Dec 192021
 


Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers 1887

 

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Pravda (CTH)
Netherlands To Enter Lockdown As Nations Across Europe Tighten Curbs (G.)
Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing (DS)
Ivermectin Prophylaxis For Covid-19 Reduces Infection, Mortality Rates (RG)
Pandemic Could Be Solved Quickly If Politics Thrown Out: Dr. Ben Carson (ET)
Ex-FDA Officials, Medical Experts Flog Feds For Politicizing Covid (JTN)
Pfizer Says Pandemic Could Extend Through 2023 (K.)
Fauci, Collins Colluded To Smear Experts Who Called For End To Lockdowns (DM)
Time To Take Away The Hall Pass We Gave Doctors And Scientists (Alexander)
The Scientists Hunting For The Next Variant Of Concern (ZH)
CDC Data Missed Millions Of Unvaccinated Americans (ZH)
CNN Doctor: Wear Masks At Home And Take Tests On Christmas Morning (SN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funniest video in a while.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Pravda (CTH)

Interesting short segment from Sky News interviewing the smiling U.K. Health Minister Gillian Keegan about the intense U.K. response to the Omicron variant and the new restrictions announced by government officials. Great Britain is preparing for hundreds-of-thousands of Omicron cases. Video prompted to 05:42 just watch for around 45 seconds. No commentary from me needed. WATCH:

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No omicron to speak of, infections falling fast, but let’s ruin Christmas regardless.

Netherlands To Enter Lockdown As Nations Across Europe Tighten Curbs (G.)

Nations across Europe moved to reimpose tougher measures to stem a new wave of Covid infections spurred by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, with the Netherlands leading the way by imposing a nationwide lockdown. All non-essential stores, bars and restaurants in the Netherlands will be closed until 14 January starting Sunday, caretaker prime minister Mark Rutte said at a hastily arranged press conference Saturday night. Schools and universities will shut until 9 January, he said. In what is surely to prove a major disappointment, the lockdown terms also rein in private holiday celebrations. Residents only will be permitted two visitors except for Christmas and New Year’s, when four will be allowed, according to Rutte.

“The Netherlands is going into lockdown again from tomorrow,” he said, adding that the move was “unavoidable because of the fifth wave caused by the Omicron variant that is bearing down on us.” It wasn’t just the Dutch seeking to slow the spread of Omicron. Alarmed ministers in France, Cyprus and Austria tightened travel restrictions. Paris canceled its New Year’s Eve fireworks. Denmark has closed theatres, concert halls, amusement parks and museums. Ireland imposed an 8 pm curfew on pubs and bars and limited attendance at indoor and outdoor events. London mayor Sadiq Khan underscored the official concern about the climbing cases and their potential to overwhelm the health care system by declaring a major incident Saturday, a move that allows local councils in Britain’s capital to coordinate work more closely with emergency services.

Irish prime minister Micheal Martin captured the sense of the continent in an address to the nation, saying the new restrictions were needed to protect lives and livelihoods from the resurgent virus. “None of this is easy,” Martin said Friday night. “We are all exhausted with Covid and the restrictions it requires. The twists and turns, the disappointments and the frustrations take a heavy toll on everyone. But it is the reality that we are dealing with.”

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Trick of the trade.

Omicron Surge is Mostly Due to Ramping Up Testing (DS)

Reported infections in the U.K. have suddenly spiked in the last three days, up from 59,610 on Tuesday to 78,610 on Wednesday, 88,376 on Thursday and 93,045 on Friday. Looking at the data regionally, the spike is currently much more pronounced in London, the South East, the East of England, the East Midlands and the North West than it is in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, the South West and the West Midlands. It’s not clear at this point if it is going to continue to rise, though the last three days’ counts don’t appear to indicate continued sharp growth. It is also so far largely an artefact of massively increased testing, as the graph below with data for the U.K. up to December 16th shows. Similar is true for Scotland. Positive tests have spiked.

