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COVID-19 prevention measures

Beware fake cures: "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." ~H L Menken

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Despite the regime of self isolation, you need additional physical load to prepare for the infection. In this sense walking is less efficient then running, biking, paying tennis/badmin, or swimming for training your lungs and heart, but of course better then nothing.  At least, walking outside  increases the level of vitamin D due to expose to the sun. Which to a certain extent determines the efficiency of your immune response to the infection. which decline in winter months.

Also standard hygienic measures allow to lessen the virus load which acts somewhat similar to the the dose of radiation; the higher the load the more chances you have to develop pneumonia.

With respiratory diseases no matter what level of precautions you adopt the question for people who are susceptible is not if you get it, but when. You need either be vaccinated, or infected and recover from the virus.  If you are susceptible, you simply can't escape your fate "in a long run". But, first of all,  not all people are susceptible to this virus. Among passengers and crew of Diamond Princess only 20% were susceptible despite large virus load typical for ship environment.  Similar picture can be found on the other cruise ships and USS Theodor Roosevelt. 

Also self-isolation can postpone infection until better methods treating the disease are found. What we will probably get is the temporary decline of epidemic in a month or two and then possibly the second, less drastic, wave starting from November-December.  Look at  the Hispanic Flu propagation: it was in three waves with the second wave being the most devastating.  The most victims were young people. For COVID-19 the main category of victims are old and frail people (especially 70+). 

Along with the status of your immune system, the health and excess volume of your lungs are two factors that determine whether you will survive acute form of  pneumonia in case of infection (or whatever this condition is -- is not very clear what it is ). But again, most people just get acute bronchitis type of disease. In this sense swimmers, singers, runners and serious badminton/tennis or similar sports players have a distinct advantage.  

https://www.webmd.com/lung/what-does-covid-do-to-your-lungs#1

Other then known "generic" facts it is not clear why some people get severe cases  while other do not.  And that's the most important question to answer. Looks like in play are such factors as your  sex, age, medications you take, arterial pressure, blood group, and chronic conditions (especially cardiovascular, being overweight, and diabetis ), if any. Some like taking ACE medication for arterial pressure have significant influence on the outcome.  For obvious reasons cardiovascular diseases diminish your chances to survive as soon as you get pneumonia as this is a stress for the cardiovascular system.

Virus load definitely have a huge influence -- people with high virus load (medical workers) typically get more serious form of COVID-19.   People who take ACE inhibitors for arterial pressure might also be especially vulnerable and more often get severe forms.

It looks like younger people who do not smoke and exercise have some advantage (there are contradictory data that smokers are more affected but more rarely  get into severe levels of the disease) , although after 50-55  this advantage diminishes for men, as immune system became less and less efficient each year. Women of the same age are in better shape in this respect.   And generally constitute only around 33% of all patients. 

I hope that methods of treating this virus pneumonia will improve in a couple of months so winning the time before you get sick is very important.  In this sense, CDC is completely dysfunctional organization as it could get direct information from Korea autopsies and treatments. That was not done.

Add to this corruption and perverse incentives (hospitals get  more money putting you on ventilator, despite some evidence that it is not optimal way to treat COVID-19 and in most case oxygen is enough)

For example, there is some information that usage of ventilators actually worsen the prognosis for the severe cases of COVID-19 due to the additional damage to the lungs. It looks like oxygen-only treatment and less invasive methods are a better deal.

The disease is very nasty even in medium form. There are somewhat interesting interview with those those suffered from COVID-19 which gives you some clues what to expect:

One recent hypothesis that I have read is the virus among other thing attacks hemoglobin in blood (like malaria) and essentially  put you in conditions of high altitude living. If this is true, then NY Governor Cuomo quest for 40K ventilators is deeply misguided.  That's probably why anti-malarial drugs are somewhat effective  for treating COVID-19.  But this is still a pure speculation.

NOTE: In France, the sudden loss of smell is considered proof of Covid-19 infection, no further tests required

It is interesting how vulnerable modern interconnected society is to such viruses, despite all the progress in genomics. This virus actually in an extremely clever virus as it has long incubation period and hit hard only around 7% of infected. All others spread it while sick (around three weeks I think) but personally do not experience much inconvenience.  There are also rumors about the existence of a completely "asymptomatic" patients. But even if such exists they are a very small percentage of infected. Some (often minor) symptoms usually are present. Can asymptomatic patients transmit the virus is unclear and some researchers say that yes they can. If true this makes this epidemic almost impossible to contain. But I hope that this is false.

This infection is transmitted mostly from an infected person with symptoms like with cough of sneezing via aerosol with viruses and occurs in closed space (churches proved to be an idea place for spreading the infection), or at densely packed spaces outside (stadiums, lines, festivals, etc) over 80% of infected were infected in family settings. 

So wearing masks in public places is a necessary precaution. As here we are talking not about filtering of the viruses but about filtering of droplets. In this sense any mask is OK but of course it is not hermetic and decrease your chances to be infected five times or more. And if you are infected it prevent you from infecting many other people. 

For 93% of infected this is like a regular flu and does not have any adverse health consequences. Only around 7% get virus pneumonia detectable with X-rays. It usually develops one week or so from the onset of the disease.

All or most affected get some scarring of lungs (fibrosis) visible via X-ray. In severe cases (for example for people who were on ventilator) this is serious consequences that increase your chances dying later. But out of those unlucky 7%, only around 20% develop breathing problems. They are progressively worse for older population and, probably, smokers. Some tiny percent (do not remember exact percentage) need oxygen and in worst cases ventilator. Approximately half of those who need ventilator dies. Total mortality is probably around 0.2% (based of cruise ship data, where 100% of people were tested) despite the fact that often cited range is much higher (because total number of infected is probably much larger in countries affected than the number of tested positively.)

If you are less that 55 I would not worry too much. Your chances to get virus pneumonia are negligible, especially if  you are wearing a mask while shopping and in other public places, and take recommended hygienic measures. Viruses survive on phones and keyboards for a couple of days. So disinfection of such things on daily basis might be also a good precaution. On cardboard and clothing virus does not survive for long enough to represent a real danger outside of hospital setting or other settings with very high concentration of viruses.

There are half-dozen elementary measures that would lower your risk.  You might wish to watch WHO presentation Q&A on Coronavirus - COVID-19 with WHO's Dr Maria Van Kerkhove - YouTube

But the main factor -- your age and the state of your health can't be changed. And state of your immune system -- the main barrier for the virus can't be changed too.  Also spending more time on fresh air and under direct sun exposure might improve it a little bit.

Please avoid quackery and snake oil salesmen which now are propagating via Internet, especially Facebook. See A Doctor's Tips for Spotting Fake COVID-19 News

A good news is that judging from Diamond Princess cruise ship experience less then 20% of people are susceptible to the virus even if they are over 50.  For everybody else the immune system simply kills the virus and the person never becomes infected. Also a large number of people who are tested positive never develop any symptoms and might be false positives of the test. 

Like with everything luck depends on your lack.: contact with infected person often lead to infection. Especially in public transport where people are very close to each other.

Below are somewhat reworded CDC recommendations

Stop touching your face, especially eyes and nose!

The CDC also recommends that you avoid touching your face — specifically, your eyes, nose, and mouth, which are entry portals for coronavirus and other germs. If an infected person coughs or sneezes on a surface, and you touch that contaminated surface and then touch your facial mucous membranes — the eyes, nose, and mouth — you could become infected.

Wash your hands.

Washing your hands regularly is the best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — assuming you’re doing it correctly. The CDC recommends getting your hands wet with warm or cold water; lathering your entire hands, including under the nails, with soap; scrubbing your hands for 20 seconds; rinsing with clean water; and finally, either letting your hands air-dry or using a clean towel.

“Wash them especially well if you’re about to eat,” Aaron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, wrote in the New York Times. “Wash them after you’ve blown your nose, coughed or sneezed. Make it routine that all members of the household wash their hands when they get home.”

It’s also not a bad idea to carry around a hand sanitizer for times when you’re not near a sink, though you should make sure it contains at least 60 percent alcohol. However, experts stress that washing your hands thoroughly — and frequently — is the best preventative measure.

If you have a chronic illness, are elderly, or have a compromised immune system …

While COVID-19 will cause mild symptoms in the majority of infected people, Jan Carette, associate professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, says that the elderly — especially those with chronic conditions, like hypertension or diabetes — are at greater risk for more severe disease. In this case, he recommends that those who are especially susceptible practice the above precautions as well as avoid people who display flulike symptoms.

If you’re traveling …

If you have upcoming travel plans, it’s a good idea to stay up-to-date on the CDC’s travel warnings for specific countries. In general, it’s safest to avoid nonessential travel to countries with a sustained COVID-19 presence; right now, this includes Iran, China, South Korea, and Italy. For individuals who are especially susceptible to viral infections, including the elderly and those with existing medical conditions, the CDC advises avoiding travel to Japan as well.

Currently, the CDC doesn’t have any additional recommendations for domestic travel, though this could change as the virus spreads further in the United States. But according to the CDC’s website, the risk of infection on an airplane is low. “Because of how air circulates and is filtered on airplanes, most viruses and other germs do not spread easily,” they write. However, they recommend that travelers wash their hands frequently and avoid contact with sick passengers.


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[Aug 01, 2021] UK scientists believe it is 'almost certain' a coronavirus variant will emerge that beats current vaccines by Mick Krever

Aug 01, 2021 | www.msn.com

An analysis by British academics, published by the UK Government's official scientific advisory group, says that they believe it is "almost certain" that a SARS-Cov-2 variant will emerge that "leads to current vaccine failure." SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes Covid-19.

The analysis has not been peer-reviewed, the early research is theoretical, and does not provide any proof that such a variant is in circulation now. Documents like it are released "as pre-print publications that have provided the government with rapid evidence during an emergency."

The paper is dated July 26, and was published by the British government on Friday.

The scientists write that because eradication of the virus is "unlikely," they have "high confidence" that variants will continue to emerge. They say it is "almost certain" that there will be "a gradual or punctuated accumulation of antigenic variation that eventually leads to current vaccine failure."

They recommend that authorities continue to reduce virus transmission as much as possible to reduce the chance of a new, vaccine-resistant variant.

They also recommend that research focus on new vaccines that not only prevent hospital admission and disease, but also "induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity."

The goal, they say, should be "to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals," and to "reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals." Research is already underway at several companies that make the Covid-19 vaccines to address new variants.

The views were expressed in a paper "by group of academics on scenarios for the longer term evolution of SARS-CoV-2," and discussed and published by the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

They write that some variants that have emerged over the past few months "show a reduced susceptibility to vaccine-acquired immunity, though none appears to escape entirely."

But they caution that these variants emerged "before vaccination was widespread," and that "as vaccines become more widespread, the transmission advantage gained by a virus that can evade vaccine-acquired immunity will increase."

This is an issue that SAGE has warned about before.

In minutes from its July 7 meeting, SAGE scientists wrote that "the combination of high prevalence and high levels of vaccination creates the conditions in which an immune escape variant is most likely to emerge." It said at the time that "the likelihood of this happening is unknown, but such a variant would present a significant risk both in the UK and internationally."

[Aug 01, 2021] 2 major San Francisco hospitals reported that 233 staff members tested positive for COVID-19

Aug 01, 2021 | www.msn.com

Hundreds of staffers at two major hospitals in San Francisco have tested positive for coronavirus in July, with most of them being breakthrough cases of the highly infectious Delta variant, The New York Times reported Saturday evening.

The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center told media outlets that 183 of its 35,000 staffers tested positive. Of those infected, 84% were fully vaccinated, and just two vaccinated staff members required hospitalization for their symptoms.

At Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, at least 50 members out of the total 7,500 hospital staff were infected, with 75-80% of them vaccinated. None of those staffers required hospitalization.

... ... ...

Day also told ABC7 News that at least 99% of the cases at UCSF were traced back to community spread, but that hospital officials are still investigating and conducting contact tracing.

He added that most of the cases presented mild to moderate symptoms, and some were completely asymptomatic. He said the cases were spread among doctors, nurses, and ancillary staff.

"We sort of are seeing that across the board," he said. "We have so far not detected any patient-to-staff or staff-to-patient transmission right now."

The Delta variant has also been known to spread among vaccinated people in breakthrough cases, prompting the agency this week to recommend that even fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in areas with high transmission rates.

The CDC emphasized that getting vaccinated is still highly beneficial and is a crucial component to combatting the coronavirus - even the Delta variant.

"Getting vaccinated continues to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death, even with Delta," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told media on Tuesday.

[Aug 01, 2021] CDC's new mask guidance for fully vaccinated suggests wearing mask in indoor areas

Aug 01, 2021 | www.msn.com

4 This is what Republicans said as Capitol police told their stories on the Hill Russia Calls Joe Biden's Comments on Nation's Economy 'Inherently

A reversal in federal health guidance calling for fully vaccinated individuals to don masks in certain indoor areas amid high and substantial viral spread has left some experts divided.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rolled out the latest guidance on Tuesday, with agency head Dr. Rochelle Walensky citing "worrisome" new science necessitating the update.

"In recent days, I have seen new scientific data from sequenced outbreak investigations showing that the delta variant behaves uniquely differently from past strains of the virus that cause COVID-19," Walensky told reporters over a call. "Information on the delta variant from several states and other countries indicate that in rare occasions, some vaccinated people infected with the delta variant after vaccination may be contagious and spread the virus to others."

[Jul 30, 2021] The Unhinged Fearmongering Over Kids and COVID Has Reached New and Absurd Levels, by Matt Vespa

Notable quotes:
"... If there's any demographic that isn't at risk, it's children. Children were never an issue when it came to COVID. Their caseload was never the majority, the plurality, or even a fraction that you could call 'significant.' ..."
"... If they do contract COVID, it's usually not a bad case. A child's survival rate is a whopping 99.995 percent when it comes to infection. They're virtually bulletproof. ..."
"... Since the start of the pandemic, only 335 kids under the age of 18 have died from COVID. Is one too many? Of course. It's tragic but hardly cause for a national panic. By this logic, we can no longer drive automobiles. Too much death. ..."
"... Schools have also never been a source of super spread. The schools in Irvine, California reopened in September of 2020. A report last March noted at the time, that of the 23,000 students in the Irvine School District, just 17 contracted COVID. How many of the 3,000 employees? Only three. And this was when the vaccine was not readily available. ..."
"... Should people still be careful? Sure, but this isn't a 'Apocalypse Now' mentality. ..."
Jul 20, 2021 | townhall.com

They have nowhere to go. The liberal media and the experts see another avenue to lock us down -- and they're going full bore. The Delta variant, which doesn't make you sicker nor is it more lethal, is a problem for the unvaccinated. But we're not locking down again. No way. There's a midterm election coming up, so no -- not even Joe Biden is going to back such a move. It's the same reason why there will be no mandatory vaccination protocol. There's an election coming up. If this were a national emergency, politics be damned -- everyone gets a shot, right? They're readily available to everyone who can get them. That should be the mindset. It's not. Why? Because obviously, it's not a do-or-die situation. If a mandatory vaccination mandate is being kept in the desk until after an election, it's all politics. We've known this for months.

And now, they're trying to gaslight us on children and COVID. Fellas, I have bad news. We've been paying attention. If there's any demographic that isn't at risk, it's children. Children were never an issue when it came to COVID. Their caseload was never the majority, the plurality, or even a fraction that you could call 'significant.' This notion that children are under threat is science fiction and it doesn't help that a hyper-partisan Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who was not shy about wanting to declare gun violence a national health issue, is peddling this fearmongering.

The science is clear. Children generally do not get it or spread it. If they do contract COVID, it's usually not a bad case. A child's survival rate is a whopping 99.995 percent when it comes to infection. They're virtually bulletproof.

Since the start of the pandemic, only 335 kids under the age of 18 have died from COVID. Is one too many? Of course. It's tragic but hardly cause for a national panic. By this logic, we can no longer drive automobiles. Too much death.

Schools have also never been a source of super spread. The schools in Irvine, California reopened in September of 2020. A report last March noted at the time, that of the 23,000 students in the Irvine School District, just 17 contracted COVID. How many of the 3,000 employees? Only three. And this was when the vaccine was not readily available.

The vaccines right now are not available for kids under the age of 12. They're not at-risk. They're not carriers. Should people still be careful? Sure, but this isn't a 'Apocalypse Now' mentality. Also, the store-bought masks that people, like Fauci, are saying kids under three should wear don't stop the spread of COVID. Fauci mentioned that in his emails .

[Jul 30, 2021] CDC Data Shows Delta Variant Breakthrough Cases Equally Contagious as In Unvaccinated People

After the virus infects a person itdoes not care whther the person vaccinated or not. The person spread virus like any other infected person, depending of course on the severity of symptoms, which supposedly should be lighter n vaccinated people. Is this so difficult to understand that for vitus any infected person is a lunchpad for infections, vaccinated or unvaccinated... A lot of pseudoscience is typical for neoliberal MSM.
Jul 30, 2021 | www.msn.com

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is equally contagious whether it's contracted by a vaccinated or unvaccinated person.

[Jul 30, 2021] CDC mask decision followed stunning findings from Cape Cod beach outbreak

Jul 30, 2021 | www.msn.com

A week after the crowds descended upon Provincetown, Massachusetts, to celebrate the Fourth of July -- the holiday President Joe Biden hoped would mark the nation's liberation from COVID-19 -- the manager of the Cape Cod beach town said he was aware of "a handful of positive COVID cases among folks" who spent time there.

"We are in touch with the Health Department and Outer Cape Health Services and are closely monitoring the data," Alex Morse told reporters.

The announcement wasn't unusual with roughly half of the country still unvaccinated and flare-ups of the virus popping up in various states.

But within weeks, health officials seemed to be on to something much bigger. The outbreak quickly grew to the hundreds and most of them appeared to be vaccinated.

MORE: Vast majority of ICU patients with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, ABC News survey finds

As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized, yet officials said the vast majority were also reporting symptoms. Seven people were reported hospitalized.

The initial findings of the investigation led by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seemed to have huge implications.

[Jul 30, 2021] CDC Warns Vaccinated People Can Pass COVID to Others

Jul 30, 2021 | www.msn.com

CDC Warns Vaccinated People Can Pass COVID to Others Even if you're vaccinated, you should wear a mask in places of high transmissibility -- and you could give COVID to someone else. These eyebrow-raising facts were revealed yesterday by the CDC.

In response, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky joined SiriusXM's Doctor Radio Reports and opened up to show host Dr. Marc Siegel about the delta variant and evidence that it's something that fully vaccinated people may pass along to others, and the idea of making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory.

Read on for five live-saving pieces of advice -- and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these: Sure Signs You Have "Long" COVID and May Not Even Know It .

[Jul 29, 2021] According to the CDC's guidelines for the fully vaccinated, those infected with the delta variant can spread it to others.

Jul 29, 2021 | www.msn.com

If a vaccinated person experiences any symptoms of COVID-19 listed by the CDC, the public health agency recommends getting tested and isolating from others until a result is received. If the test is positive, an infected vaccinated person should isolate at home for 10 days. According to the CDC's guidelines for the fully vaccinated, those infected with the delta variant can spread it to others.

The existence of breakthrough cases doesn't mean that vaccines aren't doing their job, experts say. In fact, merely coming down with a mild infection rather than a severe one is often evidence that the vaccine is doing its job in helping your immune system fight the virus. Since the existing vaccines were developed to combat the alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2, it makes sense that they're not as effective in combating the delta variant, whose mutations have shown to some extent to evade the immune response from the vaccines. Yet all the COVID-19 vaccines are mostly able to stop the infection worsening.

"In a vaccinated person, what will happen is that we already have cells that very specifically recognize an infected cell, and can aggressively target that infection so that the virus can no longer replicate," said Dr. Nicole Baumgarth, a professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at University of California–Davis. "Even if we cannot stop the infection from happening, [the vaccine] stops it very early in its tracks; the less virus replication you have, the less symptoms you will have, the less disease and it gets easier for the immune system to mop up the little bit of virus."

Signs of infection, like a fever, develop when the immune system has been activated to fight it.

"Some of the signs of disease are actually signs that the immune system has been activated," Baumgarth said. "That's one response to the body to fight the viruses, to increase the temperature."

Baumgarth said it is in fact accurate to think of a breakthrough infection as a "booster shot." However, Baumgarth would not advocate for people to purposely expose themselves to the virus. Yet a mild breakthrough case does build one's immunity against the virus.

Of course, given the possibility of spreading the virus further, it is best not to get infected at all.

[Jul 29, 2021] Israeli study says the Pfizer vaccine is losing effectiveness. But some experts think it's a fluke

Jul 29, 2021 | www.msn.com

Last week, Israel's health ministry released preliminary data suggesting that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine's ability to protect against a mild coronavirus infection may have decreased precipitously, even though it remains effective against severe illness and death from COVID-19. The reason for the decrease in the vaccine's effectiveness may be both because of transient immunity and the virulent delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, which is more adept at overcoming the vaccine's defenses.

The delta variant is now the dominant strain of SARS-CoV-2 in Israel, where researchers now estimate that the two-shot Pfizer vaccine is only 39% effective in preventing an infection within the country. That is about half as effective as the vaccine was two weeks ago, when it purportedly exhibited 64% effectiveness against coronavirus infection in Israel -- though at that point in time, the delta variant was less widespread. Upon its public release in late 2020, Pfizer-BioNTech's mRNA vaccine was reported to have an efficacy of 95%.

On a positive note, research data shows that the Pfizer vaccine is still effective at preventing serious illness; at least 88 percent effective in protecting against hospitalization; and 91 percent effective at preventing severe illness.

[Jul 29, 2021] Your Vaccinated Immune System Is Ready for Breakthroughs

The key issue problem is whether Delta can successfully spread in fully vaccinated population? If the answer is yes, then the current policy is stupid. Another important question is whether the current generation of vaccines provides any real benefits for people younger then 30?
In short, the article like this looks like another attempt to change the narrative as it demonstrates abandonment of the previous idea of herd immunity. Suddenly, because of proliferation of breakthrough infections, it is not longer a goal.
Jul 29, 2021 | www.msn.com

Post-vaccination infections, or breakthroughs, might occasionally turn symptomatic , but they aren't shameful or aberrant . They also aren't proof that the shots are failing . These cases are, on average, gentler and less symptomatic; faster-resolving, with less virus lingering -- and, it appears, less likely to pass the pathogen on. The immunity offered by vaccines works in iterations and gradations, not absolutes. It does not make a person completely impervious to infection. It also does not evaporate when a few microbes breach a body's barriers. A breakthrough, despite what it might seem, does not cause our defenses to crumble or even break ; it does not erase the protection that's already been built. Rather than setting up fragile and penetrable shields, vaccines reinforce the defenses we already have , so that we can encounter the virus safely and potentially build further upon that protection.

To understand the anatomy of a breakthrough case, it's helpful to think of the human body as a castle. Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, compares immunization to reinforcing such a stronghold against assault.

Without vaccination, the castle's defenders have no idea an attack is coming. They might have stationed a few aggressive guard dogs outside, but these mutts aren't terribly discerning: They're the system's innate defenders , fast-acting and brutal, but short-lived and woefully imprecise. They'll sink their teeth into anything they don't recognize, and are easily duped by stealthier invaders. If only quarrelsome canines stand between the virus and the castle's treasures, that's a pretty flimsy first line of defense. But it's essentially the situation that many uninoculated people are in. Other fighters, who operate with more precision and punch -- the body's adaptive cells -- will eventually be roused. Without prior warning, though, they'll come out in full force only after a weeks - long delay , by which time the virus may have run roughshod over everything it can. At that point, the fight may, quite literally, be at a fever pitch, fueling worsening symptoms.

Post-vaccination infections, or breakthroughs, might occasionally turn symptomatic , but they aren't shameful or aberrant . They also aren't proof that the shots are failing . These cases are, on average, gentler and less symptomatic; faster-resolving, with less virus lingering -- and, it appears, less likely to pass the pathogen on. The immunity offered by vaccines works in iterations and gradations, not absolutes. It does not make a person completely impervious to infection. It also does not evaporate when a few microbes breach a body's barriers. A breakthrough, despite what it might seem, does not cause our defenses to crumble or even break ; it does not erase the protection that's already been built. Rather than setting up fragile and penetrable shields, vaccines reinforce the defenses we already have , so that we can encounter the virus safely and potentially build further upon that protection.

To understand the anatomy of a breakthrough case, it's helpful to think of the human body as a castle. Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, compares immunization to reinforcing such a stronghold against assault.

Without vaccination, the castle's defenders have no idea an attack is coming. They might have stationed a few aggressive guard dogs outside, but these mutts aren't terribly discerning: They're the system's innate defenders , fast-acting and brutal, but short-lived and woefully imprecise. They'll sink their teeth into anything they don't recognize, and are easily duped by stealthier invaders. If only quarrelsome canines stand between the virus and the castle's treasures, that's a pretty flimsy first line of defense. But it's essentially the situation that many uninoculated people are in. Other fighters, who operate with more precision and punch -- the body's adaptive cells -- will eventually be roused. Without prior warning, though, they'll come out in full force only after a weeks - long delay , by which time the virus may have run roughshod over everything it can. At that point, the fight may, quite literally, be at a fever pitch, fueling worsening symptoms.

... ... ...

The choice isn't about getting vaccinated or getting infected. It's about bolstering our defenses so that we are ready to fight an infection from the best position possible -- with our defensive wits about us, and well-armored bodies in tow.

[Jul 29, 2021] Drugs cleared or recommended in the U.S. for Covid-19 patients

Jul 29, 2021 | www.wsj.com

[Jul 29, 2021] Covid Treatment Options Remain Elusive, Despite Months of Effort and Rising Delta Cases by Joseph Walker

Notable quotes:
"... Federal officials concentrated their resources on quickly developing vaccines, with success. However, a relative dearth of drug research focused on coronaviruses, despite previous outbreaks, held back a fast response on treatments ..."
"... Red Texas btw had 1,387 new cases today. A state with 30 million people. 5 (yes that's five) deaths. The fourth straight day new cases fell. Weird how those stats aren't making it into the fear-mongering articles. ..."
"... Israel is struggling with a fourth wave of infections, and the Israeli Health Ministry announced at that Pfizer vaccine is only 39% effective against the Delta variant there. People who have had Covid and recovered are not being reinfected at a high rate. ..."
"... Time to stop the fear-mongering and hysteria. There is risk to everything in life, and you can't hide under the bed for the rest of your lives because something might happen. Let's get back to normal and stop being held prisoner by confused people like Fauci who don't understand their 15 minutes of fame are long over. ..."
Jul 29, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Federal officials concentrated their resources on quickly developing vaccines, with success. However, a relative dearth of drug research focused on coronaviruses, despite previous outbreaks, held back a fast response on treatments . Scattered U.S. clinical trials competed against each other for patients. When effective yet hard-to-administer drugs were developed, a fragmented American healthcare system struggled to deliver them to patients.

Covid-19 cases, and the need for treatments, are continuing. U.S. hospitals are bracing for new surges of cases with the Delta variant spreading

... The Biden administration recently said it would spend $3.2 billion to support the development of Covid-19 antiviral pills.

... ... ...

A lack of knowledge among healthcare providers has made it difficult to get even the available treatments. When Bob Bellin of Austin, Texas, tested positive for Covid-19 last December, he remembered that then-President Donald Trump had taken a monoclonal antibody treatment from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Suffering from a mild cough and a headache, the retiree was worried about his chances of developing a bad case of the virus because he has a compromised immune system condition. He says he called a telemedicine provider to inquire about antibody treatment, but the physician assistant on the call initially didn't know about it. After some pleading, the healthcare worker agreed to research the drug's availability, he says.

Several minutes later, she got back to him with the names of sites where he could get the antibody treatment. The next week, Mr. Bellin received the infusion over a three-hour visit. A week later, he started his regular running routine again.

... ... ...

Remdesivir, first authorized by the Food and Drug Administration in May 2020 and later granted full approval, is now given to roughly half of all hospitalized patients. Yet patients often recover slowly regardless of whether they receive the treatment or not, doctors say.

"The effect of remdesivir is something a statistician can show you in a trial of 1,000 people, but it's not something where you really can see a day-to-day impact on your patients," says Dr. Griffin of ProHealth.

... ... ...

The Recovery study, which has examined at least 12 drugs so far, found the most effective of all Covid-19 treatments for hospitalized patients to date, dexamethasone, which cut the risk of death in patients on ventilators by a third. The Oxford scientists reported the results in June 2020 , less than three months after they first began evaluating it.

... ... ...

Last November, the FDA authorized the first drugs designed specifically to target Covid-19 in people who weren't hospitalized based on preliminary trial results. These monoclonal antibodies were modeled after the natural antibodies people produce to fight the new coronavirus.

Researchers at companies including Regeneron and Eli Lilly & Co. developed these monoclonal antibody therapies in less than a year, compared with the decade or longer it usually takes to bring a drug to market. The work was sped by earlier research by Regeneron and others to develop antibodies for the MERS virus. The new drugs worked well in early Covid-19 patients, reducing the risk of hospitalization or death by 70% in trials.

Yet of the nearly one million doses shipped to hospitals and clinics from November through early May, just 49% were used by patients over the period.

One factor in their limited use was the fact that influential panels that issue Covid-19 treatment guidelines balked at endorsing them before full clinical trial data was available. The NIH and the Infectious Diseases Society of America didn't recommend using the drugs until February and March, respectively, after Lilly provided results from a Phase 3 study.

... ... ...

The hospital treated 1,469 patients with the drugs through early July, and as many as 30 people a day at the peak, says Jonathan Parsons, a pulmonologist and executive vice chair of clinical operations for Wexner's internal medicine department.

Of the patients treated so far, 4.8% have gone on to be hospitalized, compared with an estimated 8% to 9% for similar patients not infused with the drug, he says.

Looking ahead, the best solution would be an antiviral that can be taken early in the disease as a pill, doctors say.

Finding highly effective treatments with tolerable side effects is likely to take years and require more coordination between government, universities and industry...

B

BRIAN OCONNOR SUBSCRIBER 7 hours ago

The posts below are sad - Trump, Trump, Trump. A man who's been gone for eight months. I guess that's better than dealing with Biden's endless problems. I suppose letting in thousands of illegals, many with covid, still isn't an issue?

Love the constant blaming of "delta" on unvaxxed Trump supporters. Sure, it's mostly red states, but the enormous fact that keeps getting ignored is the fact over 60% of whites have vaxxed. African Americans? 9%. Yes 9%. That means millions of adult AAs who can get shots, won't.

Not surprising is AAs make up a large portion of the current hospital load (which still isn't bad). Of course all the media and the people making this political want to say is...it's "red states". I guess they don't want to offend Biden's voting base?

Red Texas btw had 1,387 new cases today. A state with 30 million people. 5 (yes that's five) deaths. The fourth straight day new cases fell. Weird how those stats aren't making it into the fear-mongering articles.

jack Canzonetta SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
FDA, CDC, FAUCI all downplayed Regeneron's treatment--a super treatment --I also asked my about DR above Regeneron's treatment .. We were discussing a plan in case I contracted the Wuhan lab virus, he didn't say much Regeneron - I also found out the outlets to receive it were limited and they had produced many of product.. Fauci was singing only one note--Moderna --
Catherine G Attara-Fink SUBSCRIBER 27 minutes ago
How about we need treatment for those who have been vaccinated and get Covid after the fact???
thomas barloon SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Today I saw a 50 year old man with active pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) . Each time he coughs, he releases millions of tuberculosis organisms into to the air and fills the rooms he enters with infectious active bacteria. Should our patient with active tuberculosis be allowed to go when and where he wants? Would you enter a cafe where he is eating or enter a room where he is living? Of course, most would hope the man with active TB stays home and takes medication to treat his active infection. Now, in many states, people with active COVID are allowed to enter cafes and stores. Who are those with acitive COVID? One does not know until one tests and traces and isolates. And an effective vaccine is also available and monoclonal antibodies are available to all. Why do doctors not use HCQ and Invermectin and zinc? Simple. These and many other medications do not work. Yes, the results are available for all to read for free in NEJM, JAMA, Nature. Follow facts not fantasy.
William Lamb SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
I guessed face mask might not be in this picture, since there are those who claimed it is ineffective and covered one smile. Beside, it is their constutional rights to infect others and care less for their fellow American, when they see that it is good to share the same misery to others.
Dick Motley SUBSCRIBER 56 minutes ago
What an ironic post. You DO realize the vaccines are also categorized as emergency use because they're also considered experimental right? And you HAVE heard about adverse reactions to the vaccines, right? And you HAVE heard about "breakthrough" cases (reinfection) among the vaccinated, right?
Sorry, did I say "ironic"? I meant "moronic".
Jamilla Graves SUBSCRIBER 2 hours ago
It would be irresponsible for the WSJ to spread propaganda about drugs that have been disproven as treatments against and to prevent COVID-19.
jes merrell SUBSCRIBER 2 hours ago
Agreed. It is equally irresponsible for the layman poster to spread propaganda such as "tens of thousands" of doctors are doing what?
If the poster is a physician, virologist or immunologist, offer your credentials along with your medical advice. It will then have credibility, your opinions have none.
Mikey Metz SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago
"Fragmented health care" is correct. When will Congress and at least 60 percent of Americans wake up and realize health care in a capitalized society does not work like Target Corp. or any business that works in a competitive environment. And to read how little money is spent in this area is horrible. The world has dealt with terrible viruses forever--and the feet dragging continues.
Julia Harte SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago
Here are protocols provided by frontline workers that are having success with preventing and treating covid 19.
https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/
Claire V SUBSCRIBER 4 hours ago (Edited)
We are not in Russia or China where the state mandates what to do. with your thinking it has to be difficult for you to be in a country where there is freedom of choice.
Who are you to tell 50% of the population of the country what to do? Who are you to mandate to get an experimental vaccine? This is everyone's individual decision. If you are vaccinated you are safe. Didn't Biden say you are 100% safe?
Richard Dole SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago
Let's see, all the Science (actual peer reviewed studies) indicate that those who have recovered from COVID (naturally vaccinated) or been jabbed are good to go, have broad immunity. So why worry about others if you are protected........
J Domingo SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago (Edited)
So why worry about others if you are protected........
Because this is not about protecting people.

It is about controlling people.

That is the only explanation for why Covid survivors are put on the BAD list. If they don't line up and demonstrate their servility, they are in trouble. T

Thomas Erb SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago
Now, a new NIH-supported study shows that the answer to this question will vary based on how an individual's antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were generated: over the course of a naturally acquired infection or from a COVID-19 vaccine. The new evidence shows that protective antibodies generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying "single letter" changes in a key portion of their spike protein compared to antibodies acquired from an infection. These results add to evidence that people with acquired immunity may have differing levels of protection to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. More importantly, the data provide further documentation that those who've had and recovered from a COVID-19 infection still stand to benefit from getting vaccinated.
J Domingo SUBSCRIBER 5 hours ago (Edited)
Israel is struggling with a fourth wave of infections, and the Israeli Health Ministry announced at that Pfizer vaccine is only 39% effective against the Delta variant there. People who have had Covid and recovered are not being reinfected at a high rate.
Now, a new NIH-supported study shows that the answer to this question will vary...
Quoting a study that is not yet published provides little useful information, and cannot be used to conclude vaccination is superior to recovery from natural infection.
Thomas Erb SUBSCRIBER 5 hours ago
you missed a part of the Israeli quote

The two-dose vaccine still works very well in preventing people from getting seriously sick, demonstrating 88% effectiveness against hospitalization and 91% effectiveness against severe illness, according to the Israeli data.

David Richardson SUBSCRIBER 5 hours ago
Because I still have about a 20% chance of getting the Delta virus if I am in direct contact with unvaccinated and unmasked people. I then have a 10% chance of getting seriously ill. But, the many people who post exactly the same question know this data. It is reported daily by outlets ranging from the MSM to Fox. You just don't like it . It cuts your argument that unvaccinated people are not a concern or threat to vaccinated people to shreds Man up. Or, at least, shut up. If you or others decide not to get vaccinated you are materially raising the immediate risk to others and--perhaps even worse--the odds that you will bread an even worse variant.
Hersh Goel SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago
you do not have a 20% chance of getting Delta virus from unvaccinated pople - dont shake hands, dont hug or kiss. dont get in crowded places like elevators. wear an eye shield and mask - your risk is essentially zero. The evidence is the thousands of unvaccinated health care workers who took care of covid 19 cases for over a year.

But if you want to have 'direct contact' with people, thats a choice you make.

T Swan SUBSCRIBER 5 hours ago
This from India news, July 1, 2021

'Not a long-drawn process': Bharat Biotech expecting WHO approval soon As several European countries are accepting WHO-listed Covishield, Covaxin too is expected to receive WHO approval soon.

Stephen Carroll SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago
The highest rates of unvaccinated people live in the inner cities. In order to get support from liberals the Democrats have neglected these inner city people so it would not disprove their narrative that it is suburban conservatives that are failing to get vaccinated.
Nikola Sizgorich SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago
Time to stop the fear-mongering and hysteria. There is risk to everything in life, and you can't hide under the bed for the rest of your lives because something might happen. Let's get back to normal and stop being held prisoner by confused people like Fauci who don't understand their 15 minutes of fame are long over.
K Baker SUBSCRIBER 4 hours ago
Everybody knows a person can still get covid even if a person is fully vaccinated and spread it to other people. Except JD. He will Spin that a 1000 different ways to try to confuse people. He is talking to himself.
J Domingo SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Everybody knows a person can still get covid even if a person is fully vaccinated...
That's truly funny.
"You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations." Joe Biden, speaking at the CNN Town Hall in Cincinnati, OH, July 21, 2021
K Baker, and most D's don't even know what their confused leader believes and is saying publicly about the vaccine.

Without misinformation, the Left would be bereft of information.

[Jul 24, 2021] The World Health Organization in late June 2021 urged people to again wear masks indoors even those who are fully vaccinated due to the threat of breakthrough infections

Jul 24, 2021 | www.msn.com

With the highly infectious delta coronavirus variant spreading at an alarming rate, the World Health Organization in late June 2021 urged people to again wear masks indoors – even those who are fully vaccinated.

... ... ...

What's the science behind the WHO recommendation?

There is clear and mounting evidence that – though rare – breakthrough COVID-19 infections can occur, even in the fully vaccinated. This is particularly true with emerging variants of concern.

The CDC has been following these data closely. By mid-July 2021, nearly 60% of the U.S. population age 18 or older had been fully vaccinated. Infections in those who are fully vaccinated are rare, and serious outcomes from COVID-19 in that population are even rarer – though they do still occur. However, the CDC stopped tracking nonhospitalized cases of COVID-19 for people with and without symptoms among fully vaccinated individuals on May 1, 2021.

The risk of infection leading to serious illness and death, however, differs starkly between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

... ... ...

One recent preliminary report from Israel is sobering, however. Before the delta variant became widespread, from January to April 2021 , Israel reported that the Pfizer vaccine was 97% effective in preventing symptomatic disease. However, since June 6 , with the delta variant circulating more widely, the Pfizer vaccine has been 64% effective in preventing symptomatic disease, according to preliminary data reported by Israel's Ministry of Health in early July.

And in another new report that is not yet peer-reviewed , researchers compared blood serum antibodies from people vaccinated with Pfizer Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines and found that the J&J vaccine lent much lower protection against delta, beta and other variants, compared with the mRNA-based vaccines.

[Jul 24, 2021] In Oregon, about 10 percent of the breakthrough infections reported to the state were in people living in nursing homes or congregate care facilities, and the majority of deaths were older people.

Jul 20, 2021 | newsdeal.in

Despite the power of Covid-19 vaccines in cutting the risk of hospitalization and death from the disease, fully vaccinated people can get very sick and die from the virus in rare cases. Those individuals tend to be older than 65 or have weakened immune systems or other severe medical conditions, an NBC News survey of health officials nationwide found.

"Throughout the pandemic, people who died of Covid-19 were most likely to be older, and that continues to be true with breakthrough cases," a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said in an email.

Full coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

In Oregon, about 10 percent of the breakthrough infections reported to the state were in people living in nursing homes or congregate care facilities, and the majority of deaths were older people.

[Jul 24, 2021] What Do Breakthrough COVID Cases Tell Us About What s Safe And What s Risky- by Arun Rath

Jul 20, 2021 | www.wgbh.org

By Arun Rath July 19, 2021 All Things Considered SHARE

Shira Doron on All Things Considered | July 19, 2021

COVID-19 cases are trending upwards across the country. In Massachusetts, where vaccination rates are relatively high, cases are still on the rise" and a cluster in Provincetown among mostly vaccinated individuals caused the town to issue a new mask advisory Monday. Tufts Medical Center epidemiologist Dr. Shira Doron spoke with Arun Rath on GBH's All Things Considered about where thing stand in the Commonweath and the nation.

Arun Rath: It probably makes sense to start with today's news out of Provincetown. The town is putting its indoor mask advisory back in place after more than 100 new COVID cases popped up after the July Fourth holiday. What do you make of that uptick and the response?

Shira Doron: Well, the outbreak is unexpected. It's not what we've been seeing. There's quite a bit of transmission there reported between vaccinated individuals. And really, what we've seen so far, has been that, certainly, breakthrough cases occur in vaccinated individuals" usually they have mild symptoms, which we do believe to be the case here" but usually they don't transmit to others, so the fact that there are so many cases" 132 reported" that a good proportion of them are vaccinated and that it appears that there was transmission among them is unusual. And so it makes sense for health authorities there to take some swift and rather aggressive action, at least for the moment, to try to control the outbreak, and then continue to study what might have happened there, because there's still so much we don't know.

Rath: Interesting. So that uptick of 100 cases is as unusual as it sounds, that's sort of why the response is what it is.

Doron: Yes, we really haven't seen anything quite like this yet.

Rath: Are you concerned that we will start to see other incidents like this?

Doron: I hope not. I hope that this was, you know, an anomaly that was probably related to the fact that the delta variant is so very contagious that some people who harbor it have very, very high viral loads in the respiratory tract. The fact that it was a holiday weekend, very crowded bars and nightclubs, some rain that drove people inside more than usual, and that perhaps all of those things came together this one time to cause this outbreak...

... ... ...

[Jul 23, 2021] COVID Propaganda Roundup- Children's Risk of COVID Death 2 in 1,000,000

Jul 23, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Via BBC :

"Researchers estimate that 25 deaths in a population of some 12 million children in England gives a broad, overall mortality rate of 2 per million children."

Despite the above-cited statistics, 56% of big-D Democrats supported mandating vaccines for schoolchildren in a July 2021 poll.

[Jul 23, 2021] 20% Of New Los Angeles COVID Cases Are In Vaccinated People As Delta Variant Spikes by Cammy Pedroja

That's less in Israel.
Jul 23, 2021 | www.msn.com

4 Details on FBI inquiry into Kavanaugh draw fire from Democrats Democrats' divide on voting rights widens as Biden faces pressure

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer announced on Thursday that 20 percent of new COVID-19 cases identified in Los Angeles County were in vaccinated individuals.

..."The Delta variant is a game-changer," Ferrer said. With the Delta variant driving community spread and positive case numbers up in LA County, the percentage of breakthrough cases in fully-vaccinated people has gone up as well. The daily average case rate was 7.1 per 100,000 people on July 15 and shot up to 12.9 on Thursday.

... about 53 percent of LA County residents are fully vaccinated against coronavirus. About 58 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 are fully vaccinated.

... Vaccinated people are still far more likely to be able to fight off the virus when exposed. Vaccinated people are also much less likely to advance to serious illness or death, with 90 percent of nationwide hospitalizations or fatalities occurring in unvaccinated people.

[Jul 23, 2021] 'I think people are underestimating how bad this is going to get'- Dr. Ashish Jha on the delta variant

Jul 23, 2021 | www.msn.com

... new data shows people infected with the delta strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain.

"I think people are underestimating how bad this is going to get," said Dr. Ashish Jha. "We are in for a very tough August, probably a very tough September before this really turns around."

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters at a briefing Thursday that the delta variant "is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of, and that I have seen in my 20 year career."

Jha told CNBC's " The News with Shepard Smith ," that the infection rate could be worse if it were winter, and predicted the delta spike could peak within two months.

"It might peak in September, but we are far away from the peak, right now we are doing 40,000 cases a day, it's going to go substantially higher before it peaks," Jha said.

The delta variant has spread rapidly through the U.S., accounting for more than 83% of sequenced cases in the U.S. right now, up from 50% the week of July 3, according to the CDC.

[Jul 23, 2021] Authorites failed to understand what the most porbable path of Delta variant is that it will become endemic

Jul 04, 2021 | www.forbes.com
At delta variant of Covid-19 spreads across many Western and Southern U.S. states, its high transmission rate could increase them number of immune to the virus people from about 50% to 85%" even if vaccination rates continue to plateau, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former chief of the Food and Drug Administration, said.
Gottlieb noted that millions of Americans remain vulnerable and now have a "choice in terms of how [they] acquire immunity."
Both vaccinated and those who have natural immunity still have increased risk Gottlieb said, pointing to data showing immunity among individuals naturally infected with Covid-19" and particularly those who are older" declines after about eight months. It looks like the decline for vaccinated people is even faster and that's why there are talks about booster shots
He predicted Covid will effectively act as a "second circulating flu this winter," though he said its prominence "could be a little worse."
In Mexico, an estimated 84% of cases are delta infections, which may be a warning that this variant may also be endemic in Latin America.
If the virus continues to mutate as fast as did in 2020 and 2021 herd immunity against this virus might never be achieved.
CRUCIAL QUOTE

"I wouldn't be declaring mission accomplished. I think this is going to be a long fight," Gottlieb said Sunday. "You're seeing a decoupling between cases, hospitalizations and deaths because there's so much immunity in the population""not just through vaccination""but also through prior infection... But this is likely to become an endemic virus. We're going to have to deal with it."

KEY BACKGROUND

Since the start of the pandemic, experts have long said Covid-19's threat would largely wane once herd immunity is reached, referring to a large-enough proportion of immunity that effectively makes person-to-person transmission highly unlikely within a community. If the virus cominutes to mutated in a ways it did in 202 and 2021 this might not happen all and herd immunity against this virus might never be achived.

[Jul 21, 2021] How many breakthrough cases are there, by Katelyn Jetelina

If we assume that 80% of population is vaccinated and 30-40% of vaccinated can be infected and spread the virus, that simply means that like in case of flu and other coronaviruses herd immunity from COVID-19 will never be achieved as in one year the virus sufficiently mutates to infect significant percentage of previously vaccinated people. The situation with mass vaccination of children looks pretty absurd, if not criminal
Jul 20, 2021 | yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

The news is peppered with anecdotal evidence of breakthrough cases. The headlines are terrifying and the personal stories are tragic:

Boston Globe : "79 fully vaccinated Massachusetts residents have died, 303 hospitalized in very rare COVID "˜breakthrough' cases, officials say"

The Guardian : "COVID outbreak among vaccinated Vegas hospital workers underscores Delta risks"

NBC : "Illinois Coronavirus Updates: Breakthrough COVID Cases Are 2% of State's Deaths This Year"

So, why do breakthrough cases happen?

We shouldn't think of vaccine protection as binary (yes or no). It's better to think of protection on a spectrum: On one end the vaccine will protect people in every situation and on the other end it doesn't protect people at all. And each of us land somewhere in between.

There are many factors that determine where we land:

  1. There's of course the variants. Depending which variant you come in contact with determines your level of protection. mRNA vaccines' efficacy is now ~88% against Delta. If 100 people got COVID19, Pfizer/Moderna could have prevented 88 of them. 12 people would have still gotten some form of the disease. On the other hand, if people came in contact with the original strain, 95 (out of a 100) would have been prevented.

  2. Some of us just don't have immune systems that can build protection. For example, it looks like certain drugs for immunocompromised patients reduce and/or prevent protection. Also, older adults are less protected.

  3. Behaviors, too, can predict your place on this spectrum. If a vaccinated person is exposed to a large enough dose of a virus OR exposed to enough unvaccinated people where transmission is high, the virus can overcome the vaccine and cause infection, even among the sturdiest of immune defenses.

  4. And then there's just luck. Even if you compare twins , the level of protection can differ. Some people will just create fewer or less strong defense mechanisms (antibodies, T cells, and/or memory B cells). And we don't really know why.

Nonetheless, should the virus make it through, Dr. Ali Ellebody, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said it best:

"It becomes a race [against] time. The pathogen rushes to copy itself, and the immune system recruits more defenders. The longer the tussle drags on, the more likely the disease is to manifest."

It's important to monitor all breakthrough cases.

If we closely monitor them, we can answer some very critical questions like"¦

  1. Are breakthrough cases happening at the rate in which we expect?

  2. Who's most likely to break through?

  3. What is the rate of a mild breakthrough case vs. severe breakthrough case?

  4. Are variants, like Delta, causing more (or more severe) breakthrough cases than other variants?

A study was published describing breakthrough cases between January 1-April 30. During this time among 101 million fully vaccinated Americans, 10,262 breakthrough infections were reported to the CDC. Who were they?

Beginning May 1, 2021, though, the CDC transitioned from monitoring all breakthrough infections to investigating only those among patients who are hospitalized or die. The CDC doesn't have the infrastructure to rigorously investigate all breakthrough cases. They needed to prioritize their operation, so they decided to focus on cases of highest clinical and public health significance.

The CDC continuously publishes the latest count on their website . As of July 6, there were 5,186 severe breakthrough cases. This includes 988 deaths (although it's important to notice the footnote stating that 255 of these were not directly related to COVID19).

... ... ...

From February 1 to June 21, 123,620 Delta cases were sequenced in the UK. Among those, 10,834 cases were among fully vaccinated ( i.e. breakthrough cases) and 71,932 cases among the unvaccinated. While this isn't all of the breakthrough cases, this gives an even closer estimate to the "true" rate of breakthrough cases due to Delta. But even this is among patients who went to the hospital. We still don't know the asymptomatic and/or mild breakthrough rate.


Anna Stern Jul 16

It really angers me that the CDC isn't tracking all breakthroughs even if they don't investigate everything, because we are losing so much information, such as what's going on here.

There have been a couple of Delta breakthrough CLUSTERS in the news lately, so there may be fully vaxxed people who are superspreaders. I don't think you can attribute these to individual immune system issues.

In this cluster, the sources had a vaccine with lower effectiveness, and they probably stood pretty close together, even though outdoors. But the other folks had mRNA. All guests were required to be fully vaxxed.

https://www.businessinsider.com/fully-vaccinated-people-got-covid-after-an-outdoor-wedding-2021-7

8 fully vaxxed, 2 partially vaxxed, 1 unvaxxed health care workers were infected at a pool party.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/life/health/covid-case-cluster-hits-vaccinated-las-vegas-hospital-workers-2398382/

Reply 3 replies
GP Jul 17

Question: Many of the news reports about breakthrough cases show that groups of friends or couples who are all fully vaccinated but spent time together somehow *all* ended up as breakthrough cases. With the 88% vaccine efficacy rate, how does that work? For example, if a husband who is fully vaccinated is infected as a breakthrough case, shouldn't it be highly unprobable mathematically that his fully vaccinated wife also then contracts it from him?

Anna Stern Jul 16

This is the newest/current NY Yankee cluster.

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/07/15/new-york-yankees-game-postponed/


Susan Y
Jul 16

Thanks for this! Katelyn, you are a gem. As a retired fed health professional, I have kind of an embedded risk vs threat meter after all those years of working. I am cringing at everyone going back to normal, like the pandemic is over. I over quote Yogi Berra - it ain't over till it's over.

Reply Rose W. Jul 18

As a fully vaccinated person, I have continued to mask indoors as my kids are not vaccinated and I do not want to risk spreading it to them. I am now getting nervous about outdoor interactions i.e school dropoffs, outdoor bday parties, etc. with potentially unvaccinated individuals. The wedding and Vegas pool party stories have made me a bit nervous. Any thoughts?

Reply Ralt18 Jul 18

I wish I could put an attachment here but in the same vein of all of this, my sister , who is a diehard anti vaxxer sent me a snip of the Israel Health ministry case reporting from last week which breaks down cases of fully vaccinated and non vaccinated by age group. The chart shows almost higher percentage of vaccinated individuals with cases and show small case load but overall high percent . She is running with this information saying this proves that the vaccine makes you more suspepticle to covid and is causing the current issues. Local, I know you have explained this data reporting misunderstanding before but can you explain again why the data looks skewed in Israel ? Also check me on my chart

[Jul 21, 2021] Preliminary NYU Study Suggests Johnson Johnson COVID Vaccine May Not Be As Effective Against Delta Variant

Johnson and Johnson vaccine was ineffective against South African mutation. So why Delta, and especially Delta Plus variant which has the same mutation as South African variant (Beta in new classification). Thus like South African variant is has further advantages in infected already vaccinated people Delta plus variant of SARS-CoV-2- What do we know so far
Jul 21, 2021 | www.msn.com

The Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to spread. It now constitutes 83% of the COVID cases in the U.S.

And now, as CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez reported Wednesday, a preliminary study not yet peer reviewed suggests that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may not be as effective against the Delta variant as the other two authorized vaccines.

... The J&J vaccine has been given to more than 13 million people

Those conclusions differ from smaller clinical results released by J&J earlier this month that said a single dose of their vaccine did protect against Delta, even eight months after inoculation.

Those differences could be because the new study looked at antibodies in the lab compared to real world immunity in people, which would include T-cell immunity. Peer review would help determine that contribution to protection.

[Jul 21, 2021] COVID-19 Delta variant highly transmissible among fully vaccinated people

Jul 21, 2021 | www.thehealthsite.com

... ... ...

Delta variant dominates vaccine-breakthrough infections

To come to this conclusion, scientists from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease looked at more than 100 health workers at three centres across India. Titled "Sars-Cov-2 B.1.617.2 Delta Variant Emergence and Vaccine Breakthrough: Collaborative Study". One of the centres was Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) in Delhi. It is yet to be peer reviewed.

Researchers of this study found that the Delta variant, which emerged in India, dominates vaccine-breakthrough infections with higher respiratory viral loads compared to non-Delta infections.

They also saw that this variant generates greater transmission among the fully vaccinated healthcare workers. Moreover, the study found that, in vitro, the Delta variant is around eight-fold less sensitive to vaccine-elicited antibodies compared to the original virus.

Hence, they came to the conclusion that Delta variant is both more transmissible and better able to evade the immunity a patient gets from previous infection as compared to previously circulating coronaviruses.

[Jul 21, 2021] Mandatory vaccination with experimental vaccines is questionable and should have us all worried.

Jul 21, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

DG , Jun 18 2021 10:44 utc | 65

Mandatory vaccination with experimental vaccines is abhorrent and it should have us all worried.

Unfortunately majorities in many countries have accepted this in the name of protecting public health.

This is a very tragic situation and should be given our full attention.

And no, no one should be blackmailed to have these vaccines because they work in a hospital, or a care home. They have the right to refuse at least as long as these vaccines are in the experimental phase.

In Greece they are already preparing laws to make vaccination mandatory for doctors, health workers, teachers and firefighters.

This is highly terrifying.

[Jul 21, 2021] 40% of People Being Admitted to Hospital with Covid-19 in England Have Been Fully Vaccinated (VIDEO) by Cristina Laila

That correlates well with Israel data.
Jul 19, 2021 | www.thegatewaypundit.com

60% of people being admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 in England are fully vaccinated, Sky News reported .

According to Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific advisor, Covid patients have received two doses of the Covid vaccine.

"In terms of the number of people in hospital who've been double-vaccinated, we know it's around 60% of the people being admitted to hospital with COVID," Vallance said.

"We do expect there to be over 1,000 people per day being hospitalized with coronavirus because of the increase in infections," he added. "But the rates should be lower than they have been previously because of the protective effects of vaccination."

Update: Now Sir Patrick Vallance is claiming he misspoke during Monday's presser!

"Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference today, 19 July. About 60% of hospitalisations from covid are not from double vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from covid are currently from unvaccinated people." Vallance said in a tweet.

[Jul 20, 2021] Stanford scientist Yvonne Maldonado enrolls children as young as 2 in Pfizer vaccine trials

Looks like in the USA Hippocratic oath has been modified: First do no harm to the pharma profits
Jul 20, 2021 | twitter.com

Daniel Kotzin @danielkotzin · May 28

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children in diapers wear masks until they are fully vaccinated. Coincidentally, Yvonne Maldonado is the Chair of the AAP's Committee on Infectious Diseases AND she runs the trial of the Pfizer vaccine on 2 to 5-year-olds.

Brandon Fisher (BoulderFish) @boulderfish Replying to @jessicamstone and @danielkotzin

It's literally nauseating. 2 year olds getting this injection?? WTF is wrong with people!? These poor kids.

Kerry Evans @TomEvan81013762 · May 28 Replying to @boulderfish @jessicamstone and @danielkotzin

Babies have already died from these. One nursing baby. One two year old. Two days after the shot! It is criminal.

[Jul 20, 2021] 40% of People Being Admitted to Hospital with Covid-19 in England Have Been Fully Vaccinated (VIDEO) by Cristina Laila

That correlates well with Israel data.
Jul 19, 2021 | www.thegatewaypundit.com

60% of people being admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 in England are fully vaccinated, Sky News reported .

According to Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific advisor, Covid patients have received two doses of the Covid vaccine.

"In terms of the number of people in hospital who've been double-vaccinated, we know it's around 60% of the people being admitted to hospital with COVID," Vallance said.

"We do expect there to be over 1,000 people per day being hospitalized with coronavirus because of the increase in infections," he added. "But the rates should be lower than they have been previously because of the protective effects of vaccination."

Update: Now Sir Patrick Vallance is claiming he misspoke during Monday's presser!

"Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference today, 19 July. About 60% of hospitalisations from covid are not from double vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from covid are currently from unvaccinated people." Vallance said in a tweet.

[Jul 19, 2021] Here's what vaccinated people need to know as Covid case counts rise

Jul 19, 2021 | www.msn.com

Vaccinated people who have experienced Covid-19 symptoms in the past 10 days, however, should get tested and isolate themselves from others for 10 days if their test is positive, the CDC has recommended.

[Jul 19, 2021] Look like Delta variant is less toxic then previous and led to fewer deaths and hospitalization, as often happen with later mutations of the viruses.

Look like Delta variant is less toxic then previous and led to fewer deaths and hospitalization, as often happen with later mutations of the virus.
The key here is the rate of infection of already vaccinated, not the fact that hospitalizations and death stats decoupled from new cases stats. If the significant percentage of vaccinated can be infected by Delta (say, over 20%) that could well be the last nail into the coffin of "herd immunity" delusion promoted by Fauci and other high level medical bureaucrats. There were never herd immunity from coronaviruses as they mutate too quickly to achieve it. That does not means that vaccination is useless, especially for those who live in big cities and use public transportation or need to meet customers during each working way. But that makes the idea of "total vaccination" effort including children over 12 as useless as quarantine efforts before widespread riots.
Jul 19, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Two weeks ago, when markets were merrily melting up without a worry in the world, and certainly were not paying attention to the recent spike in Delta cases, we showed that unlike in 2020 when covid hospitalizations and deaths promptly followed - with a slight lag - any move higher in new covid cases, now that vast swaths of the population have been vaccinated, there has been a clear decoupling between new cases on one hand, and hospitalizations and fatalities on the other

... Yet while infections may indeed be rising, Fauci purposefully refused to address the real elephant in the room: is there a concurrent surge in hospitalizations and/or deaths: after all, it those that matter - especially if the Delta variant results in a much weaker form of covid as many have speculated - and not the cases outright.

...

Where we do agree with Kolanovic, however, is where he repeats what we said two weeks ago with the chart shown at the top of this post, namely that the "Delta variant is a key risk to the call, but encouragingly the link between the case count and hospitalizations/deaths in the UK and other countries has weakened meaningfully (Figure 1)." In short cases and hospitalizations have decoupled... just as we showed they have even if the government's propaganda spin masters refuse to acknowledge.

[Jul 19, 2021] Breakthrough COVID case in California: 74 vaccinated Californias have died

Jul 19, 2021 | abc7.com

As the Delta variant takes hold, some of the first COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated population are being detected. According to the states data, 74 vaccinated California's have died, however, the report states it is unknown if the primary cause of death in these cases was COVID-19 or if there were other alternate causes.

... At Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital one of seven COVID patients was vaccinated. According to the latest state data, 20.4 million fully vaccinated individuals, 10,430 post-vaccination cases (0.051%) have been identified.

[Jul 19, 2021] Bob Wachter on Twitter- -If you're wondering how bad Delta really is, even in highly vaccinated SF (76% of gt;age 12 fully v

Jul 19, 2021 | twitter.com

Bob Wachter @Bob_Wachter If you're wondering how bad Delta really is, even in highly vaccinated SF (76% of >age 12 fully vaxxed) & still w/ a lot of masking (most folks in stores), we're seeing a pretty steep Covid uptick. Daily cases up 4-fold (10->42; Fig L), hospital pts doubled (9->19; R)(Thread 1/4) 3:41 PM · Jul 15, 2021 · Twitter Web App 2,064 Retweets 285 Quote Tweets 3,874 Likes Bob Wachter @Bob_Wachter · Jul 15 Replying to @Bob_Wachter Uptick mirrored @ucsfhospitals : Covid inpatients (we were at ~3 pts two-wks ago) now 13 (Fig L). Overall test positivity rate was well below 1%; it's now up to 2.6% (Fig R). Even more worrisome, test positivity rate in asymptomatic pts was ~0.15%, now up 6-fold to 0.9%. (2/4) 14 93 362 Bob Wachter @Bob_Wachter · Jul 15 I don't have vaccinated/unvaxxed breakdown for SF & UCSF – I assume most severe cases are in unvaxxed. But even for vaxxed, w/ more Covid in air expect more breakthru cases. As for me, I'm back to double-mask in stores. Still indoor dining but might abort if trends continue.(3/4) 88 197 719 Bob Wachter @Bob_Wachter · Jul 15 The SF # s are still fairly low, & are cause for caution, not panic. But this kind of uptick in SF (U.S.'s vaccination leader) shows that Delta is very real – the places w/ much lower vax rates may well get clobbered. Alas, doesn't seem like there are many persuadables left.(4/4) 67 185 854 Derek Reilly @DerekReilly19 · Jul 15 Replying to @Bob_Wachter 42 and 19? Come on Bob seriously. 1 1 8 kenlipartito @kenlipartito · Jul 15 Really. It's not like this thing grows exponentially, right? 3 26 Show replies geva kra oz @gevakraoz · Jul 15 Replying to @Bob_Wachter @Meir_Rubin Can't Working @ArianneM12 · Jul 15 Replying to @Bob_Wachter Was waiting on the post 4th of July consequences. Hopefully they all live 1 5 Stressedout @TMD666 · Jul 15 Replying to @Bob_Wachter Any advice for @CDCgov ? They missed the window of opportunity. What can @CDCgov do in addition to vaccine to bring delta under control? 6 6 Michaela Barnes @mabarnes9 · Jul 15 Replying to @Bob_Wachter Montgomery County MD where I live has 81.8% of 12yo and up fully vaccinated per CDC and we're also seeing big % upticks from very low numbers. 6 10 75 Show replies 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗵𝗮𝗺 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗲𝗿, 𝗠𝗗 @grahamwalker · Jul 15 Replying to @Bob_Wachter Same Bob; anecdotally have started seeing COVID again in the ED when previously hadn't seen any in months, thus far only in unvaccinated patients. It's baaack, despite us being probably the most vaccinated large city in the US.

[Jul 19, 2021] New numbers released on COVID-19 breakthrough cases in Lexington

Jul 19, 2021 | foxlexington.com

In the last month or so, about 20-25% of the cases in Fayette County have been breakthroughs. Health leaders say it was expected that vaccinated people could still catch the virus, but the important thing is they are much less likely to get severely ill as a result.

... "Some of that is likely because of the Delta variant, but also because people who are vaccinated are likely not taking as many precautions as they did before," spokesperson Kevin Hall said. "This could be compared to wearing your seatbelt. It does protect you, they still don't go 120 miles an hour down the interstate. You need to still take precautions."

Hall said they've also seen a few cases where unvaccinated people bring the virus home and infect vaccinated family members.

He said even though there isn't a mandate, those safety precautions, like wearing a mask around crowds, are still encouraged.

[Jul 18, 2021] Breakthrough COVID cases in California

Jul 18, 2021 | abc7.com

As of Monday, there were 3,200 new COVID-19 cases in California, and now, medical doctors are noticing some of the first numbers of COVID vaccine breakthrough cases.

...According to the states data, 74 vaccinated California's have died, however, the report states it is unknown if the primary cause of death in these cases was COVID-19 or if there were other alternate causes.

... According to the latest state data, 20.4 million fully vaccinated individuals, 10,430 post-vaccination cases (0.051%) have been identified.

That's one in almost 2,000 vaccinated Californians reporting a breakthrough case.

[Jul 18, 2021] Scientists identify breakthrough cases of SARS-CoV-2's delta variant in fully vaccinated individuals

Jul 18, 2021 | www.news-medical.net

Background

Recently, India has seen a significant rise in new COVID-19 cases predominantly caused by the delta variant (B.1.617.2) of SARS-CoV-2. Similar to the alpha (B.1.1.7), beta (B.1.351), and gamma (P.1) variants, the delta variant has gained beneficial mutations in the spike protein , which make it more infectious and pathogenic than previously circulating variants.

The delta variant belongs to the B.1.617 lineage that is currently circulating in more than 50 countries. Because of its significant threat to public health, the delta variant has been designated as the Variant of Concern (VOC) by the World Health Organization.

Studies investigating vaccine efficacy against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants have indicated that the delta variant is partially resistant to vaccine-induced antibodies. A study conducted in the UK has indicated that the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines is 88% effective in preventing symptomatic disease caused by the delta variant.

In the current study, the scientists have described the transmission of delta variants among family members who were attending a wedding ceremony with 92 guests. The wedding events were held outside in a large open-air tent, and all guests were fully vaccinated.

Important observations

The scientists identified a total of six individuals at the wedding ceremony who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and were symptomatic. Of them, one developed severe COVID-19 requiring monoclonal antibody infusion and one died eventually. Based on encounter timings and viral sequence similarities, the scientists suggested that two persons traveling from India probably have transmitted the delta variant to other guests during the wedding events.

Related Stories

Of two guests from India, one was a man without any comorbidities, and one was a woman with diabetes. They both received the 2 nd dose of Covaxin (BBV152) 10 days before traveling to the wedding venue. Moreover, they tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 before boarding the flight.

Soon after developing symptoms including fatigue, cough, and fever, both guests from India tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection. At day 6 post-wedding, the man without comorbidity was admitted to a hospital because of worsening symptoms. One month after the wedding, he died due to COVID-19 related complications.

Four other guests who also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 had confirmed interactions with the guests from India. Of 4 guests who were fully immunized with the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, one developed severe COVID-19 that required infusion of monoclonal antibodies.

Testing of viral variant

Nasopharyngeal swab samples were collected from all six guests and analyzed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to detect viral variants. All samples tested positive for the original Wuhan strain of SARS-CoV-2 and negative for the alpha variant. All positive samples were subsequently sequenced by Swift Normalase Amplicon Panels with multiple overlapping amplicons to identify the causative variant. The findings revealed that all six guests were infected with the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 (B.1.617.2).

Study significance

Six vaccine breakthrough cases identified in the study highlight the notion that antibodies elicited by Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2, Moderna mRNA-1273, and Covaxin BBV152 may not be sufficient to provide full protection against the delta variant. Although some people fail to develop adequate immunity in response to vaccination, none of the patients identified in the study had a history of vaccine failure.

As mentioned by the scientists, mutations in three antigenic regions of the spike receptor-binding domain (450–469 IDf, 480–499 IDg, and 522–646 IDh) could potentially reduce the susceptibility of delta variant to antibody-mediated neutralization.

[Jul 18, 2021] COVID-19 Breakthrough Case Investigations and Reporting - CDC

Jul 18, 2021 | www.cdc.gov

Defining a vaccine breakthrough infection

For the purpose of this surveillance, a vaccine breakthrough infection is defined as the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.

Identifying and investigating hospitalized or fatal vaccine breakthrough cases

As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.

Previous data on all vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC from January–April 2021 are available .

State health departments report vaccine breakthrough cases to CDC. CDC now monitors reported hospitalized or fatal vaccine breakthrough cases for clustering by patient demographics, geographic location, time since vaccination, vaccine type, and SARS-CoV-2 lineage. Reported data include hospitalized or fatal breakthrough cases due to any cause, including causes not related to COVID-19.

... ... ...

As of July 12, 2021, more than 159 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

During the same time, CDC received reports from 48 U.S. states and territories of 5,492 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.

Total number of vaccine breakthrough infections reported to CDC
Hospitalized or fatal vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC 5,492
Female 2,680 (49%)
People aged ≥65 years 4,109 (75%)
Asymptomatic infections 1,107 (20%)
Hospitalizations* 5,189 (94%)
Deaths† 1,063 (19%)

[Jul 18, 2021] What to know about the recent COVID-19 trends in Massachusetts by Nik DeCosta-Klipa

Jul 15, 2021 | www.boston.com

Infections and even hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have begun to increase since the Fourth of July weekend. And it turns out that those vaccinated against the disease aren't completely immune, as state officials revealed that there have been thousands of breakthrough infections -- and even dozens of deaths -- among people who have gotten their shots since the rollout began.

... ... ...

As of July 10, 4,450 vaccinated people in Massachusetts had tested positive for COVID-19 since the rollout began this past winter, according to the state's Department of Public Health.

That 's just over 0.1 percent -- or one in a thousand -- of the 4,195,844 people in Massachusetts who were fully vaccinated at the time.

Of that tiny faction, the overwhelming majority of cases weren't severe.

DPH officials say that 303 -- or 6.8 percent -- of the breakthrough infections involved hospitalization and a total of 79 vaccinated individuals in Massachusetts have died.

... ... ...

Since June 25, the average number of new positive COVID-19 tests in the state has nearly doubled, from 64 to 122. DPH officials also reported 208 new confirmed COVID-19 cases Wednesday, the first single-day report over 200 since early June , a time when the state's testing rate was nearly a third higher.

Over the same time period, the state's positivity rate more than doubled from 0.31 percent to 0.72 percent.

Following a steady decline this spring, hospitalizations have also increased from a low of 80 statewide COVID-19 patients on July 4 to 102 as of Tuesday.

...

According to the CDC, the Delta accounted for 10 percent of new cases in Massachusetts as of June 22, but that data is now nearly a month old -- and predates the current uptick.

Cassandra Pierre, a Boston Medical Center epidemiologist and Boston University professor, says the recent uptick in overall cases in "somewhat concerning" given the national rise of the Delta variant.

"We have some data to show that the delta variant is responsible for more hospitalizations than the previous dominant variant and while the jury is out on whether it's also more virulent (capable of causing severe illness) we've begun to see COVID-related death rates rise in some of the hardest hit states," Pierre told Boston in an email.

... ... ...

While experts have predicted a mild, seasonal uptick in COVID-19 cases this fall, Pierre says the recent increase is earlier than anticipated. She noted that the rainy weather over the Fourth of July weekend may have pushed more gatherings and activities indoors.

DPH guidance says that unvaccinated resident should continue to wear masks when near people outside their household, especially indoors. While the Delta variant has caused some cities and organizations to extend that mask guidance to all individuals, regardless of vaccination status, the still-low case rates have yet to induce such a move in Massachusetts.

... ... ...

State officials say they don't have a breakdown of the recent infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, in part because the data on breakthrough cases is reported separately (while health care providers report all positive tests directly to the state, breakthrough cases are first reported to the CDC, and then to state officials).

However, earlier data on breakthrough infection obtained by the Herald through a public records request suggests that there have been 543 breakthrough cases between June 19 and July 10. That's roughly 30 percent of the 1,809 positive cases reported by the state over the same time period, meaning 70 percent of new cases were among the minority of residents who were not fully vaccinated.

... over 83 percent of Massachusetts adults have gotten at least one shot

[Jul 18, 2021] CDC doesn't track all breakthrough cases leaving a gap in data by Libby Hendren

Jul 16, 2021 | www.khou.com

There's quite a bit about COVID-19 and vaccines that we still don't know.

While the vaccines are up to 95 percent effective against COVID-19, there have been breakthrough cases. That's where those who are vaccinated test positive. The CDC was monitoring all reported breakthroughs . However, back in May, as more people got vaccinated, the feds transitioned to focusing on cases where someone went to the hospital or died. They said that data would have the greatest importance.

"The question is are we getting more cases than we should be seeing as breakthrough cases," Dr. Jill Roberts at USF Health said. "That's really hard to determine because there isn't a good source of data, so there's a lot of people looking at this. They're sequencing this strain from the people who got breakthrough cases to see if it's really Delta variant or if the thing has mutated again."

"We're trying to figure out what's going on. Is this really, truly a vaccine failure or is it expected numbers? And without the data, we can't tell," she added.

Dr. Roberts says she would like to see more information on variants – like which populations contracted them, if they're vaccinated, and what they do for living so doctors can have a better idea of infection control.

[Jul 18, 2021] Poor record-keeping limits 'breakthrough' COVID-19 case documentation - Poynter

Jul 18, 2021 | www.poynter.org

As states cut back on their COVID-19 data collection and fail to document "breakthrough" cases , we are left to guess how often and where people are being infected. I have said this a few times and now it is becoming real.

Read deeper to let me explain why the phrase "breakthrough" may be a disservice to the public.

First, consider the case unfolding in Las Vegas, where the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports :

At least 11 employees of Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a party on June 7, according to Southern Nevada Health District emails obtained through records requests by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation's Documenting COVID-19 project . The emails, which were shared with the Review-Journal, indicate that eight of the employees had been fully vaccinated in December and January, meaning that the virus had "broken through" the protection of inoculation.

Two other employees who were infected had received one dose of a double-dose vaccination. One was unvaccinated. At least 10 of the 11 had the delta variant, a more easily transmissible strain of the virus.

One question is whether the vaccines had been properly stored. But the hospital that administered them said there was no problem with storage. Was there something unique about this party that made transmission more possible?

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and some states have stopped gathering as much data as they once did. Again, the Las Vegas Journal-Review:

Beginning May 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases, focusing instead on those resulting in hospitalization or death. The state of Nevada and the health district, in turn, stopped reporting totals of identified cases.

However, in a June 22 email, a health district official told other agency officials there had been 471 identified breakthrough cases in Clark County, with 53 resulting in hospitalization and eight in death. In other words, there were nearly 10 times as many breakthrough cases identified as were publicly disclosed.

Nobody promised that there would be no breakthroughs. As WCVB explains , as with any vaccine -- especially one protecting against a fast-changing virus -- some fully vaccinated people will still get sick or become virus carriers. Remember, even in breakthrough cases, vaccinated patients are far less likely to become seriously ill.

The Atlantic raises the issue of whether using the word "breakthrough" is harmful to the public's understanding. Because, really, these are expected infections:

The thing to know about the COVID-19 vaccines is that they're flame retardants, not impenetrable firewalls, when it comes to the coronavirus. Some vaccinated people are still getting infected, and a small subset of these individuals is still getting sick -- and this is completely expected .

We're really, really bad at communicating that second point, which is all about breakthroughs, a concept that has, not entirely accurately, become synonymous with vaccine failure. It's a problem that goes far beyond semantics: Bungling the messaging around our shots' astounding success has made it hard to convey the truly minimal risk that the vaccinated face, and the enormous gamble taken by those who eschew the jabs .

The CDC has a definition for "breakthrough cases." And, the CDC says:

As of July 6, 2021, more than 157 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

During the same time, CDC received reports from 48 U.S. states and territories of 5,186 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.

(CDC)

Keep in mind that the CDC no longer gathers "breakthrough" data unless the person ends up in the hospital. This means that it misses a lot of cases since we know from the data that most breakthrough cases do not result in sickness serious enough to send a person to the hospital. To get an idea of what the data looks like when all "breakthrough" cases are reported, look at the January through April data , before the CDC changed its rules. More than 10,000 cases were reported in that timeframe.

I like the way The Atlantic put all of this in perspective:

The overwhelming majority of the COVID-19 cases we're seeing are among the unvaccinated. And when the virus does affect the immunized, it seems to accumulate to lower levels, and spread less enthusiastically to new hosts; it's causing, on average, milder and more transient symptoms.

[Jul 05, 2021] "National security" and "national interest" pretext to keeping the deal with vaccine maker secret

Jul 05, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Jul 5 2021 6:52 utc | 77

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-05/australia-covid-astrazeneca-deal-withheld-national-security/100261920
The Australian government's entire vaccine supply agreement with AstraZeneca is being withheld from public release on the grounds it poses a "real and substantial risk" to national security if it were released."

"The total value of Australia's five vaccine deals is more than $5 billion in taxpayer funds."


Mina , Jul 5 2021 8:31 utc | 78

It does raise questions that the cheap, non-profit, one-shot J&J, which did not need special storage, got various problems that may also be related to the production of the vaccines (one case was publicized, https://time.com/5951709/johnson-johnson-covid-19-vaccine-error/).
All in all, it seems to have caused less critical effects than Pfizer, but its seems Pfizer was "lucky" on that (grin).

S.P. Korolev , Jul 5 2021 9:00 utc | 79

re the mRNA vaccines,

What are the most common side effects from the Pfizer vaccine? It's the only one available in my country as the Govt only accepts vaccines with 90%+ effectiveness and of the four vaccines we did deals for (Pfizer, AZ, J&J, Novavax) only Pfizer measures up (haven't heard about results from Novavax, too far down the queue for Moderna and Sputnik V doesn't exist apparently as we are a 5 eyes country).

Heard of allergic reactions that can be fatal for the very old or very sick, and heart inflammation issues. The way the heart issues were reported in the media (in the context of the trials for 12-16 y.o.) made it seem they only effected the young but apparently a problem for everyone. Doesn't seem as serious as the AZ/J&J clotting issues as it usually clears up without treatment? My parents are both over 65 and have had their 1st Pfizer doses, no side effects so far for Dad and a tetanus shot-style sore arm for Mum that lasted a couple of days.

Mina , Jul 5 2021 9:51 utc | 82

Finally some positive comments on ivm in the Western press
https://news.wttw.com/2021/07/02/covid-19-long-haulers-turning-ivermectin-relief-questions-over-drugs-effectiveness

Jen , Jul 5 2021 11:16 utc | 84

Peter AU 1 @ 77:

That news about Scott Moronson's government doing a deal with Astra Zeneca, the details of which must be kept hush-hush, does not surprise me.

Look at this from Doctors 4 Covid Ethics:
Pfizer Vaccine Authorised, Data Sight Unseen

A Freedom of Information request to the Australian drugs regulator that approved the Pfizer vaccine confirms that they have never seen the study data.

A freedom of information request (FOI) request was made by one of our members in February 2021 to the Australian drugs regulator, the TGA (Therapeutic Good Administration) to ask what should have been simple questions. The TGA is the Australian equivalent of the FDA (US), MHRA (UK) and EMA (Europe) and is held in high regard worldwide. Essentially the FOI questions were:

1/ Did the TGA request the raw data from Pfizer
2/ Did any of the committees approving the vaccine look at the raw data and/or discuss it
3/ What were the "studies" referred to in the approval document relating to teratogenicity (risk of harm to a fetus)

The rationale of the request relates to concern over the validity and verifiability of Pfizer's data given its legal history (and expressed by Peter Doshi in the BMJ in February) as well as the proven concerns over fraudulent data relating to Covid-19 as seen in the "Lancetgate" scandal of June 2020.

The document ... is a redacted version of the documents that were sent by the TGA in response to this request. What they show is that the TGA never saw or requested the patient data from Pfizer and simply accepted their reporting of their study as true. This means that when the head of the TGA John Skerritt said that "the safety evidence is pretty thorough" on the 6th February (here) his words would ring hollow to most Australians who have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the TGA had actually looked at the patient data themselves.

A further concerning aspect of the FOI request is the efforts to which the TGA appeared to go to suppress the request – initially requesting a 6 months extension in view of a "voluminous request" which eventually yielded only one document of 14 pages, heavily redacted. This required an instruction from the Office of the Information Commissioner to the TGA to answer the request by the 26th May, a deadline that the TGA also failed to meet.

Eventually the only document that was produced from the FOI request was a heavily redacted single study (not studies, as claimed in the TGA assessment document) showing that the only investigation into the effects on the fetus was performed on 44 rats with no long term data on the offspring. It is impossible to assess this study fully because 98% of the document was removed in order to protect Pfizer's intellectual property (points 32-44 of the report)...

... Doctors for Covid Ethics remain concerned that the TGA's failure to validate the Pfizer data has been replicated at other agencies worldwide (FDA, MHRA and EMA). It is currently not known whether any of the major agencies has independently verified, or attempted to verify, Pfizer's data, before proceeding with provisional/emergency authorisation of Pfizer's mRNA therapy vaccine.

Bet this information about how the TGA applied so-called rigour to checking Pfizer's data before approving the Pfizer-BioNTech treatment sure gladdens your heart, don't it?

[Jul 05, 2021] I am seeing more of is pressure to take the vaccine in US even though the infection numbers are going down in most states

Why there is so much social pressure if the idea of "herd immunity" became a fiasco after emergence of Delta variant, which like South African variant can infect vaccinated people and thus can spread in vaccinated population (although not as quickly as in unvaccinated population). What government medical bureaucrats like Fauci are hiding ?
Jul 05, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
psychohistorian , Jul 5 2021 5:50 utc | 74

I am retired in the US so I only see some of the working world through others eyes. What I am seeing more of is pressure to take the vaccine in US even though the infection numbers are going down in most states.

I have shared before that I have a cousin, my age, that got one of the mRNA vaccines and now has some sort of blood cancer. I believe this is related to the mRNA vaccines and that more cases like my cousin will occur and eventually it will effect an "important" someone who the MSM can't suppress the connection to the vaccines and the flood gates of related cases like my cousin will open....can you imagine what the blowback will be??.....the jaded in me says they are planning on that blowback to keep the chaos/fear/manipulation level high.....its all China's fault/snark

What is the final straw that will bring the barbarian shit show to a halt? Inquiring minds want to know. What will finally break through the brainwashing?

Biswapriya Purkayast , Jul 5 2021 9:04 utc | 80

The state in which I live has made it compulsory for shops to vaaccinate all staff in order to be permitted to open.

[Jul 05, 2021] Covid-19 hyperinflammation and post-Covid-19 illness may be rooted in mast cell activation syndrome

Jul 05, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Lurk , Jul 4 2021 21:18 utc | 46

One more post about the new coronavirus, the associated COVID-19 and the "dreaded" vaccines. Caveat emptor, I am not a medically trained person, just a curious information hoarder.

While sars-cov-2 primarily targets epithelial cells, the damaging COVID-19 syndrome appears to be largely related to mast cells. Mast cells are part of the innate immune system and are the oldest form af immune system. The mast cells are also involved in tissue growth and regeneration.

I read an interesting article that made a link between secondary dengue syndrome and covid, suggesting that both are forms of slow-motion anaphylaxis. Classical anaphylaxis reactions(as eg. peanut allergy) are mediated by mast cells.

It seems that both "long covid" and similar symptoms that arise as complications from vaccinations are related to an overactivated mast cell system. Check out "mast cell activation syndrome" for more info. Ivermectin, quercetin and other "maverick" medications that appear to hold no antiviral efficacy could simply be what quiets the mast cells and dampens the inflammatory chain reaction.

On another note, there are the reported blood clotting incidents with the Astra Zeneca vaccine. There is an ongoing discussion that these are caused by improper application of the vaccine. It has to be injected intramuscularly, and not intravenously. In the former case, the innate immune system (mast cells) triggers and the reaction is primarily contained locally in the muscle tissue. From there the larger immune system is informed about the invader. In case of accidental intravenous application, the vaccine attaches to blood platelets. This in turn triggers a reaction in the spleen, causing the adaptive immune system to attack the platelets and white blood cells in an autoimmune type reaction.

So, for the mRNA vaccines (and also COVID itself), it could be important to have a stabilized mast cell system.

For the Astra Zeneca and (J&J?) vaccine, asking the person applying the vaccine to draw blood before injecting (in order to test for accidental venous injection) is important.

Well, at least that's what I understand from what I've picked up lately. Do your own research and correct me on anything above that I wrote in well-meant ignorance.

Lurk , Jul 4 2021 23:44 utc | 53

@Peter AU1 | Jul 4 2021 22:09 utc | 48

Long covid, and other virus that can take a long tome to recover from I believe trigger inflammation of the myelin sheath that insulates the nerves.

How interesting that you should mention that. The proverbial affliction featuring inflammation of myelin sheaths is multiple sclerosis. Mast cells are suspected to play a major role in the onset of ms.

Guess what serendipitous nugget I found when searching for links between ivermectin and mast cells?
Common Anti-Parasitic Agent Eases Motor Symptoms, Aids Remyelination in MS Mouse Model

The actual study that the above article reports on, investigated the effect of ivermectin on microglia, but as another study puts it: Microglia and mast cells: two tracks on the road to neuroinflammation . Both cell types are part of the innate immune system.

Another similar find was that palmitoylethanolamide, which is sometimes used to ameliorate ms progression and symptoms, was proposed for combating severe lung inflammation in covid-19

On an entirely different track, "antiparasitic" ivermectin was shown to remarkably aid wound healing and decrease scar tissue formation. As I stated in the previous post, mast cells are involved also in tissue growth and regeneration, so this could be related. (I have in the past personally used mimosa hostilis root bark infusion to heal third degree burn wounds without any scarring, who knows if and what substance in that plant (also known as tepezcohuite - "skin tree") might have similar effects on mast cells.)

Anyway, to end the speculation here are two medical articles pointing out the relation between severe covid and mast cell activation:

Covid-19 hyperinflammation and post-Covid-19 illness may be rooted in mast cell activation syndrome
and
Signatures of mast cell activation are associated with severe COVID-19

Oh and here's the article (appears to be self-published but no less interesting) speculating on the parallels between covid and secondary dengue virus infection syndrome:

Immunological mechanisms explaining the role of IgE, mast cells, histamine, elevating ferritin, IL-6, D-dimer, VEGF levels in COVID-19 and dengue, potential treatments such as mast cell stabilizers, antihistamines, Vitamin C, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin and azithromycin

[Jul 03, 2021] COVID-19 Breakthrough Case Investigations and Reporting

Jul 03, 2021 | www.cdc.gov

Defining a vaccine breakthrough infection

For the purpose of this surveillance, a vaccine breakthrough infection is defined as the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen in a respiratory specimen collected from a person ≥14 days after they have completed all recommended doses of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorized COVID-19 vaccine.

Identifying and investigating hospitalized or fatal vaccine breakthrough cases

As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance.

Previous data on all vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC from January–April 2021 are available .

State health departments report vaccine breakthrough cases to CDC. CDC now monitors reported hospitalized or fatal vaccine breakthrough cases for clustering by patient demographics, geographic location, time since vaccination, vaccine type, and SARS-CoV-2 lineage. Reported data include hospitalized or fatal breakthrough cases due to any cause, including causes not related to COVID-19.

To the fullest extent possible, respiratory specimens that test positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA are collected for genomic sequencing to identify the virus lineage that caused the infection.

Some health departments may continue to report all vaccine breakthrough cases to the national database and can continue to submit specimens to CDC for sequencing. However, CDC will focus its monitoring on reported hospitalized and fatal cases.

Developing a data access and management system for reporting COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases

CDC developed a national COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough REDCap database where designated state health department investigators can enter, store, and manage data for cases in their jurisdiction. State health departments have full access to data for cases reported from their jurisdiction.

Ultimately, CDC will use the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) to identify vaccine breakthrough cases. Once CDC has confirmed that a state can report vaccination history data to NNDSS, CDC will identify vaccine breakthrough cases through that system. At that time, the state health departments can stop reporting cases directly into the REDCap database. After this change, CDC will upload the available data reported to NNDSS into REDCap database for further review and confirmation by the state health department.

Hospitalized or fatal COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC as of June 21, 2021

As of June 21, 2021, more than 150 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

During the same time, CDC received reports from 47 U.S. states and territories of 4,115 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.

Total number of vaccine breakthrough infections reported to CDC
Hospitalized or fatal vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC 4,115
Female 2,001 (49%)
People aged ≥65 years 3,124 (76%)
Asymptomatic infections 750 (18%)
Hospitalizations* 3,907 (95%)
Deaths† 750 (18%)

*1,004 (26%) of 3,907 hospitalizations reported as asymptomatic or not related to COVID-19.
†142 (19%) of 750 fatal cases reported as asymptomatic or not related to COVID-19.

Previous data on all vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC from January–April 2021 are available .

How to interpret these data

The number of COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections reported to CDC likely are an undercount of all SARS-CoV-2 infections among fully vaccinated persons. National surveillance relies on passive and voluntary reporting, and data might not be complete or representative. These surveillance data are a snapshot and help identify patterns and look for signals among vaccine breakthrough cases.

Data on patients with vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died will be updated regularly. Studies are being conducted in multiple U.S. sites that will include information on all vaccine breakthrough infections regardless of clinical status to supplement the national surveillance.

COVID-19 vaccines are effective

[Jul 03, 2021] Delta variant likely to become dominant coronavirus strain in US, former FDA chief says

Jun 14, 2021 | news.yahoo.com
Looks like two doses of Pfizer vaccine are effective against hospitalization (but not from infection) from the Delta variant, according to UK data.

Roughly 10 per cent of infections in the US are linked to the variant, but that rate is doubling every two weeks, the former FDA chief told CBS News on Sunday .

"That doesn't mean that we're going to see a sharp uptick in infections, but it does mean that this is going to take over," he said. "And I think the risk is really to the fall that this could spike a new epidemic heading into the fall."

The more-contagious B 1.161.2 variant – a common development as a virus replicates through transmission – was first discovered in India and has emerged as a dominant strain in the UK, responsible for roughly 90 per cent of new infections there.

[Jul 03, 2021] CDC Says Delta Strain Likely to Dominate in US

Jun 18, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

The more-transmissible delta variant first found in India and now spread widely in the U.K. is expected to become the dominant strain in the U.S., said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. She added that full vaccination provides good protection against it.

[Jul 03, 2021] The return of masks due to the threat posed by Delta mutation of the coronavirus: Delta does not care whether you are vaccinated or not

To coronavirus behaved like expected and partially defeated vaccination efforts.
Jul 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

LA County -Strongly- Recommends Masks For Vaxx'd & Unvaxx'd People Over -Delta- COVID-19 Variant - ZeroHedge

The Los Angeles County health agency suggested to residents that they wear masks -- regardless of vaccination status -- due to the so-called " Delta " COVID-19 variant.

... ... ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has similarly called on people to wear masks due to the Delta variant, which is believed to have emerged in India. Meanwhile, Hong Kong officials also announced this week that it will ban travelers from the UK over concerns about the strain.

Those warnings came after officials in Israel said that half the adults infected in a recent Delta COVID-19 outbreak fully vaccinated, according to the Wall Street Journal late last week.

However, some have said that the concerns about the Delta strain are overblown.

"Don't let the fearmongers win," wrote Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday.

"New public England study of delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group."

Separately, pharmaceutical giant Moderna said that its two-dose mRNA COVID-19 vaccine works against the Delta strain, which will likely be used in future arguments against new masking or lockdown mandates.

"These new data are encouraging and reinforce our belief that the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine should remain protective against newly detected variants," CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a press release issued on Tuesday about the findings.

[Jul 03, 2021] Charlatans are a plague in modern science

Jul 03, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jun 17 2021 14:22 utc | 8

US should ask scientists to investigate itself if it truly cares about origins: epidemiologist

I agree. If the US scientists are so worried about the possibility the SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a laboratory, why don't they also ask their government to investigate their own labs?

Charlatans are a plague in modern science.


Grieved , Jun 17 2021 17:55 utc | 28

And also, the corruption of the medical profession, to which he is now speaking (it's running as I write this). The interviewer is using the words "medical mafia", citing the later manifestations we've seen this year. But this interview seems that it will do much to illustrate the long process of corruption that has happened over the years and decades, and this is very valuable to learn.

Worth spelling the link out, if I may:
Swine Flu And Covid: Pandemic Deja Vu? / With Dr Wolfgang Wodarg 9th June

Many thanks for this.

john , Jun 17 2021 20:20 utc | 38

Grieved @ 28

The interviewer is using the words "medical mafia", citing the later manifestations we've seen this year

Yes, the circuitous depravity they've engaged, the 'offer you can't refuse' has worked wonders, as the interviewer attests his young peers who've taken the jab only to regain their 'freedom', like my youngest daughter, 30, against my spoken preference, and my silent prayers.

[Jul 01, 2021] Percentage of false positives for Covid PCR tests at 40 cycles of amplification

Jul 01, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Hipneck911 11 minutes ago

... NSW Health - Covid PCR tests at 40 cycles, double the ...

https://cairnsnews.org/2021/06/28/nsw-health-covid-pcr-tests-at-40-cycles-double-the-recommended-rate-yielding-80-per-cent-false-positives/

← Craig Kelly MP a true Australian hero warns there could have been 50,000 deaths from Covid vax. NSW Health - Covid PCR tests at 40 cycles , double the recommended rate yielding 80 per cent false positives* Jun 28. Posted by Editor, cairnsnews. Letter to the Editor.

Hipneck911 10 minutes ago

You gutless losers sure do like lying:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/experts-us-covid-19-positivity-rate-high-due-to-too-sensitive-tests/ar-BB18wE8B

Up to 90 percent of people tested for COVID-19 in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada in July carried barely any traces of the virus and it could be because today's tests are 'too sensitive', experts say.

... PCR tests analyze genetic matter from the virus in cycles and today's tests typically take 37 or 40 cycles, but experts say this is too high because it detects very small amounts of the virus that don't pose a risk.

Experts say a reasonable cutoff for the virus would be 30 or 35 cycles, according to Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside.

Mina said he would set the cutoff at 30.

New York's state lab Wadsworth analyzed cycle thresholds values in already processed COVID-19 PCR tests and found in July that 794 positive tests were based on a threshold of 40 cycles.

With a cutoff of 35, about half of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 70 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30.

In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been considered negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Mina said.

[Jul 01, 2021] Experts -- US COVID-19 positivity rate high due to 'too sensitive' tests by Marlene Lenthang

Highly recommended!
This one big fraud. And Fauci is implicated. the fact that in the USA the results of the test do not come with the number of amplifications used speaks volumes about the current medical establishement.
Notable quotes:
"... With a cutoff of 35, about half of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 70 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30. ..."
"... It's just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T. values from all these tests -- that they're just returning a positive or a negative,' Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York, said. ..."
Aug 30, 2020 | www.msn.com

Marlene Lenthang For Dailymail.com 8/30/2020

Up to 90 percent of people tested for COVID-19 in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada in July carried barely any traces of the virus and it could be because today's tests are 'too sensitive', experts say.

... PCR tests analyze genetic matter from the virus in cycles and today's tests typically take 37 or 40 cycles, but experts say this is too high because it detects very small amounts of the virus that don't pose a risk.

... ... ...

Experts say a reasonable cutoff for the virus would be 30 or 35 cycles, according to Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside.

Mina said he would set the cutoff at 30.

New York's state lab Wadsworth analyzed cycle thresholds values in already processed COVID-19 PCR tests and found in July that 794 positive tests were based on a threshold of 40 cycles.

With a cutoff of 35, about half of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 70 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30.

In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been considered negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Mina said.

'I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one,' he said.

The Food and Drug Administration said that it does not specify the cycle threshold ranges used to determine who is positive and 'commercial manufacturers and laboratories set their own.'

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is examining the use of cycle threshold measures for 'policy decision'.

The CDC said its own calculations suggest its extremely hard to detect a live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles.

It's just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T. values from all these tests -- that they're just returning a positive or a negative,' Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York, said.

[Jul 01, 2021] Fauci: There Are Now Two Americas, The Vaccinated The Unvaccinated ; ZH commenter: There are now two Americas. One that's retarded. And one that wants Fauci on a lamppost.

Authorities doe not telling truth: people who already have COVID do not need to be vaccinated. Also if Delta varient can infect vaccineted in conserable quantities how any resobale person can maintain this goal of "herg immunity". How it can be achieved if a vaccinated person can be infected and thus spread the disease both amoung vaccinated cohort and among the unvaccinated cohort. The fact the vaccinated people are infected with Delta changes the game and here Senator Paul is wrong.
Pushing vaccination on chidren in such curcumstances changes nothing is became a very questionable move both from scientific an from ethical perspective.
Jul 01, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

America's favourite Chinese lab funding coronavirus doomonger doctor Anthony Fauci announced Tuesday that there are now two Americas, a vaccinated America and an unvaccinated America.

As Senator Rand Paul noted earlier this week , there is a boat load of misinformation on the matter coming from a government that is indiscriminately pushing vaccinations:

Rand Paul TEARS Into Senate Witness for Indiscriminately Pushing Vaccines


SexyJulian 3 hours ago

There are now two Americas. One that's retarded. And one that wants Fauci on a lamppost.

liberty2 1 hour ago (Edited)

Note that the officials said there's no such thing as "herd immunity" last year. Now this year they keep saying that we can reach "herd immunity" if we are 70% vaxxed! Terms are used if it fits their narrative.

Ride_the_kali_yuga 3 hours ago (Edited)

In the Covidian Cult, there is true believers in one side and heretics on the other side. Vaxxed and unvaxxed.

Divide and rule strategy, as always. Do not undurestimate the ratio of retarded people among the population, it has been growing like a cancer for decades. It amazes me how perfectly coordinated those MSM Covidian propaganda events appears worldwide.

In here France, 2 days ago, most MSM have all simultaneously gone full berserk (without any reason) blaming the reluctant ones. One of them on TV said something like : "if it was me, i will use police to drag those who refuse these "vaccines" from their home and force it on them"

This was priceless, this little man has morbid obesity. We now officialy all live on the twilight zone on steroids. Land whales dictate how people should consider their own health. This ride seems to never end.

We now have officialy entered the dehumanization phase of the unvaxxed. The sanitary gulag is not far from here.

NIRP-BTFD 1 hour ago

There are 2 Americas. The 0.01% (the rulers that own everything) and the serfs.

DemandSider 1 hour ago

Exactly, parasite and host. Fauci would be the former, obviously.

[Jun 30, 2021] Panic Porn Dressed Up As Science -- Exposing The Truth About The Delta Variant

Jun 30, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

E5 11 hours ago remove link

Uncomfortable Truths democrats don't have in their tool kit:

1) Flu is still down 98% and would normally account for a large percentage of the covid deaths.

2) 20% more babies were born in 1946 than in 1945. Deaths are increasing but not that much. This is accounts for the rest of the covid deaths.

3) Coronavirus' are among the highest mutating virus types and can not be eliminated by vaccine.

4) If the COVID symptoms arise from SARS-CoV-2 which came from bats and pangolins: then vaccinating Humans will have zero effect in eliminating the virus.

5) COVID is a set of symptoms not a virus. The virus is called SARS. This is a relationship like how AIDS is the symptom set that arises out of HIV. To talk about a vaccine for COVID as a medical professional is malpractice.

6) 50% of the people getting the "delta" variant are previously vaccinated. In clinical terms that means the vaccine experimental trial has failed.

If you still believe in mandating masks and vaccines then you are a fascist or your IQ is too low and should give up your right to vote.

Bacon's Rebellion 9 hours ago (Edited) remove link

//////////////////////////////////////////////
The Delta Variant in the UK
//////////////////////////////////////////////

June 25 th , 2021 - Public Health England

Summary:
Higher rates of "cases" for the "unvaccinated" with higher rates of hospitalizations and DEATHS for the "fully vaccinated" .

Cases:
7,235 "Fully Vaccinated"
53,822 "Unvaccinated"

Overnight Hospitalization required:
1.11% of the "Fully Vaccinated"
0.89% of the "Unvaccinated"

Deaths:
50 were "Fully Vaccinated" = 0.69% died
38 were "Unvaccinated" = 0.07% died

Death rate was 9.86 times higher for the vaccinated!

IF - 53,822 "Unvaccinated" cases = 38 deaths
Will - 53,822 "Vaccinated" cases = 375 deaths?
Will - the 142,000,000 "Fully Vaccinated" people in the USA suffer 979,800 Delta variant Deaths?

(Link downloads a PDF | SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern)

Public Health England

truth or go home 10 hours ago remove link

These are interesting facts. Some comments:

1. Flu deaths have been greatly exaggerated in recent years in order to push the flu vaccine. Just like Covid, they changed the definition of flu to count more deaths, so they could push the vaccine. Most of them are general respiratory deaths that can be/were reclassified to Covid.

2. There was a baby boom in 1946 and that was 75 years ago, so we should start seeing an acceleration from that about now, but there also has been massive population growth since then, so the effect will be muted.

3. I don't claim to understand virology, but if these things mutate so fast, they likely get less virulent rather than more. It certainly calls into question the entire vaccine program.

4. Vaxx the bats... I thought many of them died off from their own virus a few years ago, but I saw millions of them fly out from under a bridge in Austin a couple years ago.

6. This is logic beyond the understanding level of the idiot media folks - they would never be able to ask the question.

Nathan Hale PREMIUM 10 hours ago

It was a fungal infection that was/is killing bats in the US, for the record

Bacon's Rebellion 8 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Imagine the clusterphuek in the court system if these vaccines are connected with miscarriages...lawyers are salivating...your employer coerced you into vaccination...your baby died inside you...geesh...how anyone could take that chance!

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
An experiment on "millions of people"
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Angela Merkel: All of these vaccines are conditionally approved. In the course of this conditional approval, we are gaining experience for the first time on what happens if this vaccine is used on millions of people? ...In the phase of the conditional approval of such a vaccine is then very closely monitored - that is why everything is monitored so specifically - what side effects can happen or what cases or what certain things can occur.

Loads in German - Use Chrome to read in English: Angela Merkel:

Sigh. 11 hours ago remove link

The Delta Strain is supposedly more fearful and deadly and contagious than the 'original' product, why, exactly?

Where are the studies comparing the relative efficacy and methodology of the vectors? You recall the diagrams, the sneeze in one aisle of a supermarket, the blue haze covering three aisles? Is the Delta Strain so contagious it now goes seven aisles?

Instead of the diagram of the beachgoer getting virus'd from the airborne particulates from someone sneezing on a surfboard, are the viruses now coming in from further offshore, the oil rig 40 miles out?

Instead of just old people, who are easily infected with everything that comes along, now we must fear that kids and teens are susceptible? (Perhaps that's because they've worn masks for so long they aren't getting 'natural' immunological defenses?)

This is just another worldwide scare tactic designed to keep the masks on and the economy slowed. Look to the "Climate Change" set and the "One World Government" set for reasons why we're facing these "new" strains.

aegis551 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link

CDC says we have nothing to worry about. Covid will never get here.

CDC says we have the ability to defeat this thing they said would never get here.

CDC says dont worry you dont need to wear masks. Because they wont protect you from the virus.

CDC says some anti-viral medications may work. CDC corrects itself 24hrs later and says only a vaccine can save us. Dr Fauci admits he and his family have been taking hydroxychloroquine since the pandemic began. Even though they dont work.

CDC mandates everyone to wear masks because they will stop the spread.

CDC says we need to lock down for 2 weeks to stop the spread. CDC then mandates lockdowns in perpetuity.

CDC says, etc, etc...

Why the hell is anyone listening to the CDC?

pods 10 hours ago remove link

Usually for any scam if you look under the cover you will find the hand of government.

Ex. Pfizer has a vested interest of to keep their shots on the market. Profit motive and to repay their development costs for their mRNA shots. Clinical trials are not cheap.

Pfizer will use contacts to nudge policy in a direction that benefits them. Doesnt have to be evil, their job is to make stuff and sell it.

Why is Pfizer (could really be any of them) in this position? Because there was a government policy to rush a product to market, Operation Warp Speed.

If that policy was never enacted none of these companies would have undertaken the development of these shots with the resources they did. It would merely be pinheads doing animal studies still at this point because a typical vaccine takes a decade to develop, and mRNA has not been proven safe, so it would take longer to prove safety in target populations, including mutagenic/teratagenic studies.

So really it was a government policy that landed us where we are at now. This is not a political statement. No left/right BS is intended. Just a deductive theory of how the world works, at a level above the left/right pigpen.

Brushy 10 hours ago remove link

Rand Paul didnt tweet the most important part of that study;

Delta variant deaths;

117 total deaths

44 unvaccinated

23 single dose

50 fully vaccinated

Thats 73 deaths for those who have been fully or partially vaccinated vs only 44 deaths for the unvaxxed. Its looking more and more like the "Delta variant" is just code for vaccine injury.

FrankDrakman 10 hours ago remove link

On the one page of data shown, I calculated the following: (rounded)

Unvaxxed: 35,000/34 deaths ~= 1/1000

One shot < 21 days: 4,000/1 deaths ~= 1/4000

One shot > 21 days: 9,000/10 deaths ~= 1/900

Two shots > 14 days: 4,000/26 deaths = 1/150

The second shot's the killer!

Morse_Code 8 hours ago

The virus is a poor excuse for the "Great Reset" into corporate fascism and to check out the "Chicken Little" theory of the 'Sky is Falling' social syndrome.

They have already convinced society that white people are bad, men are really women, we don't need police if they take our guns away and inflation is good, the U.S. is better because of illegal immigration and that Biden won.

RathdrumGal 10 hours ago

I 100% agree. My career was spent in Critical Care nursing. I have seen people die and I have seen what torture comes from a fear of death. I am much more afraid of a vancomycin resistant enterococcus than COVID. Two days ago I was jet boating in Hell's Canyon in 117 degree heat. It was red neck heaven, no one on our boat was masked. We stopped for lunch on the way home in a college town. So many young healthy looking people wearing masks, with their young children masked! They can't all be on chemo, and I assume if they are that afraid of COVID they have been vaccinated. What gives?

[Jun 28, 2021] Coronavirus Vaccine Updates- FDA adds warning to vaccines about risk of heart inflammation

Jun 28, 2021 | www.msn.com

The US Food and Drug Administration added a warning about the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis to fact sheets for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines Friday.

The warning notes that reports of adverse events following vaccination -- particularly after the second dose -- suggest increased risks of both types of heart inflammation.

Earlier this week, vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention heard that the agency had received about 1,200 reports of such heart inflammation after 300 million doses of the two vaccines had been given.

[Jun 26, 2021] Israel which used Pfizer vaccine says the Delta variant is infecting vaccinated people, who represent as many as 50% of new cases; but they're less severe

This is a fiasco for Fauci "herd immunity" campaign and the US goverment official strategy -- full, if necessary compulsive, vaccination of population with the first generation of vaccines. It means that people vaccinated with the the first generation vaccines can become infected with Delta variant and spread the virus much like unvaccinated people.
Jun 26, 2021 | www.businessinsider.in

An Israeli receives a coronavirus vaccine in Tel Aviv, Israel, on January 6. Sebastian Scheiner/AP As many as half of new COVID-19 cases in Israel are vaccinated people, a health official suggested. The Delta variant, not as easily beaten by vaccines as other variants, is driving Israel's surge. The figure is likely an estimate, as the health ministry is still analyzing the cases. As Israel faces a surge in cases driven by the Delta variant, its health officials suggested that as many as half of new cases were among people who'd been vaccinated.

Fully vaccinated people who've come into contact with the Delta variant have no immunity and have to quarantine, Chezy Levy, the director-general of Israel's health ministry, said on Wednesday, Haaretz reported. Levy told the state broadcaster Kan Bet that about 40% to 50% of new cases appeared to be people who had been vaccinated, Haaretz reported.

He did not appear to specify a time frame for the new cases. The figure is likely an estimate, as the ministry is still analyzing the cases. On Monday, Levy said that a third of the new daily cases were people who had been vaccinated.

[Jun 26, 2021] 26 fully vaccinated people have died from Delta variant

Highly recommended!
This is a fiasco for Fauci "herd immunity" campaign. It means that vaccinated people can become infected and spread the virus much like unvaccinated people.
Jun 26, 2021 | news.yahoo.com

Cases of the Delta variant of coronavirus have almost doubled in a week with 73 people now confirmed to have died after testing positive for the variant, 26 of whom had had both vaccine doses.

Public Health England (PHE) said that as of Monday, the UK has seen 75,953 confirmed cases of the Delta variant first identified in India, up 33,630 - or 79% - from the previous week.

While just 26 people died more than two weeks after their second COVID-19 vaccine dose from the Delta variant, more than 30.6 million in the UK have had both jabs, according to the latest government figures .

PHE said a total of 806 people in England have been admitted to hospital with the Delta variant as of 14 June, a rise of 423 on the previous week.

[Jun 26, 2021] GOP Sen. Ron Johnson Under Fire for Holding Event on Adverse Reactions to COVID Vaccines by Natalie Colarossi

So we have real problems with vaccines as Delta mutation puts the end of Fauci and company fake dream about herd immunity -- it infects vaccinated people, but we can't discuss that the US medical establishment is corrupt, in bed with Big Pharma and failed us.
This "medical bolshevism" should better be stopped.
Notable quotes:
"... Johnson said Sheryl Ruettgers will detail "severe neurological reactions that still inhibit her ability to live a normal life, including muscle pain, numbness, weakness and paresthesia" that she experienced after getting the COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month. ..."
Jun 26, 2021 | www.msn.com

Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson announced plans to hold a news conference to discuss adverse reactions related to the COVID-19 vaccine, drawing backlash from health care experts who view the move as "dangerous" and a way to promote misinformation.

© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is facing backlash after he announced plans to hold a news conference to discuss the negative effects of the COVID-19 vaccine. Here, Johnson listens during a hearing in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on June 22, 2021 in Washington, DC.

In a statement Friday, Johnson said he plans to give a platform to six people from across the country who claim to have had negative health reactions after receiving the coronavirus jab. Johnson said the conference will take place Monday to allow the individuals to tell their stories and discuss issues that have been "repeatedly ignored" by the medical community, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Republican senator, who has been a vocal critic of vaccine mandates and has previously advocated for alternative and unproven drug treatments to COVID-19, faced immediate backlash from critics who feel the event will be a platform for spreading misinformation about the safety of vaccines.

Dr. Jeff Huebner, a doctor in Madison, Wisconsin, said that Johnson was "promoting dangerous and unfounded claims" about the vaccine that contradict medical research and analysis.

"As a member of the Wisconsin medical community I'm gravely concerned about the impact his event and remarks will have on our ability to return to normal and protect Wisconsinites from COVID-19.," Huebner said in a statement, the Journal Sentinel reported .

Joanna Bisgrove, a Wisconsin primary care doctor, told FOX6 that Johnson's statements and event are "putting people at risk and already hurting people."

Tony Evers, the state's Democratic governor, added Friday that Johnson was being "reckless and irresponsible" and said the event was "jeopardizing the health and safety" of the state's vaccine rollout and economic recovery.

.@SenRonJohnson, you're being reckless and irresponsible. The #COVID19 vaccine is safe and effective and based on years of science and research. Every time you suggest otherwise, you're jeopardizing the health and safety of the people of our state and our economic recovery.

-- Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) June 25, 2021

In defense, Johnson said Friday that he is "just asking questions" and isn't against the vaccine.

"We're all supporters of vaccines. As I've repeatedly said, I'm glad that hundreds of millions of Americans have been vaccinated, but I don't think authorities can ignore and censor some of the issues," Johnson said in a tweet responding to Evers. "On Monday, we'll bring light to stories that deserve to be seen, heard & believed."

Monday's event in Milwaukee will include statements from former Green Bay Packers player Ken Ruettgers and his wife, Sheryl.

Johnson said Sheryl Ruettgers will detail "severe neurological reactions that still inhibit her ability to live a normal life, including muscle pain, numbness, weakness and paresthesia" that she experienced after getting the COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month.

Additional testimonies will be heard from individuals from Ohio, Missouri, Utah, Michigan and Tennessee.

The medical community has long stressed that the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine far outweigh the risks of possible side effects. Earlier this week, top U.S. health officials, medical agencies, laboratory and hospital associations issued a statement reiterating the benefits by stating that getting vaccinated is the "best way to protect yourself, your loved ones, your community, and to return to a more normal lifestyle safely and quickly."

Newsweek contacted Johnson for additional comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.

Newsweek, in partnership with NewsGuard, is dedicated to providing accurate and verifiable vaccine and health information. With NewsGuard's HealthGuard browser extension, users can verify if a website is a trustworthy source of health information. Visit the Newsweek VaxFacts website to learn more and to download the HealthGuard browser extension.

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[Jun 26, 2021] Surgeon Fired From College Of Medicine For Voicing Concerns About COVID Shots For Kids

Highly recommended!
IF expressing concerns for kid vaccination is a punishable offence that's 100% pure Lysenkoism and strongly smells with Stalinism.
Jun 26, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Via The Justice Center For Constitutional Freedom,

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms represents Dr. Francis Christian, Clinical Professor of General Surgery at the University of Saskatchewan and a practising surgeon in Saskatoon .

Dr. Christian was called into a meeting today, suspended from all teaching responsibilities effective immediately, and fired from his position with the University of Saskatchewan as of September 2021.

There is a recording of Dr. Christian's meeting today between Dr. Christian and Dr. Preston Smith, the Dean of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, College of Medicine, Dr. Susan Shaw, the Chief Medical Officer of the Saskatchewan Health Authority, and Dr. Brian Ulmer, Head of the Department of Surgery at the Saskatchewan College of Medicine.

In addition, the Justice Centre will represent Dr. Christian in his defence of a complaint that was made against him and an investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan. The complaint objects to Dr. Christian having advocated for the informed consent of Covid vaccines for children.

Dr. Christian has been a surgeon for more than 20 years and began working in Saskatoon in 2007. He was appointed Director of the Surgical Humanities Program and Director of Quality and Patient Safety in 2018 and co-founded the Surgical Humanities Program. Dr. Christian is also the Editor of the Journal of The Surgical Humanities.

On June 17, Dr. Christian released a statement to over 200 doctors which contained his concerns regarding giving the Covid shots to children. In it he noted that he is pro-vaccine, and that he did not represent any group, the Saskatchewan Health Authority, or the University of Saskatchewan.

"I speak to you directly as a physician, a surgeon, and a fellow human being."

Dr. Christian noted that the principle of informed consent was sacrosanct and noted that a patient should always be "fully aware of the risks of the medical intervention, the benefits of the intervention, and if any alternatives exist to the intervention."

"This should apply particularly to a new vaccine that has never before been tried in humans"¦ before the vaccine is rolled out to children, both children and parents must know the risks of m-RNA vaccines," he wrote.

Dr. Christian expressed concern that he had not come across "a single vaccinated child or parent who has been adequately informed" about Covid vaccines for children.

Among his points, he stated that:

  1. The m-RNA vaccine, is a new, experimental vaccine never used by humans before.

  2. The m-RNA vaccines have not been fully authorized by Health Canada or the US CDC, and are in fact under "interim authorization" in Canada and "emergency use authorization" in the US. He noted that "full vaccine approval takes several years and multiple safety considerations "" this has not happened."

  3. That in order to qualify for "emergency use authorization" there must be an emergency. While he said there is a strong case for vaccinating the elderly, the vulnerable and health care workers, he said, "Covid does not pose a threat to our kids. The risk of them dying of Covid is less than 0.003% "" this is even less than the risk of them dying of the flu. There is no emergency in children."

  4. Children do not readily transmit the Covid virus to adults.

  5. M-RNA vaccines have been "associated with several thousand deaths" in the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System in the US. "These appear to be unusual, compared to the total number of vaccines administered." He called it a "strong signal that should not be ignored."

  6. He noted that vaccines have already caused "serious medical problems for kids" worldwide, including "a real and significantly increased risk" of myocarditis, inflammation of the heart. Dr. Christian notes the German national vaccine agency and the UK vaccine agency are not recommending the vaccine for healthy children and teenagers.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority/College of Medicine wrote a letter to Dr. Christian on June 21, 2021, alleging that they had "received information that you are engaging in activities designed to discourage and prevent children and adolescents from receiving Covid-19 vaccination contrary to the recommendations and pandemic-response efforts of Saskatchewan and Canadian public health authorities."

Dr. Christian's concerns regarding underage Covid vaccinations are not isolated to him. The US Centre for Disease Control had an "emergency meeting" today to discuss the growing cases of myocarditis (heart inflammation) in younger males after receiving the Covid-19 vaccines.

The CDC released new data today that the risk of myocarditis after the Pfizer vaccine is at least 10 times the expected rate in 12 "" 17 year old males and females. The German government has issued public guidance against vaccinating those under the age of 18.

The World Health Organization posted an update to its website on Monday, June 21, which contained the statement in respect of advice for Covid-19 vaccination that " Children should not be vaccinated for the moment ." Within 24 hours, this guidance was withdrawn and new guidance was posted which stated that "Covid vaccines are safe for those over 18 years of age."

Dr. Christian says there is a large, growing "network of ethical, moral physicians and scientists" who are urging caution in recommending vaccines for all children without informed consent. He said, physicians must "always put their patients and humanity first."

Dr. Byram Bridle, a prominent immunologist at the University of Guelph with a sub-speciality in vaccinology, recently participated in a Press Conference on Parliament Hill on CPAC organized by MP Derek Sloan, where he discussed the censorship of scientists and physicians. Dr. Bridle expressed his safety concerns with vaccinating children with experimental MRNA vaccines.

Justice Centre Litigation Director Jay Cameron also has concern over the growing censorship of medical professionals when it comes to questioning the government narrative on Covid.

"We are seeing a clear pattern of highly competent and skilled medical doctors in very esteemed positions being taken down and censored or even fired, for practicing proper science and medicine," says Mr. Cameron.

The Justice Centre represented Dr. Chris Milburn in Nova Scotia, who faced professional disciplinary proceedings last year after a group of activists took exception to an opinion column he wrote in a local paper. The Justice Centre provided submissions to the College on Dr. Milburn's behalf, defending the right of physicians to express their opinions on matters of policy in the public square and arguing that everyone is entitled to freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms "" including doctors. The Justice Centre noted that attempting to have a doctor professionally disciplined for his opinions and commentary on matters of public interest amounts to bullying and intimidation for speaking out against the government.

Last week, Dr. Milburn also faced punishment for speaking out with his concerns about public health policies, as he was removed from his position as the Head of Emergency for the eastern zone with the Nova Scotia Health Authority. In an unusual twist, a petition has been started to have Dr. Milburn replace Dr. Strang as the province's Chief Medical Officer.

"Censoring and punishing scientists and doctors for freely voicing their concerns is arrogant, oppressive and profoundly unscientific", states Mr. Cameron.

"Both the western world and the idea of scientific inquiry itself is built to a large extent on the principles of freedom of thought and speech. Medicine and patient safety can only regress when dogma and an elitist orthodoxy, such as that imposed by the Saskatchewan College of Medicine, punishes doctors for voicing concerns," Mr. Cameron concludes.


Mr. Apotheosis 4 hours ago

These mother f'ers are seriously evil. To the bone evil.

high5mail 3 hours ago

I'm Canadian and the sooner they throw Trudeau and Manitoba's Pallister out of office won't be too soon.

It is effen ridiculous what this country turned into. Makes California appear to be a free place compared to here and that is saying something.

I am jealous of people living in Florida, Texas and South Dakota. They don't know how lucky they are that some people in power there are not only intelligent but have cajones...

No_Pretzel_Logic 2 hours ago

The Davos crowd is clutching most of the Western countries by the short hairs. Yank....how does that feel, plebe?

[Jun 24, 2021] Exclusive- Athlete Who Recovered From COVID Facing Very Different Future After Second Dose of Pfizer Vaccine Triggers Myoca by Megan Redshaw

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Noorchashm also called on Pfizer and Modern to institute "clear recommendations to clinicians that they delay immunization in anyone recently recovering from COVID, as well as any known symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers -- and to actively screen as many patients with high cardiovascular risk as is reasonably possible, in order to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, prior to vaccinating them." ..."
"... 'It's a colossal error to vaccinate people who have had prior infections, and this is totally avoidable harm we are causing. Why are we rushing to vaccinate people who we know are immune and don't stand to gain any benefit? If I do anything medically unnecessary to someone as a doctor, I'm opening them up to potential harm. If you've had a recent infection and you have viral antigens in your tissues, you can literally and immunologically cause tissue damage." ..."
"... "We know that natural SARS CoV-2 virus can affect the heart. It can cause blood clots that can lead to heart attacks and strokes and myocarditis. The virus can trigger an immune response or inflammation to the heart. Anywhere the virus goes the immune system will target that tissue and cause problems. If you've had a prior infection and you have antigens in the tissues where the virus goes, like the heart, and you activate the immune response [with a vaccine], you're going to activate damage." ..."
Jun 22, 2021 | peckford42.wordpress.com

In an interview with The Defender, Marie Follmer said no one warned her that her 19-year-old son -- a healthy, elite athlete who had recovered from COVID -- shouldn't get the Pfizer vaccine because it would put him at greater risk of developing myocarditis.

The Defender is experiencing censorship on many social channels. Be sure to stay in touch with the news that matters by subscribing to our top news of the day . It's free .

Greyson Follmer, an Ohio State University (OSU) student, was an elite athlete and member of the university's chapter of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC).

But, according to his mother, the 19-year-old from Ohio is looking at a very different future now, after he developed severe heart complications following his second dose of Pfizer's COVID vaccine.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender , Marie Follmer said nobody warned her about the potential for increased risks of COVID vaccine-related adverse events for people like her son, who already had COVID and had acquired natural immunity.

Greyson has played sports since he was 4 years old. He was an athlete who played in the state soccer championship in high school and then went on to OSU and started college during the COVID pandemic. He also joined ROTC his freshman year and was very active -- running several miles every day with heavy packs on his back.

Greyson was perfectly healthy and had no underlying conditions except for asthma -- which didn't affect his athletic abilities -- and food allergies.

Like most students early on in the year, Greyson and his friends got COVID.

Though most had no symptoms, Greyson experienced mild flu symptoms -- though they were nothing like his post-vaccine symptoms, Follmer explained.

The university required students who had COVID to quarantine. It also required them to get a heart MRI before they could return to school. Follmer thought that was strange, but she made sure her son got one.

When the cardiac MRI came back it showed Greyson's heart was enlarged with slight inflammation. The cardiologist thought it could be related to being an elite athlete, and signed a release for Greyson to return to school.

"He wasn't 100%, but he was recovering. He was able to go skiing, return to ROTC and went on spring break," Follmer said.

Follmer and her husband got vaccinated first with Moderna . When a friend of Follmer secured appointments for the kids to be vaccinated, she drove to OSU, picked up Greyson and told him he was going to get vaccinated.

Greyson received his first dose of Pfizer on April 16, and a second dose on May 7. After the first dose Greyson experienced minor symptoms, but his mother didn't connect them to the COVID vaccine.

It was after his second dose that things really changed, Follmer said.

Greyson experienced significant symptoms shortly after his second dose. Three times he was taken to Nationwide Children's Emergency Hospital .

'My son feels like he's having a heart attack 24/7," Follmer said. "He now has high blood pressure, severe chest pains, back pain, elevated kidney levels, hypothyroidism, inflamed lymph nodes in different areas of his body, and he can't work or exercise."

Follmer said Greyson feels like he's dying and has to sleep all the time. He likely won't be able to go back to ROTC and doesn't know if he will be able to return to school in August. Greyson experienced broken feet from soccer and said nothing compares to the chest pain he feels now.

'A perfectly healthy kid has gone downhill," his mom said.

Doctors initially attributed the heart problems Greyson experienced in May, after the vaccine, to the COVID he had in September 2020. Believing he was a "long-hauler," they referred her son to the Ohio COVID Clinic.

According to the Harvard Gazette , "COVID long-haulers" is a term used to describe those who continue to feel symptoms of COVID long after the expected recovery time. Patients tend to be younger, and in some cases, initially experienced only mild symptoms.

On June 15, Greyson was taken by emergency medicine services to Ohio Health . Follmer said she knew her son's symptoms were connected to the Pfizer vaccine, but nobody knew how to help him.

Greyson has seen numerous doctors and specialists. His family has spent more than $12,000 in one month. Lab work is covered by insurance but his other treatments are not. Greyson is doing stem cell treatments, taking Ivermectin and numerous supplements to support his condition.

Doctors project it will take him two years to fully recover, though there's no research or information on how to treat myocarditis brought on by a COVID vaccine.

In the meantime, Greyson can't mow the grass, work or go to school. He walks around holding his chest and is in counseling to cope with the effects this has had on his life, his mother said.

Follmer said she's not an anti-vaccine person, especially because she has a young daughter who could get sick. None of her children had ever had reactions to vaccines.

Follmer's 11-year-old daughter is immunocompromised. Even though all of her children had been exposed to COVID, she thought she was protecting her daughter by having her son vaccinated.

Follmer explained:

'I think what's frustrating to me right now is that nobody told me that if you have an enlarged heart or heart inflammation, don't get the shot. Not one person ever told us this. I never would have thought in a million years my kid would get sick.

'I was ready to give my daughter the vaccine -- she is going to be 12 in August and has one lung and a reconstructive airway. There is no way on this planet I would give her the vaccine now. Greyson's twin brother will also not be getting the vaccine after seeing what his brother has gone through."

Follmer said no one told her about reporting her son's adverse reaction to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). "If I hadn't put it on Facebook and someone hadn't told me to put it in VAERS, I would have never known to do it."

Follmer said she has since reported her son's adverse reaction to VAERS (ID1395886), but no one has followed up on her son's case nor has the report been added to the system. She also tried calling the CDC to see if someone there could help them.

'I just want him better. That's the bottom line," Follmer said. I just want everyone to know -- don't be naive like I was and think that this can't happen to your kids."

Cardiothoracic surgeon warns against vaccinating people who've already had COVID

Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a surgeon , immunologist and patient safety advocate, wrote several letters to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shortly after the agency granted Pfizer and Moderna Emergency Use Authorization for their COVID vaccines.

In his letters, Noorchashm urged the FDA to require pre-screening for SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins in order to reduce COVID vaccine injuries and deaths.

Noorchashm also called on Pfizer and Modern to institute "clear recommendations to clinicians that they delay immunization in anyone recently recovering from COVID, as well as any known symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers -- and to actively screen as many patients with high cardiovascular risk as is reasonably possible, in order to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, prior to vaccinating them."

According to Noorchashm , it is scientifically established that once a person is naturally infected by a virus, antigens from that virus persist in the body for a long time after viral replication has stopped and clinical signs of infection have resolved.

When a vaccine reactivates an immune response in a recently infected person, the tissues harboring the persisting viral antigen are targeted, inflamed and damaged by the immune response.

"In the case of SARS-CoV-2, we know the virus naturally infects the heart, the inner lining of blood vessels, the lungs and the brain," explained Noorchashm . "So these are likely to be some of the critical organs that will contain persistent viral antigens in the recently infected. Following reactivation of the immune system by a vaccine, these tissues can be expected to be targeted and damaged."

In an interview with The Defender , Noorchashm said Greyson's case reminded him of Everest Romney -- the all-American basketball player who was hospitalized after his second dose of Pfizer for blood clots in his brain.

According to Noorchasm, both Romney and Greyson had acquired natural immunity because they'd been infected with COVID, and they likely did not stand to gain any benefit from a COVID vaccine.

Noorchashm explained:

'It's a colossal error to vaccinate people who have had prior infections, and this is totally avoidable harm we are causing. Why are we rushing to vaccinate people who we know are immune and don't stand to gain any benefit? If I do anything medically unnecessary to someone as a doctor, I'm opening them up to potential harm. If you've had a recent infection and you have viral antigens in your tissues, you can literally and immunologically cause tissue damage."

Medical necessity is on the ground floor of everything doctors do in regards to safety, Noorchasm said. "If you want to be a safe hospital, doctor, practitioner or health agency you would not do anything that's not necessary to people or fundamentally not beneficial. There's only a probability of harm if there's no medical necessity," he said.

When asked specifically about myocarditis, Noorchashm said this is the original prediction and prognostication he made to the FDA.

Noorchashm said:

"We know that natural SARS CoV-2 virus can affect the heart. It can cause blood clots that can lead to heart attacks and strokes and myocarditis. The virus can trigger an immune response or inflammation to the heart. Anywhere the virus goes the immune system will target that tissue and cause problems. If you've had a prior infection and you have antigens in the tissues where the virus goes, like the heart, and you activate the immune response [with a vaccine], you're going to activate damage."

Noorchashm, who is pro-vaccine, said shots need to be spread out for people who are not immune and want to be vaccinated, and the FDA and CDC should think carefully about limiting the shot to one dose, especially in young people, or increasing the duration between first and second doses.

In his letter to the FDA , Noorchashm recommended actively screening as many patients with high cardiovascular risk as is reasonably possible, in order to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, prior to vaccinating them.

"If someone has a known history of COVID, there should not be any rush to get them vaccinated," Noorchashm said. "That should be our national policy.

If you've either had COVID, or you have laboratory evidence of immunity, you shouldn't rush into getting vaccinated ."

[Jun 24, 2021] Current Reality Can Only Be Described As Anarchic Surrealism: Israel, which used Pfizer vaccines, and had only last week removed indoor mask mandates, has now reinstituted them, and is asking its citizens not to go abroad

Jun 24, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

On Covid, Israel, which used Pfizer vaccines, and had only last week removed indoor mask mandates, has now reinstituted them, and is asking its citizens not to go abroad over concerns the Delta variant is surging

[Jun 24, 2021] CDC panel finds 'likely' link between mild heart inflammation in adolescents and COVID-19 vaccine

Jun 24, 2021 | www.msn.com

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) safety panel said there is a "likely association" of mild heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults after they were vaccinated with an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

The initial cases of myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart, reported on the federal government's tracking system were generally mild, especially compared to traditional myocarditis, scientists said.

Most cases have been mild, with symptoms like fatigue, chest pain and disturbances in heart rhythm that quickly clear up within a day or so. CDC scientists said they will need to follow up with patients in the months ahead in order to get a complete picture of the impact.

"Clinical presentation of myocarditis cases following vaccination has been distinct, occurring most often within one week after dose two, with chest pain as the most common presentation," said Grace Lee, chairwoman of the CDC's vaccine safety committee.

Officials said they are tracking about 1,200 initial reports of the rare heart inflammation following doses of mRNA coronavirus vaccines have been filed with the federal government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), though they have not yet been definitively linked to the vaccines.

Most reports came from people in their late teens and early 20s, and many more occurred after the second dose than the first.

...There were more cases in males than females, and the cases essentially disappeared in older age groups.

The agency said there have been 267 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis reported after receiving one dose of the mRNA vaccines and 827 reported cases after two doses through June 11.

But the reports are preliminary, and do not mean the health issues have been linked to the vaccine. The database is meant as a repository of all events observed after vaccination.

There were 323 confirmed reports of myocarditis and pericarditis for people under the age of 29, which is the group CDC is investigating. Among those confirmed, 218 people have fully recovered. Nine people were hospitalized, with two in intensive care as of June 11, according to the CDC.

There have been about 300 million vaccine doses administered nationwide.

Scientists have emphasized this occurrence is rate - for both mRNA vaccines combined, there were 12.6 heart inflammation cases per million doses.

The highest confirmed rate of myocarditis and pericarditis was about 20 cases per 1 million doses with Moderna's vaccine, compared to 8 cases per million for Pfizer's.

Officials emphasized that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks, and noted that for every million doses of mRNA vaccine given, there are far more COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations prevented compared to the number of potential myocarditis cases.

[Jun 22, 2021] When I got pregnant the first time, my obgyn hands me a list of common foods and drinks to avoid, and now the government wants to inject an experimental drug into me? No thanks

Fauci pushing vaccines is borderline with criminality.
Jun 22, 2021 | www.unz.com

TheMoon , says: June 16, 2021 at 3:06 pm GMT • 6.3 days ago

@Peripatetic Itch pregnant the first time, my obgyn hands me a list of common foods and drinks to avoid, and now the government wants to inject an experimental drug into me? No thanks. You don't even need to go to conspiracies and shadowy research for that one. I have to avoid caffeine, but untested drug is OK?

I don't even want the J&J one (when I'm done with babymaking) even though it seems closer to a traditional vaccine. I read it was something already existing from efforts to develop an HIV shot, but they seem to have a recurring issues with contamination where they manufacture it. Too many diversity hires, maybe.

On the other hand, the MSM seems to downplay the mRNA complications and overplay the J&J ones, which is curious.

Craig Morris , says: June 16, 2021 at 5:44 pm GMT • 6.2 days ago
@TheMoon

J&J also creates spike proteins, it just does it with a viral vector instead of mRNA. Sputnik and Sinovac are traditional vaccines if you can get them.

[Jun 21, 2021] Vaccines Exhibit Reduced Efficacy Against Delta Variant, WHO Doctor Warns

Does WHO try to fearmonger the importance of vaccination using Delta (Indian) mutation as the "eminent threat". While that real problem is that vaccines are much less effective against this train (although probably not to the extent South African mutation wiped out the credibility of the first generation vaccines from the USA, especially Moderna and Johnson & Johnson ( Moderna Developing Vaccine Booster Shot for Virus Strain Identified in South Africa - WSJ "Moderna said its vaccine induced production of neutralizing antibodies against the strain first identified in the U.K., known as B.1.1.7, at levels comparable to prior variants. Yet neutralization decreased sharply in the case of the strain in South Africa, known as B.1.351,"
A weak protection against the South Africa variant suggests the flow of "total vaccination" propaganda and clear deficiencies of several first generation vaccines.
Jun 21, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

As the mutant COVID-19 strain known as "Delta" picks up steam across Europe and the US, one of the WHO's leading doctors has just expressed concern about recent research published in the Lancet showing that the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines aren't as effective at protecting against "Delta".

Answering a question from a reporter during the organization's regular Monday briefing in Geneva, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said that there is data "showing a reduction in neutralization" for the Delta variant, but not as much as the "Beta" variant - better known as the mutant strain that was first discovered in South Africa.

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Johnny Walker 1 minute ago

"Asking the CDC to look into vaccine safety is like asking the fox to guard the chicken coop."-- Dr Rimland Ph.D.

Unbelievabubble 40 seconds ago

Less WHO doctor, more WITCH doctor.

Mike Rotsch 2 minutes ago

It's kinda like a never-ending Henry Kissinger interview. On one hand, we're told that he's some kind of a genius and master of political science. On the other hand, he has absolutely nothing but a lifetime of consistent and predictable failure to show for it.

[Jun 20, 2021] Taibbi- Why Has -Ivermectin- Become A Dirty Word

It is not clear if Ivermectin is effective. But were are government studies on this important topic. Where is out "vaccines zealot" Fauci and his institute results ?
Jun 19, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News ,

On December 8, 2020, when most of America was consumed with what The Guardian called Donald Trump's "desperate, mendacious, frenzied and sometimes farcical" attempt to remain president, the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the " Medical Response to Covid-19 ." One of the witnesses, a pulmonologist named Dr. Pierre Kory, insisted he had great news.

"We have a solution to this crisis," he said unequivocally.

"There is a drug that is proving to have a miraculous impact."

Kory was referring to an FDA-approved medicine called ivermectin. A genuine wonder drug in other realms, ivermectin has all but eliminated parasitic diseases like river blindness and elephantiasis, helping discoverer Satoshi OÌ„mura win the Nobel Prize in 2015 . As far as its uses in the pandemic went, however, research was still scant. Could it really be a magic Covid-19 bullet?

Kory had been trying to make such a case, but complained to the Senate that public efforts had been stifled, because "every time we mention ivermectin, we get put in Facebook jail." A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnaring science. With the world desperate for news about an unprecedented disaster, Silicon Valley had essentially decided to disallow discussion of a potential solution" disallow calls for more research and more study" because not enough research and study had been done. Once, people weren't allowed to take drugs before they got FDA approval. Now, they can't talk about them.

Subscribe and read the rest of the post here .

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Dabooda 6 hours ago

If Ivermectin is ever recognized as effective against the Wu-flu, all the "vaccines" will become illegal. They are ONLY authorized for emergency use because no other safe and recognized treatment is available. So the pharmaceutical companies will pull out all the stops to prevent that happening. Expect a new article in The Lancet any day now, "proving" that it doesn't work.

chumlee 5 hours ago

Exactly!!

Pinto Currency 3 hours ago

Breakthrough: Ivermectin Inhibits Covid Spike Protein Binding

https://principia-scientific.com/breakthrough-ivermectin-inhibits-covid-spike-protein-binding/

" Ivermectin... has shown great efficacy in the fight against covid-19. For the first time, medical researchers have documented how ivermectin docks to the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain that is attached to the ACE2 receptor."

ClimbingTheLog 5 hours ago remove link

the Lancet may well do that but c19ivermectin.com has a hundred studies now showing the Lancet as being part of the coverup.

Demologos 4 hours ago

Great video discussing several treatments including Ivermectin. Of course, it's already pulled from YouTube, after nearly 600K views, but it can be found on odysee.com .

Dr. Bret Weinstein ( Dark Horse Podcast) is the moderator with Dr. Robert Malone (one of the inventors of mRNA vaccine technology) and Steve Kirsch. Search "how to save the world in three easy steps". Video is 3 hours but well worth your time.

h/t to a ZH commenter a few days ago.

Demologos 4 hours ago

Ivermectin peer-reviewed meta study released today. Dr. Tess Lawrie.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348297284_Ivermectin_reduces_the_risk_of_death_from_COVID-19_-a_rapid_review_and_meta-analysis_in_support_of_the_recommendation_of_the_Front_Line_COVID-19_Critical_Care_Alliance_Latest_version_v12_-_6_Jan_2021

philipat 3 hours ago (Edited)

More importantly, had Ivermectin and HCQ (As well as prophylactic Vitamnin-D supplementation in the Northern Hemisphere) been approved as (effective, cheap and AE-free) treatments for "Covid" under the laws of many countries, especially the US, it would not have been possible to approve the experimental gene therapies under the EUA mechanism.

Which would, of course, have scuttled the entire profitable psyop.

LetThemEatRand 6 hours ago

Your answer is clearly the correct one (vaccine would not be allowed if there are effective treatments). Guys like Taibbi can't accept that obvious and correct explanation for the question in his article, because doing so means admitting that there is a vast conspiracy going on regarding COVID. So he will only entertain stupid answers like "well, Trump said it was effective, therefore people said it wasn't." This is already what we're hearing with regard to the Wuhan lab.

RedDog1 7 hours ago

Big tech = Ministry of Truth.

paranoid.dragon 7 hours ago

Big Tech = created by Pentagon

Not Your Father's ZH 7 hours ago (Edited) remove link

The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health

Dr. "Follow The Science" Fauci controls a $7 billion budget that uses vaccines as weaponry. Kennedy Jr. discloses that the chronic disease rate in the US in 1968 when Fauci became director of the Institute of Infectious Disease was 6% and now is 54%. Fauci turned his agency into an incubator of prescription drugs and vaccines. His agency has a financial conflict of interest in vaccine patents.

Fauci runs a medical dictatorship, says Kennedy. Fauci gives away 13 times more money than billionaire Gates.

edotabin 5 hours ago remove link

The EUA cannot be given if there are alternatives. Of course they knew. How do I know?

1. World famous French scientist (Raoult) notices hydroxychloroquine works and starts speaking about it. Lancet publishes false study stating the opposite. They eventually are forced to retract study. They continue to give the medication to very late- stage patients and gave wrong doses so as to purposely continue to discredit its effectiveness. Sales of drug banned in Europe and Dr. Raoult goes from being world-renowned to invisible. Many pharmacists in the US refuse to fill prescriptions.

2. Ivermectin shows fantastic results in India and elsewhere. Numbers start dropping like a rock. The situation is stabilized. What happens? Ivermectin is bad-mouthed and in some areas of India it is banned. As a matter of fact, read this:

https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indian-bar-association-sues-who-scientist-over-ivermectin/article_f90599f8-c7be-11eb-a8dc-0b3cbb3b4dfa.html

[Jun 18, 2021] Hospitals See Surge In Double-Lung Transplants

Actually heard about lung transplant for a young woman during waping epidemic.
Jun 18, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

As scientists start to assess the impact that COVID-19 has had on patients and the American medical system more broadly, Bloomberg reports that hospitals across the US have seen a surge in patients receiving single- and double-lung transplants.

Transplants are necessary for only the most serious COVID-19 cases. In these patients - pretty much always patients with comorbidities - COVID-19 ravages the lung tissue, leaving nodules in the lungs incapable of absorbing oxygen from the air and transmitting it to the blood stream. For many patients, the grueling procedure may be the only solution after experiencing the worst lung damage caused by the virus - when the body fails to properly respond to, and heal from, the hyper-inflammatory response provoked by COVID-19.

... ... ...

Fortunately, COVID-19 vaccines supposedly offer "100% protection" against "severe" COVID-19 symptoms. Though patients with comorbiditis may still be at risk as variants like the "delta" strain continue to spread.


DanishViking 7 hours ago (Edited)

Fear mongering article sourced from Bloomberg (surprised?), pushing the jab narrative

ohm 4 hours ago

If your dumb enough to believe the vaccines are 95% or 100% effective against anything, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2666-5247%2821%2900069-0

Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.

bigjim 2 hours ago remove link

Fortunately, COVID-19 vaccines supposedly offer "100% protection" against "severe" COVID-19 symptoms.

Really? Last I heard, some 30% of the people who have been dying here in the UK had received both jabs.

Dr. Know 3 hours ago (Edited)

"...severe lung damage that did not improve despite prolonged mechanical ventilation"

A number of RNs and MDs have stated that the ventilators cause this damage, especially when turned up too high.

krda 1 hour ago

Bingo. 85% of Covid patients put on ventilators in China died. Something like 50% of people put on ventilators for any cause die.

The damage was caused by the rush to 'ventilators! ventilators! ventilators!' rather than using other treatments which wouldn't have killed them.

Countrygirl1411 2 hours ago

Seems they left out what has happened to one young person because of the covid injection

19-Year-Old College Freshman Dies From Heart Problem One Month After Second Dose of Moderna Vaccine

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/19-year-old-dies-heart-problem-moderna-vaccine/

kjm 1 hour ago remove link

Agreed, watch Dr. (cardiologist) Peter McCullough testifying to the Texas Senate. Essentially he said 85% didn't have to die if treated early and properly. Lung damage would have been avoided as well. I would add massive (30-50 grams, initially and repeated daily until symptoms alleviated) doses of IV vitamin C to the protocol. IV C has been used successfully for more than 70 years on Polio and other viruses. Look up Dr. Klenner.

[Jun 14, 2021] I still prefer to wait for more traditional vaccines to be approved, if I have to be vaccinated at all

Jun 14, 2021 | www.unz.com

Diversity Heretic , says: June 10, 2021 at 12:01 pm GMT • 3.8 days ago

My understanding is that Sputnik is an adenovirus vector vaccine, not really a "traditional" vaccine. The Chinese vaccine is a traditional attenuated virus vaccine and there is a SANOFI protein fragment vaccine in Phase III trials, which I think also uses a proven technology. While I think that Sputnik is better than the messenger RNA genetic treatments, which creep me out, I still prefer to wait for more traditional vaccines to be approved, if I have to be vaccinated at all.

But why design a biological weapon that works best against the elderly and already infirm?

Stephane , says: June 10, 2021 at 12:59 pm GMT • 3.7 days ago

Sputnik V is a traditional vaccine

Actually, no.

It is an adenovirus viral vector vaccine – a "neutered" adenovirus is used as a vector to inject DNA coding for viral proteins in the cells and make them produce/present them to the immune system. In fact it's somewhat similar to what Pfizer or Moderna do with lipidic nanoparticules as vector and mRNA as "source code" for protein synthesis.

This vaccine technology is fairly recent and IIRC only used in four CODID-19 (Suptnik V, AstraZenecca, J&J and one of the Chinese vaccines – maybe two) and two Ebola vaccines.

If you want "traditional", you should look into the sub-unit – for the moment it's Russian EpiVacCorona and CoviVac – or inactivated virus based vaccines, IIRC chinese only for the moment.

SteveK9 , says: June 10, 2021 at 1:29 pm GMT • 3.7 days ago

The primary goal of the response to SARS-Cov-2 was to have everyone in the World forced to have a vaccine on a regular basis. The lies reached mountainous proportions.

I am no more interested in Russia's vaccine than anyone else's. Perhaps it will prove to be somewhat safer, although it also directs the patients cells to produce the spike protein. Perhaps it is not as likely to go everywhere, including the circulatory system, which may make it safer.

But, I see no reason for vaccines for anyone under 70, and for those over 70 and everyone else there are effective treatments, like HCQ and Ivermectin the ban on these will probably end someday, just like the ban on discussing the origins of SARS-Cov-2.

Ultrafart the Brave , says: Website June 10, 2021 at 2:56 pm GMT • 3.6 days ago
@SteveK9 n the Corona Chan bug.

Corona Chan "Vaccines" Kill Lots & Lots of People

( https://www.bitchute.com/video/bSxEe9RS0P29/ ]
( https://seed163.bitchute.com/2dPYYSnBMwXp/bSxEe9RS0P29.mp4 ]

( https://freenations.net/record-vaccine-deaths-risk-greater-than-covid-governments-manipulate-data-illegal-tracking-of-vaccinated-illegal-propaganda-covid-fascists-revealed/ ]

Levtraro , says: June 13, 2021 at 7:08 pm GMT • 11.3 hours ago
@Ultrafart the Brave he "spike protein", they actually inject it directly, encapsulated in said adenovirus envelope.

You may be misunderstanding how adenovirus vector vaccines work. You are right that these vaccines do not instruct human cells to synthesize the protein (as mRNA vaccines do) but they are not delivering the protein directly, what they do is to carry the gene that synthesizes the protein, the gene is carried in the genetic make up of the adenovirus. The foreign gene is inserted into the adenovirus. Usually a crucial gene for replication of the adenovirus is replaced (gene swapping) with the foreign gene that synthesizes the protein of interest rendering the adenovirus impotent.

[Jun 12, 2021] CDC To Meet On Rare Heart Inflammation Following COVID Vaccine

Jun 12, 2021 | science.slashdot.org

Lung scarring ( Score: 1 , Informative) by defovil901 ( 7969846 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @05:28PM ( #61474844 ) Covid causes lung scarring and heart and organ failure. Wear a mask and get vaccinated!b!bb Reply to This Share Flag as Inappropriate 2 hidden comments Re:Lung scarring ( Score: 5 , Interesting) by clovis ( 4684 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @07:02PM ( #61475072 )

Covid-19 also causes pericarditis in a small number of the people infected.

The problem with the data is that we have no ways of knowing how many of those people had been exposed to coronavirus in the weeks before getting the vaccine, or were people who had the long-term covid-19 problem.

Here is a case of someone for whom pericarditis was the only symptom of infection.

https://casereports.bmj.com/co... [bmj.com] Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate Re:Lung scarring ( Score: 5 , Interesting) by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @07:57PM ( #61475206 )

Pericarditis or worse. I have a friend who had to have open heart surgery and then died almost a year later. Covid ate his heart. He was young too. Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate Re:

Definitely false, at least for COVID, can't comment about the vaccine but I strongly suspect it doesn't apply there. There are multiple cases of people who were perfectly healthy that ended up with severe pulmonary fibrosis, requiring a lung transplant, solely because of COVID. If the patient wasn't otherwise healthy before getting COVID, odds are super high that they wouldn't have even been eligible for transplant anyways as they likely would not even survive the surgery.

Here's a case of a firefighter in p Re:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com... [mediabiasfactcheck.com]

seems to like them

Azfamily.com is the joint website for KTVK and KPHO television stations based in Phoenix, Arizona. The website covers local news, sports, weather, entertainment, crime and TV programming information.

Factual Reporting: HIGH
Country: USA
World Press Freedom Rank: USA 45/180 (2020)

Overall, we rate azfamily.com Least Biased based on balanced story selection and minimal editorializing. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean Re:

Anecdotes aren't scientific proof of anything. There are super-healthy firefighters and special ops soldiers falling dead of coronary and lung disease all the time. I had a family member like that, died at the age of 30 due to an unknown and underlying heart condition, super-fit, was just sitting in the sun one afternoon and dropped dead. You don't need an underlying heart condition...

Any serious disturbance of the immune system homeostasis may result with a secondary streptococcal infection of the heart muscle - i.e. inflammation of the heart muscle.
I.e. Myocarditis.

I've had that twice. Once due to influenza resulting in a high fever, as a teenager. The night of the fever I could barely catch my breath to speak and in the morning mom had to take me by the hand to the local health center which was literally down the road from us.

Ended up in the hospital for couple of weeks as doctors kept Did they cut corners? ( Score: 1 , Troll) by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @05:29PM ( #61474852 ) I'm noticing the "rare" cases of side effects are due to lack of data. Then once they actually review, it becomes less rare. I always thought drug approval processes were because large drug companies cut corners and lie in order to get drug approval. This pandemic was a once in a lifetime occurrence and drug reviews should go back to the original process. Reply to This Share Flag as Inappropriate Re: Did they cut corners? ( Score: 3 , Informative) by KamikazeSquid ( 3611985 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @05:32PM ( #61474856 ) Drug and vaccine review processes are only ever tested on otherwise healthy people who aren't taking other medications or have other pre-existing health conditions. They don't really know if the latest drug or vaccine is going to cause negative side effects in certain subgroups of people until they actually roll it out. Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate 2 hidden comments Re: Did they cut corners? ( Score: 5 , Informative) by dirk ( 87083 ) < [email protected] > on Thursday June 10, 2021 @10:57PM ( #61475608 ) Homepage

I can't speak to the vaccine review process, but this is completely false for the drug review process. I would in the drug research sphere (I'm in IT, but I have been in it for over 20 years so I know how it works) and you are 100% incorrect. Phase 1 trials are conducted on healthy people. These are usually first in man studies looking for any side effects from the drug, so they want healthy people who are not on other medication. It then goes on to phase 2 trials, which are designed to see if the drug works. So if it is a high blood pressure drug, it is given to people with high blood pressure to see if the drug actually works and does what they want it to. These people are often on other medications. There is not a requirement they not be on other medications unless they know of negative interactions or the other drugs also may do something similar to the drug they are testing (which means the results could be skewed). Then the drug goes onto phase 3 trials which compare the drug to other drugs used for the same thing to see if the new drug performs better.

So as you can see, no, drugs are not "only ever tested on otherwise healthy people who aren't taking other medications or have other pre-existing health conditions". It is true they cannot test the interaction witha ll other drugs or conditions, since that would be practically impossible, but the idea that drugs are not tested on people with any other conditions is completely wrong. Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate Re:

Actually, no. But for rare side-effects, there is only "phase 4" testing, i.e. you vaccinate the target population and check what happens. The numbers from the article are too low to be found in any systematic test, simple statistics already gives you that. Nobody can run a drug test on about 10M people and that is what you would need here. Re:Did they cut corners? ( Score: 5 , Insightful) by Xest ( 935314 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @05:47PM ( #61474896 )

I don't think so; typically medicines are always updated post approval when they're in the open market and new side effects are found because realistically if you're talking about a 1 in 500,000 issue the ability to even get 500,000 test subjects for most medicines is flat out impossible because a lot of the time you're talking about medicines for conditions that there just aren't even that many people suffering from it at any given time. The only reason it's making headlines this time is because we're talking about medicines that everyone is getting, so those rare case are, in absolute numbers, more obvious.

If you have a vaccine for something that isn't given as broadly, it's possible you'd simply never see such rare outcomes even though they're theoretically possible. So this isn't really a function of lack of testing prior to release as it is business as usual making headlines because it's relevant to everyone. If for example rabies, or Japanese encephalitis vaccines had side effects like this you wouldn't expect the UK's medicines regulator to even notice because the rarity with which those vaccines are given out in the UK is small, but that doesn't mean that rare side effects not found during testing like this aren't a possibility.

IMO it's only really an issue when for example as with the AZ vaccine the British government tried to bury it out of nationalist pride - first by saying it wasn't a real issue and Europe as just bitter about Brexit, then lying and saying it's only a 1 in 1 million chance, before finally admitting a few weeks back it's a 1 in 60,000 chance of getting a blood clot and effectively, in real terms, phasing out the AZ vaccine in the UK because no one else after that point is now getting it in the UK other than for second doses.

So all we're really doing here is seeing everything happen at high speed - whereas with many vaccines or medicines it might take many years before millions of people are treated with them for enough cases of a rare side effect to be noticed, here we're just seeing it in a much shorter time frame - that's not because rushing it has made things less safe, it's just made issues that are typically noticed over years or even decades in classically vetted medicines get noticed within months instead because of the sheer numbers involved. Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate 2 hidden comments Re:

> Sure but that's a function of what people like Trump have done to politics

Wait, now we're blaming Trump for making politics political?

Time to close up shop... I've literally seen it all. Re:Did they cut corners? ( Score: 5 , Insightful) by The Wily Coyote ( 7406626 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @07:30PM ( #61475140 )

The parent isn't blaming Trump and those of his ilk for making politics "political". He/She is blaming them for making politics a completely toxic winner take all game where those you disagree with are enemies. Trump didn't start this trend (arguably it goes back to the 1960s), but he did accelerate it.

Politics can be about thoughtful compromise, but that requires a certain kind of politician, one who is in very short supply in the current political climate in the US.

Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate Re:

It's really not our ex-president (who lost .. and lost and lost.. he's really one of the biggets losers ever).

It started with Mitch McConnell and the republican senate in 2007 when they told incoming VP Biden, the republicans intended to vote "no" to everything Obama proposed- even if they had proposed it themselves under bush.

McConnell and what's left of the republican party (most the sane conservatives have left now) are a real threat to our democratic republic.

Re:Did they cut corners? ( Score: 4 , Interesting) by Bongo ( 13261 ) on Friday June 11, 2021 @07:43AM ( #61476292 )

Simply, if you test by giving it to 10,000 but the adverse event happens in 1 in 12,000, you probably won't see it. And if adverse events just end up sporadically reported, maybe or maybe not, and just go undiagnosed, who knows when you'll see it.

This is why, regardless of politics, beliefs, pro/anti-vax, etc., the only real test of what will happen to 100,000,000 people is when you give it to 100,000,000 people (and then pay very close attention). We're not firing projectiles which follow precise mathematical laws, these are living systems.

Vaccine companies are like, you want to give this to hundreds of millions of people? Fine, we want complete absence of liability. You want to advise the public that it is safe? Fine, say what you want, make sure we can never be sued, because we can't humanly know what will actually happen when you roll it out en masse. We can't and it would be irrational and unreasonable to expect that we could.

This is pure empiricism--safe vaccines are known safe because they're been out there for may years, decades even, and been given to hundreds of millions. Safe because we know from experience, not because we extrapolated from small tests and principles. Actually a lot of the scares around vaccines are from theoretical ideas, i.e. still science, just difference of opinions. ("anti-vax" plays on the notion that they're all quacks, but it is easy to pay attention and find all the ones which have impressive credentials -- it is intellectually honest to try to find the best and most qualified people on the opposing side, rather than just point to the worst).

The technology is amazing. mRNA as a platform is an amazing technology. Imagine you go to the doctor, and they diagnose something, and they just tap a few keys on the PC, and a machine prints some molecules into a solution, and they inject you right there and then--replacing pills, chemo, radiation, you name it. Totally customised health treatments which your body can manufacture itself. As they say on their website, it is an operating system with many potential apps to run on it.

But there's no magic crystal ball to substitute for real world, give it to a billion people, and wait 100 years to study the long term effects. Unless you think you're god. If you want to play god, you can say, well let's just give it to everyone--we think it'll probably be ok, based on data so far, and we can fix the bugs later. Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate Re:Did they cut corners? ( Score: 5 , Insightful) by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @05:51PM ( #61474904 ) There have been 226 cases of these side effects out of 140M+ persons vaccinated in the US. Your explanation for rare occurrences of side effects: "Those drug companies must have cut corners or lied!" How about the 0.00016% chance of the side effect is by definition of the word "rare"? Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate Very possible many are not reported Not everyone rushes to the hospital if they feel slightly ill after the shot. In most cases, the inflammation maybe mild enough where people don't even know something is not right. Re: Yes not all cases may have been reported; however, 226 out of 140+M is still a ridiculously low number. Also heart inflammation is not heart burn. It is a serious condition. Re:

Just wait until they find out the fatality rate of Aspirin. ›

Re: Did they cut corners? ( Score: 3 , Insightful) by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @11:24PM ( #61475662 ) Homepage

Imagine if he found out about car accidents or lightning strikes. Get the vaccine, people. Reply to This Parent Share Flag as Inappropriate Re:Did they cut corners? ( Score: 5 , Informative) by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Thursday June 10, 2021 @08:06PM ( #61475220 )

Wildtype Covid has an overall Infection Fatality Rate of about 0.8% in the US (based on our age/demographics).

With the latest variants such as Delta (Indian) you're needing about 80-90% immunity to stop the spread. And that's assuming it wouldn't mutate further with that high of levels of infection.

0.008 IFR * 140 million Americans have now been fully vaccinated * 0.8 herd immunity factor * 0.9 vaccine effectiveness. = 800,000 deaths have been prevented by the vaccines.

3 people of those 140 million vaccinated Americans have gone into the ICU for treatment. 0 have died.

Even if all 3 die... even if those 3 are 1% of the actual number who developed problems in died. Even if you wildly inflated the assumptions about how many will die you're looking at 300 deaths vs 800,000 deaths.

What they're going to do is review the data and confirm that everybody receiving a vaccination is still less likely to die from the vaccine than Covid or if there are any groups they should carve out to not be recommended to receive vaccine. If it's only a problematic side effect in people with families who have a history of severe heart disease and if you're under 18 and have no risk factors for severe covid side effects they might say "Ok this 1% of the population should take the vaccine, but they should carefully monitor their condition."

[Jun 12, 2021] CDC advisers to review heart inflammation link to mRNA COVID jabs - Business and Economy News - Al Jazeera

Jun 10, 2021 | www.aljazeera.com

U.S. public health advisers will meet to discuss a potential link between Covid-19 shots that use messenger RNA technology and heart inflammation after hundreds of vaccinated people experienced a condition called myocarditis.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will gather on June 18 to discuss an increase in reported cases of the condition, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Covid vaccines made by Moderna Inc. and partners Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE's use mRNA technology.

KEEP READING Rural Philippines pays price for ignoring COVID warnings The politics of Japan's Taiwan vaccine donation Biden announces "˜no strings attached' global vaccine donation US government workers can return to office without COVID jab

Since April, the CDC has seen a spike in reports of myocarditis along with pericarditis, an inflammation of the membrane around the heart. The cases, while rare, have occurred mostly in male teens and young adults.

The CDC has identified a total of 216 cases of heart inflammation after the first dose of an mRNA shot, and another 573 cases after the second dose. The median age of people with myocarditis or pericarditis following the first dose was 30, and 24 among the second-dose cases. There were 475 cases identified among those under the age of 30.

Most patients have responded well to treatment and rest, according to the agency, and more than 8 in 10 have had full relief from their symptoms. The agency is further examining the cases by age.

About 130 million Americans have received the full two-dose regimen of one of the two authorized mRNA vaccines. Many teenagers have now received their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was cleared for adolescents 12 and older on May 10.


"We're still learning about the rates of myocarditis and pericarditis," Tom Shimabukuro, a safety expert of CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said Thursday in a Food and Drug Administration panel meeting. "As we gather more information we'll begin to get a better idea of the post-vaccination rates and hopefully be able to get more detailed information by age group."

Shimabukuro said the U.S. data is consistent with findings from Israel's vaccinated population.

"It's hard to deny that there's some event that seems to be occurring," said Cody Meissner, head of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Division at Tufts Medical Center, at the FDA's advisory committee meeting on Thursday.

\

[Jun 12, 2021] Melbourne Lockdown Extended on Warning of Virus' Quick Spread

Notable quotes:
"... one in 10 current cases had caught the variant of the virus now spreading in Victoria from a stranger. ..."
Jun 08, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

Genome sequencing has confirmed the cases in Victoria are from the variant that was first detected in India.

Merlino said in a separate statement on Wednesday that authorities had discerned that one in 10 current cases had caught the variant of the virus now spreading in Victoria from a stranger.

[Jun 12, 2021] The Power of Natural Immunity

Notable quotes:
"... Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. He is author of "The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care""and How to Fix It," just out in paperback. ..."
Jun 08, 2021 | www.wsj.com

The news about the U.S. Covid pandemic is even better than you've heard. Some 80% to 85% of American adults are immune to the virus: More than 64% have received at least one vaccine dose and, of those who haven't, roughly half have natural immunity from prior infection. There's ample scientific evidence that natural immunity is effective and durable, and public-health leaders should pay it heed.

Only around 10% of Americans have had confirmed positive Covid tests, but four to six times as many have likely had the infection. A February study in Nature used antibody screenings in late summer 2020 to estimate there had been seven times as many actual cases as confirmed cases. A similar study , by the University of Albany and New York State Department of Health, revealed that by the end of March 2020""the first month of New York's pandemic""23% of the city's population had antibodies. That share necessarily increased as the pandemic spread.

The contribution of natural immunity should speed up the timeline for returning fully to normal. With more than 8 in 10 adults protected from either contracting or transmitting the virus, it can't readily propagate by jumping around in the population. In public health, we call that herd immunity, defined broadly on the Johns Hopkins Covid information webpage as "when most of a population is immune." It's not eradication, but it's powerful.

Without accounting for natural immunity, we are far from Anthony Fauci's stated target of 70% to 85% of the population becoming immune through full vaccination. But the effect of natural immunity is all around us. The plummeting case numbers in late April and May weren't the result of vaccination alone, and they came amid a loosening of both restrictions and behavior.

In Los Angeles, 45% of city residents were found to have antibodies in February. Once vaccines were introduced, the seven-day average of daily Covid cases fell from a peak of more than 15,000 on Jan. 11 to 253 four months later, even as people became more mobile. That sharp decline, which came far faster than health officials expected, can't be accounted for by vaccination rates, which were below 50% during that time.

Natural immunity is durable. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis reported last month that 11 months after a mild infection immune cells were still capable of producing protective antibodies. The authors concluded that prior Covid infection induces a "robust" and "long-lived humoral immune response," leading some scientists to suggest that natural immunity is probably lifelong. Because infection began months earlier than vaccination, we have more follow-up data on the duration of natural immunity than on vaccinated immunity.

Washington University's lab findings are consistent with physicians' bedside observations. After treating Covid for 16 months, we haven't seen significance incidence of re-infection. In Italy no re-infection clusters have been observed . In a large study from Denmark, less than 0.7% of people who tested positive for Covid, including those who were asymptomatic, ever tested positive again""a "breakthrough infection" rate similar to that of vaccines. These numbers are especially low considering the sensitivity of Covid PCR tests, which can sometimes detect a single viral particle in a blood sample. It often takes thousands to make you sick.

Skeptics of natural immunity point to Manaus, capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, where reports in January suggested a wave of re-infections despite herd immunity. But the initial estimate of those infected was incorrect because it was based on antibody testing among those who donated convalescent plasma""an unrepresentative subgroup of the population. A follow-up study debunked the re-infection hypothesis and found only three confirmed re-infections in the entire state, whose population exceeds four million. Other studies have confirmed that re-infections are rare and usually asymptomatic or mild.

Some health officials warn of possible variants resistant to natural immunity. But none of the hundreds of variants observed so far have evaded either natural or vaccinated immunity with the three vaccines authorized in the U.S.

Should the previously infected be vaccinated? My clinical advice to healthy patients with natural immunity is that one shot is sufficient, and maybe not even necessary, although it could increase the long-term durability of immunity. A University of Pennsylvania study of people previously infected with Covid found that a single vaccine dose triggered a strong immune response, with no increase in that response after a second dose. A separate study from New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine concluded that "the antibody response to the first vaccine dose in individuals with pre-existing immunity is equal to or even exceeds the titers found in naïve"""never-infected"""individuals after the second dose."

Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic published a study this week of 1,359 people previously infected with Covid who were unvaccinated. None of the subjects subsequently became infected, leading the researchers to conclude that "individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination."

What's the harm of underestimating or disregarding the protection afforded by natural immunity? It almost certainly cost American lives by misallocating vaccine doses earlier this year, and is still doing so in countries where Covid is prevalent and shots are scarce. It continues to delay full reopening and prolongs the state of fear that has many people wearing masks even when there's no mandate, or reason, to do so.

Dr. Fauci said last Aug. 13 that when you have fewer than 10 cases per 100,000, "you should be able to open up safely and clearly." The U.S. reached that point in mid-May. It's time to stop the fear mongering and level with the public about the incredible capabilities of both modern medical research and the human body's immune system.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. He is author of "The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care""and How to Fix It," just out in paperback.

[Jun 12, 2021] Merck Inks Molnupiravir Supply Pact With US Government For COVID-19

Jun 10, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Merck & Co Inc (NYSE: MRK ) has entered into a procurement agreement with the U.S. government for molnupiravir (MK-4482), an antiviral candidate for mild to moderate COVID-19.

Molnupiravir is currently being evaluated in Phase 3 MOVe-OUT study to treat non-hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 and at least one risk factor associated with poor disease outcomes.

Through the agreement, if molnupiravir receives FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) or approval, Merck will receive approximately $1.2 billion to supply about 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir to the government.

Merck has been investing to scale up the production of molnupiravir and expects to have more than 10 million courses of therapy available by the end of 2021.

The company is also planning to submit applications for emergency use or approval to regulatory bodies outside the U.S. It is currently in discussions with other countries interested in advance purchase agreements for molnupiravir.

Merck is developing molnupiravir in collaboration with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics .

Price Action: MRK shares are up 0.55% at $72.80 during the premarket session on the last check Wednesday.

[Jun 12, 2021] CDC To Hold -Emergency Meeting- After 100s Suffer Heart Inflammation Following COVID Vaccines

Emergency meeting in eight more days.. ??? An emergency meeting would be something held tonight; an emergency meeting that can wait days needs to call it differently --"out of schedule meeting" or something like that.
What happens when you have inflammation and damage? You get scar tissue. Do you really think that this doesn't have lasting effect? These guys will have problems ater in life with their hearts and it won't because of McDonalds....
Jun 10, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an "emergency meeting" of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

The new details about myocarditis and pericarditis emerged first in presentations to a panel of independent advisers for the Food and Drug Administration, who are meeting Thursday to discuss how the regulator should approach emergency use authorization for using COVID-19 vaccines in younger children.

As CBS reports, the CDC previously disclosed that reports of heart inflammation were detected mostly in younger men and teenage boys following their second dose, and that there was a "higher number of observed than expected" cases in 16- to 24-year-olds. Last month, the CDC urged providers to "ask about prior COVID-19 vaccination" in patients with symptoms of heart inflammation.

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Play Video

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https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.464.0_en.html#goog_595720652 Wall Street Bounces, After Selloff Fed Boosts Liquidity NOW PLAYING SoftBank Said to Plan $14 Billion Sale of Alibaba Shares China's Companies Have Worst Quarter on Record, Beige Book Says U.S.-Saudi Oil Alliance Under Consideration, Brouillette Says ETF Volumes Surge in Current Market Environment Investors Have Given Up on a V-Shaped Recovery, BNY's Young Cautions

We'll leave the judgment up to someone far more qualified...

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Does anyone else not find it odd that after discovering 800 cases in the VAERS database the "emergency" meeting is in 7 days ? ... and in the meantime, every public health authority figure is encouraging parents to get their young children vaccinated ?

* * *

As The Epoch Times' Zachary Stieber detailed earlier , Federal authorities have received over 800 reports of heart inflammation in people who received a COVID-19 vaccine, a health official said Thursday.

The reports of myocarditis or pericarditis were submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a passive reporting system run jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration, through May 31.

The bulk of the reports described heart inflammation appearing after the second of two doses of either the Pfizer of Moderna vaccines, both of which utilize messenger RNA technology.

Authorities stress that anybody can submit reports through the reporting system but authorities have already verified that 226 of the reports meet the CDC's working case definition, Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a deputy director at the agency, said during a presentation of the data. Followup and review are in progress for the rest.

Of the 285 case reports for which the disposition was known at the time of the review, 270 patients had been discharged and 15 were still hospitalized, officials said. Myocarditis typically requires hospital care. No deaths were reported.

A slide on myocarditis reports post-COVID-19 vaccination is shown during the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on June 10, 2021. (FDA/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

The CDC announced last month that it was investigating reports of heart inflammation in teenagers and young adults who received a COVID-19 vaccine, though it took no definitive action besides saying it would continue reviewing case data.

An advisory committee to the agency, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said in a little-noticed update published dated May 24 and published on June 1 that data from VAERS showed that in the 30 days following the second dose of mRNA vaccinations, "there was a higher number of observed than expected myocarditis/pericarditis cases in 16""24-year-olds."

Data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, an active reporting system that relies on nine healthcare organizations in seven states, did not show higher than expected cases, it added.

"However, analyses suggest that these data need to be carefully followed as more persons in younger age groups are vaccinated," the advisory committee's vaccine safety workgroup said in its report.

Israel's Health Ministry said that same day that it found 275 cases of heart inflammation among the more than 5 million people in the country who received a vaccine between December 2020 and May. An Israeli study found "a probable link" between receiving the second dose of the Pfizer jab "and the appearance of myocarditis among men aged 16 to 30," the ministry said.

Shimabukuro said the U.S. passive surveillance data "are consistent with the surveillance data that emerged from Israel."

The figures are also consistent with other case reports and data from the Department of Defense.

The vast majority of the U.S. reports deal with male patients. Approximately 300 preliminary reports indicated the patients suffered chest pain, with nearly as many having elevated cardiac enzymes.

Family members watch as a 12-year-old is inoculated with Pfizer's vaccine against COVID-19 at Dekalb Pediatric Center in Decatur, Ga., on May 11, 2021. (Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters)

A case report examining myocarditis in seven adolescents following vaccination with Pfizer's jab, published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, this month, said all seven developed the inflammation within 4 days of receiving the second dose, did not have evidence of COVID-19 infection, and did not meet the criteria for MIS-C, a rare disease.

The seven males, between the ages of 14 and 19, all required hospital care but each was eventually discharged.

Authors, who did not respond to requests for comment, said no link has been established between the vaccines and myocarditis and that the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks. But they also urged healthcare workers "to consider myocarditis in the evaluation of adolescents and young adults who develop chest pain after COVID-19 vaccination."

A commentary on the study published in the same journal, said "there are some concerns regarding this case series that might suggest a causal relationship and therefore warrant further analysis through established surveillance systems."

"First, the consistent timing of symptoms in these seven cases after the second vaccination suggests a uniform biological process. Second, the similarities in clinical findings and laboratory characteristics in this series suggest a common etiology. Finally, these cases occurred in the context of a dearth of circulation of common respiratory viruses known to be associated with myocarditis, and thorough diagnostic evaluations did not identify infectious etiologies," they added.

The expected number of myocarditis/pericarditis cases in those aged 16 or 17, based on background incidence rates and the number of doses administered to that population through May 31, is between two and 19. But based on the VAERS reports, the number is 79.

Likewise, the expected number for cases among young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 is eight to 83. The number based on the reports is 196.

"In the 16- to 17 year-olds and the 18- to 24-year-olds, the observed reports are exceeding the expected based on the known background rates that are published in literature," Shimabukuro told members of a Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee in the meeting on Thursday, though he cautioned that not all the reports will "turn out to be true myocarditis/pericarditis reports."

" Of note, of these 528 reports after second dose with symptom onset within 30 days, over half of them were in these younger age groups, 12""24 years old , whereas roughly 9 percent of total doses administered were in those age groups, so we "clearly have an imbalance there," he added later.

A slide on myocarditis reports post-COVID-19 vaccination is shown during the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on June 10, 2021. (FDA/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which comes from nine healthcare groups that have collectively administered over 8.8 million doses""only some 284,000 of those have been given to 12- to 17-year-olds""did not indicate safety concerns, with just 60 myocarditis or pericarditis events reported through May 29, the doctor continued.

A Food and Drug Administration surveillance system, the Biologics Effectiveness and Safety Initiative, which utilizes claims data from CVS and two other partners, has detected 99 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis in the 42 days following vaccination among some 3.1 million shots given to people between the ages of 12 and 64, the panel was told earlier by an official from the drug regulating agency.

Another 1,260 were reported in people 65 or older through claims data from Medicare claims data.

Neither number raised safety signals, Steve Anderson, director of the FDA's Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology said.

Dr. Cody Meissner, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at the Tufts Children's Hospital, and a member of the panel that heard from Shimabukuro and others, said after the presentations that he was "struck by the fact" that myocarditis "occurs more commonly after the second dose."

"It's a pretty specific interval of time, it's primarily after the mRNA vaccines as far as we know, we know that the consistent age, there's a lack of alternative explanations even though these patients have been pretty well worked up, and it's a widespread occurrence because, as you said, Israel has found a pretty similar situation," he said during the meeting.

He asked Shimabukuro about the rates of blood clots seen in women between the ages of 30 and 49 after vaccination""most of the clots appeared in that population after getting a Johnson & Johnson shot, though officials ultimately lifted a pause, saying the benefits outweighed the risks ""and to restate the rate of incidence of myocarditis in adolescents after a jab.

Shimabukuro said that in contrast with the clotting situation, when data showed "strong evidence of a causal relationship fairly early on," further study is needed on heart inflammation.

"At this point, I think we're still learning about the rates of myocarditis and pericarditis. We continue to collect more information both in VAERS and continue to get more information in VSD, and I think as gather more information we'll begin to get a better idea of the post-vaccination rates and hopefully will be able to get more detailed information by age group," he said.

"It's still early," he added, noting that authorization for a vaccine for 12- to -15-year-olds didn't come until mid-May while immunization of older adolescents largely came later than shots for adults.

"I believe that we will ultimately have sufficient information to answer those questions," he said.

A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Sept. 30, 2014. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)

Another panel member, Dr. Jay Portnoy, director of the Division of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology at Children's Mercy Hospitals & Clinics, asked for a comparison between the adverse events in vaccinated versus unvaccinated persons, saying if the adverse event rate was lower in those who are vaccinated, then it would still be worth getting a jab.

Shimabukuro said a risk-benefit assessment would be provided by the CDC's advisory panel, known as ACIP, on vaccines during a meeting next week.

A CDC spokeswoman also referenced the upcoming meeting, which will take place on June 18, after saying reports of myocarditis remain rare, given that over 300 million doses have been administered in the United States.

"Given the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered, these reports are rare. More than 18 million people between ages 12-24 have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine in the United States," she told The Epoch Times via email.

"CDC continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 12 years and older. Getting vaccinated is the best way to help protect yourself and your family from COVID-19."

A Pfizer spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the company is aware of federal data indicating "rare reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, predominantly in male adolescents and young adults, after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination." It noted that federal officials have not concluded that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines cause either condition, before expressing support for an assessment of suspected adverse events.

"With a vast number of people vaccinated to date, the benefit risk profile of our vaccine remains positive," the spokesperson added.

Moderna did not return an inquiry.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, professor of medicine and associate chief at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Epoch Times in an email that in light of the increased risk of myocarditis above expected rates among young people, especially after the second dose, parents should keep a close eye out for when guidance is issued by federal authorities.

"Possibilities include only vaccinating children without prior infection as there is an association between prior COVID and this adverse effect; giving 1 dose instead of 2 below the age of 20; addressing the dosage of the vaccine (currently at 30 micrograms down to the age of 12, which is the same dose as in adults); and extending the duration between doses 1 and 2 for younger people," she said.

"I look forward to ACIP guidance on this over the next few weeks."


BugMan 13 minutes ago

"The infamous spike protein of the coronavirus gets into the blood where it circulates for several days post-vaccination and then accumulated in organs and tissues including the spleen, bone marrow, the liver, adrenal glands, and in quite high concentrations in the ovaries"; "a large number of studies has shown that the most severe effects of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, such as blood clotting and bleeding, are due to the effects of the spike protein of the virus itself."

Top Immunologist and "˜Pro-Vaccine' Doctor Byram Bidle Issues Warning"¦ "" CITIZEN FREE PRESS

GregBurton 3 minutes ago

I don't see how the CDC, Fauci, Wuhan (CCP), Fort Detrick, Ralph Baric, Peter Daszak and the WHO are going to get out of this: the 'vaccine' mRNA spike protein is toxic, it is a pathogenic protein that causes clotting, heart problems and may be associated with infertility...

bringonthebigone 1 hour ago

The heart has almost no repair capability. Even mild damage at that age likely takes years or decades off life expectancy. Seems likely the number of undiscovered cases far far exceed the number reported.

I Write Code 1 hour ago

"Possibilities include only vaccinating children without prior infection as there is an association between prior COVID and this adverse effect; giving 1 dose instead of 2 below the age of 20; addressing the dosage of the vaccine (currently at 30 micrograms down to the age of 12, which is the same dose as in adults); and extending the duration between doses 1 and 2 for younger people," she said

No kidding Doctor Obvious.

BUT extending the duration is probably the wrong move, or if you do, cut the second dose by 90%.

Hear me now, believe me later.

MRob 5 minutes ago remove link

Watching latest Brett Weinstein interview, Dark Horse, guest claimed the numbers of complications from the vaccine could be anything up to 100x the official figures. Unlikely, but emphasises that the error bar is massive. Above reporting system is voluntary, and people have been censored from knowing what to even look for, and propagandised from considering their issues could be due to the vaccine. Vaccine complication groups of fb were deleted, with 70k or 120k people in them. Such a screwed up situation. With the suppression of ivermectin etc, this is nuremberg trials level for sure.

https://ivmmeta.com spread the word

GreatUncle 23 minutes ago

The problem is 2 part.

1. The vaccine is not tailored to the individual and therefore never 100% safe it is not possible when working with statistics and probability as your guide.

2. The reporting system is next to non-existent even under vaers because that is the measure of liability for those making people take gene therapies / vaccines.

Therein lies your two fundamental problems ... too fix it though you have too destroy the whole system it should never have been put in place that way.

hoytmonger 36 minutes ago

In Idaho, the Idaho National Guard is "assisting" vaccination of students at their middle school...

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/06/gary-d-barnett/public-political-school-madness-military-supported-vaccination-of-students-in-idaho/

Fat Beaver 54 minutes ago (Edited)

So the commenter on here, vasilievich mentioned he and his wife got the vax and his wife went into cardiac arrest shortly after (4 days ago)...they are in their 80's...(God help them)...several others have noted they knew people that went into cardiac arrest after the vax...seems to be much, much more common than they are letting on...

Seabass120 36 minutes ago

My wife got her second Pfizer vacc and now cannot go into the sun without breaking out into hives. Prior to the jab, she was outside daily.

JoKe Biden 27 minutes ago

Yep so predictable, some of the statements will read something like this.

  • The FDA and CDC have confidence that the vaccine is safe and effective in preventing COVID-19.
  • The FDA has determined that the available data show that the vaccine's known and potential benefits outweigh its known and potential risks in individuals 18 years of age and older.
  • At this time, the available data suggest that the chance of heart inflammation occurring is very low, but the FDA and CDC will remain vigilant in continuing to investigate this risk.
_Rorschach 25 minutes ago

its not a vaccine

its gene therapy

ebworthen 38 minutes ago

An untested genetic experiment and not a "vaccine" in any sense of the word.

toady 19 minutes ago

"Just say no"

-Nancy Reagan

RawDrum 20 minutes ago

Imagine being a parent who got their teenage child injected with an experiment jab for something they are at trivial risk of any impact from, that has no-one liable should it go wrong, in an American for profit health insurance system, doing zero research and outsourcing critical thinking to media, big tech and pharma corporations engaged in obvious censorship and obfuscation, and that resulted in your child having an enlarged heart impacting the rest of their shortened life.

YOLO!

LetThemEatRand 1 hour ago

"The chances of dying from COVID for the young are almost impossible to measure they are so small" - doesn't matter. Any risk is too much. You must wear a mask and stay home and be vaccinated when we're ready for that.

"The chances of dying from the COVID vaccine are unknown and documented cases of serious side effects are growing." - it's a tiny risk, doesn't outweigh the benefit of the vaccine.

RedSeaPedestrian 43 minutes ago

From Pfizer: "With a vast number of people vaccinated to date, the benefit risk profile of our vaccine remains positive," the spokesperson added.

Tell that to the families that have had a loved one die from the "jab".

Farmer Dave 24 minutes ago

My dad has been fighting this for a month. He got the jab and ended up in the hospital with blood clots and the heart inflammation. He is a tough old man and seems to be getting better. I told him if he would have heeded my warnings about the jab he wouldn't be sick. Anyone who gives this jab to a child is an idiot.

fackbankz 44 minutes ago (Edited)

If any other product killed 5000 people and injured 200,000, it would be pulled, not pushed.

There is no such thing as "mild" myocarditis, especially in juveniles. If they live, they will have a lifetime of heart problems and will likely never be able to enjoy fun activities like sports or sex. I'm only saying this to inoculate you against the incoming PR blitz of, "Oh, it's just a few mild cases of heart inflammation."

We must avenge this crime against humanity. My hope is that it is done through courts and due process, but if ends up just being heads on pikes, so be it.

Dr. Gonzo 47 minutes ago

Biden is giving away 500,000 of these serums to our lucky Vassals. Eh hem. I mean Allies. For a special thank you from the Empire.

nowhereman 19 minutes ago remove link

After asking yourself a couple more questions like that, and you begin to understand that it's never been about a "virus" it's about the jab.

hoytmonger 16 minutes ago (Edited)

There's an article to that effect...

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/06/joseph-mercola/was-the-whole-pandemic-about-the-vaccine/

absalom_hicks 41 minutes ago remove link

"Population decimated by rare blood clots", "Extremely rare side effects devastate many", "Benefits far outweigh risks as die off causes labor shortages", "Scientists explain how lab created viruses evolve naturally", "New variants cause only mild symptoms in vaccinated travelers", "Annual vaccination necessary for return to new normal, CEO of CALPERS says."

Headlines in a mentally ill society.

TieOneOn 47 minutes ago

Looks like 'Gain of Function' is full steam ahead......

Befits 10 minutes ago (Edited) remove link

They are not panicked. They will do a farce meeting and declare " the benefits of the Covid 19 vax outweigh the risks". Even for the young men who " in very small number of cases where there is no clear causal link between the Covid vax and myocarditis". Then when the microphone is off and the transcription is ended they will laugh their asses off " these fools will buy it 🤣🤣🤣🤣 ". Cha Ching...

boyplunger7777 10 minutes ago

By late summer, should the general public begin to experience serious side effects, the nation will go into full blown panic...

You_Cant_Quit_Me 9 minutes ago

They'll just say it's a variant of COVID-19 and blame that

Cabreado 38 minutes ago (Edited)

The CDC has been sufficiently exposed, and they're trying to save face with the masses.

Good luck finding any non-corrupt oversight to resolve this situation... that of a rogue CDC.
Otherwise it would've happened a long, long time ago.

Rubicon727 1 hour ago

What the CDC refuses to admit is the EU system, that keeps far more accurate deaths, severe illnesses can be looked at any time of the day. Link to EUdraVigilance.com . They've shown many examples of severe repercussions from the different kinds of Covid vaccines that have harmed, or killed people for weeks now.

Now you tell us, how is it this is just NOW emerging from the CDC? Explain that.

Lt. Shicekopf 4 minutes ago

Why are kids getting jabbed? In the off chance they contract this virus there is a 99.8% chance of recovery. I just do not get it.

AriusArmenian 3 minutes ago

Money.

allfactsmatter 21 minutes ago

The mrNA technology is a new technique for vaccine development.

Despite this, the Pfizer and Modern "vaccines" have been tested LESS than traditional vaccines. Yet the FDA and CDC says the risks from these shots are acceptable.

Keep in mind that healthy young men have almost NO mortality risk from COVID, and receive no benefit from these shots as a direct consequence.

Big Government and Big Pharma are gambling with people's lives with these Frankenvirus vaccines.

liberty2 27 minutes ago

Not a vaccine, they label it as a vaccine to have immunity to lawsuits, no pun intended. They also call it a vaccine to get emergency authorization. It's not APPROVED, only authorized, there's a difference. There's NO law mandating the vax, NONE. Your employer can be sued for discrimination or you can claim Workman's Comp if you should suffer side effects.

Danoc 29 minutes ago

Can't wait for Fauci's next round of explanation.

opaopaopa 26 minutes ago

all rounds are the same:

"it's the Science"

fackbankz 10 minutes ago

"A few minor cases of heart inflammation, nothing to worry about. Benefits outweigh the risks."

You know the drill.

Any other product that caused 800 cases of lifelong heart problems in young people would have been pulled, not pushed, and it's probably a lot more than 800.

TonTon 58 minutes ago

Looks like they are hardly even checking for Myocarditis in the 50+ age bracket and especially in the 65+ age bracket given it's less than the normal rate for this age group. I'm sure they are just putting it down to some of the many coincidences happening after people get the 'jab.' Given that the rate is less than normal though you could be forgiven for thinking that they are ACTIVELY SUPPRESSING information on side effects. We are experiencing and epidemic of coincidences these days.

[Jun 12, 2021] Gangrene, Hearing Loss Show Delta Variant May Be More Severe by Bhuma Shrivastava

Notable quotes:
"... Singapore found that the mutation accounted for 95% of the local Covid samples linked to variants of concern. ..."
"... Higher rates of transmission and a reduction in the effectiveness of vaccines have made understanding the strain's effects especially critical. ..."
"... Some patients develop micro thrombi , or small blood clots, so severe that they led affected tissue to die and develop gangrene , said Ganesh Manudhane , a Mumbai cardiologist ..."
"... Doctors are also finding instances of clots forming in blood vessels that supply the intestines , causing patients to experience stomach pain -- their only symptom, local media have reported. ..."
"... But with emerging evidence delta and at least one other variant may be adept at evading vaccine-induced antibodies, pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to tweak existing shots or develop new ones. ..."
Jun 08, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

The coronavirus variant driving India's devastating Covid-19 second wave is the most infectious to emerge so far. Doctors now want to know if it's also more severe.

Hearing impairment, severe gastric upsets and blood clots leading to gangrene, symptoms not typically seen in Covid patients, have been linked by doctors in India to the so-called delta variant. In England and Scotland, early evidence suggests the strain -- which is also now dominant there -- carries a higher risk of hospitalization .

Delta, also known as B.1.617.2, has spread to more than 60 countries over the past six months and triggered travel curbs from Australia to the U.S . A spike in infections, fueled by the variant, has forced U.K. to reconsider its plans for reopening later this month, with a local report saying it may be pushed back by two weeks. Singapore found that the mutation accounted for 95% of the local Covid samples linked to variants of concern.

Higher rates of transmission and a reduction in the effectiveness of vaccines have made understanding the strain's effects especially critical.

... ... ...

"˜New Enemy'

"Last year, we thought we had learned about our new enemy, but it changed," Ghafur said. "This virus has become so, so unpredictable."

Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, hearing loss and joint pain are among the ailments Covid patients are experiencing, according to six doctors treating patients across India. The beta and gamma variants -- first detected in South Africa and Brazil respectively -- have shown little or no evidence of triggering unusual clinical signs, according to a study by researchers from the University of New South Wales last month.

Some patients develop micro thrombi , or small blood clots, so severe that they led affected tissue to die and develop gangrene , said Ganesh Manudhane , a Mumbai cardiologist , who has treated eight patients for thrombotic complications at the Seven Hills Hospital during the past two months. Two required amputations of fingers or a foot.

"I saw three-to-four cases the whole of last year, and now it's one patient a week," Manudhane said.

India has reported 18.6 million Covid cases thus far in 2021, compared with 10.3 million last year. The delta variant was the "primary cause" behind the country's deadlier second wave and is 50% more contagious than the alpha strain that was first spotted in the U.K., according to a recent study by an Indian government panel.

The surge in cases may have driven an increase in the frequency with which rare Covid complications are being observed. Even still, Manudhane said he is baffled by the blood clots he's seeing in patients across age groups with no past history of coagulation-related problems.

"We suspect it could be because of the new virus variant," he said. Manudhane is collecting data to study why some people develop the clots and others don't.

Doctors are also finding instances of clots forming in blood vessels that supply the intestines , causing patients to experience stomach pain -- their only symptom, local media have reported.

Some Covid patients are also seeking medical care for hearing loss, swelling around the neck and severe tonsillitis, said Hetal Marfatia, an ear nose and throat surgeon at Mumbai's King Edward Memorial Hospital.

The unusual presentations for delta and a closely related variant known as kappa, whose spread led to a fourth lockdown in the Australian city of Melbourne, are still being confirmed, said Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "In the meanwhile, it is important to take note of this and be aware of possible atypical presentations," she said.

Delta Variant From India Begins to Show Its True Ugly Colors

The most alarming aspect of the current outbreak in India is the rapidity with which the virus is spreading, including to children, said Chetan Mundada, a pediatrician with the Yashoda group of hospitals in Hyderabad.

... But with emerging evidence delta and at least one other variant may be adept at evading vaccine-induced antibodies, pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to tweak existing shots or develop new ones.

[Jun 09, 2021] Israel Vaccination Statistics from The Lancet

Jun 09, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Bacon's Rebellion 4 hours ago (Edited)

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Israel Vaccination Statistics from The Lancet
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Take away....
"The Vaccine" failed to achieve a 1% reduction in your chance of death!

1,127.965 people age 65+
1,015,620 were fully vaccinated
112,345 were not vaccinated

138 "vaccinated" deaths = 0.0136% of the group died
715 "un-vaccinated" deaths = 0.636% of the group died

So, looking at the entire group, you had a 0.62% greater chance of dying if not vaccinated.

1,764,098 people age 45 to 64
1,408,492 were fully vaccinated
355,606 were not vaccinated

14 "vaccinated" deaths = 0.001% of the group died
125 "un-vaccinated" deaths = 0.035% of the group died

You had a 0.034% greater chance of dying if not vaccinated.

3,646,848 people age 16 to 44
2,290,820 were fully vaccinated
1,356,028 were not vaccinated

0 "vaccinated" deaths = 0.0% of the group died
36 "un-vaccinated" deaths = 0.0027% of the group died

You had a 0.0027% greater chance of dying if not vaccinated.

Emergency authorization of an untested drug to reduce your chance of death by less than 1%?

GTFO!

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00947-8/fulltext

Farmer Tink 1 hour ago

@Bacon's Rebellion We'll see soon enough. The India/Delta variant is in the US and the British say that it's more infectious than the British variant. If it's here, it will spread fast and that means that a lot of people who have taken the vaccine will be exposed.

[Jun 08, 2021] Science has lost its way, at a big cost to humanity by MICHAEL HILTZIK

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In today's world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you'd think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science. You'd be wrong. Many billions of dollars' worth of wrong. ..."
"... A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology. The idea was to make sure that research on which Amgen was spending millions of development dollars still held up. They figured that a few of the studies would fail the test -- that the original results couldn't be reproduced because the findings were especially novel or described fresh therapeutic approaches. But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid. ..."
"... "Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research," observed C. Glenn Begley, then Amgen's head of global cancer research, "this was a shocking result." ..."
"... A group at Bayer HealthCare in Germany similarly found that only 25% of published papers on which it was basing R&D; projects could be validated, suggesting that projects in which the firm had sunk huge resources should be abandoned. ..."
"... "The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they're investigated further," ..."
"... Eisen says the more important flaw in the publication model is that the drive to land a paper in a top journal -- Nature and Science lead the list -- encourages researchers to hype their results, especially in the life sciences. Peer review, in which a paper is checked out by eminent scientists before publication, isn't a safeguard. Eisen says the unpaid reviewers seldom have the time or inclination to examine a study enough to unearth errors or flaws. ..."
"... Eisen is a pioneer in open-access scientific publishing, which aims to overturn the traditional model in which leading journals pay nothing for papers often based on publicly funded research, then charge enormous subscription fees to universities and researchers to read them. ..."
"... But concern about what is emerging as a crisis in science extends beyond the open-access movement. It's reached the National Institutes of Health, which last week launched a project to remake its researchers' approach to publication. ..."
"... PubMed Commons is an effort to counteract the "perverse incentives" in scientific research and publishing, says David J. Lipman, director of NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is sponsoring the venture. ..."
"... The demand for sexy results, combined with indifferent follow-up, means that billions of dollars in worldwide resources devoted to finding and developing remedies for the diseases that afflict us all is being thrown down a rathole. NIH and the rest of the scientific community are just now waking up to the realization that science has lost its way, and it may take years to get back on the right path. ..."
Oct 27, 2013 | www.latimes.com

In today's world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you'd think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science. You'd be wrong. Many billions of dollars' worth of wrong.

A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology. The idea was to make sure that research on which Amgen was spending millions of development dollars still held up. They figured that a few of the studies would fail the test -- that the original results couldn't be reproduced because the findings were especially novel or described fresh therapeutic approaches. But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid.

"Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research," observed C. Glenn Begley, then Amgen's head of global cancer research, "this was a shocking result."

Unfortunately, it wasn't unique. A group at Bayer HealthCare in Germany similarly found that only 25% of published papers on which it was basing R&D; projects could be validated, suggesting that projects in which the firm had sunk huge resources should be abandoned. Whole fields of research, including some in which patients were already participating in clinical trials, are based on science that hasn't been, and possibly can't be, validated.

"The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they're investigated further,"

says Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Economist recently estimated spending on biomedical R&D; in industrialized countries at $59 billion a year. That's how much could be at risk from faulty fundamental research.

Eisen says the more important flaw in the publication model is that the drive to land a paper in a top journal -- Nature and Science lead the list -- encourages researchers to hype their results, especially in the life sciences. Peer review, in which a paper is checked out by eminent scientists before publication, isn't a safeguard. Eisen says the unpaid reviewers seldom have the time or inclination to examine a study enough to unearth errors or flaws.

"The journals want the papers that make the sexiest claims," he says. "And scientists believe that the way you succeed is having splashy papers in Science or Nature -- it's not bad for them if a paper turns out to be wrong, if it's gotten a lot of attention."

Eisen is a pioneer in open-access scientific publishing, which aims to overturn the traditional model in which leading journals pay nothing for papers often based on publicly funded research, then charge enormous subscription fees to universities and researchers to read them.

But concern about what is emerging as a crisis in science extends beyond the open-access movement. It's reached the National Institutes of Health, which last week launched a project to remake its researchers' approach to publication. Its new PubMed Commons system allows qualified scientists to post ongoing comments about published papers. The goal is to wean scientists from the idea that a cursory, one-time peer review is enough to validate a research study, and substitute a process of continuing scrutiny, so that poor research can be identified quickly and good research can be picked out of the crowd and find a wider audience.

PubMed Commons is an effort to counteract the "perverse incentives" in scientific research and publishing, says David J. Lipman, director of NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is sponsoring the venture.

The Commons is currently in its pilot phase, during which only registered users among the cadre of researchers whose work appears in PubMed -- NCBI's clearinghouse for citations from biomedical journals and online sources -- can post comments and read them. Once the full system is launched, possibly within weeks, commenters still will have to be members of that select group, but the comments will be public.

Science and Nature both acknowledge that peer review is imperfect. Science's executive editor, Monica Bradford, told me by email that her journal, which is published by the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, understands that for papers based on large volumes of statistical data -- where cherry-picking or flawed interpretation can contribute to erroneous conclusions -- "increased vigilance is required." Nature says that it now commissions expert statisticians to examine data in some papers.

But they both defend pre-publication peer review as an essential element in the scientific process -- a "reasonable and fair" process, Bradford says.

Yet there's been some push-back by the prestige journals against the idea that they're encouraging flawed work -- and that their business model amounts to profiteering. Earlier this month, Science published a piece by journalist John Bohannon about what happened when he sent a spoof paper with flaws that could have been noticed by a high school chemistry student to 304 open-access chemistry journals (those that charge researchers to publish their papers, but make them available for free). It was accepted by more than half of them.

One that didn't bite was PloS One, an online open-access journal sponsored by the Public Library of Science, which Eisen co-founded. In fact, PloS One was among the few journals that identified the fake paper's methodological and ethical flaws.

What was curious, however, was that although Bohannon asserted that his sting showed how the open-access movement was part of "an emerging Wild West in academic publishing," it was the traditionalist Science that published the most dubious recent academic paper of all.

This was a 2010 paper by then-NASA biochemist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and colleagues claiming that they had found bacteria growing in Mono Lake that were uniquely able to subsist on arsenic and even used arsenic to build the backbone of their DNA.

The publication in Science was accompanied by a breathless press release and press conference sponsored by NASA, which had an institutional interest in promoting the idea of alternative life forms. But almost immediately it was debunked by other scientists for spectacularly poor methodology and an invalid conclusion. Wolfe-Simon, who didn't respond to a request for comment last week, has defended her interpretation of her results as "viable." She hasn't withdrawn the paper, nor has Science, which has published numerous critiques of the work . Wolfe-Simon is now associated with the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

To Eisen, the Wolfe-Simon affair represents the "perfect storm of scientists obsessed with making a big splash and issuing press releases" -- the natural outcome of a system in which there's no career gain in trying to replicate and validate previous work, as important as that process is for the advancement of science.

"A paper that actually shows a previous paper is true would never get published in an important journal," he says, "and it would be almost impossible to get that work funded."

However, the real threat to research and development doesn't come from one-time events like the arsenic study, but from the dissemination of findings that look plausible on the surface but don't stand up to scrutiny, as Begley and his Amgen colleagues found.

The demand for sexy results, combined with indifferent follow-up, means that billions of dollars in worldwide resources devoted to finding and developing remedies for the diseases that afflict us all is being thrown down a rathole. NIH and the rest of the scientific community are just now waking up to the realization that science has lost its way, and it may take years to get back on the right path.

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Read his new blog, The Economy Hub, at latimes.com/business/hiltzik, reach him at [email protected] , check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @hiltzikm on Twitter.

[May 30, 2021] Vir Biotechnology CEO on its covid-19 drug candidate winning FDA nod for emergency use

May 30, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

GEORGE SCANGOS: Well, a strong message is, I think it's a really important day in the fight against COVID-19. We have an antibody drug that we have developed, brought through a phase three trial. The initial analysis of that showed that we had an 85% reduction in reducing hospitalization or death and on patients who had taken it. So that's quite an impressive number.

COVID cases are going down in the US now, but they're not going away. We're going to continue to need good therapies for the foreseeable future, and we're really quite excited about what we can do now, for not only patients in the US but around the world.

ADAM SHAPIRO: George, congratulations. Help us understand what the drug actually does. It's not an antiviral. Or is it an antiviral? Or does it prevent the issues that wind up making people seriously ill and then eventually, perhaps, dying?

GEORGE SCANGOS: No, it is an antiviral. The antibody recognizes the virus, it binds to the virus, and it does two things, actually, which distinguishes it from some of the other drugs that are on the market. First, it prevents the virus from infecting cells. And secondly, when people are already infected, there are a number of cells that are already infected, and they're making even more viral particles. So this particular antibody is capable of blocking the infection of new cells and killing those cells that are already infected with the virus to prevent making even more viral particles.


... ... ...

ADAM SHAPIRO: Is it a pill? Is it like-- Regeneron, I think, is administered via IV. Is a simpler way to administer this drug?

GEORGE SCANGOS: No, this is also intravenous, so you administer just like the other antibodies. We are quickly working on just a normal injection-- intramuscular injection-- so it would be similar to what you get with the vaccine or a flu shot. And that's in clinical trials right now, but the medicine for which we had the EUA is administered IV.

... ... ...

ADAM SHAPIRO: The biotechnology that makes this an effective drug, does it have applications for viral issues other than COVID-19? Could you be growing this for other remedies?

GEORGE SCANGOS: Well, that's a very interesting question. This particular antibody, as opposed to all of the other COVID antibodies, is able to protect against other coronaviruses in addition to the COVID coronavirus-- this coronavirus. Doesn't protect against all coronaviruses, but, for example it would protect against SARS, we believe, and a whole family of coronaviruses.

So we do believe that it's important to bring forward drugs that can not only treat this pandemic but have the potential to be effective in future pandemics. And we're taking that approach with not only COVID but flu and other diseases as well. Yeah.

JULIE LA ROCHE: Well, George Scangos, president and CEO of Vir Biotechnology, I thank you so much for joining us. And congratulations, again, on the latest as it relates to your treatment and this, of course, important fight against COVID-19.

[May 30, 2021] Widespread lack of vitamin D is the root cause of so many problems.

Apr 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Can't sit still 12 hours ago Can't sit still 12 hours ago

Here is a fantastic vid showing that our widespread lack of vitamin D is the root cause of so many problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgCL4abBFzc

[May 29, 2021] Is Ivermectin The New Penicillin

May 29, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug placed the same radioactive category as Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for the treatment of COVID-19, has reemerged as a promising treatment in the battle to extinguish the pandemic.

New York Times best-selling author Michael Capuzzo has called it the " drug that cracked Covid ," writing that there are "hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying."

Doctors in India are big fans .

To that end Dr. Justus R. Hope, MD asks in The Desert Review : Is Ivermectin the new Penicillin?

[May 29, 2021] He said he refused to do surgery on anyone not vaxed for Covid

May 28, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
MeLurkLongtime 5 hours ago

Have to have a surgery, met with surgeon today. Second question after how are you was have you had your covid shot? I said no. He said why not? I said I was waiting until it was approved by FDA. He said that would be 5 years and Covid would be over by then. I said OK. He said he refused to do surgery on anyone not vaxed for Covid. I said Ok, and left. So....now looking for another surgeon. So there is that. Pretty dismayed, actually.

RedSeaPedestrian 4 hours ago

He violated your HIPAA protections. If you want a bit of revenge, turn him in.

The fines can be quite hefty.

HIPAA violations are taken very seriously. Anyone other than a licensed health care professional asking a private person about their health conditions, including vaccinations, is against HIPAA regulations. NONE OF THE HIPAA LAWS WERE REPEALED OR RESCINDED DUE TO COVID.

The minimum penalty for a criminal HIPAA violation is $50,000 per instance and can rise to $250k.

A private individual breaking HIPAA regulations can be fined $100, the company they work for if broken within a work environment will be fined $50k.

So if I am not wearing a mask, and you ask for proof of vaccination, you just got your business a $50k fine.

https://www.hipaajournal.com/what-happens-if-you-break-hipaa-rules/

MeLurkLongtime 4 hours ago

Red Sea- He is a Surgeon that specializes in the surgery I need, no HIPAA violation. But thank you.

RedSeaPedestrian 4 hours ago

Did the surgeon tell you that? Read the link.

Quia Possum 4 hours ago (Edited)

Anyone other than a licensed health care professional asking a private person about their health conditions, including vaccinations, is against HIPAA regulations.

BS. HIPAA only applies to medical record holders, not random people, and violations are by the record holder divulging information that they should not. Asking prying questions is rude but not a HIPAA violation.

[May 28, 2021] Immunity to the coronavirus may persist for years, what it could mean for vaccination efforts

The USA vaccination efforts were badly thought out and badly implemented, resulting in dramatic economic losses for non-existent public health gains. Looks like governments suspected that "the genie is out of the bottle" -- pathogen escaped from biolab in the USA or China and badly overreacted, creating unnecessary economic losses and mass unemployment comparable with the Great Depression.
There is no need to vaccinate people who already have had COVID-19. Natural immunity is much better than a vaccine that was rushed through the FDA.
Also many people are naturally immune to COVID-19 due tot he fact that they have previous coronavirus infection. This issue is completely ignored in neoliberal MSM/
Notable quotes:
"... Obviously, you not only got immune to the Wuhan virus, but also to the globalist/collectivist and state propaganda. Those of us who lived in Soviet socialist "paradise" get it back in the USSR while protecting our mind and soul from state propaganda and government statistics. ..."
"... So more of the lies are being exposed, the lies that some who want to be in control have told are so bad, and yet some believe them. Why was SARS not a continuing pandemic, if it is the same base virus ..."
"... This is too funny. So at some point is anyone going to ask why this report is being featured on yahoo FINANCE? The answer is in the reference to the publicly-traded, pharmaceutical companies named in the Dr.'s interview. ..."
May 27, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Dr. Adrian Burrowes, Family Medicine Physician &CFP Physicians Group CEO, joined Yahoo Finance to discuss the latest on covid-19.

Thomas 2 hours ago

I had Covid twice. Once in 2020 and once this year. The first time I had it I coughed for two whole months. I had a fever off and on and I had to sleep with an extra pillow. I was miserable but I thought it was the flu because we didn't know the virus was here yet. It was only after I was tested for antibodies several months later did I learn that I had it.

This past January, I got it again after some co-workers came down with it and we all were tested. I was quarantined for 10 days. During this 10 day period, I was only sick for 1 day with a slight stomach ache and diarrhea.

The rest of the time I was out doing yard work and cutting dead limbs out of my trees.

I told my wife that if my T-Cells had that good of memory to protect me that well, I probably won't get the shot. After all, what can the shot do for me that the virus hasn't already.

Mike -> Thomas 38 minutes ago

Obviously, you not only got immune to the Wuhan virus, but also to the globalist/collectivist and state propaganda. Those of us who lived in Soviet socialist "paradise" get it back in the USSR while protecting our mind and soul from state propaganda and government statistics.

With the time, I hope enough Americans will develop the same herd immunity to propaganda masquerading as news, unhealthy "guidance" from government health agencies and corrupt intelligent agencies' deceptions that serve self-centered bureaucrats and political operatives, not the country. G-d Bless!

Ed 3 hours ago

So more of the lies are being exposed, the lies that some who want to be in control have told are so bad, and yet some believe them. Why was SARS not a continuing pandemic, if it is the same base virus, and did not have a vaccine. and yet you hear nothing about it, could it be that people gained immunity and so it is not a horrible thing as this engineered virus. and remember that SARS started in the same area of the world as this covid 19.

AB 3 hours ago

This is too funny. So at some point is anyone going to ask why this report is being featured on yahoo FINANCE? The answer is in the reference to the publicly-traded, pharmaceutical companies named in the Dr.'s interview.

[May 28, 2021] Immunity to the coronavirus may persist for years, what it could mean for vaccination efforts

The USA vaccination efforts were badly thought out and badly implemented, resulting in dramatic economic losses for non-existent public health gains. Looks like governments suspected that "the genie is out of the bottle" -- pathogen escaped from biolab in the USA or China and badly overreacted, creating unnecessary economic losses and mass unemployment comparable with the Great Depression.
There is no need to vaccinate people who already have had COVID-19. Natural immunity is much better than a vaccine that was rushed through the FDA.
Also many people are naturally immune to COVID-19 due tot he fact that they have previous coronavirus infection. This issue is completely ignored in neoliberal MSM/
Notable quotes:
"... Obviously, you not only got immune to the Wuhan virus, but also to the globalist/collectivist and state propaganda. Those of us who lived in Soviet socialist "paradise" get it back in the USSR while protecting our mind and soul from state propaganda and government statistics. ..."
"... So more of the lies are being exposed, the lies that some who want to be in control have told are so bad, and yet some believe them. Why was SARS not a continuing pandemic, if it is the same base virus ..."
"... This is too funny. So at some point is anyone going to ask why this report is being featured on yahoo FINANCE? The answer is in the reference to the publicly-traded, pharmaceutical companies named in the Dr.'s interview. ..."
May 27, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Dr. Adrian Burrowes, Family Medicine Physician &CFP Physicians Group CEO, joined Yahoo Finance to discuss the latest on covid-19.

Thomas 2 hours ago

I had Covid twice. Once in 2020 and once this year. The first time I had it I coughed for two whole months. I had a fever off and on and I had to sleep with an extra pillow. I was miserable but I thought it was the flu because we didn't know the virus was here yet. It was only after I was tested for antibodies several months later did I learn that I had it.

This past January, I got it again after some co-workers came down with it and we all were tested. I was quarantined for 10 days. During this 10 day period, I was only sick for 1 day with a slight stomach ache and diarrhea.

The rest of the time I was out doing yard work and cutting dead limbs out of my trees.

I told my wife that if my T-Cells had that good of memory to protect me that well, I probably won't get the shot. After all, what can the shot do for me that the virus hasn't already.

Mike -> Thomas 38 minutes ago

Obviously, you not only got immune to the Wuhan virus, but also to the globalist/collectivist and state propaganda. Those of us who lived in Soviet socialist "paradise" get it back in the USSR while protecting our mind and soul from state propaganda and government statistics.

With the time, I hope enough Americans will develop the same herd immunity to propaganda masquerading as news, unhealthy "guidance" from government health agencies and corrupt intelligent agencies' deceptions that serve self-centered bureaucrats and political operatives, not the country. G-d Bless!

Ed 3 hours ago

So more of the lies are being exposed, the lies that some who want to be in control have told are so bad, and yet some believe them. Why was SARS not a continuing pandemic, if it is the same base virus, and did not have a vaccine. and yet you hear nothing about it, could it be that people gained immunity and so it is not a horrible thing as this engineered virus. and remember that SARS started in the same area of the world as this covid 19.

AB 3 hours ago

This is too funny. So at some point is anyone going to ask why this report is being featured on yahoo FINANCE? The answer is in the reference to the publicly-traded, pharmaceutical companies named in the Dr.'s interview.

[May 28, 2021] Doctors Claim A Cocktail Of Cheap Drugs Could Help India Extinguish COVID Crisis

May 23, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Last week, we reported that several increasingly desperate communities across India have been embracing a controversial (at least, in the US) strategy for trying to mitigate the fallout from the crisis. Communities have been doling out inexpensive anti-malaria drugs as a prophylactic against COVID-19, citing scant data showing it could help lower mortality and hospitalization rates - which is critical given India's nationwide shortage of hospital beds and oxygen to sustain seriously ill patients.

The drug in question, ivermectin, is in some ways similar to hydroxychloroquine, which also showed some evidence of being an effective prophylactic to protect the most vulnerable against COVID-19 (President Trump memorably informed the press that he was taking it daily at one point). But since India is mostly cut off from adequate supplies of vaccines and therapeutics like Gilead's remdesivir (which studies have shown isn't all that effective anyway), public health officials have been forced to improvise.


The Times of India published an editorial this week signed by Dr. Vikas Sukhatme and Vidula Sukhatme, two American academics and medical professionals, suggesting a handful of cheap, commonplace drugs that could be taken as prophylactics by the most vulnerable patients in India. The drugs aren't approved to treat COVID, but nevertheless have shown "remarkable promise in preventing or treating the new coronavirus." Deploying them would likely reduce mortality and hospitalizations. While some of the drugs are currently being tested in large-scale randomized trials, there's no time to wait for the outcome.

Instead, Indian health authorities should issue guidelines recommending use of the most promising drugs for each stage of COVID-19. By so doing, physicians will be encouraged to prescribe them as interventions. The resulting data should of course be tracked for any insights it might show.

The two main drugs cited by the doctors, ivermectin and fluvoxamine, have proven effective, and anecdotal unpublished data from more than 400 acutely ill COVID-19 patients suggests that prescribing fluvoxamine and ivermectin together may be even more efficacious.

While daily case numbers have retreated from the peak in India, hospitalizations and mortality remain near all-time highs. Of course, as developing nations fight to waive IP protections for COVID vaccines, the notion that cheap existing drugs might be effective at combating COVID would represent yet another threat to Big Pharma's bottom line.

Read the full editorial below:

The COVID-19 humanitarian calamity unfolding in India is on a scale not seen in this pandemic. This is an extraordinary situation "" and it may benefit from an extraordinary response.

There exist affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs approved for non-COVID-19 use which show remarkable promise in preventing or treating the new coronavirus. Deploying these drugs in India is likely to rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.

Some of these drugs are being tested in large-scale randomized clinical trials in the US and abroad but in most cases, definitive efficacy data is pending. With the current COVID-19 situation in India, we do not have time to wait for results of these studies. Importantly, currently available safety and outcomes data on these drugs is strong enough that it is time to incorporate them into national practice guidelines. Indian authorities should issue such guidelines on the most promising drugs for each stage of COVID-19. By so doing, physicians will be encouraged to use these interventions. The resulting real world data from a few healthcare settings in select cities should be tracked in real time and guidelines suitably revised. If such measures were adopted, we could see effects in 3-4 weeks. This strategy might be unusual but it is not unheard of: France has the Temporary Recommendation for Use, a "regulatory instrument which aims to allow, on a temporary basis, the use of a medicinal product to allow its effectiveness to be evaluated on the basis of its use."

The choice of drugs is critical. We have worked closely with personnel at the Food and Drug Administration and have connected with the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the merits of repurposed drugs. Based on a mechanistic rationale, data in animal models, human retrospective analyses, clinical trials (some randomized, others not) and anecdotal human data, we created a prioritized list of interventions that hold the greatest promise and that could be deployed at scale. For instance, there is strong data from a randomized trial and a real-world study that administering fluvoxamine sharply reduces the need for hospitalization in COVID-19 outpatients. Moreover, anecdotal unpublished data in over 400 acutely ill COVID-19 patients from several community practitioners suggests that administering fluvoxamine and ivermectin together may be even more efficacious.

Intervention as early as possible after symptom onset is key. Ivermectin is already listed as a "MAY DO" on the ICMR and Indian government guidelines for treatment of acute mild COVID-19 and we suggest that fluvoxamine be added in this category. Also, ivermectin in the prophylactic setting merits serious consideration. For the hospitalized, there are treatments currently used for other conditions that might reduce the need for ventilator support and lower the risk of death. These include inhaled adenosine, cyproheptadine and dipyridamole. For ideas for which there is rather limited human data, the government should offer pre-approved pilot protocols and funding for rapid implementation in select centers rather than issue a recommendation for use.

To be clear, it would be ideal to pursue large clinical trials to test the efficacy of all promising interventions. A randomized adaptive design could efficiently sift through the many possibilities. It may be possible to rapidly set up parallel protocols in India if government authorities can expedite the regulatory process and offer funding. US trial investigators can be persuaded to provide protocols and web-based data collection tools.

We hope that the Indian government will take advantage of repurposed drug research and use temporary use authorizations or guidelines to rapidly promote the most promising therapies at a national level while in parallel aggressively encourage pilot studies and large-scale clinical trials with shovel-ready protocols and funding. Given the current situation, India has little to lose in piloting these approaches: the potential gains could benefit not just the country but the world.


[May 28, 2021] One of my friends in the USSA who was fully vaccinated (Phizer I think) within the past 3 months just got a positive COVID test

Is this because PCR test with high level of amplifications is junk or there are more serious problem with vaccination?
May 20, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

KYLE , May 19 2021 23:59 utc | 47

Well, it's official. One of my friends in the USSA who was fully vaccinated (Phizer I think) within the past 3 months just got a positive COVID test. Teenage son brought it back home and they all have it now.

uncle tungsten @40 - It looks like that bogus quote is used often, including by academics and the paper I found was basically hidden, so it's an easy mistake to make by Strategic Culture (whoever wrote that article). I had never seen/heard of that one so I looked it up due to the non-contemporaneous looking language. Surprised to learn that "under-cover" is actually a more recent term than "un-American" which I would have thought originated in the 1920s or 30s - or even 40s (WWII). According to that paper I found, it was first coined/used just two years after Rush's passing. Go figure. Seems that several more of Rush's quotes as told in the present day seem to be bogus as well.

[May 28, 2021] SARS-CoV-2 spike S1 subunit induces hypercoagulability

Notable quotes:
"... may have contained downstream effects of some endothelial changes that would give rise to the hypercoagulable state that is characteristic of the disease ..."
"... We suggest that, in part, the presence of spike protein in circulation may contribute to the hypercoagulation in COVID-19 positive patients and may cause severe impairment of fibrinolysis. Such lytic impairment may be the direct cause of the large microclots we have noted here ..."
May 26, 2021 | www.news-medical.net

Amyloid deposits in response to spike protein

The researchers examined the fluorescent amyloid signals in abnormal clots and in healthy platelet-poor plasma (PPP) with or without spike protein.

This showed a marked increase in dense abnormal amyloid clots, called amyloid deposits, in PPP to which spike was added, with or without thrombin. Thrombin alone also created an extensive fibrin clot. However, there was a significant increase in the percentage area of amyloid deposits.

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The greatest change followed the addition of both spike and thrombin.

Platelet activation

When whole blood was exposed to spike protein even at low concentrations, the erythrocytes showed agglutination, hyperactivated platelets were seen, with membrane spreading and the formation of platelet-derived microparticles.

In all samples, spontaneous amyloid deposits formed after exposure to the spike protein without the need for thrombin exposure.

Clotting in microfluidics channels

Microfluidics systems were set up to simulate extensive endothelial damage, with resulting hypercoagulability. This showed that COVID-19 produced changes in the clotting profile of the PPP.

Clot formation in healthy PPP occurred slowly and gradually, to a moderate size, and with orderly clot layers that allowed blood flow to occur through the channel's center. These clots were easily removed by flushing the channel at 1 mL/min.

The PPP from COVID-19 patients showed large disorderly clots that often projected into the channel's center and obstructed the flow. These clots were impossible to dislodge at the earlier flow rate or even at a higher flow.

Again, large clots formed in PPP from COVID-19 patients when it was exposed to thrombin in about 90 seconds. However, most of the clotting happened in one burst, with not much propagation of the clot thereafter, indicating rapid consumption of the thrombin.

This was not the case with PPP exposed to spike protein, where a fibrous laminar clot was combined with a chaotic clot. Moderate flow disruption was also observed. These clots could also be removed with similar ease. This intermediate state could be due to the absence of multiple other biological factors that may have hindered the formation of the characteristic clots seen in COVID-19 patients.

Mass spectrometry

The results of mass spectrometry of the healthy PPP with spike protein showed changes in the structure of the beta and gamma fibrin(ogen) proteins, together with complement 3 and prothrombin. These proteins showed resistance to degradation by trypsin, a powerful proteolytic enzyme, in the presence of spike protein.

What are the implications?

The researchers show that the spike S1 not only interacts directly with both platelets and with the key clotting protein fibrinogen and its activated form, fibrin, causing changes in the protein that, in turn, alter the way blood clots.

In PPP, the addition of thrombin was found to induce fibrinogen's polymerization into a fibrin mesh. Exposure to spike protein was shown to precipitate dense clots.

When spikes and thrombin were added to healthy PPP, the formation of abnormal amyloid deposits was increased. These also showed significant changes in the blood cells' ultrastructure, including the red cells and platelets.

The presence of extensive spontaneous fibrin networks following the addition of the spike protein to whole blood matches the ultrastructural appearance seen on COVID-19-positive blood smears. Here again, the primary features were anomalous clotting, amyloid in the clots, and spontaneous fibrin network formation.

The study also shows that it may alter blood flow in COVID-19. The microfluidics simulation showed that the PPP from COVID-19 patients, which is almost pure fibrinogen, formed large obstructing clots. The PPP " may have contained downstream effects of some endothelial changes that would give rise to the hypercoagulable state that is characteristic of the disease ."

" We suggest that, in part, the presence of spike protein in circulation may contribute to the hypercoagulation in COVID-19 positive patients and may cause severe impairment of fibrinolysis. Such lytic impairment may be the direct cause of the large microclots we have noted here ."

Thus, the free S1 subunit has harmful effects on the host even without direct infection of the cells themselves. This strengthens the case for targeting the spike protein via antibodies and vaccines.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.

Journal reference:

[May 28, 2021] The spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 variants identified in India

Notable quotes:
"... Neutralization of B.1.617 and B.1.618 spike protein variants by REGN10933 and REGN10987. Image Credit: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.14.444076v1.full.pdf ..."
May 26, 2021 | www.news-medical.net

India's surge in SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) infections are linked to the new variants B.1.617 and B.1.618, with mutated spike proteins . In recent months, it has caused a devastating second wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is reported that from 3 January 2020 to 17 May 2021, there have been over 25 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 with over 274 thousand deaths.

Neutralization of B.1.617 and B.1.618 spike protein variants by REGN10933 and REGN10987. Image Credit: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.14.444076v1.full.pdf

The mutations in these variants may contribute to the increased transmissibility of the virus, and could potentially result in re-infection or resistance to the vaccine-elicited antibodies. The mutations are driven by selective pressure for increased affinity for its receptor, ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme), and escape from neutralizing antibodies . This raises concern over the fitness of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 variants and their ability to escape the vaccine-elicited immune response.

In this context, researchers from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, USA, tested the neutralization of B.1.617 and B.1.618 SARS-CoV-2 variant spike proteins and determined their resistance to neutralization by convalescent sera, vaccine-elicited antibodies, and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.

To achieve this they generated lentiviruses pseudotyped by the variant proteins. They found that these viruses with B.1.617 and B.1.618 spike proteins were neutralized with a 2-5-fold decrease in titer by convalescent sera and vaccine-elicited antibodies.

They observed a modest neutralization resistance to the vaccine-elicited antibodies. This is good news as it suggests that the current vaccines will protect against the B.1.617 and B.1.618 42 variants. This study, led by Professor Nathaniel R. Landau, is recently posted on the bioRxiv * server.

Our results lend confidence that current vaccines will provide protection against variants identified to date."

The researchers also found that the resistance was caused by the L452R, E484Q, and E484K mutations. Further, they reported that the variants were partially resistant to REGN10933, which is one of the two mAbs constituting the Regeneron COV2 therapy (casirivimab (REGN10933) with imdevimab (REGN10987), for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19).

The B.1.617 encodes a spike protein with the mutations L452R, E484Q, D614G, and P681R while the B.1.618 spike has mutations Î"145-146, E484K, and D614G. The B.1.617 variant spike protein contains L452R and E484Q mutations in the RBD in addition to D614G and the P681R mutation near the proteolytic processing site and the B.1.618 spike has E484K in the RBD in addition to D614G and the N-terminal deletion Î"145-146.

Related Stories

The researchers generated the lentiviral virions, expressing the spike proteins at a level similar to that of wild-type D614G. They also tested the infectivity of the virus, reporting that the B.1.617 spike protein (L452R/E484Q/P681R) was >2-fold increase in infectivity while B.1.618 was similar to wild-type D614G.

Significantly, they found that the increased infectivity of the B.1.617 spike was attributed to L452R mutation, which caused a 3.5-fold increase in infectivity and, in combination with E484Q caused a 3-fold increase. Other point mutations had an insignificant effect on the infectivity.

Both variants B.1.617 and B.1.618 have increased affinity for ACE2 and the researchers found that both are partially resistant to the monoclonal antibodies. They discussed the mutations, the expressed proteins, and the subsequent effect on binding and infection.

In this study, the researchers reported that the virus variants B.1.617 and B.1.618 spike were partially resistant to neutralization, with an average 3.9-fold and 2.7-fold decrease in IC50 for convalescent sera and antibodies elicited by Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, respectively. The neutralization resistance was mediated by the L452R, E484Q, and E484K mutations. The resistance of these variants is similar to the previous variants.

Even with the 3-4-fold decrease in neutralization titer of vaccine-elicited antibodies, average titers were around 1:500, a titer well above that found in the sera of individuals who have recovered from infection with earlier unmutated viruses."

Significantly, this study reassures that the vaccinated individuals will remain protected against the B.1.617 and B.1.618 variants.

Commenting on the other vaccines, the researchers said, "The analyses in this study were restricted to the mRNA-based vaccines but there is no reason to believe that vector-based vaccines such as that of Johnson and Johnson that express a stabilized, native, full-length spike protein would be different with regarding antibody neutralization of virus variants."

*Important Notice

bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.

[May 28, 2021] Johns Hopkins Prof- Half Of Americans Have Natural Immunity; Dismissing It Is -Biggest Failure Of Medical Leadership

H ere is link to Dr. Makary interview. This may not be the Video mentioned in the article above but it is a similar gist of his critizisms of the CDC.
May 26, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Dr. Marty Makary made the comments during a recent interview, noting that "natural immunity works" and it is wrong to vilify those who don't want the vaccine because they have already recovered from the virus.

Makary criticised "the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history" for not clearly communicating the scientific facts about natural immunity compared to the kind of immunity developed through vaccines.

" There is more data on natural immunity than there is on vaccinated immunity, because natural immunity has been around longer," Makary emphasised.

"We are not seeing reinfections, and when they do happen, they're rare. Their symptoms are mild or are asymptomatic," the professor added.

"Please, ignore the CDC guidance," he urged, adding "Live a normal life, unless you are unvaccinated and did not have the infection, in which case you need to be careful."

"We've got to start respecting people who choose not to get the vaccine instead of demonizing them," Makary further asserted.

The professor's comments come amid a plethora of media generated propaganda suggesting that natural immunity isn't enough, and that those who do not choose to take the vaccine should be socially ostracised Justus D. Barnes 4 hours ago (Edited) remove link

I would not call it a hoax as some people do get sick and die.

However. Some people are allergic to peanuts. So lets force everyone to get vaccinated against peanuts?

I think of this whole thing as $#IT politicians shoving their $#IT policies down stupid peoples throats. In a free America any thoughtful person would asses the danger that corona or a peanut would present to them personally and then take the action they thought best. IMHO If your state does not let you make the choice for yourself then you join a class action lawsuit against your state or move.

FurnitureFireSale 4 hours ago remove link

And that's the problem in that what America has become: a bunch of thoughtless sheep that do what their idols tell them to do; what the commercials tell them to do; what the brainwashing convinces them to do. There are many, many of them and a good amount of thoughtful ones (us)too. It is the latter having these discussions about these therapies, no matter how much the MSM and FAANG's try to supress it. Many highly intelligent people I know have gone ahead and gotten their shots. Several in my circle have not- never will. The have nots understand just what is going on. The liberal states that are pushing this agenda need to be reeled in via a class action. One should not be forced to move based upon their vaccination status. It's as arbitrary as saying "move to a state where they don't serve peanuts". You're exactly right.

sun tzu 3 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Deaths from purely from covid was probably in the 25,000 range in the past 14 months, which is less than half of 5 months of flu deaths each year. Some died due to pneumonia or cytokine storm. Others died when the spike proteins got into their blood and caused clots. The vast majority died with covid, either real or thru a false positives. Probably 25-50K were murdered on ventilators.

philipat 1 hour ago remove link

As I have written about previously, the CDC/WHO are playing (political) games with science and their actions only discredit themselves and raise other obvious questions which challenge the official explanation(s) of events, in summary as follows:

  1. The definition of Herd Immunity has been changed (including in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary) to EXCLUDE natural immunity as a contributing factor. This is scientifically false because naturally acquired immunity is the best type of immunity because it is a complete immune response which conveys long-lasting immunity and prevents transmission of any virus. This is NOT true for the "vaccines" whose manufacturers only claim a reduction in the severity of any symptoms. The obvious conclusion based on the science is that naturally immune people have a stronger claim on "Vaccine Passports" than the vaccinated.
  2. Not only is it unnecessary for naturally immune people to be vaccinated, there are potential dangers in doing so. Based again on scientific knowledge from earlier attempts to develop vaccines for CoVs, there is a very real risk of ADE (Antibody Dependent Enhancement), also described as Pathogenic Priming from occurring when people with non-neutralizing antibodies are exposed to further challenge from either a live virus or high concentrations of viral antigen. This can potentially occur in both vaccinated people (we will know during the next "Flu" season) and in naturally immune people exposed to high concentrations of viral antigen which triggers non-neutralizing antibodies. The subsequent autoimmune reaction can result from a triggered "cytokine storm" which can result in the shutdown of vital organs and death,
    Ironically, this MIGHT explain some of the many AEs being seen with the "vaccines" where an autoimmune effect is seen.

    The only possible reason for the above denials 1-2) of the science is so as to comply with the official narrative that everyone needs vaccination "" presumably for reasons other than science and public health.

  3. The CDC still recommends the RT-qPCR test to diagnose "new cases" at a cycle threshold (Ct) of >35 cycles, typically run at 35-45 or even 50 cycles. This despite the fact they fully understand that at these high cycle counts, the numbers of "false positives" are high (up to 95% in some labs). However, in coming to terms with "a few breakthrough cases" of disease in vaccinated people, CDC has been running trials to sequence the virus (in the hope of blaming new variants) obtained from such people. However, to be included, only samples from patients confirmed positive with a PCR test run at a Ct of <28 cycles are allowed. Why the difference?

    The dilemma for CDC here is obvious. If they recommend that for reasons of accuracy, ALL PCR tests are run at a Ct of <28, they will not be able to find many "new cases" (a/k/a false positives) to inflate the case numbers and have ample material to blame "Covid deaths" on. If they run the trials on "breakthrough infections" at a Ct of >35 (as recommended for general use) they will "confirm" (by their own definition) thousands of such " extremely rare breakthrough cases". This clearly demonstrates duplicity on the part of CDC and destroys their credibility, which has been built on science not politics.

  4. The Virus origin dilemma. The Overton window has allowed two, and only two, "explanations" for the origin of the virus. Setting aside the fact that whenever the Establishment presents a limited number of explanations for anything, they are always all wrong (and in this case there are other explanations surrounding the Military Games, held in Wuhan at around the time the first patients were recorded) it is now obvious that the desired conclusion is a "leak" at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). That means we must also set aside the fact that Bio Safety Level 4 labs don't just "leak" "" I can attest to this from personal experience of BSL training.

    The dilemma for the Authorities with this explanation, not yet widely recognised, is that if indeed this is the explanation, it means that wild SARS-CoV-2 virus (and other man made variants in the "gain of function" research, was being experimented with in WIV so as to infect the respiratory system of those "infected". Other bodily contamination transported out of the lab is entirely impossible due to the security features built-in at BSL-4 facilities (Pressure gradients, UV exit lighting, 3 changes of clothing involving showers with various chemical components etc. "" these are SERIOUS safety precautions)

    That being the case, why then has it not been possible to isolate and purify said virus (and its variants) for the purposes of confirming its existence and for use in more accurate tests and diagnostics plus for use in making natural (real) vaccines?

konputa 4 hours ago

The CDC are vaccine pushers and owners of numerous vaccine patents. It seems to me they are doing their job as intended, it's just that the public misunderstands their purpose. Their mission isn't public health.

CheapBastard 5 hours ago (Edited)

That's exactly what my doc told me. Stay healthy and take the relevant supplements like Vitamin D. Most likely have immunity from previous Flu infections with cross-over protection.

Problem is for the CDC and Big Pharma is their Fear **** can't be promoted and they can't make mind-numbing profits from natural immunity.

What a mess_man 4 hours ago

We knew this last spring with the Diamond Princess.

[May 28, 2021] Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left. ~ Aldous Huxley

Notable quotes:
"... They always have these congressional investigations, yet nothing ever happens. ..."
May 14, 2021 | www.youtube.com

Kentucky Republican discusses why he questioned the top health official over funding of the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology on 'Fox News Primetime.' #FoxNews #FoxNewsPrimetime


Tim E , 1 day ago

They always have these congressional investigations, yet nothing ever happens.

GwenEcho Taylor , 1 day ago

"Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left." - Aldous Huxley


Marie Riedel
, 1 day ago

Thank you for exposing Fauci for who he really is, the truth is being revealed.


Jimmy not nice
, 1 day ago

" It came from wet markets " I remember when they pushed that narrative so hard when they really manufactured it 🤣🤣

[May 28, 2021] Don t mention Ivermectin; It ll Affect the Vaccine Rollout

May 17, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Hemiola , May 16 2021 18:16 utc | 33

"Based on the lack of a rational explanation for the actions of the WHO, Merck, FDA and Unitaid, we conclude that they result from an active disinformation campaign ... "

FLCCC Alliance statement on the irregular actions of Public Health Agencies and the widespread disinformation campaign against Ivermectin

Nice South African summary:

Don't mention Ivermectin; It'll Affect the Vaccine Rollout


The Virus and the Parasite

Grieved , May 17 2021 3:06 utc | 95

@33 Hemiola

Thank you for the latest release from FLCCC. When you find the time to comment, you always supply powerful material - I am extraordinarily grateful for this.

I just spent the time to read the release, and I was absorbed from beginning to end. Of course, there's some unavoidable scientific terminology, but very little, and most of the document stands as a revolutionary manifesto, a call to action, a call to resist the misinformation and the disinformation permeating the COVID-19 pandemic.

The document illustrates in a verifiable and succinct charge how the WHO has loaded the dice against the use of ivermectin as both a prophylactic and a treatment for COVID-19, in order to argue against its adoption - and this, in a world that is increasingly adopting its use because it quite simply works.

It works, and the results from all over the world are recorded by doctors, showing that it works up to a 90% effectiveness in the main and close to 100% in some cases, and it does this with negligible collateral harm demonstrated across billions of doses and many decades - and the WHO, despite that in 2018 it formally lauded its safety, now says that it doesn't work and that it may be dangerous.

~~

So what is the Why of the WHO?

This release from FLCCC explains why and describes the underlying, systemic rottenness in the western medical system, how it has been tainted for decades by corporations and large funding sources - and how the common doctors, fighting to do no harm and to save lives, are up against a wall of opposition during this pandemic that is breathtakingly huge.

The FLCCC press release goes beyond the medical science and explains also the corporate tactics that have demolished scientific method. It presents a call to action, and sketches the only tools we have to resist. It says much that we already know - but these are doctors and awarded researchers telling us all the things that are so obviously fishy in the institutional responses to the pandemic.

Big Pharma, Big Science, Big Media, Big Tech, Big Government, Big Foundations - all in collusion, all following the trail originally blazed by Big Tobacco.

See, we know how it works because we've watched it for decades. The FLCCC release does us the service of reminding us and enumerating the instances when corporate venality (my word, not theirs) has destroyed the truth simply to make money.

I recommend it:
FLCCC Alliance Statement on the Irregular Actions of Public Health Agencies and the Widespread Disinformation Campaign Against Ivermectin

[May 27, 2021] Ohio sees COVID vaccination rate soar 45% since announcing Vax-A-Million lottery

May 27, 2021 | www.msn.com

Looks like the chance to win a million bucks can give vaccination rates a real shot in the arm.

Ohio saw its COVID-19 vaccination rate jump 45% between May 14-19 as compared to the previous week, thanks in part to the state's Vax-A-Million lottery, Gov. Mike DeWine told reporters on Wednesday . Last week, the state said it recorded a 28% spike in vaccinations in the days following the lottery announcement.

An Associated Press analysis found that the number of Ohio residents ages 16 and up who got their first COVID shot spiked 33% in the week after DeWine announced the state would be giving away $1 million prizes and in-state public college scholarships as incentives to get more residents inoculated.

Each week, adult Ohioans who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose will enter a random drawing to win a million dollars. And younger vaccinated Ohio residents between the ages of 12 and 17 will be part of a weekly random drawing to get a four-year scholarship to an Ohio public university, which will include tuition, room, board and books. There will be five winners for each prize selected over the next five weeks.Wednesday night, the Ohio lottery announced the first two winners: Abbigail Bugenske of Silverton, near Cincinnati, won $1 million, while Joseph Costello of Englewood, near Dayton, won the college scholarship. Each Wednesday moving forward, another adult and another teen winner will be revealed at 7:29 p.m. through June 23.

More than 2.7 million adults registered for the cash prizes, and more than 100,000 teens are vying for the scholarships.

[May 24, 2021] I never saw the 1973 movie Soylent Green but below is the last Wiki line about the movie that resonates with my perspective of the Western brainwashed becoming a new income stream for Big Health just like wars are income streams for the MIC

May 24, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

psychohistorian , May 24 2021 1:48 utc | 104

I continue to be troubled by the Western Covid response of new vaccines.

Unless you haven't read Big Pharma bragging, they are projecting revenues of $100 billion this year with $20+ projected by Pfizer alone. Given my jaded economics view of the industry and Western governments owned by the financial elite, it is not beyond my belief that this controlled taking advantage of a health care crisis is conscious war criminal behavior just like the ongoing (since at least 2008) loading of the US Treasury with debt while the profits go to private finance elite.

Back to further financialization of the Health Care world. I never saw the 1973 movie Soylent Green but below is the last Wiki line about the movie that resonates with my perspective of the Western brainwashed becoming a new income stream for Big Health just like wars are income streams for the MIC

"
While being taken away, Thorn shouts out to the surrounding crowd, "Soylent Green is people!"
"

When you go to a poker game, look around and can't see who the sucker of the evening is, take a hint, its you

Its time to shoot the TV folks and end other brainwashing inputs that make it so you can't see how the world really works.....private finance barbarism which is currently in a civilization war with China's not barbarism/public finance approach.

With Grieved's friendly update.....
The shit show Narrative will continue until it doesn't..

[May 24, 2021] NIAD started working on coronavirus vaccine with Moderna in Maryland in Jan 2020

Hell-bent of vaccines?
Jan 28, 2020 | www.wusa9.com
Five people between D.C., Maryland and Virginia have been tested for the new strain of coronavirus. There are no confirmed cases in the DMV. Something went wrong.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.460.0_en.html#goog_322948139 Author: Nick Boykin (WUSA9), Jordan Fischer Published: 10:47 PM EST January 27, 2020 Updated: 3:33 PM EST January 28, 2020 Facebook Twitter

WASHINGTON -- With worries about the coronavirus spreading nationally, the National Institute of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is working on a vaccine to help combat the virus.

At its Bethesda headquarters, NIAID will be working with a company called Moderna, who received a grant from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Their mission is to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases during an outbreak, according to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) . CEPI is helping fund the grant money being used.

https://5e8b0d7b0c3a879ded0a413bf89113bc.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FTYG3EGWUk1U%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTYG3EGWUk1U&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FTYG3EGWUk1U%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=0350728de3d54ab7950f978fc80d4a70&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

Two other organizations, Inovia Pharmaceuticals and The University of Queensland, also received grants, according to CEPI.

"NIAID has mobilized a research response to 2019-nCoV that builds on experience with SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and other emerging pathogens," NIAID said in a statement about the grant. "NIAID has begun early stage development of an mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine for 2019-nCoV. mRNA vaccines direct the body's cells to express a protein to elicit a broad immune response including high levels of neutralizing antibodies. The expressed protein is designed based on knowledge of the virus structure, but the platform does not contain live or inactivated virus. The mRNA platform can be quickly adapted and manufactured efficiently."

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3R3ZWV0X2VtYmVkX2NsaWNrYWJpbGl0eV8xMjEwMiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJjb250cm9sIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1220838637547319297&lang=en&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wusa9.com%2Farticle%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fmaryland%2Fnih-working-on-coronavirus-vaccine-in-maryland%2F65-7bb9062f-de57-49a5-9470-d7c3a19b97f0&sessionId=f13b8d1a366000bf767e00a00bfc99fe56dfb878&siteScreenName=WUSA9&theme=light&widgetsVersion=82e1070%3A1619632193066&width=550px

While Moderna will develop the vaccine, NIAID will provide IND-enabling studies and a Phase 1 clinical study in the U.S.

NIAID has said that while it has started its work towards helping establish a vaccine, its availability in the coming months is not likely.

[May 22, 2021] Cases of vaccinated people getting COVID are not that rare

Notable quotes:
"... was vaccinated before it was available to any of us peasants. About 3 weeks ago she was home sick with Covid. He husband got it too, and he was also vaccinated as well. ..."
May 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Just_do_what_they_tellya 3 hours ago

My 29 year old niece that is as skinny as a broom stick is an RN in a pedes unit, and was vaccinated before it was available to any of us peasants. About 3 weeks ago she was home sick with Covid. He husband got it too, and he was also vaccinated as well.

[May 22, 2021] Indian mutation of the virus can became dominant in UK and probably in the world

May 22, 2021 | dailymail.co.uk

PHE figures show Covid outbreak is STILL flat despite rapid spread of Indian variant as expert says it won't stop lockdown easing plans but SAGE adviser warns third wave has begun and all 10 areas with biggest outbreaks are mutant strain hotspots

Some 95 out of 149 local authorities in England saw Covid cases dip last week. Dr Yvonne Doyle said the latest data was 'hugely encouraging' but that there was still concern over the Indian variant.

