And their fine was only half of that...

Maybe it's time to make an example of companies playing with our countries rules and policies, and either fine them to the ground or jail those that make the rules of those companies. Too much at stake to let companies off the hook for these types of shenanigans.

TL;DR: IL-6. It peaks then decreases in people who live, it continued to rise in patients who died. IL-6 inhibition didn't directly improve mortality but corticosteroids do so IMO it's just more evidence of pro-inflammatory cascade and cytokine storm.

ELI5: IL-6 is a ubiquitous pro-inflammatory cytokine that has been one of the darlings of inflammatory research for a long time across many domains from cancer, aging, and autoimmune disorders to psychiatry and (relevant) infectious disease. For this reason many researchers will recognize it by name even if they're not immunologists. I bet a buncha folks reading this said to themselves "Oh IL-6, I remember that from grad school/undergrad/med school".

The basic idea wrt to infectious disease is that a hyper-inflammatory state in response to the pathogen is at least correlated (and possibly causally linked to) mortality. The story goes that some people's immune systems completely freak out due to encountering covid (or influenza, see: Spanish flu) and massively over-react which leads to a bunch of bad things that all interact: high fever, increased alveolar permeability leading to respiratory failure, DIC, multisystem organ failure. When you administer corticosteroids you actually suppress the immune system a little bit and lower the odds of developing this cascade of fuckery. IL-6 is a key intermediary in immune response so its not surprising to see it implicated here.

Disclaimer: this is highly simplified, I am not an immunologist, this isn't medical advice, I'm blending hypotheses, theories and accepted medical practices for brevity and this paragraph should not be taken as authoritative. I didn't cite anything.

This headline is a mess.

Can we still equate Putin, Russia to Hitler, Nazi Germany?

"The Soviet army is a liberator, and therefore a benefactor of Europe,"

lol. Liberations don't last for 45 years.

Before the planet becomes uninhabitable, humanity will keep on exploiting the planet

I dnot understand the concept of not recognizing something that definitely happened...

Latvia also has an annual bread stacking festival...

Learn something new everyday

Silly question: more and more countries are identifying this. Does anything come out of this mass recognition?