But positivity is up only a little due to the large increase in testing. How significant is it that the spike began on Monday December 13th, the day after Boris Johnson’s Sunday press conference when he warned everyone about Omicron and told them to get their booster jab? There was a huge surge in demand for booster doses starting that Monday and continuing throughout the week. Could the fact that this surge coincided with a similar surge in both testing and positive tests be more than coincidence? Perhaps people got tested before getting their booster, or just because of the dire warning of a new threat.


We would normally expect a spike in winter viral illness at this point in December, so there is nothing particularly unusual about it. In this regard, it’s worth noting that the Covid deaths trend for the U.K. is currently very similar to normal winter flu deaths at this time of year. However, the recent announcement of the Omicron variant raises the question of the role it might be playing in the surge.

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Not if Twitter has any say in it…

Ivermectin Prophylaxis For Covid-19 Reduces Infection, Mortality Rates (RG)

Background: Ivermectin has demonstrated different mechanisms of actions that could potentially protect from both COVID-19 infection and COVID-19-related comorbidities. Based on the existing literature and safety profile of ivermectin, a citywide program of prophylactic use of ivermectin for COVID-19 was implemented in Itajai, a Southern city in Brazil in the state of Santa Catarina. The objective of this analysis is to evaluate the effects of the use of ivermectin for prevention of COVID-19 infection, risk of dying and mortality, compared to non-users.

Materials and methods: This is a retrospective analysis of registry data from the medical based citywide COVID-19 prevention with ivermectin program, between July 2020 to December of 2020. The whole population of Itajaí was invited for a medical visit to compile demographic and medical parameters. In the absence of contraindications, ivermectin was offered as an optional treatment for 2 days every 15 days at a dose of 0.2mg/kg/day. Patients’ preferences and medical autonomy were preserved. Ivermectin users were compared with the comorbidity-matched population of non-users for COVID-19 by age, sex, COVID-19 infection rate, and COVID-19 mortality rate. Results in terms of mortality were adjusted for all relevant variables and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was calculated.

Results: A total of 220,517 subjects were included in the analysis; 133,051 (60.3%) ivermectin users and 87,466 (39.7%) non-users. COVID-19 infection occurred in 4,311 (3.2%) treated subjects, and 3,034 (3.5%) non-treated subjects. This evidence showed a 7% reduction in COVID-19 infection rate with use of ivermectin: COVID-19 infection rate ratio (Risk ratio (RR) of 0.93; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.89 – 0.98; p = 0.003). A total of 62 deaths (1.4% mortality rate) occurred among users and 79 deaths (2.6% mortality rate) among non-users, showing a 48% reduction in mortality rate (RR, 0,52; 95%CI, 0.37 – 0.72; p = 0.0001). Risk of dying from COVID-19 among ivermectin users was 45% lower than non-users (RR, 0.55; 95%CI, 0.40 – 0.77; p = 0.0004).

Conclusion: Prophylactic use of ivermectin showed significantly reduced COVID-19 infection rate, mortality rate and chance of dying from COVID-19 on a calculated population-level analysis, which controlled for all relevant confounding variables.

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“..or we can take every little mutation and every little change and try to make it into a crisis so we can frighten people and control their lives more..”

Pandemic Could Be Solved Quickly If Politics Thrown Out: Dr. Ben Carson (ET)

“We’ve been having tunnel vision” dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ben Carson told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “Let’s throw the politics out. We could solve this problem pretty quickly,” he stated in an interview that will premiere on Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. New York time. “Let’s open this thing up to all the different mechanisms,” said Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian award in the nation—in 2008 for his work. He retired in 2013 and ran for the presidency in 2016, before serving as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration.

“Let’s look around the world at things that work. Let’s look at the fact that on the western coast of Africa, there’s almost no COVID. And let’s ask ourselves, why is that? And then you see, it’s because they take antimalarials, particularly hydroxychloroquine. Let’s study that. Let’s see what’s going on there. “Let’s listen to these physician groups who’ve had incredible success with ivermectin. Let’s look at the results with monoclonal antibodies. Let’s look at all of these things. Let’s put them all in our armamentarium so that we don’t have a one-size-fits-all system.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at one time had authorized hydroxychloroquine for treating certain COVID-19 patients but quickly revoked the emergency use authorization (EUA) in June 2020, claiming no data showed its effectiveness.