[May 22, 2021] Last December, Yeadon, a British national, filed a petition with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to immediately suspend testing on these experimental vaccines due to many safety concerns

May 22, 2021 | principia-scientific.com

Last December, Yeadon, a British national, filed a petition with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to immediately suspend testing on these experimental vaccines due to many safety concerns, including pathogenic priming, which involves " an exaggerated immune reaction, especially when the test person is confronted with the real, 'wild' virus after vaccination ."

In their white paper on the topic, AFLDS warned that such reactions, which can be fatal, " are difficult to prove ," as they are often interpreted as infection with " a worse virus ," or, perhaps, a more dangerous variant.

Having maintained that there is " no need of vaccines " for COVID-19, Yeadon emphasizes below, " PLEASE warn every person not to go near top up vaccines. There is absolutely no need to them ."

At the outset, Dr. Yeadon said:

" I'm well aware of the global crimes against humanity being perpetrated against a large proportion of the world's population. I feel great fear, but I'm not deterred from giving expert testimony to multiple groups of able lawyers like Rocco Galati in Canada and Reiner Fuellmich in Germany. I have absolutely no doubt that we are in the presence of evil (not a determination I've ever made before in a 40-year research career) and dangerous products."

" In the U.K., it's abundantly clear that the authorities are bent on a course which will result in administering 'vaccines' to as many of the population as they can. This is madness, because even if these agents were legitimate, protection is needed only by those at notably elevated risk of death from the virus. In those people, there might even be an argument that the risks are worth bearing. And there definitely are risks which are what I call 'mechanistic': inbuilt in the way they work. "

" But all the other people, those in good health and younger than 60 years, perhaps a little older, they don't perish from the virus. In this large group, it's wholly unethical to administer something novel and for which the potential for unwanted effects after a few months is completely uncharacterized. In no other era would it be wise to do what is stated as the intention. Since I know this with certainty, and I know those driving it know this too, we have to enquire: What is their motive? "

" While I don't know, I have strong theoretical answers, only one of which relates to money and that motive doesn't work, because the same quantum can be arrived at by doubling the unit cost and giving the agent to half as many people. Dilemma solved. So it's something else. Appreciating that, by entire population, it is also intended that minor children and eventually babies are to be included in the net, and that's what I interpret to be an evil act."

"There is no medical rationale for it. Knowing as I do that the design of these 'vaccines' results, in the expression in the bodies of recipients, expression of the spike protein, which has adverse biological effects of its own which, in some people, are harmful (initiating blood coagulation and activating the immune 'complement system'), I'm determined to point out that those not at risk from this virus should not be exposed to the risk of unwanted effects from these agents. "

INTERVIEWER: In a talk you gave four months ago, you said:

The most likely duration of immunity to a respiratory virus like SARS CoV-2 is multiple years. Why do I say that? We actually have the data for a virus that swept through parts of the world seventeen years ago called SARS, and remember SARS CoV-2 is 80 percent similar to SARS, so I think that's the best comparison that anyone can provide.

The evidence is clear: These very clever cellular immunologists studied all the people they could get hold of who had survived SARS 17 years ago. They took a blood sample, and they tested whether they responded or not to the original SARS and they all did; they all had perfectly normal, robust T cell memory. They were actually also protected against SARS CoV-2, because they're so similar; it's cross immunity.

So, I would say the best data that exists is that immunity should be robust for at least 17 years. I think it's entirely possible that it is lifelong. The style of the responses of these people's T cells were the same as if you've been vaccinated and then you come back years later to see if that immunity has been retained. So I think the evidence is really strong that the duration of immunity will be multiple years, and possibly lifelong.

In other words, previous exposure to SARS – that is, a variant similar to SARS CoV-2 – bestowed SARS CoV-2 immunity.

The Israel government cites new variants to justify lockdowns, flight closures, restrictions, and Green Passport issuance. Given the Supreme Court verdict, do you think it may be possible to preempt future government measures with accurate information about variants, immunity, herd immunity, etc. that could be provided to the lawyers who will be challenging those future measures?

DR. YEADON:

"What I outlined in relation to immunity to SARS is precisely what we're seeing with SARS-CoV-2. The study is from one of the best labs in their field.

"So, theoretically, people could test their T-cell immunity by measuring the responses of cells in a small sample of their blood. There are such tests, they are not 'high throughout' and they are likely to cost a few hundred USD each on scale. But not thousands. The test I'm aware of is not yet commercially available, but research only in U.K.

"However, I expect the company could be induced to provide test kits "for research" on scale, subject to an agreement. If you were to arrange to test a few thousand non-vaccinated Israelis, it may be a double edged sword. Based on other countries experiences, 30-50percent of people had prior immunity & additionally around 25percent have been infected & are now immune.

"Personally, I wouldn't want to deal with the authorities on their own terms: that you're suspected as a source of infection until proven otherwise. You shouldn't need to be proving you're not a health risk to others. Those without symptoms are never a health threat to others. And in any case, once those who are concerned about the virus are vaccinated, there is just no argument for anyone else needing to be vaccinated."

INTERVIEWER: My understanding of a " leaky vaccine " is that it only lessens symptoms in the vaccinated, but does not stop transmission; it therefore allows the spread of what then becomes a more deadly virus.

For example, in China they deliberately use leaky Avian Flu vaccines to quickly cull flocks of chicken, because the unvaccinated die within three days. In Marek's Disease, from which they needed to save all the chickens, the only solution was to vaccinate 100% of the flock, because all unvaccinated were at high risk of death. So how a leaky vax is utilized is intention-driven, that is, it is possible that the intent can be to cause great harm to the unvaccinated.

Stronger strains usually would not propagate through a population because they kill the host too rapidly, but if the vaccinated experience only less-serious disease, then they spread these strains to the unvaccinated who contract serious disease and die.

Do you agree with this assessment? Furthermore, do you agree that if the unvaccinated become the susceptible ones, the only way forward is HCQ prophylaxis for those who haven't already had COVID-19?

Would the Zelenko Protocol work against these stronger strains if this is the case?

And if many already have the aforementioned previous "17-year SARS immunity", would that then not protect from any super-variant?

DR. YEADON: "I think the Gerrt Vanden Bossche story is highly suspect. There is no evidence at all that vaccination is leading or will lead to 'dangerous variants'. I am worried that it's some kind of trick.

wcea facebook

"As a general rule, variants form very often, routinely, and tend to become less dangerous & more infectious over time, as it comes into equilibrium with its human host. Variants generally don't become more dangerous.

"No variant differs from the original sequence by more than 0.3%. In other words, all variants are at least 99.7% identical to the Wuhan sequence.

"It's a fiction, and an evil one at that, that variants are likely to "escape immunity".

"Not only is it intrinsically unlikely – because this degree of similarity of variants means zero chance that an immune person (whether from natural infection or from vaccination) will be made ill by a variant – but it's empirically supported by high-quality research.

"The research I refer to shows that people recovering from infection or who have been vaccinated ALL have a wide range of immune cells which recognize ALL the variants.

" This paper shows WHY the extensive molecular recognition by the immune system makes the tiny changes in variants irrelevant.

"I cannot say strongly enough: The stories around variants and need for top up vaccines are FALSE. I am concerned there is a very malign reason behind all this. It is certainly not backed by the best ways to look at immunity. The claims always lack substance when examined, and utilize various tricks, like manipulating conditions for testing the effectiveness of antibodies. Antibodies are probably rather unimportant in host protection against this virus. There have been a few 'natural experiments', people who unfortunately cannot make antibodies, yet are able quite successfully to repel this virus. They definitely are better off with antibodies than without. I mention these rare patients because they show that antibodies are not essential to host immunity, so some contrived test in a lab of antibodies and engineered variant viruses do NOT justify need for top up vaccines.

"The only people who might remain vulnerable and need prophylaxis or treatment are those who are elderly and/or ill and do not wish to receive a vaccine (as is their right).

"The good news is that there are multiple choices available: hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, budesonide (inhaled steroid used in asthmatics), and of course oral Vitamin D, zinc, azithromycin etc. These reduce the severity to such an extent that this virus did not need to become a public health crisis."

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel the FDA does a good job regulating big pharma? In what ways does big pharma get around the regulator? Do you feel they did so for the mRNA injection?

DR. YEADON: "Until recently, I had high regard for global medicines regulators. When I was in Pfizer, and later CEO of a biotech I founded (Ziarco, later acquired by Novartis), we interacted respectfully with FDA, EMA, and the U.K. MHRA. Always good quality interactions.

"Recently, I noticed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) had made a grant to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)! Can that ever be appropriate? They're funded by public money. They should never accept money from a private body.

"So here is an example where the U.K. regulator has a conflict of interest.

"The European Medicines Agency failed to require certain things as disclosed in the 'hack' of their files while reviewing the Pfizer vaccine.

"You can find examples on Reiner Fuellmich 's 'Corona Committee' online.

"So I no longer believe the regulators are capable of protecting us. 'Approval' is therefore meaningless .

"Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg and I petitioned the EMA Dec 1, 2020 on the genetic vaccines. They ignored us.

"Recently, we wrote privately to them, warning of blood clots, they ignored us. When we went public with our letter, we were completely censored. Days later, more than ten countries paused use of a vaccine citing blood clots.

"I think the big money of pharma plus cash from BMGF creates the environment where saying no just isn't an option for the regulator.

"I must return to the issue of 'top up vaccines' (booster shots) and it is this whole narrative which I fear will he exploited and used to gain unparalleled power over us.

"PLEASE warn every person not to go near top up vaccines. There is absolutely no need to them.

"As there's no need for them, yet they're being made in pharma, and regulators have stood aside (no safety testing), I can only deduce they will be used for nefarious purposes.

"For example, if someone wished to harm or kill a significant proportion of the world's population over the next few years, the systems being put in place right now will enable it.

"It's my considered view that it is entirely possible that this will be used for massive-scale depopulation."

Reprinted with permission from America's Frontline Doctors.

Brian Sandle

April 14, 2021 at 12:57 am | #

Not sure of Yeadon's claim disputing Bossche's suggestion of new strains arising from vaccination. We are early on with the program but also seeing need to check that problem in Israel:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/south-african-covid-19-variant-break-through-pfizer-vaccine-14598714
And Bossche's idea of vaccination, is not "more," of the same. But different. Can't use that argument of Yeadon's to override all that Bossche happens to be saying.

[May 22, 2021] The ex-Pfizer scientist who became an anti-vax hero

May 22, 2021 | www.reuters.com

Michael Yeadon, wasn't just any scientist. The 60-year-old is a former vice president of Pfizer, where he spent 16 years as an allergy and respiratory researcher. He later co-founded a biotech firm that the Swiss drugmaker Novartis purchased for at least $325 million.

In recent months, Yeadon (pronounced Yee-don) has emerged as an unlikely hero of the so-called anti-vaxxers, whose adherents question the safety of many vaccines, including for the coronavirus. The anti-vaxxer movement has amplified Yeadon's skeptical views about COVID-19 vaccines and tests, government-mandated lockdowns and the arc of the pandemic. Yeadon has said he personally doesn't oppose the use of all vaccines. But many health experts and government officials worry that opinions like his fuel vaccine hesitancy – a reluctance or refusal to be vaccinated – that could prolong the pandemic. COVID-19 has already killed more than 2.6 million people worldwide.

"These claims are false, dangerous and deeply irresponsible," said a spokesman for Britain's Department of Health & Social Care, when asked about Yeadon's views. "COVID-19 vaccines are the best way to protect people from coronavirus and will save thousands of lives."

Recent reports of blood clots and abnormal bleeding in a small number of recipients of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine have cast doubt on that shot's safety, leading several European countries to suspend its use. The developments are likely to fuel vaccine hesitancy further, although there is no evidence of a causative link between the AstraZeneca product and the affected patients' conditions.

... ... ...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pictured in 2016, was recently banned on Instagram because of his COVID-19 vaccine posts. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

The visage and views of Yeadon, widely identified as an "Ex-VP of Pfizer,'' can be seen on social media in languages including German, Portuguese, Danish and Czech. A Facebook post carries a video from November in which Yeadon claimed that the pandemic "fundamentally is over." The post has been viewed more than a million times.

In October, Yeadon wrote a column for the United Kingdom's Daily Mail newspaper that also appeared on MailOnline, one of the world's most-visited news websites. It declared that deaths caused by COVID-19, which then totaled about 45,000 in Britain, will soon "fizzle out" and Britons "should immediately be allowed to resume normal life." Since then, the disease has killed about another 80,000 people in the UK.

Yeadon isn't the only respected scientist to have challenged the scientific consensus on COVID-19 and expressed controversial views.

Michael Levitt, a winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry, told the Stanford Daily last summer that he expected the pandemic would end in the United States in 2020 and kill no more than 175,000 Americans – a third of the [overinflated, so probably right estimate --NNB] current total – and "when we come to look back, we're going to say that wasn't such a terrible disease."

And Luc Montagnier, another Nobel Prize winner, said last year that he believed the coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab . Many experts doubt that, but so far there is no way to prove or disprove it.

Levitt told Reuters that his projections about the pandemic in the United States were wrong, but he still believes COVID-19 eventually won't be seen as "a terrible disease" and that lockdowns "caused a great deal of collateral damage and may not have been needed." Montagnier didn't respond to a request for comment.

... ... ...

Clare Craig, a British pathologist, compared Yeadon's treatment on Twitter – where some users derided his views as nonsense and dangerous – to medieval societies burning heretics at the stake.

"There is no other way to see it than the burning of the witches," said Craig, who has criticized lockdowns and COVID-19 tests. "Science is always a series of questions and the testing of those questions and when we are not allowed to ask those questions, then science is lost."

[May 22, 2021] Michael Yeadon -- No need of vaccine, COVID-19 pandemic effectively over - FoxExclusive

Highly recommended!
Money quote: "I think the PCR test at present is throwing up so many false positives that in fact we're misdiagnosing the cause of the deaths that are being reported. The number of deaths at the moment is normal for the time of year. So if I'm right and the pandemic is fundamentally over, what's going on? And I think quite simply it's not over because SAGE says it's not!"
Notable quotes:
"... You also don't set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn't been extensively tested on human subjects." ..."
May 22, 2021 | foxexclusive.com

Michael Yeadon has voiced [his concerns about government policies regarding COVID-19] and it has left everyone shocked. As Pfizer pharmaceuticals breaks news for bringing corona virus vaccine , a former vice president and chief scientists of the company Michael Yeadon said that there is no need for any vaccine to end the ongoing pandemic.

According to a report published in the Lockdown Sceptics, Yeadon wrote: "There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic. You do not vaccinate people who aren't at risk from the disease. You also don't set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn't been extensively tested on human subjects." Yeadon made the comment on the vaccine development while criticizing the role played by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), a government agency of the UK.

SAGE is tasked with a role to determine public lockdown policies; in the UK, as a response to the COVID-19 virus. He added, "SAGE says everyone was susceptible and only 7 per cent have been infected. They have ignored all precedent in the field of immunology memory against respiratory viruses. They have either not seen or disregarded excellent quality work from numerous world-leading clinical immunologists; which show that around 30 per cent of the population had prior immunity."

Michael Yeadon wrote "They should also have excluded from 'susceptible' a large subset; of the youngest children, who appear not to become infected biology; means their cells express less of the spike protein receptor, called ACE2. I have not assumed all young children don't participate in transmission, but believe a two-thirds value is very conservative. It's not material anyway. So SAGE is demonstrably wrong in one really crucial variable, they assumed no prior immunity, whereas the evidence clearly points; to a value of around 30 per cent (and nearly 40 per cent if you include some young children, who technically are 'resistant' rather than 'immune')."

He concluded that the pandemic is effectively over and; can easily be handled by a properly functioning NHS (National Health Service).

[May 22, 2021] America's Frontline Doctors files motion for temporary restraining order against use of COVID vaccine in children

May 20, 2021 | www.americasfrontlinedoctors.org
1.6K Mordechai Sones

America's Frontline Doctors ( AFLDS ) today filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama requesting a temporary restraining order against the emergency use authorization (EUA) permitting using the COVID-19 vaccines in children under the age of 16, and that no further expansion of the EUAs to children under the age of 16 be granted prior to the resolution of these issues at trial.

The case will challenge the EUAs for the injections on several counts, based on the law and scientific evidence that the EUAs should never have been granted, the EUAs should be revoked immediately, the injections are dangerous biological agents that have the potential to cause substantially greater harm than the COVID-19 disease itself, and that numerous laws have been broken in the process of granting these EUAs and foisting these injections on the American people.

AFLDS Founder Dr. Simone Gold spoke about the reasons for filing the motion: "We doctors are pro-vaccine, but this is not a vaccine," she said. "This is an experimental biological agent whose harms are well-documented (although suppressed and censored) and growing rapidly, and we will not support using America's children as guinea pigs."

She continued: "We insist that the EUA not be relinquished prematurely; certainly not before trials are complete - October 31, 2022 for Moderna and April 27, 2023 for Pfizer. We are shocked at the mere discussion of this, and will not be silent while Americans are used as guinea pigs for a virus with survivability of 99.8% globally and 99.97% under age 70.

"Under age 20 it is 99.997% - 'statistical zero'.

"There are 104 children age 0-17 who died from COVID-19 and 287 from COVID + Influenza - out of ~72 million. This equals zero risk. And we doctors won't stand for children being offered something they do not need and of whom some unknown percentage will suffer."

AFLDS Pediatric Director Dr. Angie Farella explained: "My greatest concerns with the vaccination of children under the age of 18 is the fact that there is no prior study of these individuals before December of 2020."

She went on to say: "Children were not included in the trials, and the adult trials do not have any long-term safety data currently available."

AFLDS Legal Director Ali Shultz commented on AFLDS' filing: "Not many people could have taken this on. Dr. Simone Gold is a doctor, and a lawyer, and a fierce warrior who will stop at nothing to protect humanity.

"She has a certain finesse in developing the right team to see this medical/legal mission through."

To read the motion and all supporting documents, click here .

[May 22, 2021] The fact that they can run 40+ cycles and get a negative result shows that this test is actually garbage

May 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com


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sgpbulion 7 hours ago

Cycle testing - running the same test over and over unitl you get the results you want and then stopping.

Believe it or not this is the same foolishness that goes into radiometric dating of how old rocks are. It's why you can take a warm chunk of lava and send it in to the dating lab and get a result of over 25 million years old.

Trust the science folks - resistance is futile

By the way if the test shows negative after 30 cycles - it means that there is not enough virus in your system for it be dangerous and that your body can deal with it on its own. By the time you get to 35 cycles it is amplified so much that it will show any virus fragment in your system - and at such miniscule amounts that the body does not even know its there - and its not a problem. When you get 40 cycles and above the test will have to be positive because there is always some virus fragments in your system. The single fact that they can run +40 cycles and get a negative result shows that this test is actually garbage from the start.

Dr Phuckit 16 hours ago remove link

My own interpretation of Government Data, tells me anything above 25 cycles is fraudulent.

It looks like the CDC has come to their senses, but still bordering towards fraudulent data.

At 30 cycles it's 50/50 chance of being right. But right for what exactly because it still can't detect a virus, can't determine if it was a new infection or an old infection not even active. Above 40+ even a rock will test positive.

What all this has accomplished though, is Corporations now have DNA samples of most of worlds population , and these F'wits that weren't sick couldn't opt-in fast enough. Imagine if these Corporations had said, we want your DNA for our Database, how many would have volunteered ?

These Corporations now have the capability to target specific people with DNA for any evil purpose they might have in the future. Perhaps this was the plan all along, DNA collection.

Dr Phuckit 15 hours ago

The CDC can't stop the flood of lawsuits about to unfold, they are now trying to minimize the damage to it's control and bank account. And the CDC is nothing but an interface between All Pharmaceutical Companies and Government. They have no real power to mandate anything, all they can do is recommend because it's about as Federal as the Federal Reserve.

shakypudding 16 hours ago remove link

The rt-CPR tests were sanctioned per emergency use authorizations (EUA) which means no prior certification of efficacy. This rendered the lab results useless except for propaganda.

The vaccines were also issued per emergency use authorization (EUA) which means no prior certification of efficacy. How and why can this happen? Emergency use authorizations are permitted when alternative treatments are not officially recognized, such as HCQ, Ivermectin and vitamin D.

Had the government sanctioned alternative treatments such as HCQ, Ivermectin and vitamin D millions of drug company profits and government kickbacks would have been forfeited.

Additionally, the opportunity for extending social programs of conditioning and control would have been forgone by your overlords.

InfiniteIntellRules 10 hours ago remove link

WHO sued over fake PCR test...

https://rightsfreedoms.wordpress.com/2021/05/12/covid-fraud-lawyers-medical-experts-start-legal-proceedings-against-w-h-o-and-world-leaders-for-crimes-against-humanity/

[May 22, 2021] Caught Red-Handed- CDC Changes Test Thresholds To Virtually Eliminate New COVID Cases Among Vaxx'd - ZeroHedge

May 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

New policies will artificially deflate "breakthrough infections" in the vaccinated, while the old rules continue to inflate case numbers in the unvaccinated.

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for "Covid19" in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy "vaccines" are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

They made no secret of this, announcing the policy changes on their website in late April/early May, (though naturally without admitting the fairly obvious motivation behind the change).

The trick is in their reporting of what they call "breakthrough infections" – that is people who are fully "vaccinated" against Sars-Cov-2 infection, but get infected anyway.

Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention – to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:

  1. False-positive tests. The unreliable PCR test can be manipulated into reporting a high number of false-positives by altering the cycle threshold (CT value)

  2. Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition of "Covid case", used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a "Covid19 case", even if they never experienced any symptoms .

Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all , and now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated people.

Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected "breakthrough infections".

From the CDC's instructions for state health authorities on handling "possible breakthrough infections" (uploaded to their website in late April):

For cases with a known RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) value, submit only specimens with Ct value ≤28 to CDC for sequencing. (Sequencing is not feasible with higher Ct values.)

Throughout the pandemic, CT values in excess of 35 have been the norm, with labs around the world going into the 40s.

Essentially labs were running as many cycles as necessary to achieve a positive result, despite experts warning that this was pointless ( even Fauci himself said anything over 35 cycles is meaningless ).

But NOW, and only for fully vaccinated people, the CDC will only accept samples achieved from 28 cycles or fewer. That can only be a deliberate decision in order to decrease the number of "breakthrough infections" being officially recorded.

Secondly, asymptomatic or mild infections will no longer be recorded as "covid cases".

That's right. Even if a sample collected at the low CT value of 28 can be sequenced into the virus alleged to cause Covid19, the CDC will no longer be keeping records of breakthrough infections that don't result in hospitalisation or death .

From their website :

As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance. Previous case counts, which were last updated on April 26, 2021, are available for reference only and will not be updated moving forward.

Just like that, being asymptomatic – or having only minor symptoms – will no longer count as a "Covid case" but only if you've been vaccinated.

The CDC has put new policies in place which effectively created a tiered system of diagnosis. Meaning, from now on, unvaccinated people will find it much easier to be diagnosed with Covid19 than vaccinated people.

Consider

Person A has not been vaccinated. They test positive for Covid using a PCR test at 40 cycles and, despite having no symptoms, they are officially a "covid case".

Person B has been vaccinated. They test positive at 28 cycles, and spend six weeks bedridden with a high fever. Because they never went into a hospital and didn't die they are NOT a Covid case.

Person C , who was also vaccinated, did die. After weeks in hospital with a high fever and respiratory problems. Only their positive PCR test was 29 cycles, so they're not officially a Covid case either.

The CDC is demonstrating the beauty of having a "disease" that can appear or disappear depending on how you measure it.

To be clear: If these new policies had been the global approach to "Covid" since December 2019, there would never have been a pandemic at all.

If you apply them only to the vaccinated, but keep the old rules for the unvaccinated, the only possible result can be that the official records show "Covid" is much more prevalent among the latter than the former.

This is a policy designed to continuously inflate one number, and systematically minimise the other.

What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception? play_arrow

ArkansasAngie 7 hours ago remove link

Reminds me of money supply numbers. And inflation numbers. And GDP numbers. And unemployment numbers. Oh ... and votes

JakeIsNotFake 14 hours ago remove link

What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception?

Well, before 3/20, this would have been a FELONY. Each time a lab provided a patient with KNOWINGLY FALSE test results, the lab and the doctor would have been subject to a 16 month term in the state penitentiary. For each instance.

Can you imagine getting a positive, terminal prognosis, committing a well deserved murder, and then not dying?

Oopsie! My bad.

[May 22, 2021] Lysenkoism on the march -- CDC Changes Test Thresholds To Virtually Eliminate New COVID Cases Among Vaxx'd

May 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

New policies will artificially deflate "breakthrough infections" in the vaccinated, while the old rules continue to inflate case numbers in the unvaccinated.

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for "Covid19" in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy "vaccines" are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

They made no secret of this, announcing the policy changes on their website in late April/early May, (though naturally without admitting the fairly obvious motivation behind the change).

The trick is in their reporting of what they call "breakthrough infections" – that is people who are fully "vaccinated" against Sars-Cov-2 infection, but get infected anyway.

Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention – to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:

  1. False-positive tests. The unreliable PCR test can be manipulated into reporting a high number of false-positives by altering the cycle threshold (CT value)

  2. Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition of "Covid case", used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a "Covid19 case", even if they never experienced any symptoms .

Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all , and now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated people.

Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected "breakthrough infections".

From the CDC's instructions for state health authorities on handling "possible breakthrough infections" (uploaded to their website in late April):

For cases with a known RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) value, submit only specimens with Ct value ≤28 to CDC for sequencing. (Sequencing is not feasible with higher Ct values.)

Throughout the pandemic, CT values in excess of 35 have been the norm, with labs around the world going into the 40s.


18 play_arrow

Just a Little Froth in the Market 15 hours ago

They are manipulating the numbers to make it look like only the unvaxxed get infected. That is fraud, and this rogue agency needs to be stopped.

Enraged 1 hour ago remove link

The CDC is not an independent government agency, but is actually a subsidiary of Big Pharma.

The CDC owns patents on at least 57 different vaccines, and profits $4.1 billion per year in vaccination sales.

There are CDC patents applicable to vaccines for Flu, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, HIV, Anthrax, Rabies, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, Group A Strep, Pneumococcal disease, Meningococcal disease, RSV, Gastroenteritis, Japanese encephalitis, SARS, Rift Valley Fever, and chlamydophila pneumoniae.

https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/12/07/robert-kennedy-jr-cdc-is-a-privately-owned-vaccine-company/

yerfej 7 hours ago

People might be starting to get the impression that the federal regime, which owns the media, judiciary, academia, bureaucracy, and big tech, are attempting to manipulate information to increase their power and wealth. The elites have confiscated almost ALL the commoners wealth and now they want the rest of the money and complete and total control. Mao or Stalin would be proud of these fascists.

LetThemEatRand 17 hours ago

Imagine living under the rule of a globalist oligarchy that controls the Press. That.

JakeIsNotFake 14 hours ago remove link

What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception?

Well, before 3/20, this would have been a FELONY. Each time a lab provided a patient with KNOWINGLY FALSE test results, the lab and the doctor would have been subject to a 16 month term in the state penitentiary. For each instance.

Can you imagine getting a positive, terminal prognosis, committing a well deserved murder, and then not dying?

Oopsie! My bad.

gregga777 14 hours ago

Government, and that especially includes the so-called "Scientists" in government service, are Corrupt, Incompetent, Unaccountable and Untrustworthy. The Government's so-called "Scientists," including those funded by Government contracts, are no more trustworthy than politicians.

PeterLong 14 hours ago

Sometimes you have no choice. We had to undergo surgical procedures in a hospital and had to get tested a few days before. Whether they use the same parameters for these type cases as for others I don't know. Perhaps they are reluctant to turn away or delay surgical cases for BS reasons and therefore possibly use more realistic standards , but my opinion of the entire medical industry has become so low that I could believe anything. I still wonder about hospital and other medical practices finances concenring this scam. Have they continued to profit somehow despite being shut down in some ways?

Beebee 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link

Same here, Peter. Hubby's mother broke her elbow last year. And we had to bring her to tests to do surgery. She was negative. But, afterwards, suddenly, developed lymphoma. Now, I wonder about these tests! The cancer chemo was delayed due to all this stuff. She had so many Covid tests, all negative, and just now completed the chemo rounds. It's not necessary and they do make a profit. She is the only reason we stay here, otherwise we would moved from NY. She's a mess, and I resent the fact the hold-ups are due to testing.

fewer 36 minutes ago

Hospitals made tons of money on this. Uncle Sugar pays so much, and the administrators always slice & dice the budget/reports so they seem on the edge of bankruptcy no matter what. Naturally all of this is "debunked" by (((the usual sources))).

Here's one fact that the "debunkers" deliberately ignore: the feds pay for all the treatment of uninsured C19 patients... including illegals . Normally if an illegal comes to the ED and needs to be admitted, the hospital can't refuse to do that and instead has to eat the cost (well, they pass the cost on to hardworking, insurance having people like you and me, but bear with me).

If they admit the person for a reason *other* than C19, then the hospital still eats the cost. Now, tell me, what's the incentive here if an illegal comes in with a bunch of comorbidities and needs admission to manage those? What should be recorded as the admitting diagnosis/problem if they can get swabbed for a high Ct PCR test (a meaningless positive result)?

lasvegaspersona 7 hours ago

After more than 50 years in medicine, I tell friends and family, 'stay away from us if you can'. Modern medicine is a rats nest of false positive testing and chasing trivial abnormalities on imaging studies.

The sad part is patients feel relieved when they are told 'nothing was finally found'....this after great expense of time and money.

spiff 54 minutes ago

Caught Red-Handed

Yes, define "Caught". I have a feeling life will continue without consequences for the perpetrator of this fraud, or even your average person knowing about it.

_triplesix_ 14 hours ago

CDC, FBI, CIA, DHS, NIH, EPA, DOE...shall I go on?

Drater 6 hours ago

FAA, TSA, SEC, FCC, NHTSA, DOJ

JakeIsNotFake 13 hours ago

CDC is .gov. As an NGO, (funded by 99% .gov and 1% phony donations), the CDC can legally, (not honestly), claim they are just an advisory body.

While noteing the distinction, please pay attention to the language: Mask mandate, guidelines, advisories are NOT laws. Just like travel advisories, protocols, and best practice. These are all weasel words. And totally unenforceable.

snatchpounder PREMIUM 9 hours ago

Everything is rigged, this plandemic, elections, markets you name it because when there's currency to be made you'll always have someone more than willing to do it. Big pharma is making a killing literally in this case and tax slaves paid for the gene therapy shots creation. And all the rubes who took the shot will pay much more than just currency for their naivety.

archipusz 11 hours ago

We can speculate all we want about what the agenda is of the CDC.

But what we know is that it has nothing to do with the truth or our health.

Enraged 1 hour ago remove link

The CDC is not an independent government agency, but is actually a subsidiary of Big Pharma.

The CDC owns patents on at least 57 different vaccines, and profits $4.1 billion per year in vaccination sales.

There are CDC patents applicable to vaccines for Flu, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, HIV, Anthrax, Rabies, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, Group A Strep, Pneumococcal disease, Meningococcal disease, RSV, Gastroenteritis, Japanese encephalitis, SARS, Rift Valley Fever, and chlamydophila pneumoniae.

https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/12/07/robert-kennedy-jr-cdc-is-a-privately-owned-vaccine-company/

paranoid.dragon 8 hours ago

amazing they do not even try to hide the deception.

but reporting on such deception will have one labeled a "conspiracy theorist", and the FBI classifies "conspiracy theorists" as "domestic terrorists".

That's right, re-stating publicly available comments and policies of government agencies and officials will have you branded as a domestic terrorist.

And the "intellectuals" in the media, academia, and "think-tanks" have abandoned all logic and common sense to serve their masters in the government and big pharma.

history will not forget.

smacker 12 hours ago

Very good article which rightly exposes the CDC and all those around it for being utterly corrupt and are perpetrating a fake pandemic with sinister objectives.

crazzziecanuck 11 hours ago

You realize, it's Putin's fault. Putin can rig a presidential election, it's child's play for him to manipulate the CDC to do his evil bidding.

Everything is Putin's fault: Trump, COVID, 737 Max crashes, slavery, crucifixion of Christ, the end of the dinosaurs, and so on.

archipusz 13 hours ago

Notice how Rand Paul will argue with Fauci about policy over when we should wear a mask, BUT WILL NOT DARE ASK THEM WHY THEY HAVE, AND ARE, COMMITTING CRIMINAL FRAUD WITH THE PCR TESTING?

Demystified 2 hours ago

It's a rigged game, a scam. These people are so dishonest, and intent on falsifying Covid test results by applying different standards for vaccinated and unvaccinated people? They are perpetuating a fraud on the people.

You have to be brain dead to not see what they are doing.

Robert De Zero 3 hours ago remove link

This is so evil. Medicalized dictatorship, supported by propaganda media, is here.

Alien 851 4 hours ago

This is NEWS??? Are you kidding?

It was March 2020 when they changed the rules on reporting of Covid deaths to run the count as high as possible. It is still used in fear headlines today! How about wildly fluctuation "new cases" that seem to totally respect state borders...?

For God's sake, wake the hell up!!!!

In March, the CDC redefined what is to be reported by Medical Examiners in the US. One of them gave examples of Covid Death cases reporting criteria:

"The case definition is very simplistic," Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois Department of Public Health, explains. "It means, at the time of death, it was a COVID positive diagnosis. That means, that if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means, technically even if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death."

[May 18, 2021] Sweden Records More Than 30K Cases Of Side Effects Tied To COVID Jabs - ZeroHedge

May 18, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Sweden presently offers 3 different COVID-19 jabs: Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, with the latter being the most widely available (while other European states like Germany have sought to offer substitutes to younger patients, who are more vulnerable to dangerous cerebral blood clots, which are a rare - but not unheard of - side effect).

The number of suspected adverse reactions from the two shots seems relatively small when compared to the 19,961 reports linked to AstraZeneca's Vaxzevria, while the AstraZeneca shot only accounts for about 26% of the roughly 2.7MM vaccines that have been administered so far in Sweden, but makes up around 63% of the side effects reports.

Ebba Hallberg, an official with the Medical Products Agency, told Swedish media that it was unusual to receive so many reports of side effects. She added that the tally was likely higher because of public focus on the new vaccines.To head off complaints that many of the incidences of side effects were minor, she said healthcare providers are likely only reporting the more "serious" side effects.

One Swedish media outlet said the number of complaints filed in just a few months exceeded the number typically filed over 4 years, which underscores the public anxieties about the COVID vaccines.

In March, Sweden was one of several nations to temporarily suspend the use of the AstraZeneca jab, following reports of abnormal blood clotting in recipients. AstraZeneca, as well as the European Medicines Agency, have insisted that the vaccine is safe after it came under scrutiny.

4 hours ago remove link

I honestly don't understand how anyone could inject this toxic shot into someone's arm, see with their own eyes someone having a severe adverse reaction, and then continue to get back to work injecting more people. What the hell is wrong with these people? play_arrow 51 play_arrow 2


Friedrich not Salma 4 hours ago

It's the teevee. I asked a 75 year old man today "Do you think the nightly news would ever lie to you?" His answer: "No, I would certainly hope not, or at least not intentionally."

I walked him through how the news is full of Pharma ads and how there was no chance Pharma would put up with a pharma investigative segment. He at least gave it some thought. His son wouldn't budge on the idea that the teevee would ever lie.

Billy the Poet 4 hours ago

Ask them to show you the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then point out that both the TV and the government lie.

zvzzt 2 hours ago

Even worse (IMHO), if they make a mistake, they'll turn and twist in every way to avoid any blame, making things worse along the way. Promote the 'fvcker-ups" so they don't rock any boats.

Zero skin in the game, zero accountability ("you can always vote them away if you dont like them", right.... ) and thus zero credibility.

And than the endless comment "It's all part of the political game/theatre"... Destroying lives, destroying value, killing people accross the globe and depressing people for no other reason than a "game"? Lowest form of life. MSM is just a willing toothless prostitute.

Pie rre 56 minutes ago (Edited)

I used to search the Web for anecdotal experiences with meds my doctor advises me to take. I Used to be successful but not any longer so I imagine the pharm industry now has bots that search for and bury them.

PrivetHedge 3 hours ago

Nuremberg Code: Informed Consent.

Deliberate misinformation and witholding of valid information = people doom themselves.
There are laws, as you know. Many laws and safeguards.

But we are way beyond laws and democracy now, this is a sustained onslaught: a slaughter of the naive and careless. Leaving a core population who know exactly what they did: and who did it. This is probably the biggest flaw in their plan. Plenty of powerful people who don't want this plan.

As more and more see it, we could see some pushback. Already Gates is becoming a liability for Technocracy, some in the Trilateral Commision will want him gone. Same with Fauci, the poison dwarf's credibility is shot and they need a new puppet.

theWHTMANN 4 hours ago

I heard today that the number of vax deaths in the US is 4,191 - more than the combined vax deaths for all vaccinations in 20 years. In 1976, 25 people died of swine flu vax and they stopped it in its tracks. Hmmm.

aspnaz again 4 hours ago

FDA worked for the people in the 70s, it now rubber stamps for corporations trying to rip you off for evermore useless and more dangerous drugs.

Billy the Poet 3 hours ago

From the 5/7/2021 release of VAERS data:

Found 4,057 cases where Vaccine is COVID19 and Patient Died

https://medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?TABLE=ON&GROUP1=AGE&EVENTS=ON&VAX=COVID19&DIED=Yes

triedandtried 1 hour ago remove link

Apparently side-effect reports make it to VAERS only if the adverse reaction or death occurs within 1-2 days of the administration of the vaccine. So if someone's skin falls off on day 3, too bad, not counted .

PrivetHedge 3 hours ago remove link

Yes, CDC is hiding the numbers, most deaths we see are from January.
Now they are coming for our CHILDREN .

https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/the-cdcs-crimes-against-humanity-for-allowing-12-to-15-year-olds-to-be-injected-with-covid-bioweapon-shots/

[May 15, 2021] Colorado vaccination site shuts down early after 11 people have 'expected' adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccine, officia

May 15, 2021 | www.cnn.com

(CNN) A Colorado mass vaccination site paused operations this week after 11 people experienced adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccine . More than 1,700 people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Wednesday at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, a soccer stadium where the state of Colorado and health care provider Centura Health operate a mass vaccination site . The 11 people reported feeling nauseous and dizzy after they were vaccinated, Colorado health officials said. Two of the patients were transported to a hospital "out of an abundance of caution," while the other nine were given juice and water to recover, according to a statement from the Colorado State Joint Information Center. Don&#39;t freak out if you get these side effects from a Covid-19 vaccine. They can actually be a good sign Don't freak out if you get these side effects from a Covid-19 vaccine. They can actually be a good sign Officials didn't elaborate on the two hospital patients' conditions. "The state has no reason to believe that people who were vaccinated today at Dick's Sporting Goods Park should be concerned," state health officials said. The site closed early on Wednesday afternoon, before another 640 people were scheduled to receive their vaccine. Their appointments have been rescheduled to Sunday, Centura Health said. Enter your email to subscribe to the CNN Five Things Newsletter. "close Email Capture Inline Zone" CNN Five Things logo Do you want the news summarized each morning? We've got you. Sign Me Up By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy. Despite the hospital transport, the side effects the 11 patients reported were "consistent with what can be expected" from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Covid-19 Incident Commander Scott Bookman said in a statement. "We know it can be alarming to hear about people getting transported to the hospital, and we want to assure Coloradoans that the CDC and public health are closely monitoring all the authorized vaccines continually," Bookman said. "Based on everything we know, it remains true that the best vaccine to get is the one you can get the soonest." Severe side effects from Covid-19 vaccines are rare It's relatively common to experience side effects from any of the three vaccines available in the US -- about 10% to 15% of volunteers in vaccine trials developed "quite noticeable side effects," former Operation Warp Speed Chief Scientific Adviser Moncef Slaoui said late last year. The most common side effects are arm soreness, fatigue, body aches and, in some cases, a low-grade fever. Nausea, like the 11 patients in Colorado experienced, headaches and swelling at the injection site may occur, too, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Severe side effects, like an allergic reaction, are far less common, occurring around every two to five per million people, Baylor College of Medicine dean Dr. Peter Hotez told CNN earlier this month . Johnson & Johnson vaccine is effective Health officials continue to combat the stigma that Johnson & Johnson is a lesser vaccine than the Moderna and Pfizer two-shot offerings, which a recent CDC study found are 90% effective at preventing Covid-19. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine was found to be 66% effective in preventing moderate to severe illness. It's difficult to draw comparisons between Johnson & Johnson and the two-shot alternatives, though, because the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was studied after highly contagious variants of coronavirus were discovered, said Dr. Leana Wen , a CNN medical analyst. The vaccine was found to be effective in preventing severe disease in South Africa, where a contagious variant became dominant, and no patients who received the vaccine were hospitalized or died. "Having a vaccine that is clearly effective against this type of mutation is a distinct advantage," she told CNN in March.

CNN's Holly Yan and Katia Hetter contributed to this report.

[May 13, 2021] Blood Expert Says He Found Why Some Covid-19 Vaccines Trigger Rare Clots - WSJ

May 13, 2021 | www.wsj.com

In Germany, one researcher thinks he has found what is triggering the clots. Andreas Greinacher, a blood expert, and his team at the University of Greifswald believe so-called viral vector vaccines -- which use modified harmless cold viruses, known as adenoviruses, to convey genetic material into vaccine recipients to fight the coronavirus -- could cause an autoimmune response that leads to blood clots. According to Prof. Greinacher, that reaction could be tied to stray proteins and a preservative he has found in the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Prof. Greinacher and his team has just begun examining Johnson & Johnson's vaccine but has identified more than 1,000 proteins in AstraZeneca's vaccine derived from human cells, as well as a preservative known as ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, or EDTA. Their hypothesis is that EDTA, which is common to drugs and other products, helps those proteins stray into the bloodstream, where they bind to a blood component called platelet factor 4, or PF4, forming complexes that activate the production of antibodies.

The inflammation caused by the vaccines, combined with the PF4 complexes, could trick the immune system into believing the body had been infected by bacteria, triggering an archaic defense mechanism that then runs out of control and causes clotting and bleeding.

Prof. Andreas Greinacher is looking at the possible cause of an autoimmune response that leads to blood clots. PHOTO: MANUELA JANKE/UMG

Prof. Greinacher has compared the activation of the dormant response -- which has been supplanted in the evolution of the human immune system, but still lurks in its foundations -- to "awakening a sleeping dragon."

Prof. John Kelton of McMaster University in Canada, whose outfit runs Canada's reference lab for testing patients with blood-clotting symptoms after vaccination, said the lab replicated some of Prof. Greinacher's research and confirmed his findings.

... ... ...

One reason vaccine-induced clotting might not have been reported in the past is because shots using viral vector technology haven't been administered at scale. The Russian vaccine Sputnik V and the shot by CanSino Biologics from China use the same technology as AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, but haven't been linked to the condition so far.

The only similar shot widely administered before the pandemic is one against Ebola by Johnson & Johnson, which was given to at least 60,000 people as of last July.

Clotting occurs between one in 28,000 and one in 100,000, according to European data -- extremely rare amid the hundreds of millions of doses administered so far, yet higher than one in 150,000 previously assumed by some medical authorities, Prof. Greinacher said. Most of the hundreds of people who have been diagnosed recover, but between a fifth and a third have died, and others could suffer permanent consequences.

Data from U.S. and European regulators so far suggest young women are primarily affected by the condition. But several scientists, including Sabine Eichinger, a senior Austrian hematologist who treated one of the first-known patients, have said the correlation could reflect that medical workers and teachers were among the first to get the vaccines in Europe, and the majority of them are younger women .

Anton Pottegård, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark, co-wrote a study of more than 280,000 people in Denmark and Norway who received the AstraZeneca vaccine. The study, which was published in the British Medical Journal on May 5, found the incidence of rare but severe blood clots among vaccine recipients was 2.5 in 100,000.

[May 12, 2021] Germany introduces surveillance of "Covid deniers" and "anti-Vaxxers

May 12, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Serg , May 12 2021 17:37 utc | 14

Germany introduces surveillance of "Covid deniers" and "anti-Vaxxers" https://politnew.com/world/4874-germany-introduces-surveillance-of-covid-deniers-and-anti-vaxxers.html

[May 11, 2021] India Struggles to Keep Pace With Coronavirus Variants

For such a large country it is reasonable to expect the new mutations will emerge or already emerged: " India is sequencing far less than 1% of daily positive samples. An early goal was to aim for 5% of cases, but that became unrealistic once cases ballooned. The world leader, the U.K., has been sequencing up to 10% of samples at points in the pandemic."
May 11, 2021 | www.wsj.com

... the B.1.617 variant is outpacing other variants, including the variant first identified in the U.K.

... B.1.617 is the fourth to be classified by the WHO as a variant of concern. The U.N. agency has also given the same designation to the B.1.1.7 variant, the B.1.35 variant found in South Africa and the P.1 variant discovered by researchers in Brazil.

Recent research on the B.1.617 variant -- not yet peer-reviewed and published -- has shown that it broke through to infect fully vaccinated staff at a hospital in New Delhi, though none of them got seriously ill. A separate paper, also available before publication, found that the variant showed evasion against a drug cocktail often used on Covid-19 patients and that it had better entry into some cell lines, mainly in the lungs and gut. The paper also found the variant "evaded antibodies induced by infection or vaccination, although with moderate efficiency."

[May 10, 2021] Why is healthy 24-year-old Jennifer Gates jumping the line to get the vaccination

Notable quotes:
"... Why is healthy 24-year-old Jennifer Gates jumping the line to get the vaccination when older at-risk Americans can't get an appointment? You may not have inherited your father's genius as you claim, but you certainly have his sense of entitlement. ..."
May 10, 2021 | twitter.com

BeaglesForTrump @nice1959 · Feb 14

Why is healthy 24-year-old Jennifer Gates jumping the line to get the vaccination when older at-risk Americans can't get an appointment? You may not have inherited your father's genius as you claim, but you certainly have his sense of entitlement.

Show this thread Daniel Kotzin @danielkotzin · 7h

Why do so many people who are fully vaccinated care whether I have been vaccinated or not? They seem to think that vaccines only "work" if everyone is vaccinated.

Roar Still Not Restored @DETROlTLions313 · 22h

I am getting vax shamed by my family for not getting the vaccine yet, especially from my brother who is a surgeon. What's wrong with waiting until there is more data if you're young and healthy with no underlying conditions?

[May 09, 2021] How a Researcher 'Clinging To the Fringes of Academia' Helped Develop a Covid-19 Vaccine

May 09, 2021 | science.slashdot.org

(nytimes.com) 64 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 11, 2021 @03:34PM from the big-thank-you dept. Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: The New York Times tells the story of Hungarian-born Dr. Kariko, whose father was a butcher and who growing up had never met a scientist â€" but knew they wanted to be one . Despite earning a Ph.D. at Hungary's University of Szeged and working as a postdoctoral fellow at its Biological Research Center, Kariko never found a permanent position after moving to the U.S., "instead clinging to the fringes of academia."

Now 66 years old, Dr. Kariko is suddenly being hailed as "one of the heroes of Covid-19 vaccine development," after spending an entire career focused on mRNA, "convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines."
From the article: For many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year... She needed grants to pursue ideas that seemed wild and fanciful. She did not get them, even as more mundane research was rewarded. "When your idea is against the conventional wisdom that makes sense to the star chamber, it is very hard to break out," said Dr. David Langer, a neurosurgeon who has worked with Dr. Kariko... Kariko's husband, Bela Francia, manager of an apartment complex, once calculated that her endless workdays meant she was earning about a dollar an hour.
The Times also describes a formative experience in 1989 with cardiologist Elliot Barnathan: One fateful day, the two scientists hovered over a dot-matrix printer in a narrow room at the end of a long hall. A gamma counter, needed to track the radioactive molecule, was attached to a printer. It began to spew data.

Their detector had found new proteins produced by cells that were never supposed to make them â€" suggesting that mRNA could be used to direct any cell to make any protein, at will.

"I felt like a god," Dr. Kariko recalled.
Yet Kariko was eventually left without a lab or funds for research, until a chance meeting at a photocopying machine led to a partnership with Dr. Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania: "We both started writing grants," Dr. Weissman said. "We didn't get most of them. People were not interested in mRNA. The people who reviewed the grants said mRNA will not be a good therapeutic, so don't bother.'" Leading scientific journals rejected their work. When the research finally was published , in Immunity , it got little attention... "We talked to pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists. No one cared," Dr. Weissman said. "We were screaming a lot, but no one would listen."

Eventually, though, two biotech companies took notice of the work: Moderna, in the United States, and BioNTech, in Germany. Pfizer partnered with BioNTech, and the two now help fund Dr. Weissman's lab.

[May 09, 2021] Teens Fully Protected By Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine, Company Says

The question is why the vaccine needed for teen, not if they are protected or not. If not natural immunity better then immunity from Pfizer vaccine and teenagers not in danger of getting virus pneumonia in any case -- the main rational for the development of Pfizer vaccine.
May 09, 2021 | science.slashdot.org

(arstechnica.com) 91 Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @06:40PM from the vaccinated-adolescents dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:

Adolescents ages 12 to 15 were completely protected from symptomatic COVID-19 after being vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine in a small Phase III clinical trial, Pfizer reported in a press release Wednesday.

The company also said that the vaccine was well-tolerated in the age group, spurring only the standard side effects seen in people ages 16 to 25. The vaccine is already authorized for use in people age 16 and over.

The vaccine appeared more effective at spurring defensive immune responses in adolescents ages 12 to 15 than in the 16- to 25-year-old group, producing even higher levels of antibodies that were able to neutralize SARS-CoV-2. In a measure of neutralizing antibodies, vaccinated youths in the new trial had geometric mean titers (GMTs) of 1,239.5, compared with the GMTs of 705.1 previously seen in those ages 16 to 25, Pfizer noted.

The trial involved 2,260 adolescents ages 12 to 15, of which 1,131 were vaccinated and 1,129 received a placebo.

There were 18 cases of symptomatic COVID-19 in the trial, all of which were in the placebo group.

In today's press release, the company trumpeted that the vaccine demonstrated "100 percent efficacy." The trial was not primarily designed to assess efficacy, however. It was primarily assessing relative immune responses, so it will require more data to fully evaluate efficacy.

Additionally, Pfizer and BioNTech have only released top-line trial results, not the full data from the trial, which has not been peer-reviewed.

[May 09, 2021] Scientist Behind COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Says Her Team's Next Target Is Cancer

May 09, 2021 | science.slashdot.org

(www.cbc.ca The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can rest assured the shots are safe, and that the technology behind it will soon be used to fight another global scourge -- cancer . Ozlem Tureci, who founded the German company BioNTech with her husband, Ugur Sahin, was working on a way to harness the body's immune system to tackle tumors when they learned last year of an unknown virus infecting people in China. Over breakfast, the couple decided to apply the technology they'd been researching for two decades to the new threat.

Britain authorized BioNTech's mRNA vaccine for use in December, followed a week later by Canada. Dozens of other countries, including the U.S., have followed suit and tens of millions of people worldwide have since received the shot developed together with U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. [...] As BioNTech's profile has grown during the pandemic, so has its value, adding much-needed funds the company will be able to use to pursue its original goal of developing a new tool against cancer. The vaccine made by BioNTech-Pfizer and U.S. rival Moderna uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, to carry instructions into the human body for making proteins that prime it to attack a specific virus. The same principle can be applied to get the immune system to take on tumors.

"We have several different cancer vaccines based on mRNA," said Tureci. Asked when such a therapy might be available, Tureci said "that's very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we expect that within only a couple of years, we will also have our vaccines [against] cancer at a place where we can offer them to people." For now, Tureci and Sahin are trying to ensure the vaccines governments have ordered are delivered and that the shots respond effectively to any new mutation in the virus.

[May 09, 2021] Variant From the UK Likely Accounts for Up To 30% of Covid Infections in US, Fauci Says

May 09, 2021 | science.slashdot.org

(cnbc.com) 131 Posted by msmash on Friday March 19, 2021 @03:25PM from the closer-look dept.

The highly contagious variant first identified in the U.K. likely accounts for up to 30% of Covid-19 infections in the United States , White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday. From a report:

The variant, called B.1.1.7, has also been reported in at least 94 countries and detected in 50 jurisdictions in the U.S., Fauci said during a White House news briefing on the pandemic, adding that the numbers are likely growing. The U.K. first identified the B.1.1.7 strain, which appears to spread more easily and quickly than other variants, last fall. It has since spread across the world, including the U.S., Fauci said. U.S. researchers have identified 5,567 cases through genetic sequencing as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. health officials say the variant could become the dominant strain in the U.S. by the end of this month or in early April. New variants are especially a concern for public health officials as they could become more resistant to antibody treatments and vaccines. Top health officials, including Fauci, have urged Americans to get vaccinated as quickly as possible, saying the virus can't mutate if it can't infect hosts and replicate.

[May 09, 2021] Florida Governor Issues Executive Order Prohibiting COVID-19 Vaccine Passports

Apr 02, 2021 | science.slashdot.org

(wtxl.com) 368 Posted by BeauHD on Friday April 02, 2021 @05:20PM from the freedom-vs-safety dept. New submitter v1 writes:

"Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order Friday forbidding local governments and businesses from requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccine ," reports WTXL-TV. In addition to local businesses and governments, this move is certain to rub the restarting cruise ship businesses the wrong way. Let the lawsuits begin!

The executive order reads, in part: "No Florida government entity, or its subdivisions, agents, or assigns, shall be permitted to issue vaccine passports, vaccine passes, or other standardized documentation for the purpose of certifying an individual's COVID-19 vaccination status to a third party, or otherwise publish or share any individual's COVID-19 vaccination record or similar health information."

The full executive order can be found here (PDF)

[May 09, 2021] Reaching 'Herd Immunity' Is Unlikely in the US, Experts Now Believe

May 09, 2021 | science.slashdot.org

(nytimes.com) 505 Posted by msmash on Monday May 03, 2021 @12:07PM from the closer-look dept. Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy. From a report :

Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term "herd immunity" came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives. Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable -- at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever. Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon. Continued immunizations, especially for people at highest risk because of age, exposure or health status, will be crucial to limiting the severity of outbreaks, if not their frequency, experts believe. "The virus is unlikely to go away," said Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

"But we want to do all we can to check that it's likely to become a mild infection." The shift in outlook presents a new challenge for public health authorities. The drive for herd immunity -- by the summer, some experts once thought possible -- captured the imagination of large segments of the public. To say the goal will not be attained adds another "why bother" to the list of reasons that vaccine skeptics use to avoid being inoculated.

Yet vaccinations remain the key to transforming the virus into a controllable threat, experts said. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration's top adviser on Covid-19, acknowledged the shift in experts' thinking. "People were getting confused and thinking you're never going to get the infections down until you reach this mystical level of herd immunity, whatever that number is," he said.

[May 09, 2021] Economists Disagree Over How Much Covid-19 'Herd Immunity' Needed for Recovery

There is no or very little (depending of type of vaccine) immunity from South African mutation in the USA for people who already were vaccinated.
From comments: "Herd Immunity or Heard on the Street immunity? COVID was way over-played in order to get Biden in the WH. Now the shoes on the other foot and the Herd Concept is eroding pretty darn fast"... "Here in the US, it's undeniable that the quantity of covid cases were intentionally over counted -- likely for political reasons."
"If the re-infection rate is near zero and those who are the most vulnerable are 95% inoculated why should the remaining unvaccinated (mostly youth) be needed to reach herd immunity? Their reaction to COVID-19 is either undetectable or no worse than a mild cold. Some people, journalists, just do not want to think and/or act logically."
Notable quotes:
"... For example, there is no herd immunity from South African mutation in the USA for those who were immunized with the Moderna vaccine and Johnson and Johnson vaccine ..."
"... And more mutations will follow this and the next year. So the concept of "herd immunity" when applied to coronaviruses looks to me fuzzy; in this sense this is the goal that the nation probably can't achieve. Remember the "flattering of the curve" fiasco in NYC. Quarantine measures were completely decimated by Floyd-gate riots and authorities were forced to swallow the bitter pill. Measures they advocated proved to be useless and economically damaging. ..."
"... Coronaviruses like C19 are a moving target. Moreover, there are large swats of the US population that have weakened immune system (including some seniors) who that does not respond to vaccination, creating no protection. In large cities like NYC they will serve as the reservoir of virus mutations vaccination, or no vaccination. ..."
"... We have Fauci making unfounded statements that confuse everyone and now economists are going to tell us when herd immunity will become operative. Can't do any worse than the 'media docs'. ..."
May 09, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Some view herd immunity -- the point at which a critical mass of a population become immune to a disease-causing virus or bacteria -- as a key factor in determining when Covid-19 will be conquered and economies will return to normal. Until herd immunity is reached, some say, governments will restrict activities to prevent the disease's spread, resulting in fewer goods and services being produced and consumed.

Other economists say businesses can reopen and economic activity can rebound without full herd immunity, and likely will.

Part of the challenge for economists is that it is hard to know exactly when a given place will achieve herd immunity, if ever. For Covid-19 , epidemiologists generally believe it will require having at least 60% to 80% of a population develop antibodies, curbing the virus's ability to spread.

... ... ...

Economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have tried to incorporate immunity estimates into their forecasts by looking at daily vaccination progress around the world and take account of estimates of how many people have already been infected.

According to their calculations, 60% of the population in the U.S. and U.K. are already immune to Covid-19; the biggest economies of Europe will get there by August.

Serg Bezrukov

I agree with Umesh Patil.

For example, there is no herd immunity from South African mutation in the USA for those who were immunized with the Moderna vaccine and Johnson and Johnson vaccine .

And more mutations will follow this and the next year. So the concept of "herd immunity" when applied to coronaviruses looks to me fuzzy; in this sense this is the goal that the nation probably can't achieve. Remember the "flattering of the curve" fiasco in NYC. Quarantine measures were completely decimated by Floyd-gate riots and authorities were forced to swallow the bitter pill. Measures they advocated proved to be useless and economically damaging.

Coronaviruses like C19 are a moving target. Moreover, there are large swats of the US population that have weakened immune system (including some seniors) who that does not respond to vaccination, creating no protection. In large cities like NYC they will serve as the reservoir of virus mutations vaccination, or no vaccination.

Rick Schaler SUBSCRIBER 3 hours ago

We have Fauci making unfounded statements that confuse everyone and now economists are going to tell us when herd immunity will become operative. Can't do any worse than the 'media docs'.

Umesh Patil

SUBSCRIBER

[May 09, 2021] DOES COVID-19 REALLY CAUSE ARDS?

May 09, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

dltravers , Apr 11 2020 1:18 utc | 100

Another doctor comes forward...
FROM NYC ICU: DOES COVID-19 REALLY CAUSE ARDS??!!

I thought it might be some guy making a fake video but I guess not...
Ventilator settings wrong

[May 07, 2021] Vaccines offer little protection to elderly: an unvaccinated health-care worker set off an outbreak in a mostly vaccinated Kentucky nursing home

May 07, 2021 | www.theatlantic.com

In April, the CDC reported that an unvaccinated health-care worker set off an outbreak in a mostly vaccinated Kentucky nursing home.

Several vaccinated seniors got sick and one vaccinated resident died. *

To be absolutely clear: The vaccines worked to protect most residents. But no vaccine is perfect, and the COVID-19 vaccines won't stop all infections , especially for some people with weak immune systems.

[May 07, 2021] Democrats plan to make it suck more to not be vaccinated.

May 07, 2021 | www.theatlantic.com

Governments and companies may find that soft bribery is the best way to get the no-vaxxers to the clinics. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, for example, has linked her state reopening policies to progress in shots, letting restaurants and bars increase their occupancy once 60 percent of the state has been vaccinated, and promising to lift mask orders when 70 percent of Michiganders have received both doses.

... the cultural backlash against domestic restrictions could be prodigious. If blue-state governors and sports stadiums deny economic activities to the unvaccinated while red-state stadiums allow anybody to sit at a bar or in the bleachers, it will deepen the culture-war tensions between scolding liberals and accommodating conservatives in a way that might not be good for Democrats politically, even if they have the upper hand in the public-health argument.

[May 06, 2021] Aldous Huxley Foresaw Our Despots - Fauci, Gates, The Vaccine Crusaders

This is starting to look really like staging of "Brave new world..." Today's society is closer to Huxley's "Brave New World" than to Orwell's "1984". But there are clear elements of both. If you will, the worst of both worlds has come true today.
May 06, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Patricia McCarthy via AmericanThinker.com,

In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four , Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931), who was then living in California, wrote to Orwell. Huxley had briefly taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.

Huxley generally praises Orwell's novel, which to many seemed very similar to Brave New World in its dystopian view of a possible future. Huxley politely voices his opinion that his own version of what might come to pass would be truer than Orwell's. Huxley observed that the philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is sadism, whereas his own version is more likely, that controlling an ignorant and unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less wasteful by other means. Huxley's masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell's with sadism and fear.

The most powerful quote In Huxley's letter to Orwell is this:

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.


Aldous Huxley.

Could Huxley have more prescient? What do we see around us?

Masses of people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal. The majority of advertisements that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs, some of them miraculous but most of them unnecessary. Then comes COVID, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China. The powers that be tragically deferred to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping for just such an opportunity. Suddenly, there was an opportunity to test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty years. They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still highly experimental. These jabs are not really vaccines at all, but a form of gene therapy . There are potential disastrous consequences down the road. Government experiments on the public are nothing new .

Since there have been no actual, long-term trials, no one who contributed to this massive drug experiment knows what the long-term consequences might be. There have been countless adverse injuries and deaths already for which the government-funded vaccine producers will suffer no liability. With each passing day, new side-effects have begun to appear: blood clots, seizures, heart failure.

As new adverse reactions become known despite the censorship employed by most media outlets, the more the Biden administration is pushing the vaccine, urging private corporations to make it mandatory for all employees. Colleges are making them mandatory for all students returning to campus.

The leftmedia are advocating the "shunning" of the unvaccinated. The self-appointed virtue-signaling Democrats are furious at anyone and everyone who declines the jab. Why? If they are protected, why do they care? That is the question. Same goes for the ridiculous mask requirements . They protect no one but for those in operating rooms with their insides exposed, yet even the vaccinated are supposed to wear them!

Months ago, herd immunity was near. Now Fauci and the CDC say it will never be achieved? Now the Pfizer shot will necessitate yearly booster shots. Pfizer expects to make $21B this year from its COVID vaccine! Anyone who thinks this isn't about money is a fool. It is all about money, which is why Fauci, Gates, et al. were so determined to convince the public that HCQ and ivermectin, both of which are effective, prophylactically and as treatment, were not only useless, but dangerous. Both of those drugs are tried, true, and inexpensive. Many of those thousands of N.Y. nursing home fatalities might have been prevented with the use of one or both of those drugs. Those deaths are on the hands of Cuomo and his like-minded tyrants drunk on power.

Months ago, Fauci, et al. agreed that children were at little or no risk of getting COVID, of transmitting it, least of all dying from it. Now Fauci is demanding that all teens be vaccinated by the end of the year! Why? They are no more in danger of contracting it now than they were a year ago. Why are parents around this country not standing up to prevent their kids from being guinea pigs in this monstrous medical experiment? And now they are " experimenting " on infants. Needless to say, some have died. There is no reason on Earth for teens, children, and infants to be vaccinated. Not one.

Huxley also wrote this:

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' -- this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats ."

- Crome Yellow

Perhaps this explains the left's hysterical impulse to force these untested shots on those of us who have made the decision to go without it. If they've decided that it is the thing to do, then all of us must submit to their whims. If we decide otherwise, it gives them the righteous right to smear all of us whom they already deplore.

As C.J. Hopkins has written , the left means to criminalize dissent. Those of us who are vaccine-resistant are soon to be outcasts, deprived of jobs and entry into everyday businesses. This kind of discrimination should remind everyone of ...oh, Germany three quarters of a century ago. Huxley also wrote, "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." That is precisely what the left is up to, what BLM is planning, what Critical Race Theory is all about.

Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, said these new vaccines are "hacking the software of life." Vaccine-promoters claim he never said this, but he did. Bill Gates called the vaccines " an operating system " to the horror of those promoting it, a Kinsley gaffe. Whether it is or isn't hardly matters at this point, but these statements by those behind the vaccines are a clue to what they have in mind.

There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears , so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.

This is exactly what the left is working so hard to effect: a pharmacologically compromised population happy to be taken care of by a massive state machine. And while millions of people around the world have surrendered to the vaccine and mask hysteria, millions more, about 1.3 billion, want no part of this government vaccine mania.

In his letter to Orwell, Huxley ended with the quote cited above and again here because it is so profound:

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

Huxley nailed the left more than seventy years ago, perhaps because leftists have never changed throughout the ages. 61,497 173


Fat Beaver 14 hours ago (Edited)

If i am to be treated as an outcast or an undesirable because i refuse the vax, i will immediately become someone that has zero reverence for the law, and i can only imagine 10's of millions will be right there with me.

strych10 14 hours ago

Welcome to the club.

We have coffee in the corner and occasional meetings at various bars.

Dr. Chihuahua-González 13 hours ago

I'm a doctor, you could contact me anytime and receive your injection.

Fat Beaver 13 hours ago (Edited)

I've gotta feeling the normie world you think you live in is about to change drastically for the worse...

sparky139 PREMIUM 10 hours ago

You mean you'll sign papers that you injected us *wink *wink? And toss it away?

bothneither 2 hours ago

Oh geez how uncommon, another useless doctor with no Scruples who sold out to big Pharma. Please have my Gates sponsored secret sauce.

Unknown 6 hours ago (Edited)

Both Huxley and Orwell are wrong. Neoliberalism (the use of once office for personal gains) is by far the most powerful force that subjugates the inept population. Neoliberalism demolished the mighty USSR, now destroying the USA, and will do the same to China. And this poison dribbles from the top to bottom creating self-centered population that is unable to unite, much less resist.

Deathrips 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Tylers.
You gonna cover Tucker Carlsons show earlier today on FOX news about vaxxx deaths? almost 4k reported so far this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIJQuk-qK2o

19331510 14 hours ago (Edited)

https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data/death-stats

AGE Deaths

0-24 23

25-50 184

51-65 506

66-80 1164

81-100 1346

U 321

R.I.P.

Joe Joe Depends 13 hours ago

India up in arms about mere 1%

spanish flu was 3%

JimmyJones 9 hours ago

Is the population of india up in arms or is the MSM?

Nelbev 10 hours ago

Facebook just flagged/censored it, must sign into see vid, Tuck also failed to mention mRNA and adenovirus vaxes were experimental and not FDA approved nor gone through stage III trials. Beside deaths, have blood clot issues. Good he mentioned how naturally immune if get covid and recovered, better than vaccine, but not covered for bogus passports. Me personally, I would rather catch covid and get natural immunity than be vaccinated with an untested experimental vaccine.

19331510 14 hours ago

Covid19 links.

Websites:

https://www.americasfrontlinedocs.com/media/

https://covid19criticalcare.com/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/

https://www.constitutionalrightscentre.ca/category/news/

https://doctors4covidethics.medium.com/

https://www.flemingmethod.com/

https://gbdeclaration.org/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/

https://healthimpactnews.com/

https://www.mercola.com/

https://drleemerritt.com/

https://www.drtenpenny.com/

https://principia-scientific.com/

https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

https://thehighwire.com/

https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/ https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/links/general-links/

Video Sharing : https://www.bitchute.com/ ; https://brandnewtube.com/ ; https://odysee.com/ ; https://rumble.com/ https://superu.net

Healthcare Professionals :

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr. Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff; Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits; Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;

A list of Canadian doctors: https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

Lawyers : Dr. Reiner Fuellmich; Rocco Galati;

Drug Adverse Reaction Databases:

http://www.adrreports.eu/en/index.html (Search; Suspected Drug Reactions Reports for Substances) COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414); COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH; COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19); COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S)

https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

Research papers :

https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/ (pcr tests)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/ (face masks)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484 (lock downs)

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 (child/teacher morbidity)

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.01.20222315v1 (transmission by children)

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm (masks/restaurants)

https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/57/3/199 (biased trial reporting)

Covid19 links.

Websites:

https://www.americasfrontlinedocs.com/media/

https://covid19criticalcare.com/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/

https://www.constitutionalrightscentre.ca/category/news/

https://doctors4covidethics.medium.com/

https://www.flemingmethod.com/

https://gbdeclaration.org/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/

https://healthimpactnews.com/

https://www.mercola.com/

https://drleemerritt.com/

https://www.drtenpenny.com/

https://principia-scientific.com/

https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

https://thehighwire.com/

https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/ https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/links/general-links/

Video Sharing : https://www.bitchute.com/ ; https://brandnewtube.com/ ; https://odysee.com/ ; https://rumble.com/ https://superu.net

Healthcare Professionals :

Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr. Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff; Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits; Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;

A list of Canadian doctors: https://standupcanada.solutions/canadian-doctors-speak

Lawyers : Dr. Reiner Fuellmich; Rocco Galati;

Drug Adverse Reaction Databases:

http://www.adrreports.eu/en/index.html (Search; Suspected Drug Reactions Reports for Substances) COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE MODERNA (CX-024414); COVID-19 MRNA VACCINE PFIZER-BIONTECH; COVID-19 VACCINE ASTRAZENECA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19); COVID-19 VACCINE JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S)

https://www.openvaers.com/

Research papers :

https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/ (pcr tests)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/ (face masks)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484 (lock downs)

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2026670 (child/teacher morbidity)

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.01.20222315v1 (transmission by children)

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm (masks/restaurants)

https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/57/3/199 (biased trial reporting)

Ultramarines 15 hours ago (Edited)

His making of the gamma and delta workforce was quite prescient. We are seeing it play out now, we all know gammas and delta. There was a really good ABC tv movie made in 1980 Brave New World. Excellent show, it shows the Alphas and names them Rothchild and so on. Shows what these people specifically want to do to the world. I wonder if the ruling psychopaths actually wait for science fiction authors to plan the future and then follow their script.

Mineshaft Gap 10 hours ago

If Huxley were starting out today no major publisher would touch him.

They'd tell him Brave New World doesn't have a diverse enough of cast. Even the mostly likable totalitarian guy named Mustapha turns out to be white! A white Mustapha. It's soooo triggering. Also, what's wrong with a little electronic fun and drug taking, anyway? Lighten up , Aldous.

Meanwhile his portrait of shrieking medieval Catholic nuns who think they're possessed in The Devils of Loudun might remind the leftist editors too uncomfortably of their own recent bleating performances at "White Fragility" struggle sessions.

Sorry, Aldous. Just...too...problematic.

[May 03, 2021] Not a single resource on the Pfizer Executive team or Board of Directors has been injected with the Pfizer (experimental poison yet) vaccine yet. - C Weissman

Fact check- Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has received COVID-19 vaccine "That report is categorically false," Pfizer spokeswoman Sharon Castillo told USA TODAY via email. "Dr. Bourla has been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine."
See also The ex-Pfizer scientist who became an anti-vax hero
Notable quotes:
"... Not a single resource on the Pfizer Executive team or Board of Directors has been injected with the Pfizer (experimental poison yet) vaccine yet. - C Weissman. Excuses allegedly provided offering the less fortunate an opportunity to go first. Don't laugh. True story. Some real humanitarians. ..."
May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

End Times Prophecy

Not a single resource on the Pfizer Executive team or Board of Directors has been injected with the Pfizer (experimental poison yet) vaccine yet. - C Weissman. Excuses allegedly provided offering the less fortunate an opportunity to go first. Don't laugh. True story. Some real humanitarians.

... ... ...

[May 03, 2021] Coronavirus- One Pfizer jab wards off variants for some by Alexandra Thompson

Apr 30, 2021 | news.yahoo.com

single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine protects against two of the most concerning coronavirus variants, but perhaps only in people who have overcome the infection naturally, research suggests.

An effective immunisation programme has long been hailed as a route out of the pandemic, however, the emergence of new variants in Kent, South Africa and India has left many concerned the virus may no longer respond to the UK's three approved jabs.

With most confident the vaccines will be at least somewhat effective, scientists from Imperial College London analysed the immune response of healthcare workers at London's Barts and Royal Free hospitals after one Pfizer-BioNTech dose.

Results suggest the workers who had overcome a mild or asymptomatic infection with the original coronavirus variant experienced "significantly enhanced protection" against the so-called Kent and South Africa variants post-jab.

The workers who had not fought off the coronavirus had a weaker immune response after the vaccine, potentially leaving them at risk of the variants.

Read more: Everything we know about India's coronavirus variant

A person's immune system may be "primed" after overcoming the coronavirus naturally, raising the potency of its response following the first vaccine dose.

The results may highlight the importance of getting the second jab when called up, with the first dose similarly priming the immune system.

The coronavirus can acquire new mutations as it replicates, some of which may enable variants to spread more easily, evade vaccines or cause more severe disease. (Stock, Getty Images)

"Our findings show people who have had their first dose of vaccine, and who have not previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2 [the coronavirus], are not fully protected against the circulating variants of concern," said lead author Professor Rosemary Boyton.

[May 03, 2021] Pfizer vaccine effective against Indian variant of Covid-19 - The Doha Globe

May 03, 2021 | thedohaglobe.com

TEL AVIV: The Pfizer vaccine is effective against the Indian variant of Covid-19, albeit at a reduced efficacy level, Israeli authorities have said, say reports.

Israel, which has been touted as one of the world’s vaccination success stories due to its sweeping inoculation campaign against Covid-19, has identified eight cases of the so-called “Indian†variant of the novel coronavirus, just days after the country ended its outdoors mask mandate

... ... ...

The Indian variant has been identified in both the UK and in Ireland.

“The impression is that the Pfizer vaccine has efficacy against it, albeit a reduced efficacy,†the Israel’s health ministry director-general, Hezi Levy, told Kan public radio, saying the number of cases of the variant in Israel now stood at eight.

Israel has already vaccinated 81 per cent of its 9.3 million population, all residents above the age of 16.

Double mutant variant

Indian authorities had in January detected a “double mutant†variant of the virus, with changes to the SARS-nCov-2 virus spike protein similar to those in both UK and South Africa at once.

While the UK variant was known to be more infectious, the South African variant was believed to be deadlier â€" and triggered reduced efficacy rates in existing vaccines.

AstraZeneca had announced plans to develop a modification to its vaccine to better tackle the threat of new variants, aiming to prepare this by the end of the year.

Pfizer, meanwhile, has said those who had already taken its vaccine may require a third dose within 6-12 months, as their immunity to the virus starts to wane.

[May 03, 2021] Pfizer says South African variant could significantly reduce protective antibodies - Reuters

May 03, 2021 | www.reuters.com

(Reuters) - A laboratory study suggests that the South African variant of the coronavirus may reduce protective antibodies elicited by the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE vaccine by two-thirds, and it is not clear if the shot will be effective against the mutation, the companies said on Wednesday.

The study found the vaccine was still able to neutralize the virus and there is not yet evidence from trials in people that the variant reduces vaccine protection, the companies said.

Still, they are making investments and talking to regulators about developing an updated version of their mRNA vaccine or a booster shot, if needed.

For the study, scientists from the companies and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) developed an engineered virus that contained the same mutations carried on the spike portion of the highly contagious coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa, known as B.1.351. The spike, used by the virus to enter human cells, is the primary target of many COVID-19 vaccines.

Researchers tested the engineered virus against blood taken from people who had been given the vaccine, and found a two- thirds reduction in the level of neutralizing antibodies compared with its effect on the most common version of the virus prevalent in U.S. trials.

Their findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Because there is no established benchmark yet to determine what level of antibodies are needed to protect against the virus, it is unclear whether that two-thirds reduction will render the vaccine ineffective against the variant spreading around the world.

However, UTMB professor and study co-author Pei-Yong Shi said he believes the Pfizer vaccine will likely be protective against the variant.

“We don’t know what the minimum neutralizing number is. We don’t have that cutoff line,†he said, adding that he suspects the immune response observed is likely to be significantly above where it needs to be to provide protection.

That is because in clinical trials, both the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and a similar shot from Moderna Inc conferred some protection after a single dose with an antibody response lower than the reduced levels caused by the South African variant in the laboratory study.

Even if the concerning variant significantly reduces effectiveness, the vaccine should still help protect against severe disease and death, he noted. Health experts have said that is the most important factor in keeping stretched healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed.

More work is needed to understand whether the vaccine works against the South African variant, Shi said, including clinical trials and the development of correlates of protection - the benchmarks to determine what antibody levels are protective.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they were doing similar lab work to understand whether their vaccine is effective against another variant first found in Brazil.

Moderna published a correspondence in NEJM on Wednesday with similar data previously disclosed elsewhere that showed a sixfold drop antibody levels versus the South African variant.

Moderna also said the actual efficacy of its vaccine against the South African variant is yet to be determined. The company has previously said it believes the vaccine will work against the variant.

[May 03, 2021] Pfizer vaccine neutralizes Brazilian virus variant in new study

May 03, 2021 | thehill.com

The Pfizer vaccine was able to neutralize a coronavirus variant first identified in Brazil in a new lab study, a positive sign for the vaccine's effectiveness.

...

The study also found strong neutralization of the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the U.K., though that was already expected.

... The study authors cautioned that their results are based on a study in a lab and must ultimately be validated by real-world evidence.

[May 03, 2021] South African variant can break through Pfizer vaccine- Study - Coronavirus pandemic News - Al Jazeera

May 03, 2021 | www.aljazeera.com

The coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa can “break through†Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to some extent, a study in Israel found.

The South African coronavirus variant managed to penetrate the protection offered by two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to some degree, though it remains unclear just how much efficacy is lost, it said.

... ... ...

The research, released on Saturday, compared nearly 400 people who tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease.

It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.

The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1 percent of all the COVID-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit. But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated â€" 5.4 percent versus 0.7 percent.

This suggests the vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original coronavirus and a variant first identified in Britain that has come to comprise nearly all COVID-19 cases in Israel, the researchers said.

“ We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared with the unvaccinated group. This means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection,†said Tel Aviv University’s Adi Stern who led the study.

However, the researchers cautioned that the study only had a small sample size of people infected with the South African variant because of its rarity in Israel.

They also said the research was not intended to deduce overall vaccine effectiveness against any variant, since it only looked at people who had already tested positive for COVID-19, not at overall infection rates.

Pfizer and BioNTech could not be immediately reached for comment outside business hours.

... ... ...

Almost 53 percent of Israel’s 9.3 million population has received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Israel has largely reopened its economy in recent weeks as the pandemic appeared to recede, with infection rates, severe illness and hospitalisations dropping sharply.

About one-third of Israelis are below the age of 16, which means they are still not eligible for the shot.

[May 03, 2021] S. African Variant Challenges Pfizer, Moderna Vaccines

May 03, 2021 | www.webmd.com

March 9, 2021 -- The Pfizer/ and Moderna vaccines don’t work as well against the coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa as they do against the dominant virus strain first seen in United Kingdom, a new study says.

In the study, 10 blood samples were taken from people who received the Pfizer vaccine, 28 days after the second dose, and 12 samples from those who received the Moderna vaccine , 43 days after the second dose, Business Insider reported, citing a study published in Nature .

The goal was to find out how well the blood sample antibodies “neutralized†the original coronavirus, the variant from South Africa (called B.1.351), and the variant found in the U.K. (B.1.1.7).

The key finding: The percentage of positive antibodies that neutralized the South African variant was 12.4 fold lower for the Moderna vaccine than against the original coronavirus and 10.3 fold lower for the Pfizer vaccine , the study says.

The researchers found that the two vaccines still appear to work well against the variant first found in the U.K.

“Overall, the neutralizing activity against B.1.1.7 was essentially unchanged, but significantly lower against B.1.351,†the study said.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have previously said their vaccines work better against the U.K. variant than the South African variant.

The new lab study differed from previous studies because it used real forms of the variant taken from people who’d been infected with the virus. Earlier studies used manufactured forms of the South African variant and showed a higher level of effectiveness for the vaccines.

The variant first detected last fall in South Africa has now been reported in several countries. The CDC says that in the United States, 81 cases have been found in 20 states.

More than 3,000 cases of the UK variant have been found in the U.S., with every state except Vermont, South Dakota, and Oklahoma reporting cases as of March 8, the CDC says. Health experts say it may soon become the dominant coronavirus strain in the country.

Researchers acknowledged the sample size was small and it’s not fully known how the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will work in real life against the South African variant. Both companies have said they’re developing booster shots targeted for the South African variant.

[May 03, 2021] -I Just Wanted A Little More Time- - Texas Nurse Was Fired For Refusing COVID Vaccine - ZeroHedge

May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

"I Just Wanted A Little More Time" - Texas Nurse Was Fired For Refusing COVID Vaccine BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY, MAY 02, 2021 - 02:55 PM

Many hospital systems around the country have been surprised by the number of nurses who have passed on being vaccinated (either because they had already been infected, or simply because they didn't want the vaccine). But as federal public health officials crank up the pressure on Americans to submit to the vaccine as unused jabs pile up, one nurse in Texas complained to local journalists that she was fired simply because she refused the jab.

Nurse Michelle Fuentes told Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate KRIV-TV that she had been terminated after working for 10 years at Houston Methodist Hospital, allegedly because she refused to accept the COVID-19 vaccine.

"I knew that the date was looming over my head of me to get the vaccine and we were constantly being pressured and pressured," Michelle Fuentes said.

According to their report, at the start of April, Houston Methodist announced it would require all employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine by June 7. However, the hospital system asked employees who refused to get the vaccine to submit documentation for consideration for a medical or religious exemption. The paperwork was reportedly due by May 3.

Michelle Fuentes

Fuentes said she told her employer that she needed more time to make a decision to do more "research" on her own, but instead wound up turning in her two weeks notice.

"I just needed a little bit more time and little bit more research to be done,†Fuentes said.

A spokesperson for the hospital system said 90% of its employees are vaccinated, and that only two have resigned so far. Fuentes said when she didn't agree to stay quiet about the reason for her departure, she was not allowed to complete her final two weeks and was immediately escorted out of the hospital by security.

Finally, Fuentes told the press that she wants to wait until all clinical trials are completed before she decides to get the vaccine or not. She stressed she is not against vaccines and gets the flu vaccine every year. Fuentes even volunteered to work in the COVID unit. Despite reassurances that vaccines are safe, and that their vast public benefit outweighs any risks, recent concerns about vaccine side effects have included incidents of rare but deadly cerebral blood clots , and also an impact on the menstrual cycle.

[May 03, 2021] COVID-19 Vaccines vs Variants "Determining How Much Immunity Is Enough - Vaccination - JAMA - JAMA Network

May 03, 2021 | jamanetwork.com

Trials of the Novavax , Janssen/Johnson & Johnson , and AstraZeneca vaccines in South Africa, where the B.1.351 variant of concern represents virtually all of the circulating SARS-CoV-2, seemed to justify those concerns. The South Africa trials found lower vaccine efficacy compared with trials in other countries where B.1.351 wasn’t dominant.

The pivotal trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the first 2 authorized by the FDA, were conducted mainly in the US before any cases of infection by B.1.351 or other variants of concern had been detected in the country.

Much of the current data on the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines’ efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 variants has come from laboratory studies in which researchers exposed serum samples from immunized individuals to genetically engineered versions of concerning variants and then measured neutralizing antibody titers. Such studies repeatedly have shown the vaccines elicit lower levels of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants than against older, more common isolates.

For example, in a February 17 letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine , scientists described testing serum samples from individuals immunized with 2 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against recombinant viruses containing some or all of the spike protein mutations found in the B.1.351 variant. Neutralization of B.1.351 was approximately two-thirds lower than that of USA-WA1/2020, an early SARS-CoV-2 isolate.

In another letter published the same day, researchers reported measuring neutralizing antibody activity in serum samples from participants in the phase 1 trial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. One week after the participants received the second dose, neutralizing antibody titers induced by a recombinant virus bearing the B.1.351 spike protein were 6-fold lower than those induced by a recombinant virus bearing the original Wuhan-Hu-1 spike protein.

However, that still might be sufficient to protect against COVID-19, or at least severe COVID-19.

“Fortunately, neutralization titers induced by vaccination are high, and even with a 6-fold decrease, serum can still effectively neutralize the virus,†Fauci and 2 NIAID colleagues wrote in a JAMA ï"¿ editorial posted February 11. And, they noted, lower vaccine efficacy in the South African clinical trials could be related to geographic or population differences.

... ... ...

Without immune correlates of protection, only real-world experience can provide answers about COVID-19 vaccines’ efficacy against illness and death from SARS-CoV-2 variants.

“For right now, you know that a line is crossed if you see people fully immunized with the vaccines [who], nonetheless, when infected with the variants, are being hospitalized,†Offit said at a February 4 COVID-19 Vaccine Analysis Team press briefing.

At first glance, findings from a phase 2 trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in South Africa seemed quite discouraging, spurring that country to suspend its planned rollout of the vaccine. The trial found that the vaccine did not protect against mild to moderate COVID-19 caused by the B.1.351 variant. The findings , posted February 12, had not been peer reviewed.

However, “the study was not really designed to determine whether the vaccine could protect against severe COVID or not,†principal investigator Shabir Madhi, MBBCH, PhD, a vaccinologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and cofounder and codirector of the African Leadership Initiative for Vaccinology Expertise, said in a February 7 briefing about the results. Participants, who numbered only about 2000, were youngâ€"average age 31 yearsâ€"and healthy, so their risk of severe disease was low, vaccinated or not, explained Madhi, who also led Novavax’s vaccine trial in South Africa.

Novavax and Janssen conducted larger trials in South Africa than Oxford and AstraZeneca. Although both of their vaccines had lower efficacy rates in South Africa than in trials in other countries, vaccinated participants who received the Janssen vaccine were still less likely to require hospitalization for COVID-19 than those who received placebo shots, and Madhi recently told Nature he expected that to be the case with the Novavax vaccine as well.

.. ... ...

Pfizer and BioNTech announced February 25 that they had begun evaluating the safety and immunogenicity of a third dose of their vaccine to see whether it would boost immunity to SARS-CoV-2 variants. In addition, the companies said they are discussing with regulatory agencies, including the FDA, a clinical study to evaluate a modified vaccine based on the B.1.351 variant. “The companies are hoping to pursue the validation of future modified mRNA vaccines with a regulatory pathway similar to what is currently in place for flu vaccines,†according to a press release.

Moderna announced February 24 that it had shipped a booster vaccine candidate based on B.1.351 to the NIAID for a phase 1 trial. And Novavax, whose first-generation vaccine hasn’t been authorized yet in the US, announced January 28 it was working on developing a booster, a combination bivalent vaccine, or both to protect against variants. The company said it expected to begin clinical trials in the second quarter of 2021.

Modifying vaccines to target variants isn’t difficult. For example, with Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines, “it’s very convenient, because, basically, all you do is change a computer program and the synthetic for the synthesizing portion of this and you can change the vaccine,†Peter Marks, MD, PhD, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which regulates vaccines, said during a January 29 American Medical Association (AMA) webinar . “But the question is, what do we need from the FDA perspective to feel comfortable having that deployed.â€

On February 22, the FDA updated its nonbinding guidance for vaccine manufacturers to include information about what the agency would like to see when evaluating vaccines that have been modified to address emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants.

The updated guidance advises manufacturers to conduct studies comparing neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 induced by the modified vaccine with those induced by the prototype vaccine. One such study should use serum samples from people who hadn’t been previously vaccinated or infected with SARS-CoV-2, while another study would use serum samples from people previously vaccinated with a prototype vaccine who then received an experimental booster against variants of concern.

The Hard Part

Modifying COVID-19 vaccines would probably be the most straightforward step in dealing with SARS-CoV-2 variants. “For vaccines and biologics, it’s the manufacturing process that defines the product, and the manufacturing process isn’t changing,†Baylor explained.

More challenging will be deciding when and how to deploy COVID-19 vaccines 2.0. The influenza model, in which surveillance during the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season identifies the circulating strains to target with vaccines in the Northern Hemisphere’s coming flu season, doesn’t work for SARS-CoV-2, Baylor noted.

“The challenge for COVID is what variant do you pick†when modifying a vaccine, he said. “How often does it change?â€

Once that’s decided, would people who’ve already received the original COVID-19 vaccine get a booster shot to protect against variants of concern while vaccine-naive individuals receive the original vaccine and the booster rolled into one? “Do we have the capacity to make both?†Baylor asked.

Plus, the need to deploy vaccines or boosters targeting new variants would complicate the already rocky rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, in part due to inexperience in vaccinating US adults en masse.

“How do we deploy this?†Baylor said of next-generation COVID-19 vaccines. “When do we pull the trigger to actually do this?â€

[May 03, 2021] mRNA based vaccines are mis-named, they are a gene therapy, triggering the manufacture of antigens to work on virus.

Notable quotes:
"... What remains to be seen is how long the mRNA stays viable, how it is down regulated and let us hope it is stable and not prone to telling the cell about something else to build. ..."
May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
45North1 6 hours ago (Edited) 45North1 6 hours ago (Edited)

mRNA based vaccines are mis-named, they are a gene therapy, triggering the manufacture of antigens to work on virus.

What remains to be seen is how long the mRNA stays viable, how it is down regulated and let us hope it is stable and not prone to telling the cell about something else to build.

They could push this as an annual thing.

I would prefer the Sputnik V which is made to make the immune system do the work, and maybe retain that memory for years (?).

https://sputnikvaccine.com/

[May 03, 2021] There is significant cross-immunity between coronaviruses

May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com
Faeriedust 3 hours ago

It's true that most common cold coronaviruses only provide immunity for a year or two. HOWEVER, there is significant cross-immunity between coronaviruses.

Meaning that if we can just get the PTB to drop this ridiculous charade of mandated masks, blanket testing and partial shutdowns of everything from restaurants to government offices to baseball games, we can get back to a NORMAL situation in which everyone gets exposed to some kind of coronavirus disease several times a year, expanding and extending the cross-immunities that made eighty percent of the population IMMUNE to Covid-19 when it first arrived.

Before this hysteria hit, medical science had begun to take its first baby-steps towards admitting that humans are biological creatures that exist in a biological environment, in which our relationships with many microbes are not merely harmless, but essential . To cut ourselves off from the living world is to die. Sterility kills. Isolating ourselves from all potential sources of infection inevitably destroys our ability to resist infection when we are finally exposed . The last thing we need is a world of germ-free "bubbles". If we are to lead healthy and wholesome lives, we need to reject the fundamental principles on which the worldwide covid-19 response has been based. Look at Africa. They did nothing. They are healthy and happy.

Bay Area Guy 4 hours ago remove link

These things are described as vaccines, but they aren’t. The not so fine print says that they supposedly prevent recipients from getting serious cases of CoVid. (Tell that to the 74 who died.). That shots will be needed every year was a foregone conclusion. Anyone who thought differently was naive. There are enormous dollars to be made with a virus that’s endemic. And with countries jumping on the vaccine passport bandwagon, not just for travel, but for doing everyday things, Big Pharma is going to rake in trillions from this.

[May 03, 2021] Some scientists have used the term vaccine resistance to describe the reduced efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against some variants

May 03, 2021 | jamanetwork.com

Some scientists have used the term vaccine resistance to describe the reduced efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against some variants. But that confuses matters by suggesting vaccines are analogous to antibiotics, University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom, PhD, who studies evolution and medicine, said in an interview. "The key point for me is that in antibiotic resistance, the changes happen in people who are on antibiotics," he said, while antigenic escape by SARS-CoV-2 occurs in people who haven't been vaccinated.

When viruses replicate, Penn State biologist David Kennedy, PhD, explained in an interview, the cycle is like a classic childhood game. "Viruses copying themselves, it's almost like a game of telephone," said Kennedy, who studies pathogen evolution. "They repeat what they thought they heard, so they make mistakes all the time."

Despite those many mistakes, Kennedy noted, he's unaware of any vaccines against viral diseases other than seasonal flu that have had to be updated because of changes in the virus. Hepatitis B virus developed " vaccine escape mutations ," but they posed no health risks, he said.

[May 03, 2021] The Head of EMA is a pharma shill

Actually all vaccines carry a risk. The question is the risk is justified by the severity of the deases in question and prevalent mortality.
May 03, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
Kartoschka , Apr 27 2021 12:33 utc | 24

Maschine translation from:
https://www.anti-spiegel.ru/2021/die-profite-der-pharmakonzerne-sind-wichtiger-als-ein-schnelles-ende-des-lockdown/


It can only be a coincidence that Emer Cooke, who was appointed head of the EMA in November 2020, was head of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), a European lobbying association for the pharmaceutical industry, in which are among others AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer members. She worked there until 1998 and then switched directly to the EU.

Mao Cheng Ji , Apr 27 2021 15:33 utc | 31

There's a growing controversy in Hungary, where the government -- Hungarian government -- published stats for all the vaccines they've been using.

Sputnik V shows the highest effectiveness and least side effects. Sinopharm -- the second best. Pfizer -- the worst.

https://hungarytoday.hu/hungary-vaccines-vaccine-effectiveness-inoculation-vaccine-effectiveness-comparison-pfizer-sputnik-sinopharm/

(I see hungarytoday.hu has already censored the government table out of the article.)

Immediately, a scandal ensued, with herds of righteous grant-eaters explaining why the government stats are not to be believed. All in all, funny slapstick, I like it.

[May 03, 2021] Variants vs. Vaccines - Southwestern Vermont Health Care

May 03, 2021 | svhealthcare.org

In a basic sense, there are two types of pressures that lead to mutations that allow the virus to proliferate at a rate greater than its predecessor. Sometimes these advantages lead to the emergence of a new dominant strain throughout a population.

[May 03, 2021] COVID-19 Vaccines And Coronavirus Mutations

May 03, 2021 | www.npr.org

Mutations in the new coronavirus could reduce the effectiveness of vaccines against it. But vaccines themselves can also drive viral mutations, depending on exactly how the shots are deployed and how effective they are.

So far, vaccines still appear to work against the new strains â€" though scientists are warily watching a variant that first appeared in South Africa since it seems to reduce vaccine effectiveness. And evolution isn't standing still, so scientists realize they may need to update vaccines to keep them working reliably.

What's going on here is somewhat similar to a larger, and more concerning problem in medicine: Many bacteria have gradually evolved the ability to survive even when walloped by a large dose of antibiotics. That problem has created new strains of deadly, drug-resistant germs.

Viruses also evolve, but the process is different and the result is usually much less severe when it comes to vaccines. When a virus such as the coronavirus infects someone, that person's immune system mounts a response. Viruses produce slight variations when they multiply, and if any of these variants can evade a person's immune response, those variants are more likely to survive and possibly to spread to other people

[May 03, 2021] Children and mRNA vaccine

May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Electro Static 6 hours ago

Snyder is not even close to understanding what is going on, but I will give him credit for at least noticing how insane the mRNA experiments are - and bringing up money and big pharma.

Here is a well-documented dose of reality for anyone interested in the truth -

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/reasons-not-getting-covid-vaccine/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=c2658670-8814-4b16-bf20-22cc0f01ddac

Good luck!

[May 03, 2021] EU starts legal action against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

Notable quotes:
"... Remember how Oxford-AZ was going to offer the vaccine pro-bono and Billy Baphomet said they had to charge for it? Pfizer (with a big Black Rock stake) has tried repeatedly to take over AZ (similar BlackRock stake of around 8%) but has been rebuffed. I wouldn't be surprised if AZ is about to be humbled. ..."
"... Oligarchical collectivism is equally happy with fascism, communism or any other variety of state corporatism. Is this why the socialist/communist left has disappeared (it's redundant)? ..."
May 03, 2021 | off-guardian.org

George Mc , Apr 27, 2021 11:26 AM

This is gearing up to a money circus indeed. From the Graud:

"EU starts legal action against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls
Firm says it will 'strongly defend itself' against claim it breached agreement to supply Covid jab"

There will be the usual Left/ Right theatre with interminable wrangling over accusations of incompetence, corruption and a more responsible system for allocating funds . all over a totally unnecessary and potentially lethal vax for a hyped up flu variant.

Moneycircus , Apr 27, 2021 2:44 PM Reply to Corarden

Remember how Oxford-AZ was going to offer the vaccine pro-bono and Billy Baphomet said they had to charge for it? Pfizer (with a big Black Rock stake) has tried repeatedly to take over AZ (similar BlackRock stake of around 8%) but has been rebuffed. I wouldn't be surprised if AZ is about to be humbled.

There is no Department of Commerce, Securities and Exchange Commission, or Competition Commission -- effectively they've disappeared. Monopoly is the order of the day.

Oligarchical collectivism is equally happy with fascism, communism or any other variety of state corporatism. Is this why the socialist/communist left has disappeared (it's redundant)?

The recreation of IG Farben (including Bayer-Monsanto) which was a longstanding Rockefeller partner the green light to Amazon dominance in retail the inevitably centralized nature of subsidized "Green" energy the social credit system implied by replacing money with digital store credits the attempt to abolish individual self-determination in the interest of "keeping everybody safe" the intention is clear as day.

[May 03, 2021] Pfizer vaccine effective against Indian variant of Covid-19 - The Doha Globe

May 03, 2021 | thedohaglobe.com

TEL AVIV: The Pfizer vaccine is effective against the Indian variant of Covid-19, albeit at a reduced efficacy level, Israeli authorities have said, say reports.

Israel, which has been touted as one of the world’s vaccination success stories due to its sweeping inoculation campaign against Covid-19, has identified eight cases of the so-called “Indian†variant of the novel coronavirus, just days after the country ended its outdoors mask mandate

... ... ...

The Indian variant has been identified in both the UK and in Ireland.

“The impression is that the Pfizer vaccine has efficacy against it, albeit a reduced efficacy,†the Israel’s health ministry director-general, Hezi Levy, told Kan public radio, saying the number of cases of the variant in Israel now stood at eight.

Israel has already vaccinated 81 per cent of its 9.3 million population, all residents above the age of 16.

Double mutant variant

Indian authorities had in January detected a “double mutant†variant of the virus, with changes to the SARS-nCov-2 virus spike protein similar to those in both UK and South Africa at once.

While the UK variant was known to be more infectious, the South African variant was believed to be deadlier â€" and triggered reduced efficacy rates in existing vaccines.

AstraZeneca had announced plans to develop a modification to its vaccine to better tackle the threat of new variants, aiming to prepare this by the end of the year.

Pfizer, meanwhile, has said those who had already taken its vaccine may require a third dose within 6-12 months, as their immunity to the virus starts to wane.

[May 03, 2021] South African variant can break through Pfizer vaccine- Study - Coronavirus pandemic News - Al Jazeera

May 03, 2021 | www.aljazeera.com

The coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa can “break through†Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to some extent, a study in Israel found.

The South African coronavirus variant managed to penetrate the protection offered by two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to some degree, though it remains unclear just how much efficacy is lost, it said.

... ... ...

The research, released on Saturday, compared nearly 400 people who tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease.

It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.

The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1 percent of all the COVID-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit. But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated â€" 5.4 percent versus 0.7 percent.

This suggests the vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original coronavirus and a variant first identified in Britain that has come to comprise nearly all COVID-19 cases in Israel, the researchers said.

“ We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared with the unvaccinated group. This means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection,†said Tel Aviv University’s Adi Stern who led the study.

However, the researchers cautioned that the study only had a small sample size of people infected with the South African variant because of its rarity in Israel.

They also said the research was not intended to deduce overall vaccine effectiveness against any variant, since it only looked at people who had already tested positive for COVID-19, not at overall infection rates.

Pfizer and BioNTech could not be immediately reached for comment outside business hours.

... ... ...

Almost 53 percent of Israel’s 9.3 million population has received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Israel has largely reopened its economy in recent weeks as the pandemic appeared to recede, with infection rates, severe illness and hospitalisations dropping sharply.

About one-third of Israelis are below the age of 16, which means they are still not eligible for the shot.

[May 03, 2021] COVID-19 Vaccines vs Variants "Determining How Much Immunity Is Enough - Vaccination - JAMA - JAMA Network

May 03, 2021 | jamanetwork.com

Trials of the Novavax , Janssen/Johnson & Johnson , and AstraZeneca vaccines in South Africa, where the B.1.351 variant of concern represents virtually all of the circulating SARS-CoV-2, seemed to justify those concerns. The South Africa trials found lower vaccine efficacy compared with trials in other countries where B.1.351 wasn’t dominant.

The pivotal trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the first 2 authorized by the FDA, were conducted mainly in the US before any cases of infection by B.1.351 or other variants of concern had been detected in the country.

Much of the current data on the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines’ efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 variants has come from laboratory studies in which researchers exposed serum samples from immunized individuals to genetically engineered versions of concerning variants and then measured neutralizing antibody titers. Such studies repeatedly have shown the vaccines elicit lower levels of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants than against older, more common isolates.

For example, in a February 17 letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine , scientists described testing serum samples from individuals immunized with 2 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against recombinant viruses containing some or all of the spike protein mutations found in the B.1.351 variant. Neutralization of B.1.351 was approximately two-thirds lower than that of USA-WA1/2020, an early SARS-CoV-2 isolate.

In another letter published the same day, researchers reported measuring neutralizing antibody activity in serum samples from participants in the phase 1 trial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. One week after the participants received the second dose, neutralizing antibody titers induced by a recombinant virus bearing the B.1.351 spike protein were 6-fold lower than those induced by a recombinant virus bearing the original Wuhan-Hu-1 spike protein.

However, that still might be sufficient to protect against COVID-19, or at least severe COVID-19.

“Fortunately, neutralization titers induced by vaccination are high, and even with a 6-fold decrease, serum can still effectively neutralize the virus,†Fauci and 2 NIAID colleagues wrote in a JAMA ï"¿ editorial posted February 11. And, they noted, lower vaccine efficacy in the South African clinical trials could be related to geographic or population differences.

... ... ...

Without immune correlates of protection, only real-world experience can provide answers about COVID-19 vaccines’ efficacy against illness and death from SARS-CoV-2 variants.

“For right now, you know that a line is crossed if you see people fully immunized with the vaccines [who], nonetheless, when infected with the variants, are being hospitalized,†Offit said at a February 4 COVID-19 Vaccine Analysis Team press briefing.

At first glance, findings from a phase 2 trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in South Africa seemed quite discouraging, spurring that country to suspend its planned rollout of the vaccine. The trial found that the vaccine did not protect against mild to moderate COVID-19 caused by the B.1.351 variant. The findings , posted February 12, had not been peer reviewed.

However, “the study was not really designed to determine whether the vaccine could protect against severe COVID or not,†principal investigator Shabir Madhi, MBBCH, PhD, a vaccinologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and cofounder and codirector of the African Leadership Initiative for Vaccinology Expertise, said in a February 7 briefing about the results. Participants, who numbered only about 2000, were youngâ€"average age 31 yearsâ€"and healthy, so their risk of severe disease was low, vaccinated or not, explained Madhi, who also led Novavax’s vaccine trial in South Africa.

Novavax and Janssen conducted larger trials in South Africa than Oxford and AstraZeneca. Although both of their vaccines had lower efficacy rates in South Africa than in trials in other countries, vaccinated participants who received the Janssen vaccine were still less likely to require hospitalization for COVID-19 than those who received placebo shots, and Madhi recently told Nature he expected that to be the case with the Novavax vaccine as well.

.. ... ...

Pfizer and BioNTech announced February 25 that they had begun evaluating the safety and immunogenicity of a third dose of their vaccine to see whether it would boost immunity to SARS-CoV-2 variants. In addition, the companies said they are discussing with regulatory agencies, including the FDA, a clinical study to evaluate a modified vaccine based on the B.1.351 variant. “The companies are hoping to pursue the validation of future modified mRNA vaccines with a regulatory pathway similar to what is currently in place for flu vaccines,†according to a press release.

Moderna announced February 24 that it had shipped a booster vaccine candidate based on B.1.351 to the NIAID for a phase 1 trial. And Novavax, whose first-generation vaccine hasn’t been authorized yet in the US, announced January 28 it was working on developing a booster, a combination bivalent vaccine, or both to protect against variants. The company said it expected to begin clinical trials in the second quarter of 2021.

Modifying vaccines to target variants isn’t difficult. For example, with Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines, “it’s very convenient, because, basically, all you do is change a computer program and the synthetic for the synthesizing portion of this and you can change the vaccine,†Peter Marks, MD, PhD, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which regulates vaccines, said during a January 29 American Medical Association (AMA) webinar . “But the question is, what do we need from the FDA perspective to feel comfortable having that deployed.â€

On February 22, the FDA updated its nonbinding guidance for vaccine manufacturers to include information about what the agency would like to see when evaluating vaccines that have been modified to address emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants.

The updated guidance advises manufacturers to conduct studies comparing neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 induced by the modified vaccine with those induced by the prototype vaccine. One such study should use serum samples from people who hadn’t been previously vaccinated or infected with SARS-CoV-2, while another study would use serum samples from people previously vaccinated with a prototype vaccine who then received an experimental booster against variants of concern.

The Hard Part

Modifying COVID-19 vaccines would probably be the most straightforward step in dealing with SARS-CoV-2 variants. “For vaccines and biologics, it’s the manufacturing process that defines the product, and the manufacturing process isn’t changing,†Baylor explained.

More challenging will be deciding when and how to deploy COVID-19 vaccines 2.0. The influenza model, in which surveillance during the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season identifies the circulating strains to target with vaccines in the Northern Hemisphere’s coming flu season, doesn’t work for SARS-CoV-2, Baylor noted.

“The challenge for COVID is what variant do you pick†when modifying a vaccine, he said. “How often does it change?â€

Once that’s decided, would people who’ve already received the original COVID-19 vaccine get a booster shot to protect against variants of concern while vaccine-naive individuals receive the original vaccine and the booster rolled into one? “Do we have the capacity to make both?†Baylor asked.

Plus, the need to deploy vaccines or boosters targeting new variants would complicate the already rocky rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, in part due to inexperience in vaccinating US adults en masse.

“How do we deploy this?†Baylor said of next-generation COVID-19 vaccines. “When do we pull the trigger to actually do this?â€

[May 03, 2021] Why authorities ask vaccinated people wear masks and obey social distancing rules?

May 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

acheron2016 10 hours ago

IF vaccines worked it shouldn't matter to a vaccinated person whether you have a vaccination or not.

The entire "what about the poor wretch that is so ill he cannot survive a vaccine" is just virtue signaling tripe. FIRST no person has a claim on your life. Period, the only exception being your own children. And even that has finite limits.

The more truthful complaint is "I KNOW it is a scientific fact that flu vaccines are at BEST 70%, and often closer to 40% effective. So I am afraid of my own shadow." This exposes a risk aversion that has long since crossed over into the mental illness of full on uncontrollable paranoia.

Let the person that is so sick they cannot be around other people self isolate. Let the person that is so terrified they cannot function in society self isolate too!

The fake outrage and virtue signaling sociopaths have well and truly outlived the patience of everyone on the planet that doesn't require psychotropic drugs to make it through the day.

[May 02, 2021] If anyone had listened to Dr. Fauci or any of the mainstream press, they would think the vaccine is totally 100% safe and effective. But it is not 100% safe and 100% effective and we probably need to live with those limitation

Notable quotes:
"... If anyone had listened to Dr. Fauci or any of the mainstream press, they would think the vaccine is totally 100% safe. ..."
"... the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, VAERS, would disagree with Dr. Fauci and the mainstream media. ..."
"... According to the most recent data from VAERS found on the CDC website , 3.018 people have been reported died after taking the COVID-19 Vaccine. These deaths constitute 64.45% of all vaccine deaths. So, not only have the COVID vaccines killed 3,018 people, but 6 in 10 recorded deaths from vaccines were from a COVID vaccine alone ..."
"... ABC News reports that 189.4 million flu vaccines were distributed in the 2020-2021 season. Of that, VAERS reports a grand total of 598 people have died from the vaccines. ..."
May 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

chubbar 5 hours ago

https://www.thewashingtongazette.com/2021/05/breaking-cdc-data-3018-people-reported.html?utm_source=greatawakening&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialshare

If anyone had listened to Dr. Fauci or any of the mainstream press, they would think the vaccine is totally 100% safe. They would think that anyone who says differently is a conspiracy theorist with enough tinfoil to build a radio antenna that would reach the Andromeda Galaxy.

However, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, VAERS, would disagree with Dr. Fauci and the mainstream media.

According to the most recent data from VAERS found on the CDC website , 3.018 people have been reported died after taking the COVID-19 Vaccine. These deaths constitute 64.45% of all vaccine deaths. So, not only have the COVID vaccines killed 3,018 people, but 6 in 10 recorded deaths from vaccines were from a COVID vaccine alone:

But, some may say, that mortality rate is completely inline with any other vaccine. Well, not exactly. Right now, roughly 1 in 2 people older than 6 months of age have likely received a flu vaccine . However, according to the latest data, 43% of adults have received the first COVID vaccine dose .

Breaking this down by data, ABC News reports that 189.4 million flu vaccines were distributed in the 2020-2021 season. Of that, VAERS reports a grand total of 598 people have died from the vaccines.

So, considering more people have taken the Flu vaccine than a COVID vaccine, and far fewer people have died with a flu vaccine than a COVID vaccine, it is not at all accurate to suggest the Coronavirus vaccine is as safe as a flu vaccine. The VAERS reporting system says completely differently.

Granted, just because a report goes into VAERS, it doesn't mean that it has been fully investigated and confirmed, but the CDC's webpage for VAERS says that it is a useful tool to provide an early warning of safety problems with vaccines:

The strengths of VAERS are that it is national in scope and can quickly provide an early warning of a safety problem with a vaccine. As part of CDC and FDA's multi-system approach to post-licensure vaccine safety monitoring, VAERS is designed to rapidly detect unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse events, also known as "safety signals."

If a safety signal is found in VAERS, further studies can be done in safety systems such as the CDC's Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) or the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) project.

These systems do not have the same limitations as VAERS, and can better assess health risks and possible connections between adverse events and a vaccine.

This is particularly alarming to say the least, since the COVID vaccine alone has been responsible for 120,000 adverse reactions in general, it would be a good idea to discuss getting the vaccine with your doctor to see if it is the right choice for you."

QuiteShocking 5 hours ago remove link

We've probably already have herd immunity in many places..

[Apr 30, 2021] Pfizer, BioNTech seek EU authorisation on Covid-19 shot for younger teens, Europe News Top Stories

Apr 30, 2021 | www.straitstimes.com

Pfizer and BioNTech said they have asked European regulators to authorise their Covid-19 vaccine for those aged 12-15, a move seen as a crucial step towards achieving herd immunity.

The companies already filed a similar request with US authorities earlier this month. Their vaccine is currently only approved for use in people aged 16 and over.

In a joint statement released yesterday, Pfizer and BioNTech said they had submitted a request with the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) to expand the use of their jab to include "adolescents 12 to 15 years of age".

Mr Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of Germany's BioNTech, on Thursday said the jab could be available for those age groups from next month if EU approval is granted.

The move comes after Phase 3 trial data showed the vaccine provided "robust antibody responses" and was 100 per cent effective in warding off the disease among those aged 12 to 15. "The vaccine also was generally well tolerated," the statement added.

In an interview with Der Spiegel weekly, Mr Sahin said he expected regulators' evaluation of the data to take four to six weeks.

If approved, the green light would apply to all 27 European Union member states.
Pfizer and BioNTech added that they also plan to seek authorisations "with other regulatory authorities worldwide".

No coronavirus vaccines are currently authorised for use on children.

While children and teenagers are less likely to develop severe Covid-19 symptoms, they make up a large part of the population and inoculating them is considered key to ending the pandemic.

The prospect of getting older children jabbed before the next school year begins would also ease the strain on parents who are juggling the demands of homeschooling while keeping up with jobs.

"It's very important to enable children a return to their normal school lives and allow them to meet with family and friends," Mr Sahin told Spiegel.

BioNTech and Pfizer are also racing to get their jab approved for younger kids, from six months upwards.

"In July, the first results for five- to 12-year-olds could be available, and those for younger children in September," Mr Sahin said.

Ongoing trials so far are "very encouraging", he added, suggesting that "children are very well protected by the vaccine".

The BioNTech/Pfizer shot is based on mRNA technology and was the first Covid-19 jab to be approved in the West late last year

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

[Apr 30, 2021] Biden's administration push vaccine to children

Apr 30, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Inoculating children is a key step toward herd immunity , health officials say.

The Pfizer -BioNTech vaccine is currently authorized in the U.S. for people 16 years and older. The companies have asked U.S. health regulators to authorize the vaccine for people 12 years and older. Mr. Zients said if the FDA authorizes Pfizer's vaccine for adolescents, the administration will have "both a robust plan and sufficient supply" to administer those shots.

Shots from Moderna Inc. and Johnson & Johnson are authorized in the U.S. for people 18 years and older. Both companies are testing their vaccines in adolescents.

Mr. Biden's senior Covid-19 advisers say they are reaching out to pediatricians, citing them as "an important point of trust" who can help encourage parents to vaccinate their children once shots are approved. The administration hopes children in high school will be vaccinated going into the fall school year.

Many school districts are still providing hybrid in-person and remote learning, though some of the largest districts across the country plan to fully reopen in the fall for in-person instruction.

[Apr 30, 2021] More then half of adults in the U.S. had gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the CDC. That proportion ranged from 72% in New Hampshire to 39% in Mississippi.

Apr 30, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Estimates have differed on how much of the population would need to be vaccinated to stop the virus from circulating, but many health experts are using 70% to 80% as a goal . As of Thursday, 52% of adults in the U.S. had gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That proportion ranged from 72% in New Hampshire to 39% in Mississippi.

[Apr 30, 2021] Keyboard warriors attack Joe Rogan after he DOES NOT recommend young healthy people get Covid-19 vaccine

Apr 30, 2021 | www.rt.com

Podcaster Joe Rogan has become a target of critics on social media after saying he believes young and healthy people likely don't need Covid-19 vaccines and even opined that inoculating children is "crazy."

Rogan quickly began trending on social media on Tuesday after a recent clip from his podcast, 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' prompted critics to accuse him of spreading Covid-19 disinformation and feeding into vaccine hesitancy.

In fact, Rogan said on his show that he believes getting vaccinated is "safe" for most people – before he argued that not everyone has to get a jab.

ALSO ON RT.COM Trans MMA fighter Fallon Fox wants 'transphobic' Joe Rogan podcast canceled

"I think for the most part, it's safe to get vaccinated. I do. But if you're like 21-years-old and you say to me, 'should I get vaccinated?' I'll go no," Rogan said in the clip, first posted by a journalist for the left-wing Media Matters.

The podcaster went on to argue that a healthy person who exercises regularly, eats well, and has no health conditions that weaken their immune system likely "don't need to worry about this."

The group Rogan believes should not be subjected to vaccines at all is children, revealing his own two kids both got Covid-19 and claiming that in the end, "it was nothing." Adding that he is not "diminishing" that children have died from the virus, Rogan blasted people who are pushing for children to be vaccinated when most are far less vulnerable to the virus than adults.

"You should be vaccinated if you're vulnerable," Rogan said.

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Rogan's vaccine opinion has gotten him once again on the firing line against liberal critics. The former 'Fear Factor' host has become a frequent target since his podcast exclusively moved to Spotify and quickly became the network's most popular show. He's been criticized for everything from his views on trans women in sports to his openness to interviews with controversial figures such as Alex Jones.

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Others also criticized Spotify, which has even seen employees protest the hiring of Rogan since the platform went into business with him in what was reportedly a $100 million contract.

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While Rogan cited his own experience with his children when criticizing mass vaccinations, kids and even younger adults are also statistically far less vulnerable to the virus than older people. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people under 45 account for less than 3% of the Covid-19 deaths in the US. The highest is 65 and older, which covers over 80%.

Comorbidities – underlying conditions that weaken the immune system, such as diabetes and hypertension – are also frequent among the hundreds of thousands of patients who have died from the virus.

There are currently no vaccines on the market authorized for anyone under 16 to take. Pfizer's vaccine is approved for patients 16 and older, while Moderna has been approved for people 18 and over.

ALSO ON RT.COM West Virginia governor says he'll pay young people $100 savings bonds for getting Covid vaccine, gets bribery accusations

During another episode of his podcast this year, Rogan revealed he is not planning on getting a vaccine himself. Asked whether he would get the vaccine when available, he replied, "no. I mean I would if I felt like I needed it."

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[Apr 29, 2021] The Pfizer vaccine could cause severe neurodegenerative diseases caused by brain prions created by the mRNA-style vaccine

Apr 27, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The Pfizer vaccine could cause severe neurodegenerative diseases caused by brain prions created by the mRNA-style vaccine. National File reported, "'The current RNA based SARSCoV-2 vaccines were approved in the US using an emergency order without extensive long term safety testing,' the report declares. 'In this paper the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was evaluated for the potential to induce prion-based disease in vaccine recipients.' Prion-based diseases are, according to the CDC, a form of neurodegenerative diseases, meaning that the Pfizer vaccine is potentially likely to cause long term damage and negative health effects with regards to the brain."

[Apr 29, 2021] Pfizer Vaccine might cause Neurodegenerative Diseases

Apr 27, 2021 | nationalfile.com

In a shocking new report on the COVID-19 vaccines, it has been discovered that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine may have long term health effects not previously disclosed, including “ALS, Alzheimer's, and other neurological degenerative diseases.â€

“The current RNA based SARSCoV-2 vaccines were approved in the US using an emergency order without extensive long term safety testing,†the report declares. “In this paper the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was evaluated for the potential to induce prion-based disease in vaccine recipients.†Prion-based diseases are, according to the CDC, a form of neurodegenerative diseases, meaning that the Pfizer vaccine is potentially likely to cause long term damage and negative health effects with regards to the brain.

This is especially concerning since the Pfizer vaccine is an mRNA vaccine, an untested type of vaccine which creates new proteins and can actually integrate into the human genome , according to a report from the National Library of Medicine. In other words, degenerative brain conditions may appear at any time in your life after receiving the vaccine.

“The RNA sequence of the vaccine as well as the spike protein target interaction were analyzed for the potential to convert intracellular RNA binding proteins TAR DNA binding protein (TDP-43) and Fused in Sarcoma (FUS) into their pathologic prion conformations,†explains the report. TDP-43 is a protein known to cause dementia, ALS and even Alzheimer's, according to Alzpedia . Similarly, the FUS protein is known to cause ALS and Hereditary Essential Tremors, according to the Human Genome Database .

The experiment done for the report was to determine whether or not these two harmful proteins embed themselves into our DNA, as an mRNA vaccine is expected to do. The report determined that “the vaccine RNA has specific sequences that may induce TDP-43 and FUS to fold into their pathologic prion confirmations,†meaning that both proteins have the potential to embed themselves into our DNA and cause harmful neurological diseases.

The report's abstract summary concludes that “The enclosed finding as well as additional potential risks leads the author to believe that regulatory approval of the RNA based vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 was premature and that the vaccine may cause much more harm than benefit.†The report itself ends with this warning: “The vaccine could be a bioweapon and even more dangerous than the original infection.â€

National File actually reached out to the CDC to inquire as to why the Pfizer vaccine is still being distributed despite these credible allegations. No response was received prior to publication.

[Apr 29, 2021] Slowly But Surely, The Truth Is Coming Out: Pfizer CEO admitted that fully vaccinated people will need a third shot of the vaccine within 12 months If you don t want to believe me, perhaps you will believe the CEO of Pfizer. This week, he admitted that fully vaccinated people If you don t want to believe me, perhaps you will believe the CEO of Pfizer. This week, he admitted that fully vaccinated people This week, he admitted that fully vaccinated people will need a third shot of the vaccine within 12 months

Apr 29, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will “likely†need a third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated. His comments were made public Thursday but were taped April 1.

Bourla said it’s possible people will need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus annually.

From the very beginning of this crisis, I have been warning my readers that any immunity would be very temporary.

Natural COVID immunity is very temporary, and immunity conferred by the vaccines is very temporary too.

The CEO of Pfizer is comparing the COVID vaccines to flu shots. Every year millions of Americans rush out to get their flu shots, and the CEO of Pfizer is admitting that it looks like the COVID vaccines will be on a similar schedule …

“There are vaccines that’s like polio that one dose is enough, there are vaccines like pneumococcal vaccine that one dose is enough for adults and there are vaccines like flu that you need every year,†Bourla said. “The Covid virus looks more like the influenza virus than the polio virus.â€

If people are going to need a new shot every year, that means that COVID will be with us for a very long time to come.

This is essentially an admission that the COVID pandemic will not be ending any time soon.

Needless to say, Pfizer stands to make giant mountains of money if COVID vaccines become a yearly thing, and we need to keep that in mind.

A lot of people that I know are going to be extremely upset when they finally realize that the two shots that they got only provide temporary immunity.

And of course lots of people are still getting sick after being fully vaccinated. According to the CDC, so far there have been almost 6,000 documented cases of people being infected after getting two shots, and dozens of them have died …

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that roughly 5,800 people who received a coronavirus vaccine still ultimately came down with the disease anyway, according to CNN.

Of those 5,800, 396 of them (roughly 7 percent) were hospitalized; 74 of the vaccinated people ultimately died. The report proves that the vaccines, though frequently touted by the government and the media, are not guaranteed to prevent everyone from contracting the virus.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

But it is happening.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the current vaccines will fare against variants that have already developed and variants that will develop in the future.

At this point we just don’t know how effective the vaccines will be, but the New York Times is assuring us that we don’t have anything to be concerned about…

“I use the term ‘scariants,’†said Dr. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., referring to much of the media coverage of the variants.

“Even my wife was saying, ‘What about this double mutant?’ It drives me nuts. People are scared unnecessarily. If you’re fully vaccinated, two weeks post dose, you shouldn’t have to worry about variants at all.â€

Really?

I have a feeling that Dr. Eric Topol will end up eating those words.

The reason why a new flu vaccine comes out every year is because the flu is constantly changing and mutating.

The same thing is happening to COVID, and there are already dozens of mutant variations spreading around the globe.

To me, Dr. Eric Topol’s statement was exceedingly irresponsible, especially considering some of the studies that have come out lately. Here is just one example …

Two doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine were found to have only a 10.4% efficacy against mild-to-moderate infections caused by the B.1.351 South Africa variant, according to a phase 1b-2 clinical trial published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine . This is a cause for grave concern as the South African variants share similar mutations to the other variants leaving those vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine potentially exposed to multiple variants.

In this article, I haven’t even discussed all of the side effects that we have been witnessing. A few days ago, the FDA issued an unprecedented order regarding the Johnson and Johnson vaccine because it was causing blood clots in a number of cases…

This week, the Food and Drug Administration called for a halt in the administration of the single dose vaccine for COVID-19 manufactured by Johnson and Johnson. The halt was ascribed to the rare incidence of blood clots that could potentially be related to the vaccine.

I am glad that the FDA decided to step in, but the order came too late for this guy …

When the news broke about the pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine Tuesday, one Coast family was already living with a tragedy they believe was caused by the vaccine.

It started out as a normal day for 43-year-old Brad Malagarie of St. Martin. This busy father of seven spent the morning at his D’Iberville office before heading to get a Johnson & Johnson vaccine a little after noon.

He returned to work, and within three hours coworkers noticed he was unresponsive at his desk.

It shouldn’t be controversial to say that rushing experimental vaccines through the testing process was a really bad idea.

We should be putting the safety of the American people first, and nobody knows for sure what the long-term effects of these experimental treatments will be.

In this day and age, we all need to do our own research and we all need to think for ourselves, because the big pharmaceutical companies are more concerned with profits than anything else.

If you are harmed by their experimental therapies, the big pharmaceutical companies won’t be there to pick up the pieces for you if something goes horribly wrong.

* * *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America†is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

So...

  1. Requiring Vaccine IDs or passports violates medical privacy - Right?
  2. Unvaccinated are NOT a threat because the vaccinated are protected - Right?
  3. Preventing unvaccinated from participating in society is discrimination - Right?
_arrow

The Antisoiler 5 hours ago remove link

It appears they are moving in the direction of mandating a vaccine subscription, where you will pay monthly or yearly.

Trends indicate subscription based revenue generation is a win-win for both producer, consumer, and eugenicist.

Remember, you will own nothing and be happy about it. You will be free from the burden of asset management. And, you'll essentially be a slave, working till you drop into a grave or incinerator.

Fed Supporter 6 hours ago remove link

Sorry Michael Snyder, you are flat out wrong about natural immunity not lasting very long.

A corona virus from 17 years ago, every year those who were infected get tested for immunity, and guess what every year for 17 year those previously infected individuals still have immunity.

Further, the current corona virus , Covid, is 80% similiar to the one from 17 years ago. Some virologits estimate that 30% of the world has cross immunity and can not get Covid.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you need to do more research. You are parroting the MSM outlets who were selling fear and citing quacks from stanford, etc that said "we just don't know", No they do know they just wanted to ramp fear sky high. Memory T cells are a thing.

see

Antibody that inhibits the new coronavirus discovered in ...

https://www.livescience.com › sars-antibody-inhibits-ne...

May 18, 2020 â€" Blood samples from the patient, who had SARS in 2003, contained an ... Antibody that inhibits the new coronavirus discovered in patient who had SARS 17 years ago ... Antibodies form part of the body's immune response to pathogens. ... But Vir Biotechnology has fast-tracked the antibody for development ...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z

Here we studied T cell responses against the structural (nucleocapsid (N) protein) and non-structural (NSP7 and NSP13 of ORF1 ) regions of SARS-CoV-2 in individuals convalescing from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ( n = 36). In all of these individuals, we found CD4 and CD8 T cells that recognized multiple regions of the N protein. Next, we showed that patients ( n = 23) who recovered from SARS (the disease associated with SARS-CoV infection) possess long-lasting memory T cells that are reactive to the N protein of SARS-CoV 17 years after the outbreak of SARS in 2003; these T cells displayed robust cross-reactivity to the N protein of SARS-CoV-2. We also detected SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in individuals with no history of SARS, COVID-19 or contact with individuals who had SARS and/or COVID-19 ( n = 37). SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in uninfected donors exhibited a, etc.

Fed Supporter 6 hours ago

BTW natural immunity is way better than Mrna vaccines, which are narrowly tailored to target proteins on the spike protein. Once it mutates, like the South Africa and UK mutations, the pfizer vaccine will need modified to target the new mutations hence yearly boosters at $180 a pop. We will be chasing this thing forever, always behind on catching the mutated viruses. Invest in Pfizer their stock will go so high, they are going to make a ton of money off the sheep.

Also, some doctors, said it is not wise to get vaccinated for corvid if you already had it.

Also isn't peculiar the mutations all occurred in countries that ran human trials, Brazil, UK, SA, Israel. These countries were the first to have humans vaccinated and they are the first to have mutations.

Bacon's Rebellion 4 hours ago

"Just look at the number of medicines pulled from pharmacies in the last 20 years that the FDC originally said were perfectly safe"

Think for yourself 4 hours ago (Edited) remove link

also, the mRNA vaccine 'targets' the s-proteins by genetically hijacking your cell to construct biochemical factories to create these s-proteins. Not only is it a fixed overhead (no off switch, it's in your genes now) but that overhead is spent building parts that are designed to inflame your immune system. Even after so-called 'immunity' is acquired, those biochemical factories will keep working to produce, the immune system will keep working against the low-level inflammation, so the cells will not only be spending fuel on negative output, but the spare viral proteins floating around it's creating are just begging to be assimilated into even more mutant strains.

I am convinced that the mRNA 'vaccine' is exponentially increasing the mutation potential of covid-19.

Libertarian777 5 hours ago

THIS GUY GETS IT. Lack of antibodies does not mean immunity disappears.

Pazuzu 4 hours ago

Upvoted for clever use of term 'virologits'. If ever there were a bunch of gits the virology bunch fits the bill.

Josey Yahoo 6 hours ago remove link

Is anybody else stating to feel like they are being played?

For a year now I have been saying that this is a flu, just another flu, being blown into a major issue to literally destroy our nation.

First the lockdowns, to destroy small business, as the large companies will gladly assist in the elimination of cash. NOTE, the immediate calls for cash not to be used as it would transmit the virus, then all of a sudden a coin shortage, when was the last time that happened, oh, that's right, NEVER!

....
freedommusic 4 hours ago (Edited)

> Huh? Unvaccinated are a threat to other Unvaccinated people who want to get vaccinated and don't want to die.

No problem that's what your double mask, self isolating, and social distancing is for. Since it is SO EFFECTIVE , it will provide the necessary protection until all the smart people get vaccinated.

Then all the unwashed, ignorant, unvaccinated fools will die off as a result of natural selection.

Everyone wins here and nature wins.

RIGHT?

taketheredpill 6 hours ago

Or maybe the vaccine is 99.9925% Effective (6000 sick out of 80 Million with full dose) and Pharma guys rounded up?

Bacon's Rebellion 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link

ummm.

Assuming 100% accuracy of the "cause of death" being Covid19:

Covid19 survival rates for all age groups:
563,000 dead / 329,000,000 total population = 99.829% survival.

Covid19 survival rates over the age of 75:
245,000 dead / 55,000,000 people = 99.555% survival rate.

Covid19 survival rates under the age of 55:
40,000 dead / 229,000,000 people = 99.983% survival rate.

Covid19 survival rates under the age of 25:
550 dead / 103,000,000 people = 99.9995% survival rate.

Explain to us why in the world we need to vaccinate the 16 to 25 folks? Vaccination DOES NOT MEAN you can't catch it or spread it...

"" We don't know yet whether or not it prevents you from getting infected where you're not with symptoms...but you have virus in your nasopharynx that you could then infect an unvaccinated person who might be vulnerable, and you will inadvertently and innocently get them sick," Fauci explained."

The whole vaccine jive talk is packed with "Could", "Maybe", "Possibly", "Likely", "Unknown"...ect.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/index.htm

Bacon's Rebellion 5 hours ago (Edited)

"UNLESS....you get people to lock down, wash hands, wear masks etc."

Yeah, we did that, and we have 31,000,000 confirmed cases.

How many people contracted Covid19 but were never tested?

Estimating the Fraction of Unreported COVID-19
"The results are striking: ...The range of results across model assumptions and time periods utilized vary between 6 to 24 unreported cases."

So, at 6 unreported for every reported, more than half of the US population has been exposed...your masks and lockdowns have been a huge failure....

186,000,000 infections and 563,000 dead = .3% death rate.

University of Chicago

Fed Supporter 5 hours ago remove link

Bacon, don't confuse taketheredpill with facts, his mind is already made. I'll bet he is a paid sock puppet or just some sick liberal trolling one of the few places post comments that make sense, and that aren't a bunch of collectivist mindless sheep.

russellthetreeman PREMIUM 6 hours ago

It's not a vaccine. It doesn't even come close to halfway meeting the definition of a vaccine.

It's not a pandemic. It doesn't even come close to halfway meeting the definition of a pandemic.

The sars cov 2 virus has a known survival rate of WELL over 99+%.

sun tzu 6 hours ago remove link

The average sheep thinks over 30 million Americans died of covid-19 last year. Idiocy rules

A Lunatic 6 hours ago (Edited)

That still pales in comparison to the 150 million gun deaths we had last year, according to Joe.

Bacon's Rebellion 5 hours ago

"It's not a vaccine"...correct, it's a drug that forces your immune system to do something it doesn't want to do.

The original mRNA researcher when it actually, sorta, worked "I felt like God!"

NYTimes

baja canada 6 hours ago remove link

All BS. My wife and I are unvaccinated and have travelled half the country, always maskless, over the past year. Not sick, haven’t been sick. Our dog is fine, too.

sun tzu 6 hours ago

Same here. I've been to Mexico 3 times too. Nobody around me, family and co-workers, has gotten sick or died.

Lead Engineer PREMIUM 6 hours ago

And the CDC estimates that over 30% of the population has been infected. So if we assume that another 20% had previous natural immunity and another 50% of the susceptible have been vaccinated, then you can see that this pandemic is rapidly going extinct.

Captive1 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link

" From the very beginning of this crisis, I have been warning my readers that any immunity would be very temporary. Natural COVID immunity is very temporary, and immunity conferred by the vaccines is very temporary too."

Disqualifying statement. There is no data to support this statement. Antibody surveillance studies have shown durability and case studies have demonstrated no reinfections to those who had an initial antibody response on the first infection. Not to mention T Cell memory. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Immune memory to COV2 is long lived and protective across multiple strains. I would link the papers but I'm not helping people not be retarded anymore. Big pharma wants you to believe that immunity is temporary to drive profit. It's not.

Huxley's Ghost 6 hours ago remove link

We know so little about the immune system (really the entire human body); basic concepts, yes but effect of environment, innate experience, stressors, diet, etc..not a clue. Individual immune systems because of all these factors are more like fingerprints--vastly unique to each unit. The endocrine and immune systems are black boxes to the medical community but they act like are doing more than spit-balling.

Huxley's Ghost 5 hours ago remove link

In theory, they (vaccine companies) annually analyze what strains are prevalent in the world and predicted to have the greatest impact. Those strains get selected for production of the annual flu shot; it could be the case that the same strain(s) prevailed. Or not. These days you can't believe anything anymore.

Last time I had the flu shot was over 30 years ago. I had flu once since then and took Tamiflu, which was miraculous in its speed (identify and dose early while viral load is low) of effect, minimal/no side effects, and efficacy. I was back on my feet in about 36 hours--fully. I have heard people report horrible abdominal/GI issues (temporary). I was lucky.


strych10 3 hours ago remove link

OK, I've said this before but I will repeat it, ultra basic here:

Natural immunity tends to be both "deeper" and "broader" than what one of these mRNA (straight up or adeno vector, doesn't matter) can provide.

When a virus infects you there are a lot of different things that happen. The two that matter the most for the purposes of this discussion are as follows:

1) Your body sees a wide array of viral surface proteins and gets a look at the actual capsid and lipid envelope too. Particularly after you immune system shreds up some of the buggers and looks at the pieces.

2) Your body gets to see millions of variations on this, including the most statistically common variations in surface protein structure.

This means that your body develops a set of antibodies that is much wider than a single introduced protein can provide.

With the vax you get one structure, lab controlled QC, a single "image" of the target if you will. In the wild you get a bunch of various proteins and a ton of variation in their physical shape, hundreds or thousands of images from various angles.

The result is that you get a relatively wide array of antibodies and a hugely wider picture of what is "not self". This makes it easier for your body to recognize the same or similar infectious agent/infection next time. You also now have a set of antibodies with variable structure making it more likely that they can neutralize a mutant strain of the same virus (or something substantially similar) or at least blunt the next virus' attack long enough to buy time for your immune system to learn about it without you getting a serious illness.

duck_fur 2 hours ago

You seem to have a background in virology. What of the issue of coding errors - either during or after manufacture - within the mRNA payload? What of the possibility of the expressed protein exhibiting a fold due to the error(s)?

strych10 1 hour ago

I'm not a virologist. I'm a cell biologist.

So, trying not to make this a full on basic genetics class...

Yes, what you're asking is possible. It's also statistically rare. The root of misformed proteins tends to be genetic code error or a mistake in copying that code into mRNA.

Ribosomes, which translate mRNA into a protein, tend to be very good at their job and if they make an error can often detect it, back up and fix it and then begin sequencing again. Errors do occur but they're rare. At this stage more common is an issue of improper folding of the protein resulting in an improper tertiary structure and the inability to form a quaternary structure due to this. (A quaternary structure is an overall structure formed by multiple proteins folded to fit together into a larger unit which serves a purpose. For example, hemoglobin is formed from four separate proteins that fold up and then can fit together to form hemoglobin.)

So, assuming that the QC is good, which I have no reason to believe that it is not, coding errors are not really a problem. It's the fact that the QC is too good.

But then you have to step back and ask if this matters. Yes and no, and I'll give you a quick explanation of each.

An antibody is, essentially, like a Y of gum you're sticking on the key to a lock. The virus has a key that unlocks the cell, the antibody prevents these two things from coming into physical contact so the key can never open the lock. Once bound this antibody also marks whatever it has bound to for destruction by other parts of the immune system. That in mind...

Yes: If CoV-2 were to mutate to the point that the spike proteins in question changed enough that an antibody couldn't bind to the virion then the virus could evade the antibodies that neutralize the virion and mark it for destruction.

No: In order to do this, generally, you need quite a bit of mutation to change the physical structure of the spike. In a lot of cases this would make the virion non-operational because the same change that allows it to avoid the antibodies also means it can no longer fit that key into the desired lock.

So, does it really matter? Again, yes and no. If the virus can "figure out" a key that still opens the desired lock (or another one) and doesn't fit the antibody it will avoid the immune system until the immune system figures out what's going on. This takes some time. Infected cells have to signal that they're infected, inspection has to be done, antibodies synthesized etc.

So, IMHO, and it's just my opinion: the fear of "breakthrough" is rather overblown. However, it is still real. In a natural infection there is less chance of this kind of "breakthrough" because your body has more data on the invader meaning that the invader usually needs to change a lot more in order to evade the immune system hence "broader" and "deeper". That said, there are viruses that are pretty good at this. Influenza A is one of them.

This is the root of what you may have heard last year about "T-cell immunity". People had previously encountered a disease substantially similar to CoV-2 and it was similar enough that they produced an antibody that neutralized CoV-2.

Quasimodo. 48 minutes ago remove link

If you have breakthrough, you have a new virus. A mutation, not just a variant. Most variants have only slight changes in protein. A variant is more likely to spread and be more virulant if it is less deadly since the host survives long enough to spread the virus further, while a deadlier form (although could happen) will die out quickly as more hosts will die

strych10 15 minutes ago

I actually had to ask my wife about the technical definition about this.

For CoV-2 to change enough to be "not CoV-2" it would require significantly more alteration than you're stating here.

The things that would change the classification are things like capsid shape, nucleic acid type, mechanism of infiltration or exfiltration.

You need far more than simply the ability to evade current immune response. Hence why Influenza A can jump species, come back and still be Influenza A.

Codery 1 hour ago

Ya but that’s just like science, can you explain how any of that helps get rid of Trump?

strych10 1 hour ago remove link

Yes, in three letters. CNN.

sun tzu 6 hours ago remove link

Stay away from big hospitals. They are contract killers for big pharma

Sluggo315 3 hours ago

My older brother that has three or four co-morbidities (weight, BP, asthma, one more I think) was rushed to the hospital for a bowel blockage. He spent the night in the emergency room, and was admitted into the hospital for tests. They put him on the COVID floor. Tell me these hospitals are not in on it too!!!?

TheTruthisSomewhere 5 hours ago remove link

The article unfortunately is going from the erroneous position that this is worse than the flu. It is not the statistics are cooked and it is a testdemic. Variants are always less potent and yes people have natural immunity to this. It is almost a Gaslighting article based on quasi facts and hearsay.

[Apr 28, 2021] Joe Rogan is being attacked by Fauci the White House for daring to have an honest discussion about Covid-19 vaccines by Zachary Leeman

Joe Rogan: "I think it's safe to get vaccinated, but if you're 21 years old ... if you're a healthy person and you're exercising all of the time and you're young and you're eating well, I don't think you need to worry about this." https://twitter.com/i/status/1387077145156063234
And Fauci response: "You have to put a little bit of societal responsibility in your choices, and that's where I disagree with Mr. Rogan." https://twitter.com/i/status/1387414298432000000
It is unclear how Fauci response correlates with the fact that existing vaccines are less effective or (in case of Pfizer and South African strain) ineffective against new mutations. Does he acts as Big Pharma lobbyist, or what ?
Also, you have to be skeptical of pharmaceutical companies and the fact that they cannot be sued if something goes wrong with the vaccine.
Apr 28, 2021 | www.rt.com
White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and communications director Kate Bedingfield have made a point of belittling and attacking podcaster Joe Rogan for daring to have a mixed opinion on Covid-19 vaccines.

As Rogan has skyrocketed over the years to arguably the most influential and successful podcaster around, he has also turned into an intensely controversial figure, mainly for liberals who fear his willingness to give a platform to right-wing figures like Alex Jones and his less-than-PC takes on everything from transgender athletes to Covid-19 vaccines.

The latter is what landed the former 'Fear Factor' host in the hot seat this week as a clip from a recent episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' made its way across social media and critics painted Rogan as an anti-vaxxer spreading disinformation.

The controversy stems from Rogan saying, during a conversation with fellow comic Dave Smith, he would not recommend that a healthy person in their early 20s get a Covid-19 vaccine as they are not as vulnerable to the virus as older generations (who account for the majority of Covid deaths in the US) and people with preexisting medical conditions.

The Spotify podcaster also said pushing for kids to be vaccinated is "crazy," citing his own childrens' history with getting Covid-19, as both recovered relatively quickly.

Critics painted Rogan's comments as an angry anti-vaxx rant, urging his millions of listeners to avoid getting inoculated against Covid-19. However, they ignored the fact that Rogan says in the clip (and has said in the past) that getting vaccinated seems mostly safe and is indeed "important" for certain people.

Criticism of Rogan reached a bizarre new level on Wednesday when the White House appeared to launch a coordinated effort to disparage and belittle the podcaster, completely dismissing his opinions.

In multiple interviews, Fauci blasted Rogan for ignoring "societal responsibilities," arguing even young and healthy people should get vaccinated as asymptomatic individuals can still spread the virus.

The infectious disease expert also believes "kids of all ages" will be vaccinated by the end of the year – there are no vaccines on the market in the US approved for anyone under 16 – and everyone should "absolutely" get inoculated.

ALSO ON RT.COM Rose McGowan tells Democrats they are in a cult, and their whining, defensive responses prove her right

Bedingfield also dismissed Rogan's opinion in a CNN interview where she said Rogan not being a doctor basically strips his words of any merit.

"I guess my first question would be, did Joe Rogan become a medical doctor while we weren't looking?" she asked. "I'm not sure that taking scientific and medical advice from Joe Rogan is perhaps the most productive way for people to get their information."

Initial social media criticism of Rogan is one thing, but the White House pitting themselves against a private citizen having an open and frank discussion on a podcast is concerning. It's alarming enough that White House officials busy with vaccination efforts and a still-fresh administration would take the time to debate Rogan on the subject, but the responses to his discussion also show that administration officials are fearful of open debate and conversations about the vaccines. If one even strays from the belief that vaccines are 100% safe and every single person, regardless of age or health, should take them, they are attacked, at least if you have the following that Rogan has.

Rogan's discussions on Covid-19 vaccines do not boil down to a debate on whether getting inoculated against the virus is good for everyone or not. The recent viral clip even opens with the podcaster saying vaccines are safe, and he acknowledges that what he says about children and young, healthy people is not true across the board. He merely expresses concerns as a father and gives a personal opinion that in no way discourages everyone from getting a vaccine.

Looking at Fauci and Bedingfield's responses, it appears they aren't even debating what Rogan actually said.

Fauci, who has been a controversial figure himself and accused of flip-flopping multiple positions during the pandemic, argues that it is the potential transmission of the virus from one person to another that is the reason everyone should be vaccinated. Rogan never talks about the risk of transmission though. He simply makes the argument that a healthy individual who is younger may not need a vaccination to protect themselves from the deadlier aspects of Covid.

Bedingfield's argument is even lamer as she says without a "Dr." title, Rogan simply can't have concerns about vaccinations for children and others. She argues no one should take "medical advice" from a podcaster, setting Rogan up as a man who presented himself as some kind of expert on vaccines, dishing out advice to his listeners, who apparently aren't intelligent enough to make up their own minds, according to these critics.

Fauci and Bedingfield and any other White House official who decides to paint Rogan as the face of anti-vaxxers should be ashamed of themselves. Their personal attacks are an opportunistic way to take a shot at someone who has somehow become a near-pariah on the left, and to discourage open and frank discussions about vaccines. Their swift dismissal of a comedian who is not quite waving the flag for every single person to be vaccinated shows that they don't want discussion from citizens they want compliance and for people to keep nodding their heads at their ever-changing talking points and guidelines.

It really doesn't matter who is right in the White House versus Joe Rogan debate because there shouldn't be a White House versus Joe Rogan debate. Ironically, Fauci and Bedingfield have probably made more people aware of Rogan's comments by addressing them. They and other officials have taken questionable criticism of a fairly harmless conversation and used it to create a false narrative about one man to strike fear into anyone who would dare consider what he or anyone else would say above what they do.

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[Apr 28, 2021] I think efficiency will drop over time requiring frequent booster shots as well as new virus strains that render the current vaccine useless. Time will tell.

Notable quotes:
"... CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla is a veterinarian! ..."
"... CEO runs a business, not scientific R&D! Pfizer has thousands of employees to do the R&D work. ..."
Apr 15, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

heehaw2 2 hours ago

CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla is a veterinarian! Ha ha ha. Franci depends on this guy to give out experiment mRNA treatments to humans...what a total joke

AGuy 2 hours ago

CEO runs a business, not scientific R&D! Pfizer has thousands of employees to do the R&D work.

That's said, I don't have much faith in the vaccines. I think efficiency will drop over time requiring frequent booster shots as well as virus strains that render the current vaccine useless. Time will tell.

[Apr 27, 2021] What We Know About India s Double Mutant Covid-19 Variant

Notable quotes:
"... In the hard-hit state of Maharashtra, the double mutant has already become the dominant strain, according to Dr. Anurag Agrawal, director of the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. In samples collected in the state from January to March, over 60% were of the double-mutant variant, according to a study by the National Institute of Virology in Pune ..."
"... That research could inform future vaccine development, especially booster shots that will target particular variants of Covid-19, Dr. Pinsky said. ..."
Apr 27, 2021 | www.wsj.com

...The Indian variant has 13 mutations, but gets its name from two mutations similar to those seen separately in other variants. In other variants, one mutation is associated with making the virus more infectious and appears better at evading antibodies, while the other is similar to one that has shown signs of being able to sidestep some of the body’s immune responses.

It was first discovered in India in a sample collected in October, said Dr. Rakesh Mishra, director of the CSIR Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, which operates one of the 10 state-run labs charged with genomic sequencing of the virus. Recent data points to its rapid spread through some regions of India.

In the hard-hit state of Maharashtra, the double mutant has already become the dominant strain, according to Dr. Anurag Agrawal, director of the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. In samples collected in the state from January to March, over 60% were of the double-mutant variant, according to a study by the National Institute of Virology in Pune

For the country overall, this variant made up 70.4% of the samples collected during the week ended March 25, compared with 16.1% just three weeks earlier, according to Covid CG, a tracking tool from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The tool uses data from the GISAID Initiative, a global database for coronavirus genomes.

... The virus has already hopped to at least 21 countries, according to researchers at four universities that track viral lineages. Genetic sequencing has turned up cases in the U.S., Germany, Turkey and Nigeria, among others. In the U.K, genome sequencers have found the variant among people who haven’t traveled, suggesting it has spread within the community.

... In California, at least 20 confirmed or presumptive cases of the double mutant have been discovered since late March, according to Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, director of Clinical Virology Laboratory at Stanford University. Dr. Pinsky said samples have already been sent to collaborators at other laboratories, where research is under way to test how the virus reacts to monoclonal antibodies and plasmas from infected or vaccinated people.

That research could inform future vaccine development, especially booster shots that will target particular variants of Covid-19, Dr. Pinsky said.

Many young people are now falling ill and showing up at hospitals with severe symptoms, doctors and public-health experts said. In this surge, people age 26 to 44 account for about 40% of total cases and 10% of deaths, Dr. Kant said, compared with the previous wave, when almost all of the deaths were those aged 60 and above.


[Apr 27, 2021] No clear link between vaccinations and deaths has been found to date

Apr 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

norecovery , Apr 23 2021 16:19 utc | 12

It's no wonder there's "hesitancy" among the public about vaccination. Sputnik News has a revealing article on Pfizer's push to compete while downplaying the safety of their experimental treatment -- https://sputniknews.com/world/202104231082693859-is-pfizer-quietly-targeting-other-vaccines-while-holding-back-on-its-own-safety-record-/

Note one of the qualifiers in the death stats: "(3) No clear link between vaccinations and deaths has been found to date" -- it appears these public health agencies have set a high bar for causation in order to obfuscate the truth.


Mina , Apr 23 2021 16:40 utc | 13

Another lie used by the Western governments is the claim about the need for 'herd immunity' via vaccination and the aim of 70% of a population.
In fact, giving the vaccine to the +70 and the people who consider themselves at risk and want to be vaccinated is enough to reduce the mortality drastically.

Mina , Apr 23 2021 16:53 utc | 15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyPjAfNNA-U
Sucharit Bhakdi on blood clots

oldhippie , Apr 23 2021 18:11 utc | 17

Mina @ 13

When smallpox was extincted the WHO goal was 80% vaccination. Not achieved anywhere. Smallpox is gone.

The ‘vaccine’ does not make anyone immune. It creates antibodies that circulate in bloodstream. It is an airborne respiratory disease. Inside surface of lungs is principal locus of infection. There is no blood on inner surface of lung and thus no antibodies. The blood is close enough to the lung surface for exchange of O2 and CO2, the larger antibody molecule remains in the capillary. The epithelial cells lining the lung become infected with no resistance from any ‘vaccine’ related antibody. If the antibody is useful it will be much later in course of disease.

This is why vaccines for airborne diseases have always been difficult, unreliable. Suddenly, under political pressure, all sorts of non-possible things are claimed. Or inferred and suggested.

We have no idea how far along herd immunity might be. No one is looking. Anyone who wants to investigate herd immunity is a political enemy. The sort of testing that would be required Is possible, can be done, has been done, is relatively slow and difficult. Would need big grants from political bodies. When this all started survivors of SARS-COVID One (from 2003-2005) were asked to give blood. When that blood was exposed to samples of SARS-COVID2 t-cells remembered just what to do, immediately identified the 2 virus as a familiar antigen and ripped it apart. After fifteen years the t-cells still knew what to do. The One virus is only 80% similar to the 2 virus. Herd immunity will happen. Nothing is being done that will make that come any sooner.

lizzie dw , Apr 23 2021 18:53 utc | 18

I have read enough articles about the side effects of these "vaccines" to think that the countries denied the opportunity to be injected should almost be thanking their lucky stars. What is even more remiss, IMO, is that no one anywhere is being apprised of the NEEd for adequate Vit. D levels to combat the virus, nor of at least 2 of the relatively cheap and available therapeutics that can be given in a protocol including other medications/vitamins (hydroxchloroquine and ivermectin).

john swinburne , Apr 23 2021 19:12 utc | 20

The Ugly Truth About The Covid-19 Lockdowns:
https://www.pandata.org/time-to-reopen-society/

[Apr 27, 2021] Russia delivered 200,000 doses of Sputnik V gratis to Slovakia with a contract to deliver 2M more doses. The US/NATO agents busted a gasket, replaced the prime minister and prevented Slovakia from using any of the vaccines. They even refused to return the 200,000 doses so that Russia could use them somewhere else.

Apr 27, 2021 | turcopolier.com

Christian J. Chuba says: April 16, 2021 at 2:35 pm

"Putin critics cite Sputnik V vaccine debacle as attempt to further divide Europe"

This is one of those stories where it is a good mental exercise to try to extract the facts scattered in the layers of BS. It was just incredible. So here is my summary.

Part 1: the facts

Russia delivered 200,000 doses of Sputnik V gratis to Slovakia with a contract to deliver 2M more doses. The US/NATO agents busted a gasket, replaced the prime minister and prevented Slovakia from using any of the vaccines. They even refused to return the 200,000 doses so that Russia could use them somewhere else.

Part 2: the hysterical wailing

Evil Putin is using a divide and conquer strategy to try to destroy Europe but NATO vigilance prevented the Slovakians from being poisoned by this defective product and foiled the local Russian collaborators. Russia is eagerly peddling Sputnik V because it is the first new export item they have developed since the end of the Cold War [I don't know I thought Novichok was pretty good]. India is reconsidering their purchase because the Russians are also selling it to Pakistan (??????? wtf is that supposed to mean?????)

I can't believe an article like this got past any editor, is there a point where people in the U.S. will catch onto the fact that they are reading complete nonsense?

Yeah, Right says: April 17, 2021 at 8:01 am

Novichok is a Soviet-era family of (apparently) non-lethal super-lethal supremely-dangerous nerve agents that you can safely carry around in a perfume bottle even though it is applied as a gel on a door-nob.

Or in a water bottle. Whatever. I've lost track. Was it sprinkled on someone's underpants, or was that last week's explanation?

But definitely not developed for the post-cold war export market.

I do like the "fact" that the Slovakians are complaining that the State Institute for Drug Control doesn't know the details of the contract signed with Russia.

Ahem. There is now a new government.

So the institutions of state can solve that particular puzzle by opening the filing cabinet in the Prime Ministers Office and having a sticky-beak inside.

Perhaps Matovic took the key with him when he vacated the office?

[Apr 27, 2021] Regarding the three articles posted on covid and thrombosis.

Notable quotes:
"... Science now means refusing to know anything but the narrative. There is just no way we shall know how bad a problem the vaccine is. My supposition that the son-in-law's problems are connected to vaccine could be pure ex post facto rubbish. We shall never know because we refuse to look. ..."
Apr 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Oldhippie , Apr 25 2021 14:40 utc | 12

Covid-19 Vaccine Thrombosis:

Regarding the three articles posted on covid and thrombosis.

The first article, the NEJM article, reports six younger patients died of thrombosis, presumably cerebral venous thrombosis. Although the article is so poorly written it is hard to even know. Patients were in "Germany and Austria" but past that all we have is lab test reports. Not even clear if the authors ever saw the patients. Cerebral venous thrombosis is extremely rare in younger patients. The article does make the Astra Zeneca jab the cause of death, obscuring that by referring to it as ChAdOx1 -Covid-19

Second article is basically "nothing to see here" plus "Look! -- - A squirrel!!!" And would be entirely dismissed but for the third article, from Gamaleya Center which basically says "You filthy swine! You inject your citizens with raw sewage and then act surprised you have problems."

The son-in-law has had a series of cardiac problems. Following his vaccination. Doctors tell him the vaccination is entirely safe, absolutely no reported cardiac or circulatory problems reported anywhere. And any who say otherwise are conspiracy theorists he should quit listening to. Making NEJM conspiracy theorists.

Science now means refusing to know anything but the narrative. There is just no way we shall know how bad a problem the vaccine is. My supposition that the son-in-law's problems are connected to vaccine could be pure ex post facto rubbish. We shall never know because we refuse to look.

[Apr 27, 2021] The Pandemic and irrational exuberance about vaccines

Notable quotes:
"... Also registered in Israel, Pfizer vaccine caused more deaths only in Israel than even AstraZeneca in whole Europe.. ..."
Apr 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Lelush , Apr 25 2021 13:24 utc | 5

On the Pandemic front and vaccines...

Yesterday there was a multitudinary demonstration in London against pandemic measures and mainly against implementation of "vaccination passports" not reported by the media, not even the alt-media...

Also there were these past days huge demonstrations in Germany agsint Special Pandemic Powers Laws, currently being signed thorughout the whole EU without people´s knowledge nor escrutiny...

Increasingly are appearing unknown vaccines side effects, as cardiologic ones and effects on menstrual cycle...

Also registered in Israel, Pfizer vaccine caused more deaths only in Israel than even AstraZeneca in whole Europe..

Then this is the vaccine currently monopolizing EU strategy of vaccination through lobbyist like Thierry breton, responsible for EU internal market, The European Council of Foreign Relations ( which labels the Russian vaccine as a risk on EU health security, and pressures coming from the US DoS...

Anyway, the risk of suffering a blood clot with AstraZeneca has doubled in 15 days...and Boris Johnson has already announced that Covid-19 vaccines will not end the pandemic and that "new" meds will be needed to counter next highly likely next fall coming waves...in spite of alleged British succes with vaccines...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9491869/Coronavirus-Britain-pills-treat-Covid-autumn.html

It is a matter of time that the EU citizenry becomes aware that there are spurious interests in blocking EU acess to safe, efficient and cheap vaccines while promoting dangerous ones as a single possiblity which not only offer more risk thatn benefits but also will not provide any kind of immunity, in the best case they prived a slight protection against serious Covid-19 infection.


Lelush , Apr 25 2021 13:41 utc | 6

Who are those profitting from the vaccines...and why there is a war on vaccines, as this is a mutibillion business with no end in sight, as the pandemic will be eternal by design..

Taking into account who are the main shareholders, one is prone to think that this is the way some countries have decided they will capitalize their accute debt crisis, by looting from others, as always...

https://mundo.sputniknews.com/20210423/quienes-son-los-duenos-de-las-vacunas-privadas-y-como-se-estan-enriqueciendo-1111506444.html

Also, how is that Moderna registered the patent of its vaccine already in September, past year, when the pandemic was not even declared yet, not even in China...????

https://twitter.com/aaronyokheved/status/1386015618009272329

Lelush , Apr 25 2021 13:58 utc | 7
A resistance movement against the "new pandemic fascist world order" in surging in Europe.

Images of yesterday greatest in recent history demonstration so far in UK against lockdowns, masks, "vaccine passports" and authoritarian measures on this pandemic alibi..

https://twitter.com/InfoNewsABC/status/1385979583791501318

Also, a resistance movement has surged in France on initiative of artists, philosophers, intellectuals and fed up people who usually think on the arbitrariness and absurdity of certain pandemic measures especially outdoors...with a song "Danser Encore" rising a new resistance hymn...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyBEMRyt6Qg&ab_channel=HKsaltimbank

It is going viral...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIQvsOja_30&ab_channel=Journall%27Humanit%C3%A9

German version by Die Box....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phrCiosJB-Q&ab_channel=DIEBOX

Spanish version...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlT-vwnIAEk&ab_channel=ElenadelValle

Italian version...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_b_PLfxugM&ab_channel=StefanManderioli

jared , Apr 25 2021 14:17 utc | 8
Regarding the virus and vaccine -

- On z/h was a posting claiming that in US, there is poor correlation between states enforcing stricter measures and states having better outcomes. Difficult to assess because they play very loose with the died of covid assessment. I suspect this is valid as I dont see the pandaphiles pointing finger at florida texas with any effect.

- It has been noted that the promoters of the pandemic seem to have very low confidence in performance of the vacine as they propose to continue strict control measures.

- Institutions are requiring vacination and signing of release - requiring people to accept medical treatment with a vaccine which is not approved by FDA. Frightening on many levels.

Very troubling.

[Apr 27, 2021] The Gamaleya Center statement - Official website vaccine against COVID-19 Sputnik V

Notable quotes:
"... Science Mag ..."
Apr 27, 2021 | sputnikvaccine.com

Covid-19 Vaccine Thrombosis:

THE GAMALEYA CENTER STATEMENT

A comprehensive analysis of adverse events during clinical trials and over the course of mass vaccinations with the Sputnik V vaccine showed that there were no cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).

All vaccines based on adenoviral vector platform are different and not directly comparable. In particular, AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1-S vaccine uses chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver the antigen, consisting of S-protein combined with leader sequence of tissue-type plasminogen activator. The vaccine from Johnson&Johnson uses human adenovirus serotype Ad26 and full-length S-protein stabilized by mutations. In addition, it is produced using the PER.C6 cell line (embryonic retinal cells), which is not widely represented among other registered products.

Sputnik V is a two-component vaccine in which adenovirus serotypes 5 and 26 are used. A fragment of tissue-type plasminogen activator is not used, and the antigen insert is an unmodified full-length S-protein. Sputnik V vaccine is produced with the HEK293 cell line, which has long been safely used for the production of biotechnological products.

Thus, all of the above vaccines based on adenoviral vectors have significant differences in their structure and production technology. Therefore, there is no reason and no justification to extrapolate safety data from one vaccine to safety data from other vaccines.

The quality and safety of Sputnik V are, among other things, assured by the fact that, unlike other vaccines, it uses a 4-stage purification technology that includes two stages of chromatography and two stages of tangential flow filtration. This purification technology helps to obtain a highly purified product that goes through mandatory control including the analysis of free DNA presence. In addition, the volume of nucleic acid is several dozen times lower in adenoviral vectors compared to Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (1 to 2 mcg vs 50 to 100 mcg, correspondingly).

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine on April 9, 2021, discusses that the cause of the thrombosis in some patients vaccinated with other vaccines could be insufficient purification that leads to the emergence of significant quantities of free DNA. Insufficient purification or use of very high doses of target DNA/RNA can result in adverse interaction of a patient’s antibodies that activate thrombocytes with elements of the vaccine itself and/or free DNA/RNA, which can form a complex with the PF4 factor.

Link to the study:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2104840?query=featured_home

The Gamaleya Center is ready to share its purification technology with other vaccine producers in order to help them minimize the risk of adverse effects during vaccination.

[Apr 25, 2021] No Jab For Me

Apr 25, 2021 | nojabforme.info

Statements in this site are substantiated with facts that will stand in a court of law. Informed Consent requires a flow of information. Click on the hyperlinked sections to direct you to primary sources such as CDC, WHO, FDA documents.

Anyone trying to take down this site will be named as codefendant in Nuremberg 2.0 for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. That includes social media. Lawyers are standing by.

Did you know?

Did you also know? Are you aware that... ... and that ... or that Finally, did you know? ... or that

[Apr 15, 2021] It's all positive about coronavirus vaccines

If ten percent of vaccinated people still get the virus it is hoax not vaccine. The argument that it prevents serious illness is moot as serious illness is probably less then 1% of COVID-19 infections and happens most to people at risk (over 70, with several other serious medical conditions, morbidly obese, with compromised immune system, etc)
Apr 15, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

SaCalobra 3 hours ago (Edited)

The jab is great. Except now you need THREE of them. And except from the fact that you can still get covid. And that you are still adviced to keep distance. And to wear a mask. And a vaccine passport. And all the side effects. Like death. Great! I want it!!!

get nothing and like it 3 hours ago (Edited)

But for gods sake you must get the jab. Otherwise you "could" get the virus 50/50 chance, which would kill you .01% of you are under 60 and healthy, or put you in the hospital maybe .1%, or make you really sick like the flu 25% chance and the jab does that with 50% of people or you don't even know you have it 30%. And if you do by chance get it, you have natural immunity. So yes get the jab for sure ...

[Apr 15, 2021] 3rd Dose Of Pfizer's COVID Vaccine -Likely- Needed To Combat Mutant COVID Strains, CEO Says - ZeroHedge

Apr 15, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

3rd Dose Of Pfizer's COVID Vaccine "Likely" Needed To Combat Mutant COVID Strains, CEO Says BY TYLER DURDEN THURSDAY, APR 15, 2021 - 03:33 PM

As American waits for the CDC to finish a review of blood-clotting risks associated with Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourlas has warned reporters that recipients of the Pfizer vaccine - the most widely distributed jab in the US - will "likely" need to receive a third "booster" shot within 12 months of being vaccinated, and possibly as early as six months after receiving their second dose.

The news is hardly a surprise. Comments and rumors about the need for booster shots have been reported by the US media since late last year . But on Thursday, Bourlas said a booster shout would likely be necessary, and that patients may need to be vaccinated against COVID annually, similar to the way that flu vaccines are developed and distributed.

"It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus," he told CNBC's Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health. Bourlas added that vaccines will need to be used to combat not just COVID, but the evolving mutant strains - or "variants" - like B.1.1.7, known as the "Kent" strain, which has been blamed for some of the botched rollout in the US.

Bourlas isn't the only major public health official warning about the need for booster shots. On Thursday, the Biden administration's Covid response chief science officer David Kessler said Americans should expect to receive booster shots to protect against coronavirus variants. He noted that while the current crop of COVID jabs is highly effective, they could be "challenged" by the new variants.

New data released earlier this month by Pfizer said that updated data from its clinical trial showed its vaccine to be highly effective six months after the second dose. The data was based on more than 12K vaccinated participants. More data is still needed to determine whether protections last after six months, however. Pfizer and German partner BioNTech began studying a third dose of their vaccine in late February.

The booster shot is aimed at protecting against future variants, which may be better at evading antibodies from vaccine than earlier strains of the virus. About 144 volunteers will be given the third dose, mostly those who participated in the vaccine's early-stage U.S. testing last year.

"We don't know everything at this moment," he told House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Response. "We are studying the durability of the antibody response," he said. "It seems strong but there is some waning of that and no doubt the variants challenge...they make these vaccines work harder. So I think for planning purposes, planning purposes only, I think we should expect that we may have to boost."

Bourla said the company would likely try out the third doses first on a select group of individuals who participated in the original studies.

In other news, Pfizer has been focusing on trials of its COVID jab in children as it aims to become the first to be approved for use in minors . Currently, the pharma giant is testing the jab on children and babies younger than one year old. y_arrow


prom queen 43 minutes ago

Can I hear a 4, what about a 5??

SERReal1 42 minutes ago

Just used to getting a jab every year

Stalefarts 33 minutes ago

This is just the calm before the cytokine storm.

CleeTorres 31 minutes ago

He's not dumb...

1 shot = I'm making lots of money

2 shots = I'm making lots more money

3 shots = Heck, I need another mansion or two

Yearly Shot = Damn people are stupid. Maybe I can make it monthly

S. Archer 37 minutes ago

It won't end with a 3rd shot. This crap is going to become annual. Every year we'll be harassed about whether we have had our covid shots or not. I for one will not be participating. GTFO with that crap.

[Apr 15, 2021] The powerful technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines - PBS NewsHour

Apr 15, 2021 | www.pbs.org

Around 20 years ago, the work of two researchers -- Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó -- helped overcome two primary barriers that had been standing in the way of utilizing mRNA technology: an inflammatory effect on the body that made test animals ill, and the fragile nature of the molecule itself, both of which hindered its utility.

Despite those advancements, and the wealth of research that's been carried out since, the fact remains that the two mRNA vaccines in use today are the first of their kind. That may be in part because it's difficult to generate interest and funding to support pursuing "non-mainstream" science outside of a crisis, Duprex said -- what he characterized as "a shortsighted way to think about biology."

Only now, amid a devastating pandemic, has this technology reached mainstream prominence. "Given the choice, I would have rather avoided this past year," Weissman said. "But we didn't, and now RNA is going to be our future."

Here's a look at how, exactly, these vaccines manage to pull off this feat and some of the key research breakthroughs that made this moment possible.

How messenger RNA vaccines work

In order to develop these vaccines, researchers took the RNA-based genetic sequence of the coronavirus and turned it into DNA. This crucial step allowed them to identify the "instructions" necessary to create the spike protein, engineer corresponding synthetic mRNA and package that into their vaccines.

mRNA, as its moniker implies, is a messenger. This particular type of RNA is tasked with delivering messages to microscopic cellular machines called ribosomes, located in the cytoplasm of our cells, which are responsible for synthesizing proteins. Those ribosomes then interpret that message to make proteins and start executing its instructions, explained Phillip Sharp, a molecular biologist and MIT professor who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his contribution to our understanding of RNA.

Dendritic cells, the watchdogs of the immune system, play an essential role in responding to pathogens. They patrol the body in search of foreign invaders and, when they find one, start stimulating an immune response. When these cells encounter mRNA that's been injected via vaccination, their ribosomes decode the message and allow the cells to temporarily display spike proteins identical to the ones found on the coronavirus's exterior, Weissman said.

"Dendritic cells make the spike protein and then they present it to other immune cells and activate them to start the immune response," he added.

An animated visual of the coronavirus. Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
What does the coronavirus look like?

Like the other members of its viral family, SARS-CoV-2 -- the official name for the coronavirus -- is an RNA virus. Simply put, each individual virus is composed of single strands of genetic material protected by a fatty outer layer that's coated in spike proteins. Those "spikes" are what the virus uses to hijack our cells and use our molecular machinery to make more copies of itself.

The proteins allow the dendritic cells to alert two more key players in the immune system -- T cells and B cells -- that if they see those same spikes on any other cell, they should recognize them as a foreign invaders and either destroy them or generate antibodies to neutralize them immediately.

"There's a memory component of those cell populations, and that stays in your body over a long period of time," Sharp said. "If a similar virus infects you, those memory cells are ready to go. They are all perfected to go out and kill that virus."

mRNA naturally degrades rapidly over time, so once it has served its purpose, it simply breaks down. The dendritic cells that expressed the spike protein eventually die and are replaced by new ones that continue to pick up that vaccine-delivered mRNA and repeat the process all over again in the course of about two weeks following immunization.

Some members of the public have expressed concern over unfounded speculation that these vaccines could negatively affect the body. But it is impossible for an mRNA vaccine to alter your DNA because synthetic mRNA operates only in the cytoplasm and is incapable of entering any other parts of our cells, such as the nucleus.

Like virtually all vaccines, those that use mRNA can trigger temporary symptoms like a fever, fatigue and soreness at the injection site that dissipate within a few days. But clinical trials that took place before the vaccines were authorized, as well as those that have followed, all suggest that these vaccines are both safe and effective at preventing serious illness and death.

"It's always, always much more risky to get the disease than it is to get the vaccine," Duprex said.

How did we get here?

mRNA was first injected into the muscles of mice in 1990 with the intention to deliver therapeutic proteins. But that effort "didn't go very far," according to Weissman, in large part due to the strong inflammatory response it induced, which severely sickened the animals involved.

That's because in both animals and humans, cells feature a number of different receptors that can recognize mRNA as a foreign substance that must be destroyed. Those receptors help these cells distinguish their fellow cells from invaders like viruses, bacteria or even tumor cells.

Both RNA and DNA are composed of four nucleotides. More than a decade after that first injection in mice, Weissman and Karikó, who now serves as senior vice president at BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to manufacture their joint vaccine, figured out a way to insert an modified nucleotide that allows the synthetic mRNA to masquerade as a normal cell and circumvent those receptors, no longer triggering extreme inflammation. It also made the mRNA-spurred protein production more efficient.

"Our big discovery was that we could modify the RNA to make it non-inflammatory. And that had a couple of important features to it, but the first was that it greatly increased the amount of protein made off of the RNA," which increased potency, Weissman said.

With the inflammation problem solved, Weissman and Karikó then turned to tweaking how mRNA is delivered so it could actually do its job once injected into the body. mRNA is an inherently "labile," or unstable, material that can degrade rapidly to the point of being rendered ineffective.

After testing around 40 different types of delivery systems, the researchers found their golden ticket: lipid nanoparticles. These "droplets of fat" coat the mRNA and allow it to successfully enter our cells, which are also encapsulated in an oily substance.

Traditional vaccines are typically formulated with adjuvants that are designed to stimulate the immune response in their recipients. In what Weissman described as a lucky development, lipid nanoparticles happened to act as an adjuvant that stimulated a specific type of "helper cell" that promotes antibody responses.

"We use the lipid nanoparticles to get over a lot of the fragility [problems] because that protected the [mRNA] after you injected it into people, and it promoted these cells to take up the [mRNA] and start the vaccine process," Weissman said.

Where mRNA stands today

In the years since Weissman and Karikó made these breakthroughs, mRNA research has continued to march on. Weissman and his current colleagues have worked on a variety of mRNA vaccines, including a "universal" flu shot that could cover a majority of influenza viruses and has so far proven to be effective in animal trials.

Compared to traditional vaccine platforms that require a series of complex steps, like growing mammalian cells in massive quantities and a viral purification process that looks different depending on the pathogen you're working with, mRNA is now easy to manufacture at a fairly large scale.

Instead of needing "to reinvent the wheel every time you make a new vaccine," Weissman said, "with [mRNA,] it's the same reaction, and the only thing you have to do is plug in the new sequence for any virus, so that makes it very easy to produce a new vaccine."

Both Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines generated above 90 percent protection after two doses during clinical trials that played out before new variants of the virus marginally reduced their efficacy. Even so, the two give recipients remarkably high levels of protection, particularly against severe disease and death .

The CDC recently released new research that found these vaccines reduce a fully vaccinated person's chance of getting infected with the coronavirus by 90 percent in "real-world" settings like the workplace.

Given that no vaccines have ever been approved to immunize people against any kind of coronavirus, and that the FDA's original hope was to secure one with at least 50 percent efficacy to curb the pandemic, these results represent yet another significant milestone in annals of RNA technology.

Much more research lies ahead for these vaccines, both of which have been rolled out in the United States and in some other countries over the past few months. In addition to continuing to track safety and efficacy data, researchers need to know how well these vaccines prevent recipients from transmitting COVID-19 and how long the protection they offer lasts. Until we know the answers to those questions, recipients should keep following pandemic precautions like wearing a mask, even after they've gotten their two doses, experts say.

READ MORE: How to stay safe from COVID this summer, according to experts

Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, a one dose shot that uses a different yet similarly innovative platform to deliver immunity compared to mRNA, has also been authorized for use in the United States. Its strong efficacy and ability to be stored at a less strict temperature range makes experts hopeful that the rollout of this vaccine will help close some gaps in vaccine access both in this country and abroad.

In tackling COVID-19, Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines have "paved the way," Duprex said, when it comes to illustrating the utility of synthetic mRNA. And yet, while he anticipates that researchers will "only get better" at making tweaks that allow for better delivery and stability of this technology, he notes that we're still in the early days of harnessing its utility -- we also can't assume that mRNA is "the next big panacea" that will solve all of our problems.

But, Duprex said, "the beautiful thing about this is this just gives us another brush for the palette of novel therapeutics [and] novel ideas that somebody in the next generation of scientists are going to be able to [use to] paint."

[Apr 15, 2021] We have a therapy that can fight COVID-19. The medications have been around for 50 years, they are cheap, FDA and TGA approved, and have an outstanding safety profile

Apr 15, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

SYDNEY, Aug 20 - Triple therapy specialist Professor Thomas Borody, famous for curing peptic ulcers using a Triple Antibiotic Therapy saving millions of lives, has released the Triple Therapy Protocol for COVID-19 to Australian GPs, who can legally prescribe it to COVID-19 positive patients, or prescribe it as a preventative medication. Borody says this could be the fastest and safest way to end the pandemic in Australia within 6-8 weeks.

Professor Thomas Borody MB, BS, BSc(Med), MD, PhD, DSc, FRACP, FACP, FACG, AGAF, FRS(N) said:
"The three medications are on chemist shelves right now. GPs can email [email protected] to obtain the dosing protocol and COVID-19 treatment information for their patients.

"GPs can legally prescribe the therapy today as an "off label" treatment according to Australian Guidelines - a standard practice in medicine. In fact more than 60% of prescriptions in Australia are "off-label". It's not a new concept. It's happening every day to manage diseases and save lives."

Professor Borody continued:

"We have a therapy that can fight COVID-19. The medications have been around for 50 years, they are cheap, FDA and TGA approved, and have an outstanding safety profile. Why are we just waiting around for a vaccine? To save lives we should be using whatever is safe and available right now. We could lead the world in this fight.

"Australia has some of the best medical and science people in the world - indeed the Ivermectin connection was first discovered by Dr Kylie Wagstaff's team at Monash University in April. How long do we need to wait before Australian politicians get behind Australian medical science and use 'war room' tactics with safe and approved medications."

[Apr 13, 2021] above a threshold of 33 cycles

Apr 13, 2021 | www.cdc.gov

Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California , Riverside. "I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," she said.

A more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less.

ISITZEN -- What number of Amplification Cycles being used in the PCR tests?

[Apr 13, 2021] Moderna Shot remains 90% Effective After Six Months

Apr 13, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

Moderna Inc.'s vaccine remained more than 90% effective after six months, according to a new analysis of data from the company's final-stage trial.

Beginning two weeks after the second dose, the shot was more than 90% effective overall, and more than 95% effective at preventing severe cases, according to a statement. The company didn't release further details and said the follow-up results were preliminary as the study is continuing.

[Apr 13, 2021] VA Study- How Long Does COVID-19 Vaccine Immunity Last

If we assume that 10% of vaccinated who get infected (the vaccine does not prevent infection but does prevent development of virus pneumonia) will get virus pneumonia and if the effectiveness will drop further in 12 month this means that this particular vaccine is a grandiose failure.
Notable quotes:
"... Actual death count means the number of death where CODID-19 is primary cause means deaths from virus pneumonia only. All other needs to be excluded, IMHO. As money are involved, I think the statistics is grossly exaggerated. ..."
"... If we assume that 10% of vaccinated who get infected (the vaccine does not prevent infection but does prevent development of virus pneumonia) will get virus pneumonia and if the effectiveness will drop further in 12 month this means that this particular vaccine is a grandiose failure. ..."
Apr 02, 2021 | angrybearblog.com

Scientists at the VA's Office of Research and Development in White River Junction, Vermont, have found that the vaccines can provide immunity for at least seven to nine months, a time frame similar to the immune response generated in people who have had COVID-19.

The study examined antibodies in some of the 240,000 veterans who have contracted COVID-19, Dr. Richard Stone, VA's acting under secretary for health, said Friday.

Speaking to reporters during a news conference Friday with VA Secretary Denis McDonough, Dr. Richard Stone:

"The evidence is that between seven and nine months, we can feel comfortable that you are still protected. We think it will be longer than that. That is not a limitation,"

While several studies have shown that immunity following a COVID-19 infection can last at least six months, and perhaps as many as eight months, research on the lasting impact of COVID-19 vaccines is ongoing, and scientists have been hesitant to discuss the time frame before all the data is compiled.

But the VA's findings, Stone said, could "extend" the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's message that immunity from a vaccine lasts at least six months. Dr. Richard Stone:

"Right now it appears we will be able to publish in the next few weeks."

The belief right now in Covid-19 like the flu is an endemic disease just like influenza. The issue then is how to reduce mortality and hospitalizations going forward

Likbez, April 13, 2021 6:18 pm

> The issue then is how to reduce mortality and hospitalizations going forward

In order to reduce mortality it is important to have valid statistical data of the number of infections (not positive PcR tests without specifying the number of amplifications )

This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are. [why?]

The C.D.C.'s own calculations suggest that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles. Officials at some state labs said the C.D.C. had not asked them to note threshold values or to share them with contact-tracing organizations. [why?]

Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. "I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," she said.

A more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less.

ISITZEN - What number of Amplification Cycles being used in the PCR tests?

Actual death count means the number of death where CODID-19 is primary cause means deaths from virus pneumonia only. All other needs to be excluded, IMHO. As money are involved, I think the statistics is grossly exaggerated.

In this respect, one effect that does need a valid explanation is almost total elimination of deaths from influenza this season. How this could be?

Development of direct methods of treating COVID-19 is also important and can help to reduce "real" mortality. This policy of putting all money on a single method - vaccination - looks pretty questionable to me, taking into account that coronaviruses mutate rapidly which limits the duration of vaccination, and the possibility of discovering long term side effects.

What about effective antibody treatment and new medications that supposedly can prevent the development of virus pneumonia? Which means that death from COVID-19 can be eliminated without vaccination as only pneumonia is deadly in this case.

Traditionally pneumonia is the main cause of deaths among elderly so the fact that now this is the COVID-19 pneumonia changes very little in statistics of death for the elderly. Post-influenza bacterial pneumonia is dangerous enough for this category of people, so COVID-19 pneumonia changes almost nothing here.

This wide-scale biological experiment with vaccination for age groups below, say, 50, does not look too promising if the effectiveness of the vaccine is limited to a single virus season. Which is what the CEO of Pfizer hinted recently.

Bloomberg triumphantly reported that Moderna effectiveness is 90% after six months. But what 90% effectiveness means is anybody guess. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-12/india-has-2nd-most-cases-u-k-hits-vaccine-target-virus-update?srnd=premium

If we assume that 10% of vaccinated who get infected (the vaccine does not prevent infection but does prevent development of virus pneumonia) will get virus pneumonia and if the effectiveness will drop further in 12 month this means that this particular vaccine is a grandiose failure.

Also constant vaccine cheerleading in neoliberal MSM became a little bit annoying as for age groups below, say 50, this virus does not represent serious, statistically significant danger.

And what if we discover serious side effects of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine a year or two from now ? Then what?

IMHO attempt to immunize people below 25 or 30 years old without serious health problems would be highly questionable and possible harmful. And, unfortunately, I saw many such people in lines.

Also, one size does not fit all here. There areas with high density of population like NYC and vicinity (NY metropolitan area). Where the risk is highest and the virus represent serious and immanent threat due to the specifics of this env. Which is unhealthy env to start with.

And there are rural areas ( like in PA ) where so far there were no cases of COVID-19. At all.

It is wrong to treat them identically.

Also the value of vaccination depends on occupation, along with the age and general health. People who need to contact many other people can benefit more from the vaccination.

For them the small risk of complications from the vaccine is far less than the risk of being infected and develop COVID-19 pneumonia. For people living more or less isolated life, and, especially, people paranoid about this virus - not so much.

[Apr 12, 2021] Covid-19 Drug Prevents Symptomatic Disease in Study, Regeneron Says - WSJ

Apr 12, 2021 | www.wsj.com

ee-to-read link

Don't show me this again

Covid-19 Drug Prevents Symptomatic Disease in Study, Regeneron Says Drugmaker says it will ask federal health regulators to clear use among people who haven't been vaccinated
Regeneron said Monday it would ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand the drug's authorization. PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Joseph Walker Updated April 12, 2021 1:32 am ET Listen to this article 4 minutes 00:00 / 04:25 1x

An antibody drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. REGN 0.13% reduced the risk of developing symptomatic Covid-19 infection by 81% compared with a placebo in people living with someone infected by the new coronavirus, a study found.

The results point to potential new preventive applications for the drug, which is already in use to treat earlier Covid-19 cases.

Regeneron said Monday it would ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand the drug's authorization among people exposed to the virus who haven't yet been vaccinated, which could provide temporary stopgap protection as people await vaccines .

So far, 21.3% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, and 35.3% has received at least one shot

... REGEN-COV is currently authorized to treat people infected with Covid-19 who have mild to moderate symptoms and are at high risk of developing severe disease because of factors including age or underlying conditions such as obesity.

[Apr 11, 2021] Investigate Good, Existing Covid Therapies - WSJ

Opinion: Morning Editorial Report
Apr 11, 2021 | www.wsj.com

All the day's Opinion headlines. PREVIEW SUBSCRIBE


Drs. Gottlieb and McClellan say therapeutic antibodies and drugs like remdesivir and dexamethasone have been the only options. We disagree and have published detailed reviews of successful early treatment.

Thousands of lives have been saved.

Two drugs used, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, have two of the best safety records on the market, with billions of doses safely prescribed.

The former commissioners suggest judging drugs on whether they "shorten the duration of symptoms or reduce viral load" -- poorly measured and unimportant outcomes compared with hospitalization and mortality. We already have evidence for generics reducing Covid death rates. Agencies should devote their efforts to confirming these results instead of chasing new, more expensive drugs.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.)

Oshkosh, Wis.

Prof. Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D.

Yale School of Public Health

New Haven, Conn.

[Apr 09, 2021] Distrust of the establishment plays a role in vaccine hesitancy, but it's probably time to back off on the prevailing commentary suggesting that those avoiding vaccines are irresponsible, uninformed or politically manipulated

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Dr. Kaplan is a faculty member at the Stanford School of Medicine Clinical Excellence Research Center and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He has served as associate director of the National Institutes of Health and chief science officer at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. ..."
Apr 09, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Originally from: Stop Taking Shots at Those Who Fear Them - WSJ By Robert M. Kaplan April 8, 2021 6:21 pm ET

Distrust of the establishment plays a role in vaccine hesitancy, but it's probably time to back off on the prevailing commentary suggesting that those avoiding vaccines are irresponsible, uninformed or politically manipulated. Achieving herd immunity requires that about 70% of Americans are vaccinated or contract Covid and develop natural immunity, which official numbers place around 10% of the population. Polls consistently show that 21% say they will definitely not get the vaccine and about a third rate their chances of taking the vaccine as less than 50%. It's better to address common fears and concerns respectfully and informatively than with hectoring and condescension.

Dr. Kaplan is a faculty member at the Stanford School of Medicine Clinical Excellence Research Center and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He has served as associate director of the National Institutes of Health and chief science officer at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

[Apr 03, 2021] At the hospital where my sister works they have had to ask them to stop shipping the vaccine. Not many are lining up to take it. Seems like we have an overabundance of it here in Houston

Apr 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

tyberious 20 hours

I just checked the CDC Covid vaccine tracker and most states are under 30%.

I think they may get 5% more to take the jab, but thats about it!

Txjac 20 hours ago

At the hospital where my sister works they have had to ask them to stop shipping the vaccine. Not many are lining up to take it. Seems like we have an overabundance of it here in Houston

[Apr 03, 2021] COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless by Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter

Jun 27, 2020 | off-guardian.org

Though the whole world relies on RT-PCR to "diagnose" Sars-Cov-2 infection, the science is clear: they are not fit for purpose

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the PCR tests used to identify so-called COVID-19 patients presumably infected by what is called SARS-CoV-2 do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with.

This is a fundamental point. Tests need to be evaluated to determine their preciseness -- strictly speaking their "sensitivity"[ 1 ] and "specificity" -- by comparison with a "gold standard," meaning the most accurate method available.

As an example, for a pregnancy test the gold standard would be the pregnancy itself. But as Australian infectious diseases specialist Sanjaya Senanayake, for example, stated in an ABC TV interview in an answer to the question "How accurate is the [COVID-19] testing?" :

If we had a new test for picking up [the bacterium] golden staph in blood, we've already got blood cultures, that's our gold standard we've been using for decades, and we could match this new test against that. But for COVID-19 we don't have a gold standard test."

Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this. In her paper "Interpreting a COVID-19 test result" , published recently in The British Medical Journal , she writes that there is a "lack of such a clear-cut 'gold-standard' for COVID-19 testing."

But instead of classifying the tests as unsuitable for SARS-CoV-2 detection and COVID-19 diagnosis, or instead of pointing out that only a virus, proven through isolation and purification, can be a solid gold standard, Watson claims in all seriousness that, "pragmatically" COVID-19 diagnosis itself, remarkably including PCR testing itself, "may be the best available 'gold standard'." But this is not scientifically sound.

Apart from the fact that it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test, there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, as even people such as Thomas Löscher, former head of the Department of Infection and Tropical Medicine at the University of Munich and member of the Federal Association of German Internists, conceded to us[ 2 ].

And if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, COVID-19 diagnosis -- contrary to Watson's statement -- cannot be suitable for serving as a valid gold standard.

In addition, "experts" such as Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation, i.e. an unequivocal virus proof, can be the gold standard.

That is why I asked Watson how COVID-19 diagnosis "may be the best available gold standard," if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, and also whether the virus itself, that is virus isolation, wouldn't be the best available/possible gold standard. But she hasn't answered these questions yet – despite multiple requests. And she has not yet responded to our rapid response post on her article in which we address exactly the same points, either, though she wrote us on June 2nd : "I will try to post a reply later this week when I have a chance."

NO PROOF FOR THE RNA BEING OF VIRAL ORIGIN

Now the question is: What is required first for virus isolation/proof? We need to know where the RNA for which the PCR tests are calibrated comes from.

As textbooks (e.g., White/Fenner. Medical Virology, 1986, p. 9) as well as leading virus researchers such as Luc Montagnier or Dominic Dwyer state , particle purification -- i.e. the separation of an object from everything else that is not that object, as for instance Nobel laureate Marie Curie purified 100 mg of radium chloride in 1898 by extracting it from tons of pitchblende -- is an essential pre-requisite for proving the existence of a virus, and thus to prove that the RNA from the particle in question comes from a new virus.

The reason for this is that PCR is extremely sensitive, which means it can detect even the smallest pieces of DNA or RNA -- but it cannot determine where these particles came from . That has to be determined beforehand.

And because the PCR tests are calibrated for gene sequences (in this case RNA sequences because SARS-CoV-2 is believed to be a RNA virus), we have to know that these gene snippets are part of the looked-for virus. And to know that, correct isolation and purification of the presumed virus has to be executed.

Hence, we have asked the science teams of the relevant papers which are referred to in the context of SARS-CoV-2 for proof whether the electron-microscopic shots depicted in their in vitro experiments show purified viruses.

But not a single team could answer that question with "yes" -- and NB., nobody said purification was not a necessary step. We only got answers like "No, we did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification" (see below).

We asked several study authors "Do your electron micrographs show the purified virus?", they gave the following responses:

Study 1: Leo L. M. Poon; Malik Peiris. "Emergence of a novel human coronavirus threatening human health" Nature Medicine , March 2020
Replying Author: Malik Peiris
Date: May 12, 2020
Answer: "The image is the virus budding from an infected cell. It is not purified virus."

Study 2: Myung-Guk Han et al. "Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19", Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives , February 2020
Replying Author: Myung-Guk Han
Date: May 6, 2020
Answer: "We could not estimate the degree of purification because we do not purify and concentrate the virus cultured in cells."

Study 3: Wan Beom Park et al. "Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 in Korea", Journal of Korean Medical Science , February 24, 2020
Replying Author: Wan Beom Park
Date: March 19, 2020
Answer: "We did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification."

Study 4: Na Zhu et al., "A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China", 2019, New England Journal of Medicine , February 20, 2020
Replying Author: Wenjie Tan
Date: March 18, 2020
Answer: "[We show] an image of sedimented virus particles, not purified ones."

Regarding the mentioned papers it is clear that what is shown in the electron micrographs (EMs) is the end result of the experiment, meaning there is no other result that they could have made EMs from.

That is to say, if the authors of these studies concede that their published EMs do not show purified particles, then they definitely do not possess purified particles claimed to be viral. (In this context, it has to be remarked that some researchers use the term "isolation" in their papers, but the procedures described therein do not represent a proper isolation (purification) process. Consequently, in this context the term "isolation" is misused).

Thus, the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus concede they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.

We have also contacted Dr Charles Calisher, who is a seasoned virologist. In 2001, Science published an "impassioned plea to the younger generation" from several veteran virologists, among them Calisher, saying that:

[modern virus detection methods like] sleek polymerase chain reaction [ ] tell little or nothing about how a virus multiplies, which animals carry it, [or] how it makes people sick. [It is] like trying to say whether somebody has bad breath by looking at his fingerprint."[ 3 ]

And that's why we asked Dr Calisher whether he knows one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified. His answer:

I know of no such a publication. I have kept an eye out for one."[ 4 ]

This actually means that one cannot conclude that the RNA gene sequences, which the scientists took from the tissue samples prepared in the mentioned in vitro trials and for which the PCR tests are finally being "calibrated," belong to a specific virus -- in this case SARS-CoV-2.

In addition, there is no scientific proof that those RNA sequences are the causative agent of what is called COVID-19.

In order to establish a causal connection, one way or the other, i.e. beyond virus isolation and purification, it would have been absolutely necessary to carry out an experiment that satisfies the four Koch's postulates. But there is no such experiment, as Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei recently revealed for OffGuardian .

The necessity to fulfill these postulates regarding SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrated not least by the fact that attempts have been made to fulfill them. But even researchers claiming they have done it, in reality, did not succeed.

One example is a study published in Nature on May 7 . This trial, besides other procedures which render the study invalid, did not meet any of the postulates.

For instance, the alleged "infected" laboratory mice did not show any relevant clinical symptoms clearly attributable to pneumonia, which according to the third postulate should actually occur if a dangerous and potentially deadly virus was really at work there. And the slight bristles and weight loss, which were observed temporarily in the animals are negligible, not only because they could have been caused by the procedure itself, but also because the weight went back to normal again.

Also, no animal died except those they killed to perform the autopsies . And let's not forget: These experiments should have been done before developing a test, which is not the case.

Revealingly, none of the leading German representatives of the official theory about SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 -- the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI), Alexander S. Kekulé (University of Halle), Hartmut Hengel and Ralf Bartenschlager (German Society for Virology), the aforementioned Thomas Löscher, Ulrich Dirnagl (Charité Berlin) or Georg Bornkamm (virologist and professor emeritus at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Munich) -- could answer the following question I have sent them:

If the particles that are claimed to be to be SARS-CoV-2 have not been purified, how do you want to be sure that the RNA gene sequences of these particles belong to a specific new virus?

Particularly, if there are studies showing that substances such as antibiotics that are added to the test tubes in the in vitro experiments carried out for virus detection can "stress" the cell culture in a way that new gene sequences are being formed that were not previously detectable -- an aspect that Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock already drew attention to in her Nobel Lecture back in 1983 .

It should not go unmentioned that we finally got the Charité – the employer of Christian Drosten, Germany's most influential virologist in respect of COVID-19, advisor to the German government and co-developer of the PCR test which was the first to be "accepted" ( not validated! ) by the WHO worldwide – to answer questions on the topic.

But we didn't get answers until June 18, 2020, after months of non-response. In the end, we achieved it only with the help of Berlin lawyer Viviane Fischer.

Regarding our question "Has the Charité convinced itself that appropriate particle purification was carried out?," the Charité concedes that they didn't use purified particles.

And although they claim "virologists at the Charité are sure that they are testing for the virus," in their paper ( Corman et al. ) they state:

RNA was extracted from clinical samples with the MagNA Pure 96 system (Roche, Penzberg, Germany) and from cell culture supernatants with the viral RNA mini kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany),"

Which means they just assumed the RNA was viral .

Incidentally, the Corman et al. paper, published on January 23, 2020 didn't even go through a proper peer review process , nor were the procedures outlined therein accompanied by controls -- although it is only through these two things that scientific work becomes really solid.

IRRATIONAL TEST RESULTS

It is also certain that we cannot know the false positive rate of the PCR tests without widespread testing of people who certainly do not have the virus, proven by a method which is independent of the test (having a solid gold standard).

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results.

For example, already in February the health authority in China's Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19, started to test "negative," and then tested "positive" again .

A month later, a paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology showed that 29 out of 610 patients at a hospital in Wuhan had 3 to 6 test results that flipped between "negative", "positive" and "dubious" .

A third example is a study from Singapore in which tests were carried out almost daily on 18 patients and the majority went from "positive" to "negative" back to "positive" at least once, and up to five times in one patient .

Even Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, conceded in February that the PCR tests are "only 30 to 50 per cent accurate" ; while Sin Hang Lee from the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory sent a l etter to the WHO's coronavirus response team and to Anthony S. Fauci on March 22, 2020, saying that:

It has been widely reported in the social media that the RT-qPCR [Reverse Transcriptase quantitative PCR] test kits used to detect SARSCoV-2 RNA in human specimens are generating many false positive results and are not sensitive enough to detect some real positive cases."

In other words, even if we theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really detect a viral infection, the tests would be practically worthless, and would only cause an unfounded scare among the "positive" people tested.

This becomes also evident considering the positive predictive value (PPV).

The PPV indicates the probability that a person with a positive test result is truly "positive" (ie. has the supposed virus), and it depends on two factors: the prevalence of the virus in the general population and the specificity of the test, that is the percentage of people without disease in whom the test is correctly "negative" (a test with a specificity of 95% incorrectly gives a positive result in 5 out of 100 non-infected people).

With the same specificity, the higher the prevalence, the higher the PPV.

In this context, on June 12 2020, the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt published an article in which the PPV has been calculated with three different prevalence scenarios .

The results must, of course, be viewed very critically, first because it is not possible to calculate the specificity without a solid gold standard, as outlined, and second because the calculations in the article are based on the specificity determined in the study by Jessica Watson, which is potentially worthless, as also mentioned.

But if you abstract from it, assuming that the underlying specificity of 95% is correct and that we know the prevalence, even the mainstream medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt reports that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests may have "a shockingly low" PPV.

In one of the three scenarios, figuring with an assumed prevalence of 3%, the PPV was only 30 percent, which means that 70 percent of the people tested "positive" are not "positive" at all . Yet "they are prescribed quarantine," as even the Ärzteblatt notes critically.

In a second scenario of the journal's article, a prevalence of rate of 20 percent is assumed. In this case they generate a PPV of 78 percent, meaning that 22 percent of the "positive" tests are false "positives."

That would mean: If we take the around 9 million people who are currently considered "positive" worldwide -- supposing that the true "positives" really have a viral infection -- we would get almost 2 million false "positives."

All this fits with the fact that the CDC and the FDA, for instance, concede in their files that the so-called "SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests" are not suitable for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.

In the "CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel" file from March 30, 2020, for example, it says:

Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms"

And:

This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens."

And the FDA admits that :

positive results [ ] do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease."

Remarkably, in the instruction manuals of PCR tests we can also read that they are not intended as a diagnostic test, as for instance in those by Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics[ 5 ].

To quote another one, in the product announcement of the LightMix Modular Assays produced by TIB Molbiol -- which were developed using the Corman et al. protocol -- and distributed by Roche we can read:

These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection"

And:

For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures."

WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE THAT THE TESTS CAN MEASURE THE "VIRAL LOAD"?

There is also reason to conclude that the PCR test from Roche and others cannot even detect the targeted genes .

Moreover, in the product descriptions of the RT-qPCR tests for SARS-COV-2 it says they are "qualitative" tests , contrary to the fact that the "q" in "qPCR" stands for "quantitative." And if these tests are not "quantitative" tests, they don't show how many viral particles are in the body .

That is crucial because, in order to even begin talking about actual illness in the real world not only in a laboratory, the patient would need to have millions and millions of viral particles actively replicating in their body.

That is to say, the CDC, the WHO, the FDA or the RKI may assert that the tests can measure the so-called "viral load," i.e. how many viral particles are in the body. "But this has never been proven. That is an enormous scandal," as the journalist Jon Rappoport points out .

This is not only because the term "viral load" is deception. If you put the question "what is viral load?" at a dinner party, people take it to mean viruses circulating in the bloodstream. They're surprised to learn it's actually RNA molecules.

Also, to prove beyond any doubt that the PCR can measure how much a person is "burdened" with a disease-causing virus, the following experiment would have had to be carried out (which has not yet happened):

You take, let's say, a few hundred or even thousand people and remove tissue samples from them. Make sure the people who take the samples do not perform the test.The testers will never know who the patients are and what condition they're in. The testers run their PCR on the tissue samples. In each case, they say which virus they found and how much of it they found. Then, for example, in patients 29, 86, 199, 272, and 293 they found a great deal of what they claim is a virus. Now we un-blind those patients. They should all be sick, because they have so much virus replicating in their bodies. But are they really sick -- or are they fit as a fiddle?

With the help of the aforementioned lawyer Viviane Fischer, I finally got the Charité to also answer the question of whether the test developed by Corman et al. -- the so-called "Drosten PCR test" -- is a quantitative test.

But the Charité was not willing to answer this question "yes". Instead, the Charité wrote:

If real-time RT-PCR is involved, to the knowledge of the Charité in most cases these are [ ] limited to qualitative detection."

Furthermore, the "Drosten PCR test" uses the unspecific E-gene assay as preliminary assay , while the Institut Pasteur uses the same assay as confirmatory assay .

According to Corman et al ., the E-gene assay is likely to detect all Asian viruses , while the other assays in both tests are supposed to be more specific for sequences labelled "SARS-CoV-2".

Besides the questionable purpose of having either a preliminary or a confirmatory test that is likely to detect all Asian viruses, at the beginning of April the WHO changed the algorithm, recommending that from then on a test can be regarded as "positive" even if just the E-gene assay (which is likely to detect all Asian viruses! ) gives a "positive" result .

This means that a confirmed unspecific test result is officially sold as specific .

That change of algorithm increased the "case" numbers. Tests using the E-gene assay are produced for example by Roche , TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm .

HIGH CQ VALUES MAKE THE TEST RESULTS EVEN MORE MEANINGLESS

Another essential problem is that many PCR tests have a "cycle quantification" (Cq) value of over 35, and some, including the "Drosten PCR test", even have a Cq of 45.

The Cq value specifies how many cycles of DNA replication are required to detect a real signal from biological samples.

"Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported," as it says in the MIQE guidelines .

MIQE stands for "Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments", a set of guidelines that describe the minimum information necessary for evaluating publications on Real-Time PCR, also called quantitative PCR, or qPCR.

The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, agreed, when he stated :

If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR."

The MIQE guidelines have been developed under the aegis of Stephen A. Bustin , Professor of Molecular Medicine, a world-renowned expert on quantitative PCR and author of the book A-Z of Quantitative PCR which has been called "the bible of qPCR."

In a recent podcast interview Bustin points out that "the use of such arbitrary Cq cut-offs is not ideal, because they may be either too low (eliminating valid results) or too high (increasing false "positive" results)."

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/znrvk-d932a7?from=usersite&vjs=1&skin=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=0&download=1

And, according to him, a Cq in the 20s to 30s should be aimed at and there is concern regarding the reliability of the results for any Cq over 35.

If the Cq value gets too high, it becomes difficult to distinguish real signal from background, for example due to reactions of primers and fluorescent probes, and hence there is a higher probability of false positives.

Moreover, among other factors that can alter the result, before starting with the actual PCR, in case you are looking for presumed RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the RNA must be converted to complementary DNA (cDNA) with the enzyme Reverse Transcriptase -- hence the "RT" at the beginning of "PCR" or "qPCR."

But this transformation process is "widely recognized as inefficient and variable," as Jessica Schwaber from the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto and two research colleagues pointed out in a 2019 paper .

Stephen A. Bustin acknowledges problems with PCR in a comparable way.

For example, he pointed to the problem that in the course of the conversion process (RNA to cDNA) the amount of DNA obtained with the same RNA base material can vary widely, even by a factor of 10 (see above interview).

Considering that the DNA sequences get doubled at every cycle, even a slight variation becomes magnified and can thus alter the result, annihilating the test's reliable informative value.

So how can it be that those who claim the PCR tests are highly meaningful for so-called COVID-19 diagnosis blind out the fundamental inadequacies of these tests -- even if they are confronted with questions regarding their validity?

Certainly, the apologists of the novel coronavirus hypothesis should have dealt with these questions before throwing the tests on the market and putting basically the whole world under lockdown, not least because these are questions that come to mind immediately for anyone with even a spark of scientific understanding.

Thus, the thought inevitably emerges that financial and political interests play a decisive role for this ignorance about scientific obligations. NB, the WHO, for example has financial ties with drug companies, as the British Medical Journal showed in 2010 .

And experts criticize "that the notorious corruption and conflicts of interest at WHO have continued, even grown" since then. The CDC as well, to take another big player, is obviously no better off .

Finally, the reasons and possible motives remain speculative, and many involved surely act in good faith; but the science is clear: The numbers generated by these RT-PCR tests do not in the least justify frightening people who have been tested "positive" and imposing lockdown measures that plunge countless people into poverty and despair or even drive them to suicide.

And a "positive" result may have serious consequences for the patients as well, because then all non-viral factors are excluded from the diagnosis and the patients are treated with highly toxic drugs and invasive intubations. Especially for elderly people and patients with pre-existing conditions such a treatment can be fatal, as we have outlined in the article "Fatal Therapie."

Without doubt eventual excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown measures, while the "COVID-19" death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of diseases, redefined as COVID-19 only because of a "positive" test result whose value could not be more doubtful.

[Apr 03, 2021] SARS-CoV-2, contained in simulated saliva was inactivated quickly under sunlight exposure; may be as quickly as several minutes.

Apr 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

...But an analysis of various studies of how different types of UV light interacts with SARS-CoV-2 found that COVID should disintegrate even more quickly when exposed to summer sunlight, which features more short-wave radiation, one reason risk of contracting the virus outdoors during the summer is much, much lower than being indoors in the winter.

In practice, the team found that "inactivation" of virus particles rendered in simulated saliva was more than 8x faster than scientists believed in conditions similar to summer sunlight.

A July 2020 experimental study tested the power of UV light on SARS-CoV-2, contained in simulated saliva, and found the virus was inactivated in under 20 minutes.

However, a theory published a month later suggested sunlight could achieve the same effect, which didn't quite add up. This second study concluded that SARS-CoV-2 was three times more sensitive to UV radiation in sunlight than the influenza A virus.

The vast majority of coronavirus particles were rendered inactive within 30 minutes of exposure to midday summer sunlight, whereas the virus could survive for days under winter sunlight.

"The experimentally observed inactivation in simulated saliva is over eight times faster than would have been expected from the theory," Luzzatto-Feigiz and his team said. "So, scientists don't yet know what's going on."

The UC Santa Barbara team hypothesized that the process that destroys the virus is similar to a process seen in wastewater treatment plants.

The team suspects that, as the UVC doesn't reach the Earth, instead of directly attacking the RNA, the long-wave UVA in sunlight interacts with molecules in the virus' environment, such as saliva, which speeds up the inactivation, in a process witnessed previously in wastewater treatment.

Their research suggests that an air filtration system equipped with certain types of UVA-emitters could dramatically reduce the spread of viral particles indoors.

For some reason, all this research about the effects of sunlight on the virus has been ignored by governments like the Spanish government, which recently ordered masks to be worn outdoors, something the country's hospitality industry fears will destroy more already-embattled businesses while contributing nothing to the public safety effort. But maybe soon that will change.
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Doom Porn Star 20 hours ago

It was intentional.

UV and Vit D were established months ago.

There are companies that even rolled out airplane sterilizing devices that merely bombard the cabin with intense UV.

Fools locked themselves and their children in their homes, Zoomed those meetings instead of meeting in the sun, watched Netflix and CNN in stead of hiking or going to beach an such, doing what they were told and waiting for a miracle pill or shot to solve all those lousy lifestyle choices..

HC-CZ 20 hours ago

UV and vitamin D has been known for centuries, our grandmothers were adamant about getting us out into the sun.

edotabin 19 hours ago

Lefties are dangerously stupid and gullible people.

Chlorine Dioxide is not bleach. It is an alternative treatment that many people praise and should be very thoroughly studied by scientists. However, there's no $$$ in it

The heat will not kill anything off anything if everyone is stuck in their home. Florida, in contrast to other places, had the worst numbers in the summer. This was probably because everyone there goes inside (AC) during the summer. If you remember Florida was doing quite well in the winter and spring because everyone is outside. It is a climate issue that drives behaviors that , in turn, affects transmission.

TBT or not TBT 19 hours ago

Public transport was and remains a big problem. In America proper, unlike in NYC for example, we have cars, and ample parking. We fixed stupid here.

McStain 17 hours ago

FL has a very geriatric population. FL deaths should have been off the lying charts.

But they weren't.

The northern blue zoo cities had the deaths, generally obese and/or very old.

This entire fiasco is a scam.

this_circus_is_no_fun 19 hours ago

I was never crazy about Trump. However, objectively, many of his statements on CV were completely correct, especially the ones for which he received harsh criticisms.

  • It's like the flu = CORRECT
  • We should have opened up last Easter = CORRECT
  • Hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment = CORRECT
  • Sunlight destroys the virus = CORRECT

Part of his problem was that he didn't use precise scientific language when he made these statements. Also, since his enemies would have attacked him anyway, he should have let real experts speak on his behalf and should never had allowed Faux-chi anywhere near a microphone.

Walter Melon 19 hours ago

He did let the "experts" speak, including opposing views like Fauci. You may recall Trump was having daily news conferences for a while there, surrounded by his advisors.

Your main stream news outlets, though, didn't show that. They just showed the (apparent but not real) gaffes.

How's that make you feel, that critical data was hidden from you on purpose?

RiverRoad 15 hours ago

How about that video of Fauci giving the "thumbs-up" to Acosta as he, Fauci, hung back and made sure he was the last to leave the room. I almost threw up when I saw that.

RiverRoad 15 hours ago

Trump should have kicked Fauci upstairs to a broom closet somewhere.

Billy the Poet 19 hours ago

Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- Why Are Some Governors Blocking Physicians' Attempts to Save Lives in Coronavirus Pandemic?

While governors have been handing down orders, doctors in the U.S. and overseas have been reporting remarkable success in treating COVID-19 patients: reductions in hospitalization, less need for scarce ventilators, less need for ICU and intubations, and significantly lower death rates.

Several Governors jumped on this restriction bandwagon soon after President Trump announced at a recent Corona Task Force briefing that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine showed hope in treating COVID-19, based on several small clinical studies from Johns Hopkins, France, and (at last count) eight other countries. He did not say he recommended these medicines, as some media have falsely stated.

https://aapsonline.org/why-are-some-governors-blocking-physicians-attempts-to-save-lives-in-coronavirus-pandemic/

philipat 15 hours ago

Rhetorical question Billy?

If they acknowledge that there are effective cheap generic treatments available for a "disease" with an overall 99.7% survival rate (99.95% below age 70) there would be no justification for experimental vaccines with a high incidence of severe AEs and unknown longer-term effects.

And, of course, no vaccines = no "Vaccine Passports" to start the 24/7 surveillance/ID Card regime, the precursor to the social credit score implementation.

GemJedi 20 hours ago

BS, the media smacked down anything Trump suggested. If he talked about vitamins and sunlight, the New York Times would write about Trump trying to kill people because of vitamin toxicity (at absurd levels) and skin cancer.

Omega Point 20 hours ago

This has been known for a looong time. Our public officials have been lying. The best defense against any virus is a healthy immune system.

  1. Don't be Vitamin D deficient
  2. Don't be obese

Where has this message been? Why haven't our public health officials been promoting this message?

Follow these rules and a large % of the deaths "attributed" to Covid could have been prevented. But people have made lifestyle choices to stuff their faces with junk food and not get out in the sun for Vitamin D or take Vitamin D supplements. Don't force me to wear a mask because you choose to make yourself fat and not go outside.

Omni Consumer Product 19 hours ago

Because your advice is 100% unprofitable for the pharma-industrial complex

kickasso 17 hours ago

Bingo.

Vaccine production => Big profits.

Vitamin D production => Small profits.

Sign Felled 19 hours ago (Edited)

So...isolating people indoors, closing fitness centers, limiting their access to "elective" medical care and restricting their breathing isn't healthy for them? Gosh, who could have imagined that!

Agent Smith 19 hours ago

No but it is highly profitable

Mr. Magniloquent 19 hours ago remove link

My oldest daughter would have fun helping me tear down the "caution" tape on the playgrounds. My pocket knife would make quick work of the ***-ties on swings too. Having those shut down for "covid" was one insult too far. The silver lining, was that stay-at-home orders allowed us to meet a lot of great people. The sheeple cowered at home obediently, and polite society had a nice times at the park.

Lt. Shicekopf 19 hours ago

Imagine the mindset of locking down playgrounds. Then, imagine a world where the outlaw is the one unlocking a playground for kids to play and be kids.

HC-CZ 20 hours ago

That sunlight and UV rays kills virus and bacteria has been known for centuries. The first use of UV lighting for disinfection was in 1910. It is a technology that has been well established for a very long time.

The trick that the news used to insinuate that UV light was ineffective was by claiming that UV did not kill COVID. Technically true, as noted, it doesn't kill it. It just renders it ineffective.

Trump proven right, again.

12Doberman 20 hours ago (Edited)

There is debate as to whether viruses are even "alive."

TBT or not TBT 18 hours ago

Irrelevant, if ionizing radiation wrecks the instructions encoded in the virus. UV damages the bonds in genetic molecules. UV photon energy well exceeds that needed to break such bonds.

Wayoutwilly 16 hours ago remove link

Yeah, all these fvckers are liars.

I am a believer on the sunlight though. I've worked outdoors all my life and had one case of seasonal flu in my 35 + years of adulthood.

never had a flu shot and never will.

Boris Badenov 15 hours ago

This explains why the LOCKDOWNS seemed to target natural Vitamin D : Its the SUNLIGHT ITSELF stupid:

1) Close BEACHES, ban OUTDOOR Sports, close PLAYGROUNDS

2) Cover your FACE, stay INDOORS, No Walking around in Los Angeles

3) Explains why The SUNSHINE STATE is doing so well.

How could the CDC and Fauci be EXACTLY PRECISELY 180 degrees wrong?

insanityantidote 17 hours ago

UV light and vitamin D in sunlight. By all means stop the lockdowns and let people live.

Faeriedust 16 hours ago

Problem being that that only works in rural areas where people actually go outside for prolonged periods of time. In cities, access to limited green space is subtly limited to those in the upper middle class and above, and people spend 10 months out of the year and 9 hours out of the day in small, cramped indoor spaces with low-level lighting. They become so used to this that they complain when entering my own house or office, where I attempt to keep the lighting at a level of at least 1/3 that typical outdoors. They say it's too bright and happily fill their light fixtures with fraudulently-sold "60-watt equivalent " lightbulbs that provide only 77% of the light of the old 60-watt bulbs they're sold to replace. The only exposure to ultraviolet radiation that they get is those with enough money to bake themselves in "tanning beds". Because, you know, real natural (free) world BAD , fake world (manufactured and sold to you) GOOD .

Let the idiots die and good riddance. Evolution has to be good for something .

[Apr 03, 2021] The time of survival of virus under direct sun radiation might be less then five minutes

Confining people in badly ventilated apartments during the quarantine was a serious misstep. If apartment has a patio (on the first floor) or balcony that somewhat can be compensated, but if not that is clearly harmful for the health of people, especially children and was a blunder. Another Fauci blunder so to speak.
Apr 03, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Tall_Tom 19 hours ago

Based on CDC data on sterilization of corona viruses in general, I calculated a half life of about 12-15 seconds in full sun exposure last spring. To reduce virus to 1 part in a million, which is roughly 2^20, would take 4-5 minutes. This is the level generally recommended as sterile for viruses. Obviously this is only for item in full sun. Your car is basically sterile for this reason after a few minutes, and doesn't need disinfection...ever. And high temperatures help this as well.

And yet Spain bleached a beach. I guess they don't understand that the beach gets sun exposure.

el_buffer 17 hours ago

Well friggin duh.

It's RADIATION.

You think those UV generators in hospitals are there for a TikTok black-light dance-party?

UV light smashes nucleotide chains into pieces faster than an Antifa near a glass window.

Oh...and in doing so...causes CANCER.

curiousweb 17 hours ago

Not Far-UVC. Apparently kills airborne viruses very fast at low energy dosages within a wavelength harmless to humans. Can be used continuously.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67211-2

Faeriedust 16 hours ago

Ever heard of an ancient saying, "Moderation in all things"? Works for most health treatments, too.

19331510 19 hours ago

The study helps explain the seasonality of the corona virus and which also begs the question, why are we vaccinating at the end of the flu season?

[Apr 03, 2021] Merck (MRK) Molnupiravir Pill Could Change the Fight Against Covid by Cynthia Koons and Riley Griffin

Notable quotes:
"... Should Merck succeed in demonstrating that molnupiravir is effective and free of serious side effects, it could be a boon to the company, and to society, for many years to come. ..."
"... Viruses are uniquely difficult to attack with drugs. They hijack human cells and set up machinery to churn out copies of themselves, creating a challenge: destroying the virus without harming the cells. Success, when it comes, can be fleeting, because viruses mutate to survive. ..."
"... It interferes in replication, preventing a threat from causing severe infection. Molnupiravir doesn't stop the virus from replicating, though; instead, the drug introduces errors into the virus's RNA that are then replicated until it's defunct. ..."
"... With antivirals such as this, "basically you're going to put a piece of sand in the gears and hope it stops the impact of the virus," says Gomez, the former Niaid scientist. ..."
Mar 25, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

The antiviral drug molnupiravir, still in clinical trials, would give doctors an important new treatment and a weapon against coronaviruses and future pandemics

Drugmakers see an opportunity to add to the arsenal of potential therapies. There are 246 antivirals in development, according to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization , an industry trade group. And companies as big as Pfizer Inc. and as little-known as Veru Inc. are testing them in pill form. Merck's molnupiravir is among the furthest along. Its developers hope the pills can be prescribed widely to anyone who gets sick. Think Tamiflu for Covid.

The hurdle, beyond ensuring the drug works, is making sure it's safe. Developers of antivirals have been dealing with the thorny issues they pose for decades. Should Merck succeed in demonstrating that molnupiravir is effective and free of serious side effects, it could be a boon to the company, and to society, for many years to come.

Viruses are uniquely difficult to attack with drugs. They hijack human cells and set up machinery to churn out copies of themselves, creating a challenge: destroying the virus without harming the cells. Success, when it comes, can be fleeting, because viruses mutate to survive.

The first antiviral approved in the U.S. was idoxuridine, a herpes treatment regulators green-lit in 1963, generations after the discovery of antibiotics. It's among a widely used class of drugs called nucleoside analogues -- synthetic versions of nucleosides, critical building blocks of DNA and its counterpart, RNA, the messenger molecule that delivers instructions to a cell's protein-making factories. Nucleoside analogues prevent viruses from replicating, or from replicating effectively, inside cells.

Concerns that idoxuridine was toxic to the heart led it to be recommended only for topical use -- the sort of hurdle that kept antiviral drug development slow. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s invigorated the field. "Until HIV came along, there were precious few antivirals," says Saye Khoo, a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool. Rising death rates and the public outcry about the virus prompted companies and governments to pour millions of dollars into an area that hadn't seen that kind of investment before.

The breakthroughs were meaningful. Khoo says scientists discovered that some people appeared to have a natural resistance to getting HIV -- they lacked a receptor allowing the virus to enter cells -- leading to a new class of drugs. They also realized that antivirals would need to be adaptable enough to deal with mutations, and that potent combination therapies involving multiple drugs could prevent the evolution and spread of drug resistance. At the same time, some of the new treatments had serious side effects, including anemia and liver problems, pushing drugmakers to continually improve upon their treatments.

During this era, the U.S. government also started to boost its pandemic preparedness, with an emphasis on guarding against bioterrorism. President Bill Clinton, alarmed after reading the Richard Preston novel The Cobra Event , in which a terrorist unleashes a virus that causes a fictional ailment called brainpox, convened a group of cabinet members and scientists in April 1998 to assess such threats. That led to the formation of what's now called the Strategic National Stockpile , whose objective was to have enough emergency medicines and materials to deploy within 12 hours of an official request in times of crisis.

Following the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks of 2001, the Bush administration directed the stockpile to procure products such as smallpox vaccines. Then, in 2006, Congress authorized the formation of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda , to help develop treatments and vaccines for public-health threats.

Pharma's next major advance in antivirals came in 2013, a $1,000-per-pill hepatitis C cure produced by Gilead. The company was roundly criticized for setting so high a price for such a widely used drug...

... ... ...

The chemical compound on which molnupiravir is based -- C9H13N3O6, or N4-hydroxycytidine -- has been known for decades. Like idoxuridine, the herpes drug, it's a nucleoside analogue. It interferes in replication, preventing a threat from causing severe infection. Molnupiravir doesn't stop the virus from replicating, though; instead, the drug introduces errors into the virus's RNA that are then replicated until it's defunct.

With antivirals such as this, "basically you're going to put a piece of sand in the gears and hope it stops the impact of the virus," says Gomez, the former Niaid scientist. But, he adds, stopping the virus by creating errors in the genetic code or through other means can come with unintended consequences. "You don't know where the sand might end up in the other parts of the body." A company called Pharmasset Inc. (a hepatitis C drugmaker Gilead bought in 2011) investigated molnupiravir's main ingredient around the turn of the century, but it abandoned development over concerns that it was mutagenic, meaning it could lead to birth defects.

Painter dusted off the chemical structure of molnupiravir years ago. Prompted by a concern raised by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency , a unit of the U.S. Department of Defense, he was looking for a countermeasure against weaponized Venezuelan equine encephalitis, the stuff of Cobra Event -level nightmares. A chemist who holds 45 patents, some for hepatitis B and HIV antiviral drugs in use today, Painter has made a career of bridging the gap between academic drug discovery and the biotech and pharma industries that get treatments across the finish line. He took the chemical structure that Pharmasset had once studied and screened it against a wide range of viruses, including SARS and MERS. In late 2016 he made it possible to use in pill form by modifying that chemical structure into a "prodrug," which meant the compound would break down in the body, allowing the part that interferes with viral replication to be properly absorbed into the bloodstream.

After his initial research, Painter settled on influenza, an ever-present threat, as molnupiravir's first target and prepared to launch an NIH-funded safety trial in early 2020. He also applied for funding from Barda but didn't get it. Rick Bright, then the agency's director, later noted in a whistleblower complaint about the Trump administration's pandemic response that, though his supervisor at the Department of Health and Human Services was excited about molnupiravir and wanted to fund it, Bright had been reluctant to invest when it was first presented to him in the fall of 2019. Other nucleoside analogues had caused birth defects in animals, and he wanted more safety data before signing off.

... ... ...

[Apr 02, 2021] Vaccines advance one funeral at a time

Apr 02, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Apr 1 2021 21:20 utc | 44

Fnord13 #13
Norwegian #33

Have you ever heard the saying "Science advances one funeral at a time"?

Yes, it was Max Planck Science progresses funeral by funeral.

I like that saying. Perhaps it is equally applied as:

Pharmaceutical approvals advance one funeral at a time
Pharmaceutical consumption advances funeral by funeral

Raytheon advances funeral by funeral

Peace in Yemen advances funeral by funeral

Usastan advances funeral by funeral

enough! bleak moment.

[Apr 02, 2021] Vaccine safety: science is not about consensus. It is about what can be proved with a repeatable experiment

Apr 02, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Orage , Apr 1 2021 18:26 utc | 3

The EU handling of the vaccine supply has also caused splits within the EU. Many countries including Austria, Hungary and Czech republic are going to be using the Sputnik vaccine despite it not being approved by the EMA. This is a definite ite deplomatic win for Russia and further shows that these countries will no longer sacrifice national interest when ordered to do so.


ian , Apr 1 2021 18:35 utc | 6

"Most scientists agree ..."

Science is not about consensus. It is about what can be proved with a repeatable experiment.

Norwegian , Apr 1 2021 18:36 utc | 7
@ian | Apr 1 2021 18:35 utc | 6

Thank you, you are exactly right. Science is not determined by voting.

[Apr 02, 2021] The experimental mRNA injections are not vaccines. They do not prevent transmission. Their main purpose is to mitigate symptoms so that the sick person does not get sick enough to require hospitalisation and emergency approval was given on that basis.

Apr 02, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

cirsium , Apr 2 2021 20:58 utc | 95

@Arius Armenian, 71

The experimental mRNA injections are not vaccines. They do not give immunity or prevent transmission. Their purpose is to mitigate symptoms so that the sick person does not get sick enough to require hospitalisation and emergency approval was given on that basis.

[Apr 01, 2021] Pfizer, BioNTech Say Shot Still 91.3% Effective Six Months After Vaccination

Typically vaccines, such as the one for measles, provide lifelong immunity. It is unclear how coronavirus vaccines fair against mutations of COVID-19. The question is can vaccinated people provide for COVID-19 the new platform for mutations.
Efficiency is probably aroun 80% ( if calculated as (850-77)/(850+77) ) not 91% as the article claims.
Apr 01, 2021 | www.wsj.com

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE remains highly effective six months after its second dose, an indication that protection could last for an even longer period.

The findings, released on Thursday, emerged from a continuing review of how volunteers in the shot's late-stage trial were faring and whether they contracted Covid-19 with symptoms.

... Of the 927 cases of symptomatic Covid-19 observed through March 13, 850 were in people who received a placebo and 77 in people who were vaccinated, according to the companies.

That corresponds to a vaccine efficacy of 91.3% up to six months after getting the second dose, Pfizer and BioNTech said.

The protection remained generally consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity, as well as among individuals with underlying health conditions, the companies said.

The vaccine was also 95% to 100% effective against severe disease, with the precise figure depending on whether researchers used a definition of severe disease from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or one from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Some 800 trial subjects were enrolled in South Africa, where a more contagious variant of the virus was first identified. Among those volunteers, there were nine cases of Covid-19, all in people who got a placebo. Sequencing confirmed six of the nine cases were of the variant. ...the vaccine generated a slightly lower immune response against the variant than the more common strain circulating in the U.S., but was still effective at neutralizing the variant virus .

Of the 697 cases of symptomatic Covid-19 among study subjects in the U.S., 647 were in people who received a placebo, with the rest in vaccinated subjects, indicating 92.6% efficacy, according to the companies.

...They are also in discussions with regulators about studying a tweaked version of their vaccine that researchers designed to protect against the variant found in South Africa.

Pfizer has previously said it anticipates producing the Covid-19 shots for at least several years on the expectation that booster shots will be needed annually or every few years to maintain protection.

[Apr 01, 2021] NYT reporter against the Atlantic vaccine cheerleaders

There are a lot of issues with vaccine rollout. One issue is that they do not check if a person has immunity to the virus or not.
Another issue is how long vaccine will be effective is the next year we might face yet another strain of the virus. Coronaviruses are mutating viruses and that's why previous attempts to create vaccine failed.
Are those people who demonstrate a severe reaction to the vaccine the same people who would get severe case of COVID-19 if infected ?
Yes another issue is "emergency use". Long time effects are not known. We do not know why immunity for some people do not emerge and they became ill even after being immunized. We do not know how long immunization status hold. Will it weaken in six months to the level when infection became possible again or. and how effective it is against new strains.
So this rush with vaccine rollout is a large scale biological experiment with uncertain consequences.
In this sense any skeptic is valuable.
Notable quotes:
"... and then that test came back negative. ..."
"... suspected but unconfirmed ..."
Apr 01, 2021 | www.theatlantic.com

Alex Berenson- The Pandemic's Wrongest Man - The Atlantic Derek Thompson, Staff writer at The Atlantic

For the past few weeks on Twitter, Berenson has mischaracterized just about every detail regarding the vaccines to make the dubious case that most people would be better off avoiding them. As his conspiratorial nonsense accelerates toward the pandemic's finish line, he has proved himself the Secretariat of being wrong :

Usually, I would refrain from lavishing attention on someone so blatantly incorrect. But with vaccine resistance hovering around 30 percent of the general population, and with 40 percent of Republicans saying they won't get a shot, debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death.

Jon D. Lee: The utter familiarity of even the strangest vaccine conspiracy theories

Berenson's TV appearances are more misdirection than outright fiction, and his Twitter feed blends internet-y irony and scientific jargon in a way that may obscure what he's actually saying. To pin him down, I emailed several questions to him last week. Below, I will lay out, as clearly and fairly as I can, his claims about the vaccines and how dangerously, unflaggingly, and superlatively wrong they are.

Before I go point by point through his wrong positions, let me be exquisitely clear about what is true . The vaccines work. They worked in the clinical trials, and they're working around the world. The vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson seem to provide stronger and more lasting protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants than natural infection. They are excellent at reducing symptomatic infection . Even better, they are extraordinarily successful at preventing severe illness from COVID-19. Countries that have vaccinated large percentages of their population quickly, such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel, have all seen sharp and sustained declines in hospitalizations among the elderly. Meanwhile, countries that have lagged in the vaccination effort -- including the U.K.'s neighbors France and Italy, and Israel's neighbor Jordan -- have struggled to contain the virus. The authorized vaccines are marvels, and the case against them relies on half-truths, untruths, and obfuscations.

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Berenson's claim: In country after country, "cases rise after vaccination campaigns begin," he wrote in an email.

The reality: In country after country, cases decline after vaccination campaigns begin.

One of Berenson's themes is that the mRNA vaccines are badly underperforming outside the clinical trials and are possibly even causing a spike in cases after the first shot. But just this week, CDC researchers studying real-world conditions came to the opposite conclusion : The mRNA vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer are 90 percent effective two weeks after the second dose, in line with the trial data. "COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for all eligible persons," they concluded.

Still, Berenson pushes the argument that the vaccines are causing suspicious illness and death. On Twitter and in his email to me, Berenson claimed that an "excellent" Denmark study showed a 40 percent rise in infections immediately after nursing-home residents received their first vaccine shot.

I reached out to that study's lead author , Ida Rask Moustsen-Helms at the Statens Serum Institut, who said that Berenson had mischaracterized her findings. She explained to me that the Danish nursing homes in question were already experiencing a significant COVID-19 outbreak when vaccinations began. Many people in the long-term-care facilities were likely already sick before their vaccine was administered, and "these people would technically count as vaccinated with confirmed COVID-19, even if the infection happened prior to the vaccination or its immune response," she said. With limited vaccines, countries ought to give the first vaccines to the groups most likely to get COVID-19. That's exactly what seems to have happened here. Berenson is scaremongering about the vaccines by essentially criticizing their wise distribution.

In our emails, Berenson further argued that many of the perceived benefits of the vaccines are illusory. "It is very hard to distinguish the course of the epidemic this winter in countries that have vaccinated heavily, such as Israel and the UK, and those that have not, such as Canada and Germany," he wrote.

This is hogwash. In the U.K. and Israel, hospitalizations have fallen by at least 70 percent since mid-January, and they remain low. In Canada , hospitalizations fell by significantly less, and in Germany, the seven-day average of COVID-19 cases has more than doubled since mid-February; its government has debated a new lockdown .

This stage of the pandemic is a race between the variants and the vaccines. In many states, such as Michigan and New York, normalizing behavior combined with more contagious strains of the virus are pushing up cases again. This is not evidence that America's vaccination campaign isn't working. Quite the opposite: It highlights the urgency of moving faster to deliver vaccines, which are our best chance to control the spread of contagious variants.

Berenson's claim: Pfizer-BioNTech's clinical-trial data prove that the companies are being shady about vaccine efficacy.

The reality: His "proof" is a total mischaracterization of trial data.

Berenson seems to enjoy spelunking through research to find esoteric statistics that he then dresses up with spooky language to make confusing points that sow doubt about the vaccines. Arguing that COVID-19 cases spike after the first dose, he directs people to the Pfizer-BioNTech FDA briefing document , which reports hundreds of "suspected but unconfirmed" COVID-19 cases in the trial's vaccine group that aren't counted as positive cases in the final efficacy analysis.

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But "suspected but unconfirmed" doesn't refer to participants who were probably sick with COVID-19. On the contrary, it refers to participants who reported various symptoms, such as a cough or a sore throat, and then took a PCR test -- and then that test came back negative.

"His point is absolutely stupid, and I would know because I enrolled participants in the Pfizer-BioNTech trial," Kawsar Talaat, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, told me. "He's talking about people who call in and say, 'I have a runny nose.' So we mark them as 'suspected.' Then we ask them to take a PCR test, and we test their swab, and if the test comes back negative, the FDA says it's 'unconfirmed.' That's what suspected but unconfirmed means."

Read: Coronavirus reinfection will soon become our reality

When I emailed Pfizer and BioNTech representatives about Berenson's claim, they struggled to even understand what I was talking about. Someone was taking a group of several thousand people who had tested negative for COVID-19 and, from afar, diagnosing all of them with COVID-19? "Does not make sense," a BioNTech spokesperson responded curtly.

If you were enrolled in Berenson's vaccine trial for SARS-CoV-2 and never contracted the virus, but one day you told a clinician that you had a bit of a cough, Berenson would mark you down as "infected with COVID-19" and blame the vaccine. That's the logic here, and, as you can tell, it's not really logic; it just seems like an attempt to find something -- anything -- wrong with the vaccines.

Berenson's claim: The mRNA vaccines dangerously suppress your immune system, possibly causing severe illness and even death.

The reality: His claim is based on a total misunderstanding of how the immune system works.

Berenson wrote in an email that "the first dose of the mRNA vaccine temporarily suppresses the immune system." He has claimed on Twitter that the mRNA vaccines "transiently suppress lymphocytes," or our white blood cells, and suggested that this might lead to "post-vaccination deaths."

Scientists tore this one to shreds. "The claim he is making is simply fearmongering, connecting a simple physiological event with bogus claims of deaths," Shane Crotty, a researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told me. "The observation of lymphocyte numbers temporarily dropping in blood is actually a common phenomenon in immune responses."

Renee DiResta: Anti-vaxxers think this is their moment

A little background is useful here: White blood cells are the immune system's scouts. After an effective vaccination, some of them leave the blood and go to the site of inflammation, such as the arm that received the shot. "The cells are not gone," Crotty said. "They come back to the blood in a few days. It is generally a good sign of an immune response, not the opposite." To demonstrate that the vaccines are counterproductive, then, Berenson is pointing to the very biological mechanism that strongly suggests they're working just as scientists expected.

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Readers are surely familiar with other biological events that sound bad in the short term but are part of a normal, healthy process. When you lift weights at the gym, your muscles experience small tears that recover and then strengthen over time. Imagine if some loudmouth started screaming in the middle of the weight room, "You all think you're building your muscles, but actually you're tearing them to shreds, and it could kill you!" You would probably carry on calmly, assuming that this guy just got a little overexcited after finding a Yahoo Answers article about muscle formation and stopped reading after the first paragraph. Berenson's claim is basically a version of that, but for your immune system.

"Actually," Talaat said, "his argument is even worse than your analogy. Muscles really do tear at the gym. But lymphocytes don't go away. They just move. What he's describing as dangerous in these tweets is just the regular functioning of our immune system."

Berenson's claim: In Israel, the shots are causing a scary number of deaths and hospitalizations.

The reality: Israel is a sensational vaccine success story: a nearly open economy where COVID-19 rates are plunging. See for yourself!

On February 11, Berenson warned his followers that early data from Israel proved that vaccine advocates "need to start ratcheting down expectations." This was a strange claim to make at the time: An Israeli health-care provider had reported no deaths and four severe cases among its first 523,000 fully vaccinated people. But the claim seems even more ridiculous now, in light of Israel's incredible success since then. New positive cases in Israel are down roughly 95 percent since January. Deaths have plunged, even though the economy is almost fully open .

When I asked Berenson to explain his beef with Israel's vaccine record, he sent a link to a news story in Hebrew that, he said, reported "several hundred deaths and hospitalizations and thousands of infections in people who have received both doses." I can't read Hebrew, so I reached out to someone who can, Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel. He replied by email: "This link actually shows that the vast majority of those who died were NOT vaccinated." By Segal's calculations, the vaccines have reduced the risk of death by more than 90 percent in the Israeli population. Segal also said that "numbers of infections only went down, and even more so among the age groups who were first to vaccinate."

Berenson is wrong about all sorts of little things when it comes to Israel, but I want to emphasize how straightforward and obvious the big picture is here. Israel is a world leader in vaccinations . Its COVID-19 cases have plunged, and its economy is roaring back to life.

Berenson's claim: Healthy people under 70 shouldn't get a vaccine.

The reality: Outside of extremely rare cases, every adult should get a vaccine -- and if it's authorized for children, children should get it too.

I wanted to know where Berenson stood on the most important question: Who does he think should get a vaccine, and who does he think shouldn't? This was the core of his answer:

For most healthy people under 50 -- and certainly under 35 -- the side effects from the shots are likely to be worse than a case of Covid. Over 70, sure. The grey zone is somewhere in the middle and probably depends on personal risk factors.

This response has two huge problems. First, although the disease clearly gets more severe with age, drawing a line at 70 is nonsensical. Those in their 50s and early 60s are three times more likely to die from this disease than a 40-something, and 400 times more likely to die than a teenager, according to the CDC.

[Mar 31, 2021] Possible unanticipated effect of vaccinated people on the creation of new variants of COVID-19

Mar 31, 2021 | www.unz.com

Vax-r-us , says: March 29, 2021 at 6:02 pm GMT • 2.3 days ago

According to virologist and vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, this experimental procedure causes the recipients body to start producing antibodies specific for Covid but practically eliminates a bodies natural ability to produce antibodies capable of eliminating Covid variants or any other diseases.

In other words, taking the jab ruins our natural immune system. Those who have been "vaccinated" and travel around freely become super-spreaders of the variant mutations. Notice the recent news reports indicating a rising number cases involving covid variants.

An interview with Mr. Bossche:

https://centipedenation.com/first-column/virologist-and-vaccine-expert-geert-vanden-bossche-risks-reputation-and-career-by-speaking-out-against-administration-of-covid19-vaccines/

Brian Reilly , says: March 29, 2021 at 6:43 pm GMT • 2.3 days ago

Very well put, but the window is closed. We are all going to have to pass through the totalitarian crucible (maybe gauntlet is a better term) unless we die along the way. Too many people have bought into this nonsense for sense to prevail without a brutal systemic failure. And it will be a while, so make a point of putting some relevant time capsules together so that the people of the future will have some real hard copy to study, as the electronic files will not survive.

Wade , says: March 29, 2021 at 7:59 pm GMT • 2.2 days ago
@Vax-r-us

I listened to this interview but why does this jab do that but others (flu, measles, hpv, etc ) do not do the same thing?

I get that part of his argument is that this vaccine is "leaky", that is to say it doesn't stop the virus but accelerates its evolution/mutation rate. However, I still didn't grok the way this vaccine is different in terms of compromising our natural immunity compared to other vaccines which apparently don't (Bossche is not complete anti-vax).

guttersnipe , says: March 29, 2021 at 10:28 pm GMT • 2.1 days ago
@Wade

previous vaccines primed the immune system by using offensive dead or attenuated virus combined with other junk designed to piss off your system.

mRNA vaccines actually create the offending particles by burrowing into your cells and using them as partial Covid spike protein factories. this REALLY pisses off your immune system. and it is feared it could cause cytokine storms (dangerous excessive immune response) upon exposure to the wild virus.

among other things.

Adam Smith , says: March 30, 2021 at 4:01 am GMT • 1.9 days ago
@Wade hat should have conferred immunity.

WHO and UNICEF said in a joint statement the polio outbreak in the Philippines is concerning because it is caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2.

Nearly all the cases of polio in the modern world are caused by polio vaccines.

michael888 , says: March 30, 2021 at 12:39 pm GMT • 1.5 days ago
@Vax-r-us ts rid of the plasma cells making them within a few months.

Our authorities have rejected the use of pharmacological treatments (such as glucocorticoids in serious cases to dampen cytokine storm, published by Chinese for treating Covid-19 in March, 2020) and aspirin, to minimize clotting from Covid-19. There are a host of well-understood approved drugs that in combination may be effective prophylactically. As most of the censored dissident scientists have noted, just keeping healthy and avoiding vitamin/ nutrient deficiencies (a major problem in the elderly) may be enough to avoid serious case of Covid-19 without vaccines.

[Mar 31, 2021] EU Regulator Sees Possible Link Between Astra Shot and Clots - Bloomberg

Mar 31, 2021 | www.bloomberg.com

The European Union 's drugs regulator said a link between AstraZeneca Plc 's Covid-19 vaccine and a rare type of blood clot is possible, identifying at least 62 cases of the condition while insisting the shot's benefits still outweigh its risks.

The comments further cloud the picture around the vaccine after Germany restricted it to older people this week amid growing concerns about side effects. That could slow Europe's already lagging immunization program as virus cases surge anew.

The European Medicines Agency said its safety committee will probably issue an updated recommendation next week. If the panel concludes there's a connection between the clots and Astra's vaccine, the EMA will change its recommendations to patients and health-care officials, Executive Director Emer Cooke said.

"At the moment, at this stage of our investigations, the link is possible, and we cannot say any more than that at this point," Cooke said in a press conference. For now, there's no evidence to support restricting use of the vaccine in any population of people, she said.

... .... ....

Concerns surrounding the Astra shot have focused on an unusual type of blood clot known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. It's associated with a low number of blood platelets and occurs most commonly in women between the ages of 30 and 45 -- a group that, in the EU, has been disproportionately vaccinated with Astra's shot, EMA officials said.In individuals under the age of 60, health authorities are seeing more cases of the rare clots in people who recently got the Astra vaccine than would be normally expected, said Peter Arlett, EMA's head of pharmacovigilance and epidemiology. The agency has identified about one report per 100,000 people under the age of 60 who got the vaccine in the European economic area. It hasn't yet been able to identify specific risk factors, however, such as age, gender or previous medical history of clotting disorders.

The figure of 62 cases of the rare clots includes all side effects reported in the EMA's EudraVigilance system, which includes cases both in and outside Europe, the agency said. The count dates to March 22, and additional cases have occurred since then.

Looking beyond the rare clots, most of the adverse reactions reported in patients who had received Astra's vaccine occurred in the U.K., where it has been used most and where the government has defended the homegrown shot. A March 8 review identified 246 reactions involving various types of artery blockages or blood clots in Britain, including a range of conditions. That's out of 269 instances in a dozen countries, which included about 40 deaths, the regulator said . Just because the reactions were reported after vaccination doesn't mean they're linked to the vaccine.

[Mar 31, 2021] The "Unvaccinated" as outcasts by C.J. Hopkins

Mar 31, 2021 | www.unz.com

So, the New Normals are discussing the Unvaccinated Question. What is to be done with us? No, not those who haven't been "vaccinated" yet. Us. The "Covidiots." The "Covid deniers." The "science deniers." The "reality deniers." Those who refuse to get "vaccinated," ever.

There is no place for us in New Normal society. The New Normals know this and so do we. To them, we are a suspicious, alien tribe of people. We do not share their ideological beliefs. We do not perform their loyalty rituals, or we do so only grudgingly, because they force us to do so. We traffic in arcane "conspiracy theories," like "pre-March-2020 science," "natural herd immunity," "population-adjusted death rates," "Sweden," "Florida," and other heresies.

They do not trust us. We are strangers among them. They suspect we feel superior to them. They believe we are conspiring against them, that we want to deceive them, confuse them, cheat them, pervert their culture, abuse their children, contaminate their precious bodily fluids, and perpetrate God knows what other horrors.

So they are discussing the need to segregate us, how to segregate us, when to segregate us, in order to protect society from us. In their eyes, we are no more than criminals , or, worse, a plague , an infestation. In the words of someone (I can't quite recall who), "getting rid of the Unvaccinated is not a question of ideology. It is a question of cleanliness," or something like that. (I'll have to hunt down and fact-check that quote. I might have taken it out of context.)

In Israel , Estonia , Denmark , Germany , the USA , and other New Normal countries, they have already begun the segregation process. In the UK , it's just a matter of time. The WEF, WHO, EU, and other transnational entities are helping to streamline the new segregation system, which, according to the WEF, " will need to be harmonized by a normative body, such as the WHO, to ensure that is ethical ."

Cowboy , says: March 29, 2021 at 4:26 pm GMT • 2.4 days ago

@follyofwar

Nice thoughts but the high priests of the new secular cult of scientism are playing a zero sum game. It's an either/or for them; slavery or scalp. The rituals of the cult reinforce the dogma. The continual washing of hands as an act of purification. The mask as an act of penance for your defiling breath. Forced solitude to keep you in front of the 24 hour Cult broadcasts on tv. Social distancing as a way to inculcate insular thinking. Any resistors to the new rituals will be brought to a tribunal of neo torquemadas. Perhaps a better way to be thinking of the resistance is in terms of knighthood.

Auntie Analogue , says: March 29, 2021 at 5:25 pm GMT • 2.3 days ago

A black market trade in forged been-vaccinated-passports should be expected to debut and thrive.

[Mar 31, 2021] The pawpaw and the goat are both listed in stable condition for now.

Mar 31, 2021 | www.unz.com

,

Sollipsist , says: March 30, 2021 at 4:04 am GMT • 1.9 days ago

The pawpaw and the goat are both listed in stable condition for now.

The sheep, of course, tested negative and has since received 8 marriage proposals from relieved Tanazanian suitors.

[Mar 30, 2021] You are not vaccinated, don't come near me!

Mar 30, 2021 | www.unz.com

Ilya G Poimandres , says: March 26, 2021 at 5:51 am GMT • 4.4 days ago

Some Ape: "you are not vaccinated, don't come near me!".

Me: "but you are, so you are immune from the virus – whaddayou care about me?!".

Ape: "this vaccine does not provide full immunity".

Me: "then it's not a vaccine, is it!".

Ape: "heretic!!!".

[Mar 30, 2021] The danger of severe anaphylaxis is very small but real

Mar 30, 2021 | www.unz.com

RegretLeft , says: March 26, 2021 at 2:43 pm GMT • 4.0 days ago

Kansas City Council Woman DEAD Hours After Receiving Experimental COVID Injection

https://vaccineimpact.com/2021/kansas-city-council-woman-dead-hours-after-receiving-experimental-covid-injection/

" immediately suffered anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction, during the 15-minute waiting period after the experimental shot. She was transported to Stormont Vail Health in Topeka, where she was pronounced dead "

she was 68 – sounds like she was dead in about 15 min.

[Mar 30, 2021] Neoliberal establishemnt fiasco with lockdown now translates into dustrust of vaccines and motives behind mass vaccination

Why nobody answer the question how long vaccine will be effective for this mutating coronavirus. Pfizer CEO has had the audacity to suggest that people should be vaccinated each year. Bit as we know "Ye cannot serve God and mammon"; so any such CEO pronouncement should be taken with a grain of salt. He is a corporate crook first and foremost trying to maximize the profits at the expense of people. In 2009 Pfizer was assessed the largest fine in history for deliberate medical fraud https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history but after lengthy appeals their attorneys managed to get the judgment reduced by almost two billion dollars.
In the study of efficiency of Pfizer vaccines out of 36,000 participants split into two groups (one greo got real vaccine, the other placebo), nine vaccinated participants became infected with the virus, compared with 169 individuals injected with the placebo. But one individual in the vaccinated group had a sever case of COVID-19 which raises a lot questions. Why this could ever happen?
So the vaccine in not 100% protective even against the strain of the virus it was developed for. But there is a difference both in the number of infected and the outcomes in two groups. We cannot presume that the experiences of 19,000 vaccinated individuals will extrapolate to millions of people. For example, it's impossible to detect less common side-effects. It is clear that the efficiency of the vaccine in real world will be lower than in controlled groups study and side effects might be more pronounced.
The open question is whether it will provide any protection in one year. It's almost certain that the immune response initially generated will wane over time. If not, this is a very questionable initiative: taking substantial risk for very little temporary benefit. It is also unclear whether it will be effective against new strains, or vaccinated people will serve as a catalysts for the development of new strains.
That's why previously there were no vaccines against the coronaviruses at all. The second question is whether vaccinated people can curry and spread the virus beciang a danger to all other people. And the last is whether vaccinated people will became a platform for development of the new strains of the virus. And we now know that it is possible to became infected aeven after being vaccinated, so vaccinated people can serve as the platform for development of new strains of the virus.
Mar 30, 2021 | www.unz.com

my intention is not to criticize the vaccines themselves, but the manner by which they are being shoved down our throats. That, I object to strongly because it violates the people's right to informed consent. A lopsided, nationwide public relations blitz that relentlessly glorifies vaccines while deliberately excluding even the slightest criticism from respected professionals, does not respect the rights of the people. It's brainwashing, pure and simple.

And why have behavioral psychologists been employed by the government to promote the vaccination campaign? Why have they concocted a strategy designed "to change people's beliefs and feelings about vaccination" to inform "people about the prosocial benefits of vaccination", and to "intervene on behavior directly", which means that you're given an appointment, and told that you will be getting your vaccination at the end of the session." Psychologists call this a "presumptive recommendation" which effectively eliminates the element of personal choice by creating a scenario in which getting vaccinated is a fait accompli. How is this not coercion?

It is coercion, subconscious coercion. The doctor is strong-arming the patient into getting vaccinated by making it look like its standard procedure. That puts pressure on the patient to follow the path of least resistance, which is compliance. It's a clever tactic, but it is also transparently manipulative.

The behavioral psychologists who have helped to shape the government's policy, believe that the emphasis should be placed on the "safety and effectiveness" of the vaccines. That's the cornerstone for building public support. At the same time, they show no interest in providing evidence that would support their claims, which suggests that "safe and effective" is nothing more than a meaningless bromide that is invoked to dupe the sheeple into getting inoculated.

You might have also heard the term "vaccine hesitancy" used to describe the people who have decided not to get vaccinated. The moniker is clearly intended to denigrate vaccine skeptics by suggesting that they have a mental condition, like paranoid schizophrenia. This is an effective way to discredit one's enemies, but it also shows the glaring weakness of the pro-vaccine position. If the proponents of vaccination had something of substance to offer, they would rely on facts and data rather than ad hominin attacks. As it happens, the facts do not support their position. Besides, "vaccine hesitancy" is not a character flaw or a mental condition, it's the sign of someone who has taken responsibility for his own health and welfare. Ask yourself this: Why would a normal, rational person be eager to have an experimental cocktail injected into his bloodstream potentially triggering all manner of long-term ailments or death? Is that the choice a normal person would make?

As far as I can see, behavioral psychologists are playing a critical role in this mass vaccination campaign. According to a report put out by the National Institutes of Health, it appears that a rapid response team has been formed to attack the opinions of people who challenge the "official narrative". Check out this blurb from the report titled "COVID-19 Vaccination: Communication: Applying Behavioral and Social Science to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Foster Vaccine Confidence":

Mitigate the impact of COVID-19-related misinformation

The spread of health-related misinformation was a significant public health concern well before the COVID-19 pandemic. During the last decade, vaccine-related discourse online and in the media has been plagued by misinformation. Anti-vaccine groups have leveraged political and social divisions to diminish trust in vaccines, pushed false narratives questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, spread false claims about adverse outcomes, and downplayed the risks of the disease's vaccines protect against. .

COVID-19 vaccine communication efforts cannot ignore misinformation and must take actions, informed by behavioral and communication research, to identify emerging rumors and respond in a way that is informed by behavioral science. Real-time, agile, and scalable monitoring of discourse concerning COVID 19 vaccination -- including conspiracy theories, rumors, and myths -- can support a swiftly developed and implemented response. "Misinformation surveillance" efforts should identify the most prominent sources of misinformation, the tactics being used, and the groups most at risk of being exposed to and influenced by the rumors. This information, in addition to data regarding the dynamics and patterns of misinformation spread, could help inform the appropriate response and best targets for intervention efforts .

Correcting the false claim contained in the message, exposing the tactics used by disinformation agents , and inducing skepticism by highlighting the ulterior motives of these actors are all potentially effective strategies for mitigating the impact of misinformation " ( "COVID-19 Vaccination* Communication: Applying Behavioral and Social Science to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Foster Vaccine Confidence" , the National Institutes of Health)

Repeat: "Misinformation surveillance" "disinformation agents" " the ulterior motives of these actors "??

Really? Now who's sounding paranoid?

This is very scary stuff. Agents of the state now identify critics of the Covid vaccine as their mortal enemies. How did we get here? And how did we get to the point where the government is targeting people who don't agree with them? This is way beyond Orwell. We have entered some creepy alternate universe.

Here's more on the topic from a statement by Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, CEO of the American Psychological Association, in response to the approval by an advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration of a vaccine against COVID-19:

"We recognize that there are pockets of resistance to vaccines , distrust of the medical establishment and misinformation about vaccines generally .Some populations are understandably less likely to accept vaccinations due to a legacy of mistrust rooted in unethical public health practices.

"It is critical that leaders across the political spectrum unite behind messages of vaccine safety and transparency." ..

Enlist credible spokespeople who can connect with diverse communities, especially those where mistrust and skepticism run high. When leaders talk about vaccines as standard practices, as opposed to options, people are more likely to accept them. Research suggests building trust and providing clear information about vaccines can improve vaccination uptake rates. It is critical that leaders across the political spectrum unite behind vaccine safety and transparency, clearly explaining what is in the vaccine and what it does and doesn't do in the body.

Consider the wide variety of factors that motivate human behavior. Behavioral science indicates that people are more likely to adhere to vaccine recommendations when they believe they are susceptible to the illness, when they want to protect others, when they believe the vaccine is safe or at least safer than the illness, and when their concerns and questions are managed respectfully by doctors and experts." ( "APA Welcomes Step Toward First U.S. Vaccine Approval" , American Psychological Association)

Is it really ethical for the APA to be involved in a mass vaccination campaign? Is this the role an organization like this should play in a democratic society? Should the APA use its unique understanding of human behavior to persuade people on behalf of the government and big pharma? And, more importantly, if behavioral psychologists helped to shape the government's strategy on mass vaccination, then in what other policies were they involved? Were these the "professionals" who conjured up the pandemic restrictions? Were the masks, the social distancing and the lockdowns all promoted by "experts" as a way to undermine normal human relations and inflict the maximum psychological pain on the American people? Was the intention to create a weak and submissive population that would willingly accept the dismantling of democratic institutions, the dramatic restructuring of the economy, and the imposition of a new political order?"

These questions need to be answered.

Surprisingly, the resistance to vaccination is nearly as strong today as it was a year ago. According to PEW Research:

(only) "69% of the public intends to get a vaccine – or already has .

Those who do not currently plan to get a vaccine (30% of the public) list a range of reasons why. Majorities cite concerns about side effects (72%), a sense that vaccines were developed and tested too quickly (67%) and a desire to know more about how well they work (61%) as major reasons why they do not intend to get vaccinated.

Smaller shares of those not planning to get a vaccine say past mistakes by the medical care system (46%) or a sense they don't need it (42%) are major reasons why they don't plan to get a vaccine; 36% of this group (11% of all U.S. adults) say a major reason they would pass on receiving a coronavirus vaccine is that they don't get vaccines generally.

The new national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 16 to 21 among 10,121 U.S. adults. ( "Growing Share of Americans Say They Plan To Get a COVID-19 Vaccine – or Already Have ", PEW Research)

So, despite the nonstop propaganda blitz, a significant portion of the population remains unconvinced, unimpressed and steadfast. Go figure? Of course, this is just Round 1. Soon, persuasion will turn into coercion, and from coercion to outright force. It's already clear that air-travel will require vaccine passports, and that public transit, concerts, libraries, restaurants and, perhaps, even grocery stores could follow soon after. Vaccination looks to be the defining issue of the next few years at least. And those who resist the edicts of the state will increasingly find themselves on the outside; outcasts in their own country.


anonymous [408] Disclaimer , says: March 25, 2021 at 9:07 pm GMT • 4.8 days ago

Right. US government policy is ulterior constraint and coercion of voluntary consent to medical experimentation in the meaning of Nuremberg Code Article 1, and it's illegal in federal and universal-jurisdiction law. APA got with the program on torture, so of course they're going to help with coercive medical experimentation.

The first time it goes to court, they lose. This is why you see Pharma shills like That Would Be Telling breezily trying to rush approval – Oh, we'll get oodles of data now, so we don't have to wait so long for final approval!! Final approval opens up new possibilities for corrupt Big Pharma coercion under color of law.

But the case law encourages deference to emergency action to contain an outbreak. So as more people knuckle under and get shot up, the outbreak goes away, the exigency no longer weighs against denial of our rights. If the health emergency continues after extensive vaccination, well, Why the hell is that? So judicial review is something Big Pharma will avoid at all costs, not least because it might open the ultimate can of worms, violations of the *False Claims Act* to obtain a *fraudulent EUA* . Big Pharma corruptly suppressed alternatives to justify the EUA. This is a litigation bonanza that will make the tobacco settlement and opioid claims look like chump change.

Wade Hampton , says: March 26, 2021 at 8:29 am GMT • 4.3 days ago

A pharmaceutical company is typically responsible for the harm done by new drugs it has developed. The Covid-vaccines are being released under emergency use authorizations which shield the Pharma companies from such liability under most circumstances.

To minimize the liability related to new drug development, a typical new drug goes through a development process which takes 6-7 years of a clinical work (testing on increasing numbers of test subjects) to gain approval. During the clinical phase, 4 out of 5 drug candidates typically fail because of inefficacy or harmful side effects.

These vaccines are being released after only one year of clinical testing, so essentially, we are using the entire population as test subjects. And if experience is any guide many of them (perhaps all of them) will fail due to harmful side effects.

I am going to wait at least two years. By then, we should have a pretty good idea of the reality of the situation. I am providing a useful service to the drug development process by being a member of the "control group".

TTSSYF , says: March 26, 2021 at 11:00 am GMT • 4.2 days ago
@Dumbo

My father was sick for several days with a respiratory illness and tested positive for the virus. He had had the first of two Moderna shots three weeks prior.

BorisMay , says: March 26, 2021 at 11:45 am GMT • 4.2 days ago

Unbelievable that anyone with a brain still watches a television or listens to a radio. No wonder the US is screwed, just like the UK is.

Observator , says: March 26, 2021 at 12:36 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago
@Wade Hampton harma Technology Focus reported these activities on 2/23/21, online at https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/company-news/pfizer-latin-american-vaccine/

In 2009 Pfizer was assessed the largest fine in history for deliberate medical fraud https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history but after lengthy appeals their attorneys managed to get the judgment reduced by almost two billion dollars.

Mefobills , says: March 26, 2021 at 1:28 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago
@mongoos opinion." -Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Reichsminister Of Propaganda

That's right. It was to protect the population from internal enemies.

By then Bernays had already created propaganda techniques, and NSDAP thought leaders were figuring out ways to combat the big lie from finance oligarchs of the west.

Do you really think that the average sheeple can think for themselves? Only a small fraction of the population is capable of critical thought. It has always been that way – a large component of the population wants to be told what to do, and they want to do the right thing.

If they were critical thinkers they wouldn't be wearing a mask while in their car driving alone.

Demguy , says: March 26, 2021 at 1:33 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago

They say that vaccines are "safe". My definition of"safe" is that the chance of dying post vaccine is the same as any other vaccine. VAERS data shows 166 deaths for all of 2020. As of 3-11-21, there have been 1642 deaths, 50X the rate. If they would just come out and say the death rate is higher but you still have a 1000 times greater chance of dying without it, I'd get it. But instead I'm wondering what else they're lying about.

Also, they say to trust the science, but I never hear from scientists, only public relations, profiteers, etc. You'll get a much more honest answer from the car mechanic than the salesman.

Liza , says: March 26, 2021 at 1:42 pm GMT • 4.1 days ago

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), led by Imran Ahmed, has published a hit list of the top 10 "anti-vaxxers" they want eradicated from public platforms

CCDH, while anonymously funded, can easily be linked to a number of technocratic centers within the globalist network that seeks to take over global governance through the Great Reset

from Dr. Mercola's latest article, of today, March 26th.

[Mar 30, 2021] There is something rotten in the state of Covid

The level of corruption of science (and medicine is just a branch of science) in the USA is really astounding. It is Lysenkoism, pure and simple. And vaccine debate, or absence of thereof is just a tip of the iceberg, one manifestations of corrupt nature of neoliberalism in the USA and the level of amorality and corruption of the neoliberal elite. After all the essence of neoliberalism is "profits before people".
Notable quotes:
"... it's what it looks like to me too... pfizer must be laughing all the way to the bank, or blackrock - whatever.. i guess the johnston vaccine or whatever will have to be pushed harder too.. https://www.holdingschannel.com/13f/blackrock-inc-top-holdings/ ..."
Mar 30, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org
gottlieb , Mar 30 2021 16:10 utc | 15

Well these aren't vaccines as much as flu-shots. Indeed they're already buzzing about combining the annual flu jab with the covid 'vaccine' for inoculation once or twice a year depending on the severity of variant season. Vaccines are supposed to offer protection against disease for long periods of time. The flu shot isn't a vaccine and neither are these Covid jabs. And contrary to a comment above these 'vaccines' have proven very effective to 'cure' serious Covid patients, much like the gene-therapies being used to great effect.

I certainly wouldn't take the experimental mRNA 'vaccines' until much more data is in. Is there a reason the mRNA rabies vaccine hasn't been approved after years of trying? And of course folks are quick the forget the Moderna/Pfizer medicines have not been approved either except for "emergency use."

And now finally there is out in the open debate about the origins of the 'novel' Corona virus of which so many react as if it is not novel at all. Not to say we'll ever know the truth - imagine the legal liability of setting off a global pandemic.

There is something rotten in the state of covid. Let's put on our gasmasks and get to the bottom of it.


ptb , Mar 30 2021 16:21 utc | 17

@15 gottlieb

Well these aren't vaccines as much as [seasonal] flu-shots.

That seems to be a very significant possibility.

james , Mar 30 2021 16:25 utc | 18

it's what it looks like to me too... pfizer must be laughing all the way to the bank, or blackrock - whatever.. i guess the johnston vaccine or whatever will have to be pushed harder too.. https://www.holdingschannel.com/13f/blackrock-inc-top-holdings/

james , Mar 30 2021 16:25 utc | 19

it is hard not to be cynical..

norecovery , Mar 30 2021 16:53 utc | 23

Most people are not grasping the serious wrong-headedness of this mass vaccination effort. I transcribed a germane section of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche's interview so folks here can please read it until they understand what he's saying. (I inserted punctuation and paragraphs to make it more readable.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZxiNxYLpc

"If you go to war, you better make sure you have the right weapon. The weapon in itself can be an excellent weapon, and that is what I'm saying about the current vaccines, I mean just brilliant people who have been making these vaccines in no time and with regulatory approval and everything, so the weapon in itself is excellent. The question is, is this the right weapon for the kind of war that is going on right now? And there, my answer is definitely no. Because these are prophylactic vaccines, and prophylactic vaccines should typically not be administered to people who are exposed to high infectious pressure. So don't forget we are administering these vaccines in the heat of a pandemic.

"So in other words, while we are preparing our weapon, we are fully attacked by the virus – the virus is everywhere – so that is a very different scenario from using such vaccines in a setting where the vaccinee is barely or not exposed to the virus. And I'm saying this because if you have a high infectious pressure, it's so easy for the virus to jump from one person to the other. So, if you're immune response is just mounting, as we see right now with a number of people who get their first dose – they get their first dose, the antibodies are not fully mature, [inaudible] are not very high, so their immune response is sub-optimal. But they are in the midst of this war. While they are mounting an immune response they are fully attacked by the virus. And every single time – I mean, this is textbook knowledge – every time you have an immune response that is sub-optimal in the presence of an infection, in the presence of a virus that infects that person, you are at risk for immune escape. So that means that the virus can escape from the immune response.

"So I'm saying that these vaccines – I mean, in their own right of course, are excellent – but to use them in the midst of a pandemic and do mass vaccinations, because then you provide within a very short period of time with high antibody [types ?] [inaudible] I mean, that wouldn't matter if you could eradicate if you could prevent infection. But these vaccines don't prevent infection – they protect against disease.

"Because unfortunately, we look no further than the end of our nose, in the sense that hospitalization, that's all that counts – you know, getting people away from the hospital. But in the meantime, you're not realizing that we give, all the time during this pandemic, by our interventions the opportunity to escape the immune system. And that is of course a very, very dangerous thing, especially when we realize that these guys they only need 10 hours to replicate.

"So we think that by making new vaccines – new vaccines against the new infectious strains – we think we're going to catch up. It's impossible to catch up. The virus is not going to wait until we have those vaccines ready. I mean, this thing continues. As I was saying, the thing is, I mean, if you do this in the midst of a pandemic, that is an enormous problem. These vaccines are excellent, but they are not made for administration to millions of people in the midst, in the heat of a pandemic. So that is my point."

Mina , Mar 30 2021 16:56 utc | 25

BBC buries detail about the new AZ problems
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56580728

https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-halts-astrazeneca-vaccines-for-under-60s/a-57049301
blood clots... in the brain

https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/coronavirus-vaccine-germany-reports-more-astrazeneca-clot-cases-121032900737_1.html
31 of whom ... 7 died.

Luckily, the EU has approved a change of name of the AZ vaccin
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/vaxzevria-previously-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/eu-affairs/162559/astrazeneca-vaccine-now-renamed-as-vaxzevria-ema-european-eu-uk-swedish-lakemedelsverket/

But this latest point is not mentioned by most MSM of course...

Digital Spartacus , Mar 30 2021 16:57 utc | 26

James @ 19

It's impossible to not be cynical.

norecovery , Mar 30 2021 17:16 utc | 30

Mass vaccination apparently is accelerating the mutation of more dangerous variants. Do the experts not understand that the antigen-specific antibodies the vaccinations are eliciting, actually compromise people's innate broadly-based immune resistance to variants?

psychohistorian , Mar 30 2021 17:27 utc | 31

@ defaultcitizen | Mar 30 2021 16:55 utc | 24 who wrote

"
.....Yet some persist in shouting "The King is NAKED!" in the land of the blind and deaf and naked – their words quickly washed away by the next wave of crashing yaddayadda. Inspiring. Admirable. I need a double shot, now and then, to keep my courage and anger up. Graffiti on the cyber time-tunnel hearkens the occasional weary voyager.
"

Thanks for that and the sentiments about what b has to go through to keep churning out the truth he finds within his bias like we all have.

We are an interesting species struggling to evolve or perish it seems and yet adding my textual white noise to yours feels positive in some way and so I do it. I think it is a small percentage that don't feel the impotent rage of our social system and that rage is causing it to lose trust.

I have been waiting over 50 years for the failure tipping point in the private finance based social system and I feel it is close. But I have to admit I felt more positive in the middle of the Occupy movement because their were people in the streets and it was focused on Wall Street....and it sure as heck isn't now.....sigh

Jackrabbit , Mar 30 2021 17:30 utc | 32

Mina @Mar30 16:56 #25

AstraZeneca has been plagued with problems that get lots of media attention (production problems, suspected health problems, etc.)

And the J&J vaccine is still hard to find. There are now dozens of places to get a vaccine in NYC but I could only find 4 or 5 that give the J&J vaccine (along with one of the mRNA shots) - at least two of which note that they are not giving "first dose" shots and another says (in a FAQ on their site) that they are only receiving Moderna vaccines "at this time".

IMO we are being herded into the mRNA vaccines.

But if you complain to others about that (as I have) you are treated as though you are "anti-vaxx / anti-science.

!!

norecovery , Mar 30 2021 17:46 utc | 34

karlof1 – The "anti-vaxxer – anti-science" smear is analogous to "anti-American" if one criticizes U.S. foreign policy. Simplistic demonization is encouraged by the mainstream media with news delivered in sound bites in order to dumb down the populace and manufacture consent (or paranoia).

karlof1 , Mar 30 2021 17:53 utc | 36

norecovery @30--

That's why I see getting vaccinated now as a waste of time and medicine. My lifestyle hasn't changed much at all with the pandemic, although my employment of precautions has soared. That will change with our cross-country road trip during the month of April as we interact with many more people and visit their homes. Yes, aside from lodgings, they'll be kin--but--unprotected interactions with kin are often the source of infection. As we see cases soar once again, it's clear that the vaccine was seen as some sort of panacea when it's not that at all. People ought to wonder why they're prompted to get a new flu shot annually; it's because it mutates and a different formula's required. I've never had a flu shot and don't get the flu, mainly because of my lifestyle. What's most important for me is my preferred vaccine--Sputnik V--isn't available in my nation and may never be approved for use here. For me, the AIDS experience is my reference--Sex wasn't deadly until it suddenly was (All STDs were never considered in the same league) which prompted a change in behavior. Same with COVID, although flu is clearly a deadly virus for many.

[Mar 30, 2021] Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Frequently Asked Questions - FDA

Mar 30, 2021 | www.fda.gov

Q: What data did the FDA use to make the decision to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for emergency use?

A: Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is authorized to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in individuals 16 years of age and older.

FDA evaluated and analyzed the safety and effectiveness data from clinical trials conducted in tens of thousands of study participants and manufacturing information submitted by Pfizer-BioNTech. FDA has determined that the totality of the available data provides clear evidence that Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine may be effective in preventing COVID-19 and support that the known and potential benefits outweigh the known and potential risks of the vaccine's use in millions of people 16 years of age and older, including healthy individuals. Q: What data is available to the public to review?

A: FDA posted data and analysis in a briefing document made available in connection with the December 10, 2020, meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. Following issuance of the emergency use authorization , the Letter of Authorization, Fact Sheets and Full EUA Prescribing Information are posted on FDA's web site. FDA has also posted the review memo for Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, which summarizes FDA's review of the safety and effectiveness data, including clinical data, submitted in support of the request for emergency use authorization. Q: How well does Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine prevent COVID-19?

A: The data to support the EUA include an analysis of 36,523 participants in the ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled international study, the majority of whom are U.S. participants, who completed the 2-dose vaccination regimen and did not have evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection through 7 days after the second dose. Among these participants, 18,198 received the vaccine and 18,325 received saline placebo.

... 8 COVID-19 cases in the vaccine group and 162 COVID-19 cases in the placebo group. Of these 170 COVID-19 cases, 1 in the vaccine group and 3 in the placebo group were classified as severe. Q: Can people who have already had COVID-19 get the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine?

A: Among all study participants, 3% had evidence of infection prior to vaccination, and among participants with evidence of infection prior to vaccination, more confirmed COVID-19 cases occurred in the placebo group compared with the vaccine group. While relatively few confirmed COVID-19 cases occurred overall among participants with evidence of infection prior to vaccination, available data suggest that previously infected individuals can be at risk of COVID-19 (i.e., reinfection) and could benefit from vaccination. Q: If a person has received the the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, will the vaccine protect against transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from individuals who are infected despite vaccination?

A: Most vaccines that protect from viral illnesses also reduce transmission of the virus that causes the disease by those who are vaccinated. While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine will reduce such transmission. Q: What safety information did FDA evaluate to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for emergency use?

A: The available safety data to support the EUA include 37,586 of the participants enrolled in an ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled international study, the majority of whom are U.S. participants. These participants, 18,801 of whom received the vaccine and 18,785 of whom received saline placebo, were followed for a median of 2 months after receiving the 2nd dose. This is consistent with the recommendations set forth in FDA's October 2020 Guidance on Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines to Prevent COVID-19 .

The most commonly reported side effects were pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, joint pain, and fever. Side effects typically started within two days of vaccination and resolved 1-2 day later. Of note, more people experienced these side effects after the second dose than after the first dose, so it is important for vaccination providers and recipients to expect that that there may be some side effects after either dose, but even more so after the second dose.

FDA also evaluated additional safety data from the larger database that included participants enrolled later during the study who had shorter follow-up (the total database included 43,448 participants, 21,720 of whom received vaccine and 21,728 of whom received saline placebo) . FDA determined that the findings were similar to those in the population of participants with a median follow-up of 2 months after the 2nd dose. Q: Is information available about serious adverse events?

A: Serious adverse events, while uncommon (<1.0%), were observed at slightly higher numerical rates in the vaccine study group compared to the saline placebo study group, both overall and for certain specific adverse events occurring in very small numbers. These represented common medical events that occur in the general population at similar frequency. Upon further review by FDA, these imbalances do not raise a safety concern, nor do they suggest a causal relationship to vaccination for the vast majority of reported serious adverse events.

Serious adverse events considered by FDA to be plausibly related to the vaccine or vaccination procedure were one case of shoulder injury at the vaccination site and one case of swollen lymph node in the armpit opposite the vaccination arm.

No safety concerns were identified in subgroup analyses by age, race, ethnicity, medical comorbidities, or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, have been reported following administration of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine during mass vaccination outside of the clinical trial setting. Information pertaining to severe allergic reaction is included in the Fact Sheet for Vaccine Providers, Fact Sheet for Vaccine Recipients and the EUA Prescribing Information.

Additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious, may become apparent with more widespread use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.

[Mar 30, 2021] Reactions and Adverse Events of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine - CDC

Mar 30, 2021 | www.cdc.gov

Table 4. Systemic reactions in persons aged >55 years, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and placebo

Table 4. Systemic reactions in persons aged >55 years, Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and Placebo
Dose 1 Dose 2
Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine
N=1802
Placebo
N=1792
Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine
N=1660
Placebo
N=1646
Fever
≥38.0°C 26 (1.4) 7 (0.4) 181 (10.9) 4 (0.2)
≥38.0°C to 38.4°C 23 (1.3) 2 (0.1) 131 (7.9) 2 (0.1)
>38.4°C to 38.9°C 1 (0.1) 3 (0.2) 45 (2.7) 1 (0.1)
>38.9°C to 40.0°C 1 (0.1) 2 (0.1) 5 (0.3) 1 (0.1)
>40.0°C 1 (0.1) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Fatigue a , n (%)
Any 615 (34.1) 405 (22.6) 839 (50.5) 277 (16.8)
Mild 373 (20.7) 252 (14.1) 351 (21.1) 161 (9.8)
Moderate 240 (13.3) 150 (8.4) 442 (26.6) 114 (6.9)
Severe 2 (0.1) 3 (0.2) 46 (2.8) 2 (0.1)
Grade 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Headache a , n (%)
Any 454 (25.2) 325 (18.1) 647 (39.0) 229 (13.9)
Mild 348 (19.3) 242 (13.5) 422 (25.4) 165 (10.0)
Moderate 104 (5.8) 80 (4.5) 216 (13.0) 60 (3.6)
Severe 2 (0.1) 3 (0.2) 9 (0.5) 4 (0.2)
Grade 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Chills a , n (%)
Any 113 (6.3) 57 (3.2) 377 (22.7) 46 (2.8)
Mild 87 (4.8) 40 (2.2) 199 (12.0) 35 (2.1)
Moderate 26 (1.4) 16 (0.9) 161 (9.7) 11 (0.7)
Severe 0 (0) 1 (0.1) 17 (1.0) 0 (0)
Grade 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Vomiting b , n (%)
Any 9 (0.5) 9 (0.5) 11 (0.7) 5 (0.3)
Mild 8 (0.4) 9 (0.5) 9 (0.5) 5 (0.3)
Moderate 1 (0.1) 0 (0) 1 (0.1) 0 (0)
Severe 3 (0.2) 0 (0) 1 (0.1) 0 (0)
Grade 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Diarrhea c , n (%)
Any 147 (8.2) 118 (6.6) 137 (8.3) 99 (6.0)
Mild 118 (6.5) 100 (5.6) 114 (6.9) 73 (4.4)
Moderate 26 (1.4) 17 (0.9) 21 (1.3) 22 (1.3)
Severe 3 (0.2) 1 (0.1) 2 (0.1) 4 (0.2)
Grade 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
New or worsening muscle pain a , n (%)
Any 251 (13.9) 149 (8.3) 477 (28.7) 87 (5.3)
Mild 168 (9.3) 100 (5.6) 202 (12.2) 57 (3.5)
Moderate 82 (4.6) 46 (2.6) 259 (15.6) 29 (1.8)
Severe 1 (0.1) 3 (0.2) 16 (1.0) 1 (0.1)
Grade 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
New or worsening joint pain a , n (%)
Any 155 (8.6) 109 (6.1) 313 (18.9) 61 (3.7)
Mild 101 (5.6) 68 (3.8) 161 (9.7) 35 (2.1)
Moderate 52 (2.9) 40 (2.2) 145 (8.7) 25 (1.5)
Severe 2 (0.1) 1 (0.1) 7 (0.4) 1 (0.1)
Grade 4 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)
Use of antipyretic or pain medication 358 (19.9) 213 (11.9) 625 (37.7) 161 (9.8)

a Mild: does not interfere with activity; moderate: some interference with activity; severe: prevents daily activity; Grade 4: emergency room visit or hospitalization for severe fatigue, severe headache, severe muscle pain, or severe joint pain.

b Mild: 1 to 2 times in 24 hours; moderate: >2 times in 24 hours; severe: requires intravenous hydration; Grade 4: emergency room visit or hospitalization for severe vomiting.

c Mild: 2 to 3 loose stools in 24 hours; moderate: 4 to 5 loose stools in 24 hours; severe: 6 or more loose stools in 24 hours; Grade 4: emergency room visit or hospitalization for severe diarrhea. Unsolicited Adverse Events

Reports of lymphadenopathy were imbalanced with 58 more cases in the vaccine group (64) than the placebo group (6); lymphadenopathy is plausibly related to the vaccine. Lymphadenopathy occurred in the arm and neck region and was reported within 2 to 4 days after vaccination. The average duration of lymphadenopathy was approximately 10 days. Bell's palsy was reported by four vaccine recipients and none of the placebo recipients. The observed frequency of reported Bell's palsy in the vaccine group is consistent with the background rate in the general population, and there is no basis upon which to conclude a causal relationship.

Serious Adverse Events

Serious adverse events were defined as any untoward medical occurrence that resulted in death, was life-threatening, required inpatient hospitalization or prolongation of existing hospitalization, or resulted in persistent disability/incapacity. The proportions of participants who reported at least 1 serious adverse event were 0.6% in the vaccine group and 0.5% in the placebo group. The most common serious adverse events in the vaccine group which were numerically higher than in the placebo group were appendicitis (7 in vaccine vs 2 in placebo), acute myocardial infarction (3 vs 0), and cerebrovascular accident (3 vs 1). Cardiovascular serious adverse events were balanced between vaccine and placebo groups. Two serious adverse events were considered by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as possibly related to vaccine: shoulder injury possibly related to vaccine administration or to the vaccine itself, and lymphadenopathy involving the axilla contralateral to the vaccine injection site. Otherwise, occurrence of severe adverse events involving system organ classes and specific preferred terms were balanced between vaccine and placebo groups.

Data source: FDA briefing document external icon


[Mar 27, 2021] Why vaccines are the only game in town. Why treatments were almost completly abandoned?

Mar 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Oriental Voice , Mar 25 2021 1:00 utc | 72

@Posted by: JB | Mar 24 2021 23:47 utc | 64

....why is there almost no mention of treatment.

There were mentions of treatments, just not in the US. I don't know about whether the same has been in Europe, but in China very early on during the pandemic, various treatments were tried and discussed. China drew on its experience of fighting SARS, and their findings were actually published, such as in Lancet. I believe Italy consequently made routine use of one of the method, that of serum from recovered patients (and later in the US too) on patients in critical care units, which was first tried and endorsed in China. Serum wasn't a panacea but in most cases found helpful. However, in China itself the popular treatment was a combination of traditional western medicine for pneumonia and traditional Chinese herbal medicine for respiratory ailments. The findings were conveyed to countries that China assisted early on, such as Italy and Serbia. Chinese herbal medicine was also included in aid packages that were sent oversea to stranded Chinese expats. China also discussed at length the use of remdesivir, and dismissed it as being ineffective.

Actually there were discussions of treatments in the US too, if you recall Ole Pres Trump urged the drinking of Dittol, Lysol, and other germ killers. I didn't recall him urging the use of injection method, but like always there are daredevils in the US that went that far :)

uncle tungsten , Mar 25 2021 2:58 utc | 78

JB #37

Just listen to this doctor's testimony in the Texas legislature on TREATMENT of Covid-19:

See this link

Just one quote: "COVID - 19 has always been a treatable sickness"

Well said and thank you. My government posts a pathetic thing entitled "Covid 19 Vaccination and treatment" and there is ZERO information on early stage treatment. It is all vaccine, vaccine, vaccine.

When I next visit my GP I will ask her for details of her treatment regime should I ever receive a +ve test but I suspect what the answer will be.

Every disease is treatable to some extent. I have the Chinese Covid treatment manual of considerable volume, fully translated to english. Here is version 7 March 2020 and it is no doubt thoroughly revised since that date.

The almost total surrender of professionals in medical practice to self censorship and the brutal insistence on toeing the line to the official mantra is religious obscurantism of the worst order. It is the totalitarian stuff that led to the witch hunts and fatwas and the excommunications and now the cancel culture.

The advocates of this oppression of clinical practice are the enemies of humanity and the saboteurs of science.

That brief video is well worth considering as it demands an answer as to why this path of death causing ignorance was ever advocated let alone accepted. Let a thousand flowers bloom and a thousand ideas be considered.

[Mar 27, 2021] It looks like the vaccinated will be the petri dishes from which the variants arise, but the unvaccinated who will be vilified

Mar 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

DaveNItUp , Mar 24 2021 18:21 utc | 16

It looks like the vaccinated will be the petri dishes from which the variants arise, but the unvaccinated who will be vilified...sadistically genius...that's how hegemon rolls

I'm opting out of this sick game myself as long as possible.

[Mar 27, 2021] I don't know how important or reliable this is, but Pfizer does have an impressive rap sheet as a corporate criminal

Mar 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bluedotterel , Mar 24 2021 17:32 utc | 4

I don't know how important or reliable this is, but Pfizer does have an impressive rap sheet as a corporate criminal, Netanyahu, well...

https://www.unz.com/gatzmon/the-probe-into-the-israeli-vaccine-policy-and-its-outcome-is-beyond-damning/

"In the document the CP (Civilian Probe) points at a government attempt to conceal its dealing with Pfizer. The document states that "the Pfizer-Israel agreement is suffocated with redacted segments, consequently, it is not possible to analyze it legally and/or fully grasp Its implications as far as public health is concerned This concealment casts a heavy shadow over anyone who took part in the (Israeli/Pfizer) negotiations ".
...
"On the one hand, the state did not inform the citizens that Pfizer's vaccine is in experimental stages that have not yet been completed, and that at this stage they are actually taking part in the experiment. On the other hand, the state did not maintain transparent and open control and monitoring systems for the public. As a result, there is a serious concern that this critical and negligent omission stems from: (a) the fear that such disclosure could interfere with the fulfilment of the objectives that may be implied by the Israel-Pfizer agreement or (b) the fear of diminishing demand for the exceptional number of vaccines that were purchased by Israel in advance, and/or (c) the fear of revealing unflattering results of the 'experiment' being carried out in Israel."
...
every world citizen who is concerned about the future of humanity should be alarmed by the CP's findings and particularly by the desperate and relentless attempts to suppress free academic, scientific and ethical discussion about Covid, the so-called 'vaccines' or anything else."


[Mar 27, 2021] New York Times Does Public Relations Work for the Pharmaceutical Industry by DEAN BAKER

Mar 21, 2021 | cepr.net

The industry needs some good PR right now. After all, its refusal to share its vaccine technology could end up costing millions of lives in the developing world. In addition, it could mean trillions of dollars of lost output as countries need to shut down large segments of their economy. But the NYT is there to help. It ran a lengthy article about the issue, which contains much useful information, but it maintains a framing favorable to the pharmaceutical industry. At the end of the piece, after giving the argument for broader sharing of technology and over-riding the industry's government-granted patent monopolies, the piece tells readers: "But governments cannot afford to sabotage companies that need profit to survive."

If the reporters/editors had read their piece, they would know that the companies in question had already made large profits, through being paid directly for their research and building manufacturing facilities, as was the case with Moderna and BioNtech (Pfizer's German partner), or with advance purchase agreements. No one is suggesting that these companies should not make a profit, so it is not clear on what planet this assertion originated.

It is possible to make profits directly on government contracts, as major military contractors like Lockheed and Boeing could explain to the New York Times. The advantage of having direct contracts for biomedical research is that a requirement of the contract could be that all findings are fully open-source so that researchers all over the world can benefit from them. (I discuss a mechanism for direct funding in chapter 5 of Rigged [it's free].)

... ... ...

It is probably worth mentioning inequality in this piece. The NYT, like most intellectual types, has done considerable hand-wringing over inequality in recent years, both overall and racial inequality. It is a safe bet that giving more money to pharmaceutical companies will mean more inequality and certainly benefit whites far more than Blacks. It might be useful if the paper paid a little attention to the policies that create inequality instead of just bemoaning it as an unfortunate feature of the economy.


mary s 5 days ago ,

Yes, the NYT is really good at covering the impact of policies that increase inequality and perpetuate structural racism but avoids drawing any lines to the policies themselves -- and the politics that create these policies -- by treating the status quo as a kind of state of nature.

Rath R. Weird 6 days ago ,

Innovation in vaccine design comes from advances in fundamental science, which is funded not by companies, but by NIH and NSF (predominantly). Pharma employs scientists trained using federal funds, freely uses federally funded resources, open access publications and open source software paid for through federal funds, buys up commercializable technologies in form of startups that grow out of federal science and funded by SBIR and STTR grants, kills most of them and overcharges taxpayers for the product. That's rarely mentioned. As is the fact that pharma actually sucks at the only thing that they are supposed to be good at - manufacturing. Quality problems have been plaguing AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna - something that is discussed in trade publications and FDA meetings but doesn't make it to the NYT or TV news.

Alicia Carrot Rath R. Weird 5 days ago ,

This is spot on! Taxpayer funded research, yet the conglomerates are holding the patents and making a fortune off of open sourced information.

[Mar 26, 2021] Are PCR tests picking up spike proteins from the mRNA vaccines?

Mar 26, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Finally, COVID vaccinations are re-accelerating in US and EU...

Source: Bloomberg

And while cases are up modestly (are PCR tests picking up spike proteins from the mRNA vaccines?), death rates continue to tumble...

[Mar 26, 2021] Looking from your comment, you're in the camp of not taking the Covid vaccine. I gather that it's not because you don't believe in science, but because it's too early and a part of you don't believe in the process.

Mar 26, 2021 | www.unz.com

Rdm , says: March 25, 2021 at 9:11 pm GMT • 23.5 hours ago

@Anonymous etting where lots of people are taking, you do come out as anti-vaxxer sentiment. That's where social pressure builds in and some weak mind cave in or Some took it because their career is on the line.

There's only 32% of healthcare workers getting the vaccine here in the States. It's like the MSM and some people from higher up are pushing the idea that vaccination is a must and suggesting the vaccine passport.

What in the world, the United States of America, the beacon of Truth, the land of the Free, pioneers of Science caved into this idea of vaccine must be administered to everyone? The same can be said for all other social phenomena as well...

[Mar 26, 2021] Rutgers University is requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Aarthi Swaminathan

Excessive zeal might hurt. I would understand vaccination of faculty, especially older one. But students are young and young people do not have the same level of risk from COVID-19as older people. If vaccine has side effects Rutgers University will be liable for damages.
Mar 26, 2021 | finance.yahoo.com

Rutgers University is requiring students to get the COVID-19 vaccine before they come back for the fall semester, and one expert thinks that other colleges will do the same.

"Rutgers is on fairly solid ground and we're likely to see a good number of universities, both public and private, start to mandate the vaccine," Eric Feldman, professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above).

Rutgers, a public university in New Jersey, is the first prominent U.S. higher education institution to mandate COVID vaccines for the fall semester. Students will be required to show proof of vaccination -- or receive an exemption -- before coming to campus to attend classes or live in university housing.

Students who are under the age of 17 will only be eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, while older students will be able to receive a Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson & Johnson inoculation.

[Mar 22, 2021] Drug companies defend vaccine monopolies in face of global outcry: As immunization gap widens between rich and poor countries, the industry faces a battle over patents and know-how

Mar 22, 2021 | www.washingtonpost.com

Drug companies are lobbying the Biden administration to block a push at the WTO by India, South Africa and about 80 other countries for a temporary waiver on patent protections for the new vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry argues that innovation as well as vaccine quality and safety depend on maintaining exclusive intellectual property rights.

"Eliminating those protections would undermine the global response to the pandemic," industry executives and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, their powerful lobbying group, warned President Biden in a letter this month. Biden has sided with the drug companies so far. The United States on March 10 joined Britain, the E.U. and Switzerland in blocking the push for waivers.

[Mar 15, 2021] Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla On Covid Vaccine- Extended Interview - NBC Nightly News

Mar 15, 2021 | www.youtube.com

In an exclusive interview with Lester Holt, Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla discusses the company's Covid-19 vaccine -- including the potential for a booster shot, vaccine trials for children and more.


Fatm Marq , 2 weeks ago

and does anyone expect a CEO to tell the truth about his company's product?


Mud Fish
, 4 days ago

Do you really trust this guy? Research The World Economic Forum, read who they are tied to and the goals the have (in their own words) you will be shocked

Yu WuDu , 1 week ago

Welcome to technocracy! Oh your Antivirus definitions aren't up to date, we need to plug you into Windows update before we can let you onto the Internet of Idiots.


German Splaining
, 1 week ago

How good is this vaccine if, and I quote "the weakling that who are affect the whole society" (great English but that's just a side note) So his product does not provide immunity longer than 6 months essentially, requires a yearly dose (profit) and requires 100% to take it in order to work. What a joke!


Ghawkphd
, 1 week ago

-- Pfizer former chief respiratory research scientist (Dr. Yeadon) Most in depth honest information on C19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II4wkMKCt-c&t=29s

FactsOver Fiction , 2 weeks ago

As CEO, much of Bourla's compensation is in stock. He's a very well-paid drug salesman. He won't tell us the objective truth about his company's vaccine. It would hurt stock price and his own wealth. C'mon, NBC ... Interview an objective scientist. This is just an ad in disguise.

andrew kis , 2 weeks ago

pfizer need get advices from expert financial, how to improve spinoff and improve shareholder interest to make a better company. dividend, number of shareholder, debt , variant of products.


Michael Esq. ATP, CFII
, 1 week ago (edited)

So the data suggests 52% immunity after 1st dose and 6 months protection with current data, but possible a 3rd dose at 6 months or a year to cover variants and unknown protection after 2nd dosage after 6 months, but 95% in the first 3 months. OKAAAAYYY.. ahhh.. hummm.. i think i'll keep the mask on after the 3rd dose! oops, wait 2nd dose, but maybe no 3rd. nevermind. "Doctor Bourla, are you optimistic"? .....Ahhhhh, well Lester, yes, no and maybe but we'll have to wait and see...


Bruno Weight
, 4 days ago

I'd like to know why you haven't asked the CEO why his company gets blanket immunity??? Why did you not ask this man how many people have died so far after getting your second dose?? And can you please tell us what some of the really serious adverse effects that some people have been experiencing after the second dose??

What are the long-term effects of this vaccine on people's brain?, is there any indication that this gene therapy which is being called a vaccine will cause early-onset dementia because of Spike protein will start attacking the brain?

How many pregnant women have had a miscarriage after getting a second dose or even first dose for that matter,??

What are the long-term effects of this gene therapy on women that are in childbearing ages??

What will the gene therapy that's being called a vaccine do to the fetus when it comes to full term are there any indications that there's going to be some long-term effects like birth defects or genetic effects problems with the ability of this fetus to develop to full term in reference to their sexual organs?? The reason I mention these things is because these people that are associated with this vaccine believe in Eugenics and believe in depopulation because of not only their psychosis but because of climate change we absolutely have to reduce the population!!! Is this gene therapy vaccine being used to sterilize many human beings so that we don't get into this overpopulation and then we will not be able to deal with climate change???

And why haven't we asked this man has his company ever worked on an mRNA vaccine before and ever tested on any animals whatsoever prior to this covid-19 planned pandemic??

If the answer is yes and these animals were Gravely injured there for this mRNA couldn't come to full fruition and now it's being used on human beings because we're in this plan pandemic is this just another way to experiment on the population with this mRNA gene therapy? Another question if there was no plan pandemic would Pfizer have rolled out an mRNA vaccine for the cold which is caused by a Coronavirus?

Does anybody think that Pfizer Maderna or anybody else would be getting approval to experiment on the masses if there wasn't a covid-19 planned pandemic??

How come nobody is asking the CEO where is he getting the biological material to make this mRNA?? I am just really really really curious white nobody wants to ask that question and why people are allowing these people to inject them and they had no idea where these companies are getting the MRNA from is it from aborted fetuses is it from jellyfish is it from where what biological stores are they getting this mRNA from.?????????????????????????????????????????????

Before you decide to take this vaccine why don't you see if you can get the answers to any of these questions and my challenge to you is that you will not I repeat you will not be getting the answer to any of these question. And the story you just will not get the answer. The person that sticking you with this gene therapy won't tell you your doctor won't tell you the media won't tell you dr. Fauci won't tell you and I bet you anything that CEO will not tell you... WAKE UPPPP


Roger Jones
, 2 weeks ago

Older adults who received a single dose, the proportion testing positive for antibodies was just 34.7 per cent in those aged 80 and over for the Pfizer vaccine.


Fatm Marq
, 2 weeks ago

In "immunological language"..NOTHING. Any benefits, only risks and secondary effects


Neil McCubbin
, 2 weeks ago

I am frustrated to read the raft of cynical comments on Pfizer's achievement in takIng the vaccine from a lab success to a huge mass immunisation program. Before mindlessly bashing pharmaceutical companies find out the answer to the question "Why are you not terrified of polio". I am old enough to remember the last of the polio epidemics, the terror and the social disruption. Stopped dead by Dr Salk and big pharma. If you lack the scientific knowledge to criticize intelligently and propose improvements, say nothing

DJ Pomare , 2 weeks ago

Covid deaths US 523,082 UK 122,415 Mexico 184,474 Canada 21,915 China 4,636 Australia 909 NZ 26 Taiwan 9. Two thirds of the Covid variants originate from the US making Covid the US virus. There are 15 Covid variants, 10 from the US, 2 from the UK and 1 each from South Africa, Brazil and China. Traitor Trump's "Do nothing" pandemic strategy will be written into the history books as America's biggest-ever failure.


The Nation of Israel
, 1 week ago

this guy is a vetrenarian. no surprise that he is treating people like animals.


Sara Moran
, 2 weeks ago

Why are you not reporting the side effects and death happening to many post vaccine? Why are you not reporting that people in Israel are being coerced into taking this experimental product and without proper knowledge and informed consent?


Randy Xu
, 2 weeks ago (edited)

The twice repeated 52% number is purposeful lie, not a slip-up or confusion. Why did Lester not call him out on this? 52% includes cases before the vaccine even had a chance to take effect. Lester was totally hoodwinked. Moderna was much more upfront on their data.

[Mar 15, 2021] Gravitas -- Pfizer's abusive vaccine deals

Mar 15, 2021 | www.youtube.com


WION
2.16M subscribers SUBSCRIBE Pfizer has become a terror. The US pharma company is reportedly asking for military bases and sovereign assets as guarantee for vaccines. WION's Palki Sharma has the details.



Henry Rollins
,
1 week ago (edited)

I am from Patagonia, Argentina and what the journalist says is TRUE...! We went with the SputnikV and China's Sinopharm. Cheers Indian brothers...!


Arun Kumar
, 2 weeks ago

Boycott money-hungry companies such as Pfizer.

S Gomz , 1 week ago

Pfizer is going the CCP way. Loot the poor and the desperate.


Markus Müller
, 1 day ago

"Borders of sovereignty and dignity" should always be kept in mind !

[Mar 15, 2021] Why there is such a mad rush toward vaccination for the varus which is only moderatly lethal with infections concentrated in large cities? Could someone clarify if Dr. Bossche referring to all the COV2 vaccines or just the mRNA ones (i.e. Pfizer and Moderna)?

For the views expressed see https://mcusercontent.com/92561d6dedb66a43fe9a6548f/files/ee29efbe-ffaf-4289-8782-d323642a0072/concern_about_using_current_Covid_19_vaccines_for_mass_vaccination_in_the_midst_of_a_pandemic_Geert_Vanden_Bossche.pdf
The interview on Youtube Mass Vaccination in a Pandemic - Benefits versus Risks- Interview with Geert Vanden Bossche - YouTube
Mar 11, 2021 | thehighwire.com

World renown vaccine specialist, Geert Vanden Bossche, gave a groundbreaking interview this week risking his reputation and his career by bravely speaking out against administration of #Covid19 vaccines.

In what may be one of the most important stories ever covered by The Highwire, the vaccine developer shared his extreme concerns about these vaccines in particular and why we may be on track to creating a global immunity catastrophe.

Anthony Fauci, DDS Anthony Fauci, DDS 2 hours ago

Could someone clarify one thing: is Dr. Bossche referring to all the COV2 vaccines or just the mRNA ones (i.e. Pfizer and Moderna)? Chris Moyler Chris Moyler 5 hours ago

Polite question
Does Bossche's CV qualify him to be described as "a world renowned vaccine specialist? 0 Nancy Woolf Nancy Woolf 6 hours ago

The vaccine companies admit there will be adverse effects, including death, but claim that the benefits out-weigh these risks (millions of lives saved without proof, etc.). The companies and the CDC does claim, however, that the spike protein mRNA will never get into the cell nucleus and alter cellular DNA. This is a provable lie. Stem cells divide to replace cells damaged by SARS viruses. When the stem cell is dividing, the nuclear membrane dissolves. Hence the spike mRNA can alter the DNA by reverse transcription. Another possibility is the nanocapsule will penetrate the nuclear membrane. If the spike protein contributes to antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of disease, then permanently encoding the spike protein in stem cell DNA will likely cause long-term chronic or recurring disease. Auto-immune attacks will damage organs, and the repair and replacement cells will elicit a new round of auto-immune attacks. Many scientists on the boards of these vaccine companies have research programs on stem cells and must know these are viable risks. Vaccinated persons who develop disease or die should have organ tissues assayed for spike protein DNA. That would prove one way or the other if intentional lies are being delivered to the public. LM BENZ LM BENZ 8 hours ago

Excellent and practical information. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that have been made to believe that the only solution is the current vaccine. But if you watch the interview in its entirety, Geert does NOT denounce vaccines. He denounces THIS ONE.

All any of us can do, before blindly rolling up our sleeves, is be INFORMED. And not be so arrogant that we refuse to listen and heed warnings and advice. And unless you are anywhere as educated and knowledgeable as Geert, I trust you will leave your "karening " to yourselves lives depend on it.

He has posted his letter to governments etc., on his LinkedIn account. Its worth a read. Phil Phil 9 hours ago

Has it been even proven medically/scientifically that this virus actually exists? There are many professionals coming out now saying it has not been medically proven that this is an actual (non-flu) virus. And additionally, whatever happened to the flu? Has Covid replaced it or defeated it or ? Correct me if I am wrong but seasonally the flu kills 50k-60k people. And then how many people have actually died as a DIRECT result of this alleged COVID-19 virus? Jack Heginbotham Jack Heginbotham 10 hours ago

I suggest most Virologists are over educated thespians with silver tongues.
Of all the illness causing pathogens out there, viruses are the most innocuous because almost all are susceptible to a healthy immune system.

Bacteria have always been the deadliest because they can infect, thrive & kill in humans with healthy immune systems. I suspect bacterial pneumonia was one of the leading causes of death until antibiotics became available. Plasmodium Protozoa [Malaria pathogen] continue to kill 500,000/year. The number would likely be in the millions had we not discovered effective treatments.

However, PRIONS are the most deadly pathogen known to man. All prion diseases have longer incubation periods than most other pathogens and they are always lethal. They are incredibly small so extremely difficult to detect and even harder to kill. Many suspect that Alzheimer's syndrome is caused by some type of prion.

If I were a Godless, Crazy Megalomaniac with an agenda of ruling the World and eliminating several billion useless humans using up my global resourses:
I would find a way to distill and then distribute prions [which remain dormant for several years] in the annual flu shot. To make certain all those undesirables targeted with the tainted vaccines get injected: make the vaccine mandatory. Spike it for the next 3 years. In 5-10 years people start acting like non-flesh eating zombies then die. Each successive year, the number of deaths continue to climb. By the time the stupid sheep realize what transpired, it will be too late. 26 Jill Jill 10 hours ago

The highly inaccurate pcr test was the cause of this so called pandemic of a virus that has not been isolated. I urge everyone to go to some of Reiner Fuellmich interviews where he explains. He has international EXPERTS. Also has a WHO whistleblower interview.
9 Sharles Sharles 12 hours ago

The reason for decline in cases is because the northern hemisphere is coming out of their flu season, nothing to do with the vax. 24 Anna Anna 12 hours ago

What would the implications be for, say, blood transfusions, in the future?
Tara Fairweather Tara Fairweather 15 hours ago

Go back in history & look at the 1918 Spanish flu, masks mandates, vaccines, the war & the Global monetary change system that occurred all at the same time. Coincidence, I think not. Discernment & common Sense should have prevailed by now. I pray for the ones who are not woke🙏🏻 31 Tom Camilleri Tom Camilleri 15 hours ago

If Geert is correct, it seems that the pandemic was used to justify the development of a new technology that is not necessarily the most applicable to the current situation but would be a versatile tool with many questionable potential applications going forward; an enticing toy, if you will, for those who might think that the world is their laboratory. We need to be informed by this without succumbing to alarmism or panic. Shelley Shelley 15 hours ago

What is unclear to me is why this scientist (Geert) claims that he has no problem with the vaccines being developed to fight covid-19, yet also says they permanently disable or ineffectuate one's own natural immunity. That is a crazy, catastrophic outcome of a vaccine by itself. Totally unacceptable

So there are 2 issues really – a) how the covid-19 vaccines actually operate within the human body, causing harm (by permanently knocking out a person's natural immunity); and b) the effect of mass vaccination of sub-effective vaccines during a pandemic, driving increasing viral lethality that society or science will not be able to counter. Two completely separate issues, but they are not treated here as separate concerns.

I would really like to see more examination, analysis and explanation of the first concern. If the general population understood how harmful the vaccine actually is to themselves personally, it would demotivate a large percentage of the population to accept the vaccine, and possible dramatically reduce the risk of the 2nd concern. Procopio Procopio 19 hours ago

He has post doctoral training in Animal virology and he is spreading misinformation. He has not been on any significant academic site. He probably did work on animal diseases with the companies you cite.
The new strains were starting independently in multiple countries before the vaccinations started. That is what successful viruses do, they mutate. How does he expect to not vaccinate globally and prophylactically. That is the essence of vaccination to reduce the spread of deadly diseases. You treat people who can get the disease and spread it. Not every child that got german measles became deaf, but it was enough of a risk that mass vaccination was deemed necessary. A normal influenza death number is between 20-60K per year, we had 500000+ with shutting our whole country down. we still don't know the long term ramifications of neurologic or respiratory compromise will be. The vet seems to think that asymptomatic individuals should be studied for why the clear the virus from their systems, he doesn't even acknowledge that many of them pulmonary changes on xray indicating that they may in fact be compromised in the future. 0 Gavin Wyatt Gavin Wyatt 22 hours ago

The biggest over reaction in all of human history which is becoming something more because of human over reaction – do not take this vaccination. I know I will not willingly take it.
June B June B 1 day ago

I trust my natural immune system against any and all man-made interferences! I have reached 76 years of age with no interference from the "scientists". I care for my God-given protection and it works! In England the NK cells are called T-cells and they give orders for the bone marrow to make Killer T-cells to destroy pathogens. Those in power are on a culling of humans and these genetic engineering injections will do what they are supposed to do!!
The answer is to stop all injections and boost natural immune systems. It is time "scientists" stopped messing with natural protections against disease and looked to enhance them naturally! This "medicine " is 100 years old but we and other living creatures have existed for millenia. Hsaive Hsaive 1 day ago

If Dr. Bossche is so talented and worked for Gates a GAVI, (He calls not-for-profit) why was he not involved in the development of the mRNA injections? His name never comes up. Hsaive 1 day ago

Variants Do Not Exist Because SARS-CoV-2 does not exist -- - Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche Says "Halt All Covid-19 Mass Vaccinations Immediately" – BUT BEWARE! .Bossche then claims the global population must undergo another round of mass vaccinations!
https://tinyurl.com/azyfa8fs rod densmore rod densmore 1 day ago

I read Dr Vanden Bossche's letter he seems to be advocating we don't mess with herd immunity vaccines interfere with natural immunity, etc. Sweden chose this option initially in the pandemic and that approach has been reversed lately because too many people died. He is experienced enough to propose concrete steps to be taken that could mitigate against the dangers of the possibilities he brings up i wish he'd done that. As a 60 something year old person with some co-morbidities i do not have a low risk if i got COVID i can't wait to get my second shot. As for new variants they are caused by mutations of the virus and if there is less virus there will be less mutations trying to link vaccines to somehow be a cause of variants is very fuzzy logic. Jill Jill 1 day ago

What baffles me; they have been giving flu shots for years due to new varients. Question we need to ask is have we seen a more virulent strain due to this

[Mar 15, 2021] US worrying about vaccine competition is so stupid and amoral

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Clueless Joe , Mar 15 2021 22:33 utc | 80

US worrying about vaccine competition is so stupid when only a handful of countries have got their hands on enough vaccines right now, and when US and UK are hoarding them like crazy. It's not a 0-sum game for now, every bit helps. Gee, EU is in a bad state due to all pharmas failing to deliver.

Besides, it's funny to see US complaining about Russia badmouthing MRNA (so Pfizer and Moderna) when it's Astra-Zeneca which is gets gloomy headlines on a daily basis.

That said, I'd have no issue with Western countries relying on MRNA vaccines and taking the bulk of them, as long as it means the easier to produce and distribute, Sputnik, AZ, J/J, the Chinese ones, are reserved for the rest of the world; it's probably the best way to ensure most countries will vaccinate their most vulnerable citizens in a realistic timeframe - at least before the year is over, if not earlier.

As for Latin America, Chile is doing great, and is relying mostly on Sinovax for now if I remember correctly - like many others, it probably ordered a ton of other vaccines, but won't need them, so hopefully they'll be sent to neighbouring countries instead.


vk , Mar 15 2021 23:36 utc | 86

China's response to the USA's official claims:

West 'weaponizes' vaccines to divide world aimed at maintaining hegemony

"The West does not see vaccines from a professional and scientific perspective and now wants to use its technological advantages to squeeze China. While the West accuses China of engaging in vaccine diplomacy, the very one that wants to engage in vaccine diplomacy is the West," said Zuo.

--//--

@ Posted by: suzan | Mar 15 2021 21:33 utc | 69

Human adenovirus is a completely different technology than chimpanzee adenovirus, and both are completely different technologies from mRNA. Just three completely different things.

All viruses interact with their hosts' DNA and can potentially alter them forever. Indeed, we can restore fragments from very old viruses on the basis of DNA of third species. That is a natural and unavoidable aspect of life, and cannot and will never change.

Either way, the debate you bring up is moot point, because DNA mutation is not the issue with mRNA and chimpanzee adenovirus. The crux of the debate is this: human adenoviral vaccines are an already existing technology, tried and tested. We know they work and we know they're safe. That's not the case with the other two, which are completely untried and untested until last year.

Debsisdead , Mar 15 2021 23:36 utc | 87

Right now it is difficult to ascertain whether the euro -scare over the A-Z jab causing blood clots is tosh or not. The Pfizer jab also had a recipient suffer a blood clot, in amerika, early in the vaccine rollout so it is not inconceivable that all covid vaccines may have a propensity for inducing thrombosis in a small percentage of recipients.
On the other hand about one in one thousand humans die from thrombosis, so it may well be that these were just unlucky humans whose number came up coincidentally with their covid jab.

There is a little evidence however which indicates that at least some of the thrombosis deaths occured outside the range of 'normal' for thrombosis. Norway and Denmark two countries with well established public health systems and far more comprehensive than most other countries medical databases of their patients, were the first to blow the whistle. There were allegedly features of these post jab thromboses which took them outside the range of normal.

The deaths occurred in citizens at a younger age than is normal for thrombosis death and the blood clots occurred in lungs which had a lower than usual number of platelets in the blood, which is the opposite of what one would expect since platelets are an important part of clotting, how is that people with lower than usual platelets in their blood developed clots.
So in the last 18 hours more and more Euro states are suspending use of the AZ vaccine while this data is researched.
The Irish health mob are delaying by saying there is no evidence at all to show a link between vaccination and thrombosis, which is correct, but all that means is no one has demonstrated a physiological, biochemical process that explains how this could occur. Of course not - the vaccine is only 3 months into a massive rollout, the research required to find then prove such a link, if there is one, is likely years off.

On the other hand the entire yarn may be just another story put out by the puppets of competitors in an extremely lucrative immature market.
Every embassy in every nation on this old rock of ours, spends a large chunk of time and energy pushing products and services which the nation the particular embassy represents, will profit from.

That includes involvement by 'intelligence' services located in embassies.
It is probable that a great deal of the industrial espionage to uncover the trade secrets which countries such as england & amerika are forever trying to steal from others, friends & alleged enemies alike, are in fact undertaken by their national foreign intelligence agencies, MI6 and CIA.
We should be surprised if the CIA etc weren't attempting to blackmail and browbeat the puppet leaders of nations (Bolsonaro is most definitely a puppet) to buy products from their country.

I agree it is wrong and publicising it is essential, but as I said there should be no surprise. Aotearoa has recently (about two weeks ago), announced that the population will all be vaccinated with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. The jabs will be free or extremely low cost for most (certainly much less than the USD $60 Pfizer demands) and I had been wondering how Pharmac, the national agency which makes decisions on all drug purchases managed to beat Pfizer down. Pharmac has a reputation for favouring generics ahead of hi-cost originals.

Perhaps they didn't, although I reckon Pharmac being Pharmac they would have got a pretty good deal but maybe not as good as usual since Aotearoa governments, particularly ersatz left administrations have a habit of doing easy deals with five eyes partners as a way of avoiding agreeing to actions that will alienate voters, even worse lose trade or even sometimes tho rarely, because the inhumanity is too great.

eg Australia is in big trouble with China over PM Morrison's stupid claims about covid and Uyghur chinese, whereas Aotearoa is not. Despite pressure from USuk, Aotearoa hasn't jumped aboard the "let's all sledge China" ship. If that was achieved by kowtowing to amerikan bullies over less vital, less public and less divisive issues, good on them. That is a major from me who has little other than contempt for the neolib twats in control of Aotearoa.

Or it could be that it is like the AZ thrombosis thing could be, no connection at all.
Blind Freddie can see the last G7 was about creating a chimera of mass vaccination as a way to 'open up' and have the rich getting even richer, in that fantasy it is naive to expect that there won't be many slips twixt cup and lip. All we can do is try to discern fact from fantasy and protect as many other as possible by getting them to do the same.

norecovery , Mar 15 2021 23:42 utc | 88

K @ 84 – I agree 100%, and would add there are other ulterior motives besides profit and gaining public consent, namely attempting to exert political and economic control of competing/dissenting countries. The fact that some of the world's elite have organized such contemptuous mafia-like organizations that demonstrate total disregard for human life and dignity is enough to seriously question their motives in this case as well.

[Mar 15, 2021] U.S. And Its Five Eye Partners Use 'Persuasion', Sabotage And Disinformation To Gain Vaccine Supremacy

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

U.S. And Its Five Eye Partners Use 'Persuasion', Sabotage And Disinformation To Gain Vaccine Supremacy

The U.S. and some of its allies are engaged in efforts to malign the Russian Sputink V vaccine and to promote the more expensive mRNA vaccines produced by 'western' companies.

Back in November we warned that the vaccine competition would be ruthless :

The mRNA vaccines hyped in the U.S. media are simply too expensive to be used around the world. If we want to limit the global effects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic we will have to use the cheaper vector based vaccines.

That the AstraZeneka vaccine was immediately attacked in U.S. media by an unqualified writer quoting an investment bank and the U.S. pharma promoting (Remdesivir!) Antony Fauci is quite suspicious. Pfizer and Moderna expect to make billions of dollars with their vaccines. They will use all possible ways and means to defeat any potential competition.

Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, recently noted how unfair competition practices are used to keep some vaccines away from nations who urgently need it:

Producers are struggling for the global vaccine market worth $100 billion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

Some producers compete unfairly, sell a small batch of vaccines at a lower price on the condition to be an exclusive supplier, Putin said, speaking at a video meeting on measures to boost investment activity in Moscow.

"We see how competitors behave in the global vaccine market worth $100 billion. They come, sell a small batch of their vaccine at a discount, on the condition that everything else will be purchased only from this producer," he said.

To no one's astonishment the U.S. government is directly involved in manipulations of vaccine accessibility. As Brazil Wire found :

The US Department of Health and Human Services recently published its Annual Report for 2020.

"2020 was one of the most challenging years in the history of our country and in the history of the Department of Health and Human Services", former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar introduces the report.

"There is an end to the pandemic in sight", he continues, "with the delivery of safe and effective vaccines through Operation Warp Speed".

Tucked away on page 48, the report shockingly reveals how the US pressured Brazil to reject Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.

The HHS Annual Report is here . On page 5 it says:

Developing a strategy for supporting global vaccine access : HHS's Office of Global Affairs (OGA) led the development of an interagency strategy, coordinated through the National Security Council, to provide international access to COVID-19 vaccines once domestic needs are met .

"Once domestic needs are met" is certainly not an altruistic or even reasonably prioritizing strategy one should be proud of. A sensible effort to save lives and to end the pandemic would prioritize risk groups in every country of this planet before inoculating people at home who have little risk of serious Covid-19 complications.

On page 47 the HHS report notes that the U.S. is coordinating with its Five Eyes spy partners on vaccine 'messaging':

Combating vaccine hesitancy globally : OGA leads a group of the Five Eyes countries (U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States) on vaccine confidence, aligning our nations' efforts and sharing best practices to enhance vaccine confidence messaging globally.

One page on we learn what such communication entails:

Combatting [sic!] malign influences in the Americas : OGA used diplomatic relations in the Americas region to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia, who are working to increase their influence in the region to the detriment of US safety and security. OGA coordinated with other U.S. government agencies to strengthen diplomatic ties and offer technical and humanitarian assistance to dissuade countries in the region from accepting aid from these ill-intentioned states. Examples include using OGA's Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of Panama accepting an offer of Cuban doctors.

"To persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine" is, simply said, criminal behavior that has near genocidal consequences. Brazil is currently getting swamped with a more infectious variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its medical institutions are near a breakdown :

"It feels like we're putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound," said Eduarda Santa Rosa Barata, a 31-year-old infectologist who works in three ICUs in the north-eastern capital of Pernambuco state, all now stretched to the limit. "We're engaged in damage reduction You open new beds and they fill up immediately."

A few days earlier, Barata had admitted a 37-year-old man who had no underlying medical conditions but whose lungs were so badly damaged he needed intubation. "It seems so random," she said. "It's a bizarre disease. It's frightening."
...
"Before the end of 2020, you'd get a family and one member would be infected but not the other three or four members, even though they lived in the same environment. You don't see this any more. If there's one confirmed case, everyone ends up getting infected by the virus," he said. "It's obvious that this new variant is now circulating among us."

Panama, which under U.S. pressure rejected an offer from Cuba for medical support, has one of the highest death rates from Covid-19. That is one reason why its economy shrank by 18% .

The HHS report also speaks of Bolivia :

Opening Bolivia to health diplomacy : After decades of silence between the U.S. and Bolivia, OGA re-established health diplomatic relations with the Ministry of Health of Bolivia following national elections. Re-engaging allows the U.S. to strengthen ties in the region, which is important for influence in regional and multilateral fora , including the Pan American Health Organization.

What was "following national elections" in Bolivia was a fascist coup which produced repression and tyranny. The U.S. used its cooperation with the coup plotters to influence other organizations.

Meanwhile the U.S. is also falsely stating that Russia is spreading vaccine disinformation. Following a Wall Street Journal piece planted by U.S. officials these claimed , without evidence, that Russia was sowing fear about the mRNA vaccines:

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that four publications, all serving as fronts for Russian intelligence, have targeted Western-produced COVID-19 vaccines with misleading coverage that exaggerates the risk of side effects and raises questions about their efficacy.

The State Department confirmed that report on Monday, saying U.S. officials had identified four Russian online platforms that were spreading disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines.

However paragraph 21 of the original WSJ piece, coauthored by Iraq WMD propagandist Michael Gordon, acknowledged :

In each case, the Russian outlets were repeating actual news reports ,,,

The 'Russian outlets' repeated the news 'western' news agencies were distributing. It is nice though to see acknowledged that such is often disinformation.

There are some signs that the U.S. is coordinating with its spy partners to malign the very efficient Sputnik V vaccine . The British Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) recently put up a comment that warns of Russia's soft power gain through vaccine diplomacy especially in South America:

Sputnik V's rapid foray into new markets in Latin America may indeed have longer-term implications in an area that has traditionally been the US's backyard. Argentina gratefully received more than half a million doses in January. It served as an embassy of sorts for Sputnik V; reportedly, Argentinian delegations to Moscow in late 2020 translated reams of details into Spanish and shared these with Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile to speed up their ability to decide. Bolivia's first batch arrived at the end of January. By mid-February, Mexico received its first 200,000 doses. By mid-March, Brazil and Peru appeared close to sealing respective deals.

This is followed by musings about potential sabotage targets:

There are several factors that could make Sputnik V's current bounce shortlived. The inability to deliver supplies quickly is an immediate one. Russia has acknowledged its production squeeze, raising doubts about its ability to honour its vaccine pledges. It is dependent on plants in the likes of Brazil, India and South Korea upholding good manufacturing practice and delivering at speed and scale on Moscow's promise to provide hundreds of millions of quality vials quickly.

The piece closes with an ominous call to action:

The biomedical science of Sputnik V may well be genuinely welcome worldwide, once full data is available and has been appropriately interrogated. But the corresponding political ramifications of deeper and wider Russian influence globally may not be so beneficial. The UK and the US must not be blindsided to the full extent of Russian vaccine diplomacy already underway.

The U.S. efforts to prevent Russian vaccine distribution failed in Argentina where President Alberto Fernández has led an early and successful effort to introduce the Russian vaccine:

Amid plenty of public skepticism, Buenos Aires sent missions to Moscow in October and December 2020 to inspect data from the vaccine's phase 3 trial.

An Argentine presidential aide said the delegation had translated hundreds of pages of information about the vaccine into Spanish -- necessary for approval -- which it later shared with other governments in the region, including Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, and Chile.

This is how, a day before the phase 3 results were published, trucks of Sputnik V shots were already trundling through Bolivia's countryside. A photo of a delivery in a poultry truck draped in a Bolivian flag -- a creative (and health department- approved ) solution for cold storage requirements -- went viral. Argentina began vaccinating with Sputnik this past December, meanwhile, and Mexico announced the purchase of 24 million Sputnik doses on Jan. 25.

U.S. efforts to dissuade countries from acquiring Sputnik V have not be fully successful. That again requires to launch a propaganda campaign to malign Sputnik V wherever it is distributed:

Maxim A. Suchkov @m_suchkov - 15:35 UTC · Mar 13, 2021

1. #Putin: "Global market for #COVID19 vaccines is worth $100 billion. We see how competitors of our producers behave: they enter a country [that is in need for vaccines], sell a small batch of vaccines on a discounted price but condition the sale with that...

2. "...the country will only purchase that vaccine from that producer in the future. So, there's a real fight for the markets".

3. $100 billion is a big market. #Russia makes over $15 bln on arms sales (unofficial stats have it as high as $55 bln), about $25 bln for agricultural sales; around the same amount on gas sales (thou it depends on supplies), oil and oil products a little over than $100 bln.

4. So all of a sudden there's this huge market and there's heavy fight over it. @dimsmirnov175 cites an anonymous "source in the #Kremlin" who said that Russian intel services are aware that their foreign counterparts seek to launch a massive infowar against #Russia/n vaccines

5.The source reportedly said that soon there'll be many reports over #Russia/n vaccines inefficiency & that they even health dangerous. Allegedly, even "staged cases of massive losses of human life after using Sputnik V will be propagated via @USAID, @georgesoros @thomsonreuters

6. The target audience for this campaign will be European countries who registered #SputnikV for their emergency use – #Hungary, #Slovakia, #Montenegro, #SanMarino and N.#Macedonia.

7. On a parallel track,#US & allies, according to the "Kremlin source" 'd release "investigations" about "incompetence of #Russia/n specialists in vaccination & immunology to halt their certification by @WHO, other relevant agencies , lower demand for RU vaccines from other countries

8. "The #Kremlin source" adds #US "aggressively promotes @pfizer, eyes to make sure US free of not only from the payment of possible compensation to citizens in lawsuits in the event of side effects, but also from liability for negligence of the direct manufacturer"

9.#SputnikV now world's 2nd in terms of demand with 50+ countries having provided permit for its use. Struggle for markets in #Europe,#LatinAmerica,#Africa #Asia will get even bigger when we'll [most likely] learn that vaccination is not a one time deal but a seasonal routine /END

PS.This chart is telling in the kinda tricks one may pull: #Russia's #SputnikV completed all the stages, but designers of the chart (1) put it at the bottom (2) don't use its product name (3) mark it with (*) caveating its effectiveness as if ABC "independently fact-checked" others


Source: ABCnews - bigger

Graphics like the above are only one example of media manipulations in support of 'western' vaccine 'diplomacy'. This is more than just arrogance:

The West's reaction was not exactly objective in August 2020 when Russia presented the world's first corona vaccine. Words like "vaccine muck from Moscow", "nasty vaccine propaganda", and accusations of "clumsy manipulations" of a "high-risk experiment on humans". Distrust, malice and suspicion were easier to find. One newspaper quipped that Sputnik V was effective not only against the virus, but also against "homosexuality as well as epilspsy and hives."

The Five Eyes, their intelligence agencies and friends are pulling all possible strings to win the markets for their vaccines. The continuous delaying of the official EU authorization for Sputnik V is obviously a part of this sabotage scheme .

That these efforts will keep people away from other good and available vaccines and that this will inevitably cost a number of them their lives, is seen as a reasonable price for gaining vaccine supremacy.

Posted by b on March 15, 2021 at 12:16 UTC | Permalink


Paco , Mar 15 2021 12:32 utc | 1

Nice compilation B on what basically is another big sign of western decadence and immorality. As you very well state what is needed is a global vaccination of groups at risk to avoid mutations and new variants of the virus, and not vaccination within borders while others wait.
One more jewel in the arrogant statements denigrating SputnikV, the clown -literally- Zelensky stating that Ukraine won't approve SputnikV because Ukrainians are not "rabbits" to be subjected to experiments. He should know, he has pulled more than one rabbit from his top hat.
Carl , Mar 15 2021 13:02 utc | 2
Reminds me of the government's efforts against Rearden metal in the novel Atlas Shrugged. One must appreciate the irony that the US, the epicenter of Randian ideology, is trying this.
Mauro , Mar 15 2021 13:49 utc | 7

They are shameless, ast it is declared even in their U.S. Department of Health & Human Services annual report, look at page 49 !

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2020-annual-report.pdf

"Strengthening Health Cooperation and U.S. Humanitarian Leadership
Combatting malign influences in the Americas: OGA used diplomatic relations in the Americas region to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia, who are working to increase their influence in the region to the detriment of US safety and security.

Examples include using OGA's Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of Panama accepting an offer of Cuban doctors."

Jackrabbit , Mar 15 2021 14:45 utc | 10

The Russia-USA vaccine battle obscures another, possibly more important one: mRNA vaccines vs. all the rest.

Moderna got much of its early funding from the US Military. The Military is interested in mRNSA as a bio-weapons defense - the tech allows quick formulations to protect soldiers. But the ability to better defend against bio-weapons also makes USA use of bio-weapons more likely. Just the side that has an effective defense against ballistic missiles is more likely to use them.

Given such knowledge, one can question the many problems of the OxfordAstroZeneca (OAZ) vaccine (latest: Norway is looking into the possibility that the OAZ vaccine causes blood clots) and the late entry of the J&J vaccine (a full three months behind Sputnik V and Sinopharm).

But wait, there's more: By not fighting SARS-COV-2 effectively (like some countries did), mutations were virtually certain to happen. That makes the mRNA technology incredibly valuable for ability to quickly adjust to new strains. And who knows what other viruses will unexpectedly /sarc pop up in the near future?

Will American sheeple ever be allowed to question the Trump Administration many failures in fighting the pandemic - starting with Trump's bogus air travel ban and his lying about the severity of the virus? Not likely. New York State Governor Cuomo is now being hounded out of office with flimsy sex allegations to (IMO) prevent a review of the policy of sending people home to "self-isolate". "Self-isolate" and the "bend the curve" goal (instead of defeat the virus) virtually guaranteed that the pandemic would continue to spread.

!!

migueljose , Mar 15 2021 15:03 utc | 13

librul@3
My wife and I received the J & J jab last week, I'll keep you all updated on us. We're 70, she has #2 diabetes but healthy and not overweight. I'm healthy, skinny. We live rural, raise and forage mushrooms, herbs, forbes, 90% of our meat is deer we harvest and process but we're almost vegetarian. So, no extra health issues beyond her #2d. She had a little bit of a sore arm for 24 hours. Neither of us had other symptoms after the jab. covid is happening here, friends, neighbors, relatives have had it, hospitals are struggling to keep up.

snake , Mar 15 2021 15:03 utc | 14

what this summary of the vaccine shows me is that the nation states are marketing agents and mafia like defenders of the makers of the products of those private parties who have control over the nation states (government).
What a marketing tool, the rule of law and the use of nation state force to market privately produced products.

clearly the nation state system and its agencies have by their actions proven themselves to be a problem in need of fixing for the 8 billion people who occupy the planet.

jared , Mar 15 2021 15:18 utc | 15

Early on, there was reporting that the novel (as in recently created) corona virus was mutating rapidly - approximately every 4th transmission was claimed.
I believe it was noted that this behavior was typical for virus, novel on in particular.
The term mutate is both appropriate and used to frighten.
It seems this is a largely political beast.

psychohistorian , Mar 15 2021 15:19 utc | 16

When you live in a social system that has global private finance at its core, what do you expect?

The West is proud of its barbarism and flaunts its lie/cheat/steal mentality. We are standing by hopeful as that meme drives itself into the ground taking many with it. We just hope it isn't all of us in a pique of self loathing when the bottom is near.

What a shit show to live in the middle of. It is almost like folk think its weird to do things for the right reasons instead of profit....and they call themselves Christians as they blindly follow their devilish leadership.

jared , Mar 15 2021 15:33 utc | 17

Hypothetically, genetic research gives us the means of widespread, genetically targeted, destruction and new tools for pharmaceutical development. Dangerous situation in a neo-liberal world order.

Sam F , Mar 15 2021 15:52 utc | 19

Of course Russia has no need to spread fear about US mRNA vaccines, because these are the most expensive and difficult to distribute, and the US has conspired to prevent any humanitarian distribution, an historic disgrace. Many will long remember that Russia offered vaccines at cost while the US maximized profits, and Bill Gates obliged Astrazeneca to seek profit rather than humanitarian distribution.

Christian J. Chuba , Mar 15 2021 15:56 utc | 20

Russia vs the U.S. deaths per million

But Russian vaccine production has underperformed. I cannot even find a number for it but if I look at deaths per million, 6 day rolling average, Russia is not in a sustained downtrend yet. When a country reaches heard immunity, this will go into a sustained downtrend. Russia has not even been able to vaccinate their own population...

carl s. , Mar 15 2021 16:50 utc | 25

librul @3
migueljose @13

Can someone please explain the following ?

"Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is the third coronavirus vaccine to receive FDA approval, but the first vaccine requiring just one shot for vaccination. The drug showed a 67 percent effectiveness against moderate to severe COVID-19 infections and about an 85 percent effectiveness against the most serious illnesses . While two other FDA-approved vaccines have efficacy rates in the 90s, Johnson & Johnson's drug was shown to prevent 100 percent of hospitalizations in a clinical study of around 44,000 participants in the United States. "

If the jab has a 67% efficacy against moderate to severe infections, how can it have an 85 percent effectiveness against the most severe infections? How can it prevent 100% of haspitalizations in 44,000 subjects? Unless perhaps the figure of 67% represents people who took the shot after contracting the disease? But that doesn't make sense either.

Statistical illiteracy on the part of the writer? How much of all that is true?

carl s.

Digital Spartacus , Mar 15 2021 16:42 utc | 23

@ Christian J. Chuba 20

Funding

Jackrabbit , Mar 15 2021 17:45 utc | 29

james @Mar15 16:56 #26

... so what vaccine are you going to be getting?

I don't know yet. My preference is non-mRNA but I'll wait as long as I can.

mRNA vaccines may be the only game in town if the virus keeps mutating quickly and/or new viruses are introduced.

What I object to is the near complete lack of cynicism. Many moa readers will recall the phrase: "Question Authority" from the 1960's. We need that same spirit today. The 'woke' generation isn't quite 'there' yet.

!!

m , Mar 15 2021 17:49 utc | 30
@25 carl s.
It's 67% efficient.

That's the number according to international standards and rhe number which allows comparison to other vaccines. All the other quoted numbers are just there in order to obfuscate the fact that it is significantly less efficient than the mRNA vaccines.

Jackrabbit , Mar 15 2021 17:51 utc | 31
Follow-up to @Mar15 17:45 #29

The 'woke' are currently focused on race and sex with some concern for inequality and a living wage. 'Anti-war' isn't yet on the radar screen for most of them, though it should be.

!!

[Mar 15, 2021] The vaccine situation they are analyzing is very much like the GMO experimentation

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Mar 15 2021 15:02 utc | 12

Follow up to my comment @Mar15 14:45 #10

Gilad Atzmon has written about Israel's 100% vaccination program and questioned if it may lead to new, more virulent, forms of the virus

To anyone paying attention, this warning is a fore-shadowing.

!!


juliania , Mar 15 2021 20:58 utc | 64

jackrabbit @ 12, thanks SO much for that excellent video link! As the two participants were discussing, I had the thought that the vaccine situation they are analyzing is very much like the GMO experimentation we have all been subjected to around the world when those seeds were presented to us, and the virus being a part of our life system, is like the weeds which were enabled by the practise of using GMO seeds and then spraying the crops with virulent herbicides those seeds were now inoculated to resist --- it all meant that the situation in farmer's fields, while the crops themselves survive (much as do inoculated with the vaccine persons) the situation at large gets worse!

It is an excellent conversation also on the side issue of whether science benefits from shutting down dissent. We should all think about that!!

Mina , Mar 15 2021 21:04 utc | 65
On BioNTech; designing the vaccine on a table corner in a few hours
https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-biontech-vaccine-designed-in-hours-one-weekend-2020-12?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Hard not to raise an eyebrow.
Mina , Mar 15 2021 21:07 utc | 66
Soon we'll all be making vaccines in our kitchen
https://www.dw.com/en/german-coronavirus-vaccine-inventor-being-investigated/a-56828943

[Mar 15, 2021] The difference between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Mar 15 2021 21:10 utc | 67

Tannenhouser @ 57:

Vaccines in the strict sense of the term use weakened or inactive forms of the virus they target to stimulate the immune response. MRNA vaccines don't: they insert a protein resembling a protein on the coronavirus's outer coat into the RNA of your cells so your body makes these proteins itself to prime the immune response. That's my understanding and I stand to be corrected by others.


oldhippie , Mar 15 2021 21:38 utc | 70

john @ 68

That first link in your post is to Geert van den Bossche and is an excellent interview. Worth the time. Somewhat annoying music at start, in all ways the best take I have encountered on how mRNA works. Much more accessible than some of what that author has been putting in print.

suzan , Mar 15 2021 21:33 utc | 69

@ Jackrabbit

The Adenovirus vector vaccines are DNA vaccines. The primary difference between them (Sputnik V, Astrozenica, J & J and some more) is the type of Adenovirus vector used, for example human or chimp, how they are cultured, and the specifics of production and processing.

All of them use a segment of DNA that codes for a Covid-2 Spike protein which is genetically inserted into the adenovirus delivery system.

The mRNA vaccines use nanolipids to stabilize the mRNA segments and similarly code for Covid-2 spike protein.

The adenovirus DNA vaccines enter the cell nucleus where they begin the process transcribing DNA code to mRNA, the desired antigen trigger of the immune process. The mRNA to protein production factories are the ribosomes, housed in the (non nuclear) cytoplasm.

These DNA and mRNA vaccines all differ from traditional first-order vaccines which culture the virus being targeted, kill it so it can not reproduce, and injected it into the patient, a process called innoculation (dead virus jab which stimulates wide variety of anitbodies), vs vaccination (nucleic acid code traveling on a vector or in nano lipid packet which stimulates production of a specific antigen "spike" protein in this instance.

One problem I haven't heard any assessment about is what happens in the cell when degraded forms of genetic code, either mRNA or DNA, resulting from perhaps shoddy manufacture or sloppy handling? Would there still be biological activity? Producing what proteins?

Quality control across the process and delivery system is probably of extreme importance in ensuring vaccine safety.

oldhippie , Mar 15 2021 21:53 utc | 73

Suzan @ 69

That is an excellent question. Also there is no certainty what is happening when all apparently goes to plan. Extensive tissue sampling and analysis needs doing. Best way to do all of that is on autopsy. Autopsies are not being done. It is as if no one wants to know.

[Mar 15, 2021] Moderna we know is funded by DARPA, In-Q-Tel, Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein. In existence for thirty or forty years, depending which story you desire to believe. Never had a saleable product until now. Trust us.

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

oldhippie , Mar 15 2021 20:56 utc | 63

Tannenhouser @ 57

Main difference is mRNA is absolutely new. There has never before been an mRNA product turned loose on the general population. Moderna had a rabies investigational product that did get as far as human testing, it was shut down early. Moderna we know is funded by DARPA, In-Q-Tel, Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein. In existence for thirty or forty years, depending which story you desire to believe. Never had a saleable product until now. Trust us.

The Pfizer mRNA product is entirely acquired from BioNTech. Try to find out anything about them. Next try to find out anything about them that passes the laugh test.

If you want to know something about how mRNA gene therapy is alleged to work would suggest reading or watching what Geert van den Bossche has been saying since he started to talk. He is a vaccine developer. A man who has spent his career in the lab creating vaccines. He believes in vaccines. Formerly worked with GAVI and Gates Foundation. Not an anti-Vaxxer.

[Mar 15, 2021] It's Profit over People yet again, and such shouldn't be any surprise.

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Mar 15 2021 18:07 utc | 35

It's Profit over People yet again, and such shouldn't be any surprise. The geopolitical aspects show an extremely desperate Outlaw US Empire that has lost all its soft power through its inhumane behavior. That it thinks it can recoup some of what it lost by continuing to act inhumanely proves the absolute sordid quality of the minds at work. And then there's the lies and deceit, and to think that the people managing this campaign are allowed to raise children!

Having discovered that Mexico has Sputnik V, I'll be going South as soon as I get my renewed passport.


Erelis , Mar 15 2021 19:42 utc | 53

So the end result is a world with uneven levels of vaccination. Seems like this will simply keep covid around for a very long time for the sake of anti-Russia geopolitics and big Western pharma profits. The world will end up becoming a medical dystopia for years to come.

vetinLA , Mar 15 2021 19:47 utc | 54

Erelis @ 53; "So the end result is a world with uneven levels of vaccination. Seems like this will simply keep covid around for a very long time for the sake of anti-Russia geopolitics and big Western pharma profits. The world will end up becoming a medical dystopia for years to come."

Yep, afraid you're right.....But then hey, profits uber alles....

james , Mar 15 2021 19:53 utc | 55

@ 29 jackrabbit... thanks... i see this much the same way as you....

@ 37 b... thanks for this additional article.. i quote from it below..

"There are lots of players in the vaccine version of the great game. Both China and Russia are aggressively practicing vaccine diplomacy. As is the EU. The primary goal of U.S. vaccine diplomacy seems to be to ensure the profits of Big Pharma, rather than on maximizing the number of people vaccinated, in the shortest possible time. Could these priorities shift? Perhaps. Time will tell. India has stepped forward to represent the perspective of developing countries, drawing on its role as a major vaccine manufacturer – and perhaps sometime soon – developer."

[Mar 15, 2021] Indian Vaccine Manufacturers: U.S. Use of Wartime Export Controls Threatens World Vaccine Production

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

b , Mar 15 2021 18:20 utc | 37

Indian Vaccine Manufacturers: U.S. Use of Wartime Export Controls Threatens World Vaccine Production


Peter Williams , Mar 15 2021 18:31 utc | 38

The NY Times has a surprisingly nearly unbiased article on all available vaccines and their testing stages etc. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html?

Sputnik V is being distributed in Russia. My daughter and her boyfriend, as nursing students were required to be vaccinated, or show antibodies from a recovered case of COVID-19. My daughter has had COVID-19 and fully recovered, and her boyfriend had his first vaccination. Unlike most western countries, there is no panic, and lockdowns are on an as needed basis.

Russia reacted very quickly to the virus and closed its borders early.

karlof1 , Mar 15 2021 18:43 utc | 41

Blue Dotterel @40--

As S commented here several weeks ago, Russian travel agencies and Aeroflot were arranging special vaccine charters I might also take advantage of, and Mexico has a long history of welcoming medical patients from El Norte seeking treatments unavailable here.

[Mar 15, 2021] If you go to the US CDC website you will see that all current vaccines for Covid are only under "emergency" approval. It is also clearly stated that they will not work in all cases and that the Pharma Industry is not liable when they cause harm.

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

K , Mar 15 2021 23:14 utc | 84

If you go to the US CDC website you will see that all current vaccines for Covid are only under "emergency" approval.
It is also clearly stated that they will not work in all cases and that the Pharma Industry is not liable when they cause harm.

I don't want a jab that is messing with my DNA in the first palce but I absoliutely don't want one that is not yet fully tested.

In addition what does "fully tested" even mean in a corrupt system where you can hardly find a single truth on any topic in 24 hours of news broadcasting?

How is it that people are ultra critical of political corruption yet as happy as lambs to trust BIg Pharma in spite of endless lies, corruption and human damage in the last 100 years. Why isn't it obvious that Big Pharma is part of the problem. You can't be part of the problem and the solution at the same time.

There is a place for vaccines but for vaccines to fit into the category of preventative medicine, like good food, exercise, vitamins etc or modalities like acupuncture or herbalism etc , they also need to prove they are as harmless as good food, intelligent exercise or vitamins. In my opinion they should be part of any national health system, subject to the most rigorous and independent testing, and they should be free.

Preventative medicine should have an almost zero chance of killing or maiming anyone. Otherwise it's just the product of the same philosophy of "collateral damage" than Empires use to control the human world.

I question vaccine logic when it denies the human capacity to evolve to protect itself and I especially question Vaccines for profit. I'm not an anti vaxxer, but I am also not going to happily inject a cocktail of chemicals and animal/human DNA proteins directly into my bloodstream. I am well aware that vaccines have used dead or active animal proteins for a very long time, part of the reason why i try to avoid them at all costs.

Where is the research that proves that injecting foreign DNA into our blood is safe long term for the overall health of human beings , not just for immunity to one disease? Obviously the current vaccines are not killing people in great numbers, but they
are killing some. And anyway, not killing a patient isn't the criteria for "safe"! What other effects will be long term?

Saying that we just don't know is naive. Obviously bio tech labs have been experimenting for decades on the effect of genetic mutation on animals and humans. Just as they knew the long terms outcomes of GMO crops but kept is secret, they will also be well aware of the long terms effects of GMO vaccines and also keeping it very secret.

There doesn't need to be a micro chip in a vaccine to make it a bio weapon.

Will the gene activating vaccines become a biological weapon just as GMO seeds have?

I've watched presentations explaining the science of the current vaccines, and I do not feel at all re-assured that the genetic response will behave as predicted in every case, or even in any case. Gaining immunity from Covid is pointless if it renders people more succeptable to potentially worse health conditions down the track.

I have no expertise in this field, I'm just a concerned human being trying to make sense of very complicated science that also happens to have no legal liability. What could possibly go wrong? Einstein would be sympathetic given what happened with his science.

We should be questioning the argument for vaccines over antibody testing and preventative medicine at the very least. But that is not even a mainstream conversation at this point.

Somebody mentioned in the comments that in Russia you can get antibody testing and not need the vaccine. This sounds more like a balanced approach to me. That isn't an option in most places that I am aware of.

Manufacturing of consent for genetic intervention in humans is now happening very successfully all over the world due to covid. The created hysteria that vaccines are the only way to save the planet is so reminiscent of WMD's in Iraq and GMO seeds in the developing countries . Anyone notice that millions of Indian farmers are now rejecting the Bio-Tech because GMO seeds and their accompanying poisons are destroying lives and the planet?

These are not separate issues.

Suddenly there is a $100 Billion covid Vaccine market. And strangely Pharma seems to be the only class that is a-political and borderless. Even making profits in our favourite anti western countries. What a coup! And how is this possible?

I never really understood the intense media campaign against anti-vaxxers until now. I mean why would a relatively few traumatised parents really be a bother to Big Pharma? The answer is that they aren't.

Creating a public enemy and gaining consent was the goal and boy has it worked a treat!

Just in time for the biggest Vaccine $$$$ jackpot of all time.
It couldn't have worked out better if they had planned it.

ted01 , Mar 15 2021 23:28 utc | 85

john | Mar 15 2021 21:31 utc | 68

Thanks for that link to the Geert Vanden Bossche interview.

It is worth repeating - Mass Vaccination in a Pandemic - Benefits versus Risks

I would hope that every MOA reader would take the time to watch it.


[Mar 15, 2021] I'm not an epidemiologist nor medically trained on trial procedures and norms but i have the following questions

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

A.L. , Mar 15 2021 20:43 utc | 60

A long one, sorry about this...

I'm not an epidemiologist nor medically trained on trial procedures and norms but i have the following questions:

1. Efficacy figures:
Is it determined by looking for antibodies in the test subjects? If so how much is good enough and who sets the bar? If not...

2. Viral exposure post inoculation:
I don't believe they lock the test subjects up in a room pumped full of covid19 goodness to get the absolute efficacy figures so whatever efficacy would be highly dependant on the test cohort and their environmental exposure.

e.g. A cohort that are made up of front line workers in a hotpot/basket case like Brazil will necessarily be more prone to be exposed to the virus than say a cohort that fairly represents the population. Conversely a vaccine tested on a less exposed cohort will also more likely to get a better efficacy figure.

So is this why we're seeing lower and sometimes inconsistent figures on particular vaccines. The sinovac coronavac comes to mind. Figures in Brazil was wildly different to others in turkey and Indonesia.

... Actually i smell political meddling with the Brazil trial, similar to what b pointed out in his piece, but i digress.

3. Endpoint
Isn't the whole idea of the vaccine to avoid deaths and suffering? If so even the 'lowly' coronavac with its low efficacy was able to prevent 100% of severe cases that requires hospitalization. Of the 30 or 40% that it 'wasn't' effective for, it was just mild symptoms and did not require any intervention. Pretty good for a Chinese /3rd World vaccine that doesn't even need -70c logistics.

What I'm saying is there's a lot of cherry picking, manipulations, stacked decks and absolute bullshit because of vaccine politics. Sadly the sheeple are buying it all.

For me, because of my need to travel to both the 'free world' and the totalitarian regime that is China, i will probably need to get jabbed by 2 vaccines due to the vaccine politics that is taking shape right in front of your eyes. It pains me to think that in doing so I'll make another 2 doses unavailable to someone else.

What can you do: i do believe all the vaccines are effective and if you're otherwise healthy you should go and take the jab, whichever one (may be pass on the AZ for now). Your govt have already blown your money on it, and they don't have a long use-by date.

The world is acutely supply-limited and your support to vaccinate will ironically slow down the empire in trying to corner the vaccine market politically. Why? Because they will not be able to spin up production as quickly as RUS+CHN+other countries who are working with RUS+CHN to spin up their own production.

At the end MRNA is a mil tech and i can't see the 'free world' giving that up to anyone else until its common knowledge. So the longer it is supplied-limited, the better for the uptake of the other vaccines to put a nip on the brewing vaccine-racism where you can only travel to certain places depending on which jab you took.

Thanks for reading.

[Mar 15, 2021] I am absolutely appalled by the blinkered focus on vaccines to the detriment of therapeutic treatment.

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Kapusta , Mar 15 2021 22:07 utc | 76

I am absolutely appalled by the blinkered focus on vaccines to the detriment of therapeutic treatment. Of course, no one should be surprised by this, considering, as Putin puts it, there is now a sudden and lucrative $100 billion c19 vaccine market (what incentive!). So the entire medical world (minus a few) discovered that c19 was amenable to vaccine production and completely buried efforts to discover/develop successful treatments.

Ask anybody (in the global north) that has had c19 what they were told to do. Just about all of them will probably say that they were told to go home and self-care/quarantine until they have symptoms that are bad enough for them to be hospitalized. Doctors don't want to treat c19 because they've been told by government guidance that there is no treatment (a complete lie!). Meanwhile, those few brave doctors have actually tried to treat patients before they get worse and there have been a few discoveries (IVM is the best example) of various treatments that are highly effective.

So now we find even the least vulnerable, such as 20/30 year olds, all clamoring to get a vaccine, any supposed vaccine, when all they really need is some vit D and to take varied prophylaxis proven to work and they'd be perfectly fine. A responsible gov response would be to vaccinate the most vulnerable and treat the least vulnerable. Instead, we have mass hysteria to vaccine all human beings alive and still force 3 year olds to mask and take two tests a week, all for the sake of protecting pharma profits. Absurd.

[Mar 15, 2021] Gosh, there's so much enthusiasm for inoculation around here one almost forgets that there are many of us, even inside the industry, who don't want ANY of these injections.

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

john , Mar 15 2021 21:31 utc | 68

Gosh, there's so much enthusiasm for inoculation around here one almost forgets that there are many of us, even inside the industry, who don't want ANY of these injections.

And as a kind of aside, the extreme harvesting of their blue blood is apparently wreaking havoc on the horseshoe crab community , an extremely important link in the old ecological chain.

suzan , Mar 15 2021 21:33 utc | 69

@ Jackrabbit

The Adenovirus vector vaccines are DNA vaccines. The primary difference between them (Sputnik V, Astrozenica, J & J and some more) is the type of Adenovirus vector used, for example human or chimp, how they are cultured, and the specifics of production and processing.

All of them use a segment of DNA that codes for a Covid-2 Spike protein which is genetically inserted into the adenovirus delivery system.

The mRNA vaccines use nanolipids to stabilize the mRNA segments and similarly code for Covid-2 spike protein.

The adenovirus DNA vaccines enter the cell nucleus where they begin the process transcribing DNA code to mRNA, the desired antigen trigger of the immune process. The mRNA to protein production factories are the ribosomes, housed in the (non nuclear) cytoplasm.

These DNA and mRNA vaccines all differ from traditional first-order vaccines which culture the virus being targeted, kill it so it can not reproduce, and injected it into the patient, a process called innoculation (dead virus jab which stimulates wide variety of anitbodies), vs vaccination (nucleic acid code traveling on a vector or in nano lipid packet which stimulates production of a specific antigen "spike" protein in this instance.

One problem I haven't heard any assessment about is what happens in the cell when degraded forms of genetic code, either mRNA or DNA, resulting from perhaps shoddy manufacture or sloppy handling? Would there still be biological activity? Producing what proteins?

Quality control across the process and delivery system is probably of extreme importance in ensuring vaccine safety.

[Mar 15, 2021] Can mass mRNA vaccinations to speed coronavirus mutations

Mar 15, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

juliania , Mar 15 2021 21:44 utc | 71

I would hope others will look at the video @ 12 - lots of meat in that for a discussion and very important information from the Israeli vaccinations for the covid virus! I look forward to further consideration of the thesis. The important part is that the findings don't disagree with the efficacy of the vaccine, they simply point to a change in the virus itself being somehow linked to the vaccinations. I would like to know if this is also the case when vaccinations of the more traditional type are being used, or whether this is only true of certain ones.

And again, if this is a false correlation, I would like to know that as well. I've sent the video to my daughter who is a hospital worker.

juliania , Mar 15 2021 22:36 utc | 81

mina @ 52, thanks for your link. The headline to the article reads: "SARS-CoV-2 evolution during treatment of chronic infection." I was only able to read a line at a time, due to the set up on my computer, but it looks as though it is a more clinical study of patients being treated with remisidivir (sp? sorry) on the virus as they were being treated, and that those mutations were occurring rapidly during course of treatment. One wonders, then, is that a corroboration of the study linked @ 12 but not specifically related to any vaccine per se, and does it mean that the mutations are occurring within the hospitalization process in general (and possibly also out in the environment) as well as in conjunction with vaccine jabs, so that while some get treated, others are more likely to suffer from those mutations? Or as seems to be the claim at the video, are the virulent mutations occurring in conjunction with the vaccinations only?

The video supposes that more vaccinations may be necessary as the virus mutates and other dangerous ones come on scene. The question being can the human body suffer these annually or more often as well as, say,they have had less potent 'flu vaccinations every year? (That's assuming the 'flu jabs are harmless, but I won't go there.)

I'm not a clinical expert, but it seemed the mutations were occurring in Mina's link in a petri dish, not just out in the general atmosphere, and that those mutations seem to be less virulent, not more. Whereas in the video @ 12, the deaths had doubled in conjunction with the vaccinations.

I'm not anti vax per se. But this is a different situation from other cases. It really does need to be studied without the economic factor entering in, so that the best solution can be taken, or the world is going to be very badly off just following what powerful nations tell them to do.

[Mar 14, 2021] Study carefully the graphs of deaths in retirement homes in Ireland

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

LA_Goldbug 5 hours ago

Study carefully the graphs of deaths in retirement homes in Ireland !!!

https://twitter.com/Thorgwen/status/1370662165800230913

plus this

PHE found a 48% increase in infection risk among over 80s in the week after the first jab. The FDA found 40%. Now a study from Denmark finds 40%. Will the Government publish the data to set our minds at ease?

https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1370763011426770946

Vinividivinci 12 hours ago

Must watch...real science.

https://www.brighteon.com/257797f0-06fa-4596-be69-af71bb3adc21 -- [NOTE: interesting video; not junk]

[Mar 14, 2021] Several nations halt distribution of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

In the last 24 hours, a number of national governments including Denmark, Norway, Thailand, and Iceland, announced that they will temporarily halt the use of the COVID-19 vaccine that was developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

The Danish Health Ministry stated that the suspension was a precautionary measure following dozens of reports of blood-clotting by patients who had been vaccinated. There has been at least one fatality.

As I've written many times before, I'm not anti-vaccine. But I am pro-data and pro-reason.

And it seems sensible to pause and assess the data when a brand new and comparatively untested vaccine may be linked to serious side effects.

The problem, of course, is that this story doesn't conform to the narrative that the media wants you to believe. So they're either NOT reporting on it, or they're running counter-stories to reinforce their agenda.

Newsweek already came to the rescue with an article stating unequivocally that there is "no evidence to show COVID vaccines have caused deaths or serious illnesses. . ." including blood clots.

Another article entitled "What to Know About Serious Covid Vaccine Reactions" dismissed any potential reaction, including death, by declaring "no connection to vaccines has been established."

The Associated Press wrote, "The vast majority of people being vaccinated at the moment are elderly or have got underlying diseases", and that "it would be difficult to determine whether a vaccine shot is responsible" for blood clots.

(Nevermind that you could apply that same argument to COVID deaths, i.e. the vast majority of COVID deaths are elderly or people with underlying diseases, so we should simply ignore that data when making policy decisions )

Certainly most vaccinations worldwide have shown, at least in the short term, few side effects. And it's obviously possible that the blood clot issues may not be related to the vaccine.

But it's extraordinary that the media is willing to deliberately ignore any signs or data that might undermine what they want you to believe.

[Mar 14, 2021] Professor of Government Ethics helped cover up COVID nursing home deaths - ZeroHedge

Mar 14, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com


2 play_arrow

Greed is King 14 hours ago

First, a couple of quotes from this article, with my comments following each. And then an article that ties the two together, and MUST BE READ.

"Professor of Government Ethics Played Key Role in Nursing Home Death Coverup

Last spring, the New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered nursing homes to admit patients who had recently been treated for Covid-19. This led to a spike in Covid deaths inside nursing homes, which are filled with elderly people in the highest risk category for serious Covid-19 cases."

The exact same thing happened in the UK, elderly and in some cases DYING elderly patients were sent back to their care home from the hospitals they were being treated in, AGAINST the wishes of the care homes and medical ethics, even though it was known they were infected with the virus, the care homes were ORDERED to take them back. So, guesss what happened ?, that`s right, THOUSANDS OF DEATHS , of both the sent back and those in the care home that then became infected. THAT WAS ALL OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED.

Several nations halt distribution of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine

"The problem, of course, is that this story doesn't conform to the narrative that the media wants you to believe. So they're either NOT reporting on it, or they're running counter-stories to reinforce their agenda. Newsweek already came to the rescue with an article stating unequivocally that there is "no evidence to show COVID vaccines have caused deaths or serious illnesses. . ." including blood clots. Another article entitled "What to Know About Serious Covid Vaccine Reactions" dismissed any potential reaction, including death, by declaring "no connection to vaccines has been established."

When investigating a series of crimes, the police look for any possible connections, the common denominator that ties the crimes together and thereby highlights possible suspects.

So what`s the common denominator in ALL of these blood clot deaths ?, they ALL HAD HAD THE VACCINE !!!!. Now if that`s not a smoking gun, a starting point of investigation, WTF IS ????.

The articles bullet points.

Amazing isn`t it that Gates and his Welcome Trust keep on coming up in connection with the virus, coincidence ?. Probably not. It`s also very deeply concerning and ALARMING to find the BRITISH GOVERNMENT itself implicated !!!, VERY CONCERNING AND ALARMIN INDEED !!!.

Link to article.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/03/13/oxford-astrazeneca-eugenics-links.aspx ?

[Mar 14, 2021] SINCE NO QUANTIFIED VIRUS ISOLATES OF THE 2019-nCoV were available for CDC use at the time the test was developed and this study conducted, assays designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full length RNA..

Mar 14, 2021 | www.brighteon.com


,

Steven Keitha day ago ,

As reported by FDA/CDC:
FDA - U.S. Food and Drug Administration
CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
"SINCE NO QUANTIFIED VIRUS ISOLATES OF THE 2019-nCoV were available for CDC use at the time the test was developed and this study conducted, assays designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full length RNA..."
Scroll to page 42 link:
https://www.fda.gov/media/1...

Kary Mullis: PCR Test Inventor Calls Dr Fauci a Fraud (polymerase chain reaction, or reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction)
https://odysee.com/@Quantum...

CDC "Gold Standard" (PCR) Polymerase Chain Reaction test. False Positive Problem:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/fu...

Disturbing Vaccine Facts - (The WHO etc. "Experts & Leaders" of infectious disease proving from their own mouths Vaccines are not safe)
https://www.bitchute.com/vi...

[Mar 12, 2021] Norway Investigates Whether AstraZeneca Vaccine Caused Deadly Blood Clots - ZeroHedge

Mar 12, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Norway Investigates Whether AstraZeneca Vaccine Caused Deadly Blood Clots BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, MAR 12, 2021 - 10:34

Update (1124ET): As the first AstraZeneca shots arrive in South America via the WHO's Covax program, the international public-health agency has promised to investigate reports that the vaccine may be linked to dangerous blood clots.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1370409477749551104&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fcovid-19%2Fnorway-investigates-whether-astrazeneca-vaccine-caused-deadly-blood-clots&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=e1ffbdb%3A1614796141937&width=550px

* * *

Yesterday, Europe's already struggling COVID vaccine rollout took another hit when more than half a dozen nations stopped doling out COVID vaccines created by AstraZeneca following reports that some patients who received the vaccine developed life-threatening lung clots, with at least one person having subsequently died as a result.

While health authorities in Denmark, one of the first countries to halt the AstraZeneca-Oxford jab, said it was impossible to tell if there was any connection, the spate of suspicious cases is apparently enough to prompt health authorities to take a closer look. On Friday morning, Thailand became the first non-European country to halt the AstraZeneca vaccine, while several other nations, including Canada, Australia, the Philippines and South Korea, have all said they would move forward.

Bulgaria became the latest European nation to suspend the vaccine on Friday. According to Reuters , the Bulgarian government wants the EMA to send over a written statement outlining its argument about why it should allow vaccinations to go forward.

[Mar 12, 2021] Covid 19 live updates- WHO says no link between blood clots and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as more nations suspend its use -

Mar 12, 2021 | www.washingtonpost.com

The World Health Organization on Friday said there is no reason to stop using the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, as a growing number of countries in Europe and elsewhere have moved to halt its use over blood clot concerns.

Italy, Romania and Thailand joined at least eight European nations this week in suspending the injections either from specific batches or as part of a total freeze, citing the potential adverse events despite a lack of formal evidence that the shot is unsafe.

A WHO spokeswoman, Margaret Harris, said at a briefing that an advisory committee was investigating reports of individuals falling ill or dying after developing blood clots in the post-vaccination period, but that no causal link had been established.

[Mar 09, 2021] Western media should investigate deaths and serious injuries related to Pfizer vaccine

Mar 09, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Mar 7 2021 15:58 utc | 8

Western media should investigate deaths and serious injuries related to Pfizer vaccine

Christian Daily, a Los Angeles-based media outlet, reported on Friday that according to a whistleblower, COVID-19 vaccinations from the Pfizer shots have resulted in a significant number of deaths and serious injuries in a German nursing home. The report said, "A conscientious whistleblower, who is also a caregiver at the nursing facility where the incident happened, stepped forward to expose what transpired behind the scenes of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, a report says."

[...]

The coverage reported, "Seven out of 31 people living in the nursing home died after getting injected with their first dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. The whistleblower added that after the second dose was administered, one died and eleven more got seriously sick." Christian Daily analyzed that, "This means that out of the 31 elderly people that got vaccinated in that nursing home, 25 percent of them died shortly after while the lives of 36 percent were jeopardized."

[...]

The article also looked back to prior deaths from other European countries of elderly people after receiving the COVID-19 vaccines produced by Western companies including Pfizer. For example, 46 elderly people in a Spanish nursing home died following their vaccinations, and 16 senior citizens died after getting vaccine shots in Switzerland.

[Mar 03, 2021] Something about vaccination: four scouts who, in their quest for a good deed, helped an old lady to cross the street, and reported to their guide. All four of you were needed for that, asked an amazed guide. Well, she put up quite a strong resistance

Mar 03, 2021 | www.unz.com

Our problem is not so much bad will (and here I disagree with my esteemed colleague Mike Whitney ) but the noble and quixotic desire to save mankind from some perceived peril. P.G. Wodehouse tells us of four scouts who, in their quest for a good deed, helped an old lady to cross the street, and reported to their guide. All four of you were needed for that, asked an amazed guide. Well, she put up quite a strong resistance, they replied. Until recently, only governments played God and that was bad enough. But now every Tom, Dick and Harry with an extra billion dollars in his pocket wants to save mankind.

[Mar 01, 2021] A lot of people are beginning to understand how dysfunctional the USA government has become

Mar 01, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

snake , Oct 4 2020 14:41 utc | 7

Very interesting week.. what I saw was a lot of people are beginning to understand how dysfunctional the USA government has become.. The oligarchs who own the International Nation State Franchising operation. .you know, the franchises that govern the local nation states are being discovered one by one, as part of the dysfunction that has been used to manipulate all of hamanity . .

Most people have begun to under the meaning of having a President that is not elected by the people and that it does not matter if the people go to the poles and vote, because their vote does not count, the electoral college appoints both President and VP.

Most people are beginning to understand their concerns are not explainable because the government is conducted in secret and the media, 92% owned by just 6 people world wide. has complete control over the information environments <=in each separate nation state. The MSM is where, until recently, most people got their information from <= so most people's information until recently has been completely shaped by the private owners of the media that controls each franchised nation state separately.

The meaning to democracy <=actually to lack of it, of a six person owned, private monopoly in media is starting to become understood by everyone, even the guy that cleans the commodes: those who must cover up their sins and those seeking to discover the sins of those seeking to hide their sins <=everyone is beginning to understand. Private control, by monopoly ownership of media, has protected the nation state franchisees from being discovered for too long. The nation state system has not only allowed, but fostered and promoted global unrest. Media is independent of top down nation state control, its an alternative way that the owners of the Franchise system enforce their intentions and control the narrative.. The USA has not been shy about acting on behalf of desperate private media to prevent out of the box disclosures about global corruption < intent clearly shown in the trial going on in Britain designed to bring Julian Assange into prosecution range. Documents Mr. Assange disclosured revealed how those who govern and those who benefit by Useing government accomplish their corruptions. Devil forbid! The Assange extradition trial reports that disclosing crimes of those in government is light years more terrible than holding up a corner grocery store.


Discussion should center not on finding a vaccine, which probably will often not work, but on finding and implementing a way to prevent corona virus of any vintage or flavor from infecting a single cell in a single person..(virus carried by mosquitoes is controlled by eradicating the mosquito)<=why not infection prevention instead of infection by vaccine? <=Because all vintages and flavors of the corona viri use essentially the same process to infect human cells <=preventing infection, which would eliminate the risk posed by the virus, seems primal to waiting for victims of infection to get sick so the vaccine can work its claimed magic. Many are working on prevention <= government will stop work on prevention, if it could find those working on prevention. Infection stopped <=would upset their feudal lords in the pharmaceutical industry and <=your great protectors at the FDA and NIH and HS would use the powers vested in their crimes by the government to stop the governed humanity from being able to protect itself by method of prevention. Government power depends on citizen dependence.

So much freedom from those who govern <=its difficult to move about.

[Mar 01, 2021] A European court declares the RT-PCR test worthless. In the eyes of this court, then, a positive test does not correspond to a Covid case. The two most important reasons for this, said the judges, are that, "the test's reliability depends on the number of cycles used '' and that "the test's reliability depends on the viral load present .'

Mar 01, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

lulu , Nov 27 2020 18:04 utc | 121

A European court declares the RT-PCR test worthless.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/507937-covid-pcr-test-fail/

Posted by: Palinurus | Nov 27 2020 10:21 utc | 102
---------------------------------------------------

The judges in Portugal drew their conclusion basing on the following technicalities:

1.

The judges also said that only a doctor can "diagnose" someone with a disease, and were critical of the fact that they were apparently never assessed by one .


<--- It says nothing about PCR test "worthless".


2.

In the eyes of this court, then, a positive test does not correspond to a Covid case. The two most important reasons for this, said the judges, are that, "the test's reliability depends on the number of cycles used '' and that "the test's reliability depends on the viral load present .'


<--- The judges simply argued on technicality: the higher the cycle threshold (Ct) of a PCR test is, the higher the chance of the test turning out positively.

According to the research paper linked in your RT article Correlation Between 3790 Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction–Positives Samples and Positive Cell Cultures, Including 1941 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates ,

Several recent publications, based on more than 100 studies, have attempted to propose a cutoff Ct value and duration of eviction , with a consensus at approximately Ct >30 and at least 10 days, respectively. However, in an article published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Bullard et al reported that patients could not be contagious with Ct >25 as the virus is not detected in culture above this value.

The real argument is probably whether decision-makers (doctors, public health authority) should take the lower Ct for PCR tests or not, which affects their consequential decisions, for example, quarantine time of 10-day vs 14-day, the effectiveness control of Covid 19 contagion.


vk , Nov 27 2020 18:26 utc | 123

@ Posted by: Palinurus | Nov 27 2020 10:21 utc | 102

lulu @ 121 is correct: diagnosis ≠ track and tracing.

PCR is just for track and tracing, not for diagnosis. The diagnosis protocol is much longer and burdensome, and includes an MRI of the lungs if I'm not mistaken (and can only be made by a doctor). The Portuguese judges are, therefore, also correct.

vk , Nov 27 2020 19:29 utc | 129

@ Posted by: oldhippie | Nov 27 2020 19:23 utc | 127

There are two problems with your theory:

1) Fauci is not a reliable source;

2) China uses a 40-cycle PCR test, used it on Wuhan's entire population (almost 10 million) after a scare and found no positive results.

We already talked about the Portuguese case. The judges were probably amid a labor dispute and, in a pro-business decision, reiterated that PCR is not diagnosis.

oldhippie , Nov 27 2020 19:46 utc | 130

vk @ 129

Administer a test 10 million times and every result the same? And you believe this? Amplify a signal by a trillion and there is never a problem with noise? Oh, it is in Chinese wonderland, makes perfect sense.

Always apples and oranges with you. Same as it it would be talking to an illiterate. Or a wall.

[Feb 28, 2021] The global Pfizer jab is deadly effective.

Feb 28, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Mar 1 2021 3:07 utc | 55

Gilad Atzmon reports:
The global Pfizer jab is deadly effective.


... no one can deny the astonishing fact that in just 8 weeks of mass vaccination the total number of Covid-19 deaths in the Jewish State almost doubled from the number accumulated in the prior ten months...

At the time Israel vaccinated itself, it was witnessing a sharp exponential rise in morbidity and death. Palestine, literally the same land, saw its number of cases and deaths plummeting.

Bourla [Pfizer CEO] and PM Netanyahu should make an intellectual effort and explain to us how it's possible that in Gaza, an open-air prison and one of the most densely populated pieces of land on this planet, the numbers of Covid-19 cases are minimal and without a 'vaccine.'

But Palestine is not alone, as the situation in Jordan is similar. While Israel saw its Covid-19 death figures breaking through the roof, Jordan's Covid-19 deaths from mid-November onwards look like a slippery slope. [down that is]

And then there is another ghastly issue revealed in this closed experiment:

Since Israel morphed into a nation of Guinea pigs, a virus that used to prey on the elderly and those with severe health issues has now changed its nature completely. After just 2 months of a 'successful' mass vaccination campaign, 76% of new Covid-19 cases are under 39. Only 5.5% are over 60. 40% of critical patients are under 60. The country has also detected a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases amongst pregnant women, with m ore than a few in critical condition. In the last few weeks, new-born Covid-19 cases saw a large 1300% spike (from 400 cases in under two-year-olds on November 20 to 5,800 in February 2021).

The evidence collected in Israel points at a close correlation between mass vaccination, cases and deaths. This correlation points at the possibility that it is the vaccinated who actually spread the virus or even a range of mutants that are responsible for the radical shift in symptoms above.

Atzmon closes with black humor:

I am obviously not the only one who sees that something went dramatically wrong in Israel. A group of dissenting researchers who looked into the numbers involved with the current Pfizer Israeli experiment published a detailed study two week ago. "We conclude" they wrote, "that the Pfizer vaccines, for the elderly, killed during the 5-week vaccination period about 40 times more people than the disease itself would have killed, and about 260 times more people than the disease among the younger age class."

Based on the Pfizer/Israeli 'laboratory' experiment, I drew the following sarcastic conclusion: If you catch coronavirus you may die, but if you follow the Pfizer path, not only do you have a 95% chance to survive on top of the 99.98% provided by Covid-19, you may also kill some other people on the way.


The upside is that we can watch it in real time (until someone turns the lights off). Only the Pfizer jab (I hesitate to use 'vaccine') is available and mandatory in Israel. Nothing for the Palestinians as - blockaded.

[Feb 28, 2021] Danger of mRNA vaccines to elderly under spotlight after 16 deaths in Switzerland

Feb 28, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Feb 28 2021 18:37 utc | 18

Danger of mRNA vaccines to elderly under spotlight after 16 deaths in Switzerland

Swissmedic said the average age of the deaths was 86 and most of them had pre-existing diseases, adding there was no evidence to suggest that the vaccines were the cause of death.

However:

A Chinese immunologist who requested anonymity told the Global Times that the large-scale use of mRNA vaccines carries the risk of causing abnormal immune dysfunction, allergy or even death, especially among the elderly and people with underlying diseases.

So we have a situation where a vaccine against a disease that mainly kills the elderly can't be used on the elderly. Awesome design.

Sometimes I'm in awe with grandiosity of the Western intellect.

[Feb 27, 2021] So, why not take a Big Pharma vaccine?

Feb 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bluedotterel , Feb 27 2021 9:23 utc | 39

So, why not take a Big Pharma vaccine?

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/516525-racist-big-pharma-state-experiments/

"Then you have the testing of the antibiotic Trovan in Kano, Nigeria, to assess its effectiveness against meningitis. Eleven children died in the trial – five after taking Trovan, six after taking an older antibiotic used as a comparison drug.

Others suffered blindness, deafness, and brain damage, which may or may not have been due to the trials. We'll never know, because the Big Pharma company responsible settled out of court when sued by the Nigerian government (denying us the whole truth but giving off very guilty vibes), having been accused of conducting an illegal study with no permission from the children or their parents.

The name of the company? Pfizer. And you wonder why black Africans (or any other sane person) might be wary of a vaccine with that name on it. "


Jen , Feb 27 2021 11:06 utc | 40

Bluedotterel @ 39:

There was also a tetanus shot drive in Kenya many years ago that targeted women and girls in the main: odd when you think that men and boys tend to spend more time outdoors doing things that put them at higher risk of getting puncture wounds or wounds infected with tetanus bacteria. Some people associated with the Roman Catholic Church in Kenya decided to do some investigation and discovered that the tetanus shots contained sterility agents.

steven t johnson , Feb 27 2021 15:19 utc | 45

jen@40 speaks of a "sterilizing agent" in anti-tetanus vaccines in Kenya. I did not know there was any chemical agent capable of sterilizing women with a single shot. What was this stuff?

blue dotterel@39 tells a fairly plausible horror story about Pfizer and Trovan, except for the part about how more children dead *from another antibiotic* is somehow evidence against Pfizer and Trovan.

gm , Feb 27 2021 15:53 utc | 47

@ m | Feb 27 2021 15:24 utc | 46

For starters:

HCG [Human chorionic gonadotropin] Found in WHO Tetanus Vaccine in Kenya Raises Concern in the Developing World

October 17, 2017 Researchgate pdf

Lots of stuff pops up when you run the search: "kenya tentanus sterilisation".

james , Feb 27 2021 17:09 utc | 54

@ jen and others - tetanus shots... aside from agreeing with @ Piotr Berman | Feb 27 2021 16:18 utc | 48, i would just like to point out it is typically the women who are planting and gardening... working with the soil increases the risk posed which the tetanus shot is supposed to lessen... i wonder if this ought to be factored into all this??

Jen , Feb 27 2021 20:25 utc | 61

Steven Johnson @ 45, M @ 46, Piotr Berman @ 48 and others:

As GM @ 47 has referenced, the agent found in the tetanus vaccines is HCG which is produced naturally by a woman's body during pregnancy. When combined with a weakened tetanus toxin and introduced into the human body, the combination induces the immunity system to react against both tetanus and HCG. The Kenyan Catholic bishops' group had the vaccines tested in 4 laboratories in Kenya and the labs found HCG in the shots.

The WHO tetanus vaccination program, begun in the 1990s, targeted women and teenage girls in Kenya as a high proportion of newborn babies die from tetanus as a result of the umbilical cord being cut with unsanitised instruments. I must admit I was not aware of this when I posted my earlier comment and did some more reading after posting. The mothers themselves are also often at the risk of contracting tetanus from giving birth, often through tears that occur naturally in the vaginal region. The custom of female genital mutilation that may still occur in parts of Africa despite govt bans in many countries adds to the tetanus risk. In addition many girls are married off at a young age.

Abby Ohlheiser wrote a November 2014 article for The Washington Post on the tetanus vaccination program in Kenya. Barflies should be able to find it on Google or other search engines.

What is the relevance of this discussion besides being an addition to Bluedotterel's mention of the RT.com article stating that people of colour were wary of COVID-19 vaccines because of past history in which they were guinea pigs for medical experiments? The relevance is that there are fears and rumours that the Pfizer/Biontech mRNA treatment for the COVID-19 virus contains instructions for cells to replicate a spike protein on the coronavirus's coat that is the same as or similar to a protein that helps the placenta attach to the uterine wall. There is concern that the treatment will induce the immunity system to react against the protein in a pregnant woman's body leading to miscarriage. Whether the effects of the treatment might be long-term or not, long after the initial inoculation, is another issue.

Piotr Berman , Feb 27 2021 21:15 utc | 63

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1618603/

The linked article seems to be about the vaccine developed in India that matches what Jen described as used in Kenya.

30-40 years ago, Indian government was interested in improved methods of birth control, and Indian labs developed and tested such vaccine. It seems like a legitimate birth control method, the described tests were on women with at least two children, presumably with proper consent, although later the issues of consent etc. were a hot political subject in India. BTW, hGC is present in men too, and in animals, anti-hGC antibodies were affecting (eliminating) male fertility as well.

On one hand, the anti-fertility vaccination described there requires three shots, and perhaps the fourth one if the achieved level of anti-hGC antibodies is too low, so if used as one-shot tetanus vaccine, it may be ineffective. On the other hand, surreptitious use of such vaccine, without the consent for their designed effect, is not ethical.

gm , Feb 27 2021 22:15 utc | 64

Speaking of 'under-the-table'/underhanded stealth vaccines...

EXCLUSIVE: Dr. [Ralph (gain of function virus researcher)] Baric Was Reviewing Moderna's and Dr. Fauci's Nih-NIAD Coronavirus Vaccine in December 2019! What's Going On?

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/huge-exclusive-dr-baric-reviewing-modernas-dr-faucis-coronavirus-vaccine-december-2019-know/

On DECEMBER 12, 2019 an agreement was signed (pg 105) that Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina would receive "mRNA corona virus vaccine candidates developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna"

Dr. Lawrence Sellen Twitter Feb 26, 2021; 11:26 pm

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6935295-NIH-Moderna-Confidential-Agreements.html

Section applying to material transfer of experimental mRNA CV therapy vaccine candidate(s) to Baric labs/UNC: Pgs 105-107.

Ralph Baric's signature: 12/12/2019; pg 107.

[For those whose memory is fuzzy, 12/12/2019 was ~1.5 months *before* Wuhan Covid pandemic outbreak was publically acknowledged by US.gov/CDC/NIH/WHO or China !?]

[Feb 24, 2021] One-Third of Deaths Reported to CDC After COVID Vaccines Occurred within 48 Hours of Vaccination

Feb 24, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

gm , Feb 23 2021 17:30 utc | 230

One-Third of Deaths Reported to CDC After COVID Vaccines Occurred within 48 Hours of Vaccination

According to new data released today, as of Feb. 12, 15,923 adverse reactions to COVID vaccines, including 929 deaths, have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since Dec. 14, 2020.

VAERS is the primary mechanism in the U.S. for reporting adverse vaccine reactions. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a determination can be made as to whether the reported adverse event was directly or indirectly caused by the vaccine.

[...]

The latest VAERS data show that 799 of the deaths were reported in the U.S., and that about one-third of those deaths occurred within 48 hours of the individual receiving the vaccination.

As is consistent with previous VAERS data reports, 192 of the reported deaths -- or 21% -- were cardiac-related. As The Defender reported earlier this month, Dr. J. Patrick Whelan, a pediatric rheumatologist, warned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December that mRNA vaccines like those developed by Pfizer and Moderna could cause heart attacks and other injuries in ways not assessed in safety trials.

Of the 929 deaths reported since Dec. 14, 2020, the average age of the deceased was 77.8 and the youngest was 23. Fifty-two percent of the reported deaths were among men, 45% were women and 3% are unknown. Fifty-eight percent of the deaths were reported in people who received the Pfizer vaccine, and 41% were related to the Moderna vaccine.

States with the highest reported number of deaths were: California (71); Florida (50); Ohio (38); New York (31); Kentucky (41); Michigan (31); and Texas (31).

Full story link

[Feb 05, 2021] With a Cycle Threshold over 35, you can get a positive PCR test out of a dog's ass

Feb 05, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

As Chris Martenson (PhD in pathology from Duke University) outlines in the 2020 Year in Review with Dave Collum (PhD Columbia, Chemistry, teaches at Cornell): a medical "case" is one in which a patient is presenting symptoms and requires medical attention. That's a case. PCR tests were never meant to discern whether somebody is an "infected case" or not, and as Collum elaborated in that same interview, "with a Cycle Threshold over 35, you can get a positive PCR test out of a dog's ass".

According to the media, this is true. According to reality, it isn't. In CNN-style "fact checking" parlance, it would thus score as "partially true".

"Covid Related Deaths" is a well worn catch-all. What is known to anybody keeping track: the vast majority of COVID fatalities are with COVID, not from it. We all know this, for some reason it doesn't seem to matter. The overall survival rate for this thing is somewhere around 97% or higher. Most people don't know anybody in their immediate circle of friends and family that have actually died from it.

It can be terrible virus to catch and become sick with, and it's tragic to die from. But the majority of people either exhibit flu like symptoms and shrug it off or remain completely asymptomatic. Overall it causes fewer fatalities to society than either alcohol (3 million deaths per year, globally) or driving (1.5 million) or for that matter air pollution at 4.2 million.

[Jan 29, 2021] Coronavirus variants- What they do and how worried you should be - Ars Technica

Jan 29, 2021 | arstechnica.com

Coronavirus variants: What they do and how worried you should be The Ars guide to the coronavirus variants

BETH MOLE - 1/28/2021, 7:00 PM

Enlarge / Coronaviruses Getty | BSIP
102 WITH 66 POSTERS PARTICIPATING SHARE ON FACEBOOK SHARE ON TWITTER Covid-19 Coverage Coronavirus variants: What they do and how worried you should be Basic pandemic safety limits spread in schools "We're failing": Ex-Warp Speed leader proud, deflects blame on vaccines "I can't tell you how much vaccine we have," new CDC head says "Complete incompetence:" Biden team slams Trump's COVID work View more stories

Ever since the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, began jumping from human to human, it's been mutating. The molecular machinery the virus uses to read and make copies of its genetic code isn't great at proofreading; minor typos made in the copying process can go uncorrected. Each time the virus lands in a new human victim, it infects a cell and makes an army of clones, some carrying genetic errors. Those error-bearing clones then continue on, infecting more cells, more people. Each cycle, each infection offers more opportunity for errors. And, over time, those errors, those mutations, accumulate.

Some of these changes are meaningless. Some are lost in the frenetic viral manufacturing. But some become permanent fixtures, passed on from virus to virus, human to human. Maybe it happens by chance; maybe it's because the change helps the virus survive in some small way. But in aggregate, viral strains carrying one notable mutation can start carrying others. Collections of notable mutations start popping up in viral lineages, and sometimes they seem to have an edge over their relatives. That's when these distinct viruses -- these variants -- get concerning.

Scientists around the world have been closely tracking mutations and variants since the pandemic began, watching some rise and fall without much ado. But in recent months, they have become disquieted by at least three variants. These variants of concern, or VOCs, have raised critical questions -- and alarm -- over whether they can spread more easily than previous viral varieties, whether they can evade therapies and vaccines, or even whether they're deadlier.

Here, we'll run down what we know and what we don't know about these variants. With much research yet to be done, there's a lot of unanswered questions. But researchers are working quickly to address the most important unknowns. High on the list is whether the vaccines we already have will be effective against the variants. So far, it seems likely that they will be. Still, the virus is sending a clear message: with rampant transmission accelerating viral evolution, more variants will arise and we need to be prepared.

With more data becoming available by the day, we'll update this story with significant findings as they come along. Before we get to the data we have, a quick note on names: it's problematic to identify diseases or infectious agents -- in this case, virus variants -- based on where they were identified. Such geographic associations risk creating stigma and may discourage reporting, so there is an active discussion in the scientific community about how best to name the current variants. In the interim, it has become all too common to refer to these by their country of origin. We'll try to avoid that as much as possible while making clear which variants we're talking about.

B.1.1.7

Alternate names : 501Y.V1 and VOC 202012/01
Geographic association : United Kingdom
Number of countries reporting cases : 70
Increased transmissibility : Yes
Increased disease severity/mortality : A "realistic possibility"
Vaccine efficacy : Still effective

In early December 2020, researchers and officials in the UK began warning of a new variant that seemed to be spreading abnormally fast while carrying an unusually large number of mutations -- 23. The first record of the variant in the UK stretched back to two samples taken from infected people on September 20 and September 21. In a matter of weeks, the variant began making up a larger and larger proportion of total cases there. Researchers quickly suspected the variant had evolved to become more transmissible -- that is, it's able to spread more easily from person to person.

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Transmission

Data analyses since December have supported that hypothesis, but researchers are still working out exactly how much more transmissible it is compared to earlier versions. In early January, UK researchers released preliminary results from a series of models that estimated the variant tacks on an additional 0.36 to 0.68 onto SARS-CoV-2's observed reproduction number . That means, on average, people infected with B.1.1.7 will go on to infect an additional 0.36 to 0.68 people on top of how many they would have infected if they were carrying an earlier version of the virus. More recent estimates have been roughly in this range, suggesting B.1.1.7 has around a 47 percent or 56 percent increase in transmission.

B.1.1.7 has now been detected in more than 60 countries beyond the UK, including the United States, where it has been found in at least two dozen states . A modeling study published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on January 15 estimated that it will become the predominant strain in the US in March.

Mutations

Some of the mutations B.1.1.7 carries seem to help explain the virus's newfound ability. The variant carries 23 mutations in all: 13 mutations that change the virus's protein sequences (non-synonymous), four deletions, and six synonymous mutations. Of B.1.1.7's mutations, eight occur in the virus's spike protein, the now notorious club-like protein that juts out from the virus's spherical particle. That spike is what the virus uses to latch onto and infect cells, which the protein accomplishes by binding a receptor on the outside of human cells called ACE2.

So far, we know that at least three of B.1.1.7's eight spike mutations may be relevant to the variant's boosted transmission. Chief among them is a mutation that changes one of the spike proteins' critical amino acids -- the amino acid at position 501 of spike's protein sequence. Specifically, the mutation changes the amino acid at 501 from an asparagine (N) to a tyrosine (Y), so the mutation is written as N501Y. The 501 amino acid is critical because it lies within the area of spike that directly binds to ACE2 -- called the receptor binding domain (RBD) -- and it is one of just six key contact residues in the RBD. Lab experiments have suggested that changing from an N to a Y at 501 increases spike's ability to bind ACE2, and experiments in mice linked the mutation to increased infectiousness and disease.

After N501Y, there's P681H. The mutation at position 681 -- changing the amino acid from a proline (P) to a histidine (H) -- falls near a unique furin cleavage site on SARS-CoV-2's spike protein. For SARS-CoV-2 to successfully get into a cell after binding ACE2, the spike protein needs to be cleaved into its two subunits by enzymes. The split changes spike's conformation and activates it, allowing it to fuse itself to the cell membrane and dump its contents into the now-infected cell. In animal studies , the furin cleavage site seemed to boost the virus's ability to enter cells. Researchers suspect the new mutation may boost entry further.

Enlarge / A patient prepares to receive an injection of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine by Royal Navy medics at a vaccination center set up at Bath racecourse in Bath, southwest England. Adrian DENNIS / AFP / Getty Images
The third spike mutation known to be significant is a deletion of six nucleotides in its genetic code, which leads to the loss of two amino acids at positions 69 and 70 in the spike protein. It's unclear what this deletion does for the virus exactly, but it has arisen a number of times in different lineages, suggesting it offers an advantage . For now, there is one clear consequence for researchers: the deletion messes up a diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2. The test is a three-target RT-PCR test, meaning it works by detecting three snippets of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, including one in the gene that codes for spike. When this 69-70 deletion is present, the test will show up negative for the spike gene but positive for the other two SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences. This result is referred to as " S gene dropout " and is now used to help identify infections caused by B.1.1.7. Advertisement

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These three mutations are the most notable in B.1.1.7 for now. There's scant data on the other 20, but researchers are working swiftly to assess what each might do on its own or in combination with the others.

Disease severity/mortality

When researchers first raised concerns about B.1.1.7, all of those issues related to increased transmissibility. Preliminary evidence looking at infection outcomes did not suggest that B.1.1.7 was causing more severe disease or more deaths than other virus strains. Still, some saw little comfort in this, given that any increase in the total number of infections still leads to more severe cases and deaths in absolute numbers.

The situation took a darker turn January 21, when a UK government advisory group -- NERVTAG -- found preliminary evidence that "there is a realistic possibility that infection with VOC B.1.1.7 is associated with an increased risk of death compared to infection with non-VOC viruses."

So far, some experts are not yet convinced by the preliminary evidence presented, and they're calling for much more data before any conclusions are drawn. For one thing, the full data sets behind some of the analyses done so far have not been published, and some of them relied on comparing small numbers of deaths in people infected with B.1.1.7 with larger numbers of deaths in people infected with other strains. Some experts also wonder whether the calculated increase in deaths could simply be explained by overburdened hospitals rather than a deadlier variant.

Vaccine efficacy

With increased infectiousness and the possibility of being deadlier, a critical question raised by B.1.1.7 is whether or not the current vaccines we have -- mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna -- will work against the variant. So far, the answer appears to be yes.

On January 19, researchers at Pfizer and BioNTech released a non-peer reviewed study where they pitted antibody-laden blood from 16 people given their mRNA vaccine (BNT162b2) against a pseudovirus that carried B.1.1.7's mutated spike protein. The researchers found that the vaccines' antibodies were just as good at neutralizing the pseudovirus with B.1.1.7's mutated spike protein as they were at neutralizing a pseudovirus with the spike protein from a reference SARS-CoV-2 virus.

"These data make it unlikely that the B.1.1.7 lineage will escape BNT162b2-mediated protection," the researchers concluded.

Likewise, on January 25, Moderna released its own non-peer reviewed study , which was similar in design. They tested the antibodies from eight people given their mRNA vaccine against a pseudovirus bearing B.1.1.7's mutated spike protein. Again, the antibodies neutralized the pseudovirus at levels comparable to those seen with a pseudovirus carrying a reference spike protein.

Yet another similar study , led by researchers at Columbia University and released January 26, found the same results. Antibodies from 12 people who received Moderna's vaccine and 10 people who received Pfizer's vaccine were able to neutralize a pseudovirus containing B.1.1.7's mutated spike protein, with only a modest drop in potency compared with neutralization of a pseudovirus carrying a reference spike protein.

[Jan 27, 2021] Merck Scraps COVID Vaccines; Says It's More Effective To Get The Virus And Recover

Jan 27, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Down South , Jan 26 2021 17:58 utc | 9

Vaccine manufacturer Merck has abandoned development of two coronavirus vaccines, saying that after extensive research it was concluded that the shots offered less protection than just contracting the virus itself and developing antibodies.

The company announced that the shots V590 and V591 were 'well tolerated' by test patients, however they generated an 'inferior' immune system response in comparison with natural infection.

Merck Scraps COVID Vaccines; Says It's More Effective To Get The Virus And Recover

[Jan 26, 2021] WHO must have known how PCR test worked in Jan 2020. Now they admit, a year later, that tests are misleading.

Jan 26, 2021 | off-guardian.org

Moneycircus , Jan 23, 2021 5:40 PM

UK Column News – 22nd January 2021
PART ONE
WHO BELATEDLY ADMITS LIMITATIONS OF PCR TEST
INSTITUTIONAL FRAUD ON GLOBAL SCALE REVEALED
Countries bankrupted, children's future compromised. Nuremberg trials await.
WHO must have known how PCR test worked in Jan 2020. Now they admit, a year later, that tests are misleading. One day after Biden installed as the illegitimate president of the U.S.

SUGGESTS MANY TESTS ARE PRODUCING FALSE POSITIVES
WHO REVERSAL ON PCR TESTS
The less disease out there, the greater risk of false positives. Careful interpretation of positive results is needed -- exactly what PCR test inventor Kary Mullis said
https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users-2020-05

KEEP TESTING AND YOU WILL FIND ANYTHING – EXACTLY WHAT KARY MULLIS SAID
TRANSLATION: SET THE GAIN TOO HIGH AND YOU GET FALSE DETECTIONS
The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient's viral load.
Kary Mullis won a Nobel Prize for inventing the test so should know its limitations. Sadly he died, Aug 2019. Mullis said his PCR test should not be used to diagnose illness. PCR test can detect DNA fragments from past diseases or from your body. Claims of "Covid" detection actually detects these irrelevant fragments. PCR findings are supposed to be backed up by clinical diagnosis of illness.

GBP 500 BRIBE FOR A JAB UNDER CONSIDERATION
UK unHEALTH SECRETARY MATT HANDCOCK SEES NO LIMIT TO GOV SPENDING
Environment Sec George Eustace says it's on the table
Mike Robinson: this is probably a trial balloon to see who the narrative fares. 500 a person will be 450 million a week. UK borrowing hit a record in Dec.
Patrick Henningsen: the question is how much will it cost the gov to find new cases.

PM WON'T COMMIT TO ENDING LOCKDOWN
ANYWAY HE TALKS POSH SO THAT SHOULD PERSUADE YOU.
BoJo talks plum bull, chews words, talks guff, won't commit.

STILL NO INFORMATION ON WHETHER DEATHS ARE RISING OR WHY
NHS REMAINS EFFECTIVELY CLOSED TO ALL ILLNESSES
Are people dying from failure to treat elderly with flu or pneumonia?

CENSORSHIP RULES AS SOCIAL MEDIA UPHOLD GOV NARRATIVE
PRESS IS RAKING IN GOV ADVERTISING
Emily Hill, in Spiked: It is a journalist's duty to question lockdown
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/01/20/it-is-a-journalists-duty-to-question-lockdown/W

MHRA'S CEO JUNE RAINE: NOTHING UNUSUAL IN ADVERSE REACTIONS
EU CRITICISED HASTY APPROVAL
Reports are coming in thick and fast to the yellow card adverse reaction scheme.
Raine is a career civil servant. Been on WHO safety committees. "Risk communication and patient involvement" is her speciality.
Pfizer jab was "judged safe" and "far outweigh any risk", Raine said in Dec 2020, although there had been no risk assessment. She also claimed the UK regulator did not cut any corners. Yet phase three tests were not completed and won't be until Jan 2023. The EU criticised "hasty" UK approval.
Mike Robinson: the public is the phase three trial. The public at large is the test group.

UNIONS NOW OBLIGING MEMBERS TO COMPLY WITH VACCINATIONS.
HISTORIC SUPPORT FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES ABANDONED.
Patrick Henningsen: what happened to the left. They used to question the government and favour liberty. Now unions are channeling gov policy and requiring members to get vaccinations to work.
Mike Robinson: gov says vaccine is not mandatory but employers and unions are making it so.

OVER-50s SAGA GROUP FALLS IN LINE WITH VAX PASSPORTS
MEMBERS REBEL AGAINST UNLAWFUL DEMANDS AND VIRTUE SIGNALLING
Saga says members must be "vaccinated" against Covid 14 days before travel. Members say demand violates Nuremberg code, accuse company of virtue signalling.
Mike Robinson: dozens of companies seek to profit from the security and surveillance space and health profits.
Patrick Henningsen: this is a gravy train driven by hoped-for profits.

JUST SAY NO -- CONVENTION ON BIOETHICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
UNESCO ARTICLE 6 GIVES RIGHT TO REFUSE VACCINATION WITH NO RETRIBUTION

"The consent should, where appropriate, be expressed and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice."

Mike Robinson: the principle is there but it is not binding in any way

NORTHERN IRELAND LOCKDOWN EXTENDED TO MAR 5
HONG KONG LAUNCHES FIRST LOCKDOWN. WEST MAY COPY
Patrick Henningsen: Where China goes, the west follows. Targeted lockdowns, focused on cities, boroughs, housing estates. Only people with negative tests will be allowed off the leash

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL INSTALLATION FAKENESS
OFFICIAL PORTRAITS OF BIDEN ARE VERY ORANGE
Trumpian imagery, strange presence of PermaOrange in U.S. presidential photos.
Patrick Henningsen: Lack of attendees blamed on social distancing. loads of sports events see none of this distancing, the NFL football for instance.

GUSHING MEDIA FINALLY FREE
TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME ABATES TEMPORARILY
CNN Jeffrey Toobin (fumbulator): Lights laid down from the Lincoln statue to the obelisk were "like Joe Biden's arms embracing America". Toobin resigned in October after playing with himself on a Zoom call. CNN was happy to hire him.

CNN Jeff Zeleny: Their majesties Obama, Bush and Clint, recorded a video reflecting "the majesty of the passage of power, importance of upholding democracy".
Mike Robinson: but Bill Clinson fell asleep!!!

CNN overcome with Biden on stage with Obama "The comforting sight of the Clintons and the Bushes and the Obamas, the Avengers, the Marvel superheroes back together, with their friend Joe Biden all of them sharing the view of a lot of Americans that we did narrowly avert catastrophe all there to butress their buddy Joe Biden."

Patrick Henningsen: see the infantilization of politics. It has become a spectator sport and politicians have become Marvel superheroes.

EXECUTIVE ORDER: MASK WEARING AND DISTANCING ON FEDERAL PROPERTY
UNLESS YOU ARE DOT GOV
Trump issued the lowest number of executive orders in recent times. Biden issued 17 on day one and plans dozens in the first weeks of his installation.

BBC: KAMALA HARRIS A PRESIDENT IN WAITING?
ALREADY ASSUMED HAZY KAMALA WILL TAKE OVER
Patrick Henningsen: Joe Biden is not in his prime. He lacks the energy to lead the U.S. -- he could barely campaign.

FOREIGN POLICY OUTLOOK
U.S. OFFERS TO WORK WITH UK ON CHINA
Politico: UK's pitch to Biden: We'll work with you on China
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-pitch-joe-biden-china-us-trade/

MARK SEDWILL RUNNING UK FOREIGN POLICY
NAME APPEARS AS HEAD OF VARIOUS QUASI GOV BODIES
China is a major set piece. Britain makes a play to outdo the EU on its aproach to China.
COP 26 and climate change take prominence. Biden due to visit Britain for G7 in Cornwall in Jun 2021. D10 floated as democracy election: G7 + India, South Korea and Australia
Mike Robinson: the war narrative is broader than Covid -- aim in this case being to peel India away from BRICS

MACRON CALLS ON BIDEN FOR GREATER U.S. INVOLVEMENT
OTAN AKBAR!
Obama doctrine, Clinton doctrine is back – arming "moderate rebels", targeting Syria, Sahel region for western interests. Biden admin will need to make greater commitments on Syria and Iraq, sending troops back, undoing Trump's withdrawal.

Moneycircus , Jan 23, 2021 5:52 PM Reply to Moneycircus

UK Column News – 22nd January 2021
PART TWO

MAGICAL BAGHDAD BOMBING DAY AFTER BIDEN INSTALLATION
PROMPTS DEMAND TO ADD THOUSANDS OF U.S. TROOPS TO COMBAT REGIONAL TERROR
Bomb went off in market not far from U.S. embassy. Islamic State claimed responsibility for two bombs that killed over 30 and injured 100 in central Baghdad.
Patrick Henningsen: we've been told for months that terrorism has been declining in Iraq. Suddenly with Biden comes a new narrative and bombs. If a third party wanted to influence his policy this would be the way to do it.

ISIS 'WE BOMBED RANDOM MARKET -- PLEASE OCCUPY IRAQ AGAIN.'
FOREIGN POLICY IS ABOUT BOMBS, INCLUSION AND GENDER
Averil Haines put forward as DNI. Haines is a protégé of Clapper and Brennan.
Women and minorities are filling all these posts. The appearance of diversity: watch policy not change.

RACHEL LEVINE, ASST HEALTH SECRETARY
REMOVED OWN MOTHER FROM CARE HOMES BEFORE ORDERING TRANSFER OF SICK ELDERLY
The scandal is the unacceptable action of a dubious individual.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/05/health-secretary-rachel-levines-removal-of-mom-from-care-home-amid-epidemic-draws-scrutiny.html

LIBERTY GROUPS RESIST FURTHER CLAMPDOWN ON "TERROR"
LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS STATEMENT
https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/No_Domestic_Terrorism_Charge_1_19_2021-1.pdf
Patrick Henningsen: Obama administration saw a mass shooting events every second week – pipe bombs and country in permanent fear. At least half the terror events were driven by FBI informants. Dubious events like San Bernardino were used to justify foreign policy adventures in Syria.
Me: In contrast, apart from Las Vegas just after he took office, Trump admin saw relatively few mass shootings.

ASSANGE PARDON REPORTEDLY BLOCKED BY MITCH MCCONNELL
TUCKER CARLSON ASSERTS THAT COMPROMISED RINO THREATENED TRUMP
McConnell "sent word over to the White House: if you pardon Julian Assange, we are much more likely to convice you in an impeachment trial."
Patrick Henningsen: such horse trading would not be unusual. Trump missed a chance to go down in history as a champion of free speech and an honest press.
Donald Trump shattered a lot of Republican records. That's not going to be reversed by hunting down Trump and his supporters.

CHATHAM HOUSE MASTERCLASS IN MANIPULATING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS
JAN 2019 INFLUENZA PREPAREDNESS CONFERENCE
Communication and public engagement – MARC VAN RANST – 9: Importance of using the media to push messaging:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/320913130

Sitting in the front row was the UK's Jonathn Van Tam, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England

Marc van Ranst's Masterclass on Manipulating Public Fear for CFR-Chatham Ho.:

"Day one is so important. You start your comms with the press and people. One voice, one message . In Belgium they appointed a non politician [van Ranst himself] to do that. You are then not attacked politically. That was a big advantage. In Brussels you can play the complete naive guy.
"You have to be omnipresent so you attract media attention. You have to make a contract with them that if they call you, you will pick up the phone. If you do that you can profit from these early days to get complete carpet coverage and they are not going to search for alternative voices. And if you do that it makes things easier.
"Then you say we have a certain number of H1N1 deaths, that are unavoidable. I used a quote from Sir Donaldson that at the peak of the epidemic, 40 people would die per day in UK, and I calculated that for Belgium to show there would be 7 deaths a day. That is true in every year (laughter) but talking about fatalities gets attention because people don't usually think about anyone dying from influenza.
"A couple of days later you had the first death of H1N1 in the country and the scene was set and it was already talked about."

Mike Robinson: The point he made about deaths is important. You take a number that is normal, it happens every year but it is not usually reported. You start reporting it and people think there is something special about that number. Then you add on the effects of lockdown and you say this is really serious, even though the excess mortality is little different to what's happened in history."

Simples!

UK Column News – 22nd January 2021

https://www.youtube.com/embed/edln7eWn4ck?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

Moneycircus , Jan 23, 2021 6:21 PM Reply to Moneycircus

The Chatham House video can be watched here. Download this handy masterclass on manipulating public fear before it's deleted. MP4 downloader

Moneycircus , Jan 23, 2021 6:16 PM Reply to Moneycircus

Clarification: It was MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann who said seeing the past presidents standing next to Biden was "like the Avengers, sort of the Marvel superheroes, back up there together. "

[Jan 24, 2021] The WHO's revised guidance effectively says the majority of infection data from PCR testing is meaningless.

Jan 24, 2021 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Barbara Ann , 23 January 2021 at 08:08 PM

Patrick

From the ZH article; "None of this was for your health. It was to get rid of Orange Man Bad".

100%. The WHO's revised guidance effectively says the majority of infection data from PCR testing is meaningless. ZH notes Florida as a possible exception. The original guidance issued on 2020/12/14 seems to have been scrubbed from the WHO's website but was archived here: ( https://web.archive.org/web/20210102051357/https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users). ">https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users).">https://web.archive.org/web/20210102051357/https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users). The revised guidance calls for a retest upon a weak positive* result and publication of the Ct value along with the result.

*Why no retest after a weak negative, am I missing something re the risk of false negative results? Otherwise weeding out false positives only looks a lot like a policy to drive down reported infection rates.

The next stage of course is for the CDC to update their guidance (not updated since October) and revise the stats - hey presto pandemic over, all under the Biden administration.

This is the most audacious, yet transparent, PSYOP of all time. I just can't believe someone, somewhere doesn't have hard intel. on whoever is running it.

[Jan 24, 2021] The COVID-19 RT-PCR Test- How to Mislead All Humanity. Using a -Test- To Lock Down Society - Global ResearchGlobal Research -

Jan 24, 2021 | www.globalresearch.ca

Introduction: using a technique to lock down society

All current propaganda on the COVID-19 pandemic is based on an assumption that is considered obvious, true and no longer questioned:

Positive RT-PCR test means being sick with COVID. This assumption is misleading .

Very few people, including doctors, understand how a PCR test works.

RT-PCR means R eal T ime- P olymerase C hain R eaction.

In French, it means: Réaction de Polymérisation en Chaîne en Temps Réel.

In medicine, we use this tool mainly to diagnose a viral infection.

Starting from a clinical situation with the presence or absence of particular symptoms in a patient, we consider different diagnoses based on tests.

In the case of certain infections, particularly viral infections, we use the RT-PCR technique to confirm a diagnostic hypothesis suggested by a clinical picture.

We do not routinely perform RT-PCR on any patient who is overheated, coughing or has an inflammatory syndrome!

It is a laboratory, molecular biology technique of gene amplification because it looks for gene traces (DNA or RNA) by amplifying them.

In addition to medicine, other fields of application are genetics, research, industry and forensics.

The technique is carried out in a specialized laboratory , it cannot be done in any laboratory, even a hospital. This entails a certain cost, and a delay sometimes of several days between the sample and the result.

Today, since the emergence of the new disease called COVID-19 ( CO rona VI rus D isease-20 19 ), the RT-PCR diagnostic technique is used to define positive cases, confirmed as SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus responsible for the new acute respiratory distress syndrome called COVID-19).

These positive cases are assimilated to COVID-19 cases, some of whom are hospitalized or even admitted to intensive care units.

Official postulate of our managers: positive RT-PCR cases = COVID-19 patients. [1]

This is the starting postulate, the premise of all official propaganda, which justifies all restrictive government measures: isolation, confinement, quarantine, mandatory masks, color codes by country and travel bans, tracking, social distances in companies, stores and even, even more importantly, in schools [2].

This misuse of RT-PCR technique is used as a relentless and intentional strategy by some governments , supported by scientific safety councils and by the dominant media, to justify excessive measures such as the violation of a large number of constitutional rights, the destruction of the economy with the bankruptcy of entire active sectors of society, the degradation of living conditions for a large number of ordinary citizens, under the pretext of a pandemic based on a number of positive RT-PCR tests, and not on a real number of patients .

Technical aspects: to better understand and not be manipulated

The PCR technique was developed by chemist Kary B. Mullis in 1986. Kary Mullis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993.

Although this is disputed [3], Kary Mullis himself is said to have criticized the interest of PCR as a diagnostic tool for an infection, especially a viral one.

He stated that if PCR was a good tool for research, it was a very bad tool in medicine, in the clinic [4].

Mullis was referring to the AIDS virus (HIV retrovirus or HIV) [5], before the COVID-19 pandemic, but this opinion on the limitation of the technique in viral infections [6], by its creator, cannot be dismissed out of hand; it must be taken into account!

PCR was perfected in 1992.

As the analysis can be performed in real time, continuously, it becomes RT (Real-Time) – PCR , even more efficient.

It can be done from any molecule, including those of the living, the nucleic acids that make up the genes:

Viruses are not considered as "living" beings, they are packets of information (DNA or RNA) forming a genome.

It is by an amplification technique (multiplication) that the molecule sought is highlighted and this point is very important.

RT-PCR is an amplification technique [7].

If there is DNA or RNA of the desired element in a sample, it is not identifiable as such.

This DNA or RNA must be amplified (multiplied) a certain number of times , sometimes a very large number of times, before it can be detected. From a minute trace, up to billions of copies of a specific sample can be obtained, but this does not mean that there is all that amount in the organism being tested.

In the case of COVID-19, the element sought by RT-PCR is SARS-CoV-2, an RNA virus [8].

There are DNA viruses such as Herpes and Varicella viruses.

The most well known RNA viruses , in addition to coronaviruses, are Influenza, Measles, EBOLA, ZIKA viruses.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, RNA virus, an additional specific step is required, a transcription of RNA into DNA by means of an enzyme, Reverse Transcriptase.

This step precedes the amplification phase.

It is not the whole virus that is identified, but sequences of its viral genome.

This does not mean that this gene sequence, a fragment of the virus, is not specific to the virus being sought, but it is an important nuance nonetheless:

RT-PCR does not reveal any virus, but only parts, specific gene sequences of the virus.

At the beginning of the year, the SARS-CoV-2 genome was sequenced.

It consists of about 30,000 base pairs. The nucleic acid (DNA-RNA), the component of the genes, is a sequence of bases. In comparison, the human genome has more than 3 billion base pairs.

Teams are continuously monitoring the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome as it evolves [9-10-11], through the mutations it undergoes. Today, there are many variants [12].

By taking a few specific genes from the SARS-CoV-2 genome, it is possible to initiate RT-PCR on a sample from the respiratory tract.

For COVID-19 disease, which has a nasopharyngeal (nose) and oropharyngeal (mouth) entry point, the sample should be taken from the upper respiratory tract as deeply as possible in order to avoid contamination by saliva in particular.

A

ll the people tested said that it is very painful [13].

The Gold Standard (preferred site for sampling) is the nasopharyngeal (nasal) approach , the most painful route.

If there is a contraindication to the nasal approach, or preferably to the individual being tested, depending on the official organs, the oropharyngeal approach (through the mouth) is also acceptable. The test may trigger a nausea/vomiting reflex in the individual being tested.

Normally, for the result of an RT-PCR test to be considered reliable, amplification from 3 different genes (primers) of the virus under investigation is required .

"The primers are single-stranded DNA sequences specific to the virus. They guarantee the specificity of the amplification reaction. " [14]

"The first test developed at La Charité in Berlin by Dr. Victor Corman and his associates in January 2020 allows to highlight the RNA sequences present in 3 genes of the virus called E, RdRp and N . To know if the sequences of these genes are present in the RNA samples collected, it is necessary to amplify the sequences of these 3 genes in order to obtain a signal sufficient for their detection and quantification. "[15].

The essential notion of Cycle Time or Cycle Threshold or Ct positivity threshold [16].

An RT-PCR test is negative (no traces of the desired element) or positive (presence of traces of the desired element).

However, even if the desired element is present in a minute, negligible quantity, the principle of RT-PCR is to be able to finally highlight it by continuing the amplification cycles as much as necessary.

RT-PCR can push up to 60 amplification cycles, or even more!

Here is how it works:

Cycle 1: target x 2 (2 copies)

Cycle 2: target x 4 (4 copies)

Cycle 3: target x 8 (8 copies)

Cycle 4: target x 16 (16 copies)

Cycle 5; target x 32 (32 copies)

Etc exponentially up to 40 to 60 cycles!

When we say that the Ct (Cycle Time or Cycle Threshold or RT-PCR positivity threshold) is equal to 40, it means that the laboratory has used 40 amplification cycles , i.e. obtained 2 40 copies.

This is what underlies the sensitivity of the RT-PCR assay.

While it is true that in medicine we like to have high specificity and sensitivity of the tests to avoid false positives and false negatives, in the case of COVID-19 disease, this hypersensitivity of the RT-PCR test caused by the number of amplification cycles used has backfired.

This over-sensitivity of the RT-PCR test is deleterious and misleading!

It detaches us from the medical reality which must remain based on the real clinical state of the person: is the person ill, does he or she have symptoms?

That is the most important thing!

As I said at the beginning of the article, in medicine we always start from the person: we examine him/her, we collect his/her symptoms (complaints-anamnesis) and objective clinical signs (examination) and on the basis of a clinical reflection in which scientific knowledge and experience intervene, we make diagnostic hypotheses.

Only then do we prescribe the most appropriate tests, based on this clinical reflection.

We constantly compare the test results with the patient's clinical condition (symptoms and signs), which takes precedence over everything else when it comes to our decisions and treatments.

Today, our governments, supported by their scientific safety advice, are making us do the opposite and put the test first, followed by a clinical reflection necessarily influenced by this prior test, whose weaknesses we have just seen, particularly its hypersensitivity.

None of my clinical colleagues can contradict me.

Apart from very special cases such as genetic screening for certain categories of populations (age groups, sex) and certain cancers or family genetic diseases, we always work in this direction: from the person (symptoms, signs) to the appropriate tests, never the other way around.

This is the conclusion of an article in the Swiss Medical Journal (RMS) published in 2007, written by doctors Katia Jaton and Gilbert Greub microbiologists from the University of Lausanne :

PCR in microbiology: from DNA amplification to result interpretation :

"To interpret the result of a PCR, it is essential that clinicians and microbiologists share their experiences, so that the analytical and clinical levels of interpretation can be combined."

It would be indefensible to give everyone an electrocardiogram to screen everyone who might have a heart attack one day.

On the other hand, in certain clinical contexts or on the basis of specific evocative symptoms, there, yes, an electrocardiogram can be beneficial.

Back to RT-PCR and Ct (Cycle Time or Cycle Threshold).

In the case of an infectious disease, especially a viral one, the notion of contagiousness is another important element.

Since some scientific circles consider that an asymptomatic person can transmit the virus, they believe it is important to test for the presence of virus, even if the person is asymptomatic, thus extending the indication of RT-PCR to everyone.

Are RT-PCR tests good tests for contagiousness? [17]

This question brings us back to the notion of viral load and therefore Ct .

The relationship between contagiousness and viral load is disputed by some people [18] and no formal proof, to date, allows us to make a decision.

However, common sense gives obvious credence to the notion that the more virus a person has inside him or her , especially in the upper airways (oropharynx and nasopharynx), with symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, the higher the risk of contagiousness , proportional to the viral load and the importance of the person's symptoms.

This is called common sense , and although modern medicine has benefited greatly from the contribution of science through statistics and Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), it is still based primarily on common sense, experience and empiricism.

Medicine is the art of healing .

No test measures the amount of virus in the sample!

RT-PCR is qualitative : positive (presence of the virus) or negative (absence of the virus).

This notion of quantity, therefore of viral load, can be estimated indirectly by the number of amplification cycles (Ct) used to highlight the virus sought.

The lower the Ct used to detect the virus fragment, the higher the viral load is considered to be (high).

The higher the Ct used to detect the virus fragment, the lower the viral load is considered to be (low).

Thus, the French National Reference Centre (CNR), in the acute phase of the pandemic, estimated that the peak of viral shedding occurred at the onset of symptoms, with an amount of virus corresponding to approximately 10 8 (100 million) copies of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA on average (French COVID-19 cohort data) with a variable duration of shedding in the upper airways (from 5 days to more than 5 weeks) [19].

This number of 108 (100 million) copies/μl corresponds to a very low Ct.

A Ct of 32 corresponds to 10-15 copies/μl.

A Ct of 35 corresponds to about 1 copy/μl.

Above Ct 35, it becomes impossible to isolate a complete virus sequence and culture it!

In France and in most countries, Ct levels above 35, even 40, are still used even today!

The French Society of Microbiology (SFM) issued an opinion on September 25, 2020 in which it does not recommend quantitative results, and it recommends to make positive up to a Ct of 37 for a single gene [20]!

With 1 copy/μl of a sample (Ct 35) , without cough, without symptoms, one can understand why all these doctors and scientists say that a positive RT-PCR test means nothing , nothing at all in terms of medicine and clinic!

Positive RT-PCR tests, without any mention of Ct or its relation to the presence or absence of symptoms, are used as is by our governments as the exclusive argument to apply and justify their policy of severity, austerity, isolation and aggression of our freedoms, with the impossibility to travel, to meet, to live normally!

There is no medical justification for these decisions, for these governmental choices!

In an article published on the website of the New York Times (NYT) on Saturday, August 29, American experts from Harvard University are surprised that RT-PCR tests as practiced can serve as tests of contagiousness, even more so as evidence of pandemic progression in the case of SARS-CoV-2 infection [21].

The Covid-19 Numbers Game: The "Second Wave" is Based on Fake Statistics

According to them, the threshold (Ct) considered results in positive diagnoses in people who do not represent any risk of transmitting the virus!

The binary "yes/no" answer is not enough, according to this epidemiologist from the Harvard University School of Public Health.

"It's the amount of virus that should dictate the course of action for each patient tested. "

The amount of virus (viral load); but also and above all the clinical state, symptomatic or not of the person!

This calls into question the use of the binary result of this RT-PCR test to determine whether a person is contagious and must follow strict isolation measures.

These questions are being raised by many physicians around the world, not only in the United States but also in France, Belgium ( Belgium Health Experts Demand Investigation Of WHO For Faking Coronavirus Pandemic ), France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States and the United Kingdom. in Germany, Spain

According to them: " We are going to put tens of thousands of people in confinement, in isolation, for nothing. " [22]. 22] And inflict suffering, anguish, economic and psychological dramas by the thousands!

Most RT-PCR tests set the Ct at 40, according to the NYT. Some set it at 37.

"Tests with such high thresholds (Ct) may not only detect live virus but also gene fragments, remnants of an old infection that do not represent any particular danger," the experts said.

A virologist at the University of California admits that an RT-PCR test with a Ct greater than 35 is too sensitive. " A more reasonable threshold would be between 30 and 35, " she adds.

Almost no laboratory specifies the Ct (number of amplification cycles performed) or the number of copies of viral RNA per sample μl.

Here is an example of a laboratory result (approved by Sciensano, the Belgian national reference center) in an RT-PCR negative patient:

No mention of Ct.

In the NYT, experts compiled three datasets with officials from the states of Massachusetts, New York and Nevada that mention them.

Conclusion?

" Up to 90% of the people who tested positive did not carry a virus. "

The Wadworth Center, a New York State laboratory, analyzed the results of its July tests at the request of the NYT: 794 positive tests with a Ct of 40.

" With a Ct threshold of 35 , approximately half of these PCR tests would no longer be considered positive ," said the NYT.

"And about 70% would no longer be considered positive with a Ct of 30 ! "

In Massachusetts, between 85 and 90% of people who tested positive in July with a Ct of 40 would have been considered negative with a Ct of 30, adds the NYT. And yet, all these people had to isolate themselves, with all the dramatic psychological and economic consequences, while they were not sick and probably not contagious at all.

In France, the Centre National de Référence (CNR), the French Society of Microbiology (SFM) continue to push Ct to 37 and recommend to laboratories to use only one gene of the virus as a primer.

I remind you that from Ct 32 onwards, it becomes very difficult to culture the virus or to extract a complete sequence, which shows the completely artificial nature of this positivity of the test, with such high Ct levels, above 30.

Similar results were reported by researchers from the UK Public Health Agency in an article published on August 13 in Eurosurveillance : " The probability of culturing the virus drops to 8% in samples with Ct levels above 35." [23]

In addition, currently, the National Reference Center in France only evaluates the sensitivity of commercially available reagent kits, not their specificity: serious doubts persist about the possibility of cross-reactivity with viruses other than SARS-CoV-2, such as other benign cold coronaviruses. [20]

It is potentially the same situation in other countries, including Belgium.

Similarly, mutations in the virus may have invalidated certain primers (genes) used to detect SARS-CoV-2: the manufacturers give no guarantees on this, and if the AFP fast-checking journalists tell you otherwise, test their good faith by asking for these guarantees, these proofs.

If they have nothing to hide and if what I say is false, this guarantee will be provided to you and will prove their good faith.

  1. We must demand that the RT-PCR results be returned mentioning the Ct used because beyond Ct 30, a positive RT-PCR test means nothing.
  2. We must listen to the scientists and doctors, specialists, virologists who recommend the use of adapted Ct, lower, at 30 . An alternative is to obtain the number of copies of viral RNA/μl or /ml sample. [23]
  3. We need to go back to the patient, to the person, to his or her clinical condition (presence or absence of symptoms) and from there to judge the appropriateness of testing and the best way to interpret the result.

Until there is a better rationale for PCR screening, with a known and appropriate Ct threshold, an asymptomatic person should not be tested in any way.

Even a symptomatic person should not automatically be tested, as long as they can place themselves in isolation for 7 days.

Let's stop this debauchery of RT-PCR testing at too high Ct levels and return to clinical, quality medicine.

Once we understand how RT-PCR testing works, it becomes impossible to let the current government routine screening strategy, inexplicably supported by the virologists in the safety councils, continue.

My hope is that, finally, properly informed, more and more people will demand that this strategy be stopped , because it is all of us, enlightened, guided by real benevolence and common sense, who must decide our collective and individual destinies.

No one else should do it for us, especially when we realize that those who decide are no longer reasonable or rational.

Summary of important points :

Overall Conclusion

Is the obstinacy of governments to use the current disastrous strategy, systematic screening by RT-PCR, due to ignorance?

Is it due to stupidity?

To a kind of cognitive trap trapping their ego?

In any case, we should be able to question them, and if among the readers of this article there are still honest journalists, or naive politicians, or people who have the possibility to question our rulers, then do so, using these clear and scientific arguments.

It is all the more incomprehensible that our rulers have surrounded themselves with some of the most experienced specialists in these matters.

If I have been able to gather this information myself, shared, I remind you, by competent people above all suspicion of conspiracy, such as Hélène Banoun, Pierre Sonigo, Jean-François Toussaint, Christophe De Brouwer, whose intelligence, intellectual honesty and legitimacy cannot be questioned, then the Belgian, French and Quebec scientific advisors, etc., know all this as well.

So?

What's going on?

Why continue in this distorted direction, obstinately making mistakes?

It is not insignificant to reimpose confinements, curfews, quarantines, reduced social bubbles, to shake up again our shaky economies, to plunge entire families into precariousness, to sow so much fear and anxiety generating a real state of post-traumatic stress worldwide, to reduce access to care for other pathologies that nevertheless reduce life expectancy much more than COVID-19! [24]

Is there intent to harm?

Is there an intention to use the alibi of a pandemic to move humanity towards an outcome it would otherwise never have accepted? In any case, not like that!

Would this hypothesis, which modern censors will hasten to label "conspiracy", be the most valid explanation for all this?

Indeed, if we draw a straight line from the present events, if they are maintained, we could find ourselves once again confined with hundreds, thousands of human beings forced to remain inactive, which, for the professions of catering, entertainment, sales, fairgrounds, itinerants, canvassers, risks being catastrophic with bankruptcies, unemployment, depression, suicides by the hundreds of thousands. [25-26-27-28]

The impact on education, on our children, on teaching, on medicine with long planned care, operations, treatments to be cancelled, postponed, will be profound and destructive.

"We risk a looming food crisis if action is not taken quickly." [29].

It is time for everyone to come out of this negative trance, this collective hysteria , because famine, poverty, massive unemployment will kill, mow down many more people than SARS-CoV-2!

Does all this make sense in the face of a disease that is declining, over-diagnosed and misinterpreted by this misuse of overly sensitively calibrated PCR tests?

For many, the continuous wearing of the mask seems to have become a new norm.

Even if it is constantly downplayed by some health professionals and fact-checking journalists, other doctors warn of the harmful consequences, both medical and psychological, of this hygienic obsession which, maintained permanently, is in fact an abnormality!

What a hindrance to social relations, which are the true foundation of a physically and psychologically healthy humanity!

Some dare to find all this normal, or a lesser price to pay in the face of the pandemic of positive PCR tests.

Isolation, distancing, masking of the face, impoverishment of emotional communication, fear of touching and kissing even within families, communities, between relatives

Spontaneous gestures of daily life hindered and replaced by mechanical and controlled gestures

Terrified children, kept in permanent fear and guilt

All this will have a deep, lasting and negative impact on human organisms, in their physical, mental, emotional and representation of the world and society.

This is not normal!

We cannot let our rulers, for whatever reason, organize our collective suicide any longer.

Translated from French by Global Research. Original source: Mondialisation.ca

Dr Pascal Sacré is a physician specialized in critical care, author and renowned public health analyst, Charleroi, Belgium. He is a Research Associate of the entre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

****

Professionals whose references and comments are the basis of this article in its scientific aspect (especially and mainly on RT-PCR):

1) Hélène Banoun

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Helene_Banoun

PhD, Pharmacist biologist

Former INSERM Research Officer

Former intern at the Paris Hospitals

2) Pierre Sonigo

Virologist

Research Director INSERM, worked at the Pasteur Institute

Heads the Virus Genetics Laboratory in Cochin, Paris.

Participated in 1985 in the sequencing of the AIDS virus.

3) Christophe De Brouwer

PhD in Public Health Science

Honorary Professor at the School of Public Health at ULB, Belgium

4) Jean-François Toussaint

Doctor, Professor of Physiology at the University of Paris-Descartes

Director of IRMES, Institute for BioMedical Research and Sports Epidemiology

Former member of the High Council of Public Health

***

[Jan 22, 2021] Israel's Fauci Warns Pfizer's COVID Vaccine Only Half As Effective As Advertised

Jan 22, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

As we first pointed out on Wednesday, Israel - which has been leading the world in the race to vaccinate its entire (relatively small) population - is quickly learning that Pfizer's COVID-19 jabs aren't nearly as effective as the 95% efficacy rate advertised via the Phase 3 trial results released by the company and the FDA.

The chart below, first shared as part of Pfizer's Phase 3 trial data, suggested that there might be a short delay before immunity begins in patients who received the vaccne.

However, in Israel, health experts revealed yesterday that the immunity provided by the vaccine, especially during the initial weeks between the first and second dose, might be even lower than all that.

Because on Wednesday, Dr. Nachman Ash, better known to some as "Israel's Dr. Fauci", said the first batch of COVID jabs didn't increase immunity as much as they had hoped.

He told local media Army Radio that "many people have been infected between the first and second injections of the vaccine," adding that It can take 10 days or more for the immunity to kick in.

Of course, none of this is particularly unexpected. As we first reported three weeks ago , local media in Israel reported that hundreds of patients had been infected after receiving their first dose.

Israel also saw its fair share of patients with "adverse" health reactions, with one doctor even passing away shortly after receiving the first dose , as the country rushed to vaccinate its citizens with jabs that are still very much untested.

Meanwhile, in the US, Joe Biden and his administration are invoking wartime powers to secure supplies of critical raw materials needed for vaccine production, as a recent logistical slip-up ruined 21 shipments of the Moderna vaccine, forcing NYC to delay more than 20K jab appointments.


iambrambles 3 hours ago (Edited)

I must be the only one who read the Pfizer BioNTech docs.

Out of around 30,000 people, half were given vaccines and half placebos.

In the placebo population of 15,000, something like 130 got COVID

In the vaccination population of 15,000, something like 20 got COVID

The 95% is a complete and utter fabrication, made by comparing that 20 to the 130.....out of 30,000. We all know how Big PHarma cheats the system: they tailor the sample population. For example, if the placebo population was 90% >50yo/10% <50yo, and the vaccination population was 89% >50yo/11% <50yo, you would find that indeed, that 1% (150 people) could easily swing the result, when the result is:

99.3% placebo didnt get covid

99.93% vaccinated didnt get covid

Pandelis 3 hours ago

if that was true, dr. faucistein would have noticed it ...

iambrambles 2 hours ago (Edited)

Re-read the study. It was 44,000, and in total, out of 44,000, 180 got COVID (150 placebo to 30 vaccinated).

The first round of Pfizer vaccine was wholly ineffective, at 52%. They cherrypicked 94 individuals out of ths study to share the results, and after the second dose, the effectivity rate was 92%.

So in all, I dont think anyone noticed how ridiculous this vaccine is in the first place: if youre 99% likely to not even GET covid, why would you get a vaccine?

The second question is, why didnt Pfizer share results of specifically at danger groups, like those 55+ or with pre-existing conditions?

And it was 44,000 people across 152 countries....so the results are simply too prone to error to even be relevant. 44,000 and only 180 in total contracted COVID, how could you make heads or tails of the data?

[Jan 21, 2021] The short answer to both of these questions regarding the COVID-19 'casedemic' and the fallacy of asymptomatic PCR testing is YES and YES!

Jan 21, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

_arrow


xpxhxoxexnxixx 7 hours ago (Edited) remove link

The short answer to both of these questions regarding the COVID-19 'casedemic' and the fallacy of asymptomatic PCR testing is YES and YES!

The only answer was always yes. No one should be surprised that everyone in the political 'health sector' managed to delay or ignore any real science , not in the name of the truth mind you, but because of their opposition to the administration.

That's right, there's really no other way to put it. We had initial science, which in any movie script would have been that one moment where the 'nobody' scientist gets called into the Whitehouse to explain his life saving discovery. Instead, in our reality, those scientists were ridiculed and told they were either wrong, or the science wasn't accurate enough (never mind wanting to further support it so we could confirm or deny). These people played games in hopes of running out the clock.

Put yourself in an alternate role- if you were in a position to make official guidelines and recommendations and you realized there was science (mind you, people that spend their careers doing this) that said 'there is a good probability that doing xyz will save a life'..would you decide not to explore it? Would you decide not to share it with others?

Wonder what would have happened if let's say, the 'pandemic' would have occurred two years into presidency instead of the last 3/4 of it. Just throwing that out there for thought.

Now, when the dust settles, suddenly the WHO, Fauci and everyone else is willing to admit the science. I guess better late than never.

Give Me Some Truth 6 hours ago (Edited)

Plus, "new cases" are almost certainly going to plummet on their own . Reasons: We will soon leave the "cold land flu" season, fewer people will be tested, and the number of people who have already contracted the virus continues to grow. This means that the pool of people who could test positive in the future will be much smaller (because people who have already had the virus now have acquired natural immunity).

Bottom line: The coming huge decline in "new cases" will almost assuredly have nothing to do with the number of people who have received both doses of the vaccine.

Demologos 6 hours ago remove link

Masks are great for spreading viruses and bacterial infections unless strict protocols are followed. Remember last year when every news report on Covid ended with a segment on mask hygiene and proper fitting? Me neither.

Ajax_USB_Port_Repair_Service_ 8 hours ago (Edited)

The CT will be lowered AFTER 100 days of masks and then the Biden miracle happens.

Luci Feric 8 hours ago

* miracle

You're welcome!

Luci

Ajax_USB_Port_Repair_Service_ 8 hours ago

Thank you Luci. I knew that didn't look right.

Luci Feric 8 hours ago

You're welcome!

karzai_luver 9 hours ago

The WHO/NIH/CDC are political grifters.

The leaderships are political hacks.

Why they still have any cred is unreal.

They have been late wrong and lie forever.

The examples are too numerous to post here.

dark pools of soros 9 hours ago

same reason people still eat fast food... the flashy marketing

crow1234 9 hours ago

Here's my surprised face 😮

F all this ****!

Give Me Some Truth 9 hours ago

Excellent analysis and kudos for highlighting the key role of the PCR tests in establishing the narrative.

However, the key reason the PCR tests WILL be changed was not mentioned: This HAS to happen to "prove" that the vaccines "work."

Once the PCR tests are changed, cases will plummet by 90 percent. The "miracle vaccines" will get all the credit.

More importantly, by changing the PCR tests t his precludes the possibility of large numbers of people "testing positive" AFTER receiving two doses of the vaccine. This would not be good for the old credibility and trust of authorities and "public health officials" who have been pushing mass vaccination.

P.S. I still wonder if the tens of thousands of people in the vaccine trial weren't tested with PCR tests that had already been "adjusted." This would explain those "95 percent effective" claims.

tangent 9 hours ago

That is likely all true, but it has the ridiculous flaw of people with the vaccine still getting the same positive rates as those without the vaccine. Very funny! But then again, people don't seem to snap into reality when they learn the population is still going up same as last year and the year before that... very foolish thinking to think that is a pandemic.

[Jan 21, 2021] Right On Cue For Biden, WHO Admits High-Cycle PCR Tests Produce COVID False Positives - ZeroHedge

Notable quotes:
"... As a reminder, "cycle thresholds" (Ct) are the level at which widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test can detect a sample of the COVID-19 virus. The higher the number of cycles, the lower the amount of viral load in the sample; the lower the cycles, the more prevalent the virus was in the original sample. ..."
Jan 21, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Right On Cue For Biden, WHO Admits High-Cycle PCR Tests Produce COVID False Positives BY TYLER DURDEN THURSDAY, JAN 21, 2021 - 6:30

Were the 'conspiracy theorists' just proven right about the "fake rescue plan" for COVID? Did the 'science-deniers' just get confirmation that it was political after all ? The short answer to both of these questions regarding the COVID-19 'casedemic' and the fallacy of asymptomatic PCR testing is YES and YES!

We have detailed the controversy surrounding America's COVID "casedemic" and the misleading results of the PCR test and its amplification procedure in great detail over the past few months. As a reminder, "cycle thresholds" (Ct) are the level at which widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test can detect a sample of the COVID-19 virus. The higher the number of cycles, the lower the amount of viral load in the sample; the lower the cycles, the more prevalent the virus was in the original sample.

Numerous epidemiological experts have argued that cycle thresholds are an important metric by which patients, the public, and policymakers can make more informed decisions about how infectious and/or sick an individual with a positive COVID-19 test might be. However, as JustTheNews reports, health departments across the country are failing to collect that data .

In fact, as far back as October, we brought the world's attention to the COVID-19 "casedemic" and the disturbing reality of high-cycle threshold PCR tests being worse than useless as indicators of COVID-19 "sickness". PJMedia's Stacey Lennox said at the time:

Biden will issue national standards, like the plexiglass barriers in restaurants he spoke about during the debate, and pressure governors to implement mask mandates using the federal government's financial leverage.

Some hack at the CDC or FDA will issue new guidance lowering the Ct the labs use , and cases will magically start to fall.

In reality, the change will only eliminate false positives, but most Americans won't know that.

Good old Uncle Joe will be the hero, even though it is Deep-State actors in the health bureaucracies who won't solve a problem with testing they have been aware of for months. TDS is a heck of a drug.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=830

And now, as Lennox explains in detail below, we have been proved 100% correct as less than one hour after President Biden's inauguration, the WHO proved us right .

In August of last year, The New York Times published an article stating that as many as 90% of COVID-19 tests in three states were not indicative of active illness . In other words, they were picking up viral debris incapable of causing infection or being transmitted because the cycle threshold (Ct) of the PCR testing amplified the sample too many times.

Labs in the United States were using a Ct of 37-40. Epidemiologists interviewed at the time said a Ct of around 30 was probably more appropriate. This means the CDC's COVID-19 test standards for the PCR test would pick up an excessive number of false positives. The Times report noted the CDC's own data suggested the PCR did not detect live virus over a Ct of 33. The reporter also noted that clinicians were not receiving the Ct value as part of the test results.

Yet a PCR test instruction document from the CDC that had been revised five times as of July 13, 2020 , specified testing and interpretation of the test using a Ct of 40. On September 28, 2020, a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases from Jaafar et al. had asserted, based on patient labs and clinical data involving nearly 4,000 patients, that a Ct of 30 was appropriate for making public policy. An update to the CDC instructions for PCR testing from December 1, 2020 , still uses a Ct of 40.

Shortly before the New York Times article was published, the CDC revised its COVID-19 test recommendations , saying that only syptomatic patients should be tested . The media went insane, and Dr. Fauci went all over television saying he was not part of the decision to change the testing standards:

"I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is."

So, of course, the Mendacious Midget™ had spoken, and the guidelines went back to testing everyone, all the time, with an oversensitive test.

The idea that asymptomatic spread was a concern as of August was just one of many lies Dr. Fauci told. At the beginning of the pandemic in late January, he said:

The one thing historically that people need to realize is that even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there is a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.

There is not a single study or meta-analysis that differs from Fauci's original assessment.

Today, within an hour of Joe Biden being inaugurated and signing an executive order mandating masks on all federal property, the WHO sent out a notice to lab professionals using the PCR test . It said:

WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed ( 1 ).

The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient's viral load.

Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.

literally one hour after Biden takes the oath, the WHO admits that PCR testing at high amplification rates alters the predictive value of the tests and results in a huge number of false positives pic.twitter.com/iDtXmappRw

-- Andy Swan (@AndySwan) January 20, 2021

This translates to "in the absence of symptoms, a high Ct value means you are highly unlikely to become ill or get anyone else sick in the absence of very recent exposure to an infected person."

Dr. Fauci knew this in July when he said that tests with a Ct above 35 were likely picking up viral debris or dead virus .

Even at a Ct of 35, the incidence of virus samples that could replicate is very low, according to Jaafar et al.

The only state I know that requires reporting the Ct with every test is Florida, which started this policy in December .

The WHO went on, stating:

Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.

In short, a positive PCR test in the absence of symptoms means nothing at a Ct of higher than 30, according to the experts interviewed by the New York Times and according to Jaafar et al. Yet positive tests is the number CNN loves flashing on the screen.

If the percentage found by the Times in August holds, there have been approximately 2.43 million actual cases to date, not 24.3 million.

There is also no way to calculate the deaths from COVID-19 rather than deaths with some dead viral debris in the nostrils.

What I have referred to as the "casedemic" since September will be magically solved just in time for Joe Biden to look like a hero. For doing absolutely nothing.

Do not tell me there is not a politicized deep state in our health agencies. Do not ever tell me I need to listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci again. And every business owner who has been ruined because of lockdowns due to a high number of "cases" should be livid. Any parent whose child has lost a year of school should be furious.

None of this was for your health. It was to get rid of Orange Man Bad.

now they will drop the cycle rates and you can watch the curve go negative... like magic... because the new magic man isn't the bad man and the masks he ordered worked!!!!!

-- Andy Swan (@AndySwan) January 20, 2021

As an aside, this also clearly explains the disappearance of the "flu" during this season as the plethora of high Ct PCR Tests supposedly pointing to a surge in COVID are nothing of the sort.

As Stephen Lendman noted previously , claiming "lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks, (outbreaks) plummet(ting) by 98% in the United States" ignored that what's called COVID is merely seasonal influenza combined with false positives (extremely high Ct) from PCR-Tests.

And for that reason, the great 2020 disappearing flu passes largely under the mass media's radar. Media proliferated mass deception and the power of repetition get most people to believe and having successfully "killed the flu", they will now do the same with COVID... and, if allowed by our betters, we will all return to the new normal they desire.


Give Me Some Truth 5 hours ago remove link

The governor of Florida has proposed a law that is ingenious, or at least very important (if passed). He simply wrote into his proposed bill that labs have to disclose the cT levels in all "positive" COVID results.

He obviously put this language in the bill/regulations because he knew "public health officials" would try to continue to conceal this information.

If this law is enacted, we will learn WHEN the PCR tests were adjusted . We will then be able to see how the number of "positive cases" changes (read: declines significantly).

Here's hoping this law is enacted (with no loopholes) ... and that many more states enact the same legislation.

philipat 9 hours ago

Loved that banner at the Vienna protest last weekend "Make Infuenza Great Again"

Fed-up with being Sick and Tired 7 hours ago

...The CT standards have been all over the place and inconsistent. It became quite clear to my family and myself when we started readin: "ASYMPTOMATIC COVID cases surge" MONTHS AGO!

The smartest little kid in our family, a young Girl at age 15 and is a BIG fan of Biology and has decided that Virology will be her studies in college, said: "Daddy, is there a disease if there are no symptoms?"

NO ONE AROUND THE TABLE had a clear answer. There were attempts and then the press started talking: "YOU CAN CARRY COVID and not know it, so wear a mask!!!"

The ludicrous nature this entire charade started to unfold! SO, 40 degrees, you are not stupid, just ignorant of the facts.

Go out and do your own homework before you continue to act like an expert in Virology. YOU ARE NOT. We are all bystanders to a fraud perpetrated for nefarious reasons.

Boing_Snap 6 hours ago

Educated people know that these Tests were fake, the propaganda used was not for our consumption, just the masses whom are only looking at headlines, which is the majority of humanity.

Putting the manipulation of the tests together with a, heavens forbid a "Conspiracy Theory", kept the indoctrinated away from looking at it. So now that is changing, good.

The Indoctrinated are most of the population, they range across the spectrum, scholars and professionals included. Getting them to think for themselves will not be easy.

Oceania2020 6 hours ago (Edited)

Some of the dumbest words ever spoken...

"Google it".

checkessential 4 hours ago

At least FB and Twitter will prove that whatever you Google is true regardless of the facts.

meowmix105 6 hours ago (Edited)

You imbicile, here's a link along with the first two paragraphs from article_ https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-county-very-likely-flu-shots-covid-19-measures-keeping-influenza-cases-low

"So far this season, the county has recorded 39 influenza cases, compared to 1,220 cases at this point last season. Flu season generally runs from October through May, with flu activity peaking in December and February. The county says it's "very likely" physical distancing, hand washing, and mask-wearing are contributing to the low flu activity".

As Fed-up with being Sick and Tired stated - you've got to be absolutely clueless and or completely ignorant to not see these idiotic and contradictory statements by the San Diego county health dept.....

When the noble coronavirus is the common flu virus to begin with! Yet, there's record number of people getting covid all while having historically low cases of the flu _ thanks to the masks! 🤯🤯 wake up ffs

xpxhxoxexnxixx 5 hours ago

So then how would you explain the inability for the WHO, Fauci and anyone else in that club not using the publicly available data since April, as you said, and revising the way we test and measure 'cases'? Biden would never go against the media lol so unless you have a link gtfo.

MrBoompi 4 hours ago

This is a straw man argument. No diagnostic test like this is 100% accurate and nobody would ever make such a stupid claim. But what if someone had, accurately, stated that the pcr test is 5% accurate?

THIS IS TRUE

Ophiuchus PREMIUM 9 hours ago

Do you think they will admit Building 7 was a controlled demolition?

Dash8 6 hours ago

There's nothing left of it, it was all shipped to china with the rest of the evidence...

Ophiuchus PREMIUM 9 hours ago (Edited)

Do you think they will admit that powerful politicians in America are controlled by sex with young children?

They will never admit to anything.

All politicians in positions of power, rape and murder children. Lin Wood knows. Start there.............

"Referring to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert as a "serial child molester", a federal judge imposed a sentence of 15 months in prison, two years' supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. Hastert was imprisoned in 2016 and was released 13 months later." --- Why not 15 years? When politicians in D.C. get caught raping children, it's a slap on the wrist.

Suzy Q 8 hours ago

I have not researched this at all and cannot verify any of it, but here it is

https://steverotter.com/arrests-and-executions-of-famous-people-2020/

Except, I have looked at the part about wrinkled flags. I can only go so far down the rabbit hole before I have to stop.

JRobby 7 hours ago (Edited)

Yea, just post it anyway. You are probably safe in a secure area.

There are at least 7 or 8 major Psy Ops running right now not to mention hundreds of minor ones.

Suzy Q 2 hours ago

There are things that cannot be unseen and I'd prefer not to see those things.

daveO 30 minutes ago (Edited)

"G5 said many other people are going to face justice, but only one will have a public trial -- John Brennan, the Anti-Trump American intelligence official who served as the Director of the CIA from March 2013 to January 2017. He will have a public trial, and if convicted, will be hanged."

If so, I hope the hanging is televised.

"Some find it difficult to believe that McCain and GHWB were executed. What is the point of killing a dying person?
The point is they cannot escape by retiring, resigning or living out. What they have done remains, and their families are also demonized. The audience is SPECIFICALLY for DEEP STATE."

This would explain Beijing Biden's inauguration with 200K flags and no civilians.

Livingston 7 minutes ago

A Pay-Per-View of John Brennan being hanged would be a huge money maker. Could probably balance the budget singlehandedly!

daveO 38 minutes ago

Bingo! It's why Hunter fled Delaware to marry a "movie producer" in May, 2019.

philipat 8 hours ago

No, that's not how these things work. You NEVER admit anything, just bury the facts, censor as much as possible (to control the narrative) and stick to the official narrative always no matter how discredited or ridiculous it may be. In fact, the strategy is "If you can't win the debate don't have the debate".

And BTW, not only Building 7

Hal n back 7 hours ago (Edited)

Look at your car insurance card. After an accident, do not admit you were wrong.

for that, because of frivilous lawsuts there ends up being unnecessary settlement by insurers to avoid trial.

the plaintiffs and attys usually avoid a counter suit so they have no problem

The legal system has many issues.

and congress has a lot of lawyers.

Dear Old Hedge 6 hours ago

And the others may have been George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic, or Project Blue Beam, or something related: https://newspunch.com/cia-pilot-presents-evidence-that-no-planes-hit-towers-on-911/

Would anything really surprise anyone at this point?

JethroBodine_ 5 hours ago (Edited)

Never ever believe anything the CIA says. Everything they say is a limited hangout.

Planes hit the towers but certainly were not the cause of three sky scrappers falling at near free fall speed, symmetrically and into their own footprint.

That said, a jumbo jet did not hit the pentagon!

systemsplanet 8 hours ago

One day people who rushed out to inject the covid vaccine will begin to question what the hell they just injected in their arm.

deadcat2 8 hours ago

The kind of sheep that do that are the sort that complain if there are no lamb chops for dinner.

prairie oysters PREMIUM 7 hours ago

There is (I hope) a very clever metaphor buried in "lamb chops."

Giant Meteor 6 hours ago

Lambs get slaughtered .. eaten

Or placed in petting zoos

SwmngwShrks 5 hours ago

Its a Simpsons reference..."D'Oh!"

JRobby 7 hours ago

No THEY won't

EVER

Same reason they do this totally obvious $h!t.

GreatUncle 7 hours ago

We can only hope we get too hang people for the "intentional" 1st degree murder of 1000's.

Sick Monkey 7 hours ago

The flu is one of many infectious diseases. It's like we traveled through space and landed on a planet that has only two infectious diseases. They focus on those two like some sort of marketing campaign. A gold mine for big tech. Get your shot today! Call now and we'll throw in another 2 of your choice. Buy one and get another two for free. Limited time offer.

Marla Singer 9 hours ago

When you think about the lengths the permanent fusion party had to go to to get their candidate over the finish line: constant media bombardment against Trump, nation wide lockdowns, social media blackouts, election fraud, false flag events, and a militarized inauguration, I have to imagine it's a pretty fragile win.

camel717 6 hours ago

This is what I've been trying to tell people. After everything the democrats, celebrities pandering, media etc. did to keep Trump out, as well as the mail in ballots (which, if didn't happen, Trump would've won in a landslide) did to help Biden win, he barely ******* won. HE BARELY WON.

It was made out to look like the entire world was against Trump and he still won sans fraud and mail in ballots.

The future isn't as bleak as people think. There will be another red wave in 2022 I suspect, unless mail ins continue to be the norm which democrats certainly will try because it's their only path to victory at this point.

Iron Lady 1 hour ago

Xiden's inauguration video on commietube had 16,000 down votes and 4,000 up votes last I checked. The views were very low.

Trump's farewell at Andrews had 800,000 views in real time at RSBN.

Cautiously Pessimistic 9 hours ago

It has not even been a full 24hrs since Biden was sworn in and already the shenanigans have started. Once again, Trump, his administration and that small part of the press that still has journalistic integrity is proven right. This was predicted. It will be interesting to see what else moves from the conspiracy theory to the CONSPIRACY FACT column over the next days and weeks.

Crash N. Burn 8 hours ago

Time to file a writ of quo warranto? From constitution.org :

" A writ of quo warranto is not a petition, but a notice of demand, issued by a demandant, to a respondant claiming some delegated power, and filed with a court of competent jurisdiction, to hold a hearing within 3 to 20 days, depending on the distance of the respondant to the court, to present proof of his authority to execute his claimed powers. If the court finds the proof insufficient, or if the court fails to hold the hearing, the respondant must cease to exercise the power. If the power is to hold an office, he must vacate the office.

The writ is unlike a petition or motion to show cause, because the burden of proof is on the respondant, not on the demandant. "

Could be highly entertaining.

Ophiuchus PREMIUM 8 hours ago

It matters not as it will never be covered by the controlled media.

thunderchief 9 hours ago

Scamdemic. Enough said.

GreatUncle 7 hours ago

I prefer to view it as a tool.

The virus was intentionally released to create the desired effect and it was equally useful to get rid of Trump at the same time.

Still think vaccine id - digital id - digital currency and the economic lock for the globalists is the end game to usher in the great reset where everybody will be made a slave.

Even now more and more Karen's are pushing for everybody to be forced vaccinated or excluded from society where they will die a lingering economic death.

Walter Melon 7 hours ago

Up vote - who here knew this was going to happen a year ago?

AAA 7 hours ago

Not a whole year ago but atleast a couple of months :)

Hal n back 7 hours ago

It started when singapore reported its ct was 35. Not 40.

vealparm 1 hour ago

You can research my posts here....I was proclaiming the "ConVid-19 scam" way back in the early spring.

I am 77 and have been around the block a few times with lying lawyers and politicians, I called Fauci an actor/operative the second time I saw him and hear his spiel. The more I learned about him and his past left me with no doubt.

We have all lived a dystopian tyranny for the past year engineered by world wide hard Leftists.

Neil Patrick Harris 9 hours ago

Sure the timing is suspect but I doubt they will suddenly lift lockdowns and let us go back to normal. This is about much more than removing Trump, it's The Great Reset.

Ophiuchus PREMIUM 8 hours ago

I call it the 'Great Extermination'.

Suzy Q 8 hours ago

de Blahsio is demanding NYC reopen, as if it was the business owners that demanded the shut down. What a clown

philipat 8 hours ago

Yes agreed, Covid was a cover vehicle which allowed various different agendas to be implemented simultaneously. Primarily the Global financial Reset. And since they are still not ready with that, the covid scam will have to be extended for a good amount of time yet (At least another 12-18 months). That is why the "beaking news" about mutations to more deadly strains which will require new measures, new vaccines etc (Except that, just by magic, the existing vaccines still work just fine against the existing mutations so the vaccination campaign can continue. But they seemingly already are able to predict that the future mutant strains will not and will require new vaccines. More gravy for big pharma, more controls etc.)

Unknown User 1 hour ago

They want to issue electronic documents and money to control all movement and activity of the entire world.

OutWithLibs 7 hours ago (Edited)

Passed a line of cars yesterday waiting for the control vaccine. No less than 4 miles long, undoubtedly several hours in their cars. Upon completing errands I returned the same way and the line was disbursing. Apparently the county ran out of shots. People are so scared they'll wait in line for something that is not known to cure anything, caused death after injection, invented faster than any vaccine in history and has never had trials. The control is almost complete. Just add vaccination certificates to shop, buy gas, go see grandma, and the communism will be complete.

CaMuPaSh 9 hours ago (Edited)

You know it's about over when:

Astra-Zeneca mfg. facility in India is burning down (today).

Astra-Zeneca mfg. facility in Wales is in danger of flooding (today).

Pfizer (a Rothschild Co. thanks to E. Macron) has fizzled.

Sputnik (RU) is being accepted by an increasing number of countries. EU, ME SA

Mutti Merkle is going for Sputnik.

...and the U.S.?

....a distant last.

The only thing selling in the ussa is masks (made in CN) for the next 100 days.

Oh, the days of reconciliation and roses are upon us with a vengeance.

Suzy Q 8 hours ago

Explosion

https://welovetrump.com/2020/12/23/unexplained-explosion-destroys-worlds-second-largest-hydroxychloroquine-raw-material-factory/

steve golf 8 hours ago

Who needs a vaccine really?

GreatUncle 7 hours ago

Not a vaccine more like gene therapy if it does not use any of the viral component in it.

So you have the gene therapy but you will still catch the virus the intent is for your body to have been mutated to switch on your immune system more violently to fight it.

Thing is that response is not going to be good for some folks as the response itself puts pressure on your body just like the virus.

Virus does not kill you the symptomatic response does.

LA_Goldbug 6 hours ago

The lady's English is not perfect, but the information is very valuable,

https://www.bitchute.com/video/hvtMOdAKeAzh/

GoldmanSax 8 hours ago

We told you there was no pandemic. We kept reporting there were no deaths around us and some posters kept arguing we were covid holocaust deniers. We were right and you were a shill for an evil agenda.

The world is under attack. Most governments are onboard. Why do you need a vaccine passport for a pandemic that never happened?

youngman 8 hours ago

because of the money involved.....billions of dollars for the drug companies

Bob Lidd 8 hours ago

it's all about control at this point.......

steve golf 8 hours ago (Edited)

fake vaccination certificates will be easy to print. Problem is getting it on the database, if there is one, and there will be, but will airlines check the database or just look at the certificate?

Cobb 8 hours ago

If only there was a digital certificate or better yet a way to insert a gel into the skin that could provide pertinent data when scanned.

toejam 2 hours ago

What are you talking about? The vaccine is to kill or maim you. How is this not understood?

pods 8 hours ago

Is anyone shocked? 100 days of diapers combined with a million or so vaccine shots and voila, gone by spring.

Nobody will hang. The machine will roll on until the next financial blowup. Then probably aliens will cause us to print 20 trillion more in debt.

We are Rome, circa 470 AD.

buzzsaw99 8 hours ago

Nobody will hang...

we might hang if we complain about it long enough.

Indelible Scars 8 hours ago

It's hard to believe that people are still falling for this AT ALL.

NIRP-BTFD 8 hours ago

Humanity reached peak stupidity.

AlphaDawg 8 hours ago (Edited)

Hands up, in Feb, March I was worried. An engineered P4 lab CCP virus.

By April, after saying wait for next 2 weeks a couple of times, I realised it was a complete SCAM.

Not to mention the supression of Hydroxy and airports open.

GreatUncle 7 hours ago

Same ... the reality though never became what was being reported so by end of April I started having very serious doubts over it. Then the more you learned it became to obvious this was a hoax "lethal" virus although the virus may exist.

Then you find out that most who actually died were unfit overweight with existing medical condition to me implies there is a virus but not dangerous to many people.

Now the majority of the population in society because of the Karen's are now incarcerated by unfit overweight people with 2 or more comorbidities.

No-Go zone 6 hours ago

... that sheeple ...

Lanka 9 hours ago

The false positives of the PCR tests were known 6 months ago. Historically, ZH would have reported that in timely fashion. Another failure of ZH, cow-towing to the MSM.

NIRP-BTFD 9 hours ago

ZH are opportunistic money makers. They got paid of to do covid propaganda early on.

deadcat2 8 hours ago

Not true. I've read number of articles on ZH saying the PCR test was producing false positives and posters like me have been saying this from the very beginning. I suggest you read Lew Rockwell's site if you want a really good insight into the covid farce.

BaNNeD oN THe RuN 6 hours ago (Edited)

There are multiple Tylers reporting multiple POVs.

There is "Wuhan Lab" Tyler, who was dominant at the start.
There is "Daily Case Count" Tyler (similar to MSM).
There is "Covid Conspiracy" Tyler (this article)
There are republished 3rd party blogs.

ImpliedVol 2 hours ago

ZH has been reporting on PCR tests. The first article about it was posted in March of 2020.

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/can-we-trust-covid-19-test-what-you-need-know-about-elisa-and-rna-tests

Try paying attention next time.

Mr. Belding 6 hours ago

masks stopped all other flu but not covid. It takes a ****** commie to believe that.

TRM 5 hours ago

It's the longer name man. You know that 0.1 micron "influenza" is stopped but the 0.1 micron "covid-19" isn't. It's all those extra letters in the name that masks, distancing & lockdowns work on.

HANGTHEOWL 7 hours ago

"Were the 'conspiracy theorists' just proven right about the "fake rescue plan" for COVID?"

We are not conspiracy theorists,,,we are people telling you the truth,,,,,,

Notice even when they have to admit we were right,,they try to demonize us at the same time,,,,,,

uchibenkei 6 hours ago

yeah. were the conspiracy theorists right? why not ask "were the mainstreamers lying this whole time?"

HANGTHEOWL 6 hours ago

egg-zactly,,,,,,

deadcat2 8 hours ago

I'm in the UK (a cesspit on the edge of Europe) and I've been asking from the start, including emailing members of parliament, who decided that the PCR test should be amplified 45 times? Was it a government minister, some committee of scientists, or the laboratories themselves? WHO MADE THE DECISION to amplify the PCR test 45 times and why? The creator of the test, Kerry Mullis, stated that it should never be amplified more than 30 times. He even said the PCR test wasn't suitable to test for an infection either.

Had the test been limited to 30 times, there would have been next to no 'cases' as they are called and perfectly healthy people with no symptoms would not find themselves under house arrest in their millions.

Stinkbug 1 8 hours ago

And where is Kerry Mullis now, when we need him? Dead. A couple of months after exposing Fauci publicly, died at age 56 of 'pneumonia'.

Parasiticfilth 2 hours ago (Edited)

So if COVID is so contagious, why do they have to go all the way up your nasal cavity, almost to your brain to get a sample?

Shouldn't there be samples everywhere?

I mean apparently the virus spreads faster than Kamala Harris' legs.

HANGTHEOWL 2 hours ago

That is just another part of this hoax that does not make sense,,,,,,if you dig into the history of virology,,you find the same nonsense time and time again,,,,,take rabies for instance,,,they say that rabies is transmitted by the saliva of the animal when it bites you,,,,but they have to kill the animal and check the brain to actually see if it had rabies,,,,,,why not just test the saliva,,,???,,why,,,??,,because rabies is just another fraud,,,,

duck_fur 2 hours ago

I'd never put those two things together. You're right. Why not test the saliva since it was the alleged vector of transmission? That really does not make sense.

HANGTHEOWL 1 hour ago

Many years ago,,I read an old study from some university they did back in the early 40's,,maybe even 30's,,,where they took the heads of dogs that had died from natural causes,,and sent them in to be tested for rabies,,,,they came back positive,,,,it seems what they test for in the brain as a marker for rabies,,,is also found in healthy brains,,,,,,it is just another one of the fraud Louis Pasteur's scams,,,

duck_fur 2 hours ago

Hehe...that's funny right there. Upvote for you.

WesternCommunity 2 hours ago

Heels Up Harris. Pulled herself up by her kneepads, with the ugly looks like a polished turd Willie Brown, Speaker of the Calffornia State Assembly.

Cobb 8 hours ago

Day 2 of Biden regime and he's still a huge POS.

Smokey PREMIUM 8 hours ago

Getting huger by the hour

Farmerz 6 hours ago

Trump was stupid not to fire this Fauci guy, another Clinton lapdog.

Eric Post 6 hours ago

Fauci is civil service, it doesn't not come under any president to fire him.

Farmerz 6 hours ago

We all read the tweets Fauci wrote "fawning" over Clinton here on ZH months ago. At minimum, Trump could have brought out a different face explaining the test cycle standard the CDC was using. Could have been mentioned at the debates. Wasn't.

Trump just didn't do his homework.

Iron Lady 1 hour ago

Please. If Trump had pushed back at all they would have just called him a science denier like they do the rest of us.

Red Corvair 6 hours ago

Trump is not part of the establishment, but he was part of the game all along. He never drained that swamp. And look and behold, that swamp is more alive and kicking than ever.

Hoss N. Pfeffer 4 hours ago

And now after defeating Trump the alligators are emboldened, aggressive, and hungry.

Everybody All American 6 hours ago

Dr. Fauci was brought to the fore by none other than Mike Pence I do beilieve.

Reaper 6 hours ago

Everything the government says is a lie.

Voice_of_Doom 6 hours ago

Just goes to show you the amazing power the globalist have and how well organized they are.

LA_Goldbug 6 hours ago

They own the Media and the Politicians !!!!

scytalerules 6 hours ago

"globalists" "chicoms" lol

George Bayou 6 hours ago

They still can't prove effectiveness of masks but continue to swear by them.

convid21 7 hours ago

Even with a CT of 30, your still going to get 50% false positives

At 15 you'd get some Negatives but not many false Positives.

This test should not be used it's not accurate, not reliable and not fit for purpose.

It's doesn't have any science in it all.

The Governments are only using this to invoke fear in the Public by finding False Positives.

In their view it's better to find more than less, and more leads to lockdowns which demands a VAXX.

Which means the VAXX is a result of Fraud.

Pair Of Dimes Shift 7 hours ago

The nasal test is QUANTITATIVE not QUALITATIVE.

Completely useless for the application.

Even the antibody test isn't 100% because not everybody produces IgG all of the time when an infection is present.

LA_Goldbug 6 hours ago

More about this here,

https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1350162790569402368

T.Gracchus 1 hour ago

Covid 19 is not a disease, or a virus.

It is a political football.

Anyone who believes in it is a paid-for moron, or maybe just a common or garden idiot.

Obamanism666 2 hours ago

Start wearing the mask or 2 masks then go up to Karens and lambast them for only one mask. The mask is also good for hiding your mouth when doing sheep sounds...... drive the Karens crazy.

Made sheep sounds on the subway today, 5 People got really upset.

Could be even better that wearing a MAGA hat to trigger them.

If caught just say "well if I act like a sheep, I might as well sound like one"

WesternCommunity 1 hour ago

"Biiiddddeennnn!Biiiddddeennnn! Kaahhhhmmmaaallllaaaaa...."

Dogspurt 1 hour ago

Go lick the live rail, dumbass!

Tigbits 1 hour ago

You appear to be the last remaining covidtard troll in the group downvoting everyone. Soon, you will be out of a job trolling on here. 🤣🤣🤪🤪

Klaus Smith 6 hours ago

Creepy Joe just inaugurated and Covid disappears. YES! That's the hero we need! Hail Biden!

Space-Time Continuum 7 hours ago (Edited)

All thanks to the most popular president of all times, as we've seen all those million people there at the inauguration cheering for him.

Pro_sanity 1 hour ago

It still sucks to be vindicated. Plus it was so obvious. Anyone who didn't see through this from very early on is a total nit wit who shouldn't be allowed to even drive a car.

Shirley Yugest 6 hours ago

There is no covid-19 pandemic. There is only covid-19 panic. The reason for this is the "DEM" in panDEMic is now in the WH.

9-Month Cycle 7 hours ago

We knew that last year. The inventor himself let everybody know what was up with AIDS testing in Africa years ago. Run it over and over and over and everybody is positive.

Come on, man!! David Icke.... Alex Jones..... do you not gather information online? Only watch the boob tube?

Pair Of Dimes Shift 7 hours ago

Welcome to what some of us knew 6 months ago, normie sheep!

[Jan 20, 2021] Those healthcare workers know their system. They're not stupid.

Jan 20, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jan 19 2021 14:44 utc | 149

Health workers refusing vaccine is new growing US problem

According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 29 percent of those who work in a health care delivery setting said they would probably not, or definitely would not, take the vaccine, even if it were free and deemed safe by scientists.

Experts say the reasons for vaccine hesitancy among health workers are similar to concerns held by the general population, including worries about potential side effects. Some may also be taking a wait-and-see approach to find out how the vaccine affects people who take it earlier.

"I am definitely concerned that health care workers are electing to wait to get vaccinated," said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Those healthcare workers know their system. They're not stupid.

[Jan 20, 2021] Hacked emails allegedly detail how EU drug regulator was pressured to approve Pfizer jab despite 'problems' with the vaccine

Jan 20, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jan 18 2021 18:07 utc | 110

Hacked emails allegedly detail how EU drug regulator was pressured to approve Pfizer jab despite 'problems' with the vaccine

vk , Jan 18 2021 18:11 utc | 111

In the article @ 109:
According to Le Monde, the hacked documents primarily detail issues that the EMA had with the Pfizer/BioNTech drug. The regulator apparently had three "major issues" with the vaccine: certain manufacturing sites used for its production had not yet been inspected, data on batches produced for commercial use were still missing, and, most importantly, available data revealed qualitative differences between the commercial batches and those used during clinical trials.

Those worries confirm my fears over those mRNA vaccines: there's an abyss that separates theory from practice, and another abyss after that that separates practice from manufacturing, in medical/biological sciences. The human body is not your average machine: it is millions of times more complex.

And those worries are purely practical. Even the theory behind the mRNA therapy/vaccine is still far from complete; the field of epigenetics is still very young, a little more than ten years old, and there's a lot to investigate.

gm , Jan 18 2021 16:46 utc | 101

Re: vk | Jan 18 2021 12:58 utc | 89

Moderna and Pfizer mRNA products UNDER US Law, are mislabeled; they do not fit the legal definition for being vaccines.

They are *experimental synthetic gene therapy/chemotherapy agents*, according to this MD/JD person:

https://www.bitchuteDOTcom/video/AuvhMTMoby41/

( Replace "DOT" with "." in link)

And Pfizer is being sued for using the patented fluorescent 'reporter gene' *mNeonGreen* in their mRNA drug process w/o being licenced.

[Jan 19, 2021] Three critical video

Their first about PcR tests pretty educational.
Jan 19, 2021 | www.unz.com

[Jan 17, 2021] Personal social distancing alarms 'no jab, no job' show that individual freedoms at work will be the next victims of Covid

Jan 17, 2021 | www.rt.com


Sort by Best


Gaius_Marius 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 01:32 PM

No proof that those deaths were solely attributed to a respiratory virus. It is suspected at best.
Ellen77 Gaius_Marius 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 09:08 PM
The portuguese court ruled that When running PCR tests with 35 cycles or more – the accuracy dropped to 3%, meaning up to 97% of positive results could be false positives.
AwareAussie Gaius_Marius 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 05:09 PM
But there is proof that_death_stats have been_faked, that the_alleged virus is not as_dangerous as they promote, that_there is another_agenda behind_lockdowns, etc etc. I also suspect that this crazy_boss_story is another bigpsyop, as it would likely be an exceedingly rare event to take measures such as those mentioned. In any case I'd_quit on the_spot if any employer tried that with me.
oddthinker 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 02:14 PM
Nuremburg Code provisions of informed consent are international law. Neither government bodies and agencies, or private and public employers may coerce you into accepting the role of a long term trial subject for an experimental drug. Agency and free will is yours to refuse that drug.
AMstone oddthinker 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 11:32 PM
Unit 731 was never disbanded, just relocated.
V.B. 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 08:53 PM
the covid hoax is absolute madness, it must be stopped, it's rapidly spiraling into something worse than north korea, worse than worst sharia countries, people are losing all their freedoms, are being fined massively for noncrimes, medical experiments are done on people without their full consent, how this madness can go on for this long is beyond me, are people really that dumb? This isn't black death, it isn't even remotely close, some very old, very sick people probably died a few month earlier, yes it's bad, no it's not excuse to destroy world, kill economies, stop all other medical care - measures that will kill way more than covid-19(84) ever will Average covid victim in UK is 82.4 year old, and that's above average life expetency in UK, according to many studies anywhere between 96 and 99% of people who supposedly died of covid had co-morbidities - meaning they were seriously sick even before catching it It's absolute farce, and the biggest hoax, biggest evil joke in history. Besides they tried it before in 2009 with the swine flu, it was very much similar to this, there was also rushed vaccine that had bad side effects, massive corruption that enabled it got exposed and it faded into obscurity but people never learned.
V.B. V.B. 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 09:00 PM
You should present facts to all your mоrоn friends who still support this hoax, if they can't make a case for their support (which is not possible if you follow all facts anyway) - and they still refuse to admit they are wrong then stop talking to them, you are indirectly helping to support this hoax by being friends and supporting people who support useless and harmful covid measures like lockdowns and masks, sacrafices must be made otherways you will lose all, you are already losing all, you can't even meet thos іdіоts anymore in much of the Western world and beyond with all the curfews and ban on visits. I am already doing the very thing - I presented clear facts, clear logic to one of my long term half-friends and he refused to budge even one inch, all his arguments boiled down to calling me 'conspiracy theorist' and refusing to even admit possibility that goverments might have gone rogue or fallen for the hoax themselves. However during the discussion I uncovered that he is a secret leftist, he never talked about his political views, but this discussion forced out certain facts that revealed that he has leftist poltical views despite being reasonably wealthy bussinessman, and you would think it's the proletariat that support socialism...
SavantMan 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 04:59 PM
We need to instill fear in the people who make these decisions. I think the time has come for there to be actual repercussions for these pieces of you know what.
AwareAussie SavantMan 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 05:22 PM
The solution is both peaceful and lawful. Revert back to common law (the highest laws of the lands edit: dating back to the Magna Carta), convene common law courts and juries, and hold those traitors and criminals accountable. This is what happened in the last American civil war, but it is well hidden. It is coming back now very fast. Research it and get on board right now.
HappyBag 2 days ago 14 Jan, 2021 08:08 PM
I read that about the plumbing firm, well that's easily resolved, the plumbers can go self employed. I would certainly never work for an employer that dictated my health or demanded my records. Then the public can then make their own choice on who does their work - a barmy boss who dictates mandatory vaccinations (what next, no smokers and nobody who has the odd beer?), or a normal person?

[Jan 14, 2021] 19% or 95%? US expert challenges Pfizer vaccine's efficacy, triggers debates in China

Jan 14, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Jan 14 2021 15:39 utc | 9

19% or 95%? US expert challenges Pfizer vaccine's efficacy, triggers debates in China

[Jan 11, 2021] COVID Gone Crazy - An Epidemic Of 'Positive' Tests

Jan 11, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by John Hunt, M.D. via InternationalMan.com,

In the setting of COVID-19, almost every country in the world closed its borders, locked down its citizens, and forced businesses to close. Today, most governments still restrict travel, economic activity, and social gatherings.

The justification for these unprecedented measures has been a growing number of COVID-19 cases. This has unleashed an epidemic of COVID testing - with PCR and rapid antigen tests as the means of identifying positive COVID cases. Our very own Dr. John Hunt examines the science behind COVID testing, whether the testing paradigms are effective, and the rationality behind government response to the virus.

What COVID tests mean and don't mean

RT-PCR tests can be designed to be highly sensitive to the presence of the original viral RNA in a clinical sample. But a highly sensitive test risks poor specificity for actual infectious disease.

Rapid antigen tests are different. They measure viral protein. They do so by reacting a clinical sample with one or two lab-created antibodies that are labeled with a measurable marker. These antigen tests are often poorly specific, meaning they can show as positive in the absence of any actual viral protein or any COVID disease.

For a lab test, what does it mean to be sensitive ? What does it mean to be specific ?

I'll use COVID to help explain these terms. In order to do this correctly, we need to avoid using the language of the media and government because those institutions tend to mislead us via language manipulation. For example, they've wrongly taught us that a COVID-positive test is synonymous with COVID- disease. It isn't, as you will soon see.

So for this article, I will use the term "Relevant Infectious COVID Disease" to mean a condition, caused by COVID-19, in which a patient is sickened by the virus or has (in their airways) living replicating virus capable of being transmitted to others. This seems a fair definition of what we should be caring about in this disease. If the patient isn't sick and isn't capable of transmitting the disease, then any COVID RNA or protein that may appear in a test is not relevant, nor infectious, and therefore of little to no consequence.

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You can think of a test's sensitivity like this: In a group of 100 people who absolutely have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many people does the test actually report as "positive?" For a test that is 95% sensitive, 95 of these 100 patients with the true disease will be reported by the test as COVID positive and 5 will be missed.

Specificity : In a group of 100 people who absolutely do not have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many will be reported by the test as "negative?" For a test that is 95% specific, 95 of these healthy people will be reported as COVID-negative and 5 will be incorrectly reported as COVID-positive

Sensitivity and Specificity are inherent characteristics of a test, not of a patient, not of a disease, and not of a population. These terms are very different than Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and Negative Predictive Value (NPV). PPV and NPV are affected not only by the test's sensitivity and specificity but also by the characteristics of the people chosen to be tested and, particularly, the patients' underlying likelihood of actually having true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. The Positive Predictive Value -- the chance a positive test actually indicates a true disease -- is greatly improved if you test people who are likely to have COVID, and, importantly, avoid testing people unlikely to have COVID.

If you do a COVID test with 95% sensitivity and 95% specificity in 1,000 patients who are feverish, have snot pouring out of their noses, are coughing profusely, and are short of breath, then you are using that test as a diagnostic test in people who currently have a reasonable up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. Let's say 500 of them do actually have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, and the others have a common cold. This 95% sensitive test will correctly identify 475 of these people who are truly ill with COVID as being COVID-positive, and it will miss 25 of them. This same test is also 95% specific, which means it will falsely label 25 of the 500 non-COVID patients as COVID-positive. Although the test isn't perfect it has a Positive Predictive Value of 95% in this group of people, and is a pretty good test overall .

But what if you run this very same COVID test on everyone in the population? Let's guesstimate that the up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID in the US at this moment is about 0.5% (suggesting that 5 out of 1000 people currently have the actual transmittable disease right now, which is a high estimate). How does this same 95% sensitive/95% specific test work in this screening setting? The good news is that this test will likely identify the 5 people out of every 1000 with Relevant Infectious COVID! Yay! The bad news is that, out of every 1000 people, it will also falsely label 50 people as COVID-positive who don't have Relevant Infectious COVID. Out of 55 people with positive tests in each group of 1000 people, 5 actually have the disease. 50 of the tests are false positives. With a Positive Predictive Value of only 9%, one could say that's a pretty lousy test. It's far lousier if you test only people with no symptoms (such as screening a school, jobsite, or college), in whom the up-front likelihood of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease is substantially lower.

The very same test that is pretty good when testing people who are actually ill or at risk is lousy when screening people who aren't.

In the first scenario (with symptoms), the test is being used correctly for diagnosis. In the second scenario (no symptoms), the test is being used wrongly for screening .

A diagnostic test is used to diagnose a patient the doctor thinks has a reasonable chance of having the disease (having symptoms like fever, cough, a snotty nose, and shortness of breath during a viral season).

A screening test is used to check for the presence of a disease in a person without symptoms and no heightened risk of having the disease.

A screening test may be appropriate to use when it has very high specificity (99% or more), when the prevalence of the disease in the population is pretty high, and when there is something we can do about the disease if we identify it. However, if the prevalence of a disease is low (as is the case for Relevant Infectious COVID) and the test isn't adequately specific (as is the case with PCR and rapid antigen tests for the COVID virus), then using such a test as a screening measure in healthy people is forcing the test to be lousy. The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues.

Our health authorities are recommending more testing of asymptomatic people. In other words, they are encouraging the wrong and lousy application of these tests. Our health officials are doing what a first-year medical student should know better than to do. It's enough of a concerning error that it leaves two likely conclusions:

1) that our leading government health officials are truly incompetent and/or

2) that we, as a nation, are being intentionally gaslighted/manipulated. Or it could be both.

(Another conclusion you should consider is that my analysis of these tests is incorrect. I'm open to a challenge.)

So what if you, as an individual, get a positive PCR test result (one that has 95% specificity) without having symptoms of COVID-19 or recent exposure to a true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease patient? What do you do? Well, with that positive test, your risk of having COVID has just increased from less than 5 in 1,000 (the general population risk) to about somewhere perhaps 5 in 55 (the risk of actual Relevant Infectious COVID Disease in asymptomatic people with a COVID-19-positive test). That's an 18-fold increase in risk, amounting to a 9% risk of you having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease (or a 91% chance of you being totally healthy). That may be a relevant increase in risk in your mind, enough that you choose to avoid exposing your friends and family to your higher risk compared to the general population. But if the government spends resources to contact-trace you, then they are contact-tracing 91% of people uselessly. And they are deciding whether to lock us down based on the wrong notion that COVID-positive tests in healthy people are epidemiologically accurate when indeed they are mostly wrong.

For the 50 asymptomatic low-risk people falsely popping positive out of each group of 1,000, what makes them pop positive? For a rapid antigen test, it is because the test is never meant for use as a screening test in healthy asymptomatic people because it's not specific enough. For a PCR test, positivity confidently means that there was COVID RNA in that sample, sure, but your nose or mouth very likely just filtered some dead bits of viral debris from the dust particles in the air as you walked through CVS to get the test before you learned you were supposed to use the drive-through. PCR can be way too sensitive.

A few strands of RNA are irrelevant. Even a few hundred fully intact viral particles are not likely to infect or cause disease. Humans aren't that wimpy. But keep in mind that there is a very small chance that the test popped positive because you are about to get sick with COVID-19, and the test caught you, by pure luck, just before you are to become sick.

On top of this wrong use of diagnostic tests as screening tests, the government has been subsidizing hospitals for taking care of COVID-19-positive patients. Let's say a hospital performs a COVID test 4 times during a hospital stay as a screening test in a patient who has no symptoms of COVID. If that test pops positive once and negative three times, the hospital will report that patient as having COVID-19, even though the one positive result is highly likely to have been a false positive. Why do hospitals do this testing so much? In part, because they'll get $14,000 more from the government for each patient they declare has COVID-19.

When we see statistics of COVID-19 deaths, we should recognize that some substantial percentage of them should be called "Deaths with a COVID-19-positive test." When we see reports of case numbers rising, we should know that they are defining "case" as anyone with a COVID-19-positive test, which, as you might now realize, is really a garbage number.

Summary:

  1. We have an epidemic of COVID-positive tests that is substantially larger than the epidemic of identified Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. In contrast, people with actual, mild cases of COVID-disease aren't all getting tested. So the data, on which lockdowns are supposedly justified, are lousy.

  2. The data on COVID hospitalizations and deaths in the US are exaggerated by a government subsidization scheme that incentivizes the improper use of tests in people without particular risk of the disease.

  3. Avoid getting tested for COVID unless you are symptomatic yourself, have had exposure to someone who was both symptomatic and tested positive for COVID, or have some other personal reason that makes sense.

  4. Know that getting tested before traveling abroad puts you at a modest risk of getting a false-positive test result, which will assuredly screw up your trip. It's a new political risk of travel.

  5. There is a lot more to this viral testing game, and there are a lot of weird incentives. There are gray areas and room for debate.

  6. Yes, the COVID disease can kill people. But a positive test won't kill anybody. Sadly, every COVID-positive test empowers those politicians and bureaucrats who have a natural bent to control people -- the sociopaths and their ilk.

* * *

John Hunt, MD is a pediatric pulmonologist/allergist/immunologist, a former tenured Associate Professor and academic medical researcher, who has extensive experience and publications involving PCR, antigen testing, and analysis of respiratory fluid. He is internationally recognized as an expert in aerosol/respiratory droplet collection and analysis. He's also Doug Casey's coauthor for the High Ground novels Speculator, Drug Lord, and the just-released Assassin , and he is a founding member of the LLC that owns International Man.

* * *

Unfortunately, most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare How will you protect yourself in the event of an economic crisis? New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released a guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download the PDF now .

[Jan 10, 2021] One possible trap is that the French Government have signed one of the secret "accords" that give big Pharma the "right" (ability) to sue the French or other Governments if for any reason they do not make the profit they "expected or wanted" to make.

Jan 10, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Stonebird , Jan 10 2021 17:23 utc | 17

First, the funniest comment I have seen for a long while (Elijah Magnier)

https://twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/1347926280864473088/photo/1

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Two things I would like information or opinion on are as follows;

In France, those that are about be vaccinated by Pfizer must sign a legal form that is 56 pages long (not a joke ! - Including by seniors with pre or declared-alzheimers), which, I presume, covers all possible forms of immunity for Pfizer, and unwanted side effects, expected or not. BUT does this "form" have hidden traps? One possible trap is that the French Government have signed one of the secret "accords" that give big Pharma the "right" (ability) to sue the French or other Governments if for any reason they do not make the profit they "expected or wanted" to make.

The Governments concerned will have to make up any shortfall. even if due to popular pressures on the Gov. The "settlement" was to be overseen by an ISDN (arbitration) tribunal. Whose three members were taken from 15 US law firms specializing in Company (Corporate) law, even if one nominally was supposed to represent the Government. No input from "other interested parties" was to be allowed, and deliberations and names of "Lawyers" were also to be kept secret.

This was one part of the Trade "agreement" on services. The one which was to be kept secret for five years and those signing it to remain anonymous. Was it in fact signed? Was it in fact signed by other Governments as well. This would go a long way to explain the obsessions by some Ministers to force vaccinations against common sense. (on children etc)
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The second is more extreme; As the "vaccinated+" human body has been modified by an injection by either Pfizer or Modena, will these companies have any "rights" on the living result. (I'm thinking of Monsanto/Beyer and their attempts to Patent the living.) Normally this would be a long-shot idea, but these days I don't trust them.

[Jan 10, 2021] Miami Beach OB-Gyn doctor's death 18 days after Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine under investigation

Jan 10, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

gm , Jan 10 2021 17:16 utc | 16

This is just one individual case; but the condition is so rare that it does require independent investigation about potential side effects of the vaccine. Is immune thrombocytopenia one of them ?

https://www.news4jax.com/news/florida/2021/01/08/miami-beach-doctors-death-after-covid-19-vaccine-under-investigation/

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Questions remain in the death of a 56-year-old Miami Beach doctor who died Sunday, just a little over two weeks after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, our sister station WPLG-TV in Miami reported.

Gregory Michael, M.D., whose website states he was in private practice in obstetrics and gynecology at Mount Sinai Medical Center, received the vaccine at the hospital where he was affiliated on Dec. 18.

It is not clear, however, if the 56-year-old doctor's death is related to the shot, but an investigation is underway.

A Facebook post by Michael's wife described him as "very healthy." His website said he was an avid tournament and big game fisherman and also a rescue certified scuba diver.

His wife said that three days after getting the shot, Michael noticed severe broken blood vessels on his feet and hands, prompting him to go the emergency room.

There, he was diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenia *, which prevents blood from clotting. After two weeks of treatment, she writes on the Facebook post, Michael had a hemorrhagic stroke caused by the lack of platelets, which took his life in a matter of minutes, she said.

She said her husband was an advocate of the vaccine.

A spokesperson from Mount Sinai, who cited patient privacy restrictions, said in a statement:

"To the extent that we are aware of an incident involving any patient, the appropriate agencies are contacted immediately and have our full cooperation."

Florida's Department of Health confirmed that they referred the case to the Centers for Disease Control for investigation. A CDC spokesperson told Local 10 News that "they will evaluate the situation as more information becomes available and provide timely updates on what is known and any necessary actions."

* When immune system attacks/destroys platelet cells in the blood

More Here:
https://www.the-sun.com/news/2105759/dr-gregory-michael-miami-coroanvirus-vaccine-dead/

gm , Jan 10 2021 19:27 utc | 38

Re: "I have what I suppose to be a foolish question about the Pfizer vaccine, which in order to remain viable has to be kept in an extreme frozen condition until being used. The question is, what happens to the vaccine as it is brought to human body temperature, (which is, I assume, what must be done before it can be safely injected)?"

-juliania | Jan 10 2021 18:03 utc | 21

Not a foolish question at all--and not one that I have yet heard any of the Holy Annointed Vessels of Covid Science TRUTH (ie Dr. 'Gain of Function' Fauci, Bill Gates et al) give an understandable explanation for.

Speaking purely from the perspective of someone with technical background in the chemistry/medical fields and having no direct insider info about the Pfizer mRNA vaccine specifically,

the vaccine's Spike protein coding mRNA 'payload' must be packaged inside a protective "liposome" a synthetic lipid bi-layer vesicle.

The liposome protects the mRNA payload from being chewed up/destroyed while it is still in the extracellular space (blood plasma, lymph etc) by plasma nucleases before the spike mRNA is able reach and enter the body's cells where it is then replicated and translated into (antigenic [immune system recognizing/inducing]) viral spike proteins.

The RNA-liposome vesicles have a limited stability at room temperature in aqueous saline conditions, and an even shorter half-life in the blood stream at body temperature. They are most stable when keptvery cold in deep freeze <~70 degree C) with some physiologically compatible "antifreeze" (eg polyethylene glycol, polypropylene glycol, or syrupy sugar-like mixtures) that keep liposome-disrupting ice crystals from forming during the deep freeze storage temps.

Now to address your question, my guess is the reconstitution procedure is to bring the antifreeze-stablized -70C vaccine vials to >0 degrees C, and then add physiological saline, and then inject within the protocol-defined stability-safe time range.

[Jan 09, 2021] An interview with Professor Dolores Cahill about the potentially lethal effects of mRNA vaccines:

Jan 09, 2021 | thewallwillfall.org

Gwyn , Jan 8, 2021 3:02 PM

An interview with Professor Dolores Cahill about the potentially lethal effects of mRNA vaccines:

https://thewallwillfall.org/2021/01/07/why-people-will-start-dying-a-few-months-after-the-first-mrna-vccines/

[Jan 09, 2021] The PCR test should be trashed immediately, worldwide, and it should be considered a criminal act for anyone to be sent to quarantine because this test was positive

Jan 09, 2021 | off-guardian.org

Cal , Jan 8, 2021 6:52 PM


Mike Ellwood (Oxon UK) , Jan 9, 2021 1:09 AM Reply to George Mc

I presume that people who get the vaccine(s) will then start testing positive with the PCR test, if they are tested soon afterwards, or even some time afterwards. And so they should, really, since, in a sense, they have been "infected" with some version of the so-called virus. At least that's more or less how vaccination is supposed to work, isn't it?

If that does start happening, I will be fascinated (in a blackly comic way) to see the official reaction. I think it's all going to go very pear shaped (even more than it is now), in ways we probably can't begin to imagine yet.

[Jan 04, 2021] What Vaccine Trials- OffGuardian

Notable quotes:
"... A risk reduction of 0.84%. Oh! A barely perceptible "efficacy." ..."
"... An analysis of available positive RT-PCR tests and mortality results led the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine estimated a very tentative COVID 19 Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of around 1.4%. Based upon the figures reported to the FDA by Pfizer and BioNTech, this indicates a broad population based mortality risk from COVID 19 of 1.4(0.88/100) which is 0.012%. ..."
"... If we look at the "V-Safe Active Surveillance for COVID 19 Vaccines" reported by the U.S. Center For Disease Control (CDC), early indications of the recorded "Health Impact Events" (HIE) reveal a worrying level of adverse reactions from the mRNA vaccine. The CDC define an HIE as: ..."
"... On December the 18th 112,807 people were injected with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the U.S. Of these, 3,150 were subsequently unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional . This is an HIE rate of 2.8%. ..."
"... This suggests that among the first 10 million people to receive the vaccine in the UK, around 280,000 may find themselves unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work and require medical care as a result. As it is the most vulnerable who are the first to receive this vaccine, given the tiny risk of mortality from the COVID 19 disease, it is by no means clear that this is a risk worth taking. ..."
"... The obvious problem with these vaccines, is that no reliable fit for purpose diagnostic test exists as of this moment. As far I know, no one in power is even talking about any need for an effective test. How are they able to prove that a vaccine is effective without a reliable, valid test? ..."
"... Rahm Emmanuel said "never let a crisis go to waste". Crisis do not need to be real motivate the necessary panic for a change. ..."
"... What is the evidence so far on side effects and long-term effects of Covid vaccinations? Obtained in half a year on test subjects and within a week on nursing home residents? ..."
Jan 04, 2021 | off-guardian.org

OVID 19 vaccine trials appear to have caused some confusion. Hopefully, this article might help clear things up a bit. People genuinely appear to believe that the COVID 19 vaccines have undergone clinical trials and have been proven to be both safe and effective. That belief is simply wrong.

The main point is this. If you decide to have Pfizer and BioNTech's experimental mRNA-based BNT162b2 (BNT) vaccine, or any other claimed COVID 19 vaccine for that matter, you are a test subject in a drug trial.