The FDA hasn’t approved or issued an EUA for ivermectin to treat COVID-19, citing the same reasons. Using hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients has been highly controversial. Some studies show, and some doctors claim, that hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin can effectively treat COVID-19 patients. A vaccine confidence insight report (pdf) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) labeled such claims as misinformation or disinformation. “COVID is a virus. Viruses mutate. That’s what they do. And they will continue to mutate,” Carson said. Carson pointed out that fortunately, most of the time, viruses become a little weaker with each mutation. “We can admit that and deal with it, or we can take every little mutation and every little change and try to make it into a crisis so we can frighten people and control their lives more,” Carson said.

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But there’s only one Science.

Ex-FDA Officials, Medical Experts Flog Feds For Politicizing Covid (JTN)

The federal agencies in charge of COVID-19 response are taking hits from former officials and high-profile medical professors for “sidelining experts,” not conducting basic research, and mischaracterizing evidence related to vaccines and masks for young people. The Biden administration is getting a pass for “extreme political pressure” that “appropriately” prompted outrage against its predecessor, two FDA alumni wrote in The Washington Post Thursday. Former Office of Vaccines Research and Review Deputy Director Philip Krause and former acting Chief Scientist Luciana Borio protested three recent actions authorizing boosters for people as young as 16.

“Before last month, the standard practice was for the agencies to convene standing outside advisory committees, whose members inspect the relevant data, debate it and vote,” they wrote. Earlier debates and votes suggest that “at least some experts would probably have voiced opposition,” and the refusal to hear them out “could hurt the credibility of these agencies.” They criticized the FDA’s “unpersuasive” explanation that authorizing boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds “does not raise questions that would benefit from additional discussion by committee members.” Exigency is “the exact circumstance when expert discussion and interpretation of the data can make the biggest difference,” the duo wrote.

Krause left the FDA in apparent protest of the White House sidestepping the agency to promise booster shots across the board. He soon joined a public letter warning “there could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently,” with implications for “vaccine acceptance.” The White House is “acting seriously reckless,” University of California San Francisco medical professor Vinay Prasad tweeted, echoing Krause’s argument. “If the last administration did this, all experts would be outraged. Principles only matter when they are inconvenient.”

Johns Hopkins University medical professor Marty Makary, who agrees boosters can harm low-risk groups, blasted the feds for too much “speculation” and too little research on the Omicron variant, just their latest pandemic failure. “In fact, most of our COVID findings have come from Israel and scientists abroad,” he wrote in a New York Post op-ed Dec. 8 decrying “turtle-speed bureaucracy.” It’s baffling that the National Institutes of Health or CDC has not “mobilize[d] any of their 7,000-plus scientists” to quickly answer how antibodies from vaccines and natural immunity respond to Omicron, said Makary, editor-in-chief of MedPage Today. There’s not even a “real-time data dashboard” on Omicron cases.

“Perhaps [Anthony] Fauci could have done fewer media interviews and university lectures … and instead personally overseen an NIH Omicron-antibody-binding experiment,” he said. Makary blasted the CDC for consistently releasing “tardy and incomplete data, missing key information on risk stratification, the role of obesity and a breakdown of child deaths by comorbidity as we imposed blanket restrictions on 72 million children.”

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Who cares what Pfizer says?

Pfizer Says Pandemic Could Extend Through 2023 (K.)

Pfizer Inc said on Friday the Covid-19 pandemic could extend through next year and announced plans to develop a three-dose vaccine regimen for children ages 2 to 16, a move that could delay its authorisation. The US pharmaceutical company made its comments as European countries geared up for further travel and social restrictions and a study warned that the rapidly spreading Omicron coronavirus variant was five times more likely to reinfect people than its predecessor, Delta. Pfizer executives said the company believed that by 2024, the disease should be endemic around the globe, meaning it would no longer be a pandemic. The company projected that “Covid will transition to an endemic state potentially by 2024.”