The mRNA in the BNT vaccine was sequenced from the 3rd iteration of the original WUHAN published Genome SARS-CoV-2 (MN908947.3). However, the WHO protocols Pfizer used to produce the mRNA do not appear to identify any nucleotide sequences that are unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. When investigator Fran Leader questioned Pfizer they confirmed:

The DNA template does not come directly from an isolated virus from an infected person.

Nor are there any completed clinical trials for these vaccines. Trials are ongoing. If you are jabbed with one, you are the guinea pig. This may be fine with you but it's not a leap of faith I or my loved ones wish to take. However, everyone is different.

On December the 8th the BBC reported a study in the Lancet and categorically stated:

The Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is safe and effective, giving good protection, researchers have confirmed

The BBC had no justification to make this claim. The study in the Lancet did not confirm anything of the sort. The researchers wrote:

ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 has an acceptable safety profile and has been found to be efficacious against symptomatic COVID-19 in this interim analysis of ongoing clinical trials.

This was an interim analysis funded by, among others, CEPI and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The analysis was based upon trials which are years from completion and haven't reported anything. The researchers also stated:

There were no peer-reviewed publications available on efficacy of any severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines

There is no clear scientific evidence establishing either the safety or efficacy of proposed COVID 19 vaccines. The BBC and other MSM reports that this evidence exists are false.

We are going to focus on Pfizer and BioNTech's BNT vaccine but all the manufacturers have essentially exploited the same trick. The regulators and governments have worked with the pharmaceutical corporations to conflate the limited data from the initial, or phase one, trials with the incomplete and ongoing data collection from the substantially larger phase two and three trials. The MSM have then falsely claimed the 1,2,3 phase trials are complete and insinuated that the untested data demonstrates vaccine efficacy and safety.

In reality, not only has the reporting of existing data been manipulated to show efficacy that isn't evident in the raw data itself, the most important and meaningful phases of the trials have barely begun, let alone been completed.

Recently the UK Financial Times reported that the UK regulators (the MHRA) are due to approve Astrazeneca/Oxfords AZD1222 [ChAdOx1] COVID 19 Vaccine. The FT revealed an anonymous statement from the UK Department of health:

The medicines regulator is reviewing the final data from the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca phase 3 clinical trials to determine whether the vaccine meets their strict standards of quality, safety and effectiveness.

Thus giving the public the impression that the trials are complete and that the regulators have strict safety standards. The 1,2,3 phase trial for AZD1222 was registered with the U.S. Centre for Disease Control as clinical trial NCT04516746 [Archived 29th December 2020]. It is incomplete and the estimated end date is February 21st 2023. The CDC state:

No Study Results Posted

Astrazeneca are years away from reporting any "final data." It is impossible for the UK Department of Health to review it, because it doesn't exist.

NCT04516746 is one of four trials of AZD1222. Another Russian arm of the AZD1222 trial was suspended after a Suspected Unexpected Serious Adverse Reaction (SUSAR) event occurred. The SUSAR supposedly happened in the United Kingdom after a 37 year old women developed inflammation of the spinal chord. It appears the Russian Ministry of Health have yet to reinstate their arm of the Astrazeneca/Oxford trial while it has resumed in the UK and elsewhere.

Clinical Trial NCT04516746: [Archived 29.12.2020] , [Contemporary Link] WHAT VACCINE TRIALS?

On November 18th Pfizer and BioNTech announced they had concluded their phase three trial of BNT. They had demonstrated efficacy of 95% and U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) safety data milestone had been met.

The only part of this claim that was true was compliance with FDA emergency safety data milestones. They have not concluded their phase three trials. They haven't even fully completed phase one.

Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act ) so called "unapproved" drugs are allowed on the market in emergencies . Similarly, in the UK, authorisation under Regulation 174 of the Human Medicine Regulations 2012 (as amended) permits the same.

Having also been approved in the UK, this is why the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) state:

This medicinal product does not have a UK marketing authorisation

The fact that there are no completed clinical trials for the Pfizer and BioNTech BNT vaccine also explains why the FDA State:

Additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious, may become apparent with more widespread use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.

The FDA also noted :

[There is] currently insufficient data to make conclusions about the safety of the vaccine in sub-populations such as children less than 16 years of age, pregnant and lactating individuals, and immunocompromised individuals ..[the] risk of vaccine-enhanced disease over time, potentially associated with waning immunity, remains unknown.

Yet the first people to receive this vaccine are the most vulnerable in society, many of whom are immunocompromised. The precautionary principle appears to have been abandoned. The notion that the purpose of the BNT vaccine roll out is to save life appears untenable.

The Pfizer announcement enabled politicians to pretend to cry on national television while others were really excited. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was "fantastic news," and the BBC said it was "good news" and "really encouraging." Everyone was thoroughly impressed with the 95% effective claim.

However, this was based upon relative risk reduction . That is the declared percentage difference between the vaccinated group's 8/18310 chance (0.044%) of developing COVID 19 against a 162/18319 (0.88%) chance of COVID 19 symptoms without the vaccine. As this larger group of 43,000 people have yet to be trialled, there is no basis for this claimed outcome. But it is what it is, and we can use these reported figures here.

It should be noted this only refers to an alleged reduction of COVID 19 symptoms among those who have the virus. The tested endpoints do not demonstrate that the vaccine will either reduce the spread of infection or save lives. It should also be noted that these figures suggest the threat from COVID 19 is vanishingly small.

Using Pfizer's figures, the relative risk reduction is 100(1 – (0.044/0.88)). Which is 95%. Voila!

This sounds fantastic and is a much better marketing strategy than reporting the absolute risk reduction. The absolute risk of developing COVID 19 symptoms without the vaccine is supposedly 0.88% and with the vaccine 0.044%. In absolute terms, the effectiveness of the vaccine is (0.88-0.044)%.

A risk reduction of 0.84%. Oh! A barely perceptible "efficacy."

By using the relative instead of absolute risk reduction, the mainstream media (MSM) were free to market the mRNA vaccine for Pfizer and BioNTech (and other interested parties) with impressive sounding claims . These weren't remotely truthful, not only because they relied upon statistical manipulation but because no one had a clue about BNT's safety or efficacy. To this day, there are no clinical trial results.

THE CLINICAL TRIALS THAT DON'T EXIST

An analysis of available positive RT-PCR tests and mortality results led the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine estimated a very tentative COVID 19 Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of around 1.4%. Based upon the figures reported to the FDA by Pfizer and BioNTech, this indicates a broad population based mortality risk from COVID 19 of 1.4(0.88/100) which is 0.012%.

Please bear this incredibly remote risk in mind as we discuss the early indication of the apparent threat to public health presented by the mRNA vaccine.

It is reasonable to work in terms of population risk because, while the chance of COVID 19 mortality seemingly increases with age, with the average age of death being 82 and a mortality distribution indistinguishable from standard mortality, the intention is to give the vaccine to everybody .

If we look at the "V-Safe Active Surveillance for COVID 19 Vaccines" reported by the U.S. Center For Disease Control (CDC), early indications of the recorded "Health Impact Events" (HIE) reveal a worrying level of adverse reactions from the mRNA vaccine. The CDC define an HIE as:

Unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional

On December the 18th 112,807 people were injected with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in the U.S. Of these, 3,150 were subsequently unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional . This is an HIE rate of 2.8%.

This suggests that among the first 10 million people to receive the vaccine in the UK, around 280,000 may find themselves unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work and require medical care as a result. As it is the most vulnerable who are the first to receive this vaccine, given the tiny risk of mortality from the COVID 19 disease, it is by no means clear that this is a risk worth taking.

CDC Presentation: [Archived 19.12.2020] , [Original]

Not that any of the other vaccines seem any better. So far the CDC have noted more than 5,000 HIE's for all vaccine being trialled on the population. Clearly, the potential exists that the vaccines will contribute to more deaths than the disease they allegedly protects vulnerable people against.

The Pfizer/BioNTech trial was registered as clinical trial number NCT04368728 with the CDC. Having recently discussed what I am about to share with you with people who simply refused to believe the evidence of their own eyes, I think it is important to stress that this is the Phase 3 Clinical Trial which Pfizer claimed they had concluded in their press release. There isn't another one. This is it .

The CDC state:

When available, study results information is included in the study record under the Study Results tab .After study results information has been submitted to ClinicalTrials.gov, but before it is posted, the results tab in the study record is labeled "Results Submitted.

At the time of writing (21st December 2020) as can be seen by date of the archived ClinicalTrials.gov web-page , the Study Results tab reads "No Results Posted." That is because there are no posted or submitted results from the Pfizer BioNTech trial of the BNT162b2 vaccine:

No Study Results Posted on ClinicalTrials.gov for this Study

Mainstream media reports , giving the impression that these vaccines have been found to be effective and safe are not evidence and they are not based on science. They are based on political policy and they report dangerous pseudo-scientific babble, masquerading as science journalism.

There will of course be mindless anti-rationalists who will call this dangerous antivaxxer nonsense. All the time insisting that it is perfectly safe to give a vaccine with a questionable safety profile, for which there are no completed clinical trials, to the most vulnerable people in our society.

I am running out of patience with these people.

VACCINE SAFETY?

The start date for NCT04368728 was April 29th and the estimated trial completion date is January 27th 2023. The estimated end date of the primary or phase one of a three phase trial is June 13th 2021.

According to the " Current Primary Outcome Measures," the minimum time frame for Pfizer to assess serious adverse events (SAE's) is "6 months after last dose." This is the minimum term for assessing SAE's in phase one of the trial.

Phase one is the only part of the NCT04368728 trial to have been completed and published . It was published on the 14th October, 5 months and two weeks after the start date. Most of that period was taken up with recruitment an allocation. The minimum term for assessing SAE's has not been met during Phase One.

During Phase One, 195 participants were split into 13 groups of 15 people. In each group 12 received one of two potential mRNA vaccine candidates (either BNT162b1 or BNT162b2) and 3 a placebo.

39 people aged between 18-55 and another 39 people aged between 65-85 received the BNT vaccine, now approved for global distribution. The threat of COVID 19, though tiny overall, is statistically zero for those aged 18-55. Those with any measurable risk from COVID 19 were in the older age group.

Of the 39 older people who received 2 doses of BNT about half of them experienced "fatigue," roughly 15% had "chills" and 3 of them had a fever. The common side effects of BNT included nausea, headache (a very common BNT induced nervous system disorder) arthralgia and myalgia (very common), fatigue, chills and fever (again very common.) Other than fatigue, no one in the placebo group suffered these problems.

Safety and Immunogenicity of Two RNA-Based Covid-19 Vaccine Candidates: Figure 3, 'Participants 65 – 85 yr of age' [Archived 29.10.2020] , [Original]

The study states:

Pfizer was responsible for the trial design; for the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; and for the writing of the report.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that while Pfizer see the side effects of their vaccine as fatigue, chills and fever, the CDC refer to them as people who can't work and need medical care.

The UK Medical and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved the BNT vaccine, to be given to vulnerable British people, based upon a study of 39 older people. This study reported a pretty high adverse reaction rate. It was produced exclusively from the R&D of the vaccine manufacturer. The MHRA questioned nothing.

They "approved" BNT in the certain knowledge that there were no completed clinical trials for this vaccine. In their Public Assessment Report they state:

At the time of writing, the main clinical study is still on-going .It was concluded that BNT162b2 has been shown to be effective in the prevention of COVID-19. Furthermore, the side effects observed with use of this vaccine are considered to be similar to those seen with other vaccines. Therefore, the MHRA concluded that the benefits are greater than the risks.

This conclusion and approval not only lacks supporting evidence it is utterly at odds with what little is known about BNT. While Pfizer and BioNTech only completed trials of the vaccine on 39 relevant test subjects, the results, even from this practically inconsequential effort, suggest the risk from the vaccine is greater than the risk presented by COVID 19. By a considerable margin.

This undoubtedly explains why the MHRA ordered software from European suppliers to deal with the slew of vaccine adverse reaction they presumably anticipate. They stated:

The MHRA urgently seeks an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) .it is not possible to retrofit the MHRA's legacy systems to handle the volume of ADRs that will be generated by a Covid-19 vaccine.

From the way the manufacturers, politicians, regulators and the MSM have approached vaccine safety, it is clear that they collectively have a total disregard for the welfare of vulnerable people. We really must put aside this infantile notion that "the authorities" care about us or our loved ones. We mean nothing to them.

COVID 19 is only an appreciable risk for the most vulnerable in society. It is a risk to the infirm elderly and people with existing life threatening conditions.

If we look at the exclusion criteria for Phase One, these people were not in the cohort tested. Anyone with high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes or a high BMI were excluded from the alleged safety trial. But the vaccine is being given to the most vulnerable first.

Of the 39 older people at most risk in the phase one study, none of them had the serious comorbidities which the overwhelming majority of those who die "with" COVID 19 possess. The people actually at risk from COVID 19 nominally entered the BNT trials at phase 2 and 3. However, it appears every effort has been made to limit, if not completely remove, their number too. "Immunocompromised or individuals with known or suspected immunodeficiency," were excluded.

Immunodeficiency is caused by a wide range of health conditions . Conditions such as undernutrition, polytrauma, stress after surgery, diabetes and cancer lead to immunodeficiency. The people with the comorbidities associated with so called COVID 19 deaths were practically ruled out from the BNT vaccine trials.

NCT04368728 was designed as a 1,2,3 trial with all phases running concurrently. With regards to assessing safety Pfizer described systemic events as:

Fever, fatigue, headache, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, new or worsened muscle pain, and new or worsened joint pain as self-reported on electronic diaries.

The first 360 subjects randomised into the phase 2 and 3 trials underwent monitoring for systemic events for less than a week, following each dose:

In the first 360 participants randomized into Phase 2/3, percentage of participants reporting systemic events [ Time Frame: For 7 days after dose 1 and dose 2 ]

The same cohort of 360 test subjects were also monitored for Serious Adverse Events (SAE's) for up to 6 months in phase 2 and 3:

In the first 360 participants randomized into Phase 2/3, percentage of participants reporting serious adverse events [ Time Frame: From dose 1 through 6 months after the last dose]

Pfizer also intend to report the percentage of all test subjects who suffer SAE's:

Percentage of participants in Phase 2/3 reporting adverse events [ Time Frame: From dose 1 through 6 month after the last dose ]

But there are no reported results from either phase 2 or 3. No one has the faintest idea what the health risks of BNT are, especially for those it is supposedly designed to protect, and no one in authority gives a damn. Phase 2/3 clinical trials are now a moot point anyway.

The regulatory agencies have already approved the vaccine and health services have started injecting people with BNT. They do so after the manufacturers failed to properly test its safety on a 39 people who were in the at risk group but did not have the comorbidity that leads to claimed COVID 19 deaths.

The degree to which people have been misled into believing that these vaccines are known to be either safe or effective is almost beyond imagination.

Sadly, we don't need imagination. The evidence is clear.


Paul Nicholls , Jan 4, 2021 2:23 AM

The've been practicing this scam for a while now. Everything happening now has already had a few dry runs, perfecting all aspects of the current hoax.

James Corbett September 2012:

https://www.corbettreport.com/corbett-report-radio-226-pandemic/

Judith Nailer , Jan 4, 2021 1:12 AM

Can you clarify when you say the larger group of 43,000 people have yet to be trialled. Because I read in the following:

How Scientists Know The Approved COVID-19 Vaccines Are Safe

that "Pfizer's Phase lll trial has been published in a peer–reviewed journal and included over 40,000 volunteers in 152 sites worldwide".

Kalen , Jan 4, 2021 1:11 AM

Death porn continues:

from ABC

California funeral homes run out of space as pandemic rages.

We are led to believe that mountains of corpses pile up because .. of ongoing massive COVID die out.

In order to keep up with the flood of bodies, Maldonado has rented extra 50-foot (15-meter) refrigerators for two of the four facilities she runs in LA and surrounding counties. Continental has also been delaying pickups at hospitals for a day or two while they deal with residential clients.

Pure panic. Only to be informed why we have piling up bodies in hospitals and mortuaries.

Bob Achermann, executive director of the California Funeral Directors Association, said that the whole process of burying and cremating bodies has slowed down, including embalming bodies and obtaining death certificates. During normal times, cremation might happen within a day or two; now it takes at least a week or longer.

so to summarize typical for flu season increased numbers of flu, pneumonia deaths are processed six to seven times slower than a year ago, causing obvious pile up.

Like with sex porn, COVID death porn is best left unexamined in detail not scrutinized too much, better left to porn induced sick imagination targeting consumers, otherwise reality will turn them off.

Igor , Jan 4, 2021 12:54 AM

The obvious problem with these vaccines, is that no reliable fit for purpose diagnostic test exists as of this moment. As far I know, no one in power is even talking about any need for an effective test. How are they able to prove that a vaccine is effective without a reliable, valid test?

Rahm Emmanuel said "never let a crisis go to waste". Crisis do not need to be real motivate the necessary panic for a change.

Edith , Jan 4, 2021 1:31 AM Reply to Igor

I suspect they are only testing whether the persons immune system produces some tcells etc from giving them this rubbish they cannot possible then infer one will be immune to any sort of cold, flu or pneumonia

Schmitz Katze , Jan 3, 2021 11:57 PM

Moderna admits here that what they inject with their vaccines is an "operating system."

"Our mRNA technology platform functions very much like an operating system on a computer. It is designed so that it can plug and play interchangeably with different programs" I can´t find anything what a vaccinated person is supposed to do when the operating system inside his/her body crashes -- It´s Doctor Bill´s ultimate solution to solve climate change, I suppose.

https://www.modernatx.com/mrna-technology/mrna-platform-enabling-drug-discovery-development

axisofoil , Jan 3, 2021 11:39 PM

Very clever mass detention and forced vaccination bill. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/a416

Cal , Jan 4, 2021 12:19 AM Reply to axisofoil

It used to be the case that if we felt unwell we'd take time off to stay at home to recover, or that we'd go to hospital.

This new bill makes it possible for a healthy person to be tested (with a fraudulently used PCR test) to prove positive, followed by forced incarceration in a detention centre as if a common or garden prisoner.

Imprisonment without trial for no crime in the land of the free.

I have the feeling the rich will not be targeted, only the poor. If this was happening in North Korea people would be horrified. Any politician enabling this act is enabling fascism and tyranny.

JoeC , Jan 4, 2021 12:37 AM Reply to Cal

It's so obvious what this asymptomatic bullshit is all about.

Judith , Jan 4, 2021 12:44 AM Reply to Cal

Call me clueless, but this doesn't have a chance of actually passing does it?? Will they put everyone on trains at Grand Central and ship you off? For your own good?

livingsb , Jan 3, 2021 11:00 PM Reply to livingsb

taking a shit on the floor and pissing on the curtains, then tearing off the roof .

October , Jan 3, 2021 10:27 PM

Wow. Britain is going to mix vaccines according to this . In France meanwhile, after getting off to a very slow start, they're thinking of appointing an advisory committee of randomly selected citizens (?) to define their immunisation strategy. Said committee will submit its report in the summer .

moneycircus , Jan 3, 2021 11:12 PM Reply to October

I call them Britain's Scient-icians. They make it up as they go along. From the NYT article "There are no data on this idea whatsoever," said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain "seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess."

Kalen , Jan 3, 2021 9:59 PM

As author pointed out no SC2 viral genetic material is used in Pfizer, Moderna and AZN bioagents wrongly called vaccines .. because they do not have them available (or they do not exist). In fact even Chinese making so called traditional attenuated vaccines or Russians making adenovirus vector bioagents do not have them either. Instead of entire virus they use only spike protein only for achieving immunogenicity. But where the spike proteins come from.

ABC explained in September on AZN example.

Britain's Oxford University and AstraZeneca are making what scientists call a "viral vector" vaccine but a good analogy is the Trojan horse. The shots are made with a harmless virus – a cold virus that normally infects chimpanzees – that carries the spike protein's genetic material into the body. [infecting human cells] Two possible competitors to AZN are made with different human [common] cold viruses.

Yes. What is being tried on people by Moderna Pfizer, AZN and others are experimental bioagents that solicit antibodies that alledgedly block common cold's subclass of coronaviruses' spikes, not particularly SC2 virus spikes because they do not have them isolated.

No supposed experimental "vaccines" make any attempt to eradicate, neutralize SC2 virus itself if it exists, (if COVID exists) as so far there is no proof of either.

Those phantom pseudo-vaccines supposedly to protect us from phantom disease have nothing to do with published SC2 virus RNA or with COVID clinical disease they are bio-technological experiments with drug delivery systems aimed as harvesting human cell to production of certain proteins altering cell functions and metabolism.

In this particular case Moderna and Pfizer bioagents make regular human cells grow non human protein spikes fooling immune system into increasing antibody production, marking human cells for eradication and attacking human cells by killer TCells (Lymphocytes).

Those are human cells, not infected by active reproducible virus that are being destroyed according to the mRNA vaccine model and that is why unprecedented in comparison with other vaccines prevalence of severe disease like, incapacitating symptoms of infection with artificial bioagents themselves. Anything beyond little redness and swollen tissue around injection site not to mention loss of consciousness is cause of serious concern.

if this is the case those experimental "vaccinations" developed with no animal studies to establish safety and toxicity set up perfect conditions for cytokines shocks, pathogen priming and ADE all longer term deadly complications of coronavirus vaccinations encountered in the past coronaviruses vaccine research.

Mark R. Elsis , Jan 3, 2021 9:36 PM

Understanding What They Mean By 'Risk Reduction' Is Critical by Dr. Thomas Cowan (12:52) https://www.bitchute.com/video/yosb8WE9IvPc

Jean , Jan 3, 2021 8:56 PM

In Quebec City (Canada), the first doses of Pfizer/Biotech vaccine were for the folks and employees of an old age pensioners residence. They got their shot on Dec. 14. On Dec. 30, 66 vaccinated residents and 20 employees got COVID. Explanation from health authorities: the vaccines needs 14 days to be efficient. But positive tests were announced after 14 days. Here's the article in French: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1760058/eclosion-covid-chsld-saint-antoine-quebec-vaccin

And yesterday, I fell on this Sputnik article: 240 Israelis Test Positive for Coronavirus After Getting Vaccinated

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/202101021081631205-240-israelis-test-positive-for-coronavirus-after-getting-vaccinated/

So, does that means that you have more chance to catch the virus by being vaccined against it?

Jacques , Jan 3, 2021 9:52 PM Reply to Guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1-0XKYAZII

This sums it up quite nicely. There are other who say essentially the same thing, perhaps from a different angle.

Money might be a secondary, short-term benefit, but money as understood today won't probably matter for very long anymore.

It's about total control solidified by technologies. Eventually, eradicating people deemed non-essential. The psychopaths probably think that they can manage with robots.

Well, if that happens, the solace for us, who fall by the wayside, will be that the world created by the TFIC will eventually atrophy, implode. These fuckers have no culture, no vital creativity. They thrive on technocratic dullness, control. They can live on what's creative spirits have created thus far, but that will only take them so far.

Paul , Jan 3, 2021 10:01 PM Reply to Guy

As other commenters have eluded too the introduction of health passports are coming, digital IDS, the Chinese social credit system.

It's a fascist global coup from the WEF, IMF, Gates, Big Tech etc.

Unfortunately too many people and even those who know something isn't right are thinking it's just hysteria or the governments don't know what they're doing.

Schmitz Katze , Jan 3, 2021 8:09 PM

What is the evidence so far on side effects and long-term effects of Covid vaccinations? Obtained in half a year on test subjects and within a week on nursing home residents?

Questions like this and common sense will be banned in the near future. Sheep will bleat ten times a day: Vaccination is good because the government is only ever concerned with our welfare and health. Apart from that, vaccinating with an untested vaccine is Kismet.

For sane people, if one follows the Pfizer/Biontech package insert, the vaccination is a dareDevil act. With some probability, the vaccinated person will only become slightly ill – even that is not certain – but he/she can still become infected and infect his/her fellow men.
What´s the big selling point about Covid vaccinations again? Something along the lines of „ to save your fellow men(sch) from infection, right?

People in Germany are inundated with magazine covers the likes of Der Stern with headlines:"Vaccination is charity" with Christmas nativity scene. This is the most malicious manipulation I have seen about experimental m RNA-based vaccinations so far. The opposite is the case. Pharmaceutical corporations use people who are vaccinated now as guinea pigs for their studies which are laid out on the two following test years.
What can be more selfish than this ice-cold profit motivation?
Have they no shame, one might ask?
As for Der Stern, this magazine has sold the big hoax with the Hitler diaries as a scoop.
It all follows.
https://shop.stern.de/de_DE/einzelhefte/einzelausgaben/stern-epaper-53-2020/1990689.html

Steve , Jan 3, 2021 7:29 PM

The background to the mRNA tech in this opinion piece is interesting

" Scientific breakthroughs like this don't come from nowhere. Messenger RNA was first discovered in the early 1960s but it wasn't until the late 1980s that scientists learned how to make it from scratch. Then a new hurdle emerged. When scientists injected mRNA into animals, it induced such a severe immune response that the animals died. It was Dr Katalin Kariko,​ working with immunologist Dr Drew Weissman,​ who figured out how to stop that severe immune response from happening. And that was crucial for mRNA vaccines to be trialled in humans."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300195200/covid19-turning-our-bodies-into-vaccine-factories

Paul , Jan 3, 2021 4:14 PM Reply to JudyJ

As most of the vaccinated people are in care homes it would be interesting to know how many of them have subsequently tested PCR positive.

This hasn't been mentioned anywhere.

But then again the 'vaccine' doesn't protect against infection or transmission and just symptoms as we are told.

Hallelujah , Jan 3, 2021 6:29 PM Reply to Paul

Except that it causes the same symptoms as the alleged disease it has to prevent.

TFS , Jan 3, 2021 5:26 PM Reply to JudyJ

Does this help you?

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2020-12/slides-12-19/05-COVID-CLARK.pdf

Check out the section on Health Impact Events.

[Dec 29, 2020] Major Covid Vaccine Glitch Emerges- Most Europeans, Including Hospital Staff, Refuse To Take It - ZeroHedge

Dec 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Major Covid Vaccine Glitch Emerges: Most Europeans, Including Hospital Staff, Refuse To Take It BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY, DEC 27, 2020 - 21:50

All is not going according to plan in the biggest global rollout of what is arguably the most important vaccine in a century, and it is not just growing US mistrust in the covid injection effort that was rolled out in record time: an unexpected spike in allergic reactions to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (and now, Moderna too ) may prove catastrophic to widespread acceptance unless scientists can figure out what is causing it after the FDA's rushed approval, and is also why as we reported yesterday , scientists are scrambling to identify the potential culprit causing the allergic reactions.

Making matters worse, Europe rolled out a huge COVID-19 vaccination drive on Sunday to try to rein in the coronavirus pandemic but even more Europeans than American are sceptical about the speed at which the vaccines have been tested and approved and reluctant to have the shot.

While the European Union has secured contracts drugmakers including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, for a total of more than two billion doses and has set a goal for all adults to be inoculated next year, this is looking increasingly like a pipe dream: according to recent surveys, the local population has expressed "high levels of hesitancy" towards inoculation in countries from France to Poland, with many used to vaccines taking decades to develop, not just months.

"I don't think there's a vaccine in history that has been tested so quickly," Ireneusz Sikorski, 41, said as he stepped out of a church in central Warsaw with his two children.

"I am not saying vaccination shouldn't be taking place. But I am not going to test an unverified vaccine on my children, or on myself."

Smart: why take the risk of getting vaccinated when others will do it, resulting in the same outcome.

Surveys in Poland, where distrust in public institutions runs deep, show that fewer than 40% of people planning to get vaccinated. Worse, according to Reuters on Sunday, only half the medical staff in a Warsaw hospital where the country's first shot was administered had signed up. And if the doctors don't trust the vaccine, one can be certain that the broader population will refuse to take it.

The situation is similar in Spain, one of Europe's hardest-hit countries, where 28-year-old singer and music composer German summarizes the skepticism of a broad range of the population, and plans to wait for now.

"No one close to me has had it (COVID-19). I'm obviously not saying it doesn't exist because lots of people have died of it, but for now I wouldn't have it (the vaccine)."

A Christian Orthodox bishop in Bulgaria, where 45% of people have said they would not get a shot and 40% plan to wait to see if any negative side effects appear - meaning only 15% of the population will actually volunteer for a vaccine in the near future - is in the tiny minority when it comes to taking the vaccine.

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"Myself, I am vaccinated against everything I can be," Bishop Tihon told reporters after getting his shot, standing alongside the health minister in Sofia. He spoke about anxiety over polio before vaccination became available in the 1950s and 1960s.

To be sure, the establishment is pounding the table on why the vaccines are safe despite the record short time in development (even though not even the "scientists" can explain what is behind the spike in vaccine allergic reactions), and claiming that the new technology behind the mRNA vaccine is all one needs to know... when it is precisely this new technology that is sparking the skepticism.

"We'll look back on the advances made in 2020 and say: 'That was a moment when science really did make a leap forward'," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, which is backed by the Wellcome Trust. Oxford also received $750MM from Bill Gates in June in the billionaire's quest to vaccinate the world against Covid.

Only problem: nobody in Europe seems to care about these "scientific" justifications. Independent pollster Alpha Research said its recent survey suggested that fewer than one in five Bulgarians from the first groups to be offered the vaccine - frontline medics, pharmacists, teachers and nursing home staff - planned to volunteer to get a shot.

An IPSOS survey of 15 countries published on Nov. 5 showed then that 54% of French would have a COVID vaccine if one were available. The figure was 64% in Italy and Spain, 79% in Britain and 87% in China.

Since then things have gone far worse, and a more recent IFOP poll showed that only 41% people in France would take the shot . This means that a vast majority will not .

French Healthcare workers applaud Mauricette, a 78-year-old woman, after she received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease vaccine in the country.

Not even in Sweden, where public trust in authorities is absurdly and inexplicably high, is there a universal trust in the vaccine, with at least one in three saying they won't get the shot: "If someone gave me 10 million euro, I wouldn't take it," Lisa Renberg, 32, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in a paradoxical attempt to force more to sign up - not realizing that it will only have the precisely opposite effect - Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki urged Poles on Sunday to sign up for vaccination, saying the herd immunity effect depended on them. Critics have accused Warsaw's "nationalist leaders" of being too accepting of anti-vaccination attitudes in the past in an effort to garner conservative support. Well... let's check back on said attitude in 10 years and see if perhaps it was the right one.

For now, however, the more European governments pressure their populations to get immunized, the fewer the people who will actually sign up and the worse the vaccine rollout will be, that much we can be 100% sure of.

[Dec 29, 2020] US Demanding Iran's Vaccine Payments Go Through Its Banks

Dec 29, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Christian J. Chuba , Dec 28 2020 22:43 utc | 20

OT: but related, vaccines distributed the U.S. breathlessly announced the success of operation warp speed and claimed that 20M doses would be distributed (shots in arm) by the end of this year, now we know the number is 2M .

Does anyone know how many doses of Sputnik V have been distributed year to date?

Latest outrage US Demanding Iran's Vaccine Payments Go Through Its Banks the headline tells you what you need to know. Is there any end to our depravity?

[Dec 28, 2020] https://twitter.com/EstulinDaniel/status/1343206888020856840

Dec 28, 2020 | twitter.com

Yesterday in a especial program at private TV, it was stated by several representatives of the medical profession all very snobishly dressed, that there have not been other adverse effects so far except headhache, and joints pain..whic his not true, there have been also transverse mielitys, several anaphilactic shocks, and even deaths...

Telated, and with respect Brexit, one wonders how it is that after Brexit comes into effect, and after the EU populations are submitted to harsh restrictions of movements and meeting, especially travelling since March, several whole families of Britons managed to get into our countries carrying the new strain of the virus which is 70% more virulent...How is that UK citizens are more free than nationals, and what the Brexit serves for...

One would say that this new strain came so opportune to be blamed in case of a possible failure of the few experimented vaccines, or, if not, the population will be blamed for no vaccinating themselves enough. This way the governments wash their responsability in the previous misshandling of this pandemic,ingtroduce curtails of freedoms and rights which previously would have been impossible to do without fierce contestations in the streets, and avoid answering why they did not forced the laboratories instead into investigating on drugs that cure the Covid-19 infection, as the one administered to Trump is being investigated right now in the UK...Of course, drugs that cure an infection which anyway could dissapear in a year automathically ends profitting from vaccines.

One watch at all this data and gets the impression that he is being taken for a ride...

All of the above are legitimate questions the cintizenry are making to themselves, in lack of public comparecence of officials and heads of laboratiories implied to public and open questioning. The secrecy of all this highly controbutes to the distrust of the people. the people is being treated as herd, and never better said, illiterates who can not see further their own extende arm, and used a guinea pigs while morevoer left to pay the bill, as the ammount to be spent in these vaccines is an astronomic price which, of course, will never be taken out from the oligarchs.

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 15:55 utc | 6 Conflict of interests between major Big Pharma corporations and official drug organisms:

Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Efficacy? Where is the evidence to prove it? What's behind all that "fanciful" and encouraging news? And what about the links between state vaccine regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry?Thread.

https://twitter.com/Herbert_Keg/status/1343155319187394561

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 16:12 utc | 7

That should have been in the first paragraph. There were so far less than ten severe allergic reactions,no death, with more than 1 million vaccinated. That is 1 in 100,000 cases. About the same rate that allergic reactions to penicillin are reported. Meanwhile the U.S. has seen 100 deaths per 100,000 from Covid-19.

Do you think 1 in 100,000 is acceptable? I don't think it is, at least for a vaccine that's intended (I know it won't, but it would if it could) to for more than 7 billion people, against a disease that has a mortality rate of circa 1.5%.

Notice that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, so far, have only been inoculated on VIPs or healthcare professionals. Those who had grave anaphylactic episodes did so in a secure environment, inside fully equipped hospitals, ready to be saved if needed.

Now imagine a Third World environment, where billions of people would received the vaccine and be ready to go a few minutes later.

Luckily, the Third World will mainly receive the Chinese and Russian vaccines, which cause, as far as we know, no allergic reactions. Now imagine a world where China and Russia didn't exist, a world where capitalism reigned supreme, and 7 billion had to receive the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. This would make the Holocaust look like a book for children - and I mean that in the literal sense, not invoking Goodwin's Law (just make the calculations).

Penicillin is a completely different case: it was the only game in town when it came out, and the flu killed a lot more than the antibiotic did. Flu was basically a death sentence to a child before penicillin was discovered, and was a serious threat even to an adult. Besides, Penicillin is a cure, not a vaccine - completely different scenarios, as the person with a flu lives in a different risk-reward system than a person who may or may not ever get COVID-19.

Vaccines that kill one in 100,000 patients do exist (e.g. yellow fever, which is a live virus vaccine) - but they are for exotic and much deadlier diseases, so a much lower number of people are inoculated with it and the risk is well worth it. To release such an expensive and risky vaccine when there are cheaper and safer options is irresponsible on the part of the laboratories, in my opinion.

Posted by: vk | Dec 27 2020 16:25 utc | 8

Vk - 1 in 100,000 is incredibly good. Be assured that any vaccine that would potentially be effective against this virus would have at least this level of issue. That we don't know the complications rate of the Russian or Chinese vaccines does not mean that the rates are zero!

As to your argument, you don't see the benefit of vaccinating where potentially millions of people could die and the economies be completely wrecked? What the hell?

Posted by: Caliman | Dec 27 2020 17:33 utc | 17

Caliman @ 17

No allergic reactions from Sputnik V

Posted by: arby | Dec 27 2020 18:10 utc | 19

Two interesting interviews from Germany.

(1) In this interview with ZDF, Prof. Wolf-Dieter Ludwig, who is the head of the drug commission of physician in Germany, considers the development of Covid vaccines as a positive thing but finds faults with politicians, especially German health minister Spahn, for putting political pressure on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to accelerate the approval of vaccines, especially the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Prof. Ludwig also belongs to EMA management board. Most importantly, when asked whether he'd take the vaccine, his response was NO. That's because he feels that we hardly know anything about its long term adverse effects . https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/corona-impfstoff-zulassung-kritik-ludwig-100.html


(2) Toxicologist Prof. Hockertz unequivocally states that for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine there exist hardly any preclinical toxicological and pharmacological data (phases 1 and 2) . He points out that even in cases of orphan drugs, the regulation allows a telescoping of the Phase 3 clinical study, but NEVER of the preclinical studies. In his words, the way Phases 1 and 2 have been skipped is criminal in nature. At the very end of the interview (which is in German), he quotes the response from Pfizer as "No data available" on his request for toxicological and pharmaceutical data from preclinical studies!!

He also notes that recently Swissmedic (national authorization and supervisory authority for drugs and medical products in Switzerland) has concluded that the Pfizer vaccine submission lacks evidence of safety, efficacy and quality! Swissmedic is independent of EMA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=iiTrttV7Q8A&feature=youtu.be

Prof. Hockertz is a past director of institute for experimental toxicology and clinical toxicology at University of Hamburg Eppendorf. And before that he was a member of the directorate of Fraunhofer Institutes for Toxicology and Environmental Medicine in Hannover.

I am not saying that the vaccine is dangerous - I have no data to support that conclusion. But there is no data to support that the vaccine is safe either.

Posted by: Nathan Mulcahy | Dec 27 2020 19:44 utc | 26

@vk

You, as usually, in your apparently well informed kinda Marxist narrative, insert always some of disinfo which makes me suspect about your real golas here.

You are stating that the Pfizer vaccine was admnistered only to a few VIPs...

Which VIPS are those? Do not be you referring to Pence? He could well have been inoculated with phisiologic solution as he is reincident, like that time when he transported empty aid boxes in the past for another photo op. Another example, please?

They are inoculating first super elders, in their last 80s and 90s in the nursing homes, mainly private, young nurses and nursing home employees working there...which points at that thosve employees probably would be fired if they do not agree on being vaccinated

They have taken the caution to not inoculate first the people between 50 and 60 which are those who most could suffer a serious adverse effect, by the possible presence of preconditions, in fact the most prejudiced by Covid-19 infection....

In fact, not even in Russia there are officials vaccinated yet, and that even with the less harmful Russian vaccine....

In the press some are displaying a huge effort naming this event a "estelar moment for humanity"...

The people, over whom all the sticks fall, have not but producing memes due the current histeria displayed on TV and MSM...

https://twitter.com/i/status/1342968855598133250

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Dec 27 2020 20:04 utc | 27

URGENT News about the Covid-19 Vaccine

Dr Vernon Coleman
20 Dec 2020

Excerpt from transcript of 3:47 min video:

I have just seen a report from `ACIP Covid-19 Vaccine Work Group at CDC' in the US. (ACIP stands for Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices.)

This is a report on anaphylaxis following m-RNA covid-19 vaccine receipt, and the report includes a table headed: 'V-Safe Active Surveillance for Covid-19 Vaccine'.

The table lists the number of registrants with a recorded first dose by December 18th as 112,807 and the number of Health Impact Events as 3,150.

Health Impact Events are defined as individuals, `unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health professional'.

That is 2.79%, and it is within days of receiving the vaccine.

If 60 million people in the UK have the vaccine we can, therefore, expect 1.67 million people to be unable to work, perform normal daily activities and to require care from a doctor or health professional.

If six billion people worldwide have the vaccine, we can expect 167 million people to be `unable to work, perform normal daily activities, require care from doctor or heath professional'.

And that is just the short-term effect of the vaccine. We obviously don't know what will happen in the months and years ahead.

ACIP COVID-19 Vaccines Work Group

Posted by: pogohere | Dec 28 2020 1:23 utc | 65

65 cont'd

The transcript of the video: Urgent News about the Covid-19 Vaccine'

from vid: URGENT News about the Covid-19 Vaccine

3:47 min

ACIP COVID-19 Vaccines Work Group

Anaphylaxis Following m-RNA COVID-19

Vaccine Receipt

Thomas Clark, MD, MPH
December 19, 2020

scroll down to Slide 6

Posted by: pogohere | Dec 28 2020 1:31 utc | 68

@65 & 68 pogohere

Thank you. I'm not sure we're seeing what we think we're seeing here.

In the CDC report, page 4 says 6 cases of anaphylaxis were discovered by 2300 hours, EST on December 18.

Page 6 cites the number of Health Impact Events as 3,150, and this at an earlier time, 1730 hours, EST on December 18.

After studying this, I conclude that they are not claiming 3,150 cases of anaphylaxis in the data tabulated from earlier that night.

I currently assume that page 6 is referring to surveillance measures taken rather than cases found - the slide is titled "V-safe Active Surveillance for COVID-19 Vaccines". So, this would mean that they had monitored those patients for anaphylaxis as of 1730 hours, but in the data finalized as of 5.5 hours later they were only reporting 6 cases.

I actually hope this is the case, although I'm not a fan of the Pfizer vaccine. If I'm wrong, and Dr. Coleman's take is correct, then the world just blew up - but I would think we'd hear more about this. Anaphylaxis is serious and mandates medical attention. This is the UK, at the very start of a rapid rollout, so I have to think that a major occurrence would spill into broad alarm that we'd hear.

The CDC report is here .

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 28 2020 3:24 utc | 76

[Dec 25, 2020] The origins of the RT-PCR on which it is based our whole strategy against the Covid-19 pandemic, how it was created and in a rush published in a scientific private review, without obliged previous peer review, and which the conflict of interests are and how some people are profiting from this pandemic:

Dec 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

H.Schmatz , Dec 24 2020 18:35 utc | 17

The origins of the RT-PCR on which it is based our whole strategy against the Covid-19 pandemic, how it was created and in a rush published in a scientific private review, without obliged previous peer review, and which the conflict of interests are and how some people are profiting from this pandemic:

Turning science into a botch for profit and at the expense of the health of the whole world

Merry Christmas! Take care of your and yours!

[Dec 22, 2020] Top German virologist casts doubt on fears of new 'highly contagious' UK Covid-19 strain -- RT World News

Dec 22, 2020 | www.rt.com

Top German virologist casts doubt on fears of new 'highly contagious' UK Covid-19 strain 21 Dec, 2020 18:09 Get short URL Top German virologist casts doubt on fears of new 'highly contagious' UK Covid-19 strain FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Wolfgang Rattay 362 Follow RT on RT News of a supposedly highly infectious coronavirus strain being discovered in the UK has led to a flurry of travel bans. Now, a top German scientist says the mutation might not be as dangerous as we were led to believe.

The statement that the new strain of Covid-19 is 70 percent more contagious is nothing, but a claim made by politicians so far, Christian Drosten, the head of the virology department at the Berlin's Charite center -- one of Europe's largest university hospitals -- told the German radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.

"Suddenly, there is this figure out there, 70 percent, and no one even knows what is meant by that," he said. The virologist believes there is just not enough data to really say that the new strain is any more dangerous than the other existing ones.

ALSO ON RT.COM New Covid-19 strain found in UK spreads FASTER, is already in nearly 60 local authority areas – health secretary

The data provided by the British scientists on the new strain is still incomplete, Drosten said, adding that even preliminary analysis results would arrive within a week. The fact that discovery of a new strain coincided with a sharp rise of new infection cases in southeast England also does not necessarily mean that the new virus is to blame, the virologist believes.

"The question is whether the virus is to blame or whether it was just a local epidemic outbreak, or the lockdown was not so strict and transmission mechanisms were in place in an area where this particular strain happened to be," he said.

It was also too early to say whether this virus actually transmits faster. To do so, one needs to "look at who infected whom and how long it took," Drosten explained, adding that "one would be surprised" if such a parameter as the virus infectiousness would significantly change all of a sudden now.

What is known so far is that a mutation present in the new strain lets it form a stronger binding with human cells. Still, according to Drosten, that does not automatically mean quicker reproduction since the virus stays with one cell for a longer period of time than it could and probably should to successfully replicate.

ALSO ON RT.COM EU countries shutting down travel to and from UK amid new highly infectious Covid-19 strain scare

The scientist also said that similar coronavirus mutations already repeatedly appeared during the pandemic only to disappear at some point. He also said that the new strain is unlikely to affect any coronavirus vaccine's effectiveness since an immune response formed through vaccination is a complex process that would hardly be affected by a minor change in the virus structure.

Still, Drosten admitted that the officials were right to be cautious and temporarily ban all travel to and from the UK now that the whole situation is still unclear. "Of course, as a politician, one has to act out of caution here," he said, adding that the current policy approaches could be "corrected" once more information is available.

The discovery of a new coronavirus strain prompted many nations to suspend all travel to and from the UK. The list of countries that joined the international quarantine of the UK includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, France, Germany and Poland, as well as Russia. Some nations outside Europe, like Iran, Argentina, Chile and El Salvador also cut transportation links with the UK.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, suspended travel not just to the UK but to other nations as well. The moves came as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the new Covid-19 strain is supposedly 70 percent more contagious and announced a strict Tier 4 lockdown in part of the country, including London.

ALSO ON RT.COM Russia halts flights to UK for a week as world reacts to news of newly detected British Covid-19 mutation

Like thi

qasimodo 8 hours ago 21 Dec, 2020 05:44 PM

Certain countries try to portray this Covid as the plaque. If we remember even the WHO confirmed that the Covid is way milder than the common flu. So if we are not obliged to get a flu shot, we certainly don't need the Covid "God knows what's in it" vaccine. In the winter months, especially December every year millions of people get the flu, and in some cases its unfortunately deadly. But the authorities are trying to say that every case of the flu is Corona virus which is basically a big lie. It is something new, but way milder and in most of the cases our body can fight it off. Vaccination is being rushed, the FDA had no real solution to resolve the ifs and buts, and now out of a sudden they have approved it, and we have a deadly virus that's going to vipe our civilisation of the planet?That's a lot of disinformation and rubbish. But the big question is liability? These farmaceutical giants clearly say that in case of any trouble they won't be liable? So why would anyone want it if there's no guarantee for a human life? If someone thinks that the vaccine is going to save us, they are just delusional. Get a flu shot if you badly want to stop the panic and you will be OK. The Covid 19 vaccine in my opinion is a rushed experiment, and needs time to prove itself worthy...
Guest 11 hours ago 21 Dec, 2020 03:31 PM
It's a single amino acid change in the spike protein associated with the ACE receptor mechanism that gives the virus access to a cell. There are many such changes going on and it came via Europe and did not original in the UK. Talk about talked up, hyperboli and general incompetence. And I'm not talking about this article!

[Dec 22, 2020] B.1.1.7 mutation which has approx 70% higher transmissibility will probably soon displace the original variant of COVID-19. At least in Britain.

Dec 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Hoarsewhisperer , Dec 22 2020 2:14 utc | 32

In a press conference on Saturday, Chief Science Adviser Patrick Vallance said B.1.1.7, which first appeared in a virus isolated on 20 September, accounted for about 26% of cases in mid-November. "By the week commencing the ninth of December, these figures were much higher," he said. "So, in London, over 60% of all the cases were the new variant." Johnson added that the slew of mutations may have increased the virus' transmissibility by 70%.
...

Not being an ??-ologist, that paragraph indicates to me that a virus with greater transmissibiliy will REPLACE/DISPLACE the original Covid19 strain. Since the emerging consensus among virologists is that the B.1.1.7 variant is no more deadly than the original, then the only reason it matters is that more people will catch the mutated version than would have caught COVID19 - thus putting more pressure on an already over-stressed healthcare system.

Since it looks as though a vaccine isn't going to be a Silver Bullet for many months, if not many, many months, I find it peculiar that more effort wasn't expended on pursuing a TREATMENT to reduce the severity of COVID symptoms.

I caught CGTN News this morning and China has officially abandoned a 'promising' TREATMENT it was working on because the stats indicate that it doesn't work...

Petri Krohn , Dec 22 2020 6:59 utc | 77

I do not think the B.1.1.7 strain is any more infectious than over SARS-COV-2 strains. It prevails because UK has reached a level of herd immunity against the other strains.

It is falsely claimed that a 70% infection rate is required for herd immunity. The 70% applies to vaccines, which are distributed evenly throughout the population. For the epidemic to calm down only a very small portion of the population needs to become immune. This same population is most likely to spread the infection but also most likely to be infected. For any vaccination campaign it would be difficult to find this vector population, but the virus will find it all by itself. It now seems that this vector population is young people who frequent bars and nightclubs. A bartender in ski resorts can infect hundreds, but he is also most likely to be first infected.

[Dec 21, 2020] British medical journal The Lancet published research on Phase I and Phase II clinical trials of the vaccine, revealing no adverse effects in patients and triggering an effective immune response

Dec 21, 2020 | sputniknews.com

"British medical journal The Lancet published research on Phase I and Phase II clinical trials of the vaccine, revealing no adverse effects in patients and triggering an effective immune response. More than 50 countries have requested roughly 2.4 billion doses across India, Brazil, China, Argentina, South Korea and numerous others."

Posted by: groucho | Dec 21 2020 1:02 utc | 47

[Dec 21, 2020] CDC Launches Probe, Issues New Guidelines After Thousands Negatively Affected Following New Covid Vaccine"

Dec 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

groucho , Dec 20 2020 19:50 utc | 19


CDC Launches Probe, Issues New Guidelines After Thousands Negatively Affected Following New Covid Vaccine"

As of Dec. 18, 3,150 out of 272,001 recipients reported what the agency terms "Health Impact Events" after getting vaccinated. The definition of the term is: "unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional."


[Dec 21, 2020] WHO (finally) admits PCR tests create false positives OffGuardian

Dec 21, 2020 | off-guardian.org

The problem is that CT ( number of amplifications) is an arbitrary and is not reported. See https://www.gene-quantification.de/real-time-pcr-handbook-life-technologies-update-flr.pdf

WHO (finally) admits PCR tests create false positives Warnings concerning high CT value of tests are months too late so why are they appearing now? The potential explanation is shockingly cynical. Kit Knightly

The World Health Organization released a guidance memo on December 14th, warning that high cycle thresholds on PCR tests will result in false positives .

While this information is accurate, it has also been available for months, so we must ask: why are they reporting it now? Is it to make it appear the vaccine works?

The "gold standard" Sars-Cov-2 tests are based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR works by taking nucleotides – tiny fragments of DNA or RNA – and replicating them until they become something large enough to identify. The replication is done in cycles, with each cycle doubling the amount of genetic material. The number of cycles it takes to produce something identifiable is known as the "cycle threshold" or "CT value". The higher the CT value, the less likely you are to be detecting anything significant.

This new WHO memo states that using a high CT value to test for the presence of Sars-Cov-2 will result in false-positive results.

To quote their own words [our emphasis]:

Users of RT-PCR reagents should read the IFU carefully to determine if manual adjustment of the PCR positivity threshold is necessary to account for any background noise which may lead to a specimen with a high cycle threshold (Ct) value result being interpreted as a positive result.

They go on to explain [again, our emphasis]:

The design principle of RT-PCR means that for patients with high levels of circulating virus (viral load), relatively few cycles will be needed to detect virus and so the Ct value will be low. Conversely, when specimens return a high Ct value, it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.

Of course, none of this is news to anyone who has been paying attention. That PCR tests were easily manipulated and potentially highly inaccurate has been one of the oft-repeated battle cries of those of us opposing the "pandemic" narrative, and the policies it's being used to sell.

Many articles have been written about it, by many experts in the field, medical journalists and other researchers . It's been commonly available knowledge, for months now, that any test using a CT value over 35 is potentially meaningless.

Dr Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR process, was clear that it wasn't meant as a diagnostic tool , saying:

with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody."

And, commenting on cycle thresholds, once said:

If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR."

The MIQE guidelines for PCR use state:

Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported,"

This has all been public knowledge since the beginning of the lockdown. The Australian government's own website admitted the tests were flawed, and a court in Portugal ruled they were not fit for purpose .

Even Dr Anthony Fauci has publicly admitted that a cycle threshold over 35 is going to be detecting "dead nucleotides", not a living virus.

Despite all this, it is known that many labs around the world have been using PCR tests with CT values over 35, even into the low 40s.

So why has the WHO finally decided to say this is wrong? What reason could they have for finally choosing to recognise this simple reality?

The answer to that is potentially shockingly cynical: We have a vaccine now. We don't need false positives anymore.

Notionally, the system has produced its miracle cure. So, after everyone has been vaccinated, all the PCR tests being done will be done "under the new WHO guidelines" , and running only 25-30 cycles instead of 35+.

Lo and behold, the number of "positive cases" will plummet, and we'll have confirmation that our miracle vaccine works.

After months of flooding the data pool with false positives, miscounting deaths "by accident" , adding "Covid19 related death" to every other death certificate they can stop. The create-a-pandemic machine can be turned down to zero again.

as long as we all do as we're told. Any signs of dissent – masses of people refusing the vaccine, for example – and the CT value can start to climb again, and they bring back their magical disease .


Hugo , Dec 21, 2020 4:14 AM

In an interview, Dr. Wodarg said he had checked his own blood oxygen saturation with a simple test on his finger after wearing a mask for several minutes. It had dropped from 98 to 94 percent. It is different when climbers hike in regions with low oxygen levels; the organism gets used to this and reacts by producing red blood cells. 50 percent of the oxygen we take in is consumed by our brain alone.

That is why the consequences for children wearing a mask are so devastating: their brains are still growing. The constant inhalation of their own carbon dioxide makes them sleepy, lame, unfocused and listless. In addition, the mask creates a hotbed of moisture in which germs thrive. If, on the other hand, we snort into the crook of our arms, they dry out. Open windows prolong life. Especially for smokers, whose organism is pre-damaged, for example, by a lifelong lack of oxygen.

TFS , Dec 20, 2020 11:09 AM

Former Brexit Party letter to the Secretary of State for Health:

Testing for Coronavirus and Government lockdown policies
https://www.thebrexitparty.org/letter-to-secretary-of-state-for-health/

JudyJ , Dec 20, 2020 1:02 PM Reply to TFS

Excellent letter, reply requested by 22 December. A long list of questions to be answered but, if the Government truly has a grip on what they are doing and can demonstrate that they have the supporting evidence, the questions should not be difficult to answer. When I was a civil servant in a London HQ many years ago now, we regularly received requests like this, often with 24 hours notice to reply, and we would have to drop everything else to deal with them. All the receiving Minister's office do is send the request to the appropriate policy unit where responsibility for drafting answers could be shared between any number of staff – one member of staff might deal with, say, three simple questions or one more complex question. But meeting the deadline should not be a problem if one assumes the information is readily accessible as we would be led to believe. We shall see.

Quote from letter: "We trust that this letter will be taken seriously"

In my best pantomime voice 'Oh no it won't.'

aspnaz , Dec 20, 2020 2:33 AM

Read chapter 11 "What happened to the scientific method" of Kary Mullis's (inventor of the PCR test) "Dancing in the mind field" ( https://b-ok.cc/book/1523791/8aa4c2 ) to get his take on why these people are so corrupt.

In summary, he describes what I would call the "Science Industrial Complex" which is basically useless people leaching money from the government teat by creating "imminent disasters" that scare the population, and hence motivate the politicians, into handing out research grants for the most ridiculous projects without any real scientific proof, such as climate change.

Here is an extract:

Imagine two hypothetical labs competing for public funds.
One of those labs announces in a series of scientific papers that they have found some unexpected and very interesting phenomena in the upper atmosphere that contradict the currently accepted theories on the radiogenic formation of carbon-14. This could have a dramatic impact on the radioisotopic dating of fossils. The time frame for human evolution might be a tenth of what has previously been concluded. We may have evolved from the fossils in the Oldavai Gorge in only a couple of hundred thousand years. All of biology may be much younger than we think. More research would be required to confirm this. Biologists all over the world are curious and very excited. The lab is requesting a million dollars from the National Science Foundation to conduct a more detailed study.
A second lab working on upper atmospheric physics calls a press conference to report preliminary data on what appears to be a giant hole in the ozone layer and warns the reporters that if something isn't done about it -- including millions of dollars in grants to study it further -- the world as we know it will be coming to a tragic end. Skin cancer is epidemic, and there are reports of sheep going blind from looking up to the sky. People are starting to worry about having sunglasses that shield their eyes from ultraviolet light. Children begin to learn about it in school, and they are taught to notice the intensity of the UV light when they get off the bus.
Which one of these two laboratories will get funding? Follow the money trail from your pocket to the laboratories and notice that it passes through politicians who need you and by the interest groups who with the media train you.

from "Dancing in the mind field" by Kary Mullis, inventor of the PCR test.

-CO , Dec 20, 2020 7:27 PM Reply to aspnaz

There are different sciences that use different methods. The so-called "scientific method" itself is based on speculative philosophical principles that cannot be proven in or by science since they specify the very conditions required for the scientific knowledge process to exist and to operate.

aspnaz , Dec 20, 2020 10:44 PM Reply to -CO

Mirriam-Webster defines it as: "principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses".

Can you illustrate your point with some examples of scientific methods that differ from the above?

I think that Mullis is pointing out where the above scientific method, however you may want to describe it but involving the fundementals of proof of a hypothesis using empirical evidence, has been overtaken by commercial interests in a way that uses the credibility of the scientific method to sell untested hypotheses that provide some financial gain to the sponsor.

[Dec 20, 2020] What is questionable about the corona virus vaccines?

Dec 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

norecovery , Dec 19 2020 15:53 utc | 44

Jay @ 24

"Can you clarify what you find questionable about the corona virus vaccines?"

Disclaimer: I am not an epidemiologist or medical professional. I get information from various sources especially OTHER THAN mainstream media. Some of those credible sources, such as Dr. Mike Yeadon , subsequently have been censored because they don't purvey the medical establishment's requisite narrative. This is what I have learned:

These COVID-19 vaccines can be characterized as 'experimental.' Some past vaccines have a spotty record. They typically require many years of clinical trials to determine safety and efficacy. A vaccine for Coronavirus has never been developed before, in spite of having been researched to combat previous epidemics of SARS and MERS. This one was completed in a very short time, and the handling and delivery requirements are stringent.

True efficacy and the protocol used for testing the presence of viral infection in the relatively small clinical trials are unclear. We know the rt-PCR test to identify the presence of "COVID-19 infection" has been misapplied on a large scale. The FDA approval of these vaccines is based on that test, which has been proven to show a large proportion of false positives. A Portuguese high court ruled against the legality of this test to determine infection. Effectiveness of a vaccine is probably very short term, possibly only a few weeks. It is unknown whether natural immunity in a healthy individual (the body's own defense) might be equally effective.

Potential side effects are yet to be revealed, besides the few documented cases of allergic reactions thus far. Potential long term health impacts are unknown, and due to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines' 'invasion' of the body with mRNA at the cellular level, they could be serious. Only time will tell, so one must ask, "do I want to volunteer to become a clinical test subject?"

Social controls, so-called "immunity passes" which may not even have validity, are an infringement on individual freedoms and rights and are already being used in some places. That also paves the way for future vaccination requirements against a person's will, and given the financial imperatives of the medical establishment and its collusion with oligarchs, there may exist ulterior motives that are unacceptable.

[Dec 18, 2020] The hunt for profit and power has now resulted in people being used as live test animals for a "vaccine" that is totally unnecessary.

Dec 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Norwegian , Dec 17 2020 15:52 utc | 8

@vk | Dec 17 2020 15:44 utc | 6

SECOND health worker in Alaska suffers allergic reaction after getting Pfizer Covid-19 jab

The hunt for profit and power has now resulted in people being used as live test animals for a "vaccine" that is totally unnecessary. This stuff is criminal to the extreme.

librul , Dec 17 2020 16:33 utc | 14

I just archived the following webpage at http://web.archive.org/
before the censors find it.

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation


Vaccine development is a long, complex process, often lasting 10-15 years and involving a combination of public and private involvement.
...
Exploratory Stage

This stage involves basic laboratory research and often lasts 2-4 years.
...
Pre-Clinical Stage

Many candidate vaccines never progress beyond this stage because they fail to produce the desired immune response. The pre-clinical stages often lasts 1-2 years and usually involves researchers in private industry.
...
Phase I Vaccine Trials
...
Phase II Vaccine Trials
...
Phase III Vaccine Trials
...
Post-Licensure Monitoring of Vaccines
...
Vaccine development is a long, complex process, often lasting 10-15 years and involving a combination of public and private involvement.

I happen to have scheduled an appointment with my primary care doctor early in January.
This is my first meeting with this particular doctor (my previous doctor recently moved elsewhere).
I wonder how pushy this new doctor will be about my taking the vaccine right away.

My first question will be about *which* vaccine.

I just found this quote somewhere:


Indeed, NIH chief Francis Collins, MD, PhD, when asked during a press briefing last week whether people will be able to choose their vaccine, said there won't be enough doses in December for the whole country and "people who get offered one should feel quite happy about that."

Note to self: "feel quite happy about that".

Maybe there is actually something to the good doctor's advice
as how many happy corpses have you seen?

Smile, don't be a corpse.


librul , Dec 17 2020 20:47 utc | 37

@Posted by: librul | Dec 17 2020 16:33 utc | 14

I posted @14 an article. Here is a section from the article I didn't mention.

VAERS

The CDC and FDA established The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in 1990. The goal of VAERS, according to the CDC, is "to detect possible signals of adverse events associated with vaccines." (A signal in this case is evidence of a possible adverse event that emerges in the data collected.) About 30,000 events are reported each year to VAERS. Between 10% and 15% of these reports describe serious medical events that result in hospitalization, life-threatening illness, disability, or death.

VAERS is a voluntary reporting system. Anyone, such as a parent, a health care provider, or friend of the patient, who suspects an association between a vaccination and an adverse event may report that event and information about it to VAERS. The CDC then investigates the event and tries to find out whether the adverse event was in fact caused by the vaccination.

Over 4,000 adverse reactions (hospitalization, life-threatening illness, disability, or death) to vaccines are *reported* each year.
That is in a normal year, with vaccines that have gone thru the normal vetting procedure.

I would say let's see what next year's numbers are. Except who the heck will trust their numbers?

[Dec 18, 2020] I am also hearing considerable chatter that many medical professionals including doctors and nurses are going to REFUSE to take the poorly tested and questionable Covid vaccine for fear of damaging side effects

Vaccines were clearly rushed. Also the nature of coronaviruses makes creation of vaccine like shooting at moving target. So each of them is more dangerous then usual and it is unclear how useful they are. How much it is difficult to tell.
Dec 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Norwegian , Dec 17 2020 17:35 utc | 21

Clearly, the lockdowns and medical tyranny is not a phenomenon isolated from the power struggle, it is obviously a weapon of the establishment, used against the people, to prevent them from organizing independently.

I am also hearing considerable chatter that many medical professionals including doctors and nurses are going to REFUSE to take the poorly tested and questionable Covid vaccine for fear of damaging side effects. And why should they? Why take a vaccine for a virus that only threatens less than 0.3% of the public outside of nursing homes?

Exactly, when applying real scientific method and rational thinking, it is clear that the risk of covid is negligible, while the risk of the "vaccine" is huge. Once you realize that this is a weapon used in a power struggle and not a medical crisis, you also realize the enormity of the crime committed. It is very encouraging to hear that this is being understood more and more.
We have to offer people a choice outside of tyranny, otherwise many will go along with the tyranny.

Indeed. This answers my question very well.

Thanks again.

[Dec 17, 2020] Is there a decease that a claim that vitamins C and D are a panacea for it would not be heard?

Dec 17, 2020 | www.unz.com

utu , says: December 15, 2020 at 4:29 pm GMT • 7.4 hours ago

@Bert anonymous pro HCQ people that IMO were completely flawed.

' vitamins D and C " . – Is there a decease that a claim that vitamins C and D are a panacea for it would not be heard?

" Latin America and South Asia " – There is good reason that in Western science double blind studies are believed to be necessary to verify various claims. There are places in the less developed countries that are less strict and it is very likely that they jump to unwarranted conclusions by Western science standards. Should the claims coming from the third world be researched and evaluated in the West? Yes, absolutely.

[Dec 13, 2020] The paper that established the Drosten PCR test for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus that has subsequently been adopted with indecent haste by the Merkel government along with WHO for worldwide use -- resulting in severe lockdowns globally and an economic and social catastrophe was never peer-reviewed before its publication by Eurosurveillance journal.

Notable quotes:
"... PCR-tests (their essential details are not known to you or me) can be easily used to artificially, adjust" the number that you need as a legitimatization for your politics. Yes, there are without doubt that many dead people. ..."
Dec 13, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Down South , Dec 13 2020 21:06 utc | 36

So let me point out the key part for you:

the paper that established the Drosten PCR test for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus that has subsequently been adopted with indecent haste by the Merkel government along with WHO for worldwide use–resulting in severe lockdowns globally and an economic and social catastrophe–was never peer-reviewed before its publication by Eurosurveillance journal. The critics point out that, "the Corman-Drosten paper was submitted to Eurosurveillance on January 21st 2020 and accepted for publication on January 22nd 2020. On January 23rd 2020 the paper was online."

Incredibly, the Drosten test protocol, which he had already sent to WHO in Geneva on 17 January, was officially recommended by WHO as the worldwide test to determine presence of Wuhan coronavirus, even before the paper had been published.

As the critical authors point out, for a subject so complex and important to world health and security, a serious 24-hour "peer review" from at least two experts in the field is not possible.


How is it possible that a credible scientific study in the means to test for COVID-19 is completed, peer-reviewed and accepted as the general standard in less than a couple of weeks after China announces the emergence of a new virus ?????

uncle tungsten , Dec 13 2020 21:41 utc | 43

Down South #36

How is it possible that a credible scientific study in the means to test for COVID-19 is completed, peer-reviewed and accepted as the general standard in less than a couple of weeks after China announces the emergence of a new virus ?????

Thank you for every word in your post. +++ The frenetic scramble to demonstrate the infallibility of private financed science over public funded and cautious institutions seems to be the driver here. As soon as I grasped the Bill Gates link with the WHO it was clear that neo liberal economics had engulfed the world leading health institution.

You simply cannot believe their blather as it is entirely at the service of neo liberal economics and therefore propaganda first, second, and third with a veneer of science fact somewhere.

Meanwhile USA passenger flights arrive in Sydney. No doubt 'PCR screened'

Hausmeister , Dec 13 2020 23:03 utc | 50

Down South | Dec 13 2020 21:06 utc | 36 and @vk 30

I applaud you, Down South, and I cannot see the qualification vk has for his claims. I would not sign each sentence of the Engdahl paper but as a gross evaluation it is correct.
If you get a PCR test done in Germany you cannot be sure that the ORF-1-gen, that is specific for CoV-2, has been tested too. So this test may mistake with Corona-something. You cannot learn the applied number of cycles which is of essential importance for the interpretation of this test.
The test was not seriously validated. There was no need to speed up with this paper at Eurosvurveillance, justified only for selling the test. Drosten is co-editor of Eurosurveillance. Undeclared conflicts of interest are, in my opinion, reason enough to reject this paper.
And, @vk, I have no idea about your motivation to spread this propaganda. In Germany there is now very heavy censorship also in social media. What you cite is the standard excuse those lovers of censorship sell here.

Hausmeister , Dec 13 2020 23:54 utc | 59

vk | Dec 13 2020 23:17 utc | 53

Sorry, that is nonsense. The Drosten paper has not been peer-reviewed. That first. How deep the scientific flaws in it are neither you or I can assess. And the hair-rising conflicts of interest were never communicated.

As sad canuck | Dec 13 2020 22:45 utc | 48 showed with a brilliant example these PCR-tests (their essential details are not known to you or me) can be easily used to artificially, adjust" the number that you need as a legitimatization for your politics. Yes, there are without doubt that many dead people. But again: in this politicized environment neither you nor I know what the reason of their death was.

William Gruff , Dec 13 2020 23:57 utc | 60

...Even if we assume that half of the PCR covid results are false positives, what would that establish? Wouldn't that just demonstrate that the fatality rate is twice as high? And isn't diagnosis still done by a doctor anyway? The tests are just screening.

Basically, what is with the hyperventilating about false positives? What am I missing here?

[Dec 13, 2020] If PcR test runs with more than 25 cycles, you are likely to get many false positives and at 40 you get mainly false postives

Dec 13, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Dec 13 2020 18:45 utc | 19

7) China is doing PCRs since the dawn of time and there is not an explosion of new cases as the anti-PCR squad is claiming. On the contrary: when they decided to re-test all the Wuhan inhabitants with obligatory PCR tests, they found none, zero, nada positive results.


Blue Dotterel , Dec 13 2020 19:00 utc | 22

Posted by: Down South | Dec 13 2020 17:55 utc | 16
Posted by: vk | Dec 13 2020 18:45 utc | 19

As I understand it, the false positives are a result of poorly conducting the analyses through putting the samples through too many cycles. If you intensify the concentration of the virus more than 25 cycles, you are likely to get false positives. This apparently has been a problem in the US and other EU countries.

Any country that conducts the test properly significantly reduces the probability of false positives.

Most likely China, among others, does it properly

Down South , Dec 13 2020 19:51 utc | 25

Blue Dotterel @ 22

Exactly so.

None of them are arguing that COVID-19 does not exist, it is that the maximum reasonably reliable Ct value is 30 cycles.and as you increase the cycles above that you start getting more false positive results as only non-infectious (dead) viruses are detected.

The issue that the report raised is that the WHO and Drosden are recommending a Ct of 45 . The higher the cycles the more the "cases" the more drastic the action the government will take to bring the number of "cases" down.

Therefore, to ensure that the government action is reasonable it is necessary to ensure that the information the government is using to justify such action is indeed reasonable and justifiable.

You have to be an absolute idiot to think that government diktats should simply be obeyed and not questioned especially by people who have the necessary credentials to evaluate such information.

js , Dec 13 2020 22:28 utc | 47

Well, it is sad to note absolute lack of intellectual curiosity about something that most likely will not pass without profoundly changing western societies. On side note it would be good to recognise both taoist and christian way of handling the exception of sickness – being sick of sickness is way less dangerous than people being religiously afraid of contamination, of sick people, and organising accordingly.

Most likely this, now already mental, curse will not pass before one or all of the following happens:
– forced vaccination using either public or private coercion or both,
– global (or regional) digital health IDs and tracking systems,
– social, health and education sectors of lesser states will be overridden and forced open to global international providers,
– not to mention that the precendent of tiers and lockdowns is established and can be used repeatedly for the purpose of global health imperialism. There'll be the mandate to force people self-isolate as well.

One could say these are the markings of global sanitary dictature. Or, this could be the way to make formal the hidden features of the system currently in use. The spooky license will be made official. All the tracking, etc.

The Drosten testing non-protocol is faulty to the core, and – without doubt – it is enabling corruption of both politics and science (cormandrostenreview.com).

Resulting actions are criminal in their essence – that is the reason why we are seeing leaders of nations acting in such a bizarre way. The truth is being established by the means of spectacle. Once harsh and overdecisive, then lacking in resoluteness – even in the EU the countries still can not coordinate simple and relevant statistics.

China has nothing to gain from this virus, hence there it is mostly over and done with. Seems to go for Russia as well.

Still, they are playing the ball. Wonder why?

sad canuck , Dec 13 2020 22:45 utc | 48

vk @ 40 said "of course the scientific standards for times of emergency do fall because of time constraints. That doesn't mean the debunk attempts aren't equally flawed".

I'm sorry but this is not the way science works and cutting corners during emergencies is an even worse practice. The amplification issue, lack of Standard Operational Protocol, and clear bias and hijacking of the peer review process for this paper which formed the foundation of PCR implementation is utterly and completely outrageous. But of course not surprising. It's clear that all UN agencies including WHO have been corrupted. Right from the beginning there has been a consistent and widespread effort to discredit any testing method aside from PCR. Are you not even remotely interested why?

It's easy to see how COVID testing with a flawed PCR testing procedure rolls out and I will give you an example from a place that I am familiar with. COVID has magically disappeared in Thailand, but large number of positive cases are appearing in Thai who are returning and in foreign visitors. These PCR positives are occurring in spite of all returnees having tested negative just prior to boarding their flight to Thailand. Almost all of the positives in returning residents are also of the asymptomatic variety. I would wager that the amplification level for a domestic PCR test is 25 while the returning resident test level is set at 35 or higher. Lacking transparency and a Standard Operational Protocol for the RT-PCR test, including a universally accepted amplification level, you can create any result you want, any time, any place. These are serious issues and you can't label people who have issues with scientific integrity as deniers or misleading.

The entire justification of PCR as a public health tool (as opposed to a diagnostic tool) has been vaporized and I cannot for the life of me understand why you don't "get it" or the wider implications.

[Dec 13, 2020] Protocols Strategies to manage COVID-19 Pandemic Dr Peter McCullough

Dec 13, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

b , Dec 13 2020 17:27 utc | 13

Accidentally deleted this comment by gm:

EARLY OUTPATIENT TREATMENT Protocols & Strategies to manage COVID-19 Pandemic Dr Peter McCullough,11/27/20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ1fkKqK7T8

gm , Dec 13 2020 17:35 utc | 14

RE: "None of these experts talk about the way to stop COVID before it hits"

-Posted by: Lurk | Dec 13 2020 17:13 utc | 11

That is not correct in the case of Dr. McCullough.

In both the late Oct YT at #8 and the late Nov YT at post #9 he addresses the "Four Pillars of Pandemic Response", with the first pillar being *preventative actions* (masks/transmission limiting measures/index case tracking etc).

McCullough also points out in the latter YT that, in the case of the US, Canada, UK and much of western EU, 'First Pillar' measures have failed miserably to stop the resurgent wave of covid.

[Dec 12, 2020] Russian Cooperation Saves British Vaccine

Dec 12, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

In late November Debs is dead and I wrote about the ruthless vaccine competition . The cause were the ambiguous results of the non-profit AstraZeneca vaccine trials which led to delighted criticism from those who prefer commercial vaccine suppliers.

The good news today is that cooperation between vaccine developers is still possible and can lead to better results.

As Debs had opined:

In the real world that means if the AstraZeneca vaccine is more than 60% efficacious (which is better than any flu vaccine - 95% is new big pharma BS IMO) and has no major side effects (one case of MS tells us nothing for the reason I outlined above), then it will be that or nothing for a sizeable slab of the world's population.

If everyone falls for big pharma's transparent attempt to stop this possible vaccine in its tracks, prior to testing completion, then that will mean no vaccine for billions of our fellow humans , so rather than joining in the big pharma sabotage, it makes better sense to consider that vaccine more objectively than de Noli, that Harvard minion of corporations seems to do.

I agreed with that and discussed the most likely reason why the AstraZeneca vaccine did not create a higher efficacy:

The AstraZeneca vaccine uses an adenovirus as 'vector' to deliver a DNA sequence that human cells then use to create one specific (but harmless) SARS-CoV-2 protein. The immune system will then learn to attack that protein. Afterwards it should be able to protect against SARS-CoV-2 infections.
...
In order to safeguard against cases where an already existing immunity to human adenoviruses may impede inoculation AstraZeneca is using a chimpanzee-originated version of an adenovirus as a vector. The Russian Sputnik V vaccine, hyped by Prof. de Noli on RT , uses two doses with different human adenoviruses (Ad-26, Ad-5) as vectors to increase the chance of inoculation. Other vaccine developers, CanSino Biologics and Johnson & Johnson, are also using adenovirus vectors. Sinopharm's vaccine uses an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus.

AstraZeneca found by chance that its vaccine works best when the first dose is smaller than the second one. Vector immunity can explain why this is the case.

A first high dose will create some immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 virus but also some immunity against the vector virus, the chimpanzee-originated adenovirus. When a first high dose has trained the immune system to fight the vector virus the second 'booster' vaccine dose using the same vector will become inefficient. A lower first dose can make sure that the second higher dose is not prematurely defeated by vector immunity but can still do its work.

Unbeknownst to me the Russian developers of the Sputnik V vaccine had come to the same conclusion:

[Dec 12, 2020] '95% Effective' May Not Mean What You Think It Means by Thomas Neuburge

Notable quotes:
"... Multiple COVID-19 vaccines are currently in phase 3 trials with efficacy assessed as prevention of virologically confirmed disease. WHO recommends that successful vaccines should show disease risk reduction of at least 50%, with 95% CI that true vaccine efficacy exceeds 30%. However, the impact of these COVID-19 vaccines on infection and thus transmission is not being assessed. Even if vaccines were able to confer protection from disease, they might not reduce transmission similarly. ..."
"... A note before I begin: This is not a recommendation not to be vaccinated against Coronavirus. It's an encouragement to decide for yourself and your family when to be vaccinated and which vaccine to choose based on the most accurate information available. That said, let's proceed. ..."
"... "Done right, vaccines end pandemics. Done wrong, pandemics end vaccines." -- Andy Slavitt here ..."
"... Based on the numbers released from phase 3 trials, the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective, but 1% of the time . In the same way, the Moderna vaccine is 94% effective, but 2% of the time . ..."
"... For comparison, let's look at the absolute numbers from the Moderna test. In the unprotected population, 1.23% of the people who could have been exposed to the virus, got it. In the vaccinated population exposed to the same conditions, a little less than 0.07% got the virus. Subtracting the two, the absolute gain in protection was 1.16% -- that is, taking the vaccine bought you a little over 1% in absolute protection. ..."
"... any studies or testing on fertility? what about breast feeding? what about long term symptoms? [ hint ; the manufacturers have nothing] what does that tell you? ..."
"... Pharma/FDA: "We can't worry about that right now. We have a pandemic to fight. And investors to consider. And year-end bonuses are coming up. And a political class looking for a quick fix." ..."
"... Indeed we can't worry about that now say Pharma, that's why you absolutely must completely indemnify us from any financial repercussions too. ..."
"... just yesterday the Pfizer vaccine vaccine reported a number of issues with allergic reactions. It raised the question on whether they deliberately excluded people with known allergies from their test subjects (this is not uncommon in early drug testing as a safety precaution). If even 1% have a serious allergic reaction, this would throw the benefit/risk balance out. ..."
"... Is it O/Z, or the Pfizer one? NHS yesterday issued a guideline to stop vaccinating anyone with "history of allergic reactions", which was for Pfizer vaccine. ..."
"... That "1% of the time" and "2% of the time" reflects the approximate likelihood that a subject from among the test groups was exposed to a high enough dose of SARS2-CoV to cause symptoms and a positive PCR test over the course of the trial. It has absolutely zero to do with the efficacy or lack thereof of the vaccines. Let me repeat that. The overall proportion of infection among all trial participants has no bearing, in and of itself, on the actual efficacy. ..."
"... As such, this Pfizer vaccine and possibly the Moderna one too if it has the same problem, will require that patients be monitored for anaphylactic symptoms for some significant duration of time (an hour?) after the injection. Now consider this potential possibility in light of the other logistical difficulties surrounding the vaccine distribution and administration to huge numbers. It probably won't be via drive-thru service. ..."
"... Well, the anaphylaxis, regardless of state of health, indicates that there are antigens present in the formulation which are unrelated to the protein the vaccine will manufacture in cells. While it can even be a mucopolysaccharide rather than a protein, the fact remains that the carrier is not benign and we are not being provided with all the information. ..."
"... Yep, I am wondering of the consequences of rushing out the vaccines and I am convinced the pressure is 99% political. There are governments too eager to announce mass vaccination and putting too much confidence in early reports so worried they are with the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic. And this can show (will show) problematic if mass vaccination is started before a thorough examination of further trial results and problems like allergic reaction and others that might surge in the course of the trials. ..."
"... We provide people very little education and most others end up specialists. Yet at the same time everyone knows everything and needs to know everything because everyone is trying to screw you over. And worse yet, most people do not know that they are stupid or can speak about a topic knowing they are probably wrong. ..."
"... It's all so damn stressful I will just take my chances without the vaccine and be as careful as I can not to infect others. I know a lot about human biology, but not enough about vaccines and the companies and the people who own them. I do not trust the government because it is controlled by corporations and not the people. ..."
"... Can the pharma companies stand behind the claim that it's 95% effective without resorting to numerical semantics or lobbying for liability shields? If so then by all means tell the public that the vaccines are 95% effective. If they say "well we did say it's 95% but what we meant was " then we are in the territory of bait and switch. ..."
"... There's too much at stake to leave even little room for exaggerated claims from profiteers because the anti-vaxxers will have a field day exploiting any discrepancy between claimed and actual performance for these vaccines and guess what, with that will go public trust. ..."
"... people are going to alter their behaviour based on these claims once vaccinated, so 95% should mean 95% in absolute terms and contra-indications should also be clearly communicated to at-risk populations. Auditable transparency should be the name of the game, if we've learnt anything from the 737max debacle it's that companies, when left to their own devices, place profit ahead of human lives. ..."
"... Why should Vietnam show a terrible "absolute effectiveness" compared to France if the goal is to analyze the same vaccine? As the number of people exposed to the virus approaches the entirety of the population (if half were vaccinated and all members are susceptible to infection) the number would approach the vaccine efficacy as the companies define it. ..."
"... I would even ditch the '95% effective' language. They need to say 'if 10,000 people were exposed to the virus, ordinarily about n1 would get infected. With this vaccine, the number infected was n2. This is language people can grasp. ..."
"... I was born three years before doctors began giving a new drug on the market declared safe in pregnancy to mothers for morning sickness. It was called Thalidomide. ..."
"... The second surprise from these protocols is how mild the requirements for contracted Covid-19 symptoms are. A careful reading reveals that the minimum qualification for a case of Covid-19 is a positive PCR test and one or two mild symptoms. These include headache, fever, cough, or mild nausea. This is far from adequate. These vaccine trials are testing to prevent common cold symptoms. ..."
"... A temperature of 104.9 in an adult with a functional immune system (we are not talking about babies and kids – they are different) is extraordinary after a vaccination. 104.9 means that the immune system has been activated enough to take it up a few notches to DEF CON 1. This is very unusual in infectious disease – some parasites and ameba do this routinely – and things like sepsis syndrome can – but for the most part, getting a temperature up this high is definitely not normal. It is certainly not a good sign for a vaccine. A vaccine should not be stimulating the immune system to this degree – EVER. Idiosyncratic reactions in a very rare patient is one thing – if this is happening more often – this is not a good sign for that vaccine. ..."
"... This is medically important for two reasons. 1) That level of fever if sustained can damage permanently multiple organs. 2) Vaccines should simply not be activating the immune system to that degree – it is completely inappropriate. It is very normal for people to have a brief temp of 99 or 100 after a vaccine – this is a completely different level. ..."
"... The Vaccine Drumbeat in my jurisdiction is increasing and I'm sure will become deafening. Talk show radio hosts actually giving medical advice. No recommendations to consult with a doctor regarding your personal health circumstances and risks or those of your loved ones. ..."
"... This is all orchestrated by Public Health officials who apparently have never heard of personal health care. We are all just one big Herd. To me this is a desecration of the doctor patient relationship by so-called health professionals. All of which is extremely dangerous and bad medical advice. ..."
"... Re: companies mandating staff to be vaccinated to market their establishments as "safe". The tone and substance of the post is clearly meant to be a "proceed with caution" advisory on taking the vaccine, despite the author being at pains to emphasize that it's not an "encouragement to reject vaccines". ..."
"... Don't forget they are using flawed PCR tests and except for Moderna in the US all other countries and companies where studies have been conducted are using another vaccine instead of a true saline or inert placebo. ..."
"... Not to mention most of these Pharmaceutical Companies have been sued for tens of billions of dollars for harmful drugs , buried information, fraud ect. We're supposed to trust them with safety studies for medical products they have indemnity for. Thank you for pointing out how deceptive these numbers can be for the average person. ..."
"... The problem is, given the PCR is acknowledged to generate a lot of false positives, then the success rate will be overstated, because the denominator in the success rate calculations will be swollen with subjects who didn't actually have the CV19 virus to start with ..."
Dec 10, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

'95% Effective' May Not Mean What You Think It Means Posted on December 10, 2020 by Yves Smith

Yves here. It's good to see Tom Neuburger discussing a possible misperception by some of what the "95% effective" Covid mRNA vaccine results touted by Pfizer and Moderna mean, when they are on the verge of receiving an FDA Emergency Use Authorization to allow their release.

While we have your attention, we'll point out another misperception, which the press is amplifying, that having been vaccinated would prevent the recipient from transmitting Covid. For instance, some business owners are saying they will require employees to be vaccinated, not because they are concerned about worker safety, but because they intend to market their venue as safe for customers by virtue of having vaccinated staff.

At this point, the effect of any of the Covid vaccines on disease transmission is a known unknown. From Wired in late November :

The problem is, a Covid-19 vaccine that only prevents illness -- which is to say, symptoms -- might not prevent infection with the virus or transmission of it to other people. Worst case, a vaccinated person could still be an asymptomatic carrier. That could be bad.

The article further points out that so far, only the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has evidence that it reduces transmission, as opposed to protecting recipients of the disease.

A more technical explanation from The Lancet , in September:

Multiple COVID-19 vaccines are currently in phase 3 trials with efficacy assessed as prevention of virologically confirmed disease. WHO recommends that successful vaccines should show disease risk reduction of at least 50%, with 95% CI that true vaccine efficacy exceeds 30%. However, the impact of these COVID-19 vaccines on infection and thus transmission is not being assessed. Even if vaccines were able to confer protection from disease, they might not reduce transmission similarly.

Challenge studies in vaccinated primates showed reductions in pathology, symptoms, and viral load in the lower respiratory tract, but failed to elicit sterilising immunity in the upper airways. Sterilising immunity in the upper airways has been claimed for one vaccine, but peer-reviewed publication of these data are awaited.

The sterlizing immunity claim came from Phase 1 trials of the Novavax vaccine .

By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at Substack

Excessive haste could have fatal consequences, since public trust and wide vaccination are the only ways any vaccine, even the best ones, can work.

A note before I begin: This is not a recommendation not to be vaccinated against Coronavirus. It's an encouragement to decide for yourself and your family when to be vaccinated and which vaccine to choose based on the most accurate information available. That said, let's proceed.


"Done right, vaccines end pandemics. Done wrong, pandemics end vaccines." -- Andy Slavitt here

People in the United States, along with people in all of the rest of the world, are eager for a vaccine that provides immunity to the Covid-19 virus. Drug manufacturers, with a market of tens of billions of injections to sell into, are eager to roll one off the production line. Both groups are highly incentivized to get a vaccine into distribution quickly.

Hundreds of Billions in Potential Revenue

Let's look at the revenue side first. Here, for example, is what the three leading vaccine candidates are projected to cost in the UK according to a recent Sky News piece :

In two years the earth is projected to hold 8 billion people , and most leading vaccine candidates require at least two doses. Let's be conservative: If Moderna, say, sold its Covid vaccine to 1 billion people at ₤28 (about $37) per dose, the revenue stream from those sales would turn into real money fast -- $74 billion in revenue at retail prices in less than two years.And that's for capturing less than a sixth of the global market. A vaccine manufacturer that captures a third of that market would swim in wealth till the climate crisis took us all.

For comparison, consider Moderna's recent revenue profile . For the last few years, Moderna income has run between $60 and $200 million per year. Revenue for just the last quarter , however, jumped to $158 million. Moderna is clearly set for a windfall.

Needless to say, something like $100 billion or more in revenue would more than cover the cost of Covid vaccine development, so why the high price retail prices? One can only guess.

How Effective Is "Effective"?

About effectiveness, much is claimed. From the same Sky News article:

The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use.

The government says the jab [vaccine], which has been given the green light by independent health regulator MHRA, will be rolled out across the UK from early next week.

Studies have shown the jab is 95% effective and works in all age groups. [emphasis added]

Moderna claims similar effectiveness -- 94% -- for its own vaccine candidate. But what does effectiveness mean?

To a lay person, a phrase like "95% effective" means one of two things: either that she or he, upon exposure to the virus, is protected 95% of the time, or that 95% of the people who take the vaccine are protected 100% of the time.

And this is where the mutual eagerness of the two highly motivated groups -- the public; the profiteers -- intersect. The public wants to hear "95% effectiveness" and think it knows what those words means. The drug companies want the same thing as the public; it wants the public to think it knows what those words mean.

But in the world of drug advertising, the word "effective" does not mean what you think it means . The other way to look at effectiveness is this: Based on the numbers released from phase 3 trials, the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective, but 1% of the time . In the same way, the Moderna vaccine is 94% effective, but 2% of the time .

Relative Effectiveness

To sort this out, let's look at real numbers, thanks to Twitter friend David Windt.

For the Moderna product, the phase 3 trial contained 30,000 individuals divided between those given the vaccine and those given a placebo. Let's assume that individuals in each group were allowed to roam freely "in the wild" -- that is, told to live their regular lives among the general population, including going out infrequently, staying masked, and practicing social distance -- as opposed being proactively and aggressively exposed to the virus by the researchers, which would be highly immoral, to say the least.

In the Moderna vaccinated group, 11 people out of 15,000 got the virus (by Moderna's definition of what "got the virus means") for an overall infection rate of 0.07% . (There's disagreement about whether the drug company's "got the virus" measurements are well chosen; see the Forbes article " Covid-19 Vaccine Protocols Reveal That Trials Are Designed To Succeed ." But we'll ignore that point for now.)

In the Moderna placebo group, 185 people of 15,000 got the virus, for an overall infection rate of 1.23% .

Do you see where this is headed? If you divide 0.07% by 1.23%, you get a 5.7% infection rate -- or inversely, a 94% protection rate, which is what's claimed. But that's a percentage of a percentage, a ratio of a ratio, something called the "relative rate" in the medical profession. What this really means is that, of the 1.23% of people who would have gotten the virus in the vaccinated group, 94% of them didn't.

But Moderna isn't testing 30,000 people who are infected with the virus, or even 15,000 people. Only 185 people "got the virus" (by their definition) in the placebo group. That population was reduced to 11 people with vaccination. These are very small numbers. As stated above, the Moderna vaccine is 94% effective -- but only 1.23% of the time.

(For another way to see that using a percentage of a percentage, or a ratio of a ratio, is confusing, consider an advertisement that claims a company's new product is "twice as effective" as its old one. If the old product was effective only 2% of the time, and you knew this, would you buy the new one?)

Infection rates in those clinical trials seem low, by the way, which could be just an accident of statistics, or something off in their way of measuring who is counted as infected. From the start of the pandemic until now, the overall disease rate for Maricopa County, a high-infection zone, is 5034 per 100,000 people , or 5% . At the lower end, the overall disease rate for Multnomah County, a less-infected but still urban county, is 2363 per 100,000 people , or 2.4% .

Both rates are higher than the infection rates of the Moderna and Pfizer placebo groups. As stated, Moderna's placebo group experienced a 1.23% infection rate, and Pfizer's placebo group was infected just 0.75% of the time. Does this indicate a difference in how "infection" is determined, or just something else about these studies? Hard to tell at this point.

None of this is to imply dishonesty on the part of the drug companies. Measuring "effectiveness" using the relative rate of infection is common in that world. It's just more meaningful when the overall infection rate of a pathogen is, say, 70% or higher, instead of 5% or less.

Absolute Effectiveness

For comparison, let's look at the absolute numbers from the Moderna test. In the unprotected population, 1.23% of the people who could have been exposed to the virus, got it. In the vaccinated population exposed to the same conditions, a little less than 0.07% got the virus. Subtracting the two, the absolute gain in protection was 1.16% -- that is, taking the vaccine bought you a little over 1% in absolute protection.

The numbers for the Pfizer vaccine are similar. According to Windt , "the infection rate was reduced slightly, from 0.75% to 0.04% – that's "95% efficacy" [but] these results do NOT mean that 95% of those vaccinated are protected." In absolute terms, taking the Pfizer vaccine reduced the risk of getting the virus by just 0.71%.

Do you trust any of these drug manufacturers and their massively under-tested vaccines enough that you would take whatever risk is associated with their product to gain that amount of protection? I know good doctors who won't, and others who will.

Testing and Public Trust

I want to point to two articles about testing and public trust. First from MIT in November, consider this caution about public trust:

Covid-19 vaccines shouldn't get emergency-use authorization

Public trust in vaccines is already in decline. The FDA should proceed with caution.

The pace of covid-19 vaccine research has been astonishing: there are more than 200 vaccine candidates in some stage of development, including several that are already in phase 3 clinical trials , mere months after covid-19 became a global public health emergency. In order for the FDA to approve a vaccine, however, not only do these clinical trials need to be completed -- a process that typically involves following tens of thousands of participants for at least six months -- but the agency also needs to inspect production facilities, review detailed manufacturing plans and data about the product's stability, and pore over reams of trial data. This review can easily take a year or more.

Excessive haste could have fatal consequences, since public confidence and wide vaccination are the only ways any vaccine, even the best ones, can work: "Public health experts caution that vaccines don't protect people; only vaccinations do . A vaccine that hasn't gained enough public trust will therefore have a limited ability to control the pandemic even if it's highly effective." [emphasis mine]

This Forbes article from September, titled " Covid-19 Vaccine Protocols Reveal That Trials Are Designed To Succeed ," argues that the vaccine trials it examined measure efficacy by testing for the wrong things -- the absence or presence of symptoms, especially mild ones:

One of the more immediate questions a trial needs to answer is whether a vaccine prevents infection. If someone takes this vaccine, are they far less likely to become infected with the virus? These trials all clearly focus on eliminating symptoms of Covid-19, and not infections themselves. Asymptomatic infection is listed as a secondary objective in these trials when they should be of critical importance.

It appears that all the pharmaceutical companies assume that the vaccine will never prevent infection . Their criteria for approval is the difference in symptoms between an infected control group and an infected vaccine group. They do not measure the difference between infection and noninfection as a primary motivation. [emphasis added]

Is this true of the latest trials? Last September is forever in Covid years. I'll look at this side of the issue in a follow-up piece, but my early research says that the Forbes point is still valid. If this turns out to be the flaw Forbes thinks it is, public trust could be even more greatly eroded as these vaccines fail to deliver what's we're led to expect of them.

To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate?

As I said before, this is an not an encouragement reject the vaccines. It's an encouragement to decide about them wisely by considering a number of factors -- your need to feel "safe," your need to end this constant quarantine, and society's need to inoculate nearly everyone, versus your trust in the approval process, your personal level of caution, and the benefit of taking a relatively untested product to reduce your Covid risk by maybe 2% in absolute terms.

There are Covid hot-spots after all, areas of the country and the world where infections are soaring, and even low infection rates come at a heavy price. Covid has changed for the worse both the way we live and our economy . And people do die from it.

Maybe the first vaccines out of the gate, perhaps these three, will be everything a mother could want for her family and nation. But even if these products are are very very good, they have to be trusted to be effective.

If that trust is given blindly, and then betrayed, the consequences will be severe.


Savita , December 10, 2020 at 3:46 am

any studies or testing on fertility? what about breast feeding? what about long term symptoms? [ hint ; the manufacturers have nothing] what does that tell you?

Dean , December 10, 2020 at 6:01 am

Pharma/FDA: "We can't worry about that right now. We have a pandemic to fight. And investors to consider. And year-end bonuses are coming up. And a political class looking for a quick fix."

Adrian D. , December 10, 2020 at 6:31 am

Indeed we can't worry about that now say Pharma, that's why you absolutely must completely indemnify us from any financial repercussions too.

Dwight , December 10, 2020 at 1:22 pm

And since media depend on our ad dollars, we can control the PR repercussions.

westkentim , December 10, 2020 at 2:57 pm

The Wodarg/Yeadon petition to the EMA (which, contrary to some reports, does not say "it causes sterilisation") is worth reading

https://2020news.de/en/dr-wodarg-and-dr-yeadon-request-a-stop-of-all-corona-vaccination-studies-and-call-for-co-signing-the-petition/

Yeadon appears to be being branded as a nut in the mainstream British media (and, indeed, Associated Press have published an article refuting the allegation that the vaccine causes sterility, by disproving assertions that Wodarg & Yeadon did not make.) In my book, that probably means he is not 180 degrees wrong

bob , December 10, 2020 at 4:05 pm

Put "sterilization" in the press release and Karen is going deep undercover to sniff it out. She knows what's up. She found documents on the website

It's all for the children! ..

PlutoniumKun , December 10, 2020 at 3:48 am

I don't know the answer to this, but just yesterday the Pfizer vaccine vaccine reported a number of issues with allergic reactions. It raised the question on whether they deliberately excluded people with known allergies from their test subjects (this is not uncommon in early drug testing as a safety precaution). If even 1% have a serious allergic reaction, this would throw the benefit/risk balance out.

The potential harm of getting his roll out badly wrong could be catastrophic for public health policy for decades to come. I've a very bad feeling that there have been too many incentives built in to cut corners and fudge data. Who wants to be the mid level scientist in one of those companies with an awkward question to raise during a weekly meeting? We may well be throwing a dice and hoping for the best, rather than focusing on getting the right answer.

vlade , December 10, 2020 at 4:04 am

Is it O/Z, or the Pfizer one? NHS yesterday issued a guideline to stop vaccinating anyone with "history of allergic reactions", which was for Pfizer vaccine.

If it's just one vaccine, it could be an oversight. If both/all, it could be a real problem – as you say, a potential catastrophe for decades.

GramSci , December 10, 2020 at 8:04 am

Is the sample skewed?

If I had severe or eve moderate allergies, I wouldn't volunteer for a drug test, especially given the current state of US health scare.

Stephen the tech critic , December 10, 2020 at 4:18 am

With all due respect, the author and his Twitter friend seem very confused about how to interpret the efficacy numbers. The quantitative reasoning is fundamentally erroneous.

> The other way to look at effectiveness is this: Based on the numbers released from phase 3 trials, the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective, but 1% of the time. In the same way, the Moderna vaccine is 94% effective, but 2% of the time.

That "1% of the time" and "2% of the time" reflects the approximate likelihood that a subject from among the test groups was exposed to a high enough dose of SARS2-CoV to cause symptoms and a positive PCR test over the course of the trial. It has absolutely zero to do with the efficacy or lack thereof of the vaccines. Let me repeat that. The overall proportion of infection among all trial participants has no bearing, in and of itself, on the actual efficacy.

Note that these percentages are smaller than the overall "rate" of infection (proper term would be "proportion") in e.g. Maricopa Cty, AZ because the latter proportions are with regard to the entire pandemic whereas the proportions observed in the vaccine studies reflect the limited duration of the study. Also keep in mind that a fair amount of data collection likely happened over the summer before the cases started skyrocketing again.

With that said, the problem, such as it is, with the low percentage of people who got infected is that it reduces the effective sample size, relative to the number of people who actually enrolled in the study. However, the sample sizes are not so small as to be inadequate to demonstrate high efficacy for the purposes of these trials.

Now, there are plenty of caveats here if you really want to pick these thing apart. The author correctly notes that these studies demonstrate efficacy in terms of getting full-blown symptomatic COVID-19, not in terms of preventing transmission or avoiding the disease entirely.

Also, the results only apply to the *sampled population*, which are the people among the test subjects who became positive. Is that population *representative* of the whole population? Does it include children? The elderly? People of different social class and/or living situations? People of different "colors"? People with history of severe allergies? And are the proportions of each of these (and any others I *can't* think of) similar within the sampled population as in the whole population?

Second, the result assumes that the study is blinded. Blinded means that subjects don't know whether they have been given a real vaccine or a placebo. If subjects are not blinded, they may alter their own behavior accordingly. For example, a test subject who knows (s)he is vaccined might be more nonchalant about social interactions, which could increase their frequency of exposure to COVID vs. subjects who knew they got placebo.

While the studies themselves have surely taken precautions to avoid accidentally un-blinding the subjects (unless an adverse reaction occurs, which is handled separately in the data), the media has reported repeatedly and extensively, while these trails are on-going, that side-effects are common. This is very bad because this information gives test subjects knowledge they can use to judge whether they are actually vaccinated or not. Even if said subjects are wrong in their assessment, simply believing they have extra knowledge can change their behavior, and if this phenomenon is not identical between the placebo and experimental groups, it will throw off the results. An analogy in the legal world is how jurors are advised not to watch or listen to news reports about the trial they are serving in. Whether they choose to believe or disbelieve the reported information, it has the potential to harm their impartiality.

By the way, I'm not trying to defend these vaccines or their manufacturers for their own sake. The author is correct that these vaccines are "under-tested", and I believe pushing them onto the market so quickly comes with substantial risks, both directly to public health and indirectly via potential severe damage to trust and credibility. I adhere to the maxim that Murphy was an optimist, and Murphy would say that there's a lot that can go wrong in this scenario.

Yves Smith , December 10, 2020 at 4:44 am

Thanks. I was concerned that the emphasis trying to undercut the 95% claim was overegged, but I had separately been bothered by how small the effective sample was. It appears the Pfizer sample was skewed by excluding people who were allergic and not having read their data release, it isn't clear how up front they were about that (you'd think the NHS wouldn't have gone about injecting their staff willy nilly and getting two severe bad reactions the first day if they had had a clue).

Stephen the tech critic , December 10, 2020 at 6:21 am

You're welcome, but I'm not sure I explained as well as I could have.

The reports of serious allergic reactions from the Pfizer vaccine on its debut day surprised me. I imagined lots of things that could go wrong, but two bad reactions on the first day? Perhaps these incidents will be limited to people with "a history of serious allergic reactions", but I also know that anaphylaxis is unpredictable and I know many people anecdotally who only had such a reaction later in life.

As such, this Pfizer vaccine and possibly the Moderna one too if it has the same problem, will require that patients be monitored for anaphylactic symptoms for some significant duration of time (an hour?) after the injection. Now consider this potential possibility in light of the other logistical difficulties surrounding the vaccine distribution and administration to huge numbers. It probably won't be via drive-thru service.

Adrian D , December 10, 2020 at 6:50 am

As I understand it the 2 people in the UK who suffered the reaction were aware of their allergy issues and carried epi-pens, but the allergic effects just weren't flagged in any of the resources accompanying the rolled-out vaccine or asked of them when they got the jab. Which rather speaks of a rushed and botched process to me.

Phacops , December 10, 2020 at 9:42 am

Well, the anaphylaxis, regardless of state of health, indicates that there are antigens present in the formulation which are unrelated to the protein the vaccine will manufacture in cells. While it can even be a mucopolysaccharide rather than a protein, the fact remains that the carrier is not benign and we are not being provided with all the information.

In the Adenovirus carrier vaccines the virus shell is in itself immunogenic, which makes a booster problematic unless, as with Sputnik 5, different adenoviruses are used for the primary and booster.

I intend to be vaccinated, but I'm witholding judgement until more data is presented about the currently highlighted vaccines until I see data on either attenuated virus or adjuvated purified protein vaccines.

Coming from a time before polio vaccination, what I have not lost sight of is the fact that vaccination in general has been breathtakingly successful in improving and maintaining our health at low cost.

larry , December 10, 2020 at 9:07 am

AZ say that Phase III of their trials was double blind with 40k subjects. The official title of the study is A Phase III Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Multicenter Study in Adults to Determine the Safety, Efficacy, and Immunogenicity of AZD1222, a Non-replicating ChAdOx1 Vector Vaccine, for the Prevention of COVID-19 whose start date was August 2020, Primary completion date as March 2021, and Estimated study completion date as February 2023. A lttle more data can be found at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04516746 (ClinicalTrials.gov of the NIH).

One could be forgiven for thinking that the trials are currently not finished. If so, does that mean the vaccine was rushed out with all the consequences resulting from that?

Ignacio , December 10, 2020 at 12:51 pm

Yep, I am wondering of the consequences of rushing out the vaccines and I am convinced the pressure is 99% political. There are governments too eager to announce mass vaccination and putting too much confidence in early reports so worried they are with the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic. And this can show (will show) problematic if mass vaccination is started before a thorough examination of further trial results and problems like allergic reaction and others that might surge in the course of the trials.

It is absolutely unwise to throw ourselves into a rush based on early reports that account for very little exposure time and which are biased by the nature of the vaccine. One cannot even suppose that the placebo group and the vaccinated group behaved similarly given the high reactogenicity reported by the vaccines (particularly the RNA vaccines). This reports were obtained with data gathered about 12 weeks after the trial start. Imagine, given that two shoots were provided and each shoot produces quite a nasty reaction that can last nearly a week, nearly 20% of the time the subjects that were vaccinated were suffering symptoms related with the vaccination and this would alter their behaviour significantly compared with the placebo subjects.

Given the time course of antibody production after vaccination, with a peak shortly after the second shoot, the results are biased by the peak and the real protective rate will be different when specific immunoglobulin levels decline. One can consider this 95% efficacy as transient efficacy and we will almost certainly see that further data reveals a sharp reduction. Repeating 95%! 95! all the time will probably result in a sense of deception later that could be counterproductive.

I don't think data is fudge, that would be really, really stupid, but it is being badly misinterpreted and can conduct to cutting corners to mass deployment with unintended consequences.

Yves Smith , December 10, 2020 at 4:15 pm

Yes, but as the post does explain, that 40K participants translates into a very small number that contracted the disease (and in the injection group, were assumed to have gotten it but beat it back). So the effective sample was way way smaller.

Phacops , December 10, 2020 at 10:16 am

Exactly. The number of infections are so small that while one may estimate efficacy, the power of the estimate (beta error; calling something true when it is in fact, false) is high. The best I could really see statistically given the data is the ability to reject the null hypothesis in a F-test (no difference between the groups) with reasonable confidence (1 – alpha; the chance of rejecting something as false when it is in fact true).

As with any sample from a larger population, it is important to understand the uncertainty of the estimate, which at least Oxford/AZ is providing.

Otto V. , December 12, 2020 at 7:18 am

They published the CI, and if I recall correctly it was 95% of something like 92%-98.5% effective. The sample size was just big enough to calculate it, but just so. But what's more important, in my opinion, is that the method they used to calculate the effectiveness of the vaccine are the same they use for every other vaccine. I.e.: they're not doing exception for this one, which is important. We know it's a Phase III study with the limitations of all Phase III studies.

David , December 10, 2020 at 6:09 am

Ah, thanks. I was puzzled by the argument, because it seemed a bit like saying that routinely carrying umbrellas did not provide 95% protection against rain because it only rained some of the time. More relevantly, though, consider vaccinations against tropical diseases. I've had many and need to check on them before I go to certain countries. They are generally considered highly effective – it's assumed, 100% or nearly so in some cases. But if, say, 10000 vaccinated people visit a country in the course of a year, but only 500 come into contact with a contagious source (which would not be surprising) and none get ill, then the efficacy of the vaccine would presumably only be 0.05% according to the logic of the article. So what, as a layman, am I missing, (apart from the issue of sample size)?

Stephen the tech critic , December 10, 2020 at 6:31 am

> Ah, thanks. I was puzzled by the argument, because it seemed a bit like saying that routinely carrying umbrellas did not provide 95% protection against rain because it only rained some of the time.

Exactly, and thanks for your concise example.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 7:11 am

isn't this precisely why the burden of interpreting the efficacy claims shouldn't be offloaded to the general public? If the numbers require a level of maths proficiency not many can lay claim to to interpret then therein lie opportunities for misrepresentation via numerical sleight of hand, which if history is anything to go by, will be exploited to hoodwink an unsuspecting public, especially with a pot of gold filled to the brim with billions of dollars lying in wait. Most laymen don't have the maths chops to pick apart the claims and will most likely throw their hands in the air and walk away with "it's 95% effective" as the takeaway, caveats of data interpretation be damned. The efficacy should be communicated to the public in as simple and absolute terms as possible, in a language that is a sharp departure from that usually employed in the fine print of legal documents to make things unintelligible while embedding opportunities for plausible deniability should things go belly up.

Krystyn Podgajski , December 10, 2020 at 7:56 am

I think what was said here is important. We provide people very little education and most others end up specialists. Yet at the same time everyone knows everything and needs to know everything because everyone is trying to screw you over. And worse yet, most people do not know that they are stupid or can speak about a topic knowing they are probably wrong.

It's all so damn stressful I will just take my chances without the vaccine and be as careful as I can not to infect others. I know a lot about human biology, but not enough about vaccines and the companies and the people who own them. I do not trust the government because it is controlled by corporations and not the people.

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 8:49 am

A nice visual would answer this question but I can't find one with DuckDuckGo.

There are two separate groups of people (each 15,000 in the Moderna case), placebo and vaccine. We'll measure the (small) subset of each group that gets infected and compare the numbers.

If 100 in the placebo group get infected and 100 in the vaccine group get infected, that vaccine was 0% effective. No apparent benefit from the vaccine, outcomes look identical.

If 100 in the placebo group and 50 in the vaccine group get infected, that vaccine was about 50% effective. Not great. Maybe the severity of disease was less in the vaccine group, but that's a secondary goal and not what we're measuring primarily.

100 in the placebo group and 5 in the vaccine group get infected. That's called 95% effective.

The size of our trial dictates our level of confidence in these numbers. If our original groups of people were tiny and/or we have barely any infections in either group, we can't say much anything with confidence because small numbers of infections in either group can swing the numbers in either direction.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 9:16 am

I was an engineering major so I have no issues with interpreting the data, however it's laid out. The same can't be said for some members of the general public, hence my assertion that the claims on efficacy should leave very little room for "depends on how you look at it, absolute vs relative" interpretations that will serve only to confuse.

Can the pharma companies stand behind the claim that it's 95% effective without resorting to numerical semantics or lobbying for liability shields? If so then by all means tell the public that the vaccines are 95% effective. If they say "well we did say it's 95% but what we meant was " then we are in the territory of bait and switch.

There's too much at stake to leave even little room for exaggerated claims from profiteers because the anti-vaxxers will have a field day exploiting any discrepancy between claimed and actual performance for these vaccines and guess what, with that will go public trust.

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 10:01 am

I can get behind what you're saying, but how might you suggest this be communicated? It seems like a failure of the press if they can't convey the essential fact that there were two groups of people and it looks like there were significantly fewer (but not zero) infections among the 15,000 that got the vaccine.

People (especially managers) usually want one single metric to compare even if it's woefully inadequate. Quantifying reductions in infection or maybe severe disease seem like reasonable single-metric comparisons to me.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 10:38 am

The 95% efficacy claim shouldn't depend on the lens you wear to interpret the data, that's my point. As Stephen the tech critic mentions, people are going to alter their behaviour based on these claims once vaccinated, so 95% should mean 95% in absolute terms and contra-indications should also be clearly communicated to at-risk populations. Auditable transparency should be the name of the game, if we've learnt anything from the 737max debacle it's that companies, when left to their own devices, place profit ahead of human lives.

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 11:26 am

I guess "absolute effectiveness" as a metric like the author defines it is might be a reasonable for people assessing their individual risk or as a public health metric but it's a moving target and totally specific to a certain population over a certain span of time, so it's not especially useful for comparing vaccines. I don't think explaining it sounds any easier than the other numbers.

Why should Vietnam show a terrible "absolute effectiveness" compared to France if the goal is to analyze the same vaccine? As the number of people exposed to the virus approaches the entirety of the population (if half were vaccinated and all members are susceptible to infection) the number would approach the vaccine efficacy as the companies define it.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 11:45 am

Our back-and-forth is proving my point, you and I are somewhat equipped with the intellectual/statistical/mathematical wherewithal to do an analytical deep dive and look at the data from different angles, some (most?) people aren't. It's this knowledgeable that the general population lack the mathematical grasp to make sense of marketing claims, especially those presented as numbers, that companies exploit to mislead the public. That's why I contend that the claims should be presented as simply as possible, stripped of opportunities for profiteers to obsfuscate anything. Freebird has a suggestion below, which I'm 100% on board with

freebird , December 10, 2020 at 10:40 am

Exactly. I would even ditch the '95% effective' language. They need to say 'if 10,000 people were exposed to the virus, ordinarily about n1 would get infected. With this vaccine, the number infected was n2. This is language people can grasp.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 11:46 am

Exactly

Stephen the tech critic , December 10, 2020 at 4:30 pm

Except that even the above language can still be interpreted through different "lenses". Certainly with the relatively sample size, it should be clarified that there's a pretty big "bubble" of uncertainty around the 'n', just considering the basic statistics.

But suppose that for the 75 years and older population the vaccine only works at 50% efficacy, so if I'm 81.5 years old and the TV tells me that the vaccine prevents "9500 out of 10000 infections", I might take myself out of isolation when that may be otherwise ill-advised. Likewise, if I'm an allergy sufferer, I might want to know if said suffers have a 1 in 100 chance of a severe allergic reaction vs. say 1 in 10000 for the general populace. So how do we communicate all these nuances in a way that makes them understandable to the wider public? I don't really see an easy way.

In a sense, this is what doctors and regulatory authorities are supposed to do for people, but much of that is broken right now. Western societies have utterly failed to contain the virus when it doing so would have been much easier, and they refuse to take the steps required to contain it now. They have forced themselves into a situation with no alternatives. They are grasping for a "Hollywood solution" in the form of a high-tech vaccine "developed in a single weekend".

Mel , December 10, 2020 at 12:10 pm

Where n/10000 is so small, if I wanted to be a Covid-denier I would point to that tiny number and argue that not getting vaccinated is already 100%-1.23% = 98.77% effective. To get it right, I have to think about the period of the trial. In X week trial period, my chance of infection might be 1.23%.

At 4X weeks it approaches 5%. 16X weeks (caeteris paribus) we're talking about serious risk. But 16X might be a year, and we need test results sooner than that.

Aumua , December 10, 2020 at 12:58 pm

if I wanted to be a Covid-denier I would point to that tiny number and argue that not getting vaccinated is already 100%-1.23% = 98.77% effective.

That's similar to a (fallacious) argument people use all the time, which is that there's a 99.whatever% chance of survival if you get Covid-19.

ProNewerDeal , December 10, 2020 at 1:44 pm

I hate that fallacy, the binary of 0.X% COVID death vs 99.Y% full recovery. It ignores Long COVID risk, potentially affecting 20% of symptomatic patients per a UK study. It ignores the pain, medical cost (especially in no-Medicare4All Murica), & lost-wages opportunity cost of a non-death hospitalized case.

It is shameful that Long COVID is barely discussed by public health experts, politicians, or CorpMedia.

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 1:26 pm

if 10,000 people were exposed to the virus, ordinarily about n would get infected

I don't think anyone can possibly put a number on this. It seems like the answer is likely to be 10,000 unless some people have some innate immunity for reasons we don't understand. Exposure isn't really binary, someone singing in a phone booth choir with a sick person is much more likely to get infected than if they were just passing by a sick person in the grocery store.

It's a very different statement than what the post author tries to capture with "absolute accuracy" which scales from zero (no cases) to the vaccine efficacy for a whole population.

Tom Bradford , December 10, 2020 at 3:49 pm

Surely the only way to achieve "absolute accuracy" would be to ensure that both groups are a) identical in age ranges from 0 – 100, sex and biology/medical history, b) subject 100% of both groups to identical exposure to the virus, and c) isolate both groups from each other and the general population for a fortnight to prevent additional exposure from outside. In the absence of the above there is too much scope for a) deliberate and nefarious manipulation, and b) uncontrollable input influencing the numbers. IMHO.

I was born three years before doctors began giving a new drug on the market declared safe in pregnancy to mothers for morning sickness. It was called Thalidomide.

I won't be taking this one.

The Historian , December 10, 2020 at 4:21 pm

Exactly! We can never know what 'n' is unless we purposely expose a population to Covid and then measure how many of them come down with the disease – and to me, that would be a highly unethical test to employ. So that 'n' as described is meaningless at best.

All we can know is how many people given the placebo come down with the disease v. how many of the group that get the vaccine come down with the disease and go from there. We know that not all of the people in either group will be exposed since most of them probably are taking precaution they can to avoid the disease like most of us – which means that the numbers of people who do get Covid will be small – and that is where 'statistically significant' comes into play. If there is any criticism it would be there – did they test enough people and long enough to get statistically significant numbers?

If you want 'absolute accuracy', then you have to be willing to throw ethics out the window and purposely give people Covid. Then you can study the effects and get 'real numbers' if that is what is necessary to convince the critics.

Yves Smith , December 11, 2020 at 1:21 am

But they don't know how many were infected. This is a leap of logic in your example. They had a number of infections identified in each group and INFERRED an infection rate, as in assumed that the rate of contracting the disease was the same in the injected group as in the control.

There's more cause for pause given that a top HIV expert pointed out that the bar for designating an infection is too low:

The second surprise from these protocols is how mild the requirements for contracted Covid-19 symptoms are. A careful reading reveals that the minimum qualification for a case of Covid-19 is a positive PCR test and one or two mild symptoms. These include headache, fever, cough, or mild nausea. This is far from adequate. These vaccine trials are testing to prevent common cold symptoms.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/

rusti , December 11, 2020 at 1:44 am

Where is the leap in my logic? A lower threshold for diagnosing disease (risking more false or dubious positives) is bad for the pharma companies.

False positives in the vaccine group are disproportionally worse for efficacy when the manufacturers want to be able to claim an order of magnitude fewer infections for that group.

Jeff W , December 10, 2020 at 10:19 am

Ah, thanks. I was puzzled by the argument, because it seemed a bit like saying that routinely carrying umbrellas did not provide 95% protection against rain because it only rained some of the time.

I'm glad it wasn't only me, although I was thinking along the lines that parachutes are highly effective in only the 1–2% of the population that goes skydiving. (But, to analogize to COVID-19 somewhat, you'd end up in a plane about to be pushed out without expecting it or wanting to.) It struck me as a way not to interpret the statistics.

Nameful , December 10, 2020 at 11:09 am

But if, say, 10000 vaccinated people visit a country in the course of a year, but only 500 come into contact with a contagious source (which would not be surprising) and none get ill, then the efficacy of the vaccine would presumably only be 0.05% according to the logic of the article.

Actually, it would about 0% plus whatever smoothing coefficient you choose to apply for your prior (Jeffreys would give 0.5 / 500.5 = ~0.1%). The number of vaccinated people here is has an indirect impact, via Bayesian chaining – it will give you a confidence interval for the number of exposed people (via a binomial with the maximum at about 500/10000 = 5%), which is then propagated into the confidence interval of the number of infected ones.

Cocomaan , December 10, 2020 at 6:43 am

What was the testing protocol for people who were asymptomatic? That is, we're the 95% of people all tested, or just assumed free of disease?

Cocomaan , December 10, 2020 at 7:03 am

Apparently I can't form a sentence this early in the morning.

My concern is that the vaccine creates a class of people who are asymptomatic carriers that 1) continue to spread the disease and 2) may still have damage from the disease, because we have seen that asymptomatic carriers can still get lung and heart damage .

How would you know someone is an asymptomatic carrier unless you tested them?

Otto V. , December 10, 2020 at 8:55 am

Is that population *representative* of the whole population? Does it include children? The elderly? People of different social class and/or living situations? People of different "colors"? People with history of severe allergies? And are the proportions of each of these (and any others I *can't* think of) similar within the sampled population as in the whole population?

Probably. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Unlikely. Close. Also, no pregnant people. But the vaccine has not been approved for children nor pregnant people.

Second, the result assumes that the study is blinded.

It was randomized and double-blinded.

the media has reported repeatedly and extensively, while these trails are on-going, that side-effects are common

The common side effect was redness, swelling, and pain in the injection area. Mild side effects in less than 10% (otherwise, it would have not been approved by the NHS). I don't think that's enough to "unblind" participants, at least in significant numbers.

The author is correct that these vaccines are "under-tested"

Do we know if they've weakened the criteria in the approval process? Because I might be wrong/misinformed, but from what I've read, any other vaccine at any other time would get a Phase IV approval with the data provided.

I do agree with the part that we shouldn't lift all the restrictions just because we have the vaccine. Only when and if infection rates drop down to anecdotal, we can slowly and carefully begin to get back to normal (whatever that may be).

Yves Smith , December 10, 2020 at 4:20 pm

You are understating the side effects. Many people feel like crap for a day:

High fever, body aches, headaches and exhaustion are some of the symptoms participants in Moderna and Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine trials say they felt after receiving the shots.

While the symptoms were uncomfortable, and at times intense, they often went away after a day, sometimes less.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/01/coronavirus-vaccine-trial-participants-exhaustion-fever-headaches.html

john , December 10, 2020 at 5:49 pm

Is feeling crap for a day a mild symptoms ? i don't know either way in terms or what is considered mild, but it doesn't sound too severe.

The article appears to over egg the efficacy concerns. Did they want people 30, 000 to be deliberately infected to test the exact number. I think a large number of human challenge trials are ongoing. I think its reasonable to except the efficacy to be over 80% but the exact number is to be determined with further studies.

Yves Smith , December 10, 2020 at 6:37 pm

If you can't take a day off from work, and many can't, it's not trivial. And Pfizer appears to have underplayed the fever issue. Some experts took note of the fact that everyone who took the Pfizer vaccine in the trials was encouraged to take acetaminophen afterwards. That's not normal. IM Doc wrote this in today's Links:

Thank you for the link regarding the nurse who had the reaction to the vaccine.

A few words of clarification for your readers from a physician of 30 years.

A temperature of 104.9 in an adult with a functional immune system (we are not talking about babies and kids – they are different) is extraordinary after a vaccination. 104.9 means that the immune system has been activated enough to take it up a few notches to DEF CON 1. This is very unusual in infectious disease – some parasites and ameba do this routinely – and things like sepsis syndrome can – but for the most part, getting a temperature up this high is definitely not normal. It is certainly not a good sign for a vaccine. A vaccine should not be stimulating the immune system to this degree – EVER. Idiosyncratic reactions in a very rare patient is one thing – if this is happening more often – this is not a good sign for that vaccine.

The nurse in the article is absolutely correct – a temperature of 104.9 after a vaccine administration is a grade 4 reportable event.

This is medically important for two reasons. 1) That level of fever if sustained can damage permanently multiple organs. 2) Vaccines should simply not be activating the immune system to that degree – it is completely inappropriate. It is very normal for people to have a brief temp of 99 or 100 after a vaccine – this is a completely different level.

From what I can tell in the Pfizer documents – "fever" is not uncommon as a side effect to their vaccine. I cannot determine in any location what their parameters are for "fever". As stated above – it is accepted that multiple vaccines will give a patient a slight fever as a side effect maybe up to a day. But not 104.5. How many of these patients classified as "fever" in their information and glossies were actually 103? 104? There is no transparency – and that is the problem.

And if you read the comments above from those who are statistically well versed, the issue is that the effective sample is so small that there is a high degree of statistical uncertainty around the efficacy numbers. And that's before getting to the fact that messenger RNA technology (the one used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines) have never before been used (except in a Zika trial of ~100, too small to be reliable) and the long term effects are unknown.

There are plenty of MDs who never prescribe a new med that has been out less than a year to patients. I won't take the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. I'll wait for a conventional vaccine (there are plenty in trials, so several are likely to win approval).

nn , December 10, 2020 at 10:53 am

But as I understand it, the point is precisely that the sample is unrepresentative. What the trials did is ethical equivalent of randomly choosing 185 people, vaccinating them, then infecting then with the virus and then observing that only 11 got sick.

Just 185 seems really low.

Stephen , December 10, 2020 at 11:24 am

I really appreciate the explanation. There is another element that has bothered me from the beginning of the phase 2/3 trial: that any and all symptoms are self reported. I'm in the Pfizer trial and received the doses in August and I asked repeatadly what level of pain/discomfort/deviation from the norm would warrant reporting and was told ANY change. But I am curious how many asked that and actually did it. Meaning, my guess is that the level of infections in the placebo group is actually higher when combined with the truly asymptomatic. But the same may be true in the vaccine group as well. They are trying to root out the asymptomatic spread with challenge trials, if they get approved.

Cuibono , December 10, 2020 at 1:11 pm

You are right about his weird choice of language but his point is accurate in ANY medical intervention one wants to know BOTH Relative efficacy and Absolute.

This vaccine reduced the RELATIVE rate of infections dramatically.. But since the overall incidence of infections was low, the ABSOLUTe reduction was very small. This is also true of say STATINs in low risk patients.

Maritimer , December 10, 2020 at 4:43 am

The Vaccine Drumbeat in my jurisdiction is increasing and I'm sure will become deafening. Talk show radio hosts actually giving medical advice. No recommendations to consult with a doctor regarding your personal health circumstances and risks or those of your loved ones.

This is all orchestrated by Public Health officials who apparently have never heard of personal health care. We are all just one big Herd. To me this is a desecration of the doctor patient relationship by so-called health professionals. All of which is extremely dangerous and bad medical advice.

Nick Alcock , December 11, 2020 at 1:11 pm

They're trying to prevent people who *cannot* take the vaccine for whatever reason from dying, by encouraging people who are merely worried but have no actual reason not to take the vaccine other than paranoia and ungrounded conspiracy-mongering to take the bloody thing. This seems like, y'know, their job, and entirely praiseworthy.

The disease *does* see us as one big herd, or rather as a pile of individual infectable cells. It seems right to deal with the response to it on the same level.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 5:00 am

Re: companies mandating staff to be vaccinated to market their establishments as "safe". The tone and substance of the post is clearly meant to be a "proceed with caution" advisory on taking the vaccine, despite the author being at pains to emphasize that it's not an "encouragement to reject vaccines".

Some quarters of the labour market are clearly going to render this moot for the serfs who'll be required to either sign up to be guinea pigs or lose their jobs, wow. Swallow the tail risk of unknown medium to long-term health effects of these rapidly developed vaccines for the short term gain of a (most likely crap) salary? So agency over one's health is now signed over to employers as a means to eke out a meagre existence, double wow.

Barry Disch , December 10, 2020 at 5:13 am

Don't forget they are using flawed PCR tests and except for Moderna in the US all other countries and companies where studies have been conducted are using another vaccine instead of a true saline or inert placebo.

Not to mention most of these Pharmaceutical Companies have been sued for tens of billions of dollars for harmful drugs , buried information, fraud ect. We're supposed to trust them with safety studies for medical products they have indemnity for. Thank you for pointing out how deceptive these numbers can be for the average person.

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 8:18 am

Don't forget they are using flawed PCR tests

Can you elaborate on why PCR testing is flawed? What better alternative is there for determining an infection with high specificity?

westkentim , December 10, 2020 at 3:08 pm

My understanding (and my understanding of all this is not perfect!) is that PCR tests are flawed (a) because they iterate an amplification process until they find something, and that something could be the remnants of another CV caused by a cold you had 3 months previously and (b) at least in the UK, the testing labs are not necessarily as well-versed in the hygiene procedures you need to avoid cross-contamination. So there is a high risk of false positives.

Moreover, if I am reading the background to the clinical trials correctly, they count as "success" situations where someone who has one positive PCR test plus some fairly common cold symptoms does not then go on to develop full-blown CV19 symptoms. The problem is, given the PCR is acknowledged to generate a lot of false positives, then the success rate will be overstated, because the denominator in the success rate calculations will be swollen with subjects who didn't actually have the CV19 virus to start with

(I can't quite believe that the test can be that dumb, so perhaps I am totally wrong about that? But I fear I am not.)

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 11:46 pm

The Cycle Threshold of a sample (for PCR tests that provide it) gives some indication of the quantity of virus in the sample. I think that for only viral fragments a very high CT value (low amount of virus) will be an indicator that repeat testing may be necessary. I haven't read the actual protocols to learn how they handle this.

The problem is, given the PCR is acknowledged to generate a lot of false positives, then the success rate will be overstated

I don't follow your thinking here, if false positives are equally distributed across the placebo and vaccine groups then it will make the vaccine look less effective.

Let's say 100 people really get infected in the placebo group and 10 in the vaccine group (90% efficacy). If you add an equal number of false positives to both groups, it can only push efficacy number down. If we add 10 to each group, efficacy is down to ~80%. If we add 20 to each group, efficacy is down to 75%.

Synoia , December 10, 2020 at 5:46 am

Treating symptoms and not the underlying disease appears very profitable to me. How can that possibly create herd immunity?

Does that mean herd immunity is achieved when a significant number are asymptomatic, infected and capable of infecting the uninoculated?

I am assuming that infected asymptomatic individuals are capable of infecting others.

Samuel Conner , December 10, 2020 at 7:20 am

A question that this raises for me is whether sterilising immunity is conferred by the innate immune response to infection with live virus.

If not, then "herd immunity" would not be achieved by letting the virus "run" through the population, as has been advocated by some. The commentary I have seen on this generally assumes that people who have recovered from infection are not only protected from disease symptoms, but cannot for some length of time become reinfected and asymptomatic spreaders. Perhaps they can.

This is a very bad prospect for vulnerable populations.

lincoln , December 10, 2020 at 2:36 pm

If a vaccinated individual can still transmit COVID, then herd immunity may not be practical.

"Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease ..Immune individuals are unlikely to contribute to disease transmission, disrupting chains of infection, which stops or slows the spread of disease. The greater the proportion of immune individuals in a community, the smaller the probability that non-immune individuals will come into contact with an infectious individual."

ahimsa , December 10, 2020 at 5:54 am

There is a comic meme going around at the moment:

1st mouse says: Are you going to get vaccinated?

2nd mouse replies: Are you mad? They haven't completed the human trials!

Dean , December 10, 2020 at 6:22 am

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around this. What do the 'numbers' look like for a proven vaccine that's been around for several decades or more (e.g. smallpox, polio, etc)?

Are these vaccines truly "95% effective": illness prevented and infection eliminated in 95% of everyone vaccinated. Period?

Am I thinking about this the right way?

Thank you.

The Historian , December 10, 2020 at 9:39 am

Let's just make this simple.

Not everyone is going to be exposed to Covid-19 just like not everyone is going to be exposed to the flu. So why do you take the flu vaccine? Isn't it because if you are unlucky and DO get exposed, you have some protection from getting sick?

Not everyone was going to be exposed to small pox or polio, but for those that were unlucky enough to get exposed, those vaccines protected MOST of them from getting the diseases, I'm not sure what the 'effectiveness' of those vaccines were, but you don't hear of small pox or polio pandemics any more. Isn't that what a vaccine is supposed to do?

The reason for getting a Covid-19 vaccine is just the same. You may never be exposed to Covid-19 so the vaccine will have nothing to protect you from – so, according to this article, it's effectiveness for you will be zero. Remember only 185 of 15,000 people who were taking the placebo got exposed. So, if you are unlucky and do get exposed, wouldn't you like to have some protection from what Covid-19 can do? And what the numbers are saying is that IF you do get exposed to Covid-19 that you have a 95% chance of being protected and NOT getting that disease. To me that sounds a whole lot better than nothing!

I call articles like the above "fun with math". They send you down the wrong path when it comes to what you can rationally expect from vaccines and they provide fodder for the anti-vaxxers.

That said, I wish we had more time to see what the possible side effects are, but sadly Covid is killing people at a too rapid pace for us to wait for the perfect vaccine.

Burritonomics , December 10, 2020 at 10:17 am

Exactly. I'd like to write a long form rebuttal to this article, but I have to go to work in 30 minutes.

"It sucks, and is bordering on intentionally misleading" is my short form response.

My thinking is like I'm being given a choice between two syringes: one has an unknown dose of Covid-19. The other is the vaccine.

I'll be getting the vaccine as soon as I can.

Jeff W , December 10, 2020 at 8:26 pm

" bordering on intentionally misleading"

I thought so, too.

Brian (another one they call) , December 10, 2020 at 10:37 am

I have a growing problem with the claims without any proof of efficacy. One of the vaccine makers bragged about creating the vaccine "one weekend" Vaccines take years to develop. That these are miraculously appearing within months by companies with a financial interest in being first. In a word, bushwa.
So far many claims have been made that have passed no test to justify. Only immunity from prosecution and personal responsibility are important to the vaccine makers at this point. The populous waits on bated breath for every word they spew.
Dr. Chris Martenson has a few things to say about it from his perspective as an expert in pathology. We, the people, desparately need rational voices that know statistics to begin with. Numbers are always mistaken for facts when presented by those alleged to be in authority. It doesn't mean they understand them, or are working hard to be certain that the statistics are accurate, not just supportive of their claims.
I would make this silly prediction based on what I know now;
Prophylaxis with Ivermectin and vitamin supplements has already shown much higher efficacy in preventing infection, transmission, length of symptoms and outcome. But it doesn't make huge profits. There are no horrible side effects.
When was the last time we were asked to accept a drug that was supported by the pharma companies? Statins? The benefits only seem to appear if one is hospitalized in critical care. The side effects may have injured more than the drug helped. But this sacred cow too is making companies lots of money.
Stop the viral functions vs. alter the body chemistry. When did our science think this was acceptable to alter our functioning immune systems and then say it was AOK? Was it just the lucre? We can't imagine that our science has become snake oil from where it began.

Don Cafferty , December 10, 2020 at 12:57 pm

I am not an expert or have medical training. I do read a lot. Re "Vaccines take years to develop", you are correct. From my reading, the basic science for mRNA started in 1983. What happened afterwards has irony. The principle scientist/investigator repeatedly had difficulty in getting grant money to do her study because granting agencies did not think that the mRNA would be accepted by the human body. It was thought that the auto immune system would automatically reject it. The principle scientist/investigator failed to get tenure at her university because she was not able to bring much grant money to the university. Nonetheless, she persevered and finally together with a collaborator, they found a way of introducing mRNA without alerting the immune system. Their work was published in 2005. Their work was largely unnoticed except for two people who saw the medical opportunity provided by mRNA. Further study was done and eventually medical science and entrepreneurship merged together which led to the formation of BioNtech (based on the words, "biopharmaceuticals", "New", "Technologies") and Moderna (based on the words "Modified", "RNA"). Neither BioNtech nor Moderna had a vaccine a year ago. Instead, they had the technology. When the genetic code for the virus was released to the world by Chinese scientists, BioNtech and Moderna could then program their mRNA technology for the Sars-Cov-2 virus. With their technology, it could be said that they already had a head start in making the vaccine. The principle scientist and her collaborator work separately. One is now employed with Moderna and the other is with BioNtech.

rosemerry , December 10, 2020 at 5:46 pm

None of the "Western" developers would of course now give any credit to their Chinese helpers!!! We only hear of "China steals our intellectual property."

Remember the days when Jonas Salk refused to patent and make money from his polio vaccine?

Nick Alcock , December 11, 2020 at 1:13 pm

They had a head start in making this vaccine *and possibly all future ones too*. This is a game-changer: it's quite possible that future diseases may routinely have a vaccine entering clinical trials *days* after its genome is known, rather than having to work on it for months to decades first.

(Now all we have to do is convince people that it's not a dark plot and that actually these things do save lives.)

Count Zero , December 11, 2020 at 6:20 am

I too am getting dizzy with all these statistics and caveats. I have had a flu jab every year for the last 12. I have had bugs of one kind or another over the years but I only had some kind of flu once -- this February as it happens. There is no way that anybody can estimate how many flu bugs I was exposed to and what their impact would be on a healthy man in his 60s in the last decade. Anyway, I don't worry about the statistics but make a simple risk assessment. Is the risk of a flu vaccine less than the risk of getting flu? The answer has to be yes.

With covid19 vaccinations I don't much care whether it's efficacy can be measured as 95% or 70% or 60%. Anything is better than nothing. Anyway, it's like wearing masks. Its efficacy depends upon large numbers of people being vaccinated. I help protect you as well as myself and you protect me as well as yourself. I worry that large numbers of people will decide not to have any vaccine, ensuring that covid19 will continue to kill unprotected people.

Only one thing concerns me at present. Safety. Sadly, enough doubts have been raised about the two new experimental vaccines to make me think the risk is not worth it. I will wait for the Oxford vaccine to become available I think -- while trying to keep a sensible open-minded watching brief.

IdahoSpud , December 10, 2020 at 6:36 am

There is no reason that you should go right out and get poked with these barely-tested, and IMHO experimental vaccines.

Salk and Sabin were hailed as heroes – which they were – for giving humanity polio vaccines. What has gone down the memory hole though, is how Pharma family blogged up the production of the vaccines. You should really check these links to see how bad this was/is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories (children vaccinated with live polio virus that survived the production process)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV40 (90% of US children and 60% of adults inoculated with polio vaccine contaminated with a monkey virus that turns out be carcinogenic – it's also passed down in-utero, so we all have increased likelihood of certain cancers, thanks pharma)

Public health is standing between greedy sociopaths and a big pile of cash, and it'll probably get run over. I fail to see why we should expect a sound vaccine in this environment.

Nick Alcock , December 11, 2020 at 1:16 pm

I haven't seen my parents in a year. My parents haven't seen anyone in a year. There's a bloody good reason to go out and get vaccinated for us!

There's a reason for everyone else too: some old and vulnerable people won't be able to get vaccinated, which means they'll be stuck in isolation until enough people have been vaccinated that they don't need to worry about dying of this thing every time they go out in public or meet anyone ever.

Adrian D. , December 10, 2020 at 6:44 am

Whether or not the vaccine is capable of interrupting transmission absolutely should have been front and centre in these studies especially when it's presented to people with an extremely low chance of being harmed by the virus (ie. the fit & young who might be the ones likely to be affected by any fertility issues).

It could be assumed that less severe symptoms means less chance for spread which may be the case, but then I can't see how logically that fits with the mainstream view that of the virus as something that is transmitted asymptomatically so readily anyway? (Although I think this asymptomatic spread idea is probably wildly overblown).

Otto V. , December 10, 2020 at 9:09 am

Asymptomatic and presymptomatic are not the same. Studies show that most of the asymptomatic people who transmit the disease end up developing symptoms (I've seen systematic reviews that show anything between 83% to 94%). I.e.: asymptomatic transmission is possible, but mostly by presymptomatic people.

Red , December 10, 2020 at 7:38 am

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!

Kevin C. Smith , December 10, 2020 at 8:16 am

As a practical matter, I expect that these vaccines will reduce the incidence and severity of both disease and transmission in the treated populations, and do so with little risk to the treated indivduals, so that there is very likely to be a net benefit to a treated individual, to the population of treated individuals, and [to a lesser exent] to the non-treated individuals in the general population.

I am confident that more information will emerge to support and refine the above hypotheses. It will only be a matter of degree. Speaking as a 69 year-old physician, I would take any of the three leading vaccines at the first opportunity. I expect that when we look back in a few years we will see that the immunized population did better than the age-sex-etc matched non-immunized population. To some extent, my wife and I are relying on unbalanced articles like this to at least temporarily deter some people from having the vaccine, so that we can get to the front of the line more quickly.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 8:55 am

Out of curiosity, what informs your confidence in these vaccines apart from the press releases and efficacy claims from the pharma companies developing them? Is it something we the general public aren't privy to that physicians have given the heads up on? I'm in now way being flippant, it's just that a good number of doctors I know personally wouldn't go near any of these vaccines, at least not until there's enough data backing up their efficacy in the real world.

Otto V. , December 10, 2020 at 9:20 am

it's just that a good number of doctors I know personally wouldn't go near any of these vaccines, at least not until there's enough data backing up their efficacy in the real world.

That's a pretty contradictory position. You don't get real world data unless real world people take the vaccine. Very telling of those -probably wealthy- doctors to let others assume that risk. Let's not forget that tens of thousands of people already took the vaccine with significantly fewer assurances. I guess it's alright to go to poor and desperate people first? That's what I call solidarity and prosocial behavior.

Thuto , December 10, 2020 at 9:53 am

No, the doctors aren't convinced by the studies and the claims emerging from that, at least not yet. If signing up to be a guinea pig for something you're not entirely convinced of is your idea of solidarity and pro-social behaviour then by all means, go right ahead, they're not stopping you. By the way, more data can be the result of more extensive clinical trials with better designed studies that aren't "designed to succeed", and is not limited to being obtained from poor people being lined up to volunteer as guinea pigs, as you imply.

In any event all of this "being at the head of the queue" talk is academic for us in Africa, the big wealthy nations have resolved to hoard the supplies of whatever credible vaccine becomes available. Maybe you could lobby them to share in the name of solidarity.

Otto V. , December 12, 2020 at 7:34 am

If signing up to be a guinea pig for something you're not entirely convinced of is your idea of solidarity and pro-social behaviour then by all means, go right ahead, they're not stopping you

If you put it like that, and people interpret it like that, no clinical trials ever would happen, except in Nazi Germany, where they forced people to submit to medical experiments (see, we can all be overly dramatic). If the vaccine is not good enough for you, it shouldn't be good enough for anybody, and we never get a vaccine for anything, ever.

Therefore, yes, I will gladly accept the vaccine once it's my turn, because at this point is civic duty and safety is as guaranteed as any other Phase IV drug. Again, the two alternatives are being a hypocrite or not having a vaccine.

Maybe you could lobby them to share in the name of solidarity

Even better, I advocate to allow the vaccine to be produced in developing countries freely, without IP concerns. I doubt the wealthy countries will accept the proposal, but I also hope those countries will ignore international law and manufacture it for local consumption anyway.

freebird , December 10, 2020 at 10:47 am

I don't know if it's selfishness on the doctors' part, or just so much familiarity with the avarice of the pharmaceutical industry that they don't trust the data that has been molded into a neat report, likely as not full of hidden flaws or deliberately misleading conclusions. Unfortunately the truth will not come out til a lot of people have taken the vaccines, and I can't blame a front line worker for not wanting to be at the front of the line.

Otto V. , December 12, 2020 at 7:44 am

I don't doubt the avarice of Big Pharma. I count on it. But the people who actually developed the vaccine and actually run the experiments won't see a penny of the billions Pfizer is going to make with this vaccine. At that point, I would expect at least a couple of trustworthy sources, with a conscience and without billions to blind it, would blow the whistle on any data manipulation. Like all conspiracies, the more people are involved, the shorter they live. Thousands have participated in the Phase III. So far, all the complains come from people who don't trust Pfizer because Pfizer is not trustworthy, and people who are concerned for political reasons. And don't get me wrong, you can't trust Pfizer and there are clear political concerns, but as long as it's just that, keeping an eye open and taking the vaccine is the right thing to do. Again, because otherwise we probably won't get a vaccine in decades, if ever.

The Rev Kev , December 10, 2020 at 9:14 am

Don't be in such a rush to get to the head of the que-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arwZcw0Ejcc

Wyoming , December 10, 2020 at 9:23 am

I 2nd Thuto here.

I have a good friend who is a practicing MD dealing with Covid patients who I talk to regularly about the vaccines and the epidemic. He has a low opinion of how the trials have been conducted and thinks that there is a high chance of several surprising issues popping up (like the adverse reactions mentioned above). He, contrary to you, intends to let the early vaccine recipient's finish the more comprehensive testing which should have occurred as part of the stage 3 trials.

Thor's Hammer , December 10, 2020 at 10:51 am

Dr. Smith
You are no doubt aware that mRNA "vaccines" are not really vaccines at all in the conventional sense, but rather might more accurately be termed "genetic immune response modifiers.' This approach to disease control has been speculated about for some time and subject to investigation, but has never been administered at scale in a human population. "Testing" to observe whether recipients immediately fall ill after the first or second shot is essentially meaningless except to the extent that it may retard or stop entirely the use of the drug. There are enough theoretical pitfalls with this radical methodology that no one can predict their long term impact. Perhaps after three years, but certainly not after 90 days.

Conventional vaccines like those for Polio and Smallpox utilize modified or disabled forms of the disease pathogens to stimulate antibodies to provide resistance when they encounter the disease "in the wild." We have decades of experience and millions of cases using this type of vaccine which lends a high level of confidence that a new conventional vaccine can be used safely on a new pathogen.

MD's like yourself have years of experience and training in identifying and treating disease -- certainly far beyond that of the the average layman. But you are also the product of a culture that determines how you think about your practice. For example, "Only medicines that have gone through the approval and patent process are suitable for human use." Or, "All medicines obtained from foreign countries are suspect or dangerous." Or: "Authorities like the AMA, NIH or WHO are the only reliable sources of information" Or: "Deviating from approved practice can/will result in lawsuits and being barred from practicing medicine."

By all means dash to the head of the Pfizer/Moderna Corvid vaccine line. We need more willing volunteers like yourself so authorities like Bill Gates won't have to test new vaccines on poor children in Africa and India to determine whether the side effects include sterility or the re-emergence of Polio.

Kurtismayfield , December 10, 2020 at 11:22 am

This.

Considering the questions that people have been asking on this website on how the mRNA vaccine works, I doubt that most people understand that this is not like the other vaccines that people have taken, and uses a completely different mechanism for eliciting an immune response than traditional vaccines.

Nick Alcock , December 11, 2020 at 1:23 pm

It uses exactly the same mechanism: presentation of an antigen on cell surfaces. It even uses the same antigen as some of the more conventional SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. The antigen is even produced in the same place: the inside of the recipients' cells. The only unusual thing is where the RNA comes from that is used to do this: is it on its own, or does it come packaged with other viral RNA implementing a complete working virus not common in human populations which has been modified to produce this antigen?

(I don't know why anyone would consider it safer to take a traditional vaccine which has an actual working virus in it, even if said virus only causes a mild cold, than it would be to take these new ones which have no viral replication machinery whatsoever . The Moderna/biontech stuff is new, but not because it was previously believed unsafe, merely because eukaryotes are vicious to naked RNA outside their cells and destroy it on sight with some of the most efficient enzymes known because, well, it's a sign of viral infection. So RNA-based vaccines never got close to getting inside enough cells to be useful, so you needed a whole viral capsid to do the job, like the more traditional Astra-Zeneca vaccine. That's the problem that's been solved.)

Kevin C. Smith , December 10, 2020 at 12:47 pm

There will be some who make the specious argument that only ~2% of the subjects in the study got symptomatic Covid, so "big deal". That sort of argument would carry more weight if it had been expressed in terms of "cases per unit time". In this case, it looks as though the median time was about 2 months.

I expect that as time goes on we would find that a very large proportion of the control group [maybe 10%] would develop clinical symptoms, and a much larger proportion would develop asymptomatic disease [which carries a poorly defined risk of serious but silent damage to the heart, brain, etc].

As good studies emerge, like BioNTech, we can read the original peer reviewed literature and the commentaries on it, and draw our own conclusions:
SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination -- An Ounce (Actually, Much Less) of Prevention
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2034717?query=RP

Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577?query=RP

Tom Bradford , December 10, 2020 at 4:09 pm

To some extent, my wife and I are relying on unbalanced articles like this to at least temporarily deter some people from having the vaccine, so that we can get to the front of the line more quickly.

Fine by me. The more human guinea-pigs that stand between me and this stuff – and remain standing – the more likely I'll be to take it. Eventually. Tho' if your confidence is justified and you help take Runder1 perhaps I won't even have to risk it.

Paolo , December 10, 2020 at 9:22 am

While there are some clear misunderstandings about these numbers from both sides, several pointed out that we have zero knowledge about other aspects of the vaccine, such as:
1) Can people still transmit the virus after "successful" immunization from the vaccine?
2) How long will the immunity from vaccination last?
3) How long before a vaccine-resistant mutation emerges?

We should be focused on better testing (both developing and administering), pervasive contact tracing, and innovative technologies such as air filtering with vertical flow, better masks, better public support for masks, better strategies for isolating sick individuals in crowded situations, better treatments. What terrifies me about the vaccine craze is that it is distracting everyone from doing the right things not just to stem the death toll from this pandemic, but also from using this as a learning experience to be better prepared for the next one.

There is the expression "closing the barn doors after the cows have gone." A more complete analogy in this case would be "a fire started in the barn, luckily the cows were able to run out the open door. We went into the barn and closed the door from the inside without a fire extinguisher."

Olivier , December 10, 2020 at 9:24 am

The COVID coverage by Michael Haseltine on Forbes is well worth reading. His Sep. 23 piece titled Covid-19 Vaccine Protocols Reveal That Trials Are Designed To Succeed is especially relevant.

KLG , December 10, 2020 at 10:18 am

William A. Haseltine, who was a pioneer during the early HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Yves Smith , December 10, 2020 at 10:19 pm

This part is damning:

The second surprise from these protocols is how mild the requirements for contracted Covid-19 symptoms are. A careful reading reveals that the minimum qualification for a case of Covid-19 is a positive PCR test and one or two mild symptoms. These include headache, fever, cough, or mild nausea. This is far from adequate. These vaccine trials are testing to prevent common cold symptoms.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 11:51 pm

Why is that damning? The lower their threshold for a positive, the more likely they are to have false positives. False positives in the vaccine group make the efficacy values plunge.

It is totally counterproductive if the intention is to game the results. Then the smart play would be to only count serious disease.

Milton , December 10, 2020 at 10:00 am

By tomorrow, according to Worldmeters, 5% of the population in the US will have tested positive for c-19-studies have put the actual penetration of those infected at anywhere from 2X to 10X the counted numbers (16 million, or so). Are persons that have been tested positive, or carry antibodies, exempt from any mass vaccination program? It seems to me the enormous rush to get vaccines to market is the fear that, lockdowns notwithstanding, we are heading towards that time when a majority of the US population will have already become infected. I can envision the panic in big phamas boardrooms as the see that every week another million potential customers are removed from their expected profit sheets.

The Rev Kev , December 10, 2020 at 10:08 am

It's worse than that. Not long ago some were saying how the number of American dead in this pandemic was approaching the number killed in Vietnam. Now the daily total exceeds that lost on 9/11 and is accelerating.

Thor's Hammer , December 10, 2020 at 11:27 am

Not to worry. Simply denying the ability to fly, work, drive a car, or go to the supermarket to everyone without a digital vaccine certification card will ensure a high level of compliance with the Universal Mandate and continued joy in the boardrooms of Pfizer. The goal is to monetize Pharma Power, not to control Corid19. So bringing all those who have self-vaccinated by contacting a mild case of the disease or have a strong T-cell immunity response into the Fold is just good business.

Speaking of business opportunities, printing black market certification cards @ $100 each promises to put BitCoin to shame.

About that 5% of the US population that have tested positive:
At the conventional PCR Cr of 40 about 5% will have a viral loading such that they are actively spreading infection to others. The other 95% could be more accurately termed as false positives.

Aumua , December 10, 2020 at 1:31 pm

The goal is to monetize Pharma Power, not to control Corid19.

I assume it's probably some degree of both. I mean just cause something might be true doesn't mean it is true.

At the conventional PCR Cr of 40 about 5% will have a viral loading such that they are actively spreading infection to others. The other 95% could be more accurately termed as false positives.

I also question these numbers and/or reasoning. Do you have a link supporting this statement?

Thor's Hammer , December 10, 2020 at 3:28 pm

I too have a problem with the way my source arrived at their 97% false positive claim. The internal logic is indeed correct, but it feels like using statistics in a less than transparent manner.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/507937-covid-pcr-test-fail/

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/covid-19-rt-pcr-test-how-mislead-all-humanity-accepting-societal-lock-downs

marku52 , December 10, 2020 at 4:02 pm

I had read that a cycle rep of about 25 was more commonly used. 40 would pick up a lot false positives.

Petter , December 10, 2020 at 2:02 pm

Regarding monetizing Pharma Power: The Norwegian institute CEPI – Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations was founded in 2017 with the goal (amongst others) of being in the forefront in the development of vaccines for new infectious diseases and their distribution at an affordable price (or no price if countries can't afford it) throughout the world. Funding for CEPI has come from the governments, trusts and foundations. Read all about it here.
https://cepi.net

What happened with CEPI and the development of Covid vaccines? The pharma companies would not give up their right to determine prices, for "competitive business reasons".

Goggle Translate of an NRK article: https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/ble-makteslost-vitne-til-dod-_-selv-om-vaksinen-fantes-1.15060685
-- -- -
The pharmaceutical industry, on the other hand, did not like the rules, according to Richard Hatchett. He has been the director of CEPI since April 2017, when he left his job as deputy commander of BARDA. It is the agency of the US Department of Health that buys and develops vaccines.

In a sensational article, Hatchett explains what happened to CEPI's policy:

CEPI's rules are based on the idealism on which the coalition was founded. However, several multinational vaccine companies said they did not "reflect the business reality of vaccine developers," according to the CEPI director. They also disliked the fact that CEPI should be able to set the price.

For industry, the rules were simply not in line with a competitive business model, according to Richard Hatchett.
-- --
BTW, the sensational article referred to above, results in this:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X19317190# !

Gerald Posner discusses CEPI in a New York Times article (from March): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/opinion/contributors/pharma-vaccines.html

-- -
Before Covid-19 was identified last December, CEPI had raised three-fourths of the $1 billion it determined was necessary to fund the innovative research for expedited development of vaccines to treat new epidemics. Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia and Norway, as well as the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, had given $460 million. In the last two years, CEPI has used that money to provide grants for some leading edge biotechnologies that could revolutionize vaccine research and production.

But what has played mostly out of public view over that same time was the organization's failed effort to get large pharmaceutical firms to agree to be partners without insisting on substantial profits or proprietary rights to research that CEPI helped to finance and produce (my bolding). That did not surprise many industry observers who knew that since the 1930s, the National Institutes of Health had spent over $900 billion on grants that drug firms relied on to patent brand-name medications.
-- -- -- --
The band plays on: Tanz mit Laibach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glu9wA4HjE0

Kevin C. Smith , December 10, 2020 at 5:02 pm

Several lines of evidence show that immunity after COVID-19 wanes quite rapidly, and that immunity after immuniztion with several of the vaccines persists quite nicely, both in animal and human models. The reason for this is that the vaccines are engineered to stimulate strong defensive responses which include both antibody-mediated immunity and T-cell mediated immunity. Many of the vaccine candidates include adjuvants, which are materials which facilitate and enhance the immune response to the antigens in the vaccine.

martin horzempa , December 10, 2020 at 10:47 am

just a thought to all who venture here now and again,
this post represents the reason i make Naked Capitalism my first click of the day
the content and the comments are priceless
and the combination unique and invaluable

thanks Yves
thanks All

p fitzsimon , December 10, 2020 at 11:36 am

The big unknown is of course the number of people in the test population who were actually exposed to the infection. If everyone in the test population were exposed and only 11 of the 15000 vaccinated developed symptons then we have 11/15000 or 99.9% effectiveness. However, if only 5% (1500)were actually exposed to infection during the test period then we have 11/750 or 98.5%, which looks pretty good. Does this sound logical? Ok the other unknown is the number of people in the vaccinated population whose own immune systems would have defeated the virus without the vaccine. That's where the ratio helps 1-11/185 or 94% effective. Looks good to me.

Otto V. , December 12, 2020 at 7:57 am

The assumption is that the exposure rate was the same in both groups, therefore the expected number of infections in both groups should be about the same. The inoculated group had 5% the number of cases of the placebo group, and that's where the 95% effectiveness rate comes from. Whether you like how they calculated it or not, the important thing to understand is that there's nothing special or ad-hoc about this method, this is how they calculate the effectiveness of all vaccines (and prophylactic treatments in general), and the effectiveness of a good flu vaccine is around 60%, and it's frequently as low as 40%.

Greg S. , December 10, 2020 at 12:17 pm

I thought this was a sober and sobering post from Peter Doshi the assoicate editor at the British Medical Journal.

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/26/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-lets-be-cautious-and-first-see-the-full-data/

Cuibono , December 10, 2020 at 1:18 pm

The author also fails to address one other important issue: the trials have so far not demonstrated that these vaccines prevent real morbiidity mortality.
to do so, the trials would have needed to be MUCH larger.
Still, preventing symptomatic infection looks good. Does that translate into preventing mortality? We dont yet know. The published data admits this . the differnce in severe cases HAD Extremely wide confidence intervals.

Mike Smitka , December 10, 2020 at 1:22 pm

Stopping transmission would be nice. But instilling sufficient immunity to not become seriously ill, much less die, is REALLY nice. If we could cut our current 3,000 deaths a day by even 50%, wouldn't that be great?

Note I am a month into recovery from COVID, caught from my son, who probably caught it from anti-maskers at the factory where he works. (He's in a high-metal-dust environment, his clothes are a different color by the end of the day, so for someone to not wear a mask is political correctness taken way too far.) We were both fortunate – he was back to 12-hours days once his quarantine was done. I still have some head cold symptoms, but it is that time of year. However, I know multiple people who have been hospitalized, and one person who died. One 30-something RN whose avocation is boxing (eg, he was in extraordinary physical condition) ended up critical. And all this was before Thanksgiving, before the current explosion of cases and consequent deterioration of the care that those critically ill will receive.

As to the math, it's unfortunate from a statistical sense that right now wasn't the core of the testing period. The number of cases among the placebo group would be far higher, and it would be easier to explain to the vast majority of the population who are not trained in statistical thinking. Even there humility is needed: I have formal training, graduate school courses in math stats and econometrics, and decades of empirical work employing that training. Nevertheless my reflexes remain those of a normal human in terms of misperceiving the impact of long odds. I have to consciously apply my training.

Finally, the above paragraph reflects a mind game. It's not unfortunate in a human sense that the vaccines are far enough along to grant provisional approval. If only they'd been available even earlier

Skip Intro , December 10, 2020 at 2:35 pm

Am I being overly cynical, or does it occur to anyone else that making a vaccine that just prevents symptoms but doesn't prevent infection and transmission will tend to make the virus endemic, rather than extinguishing it. This will gradually increase the dangers to the unvaccinated population, creating a class of sick whose 'access' to vaccination has not actually provided vaccine. Assuming the vaccination will need to be refreshed, it also creates a large group of hostages repeat customers. -- Nice lungs you got there, it'd be a shame if somethin' were to happen to 'em

Baldanders , December 10, 2020 at 5:32 pm

And here we see the inevitable result of poor analysis: the author speculates the vaccine may not prevent transmission; of course, many readers interpret this as "the vaccine doesn't stop transmission" and now will spread this speculation as rock hard fact.

I'm starting to think the best health measure we could take would be to dismantle the internet. Crowdsourced wisdom will be our end.

tegnost , December 10, 2020 at 8:37 pm

another option is ending public health as a path to riches, as this is the primary reason for most of the skepticism, who would you like to blame that on?

Seems to me it's the inevitable result of a broken health care system

Skip Intro , December 11, 2020 at 12:59 am

Your reading comprehension seems poor.

rusti , December 11, 2020 at 1:19 am

By requiring that the vaccine provides durable sterilizing immunity you've set the bar higher, maybe by orders of magnitude, I don't think the science is there for anyone to know for this virus.

I think Mike Smitka makes a compelling case for setting a lower threshold in preventing serious disease is priority number one, and one can say that without being a shill for the pharma companies. If none of the vaccines provide durable immunity it is of course great for their collective bottom lines, but if you know of an immunologist who thinks that they're doing so deliberately I would be very interested to see a link.

Nick Alcock , December 11, 2020 at 1:27 pm

Errr this disease is endemic. With approaching a billion likely cases at this point, extinguishing it is a pipe-dream. It'll be almost as hard to exterminate as it is to exterminate the flu. That horse has left the barn. It probably left the barn before the end of last year

Mike Smitka , December 12, 2020 at 10:13 am

Indeed. At least at present, however, there is one big difference with flu: low levels of mutation (perhaps zero = a single strain) for the surface proteins of SARS-CoV-2, so that the vaccines currently being approved will continue to be effective. So while we may need a booster every year or two, depending on how long the immunity from a given vaccine, it will "work."

In contrast flu vaccines protect against only a few strains (the most common vaccine type in the US targets 3), but with many, many strains in circulation at any given time (and new ones arising on a regular basis), those may not be the right strains. Hence new vaccines are developed 2x a year to target the strains epidemiologists predict will be the most prevalent. They can for example look at the strains prevalent in the winter in the southern hemisphere, and use what they see to guide their choices. Ditto what's going on in winter in the north to guide vaccines for administration in the south. Needless to say, those predictions are not always accurate, and even if they do target the 3 most prevalent strains, you may by chance be exposed to one of the strains not included. Adding more strains to the flu vaccine doesn't work, as the body won't react equally to all of them: put in 6 strains, and your body may generate weak immunity to 2, very weak to another 2, and none at all to the last 2. (My body might develop moderate immunity to 1 and none to 5.)

Over time we may see substantive mutations that affect vaccine efficacy. But with the current vaccines, it would in principle be possible to wipe out the virus that causes COVID, assuming that a very high proportion of the population gets vaccinated (and potentially revaccinated), and constant monitoring for new zoonotic outbreaks among humans catching it from animal populations in which it would remain endemic.

I don't expect that to happen. That's because, thankfully, average mortality rates for COVID are well under 1%, whereas for smallpox they were 20%-30%. Too many people will be lax about immunizations, while governments will not enact the draconian policies that would be needed to offset that – unlike if we saw a reemergence of smallpox.

Lins , December 10, 2020 at 11:20 pm

I am frustrated but hopeful that viable treatments will be approved for use like CytoDyn's Leronlimab. I personally would choose a proven safe and effective treatment vs any of the vaccines!

rusti , December 10, 2020 at 11:56 pm

Antiviral treatments or monoclonal antibodies are only useful if you apply them very early in the course of disease. Most people, by the time they show up in the hospital, can not benefit from these treatments and can have worse outcomes. I suggest searching for Dr. Daniel Griffin's material about the "phases of covid" to understand how clinical protocols are evolving.

Eric J , December 12, 2020 at 1:07 am

The real questions is

"With only about 20,000 people have received this Pfizer's vaccine. Will unexpected safety issues arise when the number grows to millions and possibly billions of people? Will side effects emerge with longer follow-up? Implementing a vaccine that requires two doses is challenging. What happens to the inevitable large number of recipients who miss their second dose? How long will the vaccine remain effective? Does the vaccine prevent asymptomatic disease and limit transmission? And what about the groups of people who were not represented in this trial, such as children, pregnant women, and immunocompromised patients of various sorts?"

Otto V. , December 12, 2020 at 8:02 am

I can 100% answer at least the last question: the vaccine has not been approved for children nor pregnant woman, and immunocompromised people never get vaccines. They are protected by herd immunity or not at all. Same for people with allergic reactions to any of the vaccine components.

As usual, we won't have the answer to most of the other questions until we're further into Phase IV, which just started.

[Dec 10, 2020] To my knowledge, Pfizer/BioNTech has yet to release any samples of written materials provided to patients, so it is unclear what, if any, information regarding (potential) fertility-specific risks caused by antibodies is included

Dec 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Philthy_Stacker 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Several vaccine candidates are expected to induce the formation of humoral antibodies against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2. Syncytin-1 (see Gallaher, B., "Response to nCoV2019 Against Backdrop of Endogenous Retroviruses" - http://virological.org/t/response-to-ncov2019-against-backdrop-of-endogenous-retroviruses/396 , which is derived from human endogenous retroviruses (HERV) and is responsible for the development of a placenta in mammals and humans and is therefore an essential prerequisite for a successful pregnancy, is also found in homologous form in the spike proteins of SARS viruses.

There is no indication whether antibodies against spike proteins of SARS viruses would also act like anti-Syncytin-1 antibodies. However, if this were to be the case this would then also prevent the formation of a placenta which would result in vaccinated women essentially becoming infertile.

To my knowledge, Pfizer/BioNTech has yet to release any samples of written materials provided to patients, so it is unclear what, if any, information regarding (potential) fertility-specific risks caused by antibodies is included.

[Dec 10, 2020] Cycle threshold is everything with the PCR test. Anything above 35 is rubbish. 97% false positives.

Dec 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

DrBrown 8 hours ago (Edited)

Cycle threshold is everything with the PCR test. Anything above 35 is rubbish. 97% false positives. Chris Martenson just presented some compelling information regarding these tests. A recent paper basically shoots down a paper ( Corman-Drosten paper ) that was rushed to press (before any real peer review) in January 2020 that declared the PCR test the end all best way to test for covid. NOT TRUE. It was never meant for this purpose and is now being grossly abused by TPTB. The paper says:

3. The number of amplification cycles (less than 35; preferably 25-30 cycles); In case of virus detection, >35 cycles only detects signals which do not correlate with infectious virus as determined by isolation in cell culture [reviewed in 2]; if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the case in most laboratories in Europe & the US), the probability that said person is actually infected is less than 3%, the probability that said result is a false positive is 97% [reviewed in 3]

Most testing sites are using a cycle threshold of 40 or more meaning the results mean nothing. In fact many labs are using a CT of 47! The paper goes on to say:

3. The number of amplification cycles It should be noted that there is no mention anywhere in the Corman-Drosten paper of a test being positive or negative, or indeed what defines a positive or negative result. These types of virological diagnostic tests must be based on a SOP, including a validated and fixed number of PCR cycles (Ct value) after which a sample is deemed positive or negative. The maximum reasonably reliable Ct value is 30 cycles. Above a Ct of 35 cycles, rapidly increasing numbers of false positives must be expected . PCR data evaluated as positive after a Ct value of 35 cycles are completely unreliable. Review Report by an International Consortium of Scientists in Life Sciences (ICSLS) - Corman-Drosten et al., Eurosurveillance 2020 (Updated: 29.11.2020) Citing Jaafar et al. 2020 [3]: "At Ct = 35, the value we used to report a positive result for PCR, <3% of cultures are positive." In other words, there was no successful virus isolation of SARS-CoV-2 at those high Ct values. Further, scientific studies show that only non-infectious (dead) viruses are detected with Ct values of 35 [22]. Between 30 and 35 there is a grey area, where a positive test cannot be established with certainty. This area should be excluded. Of course, one could perform 45 PCR cycles, as recommended in the Corman-Drosten WHO-protocol (Figure 4), but then you also have to define a reasonable Ct-value (which should not exceed 30). But an analytical result with a Ct value of 45 is scientifically and diagnostically absolutely meaningless (a reasonable Ct-value should not exceed 30). All this should be communicated very clearly. It is a significant mistake that the Corman-Drosten paper does not mention the maximum Ct value at which a sample can be unambiguously considered as a positive or a negative test-result. This important cycle threshold limit is also not specified in any follow-up submissions to date.

Hillary's Fish Taco 6 hours ago remove link

The PCR test will go down in history as the biggest part of this scamdemic. Covid 19 was a novel virus resulting in a bad flu that killed the elderly and the already ill.

That will be Covid's legacy...the politicians will be shamed for all eternity.

[Dec 10, 2020] For The First Time, A US State Will Require Disclosure Of PCR 'Cycle Threshold' Data In COVID Tests -

Dec 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

For The First Time, A US State Will Require Disclosure Of PCR 'Cycle Threshold' Data In COVID Tests by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/06/2020 - 10:45 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

We have detailed the controversy surrounding America's COVID "casedemic" and the misleading results of the PCR test and its amplification procedure in great detail over the past few months.

As a reminder, "cycle thresholds" (Ct) are the level at which widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test can detect a sample of the COVID-19 virus. The higher the number of cycles, the lower the amount of viral load in the sample; the lower the cycles, the more prevalent the virus was in the original sample.

Numerous epidemiological experts have argued that cycle thresholds are an important metric by which patients, the public, and policymakers can make more informed decisions about how infectious and/or sick an individual with a positive COVID-19 test might be. However, as JustTheNews reports, health departments across the country are failing to collect that data .

Here are a few headlines from those experts and scientific studies:

1. Experts compiled three datasets with officials from the states of Massachusetts, New York and Nevada that conclude: "Up to 90% of the people who tested positive did not carry a virus."

2. The Wadworth Center, a New York State laboratory, analyzed the results of its July tests at the request of the NYT: 794 positive tests with a Ct of 40: " With a Ct threshold of 35 , approximately half of these PCR tests would no longer be considered positive ," said the NYT. "And about 70% would no longer be considered positive with a Ct of 30! "

3. An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that the PCR process is not a reliable test for Sars-Cov-2 , and therefore any enforced quarantine based on those test results is unlawful.

4. A new study from the Infectious Diseases Society of America , found that at 25 cycles of amplification, 70% of PCR test "positives" are not "cases" since the virus cannot be cultured, it's dead. And by 35: 97% of the positives are non-clinical.

5. PCR is not testing for disease, it's testing for a specific RNA pattern and this is the key pivot. When you crank it up to 25, 70% of the positive results are not really "positives" in any clinical sense , since it cannot make you or anyone else sick

So, in summary, with regard to our current "casedemic", positive tests as they are counted today do not indicate a "case" of anything. They indicate that viral RNA was found in a nasal swab. It may be enough to make you sick, but according to the New York Times and their experts, probably won't. And certainly not sufficient replication of the virus to make anyone else sick. But you will be sent home for ten days anyway, even if you never have a sniffle. And this is the number the media breathlessly reports... and is used to fearmonger mask mandates and lockdowns nationwide...

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1335459652004286466&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmedical%2Ffirst-time-us-state-will-require-disclosure-pcr-test-cycle-data&partner=tweetdeck&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

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All of which is background for an intriguing decision made by Florida's Department of Health (and signed off on by Florida's Republican Governor Ron deSantis).

For the first time in the history of the pandemic, a state will require that all labs in the state report the critical "cycle threshold" level of every COVID-19 test they perform .

All positive, negative and indeterminate COVID-19 laboratory results must be reported to FDOH via electronic laboratory reporting or by fax immediately. This includes all COVID-19 test types - polymerase chain reaction (PCR), other RNA, antigen and antibody results.

Cycle threshold (CT) values and their reference ranges , as applicable, must be reported by laboratories to FDOH via electronic laboratory reporting or by fax immediately.

Full press release below:


3 hours ago

Try this on for size, pulled it from the comments at Naturalnews.com :

I have a PhD in virology and immunology. I'm a clinical lab scientist and have tested 1500 "supposed" positive Covid 19 samples collected here in S. California. When my lab team and I did the testing through Koch's postulates and observation under a SEM (scanning electron microscope), we found NO Covid in any of the 1500 samples.

What we found was that all of the 1500 samples were mostly Influenza A and some were influenza B, but not a single case of Covid, and we did not use the B.S. PCR test.

We then sent the remainder of the samples to Stanford, Cornell, and a few of the University of California labs and they found the same results as we did, NO COVID. They found influenza A and B.

All of us then spoke to the CDC and asked for viable samples of COVID, which CDC said they could not provide as they did not have any samples. We have now come to the firm conclusion through all our research and lab work, that the COVID 19 was imaginary and fictitious. The flu was called Covid and most of the 225,000 dead were dead through co-morbidities such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, emphysema etc. and they then got the flu which further weakened their immune system and they died. I have yet to find a single viable sample of Covid 19 to work with. We at the 7 universities that did the lab tests on these 1500 samples are now suing the CDC for Covid 19 fraud. the CDC has yet to send us a single viable, isolated and purifed sample of Covid 19.

If they can't or won't send us a viable sample, I say there is no Covid 19, it is fictitious. The four research papers that do describe the genomic extracts of the Covid 19 virus never were successful in isolating and purifying the samples. All the four papers written on Covid 19 only describe small bits of RNA which were only 37 to 40 base pairs long which is NOT A VIRUS. A viral genome is typically 30,000 to 40,000 base pairs. With as bad as Covid is supposed to be all over the place, how come no one in any lab world wide has ever isolated and purified this virus in its entirety? That's because they've never really found the virus, all they've ever found was small pieces of RNA which were never identified as the virus anyway. So what we're dealing with is just another flu strain like every year... play_arrow 30 play_arrow


Gunston_Nutbush_Hall 3 hours ago (Edited)

Tks my point exactly in general, setting aside any Trump innuendo but keeping straight up "scientific method(s)"

And if I were to continue my post it would be similar based upon what you have written hereto:

Sorry Rick DeSantis, the question I would have been really impressed by you asking is not the back end falsifiable PCR testing but the front end question I have been asking for 12 months!: please provide me from five different independent laboratories, via independent gold standard, an empirically isolated, separated, purified, and replicated as sole direct external biological causation agent, for one or all "COVID19" symptoms to any human being, as "contagious/pathogenic" "virus."

I would nominate Rick DeSantis for the Nobel Prize on that experiment! ;-)

Sardonicus 3 hours ago

No one is testing for, or counting, financial deaths.

There are way more of those.

sparkadore 2 hours ago

The brainwashing is very real. The MSM simply report the daily memo sent to them by the spin Doctors in the alphabet agencies. Social media and search engine algorithms have been adjusted to assist you in RightThink.

That leaves the comment section in zh as the voice in the wilderness.

God help us all.

Bastiat 2 hours ago

Heard from a friend the other day: an elderly health compromised couple both got ill and went to the doctor to get tested for flu. The doctor tested them for COVID and, surprise, they both came back "positive." No test for flu. So, 2 new "COVID cases" and perhaps another "COVID" death. Meanwhile flu deaths have dropped off the chart for the season.

Decimus Lunius Luvenalis 3 hours ago

And this is how the imbecile Biden and his ilk will claim 'victory' over the vid. They chose 'cases' as the benchmark so they'll simply change how a 'case' is defined all the while hiding behind the 'science' while never citing the 'science' or explaining why their cherry picked 'science' is valid.

How interesting that 'science' has now been transformed by those that desire to 'rule' into religious mystery. It must be believed, never questioned, you are guilty of something and therefore must self-regulate, but they'll provide absolution.

idontcare 2 hours ago (Edited)

Truth if you consider that only 6% of the 277K+ deaths have been categorized as CV19 deaths without co-morbidities according to the CDC's own data. My # just uses the total # of "reported deaths" ("w/ CV" not necessarily "from CV") accdg to the CDC.

Patrick Bateman Jr. 1 hour ago

I just divided 260,000 by 350 million. My math might be off. But that 99.999 stretches out even farther into the 9's if we take out the Covid deaths with co-morbidities and use the 6%.

We are destroying an entire way of life and allowing the media, state, and others to dictate our behavior in our homes over a stronger variant of the flu that has virtually no chance of killing us. You can go mad thinking about it too much

ThePub'Lick_Hare 2 hours ago

Time for every state to follow Florida by class action suit. This farce has gone on too long. Kudos to Florida for taking the initiative. Now at last people can ask relevant questions and insist on proper protocol. The Portuguese High Court saw false COVID testing for what it is, the spark and flame of a reign of terror. Time to douse the flames and the douche-bags inflaming the scam-demic.

Ajax_USB_Port_Repair_Service_ 3 hours ago (Edited)

Lowering the test magnification nation wide would be a brilliant covid rescue plan for whoever wins the presidency.

daveO 3 hours ago

Whoever wins the presidency is not running this SCAMDEMIC. But, yes, they will do it by spring.

Ajax_USB_Port_Repair_Service_ 2 hours ago (Edited)

" Whoever wins the presidency " Will get the credit.

Agree, covid hysteria is being controlled by some group more powerful than our president.

deFLorable hillbilly 2 hours ago (Edited)

Ron DeSantis is the best governor, by far, in any of the 57 states.

He is fearless and pro-American.

PS- I forgot about Noem in SD. It’s a tie. That chick rocks red, white and blue too.

LiberateUS 2 hours ago (Edited)

#3 .Desantis is extremely knowledgeable about the pcr test, extremely intelligent, and a person of integrity. C 19 is just another annual flu that affects only already sick or very elderly people. He knows that, and using CT of 25 or lower will reveal only people who have a virus load that will cause symptoms and illness. Those are the people that need medical attention. Everyone has small virus particles in their bloodstream, which are harmless. Vaccines inject viruses into your bloodstream.

bustdriver 2 hours ago

"Approximately 150,000 people die every day, worldwide. That’s 52 million people that have died so far this year. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the number 1 cause of death globally, taking an estimated 17.9 million lives each year. Close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds.

Coronavirus has killed 1.5 million people worldwide so far this year.


Perhaps this can offer a little perspective"

fackbankz 2 hours ago

I bet you'll see a marked decrease in deaths from CVDs in 2020 because a lot of them are being blamed on Covid-1984.

[Dec 06, 2020] Tested 'Positive' For COVID-19- Be Sure To Ask This Question

Highly recommended!
Dec 06, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The lockdowns are based on surging "cases" which are based on positive PCR test results.

However, what exactly is a positive PCR test result? What does it mean? As Dr. Tommy Megremis summarized recently :

If you are generally aware, the PCR test is used to amplify small amount of genetic material so as to recognize patterns of DNA by "cycling." (Also, for RNA virus, the RNA is converted to DNA in order to be detected, it's just the way the test works) This is how we have been able to recognize the genomes in Egyptian mummies and Wooly Mammoths. It works because if you amplify and cycle enough times to "grow" legitimate DNA fragments, you get something with with a fair amount of specificity. W hat is becoming more and more apparent is that the PCR test was not designed as a diagnostic tool for infection, and really cannot function as one without having a huge amount of false positives, period.

When it comes to COVID, the presence of viral particles picked up by the PCR technique does not and has not been quantitatively linked to an active "symptomatic" infection. It simply cannot be so, because infection threshold as a result of viral load is different for each patient. It turns out, if you "cycle" over around 25 times, the false positivity of COVID infection starts getting very high.

I and others have explained in blogs how people can be exposed to virus, and mount a simple innate immune response and never know any differently. When you test these people with very low viral loads, who are not sick, you can find the viral RNA code that is used to "diagnose" if you cycle enough times. The last I read, Labcorp cycles at least 40 times to detect viral genome fragments. The PCR test was never intended for diagnosis of infection but as a qualitative test for presence of parts of a virus genome. I know there has been some confusion circulating the net about what the inventor Kary Mullis had said about that. But we walk daily with people who have any number of parts of killer virus or bacterial genomes which one could pick up with a PCR test if one had the specific test for it. Would we claim that that individual was an infected patient? No!

So given all that, PeakProsperity's Chris Martenson explains below , in great details, the answer to the most important question you should ask if you or a loved one gets a positive PCR test result .

"What's the Cycle Threshold (CT) value for that test?"

Sounds wonky but it's actually really important to understand. A low CT value means someone is loaded with virus. A high value, oppositely, means less of a viral load.

Beyond a certain level the load is insufficient to either infect someone else or be of any clinical or epidemiological relevance whatsoever.

The problem? Governments all over the country and world are basing their decisions on CT values that are very high. Too high.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/eWqNl4UUlH0

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

* * *

Links:

WHO PCR 47 (!) Cycles

https://www.who.int/diagnostics_laboratory/eul_0489_185_00_path_covid19_ce_ivd_ifu_issue_2.0.pdf?ua=1

CT over 35 is non-infectious

https://www.infectiousdiseaseadvisor.com/home/topics/covid19/ct-value-may-inform-when-patients-with-covid-19-can-be-safely-discharged/

Cycle Thresholds Too Damn High

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

Corman Drosten retraction request

https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/

Bad Testing Video Sept 1

NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

https://youtu.be/ZFNdsRHKUM4

UK PCR positive standards

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/guidance-and-sop-covid-19-virus-testing-in-nhs-laboratories-v1.pdf

Kansas CT cutoff of 42

https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1505/SARS-CoV-2-COVID-19-PCR-Ct-Cutoff-Values-PDF -- 10-5-20


span

6 hours ago remove link

Jon Rappoport (excellent blog) nails it in some of his recent posts.

.

"July 16, 2020, podcast, 'This Week in Virology': Tony Fauci makes a point of saying the PCR Covid test is useless and misleading when the test is run at '35 cycles or higher.' A positive result, indicating infection, cannot be accepted or believed.

"Here, in techno-speak, is an excerpt from Fauci's key quote: ' If you get [perform the test at] a cycle threshold of 35 or more the chances of it being replication-competent [aka accurate] are miniscule you almost never can culture virus [detect a true positive result] from a 37 threshold cycle even 36 '

"Too many cycles, and the test will turn up all sorts of irrelevant material that will be wrongly interpreted as relevant.

"That's called a false positive.

"What Fauci failed to say on the video is: the FDA, which authorizes the test for public use, recommends the test should be run up to 40 cycles. Not 35.

"Therefore, all labs in the US that follow the FDA guideline are knowingly or unknowingly participating in fraud. Fraud on a monstrous level, because millions of Americans are being told they are infected with the virus on the basis of a false positive result, and

"The total number of Covid cases in America -- which is based on the test -- is a gross falsity.

"The lockdowns and other restraining measures are based on these fraudulent case numbers.

play_arrow
GenuineAmerican 3 hours ago

Fauci has lied again the PCR maximum cycle for a accurate test results is 25 NOT 35. PCR is run, or should be run at 21-25 cycles everything else will give a false positive. Had a friend in Scottsdale MAYO. I had to go to this god-forsaken place to get him out. They were running the PCR at 42 cycles to keep him in the hospital because he had very, very good UNION insurance!! The health industries are all crooks, lying to people to get more money being paid to the orgainizations by the feds.

BaNNeD oN THe RuN 7 hours ago

IQ tests were always seriously flawed, just like the PCR test

https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39

It does not measure creative or lateral thinking ability at all.

I had scores that put me in the top 0.5% but I had no illusion that made me anything more than a good test taker.

NatsarimAmericanoLion 6 hours ago

Giorgio Palmas 21 hours ago

U.S TOTAL DEATHS
2015: 2,602,000
2016: 2,744,248
2017: 2,649,000
2018: 2,839,205
2019: 2,909,000
According to usalivestats(dot)com, there are 2,486,700 so far this year. There could be a lag in reports, but I doubt enough to fulfill their doomsday claims. The CDC still admits only 6% of these "COVID" are without 2 or more comorbidities, so that's about 25,000 or so. This is a mild flu season. Here are the recent flu numbers:
FLU DEATHS 2010's
2010: 36,656
2011: 12,447
2012: 42,570
2013: 37,930
2014: 51,376
2015: 22,705
2016: 38,230
2017: 61,099
2018: 34,157

choctaw charley 5 hours ago remove link

so what's the purpose behind the bogus plandemic. In order to institute a one world plantation several things have to happen. Foremost is the sense of "nationhood". a nation can be thought of as modeled on the family unit. We look similar, we share religious beliefs, economic and political views and we have a common history which we take pride in. We trust rely on and help another. If you have half a brain you don't need me to describe how all these are under attack. So how does the plandemic play into this? Yesterday you neighbor was your neighbor. Today he is behind a mask because the government tells you that he is a threat to you and your family and you to his! The plandemic was used to to hugely expand the mail-in ballot fraud further driving in the wedge suspicion. Then there is this: when you get your covid test there will be a permanent file created with your name on it. It will contain your genetic code and the test result. this will become the social register that is all over Europe. Get a traffic ticket; late in making a payment; engage in disapproved political activity as I am doing at this moment? All these will find their way into your file and will in the future determine the rate you pay on your home mortgage whether you can be employed in a government job, what you have to endure to board a commercial aircraft etc. There is also a great likelihood that contained in the vaccine will be a tracking component. Consider also population segment most vulnerable to covid: older retired people drawing on an already bankrupt social security ponzi scheme. Hitler referred to these as "Useless Eaters". He had a system in place to rid society of these. Later these faciliries were expanded to include the Jewish population.

flyonmywall 9 hours ago

I've done lots of PCR in my life. If you have to do over 35 cycles to detect or amplify something, you're probably barking up the wrong tree or there is something wrong with your assay.

Once you ramp up the cycles to past 35-40 cycles, you're just amplifying non-specific competing amplification products, of which there are always some.

You could have the best designed primers in the world, there is always some random **** that happens to get amplified at high cycle counts.

Zero-Hegemon 4 hours ago

False positives are beneficial for obtaining COVID money and creating hysteria.

KimAsa 9 hours ago (Edited)

these psychopaths have redesignated the normal course of annual deaths from heart disease, and other common ailments that old people die from, to Covid 19, to create the illusion of a deadly pandemic. they claim to have isolated this virus out of one side of their mouth, out the the other side they claim it has mutated (how many times?) so can't produce proof that this virus even exists. and out of their ******* they claim to have developed a vaccine?

this is and always has been about the vaccinating the public for free moral agency prevention.

Ride_the_kali_yuga 9 hours ago

Covid "tests" are an efficient way to feed the false pandemic narrative with nonsensical numbers of "contaminations". Masks are a mark of submission.

africoman 9 hours ago

Re-posting someone's comment from this article Here

by John Wear, (retired) lawyer, accountant, and author.

Excellent points, now let's threw a monkey wrench in it to the Operation Warp Speed play_arrow

Schooey 6 hours ago

Its all BS

KimAsa 9 hours ago (Edited)

these psychopaths have redesignated the normal course of annual deaths from heart disease, and other common ailments that old people die from, to Covid 19, to create the illusion of a deadly pandemic. they claim to have isolated this virus out of one side of their mouth, out the the other side they claim it has mutated (how many times?) so can't produce proof that this virus even exists. and out of their ******* they claim to have developed a vaccine?

this is and always has been about the vaccinating the public for free moral agency prevention.

Ms No 8 hours ago

They actually murdered people with the lockdown too though. Knowingly and premeditated...certainly some of those were also declared covid.

smacker 8 hours ago

" this is and always has been about the vaccinating the public "

Correct.

That has become clear. What we are only now slowing learning is what the sinister motive is.

kellys_eye 9 hours ago

Is the test for Covid or Covid-19. Can it tell the difference? The 'normal' flu and influenza are both corona viruses and this is the 'high season' for such cases in the Northern hemisphere.

Strangely (or not) the incidence of actual flu and influenza are suspiciously MUCH lower than they should be.

Ergo - tests that prove 'positive' for Covid are likely either false OR reporting on the flu/influenza.

The LIES keep mounting and mounting.

Harry Tools 5 hours ago

there is no pandemic

RedNeckMother 3 hours ago

I will add another: FDA: 40 recommendation for testing

And let's not forget the comments by Fauci that if they're testing at 35 they're going to get a lot of false positives.

There's an attorney in Ohio who has filed a FOI to obtain all the ct levels used by the labs testing in Ohio. It will be very interesting once that is revealed - I'm sure our governor already knows the answer. If I recall, the NYT itself did an article on this very topic awhile back and estimated that 90% of the positive results in CT and NY were bogus. And going from 40 to 35 I believe reduces positives by 63%.

We're being played.

MoreFreedom 5 hours ago remove link

Dr. Martenson's videos are very good. He's clear.

As for "the science" and scientists, we all make mistakes. If we didn't make mistakes, we wouldn't have scientists pointing out other scientist's mistakes. But it's not a question of whose science is correct, it's that science is no excuse for taking away peoples' liberty.

SRV 7 hours ago

The inventor of the test (Dr Kary Mullis) was very outspoken that it was NOT developed for human virus confirmation...he died of cancer just weeks before the first Covid cases (hmmmm).
The test procedure was developed as a screening tool in lab research, and he won a Nobel Prize for it!

It's in your face proof of the scam we're all being subjected to that almost no one ever questioned (brilliant move really)... ONE cycle above 35 (each cycle doubles the amplification) will explode the the false positives.

And... if you have no symptoms you DO NOT have the virus (remember how much play the "asymptomatic" BS story got early on... another psyop). Notice how none of the athletes never get sick and are back in two weeks... yet it's never questioned by a soul paid to look the other way!

smacker 9 hours ago

" What is becoming more and more apparent is that the PCR test was not designed
as a diagnostic tool for infection, and really cannot function as one without having
a huge amount of false positives, period. "

This is not knew and didn't need to become "more and more apparent".

The inventor of the PCR test Kary Mullis is on video record stating it. Sadly his expert
knowledge has been wilfully ignored by the political elites and countless talking heads
and "experts" because it doesn't suit them and didn't fit their agenda.

It's time to prepare the gallows and stock up with rope.

smacker 7 hours ago remove link

The PCR test is used precisely because it can be manipulated to produce as many "cases" as wanted.

Just turn the dial up on "amplification cycles" and hey presto, you get as many positives as you want.

The cases are not genuine cases but simply PCR positive tests, but are reported as "cases" and then
"infections" by MSM who are "In On It".

The idea is "FEAR Management" which allows draconian CovID rules like lockdowns and tiers and
social distancing to be introduced which accustoms people to being managed and controlled.

It then ramps up demand for vaccines which is the ultimate objective. Initially (or soon after), the
vaccines will contain nano-technology - dust-chips - which will be used for surveillance and control.
Some say they will also contain ingredients to render people infertile (ie population control).

We are seeing in plain sight the biggest coup ever against mankind.

It must be stopped.

smacker 7 hours ago remove link

The PCR test is used precisely because it can be manipulated to produce as many "cases" as wanted.

Just turn the dial up on "amplification cycles" and hey presto, you get as many positives as you want.

The cases are not genuine cases but simply PCR positive tests, but are reported as "cases" and then
"infections" by MSM who are "In On It".

The idea is "FEAR Management" which allows draconian CovID rules like lockdowns and tiers and
social distancing to be introduced which accustoms people to being managed and controlled.

It then ramps up demand for vaccines which is the ultimate objective. Initially (or soon after), the
vaccines will contain nano-technology - dust-chips - which will be used for surveillance and control.
Some say they will also contain ingredients to render people infertile (ie population control).

We are seeing in plain sight the biggest coup ever against mankind.

It must be stopped.


4 hours ago

[Dec 05, 2020] -This Gives Some Hope- - Japanese Study Finds 98% Of COVID Patients Still Have Antibodies 6 Months Later -

Dec 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

A Japanese research team said Wednesday that it has detected neutralizing antibodies in 98% of people six months after they were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Another study performed in the UK found that antibodies found evidence that antibody levels start to degrade within six months.

The team, led by Yokohama City University professor Takeharu Yamanaka, is already planning to conduct a follow-up study to see whether these people will still have such antibodies a year after their infections.

But in the survey data released Wednesday, researcher checked blood samples from 376 people who had already recovered - the largest study of its type in Japan. The samples were collected six months after the patients were infected.

According to a report on the study published by Nippon, Yamanaka said that "in general, people with neutralizing antibodies are believed to carry a low risk of reinfection...This gives some hope" for the effectiveness of the vaccines that are soon to be delivered to the public.

As the west prepares to roll out the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations, scientists will be watching closely for more data to try an ascertain whether COVID-19 can truly be defeated, or whether it might morph into a flu-like seasonal infection.

[Dec 02, 2020] A global team of experts has found 10 FATAL FLAWS in the main test for Covid and is demanding it's urgently axed. As they sho

Dec 02, 2020 | www.rt.com

By Peter Andrews , Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics A peer review of the paper on which most Covid testing is based has comprehensively debunked the science behind it, finding major flaws. They conclude it's utterly unsuitable as a means for diagnosis – and the fall-out is immense.

Last week, I reported on a landmark ruling from Portugal, where a court had ruled against a governmental health authority that had illegally confined four people to a hotel this summer. They had done so because one of the people had tested positive for Covid in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test – but the court had found the test fundamentally flawed and basically inadmissible.

Now the PCR testing supremacy under which we all now live has received another crushing blow. A peer review from a group of 22 international experts has found 10 "major flaws" in the main protocol for such tests. The report systematically dismantles the original study , called the Corman-Drosten paper, which described a protocol for applying the PCR technique to detecting Covid.

The Corman-Drosten paper was published on January, 23, 2020, just a day after being submitted, which would make any peer review process that took place possibly the shortest in history. What is important about it is that the protocol it describes is used in around 70 percent of Covid kits worldwide. It's cheap, fast – and absolutely useless.

ALSO ON RT.COM Landmark legal ruling finds that Covid tests are not fit for purpose. So what do the MSM do? They ignore it The 10 deadly sins

Among the fatal flaws that totally invalidate the PCR testing protocol are that the test:

is non-specific, due to erroneous primer design

is enormously variable

cannot discriminate between the whole virus and viral fragments

has no positive or negative controls

has no standard operating procedure

does not seem to have been properly peer reviewed

Oh dear. One wonders whether anything at all was correct in the paper. But wait – it gets worse. As has been noted previously , no threshold for positivity was ever identified. This is why labs have been running 40 cycles, almost guaranteeing a large number of false positives – up to 97 percent, according to some studies.

The cherry on top, though, is that among the authors of the original paper themselves, at least four have severe conflicts of interest. Two of them are members of the editorial board of Eurosurveillance, the sinisterly named journal that published the paper. And at least three of them are on the payroll of the first companies to perform PCR testing!

ALSO ON RT.COM YouTube removes lockdown-sceptical interview with renowned immunologist Dr Mike Yeadon for 'violating terms of service' Heroes we deserve

The 22 members of the consortium that has challenged this shoddy science deserve huge credit. The scientists, from Europe, the USA, and Japan, comprise senior molecular geneticists, biochemists, immunologists, and microbiologists, with many decades of experience between them.

They have issued a demand to Eurosurveillance to retract the Corman-Drosten paper, writing: " Considering the scientific and methodological blemishes presented here, we are confident that the editorial board of Eurosurveillance has no other choice but to retract the publication. '' Talk about putting the pressure on.

It is difficult to overstate the implications of this revelation. Every single thing about the Covid orthodoxy relies on 'case numbers', which are largely the results of the now widespread PCR tests. If their results are essentially meaningless, then everything we are being told – and ordered to do by increasingly dictatorial governments – is likely to be incorrect. For instance, one of the authors of the review is Dr Mike Yeadon, who asserts that, in the UK, there is no 'second wave' and that the pandemic has been over since June. Having seen the PCR tests so unambiguously debunked, it is hard to see any evidence to the contrary.

ALSO ON RT.COM All vaccines, including the new Covid ones, carry a tiny risk of serious side effects. But does that mean we shouldn't take them? The house of cards collapses

Why was this paper rushed to publication in January, despite clearly not meeting proper standards? Why did none of the checks and balances that are meant to prevent bad science dictating public policy kick into action? And why did it take so long for anyone in the scientific community to challenge its faulty methodology? These questions lead to dark ruminations, which I will save for another day.

Even more pressing is the question of what is going to be done about this now. The people responsible for writing and publishing the paper have to be held accountable. But also, all PCR testing based on the Corman-Drosten protocol should be stopped with immediate effect. All those who are so-called current 'Covid cases', diagnosed based on that protocol, should be told they no longer have to isolate. All present and previous Covid deaths, cases, and 'infection rates' should be subject to a massive retroactive inquiry. And lockdowns, shutdowns, and other restrictions should be urgently reviewed and relaxed.

Because this latest blow to PCR testing raises the probability that we are not enduring a killer virus pandemic, but a false positive pseudo-epidemic. And one on which we are destroying our economies, wrecking people's livelihoods and causing more deaths than Covid-19 will ever claim.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.


[Dec 02, 2020] Most labs are running upwards of 40 cycles and that created a lot of false postives; you need to know Ct (cycle threshhold) to make a jusdgement

Dec 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

gm , Dec 2 2020 0:16 utc | 187

Good one from Vanessa Beeley:

On Sean Penn as possible US deep state tool

Article also touches upon:

-reclusive Israeli billionaire, Vivi Nevo, who sounds from the write-up like a latter day Jeffrey Epstein replacement figure

-use of covid rt-Pcr tests in US under ulterior motives as a HIPPA dodge to mass-collect DNA for Big data/Big tracking and other purposes.

The PCR test, DNA harvesting and false positives

The validity of the PCR tests in diagnosing Covid-19 has been the subject of much scientific discussion with a growing number of medical experts and analysts dismissing the PCR test as unreliable and inconclusive due to the high percentage of false positives. It is also claimed that this widespread DNA collection under the pretext of Covid-19 could be a covert genetic information harvest on the pretext of extracting viral DNA from all the genetic material.

I spoke with a medical expert who will remain anonymous for security reasons and he informed me that the PCR test is "not designed to diagnose disease." He told me:

"The test identifies a genetic sequence being present in a sample and then copies it, thereby increasing the amount of genetic material. Each test cycle copies and increases the genetic material. A specific amount of GM is required to meet a threshold of detection. The test will keep copying until it is possible to say the virus is "detected". Therein lies the problem. After "Covid" infection, when the virus has been removed by the immune system, some viral genetic debris can remain for many months. A tiny fragment viral, genetic material debris will be found and multiplied by many, many cycles until the detection threshold is reached. This is a false positive."

He informed me that most labs are running upwards of 40 cycles. "In at least 4 examples of RT PCR testing in the US, it was found that 90% of the positive tests were actually false."

He also told me "the real reason they are pushing the testing is control. They want a rapid test to be used every day, multiple times per day to gain entry to school, work, restaurants, entertainment centres etc. It is conditioning."

The sinister question is whether all this genetic DNA information is passed on to undisclosed entities for "research purposes" without the patient's knowledge.

gm , Dec 2 2020 1:37 utc | 188

Clear explanation of meaning of "Ct" (cycle threshhold) in nCoV "+" pcr test [ie What's garbage and what's not]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqNl4UUlH0

[Nov 30, 2020] Landmark legal ruling finds that Covid tests are not fit for purpose. So what do the MSM do- They ignore it -- RT Op-ed

Nov 30, 2020 | www.rt.com

By Peter Andrews , Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics. Four German holidaymakers who were illegally quarantined in Portugal after one was judged to be positive for Covid-19 have won their case, in a verdict that condemns the widely-used PCR test as being up to 97-percent unreliable.

Earlier this month, Portuguese judges upheld a decision from a lower court that found the forced quarantine of four holidaymakers to be unlawful. The case centred on the reliability (or lack thereof) of Covid-19 PCR tests.

The verdict , delivered on November 11, followed an appeal against a writ of habeas corpus filed by four Germans against the Azores Regional Health Authority. This body had been appealing a ruling from a lower court which had found in favour of the tourists, who claimed that they were illegally confined to a hotel without their consent. The tourists were ordered to stay in the hotel over the summer after one of them tested positive for coronavirus in a PCR test - the other three were labelled close contacts and therefore made to quarantine as well.

Unreliable, with a strong chance of false positives

The deliberation of the Lisbon Appeal Court is comprehensive and fascinating. It ruled that the Azores Regional Health Authority had violated both Portuguese and international law by confining the Germans to the hotel. The judges also said that only a doctor can "diagnose" someone with a disease, and were critical of the fact that they were apparently never assessed by one.

READ MORE Immunity for YEARS or DECADES: Covid resistance may last much longer than previously thought, says new research Immunity for YEARS or DECADES: Covid resistance may last much longer than previously thought, says new research

They were also scathing about the reliability of the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, the most commonly used check for Covid.

The conclusion of their 34-page ruling included the following: "In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus."

In the eyes of this court, then, a positive test does not correspond to a Covid case. The two most important reasons for this, said the judges, are that, "the test's reliability depends on the number of cycles used'' and that "the test's reliability depends on the viral load present.'' In other words, there are simply too many unknowns surrounding PCR testing.

Tested positive? There could be as little as a 3% chance it's correct

This is not the first challenge to the credibility of PCR tests. Many people will be aware that their results have a lot to do with the number of amplifications that are performed, or the 'cycle threshold.' This number in most American and European labs is 35–40 cycles, but experts have claimed that even 35 cycles is far too many, and that a more reasonable protocol would call for 25–30 cycles. (Each cycle exponentially increases the amount of viral DNA in the sample).

Earlier this year, data from three US states – New York, Nevada and Massachusetts – showed that when the amount of the virus found in a person was taken into account, up to 90 percent of people who tested positive could actually have been negative, as they may have been carrying only tiny amounts of the virus.

The Portuguese judges cited a study conducted by "some of the leading European and world specialists," which was published by Oxford Academic at the end of September. It showed that if someone tested positive for Covid at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher, the chances of that person actually being infected is less than three percent, and that "the probability of receiving a false positive is 97% or higher."

While the judges in this case admitted that the cycle threshold used in Portuguese labs was unknown, they took this as further proof that the detention of the tourists was unlawful. The implication was that the results could not be trusted. Because of this uncertainty, they stated that there was "no way this court would ever be able to determine" whether the tourist who tested positive was indeed a carrier of the virus, or whether the others had been exposed to it.

READ MORE I'm an epidemiology professor and I have some genuine concerns about the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. Here's why I'm an epidemiology professor and I have some genuine concerns about the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. Here's why Sshhh – don't tell anyone

It is a sad indictment of our mainstream media that such a landmark ruling, of such obvious and pressing international importance, has been roundly ignored. If one were making (flimsy) excuses for them, one could say that the case escaped the notice of most science editors because it has been published in Portuguese. But there is a full English translation of the appeal, and alternative media managed to pick it up.

And it isn't as if Portugal is some remote, mysterious nation where news is unreliable or whose judges are suspect – this is a western EU country with a large population and a similar legal system to many other parts of Europe. And it is not the only country whose institutions are clashing with received wisdom on Covid. Finland's national health authority has disputed the WHO's recommendation to test as many people as possible for coronavirus, saying it would be a waste of taxpayer's money, while poorer South East Asian countries are holding off on ordering vaccines, citing an improper use of finite resources.

Testing, especially PCR testing, is the basis for the entire house of cards of Covid restrictions that are wreaking havoc worldwide. From testing comes case numbers. From case numbers come the 'R number,' the rate at which a carrier infects others. From the 'dreaded' R number comes the lockdowns and the restrictions, such as England's new and baffling tiered restrictions that come into force next week.

The daily barrage of statistics is familiar to us all by this point, but as time goes on the evidence that something may be deeply amiss with the whole foundation of our reaction to this pandemic – the testing regime – continues to mount

[Nov 28, 2020] Post-2008 First World capitalism: the zombification and then definitive death of the petite-bourgeoisie:

Nov 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Nov 27 2020 13:27 utc | 107

Pushed by Pandemic, Amazon Goes on a Hiring Spree Without Equal

The First World is leaving the "sweet spot" of its capitalist development stage, marked by a relatively inflated petit-bourgeois middle class, and is reentering a proletarianization phase. Call it the reproletarianization of the First World.

Looks like Marx was right all along.

[Nov 28, 2020] mRNA technology is only effective theoretically. In the real world, it potentially has devastating effects on the human body.

Nov 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Nov 27 2020 12:13 utc | 105

@ Posted by: Debsisdead | Nov 27 2020 1:35 utc | 69

You didn't read the link I provided. I'll recap:

1) Western Big Pharma "forgot" how to develop new vaccines over these last decades because they're not profitable. That opened the gates for Gamaleya to occupy the sector, therefore dominating the main technology used today, human adenovirus; (see Dmitriev's "forbidden op-ed").
Proof of this is J&J's difficulty in developing a simple human adenovirus vaccine (by the time they finish theirs, we'll already have billions of Sputnik V and Sinovac doses produced). The reason we still don't have an effective cold vaccine is because we don't have enough investment, not because it is impossible;

2) Sputnik V and Sinovac (and other Chinese variants) use a known, tested and tried technology for their vaccines - human adenovirus -, while Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca use untested and untried technologies (mRNA and chimpanzee adenovirus). It is the difference between the known and the unknown, except that this time hundreds of millions of human lives are at the table. We suspect the Western pharmaceuticals are resorting to these exotic technologies because they want something they can patent and sell at monopolistic prices to national governments; (see Dmitriev's "forbidden op-ed" and his "questions")

3) mRNA technology is only effective theoretically. In the real world, it potentially has devastating effects on the human body. It is already known it can potentially cause infertility. It very likely has carcinogenic properties; (see Dmitriev's "questions")

4) chimpanzee adenovirus technology doesn't make any sense when you already have a viable human adenovirus option. Besides the fact that it can cause more adverse effects on a human (because the virus is strange to the human organism), the doctor I linked raised the question of contamination when extracting the adenovirus from the chimpanzees (contamination rate of 10%, or one in ten). It also cause sever spinal cord inflammation - contrary to the official version in much more than one patient. It also probably killed a healthy 28-year old subject in the Brazilian trials (the Brazilian MSM initially "leaked" he was on the placebo group; later even this version was put into doubt)

5) silver bullet vaccines are very rare (e.g. polio). Most likely scenario, these vaccines will just shield you from a severe case of COVID-19, thus relieving the pressure over the national healthcare systems. Deaths of COVID-19 only begin to pile up exponentially after the limit of the healthcare system is surpassed (Italy). That's the "line of death", after which COVID-19 really begins to ravage entire populations. In this scenario, it doesn't make any sense not to go with the tried and tested technology of human adenovirus, over which Gamaleya has primacy, or, second best, the Chinese vaccines, which will be produced the most because China has manufacture supremacy. In the Russian and Chinese options, you have the choice between the best and the most available - a common decision any working class family takes daily in the free market for the purchase of their goods;

6) AstraZeneca will still have privileges in the British market. Evidence of this is the British MSM being the first to publish the fake news that it had 90% efficacy, while the American MSM went with the 70% figure. Make no mistakes: the AstraZeneca will be the only option in the NHS for the British people, with or without transverse myelitis;

7) The "half dose" mistake simply doesn't happen in the Big Pharma. It is simply not believable. The story is clearly a pathetic attempt of the British to create a comparison with the story of the penicillin discovery (by a British scientist), which also happened by accident. There wasn't half dose and, even if that really happened (the doctors involved should be immediately fired), you would be giving credence to the homeopathy thesis, which states the lower the dose, the stronger the effect. Doesn't make any sense.

AstraZeneca, by the way, is already feeling the heat. It will have to redo its trials because nobody was born yesterday:

AstraZeneca considers extra global vaccine trial as questions mount

[Nov 23, 2020] What's Not Being Said About Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine

Nov 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Down South , Nov 22 2020 17:17 utc | 9

Interesting read from F William Engdahl who takes a deeper look at the Pfizer vaccine

Suspicious events

However it seems Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, doesn't share the confidence of his own claims. On the day his company issued its press release on the proposed vaccine trials, he sold 62% of his stock in Pfizer, making millions profit in the deal. He made the sell order in a special option in August so it would not appear as "insider selling", however he also timed it just after the US elections and the mainstream media illegitimately declared Joe Biden President-elect.

It seems from appearances that Bourla had a pretty clear conflict of interest in the timing of his press release on the same day.

What's Not Being Said About Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine

karlof1 , Nov 22 2020 23:09 utc | 60

It appears the Outlaw US Empire has put all its chips on the table in favor of vaccines providing the path to "normalcy" :

"US Covid-19 vaccinations may begin as soon as December 11, reach enough people for return to normalcy in May – program chief."

When was it determined that the two potential vaccines on offer have "efficacy rates of about 95 percent" since the reports posted here were extremely dubious about them being effective at all? More:

"An FDA vaccine advisory committee is scheduled to meet on December 10 and may grant Pfizer's request for emergency use authorization that day, Dr. Moncef Slaoui said on Sunday during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. The Trump administration stands ready to ship the vaccine to immunization sites in all 50 states within 24 hours, he said, so the first doses would be administered to recipients on December 11 or December 12."

As for a vaccine being a panacea, this is from the editorial I linked @56:

"The US has made certain breakthroughs in vaccine development, but so have China, Russia and other countries. The US' attitude toward vaccines seems much too optimistic. As WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on November 16, ' A vaccine will complement the other tools we have, not replace them a vaccine on its own will not end the pandemic .'" [My Emphasis]

So yet again, the USA's citizenry is being told by the two institutions it trusts the least--federal government and media--that the End is Near IF they imbibe the new Miracle.

[Nov 20, 2020] WHO Rejects Gilead Remdesivir Drug Trump Took to Treat COVID-19

Nov 20, 2020 | www.newsmax.com

Gilead's remdesivir is not recommended for patients hospitalized with COVID-19, regardless of how ill they are, as there is no evidence the drug improves survival or reduces the need for ventilation, a World Health Organization panel said on Friday.

[Nov 19, 2020] Far Deadlier Strain Of Coronavirus Discovered In South Australia -

Nov 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

As researchers struggle to understand what makes infection with COVID-19 so mild in some cases, and so deadly in others, we have kept a close eye out for any new links between symptoms different strains of the virus. And on Wednesday we noticed new comments from South Australia's top health official who warned that a particularly deadly strain of SARS-CoV-2 is circulating in the state.

Chief Health Officer Professor Nicola Spurrier explained that the reason for the recently imposed six-day lockdown is the fact that "this particular strain has had certain characteristics" she said.

The State of South Australia, which became home to this dramatic scene yesterday , is also bracing for the risk that this new strain could spread more quickly, in addition to being more deadly. Professor Spurrier said a typical generation, or stage, of the virus was only about three days.

"We also know, because of that characteristic, that what we call a generation, is only about three days and a generation is when one case is passing it on to the next level, and then that (next) level, so if they pass it on to two people, they will pass it on to another lot of people, and that is your third generation," she said.

Already, the virus has progressed to the fifth generation, she said.

"At the moment in SA we have done contact tracing to the fourth generation but the fifth generation is out there in our community and at the moment we are contact tracing to get on to that generation and that is the Woodville pizza bar."

Authorities have traced the local outbreak to a pizza shop in Parafield. The cluster began with a worker at Peppers Warmouth, which is being used as a quarantine hotel, was infected with the virus.

[Nov 02, 2020] rtPCR testing, under the current state of knowledge, is the equivalent of measuring a patient's temperature with a thermometer but no doctor knows the average body temperature, and its natural healthy interval, nor would the thermometer provide a number on a scale, merely reporting that a patient has something other than "0". This would constitute a USELESS thermometer.

Nov 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Vasco da Gama , Nov 1 2020 23:49 utc | 56

Covid-19 is a dangerous disease and I take precautions to protect myself. However, the public depiction of the disease in the media and the actions being taken by most governments cannot but raise some very serious questions.

Posted by: Nathan Mulcahy | Nov 1 2020 18:14 utc | 16

THIS! Thank you for all your post Nathan! I was just about contributing some information that ties in precisely with your concern:
COVID-19: Council adopts a recommendation to coordinate measures affecting free movement (13-10-2020)

Based on this data, the ECDC should publish a weekly map of EU member states, broken down by regions, to support member states in their decision-making. Areas should be marked in the following colours:
  • green if the 14-day notification rate is lower than 25 and the test positivity rate below 4%
  • orange if the 14-day notification rate is lower than 50 but the test positivity rate is 4% or higher or, if the 14-day notification rate is between 25 and150 and the test positivity rate is below 4%
  • red if the 14-day notification rate is 50 or higher and the test positivity rate is 4% or higher or if the 14-day notification rate is higher than 150
  • grey if there is insufficient information or if the testing rate is lower than 300

You will notice how the measures to be taken by individual countries are absolutely (as in 100%) dependent on the worst metric possible according to the demonstrated performance of rtPCR tests. We are being recommended to use the wrong metric! None of us wishes any of our health systems to collapse, however their occupancy objectively varies with the cumulative individual immune response of the population NOT with the precariously measured transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 via rtPCR tests. Remember that the only reason we are worried about virus transmissibility is because of eventual severe developments of the disease in a fraction of the population and a possible breakdown of health systems as a consequence.

The relevant failure of rtPCR testing is its inability to estimate accurately the viral load (let's not put in question the assumption that viral load is the most important criteria for a severe development of C-19, while also leaving aside aggravating comorbidities). rtPCR testing, under the current state of knowledge, is the equivalent of measuring a patient's temperature with a thermometer but no doctor knows the average body temperature, and its natural healthy interval, nor would the thermometer provide a number on a scale, merely reporting that a patient has something other than "0". This would constitute a USELESS thermometer.

From the same recommendation as above, quote:


Free movement restrictions

Member states should not restrict the free movement of persons travelling to or from green areas. [LOL - great opening, they know full well under these criteria there will be barely any in the next months]

If considering whether to apply restrictions, they should respect the differences in the epidemiological situation between orange and red areas and act in a proportionate manner. They should also take into account the epidemiological situation in their own territory.

Member states should in principle not refuse entry to persons travelling from other member states. Those member states that consider it necessary to introduce restrictions could require persons travelling from non-green areas to:


  • undergo quarantine
  • undergo a test after arrival

Member states may offer the option of replacing this test with a test carried out before arrival.

Member states could also require persons entering their territory to submit passenger locator forms. A common European passenger locator form should be developed for possible common use.

"Test, test, test" remember? The above simply becomes arbitrary according to the criteria defined. This is not policy based on solid science! Such arbitrary policies usually serve unstated purposes (I'll refrain here to expand on those) while throwing some false pretext to the masses in order to seek their consent, exploiting their limited ability to validate the pretext as legitimate science.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So then... what could be a valid metric that allows us to prevent "eventual severe developments of the disease and a possible breakdown of health systems"? This is the question we should be asking! Myself, I would be satisfied, in substitution of rtPCR testing, with the use of new Hospitalizations, ICU and even Deaths as much better metrics, since these are true fractions of the disease development against any population and even allow to calibrate for its health system performance, much less vulnerable to duplications and false positive accounting.

rtPCR testing is absolutely absurd for the purposes it is being used (ie. country wide government response policy), instead of being limited to clinical diagnostic tool of the individual suspect of some respiratory disease to be used by a qualified practitioner, and, at best, a screening tool to get a handle on local outbreaks (schools, workplaces, residences, etc).

Hanging on this fallacy lies the destruction of most western economies and an ominous verge into the police state, neither are overstatements given what we have seen so far.


Nathan Mulcahy , Nov 1 2020 23:51 utc | 57

@ Posted by: Jen | Nov 1 2020 22:08 utc | 43

Thanks for the link, Jen. But it's not that a PCR test cannot detect a SARS-cov2 virus. The problem is that there is no standardized and validated PCR test for detecting SARS-Cov2 virus. I believe in Germany alone there are 200+ variations of the test currently being used.

My concerns about the remaining four points remain.

Nathan Mulcahy , Nov 2 2020 0:02 utc | 60

@ Posted by: Vasco da Gama | Nov 1 2020 23:49 utc | 56

Thanks for adding additional meat to my argument, including the issue with "viral load", which together with the state of the immune system of the host will decide whether or not an infected person will get sick. PCR can be extremely sensitive but that's only part of the picture.

And as I have mentioned in my response to Jen I am yet to find good answers to my remaining the 4 points in my first post (#16)

[Oct 31, 2020] Democracy Dies in Darkness. And also at the Washington Post, these days...

If this is humor, this is very dark humor. The saddest thing of all in this is that very little of Glenn's excellent article is new. One of Donald Trump's presidency greatest accomplishment has been to show me how the main stream media 'plays' its dirty games... The entire mainstream media collectively abandoned its integrity during the last decade.
Oct 31, 2020 | greenwald.substack.com

It's beyond what Orwell could have ever possibly imagined. Targeted gaslighting on an individual basis using social media to brainwash people into believing whatever they want you to believe?


B.A. Berg
Oct 29

I just paid for an annual subscription out of a total frustration with the current outrageous, unfair, evil and dishonest media situation in the US (and elsewhere also). Totalitarism is approaching and I have decided to participate in the fight against the threatening darkness. Good luck.

[Oct 21, 2020] COVID19 PCR Tests Are Scientifically Meaningless

Oct 21, 2020 | www.globalresearch.ca

Loooks like they reliable detemine only that fact that you do not have infection.

But a positive test can well be a false positive, due to excessive multiplication.

Though the whole world relies on RT-PCR to "diagnose" Sars-Cov-2 infection, the science is clear: they are not fit for purpose By Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter Global Research, October 18, 2020 OffGuardian 27 June 2020 Theme: Intelligence , Science and Medicine

2327

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First published on June 29, 2020

Lockdowns and hygienic measures around the world are based on numbers of cases and mortality rates created by the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests used to identify "positive" patients, whereby "positive" is usually equated with "infected."

But looking closely at the facts, the conclusion is that these PCR tests are meaningless as a diagnostic tool to determine an alleged infection by a supposedly new virus called SARS-CoV-2.

Unfounded "Test, Test, Test, " mantra

At the media briefing on COVID-19 on March 16, 2020 , the WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:

We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test."

The message was spread through headlines around the world, for instance by Reuters and the BBC .

Still on the 3 of May, the moderator of the Heute j ournal -- one of the most important news magazines on German television -- was passing the mantra of the corona dogma on to his audience with the admonishing words:

Test, test, test -- that is the credo at the moment, and it is the only way to really understand how much the coronavirus is spreading."

This indicates that the belief in the validity of the PCR tests is so strong that it equals a religion that tolerates virtually no contradiction.

But it is well known that religions are about faith and not about scientific facts. And as Walter Lippmann, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and perhaps the most influential journalist of the 20th century said: "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much."

So to start, it is very remarkable that Kary Mullis himself, the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology, did not think alike. His invention got him the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993.

Unfortunately, Mullis passed away last year at the age of 74, but there is no doubt that the biochemist regarded the PCR as inappropriate to detect a viral infection .

The reason is that the intended use of the PCR was, and still is, to apply it as a manufacturing technique, being able to replicate DNA sequences millions and billions of times, and not as a diagnostic tool to detect viruses.

How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn't .

Lack of a valid gold standard

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the PCR tests used to identify so-called COVID-19 patients presumably infected by what is called SARS-CoV-2 do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with.

This is a fundamental point. Tests need to be evaluated to determine their preciseness -- strictly speaking their "sensitivity"[1] and "specificity" -- by comparison with a "gold standard," meaning the most accurate method available.

As an example, for a pregnancy test the gold standard would be the pregnancy itself. But as Australian infectious diseases specialist Sanjaya Senanayake, for example, stated in an ABC TV interview in an answer to the question "How accurate is the [COVID-19] testing?" :

If we had a new test for picking up [the bacterium] golden staph in blood, we've already got blood cultures, that's our gold standard we've been using for decades, and we could match this new test against that. But for COVID-19 we don't have a gold standard test."

Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this. In her paper "Interpreting a COVID-19 test result" , published recently in The British Medical Journal , she writes that there is a "lack of such a clear-cut 'gold-standard' for COVID-19 testing."

But instead of classifying the tests as unsuitable for SARS-CoV-2 detection and COVID-19 diagnosis, or instead of pointing out that only a virus, proven through isolation and purification, can be a solid gold standard, Watson claims in all seriousness that, "pragmatically" COVID-19 diagnosis itself, remarkably including PCR testing itself, "may be the best available 'gold standard'." But this is not scientifically sound.

Apart from the fact that it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test, there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, as even people such as Thomas Löscher, former head of the Department of Infection and Tropical Medicine at the University of Munich and member of the Federal Association of German Internists, conceded to us[2].

And if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, COVID-19 diagnosis -- contrary to Watson's statement -- cannot be suitable for serving as a valid gold standard.

In addition, "experts" such as Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation, i.e. an unequivocal virus proof, can be the gold standard.

That is why I asked Watson how COVID-19 diagnosis "may be the best available gold standard," if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, and also whether the virus itself, that is virus isolation, wouldn't be the best available/possible gold standard. But she hasn't answered these questions yet – despite multiple requests. And she has not yet responded to our rapid response post on her article in which we address exactly the same points, either, though she wrote us on June 2nd : "I will try to post a reply later this week when I have a chance."

No proof for the RNA being of viral origin

Now the question is: What is required first for virus isolation/proof? We need to know where the RNA for which the PCR tests are calibrated comes from.

As textbooks (e.g., White/Fenner. Medical Virology, 1986, p. 9) as well as leading virus researchers such as Luc Montagnier or Dominic Dwyer state , particle purification -- i.e. the separation of an object from everything else that is not that object, as for instance Nobel laureate Marie Curie purified 100 mg of radium chloride in 1898 by extracting it from tons of pitchblende -- is an essential pre-requisite for proving the existence of a virus, and thus to prove that the RNA from the particle in question comes from a new virus.

The reason for this is that PCR is extremely sensitive, which means it can detect even the smallest pieces of DNA or RNA -- but it cannot determine where these particles came from . That has to be determined beforehand.

And because the PCR tests are calibrated for gene sequences (in this case RNA sequences because SARS-CoV-2 is believed to be a RNA virus), we have to know that these gene snippets are part of the looked-for virus. And to know that, correct isolation and purification of the presumed virus has to be executed.

Hence, we have asked the science teams of the relevant papers which are referred to in the context of SARS-CoV-2 for proof whether the electron-microscopic shots depicted in their in vitro experiments show purified viruses.

But not a single team could answer that question with "yes" -- and NB., nobody said purification was not a necessary step. We only got answers like "No, we did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification" (see below).

We asked several study authors "Do your electron micrographs show the purified virus?", they gave the following responses:

Study 1: Leo L. M. Poon; Malik Peiris. "Emergence of a novel human coronavirus threatening human health" Nature Medicine , March 2020
Replying Author: Malik Peiris
Date: May 12, 2020
Answer: "The image is the virus budding from an infected cell. It is not purified virus."

Study 2: Myung-Guk Han et al. "Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19", Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives , February 2020
Replying Author: Myung-Guk Han
Date: May 6, 2020
Answer: "We could not estimate the degree of purification because we do not purify and concentrate the virus cultured in cells."

Study 3: Wan Beom Park et al. "Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 in Korea", Journal of Korean Medical Science , February 24, 2020
Replying Author: Wan Beom Park
Date: March 19, 2020
Answer: "We did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification."

Study 4: Na Zhu et al., "A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China", 2019, New England Journal of Medicine , February 20, 2020
Replying Author: Wenjie Tan
Date: March 18, 2020
Answer: "[We show] an image of sedimented virus particles, not purified ones."

Regarding the mentioned papers it is clear that what is shown in the electron micrographs (EMs) is the end result of the experiment, meaning there is no other result that they could have made EMs from.

That is to say, if the authors of these studies concede that their published EMs do not show purified particles, then they definitely do not possess purified particles claimed to be viral. (In this context, it has to be remarked that some researchers use the term "isolation" in their papers, but the procedures described therein do not represent a proper isolation (purification) process. Consequently, in this context the term "isolation" is misused).

Thus, the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus concede they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.

We have also contacted Dr Charles Calisher, who is a seasoned virologist. In 2001, Science published an "impassioned plea to the younger generation" from several veteran virologists, among them Calisher, saying that:

[modern virus detection methods like] sleek polymerase chain reaction [ ] tell little or nothing about how a virus multiplies, which animals carry it, [or] how it makes people sick. [It is] like trying to say whether somebody has bad breath by looking at his fingerprint."[3]

And that's why we asked Dr Calisher whether he knows one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified. His answer:

I know of no such a publication. I have kept an eye out for one."[4]

This actually means that one cannot conclude that the RNA gene sequences, which the scientists took from the tissue samples prepared in the mentioned in vitro trials and for which the PCR tests are finally being "calibrated," belong to a specific virus -- in this case SARS-CoV-2.

In addition, there is no scientific proof that those RNA sequences are the causative agent of what is called COVID-19.

In order to establish a causal connection, one way or the other, i.e. beyond virus isolation and purification, it would have been absolutely necessary to carry out an experiment that satisfies the four Koch's postulates. But there is no such experiment, as Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei recently revealed for OffGuardian .

The Tests: The Achilles Heel of the COVID-19 House of Cards

The necessity to fulfill these postulates regarding SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrated not least by the fact that attempts have been made to fulfill them. But even researchers claiming they have done it, in reality, did not succeed.

One example is a study published in Nature on May 7 . This trial, besides other procedures which render the study invalid, did not meet any of the postulates.

For instance, the alleged "infected" laboratory mice did not show any relevant clinical symptoms clearly attributable to pneumonia, which according to the third postulate should actually occur if a dangerous and potentially deadly virus was really at work there. And the slight bristles and weight loss, which were observed temporarily in the animals are negligible, not only because they could have been caused by the procedure itself, but also because the weight went back to normal again.

Also, no animal died except those they killed to perform the autopsies . And let's not forget: These experiments should have been done before developing a test, which is not the case.

Revealingly, none of the leading German representatives of the official theory about SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 -- the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI), Alexander S. Kekulé (University of Halle), Hartmut Hengel and Ralf Bartenschlager (German Society for Virology), the aforementioned Thomas Löscher, Ulrich Dirnagl (Charité Berlin) or Georg Bornkamm (virologist and professor emeritus at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Munich) -- could answer the following question I have sent them:

If the particles that are claimed to be to be SARS-CoV-2 have not been purified, how do you want to be sure that the RNA gene sequences of these particles belong to a specific new virus?

Particularly, if there are studies showing that substances such as antibiotics that are added to the test tubes in the in vitro experiments carried out for virus detection can "stress" the cell culture in a way that new gene sequences are being formed that were not previously detectable -- an aspect that Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock already drew attention to in her Nobel Lecture back in 1983 .

It should not go unmentioned that we finally got the Charité – the employer of Christian Drosten, Germany's most influential virologist in respect of COVID-19, advisor to the German government and co-developer of the PCR test which was the first to be "accepted" ( not validated! ) by the WHO worldwide – to answer questions on the topic.

But we didn't get answers until June 18, 2020, after months of non-response. In the end, we achieved it only with the help of Berlin lawyer Viviane Fischer.

Regarding our question "Has the Charité convinced itself that appropriate particle purification was carried out?," the Charité concedes that they didn't use purified particles.

And although they claim "virologists at the Charité are sure that they are testing for the virus," in their paper ( Corman et al. ) they state:

RNA was extracted from clinical samples with the MagNA Pure 96 system (Roche, Penzberg, Germany) and from cell culture supernatants with the viral RNA mini kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany),"

Which means they just assumed the RNA was viral .

Incidentally, the Corman et al. paper, published on January 23, 2020 didn't even go through a proper peer review process , nor were the procedures outlined therein accompanied by controls -- although it is only through these two things that scientific work becomes really solid.

Irrational rest results

It is also certain that we cannot know the false positive rate of the PCR tests without widespread testing of people who certainly do not have the virus, proven by a method which is independent of the test (having a solid gold standard).

Therefore, it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results.

For example, already in February the health authority in China's Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19, started to test "negative," and then tested "positive" again .

A month later, a paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology showed that 29 out of 610 patients at a hospital in Wuhan had 3 to 6 test results that flipped between "negative", "positive" and "dubious" .

A third example is a study from Singapore in which tests were carried out almost daily on 18 patients and the majority went from "positive" to "negative" back to "positive" at least once, and up to five times in one patient .

Even Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, conceded in February that the PCR tests are "only 30 to 50 per cent accurate" ; while Sin Hang Lee from the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory sent a l etter to the WHO's coronavirus response team and to Anthony S. Fauci on March 22, 2020, saying that:

It has been widely reported in the social media that the RT-qPCR [Reverse Transcriptase quantitative PCR] test kits used to detect SARSCoV-2 RNA in human specimens are generating many false positive results and are not sensitive enough to detect some real positive cases."

In other words, even if we theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really detect a viral infection, the tests would be practically worthless, and would only cause an unfounded scare among the "positive" people tested.

This becomes also evident considering the positive predictive value (PPV).

The PPV indicates the probability that a person with a positive test result is truly "positive" (ie. has the supposed virus), and it depends on two factors: the prevalence of the virus in the general population and the specificity of the test, that is the percentage of people without disease in whom the test is correctly "negative" (a test with a specificity of 95% incorrectly gives a positive result in 5 out of 100 non-infected people).

With the same specificity, the higher the prevalence, the higher the PPV.

In this context, on June 12 2020, the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt published an article in which the PPV has been calculated with three different prevalence scenarios .

The results must, of course, be viewed very critically, first because it is not possible to calculate the specificity without a solid gold standard, as outlined, and second because the calculations in the article are based on the specificity determined in the study by Jessica Watson, which is potentially worthless, as also mentioned.

But if you abstract from it, assuming that the underlying specificity of 95% is correct and that we know the prevalence, even the mainstream medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt reports that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests may have "a shockingly low" PPV.

In one of the three scenarios, figuring with an assumed prevalence of 3%, the PPV was only 30 percent, which means that 70 percent of the people tested "positive" are not "positive" at all . Yet "they are prescribed quarantine," as even the Ärzteblatt notes critically.

In a second scenario of the journal's article, a prevalence of rate of 20 percent is assumed. In this case they generate a PPV of 78 percent, meaning that 22 percent of the "positive" tests are false "positives."

That would mean: If we take the around 9 million people who are currently considered "positive" worldwide -- supposing that the true "positives" really have a viral infection -- we would get almost 2 million false "positives."

All this fits with the fact that the CDC and the FDA, for instance, concede in their files that the so-called "SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests" are not suitable for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.

In the "CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel" file from March 30, 2020, for example, it says:

Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms"

And:

This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens."

And the FDA admits that :

positive results [ ] do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease."

Remarkably, in the instruction manuals of PCR tests we can also read that they are not intended as a diagnostic test, as for instance in those by Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics[ 5 ].

To quote another one, in the product announcement of the LightMix Modular Assays produced by TIB Molbiol -- which were developed using the Corman et al. protocol -- and distributed by Roche we can read:

These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection"

And:

For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures."

Where is the evidence that the tests can measure the "viral load"?

There is also reason to conclude that the PCR test from Roche and others cannot even detect the targeted genes .

Moreover, in the product descriptions of the RT-qPCR tests for SARS-COV-2 it says they are "qualitative" tests , contrary to the fact that the "q" in "qPCR" stands for "quantitative." And if these tests are not "quantitative" tests, they don't show how many viral particles are in the body .

That is crucial because, in order to even begin talking about actual illness in the real world not only in a laboratory, the patient would need to have millions and millions of viral particles actively replicating in their body.

That is to say, the CDC, the WHO, the FDA or the RKI may assert that the tests can measure the so-called "viral load," i.e. how many viral particles are in the body. "But this has never been proven. That is an enormous scandal," as the journalist Jon Rappoport points out .

This is not only because the term "viral load" is deception. If you put the question "what is viral load?" at a dinner party, people take it to mean viruses circulating in the bloodstream. They're surprised to learn it's actually RNA molecules.

Also, to prove beyond any doubt that the PCR can measure how much a person is "burdened" with a disease-causing virus, the following experiment would have had to be carried out (which has not yet happened):

You take, let's say, a few hundred or even thousand people and remove tissue samples from them. Make sure the people who take the samples do not perform the test.The testers will never know who the patients are and what condition they're in. The testers run their PCR on the tissue samples. In each case, they say which virus they found and how much of it they found. Then, for example, in patients 29, 86, 199, 272, and 293 they found a great deal of what they claim is a virus. Now we un-blind those patients. They should all be sick, because they have so much virus replicating in their bodies. But are they really sick -- or are they fit as a fiddle?

With the help of the aforementioned lawyer Viviane Fischer, I finally got the Charité to also answer the question of whether the test developed by Corman et al. -- the so-called "Drosten PCR test" -- is a quantitative test.

But the Charité was not willing to answer this question "yes". Instead, the Charité wrote:

If real-time RT-PCR is involved, to the knowledge of the Charité in most cases these are [ ] limited to qualitative detection."

Furthermore, the "Drosten PCR test" uses the unspecific E-gene assay as preliminary assay , while the Institut Pasteur uses the same assay as confirmatory assay .

According to Corman et al., the E-gene assay is likely to detect all Asian viruses , while the other assays in both tests are supposed to be more specific for sequences labelled "SARS-CoV-2".

Besides the questionable purpose of having either a preliminary or a confirmatory test that is likely to detect all Asian viruses, at the beginning of April the WHO changed the algorithm, recommending that from then on a test can be regarded as "positive" even if just the E-gene assay (which is likely to detect all Asian viruses! ) gives a "positive" result .

This means that a confirmed unspecific test result is officially sold as specific .

That change of algorithm increased the "case" numbers. Tests using the E-gene assay are produced for example by Roche , TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm .

High CQ values make the test results even more meaningless

Another essential problem is that many PCR tests have a "cycle quantification" (Cq) value of over 35, and some, including the "Drosten PCR test", even have a Cq of 45.

The Cq value specifies how many cycles of DNA replication are required to detect a real signal from biological samples.

"Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported," as it says in the MIQE guidelines .

MIQE stands for "Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments", a set of guidelines that describe the minimum information necessary for evaluating publications on Real-Time PCR, also called quantitative PCR, or qPCR.

The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, agreed, when he stated :

If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR."

The MIQE guidelines have been developed under the aegis of Stephen A. Bustin , Professor of Molecular Medicine, a world-renowned expert on quantitative PCR and author of the book A-Z of Quantitative PCR which has been called "the bible of qPCR."

In a recent podcast interview Bustin points out that "the use of such arbitrary Cq cut-offs is not ideal, because they may be either too low (eliminating valid results) or too high (increasing false "positive" results)."

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/znrvk-d932a7?from=usersite&vjs=1&skin=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=0&download=1

And, according to him, a Cq of 20 to 30 should be aimed at, and there is concern regarding the reliability of the results for any Cq over 35.

If the Cq value gets too high, it becomes difficult to distinguish real signal from background, for example due to reactions of primers and fluorescent probes, and hence there is a higher probability of false positives.

Moreover, among other factors that can alter the result, before starting with the actual PCR, in case you are looking for presumed RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the RNA must be converted to complementary DNA (cDNA) with the enzyme Reverse Transcriptase -- hence the "RT" at the beginning of "PCR" or "qPCR."

But this transformation process is "widely recognized as inefficient and variable," as Jessica Schwaber from the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto and two research colleagues pointed out in a 2019 paper .

Stephen A. Bustin acknowledges problems with PCR in a comparable way.

For example, he pointed to the problem that in the course of the conversion process (RNA to cDNA) the amount of DNA obtained with the same RNA base material can vary widely, even by a factor of 10 (see above interview).

Considering that the DNA sequences get doubled at every cycle, even a slight variation becomes magnified and can thus alter the result, annihilating the test's reliable informative value.

So how can it be that those who claim the PCR tests are highly meaningful for so-called COVID-19 diagnosis blind out the fundamental inadequacies of these tests -- even if they are confronted with questions regarding their validity?

Certainly, the apologists of the novel coronavirus hypothesis should have dealt with these questions before throwing the tests on the market and putting basically the whole world under lockdown, not least because these are questions that come to mind immediately for anyone with even a spark of scientific understanding.

Thus, the thought inevitably emerges that financial and political interests play a decisive role for this ignorance about scientific obligations. NB, the WHO, for example has financial ties with drug companies, as the British Medical Journal showed in 2010 .

And experts criticize "that the notorious corruption and conflicts of interest at WHO have continued, even grown" since then. The CDC as well, to take another big player, is obviously no better off .

Finally, the reasons and possible motives remain speculative, and many involved surely act in good faith; but the science is clear: The numbers generated by these RT-PCR tests do not in the least justify frightening people who have been tested "positive" and imposing lockdown measures that plunge countless people into poverty and despair or even drive them to suicide.

And a "positive" result may have serious consequences for the patients as well, because then all non-viral factors are excluded from the diagnosis and the patients are treated with highly toxic drugs and invasive intubations. Especially for elderly people and patients with pre-existing conditions such a treatment can be fatal, as we have outlined in the article "Fatal Therapie."

Without doubt eventual excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown measures, while the "COVID-19" death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of diseases, redefined as COVID-19 only because of a "positive" test result whose value could not be more doubtful.

Addendum: We thank Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and Val Turner in particular who made valuable contributions to the realization of this article.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Torsten Engelbrecht is an award-winning journalist and author from Hamburg, Germany. In 2006 he co-authored Virus-Mania with Dr Klaus Kohnlein, and in 2009 he won the German Alternate Media Award . He has also written for Rubikon, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Financial Times Deutschland and many others.

Konstantin Demeter is a freelance photographer and an independent researcher. Together with the journalist Torsten Engelbrecht he has published articles on the "COVID-19" crisis in the online magazine Rubikon, as well as contributions on the monetary system, geopolitics, and the media in Swiss Italian newspapers.

[Oct 15, 2020] Three scientists give their best advice on how to protect yourself from COVID-19

Notable quotes:
"... COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact (within about 6 feet) for a prolonged period. ..."
"... "Current data do not support long range aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, such as seen with measles or tuberculosis. Short-range inhalation of aerosols is a possibility for COVID-19, as with many respiratory pathogens. However, this cannot easily be distinguished from 'droplet' transmission based on epidemiologic patterns. Short-range transmission is a possibility particularly in crowded medical wards and inadequately ventilated spaces ." ..."
"... Kimberly A. Prather, PhD, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. ..."
"... Linsey C Marr, PhD, Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech. ..."
"... Donald K Milton, MD, DrPH, Professor of Environment Health at The University of Maryland School of Public Health. ..."
Oct 15, 2020 | www.cbsnews.com

Right now, the CDC website does not acknowledge that aerosols typically spread SARS-CoV-2 beyond 6 feet, instead saying :

" COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact (within about 6 feet) for a prolonged period. Spread happens when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks, and droplets from their mouth or nose are launched into the air and land in the mouths or noses of people nearby. The droplets can also be inhaled into the lungs."

The site says that respiratory droplets can land on various surfaces, and people can become infected from touching those surfaces and then touching their eyes, nose or mouth. It goes on to say,

"Current data do not support long range aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, such as seen with measles or tuberculosis. Short-range inhalation of aerosols is a possibility for COVID-19, as with many respiratory pathogens. However, this cannot easily be distinguished from 'droplet' transmission based on epidemiologic patterns. Short-range transmission is a possibility particularly in crowded medical wards and inadequately ventilated spaces ."

Confusion has surrounded the use of words like "aerosols" and "droplets" because they have not been consistently defined. And the word "airborne" takes on special meaning for infectious disease experts and public health officials because of the question of whether infection can be readily spread by "airborne transmission." If SARS-CoV-2 is readily spread by airborne transmission, then more stringent infection control measures would need to be adopted, as is done with airborne diseases such as measles and tuberculosis. But the CDC has told CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jonathan LaPook that even if airborne spread is playing a role with SARS-CoV-2, the role does not appear to be nearly as important as with airborne infections like measles and tuberculosis.

All this may sound like wonky scientific discussion that is deep in the weeds -- and it is -- but it has big implications as people try to figure out how to stay safe during the pandemic. Some pieces of advice are intuitively obvious: wear a mask, wash your hands, avoid crowds, keep your distance from others, outdoors is safer than indoors. But what about that "6 foot" rule for maintaining social distance? If the virus can travel indoors for distances greater than 6 feet, isn't it logical to wear a mask indoors whenever you are with people who are not part of your "pod" or "bubble?"

Understanding the basic science behind how SARS-CoV-2 travels through the air should help give us strategies for staying safe. Unfortunately, there are still many open questions. For example, even if aerosols produced by an infected person can float across a room, and even if the aerosols contain some viable virus, how do we know how significant a role that possible mode of transmission is playing in the pandemic?


Aerosols can be thought of as cigarette smoke. While they are most concentrated close to someone who has the infection, they can travel farther than 6 feet, linger, build up in the air and remain infectious for hours. As a consequence, to lessen the chance of inhaling this virus, it is vital to take all of the following steps:

Indoors:

Outdoors:

Whether you are indoors or outdoors, remember that your risk increases with the duration of your exposure to others.

With the question of transmission, it's not just the public that has been confused. There's also been confusion among scientists, medical professionals and public health officials, in part because they have often used the words "droplets" and "aerosols" differently. To address the confusion, participants in an August workshop on airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggested these definitions for respiratory droplets and aerosols::

All respiratory activities, including breathing, talking and singing, produce far more aerosols than droplets. A person is far more likely to inhale aerosols than to be sprayed by a droplet, even at short range. The exact percentage of transmission by droplets versus aerosols is still to be determined. But we know from epidemiologic and other data, especially superspreading events , that infection does occur through inhalation of aerosols.

In short, how are we getting infected by SARS-CoV-2? The answer is: In the air. Once we acknowledge this, we can use tools we already have to help end this pandemic.


Kimberly A. Prather, PhD, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

Linsey C Marr, PhD, Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech.

Donald K Milton, MD, DrPH, Professor of Environment Health at The University of Maryland School of Public Health.

[Oct 06, 2020] 'False' positive Covid-19 tests saw non-contagious people counted as fresh infections triggered 2nd wave alarm Belgian media -- RT World News

Oct 06, 2020 | www.rt.com

'False' positive Covid-19 tests saw non-contagious people counted as fresh infections & triggered 2nd wave alarm – Belgian media 5 Oct, 2020 15:36 / Updated 2 hours ago Get short URL 'False' positive Covid-19 tests saw non-contagious people counted as fresh infections & triggered 2nd wave alarm – Belgian media FILE PHOTO © Global Look Press / Frank Hoermann / SVEN SIMON 66 Follow RT on RT Over a half of coronavirus infections revealed this summer by one of Belgium's biggest labs were old and no longer contagious, but were still reported as new cases, local media discovered.

Belgian daily newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws examined the tests carried out by AZ Delta, one of the largest labs in the country, and made a stunning discovery. Almost half of all positive cases reported throughout June, July and August were actually people with an old infection.

The problem, it turns out, lies in the PCR Covid-19 tests. The paper reports that scientific data reveals virus particles can be detected up to 83 days after the actual infection. This led to instances where people were no longer contagious, but were still registered as positive cases. According to HLN, all of these people had to be quarantined.

Belgian experts sounded the alarm in mid-July, when coronavirus numbers spiked after a relief in June, and even insisted that the second wave had already begun for the country.

"We may have had to deal with old infections largely in the summer months," the lab's clinical biologist Frederik Van Hoecke told the paper.

ALSO ON RT.COM Paris to shutter bars for 2 weeks as French capital placed on Covid-19 high alert

The revelation comes as countries look to reintroduce restrictions to curb the spread of the virus.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

[Oct 03, 2020] Following PCR-confirmation of the President's diagnosis, as a precautionary measure he received a single 8 gram dose of Regeneron's polyclonal antibody cocktail

Oct 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Oct 2 2020 23:09 utc | 145

It's confirmed: Trump won't be treated with hydroxycloroquine:

Physician to the President: Health Update on President Donald J. Trump, Oct. 2, 2020

"Following PCR-confirmation of the President's diagnosis, as a precautionary measure he received a single 8 gram dose of Regeneron's polyclonal antibody cocktail . He completed the infusion without incident. In addition to the polyclonal antibodies, the President has been taking zinc, vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and a daily aspirin."

When the cookie crumbled, no hydroxycloroquine was taken - even in a case of of initial phase of the disease. It is below even a single aspirin in the COVID-19's treatment food chain (which is being ministered, among other supplements, just to keep Trump's body strong while the main drug takes effect, as is normal to old patients).

On the bright side, at least we know the name of the real deal: Regeneron.

[Sep 28, 2020] No wonder Pompey and his friend Jeffries won't give up on Syria! No wonder

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it. ..."
Sep 28, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"Western government-funded intelligence cutouts trained Syrian opposition leaders, planted stories in media outlets from BBC to Al Jazeera, and ran a cadre of journalists. A trove of leaked documents exposes the propaganda network."

"Leaked documents show how UK government contractors developed an advanced infrastructure of propaganda to stimulate support in the West for Syria's political and armed opposition.

Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.

The leaked files reveal how Western intelligence cutouts played the media like a fiddle, carefully crafting English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage.

US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian opposition leaders at all levels, from young media activists to the heads of the parallel government-in-exile . These firms also organized interviews for Syrian opposition leaders on mainstream outlets such as BBC and the UK's Channel 4.

More than half of the stringers used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained in a joint US-UK government program called Basma, which produced hundreds of Syrian opposition media activists.

Western government PR firms not only influenced the way the media covered Syria, but as the leaked documents reveal, they produced their own propagandistic pseudo-news for broadcast on major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient TV .

These UK-funded firms functioned as full-time PR flacks for the extremist-dominated Syrian armed opposition. One contractor, called InCoStrat, said it was in constant contact with a network of more than 1,600 international journalists and "influencers," and used them to push pro-opposition talking points.

Another Western government contractor, ARK, crafted a strategy to "re-brand" Syria's Salafi-jihadist armed opposition by "softening its image ." ARK boasted that it provided opposition propaganda that "aired almost every day on" major Arabic-language TV networks."

"The Western contractor ARK was a central force in launching the White Helmets operation.

The leaked documents show ARK ran the Twitter and Facebook pages of Syria Civil Defense, known more commonly as the White Helmets.

ARK took credit for developing "an internationally-focused communications campaign designed to raise global awareness of the (White Helmets) teams and their life saving work."

ARK also facilitated communications between the White Helmets and The Syria Campaign , a PR firm run out of London and New York that helped popularize the White Helmets in the United States.

It was apparently "following subsequent discussions with ARK and the teams" that The Syria Campaign "selected civil defence to front its campaign to keep Syria in the news," the firm wrote in a report for the UK Foreign Office." thegreyzone

--------------

Using really basic intelligence analytic tools; Occam's Razor, Walks like a duck, Smileyesque back azimuth's, etc. it has been clear that the UK government has been deeply involved in sponsoring and influencing the Syrian/ jihadi opposition in that miserable country. The wide spread British Old Boys network of aspirants to the tradition of imperial manipulation has been visible just below the surface if you had eyes to look and a brain to think.

A lot of the money for this folly came right out of USAID.

pl

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/23/syria-leaks-uk-contractors-opposition-media/


ISL , 27 September 2020 at 04:03 PM

Dear Colonel agreed.

I object to the line in the article that they "played the media like a fiddle" - as it implies the mainstream media is a victim as opposed to willing accomplice.

The American public very strongly told Obama they didn't want another invasion and war in the middle east (red lines or not) so rather ineffective propaganda.

Moreover, I suspect that given the US public inattention to overseas events that do not involve much US blood (in places they can not find on a map). Today's mess would be where more or less the same if the entire IO had never happened - though maybe with less cynicism of US/UK gov'ts and media.

OTH, it is curious how well the British Old Boys network (and US) aligns with Israeli interests (and runs counter to US or British interests). Maybe grayzone will investigate that (impressive) IO campaign. I think a small country in the middle east played US and UK elites like a fiddle.

The Twisted Genius , 27 September 2020 at 04:48 PM

I've only given this article a cursory reading so far and it is clear that the Brits are going balls to the wall on the PSYOPS/perception management front. This campaign flows naturally from the strong material support for the Syrian "moderate rebels" provided by the US, the Brits and probably others for years. We may still be blowing up IS jihadis, but we're also supporting our own brand of jihadis around Al-Tanf, giving free hand to Erdogan's jihadis along the Turkish-Syrian border and doing our best to stymie R+6 efforts to crush the remaining jihadis and unite Syria.

The article focuses on the contractors role in PSYOP. I'm not sure if it mentions the British government's role in this. The GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) probably manages most of those contractors. The British Army also has the 77th Brigade. This brigade's slogan is: "behavioural change is our unique selling point". Gordon MacMillan, a reserve officer with the 77th Brigade, is now Twitter's head of editorial operations for the Middle East.
The 77th was formed in 2015 and subsumed the 15th Psychological Operations Group which was headed by Steve Tathan, who went on to head the defence division of SCL, the now defunct parent of Cambridge Analytica. I'm sure the 77th is capable of managing some of those contractors, as well. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of contractors were also reservists in the 77th.

I bet we're not letting the Brits have all the fun. The CIA Special Activities Center (formerly SAD) includes the Political Action Group for PSYOP, economic warfare and cyberwarfare. That dovetails nicely with what CENTCOM is doing in Syria. I knew some of those guys a while back. I remember scaring them with some of my own anarchist hacker rantings when I was penetrating those hackers.

Our Army has fours PSYOP groups brigade-sized), two active and 2 reserve. I would think they have advanced their methodology since I took the course at Bragg. For a few years, they were called military information support operations (MISO) groups rather than PSYOP groups. They have since reverted to their PSYOP name although their activities are referred to as MISO. I don't know what the difference is.

Babak makkinejad , 27 September 2020 at 05:10 PM

ISL

No, no, no.

There is no such small country as you describe in the Near East.

There is an self-disciplined proxy force masquerading as a state which is mostly funded by the United States to further the religious policies of the WASP Culture Continent.

It is no accident that in this context, the names of US and UK occur often in the same sentences; one declared a crusade to wrestle control of Plastine from Muslims, and the otber one carried out that crusade and escalated it.

That is also the reason that US cannot end the war over Palestine or leave Islamdom

(Oil, Geostrategic considerations, arms sales, Realpolitik are just pseudo-rationications to obscure the real war.)

Diana Croissant , 28 September 2020 at 07:45 AM

Where is Candide (aka Voltaire) when we need him?

BABAK MAKKINEJAD , 28 September 2020 at 09:14 AM

Ishmael Zechariah

How WASP-dom has arrived in this crusade is not, in my opinion, as significant as that it has been waging it for more than a hundred years.

fakebot , 28 September 2020 at 10:43 AM

"WASP Culture" is into golfing, not crusading. Erik Prince and the religious fundamentalists, maybe, but they don't drive US policy.

Russia and/or Chinese dominion over Eurasia cannot be permitted. Their means to achieve that would be less ethical, not that the US or UK have been prince among men and salts of the earth, as noted in the article.

The US has tried in vain to win over hearts and minds. It has been a mostly noble effort to bring countries like Iraq and Afghanistan into the 21st century, but it was always more of a losing game. The problem lies too much in Islam and tribal rivalries.

[Sep 28, 2020] Truth be told: political operatives own and run our MSM. This is why the press is called the 'Fourth Estate'

Highly recommended!
Aug 21, 2020 | www.unz.com
Ragno says: August 21, 2020 at 4:16 pm GMT 800 Words ⇑ @mark green

Truth be told: political operatives own and run our MSM. This is why the press is called the 'Fourth Estate'.

They are more correctly described as a Fifth Column , one far more open and sworn to destroy our country and its foundational citizens – and taxpayers – as any that ever operated during World War II. You would think this would be of vital interest to people who loudly declare themselves to be "Nazi-punchers", but who time and again show themselves to be merely low-level street terrorists informed and inspired by Mao's Red Guard and the irredeemable thugs of the African National Congress.

One wonders what's preventing them from mimicking the Red Terror waged by the leftists of Spain, when the battle for "freedom" involved the disinterment of the graves of Catholic clergy to better pose the corpses in blasphemous positions. Imagine how depraved those Mostly Peaceful protesters had to have been for even a leftist-supporting site such as Wikipedia to baldly state

The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 Roman Catholic priests, the vast majority in the summer of 1936 in the wake of the military coup), attacks on the Spanish nobility, industrialists, and conservative politicians, as well as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches.

Directly in the crosshairs this time are small and medium-sized owner-operated businesses – the true backbone of American freedom and prosperity – who have largely been sacrificed in exchange for the knock-kneed offerings of Danegeld from our giant conglomerates, all of whom have prospered immensely from the suffering and privation brought on by the Democratic lockdown of society – and the total shutdown of our economy.

Think! – have you read a single article charting how the government war on small business directly enriched Amazon.com and world's richest autocrat, Jeff Bezos? . who then funnels his windfall into a newspaper that blatantly pimps for the Democratic Party, which translates into a vast payday for the DNC, not least from its newly-approved partnership with the shadowy and many-tentacled Soros-surrogate group, BLM?

The result is what you'd expect when a fringe group operates with the full cooperation and partnership of major industry and both political parties (don't confuse Trump with a standard-issue Republican, please – he may have terrible flaws, but that isn't one of them) – 10% of the population holding the other 90% in a chokehold with only one set of rules: no arrest and prosecution for Bolshevik violence and terror ..but the zero-tolerance heavy hand of corrupt Leviathan coming down hard against any and all citizens who fight back or, eventually – inevitably – who even struggle against their restraints.

Short of the sudden arrival of celestial horsemen to punish the guilty and reward the set-upon, it has become clear that the only answer is the one that the Powers That Be claim to be dead set against: racial separatism. (Particularly when we consider that all that will be necessary to turn America into Hell on earth will be the adoption of Ibram Kendi's First Law, sometimes known as equality of outcome :

To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.

Could any "amendment" be more terrifyingly totalitarian than this?)

White and black separation would, instead, accomplish two goals, both more important than Kendi's quick fix: we would learn soon enough about actual equality of outcomes (which is why no Communist, black or white, wants anything to do with the creation of one more failed basket-case black state), and much more importantly, white families can sleep secure in their beds at night, without worrying about Apache raids at midnight, egged on and recorded for "posterity" by that Fourth Estate/Fifth Column referred to up top. Because the fact of the matter is that, even should some combination of government and law-enforcement halt the burning and looting of America – as things stand now, none of the worst malefactors will ever see the inside of a prison cell .which means any ceasefire will only be temporary, to be violently ripped asunder the moment they sense white Americans have at last lowered their guard once more. And living in perpetual paranoid readiness for violent uprisings and mindless destruction is no way to live at all.

Trump has it half right, a border wall is the answer: only it needs to run lengthwise , between the Southern and Northern borders. If we don't use the next four years to plan out such a separation, fretting over our children's children will be a fruitless exercise – those who aren't murdered will be captured and 'go native' .and in case you haven't looked at a globe lately, there's no place left to run.

Majority of One , says: August 21, 2020 at 4:33 pm GMT

@Miro23

As a recovering journalist, I can point out that even on a rinkydink rag in a small city, where I got fired for being a real journalist back in the early '70's; he who owns the presses and distribution networks calls the tune. It's a matter of working-class (no matter how middle-class your income or social-status) versus the ownership class. The latter wins every time.

[Sep 24, 2020] What to know before getting a COVID-19 antibody test by Keith Zubrow

Jun 28, 2020 | www.cbsnews.com

In March, as the United States faced a shortage of COVID-19 diagnostic tests to determine who was currently infected with the virus, the Food and Drug Administration began allowing antibody tests into the country without FDA review or formal clearance.

A COVID-19 molecular diagnostic test, sometimes referred to as a virology test, is often conducted through a nasal or throat swab. It is designed to detect if you presently have the COVID-19 virus.

A COVID-19 antibody test, or serology test, usually involves a blood sample and determines the presence of antibodies, which may signal that you previously had the viral infection.

"The two different types of tests give us complementary information about the pandemic," said Dr. Alex Marson, an infectious disease specialist and the director of the Gladstone UCSF Institute for Genomic Immunology. "The one tells us about who's actively infected. The other tells us who has been infected."

Dr. Marson and Dr. Patrick Hsu, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley both told 60 Minutes it is presently unknown if a positive antibody test means protection from future infection.

"We do not know if a positive antibody test means that you have protective immunity," said Dr. Hsu. "It will certainly mean that in some cases, but how much, and for how long, and how many times? We do not yet know. People should not assume that, if you have a positive antibody test that you're immune, [that] you don't need to wear a mask, and [that] you don't need to socially distance."

A small sample size study from China published on June 18 in Nature Medicine found antibodies could fade in as soon as two to three months after the time of infection.

Both Dr. Marson and Dr. Hsu were interviewed by 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi as part of a three-month investigation into the accuracy of antibody tests available in the U.S. The physicians assembled a team of scientists to study the accuracy of COVID-19 antibody tests in early March.

The accuracy of antibody tests are measured by their sensitivity and specificity. The sensitivity refers to a test's ability to determine if someone has COVID-19 antibodies present in his or her body. The specificity refers to a test's ability to distinguish who does not have COVID-19 antibodies.

In the early months of the pandemic, hundreds of companies from around the world were selling antibody tests in the U.S. with varying levels of accuracy.

In May, the FDA amended its policy and began requiring developers of antibody tests to apply for emergency authorization and submit data to prove their tests work. The FBI warns the policy change has not stopped scammers from trying to infiltrate the U.S. market with fraudulent or inferior quality tests.

The FDA also teamed with the other government agencies including the National Institutes of Health to track the accuracy of some antibody tests and on June 18 published performance results for 21 of them.

The FDA's list includes both rapid serology tests that are often processed on-location and tests that require blood samples be sent to a laboratory.

ARRAY / AP

"I will say that the best tests, especially tests where blood samples are being sent off to labs, seem to have responsible test performance characteristics," Dr. Marson told Alfonsi. "Does that mean that they're perfect? No"

The FDA says the prevalence of COVID-19 in a specific area and amongst different groups of people will factor into the likelihood of false positive or false negative results.

"I think when you ever get a positive test, it's important to undergo confirmatory testing, whether with a different antibody test, or an independent test that looks for a different viral antigen, or a different antibody isotype," Dr. Hsu told 60 Minutes. "This will be a way that we can guard against false positives. The statistical likelihood that you would test false positive twice is generally quite unlikely if you use independent tests."

Getting multiple independent tests might be more difficult than it sounds.

Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp are two of the largest laboratory testing providers in the U.S. They have collectively processed more than 3.5 million COVID-19 serology tests.

Quest told 60 Minutes it presently offers antibody tests manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, EUROIMMUN AG, and Ortho Clinical Diagnostics. LabCorp said it currently uses serology tests made by Abbott and Roche.

Both lab companies told 60 Minutes they do not allow patients to choose which antibody test is used ahead of a sample being processed.

Quest said the testing platform used to process a sample depends on a lab's volume and capacity. The company said it can run 200,000 serology tests per day and has conducted 2.1 million since April.

LabCorp said it began serology testing on a limited basis in March and now has the ability to run 300,000 samples a day. It does not disclose the daily volume of antibody testing, but told 60 Minutes it has processed approximately 1.4 million tests so far.

As of June 27, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 32 million tests have been processed in the U.S. with a positivity rate of 9%. The CDC declined to tell 60 Minutes the specific sources of its aggregated data. A spokesperson told 60 Minutes the 32 million tests include both viral and antibody test results. The CDC also says not all test results are reported to them.

A Government Accountability Office report released on June 25, 2020 says the watchdog agency found that the CDC has made mistakes in its collection of data about COVID-19 testing. It says the CDC was gathering data about testing that combined antibody tests with diagnostic tests in their overall testing numbers, a practice that has been criticized by scientists as mixing apples and oranges.

The CDC made an effort to correct this practice and advise states to separate virology and serology test results, but the overall testing numbers from prior to June may still be inaccurate. Given the problems with accuracy of some antibody tests, it is also unclear whether all antibody positives should be considered true positives.

The video above was produced by Keith Zubrow and Sarah Shafer Prediger. It was edited by Sarah Shafer Prediger.

[Sep 24, 2020] COVID-19 antibodies may last for at least 4 months, Icelandic study suggests by Akshay Syal

Sep 24, 2020 | www.nbcnews.com

Sept. 1, 2020

People may have antibodies for at least four months after they get COVID-19, a study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests.

The study pulled from a massive dataset from Iceland, looking for the presence of antibodies in more than 30,000 blood samples. The samples came from three groups of people: those with confirmed COVID-19 cases, those who had been exposed to the virus but weren't necessarily infected, and those who had no known exposure.

The researchers focused on a small subset of 487 people who had had more than one antibody test, which allowed researchers to see whether antibody levels remained stable or faded over time. In this group, the researchers found, antibody levels increased in the first two months after diagnosis and remained stable for the next two months.

Stefánsson said the study detected antibodies in a significant number of people who had been asymptomatic and were never tested for COVID-19.

Not everyone developed antibodies after infection, the authors wrote, suggesting that some people might have weaker immune responses to the virus. It's possible, however, that those people had false positive diagnostic tests and were never sick in the first place.

The researchers noted several other interesting trends. Antibody levels were higher in older patients and in those with more severe disease. Women also had lower antibody levels compared to men, and smokers had lower antibody levels than nonsmokers.

"What they're seeing here is that they're inducing a pretty strong immune response," said Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor of medical microbiology & infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

But while the data suggest that antibody levels remain stable for at least four months, questions remain.

"What we don't know is really the million-dollar question: How do these antibodies reflect immunity against this virus and inhibition of this virus," said Kindrachuk, who wasn't involved with the research. "Just because you see antibodies being produced, it doesn't tell you that those antibodies are going to act specifically against the virus."

In other words, it's unclear whether the antibodies will protect people from being reinfected.

Confirmed cases of people being reinfected with the coronavirus are exceedingly rare. Last week, it was reported that four people were reinfected, the only such instances out of more than 25 million cases worldwide.

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its quarantine guidelines, saying people with confirmed COVID-19 didn't need to be tested again for three months if they didn't develop any symptoms.

The study isn't the first to show that antibodies can stick around for some time after infection.

The data in the new study are in line with those in a July preprint article showing that antibody levels were stable for at least three months in patients who had recovered from the virus in New York City, said Elitza Theel, director of the infectious diseases serology laboratory at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

[Sep 24, 2020] If the PCR Test Is Unreliable - Why Are Health Officials Demanding the Public Be Tested-

Sep 24, 2020 | www.blacklistednews.com

SOURCE: DERRICK BROZE, THE LAST AMERICAN VAGABOND

S EVIDENCE MOUNTS THAT THE "GOLD STANDARD" TEST FOR DETECTING COVID-19 IS UNRELIABLE, WHY ARE HEALTH OFFICIALS AROUND THE WORLD CALLING FOR MORE TESTS?

In the months since the COVID-19 panic began health authorities around the world have told the public to "get tested" to help track the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, as fear and hysteria subside, the scientific community and public at large are calling into question the efficacy of the test used to determine a patients status. This article is a brief examination of the evidence that the PCR test is unreliable and should not be used as a determinant for the number of COVID-19 cases or as a factor in political decisions.

HOUSTON HEALTH AUTHORITY HAS CONCERNS ABOUT PCR TEST

On August 31, I attended a press conference in Houston to ask the Mayor and Houston Health Authority about reports regarding problems with the Texas Department of State Health Services' numbers on COVID-19 cases. TLAV has previously reported on these concerns with the COVID-19 case numbers in Texas. I also had a chance to ask Houston Health Authority Dr. David Persse about concerns around the test used to detect COVID-19.

The most common test is a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) lab test. This incredibly sensitive technique was developed by Berkeley scientist Kary Mullis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. The test is designed to detect the presence of a virus by amplifying the virus' genetic material so it can be detected by scientists. The test is viewed as the gold standard, however, it is not without problems.

The PCR test uses chemicals to amplify the virus's genetic material and then each sample goes through a number of cycles until a virus is recovered. This "cycle threshold" has become a key component in the debate around the efficacy of the PCR test.

Dr. Persse says that when the labs report numbers of COVID-19 cases to the City of Houston they only offer a binary option of "yes" for positive or "no" for negative. "But, in reality, it comes in what is called cycle-thresholds. It's an inverse relationship, so the higher the number the less virus there was in the initial sample," Persse explained. "Some labs will report out to 40 cycle-thresholds, and if they get a positive at 40 – which means there is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of virus there – that gets reported to us as positive and we don't know any different."

Persse noted that the key question is, at what value is someone considered still infectious?

"Because if you test me and I have a tiny amount of virus, does that mean I am contagious? that I am still infectious to someone else? If you are shedding a little bit of virus are you just starting? or are you on the downside?," Dr. Persse asked in the lobby of Houston City Hall. He believes the answer is for the scientific community to set a national standard for cycle-threshold.

Unfortunately, a national standard would not solve the problems expressed by Dr. Persse and others.

UK PARLIAMENT AND SCIENTISTS HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT PCR TEST

In the first weeks of September a number of important revelations regarding the PCR test have come to light. First, new research from the University of Oxford's Center for Evidence-Based Medicine and the University of the West of England found that the PCR test poses the potential for false positives when testing for COVID-19. Professor Carl Heneghan, one of the authors of the study, Viral cultures for COVID-19 infectivity assessment – a systematic review , said there was a risk that an increase in testing in the UK will lead to an increase in the risk of "sample contamination" and thus an increase in COVID-19 cases.

The team reviewed evidence from 25 studies where virus specimens had positive PCR tests. The researchers state that the "genetic photocopying" technique scientists use to magnify the sample of genetic material collected is so sensitive it could be picking up fragments of dead virus from previous infections. The researchers reach a similar conclusion as Dr. David Persse, namely that, "A binary Yes/No approach to the interpretation RT-PCR unvalidated against viral culture will result in false positives with segregation of large numbers of people who are no longer infectious and hence not a threat to public health."

Heneghan, who is also the the editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, told the BBC that the binary approach is a problem and tests should have a cut-off point so small amounts of virus do not lead to a positive result. This is because of the cycle threshold mentioned by Dr. Persse. A person who is shedding an active virus and someone who has leftover infection could both receive the same positive test result. He also stated that the test could be detecting old virus which would explain the rise in cases in the UK. Heneghan also stated that setting a standard for the cycle threshold would eliminate the quarantining and contact tracing of people who are healthy and help the public better understand the true nature of COVID-19.

The UK's leading health agency, Public Health England, released an update on the testing methods used to detect COVID-19 and appeared to agree with Professor Heneghan regarding the concerns on the cycle threshold. On September 9, PHE released an update which concluded, "all laboratories should determine the threshold for a positive result at the limit of detection."

This is not the first time Heneghan's work has directly impacted the UK's COVID-19 policies. In July, UK health secretary Matt Hancock called for an "urgent review" of the daily COVID-19 death numbers produced by Public Health England after it was revealed the stats included people who died from other causes. The Guardian reported:

"The oddity was revealed in a paper by Yoon K Loke and Carl Heneghan of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, called " Why no one can ever recover from Covid-19 in England – a statistical anomaly ".

Their analysis suggests PHE cross-checks the latest notifications of deaths against a database of positive test results – so that anyone who has ever tested positive is recorded in the COVID-19 death statistics.

A Department of Health and Social Care source said: 'You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then hit by a bus in July and you'd be recorded as a COVID death.'"

Only days after Hancock called for the review of PHE data, the UK government put an immediate halt to its daily update of death numbers from COVID-19.

On September 8, Heneghan tweeted out another study on the limitations of the PCR test. The study, "SARS-CoV-2 Testing: The Limit of Detection Matters" , examines the limit of detection (LoD) for RNA. The researchers note similar problems with the PCR test and the cycle threshold, concluding, "the ultimate lesson from these studies bears repetition: LoD matters and directly impacts efforts to identify, control, and contain outbreaks during this pandemic."

Heneghan also recently told the BMJ , "one issue in trying to interpret numbers of detected cases is that there is no set definition of a case. At the moment it seems that a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive result is the only criterion required for a case to be recognised."

"In any other disease we would have a clearly defined specification that would usually involve signs, symptoms, and a test result," Heneghan explained. "We are moving into a biotech world where the norms of clinical reasoning are going out of the window. A PCR test does not equal covid-19; it should not, but in some definitions it does."

Heneghan says he is concerned that as soon as there is the appearance of an outbreak there is panic and over-reacting. "This is a huge problem because politicians are operating in a non-evidence-based way when it comes to non-drug interventions," he stated.

THE EVIDENCE FOR FALSE POSITIVES IS OVERWHELMING

A recent report from NPR outlines the dangers of false positives with the PCR tests. Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions, was hired by the state of California to study an invasion of non-native mussels. The researchers took water samples and used a PCR test to search for genetic material from the mussels. After the tests came back overwhelmingly positive, Cohen grew suspicious.

"I began to realize that many of these -- if not all of these -- were false positives, especially when they started being reported in waters that had chemistry that would not allow the mussels to reproduce and establish themselves," he told NPR. NPR notes that, depending on the lab, there was a 2 to 8 percent false positive rate.

Once COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Cohen said he began asking if the reports of people with absolutely no symptoms and positive PCR test results could be false positives. "I began wondering whether these asymptomatic carriers weren't in large part or in whole part the human counterparts of those false-positive results of quagga and zebra mussels in all those water bodies across the West," he said.

Cohen emphasized the importance of researchers taking potential false positive PCR results seriously. "As near as we can tell, the medical establishment and public health authorities and researchers appear to be assuming that the false-positive rate in in the PCR based test is zero, or at least so low that we can ignore it."

Cohen is correct that the scientific authorities need to take false positives seriously, especially when a person can be sent to isolate or quarantine for weeks due to a positive test result. Even the U.S. FDA's own fact sheet on testing acknowledges the dangers posed by false positives:

"The CDC 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel has been designed to minimize the likelihood of false positive test results. However, in the event of a false positive result, risks to patients could include the following: a recommendation for isolation of the patient, monitoring of household or other close contacts for symptoms, patient isolation that might limit contact with family or friends and may increase contact with other potentially COVID-19 patients, limits in the ability to work, the delayed diagnosis and treatment for the true infection causing the symptoms, unnecessary prescription of a treatment or therapy, or other unintended adverse effects."

A CDC fact sheet also acknowledges the possibility of false positives with the PCR test.

Professor Heneghan believes the confusion around COVID-19 has come as a result of a shift away from "evidence-based medicine." In a recent opinion piece published at The Spectator , Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, a senior associate tutor and honorary research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford, wrote that patients have become a "prisoner of a system labelling him or her as 'positive' when we are not sure what that label means." The two scientists offer this conclusion and warning:

Governments are producing a series of contradictory and confusing policies which have a brief shelf life as the next crisis emerges. It is increasingly clear the evidence is often ignored. Keeping up to date is a full time occupation, and the advances of the last 30 years have at best been put on hold.

The duties of a good doctor include working in partnership with patients to inform them about what they want or need in a way they can understand, and respecting their rights to reach decisions with you about their treatment and care. Questions need to be asked as to how this will occur if you don't see your doctor, particularly if all you have to do is queue in at a drive in to get your answer.

And ultimately what is a 'good test'? We think it's the test which helps your doctor narrow the uncertainty around the origins and management of your problem.

RELATED ARTICLES: Tuesday, September 8, 2020 - "Dead" Virus Cells Frequently Trigger "False Positives" In Most Common COVID Test, New Study Finds

In the past, our reports raising questions about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests have been met with accusations of 'fearmongering' and spreading 'misinformation'.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020 - REPORT: Over 95% of UK "Covid19" deaths had "pre-existing condition"

Over 95% of "COVID Deaths" recorded in England and Wales had potentially serious comorbidities, according to statistics released by NHS England. RELATED ARTICLES: Tuesday, September 8, 2020 - "Dead" Virus Cells Frequently Trigger "False Positives" In Most Common COVID Test, New Study Finds

In the past, our reports raising questions about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests have been met with accusations of 'fearmongering' and spreading 'misinformation'.

[Sep 23, 2020] Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn t Be by Apoorva Mandavilli

Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. "I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," she said.
In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. "I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one," he said.
Notable quotes:
"... PCR tests still have a role, he and other experts said. For example, their sensitivity is an asset when identifying newly infected people to enroll in clinical trials of drugs. ..."
Aug 29, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

Updated Sept. 17, 2020

The usual diagnostic tests may simply be too sensitive and too slow to contain the spread of the virus.

Tests authorized by the F.D.A. provide only a yes-no answer to infection, and will identify as positive patients with low amounts of virus in their bodies. Credit... Johnny Milano for The New York Times

Some of the nation's leading public health experts are raising a new concern in the endless debate over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.

Most of these people are not likely to be contagious, and identifying them may contribute to bottlenecks that prevent those who are contagious from being found in time. But researchers say the solution is not to test less, or to skip testing people without symptoms, as recently suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

Instead, new data underscore the need for more widespread use of rapid tests , even if they are less sensitive.

"The decision not to test asymptomatic people is just really backward," said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, referring to the C.D.C. recommendation.

"In fact, we should be ramping up testing of all different people," he said, "but we have to do it through whole different mechanisms."

In what may be a step in this direction, the Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would purchase 150 million rapid tests.

The most widely used diagnostic test for the new coronavirus, called a PCR test, provides a simple yes-no answer to the question of whether a patient is infected.

But similar PCR tests for other viruses do offer some sense of how contagious an infected patient may be: The results may include a rough estimate of the amount of virus in the patient's body.

"We've been using one type of data for everything, and that is just plus or minus -- that's all," Dr. Mina said. "We're using that for clinical diagnostics, for public health, for policy decision-making."

But yes-no isn't good enough, he added. It's the amount of virus that should dictate the infected patient's next steps. "It's really irresponsible, I think, to forgo the recognition that this is a quantitative issue," Dr. Mina said.

The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.

This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.

On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.

One solution would be to adjust the cycle threshold used now to decide that a patient is infected. Most tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37. This means that you are positive for the coronavirus if the test process required up to 40 cycles, or 37, to detect the virus.

Tests with thresholds so high may detect not just live virus but also genetic fragments, leftovers from infection that pose no particular risk -- akin to finding a hair in a room long after a person has left, Dr. Mina said.

Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. "I'm shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive," she said.

A more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less. Those changes would mean the amount of genetic material in a patient's sample would have to be 100-fold to 1,000-fold that of the current standard for the test to return a positive result -- at least, one worth acting on.

Image
"It's just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T. values from all these tests, that they're just returning a positive or a negative," one virologist said. Credit... Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The Food and Drug Administration said in an emailed statement that it does not specify the cycle threshold ranges used to determine who is positive, and that " commercial manufacturers and laboratories set their own."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is examining the use of cycle threshold measures "for policy decisions." The agency said it would need to collaborate with the F.D.A. and with device manufacturers to ensure the measures "can be used properly and with assurance that we know what they mean."

The C.D.C.'s own calculations suggest that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles . Officials at some state labs said the C.D.C. had not asked them to note threshold values or to share them with contact-tracing organizations.

For example, North Carolina's state lab uses the Thermo Fisher coronavirus test, which automatically classifies results based on a cutoff of 37 cycles. A spokeswoman for the lab said testers did not have access to the precise numbers.

This amounts to an enormous missed opportunity to learn more about the disease, some experts said.

"It's just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T. values from all these tests -- that they're just returning a positive or a negative," said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York.

"It would be useful information to know if somebody's positive, whether they have a high viral load or a low viral load," she added.

Officials at the Wadsworth Center, New York's state lab, have access to C.T. values from tests they have processed, and analyzed their numbers at The Times's request. In July, the lab identified 872 positive tests, based on a threshold of 40 cycles.

With a cutoff of 35, about 43 percent of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 63 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30.

In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. "I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one," he said.

Other experts informed of these numbers were stunned.

"I'm really shocked that it could be that high -- the proportion of people with high C.T. value results," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "Boy, does it really change the way we need to be thinking about testing."

Dr. Jha said he had thought of the PCR test as a problem because it cannot scale to the volume, frequency or speed of tests needed. "But what I am realizing is that a really substantial part of the problem is that we're not even testing the people who we need to be testing," he said.

The number of people with positive results who aren't infectious is particularly concerning, said Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. "That worries me a lot, just because it's so high," he said, adding that the organization intended to meet with Dr. Mina to discuss the issue.

The F.D.A. noted that people may have a low viral load when they are newly infected. A test with less sensitivity would miss these infections.

But that problem is easily solved, Dr. Mina said: "Test them again, six hours later or 15 hours later or whatever," he said. A rapid test would find these patients quickly, even if it were less sensitive, because their viral loads would quickly rise.

PCR tests still have a role, he and other experts said. For example, their sensitivity is an asset when identifying newly infected people to enroll in clinical trials of drugs.

But with 20 percent or more of people testing positive for the virus in some parts of the country, Dr. Mina and other researchers are questioning the use of PCR tests as a frontline diagnostic tool.

People infected with the virus are most infectious from a day or two before symptoms appear till about five days after. But at the current testing rates, "you're not going to be doing it frequently enough to have any chance of really capturing somebody in that window," Dr. Mina added.

Highly sensitive PCR tests seemed like the best option for tracking the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic. But for the outbreaks raging now, he said, what's needed are coronavirus tests that are fast, cheap and abundant enough to frequently test everyone who needs it -- even if the tests are less sensitive.

"It might not catch every last one of the transmitting people, but it sure will catch the most transmissible people, including the superspreaders," Dr. Mina said. "That alone would drive epidemics practically to zero."

An earlier version of this article, using information provided by a laboratory spokesman, misstated the number of positive coronavirus tests in July processed by Wadsworth Center, New York's state lab. It was 872 tests, not 794. Based on that error, the article also misstated the number of tests that would no longer qualify as positive with a C.T. value of 35 cycles. It is about 43 percent of the tests, not about half of them. Similarly, the article misstated the number of tests that would no longer qualify as positive if cycles were limited to 30. It is about 63 percent of the tests, not about 70 percent.


Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter for The Times, focusing on science and global health. She is the 2019 winner of the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. @ apoorva_nyc A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 30, 2020 , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: You're Positive. But Are You Contagious? Tests May Be Too Sensitive, Experts Say . Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

[Sep 23, 2020] DNA Amplification Through Polymerase Chain Reaction

Sep 23, 2020 | www.thoughtco.com

By Theresa Phillips Updated October 25, 2019

PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction , a molecular biology technique for amplifying segments of DNA, by generating multiple copies using DNA polymerase enzymes under controlled conditions. As little as a single copy of a DNA segment or gene can be cloned into millions of copies, allowing detection using dyes and other visualization techniques.

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Developed in 1983, the process of PCR has made it possible to perform DNA sequencing and identify the order of nucleotides in individual genes. The method uses thermal cycling or the repeated heating and cooling of the reaction for DNA melting and replication. As PCR continues, the "new" DNA is used as a template for replication and a chain reaction ensues, exponentially amplifying the DNA template.

https://d956b974574e4d9df2e942a9641c69dc.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

PCR techniques are applied in many areas of biotechnology including protein engineering , cloning, forensics (DNA fingerprinting), paternity testing, the diagnosis of hereditary and/or infectious diseases, and for the analysis of environmental samples.

In forensics, in particular, PCR is especially useful because it amplifies even the smallest amount of DNA evidence. PCR can also be used to analyze DNA that is thousands of years old, and these techniques have been used to identify everything from an 800,000-year-old mammoth to mummies from around the world.

PCR Procedure Initialization

This step is necessary only for DNA polymerases that require hot-start PCR. The reaction is heated to between 94 and 96 °C and held for 1-9 minutes.

Denaturation

If the procedure does not require initialization, denaturation is the first step. The reaction is heated to 94-98 °C for 20-30 seconds. The DNA template's hydrogen bonds are disrupted and single-stranded DNA molecules are created.

Annealing

The reaction temperature is lower to between 50 and 65 °C and held for 20-40 seconds. The primers anneal to the single-stranded DNA template. The temperature is extremely important during this step. If it's too hot, the primer might not bind. If it's too cold, the primer might bind imperfectly. A good bond is formed when the primer sequence closely matches the template sequence.

Extension/Elongation

The temperature during this step varies depending upon the type of polymerase. The DNA polymerase synthesizes a completely new DNA strand.

Final Elongation

This step is performed at 70-74 °C for 5-15 minutes after the final PCR cycle.

Final Hold

This step is optional. The temperature is kept at 4-15 °C and strops the reaction.

Three Stages of the PCR Procedure Exponential Amplification

During every cycle, product (the specific piece of DNA that is being replicated) is doubled.

Leveling-off Stage

As the DNA polymerase loses activity and consumes reagents, the reaction slows.

Plateau

 No more product accumulates.

[Sep 20, 2020] NYT First Reinforces, Then Silently Debunks Its False Claims About Russia's Covid-19 Vaccine

Vaccine against coronaviruses is a very tricky business as the virus tend to mutate with time. Still it looks like Russian found some nw avenue to tackle this problem which might be more efficient then alternatives.
Notable quotes:
"... Science Magazine ..."
"... Science Magazine ..."
Sep 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Western reporters to not like to correct their own false reporting. They rather reinforce it as much as possible. Only when overwhelmed by the facts will they silently admit that they were wrong in the first place. Here is a prime example of how that's done.

In mid-August we exposed how 'western' media lied about the approval for phase-3 testing of the Russian Sputnik vaccine against Covid-19. They said that Russia claimed the vaccine was ready to go population wide. That never was the case.

'Western' Media Falsely Claim That Russia's Covid-19 Vaccine Is Ready To Go

Russia has not approved a vaccine against Covid-19 and it is not skipping large-scale clinical trials. The Russia regulator gave a preliminary approval for a vaccine candidate to start the large-scale clinical trial. [...]

Science Magazine is one of the few media who got it right : ...

One of the false reports we pointed out was by the New York Times Moscow correspondent Andrew E. Kramer:

Russia Approves Coronavirus Vaccine Before Completing Tests

Russia has become the first country in the world to approve a vaccine for the coronavirus, President Vladimir V. Putin announced on Tuesday, though global health authorities say the vaccine has yet to complete critical, late-stage clinical trials to determine its safety and effectiveness.
...
By skipping large-scale clinical trials, the Russian dash for a vaccine has raised widespread concern that it is circumventing vital steps -- and potentially endangering people -- in order to score global propaganda points.

Russia had, as we and Science Magazine reported, never the intent to skip large-scale clinical trials. Kramer made that up.

In new report today Kramer reinforces his previous false and disproven claims to lament about an alleged slow distribution of the Sputnik vaccine in Russia:

Russia Is Slow to Administer Virus Vaccine Despite Kremlin's Approval

More than a month after becoming the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, Russia has yet to administer it to a large population outside a clinical trial, health officials and outside experts say.

The approval, which came with much fanfare, occurred before Russia had tested the vaccine in late-stage trials for possible side effects and for its disease-fighting ability. It was seen as a political gesture by President Vladimir V. Putin to assert victory in the global race for a vaccine.

It is not clear whether the slow start to the vaccination campaign is a result of limited production capacity or second thoughts about inoculating the population with an unproven product.

The Times author reinforces his own lie that Russia had declared its vaccine ready for population wide application. It had never done that. The official registration of the vaccine by the relevant authorities was only a necessary precondition to start the large scale phase-3 testing of the vaccine. There never was a Russian intent to distribute the vaccine to a large population without phase-3 testing.

In the bottom third of his long piece Kramer comes near to admitting that. There he describes that the Sputnik phase-3 testing is now ongoing. That contradicts all of his previous reporting on the issues though he himself never says that. But even now he is getting the details wrong:

The trial in Russia began on Sept. 9, and Russian officials have said they expect early results before the end of the year, though the Gamaleya Institute, the scientific body that developed the vaccine, has scheduled the trial to continue until May.

That timeline is similar to the testing schedules announced by the three pharmaceutical companies testing potential vaccines in the United States, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer.
...
The Russian late-stage, or Phase 3, clinical trial is being carried out entirely in Moscow, where 30,000 people will receive the vaccine and 10,000 will get a placebo.

Yevgenia Zubova, a spokeswoman for the Moscow city health department, said in an interview that the vaccine was available only to trial participants.

Those last two paragraphs, which completely debunk Kramer's original reporting, should have been at the very top of the piece. They are buried down in paragraph 23 and 24 of a 29 paragraphs story that starts out with an epic repeat of the previously made false claims.

Kramer is wrong to say that the testing is limited to Moscow. As explained on the Sputnik Vaccine website :

Post-registration clinical trials involving more than 40,000 people in Russia will be launched in a week starting from August, 24. A number of countries, such as UAE, Saudi Arabia, Philippines and possibly India or Brazil will join the clinical trials of Sputnik V locally. [...] Mass production of the vaccine is expected to start in September 2020.

That testing of Sputnik V will also happen outside of Moscow has been confirmed by recent reports :

Russia's sovereign wealth fund will supply 100 million doses of its potential coronavirus vaccine to Indian drug company Dr Reddy's Laboratories, the fund said on Wednesday, as Moscow speeds up plans to distribute its shot abroad.
...
Dr Reddy's, one of India's top pharmaceutical companies, will carry out Phase III clinical trials of Sputnik-V in India, RDIF said.

It is not Russia that is fudging the testing of its vaccine. It is the Trump administration that is planning to do so out of political reasons:

Eric Topol @EricTopol - 18:10 UTC · Sep 19, 2020

We have the protocols. Now we know how there will very likely be an Emergency Use Approval (EUA) for a vaccine prior to November 3. The company and political motivations are fully aligned.

The criteria for an EUA is that it "may be effective" https://fda.gov/regulatory-inf ...
...
16. If there was any doubt about @HHSgov @SecAzar's plan to make sure there is an EUA for a vaccine before Nov 3 (see 10. above), then you can read this by @BySheilaKaplan In 'Power Grab,' Health Secretary Azar Asserts Authority Over F.D.A.

In contrast to the U.S. the Russian testing of its Sputnik vaccine will be -as usual- of high integrity and will strictly follow the protocols such trials are supposed to follow. In paragraph 29, the very last one in today's NYT story, the author at last admits as much :

[W]hen medicines are tested, Russia has an exceptionally good track record on managing clinical trials , according to a database of U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspections of clinical trials around the world. The F.D.A. found a lower percentage of trials with problems in Russia than in any other European country or the United States.

If I get the chance to chose a vaccine for myself I will rather take the one which was developed by a highly qualified state financed research institution and approved in Russia than one developed by some profit oriented pharmaceutic conglomerate that is in cahoots with a politicized regulator under the Trump administration.

Posted by b on September 20, 2020 at 12:12 UTC | Permalink


foolisholdman , Sep 20 2020 12:21 utc | 1

Very interestng clarification of well-muddied waters! Thank you for that b.
vk , Sep 20 2020 12:53 utc | 2
If I get the chance to chose a vaccine for myself I will rather take the one which was developed by a highly qualified state financed research institution and approved in Russia than one developed by some profit oriented pharmaceutic conglomerate that is in cahoots with a politicized regulator under the Trump administration.

To top it off, Gamaleya's vaccine simply has the better science behind it. It uses two human adenoviruses, in opposition to the single chimpanzee adenovirus used by the AstraZeneca one (the Chinese one also uses only one adenovirus, but I don't remember if it is human or chimpanzee).

No other laboratory in the world is using Gamaleya's technology - which it already dominates. Two American laboratories (Moderna and one more that I forgot the name) are testing the untried and dangerous mRNA technology. It is very unlikely those two mRNA vaccines will ever come out to the public; those two labs probably just cashed in their USD 2 billion checks they received from the USG.

This gives force to my original hypothesis: the Anglo-Saxon laboratories are exploiting exotic technologies for their vaccines because they want something the can patent, thus charging astronomical prices to the national governments and thus emerge from this pandemic even richer.

--//--

Speaking of AstraZeneca (Oxford), it released its blueprints yesterday after "public pressure":

A Phase III Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Multicenter Study in Adults to Determine the Safety, Efficacy, and Immunogenicity of AZD1222, a Non-replicating ChAdOx1 Vector Vaccine, for the Prevention of COVID-19

The USG is, behind the scenes (I already posted the link here in the open thread), extremely worried about this vaccine.

AstraZeneca will try to get what it can get, but the fact is it's game over for them. The thing here is that the Gamaleya alternative is better and if the USA (where the vaccine makers will really make money) wants to get political, it will simply opt for one of the many American vaccines that will come out - ready or not, satisfactory or not - next year. As a British vaccine, AstraZeneca-Oxford will, at best, have to do with the British market, which is very tiny for a big pharmaceutical company.

It is better if they just cancel the trials and abandon production.

jo6pac , Sep 20 2020 13:07 utc | 3
If I had money I'd fly to Russia for their vaccine. They made theirs for the people and in Amerika we make it for profits and protect the makes from lawsuits.

Thanks b and vk

Clueless Joe , Sep 20 2020 13:19 utc | 4
To be frank, at this point, ironically, it's Big Pharma's own self-interest that might help us to counter Trump's lunacy. There are enough anti-vaxxers around for them not to want a screwed up vaccine and a big scandal that would only comfort the vaxxers and sow mistrust among the population. They need people to assume vaccines are well done and mostly harmless if they want to keep making profit with them. Trump is only interested in a victory in the next few weeks, Pharma business is interested in making profits for the next decades.
That's quite a damning indictment of our Western system, but then 2020 is a milestone, the threshold beyond which it won't be possible to consider the Western liberal capitalistic system as the superior one, if not the best one possible - quite the opposite.
Tuyzentfloot , Sep 20 2020 13:22 utc | 5
The Kramer reporting is highly unusual. Normally the important information should be in the third paragraph from the end and now it's in the sixth and seventh last.

Anyway, while I agree that this vaccine should be treated as an entirely legitimate effort I want to add:
- phase 1/2 testing did appear a too lightweight and the article on it in the Lancet has been criticized by russian scientists ( https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/08/leading-scientists-question-highly-improbable-russian-vaccine-results-published-in-lancet-a71384).
- one family of vaccines can be more controversial and experimental than another and the judgement of the testers can take this in account when considering shortcuts.
- One should distinguish what the makers of the vaccine claim with the political (exaggerated) statements from Putin about it .
- The statements on testing on the Sputnikvaccine have changed over time. In the beginning it said 2000 people in Russia and it listed 4 more countries(UAE, KSA, Brazil,Mexico). That was insufficient. Several of these countries have been omitted since, and others have been added. One can say that the intent to do decent testing was always there but the confirmed planning was not.
- rollout to large population was impossible anyway at an early stage because the production capacity was limited.

pnyx , Sep 20 2020 14:02 utc | 6
Kramer is not wrong, he simply lies. In the Relotius media this is standard practice when covering politically sensitive topics, combined with omissions.
Of course, many well-researched and truthful articles are published in the nyt, faz, nzz etc. That is exactly what makes these media so refined and what they base their claim to be quality media on. One lies and distort as little and as targeted as possible.
Steve , Sep 20 2020 14:05 utc | 7
The Europena and Australian vassals of the USA would not be given a choice to choose the more authetic option of the vaccine. But Israel would probably opt for the Russian version without consequence. It's over for the West!
morongobill , Sep 20 2020 14:10 utc | 8
Get your covid 19 news here folks!
Kramer vs Kramer , Sep 20 2020 14:15 utc | 9
Kramer appears to have the right kind of nose. It is all that matters
vk , Sep 20 2020 14:22 utc | 10
@ Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Sep 20 2020 13:22 utc | 5

Nobody is saying the Gamaleya vaccine will be the second coming of the polio vaccine. Whichever COVID-19 vaccine comes out will inevitably be imperfect (in relation to the already tested and tried vaccines everybody takes nowadays).

Your worries are all legitimate. Indeed, Gamaleya publicly admitted phases 1 and 2 of its trials has small samples of subjects.

However, you also have to take into account that the science is solid (two human adenoviruses, a tested and tried technology) and that Gamaleya is the center of excellence in adenovirus vaccine technology. That's why - and not because it is Russian - we can trust Gamaleya's vaccine is, given the circumstances (pandemic), reliable. The fact Gamaleya already dominated the adenovirus technology also explains why it was the first laboratory to come out with a solution - it simply used a tested and tried method it already dominated, while the other pharmaceuticals are basically having to relearn how to develop a vaccine and/or are adventuring in uncharted territory because they want something they can patent.

So yes, we can search and find defects in Gamaleya's trials - but the strongest argument in its favor is not the trials, it's the solid science and technology behind it.

Jackrabbit , Sep 20 2020 14:34 utc | 11
What will the astro-turfed libertarian mob say about vaccines?

My guess: they will support them vociferously.

Because freedumb. And Big Pharma $$$ in their pockets.

!!

Anne , Sep 20 2020 14:54 utc | 12
Vk and the wabbit - right on. And Thanks to you, B, for this clear and straightforwardly informative piece (as usual).

Is it any surprise that the NYT uses the usual propaganda format of truth (when it accords with the ruling elites perspective) and lies (when "reporting on" what is happening in those "bad hat" countries)? And might I add that NPR and the BBC World Service do exactly the same thing, boosting the US-UK-NATO worldview (which equals the western corporate-captitalist-imperialist, oh so exceptional, ruling elites world position) while denigrating Russia, China, Iran (and now Lukashenko - indeed the Beeb refuses to pronounce his name properly, always reducing it to the feminine form, and believe me, as born and raised Brit, that's deliberate) via lies, lies and more lies. And via those weasely words: "likely," "Highly likely" and so on and on ....

All that this latest vaccine competition (western) will produce is more anti-vaxxers. And this time round, sensibly so.

JohnH , Sep 20 2020 14:57 utc | 13
Tuyzefot (5): it is common for the NYT to lead with propaganda and bury the facts at the end of the article.

I noticed it decades ago in articles covering Palestine. I learned to skip whatever was printed on the front page and immediately jump to the final five paragraphs found deep within the paper. I guess they print the facts at all there only as a bizarre way of covering their asses in a feeble attempt at integrity.

vk , Sep 20 2020 15:22 utc | 14
Just saw this, should've posted here earlier. Highly recommend reading in full:

Kirill Dmitriev: Questions on Sputnik V Vaccine Answered, Critics need to Look for Plank in Own Eyes

Highlights:

The vaccine uses a unique two-vector human adenovirus technology which no-one else in the world currently has for COVID-19.

[...]

On the surface the Sputnik V trial with 76 participants seems smaller in size compared to 1,077 people that, for example, AstraZeneca had in its Phase 1-2 studies. However, the design of the Sputnik V trial was much more efficient and based on better assumptions.

[...]

The post-registration studies involving more than 40,000 people started in Russia on August 26, before AstraZeneca has started its Phase 3 trial in the U.S. with 30,000 participants. Clinical trials in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Philippines, India and Brazil will begin this month. The preliminary results of the Phase 3 trial will be published in October-November 2020.

[...]

Q.: Why has the Sputnik V vaccine already become eligible for emergency use registration?

Because of the very positive results of the Phase 1-2 trials and because the human adenoviral vector-based delivery platform has been proven the safest vaccine delivery platform over decades including through 75 international scientific publications and in more than 250 clinical trials.

[...]

Some other companies are using human adenoviral vector-based platforms for their COVID-19 vaccines. For example, Johnson & Johnson uses only Ad26 vector and China's CanSino only Ad5 while Sputnik V uses both of these vectors. The work of Johnson & Johnson and CanSino not only validates the Russian approach but also shows Sputnik V's advantage as studies have demonstrated that two different vectors produce better results than one.

[...]

The monkey adenovirus and mRNA vaccines have never been used and approved before and their research is lagging the proven human adenoviral vector-based platform by at least 20 years. However, their developers have already secured supply contracts worth billions of dollars from Western governments and may potentially apply for fast-track registration -- while receiving full indemnity at the same time.

At the end of the Q&A, Dmitriev counters his Western colleagues:

Question 1: Are there any long-term studies of mRNA and monkey adenovirus vector-based technologies for carcinogenic effects and impact on fertility? (Hint: there are none)

Question 2: Could their absence be the reason why some of the leading pharmaceutical firms making COVID-19 vaccines based on these technologies pushed the countries buying their vaccines for full indemnification from lawsuits if something goes wrong?

Question 3: Why is Western media not reporting a lack of long term studies for mRNA and monkey adenoviral vector-based vaccines?

Those are good questions. Very good questions.


Mark Thomason , Sep 20 2020 15:42 utc | 15
The constant Russia bashing is a disconnect from the truth and the real world.

It is annoying to wade through.

Far more important, it is crippling for a nation if its leadership actually does disconnect from reality and believe its own fantasy.

Disconnect from reality, belief in convenient fantasy, is exactly how the Democrats went from losing with Hillary to running again with Hillary II, the same donors and advisers and influence peddlers pushing the same right wing triangulation by the Democratic Party.

Maybe they can squeak out a win this time. It should not be close.

Far more important, there are things that need doing, things that would win like health care for all, that they simply won't offer or run on. We are not going to get from them what we need, we know that, and that is why they again have a squeaker election even against a joke like Trump.

Patrick Armstrong , Sep 20 2020 15:54 utc | 16
Perfect example of the free and unfettered press at work. What do you mean we're just a propaganda rag? See, right down at the bottom, the bit you didn't bother to read down to, right next to the denture ad, we told the truth. So there! Balanced and accurate reporting!
Kooshy , Sep 20 2020 16:21 utc | 17
Here in US we are getting 737maxed again this time with FDA
Kooshy , Sep 20 2020 16:28 utc | 18
Trump's "national security" state has managed to kill 200000 by him the autocrat in chief to come out and tell the truth as he admitted so to Woodward. This fucking American national security phobia is costing American lives more than all past 70 years of national security wars.
aquadraht , Sep 20 2020 18:14 utc | 19
The sick transatlantic mindset is exposed here:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/31/china-covid-19-vaccine-first-401636

Nice to read the comment on Global Times:
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1199658.shtml

Tuyzentfloot , Sep 20 2020 19:34 utc | 20
@JohnH 13 , it was hm, a joke. There is indeed rule of thumb that you have to look fore the third to last paragraph. I upgraded it into something of a law, which is then violated in this case.
Tuyzentfloot , Sep 20 2020 20:10 utc | 21
@vk 10, I wouldn't call it my worries, just that I think B. posted a version which was too simple and rosy. In the meantime I saw your post 14 which I roughly expected but hadn't read about yet.
Jen , Sep 20 2020 20:17 utc | 22
Andrew Kramer's reporting on the Sputnik V vaccine is deliberately written to discredit the Russians and anything and everything they do, which includes the way they conduct scientific and medical research (because it's govt-funded, not funded by global pharmaceutical corporations) and the way they run their healthcare system (not privatised).

First, Kramer says the Kremlin approved the vaccine: this is to set up Moscow and Putin in particular as rash, so that the supposed "roll-out" of the vaccine can be (secondly) portrayed as inefficient.

Kramer knows he is lying which is why his piece is long (he knows most NYT readers are time-poor and want the celebrity news and baseball results) and the most important information is squeezed into the last two paragraphs of his article.

Jen , Sep 20 2020 20:24 utc | 23
Tuyzentfloot @ 5:

I tried linking to that Moscow Times article at your link and either I hit a dead end or the newspaper removed the article, which does not surprise me since that newspaper is as credible as The New York Times. It used to be given away f o r free in Moscow but I believe it now exists only as an online paper.

Tuyzentfloot , Sep 20 2020 20:32 utc | 24
@Jen, you have to remove the last two characters ').' because I omitted a space. The article in the moscow times is ok and not too alarming. It is also not discrediting the lancet article. Just raising concerns.

[Sep 06, 2020] Inactive fragments on virus RNA trigger false positives in most common COVID test due to way too many cycles of amplification which amplifies noise along with the signal and efffectly turns noise (inactive fragments on RNA) into signal, new study finds

Highly recommended!
From comments: "Article is poorly written by someone who does not know medical science. There are no viral "cells" so the headline is a put off right away. The comment about "sensitivity" is misplaced as PCR tests are too sensitive: ergo false positives. I believe "specificity" is the word the author was searching for. If a test lumps true positives with false positives, then it lacks specificity."
Sep 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

In the past, our reports raising questions about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests have been met with accusations of 'fearmongering' and spreading 'misinformation'.

But not today.

That's because new research from the University of Oxford's Center for Evidence-Based Medicine and the University of the West of England has found that the swab-based technique used for most COVID-19 testing is at risk of returning "false positives" since copies of the virus's RNA detected by the tests might simply be dead, inactive material from a weeks-old infection. Although patients infected with COVID-19 are typically only infectious for a week or less, tests can be triggered by virus genetic material left over from a weeks-old infection.

The team's research involved analyzing 25 studies on the widely used polymerase chain reaction test. PCR tests use material collected with a swab - the most common type of test around the world, and especially in the US - then utilize a "genetic photocopying" technique that allows scientists to magnify the small sample of genetic material collected, which they can then analyze for signs of viral RNA.

What the researchers here have effectively found is that these PCR tests just aren't sensitive enough to distinguish if the viral material is active and infectious, or dead and inert.

For those who desire a more comprehensive understanding of how these tests work, the chart below can be helpful.

Professor Carl Heneghan, one of the authors of the study, said there was a risk that a surge in testing across the UK was increasing the risk of this sample contamination occurring and it may explain why the number of Covid-19 cases is rising but the number of deaths is static.

"Evidence is mounting that a good proportion of 'new' mild cases and people re-testing positives after quarantine or discharge from hospital are not infectious, but are simply clearing harmless virus particles which their immune system has efficiently dealt with," he told the Spectator.

Professor Heneghan added that international scrutiny might be required to avoid "the dangers of isolating non-infectious people or whole communities." ZKnight 14 minutes ago

Fake science. How about purify the virus first and establish a gold standard for testing first. No, of course not because the CDC has a patent for Covid-19 and nobody is allowed to try find it to see if it exists. play_arrow LogicFusion 27 minutes ago

Everybody is a Covid-19 / Coronavirus expert now!

Read about the failed coin dealer and convicted felon's performance. It's hilarious!

Martin Armstrong becomes Covid-19 Coronavirus Expert overnight play_arrow ducksinarow 59 minutes ago

Covid -19 has been so politicized that I don't believe a word of any publication for or against testing, existence of the Virus, or anything that provokes testing or issues opinions about locking down communities. Just like the riots, Covid news is just plain boring. play_arrow ominous 3 hours ago

Link to spectator.co.uk goes to home page, not this story.

Where is the original story posted? play_arrow play_arrow ominous 3 hours ago (Edited)

Perhaps this

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/ y_arrow 1 Rabbi Blitzstein 38 minutes ago

"Give me control of a nation's money, and I care not who makes the laws" - Mayer Amschel Rothschild. play_arrow play_arrow tangent 4 hours ago remove link

People who recommend a vaccine for an entirely cured virus should lose their license to practice medicine. 99.9% cure rate applying to people who take it before being hospitalized is one of the biggest success stories in the history of medicine for HCQ. Not only that, but there are multiple other likely cures that simply have not been studied well. You'd think people would appreciate the fact that the common cold has been cured, but instead they just whine that big pharma isn't getting those bucko bucks.

I honestly expected a ticker tape parade like in the movies when that first cure study came out. But instead they took a massive **** on the study and on the doctor... ****ty world we live in. ay_arrow Pair Of Dimes Shift 2 hours ago

An exec (55+) at my company is gung ho about the vaccine.

Unfortunately, I just had to give him a "wait and see" response although I know vaccines for coronaviruses are impossible. play_arrow 2 play_arrow ThanksIwillHaveAnother 4 hours ago (Edited)

Viruses are not full cells. They are DNA/RNA wrapped with a protein the clings to a cell then the cell imports the DNA/RNA to start making its proteins. So what is inactive? If that person sneezes on another person depending on immune system status that other person could get a bad infection. y_arrow 4 CrabbyR 3 hours ago

viruses utilizes CELL structures and host DNA to replicate dna or rna according to the viruses genetic code, the protein jacket is the final product to

disguise the virus from detection and to bind on another cell after the compromised cell RUPTURES, there's more to it but if it cannot copy itself effectively it can become nonviable and unable to infect another cell. It replicates DNA inside a host cell, It is not a complete organism and cannot replicate unless it can inject its DNA into a host cell. Antibodies cling to viruses and destroy this ability to bind to a target cell. A non viable virus has a damaged coat or DNA RNA that has to many Dimers (damage or code breaks) Bacteria is more in line with what you think a virus is y_arrow onewayticket2 4 hours ago (Edited) remove link

they lost me when they changed the definition of "death" to include "presumed, untested" cases (while bI@#$% ing at me that we needed to "follow the science")....and even got busted for the laughable motorcycle accident being classified as a covid death and the Labs that were sending in 100% positive results. (until they were caught) play_arrow OutaTime43 4 hours ago remove link

The test detects RNA. Not necessarily viable virus. Also, it will detect RNA presence in an individual who may already have antibodies and may be immune. We are bombarded daily by viruses of which we already have immunity. play_arrow sun tzu 10 hours ago

Shocking news that the South Koreans already discovered and published back in May. Western big pharma driven medicine is garbage 😂😂😂

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/wha-passes-pandemic-probe-resolution-korea-clarifies-reinfection-reports

play_arrow Roger Casement 10 hours ago

WTF!!!!

World Bank exporting COVID-19 Testing Kits in 2018??????

https: // wits.worldbank.org/trade/comtrade/en/country/ALL/year/2018/tradeflow/Exports/partner/WLD/nomen/h5/product/300215 play_arrow 7 play_arrow sun tzu 10 hours ago

Interesting play_arrow play_arrow Jack Mehoff 1 more time 9 hours ago

Business as usual play_arrow play_arrow Argon1 7 hours ago

Preparation for agenda 2021 in 2017. play_arrow 1 play_arrow CrabbyR 4 hours ago

WOW.......ties a few strands from other sources together into a real ugly picture play_arrow play_arrow Welsh Bard 10 hours ago

The professor who won the Nobel prize for work in this field, said that the way this test is being operated with over forty cycles, means that any results are entirely meaningless.

In Britain, having spent over £15 billion setting up PCR testing systems and a shaky test and trace apparatus on top of that, it appears that 90% of positive results now appear to be false. This is compounded by the fact that when a hot spot develops, more testing is done to show a rapid increase in more false positive results, meaning further new lockdowns and even more testing to prove yet more false positive results ad infinitum.

Now whether this is by design or ineptitude, people must decide for themselves but the outcome is utter chaos.

For those countries who have not followed the Swedish model especially countries like Australia and New Zealand who have set up complete isolation, now face a future perpetually cut off from the rest of the world.

Okay, new techniques will and are coming along to treat the disease like HCQ when used correctly maybe as a prophylactic and a vaccine that will need to be constantly upgraded like the Flu vaccine, means that the whole world has painted itself into a corner unless drastic revision is now made to the whole sorry mess.

In the meantime, we will now be stuck with digital currency and the introduction of ID Health Cards that will limit people in how they travel where they work and access to a whole heap of things like government services.

Welcome to the new world order! play_arrow 1 KuriousKat 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Don't tell the Shameless Aussie gov that after arresting hundreds for simply voicing doubt on need to lockdown entire city...Next time it will be thousands and not a damn thing they can do to stop it..These people are trickling us the truth how worthless the tests are when pretty much everyone knows. play_arrow espirit 12 hours ago remove link

Lessee.

WHO

Imperial College

John Hopkins

CDC

Line all those peeps up against the wall, and the first one to rat gets to live.

I'll provide my own ammo... ay_arrow Sick Monkey 6 hours ago

Not everyone working in these agencies are dishonest but like you and I we have to work and eat.

Most of them are trapped in this mess with bills to pay threatened by NDA.


play_arrow 1 Urban Roman 12 hours ago

Not particularly new news. Been talked about since April at least -- it's an RNA virus, it has its own polymerase, and it leaves lots of RNA fragments in its wake.

The Corona family of viruses make 5 or 6 strands with partial copies of their RNA molecule. negative copies are made first, and then copied again into positive copies. Finally the one big RNA is made with the entire genome on it.

So about a dozen RNA molecules are made for each finished virus particle that is produced. And finally, a variety of different primers are used for the PCR tests, some are matched to the small partial RNA copies and others are matched to various features on the large whole-virus RNA. They can give different results for the same sample.

So, someone who registers on a PCR test has probably been exposed to the virus, but the test gives no clue as to whether it is an active infection, or the person is contagious, or they are just coming down with it, or they got over it six months ago. play_arrow 4 play_arrow 1

10 play_arrow gordo 12 hours ago remove link

Sweden, no masks, no lock downs, ALL SCHOOLS OPEN, herd immunity, no second wave.

Still think your masks and lock downs are working muppets?


1 play_arrow The 3rd Dimentia 13 hours ago

https://youtu.be/sjYvitCeMPc SARS-CoV2 and the Rise of Medical Technocracy. Lee Merritt, M.D. play_arrow 3 play_arrow hugin-o-munin 13 hours ago

I'm glad to see that many are starting to counter the official narrative.

We've been asleep for too long and allowed these agendas to fester to the point we're at now where a college dropout software salesman and a former 3rd world communist terrorist (neither of whom have any medical degree) are dictating to the world how everyone needs to get a DNA altering vaccine and a medical ID. It's completely nuts and bonkers yet more or less the entire planet's governments follow in 'lockstep' with ever more draconian laws and regulations incarcerating people in their own homes, making them wear masks causing oxygen deprivation and shutting down the entire world economy.


lay_arrow Warthog777 , 13 hours ago

Article is poorly written by someone who does not know medical science. There are no viral "cells" so the headline is a put off right away. The comment about "sensitivity" is misplaced as PCR tests are too sensitive: ergo false positives. I believe "specificity" is the word the author was searching for. If a test lumps true positives with false positives, then it lacks specificity.

Cabreado , 13 hours ago

"accusations of 'fearmongering' and spreading 'misinformation'.
But not today."

Well, much of the world has known for months now about the testing lies...

and I'd be remiss to not remind the Tylers that they indeed played a role in the fear mongering along the way; quite intently so.

Crush the cube , 13 hours ago

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Flavio_Bell_Covid_24?id=SxrxDwAAQBAJ

Busted, published 2018, what a scam.

Digital-Anarchy , 14 hours ago

Anyone who would use the term "virus cells", has no clue what they're talking about and should be completely disregarded. Viruses are not cells. PCR tests are searching for something your body produces in response to a virus as well. They are not produced specifically for a singular virus either. The entire concept of PCR testing is garbage. This **** was a scam from the get-go.

hugin-o-munin , 13 hours ago

Yes it is evident now that this entire pandemic is false and political. The goal seems to be to vaccinate entire populations and the question people need to ask is - why? what for? Aside from the obvious economic motives there are some more sinister plans that most people will have a hard time accepting but these need to be looked at. Several years ago there were a group of doctors and researchers that died of suspicious suicides who were collaborating and studying vaccines and the link to autism.

The effort was led by Dr.Jeffrey Bradstreet who was researching the natural substance GcMAF and how this could boost the immune system. What he discovered was that many vaccines had a compound/substance called Nagalase in them that is unnatural and has a detrimental effect on the immune system and function of GcMAF (which is produced by our own bodies) and has no business at all being in vaccines. Just before he was able to blow the whistle on this he also died of a suspicious 'suicide' and today most of the clinics and research groups working on GcMAF have been destroyed and ruined. Draw your own conclusions.

snblitz , 14 hours ago

Dr. Kary Mullis invented the PCR test. He said it was ineffective for this purpose.

Though he was addressing its use in a prior virus hoax unleashed upon the world.

I bet you didn't know this scam has been used before.

That is why I was able to call out the scam right from the start. The second I saw them using the PCR again, I knew it was from the same playbook.

snblitz , 14 hours ago

So many lies.

Viruses are not alive. They have no metabolic functions. They cannot move.

Don't believe me? Get a degree is virology or microbiology or just a read a book on the subject. Or capture a wuhan-virus yourself and watch it under a microscope. It won't move. It won't consume anything. It will just sit there inert.

The problem is that you are being lied to at a scale you cannot imagine.

I know, off to the fema re-education camp for me for spreading false information about the wuhan-virus.

Though I am not the one spreading fear and hysteria.

aldousd , 13 hours ago

There article is confused, but the work of the doctor is not. Viruses use your cells to reproduce. When your immune system targets the virus it actually kills your own cell which has become host to the virus. The virus particles and markers, and the DNA of the virus can be detected in these dead cells, but dead cells cannot serve as a factory for more viruses. So it's effectively a dead virus infected cell. Not a dead virus cell.

So while the transcription of the idea here was done by an idiot, it's not an idiotic idea. The tests cannot tell if the virus came in a living cell that is actively producing more viruses or a dead host cell that has been assassinated by your immune system. That's what they're talking about here.

mstyle , 11 hours ago

what about the chromosome 8 stuff that has been mentioned lately?

(since you appear to be rather intelligent)

hugin-o-munin , 11 hours ago

Thanks. Well the chromosome 8 discovery in the PCR test specifications/details is strange and worrying because it makes you wonder why it's part of this at all. Some believe it's to get more false positive results while others believe it is what the mRNA vaccines are intended to target and if that's right then it's really sinister. What exactly is the plan? To make all of us get Downs Syndrome? I don't know but judging by all their other lies and schemes it wouldn't surprise me.

IRC162 , 14 hours ago

Fuggin progressives and their pandemic political prop. But really this reaction is the same as their reaction to 'racial injustice'. They focus on feelings before the facts are known in order to achieve their end, and then do their best to bury/ignore the facts when they are gathered later.

94% COVID deaths with multiple comorbidities.

10 unarmed blacks killed by police in 2019 (6 were in self-defense).

adr , 15 hours ago

Why didn't you mention that nearly all labs are running 35-40 cycles which guarantees a positive test, simply from noise.

The inventor of the test said if you don't find anything after 15 cycles, it probably isn't there. After 20 cycles the noise starts to be greater than any real information. By 30, the test is mostly noise. More than 35, the test is completely worthless.

Of course I've been saying this for five months, but most people didn't listen. After the NYT article came out, people I know started saying, "How did you know?"

I said, "Because I have critical thinking skills. Why didn't you believe me? Name a time I've steered you wrong."

Antiduck , 14 hours ago

333 labs in florida had 100% positivity. (stupid word.)

ZenStick , 12 hours ago

Exactly correct.
Nobody will touch this line of reasoning in public or on media.
Bastages.

Identify as Ferengi , 15 hours ago

See above, Born2Bwired.

The PCR test is not useful for what they are using it for apparently. This has been known since the beginning. Here is quote regarding AIDS:

"Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in Science for inventing the PCR, is thoroughly convinced that HIV is not the cause of "AIDS". With regard to the viral load tests, which attempt to use PCR for counting viruses, Mullis has stated: "Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron." PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers. Although there is a common misimpression that the viral load tests actually count the number of viruses in the blood, these tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all; they can only detect proteins that are believed, in some cases wrongly, to be unique to HIV. The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.

What PCR does is to select a genetic sequence and then amplify it enormously. It can accomplish the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack; it can amplify that needle into a haystack. Like an electronically amplified antenna, PCR greatly amplifies the signal, but it also greatly amplifies the noise. Since the amplification is exponential, the slightest error in measurement, the slightest contamination, can result in errors of many orders of magnitude."

http://www.virusmyth.org/aids/hiv/jlprotease.htm

naro , 15 hours ago

NYTimes article last week suggested that only 10% of Covid positive PCR tests are clinically significant and infectious.

[Aug 24, 2020] Angry Bear " Some of the Gilead Remdesivir Results from Recent Studies

Aug 24, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

Some of the Gilead Remdesivir Results from Recent Studies

run75441 | August 24, 2020 9:00 pm

HEALTHCARE HOT TOPICS POLITICS Effect of Remdesivir vs Standard Care on Clinical Status at 11 Days in Patients With Moderate COVID-19 A Randomized Clinical Trial , JAMA, Christoph D. Spinner, MD ; Robert L. Gottlieb, MD, PhD ; Gerard J. Criner, MD, August 21, 2020

This is a freebie so you should be able to get into this article and pickup on additional detail. Those who were treated early on had a better result from remdesivir than those who were treated later after contracting Covid. This was already know,.

Results: Among 596 patients who were randomized, 584 began the study and received remdesivir or continued standard care (median age, 57 [interquartile range, 46-66] years; 227 [39%] women; 56% had cardiovascular disease, 42% hypertension, and 40% diabetes), and 533 (91%) completed the trial. Median length of treatment was 5 days for patients in the 5-day remdesivir group and 6 days for patients in the 10-day remdesivir group.

On day 11, patients in the 5-day remdesivir group had statistically significantly higher odds of a better clinical status distribution than those receiving standard care (odds ratio, 1.65; 95% CI, 1.09-2.48; P  = .02).

The clinical status distribution on day 11 between the 10-day remdesivir and standard care groups was not significantly different ( P  = .18 by Wilcoxon rank sum test). By day 28, 9 patients had died: 2 (1%) in the 5-day remdesivir group, 3 (2%) in the 10-day remdesivir group, and 4 (2%) in the standard care group. Nausea (10% vs 3%), hypokalemia (6% vs 2%), and headache (5% vs 3%) were more frequent among remdesivir-treated patients compared with standard care.

Some Limitations: This study has several limitations. First, the original protocol was written when COVID-19 cases were largely confined to Asia and the clinical understanding of disease was limited to case series. This led to a change in the primary end point on the first day of study enrollment as it became clear that hospital discharge rates varied greatly across regions and the ordinal scale had become standard for interventional COVID-19 studies. Second, the study used an open-label design, which potentially led to biases in patient care and reporting of data. Third, because of the urgent circumstances in which the study was conducted, virologic outcomes such as effect of remdesivir on SARS-CoV-2 viral load were not assessed. Fourth, other laboratory parameters that may have aided in identifying additional predictors of outcomes were not routinely collected. Fifth, the ordinal scale used to evaluate outcomes was not ideal for detecting differences in patients with moderate COVID-19, especially for a clinical situation in which discharge decisions may be driven by factors other than clinical improvement.

Conclusions: Among patients with moderate COVID-19, those randomized to a 10-day course of remdesivir did not have a statistically significant difference in clinical status compared with standard care at 11 days after initiation of treatment. Patients randomized to a 5-day course of remdesivir had a statistically significant difference in clinical status compared with standard care, but the difference was of uncertain clinical importance.

[Aug 19, 2020] Russia's Ministry of Health names three drugs that can treat new Chinese coronavirus

This is from Jan 2020, but still interesting
Jan 30, 2020 | www.rt.com

While experts across the world search for a vaccine to tackle the dangerous new infection, Russian health bosses have identified a trio of existing medicines to combat 2019-nCoV in adults.

The new coronavirus can be fought with ribavirin, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon beta-1b, they believe. These drugs are typically used to treat hepatitis C, HIV and multiple sclerosis respectively.

The Ministry of Health advisory not only offers recommendations, but also describes how the treatments work and in what quantities they should be prescribed. The guidelines are intended for doctors in hospitals throughout the country.

... ... ...

One of the drugs recommended, ribavirin, was used in the treatment of the 2003 Chinese SARS outbreak, which infected over 8,000 people and killed 774 across 17 different countries. The new coronavirus has shown a sizeable genetic similarity with SARS, with one sequence comparison showing a match of 79.5%.

The ministry also instructs that, in order to prevent and reduce the severity of symptoms, medication should be consumed within two days of contact with an infected person. Their prevention recommendations also include sanitary and hygiene rules, such as handwashing and wearing protective masks.

[Aug 13, 2020] America's Obesity Epidemic Threatens Effectiveness of Any COVID Vaccine

Aug 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Sarah Varney via Kaiser Health News,

As scientists race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, experts say obesity could prove an impediment -- a sobering prospect for a nation in which nearly half of all adults are obese.

For a world crippled by the coronavirus, salvation hinges on a vaccine.

But in the United States, where at least 4.6 million people have been infected and nearly 155,000 have died, the promise of that vaccine is hampered by a vexing epidemic that long preceded COVID-19: obesity.

Scientists know that vaccines engineered to protect the public from influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies can be less effective in obese adults than in the general population, leaving them more vulnerable to infection and illness. There is little reason to believe, obesity researchers say, that COVID-19 vaccines will be any different.

"Will we have a COVID vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way," said Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

"Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no."

More than 107 million American adults are obese, and their ability to return safely to work, care for their families and resume daily life could be curtailed if the coronavirus vaccine delivers weak immunity for them.

In March, still early in the global pandemic, a little-noticed study from China found that heavier Chinese patients afflicted with COVID-19 were more likely to die than leaner ones, suggesting a perilous future awaited the U.S., whose population is among the heaviest in the world.

And then that future arrived.

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As intensive care units in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere filled with patients, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that obese people with a body mass index of 40 or more -- known as morbid obesity or about 100 pounds overweight -- were among the groups at highest risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19. About 9% of American adults are in that category.

As weeks passed and a clearer picture of who was being hospitalized came into focus, federal health officials expanded their warning to include people with a body mass index of 30 or more. That vastly expanded the ranks of those considered vulnerable to the most severe cases of infection, to 42.4% of American adults.

Obesity has long been known to be a significant risk factor for death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. But scientists in the emerging field of immunometabolism are finding obesity also interferes with the body's immune response, putting obese people at greater risk of infection from pathogens such as influenza and the novel coronavirus. In the case of influenza, obesity has emerged as a factor making it more difficult to vaccinate adults against infection. The question is whether that will hold true for COVID-19.

A healthy immune system turns inflammation on and off as needed, calling on white blood cells and sending out proteins to fight infection. Vaccines harness that inflammatory response. But blood tests show that obese people and people with related metabolic risk factors such as high blood pressure and elevated blood sugar levels experience a state of chronic mild inflammation ; the inflammation turns on and stays on.

Adipose tissue -- or fat -- in the belly, the liver and other organs is not inert; it contains specialized cells that send out molecules, like the hormone leptin, that scientists suspect induces this chronic state of inflammation. While the exact biological mechanisms are still being investigated, chronic inflammation seems to interfere with the immune response to vaccines, possibly subjecting obese people to preventable illnesses even after vaccination.

An effective vaccine fuels a controlled burn inside the body, searing into cellular memory a mock invasion that never truly happened.

Evidence that obese people have a blunted response to common vaccines was first observed in 1985 when obese hospital employees who received the hepatitis B vaccine showed a significant decline in protection 11 months later that was not observed in non-obese employees. The finding was replicated in a follow-up study that used longer needles to ensure the vaccine was injected into muscle and not fat.

Researchers found similar problems with the hepatitis A vaccine, and other studies have found significant declines in the antibody protection induced by tetanus and rabies vaccines in obese people.

"Obesity is a serious global problem, and the suboptimal vaccine-induced immune responses observed in the obese population cannot be ignored," pleaded researchers from the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group in a 2015 study published in the journal Vaccine.

Vaccines also are known to be less effective in older adults, which is why those 65 and older receive a supercharged annual influenza vaccine that contains far more flu virus antigens to help juice up their immune response.

By contrast, the diminished protection of the obese population -- both adults and children -- has been largely ignored.

"I'm not entirely sure why vaccine efficacy in this population hasn't been more well reported," said Catherine Andersen, an assistant professor of biology at Fairfield University who studies obesity and metabolic diseases. "It's a missed opportunity for greater public health intervention."

In 2017, scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill provided a critical clue about the limitations of the influenza vaccine. In a paper published in the International Journal of Obesity , they showed for the first time that vaccinated obese adults were twice as likely as adults of a healthy weight to develop influenza or flu-like illness.

Curiously, they found that adults with obesity did produce a protective level of antibodies to the influenza vaccine, but they still responded poorly.

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"That was the mystery," said Chad Petit, an influenza virologist at the University of Alabama.

One hypothesis, Petit said, is that obesity may trigger a metabolic dysregulation of T cells, white blood cells critical to the immune response.

"It's not insurmountable," said Petit, who is researching COVID-19 in obese patients. "We can design better vaccines that might overcome this discrepancy."

Historically, people with high BMIs often have been excluded from drug trials because they frequently have related chronic conditions that might mask the results. The clinical trials underway to test the safety and efficacy of a coronavirus vaccine do not have a BMI exclusion and will include people with obesity, said Dr. Larry Corey, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who is overseeing the phase 3 trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Although trial coordinators are not specifically focused on obesity as a potential complication, Corey said, participants' BMI will be documented and results evaluated.

Dr. Timothy Garvey, an endocrinologist and director of diabetes research at the University of Alabama, was among those who stressed that, despite the lingering questions, it is still safer for obese people to get vaccinated than not.

"The influenza vaccine still works in patients with obesity, but just not as well," Garvey said. "We still want them to get vaccinated."

[Aug 12, 2020] New Study Finds Potential Reason Why COVID-19 Occurs Less In Children

Aug 12, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

This new study detailed in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on May 20, discovered that the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which grows in abundance as the individual grows, might be the reason that less than two percent of all individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease - are children.

Researchers had suspected that COVID-19 susceptibility could be linked to the amount of gene expression of ACE2 seen in the nasal cavity, given that the enzyme acts as a receptor to allow the SARS-CoV-2 virus to pass into the body.

To investigate this potential link, researchers looked for a relationship between the two - the level of gene expression of ACE2 in the nose and COVID-19 infection - by taking nasal swabs from 305 people involved in an asthma study . Researchers hypothesized that the lower the levels of enzyme gene expression, the less likely it is a person will be infected by COVID-19.

Researchers said they chose to swab the nose because it is one of the first access points for SARS-CoV-2 to infect an individual.

Samples were taken from both asthmatic (49.8 percent) and non-asthmatic patients. The 305 people involved in the study were between four to 60 years of age.

Researchers said they found a clear association between ACE2 expression and age - opening up a possible explanation as to why most children, who tend to have lower levels of enzyme expression, are less susceptible to COVID-19.

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Supinda Bunyavanich, professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and Paediatrics at Mount Sinai, said in a press release that the study found "that there are low levels of ACE2 expression in the nasal passages of younger children, and this ACE2 level increases with age into adulthood.

"This might explain why children have been largely spared in the pandemic," Bunyavanich said.

[Aug 03, 2020] Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims -

Aug 03, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Last week we warned readers to be cautious about new COVID-19 vaccines, highlighting how key parts of the clinical trials are being skipped as big pharma will not be held accountable for adverse side effects for administering the experimental drugs.

A senior executive from AstraZeneca, Britain's second-largest drugmaker, told Reuters that his company was just granted protection from all legal action if the company's vaccine led to damaging side effects.

...

For more color on leading vaccines in development that produce "severe" side effects, read our latest piece titled "Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Induced Adverse Reactions In "More Than Half" Of Trial Participants."

Maybe these rushed vaccines are more for optics, get consumers back into airplanes, hotels, resorts, and malls.

The major red flag is how governments are allowing big pharma to rush experimental vaccines, with no legal recourse if something goes terribly wrong.

[Aug 03, 2020] Next big COVID-19 treatment may be manufactured antibodies

Aug 03, 2020 | www.msn.com

As the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, the next big advance in battling the pandemic could come from a class of biotech therapies widely used against cancer and other disorders - antibodies designed specifically to attack this new virus.

[Aug 02, 2020] Red Flags Soar As Big Pharma Will Be Exempt From COVID-19 Vaccine Liability Claims

Aug 02, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Last week we warned readers to be cautious about new COVID-19 vaccines, highlighting how key parts of the clinical trials are being skipped as big pharma will not be held accountable for adverse side effects for administering the experimental drugs.

A senior executive from AstraZeneca, Britain's second-largest drugmaker, told Reuters that his company was just granted protection from all legal action if the company's vaccine led to damaging side effects.

[Aug 02, 2020] Obese People Are Twice As Likely To Die From Covid

Notable quotes:
"... And while being overweight does not seem to increase people's chances of contracting COVID-19 according to the study, it can affect the respiratory system, and potentially immune function as well. ..."
Aug 02, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Just in case Americans - the most obese nation in the world - needed another reason to lose some weight, here it is.

In what is emerging as a perfidious Catch 22, at a time when the US population is rapidly gaining weight due to mandatory work from home regulation (hence the Covid 19 pounds ) as described here and here , while a surge in domestic alcohol consumption is only making the matters worse...

... Public Health England has published a paper titled " Excess Weight and COVID-19 Insights from new evidence ", indicating that the risks of hospitalization, intensive care treatment and death increase progressively with increasing body mass index (BMI) above the healthy weight range even after adjustment for potential confounding factors, including demographic and socioeconomic factors. In other words, the fatter one is, the higher the risk that person may die from covid.

Some more details: according to the Public Health England paper, the hazard ratios of ICU admission patients who are overweight (BMI ≥25-29.9), obese (BMI ≥30-34.9) or severely obese (BMI ≥35) are 1.64, 2.59 and 4.35, respectively see figure below) relative to patients with a BMI of ≥20-24.9.

And while being overweight does not seem to increase people's chances of contracting COVID-19 according to the study, it can affect the respiratory system, and potentially immune function as well.

And since no crisis will ever be put to waste by a nanny state which after the covid pandemic will control virtually every aspect of our lives, the British government plans to initiate an anti-obesity campaign including strict rules on how junk food is advertised and sold in the UK.

[Aug 02, 2020] The Coronavirus Recovery Handbook: 19 Rehab Exercises for Mild to Severe Cases of COVID-19

Aug 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , Aug 1 2020 10:46 utc | 89

This book is likely required reading for those who have suffered from COVID-19. It's only 76 pages, but only costs $1.99 for the Kindle edition. I downloaded a copy from the Internet and will tuck it away for when I'm unlucky (assuming I would live long enough to try them.)

The Coronavirus Recovery Handbook: 19 Rehab Exercises for Mild to Severe Cases of COVID-19 - Dr. Liu Xiaodan and Dr. Shan Chunlei and their colleagues at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center and Lei Shenshan Hospital in Wuhan.

[Aug 01, 2020] Russia preparing mass vaccination against coronavirus for October

Aug 01, 2020 | www.msn.com

Russia's health minister is preparing a mass vaccination campaign against the novel coronavirus for October, local news agencies reported on Saturday, after a vaccine completed clinical trials.

Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said the Gamaleya Institute, a state research facility in Moscow, had completed clinical trials of the vaccine and paperwork is being prepared to register it, Interfax news agency reported.

He said doctors and teachers would be the first to be vaccinated.

[Aug 01, 2020] Length of interaction with tan infected person matter

Highly recommended!
Aug 01, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

monty42 , 2 hours ago

" We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic."

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372

Revisionist claims now- " In truth, the intent of our article was to push for more masking, not less." "

[Jul 27, 2020] The problem of false positives from Covid-19 tests means UK is inflating its numbers – and taking wrong decisions by Rob Lyons

Jul 27, 2020 | www.rt.com

The problem of false positives from Covid-19 tests means UK is inflating its numbers – and taking wrong decisions Rob Lyons

Rob Lyons is a UK journalist specialising in science, environmental and health issues. He is the author of ' Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder'.

A sign is seen at a drive-through coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing facility in Hyde Park, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, London, Britain, June 11, 2020

When seven staff at a Scottish football club tested positive for coronavirus, alarm bells went off. But really alarming was when six of those results turned out to be wrong. Such inaccurate tests are exaggerating the problem.

Last weekend, at very short notice, the UK reintroduced quarantine measures for people arriving from Spain. For those already in Spain, or for whom it was too late to postpone their trip, the decision is very inconvenient. For those who can't work at home when they return, it may mean missing out on wages for the two weeks they will have to spend in isolation when they get back. But what if the apparent rise in cases has been exaggerated by seemingly small flaws with testing?

The potential for problems was illustrated by Scottish football team St Mirren last week. The club, based in Paisley, a town just west of Glasgow, reported seven positive test results for Covid-19 among its staff. Alarm bells went off about what this might mean for the new Scottish football season. But this "cluster" was a mirage. When the seven people were re-tested using a more accurate method, just one of them was found to be Covid-positive.

In Spain, half of the reported cases have been in people who had no symptoms. We know that many people who test positive never suffer any symptoms. But what if many of these people don't have Covid-19 at all?

READ MORE International airline body slams UK's 'unilaterally decided blanket quarantine' on travellers from Spain

If that sounds implausible, it's important to know that tests are not perfect. There are currently two kinds of tests to see if you have the disease. One kind, the molecular real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test, looks for genetic material from the virus. This kind seems to be very accurate, but it's expensive and time-consuming. The other kind, the antigen test, detects specific proteins on the surface of the virus. This is quicker, easier and cheaper, but it's much less accurate. In developed countries, RT-PCR testing is the norm, but poorer countries may have to make do with antigen testing.

The difficulty at the moment is that there are relatively few cases of Covid-19 in the community, but more and more testing is being done. So even if the RT-PCR test has a high "specificity" – that is, a tiny fraction of test results are false positives – the number could actually be quite significant. For example, let's say that 99.9 percent of the time, a test correctly identifies someone without the disease as negative. Just 0.1 percent of tests produce false positives.

Recently, in the UK, it was estimated that 0.04 percent of people had the virus outside of care homes and hospitals. So, if we tested 10,000 people, we should find four cases of Covid-19, on average. Of the 9,996 other people tested, in this hypothetical example, 0.1 percent who don't have the virus would also test positive – that's 9.996 – in other words, 10 people. So, even if the test is very accurate indeed, we could easily end up with four positive tests from people who really do have the virus and 10 false positives from people who don't.

For any particular individual, the chances of the test being a false positive is small. But when we look at the big picture, we could easily be fooled into thinking that there are many more cases than there really are. Indeed, with a test accuracy of 99.9 percent, if you tested a million people, none of whom actually had the disease, you would produce 1,000 positive results. And for tests with less accuracy – as with St Mirren FC – the situation could be even worse.

The UK government has now performed nearly 11 million tests. Could there be 11,000 "cases" that are simply a mistake ? In turn, that means governments and other authorities might be introducing additional restrictions on people's lives that are actually unnecessary.

The problem of false positives is much less significant when the disease really is in wide circulation. It doesn't change the picture much for the period from mid-March through to the start of June. (In any event, in the UK at least, there was very little testing capacity thanks to the jaw-dropping incompetence of bodies like Public Health England.)

Let's look at the latest figures. On Sunday, July 26, for example, 142,954 tests were processed. Of these, 747 were found to be positive. If 0.1 percent of tests are false positives, we would expect 142 of those 747 positives to be false. If the test turns out to be slightly less accurate – perhaps 'only' 99.5 percent accurate (which still seems very good), then 710, almost all the reported positives, could be false.

We should also bear in mind, when trying to assess the overall situation, that there will be some false negatives. There will also be people who don't show symptoms who do have the virus and never get tested. But this understanding shows that we do need to be careful about reading too much into every small blip in the number of cases. We should be particularly sceptical about imposing new restrictions like mandatory quarantine. And if we rely solely on these tests, we could have the crazy situation where Covid-19 apparently never disappears, even when nobody has got it.

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[Jul 27, 2020] How and when to wear masks

I remember signs on businesses that said "No shirts, no shoes: no service". I don't recall morons screaming at underpaid clerks about their constitutional right not to wear a shirt or shoes.
Population density has at least something to do with it. Big cities are the hardest hit, as would be expected. The US death rate per capita is below that of Belgium, the UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Peru (which is surprising), Chile (another surprise), and France.
Jul 27, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

John Michener20 hours ago

I fail to see your problem with masks. My grandfather wore a gas mask on the front during World War 1. I wear a mask, indeed a N99 mask, when sawing concrete or doing fine wood sanding. When I was in the chemical process industry, some stations had Oxygen rebreathers to deal with the hazards in case of accidents.

Medical staff have always worn respirators around patients with airborne diseases, as have researchers handling such agents. Covid-19, Tuberculosis, and late stage plague are all airborne. Wearing a mask when in a situation when you are potentially exposed is common sense.

So wearing my N99 mask when I go shopping is a trivial additional step. I actually wear nitrile gloves as well - I had them for dealing with paints and solvents.

Now I have had to give up eating out and going to my professional society meetings. I am not happy about that, but I am not willfully stupid. I am approaching 70...

[Jul 27, 2020] One element of being a proper person is having some regard for the wellbeing of other people.

Jul 27, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com

d_hochberg Bradley Perry6 hours ago

One element of being a proper person is having some regard for the wellbeing of other people.

stephen pickard Bradley Perry5 hours ago

To me : A proper person dresses properly for the occasion. A proper person has high regard for both himself and others. A proper person does not smoke in a no smoking zone. A proper person places his child in a child restraint seat while riding in a car. And on and on with other safety festures that we accept.You get my point.

What I would have you do is to do the three things that I mentioned.

Social distance. Good hygiene protocol. And yes wear a mask. A rhetorical question. Would you permit a surgeon and every other person in an operating room go about the surgery masklessess?

SatirevFlesti Bradley Perry10 hours ago

Real science and evidence won't convince the Coronadoom kool-aid drinkers. Masks are all about signalling one's virtue and submission to arbitrary rules and to be seen as "doing something". That the virus has an IFR in the range of flu and that mask are ineffective in stopping spread of viruses doesn't matter to them. They want to force everyone to abdicate human dignity and act in the same paranoid, abject manner as they do. It's all political and has been form the beginning.

njoseph18 SatirevFlesti8 hours ago

So if masks are ineffective, are you comfortable having your surgery team not wear masks and breathe all over you while you're cut open? If not, why not, since masks are ineffective?

I work in a hospital. The people who say Covid is just flu both don't understand how bad Covid is and also don't understand how deadly the flu can be.

A third thing they don't understand is that cloth or surgical masks are about preventing asymptomatic transmission, which is a real thing. I've seen people die from Covid that they caught from someone who was "perfectly healthy."

It is such a simple, small thing to do, and has nothing to do with virtue signalling and everything to do with not killing other people because you're carrying a virus and don't know it. Some of the most Trump supporting people I've ever met work in this hospital and wear masks everywhere they go to protect others, because they understand what Covid is. C'mon people, if other countries can get this right without all the hand-wringing, so
can we.

Gswag99 njoseph188 hours ago • edited

weak straw man emotive argument with no basis in reason or education whatsoever.

njoseph18 Gswag997 hours ago

Umm, actually I am a frontline non clinical hospital worker. I guess you're a bot but if my reasoning is emotive can you kindly share the peer reviewed data upon which you base your perspective?

stephen pickard Gswag995 hours ago

It is a good counter point. One I made above using the same anology. Relevant anologies are powerful antidotes to careless thinking like yours.

Curious SatirevFlesti4 hours ago

I didn't realize Fisher Price ran a medical school

[Jul 25, 2020] Corporate Insiders Pocket $1 Billion in Rush for Coronavirus Vaccine

Jul 25, 2020 | www.msn.com

Corporate Insiders Pocket $1 Billion in Rush for Coronavirus Vaccine David Gelles and Jesse Drucker 11 hrs ago


Opinion: There is more to picking a place to retire than low taxes -- avoid these 5 Reserving a 2021 Ford Bronco? Get Ready To Wait 18 Months to Take Delivery The New York Times logo Corporate Insiders Pocket $1 Billion in Rush for Coronavirus Vaccine

On June 26, a small South San Francisco company called Vaxart made a surprise announcement: A coronavirus vaccine it was working on had been selected by the U.S. government to be part of Operation Warp Speed, the flagship federal initiative to quickly develop drugs to combat Covid-19.

a close up of a cell phone screen with text: Selling Vaxart stock made more than $197 million in profit for Armistice Capital, a hedge fund that owned two-thirds of the company's shares. © Rafael Henrique/Getty Images Selling Vaxart stock made more than $197 million in profit for Armistice Capital, a hedge fund that owned two-thirds of the company's shares.

Vaxart's shares soared. Company insiders, who weeks earlier had received stock options worth a few million dollars, saw the value of those awards increase sixfold. And a hedge fund that partly controlled the company walked away with more than $200 million in instant profits.

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The race is on to develop a coronavirus vaccine, and some companies and investors are betting that the winners stand to earn vast profits from selling hundreds of millions -- or even billions -- of doses to a desperate public.

Across the pharmaceutical and medical industries, senior executives and board members are capitalizing on that dynamic.

They are making millions of dollars after announcing positive developments, including support from the government, in their efforts to fight Covid-19. After such announcements, insiders from at least 11 companies -- most of them smaller firms whose fortunes often hinge on the success or failure of a single drug -- have sold shares worth well over $1 billion since March, according to figures compiled for The New York Times by Equilar, a data provider.

A trial of a potential coronavirus vaccine announced by Moderna in January. Since then, Moderna insiders have sold shares totaling about $248 million. © Ted S. Warren/Associated Press A trial of a potential coronavirus vaccine announced by Moderna in January. Since then, Moderna insiders have sold shares totaling about $248 million.

In some cases, company insiders are profiting from regularly scheduled compensation or automatic stock trades. But in other situations, senior officials appear to be pouncing on opportunities to cash out while their stock prices are sky high. And some companies have awarded stock options to executives shortly before market-moving announcements about their vaccine progress.

a man smiling for the camera: Andrei Floroiu, the chief executive of Vaxart, received stock options worth about $4.3 million in June. A month later, they were worth more than $28 million. © Will Ragozzino/Patrick McMullan Andrei Floroiu, the chief executive of Vaxart, received stock options worth about $4.3 million in June. A month later, they were worth more than $28 million.

The sudden windfalls highlight the powerful financial incentives for company officials to generate positive headlines in the race for coronavirus vaccines and treatments , even if the drugs might never pan out.

Some companies are attracting government scrutiny for potentially using their associations with Operation Warp Speed as marketing ploys.

For example, the headline on Vaxart's news release declared: "Vaxart's Covid-19 Vaccine Selected for the U.S. Government's Operation Warp Speed." But the reality is more complex.

Vaxart's vaccine candidate was included in a trial on primates that a federal agency was organizing in conjunction with Operation Warp Speed. But Vaxart is not among the companies selected to receive significant financial support from Warp Speed to produce hundreds of millions of vaccine doses.

"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has entered into funding agreements with certain vaccine manufacturers, and we are negotiating with others. Neither is the case with Vaxart," said Michael R. Caputo, the department's assistant secretary for public affairs. "Vaxart's vaccine candidate was selected to participate in preliminary U.S. government studies to determine potential areas for possible Operation Warp Speed partnership and support. At this time, those studies are ongoing, and no determinations have been made."

Some officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have grown concerned about whether companies including Vaxart are trying to inflate their stock prices by exaggerating their roles in Warp Speed, a senior Trump administration official said. The department has relayed those concerns to the Securities and Exchange Commission, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It isn't clear if the commission is looking into the matter. An S.E.C. spokeswoman declined to comment.

"Vaxart abides by good corporate governance guidelines and policies and makes decisions in accordance with the best interests of the company and its shareholders," Vaxart's chief executive, Andrei Floroiu, said in a statement on Friday. Referring to Operation Warp Speed, he added, "We believe that Vaxart's Covid-19 vaccine is the most exciting one in O.W.S. because it is the only oral vaccine (a pill) in O.W.S."

Well-timed stock transactions are generally legal. But investors and corporate governance experts say they can create the appearance that executives are profiting from inside information, and could erode public confidence in the pharmaceutical industry when the world is looking to these companies to cure Covid-19.

"It is inappropriate for drug company executives to cash in on a crisis," said Ben Wakana, executive director of Patients for Affordable Drugs, a nonprofit advocacy group. "Every day, Americans wake up and make sacrifices during this pandemic. Drug companies see this as a payday."

Executives at a long list of companies have reaped seven- or eight-figure profits thanks to their work on coronavirus vaccines and treatments.

Shares of Regeneron, a biotech company in Tarrytown, N.Y., have climbed nearly 80 percent since early February, when it announced a collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a Covid-19 treatment. Since then, the company's top executives and board members have sold nearly $700 million in stock. The chief executive, Leonard Schleifer, sold $178 million of shares on a single day in May.

Alexandra Bowie, a spokeswoman for Regeneron, said most of those sales had been scheduled in advance through programs that automatically sell executives' shares if the stock hits a certain price.

Moderna, a 10-year-old vaccine developer based in Cambridge, Mass., that has never brought a product to market, announced in late January that it was working on a coronavirus vaccine. It has issued a stream of news releases hailing its vaccine progress, and its stock has more than tripled, giving the company a market value of almost $30 billion.

Moderna insiders have sold about $248 million of shares since that January announcement, most of it after the company was selected in April to receive federal funding to support its vaccine efforts.

While some of those sales were scheduled in advance, others were more spur of the moment. Flagship Ventures, an investment fund run by the company's founder and chairman, Noubar Afeyan, sold more than $68 million worth of Moderna shares on May 21. Those transactions were not scheduled in advance, according to securities filings.

Executives and board members at Luminex, Quidel and Emergent BioSolutions have sold shares worth a combined $85 million after announcing they were working on vaccines, treatments or testing solutions.

At other companies, executives and board members received large grants of stock options shortly before the companies announced good news that lifted the value of those options.

Novavax, a drugmaker in Gaithersburg, Md., began working on a vaccine early this year. This spring, the company reported promising preliminary test results and a $1.6 billion deal with the Trump administration.

In April, with its shares below $24, Novavax issued a batch of new stock awards to all its employees "in acknowledgment of the extraordinary work of our employees to implement a new vaccine program." Four senior executives, including the chief executive, Stanley Erck, received stock options that were worth less than $20 million at the time.

Since then, Novavax's stock has rocketed to more than $130 a share. At least on paper, the four executives' stock options are worth more than $100 million.

So long as the company hits a milestone with its vaccine testing, which it is expected to achieve soon, the executives will be able to use the options to buy discounted Novavax shares as early as next year, regardless of whether the company develops a successful vaccine.

Silvia Taylor, a Novavax spokeswoman, said the stock awards were designed "to incentivize and retain our employees during this critical time." She added that "there is no guarantee they will retain their value."

Two other drugmakers, Translate Bio and Inovio, awarded large batches of stock options to executives and board members shortly before they announced progress on their coronavirus vaccines, sending shares higher. Representatives of the companies said the options were regularly scheduled annual grants.

Vaxart, though, is where the most money was made the fastest.

At the start of the year, its shares were around 35 cents. Then in late January, Vaxart began working on an orally administered coronavirus vaccine, and its shares started rising.

Vaxart's largest shareholder was a New York hedge fund, Armistice Capital, which last year acquired nearly two-thirds of the company's shares. Two Armistice executives, including the hedge fund's founder, Steven Boyd, joined Vaxart's board of directors. The hedge fund also purchased rights, known as warrants, to buy 21 million more Vaxart shares at some point in the future for as little as 30 cents each.

Vaxart has never brought a vaccine to market. It has just 15 employees. But throughout the spring, Vaxart announced positive preliminary data for its vaccine, along with a partnership with a company that could manufacture it. By late April, with investors sensing the potential for big profits, the company's shares had reached $3.66 -- a tenfold increase from January.

On June 8, Vaxart changed the terms of its warrants agreement with Armistice, making it easier for the hedge fund to rapidly acquire the 21 million shares, rather than having to buy and sell in smaller batches.

One week later, Vaxart announced that its chief executive was stepping down, though he would remain chairman. The new C.E.O., Mr. Floroiu, had previously worked with Mr. Boyd, Armistice's founder, at the hedge fund and the consulting firm McKinsey.

On June 25, Vaxart announced that it had signed a letter of intent with another company that might help it mass-produce a coronavirus vaccine. Vaxart's shares nearly doubled that day.

The next day, Vaxart issued its news release saying it had been selected for Operation Warp Speed. Its shares instantly doubled again, at one pointing hitting $14, their highest level in years.

"We are very pleased to be one of the few companies selected by Operation Warp Speed, and that ours is the only oral vaccine being evaluated," Mr. Floroiu said.

Armistice took advantage of the stock's exponential increase -- at that point up more than 3,600 percent since January. On June 26, a Friday, and the next Monday, the hedge fund exercised its warrants to buy nearly 21 million Vaxart shares for either 30 cents or $1.10 a share -- purchases it would not have been able to make as quickly had its agreement with Vaxart not been modified weeks earlier.

Armistice then immediately sold the shares at prices from $6.58 to $12.89 a share, according to securities filings. The hedge fund's profits were immense: more than $197 million.

"It looks like the warrants may have been reconfigured at a time when they knew good news was coming," said Robert Daines, a professor at Stanford Law School who is an expert on corporate governance. "That's a valuable change, made right as the company's stock price was about to rise."

At the same time, the hedge fund also unloaded some of the Vaxart shares it had previously bought, notching tens of millions of dollars in additional profits.

By the end of that Monday, June 29, Armistice had sold almost all of its Vaxart shares.

Mr. Boyd and Armistice declined to comment.

Mr. Floroiu said the change to the Armistice agreement "was in the best interests of Vaxart and its stockholders" and helped it raise money to work on the Covid-19 vaccine.

He and other Vaxart board members also were positioned for big personal profits. When he became chief executive in mid-June, Mr. Floroiu received stock options that were worth about $4.3 million. A month later, those options were worth more than $28 million.

Normally when companies issue stock options to executives, the options can't be exercised for months or years. Because of the unusual terms and the run-up in Vaxart's stock price, most of Mr. Floroiu's can be cashed in now.

Vaxart's board members also received large grants of stock options, giving them the right to buy shares in the company at prices well below where the stock is now trading. The higher the shares fly, the bigger the profits.

"Vaxart is disrupting the vaccine world," Mr. Floroiu boasted during a virtual investor conference on Thursday. He added that his impression was that "it's OK to make a profit from Covid vaccines, as long as you're not profiteering."

Noah Weiland contributed reporting.

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[Jul 24, 2020] Cold Wars Profit by Craig Murray

Jul 24, 2020 | consortiumnews.com

Consortiumnews Volume 26, Number 206 – Friday, July 24, 2020

AFGHANISTAN , COMMENTARY , FOREIGN POLICY , HISTORY , HUMAN RIGHTS , MEDIA , PROPAGANDA , RUSSIA , RUSSIAGATE , UKRAINE , UNITED KINGDON , UNTIL THIS DAY--HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEWS Cold Wars & Profit July 21, 2020 Save

Craig Murray lambasts a Russophobic media that celebrates a supposed cyber attack on UK vaccine research, ignores collapse of key evidence of a "hack" and dabbles in dubious memorabilia.

The Guardian's headquarters in London. (Bryantbob, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

... ... ...

Attack on UK Vaccine Research

Andrew Marr, center, in 2014. ( Financial Times , Flickr)

A whole slew of these were rehearsed by Andrew Marr on his flagship BBC1 morning show. The latest is the accusation that Russia is responsible for a cyber attack on Covid-19 vaccination research. This is another totally evidence-free accusation. But it misses the point anyway.

The alleged cyber attack, if it happened, was a hack not an attack -- the allegation is that there was an effort to obtain the results of research, not to disrupt research. It is appalling that the U.K. is trying to keep its research results secret rather than share them freely with the world scientific community.

As I have reported before , the U.K. and the USA have been preventing the WHO from implementing a common research and common vaccine solution for Covid-19, insisting instead on a profit driven approach to benefit the big pharmaceutical companies (and disadvantage the global poor).

What makes the accusation that Russia tried to hack the research even more dubious is the fact that Russia had just bought the very research specified. You don't steal things you already own.

Evidence of CIA Hacks

If anybody had indeed hacked the research, we all know it is impossible to trace with certainty the whereabouts of hackers. My VPNs [virtual private networks] are habitually set to India, Australia or South Africa depending on where I am trying to watch the cricket, dodging broadcasting restrictions.

More pertinently, WikiLeaks' Vault 7 release of CIA material showed the specific programs for the CIA in how to leave clues to make a leak look like it came from Russia. This irrefutable evidence that the CIA do computer hacks with apparent Russian "fingerprints" deliberately left, like little bits of Cyrillic script, is an absolutely classic example of a fact that everybody working in the mainstream media knows to be true, but which they all contrive never to mention.

Thus when last week's "Russian hacking" story was briefed by the security services -- that former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn deployed secret documents on U.K./U.S. trade talks which had been posted on Reddit, after being stolen by an evil Russian who left his name of Grigor in his Reddit handle -- there was no questioning in the media of this narrative. Instead, we had another round of McCarthyite witch-hunt aimed at the rather tired looking Corbyn.

Personally, if the Russians had been responsible for revealing that the Tories are prepared to open up the NHS "market" to big American companies, including ending or raising caps on pharmaceutical prices, I should be very grateful to the Russians for telling us. Just as the world would owe the Russians a favor if it were indeed them who leaked evidence of just how systematically the DNC rigged the 2016 primaries against Bernie Sanders.

But as it happens, it was not the Russians. The latter case was a leak by a disgusted insider, and I very much suspect the NHS U.S. trade deal link was also from a disgusted insider.

When governments do appalling things, very often somebody manages to blow the whistle.

On the core subject here: By necessity, a pandemic requires a cooperative international response. Only one country has refused to do so: The US. In their supreme arrogance, our ruling class lost track the fact that the US needs the rest of the world, not the other way way around.

[Jul 24, 2020] Study identifies six different types of COVID-19

Jul 24, 2020 | www.msn.com

We Find the Best $500 Cars to Field in the 24 Hours of Lemons Race Series Sources: Trump erupted over Esper's flag ban

Study identifies six different "types" of COVID-19

A new study of COVID-19 , based on data from a symptom tracker app, determined that there are six distinct "types" of the disease involving different clusters of symptoms. The discovery could potentially open new possibilities for how doctors can better treat individual patients and predict what level of hospital care they would need.

Researchers from King's College London studied data from approximately 1,600 U.K. and U.S. patients who regularly logged their symptoms in the COVID Symptom Tracker App in March and April.

Typically, doctors will look for key symptoms such as cough, fever and loss of the sense of smell to detect COVID-19. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, says the six different "types" of COVID-19 can vary by severity and come with their own set of symptoms.

"I think it's very, very interesting," Dr. Bob Lahita, who is not affiliated with the study, told CBSN anchors Vladimir Duthiers and Anne-Marie Green. "Among the patients I see, those who recovered, many of them present different ways: some people with fever and some without fever, and some with nausea and vomiting, some people with diarrhea , etc."

The six clusters of symptoms outlined in the study are:

  1. Flu-like with no fever: Headache, loss of smell, muscle pains, cough, sore throat, chest pain, no fever.
  2. Flu-like with fever: Headache, loss of smell, cough, sore throat, hoarseness, fever, loss of appetite.
  3. Gastrointestinal: Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, diarrhea, sore throat, chest pain, no cough.
  4. Severe level one, fatigue: Headache, loss of smell, cough, fever, hoarseness, chest pain, fatigue.
  5. Severe level two, confusion: Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue, confusion, muscle pain.
  6. Severe level three, abdominal and respiratory: Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue, confusion, muscle pain, shortness of breath, diarrhea, abdominal pain.

The first level, "flu-like with no fever," is associated with headaches, loss of smell, muscle pains, cough, sore throat and chest pain. Patients at this level have a 1.5% chance of needing breathing support such as oxygen or a ventilator.

The second type, "flu-like with fever," includes symptoms like loss of appetite, headache, loss of smell, cough, sore throat, hoarseness and fever. Researchers say about 4.4% of patients at this level needed breathing support.

Patients with the third type, simply described as "gastrointestinal," do not have a cough as part of their illness. Instead, they experience headache, diarrhea, loss of smell, loss of appetite, sore throat and chest pain, and about 3.3% needed breathing support.

Lahita referred to the following three clusters of COVID-19 as the "really severe types."

In type four, or "severe level one," patients experience fatigue along with headache, loss of smell, cough, fever, hoarseness and chest pain. Patients at this level needed breathing support at a rate of 8.6%.

Type five, "severe level two," includes the symptoms of type four along with loss of appetite, sore throat and muscle pain, and is mainly distinguished by confusion .

"That means you don't know where you are or where you live, whether you are in or out of the hospital, who your relatives are," Lahita explained. "That is very scary." Almost 10% of patients at that level need breathing support.

The most severe type of COVID-19 is referred to as "severe level three, abdominal and respiratory," and has all the above symptoms along with abdominal pain, shortness of breath and diarrhea. Nearly 20% of these patients need breathing support.

"Those are the severe level threes who wind up on a ventilator, and then it is touch-and-go as to whether they survive the infection entirely," Lahita said.

The U.K. researchers also found that only 16% of patients with type one COVID-19 required hospitalization, compared with nearly half of the patients with type six.

Patients in the severe clusters also tended to be older or with pre-existing conditions and weakened immune systems, compared to those in the first three.

Scientists hope the discovery, once further studied, could help predict what types of care patients with COVID-19 might need, and give doctors the ability to predict which patients would fall into which category.

"I'm very happy that these six types have been identified and can give us an idea of a prognosis going forward for patients who are afflicted with this virus," Lahita said.

[Jul 23, 2020] COVID-19/nCOV/SARS-2 immunity comes from T-cell and B-cell activity

Jul 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Jul 23 2020 15:30 utc | 8

More talk about T-cells and B-cells (per Volchkov)
Australia T-cell and B-cell research
To recap: Volchkov, a Russian geneticist/medical researcher, was quoted in a John Helmer article that he believes the true COVID-19/nCOV/SARS-2 immunity comes from T-cell and B-cell activity. His view is based upon multiple European studies employing a very expensive T-cell/B-cell test called ELISPOT - and is that the actual nCOV infection rate is likely far higher than spot PCR or antibody tests can ever detect. In particular, if 20% of people tested by PCR or antibody tests show exposure, the likely actual exposure rate is 3 times higher (60% vs. 20%).
This has huge ramifications if true: it means places with high nCOV death rates have likely already achieved herd immunity levels.
One thing is true: death rates in every single nation and region with a high nCOV death/million count have fallen dramatically.
People are still dying, but they are dying at a far lower CFR/IFR rate.
IF, and I mean *IF*, this is true, this means the lockdown strategies actually did very little to "contain" the outbreak.
This is why looking at the historical behavior in different US states is so important.
California locked down early, but the nCOV mortality rates (both absolute and relative) have basically been flat from April until now.

[Jul 21, 2020] Scientists report that airborne coronavirus is probably infectious

Notable quotes:
"... This boosts the hypothesis that normal speaking and breathing, not just coughing and sneezing, are responsible for spreading COVID-19 -- and that infectious doses of the virus can travel distances far greater than the six feet (two meters) urged by social distancing guidelines. ..."
"... The paper was posted to the medrxiv.org website, where most cutting-edge research during the pandemic has first been made public. ..."
"... The team managed to collect microdroplets as small as one micron in diameter. They then placed these samples into a culture to make them grow, finding that three of the 18 samples tested were able to replicate. For Santarpia, this represents proof that microdroplets, which also travel much greater distances than big droplets, are capable of infecting people. "It is replicated in cell culture and therefore infectious," he said. ..."
Jul 21, 2020 | www.msn.com

Scientists have known for several months the new coronavirus can become suspended in microdroplets expelled by patients when they speak and breathe, but until now there was no proof that these tiny particles are infectious.

A new study by scientists at the University of Nebraska that was uploaded to a medical preprint site this week has shown for the first time that SARS-CoV-2 taken from microdroplets, defined as under five microns, can replicate in lab conditions.

This boosts the hypothesis that normal speaking and breathing, not just coughing and sneezing, are responsible for spreading COVID-19 -- and that infectious doses of the virus can travel distances far greater than the six feet (two meters) urged by social distancing guidelines.

The results are still considered preliminary and have not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, which would lend more credibility to the methods devised by the scientists.

The paper was posted to the medrxiv.org website, where most cutting-edge research during the pandemic has first been made public.

The same team wrote a paper in March showing that the virus remains airborne in the rooms of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and this study will soon be published in a journal, according to the lead author.

"It is actually fairly difficult" to collect the samples, Joshua Santarpia, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center told AFP.

The team used a device the size of a cell phone for the purpose, but "the concentrations are typically very low, your chances of recovering material are small."

The scientists took air samples from five rooms of bedridden patients, at a height of about a foot (30 centimeters) over the foot of their beds.

The patients were talking, which produces microdroplets that become suspended in the air for several hours in what is referred to as an "aerosol," and some were coughing.

The team managed to collect microdroplets as small as one micron in diameter. They then placed these samples into a culture to make them grow, finding that three of the 18 samples tested were able to replicate. For Santarpia, this represents proof that microdroplets, which also travel much greater distances than big droplets, are capable of infecting people. "It is replicated in cell culture and therefore infectious," he said.

Why we wear masks

The potential for microdroplet transmission of the coronavirus was at one stage thought to be improbable by health authorities across the world. Later, scientists began to change their mind and acknowledge it may be a possibility, which is the rationale for universal masking.

The World Health Organization was among the last to shift its position, doing so on July 7.

"I feel like the debate has become more political than scientific," said Santarpia. "I think most scientists that work on infectious diseases agree that there's likely an airborne component, though we may quibble over how large."

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Linsey Marr, a professor at Virginia Tech who is a leading expert on aerial transmission of viruses and wasn't involved in the study, said it was rare to obtain measurements of the amount of virus present in air.

"Based on what we know about other diseases and what we know so far about SARS-CoV-2, I think we can assume that if the virus is 'infectious in aerosols,' then we can become infected by breathing them in," she told AFP.

[Jul 20, 2020] Russian Elite Received 'Experimental' COVID-19 Vaccine As Early As April -

Jul 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Russian Elite Received 'Experimental' COVID-19 Vaccine As Early As April by Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2020 - 07:22 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Last week, we shared news of what Russia's scientific community had touted as a major breakthrough in the development of a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2: A vaccine trial at Moscow's Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University had yielded the first successful human trials. The American business press slavishly parrots every Moderna press release as the company regurgitates its Phase 1 trial results, despite the fact that the politically-connected biotech company's stage 3 clinical trials won't begin until later this month. Meanwhile, its CEO Stephane Bancel and other executives have cashed in on their Moderna shares, prompting SEC chief Jay Clayton to sheepishly caution against credibility-destroying insider selling.

Despite all of this, we didn't hear a peep out of the western press about the Sechenov trial's accomplishments . However, a few days later, with anxieties about Russia-backed electoral interference intensifying and 'national polls' hinting at a Biden landslide, the British press reported on a new 'policy paper' accusing those pesky Ruskies of trying to steal British research involving COVID-19 vaccines. Intel shared by Canada and the US purportedly supported this conclusion, though Russia has vehemently denied the accusations.

But that's not all: Around the same time, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab accused Russia of trying to meddle in the UK's December election (which returned the Tories to power and ended the reign of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn).

Were these reports about Russia's vaccine-trial successes merely a smokescreen? The British might see it that way, but on Monday, US-based Bloomberg News published an interesting report claiming that certain Russian VIPs had been administered experimental doses of a vaccine prototype as early as April. Reportedly developed by Moscow's Gamaleya Institute and financed by the state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund, this Russian vaccine candidate is a so-called "viral vector vaccine" based on human adenovirus - a common cold virus fused with the spike protein of SARS CoV-2 to stimulate a human immune response.

It's similar to a vaccine being developed by China's CanSino Biologics, according to Bloomberg.

Scores of members of Russia's business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the effort, as the country races to be among the first to develop an inoculation.

Top executives at companies including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, as well as billionaire tycoons and government officials began getting shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow as early as April, the people said. They declined to be identified as the information isn't public.

The Gamaleya vaccine, financed by the state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund and backed by the military, last week completed a phase 1 trial involving Russian military personnel. The institute hasn't published results for the study, which involved about 40 people, but has begun the next stage of trials with a larger group.

Gamaleya's press office couldn't be reached by phone Sunday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn't respond to a text message asking whether President Vladimir Putin or others in his administration have had the shots. A government spokesman couldn't immediately comment.

Wait... so the Russians hacked the British vaccine research, traveled back in time, then decided to test their vaccine prototype on some of the most powerful people in Russia's (highly unequal) society? Well, they had to first travel to the future to steal the time-travel technology from the Americans (bear with us...we're still piecing it all together).

The program under which members of Russia's business and political elite have been given the chance to volunteer for doses of the experimental vaccine is legal but kept under wraps to avoid a crush of potential participants, according to a researcher familiar with the effort. He said several hundred people have been involved. Bloomberg confirmed dozens who have had the shots but none would allow their names to be published.

It's not clear how participants are selected and they aren't part of the official studies, though they are monitored and their results logged by the institute. Patients usually get the shots - two are needed to produce an immune response Gamaleya says will last for about two years - at a Moscow clinic connected to the institute. Participants aren't charged a fee and sign releases that they know the risks involved.

Dmitriev of the RDIF said he and his family had taken the shots and noted that a significant number of other volunteers have also been given the opportunity. He declined to provide further details. The Gamaleya Institute said it vaccinated its director, as well as the team working on the trial, when it started. In May, state-controlled Sberbank recruited volunteers among employees to test the institute's vaccine.

O ne top executive who had the vaccine said he experienced no side effects. He said he decided to risk taking the experimental shots in order to be able to live a normal life and have business meetings as usual. Other participants have reported fever and muscle aches after getting the shots.

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Is it so hard to believe that Russia had enough faith in its vaccine prototype that it would allow certain individuals the choice of receiving an early dose? After all, EU governments are already buying up millions of doses of Moderna's still-largely-untested vaccine candidate.

Similarly, is it possible that Russian spies were simply monitoring the competition?

Who knows? When it comes to the shadowy world of espionage, the public rarely hears the full story. Russia's outbreak has slowed in recent weeks as it has been overtaken by India, which now counts more than 1 million confirmed cases. Meanwhile Russia has confirmed more than 750,000 cases of Covid-19, the fourth-largest total in the world.

[Jul 20, 2020] Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Show -No Adverse Effects- -

Jul 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

pdate (0935ET): A coronavirus vaccine candidate developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca has shown promise in an early trial which found it to be safe for human consumption while reliably producing antibodies that are effective at stopping the virus.

In what looked like a coordinated one-two punch, one of the top researchers leading the Oxford-Astrazeneca trials said in an interview published Monday morning that the research was making "good progress". Minutes later, the Lancet published the first Phase 1/2 trial results, which showed that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine caused "robust immune responses" and was "tolerated" by all study subjects.

That interview was published Monday morning in the US, just minutes before the Lancet released the results of a Phase 1/2 study of the Oxford-AZ vaccine, the most highly anticipated COVID-19 news of the day.

There are currently more than 137 vaccine candidates undergoing preclinical development, and 23 in early clinical development, according to WHO. Of these, candidates from Moderna and the Oxford-AstraZeneca partnership are two of the most closely followed prototypes. Governments have already started ordering the vaccine from Moderna, even though approval is still months, perhaps years, away.

According to the Lancet, research has shown that vaccine candidates from Cansino and Astra-Oxford trial have been making good progress, and while they couldn't say much conclusively, the Astra-Oxford trial showed no worrisome "adverse effects".

The Phase 1/2 trial, one of the first human studies of the vaccine, showed an appropriate "immune response". Patients who received 2 doses instead of one saw a stronger response. All patients who received the vaccine generated the desired immune response.

Oxford's candidate "showed an acceptable safety profile, and homologous boosting increased antibody responses. These results "support large scale evaluation of this candidate vaccine in an ongoing phase 3 program." The Oxford-AZ study included 1,077 participants spread across 5 test sites in and around the UK.

By comparison, Moderna has released press releases touting findings from studies with fewer than 100 patients. The fact that 8 patients developed neutralizing antibodies in a study that involved dozens of additional subjects was apparently news enough for Moderna, which released a market-pumping press release on those findings a few weeks back.

Though to be sure, not everybody was impressed.

In the study, researchers measured the number of antibodies, and the strength of the immune response, after administering single doses and double doses of the vaccine to various groups of study subjects, and compared those results with a control group who received another vaccine. Pain and swelling caused by the injection were easily treated with paracetemol.

There were no serious adverse events related to ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. In the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group, spike-specific T-cell responses peaked on day 14 (median 856 spot-forming cells per million peripheral blood mononuclear cells, IQR 493–1802; n=43). Anti-spike IgG responses rose by day 28 (median 157 ELISA units [EU], 96–317; n=127), and were boosted following a second dose (639 EU, 360–792; n=10). Neutralising antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2 were detected in 32 (91%) of 35 participants after a single dose when measured in MNA80 and in 35 (100%) participants when measured in PRNT50. After a booster dose, all participants had neutralising activity (nine of nine in MNA80 at day 42 and ten of ten in Marburg VN on day 56). Neutralising antibody responses correlated strongly with antibody levels measured by ELISA (R²=0·67 by Marburg VN; p<0·001).

The result: The vaccine candidate has been deemed safe enough to move on to 'Phase 3', which would involve large-scale human trials.

ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 showed an acceptable safety profile, and homologous boosting increased antibody responses. These results, together with the induction of both humoral and cellular immune responses, support largescale evaluation of this candidate vaccine in an ongoing phase 3 programme.

Read the full Lancet paper below:

[Jul 18, 2020] COVID-19- What Does Being Positive Really Mean- What Are We Really Detecting- - Fort Russ

Jul 18, 2020 | fort-russ.com

By Dr. Sherri Tenpenny – May 21, 2020an osteopathic medical doctor, board-certified in three specialties. She is the founder of Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, a medical clinic located near Cleveland, Ohio. Her company, Courses4Mastery.com provides online education and training regarding all aspects of vaccines and vaccination.

_____________________________

In 1965, scientists identified the first human coronavirus; it was associated with the common cold. The Coronavirus family, named for their crown-like appearance, currently includes 36 viruses. Within that group, there are 4 common viruses that have been causing infection in humans for more than sixty years. In addition, three pandemic coronaviruses that can infect humans: SARS, MERS, and now, SARS-CoV-2.

As the news of deaths in China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran began to saturate every form of media 24/7, we became familiar with a new term: COVID-19. To be clear, the name of the newly identified coronavirus is SARS-CoV-2, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2. This virus is associated with fever, cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath, the complex of symptoms that form the diagnosis of COVID-19.

The Trump administration declared a public health emergency on January 31, 2020, then on February 2 placed a ban on the entry of most travelers who had recently been in China. On February 4, Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a declaration of public health emergency and activated the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, otherwise known as the PREP Act. This nefarious legislation provides complete protection of manufacturers from liability for all products, technologies, biologics, or any vaccine developed as a medical countermeasure against COVID-19. For those nervously waiting for the vaccine to become available, be sure to understand the PREP Act before rushing to the get in line.

Calls for testing – to see if a person is or isn't infected – began soon after the emergency was declared, but performing those tests was initially slow due to an inadequate number of test kits. As the kits became available, those developed by the CDC had a defect: The reagents reacted to the negative control sample , making the test inaccurate and the kits unusable.

In various countries, thousands of test kits purchased from China were found to be contaminated with the SARS-CoV-2 viruses. No one really knows how that happened, but theories spread like wildfire. Could the test kit infect the person being tested? Or, did it mean the test would return a false-positive result, driving up the numbers of those said to be infected so those in power could implement stronger lockdowns and accelerate the hockey-stick unemployment rates? Neither of those questions has been adequately answered.

Mandatory Testing of what?

Authorities claim that testing is important for public health officials to assess if their mitigation efforts – "shelter in place" and "social distancing" and "wearing a mask" – are making a difference to "flatten the curve." Officials also claim that testing is necessary to know how many persons are infected within a community and to understand the nature of how coronaviruses spread.

Are these reasons sufficient to give up our health freedom and our personal rights, being tested and shamed in public?

Despite the challenges with test kits, testing began. By the end of March 2020, more than 1 million people had been tested across the US. By May 9, the number tested had grown to over 8.7M. Testing methods include a swab of the nasal passages or by inserting a long, uncomfortable swab through the nose to scrape the back of the throat. Specimens have also been obtained bronchoalveolar lavage, from sputum , and from stool specimens.

The call for mandatory testing has been gathering steam and becoming ever more onerous. In Washington state, Governor Inslee has declared:

Individuals that refuse to cooperate with contact tracers and/or refuse testing, those individuals will not be allowed to leave their homes to purchase basic necessities such as groceries and/or prescriptions. Those persons will need to make arrangements through friends, family, or state provided 'family support' personnel .

But what do the results really mean?

Who Should Be Tested

On May 8, 2020, the CDC has listed specific priorities for when testing should be done. As of May 16, more than 11-million samples have been collected and more than 3700 specimens have not yet been evaluated.

High Priority

Priority

Read that last priority again: That means virtually everyone can be required to get a test.

Is that a violation of your personal rights? And, if you submit to testing, what does a "positive test" actually mean?

Types of Testing: RT-PCR

PCR, short for polymerase chain reaction , is a highly specific laboratory technique. The key to understanding PCR testing is that PCR can identify an individual specific virus within a viral family.

Has COVID-19 Testing Made the Problem Worse? Confusion Regarding "The True Health Impacts"

However, a PCR test can only be used to identify DNA viruses; the SARS-CoV2 virus is an RNA virus. Therefore, multiple steps must be taken to "magnify" the amount of genetic material in the specimen. Researchers used a method called RT-PCR, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, to specifically identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It's a complicated process. To read more about it, go here and here.

If a nasal or a blood sample contains a tiny snip of RNA from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, RT-PCR can identify it, leading to a high probability that the person has been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

However – and this is important – a positive RT-PCR test result does not necessarily indicate a full virus is present. The virus must be fully intact to be transmitted and cause illness.

RT-PCR Testing: The Importance of Timing

Even if a person has had all the symptoms associated with a coronavirus infection or has been closely exposed to persons who have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the probability of a RT-PCR test being positive decreases with the number of days past the onset of symptoms.

According to a study done by Paul Wikramaratna and others:

In other words, the longer the time frame between the onset of symptoms and the time a person is tested, the more likely the test will be negative.

Repeat testing of persons who have a negative test may (eventually) confirm the presence of viral RNA, but this is impractical. Additionally, repeated testing of the same person can lead to even more confusing results: The test may go from negative, to positive, then back to negative again as the immune system clears out the coronavirus infection and moves to recovery.

And what makes this testing even more confusing is that the FDA admits that "The detection of viral RNA by RT-PCR does not necessarily equate with an infectious virus."

Let's break that down:

You've had all the symptoms of COVID19, but your RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is negative.

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So, what does a "positive" test actually mean? And that's the problem:

No one knows for sure.

Another Type of Testing: Antibodies

According to the nonprofit Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) , more than 200 serologic blood tests, to test for antibodies, are either now available or in development.

There are two primary types of antibodies that are assessed for nearly any type of infection: IgM and IgG. While several new testing devices are being touted as a home test, they are not the same as a home pregnancy test or a glucometer to you're your blood sugar. The blood spot or saliva specimen can be collected at home, must it must then be sent to a laboratory for analysis. It can take a few days – or longer – to get the results. With so many tests in the pipeline, the ability to test at home will be changing over time.

The first antibody to rise is IgM. It rises quickly after the onset of the infection and is usually a sign of an acute, or current, infection. The IgM levels diminish quickly as the infection resolves. The FDA admits they do not know how long the IgM remains present for SARS-CoV-2 as the infection is being cleared.

The interpretation of an IgG antibody is more difficult. This antibody is an indicator of a past infection. The test is often not specific enough to determine if the past infection was caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus or one of the four common coronaviruses that cause influenza-like illness.

The FDA says:

Because serology testing can yield a negative test result even if the patient is actively infected (e.g., the body has not yet developed in response to the virus) or maybe falsely positive (e.g., if the antibody indicates a past infection by a different coronavirus), this type of testing should not be used to diagnose an acute or active COVID-19 infection.

Similarly, the CDC says the following regarding antibody testing:

What? Wait!

If the FDA does not know if an IgG antibody to SARS-CoV-2 after recovering from the infection is protective against a future infection, then they certainly don't know if an antibody caused by a vaccine will prevent infection either.

Doesn't this completely eliminate the theory that antibodies afford protection and antibodies from vaccines are necessary to keep you from getting sick?

Mandatory Testing – New Job Creation

Illinois U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush introduced the H.R. 6666 TRACE Act on May 1. On his website, Rush said ,

Until we have a vaccine to defeat this dreaded disease, contact tracing in order to understand the full breadth and depth of the spread of this virus is the only way we will be able to get out from under this.

H.R.6666 would authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), acting through the Director of the CDC to award grants to eligible entities to conduct diagnostic testing and then to trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals. The contact tracers would be authorized to test people in their homes and as necessary, quarantine people in place.

Where do they intend to do this testing? Besides mobile units to test people in their homes, the bill identifies eight specific locations where the testing and contract tracing could occur: schools, health clinics, universities, churches, and "any other type of entity" the secretary of HHS wants to use.

The bill would allocate $100 billion in 2020 "and such sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 2021 and any subsequent fiscal year during which the emergency period continues."

But what are they looking for?

The virus is rapidly mutating, which is rather typical of RNA viruses. In a study published in April 2020, researchers have discovered that the novel coronavirus has mutated into at least 30 different genetic variations. If your RT-PCR test is positive, does this identify exposure to the pandemic virus or exposure to one of the genetic variations? The same can be said about the vaccines under development: With each mutation, is the vaccine more likely to be all risk and no benefit when it reaches the market?

What You Can Do

Across the nation, police are being told to not apprehend criminals but instead, to arrest parents at playgrounds, to arrest lone surfers on public beaches, to fine ministers and congregation members sitting in their cars listening to a service on the radio, and to restrict movement by creating one-way sidewalks.

People have had enough. They are beginning to see the huge scam that has been perpetrated on the entire world over a viral infection with a global death rate of 1.4% (meaning, 1.4% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have a fatal outcome, while 98.6% recover). This is far fewer deaths than a severe flu season.

We're already starting to see the thrust to take our power back:

While they shut us down and held us hostage in our homes, they changed our society, our lives, our world.

It's time for Americans to resist with non-violent civil disobedience. Be brave. Be bold. Put on the full armor of God, as found in Ephesians 6:10-20 in the Bible, to stand against the world rulers of this present darkness. With God on our side, all things are possible.

*

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[Jul 18, 2020] Lee Camp- The Life-Saving COVID-19 Drugs You've Never Heard Of (and Why)

Jul 18, 2020 | www.mintpressnews.com

he American profit-based healthcare system impacts us in more ways than just our gargantuan bill at the excretion end of an emergency room visit. Right now, our lovable idiotic inhumane healthcare system is acting as a hurdle to the manufacture and procurement of the right drugs to treat Covid-19.

One of the drugs currently trumpeted as our savior is Remdesivir . Despite sounding like the name of a Hobbit in Middle Earth, some reports from the corporate media make it sound like the drug will thrust us face-first into a fresh world of happiness -- water parks and restaurants and random no-holds-barred make-outs with strangers. A world where when someone sneezes, we don't dive under our desk with an adult diaper strapped on our face as a makeshift mask.

There's only one problem. The big pharma company that owns Remdesivir, Gilead, has already made clear their plans to profiteer from this pandemic. As The LA Times put it

Drugmaker Gillead says it's doing you a favor by setting the price for its pending COVID-19 treatment, Remdesivir, at more than $2,000 for government agencies and over $3,000 for private insurers."

How does the CEO of Gilead, Daniel O'Day, justify this disgusting price point? He claims they're under-pricing Remdesivir. He said , "In normal circumstances, we would price a medicine according to the value it provides. Earlier hospital discharge would result in hospital savings of approximately $12,000 per patient."

Public Outcry Follows Gilead Decision to Charge $3000 for COVID Drug that Costs Pennies to Produce Gilead announced that a five-day course of its drug Remdesivir -- used to fight COVID-19 -- will cost $3,120 despite costing pennies to produce.

MintPress News | Alan Macleod | Jul 1

The value it provides?? So, if a doctor saves someone's life with heart surgery, then that guy owes the doctor the entire worth of the rest of his life? Millions of dollars? Maybe he should become the surgeon's butler or wet nurse.

Saying something should cost even close to the value it provides ranks up there as one of the stupidest arguments ever spoken. (Second only to when the people at Mountain Dew argued that human beings would love a Doritos-flavored soft drink named "Dewitos.") So, for a dude taking Viagra who can now get it up, he owes the makers of Viagra – what? – sex with his wife? Or does he just owe them 300 orgasms? Or perhaps he owes them the child he's able to produce while taking the pills. ("Dear Cialis Folks, I'm emailing to ask for a mailing address to send you my 2-year-old, Robbie. Fair is fair. I want to give you the value of your goods. Just be careful – he bites a lot. And he's already totally racist. Not sure how he picked that up so young.")

But there's another catch to Gilead's price-gouging shenanigans. They didn't create Remdesivir. We did. You and me.

Public Citizen revealed that Gilead raked in over $70 million from taxpayers. Plus, federal scientists ran the team that found out Remdesivir also worked against Coronaviruses. And, " The National Institutes of Health ran the trial that led to Remdesivir's emergency use authorization, and public funding is supporting clinical trials around the world today."

You and I paid for the creation and research behind Remdesivir. There is absolutely no reason we should fill the pockets of Gilead's preposterously rich CEO and its board. Most countries realize this. Most countries don't behave this way. Most countries have some tiny modicum of respect for the lives of their citizens. America is not most countries.

Back to the LA Times , "Nearly all other developed countries limit how much pharmaceutical companies can charge for prescription meds. The U.S. doesn't operate like that. We allow drug companies to charge as much as they please "

Perhaps prescription meds that cost the same as landing a man on Mars (in a pair of Jimmy Choo heels) are the reason 42 percent of new cancer patients have their entire life savings wiped out within two years. The average amount drained from a patient is nearly $100,000, and the entire medical costs for U.S. cancer patients per year is $80 billion . Why ever change a system that piles such bulbous mountains of cash in the vaults of those running the show?

Apparently most other national governments don't want to ruin the lives of every cancer survivor. As to why not, one can only guess.

But this story gets crazier. Not only is Remdesivir way over-priced, we're not even sure it does much. Some studies show it achieves almost nothing. Meanwhile, according to the Intercept

[A]nother Covid-19 treatment has quietly been shown to be more effective. A three-drug regimen offered a greater reduction in the time it took patients to recover than Remdesivir did. People who took the combination of interferon beta-1b, lopinavir-ritonavir, and ribavirin got better in seven days as opposed to 12 days for those who didn't take it."

However, I have yet to hear of a mad rush to hoard those drugs. Why is that? Probably because those drugs don't have colossal marketing campaigns that would make Coca-Cola blush. In fact there appears to be no marketing campaign whatsoever for the more effective drugs. To figure out why that is, one simply must follow the money.

New Research Shows Anti-Coronavirus Drugs Could Be Produced for Pennies A new study shows that several drugs that have shown promise in fighting the coronavirus could be produced cheaply and in en masse.

MintPress News | Alan Macleod | Apr 10

[E]ach of the three drugs in the new combination is generic, or no longer under patent, which means that no company stands to profit significantly from its use."

Must cut-throat late-stage capitalism always be so predictable?

Only the ridiculously profitable drugs are worth hyping. Only the money makers deserve 80,000 commercials telling every consumer to irrationally demand them. The cheap drugs that simply – save lives – those are garbage. What's the point of saving a life if you can't make a bundle from it? I've always said, "A life saved without extracting a shitload of money from it, is a life lost."

I don't know that this last part needs saying, but I'm going to do it anyway. When a society has a system built on profit, run by sociopaths, based on the manipulation of lizard-brain impulses, then it will always end up in a race to the bottom. With unfettered capitalism we inevitably find ourselves with the worst drugs, priced at the highest amounts, hoarded by those who need them the least.

Unless we're talking about recreational illegal drugs. Those are cheaper than ever.

If you feel this column is important, please share it.

Feature photo | A lab technician works at the Eva Pharma facility in Cairo, Egypt, July 12, 2020, where Remdesivir is being produced. Nariman El-Mofty | AP

Lee Camp is the host of the hit comedy news show "Redacted Tonight." His new book "Bullet Points and Punch Lines" is available at LeeCampBook.com and his standup comedy special can be streamed for free at LeeCampAmerican.com .

This article was published with special permission from the author. It originally appeared at Consortium News .

Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.


[Jul 15, 2020] These Are the Drugs and Vaccines That Might End the Coronavirus Pandemic

Jul 15, 2020 | www.bloomberg.com

Vaccines Vaccines give broad parts of the population some level of immunity and are considered crucial to ending the pandemic. They also take longer to develop, in part because they must be proven to be extremely safe since they're given to healthy people. While some researchers say a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year, others say it could take far longer.
COMPANY Oxford University, AstraZeneca Plc NAME ChAdOx1 nCov-19 PROGRESS Phase 3

The vaccine is made from a harmless virus that's been altered to produce the surface spike protein from SARS-CoV-2.

LATEST NEWS With human trials underway, the U.S. government has pledged as much as $1.2 billion, and the company plans to produce as many as 30 million doses available in the U.K. by September. Other groups are moving to line up access elsewhere. COMPANY Moderna Inc. NAME mRNA-1273 RECENTLY UPDATED Phase 2

Moderna's mRNA-1273 uses messenger RNA to prompt the body to make a key protein from the virus, creating an immune response.

LATEST NEWS Moderna's vaccine produced antibodies to the coronavirus in all patients tested in an initial safety trial. The company expects a phase 3 trial to begin July 27. COMPANY CanSino Biologics Inc. NAME Ad5-nCoV PROGRESS Phase 2

CanSino's vaccine was developed alongside China's military and is genetically engineered with a replication-defective mutant virus.

LATEST NEWS CanSino's vaccine has received a special authorization to be used by China's military after a study showed it generated an immune response. President Xi Jinping says the country will make any vaccine available as a global public good. COMPANY BioNTech SE, Pfizer Inc. NAME multiple candidates PROGRESS Phase 2

BioNTech's BNT162 is another messenger RNA vaccine platform that the German company is developing with Pfizer. In China, BioNTech is co-developing vaccines with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group.

LATEST NEWS One of the companies' vaccine candidates has shown promising antibody responses. Further testing in up to 30,000 people may start as early as July. COMPANY Sinovac Biotech Ltd NAME No name yet PROGRESS Phase 3

The vaccine uses inactivated virus, which can help the body develop antibodies to the pathogen without risking infection.

LATEST NEWS Sinovac has begun human trials in China. The company says its vaccine candidate can neutralize different strains of the virus. COMPANY China National Biotec Group Co., Beijing Institute of Biological Products NAME No name yet PROGRESS Phase 3

The vaccine uses inactivated virus, which can help the body develop antibodies to the pathogen without risking infection.

LATEST NEWS With phase 2 trials complete, a vaccine could be available as soon as the end of this year, according to an official report in May. COMPANY Novavax Inc. NAME NVX-CoV2373 RECENTLY UPDATED Phase 2

Novavax's vaccine is meant to create antibodies that block a protein "spike" that the virus uses to infect its host.

LATEST NEWS Novavax has received $1.6 billion from the U.S. government as it prepares for a final-stage study as early as this fall. COMPANY Johnson & Johnson NAME No name yet PROGRESS Preclinical

J&J is working on an unnamed adenovirus-based vaccine as well as two backups.

LATEST NEWS J&J accelerated plans for human studies and aims to make up to 1 billion doses by the end of 2021 . J&J has said its vaccine could be ready for emergency use by January, and it has received $456 million from the U.S. COMPANY Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline Plc NAME No name yet PROGRESS Preclinical

Sanofi is working on a vaccine using technology already employed in one of its flu vaccines, which could speed development and production.

LATEST NEWS France's Sanofi has partnered with the U.K.'s Glaxo on a project backed by U.S. funding. The companies plan to start human trials in the second half of this year. Sanofi is also developing an mRNA vaccine with Translate Bio. COMPANY Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. NAME INO-4800 RECENTLY UPDATED Phase 1

Inovio's experimental vaccine uses DNA to activate a patient's immune system.

LATEST NEWS Inovio says an early trial showed positive immune responses but investors complained about a lack of detail. COMPANY Merck & Co. NAME No names yet PROGRESS Preclinical

Merck's two vaccine candidates employ exisiting technology behind its Ebola virus shot and a measles virus vector platform discovered by the Pasteur Institute, respectively.

LATEST NEWS Merck has partnered with AIDS researchers to develop a vaccine using technology already employed in its Ebola virus shot. The company has also agreed to buy biotech Themis, gaining a vaccine candidate that uses an existing measles virus vector platform. COMPANY Imperial College London NAME No name yet PROGRESS Phase 1

When injected, the RNA vaccine candidate delivers genetic instructions to muscle cells to make the "spike" protein on the surface of the coronavirus.

LATEST NEWS Researchers have received U.K. funding and have begun human trials.

[Jul 11, 2020] The Great Covid-19 Deception and What You Need to Know to Survive by Gary Heavin

Jul 11, 2020 | www.unz.com
The Great Covid-19 Deception and What You Need to Know to Survive GARY HEAVIN JULY 10, 2020 1,600 WORDS 74 COMMENTS REPLY Tweet Reddit Share Share Email Print More RSS

I've been speaking with my friends who include medical doctors and other highly educated people about the treatments that they would seek if they were diagnosed with Covid 19. Most of them had no idea what course of treatment they or their families might seek. This conundrum is in part due to the massive volume of information that is being thrown at us. Much of this information is deliberately deceptive. I am writing this article to cut through the deception so that you and your physician can make informed decisions if and when the time comes.

This article has two purposes. First, it's imperative that you understand the great deceit that Big Pharma, their minions at the FDA, CDC, NIH, the WHO, the MSM, and officials in high government positions are perpetrating on you, your family, and likely your doctor.

The second purpose is to assure that you are armed with the necessary information to insure that you receive the best treatment options from your health care provider. Knowledge is power.

Allow me to repeat, you need to know you are being duped and you need a plan for you and your family if you become infected with Covid 19. So let's get to it. Let me begin by stating that I'm not a medical doctor and I m not offering medical advice. I do have a bachelors of science degree in health, nutrition, and counseling. I've written two NY Times bestselling books on women's health and fitness and I have been awarded an honorary doctorate degree. However, you will need to determine your treatment options with your personal physician.

The Great Deception

When it comes to safe, effective and affordable therapies for Covid 19, Big Pharma and its agents, i.e. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx and many others, appear to have an agenda to lie to you and your physician.

The most obvious example is their ongoing effort to ridicule the treatment option of hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Zinc. We've all watched the harsh criticism that President Trump received when he promoted this protocol for Covid 19.

So, hydroxychloroquine has been around for almost 70 years as a treatment for malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis. The WHO has designated it as a safe and effective medication akin to taking an aspirin. A survey of 6,000 medical doctors affirmed it as their treatment of choice for Covid 19.

The treatment works like this. hydroxychloroquine is an ionophore, which means it can transport material through the cellular wall. Zinc is a mineral that stops the replication of the Covid 19 virus within the cell. hydroxychloroquine transports Zinc into the cell so that it can stop the replication of the virus. The Z-pak antibiotic is given to prevent opportunistic bacterial infections like pneumonia that can occur while your immune system is engaged in fighting your viral infection. The key to its effectiveness is to start this treatment at the early onset of Covid 19 so that it has time to work.

How much effort has Big Pharma put into subverting this treatment regimen? In addition to denouncing its effectiveness, from Dr. Fauci and company, constant MSM hit pieces, the censoring of medical doctor's articles and videos from the internet, there has also been a number of "studies" done that were literally sabotaged from the onset.

The VA hospital system reported in March that they had given hydroxychloroquine to a number of patients. Following their release of information, the MSM ran the story with the headlines, "VA hospital found that hydoxychloroquine doesn't work and increases the fatality rate of Covid 19." However, if you actually read the study (see link ) you will find that only the sickest of the cohorts were given the drug. They got the drug only after they were so far along that it would not have a chance to work and they were not given zinc. None of these details made the MSM articles.

Another example of the Great Deception came from the British medical journal, The Lancet. The Lancet reported that a meta study showed that hydroxychloroquine was ineffective. As a result of this published study, France, Italy and other European countries immediately prohibited the use of this treatment option. Within a few weeks, it was found that the study was so badly designed and that the results were literally fabricated . The Lancet was forced to make a retraction of the "study." Of course in the meantime the MSM ran the original Lancet story and mislead millions of people and their physicians.

So what could possibly be the motive behind Big Pharma's Great Deception. Well there's three answers, money, money and money. That brings up the treatment option that Big Pharma is promoting, Remdesivir. This lovely experimental drug, costs above $3,000 per regimen, must be given intravenously in a hospital (five days stay around 15 grand) and evidence shows it doesn't really work .

The other treatment option is the promised Covid 19 vaccine that they allege is forthcoming. The NHS in Great Britain has committed to purchase a vaccine for the entire population of Great Britain. That's a commitment of 80,000,000 doses at an agreed price of around $600 for each vaccination. That's about $50,000,000,000. (50 Billion) That's a lot of incentive to mislead people. This week, a US pharmaceutical company received $1.6 billion dollars towards their efforts to make this vaccine which in the opinion of many experts, won't work on a coronavirus and will be untested and experimental.

How does Big Pharma have so much control over the dissemination of this information or should I say propaganda? Well, the same answer pops up again, money. Big Pharma gave $2 billion dollars during the last election cycle to US politicians. Big AG, the military/security complex and big oil each gave only a paltry $1.0 billion dollars to buy the votes of our political leadership.

The MSM counts Big Pharma's advertising revenue at up to 80 percent of their income. The internet's "masters of the universe" also kowtow to Big Pharma's influence and advertising dollars by censoring anyone who tries to tell the American people the truth about Covid 19. It certainly appears that anyone who is complicit in this Great Deception, a deception that is designed to kill and terrify enough people to ultimately beg for an experimental vaccine, well, these people would be accessories to murder.

What You Need to Know to Survive

Now, for some good news. There are several therapies that are being offered that appear to be safe, effective and affordable. However, these therapies must be utilized early in the disease progression.

Budesonide

Japan, Taiwan and other Asian countries have maintained a much lower fatality rate with Covid 19 then we have here in America, in spite of the fact they live in densely populated communities. Many people believe that it is due to their preferred method of treatment. They use a steroid medication that is inhaled in a mist through a home use nebulizer. I'm familiar with this since my 2 year old granddaughter needed this treatment with a similar drug for an upper respiratory issue that she had recently. That speaks to the safety and the commonality of this treatment. Watch the link of a Texas doctor who shares his patient's experiences with this therapy method using the drug Budesonide and a course of antibiotics.

Ivermectin

Another treatment option that appears to be safe and effective is the use of the antiparasitic drug Ivermectin with the antibiotic Doxycycline. Just one Ivermectin pill and then the course of antibiotics for ten days resulted in a 100 percent cure rate for Covid 19 patients according to the attached study. Ivermectin has been widely used on the continent of Africa for many years as an anti-parasitic and is believed to be a primary reason that Covid 19 has not severely impacted the African population.

Hydroxychloroquine & Zinc

As we've seen above, this therapeutic regimen should be considered simply due to the efforts to prevent you from knowing the truth about it . As Shakespeare wrote, "Doth thou protest too much?"

The challenge with this therapeutic is both finding a doctor who will prescribe it and finding a pharmacy that will sell it. This should be between you and your doctor. Not the governors of certain states. Considering that 20 percent of all drugs are prescribed "off label", meaning that they are prescribed for a use other than intended, you and your doctor should have the liberty and the responsibility to make this health care decision.

There are several other therapies that appear to be safe, effective and affordable. You may want to research Chlorine Dioxide, intravenous ozone, high dose intravenous vitamin C and another, glutathione which are popular treatments in the homeopathic communities.

As for me and my family, we are going to make informed and responsible decisions regarding our health care. I hope the information I've given to you today along with the links for further information will help you, your family and your doctor make the best decisions as well.

Gary Heavin and his wife Diane are the founders of Curves, the world's largest fitness franchise. Gary is the author of two NY Times bestselling books, Curves and Curves on the go. Gary co-wrote and starred in the movie Amerigeddon. Gary is a pro-life libertarian and serves on the advisory board of Dr. Ron Paul's Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Gary and his wife are philanthropists who feed 10,000 children a day in Haiti and operate an orphanage outside the slums of Mumbai. Most importantly, they are bible believing Christians.


Anon [694] Disclaimer , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:42 am GMT

Excellent article. Early treatment is definitely key. The French doctor who recommended hydroxychloroquine way back in Feb. said that it needs to be given early, by the time they go on ventilator it's no longer effective. I read in Zerohedge last week that in TX, doctors said they simply give patients who come into the emergency room a steroid shot and send them home with antibiotics. Usually they are already feeling much better after the steroid shot. Even those who are hospitalized are now only staying 3-5 days.

I find it incredulous that on their website, CDC is still telling people to stay home if they are sick, that "many people" get over it themselves without treatment, and to *not* go to the doctor's until we are having difficulty breathing. By then it is too late! Doctors have said that the main difference btwn Covid patients and flu patients is, with a flu patient, when their lungs are 10% fluid, they are already having difficulty breathing, but for some reason for Covid19, the patient does not have difficulty breathing until the lungs are 50 to 60% fluid, which is why it's too late by the time they sought treatment.

This article discusses the low fatality rate in HK(0.4%) and Singapore(<0.1%), the doctors there attributed it to early treatment using a different cocktail of drugs: interferon beta-1b, which was developed to treat multiple sclerosis; ribavirin, which is used in the treatment of hepatitis C; and lopinavir-ritonavir, also known by its brand name, Kaletra. But again, early treatment is key.
https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/singapore/how-hong-kong-singapore-kept-coronavirus-death-rates-low/ar-BB14CLbM

CDC is an absolute fail. I'm beginning to believe they want more people to die so Trump would lose the election. They need to change their advice on their website before more lives are senselessly lost. Pence as the Covid Tzar is also totally failing on his job by not calling him out.

I'm also beginning to believe those who claim hydroxychloroquine doesn't work simply want to keep it for themselves and their cronies to take as preventive drug. Trump has been on it and he hasn't gotten sick, even though he's been exposed to lots of people. Something tells me many of our congress critters and the effing Jews are already loaded up on it.

Anonymous [426] Disclaimer , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:50 am GMT

I can't wait for November 4th when COVID-19 ends for good and all the masks and social distancing bullshit ends. Thankfully this C-19 psyops will last just 8 months and not the 2+ years the Russian collusion BS was drawn out to. Though sadly with the former it has further eviscerated working/middle-class America. I'm guessing that was part of the plan as well.

Quinsat , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:24 am GMT

The great Covid deception is it hasn't fulfilled Koch's postulates.

Smokey , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:51 am GMT

I believe Mr. Heavin more than I believe the government, and the CDC in particular.

But that could also apply to a Numerologist vs the gov't, so there's that.

I don't believe Jeffrey Epstein died a natural death any more than I believe the mainstream media is the least bit impartial. They used to try. They tried to keep the news and the Op-Ed pages separate. But that was then and this is now

This is getting fun!

So, I used to believe that cops were always the good guys, and that federal judges were above politics. Oh, and they would never lie, or take a bribe. And I believed that priests would never, ever molest a boy, or even girl (did I get that backward?), or even use bad words around them. And I believed Scoutmasters took Boy Scouts up into the mountains for the fresh air and Indian lore OK, this is starting to sound ridiculous.

Except, now I'm not sure what to believe any more.

Can anyone tell me ?

Chris in Cackalacky , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:57 am GMT
@Kirt

No offense but do you know how many people claim to have had Covid before Covid was cool? I don't know anyone who has tested positive but I know 25 people who claim they had or have it. In the past three years there have been severe influenzas making the rounds, there is no denying that. And why should routine flu and colds take a holiday just because our criminal elites tell us there is a special disease we need to watch out for? My point is we are so deceived that nobody knows up from down anymore. But at least we know one thing for sure -- hostile elites are working to deceive us.

Achilles Wannabe , says: July 11, 2020 at 6:33 am GMT

My doctor suffers from a delusion common to her profession. She thinks she is a "Medical Scientist". Actually she is a retailer for pharmaceuticals and medical technologies. She is a sales person in a capitalist industry And should she have any questions about her real role in a health care field which is really a substance and med tech pushing industry, her colleagues – fellow sales people – will remind her of her professional obligations by threatening her board certification to insure her near absolute conformity to market standards.

But there is no getting her to understand her real role in the medical industry. She believes her own hype or the hype created about her profession back in the 1950s when a few genuinely useful drugs and technologies were discovered which then afforded the money making corporate establishment the opportunity to take a humane craft and, thru the "science" of Epidemiology -Medical speak for lying with statistics – turn professional Medicine into probably the largest boondoggle in history. Consider the flag ship for usurious medicine – cholesterol lowering statin drugs.

But why don't I get rid of my essentially brain dead doctor, go to to someone else? Practically speaking, there is no one else. There are doctors who understand all this and write books about it but they are so rare as to be useless when real sickness like bacterial infections for which there are useful technologies like antibiotics actually occur. The most useful thing these real scientific doctors have to say is "Don't see your doctor" unless you have a real emergency – like an old fashion visceral type sickness – as opposed to some epidemiologically hyped condition like, again, "high cholesterol" as the "cause" of heart disease.

But now we have a genuine epidemic that is killing and injuring people and Medical Science is lying to us about possible treatments. Even a Medical skeptic like myself could not have predicted this level of base greed by our Medical pharmaceutical establishment This is tantamount to MURDER. And we have no government -whether it be run by Democrats or Republicans- who will take action. They are all on the Med Pharm tit and/or deluded by "Medical Science" as well. Until we learn to help ourselves and overthrow this system, God help us

Valka , says: July 11, 2020 at 6:48 am GMT

$50 billion just for Britain America doesn't stand a chance.

TheTrumanShow , says: July 11, 2020 at 6:58 am GMT

Thanks, Gary.

I've been reading everything counter-&-alternative to the deception I could find since it first appeared, but had never thought to investigate therapies until reading your article. Fortuitously, for me (in Thailand), Hydroxychloroquine is being used therapeutically and may even be available OTC.

However, Big Medicine & Big Pharma are already here and steadily making inroads into health care and medicine.

Gleimhart Mantooso , says: July 11, 2020 at 7:10 am GMT

Whatever happened to that vaccine that some Israeli Genius Doctors claimed would be ready in a few weeks, which was months ago now? What a shock that that never materialized.

Trygve Blodøks , says: July 11, 2020 at 7:38 am GMT

You should also look into coodial silver water. I got rid of an hpv infection using it. No side effects.

Herald , says: July 11, 2020 at 9:14 am GMT

The author doesn't mention Vitamin D, which is rather strange.

skrik , says: July 11, 2020 at 9:29 am GMT

@Gary Heavin

The Great Covid-19 Deception and

Click-baitish, much? Well, you got me in, but you seem to have a good 'treatment' argument, and 'good luck,' both by avoiding Covid-19 in the 1st place and finding a 'collaborative+pursuasive' Dr in the 2nd = worst case, should you or one of yours gets 'hit.' [Perish the thought.]

But IMHO, the Great est Covid-19 Deception is the negligent way most 'Western' governments have *not* taken Covid-19 properly seriously, starting of course with US = Trump and UK = Johnson then perhaps SE 'led' by so-called expert Tegnell next in a looong list of apparent delinquents.

Again IMHO, when Wuhan realised that they were under a bio-warfare-like attack [possibly when they 1st saw the PRRA inclusion in the decoded genome], they reacted like cut snakes and proceeded with the speed of fear-stricken Gazelles in a very largely successful attempt to *suppress* the virus. But, of course, they are communists, eh? So-called 'democratic' [in-name-only governments, many largely bolshie 'wo/men in the street'] think differently [even to their own detriment; they just can't help themselves.]

With the possible exception of NZ = Ardern, most 'Western' governments went for 'mitigation' = 'flattening the curve,' if they took any action at all, see BR = Bolsonaro "has accused the media of "fear-mongering"" and IIRC said something like "What can I do?"

Here is an article, 1st found by me in March on MoA :

"Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance"
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

MoA blurb: 'Here is his latest in which he argues not only to "flatten the curve" but to eradicate the virus.'

For my last IMHO, all 'Western' leaders who have acted with less than full effort = incompetently meaning ineffectively on behalf of their 'own people' should be prosecuted for their negligence. rgds

GeeBee , says: July 11, 2020 at 9:34 am GMT

A good article all around, except that the population of the UK is nowhere near eighty million. The latest figure I can find gives 66 million. Also, your attempt to invoke the Bard ('As Shakespeare wrote, "Doth thou protest too much?"') is lamentably botched. Try 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much'. (Hamlet's mother Gertrude says it of what she regards as overacting in a play that Hamlet has arranged for his mother and her husband, the usurper Claudius, to watch).

Justvisiting , says: July 11, 2020 at 10:37 am GMT

It is a great idea to have a candid discussion with your doctor/nurse on the issue of big pharma's economic power and how it creates conflicts of interest in the medical profession.

Many doctors/nurses already knew it and will quickly agree, many more "get it" after you explain it to them.

If your doctor is so brainwashed by "experts" that they think you are an "anti-science kook", time to get a new doctor!

gotmituns , says: July 11, 2020 at 10:40 am GMT
@Kirt

Bingo – it's all a total bunch of malarkey. All the BS isn't aimed at people our age (I'm 76), it's aimed at the milennials and younger. It is shaping them for the "Brave New World" that they will live.

Simon Tugmutton , says: July 11, 2020 at 10:48 am GMT

First let me say that the virus has never been satisfactorily isolated and does not meet Koch's postulates, which leads some people to speculate that it does not exist at all. The symptoms are so various as to be nonsensical; whatever the virus may be, last winter, that led to all the hospitalizations is open to question. Certainly the fear-porn spewed out 24/7 by the corporate media led to high levels of anxiety among the credulous and many of these no doubt presented as Covid-19 patients even though they were in fact suffering from the flu or a bad cold. Once in the hands of the quacks, nosocomial infections and intubation really made them sick – or dead.

As for protection against any respiratory illness, vitamin D is essential and I am surprised the author fails to understand this. 4000 IU per day maximum.

All that aside, Covid-19 a gigantic psyop designed to usher in a world government. It was even rehearsed in 2019 and all the wrinkles worked out beforehand.

[MORE]
Mark G. , says: July 11, 2020 at 10:56 am GMT

If you can't get hydroxychloroquine there is some evidence that the natural substance quercetin found in apples and onions can act as an ionophore that transports zinc into the cell. Instead of the z-pak, a natural antibiotic like oregano or cinnamon oil might suffice. These items quercetin, zinc and oregano and cinnamon oil are all available down at the local health food store. There is more evidence for the hydroxychloroquine, zinc, z-pak combination so those would be the preferred combination if you can get them but these natural substances might help if you can't get them and might act as a preventative to keep from getting the virus if you use them regularly.

I have found only a few studies that support the use of these natural substances but you need to understand that since these aren't drugs they can't be patented so there isn't the same financial incentive to prove their effectiveness as there would be with drugs that can be patented and then sold exclusively by one company.

UncommonGround , says: July 11, 2020 at 10:59 am GMT

Whether hydoxy/chloroquine works or not is something that will be clear only after there are studies that allow to take a final conclusion. The question has been discussed critically by the press, by medical doctors, by people. Of course, everybody knows that it's possible that no vaccination will function or be available (we can hear this everyday on television). Contrary to what the author says, a phamaceutical firm was happy that the medicament could be possibly used when the question came up and some people were optimistic about it. The web site of a German television wrote in may that it was still conceivable that hydoxychloroquine could work in the very early stages of the disease (after first negative results). This was only speculation.

The author mentions a talk with some friends of him and some information that he has. But there have been a few studies, good or bad, with chloroquine with negative results. The study of the Lancet was taken back because the data that they used was apparently not trustworthy. This shows how difficult it is to have good and conclusive results in a short time. We can say the same about the evidence used by the author. It doesn't mean very much. We still have to see what happens and until now we don't know. There are efforts to find ways to treat better the disease. In German, I read yesterday:

https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/mannheim/heidelberg-neue-corona-behandlungsmethode-100.html

chuckywiz , says: July 11, 2020 at 11:15 am GMT

The media never talks about those who recovered from Corona virus like BOJO, the prime minister of UK or others. What treatment the recovered patients received, how it helped them and other information. We hear only the scary stuff.
Dr. Fauci and associates could never develop his promised HIV vaccine. I read somewhere that he had been on the same job for the last 37 years. Go figure.

"DR" Bill Gate of MS is an expert of globalized vaccination and his articles on the subject have been published in several Medical Journals.
New Economy. Question More.

Linux_tyro , says: July 11, 2020 at 11:31 am GMT

I was diagnosed with an upper respiratory infection in April. Was given a Z-pack for 5 days, an inhaler, Albuterol Sulfate that I am going to refill and a pill for cough, Benzonatate 200mg. They tested me for Flu, Pneumonia, Strep and Covid. All test came back negative.

Now I have a sinus infection and was prescribed another Z-pack with Prednisone 250mg twice a day for five days.

I've been feeling under the weather for months now.

Oh! Now I remember my question. How much zinc daily should we be taking?

Emslander , says: July 11, 2020 at 11:39 am GMT

So, now we know who the enemy is. When can we start arresting and executing them?

I've had a condition common to old men for a long time. I went to some MD from the Far East who started immediately talking about cutting me up. I went to a second doctor, a young American, and told him I guess I needed to be sliced and diced. He said, "Not so fast" and recommended the regular use of two substances I could get at the vitamin store. I did so and the matter improved to the point that I felt effectively cured.

Last week, I went back to him. He works at a large establishment that includes my regular MD. I started telling him about how miraculous and enlightened his advice was. He quickly shut me up and started talking about operations and antibiotics. He wouldn't even listen when I told him that his earlier advice had worked. My presumption is that the financial people got to him. I'd guess that they do a regular review of medical care by each physician to see how they can better monetize their practice. Anyway, his changed tone was remarkable enough that it had to be something like money that was involved.

mark tapley , says: July 11, 2020 at 11:47 am GMT

Covid 19 is just another in a long line of fake or hyped up illnesses. Remember H1N1, H5n1, SARS1, Swine flu, Bird flu, Zika and others. AIDS was another fake disease (read Dr. Peter Duesberg on this). The same type of hoax is being perpetrated with the current Corona "epidemic."

Notice it supposedly began in Wuhan China. This city of 11 million has the worlds worst air pollution. 350,000 people per year die of pneumonia in China. There are lots of people there that can be tagged as Covid 19 victims. Also quickly touted as a hot spot by our Jew controlled MSM was deaths in Italy. Official autopsies revealed over 99% of victims had pre existing illness, most of them had multiple ones at an avg. age go 69.5. Latter the age went up but I can't remember the exact figure. Remember CDC criminal Debra Brix said "we have told the hospitals to tag everything possible as Covid 19."

Remember the fake tents set up all over and the hospital ship that looked like a relic of WW1. The MSM kept talking about overflowing hospitals. Several people took videos of near vacant hospitals at this time including Brian Ruhe's exposure of Vancouver's practically empty hospital. Whenever you see the media jump all over something with all the official spokesmen and there is no alternative opinion allowed, you known it is a gov. false flag. All of a sudden climate change is no longer the critical topic of the day. I guess Greta Thunberg got the covid.

The covid 19 has never been identified by the standard scientific method of the Koch's postulates because they can't. If you have a fake virus you must have a fake test. That is the PCR test that gives ap. 200 false positives, does not determine one Corona (cold from another) and is not quantitative is a fake test. The numbers given by the CDC (holds 50 vaccine related patents) that is really an adjunct of big Pharma are a crock of baloney. Most of these figures are generated from old people in the nursing homes that are given a "visual" conformation as having covid. Note that Fauci said in February that the masks did more harm than good. Hospitals get paid big money for labeling patients as Covid victims and many times doctors just write it on the report.

The Zionists have hit a home run with this medical hoax and they will never give it up unless the cucks start using their brain a little bit and figure some things out. The next move will be manditory dangerous vaccines for all the cattle. There is big money to be made in the vaccine scam. To get the truth on vaccines read Dissolving Illusions by Dr. Suzanne Humphries and books by Forrest Maready.

The Covid scam has been planned for many years, this was an opportune time to spring it as a cover for the central banks theft of trillions more while bankrupting the workers and small businesses. The Jews at Blak Rock are big investors in masks and will now be scooping up failed businesses everywhere just like in 08.

Emslander , says: July 11, 2020 at 11:47 am GMT
@Smokey

Except, now I'm not sure what to believe any more.

Can anyone tell me ?

My uncle told me a story a long time ago about a man who had his young son climb a tree in the back yard. He let him get pretty high and then said, "Jump Johnny, Jump!" Johnny said, "If I jump, I'll get hurt." The Dad said, "No, I'll catch you." Johnny jumped and the Dad did nothing. The boy hit the ground and was crying, though not permanently injured.

He said to his Dad, "Father, you promised to catch me."

"Let that be a lesson," the Dad said. "Don't trust NOBODY."

Brás Cubas , says: July 11, 2020 at 12:03 pm GMT

Gary is a pro-life libertarian

Well, seeing as libertarians are against government action to stop abortions, I suppose all that a libertarian who opposes abortion is allowed to do is acting against it in their private life; seeing as that is exactly what the pro-choice option means, you see that Gary's position is rigorously meaningless: he is pro-life and pro-choice at the same time.

That is a really grand deception, regardless of any other claimed by this article, and all I need to know about it.

Giancarlo M. Kumquat , says: July 11, 2020 at 12:17 pm GMT

Stop feeding those Haitians!

St-Germain , says: July 11, 2020 at 12:24 pm GMT

Thanks for your article.

I also prefer plain facts to eloquent fiction (MSM). Your article has obvious practical value for the public. It's a keeper. I also hope it circulates widely as an effective antidote to virulant MSM viruses.

BTW, my first act following retirement from four decades of professional news writing was to cancel all newspaper and magazine subscriptions. There is no utility in paying to be misinformed.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many people who have never set foot in a news room now regurgitate MSM propaganda as though it came down from Mt. Sinai. MSM journalism has now run the gamut from the duty to reveal what is true, even if it hurts, to the need to say what sounds nice, even if the reporter himself doesn't believe it. That's the definition of PR.

anonymous [400] Disclaimer , says: July 11, 2020 at 12:29 pm GMT

When this wears thin they'll discover another killer virus and there'll be another go-round. They started off saying the lockdowns were just for a brief time and then when they got their foot in the door it was extended. Now government herding people around by diktat is a permanent feature of American society. They'll never let it go. There's already been some report of some other mysterious killer virus coming out of Kazakhstan so get ready. This is the largest transfer of wealth scheme ever, the assets of the bankrupted scooped up by the big companies.

An Easterner , says: July 11, 2020 at 12:38 pm GMT

'Most importantly, they are Bible believing Christians.'

That for me, as a Muslim, is the best guarantee that the person writing this article will have written all in good faith because he or she is answerable to God.

Overall, the article was very informative and pertinent to the situation we face today.

macilrae , says: July 11, 2020 at 12:47 pm GMT

The article cites imperfect studies in which hydroxychloroquine was found to be an ineffective therapeutic for COVID19 – imperfect because the treatment was generally started too late in the progression of the disease. The author postulates that, if treatment were begun earlier, mortality would be drastically reduced but, unfortunately, there is no study to support this and the majority of people suffering the symptoms of early-onset COVID19 will recover spontaneously anyway.

Singapore, with its superb bureaucratic infrastructure, has reported over 45,000 infections but only 26 deaths – that is 4 deaths per million population. South Korea reports 13,000+ deaths and 287 deaths (6 per million population) and Japan 20,000 cases and 981 deaths (10 per million) compare this to the USA with 364 deaths per million or the UK with 718.

I have yet to see a convincing explanation of these shocking differences and, when asked recently, a British government spokesman said that it is "too early" to start drawing international comparisons – "too early" for whom you might ask? Evidently not for those who have succumbed – by now a huge effort should have been put forth to account for the disparity – even if the explanation is demographic as is being largely claimed. I assume that national pride has stood in the way of seeking answers by sending study teams to these countries.

The article recounts a number of inexpensive treatments that might work and points to "Big Pharma" as the major reason these are not being systematically studied – that may well be an impediment in the USA particularly – so gathering of data from East Asia, where that influence is far less and where dramatic positive results are seen, is all the more urgent.

Meanwhile my family will wear masks and hunker down because we have no particular plan to implement if one of us catches this bug.

Butch , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:01 pm GMT

Here is a clue, stop doing ALL the things they tell you to do because its all designed to make you sicker. Eat real food, so many people just don't get it, its garbage in and garbage out. Curves have always been flattened by the healthy freely moving about [oops, stay home], health from being outside, in the sun, and amongst nature is vital [oops stay inside], eating good REAL food is how you have a good immune system [oops, dont want that we need sick people for the pharma devils, therefore we'll allow FAST [shit] FOOD to be readily available [no contact of course [OMG can you actually believe this crap?] Wear a mask because the covid devil lurks everywhere [oops, retard the flow of healthy oxygen into your body, breath back in your own exhalations of CO2 and bacteria so you can increase your odds of getting sick, you just cant make this twisted stuff up!!!] Social distance, thats the best one? We should be wanting to be social for many many reasons, the least of which is because we ARE social animals, but the best way to flatten any curve is, as previously stated, assimilate it [as humans have with all viruses] to develop herd immunity [something that you CANNOT get with a toxic vaccination], like Sweden and Japan. STOP watching MSM and social platforms removing truth. Actually STOP watching TV, its all designed to make you think a certain way.

Off The Reservation , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:06 pm GMT

The biggest problem with this article is that it does not address the fundamental basis of the fraud that is CV19.

The Chinese supposedly identified a new coronavirus and named it SARS-CoV-2.

Then, the WHO made a vague list of symptoms and created a syndrome called COVID19.

There is no proven connection whatsoever between the supposedly identified virus and the syndrome.

Billing codes were created that allow the assumed or tested diagnosis of CV19.

To make matters worse, a test was created which only tests for "markers" of coronavirus and has never been proven to connect to the above viruses or the above syndrome. Thus testing positive or negative really has no meaning as proven by the disconnect between symptoms and diagnosis.

Then, the government incentivized and instructed the use of the above billing codes and created the commonly known situation of people dying "with" the syndrome even though they died of other causes.

Add to that the manipulation of the case count, etc. Then, you have New York and New Jersey basically murdering people with treatment. Loved ones banned from visiting homes – for reasons they might bring the virus in – while "positive" sick patients are brought in. Reconcile that.

I am not saying a few people aren't sick, but there is no way to deal with something while these language tricks are going on.

The virus, the syndrome, and the tests, and the count of cases have no scientific connection to each other. What is it you are talking about being treated for? The flu?

CW2isComing , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:14 pm GMT
@Gleimhart Mantooso

Yes, where IS that Wonder of Modern Medicine anyway? We were breathlessly told of its soon-to-be release; I even thought that it was peculiar that the Israelis were so serendipitously working on just the right strain of coronavirus as to be in the forefront of vaccine development.

Miracles happen.

Except when they don't. And, to summarize here, there has NEVER been a stable/effective vaccine for the coronavirus family of viruses. NEVER.

As in, NEVER.

Adûnâi , says: Website July 11, 2020 at 1:22 pm GMT
@skrik bio-warfare-like attack [possibly when they 1st saw the PRRA inclusion in the decoded genome], they reacted like cut snakes and proceeded with the speed of fear-stricken Gazelles in a very largely successful attempt to *suppress* the virus. But, of course, they are communists, eh?"

Finally some sense in the sea of conspiratards. It is fascinating to observe the insanity of White nations – they will cling to their clearly delusional beliefs to the end, even when an alternative is presenting itself this whole time.

Wearing a mask apparently turns you into a slave. Believing in the existence of the virus makes you a shill. Pure anarchism, just without the bombs.

The comment #19 by UncommonGround is decent as well.

anon [327] Disclaimer , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:25 pm GMT

Best cure for C-19: Put Dr. Fauxci and Dr. Birx , ilk,
on a SpaceX ship bound for Mars.

Doesn't need to be a big ship.
Use sardine packing method.

CW2isComing , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:35 pm GMT
@Mark G. As well (and mentioned in some of the above comments) there are many studies indicating that adequate levels of Vitamin D may be protective. Best source: sunlight; then fresh fish, then supplements.

The entire point of this article is "self-rescue." It is clear to me that the "official" recommendation is to "stay home, don't come to your doctor's office/E.R. until you get shortness of breath, etc." so as to not "overload the hospital system."

The latter advice will get you killed if you are elderly and/or have certain co-morbidities. Treat yourself early on, be proactive towards you health; oh, also, maybe stop shoving Cheetos down your neck, take a walk, lose some weight?

anon [624] Disclaimer , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:48 pm GMT
@skrik

Moon of Alabama is a controlled website that censors dissenting commenters. The Covid-19 has completely blown the cover of that site and Mr. 'b'. Do not push that site. This unz.com site does not censor comments. Get back to us when Mr. 'b' (or is that German Intelligence?) decides to play his role properly again.

Gary Heavin , says: July 11, 2020 at 1:58 pm GMT
@Herald

Hi Herald,
The reason I didn't mention vitamin D3 is that I classify it under prevention rather than therapeutics.
I take 2,000 iu daily, 2,000 mg of vitamin C, 30 mg of zinc and 200 mg of magnesium to help prevent illness.

Twodees Partain , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:04 pm GMT
@Quinsat ch's postulates.

That's the main point of information needed if "need to know" is at the top of the list on how to survive. A person "diagnosed with covid19" should know that the existence of this "novel coronavirus" has not been established in any way that is based in actual science.

Such a diagnosis subjects the purportedly infected person to treatments that would be, at best, useless. Diagnosis is the starting point for a political assault conducted by means of "contact tracing" prescribed by an Israeli intelligence operation, and can't possibly include any effective medical treatment.

No medical treatment exists that can cure infection with an imaginary virus.

Gary Heavin , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:06 pm GMT
@GeeBee

Thank you for your corrections. When I found out that Ron was going to post my article on this website I was very excited due to the quality of its readership. People like you.

Really No Shit , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:08 pm GMT

A chinaman told me that lots of chopsuey with exotic wild animals worked for his country, whereas a wetback told me lots of beans and rice with hot sauce was the key to their success. Here in my neighboring neighborhood, the Borough Park, I hear that bubbies are offering up matzo ball soup with a scrawny chicken thrown in and the Bensonhurst Fredos are insisting that had the Italian government not abandoned the age old custom of over eating pasta fagioli, none of those paisans needlessly would have died. So, who do you believe?

Gary Heavin , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:10 pm GMT
@Linux_tyro

25 mg of zinc daily is what I take

Agent76 , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:19 pm GMT

July 9, 2020 CDC May Officially Downgrade COVID From An 'Epidemic'

The coronavirus mortality rate in the United States has dropped so low that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon stop calling the virus an "epidemic."

https://principia-scientific.org/cdc-may-officially-downgrade-covid-from-an-epidemic/

Twodees Partain , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:32 pm GMT
@Emslander

"the regular use of two substances I could get at the vitamin store."

What two substances?

Alfred , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:39 pm GMT
@Anon

I'm beginning to believe they want more people to die so Trump would lose the election.

I am surprised it is taking people so much time to work that one out.

The media don't want you to see this chart. That is why I won't stop shouting CASES

Anonymousse , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:53 pm GMT

I had symptomatic corona. It was a day and a half of mild fever and fatigue. Basically like the flu but not nearly as bad. Everyone else I've known that had symptomatic corona (already a small minority of those who actually got infected woth corona) experienced the same or even less.

If you're just about to die from something else anyway, yeah maybe such a mild disease can give you that last little push. At that point you need to be thinking about saying confession and your relationship to eternity not some magic drug extending your life another few months

It's just the flu bro.

Desert Fox , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:54 pm GMT

Coronavirus is one of the biggest scams, frauds, psyops, mass hypnosis, in history, see these sites for the truth about the coronavirus scam, henrymakow.com , thetruthseeker.co.uk, chuckbaldwinlive.com , thedollarvigilante.com .

Alfred , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:55 pm GMT
@Gleimhart Mantooso aled that they had designed a vaccine and tested it on hamsters. They wrote that a single dose "was able to protect hamsters against SARS-CoV-2."

Their best shots: Israeli efforts to invent a coronavirus vaccine, explained (Times of Israel)

You can be absolutely certain that the clowns above removed their masks as soon as they were off-camera.

Trinity , says: July 11, 2020 at 2:58 pm GMT

The (((CoronaRona?))) Well, put it this way, the same people pushing the (((CoronaRona))) story or the same people who told you that Germans gassed 6 gatrillion Jews in the "holocaust." You might have a better chance at seeing Santa Claus than dying from the (((CoronaRona.)))

During the riots, the weasel, Fauci and that female doctor whats her name, were nowhere to be seen, and now they have returned and the (((CoronaRona))) is being looped 24/7. My guess is that all these (((medical experts))) will recommend another lock-down until the election. IF Biden wins, which given the corruption out there, is highly likely whether we are in lock-down or not, the (((CoronaRona))) will fade away into the night. IF Trump is somehow is reelected, well the (((Antifa-BLM))) types will be having another meltdown that the (((media))) will cover 24/7, and the (((CoronaRona))) will be back page news again.

I'm (((CoronaRona))) and I approve this message.

Che Guava , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:13 pm GMT

This reply is both to Kirt and Garry Heavin.

For Kirt, yes, I think I already had it too, seven or eight weeks from NYE last year to mid-Feb. of this. As I have said several times, the area near my workplace was usually full of Chinese tourists.

I had a cough, extreme lethargy on many days, a slight fever. Water frnm my nose, always the case for me in winter, but no sneezing. I must raise the idea with my regular doc., since I saw him at least three times over that time.

As for our author, Heavin's article, he is clearly offering better ideas for treatments than big pharma, but who really needs treatment?

Those who have a persistent cold-like syndrome?

Anyome identified through the polymerase chain reaction tests, which prove nothing.

Just ignore it and it will go away seems by far the wisest course.

schrub , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:29 pm GMT

On an entirely different topic:

WARNING: FOR THOSE WHO USE NORD VPN for their VPN service

If you select NORDVPN's "CYBERSEC" option to "block ads and malicious websites" , you will no longer be able to get on sites like unz.com or many other right wing sites (like Mike Rivero's site: whatreallyhappened.com for instance).

NORDVPN's CYBERSEC will, however, allow you on all the left wing sites pushed by the ADL. This means that NORDVPN'S CYBERSEC option is probably using the ADL's filtering criteria.

I questioned NORDVPN about this "selectivity" and never received a reply.

This also means that your NORDVPN software could well be spying on you and recording your keystrokes if you try to access to certain unapproved sites EVEN IF if the CYBERSEC option hasn't chosen.

NORDVPN is now, curiously enough, based in Panama, a country which the US government has been shown in the past to have considerable influence over when the need arises. (Ask Manuel Noriega for examples)

Spread the word.

It might be time choose a different VPN sofware if you are now using NORDVPN. Anybody have any good suggestions?

Zarathustra , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:33 pm GMT

I believe!
I believe in CNN.
I believe that half of population of USA will die of Corona virus.
The other half because Corona virus infecting toe nails will become zombies.
Also their brains are now eaten out by Corona virus.
All US population will be replaced by natives from Africa.
First herd of Negroes are already swimming halfway in Atlantic toward America.

Well?
Its not really funny.
But than CNN is never funny.

CW2isComing , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:35 pm GMT
@Twodees Partain

@Emslander

Yes, why are you being cryptic here–on this site–where a free exchange of information is desirable?

Herald , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:38 pm GMT
@Alfred

Cases now mean positive tests and of course, no really knows what that means, other than that more useless tests have been carried out. As the graph clearly indicates these so called "cases" have little to do with deaths. Nor do they have anything to do with hospitalisations.

We are clearly in the midst of an almighty scam, which is much much bigger than simply getting rid of Trump.

Emslander , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:41 pm GMT
@Twodees Partain

Extract of cranberries and D-Mannos. Together they are very good. I presume that they can't cure serious problems, but they work pretty well.

I'm not a doctor and I don't even work on TV.

Alfred , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:50 pm GMT
@UncommonGround ut a thorough check.

A report in The Guardian also found that the key employees of Surgisphere included a science fiction writer and an adult movie star.

The HCQ study mess: How 3 Indian researchers put reputation of Lancet, NEJM at stake

How 3 'smart' Indian names have ruined 200-year reputation of most respected medical journals

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-6WnSiCPYyQ?feature=oembed

Zarathustra , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:55 pm GMT

But putting all attempted jokes aside and talking a little bit more seriously, CNN did become certified criminal enterprise now.

Gary Heavin , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:56 pm GMT

To Bras my pro-life libertarian position does not become "meaningless" as if my prolife and libertarianism negate each other as you suggest. It's quite simple. Libertarianism demands we not harm other persons. An unborn baby is a person.
To Che I certainly agree with you that Covid 19 has been hyped, politicized, misrepresented, etc..
If I come down with a severe upper respiratory event that is heading toward pneumonia-like symptoms, I've lost my sense of taste and smell I'm going to talk with my Doctor and try one of the therapies I've written about. I hope you do the same.

Thomas Milton , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:57 pm GMT

"What you need to know" .is that this crisis has been spun from whole cloth.

Montefrío , says: July 11, 2020 at 3:58 pm GMT
@gotmituns e before the year is out. My bucolic life has been given a shake and I'm scrambling to best position our family (we live on the same property) financially and economically when BNW arrives with a vengeance. I wish to leave my grandchildren (my son, a water well driller, is prospering, happily, but still ) wholly owned property and the houses thereon plus one. I believe the BNW will have a distinctly local air to it in rural or semi-rural communities: little travel, local employment save for telecommuters, detachment from social media, different educational strategies and opportunities, etc. If you share this belief, get cracking and pretend that the reset has already arrived and act accordingly.
schrub , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:00 pm GMT

AS an answer to my own question about a new secure VPN service, I just came upon this. Anybody have any experience with this outfit?

https://protonvpn.com/about

I now wouldn't trust any VPN whatsoever service that wasn't entirely "open source". Protonvpn claims to be "open source". (On the other hand, NORDVPN isn't open source).

https://protonvpn.com/blog/open-source/

Definition of very important term "open source" for those are unfamiliar with it:
https://opensource.org/osd

If a software isn't "open source" it could potentially be spying on you. Choosing a VPN service using "open source" software should be the PRIMARY and most critical consideration when choosing a VPN service.

Non "open source" VPN software is open to outside manipulation and possible government infiltration.

Wally , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:02 pm GMT
@Gleimhart Mantooso

asked:
"Whatever happened to that vaccine that some Israeli Genius Doctors claimed would be ready in a few weeks, which was months ago now?"

– The same thing that happened to the 'Israeli Geniuses' laughable, but "historic", attempt to put a spacecraft on the moon.

Israel's Beresheet spacecraft crashes during historic moon landing attempt : https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/how-watch-israel-s-beresheet-spacecraft-attempt-moon-landing-ncna993436

Alfred , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:04 pm GMT
@Emslander

It suits her personality as she is a quite orderly and methodical person. However, it means that she is incapable of critical thinking. All doctors in Australia are invited to free seminars and meals at expensive restaurants – paid for by pharmaceutical companies.

Sadly, she did not listen to my opinion about vaccines for our two girls. In the State of Victoria, they give a mandatory HPV vaccine. However, HPV is only a problem for those who are promiscuous. Furthermore, this vaccine is essentially an unknown. It is highly-expensive at some US$300 – paid for by the tax-payers. I suspect the vaccine altered the personality of one of our daughters. It is uncanny.

Astuteobservor II , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:05 pm GMT

It seems the only way to convince retards is to kill them or let them see dead bodies everywhere.

It is like the old saying in IT.

Everything is working, wtf does the company need you for.

Everything is falling apart, wtf does the company need you for.

On covid.

Lockdowns and quarantine is working, wtf, covid is Nothing, flu is worst.

Death count is now twice the number of the worst flu year, the lockdowns and quarantine are the causes, not covid.

Lincoln was right, just need to make sure the 80% retards gets fooled, the other 20% doesn't matter as their voices would be drown out by the retards.

If this covid virus is as deadly as it needs to convince the retards, nukes would have flown. I wonder how many retards understands why that is.

Zarathustra , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:13 pm GMT
@Gary Heavin

Slightly increase the daily intake of butter you moron, and you will not need to worry anymore.

Montefrío , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:21 pm GMT
@macilrae

I neither wear a mask nor hunker down and I'm a "double-vulnerable" (nearly 74 and mildly diabetic). A close lady friend is the village pharmacist and when on duty wears the mask under mild duress; neither of us wears it when alone with each other. Unless you're in a densely populated area, better to go out and get at least half an hour of sun daily, fortify yourself and family, keep the faith and don't succumb to manufactured fear, sez I.

Sparkon , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:35 pm GMT
@macilrae ak links here in the USA, sad to say. During my most recent trip to the market, I saw perhaps 7-10% of shoppers with their masks pulled down so it was covering the mouth, but not the nose. For the most part, these non-complying shoppers were the fat, ugly, slovenly, and stupid looking types one would try to avoid anyway, so the pulled-down mask is a good signal to give these types a very wide berth.

Recall that the world's experience with COVID-19 amounts to just six or seven months. Nobody knows what this virus may do in the future, but odds are it will mutate, like all viruses.

Psst: If it's just the flu, bro, why is it still spreading in the summer?

Vandal , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:41 pm GMT
@chuckywiz

The regiment I've seen published is as follows

Hydroxychloroquine 200mg twice a day for 5 days

ZPAK 500mg once a day for 5 days

Zinc Sulfate 220mg daily

Pragma , says: July 11, 2020 at 4:47 pm GMT

Mr. Heaven:

I found your figures regarding the vaccine cost and quantity remarkable, to say the least.

After some research, I could find no reference of a commitment by the UK government to purchase 80 million doses at $600 each.

I did find, however, reference to the Oxford/AstraZeneca potential vaccine AZD1222 which is estimated to cost around 2.5 euros or about $2.80 US. This appears to be the direction that the EU is going, but it is unclear if the UK will be part of it.

Could you please forward a link or reference for the source of your figures?

Gary Heavin , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:16 pm GMT
@Pragma

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8123691/With-estimated-477-injection-potentially-billions-coronavirus-jab.html
As you can imagine, this article has been lambasted by big pharmaceutical interests.

Thim , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:19 pm GMT
@macilrae

Your family will wear masks, because you are slaves. Absolutely no one claims wearing a mask will prevent you from catching a flu or cold (Corona virus).

Bardon Kaldian , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:20 pm GMT

So, it's all a giant conspiracy Interesting: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/10/health/coronavirus-entire-body-effects-columbia/index.html

How coronavirus affects the entire body

TheTruthSeeker , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:30 pm GMT

Pavia, a cure that works, challenges media silence: "Plasma kills the virus"

"Plasma kills the coronavirus." The therapy developed by the Immuno-hematology Institute of Saint Matthew in Pavia is encouraging. In this exclusive interview with The Daily Compass given at the end of his experimentation, director Cesare Perotti reveals the positive results: "The treatment works; at the moment no one has died; the USA has asked for the protocols." But nobody is talking about it: "There are other interests opposing us, but we will address these after the scientific publication." This is how the shared treatment works, by "using" volunteers who have recovered to help heal those who are sick.

Reference and continuation:

https://newdailycompass.com/en/pavia-a-cure-that-works-challenges-media-silence-plasma-kills-the-virus

Rubicon , says: July 11, 2020 at 5:53 pm GMT
@Achilles Wannabe

What Achilles Wannabe writes is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

If I have to, the ONLY way to purchase HDC is via my Canadian brothers. Naturally, I would need an American doctor's prescription, but push comes to shove, I absolutely refuse going to ANY American "medical doctor" to treat me.

Hopefully, the Canadian prescription stores would be able to fill that prescription. If not, oh well.
Living in this dying nation is death-defying.

[Jul 10, 2020] Vitamin D deficit potencially increases the probablity to catch COVID-19

Jul 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

jean , Jul 10 2020 17:59 utc | 105

There is a racial difference in that blacks and people of color are vitamin D deficient, as are the elderly.

Vitamin D linked to low virus death rate, study finds
New COVID-19 research finds relationship in data from 20 European countries

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200507131012.htm


dbk , Jul 10 2020 18:05 utc | 107

For commenters who've remarked on the incidences of (a) obesity, (b) diabetes and (c) high blood pressure - other cardiovascular ailments (not sure anyone referred to [c] but it's on most lists), these are all ultimately rooted in poverty / stress.

For commenters who remarked on the "Southern" diet and McDonald's food, many urban neighborhoods and poor rural counties are food deserts, period. The urban elite in the South (Black and white alike) have diets that resemble those of residents of Manhattan.

For the commenter who remarked on the absence of a national health care program in the U.S. - yes, this is a major contributing factor but it's further complicated by other intersecting forms of injustice which contribute to the heightened risk for Blacks who contract the virus.

The premise of the OP is correct in my view, and the post correctly concludes the Identity Politics is being used (by both sides) to mask the real disease.

karlof1 , Jul 10 2020 18:34 utc | 108

I must applaud b for finally bringing in the Class War into his COVID-19 analysis. What you are genetically isn't the main factor; rather, it's your socio-economic-- CLASS --status that matters most regarding your potential exposure to the disease. Activists within the Outlaw US Empire have pointed to that fact going back to March, and it's certainly a big factor fueling the ongoing protests.

[Jul 10, 2020] AR Comes to the Fight Against Covid-19

Jul 10, 2020 | www.afr.com

Australian Financial Review
John Davidson
July 6, 2020

Researchers at La Trobe University in Australia have developed an augmented reality (AR) visualization of the effects of Covid-19 on the lungs, in an effort to aid diagnosis and treatment. The researchers converted two-dimensional (2D) computed tomography (CT) scans of Covid-damaged lungs into three-dimensional (3D) images. Microsoft's HoloLens 2 headset lets researchers view those images, superimposed into the space in front of their eyes. Said La Trobe's Henry Duh, "If you only see a 2D scan, without HoloLens, you need to do more mental rotations and reconstructions in order to figure out what it looks like in the body." The researchers hope to use machine learning to analyze original CT scans and identify areas of the lungs damaged by the disease.

Full Article
*May Require Paid Registration

[Jul 10, 2020] LancetGate- -Scientific Corona Lies- Big Pharma Corruption - Hydroxychloroquine Versus Remdesivir -

Jul 10, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

LancetGate: "Scientific Corona Lies" & Big Pharma Corruption - Hydroxychloroquine Versus Remdesivir by Tyler Durden Fri, 07/10/2020 - 19:05 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print

Authored by Prof Michel Chossudovsky via GlobalResearch.ca,

Introduction

There is an ongoing battle to suppress Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a cheap and effective drug for the treatment of Covid-19. The campaign against HCQ is carried out through slanderous political statements, media smears, not to mention an authoritative peer reviewed "evaluation" published on May 22nd by The Lancet, which was based on fake figures and test trials.

The study was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Dec 20, 2019, and April 14, 2020 from 671 hospitals Worldwide. The database had been fabricated. The objective was to kill the Hydroxychloroquine ( HCQ) cure on behalf of Big Pharma.

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Harvard And MIT Sue

Meatpacking Workers Are In Danger

Trump Not Happy With CDC School Guidelines

The Unreported Cases

The CDC Single Test

Censor In Chief? VP Pence To Control Coronavirus Info

The Yeezy Loan

Cruise Ships Might Be a Safer Way to Vacation During COVID-19, Health Expert Claims

While The Lancet article was retracted, the media casually blamed "a tiny US based company" named Surgisphere whose employees included "a sci-fi writer and an adult content model" for spreading "flawed data" (Guardian) . This Chicago based outfit was accused of having misled both the WHO and national governments, inciting them to ban HCQ. None of those trial tests actually took place.

While the blame was placed on Surgisphere, the unspoken truth (which neither the scientific community nor the media have acknowledged) is that the study was coordinated by Harvard professor Mandeep Mehra under the auspices of Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) which is a partner of the Harvard Medical School.

When the scam was revealed , Dr. Mandeep Mehra who holds the Harvey Distinguished Chair of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital apologized:

I have always performed my research in accordance with the highest ethical and professional guidelines. However, we can never forget the responsibility we have as researchers to scrupulously ensure that we rely on data sources that adhere to our high standards.

It is now clear to me that in my hope to contribute this research during a time of great need, I did not do enough to ensure that the data source was appropriate for this use. For that, and for all the disruptions – both directly and indirectly – I am truly sorry. (emphasis added)

Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, MSC ( official statement on BWH website)

But that "truly sorry" note was just the tip of the iceberg. Why?

https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890

Studies on Gilead Science's Remdesivir and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) Were Conducted Simultaneously by Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH)

While The Lancet report (May 22, 2020) coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra was intended "to kill" the legitimacy of HCQ as a cure of Covid-19, another important (related) study was being carried out (concurrently) at BWH pertaining to Remdesivir on behalf of Gilead Sciences Inc. Dr. Francisco Marty, a specialist in Infectious Disease and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School was entrusted with coordination of the clinical trial tests of the antiviral medication Remdesivir under Brigham's contract with Gilead Sciences Inc :

Brigham and Women's Hospital began enrolling patients in two clinical trials for Gilead's antiviral medication remdesivir. The Brigham is one of multiple clinical trial sites for a Gilead-initiated study of the drug in 600 participants with moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and a Gilead-initiated study of 400 participants with severe COVID-19.

If the results are promising, this could lead to FDA approval, and if they aren't, it gives us critical information in the fight against COVID-19 and allows us to move on to other therapies."

While Dr. Mandeep Mehra was not directly involved in the Gilead Remdesevir BWH study under the supervision of his colleague Dr. Francisco Marty, he nonetheless had contacts with Gilead Sciences Inc: "He participated in a conference sponsored by Gilead in early April 2020 as part of the Covid-19 debate" (France Soir, May 23, 2020)

What was the intent of his (failed) study? To undermine the legitimacy of Hydroxychloroquine?

According to France Soir, in a report published after The Lancet Retraction:

The often evasive answers produced by Dr Mandeep R. Mehra , professor at Harvard Medical School, did not produce confidence, fueling doubt instead about the integrity of this retrospective study and its results . (France Soir, June 5, 2020)

Was Dr. Mandeep Mehra in conflict of interest? (That is a matter for BWH and the Harvard Medical School to decide upon).

Who are the Main Actors?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to Donald Trump, portrayed as "America's top infectious disease expert" has played a key role in smearing the HCQ cure which had been approved years earlier by the CDC as well as providing legitimacy to Gilead's Remdesivir.

Dr. Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since the Reagan administration. He is known to act as a mouthpiece for Big Pharma.

Dr. Fauci launched Remdesivir in late June (see details below). According to Fauci, Remdesevir is the "corona wonder drug" developed by Gilead Science Inc. It's a $1.6 billion dollar bonanza.

Gilead Sciences Inc: History

Gilead Sciences Inc is a Multibillion dollar bio-pharmaceutical company which is now involved in developing and marketing Remdesivir. Gilead has a long history. It has the backing of major investment conglomerates including the Vanguard Group and Capital Research & Management Co, among others. It has developed ties with the US Government.

In 1999 Gilead Sciences Inc, developed Tamiflu (used as a treatment of seasonal influenza and bird flu). At the time, Gilead Sciences Inc was headed by Donald Rumsfeld (1997-2001), who later joined the George W. Bush administration as Secretary of Defense (2001-2006). Rumsfeld was responsible for coordinating the illegal and criminal wars on Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).

Rumsfeld maintained his links to Gilead Sciences Inc throughout his tenure as Secretary of Defense (2001-2006). According to CNN Money (2005) : "The prospect of a bird flu outbreak was very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld [who still owned Gilead stocks] and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences".

Anthony Fauci has been in charge of the NIAID since 1984, using his position as "a go between" the US government and Big Pharma. During Rumsfeld's tenure as Secretary of Defense, the budget allocated to bio-terrorism increased substantially, involving contracts with Big Pharma including Gilead Sciences Inc. Anthony Fauci considered that the money allocated to bio-terrorism in early 2002 would:

"accelerate our understanding of the biology and pathogenesis of microbes that can be used in attacks, and the biology of the microbes' hosts -- human beings and their immune systems. One result should be more effective vaccines with less toxicity." (WPo report)

In 2008, Dr. Anthony Fauci was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom by president George W. Bush "for his determined and aggressive efforts to help others live longer and healthier lives."

The 2020 Gilead Sciences Inc Remdesivir Project

We will be focussing on key documents (and events)

Chronology

February 21: Initial Release pertaining to NIH-NIAID Remdesivir placebo test trial

April 10 : The Gilead Sciences Inc study published in the NEJM on the "Compassionate Use of Remdesivir"

April 29 : NIH Release: Study on Remdesivir (Report published on May 22 in NEJM)

May 22, The BWH-Harvard Study on Hydroxychloroquine coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra published in The Lancet

May 22 , Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 -- Preliminary Report (NEJM)

June 5: The (fake) Lancet Report (May 22) on HCQ is Retracted.

June 29 , Fauci announcement. The $1.6 Billion Remdevisir HHS Agreement with Gilead Sciences Inc

April 10: The Gilead Sciences Inc. study published in the NEJM on the "Compassionate Use of Remdesivir"

A Gilead sponsored report was published in New England Journal of Medicine in an article entitled "Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19" . It was co-authored by an impressive list of 56 distinguished medical doctors and scientists, many of whom were recipients of consulting fees from Gilead Sciences Inc.

Gilead Sciences Inc. funded the study which included several staff members as co-authors.

The testing included a total of 61 patients [who] received at least one dose of remdesivir on or before March 7, 2020; 8 of these patients were excluded because of missing postbaseline information (7 patients) and an erroneous remdesivir start date (1 patient) Of the 53 remaining patients included in this analysis, 40 (75%) received the full 10-day course of remdesivir, 10 (19%) received 5 to 9 days of treatment, and 3 (6%) fewer than 5 days of treatment.

The NEJM article states that "Gilead Sciences Inc began accepting requests from clinicians for compassionate use of remdesivir on January 25, 2020". From whom, From Where? According to the WHO (January 30, 2020) there were 82 cases in 18 countries outside China of which 5 were in the US, 5 in France and 3 in Canada.

Several prominent physicians and scientists have cast doubt on the Compassionate Use of Remdesivir study conducted by Gilead, focussing on the small size of the trial. Ironically, the number of patients in the test is less that the number of co-authors: "53 patients" versus "56 co-authors"

Below we provide excerpts of scientific statements on the Gilead NEJM project ( Science Media Centre emphasis added) published immediately following the release of the NEJM article:

" 'Compassionate use' is better described as using an unlicensed therapy to treat a patient because there are no other treatments available . Research based on this kind of use should be treated with extreme caution because there is no control group or randomisation, which are some of the hallmarks of good practice in clinical trials. Prof Duncan Richard , Clinical Therapeutics, University of Oxford.

"It is critical not to over-interpret this study. Most importantly, it is impossible to know the outcome for this relatively small group of patients had they not received remdesivir. Dr Stephen Griffin , Associate Professor, School of Medicine, University of Leeds.

"The research is interesting but doesn't prove anything at this point: the data are from a small and uncontrolled study. Simon Maxwell, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Prescribing, University of Edinburgh.

"The data from this paper are almost uninterpretable. It is very surprising, perhaps even unethical, that the New England Journal of Medicine has published it. It would be more appropriate to publish the data on the website of the pharmaceutical company that has sponsored and written up the study. At least Gilead have been clear that this has not been done in the way that a high quality scientific paper would be written. Prof Stephen Evans, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

"It's very hard to draw useful conclusions from uncontrolled studies like this particularly with a new disease where we really don't know what to expect and with wide variations in outcomes between places and over time. One really has to question the ethics of failing to do randomisation – this study really represents more than anything else, a missed opportunity." Prof Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics, University of Bristol.

To review the complete document of Science Media Centre pertaining to expert assessments click here

April 29: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study on Remdevisir.

On April 29th following the publication of the Gilead Sciences Inc Study in the NEJM on April 10, a press release of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Remdevisir was released. The full document was published on May 22, by the NEJM under the title:

Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 -- Preliminary Report (NEJM)

The study had been initiated on February 21, 2020. The title of the April 29 Press Release was:

"Peer-reviewed data shows remdesivir for COVID-19 improves time to recovery"

It's a government sponsored report which includes preliminary data from a randomized trial involving 1063 hospitalized patients. The results of the trial labelled Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT) are preliminary, conducted under the helm of Dr. Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) :

An independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) overseeing the trial met on April 27 to review data and shared their interim analysis with the study team. Based upon their review of the data, they noted that remdesivir was better than placebo from the perspective of the primary endpoint, time to recovery, a metric often used in influenza trials. Recovery in this study was defined as being well enough for hospital discharge or returning to normal activity level.

Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001). Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo. Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (p=0.059). (emphasis added)

In the NIH's earlier February 21, 2020 report (released at the outset of the study), the methodology was described as follows:

A randomized, controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the investigational antiviral remdesivir in hospitalized adults diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Numbers. Where? When?

The February 21 repor t confirmed that the first trial participant was "an American who was repatriated after being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship" that docked in Yokohama (Japanese Territorial Waters). "Thirteen people repatriated by the U.S. State Department from the Diamond Princess cruise ship" were selected as patients for the placebo trial test. Ironically, at the outset of the study, 58.7% of the "confirmed cases" Worldwide (542 cases out of 924) (outside China), were on the Diamond Cruise Princess from which the initial trial placebo patients were selected.

Where and When: The trial test in the 68 selected sites? That came at a later date because on February 19th (WHO data), the US had recorded only 15 positive cases (see Table Below).

"A total of 68 sites ultimately joined the study -- 47 in the United States and 21 in countries in Europe and Asia." (emphasis added)

In the final May 22 NEJM report entitled Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 -- Preliminary Report :

There were 60 trial sites and 13 subsites in the United States (45 sites), Denmark (8), the United Kingdom (5), Greece (4), Germany (3), Korea (2), Mexico (2), Spain (2), Japan (1), and Singapore (1). Eligible patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive either remdesivir or placebo. Randomization was stratified by study site and disease severity at enrollment

The Washington Post applauded Anthony Fauci's announcement (April 29):

"The preliminary results, disclosed at the White House by Anthony S. Fauci, fall short of the magic bullet or cure But with no approved treatments for Covid-19, [Lie] Fauci said, it will become the standard of care for hospitalized patients The data shows that remdisivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery," Fauci said.

The government's first rigorous clinical trial of the experimental drug remdesivir as a coronavirus treatment delivered mixed results to the medical community Wednesday -- but rallied stock markets and raised hopes that an early weapon to help some patients was at hand.

The preliminary results, disclosed at the White House by Anthony Fauci, chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which led the placebo-controlled trial found that the drug accelerated the recovery of hospitalized patients but had only a marginal benefit in the rate of death.

Fauci's remarks boosted speculation that the Food and Drug Administration would seek emergency use authorization that would permit doctors to prescribe the drug.

In addition to clinical trials, remdesivir has been given to more than 1,000 patients under compassionate use. [also refers to the Gilead study published on April 10 in the NEJM]

The study, involving [more than] 1,000 patients at 68 sites in the United States and around the world (??) , offers the first evidence (??) from a large (??), randomized (??) clinical study of remdesivir's effectiveness against COVID-19.

The NIH placebo test study provided "preliminary results". While the placebo trial test was "randomized", the overall selection of patients at the 68 sites was not fully randomized. See the full report.

May 22: The Fake Lancet Report on Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)

It is worth noting that the full report of the NIH-NIAID) entitled Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 -- Preliminary Report was released on May 22, 2020 in the NEJM, on the same day as the controversial Lancet report on Hydroxychloroquine.

Immediately folllowing its publication, the media went into high gear, smearing the HCQ cure, while applauding the NIH-NIASD report released on the same day.

Remdesivir, the only drug cleared to treat Covid-19, sped the recovery time of patients with the disease, "It's a very safe and effective drug," said Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. "We now have a definite first efficacious drug for Covid-19, which is a major step forward and will be built upon with other drugs, [and drug] combinations."

When the Lancet HCQ article by Bingham-Harvard was retracted on June 5, it was too late, it received minimal media coverage. Despite the Retraction, the HCQ cure "had been killed".

June 29: Fauci Greenlight. The $1.6 Billion Remdesivir Contract with Gilead Sciences Inc

Dr. Anthony Fauci granted the "Greenlight" to Gilead Sciences Inc. on June 29, 2020.

The semi-official US government NIH-NIAID sponsored report (May 22) entitled Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 -- Preliminary Report (NEJM) was used to justify a major agreement with Gilead Sciences Inc.

The Report was largely funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

On June 29, based on the findings of the NIH-NIAID Report published in the NEJM, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on behalf of the Trump Adminstration an agreement to secure large supplies of the remdesivir drug from Gilead Sciences Inc. for the treatment of Covid-19 in America's private hospitals and clinics.

The earlier Gilead study based on scanty test results published in the NEJM (April 10), of 53 cases (and 56 co-authors) was not highlighted. The results of this study had been questioned by several prominent physicians and scientists.

Who will be able to afford Remdisivir? 500,000 doses of Remdesivir are envisaged at $3,200 per patient, namely $1.6 billion (see the s tudy by Elizabeth Woodworth )

The Drug was also approved for marketing in the European Union. under the brandname Veklury.

If this contract is implemented as planned, it represents for Gilead Science Inc. and the recipient US private hospitals and clinics a colossal amount of money.

[error in above title according to HHS: $3200]

According to The Trump Administration's HHS Secretary Alex Azar (June 29, 2020):

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"To the extent possible, we want to ensure that a ny American patient who needs remdesivir can get it . [at $3200] The Trump Administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for COVID-19 and secure access to these options for the American people."

Remdesivir for Covid-19: $1.6 Billion for a "Modestly Beneficial" Drug?

Remdesivir versus Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)

Careful timing:

The Lancet study (published on May 22) was intended to undermine the legitimacy of Hydroxychloroquine as an effective cure to Covid-19, with a view to sustaining the $1.6 billion agreement between the HHS and Gilead Sciences Inc. on June 29th. The legitmacy of this agreement rested on the May 22 NIH-NIAID study in the NEJM which was considered "preliminary".

What Dr. Fauci failed to acknowledge is that Chloroquine had been "studied" and tested fifteen years ago by the CDC as a drug to be used against coronavirus infections. And that Hydroxychloroquine has been used recently in the treatment of Covid-19 in several countries.

According to the Virology Journal (2005) " Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread". It was used in the SARS-1 outbreak in 2002. It had the endorsement of the CDC.

HCQ is not only effective, it is "inexpensive" when compared to Remdesivir, at an estimated "$3120 for a US Patient with private insurance".

Below are excerpts of an interview of Harvard's Professor Mehra (who undertook the May 22 Lancet study) with France Soir published immediately following the publication of the Lancet report (prior to its Retraction).

Dr. Mandeep Mehra: In our study, it is fairly obvious that the lack of benefit and the risk of toxicity observed for hydroxychloroquine are fairly reliable. [referring to the May 22 Lancet study]

France Soir: Do you have the data for Remdesivir?

MM: Yes, we have the data, but the number of patients is too small for us to be able to conclude in one way or another.

FS: As you know, in France, there is a pros and cons battle over hydroxychloroquine which has turned into a public health issue even involving the financial lobbying of pharmaceutical companies. Why not measure the effect of one against the other to put an end to all speculation?

MM: In fact, there is no rational basis for testing Remdesivir versus hydroxychloroquine. On the one hand, Remdesivir has shown that there is no risk of mortality and that there is a reduction in recovery time. On the other hand, for hydroxychloroquine it is the opposite: it has never been shown any advantage and most studies are small or inconclusive In addition, our study shows that there are harmful effects.

It would therefore be difficult and probably unethical to compare a drug with demonstrated harmfulness to a drug with at least a glimmer of hope.

FS: You said that there is no basis for testing or comparing Remdesivir with hydroxychloroquine, do you think you have done everything to conclude that hydroxychloroquine is dangerous?

MM: Exactly.

All we are saying is that once you have been infected (5 to 7 days after) to the point of having to be hospitalized with a severe viral load, the use of hydroxychloroquine and its derivative is not effective.

The damage from the virus is already there and the situation is beyond repair. With this treatment [HCQ] it can generate more complications

FS Mandeep Mehra declared that he had no conflict of interest with the laboratories and that this study was financed from the endowment funds of the professor's chair.

He participated in a conference sponsored by Gilead in early April 2020 as part of the Covid-19 debate.

- France Soir, translated by the author, emphasis added, May 23, 2020)

In Annex, see the followup article by France Soir published after the scam surrounding the data base of Dr. Mehra's Lancet report was revealed.

Concluding Remarks

Lies and Corruption to the nth Degree involving Dr. Anthony Fauci, "The Boston Connection" and Gilead Sciences Inc.

The Gilead Sciences Inc. Remdesivir study (50+ authors) was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 10, 2020).

It was followed by the NIH-NIAID Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 -- Preliminary Report on May 22, 2020 in the NEJM. And on that same day, May 22, the "fake report" on Hydroxychloroquine by BWH-Harvard Dr. Mehra was published by The Lancet.

Harvard Medical School and the BWH bear responsibility for having hosted and financed the fake Lancet report on HCQ coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra.

Is there conflict of interest? BWH was simultaneously involved in a study on Remdesivir in contract with Gilead Sciences, Inc.

While the Lancet report coordinated by Harvard's Dr. Mehra was retracted, it nonetheless served the interests of Gilead Sciences Inc.

It is important that an independent scientific and medical assessment be undertaken, respectively of the Gilead Sciences Inc New England Journal of Medicine (NEMJ) peer reviewed study (April 10, 2020) as well as the NIH-NIAID study also published in the NEJM (May 22, 2020).

* * *

ANNEX

Retraction by France Soir

The fraud concerning the Lancet Report was revealed in early June. France Soir in a subsequent article (June 5, 2020) points to the Boston Connection: La connexion de Boston , namely the insiduous relationship between Gilead Sciences Inc and Professor Mehra, Harvard Medical School as well as the two related Boston based hospitals involved.

(excerpts here, to access the complete text click here translation from French by France Soir, emphasis in the original article)

The often evasive answers produced by Dr Mandeep R. Mehra, a physician specializing in cardiovascular surgery and professor at Harvard Medical School, did not produce confidence, fueling doubt instead about the integrity of this retrospective study and its results.

However, the reported information that Dr. Mehra had attended a conference sponsored by Gilead – producer of remdesivir, a drug in direct competition with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) – early in April called for further investigation

It is important to keep in mind that Dr. Mandeep Mehra has a practice at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston.

That study relied on the shared medical records of 8,910 patients in 169 hospitals around the world, also by Surgisphere.

Funding for the study was "Supported by the William Harvey Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The development and maintenance of the collaborative surgical outcomes database was funded by Surgisphere."

The study published on May 22 sought to evaluate the efficacy or otherwise of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, alone or in combination with a macrolide antibiotic.

It is therefore noteworthy that within 3 weeks, 2 large observational retrospective studies on large populations – 96,032 and 8,910 patients – spread around the world were published in two different journals by Dr. Mehra, Dr. Desai and other co-authors using the database of Surgisphere, Dr. Desai's company.

These two practising physicians and surgeons seem to have an exceptional working capacity associated with the gift of ubiquity.

The date of May 22 is also noteworthy because on the very same day, the date of the publication in The Lancet of the highly accusatory study against HCQ, another study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine concerning the results of a clinical trial of remdesivir.

In the conclusion of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, "remdesivir was superior to placebo in shortening the time to recovery in adults hospitalized with Covid-19 and evidence of lower respiratory tract infection."

Concretely: on the same day, May 22nd, one study demeaned HCQ in one journal while another claimed evidence of attenuation on some patients through remdesivir in another journal.

It should be noted that one of the main co-authors, Elizabeth "Libby"* Hohmann, represents one of the participating hospitals, the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, also affiliated with Harvard Medical School, as is the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where Dr. Mandeep Mehra practices.

Coincidence, probably.

Upon further investigation, we discovered that the first 3 major clinical trials on Gilead's remdesivir were conducted by these two hospitals:

"While COVID-19 continues to circle the globe with scientists following on its trail, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) are leading the search for effective treatment.

"Both hospitals are conducting clinical trials of remdesivir."

MGH has joined what the National Institute of Health (NIH) describe as the first clinical trial in the United States of an experimental treatment for COVID-19, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of NIH . MGH is currently the only hospital in New England to participate in this trial, according to a list of sites shared by the hospital.

" It's a gigantic undertaking, with patients registered in some 50 sites across the country, getting better .

"The NIH trial, which can be adapted to evaluate other treatments, aims to determine whether the drug relieves the respiratory problems and other symptoms of COVID-19, helping patients leave hospital earlier.**

As a reminder, the NIAID/NIH is led by Antony Fauci, a staunch opponent of HCQ.

Coincidence, probably.

" At the Brigham, two additional trials initiated by Gilead , the drug developer, will determine whether it alleviates symptoms in patients with moderate to severe illness over five- and ten-days courses. These trials will also be randomized, but not placebo controlled, and will include 1,000 patients at sites worldwide. Those patients, noted Francisco Marty, MD, Brigham physician and study co-investigator, will likely be recruited at an unsettlingly rapid clip."

As a result, the first major clinical trials on remdesivir launched on March 20, whose results are highly important for Gilead, are being led by the MGH and BWH in Boston, precisely where Dr. Mehra, the main author of the May 22nd HCQ trial, is practising.

Small world! Coincidence, again, probably.

Dr. Marty at BWH expected to have results two months later. Indeed, in recent days, several US media outlets have reported Gilead's announcements of positive results from the remdesivir clinical trials in Boston.:

"Encouraging results from a new study published Wednesday on remdesivir for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.**

Brigham and Dr. Francisco Marty worked on this study, and he says the results show that there is no major difference between treating a patient with a five-day versus a 10-day regimen.

"Gilead Announces Results of Phase 3 Remdesivir Trial in Patients with Moderate COVID-19

– One study shows that the 5-day treatment of remdesivir resulted in significantly greater clinical improvement compared to treatment with the standard of care alone

– The data come on top of the body of evidence from previous studies demonstrating the benefits of remdesivir in hospitalized patients with IDVOC-19

"We now have three randomized controlled trials demonstrating that remdesivir improved clinical outcomes by several different measures," Gilead plans to submit the complete data for publication in a peer-reviewed journal in the coming weeks .

These results announced by Gilead a few days after the May 22 publication of the study in the Lancet demolishing HCQ, a study whose main author is Dr. Mehra, are probably again a coincidence.

So many coincidences adds up to coincidences? Really ?


[Jul 09, 2020] Vitamin D may be a good defense against the coronavirus, according to several new reports. Here's what you need to know-

Jul 09, 2020 | www.msn.com

While there's still no evidence that vitamin D can cure or prevent the coronavirus, three major health organizations in the UK are advising people to ensure they get enough vitamin D, from the sun or supplements, to be on the safe side.

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The Scientific Advisory Commission on Nutrition , the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence , and the Royal Society all published reports last month detailing what we know (and don't) about the coronavirus and vitamin D, concluding that we need more research to fully understand the connection.

In the meantime, however, these organizations advise a stronger emphasis on meeting the current recommended vitamin D intake, not only as a precaution against coronavirus, but for general health too.

Vitamin D is important for health, and might even stave off some illnesses

Vitamin D is an essential nutrient for health, including the immune system.

Normally, humans can produce vitamin D naturally through direct exposure to sunlight -- we also get vitamin D in certain foods, like eggs, fatty fish, and beef liver. In total, the UK recommends people get 10 micrograms of vitamin D per day; the US recommendation is slightly higher, 15 micrograms for most people, and 20 micrograms for those over 70.

Spending too much time indoors, whether in the colder winter months or in quarantine, can potentially put you at risk of a vitamin D deficiency. Not enough of the nutrient is directly linked to muscle, tooth, and bone health issues, according to the recent Royal Society report.

That could be a problem when it comes to illness -- there's some evidence that a lack of vitamin D is linked to infections, particularly in the respiratory tract, according to the Scientific Advisory Commission on Nutrition report.

But there's no evidence showing a direct cause link between vitamin D and better coronavirus outcomes

However, while COVID-19 (the disease caused by the novel coronavirus) does attack the respiratory system, there's no evidence vitamin D can cure or prevent the illness.

Several previous studies have made a link between coronavirus outcomes and vitamin D deficiency -- however, that research has included other variables that could explain the number and severity of COVID-19 cases, and the research is far from showing a causal link.

But at least one study has also shown no apparent link between vitamin D and coronavirus outcomes, leading s ome researchers to remain skeptical about the possible connection .

Previous research has cautioned consumers about exaggerated claims about vitamin D and the coronavirus, particularly with regard to supplements or extremely high doses through an IV: too much vitamin D can can cause a toxic buildup of calcium and lead to kidney issues, according to the Mayo Clinic .

As such, there's still much more research to be done on the implications of vitamin D for different coronavirus outcomes.

Charles Bangham, professor of immunology at Imperial College London and co-author of the Royal Society paper, told the Financial Times that Vitamin D deficiency could in part explain why people with darker skin tones have been hardest-hit by the coronavirus. Black and brown people have more melanin that blocks UV rays from the sun, so naturally-producing the nutrient from sunlight takes longer for people with darker skin.

... ... ...

Read more:

Huge doses of vitamin D will not cure or protect you from the coronavirus, a new report says

Copper will not protect you from the coronavirus, despite its germ-killing properties, a microbiologist says

Race is not the reason Black Americans have a higher risk of dying from the coronavirus. It's racism.

Read the original article on Insider

[Jul 08, 2020] Copper will not protect you from coronavirus despite killing germs - Insider

Jul 08, 2020 | www.insider.com

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As the US begins to tentatively return to business, despite the novel coronavirus still lurking among the population, any potential protection has become a hot commodity.

Copper metal, used in products such as door handles and key rings, is being touted as one such solution, advertised as killing the virus on contact.

But before you click "buy" on those Instagram ads for copper patches billed as "natural hygienic germ stoppers," it's important to distinguish between what copper is and isn't capable of doing against the virus.

It may help against germs in some instances, but it's not a panacea for prevention, since the coronavirus can still live on copper surfaces for hours. And it's certainly no substitute for other precautions, according to Dr. Miryam Wahrman, biology professor at William Paterson University and author of " The Hand Book: Surviving in a Germ-Filled World ."

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"From what we're dealing with now, I don't think there's a lot of evidence to support the usefulness of copper in terms of reducing infections," Wahrman told Insider.

"Germ-killing" ads include everything from copper discs and stickers to cell phone cases, bracelets and socks

There is a huge variety of copper products sold as "prevention tools," but they fall into four general categories.

There are wearables, such as face masks, but also tee-shirts laced with copper, and jewelry, which vendors claim "self-sanitize" if they come into contact with contagious particles.

Then there are "sanitizers," which are bars or discs made of or coated in copper. These are designed to be rubbed on your hands or other objects in order to sanitize them.

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Touch-tools, the third category, can vary widely, but picture something that looks like bottle opener or key. You might use these to open doors, push buttons, or even tap on touchscreens instead of directly interesting with those potentially germy surfaces.

Finally, there are copper-coated versions of everyday items you touch frequently, such as cellphone cases and door handles. The advantage of these over their ordinary counterparts is that germs (including coronavirus) can't survive as long on copper as on surfaces like plastic and other types of metal.

Copper can kill bacteria, but it's less effective against viruses

It's true that research has shown copper has antimicrobial properties -- it can kill germs on contact in several ways, including by damaging the cell membranes, but is most effective against bacteria, Wahrman explained.

"Copper is good as an antimicrobial against certain types of bacteria but when it comes to viruses, that's a whole different ballgame because viruses are not living cells," she said.

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An April 2020 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found copper is inhospitable for the novel coronavirus as well, as the virus has a much shorter lifespan on copper than on other surfaces such cloth, plastic, or even other metals.

That's important for environments where a lot of potential viral and bacterial particles are present, such as hospitals. A 2016 study found that using copper components in hospitals could help prevent patients from contracting other infections while hospitalized. According to the study, copper surfaces reduced the infection rate of patients by 58% (from 8.1% to 3.4%), and reduced the viral load on surfaces by 83%.

However, the study found the coronavirus can still survive as long as 4 hours on copper, and it could take as long as 45 minutes for copper to reduce even a substantial amount of the virus on a surface .

copper sink
The soap, not the metal on the sink, is what really helps prevent viral contamination.
Maryna Andriichenko/Getty Images
Most copper products do nothing more than lull you into a false sense of security, experts say

Touch-tools, which you can use to open doors, push buttons or otherwise interact with high-touch surfaces, might help by creating a barrier between contagions and your hand, but only if you keep the tool clean, too. If you're not careful to do that, this protective touch tool could simply be lulling you into feeling you're protected, when you're not.

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"The positive thing is, you're touching fewer surfaces," Wahrman said. "But then you're going to come into contact with the part that's been touching surfaces when you put it back in your purse or your pocket. It's going to give you a false sense of confidence and won't occur to you that you've actually transferred germs to yourself and your home."

As an antimicrobial surface, copper could potentially still slow the spread of infection. But experts say it's highly unlikely that, even in that unlikely scenario, it wouldn't instantly kill coronavirus germs.

"The suggestion that you can rub these items on your hands and that's going to keep you healthy, that's not scientifically supported, especially for viruses," Wahrman said.

And face masks containing copper might be even less helpful, since in order for it to be effective, the copper needs to come into direct contact with the virus. Copper-infused cloth would only work if the virus penetrates the fabric, defeating the purpose of the mask in the first place.

me title=

"The face mask is a great barrier. They have a tight fiber so that they do block a lot of the viral particles and blocking them is key," Wahrman said. "If the viral passes through the mask, it's not going to interact with the metal anyway, so it's not going to make a difference."

For that direct contact to occur, items would need to be fully coated in copper across the entire surface. Even then, however, the virus wouldn't be eliminated instantly. There's an additional complication, too, with cleaning copper-coated objects, since typical cleaning products could interfere with the chemical properties of the metal that make it effective against viruses in the first place, according to research.

Copper might help on surfaces over time, but it can't prevent droplets direct from another person

None of these uses of copper address the most common form of contagious for the novel coronavirus, which is airborne infectious directly from person to person.

"The big problem with the coronavirus is that it travels in droplets from one person to another who inhales it and that's how most of the infections are happening. So there's no real way to get copper involved," Wahrman said.

me title=

So, while copper could have some promising applications, particularly in high-risk settings such as hospitals, it's not a cure-all for the average person, and it can't replace traditional disinfectants, hand sanitizer, or good old fashioned soap and water, according to Wahrman.

"The original advice that's tried and true is wash your hands with soap and water or use alcohol based hand sanitizer, and you've really reduced the risk and reduced the germ load," she said.

Wearing a mask, washing your hands frequently, and maintaining social distancing are still your best bet against slowing the spread of the virus, per the CDC's advice .

[Jul 07, 2020] Approximately one in every 12 individuals, or 500 million people worldwide, is living with chronic viral hepatitis

Jul 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

somebody , Jul 6 2020 20:48 utc | 118

Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Jul 5 2020 20:23 utc | 41

More math .

Perhaps the scariest numbers in microbiology relate to pathogenic microorganisms. Worldwide, 16 million people die from infectious disease every year, and many of these deaths are preventable. Approximately one in every 12 individuals, or 500 million people worldwide, is living with chronic viral hepatitis, and the estimated number of new chlamydial infections per year is approximately 50 million, more than the population of South Korea. The bacterium Clostridium botulinum produces a toxin so potent that 3 grams would be enough to kill the population of the United Kingdom and 400 grams would kill everyone on the planet.

In total, there are ∼1,400 known species of human pathogens (including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths), and although this may seem like a large number, human pathogens account for much less than 1% of the total number of microbial species on the planet. On this point, ignoring questions about what actually constitutes a species, estimates for the total number of microbial species vary wildly, from as low as 120,000 to tens of millions and higher. Part of the reason for this large range is that we have only sequenced 1 × 10−22% of the total DNA on Earth (although the Earth Microbiome Project should improve this dramatically to 1 × 10−20% in the next 3 years). This means that the fraction of microbial diversity that we have sampled to date is effectively zero, a nice abstract entity to end on.

Have you ever wondered how Sarv-Cov-2 made it to discovery? Or how humans have managed to survive up to now?

[Jul 07, 2020] Why closed spaces are them main avenue of COVID-19 propagation

Jul 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Tuyzentfloot , Jul 5 2020 20:23 utc | 41

Airborne ballpark math: we breathe about 500 l/h when sitting down and up to 10 times that when exercising. When someone is ill and pushing 500 l/h of breath into a room with a halftime of say 4 hours then after about that time this person maintains roughly 2 cubic meters of breath in that room. For a room of 100 cubic meter that would be 2% of the air. So during a workday you'd be breathing the breath of that other person at a dilution of the order of 1%. Air conditioning recycles the air (maybe not completely I don't know the ratio) so it is not ventilation where the air is replaced. Maybe airco can pick off a large part of the particles. But that is the idea, assuming various losses and a large room you would still breathing someone elses breath diluted by a factor thousand.
I haven't found data on it but I suspect half time in cool air is considerately longer.
What talking and shouting then does is increase the amount of virus material in the air but there will be a huge increase at short distance and an unknown increase at large distance.
With this reasoning the question is not whether the virus can travel through air but how easy it is. Long halflife in air increases the chance.
High threshold of number of virus particles to have an effective transmission would decrease the chance. So I would start by measuring the amount of material we can push into the air in small droplets. How much variation is there.

So meat processing: cold air and to save energy ventilation is not good. Air is recycled a lot. People doing physical labour a whole day, not sitting. Sounds tricky independently of the hygiene question of dealing with industrially forcegrown animals

tucenz , Jul 5 2020 20:29 utc | 42

Tuyzentfloot | Jul 5 2020 20:23 utc | 40

You may need to put some gallons, pounds and feet in that post for the benefit "exceptional" nation readers.

[Jul 05, 2020] The main benefit of herd immunity is that it will allow the country to function again. And that would be good for everyone, healthy and sickly alike.

Jul 05, 2020 | www.unz.com

john cronk says: July 2, 2020 at 5:18 pm GMT 500 Words

There is no exit strategy for this haphazard insanity. Once this over-reaction to a fairly innocuous infectious agent was accepted as being necessary, there's no way to ever declare reversion to normalcy.

In my opinion, rather than endlessly focussing on this not particularly interesting virus, coming up with creative signboards and banners restricting movement, wrecking people's livelihoods and painting crosses on the pavement where one must stand, we should have been onto a more obvious problem by now. What if this HAD been a deadly pathogen? Why aren't we prepared to quickly open special quarantine/treatment centers, disconnected from regular hospitals? And what are we going to do about it?

This little rehearsal showed how unprepared we are should a real existential threat arise.
But no, we must instead continue to waste our time, money and effort in playacting that this is a real biological crisis, and creating an actual breakdown in our way of life. We must continue to double down, because if we take ever more extreme action about corona, that will prove that the idiocy we've demonstrated thus far was necessary ..right?

[Hide MORE]
Given the way corona virus is being handled, one would think we don't realize that people die quite regularly, especially when they're in bad condition. Now, we're practically demanding that nobody should die from catching a microbe – that we should stay home and hold our breath until everyone is guaranteed to survive. Since when have we ever believed that? Is that how we built civilization? The civilization that we're now destroying?

There's little reason for insulin-sensitive people – with healthy immune status and without metabolic disease – to stay home, wear a mask or 'social distance' themselves. Since they won't be getting seriously ill, their staying home wouldn't help 'flatten the curve' of sick people overburdening the healthcare system (as usual, to the expense of all of us). On the contrary, active healthy people can contribute something to the economy.

The main benefit of herd immunity is that it will allow the country to function again. And that would be good for everyone, healthy and sickly alike. The metabolically/immunologically compromised will be vulnerable to catching the corona virus from anyone who's contracted it and is temporarily contagious, no matter whether the carrier's general health is good or poor. And that's the same fix that people with poor immune function are in, always and everywhere. The answer for protecting these most vulnerable people from COVID – which is only one of the many dangers to their health that they face – can be one of two things; the best one being that they start eating right. And/or, we can build as much equipment and medical facilities, where they're most needed, as they may require. Either of these solutions is much more viable, less disruptive and less expensive than what we're doing now. And with either solution, healthier people would no longer be punished for possessing normal human vitality.

While governments, health agencies and scientists take steps to upgrade the availability of care facilities, equipment and treatments, individuals should follow this
CORONA VIRUS PROTOCOL
Part A (Everyone)
Begin a therapeutic diet to quickly upgrade and regulate the immune system. This consists of, wholly or mostly:
Home cooked meat, oily fish, eggs (especially yolks), animal fat, bone broth, collagen or gelatin, and liver, and the elimination of corn, soy, canola, safflower, sunflower, grapeseed and rice bran oils as well as flours, sugar and prepared foods.

Part B (those most at risk for COVID complications- individuals with high BMI or chronic health issues, or taking prescription medications, etc.)
While following the part A protocol, take reasonable precautions to limit your exposure to possible infection from others, such as limiting time or wearing a mask when in close contact with other people.

AaronInMVD , says: Website July 2, 2020 at 6:16 pm GMT

@john cronk with this knowledge is talk about it. Lots of talk, little action. The only active pieces on the board are hopping around and trying to do a cultural revolution and proceeding with an absolute poverty of energy.

This might be the most sedentary collapse ever. The world is taking a hard turn towards a prolonged dark age and for the lack of reaction it seems people are just going with the flow. Welcome to the future. A little bit of 1984, a heavy dose of Idiocracy, and a whole bunch of pudgy kids trying to live out their Harry Potter headcanon.

Nevermind all the attention given to "Black Lives" while Black voices (Lest we forget the 'Shaun King is transracial' scandal of not long ago) are shut out of the conversation Nonsense reigns!

[Jul 03, 2020] Hydroxychloroquine lowers COVID-19 death rate, Henry Ford Health study finds - Detroit News

Notable quotes:
"... The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system's six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died. ..."
"... Among all patients in the study, there was an overall in-hospital mortality rate of 18%, and many who died had underlying conditions that put them at greater risk, according to Henry Ford Health System. Globally, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients is between 10% and 30%, and it's 58% among those in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator." Detroit News ..."
"... A long "take down" of Fauci: https://www.unz.com/audio/kbarrett_ken-mccarthy-tony-fauci-is-corrupt-to-the-core/ ..."
"... This is not Fauci's first rodeo. He's been pumping hysteria for 36 years. He always gets it wrong. He was wrong about swine flu. He was wrong about bird flu. He was wrong about Zika. He was wrong about Ebola. He wildly exaggerated AIDS. And he always is wrong in the favor of pharmaceutical companies. And he's always wrong in favor of 'we've got to develop a vaccine now. We have to throw out all the rules. ..."
"... Observational studies are never the equivalent of double-blind randomized studies; but there can still provide important and fare more readily obtained early information about these connections and conditions. ..."
"... This stuff is hard. There are lots of variations in patient populations and treatment protocols. We have to consider doses, concomitant meds (such as azithromycin), patient status at time of treatment, age, and, comorbidities. ..."
"... the recently halted NIH trial was randomized, double-blinded; this was in a hospital setting. The prophylactic trial reported at the beginning of June in NEJM (author Boulware) was also randomized, double-blinded; this was in a prophylactic setting. ..."
Jul 03, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday.

Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug "significantly" decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis.

The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system's six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died.

Among all patients in the study, there was an overall in-hospital mortality rate of 18%, and many who died had underlying conditions that put them at greater risk, according to Henry Ford Health System. Globally, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients is between 10% and 30%, and it's 58% among those in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator." Detroit News

-----------------

No comment needed. pl

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/02/michigan-henry-ford-health-study-finds-hydroxychloroquine-lowers-covid-19-death-rate/5365090002/


Fred , 03 July 2020 at 11:38 AM

I agree, no comment is needed. Some charges for medical malpractice and malfeasance certainly are.

John Credulous , 03 July 2020 at 01:06 PM

Fred,

There will be no accountability: The b-stards have set the standards.

A long "take down" of Fauci: https://www.unz.com/audio/kbarrett_ken-mccarthy-tony-fauci-is-corrupt-to-the-core/

BillWade` , 03 July 2020 at 01:09 PM

Damn it, it's too cheap!

Deap , 03 July 2020 at 01:54 PM

Uncharted research: areas where anti-malarial drugs are sold widely over the counter - in malaria prone parts of the world - eg: Central America, SEA and Pacific Islands. How do their covid rates relate to these specific localities (not just generalized country numbers), where ongoing prophylactic sales of OTC anti-malaria drugs are most prevalent?

Why does the CDC travel and tourism website info still recommend taking anti-malarial drugs, when the other hand of our deep state bureaucrats are screaming these drugs will kill you?

Observational studies are never the equivalent of double-blind randomized studies; but there can still provide important and fare more readily obtained early information about these connections and conditions.

jonst , 03 July 2020 at 01:56 PM

No comment/s needed perhaps. But deliciously anticipated. Here, from the Committee, and especially from the MSM. Even if only silence. Because "silence is really violence" in this case.

John Credulous , 03 July 2020 at 02:17 PM

FWIW, Jimmie Moglia's erudition is formidable, and as a stylist, not too distracting:

https://www.yourdailyshakespeare.com/2020/04/11/the-coronavirus-and-galileo/
As for me I am reminded of the advice that Timon of Athens gave to two robbers who came to see him, "Trust not the physician, for his antidotes are poison, and he slays more than you rob."

https://www.yourdailyshakespeare.com/2020/06/08/the-world-upside-down/
And here is an example, a reported 'case-study'. A prince of Persia had melancholia and suffered from the delusion of being a cow. He would moo like a cow, crying "Kill me so that a good stew may be made of my flesh," and would never eat anything. Avicenna was persuaded to treat the case and sent a message to the patient, asking him to be happy as the butcher was coming to slaughter him. The sick man rejoiced. When Avicenna approached the prince with a knife in his hand, he asked, "Where is the cow so I may kill it."

The patient then mooed like a cow to indicate where he was. He was then laid on the ground for slaughter. When Avicenna approached the patient pretending to slaughter him, he said, "The cow is too lean and not ready to be killed. He must be fed properly and I will kill it when it becomes healthy and fat. The patient was then offered food, which he ate eagerly and gradually gained strength, got rid of his delusion, and was completely cured.

How relevant may be the Avicennian case study to the current dynamics of the pandemic I will leave it to my possible and patient readers to decide.

Ulenspiegel , 03 July 2020 at 02:20 PM

"No comment needed."


What was the difference between the Michigan study and the others, which found no positive ecffect?

How do you explain the low mortality of the control group in the Michigan study?

egl , 03 July 2020 at 02:31 PM

"Limitations to our analysis include the retrospective, non-randomized, non-blinded study design."

turcopolier , 03 July 2020 at 02:51 PM

ulenspiegel

Dr. Marc Siegel a medical correspondent for Foxnews told T. Carlson weeks ago that an emergency treatment of this drug saved the life of his 96 year old father who was at the point of death, cured him overnight in fact.

Babak makkinejad , 03 July 2020 at 03:27 PM

Utenspiegel

It is a fact that cancer drugs are not uniformly effective in all patients.

The causes must be sought in the genotypes of the patients.

The differential response as well as effectiveness are not reasons to discard a therapy.

In further news on COVID-19 Treatments I have 2 items to report:

First one:

The 3-drug mixture of Azittomycin, Naproxen, and prednisolone (oral or injectable) have been used successfully for reduction of the inflammation of respiratory system.

3 systematic trials have been undertaken and results were conclusive in expediting faster recovery.

Second one:

Clinical trials in Iran (in Masih Daneshvari hospital) – indicated 100% cure of COVID-19 in 20 patients using a combination of ReciGen and Cultera (sic?) which is an AIDS drug.

A second group of patients – 152 – had a reduction in mortality of 20% as compared to those who were only receiving Cultera (sic.?)


https://www.cinnagen.com/Product.aspx?t=2&l=1&Id=66&f=3

The results are supposed to be published in the Journal of Immunopharmacotherapy.

The dosage was: 5 times day, 12 million units.