Prior to the Omicron variant, top US disease doctor Anthony Fauci forecast the pandemic would end in 2022 in the United States. Announcing plans to develop a three-dose regimen for ages 2 to 16, Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten told a conference call that results of three doses among people older than 16 showed that approach offered greater protection. “Therefore, we have decided to modify each of the pediatric studies to incorporate a third dose to the series and seek licensure for a three-dose series rather than a two-dose series as originally anticipated,” the company said.

Pfizer developed its Covid-19 vaccine with Germany’s BioNTech SE. The companies have been developing a version of their vaccine tailored to combat the Omicron variant, but have not decided whether it will be needed. They expect to start a clinical trial for the updated vaccine in January, the Pfizer executives said. The risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times higher and it shows no sign of being milder than the Delta variant, a study by Imperial College London found, as cases soar across Europe and threaten year-end festivities. Past infection may offer as little as 19% protection against reinfection by the new variant, Imperial College said, noting that the study of hundreds of thousands of cases, including 1,846 confirmed as Omicron, had not been peer reviewed.

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‘three fringe epidemiologists’

Fauci, Collins Colluded To Smear Experts Who Called For End To Lockdowns (DM)

Dr. Anthony Fauci and the head of the National Institute of Health (NIH) colluded on a way to discredit an alternative plan to deal with COVID from a group of experts, released emails reveal. The emails, some of which were tweeted out on Saturday by Phil Magness, senior research faculty and interim research and education director at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), show Fauci and Francis Collins attempting to coordinate a ‘devastating takedown’ of the Great Barrington Declaration. AIER, a libertarian think tank, sponsored the declaration, which largely abandons lockdowns in favor of a herd immunity strategy that allows life to return to normal.


In an October 8 email from Collins to Fauci, the head of the NIH calls the GBD the work of ‘three fringe epidemiologists’ that ‘seems to be getting a lot of attention.’ Collins adds that ‘there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?’ Later in the day, Fauci sends Collins a Wired op-ed that refutes the notion of herd immunity stopping the pandemic. Collins then sends Fauci an op-ed in The Nation also trashing the GBD.

A few days later, Collins emails Fauci a Washington Post op-ed he’s quoted in headlined ‘Proposal to hasten herd immunity to the coronavirus grabs White House attention but appalls top scientists.’ Collins – working under former President Donald Trump at the time – said ‘my quotes are accurate but will not be appreciated in the [White House].’ Fauci responds: ‘They are too busy with other things to worry about this. What you said was entirely correct.’ Later, Gregg Gonsalves – the writer of The Nation op-ed – sends Collins an email thanking him with a subject line that includes saying legendary AIDS activist Larry Kramer ‘would be proud.’ Collins responds with a smiley face.


The GBD – authored by previous DailyMail.com contributor Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, calls for individuals at significantly lower risk of dying from COVID-19 – as well as those at higher risk who so wish – to be allowed ‘to resume their normal lives.’ That would mean allowing people in low risk groups to go to offices, hang out in bars and restaurants and go to sporting and entertainment events. The centerpiece of the declaration, according to Dr. Bhattacharya, is a call for increased focused protection of the vulnerable older population, who are more than a thousand times more likely to die from COVID infection than the young. The declaration makes no mention of social distancing, masks, tracing, or long-term Covid cases but suggests that increased infection of those at lower risks would build herd immunity.

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Dr. Paul Alexander names a few more ‘fringe epidemiologists’.

Time To Take Away The Hall Pass We Gave Doctors And Scientists (Alexander)

Had it not been for the likes of McCullough, Fareed, Zelenko, Tenenbaum, Oskoui, Urso, Littell, Malone, Vanden Bossche, Yeadon, Ryan Cole, Kulvinder Gill, Francis Christian, Trozzi, Phillips, Palmer, Hodkinson, Bhattacharya, Heneghan, Kulldorff, Bridle, Mallard, Bernstein, Risch etc. to me, take the whole lot of the million doctors and fire them all…every one damn of them, they have caused this by being silent and being on the take…yes, I know many from CDC and NIH and even FDA who told me they cant speak out because of fear of losing their appointment and grant…yes, this be about money…grift and graft…they have all benefitted and of course the top dog Bourla of Pfizer with his buddy Fauci…imagine this grifter Bourla saying we are criminals because we question the efficacy and safety of the vaccines…this piece of untermensche s***….