No side effects were reported.

egl , 03 July 2020 at 03:57 PM

ulenspiegel:

This stuff is hard. There are lots of variations in patient populations and treatment protocols. We have to consider doses, concomitant meds (such as azithromycin), patient status at time of treatment, age, and, comorbidities.

A big difference: the Ford study was not randomized, not double-blinded. They used a statistical technique to try to make the groups comparable on factors believed to be relevant, but this is after fact. (It's a nice technique, I've used it myself, but it doesn't magically solve all of the difficulties of retrospective analysis.)

In contrast, the recently halted NIH trial was randomized, double-blinded; this was in a hospital setting. The prophylactic trial reported at the beginning of June in NEJM (author Boulware) was also randomized, double-blinded; this was in a prophylactic setting.

Seward , 03 July 2020 at 06:00 PM

Hydroxychloroquine is the active ingredient in the tonic portion of gin and tonics, which I've been drinking for prophylactic purposes since the pandemic began.

[Jul 03, 2020] The current reserach suggests that while the G614 variant may be more infectious, it is not more pathogenic.

Jul 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mina , Jul 3 2020 12:57 utc | 134

"The current work suggests that while the G614 variant may be more infectious, it is not more pathogenic. There is a hope that as SARS-CoV-2 infection spreads, the virus might become less pathogenic,"

i.e. that if schools had been left open, it would have spread and became less pathogenic earlier.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/02/health/coronavirus-mutation-spread-study/index.html

[Jul 02, 2020] Public Outcry Follows Gilead Decision to Charge $3000 for COVID Drug that Costs Pennies to Produce

Notable quotes:
"... Journal of Virus Eradication ..."
"... Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent . He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting , The Guardian , Salon , The Grayzone , Jacobin Magazine , Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary . ..."
Jul 02, 2020 | www.mintpressnews.com

alifornia-based pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences has announced that a five-day course of its antiviral drug Remdesivir -- shown in tests to effectively fight COVID-19 -- will cost $3,120 to Americans with health insurance and $2,340 to those on Medicaid. Yet research published in April calculated that the drug could be produced at a profit for as little as $0.93 per day.

The study, led by Dr. Andrew Hill from the Department of Translational Medicine, University of Liverpool, U.K., and published in the Journal of Virus Eradication , found that a five-day course of lifesaving Remdesivir could be mass-produced for less than the cost of a Subway sandwich. So cheap is the drug that the saline solution and the syringe needed to administer it would be more costly. MintPress spoke with Dr. Hill, who was dismayed by the company's announcement.

We are in a health emergency. We can't have a situation right now where people are unable to access medicine because the prices are too high. Remdesivir is a drug that has had its development costs paid for, in large part, by independent donors like governments and ministries of health in China, the WHO, and the U.S. government. So why should a company be making money in the middle of a pandemic by selling a drug which has largely been developed independently of them?" he said.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=AlanRMacLeod&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1278229120711716865&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mintpressnews.com%2Fpublic-outcry-gilead-charges-3000-covid-19-drug-cost-pennies%2F269110%2F&siteScreenName=MintPressNews&theme=light&widgetsVersion=9066bb2%3A1593540614199&width=500px

News of the decision led to an explosion of public anger. "As Gilead charges $3,120 for its COVID drug, Remdesivir, remember that the drug was developed with a $70,000,000 grant from the federal government paid for by American taxpayers. Once again, Big Pharma is set to profit on the people's dime," wrote former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. "This isn't healthcare. It's extortion," appeared to be the overwhelming sentiment on social media.

Gilead itself, however, seemed not to share this sentiment. Indeed, its press release on the subject positioned its decision as a selfless and magnanimous gesture of corporate philanthropy. "We approached this with the aim of helping as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible and in the most responsible way," said its CEO, Daniel O'Day, adding that, "under normal circumstances" the company would have charged the public $12,000 per patient.

"A new low"

Remdesivir is an intravenous antiviral drug that has been used to fight other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS and has shown some effectiveness against Ebola. Although far from a miracle treatment, studies have concluded that it aids recovery, reducing the average hospital visit for COVID-19 patients from 15 days to 11 days when compared to a placebo. Like with everything coronavirus-related, there is no absolute scientific consensus. In late April, the WHO accidentally leaked a Chinese study that suggested Remdesivir may not be as effective as Gilead claims it to be. Nevertheless, the Trump administration has now bought up the entire world's stock of the drug, effectively confiscating it and shutting out every other country from the medicine.

"I've been working in medicine for 32 years and I have never seen anything like it. I've never seen a country be that brazen. We have to work together. This could be a taste of the future. They've tried to also do this with advanced orders of vaccines. Imagine if we had a 100 percent effective vaccine and it only went to Americans," Dr. Hill told MintPress .

At the moment people don't quite understand the gravity of the decision that the American government has made. This is a worldwide epidemic and we have got to remember that the clinical trials of Remdesivir were not just conducted in the United States; they were conducted around European and Chinese centers. Patients put themselves at risk to take part in an experimental drug trial, and the gratitude we get as other countries after our people were involved in these studies is to be shut out of the future supply of the drug?! It is simply ethically unacceptable. I think there are serious questions to be answered. This is a new low ground, unfortunately," he added.

https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1277821241496408071

Gilead has been under considerable public scrutiny of late. The company, which announced profits of $5.4 billion last year, has increased its value by $15 billion since the pandemic began. In December, MintPress reported that it was being sued, accused of deliberately holding back a lifesaving HIV drug to extend the profitability of their previous, inferior one. With shades of the Remdesivir announcement, the drug is sold in Australia for $8 per month, but the company charges Americans around $2,000 for the same dosage. "Gilead has a long history of profiteering," said Dr. Hill. "Its CEO is a billionaire and has been accused of tax avoidance; by keeping their intellectual property in Ireland they avoided $10 billion in taxes in 2016 and they sell drugs for between 100 and 1,000 times the cost of production. And nobody is stopping them. I think this is a taste of things to come if we don't have better controls on the pharmaceutical industry's excesses."

As of Wednesday morning, there have been 2.73 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, the six worst days for the virus in terms of infections all occurring in the previous week.

Feature photo | A lab tech displays a package of the Remdesivir at the Eva Pharma Facility in Cairo, Egypt June 29, 2020. Amr Abdallah | Reuters

Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent . He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting , The Guardian , Salon , The Grayzone , Jacobin Magazine , Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary .

[Jun 29, 2020] Gilead Will Charge More Than $3,000 For A Course Of COVID-19 Drug Remdesivir

Highly recommended!
Corrupt Fauci, stupid customers. IT the same neoliberal story of profiteering as a virtue all over again.
The government bought by Big Pharma, and Big Pharma out or control with questionable drugs and methods are two side of the same coin
Jun 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

On Monday, Gilead disclosed its pricing plan for Gilead as it prepares to begin charging for the drug at the beginning of next month (several international governments have already placed orders). Given the high demand, thanks in part due to the breathless media coverage despite the drug's still-questionable study data, Gilead apparently feels justified in charging $3,120 for a patient getting the shorter, more common, treatment course, and $5,720 for the longer course for more seriously ill patients. These are the prices for patients with commercial insurance in the US, according to Gilead's official pricing plan.

As per usual, the price charged to those on government plans will be lower, and hospitals will also receive a slight discount. Additionally, the US is the only developed country where Gilead will charge two prices, according to Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day. In much of Europe and Canada, governments negotiate drug prices directly with drugmakers (in the US, laws dictate that drug makers must "discount" their drugs for Medicare and Medicaid plans).

But according to O'Day, the drug is priced "far below the value it brings" to the health-care system.

However, we'd argue that this actually isn't true. Remdesivir was developed by Gilead to treat Ebola, but the drug was never approved by the FDA for this use, which caused Gilead to shelve the drug until COVID-19 presented another opportunity. Even before the first study had finished, the company was already pushing propaganda about the promising nature of the drug. Meanwhile, the CDC, WHO and other organizations were raising doubts about the effectiveness of steroid medications.

Months later, the only study on the steroid dexomethasone, a cheap steroid that costs less than $50 for a 100-dose regimen, has shown that dexomethasone is the only drug so far that has proven effective at lowering COVID-19 related mortality. Remdesivir, despite the fact that it has been tested in several high quality trials, has not.

So, why is the American government in partnership with Gilead still pushing this questionable, and staggeringly expensive, medication on the public?

[Jun 28, 2020] New COVID19 treatment protocol specifically targets the cytokine storm and they use heparin for the blood clots

Jun 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , Jun 28 2020 14:08 utc | 3

"My hunch is that by now doctors have learned much more about the disease's progression (cytokine storm, blood clotting) and how to manage it."

I believe the UK is where the dexamethasone Study was done. Possibly more doctors are using it. The Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group have been pushing corticosteroids as the main treatment in their MATH+ Protocol, and they believe the UK study provides evidence that they are on the right track. Their Protocol specifically targets the cytokine storm and they use heparin for the blood clots. Now if they can only get a full-fledged trial going. Unfortunately their Web site doesn't provide much info about how much traction they're getting promoting their Protocol.

The 1918 SF article proves that morons are morons no matter how many years have passed. I'm sure there were such during the Black Plague. I sincerely hope the coronavirus mutates before the second wave and starts killing all the younger people just to see their reaction when they have to bear the brunt. Can't wait for all the "it's just the flu" BS from these morons to dry up.

[Jun 28, 2020] European study links genes, blood type with risk of severe coronavirus infection

Notable quotes:
"... "Our genetic data confirm that blood group O is associated with a risk of acquiring Covid-19 that was lower than that in non-O blood groups, whereas blood group A was associated with a higher risk than non-A blood groups," the researchers wrote in their report. They found people with Type A blood had a 45% higher risk of becoming infected than people with other blood types, and people with Type O blood were just 65% as likely to become infected as people with other blood types. ..."
Jun 28, 2020 | www.blogger.com
Anonymous Fred C. Dobbs said...
European study links genes, blood type with risk of severe coronavirus infection

(CNN - June 18) A team of European scientists say they have found two genetic variations that may show who is more likely to get very sick and die from coronavirus, and they say they have also found a link to blood type.

Their findings, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, point to a possible explanation for why some people get so seriously ill with the virus, while most barely show any symptoms at all.

(NEJM: Genomewide Association Study of Severe Covid-19 with Respiratory Failure )

They found people with Type A blood have a higher risk of catching coronavirus and of developing severe symptoms, while people with Type O blood have a lower risk.

"Our genetic data confirm that blood group O is associated with a risk of acquiring Covid-19 that was lower than that in non-O blood groups, whereas blood group A was associated with a higher risk than non-A blood groups," the researchers wrote in their report. They found people with Type A blood had a 45% higher risk of becoming infected than people with other blood types, and people with Type O blood were just 65% as likely to become infected as people with other blood types. ...

June 27, 2020 at 9:41 AM

[Jun 28, 2020] Genomewide Association Study of Severe Covid-19 with Respiratory Failure

Jun 17, 2020 | www.blogger.com
Anonymous said...
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2020283

June 17, 2020

Genomewide Association Study of Severe Covid-19 with Respiratory Failure
By David Ellinghaus, Ph.D., Frauke Degenhardt, M.Sc., Luis Bujanda, M.D., Ph.D., Maria Buti, M.D., Ph.D., Agustín Albillos, M.D., Ph.D., Pietro Invernizzi, M.D., Ph.D., Javier Fernández, M.D., Ph.D., Daniele Prati, M.D., Guido Baselli, Ph.D., Rosanna Asselta, Ph.D., Marit M. Grimsrud, M.D., Chiara Milani, Ph.D., et al. for The Severe Covid-19 GWAS Group
Abstract

BACKGROUND

There is considerable variation in disease behavior among patients infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). Genomewide association analysis may allow for the identification of potential genetic factors involved in the development of Covid-19....

[Jun 28, 2020] Coronavirus Causes Weaponized 'Tentacles' To Sprout From Infected Cells, Directly Inject Virus Into New Ones

Jun 28, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Coronavirus Causes Weaponized 'Tentacles' To Sprout From Infected Cells, Directly Inject Virus Into New Ones


by Tyler Durden Fri, 06/26/2020 - 19:25 The virus behind COVID-19 causes infected cells to sprout 'tentacles' which allow the virus to attack several nearby cells at once - poking holes which allow the disease to easily transfer inside.

This nightmare fuel was discovered by researchers led by the University of California, San Francisco.

" There are long strings that poke holes in other cells and the virus passes through the tube from cell to cell ," said UCSF's Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute, Professor Nevan Krogan. " Our hypothesis is that these speed up infection. "

The images taken by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory in the US and University of Freiburg in Germany will be published in the medical journal Cell on Saturday.

Most viruses do not cause infected cells to grow these tentacles . Even those that do, such as smallpox, do not have as many or the same type of branching as Sars-Cov-2, the virus behind Covid-19. - FT

According to the report, the silver lining is that the tentacle discovery may pave the way for a number of drugs to work against the disease - most of which were previously being used to treat cancer.

"It totally makes sense there's an overlap in anticancer drugs and an antiviral effect," said Prof. Krogan, who added that cancers, HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are all searching for the "Achilles heel of the cell."

Potential drugs include silmitasertib, made by Taiwan-based Senhwa Biosciences - which is working with the NIH on trials in the US. The drug works by inhibiting the CK2 enzyme which is used to build the tubes.

The drug is one of five which were found to be more effective against the virus than Gilead's remdesivir , including FDA-approved Xospata (aka gilteritinib) made by Japan-based Astellas Pharma, Eli Lily's FDA-approved abemaciclib (Verzenio) and ralimetinib, and dasatinib, made by Bristol-Meyers Squibb.

Remember, the official narrative is that the virus - which specializes in infecting humans and packs ultra-rare 'infection tentacles' - did not emerge from a Chinese biolab located at 'ground zero' for the pandemic, where scientists had previously come under international scrutiny for conducting 'gain of function' experiments in which chimeric coronaviruses were genetically engineered for the sole purpose of infecting humans.

But we digress.

play_arrow Shemp 4 Victory , 1 hour ago

Remember, the official narrative is that the virus - which specializes in infecting humans and packs ultra-rare 'infection tentacles' - did not emerge from a Chinese biolab located at 'ground zero' for the pandemic, where scientists had previously come under international scrutiny for conducting 'gain of function' experiments in which chimeric coronaviruses were genetically engineered for the sole purpose of infecting humans.

Well, the funny thing is that, despite all the hand-wringing histrionics of the Falun Gong/Epoch Times cultists, the story of a "weaponized CCP virus" is still just a clickbait fairy tale. The fact remains that there is zero evidence that the virus emerged from a Chinese biolab. Zero. Nada. Null. The empty set.

But hey, US citizen society is articulated around monetization of conflicts (among other things) and cannot do without it. This is how the US has killed the possibility of debate.

Debate as a means of investigating truth requires to accept facts. In US citizenism, admittance of facts is counter-balanced by denial of facts. Which one is better to monetize?

When it comes to US citizens, it is always good to balance admittance with denial, trying to figure out which one is the most profitable. US citizens always weigh whether it is more profitable to deny or admit facts, and they usually choose profits over truth.

It is no critical thinking here, it is no education. It is US citizenism. If it is profitable to deny facts, well, US citizens deny. And will keep denying until it is no longer profitable.

You can apply this to all fields touched by US citizens. It never misses, because US citizens nature is eternal.

Truth, justice, freedom: US motto.

JGResearch , 1 hour ago

It was made in Japan., and the U.K.

Japan's Demon Of BioWar Kawaoka Inserted HIV Force Multipliers Inside The Wuhan Virus - No governments will ever state this truth. It would lead to war and even the Chinese do want that. They want business back to normal. The Chinese are not so concern about some workers and elders who are on the public welfare.

It is still a Bio-engineered virus, but it is from Veterinary labs that are not being watched like Bio 4 labs, from second generation of Unit 731. Who knows bat and fish better than anyone else, it is the Veterinary labs. Imperial Japanese have a long history with China. For the most part, Suzuki's military-dominated cabinet favored continuing the war. For the Japanese, surrender was unthinkable -- Japan had never been successfully invaded or lost a war in its history, plus they were hit with two Atomic weapons. You think they forgot about at that?

The dark side of microbiology finds its haven inside the dozens of veterinary schools outside the authority of the WHO, CDC, NIH and equivalent professional supervisory bodies and reporting-review systems.

Exhibit A: To summarize, a decade ago at his lab in Wisconsin with generous funding from Japanese state institutions, Kawaoka was developing an "unstoppable flu", secretly derived from an illegal exhumation of the Arctic frozen corpse of an Alaskan native who died in the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, which killed up to 80 million worldwide. We learned of Kawaoka's reckless violations of science ethics from Robert Finnegan, former editor of the Jakarta Post, who was tracking the theft of MERS and other virus samples from NAMRU-2 (U.S. Navy Research Unit) by a senior local lab technician who personally smuggled the dangerous materials to U Wisconsin.

Exhibit B is a 2011 research paper by Y. Kawaoka and two colleagues at his animal virology lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, titled "HIV reverse-binding protein is essential for influenza A virus replication and promotes genome-trafficking in late-stage infection". Published in the Journal of Virology, September 2011, it's an admission of guilt for preparing the emergence of the Wuhan contagion.

JGResearch , 1 hour ago

The original plan: The dilution of toxicity indicates the objective as being mild symptoms diagnosed as a case of food poisoning. On a massive scale, a food poisoning scandal would lead to the shut down of fisheries and aquaculture in a huge blow to national food security.

However, what's so amazing about the Wuhan coronavirus was its regeneration after being clipped of virulence-causing genes that intensify the pain of symptoms in its victims. nCov2019 somehow reconstructed alternative sequences to replace the lopped-off gene sequence. The Japanese ignore the morphogenetic fields of the virus.

Therein lies the rub. Prophetically, Kawaoka foresaw HIV acting in unexpected ways in constructing new flu virions and their components, which likely explains how and why the at-first relatively mild version bio-engineered Wuhan coronavirus was self-altered in its third or fourth generation with highly lethal proteins, a spontaneous Gain of Function, which transformed 2019-nCov into a raging killer.

This is exactly what occurred in early January when the Chinese government banned fishing and consumption of fish along the entire 6,300 km (3,900 miles) length of the Yangtze River.

JGResearch , 1 hour ago

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3044376/china-bans-fishing-depleted-yangtze-river-10-years-protect

https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/18/9588

https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/18

DefendYourBase , 1 hour ago

JUST DA FLU!

warsev , 2 hours ago

I've read any number of articles from "experts" in the field who claim that this thing is "engineered". The "experts" get very little play outside of a small echo chamber. I want to know when anyone with any political clout will start shouting about it more broadly. Doesn't seem likely.

Cthonic , 1 hour ago

accredited virologists are kept in line

http://tapnewswire.com/2016/02/list-of-over-100-dead-microbiologists/

Cthonic , 1 hour ago

have another 100 hits

https://time.com/3003840/malaysia-airlines-ukraine-crash-top-aids-researchers-killed-aids2014-mh17/

DFCtomm , 2 hours ago

I caught an episode of peak prosperity on youtube the other day and they were talking about supercells and multiple nuclei. This makes sense. This virus behaves more like a colonizing bacteria.

4Celts , 2 hours ago

What I was most disgusted by the " Task Force " presser today, was that the orchestrators have noticed all of the pushback on the statistics showing the small demographic that was most effected by this " virus . So , they put the maggot Fauci out there to say the " young " who are asymptomatic were the cause of the " second wave " , and they should really curb their youthful bravado and instead be very mindful that " they " could spread this to the immunodeficient , both the elderly and the child with cancer. A totally spineless, and despicable tact.

FrankDrakman , 2 hours ago

In Ontario, 1.3 million have been tested for the virus. Outside of nursing homes, only 960 have died.

Can you divide 960 by 1.3 million, "boob"? Let me help you.. 130,000 is 10%, 13,000 is 1%, and 1,300 is 0.1%

960 is .078%. In other words, you have 99.92% chance of surviving this bug. Wow, 'far more deadly than originally thought', indeed.

[Jun 28, 2020] Diabetes is linked to a higher risk of death from the new coronavirus

Jun 28, 2020 | www.blogger.com
ilsm said...
Anonymous,

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00502-w

"11 May -- High risk of COVID-19 death for minority ethnic groups is a troubling mystery:"

"People who are not white face a substantially higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than do white people -- and pre-existing health conditions and socioeconomic factors explain only a small part of the higher risk."

"In the most sweeping study of its kind, Ben Goldacre at the University of Oxford, UK, and his colleagues examined the medical records of more than 17 million residents of England (E. Williamson et al. Preprint at medRxiv http://doi.org/dt9z; 2020). The analysis, which has not yet been peer reviewed, showed that medical conditions such as diabetes are linked to a higher risk of death from the new coronavirus."

"But the prevalence of such conditions in people who belong to minority ethnic groups plays only a small part in the heightened risk, as does the prevalence of social disadvantages such as low income. The researchers say that there is an urgent need for better measures to protect people in minority ethnic groups from the disease."

This is from Nature daily Covid 19 update. Which is good reading and covers vaccines, and anti body treatments which may be used by Autumn. See ELI Lilly and Regenron debvelopments.

June 26, 2020 at 2:51 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/corona-virus-latinos.html

June 26, 2020

Many Latinos Couldn't Stay Home. Now Virus Cases Are Soaring in the Community.
Rates of coronavirus infection among Latinos have risen rapidly across the United States.
By Shawn Hubler, Thomas Fuller, Anjali Singhvi and Juliette Love

June 26, 2020 at 1:48 PM

[Jun 28, 2020] Nobel Prize winner Dr Michael Levitt postulated that the virus burns out when it has infected 15-20% of the population

Jun 28, 2020 | www.blogger.com
Anonymous ilsm said...
JBR,

Thanks for your forbearances, misguided as you may be.

You do not answer questions, you do not like. Okay, with me. You could attempt to revise my conclusions on your lack of openness to countering evidence.

For Fred, from my son's latest input. Fred is an RPI alum, within a years or two, with me:

"Stockholm is the best population to test Covid theory whereby it was hit hard early and did not have lockdowns.
Nobel Prize winner Dr Michael Levitt postulated that the virus burns out when it has infected 15-20% of the population.
According to this, he's right...What does this mean for the US?
If you look at the rest of Sweden, you see a bumpier curve because different counties get hit at later times

The same will probably happen in states which were not hit hard during the first wave"

The tweet thread goes on to list the states that have not yet reached the 20% threshold, which is many, though if these states only need to reach 15-20% to exit the first wave, then most of them are at least halfway there."

https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1275118332887392256?fbclid=IwAR3udQL8UNl8o05RTmtpOmlxDyVb57NptU9WqwhAzUXe9J1WfKE1FF4PYnY

Why the US is in for rocky road with or without "second wave".

Concluding any of oit due to Trump is a stretch.

June 26, 2020 at 8:57 AM

[Jun 17, 2020] Polio vaccine may be useful to prep the body for COVID19.

Jun 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Caliman , Jun 17 2020 17:28 utc | 9

Perhaps one of the well-read people here can help me find some sources. I've been puzzled by something before and it got exacerbated by the news recently that the Polio vaccine may be useful to prep the body, as it were, for COVID19.

What I'd be puzzled by is the following: we know there are four commonly circulating human coronaviruses that register as "colds" in the population, sometimes nasty but generally not dangerous, and that large %ages of us have gotten them over the years and will continue to. While these four viruses are not identical to COVID19, they are quite similar. And it seemed like there were some reports that people who had recently been sick with these more common coronaviruses had some immunity to COVID19.

Has this been investigated further? Would it not make sense, if true, that the "quick vaccine" we have been looking for could be purposeful infection by one of these common human coronaviruses? Would this not be like using the cowpox as a way to make ourselves more resistant to smallpox, which used to be done until the actual smallpox vaccine was discovered?

Anyway, anybody read anything along these lines?


hopehely , Jun 17 2020 17:47 utc | 10

@Caliman | Jun 17 2020 17:28 utc | 9
Anyway, anybody read anything along these lines?

Yes, we read it here a month ago.
albagen , Jun 17 2020 17:56 utc | 11
Well Caliman, why do you bother thinking about Covid19? It's just the flu, on tap. When they need, they open the tap. When it suits them, they close the tap. It's Covid19 on, Covid19 off. Sometimes it trickles or drips. We all will die some day.

In other words: "behave, or else we bring back the restrictions", but if the flow of money stops, we will lift them, just so that you work to produce something and keep us happy.

My suggestion: live your life to the fullest, enjoy nature and family, as if there is no covid19, no government, no bullshit. You won't regret it.

And don't forget to give feedback here, if you follow my advice.

;)

[Jun 16, 2020] Hope for patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia

Jun 16, 2020 | www.msn.com

Trial results announced on Tuesday showed dexamethasone, which is used to reduce inflammation in other diseases such as arthritis, reduced death rates by around a third among the most severely ill of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital.

[Jun 16, 2020] Coronavirus- Dexamethasone proves first life-saving drug by Michelle Roberts

"This is an extremely welcome result," said Peter Horby of Oxford, one of the study leaders. "The survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these patients. Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide."
Lead researcher, Prof. Martin Landray, says that hospital patients should now be given the steroid without delay, but that people shouldn't try to hoard it for private use. According to the study, Dexamethasone does not appear to help milder cases - those who don't need help breathing.
The drug has been used to treat a wide range of conditions, including asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.
Notable quotes:
"... Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough." ..."
Jun 16, 2020 | www.bbc.com

By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online

A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus.

The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say.

The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.

It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.

Had the drug had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the pandemic, up to 5,000 lives could have been saved, researchers say.

And it could be of huge benefit in poorer countries with high numbers of Covid-19 patients.

About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital. Of those who are admitted to hospital, most also recover, but some may need oxygen or mechanical ventilation. These are the high-risk patients whom dexamethasone appears to help.

The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, and it appears that it helps stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus.

The body's over-reaction is called a cytokine storm and it can be deadly.

In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, around 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and were compared with more than 4,000 who did not receive the drug.

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough."

Lead researcher Prof Martin Landray says the findings suggest that for every eight patients treated on ventilators, you could save one life.

For those patients treated with oxygen, you save one life for approximately every 20-25 treated with the drug.

"There is a clear, clear benefit. The treatment is up to 10 days of dexamethasone and it costs about £5 per patient. So essentially it costs £35 to save a life. This is a drug that is globally available."

Prof Landray said, when appropriate, hospital patients should now be given it without delay, but people should not go out and buy it to take at home.

Dexamethasone does not appear to help people with milder symptoms of coronavirus - those who don't need help with their breathing.

The Recovery Trial has been running since March. It included the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine which has subsequently been ditched amid concerns that it increases fatalities and heart problems.

Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing Replying to @DrEricDing

5) And again, Dexamethasone is cheap, available from any pharmacy, and easily obtainable anywhere in the world. This is EXACTLY what we need, instead of a $1000 drug like remdesivir that is just marginally effective for shortening illness but not yet fully proven for mortality.

[Jun 15, 2020] These San Francisco doctors flew to New York to fight the coronavirus -- and they have a warning for us

Jun 15, 2020 | www.cnbc.com


"I've worked in a lot of settings," said Dr. Michael Peters, a pulmonary critical care doctor, was assigned to a hospital in Queens overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases. "These patients were very sick, and they had a disease that we didn't know how to take care of yet."

All of the UCSF doctors said they saw patients in their forties and fifties, who didn't meet the "typical" profile for Covid-19 because they were otherwise healthy. In the Queens hospital, where Peters worked, many of the patients were Black or Hispanic. Data shows that the virus has hit racial and ethnic minorities worse, and studies are underway to better understand why.

[Jun 13, 2020] We Don't Need No Stinking Vaccine For COVID-19

Jun 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jeff Harris via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity, A Glaring Omission

With the 24/7 media circus coverage of Covid-19 I find it particularly interesting that there is an obvious glaring omission of some extremely important facts relative to dealing with a virus, especially one that is allegedly so virulent like this one. Yes, I read all about the critical need to shelter in place, stay inside away from other people, wash your hands constantly, avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth, wear your face mask and by all means observe social distancing if you MUST venture outside for food!

Then it's repeated ad infinitum that the ONLY hope we have of ever returning to a semblance of normalcy is to have a vaccine to protect us! Then to add some drama to this narrative the media highlights their death-o-meter scoreboard with the implied threat that you'll be next IF you don't obey the rules as dictated by the "experts".

But what is assiduously avoided at all cost is any reference to our most potent defense against any virus; our body's natural immune system. Try as I might I couldn't find anything about this first line of defense on the World Health Organizations (WHO) website or Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website. It's as if it doesn't exist and is completely irrelevant.

If these organizations were genuinely concerned about the health of citizens they would obviously discuss the vital role a healthy immune system plays in protecting us from illnesses. But since they don't its obvious some other motive is at work, at least to me, and I strongly suspect to other critical thinkers as well.

We now know from the science and data that over 90% of the people exposed to Covid-19 have no symptoms at all or at worst a mild cold. The flu vaccines we have are only effective 30% to 60% of the time and the bugs change regularly so a vaccine that worked OK last year may barely work at all this year. Let's learn some more about our body's immune system.

Virus protection without a vaccine

There is an enlightening article on Web MD titled: "How to use Your Immune System to Stay Healthy". That's a pretty straight forward title now isn't it? Early on Bruce Polsky, MD, interim chairman department of medicine and chief division of infectious disease at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City says:

"We are endowed with a great immune system that has been designed evolutionarily to keep us healthy."

The article goes on. . .

"The immune system is your body's natural defense system. It's an intricate network of cells, tissues and organs that band together to defend your body against invaders. Those invaders can include bacteria, viruses, parasites, even fungus, all with the potential to make us sick. They are everywhere-in our homes, offices and backyards. . . "

The truth is no amount of social distancing, hand washing or face mask wearing is going to eliminate our exposure to these various bugs. That's why we were created with this amazing first line of natural defense.

Here's more from Web MD . . .

"The immune system can recognize millions of different antigens. And it can produce what it needs to eradicate nearly all of them. When it's working properly, this elaborate defense system can keep health problems ranging from cancer to the common cold at bay. . . "

Wow! That's pretty amazing stuff isn't it! According to Web MD a properly functioning immune system can "keep health problems ranging from cancer to the common cold at bay." So why isn't this "science" being included in all the other health recommendations we're being bombarded with daily? It seems to me that any "expert" worth their salt would be talking about the importance of a healthy immune system to stay healthy.

But there's more . . .

The Web MD article noted that failure to eat a healthy diet, sitting around not exercising, not getting enough sleep and chronic stress can all lead to a compromised immune system. To quote Dr. Polsky again:

". . . Lifestyle aspects are very, very important."

So if our lifestyle is very, very important to staying healthy as the good doctor says ask yourself this question? Based on the Web M.D. article virtually all the results of the lockdown serve to weaken our immune systems. The stress of unemployment, constant harping about infections and rising death rates, lack of exercise and now a crack in our food distribution system all are known to weaken the human immune system.

I also find it quite interesting that large groups of people can shop at Walmart, Home Depot or other big box stores but they can't attend their local church even if it's a "drive through" service?

Web M.D. says:

"Research shows that people with close friendships and strong support systems tend to be healthier than those who lack such supports."

During times of crisis people need encouragement and their faith built up more than ever before. Mandating people huddle in fear in their homes with constant media reports of infections and death bombarding them continually is there any wonder peoples immune systems are under severe stress?

[Jun 12, 2020] Russia registers new Covid-19 drug to keep complications caused by virus 'under control'

Jun 07, 2020 | www.rt.com

Russian developers have registered a new drug that may help alleviate the harshest complications caused by Covid-19, including lung failure. It's hoped the treatment can buy time before a vaccine is found. Levilimab is the second medication to receive state approval through a fast-track mechanism, implemented to give doctors more options to tackle the virus, which has already infected more than 459,000 and killed 5,725 in Russia, according to official statistics.

"I think we'll be able to keep Covid-19 complications under control and minimize the harshest problems it causes," Dmitry Morozov, general director of Biocad, the biopharmaceutical company behind the drug, wrote on Facebook. By reducing the Covid-19 mortality rate, Levilimab will allow Russia to "buy time" before the vaccine against the coronavirus is made, and "the vaccine is surely coming soon," he added.

The drug is aimed at curbing the so-called 'cytokine storm,' a common complication from Covid-19 when the sick person's immune system overreacts to the virus and the excessive inflammation leads to fatal outcome.

"The mechanism [used in Levilimab] is known to researchers around the globe. But all the rest was done in Russia, by our company, from scratch. There's an original patented molecule," Morozov told RT.

Levilimab's highlight is that it can be administered not only to patients already in a serious condition, but used as a prophylactic to "prevent the 'cytokine storm' from occurring and allowing the patient to avoid intensive care and lung ventilation," he pointed out.

The drug, which will go into the market under the brand ILSIRA, is administered hypodermically unlike its foreign counterparts, which get into the system through the intravenous route. "One shot and you don't go into the emergency room. There are two syringes in a package. Their injected simultaneously or with some interval. And in a week the person is discharged from hospital," Morozov said.

Levilimab has proven itself as effective as its foreign counterparts and increased the speed of recovery for patients, Ekaterina Trifonova, who heads the infectious ward at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, where the drug underwent clinical testing, told RT. During the first two weeks of trials, out of 45 Covid-19 patients who got the drug, ten were discharged, including a 92-year-old-man, while the rest remained in satisfactory condition, she added.

[Jun 11, 2020] WHO now says asymptomatic spread of coronavirus is 'very rare'

Jun 11, 2020 | video.foxnews.com

WHO now says asymptomatic spread of coronavirus is 'very rare'

Jun. 09, 2020 - 4:06 - World Health Organization changes its tune on asymptomatic patients spreading COVID-19; reaction from Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel.

[Jun 11, 2020] Does asymptomatic spread exists or this is artifact of modeling and tests false positives?

Jun 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , Jun 11 2020 0:18 utc | 48

Coronavirus confusion reigns as World Health Organisation scrambles advice about masks and asymptomatic spread

Although numerous studies have suggested people can spread the virus before they show symptoms, the WHO has largely dismissed those as anecdotal or pointed out that they were based on modelling.

Babak Javid, an infectious diseases doctor at Cambridge University Hospital, says many scientists are persuaded by the studies published so far and think WHO should publish the data it is citing to explain why it believes transmission of the disease in people without symptoms is "rare".

"If you're going to make a really important statement like that, it would be good to back it up," Javid said. "I think WHO is an important organisation, but they've made a lot of statements that have been misleading."

[Jun 11, 2020] WHO official backtracks after claiming asymptomatic spread of coronavirus is 'very rare'

Jun 10, 2020 | video.foxnews.com

Reaction and analysis from Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel.

[Jun 10, 2020] Coronavirus vaccine developers are chasing outbreaks before they disappear Washpost - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Jun 10, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"Coronavirus vaccine developers are chasing outbreaks before they disappear" Washpost

"The top teams rushing to develop coronavirus vaccines are alerting governments, health officials and shareholders that they may have a big problem : The outbreaks in their countries may be getting too small to quickly determine whether vaccines work

A leader of the Oxford University group, one of the furthest ahead with human trials, admits the reality is paradoxical, even "bizarre," but said the declining numbers of new infections this summer could be one of the big hurdles vaccine developers face in the global race to beat down the virus.

Even as new cases are growing worldwide, transmission rates are falling in Britain, China and many of the hardest-hit regions in the United States -- the three countries that have experimental vaccines ready to move into large-scale human testing in June, July and August." Washpost

---------------

Well, pilgrims it would seem that the Post staff does not see the irony in their own writing, or perhaps they do. There have been scattered evidences of rationality there lately. Even as Democrat governors and mayors across the country drag their feet on the re-opening of the American economy, infection rates are falling. In the Faucibirxist view of things everything depends on vaccine development (or herd immunity post holocaust). But, alas there just aren't enough new, vibrant infections to make development of the vaccines convenient. What will happen to the flow of government money to these projects if this phenomenon becomes general knowledge. Someone at the Post should be disciplined for this indiscretion. pl

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-trials-astrazeneca-moderna/2020/06/09/48f28fea-a414-11ea-898e-b21b9a83f792_story.html


Fred , 10 June 2020 at 09:34 AM

"What will happen to the flow of government money to these projects if this phenomenon becomes general knowledge."

Well Fauci is almost 80 so I think he's set for life. I hear the left wants lots of redevelopment funds and jobs programs, with the attendant opportunities for graft that comes with them, for thier cities which we are all assured had neither rioting nor looting.

Jim , 10 June 2020 at 11:50 AM
Thank you Col. Lang for all the posts on novel coronavirus.

For shining light on this, this utter failure by the medical community and their various and sundry enablers in government and in business.

On these liars and charlatans and killers and criminals.

The video below is about an hour long. It is a nurse, who worked in NYC hospital, the alleged epi center of epi centers.

She basically says, without saying directly, but points to the fact that doctors were murdering patients there, it seems.

She paints a picture of doctors not as scientists but as zealots, as neo neanderthals, as craven monsters, who care not about life, the elderly, the sick, the least among us.

As Nurse Ratchets

Towards the end of video, she recounts her last day at this hospital, discussing a patient she had nursed for many days, and who was doing fine, making progress, . . . and how she was removed from his bed on direct orders, sent to the ER where she was not assigned, and 20 minutes later, the man she was caring for is dead.

These sorts of stories abound; this rage is not going away anytime soon. This is the rage, and what caused it, that our "lords and masters" who censor us and tell us black is white, and want to destroy our country. . . this is the rage they don't want to see expressed and exposed. Will they get their way?

http://edwardcurtin.com/the-undercover-epicenter-nurse-watch-weep-and-rage/


-30-

Laura Wilson , 10 June 2020 at 01:04 PM
Well...they can always test their vaccines in the USA. We seem not to be faring as well and can help out. (I believe this is a glass half-full moment.)
Walter Lang , 10 June 2020 at 01:27 PM
Laura Wilson

Still hysteric. if you are not over 65 and not in compromised health the disease is rarely fatal.

optimax , 10 June 2020 at 01:32 PM
Trump needs to stop the $600 a week federal bonus to the unemployed. My neighbor told me about how his daughter-in-law worked one day a week as a barmaid before the virus shut the bar down and made a little over a hundred a week. Oregon unemployment pays her 150 a week and with the added 600 she now makes over 7 times what she did working. How many protesters and rioters are just as flush getting paid to party in the street? Most i'd say. That makes these government funded protests a powerful voice and recruitment tool for the Democratic Party.

Ending the federal subsidy to the unemployed would reduce, if not stop, the demonstrations and mau-mauing of the country.

Fred , 10 June 2020 at 03:17 PM
optimax,

Absolutely. There were howls of protests before Minneapolis when Georgia, Florida and Texas started tellling people that if they recieved a recall to work notice from an employer and refused to go they would be considered a voluntary quit and no longer eligable for unemployment insurance payments. They'll howl again when they figure out this is all taxable income.

LA Sox Fan , 10 June 2020 at 03:21 PM
Take everything the WaPo claims with a grain of salt. There is no real worry over lower covid infections. What made Covid decrease was the lockdowns. Remove the lockdowns and covid infection rates will climb, as we are seeing in the already reopened states.

Then when fall rolls around, and people are stuck indoors again, rates will skyrocket. There will be plenty of test subjects for a vaccine.

rho , 10 June 2020 at 09:29 PM
With the spread rate of the coronavirus, any outbreak of the infection will peter out once the total immunity rate of the population approaches 65-70 percent.

In Bergamo (Italy), 57 percent a population sample have tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, which means that they must have had the infection before and are now most likely immune.

If you are a Karen, then don't listen to me, but take it from the German government's very own propaganda outlet, Deutsche Welle:

"Out of nearly 10,000 Bergamo residents who had their blood tested between April 23 and June 3, 57% had antibodies, indicating they had come into contact with the virus and developed an immune response.

Health authorities said the sample size was 'sufficiently broad' to be a reliable indicator of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 among Bergamo province's population."

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-tests-show-half-of-people-in-italys-bergamo-have-antibodies/a-53739727

Nobody in Bergamo will need a coronavirus vaccine once its development is finished - whenever that may happen, if at all.

[Jun 10, 2020] Yale has published research that shows HCH + AZ has 50-fold benefits and insignificant risks

Highly recommended!
Jun 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

BM , Jun 10 2020 18:11 utc | 5

Yale has published research that shows HCH + AZ has 50-fold benefits and insignificant risks

Using Hydroxychloroquine and Other Drugs to Fight Pandemic

Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be
Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis

In the author's words:

COVID-19 is really two different diseases. In the first few days, it is like a very bad cold. In some people, it then morphs into pneumonia which can be life-threatening. What I found is that treatments for the cold don't work well for the pneumonia, and vice versa. Most of the published studies have looked at treatments for the cold but used for the pneumonia. I just looked at how well the treatments for the cold worked for the cold. There are five studies done this way, four of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin and one with hydroxychloroquine plus doxycycline, and they all show that treating the cold part of COVID-19 -- the early part -- works very well.

The article completely decimates the arguments against using HCQ + AZ or HCQ + doxycycline, specifically in early outpatient use.

uncle tungsten , Jun 10 2020 22:29 utc | 41

BM #5

re Yale HCQ study.

The article completely decimates the arguments against using HCQ + AZ or HCQ + doxycycline, specifically in early outpatient use.

It is good to see real science being applied rather than voodoo shilling for big pharma.

Still waiting for the editor resignations at Lancet and NEJM on their publication of the hoax science article.

Let me be very clear about pharmaceuticles: the interaction of two dissimilar substances can be extraordinary beneficial. My personal example is from a Specialist Pharmacologist that treated a bone disease in my thumb arising from mechanical injury. He explained thus:

The bone problem has three quite separate stages of treatment.

At the first week common antibiotic remedies are vital and effective. I was too late for that.

If that stage is missed then a common and potent antibiotic combined with a substance commonly used to treat gout is vital. The combination of the two flattens the peak of the antibiotic such that it is sustained in the bloodstream for 24 hours until the next dose of the two. A fourteen day process as I recall. It was totally successful.

If that second stage is missed then late intervention is extensive use of antibiotics and the gout remedy over months as the bone decomposition bacteria have spread throughout ones metabolism and lodge randomly to wreak havoc. This treatment regime is punishing on the body and digestive tract and many people cannot endure it.

This Specialist was a high street operator in nice office NOT a pharmacy.

So lets not be jumping to hasty dismissals of what may or may not 'work' and when. Humans vary, diets vary and propensities are highly variable. It is the responsibility of scientists to be honest and act in the best interests of humanity. Clearly the study published in the Lancet and NEJM was fake science and those journals fell for it because of either inadequate editorial investigation of the paper, confirmation bias, inadequate consideration of human consequences.

The WHO stands condemned for being suckered by fake news, confirmation bias, malign financial manipulation or perhaps inadequate investigation of the authors and claims of the paper.

[Jun 08, 2020] Doctors were allowed to consider PCR results as a factor, cautioned not to rely on them. In current situation PCR results became the definition of COVID

Jun 08, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

oldhippie , Jun 7 2020 23:59 utc | 45

PavewayIV @ 36

Try doing a search on Kary Mullis, creator of the PCR process. He died last year so we can only go by past statements. He always stated that PCR was completely inappropriate and meaningless for diagnostics or for any other clinical purpose.

CDC guidance on PCR until earlier this year was that doctors do diagnosis, not laboratories. Doctors were allowed to consider PCR results as a factor, cautioned not to rely on them. In current situation PCR results are the definition of COVID.

If the test is allowed to run too many cycles any sample will test positive.

And it is never entirely certain how many cycles have elapsed, clock does not tell exactly what the RNA is up to.

[Jun 06, 2020] A fraction of infected people trigger the bulk of new cases, one reason the pandemic is far from over

Jun 06, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , Jun 6 2020 5:01 utc | 101

The Science of Superspreaders
A fraction of infected people trigger the bulk of new cases, one reason the pandemic is far from over

Meanwhile, the protests happening in this convulsed nation, with people often shoulder to shoulder, set the stage for new chains of infections. Any shouting, along with sneezing and coughing (perhaps in reaction to pepper spray) will spread the virus especially easily. "All things considered, there's little doubt that these protests will translate into increased risk of transmission for Covid-19," Maimuna Majumder, an epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, tells The Atlantic.

Putting an exact number on the impact of superspreaders is nearly impossible, since not all cases are ever traced back to any original source. The going best estimate is that 20% of infected people are responsible for 80% of onward infections, says William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Some evidence suggests as few as 10% of people trigger 80% of ongoing infections, Hanage told reporters in a recent teleconference.

Three separate studies have suggested the 20/80 ratio. A study of Hong Kong cases reached that conclusion and also found that 70% of people who contracted Covid-19 didn't spread it at all.

[Jun 05, 2020] Rush to trash hydroxychloroquine was based on faulty Surgisphere data exposes fundamental flaws in profit-based medical science

Jun 05, 2020 | www.rt.com

The latest data this disprove its efficiency in treating COVID-19, as it turned out, came from a tiny US healthcare analytics firm called Surgisphere, and calling it faulty would be excessively charitable. This is clearly a hired guns hit.

Not only is Surgisphere a company lacking in medical expertise – its employees included an "adult" entertainer and a science-fiction writer – but its CEO Sapan Desai co-authored two of the damning studies that used the firm's data to smear hydroxychloroquine, already thoroughly demonized in the media thanks to its promotion by US President Donald Trump, as a killer. All data is sourced to a proprietary database supposedly containing a veritable ocean of real-time, detailed patient information yet curiously absent from existing medical literature.

The Surgisphere-tainted study appeared to show increased risk of in-hospital deaths and heart problems with no disease-fighting benefits, confirming the suspicions of medical-industry naysayers already inclined to hate the off-patent drug due to the lack of profit potential and Trump's incessant boosterism. Italy, France, and Germany rushed to ban hydroxychloroquine, citing "an increased risk for adverse reactions with little or no benefit."

[May 31, 2020] Russian Health Ministry Approves First Domestic Drug for COVID-19

May 31, 2020 | sputniknews.com

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Russian Health Ministry has approved the first domestic drug, called Avifavir, for treating coronavirus patients, according to a new entry to the national drug registry. The medicine was developed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a sovereign wealth fund, and ChemRar, a Russian pharmaceutical investment and R&D group.

"Avifavir is not only the first antiviral drug registered against coronavirus in Russia, but it is also perhaps the most promising anti-COVID-19 drug in the world. It was developed and tested in clinical trials in Russia in an unprecedentedly short period of time enabling Avifavir to become the first registered drug based on Favipiravir in the world", CEO of the RDIF Kirill Dmitriev said.

The final stage of Avifavir clinical trials involving 330 patients, approved by the national Health Ministry earlier in the month, is ongoing.

Previously, the new drug underwent several clinical trials at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and other medical and academic institutions.

Avifavir, is the first Russian direct antiviral drug that has proven effective in clinical trials. The drug has been used in Japan since 2014 against severe forms of influenza.

In April, the Russian Direct Investment Fund launched a project to diagnose and detect pneumonia , including that caused by the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus.

ChemRar Group includes R&D service and investment companies in the field of innovative pharmaceuticals for the development and commercialization of innovative medicines, diagnostics, preventive care, and new treatments of life-threatening diseases in Russia and abroad.

The latest data by the Russian Health Ministry shows that more than 396,000 cases of the coronavirus and 4,555 fatalities related to the disease have been confirmed in the country.

[May 30, 2020] Paul Craig Roberts Questions The Campaign Against HCQ

May 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought out many disturbing features of our society. Misinformation, or perhaps more accurately, disinformation, abounds in the service of agendas ranging from those who interpret the virus as a useful ploy for the construction of a police state, to Big Pharma and its allies who are moving us toward mass vaccinations, to the narcissistic views of those who would sacrifice the elderly and ill rather than to be inconvenienced by being denied access to bars and beaches. Every aspect of the pandemic, including Trump's own use of HCQ, is being used against the President of the United States.

At a time when accurate information is essential, the waters are instead muddied by disinformation in the service of political, ideological, and profit agendas. The irresponsibility of those putting their self-interests first is extraordinary. It indicates that the social bond between people that made America a country has been dissolved by greed, multiculturalism, and Identity Politics. America has become a country without a common interest. It is a narcissistic state.

This article is limited to the campaign against HCQ. HCQ -- hydroxychloroquine -- has been in use for 65 years for the prevention or treatment of malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis. It is officially labeled a safe drug. Many doctors treating Covid patients have found and reported HCQ, when used early enough together with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin to be an effective and safe treatment.

I have reported and made available many of the reports of HCQ's efficacy and safety. See for example:

Despite 65 years of safe use, HCQ is alleged to be dangerous and to cause heart attacks. Its use is officially approved only for "adolescent and adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19." Generally, by the time a patient is hospitalized the virus has progressed to a later stage in which treatment is less successful. Studies of HCQ's effectiveness, such as the VA one and apparently the more recent one reported in The Lancet, are limited to later stage hospitalized patients and seem to exclude the essential zinc component of the HCQ treatment. In other words, the studies seem to be designed to exclude from official approval the treatment that doctors have found most effective. It is not easy for a layperson to know what the studies actually say as the media report the studies in an anti-Trump manner. For the media, what is most important is criticism of Trump, not the effectiveness of a treatment.

In contrast, the untested investigational antiviral drug, Remdesivir, which has no record of safe use and is extraordinarily expensive compared to HCQ, has been given the same clearence for use. The media is not interested in the effectiveness and safety, or lack of, of this new and untested drug. Trump isn't taking it, and it is a potential profit-maker for Big Pharma. If Remdesivir fails, the failure will be used to dispose of the hope for cures and to focus on vaccination.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that HCQ/zinc is being sidelined in order to clear the way for a profitable vaccine and a vaccination mandate.

But the vaccines are not panning out.

The Moderna vax touted by Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci caused severe illnesses in one-fifth of the test recipients.

The other fast-tracked vaccine developed by the Oxford Vaccine Group proved ineffective. The vaccine produced insufficient antibodies to prevent Covid-19 infection.

...

A few years ago the British medical journal, The Lancet , published a paper touting the safety of HCQ. But this was before HCQ with zinc was found effective if used earlier enough against Covid-19. Covid-19 turned HCQ's effectiveness into a big problem for Big Pharma's big profits.

The solution was another study by medical professionals some of whom have ties to Big Pharma and none of whom, apparently, are involved in the treatment of Covid patients. The study lumps together people in different stages of the disease and undergoing different treatments. It touts its large sample, but many of the patients in the sample received treatment too late after the virus had reached their heart and other vital organs. Most likely the people who died from heart failure died as a result of the virus, not from HCQ.

To be effective treatment has to stop the virus early. Waiting until the patient must be hospitalized has given the virus too much of a head start. Every doctor, and there are many, who reports success with the HCQ treatment stresses early treatment. President Trump used a two-week treatment with HCQ as a prophylactic as he was constantly coming into contact with people who tested positive for the virus. Many medical professionals who are treating Covid patients also use HCQ as a prophylactic.

The Lancet study was a rush job as it was essential for Big Pharma to prevent the spread of the HCQ treatment and awareness of its safety and effectiveness. The study's authors completed the data collection around the middle of April and the study was published on May 22. As soon as it appeared, it was used to close down the World Health Organization's clinical trial of hydoxychloroquine in coronavirus patients citing safety concerns. Most likely, the trial was aborted in order to prevent an official agency from finding out that HCQ worked.

The media, of course, used the suspended trial to cast more doubt on Trump's judgment for recommending and using the treatment, the implication being that Trump had put himself at more risk from a heart attack than from the virus itself.

The Daily Mail , which is often somewhat skeptical of official reports, even misreported French virologist Didier Raoult's report ) of his success with treating 1,061 patients with HCQ/AZ as consisting of o nly a small sample of 30 patients . A small sample is considered to be inconclusive. Thus 1,061 people became 30.

The Lancet study claims a high mortality from HCQ treatment, reporting a death rate ranging from 5.1% to 13.8%. In response to a journalist when asked about this claim, Didier Raoult said that he and has colleagues have followed 4,000 of their patients so far. They have had 36 deaths and none from heart problems for a death rate of 0.009%. According to The Lancet study, he should have between 204 and 552 patients dead from heart problems. He has zero. Raoult had more than 10,000 cardiograms analysed by rythmologists (a special kind of cardiologist) searching for any sign of heart problems.

NIH's Dr. Fauci denies that Raoult's hard evidence is evidence. On May 27 Fauci said, without showing shame of his ignorance or his lie, that there's no evidence that shows the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is effective at treating COVID-19.

Perhaps what Fauci means is that no study undertaken by NIH or another Big Pharma friendly official body has been done and that only such studies constitute evidence.

When hard evidence such as Raoult's is suppressed and misreported while "studies" doctored to produce a predetermined conclusion that serves Big Pharma profits are rushed into publication, we know that money has pushed ethics out of medical research. A number of concerned people have been telling us this for some time. We are past due to listen to them.

Private medicine is profit driven, which makes it susceptible to fraud. In long ago days fraud was restrained by the moral character of doctors and the respect for truth of researchers. These restraints, never perfect, have eroded as greed turned everything, integrity itself, into a commodity that is bought and sold.

The intent is to bury HCQ as a low cost effective treatment and to put in its place a high cost alternative whether effective or not, and to supplement this enhancement of profits with mass vaccination which might do us more harm than the virus itself. Big Pharma could care less. The only value it knows is profit.

This intent has garnered the support of the French, Belgium and Italian governments . Using The Lancet study and WHO's termination of its HCQ trial as the excuse, the French government revoked its decree authorizing HCQ treatment. Belgium's health ministry issued a warning against the use of HCQ except in registered clinical trials. Italy's health agency wants HCQ's use banned outside of clinical trials and suspended authorization to use HCQ as a Covid-19 treatment.

Does this mean that Raoult and his team who by treating Covid patients with HCQ have achieved the remarkable low death rate of 0.009% are prohibited from using the proven cure to save lives? Will Raoult and his team be imprisoned if they continue to save lives? What about the people who will die from the three government's prevention of a safe and effective treatment? Will France, Belgium, and Italy accept responsibility for these lost lives?

I can't avoid wondering if the revolving door between Big Pharma and the NIH and CDC which corrupts US public health decisions also operates in France, Belgium and Italy. Are European health officials elevating themselves by climbing over the dead bodies of their victims?

[May 29, 2020] Chris Whitty - the UK's Chief Medical Officer - says that, to most people, the coronavirus is entirely harmless.

May 29, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Roberto , May 28 2020 20:12 utc | 10

2 or 8 meters away from everybody? it doesn't matter.

Please go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adj8MCsZKlg

In this clip from the Downing Street Corona Briefing on May 11th, Chris Whitty - the UK's Chief Medical Officer - says that, to most people, the coronavirus is entirely harmless.

Most people will never get it.
Most of the people who get it won't ever experience symptoms.
Most of the people who experience symptoms won't need medical care.
Most of the people who need medical care won't be need emergency or critical care.
And even the tiny percentage of people who need who DO need critical care will survive, regardless of risk factors or medical history.

[May 29, 2020] 'Thousands' Of Dutch COVID-19 Survivors Likely Have Permanent Lung Damage According To Top Pulmonologist

May 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

COVID-19 may be far less deadly than originally projected - and asymptomatic cases may be even more common than first suspected, but for those who have caught it and come down with symptoms, the disease can result in lasting symptoms, including shortness of breath, lethargy, recurrent fevers, headaches, itchiness and other mystery problems that aren't going away .

To that end, a top pulmonologist in the Netherlands says that thousands of Dutch residents who have recovered from COVID-19 may be left with permanent lung damage , resulting in decreased lung capacity and difficulty absorbing oxygen.

A computer tomography (CT) X-ray scan shows the signature "ground glass" tissue due to COVID-19 infection,
which is caused by fluid in the lungs. Weifang Kong and Prachi P. Agarwal

According to Leon van den Toorn, Chairman of the Dutch Association of Physicians for Pulmonary Disease and Tuberculosis NVALT, people are underestimating the consequences of the coronavirus .

"In severe cases, a kind of scar formation occurs, we call this lung fibrosis. The lungs shrink and the lung tissue becomes stiffer, making it harder to get enough oxygen," Van den Toorn told Dutch newspaper AD (via the NL Times ), adding that "there may be thousands of people in the Netherlands who suffered permanent injury to the lungs from corona."

Of the 1,200 Covid-19 patients who so far recovered after admission to intensive care, "almost 100 percent went home with residual damage", he said to AD. And about half of the 6 thousand people who were hospitalized, but did not need intensive care, will have symptoms for years to come.

So far 45,500 people in the Netherlands tested positive for the coronavirus. Many did not get sick enough to need hospital care. In this group, Van den Toorn expects that permanent problems will be less serious, but still possible. - NL Times

Van den Toorn says that patients experiencing lung issues should immediately see a pulmonologist, as "there may be a low oxygen level in the blood, which is harmful to the body."

"People with a history of corona infection should be monitored closely to see if recovery is complete," he added.

Drilling down on lung issues, let's flash back to March , when a New Orleans respiratory therapist dealing with coronavirus patients told ProPublica that coronavirus patients suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are extremely difficult to oxygenate .

Authored by Lizzie Presser via ProPublica

"Normally, ARDS is something that happens over time as the lungs get more and more inflamed. But with this virus, it seems like it happens overnight . When you're healthy, your lung is made up of little balloons. Like a tree is made out of a bunch of little leaves, the lung is made of little air sacs that are called the alveoli. When you breathe in, all of those little air sacs inflate, and they have capillaries in the walls, little blood vessels. The oxygen gets from the air in the lung into the blood so it can be carried around the body.

​ A screenshot of chest radiographs of a man suspected to have COVID-19. (Obtained by ProPublica via the Radiological Society of North America, cited in the paper "Severe Acute Respiratory Disease in a Huanan Seafood Market Worker: Images of an Early Casualty" by Lijuan Qian, Jie Yu and Heshui Shi.)

"Typically with ARDS, the lungs become inflamed. It's like inflammation anywhere: If you have a burn on your arm, the skin around it turns red from additional blood flow. The body is sending it additional nutrients to heal. The problem is, when that happens in your lungs, fluid and extra blood starts going to the lungs. Viruses can injure cells in the walls of the alveoli, so the fluid leaks into the alveoli. A telltale sign of ARDS in an X-ray is what's called 'ground glass opacity,' like an old-fashioned ground glass privacy window in a shower. And lungs look that way because fluid is white on an X-ray, so the lung looks like white ground glass, or sometimes pure white, because the lung is filled with so much fluid, displacing where the air would normally be. "

...

"It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu . Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth . The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we've had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe . When you're in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don't know when someone is trying to help you, so you'll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning . ay_arrow 3 play_arrow


Bananamerican , 5 hours ago

Oxygen toxicity, caused by excessive or inappropriate supplemental oxygen, can cause severe damage to the lungs and other organ systems. High concentrations of oxygen, over a long period of time, can increase free radical formation, leading to damaged membranes, proteins, and cell structures in the lungs. It can cause a spectrum of lung injuries ranging from mild tracheobronchitis to diffuse alveolar damage.

smacker , 4 hours ago

I think you're right about ventilators being the wrong treatment. According to some doctors the patients needed oxygen not ventilation.

I spotted here in Brazil, patients were being placed inside plastic oxygen tents neatly fitted over the top half of their beds. So their breathing remained natural.

Battlefield USA , 6 hours ago

Co-existence of coronavirus with bacterial pathogen a major cause of fatalities

Battlefield USA , 6 hours ago

Did you know that the regular run-of-the-mill pneumonia causes lung damage and a host of other problems.

You would know that if you read up on it at the CDC and NIH website.

But just keep being an ignorant brainwashed dumb-***.

Getitright2016 , 7 hours ago

As soon as symptoms appear, a person should be treated. Waiting for shortness of breath is too late. Damage has been done. Early treatment, blood thinners, HCQ with zinc and Antibiotics Zpac to prevent pneumonia.

INeverForget , 7 hours ago

**** THAT "Z-PACK".

Harnar , 7 hours ago

Z-pack gave my mother in law afib (Atrial fibrillation). Although the doctor said it was just coincidence that 3 days after starting Z-pack she was in the hospital with chest pains and needed to be on beta blockers for the rest of her life....

Unfortunately she isn't always good about remembering her pills and died a couple years later due to a brain aneurysms (which can occur if you come off beta blockers too fast or forget to take them for a few days after taking them regularly for a year)

OutaTime43 , 8 hours ago

Lung injuries happen with Pneumonia. When your cells are killed by the virus, then they are replaced with fibroid tissue (scar tissue) just like any other injury. This is of course a problem with Lungs as it reduces vital capacity. If you smoke or have other lung diseases, then it affects you more. When you're young with healthy lungs, then the damage isn't enough to affect you.

I've had CT scans of my lungs and they can still see the damage caused to my lungs from pneumonia at age 5.

charlie_don't_surf , 8 hours ago

Details??? When they don't give details be suspicious. Were these very old patients with already damaged lungs? Are these former ventilator patients and their lungs were damaged by the ventilator? Were these patients with particular genetic weaknesses or predispositions regarding lung tissue? Until there are exact details of patient demographic, pre existing disease, and the nature of their treatment take with a grain of salt.

MX_DOGG , 8 hours ago

Approximately 22.4% of adults in the Netherlands smoked in 2018. This includes 16.0% daily smokers and 6.4% occasional (non-daily) smokers . Of people in the Netherlands who reported smoking , 71.6% smoked every day

charlie_don't_surf , 8 hours ago

the smart people tell you that extensive data collection shows that 50's and under have an extremely low risk, the vast majority of deaths are extremely old, in nursing homes and the smart also will tell that the death rate was jacked up by Cuomo and some other NE dem state guvs ordering infected patients be put in the nursing homes to increase infections and deaths and the smart people will also tell you that destroying the economy will definitely greatly increase injuries, illnesses and premature death...brah...that's what smart people will tell ignorant stiffs like you but it's like talking to a tree stump...brah.

charlie_don't_surf , 8 hours ago

that's probably damage from over expansion from ventilators or just inflammation can cause capillary breakage...capillaries are weak and break easily when stressed and then of course they clot...because they clotted is normal and not a "clotting disease"...I would bet similar happens when people get a bad pneumonia...lungs bleed from tuberculosis too...probably any significant infectious process in lungs will cause bleeding...I had bleeding from strep throat when I was in college.

John C Durham , 9 hours ago

This happens where ever one doesn't get an anti-viral drug from his doctor at his office in the first day or so. The Viral attack comes and goes in about 7 days.

An anti-viral drug does no good after that and giving anti-viral drugs to a hospital patient when the viral attack is long past, just loads them up with more toxins. This has been known since Hydroxychloroquine was given against SARS years ago. It worked great there early on and many doctors starting using it again for the current big panic.

It does nothing later as demonstrated in a recent study that is being used as firepower against that drug instead of against any doctor prescribing it for late treatment in the hospital.

Hydroxychloroquine should be in everyone's medicine cabinet, available over the counter, to be used against flu, colds and any virus starting on the first day. It's safer than an aspirin and much safer than Tylenol and I bet you have had either or both in your cabinet before without triggering WWIII.

She Love Me Long Time , 9 hours ago

Just like politics, the herd has separated into two sides.

Is it really so difficult to see that both sides are wrong?

Yes, there is a virus. No, it won't kill us all. It's more deadly than the flu but it's not the ******* plague. However, this could be the equivalent of an airborne HIV-type of infection that results in chronic long-term health issues and a weakened immune system. If that's true, wearing an N95 mask when you're at the grocery store, even if it makes you look like a sissy, is the smart thing to do.

Just my 2 cents

Drachma , 9 hours ago

The important test would be to determine how many of the worst affected were regular vaccine recipients, especially the flu vaccine, which has been linked to the phenomenon of viral interference, There are at least two proposed related mechanisms of action contributing to an enhancement of disease with subsequent respiratory viral infections, especially coronavirus, after vaccination with influenza vaccine. On the one hand there is an inflammation and scarring of the interstitial membrane of the lungs, subsequent to influenza inoculation, which lessens oxygen transfer to the blood. On the other hand there is an overreaction by the immune system at the time of the secondary infection with coronavirus, as the cross-reactivity from influenza group antibodies, in this case, acts to over-stimulate the immune system, leading to excessive tissue damage and compounding the disease symptoms.

Vaccines, by their very nature, are contaminated with RNA and DNA from latent and dormant viruses from different species cell lines. Since one of the most ubiquitous viruses in the mammalian cell lines is coronavirus, and many different mammalian as well as avian cell lines are used to produce vaccines, chances are that most people with a government-scheduled vaccine history are already infected with coronavirus. Ponder that subject for a while.

Cardinal Fang , 9 hours ago

I'm no radiologist but those 3 CT scans are of different people so it is not a progression.

It appears they are from Chinese study.

So you can throw that data out the window.

Fiscal Reality , 9 hours ago

Democrat Governors LOVE to kill geezers in nursing homes. Facts matter Cuomo, Murphy,Waltz, Wolf and Witmer.

While Fauxi, Birx, the MSM, Soros, the WHO, the CDC and the DNC/CCP scream SOCIAL DISTANCING AND WEAR YOUR MASK, Dem governors build a big body count by pushing COVID infected patients back into nUrsing homes. MONEY MATTERS MORE THAN LIVES.

bunnyswanson , 9 hours ago

Medical error causing death and the controversy around how ...

healthydebate.ca › 2019/08 › topic › medical-error-cau...

Aug 1, 2019 - In May 2016, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published an article with the headline: Medical error -- the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The article estimated that as many as 250,000 deaths per year in the United States were caused by medical error.

PrivetHedge , 9 hours ago

gasping for air, pink frothy secretions

That is a lung damaging cytokine storm that can be moderated with vitamin D and C, vitamins our government is staying remarkably quiet about. In a politics free medical system no patient would be allowed to get to that stage.

There are simple cures to these diseases:

  1. Stop Fort Detrick etc. from making them
  2. Use interferon 1, hydroxychloroquine, zinc and antibiotics to cure people before they are permanently damaged.
  3. Allow people to get sunshine and fresh air, and instead of banning useful medicines; ban junk food, GMO and the various other harmful things our government permits in our air and water.
Uncle Frank , 5 hours ago

Why? We didn't buy it the first time.

Don't lose sight of an important fact, one of the few verifiable ones in the piece -

His title - 'Chairman of the Dutch Association of Physicians for Pulmonary Disease and Tuberculosis'.

Ya think he might be motivated to go for grants by hyperbolizing the situation? I do. I'm not saying that some people aren't dying, just that pneumonia isn't ever a walk in the park, and it kills 100's of thousands every year. Try some perspective, and grow a pair. You might need to lose 100 lbs too, I can't tell from here.

JSG , 9 hours ago

Let's see the demographics of these folks. It's an incomplete story without that. My bet: it's people over 70 with pre-existing conditions so this is not remotely surprising. Their immune systems aren't as strong. Their pre-existing conditions likely already causes a lot of this damage (e.g. COPD does exactly this!)

PrivetHedge , 9 hours ago

(as directed by CCP military to the lab people)

The evidence says the CCP were the targets, not the makers.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-world-leader-bio-weapons-research-production-use-against-mankind
https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debate-over-risky-research-1.18787
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/higher-form-of-killing-robert-harris/1100618277
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/09/people-are-still-dying-from-mysterious-vaping-illness-as-outbreak-slows.html

smacker , 8 hours ago

Those who claim that China knowingly released this virus in China and elsewhere in Asia to attack America(!) conveniently ignore the vaping disease which was actually a severe respiratory infection.

Then there were multiple deaths in nursing homes by similar infections. All this happened months before CovID-19 came along.

Roacheforque , 10 hours ago

The question is ... is COVID 19 alone CAUSING this reaction, or is it TRIGGERING an immune system response from "something else"?

https://roacheforque.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-case-for-mikovits.html

mrjinx007 , 10 hours ago

"It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy ****, this is not the flu . Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth . The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him. With all the coronavirus patients, we've had to restrain them. They really hyperventilate, really struggle to breathe . When you're in that mindstate of struggling to breathe and delirious with fever, you don't know when someone is trying to help you, so you'll try to rip the breathing tube out because you feel it is choking you, but you are drowning .

Caused by ventilator.

[May 29, 2020] France bans use of hydroxychloroquine as coronavirus treatment

May 29, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , May 28 2020 10:11 utc | 69

France bans use of hydroxychloroquine as coronavirus treatment
The country's public health agency advised against use outside of clinical trials.
https://tinyurl.com/ybm266qn

WHO pauses study of hydroxychloroquine in global trial
The study has enrolled 3,500 patients in at least 17 countries since March.
https://tinyurl.com/ya8b4yuw

US coronavirus death toll tops 100K as Trump pushes to reopen
The tragic milestone revives debate over the handling of the pandemic.
https://tinyurl.com/ybpzormy


A day before the U.S. reached the 100,000-death mark, Trump once again blamed China for not stopping the virus before it spread across the globe, and touted his decision in January to restrict travel from China to the U.S.

"For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn't done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number," he tweeted on Tuesday.

Yes, folks, *Trump* is claiming *credit* for saving 1-2 million lives! You can't make this shit up!

Mina , May 28 2020 11:47 utc | 74

Good to know, with regards to what the WHO is doing: "It is not the case that HCQ has been removed from the trial. The WHO has paused that arm of the trial to allow for a review of the interim data to see if they are seeing the same impacts on mortality as have been seen in some other studies."
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/05/26/last-post-on-hydroxychloroquine-perhaps/#comment-1345645

[May 28, 2020] Is aerosol tranmission of the SARC-NCOV-2 virus possible?

May 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , May 28 2020 23:24 utc | 32

As for aerosols over droplets, I've been reading about that for the last month. I thought it was common knowledge. It's the obvious explanation for why some people get it and others don't. Fomites - the virus particles on surfaces - are supposedly responsible for only ten percent of transmission. The question was always to what *degree* aerosols were the transmission method over droplets. Quite a few articles I read debated that point, with evidence mounting that aerosols might have equal or more effect than droplets, at least as secondary transmission. Obviously if someone sneezes or coughs in your face at close range, droplets are the primary transmission. But there are tons of reports - and even video demonstrations on Youtube - of how far aerosols can be dispelled by breathing, talking, yelling, singing and coughs and sneezes. Aerosols can be spread up to 25 feet or more and hover in the air for up to 45 minutes, if not longer, depending on air temperature, humidity and air movement. Droplets can turn into aerosols depending on the same factors.

I started early on washing my hands religiously because due to the fact that I do not interact with hardly anyone in my building or elsewhere except during my supply runs, fomites would be the most likely way I could catch the virus. I have to use a common toilet - so touching the door and toilet lid would be my main risk. That's why I bought a thousand food service plastic gloves which I wear when using the john or going outside the building. When I return, I remove them by the recommended method, then wash my hands.

Initially I didn't have any masks because the depletion of the supply had already occurred. Now I have nineteen masks, 14 of which I use and rotate whenever going to the john or outside the building. I wear it when going to the john because I read recently that flushing a toilet aerosolizes fecal matter - and any virus particles - present in the water. In other words, you get a faceful of virus every time you flush a toilet. So close the lid before flushing. When I return, I wash my hands, remove the mask, then apply hand sanitizer or wash my hands again - which is the recommended procedure.

I now have an adequate supply of masks, hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray (with some more of the latter coming), so I think I'm in a good position to reduce my risk. But of course, as with the rest of life, it's still a crapshoot.

It will be a worse crapshoot as these idiots start crowding places I have to go to for supplies. I use convenience stores a lot and they tend to be crowded because they are very small. I also visit the Target store, but they initially had the crowding under control - because you had to wait in line to get in, which took twenty minutes or more. Now with the easing of restrictions, they have eliminated the door check, so the store is a bit more crowded, but not too much. People might still be wary, as has been suggested by some articles and polls. It's a big store, so ventilation and air movement might be better than a smaller space.

likbez , May 28, 2020 at 23:40

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@Richard Steven Hack | May 28 2020 23:24 utc | 32

The question was always to what *degree* aerosols were the transmission method over droplets

They are not mutually excusive. Aerosol transmission can theoretically occur when a droplet that contains virus particles dry out and they start chaotically move via Brownian motion of air molecules.

Looks like the virus does not die instantly in this case. After all it looks like it survives in dry state on surfaces for a day or two in the absence of sun radiation (depending on the surface -- longest on steel surfaces, shortest on copper)

[May 28, 2020] https://tinyurl.com/y9mudhmf

May 28, 2020 | tinyurl.com

Recommends blood thinners in the same manner that the Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group does...


There is another treatment that hasn't received as much coverage possibly because it isn't one individual drug. It's a broad category of blood thinners called anticoagulants. A recent pre-proof study of over 2500 patients from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that anticoagulation can decrease the mortality of critically ill patients with the coronavirus from a frightening 63% to a somewhat less daunting 29%.

Medical providers, including myself, often use prophylactic doses of blood thinners such as heparin or enoxaparin to prevent blood clots in hospitalized patients particularly in those with additional risk factors for blood clots, but now these medications are being administered to hospitalized patients who have no risk factors for clots other than having COVID-19.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | May 28 2020 10:22 utc | 70

[May 28, 2020] Interesting comments/reviews on the article which has supposedly debunked HCQ

May 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mina , May 28 2020 8:35 utc | 64

Interesting comments/reviews on the article which has supposedly debunked HCQ. (But see Somebody's links at the Nicotine-patch thread for the danger it presents in certain genetic groups)
https://pubpeer.com/publications/71DA593B9943638F1ADE6F80696914

[May 25, 2020] Two postulates of the establishment's propaganda on coronavirus

Outdoor maskism has zero to do with science, everything to do with irrational panic at best, and most of all top-down totalitarian control-seeking
Living in the Empire isn't quite as bad as being a victim of the Empire, but it's getting close.
May 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Russ , May 25 2020 5:44 utc | 66

v> Thus in this case the propaganda has been largely monolithic:

1. Stay indoors. Don't breathe the air.

2. If you must venture into the hostile outdoors*, wear a mask**. Especially now that the air is the cleanest it's been our whole live s, do all you can to avoid breathing it.

"Covid-19 has forced modern medicine to broaden its outlook and look for new solutions, even in the wisdom of the past."

Indeed, it's clear where the establishment's propaganda has found wisdom.

Thus in this case the propaganda has been largely monolithic:

1. Stay indoors. Don't breathe the air.

2. If you must venture into the hostile outdoors*, wear a mask**. Especially now that the air is the cleanest it's been our whole live s, do all you can to avoid breathing it.

"Covid-19 has forced modern medicine to broaden its outlook and look for new solutions, even in the wisdom of the past."

Indeed, it's clear where the establishment's propaganda has found wisdom. /div

[May 25, 2020] BIG PHARMA steered public money away from pandemic research and into PROFIT-MAKING projects for years watchdog -- RT World New

Notable quotes:
"... EU money intended for underfunded public-benefit research such as preparing for a pandemic has been diverted by the pharmaceutical industry into areas where it can make more money, according to a scathing new report. ..."
"... The target of the criticism is the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private partnership that was equally funded, between 2008 and 2020, by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) lobbying group and the European Commission to the tune of 5.3 billion euros (US$5.8 billion). The money is supposed to go to areas of "unmet medical or social need," ..."
"... "We were outraged to find evidence that the pharmaceutical industry lobby EFPIA not only did not consider funding biopreparedness (ie, being ready for epidemics such as the one caused by the new coronavirus, COVID-19) but opposed it being included in IMI's work when the possibility was raised by the European Commission in 2017, ..."
"... "The research proposed by the EC in the biopreparedness topic was small in scope," ..."
"... "IMI's projects have contributed, directly or indirectly, to better prepare the research community for the current crisis, the Ebola+ programme or the ZAPI project." ..."
"... "belated interventions when an epidemic is already underway," ..."
"... Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! ..."
May 25, 2020 | www.rt.com
EU money intended for underfunded public-benefit research such as preparing for a pandemic has been diverted by the pharmaceutical industry into areas where it can make more money, according to a scathing new report. Officials in Brussels wanted to co-fund research that would have ensured the European Union (EU) was better prepared for a pandemic akin to the one we are experiencing today. But their partners, the big pharmaceutical companies, rejected the proposal, ensuring that taxpayer money would go instead into studies with more potential for commercial application. In short big-pharma lobbyists were allowed to steer billions of euros of public funds as they saw fit, a damning new report claims.

The target of the criticism is the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private partnership that was equally funded, between 2008 and 2020, by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) lobbying group and the European Commission to the tune of 5.3 billion euros (US$5.8 billion). The money is supposed to go to areas of "unmet medical or social need," but, in practice, corporate priorities dominate the decision-making, according to the non-governmental organization Corporate Observatory Europe (COE).

"We were outraged to find evidence that the pharmaceutical industry lobby EFPIA not only did not consider funding biopreparedness (ie, being ready for epidemics such as the one caused by the new coronavirus, COVID-19) but opposed it being included in IMI's work when the possibility was raised by the European Commission in 2017, " a new COE report said.

Also on rt.com Head of EU's top science body quits after Covid-19 response plans get bogged down by Brussels bureaucracy

The rejected proposal would have directed money into refining computer simulations and the analysis of animal testing models, potentially speeding up regulatory approval of vaccines, according to the Guardian. But a spokeswoman for the IMI called the report "misleading".

"The research proposed by the EC in the biopreparedness topic was small in scope," she said. "IMI's projects have contributed, directly or indirectly, to better prepare the research community for the current crisis, the Ebola+ programme or the ZAPI project."

ZAPI, or the Zoonotic Anticipation and Preparedness Initiative, was launched in 2015 with a budget of 20 million euros (US$21.8 million) after the Ebola epidemic a year prior. The COE report said it exemplifies a pattern of "belated interventions when an epidemic is already underway," much like this year's emergency funding of coronavirus research.

Also on rt.com Hotly-touted Oxford coronavirus VACCINE trial has only 50 percent chance of success, project leader warns

The think tank questioned whether EU public money was well applied through IMI. Much of it went into research into cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes – areas that are potentially profitable and thus are given close attention by private business. But epidemic preparedness, HIV/AIDS, and poverty-related and neglected tropical diseases have been overlooked by the initiative, the report said.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

[May 24, 2020] 'How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?' The government's disease-fighting agency is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the same.

Notable quotes:
"... "According to CDC, the disease of obesity affects about 78 million Americans 1 and the ASMBS estimates about 24 million have severe or morbid obesity." ..."
May 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , May 24 2020 23:54 utc | 46

And the government botching of this crisis continues...

'How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?' The government's disease-fighting agency is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the same.
https://tinyurl.com/y92ea59f

And overseas as well...

'Politicised nature' of lockdown debate delays Imperial report
https://tinyurl.com/y7csboom

And of course, the effect of that...

Nearly half of US states haven't contained their coronavirus outbreaks, a new study finds
https://tinyurl.com/yc72pd8t

And no, Sweden is not doing better...

Just 7.3% of Stockholm had Covid-19 antibodies by end of April, study shows
Official findings add to concerns about Sweden's laissez-faire strategy towards the pandemic
https://tinyurl.com/yahnmb3a

Finally, a large scale study on HCQ - 86,000 patients, with 15,000 receiving HCQ...

Trump drug hydroxychloroquine raises death risk in Covid patients, study says
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52779309

The color of coronavirus:
COVID-19 deaths by race and ethnicity in the U.S.
https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race

Blacks are *twice* as likely to get it as whites and Latinos. American Indians are *five times* more likely to get it. They conclude the best indicator is poverty.

From The Lancet, a study of New York patients... Epidemiology, clinical course, and outcomes of critically ill adults with COVID-19 in New York City: a prospective cohort study https://tinyurl.com/yblmszsx

Between March 2 and April 1, 2020, 1150 adults were admitted to both hospitals with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, of which 257 (22%) were critically ill.

The median age of patients was 62 years (IQR 51–72), 171 (67%) were men. 212 (82%) patients had at least one chronic illness, the most common of which were hypertension (162 [63%]) and diabetes (92 [36%]).

119 (46%) patients had obesity.

As of April 28, 2020, 101 (39%) patients had died and 94 (37%) remained hospitalised.

203 (79%) patients received invasive mechanical ventilation for a median of 18 days (IQR 9–28), 170 (66%) of 257 patients received vasopressors and 79 (31%) received renal replacement therapy.

The median time to in-hospital deterioration was 3 days (IQR 1–6).

In the multivariable Cox model, older age (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 1·31 [1·09–1·57] per 10-year increase), chronic cardiac disease (aHR 1·76 [1·08–2·86]), chronic pulmonary disease (aHR 2·94 [1·48–5·84]), higher concentrations of interleukin-6 (aHR 1·11 [95%CI 1·02–1·20] per decile increase), and higher concentrations of D-dimer (aHR 1·10 [1·01–1·19] per decile increase) were independently associated with in-hospital mortality.

Note: 36% had diabetes; 46% were fat. Like I've said before, "diabetes" is a code word for "fat." And how many people in the US are fat and thus at risk? "According to CDC, the disease of obesity affects about 78 million Americans 1 and the ASMBS estimates about 24 million have severe or morbid obesity."

So much for "let's just isolate the elderly"...so we can attend our baseball games this summer and stuff ourselves with crap food...

[May 24, 2020] Lung volume as an important factor in coronavirus progrnnsys

May 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , May 24 2020 23:13 utc | 41

I think lung volume is indirect indicator of how well trained the person is. Coach potatoes have low lung volume. Most sportsmen -- a high or even very high.

From WSJ article "The Healing Power of Proper Breathing" https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-healing-power-of-proper-breathing-11590098696

In the 1980s, researchers with the Framingham Study, a 70-year research program focused on heart disease, gathered two decades of data from 5,200 subjects, crunched the numbers and discovered that the greatest indicator of life span wasn't genetics, diet or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. It was lung capacity. Larger lungs equaled longer lives. Because big lungs allow us to get more air in with fewer breaths. They save the body from a lot of unnecessary wear and tear.

Also a sedentary way of life with not enough movement during the day, especially during childhood and adolescence, along with poor sitting and standing postures can encourage shallow breathing instead of breathing with the whole body.

[May 23, 2020] The more you know Over a third of Americans apprehensive about Covid-19 vaccine, citing rushed development trust issues -- RT

May 23, 2020 | www.rt.com

The more you know? Over a third of Americans apprehensive about Covid-19 vaccine, citing rushed development & trust issues 21 May, 2020 21:37 Get short URL The more you know? Over a third of Americans apprehensive about Covid-19 vaccine, citing rushed development & trust issues © Global Look Press / Fotostand / K. Schmitt Follow RT on RT As the Trump administration pushes for Covid-19 vaccine development on an ever-shrinking timetable and companies report lackluster early trials, 35 percent of Americans are less than thrilled about getting the shot. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's unprecedented drive to create and roll out a vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic by the end of the year, may be doing more harm than good, at least where Americans' trust is concerned. Between the shockingly abbreviated timetable and the lack of long-term safety testing, almost one in four Americans (24 percent) said they were not interested in the shot, according to a Reuters poll published Thursday. An additional 11 percent were unsure about it.

Also on rt.com Study Trump cited in his latest attack on WHO does NOT EXIST, says editor-in-chief of prestigious medical journal

Compounding the distrust is the polarizing figure of President Donald Trump himself, who proudly announced the shortened timetable for vaccine development last week. Thirty-six percent of those polled by Reuters said they would be less likely to take a potential Covid-19 vaccine if it came recommended by Trump, while just 14 percent thought the president's seal of approval was a positive.

Trump's narrative flip-flops haven't helped his credibility on the vaccine front. From his early reassurances that the virus would vanish in weeks, to his public conflicts with his own health advisers over locking down and reopening the country, it's not hard to see why Americans are hesitant to fall in line behind him on this. But the problem isn't necessarily political. Nearly half of those uninterested in taking the vaccine said the speed of its development worried them, while over 40 percent said the vaccine would be riskier than actually contracting Covid-19 itself.

Read more Trump's WARP SPEED vaccine czar oversaw an infamously BOTCHED vaccination. Wonder why a THIRD of Americans want to dodge this one? Trump's WARP SPEED vaccine czar oversaw an infamously BOTCHED vaccination. Wonder why a THIRD of Americans want to dodge this one?

However, even 29 percent of those who said they were " not very interested " in the vaccine allowed they'd be willing to change their mind if the shot was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The full approval process for vaccines usually takes over a decade, and even the most optimistic experts – including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has become the public face of the US' Covid-19 policy – believe a shot won't be ready for another year to 18 months. Rushing a vaccine to market in the middle of a pandemic means sacrificing comprehensive safety checks for efficiency – a tradeoff that can be disastrous, as in the case of the 2009 swine flu shot Pandemrix, which caused permanent brain damage in over 1,000 British patients.

The parallels between Covid-19 and that epidemic are ominous – wildly inflated death predictions had spooked the UK government into approving Pandemrix without sufficient safety data – and it surely won't help Americans' trust in this vaccine that Trump's " vaccine czar " Moncef Slaoui ran GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine division during the swine flu debacle. Nor has it been especially heartening to discover Slaoui's extensive investments in not just Glaxo but many other drug companies working on potential vaccines.

Slaoui earned $3 million on Monday alone from Moderna, which is still considered the leading candidate in the vaccine race, even though the drug company has never brought a vaccine to market. After hyping up what were essentially meaningless preliminary results, Moderna's stock shot up 25 percent, bringing his holdings to over $10 million. He pledged to donate those earnings to " cancer research " after demands for him to divest reached a fever pitch. A vaccine produced at Oxford University hasn't fared much better, with all six rhesus monkeys who received the shot becoming infected anyway – despite a preliminary report that tried to spin the failure as representing " some " success.

Also on rt.com Define 'distribute'! Trump mobilizing MILITARY to deliver Covid-19 vaccine 'assuming we get it,' sparks conspiracy frenzy

Threats of mandatory vaccination have unsurprisingly not helped to soothe Americans' worries over a potentially unsafe vaccine. Fauci and other health officials have repeatedly warned the public that there will be no return to " normal " without a vaccine, even as lockdown restrictions are slowly lifted – a statement some have interpreted as a threat that the unvaccinated will be barred from crowded public places or travel. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz went further, declaring the government has " police power " to mandate Americans take a vaccine and claiming such power is " not debatable " constitutionally. And other experts downplayed the very real concerns voiced by poll respondents in favor of blaming the " very aggressive anti-vaccine movement ."

All this is bad news for the health experts Reuters cites, who say 70 percent of Americans would have to be immune in order to achieve " herd immunity " and stop the virus from spreading through the US, where upwards of 90,000 people have died since the pandemic began.

[May 23, 2020] Hydroxychloroquine After Action Report

May 23, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

Robert Waldmann | May 23, 2020 10:52 am

Healthcare Hot Topics I was a vehement advocate of prescribing hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) off label while waiting for the results of clinical trials. I wasn't all that much embarrassed to agree with Donald Trump for once. Now I feel obliged to note that my guess was totally wrong. I thought that the (uncertain) expected benefits were greater than the (relatively well known) costs.

The cost is that HCQ affects the heart beat prolonging the QT period (from when the atrium begins to contract to when the ventrical repolarizes and is read to go again). This can cause arrhythmia especially in people who already have heart problems. I understood that one might argue that all people with Covid 19 have heart problems but didn't consider that argument decisive (I probably should have).

The positive expected value of the uncertain benefits was based on strong in vitro evidence that HCQ blocks SARS Cov2 infection of human cells in culture. (this is a publication in the world's top general science journal).

Already in early May, there was evidence that any effect of HCQ on the rate of elimination of the virus must be small. In this controlled trial conducted in China , the null of no effect is not rejected. Much more importantly, the point estimates of the effects over time are all almost exactly zero. I considered the matter settled (although the painfully disappointed authors tried to argue for HCQ and that their study was not conclusive).

There are now four large retrospective studies all of which suggest no benefit from HCQ and two of which suggest it causes increased risk of death. I am going to discuss the two studies most recently reported.

One is a very large study (fairly big data goes to the hospital) published yesterday in The Lancet. In this study patients who received HCQ had a significantly higher death rate with a hazard of dying 1.335 times as high. The estimate comes from a proportional hazard model with a non parametric baseline probability and takes into account many risk factors including crucially initial disease severity. It is also important that only patients who were treated within 48 hours of diagnosis were considered.

I am, of course, dismayed by this result. I am also puzzled, because it is quite different from the result obtained in a smaller retrospective study published in JAMA

I think the practical lessons are that it seems unwise to give Covid 19 patients HCQ. Also maybe Robert Waldmann should be more humble. After the jump, I will discuss the two studies in some detail and propose an explanation of the difference in results.

[May 22, 2020] Global report: don't count on vaccine, US scientist warns, as cases pass 5m

May 22, 2020 | www.theguardian.com

A top US scientist has said that people should not count on a Covid-19 vaccine being developed any time soon...

William Haseltine, the groundbreaking cancer, HIV/AIDS and human genome projects researcher, has said the best approach to the pandemic is to manage the disease through careful tracing of infections and strict isolation measures whenever it starts spreading. He said that while a vaccine could be developed, "I wouldn't count on it", and urged people to wear masks, wash hands, clean surfaces and keep a distance.

[May 22, 2020] Washington State conned out of a likely 'hundreds of millions of dollars' by Nigerian scammers

If Nigerian hackers can steal that much money, Israel, Chinese, and Russian, intel agencies probably are in the most Fed information systems doing what they want ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... officials in Washington State may have lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" to fraudsters filing bogus unemployment claim ..."
May 22, 2020 | www.rt.com
officials in Washington State may have lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" to fraudsters filing bogus unemployment claim s – all the way from Nigeria.

[May 22, 2020] The Remdesivir Study Is Finally Out Drug Only Helped Those On Oxygen, Finds Mortality Too High For Standalone Treatment Zero

May 22, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Remember when the market soared on several days in April on the Facui-touted Remdesivir study which, according to StatNews and various other unofficial sources of rumors, was a smashing success only for the optimism to fizzle as many questions emerged , and as the Gilead drug quietly faded from the public's consciousness and was replaced by various coronavirus vaccine candidates such as those made by the greatly hyped Moderna ( whose insiders just can't stop selling company stock ).

Meanwhile, those who were waiting for the official version of Remdesivir's effectiveness had to do so until 6pm on a Friday before a long holiday, and for good reason...

Friday 6 pm. Fking ridiculous. https://t.co/6Ze38BfVgN

-- Adam Feuerstein (@adamfeuerstein) May 22, 2020

... According to a pivotal study published in the New England Journal of Medicine late on Friday, Remdesivir, which was authorized to treat Covid-19 in a group of 1063 adults and children (split into two groups, one receiving placebo instead of remdesivir) who need i) supplemental oxygen, ii) a ventilator or iii) extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), only significantly helped those on supplemental oxygen.

Meanwhile, and explaining the 6pm release on a Friday, the study also found no marked benefit from remdesivir for those who were healthier and didn't need oxygen or those who were sicker, requiring a ventilator or a heart-lung bypass machine.

The NEJM, almost apologetically, stated that "the lack of benefit seen in the other groups might have stemmed from a smaller number of patients in each group."

Still, as a result of the partial benefit for patients in the supplemental oxygen group, the study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was evaluated early and led to the authorization of remdesivir before the full trial was completed.

Our findings highlight the need to identify Covid-19 cases and start antiviral treatment before the pulmonary disease progresses to require mechanical ventilation.

Some more details on the study, which was a "rank test of the time to recovery with remdesivir as compared with placebo, with stratification by disease severity":

The primary outcome measure was the time to recovery, defined as the first day, during the 28 days after enrollment, on which a patient satisfied categories 1, 2, or 3 on the eight-category ordinal scale. The categories are as follows:

  1. not hospitalized, no limitations of activities;
  2. not hospitalized, limitation of activities, home oxygen requirement, or both;
  3. hospitalized, not requiring supplemental oxygen and no longer requiring ongoing medical care (used if hospitalization was extended for infection-control reasons);
  4. hospitalized, not requiring supplemental oxygen but requiring ongoing medical care (Covid-19–related or other medical conditions);
  5. 5, hospitalized, requiring any supplemental oxygen;
  6. hospitalized, requiring noninvasive ventilation or use of high-flow oxygen devices;
  7. hospitalized, receiving invasive mechanical ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO); and
  8. death.

The results are summarized below, highlighting the only group that showed a statistically significant improvement in outcomes as a result of taking the drug vs placebo.

A visual representation of the outcomes is below; it shows that whereas there was a modest benefit only to patients who were receiving oxygen, the results were statistically insignificant vs placebo for patients not receiving oxygen, while in a surprising twist patients on high-flow oxygen or mechanical ventilator/ECMO did modestly better in the placebo group than those taking remdesivir. Also, the overall results showed a very modest, but not statistically significant improvement in the remdesivir group vs placebo (box A).

Another disappointment: the study found that overall "mortality was numerically lower in the remdesivir group than in the placebo group, but the difference was not significant ", in other words the alleged "miracle drug" has largely the same effect as a placebo in terms of overall disease mortality.

The study authors also note that the "findings in our trial should be compared with those observed in a randomized trial from China in which 237 patients were enrolled (158 assigned to remdesivir and 79 to placebo).... That trial failed to complete full enrollment (owing to the end of the outbreak), had lower power than the present trial (owing to the smaller sample size and a 2:1 randomization), and was unable to demonstrate any statistically significant clinical benefits of remdesivir. "

Finally, the study found that while mortality was modestly lower for the remdesivir arm, it was not significantly so, at 7.1% at 14 days on drug versus 11.9% on placebo.

In conclusion, while the "preliminary findings support the use of remdesivir for patients who are hospitalized with Covid-19 and require supplemental oxygen therapy" the study goes on to warn that " given high mortality despite the use of remdesivir, it is clear that treatment with an antiviral drug alone is not likely to be sufficient."

The study's recommendation:

Future strategies should evaluate antiviral agents in combination with other therapeutic approaches or combinations of antiviral agents to continue to improve patient outcomes in Covid-19.

So a generally disappointing outcome, one which would lead to a drop in the market. Nonsense: think of all the spin, and why this is in fact great news for stocks: Remdesivir may be a dud as a "silver bullet" to curing covid, leading to statistically significant improvement in only a very limited subset of infected patients and "high mortality" for those taking it, but at least the algos will have a whole lot of other "miracle drugs" to levitate them as optimism that the next remdesivir is just around the corner. In short: rinse, rumor, and repeat... and then save the bad news for 6pm on a Friday.

Oh, and for those asking about the "official" reason why the NE Journal of Medicine waited until just the right time to make sure nobody reads the results, here it is:

I asked NEJM spox to explain the Friday 6 pm release of the remdesivir study. Her response is below. pic.twitter.com/WjNGyUv7sH

-- Adam Feuerstein (@adamfeuerstein) May 22, 2020

The full study is available here .

[May 21, 2020] Smokers are at a lower risk of contracting covid19 infections

May 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

J Norwich , May 19 2020 5:43 utc | 108

Prior infection with other coronavirus strains appears to confer an enhanced immune response to covid19. Smokers are at a lower risk of contracting covid19 infections. Perhaps the two observations are related? Smokers generally have poorer lung health and may be more likely to acquire lung infections such as those caused by other varieties of coronavirus and to develop antibody protection. So maybe their vulnerability to such infections has proved an advantage in this case?

Hoarsewhisperer , May 19 2020 6:05 utc | 109

"Immune warriors known as T cells help us fight some viruses, but their importance for battling SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been unclear. Now, two studies reveal infected people harbor T cells that target the virus -- and may help them recover. Both studies also found some people never infected with SARS-CoV-2 have these cellular defenses, most likely because they were previously infected with other coronaviruses."

Thanks for drawing attention to this, b.

The T cell/Common Cold factor may help to explain why children are less likely to be infected by COVID-19 than adults. I can recall that when each of my own offspring went through that miserable, snotty-nosed toddler phase, there seemed to be no upside for them or their parents. In retrospect, maybe it was producing a hidden benefit?

[May 21, 2020] Is nikotin effective against COVID-19

May 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

gm , May 19 2020 16:13 utc | 129

With respect to highly addictive nicotine, it is not hard to find any number of "healthful" justifications for continuing with the (disgusting, imho) smoking habit.

Why, there is already an extensive body of scientific "evidence" one can latch onto that nicotine is beneficial in Parkinson's disease:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=smoking+parkinson%27s+disease&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

And of course, one can also find numerous reports nicotine also helps schizophrenics to manage their symptoms:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=smoking+schizophrenia+benefits&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

But with regard to anecdotal/unverified [touch'e] claims of nicotine benefits in covid, one should not reflexively ignore the evidence to the contrary that conflict with one's pro-nicotine bias/belief system:}

"Smokers more likely to express ACE2 protein that SARS-COV-2 uses to enter human cells"
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-smokers-ace2-protein-sars-cov-human.html

and

"Tobacco smoking increases lung entry points for COVID-19 virus"
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-tobacco-lung-entry-covid-virus.html

"They looked at the expression of ACE2, the molecule in the respiratory tract that the COVID-19 virus uses to attach to and infect human cells. They also looked at the expression of FURIN and TMPRSS2, human enzymes known to facilitate COVID-19 virus infection.

The researchers report in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine a 25 percent increase in the expression of ACE2 in lung tissues from ever-smokers, people who have smoked at least 100 cigarettes during their lives, when compared with nonsmokers. Smoking also increased the presence of FURIN, but to a lower extent compared to ACE2 . TMRPSS2 expression in lungs was not associated with smoking. They also found that smoking remodeled the gene expression of cells in the lungs so that the ACE2 gene was more highly expressed in goblet cells, cells that secrete mucus in order to protect the mucous membranes in the lungs ."

But if you are totally bent on using a non-addictive feel-good drug that Israelis say may prevent/fight against the Corona-chan, try CANNABIS:

https://news.google.com/search?for=marijuana%20covid%20israel&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

[May 21, 2020] An MD wrote this op/ed dealing with the hypoxia caused by the coronavirus and provides evidence in support of Dr. Bush's video interview

May 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , May 19 2020 20:56 utc | 137

An MD wrote this op/ed dealing with the hypoxia caused by the coronavirus and provides evidence in support of Dr. Bush's video interview that can be reached through the link @135 above.

Yes, the op/ed's a month old, but the dynamics of the virus haven't changed nor have the frequency of deaths within the Outlaw US Empire.

Based on the doctor's first hand testimony and other studies, the initial treatment approach advocated by Dr. Bush and its reasoning seem quite pragmatic and logical.

Comparison with Malaria yields almost no correlation aside from the malaria parasite's use of red blood cells as nurseries and lairs, which may explain why anti-malaria drugs used against COVID-19 in its initial stages have some positive results.

[May 21, 2020] Our FLCCC Working Group currently believes that, if hydroxychloroquine proves to have any benefit, it will most likely be in the earliest stage of infection, while the virus replicates and the patient is still at home, before breathing difficulties or low oxygen levels necessitate a trip to the hospital.

May 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , May 19 2020 4:45 utc | 106

The Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (EVMS is part of that group) has this to say about HCQ:
Some have asked why our initial protocol included hydroxychloroquine, the anti-viral drug that was widely touted as a cure for the COVID-19 disease that is caused by the virus. Almost all ER and ICU physicians tried it before a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed it to have no effect on mortality in patients with severe cases of the disease. Our FLCCC Working Group currently believes that, if hydroxychloroquine proves to have any benefit, it will most likely be in the earliest stage of infection, while the virus replicates and the patient is still at home, before breathing difficulties or low oxygen levels necessitate a trip to the hospital.

A shortened version of their current treatment protocol (PDF):
https://tinyurl.com/y836kmpc

Dr. Kory Senate Testimony before the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Hearing (Vimeo video)
https://vimeo.com/415698366

Dr. Kory is Pierre Kory, M.D., M.P.A., Medical Director, Trauma & Life Support Center, Critical Care Service Chief, Associate Professor of Medicine Univ. of Wisconsin School of Medicine & Public Health - one of eight medical professionals on the FLCCC team.

Note: I do *not* explicitly endorse any of this. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on MoA. But I find their arguments reasonable to the degree I can comprehend them.

Richard Steven Hack , May 19 2020 6:26 utc | 110

Just watched Dr. Kory's testimony before the Senate Committee I referenced above... Link again: https://vimeo.com/415698366

I recommend it to everyone. Again, I can't speak to the medicine, but I think you'll find him highly persuasive, if rather desperate to fit his arguments into the time allotted him (which he overran.)

At least we got a number for the patients treated with their complete MATH+ Protocol - merely 100 (at the time of his testimony.) That's not a high number that persuades me. But he also cites a number of other doctors around the country and in Italy who have tried corticosteroids and apparently they consider it a "game-changer" in treatment, in that it massively reduces the number of people needing to be put on ventilators. He emphasizes that the treatment is safe, physiologically sound, well-recognized as useful for the conditions caused by the virus for years, and although "off-label" for this disease it is not unusual to do "off-label" and that is supported by all the medical association ethical standards.

But he emphasizes that the treatment needs to be started as soon as respirator symptoms develop and he is concerned that too many people are avoiding going to the hospital until it's too late. This of course raises the question as to whether this is another treatment - like HCQ - that "only" works at early stages and therefore is not necessarily proven by trials, but is only supported by "observation" in the hospital.

Of course, the solution to that is run the bloody trial. Or at least use the treatment on a greater number of treatments and see how it washes out. He's concerned that they can't get the White House to listen - big surprise, there.

[May 21, 2020] On the necessity and the duration of quarantine

May 21, 2020 | www.unz.com

likbez , says: Show Comment May 21, 2020 at 9:20 pm GMT

Hi The Kremlin Stooge,

Don't forget 'Covidiots'. The frontline-worker-lovin', government-narrative-believin' social-distance welcomin' simpletons are endlessly inventive when it comes to coining contemptuous nicknames for those who don't buy into their embrace of madness. I am happy to be able to say I thought the virus was bogus from the first, and said so to anyone who would listen.

That's too simplistic. You should agree that religious nuts who attend the church in large groups despite the risk can and should be called "Covidiots". Because they are. And the people who are trying to preserve their meager income generally should not.

Why religious nuts can't move to outdoors for the same purpose like first Chirstians did, is unclear to me ;-). Not sure about Orthodox Jews, which is pretty closed sect in any case so if they want to infect each other, be my guest.

The virus causes specific for it virus pneumonia which is no joke. People who recovered still have fibroses in this lungs of different degree. That's why people who were hospitalized with COVID-19 are ineligible to serve in US army. So for those unlucky who get virus pneumonia that's a crippling disease. You can't deny this.

For around 15-20% of people over 65 infected with COVID-19 it means the death sentence -- they will never recover and either die in hospital or soon after. Men over 65 are two third of those so for old men the risk can't be discounted.

So the question is what forms and length of quarantine was optimal, not whether it should or should not be enforced. I doubt that you want to argue that night clubs should remain open. Or that wearing masks in closed spaces is redundant (in open spaces they generally are redundant, unless you are standing in line, etc)

You also need some timeout to collect the vital information about the disease using first cases, enhance the protection of medical personnel, and access the level of actual risk to the population and the economy (the USA generally wasted it and Trump was inapt; so the effect of quarantine is more questionable for this particular country).

It was not that clear in March that the risk is generally low, although we can't deny that Fauci and Co were caught without pants (or, for some sinister reason were intended to be caught this way as if they waited until epidemic got to a certain point that masks something else )

That does not excuse incompetence of Trump administration and very strange behaviors of Fauci, who spent two months and then woke up and suddenly start crying Wolf, Wolf, but the USA is very mysterious country and in no way Canadians can understand it

[May 21, 2020] New York Times continues to prop up the vaccine hype

May 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , May 21 2020 0:49 utc | 55

New York Times continues to prop up the vaccine hype:

Coronavirus Live Updates: Scientists See Progress in Path to Vaccine by Next Year

In addition to this Home Page highlight, there's an opinion piece as a side dish:

What to Expect When a Coronavirus Vaccine Finally Arrives

Buried a little bit more at the bottom, there's this borderline pseudoscientific, definitely reckless article:

Prototype Vaccine Protects Monkeys From Coronavirus

There is a statistical possibility a vaccine comes out next year. But his possibility is remote. The key here is that a vaccine must be tested to the exhaustion before being ok'd by any government for mass use. Any mistake can result in a number of deaths that will make this pandemic look like child's play. My opinion is that the NYT is feeding too much enthusiasm to its readers.

Circe , May 19 2020 12:05 utc | 119

The Moderna Vaccine the media is touting as a promising, miracle breakthrough that has only been tested on a limited group of 45 people, aged 18 to 55 has Grade 3 adverse effects in 100 and 250 microgram dosage.

So they're going to lower dosage to 50 micrograms and test it on the 56 to 70 and over 70 age groups. What about the group most Americans are in: the KFC, McDonald's, IHOP group?

[May 21, 2020] It is worth reminding of criticism of the untrustworthiness of modern medical science from the editors of some of the top medical journals

Notable quotes:
"... There are some who parrot Big Pharma vested interests in ridiculing and denigrating hydroxychloroquine, despite the very notable positive results several countries such as China, Russia, Iran and Turkey have had with it, while vainly spouting the benefits of smoking despite complete lack of quality research papers supporting it and abundant quality papers against. ..."
"... Research is not created equal. There is good research (some, not so much) and there is bad research (bundles of it), mostly funded by vested interests, who where necessary direct the desired results. In general, research from China and Russia arguably tends to be higher quality and more reliable because those countries place the emphasis on health for society, not on profits for the corporations. ..."
May 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

BM , May 20 2020 6:17 utc | 146

But with regard to anecdotal/unverified [touch'e] claims of nicotine benefits in covid, one should not reflexively ignore the evidence to the contrary that conflict with one's pro-nicotine bias/belief system:}
"Smokers more likely to express ACE2 protein that SARS-COV-2 uses to enter human cells"
"Tobacco smoking increases lung entry points for COVID-19 virus"
Posted by: gm | May 19 2020 16:13 utc | 129

Touché again gm!

It is indeed desperate grasping at straws to believe that smoking will protect against Covid-19 when far higher quality research clearly indicates increased risk from smoking that the disease will be more severe (the latter also being the more plausible result).

As I commented the last time B raised this issue, there is one genuine effect of a past history of smoking that statistically reduces risk of death from Covid-19 - namely smoking significantly reduces expected lifespan, and therefore reduces the risk of living long enough to reach the highest risk age groups for severe Covid-19. Alternatively expressed - smoking kills you off first before you get a chance to be killed by Covid, if that is what you want. Post-hoc nicotine patches at a late stage deny you even that advantage.

There are some who parrot Big Pharma vested interests in ridiculing and denigrating hydroxychloroquine, despite the very notable positive results several countries such as China, Russia, Iran and Turkey have had with it, while vainly spouting the benefits of smoking despite complete lack of quality research papers supporting it and abundant quality papers against.

At this point it is worth reminding of criticism of the untrustworthiness of modern medical science from the editors of some of the top medical journals:

Skeptical of medical science reports?

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine"
Angell M. Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption. The New York Review of Books magazine.

More recently, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, wrote that "The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness"
Horton R. Offline: What is medicine's 5 sigma? www.thelancet.com.

The first of these two commentaries on clinical research publications appeared in 2009, the second in April of this year. These statements are being taken seriously, coming as they do from the experiences of editors of two of the world's most prestigious medical journals. The first article showed how the relationships between pharmaceutical companies and academic physicians at prestigious universities impacted certain drug-related publications and the marketing of prescription drugs. Potential conflicts of interest seemed to abound: millions of dollars in consulting and speaking fees to physicians who promoted specific drugs, public research dollars being used by a researcher to test a drug owned by a company in which the researcher held millions of dollars in shares, failure of university researchers to disclose income from drug companies, company subsidies to physician continuing education, publishing practice guidelines involving drugs in which the authors have a financial interest, using influential physicians to promote drugs for unapproved uses, bias in favor of a product coming from failure to publish negative results and repeated publication of positive results in different forms. The author, Marcia Angell, cited the case of a drug giant that had to agree to settle charges that it deliberately withheld evidence that its top-selling anti-depressant was ineffective and could be harmful to certain age groups. ...

Richard Horton's statement was part of his comments on a recent symposium on reliability and reproducibility of research in the biomedical sciences and addresses a broader area of concern. Some of the problems he identified are seen in the veterinary literature. They include inadequate number of subjects in the study, poor study design, and potential conflicts of interest. He notes that the quest for journal impact factor is fuelling competition for publication in a few high reputation journals. He warns that "our love of 'significance' pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale" ...

Research is not created equal. There is good research (some, not so much) and there is bad research (bundles of it), mostly funded by vested interests, who where necessary direct the desired results. In general, research from China and Russia arguably tends to be higher quality and more reliable because those countries place the emphasis on health for society, not on profits for the corporations.

@Flatulus @16 "sources"
Christian Drosten, chief virologist Charité Berlin in his podcast no 31. Available with transcript here.
Posted by: b | May 18 2020 16:42 utc | 32

B, have you looked into the Big Pharma vested interests of Drosten yet? I suggest you do so.

[May 20, 2020] Adding insult to injury Spike in Covid-19 robocalls fraud

Few things can be more annoying than answering the phone while you're in the middle of something -- and then being greeted by a recording. If you receive a robocall trying to sell you something (and you haven't given the caller your written permission), it's an illegal call. You should hang up. Then, file a complaint with the FTC and the National Do Not Call Registry.
May 20, 2020 | www.rt.com

From phony positive Covid-19 test results to deceptive offers of financial relief, robocalls have proliferated amid the pandemic, separating Americans from millions of precious dollars at a time when few can afford to lose money.

One particularly nasty scam sees the target receive a text or phone call warning them they've been exposed to the virus, tricking them into providing personal information while in a state of panic. Another cruel variant dangles the possibility of virus-related financial relief if they just give up their bank account details or wire the scammer a small " fee " – a tempting prospect at a time when half of American workers are unlikely to see a paycheck this month and upwards of 36 million have filed for unemployment since the pandemic began. Phony treatments – in which the target orders a miracle cure, only to never receive it – comprise some 22 percent of coronavirus-related robocalls, making them the most common pandemic scam.

Even those who haven't been personally scammed by a robocaller have experienced stress because of them, Provision found; 70 percent of millennials are concerned a parent or grandparent will be preyed upon by the automated scammers, who frequently impersonate government authorities like the Social Security Administration or the Internal Revenue Service in order to con their targets out of bank account information or other personal data. In fact, nearly two in five robocalls (39 percent) claim to be the SSA, with 38 percent impersonating the IRS and 33 percent pretending to be debt collectors.

The Covid-19 scams are apparently quite effective, robbing Americans of over $13.4 million of their hard-earned cash in the first three months of 2020 alone, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That number doesn't include scams that haven't been discovered by their victims, or those that go unreported to the FTC – meaning the real figure is likely much higher.

[May 20, 2020] Beware of fake contact tracers, N.J. officials warn

May 20, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

Beware of fake contact tracers, N.J. officials warn.

New Jersey officials warned residents on Wednesday to be wary of fraudsters identifying themselves as contact tracers in order to obtain financial information.

In recent weeks, as health departments have hired legitimate tracers to track the spread of the coronavirus, fake tracers have been sending people text messages looking for insurance information and bank account and social security numbers, said Judith Persichilli, the state health commissioner.

Real contact tracers do not ask for such things, the state said.

A legitimate tracer will call, identify themselves as part of a local health department, and explain to the person on the phone that they may have come into contact with someone who tested positive for the virus.

Scams around the virus, unemployment benefits and stimulus checks have proliferated nationwide , the authorities say.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy said "there is a special place in hell" for people who would scam others during the pandemic.

Mr. Murphy also reported the state's daily virus fatalities: 168, bringing the overall death toll to 10,747.

[May 20, 2020] Breakthrough South Korean Study Finds Recovered COVID Patients Who Test Positive Aren't Infectious

May 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
In what appears to be yet another strike against public officials like LA County's Barbara Ferrer - that is, Democrats and others who insist that lockdowns should continue perhaps until a vaccine has been discovered and that police should punish anyone who dares violate these orders - a study from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that patients who test positive for COVID-19 after recovering from the illness appear to be shedding dead copies of the virus. That would suggest that these patients are not infectious, the scientists said, which helped dispel fears that some patients can remain infectious for months after being infected. While the study doesn't answer every question about the virus's longevity - such as patients who almost appear to have developed a "chronic" form of the illness because their symptoms have persisted for so long.

But still, the finding was greeted as a major relief, and, if anything, should encourage economies to reopen more quickly, as a potential trigger for reinfection that had panicked some experts appears to be a non-issue.

The research also undermines the reliability of 'antibody' tests like the ones NY Gov Andrew Cuomo insisted would be 'critical' for NY's reopening.

The results mean health authorities in South Korea will no longer consider people infectious after recovering from the illness. Research last month showed that so-called PCR tests for the coronavirus's nucleic acid can't distinguish between dead and viable virus particles, potentially giving the wrong impression that someone who tests positive for the virus remains infectious.

The research may also aid in the debate over antibody tests, which look for markers in the blood that indicate exposure to the novel coronavirus. Experts believe antibodies probably convey some level of protection against the virus, but they don't have any solid proof yet. Nor do they know how long any immunity may last.

A recent study in Singapore showed that recovered patients from severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, are found to have "significant levels of neutralizing antibodies" nine to 17 years after initial infection, according to researchers including Danielle E. Anderson of Duke-NUS Medical School.

Other scientists have found higher levels of IgM, an antibody that appears in response to exposure to an antigen, in children, according to an article published on medRxiv. That suggests younger populations have the potential to produce a more potent defense against Covid-19. The study has not been certified by peer review.

Bloomberg offers a succinct review of some of the research into the infectious qualities of the virus, and the efficacy of antibodies in keeping patients safe from reinfection. As BBG shows, studies of SARS, which is related to the virus that causes COVID-19, suggest that antibodies keep patients safe for years, undermining warnings about a possible second wave, or worries that the virus might become endemic, which were recently raised by the WHO.

The research may also aid in the debate over antibody tests, which look for markers in the blood that indicate exposure to the novel coronavirus. Experts believe antibodies probably convey some level of protection against the virus, but they don't have any solid proof yet.

Nor do they know how long any immunity may last.

A recent study in Singapore showed that recovered patients from severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, are found to have "significant levels of neutralizing antibodies" nine to 17 years after initial infection, according to researchers including Danielle E. Anderson of Duke-NUS Medical School.

Other scientists have found higher levels of IgM, an antibody that appears in response to exposure to an antigen, in children, according to an article published on medRxiv. That suggests younger populations have the potential to produce a more potent defense against Covid-19. The study has not been certified by peer review.

The study's findings are apparently convincing enough for South Korean health authorities to no longer require patients to be re-tested after they've recovered from COVID-19 and all symptoms have subsided.

As a result of the findings in the South Korea study, authorities said that under revised protocols, people should no longer be required to test negative for the virus before returning to work or school after they have recovered from their illness and completed their period of isolation.

"Under the new protocols, no additional tests are required for cases that have been discharged from isolation," the Korean CDC said in a report. The agency said it will now refer to "re-positive" cases as "PCR re-detected after discharge from isolation."

Some coronavirus patients have tested positive again for the virus up to 82 days after becoming infected. Almost all of the cases for which blood tests were taken had antibodies against the virus.

If nothing else, this study is just the latest reminder of how much we don't know about the virus.

[May 20, 2020] Here's a source of excellent n95 masks. They are 3m 8210 PLUS

May 20, 2020 | www.unz.com

Alden , says: Show Comment May 10, 2020 at 2:53 pm GMT

@Al t from wood like cherry and walnut Unlike the medical masks with the 3 flapping edges, dust doesn't come in through the seal.

The medical masks are 6 inch long rectangles that are open at the bottom and 2 sides. According to the 2 Drs I saw , they're useless for preventing germs and viruses coming in.

The 3m 8210 PLUS n95 masks work to keep the finest softest dust out if you think you need a mask. And you can use them for days if you're not sanding and using dangerous materials.

The only reason I looked at was after I used a really strong toxic paint stripper all day long. The stripper was orange. I saw that the outside of the mask was orange from the fumes. But the inside was still white, no orange. So that mask prevented the fumes going through to my nose and mouth.

[May 20, 2020] Men's Blood Contains High Levels of Enzyme That Helps COVID-19 Infect Cells Study

May 20, 2020 | www.unz.com

vot tak , says: Show Comment May 12, 2020 at 12:22 am GMT

Men's Blood Contains High Levels of Enzyme That Helps COVID-19 Infect Cells – Study

https://sputniknews.com/science/202005111079275898-mens-blood-contains-high-levels-of-enzyme-that-helps-covid-19-infect-cells -- study/

"A new study published in the European Heart Journal on Monday has provided scientific evidence that men have higher concentrations of ACE2 in their blood than women. ACE2, which is found in organs such as the heart, kidney, intestines and others, is the receptor required for cellular entry of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

While the ACE2 receptor is normally helpful to the human body, as it stabilizes one's blood pressure and regulates blood vessel dilation, it is also the target of SARS-CoV-2's spike protein. Once the spike protein has attached itself to the receptor, the novel coronavirus is able to invade the human cell and infect an individual.

"When we found that one of the strongest biomarkers, ACE2, was much higher in men than in women, I realised that this had the potential to explain why men were more likely to die from COVID-19 than women," said Iziah Sama, a doctor at University Medical Center (UMC) Groningen who co-led the study.

Findings from the recent study further advanced scientists' presumption that the ACE2 is a key component to how COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, creeps to the lungs.

"ACE2 is a receptor on the surface of cells. It binds to the coronavirus and allows it to enter and infect healthy cells after it has been modified by another protein on the surface of the cell, called TMPRSS2," explained Dr. Adriaan Voors, a professor of cardiology at UMC Groningen who led the study. "High levels of ACE2 are present in the lungs and, therefore, it is thought to play a crucial role in the progression of lung disorders related to COVID-19."

The study, which relied on blood samples from several thousand participants, also found that heart failure patients prescribed drugs that target the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, like angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), did not have higher concentrations of ACE2 in their blood.

"ACE inhibitors and ARBs are widely prescribed to patients with congestive heart failure, diabetes or kidney disease," Reuters noted.

"Our findings do not support the discontinuation of these drugs in COVID-19 patients as has been suggested by earlier reports," explained Voors."

[May 20, 2020] If 20% recovered enough for herd immunity?

May 20, 2020 | www.unz.com

Alfred , says: Show Comment May 9, 2020 at 3:29 pm GMT

@KA From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States due to the H1N1pdm09 virus

This is interesting.

The population of the USA in 2010 was 308 million. The number of infected was 60.8 million. That suggests that herd immunity was reached when 19.7% of the population was infected.

That magical number of 20% has been repeated by me in a number of comments here. I don't claim to have originated it.

[May 20, 2020] There are several papers on pubmed suggesting the use of doxycycline to treat COVID-19

May 20, 2020 | www.unz.com

Harold Smith , says: Show Comment May 6, 2020 at 9:15 pm GMT

@Anon Speaking of antibiotics, there are several papers on pubmed suggesting the use of doxycycline to treat COVID-19 (and the ARB drug telmisartan is apparently another off-the-shelf treatment possibility).

In silico modeling shows that doxycycline might inhibit SARS-CoV-2 PLpro and 3CLpro; plus it has an anti-inflammatory effect. Doxy is highly bioavailable and crosses the blood brain barrier.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7102550/

Apparently some clinical trials with doxycycline for COVID-19 are in the works.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04371952

[May 19, 2020] Does COVID-19 attack hemoglobin cells?

May 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , May 18 2020 22:57 utc | 85

What if the virus causing COVID-19 is first doing great injury to hemoglobin which then allows bacteriological infections to do their work? People are showing hypoxia, not all, just what become the worst cases. Those factors are part of an hypothesis developed by Dr. Zach Bush, a physician specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology and hospice care, that gets presented during this 1 hour 20 minute interview that covers more than just the COVID-19 issue. When finished, you'll have a completely different appreciation for the term Environmental Science.

[May 19, 2020] A team of doctors in Bangladesh claims success in treating patients with COVID-19 using doxycycline and ivermectin:

May 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , May 19 2020 2:59 utc | 104

A team of doctors in Bangladesh claims success in treating patients with COVID-19 using doxycycline and ivermectin:

Kamal Kant Kohli, "Doxycycline And Ivermectin Combo May Be New Effective Covid 19 Treatment"

Doxycycline is an anti-malarial drug that was patented in 1957, became commercial in 1967 and is now a generic drug. Ivermectin , used to treat parasitic infestations, is available in the US as a generic prescription drug. Both drugs do have side effects. It will be interesting to see if either drug gets much attention in the global press beyond the medical literature if the Bangladeshi doctors continue to have success in treating their patients.

Jim , May 19 2020 3:28 utc | 106

https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_medicine/Marik-Covid-Protocol-Summary.pdf

Eastern Virginia Medical school covid treament protocol
Pretty recent update (may 14th)

[May 16, 2020] FDA Halts Bill Gates-Backed COVID-19 Testing Program

Notable quotes:
"... SCAN is backed by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the University of Washington Medicine. The testing program was sending free test kits to participants' homes in the Seattle Metropolitan Area, with the goal of testing people in the region to get a sense of how the virus was spreading through the community. ..."
May 16, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

About a month after Bill Gates criticized President Trump's decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), the federal government has just halted a Seattle-based COVID-19 testing program backed by Gates.

What are the odds, right?

"Please discontinue patient testing and return of diagnostic results to patients until proper authorization is obtained," the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) wrote in a memo, addressed to the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), according to The New York Times .

SCAN posted an update on its website on Thursday (May 14) describing how the FDA had asked it to "pause" testing while it receives further guidance on new procedures for its COVID-19 test kits that collect samples at home.

The FDA "recently clarified its guidance for home-based, self-collected samples to test for COVID-19. We have been notified that a separate federal emergency use authorization (EUA) is required to return results for self-collected tests," the post read.

"The FDA has not raised any concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of SCAN's test, but we have been asked to pause testing until we receive that additional authorization."

An FDA spokesperson told The Times, the home collection test kits raised some concerns about "safety and accuracy that required the agency's review."

The issue in the Seattle case appears to be that the test results are being used not only by researchers for surveillance of the virus in the community but that the results are also being returned to patients to inform them.

The two kinds of testing — surveillance and diagnostic — fall under different F.D.A. standards. In a pure surveillance study, the researchers may keep the results just for themselves. But coronavirus testing has largely revolved around getting results returned to doctors who can share the results with patients.

"We had previously understood that SCAN was being conducted as a surveillance study," the spokesperson said.

SCAN is backed by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the University of Washington Medicine. The testing program was sending free test kits to participants' homes in the Seattle Metropolitan Area, with the goal of testing people in the region to get a sense of how the virus was spreading through the community.

[May 16, 2020] Side effect of untested vassine can be crippling

May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

juliania , May 16 2020 13:41 utc | 88

As there have been some comments relating to the development of a vaccine against the virus, I made a search this morning relating to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation's record in funding such developments. I tried to stay away from the articles that seemed to be inflammatory but did find this article dated today at indianexpress.com: "Can't penalise US NGO for violating drug trial norms" related to a previous drug trial involvement of the foundation. Here are the opening paragraphs:
The NDA government Friday told the Supreme Court that no specific penalties could be imposed on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) for violating norms in conducting the vaccination trials on tribal girls in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

Pointing out that the current legal regime had no provision of penalties, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has expressed its inability to proceed against the NGO PATH despite a parliamentary panel recommending strict actions.

The article would seem to advise caution in urging such trials on the part of the US government with respect to a vaccine for the covid virus, as they also have taken place in other countries, with unforseen complications for some of the participants. It is often the case that strong medicinal remedies are available to poor people on a trial basis. These days I'm remembering the John Le Carre novel, "The Constant Gardener". If my library were open I'd be rereading it.

The old saying 'haste makes waste' needs to be kept in mind.

Trailer Trash , May 16 2020 14:25 utc | 96

> I made a search this morning relating to the Bill and Melinda Gates
>Posted by: juliania | May 16 2020 13:41 utc | 88

Thank you for this. I've been wondering about the noise swirling around Gates and vaccine shenanigans and how much of it is true. I would not be surprised to learn that he really did harm many people with his PATH project.

It's well understood in the computer industry that Gates was an abusive bully to his employees while wrecking every company he crossed paths with, whether they were the competition or a partner. No reason to think it would be different with his new projects.

I'll take my chances with the evil virus before I'll take a dose of a Gates' vaccine.

[May 16, 2020] Any drugs out of patent will be discredited by big pharma lobbyists. It seems a number of drugs do have an impact on the covid-19 set of symptoms.

May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , May 16 2020 11:18 utc | 73

Any drugs out of patent will be discredited by big pharma lobbyists. It seems a number of drugs do have an impact on the covid-19 set of symptoms.

At one point in time, I was diagnosed with 'chronic fatigue syndrome'. It is a bullshit diagnosis, basically the scrap heap for undiagnosed disease. I looked up research on the subject at the the time. There was a couple of interesting contrasts.

One research project simply took in a mob that had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, and of course found nothing in various trials.

Another project took in a cohort with exactly the same symptoms, and found that a pathogen was indeed causing their problems.

A number of drugs on anecdotal evidence (and perhaps the observations of Chinese doctors unencombered by lobbyists are anecdotal) do help certain patients.
Each drug may not be a cure all for all people with COVID-19, but it seems these do help various patients depending on their symptoms and the way the virus is attacking them.

With that in mind, I would be keeping an eye on China rather than US big pharma.
Big pharma may well come up with a you beaut cure all, but in the mean time I would be looking at doctors unencombered by big pharma for something that will help.


BM , May 16 2020 13:59 utc | 91

WaPo: Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus 'game changer' increasingly linked to deaths
Posted by: b | May 16 2020 9:39 utc | 61

b,
do you have any conception of the lobbying methods used by Big Pharma?
Do you have any conception of the financial clout they have available for protecting their interests?
Do you have any conceptions of the influence they have, of the revolving doors between Big Pharma, pharmaceutical regulatory bodies, medical schools and every single level of the medical industry?
Do you have any conception of the way pharmaceutical registration works, and of the corrupt and fraudulent practices used to obtain authorisation for drugs?

It is one gigantic spaghetti pot of corruption and deception. Boeing/FAA is miniscule and almost angelic by comparison (and far less deadly also).


Coincidentally I have direct first-hand experience of both sides of the activities of Big Pharma concerning one specific highly effective cancer drug that the world's biggest Pharma corporations have tried for the last 40 years to eradicate (finally almost successful by 2014, unfortunately). I have direct first-hand experience of the highest praise they share amongst their own top elites of the efficacy of that competitor's medicine against all known types of cancer. I also have close 2nd hand inside knowledge of their efforts to purchase the patents for that same medicine for vast sums of money. I also personally know the proprietor and developer of that same medicine, and have witnessed and experienced first hand some of the fraudulent and criminal methods Big Pharma have used non-stop for 40 years to try to force my friend out of business, together with the lies and deception they have used publicly falsely alleging its "danger" and "inefficacy", together even with using police to illegally force parents to stop using it for their seriously ill children who had already dramatically benefited from its use, and forcing doctors to stop using it for treatment. I also have extensive 2nd hand knowledge of their activities to that effect, and have good reason to believe they are true. I have also used that medicine myself, to great effect, and closely know a medical practice which has used it with considerable medical success, and of the coercion they also experienced not to use it.

The way the Western medical establishment has handled the question of the use of chloroquine and closely related drugs for Covid-19 is in every single respect and at every level 100% typical of Big Pharma disinformation projects .

The very fact that the US medical establishment approved use of hydroxychloroquine under specific conditions that ensure it is used exclusively at a very late stage after the virus has ceased to replicate guarantees that all or almost all major Western hydroxychloroquine trials will be negative - because it is a specific and known requirement of hydroxychloroquine therapy that the therapy is conducted early whilst the virus is stil replicating - later it is known to be useless. The approval of its use under such conditions is the specific result of Big Pharma influence . That is how they operate all the time.

Big Pharma is no more honest about either the safety or the efficacity of its products than are the White Helmets about their activities in Syria. Many of the most dangerous drugs sold by the biggest companies are approved on the basis of very small, improperly balanced trials, sometimes fraudulently conducted. Trials which give the wrong result are routinely hidden. Research on toxicity and dangerous side-effects are routinely inadequate, frequently fraudulent or knowingly misleading, and legal requirements for drug authorisations are frequently waived on the basis of influence campaigns. This is especially so for new chemotherapy drugs, which are intrinsically highly toxic and are normally used at very close to the fatal dose. There is no level playing field at all, quite the contrary.

Big Pharma do not profit from cures - they profit from selling very expensive drugs, and they are far more ruthless than the White Helmets in destroying any potential threat to their profits. There is no more effective threat to the World-View of Big Pharma - as I know from first hand experience - than effective cures, especially where they are cheap and unpatentable, or the patents are owned outside the cabal. Any such cure must be destroyed at all costs.

Several of the Big Pharma companies in recent years have been given multi-billion dollar fines for the fraud and subversion they have utilised in obtaining authorisation for drugs which are dangerous to the patient, and for their marketing of drugs known to be dangerous.

The patent for chloroquine and its derivatives has expired. It has been widely used for many years, its hazards and limitations are thoroughly documented, and it is in this respect - under proper supervision with respect to its known hazards and limitations and qualified by them - incomparably safer than any new and barely tested pharmaceutical drug or vaccine such as Remdesivir. It is cheaply produced around the world. Therefore, no full-scale well-controlled randomised clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine treatment for Covid-19 will ever be conducted in a major Western country. Big Pharma will ensure that.

BM , May 16 2020 16:24 utc | 112
One does have to wonder whether it is simply a matter that the difficulty in the US concerning early diagnosis is the real problem that makes use of the drug impractical here. Perhaps we just don't have the resources, teams of testers and physicians and nurses, for the accuracy and careful monitoring of patients in early stage infection required when using this drug.
Posted by: juliania | May 16 2020 15:17 utc | 103

I'm afraid it's not anything to do with early diagnosis, it is only about profit. As Blue Dotterel said, it is about profit, not curing patients. For Big Pharma the very last thing they want is for the patient to be cured - a dead patient is far more profitable. No wonder Gilead holds the more promising GS-441524 off the market, because they can make more profit from a more expensive useless drug that will be in patent for far longer.

Big Pharma expects to make many trillions of dollars profit per year on Covid-19, as they do on cancer. The more Covid cases, the more profits. The less effective the efforts to reduce infections, the more profits. The less availability of PPE, the more profits. The more chaotic and irrational the government policies, the more profit. Big Pharma profits at every step.

They will stop at nothing to block proper trials of hydroxychloroquine - including bribery, coercion, and sabotage, not just massive disinformation. They will spend billions just to block
proper trials, using myriad different methods of subterfuge and subversion. That is just small change compared to the profits they want and expect.

The entire philosophy of Western medicine is a dying patient - it is corrupt, it is dishonest, its entire foundations are fraudulent. There is an urgent need for a whole new paradigm for medicine that is based on maximising the health of society, not on maximising profit.

There is a story I heard on television several decades ago - I think it was true, but I am not certain - about an old Chinese tradition. Villagers would pay a regular monthly fee to the doctor, as long as they stay healthy. As soon as they fall sick they stop paying, and the doctor has to cure them (without charge). Only when they get better will they resume the normal regular payments. Think about it, what is the best interest of the doctor towards his patient? He has an investment in their good health. Now compare the Western system. What interest does the doctor have in the patient's health? If the patient is sick for 4 times as long and then dies, is the doctor richer or poorer? If the doctor gives drugs with side effects, which need more drugs against the side effects, will he be richer or poorer? If there are two drugs available, one cheap, one expensive, which one does the doctor prefer?

Think about it Juliana, the last time you went to a hospital, how much did it cost? How many useless medicines did the doctor give you, versus how many basic essential medicines?

Western medicine is a big scam. It is a business. The second biggest business in the world after war.

That is why I reject Western medicine. For 20 years I have used only non-Western medicine.

[May 16, 2020] WaPo: for a certain type of patients hydroxychloroquine promoted by Trump as coronavirus 'game changer' increasingly linked to deaths

May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

b , May 16 2020 9:39 utc | 61

@fairleft

You want to continue to promote Trump's wonder medicine? Than leave this place and go elsewhere.

You are obviously not well informed about the issue anyway.

WaPo: Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus 'game changer' increasingly linked to deaths

Clinical trials, academic research and scientific analysis indicate that the danger of the Trump-backed drug is a significantly increased risk of death for certain patients. Evidence showing the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating covid-19 has been scant. Those two developments pushed the Food and Drug Administration to warn against the use of hydroxychloroquine outside of a hospital setting last month, just weeks after it approved an emergency use authorization for the drug.

Alarmed by a growing cache of data linking the anti-malaria drug to serious cardiac problems, some drug safety experts are now calling for even more forceful action by the government to discourage its use. Several have called for the FDA to revoke its emergency use authorization, given hydroxychloroquine's documented risks.

"They should say, 'We know there are harms, and until we know the benefits, let's hold off,' " said Joseph Ross, a professor of medicine and public health at Yale University, who added that the original authorization may have been warranted but new evidence has emerged about the drug's risks.

"I'm surprised it hasn't been revoked yet," said Luciana Borio, who served as director for medical and biodefense preparedness of the National Security Council and was acting chief scientist at the FDA.
...
Yogen Kanthi, assistant professor in the division of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Michigan, said that it has been clear that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin -- used to treat bacterial infections -- could lead to cardiac arrhythmias, which cause the heart to beat irregularly or too fast or slow. Many patients hospitalized for covid-19 had underlying cardiovascular disease that put them at higher risk for arrhythmias, "so it shouldn't be surprising we saw an increase in death," he said.
AD

"The question has been answered that if you have the infection and it's significant enough to be in the hospital, the drug doesn't seem to do anything for you," he said. "It may be the horse is out of the barn."

Many hospitals have stopped using the drug outside of clinical trials.

"We no longer are keeping large quantities and have returned most of it," said Nishaminy Kasbekar, director of pharmacy for the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia. "I think they should revoke the EUA because clearly based on the data it is no longer considered a treatment for covid."
...
A study of Veterans Affairs patients hospitalized with the coronavirus found no benefit and higher death rates among those taking hydroxychloroquine, researchers said last month.

More than 27 percent of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine died, and 22 percent of those treated with the combination therapy died, compared with an 11.4 percent death rate in those not treated with the drugs, the study said.


fairleft , May 16 2020 13:13 utc | 82

Posted by: b | May 16 2020 9:39 utc | 61

This is what I thought, you've been damaged by Trump Derangent Syndrome (TDS), so you insult with a childish phrase like "Trump's wonder medicine." You actually erased a medical doctor's respectful and evidence-laden disagreement with your 'line'. In any case, I'm not participating in the childish Trump/antiTrump, pro-hydroxychloroquine/anti-hydroxychloroquine, pro-lockdown/anti-lockdown discourse. The evidence is split on all of these issues. You cite your evidence, those who disagree with you cite theirs. Believe it or not, neither side in the disagreement are demons.

I don't have a strong opinion on Hydroxychloroquine, but it's just that it had been widely and uncontroversially used in China from early on in the fight against Covid-19. Then, after Trump mentioned it positively, it became controversial. A classic TDS timeline doesn't mean anything factually, but it naturally raises a rational person's skepticism about the extremely negative claims suddenly appearing in places like the Washington Post and other classic TDS places. I'm not expert enough to weigh the evidence, and neither are you, b, but even a brief internet search shows China-produced scientific studies of Hydroxychloroquine showing positive results:

Efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19: results of a randomized clinical trial
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v3

"But for TTCR, the body temperature recovery time and the cough remission time were significantly shortened in the HCQ treatment group. Besides, a larger proportion of patients with improved pneumonia in the HCQ treatment group (80.6%, 25 of 31) compared with the control group (54.8%, 17 of 31)."

Chinese study finds hydroxychloroquine useful in controlling Covid mortality

"The mortality rate in the HCQ group stood at 18.8 percent against 43.5 percent in the non-HCQ group, the study noted.

"'Hydroxychloroquine treatment is significantly associated with a decreased mortality in critically-ill Covid-19 patients,' the researchers wrote. ...

"The Chinese researchers, however, also suggest that despite their findings, the randomized double-blind-control study was needed to provide stronger evidence."

So there is evidence on both sides, as contributors more expert than you or me have told you repeatedly. Non-experts don't know who's right, or if this disagreement will reach some nuanced "you're both partly right" conclusion. I will humbly continue to be open to both sides of the argument. Get well soon from TDS, b.

BM , May 16 2020 13:59 utc | 91
WaPo: Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus 'game changer' increasingly linked to deaths
Posted by: b | May 16 2020 9:39 utc | 61

b,
do you have any conception of the lobbying methods used by Big Pharma?
Do you have any conception of the financial clout they have available for protecting their interests?
Do you have any conceptions of the influence they have, of the revolving doors between Big Pharma, pharmaceutical regulatory bodies, medical schools and every single level of the medical industry?
Do you have any conception of the way pharmaceutical registration works, and of the corrupt and fraudulent practices used to obtain authorisation for drugs?

It is one gigantic spaghetti pot of corruption and deception. Boeing/FAA is miniscule and almost angelic by comparison (and far less deadly also).


Coincidentally I have direct first-hand experience of both sides of the activities of Big Pharma concerning one specific highly effective cancer drug that the world's biggest Pharma corporations have tried for the last 40 years to eradicate (finally almost successful by 2014, unfortunately). I have direct first-hand experience of the highest praise they share amongst their own top elites of the efficacy of that competitor's medicine against all known types of cancer. I also have close 2nd hand inside knowledge of their efforts to purchase the patents for that same medicine for vast sums of money. I also personally know the proprietor and developer of that same medicine, and have witnessed and experienced first hand some of the fraudulent and criminal methods Big Pharma have used non-stop for 40 years to try to force my friend out of business, together with the lies and deception they have used publicly falsely alleging its "danger" and "inefficacy", together even with using police to illegally force parents to stop using it for their seriously ill children who had already dramatically benefited from its use, and forcing doctors to stop using it for treatment. I also have extensive 2nd hand knowledge of their activities to that effect, and have good reason to believe they are true. I have also used that medicine myself, to great effect, and closely know a medical practice which has used it with considerable medical success, and of the coercion they also experienced not to use it.

The way the Western medical establishment has handled the question of the use of chloroquine and closely related drugs for Covid-19 is in every single respect and at every level 100% typical of Big Pharma disinformation projects .

The very fact that the US medical establishment approved use of hydroxychloroquine under specific conditions that ensure it is used exclusively at a very late stage after the virus has ceased to replicate guarantees that all or almost all major Western hydroxychloroquine trials will be negative - because it is a specific and known requirement of hydroxychloroquine therapy that the therapy is conducted early whilst the virus is stil replicating - later it is known to be useless. The approval of its use under such conditions is the specific result of Big Pharma influence . That is how they operate all the time.

Big Pharma is no more honest about either the safety or the efficacity of its products than are the White Helmets about their activities in Syria. Many of the most dangerous drugs sold by the biggest companies are approved on the basis of very small, improperly balanced trials, sometimes fraudulently conducted. Trials which give the wrong result are routinely hidden. Research on toxicity and dangerous side-effects are routinely inadequate, frequently fraudulent or knowingly misleading, and legal requirements for drug authorisations are frequently waived on the basis of influence campaigns. This is especially so for new chemotherapy drugs, which are intrinsically highly toxic and are normally used at very close to the fatal dose. There is no level playing field at all, quite the contrary.

Big Pharma do not profit from cures - they profit from selling very expensive drugs, and they are far more ruthless than the White Helmets in destroying any potential threat to their profits. There is no more effective threat to the World-View of Big Pharma - as I know from first hand experience - than effective cures, especially where they are cheap and unpatentable, or the patents are owned outside the cabal. Any such cure must be destroyed at all costs.

Several of the Big Pharma companies in recent years have been given multi-billion dollar fines for the fraud and subversion they have utilised in obtaining authorisation for drugs which are dangerous to the patient, and for their marketing of drugs known to be dangerous.

The patent for chloroquine and its derivatives has expired. It has been widely used for many years, its hazards and limitations are thoroughly documented, and it is in this respect - under proper supervision with respect to its known hazards and limitations and qualified by them - incomparably safer than any new and barely tested pharmaceutical drug or vaccine such as Remdesivir. It is cheaply produced around the world. Therefore, no full-scale well-controlled randomised clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine treatment for Covid-19 will ever be conducted in a major Western country. Big Pharma will ensure that.

Blue Dotterel , May 16 2020 14:17 utc | 94
Turkey uses Chloroquine as well
"Koca explained that unlike the other countries, in Turkey doctors do not advise people with symptoms such as fever, store throat and coughing to take antipyretics and stay at home, but invite them to hospital and immediately start treatment by administering chloroquine to the people in suspicious cases without waiting for the results from the test results.

Another difference between the methods Turkey and other countries use is that in addition to chloroquine, an antibiotic, called azithromycin, is used in the early stages of the treatment, Koca noted."
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-model-proves-effective-in-covid-19-treatment-154220

So one has to wonder

Blue Dotterel , May 16 2020 14:17 utc | 94
Turkey uses Chloroquine as well
"Koca explained that unlike the other countries, in Turkey doctors do not advise people with symptoms such as fever, store throat and coughing to take antipyretics and stay at home, but invite them to hospital and immediately start treatment by administering chloroquine to the people in suspicious cases without waiting for the results from the test results.

Another difference between the methods Turkey and other countries use is that in addition to chloroquine, an antibiotic, called azithromycin, is used in the early stages of the treatment, Koca noted."
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-model-proves-effective-in-covid-19-treatment-154220

So one has to wonder

Hoarsewhisperer , May 16 2020 14:46 utc | 98
...
The very fact that the US medical establishment approved use of hydroxychloroquine under specific conditions that ensure it is used exclusively at a very late stage after the virus has ceased to replicate guarantees that all or almost all major Western hydroxychloroquine trials will be negative-
...
Posted by: BM | May 16 2020 13:59 utc | 91

I'm calling bullshit on that claim.
Whoever made it is an ignoramus with no knowledge, or understanding, of what Clinical Trials involve, how many variables have to be tested, nor why it takes so long for such trials to reach a 'safe' set of recommendations. If ever...

Trailer Trash , May 16 2020 15:36 utc | 105
>I'm calling bullshit on that claim.

Unfortunately the poster doesn't state what is wrong with the claim. Assertions that another poster is ignorant are not relevant. Neither are appeals to authority.

BM , May 16 2020 16:24 utc | 112
One does have to wonder whether it is simply a matter that the difficulty in the US concerning early diagnosis is the real problem that makes use of the drug impractical here. Perhaps we just don't have the resources, teams of testers and physicians and nurses, for the accuracy and careful monitoring of patients in early stage infection required when using this drug.
Posted by: juliania | May 16 2020 15:17 utc | 103

I'm afraid it's not anything to do with early diagnosis, it is only about profit. As Blue Dotterel said, it is about profit, not curing patients. For Big Pharma the very last thing they want is for the patient to be cured - a dead patient is far more profitable. No wonder Gilead holds the more promising GS-441524 off the market, because they can make more profit from a more expensive useless drug that will be in patent for far longer.

Big Pharma expects to make many trillions of dollars profit per year on Covid-19, as they do on cancer. The more Covid cases, the more profits. The less effective the efforts to reduce infections, the more profits. The less availability of PPE, the more profits. The more chaotic and irrational the government policies, the more profit. Big Pharma profits at every step.

They will stop at nothing to block proper trials of hydroxychloroquine - including bribery, coercion, and sabotage, not just massive disinformation. They will spend billions just to block
proper trials, using myriad different methods of subterfuge and subversion. That is just small change compared to the profits they want and expect.

The entire philosophy of Western medicine is a dying patient - it is corrupt, it is dishonest, its entire foundations are fraudulent. There is an urgent need for a whole new paradigm for medicine that is based on maximising the health of society, not on maximising profit.

There is a story I heard on television several decades ago - I think it was true, but I am not certain - about an old Chinese tradition. Villagers would pay a regular monthly fee to the doctor, as long as they stay healthy. As soon as they fall sick they stop paying, and the doctor has to cure them (without charge). Only when they get better will they resume the normal regular payments. Think about it, what is the best interest of the doctor towards his patient? He has an investment in their good health. Now compare the Western system. What interest does the doctor have in the patient's health? If the patient is sick for 4 times as long and then dies, is the doctor richer or poorer? If the doctor gives drugs with side effects, which need more drugs against the side effects, will he be richer or poorer? If there are two drugs available, one cheap, one expensive, which one does the doctor prefer?

Think about it Juliana, the last time you went to a hospital, how much did it cost? How many useless medicines did the doctor give you, versus how many basic essential medicines?

Western medicine is a big scam. It is a business. The second biggest business in the world after war.

That is why I reject Western medicine. For 20 years I have used only non-Western medicine.

[May 16, 2020] Remdesivir is a drug looking for a disease

May 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

abierno , May 15 2020 19:34 utc | 10

Deep thanks for the comment on Remdesivir. I've seen this appraisal in the medical community but not in any public commentary. It was developed to address Ebola and failed miserably. Tagged "a drug looking for a disease."

[May 15, 2020] The games cats play: a cat which went out of the house and met a cat already infected with Covid-19 comes back home and infects its own human servant

May 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

oldhippie , May 15 2020 22:32 utc | 27

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)has a correspondence about cats:

Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Domestic Cats

Cats can get infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and do replicate it strongly in their respiratory system. But the cats do not get sick and show no symptoms. During the study three infected cats were each put into the same cage as a not-infected cat. They transmitted the disease to the previously non-infected ones. The researchers tested if the viruses the cats produce are still able to grow on human tissues. Unfortunately they are.

This means that a cat which went out of the house and met a cat who's owner has Covid-19 might come back home and infect its own human servant. Household cats may also play a role in the infection chain between household members. Any cat owner who goes into lockdown or is quarantined at home must also quarantine the cat. So far COVID lives in cats, Siberian tigers, bats, pangolins, raccoon dogs, ferrets. Only commonality here is they are all mammals. There have been a couple reports that it lives in dogs as well. If conclusions can be drawn from this it would seem to be a simple and indiscriminate virus. And we must mask our dogs, mask our cats, make them wear diapers if they go outside.

[May 15, 2020] French researchers High temperatures ineffective against coronavirus TheHill

May 15, 2020 | thehill.com

The novel coronavirus can survive in high temperatures, researchers said, casting doubt on suggestions that the threat will subside in the summer.

Researchers from the University of Aix-Marseille in France, led by Remi Charrel and Boris Pastorino, found that the virus survived in 140-degree Fahrenheit temperatures typically used to disinfect research labs, The Jerusalem Post reported .

It took 15 minutes of exposure to 197.6-degree temperatures to kill the virus, the newspaper noted, adding that the study had yet to be peer-reviewed.

Researchers did say the lower temperature should be sufficient to deactivate the virus in samples with smaller loads but added that the higher temperature was necessary for larger loads and concluded that disinfecting chemicals were a better option.

Earlier research has reached similar conclusions.

A National Academies of Sciences (NAS) panel told the White House in early April that previous research suggesting a connection between temperature and the virus's transmissibility was flawed. "There is some evidence to suggest that [the coronavirus] may transmit less efficiently in environments with higher ambient temperature and humidity; however, given the lack of host immunity globally, this reduction in transmission efficiency may not lead to a significant reduction in disease spread" without efforts such as social distancing, the NAS report stated, noting that SARS and MERS are not seasonal.

[May 15, 2020] Uncovering Why the COVID-19 Virus Is So Infectious and Efficiently Evades Immune Responses

May 15, 2020 | scitechdaily.com

SARS-CoV-2 , the virus that causes COVID-19 , is highly infectious. Curiously, in many patients, it triggers poor immune responses, which prolongs illness. This helps the virus spread widely, exacerbating the global pandemic. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , researchers at the University of Minnesota identified the biochemical mechanism that may explain how the virus infects people efficiently while evading their immune responses.

This study, led by Fang Li, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, examined the mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 enters cells. Specifically, the team of scientists investigated how the virus "unlocks" human cells using a surface spike protein as the "key." They made three important findings:

"Typically when a virus develops mechanisms to evade immune responses, it loses its potency to infect people," said Li. "However, SARS-CoV-2 maintains its infectivity using two mechanisms. First, during its limited exposure time, the tip of the viral key grabs a receptor protein on human cells quickly and firmly. Second, the pre-activation of the viral key allows the virus to more effectively infect human cells."

Li says that recognizing the evasiveness of SARS-CoV-2 is important for designing antibody drugs and vaccines. Antibody drugs would need to overpower the tip of the hidden viral key by latching onto it very quickly and tightly during its limited exposure time. Alternatively, drugs can target other parts of the viral key that are more exposed.

Li recommends that successful antiviral strategies will need to consider both the potency of the virus and its evasiveness.

Reference: "Cell entry mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2" by Jian Shang, Yushun Wan, Chuming Luo, Gang Ye, Qibin Geng, Ashley Auerbach and Fang Li, 6 May 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2003138117

The study is coauthored by postdoctoral researchers Jian Shang, Yushun Wan, and Chuming Luo, graduate students Gang Ye and Qibin Geng, and junior scientist Ashley Auerbach. The National Institutes of Health funded the study.

[May 15, 2020] Dirty games of big pharma

Notable quotes:
"... I've seen this appraisal in the medical community but not in any public commentary. It was developed to address Ebola and failed miserably. Tagged "a drug looking for a disease." ..."
May 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Stonebird , May 15 2020 20:46 utc | 14

The remdesivir drug by the company Gilead gets hyped as a potential useful drug against the Covid-19 disease. This even after a serious study from China published in Lancet found it useless:

Remdesivir in adults with severe COVID-19: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial

The result:

In this study of adult patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19, remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.

A not completed Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT) by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases also found that remdesivir does not change the mortality of serious Covid-19 cases. But it found that the drug may lead to a faster recovery. That has led to run on the hard to produce drug and confusion about its distribution .

But the real scandal behind this is that Gilead has a second drug, GS-441524, that is more promising and much easier to produce. STAT published a strong call on Gilead to release it immediately:

Gilead should ditch remdesivir and focus on its simpler and safer ancestor

The authors have the suspicion that Gilead has an ignoble motive for holding back the better drug as its patent will run out sooner:

The attractive profile of GS-441524 from both manufacturing and clinical perspectives raises this question: Why hasn't Gilead opted to advance this compound to the clinic? We would be remiss for not mentioning patents, and thus profits. The first patent on GS-441524 was issued in 2009, while the first patent for remdesivir was issued in 2017.
...
Given GS-441524's optimal properties, we -- along with the millions of people awaiting an effective treatment for Covid-19 -- are left to wonder why Gilead isn't giving it the same attention it is giving remdesivir. The world can only hope it isn't for the sake of protecting its intellectual property.
Surely it is profit that Gilead is after? I have heard quoted that one dose of remdesivir is about $1'000 so a "full" cure (whatever that may be) is $30'000. The second drug is almost certainly much cheaper.

They may think about reducing the cost if they find it is being given to the cat.

abierno , May 15 2020 19:34 utc | 11

Deep thanks for the comment on Remdesivir. I've seen this appraisal in the medical community but not in any public commentary. It was developed to address Ebola and failed miserably. Tagged "a drug looking for a disease."

[May 14, 2020] Interesting *opinion* piece supporting HCQ over remdesivir.

May 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , May 13 2020 6:29 utc | 213

Interesting *opinion* piece supporting HCQ over remdesivir. I take no position on this argument - unlike many here - except that as I've said before, we need a *good* set of studies on both (and every other treatment, which includes the EVMS treatment I discuss above) and then a decent review study to interpret the results for us laymen. Perhaps that's another case of "good luck with that" any time before, say, five or ten years from now...

A Tale of Two Drugs: Money vs. Medical Wisdom
https://tinyurl.com/yadpyktu


Richard Steven Hack , May 13 2020 6:39 utc | 214

Ah, the same doctor referenced above as author of the "A Tale of Two Drugs" has another *opinion* article on the same topic - HCQ. Again, I have no idea whether her statements are factual, although presumably her quoting the CDC on HCQ is accurate, which in itself is interesting if true.

Doctors and Patients Are Pawns in a Dangerous Political Brinkmanship
https://tinyurl.com/ycpxcjry


On duration of use: "CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria. When hydroxychloroquine is used at higher doses for many years, a rare eye condition called retinopathy has occurred. People who take hydroxychloroquine for more than five years should get regular eye exams."

NOTE: CDC guidelines for use in malaria do not even mention the "fatal heart arrhythmia" hyped in the fear-mongering articles in the media. Rheumatology guidelines for HCQ in lupus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) do not require a baseline EKG to check heart rhythm, although doctors might order one before prescribing HCQ if needed for a patient with heart disease. SARS-CoV-2 itself, which can damage to the heart, may be responsible for some heart problems now blamed on HCQ.

Hausmeister , May 13 2020 13:35 utc | 223
@ b
Did you read what you linked here?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2012410?query=featured_home

„Conclusions

In this observational study involving patients with Covid-19 who had been admitted to the hospital, hydroxychloroquine administration was not associated with either a greatly lowered or an increased risk of the composite end point of intubation or death. Randomized, controlled trials of hydroxychloroquine in patients with Covid-19 are needed. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health.)"

According to what we learnt in the meantime the use of HCQ at a quite late stadium of this illness is as meaningless as most likely the use of Remdisivir (another kind of pure antiviral medicament) would have been. The only thing what one can learn from this study isthat HCQ apparently did not damage people. So your sentence „...to be as false as the promotion of the useless but potentially dangerous Hydroxychloroquine as a therapy for Covid-19." is just nonsense.

[May 14, 2020] UCSF Health Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Prevention COVID-19 Global Clinical Knowledge Base

May 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , May 13 2020 6:13 utc | 212

People might find this resource useful...

UCSF Health Hospital Epidemiology and Infection Prevention COVID-19 Global Clinical Knowledge Base
https://tinyurl.com/y9qu3qs6


The goal of this site is to compile a comprehensive but curated directory of publicly-available practice guidelines, clinical protocols, and other resources related to COVID-19. We hope this resource will encourage clinicians and medical organizations to share knowledge and compare practices with peers.

Submitted resources are reviewed by a team of medical professionals for accuracy and relevance. We do not specifically endorse any resource posted on this site.

[May 12, 2020] How coronavirus attacks the human body - The Washington Post

May 12, 2020 | www.washingtonpost.com

How coronavirus attacks the human body - The Washington Post It mostly spares the young. Until it doesn't: Last week, doctors warned of a rare inflammatory reaction with cardiac complications among children that may be connected to the virus. On Friday, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced 73 children had fallen severely ill in the state and a 5-year-old boy in New York City had become the first child to die of the syndrome. Two more children had succumbed as of Saturday.

That news has shaken many doctors, who felt they were finally grasping the full dimensions of the disease in adults. "We were all thinking this is a disease that kills old people, not kids," Reich said.

Mount Sinai has treated five children with the condition. Reich said each started with gastrointestinal symptoms, which turned into inflammatory complications that caused very low blood pressure and expanded their blood vessels. This led to heart failure in the case of the first child who died.

"The pattern of disease was different than anything else with covid," he said.

"We were all thinking this is a disease that kills old people, not kids," said David Reich, president of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

Of the millions, perhaps billions, of coronaviruses, six were previously known to infect humans.

Four cause colds that spread easily each winter, barely noticed. Another was responsible for the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed 774 people in 2003. Yet another sparked the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012, which kills 34 percent of the people who contract it. But few do.

SARS-CoV-2, the bad seed of the coronavirus family, is the seventh. It has managed to combine the infectiousness of its cold-causing cousins with some of the lethality of SARS and MERS. It can spread before people show symptoms of disease, making it difficult to control, especially without widespread and accurate testing. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure .

It has infected 4 million people around the globe, killing more than 280,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. In the United States, 1.3 million have been infected and more than 78,000 have died.

Had SARS or MERS spread as widely as this virus, Rasmussen said, they might have shown the same capacity to attack beyond the lungs. But they were snuffed out quickly, leaving only a small sample of disease and death.

Paramedics bring home a woman with covid-19 who underwent an emergency C-section because she was gravely ill. After extensive care, including time on a ventilator, she was released from a hospital in Stamford, Conn., and she has a healthy newborn. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Trying to define a pathogen in the midst of an ever-spreading epidemic is fraught with difficulties. Experts say it will be years until it is understood how the disease damages organs and how medications, genetics, diets, lifestyles and distancing impact its course.

"This is a virus that literally did not exist in humans six months ago," said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine. "We had to rapidly learn how this virus impacts the human body and identify ways to treat it literally in a time-scale of weeks. With many other diseases, we have had decades."

In the initial days of the outbreak, most efforts focused on the lungs. SARS-CoV-2 infects both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, eventually working its way deep into the lungs, filling tiny air sacs with cells and fluid that choke off the flow of oxygen.

But many scientists have come to believe that much of the disease's devastation comes from two intertwined causes.

The first is the harm the virus wreaks on blood vessels, leading to clots that can range from microscopic to sizable. Patients have suffered strokes and pulmonary emboli as clots break loose and travel to the brain and lungs. A study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showed this may be because the virus directly targets the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

The second is an exaggerated response from the body's own immune system, a storm of killer "cytokines" that attack the body's own cells along with the virus as it seeks to defend the body from an invader.

Research and therapies are focused on these phenomena. Blood thinners are being more widely used in some hospitals . A review of records for 2,733 patients, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicates they may help the most seriously ill.

"Things change in science all the time. Theories are made and thrown out. Hypotheses are tweaked. It doesn't mean we don't know what we are doing. It means we are learning," said Deepak Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Inflammation of those endothelial cells lining blood vessels may help explain why the virus harms so many parts of the body, said Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the Lancet study on how covid-19 attacks blood vessels.

Subtitle Settings Font Font Size Font Edge Font Color Background The novel coronavirus is a master of disguise: Here's how it works Skip

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That means defeating covid-19 will require more than antiviral therapy, he said.

"What this virus does is it starts as a viral infection and becomes a more global disturbance to the immune system and blood vessels -- and what kills is exactly that," Mehra said. "Our hypothesis is that covid-19 begins as a respiratory virus and kills as a cardiovascular virus."

The thinking of kidney specialists has evolved along similar lines. Initially, they attributed widespread and severe kidney disease to the damage caused by ventilators and certain medications given to intensive-care patients, said Daniel Batlle, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Then they noticed damage to the waste-filtering kidney cells of patients even before they needed intensive care. And studies out of Wuhan found the pathogen in the kidneys themselves, leading to speculation the virus is harming the organ.

"There was nothing unique at first," Batlle said. But the new information "shows this is beyond the regular bread-and-butter acute kidney injury that we normally see."

Like other coronaviruses, SARS-Cov-2 infiltrates the body by attaching to a receptor, ACE2, found on some cells. But the makeup of the spikes that protrude from this virus is somewhat different, allowing the virus to bind more tightly. As a result, fewer virus particles are required to infect the host. This also may help explain why this virus is so much more infectious than SARS, Rasmussen said.

Other factors can't be ruled out in transmission, she said, including the amount of virus people shed and how strictly they observe social distancing rules.

Once inside a cell, the virus replicates, causing chaos. ACE2 receptors, which help regulate blood pressure, are plentiful in the lungs, kidneys and intestines -- organs hit hard by the pathogen in many patients. That also may be why high blood pressure has emerged as one of the most common preexisting conditions in people who become severely ill with covid-19.

A colorized scan of a cell (shown in red) infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (shown in yellow), isolated from a patient sample. (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

The receptors differ from person to person, leading to speculation that genetics may explain some of the variability in symptoms and how sick some people become.

Those cells "are almost everywhere, so it makes sense that the virus would cause damage throughout the body," said Mitchell Elkind, a professor of neurology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and president-elect of the American Heart Association.

Inflammation spurs clotting as white blood cells fight off infection. They interact with platelets and activate them in a way that increases the likelihood of clotting, Elkind said.

Such reactions have been seen in severe infections, such as sepsis. But for covid-19, he said, "we are seeing this in a large number of people in a very short time, so it really stands out."

"The virus can attack a lot of different parts of the body, and we don't understand why it causes some problems for some people, different problems for others -- and no problems at all for a large proportion," Elkind said.

Coughlin, in critical condition at a hospital in Connecticut, deteriorated quickly after she reached the emergency room. Her fever shot up to 105 and pneumonia developed in her lungs.

On Wednesday, she called her six daughters on FaceTime, telling them doctors advised she go on a ventilator.

"If something happens to me, and I don't make it, I'm at peace with it," she told them.

The conversation broke daughter Coleman's heart.

"I am deciding to help her go on a ventilator, and she may never come off," she said. "That could have been my last phone conversation with her."

Illustrations from iStock. Edited by Carol Eisenberg . Photo editing by Nick Kirkpatrick . Copy-edited by Jennifer Anderson and Thomas Floyd. Design and development by Tyler Remmel.

Read more:

Coronavirus destroys lungs. But doctors are finding its damage in kidneys, hearts and elsewhere.

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes

Children are falling ill with perplexing inflammatory syndrome thought to be linked to covid-19

A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients

Frostbite' toes and other peculiar rashes may be signs of hidden coronavirus infection, especially in the young

[May 12, 2020] https://www.newsbiella.it/2020/04/28/leggi-notizia/argomenti/speciale-coronavirus-4/articolo/idrossiclorochina-vs-covid-19-una-terapia-considerata-efficace-ma-controversa-il-parere-dellinfet-4.html

May 12, 2020 | www.newsbiella.it

Posted by: cirsium | May 11 2020 23:44 utc | 43

[May 11, 2020] Do you need a personal oximeter to fight coronavirus? by By Jane Ridley

Vital for old people who live alone. Especially for those with hypertension
Apr 08, 2020 | nypost.com

ver since coronavirus survivor Andy Cohen told listeners of "Andy Cohen Live" March 30 that owning a pulse oximeter provided a source of relief for him, interest in the humble medical device has soared.

The small, handheld units, which normally attach to your finger or toe, monitor your oxygen-saturation level -- which, if that level dips below 90%, can be an indicator that you have COVID-19.

"Oximeters measure how efficient the lungs are at getting the blood filled with oxygen," Dr. Eric Cioe-Pena, director of global health at Northwell Health , tells The Post. "Most healthy people's reading of oxygen in the blood is 100%.

"We are seeing lower levels in coronavirus patients because the virus impedes their ability to oxygenate the blood. There is fluid, instead of air, in their lungs, and so, when the blood passes through those organs, it doesn't get oxygen."

The doctor, based in New Hyde Park, LI, adds that he has treated COVID-19 sufferers with blood-oxygen levels as low as 55% and even 27%.

Speaking on his radio show, Cohen, 51, said, "You could scare yourself and think: 'Oh my God, my lungs don't feel right,' but you could use this pulse oximeter and see, OK, actually, you're fine, you're within the range." CNN host Chris Cuomo, 49, who currently has the coronavirus , has also been testing his oxygen levels daily using an oximeter, according to his wife, Cristina, who shared an extensive update on Cuomo's health earlier this week.

No wonder people are scrambling to purchase their own oximeters, which can be found at pharmacies and online for anywhere from $20 to $50.

see also Andy Cohen reveals what it was like to have coronavirus His symptoms included a fever, tightness in his chest, a...

But Cioe-Pena maintains that healthy people don't need them. Not only that, a rush on the devices could cause problems at hospitals and other emergency facilities that require them, similar to the situation that played out over N95 masks and other gear for essential medical workers .

"The issue is supply and demand," explains Cioe-Pena, adding that the information given by an oximeter about oxygen is really "only good if you have the ability to supply supplementary oxygen, like you can in a hospital." He notes as well that folks with "underlying conditions such as diabetes, hypertension or chronic lung disease" might need to have access to oximeters more than the average healthy person with fears of contracting the coronavirus.

[May 10, 2020] Can pulse oximeters detect coronavirus How they work and more by Dale Smith

Notable quotes:
"... According to the Mayo Clinic, a normal pulse oximeter oxygen level reading is between 95% and 100% , and anything less than 90% is considered dangerously low, or hypoxic. Some doctors have reported COVID-19 patients entering the hospital with oxygen levels at 50% or below . ..."
May 08, 2020 | www.cnet.com

Some doctors are recommending these small, inexpensive devices to help monitor symptoms.

A pulse oximeter attaches to a finger and uses light to detect the level of oxygen in your blood.

As coronavirus testing efforts continue to ramp up and face masks are now a part of everyday life, a small diagnostic tool that clips to the tip of your finger is fast becoming a must-have gadget in the fight against the coronavirus . It's called a pulse oximeter, and it painlessly checks your blood oxygen level, which can be affected by lung diseases such as COVID-19.

The device was already starting to surge in popularity as word got around that people with the coronavirus frequently arrive at the hospital with abnormally low oxygen levels . After an op-ed piece in The New York Times recommended the use of pulse oximeters to detect a frightening condition called "silent hypoxia," sales of the devices skyrocketed . Many models are sold out or on lengthy backorder online. Same with brick-and-mortar drug stores, supermarkets and box stores.

[May 10, 2020] Monoclonal antibodies Drug inspired by an old treatment could be 'next big thing for Covid-19' - CNN

May 10, 2020 | www.cnn.com

At least five US teams have cloned antibodies to Covid-19, paving the way for cutting-edge treatments that could be what one researcher calls "an immunity bridge" before a vaccine comes along. The treatment is monoclonal antibody therapy, and the antibodies come from people who have recovered from the novel coronavirus. Researchers then take the blood, select the most potent antibodies, and make them into a drug. One company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, hopes to have a treatment available to patients as early as the end of the summer. "I think monoclonal antibody therapy has enormous promise as the next big thing for Covid-19," said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine specialist at Baylor University School of Medicine who is not involved in the research. Monoclonal antibody therapy is a modern take on convalescent plasma, where someone who has recovered from coronavirus donates blood to someone who is currently ill. Read More Even if convalescent plasma is effective -- it's still being studied -- it has two shortcomings. First, one person can only give so much blood. Second, the donor might not have enough strong antibodies for the blood donation to be effective. To develop a monoclonal antibody treatment, researchers cull through thousands of antibodies to find the best ones, and then clone them potentially in unlimited amounts. Many other illnesses are treated with monoclonal antibodies, such as various forms of cancer, HIV, asthma, lupus, multiple sclerosis and various forms of cancer, but of course there's no guarantee it could work for Covid-19. What happens if a coronavirus vaccine is never developed? It has happened before <img alt="What happens if a coronavirus vaccine is never developed? It has happened before" src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/200428210047-coronavirus-new-york-0320-large-169.jpg"> What happens if a coronavirus vaccine is never developed? It has happened before "One of the things about the search is it's a little bit like finding a needle in a haystack. We're all searching for the magical antibody that's a silver bullet," said Dr. James Crowe, who's leading the Covid-19 monoclonal antibody effort at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Regeneron is hoping to start clinical trials for an antibody treatment for coronavirus in humans as soon as next month, and if everything goes right, perhaps have a treatment ready for widespread distribution by the end of the summer. "We generated thousands of [antibodies] and then selected the most powerful and potent ones to grow up into an antibody cocktail," said company president Dr. George Yancopoulos. Like any treatment under development, it might not pan out. But if it does, it could treat coronavirus and possibly also prevent infection for a period of time. A vaccine would likely offer longer lasting immunity, but that would likely take longer to develop, with the earliest estimates set at January. "I think antibodies will be finished first, and will be the bridge toward longer immunity, which will be conferred by vaccines," said Crowe, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. 'A guided nuclear warhead' In mid-January, researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York City heard from the National Institutes of Health: Get to work because we hope to have coronavirus antibodies cloned by the spring. About two months later, Rockefeller researcher Jill Horowitz found herself handing out fliers outside a supermarket in New Rochelle, New York, inviting people who'd recovered from coronavirus to learn more about the Rockefeller study. They won the fight against coronavirus. Here&#39;s what life looks like on the other side <img alt="They won the fight against coronavirus. Here&amp;#39;s what life looks like on the other side" src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/200416042613-03-coronavirus-recovery-large-169.jpg"> They won the fight against coronavirus. Here's what life looks like on the other side The city -- and in particular one synagogue -- had been hit hard by a coronavirus outbreak. "I'm Jewish, and I'm Orthodox, and I know people at Young Israel. I have friends in New Rochelle. Our kids went to school together, so I could go into the community and make my case," said Horowitz, executive director of strategic operations in the immunology laboratory at Rockefeller. In all, more than 100 people donated blood for the study, many of them from the New Rochelle community. Some of their stories will be told in an upcoming documentary, " Rebel Blood The Race to Cure Covid-19 ." The lead scientist in Rockefeller's monoclonal antibody effort compares it to battle, noting that convalescent plasma has been used for more than a century. "If you're thinking about a war, and you're fighting a war with a drug that came out of the early part of the 20thcentury, the monoclonal antibody is like a guided nuclear warhead in comparison," said Dr. Michel Nussenzweig, a professor at Rockefeller. Research by several US teams Several other US teams also say they've cloned antibodies, including Vanderbilt, Regeneron, Lilly Pharmaceuticals and Distributed Bio. Regeneron anticipates starting clinical trials next month and hopes to provide "hundreds of thousands of doses" to patients by the end of the summer, Yancopoulos said. The company already makes monoclonal antibodies for several illnesses, including cancer, arthritis and asthma. "We're using the same exact technology now to come up with a specific tailored approach against Covid-19," Yancopoulos said. Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team. Other companies gave a longer timeline. For example, Crowe, the doctor at Vanderbilt, said he anticipates it will be around the first quarter of next year before his team might have a Covid monoclonal antibody treatment ready to distribute. He said it's a good sign that several teams are working on monoclonal antibodies. "I think the more groups we have working on it, all the better, and the more shots on goal we have for getting an effective prevention or treatment," he said.

CNN's Dr. Minali Nigam, Devon Sayers and Wes Bruer contributed to this report.

[May 09, 2020] Is Fauci corrupt? The story of Remdesevir approval suggest that YES.

Does Dr Fauci enjoy indirect financial ties to Gilead? Does he own the stock?
Notable quotes:
"... Basically, this was a negative trial. Of the 255 patients screened, 237 met the eligibility criteria, and 158 were assigned to the remdesivir group, with 79 assigned to placebo control. Unfortunately, remdesivir treatment was not associated with a shorter time to clinical improvement, and mortality was not different between the two groups. ..."
"... It does look very fishy to me. Endpoint or outcome switching, particularly late in a clinical trial is a huge red flag. ..."
"... There are also other reasons to question this trial, including how no confidence intervals were reported, that not even an abstract was published, just a press release with, as Heathers put it, "two results in four lines": ..."
"... I remain very suspicious that the NIH study was announced the same day that a negative study out of China of remdesivir was published. It just seems too convenient. Maybe I'm being overly suspicious. Maybe I'm too suspicious. Maybe I'm falling prey to conspiracy mongering. However, in the Trump era, when the Trump administration has politicized previously (mostly) apolitical government agencies as never before, it's hard not to wonder. ..."
"... He was unimpressed by remdesivir's modest benefit. "It was expected to be a whopping effect," Topol added. "It clearly does not have that." ..."
"... Indeed, given that the pre-test probability of remdesivir having a significant effect was low, meaning that this trial is probably just noise: ..."
"... But Gilead will make billions and billions of dollars ..."
"... Could Anthony Fauci explain why the investigators of the NIAID remdesivir trial did change the primary outcome during the course of the project (16th April)? Removing "death" from primary outcome is a surprising decision. ..."
"... The most common adverse effects in studies of remdesivir for COVID-19 include respiratory failure and blood biomarkers of organ impairment, including low albumin, low potassium, low count of red blood cells, low count of platelets that help with clotting, and yellow discoloration of the skin. Other reported side effects include gastrointestinal distress, elevated transaminase levels in the blood (liver enzymes), and infusion site reactions. ..."
"... So, if it does shorten duration, is it worth potential liver damage, respiratory failure and organ impairment? In other words is the cure potentially as bad as the disease. ..."
"... For yet another drug that was supposed to be a game changer, I am unimpressed by its results. The whole mechanism is wrong. A drug with this mechanism would need to be almost a prophylactic for it to be hugely effective. ..."
"... Fauci didn't seem to have any problem cautioning against unwarranted optimism for CQ/HCQ even while DJT was championing the stuff. What is different about this? . ..."
"... So, what did Fauci say about chloroquine? ""We've got to be careful that we don't make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug. We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitely prove whether any intervention is truly safe and effective," Fauci, who is also a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said during an interview on "Fox & Friends. . . "We don't operate on how you feel, we operate on what evidence and data is," Fauci said, adding that it was "not a very robust study" or "overwhelmingly strong."" (Concha, 2020 Apr 3) ..."
"... Now, what did he say about Remdesivir: "Speaking to reporters from the White House, Fauci said he was told data from the trial showed a "clear-cut positive effect in diminishing time to recover." Fauci said the median time of recovery for patients taking the drug was 11 days, compared with 15 days in the placebo group. He said the mortality benefit of remdesivir "has not yet reached statistical significance." ..."
"... Disappointingly, the lock down seems to have made a number of people irrational. Just a quick post to expound on my Fauci post for those who see the world as binary – ie: black or white. These people think you either support Fauci 100% or 0% and a single criticism of any Fauci statement means 0% support of Fauci. I do not happen to worship at the altar of Fauci or any scientist and recognize all are subject to errors – including myself. I view the world in a more nuanced manner than those with the black/white delusion. I find I can disagree with some things a person says or stands for and agree with some other things they say or do. ..."
"... I am of the opinion that Fauci made a mistake here. The evidence for Remdesiver is nowhere near good enough for it to become the standard of care. ..."
"... On the other hand, watching the White House performance from afar, I can see the administration is dysfunctional and is run by a narcissistic bully, who will publicly turn on anyone who disagrees with them. ..."
"... I believe that is the main thrust of this Orac article – that the evidence for Remdesiver efficacy is sorely lacking. ..."
May 09, 2020 | respectfulinsolence.com
Remdesivir: Gilead wins with unimpressive results announced by press release On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced positive results for the antiviral drug remdesivir treating COVID-19. They were unimpressive and, suspiciously, announced by press release rather than scientific paper. It's all very fishy, but one thing's for sure. Gilead Sciences will make boatloads of money. I've been writing a lot about the unjustified and premature hype over hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug with mild immunosuppressive activity that is also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases and how the drug probably doesn't work against COVID-19, despite its being hyped by President Trump and his sycophants, toadies, and lackeys on Fox News, Dr. Mehmet Oz , Dr. Phil , Dr. Didier Raoult , and a bevy of irresponsible fame seeking doctors who have no idea how to do a proper clinical study.

There are, however, other drugs being hyped out there, drugs that might actually have a better chance of turning out to be effective treatments for COVID-19. Chief among these is remdesivir, the experimental antiviral drug being tested by Gilead Sciences.

Remdesivir is an adenosine (a nucleotide) analog that inhibits viral RNA polymerases. It is incorporated into RNA made by the virus, causing the premature termination of the RNA molecule, thus interfering with viral replication. The drug was originally developed to treat Ebola and Marburg but was ultimately found to be ineffective against these viruses . Because it inhibits the replication of a number of RNA viruses, it was only natural that it would be considered as a possible treatment for COVID-19, and Gilead has been relentlessly promoting it as such as the company has been working to carry out clinical trials.

What prompted me to write about remdesivir were headlines like Dr. Anthony Fauci says Gilead's remdesivir will set a new 'standard of care' for coronavirus treatment that started popping up on Wednesday afternoon:

White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that data from a coronavirus drug trial testing Gilead Sciences' antiviral drug remdesivir showed "quite good news" and sets a new standard of care for Covid-19 patients.

Speaking to reporters from the White House, Fauci said he was told data from the trial showed a "clear-cut positive effect in diminishing time to recover."

Fauci said the median time of recovery for patients taking the drug was 11 days, compared with 15 days in the placebo group. He said the mortality benefit of remdesivir "has not yet reached statistical significance."

The results suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group, according to a statement from the National Institutes of Health released later Wednesday.

"This will be the standard of care," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added. "When you know a drug works, you have to let people in the placebo group know so they can take it."

My skeptical antennae started twitching immediately, because on the same day a study from China was published in The Lancet that was far less impressive. In fact, it was a negative trial. What also got my skeptical antennae all aflutter twitching away was how the results of the remdesivir trial were announced. Normally, when a study is announced to the press, it's upon publication of the paper, and the press release is issued either the same day or the evening before publication. As of last night, as I wrote this, however, the actual paper reporting the results of the clinical trial had not yet been published. As I perused Twitter on Wednesday, I found even more reasons for skepticism.

So, before I get to the study touted by Dr. Fauci, let's review some history.

Remdesivir: The early days versus COVID-19 (like, you know, three weeks ago)

The first data published on remdesivir was a single-arm uncontrolled trial that somehow got published three weeks ago in The New England Journal of Medicine . This was peak COVID-19 publishing, when an uncontrolled case series of patients with severe COVID-19 treated with remdesivir under compassionate was published in a super high impact journal like NEJM and made headlines as a result. Be that as it may, the case series examined 61 patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who had an oxygen saturation of 94% or less while they were breathing room air or who were receiving oxygen support. They received a 10-day course of remdesivir, consisting of 200 mg given intravenously on day 1, followed by 100 mg daily for the remaining 9 days of treatment. (Remdesivir is an intravenous drug.) The authors reported clinical improvement in 68% of evaluable patients:

Of the 61 patients who received at least one dose of remdesivir, data from 8 could not be analyzed (including 7 patients with no post-treatment data and 1 with a dosing error). Of the 53 patients whose data were analyzed, 22 were in the United States, 22 in Europe or Canada, and 9 in Japan. At baseline, 30 patients (57%) were receiving mechanical ventilation and 4 (8%) were receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. During a median follow-up of 18 days, 36 patients (68%) had an improvement in oxygen-support class, including 17 of 30 patients (57%) receiving mechanical ventilation who were extubated. A total of 25 patients (47%) were discharged, and 7 patients (13%) died; mortality was 18% (6 of 34) among patients receiving invasive ventilation and 5% (1 of 19) among those not receiving invasive ventilation.

The case series also did not collect viral load data to confirm potential antiviral activity in humans or any association between declines in viral load and clinical improvement. Basically, when you get right down to it, this study was not really much better than Didier Raoult's crappy study of his hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination, but that didn't stop the authors from concluding that comparisons with contemporaneous cohorts "suggest that remdesivir may have clinical benefit in patients with severe Covid-19." In reality, like Raoult's trials, this trial said nothing about the efficacy of remdesivir against COVID-19 other than that the drug could be given to COVID-19 patients with a reasonable safety profile.

Less than week later, as related by Derek Lowe , came news that two clinical trials of remdesivir in China, one for severe disease and one for moderate disease had been suspended. (They still are.) Lowe noted that both trials had the notice: "The epidemic of COVID-19 has been controlled well at present, no eligible patients can be recruited." The apparent explanation was "the stringent inclusion criteria for the trials – apparently patients had to have no previous therapy with any other experimental agent to enroll, and that eliminates a lot of people." Around the same time, Adam Feuerstein and Matthew Herper published a story in STAT, Early peek at data on Gilead coronavirus drug suggests patients are responding to treatment :

The University of Chicago Medicine recruited 125 people with Covid-19 into Gilead's two Phase 3 clinical trials. Of those people, 113 had severe disease. All the patients have been treated with daily infusions of remdesivir.

"The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We've only had two patients perish," said Kathleen Mullane, the University of Chicago infectious disease specialist overseeing the remdesivir studies for the hospital.

Her comments were made this week during a video discussion about the trial results with other University of Chicago faculty members. The discussion was recorded and STAT obtained a copy of the video.

Derek Lowe discussed this story in depth, and I largely agree with him that the leak of the video to STAT was a serious breach of clinical trial ethics and protocol. (I'm not alone in suspecting that it was almost certainly intentional to jack up Gilead's stock price, a result that was achieved.) Lowe also noted:

But now that it's out there, let's talk about what's in the leak. Gilead stock jumped like a spawning salmon in after-market trading on this, and one of the reasons was that that 113 of the 125 patients were classed as having "severe disease". People ran with the idea that these must have been people on ventilators who were walking out of the hospital, but that is not the case. As AndyBiotech pointed out on Twitter, all you had to do was read the trial's exclusion criteria : patients were not even admitted into the trial if they were on mechanical ventilation. Some will have moved on to ventilation during the trial, but we don't know how many (the trial protocol has these in a separate group).

Note also that this trial is open-label; both doctors and patients know who is getting what, and note the really key point: there is no control arm. This is one of the trials mentioned in this post on small-molecule therapies as being the most likely to read out first, but it's always been clear that the tradeoff for that speed is rigor. The observational paper that was published on remdesivir in the NEJM had no controls either, of course, and that made it hard to interpret. Scratch that, it made it impossible to interpret. It will likely be the same with this trial – the comparison is between a five-day course of remdesivir and a ten-day course, and the primary endpoint is the odds ratio for improvement between the two groups.

Again, these data, such as they are, are no more useful than Didier Raoult's data on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to treat COVID-19, but this brings us to the Chinese trial published in The Lancet on Wednesday.

The Chinese randomized clinical trial

The Chinese trial published two days ago is the first randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of remdesivir to treat COVID-19, but it was also one of the studies halted. Eligible patients were adults admitted to the hospital with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 whose symptoms had lasted less than 12 days before enrollment and who had an oxygen saturation on room air of 94% or less or a ratio of arterial oxygen partial pressure to fractional inspired oxygen of 300 mm Hg or less (another measure of hypoxia), and radiologically confirmed pneumonia.

Patients were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to intravenous remdesivir at the same dose as the NIH trial touted by Dr. Fauci or the same volume of placebo infusions for 10 days and were permitted concomitant use of lopinavir–ritonavir, interferons, and corticosteroids. The primary endpoint was time to clinical improvement up to day 28, defined at the time from randomization to the point of a decline of two levels on a six-point ordinal scale of clinical status (from 1=discharged to 6=death) or discharged alive from hospital, whichever came first. An intention-to-treat analysis was carried out.

Basically, this was a negative trial. Of the 255 patients screened, 237 met the eligibility criteria, and 158 were assigned to the remdesivir group, with 79 assigned to placebo control. Unfortunately, remdesivir treatment was not associated with a shorter time to clinical improvement, and mortality was not different between the two groups. Subgroup analysis looking for hypotheses found that there was a trend towards a shorter duration of symptoms (not statistically significant) in patients treated with remdesivir who had had symptoms for less than ten days. Most disappointingly, there was no detectable difference in viral load between the remdesivir groups and the placebo controls. Again, basically this was a negative study with only the barest hint that remdesivir might -- I repeat, might -- work if administered earlier in the course of COVID-19. That's some pretty thin gruel.

Which brings us to the NIH trial of remdesivir touted by Anthony Fauci.

The NIH press release for its remdesivir trial.

The results of the NIH remdesivir trial can, unfortunately, only be gleaned from the press release and news stories so far:

For the first time, a major study suggests that an experimental drug works against the new coronavirus, and U.S. government officials said Wednesday that they would work to make it available to appropriate patients as quickly as possible.

In a study of 1,063 patients sick enough to be hospitalized, Gilead Sciences's remdesivir shortened the time to recovery by 31% -- 11 days on average versus 15 days for those just given usual care, officials said. The drug also might be reducing deaths, although that's not certain from the partial results revealed so far.

"What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus," the National Institutes of Health's Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

"This will be the standard of care," and any other potential treatments will now have to be tested against or in combination with remdesivir, he said.

Here is the press release , posted to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases website:

Hospitalized patients with advanced COVID-19 and lung involvement who received remdesivir recovered faster than similar patients who received placebo, according to a preliminary data analysis from a randomized, controlled trial involving 1063 patients, which began on February 21. The trial (known as the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial, or ACTT), sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is the first clinical trial launched in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for COVID-19.

An independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) overseeing the trial met on April 27 to review data and shared their interim analysis with the study team. Based upon their review of the data, they noted that remdesivir was better than placebo from the perspective of the primary endpoint, time to recovery, a metric often used in influenza trials. Recovery in this study was defined as being well enough for hospital discharge or returning to normal activity level.

Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001). Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo. Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (p=0.059).

More detailed information about the trial results, including more comprehensive data, will be available in a forthcoming report. As part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's commitment to expediting the development and availability of potential COVID-19 treatments, the agency has been engaged in sustained and ongoing discussions with Gilead Sciences regarding making remdesivir available to patients as quickly as possible, as appropriate. The trial closed to new enrollments on April 19. NIAID will also provide an update on the plans for the ACTT trial moving forward. This trial was an adaptive trial designed to incorporate additional investigative treatments.

As you can see, the difference in mortality was not statistically significantly different, although that could just be because of inadequate numbers. It's also very important to note the part about the adaptive trial design of this trial, which puts Dr. Fauci's comment about how remdesivir will become the "standard of care" going forward into the proper context. In this particular trial , multiple different drugs can be compared to placebo or standard of care. The idea is that, if a signal of efficacy is found with one drug, that drug becomes "standard of care" and the trial is adapted to study how adding other experimental drugs compares to the "standard of care." So what Dr. Fauci meant was that, based on the finding, going forward remdesivir will become the "standard of care" arm for the trial and the experimental arm will become remdesivir plus another experimental therapeutic. However, given that the FDA is on the verge of issuing an emergency use authorization for remdesivir to treat COVID-19, it looks as though remdesivir will become standard-of-care in general soon.

But back to the results. Derek Lowe observed:

it's worth noting that had there been "clear and substantial evidence of a treatment difference" during the trial that the DSMB was to have halted the study at that point. We can infer that nothing rose to that level, then: we have a difference, but not substantial enough to have ended the trial prematurely.

It's also worth noting some things posted on Twitter about the trial. For instance, Waller Gellad noted:

Since NIH remdesivir trial is in the news

was there an explanation about why the primary outcome (now positive) was changed last month to 'time until clinical recovery?' @matthewherper https://t.co/fCTc1EGI1d pic.twitter.com/W1hAACnO1r

-- Walid Gellad, MD MPH (@walidgellad) April 29, 2020

It's very odd that the primary endpoint was changed:

Thread that summarizes my concerns with Remdesivir press release (not science) as well.

Changing the endpoint midtrial this way is like hosting a race for one destination then declaring wherever you end up after running for an hour is the finish line. https://t.co/XMUXYW3njp

-- Mark Hoofnagle (@MarkHoofnagle) April 30, 2020

This long Twitter thread explains:

Here's Fauci talking about it. Give him a listen, sharpen your ears at about 0.30.

"The primary endpoint was the time to recovery, namely the ability to be discharged."

He's right, it was.

On April 16th. https://t.co/U6Cx3XSOJ6

-- 🏴James Heathers 🏴 (@jamesheathers) April 30, 2020

I'll summarize, so that you don't have to scroll through a Twitter thread if you don't want to. As James Heathers and Waller Gellad noted, the original primary outcome of the trial when it was registered on March 20. The original primary endpoint of the trial was an 8-point severity scale (death, on ventilator, hospitalized with oxygen, all the way down to discharged with no limits on activity) but was changed to time to recovery. There's still a similar scale for the secondary endpoints, but no numbers for that were reported. (Any bets on whether the results are negative?) This change was apparently made on or around April 16.

Gellad also notes:

last thing:
Here is the results table for the negative lancet trial of remdesivir. The highlighted results are what the primary outcome for the NIH trial was until 2 weeks ago. https://t.co/niQ65zgLF2

We need to see that outcome, in addition to time until recovery. pic.twitter.com/ptXGhPx13N

-- Walid Gellad, MD MPH (@walidgellad) April 30, 2020

It does look very fishy to me. Endpoint or outcome switching, particularly late in a clinical trial is a huge red flag. Don't get me wrong. There can be legitimate scientific reasons to switch primary endpoints of a trial. as James Heathers puts it:

Sometimes it becomes clear after you start that the registration is incomplete or wrong. Sometimes you have a better idea after you start. Sometimes your thinking changes.

Other times, you're trying to cherry-pick the results.

-- James Heathers 🏴 (@jamesheathers) April 30, 2020

There are also other reasons to question this trial, including how no confidence intervals were reported, that not even an abstract was published, just a press release with, as Heathers put it, "two results in four lines":

(2) the results in the press release. I call this 'two results, four sentences' – press releases describe the results in incredibly brief terms, usually the two most positive outcomes w the briefest explanation possible. He's me bitching about it earlier. https://t.co/FQlaAQaytG

-- James Heathers 🏴 (@jamesheathers) April 30, 2020

Basically, if you have two "good" results and twenty "bad" or uninterpretable results, what do you do? What are you going to tell people? The two "good" results, of course!

Gary Schwitzer has a nice summary of the negative reactions to the trial and how it was announced.

The bottom line

I remain very suspicious that the NIH study was announced the same day that a negative study out of China of remdesivir was published. It just seems too convenient. Maybe I'm being overly suspicious. Maybe I'm too suspicious. Maybe I'm falling prey to conspiracy mongering. However, in the Trump era, when the Trump administration has politicized previously (mostly) apolitical government agencies as never before, it's hard not to wonder.

Adding to my suspicion is the fact that the study was reported in a press release, rather than being published, which makes me wonder if the press release was written to counter the negative study from China that would certainly have tanked Gilead's stock prices. Yes, I know that the press release reported that this decis, apparently the announcement was decided upon after April 27 meeting of the data and safety monitoring board overseeing this trial, but the outcome switching so late in the trial makes me very suspicious. Yes, the explanation, which should have been in the press release, along with an acknowledgment that the primary outcome/endpoint had been changed, but wasn't is not unreasonable:

NIAID explains why endpoint of remdesivir trial was changed: pic.twitter.com/Zpl08nd4PL

-- Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell) April 30, 2020

Then there was this news report in which Fauci claimed that concerns about leaks fueled the announcement:

He expressed concern that leaks of partial information would lead to confusion. Since the White House was not planning a daily virus briefing, Fauci said he was invited to release the news at a news conference with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards(D). "It was purely driven by ethical concerns," Fauci told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"I would love to wait to present it at a scientific meeting, but it's just not in the cards when you have a situation where the ethical concern about getting the drug to people on placebo dominates the conversation."

An independent data safety and monitoring board, which had looked at the preliminary results of the NIAID trial, determined it had met its primary goal of reducing hospital stays.

On Tuesday evening, that information was conveyed in a conference call to scientists studying the drug globally.

"There are literally dozens and dozens of investigators around the world," Fauci said. "People were starting to leak it." But he did not give details of where the unreported data was being shared.

I smell bullshit here. What probably really happened is that he was under enormous pressure to release the results. It was also unwise to discuss the results with so many scientists until the manuscript reporting the results of the trial had at least been submitted for publication. I agree with the scientists who had "expected it [the trial data] to be presented simultaneously in a detailed news release, a briefing at a medical meeting or in a scientific journal, allowing researchers to review the data." I also agree with Dr. Eric Topol, referring to the Chinese RCT and this one:

"That's the only thing I'll hang my hat on, and that was negative," said Dr. Eric Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

He was unimpressed by remdesivir's modest benefit. "It was expected to be a whopping effect," Topol added. "It clearly does not have that."

Indeed, given that the pre-test probability of remdesivir having a significant effect was low, meaning that this trial is probably just noise:

Unfortunately, by the time you are symptomatic with a virus, you are usually already high/peak viral load. So, when you give an antiviral to someone who is already ill, the damage from the virus is largely done. It's there in big numbers and in the cells.

-- Mark Hoofnagle (@MarkHoofnagle) May 1, 2020

Indeed, I'm not only unimpressed with the modest benefit reported, I question whether there really was any benefit at all, particularly in light of the Chinese trial, which found zero difference in viral load in the remdesivir group.

The whole thing looks damned fishy, and we can't judge the study until it's actually published. Meanwhile, whatever the true reasons for releasing the study results this way, mission accomplished. The negative effect of the Chinese study on Gilead's stock price was successfully countered and remdesivir becomes a de facto standard of care for patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Worse, no further trials of remdesivir versus placebo will be possible, because it's been declared that remdesivir "works" against COVID-19 and is the new standard of care! As Mark Hoofnagle put it in a great Twitter thread, that echoes my thoughts:

By the end of the day, reports that FDA is going to emergently approve remdesivir for treatment of COVID.

Gilead gets what they want. No one will want to be in a control arm in further trials and they will argue all future trials must be noninferiority.

-- Mark Hoofnagle (@MarkHoofnagle) May 1, 2020

Absolute genius. You have to salute them. On the day a negative trial of their drug is reported, based on a press release they took over the news cycle, and with some midstream edits to their endpoints their now "positive" trial wins them FDA approval and a halted trial.

-- Mark Hoofnagle (@MarkHoofnagle) May 1, 2020

It's worse than that. If remdesivir is now the "standard of care" for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, it now becomes unethical to randomize them to a placebo group testing ANY new drug for COVID-19. Trials will now have to compare remdesivir alone to remdesivir plus experimental drug. We'll probably never know now for sure if remdesivir is truly effective against COVID-19.

But Gilead will make billions and billions of dollars.

Related The FDA's emergency use authorization of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19: Dangerous politics, not science

Yesterday, the FDA issued emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroqine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19. Politics, not science, is why.

By Orac Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski ...

John Kane says: May 2, 2020 at 8:52 am

In long twitter exchange mainly led by James Heathers, has anyone noticed that there are a series of tweets by Didier Raoult ?

One tweet reads:

Could Anthony Fauci explain why the investigators of the NIAID remdesivir trial did change the primary outcome during the course of the project (16th April)? Removing "death" from primary outcome is a surprising decision.

In a quick search of the web I found the following two:

WHAT ARE SIDE EFFECTS OF REMDESIVIR (RDV)?

In the Ebola trial, researchers noted side effects of remdesivir (RDV) that included:

Typical antiviral drug side effects include:

Nausea
Vomiting

Found at: https://www.rxlist.com/consumer_remdesivir_rdv/drugs-condition.htm

Side effects

The most common adverse effects in studies of remdesivir for COVID-19 include respiratory failure and blood biomarkers of organ impairment, including low albumin, low potassium, low count of red blood cells, low count of platelets that help with clotting, and yellow discoloration of the skin. Other reported side effects include gastrointestinal distress, elevated transaminase levels in the blood (liver enzymes), and infusion site reactions.

Other possible side effects of remdesivir include:

Infusion‐related reactions. Infusion‐related reactions have been seen during a remdesivir infusion or around the time remdesivir was given.[8] Signs and symptoms of infusion‐related reactions may include: low blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, sweating, and shivering.

Increases in levels of liver enzymes, seen in abnormal liver blood tests. Increases in levels of liver enzymes have been seen in people who have received remdesivir, which may be a sign of inflammation or damage to cells in the liver.

Found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remdesivir

So, if it does shorten duration, is it worth potential liver damage, respiratory failure and organ impairment? In other words is the cure potentially as bad as the disease.

And, as Orac and many commenters have made more than clear, one more example of Trump's government, ignoring science, and jumping to conclusions.

And once more I suggest reading the following:

Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee (April 28, 2020). Pandemic Science Out of Control. Issues in Science and Technology. Available at: https://issues.org/pandemic-science-out-of-control/

Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH says: May 2, 2020 at 7:05 pm
ADDENDUM

I found the following: "Particular laboratory features have also been associated with worse outcomes (table 2). These include: Elevated liver enzymes"

Found at: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-epidemiology-virology-clinical-features-diagnosis-and-prevention?search=coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19- demiology-virology-clinical-features-diagnosis-and-prevention&source=search_result&selectedTitle=1~150&usage_type=default&display_rank=1

So, one of the side-effects has been associated with worse outcomes. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Remdesivir.

Chris Preston says: May 2, 2020 at 6:52 pm
For yet another drug that was supposed to be a game changer, I am unimpressed by its results. The whole mechanism is wrong. A drug with this mechanism would need to be almost a prophylactic for it to be hugely effective.
Tim says: May 3, 2020 at 11:33 am

One thing they discovered is that the proteins involved have zinc atoms incorporated into their structure. This won't surprise any biochemists, as zinc-containing proteins are common. But there's been a steady flow of fringe treatments for the disease -- including some involving chloroquine derivatives -- in which zinc was a key component. We'll have to see whether that changes now that it's clear that zinc is needed to make copies of the virus (assuming that fact registers at all with the people prone to promoting fringe therapies).

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/scientists-get-an-atomic-level-look-at-how-a-drug-blocks-the-coronavirus/

What is that saying about zinc? I've always heard that zinc was a good thing to have a high intracellular level of it to protect against viruses besides also being needed to make NO.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nih-cuts-coronavirus-funding-amid-trump-comments-and-conspiracy-theories/

Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH says: May 4, 2020 at 1:11 pm
@ Reality

So: "Fauci just dropped down a level or two in my estimation of his commitment to rationality."

Let's look at the "Reality": "America needs a federal government that assertively promotes and helps to coordinate that, not one in which experts like Tony Fauci and Deborah Birx tiptoe around a president's tender ego."

I wouldn't want to be in Fauchi's shoes. If he openly criticizes Trump, he is out and staying in allows him to have some effect. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. So, he has to balance his "committment to rationality" to trying to modify/reduce the insanity of Trump. If he resigned or was fired, could he have more of an influence? Maybe, maybe not. I would not want to be in his shoes! ! ! Personally, I would probably resign and try to get our media to listen to me. Just standing next to Trump would turn my stomach.

So, maybe you should live up to your "name" and evaluate "reality" not an idealistic world.

Reality says: May 4, 2020 at 2:22 pm
So you wouldn't say what Fauci said and would quit, eh, Joel?
I wouldn't say what Fauci said about "standard of care" which is basically his endorsement of this.
I believe Orac wouldn't make that statement endorsing Remdesivir as the "standard of care".
I don't know of any self-respecting scientist who would make such a statement no matter what the pressure.
If I was pressured by DJT I would object but maybe agree to not make any statement pro or con about the subject – so as to keep my position and influence but if someone asked me to say something I thought was not true I would not do it and refuse.
.
Fauci didn't seem to have any problem cautioning against unwarranted optimism for CQ/HCQ even while DJT was championing the stuff. What is different about this?
.

That is the Reality of this Fauci statement.

A. Harrison, PhD, MPH says: May 4, 2020 at 4:31 pm
@ Reality

You write: "Fauci didn't seem to have any problem cautioning against unwarranted optimism for CQ/HCQ even while DJT was championing the stuff. What is different about this?"

Yep; but the only studies promoting CQ/HCQ was a fraudulent one in France and an in vitro study.

What about Remdesivir? First it is a nucleic acid analogue designed to directly disrupt replication of the viral genome. Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine were not even remotely designed to target viruses, though they have a moderate dampening effect on immune reactions, so they work for autoimmune diseases (e.g., lupus, rheumatoid arthritis); but, as I wrote in a previous exchange, the immune response in an autoimmune disease compared to a cytokine storm is like comparing 20 mile per hour winds to a category 5 hurricane, 160 mph winds. In addition, chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine have a large number of mild side-effects and some really serious major ones.

So, what did Fauci say about chloroquine? ""We've got to be careful that we don't make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug. We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitely prove whether any intervention is truly safe and effective," Fauci, who is also a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said during an interview on "Fox & Friends. . . "We don't operate on how you feel, we operate on what evidence and data is," Fauci said, adding that it was "not a very robust study" or "overwhelmingly strong."" (Concha, 2020 Apr 3)

Now, what did he say about Remdesivir: "Speaking to reporters from the White House, Fauci said he was told data from the trial showed a "clear-cut positive effect in diminishing time to recover." Fauci said the median time of recovery for patients taking the drug was 11 days, compared with 15 days in the placebo group. He said the mortality benefit of remdesivir "has not yet reached statistical significance."

The results suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group, according to a statement from the National Institutes of Health released later Wednesday. "This will be the standard of care," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added. "When you know a drug works, you have to let people in the placebo group know so they can take it." "What it has proven is a drug can block this virus," he said. (Lovelace, 2020 Apr 29)

"The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery," Fauci said at the White House on Wednesday. The data he referred to is from a large study of more than 1,000 patients from multiple sites around the world. Patients either received the drug, called remdesivir, or a placebo.

Dr. Michael Saag, associate dean for global health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said the results seemed promising. Antiviral drugs such as remdesivir tend to work earlier in the course of an illness, so "the thing that I think is important in this study is the patients had advanced disease," said Saag, who is not involved with any remdesivir trials. (NBC News (2020 Apr 29)

Hospitalized patients with advanced COVID-19 and lung involvement who received remdesivir recovered faster than similar patients who received placebo, according to a preliminary data analysis from a randomized, controlled trial involving 1063 patients, which began on February 21. The trial (known as the Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial, or ACTT), sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is the first clinical trial launched in the United States to evaluate an experimental treatment for COVID-19.

An independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) overseeing the trial met on April 27 to review data and shared their interim analysis with the study team. Based upon their review of the data, they noted that remdesivir was better than placebo from the perspective of the primary endpoint, time to recovery, a metric often used in influenza trials [my emphasis]. Recovery in this study was defined as being well enough for hospital discharge or returning to normal activity level. . .

Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (p=0.059). the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (2020 Apr 29).

So, first I'd bet you don't understand how nucleic acid analogues work?
Second, though I tend not to rely on one study, this one was fairly large and the shortening of time to recovery was clinically significant, "defined as being well enough for hospital discharge or returning to normal activity level." And Dr. Michael Saag: "Antiviral drugs such as remdesivir tend to work earlier in the course of an illness, so "the thing that I think is important in this study is the patients had advanced disease,"

Standard of Care is more a legal definition than a clinical one. Basically it reduces risk of malpractice lawsuits.

While I probably would not have called it "standard of care", instead clearly stating that based on the recent trial, it is currently the best we have to offer or something to that effect.

So, Fauci didn't call it a cure, didn't claim it reduced mortality, though indications it did, and based on over 1,000 patients, found it reduced hospitalization and return to normal life by a clinically significant margin, the standard used for flu studies. Again, I would have been more cautious in my working; but your rank attack on a man who knows more about infectious diseases that you, I, and many others, a man who has dedicated his life to preventing and dealing with them is just plain sickening. Your black and white view of Fauci is how antivaccinationists and other adherers to unscience see the world. And an MPH probably means a couple of lower level epidemiology courses. So, the old saying: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, coupled with a personality that prefers a dichotomous world is very very problematic.

Only time and further studies will tell if Remdesivir really does shorten recovery time and, perhaps, also lowers mortality. Right now, we have nothing else and I wouldn't jump on something because of this; but the over 1,000 patient study isn't nothing.

Just to be clear, Orac's critique is valid; but, as he says, by this time one becomes perhaps overly skeptical given Trump's insanity. How cautious should Fauci have been? People are becoming desperate. The risks from Remdesivir are extremely low, so currently, either use it or continue as is.

If there were significant risks and the one study had been one a much smaller group, the scales would be different. And, though Orac is right they changed the outcome points, as mentioned, shortening of recovery time is a criterion used for treatment of flu, so, though not, perhaps, the best end-point, it is certainly not the same as some studies using endpoints such as lowered cholesterol without looking at deaths. They did look at deaths and though not significant, in the right direction. By the way, do you even understand significance levels? Though only one study, p=0.059 isn't far from p=0.05.

References:

Reality says: May 5, 2020 at 10:58 am
Disappointingly, the lock down seems to have made a number of people irrational. Just a quick post to expound on my Fauci post for those who see the world as binary – ie: black or white. These people think you either support Fauci 100% or 0% and a single criticism of any Fauci statement means 0% support of Fauci. I do not happen to worship at the altar of Fauci or any scientist and recognize all are subject to errors – including myself. I view the world in a more nuanced manner than those with the black/white delusion. I find I can disagree with some things a person says or stands for and agree with some other things they say or do.

My criticism of Fauci in regard to his remdesivir endorsement does not mean I have 0% support for Fauci it means that with that statement and some others my positive view of him is now ~80% but not 100% and I will have to check up on what he is endorsing to make sure that I agree with it just like I do with any other scientist/person.

BTW – If some were to check my Disqus account history (Reality022) you would find posts strongly defending Fauci against the Loony Libertarians who seem to think he is the debil.
.
Now to a second point:

There appears to be a group of Fauci apologists who, to excuse Fauci's statement, say it is due to 'pressure from Trump/the administration'.
I do not subscribe to this excuse and think it is a horrible thing to say for 2 reasons:

1) There is absolutely no evidence that this statement was made under pressure. That idea is totally invented in the minds of the Fauci apologists in their attempt to exonerate Fauci.

2) It is a horrible thing to say about Fauci. I take him at his word. If he said it he meant it. The excuse actually means that Fauci's word is so untrustworthy that he can be pressured into being dishonest about his scientific opinions and only the apologists can tell us when he is lying or actually relating his honest view. The apologists are basically saying Fauci is dishonest.

I have much more respect for the man and believe he is honest but in this case merely wrong.
.
That is all I'm going to say about this subject as some people are going off the rails with their binary view of the world. (snicker)

A. Harrison, PhD, MPH says: May 5, 2020 at 11:06 am

@ Reality

And you continue to miss the point that "Standard of Care" is mainly a legal term. Are you that dense? It is you who stated your opinion of Fauci sank, so your binary view of the world. Try reading my other comments, closely, maybe you will learn something; but I doubt it. "Reality", lacks reality testing. Reply

Preston says: May 5, 2020 at 8:18 pm

I tend to agree. I am of the opinion that Fauci made a mistake here. The evidence for Remdesiver is nowhere near good enough for it to become the standard of care. But then I am not the one having to make these decisions under difficult circumstances. I don't pretend to understand why Fauci might have made the comment, so don't see a lot of point in speculating about it.

On the other hand, watching the White House performance from afar, I can see the administration is dysfunctional and is run by a narcissistic bully, who will publicly turn on anyone who disagrees with them. I also see there are people within and around the White House who are happy to tell whatever lies they think Trump wants to hear, either through fear or hope for advancement. I understand why people would add 2 and 2 and come up with 5.

Reality says: May 5, 2020 at 9:28 pm
Chris Preston said, "I am of the opinion that Fauci made a mistake here. The evidence for Remdesiver is nowhere near good enough for it to become the standard of care."

I believe that is the main thrust of this Orac article – that the evidence for Remdesiver efficacy is sorely lacking.

Quoting Orac's article above: "In reality, like Raoult's trials, this trial said nothing about the efficacy of remdesivir against COVID-19 other than that the drug could be given to COVID-19 patients with a reasonable safety profile."
.
I agree with your 2nd paragraph and think that Fauci is not one of those administration toadies and is being honest and has merely made a mistake perhaps brought about through grasping-at-straws desperation as described in a current SBM article.

I, as well, do not know why Fauci made the statement but to me it is very disrespectful of the man to use as an excuse that he is dishonest enough to lie like a toady when pressured by Trump.

I think we are essentially in agreement about this matter.
Have fun.

Denice Walter says: May 5, 2020 at 10:05 pm
re dysfunctional administration.. narcissistic bully et al

It seems that the aforementioned will now " wind down" the Covid task force ( The Hill reports) but Drs Fauci and Birx will still be involved in some capacity.

AS though the battle is already won. Hah! CA and the NY area are reporting lower numbers of deaths and hospital admissions BUT whilst
other areas are increasing theirs.

Maybe the Orange One imagines that if we discuss Covid less, people will think it's gone, go back to work, buy stuff and the economy will flourish. Ignore it and it'll go away. Wishful thinking as usual.

Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH says: May 5, 2020 at 10:55 pm
@ Chris Preston

Apparently you lack understanding of English. As I explained even grandfathered in medical treatments with no hard scientific evidence are considered the standard of care, that is, if a doctor uses them he/she lessens risk of lawsuits. Standard of care doesn't mean a high level of scientific validity.

I guess I am wasting my time. Think of it this way, if allowed for compassionate use advised by ones doctor, then doctor may not be protected against lawsuits. Unfortunately, as something I read a long time ago, even in Colonial times Americans would rather sue than eat breakfast. Just one more sickness of American exceptionalism, so maybe, just maybe, all Fauci was doing was trying to reduce this risk.

Tim says: May 5, 2020 at 10:56 pm
No shit???

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KzRhcjOG1es?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

At least, he had the googles on; Wouldn't want him to get fibres in his eyes.,

Aarno Syvänen says: May 6, 2020 at 12:34 am
Not to mention that CDC closed the lab. So CDC is not part of great vaccine conspiracy, after all. Huge news, I would say. One could mention, too, that Johnson & Johnson get COVID vaccine contract. So Dorit Reiss' plots are not very effective, ater all. Reply
Natalie White says: May 6, 2020 at 10:30 am
Aarno, you made me curious about how much $$$$ and how many companies. A list of the Convid19, oops, I mean Covid19 cash! https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/04/07/here-are-all-the-companies-working-on-covid-19-vac.aspx
Natalie White says: May 9, 2020 at 10:20 am
@Aarno- Sometimes the CDC gets it right and sometimes, well .. sometimes you can't truss it. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/cdcs-failed-coronavirus-tests-were-tainted-with-coronavirus-feds-confirm/

https://www.youtube.com/embed/am9BqZ6eA5c

Natalie White says: May 9, 2020 at 11:47 am
Aarno writes, "Not to mention that CDC closed the lab." Yes, sometimes they get it right. Then, they fail miserably like this https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/cdc-lab-contamination-delayed-coronavirus-testing-67438

Confidence meter less than zero.

Natalie White says: May 6, 2020 at 9:40 am
Hmm . Problems with the Wuhan Lab and those nasty bats back in 2018. Just another coincidence, I suppose. Weird. So many coincidences. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/ Reply
Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH says: May 6, 2020 at 2:18 pm
@ Natalie White

You write: Hmm . Problems with the Wuhan Lab and those nasty bats back in 2018. Just another coincidence, I suppose. Weird. So many coincidences."

From a recent article in the Atlantic:

scientists have also identified about 500 other coronaviruses among China's many bat species. "There will be many more -- I think it's safe to say tens of thousands," says Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who has led that work. Laboratory experiments show that some of these new viruses could potentially infect humans. SARS-CoV-2 likely came from a bat, too.

It seems unlikely that a random bat virus should somehow jump into a susceptible human. But when you consider millions of people, in regular contact with millions of bats, which carry tens of thousands of new viruses, vanishingly improbable events become probable ones. In 2015, Daszak's team found that 3 percent of people from four Chinese villages that are close to bat caves had antibodies that indicated a previous encounter with SARS-like coronaviruses. "Bats fly out every night over their houses.

Some of them shelter from rain in caves, or collect guano for fertilizer," Daszak says. "If you extrapolate up to the rural population, across the region where the bats that carry these viruses live, you're talking 1 [million] to 7 million people a year exposed." Most of these infections likely go nowhere. It takes just one to trigger an epidemic.

Ed Yong (2020 Apr 29). Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/

Note. he links to peer-reviewed journal articles. So, as the second paragraph makes clear, antibodies to bat coronaviruses exist in the population, etc. Add this to the sequencing of the genome that shows just how close it is to the 2003 SARS corona virus and to bat coronaviruses and, as usual, your moronic "coincidences" just lacks any validity.

Note also that his article links to many other good ones.

As I've written before, nature is quite capable of creating really nasty microbes.

Natalie White says: May 6, 2020 at 10:17 am

Oh this guy needs a dishonorable mention, Harvard traitor, Charles Leiber. "has received more than $15,000,000 in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense (DOD)." Our tax dollars hard at work for this POS.

Dude is still collecting a paycheck. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-and-two-chinese-nationals-charged-three-separate-china-related Reply

Aarno Syvänen says: May 6, 2020 at 11:00 am

This is our guy:
Charles M. Lieber
Semiconductor nanowires: A platform for nanoscience and nanotechnology
MRS Bulletin
Volume 36, Issue 12 (Laser micro- and nanofabrication of biomaterials)December 2011 , pp. 1052-1063
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2011.26
So COVID 19 was not involved. One should indeed not serve two masters, DOD and a Chinese university Reply
Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH says: May 6, 2020 at 4:48 pm
@ Natalie White

You write: "Hmm . Problems with the Wuhan Lab and those nasty bats back in 2018. Just another coincidence, I suppose. Weird. So many coincidences."

From a recent article by Ed Yong (2020 Apr 29). "Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing: A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend." The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/

Note that he links to a number of excellent articles, including the two that the following is based on:

"scientists have also identified about 500 other coronaviruses among China's many bat species. "There will be many more -- I think it's safe to say tens of thousands," says Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who has led that work. Laboratory experiments show that some of these new viruses could potentially infect humans. SARS-CoV-2 likely came from a bat, too.

It seems unlikely that a random bat virus should somehow jump into a susceptible human. But when you consider millions of people, in regular contact with millions of bats, which carry tens of thousands of new viruses, vanishingly improbable events become probable ones. In 2015, Daszak's team found that 3 percent of people from four Chinese villages that are close to bat caves had antibodies that indicated a previous encounter with SARS-like coronaviruses. "Bats fly out every night over their houses. Some of them shelter from rain in caves, or collect guano for fertilizer," Daszak says. "If you extrapolate up to the rural population, across the region where the bats that carry these viruses live, you're talking 1 [million] to 7 million people a year exposed." Most of these infections likely go nowhere. It takes just one to trigger an epidemic."

So, 3 percent of people had antibodies to bat corona viruses. As the above explains, it is quite probable that the current virus came from someone infected by a bat. Now, since sequencing of the current SARS-Cov-2 has found its genome quite close to the 2003 SARS virus and to several bat coronavirus genomes, goes against your sick need to blame the Chinese. A coincidence is not even close to any type of proof, except in the mind of a moron like you looking to place blame. And there is a great book on "coincidences": David J. Hand (2014). "The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day." Basically, what someone might think is a rare coincidence isn't.

And, the major blame for what is happening in the U.S. is a combination of Trump and overall American unappreciation for Public Health and, thus, pandemic preparedness. When it comes to cutting funding, first to go.

I realize that real research, logic, etc. have NO effect on moron's like you; but, hopefully, others monitoring this exchange are open-minded.

And as Aarno pointed out, you attacked someone who had nothing to do with COVID. He worked with the Wuhan Institute of Technology; yep, in Wuhan and that's it. It's a large city dimwit. More importantly, he has been charged, not found guilty. I realize that the old adage innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply to anyone you chose to attack. You just don't know when to stop. YOU ARE DESPICABLE! Reply

[May 07, 2020] Coronavirus Mutates Into Now-Dominant, More Contagious Form As Doctors Ponder 'East Coast vs. West Coast' Strains

May 07, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

A new study from Los Alamos National Laboratory has revealed a new, now-dominant strain of the coronavirus which appears to be more contagious , according to the authors. Meanwhile, doctors in the United States are wondering if the harder-hit East Coast is being hit with a different version of the virus than the West Coast.

Emerging in early February, the new strain migrated from Europe to the East Coast of the United States, where it became the dominant strain across the world beginning in mid-March. Wherever the new strain has appeared, it's quickly infected far more people than earlier strains which emerged from Wuhan, China. Within weeks it became the most prevalent strain in some nations.

... ... ...

Emerging in early February, the new strain migrated from Europe to the East Coast of the United States, where it became the dominant strain across the world beginning in mid-March. Wherever the new strain has appeared, it's quickly infected far more people than earlier strains which emerged from Wuhan, China. Within weeks it became the most prevalent strain in some nations.

In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease , the report warned.

The 33-page report was posted Thursday on BioRxiv, a website that researchers use to share their work before it is peer reviewed, an effort to speed up collaborations with scientists working on COVID-19 vaccines or treatments. That research has been largely based on the genetic sequence of earlier strains and might not be effective against the new one . - LA Times (via Yahoo)

According to the report, fourteen mutations have been identified in the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 , the protrusions on the exterior of the virus which make up its namesake 'corona.' The report was based on a computational analysis of more than 6,000 coronavirus samples from around the world, collected by the Germany-based Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data.

Assisted by scientists at Duke University and the University of Sheffield in England, the Los Alamos team focused on a mutation called D614G, which controls changes in spike proteins.

"The story is worrying, as we see a mutated form of the virus very rapidly emerging, and over the month of March becoming the dominant pandemic form," said lead author Bette Korber, a Los Alamos computational biologist. "When viruses with this mutation enter a population, they rapidly begin to take over the local epidemic, thus they are more transmissible." The new strain first appeared in Italy, almost at the same time as the original Wuhan strain appeared, according to the report. By March 15, the mutated strain was dominant. The same was seen in New York, which was hit by the original virus around March 15, but was overwhelmed by the new strain within days.

The authors also warn that if the pandemic doesn't wind down during the summer as most viruses do, it could undergo further mutations right as the first medical treatments and vaccines - should the adhere to ambitious timelines we've been promised - begin to roll out.

" We cannot afford to be blindsided as we move vaccines and antibodies into clinical testing ," Korber added on Facebook. "Please be encouraged by knowing the global scientific community is on this, and we are cooperating with each other in ways I have never seen in my 30 years as a scientist."

David Montefiori , a Duke University scientist who worked on the report said it is the first to document a mutation in the coronavirus that appears to make it more infectious.

Although the researchers don't yet know the details about how the mutated spike behaves inside the body , it's clearly doing something that gives it an evolutionary advantage over its predecessor and is fueling its rapid spread. One scientist called it a "classic case of Darwinian evolution."

" D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate , indicating a fitness advantage relative to the original Wuhan strain that enables more rapid spread," the study said.

Different strains, different effects?

As the Times notes, doctors in the United States have begun to question whether new strains of the virus could account for differences in how it affects different people , according to UC San Francisco professor Alan Wu, who runs the clinical chemistry and toxicology laboratories at SF General Hospital.

According to Wu, medical experts have speculated in recent weeks that at least two strains of coronavirus were circulating in the US - one prevalent on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.

"We are looking to identify the mutation," said Wu, who highlighted that his hospital has only had a few fatalities out of the hundreds of cases it's treated, which is "quite a different story than we are hearing from New York."

The Los Alamos study does not indicate that the new version of the virus is more lethal than the original. People infected with the mutated strain appear to have higher viral loads. But the study's authors from the University of Sheffield found that among a local sample of 447 patients, hospitalization rates were about the same for people infected with either virus version.

Even if the new strain is no more dangerous than the others, it could still complicate efforts to bring the pandemic under control . That would be an issue if the mutation makes the virus so different from earlier strains that people who have immunity to them would not be immune to the new version.

And if the mutation makes it back to those who have already had COVID-19, it would make "individuals susceptible to a second infection," according to the authors.

[May 07, 2020] SARS-CoV-2 is so good at infecting the upper respiratory tract that there might even be a second receptor that the virus could use to launch its attack.

May 07, 2020 | www.unz.com

skrik , says: Show Comment May 6, 2020 at 8:52 am GMT

@Kratoklastes ory tract that there might even be a second receptor that the virus could use to launch its attack.

Even more troubling is the fact that SARS-COV-2 seems to make use of the enzyme furin from the host to cleave the viral spike protein. This is worrying, researchers say, because furin is abundant in the respiratory tract and found throughout the body.

It is used by other formidable viruses, including HIV, influenza, dengue and Ebola to enter cells. By contrast, the cleavage molecules used by SARS-CoV are much less common and not as effective

I do not think that Covid-19 is 'just a flu' and I think that the panic in Wuhan started in the next microsecond after they had decoded the [warlike!] spike. rgds

[May 07, 2020] A new strain has come Meet Spike D614G, the new improved coronavirus

May 07, 2020 | www.rt.com

Fears that the coronavirus would mutate into a more dangerous strain appear to have been borne out, as research has identified that a new, more contagious strain of SARS-CoV-2 has become the dominant form worldwide. The new strain, which has been dubbed 'Spike D614G' has been proliferating in Europe since at least mid-February, and spread to become the dominant form during the month of March. It is far more contagious than the original strain which emerged from Wuhan, for reasons as yet unknown.

Wherever it emerged it became dominant very quickly, and in some countries it became the only common strain within weeks. The paper notes that the rapid global spread of the coronavirus has provided it with "ample opportunity for natural selection to act upon rare but favorable mutations.'' Furthermore, if the virus does not wane away as the weather warms in summer there will be nothing to stop it mutating into more and more strains.

Warning call

The research , which was carried out by a joint American and British team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been released ahead of peer review as 'an early warning' to other researchers. As it stands, scientists studying the coronavirus around the world may be analysing the genetic sequence of the older strain, and therefore it is crucial that they collaborate with this team to get the latest information. "We cannot afford to be blindsided as we move vaccines and antibodies into clinical testing," the lead author Dr Bette Korber, known for her work on HIV, said.

Because the paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, it has been published online on the server BioRxiv. However, the reputations of the scientists involved suggest that the findings are sound and must be taken with the utmost seriousness -- the report is 33 pages long, and short on laughs. "This is hard news,'' said Korber of the findings.

Also on rt.com Covid-19 mutations underestimated, Chinese scientists warn, as DEADLIEST strains grip Europe and US

The scientists' methodology involved running computer analysis of over 6,000 coronavirus DNA sequences collected from around the world. Although they remark that "observed diversity among pandemic SARS-CoV-2 sequences is low'' there were no fewer than 14 different mutations in the Spike protein sequences, just one of which is the strain that has everybody worried.

This is the strain with the D614G mutation, which is probably causing the increased contagiousness. The mutation affects the 'Spike proteins' on the outside of the virus, which allow the virus to invade human cells. For this reason, these spikes have until now been the main target of those trying to design vaccines or antiviral drugs to combat the virus. There are currently at least 62 vaccines in development, and most of these are focused on the Spike proteins.

Wasted efforts

Although there is not really any good news here, this may not be as bad as it sounds. There is at present no suggestion that Spike D614G is any more deadly than the original. The British team calculated that people were no more likely to be hospitalized by it, although they did seem to have higher viral loads (more of the virus in their body).

But even if Spike D614G is not meaningfully different from the old strain, it does not mean that nothing has changed. The problems introduced by multiple forms of a virus have everything to do with immunity and vaccination. If a person had contracted and been ill with one strain, that would still be no guarantee of immunity to another. Epidemiologists could be left every winter having to guess what the commonest strain of coronavirus will be, as they do with the flu.

Furthermore, the development of a vaccine relies on designing the antibodies to match perfectly to the specific 'Spikes' on the outside of the virus. If these are mutated, any potential vaccine might not be specific enough to target that strain. Receiving the vaccine would provide no guarantee of immunity. This possibility is especially worrying to the study's authors.

Also on rt.com Neither 'lab' nor 'wet market'? Covid-19 outbreak started months EARLIER and NOT in Wuhan, ongoing Cambridge study indicates

The authors have also been led to speculate that the wildly different outbreaks experienced in different regions could be down to different strains. Spike D614G hit Italy in early February, probably around the same time as the older strain hit there. Italy has been one of Europe's worst affected countries.

And in America, just a few days after the first cases were reported in New York, Spike D614G was the dominant form there. Contrasting New York City with the relatively mild outbreak on America's West Coast suggests that different strains could be at play. No matter what details transpire, it's clear that in a world with multiple strains of coronavirus, developing vaccines or treatments is only going to get harder.

[May 07, 2020] The Puzzling Questions of the Coronavirus: A Doctor Addresses 6 Questions That Are Stumping Physicians

Notable quotes:
"... Originally published at The Conversation ..."
"... Editor's Note: As researchers try to find treatments and create a vaccine for COVID-19, doctors and others on the front lines continue to find perplexing symptoms. And the disease itself has unpredictable effects on various people. Dr. William Petri, a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia Medical School, answers questions about these confusing findings. ..."
"... Even before symptoms arise ..."
"... Differences in susceptibility to a virus is one of the main working hypotheses regarding the disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a.k.a. myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID). ..."
"... It is possible that the virus is spreading within crowded and substandard apartment complexes. One possible mechanism? Toilets, as an outbreak of SARs in 2003 demonstrated: https://www.cnn.com/2013/02/21/world/asia/sars-amoy-gardens/index.html ..."
"... In addition in poorly maintained buildings just going out in the hallways to put out your garbage, for example, might well expose a home bound residents to viruses lingering on common surfaces. ..."
"... The city of Hong Kong is even more crowded than New York, but last I checked its virus deaths and hospitalizations were much lower. ..."
"... This link has the slides Cuomo used plus more details: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html ..."
"... some aspect of their domiciles, such as plumbing or ventilation; or are they permitting non-household individuals to visit them. ..."
"... It would be interesting to see if there is a connection between the virus and apartments/co-living. ..."
"... Indians and Pakistani's in particular seem to have been hit very hard in the UK, and yet the same can't be said in their home countries. ..."
"... The drug, made by the US company Gilead Sciences, is an antiviral that was trialled in Ebola, but which failed to show benefits in Africa. ..."
"... Here is a study on an early transmission site in China, where incidents of infection seem to correlate to ventilated air flow in a restaurant: COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article ..."
"... Here is a not-yet-reviewed preprint of a study of two buses transporting attendees to and from an event in China. One bus (#2) had a suspected "index patient" (IP), the other didn't. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1255579524047220741 ..."
"... Interestingly, the conference itself produced few further cases, these were all traced to prolonged interactions with the IP. Generally with viruses, some critical mass of virions must accumulate in sufficient number to produce infection, and total net exposure may approximately correlate with severity. Untreated recirculated air bearing virus-laden droplets may lead to repeated exposure and increase concentration of virions in individuals. ..."
May 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. While a list of coronavirus "known unknowns" is useful, I imagine most readers would have focused on other questions, like "When will we know how much if any immunity you get from contracting the virus?" However, this article likely reflects issues that seem to be coming up in layperson discussions .which in turn reflects the informational nuggets that attract media attention.

Originally published at The Conversation

Editor's Note: As researchers try to find treatments and create a vaccine for COVID-19, doctors and others on the front lines continue to find perplexing symptoms. And the disease itself has unpredictable effects on various people. Dr. William Petri, a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia Medical School, answers questions about these confusing findings.

Some evidence suggests that patients experience low oxygen saturation days before they appear in the ER. If so, is there a way to treat patients earlier?

Even before symptoms arise, people infected with SARS-CoV-2 show damage to their lungs. This is likely why low oxygen saturation – that is, below-normal oxygen levels in their blood – occurs before the patient goes to the ER . Restoring those levels to normal is presumed, though not proven, to be beneficial; giving patients supplemental oxygen via a nasal cannula, a flexible tube that delivers oxygen, placed just inside the nostrils, will restore oxygen to normal levels unless disease worsens to the extent that mechanical ventilation is needed.

Young adults are having strokes with COVID-19. Does this suggest the illness is more of a vascular disease than a lung disease in that age group ?

COVID-19 can be a devastating disease to multiple organs and systems in the body, including the vascular and immune systems. A lung infection is the primary cause of disease and death. There are examples of the clotting system being activated and causing strokes, perhaps caused by an immune system responding abnormally to COVID-19 .

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its official list of symptoms. Does this suggest anything unusual about COVID-19?

This new information is due to a greater number of infected individuals being studied . The update simply reflects a better understanding of the full spectrum of illness due to COVID-19, from asymptomatic to presymptomatic to severe and fatal infections.

How can so many people experience such mild symptoms and others quickly die from it?

One of the most fascinating aspects of these diseases is the huge difference that individuals experience with an infection. In our own research, we have found that many children in the U.S. infected with cryptosporidia have no symptoms, yet this parasite is a major killer of infants in the developing world. After an infection of SARS-CoV-2, the severity of the illness is likely due in part to how the patient's immune system responds; an overzealous immune response may cause death through what is called colloquially a " cytokine storm. ." We do not know yet if cytokine storms occur more in one group than another – for example, older versus younger.

The disease appears now to affect various other organs – heart and kidney, for example. What does this suggest?

What we know most clearly is that infection starts only in human cells with the ACE2 receptor – that is, in a cell that is capable of receiving the virus. That is present not only in the lungs, but in other cells as well, including those in the intestine and in the nasal mucosa, which lines the nasal cavity. When those cells are infected, the immune system is activated. A consequence is that both the heart and kidney are affected.

Why are some countries not experiencing as much COVID-19 as the U.S., Europe and China?

I think it's too early in the pandemic to know if certain countries or populations are relatively less susceptible. The younger overall age of a population could be a primary factor. Or perhaps the virus, so far at least, has not had time to spread more widely in these countries.


PlutoniumKun , May 7, 2020 at 10:12 am

I'd add that the FT has a very good free to read article on the 'unknowns' around the virus: From Blood Clots to 'Covid Toe', the Medical Mysteries of Coronavirus.

The Rev Kev , May 7, 2020 at 10:25 am

The thing about this virus is that it seems to be the Swiss Army knife of the virus world. Instead of a simple virus, as time goes along you find out that it has all sorts of weird and damaging effects in all sorts of places. And that just because you get it does not mean that the won't get the next strain.

We aren't even sure how to treat it and financial interest are clouding the search for a treatment. It is like we just can't get a handle on just what this virus really is or just what it does to the human body.

Synoia , May 7, 2020 at 11:41 am

The Eco-sphere strikes back? There are a lot of humans to infect, appears to the virus as a bountiful place to inhabit.

Lee , May 7, 2020 at 10:34 am

Differences in susceptibility to a virus is one of the main working hypotheses regarding the disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a.k.a. myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID).

The assumption is that the symptoms represent a relatively rare immune system over-reaction in a relatively small percentage of the population to a viruses that in the vast majority of persons is part of their normal viral load producing no symptoms.

Hana M , May 7, 2020 at 10:50 am

Yet another puzzling note on Coronavirus transmission. Sixty-six percent of coronavirus hospital admissions in New York in a recent study cited by Gov. Cuomo, were people who had been staying home. Most of the cases were elderly, and either retired or unemployed. The vast majority had other conditions. And African-Americans and Hispanics were disproportionately affected. My apologies for not linking to the original study–I'm still trying to track it down.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/05/06/majority-of-new-coronavirus-cases-in-new-york-are-from-people-staying-at-home-not-traveling-or-working/#792178af1655

It is possible that the virus is spreading within crowded and substandard apartment complexes. One possible mechanism? Toilets, as an outbreak of SARs in 2003 demonstrated: https://www.cnn.com/2013/02/21/world/asia/sars-amoy-gardens/index.html

In addition in poorly maintained buildings just going out in the hallways to put out your garbage, for example, might well expose a home bound residents to viruses lingering on common surfaces.

Bob Hertz , May 7, 2020 at 10:54 am

The city of Hong Kong is even more crowded than New York, but last I checked its virus deaths and hospitalizations were much lower.

Hana M , May 7, 2020 at 4:26 pm

Hong Kong and New York are completely different on so many levels apart from population density. The differences are more instructive than the similarities. Hong Kong had a devastating experience with the SARs coronovirus epidemic in 2003 so they had a much clearer idea what they were dealing with; much of the early response (masks, increased social hygiene) was a bottom up response by people who had gone through it before.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/coronavirus-sense-of-crisis-scars-from-sars-help-keep-cases-in-hong-kong-lower-than

The HK response to COVID-19 was also earlier, more targeted, both more draconian in some ways and much less so in others.

https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/How-Hong-Kong-kept-COVID-19-at-bay-15254007.php .

Still, the two apartment building outbreaks I've referenced in these threads both occurred in Hong Kong.

Hana M , May 7, 2020 at 10:58 am

This link has the slides Cuomo used plus more details: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html

Hana M , May 7, 2020 at 11:00 am

What a surprise! You're on your own, says Cuomo.

'"Much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself. Everything is closed down, government has done everything it could, society has done everything it could. Now it's up to you," Cuomo said.'

IsabelPS , May 7, 2020 at 11:13 am

"How can so many people experience such mild symptoms and others quickly die from it?"

There seems to be another possibility, that SARS-CoV-2 can infect both the upper respiratory tract (like the coronavirus responsible for the common cold) and the lower respiratory tract, eventually causing pneumonia (like the SARS-CoV)

anon in so cal , May 7, 2020 at 12:38 pm

This is an alarming development, not least because anti lockdown GOP and Libertarian types have jumped on it to argue that the lockdowns are misguided. The news item raises many questions, such as, are the afflicted individuals getting the virus from groceries; some aspect of their domiciles, such as plumbing or ventilation; or are they permitting non-household individuals to visit them. Obviously, more detailed data are needed.

PlutoniumKun , May 7, 2020 at 11:02 am

It would be interesting to see if there is a connection between the virus and apartments/co-living.

The one thing for sure is that this virus is extremely contagious for those who are vulnerable. A colleague of mine cocooned himself with his two elderly parents in their detached suburban house at the very beginning of this, back in late February (he could see it coming). I know he was very cautious in order to protect them. But both his parents died from it over the last 2 weeks, and he is only just recovering from it. So far as I know, he has no idea how the infection got into the house.

Synoia , May 7, 2020 at 11:50 am

Is the address data for the death available? It would be interesting to look for correlation between Covid deaths and the ages of the apartment complex.

Hana M , May 7, 2020 at 12:53 pm

What a terrifying story! Really we are so far behind on the basic public health detective work and analysis that we need to do to beat this.

rtah100 , May 7, 2020 at 5:12 pm

We have been isolating since mid- March. All food delivered and disinfected, post heat-treated. Never eaten a healthier diet or taken more vitamins. Been out (beach and moor) just a handful of times, no contact, always hand sanitizer etc.

Nevertheless, still had three colds!

Viruses are damn infectious.

Also, pace the Kawasaki-like syndrome in children putatively linked to sars-cov-2, true Kawasaki syndrome has no known causal agent but it is believed to be infectious in origin because it is reliably linked to wind: when it blows from central Asia, cases spike in Japan and Hawaii.

Could Sars-cov-2 be hitching a ride on the wind / pollen and infecting people long distance?

Oso , May 7, 2020 at 12:20 pm

Hana M, good post and links

"It is possible that the virus is spreading within crowded and substandard apartment complexes. One possible mechanism? Toilets, as an outbreak of SARs in 2003 demonstrated"

brought to mind one of the possible causes among my community (field workers). porta pottys are badly maintained as well as in short supply. among the many hazards, also particle board living quarters where people sleep in shifts.

Oso , May 7, 2020 at 1:45 pm

you're welcome Hana M.
also, along similar lines a group of us here in oakland (with some city council buy in) are asking for a black new deal dealing with covid-19. demands are specific as well as linked to available funding. i'll share them if ur interested.

Oregoncharles , May 7, 2020 at 4:08 pm

We've been having groceries and other items delivered; one just arrived. This leads to a big disinfecting operation, focused on containers, sacks, etc. I even wash all the veggies before bringing them in. It's more trouble than doing the shopping was, but so far it's worked. We're healthy so far, salt over shoulder.

Fortunately there's minimal infection here, but it is present.

I'm just thinking if you DON'T disinfect the packaging and then your hands, you might well introduce the virus.

Ignacio , May 7, 2020 at 6:18 pm

Indeed, two weeks after a lockdown most hospitalizations must be originated in contagions inside houses or residential buildings where most direct or indirect contacts occur. This suggests that fomites-led contagions are important in Covid-19 transmission. During a lockdown, with very few getting in and out one should basically beware about touching things like doors, elevator buttons, or light switches rather than breathing contaminated air. In buildings with wealthy residents someone will be paid to keep all these surfaces clean once or twice a day but in less wealthy sites it has to be done by oneself.

cnchal , May 7, 2020 at 8:31 pm

> . . . Sixty-six percent of coronavirus hospital admissions in New York in a recent study cited by Gov. Cuomo, were people who had been staying home.

Anyone check if there is a stack of empty Amazon boxes in the corner? Every one of their warehouses has infected workers, and we all know how much people like to push the buy button and crack that whip.

Hana M , May 7, 2020 at 10:51 am

More on the toilet problem with technical notes and 'news you can use': https://waterandhealth.org/disinfect/preventing-infection/can-coronavirus-spread-through-defective-bathroom-sewage-pipes/

CuriosityConcern , May 7, 2020 at 10:58 am

I had a thought yesterday, and it probably has nothing to do with COVID19, but remember the vaping injuries to young people last year? What if those were early infections transmitted via infected vape devices or accessories? Points against this being true: didn't appear to be any spread among medical personnel treating the vape injury population.

Final verdict if I remember right was some form of vitamin e being in the vape liquid. Points in favor: I thought certain quarters were not satisfied with the vit e explanation. Just wild speculation on my part, but interesting idea, no?

Code Name D , May 7, 2020 at 3:37 pm

I remember hearing a roomer that smokers were more susceptible to covid. Not seen anything to support that though.

ShamanicFallout , May 7, 2020 at 4:12 pm

It is actually now appearing to be the opposite- smoking (and/or nicotine) is something of a prophylactic. There have been several links floating around here discussing this. Not sure how definite the conclusions though.

Also, I am untrained in any of this stuff, though have been following, but it seems that something that hits a small majority of people very hard, while so many seem to not even know they have it, says to me it's some specific genetic issue.

Hayek's Heelbiter , May 7, 2020 at 11:17 am

https://www.the-scientist.com/research-round-up/could-the-black-death-protect-against-hiv-54468

Strangely enough, one possible explanation of why ethnic minorities are more susceptible to Corona virus is the same reason that Northern Europeans seem to have greater resistance to HIV. Corona virus and HIV both are single-stranded RNA viruses. (And why remdesivir, effective against Ebola [a double-stranded RNA virus] is also showing effectiveness against Corona virus).

If you are alive today and have Northern European ancestry, they were quite likely survivors of the Black Death with a mutation that disables CCR-5 . It's Evolution 101.

Africa, Asia and the Americas were never exposed to the plague with the same virulence that Northern Europe was, and thus populations there did not develop the same level of of immunity that has lingered in people with Northern European ancestry.

As this is already a plausible theory for HIV, I have been unable to find the same research on Coronavirus as to whether people who are immune to it somehow have similarly disabled receptors on ACE-2.

Synoia , May 7, 2020 at 11:48 am

How could the two Black Death plagues, the 1347one and the 1665 affect your hypothesis?

I believe the 1347 plague was not brought to the west by sea, as it predates the Portuguese exploration of the sea route to the orient.

The Historian , May 7, 2020 at 12:03 pm

There are many good books on the Black Plague of 1347 and how it originated and spread. The most common theory is that it came with the Huns as they attacked shipping ports on the Black Sea which were connected to the overland shipping routes to China. Yes, Europe had trade with the Orient before the Portuguese rounded Africa. And then the ships in the Black Sea started bringing it west to ports in Italy and beyond.

For a simple yet historically accepted theory of the Black Plague, there is a well done course on Great Courses Plus, as well as a ton of written histories. Just search your favorite bookstore.

Harold , May 7, 2020 at 2:31 pm

By "Huns" do you mean Mongols? The disease is endemic to the grasslands of Mongolia and also the Western United States. Supposedly Genoese traders brought it to Constantinople from their ports in the Crimea, I thought.

The Historian , May 7, 2020 at 6:19 pm

Yes, it is probably more correct to call them Mongols because that is who they were fighting under, although some of the midieval historians that I have been reading called them Tartars and Huns, based on what tribes they belonged to. And Caffa, the city where the plague probably got its foothold, was both in Crimea and a port on the Black Sea. And yes, it did strike Constantinople first but since the topic was Europe proper, I just stated that ships brought it to Italy.

Hayek's Heelbiter , May 7, 2020 at 12:12 pm

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mutant-genes-behind-the-black-death/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/02/black-death-left-mark-human-genome

PlutoniumKun , May 7, 2020 at 1:01 pm

I'm not really convinced – for one thing I'd always understood that the Black Death did hit many other populations, they just weren't recorded so well (I can stand corrected by this, I don't know the latest research). It also doesn't explain why so far the home countries of those ethnicities that have been hit so hard in the west – East Asians, Iranians, SE Asians, have so far not been hit so hard by Covid. Indians and Pakistani's in particular seem to have been hit very hard in the UK, and yet the same can't be said in their home countries. This is why I suspect that a mix of socio economic (there is evidence that non-white healthcare workers are more likely to be put on the frontline), plus dietary/vitamin D related explanations may be stronger.

But its an interesting theory, nonetheless.

Synoia , May 7, 2020 at 1:28 pm

East Asians, Iranians, SE Asians, have so far not been hit so hard by Covid. Indians and Pakistani's in particular seem to have been hit very hard in the UK, and yet the same can't be said in their home countries.

Ambient Temperatures are very different, and there are some reports of less virulence in hotter climates.

PlutoniumKun , May 7, 2020 at 2:13 pm

Iran and a large chunk of Pakistan is actually quite cold in winter and early Spring. Tehran temperatures only went above a max of 20C in the last 2 weeks or so. Much of the temperature range of that region is not all that different from the inland cities of northern Italy and Spain.

HotFlash , May 7, 2020 at 4:53 pm

Indians and Pakistani's in particular seem to have been hit very hard in the UK, and yet the same can't be said in their home countries.

I wonder, are there differenced betw first or second generation immigrants? Age groups? Another factor that seems to correlate is vaccination for tuberculosis. The BCG vaccine (which is the only tuberculosis vaccine, although there are several strains and manufacturers of it) is mandatory in a number of countries, including India and Pakistan. Some countries never did it, and others have ended or limited their TB vaccination programs as cases of TB diminished.

There are lots of variables to work out -- lockdown, distancing, age of population, co-morbidities, yada yada. But just doing a deeper dive into Spain is interesting. Universal vaccination program started in 1965 for all newborns, no booster, and stopped in 1981, except for at-risk children. So that is a cohort of approx 49 to 55 year olds vaccinated. It would be interesting to see if the mortality rate was different in that group. Bonus! Basque region children are automatically considered 'at-risk' and have been vaccinated up to present! We have a control group! Would love to see data on that.

Here are the charts, people, go crazy. 91-divoc , this is deaths normalized for population, and the BCG World Atlas .

Bsoder , May 7, 2020 at 2:27 pm

Too bad Evolution 101 or 202 is not taught in red states, just not how god does things.

Science Officer Smirnoff , May 7, 2020 at 4:02 pm

Reply to Hayek's Heelbiter
May 7, 2020 at 11:17 am
On remdesivir:
The drug, made by the US company Gilead Sciences, is an antiviral that was trialled in Ebola, but which failed to show benefits in Africa. -- The Guardian Thu 23 Apr 2020 15.35 EDT
[emphasis added]

Hayek's Heelbiter , May 7, 2020 at 6:55 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remdesivir
Nevertheless (emphasis mine)

As an adenosine nucleotide triphosphate analog, the active metabolite of remdesivir interferes with the action of viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and evades proofreading by viral exoribonuclease its predominant effect (as in Ebola) is to induce an irreversible chain termination. Unlike with many other chain terminators, this is not mediated by preventing addition of the immediately subsequent nucleotide, but is instead delayed, occurring after five additional bases have been added to the growing RNA chain.[56] Hence remdesivir is classified as a delayed chain terminator.

[56] Tchesnokov EP, Feng JY, Porter DP, Götte M (April 2019). "Mechanism of Inhibition of Ebola Virus RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase by Remdesivir". Viruses. 11 (4): 326. doi:10.3390/v11040326. PMC 6520719. PMID 30987343.

Carolinian , May 7, 2020 at 1:01 pm

A useful discussion of the models versus evidence schools of epidemiology. While the evidence school sounds a lot more like science, the models school currently has the upper hand given the emergency nature of the response. Are they "assuming a can opener?"

https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/jonathan-fuller-models-v-evidence

Cuibono , May 7, 2020 at 1:17 pm

My questions

  1. how important is asymptomatic transmission?
  2. what is the relative importance of different locales of transmission
  3. does prior SARS infection provide protection

Ignacio , May 7, 2020 at 6:50 pm

Your first two questions are unfortunately very difficult to address.

I think asymptomatic or nearly asymptomatic direct transmission is very important when there is not awareness of disease in the community. Then, there is fomites-led transmission which is even more elusive than asymptomatic direct transmission. So, when you detect someone with symptoms in a community if then everyone is tested it is almost certain some more will show positive. A couple of days later some many more will. So when first symptoms appear everyone must be isolated from each other, clean all surfaces, masks mandatory, and if the community includes some medical and other care full protection by and for the providers. Suddenly the community transforms into something resembling a military camp in wartime.

What i find most difficult is to decide what discipline to keep BEFORE the first case appears.

John k , May 7, 2020 at 2:03 pm

Everybody's different, flu only kills a very small fraction, granted elderly get shots. Maybe some differences are nutritional.

My thought is that there is a wide variety of vitamin d and zinc levels in those that get the virus, and that low levels worsen the outcome. And maybe nicotine also provides protection.

Diets low in red meat and oysters typically mean low zinc, plus local soils may be low, too I saw an indication North American soils are generally low. Poor people on cheap diets likely get little red meat. Hiding inside means low vit d, plus many seniors like me anyway seek shade to avoid harmful rays. And most living seniors stopped smoking, so no nicotine input.

I take vit d, plus zinc in a multi, have zinc lozenges on hand if I get symptoms, and if they worsen would add nicotine patch.

Bsoder , May 7, 2020 at 2:32 pm

American soils remain the richest in the world. Zinc would be a mineral and mined. There's no evidence based data to indicate for people in general zinc going to do anything. But if makes you happy sure why not. I'd ask my doc for a blood test on minerals and a vitamin panel. Then you'd know.

rd , May 7, 2020 at 7:31 pm

It is a function of regional geology. The northern US and Canada were largely glaciated and the soils are very recent (<100,000 years old) and so have not leached their nutrients and miinerals out. The rolling farmed plains of Western NY, OH, IL, KS, NE, etc. are glacial till plains or old glacial lakebeds. The Russian steppes are similar. Much of the major floodplains come from such soils and are rich as well (e.g. Mississippi).

Much of the South and California are old soils that are classified as "residual", basically bedrock weathered in place with a lot of leaching over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. These regions often have limited crops that can be grown or require a lot of fertilizer and maintenance. The same issues hold true for much ot the tropics (the reason why the Amazon rainforest has slash and burn agriculture to open up new areas that are temporarily rich.

Bob , May 7, 2020 at 2:39 pm

Regarding why are some countries not experiencing as much COVID-19 as the U.S., Europe and China, my personal non-scientifcally vetted opinion is that this this virus spreads indoors. Fresh air, ozone and UV radiation are all natural disinfectants. Outdoors, coughs and sneezes are dispersed via the wind.

This could also explain why the disease is concentrated in urban settings like NYC, present in warm weather locations like Singapore and implies it won't necessarily go away come the summer. On the other hand, the poorest citizens in the poorest countries spend a lot of time outdoors and don't seem to be as hard hit. Though this has been attributed to a lack of testing, their homes aren't hermetically sealed and climate controlled like those in the US, Europe or China which I believe leads to a lower infection rate. That being said, people who live in urban slums are certainly vulnerable.

Moshe Braner , May 7, 2020 at 3:59 pm

There is also the issue, recently somewhat in the news, of different genetic variants of the virus. I've heard the claim that that explains why NY has been hit harder than the US West Coast – that the variant in NY supposedly came from Italy, while the West Coast got it from China. Of course they also spend more time outdoors on the West Coast than in NY, especially in February.

WhoaMolly , May 7, 2020 at 3:40 pm

I wonder if air conditioning systems could be contributing to infections by recirculating the air inside buildings.

My reasoning:

rd , May 7, 2020 at 7:33 pm

Commercial real estate is probably going to have to increase their fresh air exchange and potentially install electrostatic filters if they don't have them. Without that, offices are likely to be unhealthy.

neo-realist , May 7, 2020 at 10:05 pm

Offices have been unhealthy, air wise, for years. We just cough, hack, adapt, deal.

dk , May 7, 2020 at 7:41 pm

The short answer is yes.

The term for the motile form of a virus is virion , one or more strands for RNA (of DNA but SARS-CoV-19 is RNA) enclosed in a fatty lipid capsule ("capsid"), usually with protruding receptors with which the virion can attach to and inject it RNA strand into a host cell. Coronaviruses have characteristically prominent "spikes," receptors that extend beyond the capsid surface.

Basically, virions are little blobs of fat. When exposed directly to air they quickly rancidify and the exposed RNA strand disintegrates. Riding air pollution particles is possible but unlikely, as many of these kinds of particles have surfaces antagonistic to the fatty capsid. However, exhaled particulate droplets suspended in air can pass through coarse filtration. HEPA filters are designed to trap such droplets, UV irradiation can "cook" them.

Here is a study on an early transmission site in China, where incidents of infection seem to correlate to ventilated air flow in a restaurant: COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

The Figure 1 illustration helps to visualize this: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764-f1

Here is a not-yet-reviewed preprint of a study of two buses transporting attendees to and from an event in China. One bus (#2) had a suspected "index patient" (IP), the other didn't. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1255579524047220741

From the article: "In both buses and conference rooms, central air-conditioners were in indoor re-circulation mode."

Interestingly, the conference itself produced few further cases, these were all traced to prolonged interactions with the IP. Generally with viruses, some critical mass of virions must accumulate in sufficient number to produce infection, and total net exposure may approximately correlate with severity. Untreated recirculated air bearing virus-laden droplets may lead to repeated exposure and increase concentration of virions in individuals.

[May 07, 2020] As of a few weeks ago in one NJ hospital Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine) was the standard treatment, along with azithromycin and zinc which is the most common protocol.

May 07, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Valissa , 06 May 2020 at 06:03 PM

Eakens, thanks for the link to the Plandemic video! I was chatting with my sister today and she recommended it as well.

BTW, my sister is a nurse in NJ in a hospital about 60 mi south of NYC near the shore. Several wards in her hospital were converted to ICUs to handle the influx of covid patients, so I have been asking her what meds they are given. As of a few weeks ago Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine) was the standard treatment, along with azithromycin and zinc which is the most common protocol. Most patients are getting this and to quote her directly: "It's standard treatment and saving lives daily." She is perplexed by the politicization. While she is a conservative, the great majority of her coworkers are not.

The other two standard treatments added more recently to their covid protocols are tocizulamab (IL-6) and plasma with antibodies.

Here is a recent article on the tocizulamb, which I had never heard of before my sister mentioned it.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/tocilizumab-drug-shows-coronavirus-treatment-promise-doctor-says/ar-BB13HNun

optimax , 06 May 2020 at 11:23 PM
Teachers want their students back in the classroom before they start thinking for themselves. (drum roll). The NYT published a letter from a middle school girl who says she learns better, faster and deeper, distance learning than in class. Teachers have to spend too much time dealing with disruptive knuckleheads. Teachers didn't put up with any crap when I went to school.

Doctors that use hydroxychloroquine as a covid treatment report up to a 90% success rate, and works best when given early. On the other hand, the ebola wonder drug shortens the hospital stay from 15 to 11 days. I don't understand Ain't So Bright's, and many of the "experts," dismissal of of what treating physicians report an effective treatment in favor of one that less effictive. I trust the observations of the doctors on the ground more than some office dweller reading numbers, the most important ones being those in his paycheck.

[May 07, 2020] 2020 US Pentagon study that found that the flu shot INCREASES the risks from coronavirus by 36%

May 07, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

xxx Anonymous IX, 4 hours ago

Do you believe the Pentagon? From their study published this year. From Children's Health Defense entitled "Pentagon Study: Flu Shot Raises Risk of Coronavirus by 36% (and Other Supporting Studies)."

In searching the literature, the only study we have been able to find assessing flu shots and coronavirus is a 2020 US Pentagon study that found that the flu shot INCREASES the risks from coronavirus by 36%. "Receiving influenza vaccination may increase the risk of other respiratory viruses, a phenomenon known as "virus interference 'vaccine derived' virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus " Here are the findings:

2020 Pentagon study: Flu vaccines increase risk of coronavirus by 36%

Examining non-influenza viruses specifically, the odds of coronavirus in vaccinated individuals were significantly higher when compared to unvaccinated individuals with an odds ratio (association between an exposure and an outcome) of 1.36. In other words, the vaccinated were 36% more likely to get coronavirus.

[May 07, 2020] There is evidence that vitamin D is involved in our defense against respiratory tract infections

May 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Lurk , May 6 2020 20:46 utc | 14

From a rapid response to an article in the British Medical Journal:

https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m1101/rr-10

... ... ...

A risk factor that we want to highlight, however, is the low vitamin D levels...

There is evidence that vitamin D is involved in our defense against respiratory tract infections. According to a meta-analysis, vitamin D supplementation (daily-weekly dosage) prevents acute respiratory tract infections, especially in those with 25(OH)-D below 25 nmol/l (NNT = 4).[7]

In a randomised trial on individuals with frequent respiratory tract infections, treatment with cholecalciferol 4000 IE/day reduced the need for antibiotic treatment.[8] The mechanism is debated; however, modulation of the renin-angiotensin system has been implicated in animal studies of acute respiratory distress syndrome,[9] and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 is a well-established receptor for the SARS-CoV virus.[10]

In order to cope with the covid-19 epidemic, preventive measures could be administration of vitamin D to high-risk populations... adults with low sun-exposure and/or individuals with risk factors for respiratory tract infections. Although it may not always be helpful, it is unlikely to be harmful.

24 March 2020
Susanne Bejerot
Professor, MD
Mats Humble, MD, PhD
Örebro University, School of Medical Sciences
Campus USÖ, SE-70182 Örebro, Sweden

[May 07, 2020] Scientists have detected an antibody that blocks the coronavirus from entering cells, providing a much-needed shield for severely ill patients

May 07, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , May 7 2020 10:08 utc | 93

Likklemore #38
Scientists have detected an antibody that blocks the coronavirus from entering cells, providing a much-needed shield for severely ill patients. While not a cure or vaccine, it is still a significant development.
"This is clearly a breakthrough that shows that we are on the right track for the development of a drug against Covid-19," said virologist Professor Luka Cicin-Sain.

"In repeated experiments, we were able to show that this result is sustainable." [.]

The antibodies are currently undergoing additional testing on cell cultures to whittle their number down to find the most effective at blocking the infection. [.]

a drug for treatment, a vaccine unlikely.

Thank you Likklemore, that is promising news. Methinks chasing the holy grail (more likely Golden Fleece) of vaccines has cost the world many lives and needless lockdown. You have to wonder what all that research was doing by NOT coming up with a remedial medicine years ago.

[May 07, 2020] Evidence mounts that outside is safer when it comes to COVID-19

Notable quotes:
"... Health experts say people are significantly less likely to get the coronavirus while outside, a fact that could add momentum to calls to reopen beaches and parks closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. ..."
"... The virus is harder to transmit outdoors because the droplets that spread it are more easily disturbed or dispersed outside in the elements than in a closed, confined, indoor setting. ..."
"... As people go outside for their daily exercise and pass by one another, experts offered reassurance that simply passing someone for a split second outdoors presents a low risk. "The virus can't magically teleport," said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. "It needs a cough or sneeze or something, singing, talking, spitting. ... It's not magnetism or something like that." ..."
May 07, 2020 | thehill.com

Health experts say people are significantly less likely to get the coronavirus while outside, a fact that could add momentum to calls to reopen beaches and parks closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

... ... ...

Murray said that even outside on the beach, people who do not live together should stay six feet apart and that activities such as beach volleyball should be avoided because multiple people touching the same equipment can spread the virus.

That means playgrounds also are a danger, she said.

"While it's great to have parks and beaches, you probably don't want playground equipment open," Murray said.

The virus is harder to transmit outdoors because the droplets that spread it are more easily disturbed or dispersed outside in the elements than in a closed, confined, indoor setting.

"It definitely spreads more indoors than outdoors," said Roger Shapiro, a professor at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "The virus droplets disperse so rapidly in the wind that they become a nonfactor if you're not really very close to someone outdoors -- let's say within six feet."

As people go outside for their daily exercise and pass by one another, experts offered reassurance that simply passing someone for a split second outdoors presents a low risk. "The virus can't magically teleport," said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. "It needs a cough or sneeze or something, singing, talking, spitting. ... It's not magnetism or something like that."

Adalja said some of the decisions around activities such as sitting closer than six feet away from a friend outside on the grass have to do with how much risk someone is personally willing to accept. "There's not some kind of black or white answer to all of this stuff," he said. "People are going to have to make a lot of decisions about what risk tolerance they have."

Indoor spaces such as barbershops are certainly higher risk, though. There are more shared surfaces that could transmit the virus, such as the barber's chair. Another danger, especially in the summer, is air conditioning, which can circulate the virus through the air.

Military not accepting new recruits who've recovered from COVID-19 Immigrant detainee with COVID-19 dies in ICE custody: ACLU

"If you're in an indoor space that has the air conditioning blasting ... that air conditioning might be blowing the droplets straight at you," said Murray, the Boston University professor. Even outdoors, Adalja said people should be mindful of keeping their distance and washing their hands. "You can go to the beach, you can go to the park, and it can be safe," he said. "It's just you have to be cognizant of the fact that the virus is there."

[May 06, 2020] The accuracy of existing tests used to detect COVID-19 is at 70%-80%

May 06, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

[May 06, 2020] Russian virusolog about an interesting form of institutional idiotism: enforcing wearing of masks outside closed spaces

Notable quotes:
"... "Actually, wearing masks on the street is stupid. First, in the open air, it is absolutely useless, only makes it difficult for people with disabilities to breathe. But, of course, in public places, shops, probably, wearing a mask should be left. Secondly, if you do not provide the entire population with masks, it will end in the fact that a person will buy a single mask and wear it forever, which will cause much more harm to health," Zverev says. ..."
May 06, 2020 | vz.ru

The virologist also spoke about the possible introduction of a mandatory "mask regime" throughout Russia, which is written about by the media.

"Actually, wearing masks on the street is stupid. First, in the open air, it is absolutely useless, only makes it difficult for people with disabilities to breathe. But, of course, in public places, shops, probably, wearing a mask should be left. Secondly, if you do not provide the entire population with masks, it will end in the fact that a person will buy a single mask and wear it forever, which will cause much more harm to health," Zverev says.

He explains that after two hours of continuous wearing of the mask, it becomes wet, which turns it from a means of protection to a means of infection with viruses and bacteria. Zverev reminds that in addition to the coronavirus in the world, there are still a huge number of infections that can also cause severe harm to a person, so it is not necessary to resort to such measures yet.

Earlier, a mandatory "mask regime" was introduced in the Moscow region in order to prevent a new coronavirus. For going out on the street without this means of protection, citizens of the region face a fine of 4 thousand rubles.

[May 06, 2020] Chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells

May 06, 2020 | nlm.nih.gov

Virol J . 2005; 2: 69. Published online 2005 Aug 22. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-2-69 Background

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by a newly discovered coronavirus (SARS-CoV). No effective prophylactic or post-exposure therapy is currently available. Results

We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage. In addition to the well-known functions of chloroquine such as elevations of endosomal pH, the drug appears to interfere with terminal glycosylation of the cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This may negatively influence the virus-receptor binding and abrogate the infection, with further ramifications by the elevation of vesicular pH, resulting in the inhibition of infection and spread of SARS CoV at clinically admissible concentrations. Conclusion

Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-CoV antiviral compounds.

[May 05, 2020] There may be hope in an engineered antibody that targets the viral spike protein

May 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Krollchem , May 5 2020 0:05 utc | 89

Laguerre@11

"Every time the virus replicates, there is a danger of error in the copy, which renders it less effective for the most part, much as in human cells."

The issue is that the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein that binds to ACE2 and CD147 receptors is what allows the virus to replicate more efficiently. In a given population of viral particles a less efficient particle would result in fewer replicates leading its mutation to be less prevalent in a population of the coronavirus.

Thus, I would expect the virus to retain its virulence over time which leads us back to Dr Talab's conclusion on how to stop the transmission of a virus that needs a host. A subset of the availability of a host is what happens if the host can also be a non-human such as the Chinese raccoon dog, ferrets or even pigs?

In discussing viral mutations it is important to also note that articles that claim to calculate viral mutation rates fail to understand that statistics is about populations, and not individuals. The mutation rates of a population are not well represented by the PCR test if the mutation is not frequent enough to be seen in the amplification process (38-39 times).

I would not bet against the persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus S-protein and thus its continued virulence given the probability of mutations and the loss of function by a less virulent strain.

There may be hope in an engineered antibody that targets the viral spike protein:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/coronavirus-defeated-experimental-antibody-targets-spike-protein

As for a vaccine, I would not hold my breath and if partially successful might result in more deaths due the the vaccine of the cytokine storm that the virus itself.

[May 05, 2020] What does an anti-body test do?

May 05, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Deap , 04 May 2020 at 01:44 PM

What does an anti-body test do? I just had one last week and awaiting the results - was a cruise passenger and international air passenger during the month of January in a later suspected area. (not Asia).

Here is why I did the anti-body test: (Quest Labs - fee service, no RX- 99% accuracy - drawn blood vial test)

1. Helps substantiate dates and areas of transmission that may not yet be in the data pool.

2. Tracks the rates of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases occurring among the "elderly", in order to see if there is an enhanced risk of not in this age group, if there are no underlying co-morbidities.

3. Adds demographic data specific for the travel industry.

4. Allows possible donation of anti-body serum for research and perhaps mitigation of those who are affected.

5. Personal peace of mind -been there and done that. Freedom to move about.

6. Provides baseline for duration of immunity; resilience of immunity or data showing re-infection can be possible.

Primarily it is for data gathering to help stop the hysteria. That was worth the time, money and blood donation for me. We will never know the true extent of this virus, its impacts, its initial modeling accuracy until we start plugging facts into the "expert" hypotheticals.

Taking one for the team is the way I see it. Will I now become a local Typhoid Mary and our house burned down if this data becomes known? Or will people stop walking out into the roadway in faux deference to my advanced age as I pass by, from our deliciously virtue signaling "progressive" population in blue state California.

turcopolier , 04 May 2020 at 01:47 PM
Deap

"Provides baseline for duration of immunity; resilience of immunity or data showing re-infection can be possible. Primarily it is for data gathering to help stop the hysteria." Yes

[May 03, 2020] GSK partnered with Bill Gates to produce the Covid-19 Vaccine. GSK has been found guilty for several criminal federal offenses, bribes and health violations, and paid Billions in lawsuits including for birth defects brain damage.

May 03, 2020 | twitter.com

Marina Solonos ‏ 8:18 PM - 2 May 2020

GSK partnered with Bill Gates to produce the Covid-19 Vaccine. GSK has been found guilty for several criminal federal offenses, bribes and health violations, and paid Billions in lawsuits including for birth defects & brain damage. https://www. drugwatch.com/manufacturers/ glaxosmithkline/ # BillGates # QAnon # q

https--childrenshealthdefense.org-wp-content-themes-chd-theme-chd-theme

Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate polio, Gates took control of India's National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates' vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously. ­

[May 03, 2020] The spike elements of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus are mutating

May 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Pft , May 2 2020 23:31 utc | 49

Yesterday a preprint of a collaborative study involving medical, genomic and virology researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico-US, University Of Sheffield-UK, Duke University in North Carolina-US, Sheffield Teaching Hospital-UK and the NHS-Foundation-UK, was released. No quacks there.

It shows that the Spike elements of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is mutating

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.069054v1.full.pdf+html

It uses real-time mutation tracking in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, specifically on the Spike (S) protein because it mediates infection of human cells and is the target of most vaccine strategies and antibody-based therapeutics.

It monitored changes over the last two months from the early strains in Wuhan to the specific strains across the globe in conjunction with the GISAID data.

They focused on 14 specific sites on the virus and 2 Spike mutations were of particular interests: D614G and S943P.

It was found that D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate, indicating a fitness advantage relative and enables more rapid spread. S943P is located in the fusion core region, and is of particular interest as it is concerned with spreading via recombination.

D614 is located on the surface of the spike protein protomer, where it can form contacts with the neighboring protomer. The mutation allows from a structurally perspective more easy 'binding' to human host cells through a variety of ways and from a immunological function, it disrupts antibody functions trying to attack it.

Hence the D614G mutation not only increases transmissibility, but also impacts severity of disease.

The S943P mutation however allows recombinant strategies for the virus to evolve.

The study of the other mutation sites L5F, L8V V367F, G476S, and V483A all indicate that he virus can easily and evolve depending and conditions, displaying characteristics that it is even far more potent than HIV. There were also many other sites of mutations that the study covered.

So thats not very encouraging and doesn't bode well. Not conclusive but just means this needs watching.

... ... ...

[May 03, 2020] Ignorant Italians majors do not understand that 99% of coronavirus infections happened in closed spaces.

As long as social distancing is maintained, there is no harm of people specing some time ourdoors. Excessive zeal here is countrproductive
May 03, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Angry Italian mayors rage at people ignoring coronavirus lockdown rules - YouTube


ppermint , 1 month ago

Well, walking your dog around the home for 5 minutes with no other people around, will not spread anything and will keep a better mental health. Italians have gone from total ignorance to total isolation - another extreme. Unfortunately, many people are undisciplined and careless, so there's no other choice. By the way, stop running: you may already have the virus, making any physical effort will only waste your body energy to fight the virus

spywhale , 1 month ago

Its not the people in the open countryside or walking in the streets or relaxing in the park spreading the virus its when people travel together in buses, trains or any crowded environment.

shaun grobbelaar , 2 weeks ago

Ah the open border Italian wussy is complaining about smokes. they stupid

forist1 , 2 weeks ago

The Camorra are scared of the Black Axe , Maybe if the mayors stopped turning a blind eye to the growing threat of criminal gangs on there streets instead of bullying there citizens Italy would be a safer place to live .

NotJerry Beans , 1 month ago

Poor government makes ignorant majors

Michael Lee , 1 month ago

"Sweet coronavirus-flavoured cream" that's a good one, Mayor.

Eagle 4 , 1 month ago

"What do you even need these haircuts for!?" 😂😂😂😂

Justin B , 1 month ago

They've censored all the funny bits. Like how the mayor with the glasses says the f word a lot and the one talking about hairdressing says the casket is closed, noones going to see your new haircut when yo dead' 😂

P.C. Π.Χ.Φ.Ω , 1 month ago

Love them all Mediterreneans-they have such passion and fire in them . Italians, Greeks, Spanish..LOL

Ma Sa , 1 month ago

I love the last part "why people suddenly become runners."

Sam H , 1 month ago

i love their dark humour. viva italia! what a tremendous loss of the country's elderly population, I love italian elderly, they have so much wisdom and charisma. what a loss.

Emah Edabus , 1 month ago

The best one from another clip was: if u have a party I'll send the police with flamethrowers. They're all passionate!

Tristan Lau , 1 month ago

If anyone in Italy violates the lockdown rules will be subjected to eating pineapple pizza, the streets will be empty.

Adriana Giuro-Walla , 1 month ago

"La bestialità totale!" 🤣 Grande Sindaco De Luca!

A BC , 1 month ago

I must admit, I feel so much better working from home than dragging myself to the office. And there is so much flexibility.

Pesi Belau , 4 weeks ago

The best one were the who made references to will smith and the one who threathen to send police with torch to break party out!!

[May 03, 2020] I think this remdesivir authorization was a genius move by the Trump administration

May be it is valuable as a placebo treatment... "Remdesivir (imho) has no effect whatsoever, positive or negative, so it will work as a placebo and a show of 'good treatment'. On the whole ppl are apt to judge that what is expensive (as opposed to dirt cheap and used by lesser folks) and can be touted as 'innovative' (hmm..) is well -classier!- therefore more effective!" An indirect result might be that less /very seriously affected/ patients are put on vents. (Intubated with breathing done outside the body.)
May 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
vk , May 2 2020 19:44 utc | 2
I think this remdesivir authorization was a genius move by the Trump administration. So genial even Dr. Fauci must have immediately understood the catch and endorsed it, as it is probable the drug must not have any grave collateral effects on the patients (as is the case with hydroxycloroquine).

First of all, remdesivir helps one of America's biggest pharmaceuticals (Gilead). Therefore, it will also help American capitalist reproduction.

Second, it will trigger a nationwide placebo effect thanks to widespread optimism and petit-bourgeois euphoria, thus lowering the death rates (though not the infection rates), and giving Trump an election boost in crucial areas (by the astroturf protests pattern, important swing states in the Midwest).

Third, by the time the efficacy of remdesivir is debunked, the Trump administration can simply state they acted with good will, with the "evidence" available at the time, and gently apologize. It is the perfect plausible deniability.

[May 03, 2020] prosperopharma.com

Martin Shkreli has been seeking a jail furlough since early April from his New Jersey (Fort Dix Federal) prison (ie., covid incubator/deathtrap), to do vital research on covid cures. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/491536-shkreli-seeks-prison-release-to-conduct-research-for-coronavirus-cure
Maybe its working for him, but then again maybe not: As of last week He's been transferred out of the New Jersey prison, but is now being held in the NYC "Jeffery Epstein Memorial Euthanasia Facility" aka the Metropolitan Detention Center", (yikes!) awaiting relocation to a minimum security (?) Allenwood Federal prison in PA. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/24/pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-moved-from-prison-after-rule-breaking.html
May 03, 2020 | prosperopharma.com

M. Shkreli states: The industry response to COVID-19 is inadequate. All biopharmaceutical companies should be responding with all resources to combat this health emergency. Donations from these very valuable companies do not go far enough. The biopharmaceutical industry has a large braintrust of talent that is not working on this problem as companies have deprioritized or even abandoned infectious disease research. Medicinal chemists, structural biologists, enzymologists and assay development and research biology departments at EVERY pharmaceutical company should be put to work until COVID-19 is no more.

[May 03, 2020] Another day another hypothesis: SARS-COV-2 is not primarily a respiratory virus, it is mostly an epithelial virus.

May 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Lurk , May 2 2020 20:01 utc | 6

Recent developments and insights point out that SARS-COV-2 is not primarily a respiratory virus, it is mostly an epithelial virus. The lung surface is composed of epithelial cells, but so are many other organs in the body.

The virus binds to ACE2 receptors that are richly expressed in epithelial cells. ACE2 stands for the angiotensin II converting enzyme. By this binding action, it disables the function of this enzyme and therein lies the mechanism of the problems it causes in the body.

A cascade of reactions surrounding the angiotensin system results in the creation of, and acerbation of pre-existing oxidative stress at the cellular level. This is why the actual risk categories turn out not to be asthmatics and other pulmonary patients, but instead diabetics, hypertensics and people with coronary disease.

Many COVID-19 victims die not from ARDS, but from sudden heart attacks, strokes and renal failure, in many cases systemic blood clotting is found. The "ground glass" lung photos are in fact showing pervasive alveolar bleeding.

Check out the latest of many highly informative MedCram videos on the topic:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gzx8LH4Fjic

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/div

[May 03, 2020] Analysis and viewpoint scenarios: COVID-19 prepare for the next 2 years

May 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Likklemore , May 1 2020 22:30 utc | 94

Analysis and viewpoint scenarios: COVID-19 prepare for the next 2 years

Part 1:"The Future of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Pandemic Influenza" by CIDRAP, University Minnesota.

LINK

cited by Sputniknews.


[May 02, 2020] Power of connections: Remdesivir approved for emergency use for Covid-19 treatment in US despite lackluster clinical trials

While a study of the experimental drug remdesivir as a treatment for Covid-19 published positive preliminary results on Wednesday, such treatment is likely to remain just as far out of reach as existing coronavirus care for many patients. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, nevertheless cheered the results, declaring the trial had " proven " that " a drug can block this virus ."
May 02, 2020 | www.rt.com

Remdesivir, made exclusively by Gilead, received FDA approval for emergency use on Friday after appearing to show clinical benefit in a single trial conducted by the National Institute for Allergy and Infections Disease (NIAID). Gilead has pledged to donate 1.5 million doses of the drug, and the stockpile currently on hand will be distributed to hospitals starting on Monday, according to Vice President Mike Pence.

FDA commissioner Steve Gottlieb called the drug an " important clinical advance. " Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the White House's coronavirus task force, gushed that it was " the first positive step forward " in treating Covid-19.

Emergency drug approval differs from full FDA approval in that it is only valid while the emergency declaration - in this case, the coronavirus pandemic - remains in effect. Remdesivir is not the first drug to receive such approval for treating Covid-19 - the malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were approved on an emergency basis in late March. While their use remains controversial due to the vocal support of President Donald Trump, doctors in other countries (and even in the US) have anecdotally reported success in treating patients with the malaria pills in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin, though clinical trials have produced mixed results.

While the results of the NIAID's remdesivir trial reported on Wednesday were reportedly positive, indicating a 31 percent faster recovery time, the full data has not been publicly released, let alone peer-reviewed. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the NIAID, nevertheless cheered the drug as having a " clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery ." He insisted the drug " can block this virus " and suggested that no further studies with placebos were needed, declaring that scientists had an " ethical obligation " to let those receiving the sugar pills have access to the active drug - no further comparison needed.

Could Anthony Fauci explain why the investigators of the NIAID remdesivir trial did change the primary outcome during the course of the project (16th April)? Removing "death" from primary outcome is a surprising decision. https://t.co/ZnK9LiUzaX pic.twitter.com/Rq47FHqGyO

-- Didier Raoult (@raoult_didier) April 30, 2020

Skeptics have pointed to the NIAID's decision to change its trial's " endpoint " from mortality to duration of illness as proof remdesivir is not the miracle pill it is being portrayed as. Tellingly, the drug had no clinically significant effect on mortality for patients enrolled in the trial. Others have questioned whether a drug initially developed as a (failed) treatment for Ebola would have any effect on a totally different virus. Fauci's own comparison of the NIAID trial to the first trial of AZT for HIV treatment also raised a few eyebrows, as early high-dose AZT treatment was extremely deadly.

Another remdesivir trial Gilead has touted as positive in fact showed no difference in clinical improvement between five-day and 10-day treatment groups on the 14th day of observation. While the company suggested this meant more patients could be treated with the drug, the lack of a control group rendered the results all but meaningless. Nevertheless, Gilead flooded the media with positive releases about its two trials, drowning out concern about a Chinese trial whose results had already been published in the Lancet, showing no clinical benefit for the drug.

[May 01, 2020] 47 old drugs that might treat the coronavirus... The Conversation - Sic Semper Tyrannis

From the article: Two potent antihistamines, clemastine and cloperastine , also displayed antiviral activity... ...Interestingly, a seventh compound – an ingredient commonly found in cough suppressants, called dextromethorphan – does the opposite: Its presence helps the virus.
May 01, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

In theory, any intersection on the map between viral and human proteins is a place where drugs could fight the coronavirus . But instead of trying to develop new drugs to work on these points of interaction, we turned to the more than 2,000 unique drugs already approved by the FDA for human use. We believed that somewhere on this long list would be a few drugs or compounds that interact with the very same human proteins as the coronavirus.

We were right." The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/we-found-and-tested-47-old-drugs-that-might-treat-the-coronavirus-results-show-promising-leads-and-a-whole-new-way-to-fight-covid-19-136789

deap , 01 May 2020 at 12:04 PM

Every good linked article - thanks. Important takeaway from very early research finings: OTC cough suppressant

..... "Interestingly, a seventh compound – an ingredient commonly found in cough suppressants, called dextromethorphan – does the opposite: Its presence helps the virus. When our partners tested infected cells with this compound, the virus was able to replicate more easily, and more cells died.

This is potentially a very important finding, but, and I cannot stress this enough, more tests are needed to determine if cough syrup with this ingredient should be avoided by someone who has COVID-19........"

[May 01, 2020] Ventilators are generally not working for COVID-19

Monitoring oxygen is important. If your lip are blue you need to go to the hospital. Pulse Oximeter is a relatively cheap device.
May 01, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
Treatment for the Coronavirus is evolving. The disease is complicated and is not acting like influenza. They are finding that it also causes brain infections, heart infections, and neurological problems. Ventilators are generally not working. So now they are avoiding ventilators for the most part. Sixty to eighty percent of the people put on ventilators either die or end up with additional serious complications.

Instead doctors are now turning people on their stomachs and improving their oxygenation. Dr. Richard Levitan, an airway specialist who has practiced emergency medicine for over 30 years addresses these issues.