The Canadian and UK and American doctor, yes Kuntsler, have shown themselves to be among the most dweeb, pusillanimous, weak, cowardly, craven, money hungry, grifters, stiff necked idiots and fools…money whores to the pharma…selling out the good populations for benefit to yourself…you sick twisted set of doctors…you dont see it yet but your gravitas id now DOA…and you did it to you. you had it all and now are worth nothing. you helped destroy your careers, your name, EBM, research, all of it…you did this…you joined a devious scheme and history will recall and remind you always of what you did. you are utterly corrupt and I tell you in your face here…corrupt untermensche.

Yes it the doctors we used to revere and admire, that have lost all credibility along with the entire research establishment, the medical publication process, the journal editors, all of them were and are on the take in some manner…their silence got them something and we will come to learn in time…fire these bastards, all of them. These losers oh I meant doctors and scientists in the US and Canada and UK etc…sucking on the teats of NIH grants and CIHR grants…losers the whole bunch of them should hang heads in shame…abject failures….it is their disastrous unscientific illogical and specious policies that have harmed populations…children hung themselves and it was this Trump was fighting against and Atlas…I know I was there. Atlas did many things to stem the tide of the massive deaths in the nursing homes and deserves big credit…I know, I was there.

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Brought to you by Pfizer. Bought for you by Pfizer.

The Scientists Hunting For The Next Variant Of Concern (ZH)

America has some of the most advanced medical research capabilities in the world. So why is it that a small group of labs in South Africa seems to be a step ahead of everybody else when it comes to sniffing out new variants? The group first gained notoriety for discovering the beta variant and alerting the world to its presence. But most people probably became familiar with Alex Sigal, Tulio de Oliveira and their work at a gene-sequencing laboratory in the South African port city of Durban when they announced the discovery of the omicron variant, the latest “variant of concern” while Americans were enjoying their Thanksgiving dinner. What is it that makes their lab so successful? Well, it looks like Bloomberg has finally found the answer in a profile of the Africa Health Research Institute, as it’s formally known.

South African scientists became experts at combating viruses almost by necessity, They have been hard at work fighting AIDS, Turburculosis and other viruses – work that has made them a magnet for the world’s best epidemiologists. Because of this, Sigal’s lab has become a kind of training ground for scientists across the continent. It was the first to test omicron against blood plasma from people who’d received two doses of the Pfizer jab. They also developed a theory claiming that immunodepressed people might be breeding grounds for mutants since they’re so vulnerable. One reason for its success with finding new variants: South Africa has set up a network of seven genomic surveillance labs with one at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and six at academic institutions. Sigal works with Tulio de Oliveira, the Brazilian head of the gene-sequencing laboratory Krisp.

“There’s a lot of technical capacity in South Africa to do genomic sequencing of pathogens because we’ve built up that expertise over many years for HIV and TB,” said Richard Lessells, a Scottish infectious diseases specialist at Krisp. “Very early on in the pandemic, we recognized that genomic sequencing and genomic surveillance was going to be very important.” Since the discovery of omicron, many of the scientists working in the lab have been dealing with sleepless nights. “I’ve been working to get the Pfizer vaccine efficacy study ready,” said Sigal, who becomes animated when he watches a time-lapse video of the omicron variant attacking cells. “I worked through the night.” Put another way: the more variants they “discover”, the more prestige and funding they will be rewarded with.

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“..CDC data show 240MM people with at least one shot – about 72.5% of the population. But it also says only 203MM have been fully vaccinated, or 61.3%..”

CDC Data Missed Millions Of Unvaccinated Americans (ZH)

What a surprise – the CDC and states across the country have been over-counting the number of American adults who have been fully vaccinated. Here’s how Bloomberg explains this accident (because what kind of person would do this on purpose?): “in collating reams of data on vaccinations, the US has counted too many shots as first doses when they are instead second doses or booster shots.” Here’s the tell: CDC data show 240MM people with at least one shot – about 72.5% of the population. But it also says only 203MM have been fully vaccinated, or 61.3%, an 11-percentage-point difference that is far larger than in other developed countries. So, either Americans are so lazy – or perhaps don’t want to endure another series of adverse reactions – that they won’t show up to get their second dose, or there’s something wrong with these numbers.

And it might not surprise you to learn that a number of state and local officials believes it’s the latter. “State and local officials say it’s improbable that 37MM Americans got one shot without completing their inoculations. Instead, they say, the government has regularly and incorrectly counted booster shots and second doses as first doses.” Their conclusion is that both fully vaccinated and completely unvaccinated are officially undercounted. As for the precise number miscounted, that’s unknown, but revisions in data from three states – Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – found enough over-counting of first shots to suggest that there are plenty of unvaccinated people nationally who’ve mistakenly been counted as having received a dose.

One of the biggest gaps identified was in Pennsylvania, where CDC estimates of first doses for the elderly exceed the state of Pennsylvania’s estimate by about 850,000. If changes are made to the national data on the scale of Pennsylvania’s revisions, this would mean increasing the number of Americans who are unvaccinated by more than 10MM. “The truth is, we have no idea,” said Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s Covid czar.

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“..Schaffner took to CNN to express his horror at Americans having fun at football games, complaining that they were “breathing too vigorously.”

CNN Doctor: Wear Masks At Home And Take Tests On Christmas Morning (SN)

A resident doctor on CNN told viewers Thursday that they should all be wearing masks at home around other family members and everyone should wake up on Christmas morning and rather than open presents, take COVID tests. Dr. William Schaffner also said that these restrictions should apply to everyone, even those people who are double and triple vaccinated. “I recommend that we hang our stockings with care,” Schaffner stated, adding “We have to be careful because we are all going to get together, we should all be vaccinated and preferentially boosted. We should wear our masks if we are uncertain.”


“Another thing we could do is we could all get tested the morning of our getting together,” Schaffner further urged, before sharing a heartwarming story of how his own family did that for Thanksgiving. “We were all negative. It worked out just fine,” the doctor declared. Earlier in the year, Schaffner took to CNN to express his horror at Americans having fun at football games, complaining that they were “breathing too vigorously.” Schaffner declared “People are cheering and enthusiastic, exhaling with vigor; if there are people infected, they can infect people around them … Nobody was wearing a mask … I’d be very surprised if we didn’t have outbreaks.”

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London Dec 18

 

 

Paris Dec 18

 

 

 

 

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Sep 292021
 
 September 29, 2021  Posted by at 8:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  80 Responses »


Salvador Dali Galatea of the Spheres 1952

 

The Purges Have Begun (Tucker)
Clinical Outcomes of Over-the-Counter COVID-19 Prophylaxis and Treatment (Sage)
A New Covid Variant (B.1.1.523) Capable Of Escaping Immune Protections (Bose)
Guam’s Vaccination Success Story Turns Grim With Covid Surge (G.)
Victoria Australia: 95% of Those Hospitalized are Vaccinated (CTH)
How Close Is A Coronavirus Vaccine? (FT)
Network Of Right-wing Health Care Providers Makes Millions Off HCQ, IVM (IC)
United Airlines To Lay Off 600 Workers Who Refused To Get Vaccinated (Hill)
Liberal COVID Discourse is Devoid of Science (Greenwald)
Pandemic A Unique Opportunity To Test Propaganda On Canadians (NP)
British Gov’t Trying to Bypass Parliament to Implement Vaccine Passports (SN)
You Can’t Be Fat And Fit (DM)
Florida AG Files Lawsuit Against Biden Admin for Not Protecting Border (TC)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leadership
https://twitter.com/i/status/1442998732220362758

 

 

“My wife is a triple board certified doctor in the Bronx. She worked at the hospital that had the highest Covid death rate in all of NYC. She went down hard w/Covid in April 2020 and missed two months of work. She recovered and went back. For 15 years she served the poor – underprivileged patients on welfare in the Bronx – none of them had private insurance. She resigned on Friday and I could not be more proud of her.”