http://www.youtube.com

~~~

[May 01, 2020] Welcome to the era of the Great Disillusionment by Jonathan Cook

May 01, 2020 | www.unz.com

Now rogue academics, rogue journalists, rogue former officials – anyone, in fact – can go online and discover a myriad of things that until recently no one outside a small establishment circle was ever supposed to understand. If you know where to look, you can even find some of this stuff on Wikipedia (see, for example, Operation Timber Sycamore ).

The effect of this information overload has been to disorientate the great majority of us who lack the time, the knowledge and the analytical skills to sift through it all and make sense of the world around us. It is hard to discriminate when there is so much information – good and bad alike – to digest.

Nonetheless, we have got a sense from these online debates, reinforced by events in the non-virtual world, that our politicians do not always tell the truth, that money – rather than the public interest – sometimes wins out in decision-making processes, and that our elites may be little better equipped than us – aside from their expensive educations – to run our societies.

Two decades of lies

There has been a handful of staging posts over the past two decades to our current era of the Great Disillusionment. They include:

lack of transparency in the US government's investigation into the events surrounding 9/11 (obscured by a parallel online controversy about what took place that day); the documented lies told about the reasons for launching a disastrous and illegal war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 that unleashed regional chaos, waves of destabilising migration into Europe and new, exceptionally brutal forms of political Islam; the astronomical bailouts after the 2008 crash of bankers whose criminal activities nearly bankrupted the global economy (but who were never held to account) and instituted more than a decade of austerity measures that had to be paid for by the public; the refusal by western governments and global institutions to take any leadership on tackling climate change , as not only the science but the weather itself has made the urgency of that emergency clear, because it would mean taking on their corporate sponsors; and now the criminal failures of our governments to prepare for, and respond properly to, the Covid-19 pandemic, despite many years of warnings.

Anyone who still takes what our governments say at face value well, I have several bridges to sell you.

Experts failed us

But it is not just governments to blame. The failings of experts, administrators and the professional class have been all too visible to the public as well. Those officials who have enjoyed easy access to prominent platforms in the state-corporate media have obediently repeated what state and corporate interests wanted us to hear, often only for that information to be exposed later as incomplete, misleading or downright fabricated.

In the run-up to the 2003 attack on Iraq, too many political scientists, journalists and weapons experts kept their heads down, keen to preserve their careers and status, rather than speak up in support of those rare experts like Scott Ritter and the late David Kelly who dared to sound the alarm that we were not being told the whole truth.

In 2008, only a handful of economists was prepared to break with corporate orthodoxy and question whether throwing money at bankers exposed as financial criminals was wise, or to demand that these bankers be prosecuted. The economists did not argue the case that there must be a price for the banks to pay, such as a public stake in the banks that were bailed out, in return for forcing taxpayers to massively invest in these discredited businesses. And the economists did not propose overhauling our financial systems to make sure there was no repetition of the economic crash. Instead, they kept their heads down as well, in the hope that their large salaries continued and that they would not lose their esteemed positions in think-tanks and universities.

... ... ...

And recently we have learnt, for example, that a series of Conservative governments in the UK recklessly ran down the supplies of hospital protective gear , even though they had more than a decade of warnings of a coming pandemic. The question is why did no scientific advisers or health officials blow the whistle earlier. Now it is too late to save the lives of many thousands, including dozens of medical staff, who have fallen victim so far to the virus in the UK.

Lesser of two evils

Worse still, in the Anglosphere of the US and the UK, we have ended up with political systems that offer a choice between one party that supports a brutal, unrestrained version of neoliberalism and another party that supports a marginally less brutal, slightly mitigated version of neoliberalism. (And we have recently discovered in the UK that, after the grassroots membership of one of those twinned parties managed to choose a leader in Jeremy Corbyn who rejected this orthodoxy, his own party machine conspired to throw the election rather than let him near power.) As we are warned at each election, in case we decide that elections are in fact futile, we enjoy a choice – between the lesser of two evils.

Those who ignore or instinctively defend these glaring failings of the modern corporate system are really in no position to sit smugly in judgment on those who wish to question the safety of 5G, or vaccines, or the truth of 9/11, or the reality of a climate catastrophe, or even of the presence of lizard overlords.

Because through their reflexive dismissal of doubt, of all critical thinking on anything that has not been pre-approved by our governments and by the state-corporate media, they have helped to disfigure the only yardsticks we have for measuring truth or falsehood. They have forced on us a terrible choice: to blindly follow those who have repeatedly demonstrated they are not worthy of being followed, or to trust nothing at all, to doubt everything. Neither position is one a healthy, balanced individual would want to adopt. But that is where we are today.

Big Brother regimes

It is therefore hardly surprising that those who have been so discredited by the current explosion of information – the politicians, the corporations and the professional class – are wondering how to fix things in the way most likely to maintain their power and authority.

They face two, possibly complementary options.

ORDER IT NOW

One is to allow the information overload to continue, or even escalate. There is an argument to be made that the more possible truths we are presented with, the more powerless we feel and the more willing we are to defer to those most vocal in claiming authority. Confused and hopeless, we will look to father figures, to the strongmen of old, to those who have cultivated an aura of decisiveness and fearlessness, to those who look like down-to-earth mavericks and rebels.

This approach will throw up more Donald Trumps, Boris Johnsons and Jair Bolsonaros. And these men, while charming us with their supposed lack of orthodoxy, will still, of course, be exceptionally accommodating to the most powerful corporate interests – the military-industrial complex – that really run the show.

The other option, which has already been road-tested under the rubric of "fake news", will be to treat us, the public, like irresponsible children, who need a firm, guiding hand. The technocrats and professionals will try to re-establish their authority as though the last two decades never occurred, as though we never saw through their hypocrisy and lies.

They will cite "conspiracy theories" – even the true ones – as proof that it is time to impose new curbs on internet freedoms, on the right to speak and to think. They will argue that the social media experiment has run its course and proved itself a menace – because we, the public, are a menace. They are already flying trial balloons for this new Big Brother world, under cover of tackling the health threats posed by the Covid-19 epidemic.

Surveillance a price worth paying to beat coronavirus, says Blair thinktank https://t.co/AAb1nnv4pG 

-- Guardian news (@guardiannews) April 24, 2020

We should not be surprised that the "thought-leaders" for shutting down the cacophony of the internet are those whose failures have been most exposed by our new freedoms to explore the dark recesses of the recent past. They have included Tony Blair, the British prime minister who lied western publics into the disastrous and illegal war on Iraq in 2003, and Jack Goldsmith, rewarded as a Harvard law professor for his role – since whitewashed – in helping the Bush administration legalise torture and step up warrantless surveillance programmes.

Fmr. Bush admin lawyer/current Harvard Law prof Jack Goldsmith goes full-Thomas Friedman, credits China's enlightened authoritarian approach to information as "largely right" and laments the US' provincial fealty to the First Amendment as "largely wrong." https://t.co/1WyQtgE8bK pic.twitter.com/1M03ybxh0I 

-- Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonyLfisher) April 26, 2020

Need for a new media

The only alternative to a future in which we are ruled by Big Brother technocrats like Tony Blair, or by chummy authoritarians who brook no dissent, or a mix of the two, will require a complete overhaul of our societies' approach to information. We will need fewer curbs on free speech, not more.

The real test of our societies – and the only hope of surviving the coming emergencies, economic and environmental – will be finding a way to hold our leaders truly to account. Not based on whether they are secretly lizards, but on what they are doing to save our planet from our all-too-human, self-destructive instinct for acquisition and our craving for guarantees of security in an uncertain world.

That, in turn, will require a transformation of our relationship to information and debate. We will need a new model of independent, pluralistic, responsive, questioning media that is accountable to the public, not to billionaires and corporations. Precisely the kind of media we do not have now. We will need media we can trust to represent the full range of credible, intelligent, informed debate, not the narrow Overton window through which we get a highly partisan, distorted view of the world that serves the 1 per cent – an elite so richly rewarded by the current system that they are prepared to ignore the fact that they and we are hurtling towards the abyss.

With that kind of media in place – one that truly holds politicians to account and celebrates scientists for their contributions to collective knowledge, not their usefulness to corporate enrichment – we would not need to worry about the safety of our communications systems or medicines, we would not need to doubt the truth of events in the news or wonder whether we have lizards for rulers, because in that kind of world no one would rule over us. They would serve the public for the common good.

Sounds like a fantastical, improbable system of government? It has a name: democracy. Maybe it is time for us finally to give it a go.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .

[Apr 30, 2020] The danger of untested vaccine for coronavirus. Rumsfeld and Geliad. We need a new definition for the term vulture capitalist.

Apr 30, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Lysander , Apr 29 2020 17:33 utc | 8

"The real threat isn't the virus that has killed 59,000 Americans. It is a nonexistent vaccine for it."

There are many valid comments in that post, but...call me crazy...I will not be taking any vaccine that's been rushed in a few months. Vaccines take quite a while to develop and the consequences of taking a poorly researched one are quite severe. However, I doubt it will come to that, as even the most optimistic vaccine estimate seems to be 18 to 24 months. By which time herd immunity will have happened whether anyone wants it to or not.

Clearly this is much worse than any flu in the past century. But I don't blame anyone for being suspicious when so many contract the disease either have mild symptoms or none at all.


Ghost Ship , Apr 29 2020 17:58 utc | 11

I really can't see COVID-19 as a bio-weapon, it's far too non-specific for that, but what I might think possible is that someone developed it plus corresponding vaccine and anti-COVID-19 drug to make billions out of it. The longer the release of the vaccine and drug are delayed, the more valuable they become. If someone had released the vaccine straight after COVID-19, it might be worth a few million dollars and the authorities would be very suspicious, but if release was delayed for a few months it would be worth billions and every country is so desperate for a vaccine/treatment they most likely be too bothered. It'd need a new definition for the term vulture capitalist.
Allen , Apr 29 2020 18:06 utc | 16
oldhippie@2

Can you link to that statement/story.

Let's also remember that Gilead/Rumsfeld were the driving forces with the Avian Flu Hoax (Tamiflu) that resulted in scandals and mass profiting- Rumsfeld himself who was once CEO of Gilead sold his Gilead shares and netted a handsome return.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/bird-flu-a-corporate-bonanza-for-the-biotech-industry/1190

https://constantinereport.com/donald-rumsfeld-gilead-the-bird-flu-hoax/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-rumsfeld-makes-5m-killing-on-bird-flu-drug-6106843.html

Stonebird , Apr 29 2020 19:48 utc | 33
oldhippie | Apr 29 2020 16:52 utc | 2 + Allen @17

Don't forget Rumsfelds attraction to vast sums of money. After Tamiflu, Aspartame, and now Gilead there are still the two trillion $ that disappeared from Pentagon's accounts just before 9/11.(The records/archives were in Bat 7, and the thing that hit the Pentagon itself, exploded in the Finance/accounts section).

So statistically, where there is Rumsfeld it is 100% certain there is something that will be profitable. Or should that be, where there is some profit to be made from a disaster, it ought to be statistically possible to calculate the part that goes to Rummy?

H.Schmatz , Apr 29 2020 19:59 utc | 35
So statistically, where there is Rumsfeld it is 100% certain there is something that will be profitable. Or should that be, where there is some profit to be made from a disaster, it ought to be statistically possible to calculate the part that goes to Rummy?

Posted by: Stonebird | Apr 29 2020 19:48 utc | 33

And why is that this obviously crony dude is always absent from scrutiny by the media and Congress?
Why always the same circus of Biden and Trump?

[Apr 29, 2020] The number who fist responders tested positive fpr coronavirus antibodies is 10% for NYPD and 17% for FDNY/EMP

The latest round of 'surveillance' testing for coronavirus antibodies was done on first responders, and found that the number who tested positive was once again surprisingly high.
Apr 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

New York State has tested over 2,000 first responders for COVID-19 antibodies.

Preliminary results:

FDNY/EMT: 17.1% positive
NYPD: 10.5% positive

[Apr 29, 2020] "Four legs good, two legs bad." is now fully applicable to neoliberal MSM and especially to identity politics. But that does not mean that everything they say is wrong

Apr 29, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Apr 29 2020 20:22 utc | 38

@Allen #19

> The mainstream media being a lying machine doesn't automatically make everything they say wrong.

2 legs bad is no more idiotic applying to liberals as it does to conservatives, or mainstream media vs. alt media.

[Apr 28, 2020] Four of the coronavirus antibody tests produced false-positive rates ranging from 11 percent to 16 percent; many of the rest hovered around 5 percent

Apr 28, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

... ... ...

For the past few weeks, more than 50 scientists have been working diligently to do something that the Food and Drug Administration mostly has not: Verifying that 14 coronavirus antibody tests now on the market actually deliver accurate results.

These tests are crucial to reopening the economy, but public health experts have raised urgent concerns about their quality. The new research, completed just days ago and posted online Friday, confirmed some of those fears: Of the 14 tests, only three delivered consistently reliable results . Even the best had some flaws.

The research has not been peer-reviewed and is subject to revision. But the results are already raising difficult questions about the course of the epidemic.

Surveys of residents in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York this week found that substantial percentages tested positive for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the new coronavirus. In New York City, the figure was said to be as high as 21 percent. Elsewhere, it was closer to 3 percent.

The idea that many residents in some parts of the country have already been exposed to the virus has wide implications. At the least, the finding could greatly complicate plans to reopen the economy.

Already Americans are scrambling to take antibody tests to see if they might escape lockdowns. Public health experts are wondering if those with positive results might be allowed to return to work.

But these tactics mean nothing if the test results can't be trusted.

In the new research, researchers found that only one of the tests never delivered a so-called false positive -- that is, it never mistakenly signaled antibodies in people who did not have them.

Two other tests did not deliver false-positive results 99 percent of the time. But the converse was not true. Even these three tests detected antibodies in infected people only 90 percent of the time, at best.

The false-positive metric is particularly important. The result may lead people to believe themselves immune to the virus when they are not, and to put themselves in danger by abandoning social distancing and other protective measures.

It is also the result on which scientists are most divided.

"There are multiple tests that look reasonable and promising," said Dr. Alexander Marson, an immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the project's leaders. "That's some reason for optimism."

Dr. Marson is also an investigator in the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, which partly funded the study.

Other scientists were less sanguine than Dr. Marson. Four of the tests produced false-positive rates ranging from 11 percent to 16 percent; many of the rest hovered around 5 percent.

[Apr 28, 2020] Consumer Beware Coronavirus Antibody Tests Are Still A Work In Progress

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... By JoNel Aleccia, Senior Correspondent at Kaiser Health News, who previously reported for The Seattle Times, NBCNews.com, TODAY.com and MSNBC.com. Originally published at Kaiser Health News ..."
Apr 28, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By JoNel Aleccia, Senior Correspondent at Kaiser Health News, who previously reported for The Seattle Times, NBCNews.com, TODAY.com and MSNBC.com. Originally published at Kaiser Health News

After hearing for months about serious access issues involving tests that diagnose COVID-19 based on swabs from the nose or throat, Americans are being inundated with reports about promising new tests that look for signs of infection in the blood.

There are high hopes for these antibody tests, which detect proteins that form in blood as part of the body's immune response to an invading virus. Communities across the U.S. have been rolling out the results of serological surveys that examine blood samples from people who haven't been diagnosed with COVID-19 to see if they were, in fact, previously infected.

The thinking is, if there are blood markers that can detect when people have been infected, such tests should be able to tell us how widely the novel coronavirus has spread. And equally optimistic: those same antibodies could convey immunity to the disease, signaling someone is safe from reinfection and able to get back to work.

Such high hopes, however, are running smack into the roadblocks of reality.

Infectious disease experts are raising pointed questions about the reliability of the early tests and the studies that hinge on their results. And they warn that state and local governments -- as well as individuals -- should be wary of shaping policy or changing behavior based on any single report.

In the sharpest caution to date, officials with the World Health Organization on Saturday warned against plans for proposed "immunity passports," which would allow people who have recovered from the coronavirus to resume unrestricted travel and work.

"There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection," the agency wrote in a scientific brief.

Even before the WHO weighed in, other experts were urging restraint in interpreting early results of antibody screening.

"The science is catching up," said Dr. Liise-anne Pirofski, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System. "Our ability to make a test at the moment is much greater than our understanding of what those antibodies we are testing for mean."

In the past few weeks, more than 180 academic centers, hospitals and private manufacturers have notified the federal Food and Drug Administration that they intend to create serology tests for COVID-19, spokesperson Stephanie Caccomo said in an email. They've been able to jump into the fray because the FDA in March relaxed regulations for developing tests as part of its emergency response to the pandemic.

But the FDA has not reviewed the vast majority of tests on the market, and their validity, particularly point-of-care blood tests that promise rapid results within minutes, isn't clear, said Dr. Michael Busch, director of the Vitalant Research Institute and a professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

"Some of them have sensitivities that are quite poor," he said. "You may even miss some infected people completely."

Other tests may flag people as positive for COVID-19 when they're not infected. That's especially true in regions of the country with little spread of the novel virus. If the prevalence of a disease is low, less than 5%, even an accurate test would yield a high number of false positive results because of the way such screening tools operate.

So when people see advertisements for finger-prick antibody tests becoming widely available at urgent care centers and medispas, they should think twice.

For one, antibody tests can't be used to diagnose the disease. Antibodies may not be present in high enough levels to be detected in the earliest days of an infection. And because there are several other known coronaviruses -- including those that cause the common cold -- people infected with those viruses could produce antibodies that cross-react with those produced in response to the new virus.

Scientists still know too little about whether antibodies to COVID-19 convey immunity that could allow people to put away masks and halt social distancing, said Dr. Mary Hayden, director of the division of clinical microbiology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Immunity to a virus is a complicated process that takes place over one to two weeks, the WHO noted. The immune system makes antibodies in response to an infection. But the body also makes T-cells that recognize and eliminate other cells infected with the virus, creating what's known as cellular immunity. Those two processes together may help a person recover and prevent reinfection. But it is not yet clear whether cellular immunity is required to bolster recovery and prevent subsequent infection with COVID-19.

"We do not know whether or not the antibodies detected are protective," Hayden told reporters last week on a call organized by the Infectious Diseases Society of America . "We recommend that people with antibodies not change their behavior in any way."

Scientists are hoping, however, that future COVID-19 studies may demonstrate immunity that could last for one or two years.

Concerns about the validity of the tests have cast a shadow on several recent reports aiming to quantify the spread of the virus in specific regions. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed the results of a serological survey that suggested that 1 in 5 New York City residents had been infected with the coronavirus. Statewide, the figure was 13.9%, according to the study of 3,000 New Yorkers in 19 counties who were recruited at grocery stores.

But the results quickly drew criticism. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who directs the city's disease control, warned that the tests could produce "false negative or false positive results. " Florian Krammer, a microbiology professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who designs such tests, tweeted -- and later deleted -- that the results were "BS."

"I think this is too high," he said in a later tweet. "It is possible. But a 20% plus infection rate seems too high for NYC due to a number of reasons. I would think 6-8%, maybe 10% are closer to the truth. It would be nice to know more about the test, its sensitivity and specificity and the test population."

Similarly, two serology studies in California, one in Santa Clara County and one in Los Angeles County, drew wide criticism about the recruitment of subjects and the analyses used.

In the Santa Clara study , Stanford University researchers tested 3,330 volunteers for antibodies showing exposure to COVID-19; about 1.5% were positive. They concluded that meant from 48,000 to 81,000 people were infected with the virus in the county.

"It was completely inadequate to interpret the results that 50,000 to 80,000 people were infected," Busch said.

The L.A. study, conducted by University of Southern California researchers, concluded that 2.8% to 5.6% of the county's adult population had been exposed to the coronavirus. That translates to 221,000 to 422,000 adult residents who have been infected. Critics, however, argued that the study sample was too small and that details of the methodology weren't immediately available.

Busch understands the drive to conduct such tests.

"People are asking the questions: What's the real denominator to judge the case counts and the death counts against?" he said. "People are urgently trying to get data."

Unfortunately, that data simply is not available yet, other experts said. This coronavirus has never been seen before, so the science that will inform efforts to help communities respond and recover is playing out in real time.

"The problem is that the science has not kept up with the tests," Hayden said. "Now we need to do the research to tell what the results mean."

On the positive side, most of the scientific community has pivoted to focus on finding solutions, said Pirofski, who was also on the IDSA call. "We just have to slow our roll."

"This is our first dive in trying to understand what's going on," she said. "I would say it's a start."

[Apr 28, 2020] US attorney Robert F Kennedy Jr says that top Trump advisor Anthony Fauci has made the reckless choice to fast track vaccines, partially funded by Gates, without critical animal studies

Apr 28, 2020 | off-guardian.org

US attorney Robert F Kennedy Jr says that top Trump advisor Anthony Fauci has made the reckless choice to fast track vaccines, partially funded by Gates , without critical animal studies . Gates is so worried about the danger of adverse events that he says vaccines shouldn't be distributed until governments agree to indemnity against lawsuits.

But this should come as little surprise. The Gates Foundation and its global vaccine agenda already has much to answer for. Instead of prioritizing projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases and improve health – clean water, hygiene, nutrition and economic development – Kennedy notes that the Gates Foundation spends only about $650 million of its $5 billion budget on these areas.

It is fair to say that the Gates Foundation has an agenda: it believes that many of its aims can be delivered via the barrel of a syringe. It has been well documented in recent weeks about how the Gates Foundation has spread its tentacles into every facet of global health policy.

For instance, it is a major funder of the World Health Organization and donates to other pivotal players in the COVID-19 saga, not least Imperial College London whose Neil Ferguson produced hugely flawed data upon which the UK government implemented a lockdown, which entailed sanctioning draconian state powers and stripping of people's basic rights via the Coronavirus Emergency Act.

Although often alluded to, Gates's push for cashless societies is given less attention in the current climate but is just as important. It is not only the major pharmaceutical corporations which the Gates Foundation is firmly in bed with (along with the big agri-food players ), it is also embedded with Wall Street financial interests.

The global shift from cash towards digital transactions is being spearheaded by Bill Gates and US financial corporations who will profit from digital payments. At the same time, by controlling digital payments (and removing cash), you can control and monitor everything a country and its citizens do and pay for.

[Apr 28, 2020] Who is at RISK from COVID-19 -- UK DOCTOR -- Covid-19 Vlog #15

Highly recommended!
I recommend to listen to this video in full. It is really good !
Apr 28, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Rebecca Elliott , 4 days ago

Sign of a true expert - admitting when you don't know the answer to something

Mike Rees , 4 days ago

The format you have here with Dr Jenkins is really good. Almost like a podcast. You two have a great rapport

Sarah's Tarot , 4 days ago

Doctor Jenkins is so level headed. I imagine he must be a very reassuring presence for his patients

SuperLkelley , 4 days ago

As a research scientist in the life sciences at Imperial College, this interview is the best source of information I have seen on the internet. Thank you so much.

Daily Occasions , 4 days ago

This format where you ask a question and allow a detailed response was delightful! Watching this conversation between two highly skilled and intelligent doctors who are full of compassion has given me hope. Please do more video's like this ? Well done doctors well done!

[Apr 28, 2020] To end endless wars, I support 75% military spending cuts

This amount of money would end COVID-19 epidemic really quickly
Apr 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
blues , Apr 26 2020 21:26 utc | 31
Howie Hawkins -- Peace and Freedom Party 2020

I am a retired Teamster in Syracuse, New York, who joined the civil rights, antiwar, and environmental movements as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. In 1984, I co-founded the Green Party. In 2010, I was the first U.S. candidate to campaign for a Green New Deal in the first of three campaigns for New York governor that won Green Party ballot lines.

To end the climate crisis, I have detailed an Ecosocialist Green New Deal to create 38 million new jobs, 100% clean energy, and zero carbon emissions by 2030.

To end poverty and economic insecurity, I propose an Economic Bill of Rights: job guarantee, guaranteed minimum income, affordable housing, improved Medicare for all, tuition-free public education pre–K to college, and secure retirement by doubling Social Security.

To end endless wars, I support 75% military spending cuts, U.S. troops home, diplomacy, international law, human rights, and a Global Green New Deal.

To end the new nuclear arms race, I favor no first use, minimum credible deterrent, and ratification of the new Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.

I support unions, $20 minimum wage, worker co-ops, public banks, public energy, public railroads, progressive taxation, net neutrality, internet privacy, ending mass surveillance, no nukes, no fracking, abortion rights, student and medical debt relief, decriminalizing drugs, ending mass incarceration, police under community control, immigrant amnesty, African-American reparations, Indian and Mexican-American treaty rights, whistleblower and political prisoner pardons, and presidential elections by National Popular Vote using Ranked-Choice Voting. [Ranked Choice Voting is a huge fraud -- which many well-meaning people fall for]
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So --

HowieHawkins20 -- Account suspended -- Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules

You catching on yet?

[Apr 28, 2020] SARS-CoV-2 might cause cell necrosis in endothelial tissue.

Apr 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Apr 27 2020 0:05 utc | 50

I had posted this comment at the 'coronavirus and smoking' thread, but it looks like it may be a major advance on understanding COVID-19 and how it affects the body so will post it here as well.

http://www.en.usz.ch/media/press-releases/pages/covid-19-endotheliitis.aspx

Varga has been able to use an electron microscope to verify for the first time that SARS-CoV-2 is present and causes cell necrosis in endothelial tissue.

Endothelial tissue is a cell layer that acts as a protective shield in blood vessels and regulates and balances out various processes in the microvessels. The disruption of this regulatory process can, for example, cause circulatory disorders in organs and body tissue, resulting in cellular necrosis and thus to the death of these organs or tissue...

... This means that the virus not only triggers the inflammation of the lungs, which then causes further complications, but is also directly responsible for systemic endotheliitis, an inflammation of all endothelial tissue in the body which affects all vessel beds – in heart, brain, lung and renal vessels as well as vessels in the intestinal tract....

...The endothelial tissue of younger patients is usually capable of coping well with the attacks launched by the virus. The situation is different for patients suffering from hypertension, diabetes, heart failure or coronary heart diseases, all of which have one thing in common – their endothelial function is markedly impaired. If patients such as these become infected with SARS-COV-2, they will be particularly at risk, as their already weakened endothelial function will diminish even further, especially during the phase in which the virus reproduces the most.

[Apr 28, 2020] Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI) is an interesting idea

Apr 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Pft , Apr 27 2020 0:40 utc | 54

Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI) is an interesting idea.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4783265/

It was actually quite a thing in the 1940's and 1950's for diseases like septicemia, pneumonia, tuberculosis, arthritis, asthma and even poliomyelitis.

Low and mild doses of UV kill microorganisms by damaging the DNA, while any DNA damage in host cells can be rapidly repaired by DNA repair enzymes.

Having done a bit of reading on porphyrins of late and seeing a NY doctor mentioning that covid-19 patients have hypoxia w/o pneumonia and good lung function got me thinking. This may be due to the porphyrin heme is unable to transport oxygen , perhaps because the virus somehow has displaced iron from the porphyrin (heme) , and makes me wonder if UV light can help in this regard .

Porphyrins are highly pigmented (heme gives blood its red color) fluorescent molecules . Strong pigments are always efficient energy absorbers, and if they are also fluorescent like porphyrins, they are also good energy transmitters.

Porphyrins are more efficient energy transmitters than any other of life's components. In technical terms, their ionization potential is low, and their electron affinity high. They are therefore capable of transmitting large amounts of energy rapidly in small steps, one low-energy electron at a time. They can even transmit energy electronically from oxygen to other molecules, instead of dissipating that energy as heat and burning up. That's why breathing is possible.

The word porphyrin is derived from the Greek porphura meaning purple. The pandemic exercise last year was named Crimson Contagion. Crimson is a strong, red color, inclining to purple like heme. Coincidence?

Could it be that whatever is causing COVID-19 , and we dont know for sure because kochs postulate was not fulfilled on the virus China said they isolated, that it is infecting or altering a porphyrin like heme?

Completely out of my depth here of course. Food for thought though.

krollchem , Apr 27 2020 16:04 utc | 94

Pft@62

UVC light has been proposed as a means to sterilize indoor areas to prevent COVID-19 infections in crowded areas such as shops.
https://news.columbia.edu/ultraviolet-technology-virus-covid-19-UV-light

Interesting comment about crimson contegion. The attack on hemogloblin was reported a few weeks ago but has since disappeared. Do not know if it was true. Perhaps UVC in conjunction with ECMO which involves shunting blood outside the body and then back again may be a means to kill the virus, thus suppressing the disease progression.

[Apr 28, 2020] How air pollution exacerbates Covid-19

Apr 28, 2020 | www.bbc.com

One recent study found that even small increases in fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, have had an outsized effect in the US. An increase of just 1 microgram per cubic metre corresponded to a 15% increase in Covid-19 deaths , according to the researchers, led by Xiao Wu and Rachel Nethery at the at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The evidence we have is pretty clear that people who have been living in places that are more polluted over time, that they are more likely to die from coronavirus – Aaron Bernstein
For comparison, the safe limit designated by the US's Environmental Protection Agency is 12 micrograms PM2.5 per cubic metre , while the World Health Organization has a guideline figure of 10 micrograms per cubic metre as an annual mean.Parts of New York have annual PM2.5 levels consistently above this safe threshold . Researchers suggest that this could have played a part in the scale of New York State's coronavirus outbreak, with deaths as of April by far the highest of any state. "The evidence we have is pretty clear that people who have been living in places that are more polluted over time, that they are more likely to die from coronavirus," says Aaron Bernstein, the director of the Center for Climate, Health, and Global Environment at Harvard University.

The study, which looked across 3,080 counties in the United States, also found people who have lived in counties with long-term pollution exposure for 15-20 years have significantly higher mortality rates, says Wu.

While the study has yet to be peer-reviewed by independent experts, Wu says that the association is likely down to the higher risk of existing respiratory and heart diseases in areas of higher pollution. Air pollution is also known to weaken the immune system , compromising people's ability to fight off infection, according to the European Public Health Alliance.

"If Manhattan had lowered its average particulate matter level by just a single unit, or one microgram per cubic meter, over the past 20 years, the borough would most likely have seen 248 fewer Covid-19 deaths by this point in the outbreak [4 April 2020]," the researchers conclude.

A study of air quality in Italy's northern provinces of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna also found a correlation between Covid-19 mortality rates and high levels of pollution. Lombardy makes up the vast majority of the country's deaths, at 13,325 of Italy's 26,644 as of 26 April , while Emilia Romagna was the province with the next greatest death toll, at 3,386. The researchers questioned the role of low air quality in their becoming hotspots, concluding that: "the high level of pollution in northern Italy should be considered an additional co-factor of the high level of lethality recorded in that area".

You could pick any city in the world and expect to see an effect of air pollution on people's risk of getting sicker from coronavirus – Aaron Bernstein
These are not the first studies to highlight a substantial link between air pollution levels and deaths from viral diseases. A 2003 study found that patients with Sars, a respiratory virus closely related to Covid-19, were 84% more likely to die if they lived in areas with high levels of pollution.

[Apr 27, 2020] I checked just now and today the CDC has removed 'smoking' as part of the list of conditions that make ppl vulnerable.

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Noirette , Apr 26 2020 18:27 utc | 21

When the idea 'lungs affected by' 'pneumonia' plus 'smoking' plus 'Chinese men bigly smokers (women not)' came up, I posted, this is junk!

Smoking reduces ACE2 receptors, these being (reportedly ..) 'the' or 'one of the' entry avenues for cov-19 virus.

That social media was, is, filled with such rubbish is understandable, as smoking has become in many places a marker of low status, smokers are disgusting ppl, druggies, polluters, child killers, gutter filth.

Note the difference with cocaine users who tend to be quite well off - at least in EU - and get a pass, nobody is screaming your doc is mad high and will cut in the wrong place, or X leader is coked up talking BS...(Macron?)

Yet, that supposedly serious authorative organisms like the CDC in the US (and all the MSM following) blithely announce being a smoker as a condition that is co-morbid is worrisome. I checked just now and today the CDC has removed 'smoking' as part of the list of conditions that make ppl vulnerable.

What about the other conditions, characteristics? They are all correlated with older age, being in a 'rich' country, aka more elderly living taking a pile of pills everyday.

So is having gray hair (correlates with age), is losing 2 cms in height (correlates with age), taking X meds, eating junk food, or more, leading to cov-19 deaths? What really makes older ppl more susceptible to death by nov-19?

None of this informs us about the cellular (or more general) mechanisms of the virus, its attack, success in function of x y z factors or whatever. All very shoddy check boxes (with no solid support) parading as 'Your Gvmt top info.'

Plus, the few stand out group-differences that could lead to some insight, such as death of men, much higher vs. women, are not considered seriously (or only so in a few publications, etc.)


[Apr 27, 2020] The epidemic and the population dencity: among the top 12 states in terms of nCOV mortality almost all are also the densest populated states.

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Apr 27 2020 19:29 utc | 113

@Mina #102
All true, but again, not clear where density ranks in the grand scheme of nCOV impact.
Just for grins - I did a quick experiment on US states. Specifically I compared the absolute ranking of each state in terms of density vs. its ranking in nCOV mortality per unit population:
US state density vs. nCOV mortality

The top 12 states in terms of nCOV mortality - almost all of them are roughly also the densest states.

DC is the densest and is #7 in nCOV mortality.
New Jersey is #2 in both.
New York is #1 in mortality and #10 in density.

The major outliers in the top 12 nCOV mortality is Louisiana (due to Mardi Gras) and Michigan (?).

Other outliers: Washington state: +14 nCOV mortality vs. density - but of course Washington state is where nCOV kicked off in the US.

The 3 island territories and Hawaii are all hugely below their density rankings - that's clearly a case of isolation working.

Excluding those 4, the average state is +3 places in nCOV mortality vs. density.

The top 12 nCOV mortality average average +5 places in nCOV mortality vs. density.

This certainly doesn't prove anything, but is interesting.

[Apr 27, 2020] Unfortunately, this serological test yields very high false positives "due to past or present infection with non-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strains, such as coronavirus HKU1, NL63, OC43, or 229E."

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

krollchem , Apr 24 2020 19:38 utc | 40

Petri Krohn@12

Please do not trust the serological tests!

Several serological studies for the presence of IgM-IgG antibodies have concluded that the percentage of individuals infected with the COVID-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 is 50-80x higher than the recorded cases, due to recovered asymptomatic cases that were not tested during the infection using the RT-PCR test.

Unfortunately, this serological test yields very high false positives "due to past or present infection with non-SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strains, such as coronavirus HKU1, NL63, OC43, or 229E." Yes, if a person has had a common cold they would likely test positive!!!
https://www.biomedomics.com/products/infectious-disease/covid-19-rt/

Other limitations mentioned by this manufacturer include:
(1) Lacks FDA review due to the urgency of testing;
(2) "Negative results do not rule out SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those who have been in contact with the virus. Follow-up testing with a molecular diagnostic should be considered to rule out infection in these individuals.";
(3) "Results from antibody testing should not be used as the sole basis to diagnose or exclude SARS-CoV-2 infection or to inform infection status." "The COVID-19 IgM/IgG Rapid Test can be used to screen patients suspected of having been affected by the novel coronavirus. However, results of test should not be the only basis for diagnosis.";
(4) Only used on fresh samples and tested immediately;
(5) "Results are valid 10 minutes after sample and buffer are combined in the cassette sample well. ";
(6) This test has a low sensitivity, as it has been determined to detect only 88.66% of those confirmed to be positive by the PCR test;
(7) This test have a low specificity of 90.63%, as 9.37% of those patients tested were not SARS-CoV-2 infected;

Other issues with serological testing in the fore mentioned studies include":
(1) Lack of random sampling for age, sex, ethnic background, socio-economic status etc.
(2) Potential of super-recruiter bias from word of mouth of the drive by test site(s)

See also this video by a doctor of pathology on limitations of serological testing for COVID-19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Pv77R3g1E

Given the measured sensitivity and selectivity from the above test one can calculate the following for a 1% infection rate (10,000) among one million people:
Positive cases found =8,866 (0.8866%)
False positives found= 92,763 (9.2763%)
Ratio of false/real =92,763/92,763+8,866 = 91.28% of positive tests are false

Thus the herd immunity is greatly exaggerated in serological testing. For instance, if a serological study claims that 20% of the population has been exposed to COVID-19, the actual percentage of the population exposed to this virus is actually 1.74%.

All such studies using serological testing should contain a BIG disclaimer on the accuracy of the results.


[Apr 27, 2020] Covid-19 mutations underestimated, Chinese scientists warn, as DEADLIEST strains grip Europe and US

Apr 21, 2020 | www.rt.com
Chinese scientists have found that Europe and America's East Coast have been infected by some of the most aggressive Covid-19 strains, as they discovered dozens of virus mutations. These destroy a host's cells faster than others. The ability of the novel coronavirus to mutate has been previously vastly underestimated, a team from China's Zhejiang University, led by Professor Li Lanjuan, says in a new study. The group found as many as 33 virus mutations in just 11 coronavirus patients they examined in the city of Hangzhou.

The researchers say that 60 percent of the strains they discovered turned out to be entirely new. In a worrying development, they also discovered that the virus's mutations directly affect its deadliness. Their research revealed that the most aggressive type of Covid-19 could create a virus load 270 times greater than the least potent one.

Also on rt.com 'Not possible to determine' exact origins of Covid-19, but available evidence points to animal source – WHO

"Despite only 11 patient-derived isolates being analyzed in this study, we observed abundant mutational diversity, including several founding mutations for different major clusters of viruses now circulating globally," the study said.

The virus load is the measure of its quantity in a certain volume of bodily fluid, usually blood plasma. It particularly shows how quickly a pathogen could propagate through the organism and destroy its cells. Unfortunately for Europeans, one of the most aggressive strains found by the Chinese scientists appears to be similar to the one that has spread across the continent, particularly Italy and Spain, the pre-print of the study published on the website medRxiv.org revealed on Sunday.

The same strain came from Europe to New York, which has since become one of the worst affected US states. America's West Coast, however, appears to be infected by another, less deadly strain that arrived directly from China.

Nonetheless, that doesn't mean those on the West Coast have less cause for concern, as even less powerful strains can cause a serious ailment, the Zhejiang University team warns. They note that two of the observed patients, in their 30s and 50s, who contracted a weaker strain, still suffered severe symptoms.

Also on rt.com Worldwide Covid-19 death toll soars past 170,000 – Johns Hopkins University

Most importantly, though, the scientists say their discoveries could affect the development of the much-needed vaccine, because a one-size-fits-all solution might not work in case of Covid-19.

"Drug and vaccine development, while urgent, needs to take the impact of these accumulating mutations, especially the founding mutations, into account to avoid potential pitfalls," the team says.

Globally, the novel coronavirus has thus far infected more than 2.3 million people and claimed more than 170,000 lives.

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[Apr 27, 2020] An argument for outdoor sports

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Apr 25 2020 20:59 utc | 31

Dear B,

I have to say that the last few paragraphs of your post, in which you say that the most effective way of limiting the spread of COVID-19 is to isolate the sick in special quarantine conditions in clinics or hotels set aside for just that purpose, can be used to argue against a general shutdown of society across entire nations or regions, or even cities or communities where COVID-19 clusters exist.

The Chinese information suggesting that 99% of infections occur indoors should prompt builders, architects, engineers and aircdonditioning manufacturers to consider ways in which conventional airconditioning systems in enclosed environments might be adjusted or redesigned to mis fresh air with recycled and recycling air, so as to reduce the possibility of spreading COVID-19 and other contagions (like Legionnaire's) through internal systems.

There may be a case for reintroducing some sports events that are normally played outdoors, and even bringing professional indoor sports out into the open again. Basketball, netball and other sports using a ball and hoop could become completely outdoors in their professional formats like many other team sports, and might attract more fans. Gymnastics used to be an outdoor sport as well. No reason why major gymnastics events at regional, national and international levels can't be brought outdoors: special mats for floor exercises and for protection could be made and used for outdoor events.

Passer by , Apr 25 2020 21:19 utc | 36

Posted by: Jen | Apr 25 2020 20:59 utc | 31

Even back then during SARS 1 some infections occured via the ventilation system.

One chinese report recently claimed hydrogen peroxide vapor in the hospital ventilation system helped decrease Covid 19 symptoms among the patients.

HPV is highly effective for sterilisation purposes, including of N95 masks and hospital equipment.

On the outdoor issue it is known that sun and heat kill this and other viruses, so it is better if indoor activity also coincides with warm and sunny weather.

[Apr 27, 2020] On the point of family or shared domicile infections, this is a good article about the working class, immigrant area of Boston called Chelsea. It's a major hot zone of covid infections. The images coming out of Chelsea are heart breaking.

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Prof K , Apr 25 2020 21:21 utc | 37

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/us/coronavirus-chelsea-massachusetts.html

On the point of family or shared domicile infections, this is a good article about the working class, immigrant area of Boston called Chelsea. It's a major hot zone of covid infections. The images coming out of Chelsea are heart breaking.

That aside, the article shows that a key source of community spread is working class poverty and the types of cramped housing that result from it. Racism and immigration are obviously also part of the story.

But the article also sites, positively, the Chinese method of extracting people from their homes to protect everyone.

The article indirectly indicts American capitalism and political and civic institutions for being unable to replicate those effective Chinese methods.

The obvious implications of the article are that the covid crisis in the US is a social one, that poverty is death, and that the struggle against the virus is inextricable from the urgent necessity of socialist transformation.

[Apr 27, 2020] A two week quarantine in a hotel or public facility during which one is well provided for...It is hard to understand why some people continue to reject this.

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

oldhippie , Apr 25 2020 21:24 utc | 38

"A two week quarantine in a hotel or public facility during which one is well provided for...It is hard to understand why some people continue to reject this."

Because no one has ever seen government behave this way. Because we live in terror of the police. Because in USA there is no public health infrastructure at all and any such program would be administered by police.


VietnamVet , Apr 25 2020 22:16 utc | 53

The only way to combat COVID-19 is good old fashion public health principles of testing, tracing and isolating the ill. Western governments have failed at their most fundamental job of saving the lives of their citizens. This is not a coincidence. It is the direct result of the end of democracy and the rise of the multi-national plutocracy. This is shown by the corporate media's ignoring of the western national governments' failures to institute public health measures; instead, it harps on Donald Trump's letting the light shine inside the body to kill the virus.

The bankers got 4.5 trillion dollars. If a fraction of this was spent to prevent and stop the spread of the coronavirus, 50,000 Americans would not be dead today. But that would require a functional government and taxing the rich, homeless living inside Hilton hotels, the last thing oligarchs want. So, "it is just like the flu". "Freedom", scapegoating", "racism", and "shaming" are all used to hide the truth.

bevin , Apr 26 2020 0:54 utc | 66
This article is worth reading.
https://fair.org/home/economic-reporting-on-hardships-of-pandemic-should-explore-market-failures/

Whatever it is 'a flu', the 'common cold', an invention by the heroes of the Protocols of Zion or a pandemic of the sort most of us think that we see around us and some of us feel is a pure invention... whatever.

It is a crisis of Capitalism, a major crisis which calls all the conventional wisdom of the past seventy going on three hundred years into question.
How has the market been doing?

What do we think of the invisible hand now?


Commodity prices are crumbling, supply chains are drying up. And all that the capitalist can do is to scream racist insults- hoping that the people will forgive the famine if they can be fed hatred of foreigners instead.

There have probably been more strikes in the US in the past three months than there had been in the last ten years. A Universal Basic Income-the revival of the idea that the people have first call on all resources- the polar opposite to Capitalism's insistence that the only thing that makes people work is the fear of starving, is coming. It has to come, and when it does one of the foundation stones of the entire edifice of exploitation is removed.
Next week we will see what happens when the capitalists order workers to risk their lives by going back to work in workplaces that are unsafe, without proper masks and protective gear.

And we will see here whose side commenters are on and how many are ready to progress from trivialising the pandemic into strike breaking. Strike breaking in the name of anti-authoritarianism; strike breaking packaged as 'right to work' freedoms.

[Apr 27, 2020] Hydroxychloroquine controvercy

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

krollchem , Apr 26 2020 3:50 utc | 80

William Kierath@74

The "cardiologists" in this report are either irresponsible, paid by the pharma/vaccine lobby and/or are not keeping up with the medical literature.

Hydroxychloroquine is only effective in the onset of symptom and only in conjunction with organically bound available zinc. The doctors administered hydroxychloroquine in the ICU at a late stage of the dis-ease progression which is too late. They also used very high doses of hydroxychloroquine (without zinc), resulting in toxicity issues as with any chlorinated organic.

The arrhythmia issue may have been a clinical symptom of zinc deficiency:
https://knowledgeofhealth.com/modern-day-zinc-deficiency-epidemic/

Azithromycin should be incorporated as a precautionary as it prevents secondary lung infections but can enhance heart rhythm disorders .
https://www.drugs.com/azithromycin.html

Yes, COVID-19 is not only a sudden acute respiratory disease (SARS). However, it is not a blood infection either! The SARS-CoV-2 virus following infection, replication and release primarily from cell in the nasal passages, throat and trachea does infect lung cells causing fluid buildup and cellular debris, which provide nutrients for secondary bacterial infections as well as current infections with mycobacteria in TB.

Yes the virus does travel visa the blood and can bind to ACE2 receptors in many other organs besides the nasal passages, throat and lungs. It also binds to CD-127 receptors. The proposed blood infection (red blood cells) mode of action has not been proven.

Yes free radicals are increased in the blood in part to the mechanism you mention but also by reducing the vitamin C level in the bloodstream. The antioxidant properties of vitamin C is why a Seattle doctor was able to recover using IV vitamin C along with an anti-arthritis drug.

The principal cause of death is the cytokine storm that several posters have already described over a month ago. Associated with this inflammation of tissues, particularly the lung, is the deposition of fibrin in the capillary bed resulting in blockages and a lack of gas transfer. These blockages cause the blood pressure to rise and even the heart to "explode" if the blood has no where to go.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus-complications#1
MedCram series

krollchem , Apr 26 2020 3:53 utc | 81

Statistician points out gross errors in the much cited Stanford serological study:
https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody-seroprevalence-in-santa-clara-county-california-1f6382258c25

Too bad he failed to notice that the serological test also is positive for other coronovirus infections such as the common cold.

[Apr 27, 2020] Some sanity from Georia Gov Brian Kemp, but differencial treatment on people over 65 is missing; it is also unclear if wearing masks in public places is enforced

Mass sport events still should be closed. The same is true for concert, mass prayers and such. It is generally desirable to move professional sport event outdoor now and enforce social distancing. Mega Churches should be closed until the Second Coming and prayers allowed only on open air with proper social distanceing.
Apr 27, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: "We will allow gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designers, nail care artists, aestheticians, their respective schools, and massage therapists to reopen their doors this Friday, April the 24th."

[Apr 27, 2020] This scientist suggested a drug to treat Covid-19. 'Fact checkers' branded him fake news -- RT Op-ed

Apr 27, 2020 | www.rt.com

This scientist suggested a drug to treat Covid-19. 'Fact checkers' branded him fake news Nebojsa Malic Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic 26 Mar, 2020 06:50 Get short URL This scientist suggested a drug to treat Covid-19. 'Fact checkers' branded him fake news French professor Didier Raoult, director of IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute in Marseille, pictured on February 26, 2020 © AFP / GERARD JULIEN Follow RT on RT Amid a pandemic panic over the coronavirus, evidence for a possibly effective treatment has been denounced as 'fake news' – even when offered by a renowned scientist with decades of experience. Take Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist with undeniable expertise, even if some of his views are about as eccentric as his appearance. Though he may look like he just stepped out of an Alexandre Dumas novel, the director of the Mediterranean University Hospital Institute in Marseille cited not one but three different studies from China showing that the anti-malaria drug called chloroquine has been effective in treating Covid-19 patients.

#chloroquine Pr Didier Raoult : "C'est quand les patients ont des formes modérées, moyennes, ou qui commencent à s'aggraver, qu'il faut les traiter. A ce moment là on contrôle les virus qui se multiplient. Quand ils sont rentrés en réanimation, le problème ce n'est plus le virus" pic.twitter.com/WolGe2o05z

-- Alex (@AlexLeroy90) March 25, 2020

That did not stop Le Monde, France's biggest newspaper, of declaring his February 25 video as "partially false ." Raoult's 'sin' was to argue that the common anti-malaria drug used widely for decades resulted in "dramatic improvements " among those afflicted by the virus.

As a result of Le Monde's fact-check, anyone attempting to share Dr. Raoult's videos on Facebook gets a banner saying the information therein was "partially false" as "determined by independent fact-checkers."

The main argument put forward by those critical of the drug is that more testing is required before it can be officially approved as treatment for the coronavirus. As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts it , "There are no currently available data from Randomized Clinical Trials to inform clinical guidance on the use, dosing, or duration of hydroxychloroquine" treatments for Covid-19.

Which is fair enough, but last time I checked, there was a pandemic going on, with billions of people locked in their homes and all business grinding to a halt across the globe, over apocalyptic predictions of hospitals brimming with corpses due to this coronavirus.

Should any kind of treatment – especially a drug that has been used safely for decades to treat something else, with side effects meticulously documented – be so cavalierly rejected, under the circumstances? Do "experts " really think the world has the luxury of waiting for months or even years for their controlled lab studies?

As for the fact-checkers, shouldn't they have applied the same rigor to the models used to scare everyone into hoarding toilet paper and setting off a depression orders of magnitude worse than anything the world has ever seen?

Also on rt.com Not letting a crisis go to waste: Some seize on Covid-19 to force change on America

To ask these questions is to answer them, yet no one seems to bother. Nor is this sort of selective blindness endemic to France; across the Atlantic, the mainstream media raised their voices in unison against chloroquine after US President Donald Trump brought it up as a possible treatment – apparently referring to Dr. Raoult's work.

They went so far as to widely circulate a deliberately misleading story about an Arizona couple that ate fish tank cleaner – chloroquine phosphate, clearly labeled not for human consumption – as somehow Trump's fault. Some of them quietly amended it to specify the difference, but long after the original story – implying they took the actual medication praised by the president – literally went viral and poisoned the minds of millions.

Worse yet, as a result of this media blitz, the governor of Nevada actually banned using chloroquine to treat Covid-19 patients this week, saying there was "no consensus among experts or Nevada doctors" that the anti-malaria drug can treat coronavirus sufferers. There were no angry editorials denouncing Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, for letting people die or the coronavirus rather than have them treated with a drug endorsed by the Republican president and the media's favorite hate object.

Read more Devil in the details: Media jumps to blame Trump for death of man who self-medicated with FISH TANK CLEANER containing chloroquine Devil in the details: Media jumps to blame Trump for death of man who self-medicated with FISH TANK CLEANER containing chloroquine

One would think the world paralyzed with fear of the invisible death would pounce on every possible solution, no matter how unlikely it seems. That's what we're shown in Hollywood disaster movies, after all. Yet when such a solution presents itself, it is dismissed and denounced as " not proven" !

We're supposed to blindly trust apocalyptic models produced by panic-mongering political hacks, but ignore the man who says the drug brought him back from the brink of death, even though his story can be easily verified and theirs cannot.

"Preferring opinions to facts is a disease ," Dr. Raoult told the French magazine Marianne last week . Just so.

I don't know if hydroxychloroquine works on Covid-19. Dr. Raoult seems to believe so, and he's not alone. In the absence of better solutions – and locking billions of people in their homes indefinitely is not one – don't we owe humanity to at least try? What do we have to lose?

In the three months or so since the coronavirus first appeared in China, there has been a lot of conflicting, confusing and outright false information about it. One thing that has consistently proven true, however, is that the biggest obstacle in effectively battling its spread and treating the afflicted has been the obtuse insistence of the political and medical establishment on blindly following their rules. If the virus is truly threatening to kill millions, as they say, they would not value procedures over saving lives. Nevertheless, they persist. It makes one wonder why.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

[Apr 27, 2020] Magic bullet for Covid-19 Scientists look to century-old plasma treatment, but there are some big 'BUTS' -- RT World News

Apr 27, 2020 | www.rt.com

As the world seeks a Covid-19 panacea, treating patients with plasma harvested from those who have recovered from the virus is being touted as a possible cure – but big challenges still remain, scientists say. It's been months since the novel coronavirus started to rage across China, spilling over to other countries and infecting more than a million people around the world, but there is still no clinically tested vaccine or medication. However, one possible treatment that has been around for over a century is attracting attention, with some scientists suggesting it could be a game-changer – provided that certain flaws are removed. What is this plasma treatment about?

The approach basically revolves around harvesting convalescent plasma, the yellowish liquid component of human blood, from someone who recovered from a viral infection and transfusing it to a newly infected patient.

In search of a coronavirus killer: Can existing drugs really turn the tide in the Covid-19 pandemic? READ MORE: In search of a coronavirus killer: Can existing drugs really turn the tide in the Covid-19 pandemic?

Plasma is essential here because it is rich in antibodies – proteins that bind to parts of the virus and neutralize it. Remarkably, antibodies are produced against specific types of viruses, effectively becoming an "anti-virus serum," Aleksey Kupryashov, head of blood transfusion at Bakulev Center of Cardiovascular Surgery, explained to RT.

The idea behind the therapy is very straightforward – sharing antibodies taken from patients with a robust immune system could help other, weaker ones to recover.

Conceptualized by German physiologist Emil von Behring – the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine – the method has actually been around for over a century. Just recently, in mid-March, Arturo Casadevall of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and Liise-anne Pirofski of the Albert Einstein Medical College championed the treatment, claiming infusions of antibodies could potentially protect people from the virus for several weeks.

Later in the same month, their Chinese colleagues suggested that convalescent plasma had helped Covid-19 patients even on ventilation, but their study was based on only five cases. Is it efficient or at least SAFE?

As health workers used to say in the Hippocratic Oath, doing no harm is key in medicine. Can we be sure that treating Covid-19 patients with antibody-packed plasma will do no harm?

"We transfuse hundreds of thousands [or] millions of blood units in hospitals, and the severe outcomes are really low," Professor Jeff Bailey of the US-based Brown University told RT. The logic behind using plasma against Covid-19 is "very strong" because "a person who has recovered has good antibodies that will block and neutralize the virus," he explained. However, one big issue is that "it's a new disease, we haven't transfused a lot."

Blood donation breakthrough sees scientists convert all types to O using gut bacteria READ MORE: Blood donation breakthrough sees scientists convert all types to O using gut bacteria

Another concern that may arise is that every 200 or 400 milliliters of transfused plasma expands the patient's blood stream. This will present no problem if the patient's kidneys work well, but if they don't, the volume could increase fluid in their lungs, worsening the condition.

But will the therapy work for everyone, given that there are no compelling statistics showing whether the plasma transfusion is efficient against the Covid-19?

"You have to try it, only experimenting can tell us yes or no," argued Sergey Netesov, a leading virologist and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

At any rate, trying experimental therapy is better than "dying on the spot without any medication."

Physicians on the front line urgently need trials to study the benefits of plasma treatment as new drugs are being developed, Bailey agreed.

What you want to know is if this helps survival [by] 50 percent and something else helps survival [by] 25 percent, you probably want to go with the one that's 50 percent.

Dr Charles Rupprecht of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Ross University said " there is no magic bullet" in the absence of peer-reviewed, large-scale, long-term, double-blinded studies proving the benefits of plasma in Covid-19 treatment.

The scientist, who leads the rabies section at his institution, referred to that disease as an example. Rabies immune globulin (RIG) – which also contains large amounts of antibodies from donated blood – is "one critical part of prevention after humans have been exposed to a rabid animal," but it's "short-acting" and is usually used in a healthy patient before "illness onset."

Still, no specific coronavirus treatment has been proven to be effective, so doctors and patients need "the tincture of time," as there are always safety issues to consider in the use of human blood products, he cautioned.

//www.youtube.com/embed/3w_WPHvSOpE

Even IF it helps, finding donors will be a problem

However, the hardest part here is finding and vetting donors, the number of which is appallingly small, especially compared to more than one million coronavirus cases globally. Also, plasma intended for Covid-19 patients must be free from other diseases, such as hepatitis or HIV/AIDS.

"As a matter of fact, up to 50 percent of donor blood is being rejected in most countries," Netesov revealed, citing the example of China – a pioneer in plasma treatment – where almost one-in-10 potential donors had hepatitis. Russia, for instance, has only a tiny number of recovered Covid-19 patients, and maybe only half of them could donate blood, limiting the pool to mere dozens, the scientist acknowledged.

"The number of patients is still larger than the number of the recovered. As long as this situation persists, we have nobody to take that plasma from," Kupryashov of the Bakulev Center agreed.

Finding the right dosage of plasma is equally crucial under the circumstances, because doctors have to know what concentration of antibodies is enough to help cope with the virus. In the long run, however, manufacturers will usually process plasma, increasing the amount of antibodies and allowing doctors to use smaller doses, Bailey said.

Also on rt.com The US was named the best equipped country to deal with a pandemic not a year ago -- what happened there? Who sees promise in plasma therapy?

Health authorities around the world have high hopes for plasma treatment, rapidly rolling out trials and authorizing it for compassionate use – allowing unapproved treatments to be prescribed if a dying patient has no other options, and if the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

In the US, where the number of coronavirus cases has now exceeded 312,000, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has spearheaded "a new national effort" to facilitate the use of plasma treatment. "There are some limited data to suggest that convalescent plasma and hyperimmune globulin may have benefit in the Covid-19 illness," the agency states.

This scientist suggested a drug to treat Covid-19. 'Fact checkers' branded him fake news READ MORE: This scientist suggested a drug to treat Covid-19. 'Fact checkers' branded him fake news

The Mayo Clinic will serve as the lead institution for the program, while the American Red Cross will collect plasma and distribute it to hospitals throughout the country.

In the UK, coronavirus patients are about to receive the experimental treatment, with experts calling on the NHS to urgently stockpile antibody-rich plasma for such needs. France is also set to start trials for the promising therapy next Tuesday.

Russia, too, is catching up with the trend. The country's famed Sklifosovsky Institute of Emergency Care will be the first to try infusing plasma in the coming days, local media have reported. Additionally, the Vector Institute – a leading research center of virology and biotechnology – has developed a test for measuring antibodies in those who have survived Covid-19. The institution has already screened blood samples from 11 people who recovered from the virus, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said.

Iran, recently a coronavirus hotspot, will also follow suit, as will Turkey, where the head of the Red Crescent insists that it could become "one of the world's most effective applications" against the contagion.

For the time being, many other treatment options are being considered by the international healthcare community, ranging from anti-malarial drugs to HIV medication. A range of Covid-19 vaccines are also being developed, although they seem to be months – if not years – away from being commissioned.

[Apr 27, 2020] Covid-19 vaccine may be far away, but these alternate treatments are next best thing -- study -- RT USA News

Apr 27, 2020 | www.rt.com

The most effective treatment recommended by the study, besides vaccines, are antivirals like nucleoside analogs, which mirror the virus's genetic material in order to get incorporated into it and stall its progress. Coronaviruses reportedly contain a "proofreading" enzyme that can reject such antivirals, but there are exceptions to the rule.

Other strategies include blood plasma from patients who have recovered from the virus and monoclonal antibodies, which are made through biotechnology to be clones of a parent cell. However, the latter of those also presents the obstacle of being a long process.

[Apr 27, 2020] Nicotine might have some protective effect against the infection by SARS-CoV-2

Apr 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

hopehely , Apr 25 2020 19:19 utc | 1

.

A French study has now confirmed this astonishing phenomenon:

In the study that two of us are reporting [ 1 ], the rates of current smoking remain below 5 % even when main confounders for tobacco consumption, i.e. age and sex, in- or outpatient status, were considered.

Compared to the French general population, the Covid-19 population exhibited a significantly weaker current daily smoker rate by 80.3 % for outpatients and by 75.4 % for inpatients.

Thus, current smoking status appears to be a protective factor against the infection by SARS-CoV-2.

Nicotine is known to influence the process that regulates the number of ACE2 receptors on the cell surface. Current smokers do have less ACE2 receptors than non smokers. SARS-CoV-2 bonds to that receptor to enter a cell.

The study was led by Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux who is quite famous for his discovery of that general regulation process and other findings. He now plans to use nicotine patches on Covid-19 patients to see if it can help in current cases.

Well if nicotine is the magic protector against covid, then wearing a nicotine patch or chewing nicorette gum will work too I guess. No need to inhale toxic fumes and tar our lungs.



farm ecologist , Apr 25 2020 20:28 utc | 14

The study was led by Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux who is quite famous for his discovery of that general regulation process and other findings. He now plans to use nicotine patches on Covid-19 patients to see if it can help in current cases.

Changeaux is indeed recognized as a pioneer in the field of receptor biochemistry. The idea to use nicotine patches seems sensible in light of the fact that this drug produces anti-inflammatory effects via alpha7-nicotinic receptors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29331768

GeorgeV , Apr 25 2020 20:34 utc | 19
I think readers of MoA might be interested to know that the April 22 2020 edition of the NY Post carried a story mirroring what B has n written in his April 25 2020 post on the use of nicotine patches as a possible counter to the COVID-19 virus infection.

There is also an earlier story in the NY Post dated April 15 2020 about 82-year old British artist David Hockney who had written a letter to the UK Daily Mail claiming that smokers like himself, seemed to be less likely to get the COVID-19 infection. Hockney lives in Normandy France.

The Post is also reporting that the French government is also limiting the sales of nicotine gum and patches, to prevent runs on these items. I picked this up from the April 25 2020 Drudge Report. Make of it what you wish.

farm ecologist , Apr 25 2020 20:44 utc | 24
Posted by: Gregory Purcell | Apr 25 2020 20:30 utc | 16

Just great, I quit smoking four weeks ago because of coronavirus, and because it has become ridiculously expensive, now what do I do?

It's too early to know if nicotine will be a useful therapeutic to treat COVID-19 patients, and it seems unlikely that it would have a prophylactic effect against infection . Not a good reason to resume smoking (sorry) but going to nicotine patches or vaping would be relatively harmless.

Pft , Apr 25 2020 20:46 utc | 26
The smoking numbers suffer from an age bias. Those most likely to be in icu and die are elderly over 65 years of age. Over 65's have a lower smoking rate (9%) than average (15%). Part of that is smokers die earlier and another part is probably financial/health related.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aginginplace.org/how-smoking-can-affect-the-elderly/amp/

Cytokine storm is more common in elderly because they have more complement molecules due to chronic inflammation from the aging process. Complement are molecules of the innate immune system which when can activated produce cytokines activating more immune molecules/cells.

Pft , Apr 25 2020 20:46 utc | 26
The smoking numbers suffer from an age bias. Those most likely to be in icu and die are elderly over 65 years of age. Over 65's have a lower smoking rate (9%) than average (15%). Part of that is smokers die earlier and another part is probably financial/health related.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aginginplace.org/how-smoking-can-affect-the-elderly/amp/

Cytokine storm is more common in elderly because they have more complement molecules due to chronic inflammation from the aging process. Complement are molecules of the innate immune system which when can activated produce cytokines activating more immune molecules/cells.

Hoarsewhisperer , Apr 25 2020 21:18 utc | 35
Just great, I quit smoking four weeks ago because of coronavirus, and because it has become ridiculously expensive, now what do I do?
Posted by: Gregory Purcell | Apr 25 2020 20:30 utc | 16

Stay off the smokes and flaunt some smug.

The chart b has reproduced above shows that healthy non-smokers with no pre-existing health conditions handle a C-virus infection with far more aplomb than current and ex-smokers.

Write a How To Become an Ex-smoker booklet and relate your own 'journey' chapter & verse; then flog it on eBay for $x-00 per copy. There'll be a big market from desperate unemployed smokers hoping to ease the pain of quitting...

DomesticExtremist , Apr 25 2020 22:00 utc | 49
Interesting result regarding smokers, though as yet there is no evidence that nicotine is the causative agent in conferring resistance to Covid19.
as an ex-smoker turned vaper, I would be interested to know if vapers are equally protected.
It should be noted that tobacco smoke contains other substances as well as nicotine and for sure vaping is not the same physiologically as smoking and I'm not just talking about the reduced risk of smoking related disease.
IIRC the changes in nerve receptors take several years to occur, both at the beginning of nicotine addiction and also at the end (which is why ex-smokers have such a hard time after stopping), so a simple application of a nicotine patch may not produce any useful effect in a non-smoker.
farm ecologist , Apr 25 2020 22:27 utc | 54
Posted by: DomesticExtremist | Apr 25 2020 22:00 utc | 49

as an ex-smoker turned vaper, I would be interested to know if vapers are equally protected.

I would expect so. The benefit of nicotine presumably comes from its ability to reduce the synthesis and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines which cause "cytokine storms" in the lungs of severely infected individuals. Again, there is no reason to expect that nicotine would prevent infections from occurring, rather it would mitigate some of the more deadly symptoms.

Piero Colombo , Apr 25 2020 22:41 utc | 55
Some caution is indicated re the perceived negative correlation with smoking: 1. This is not an actual observational study but extrapolated from adjusted population rates -- the proportion of active smokers in the patient population was not sufficient by itself to draw conclusions with decent power. Then, there seems to be little difference between the ICU needed for former smokers and the patients with cardiovascular disease, diabetes or CRF. Finally, the in-vitro work quoted in the paper and shown here as "confirming" is certainly not confirming (or invalidating) any clinical data (which is introduced there as a clinical to the clinical paper.)
On the whole, interesting observation but would need a study with effective observation of sufficient numbers of smokers.
I'd tend to see this as suggesting that there may be something in persons who continue to smoke, not former smokers. And there lies the rub: practically all we know about smoking continues, generally lifelong, after cessation, except this phenomenon if verified. It's true that lung disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer (and cancer therapy), renal failure and the myriad other chronic conditions of the ex-smokers would be very likely to cancel any of the advantage seen in the active smokers. Essentially then, looks like continuing to smoke cancels all such problems in the active smoking patients (if, that is, the observation is credibly confirmed.)
Clueless Joe , Apr 25 2020 23:22 utc | 60
If it's smoking who alters ACE2, then it's definitely not nicotine in the bloodstream that will do the trick, it's smoking dirty nasty shit that fills your lungs that reduces ACE2 receptors. I expect nicotine patches to be fully useless - though I'll be glad to be provent wrong.

As for household contamination, I had read a month ago that the Chinese themselves were reporting that 3/4 of contaminations in Wuhan occurred at home between family members, so this not a big surprise.
On the other hand, a very recent report seems to show that UV are very effective at destroying the virus and indeed outdoor contamination is limited, because the virus won't last long in a sunny place. In a cold grey winterscape, it might be a bit different though.

Now, there are also more reports of non-pulmonary deaths, people having strokes, heart attacks, brain damages and the like because the virus wrecks havoc in blood vessels and clogs them. That's very worrying. The only thing I'm wondering, since these reports are mostly American ones, is what's the real condition of those victims. To put it simply: it's known that obesity is a massive pre-condition with the coronavirus and greatly increases the risk. Are these cardio-vascular deaths also linked to people's obesity, or is any normal or fit person at risk as well?

[Apr 26, 2020] Who is an idiot here: What's not fair is that you go out running, you bloody idiot! shouted a Spanish woman apparently filming the encounter

Highly recommended!
If 99% of cases of infection happen in closed spaces and/or in open spaces with very close and long contact (stadiums, parties, festivals, concenrts, atc) is it really wise to limit activities in which social distancing can be maintained, such as jogging, fishing, biking, etc
Also the policy on mitigation (complete suppression is impossible now) should vary by locality. What is good for NYC is idiotic for rural Pennsylvania.
Apr 26, 2020 | en.as.com

As the jogger struggled with police, screaming for help, she was filmed by residents who had absolutely zero sympathy for her plight. 'What's not fair is that you go out running, you bloody idiot!', shouted the woman apparently filming the encounter."

Coronavirus lockdown: Jogger resists arrest in Spain and is abused by onlookers , AS.com, (21st March 2020)

[Apr 25, 2020] Seventy percent of US citizens on over 65 age group have hypertension which is No.2 risk factor for COVID-19 (just after cardiovascular disease)

Most of those who have hypertension are also overweight.
Mar 12, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Joerg , Mar 11 2020 22:40 utc | 126

This was based on the virus' affinity for the ACE2 receptor in the lungs. It is also thought to have a higher prevalence in heavy smokers. Iran and Italy are countries where people smoke heavily. In Iran smoking related disease accounts for about 20% of fatalities in males.

Risk: Hypertension ( high blood pressure)

The graphs in my comment above (88) are from a German language article ( https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Zahlen-bitte-3-4-Coronavirus-Fallsterblichkeit-False-Number-4679338.html?seite=all ). There I read that 70 % of US citizens have hypertension while in Japan it's only 16 % and in China - of those who were confirmed Covid-19- patients - it's only 12.8 %.

I believe that it is lecithin (soy, fish) that East-Asians [eat] protect from hypertension.

As a heavy smoker I got a "smoker-leg" some years ago. I got successfully rid of it with lecithin, because I read that lecithin dissolves 'bad fats'. These 'bad fats' can't be put into the liver, because unlike 'good fats' they would destroy the liver. And thus our blood puts the 'bad fats' into the walls of our arteries, which then swell like balloons. Lecithin dissolves/cracks these 'bad fats' so that they now can be eliminated by the liver.

As not only smoking produces 'bad fats' (too long molecules?) lecithin in general will make the blood vessels fit again and by this certainly lower blood-pressure.

[Apr 24, 2020] Every major organ system in the body can be affectedby coronavirus

Provably some effects are due to oxygen starvation and some due to virus binding ACE2 receptors
Apr 24, 2020 | www.washingtonpost.com

Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, which operates 14 medical centers in Philadelphia and NYU Langone in New York City, found that 12 of their patients treated for large blood blockages in their brains during a three-week period had the virus. Forty percent were under 50, and had few or no risk factors. Their paper is under review by a medical journal, said Pascal Jabbour, a neurosurgeon at Thomas Jefferson.

Jabbour and his co-author Eytan Raz, an assistant professor of neuroradiology at NYU Langone, said that strokes in covid-19 patients challenge conventionally thinking. "We are used to thinking of 60 as a young patient when it comes to large vessel occlusions," Raz said of the deadliest strokes. "We have never seen so many in their 50s, 40s and late 30s."

Raz wondered whether they are seeing more young patients because they are more resistant than the elderly to the respiratory distress caused by covid-19: "So they survive the lung side, and in time develop other issues."

Jabbour said many of the cases he's treated have unusual characteristics. Brain clots usually appear in the arteries, which carry blood away from the heart, but in covid-19 patients, he's also seeing them in the veins, which carry blood in the opposite direction and are trickier to treat. Some patients are also developing more than one large clot in their heads, which is highly unusual.

"We'll be treating a blood vessel and it will go fine, but then the patient will have a major stroke" due to a clot in another part of the brain, he said.

... ... ...

In a letter to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine next week, the Mount Sinai team details five case studies of young patients who had strokes at home from March 23 to Apr. 7. They make for difficult reading: The victims are age 33, 37, 39, 44, and 49, and were all home when they began to experience sudden symptoms, including slurred speech, confusion, drooping on one side of the face and feeling dead in one arm.

[Apr 24, 2020] The mysterious connection between the coronavirus and the heart

Apr 24, 2020 | www.livescience.com

By Yasemin Saplakoglu - Staff Writer 16 days ago

Doctors say some patients with COVID-19 can have heart damage.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

The novel coronavirus mainly attacks the lungs. But doctors have been increasingly reporting cases of another battlefield raging within the body: the heart.

More than 1 in 5 patients develop heart damage as a result of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, one small study published March 27 in the journal JAMA Cardiology suggested. While some of these patients have a history of heart conditions, others do not. So what's going on?

Cardiologists say several scenarios could be unfolding: The heart may struggle to pump blood in the absence of enough oxygen; the virus may directly invade heart cells; or the body, in its attempt to eradicate the virus, may mobilize a storm of immune cells that attack the heart.

Related: Coronavirus Live Updates

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"We know that this is not the only virus that affects the heart," said Dr. Mohammad Madjid, an assistant professor at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The risk of developing heart attacks, for example, is thought to increase about sixfold when a person is infected with the flu virus, according to a study published in 2018 in the New England Journal of Medicine .

What's more, during most influenza epidemics, more patients die from heart complications than from pneumonia , according to a review published March 27 in the journal JAMA Cardiology . Viral infections can disrupt blood flow to the heart, cause irregular heartbeats and heart failure, according to the review.

So while it doesn't "come as a surprise," that novel coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 can lead to heart damage, it may be occurring more frequently in these patients than it does in people infected with other viruses, Madjid, the lead author of the review, told Live Science.

The double-edged sword

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The virus might be directly attacking the heart.

"We're seeing cases of people who don't have an underlying heart disease ," who are getting heart damage, said Dr. Erin Michos, the associate director of preventive cardiology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Heart damage isn't typical in mild cases of COVID-19, and tends to occur more often in patients who have severe symptoms and are hospitalized, she said.

Though the virus predominantly affects the lungs, it is circulating in the bloodstream; that means the virus could directly invade and attack other organs, including the heart, Michos told Live Science.

Related: 13 coronavirus myths busted by science

Both heart cells and lung cells are covered with surface proteins known as angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) -- these molecules serve as "doorways" for the virus to enter cells. But this enzyme is a "double-edged sword," she said. On one hand, the ACE2 molecule acts as a gateway for the virus to enter the cell and replicate, but on the other hand, it normally serves a "protective" function, Michos said.

When tissues in the body are damaged -- either by an invading virus such as SARS-CoV-2 or by other means, the body's natural healing response involves releasing inflammatory molecules, such as small proteins called cytokines, into the bloodstream. But paradoxically, too much inflammation can actually make things worse. The ACE2 enzyme acts as an anti-inflammatory, keeping immune cells from inflicting more damage on the body's own cells.

But when the virus latches onto ACE2 proteins, these proteins get knocked out of commission, possibly reducing the anti-inflammatory protection that they give. So the virus may be acting as a double-whammy by damaging cells directly and preventing the body from protecting tissues from inflammatory damage.

"If the heart muscle is inflamed and damaged by the virus, the heart can't function," she said.

The novel coronavirus might also indirectly damage the heart. In this scenario, the patient's immune system winds up "going haywire," Michos said. This scenario has played out in some really sick patients who have highly elevated inflammatory markers -- or proteins that signal high levels of inflammation in the body.

This is called a "cytokine storm," Michos said. Cytokine storms damage organs throughout the body, including the heart and liver, she added. It's not clear why some people have such an elevated response compared with others, but some people could be genetically prone to it, she added.

And then you have patients who have underlying heart disease who are at higher risk of developing severe symptoms of COVID-19 -- and higher risk of mortality. "You can imagine, if their heart already has difficulty working they don't have the capacity to meet this challenge" of not having enough oxygen because their lungs aren't working as well.

So COVID-19 can "exacerbate" underlying heart disease, Michos said. A new study, published April 3 in the journal Circulation , described four cases of heart damage among COVID-19 patients in New York, some with underlying conditions. (Michos is on the editorial board for the journal Circulation.)

Treatments and complications

Cardiologists identify heart damage using a blood test for a protein called troponin. When heart cells are injured, they leak troponin into the bloodstream. But "it's sometimes not that easy," to figure out what kind of heart damage a patient is having, Michos said.

"We are really seeing different cardiac involvement," Michos said. So it matters "what's causing the heart damage because you would treat it differently."

For example, if the virus is directly invading the heart, the patient may need antiviral medications. If instead the immune system is causing heart damage, the patient might need immunosuppressants. Right now, no direct treatments target COVID-19, and most of the treatment being used currently involves supportive care such as providing more oxygen.

What's more, people who have high blood pressure or other underlying heart conditions commonly take ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) -- medications that widen blood vessels, therefore increasing the amount of blood the heart pumps and lowering blood pressure.

Cardiologists are hotly debating whether people should stop or start taking those medications if they're at high risk for COVID-19. (One paper suggested the drugs could be harmful, while some clinical trials are assessing the use of ARBs to reduce the severity of COVID-19, Live Science previously reported .)

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It's really hard to tease out whether having more ACE2 is helpful or harmful, as these proteins are how the virus enters the cells, but also known to protect the cells against injury, Michos said.

The current consensus is that if patients are already taking these medications, they should stay on them, she said. "Patients taking ACE-[inhibitors] and ARBs who contract COVID-19 should continue treatment, unless otherwise advised by their physician," according to a statement from the American Heart Association, the Heart Failure Society of America and the American College of Cardiology.

Experts from Australia and New Zealand similarly said they strongly recommend patients with hypertension, heart failure and cardiovascular disease who are already on these medications keep using them, according to a study preprint published on April 3 in The Medical Journal of Australia .

Complicating matters, certain drugs that are currently under investigation for treating COVID-19, including hydroxychloroquine -- the drug that President Trump has said is a game-changer -- could cause heart damage, those experts said. Now, the goal is to figure out if there's a genetic or biochemical reason some people are more prone to heart damage from COVID-19 -- and to figure out what drugs work best "to protect the heart from injury," Michos said.

Originally published on Live Science .

[Apr 24, 2020] "What do you have to lose" - TTG - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Notable quotes:
"... A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported. ..."
"... The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it's the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people as of Tuesday. The study was posted on an online site for researchers and has been submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine, but has not been reviewed by other scientists. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia paid for the work. ..."
"... Researchers analyzed medical records of 368 male veterans hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infection at Veterans Health Administration medical centers who died or were discharged by April 11. About 28% who were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting routine care alone. About 22% of those getting the drug plus azithromycin died too, but the difference between that group and usual care was not considered large enough to rule out other factors that could have affected survival. Hydroxychloroquine made no difference in the need for a breathing machine, either. ..."
"... Researchers did not track side effects, but noted hints that hydroxychloroquine might have damaged other organs. The drug has long been known to have potentially serious side effects, including altering the heartbeat in a way that could lead to sudden death. ..."
"... Earlier this month, scientists in Brazil stopped part of a hydroxychloroquine study after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested. ..."
"... The interesting news is that ventilators are not required in all cases and indeed my do more harm for some. BoJo was only on a cpap. The harm mechanism may be impaired hemoglobin ..."
Apr 24, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"What do you have to lose?" - TTG

A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported.

The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it's the largest look so far of hydroxychloroquine with or without the antibiotic azithromycin for COVID-19, which has killed more than 171,000 people as of Tuesday. The study was posted on an online site for researchers and has been submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine, but has not been reviewed by other scientists. Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia paid for the work.

Researchers analyzed medical records of 368 male veterans hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infection at Veterans Health Administration medical centers who died or were discharged by April 11. About 28% who were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting routine care alone. About 22% of those getting the drug plus azithromycin died too, but the difference between that group and usual care was not considered large enough to rule out other factors that could have affected survival. Hydroxychloroquine made no difference in the need for a breathing machine, either.

Researchers did not track side effects, but noted hints that hydroxychloroquine might have damaged other organs. The drug has long been known to have potentially serious side effects, including altering the heartbeat in a way that could lead to sudden death.

Earlier this month, scientists in Brazil stopped part of a hydroxychloroquine study after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested. (AP News)

-- -- -- --

This was not a rigorously designed experiment and from what I've seen, VA patients almost inevitably have multiple heath problems before they walk into the clinic or VA hospital. We're a pretty banged up, broken down lot. However, the VA is skilled at doing this kind of evaluation of their vast patient population. Through their Million Veteran Program, they are conducting myriad studies involving genetic samples and health records. The results of this VA study is sobering and seems to help answer Trump's question of what do you have to lose.

In response to this study and several prematurely ended studies, Fauci's "National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities.

Maybe those with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis will have an easier time getting their medication. We have to do something with our stockpiled 29 million pills. Still, more studies need to be done. Perhaps an effective treatment involving hydroxychloroquine will be developed when we understand Covid-19 better. We're still learning of the full range of damage this virus is capable of inflicting. Maybe it will be an effective prophylactic, not a magic shield or miracle potion, but a helpful prophylactic. There's no reason to give up on this or any other proposed treatment or cure.

TTG

https://apnews.com/a5077c7227b8eb8b0dc23423c0bbe2b2

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1.full.pdf

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/21/840341224/nih-panel-recommends-against-drug-combination-trump-has-promoted-for-covid-19


Laura Wilson , 22 April 2020 at 02:56 PM

More studies, for sure. I always find it interesting other your take on VA matters...thank you for sharing your perspective to those of us without experience with the VA.
steve , 22 April 2020 at 04:12 PM
To be clear, the Institue guidance recommends agains the combination of HCQ and AZ. It makes to recommendation for or against HCQ by itself. These recommendations are only fo hospitalized pts. There are no recommendations for or against drugs for prophylaxis.

In our own internal studies we found higher rates of arrhythmias on HCQ and AZ, and found more problems related to AZ. We have stopped that. HCQ is no longer part of our standard protocol but docs may order it if they choose.

Steve

will.2718 , 22 April 2020 at 04:29 PM
The brazil study was of the Chloroquine diphosphate which has greater side effects than of the hydroxy form. The big trial is the one in NY state. Those results are not yet in.

The interesting news is that ventilators are not required in all cases and indeed my do more harm for some. BoJo was only on a cpap. The harm mechanism may be impaired hemoglobin . These medcram youtubes linked below are topnotch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc6VV7ue4cE

walrus , 22 April 2020 at 05:23 PM
Thank you for your thoughtful post TTG. It may still be that the drug has a useful effect. I know Fauci is infuriating a lot of people, but he is right: a double blind placebo controlled trial is the only way to really know.

Off topic, but when my wife had breast cancer she took part in such a trial of a new drug. That involved extra free visits to hospital for testing. We guessed she was given the drug afterwards because her oncologist and surgeon surprisingly found that her lymph nodes had been scoured clean of the cancer. It's now about four years of remission. The new drug is apparently going to be the new standard for treatment of that type of cancer.

Lars Moeller-Rasmussen , 22 April 2020 at 06:05 PM
I am surprised that "cloroquine phosphate", the name under which I know the drug, is now suddenly supposed to have serious side effects. When I was stationed in Egypt for one year with my family back in 1978, we all took cloroquine, as I remember it, once a week.
In my country, Denmark, drug regulation is pretty strict, so we assumed cloroquine was safe. Still, I went to ask my doctor when I had another one-year stationing to the Middle East coming up five years later. After looking at the guidelines, my doctor told me that cloroquine had been used for years without any side effects, and that the only side effects found after long trials on rabbits were some sort of residue settling in their eyes, though with no adverse effect on their eyesight.
Lars Moeller-Rasmussen
JMH , 22 April 2020 at 06:14 PM
This is not a controlled study. It is an analysis of medical records. It stands to reason that there were more fatalities amongst those who were given the drug, because it was desperation hour, so they therefore got the drug. The French guy says you have to use the drug early, not as a Hail Mary pass when the virus has done its work and left and all that remains in the pneumonia.

Oh the end-zone celebration on Morning Joe about this study! I guess you don't need a double blind six month controlled trial to have absolute metaphysical certainty after all. People who were given hydroxycloriquine died, said Mika when she spiked the football.

Deap , 22 April 2020 at 06:48 PM
From the CDC website right now: CDC information for travelers who want to avoid malaria:

CLOROQUINE
Drug Reasons that might make you consider using this drug Reasons that might make you avoid using this drug

Chloroquine
Adults: 300 mg base (500 mg salt), once/week.

Children: 5 mg/kg base (8.3 mg/kg salt) (maximum is adult dose), once/week. Begin 1-2 weeks before travel, once/week during travel, and for 4 weeks after leaving.

Some people would rather take medicine weekly
Good choice for long trips because it is taken only weekly

Some people are already taking hydroxychloroquine chronically for rheumatologic conditions. In those instances, they may not have to take an additional medicine

Can be used in all trimesters of pregnancy

Cannot be used in areas with chloroquine or mefloquine resistance
May exacerbate psoriasis

Some people would rather not take a weekly medication
For trips of short duration, some people would rather not take medication for 4 weeks after travel

Not a good choice for last-minute travelers because drug needs to be started 1-2 weeks prior to travel

Barbara Ann , 22 April 2020 at 07:12 PM
The quote cirsium provided above from Didier Raoult is worth repeating with emphasis IMO: "The HCQ-AZ combination, when started immediately after diagnosis , is a safe and efficient treatment for COVID-19..". The price of treatment only beginning when sufferers are bad enough to be hospitalized seems to be a one to two orders of magnitude increase in mortality rate.

Test, trace contacts & quarantine like the South Koreans and prescribe Didier's magic elixir to all positives right away. If this isn't accepted medical practice, then change the accepted medical practice.

English Outsider , 22 April 2020 at 07:21 PM
TTG - on treatment of the disease this protocol from the Eastern Virginia Medical School is interesting -

https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_medicine/EVMS_Critical_Care_COVID-19_Protocol.pdf

They haven't found that much use for ventilators, seems.

On the wider question of how the pandemic should be tackled an article in the Jerusalem Post led me to wonder how they were tackling it in Israel-

On contact tracing via Smartphone monitoring -

https://techcrunch.com/2020...

"Details of exactly how the tracking will work have not been released -- but, per the BBC, the location data of people's mobile devices will be collected from telcos by Israel's domestic security agency and shared with health officials."

Leads me to wonder whether the enthusiasm for smartphone tracking in the UK - HMG seems to be betting the farm on it - derives from the fact that GCHQ is geared up for that anyway.

Also group testing for speed -

https://www.tabletmag.com/s...

Plus what seems to be an extensive programme of testing both for antibodies and for detection of currently infected cases -

https://www.jpost.com/israe...

This seems to be a version of the American approach to containing local outbreaks after lockdown has been lifted -

"When we have more tests, we can open the economy in an aggressive way without any danger and without being surprised – and the moment there is an outbreak in a residential building or a school, you can go there [and close it] and not the whole city," Bennett said.

Also containing a reference to the progress made in ensuring the various tests are more accurate -

"There have been more than 20 rapid serological tests that have been developed worldwide – mainly in China – many of which have been found to provide inaccurate results.

"However, Roche and a handful of companies, such as US-based Abbott Laboratories and Becton Dickinson and Co., have created more sophisticated serological tests, which are expected to be validated.

"Ofer said that, "If we run these tests in conjunction with the molecular test, then we will get a full picture" – and as Bennett explained, "the closures will end."

Those are the roughly the references I put together to submit to an English site. On another English site I read a reference to how one Canadian area (unnamed) geared up for the pandemic -

We live in an Ontario health district, about the size of Connecticut (with 200,000 population), in a small city with a medical school. Our public health officer in January alerted nursing homes and hospitals to prepare, e.g. get supplies and train staff for higher hygiene standards. Example, auditing handwashing practices in nursing homes. As a result, we have 50 total positive cases, almost all cases traceable to travel. No nursing home outbreaks. No deaths. No ICU care. Two people currently in hospital."

So they got going on this back in January. If only ...

LJ , 22 April 2020 at 09:46 PM
Another discussion of chloroquine: only does any good if used early in the disease progress and with zinc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLSYRqcg0wo

[Apr 24, 2020] Various pre-existent types of pneumonia and now all put under COVID-19 tent

Apr 24, 2020 | www.unz.com

Hempus , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 12:09 pm GMT

Before the Covid-19 "outbreak" there was a pneumonia known as the HAP "hospital-acquired pneumonia" and also the CAP "community-acquired pneumonia" in nursing homes.

Even the "ventilator-associated pneumonia" VAP, somehow disappeared in the phrase book because now some "experts" and Vaccination Pope Bill gates love to declare martial law to fight the "covid-19 associated pneumonia" COP.

If you have a little bit time to research where the "NEW" Pneumonia breaked out you find mainly:

Even Donald Trump was forced to demand carmakers to produce respiratory Ventilators ..to help in the war against Covid-19.
You would think after three and half years of "witch hunt" Donald Trump should be an expert but still he has the poisonous dwarf Dr. Fauci as an adviser this is like fighting the devil with satan.

Meena , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 12:49 pm GMT
@Hempus HAP, VAP, and your CAP do not and can not prevent emergence of another Pneumonia of newer causative agents that can spread like fire
When did HAP VAP CAP overwhelm
911, and ICU and kill nurses doctor bus drivers police and fire officers and nursing home elderly in the nursing homes?

When did CAP VAP HAP and regular flu shit ever
cause this exponential rise in infectivity across the globe from 0 to 800,000 in 45 days in USA?

When did the illness cause from those agents liver failure , gi bleeding , kidney failure and resistant hypoxemia? When did any of those patients stay on ventilator for 3 weeks?
When did those illness show such diverse symptoms as by Corona at the beginning phase of the illness ? When did those illness cause such morbidity in the afflicted young ?

When did those surviving the ICU admission report ongoing morbidities of this extent?
Trump is a moron , a thug , a liar . He is full of crap who has taken the ' deplorable 'for a ride by throwing some fiery rhetorics .

meena , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 5:00 pm GMT
@Hempus Your statement is illogical!
Why should a pneumonia previously called HAP, CAP and VAP and causes hundred thousands death each year prevent "Covid-19?"

Because this one is not one of them . . This virus is different genetically , morphologically and clinically . Theoretically they can coexist in same patients .

It is not the mortality but the morbidity and the sped of unravelling that are acute and overwhelming .

I don't agree with lockdown but I dont agree with this who wants to observe it What is irksome is the lying thug 's Trumps denial and then lying about the denial .
I also believe given the checkered history of US it is US who possibly released it in China either directly or indirectly .

When 2 patients aged 80 with same clinical and metabolic profiles in a nursing home are observed and are found out one of them has died from an acute infection in less than 30 days after symptoms appeared and other has continued to stay stable with no worsening and no infection – you blame the virus for the death .

antibeast , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 5:32 pm GMT
@Been_there_done_that

Have you bothered to check how many countries you are referring to altogether, which purportedly had been forewarned about a possibly emerging epidemic, ahead of even the local Chinese government?

Take a look: NATO + Israel = 31

NATO is not a country but a military subsidiary of the USA.

So according to the unsourced report, which so many wishfully presume as a fact, with so many countries allegedly in on the "secret" briefing, not a single country's representative followed up to monitor developments or even corroborated the briefing, but most importantly, not a single country took any defensive preparations whatsoever in advance.

The USA informed NATO and Israel not those thirty European colonies.

This shows the level of credulity that people will descend down to when an obvious news fabrication happens to support their desired narrative. China worshippers here have become severely blinded in light of the epidemic. So many commentators are thus eagerly making themselves irrelevant, including Escobar, which I think is a good thing.

Dude, Esper thought that the report was such an "obvious news fabrication" that he didn't deny it but merely said: " Oh, I can't recall, George ," ( ) " But, we have many people who watch this closely ." So Esper didn't recall seeing the report but decided to " have many people who watch this closely " because it was such an "obvious news fabrication".

Peculiarly, one of the European countries that has handled the pandemic the best, according to the statistics, Austria, is not a NATO member and would not have been in on the "secret".

The USA didn't want to do anything about it but " have many people who watch this closely " as Esper puts it because it was just a " live exercise " as Pompeo puts it.

Yeah, I get it: you're one of those die-hard chinadidit people.

Michael888 , says: Show Comment April 23, 2020 at 5:33 pm GMT
We have had a constant continual stream of 'disinformation' about covid-19:

"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China," the World Health Organization, January 14, 2020.

On February 29 on NBC's Today, for instance, Anthony Fauci said: "At this moment, there is no need to change anything you're doing on a day-by-day basis, right now the risk is still low, but this could change. When you start to see community spread, this could change, and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread."

The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Fauci is the Head) gave a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Virology lab to study bat coronaviruses between 2010 and 2015. Was this just science, or to develop trust for cover to introduce COVID-19 into the Wuhan area and destroy the Chinese economy? ( https://jamesfetzer.org/2020/04/gordon-duff-documentary-proof-university-of-north-carolina-generated-covid-19/ )
Such conspiracy theories! If so, it boomeranged in a way only the CIA could produce.

[Apr 23, 2020] The researchers found that, among all patients, 57 percent had high blood pressure, 41 percent were obese and just over a third had diabetes."

Apr 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

JohnH , Apr 23 2020 16:55 utc | 18

... from NBC: "People with obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are at greater risk for complications from the coronavirus, according to a large study of patients hospitalized with the illness it causes...

The study included data on 5,700 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the New York City area.

Underlying conditions were common. The researchers found that, among all patients, 57 percent had high blood pressure, 41 percent were obese and just over a third had diabetes."

Ummm...about 70% of Americans over age 65 have high blood pressure. And they are by far the most severely afflicted group...

[Apr 23, 2020] Maybe Italy and New York and London have a different strain of virus, but from here, the calamitous effects of quarantine (effectively house arrest) upon the lives of the people is 10,000 times worse than the disease.

Apr 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ric G , Apr 22 2020 18:56 utc | 28


I think 'B' is barking mad on this one. Australia and New Zealand are locked down but have almost negligible deaths. Maybe Italy and New York and London have a different strain of virus, but from here, the calamitous effects upon the lives of the people is 10,000 times worse than the disease.

We could just keep the border lock downs, no physical contact with strangers, etc, and I am sure all will be ok.

'B' also claims that only a small percentage of people have had contact with the virus, when it may already be 40%.

Russia detected 5,236 new coronavirus carriers yesterday. That is substantially less than yesterday. But this is not the story. It really should not matter that much how many new cases the Russians are able to dig up, because the big story is that according to Russia's own statistics upwards of 60% of those infected don't get sick and are asymptomatic:

https://www.anti-empire.com/russias-own-testing-data-shows-moscows-draconian-lockdown-is-not-warranted/

Why do they not present daily deaths and infections from normal influenza/flu/pneumonia, as well as Covid 19, or are they all lumped into one box now called Covid19.

I will run with the Guardian reaction, this smells like a giant '9-11' psych-ops, a seize for power, and a chance for the usual banking suspects to buy the world for cents in the dollar.


[Apr 23, 2020] Why Copper Is Good at Killing Viruses by Jim Morrison

Apr 14, 2020 | www.smithsonianmag.com

The SARS-CoV-2 virus endures for days on plastic or metal but disintegrates soon after landing on copper surfaces. Here's why

When researchers reported last month that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic survives for days on glass and stainless steel but dies within hours after landing on copper, the only thing that surprised Bill Keevil was that the pathogen lasted so long on copper.

Keevil, a microbiology researcher at the University of Southampton (U.K.), has studied the antimicrobial effects of copper for more than two decades. He has watched in his laboratory as the simple metal slew one bad bug after another. He began with the bacteria that causes Legionnaire's Disease and then turned to drug-resistant killer infections like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). He tested viruses that caused worldwide health scares such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and the Swine Flu (H1N1) pandemic of 2009. In each case, copper contact killed the pathogen within minutes. "It just blew it apart," he says.

In 2015, Keevil turned his attention to Coronavirus 229E , a relative of the COVID-19 virus that causes the common cold and pneumonia. Once again, copper zapped the virus within minutes while it remained infectious for five days on surfaces such as stainless steel or glass.

"One of the ironies is, people [install] stainless steel because it seems clean and in a way, it is," he says, noting the material's ubiquity in public places. "But then the argument is how often do you clean? We don't clean often enough." Copper, by contrast, disinfects merely by being there.

Ancient Knowledge

Keevil's work is a modern confirmation of an ancient remedy. For thousands of years, long before they knew about germs or viruses, people have known of copper's disinfectant powers. "Copper is truly a gift from Mother Nature in that the human race has been using it for over eight millennia," says Michael G. Schmidt, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina who researches copper in healthcare settings.

The first recorded use of copper as an infection-killing agent comes from Smith's Papyrus, the oldest-known medical document in history. The information therein has been ascribed to an Egyptian doctor circa 1700 B.C. but is based on information that dates back as far as 3200 B.C. Egyptians designated the ankh symbol, representing eternal life, to denote copper in hieroglyphs.

As far back as 1,600 B.C., the Chinese used copper coins as medication to treat heart and stomach pain as well as bladder diseases. The sea-faring Phoenicians inserted shavings from their bronze swords into battle wounds to prevent infection. For thousands of years, women have known that their children didn't get diarrhea as frequently when they drank from copper vessels and passed on this knowledge to subsequent generations. "You don't need a medical degree to diagnose diarrhea," Schmidt says.

And copper's power lasts. Keevil's team checked the old railings at New York City's Grand Central Terminal a few years ago. "The copper is still working just like it did the day it was put in over 100 years ago," he says. "This stuff is durable and the anti-microbial effect doesn't go away."

The East Tower of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. The contrast between the refurbished copper installed in 2010 and the green color of the original 1894 copper is clearly seen. (Wiki Commons)

Long-Lasting Power

What the ancients knew, modern scientists and organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency have confirmed. The EPA has registered about 400 copper surfaces as antimicrobial. But how exactly does it work?

Heavy metals including gold and silver are antibacterial, but copper's specific atomic makeup gives it extra killing power, Keevil says. Copper has a free electron in its outer orbital shell of electrons that easily takes part in oxidation-reduction reactions (which also makes the metal a good conductor). As a result, Schmidt says, it becomes a "molecular oxygen grenade." Silver and gold don't have the free electron, so they are less reactive.

Copper kills in other ways as well, according to Keevil, who has published papers on the effect. When a microbe lands on copper, ions blast the pathogen like an onslaught of missiles, preventing cell respiration and punching holes in the cell membrane or viral coating and creating free radicals that accelerate the kill, especially on dry surfaces. Most importantly, the ions seek and destroy the DNA and RNA inside a bacteria or virus, preventing the mutations that create drug-resistant superbugs. "The properties never wear off, even if it tarnishes," Schmidt says.

Schmidt has focused his research on the question of whether using copper alloys in often-touched surfaces reduces hospital infections. On any given day, about one in 31 hospital patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control, costing as much as $50,000 per patient . Schmidt's landmark study , funded by the Department of Defense, looked at copper alloys on surfaces including bedside rails, tray tables, intravenous poles, and chair armrests at three hospitals around the country. That 43-month investigation revealed a 58 percent infection reduction compared to routine infection protocols.

Further research stalled when the DOD focused on the Zika epidemic, so Schmidt turned his attention to working with a manufacturer that created a copper hospital bed . A two-year study published earlier this year compared beds in an intensive care unit with plastic surfaces and those with copper. Bed rails on the plastic surfaces exceeded the accepted risk standards in nearly 90 percent of the samples, while the rails on the copper bed exceeded those standards on only 9 percent. "We again demonstrated in spades that copper can keep the built environment clean from microorganisms," he says.

Schmidt is also a co-author of an 18-month study led by Shannon Hinsa-Leasure, an environmental microbiologist at Grinnell College, that compared the bacterial abundance in occupied and unoccupied rooms at Grinnell Regional Medical Center's 49-bed rural hospital. Again, copper reduced bacterial numbers. "If you're using a copper alloy that's always working," Hinsa-Leasure says, "you still need to clean the environment, but you have something in place that's working all the time (to disinfect) as well."

Harnessing Copper

Keevil and Schmidt have found that installing copper on just 10 percent of surfaces would prevent infections and save $1,176 a day (comparing the reduced cost of treating infections to the cost of installing copper). Yet hospitals have been slow to respond. "I've been surprised how slow it has been to be taken up by hospitals," Hinsa-Leasure adds. "A lot of it has to do with our healthcare system and funding to hospitals, which is very tight. When our hospital redid our emergency room, we installed copper alloys in key places. So it makes a lot of sense when you're doing a renovation or building something that's new. It's more expensive if you're just changing something that you already have."

The Sentara Hospital system in North Carolina and Virginia made copper-impregnated surfaces the standard across 13 hospitals in 2017 for overbed tables and bed rails after a 2016 clinical tria l at a Virginia Beach hospital reported a 78 percent reduction in drug-resistant organisms. Using technology pioneered in Israel , the hospital has also moved to copper-infused bedding . Keevil says France and Poland are beginning to put copper alloys in hospitals. In Peru and Chile, which produce copper, it's being used in hospitals and the public transit systems. "So it's going around the world, but it still hasn't taken off," he says.

If copper kills COVID-19, should you periodically roll a few pennies and nickels around in your hands? Stick with water, soap, and sanitizer. "You never know how many viruses are affiliated with the hand, so it may not completely get them all," Schmidt says. "It will only be a guess if copper will completely protect."

[Apr 21, 2020] Open-source firmware turns CPAP machines into coronavirus ventilators

Apr 21, 2020 | www.zdnet.com
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic , we are woefully short of ventilators that can give the most gravely ill a chance for life. There are many efforts afoot to build more ventilators . Now, instead of building ventilators, a group of open-source developers has a new idea: Create a firmware update, Airbreak , which can transform common Constant Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machines into non-invasive ventilators. ebook

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Their first effort -- a proof of concept -- converts the Airsense 10 CPAP machine , which is a common, inexpensive sleep apnea treatment device, into a ventilator. It does so by simply replacing its existing firmware with updated firmware .

With this upgrade, the Airsense could be used as an emergency ventilator until a better, purpose-built ventilator is available. It has the following ventilator features:

Adds a Pressure Control Ventilator (PCV) mode that oscillates between high and low pressure at a configurable breathing rate (stock firmware supports only a single pressure, with no breath rate control). Allows maximum pressure to be increased to 30 cm H2O, as required by clinical protocols (stock firmware is limited to 20cm H2O). Allows smooth rapid pressure change rates for respiration rates up to 30 breaths per minute (stock firmware changes pressure at less than 1cm/sec). Unlocks all the vendor modes and tunable configuration parameters, including ST and iVAPS modes present in the firmware. Provides access to all of the sensors (flow, pressure, temperature, tidal volume, minute ventilation, etc). Displays real-time graphs on the screen to show an immediate history of sensor data.

What the firmware is doing is changing a CPAP device into a Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure (BIPAP) . These aren't ventilators either, but hospitals -- like New York's Mount Sinai -- have been able to deploy these as ventilators . The reason why this is worth doing is CPAP machines are cheaper and more common than BIPAP devices. The FDA has already approved the use of modified BiPAP devices as ventilators .

Now, CPAP devices with this firmware patch are not drop-in-replacements for ventilators. Far from it. Additional equipment like viral filters and monitoring alarms are also required. As its creators state:

We want to be very clear here: This modified firmware should not be flashed on CPAP machines and used to treat COVID patients immediately. The firmware that we've developed is an effective demonstration of the capability, and while it has been reviewed and validated by expert researchers, biomedical engineers, and clinical pulmonologists , it has not yet been put through FDA [Food and Drug Administration] approval. Additionally, the Mt Sinai's protocols for off-label non-invasive ventilation require additional modifications such as viral filter and remote control before the machines would be ready for clinical use.

The programmers could send its firmware through the FDA approval process themselves, but its developers think "the best route for rolling out these upgrades is to work with the manufacturers to use their resources to validate and distribute these upgrades safely and at scale."

The code has great potential. It would also be easy to deploy. The five million CPAP devices shipped over the last three years have an always-on cellular connection. Thanks to that, these devices can easily be upgraded over-the-air by device manufacturers. With this, hundreds of thousands of CPAP machines could be upgraded overnight. This could easily bring millions of unused or underutilized CPAP machines into hospitals just when we need them.

Further coding, testing, and evaluation need to be done with FDA approval received before these patched CPAP machines can be deployed. But, the need is urgent, and it's a heck of a lot easier to wirelessly update firmware than it is to build and deploy millions of new hardware ventilators. This project isn't just a good idea -- it's one that deserves close attention from CPAP manufacturers and medical professionals as soon as possible.

[Apr 21, 2020] Obesity and COVID-19 mortality

Apr 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Alaric , Apr 20 2020 3:12 utc | 180

Sweden has roughly twice the obesity (21%] compared to 9.5% in Denmark and 44% of Swedes are overweight. Studies of deceased in US determined obesity to be the largest factor (outside of age) in covid mortality.

[Apr 21, 2020] Two important results in Switzerland and Germany show that it is the elimination of large gatherings together with mask wearing and social distancing that have had the main impact on reducing the infectivity of covid-19, not the lockdowns

Apr 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

BM , Apr 20 2020 11:09 utc | 263

Two important results in Switzerland and Germany show that it is the elimination of large gatherings together with mask wearing and social distancing that have had the main impact on reducing the infectivity of covid-19, not the lockdowns (which appear to have had relatively minor effects so far, according to these two results). Any measures have a built-in delay of 8 to 10 days before their effects, due to the incubation periods of successive infections.

(in German)

[Apr 20, 2020] Taiwan experience

Apr 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Pacifica Advocate , Apr 20 2020 3:46 utc | 189

I live in Taiwan and I know for a fact that this entire post is a flat-out lie.

Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly quarantined for the last three weeks after traveling, as well as entire sections of cities, based solely on whether they had traveled to districts in areas of Taiwan's largest cities or if there were confirmed cases in their neighborhood.

The quarantines were enforced with cel-phone apps that used GPS to confirm if the person in question was at home, doubled up with 4 phone calls a day to confirm of the person was near their phone or not.

Pft clearly either doesn't live on Taiwan or cannot access the local news (I.e.: doesn'tspeak or read Chinese), because this is pretty much all anyone has been talking about for the last month.

In addition, social distancing is being enforced in all markets (and yes, we have the "wet" ones here, too, except we call them "traditional," while the "dry" ones are called either "grain" or "North-South Goods", so all you fools slandering "wet markets" should also do us all a favor by cutting out your tongues), convenience stores, etc. All citizens were asked by the government to stay at home, the last 2 weekends. Masks are mandatory on all public transportation and anywhere food is purchased. Etc.

Pft is just wrong--completely and totally wrong.

[Apr 20, 2020] The virus can transmit between cats via respiratory droplets.

Apr 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Apr 20 2020 4:20 utc | 201

By this research, spread may be a lot faster and harder to control in populations or cultures with many domestic cats.

"SARS-CoV-2 is thought to have originated in bats; however, the intermediate animal sources of the virus are completely unknown. Here, we investigated the susceptibility of ferrets and animals in close contact with humans to SARS-CoV-2. We found that SARS-CoV-2 replicates poorly in dogs, pigs, chickens, and ducks, but efficiently in ferrets and cats. We found that the virus transmits in cats via respiratory droplets.'
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.015347v1.full

[Apr 20, 2020] Self-made masks

Apr 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Passer by , Apr 19 2020 19:59 utc | 82

Posted by: mark | Apr 19 2020 19:53 utc | 77

https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-face-mask-virus/

https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/coronavirus-pollution-masks-n95-surgical-mask/

[Apr 19, 2020] I can take it off if you'd like

Apr 19, 2020 | twitter.com

Emily Annette ‏ 1:50 PM - 9 Apr 2020

At the grocery. Wearing my mask. Lady behind me, snarky & loud enough to make sure I heard, "don't guess she realizes that stupid mask won't do any good." Me: "Honey, I'm an off duty nurse, I'm wearing it to protect YOU. But, I can take it off if you'd like." She practically ran.

[Apr 19, 2020] Greatest health care system in the world:

Apr 19, 2020 | twitter.com

The reality of the #COVID19 pandemic is that my patients have lost all faith in our healthcare system so even when they are very short of breath or have low oxygen levels they refuse to go to the ER bc they're afraid they will die in a corner and they would rather die at home.

-- uché blackstock (@uche_blackstock) April 15, 2020

[Apr 19, 2020] "Over 100 Hospitals Cut Staff as Pandemic Spreads"

Apr 19, 2020 | labornotes.org

[ Labor Notes ]. "More than 100 hospitals in the U.S. have laid off workers since the pandemic began. Tens of thousands of medical workers are furloughed at the exact moment hospitals should be staffing up and training everyone in intensive care. Expecting a tidal wave of very sick patients, many of whom could be unemployed and uninsured, many hospitals have ended all elective procedures, one of their most lucrative sources of revenue. Since insurance in the United States is primarily tied to having a job, hospitals anticipate being left with egregious costs they have no hope of ever being able to recoup."

[Apr 19, 2020] the doctor in the video above suggests, the medical profession needs to examine the *possibility* that COVID-19 is a *new* disease and that previous protocols may not apply.

Apr 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , Apr 18 2020 3:54 utc | 167

This interview by WebMD with a doctor at Maimonides in New York is important and should be viewed by everyone. What he is saying is that this virus causes a *new* disease that is *not* conventional ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) and (probably) should not be treated by the same protocols developed for treating ARDS.

Do COVID-19 Vent Protocols Need a Second Look?
https://tinyurl.com/yd3dxygf

The bottom line is that the doctors currently treating you for this virus (probably) *do not know* how to treat this virus! They are feeling their way through this thing. As the doctor in the video above suggests, the medical profession needs to examine the *possibility* that COVID-19 is a *new* disease and that previous protocols may not apply.

For patients on ventilators, the bottom line is that upwards of 50 percent - to seventy percent, according to this doctor - will not come out alive, based on current protocols.

This Webinar - which I believed was referenced here in an earlier thread by someone - is along the same lines (Warning: More technical than the above because it is a Webinar for doctors - but still valuable to watch):

Webinar on Avoiding Intubation and Initial Ventilation in COVID19
https://tinyurl.com/rch6qu8

chuteh , Apr 18 2020 5:30 utc | 172

This video explains much about the inter-action of SARS-Covid2 virus and... spike/ACEnzyme2 binding to AT2 lung cells, furin, membrane porosity via viroporons E and ORf3a, macrophages, cell-free heme, porphyrins, sabotage of ferrous/hemoglobin oxygen transport, ferritin hypoxia, ascorbate/DHA recycling, Nitric Oxide, Oxidative Bursts, etc.

I cannot judge its degree of truth and errors and omissions, but I could follow its detailed view of how the disease can be understood and handled. For that it was very helpful.

You might scan thru the introduction of the presenter and get right into her 1-hour , very tight review .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV53h7MCu9I

[Apr 19, 2020] I was recently struck by how very much it reminded me of H.L. Mencken's description of growing up in late 19th century Baltimore, and how terrified the poor were at the prospect of "recieving treatment" in hospitals, from which few ever returned.

Apr 19, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

richard , April 16, 2020 at 3:33 pm

Looking at that uche blackstock tweet about patients not wanting to come in, and then seeing how much it was echoed (despite blackstock's dismay at people waiting) in the responses, I was struck by how very much it reminded me of H.L. Mencken's description of growing up in late 19th century Baltimore, and how terrified the poor were at the prospect of "recieving treatment" in hospitals, from which few ever returned.
Take a second and let that sink in. Then think of how south korea is treating sick people, where it actually appears to be 2020. Think about that too.
Then say your names like the 2nd daughter of Ned Stark, and knit yourself something.

chuck roast , April 16, 2020 at 5:32 pm

Yep, this is America our motto you're on your own and we all know it. And here is this PMC doctor shocked, shocked that the locals have figured out the American Public Health Care scam.

So, Il Douche will declare this annoying emergency over in a week or two, and we can all climb back on the monthly payment dreadmill. As a geezer, I will find that extremely comforting inasmuch as there will no longer be any uncertainty about my near term health I will be well and truly doomed. And will I be visiting Dr. Uche and his cohorts when I am drowning? Nah, that's not the plan! Besides, when the post-pandemic CV tidal wave hits what's left of the health care apparatus, who would want to be bothering the wretched, surviving nurses, PAs and docs?

BTW Ralph Reed, barring a last trip on the on the LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular I.V., do you have any of those purple dots left?

richard , April 16, 2020 at 6:23 pm

Reading through that thread, the doctor seems to me more aware and responsible to me than the french guy in casablanca :)

[Apr 19, 2020] Ron Paul: People 'Should Be Leery About' a Coronavirus Vaccine by Adam Dick

Apr 14, 2020 | ronpaulinstitute.org


Ron Paul, in a Monday interview with host Dan Dicks at Press for Truth, warns that people "should be leery about" coronavirus vaccines that may come out. Further, says Paul, a doctor and former United States House of Representatives member, "right now I wouldn't think there is any indication for anybody to take them," noting that "scare tactics" are being used to pressure people into thinking they should take such potential vaccines to protect against coronavirus.

Paul supports this conclusion by stressing in the interview the potential danger of a vaccine as well as the overstated threat from coronavirus.

Regarding the potential danger from a coronavirus vaccine, Paul discusses at the beginning of the interview how, in 1976 in his first week as a House member, Paul was one of only two members, both doctors, who voted against legislation that helped rush through a vaccine in response to swine flu. Paul describes the results of the push for people to take the swine flu vaccine as follows:

They rushed the vaccine through. The vaccine was not properly made. It had nothing to do with the virus that was out there, so it saved nobody's life from it. It caused a lot of harm. More people ended up dying from the inoculation than died from the flu that year. And that sort of was a lesson, like that's a little bit too extreme. But, that's about what happens when governments get involved and you do things for political reasons.

There was also, because a lot of people ended up getting the vaccine, I think there were like 50 people or more who got Guillain-Barré syndrome, which is temporary total paralysis and you can die from it but most of them did get better. But, it was a very, very serious complication of a viral injection, you know, a vaccine.

Paul also discusses in the interview the overstated danger from coronavirus that is being used to scare people to take actions including to potentially take a coronavirus vaccine.

Paul notes that many of the people whose deaths have been blamed on coronavirus are elderly people, including people living in nursing homes, who have multiple other diseases. Further, explains Paul, doctors have "been instructed by [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and other politicians that, when the doctors sign the death certificate, if [patients] have four different things but they happen to have a positive test for the virus that is to be put down as the major cause of death." "The numbers mean nothing," concludes Paul regarding the daily tabulation of coronavirus deaths.

In addition, Paul explains that many more people than officially recorded have contracted coronavirus. Some of these individuals never became sick. Others got better without any treatment, says Paul, pointing to his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as an example. While Rand Paul was given a test that confirmed he had coronavirus, most people who have had coronavirus and suffered no to minor medical problems have not been tested. With "probably millions of people" having contracted coronavirus, Paul concludes that the percentage of people who have contracted coronavirus and have died as a result "is probably very, very small."

While Paul says he would choose not to take a vaccine for the coronavirus should one appear next week even if people claim it is 99 percent effective, he says that the decision to take or not take a vaccine is one that should be made by each individual, who can discuss the vaccine alternative with a doctor. Absolutely, Paul concludes, that decision should not be made by government.

Watch here Paul's complete interview, in which he also discusses how government actions taken in the name of fighting coronavirus are harming the economy and his support for people speaking out for ending coronavirus-justified encroachments on freedom:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TblqxaQbtac


Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute

[Apr 18, 2020] As one caustic virologist observed, getting out into the open air is a good defense against respiratory transmitted infections: avoiding infection is a walk in the park

Apr 18, 2020 | www.unz.com

A German team under Prof Streeck argues that workplaces don't spread the coronavirus as much as play spaces: singing in a choir produces an aerosol and spray cloud, dancing together in a room or bar, or nightclub apres-ski, also creates infective clouds, as would any confined space where lots of people are in close contact breathing heavily. Although public health guidance has been coy on this matter, orgies are probably best avoided.

On that theme, there are settings in which you are likely to get a big dose, a large viral load, and others where the globules will be few and far between. As one caustic virologist observed, getting out into the open air is a good defense against respiratory transmitted infections: avoiding infection is a walk in the park.

[Apr 18, 2020] Stanford Study Suggests Actual Number of COVID-19 Cases May Be Up to 85 Times Higher Than Official Data - Sputnik International

Apr 18, 2020 | sputniknews.com

The researchers think there could be a difference between the actual and official numbers due to a percentage of citizens who have been infected with the virus but do not show any symptoms. At the same time, they can potentially transmit it to other people, and the overall tally continues to grow. A group of scientists from California estimates that the actual number of COVID-19 cases in one county may be up to 85 times higher than the official data.

The Stanford University-led researchers took data from Santa Clara County as the basis for their study, where 3,330 adults and minors have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. According to their findings, the COVID-19 prevalence in the area ranged from 2.49 percent to 4.16 percent, representing 50-85 times more cases than the number confirmed by the authorities.

"Our data imply that, by 1 April (three days prior to the end of our survey) between 48,000 and 81,000 people had been infected in Santa Clara County. The reported number of confirmed positive cases in the county on 1 April was 956, 50-85-fold lower than the number of infections predicted by this study", the study says.

Apart from detecting asymptomatic carriers, recording previously unreported cases will also help provide better estimates on the prevalence of COVID-19, the study suggests.

According to the researchers, their findings will help make more accurate projections on the epidemic's spread and mortality rate in the future.

"While our study was limited to Santa Clara County, it demonstrates the feasibility of seroprevalence surveys of population samples now, and in the future, to inform our understanding of this pandemic's progression, project estimates of community vulnerability, and monitor infection fatality

[Apr 18, 2020] How Long Are You Contagious With Coronavirus For by Tambri Housen Amy Elizabeth Parry Meru Sheel ,

Notable quotes:
"... Read more: Coronavirus: how long does it take to get sick? How infectious is it? Will you always have a fever? COVID-19 basics explained ..."
"... Read more: How can I treat myself if I've got – or think I've got – coronavirus? ..."
"... Read more: Who can get tested for coronavirus? ..."
Apr 14, 2020 | nationalinterest.org

For COVID-19, the incubation period ranges from 1 to 14 days. But most people who develop COVID-19 symptoms do so 4 to 6 days after exposure.

Read more: Coronavirus: how long does it take to get sick? How infectious is it? Will you always have a fever? COVID-19 basics explained

How long are you infectious?

The " infectious period " means the time you're able to spread the virus to someone else.

For COVID-19, there is emerging evidence to suggest the infectious period may start 1 to 3 days before you develop symptoms .

The most infectious period is thought to be 1 to 3 days before symptoms start, and in the first 7 days after symptoms begin. But some people may remain infectious for longer.

Commonly reported symptoms for COVID-19 – such as fever, cough and fatigue – usually last around 9 to 10 days but this can be longer.

Why are some people infectious for longer?

Typically with viruses, the higher the viral load (the more virus circulating in the body), the higher the risk of transmission through known transmission pathways.

A study conducted in Hong Kong looking at viral load in 23 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 found higher viral loads in the first week of illness .

Another study from China looking at 76 hospitalised patients found that by 10 days after symptom onset, mild cases had cleared the virus. That is, no virus was detectable through testing.

However, severe cases have much higher viral loads and many continue to test positive beyond the 10 days after symptoms start.

So the more severe the illness and the higher the viral load, the longer you continue to shed the virus and are infectious.

Read more: How can I treat myself if I've got – or think I've got – coronavirus?

When are you no longer infectious?

If someone has been symptom-free for 3 days and they developed their first symptoms more than 10 days prior, they are no longer considered to be infectious.

But we're not sure whether people are infectious when they have recovered but the virus can still be detected in their bodies.

One study from Hong Kong found the virus could be detected for 20 days or longer after the initial onset of symptoms in one-third of patients tested.

Another study from China found found the virus in a patients' faecal samples five weeks after the first onset of symptoms.

But the detection of the virus doesn't necessarily mean the person is infectious. We need more studies with larger sample sizes to get to the bottom of this question.

Should you get tested again before going back into the community?

Due to a global shortage of coronavirus tests, the Commonwealth and state governments have strict criteria about who should be tested for COVID-19 and when.

Read more: Who can get tested for coronavirus?

People who have been self-quarantining , because they had contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19 and have completed their 14-day quarantine period without developing symptoms, can return to the community . There is no requirement to be tested prior to returning to the community. It is, however, recommended they continue to practise social distancing and good hygiene as a precaution.

The requirements are different for people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

At present, re-testing people who have experienced mild illness, and have recovered from COVID-19 is not recommended. A person is considered safe to return to the community and discontinue self-isolation if they are no longer infectious. This means they developed their first symptoms more than 10 days prior and have not experienced any symptoms for at least 3 days (72 hours).

[Apr 17, 2020] Clinical observations from ICU doctors report multi-organ (kidney heart GI testes) involvements

Apr 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

gm , Apr 16 2020 11:42 utc | 136

Hang onto your hats for this latest scary but data-driven 48 min long Chris Martenson YT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vtX0s-nHKo

Covers all kinds of snowballing repercussions of the pandemic in US/world including:

-plummeting US economic activity indicators /bank reserves data

-food production/processing supply chain problems

-clinical observations from icu doctors world wide of new multi-organ (kidney heart GI testes) involvements, olfactory/neurological/pinkeye, etc phenomena (from Washington Post of all places).

[Apr 17, 2020] Nations with Mandatory TB Vaccines Show Fewer Coronavirus Deaths (bloomberg)

Apr 17, 2020 | www.bloomberg.com

Posted by: Virgile | Apr 16 2020 21:42 utc | 59

[Apr 17, 2020] Soviet-era tuberculosis vaccinations (BCG vaccine) may have had an protective effect for COVID-19

Apr 17, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

COVID AND RUSSIA. Overall totals to today are 28K infected, 232 dead . This raises the question of why the death rate in Russia appears to be lower. One theory is that the widespread Soviet-era tuberculosis vaccinations ( BCG vaccine ) may have had an effect – just how or why is unclear, but there seems to be a statistical relationship .

A test of its effectiveness is beginning in Australia .

Over half the cases are in Moscow but every region except one reports cases: most of Sunday's infections in Shanghai came from a flight from Russia the day before . A pass system was introduced in Moscow yesterday but not very successfully (and many standing in line waiting to be checked). The new hospital in Moscow Region is up and running .

A vaccine prototype is undergoing human testing (including by the developer) . The Victory Parade is postponed .

Meanwhile Russian military specialists are working away in Italy. ( This, by the way, is why NBCW units were sent – not to spy , or for " gaining access to Italy's health and military system, which is part of a larger NATO structure ", or to create " A hybrid lie. Or a hybrid truth " or be useless or whatever else NATO flacks imagine).

[Apr 17, 2020] Scientists Discover Alarming Coronavirus Mutation That Could Render Vaccine Useless

Apr 17, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

The problem is that vaccines often aren't as effective against viruses that mutate, like the flu does every season (that's why you need to keep getting that flu shot year after year). And now, a new scientific paper that - like most of the coronavirus research being cited in the press - has yet to be peer reviewed claims to have identified a mutation in a sample of the virus collected in India that could create serious problems for researchers working on a vaccine.

Monitoring the mutation dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 is critical for the development of effective approaches to contain the 21 pathogen. By analyzing 106 SARS-CoV-2 and 39 SARS genome sequences, we provided direct genetic evidence that 22 SARS-CoV-2 has a much lower mutation rate than SARS. Minimum Evolution phylogeny analysis revealed the putative original status of SARS-CoV-2 and the early-stage spread history. The discrepant phylogenies for the spike protein and it receptor binding domain proved a previously reported structural rearrangement prior to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. Despite that, we found the spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 is particularly more conserved, we identified a mutation that leads to weaker receptor binding capability, which concerns a SARS-CoV-2 sample collected on 27th January 2020 from India. This represents the first report of a significant SARS-CoV-2 mutant, and raises the alarm that the ongoing vaccine Development may become futile in future epidemic if more mutations were identified.

[Apr 16, 2020] Debunking Some Ideas About The Virus

Notable quotes:
"... These observations support the importance of hand hygiene after touching the outer surface of masks. ..."
Apr 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

mk , Apr 15 2020 6:20 utc | 125

New South Korean study on the effectivity of masks

https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2764367/effectiveness-surgical-cotton-masks-blocking-sars-cov-2-controlled-comparison

Background: During respiratory viral infection, face masks are thought to prevent transmission (1). Whether face masks worn by patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevent contamination of the environment is uncertain (2, 3). A previous study reported that surgical masks and N95 masks were equally effective in preventing the dissemination of influenza virus (4), so surgical masks might help prevent transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS–CoV-2). However, the SARS–CoV-2 pandemic has contributed to shortages of both N95 and surgical masks, and cotton masks have gained interest as a substitute.
Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of surgical and cotton masks in filtering SARS–CoV-2.

...


Discussion: Neither surgical nor cotton masks effectively filtered SARS–CoV-2 during coughs by infected patients. Prior evidence that surgical masks effectively filtered influenza virus (1) informed recommendations that patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 should wear face masks to prevent transmission (2). However, the size and concentrations of SARS–CoV-2 in aerosols generated during coughing are unknown.

Oberg and Brousseau (3) demonstrated that surgical masks did not exhibit adequate filter performance against aerosols measuring 0.9, 2.0, and 3.1 μm in diameter.

Lee and colleagues (4) showed that particles 0.04 to 0.2 μm can penetrate surgical masks. The size of the SARS–CoV particle from the 2002–2004 outbreak was estimated as 0.08 to 0.14 μm (5); assuming that SARS-CoV-2 has a similar size, surgical masks are unlikely to effectively filter this virus.

Of note, we found greater contamination on the outer than the inner mask surfaces. Although it is possible that virus particles may cross from the inner to the outer surface because of the physical pressure of swabbing, we swabbed the outer surface before the inner surface. The consistent finding of virus on the outer mask surface is unlikely to have been caused by experimental error or artifact. The mask's aerodynamic features may explain this finding. A turbulent jet due to air leakage around the mask edge could contaminate the outer surface. Alternatively, the small aerosols of SARS–CoV-2 generated during a high-velocity cough might penetrate the masks. However, this hypothesis may only be valid if the coughing patients did not exhale any large-sized particles, which would be expected to be deposited on the inner surface despite high velocity. These observations support the importance of hand hygiene after touching the outer surface of masks.

This experiment did not include N95 masks and does not reflect the actual transmission of infection from patients with COVID-19 wearing different types of masks. We do not know whether masks shorten the travel distance of droplets during coughing. Further study is needed to recommend whether face masks decrease transmission of virus from asymptomatic individuals or those with suspected COVID-19 who are not coughing.

In conclusion, both surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment and external mask surface.

[Apr 15, 2020] Coronavirus scam- 39 million masks exposed as fake

Apr 15, 2020 | www.latimes.com

A powerful California union that claimed to have discovered 39 million masks for healthcare workers fighting the novel coronavirus was duped in an elaborate scam uncovered by FBI investigators, the U.S. attorney's office said Friday.

U.S. Atty. Scott Brady of the Western District of Pennsylvania said FBI agents and prosecutors stumbled onto the arrangement while looking into whether they could intercept the masks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Defense Production Act.

The federal government has been quietly seizing supplies across the country, taking the orders placed by hospitals and clinics and not publicly reporting where the products are being routed.

But in this case, there was no warehouse, and there were no masks to seize.

[Apr 15, 2020] Three subtypes of SARC-CoV-2 are spreading in different geographical regions

Is immunity to one type provide immunity to all three ?
Apr 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Peter AU1 , Apr 15 2020 10:05 utc | 152

And this

"When cuttlefish is in danger, it spits its ink to blacken the water and took the opportunity to take flight. It is a well known tactic of some political elites and western cultural. "They wanted to simply be attributed to China the responsibility for their own inability to cope with the epidemic and the multiple tragedies that followed, and so," to whiten completely. "

By the time I finished my text, I discovered a report on the Net. On 8 April, the academic journal world-renowned, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) has published an article co-written by academics in British and German entitled network Analysis the phylogenetic genomes of SARS-CoV-2.

The first author of the article is Dr. Peter Forster of the University of Cambridge. According to the study, the researchers classified the new coronavirus in three types (A, B, and C) according to their development.

The type A is the closest of the virus extracts of the bat and pangolin. It is the one most frequently identified among hiv-infected patients in the United States and Australia. That is, what researchers call " the root of the epidemic ".

The strains of type B are variants of the type A and are mainly present in China. Those that are spreading on a large scale in Europe are those of the type C. Unfortunately, it appears that the results of the research of Dr Peter Forster are not interested in the western mainstream media.

[Apr 15, 2020] Note on virus panic porn

Notable quotes:
"... As soon as you see the real data released by the ONS you will immediately see that the cited twitter is blatant fake news! ..."
Apr 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

BM , Apr 15 2020 11:08 utc | 163

The graphs show the normal mortality rates in the England and Wales and in New York City and the current deviations from it. The flu does not create such graphs. Nor do the lock-downs.

I've got a nice bridge for sale, B, 2000 miles long and entirely made of NYT articles and twitter tweets.

The Twitter chart leaves the impression that the number of deaths suddenly soared up almost vertically by around 5500 just in the last few days ...

Good panic porn stuff that. Also take note of what sort of people appear in that thread - it is not a list of nobodies!

But wait - look more closely! That upturn is for week 14 - the week ending 3rd April, already 12 days ago. You can see the release of the data by the Office for National Statistics here (there is no more recent data released by ONS)

As soon as you see the real data released by the ONS you will immediately see that the cited twitter is blatant fake news!

That chart is specifically constructed to deceive. No actual cited figures, no actual dates, no links to the real data - just pure panic porn. Why not cite the specific dates covered? Because that would raise immediate suspicion with that sudden spurt, because it does not correspond to previously available figures. Why not cite the specific figures in the tweet? Because then it would be immediately obvious that this is fake news. Why not explain the cause of the strange shape of the graph? Because that would give the whole game away.

So what do you see when you look at the real data released by ONS, instead of the fake news in that twitter?

1) Total deaths registered in week 14 16387
2) Increase over week 13 5246
3) Increase over 5-year average for week 14 6082
*** BUT ***
4) Note that these figures are not the deaths which occurred in week 14, they are the deaths which were registered in week 14, irrespective of when the deaths actually occurred (registration is often delayed)
5) Note the warning given on that page: "Please note, where Easter falls in previous years will have an impact on the five-year average used for comparison"
6) 3475 deaths in week 14 " mentioned novel coronavirus (COVID-19)" on the death certificate - NOTE - this is not the cause of death specified on the death certificate!!!
7) 539 deaths in week 13 " mentioned novel coronavirus (COVID-19)" on the death certificate
8) But wait - 3475 is only about half the alleged excess deaths, and these are not even the deaths caused by covid-19 (see below) these are only the deaths where covid-19 "happens" to have been tested positive (car accident, for example!)

Look further!

9) Look at the row "Deaths where the underlying cause was respiratory disease (ICD-10 J00-J99)" under official WHO standards, that is the broad category under which the covid-19 deaths are to be listed, if it is considered by the doctor to be the cause of death. The row gives figures for each week of 2020 as follows (from weeks 1 to 14 in sequence):
2141 2477 2188 1893 1746 1572 1602 1619 1546 1581 1492 1515 1534 2106

VOILA!

This category - which is the actual recorded cause of death - includes covid-19 deaths, but it is a broad category of respiratory-related deaths which also includes many deaths which have nothing whatsoever to do with covid-19. Those 2141, 2477 and 2188 deaths registered in each of the first 3 weeks of 2020 were before there was even a single death from covid-19 in the UK! The average of the first 13 weeks is 1762, and the value for week 14 (2106) is only 344 more than that!

Also note that the deaths which "mention" covid-19 are 1369 greater (including car accidents, unrelated illness, etc) than the number of deaths caused by respiratory illnesses (including Covid-19), which already includes another 1500 to 1700 deaths not caused by covid-19!

This spurt of extra deaths registered in week 14 most certainly does not represent a sudden spurt of genuine covid-19 deaths - that is conclusively proven by the row of figures giving the underlying cause of death for each week's registrations.

If anything, the data may show a sudden spurt of deaths from other causes such as stress caused by the lockdown, food shortages, money shortages, unexpected homelessness, non-covid-19 illnesses not treated because the hospitals cancelled appointments and operations, stress, fear etc.

Such causes probably underlie at least a few of the unaccounted for excess deaths (conceaveably even most, perhaps), but it is also possible it is simply a statistical aberration and/or related to delays in registering deaths, including the unspecified effect of the Easter holidays on death registration. The aberration may also have been deliberate, to cover up government mishandling of the crisis, or it may result from staff shortages, or perhaps completely irrelevant reasons - we cannot know without detailed investigation of how the data were prepared and the patterns of death registration.

What is absolutely certain is that that twitter chart is unmitigated fake news deliberately designed to deceive .

The NYT is no better - completely non-sensical presentation of the data with no explanation of the meaning of the non-sensical presentation, deliberately designed to misrepresent.

Comments, B? Time to reconsider what you are doing?

I've been urging people to look more closely at what is happening, because the magicians have been very successful with their acts, recently. Things are not as they seem on the surface - you need to look more carefully at the small print.

That includes the details of lockdowns. Lockdowns kill, when they are done in the irresponsible and brutal and dishonest way they have been done in the UK and the USA.

China did NOT rely on lockdowns - they relied on an integrated combination of social distancing (including, where necessary, lockdowns, but mostly not , except in Hubei Province), tracing, and isolation of those infected or at risk.

Lockdowns as imposed by the UK and the USA are just suicide pacts, as described by Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, and are ineffective in dealing with covid-19.

[Apr 15, 2020] Wearing masks indoors in close quarters is prudent, while wearning them outside or inside a personal car when you drive alone is stupid and is a sign of the pandemic of panic

Notable quotes:
"... But it's especially outdoor behavior which gives psychological insight on the pandemic of panic. Yesterday I saw people walking alone on the sidewalk, for example a woman alone walking her dog, wearing masks. Evidently such people have regressed from the germ theory of infection to the miasma theory. They think the very air itself is the source of the bug. ..."
Apr 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Russ , Apr 15 2020 9:12 utc | 141

Wearing masks indoors in close quarters seems prudent, even though there's so much conflicting evidence and it's just as likely they're a stifling version of a rabbit's foot as that they confer any real protection.

But it's especially outdoor behavior which gives psychological insight on the pandemic of panic. Yesterday I saw people walking alone on the sidewalk, for example a woman alone walking her dog, wearing masks. Evidently such people have regressed from the germ theory of infection to the miasma theory. They think the very air itself is the source of the bug.

But the guy who instantly became my favorite representative of the whole hysteria (I wish I had a picture of him) was the idiot I saw perform an act of extremely dangerous jaywalking, dashing across a busy road with fast oncoming traffic both ways - wearing a mask.

[Apr 15, 2020] "Le microbe c'est rien, le milieu c'est tout" = the microbe is nothing, the environment is everything.

Apr 15, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Matthias , Apr 15 2020 9:16 utc | 142

Everyone seems fixated on the virus and how to protect against it. I remind you all of the famous proverb

"Le microbe c'est rien, le milieu c'est tout" = the microbe is nothing, the environment is everything.

Environment means the local conditions in the affected body, a combination of immune system and pre-existing illness.

We are facing a microbe that appears very dangerous in some places with case mortality 10..20% (heavily featured in the media and also in this blog), while in other places it does no more than a seasonal flu with overall mortality < 0.5%. This leads to two equally distorted biases: some people see the whole world as disaster area, some say there is no problem at all. One could question whether it is really the exact same virus, but I'm not going there.

Actually, with the proverb in mind we should be asking: what are the local conditions in the hotspots, what has weakened people's immune system in these places, and what kind of precondition exists there but does not exist in general. In simple words: why here and not there?
Not asking this question and focusing only on an alleged "killer virus" means you see a distorted picture and you would tend to roll out the same drastic protection lockdown measures everywhere, which suffocates the economy and culture unnecessarily and creates massive collateral. I'm in favor of a proportional response focusing on the hotspots, and otherwise teach people how to strengthen their immune system and protect themselves (voluntarily) if they see the need - of course they must have the means made available.

Known factors weakening the immune system and/or lungs:

1) Poor diet – the junk food (fast food, canned food, microwaved food) so typical of US and GB city dwellers. Without the necessary high-quality nutrition the immune system can only be weak. Natural vitamins and essential nutrients go very far in terms of virus protection.

2) Air pollution – Lombardia (Bergamo in particular) and NYC for example both suffer from high air pollution, and particularly in Manhattan the 9/11 event released a huge cloud of finest asbestos dust which caused a wave of lung cancer in the region and a lung precondition for everyone who was exposed at the time.

3) Negative emotions – intense anger and fear can reduce immune activity by 50% for several hours, as measured by IgA in the saliva. Likewise, positive emotions strengten it. Media have been feeding us shock and awe and disaster 24/7 for weeks now, you think that has no effect, think again. Check the amazing research done by HeartMath institute . Also, forced isolation and contact deprevation is wreaking havoc with people who love company or have psychic preconditions.

4) Radiation – there are hundreds of scientific papers on the non-thermal effect of low-energy microwave radiation on our physiology at cellular level, usually this medical research is ignored. An extensive linked collection is available by diagnose:funk (a German self-help society involving many M.D.s). Immune suppression is one of the effects. Where the COVID19 death toll is very high you have a dense WiFi and 4G coverage and yes, typically 5G pilot installations also exist. Most young people who died from COVID19 were working in IT companies and thus had very high exposure.

5) Vaccination – a vaccine protects from one specific virus but is known to weaken the immune system otherwise. North Italy is among the regions with the highest vaccination rate on this globe.

[Apr 15, 2020] COFFEE-FILTER FACE MASK

Apr 15, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

COFFEE-FILTER FACE MASK

What you need:

Two coffee filters
Two to three feet of craft ribbon or string
Tape

Keep the coffee filters nested. Place them with the cup side down.

Fold the bottom edges of the mask up about an inch (approximately 2-3 cm). Fold the top edge about a half inch (or about 1 cm).

Then fold the top over another half inch. This will make the top part of the mask slightly stiffer so it will hold the bend over your nose better.

Place the ribbon in the top and bottom troughs formed by the folded edges of the coffee filters. Tape the folded edges of the filters down to hold the ribbon in place.

Loop the ribbon over one ear and tie the free ends of the ribbon over the other ear to hold the mask in place over your face. Use a vertical piece of tape on the mask over each cheek to fit the mask to your face once you have put it on.

This mask will not stop lone viruses from getting through because the coffee filter is too porous. It will tend to block large droplets from coughing or sneezing. Droplets can contain huge numbers of viruses and be very infectious.

This mask is not nearly as good as a surgical mask, but better than nothing. It is much easier to wear a mask like this than to walk around holding a tissue in front of your face.

I found that I am sensitive to the odor of cheap masking tape but the cellophane tape was OK for me. Masks should be tested at home for comfort and allergens before trying to use them.

The coffee filters should be thrown away after the mask in used. Washing hands with soap and warm water will destroy the virus, so it is important to wash your hands after handling used masks. The roll of ribbon was 47 cents so this is not too expensive, but I plan on removing the ribbons and washing them in hot, soapy water to use again.

These coffee filter masks are easy to make, fit fairly comfortably and do not require sewing skills. Paper towels could probably be used to make masks but I do not use paper towels and am not about to brave the stores to wrestle other customers for the last roll. This virus can be destroyed by soap and water, acid and/or heat. It generally only survives a day or two on paper. If you cannot get enough coffee filters, leaving the mask in a hot car for a day should kill this virus. The hot-car treatment would not necessarily kill other germs that might be on the mask though.

[Apr 15, 2020] Covid-19 Research Updates- Chinese Study Reveals That Hypokalemia Present In Almost All Covid-19 Patients - Thailand Medical News

Apr 15, 2020 | www.thailandmedical.news

Covid-19 Research Updates: Chinese Study Reveals That Hypokalemia Present In Almost All Covid-19 Patients Source: Covid-19 Research Mar 09, 2020 1 month ago Covid-19 Research : A new research study by researchers from Wenzhou Medical University in Zhejiang province lead by Dr Don Chen revealed that almost all Covid-19 patients exhibited hypokalemia and that supplementation with potassium ions was one of the many factors that assisted in their recovery.

Hypokalemia is best described as low level of potassium (K+) ions in the blood serum. Mild low potassium does not typically cause symptoms. Symptoms may include feeling tired, leg cramps, weakness, and constipation. Low potassium also increases the risk of an abnormal heart rhythm, which is often too slow and can cause cardiac arrest.

It was found that as the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus attacks human cells via the ACE2 (Angiotensin- converting enzyme-2) receptors, it also attacks the renin–angiotensin system (RAS), causing low electrolyte levels in particularly potassium ions.

The study involving 175 patients in collaboration with Wenzhou Hospital found that almost all patients exhibited hypokalemia and for those who already had hypokalemia, the situation even drastically worsened as the disease progressed.

However, it was found from the study that patients responded well to potassium ion supplements and had a better chance of recovery.

The researchers noted that the end of urine K+ loss indicates a good prognosis and may be a reliable as a sensitive biomarker directly reflecting the end of adverse effect on RAS system.

The study has yet to be peer reviewed and has been published in the open platform medRvix : ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.27.20028530v1.full.pdf+html )

However, doctors at various hospitals in Wuhan, Shanghai and Guangdong have witnessed similar occurrences and also found that potassium ion supplementation helped patients towards recovery.

For the latest on Covid-19 research developments, keep checking at: Thailand Medical News

[Apr 15, 2020] Pretty ingeniou shopital trick: DIY Isopod with Negative Pressure and Air Scrubber

80% of infections happen in families when one member of the family became sick. Can be used in families with infected people. See also COVID-19 virus self isolation quarantine room at home using HEPA air filtration
Apr 15, 2020 | www.youtube.com

There are redymade isolation pods as well What does a Coronavirus isolation pod look like- - YouTube


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ht="100%" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 36 36" width="100%"> DIY Isopod with Negative Pressure and Air Scrubber 4,917 views • Mar 25, 2020 93 0 SHARE SAVE HNMC Media 803 subscribers SUBSCRIBE How to make rooms negative pressure by using construction scrubbers with HEPA filters, and a DIY isopod using materials available in a local hardware store. If you would like to see a sample of these isopods - We will have one on display at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, NJ 07666. Please email Steve Mosser to review [email protected]

[Apr 13, 2020] Thoughts on the Gautret et al. paper about Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin treatment of COVID-19 infections

See also ISAC shares concerns about the Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin paper
Apr 13, 2020 | scienceintegritydigest.com
  1. Maisonneuve says: March 25, 2020 at 1:30 am Hello,
    This analysis is well done, as it's a very poor paper with plenty of conflicts of interests. The French context goes beyond the article. Too many non-scientists, mainly politicians, give opinions on radios and televisions. A well-known politician from Nice (Estrosi) took chloroquine for his coronavirus. He was cured in a few days without hospitalization.

    He gave interviews to explain that chloroquine was effective he is not the only politician with a media opinion on this treatment. Politicians and pseudo-science journalists comment on D Raoult's excellence, based only on the number of publications.

    In March 2020, D Raoult co-signed 5 papers in the International Journal of Antimicrobiol Agents ..

    There are too many fights in France about this publication, and the message that it is bad is not heard by the media.
    I suggest to read the 2012 D Raoult portrait in Science entitled 'Sound and fury in the microbiology lab'

    https://science.sciencemag.org/content/335/6072/1033.long

    Bonne journée
    Hervé Maisonneuve, MD, Paris

[Apr 13, 2020] China Cancels Gilead Study

Apr 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Beijing had shut down a branch of its closely watched global remdesivir that was studying patients in 'severe' condition in Wuhan. After showing early promise, the study was allegedly shuttered by the government because there weren't enough patients who qualified.

[Apr 13, 2020] Doctors Fear Coronavirus Survivors May Have Lasting Damage To Multiple Organs

Apr 13, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

For the sickest patients, infection with the new coronavirus is proving to be a full-body assault, causing damage well beyond the lungs. And even after patients who become severely ill have recovered and cleared the virus, physicians have begun seeing evidence of the infection's lingering effects .

In a study posted this week, scientists in China examined the blood test results of 34 COVID-19 patients over the course of their hospitalization. In those who survived mild and severe disease alike, the researchers found that many of the biological measures had "failed to return to normal." - Los Angeles Times

One alarming observation have been test results indicating that recovered patients continue to have impaired liver function after patients had been cleared for discharge.

Another concern from cardiologists are the immediate effects of COVID-19 on the heart , raising questions over how long the damage may last. As the Times notes, "In an early study of COVID-19 patients in China, heart failure was seen in nearly 12% of those who survived, including in some who had shown no signs of respiratory distress. "

Heart damage can easily occur when the lungs cannot deliver sufficient oxygen to the body, however when this happens without respiratory distress, "doctors have to wonder whether they have underestimated COVID-19's ability to wreak lasting havoc," according to the report.

"COVID-19 is not just a respiratory disorder," according to Yale cardiologist Dr. Harlan Krumholtz, who added "It can affect the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the endocrine system and the blood system."

Of course, there are no long-term survivors of the disease - which was unknown to mainstream science less than five months ago. Even its first victims in China are just over three months removed from their ordeal, while physicians swamped with the ongoing pandemic have been too busy treating critical patients to closely monitor the some 370,000 patients classified as 'recovered.'

Still, doctors are worried that in its wake, some organs whose function has been knocked off kilter will not recover quickly, or completely . That could leave patients more vulnerable for months or years to come.

" I think there will be long-term sequelae ," said Yale cardiologist Dr. Joseph Brennan , using the medical term for a disease's downstream effects.

"I don't know that for real," he cautioned. "But this disease is so overwhelming" that some of the recovered are likely to face ongoing health concerns , he said. - Los Angeles Times

Meanwhile, questions have emerged over whether COVID-19 actually leaves the body - possibly lying dormant for years only to re-emerge later in a different form.

Several viruses already do this such as chicken pox - which can come back as shingles, and hepatitis B, which can cause liver cancer years after the primary infection clears up. Ebola is another example - hiding in the vitreous fluid of victims' eyeballs in some cases, causing blindness or impaired vision in 40% of survivors.

Of course, then there's the lungs - which the novel coronavirus tends to target first. In another closely related coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), around 1/3 of recovered patients had impaired lung function after three years - though they largely resolved over the next 15 years. And, 1/3 of those who survived Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) had permanent scarring of the lungs known as fibrosis.

According to a mid-March publication which tracked a dozen COVID-19 patients discharged from a Hong Kong hospital, two or three reported having difficulties with activities they had no problem performing in the past.

Dr. Owen Tsang Tak-yin, director of infectious diseases at Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong, told reporters that some patients "might have around a drop of 20 to 30% in lung function" after their recovery.

Citing the history of lasting lung damage in SARS and MERS patients, a team led by UCLA radiologist Melina Hosseiny is recommending that patients who have recovered from COVID-19 get follow-up lung scans "to evaluate long-term or permanent lung damage including fibrosis."

As doctors try to assess organ damage after COVID-19 recovery, there's a key complication: Patients with disorders that affect the heart, liver, blood and lungs face a higher risk of becoming very sick with COVID-19 in the first place . That makes it difficult to distinguish COVID-19 after-effects from the problems that made patients vulnerable to begin with -- especially so early in the game. - Los Angeles Times

And while doctors and researchers are still discovering COVID-19's secrets, what they do know is that when patients show signs of infection, several organ systems are affected - and that when one begins to fail, others often follow. This is all wrapped in an inflammatory response, which can pry "plaques and clots from the walls of blood vessels and causing strokes, heart attacks and venous embolisms," according to the report.

Dr. Krumholtz, the cardiologist, says the infection can cause damage to the heart and the sac which encases it, causing heart failure and arrhythmias in some patients during the acute phase. This means that former COVID-19 patients can become lifelong cardiology patients after they 'recover' from the primary illness.

What's worse, blood abnormalities that can make clots more likely can persist as well.

In a case report published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, Chinese doctors described a patient with severe COVID-19, clots evident in several parts of his body, and immune proteins called antiphospholipid antibodies .

A hallmark of an autoimmune disease called antiphospholipid syndrome , these antibodies sometimes occur as a passing response to an infection. But sometimes they linger, causing dangerous blood clots in the legs, kidneys, lungs and brain. In pregnant women, antiphospholipid syndrome also can result in miscarriage and stillbirth. - Los Angeles Times

Yale's Dr. Brennan says that at the end of the day, we just don't have enough data to make a long term prognosis for coronavirus patients.

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[Apr 13, 2020] How to Make (and Use) a Disinfectant Against Coronavirus

Apr 13, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

Complete disinfecting protocol includes four steps: Pre-cleaning, disinfecting (dwell time), wiping clean and rinsing with water. "But we're lucky if we get two," meaning dwell time and wipe-up, said Mark Warner, education manager at the Cleaning Management Institute, a provider of training and certification for professional cleaning services. Pre-cleaning is most important on heavily soiled surfaces, because dirt can shield pathogens underneath; it's fine to use soap and water or a household cleaner. Disinfecting for the proper dwell time, of course, is nonnegotiable. Wiping afterward is essential because disinfectants can leave a sticky residue where pathogens can quickly resettle. And rinsing finishes the process.

.... ... ...

Multiple sources give different bleach-to-water ratios for use with regular bleach. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that "unexpired bleach will be effective against coronaviruses" in a 1:48 solution (⅓ cup of bleach per gallon of water, or 4 teaspoons per quart). Clorox recommends a slightly stronger 1:32 ratio (½ cup per gallon or 2 tablespoons per quart). Mark Warner recommends a much stronger 1:10 ratio (about 1½ cups per gallon of water, or about ⅓ cup per quart). Some medical disinfectants are basically the same solution.

Whichever ratio you use, let it sit on the surface for 10 minutes: Warner told us that this is the Environmental Protection Agency's guideline for any new or unknown pathogen, and it is also the dwell time listed for the regular household bleaches on the E.P.A.'s List N, which means it is approved to eliminate the coronavirus when properly used.

Don't mix up more than you will use within a day or two. Bleach degrades fairly rapidly once taken from its original storage container, becoming less effective each day

[Apr 13, 2020] The danger of vaccines and Bill Gates activites

Apr 13, 2020 | caucus99percent.com

22 users have voted.

wendy davis on Sun, 04/12/2020 - 12:27pm

wooot!

via Gates Expert jacob levitch's twit account: April 09, 2020 , Gates' Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination , RFK, Jr, Chairman, Children's Health Defense

[hope you won't mind if i paste it all in, CB.]

'Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft's ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.
Gates' obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.

Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India's National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates' vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. [?] The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain.

In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country's Supreme Court.

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK's experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.
During Gates' 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates' operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, "We are guinea pigs for the drug makers." Nelson Mandela's former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates' philanthropic practices as "ruthless and immoral."

... ... ...

In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children.'

[Apr 12, 2020] Tolstoy advice that is useful in regina of self-isolation

Apr 12, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bruce , Apr 12 2020 13:39 utc | 10

"If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you." Leo Tolstoy

[Apr 12, 2020] It is possible that the virus attack hemoglobin and ventilators are more harmful then useful

The guy claims that this is oxygen insufficiency and ventilator can cause ARDS.
Notable quotes:
"... COVID actually attacks hemoglobin causing hypoxia in the lungs ..."
Apr 12, 2020 | www.youtube.com

M , 6 hours ago

Question: Why the hell do all of you in the comments assume this guy is right, and literally every SINGLE other doctor and physician is wrong? Just because he's contradicting the consensus? He hasn't presented a shred of evidence apart from his "theories". How likely is it that literally nobody else agrees with him? Essentially zero. Why are you all jumping on this? Cause of some insane conspiracy that every physician in the world is part of some conspiracy to lie to you?

CaptTurbo , 2 days ago

The virus is attaching to the hemoglobin, breaking the iron free so the red blood cells can't carry oxygen. This guy is on the right track!

Richard Duarte , 1 day ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role

="article"> RT here. I'd consider using an esophageal balloon catheter and adjusting vent settings according to transpulmonary pressures. A lot of places are using ARDSnet protocol and this is a great start, but transpulmonary pressure monitoring is really the next step up to achieving optimal and safe ventilator settings. I have a high suspicion that if you place a balloon in a patient on ARDSnet setting, their PEEP would be suboptimal and their transpulmonary pressure will be negative, suggesting alveolar collapse with every breath, leading to atelectrauma and lung injury. I've had patients in APRV, placed a balloon and switched back to conventional ventilation with balloon guided settings, and have drastic improvements in both oxygenation and ventilation. Increasing PEEP to achieve PtpExp 0-5 to avoid alveolar collapse and adjusting tidal volumes/inspiratory pressures to maintain PtpInsp(Driving Pressure) <15 to avoid overdistention.

Will Kelly , 1 day ago

div>I tentatively suggest it may be worth researching Viagra as a possible treatment - Viagra causes the blood to flow more freely and more oxygen flow in the body - Viagra is commonly used by high altitude climbers to help them combat the severe lack of oxygen at high altitude - see my previous comments. Maybe Viagra could help get desperately needed oxygen in to the blood of Covid 19 patients and help save lives. It's definitely worth considering - as it is an existing approved drug that could easily be re-appropriated without lengthy clinical trials. At this point we have nothing to loose - if Viagra could possibly help, then it is tentatively worth looking in to. (Possibly Coca leaves too - as they are also used to help the body uptake oxygen at high altitude where there is very little oxygen - but I suppose Coca leaves would never get official approval) I would be very interested to hear peoples thoughts. Please read my previous comment for more info. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Elizabeth Mitchell , 1 day ago (edited)

iv>Looks like the Covid19 has at least 3 stages of progression: Stage 1: fever, cough, diarrhea, headache, within 7-10 days of infection Stage 2: as disease gets deeper into the lungs, shortness of breath, low levels of oxygen by approximately day 11-15 days. At this point the Respirators helps patients Stage 3: at about 3 weeks. The patients are very sick, acute respiratory distress, shock, cardiac failure and death. Most probable, they are experiencing the effects of the 'Cytokine storm' due to the viral overload, and a massive release of cytokines, causing serious damage to the lungs, loss of lung function and fatal outcome.

GT380man , 2 days ago div class="comment-

renderer-text-content expanded">Thank you, doctor. I'm a recently retired PhD veteran of respiratory research out of pharma & biotech. I'm so relieved someone with credibility has finally called it correctly. I have friends in Italy I've known for decades through the medical/ research community. They've told me EXACTLY what you've found. Further, in some Italian case series, 97% died on ventilators. A similar case series given high oxygen CPAP often survived. Now imagine hundreds of elderly people, ill & having a positive covid19 PCR test, being put on transport ventilators attended by physicians inexperienced in ITU. I would not expect many to survive, but this is our "surge capacity" we've set up in UK.

Tracey Continelli , 6 days ago div class="c

omment-renderer-text-content expanded">This is exactly what I have been suspecting. This was recently published in Nature. "The results showed the ORF8 and surface glycoprotein could bind to the porphyrin, respectively. At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a proteins could coordinate attack the heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to dissociate the iron to form the porphyrin. The attack will cause less and less hemoglobin that can carry oxygen and carbon dioxide. The lung cells have extremely intense poisoning and inflammatory due to the inability to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen frequently, which eventually results in ground-glass-like lung images." 1. The virus attaches to the hemoglobin via ORF8 (a protein) and glycoprotein. Hemoglobin is an iron rich protein that that allows red blood cells to carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. 2. This allows it to cut off the iron 3. This reduces the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide available to the lung cells. (it is well known that anemia causes shortness of breathe, for example, because your body does not get enough oxygen rich blood). 4. This results in intense poisoning and inflammation, which results in lung damage, the ground glass like lung images, and sometimes death. Sickle cell disease is caused by a mutation in the hemoglobin-Beta gene found on chromosome 11. Hemoglobin transports oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body. Red blood cells with normal hemoglobin (hemoglobin-A) are smooth and round and glide through blood vessels. This may be why an anti-malaria drug like Plaquenil might be effective against this virus. Sickle cell anemia mutates the hemoglobin-Beta gene, which then provides protection from malaria. COVID-19 attacks the beta-hemoglobin. Doctor, I came to the same conclusion myself. Please pass this along to your colleagues. https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173/5?fbclid=IwAR1K50u0wRWhOCv0_rxS2_bYk7p3mT-OWX08GXaa0Tm13bzT8Wl8MYfTAI8

tobi foong , 1 day ago (edited)

There seems to be some evidence that hemoglobin is being disrupted and Iron ions are being released and the Free iron ions are poisoning the lung cell. this needs to be researched. Mitigated by providing O2 may be needed.

Paul Furber , 4 days ago

You are correct sir. COVID actually attacks hemoglobin causing hypoxia in the lungs : https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173

Emanuele Frati , 5 days ago

In Italy some (few) hospitals started using ozone therapy and the very first experiences are rather promising. I really hope that they can find an effective treatment of Covid-19.

Adriane C , 1 week ago

iv> TY-I posted this on my FB and am sharing with all the pulmonologists I know. You are spot on. Many of us nurses have had similar questions. Why is Vent to death rate nearly 2x faster with this than pneumonia? This is what I posted on my FB w your video. Please please keep talking - everyone please keep talking and being public. Doctors and nurses are the ones who will raise public awareness and create change and save lives. Nobody else. Seriously we are on our own. Our union nurses have been making the news daily. We need to continue to take over Social media and the news and use the public trust to advance care of our patients and protection for us (need PPE) and our families. "This is NOT pneumonia. I 100% agree with him. There's no other answer to the poor response and rapid decline with "traditional" treatment regimens. Please get this video out to all providers-especially ICU-Critical Care Providers-Pulmonologists- Infection Disease doctors. There has to be a different paradigm. Steroid use must be questioned. Suppression of febrile state must be questioned? Why not allow the immune response to run its course up to 40C? Pay attention to ACE2 receptor and microbiology of it's actions and role. Check out Med Cram or John Campbell on Youtube as well. They speak to the same questions. We are all learning and this is something totally new."

vitola1111 , 4 days ago

Malaria is also linked to hypoxia because the malaria parasite uses hemoglobin as a nutrient source. HCQ is effective in protecting the hemoglobin in the blood which is why it is showing success against COVID-19 as well.

eugene smetannikov , 3 days ago (edited) div tabindex="0" class="comment-renderer-text

" role="article"> There are four types of hypoxia: hypoxic, stagnant, anaemic and cytotoxic - as I am sure you know. If your theory is correct this would equate to anaemic hypoxia, but instead of lack of haemoglobin it would be dysfunctional. Similar, in a way, to CO poisoning: HB doesn't unload oxygen, so there is a tissue hypoxia without cyanosis. What you would see is normal or high pa02 (partial pressure of oxygen in arterial blood) and discordantly low arterial haemoglobin saturation. On the other hand, if pa02 is low it indicates that the primary problem is pulmonary, that is oxygen does not diffuse across the alveolar membrane. If haemoglobin is the primary problem then blood transfusion would indeed improve the outcome. What is the typical blood gas like in these patients? I am in Australia, and we don't have many severe cases, luckily. From what get to the Internet I gather these patients are also hypercarbic. Which is the opposite of the altitude sickness, where a patients hyperventilates, causing hypocarbia and respiratory alkalosis, with consequent symptoms. Hence acetazolamide treatment. So, what's the typical arterial blood gas like in COVID patients? High pa02 and low Sa02? Both low? What's paCO2 like?

Roger Moore , 1 day ago

According to Chinese research, it's because the red blood cells are unable pick up oxygen, like malaria. Obviously, the cure would be to enable red blood cells to carry oxygen again - something a ventilator does not do. https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/must-read-research-reveals-that-covid-19-attacks-hemoglobin-in-red-blood-cells,-rendering-it-incapable-of-transporting-oxygen--current-medical-protoco

Richard W , 2 days ago

Your video was linked in this article which points to an interesting take on Covid-19 attacking red blood cell's ability to carry iron and thus oxygen. https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/must-read-research-reveals-that-covid-19-attacks-hemoglobin-in-red-blood-cells,-rendering-it-incapable-of-transporting-oxygen--current-medical-protoco

Global Agenda , 4 days ago

Thank you for covering this doctor. I am sharing. I noticed that they have not rushed to put Boris Johnson on a ventilator and Dr. Oz brought up the ventilator issues on a recent broadcast. There are not enough qualified personnel running these machines throughout the States and that is a cause for concern because as you have noted they need to be monitored and adjusted accordingly. Stay safe. We have your back.

maarit gneleah , 3 hours ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role

="article"> Video: Ari Whitten speaks with Scott Antoine, MD -- a board-certified emergency physician and a functional and integrative medicine doctor about the latest findings on COVID-19: A potential breakthrough on COVID-19 treatment." Show Notes: The difference between ARDS and COVID-19 ( 0:59 ) The danger of the cytokine storm ( 8:28 ) How COVID-19 may not be a respiratory condition ( 16:20 ) The pros and cons of ventilators ( 25:13 ) Why Methylene blue shows promise for treating COVID-19 ( 31:00 ) Other potential factors that could help COVID-19 treatment ( 47:33 ) How Vitamin C works in COVID-19 treatment ( 55:09 ) https://www.theenergyblueprint.com/blue/?inf_contact_key=7c7cb8a0e1a3404449b49e79b5046d61d18a532c4142cb79caf2b269de1401fa

Phred Ziphell , 1 day ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role="a

rticle"> Fantastic analysis, backed by a prospective explanation. I'm a physician in upstate NY and confirm Dr. Kyle-Sidell's observations. HFNC (high-flow nasal cannula) appears to be a good intermediary between typical face-mask O2 and traditional ventilators .. but these machines are not in widespread use. Optiflow by Fisher & Paykal https://www.fphcare.com/us/hospital/adult-respiratory/optiflow/ and Hi-VNI Precision Flow by Vapotherm https://vapotherm.com/hi-vni-technology/ are two companies that make these units. I have no financial interests in either of these companies.

PAiL Awareness Campaign , 3 days ago div tabindex="0" role=

"article"> The symptoms of individuals presenting with suspected "CoVid 19" are similar to individuals with radiation sickness. What is your experience with treating radiation sickness? Have you attempted to utilize radiation sickness treatment protocol to address the symptoms you are witnessing in individuals presenting with suspected "CoVid 19"? You feedback is appreciated, thank you in advance. https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/radiation-sickness

Nurse C , 1 day ago div c

lass="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> You are right. My hospital has a 0% success rate using ventilators on covid patients. These patients can be sitting comfortably talking to you on a non-rebreather with no use of accessory muscles and have a pulse ox of 75%. They appear to have no issue moving air into and out of the lungs like you would see if it were ARDS. They all have horribly high ferritin levels and go into kidney failure long before their respiratory system crashes.

This virus destroys the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood through the iron binding sites of the red blood cells. So what then is the solution?

Mijagi1976 , 1 hour ago

iv> This is from CDC web site (description of malaria): Severe malaria occurs when infections are complicated by serious organ failures or abnormalities in the patient's blood or metabolism. The manifestations of severe malaria include the following: Cerebral malaria, with abnormal behavior, impairment of consciousness, seizures, coma, or other neurologic abnormalities Severe anemia due to hemolysis (destruction of the red blood cells) Hemoglobinuria (hemoglobin in the urine) due to hemolysis Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), an inflammatory reaction in the lungs that inhibits oxygen exchange, which may occur even after the parasite counts have decreased in response to treatment Abnormalities in blood coagulation Low blood pressure caused by cardiovascular collapse Acute kidney injury Hyperparasitemia, where more than 5% of the red blood cells are infected by malaria parasites Metabolic acidosis (excessive acidity in the blood and tissue fluids), often in association with hypoglycemia Hypoglycemia (low blood glucose). Hypoglycemia may also occur in pregnant women with uncomplicated malaria, or after treatment with quinine. Severe malaria is a medical emergency and should be treated urgently and aggressively. Now, what we have at hand is viral malaria type disease. Same symptoms. Now, BIll Gates was working on the cure for malaria, right? Maybe he found something else. Malaria and COVID 19 both respond well to HCQ. You guys make your own conclusions.

Jim Chin , 3 days ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role="artic

le"> With regards to Hypoxia and Covid-19 ask hemotology Has erythrocytapheresis been tried with super saturated 2,3,BPG erythrocytes as temporary solution or test before ventilation ?. Has hematological study been done on the extracted old erythrocytes ? 2,3-Bisphosphoglycerate effects oxygen affinity significantly https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1365-2044.1977.tb10002.x https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/327846 So anywhere along the way or lowering adenosine and/or inosine concentrate reduces 2,3 Bisphoglycerate . Virus replication maybe sucking up or modifying adenosine https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/pdf/S1931-3128(17)30201-9.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub28618265med/ in the erythrocyte or be affecting the A2A receptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_A2A_receptor https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6168195/ . This accounts for the effect seen. In the affected erythrocytes, O2 is not binding and not delivering O2 to the tissues and organ. It will be important to look at the 2,3 Bisphoglycerate concentration or A2A receptors. It maybe cause of the hypoxia and tissue damage. Not breathing or neurological symptoms may really be CNS or respiratory nerve of Bell (,root C5, C6, C7) infections by Sars-coV2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20026500v1.full.pdf , https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32104915 https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-news-coronavirus-can-also-attack-the-nervous-system,-causing-neurological-conditions-and-even-viral-encephalitis Hopefully , they can find the answer for you and help change protocol

Larry Hawes , 3 days ago

Did you ever wonder if the disease itself gets a foothold because of the oxygen saturation level of the patients involved? Could it be that the most severely compromised already have lowered oxygen levels? Certainly exacerbated by COVID-19 but perhaps initiated by initial lowered oxygen levels?

SapereAude , 4 days ago

Dr Bill Deagle of Nutrimedical Report recently said in his broadcast that COVID-19 is like a high altitude sickness - just as you've concluded Dr Kyle-Sidell. Dr. Bill Deagle (a bit rough around the edges yet brilliant) claims to have treatment solutions that are effective. Perhaps you should contact him immediately and have a conversation. It may steer the course to brighter outcomes for us all. God speed! 🇺🇸

david77james , 1 day ago

Good, but so few doctors have the nuts to speak out as this physician did. Treating Lungs, when the lungs ARE WORKING FINE and only get damaged by the ventilator. It's blood disease, where hemoglobin is destroyed and cannot deliver oxygen to the organs. We need Hydroxychloroquine widely distributed as a preventative AND CURE, and open up our society again!! FIRE FAUCI!

Kathy C , 3 hours ago

Red blood cell destruction - oxygen transport problem ... similar to Malaria rendering Red cells non functional - QUININE

SMG Scorpion , 1 day ago div tabindex="0" role="articl

e"> You must clear out the phlegm in both lungs first. This virus consumes & breaks down lung cells to replicate itself. As more cells are consumed more pinkish phlegm will continue to form inside both lungs and blocking the air. Eventually the lungs will be liquefied. Put down that American pride and start working with the Chinese experts to SAVE LIVES. Enough time has been wasted on playing the blame game https://covid-19.alibabacloud.com/

Nurse Judy , 3 days ago div tabindex="0" role="artic

le"> ARDS, oxidative stress, PAP.( Pulmonary Alveolar Proteinosis), " It has been proposed that lower iron saturation of Tf decreases iron-mediated oxidative stress and rescues respiratory failure [89,90]. Secondary PAP can accompany infection, particle exposure and malignancies [38], most of which are associated with altered iron homeostasis. Together, a remarkable relationship between PAP and iron metabolism exists" " it has been proposed that the presence of pro-oxidant iron in lung epithelial fluid may contribute to susceptibility to oxidative damage [28]. Lavage fluid of ARDS patients has elevated levels of total and nonheme iron as well as cellular content of Tf, ferritin and Lf [86]. This indicates impaired pulmonary homeostasis of iron in ARDS, although it is unclear whether this is due to general increase in membrane permeability or altered iron metabolism." ARDSAcute Respiratory Distress SyndromeBALBronchoalveolar LavageDcytbDuodenal cytochrome bDMT1Divalent Metal Transporter 1FPNFerroportinLfLactoferrinLfRLactoferrin ReceptorNramp1Natural Resistance-associated Macrophage Protein 1PAPPulmonary Alveolar ProteinosisRBCRed Blood CellsTfTransferrinTfRTransferrin Receptor I copied and pasted exerpts from the study. Interesting Read between correlation of Iron Homeostasis / Regulation and ARDS, Lung Inflammation etc https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5718378/

Wolf Moon , 6 days ago div tabindex="0" role="article"

> Cameron - I'm a retired scientist and former climber who got this disease back in January (classic symptoms, including shortness of breath - now permanent), and what you are describing is EXACTLY what I thought. I have been telling people that "I'm permanently stuck at 7000 feet in the Colorado Rockies". I sleep worse just like when I was in the mountains. Very lucky I'm not at 11,000 feet - that would not have been long-term survivable for me. I can likely live 10-20 more years with this, if it doesn't progress, but I have a feeling that it DOES PROGRESS. I don't think the virus is gone. It seems like it's still there. Quinine and zinc helped me AFTER recovery, but the side effects of quinine are nasty, so I'm taking a break. I had to get MacGyver and self-treat because I'm supposedly cured and can't get HCQ/AZM/Zn and my doc is not a specialist, etc. Nobody knows how to deal with this, so my fellow online researchers are working constantly on understanding (wqth.wordpress.com). We think a lot of us got it - two of us had intermediate cases like mine (no hospitals). Would love to get into a study.

Jan Beute , 2 days ago

You are the first colleague that also seems to have discovered that COVID-19 is not an ordinary viral pneumonia. I think I may know how to prevent respiatoy failure in an early phase and therefore no need for mechanical ventilation.

WillsDuffy , 1 week ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role=

"article"> Hi Doctor. My experience of COVID-19 over the last 4 weeks precisely as you are describing. I instinctively felt when I got it that it was not what the experts described. I could feel through my knowledge with my body that the problem with my system as it started to breakdown was in the drop in the oxygen levels being the main source of my distress. The way I got COVID-19 the symptoms of fever, dry cough, aches and pains were such that they did not distract from the main problem itself which was my system not taking in oxygen, I have been trying to puzzle this out during my recovery and I definitely think that as your explain it here it is the case with how the COVID-19 virus takes down the individual. You must forge ahead with this. Let me offer an example in my own treatment of this ... I deliberately removed certain remedies I was using like Vit C for a period of time to see what the effect would be then I returned to a regime of taking it and the oxygen in-take into my system returned and my system improved with the simple increase of Vit C I felt my oxygen intake improve and I felt immediately less stressed. Also, a constriction in the back of my throat alongside my swallowing action indicated to me when my system was struggling with oxygen intake levels moving up and down. I definitely do agree with your findings here from my experience of being a victim of this Virus in a significant way.

Paincakes , 1 day ago

I've been sick for 22 days, this makes sense to me. I have no cough, no fever, and feel like I'm running out of air.

JerryHFreeman , 6 days ago div tabindex="0" role="arti

cle"> Email from another doctor in New York City to a colleague: "We have zero success story for patients who were intubated. Our thinking is changing to postpone intubation to as long as possible, to prevent mechanical injury from the vent. "Those patients tolerate arterial hypoxia surprisingly well. Natural course seems to be the best. Yesterday did not intubate patient with 86% [blood oxygen saturation percentage] on non re breather ( gave the best sat, desated on CPAP). Today he is sating 96%. If he would have been intubated, he will be dead in three days."

hock wah hoo , 2 days ago

High frequency low volume ventilation to reduce baro trauma

Karen Robenstine , 5 days ago div tabindex="0" role="artic

le"> Doctor Ming Lin an emergency room doctor with 17 years of experience was fired for going public about poor hospital room safety and shortage of medical supplies and PPE. He was employed by a physician staffing firm at Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham,Washington. A third of hospital emergency rooms are staffed by 2 physician staffing companies TeamHealth and Envision Healthcare, owned by Wall Street investment firms. Patients and insurance companies then can be overcharged for needed emergency care. Blackstone's owner of Teamhealth CEO, Stephan Schwarzman a part of the president's circle would not want an employee to express information contrary to the political rhetoric of the current administration. The navy relieved Captain Brett Cozier for also sounding the alarm about lack of medical supplies and supplies. Do not be naive enough to believe money and power trumps the wellbeing of the citizens of this country.

Steve Stark , 3 days ago

Could it not be an IHA reaction, also associated with the vulnerabilities to Covid? Suppress that response and allow more time to overcome viral replication.

jaggafeen , 4 days ago

Tracey Continelli1 day ago This is exactly what I have been suspecting. This was recently published in Nature. "The results showed the ORF8 and surface glycoprotein could bind to the porphyrin, respectively. At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a proteins could coordinate attack the heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to dissociate the iron to form the porphyrin. The attack will cause less and less hemoglobin that can carry oxygen and carbon dioxide. The lung cells have extremely intense poisoning and inflammatory due to the inability to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen frequently, which eventually results in ground-glass-like lung images." 1. The virus attaches to the hemoglobin via ORF8 (a protein) and glycoprotein. Hemoglobin is an iron rich protein that that allows red blood cells to carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. 2. This allows it to cut off the iron 3. This reduces the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide available to the lung cells. (it is well known that anemia causes shortness of breathe, for example, because your body does not get enough oxygen rich blood). 4. This results in intense poisoning and inflammation, which results in lung damage, the ground glass like lung images, and sometimes death. Sickle cell disease is caused by a mutation in the hemoglobin-Beta gene found on chromosome 11. Hemoglobin transports oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body. Red blood cells with normal hemoglobin (hemoglobin-A) are smooth and round and glide through blood vessels. This may be why an anti-malaria drug like Plaquenil might be effective against this virus. Sickle cell anemia mutates the hemoglobin-Beta gene, which then provides protection from malaria. COVID-19 attacks the beta-hemoglobin. Doctor, I came to the same conclusion myself. Please pass this along to your colleagues. https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173/5?fbclid=IwAR1K50u0wRWhOCv0_rxS2_bYk7p3mT-OWX08GXaa0Tm13bzT8Wl8MYfTAI8 Bob Sapp20 hours ago Tracey Continelli I'm trying to understand why the anti-malaria drug would work. Are you saying the drug will mutate our hemoglobin and then the virus wouldn't be able to attach itself to our red blood cell? Tracey Continelli11 hours ago (edited) @Bob Sapp YES. Before the Nature article came out, multiple studies have been done showing that the anti-malaria drug Plaquenil alters the intracellular structure. One article I found stated that it had the ability to alter the protein structure. If this is true - and based on the article in Nature, the virus attaches itself to the PROTEIN on the outside of the red blood cells - then it is effectively PREVENTING the virus from attaching itself to the proteins and glycoproteins on the red blood cells, where it then "kicks out" the iron ion, which then prevents the lung cells from getting the necessary oxygen, which then causes the respiratory distress and damaged lungs that clinicians are seeing. Tracey Continelli10 hours ago (edited) I'm a health researcher and college professor. Hydroxychloroquine is hypothesized to be exerting a multi-pronged effect on this virus. One, by altering the cellular structure, it can make it difficult to replicate and reproduce itself. Two, it can make it difficult to attach to the red blood cell wall and kicking out the iron ion, causing the deprivation of oxygen to the lungs and patients becoming hypoxemic. Three, as someone noted, because it dampens down the immune system (it is given to patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, both of whom have hyperactive immune system) it should lower the risk of a cytokine storm. Sermo just conducted a study of over 6000 physicians around the world, asking them what treatments for COVID-19 they had used, and which they considered to be the most promising. Sermo regularly surveys physicians around the world, it is an established organization. As a professor/researcher I was able to access the data myself and ran the numbers. Excluding already approved treatments, such as Tylenol, antibiotics, etc, I isolated ONLY the four experimental treatments and computed the percentages. Here they are: Hydroxychloroquine - 49% Anti-HIV retrivirals - 30% Plasma - 8% Remdesivir - 13% Sermo computed the percentages differently by including other drug treatments, but still found that hydroxychloroquine was rated as most effective. https://www.sermo.com/press-releases/largest-statistically-significant-study-by-6200-multi-country-physicians-on-covid-19-uncovers-treatment-patterns-and-puts-pandemic-in-context/?fbclid=IwAR36GA79oiUF5cuCjuweV2pqys0Eneu6AAbqoOfikK1PgYepVvLP1tKC5cc

James Grove , 2 hours ago div tabindex="0" role="articl

e"> Thoughts on COVID-19 Pathophysiology and Therapeutic Intervention Posted on Quora on 5/10 in response to the video. Quora: Does Covid-19 really cause ARDS? Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell questions treating COVID-19 with the present medical paradigm of ARDS. ........ "We should consider that part of the pathophysiological mechanism of COVID-19 is resulting from an acquired hemoglobinopathy or dyshemoglobinemia" .

Mark Hartman , 4 days ago

Dr. Kyle-Sidell, if you haven't read this article - even though it is anonymous - you may want to. It has a rational, NON-RESPIRATORY explanation for the hypoxic symptoms in your patients, and a simple test of its conclusions would be to give a patient a single unit of packed cells. http://web.archive.org/web/20200405061401/https://medium.com/@agaiziunas/covid-19-had-us-all-fooled-but-now-we-might-have-finally-found-its-secret-91182386efcb

Dan Ecklund , 4 days ago

I think this may answer some of your questions about oxygenation vs ventilation. https://archive.is/ONUmi#selection-183.0-183.75 Says that CV causes the iron to dissociate from the heme groups, causing dysfunctional hemoglobin. And the Fe+++ causes massive oxidative damage. That is why intravenous Vitamin C has been so effective at avoiding the cytokine storm. Even explains chloroquine effect. Highly recommended.

[Apr 11, 2020] Ventilators their use and misuse

Apr 11, 2020 | www.healthline.com

Ventilator-associated lung injury - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Ventilator-associated_lung_injury Ventilator-associated lung injury (VALI) is an acute lung injury that develops during mechanical ventilation and is termed ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) if it can be proven that the mechanical ventilation caused the acute lung injury. In contrast, ventilator-associated lung injury (VALI) exists if the cause cannot be proven.

When & How Medical Ventilators Are Needed https://www.healthline.com /health/ventilator A ventilator can cause lung damage. This can happen for several reasons: too much pressure in the lungs ; pneumothorax (air leaks into space between the lungs and chest wall)

Here's What Happens to the Body After Contracting the ... https://www.healthline.com /health-news/heres-what-happens-to-the-body-after-contracting-the-coronavirus These cause damage to the lungs , which leads to fluid leaking from small blood vessels in the lungs . The fluid collects in the lungs' air sacs, or alveoli. This makes it difficult for the lungs ...

Coronavirus in the Lungs : What Does COVID-19 Really Do to ... https://www.webmd.com /lung/what-does-covid-do-to-your-lungs COVID-19 is a serious respiratory disease, but how does it really affect your lungs if you get infected? Here's what coronavirus can do to your lungs in mild- to -moderate, severe, and critical cases.

Here's the Damage Coronavirus (COVID-19) Can Do to Your Lungs https://health.clevelandclinic.org /heres-the-damage-coronavirus-covid-19-can-do-to-your-lungs/ Here's the Damage Coronavirus (COVID-19) Can Do to Your Lungs . New evidence shows how coronavirus (COVID-19) can damage your lungs , leading to severe respiratory issues.

Ventilator/Ventilator Support | National Heart, Lung , and ... https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov /health-topics/ventilatorventilator-support Using a ventilator also can put you at risk for other problems, such as: Pneumothorax (noo-mo-THOR-aks). This is a condition in which air leaks out of the lungs and into the space between the lungs and the chest wall. This can cause pain and shortness of breath, and it may cause one or both lungs to collapse. Lung damage.

Side Effects of Being Intubated | Healthfully https://healthfully.com /side-effects-of-being-intubated-3715884.html Collapsed Lung . Damage or perforation of internal organs within the chest during intubation can lead to lung collapse in certain people. A collapsed lung , also called pneumothorax, can result in additional side effects such as cough, severe, stabbing chest pain, or shoulder or back pain.

Coronavirus and the lungs : Does COVID-19 cause more severe ... https://www.cleveland.com /coronavirus/2020/03/coronavirus-and-the-lungs-does-covid-19-cause-more-severe-pneumonia-or-ards-than-other-viruses.html Coronavirus and the lungs : Does COVID-19 cause more severe pneumonia or ARDS than other viruses? ... but it's clear the most serious cases involve severe respiratory symptoms that can damage a ...

Coronavirus: What is acute respiratory distress syndrome ... https://www.usatoday.com /story/news/health/2020/03/19/coronavirus-what-acute-respiratory-distress-syndrome-ards/5066412002/ ‎Mar‎ ‎19‎, ‎2020 The reaction can cause small blood vessels in the lung to leak fluid and fill up the alveoli, which are tiny air sacs in the lung that process oxygen, according to the American Lung Association ...

COVID-19 tough on lungs , can cause difficult- to -treat ... https://www.upi.com /Health_News/2020/03/26/COVID-19-tough-on-lungs-can-cause-difficult-to-treat-pneumonia/5651585241656/ ‎Mar‎ ‎26‎, ‎2020 March 26 (UPI) -- The COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan, China, as a cluster of unusually severe pneumonia cases of unknown cause. Now that the disease has spread globally, the lungs continue to ...

[Apr 11, 2020] DOES COVID-19 REALLY CAUSE ARDS?

Ventilator settings wrong
Apr 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
dltravers , Apr 11 2020 1:18 utc | 100
Another doctor comes forward...
FROM NYC ICU: DOES COVID-19 REALLY CAUSE ARDS??!!

I thought it might be some guy making a fake video but I guess not...
Ventilator settings wrong

[Apr 11, 2020] The difference between lockdown and contact tracing

Apr 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Apr 10 2020 17:12 utc | 20

Not lockdown - contact tracing and testing ( Atlantic source )
In Italy, two similar regions, Lombardy and Veneto, took different approaches to the community spread of the epidemic. Both mandated social distancing, but only Veneto undertook massive contact tracing and testing early on. Despite starting from very similar points, Lombardy is now tragically overrun with the disease, having experienced roughly 7,000 deaths and counting, while Veneto has managed to mostly contain the epidemic to a few hundred fatalities.

[Apr 11, 2020] Wet market is partially "fresh food" market

Hygienic standards are difficult to enforce in both.
Apr 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Antoinetta III , Apr 10 2020 17:49 utc | 34
At Gruff, #3

"Wet markets really are just farmers' markets that also happen to sell fresh fish (thus the "wet" part of their label) and poultry and sometimes beef and pork."

"Readers can display how susceptible they are to mass media driven hysteria and jingoism and perhaps also reveal unacknowledged racism by insisting that there is something fundamentally different about Asian farmers markets from the local ones they themselves shop at for the freshest foods. "

I would respond that the fact that our local farmers markets don't generally sell the "wet" stuff is in and of itself a "fundamental difference." If there are disease-vector issues with wetmarkets, the issue will likely have originated in the "wet" part of the market.

Antoinetta III

Miss Lacy , Apr 10 2020 17:54 utc | 37

PS re the wet market bs. Let's all grow up. Nearly every coastal town I've ever visited on four continents has a "wet market" i.e. tanks full of shell fish or crayfish or lobsters. There are plenty of places you can buy a live chicken and have it cut up. In souther murka they do love their trotters - i.e. pig's feet (gross in my opinion.) sea urchins any one? How about sea slugs? There's a tasty meal. I know, let's just call it a "fresh food" market. Hmmm?

With the deepest respect for your inner beauty. Cheers.

[Apr 10, 2020] All Americans asked to wear cloth masks while in public

Apr 10, 2020 | www.washingtontimes.com

The U.S. surgeon general on Sunday trumpeted the administration's new recommendation that all Americans wear cloth masks in public, a reversal of its previous advice as the country braces for a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases and potential fatalities this week.

"The next week is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment. It's going to be our 9/11 moment. It's going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives," Vice Admiral Jerome Adams warned on NBC's "Meet the Press," as he made rounds of political talk shows.

The push to wear masks follows updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is not mandatory but masks offer added protection against spreading the coronavirus, especially when people cannot practice 6-foot social distancing.

[Apr 10, 2020] Effective home-made mask insert/liner material: Two brands of cheap widely available blue shop towels are found to work great

Apr 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

gm , Apr 10 2020 15:54 utc | 2

Re: Effective home-made mask insert/liner material: Two brands of cheap widely available blue shop towels are found to work great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNDE12HymYc (starts at minute 31:20).

Re: bubonic plague in Mongolia. Sporadic human Yersinia pestis infections have been endemic in American Southwest for many years.

[Apr 10, 2020] Tucker: In crisis, nothing is more important than staying connected to reality

Highly recommended!
Tucker comments on Fauci above face with estimating the number of deaths: first around 3 million, not less then 60K.
Hospitals are staying half empty. So much for Fauci flattening the curve efforts
Apr 10, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Mike Jordan , 14 hours ago

Being "connected" is a huge part of the cause of this mess, before internet propaganda was limited to newspapers and magazines, it was much slower and manageable.

Don Nix , 9 hours ago

I do find it funny how wealthy folks spread the "don't worry WE will all be fine" garbage. WE....no, tell that to someone who has lost their business and has dependents.

Karel Moulík , 10 hours ago

When everything can be solved by propaganda it's time for revolution.

Massive-Headwound Harry , 12 hours ago

I hate the "We're going to be ok. We're all in this together" ads. All of them celebrities, pro athletes, and actors. Not one has to worry about whether they'll be able to buy food next week. Elites telling the little people everything's ok.

Joe Shaloom , 14 hours ago

It's really sad when Tucker Carlson is the only person who ever admitted he was wrong on Fox News. Hannity still claims he never called the virus a hoax even though he did it on TV.

[Apr 10, 2020] Hydroxchloroquinine is toxic if combined with metformin. Diabetics who take it beware.

Apr 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Apr 9 2020 17:27 utc | 110

Hydroxchloroquinine is toxic if combined with metformin. Diabetics who take it beware.
source
Note the link above also lists all of the known drug interactions of HCH with other drugs - there are 332 total of which 59 are considered "major".

[Apr 10, 2020] Fauci had previously supported the use of Hydroquinone for similar virus. What changed?

Apr 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

jared , Apr 8 2020 13:41 utc | 26

On the subject of who does our government serve:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/why-did-fauci-cheer-use-untested-drug-coronavirus-2013-now-hes-skeptical

Fauci had previously supported the use of Hydroquinone for similar virus. What changed? However, to the matter of Israel and the virus:
I thought they were having strangely little impact from virus.

Anyway, this is all very revealing.

You know how people always question:
Why did that woman remain in that abusive relationship?


c1ue , Apr 8 2020 14:44 utc | 36

@jared #26
I don't consider anything coming out of ZH to be credible until verified.
Fauci has been very consistent: he is cautious about whether hydroxychloroquinine is a efficacious treatment for nCOV/COVID-19.
Note there are multiple levels of potential use:
1) The drug doesn't hurt/kill you. At normal levels, HCH passes this test but the levels it has been used at to treat nCOV - they're much higher than existing anti-malaria/malaria preventative/rheumatoid arthritis use.
At these higher levels, it isn't clear how safe HCH is - particularly for really old people who are the primary nCOV at risk group.
2) Does the drug decrease negative outcomes? i.e. maybe it doesn't cure (which it shouldn't) but it makes it less likely that nCOV infected get pneumonia or worse. This would be fantastic but it is 100% unproven.
3) Does the drug cure? By itself or with other things like the antibiotic azithromycin? There have been studies saying yes - but I look at a couple - and they're frankly poor studies. To me, it is very unclear.

Hydroxychloroquinine/chloroquinine phosphate shows promise as a way to treat nCOV in its early stages, but this is so far completely unverified. Nor do we know what the optimal dosage might be to balance between known risks and side effects induced by HCH use vs. optimal nCOV impact.

I've gotten a prescription sufficient for a couple of courses, but am not taking it as a preventative (nor is there any proof it actually works this way).

Lots of people taking HCH as a preventative when it doesn't work or as treatment when dosages/outcomes aren't known *will* increase the likelihood that nCOV will evolve resistance against it, so it isn't like side effects are the only bad outcome to uninformed use.

gottlieb , Apr 8 2020 15:04 utc | 38
The Trump regime's goal is only ever to enrich themselves through the Presidency. Reportedly, Kushner's National Stockpile has been, uh, stockpiling Hydroxychloroquine as the President has been snake-oiling it. As the USA is become completely privatized it is not hard to arrange government contracts to middle-man the stockpile to its needy 'customers.'

And I can't believe all the raging antisemites here. Surely the Israelis have procured all those masks to help out those poor Palestinians for whom they care so deeply.

Finally; can we see the endgame? Whip up a worse-case scenario of fear mongering that our leaders miraculously save us from, yet institute a 'new normal' ripped from the pages of Orwell to protect us from the 'next time' which they promise is a matter of when not if.

Don Wills , Apr 8 2020 15:37 utc | 41
@38 - Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine are not sufficient by themselves for treating COVID-19. CQ and HCQ create a pathway for zinc ions to get inside the cells to disrupt the coronavirus replication. It's the zinc that actually is the medicine. See this study for details - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21079686/

[Apr 10, 2020] The more I read about ventilators, the more sure I am that I do not want one if I get sick from the evil virus.

Apr 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Trailer Trash , Apr 8 2020 22:20 utc | 73

With all the endless hand-wringing regarding ventilators, this article deserves much more attention:

With ventilators running out, doctors say the machines are overused for Covid-19


Even as hospitals and governors raise the alarm about a shortage of ventilators, some critical care physicians are questioning the widespread use of the breathing machines for Covid-19 patients, saying that large numbers of patients could instead be treated with less intensive respiratory support.

If the iconoclasts are right, putting coronavirus patients on ventilators could be of little benefit to many and even harmful to some.

What's driving this reassessment is a baffling observation about Covid-19: Many patients have blood oxygen levels so low they should be dead. But they're not gasping for air, their hearts aren't racing, and their brains show no signs of blinking off from lack of oxygen.


The more I read about ventilators, the more sure I am that I do not want one if I get sick from the evil virus.

susan , Apr 9 2020 5:35 utc | 92

Trailer Trash @ 73

My understanding is that currently the UK has a 50% mortality rate of Covid sufferers who've been put on ventilators. They started using CPAP masks several weeks ago according to Dr. John D. Campbell UK. Much less invasive.

Interesting link you share -- it mentions acute symptoms are more like altitude sickness, with low 02 but CO2 still being cleared

[Apr 09, 2020] And b has posted previously directions for making masks. The advantage is you can throw them in the washing machine to clean, or even hand wash as they are small items

Highly recommended!
Apr 09, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

juliania , Apr 8 2020 15:04 utc | 37

My daughter who is a hospital worker showed me her mask, made by her sister. And b has posted previously directions for making masks.

While homemade or even professional surgical mask do not protect the wearer from all particles they do protect one much better from them than when one wears no mask at all.

A person rarely gets infected by just one virus particle. They come in millions attached to tiny droplets. We do not know yet how the dose of the novel coronavirus that infects a person affects the intensity of the disease. But we do know from other viruses that the dose matters. People who catch a higher dose of viruses will usually have a more intense disease. A mask can lower the virus load the wearer may receive.

One can improvise a mask from simple household objects. One can sew a mask like a surgeon does in this video . This is my preferred model which is officially recommended by German fire departments. (The pdf is in German but the pictures tell the story). This is the mask I made by following those instructions.


bigger

It is made of a folded sheet cut from a triangular arm-sling out of an old first-aid kit. A HEPA microfilter (as used in a vacuum cleaners) is in between the folded sheet. A piece cut from a clean bag for vacuum cleaners will do as well. Do not use a sheet or insert that is too tight to breathe through. If one does that the air will come in from the sides of the mask and the total protection effect will be less. It can be arduous to breathe through such a mask. If you have breathing problems leave the insert out. The sheets alone are already good protection. There is a piece of wire from a big paper clip fixed inside the middle of the upper seam to fit the mask tightly around the upper nose. The lower part goes under the chin. I shaved my beard to make it a tighter fit. As I had no sewing equipment I used a stapler to fix the seams and the ribbons.

The HEPA filter catches particles down to 0.3 micrometer. Viruses are some 125 nanometer in diameter so they are smaller and could slip through. But the viruses are attached to some droplet that are bigger. HEPA filter are essentially labyrinths of small fiber and the viruses would have to bounce multiple times to get through. Finally the dose also matters.

To clean the mask of potential viruses I put it into the oven for 30 minutes at 70C (158F).

The science says that masks work. Everyone should use one. #MaskUp!

The advantage is you can throw them in the washing machine to clean, or even hand wash as they are small items.

The masks in question here, surgical ones, being only meant to protect the patient from the practitioner, seem somewhat flawed in any case.

Better to make better ones; let the Israelis have those not so good ones. A great gift from a family member to their hardworking sibling.

There ought to be an industrial production plant producing the cloth masks with disposable inserts - how about taking over a diaper factory - a lot of folk still use the cloth ones - have such been totally outsourced? (I'd make 'em deluxe, organic cotton only! But for us home bodies, an old sheet well washed, suitably patterned is better than nothing at all.)

[Apr 09, 2020] What temperature should you wash your clothes to kill viruses and bacteria Express.co.uk

Soap disintegrates viral lipid coating in less then a minute and the virus collapses. So even warm water might be OK
Apr 09, 2020 | express.co.uk

Dr Beckmann spokeswoman Susan Fermor revealed a wash at 60C is enough.

She said: "There's a common misconception that people should wash clothes on the hottest possible setting to kill bacteria, but it's unnecessary.

"Tests have proven that washing your clothes at 60C, with a good detergent, is perfectly adequate to kill bacteria.

"Just make sure that you check all garments are suitable to be washed at this temperature before putting them in the washing machine and take care not to ruin your clothes by boil washing."

... ... ...

The NHS said people should keep these items separately from those bearing the virus.

They released the following advice:


[Apr 09, 2020] Covid-19 Can 'boosting' your immune system protect you

Notable quotes:
"... You might also like: ..."
"... Read more about what evidence exists for the idea that spices can affect your health , and how hot drinks will not protect you from Covid-19 ). ..."
"... Unfortunately, the idea that pills, trendy superfoods or wellness habits can provide a shortcut to a healthy immune system is a myth. In fact, the concept of "boosting" your immune system doesn't hold any scientific meaning whatsoever. ..."
"... In this case, the mucus helps to flush out the pathogen, the fever helps to make your body an uncomfortably hot environment in which it's harder for it to replicate, and the aches and general malaise are by-products of the inflammatory chemicals that course through your veins, telling immune cells what to do and where to go. (These symptoms also help signal to your brain that it's time to slow down and let your body recover). ..."
"... There is no evidence that vitamin supplements will protect you from infections, unless you are deficient (Credit: Reuters) Making the other aspect of immunity – the adaptive immune system – generally more active could also be extremely unpleasant. For example, allergies occur when overzealous immune cells learn to treat innocuous foreign bodies, such as pollen, as though they are harmful. Each time they find the offending substance, they switch on the innate immune response too – cue lots of sneezing, itchy eyes and general fatigue. Again, this is probably not what the people championing these remedies have in mind. ..."
"... If you're healthy, forget supplements – except vitamin D ..."
"... Many multivitamins claim to provide "immune support" or to help "maintain healthy immune function". But as BBC Future reported in 2016, vitamin supplements generally don't work in already healthy people – and some may even be harmful. ..."
"... there is little evidence to support vitamin C's mighty reputation for helping us to fight off colds and other respiratory infections. A 2013 review by Cochrane – an organisation renowned for its unbiased research – found that in adults "trials of high doses of vitamin C administered therapeutically, starting after the onset of symptoms, showed no consistent effect on the duration or severity of common cold symptoms". ..."
"... high doses of this vitamin can lead to kidney stones . ..."
"... Brightly coloured fruits and vegetables tend to contain the most antioxidants, because the compounds are often pigmented (Credit: Getty Images) In the developed world, most people get enough vitamins from their diets (unless they are restricted – vegans, for example, are more likely to have certain deficiencies ). However, there is one exception – vitamin D. Iwasaki explains that taking this supplement wouldn't be a bad idea. ..."
"... In fact, many immune cells can actively recognise vitamin D, and it's thought to play an important role in both the innate and acquired immune response – though exactly how remains a mystery. ..."
"... (Read more about who needs to take vitamin D and why ). ..."
"... And we get some of our reserves of these compounds from our diets. Brightly coloured fruits, vegetables and spices tend to contain the most, because antioxidants are often pigmented: they give carrots, blueberries, aubergines, red kale, turmeric, and strawberries their hues. ..."
"... Wellness products aside, there are some approaches you can ..."
Apr 09, 2020 | www.bbc.com

Forget kombucha and trendy vitamin supplements – they are nothing more than magic potions for the modern age. "Spanish Influenza – what it is and how it should be treated," read the reassuringly factual headline to an advert for Vick's VapoRub back in 1918 . The text beneath included nuggets of wisdom such as "stay quiet" and "take a laxative". Oh, and to apply their ointment liberally, of course.

The 1918 flu pandemic was the most lethal in recorded history , infecting up to 500 million people (a quarter of the world's population at the time) and killing tens of millions worldwide.

But with crisis comes opportunity, and the – sometimes literal – snake oil salesmen were out in force. Vick's VapoRub had stiff competition from a panoply of crackpot remedies, including Miller's Antiseptic Snake Oil , Dr Bell's Pine Tar Honey, Schenck's Mandrake Pills, Dr Jones's Liniment, Hill's Cascara Quinine Bromide , and A. Wulfing & Co's famous mint lozenges. Their adverts made regular appearances in the newspapers, where they starred alongside increasingly alarming headlines.

Fast-forward to 2020, and not much has changed. Though the Covid-19 pandemic is separated from the Spanish flu by over a century of scientific discoveries, there are still plenty of questionable medicinal concoctions and folk remedies floating around. This time, the theme is "boosting" the immune system.

Of the rumours currently circulating on social media, one of the more bizarre is the idea that you can raise your white blood cell count by masturbating more. And as always, nutritional advice abounds. This time, we're being encouraged to seek out foods rich in antioxidants and vitamin C (back in 1918, the public were told to eat more onions), while pseudoscientists are peddling trendy products such as kombucha and probiotics .

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According to one source, cayenne pepper and green tea can provide better protection against Covid-19 than face masks – a bold and highly dubious claim, considering that some face masks reduce your risk of contracting respiratory viruses by a factor of five. ( Read more about what evidence exists for the idea that spices can affect your health , and how hot drinks will not protect you from Covid-19 ).

There's no such thing as boosted immunity

Unfortunately, the idea that pills, trendy superfoods or wellness habits can provide a shortcut to a healthy immune system is a myth. In fact, the concept of "boosting" your immune system doesn't hold any scientific meaning whatsoever.

"There are three different components to immunity," says Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. "There's things like skin, the airways and the mucus membranes that are there to begin with, and they provide a barrier to infection. But once the virus gets past these defences, then you have to induce the 'innate' immune response." This consists of chemicals and cells which can rapidly raise the alert and begin fighting off any intruder. An Italian advert for a remedy during the 1918 flu pandemic (Credit: Getty Images)

The 1918 flu pandemic was an opportunity for snake oil salesmen to market their useless - and sometimes harmful - products (Credit: Getty Images)

"When that is not enough, then we kick in the adaptive immune system," she says. This involves cells and proteins – antibodies – which take a few days or weeks to emerge. Importantly, the adaptive immune system can only target particular pathogens. "So, for example, a T-cell specific to Covid-19 will not respond to influenza or bacterial pathogens."

Most infections will trigger adaptive immunity eventually. But there's another way to get it going, and that's vaccination: exposing the body to live or dead microbes, or parts of them, can help the body to identify the real deal when it comes along.

The concept of "boosting" a person's immune system would, presumably, involve making these responses more active, or stronger.

In actuality, you wouldn't want to do this.

Take the symptoms of a cold – body aches, a fever, brain fog, copious amounts of snot and phlegm. Most of these problems aren't actually caused by the virus itself. Instead, they're triggered by your own body, on purpose: they're part of the innate immune response.

Many "immunity-boosting" products claim to reduce inflammation
In this case, the mucus helps to flush out the pathogen, the fever helps to make your body an uncomfortably hot environment in which it's harder for it to replicate, and the aches and general malaise are by-products of the inflammatory chemicals that course through your veins, telling immune cells what to do and where to go. (These symptoms also help signal to your brain that it's time to slow down and let your body recover).

The mucus and chemical signals are part of inflammation, which is the bedrock of a healthy immune response . But the process is exhausting, so you wouldn't want to have it turned up to 11 all the time. And most viruses, including Covid-19, will trigger it anyway. If kombucha, green tea or any of the various "immune-boosting" concoctions on the market really had any impact, they wouldn't give you a healthful glow: they'd give you a runny nose.

Ironically, many "immunity-boosting" products claim to reduce inflammation. Empty vitamin shelves in a supermarket (Credit: Reuters)

There is no evidence that vitamin supplements will protect you from infections, unless you are deficient (Credit: Reuters) Making the other aspect of immunity – the adaptive immune system – generally more active could also be extremely unpleasant. For example, allergies occur when overzealous immune cells learn to treat innocuous foreign bodies, such as pollen, as though they are harmful. Each time they find the offending substance, they switch on the innate immune response too – cue lots of sneezing, itchy eyes and general fatigue. Again, this is probably not what the people championing these remedies have in mind.

But let's give those saying you can "boost" your immune system the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean that certain products can improve the immune response in a useful way – rather than literally "boost" it.

"The problem is that many of these claims have no grounding in evidence," Iwasaki says. So what are they based on – and is there anything that can help?

If you're healthy, forget supplements – except vitamin D

Many multivitamins claim to provide "immune support" or to help "maintain healthy immune function". But as BBC Future reported in 2016, vitamin supplements generally don't work in already healthy people – and some may even be harmful.

Take vitamin C. The health effects of this antioxidant have been steeped in mythology ever since the two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling became obsessed with its ability to fight the common cold. After studying the vitamin for years, eventually he started taking 18,000 mg per day – around 300 times the current recommended daily amount.

Vitamin supplements aren't beneficial to your immune system unless you are deficient
However, there is little evidence to support vitamin C's mighty reputation for helping us to fight off colds and other respiratory infections. A 2013 review by Cochrane – an organisation renowned for its unbiased research – found that in adults "trials of high doses of vitamin C administered therapeutically, starting after the onset of symptoms, showed no consistent effect on the duration or severity of common cold symptoms".

In fact, many experts consider the vitamin C market to be a bit of a racket , as most people in the developed world get enough from their diets already. Though scurvy is thought to have killed two million sailors and pirates between the 15th and 18th Centuries, the numbers now are far lower. For example, just 128 people in England were hospitalised with the disease between 2016 and 2017. On the other hand, high doses of this vitamin can lead to kidney stones .

"Vitamin supplements aren't beneficial to your immune system unless you are deficient," says Iwasaki. An assortment of vegetables in a wooden crate (Credit: Getty Images)

Brightly coloured fruits and vegetables tend to contain the most antioxidants, because the compounds are often pigmented (Credit: Getty Images) In the developed world, most people get enough vitamins from their diets (unless they are restricted – vegans, for example, are more likely to have certain deficiencies ). However, there is one exception – vitamin D. Iwasaki explains that taking this supplement wouldn't be a bad idea.

Several studies have linked low vitamin D levels to a higher risk of respiratory infections , and more severe symptoms when they develop. They've also been implicated in the development of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

In fact, many immune cells can actively recognise vitamin D, and it's thought to play an important role in both the innate and acquired immune response – though exactly how remains a mystery.

But crucially – and unusually – vitamin D deficiencies are endemic in many countries, even wealthy ones. As of 2012, it was estimated that about a billion people worldwide weren't getting enough. And with more and more people urged to stay indoors, it's easy to see how even less sunlight exposure could lead to more deficiencies. (Read more about who needs to take vitamin D and why ).

No, masturbation won't help either

Historically, this form of sexual activity was held in deep suspicion by Western medicine. After an 18th Century doctor claimed that the loss of one ounce of semen (28 millilitres) had the same effect on the body as losing 40 ounces (1.18 litres) of blood, masturbation was blamed for all kinds of health problems for hundreds of years, from blindness to neurosis.

Now the tables have turned, and recent research has shown that it can come with some surprising health benefits. In men, for example, it's thought to help keep sperm healthy and may reduce a person's risk of developing prostate cancer .

The question of whether antioxidants can help is slightly more complicated
Alas, any claims that masturbation can improve your immunity or protect you from Covid-19 are overblown. It's true that one study found that men had higher white blood cell counts when they were sexually aroused, and during orgasm. However, there is no evidence that this translates into protection from infections.

There is one way that the practice might protect you – by keeping away from other people. On Twitter, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recently reminded their followers that, in the age of Covid-19, " you are your safest sex partner ".

There's no need to stock up on antioxidant pills

The question of whether antioxidants can help is slightly more complicated.

As part of the inflammatory response, white blood cells release toxic oxygen compounds. These are something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can kill bacteria and viruses and stop them from being able to make more copies of themselves. On the other, they can damage healthy cells, leading to cancer and ageing – and wearing out the immune system.

To stop this from happening, the body relies on antioxidants. These help to control those unruly oxygen compounds and keep our cells safe.

And we get some of our reserves of these compounds from our diets. Brightly coloured fruits, vegetables and spices tend to contain the most, because antioxidants are often pigmented: they give carrots, blueberries, aubergines, red kale, turmeric, and strawberries their hues. A glass of kombucha, a type of fermented tea (Credit: Getty Images)

Wellness experts like to promote kombucha as more than just a drink - but there's no evidence that it can treat or prevent any illnesses, including Covid-19 (Credit: Getty Images) There's currently a trial in the works to test if giving people with Covid-19 antioxidant supplements might help their recovery.

However, the trial is just one of hundreds looking into potential treatments for Covid-19. And despite decades of research, not a single placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed study on humans has ever shown that high doses of antioxidants can "boost" the immune system, or treat or prevent viral infections in humans.

Probiotics may help or they may not

If you believe the wellness experts and homeopaths, kombucha is much more than a sweet, fizzy drink made from fermented tea. The internet is teeming with outrageous claims about the product, including that it can treat cancer and even Aids (it can't).

Now some websites are suggesting that it can help to stop you getting Covid-19 (and it probably can't).

Like probiotics, kombucha contains live microorganisms. However, no studies have ever confirmed whether the drink has these in high enough concentrations to be considered one – and there is currently no evidence that kombucha specifically can treat or prevent any illnesses whatsoever.

The picture is less clear for probiotics in general.

There is currently no evidence that any kind of probiotic can protect you from Covid-19
One 2015 review found that probiotics – beneficial microorganisms which are concentrated in foods, drinks, or pills – significantly reduced the number of upper respiratory tract infections that people got and made them less severe. They also slightly reduced the use of antibiotics and led to fewer school absences. The authors concluded that they might be better than placebo treatments, but pointed out that the quality of the available evidence was low.

(You can find out more about what we do and don't know about gut health , as well as how to eat your way to a healthy gut by checking out BBC Future's series on gut bacteria from last year. We found that it's true that gut bacteria are important – but that taking probiotics is unlikely to help you much, and that the best way forward is to simply eat a varied diet.)

Importantly, there is currently no evidence that any kind of probiotic can protect you from Covid-19.

So what has been proven to work?

Iwasaki says most of these myths are relatively innocuous – but the danger is that falling for them will give you a false sense of security. "One thing I do warn against is when people feel like they're protected. They shouldn't feel empowered to go out there and, you know, start having parties," she says.

Wellness products aside, there are some approaches you can take to help support your immune system. They aren't especially sexy, and you won't see many wellness influencers selling them in a bottle. They are, however, proven to work – and they don't require shelling out your hard-earned cash: get enough sleep, exercise, eat a balanced diet, and try not to be stressed.

Failing that, there is one sure-fire way to improve your immunity to certain pathogens: vaccination.

--

[Apr 09, 2020] Growing numbers of fake medicines linked to coronavirus are on sale in developing countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned

Apr 09, 2020 | www.bbc.com

Growing numbers of fake medicines linked to coronavirus are on sale in developing countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

A BBC News investigation found fake drugs for sale in Africa, with counterfeiters exploiting growing gaps in the market.

The WHO said taking these drugs could have "serious side effects".

One expert warned of "a parallel pandemic, of substandard and falsified products".

Around the world, people are stockpiling basic medicines. However, with the world's two largest producers of medical supplies - China and India - in lockdown, demand now outstrips the supply and the circulation of dangerous counterfeit drugs is soaring.

In the same week the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a pandemic last month, Operation Pangea, Interpol's global pharmaceutical crime fighting unit, made 121 arrests across 90 countries in just seven days, resulting in the seizure of dangerous pharmaceuticals worth over $14m (£11m).

From Malaysia to Mozambique, police officers confiscated tens of thousands of counterfeit face masks and fake medicines, many of which claimed to be able to cure coronavirus. "The illicit trade in such counterfeit medical items during a public health crisis, shows a total disregard for people's lives," said Interpol's Secretary General Jurgen Stock.

According to the WHO, the broader falsified medicines trade, which includes medicines which may be contaminated, contain the wrong or no active ingredient, or may be out-of-date, is worth more than $30bn in low and middle-income countries.

"Best case scenario they [fake medicines] probably won't treat the disease for which they were intended", said Pernette Bourdillion Esteve, from the WHO team dealing with falsified medical products.

"But worst-case scenario they'll actively cause harm, because they might be contaminated with something toxic."

The supply chain

The global pharmaceutical industry is worth more than $1 trillion. Vast supply chains stretch all the way from key manufacturers in places such as China and India, to packaging warehouses in Europe, South America or Asia, to distributors sending medicines to every country in the world.

There is "probably nothing more globalised than medicine" said Esteve. However, as the world goes into lockdown, the supply chain has already begun to uncouple.

Several pharmaceutical companies in India told the BBC they are now operating at 50-60% of their normal capacity. As Indian companies supply 20% of all basic medicines to Africa, nations there are being disproportionately affected. Fake medicine

Speaking to pharmacists and drug companies around the world, the global supply of antimalarials is now under threat.

Ever since US President Donald Trump began referring to the potential of chloroquine and a related derivative, hydroxychloroquine, in White House briefings, there has been a global surge in the demand for these drugs, which are normally used to tackle malaria.

The WHO has repeatedly said there is no definitive evidence that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine can be used against the virus that causes Covid-19. However, at a recent news conference, whilst referring to these antimalarials, President Trump said: "What do you have to lose? Take it."

As the demand has soared, the BBC has discovered large quantities of fake chloroquine in circulation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon. The WHO has also found the fake medicines for sale in Niger.

The antimalarial chloroquine is normally sold for about $40 for a pot of 1,000 tablets. But pharmacists in the DRC were found to be selling them for up to $250.

The medicine being sold was allegedly manufactured in Belgium, by "Brown and Burk Pharmaceutical limited". However, Brown and Burk, a pharmaceutical company registered in the UK, said they had "nothing to do with this medicine. We don't manufacture this drug, it's fake." As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Professor Paul Newton, an expert in fake medicines at the University of Oxford, warned the circulation of fake and dangerous medicines would only increase unless governments around the world present a united front.

"We risk a parallel pandemic, of substandard and falsified products unless we all ensure that there is a global co-ordinated plan for co-ordinated production, equitable distribution and the surveillance of the quality of the tests, medicines and vaccines. Otherwise the benefits of modern medicine... will be lost."

[Apr 08, 2020] Los Angeles has become one of the country's first localities to mandate the use of face masks while shopping

Apr 08, 2020 | nationalinterest.org

The requirement will commence midnight as Thursday turns to Friday. Starting then, all customers entering the necessary businesses that have been allowed to stay open despite the quarantine must be wearing some kind of cloth mask. These businesses include grocery stores, pharmacies, hotels, and any kind of taxi or ride-sharing service. These locations are permitted to refuse service to anyone not covering their mouth and nose.

All employees of these businesses must wear masks as well, and employers must reimburse the cost of such items. Included in the new rule are regulations on essential businesses mandating that they ensure every worker has access to a clean restroom and has an opportunity to wash their hands at a minimum of thirty-minute intervals. While Los Angeles public health officials have recommended implementing the use of plexiglass doors between employees and customers where possible, this was not included in the order

[Apr 08, 2020] Medical group endorses anti-malarial drug treatment for coronavirus patients NY Post - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Apr 08, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"Medical group endorses anti-malarial drug treatment for coronavirus patients" NY Post


"America's major medical society specializing in the treatment of respiratory diseases has endorsed using hydroxychloroquine for seriously ill hospitalized coronavirus patients.

The American Thoracic Society issued guidelines Monday that suggest COVID-19 patients with pneumonia get doses of the anti-malaria drug.

"To prescribe hydroxychloroquine (or chloroquine) to hospitalized patients with COVID-19 pneumonia if all of the following apply: a) shared decision-making is possible, b) data can be collected for interim comparisons of patients who received hydroxychloroquine (or chloroquine) versus those who did not, c) the illness is sufficiently severe to warrant investigational therapy, and d) the drug is not in short supply," the Thoracic Society said." NY Post

--------------

So, the Thoracic Society says 1- Hydrochloroquin is only rarely dangerous 2. It is widely available and 3 - Why not give it a shot if the patient is in bad shape.

I could have bought some of this an Z-pac before the madness started. Like a lot of old SF men I had quite a lot of medical instruction in training and assisted my team medical sergeants in the their work among the unfortunate. IOW I self treat a lot and have a stash of antibiotics, etc.

Fauci says we should never shake hands again and should expect the economy to be shut down for 18 months. IMO if we accept the 18 month thing that cat won't bounce. pl

https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/medical-group-backs-giving-hydroxychloroquine-to-coronavirus-patients/

just another old guy , 08 April 2020 at 11:50 AM

In the previous post about the use of chloroquine for treating Covid-19 I posted a link to a research paper which concluded that there was no clinical benefit to its use for those severely ill. As far as i know this was the first actual research performed on this subset of the issue.

Below is another one I found this morning from the Pasteur Hospital in Nice. In this instance they are using the hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin drug suggestion on more mildy ill patients. This is the drug combination which so many have placed their hopes in a miracle on. The result is that it has turned out to be so toxic that it had to be discontinued. This is not the final answer as there are more variations to check out - but don't get your hopes too high.

Thus we have no seen so far that this drug idea has either no effect or is too toxic. Anecdotally, I and the teams I worked with when I was younger had to take choloroquine for long periods of time. The frequency and unpleasantness of side effects were such that many eventually refused to take the drug and took their chances with getting malaria - and we were seeing malaria all the time so this was not an uniformed choice. I have questioned this idea from the get go - but that is, of course, just a gut reaction and not valid or scientific.

I think it fair to say the stress of the situation is driving us to grasp at straws and hope for miracles. No one wants to wait the time it normally takes to work our way to a scientific solution. But that is almost certainly what we are going to end up doing anyway as the alternative has only worked on the rarest of occasions. A very interesting discussion can also take place regarding the likelihood of developing a successful vaccine as after near 20 years of working on SARS and MERS there are still no vaccines for them approved.

Link is a Goggle translate from french.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nicematin.com%2Fsante%2Fcoronavirus-nous-avons-deja-du-interrompre-le-traitement-de-hydroxychloroquine-azithromycine-au-chu-de-nice-489118%23Echobox%3D1586243253

turcopolier , 08 April 2020 at 02:03 PM
just another old guy

i took chloroquine for a year and it gave me the runs but that was the only side effect I experienced.

[Apr 08, 2020] Coronavirus hits men harder. Here's what scientists know about it

Apr 08, 2020 | www.theguardian.com

[Apr 08, 2020] Results from a Controlled Trial of Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 contagion live

Apr 08, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Crimson King , 05 April 2020 at 08:34 AM

New new study found the reason for the effectiveness of chloroquine:
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173
In short, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has three protein configurations on its outside which attack hemoglobine, dissolving the iron ion from the molecule. The hemoglobin looses the ability to bind oxygen and CO2 without the iron, thus cannot transport it anymore (the effect of hydocyanic acid or carbonmonoxide, but both block the binding location, they do not destroy it).

As a consequence, the O2 load in the blood decreases dangerously even if the lungs still are working. Chloroquine seems to cover the hemoglobine binding location, so the virus cannot attack it anymore. Against the malaria parasite, the coverage by chloroquine seems to block the parasite from consuming proteins from the blood cells which it needs for reproduction.

Strange collection of features: The unique furine cleavage site (known from other, completely different highly contagious flu viruses), the CD147 docking site (known only from the dangerous Coxsakie virus and expressed strongly by cancer cells), the GRP78 docking site (expressed by cells under stress) and the attack on hemoglobine, five distinctive pathways to attack cells and cause damage. All not found in any other corona virus genome...

just another old guy , 05 April 2020 at 03:25 PM
I note that the link posted by CK is not actual results of research into whether chloroquine is effective regarding its use against covid-19 but rather an analysis of physical functions which 'suggests' that it might be. Actual research is required to prove the point.

Conversely there is a new research report on the effectiveness of chloroquine on treating those with severe symptoms from covid-19 just published and the conclusion for that set of patients is that it has 'No Evidence of Rapid Antiviral Clearance or Clinical Benefit ..."

I have read articles from Dr's and PhD experts who postulate both ways on this issue. Actual testing will be required to answer this and this first result is not optimistic at least in the case of severe symptoms.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0399077X20300858

[Apr 07, 2020] Turkey orders all citizens to wear masks as infections surge

Apr 07, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

Turkey has ordered all citizens to wear masks when shopping or visiting crowded public places and announced it will start to deliver masks to every family, free of charge, as infections sharply increase in the country of 80 million.

Turkey has over 30,000 confirmed cases of the virus and has registered 649 deaths. More than 1,300 patients are in intensive care units and at least 600 medical workers have been infected, according to figures released by the Health Ministry.

The number of cases places Turkey among the top 10 worst affected countries , a sharp rise since its first confirmed death from the disease on March 17.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, however, said on Monday that the increase in confirmed cases was low when compared with the increase in testing, which has been ramped up to more than 20,000 per day.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has introduced measures to contain the spread of the virus, asking people to stay at home and imposing a curfew on those over 65 and under 20, but resisting a nationwide lockdown.

[Apr 07, 2020] Why the U.S. Flip-Flopped on Masks While Asia Stayed the Course

Apr 07, 2020 | www.usnews.com

But now, after evidence that asymptomatic people can spread the disease, the CDC is recommending that all Americans wear masks when out in public to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. And while the CDC now recommends Americans wear masks, they recommend only cloth coverings, or homemade masks, and ask that medical-grade masks still be reserved for health care professionals.

The move is a win for those who have been publicly questioning the government's guidance and edges the U.S. closer to the practices of East Asian countries where masks are commonplace.

But the U.S. is not alone in its reluctance to recommend the widespread use of masks. The WHO is standing its ground in saying that masks won't help prevent the spread of disease. Though, notably, it said that countries where cleaning and physical distancing are difficult could consider widespread mask wearing.

The science of infection hasn't changed, but experts point to a better understanding of how the coronavirus spreads as the reason for the shift. Since some people are asymptomatic and could still be infecting others without knowing they have the disease, experts say it is prudent for everyone to wear a mask.

[Apr 06, 2020] Wearing a mask is a rare case when a selfish motive to save your own life produce a greater good

Highly recommended!
Apr 06, 2020 | www.unz.com

utu , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 10:45 pm GMT

@Dreadilk By wearing a mask you reduce the probability of getting infected by x while a mask on an infected person reduces the probability of infecting another person by y and y>x (I can't formally prove this inequality at this point but it is intuitively obvious to me.). Since you do not know whether you are infected or not by wearing a mask you are protecting other more than yourself on average. This is a rare case when a selfish motive to save your own life produce a greater good. Not wearing a mask would be an inverse-altruism where you are willing to sacrifice yourself for an idea of killing others , i.e., doing what a suicide bombers do who are aware of y>x calculus.

[Apr 06, 2020] n France, the sudden loss of smell is considered proof of Covid-19 infection, no further tests required

Apr 06, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

marcel , Apr 6 2020 17:29 utc | 1

In France, the sudden loss of smell is considered proof of Covid-19 infection, no further tests required.

[Apr 06, 2020] Peter Navarro Explodes At Fauci In Heated Showdown Over Hydroxychloroquine

Notable quotes:
"... Washington Times ..."
"... Washington Times ..."
Apr 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
White House economic adviser got into a massive argument with the coronavirus task force's Anthony Fauci over the doctor's ongoing resistance to the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, despite reports of the drug's widespread efficacy.

Via Axios :

According to the report, towards the end of the meeting Hahn began a discussion of the commonly used malaria drug hydroxychloroquine - which was recently rated the ' most effective therapy ' for coronavirus according to a global survey of more than 6,000 doctors .

After Hahn gave an update on various trials and real-world use of the drug, Navarro got up and dropped a stack of folders on the table to pass around .

According to Axios 's source, " the first words out of his [Navarro's] mouth are that the studies that he's seen, I believe they're mostly overseas, show 'clear therapeutic efficacy,' " adding "Those are the exact words out of his mouth.

Fauci - who's not got his own Twitter hashtag, #FireFauci - began pushing back against Navarro, repeating his oft-repeated contention that 'there's only anecdotal evidence' that the drug works against COVID-19.

Navarro exploded - after Fauci's mention of anecdotal evidence "just set Peter off." The economic adviser shot back "That's the science, not anecdote," while pointing to the stack of folders on the desk, which included the results of studies from around the world showing its efficacy.

Here's what unfolded next, via Axios :

Navarro started raising his voice, and at one point accused Fauci of objecting to Trump's travel restrictions, saying, "You were the one who early on objected to the travel restrictions with China," saying that travel restrictions don't work. (Navarro was one of the earliest to push the China travel ban.)

According to a source familiar with the coronavirus task force, "There has never been a confrontation in the task force meetings like the one yesterday," adding "People speak up and there's robust debate, but there's never been a confrontation. Yesterday was the first confrontation."

Meanwhile, 37% of 6,227 doctors across 30 countries felt the drug was the "most effective therapy" out of 15 options in treating coronavirus, according to a poll reported by the Washington Times .

The drug has been prescribed in 72% of cases in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in Mexico, 28% in France, and 23% in the USA . Overall, 19% of physicians have prescribed the drug for high-risk patients, and 8% for low-risk patients.

More from the Sermo poll (via the Washington Times )

***

Sermo CEO Peter Kirk called the polling results a "treasure trove of global insights for policy makers."

"Physicians should have more of a voice in how we deal with this pandemic and be able to quickly share information with one another and the world," he said. "With censorship of the media and the medical community in some countries, along with biased and poorly designed studies, solutions to the pandemic are being delayed."

The survey also found that 63% of U.S. physicians believe restrictions should be lifted in six weeks or more, and that the epidemic's peak is at least 3-4 weeks away.

The survey also found that 83% of global physicians anticipate a second global outbreak, including 90% of U.S. doctors but only 50% of physicians in China.

On average, U.S. coronavirus testing takes 4-5 days, while 10% of cases take longer than seven days. In China, 73% of doctors reported getting rest results back in 24 hours.

In cases of ventilator shortages, all countries but China said the top criteria should be patients with the best chance of recovery (47%), followed by patients with the highest risk of death (21%), and then first responders (15%) .

[Apr 06, 2020] Wearing masks in public places is the most cheap and effective way to lower R0 for the virus

Apr 06, 2020 | www.unz.com

yakushimaru , says: Show Comment April 3, 2020 at 6:47 am GMT

@Philip Owen The most important thing is to have a cheap way to lower the R0.

Herd immunity is one, but it is expensive to get there.

Masks, widespread use of masks, is another, and it is relatively cheap. The virus lives mainly in lungs, after all. Accidental touching of mask's dirty side etc. can be a problem, but the virus would have to cross one mask to reach out, then go into air to touch another surface, then wait for some accidents to happen to go through your mask to reach your lungs.

Social distancing, widespread use of masks, and contact tracing, and 14 days wait period for people suspected of infection. The pandemic can be controlled, and normal life can largely resume when we wait for vaccine and cure.

[Apr 06, 2020] Around 81% have mild symptoms, 14% severe symptoms requiring hospitalization, 5% critical.

Apr 06, 2020 | www.unz.com

Daniel Chieh , says: Show Comment

[Apr 06, 2020] All that test does does is to indicate the presence of virus RNA not the illness itself

Apr 06, 2020 | www.fda.gov
  1. Read here – https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download

    It says there, black on white – " Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. "

[Apr 06, 2020] The Use of Facemasks and Respirators during an Influenza Pandemic: Scientific Evidence Base Review

It make sense to wear mask only for a limited time (no more then 2 hours for a single mask) and only in public places. Should always be combined with strict hand hygiene. Without hand hygiene wearing of masks can be counterproductive.
Notable quotes:
"... Given the potential loss of effectiveness with incorrect usage, general advice should be to only use masks/ respirators under very particular, specified circumstances, and in combination with other personal protective practices. ..."
Apr 06, 2020 | service.gov.uk

Executive summary

Conclusions: Despite a further review of all the available evidence up to 30 November 2012 there is still limited evidence to suggest that use of face masks and/or respirators in health care setting can provide significant protection against infection with influenza when in close contact with infected patients. Some evidence suggests that mask use is best undertaken as part of a package or 'bundle' of personal protection especially including hand hygiene, the new evidence provides some support to this argument particularly within the community or household setting. Early initiation and regular wearing of masks/respirators may improve their effectiveness in healthcare and household settings, again an argument marginally strengthened by the updated evidence.

The effectiveness of masks and respirators is likely to be linked to consistent, correct usage and compliance; this remains a major challenge – both in the context of a formal study and in everyday practice.

Given the potential loss of effectiveness with incorrect usage, general advice should be to only use masks/ respirators under very particular, specified circumstances, and in combination with other personal protective practices.

... ... ...

None of the trials found, in the main analyses, a significant difference between non-intervention and mask-only arms (surgical masks or N95/P2 respirators) in either clinically diagnosed (influenza-like-illness/ILI) or laboratory-confirmed influenza. However in four of the household trials, sub-analyses of the datasets revealed some evidence of protection.

One trial observed that household contacts who wore a P2 respirator 'all/most' of the time were less likely to develop an influenza-like illness compared to less frequent users.

A second trial found a significant reduction in laboratory-confirmed influenza among household contacts that began hand hygiene or hand hygiene plus a face mask within 36 hours of the index case's illness.

... ... ...

One of these studies found that there was a significantly lower frequency of H1N1 pdm09 infection in healthcare workers wearing a mask when compared to those not wearing a mask. Furthermore, a sub-analysis of nurses and nurse assistants in a seroprevalence study identified an increased risk of acquiring H1N1 pdm09 infection when not wearing a mask, however while the authors described this result as significant (p-value significant), the confidence interval was not significant

... ... ...

There is some weak evidence to suggest that facemasks may be protective when they are used early (after recognition of an index case in a household setting); if better compliance (using the masks for longer periods of time) is achieved, and when combined with hand-washing practicing.

Background

Minimising transmission of influenza requires a range of personal and public health measures taken by individuals and communities such as respiratory etiquette and hand hygiene and possibly proactive school closures (and other measures sometimes called social distancing). Use of personal protective equipment is generally advised according to the risk of exposure to the influenza virus and the degree of infectivity and human pathogenicity of the virus. A particularly vexing issue for policy makers has been the paucity of scientific evidence upon which to base guidance for use of masks and respirators in healthcare and community settings to prevent transmission of seasonal, pandemic and animal influenzas.

... ... ...

Participants were allocated to wear either a fit-tested N95 or a surgical face mask when providing care (including aerosol generating procedures) to patients with a febrile respiratory illness during the influenza season. No difference in influenza infection was detected in the two groups. The final hospital based study stratified 1441 health care workers across 15 Beijing hospitals to analyse the effectiveness of surgical masks compared to both fit-tested and non-fit tested N95 respirators (6). The wearers of N95 respirators had lower, but non-significant attack rates, compared to those wearing surgical masks. However the intention to treat analysis (when adjusting for clustering of hospitals) identified that non-fit-tested N95s had a statistically significant protective effect against clinical respiratory illness when compared to surgical masks in healthcare workers. Additionally a multivariate analysis ( post hoc ) found that wearing any N95 mask type protected against clinical respiratory illness

... ... ...

A cluster randomized controlled trial in Australia compared household contacts of paediatric index cases (0-15 years) with a febrile respiratory illness that were randomised to control, surgical mask or non-fit-tested P2 respirator intervention groups (9). No differences in rates of influenza-like infection or rates of respiratory virus isolation were observed in an intention-to-treat analysis. In a survival analysis that evaluated risk factors for influenza-like illness, use of P2 respirators or surgical masks grouped together was found to significantly reduce the risk for illness in those household contacts who reported wearing the device 'all' or 'most' of the time for the first five days; however, the study was underpowered to detect a difference in efficacy between P2 and surgical masks.

... ... ...

A study in Berlin, conducted across two influenza seasons (2009/10 and 2010/11), randomised households to three groups; control, face mask or face mask and hand-hygiene with the analyses stratified by influenza type (seasonal or pandemic cases), season, and early implementation of interventions (12). This was the only example of a trail that analyzed specific H1N1 pdm09 secondary household attack rates. In the intention-to-treat multivariable analysis, pooling of both intervention groups resulted in a significant reduction in lab-confirmed influenza when stratified for either early intervention or pandemic-only cases; however there was no statistically significant effect of intervention groups on secondary household attack rates. When a per-protocol analysis was applied the odds ratios in both the mask-only and mask/hand-hygiene 24 groups were between 0.2 and 0.3 suggesting a strong protective effect. Although a statistically significant reduction was found in the mask-only groups.

... ... ...

Larson and colleagues examined hand-sanitiser and hand-sanitiser/mask use (both with education) effectiveness amongst crowded households in upper Manhattan (15). In this study, both household caretakers and symptomatic individuals were asked to wear masks. The study found that mask wearing coupled with hand-sanitiser use significantly reduced secondary transmission of aggregated upper respiratory infection/ ILI and lab-confirmed influenza outcome compared with control households (education but no intervention) in the final logistic regression model. Unfortunately there was not a mask-only group, but the observation that hand sanitizer alone resulted in no reduction in the aggregated outcome suggests that mask use, in combination with hand-sanitiser had an impact on transmission. There was also limited power to detect differences amongst the three groups and there was also observed cross-contamination with use of hand-sanitizer in the control group

... ... ...

It was observed that there was a statistically significant difference in H1N1 pdm09 infection between individuals wearing masks at any point and those not wearing masks (0% seropositive individuals when using either surgical masks or N95 respirators in comparison to 14% individuals in the no mask/respirator group). The study however lacked power to detect significant differences between those wearing N95 respirators against those wearing surgical masks. In addition to this the study suffered for a large number of other limitations such as potential measurement and recall bias.

[Apr 06, 2020] The shadow of Spanish flu

Apr 06, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

dltravers , Apr 5 2020 17:28 utc | 26

most people who dies form Spanish flue also have lungs full of liquid

BM @ 10

Interesting, I had a Chinese coworker show me some videos of autopsies from China on Covid patients. The lungs were full of mucus. He translated for me and they were saying that drinking very hot liquids helps to keep things in check if you are sick. Coffee, tea and the like.

What we would call anecdotal reports from experts.

[Apr 05, 2020] Of the medications you have personally prescribed or have seen used, please indicate which ones are most effective

Apr 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

...37% of 6,227 doctors across 30 countries felt the drug was the "most effective therapy" out of 15 options in treating coronavirus, according to a poll reported by the Washington Times .

The drug has been prescribed in 72% of cases in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in Mexico, 28% in France, and 23% in the USA. Overall, 19% of physicians have prescribed the drug for high-risk patients, and 8% for low-risk patients.

Overall (2171) US (580) NY (112) Europe (827) Italy & Spain (671) China (109) Rest of world (543)
Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine 37% 23% 25% 37% 62% 44% 55%
Azithromycin or similar antibiotics 32% 18% 25% 32% 45% 33% 48%
Nothing 32% 51% 42% 29% 16% 4% 18%
Analgesics (e.g., Paracetamol/Acetaminophen) 31% 21% 29% 34% 37% 20% 39%
Anti-HIV drugs (e.g. Lopinavir plus Ritonavir) 16% 5% 6% 15% 28% 42% 25%
Cough medications 13% 13% 15% 12% 8% 22% 11%
Compassionate use of experimental drugs 13% 10% 8% 12% 20% 35% 14%
(e.g. Remdisivir)
Drugs used to treat flu (e.g., Oseltamivir) 12% 4% 11% 9% 10% 39% 19%
Expectorants (e.g., Mucinex 10% 10% 9% 8% 8% 28% 10%
Interferon-beta 7% 1% 3% 3% 11% 41% 15%
Antihistamines/Decongestants 7% 7% 6% 5% 5% 17% 8%
Plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 7% 3% 6% 4% 6% 48% 6%
Vitamin D 6% 4% 6% 6% 5% 12% 7%
Zinc tablets 5% 6% 10% 4% 2% 8% 4%
Glycopyrolate inhaler 3% 2% 3% 1% 1% 19% 3%

[Apr 05, 2020] How healthy and strong your respiratory system has a lot to do with fending off the scourge of viruses. viruses.

Apr 05, 2020 | off-guardian.org

Enough OK. How healthy and strong your respiratory system has a lot to do with fending off the scourge of viruses. Governments generally do very poor record in tackling Pollution(s).

There is a ' Great ' gift from the US to countries around the world: Please welcome Petroleum Coke, or ' petcoke '. This is the bottom-of-the-barrel leftover from refining .. tar sands crude and other heavy oils, is cheaper and burns hotter than coal. But it also contains .. far more heart- and lung-damaging sulfur."
American companies don't like to use it, and "are sending it around the world. Laboratory tests on imported petcoke used near New Delhi found it contained 17 times more sulfur than the limit set for coal, and a staggering 1,380 times more than for diesel."

Big Corporations are literally pooping all over the planet, and virtually pooping inside our lungs , with impunity; we have to live in such conditions. Can this situation be stopped and reveresed?

[Apr 05, 2020] The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren't wearing masks

Highly recommended!
Apr 05, 2020 | www.sciencemag.org

Science has tried to interview George Gao, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for 2 months. Last week he responded.

Q : What mistakes are other countries making?

A: The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren't wearing masks. This virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important role -- you've got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others. Q: People who tested positive in Wuhan but only had mild disease were sent into isolation in large facilities and were not allowed to have visits from family. Is this something other countries should consider?

A: Infected people must be isolated. That should happen everywhere. You can only control COVID-19 if you can remove the source of the infection. This is why we built module hospitals and transformed stadiums into hospitals.

[Apr 05, 2020] Please provide a reference that says an asymptomatic person is contagious. If you are referring to the article published in the NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), that turned out to be flawed as the women did display symptoms when she returned to Germany.

Apr 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

PokeTheTruth , Apr 2 2020 23:57 utc | 145

Richard Steven Hack @129

You wrote, " The difference between this virus and most previous viruses is that they required one to have a fever, i.e., symptoms, before being contagious. This one does not for at least one to two days before symptoms appear. So we know it's possible to be asymptomatic for at least one to two days and still be contagious."

Asymptomatic means no symptoms i.e., no sneezing, coughing or postnasal drip.
As far as transmission by sputum (spitting) or other secretions, I think that is a such a rare occurrence that it is too infinitesimal to statistically count. I mean come on, how many times have you touched someone's spit? Kissing is not known to spread the disease from an asymptomatic carrier either.

The other observations that suggest presymptomatic transmission of infection (meaning no symptoms) cannot be confirmed because it is unknown if the disease was present and active on surfaces before the subjects came in contact with it and with each other.

The disease is spread by sending a plume into the air as a result of a cough, sneeze or postnasal drip. A person comes in contact with the virus by being in the vicinity of the plume or when the virus falls on a surface and a person touches it and then somewhere on their body that allows entry (eyes, nasal passages or mouth.)

Please provide a reference that says an asymptomatic person is contagious. If you are referring to the article published in the NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), that turned out to be flawed as the women did display symptoms when she returned to Germany.

Source: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomatic-patient-transmitting-coronavirus-wrong# .

[Apr 04, 2020] N95 vs FFP3 FFP2 masks what's the difference

Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

A User , Apr 3 2020 22:36 utc | 85

There is still confusion between what is a mask & what is a respirator -basically a mask will protect others from your sputum & a respirator protects yourself from others.
I discovered a site N95 vs FFP3 & FFP2 masks – what's the difference? which explains the different masks & respirators and most importantly what the standards are. eg n95 amerika = KN95 China. As well as explaining the problems of valved devices versus unvalved etc.
It is clear layman style stuff free of dense bullshit, read it if you want to understand this stuff.

[Apr 04, 2020] I'll wear a mask to protect you, and you wear a mask to protect me

Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Grieved , Apr 4 2020 3:24 utc | 118

I haven't seen this specifically mentioned so I'll offer it. My local newspaper of all things, published an editorial today calling for more people in our community to "mask up". It included this wonderful phrase that captures the true social dynamic and the logic of the situation:

"I'll wear a mask to protect you, and you wear a mask to protect me."

What's nice about this social compact is that it costs almost nothing, is in plentiful, makeshift supply (we're including bandanas and scarves - anything), and surely must do more good than harm, no matter how real or unreal the danger is, nor how prone to mishap or not the wearing of a mask is.

Such a compact surely must be a social good. If only there had been masks in the US - or leadership willing to plunge humble and naked into the realities of the situation and learn from Asia so we could all start making our own masks - then perhaps the US would not have had to do the most stupid thing possible to its lean productive economy, namely, shutting down the entire entrepreneur class of the country and throwing their employees into hazard and poverty.

Given that there was no safety net, and never was going to be despite the talk of the first few days, it could have saved countless deaths from poverty if the people if the US had learned the new social rules, including mask and physical distance etiquette immediately, and kept many of the businesses open instead of driving them to bankruptcy.

So the US is very late to the party, and will pay the price, but now the people who survive must learn how to live in the new normal. Masking-up in public seems the least impactful of all responses.

[Apr 04, 2020] Virus size and Brownian motion

Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

A User , Apr 3 2020 22:56 utc | 92

re b's comment : "The HEPA filter catches particles down to 0.3 micrometer. Viruses are some 125 nanometer in diameter so they are smaller and could slip through. " .
That isn't strictly correct, there is a solid reason for the 0.3 micrometer limit related to Brownian motion,as I learned after reading a piece from the link I posted above - to wit:
The reason for the focus on 0.3 microns is because it is the "most penetrating particle size" (MPPS). Particles above this size move in ways we might anticipate, and will get trapped in a filter with gaps smaller than the particle size. Particles smaller than 0.3 microns exhibit what's called brownian motion – which makes them easier to filter. Brownian motion refers to a phenomenon whereby the particle's mass is small enough that it no longer travels unimpeded through the air. Instead it interacts with the molecules in the air (nitrogen, oxygen, etc), causing it to pinball between them, moving in an erratic pattern.

According to researchers this point between "normal" motion and brownian motion is the hardest particle size for filters to capture.

What we can take away from this, is that high filter efficiency at 0.3 micron size will generally translate to high filter efficiency below this size also.

[Apr 04, 2020] Vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, has profound effects on human immune system

Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Stonebird , Apr 3 2020 20:22 utc | 36

juliania | Apr 3 2020 19:06 utc | 13

Immunity can also be obtained naturally rather than by "vaccine".
You can ask your doctor for a strong Vitamin D supplement and probably buy them elswhere. The simplest is to go out in the same beautiful sunshine as we are now having in Europe.

vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, and activated vitamin D, a steroid hormone, has profound effects on human immunity. D acts as an immune system modulator, preventing excessive expression of inflammatory cytokines and increasing the 'oxidative burst' potential of macrophages. Perhaps most importantly, it dramatically stimulates the expression of potent anti-microbial peptides, which exist in neutrophils, monocytes, natural killer cells, and in epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract where they play a major role in protecting the lung from infection.

The link.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/02/fight-the-virus-with-sunshine/
. . . . .

For information; one group that suffered from Vitamin D deficiency was Saudi Arabian women. Their Abbayas (full head covering with no eyes visible, right down to the toes. Maybe not the correct spelling of abbaya) did not let in the sun. So .....
Even face "masks" were not very efficient at "letting the sun shine in". However, the abbayas had one advantage; that was women suffered less from trachoma, an illness that is provoked by rubbing the eyes regularly (irritated because of the sand). The eye flips inward permanently, leaving only the white of the eye showing. ie. Blindness.

Personally my doctor prescribes a 200'000 UI D dose (drinkable) to be taken twice a year in November/December and February. Which I naturally took just before the Coronavirus hit around here.

[Apr 04, 2020] Use 30 minutes at 70 C in oven with the respirator put in a paper bag over put over something wooden in the oven

Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Passer by , Apr 3 2020 19:48 utc | 22

Surgical masks are pretty good at stopping bacteria and larger droplets, but not aerosols (small particles). They also have lower quality fit, just like ordinary masks too.

Surgical masks are very good for blocking you own droplet emissions.

Simply use N99 respitator or FFP 3 respirator (EU standard).
Blocks 99 % of small particles, including virus transporting ones. It is used by medical personnel who handle corona and other viruses.

Use 30 minutes at 70 C in oven with the respirator put in a paper bag over put over something wooden in the oven. This method can be used for up to 20 times with minimal damage to the respirator filtration capacity, according to several studies. Another good method is putting it in commercial steam bag used for sterilisation of baby items for 3 minutes in a microwave oven, metal presence should not be a problem according to the study because the metal gets coated by the steam. This method can be used up to 10 times with minimal loss to the quality of the respirator. It is good for surgical masks too. Also use eye protection and gloves. These simple methods are good and some hospitals started using them.

Another way is 7 to 10 days keeping the mask in dry bag with acces to air, that significantly decreases viral load for most viruses. During this time use another respirator.

For homemade masks these methods should be good too.

Methods that decrease respirator quality are spirt based solutions, bleach based solutions, and longer exposure to steam. UVGI light and Hydrogen peroxide bath are also are relatively good methods for disinfection of masks.

Importantly do not touch the respirator's main surface with your fingers, secure a good fit, and always clean hands before and after handling the respirator.

Combine respirator mask with eye protection, raincoat and gloves. Put the raincoat and any new item you bring into the home for 3 days quarantine in some special room.

Stay away from people at minimum 7 meters, especially from those who don't have masks.

Use ethanol to clean your gloves before and after you visited a store.

For disinfection purposes ethanol is good, it kills 100 % of viruses and bacteria. Ethanol is used by russian Covid 19 disinfection teams in Italy for surface disinfection.

b , Apr 3 2020 20:10 utc | 33

@Passer by

Simply use N99 respitator or FFP 3 respirator (EU standard).
Blocks 99 % of small particles, including virus transporting ones. It is used by medical personnel who handle corona and other viruses.

1. None of such mask are currently available.
2. Even for hospital staff N95 aka FFP2 is sufficient to protect against SARS-CoV-19.
3. It is already very hard to wear and breathe through a N95 mask for a longer time. N99 masks are even worse!
4. The N99 masks have exhalatation valves which let the air from the person who wears it flow out freely. That defeats the current purpose of #MaskUp which is to protect from unknown spreaders.

I have trained for chemical warfare in the military. Wearing a tight mask with a filter (FFP3) system while moving around is physically very tiring after even an hour or so. You don't select a mask that is more difficult to breathe with than actually required.

[Apr 04, 2020] The Science Says #MaskUp - A Look At Two New Virus Studies

Notable quotes:
"... Infections from asymptomatic cases have an R 0 of 0.1 or 4% of all new infections. ..."
"... More new infections are created during the three pre-symptomatic days the virus carrier runs around then during the symptomatic one. ..."
"... Washing ones hands helps but environmental infections happen only in 10% of all new infections. The pre-symptomatic carriers are, without knowing it, the biggest spreader of the disease. Millions of the many billions of viruses that get created in their throat can attach to tiny water droplets or aerosols while a person breathes, speaks or coughs. ..."
Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Dors , Apr 3 2020 19:05 utc | 10

The virus starts to replicate in significant numbers (billions per mililiter) on day 2 after the infection. The virus first replicates in the upper throat and the infected person starts to spread it to others simply by breathing, talking or coughing. Only on day 5 the infected person starts to develop first symptoms. The virus migrates into the lower lung and replicates there. The virus load in the upper throat will then start to decline. The immune system intervenes and defeats the virus but also causes additional lung damage which can kill people who have already other preexisting conditions . (Interestingly smokers seem not to develop a cytokine storms during a Covid infection and are thereby less prone to end up in the ICU.) On day 10 only few viruses will be found in the upper throat and the person will generally no longer be infectious.

The typical hospitalization point in China was only on day 9 to 12 after the onset of symptoms. At that point a test by swabs is nearly useless as the infected person will normally no longer have significant numbers of the virus in the upper throat. Reports of "defective tests from China" were likely caused by a lack of knowledge about this phenomenon. The diagnose in these later cases should be done by a CT scan which will show the lung damage.

We do know since late January that people can transmit the virus even when they have not yet developed symptoms. An open question was how many of new infections happen during this phase.

The new Science study investigated how many infections were created by each of four infection phases or types:

The study says that R 0 for pre-symptomatic infections is 0.9 or 46% of all new infections. Infections from a symptomatic persons happen with an R 0 of 0.8 which is equal to 40% of all new infections. Environmental infections have an R 0 of 0.2 or 10% of all new infections. Infections from asymptomatic cases have an R 0 of 0.1 or 4% of all new infections.

More new infections are created during the three pre-symptomatic days the virus carrier runs around then during the symptomatic one.

Washing ones hands helps but environmental infections happen only in 10% of all new infections. The pre-symptomatic carriers are, without knowing it, the biggest spreader of the disease. Millions of the many billions of viruses that get created in their throat can attach to tiny water droplets or aerosols while a person breathes, speaks or coughs.

Such spreading can be prevented when everyone wears a mask. A different new study shows that masks are very effective. Published in Nature the study is titled:

Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks .

The graphic (here cut off for only corona viruses) shows how masks can keep away your droplets from the people you meet and talk to.


bigger

If the carrier of a virus wears a mask the spreading of viruses due to speaking, coughing or even breathing goes basically down to zero.

But a mask does not only protect the carrier of the viruses. While homemade or even professional surgical mask do not protect the wearer from all particles they do protect one much better from them than when one wears no mask at all.

A person rarely gets infected by just one virus particle. They come in millions attached to tiny droplets. We do not know yet how the dose of the novel coronavirus that infects a person affects the intensity of the disease. But we do know from other viruses that the dose matters. People who catch a higher dose of viruses will usually have a more intense disease. A mask can lower the virus load the wearer may receive.

One can improvise a mask from simple household objects. One can sew a mask like a surgeon does in this video . This is my preferred model which is officially recommended by German fire departments. (The pdf is in German but the pictures tell the story). This is the mask I made by following those instructions.


bigger

It is made of a folded sheet cut from a triangular arm-sling out of an old first-aid kit. A HEPA microfilter (as used in a vacuum cleaners) is in between the folded sheet. A piece cut from a clean bag for vacuum cleaners will do as well. Do not use a sheet or insert that is too tight to breathe through. If one does that the air will come in from the sides of the mask and the total protection effect will be less. It can be arduous to breathe through such a mask. If you have breathing problems leave the insert out. The sheets alone are already good protection. There is a piece of wire from a big paper clip fixed inside the middle of the upper seam to fit the mask tightly around the upper nose. The lower part goes under the chin. I shaved my beard to make it a tighter fit. As I had no sewing equipment I used a stapler to fix the seams and the ribbons.

The HEPA filter catches particles down to 0.3 micrometer. Viruses are some 125 nanometer in diameter so they are smaller and could slip through. But the viruses are attached to some droplet that are bigger. HEPA filter are essentially labyrinths of small fiber and the viruses would have to bounce multiple times to get through. Finally the dose also matters.

To clean the mask of potential viruses I put it into the oven for 30 minutes at 70C (158F).

The science says that masks work. Everyone should use one. #MaskUp!

---
Here some additional links which might be of interest.

So far, to the frustration of both the White House and the intelligence community, the agencies have been unable to glean more accurate numbers through their collection efforts.

That's because the Chinese numbers are as correct as they can get

Since none of us is an expert or eminently knowledgeable on this topic, for the sake of sharing information to develop our views here is data that suggests otherwise...

via https://twitter.com/denisrancourt/status/1246070568090288128

Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, Volume 26, Number 6—June 2020
Research Letter : Serial Interval of COVID-19 among Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases
Abstract. We estimate the distribution of serial intervals for 468 confirmed cases of 2019 novel coronavirus disease reported in China as of February 8, 2020. The mean interval was 3.96 days (95% CI 3.53–4.39 days), SD 4.75 days (95% CI 4.46–5.07 days); 12.6% of case reports indicated presymptomatic transmission .

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0357_article

[Apr 04, 2020] The majority of viral infections come from prolonged exposures in confined spaces with other infected individuals. COVID-19 doesn't spread as easily as first thought

There was another study suggesting that many infection do not go beyond mild common cold, with a conjecture that with small initial number of viruses the organism, T-cells in the mouth and throat etc. learn to eliminate viruses in time to prevent severe lung infection. Thus gives value to masks that are not 100% effective.
You can will mark my mask for each day of the week and rely on the fact that after paper or fabric is completely dry ythe virus fdies in 72 hours.
Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Allen , Apr 3 2020 21:33 utc | 69
The World Health Organization released a study on how China responded to COVID-19. Currently, this study is one of the most exhaustive pieces published on how the virus spreads.

The results of their research show that COVID-19 doesn't spread as easily as first thought.

The majority of viral infections come from prolonged exposures in confined spaces with other infected individuals. Person-to-person and surface contact is by far the most common cause. From the WHO report, "When a cluster of several infected people occurred in China, it was most often (78-85%) caused by an infection within the family by droplets and other carriers of infection in close contact with an infected person.

Routes of transmission

COVID-19 is transmitted via droplets and fomites during close unprotected contact between an infector and infectee. Airborne spread has not been reported for COVID-19 and it is not believed to be a major driver of transmission based on available evidence; however, it can be envisaged if certain aerosol-generating procedures are conducted in health care facilities.

Household transmission

In China, human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus is largely occurring in
families. The Joint Mission received detailed information from the investigation of clusters and some household transmission studies, which are ongoing in a number of Provinces. Among 344 clusters involving 1308 cases (out of a total 1836 cases reported) in Guangdong Province and Sichuan Province, most clusters (78%-85%) have occurred in families. Household transmission studies are currently underway, but preliminary studies ongoing in Guangdong estimate the secondary attack rate in households ranges from 3-10%.

Full Reprt Here:

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

Piotr Berman , Apr 3 2020 21:35 utc | 70

The coefficient from the simulation are selected to match observed infections and they are not "facts" but useful guidelines. The bottom line is that the infection happen in some proportion, a large part from asymptomatic people. There was another study suggesting that many infection do not go beyond mild common cold, with a conjecture that with small initial number of viruses the organism, T-cells in the mouth and throat etc. learn to eliminate viruses in time to prevent severe lung infection. Thus gives value to masks that are not 100% effective.

Surely, the actual infection rate depends on the customs in a particular area. Oriental people are not in habit of kissing, embracing, clasping hands etc., plus they are quick to wear masks. Mediterranean people, which may include Iran, embrace, clasp hands and even kiss (I assume that Muslim would greet only people of the same gender in that way). Masks are not a habit. Crowded subway, buses etc. involve a lot of very close contacts, which may be OK if EVERYONE has a decent mask.

I guess I will mark my mask for each day of the week and rely on the fact that after paper or fabric is completely dry, viruses die (cease to become viable) within hours, so one does not have to rush the drying process by special heating. On the other hand, one could try to gently dry in the cloth drier in a bag for female underwear. We do not damage viruses by heat but by the lack of moisture. Masks seems to be limited.

[Apr 04, 2020] Face Mask Disinfection Sterilization for Viruses

Apr 04, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard Steven Hack , Apr 3 2020 22:35 utc | 84

@Passer by | Apr 3 2020 19:48 utc | 22

Excellent advice. This is what I've gleaned as well from some of the articles I've posted here in earlier threads.

This article gives more detailed advice although it seems to require a fair amount of work:

Covid-19 Pandemic: Face Mask Disinfection & Sterilization for Viruses
https://tinyurl.com/qtehozu

These are the reuse recommendations I'll be following, from Dr. Peter Tsai, the inventor of the filtration fabric in the N95 mask:
N95 Re-Use Instructions (Updated as of April 3, 2020)
https://www.sages.org/n-95-re-use-instructions/

I intend to follow the advice of rotating masks - once I have masks. It's likely that four days would be sufficient to dry out any droplets or aerosols and inactivate any virus. However, longer obviously would be better.

I'm going to order some masks from China today, if I can. Also perhaps some impermeable food surface plastic gloves to deal with contact infections.

.... .... ...

[Apr 04, 2020] Here's Every Vaccine And Treatment In Development For COVID-19, So Far

Apr 04, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to skyrocket, healthcare researchers around the world are working tirelessly to discover new life-saving medical innovations.

As Visual Capitalist's Nick Routley notes , the projects these companies are working on can be organized into three distinct groups:

  1. Diagnostics: Quickly and effectively detecting the disease in the first place
  2. Treatments: Alleviating symptoms so people who have disease experience milder symptoms, and lowering the overall mortality rate
  3. Vaccines: Preventing transmission by making the population immune to COVID-19

Today's graphics provide an in-depth look at who's in the innovation race to defeat the virus, and they come to us courtesy of Artis Ventures , a venture capital firm focused on life sciences and tech investments.

Editor's note: R&D is moving fast on COVID-19, and the situation is quite fluid. While today's post is believed to be an accurate snapshot of all innovations and developments listed by WHO and FDA as of March 30, 2020, it is possible that more data will become available.

Knowledge is Power

Testing rates during this pandemic have been a point of contention. Without widespread testing, it has been tough to accurately track the spread of the virus, as well as pin down important metrics such as infectiousness and mortality rates . Inexpensive test kits that offer quick results will be key to curbing the outbreak.

Here are the companies and institutions developing new tests for COVID-19:

The ultimate aim of companies like Abbott and BioFire Defense is to create a test that can produce accurate results in as little as a few minutes.

In the Trenches With Coronavirus

While the majority of people infected with COVID-19 only experience minor symptoms, the disease can cause severe issues in some cases – even resulting in death. Most of the forms of treatment being pursued fall into one of two categories:

  1. Treating respiratory symptoms – especially the inflammation that occurs in severe cases
  2. Antiviral growth – essentially stopping viruses from multiplying inside the human body

Here are the companies and institutions developing new treatment options for COVID-19:

A wide range of players are in the race to develop treatments related to COVID-19. Pharma and healthcare companies are in the mix, as well as universities and institutes.

One surprising name on the list is Fujifilm . The Japanese company's stock recently shot up on the news that Avigan, a decades-old flu drug developed through Fujifilm's healthcare subsidiary, might be effective at helping coronavirus patients recover. The Japanese government's stockpile of the drug is reportedly enough to treat two million people.

Vaccine

The progress that is perhaps being watched the closest by the general public is the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Creating a safe vaccine for a new illness is no easy feat. Thankfully, rapid progress is being made for a variety of reasons, including China's efforts to sequence the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2 and to share that information with research groups around the world.

Another factor contributing to the unprecedented speed of development is the fact that coronaviruses were already on the radar of health science researchers. Both SARS and MERS were caused by coronaviruses, and even though vaccines were shelved once those outbreaks were contained, learnings can still be applied to defeating COVID-19.

One of the most promising leads on a COVID-19 vaccine is mRNA-1273. This vaccine, developed by Moderna Therapeutics , is being developed with extreme urgency, skipping straight into human trials before it was even tested in animals. If all goes well with the trials currently underway in Washington State, the company hopes to have an early version of the vaccine ready by fall 2020. The earliest versions of the vaccine would be made available to at-risk groups such as healthcare workers.

Further down the pipeline are 15 types of subunit vaccines. This method of vaccination uses a fragment of a pathogen, typically a surface protein, to trigger an immune response, teaching the body's immune system how to fight off the disease without actually introducing live pathogens.

No Clear Finish Line

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet for solving this pandemic.

A likely scenario is that teams of researchers around the world will come up with solutions that will incrementally help stop the spread of the virus, mitigate symptoms for those infected, and help lower the overall death toll. As well, early solutions rushed to market will need to be refined over the coming months.

We can only hope that the hard lessons learned from fighting COVID-19 will help stop a future outbreak in its tracks before it becomes a pandemic. For now, those of us on the sideline can only do our best to flatten the curve .

[Apr 03, 2020] Truth about masks: does it help? yes, every little bit is better than nothing

Apr 03, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

A.L. , Apr 2 2020 19:46 utc | 59

Truths about mask:

1. does it stop you from catching the bug 100%? No, including N95, P100, whatever. there's leakage and also many other infection vectors.

2. do most people know how to don, adjust and handle used masks properly? No

3. does it help? yes, every little bit is better than nothing

4. dirty little secret - for most of Asia with exception of probably Japan, people wear mask not because they are trying to protect others if they are asymptomatic carriers. They do it out of good old self preservation. it DOES, however, have the useful side effect that the end result is the same - asymptomatic carriers are also covered.

[Apr 02, 2020] Some plausible but unverified guidelines

Apr 02, 2020 | hub.jhu.edu

Statement about listerine is obviously wrong.

George Obrien 7 days ago • edited ,

Did Johns Hopkins issue the following guidelines (I don't think they did)?

1. The virus is not a living organism, but a protein molecule (DNA) covered by a protective layer of lipid (fat), which, when absorbed by the cells of the ocular, nasal or buccal mucosa, changes their genetic code. (mutation) and convert them into aggressor and multiplier cells.

2. Since the virus is not a living organism but a protein molecule, it is not killed, but decays on its own. The disintegration time depends on the temperature, humidity and type of material where it lies.

3. The virus is very fragile; the only thing that protects it is a thin outer layer of fat. That is why any soap or detergent is the best remedy, because the foam CUTS the FAT (that is why you have to rub so much: for 20 seconds or more, to make a lot of foam). By dissolving the fat layer, the protein molecule disperses and breaks down on its own.

4. HEAT melts fat; this is why it is so good to use water above 25 degrees Celsius for washing hands, clothes and everything. In addition, hot water makes more foam and that makes it even more useful.

5. Alcohol or any mixture with alcohol over 65% DISSOLVES ANY FAT, especially the external lipid layer of the virus.

6. Any mix with 1 part bleach and 5 parts water directly dissolves the protein, breaks it down from the inside.

7. Oxygenated water helps long after soap, alcohol and chlorine, because peroxide dissolves the virus protein, but you have to use it pure and it hurts your skin.

8. NO BACTERICIDE SERVES. The virus is not a living organism like bacteria; they cannot kill what is not alive with anthobiotics, but quickly disintegrate its structure with everything said.

9. NEVER shake used or unused clothing, sheets or cloth. While it is glued to a porous surface, it is very inert and disintegrates only between 3 hours (fabric and porous), 4 hours (copper, because it is naturally antiseptic; and wood, because it removes all the moisture and does not let it peel off and disintegrates). ), 24 hours (cardboard), 42 hours (metal) and 72 hours (plastic). But if you shake it or use a feather duster, the virus molecules float in the air for up to 3 hours, and can lodge in your nose.

10. The virus molecules remain very stable in external cold, or artificial as air conditioners in houses and cars. They also need moisture to stay stable, and especially darkness. Therefore, dehumidified, dry, warm and bright environments will degrade it faster.

11. UV LIGHT on any object that may contain it breaks down the virus protein. For example, to disinfect and reuse a mask is perfect. Be careful, it also breaks down collagen (which is protein) in the skin, eventually causing wrinkles and skin cancer.

12. The virus CANNOT go through healthy skin.

13. Vinegar is NOT useful because it does not break down the protective layer of fat.

14. NO SPIRITS, NOR VODKA, serve. The strongest vodka is 40% alcohol, and you need 65%.

15. LISTERINE IF IT SERVES! It is 65% alcohol.

16. The more confined the space, the more concentration of the virus there can be. The more open or naturally ventilated, the less.

17. This is super said, but you have to wash your hands before and after touching mucosa, food, locks, knobs, switches, remote control, cell phone, watches, computers, desks, TV, etc. And when using the bathroom.

18. You have to HUMIDIFY HANDS DRY from so much washing them, because the molecules can hide in the micro cracks. The thicker the moisturizer, the better.

19. Also keep your NAILS SHORT so that the virus does not hide there.

omer92 George Obrien 6 days ago ,

IMHO only 20% of the note shows some imprecise or wrongly interpreted examples (like f i Listerine) , but when 80% looks correct, we ABSOLUTELY need to find the source and disseminate it in order to help people understand and , why not, start thinking on why and how apply the recommendations AFTER having understood the logic behind the detailed and practical recommendations which do make sense but which we need to justify and assess before we carry them further as full "truth"

[Apr 02, 2020] Is it okay to take ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms?

Apr 02, 2020 | wired.co.uk

On March 14, French health minister Olivier Véran made a blunt statement on Twitter – warning that people should stay away from using ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms. Some patients in France had experienced adverse affects using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to treat the disease. The tweet has sparked rampant disinformation on WhatsApp and social media, but there is currently no strong evidence that ibuprofen can make coronavirus worse. Even so, the NHS is still advising that – until we have further evidence – people should avoid using ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms and take paracetamol instead. If you can't take paracetamol, or are taking ibuprofen on the advice of a doctor, make sure you check with a doctor before you make any changes to your medication.

Updated 04.03.20, 11:05 GMT: The article has been updated to clarify that some alcohol gels are effective against norovirus.

Matt Reynolds is WIRED's science editor. He tweets from

[Apr 02, 2020] We need to look into why the most active countries that do not practice self isolation, while wearing face masks, have very lowest death rates compared to case numbers. I.e., Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Japan, etc...

Apr 02, 2020 | hub.jhu.edu

FFClementi5 hours ago • edited ,

We need to look into why the most active countries that do not practice self isolation, while wearing face masks, have very lowest death rates compared to case numbers. I.e., Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Japan, etc...

ZWaqar Kahlon FFClementi4 hours ago ,

There is difference among people born and raised in different countries with different vaccinations given at birth and afterwards. There is also difference of many local diseases very common; like malaria and others in Asian courtiers, which are almost non-existent here in USA. It gives us some directions to fight Covid-19 employing mass spectrometry and many other tools.

Richard Wightwick4 hours ago ,

I am over 70 and last year in the UK I had a vaccine for pneumonia, which I understand is of one of the stages in the desease's cycle. Might it be possible that a pneumonia vaccine would provide some kind of immunity for Covid-19?

ZWaqar Kahlon Richard Wightwick3 hours ago ,

The vaccine for pneumonia may have a limited scope compared to Covid-19 attack on immune system, but studies of the blood samples looking for anti-bodies after vaccine for pneumonia may provide us further insight. The best practice would be to try staying away from Covid-19 exposure and try to boost our immune system.

[Apr 02, 2020] People with blood type A may be more vulnerable to coronavirus, China study finds

Apr 02, 2020 | hub.jhu.edu

Alfonso Eslava2 days ago ,

I would like to share some information I happen to find coming out from Chinese Social Media South China Morning Post: "People with blood type A may be more vulnerable to coronavirus, China study finds".
A claim from scientists from Chinese study at Zhognan University Hospital in Wuhan and Shenzhen city. They screen 2000 medical record of patients infected with the SARS CAVID19 to find a higher proportion of patients belonging to the Blood group A, as well as greater proportion of them suffering from more severe disease. As we know most scientific papers from China are written in Chinese language and their scientific perspective may not be as ours, we cannot confirm that is a reflecting a true fact. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be so difficult nor expensive to have a look into the matter. If it turns out to reflect a confirmed fact, it will change our perception about the susceptibility to this germ. We already know that there is a very wide spectrum of severity of symptoms in our population and in part that might be due to factors as those mentioned above. My only recommendation is please take it easy we do not want another problem as we did with toilet paper or Chloroquine.
Be safe, keep yourself at home.

[Apr 02, 2020] FAKE: Tito vodka kills coronavirus

Apr 02, 2020 | www.distractify.com

Publications like Good Housekeeping and USA Today are printing retractions and corrections after accidentally spreading information that vodka can be used to kill the coronavirus .

Per the CDC, hand sanitizer needs to contain at least 60% alcohol. Tito's Handmade Vodka is 40% alcohol, and therefore does not meet the current recommendation of the CDC. Please see attached for more information. pic.twitter.com/plYf54HPLn

-- TitosVodka (@TitosVodka) March 4, 2020

[Apr 02, 2020] The coronavirus and hot weather

Apr 02, 2020 | hub.jhu.edu

Carlos Alejandro Pérez3 days ago

You can certainly bet on that the virus can spread in hot seasons. In these days, in Argentina, we have temperatures about 35 Celsius (almost 100 Fahrenheit), and the virus still gained momentum in such environments. The strict social isolation has been proven to be our best option so far. In economics terms, and even in social mood, it seems to be a very high price to pay. But relaxing or terminating this forced quarantine may led us to the worst case scenario.

CARLOS ALBERTO RANGEL11 hours ago ,

Here in Brazil we have high temperatures right now. And the daily contagion rate is much lower than in countries or places where the climate is much colder. I believe that the virus will not spread as well in hot climates.

jehangir khan6 hours ago ,

why is the infectivity and mortality in indian subcontinent lower?
as they are poor countries and with minimum facility to do distancing....

MSUS2005 EricD.5 days ago ,

I'm currently in mid-Florida there it has been in the upper 80's to mid 90's every day for the last several weeks. The infection is increasing here as far as in Michigan. Also, it's hotter down towards Miami and the infection levels are even higher down there. I wouldn't put any faith and hot days killing it

BenSashko MSUS20053 days ago ,

because tens of thousands of infected new-yorkers escape from NYC to Florida

tg411 Dustin Sidley8 days ago ,

"those countries are poor and have no testing" - but what about their death rate then? As of right now, the ENTIRE CONTINENT of Africa has just a few dozen deaths TOTAL..

Extreme heat/cold are known to be formidable environments to most viruses. Odds are that this one is too, but only time will tell I guess.

Nadine O'Connor Dustin Sidley7 days ago ,

Australia is not poor and absolutely does have testing!!! We have over 3000 infected (that has been identified) and 13 deaths. Do not count on weather conditions offering some form of protection.

Jake Westen Nadine O'Connor4 days ago ,

Sydney is 21C / 69F and Melbourne is 18C / 64F. That isn't hot weather. That is winter weather here in Texas.

Laszlo Lebrun Jake Westena day ago ,

Temperature isn't the only parameter, air-conditioning and the related irritation of mucous membranes are favouring coughs and sneezing and by consequence the spread of viruses.

[Apr 01, 2020] Family infections are the most dangerious one

Apr 01, 2020 | www.unz.com

AnonFromBeijing , says: Show Comment March 30, 2020 at 8:20 am GMT

You misunderstood something about Chinese measures to fight this virus.
We did not just simply lock down cities and everybody stay home to wait for the good ending.
It's far from enough.
We check check and check.
Find out those infected, took them into hospitals. Find them as much as we can. DO NOT leave them goof around/stay home to infect the whole family.
Find out those who are close to the infected, took them into isolation to observe if they will catch the virus. Find them as much as we can.
Track those who were close to the infected, check out the asymptomatic one who is out of the radar and secretly give the virus to the infected. Isolate this asymptomatic person who may continue to spread the virus to others. Yes, you need to find out who infected whom, and how. You need to build the detective teams on infection. You find them out, learn from it, publish it, avoid it.
It's a mission impossible, but still, you do it, with enough endeavor, it's mission possible.
check, check, check track, track, track isolate, isolate, isolate
In the same time, you do all you capacity to guarantee the medic, the logistic, the supply, it's a whole system. Not simply lock down, not just stay at home.

China has more than 70% family cases because social cases are effectively avoided by lock down and stay at home, while those family cases at early stage in Wuhan especially can not be avoided since we don't have this system at the time. Things happened in Wuhan too fast!
You need to react fast! You need to do lot of things at the same time. You need to find them, all of them, really fast. Take them into hospital, into isolation, into observation, under your radar.

Lock down and stay at home works! But that's not all about it. That's just a start of it.
There are cases that people go out for grocery, without masks, get infected by another buyer, within seconds!

If you guys don't wear mask, don't follow stay at home and social distance strictly, whatever your government doing is in waste.
But if your government don't respond fast and find out all of them for treatment and isolations, still the same: this virus thing will just goes on and on and on and on and on

At the end of the day, you may reach herd immunity (if this virus is that friendly: once cured, never infected again, we are not sure about that since somebody already has two strains of this virus in the body at the same time, which suggest something quite different)
In that case, there will be herd immunity gap between you strong survival guys who passed the virus test and we the untested weaker ones who avoided the test by all means.

Who knows, you might win by lost the burden of the old the sick the weak the poor the idiot.
We may also win by guard our value and our people as an unity.
Win-Win

As for fundamental changes of life style and governing method. We didn't think much about it before as we sincerely believed this would be a short term thing. We believed in ourselves and expected everything back to normal in Apr. until you guys join this virus thing.

Now everything changed. Things become really complicated.

[Apr 01, 2020] Youtube to the rescue: DIY masks

The US government incompetence as for mask stockpiling is just staggering. Will go into textbooks about bureaucratic incompetence.
For a country with a trillion dollar military budget to have shorages of mask is really amazing feat.
See for example: DIY Fabric Tie Face Mask with Jenny Doan of Missouri or How to Sew a Face Mask with Filter Pocket or How To Make DIY Face Masks To Donate To Healthcare Workers, or HOW TO SEW A MEDICAL FACE
Apr 01, 2020 | www.unz.com

Republic , says: Show Comment March 31, 2020 at 5:56 pm GMT

@AKAHorace Many Youtube videos address this issue regarding the making of masks

[Apr 01, 2020] FFP2 and N95 masks must be recycled for the moment

Apr 01, 2020 | www.unz.com

Furthermore, I tried to communicate the importance of recycling FFP2 masks, without any success. It is a matter of life and death. These masks are considered for single use and staffs throw them away too quickly. This is not the place to be technical, but I have proposed four methods to recycle them and they must be implemented according to the sterilization equipment available in hospitals, information that I have still not been able to obtain. We must educate medical staff on how to extend the life of these masks and recycle them, today, the urgency is immense.

The army, firefighters and probably the police have gas masks, which should not be left in the barracks, they are even more effective than the FFP2. We do not care if it looks crazy to see doctors with gas masks, I prefer to see them stay alive and able to care for patients, and also it would prevent them from becoming vectors of spread themselves. How many gas masks, which are cleanable and reusable, are available?

FFP2 masks for the population, a simple solution for returning to work.

To finish with the masks, let us understand that what will get us out of confinement, lockdown, and will allow the population to resume almost normal work, is the massive production of FFP2 masks for the entire population, small (children) and adults (adults). The faster the necessary production tools are put in place, the faster Belgium can get back to work, it's really that simple.

During the minimum 4 weeks of lockdown, massive screening is needed, and the establishment of the task force is a step in the right direction. We cannot lift the lockdown until our ability to track down infected individuals has been greatly increased.

At Vo'Euganeo in Italy, all the confined residents (3,300) were tested a month ago. Result: out of 89 positive cases, there are only handful contaminations, reports La Voix du Nord. The approach I propose works when you can combine lockdown and massive screening.

Chinaman , says: Show Comment March 31, 2020 at 8:42 am GMT

It was true yesterday, it is true today, it is enough to see how Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore handled the crisis from the start, and how China and South Korea recovered.

CountLess life could have been saved if white people just didn't have an illogical aversion to masks.

Everyone wear masks in asia. Ironically, It is not the Chinese who is spreading it In Asia. The people who are spreading the disease where I live are the white people returning from overseas and refuse to wear masks. They should go back to wherever they come from.

these people should be physically assaulted for NOT wearing a mask in Asia like Asians are assaulted in the West for wearing one.

[Mar 30, 2020] If you get COVID-19 infection in the shop, office or transport, you probably will be sick two weeks, but if you get if from your wife - probably four, and mother-in-law -- six

Highly recommended!
Jokes aside, infection on family settings might lead to more severe outcomes, as virus load is higher.
Mar 30, 2020 | time.com

In this sense, COVID-19 behaves a lot like seasonal flu. Common rooms often mean common pathogens and higher dose of virus then from strangers. There are some indications that the doze of virus that you get affects the severity of the disease.

Families are great places for socialization and provide a means to stay active and engaged, but can serve as pathogenic petri dishes

Based on current research, it takes about 2 weeks between the onset of symptoms to the clinical recovery of patients with a mild form of the disease

[Mar 30, 2020] Austria mandates face masks for shoppers by Latika Bourke

Mar 30, 2020 | smh.com.au

Austria says anyone shopping will have to wear face masks, bringing it in line with the neighbouring Czech Republic which, on March 18, ordered face masks be worn in public.

Masks will be supplied to supermarket retail chains which will distribute them to shoppers as they enter stores.

The government cautioned that the masks do not protect wearers but are meant to prevent them from spreading infectious cough droplets.

[Mar 28, 2020] Meet The 'Covidiot' A Dense Creature That Ignores Simple Instructions, Endangers Others

Mar 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
...On Saturday, a new term caught the internet by storm, that is, 'Covidiot' – and first defined on Urban Dictionary , with the top definition:

"Someone who ignores the warnings regarding public health or safety. A person who hoards goods, denying them from their neighbors."

[Mar 28, 2020] What I have found when yesterday I ventured into Wal-Mart to shop with the other deplorable people that the elite child molesters, sexual perverts, and sociopaths out in Hollyweird, NYC and Washington like to look down on

Notable quotes:
"... Speaking of "suited and booted", shouldn't these people be wearing one of those full body suits and booties over their shoes as well? ..."
Mar 25, 2020 | www.unz.com

Trinity , says: Show Comment March 25, 2020 at 3:13 pm GMT

Yesterday I ventured into Wal-Mart to shop with the other local deplorable people that the elite child molesters, sexual perverts, and sociopaths out in Hollyweird, NYC and Washington like to look down on.

Wasn't that crowded and I probably noticed about 10 customers "suited and booted" wearing various masks of different shapes and styles and latex gloves.

Speaking of "suited and booted", shouldn't these people be wearing one of those full body suits and booties over their shoes as well?

[Mar 28, 2020] It has been suggested that a profitable class of antihypertensives (ACE inhibitors) is linked with worse COVID19 outcomes.

Mar 28, 2020 | www.unz.com

gfhÄndel , says: Show Comment March 26, 2020 at 7:27 pm GMT

To clarify: chloroquine and like agents are antimalarials which also have immunosuppressive properties. They are used in COVID19 to dampen the acute respiratory distress syndrome [ARDS], the pathologic exaggerated immune response which is the cause of most COVID19 fatalities.
It is not without significant side effects (eg retinopathy).
Nevertheless, any suspicions about big pharma's motives in this context are warranted.
It has been suggested that a profitable class of antihypertensives (ACE inhibitors) is linked with worse COVID19 outcomes.

[Mar 28, 2020] Beware padding unproven advertising of Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquione as cures for COVID-19 from Esxobar and similar unqualified folk

Mar 28, 2020 | www.unz.com

KA , says: Show Comment March 27, 2020 at 3:03 pm GMT

Hydroxyxhloroquine is antimalarial,works on the DNA , and accumulates in white blood cells . Corona virus is RNA. Possible other mechanism includes suppression of T lymphocytes , decreased white blood cell migration to the injured area ,stabilization of lysosomal enzymes which means the enzymes that can attack pathogen and also human normal cells are being prevented from release from inside the immune cells and suppression of DNA and RNA synthesis.

I am not aware that has ever been to be effective against any virus in the past. It doesn't work on the Angiotensin receptor or signal transduction down stream .

Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquione are used for Rheumatoid arthritis but they don't alter the bone damages They are not very effective DMARDs ( disease modifying anti rheumatic drugs ) .It is also used against Graft versus Host rejection . Not effective enough.

Any antiviral medicine has to work on one of these sites or on combination of these sites- attachment of virus to cells, f penetration ( nucleus) , uncoating, protien synthesis , nucleic acid synthesis, packaging , and assembly of new virus , then the last part -viral release from cell to attack new cells. Hydroxychloroquine is not known to attack any of these processes .

Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine are known to work differently in rheumatoid and graft vs host disease or in some patients with SLE.

I am not sure if these 2 can be considered as an orphan drug and approved by FDA

I am not sure how French jumped to the idea that this medication would work ( usually a possible mechanism of action or anecdotal data have to be furnished before trying or have two have animal data )

So let's not celebrate French microbiologist or IHU and jump to some theories on the behaviors of French ministers or pharmaceuticals.

JT , says: Website Show Comment March 26, 2020 at 10:55 pm GMT
Since March 17th the pin on my twitter profile promotes the preventive use of chloroquine to treat the Novel Coronovirus. I've been following the debate about this anti-malarial (polio and yellow fever) drug closely. I like Escobar's article, but there are several problems with it, that even I, as a proponent of chloroquine cannot ignore.

First, the claim that Agnes Buzyn (mispelled twice in the article as "Buzy"), classified the drug as a poison, thus requiring prescription.

this is false. Chloroquine, in its market French form known as Nivaquine, was never over the counter. Never. In fact very few Western countries ever sold it over the counter. In most US states, it was prescription based. It is lethal when used inappropriately.

Second, with all due respect to Dr. Raoult, he is absolutely wrong about viral load in terminal stages of Covid-19. Corona virus is anything but low or nearly absent. In fact, its viral load is extremely high and a good measure of patient outcome at admission, and no amount of antiviral treatment can reduce it on its own at this point. Raoult was either trying to say that corona is not the cause of mortality, which is technically true, or like 99% of doctors fighting Corona, has no grasp of what the virus actually does.

The gist of the Escobar article is problematic. Nothing concrete about how Sanofi or Big Pharma is planning on cashing in by delaying chloroquine production. Last week Sanofi donated 300,000 "dosses" of chloroquine to the United States. The drug has been around for 60 years and is listed by the WHO as a required drug in all medical systems with required possibilities of local production. The criteria of which are known only to experts.

As for the theory that chloroquine supplies have been pilfered my French sources told me supplies had been seized. Macron may be pursuing a policy of herd immunity, but doesn't have the political luxury of being public about it, and a little less literalism is a helpful corrective for wild speculation. Herd immunity strategies cannot be pursued openly, being political (reelection) liabilities.

Far far more important to the coronovirus debate is how one is supposed to cure with vaccines, if the jury is still out on acquired immunity. One cannot work without the other, suggesting that the MSM acceptance of possible vaccine treatment ipso facto means acquired immunity is a given, but that's not the way the MSM and governments are presenting this, suggesting that either vaccines cannot possibly work, or that immunity is being aquired as we speak, while the facade of a fight is kept up.

utu , says: Show Comment March 27, 2020 at 4:24 am GMT
@The Obscurantist Coronavirus : Agnès Buzyn a-t-elle interdit la vente libre de chloroquine en pleine épidémie
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/25/agnes-buzyn-a-t-elle-interdit-la-vente-libre-de-chloroquine-en-pleine-epidemie-de-covid-19_6034372_4355770.html

Since this decree, the hydroxychloroquine molecule marketed under the name of Plaquenil is therefore no longer available over the counter. A prescription from a doctor is now mandatory. But this new classification, which came into effect in January, contrary to what some conspiratorial publications suggest, predates the appearance of the new coronavirus. Its cousin, chloroquine, appears on this list "in injectable and oral form", since a decree taken in 1999.

As LCI explains, the National Health Security Agency (ANSES) had been asked for an opinion on a proposal for an order to include hydroxychloroquine in List II of poisonous substances in October 2019, "in order to ensure appropriate patient care ". Two months before the appearance of the new coronavirus in China.
ANSES had given the green light on November 12, 2019. It is therefore false and dishonest to claim that the former Minister of Health, Ms. Buzyn, would have made this decision herself during the Covid-19 epidemic.

CCZ , says: Show Comment March 27, 2020 at 2:37 pm GMT
@onebornfree The Quinism Foundation is a nonprofit charitable organization established to support education and research on chronic quinoline encephalopathy and other medical conditions caused by poisoning, or intoxication, by mefloquine, tafenoquine, chloroquine, and related quinoline drugs.

Executive Director Dr. Remington Dr. Nevin noted his concern that members of the public may even attempt to obtain therapeutic quantities of quinine through questionable channels. "Tonic water, whose bitter taste is produced by the addition of quinine or related naturally-occurring quinolines, is limited by U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations to 83 mg per liter of quinine and related cinchona alkaloids," said Dr. Nevin. "However, drinking several bottles of tonic water will result in consuming pharmaceutical quantities, and therefore potentially harmful, amounts of these drugs", said Dr. Nevin. "Tonic water is a prescription medication masquerading as a cocktail mixer."

oneworld , says: Show Comment March 27, 2020 at 11:44 am GMT
A single, non-randomized observational trial is close to the bottom of the list in terms of meaningful medical research, down there with anecdotal reports, particularly in a novel viral disease with highly variable clinical manifestations and outcomes.

There are also significant potential cardiac risks caused by the Q-T lengthening on one's EKG caused by both azithromycin and chloroquine. Don't grasp at straws.

Turk 152 , says: Show Comment March 27, 2020 at 9:05 pm GMT
@KA You seem quite a knowledge so I hope to obtain your insights, I am not medical.

I heard that the likelihood of ARDS (cytokine storm?) can be detected by a Serum Ferritin test. If it levels are high, the patient should be given Anakinra, the rheumatoid arthritis medication, which will prevent ARDS. Neither the test, nor the treatment are being given because the average Doc who does not specialize in this field, does not know to test for this.

I understand that Hydroxychloroquin will reduce virulent symptoms in high risk patients but should be given cautiously.

Toubib Thawr , says: Show Comment March 27, 2020 at 10:06 pm GMT
KA,
I am commenting here first time but have been reading the site for years.
I have two decades of biotech research experience.
I just finished a literature survey about effects of these active pharmaceutical ingredients or APIs (chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, hydroxychloroquine phosphate).
The APIs have been in human application for very long time and their side effect profile might be broad but it is not widespread. The most serious problems arise from eventual eye degenerative effects but those are very-very rare.
These APIs do act on several steps of what you mentioned, starting with receptor binding interference (ACE2 glycosylation changes), viral entry (impairment of endosome formation), then viral DNA offloading (interference with virus-containing endosomes fusing with lysosomes), through viral "work" (impairment of protein synthesis and virion assembly through stopping of Golgi- and endoplasmatic reticular budding and traffic).
The most interesting part of their actions might however be the inhibition of the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase enzyme. This is done through increasing Zn++ concentration in the cytoplasm because all of these APIs are ionophores and bring Zn++ ions into the cytosol through the lipid membrane. High Zn++ "levels" inside the cell block the "xerox machine"of the viral RNA. So indeed these have at least theoretical effects and in vitro proof is abundant.

On the contrary, if one looks at the now not too worthwile treatment compilation from Alipay and Zhezhiang University the use of different antiviral drugs is quite dangerous to the liver. Many patients on anti-retrovirals developed liver problems. I think the Shanghai Protocol is much more adequate but to each his own.

With regards to the origins of the virus someone earlier wrote about haplotypes. There are 58 haplotypes (called as such in peer-reviewed publications) and 5 haplogroups of the virus in two clades (L and S). According to a non peer-reviewed publication at ChinaXiv, 5 haplogroups have only been reported from the US so far. Mainland Chinese enjoyed the society of only 4 haplogroups while the fifth could be found in Taiwan.

Felix Keverich , says: Show Comment March 27, 2020 at 10:44 pm GMT
For your information, Russia will now be using chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 in moderate to severe cases.

https://static-3.rosminzdrav.ru/system/attachments/attaches/000/049/877/original/COVID19

[Mar 28, 2020] Handbook on COVI-19 treatment put out by Chinese doctors.

Mar 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Mar 27 2020 21:35 utc | 47

Handbook put out by Chinese doctors.
alibabacloud.com/universal-service/pdf_reader

[Mar 28, 2020] Awareness of the risk of chloroquine phosphate causing acute poisoning or even death should be strengthened

Mar 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Likklemore , Mar 27 2020 21:18 utc | 44

@ mpn 8

Here is one published Abstract, specific to COVID-19 warns of the toxicity.

Department of Forensic Medicine, Tongji Medical College, Huanzhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China. LINK

The Trial of Chloroquine in the Treatment of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Its Research Progress in Forensic Toxicology.

[.]Since December 2019, COVID-19 (corona virus disease 2019) outbreaks caused by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) has occurred in China and many countries around the world. Due to the lack of drugs against COVID-19, the disease spreads rapidly and the mortality rate is relatively high. Therefore, specific drugs against SARS-CoV-2 need to be quickly screened. The antimalarial drug Chloroquine phosphate which has already been approved is confirmed to have an anti-SARS-CoV-2 effect and has been included in diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines. However, awareness of the risk of chloroquine phosphate causing acute poisoning or even death should be strengthened. The dosage used according to current clinical recommended dosage and course of treatment are larger than that of previous treatment of malaria. Many provinces have required close clinical monitoring of adverse reactions. This paper reviews the pharmacological effects, poisoning;[.]

Peter AU1 , Mar 27 2020 22:02 utc | 53

This is the antiviral treatment recommended in the hand I linked above.
Antiviral Treatment
At FAHZU, lopinavir/ritonavir (2 capsules, po q12h) combined with arbidol (200 mg po q12h) were applied as the basic regimen. From the treatment experience of 49 patients in our hospital, the average time to achieve negative viral nucleic acid test for the first time was 12 days (95% CI: 8-15 days). The duration of negative nucleic acid test result (negative for more than 2 times consecutively with interval ≥ 24h) was 13.5 days (95% CI: 9.5 - 17.5 days).If the basic regimen is not effective, chloroquine phosphate can be used on adults between 18-65 years old (weight ≥ 50 kg: 500 mg bid; weight ≤50 kg: 500 mg bid for first two days, 500 mg qd for following five days).Interferon nebulization is recommended in Protocols for Diagnosis and Treatment of COVID-19. We recommend that it should be performed in negative-pressure wards rather than general wards due to the possibility of aerosol transmission.Darunavir/cobicistat has some degree of antiviral activity in viral suppression test in vitro, based on the treatment experience of AIDS patients, and the adverse events are relatively mild. For patients who are intolerant to lopinavir/ritonavir, darunavir/ cobici-stat (1 tablet qd) or favipiravir (starting dose of 1600 mg followed by 600 mg tid) is an alternative option after the ethical review. Simultaneous use of three or more antiviral drugs is not recommended.

Course of Treatment
The treatment course of chloroquine phosphate should be no more than 7 days. The treatment course of other regimens has not been determined and are usually around 2 weeks. Antiviral drugs should be stopped if nucleic acid test results from sputum specimens remain negative for more than 3 times

[Mar 27, 2020] High quality Microfilter bags for vacuum cleaners as apoor man mask

Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

aleksandar , Mar 26 2020 20:00 utc | 26

@uncle tungsten
High quality Microfilter bags for vacuum cleaners are ways better
And you can wash them
Take care

[Mar 27, 2020] The masks are useful even if they aren't 100% useful in blocking water droplets, insofar as wearing a mask makes it much less likely that you will touch your mouth with your hands or stick your finger in your nose.

Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Yeah, Right , Mar 26 2020 21:31 utc | 57

The masks are useful even if they aren't 100% useful in blocking water droplets, insofar as wearing a mask makes it much less likely that you will touch your mouth with your hands or stick your finger in your nose.

If you also get into the habit of vigorously washing your hands before and after eating, well, you have done most of the hard yards in avoiding infection.

[Mar 27, 2020] Some important details on the France ibuprofen warning

Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Mar 27 2020 12:36 utc | 189

Some important details on the France ibuprofen yes or no debate:
Source
The trouble over ibuprofen began March 11, when researchers at University Hospital Basel, in Switzerland, and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece, published a letter in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The letter reviewed three early sets of case reports from China, covering almost 1,300 patients gravely ill with Covid-19. The letter's authors observed that significant numbers of those patients had high blood pressure and diabetes, from 12 percent to 30 percent depending on the study, and theorized that higher rates of expression of a particular enzyme, known for short as ACE2, might be raising the risk of coronavirus infection.

ACE2 provides a place on cell surfaces for the coronavirus to attach and enter in order to replicate. High blood pressure and diabetes are treated with drugs that suppress inflammation, called ACE inhibitors; the inhibitors, paradoxically, cause ACE2 to rise. That interaction is where the authors spotted a possible connection between patients experiencing chronic diseases and then becoming infected with Covid-19.

And that's where ibuprofen entered the unfolding story, too. The over-the-counter drug doesn't only knock down fever. It also reduces inflammation (the class of drugs it belongs to are known as NSAIDs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). That effect, as with the anti-inflammatory drugs given to chronic disease patients, can cause ACE2 to rise.

So any anti-inflammatory - whether ibuprofen or actual anti-inflammatory drugs - *can* (not will) cause ACE2 to rise. And ACE2 is what nCOV latches on to.

So the acetominophen/paracetamol vs. ibuprofen has nothing to do with the fever reduction side but the potential increase of ACE2, which *might* increase susceptibility to nCOV.

[Mar 27, 2020] Do not steam your masks. they are made of polyester and will shrink into a blob

Steam can be used for decontamination of cotton, but not polister
You can spay them with alcohol
Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Passer by , Mar 26 2020 19:04 utc | 7
On the protection issue, use FFP 3 respirator masks (EU), or N99 (US) or KN 99 (China) and scarf over it. These masks filter 98 % of micro particles, including viruses. In case of mask shortages steam can be used to decontaminate masks. Also use gloves, eye protection and raincoat when in risky areas. Everything new taken in your home must be under 3 - 4 days quarantine in separate room. The raincoat too. After this quarantine items can be further cleaned with steam, ethanol, bleach + water, and groceries via soap and water.

Virus can stay for 3 hours in mid air (room) and 3 days on some surfaces. And it is possible that can even survive for up to 17 days on some surfaces, which would be pretty bad news. At least 5 meters distance between people outside is needed.

A.L. , Mar 26 2020 19:57 utc | 24

PSA:

1. do not steam your masks. they are made of polyester and will shrink into a blob. people have tried and failed. you can wash with soap and dry or low temp bake as B suggested. they will eventually fail from delaminating or the elastic band snapping.

2. stop behaving like you don't want to catch it, behave like you have it and you don't want others to catch it. we'll all be better off.

3. going on 2 - wearing masks with exhaust valves will just spray virus straight out of you're infected. if you're not sure you're infected (and you don't) wearing a valves N95 is just a dick act.

4. when PPE were in short supply in China, what they did was to wear N95 with surgical mask over the top. it's definitely off-label use but at least you can then reuse your precious N95 as it's shielded from external pathogens, at the same time your own exhaust valve (see 3) is also shielded from others.

[Mar 27, 2020] Malaria vs. coronavirus

Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Mar 27 2020 11:53 utc | 184

Malaria is a single cell bug called a protozoa. My understanding that is a class of bugs like bacteria and viruses are classes of bugs.

Mosquitoes carry or host the bug and pass it onto people. The quinine type drugs block the bug and prevent it from attaching or entering cells. That is how the drug also works against the corona viruses. Various strains of the malaria bug have developed resistance to various drugs.

Because SARS-CoV-2 is a new bug, it should not have developed a resistance to any drug.

Human immunity is directed at pathogens and seems very specific even to strains as can be seen with influenza vaccines, and the malaria protozoa is a very different animal to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

That's the basics as I know it. Others here may be able to explain it a little better.

[Mar 27, 2020] This is an hour with experts who ran the Singapore response

Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

jayvee , Mar 27 2020 1:53 utc | 110

This is an hour with experts who ran the Singapore response. It answers many of our questions and also those which cannot yet be answered. I resisted listening because it's an hour, but it was worthwhile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3w8gu9S3lo

[Mar 27, 2020] We must also introduce the wearing of a mask in public as a new social norm:

Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

MoA - More Bits On The Corona Crisis

Tests and care for Covid-19 must be for free. We need hospitals to care for only the critical cases. We need quarantine centers to isolate the milder cases from the wider population. Many hotels, sport arenas and exhibition halls are currently empty. They can be converted into quarantine stations within a day or two. People will have to stay for only two weeks. They would be fed and would have medical attention. That is a small restriction of the freedom of a few for a large benefit for our societies.

We must also introduce the wearing of a mask in public as a new social norm:

A number of studies have reported that a significant portion of people are even spreading the virus while presymptomatic -- in the day or two before they start to feel ill. Presymptomatic spreaders are, well, gonna spread. It's not their fault.

How much this type of transmission is driving the pandemic is unclear but it could be significant. Gabriel Leung, dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, has estimated about 40% of cases transmit before symptoms develop. A recent preprint -- a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed -- from China pooled data from seven countries and estimated a very similar 43%.

The novel coronavirus is spread to a large part by people who stay asymptomatic and by people who do not yet feel sick but will later show symptoms. When they talk, sneeze or cough they release small droplets that carry viruses. The droplets can stay in the air for some time. If a person coming along inhales those droplets the viruses will likely infect that person.

Those who have have the virus or might spread it should wear a mask because it prevents their droplets from flying out. Those who do not have the virus should wear a mask to prevent droplets from entering their body.

We were told that 'masks don't work' because they are not a 100% protection. The very tiny viruses can pass behind the mask at its sides or they can slip through its webbing. But the virus is not traveling alone but as part of a droplet. Even a relatively wide webbing may hold it up. If it is doubled with a sheet of cosmetic paper towel in between the protection will be even better. Microfilter bags for vacuum cleaners and so called HEPA filters are also effective materials that are readily available and easy to turn into masks.

The development of the epidemic will depend on how many people will start to regularly wear masks when they are not at home. Even if the protection masks prevent only 50% of new infections the speed with which the epidemic will unfold will be significantly lower.


Source: Financial Times - bigger

Consider that the societies in the blue circle are all ones where people regularly wear masks while the other countries (except China which was surprised by the outbreak) are societies were wearing a mask is seen as unusual. These 'blue' countries, which also gained experience during the SARS and MERS epidemics, show significant flatter trajectories.

Graphs similar to the above for all U.S. states and territories can be found here .

Meanwhile U.S. media continue to spread anti-China propaganda:

Two European Countries Report High Error Rate For Chinese Supplied Coronavirus Tests

Medical personnel in Spain and the Czech Republic have reported that the coronavirus rapid tests their respective countries have received from China are faulty and have a high error rate.

Several labs in Spanish hospitals have reported that the test kits they purchased, manufactured by Chinese company Bioeasy and based in Shenzhen, have a sensitivity of 30% when the sensitivity should be above 80%, Spanish newspaper El País reported Thursday. Due to the test's lack of reliability, medical personnel in Spain have switched back to the PCR test, which takes up to four hours for a diagnosis, while rapid tests take between 10 to 15 minutes

The Spanish government purchased 340,000 tests from the Chinese company, a similar quantity to the tests ordered by the Czech Republic, where medical personnel also report an 80% failure rate.

When one checks the original reports from Spain and from the Czech Republic one learns that these countries bought anti-body tests which only react when a person has had the virus for some time and developed anti-bodies against it. These tests can obviously not be used to find persons who are infected but have not yet developed anti-bodies.

China's ambassador in Spain also pointed out that these tests have yet to be verified by the regulator and were imported without the help or knowledge of the Chinese government.

The anti-body tests are valuable to identify people who have developed current immunity against the virus. These people can then care for those who are most endangered by the disease. Anti-body tests are quick. They can be used anywhere.

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests which are currently necessary to find if someone has the virus take at least four hours and specialized laboratories to process them. We will need a much quicker reliable test if we want to put our economies back to work. Luckily several companies and academic groups are already working on these and a 45 minute test is now ready to be marketed .

When we have a quick test for the virus and a quick test for anti-bodies available in mass we can restart the economy by 'filtering' through the population on a large scale. Movement restrictions would then only be needed for those who show virus-positive and anti-body negative results. All others could go back to work.

There would certainly still be outbreaks from people who escaped the 'filtering' process but with easy testing and care in place those clusters can be locally contained.

It may take another two month or so to get to that point. Until then there is little we can do but to stay apart as much as possible and to wear our masks.

[Mar 27, 2020] Questions, questions, questions

Mar 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

chu teh , Mar 27 2020 3:01 utc | 120

@Richard Steven Hack | Mar 26 2020 23:39 utc | 88

re spread of CV19--yr post interests me.

Have seen no data on how many viral particles it takes to cause a serious effect. Likely, such data would be in terms of probability at X [number of viral particles]. Such is known for many infective agents in surface and aerosol form, but CV19 may be very different.

Can CV19 vapor aerosol from mouth/breath in still air, exclusive of explosive discharge via cough/sneeze, cause full-blown case beyond 6 feet? I'd like to know.

Also, have not seen any data re time duration of infective after it enters throat passage on journey to lungs. I posit that there are anti-viral liquids that might be effective if small amount were trickled down throat 2x per day; surely just before bedtime to discourage the next 7-hs of undisturbed incubation. I do take something that I am guessing may be effective. [E.g., I also
"heard" OliveOilExtract as anti-viral but I have no experience with it.]

Another thought: Re different strains of CV19 having very different outcomes...Anyone suggestion that US forms collectively having, say, milder outcomes relative to China/Iran/LombardyItaly, etc? Seems to be an aversion to testing the general population, or even publishing all results of the small amount of tests with time+place data. Where are the lists of 1st observations of "unusual flu" in US? that would NORMALLY, provoke tracking + names/places of sequential contacts?

Routine discovery and mapping of communication lines is very likely to uncover a lot of truth. That is what rational folks desire.

[Mar 26, 2020] Nearly 40% of the Italian fatalities were using ACE inhibitors (and this may be an underestimate as pre-admission medication charts were lacking). The virus binds to the pulmonary ACE2 receptor.

Mar 26, 2020 | www.unz.com

gfhÄndel , says: Show Comment March 25, 2020 at 11:48 am GMT

I will keep this comment as brief as possible.
I welcome refutation of these theses, which I believe are crucial to any analysis of the response to the pandemic:
1. Current screening tests for COVID19 (a PCR test, not an antibody test) have a high rate of false positives (see excellent contributions on this topic from Kratoklastes).
2. Draconian public health responses are allegedly aimed at minimizing serious COVID19 disease (severe respiratory distress, up to and including ARDS). "Positive" testing individuals overwhelming do not fall into this category.
3. At this juncture, our best single metric is death from COVID19. Unfortunately the definition of a COVID19 fatality varies between jurisdictions. To be counted as such a fatality, the current best definition would be: novel coronovirus IgM (+/- IgG) positive (proof of recent infection) plus ARDS (radiologically, if not pathologically, confirmed).
4. Alleged COVID19 fatalities are overwhelming patients >70 having 3 or more serious comorbidities.
5. There is an association between ACE-inhibitor or AT-receptor antagonist use and likelihood of death from infection by novel coronavirus.

To the last point: nearly 40% of the Italian fatalities were using ACE inhibitors (and this may be an underestimate as pre-admission medication charts were lacking). The virus binds to the pulmonary ACE2 receptor.
Conceivably the use of ACE-inhibitors (or the related AT-receptor antagonists) induces upregulation of this receptor, but this is purely conjecture on my part.
Anecdotally, use of this medication class is lower in Germany, which has been proffered among reasons for its lower fatality rates.

[Mar 26, 2020] An antibody test for COVID-19 virus exposure is near to becoming commercially available and this is likely to be widely used in order to identify people who can safely volunteer to help with the pandemic it may provide some interesting statistics and a different management perspective.

Mar 26, 2020 | www.unz.com

macilrae , says: Show Comment Next New Comment March 25, 2020 at 6:36 pm GMT

@Realist I have two family members in UK who have already recovered after testing positive and I, myself, suffered ten days with an unpleasant dry cough, malaise and low grade fever late in February – which has since cleared uneventfully. I was never tested and, following my GP, discounted being infected with COVID-19 at that time.

An antibody test for COVID-19 virus exposure is near to becoming commercially available and this is likely to be widely used in order to identify people who can safely volunteer to help with the pandemic – it may provide some interesting statistics and a different management perspective.

[Mar 25, 2020] Sterilization of used face masks

Probably the simplest is ironing with iron set to 200F or so
Mar 25, 2020 | www.unz.com

Saggy , says: Website Show Comment March 25, 2020 at 1:13 pm GMT

@joe webb You can google up several papers on the subject, apparently the best method is to use UV light https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/health/coronavirus-masks-reuse.html
I just ordered a UV sterilization box from Amazon or Ebay (can't remember), you need to check that it's shipped from the US as most are shipped from China and take a while. The other easily available method is heat, but here it's difficult to determine the time/temp parameters https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186217

[Mar 25, 2020] Sun helps but not absolutly

Mar 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

TJ , Mar 23 2020 21:02 utc | 67

@54 Per/Norway

" The second thing that's good about it is the sun. Ultraviolet light kills viruses."

The disease is spreading in the southern hemisphere which is in summer with much higher UV just as rapidly as the northern hemisphere which is in winter with much less UV. So the data at least in this case says no. BTW she retired in 2008, and she seems to have done some impressive work in the past, though as they say in the small print of adverts for investments, past performance is no predictor of future performance.

[Mar 24, 2020] #Coronavirus - Israeli Defense Minister Gives A Speech

His main advice is to separate old people from young and wait until young people will be immune to the virus.
Mar 24, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Georgios Paraskeva , 1 day ago

'' want it or not the rest of the population is gonna get the Coronavirus''...wow !!! you are are sooo sure about it ...i bet you know thinks that we don't , probably you knew this since last year

Devrat1 , 2 days ago

Very informative .. Thank you and I agree almost totally.. only thing that I find is an error is immunity to virus. Immunity will be there with young and active people. The virus can still be transmitted. Older generation will continue to be susceptible to the virus unless we have a medicine for corona virus.

Valkyrie angel , 15 hours ago

Haha No grandma hugs grandson.. once the epidemic over grandma and grandpa come out... its way so light to express... cute..

[Mar 24, 2020] So why should people who already see a max of 5 persons a week be under house arrest? Masks are evidently a solution

Notable quotes:
"... Instead the French authorities are now trying to prepare people for work by saying that people should not go out at all because when they do they touch the left button, the doors etc. ..."
"... They can just wear gloves and clean up whatever they touch with alcohol, no? Why aren't such cheap things not distributed widely, household by household? ..."
Mar 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mina , Mar 24 2020 9:54 utc | 200

Another interesting feature of the shock strategy currently applied is that until planes and trains and stadiums were not plugged off, one can imagine that the virus was spreading on a much bigger scale than without these going on as usual.

So why should people who already see a max of 5 persons a week (close enough) be under house arrest? masks are evidently a solution.

Instead the French authorities are now trying to prepare people for work by saying that people should not go out at all because when they do they touch the left button, the doors etc.

But what of asking people for responsibility?

They can just wear gloves and clean up whatever they touch with alcohol, no? Why aren't such cheap things not distributed widely, household by household?

The French are doing worse because they have no community planning, unlike Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and other northern countries. I haven't heard anyone on French media say that the municipalities or district social centres could play a role in better mapping the needs.

It seems to be entirely on the shoulders of our super-centralized gov and the hospitals! With the results we see (and we are actually doing not so bad: 5 % of the positive seem to die, vs 10% in Spain and Italy -using the figures given here

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest)

[Mar 24, 2020] COVID-19 Symptoms Could Include Loss Of Smell And Taste

Mar 24, 2020 | www.youtube.com

There's growing concern among health officials about so called silent spreaders, people who are infected with the coronavirus, but aren't sick. Now some UK doctors say there may be a clue to who's carrying it and they want the loss of smell and taste added to the list of symptoms.

[Mar 24, 2020] Jack Ma placed a message on Twitter regarding availability of a Handbook related to Coronavirus for medical workers and anyone else who is interested.

Mar 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Tom_LX , Mar 24 2020 7:01 utc | 182

Jack Ma placed a message on Twitter regarding availability of a Handbook related to Coronavirus for medical workers and anyone else who is interested.

Jack Ma Handbook

[Mar 24, 2020] NYT reports that loss of sense of smll night be an important symptom that you are infected with the corornovirus

Mar 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

blues , Mar 24 2020 4:32 utc | 165

This may be an important new clue:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
Lost Sense of Smell May Be Peculiar Clue to Coronavirus Infection
The New York Times - March 22, 2020

A mother who was infected with the coronavirus couldn't smell her baby's full diaper. Cooks who can usually name every spice in a restaurant dish can't smell curry or garlic, and food tastes bland. Others say they can't pick up the sweet scent of shampoo or the foul odor of kitty litter.

Anosmia, the loss of sense of smell, and ageusia, an accompanying diminished sense of taste, have emerged as peculiar telltale signs of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and possible markers of infection.

On Friday, British ear, nose and throat doctors, citing reports from colleagues around the world, called on adults who lose their senses of smell to isolate themselves for seven days, even if they have no other symptoms, to slow the disease's spread. The published data is limited, but doctors are concerned enough to raise warnings.
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Mar 24, 2020] A woman in Chicago has developed a new function for the bra, one half of bra can serve as a mask

Mar 24, 2020 | www.youtube.com

SCODI OFFICER:001 , 4 days ago

Y'all know the chinese already did this back when SARS was around.

Ennis XU , 2 days ago

Somehow better than strawberry containers from ALDI

[Mar 24, 2020] Titillating advice

Mar 24, 2020 | www.youtube.com

A woman in Chicago has developed a new function for the bra, one that could help people escape dange - YouTube

alan king , 12 hours ago

titillating advice

[Mar 24, 2020] The US Department of Justice announced Sunday it had shut down a website claiming to sell a coronavirus vaccine

Highly recommended!
Mar 22, 2020 | news.yahoo.com

US authorities are working to combat the spread of misinformation that has blossomed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic

The US Department of Justice announced Sunday it had shut down a website claiming to sell a coronavirus vaccine, in its first act of federal enforcement against fraud in connection with the pandemic.

Lawsuits had been filed against the site coronavirusmedicalkit.com, which claimed to sell vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, when in fact there is no such vaccine, the Justice Department said in a statement.

A Texas federal judge on Saturday ordered the site to shut down, according to the statement. Its homepage, however, was still accessible as of Sunday evening.

"Due to the recent outbreak for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) the World Health Organization is giving away vaccine kits. Just pay $4.95 for shipping," read a statement on the homepage.

It was followed by a place to leave bank account information to pay shipping fees.

The Justice Department did not specify how many people fell victim to the scam, but the investigation is ongoing to identify who is behind the fraud and how much money was stolen.

The intervention by the federal judiciary system is part of ongoing efforts by US authorities to combat the spread of misinformation that has blossomed since the start of the pandemic.

Attorney General Bill Barr last week urged federal prosecutors to make stopping misinformation a priority and called US civilians to report all such abuses to the National Center for Disaster Fraud.

He also warned citizens against a variety of scams including selling fake treatments online, imitating emails from the WHO or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) intended to collect personal data, and asking for donations for imaginary organizations.

Simultaneously, the US judicial system is on the warpath to combat price gouging of products such as hand sanitizer or hygienic masks.

More than 33,000 people have been infected by the coronavirus in the US, and 416 have died, according to a tracker managed by Johns Hopkins University.

[Mar 24, 2020] Super-spreaders - mostly young fools ignoring social distancing on beaches, in parks, restaurants etc - are now popping up, most recently returning from Florida spring break

Mar 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Trisha , Mar 23 2020 19:06 utc | 27

Thanks b for the update.

Unfortunately, we in the US are way behind the curve in finding and locking down clusters. In fact super-spreaders - mostly young fools ignoring social distancing on beaches, in parks, restaurants etc - are now popping up, most recently returning from Florida spring break to Utah. Testing rates remain abysmal.

Idaho cases just went exponential, doubling about every 3 days. Republic Governor there is pretty much a copy of Trump, as in a dangerous idiot, giving press conferences with multiple staff hovering around, downplaying the risks, lying about test availability, talking about protecting businesses, etc.

[Mar 23, 2020] Some inventive modern ways to disinfect masks

Microware can be used for cleaning if you make the mask slightly wet. In this case they will heat to over 60 0 C. Other then using alcohol this is probably the fastest method of disinfection
Mar 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Don Utter , Mar 23 2020 18:11 utc | 4
Can a mask be cleaned by a microwave?

Taffyboy , Mar 23 2020 18:51 utc | 21

@4

If you can, get one of these, and there are 110 volt UVC lamps also.

https://www.amazon.ca/Germicidal-Lamp-Ozone-Light-Covers/dp/B07RWZ5SG6/ref=sr_1_10?crid=2RDBYXDA7Q4F2&keywords=uvc+lamp+germicide&qid=1584989398&sprefix=uvc+lamp%2Caps%2C913&sr=8-10

[Mar 23, 2020] Fake science: Dr. Dan Lee Dinke claims that breathing hot air in a sauna for 20 minutes will mostly clean the upper respiratory tract of corona-viruses

Sauna or hot tube might help as it raise body temperature to fever levels and as such inhibit spreading of the virus.
Mar 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
LP , Mar 22 2020 18:50 utc | 52
Sauna is your friend:

https://youtu.be/vz5KmKKiuqk

Dr. Dan Lee Dinke: All Corona-viruses have a common weakness:heat kills them. Specifically relative short exposure to 56°C. Breathing hot air in a sauna for 20 minutes will mostly clean the upper respiratory tract of corona-viruses, but a hair dryer can also help if no sauna available.

The video is worth to watch and could save lives through such a simple method.

c1ue , Mar 22 2020 19:22 utc | 57

@LP #52
Wrong. The lower respiratory tract - the temperature is stable via mixing outside air with inside. Otherwise people could not survive in extreme cold or extreme heat situations.

The hot air might kill the virus outside; it won't kill the virus in the lower respiratory tract.

[Mar 23, 2020] Perspectives of using mRNA technology for a vaccine for the COVID-19

Mar 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Likklemore , Mar 22 2020 14:55 utc | 2

I read of the new tool scanning online messages. Checking in: late afternoon my two comments, in reply, failed to appear in the "Western Governments failures" thread.

Coronavirus, Vaccines and the Gates Foundation -
F. William Engdahl delves into the new mRNA vaccine.


[.] Gates Foundation monies via CEPI are financing development of a radical new vaccine method known as messengerRNA or mRNA.

They are co-funding the Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech company, Moderna Inc., to develop a vaccine against the Wuhan novel coronavirus, now called SARS-CoV-2. Moderna's other partner is the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Head of NIAID is Dr Anthony Fauci, the person at the center of the Trump Administration virus emergency response. Notable about the Fauci-Gates Moderna coronavirus vaccine, mRNA-1273, is that it has been rolled out in a matter of weeks, not years, and on February 24 went directly to Fauci's NIH for tests on human guinea pigs, not on mice as normal. Moderna's chief medical adviser, Tal Zaks, argued, "I don't think proving this in an animal model is on the critical path to getting this to a clinical trial."

Another notable admission by Moderna on its website is the legal disclaimer, "Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: These risks, uncertainties, and other factors include, among others: the fact that there has never been a commercial product utilizing mRNA technology approved for use." In other words, completely unproven for human health and safety.

Another biotech company working with unproven mRNA technology to develop a vaccine for the COVID-19 is a German company, CureVac. Since 2015 CureVac has received money from the Gates Foundation to develop its own mRNA technology. In January the Gates-backed CEPI granted more than $8 million to develop a mRNA vaccine for the novel coronavirus.[.]

======
early fall the CDC planning and forgot to order test kits and ventilators:---{hapstance} ---the recruitment of

Public Health Advisors (Quarantine Program) country wide major cities, every state
Open Period:2019-11-15 to 2020-05-15 Salary $511440. to $93077.
Job summary: - responsible for preventing the importation and spread of communicable diseases from abroad and spread of these diseases domestically.[.]

Duties:
[Provide technical assistance, consultation and guidance to national, state and / or local agencies; health organizations; federal, state and local law enforcement agencies [.] and quarantine activities [.] ]

[Mar 22, 2020] In 1918, anyone at the emergency hospital in Boston who had contact with patients had to wear an improvised face mask.

Mar 22, 2020 | medium.com

Face Masks Coronavirus and Flu

Surgical masks are currently in short supply in China and elsewhere. They were worn 100 years ago, during the great pandemic, to try and stop the influenza virus spreading. While surgical masks may offer some protection from infection they do not seal around the face. So they don't filter out small airborne particles. In 1918, anyone at the emergency hospital in Boston who had contact with patients had to wear an improvised face mask. This comprised five layers of gauze fitted to a wire frame which covered the nose and mouth. The frame was shaped to fit the face of the wearer and prevent the gauze filter touching the mouth and nostrils. The masks were replaced every two hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in hospitals today to protect medical staff against airborne infection.

... ... ...

Putting infected patients out in the sun may have helped because it inactivates the influenza virus.[7] It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other infections in hospitals.[8] During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal infected wounds.[9] They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn't know is that one advantage of placing patients outside in the sun is they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin if sunlight is strong enough. This was not discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are now linked to respiratory infections and may increase susceptibility to influenza.[10] Also, our body's biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist infections.[11] New research suggests they can alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus.[12] As with vitamin D, at the time of the 1918 pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these rhythms was not known.

[Mar 22, 2020] Coronavirus and the Sun a Lesson from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic by Richard Hobday

Notable quotes:
"... The masks were replaced every two hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in hospitals today to protect medical staff against airborne infection. ..."
Mar 10, 2020 | medium.com

Fresh air, sunlight and improvised face masks seemed to work a century ago; and they might help us now.

by Richard Hobday

When new, virulent diseases emerge, such SARS and Covid-19, the race begins to find new vaccines and treatments for those affected. As the current crisis unfolds, governments are enforcing quarantine and isolation, and public gatherings are being discouraged. Health officials took the same approach 100 years ago, when influenza was spreading around the world. The results were mixed. But records from the 1918 pandemic suggest one technique for dealing with influenza -- little-known today -- was effective. Some hard-won experience from the greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks and months ahead.

<img src="https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*7pNa3EQCs1VsWXRWL8_Uig.jpeg" width="1200" height="892" role="presentation"/>
Influenza patients getting sunlight at the Camp Brooks emergency open-air hospital in Boston. Medical staff were not supposed to remove their masks. (National Archives)

Put simply, medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients; and infections among medical staff.[1] There is scientific support for this. Research shows that outdoor air is a natural disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there is now evidence it can kill the flu virus.

`Open-Air' Treatment in 1918

During the great pandemic, two of the worst places to be were military barracks and troop-ships. Overcrowding and bad ventilation put soldiers and sailors at high risk of catching influenza and the other infections that often followed it.[2,3] As with the current Covid-19 outbreak, most of the victims of so-called `Spanish flu' did not die from influenza: they died of pneumonia and other complications.

When the influenza pandemic reached the East coast of the United States in 1918, the city of Boston was particularly badly hit. So the State Guard set up an emergency hospital. They took in the worst cases among sailors on ships in Boston harbour. The hospital's medical officer had noticed the most seriously ill sailors had been in badly-ventilated spaces. So he gave them as much fresh air as possible by putting them in tents. And in good weather they were taken out of their tents and put in the sun. At this time, it was common practice to put sick soldiers outdoors. Open-air therapy, as it was known, was widely used on casualties from the Western Front. And it became the treatment of choice for another common and often deadly respiratory infection of the time; tuberculosis. Patients were put outside in their beds to breathe fresh outdoor air. Or they were nursed in cross-ventilated wards with the windows open day and night. The open-air regimen remained popular until antibiotics replaced it in the 1950s.

Doctors who had first-hand experience of open-air therapy at the hospital in Boston were convinced the regimen was effective. It was adopted elsewhere. If one report is correct, it reduced deaths among hospital patients from 40 per cent to about 13 per cent.[4] According to the Surgeon General of the Massachusetts State Guard:

`The efficacy of open air treatment has been absolutely proven, and one has only to try it to discover its value.'

Fresh Air is a Disinfectant

Patients treated outdoors were less likely to be exposed to the infectious germs that are often present in conventional hospital wards. They were breathing clean air in what must have been a largely sterile environment. We know this because, in the 1960s, Ministry of Defence scientists proved that fresh air is a natural disinfectant.[5] Something in it, which they called the Open Air Factor, is far more harmful to airborne bacteria -- and the influenza virus -- than indoor air. They couldn't identify exactly what the Open Air Factor is. But they found it was effective both at night and during the daytime.

Their research also revealed that the Open Air Factor's disinfecting powers can be preserved in enclosures -- if ventilation rates are kept high enough. Significantly, the rates they identified are the same ones that cross-ventilated hospital wards, with high ceilings and big windows, were designed for.[6] But by the time the scientists made their discoveries, antibiotic therapy had replaced open-air treatment. Since then the germicidal effects of fresh air have not featured in infection control, or hospital design. Yet harmful bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics.

Sunlight and Influenza Infection

Putting infected patients out in the sun may have helped because it inactivates the influenza virus.[7] It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other infections in hospitals.[8] During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal infected wounds.[9] They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn't know is that one advantage of placing patients outside in the sun is they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin if sunlight is strong enough. This was not discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are now linked to respiratory infections and may increase susceptibility to influenza.[10] Also, our body's biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist infections.[11] New research suggests they can alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus.[12] As with vitamin D, at the time of the 1918 pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these rhythms was not known.

Face Masks Coronavirus and Flu

Surgical masks are currently in short supply in China and elsewhere. They were worn 100 years ago, during the great pandemic, to try and stop the influenza virus spreading.

While surgical masks may offer some protection from infection they do not seal around the face. So they don't filter out small airborne particles.

In 1918, anyone at the emergency hospital in Boston who had contact with patients had to wear an improvised face mask. This comprised five layers of gauze fitted to a wire frame which covered the nose and mouth. The frame was shaped to fit the face of the wearer and prevent the gauze filter touching the mouth and nostrils.

The masks were replaced every two hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in hospitals today to protect medical staff against airborne infection.

Temporary Hospitals

Staff at the hospital kept up high standards of personal and environmental hygiene. No doubt this played a big part in the relatively low rates of infection and deaths reported there. The speed with which their hospital and other temporary open-air facilities were erected to cope with the surge in pneumonia patients was another factor. Today, many countries are not prepared for a severe influenza pandemic.[13] Their health services will be overwhelmed if there is one. Vaccines and antiviral drugs might help. Antibiotics may be effective for pneumonia and other complications. But much of the world's population will not have access to them. If another 1918 comes, or the Covid-19 crisis gets worse, history suggests it might be prudent to have tents and pre-fabricated wards ready to deal with large numbers of seriously ill cases. Plenty of fresh air and a little sunlight might help too.

Dr. Richard Hobday is an independent researcher working in the fields of infection control, public health and building design. He is the author of `The Healing Sun'.

References

  1. Hobday RA and Cason JW. The open-air treatment of pandemic influenza. Am J Public Health 2009;99 Suppl 2:S236–42. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2008.134627.
  2. Aligne CA. Overcrowding and mortality during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Am J Public Health 2016 Apr;106(4):642–4. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.303018.
  3. Summers JA, Wilson N, Baker MG, Shanks GD. Mortality risk factors for pandemic influenza on New Zealand troop ship, 1918. Emerg Infect Dis 2010 Dec;16(12):1931–7. doi:10.3201/eid1612.100429.
  4. Anon. Weapons against influenza. Am J Public Health 1918 Oct;8(10):787–8. doi: 10.2105/ajph.8.10.787.
  5. May KP, Druett HA. A micro-thread technique for studying the viability of microbes in a simulated airborne state. J Gen Micro-biol 1968;51:353e66. Doi: 10.1099/00221287–51–3–353.
  6. Hobday RA. The open-air factor and infection control. J Hosp Infect 2019;103:e23-e24 doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2019.04.003.
  7. Schuit M, Gardner S, Wood S et al. The influence of simulated sunlight on the inactivation of influenza virus in aerosols. J Infect Dis 2020 Jan 14;221(3):372–378. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiz582.
  8. Hobday RA, Dancer SJ. Roles of sunlight and natural ventilation for controlling infection: historical and current perspectives. J Hosp Infect 2013;84:271–282. doi: 10.1016/j.jhin.2013.04.011.
  9. Hobday RA. Sunlight therapy and solar architecture. Med Hist 1997 Oct;41(4):455–72. doi:10.1017/s0025727300063043.
  10. Gruber-Bzura BM. Vitamin D and influenza-prevention or therapy? Int J Mol Sci 2018 Aug 16;19(8). pii: E2419. doi: 10.3390/ijms19082419.
  11. Costantini C, Renga G, Sellitto F, et al. Microbes in the era of circadian medicine. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2020 Feb 5;10:30. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2020.00030.
  12. Sengupta S, Tang SY, Devine JC et al. Circadian control of lung inflammation in influenza infection. Nat Commun 2019 Sep 11;10(1):4107. doi: 10.1038/s41467–019–11400–9.
  13. Jester BJ, Uyeki TM, Patel A, Koonin L, Jernigan DB. 100 Years of medical countermeasures and pandemic influenza preparedness. Am J Public Health. 2018 Nov;108(11):1469–1472. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2018.304586.
7.9K 7.9K claps

Dr. Richard Hobday is an internationally recognized authority on health in the built environment.

[Mar 22, 2020] It seems that chloroquine and its use as a 'potent inhibitor of the coronavirus infection' has been known for a long time - since August 2005

Mar 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

alaric , Mar 22 2020 3:26 utc | 84

I see nothing wrong with testing Hyrodroxychloroquine together with azithromycin as long as its done safely and ethically to gain additional data. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

A lot of people are going to reject it just because it came from Trump's mouth. Drug companies will fight against it because they'd rather sell more expensive drugs.

Anti malaria drugs are part of the primary or secondary treatment recommendations in China and Korea. I'm pretty sure they were used in Japan as well so the first half of it (hydroxychloroquine) seems pretty legit though maybe not effective enough. Lets see what happens. I'd agree we lack sufficient data to make an adequate evaluation. Hydroxychloroquine is also being used with other things in trials. We'll see what happens there too.

** A dutch professor has announced an aerosol version of i believe hydroxycholoquine but it might just be chloroquine that is able to penetrate the lungs they claim. They also claim it can be manufactured immediately.

https://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/220259/RUG-onderzoekt-effect-malariamedicijn-op-corona


ted01 , Mar 22 2020 4:03 utc | 87

It seems that chloroquine and its use as a 'potent inhibitor of the coronavirus infection' has been known for a long time - since August 2005.

https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69

No money for big pharma therefore no interest.
They would rather let people die.

alaric , Mar 22 2020 4:19 utc | 88
We should all certainly be skeptical of such a small study (HCQ and azithromycin) but do keep in mind that you really can't trust industry and their legion of paid doctors and experts either.

For example:

The CEO of Ericsson once said "CDMA will never work." Maybe that was because Ericsson didn't have it working for cellular systems at the time. I worked in the cell phone industry as an analyst for some time. People say anything to sell their stuff. I'm sure pharma is equally bad.

Peter AU1 , Mar 22 2020 4:35 utc | 92
ted01 "No money for big pharma therefore no interest. They would rather let people die."

That is about it. A dirt cheap generic drug can't possibly be any good. A pity so many here prefer to believe big pharma rather than the frontline doctors using it.

Peter AU1 , Mar 22 2020 5:02 utc | 94
Chinese doctors Chloroquine or Chloroquine Phosphate - Formula C18H26ClN3
Trump Hydroxychloroquine - Formula C18H26ClN3O

Two different chemicals but I take it their mode of action is similar.

Hydroxychloroquine

"The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$4.65 per month as of 2015, when used for rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.[7] In the United States the wholesale cost of a month of treatment is about US$25 as of 2020" (wikipedia)

Chloroquine Phosphate

"The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$0.04.[9] In the United States, it costs about US$5.30 per dose." (wikipedia)

Easy to see why Trump and big phama don't like Chloroquine.

Richard Steven Hack , Mar 22 2020 8:55 utc | 112
Link to a review of available evidence for chloroquine treatments cited:

A systematic review on the efficacy and safety of chloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883944120303907?via%3Dihub

Click the PDF link at the top of the page. 5 Pages.

Peter AU1 , Mar 22 2020 9:36 utc | 117
This from link @ Richard Steven Hack | Mar 22 2020 8:55 utc | 114

"chloroquine was highly effective in reducing viral replication, with an Effective Concentration (EC)90 of 6.90 μM that can be easily achievable with standard dosing, due to its favourable penetration in tissues, including in the lung"

Veritas X- , Mar 22 2020 9:41 utc | 119
re: Jackrabbit | Mar 22 2020 6:46 utc @ 106

You may find the following, interesting:

>>>
Brasco_Aad
@Brasco_Aad
Israeli Pharmaceutical Company Teva to send 10 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to the United states, free of charge. | The Times of Israel
Quote Tweet
Brasco_Aad
@Brasco_Aad
· Mar 20
-significant-

Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis to donate 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to the United States.

50 million doses now and another 80 million doses by the end of may.

Enough to treat millions of Americas who have been infected with COVID-19 | Reuters
12:09 AM · Mar 21, 2020
https://twitter.com/Brasco_Aad/status/1241139799077117952
<<<

I don't have the time nor need to try to do any 'confirmation'.
Regards X- in Sweden

Peter AU1 , Mar 22 2020 9:57 utc | 122
Chloroquine I have noticed is also called chloroquine phosphate. Phosphate I believe is the binder that holds the chloroquine powder in tablet form. According to the paper linked by RSH @114 there is 300mg of chloroquine in a 500mg chloroquine phosphate tablet.

[Mar 22, 2020] A pretty good overview on the major avenues to attack nCOV/COVID-19 from a treatment perspective

Mar 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Mar 22 2020 14:05 utc | 171

Here's a pretty good overview on the major avenues to attack nCOV/COVID-19 from a treatment perspective: Ars Technica overview

In particular, this article talks about targeting different aspects of the nCOV life cycle and how these are targeted by treatments to attack nCOV:
1) Reproduction: remdesivir and others
2) [viral] protein processing: protease inhibitors such as HIV drugs
3) [viral] packaging: attack the final protein packaging of the virus such as a Hep B treatment - but very few such examples exist, of any kind
4) viral shell: plasma distilled from existing recovered victims used to prime immune system of ongoing infected. Vaccines will eventually enable this via manufacturing processes.
5) new infection capability: chloroquines. In particular

One of these targets is the drop in pH. This is the step that's targeted by chloroquine, the antimalarial drug. Chloroquine can cross membranes and so can enter the sac containing the virus. Once there, it can neutralize the pH.

That's significant, because many proteases are only active at lower pH. If the pH inside the sac doesn't change, it's possible that the coronavirus spike protein won't be cut and thus won't be activated. This appears to be the case in cultured cells infected by the virus, and there are anecdotal case reports of chloroquine helping COVID-19 patients.


It is also clear - from this description - why evolutionary pressures could create defenses against this type of attack (chloroquine pH change)

Again, a theoretical operation, even the clinical test tube trials, doesn't equate to effective therapy.
However, IMO, the cost and risk factor for chloroquines makes for a far better gambit than anything else at this moment in time. And note that because of the way chloroquines are supposed to affect nCOV - if chloroquines work, they have to be taken when symptoms first appear or potentially even as a preventative.
I would discourage the preventative use though - that will likely accelerate the nCOV evolution around the chloroquine pH attack.

Another reason: it appears the US only has 160,000 ventilators available Johns Hopkins estimate
of which a bit under 30K are being used for neonatal/pediatric care.
Yow.

Walter , Mar 22 2020 14:15 utc | 174

hydroxycloroquine overdose, the boffins say, can destroy the retina of the eyes.

Not a trivial side effect. Nothing to play with. Fer what it worth, better read up on the drug and pay attention. Eyes are nice to have.

Overdose of Q is Bad.

Wally read 60 years ago in Rome newspaper story that British air-line pilots, who drank their Gin an' Tonics, had been discovered to have very poor glare recovery. That, they said, was from the quinine in the tonic water. Henceforth, they were forbidden the tonic water, alas!

But Wally never drives at night and his airplane days ended back in the mists...

He's saving the quinine he's got, for now.

[Mar 22, 2020] Equivalent respirator standards by country

Mar 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Mar 21 2020 22:18 utc | 44

Equivalent respirator standards by country
. N95 (United States NIOSH-42CFR84)
• FFP2 (Europe EN 149-2001)
• KN95 (China GB2626-2006)
• P2 (Australia/New Zealand AS/NZA 1716:2012)
• Korea 1st class (Korea KMOEL - 2017-64)
• DS (Japan JMHLW-Notification 214, 2018)

I just received an email from a contact in China offering to help get FFP2 respirators if I needed or wanted any. She said KN95 were virtually non existent in China but there are limited supplies of the FFP2 respirators.

TJ , Mar 21 2020 22:29 utc | 47

@44 Peter AU1

If you or anyone else is interested in masks / respirators I would recommend watching the videos by weaponsandstuff93 on YouTube. I am no expert on the subject but on his recommendation I got myself a mask that takes 40mm NATO filters ( the mask is a Belgium BEM4 ) and some P3 level filters ( mine are Scott Pros ) this is different to 40MM GOST filters which were the Soviet standard.

[Mar 22, 2020] Make your own face masks?

Mar 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ian2 , Mar 21 2020 21:04 utc | 26

Make your own face masks? Pfff...it appears the Japanese found a better idea from the Philippines government... panties . OR, you could order a custom one from Pantsu Mask . ROFL

[Mar 22, 2020] WTO stance on Covid-19 propaganda and manipulation

Returning to the Covid-19 epidemic and the way governments are reacting to it, Thierry Meyssan stresses that the authoritarian decisions of Italy and France have no medical justification. They contradict the observations of the best infectiologists and the instructions of the World Health Organization.
Mar 22, 2020 | www.voltairenet.org

In all of its messages, the WHO stressed : the low demographic impact of the epidemic; the futility of border closures; the ineffectiveness of wearing gloves, masks (except for health care workers) and certain "barrier measures" (for example, the distance of one metre only makes sense with infected people, but not with healthy people); the need to raise the level of hygiene, including hand washing, water disinfection and increased ventilation of confined spaces. Finally, use disposable tissues or, failing that, sneeze into your elbow.

However, the WHO is not a medical organization, but a United Nations agency dealing with health issues. Its officials, even if they are doctors, are also and above all politicians. It cannot therefore denounce the abuses of certain states. Furthermore, since the controversy over the H1N1 epidemic, the WHO must publicly justify all its recommendations. In 2009, it was accused of having let itself be swayed by the interests of big pharmaceutical companies and of having hastily sounded the alarm in a disproportionate manner [ 4 ]. This time it used the word "pandemic" only as a last resort, on March 12th, four months later.

[Mar 21, 2020] Air pollituion as an important factor in this virus epidemic

Mar 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Allen , Mar 22 2020 1:06 utc | 68

I urge everyone to read the first article that is linked. What is happening this year is decidedly NOT a unique phenomenon for Italy or elsewhere that has been cited below. You might call it an acceleration or culmination or "perfect storm" but this is not a unique situation.

I wish to stress the following:

Estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17 seasons in Italy.

Anyone remember a global outcry about these excess deaths during any of these years?

Pollution; The Po river contains some of the worst waste from industrial pig farms upriver. The air quality in the Po River Valley is some of the worst only behind an area in Poland where they still use coal fired power plants in overall poor quality.

The people in N Italy have been subjected to constant bombardment of this pollution which destroys their respiratory functions and weakens their immune systems- a perfect milieu for viruses to proliferate. The same is true for those in N China and Tehran. Tehran's air quality has deteriorated dramatically since the US sanctions as they have gone to using a cheaper gas, laced with sulfur, to provide fuel for their people.

Northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe, which has already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past and is likely an additional risk factor in the current epidemic.

According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS, the average age of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased are over 70 years old.

The Italian Institute of Health moreover distinguishes between those who died from the coronavirus and those who died with the coronavirus. In many cases it is not yet clear whether the persons died from the virus or from their pre-existing chronic diseases or from a combination of both.

This is not a coincidence that these environmental factors have created a milieu in which all sorts of diseases can proliferate. Now capitalism will come up with the magic bullet like a vaccine or a pill to "fix" the problem- rinse and repeat if the current social order/forms of production aren't radically changed.

A virus which impacts upper respiratory functions attacking those who are vulnerable due to years of having their upper respiratory systems assaulted non-stop by heavy doses of pollutants of all varieties- that's what we are seeing. None of this is new except to the degree. In all the areas listed below, N Italy, N China, Madrid, Tehran they have been experiencing a dramatic increase in upper respiratory disease for years now.

And please don't tell me the solution is some vaccination or some great new cure that will be discovered (and profited from) by the miraculous men of modern medicine. The solution is to clean up the environment so that we are not vulnerable in the first place. Without that prepare for COVID-20 the sequel or whatever name the thoroughly bought off WHO and CDC and...wish to place upon this next "pandemic."

Investigating the impact of influenza on excess mortality in all ages in Italy during recent seasons (2013/14–2016/17 seasons)

In recent years, Italy has been registering peaks in death rates, particularly among the elderly during the winter season. Influenza epidemics have been indicated as one of the potential determinants of such an excess.

We estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, respectively, using the Goldstein index. The average annual mortality excess rate per 100,000 ranged from 11.6 to 41.2 with most of the influenza-associated deaths per year registered among the elderly.

https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(19)30328-5/fulltext

Nitrogen dioxide and fine particles are threatening Po valley air quality

https://vitesy.com/blog/air-pollution/nitrogen-dioxide-fine-particles-po-valley-air-quality/

Italy's polluted Po Valley gasps for fresh air

https://phys.org/news/2019-02-italy-polluted-po-valley-gasps.html


How a 'Toxic Cocktail' Is Posing a Troubling Health Risk in China's Cities

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-a-toxic-cocktail-is-posing-a-troubling-health-risk-in-chinese-cities


The new study argues that smogs in China contain more ingredients than those found either in the legendary "pea-soupers" of 19th- and 20th-century Europe and North America or in modern rich-world, vehicle-generated smogs. Something new is happening: The unprecedented speed of industrialization and urbanization has combined two eras of pollution.

Investigating air quality status and air pollutant trends over the Metropolitan Area of Tehran, Iran over the past decade between 2005 and 2014


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6044178/

Overall, trends have been progressed to worsening, the number of healthy days has been declined and the number of unhealthy days has been increased in recent years.

Tehran is rated as one of the world's most polluted cities. Parts of the city are often covered by smog, making breathing difficult and causing widespread pulmonary illnesses. ... According to local officials, 3,600 people died in a single month due to the hazardous air quality.

Air Pollution, a Silent Form of Death for Tehran Citizens

https://www.iranfocus.com/en/life-in-iran/34172-air-pollution-a-silent-form-of-death-for-tehran-citizens


Madrid air pollution reaches alarming levels

You don't have to step into the street for Madrid's roads to pose a hazard to your health: air pollution from cars in the city might just knock you over. Scientists are finding links between the gases and disease.

......

According to studies by Julio Diaz, a researcher at the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid, even small increases in air pollution can cause the number of people admitted to hospitals with circulatory and respiratory illnesses to rise.

https://www.dw.com/en/madrid-air-pollution-reaches-alarming-levels/a-16739363

[Mar 21, 2020] Vietnam is now requiring everyone to wear masks in public places.

Mar 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Hope , Mar 22 2020 1:02 utc | 67

There's much attention being given to how China and South Korea have reacted to the virus, but amazingly little to the response in Vietnam. The first cases in Vietnam arrived with the new lunar year, via Wuhan; quite quickly the number of cases rose to sixteen, and for several weeks stayed at that number. The Vietnamese government acted quickly, strongly and effectively, until all sixteen recovered (and the district near Hanoi which had been placed under lockdown had completed their isolation.
On March 2nd a flight from London, carrying a woman who was returning from the Milan fashion week:
"The country's 17th case, imported on a flight from London, kicked off a new wave of cases, [now nearing 100].

Even with a new wave of cases, the numbers are far from those witnessed in the western world. The issue has been taken seriously, with all suffering symptoms put in quarantine and tested, while their places of residence are locked down and sanitised. Việt Nam was one of the first nations to declare an epidemic and has been quick in its response, both in handling current cases and ensuring the spread of the virus is as limited as possible. "
- taken from https://vietnamnews.vn/life-style/expat-corner/653815/keeping-calm-and-carrying-on-viet-nam-sets-a-coronavirus-example.html

It is notable that almost all cases of infection have been brought into the country, or at one-person distance from the person bringing it into the country.

Today there has been the announcement of the seventeenth reported recovery in Vietnam. So far there has been not one death.

Points in the reaction:
Public gatherings were stopped right away - even local community Women's Day lunches.
All citizens and all foreigners are now required to report on health, on recent travel, etc.
Everyone is now required to wear masks in public places.

[Mar 21, 2020] Coronavirus - A Laymans Update By Walrus

Mar 21, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Larry Kart , 20 March 2020 at 07:57 PM

FWIW, Dr. Fauci pretty much threw cold water on the Chloroquine option at today's Trump press conference, saying that no clinical trials have been conducted and leaving the impression that he was highly dubious. Again, FWIW.

P.S. I wonder how long Fauci will be welcomed onto that podium.

[Mar 20, 2020] No specific vulnerability of East Asians?

Mar 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Kassandra , Mar 19 2020 22:00 utc | 201

No specific vulnerability of East Asians?

"The East Asian populations have much higher AFs in the eQTL variants associated with higher ACE2 expression in tissues (Fig. 1c), which may suggest different susceptibility or response to 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 from different populations under the similar conditions."

This is a "we do not know yet", not a "we can exclude".

No lab-generated strain?

The Furin docking cleavage site has not been found yet in any other beta-CoV strain, it is only known from other completely different viruses and seem to be related there with being highly contagious. In adition, a recent study found a third docking option via GRP78 expressions on the cell surface (usually by cells experiencing stress), https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-15157/v1 . This is already two strange features more compared to SARS and MERS.

There is only a "there is no proof, neither a direct hint found yet", not a "we can exclude", but a mere belief.

Most irritating is that there is are not intermediate or other similar strains found yet, and that there is a strange pattern of first occurences in the early phase in Wuhan (and probably also in the US). We still have no sound explanation how it came into existence, not even some plausible facts suggesting a pathway. Given the technical capabilities since 15 years, the multitude of stakeholders working on gene editing, for vaccine research also on dangerous stains, and some irritating cui bono issues, it is too early to discard some suspicions already. The scope of potential perpetrators (by accident or intentionally with a not expected outcome) is broad and - given the very intransparent transnational companies - quite opaque. In issues of global security and extreme relevance for humanity, transparency should be enforced and secrecy for corporate interests should not be tolerated in such cases.

Anyway, most important now is to mitigate the ongoing desaster, we should only not forget some issues for later investigation.


antitermite , Mar 19 2020 22:23 utc | 208

The argument that cov19 isn't engineered because biowar researchers & the empire that incubates them are 1. Sane and 2. Indequately funded
Nope, not buying it on either count.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-geopolitical-deployment-of-biological-weapons/5703005

The hegemony has military labs all around the globe (though the Fort Detrick closure is suspicious).

Even if it weren't engineered, a virus doesn't need to be vat-grown to be politically useful - anthrax, smallpox and bubonic plague - all natural & deadly pathogens - exist within bioweapon labs, for research purposes of course.

I am a little doubtful about the wuhan games being the vector - think of the timing, right before CNY.
Surely a "Diplomat" with a diplomatic bag could have a far wider range of opportunities (via proxies) for more precise delivery.

Unlike what other posters here have been reporting, most Chinese markets are quite clean, at least those I've seen. Yes they are certainly diverse. Here's a good example (not Wuhan though)
https://viktoriajean.com/2019/10/25/qingdao-starfish-sea-urchin-and-other-exotic-foods/

bevin , Mar 19 2020 22:32 utc | 209
An interesting story at Common Dreams
"A look at financial records reveal that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr last month -- just as he was big-dollar donors, but not the general public about the looming threat of the coronavirus -- personal stock holdings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, many of them in industries now seriously impacted by the outbreak..."

".....In an audio recording obtained by NPR, the North Carolina Republican was heard telling donors at a luncheon on Feb. 27 that the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, would likely spread through the population aggressively -- and suggested it could kill hundreds of thousands of people.

"It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," Burr said.

"It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic," he added, referring to the flu pandemic which killed more than 600,000 Americans...."
There is audio here

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/19/while-warning-donors-reassuring-public-gop-intel-chair-unloaded-personal-stocks

Bongocero , Mar 19 2020 22:41 utc | 215
Here is the patent application filed in 2004 showing that the virus was invented in a lab: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e0/4e/2e/09e238c87e2d20/EP1694829B1.pdf
H.Schmatz , Mar 19 2020 22:43 utc | 216
Really, it is hard stop thinking this was a preplanned event...

Wall Street is pressuring key healthcare firms to hike prices over the coronavirus crisis. Audio here of bankers asking drug companies, firms supplying N95 masks & ventilators, to figure out how to profit from the Covid-19 emergency.

https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1240716348939833344

karlof1 , Mar 19 2020 22:50 utc | 217
Today's Keiser Report declares petrodollar and fiat dollar dead and announces the world will need to have a confab to arrange a new commercial currency or currency basket. Other interesting food for thought's discussed. The 2nd half interview is with a metals broker who says we must demand physical delivery instead of paper because the derivatives aren't properly reflecting physical price. An item from Shadowstats's Daily Update, "the February 2020 Cass Freight Index® Continued in Annual Decline for the 15th Straight Month, Down by 7.5% (-7.5%)," further ongoing confirmation that we've actually been in a recession for at least that long.
Mao , Mar 19 2020 23:07 utc | 221
In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, investors who bought "pandemic bonds" from the World Bank in 2017 are set to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbfWuk1r6dY

vk , Mar 19 2020 23:17 utc | 223
It seems people here don't understand the concept of "burden of proof".

Burden of proof arives from a logical necessity. If you treat every hypothesis existent in the universe for which there are no scientific evidence as a priori true, the it would mean they are all true at the same time. The same if you treat them as all false.

That, of course, would be a logical fallacy, since contradictory hypotheses would be true or false at the same time.

That's why the absence of evidence the SARS CoV-2 isn't a bioweapon doesn't make it a bioweapon. Since we don't know that, that would make, by the same logic, it a bioweapon and a not-bioweapon at the same time. It is the same fallacy of religion: you can't prove God doesn't exist (and you really can't, since God is a metaphysical concept, not a physical one), therefore it must exist in the eyes of the religious.

Except that, in the case here, there is strong evidence the SARS CoV-2 is fruit of evolution, so I don't even know why people are bringing the opposite hypothesis here without even a hint of evidence.

Pft , Mar 19 2020 23:25 utc | 224
"Some Indian researchers found four genome sequences in the novel coronavirus that can also be found in the HIV virus. They self published their findings in a paper that was not peer reviewed. We discussed that paper in detail on February 1 in our second post on the virus and we strongly expressed our doubt about its veracity. A few days later the paper was retracted by its authors after other scientists had pointed out that the lengths of each of the four sequences they had compared were way too small to be of statistical significance."

The authors retracted the study temporarily to allow it to be peer reviewed. They did not concede their results were insignificant. The stated reason for retracting the study from one of the authors is because the study was being used to promote conspiracy theories that the virus was intentionally released as weapon since they made no such contention

"Asian people are not more genetically receptive for the novel coronavirus."

Yet the study you linked to states "The East Asian populations have much higher AFs in the eQTL variants associated with higher ACE2 expression in tissues (Fig. 1c), which may suggest different susceptibility or response to 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 from different populations under the similar conditions."


There is zero evidence that the virus is from a Chinese or U.S. or other (weapon) laboratory and the claim actually makes no sense. The genome of the virus consists of more then 23,000 'letters'. It is significantly different than the genome of other known viruses."

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Actually, its pretty similar to the bat virus found in 2013 as reported by Shi Zheng Li in January , 2020. And the key word is "known". How stupid would you have you have to be to publish the sequence data in public papers of the exact virus that will be used as a weapon before unleashing the virus. Shi Zhengli was involved in gain of function research for over a decade working with Ralph Baric at UNC on some research.

If you look at the research thats been done on corona viruses gain of function and corona virus/ebola/zika virus vaccines you run into the same names a lot, Chinese scientists like Shi Zhengli, American scientists like Ralph Baric of UNC, Wuhan institute of Virology/BSL-4 lab, ,Duke University and USAMRIID, both of which has ties with Wuhan University-Institute of Medical Virology all funded by USAMRIID, DARPA, NIAD, BARDA, NIH , chinese military, chinese CDC, Bill Gates (WHO, Event 201, AMC, CEPI) , and various vaccine makers such as Innovio, Moderna, NanoViricides, etc, often in collaboration with each other. George Gao of China CDC attended Event 201.

Look close at Project Bioshield-The Department of Homeland Security uses intelligence reports to decide which diseases and biological threats are considered "material," or realistic threats to US security. It then refers these findings to Health and Human Services (HHS), which determines whether it's necessary for the government to order new drugs from pharmaceutical companies to combat the threats.

A funding agency within HHS called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) hands out lucrative contracts for research, parts of which can be paid up front.

The parent agency (HHS) in charge of funding drugs and vaccines for the national stockpile, is also the one that is separately funding research into new diseases that could result in a bioterror or accidental infection, which would in turn demand a response from the national stockpile. Sounds like a racket

More on Ralph Baric- also known as the Godfather of Corona Virus due in part to a corona virus vaccine patent in 2002 as well as his subsequent research. But Dr. Ralph Baric's lab
is designed to develop drugs against new emerging pathogens focuses on coronaviruses. Baric and his 30-person team partnered with Gilead Sciences, Inc. six years ago to test antiviral drugs such as Remdesivir to curb emerging viral diseases that were then largely overlooked by big pharmaceutical companies.

Gilead Science as you recall struck gold with Tamiflu thanks to Bird Flu scares that followed after SARS. Also known for its association with Donald Rumsfeld.


[Mar 20, 2020] Looks like COVID-19 is more contagious then evne Spalish flu

Mar 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

S , Mar 20 2020 2:08 utc | 263

PokeTheTruth #150:
Also there is no proof that COVID-19 is "more contagious" either by laboratory analysis or in fielded studies than influenza. If you know of such a paper, I would appreciate a link so that I can examine it for myself.

From the Wikipedia article " Basic reproduction number " (see the article for references):

    Disease                           R0

    COVID-19                          1.4–3.9
    Influenza (1918 pandemic strain)  1.4–2.8
    Influenza (2009 pandemic strain)  1.4–1.6
    Influenza (seasonal strains)      0.9–2.1

More comparisons between COVID-19 and influenza: How does the new coronavirus compare with the flu? ( Live Science ).

[Mar 20, 2020] Virus and air pollution

Mar 20, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Mar 19 2020 20:17 utc | 162

James @ 47:

There have been articles posted online about high levels of air pollution in Italy's Po River valley region, where Lombardia province is located. Do a search on Google or DuckDuckGo and they appear.

Much of that pollution probably occurs at particular times of the year. Milan is said to be notorious for temperature inversions, as is Tehran in Iran. These occur in winter-time in Tehran nearly every year. Cold air sinks under warm air in river valleys or inter-mountain valleys and plateaux so air is trapped and cannot circulate, trapping pollutants. Milan, Tehran and probably Wuhan beside the Jiangzi River sit in these kinds of physical environments.

Italy does seem to have a history of industrial accidents. I have a double CD set of urban folk by Alessandro Monti, "Unfolk + Live Book", which is partly inspired by an industrial poisoning incident that occurred somewhere in northern Italy in the 1970s. Can't remember any details and can't look up now, being on smartphone, but it was a major incident, large numbers in the vicinity were poisoned, many died and others still struggling with long-term effects. May have been some form of dioxide poisoning.

[Mar 19, 2020] US bad availability actually isn't bad: there are spots where 20% infection in 12 months is bad, but overall the US seems in decent shape

Mar 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Mar 19 2020 17:48 utc | 95

Propublica has published a model showing hospital bed availability vs. nCOV infection rates, nationwide: bed vs. infection rate
It actually isn't bad: there are spots where 20% infection in 12 months is bad, but overall the US seems in decent shape. 20% in 6 months - significant red coverage.

But interestingly - my Eyeball Mark I shows the negative effects mostly in the liberal zones = cities.

[Mar 19, 2020] All the funny videos about Chinese making masks out of women's bras, water bottles: not so funny now

Mar 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Mar 19 2020 17:44 utc | 93

All the funny videos about Chinese making masks out of women's bras, water bottles: not so funny now: Washington hospital making masks out of office supplies

And people are really saying there weren't racist currents?

[Mar 19, 2020] Chloroquine/hydrochloroquinine was determined to be effective for the treatment of the coronavirus by Chinese clinicians early in February, and the Chinese government announced this on February 17 this year.

Mar 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jack R , Mar 19 2020 16:33 utc | 58

Chloroquine/hydrochloroquinine was determined to be effective for the treatment of the coronavirus by Chinese clinicians early in February, and the Chinese government announced this on February 17 this year. Today (March 19) Trump and his staff amazingly announced that medical personnel in American health agencies have discovered, developed and were testing these drugs without any mention of the considerable Chinese, as well as Korean, published experience and success using these closely-related and relatively safe malarial drugs. Shameful and highly deceitful, to say the least. This deceit should be revealed again and again without letup.

[Mar 19, 2020] Do not fall for the barrage of fake news in the Western MSM about "promising cures, treatments and vaccines" coming from some alleged geniuses at some unicorn in some First World country:

Mar 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Noirette , Mar 18 2020 18:18 utc | 50

TJ @ 3, adding:

Chloroquine was proposed as an efficient anti-viral for Cov-19 (short for the virus and disease) by Dr. Raoult in France, right from the start. He is supposedly the no.1 expert *World* on Communicable diseases. See list of names in the > right column.

http://expertscape.com/ex/infectious+diseases

This type of grading - ranking - endorsing, certifying, etc. some 'experts', does NOT per se correlate with their knowledge, honesty, ingenuity, insight (which may be random), etc. It is very much a social acceptance by the PTB scene based on no. of publications, contacts, financial awards, contacts with pols, getting more funding, being able to run a team, etc.

Yet, Dr. Raoult (Marseilles) is not in F considered a great expert at all, as he is not part of the Paris-Nexus.

https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/French-researcher-in-Marseille-posts-successful-Covid-19-coronavirus-drug-trial-results

This short clip 4 mins on Jan. 21, he is questioned about the coronaviruses (well before huge alarm in F) shows the personage. In F no subs, but have a look-see for 30 secs.

https://youtu.be/qoBoryHuZ6E

Here he explains why chloroquine can treat Cov-19 infections. In F.

https://youtu.be/fcNRmALkpTA

Imho several anti-virals will turn out to have some supressive / effective action, just like for HIV.


TJ , Mar 18 2020 18:35 utc | 55

Coronavirus Pandemic Update 39: Rapid COVID-19 Spread with Mild or No Symptoms, More on Treatment from MedCram about the French using chloroquine to treat patients with COVID-19.
JC , Mar 18 2020 19:16 utc | 62
Weekly Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Live from WHO Headquarters

"Live from WHO Headquarters - COVID-19 daily press briefing 18MAR2020"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wucieL5YxCs

vk , Mar 18 2020 19:24 utc | 64
@ Posted by: donkeytale | Mar 18 2020 18:49 utc | 61

Did you see my link? Japan has a daily test capacity of only some 7,000 (South Korea, for example, is testing 20,000 per day). To make things worse, it is using just one sixth of this capacity. My source is the Japan Times, so you cannot invoke propaganda.

The Chinese doctors are using at least 22 different broad-spectrum antivirals to try to treat the infected. Not surprised one of them is Japanese, but that's irrelevant information (one of them, for example, is Cuban).

As I've posted in the previous thread, in moments of pandemic crisis against a disease without cure, doctors on the field have the poetic license to try whatever they want to. So they threw practically everything in Wuhan (shots in the dark after shots in the dark). It's acceptable medical practice in these extraordinary cases.

But none of the 22 antivirals are cures. Not even close. Best case scenario, they gain some time for some patients. Do not fall for the barrage of fake news in the Western MSM about "promising cures, treatments and vaccines" coming from some alleged geniuses at some unicorn in some First World country:

Zhong Nanshan: No evidence that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan

Zhong made the remarks at a press conference in Guangzhou on Wednesday, stressing that so far there is no targeted therapeutic COVID-19 drug and international cooperation is still needed for new experiments.

The fight against the COVID-19 should not be reliant on "herd immunity," Zhong added, saying that the production of an effective COVID-19 vaccine is at present the top priority, and the development requires international cooperation.

Zhong also made very clear the laissez-faire tactic won't work:

"There is no evidence of immunity for life after one infection of the virus," Zhong added.

[Mar 19, 2020] Virus and air quality

Mar 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Mar 18 2020 20:25 utc | 77

Ken Garoo @ 43:

Iran (especially Tehran), northern Italy (Po River valley region) and Wuhan are also areas of high levels of air pollution. Populations in these regions are located in river valleys or plateaux in mountainous areas where temperature inversions leading to thick smog are common. I've read that Tehran experiences annual temperature inversions once a year, in the past occurring in December but in recent times starting earlier in November. Qom, where Iran's COVID-19 outbreak started, is not far from Tehran and itself is becoming more industrialised.

Northern Italy is reputed to have the worst air quality of any region in Europe.

jayc , Mar 18 2020 20:49 utc | 82

Interesting that there was a flood of comments yesterday - here, at Off Guardian, and other similar sites - all pushing the concept that the virus is a mild flu and that best practices, particularly social distancing, were in fact a scam designed to initiate the new world order/global police state, or something. Rational responses were met with all-caps freak outs and down-voting.

In my area, vehicle traffic has been down by at least 50%. The skies are noticeably clearer. A colleague pointed out that satellite imagery over northern Italy has shown that the air quality there has visibly improved.

[Mar 19, 2020] SK doctors have been using the malaria/arthritis drug hydrochloroquine to treat patients with much success, now a doctor in France has found that a combination of that drug and a common antibiotic azithromycin has cured up to 70% of patients after 3 to 6 days

Mar 19, 2020 | www.unz.com

Anon [279] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment March 19, 2020 at 1:56 am GMT

People should take a closer look at the stats coming out of Germany and S. Korea, both countries known for extensive testing. There are over 8,100 cases in Germany, yet death remains at 12, which makes the death rate <0.15%, almost on par with the flu. SK's death rate is around 0.65%.

SK doctors have been using the malaria/arthritis drug hydrochloroquine to treat patients with much success, now a doctor in France has found that a combination of that drug and a common antibiotic azithromycin has cured up to 70% of patients after 3 to 6 days:
https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/18/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-covid19-cure-study/

Hopefully this is the cure we've been waiting for.

[Mar 17, 2020] Which objects to sanitize to avoid spreading the deadly disease

Notable quotes:
"... our own hands can be the biggest culprit when it comes to adding germs and bacteria onto your phone. ..."
"... mobile telephones are particularly dirty because people do not necessarily wash their hands before touching them. ..."
"... Shaking hands is a frequent transmission route for disease in hospitals. ..."
Mar 17, 2020 | express.co.uk
...Express.co.uk has compiled advice to show which objects to sanitise to avoid spreading the deadly disease. Trending
Mobile phones

Research has found mobile phones can be 10 times dirtier than toilet seats. Your own hands can be the biggest culprit when it comes to adding germs and bacteria onto your phone.

Assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Emily Martin, said mobile telephones are particularly dirty because people do not necessarily wash their hands before touching them.

She told Time.com: "Because people are always carrying their cell phones even in situations where they would normally wash their hands before doing anything, cell phones do tend to get pretty gross."

ATMs or ticket machines

Ticket machines and ATMs will be touched by many people which means it poses a risk to spreading coronavirus.

Coronavirus warning: Coronavirus has killed more than 94,000 people around the world (Image: GETTY) Telephones

Your mobile phone can pose a risk, but additionally so can shared office telephones.

Office kitchens

Coffee machines or kettles will be handled by multiple people, so it's a good idea to use hand sanitiser after doing the tea round.

Lift buttons

Lift buttons can be touched by potentially hundreds or thousands of people depending on how many people use the lift regularly.

This means it can pose a threat to spreading coronavirus.

Handrails

Escalators, tube handrails, bannisters will all be touched constantly, potentially by thousands of people a day.

Dr Tait-Burkard told the Guardian: "If you're on public transport, there's no way not to touch the handrails.

"So when you get off, disinfect your hands."

Coronavirus warning: More than 75 countries have reported cases of coronavirus (Image: GETTY) Communal bathrooms

Communal bathrooms can pose a threat as they are enclosed spaces which will be accessed by several people.

The door handles, soap dispensers, hand dryers, bins and other objects could be touched by many people.

Additionally, people often blow their noses in the bathroom which can help spread the virus.

Hospitals

Hospitals can be hotbeds for disease, so it is advisable to wash your hands thoroughly before and after visiting a hospital.

Professor Haas told the Guardian: "Shaking hands is a frequent transmission route for disease in hospitals.

"It's why health personnel are supposed to regularly disinfect their hands."

[Mar 17, 2020] In might make sense to wash you nose with saltwater. To gaggle you throat with the mouth wash.

There is only limited evidence to suggest it actually helps. However, saltwater rinses have not been shown to prevent respiratory infections in the past. The NHS said: “There is no evidence that regularly rinsing the nose with salt water protects you from coronavirus”. The real question is how long it take the virus to get inside the cell: is this hours or minutes?
BTW Research has found mobile phones can be 10 times dirtier than toilet seats.
Gargling with slat war is probably completely false: FALSE Gargling salt water ‘eliminates’ coronavirus
The use of saline (salt water) irrigations for the nose and sinuses has been shown to be highly effective in improving allergy symptoms and shortening the duration of a sinus infection. Typically, for allergy sufferers, doctors recommend irrigating the sinuses once every day to every other day with 8 ounces of salt water. Make your own saline rinse Combat sinus infections
Mar 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Stonebird , Mar 17 2020 20:33 utc | 25

As an Asthmatic I found this information interesting. You might need to scroll down - as simple solutions (mainly before you really get it !) are near the end.

https://thesaker.is/how-to-treat-coronavirus-infection-covid-19/

Quotes; A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of all, take a good care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.

Q: To wash it with saltwater?
A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus cleaners to stop running nose and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free unobstructed breath should come after all. The second thing is the oropharyngeal area behind the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of the oropharyngeal region.

Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down your throat?
A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good airways. Of all the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can afford to buy a nebulizer or

Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?
A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good state. When a cough starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe for patients with bronchial asthma. This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol. Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance, relieve spasm.

Q: You mean expectorant?" Mucolytic ACC?
A: Yes, ACC and Fluimucil. And what you can't do is use glucocorticosteroids. This virus replication is rapidly increasing by them.

Q: What does that mean?
A: Corticosteroids is prednisone, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, betamethasone.

Q: So you don't need to inject hormones, relatively speaking, if you have a viral infection?
A: There are inhaled steroids. But there are patients with asthma who are ill and are on this therapy. But this has to be a tailor-made solutions.

------------

b's and most western Government's change of heart, makes sense if the re-infection rate is much higher and more lethal than the first onset of the virus. I don't know the truth about this but there was a small, quickly suppressed, report from *researchers* in Hubei that this is the case. The second time round we are talking about an attack on the "vital" organs (heart etc) in a relatively short period of days.

What will happen is a societal collapse, or a total financial scam where the billionaires come out of hiding and take everything for a few shekels. Remember that debts can be "claimed" decades after they are made. So ordinary people will have to pay back all these massive "aids" later, through taxes.

Richard Steven Hack , Mar 17 2020 20:57 utc | 34

@Stonebird | Mar 17 2020 20:33 utc | 25

I keep seeing people recommending this salt water lavage. So I looked it up on the Internet. No, it does *not* kill the virus. It might ease the symptoms, but does nothing to eliminate the virus.

As far as I know from reading so far, there are *no* "home remedies" that can deal with this virus.

I have seen suggestions to boost your vitamin intake in hopes of boosting your immune system. I've upped my C to 3 grams a day instead of my usual 1 and my D-3 to 6,000 units instead of my usual 4,000.

[Mar 17, 2020] First of all, take a good care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.

Mar 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Stonebird , Mar 17 2020 20:33 utc | 25

As an Asthmatic I found this information interesting. You might need to scroll down - as simple solutions (mainly before you really get it !) are near the end.

https://thesaker.is/how-to-treat-coronavirus-infection-covid-19/

Quotes; A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of all, take a good care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.

Q: To wash it with saltwater?
A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus cleaners to stop running nose and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free unobstructed breath should come after all. The second thing is the oropharyngeal area behind the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of the oropharyngeal region.

Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down your throat?
A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good airways. Of all the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can afford to buy a nebulizer or

Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?
A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good state. When a cough starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe for patients with bronchial asthma. This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol. Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance, relieve spasm.

Q: You mean expectorant?" Mucolytic ACC?
A: Yes, ACC and Fluimucil. And what you can't do is use glucocorticosteroids. This virus replication is rapidly increasing by them.

Q: What does that mean?
A: Corticosteroids is prednisone, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, betamethasone.

Q: So you don't need to inject hormones, relatively speaking, if you have a viral infection?
A: There are inhaled steroids. But there are patients with asthma who are ill and are on this therapy. But this has to be a tailor-made solutions.

------------

b's and most western Government's change of heart, makes sense if the re-infection rate is much higher and more lethal than the first onset of the virus. I don't know the truth about this but there was a small, quickly suppressed, report from *researchers* in Hubei that this is the case. The second time round we are talking about an attack on the "vital" organs (heart etc) in a relatively short period of days.

What will happen is a societal collapse, or a total financial scam where the billionaires come out of hiding and take everything for a few shekels. Remember that debts can be "claimed" decades after they are made. So ordinary people will have to pay back all these massive "aids" later, through taxes.

Richard Steven Hack , Mar 17 2020 20:57 utc | 34

@Stonebird | Mar 17 2020 20:33 utc | 25

I keep seeing people recommending this salt water lavage. So I looked it up on the Internet. No, it does *not* kill the virus. It might ease the symptoms, but does nothing to eliminate the virus.

As far as I know from reading so far, there are *no* "home remedies" that can deal with this virus.

I have seen suggestions to boost your vitamin intake in hopes of boosting your immune system. I've upped my C to 3 grams a day instead of my usual 1 and my D-3 to 6,000 units instead of my usual 4,000.

[Mar 17, 2020] Here are three most helpful and competent sources

Mar 17, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Dilara , Mar 17 2020 1:58 utc | 115

There are three most helpful and competent sources "How to treat Coronavirus infection COVID-19"
1. An advice from a pathologist who's been tracking the virus since 1970: United Nursing Services "Good luck for all of us"
2. The RT-Interview with the member of the Russian Academy of Science Alexander Chuchalin Translated by Scott Humor
3. Das Coronavirus-Update mit Christian Drosten | NDR.de ...
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html
The German Virologie-Professor gives a lot of informations in a podcast everyday for half an hour, today was the 14th. If anybody knews the German language, it is a must to hear. He does not speak only about the medical but all the sociological problems, the media and the scientistic "fakes".

[Mar 16, 2020] One promising way to decrease chances of your infection via nose and throat this is salt water gargling and nasal rinses with the same. Also you can wear gloves when out

Mar 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

gepay , Mar 16 2020 19:03 utc | 6

The Saker has a good article - How to treat Coronavirus infection COVID-19 - by an international recognized virologist, Dr Chuchalain.

Contrary to what I have read in other articles, he says the virus does cause runny nose and sore throat along with mild fever.

The best way to deal with this is salt water gargling and nasal rinses with the same.

A method to reduce getting infected is to wear gloves when out. Handwashing is more effective than masks.

If you are infected masks do help you not infecting others. It is when the virus bypasses your immune system and infects the lower lungs that danger appears.

Then other opportunist pathogens -- pneumonia causing bacteria and fungi take up residence in the lower lungs often leading to death or lasting damage by fibrosis. Obviously it is much better to stop it before this with then no lasting effects.

If dry cough and shortness of breath appear seek medical help immediately.

[Mar 16, 2020] The US will be offering free drive-up testing to practically everyone. I now believe the United States now has a better change at containing the pandemic than Europe.

Mar 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Petri Krohn , Mar 16 2020 19:56 utc | 28

Analyzing the swab in a lab is simple and cheap, but getting the swab to the lab is expensive. Normal testing procedures assume that the tested person is already infected. Therefore the health worker doing the swabbing will have to wear full protective clothing. Moreover, before testing the next patient he will have to disinfect and change protective clothing. One estimate put the price of a COVID-19 test in the US at $1200. Of the sum $1000 was charged for the biohazard.

In most countries testing is done only where there is a strong suspicion the person is infected with the new coronavirus. Therefore the measures against biohazards may be called for.

Testing for coronavirus must be separated from health care. People who have symptoms but do not need medical care should stay as far away from hospitals as possible. The safest and most effective way to do high-throughput testing is drive-up or drive-in testing. The patient or suspect stays inside the car and only opens a window. This way he or she does not infect others. The testing team wears full protective clothing, including a gas mask. This video by NBC News shows how it is done. A tent is set up on a huge parking lot. Hundreds of cars wait in line. The testers wear disposable aprons which they change after each suspect.

I watched VP Pence's press conference yesterday. I was actually impressed! The US will be offering free drive-up testing to practically everyone. I now believe the United States now has a better change at containing the pandemic than Europe.

The problem here and especially in countries other that the USA is that the patient needs a car. Walk-in testing is more difficult to organize as the patients need to be isolated from each other. The simplest test would be one were the test subject swabs his own mouth, puts the swab in a plastic tube and seals it in an envelope.

In the mean time Sweden has stopped testing all together, except for hospital patients. Britain and Finland have followed suit. People with symptoms are simple told to lock themselves up in their homes and not come out for two weeks. The Chinese edition of the Global Times has called the Swedes out for the surrender monkeys they are.

Containing an epidemic and avoiding a pandemic requires testing large parts of the population to locate any unknown cluster of infections. Once a case is found, the anti-corona task force must locate all contacts, test them and place them under quarantine even if they do not show symptoms.

[Mar 16, 2020] Covid-19 The Sun A Lesson From The 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Mar 16, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Covid-19 & The Sun: A Lesson From The 1918 Influenza Pandemic by Tyler Durden Sun, 03/15/2020 - 23:10 Authored by Richard Hobday via Medium.com,

Fresh air, sunlight and improvised face masks seemed to work a century ago; and they might help us now.

When new, virulent diseases emerge, such SARS and Covid-19, the race begins to find new vaccines and treatments for those affected. As the current crisis unfolds, governments are enforcing quarantine and isolation, and public gatherings are being discouraged. Health officials took the same approach 100 years ago, when influenza was spreading around the world. The results were mixed. But records from the 1918 pandemic suggest one technique for dealing with influenza -- little-known today -- was effective. Some hard-won experience from the greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks and months ahead.

Influenza patients getting sunlight at the Camp Brooks emergency open-air hospital in Boston. Medical staff were not supposed to remove their masks. (National Archives)

Put simply, medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients; and infections among medical staff. There is scientific support for this. Research shows that outdoor air is a natural disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there is now evidence it can kill the flu virus .

`Open-Air' Treatment in 1918

During the great pandemic, two of the worst places to be were military barracks and troop-ships. Overcrowding and bad ventilation put soldiers and sailors at high risk of catching influenza and the other infections that often followed it. As with the current Covid-19 outbreak, most of the victims of so-called `Spanish flu' did not die from influenza: they died of pneumonia and other complications.

When the influenza pandemic reached the East coast of the United States in 1918, the city of Boston was particularly badly hit. So the State Guard set up an emergency hospital. They took in the worst cases among sailors on ships in Boston harbour. The hospital's medical officer had noticed the most seriously ill sailors had been in badly-ventilated spaces. So he gave them as much fresh air as possible by putting them in tents. And in good weather they were taken out of their tents and put in the sun. At this time, it was common practice to put sick soldiers outdoors. Open-air therapy, as it was known, was widely used on casualties from the Western Front. And it became the treatment of choice for another common and often deadly respiratory infection of the time; tuberculosis. Patients were put outside in their beds to breathe fresh outdoor air. Or they were nursed in cross-ventilated wards with the windows open day and night. The open-air regimen remained popular until antibiotics replaced it in the 1950s.

Doctors who had first-hand experience of open-air therapy at the hospital in Boston were convinced the regimen was effective. It was adopted elsewhere. If one report is correct, it reduced deaths among hospital patients from 40 per cent to about 13 per cent. According to the Surgeon General of the Massachusetts State Guard:

`The efficacy of open air treatment has been absolutely proven, and one has only to try it to discover its value.'

Fresh Air is a Disinfectant

Patients treated outdoors were less likely to be exposed to the infectious germs that are often present in conventional hospital wards. They were breathing clean air in what must have been a largely sterile environment. We know this because, in the 1960s, Ministry of Defence scientists proved that fresh air is a natural disinfectant. Something in it, which they called the Open Air Factor, is far more harmful to airborne bacteria -- and the influenza virus -- than indoor air. They couldn't identify exactly what the Open Air Factor is. But they found it was effective both at night and during the daytime.

Their research also revealed that the Open Air Factor's disinfecting powers can be preserved in enclosures -- if ventilation rates are kept high enough. Significantly, the rates they identified are the same ones that cross-ventilated hospital wards, with high ceilings and big windows, were designed for. But by the time the scientists made their discoveries, antibiotic therapy had replaced open-air treatment. Since then the germicidal effects of fresh air have not featured in infection control, or hospital design. Yet harmful bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics.

Sunlight and Influenza Infection

Putting infected patients out in the sun may have helped because it inactivates the influenza virus. It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other infections in hospitals. During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal infected wounds. They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn't know is that one advantage of placing patients outside in the sun is they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin if sunlight is strong enough. This was not discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are now linked to respiratory infections and may increase susceptibility to influenza . Also, our body's biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist infections. New research suggests they can alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus. As with vitamin D, at the time of the 1918 pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these rhythms was not known.

Face Masks Coronavirus and Flu

Surgical masks are currently in short supply in China and elsewhere. They were worn 100 years ago, during the great pandemic, to try and stop the influenza virus spreading. While surgical masks may offer some protection from infection they do not seal around the face. So they don't filter out small airborne particles. In 1918, anyone at the emergency hospital in Boston who had contact with patients had to wear an improvised face mask. This comprised five layers of gauze fitted to a wire frame which covered the nose and mouth. The frame was shaped to fit the face of the wearer and prevent the gauze filter touching the mouth and nostrils. The masks were replaced every two hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in hospitals today to protect medical staff against airborne infection.

Temporary Hospitals

Staff at the hospital kept up high standards of personal and environmental hygiene. No doubt this played a big part in the relatively low rates of infection and deaths reported there. The speed with which their hospital and other temporary open-air facilities were erected to cope with the surge in pneumonia patients was another factor. Today, many countries are not prepared for a severe influenza pandemic. Their health services will be overwhelmed if there is one. Vaccines and antiviral drugs might help. Antibiotics may be effective for pneumonia and other complications. But much of the world's population will not have access to them. If another 1918 comes, or the Covid-19 crisis gets worse, history suggests it might be prudent to have tents and pre-fabricated wards ready to deal with large numbers of seriously ill cases. Plenty of fresh air and a little sunlight might help too.

[Mar 16, 2020] Scott Humor's translation of the video provided by Saker of Russian pulmonary specialist, Dr Aleksandr Chuchalin

Mar 16, 2020 | www.unz.com

Mustapha Mond , says: Show Comment March 15, 2020 at 6:28 am GMT

Scott Humor's translation of the video provided by Saker of Russian pulmonary specialist, Dr Aleksandr Chuchalin : https://thesaker.is/how-to-treat-coronavirus-infection-covid-19/

Not a very pretty read. Those who get the virus bad, and survive the pneumonia, are likely to have pretty scarred up lungs once they recover, if we can call it that. Let's hope not. But with the Han Chinese supposedly having a vastly larger ACE-2 presence in their lungs than other races, it would seem this virus is uniquely able (designed?) to cripple the Chinese long-term, via creating a vast population of people with significant pulmonary problems (pulmonary fibrosis) for the remainder of their lives, and perhaps more likely to have terrible problems requiring extensive medical care should they ever become re-infected in the future. All of which would be significant burdens on the PRC's future.

Hopefully, the Chinese government's overwhelming response to the virus will minimize this possibility.

Let's also hope this nasty bug doesn't decimate the seniors in the USA. If it does, one can already hear the MSM whipping the proles into an anti-China frenzy with, "Them damn Chinese killed your grandma and grandpa!"

And if the virus was engineered, maybe that was some pre-planned fortuitous blow-back that cuts down on the aging boomer "useless eaters" (as the supreme useless eater Dick Cheney called them), and which thereby offers enormous opportunities for world-wide anti-China propagandizing (and perhaps even a possible casus belli for the next president to mull over after the 2020 election .. )

[Mar 15, 2020] How to treat Coronavirus infection COVID-19

Mar 15, 2020 | thesaker.is

Interview with the member of the Russian Academy of Science Alexander Chuchalin

Translated by Scott Humor

Source

If a situation with the CAVID-19 coronavirus infection follows the same scenario as the SARS epidemic, then by April- May the problem will be less acute. In his interview to the RT the academic Alexander Chuchalin, the Head of Department of Hospital therapy of the Russian National Research Medical Pirogov University. In his opinion, the Russian healthcare system has done its best to protect the country from coronavirus. The doctor also says that, contrary to popular belief, infection with CAVID-19 can be accompanied by a runny nose.

Q: Not only are you one of the best pulmonologists in Europe, you are also in the main risk group now for coronavirus. Could you, please, give some recommendations for people of your generation and those who are younger, those who, as we see, are really susceptible to high mortality -- especially in China, Italy, and Iran.

A: In order to understand the risk groups for this disease: first of all, these are people who come into contact with animals that represent a biological reservoir. For example, in 2002 it was African cats, in 2012 it was camels, and now the science is a little confused, it has not been fully established. There is more evidence that this is a certain kind of bat -- the one that the Chinese eat.

This bat spreads the coronavirus through its bowel movements. After that a seeding process takes place. Let's say, it's a seafood market or some other products, and so on. But, right now we're talking about an epidemic, we are talking about people infecting people. Therefore, this phase has already arrived. The infection spreads person to person.

Coronaviruses are a very, very common viral infections, and people encounter them many, many times in their lives. Within a year a child carries diseases that we call acute colds up to ten times. And behind this acute cold are certain viruses.

And the second place in its prevalence is occupied by the coronavirus. The problem is that these seemingly harmless pathogens were dismissed, and they could never understand the cause-and-effect relationship between a common cold and a virus. If, say, a child has a cold, he has a runny nose, what will follow? And so on. For about two weeks, a child or an adult gets sick -- and all this disappears without a trace.

But in 2002, 2012, and now in 2020, the situation has changed qualitatively. Because the serotypes that have started to circulate they affect the epithelial cells.

Epithelial cells are cells that line the respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, and urinary system. Therefore, a person infected has pulmonary symptoms and intestinal symptoms. And in the study of urine tests, too, allocate with such a viral load.

But these new strains, which we are now talking about, they have these properties -- to come into contact with the second type of receptor, the angiotensin-converting enzyme. And this receptor is associated with such a serious manifestation as cough.

Therefore, a patient who has symptoms of damage to the lower respiratory tract, a characteristic sign is a cough. This affects the epithelial cells of the most distal parts of the respiratory tract. These breathing tubes are very small.

Q: Distal, is it distant?

A: It's far and small in diameter.

Q: So this is what we have next to the bronchi?

A: This is bronchi, then we have bronchioles, respiratory bronchioles. And when the air, the diffusion of gases goes on the surface of the alveoli, they pass just this section of the respiratory tract.

Q: That is, the primary symptom is a cough

A: No, the first is a runny nose, and a sore throat.

Q: They say that there is no runny nose.

A: No, these are big data issues. 74 thousand medical records were processed, and all of them have rhinorrhea (runny nose. – RT). When you are told this -- there are really some nuances. Biology is like this. The biological target of the virus is epithelial cells. The nose, oropharyngeal region, trachea, and then small bronchioles, targeting these regions are especially dangerous to humans. And it turned out that, having this mechanism, the virus leads to a sharp breakdown of the immune system.

Q:Why?

A: An explanation that science gives today is that a protein called interferoninduced protein-10 is involved in the process. It is with this protein that the regulation of innate immunity and acquired immunity is associated. How should we see this? As a very deep damage to lymphocytes.

Q: So you can see lymphocytes falling immediately on the general test?

A: Yes. And if there are white blood cells increase, platelets will increase, and it is more stable lymphopenia, that is, the lymphotoxic effect of the viruses themselves. Therefore, the disease itself has at least four outlined stages. The first stage is virusemia. A harmless cold, nothing special. Seven days, nine-approximately in this interval.

But starting from the ninth day to the 14th, the situation changes qualitatively, because it is during this period that viral and bacterial pneumonia is formed. After damage to epithelial cells in the anatomical space of the respiratory tract, colonization of microorganisms occurs, primarily those that inhabit the human oropharyngeal region.

Q: Do you mean bacteria that is already there?

A: Bacteria, Yes. Therefore, these pneumonias are always viral and bacterial.

Q: So the virus, so to speak, fills the alveoli, where some bacteria live all the time? And they live somewhere by themselves, in some quantity?

A: In general, we believe that the lower respiratory tract is sterile. This is how the defense mechanism works for the lower respiratory tract.

Q: There's nothing there?

A: It's not inhabited. When the virus has entered and it has broken this barrier, where there was a sterile environment in the lungs, microorganisms begin to colonize and multiply.

Q: So it's not a virus that causes pneumonia? Still, pneumonia is caused by bacteria, of course.

A: It's the association of virus-bacteria.

This is the window where the doctor must show his skill. Because often the virusemic period is like a mild disease, like a slight cold, malaise, runny nose, a slight temperature is small, subfebrile. But the period when the cough increased and when there is a shortness of breath -- these are two signs that say: stop, this is a qualitatively different patient.

If this situation is not controlled and the disease progresses, then more serious complications occur. We call it respiratory distress syndrome, shock. A person cannot breathe on their own.

Q: Pulmonary edema?

A: You see, there are a lot of different edemas of a lung. In fact, it depends on how it happens. To be precise, we call this non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema. If, say, cardiogenic pulmonary edema can be treated with certain medications, then this pulmonary edema can only be treated with a mechanical ventilation machine or advanced methods such as extracorporeal hemoxygenation.

If a person transfers to this phase, the immunosuppression caused by the defeat of the acquired and innate immunity becomes fatal and the patient is joined by such aggressive pathogens as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, fungi. And the cases of death that occurred -- 50% of those who were on artificial ventilation for a long time, the alveoli are all filled with fungi.

Fungi appear during the stage of deep immunosuppression. What is the fate of the man who endured all this? That is, he suffered virusemic period, he suffered viral-bacterial pneumonia, he suffered respiratory distress syndrome, non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema, and he suffered septic pneumonia. Will he be healthy or not? And, in fact, today the world is concerned about this: what is the fate of those 90 thousand Chinese who have suffered a coronavirus infection?

Q: But those 90 thousand -- they recovered by themselves, they weren't kept on on a ventilator, they did not get fungi. ARI or acute respiratory infection, that's it?

A: But the problem itself is very important. Because practical medicine is faced with the fact of a sharp increase in the so-called pulmonary fibrosis. And this group of people who have had a corona virus infection develops fibrosis of the lung within a year.

Q: That is, when the lung tissue thickens?

A: Yes. A lung becomes like burnt rubber, if the analogy is to be made.

Q: Say, you get an elderly person who has been accurately diagnosed with a coronavirus. And he is not yet on the ninth day, that is, he does not need to be put on a ventilator yet. How will you treat him?

A: You know what the problem is: we do not treat such patients yet, because there are no medications, medicines that should be used in this phase. There is no panacea. Because a drug that would act on virusemia, on the viral-bacterial phase, on non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema, on sepsis -- is a panacea, this drug doesn't exist.

Because if we go back to the experience of 2002, when we saw the vulnerability of medical personnel, doctors and nurses were recommended to use Tamiflu and oseltamivir -- an anti-influenza drug. And with certain serotypes of the coronavirus, indeed, the mechanism of introduction into the cell is the same as with influenza viruses. Therefore, it has been shown that these drugs can protect individuals who are at high risk of developing this disease.

Or, he is identified as a carrier of the virus, he is given these drugs and so on. But this, I want to say again, has no serious evidence base. The situation that is most threatening, because it determines the fate of a person. A cold is one thing. And another thing a viral-bacterial pneumonia, it is a fundamentally different thing.

And here it is very important to emphasize that it is problematic to help such a patient only with antibiotics. There must be a combination therapy, which includes means that stimulate the immune system. This is a very important point.

Q: What do you mean? So, relatively speaking, you will prescribe him Amoxiclav with some kind of immunomodulator?

A: Yes, we would usually prescribe fourth-generation cephalosporins, not Amoxiclav, in combination with vancomycin. This combination is broad, because very quickly there is a process of a change of gram-positive and gram-negative flora. But what immunomodulatory drug to prescribe is a question for scientific research.

So, we understand that the immune system will suffer dramatically. We understand the high vulnerability of a person to the infection that begins to colonize the respiratory tract. So, unfortunately, we don't have a clear line. But what really can help such patients in this situation is immunoglobulins. Because this is substitution therapy.

And therefore, such patients are prescribed high immunoglobulins so that they do not develop sepsis, at least they do not enter the sepsis phase. American doctors used this drug in their Ebola patient. This is a group drug, an analog of nucleosides. This is a group of drugs that are used for herpes, cytomegalovirus, and so on.

Q: So this is antiviral or antiviral-supporting therapy, right?

A: No, this is a drug that still acts on the mechanisms in the cell that resist virus replication. Here in my hands (photo of US President Donald trump. – RT). He gathered all the top people who could speak out on promising drugs. Two questions that he raised, he was preparing for this conference. The first question is: how ready are scientists in the United States of America to introduce the vaccine?

Q: Eighteen months.

A: Yes, absolutely. That's two years. He asked what in this case? Does the country have drugs that could protect? And, as a matter of fact, they said: Yes, there is such a drug.

Q: What?

A:What kind of drug is this? It's called Remdesivir

Q: Let's look at it.

A: That's what scientists said, given the experience that we have, and discussions and so on. Although, of course, there are other drugs that are being actively studied. In general, this direction is very interesting: in fact, it is considered promising. The use of mesenchymal stem cells is considered promising. But at what stage?

Q: As a person who has been doing this for many years, treating everything from asthma to pneumonia, can you somehow try to predict the development of this epidemic, for example, in Russia?

A: I want to say that if we compare Russia with the surrounding world in case of the coronavirus of 2002. We didn't have a single patient here.

Q: Maybe we just didn't diagnose them?

A: As you know, there are strong aspects of Russian healthcare in this situation, and I would like to stress this. This is the work of our sanitary and epidemiologic services. They really did their best to protect our country. This is on one side, as if punitive measures. And on the second side is the work of the Vector Research Institute, which made diagnostics for the coronavirus in a very short time, and they did everything absolutely. And it was tested at the CDC, and they got a certificate indicating high specificity and sensitivity.

Q: The Vector diagnostic kit is the only certified

A: Yes.

Q: The virus is already in Russia, no matter how much the sanitary service tries. How do you think it will develop? Will it end in the spring, for example, with the arrival of summer?

A: You know, I think the picture repeats what it was then with the SARS. If you remember

Q: Then? Do you mean in 2002? When it was SARS?

A: Yes, that's the one. If we follow this scenario, we should say that somewhere in April or May this problem will become less acute.

Q: Just because of the seasonal cessation of respiratory infections?

A: Yeah. The climate factor and a number of other factors. Now, the trouble, of course, comes to us not from China, but from Europe. Those who return from these countries, primarily from Italy, today, remember: Carlo Urbani . He accomplished a lot of things. I think this is just a hero of a doctor who has done so much. He was a virologist from Milan.

Q: Back in 2002?

A: He was a WHO expert. I met with him through the World Health Organization. He was on the list as an expert on coronaviruses. And then he was sent to Hanoi. They were dispatching doctors, and he got to go to Vietnam. And in Vietnam, when he arrived, there was a panic. Their doctors stopped coming to work. Their medical staff, also. There had patients, but there wasn't any medical personnel and no doctors.

He assessed the situation. With difficulty, he managed to break it, to remove this panic situation that was then in the hospital. But most importantly, he began to communicate with the government and said: close the country to quarantine. That's where it all came from. It came from Urbani. They started to fight back.

Q: The Vietnamese?

A: Yes, the government of Vietnam. That this would affect the economy, tourism, and so on. But, he found these words, he convinced them. And Vietnam was the first country to come out of this. And he thought his work was done. He collected material for a virological examination and boarded a plane to Bangkok.

He was supposed to meet with the American virologists there. During the flight, he realized that he got ill. He got sick, just like those poor Vietnamese in that hospital. And he began to write everything down and describing it. This is this exact time, and this is how I feel.

Q: The flight was about three hours?

A: Yes, about three hours. And during these three hours, he became an invalid who couldn't get up and move on his own. Here we see how the window itself works, and we understand when pneumonia joins -- this window can be extremely, extremely short in duration. And when he was barely able to get down the aircraft ladder, he left the last entry: "I'm waving to them so they don't come near me."

That is, American virologists wanted to meet Urbani, but he said: let's not contact. He died in an intensive care unit. And there was an autopsy. And from his lung tissue was isolated a strain that was named after him – "Urban I-2". Here is a very story that I am telling you. A tragedy, of course.

Q: What would you recommend to a person who finds himself Well, we have already agreed that the virus is in the general population. We can't really control it anymore.

A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of all, take a good care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.

Q: To wash it with saltwater?

A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus cleaners to stop running nose and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free unobstructed breath should come after all. The second thing is the oropharyngeal area behind the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of the oropharyngeal region.

Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down your throat?

A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good airways. Of all the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can afford to buy a nebulizer or

Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?

A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good state. When a cough starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe for patients with bronchial asthma. This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol. Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance, relieve spasm.

Q: You mean expectorant?" Mucolytic ACC?

A: Yes, ACC and Fluimucil. And what you can't do is use glucocorticosteroids. This virus replication is rapidly increasing by them.

Q: What does that mean?

A: Corticosteroids is prednisone, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, betamethasone.

Q: So you don't need to inject hormones, relatively speaking, if you have a viral infection?

A: There are inhaled steroids. But there are patients with asthma who are ill and are on this therapy. But this has to be a tailor-made solutions. Of course, 2020 will go down in medical history as a year of a new disease. We must admit that we have understood this new disease. Two new pneumonias have arrived. First is pneumonia, which is caused by e-cigarettes, vapes, and now in the United States, people have died from this

Q: several thousand teenagers. Yes, this is a well-known fact, and how to treat it is unclear. You put them on a ventilator -- they die immediately.

A: Yes. Do you understand what the problem is? Here they develop those changes in the lungs that occur during this process. They seem to be similar (to the changes from the coronavirus). This is respiratory distress syndrome, which we are talking about. The literature raises very serious questions: the role of coronaviruses in transplantation. One of the problems is obliterating bronchiolitis, which occurs especially during transplantation.

Q: A lung transplant?

A: Yes, lungs and bone marrow. Stem cell. As a matter of fact, everything is well done, everything is normal, the person has responded to this therapy, and the problem of respiratory failure is beginning to grow. And the cause of these bronchiolitis was caught -- it is a coronavirus That is, new knowledge has come.

How to treat Coronavirus infection COVID-19 in Russian

https://www.youtube.com/embed/FbRJLcRBSOY?feature=oembed

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48 Comments

Larchmonter445 on March 14, 2020 , · at 11:05 pm EST/EDT

Scary as hell.

What a biological horror.

They want everyone to socially distance themselves. Just read this interview.

Scott on March 14, 2020 , · at 11:15 pm EST/EDT
I had SARS back then. My regular dentist called sick, and his partner just came from Vietnam.
I was ill bedridden for 6 weeks with a viral pneumonia. Refused to be hospitalized, though.
Socializing was the last thing on my mind.
Harry_Red on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:10 am EST/EDT
I can attest from experience that a mixture of salt and warm water is the number one remedie in the arsenal against these types of infections.

Use it aggressively !

Two to three teaspoons of salt in a glass mixed with warm water. Try to gargle it in small to medium sips for about 5 minutes. You might not finish the entire glass in 1 sitting. Save the glass.

Repeat this process every 2 to 3 hours. It is one of God's miracles ;-) .

Besides viral infections, you can even cleanse your teeth and gums regularly with salt water.

Another important remedie for soar throats is squeezing half a lemon and mixing it with the highest quality honey available to you, without diluting the mix in water. Let it burn your throat, if it does, it will eventually have a soothing feeling after repeated sips and repeating sittings.

May God keep you all in good health !

Anonius on March 15, 2020 , · at 11:03 am EST/EDT
Funny, this is what my mother's family always used. Salt and water is also very effective on swellings and bruising.
Babushka in Oz on March 14, 2020 , · at 11:30 pm EST/EDT
Thanks Saker and Scott a very timely translation.

Regarding the treatment steps, the following relates to asthma, but may be of interest

The National Asthma Council Australia video on how to perform nasal irrigation.

https://www.nationalasthma.org.au/living-with-asthma/how-to-videos/how-to-perform-nasal-irrigation-with-fess-sinu-cleanse

Maiden PEI on March 15, 2020 , · at 12:41 am EST/EDT
I CAN TESTIFY TO THE GREAT EFFECTIVENESS OF NASAL RINSES

If I start nasal rinses as soon as I feel the throat tickle of a cold coming on, I don't get the cold.

I haven't had one in years.

This year, though, I mustn't had started the rinses soon enough as I did get the cold.

BUT, instead of stopping the rinses, I upped them to every 2hrs & I never had to blow my nose ONCE all through the two week cold!

AND it wasn't miserable, like usual, at all.

I gradually decreased the frequency of the rinses as the cold got better.

I was continuing the rinses, preventatively, every day, but now with the added risk of COVID-19, I will increase that to AM & PM, as recommended &, of course, will increase that if I become symptomatic.

Babushka in Oz on March 15, 2020 , · at 2:37 am EST/EDT
As a former yoga teacher I can also recommend Alternate Nostril breathing.

To clean the sinus, clear the head and calm the mind and spirit. Super essential now to supercharge our bodies with positive energy and clear the lungs.

I have the advantage of living near a beach and this is part of my daily walk and deep breathing ritual. I have not had a cold or sniffle for a many years, nor do I ever have the flu injection.

https://www.healthline.com/health/alternate-nostril-breathing

Pamela on March 15, 2020 , · at 2:08 pm EST/EDT
I recently learned of this too Babushka. It's helpful for learning how blocked – often from internal swelling due to inflammation – they can be. Breathing with both, we learn to interpret the compensation, so we can easily think "Oh I dont have a problem. This can be wrong, as I discovered I was.. When I tried to alternate nasal breathe, I was shocked at how I almost couldnt. Breathe, that is. It was an eye opener for me.

I had been suffering from internal nasal swelling due to my reaction to Salicylates – which I'm among those people intolerant of. I've had it since childhood but just let it go, eating the fruits I love so much. But on realising how bad the nasal results were, I got checked for polyps and then just cut the food out.

I also learned the saline nasal washes from the Indian nurses and Doctors I made friends with years ago in UK. You dont need a machine – as I'm sure you know. They just pour normal saline** into a cupped palm of hand, close off the opposite side nasal with opposite hand, and slowly inhale it to reach the back of the nasal passage, then repeat changing sides.

** N/Saline is roughly 1 tsp salt in 1L water!!

Glad to see you are staying well. Are you as glad as I you dont live in UK, now that we'd be condemned to isolation for 4 months
And then some wonder why I keep saying – the reaction is out of all proportion to the infection!!

Babushka in Oz on March 15, 2020 , · at 6:03 pm EST/EDT
Thanks Pamela

Yes, keeping as well as possible as the insanity descends on this great land.

My husband is a great believer in cold water swimming to keep the immune system in good tune – does it all year round – every day ritual. Not my thing, but turning the shower to cold for the last few bursts will also close the pores and boost immunity.

Btw – I am a different person to Babuška, who also lives in Aussie and shares her wonderful wisdom in the cafe.

S75ponny on March 14, 2020 , · at 11:58 pm EST/EDT
Many thanks to Alexander Chuchalin for sharing his expertise and also to Scott Humor for this translation.

Abundance of information which I was waiting for.

TEP on March 15, 2020 , · at 12:03 am EST/EDT
Excellent informative article. This should be shared extensively in the current COVID-19 environment, particularly among healthcare professionals.
S75ponny on March 15, 2020 , · at 12:50 am EST/EDT
"This should be shared extensively in the current COVID-19 environment, particularly among healthcare professionals."

Done already at fairly high level, so far no applause. Let's give them time to digest and overcome their sense of innocent supremacy

Just saying

Jim Dukarm on March 15, 2020 , · at 12:07 am EST/EDT
Scott, молодец.
Oliver K on March 15, 2020 , · at 2:23 am EST/EDT
I do not understand the general recommendations:

"A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of all, take a good care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.
Q: To wash it with saltwater?
A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus cleaners to stop running nose and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free unobstructed breath should come after all. The second thing is the oropharyngeal area behind the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of the oropharyngeal region.
Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down your throat?
A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good airways. Of all the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can afford to buy a nebulizer or
Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?
A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good state. When a cough starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe for patients with bronchial asthma. This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol. Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance, relieve spasm."

1. Okay, the "washing with sea water" I associate with the sea water nasal sprays -- is this roughly correct?
2. But what is meant with "lavage"? Gurgling with salt water, say?
3. And then the aerosol thing, what is that? Is this related to the good old method of putting hot water with something into a bowl, your head over it, and cover with a towel?

Maiden PEI on March 15, 2020 , · at 4:13 am EST/EDT
WASHING WITH SEA WATER – he is talking about what is called "nasal rinses" also called "nasal washes" or "nasal lavages" look online for videos how to do it.

LAVAGE – is French for "wash", here he means "nasal washes" not gurgling.

BOTH nasal washes & gurgling (back of throat) should be done for regular/usual nose & mouth hygiene, to prevent colds/flu & to relieve cold/flu symptoms.

AEROSOL – no, not putting head over hot water, that's "steam inhalation" aerosol is a fine mist, either sprayed or inhaled from a device, like for asthma.

Hope this explanation helps!

Oliver K on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:16 am EST/EDT
Thanks.
I understand now the "nasal washes" part: found
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_irrigation
Wikipedia Nasal irrigation
and also found (simple) devices which one can purchase. That solves that.

But the "gurgling" is still unclear to me. The text sound as if it weren't just ordinary gurgling, but part of the nasal irrigation, somehow.

Concerning the mist to be inhaled: in recent weeks I was searching for information and devices about that, but couldn't find much solid information for the simple uses related to colds. So I opted for buying a simple small device which boils water, and one puts some essential oils in it. This steam inhalation is traditional, easy to understand, and one feels the effect.
Found
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebulizer
Wikipedia Nebulizer
but that also doesn't speak about the non-medical use. One can buy devices, but information is always about the medical cases. So for now I stay away from that.

Just an ordinary pleb on March 15, 2020 , · at 9:48 am EST/EDT
He means "Gargling" I believe. Sage tea was a common gargle for sore throats etc in the past.
Oliver K on March 15, 2020 , · at 10:19 am EST/EDT
Indeed, I meant "gargling".
For some time I used in the UK the word "gurgling" when I mean "gargling" -- people would then always "gurgle", but never say something (I guess they thought I wanted to be funny ;-)).
Anonius on March 15, 2020 , · at 11:07 am EST/EDT
Not so fast, water heavy on salt is excellent for gargling your sore throat. Centuries old method. Of course other natural methods work also.
Michel V. on March 15, 2020 , · at 4:42 pm EST/EDT
Hi, you can also use a "nebulizer" to nebulize essential oils without water as a carrier: the essential oils will have an easy way to go deep into the respiratory system. (I would use all kind of soft essential oils and in some case add a little bit of strong oils).
I made some French and Dutch pages about this, here is a link to an avi, showing the working of such a nebulizer. Not to confound with the fancy products that use water as a carrier!
No spam intended as I have not enough to sell here anyway I'm in France and we are almost in complete lockdown anyway now: to moderators)

http://www.cevenat.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/diffuseur.avi

You also have ventillators that "diffuse" essential oils through a pad, less effective than the "real nebulizers", but still effectif in hospitals:
Voir aussi :
Voici deux liens (anciens), de l'utilisation de diffuseurs dans l'hôpital de Manchester au Royaume-Uni:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4116053.stm
Article de 2004, dans le contexte des maladies nosocomiales.

Le lien suivant, de l'hôpital de Wytenshawe montre un appareil par ventilation plus grand:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/6471475.stm

Un autre lien relaté sur la puissance des huiles essentielles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/sussex/8584753.stm

Staph Infection ressources:
https://www.staph-infection-resources.com/prevention/airborne/

Daniel on March 15, 2020 , · at 3:44 am EST/EDT
The Saker

The Russian Academic is a smart fellow, but I think following the money can yield results quicker and easier. Covid-19 may be a new virus, but the script is old and worn out from overuse. I personally got acquainted with this bloody script during the aids pandemic. The script albeit macabre, is simple and makes good business sense. Recurring expenditure by patients makes for guaranteed income for big "Pharma". Hence the cure for almost all diseases is permanent medication for the patient. This is called "Corporate Interests" and Doctors, Academics, politicians, me and you are under its complete domination. Summer is coming to the Northern hemisphere and with it come the reprieve from the pandemic, but please keep your focus on the money for that's were they will reveal themselves.

Saji Hameed on March 15, 2020 , · at 4:56 am EST/EDT
I am much inclined to agree with Daniel.

I was a bit confused by the Russian academician's assertion that the lower respiratory tract (lungs etc.) are not inhabited by bacteria. This is not true https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6297685/ Therefore, some of the assertions by the good physician might be incorrect to some degree.

What is known for sure is that a huge scare campaign is going on among the world's media, and governments are forced to do things that may not be in the states' best interests. Accompanying this is a distinct lack of objective information related to the disease and the virus responsible for it.

I hope the discourse turns sane soon; in a large sense, the impact of the virus has been negligible considering that it has been out there at least for 3 months at the end of the winter season.

I too look forward to understand who will profit from this scare.

Lumi on March 15, 2020 , · at 8:18 am EST/EDT
Yes Daniel, yes Saji, I happily agree with you. Let's not succumb to fear. Thanks Harry for the salt water reminder. Thanks translators for this informative Interview.
Makedonia on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:38 am EST/EDT
I must say that I am quite disappointed with both Russia and China in that they are more or less following or copying the Western model of conventional medicine and it seems either the medical professional there are either just looking at how to make as much money as possible from human suffering or it's just more "modern" to adopt the Western way of doing things. The Chinese themselves are abandoning 5000 years of proven traditional medicine that has shown effectiveness in dealing with almost all disease as well as successfully fighting various plagues that have attacked their country over the centuries. As is the case, Chinese now want to look modern and use Western pharmaceuticals. It's a massive shame that Russia and China don't get together and create a new model of medicine incorporating both traditional and modern scientific means. They both have the resources, knowledge and ability to do so. People don't even realize the miraculous innovations that Soviet doctors accomplished but have been lost along with other feats of that era. Western medicine or Big Pharma preys on people's suffering for the sake of profit. Even Goldman Sachs admitted there is no profit in the cure of cancer.
Anyway, in regard to the current situation, what I do is follow Dr Andrew Saul's protocol to fight the virus. It involves cheap and effective vitamins including vitamins C and D3, selenium, zinc and magnesium. Vitamin C is so so important. Even Chinese doctors are now using it in their fight against the virus. Also I take elderberry, medicinal mushrooms, olive leaf and other antiviral supplements. I urge you to do an internet search on these and in particular Andrew Saul's protocol. Additionally, I do a lot of things to strengthen my immune system like taking infra-red saunas. And if I needed treatment I would consider ozone therapy and hyperthermia to kill the virus. Listen to podcasts by Gary Null, Mike Adams of Natural News, Dr Ronald Hoffman of Intelligent Medicine, and a great interviewer on http://www.extremehealthradio.com . These guys are a treasure trove of information and who I consider the real American heroes.
I write this because it's not intended to replace professional medical advice but is only what I do and what I would do regarding both the coronavirus and good health in general.
But in the end, the current medical system based on greed and profit must be replaced or we will forever see loved ones needlessly suffer and die.
Blue Dotterel on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:43 am EST/EDT
Thanks for the translation Scott,

An article in Zero Hedge also addresses this issue in a slightly different way:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tverberg-it-easy-overdo-covid-19-quarantines

The conclusion is one that I would advocate based on my life experience:

"We also need to be looking for new approaches for fighting COVID-19. One approach that is not being used significantly to date is trying to strengthen people's own immune systems. Such an approach might help people's own immune system to fight off the disease, thereby lowering death rates. Nutrition experts recommend supplementing diets with Vitamins A, C, E, antioxidants and selenium. Other experts say zinc, Vitamin D and elderberry may be helpful. Staying away from cold temperatures also seems to be important. Drinking plenty of water after coming down with the disease may be beneficial as well. If we can help people's own bodies fight the disease, the burden on the medical system will be lower."

I have rarely suffered from the "flu", maybe 3 or 4 times in my 60+ years, and rarely suffer from colds (usually ending within 3-4 days). When I do suffer from the latter, it is usually as a result of improper dress for inclement weather, or a week of inadequate eating; that is, not usually eating a well balanced diet, as I usually strive to do.

So instead of accentuating the negative, maybe, we should consider strengthening the positive things we can do. Of course, the aged and infirm need to be dealt with otherwise. But the key for the rest of us is strengthening our immune systems.

Opport Knocks on March 15, 2020 , · at 6:39 am EST/EDT
In my experience, the best preventative is an alkaline diet as viruses need a human blood environment that is slightly more acidic than the normal 7.35 to 7.45 range in order to propagate. I have been 5 years cold/flu free.

If you start to experience symptoms, one trick to quickly elevate blood pH is to sleep with a piece of sliced onion (yellow are best) in your socks. The sulfides in the onions will elevate blood pH and by morning the symptoms are gone.

https://www.mynaturaltreatment.com/natural-ways-to-prevent-coronavirus-covid-19-infection

Daniel on March 15, 2020 , · at 7:51 am EST/EDT
Following the Scientific way to understand an economic stunt like Covid-19 is time wasting. Big "Pharma" will come with a solution and it is called lifetime medication (jokingly called 'three times a day). During the Aids epidemic, I did a lot of research on Virology and Toxicology in order to understand certain logic defying things regarding the epidemic progression. All I could come up with is that medicine has long parted ways with objective scientific practice under immense pressure from Big Pharma. People it doesn't pay to cure a disease but it is highly profitable to come with a so called "life prolonging substance" (aka Patenting).. Unfortunately during this phase of instilling mortal terror in the masses, a lot of innocent lives will be lost during the winter season. Things will clear up in summer and by then more information will be available and patterns would be clearly discernible.
Robert Shule on March 15, 2020 , · at 4:20 pm EST/EDT
I wonder if the Covid-19 pandemic will subside when the MSM ratings begin to decline because people will be getting tired of the regurgitated news, and a new news story will come up?

By the way, Russian Doctor gives very sensible advice. This is the kind of information we should be getting on the MSM, but are not.

metamars on March 15, 2020 , · at 10:17 am EST/EDT
I'm not a doctor, but I thought this information was so important, I immediately alerted my doctor. I encourage everyone else to do so, also. Most of it, we can't actualize, directly. However, the information about lavage could be life saving, and I haven't heard that ANYWHERE else, certainly not in official pronouncements or mainstream media. (With one exception, viz. Dr. Oz, I haven't even heard about people boosting their Vitamin D levels. This, in spite of research showing that going from Vitamin D deficiency to sufficient supplementation can cut your risk of upper respiratory infection in half.)

I am wondering why this doctor did not mention Vitamin D, either. Yes, it's of limited usefulness after an infection already sets in, but, at least in the US, we are looking at the medical system getting overwhelmed. Some people put Vitamin D deficiency levels in the US at 40%. If we can cut the risk of needing a ventilator in half, for 40% of the population, that might flatten the curve enough to avoid forcing doctors to cut off treatment to people over a certain age. (I have read that this is being done in Italy, though I don't know, for sure.)

Note to commentator: moderation policy is no use of caps .. caps have been removed mod

teranam13 on March 15, 2020 , · at 10:55 am EST/EDT
Scott, a million thanks. Now you are talking my language. I'm e mailing this to all my friends especially the ones in the medical field.

I'd like to know more about the Vector disposal kits, however. Will research it.

teranam13 on March 15, 2020 , · at 11:36 am EST/EDT
From Mike Adams at Naturalnews.com

put in an essential oil diffuser or a deep lung nebulizer

3% hydrogen peroxide ( phew! is really strong, go easy)
2 drops of iodine
colloidal silver ( my little generator makes 12ppm)

Probably the total liquid amount will be 50cc or 1/8 cup? depending on the capacity of your device. Usually respiratory treatments are from 10-15 minutes. My guess would be to mix the colloidal silver 2:1 as a liquid base. Colloidal silver is touted to interfere with viral wall and its replication abilities.

PeterP on March 15, 2020 , · at 11:51 am EST/EDT
Vaping for the 65+ ..1 tablespoon of Vick's dissolved in a quart of boiling water, breath in deeply repeatedly.
V on March 15, 2020 , · at 12:12 pm EST/EDT
Thank you so much Scott for translating this important information – I am going to email to family and friends. Also going to stock up on more salt. Already do the Vit D.

Funnily enough my mother said to me back in early February that gargling and cleansing with salt water was the best thing to use to avoid the Covid 19 virus she was so right!

Why aren't our governments, health services and media telling us to do this? Such a simple thing that everyone can afford to do ..I think we all know .

Craig Mouldey on March 15, 2020 , · at 12:32 pm EST/EDT
Well, this is not 'just a cold'. It is much worse. This finally would explain the extraordinary measures taken worldwide to try and contain it.
And I'm 66.
Col...'the farmer from NZ' on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:14 pm EST/EDT
Yeah Craig, that idiotic brigade has so much egg on their faces now they will be looking like fried omelets!
I'm 66 this September too.

Take great care
Col

Craig Mouldey on March 15, 2020 , · at 12:49 pm EST/EDT
It was rather eye-opening with his remarks that if someone contracts Corona virus within a year changes occur to the lungs. A thickening.
California on March 15, 2020 , · at 1:10 pm EST/EDT
Birdseed. The Russians seem to have left a clue. One should ask what the number is of this useful protein. If it is Nsp15 it is in my exotic birds' mix. I ordered 8 pounds of the specific seed which were delivered last Thursday and will order another batch when possible. If the virus doesn't get me, my husband will. I am no scientist but there are some coincidences here.

Favorov explains that the virus mimics a useful protein consumed by human cells. It seems that the cells of an older organism require this "useful" substance in much larger quantities and thus fuse with the virus more actively.
https://www.rt.com/news/482612-coronavirus-specialists-odds-catching-surviving/

I knew researchers were homing in on Nsp15 and this is what gets interesting. Virology gives the role of Nsp15 in coronavirus replication as enigmatic. When I read virology I thought-weird- Nsp15 is acting like two different proteins. Then I saw Favorov's explanation, the real protein and an imposter protein. "EndoU-deficient coronaviruses were viable and replicated to near wild-type virus levels in fibroblast cells." This would explain why the elderly are hit hardest.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020 2:19PM
RIVERSIDE (KABC) -- A team that includes UC Riverside researchers has identified a protein in a virus from the previous decade that might prove beneficial in developing a vaccine to combat novel coronavirus, according to the university.

Researchers isolated a protein designated, designated as "Nsp15," from the severe acute respiratory syndrome – SARS – outbreak of 2003 that could be useful in testing for vaccines intended to prevent or reduce the threat of coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. The protein found in coronavirus is 89% identical to a protein discovered in SARS, suggesting that drugs developed to treat that disease could work for the current outbreak plaguing countries around the world.

Virology. 2018 Apr;517:157-163. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2017.12.024.
EpuCoronavirus EndoU is encoded within the sequence of nonstructural
protein (nsp) 15, which was initially identified as a component of the
viral replication complex. Biochemical and structural studies revealed
the enzymatic nature of nsp15/EndoU, which was postulated to be
essential for the unique replication cycle of viruses in the order
Nidovirales. However, the role of nsp15 in coronavirus replication was
enigmatic as EndoU-deficient coronaviruses were viable and replicated
to near wild-type virus levels in fibroblast cells. A breakthrough in
our understanding of the role of EndoU was revealed in recent studies,
which showed that EndoU mediates the evasion of viral double-stranded
RNA recognition by host sensors in macrophages. This new discovery of
nsp15/EndoU function leads to new opportunities for investigating how
a viral EndoU contributes to pathogenesis and exploiting this enzyme
for therapeutics and vaccine design against pathogenic coronaviruses.

teranam13 on March 15, 2020 , · at 1:42 pm EST/EDT
immunolgy is not my forte but this article discusses how testing is done..
It is a bit academic but the concepts are there.

https://www.creative-diagnostics.com/Immunochromatography-guide.htm

and this further explains the concept and why it is handy in the field

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2268275/

Col...'the farmer from NZ' on March 15, 2020 , · at 1:55 pm EST/EDT
Interesting .Not so much as a murmur yet from the idiotic "its just a cold" brigade.
KINZAZA on March 15, 2020 , · at 4:04 pm EST/EDT
PLANdemic is a new word that is becoming very popular. Here is a nice overview of the medical marshal law, and how it all came about. Very detailed and superbly researched. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2oHhN3heo

Saw lots of military today in my area, and yet I feel like there is something isn't working for the insects who self-elected themselves to rule over humanity. The theater curtains are full of holes, and too many people can see the genocidal actors and their pathetic scripts.

Ishkabibble on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:05 pm EST/EDT
Assuming that I French kiss a person who has covid, how much time from the moment that kiss is ended, if any, do I have to wash away "all traces" of that kiss from my mouth in order to prevent being infected with covid? A. Impossible to prevent infection. B. Mere seconds. C. A few minutes. D. An hour. E. 24 hours.

Assuming that I "catch" covid from an infected person TODAY, in exactly how much time will the most sensitive test available report/confirm that I am indeed infected with covid? A. An hour. B. 24 hours. C. 48 hours. D. 72 hours. E. 7 days. F. 14 days. G. 30 days? What is the market name for the most sensitive test available for earliest possible detection? How do the 15-minute, Chinese-developed blood tests stack up against the most sensitive?

Assuming that I "catch" the covid infection today, in exactly how much time will/can the covid in ME be transmitted to others? For example, if I sneeze into the air tomorrow and someone inhales some of those droplets, will those droplets "infect" that person with covid? If not tomorrow, how many days down the road?

Thanks.

Col...'the farmer from NZ' on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:09 pm EST/EDT
Money, Money, Money Trump language yet another example of obscene unveiled greed it will not go down well with the Germans.
A quote from the below link

"According to an anonymous source quoted in the newspaper, Trump was doing everything to secure a vaccine against the coronavirus for the US, "but for the US only".

The German government was reportedly offering its own financial incentives for the vaccine to stay in the country.

The German health minister Jens Spahn said that a takeover of the CureVac company by the Trump administration was "off the table". CureVac would only develop vaccine "for the whole world", Spahn said, "not for individual countries".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/15/trump-offers-large-sums-for-exclusive-access-to-coronavirus-vaccine

PokeTheTruth on March 15, 2020 , · at 5:10 pm EST/EDT
Excellent article, thank you Saker and Scott for the translation. I have five questions.

1. Can a person be infected with influenza and coronavirus at the same time? I ask because there is an epidemic of influenza in the U.S. with 29,000,000 (29 million) so far and the symptoms are nearly the same between them (e.g., coughing, sneezing, body chill, muscle ache, intestinal disorder, fever.)

Source: https://www.contagionlive.com/news/us-flu-cases-reach-29-million-have-we-hit-peak-season

2. We read of the horrific numbers coming out of Italy. Are there different strains of coronavirus active, some being more virulent than others? Can those different strains be identified by microscopic examination?

3. Did Dr. Chuchalin have an opinion as to whether this epidemic of coronavirus was developed in a laboratory as oppose to in nature?

4. Did Dr. Chuchalin have an opinion about more than one "patient zero" originating from geographic locations other than from Wuhan, China?

5. Vaccines such as for influenza introduce antigens to stimulate the immune system and create antibodies to neutralize that particular strain of the virus. Every year a vaccine is created to address new strains of the flu. However if a person does not receive the yearly vaccine (like me), the body will fight off the infection and once an antibody has been produced, a copy remains in the body so that if the same antigen appears again, it can be dealt with more quickly.

Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320101#immunity

My question: If a person contracts cononavirus and successfully recovers through normal palliative care, does he/she now have immunity to that strain of coronavirus like what happens with influenza?

Milan on March 15, 2020 , · at 6:28 pm EST/EDT
Warning here about nasal rinses. My Doctor was adamant never ever use regular water it is extremely dangerous. The water has to be sterile which means buy distilled water otherwise you are playing a very dangerous game one that will kill you.

Be healthy and safe.

teranam13 on March 15, 2020 , · at 7:06 pm EST/EDT
The question was posed can one have two viral infections at the same time? Since in the USA the medical incompetents did not test, no one knows what they have when they exhibit symptoms unless the person becomes critical.

The first testing in the USA took 24-72 hours because the Feds forbade the state labs from testing so samples had to be sent to the CDC in Atlanta. Lab testing takes awhile.

Now in the above article Mr.Chuchalin mentions Vector diagnostic kits–with this one can get a result in 10 minutes and the amount of training necessary to administer and read it is minimal. 10 freaking minutes!!!!

So all I can tell you is my experience here at ground zero in Roseville, CA which hosted the first fatality ( at least the first diagnosed one). I had the usual flu which I contained after 10 days. Then I had to have some very needed dental surgery ( two hours worth) after which strangely enough I contracted an unusual rhinitis–watery flow from my nose and into the back of my throat. I never get this. Then there came a dry cough and an ache in my upper chest. ( no temperature and no shortness of breath). I am on antibiotics for the dental surgery so that actually is good. ( old school ampicillin). So now I have a stint of staying in, gargling to prevent migration deep into the lungs. , giving myself breathing treatments with colloidal silver, taking all sorts of anti viral herbal medicines to cut viral reproduction etc. Thanks to the above article I was able to focus in on what was possibly going on and rather than continue to be puzzled by it or ignore it, I am on it!!!

So, in my opinion,,,yes, one can have two viral infections at once or one after another.

Azorka1861 on March 15, 2020 , · at 8:05 pm EST/EDT
2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory and Template

2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data / WHO situation reports on March 15, 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic

Jim on March 15, 2020 , · at 8:47 pm EST/EDT
Scary stuff yet surely a vital statistic is missing. These people must have a clear understanding of the mortality rate associated with this infection. They are locking down the entire world so it seems likely they would have looked into this a little bit.

The number of celebrities contracting the disease seems to be flatlining possibly because this phenomenon strongly advertisers a widespread contamination. If such large scale contamination exists in the populace it follows that the mortality rate is far lower than stated.

Anyway stock markets have crashed but only so far. They are predicting the end of the economic system as we know it. Someone somewhere does not believe them.

JC on March 15, 2020 , · at 8:52 pm EST/EDT
Life saver: Stabilized allicin extracted from garlic (Allimax/AllicinMax). This is such strong medicin to all kinds of infections that first time users should be aware of the possibility of herxheimer reactions if more than the recommended amount of capsules are taken.

My brother-in-law suffered from Lyme disease in the brain where it is very hard to get rid of because of the blood-brain barrier. No medication did him any good until he started taking AllicinMax capsules that cured him completely.

In case of infection of the lungs allicin in a sterile solution can be inhaled with the help of a nebulizer. No kidding, 100% corona proof!

More info here:
US: https://www.allimax.us/
CA: https://allimax.ca/
UK: https://www.allicin.co.uk/
DE: https://www.allicin-allimax-deutschland.de/

Stay healthy!

[Mar 15, 2020] French Health Minister Warns Certain Drugs May Aggravate Coronavirus Infection

Mar 15, 2020 | sputniknews.com

French Health Minister Olivier Veran, a qualified doctor and neurologist, on Saturday warned of certain types of anti-inflammatory drugs that may worsen the infection and the spread of the coronavirus.

"The taking of anti-inflammatories (ibuprofen, cortisone ) could be a factor in aggravating the infection. In case of fever, take paracetamol. If you are already taking anti-inflammatory drugs, ask your doctor's advice," Veran tweeted.

⚠️ #COVIDー19 | La prise d'anti-inflammatoires (ibuprofène, cortisone, ...) pourrait être un facteur d'aggravation de l'infection. En cas de fièvre, prenez du paracétamol.
Si vous êtes déjà sous anti-inflammatoires ou en cas de doute, demandez conseil à votre médecin.

-- Olivier Véran (@olivierveran) March 14, 2020

French heath officials also warned of using anti-inflammatories as they are known to pose a risk to people with infectious diseases because they tend to reduce the body's immune system response, according to The Guardian .

They rather recommend taking paracetamol because "it will reduce the fever without counterattacking the inflammation".

"Anti-inflammatory drugs increase the risk of complications when there is a fever or infection," warned Jean-Louis Montastruc, the head of pharmacology at Toulouse Hospital, according to The Guardian.

The French Health Ministry has reportedly been advising patients since mid-January to consult pharmacies when purchasing common pain relievers such as ibuprofen, paracetamol and aspirin, to be reminded of the risks.

France is one of the worst-affected countries in Europe, which has been declared a new virus hotspot after infections on the continent rose dramatically this month, while those in China have been reported to be leveling off.

On Saturday, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced that the number of infection cases in France jumped 4,499, among which 154 are in critical condition, whereas the death toll had risen to 91 people.

Philippe has also announced that the country would shut most shops, restaurants and entertainment facilities beginning midnight on Saturday and people should stay home as long as possible as the spread of coronavirus accelerates.

As part of the country's response to the pandemic, a number of iconic monuments in Paris have been closed, including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, the Versailles Palace, Louvre, Orsay Museum and Centre Pompidou.

[Mar 15, 2020] A Planet of Viruses Second Edition Zimmer, Carl 9780226294209 Amazon.com Books

Mar 15, 2020 | www.amazon.com

That same year, another scientists named Dana Willner led a virus-hunting expedition of her own. Instead of a cave, she dove into the human body. Willner had people cough up sputum into a cup, and out of that fluid she and her colleagues fished out frag- ments of DNA. They compared the DNA fragments to millions of sequences stored in online databases. Much of the DNA was hu- man, but many fragments came from viruses. Before Willner's ex- pedition, scientists had assumed the lungs of healthy people were sterile. Yet Willner discovered that, on average, people have 174 species of viruses in the lungs. Only 10 percent of the species Will- ner found bore any close kinship to any virus ever found before.

[Mar 14, 2020] The most primitive testing for coronavirus in an autopsy or living person is as easy as looking through a microscope and positively identifying the virus as they are present in large qualtities

Mar 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Mar 14 2020 6:26 utc | 215

Siotu
Testing for coronavirus in an autopsy or living person is as easy as looking through a microscope and positively identifying the virus. Just a bit slow or labour-electron microscope intensive for wholesale testing of populations.

[Mar 13, 2020] Vaccine is on horizon

Mar 13, 2020 | www.unz.com

Oscar Peterson , says: Show Comment March 13, 2020 at 2:59 pm GMT

@another anon

I'd rather take my chances with the virus than consume an Israeli vaccine

Don't blame you at all, but you don't have to make that choice!

A Canadian company says that it has produced a COVID-19 vaccine just 20 days after receiving the coronavirus's genetic sequence, using a unique technology that they soon hope to submit for FDA approval.

Medicago CEO Bruce Clark said his company could produce as many as 10 million doses a month. If regulatory hurdles can be cleared, he said in a Thursday interview, the vaccine could start to become available in November 2021.

An Israeli research lab has also claimed to have created a vaccine. But Clark says his company's technique, which has already been proven effective in producing vaccines for seasonal flu, is more reliable and easier to scale.

"There are a couple of others who are claiming that they have -- well, we will call them vaccine[s]" for COVID-19, he said. "But they're different technologies. Some are RNA- or DNA-based vaccines that have not yet been proven in any indication yet, let alone this one. Hopefully, they'll be successful."

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/03/breaking-weve-got-vaccine-says-pentagon-funded-company/163739/?oref=d-river

And it's all thanks to DoD:

In 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, put together a $100 million program dubbed Blue Angel to look into new forms of vaccine discovery and production. A big chunk of that money went to Medicago to build a facility in North Carolina, where they showed that they could find a vaccine in just 20 days, then rapidly scale up production.

But it won't be ready for actual people for 18 months.

[Mar 12, 2020] Turn Up the Humidity in Your House

Mar 12, 2020 | angrybearblog.com

run75441 | March 12, 2020 12:46 pm

Healthcare Hot Topics This is coming from MEDPAGE TODAY , "Track the U.S. COVID-19 Outbreak in Real Time," Comments Section (3 comments), March 11, 2020 with regard to COVID-19

"The mechanism of seasonal effect for seasonal respiratory virus spread is believed to be humidity, not temperature. In New York state which has 220 cases, fomites lose moisture where indoor humidity is low, allowing the lighter particles to stay longer in the aerosol. In Florida and Arizona, with 38 cases, fomites gain moisture and weight from the humid air and fall to the floor faster. Northern Italy, where people wear winter coats in the media reports has dry, heated indoor air, while Southern Italy has humid indoor air.

Humidifying indoor air in schools, stores, churches, etc. may reduce seasonal influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, coronoviruses which produce the common cold, rhinoviruses and Covid-19, Airports, airliners, airport shuttles should be the highest priority. The goal should be humidifying to the level seen in summer without transmitting Legionella."

"The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong have warmer, more humid air and much less Covid-19. Southern Italy has warmer, more humid indoor air than Northern Italy where indoor air is dry. The photographs in the media from places with the highest rate of Covid-19 spread show people wearing winter jackets."

"In warm humid climates, fomites absorb water from indoor air and sink to the floor. There is a fine layer of dust everywhere indoors and viral particles attach to charged dust particles.

The mechanism for seasonal respiratory virus transmission is: fomite size in dry heated indoor air promotes viral spread. Larger fomites in humid air fall to the floor and react with charged dust particles."

fomite definition: objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture.

microbiology definition: A fomes (pronounced /ˈfoʊmiːz/) or fomite (/ˈfoʊmaɪt/) is any inanimate object that, when contaminated with or exposed to infectious agents (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses or fungi), can transfer disease to a new host.

This would include counter tops, etc.

likbez , March 12, 2020 4:10 pm

I think incompetent politicians who want to be seen to be acting but do not implement the necessary for containing the epidemics steps or take them too late are more important danger in this coronavirus outbreak then the disease itself.

Humidity about 50% is a double edge sword: it greatly stimulates growth of various bacteria and fungus. And Legionnaires disease is more dangerous type of virus pneumonia than COVID-19.

Legionnaires' disease is the cause of an estimated 2–9% of pneumonia cases that are acquired outside of a hospital.[1] An estimated 8,000–18,000 cases a year in the United States require hospitalization

Respiratory-care devices such as humidifiers and nebulizers used with contaminated tap water may contain Legionella species, so using sterile water is very important.[29]

It is also not clear if 50% humidity is enough to adversely affect the coronavirus virus.

https://www.hvac.com/faq/recommended-humidity-level-home/

•Excess moisture promotes the growth and spread of mold, mildew, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. These contaminants diminish indoor air quality, causing illness, and can also cause damage to your home.

•When indoor humidity levels are too high, asthma and allergy sufferers may experience worse or more frequent symptoms.

•High humidity indoors causes the home to feel muggy. You may notice visible condensation on windows and walls.

At 80% or higher humility your sheets feel wet. This for example is the case in Dominican republic.

In general, this temperature guide will show you where to keep your indoor relative humidity levels to ensure comfort.

•Outdoor temperature over 50˚F, indoor humidity levels shouldn't exceed 50%

•Outdoor temperature over 20˚F, indoor humidity levels shouldn't exceed 40%

Over 50% humility can probably be maintained for prolong time only along with ultraviolet lamp disinfection of the room and daily change of bed sheets and weekly washing of pillows.

It is also not clear if the coronavirus can survive after drying of aerosol saliva particles that carry them. Probably not.

At the same time places with a very high humidity such as Hong Kong and Taiwan were less affected by the coronavirus.

[Mar 12, 2020] The NYT now has a section of free coronavirus coverage

The NYT now has a section of free coronavirus coverage, including our live briefing, maps of confirmed cases and advice on how to prepare for the outbreak
Quote: "If you begin to have a high fever, shortness of breath or any other more serious symptom, the best thing to do is to call your doctor to let them know and inquire about next steps. (Testing for coronavirus is inconsistent right now -- there are not enough testing kits, and it's dangerous for people with coronavirus to go into a doctor's office and risk infecting others. So please follow your doctor's instructions.) Check the C.D.C. website and your local health department for advice about how and where to be tested"
Mar 12, 2020 | www.nytimes.com

Latest Updates

Trump says domestic travel restrictions are a possibility. Days after being with Trump and Pence, Brazilian official tests positive for the virus, reports say. Europe condemns the U.S. travel ban as more nations add restrictions. Pence says to expect thousands of more cases in the U.S. California calls for a ban on large gatherings as states take measures to rein in the spread. Wall Street opens sharply lower after European markets tumble. A JetBlue passenger learns, in the air, that he has the virus. How to Prepare for the Coronavirus Keep your hands clean, and keep your distance from sick people Stay home if you are sick Unless you are already infected, face masks won't help Stock up on home supplies, medicine and resources Prepare your family, and communicate your plan With children, keep calm and carry on -- and get the flu shot Concerned about the stock market? Take a deep breath. Here's what you can do: Keep your hands clean, and keep your distance from sick people Stay home if you are sick Unless you are already infected, face masks won't help Stock up on home supplies, medicine and resources Prepare your family, and communicate your plan With children, keep calm and carry on -- and get the flu shot Concerned about the stock market? Take a deep breath.

[Mar 12, 2020] Korean model is that grocery are ordered (online or phone?) and delivered to the door, increasingly, people pick the grocery without physical contact with delivery people

Mar 12, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mina | Mar 11 2020 17:20 utc | 10

Sorry to say but... social distancing is one thing but how do you get some food? are you ready to wash up everything you bought at supermarket and change your clothes each time you go out and your bedsheets every morning?

Piotr Berman , Mar 11 2020 17:29 utc | 16

Korean model is that grocery are ordered (online or phone?) and delivered to the door, increasingly, people pick the grocery without physical contact with delivery people. Korean cities are quite dense from what I understand. Initially, shoppers abandoned big supermarket for neighborhood stores, neighborhood stores usually belong to big chains, like in Germany, so there are website for ordering groceries, but they are delivered over short distances.

Because having food delivered was already popular, a massive increase could be easy to handle. E.g. with more orders to the same address (high rise living is the norm), it takes less time for an individual delivery.

Piotr Berman , Mar 11 2020 17:37 utc | 20

I was thinking that "no contact shopping" in USA could be more practical with people arriving at their big supermarket (or local store in a rural area) and picking up pre-paid boxes (could be just open boxes that could be left empty).

[Mar 11, 2020] Self-isolation is important for people most vulnerable for COVID-19

Notable quotes:
"... I have no illusion this behavior will guarantee anything, but que faire? ..."
Mar 11, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Brooklin Bridge , March 11, 2020 at 11:49 am

I just got a call yesterday from close friends who must still think this is a joke and they wanted me to come out to a restaurant with them in about a weeks time. Six weeks ago, I would have gone.

I just told them the truth, thanking them very much for being so thoughtful, and also suggesting that this was more serious than people might realize, but I didn't go into too much detail as I've learned it's counter productive. I did, however, point out that due to our for profit health care system, we will get a much greater and faster spread of covid-19 due to prohibitive costs of any health care visit.

Couldn't resist that one; talk about res ipsa loquitur.

For a couple of weeks now, I have been quite up front with close friends, slightly less so with others, but refuse to go out unless I have to and can somewhat control how many people will be around (as in going to the super market very early am during the week).

I have no illusion this behavior will guarantee anything, but que faire?

[Mar 11, 2020] By e-mail, from National Nurses United:

Mar 11, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Registered nurses are outraged to learn that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday further weakened its guidance on measures to contain COVID-19. These changes include, among other things, rolling back personal protective equipment (PPE) standards from N-95 respirators to allow simple surgical masks; not requiring suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients to be placed in negative pressure isolation rooms at all times; and weakening protections for health care workers collecting diagnostic respiratory specimens. These are moves that National Nurses United nurses say will gravely endanger nurses, health care workers, patients, and our communities

"If nurses and health care workers aren't protected, that means patients and the public are not protected," said Bonnie Castillo, RN and CNA/NNOC and NNU executive director. "This is a major public health crisis of unknown proportions. Now is not the time to be weakening our standards and protections, or cutting corners. Now is the time we should be stepping up our efforts."..

In addition to lobbying almost every federal health agency, the presidential administration, and members of Congress, and California health agencies to step up protections, NNU recently surveyed RNs nationwide, finding that the vast majority of the nation's health care facilities are unprepared for COVID-19, with only 29 percent of nurses reporting that their hospitals have a plan in place to isolate a coronavirus patient, and only 30 percent saying their employer has enough personal protective equipment if there is a rapid surge in patients with possible COVID-19 infections.

Many hospitals and healthcare facilities have failed to provide adequate personal protective equipment to nurses working with COVID-19 patients. Some facilities are telling nurses to continue to work while asymptomatic, even though they've been exposed to the virus and might be contagious. Testing at hospitals has been sporadic.

[Mar 11, 2020] Avoidance of couded places is now of paramount importance. Specialists suggested ramping up alternatives to face-to-face visits, tetemedicine, "car visits", telephone consultation hotlines.

Mar 11, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Expat2uruguay , , March 11, 2020 at 6:31 am

I found this very interesting personal report on flutrackers:

Something else to share, here (reproduced exactly as I received it):

3/8/2020

Notes from the front lines:

I attended the Infectious Disease Association of California (IDAC) Northern California Winter Symposium on Saturday 3/7. In attendance were physicians from Santa Clara, San Francisco and Orange Counties who had all seen and cared for COVID-19 patients, both returning travelers and community-acquired cases. Also present was the Chief of ID for Providence hospitals, who has 2 affected Seattle hospitals under his jurisdiction. Erin Epson, CDPH director of Hospital Acquired Infections, was also there to give updates on how CDPH and CDC are handling exposed health care workers, among other things. Below are some of the key take-aways from their experiences.

1. The most common presentation was one week prodrome of myaglias, malaise, cough, low grade fevers gradually leading to more severe trouble breathing in the second week of illness. It is an average of 8 days to development of dyspnea and average 9 days to onset of pneumonia/pneumonitis. It is not like Influenza, which has a classically sudden onset. Fever was not very prominent in several cases. The most consistently present lab finding was lymphopenia (with either leukocytosis or leukopenia). The most consistent radiographic finding was bilateral interstitial/ground glass infiltrates. Aside from that, the other markers (CRP, PCT) were not as consistent.

2. Co-infection rate with other respiratory viruses like Influenza or RSV is 24 hours apart.

... ... ...

10. All suggested ramping up alternatives to face-to-face visits, tetemedicine, "car visits", telephone consultation hotlines.

11. Sutter and other larger hospital systems are using a variety of alternative respiratory triage at the Emergency Departments.

12. Health Departments (CDPH and OCHD) state the Airborne Infection Isolation Room (AIIR) is the least important of all the suggested measures to reduce exposure. Contact and droplet isolation in a regular room is likely to be just as effective. One heavily affected hospital in San Jose area is placing all "undifferentiated pneumonia" patients not meeting criteria for COVID testing in contact+droplet isolation for 2-3 days while seeing how they respond to empiric treatment and awaiting additional results.

Feel free to share. All PUIs in Monterey Country so far have been negative.

Martha.

Martha L. Blum, MD, PhD

Ignacio , March 11, 2020 at 6:52 am

Consequences of widespread denialism. At home, the virologist was not taken seriously until last Monday. I advised my wife last week not to assist to some meeting in closed doors, my son not to go to a concert, a friend of mine not to travel to Switzerland. They finally conceded I was right this week. The runners chat was complaining about cancellation of events until yesterday and I have received in chats lots of hyperventilating noises. Not helpful. We are now in Madrid replicating quite exactly events occurring in Italy 7-10 days before. Expect the same elsewhere.

Wukchumni , March 11, 2020 at 7:27 am

I’d mentioned yesterday that a group of 14 people from LA had all contracted Covid-19 @ an Italian ski resort, and 3 are very ill.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8094515/Doctor-treating-coronavirus-patients-LA-suburb-calls-schools-shut-immediately.html

I’m thinking of making up some lame excuse to not go skiing next week, a phantom injury or some other malady of my imagination.

Why not just admit to my friends that i’m afraid of mixing with a large group of people, especially so @ lunch, where we are in close proximity to a lot of other folks all milling around?

We are still in heavy denial-myself included, in that I feel my friends will think less of me if I was to give them the real reason, in that I don’t want to die, just yet.

An e-mail to my family regarding how bad the crisis is and will be here soon, was similar to my frantic e-mails & calls in the summer of 2008 regarding how shaky things are financially on Wall*Street, please be ready! They did nothing.

When I related that ‘Dr Drew’ (a sister sent me a video of his-after I sent out the Bergamo doctor’s account) who claimed Covid-19 was a press engineered fantasy, was just an addiction specialist and judging from where he hangs his hat (Breitbart, Washington Examiner, erc) everything he does is politically motivated hard right, one of my sisters asked me not to politicize the matter.

Being a Cassandra ain’t all that.

vlade , March 11, 2020 at 8:30 am

We took our daughter from school even before they closed them, because we suspected (rightly, as it turned out), that some parents coming from midterm sky trips to Italy will ignore the quarantine.

A friend of mine sent half of his staff WFH, and some of his business contacts see him as mad now.

That said, majority of people here support the drastic reaction, and would be happy to support even more dramatic ones. For example, a CEO of a major movie theater chain got quite a bit of kudos today when he said that while they could keep smaller theatres open, he doesn’t see how it’s better to keep 50 people bunched together than 100, so they close it all until further notice.

Wukchumni , March 11, 2020 at 2:34 pm

This sums it up for me…

You might have fears today: What if I overreact? Will people laugh at me? Will they be angry at me? Will I look stupid? Won’t it be better to wait for others to take steps first? Will I hurt the economy too much?

But in 2–4 weeks, when the entire world is in lockdown, when the few precious days of social distancing you will have enabled will have saved lives, people won’t criticize you anymore: They will thank you for making the right decision.

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

rtah100 , March 11, 2020 at 3:37 pm

(from the little book of VC aphorisms):
– Nobody thanks you for being right.

[Mar 11, 2020] China approves Favilavir as first antiviral drug against ...

Mar 11, 2020 | vuuzletvph.com

Your browser indicates if you've visited this link https://vuuzletvph.com /favilavir-first-covid-19-drug-approved/ The government of Taizhou in Zhejiang province declared Sunday that Favilavir, formerly known as Fapilavir, an antiviral that has shown efficacy in the treatment of the novel coronavirus (), has been approved to be sold in the market.It is the first antiviral drug approved by the National Medical Products Administration for marketing since the outbreak happened.

[Mar 11, 2020] Does the sun kill the new coronavirus Expert explains

Mar 11, 2020 | cntechpost.com

Special Report: Fighting The New Coronavirus

Can the virus freeze to death at low temperatures? Will it disappear as the temperature rises? With the outbreak of a new coronavirus in Wuhan and across China, there have been more and more recent statements about the virus and temperature.

These judgments lead to different conclusions no matter true or false, but they are widely circulating.

Does the sun kill the new coronavirus? Expert explains-cnTechPost <img alt="Does the sun kill the new coronavirus? Expert explains-cnTechPost" src="https://img.cntechpost.com/images/2020/01/28/071.jpg" />

How resistant is the new coronavirus to temperature? Is it suitable for outdoor activities after fine weather? Ma Ke, deputy chief physician of the Department of Infectious Diseases of Tongji Hospital, answers these questions.

1. Is the new coronavirus more afraid of heat or cold?

Coronavirus is more sensitive to heat.

The virus is moderately stable in a suitable maintenance solution at 4 °C and can be stored for several years at -60 ° C.

However, as the temperature increases, the virus's resistance decreases, but it must reach a certain temperature for a certain time to inactivate the virus.

2. Does the ambient temperature affect the infectivity of the virus? Is there a difference in transmission in different regions (such as Northeast and Hainan)? Will the infectivity of the virus decrease as the temperature rises?

It can survive in different body fluids and even the surface of the object at room temperature for 2-10 days. Temperature mainly affects the survival time of the virus and does not affect its infectious capacity.

Because coronaviruses can be transmitted through respiratory aerosols, inactivating the virus in various ways and adopting multifaceted protective measures can minimize the possibility of infection.

3. How much and how long does the high temperature have a killing effect on the virus? High-temperature environment disinfection? Does turning on air conditioning and heating work?

The virus is sensitive to heat and can effectively inactivate the virus when it reaches a temperature of 56 ° C for 30 minutes. However, it is impossible to achieve the effect of inactivating the virus by raising the ambient temperature by heating with an air conditioner, and the effect of the virus cannot be achieved by heating the temperature.

4. In addition to fear of heat, what is the virus afraid of? (Disinfectant, ethanol, chlorine-containing disinfectant, etc., correct use)

In addition to killing the virus at high temperatures, lipid solvents such as ether, 75% ethanol, chlorine-containing disinfectants, peracetic acid, and chloroform can effectively inactivate the virus.

Air disinfection method:

1. Some people open the window twice a day for 30 minutes each time.

2. When there is an ultraviolet lamp, irradiate the ultraviolet lamp once a day in an unmanned room for more than 1 hour each time.

3. Disinfection method for the surface and ground of environmental objects: use 1000mg / L chlorine-containing disinfectant or peroxyacetic acid and hydrogen peroxide paper towels to wipe and disinfect thoroughly, twice a day.

Experts remind:

First, the sun's irradiation temperature cannot reach 56 degrees, and the intensity of ultraviolet rays in sunlight can not reach the intensity of ultraviolet lamps.

Second, it needs a duration of 56 degrees and 30 minutes, and the ultraviolet lamp is irradiated for 60 minutes. The conditions must be met at the same time, which is difficult to achieve in the ordinary outside environment.

[Mar 11, 2020] Corona Virus COVID-19 Experienced doctor's opinion

He correctly stated "Hysteria is going out the roof"
Mar 04, 2020 | www.youtube.com

Older doctor's assessment of the new Coronavirus. His many years of experience and his opinion of this new "chest flu". They talk about the terrible flu of 1918 when 50 million died.

We have had just as bad "pandemics" since then but we now have antibiotics for the bacterial pneumonia and better hospital care. Few people went into hospitals back then.

The first president to be born in a hospital was Jimmy Carter. Many people still die from world wide infections (called pandemics). HIV and HPV are pandemics also.

[Mar 11, 2020] Coronavirus (COVID-19) What People With Asthma Need to Know

Mar 11, 2020 | community.aafa.org

The CDC has also released new guidelines for people who are at high risk, which includes people with asthma. They recommend people at high risk:

If there is an outbreak in your local community, they also recommend you stay home as much as possible.

With this update, we have also added more questions and answers below from Dr. Mitchell Grayson from AAFA's Medical Scientific Council.

The new coronavirus is estimated to spread at a similar rate to the flu. It is important to take steps to prevent getting sick, like frequent hand-washing and avoiding people who are sick.

In the U.S., flu activity is still high. According to CDC estimates, the flu may have infected as many as 49 million people this season, and as many as 52,000 may have died. If you get sick, it is more likely it is the flu unless you live in an coronavirus outbreak area.

Note: Because this is a constantly changing situation, this data may not represent the most up-to-date numbers as state health departments and the CDC independently confirm infections and deaths. We will update this blog when possible.


The 2019 new coronavirus (also known as COVID-19 or 2019-nCoV) is a hot topic in the news. Now that it has spread to the U.S., you may wonder if you should be concerned. It is a respiratory virus , meaning it affects the lungs, so what do people with asthma need to know?

COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. (according to the CDC as of 3/10/2020)
Travel-related (confirmed) 83
Person-to-person spread (confirmed) 36
Being investigated 528
Total cases 647
What Is Coronavirus (COVID-19)?

A coronavirus is a type of virus that often occurs in animals. Sometimes, it can spread to humans. This is rare.

In December 2019, a new coronavirus started spreading. Experts think people first caught the virus at a fish and live animal market. Now it is spreading from person to person.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), coronavirus symptoms can include:

The CDC believes symptoms may appear two to 14 days after coming in contact with the virus.

As of March 10, 2020, there are more than 113,851 cases of COVID-19 in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it a global health emergency.

How Is It Spread?

The virus is spread through coughing and sneezing. The virus will be in droplets that are coughed or sneezed out into the air. These are heavy droplets and they quickly fall to the ground/surface below.

People who are within 1 to 2 meters (3 to 6 feet) of someone who is ill with coronavirus may be within the zone that droplets can reach. If someone who is sick coughs or sneezes on your face, you may get infected. This is why it is recommended that people who are sick should cough/sneeze into their elbows or a tissue and throw it away and wash their hands. People who are sick should also wear a mask to help stop the spread of illness.

The coronavirus may also live on surfaces that people have coughed and sneezed on. If you touch a surface with the virus on it and then touch your mouth, nose or eyes, you may get sick.

Who Is at Risk From the Coronavirus?

Most Americans are still at a low risk of getting coronavirus, says the CDC.

At this time, little is known about how the coronavirus affects people with asthma . One study of 140 cases showed no link to asthma. 1 According to the WHO and the CDC, the highest risk groups include:

People with asthma should take precautions when any type of respiratory illness is spreading in their community.

[Sep 09, 2019] Will NPR Now Officially Change Its Name to National Propaganda Radio? by Edward Curtin

The main achievement of neoliberal and imperial (warmongering) propaganda in the USA is that it achieved the complete, undisputed dominance in MSM
Pot Calling the Kettle Black: "The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield may be the fight of the 21st century."
Notable quotes:
"... Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left." ..."
"... The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites. ..."
"... Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world. ..."
Sep 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left."

Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing audiences into believing the myth of American exceptionalism and its divine right to rule the world.

The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.

Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, with particular emphasis on the complicity between the CIA and the famous literary journal, The Paris Review.

By the mid-1970s, as a result of the Church Committee hearings, it seemed as if the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. had been caught in flagrante delicto and disgraced, confessed their sins, and resolved to go and sin no more.

Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world.

It seemed as if all would be hunky-dory now with the bad boys purged from the American “free” press. Seemed to the most naïve, that is, by which I mean the vast numbers of people who wanted to re-stick their heads in the sand and believe, as Ronald Reagan’s team of truthtellers would announce, that it was “Morning in America” again with the free press reigning and the neo-conservatives, many of whom had been “converted” from their leftist views, running things in Washington.

... ... ...

...read Lansing’s July 10, 2019 testimony before the House Appropriations Sub-Committee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs: “United States Efforts to Counter Russian Disinformation and Malign Influence.”

Here is an excerpt:

USAGM provides consistently accurate and compelling journalism that reflects the values of our society: freedom, openness, democracy, and hope. Our guiding principles—enshrined in law—are to provide a reliable, authoritative, and independent source of news that adheres to the strictest standards of journalism…

Russian Disinformation. And make no mistake, we are living through a global explosion of disinformation, state propaganda, and lies generated by multiple authoritarian regimes around the world. The weaponization of information we are seeing today is real. The Russian government and other authoritarian regimes engage in far-reaching malign influence campaigns across national boundaries and language barriers.

The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield may be the fight of the 21st century.

Then research the history of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Voice of America, Radio and Television Marti, etc. You will be reassured that Lansing’s July testimony was his job interview to head National Propaganda Radio.

Edward Curtin writes, and his writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He writes as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. He believes a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore sees all his work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding. His website is edwardcurtin.com

[Jul 23, 2019] Some thoughts about Mueller testimony

Notable quotes:
"... Imagine you are a horny 15 year old boy and you have been promised sex with an incredible Hollywood talent. Driven by surging hormones your anticipation and excitement are off the scale. You are taken to the place where the tryst will happen. And you open the door. Waiting of you is Barney Fife. ..."
Jul 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Imagine you are a horny 15 year old boy and you have been promised sex with an incredible Hollywood talent. Driven by surging hormones your anticipation and excitement are off the scale. You are taken to the place where the tryst will happen. And you open the door. Waiting of you is Barney Fife.

That sort of sums up what is likely to happen tomorrow when Robert Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary and the House Intelligence committees. I have shut off almost all cable news. I cannot stomach the relentless hype about tomorrow's supposed "big day."

Blackberet , 23 July 2019 at 02:18 PM

Hmmm, given how the legacy media has managed to completely misinterpret what Mueller's Report actually says, imagine what a field day they will have interpreting "nothing" to mean something. Now, I wonder what that something might be...?

[Jun 27, 2019] Something about neoliberal MSM

Jun 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Curtis , Jun 26, 2019 6:12:43 PM | 54

michaelj72 #37
I'm the Slime - Frank Zappa

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I'm the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

[Jan 31, 2019] Do you think that the Guardian will shortly report that Iraq's WMD were snuck out of Iraq and hidden in Venezuela all those years ago?

Jan 31, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

The Rev Kev , , January 31, 2019 at 8:08 am

Do you think that the Guardian will shortly report that Iraq's WMD were snuck out of Iraq and hidden in Venezuela all those years ago?

Colonel Smithers , , January 31, 2019 at 8:36 am

Thank you, Kev.

Please don't give the scoundrels at King's Place any ideas.

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