The Purges Have Begun (Tucker)

The biggest impact will most immediately be felt in the state of New York. The governor – a new person named Kathleen Courtney Hochul to replace the previous bad guy – is all behind the Biden order. In particular, she is imposing this on health-care workers. As many as 70,000 people will lose their jobs as health-care workers even as hospitals are complaining about staffing shortages. She has issued an executive order that contemplates forcing people who are enlisted in the National Guard to be deployed as scabs to replace the people who will be fired from their jobs. It’s hard to imagine how all of this will work. It comes very close to being a form of conscription in the health sector, replacing a voluntary system with a compulsory system. It’s not going to work out well for the patient.

The most shocking aspect of this is that it targets the very workers who put themselves on the line in the early days of the panic. The world cheered in the spring of 2020. New Yorkers stood outside their windows and sang songs as the staffing shifts took place. They banged pans in appreciation. Here were all kinds of nurses, technicians, and doctors who put themselves in harm’s way at a time when people were unsure of the risk profile of the disease itself. And they gained natural immunity through exposure. They know what that means because they are all trained in virology. They know that nothing beats acquired immunity via exposure. Especially with a coronavirus with a changing profile, a vaccine cannot compare. That is precisely what 100% of the studies have shown since that time. And yet here we have governments imposing the shot on people who took the risk, gained the immunities, and now refuse to take another and potentially more deadly risk from the vaccine that operates not like vaccines of old.

A correspondent writes as follows: “My wife is a triple board certified doctor in the Bronx. She worked at the hospital that had the highest Covid death rate in all of NYC. She went down hard w/Covid in April 2020 and missed two months of work. She recovered and went back. For 15 years she served the poor – underprivileged patients on welfare in the Bronx – none of them had private insurance. She resigned on Friday and I could not be more proud of her. She is not bowing to this tyranny. She tested her antibodies several times and they remain high. Please keep up this fight. Many many nurses took the vax against their will because they could not afford to miss a paycheck. These mandates must fail.”

[..] This is no longer about scientific confusion. This is starting to look like an old-fashioned political purge, whether justified by fake science or theology. It is happening at many levels of society. In Massachusetts, dozens of state troopers are resigning. Health care workers in North Carolina are resigning. It’s happening in Nebraska, California, and many other areas of the country, and hospitals and many other industries are worried. Even Navy Seals are being told that they won’t be deployed if they don’t get the jab. It is not lost on the Biden administration – this tactic seems to have been hatched in the summer – that this is harming their political enemies, not exclusively but predominantly. Apparently, no one really cares.

In academia, the problems are heating up. Todd Zywicki of George Mason University School of Law sued over the mandate – he proved that he had natural immunity – and won an individual concession from the school but the policy remained unchanged. He is just one person but there are thousands of others, most of whom are quiet about their plight. They don’t have lawyers. They are considering just giving in. They wonder what the point of resistance really is.

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Good. Simple. Read.

Clinical Outcomes of Over-the-Counter COVID-19 Prophylaxis and Treatment (Sage)

There is a pressing need for formulations and methods for COVID-19 alleviation that can be easily accessed and utilized by the public. That the alleviation should encompass prophylaxis and early-stage treatment is underscored by studies confirming spread of COVID-19 by asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic carriers; by widespread upsurges of new confirmed COVID-19 cases amid second-wave concerns; and by identification of ongoing mutations of the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus with diverse infectivity rates. We present a 20-week study of our clinical experience with a multi-component over-the-counter (OTC) “core formulation” regimen used in a multiply exposed, high risk population.


The OTC core supplementation formulations used include zinc and zinc ionophores; vitamins C, D3 and E; and l-lysine. Analysis of clinical outcome data from our sample of 113 subjects – comprised of roughly equal sized regimen-compliant (test) and non-compliant (control) groups meeting equivalent inclusion criteria of age and overall health, including prevalence of COVID-19 comorbidities – demonstrates a strong statistical significance in favor of use of the core formulations. The statistical analysis exhibits significance even with an assumption of a sub-15%, even as low as a sub-5%, post-exposure symptom-presentation rate.

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“..many variants have been detected that are more infectious and virulent than the original strain first reported in Wuhan..”

Really?

A New Covid Variant (B.1.1.523) Capable Of Escaping Immune Protections (Bose)

A new study published on bioRxiv* preprint server describes a new variant that possesses a novel combination of various concerning mutations at the spike region. These mutations have been reported to be shared among VoCs. The researchers of this study also revealed that the prevalence of this new variant has already been reported in many countries across the world. Scientists defined the pangolin lineage of this variant to be B.1.1.523 and it was originally recognized as a variant under monitoring on July 14, 2021. According to GISAID, a total of 533 cases of B.1.1.523 have been reported as of August 19, 2021. A number of cases of this variant have been reported in Russia and Germany. The prevalence of this variant has also been reported in the U.S. and Australia.

According to sequence-based surveillance data, the first cases concerning this variant were reported in February 2021. The frequency of this variant increased in May 2021 and its prevalence decreased by June 2021. Scientists have observed that this variant does not infect any specific age group. In the current study. The researchers explain that it has not been easy to identify the origin of this variant by knowing the pangolin lineage and some spike mutations. Using the genomic sequences, they constructed a phylogenetic tree which revealed that all the cases were similar, as they were in the same branch. This result indicated that the origin of this virus was likely in Russia and the first strain was reported in Moscow.

Two of the main reasons why scientists are concerned about this variant are the three amino acid deletions in the NTD antigenic supersite and the presence of the E484K mutation of the spike protein. The E484K mutation is also present in B.1.351 and P.1 variants, both of which are strongly associated with the reduced efficacy of vaccines. Researchers conducted multiple sequence alignment (MSA) with the amino acid sequence of VoC and the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. They found that three VoCs (Alpha, Beta, and Delta) have deletions in one of the regions of the NTD antigenic supersite. The deletion of B.1.1.523 was found to be similar to B.1.617.2 and also comprises the E484K mutation that is present in many VOC. The results of this study are in line with previous studies that reported the effect of spike mutations on the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma treatment.

The authors of this study have reported that the B.1.1.523 variant harbors a new combination of concerning spike mutations that are present in many currently circulating VoCs. Many of these mutations are concerning and are associated with the evasion of immune protection. This is critical, as these developments could challenge the effectiveness of available vaccines. More research is required to determine the transmissibility of this variant, which would assist in the development of preventive strategies to stop the further spread of this strain.

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Not one single word to suggest maybe the vaccines are the culprit. Not one. Blinders all around.

Guam’s Vaccination Success Story Turns Grim With Covid Surge (G.)

Outside Guam Memorial hospital, blue medical tents have sprung up to accomodate an overflow of Covid patients. The sight is bewildering for Guam residents. The island ran an incredibly successful vaccination campaign, with almost 90% of eligible people having received two doses, and even began offering jabs to tourists in an “Air VnV” – vacation and vaccination – scheme. But the tents have been installed to accommodate an overflow of Covid patients at the hospital as the territory grapples with a third wave of the virus, with daily deaths reaching the highest rates since March 2020. “We just have no space – we have Covid patients waiting outside,” Pauline Perez, a nurse at the hospital, said in a government-released video that appeals to the remaining vaccine stragglers to get their shots.

“We use the blue med tents for Covid-19 patients who are stable. They need to be checked up by doctors but they don’t need treatment.” Even before the onset of the pandemic, Guam’s healthcare system was fragile, but the surge in Covid cases triggered by the Delta variant has pushed it to the verge of collapsing. Last week, the government hospital paused its services for all elective surgeries in order to realign its limited resources. Guam has been seeing close to 300 cases some days in the last few weeks, reversing months of steady decline. It has recorded 14,705 cases – nine percent of Guam’s population of 160,000 – and 195 deaths. Covid test results in the past two months have shown an alarming rate of breakthrough cases of people who had been vaccinated, including 554 of the 1,765 positive cases in August.

Overall, breakthrough cases represent 31% of infections – the highest rate in the US, where most states have less than 1%. Breakthrough patients in Guam account for about 40% of hospital admissions. The Covid surge is perplexing for a territory with a vaccination rate close to 90%, ranking sixth in the US. To date, a total of 118,756 people – or 87.13% – of Guam’s eligible population (residents 12 years and older) are fully vaccinated. That includes 10,318 residents aged 12 to 17. The high rate of breakthrough cases has led to fear in the community. “One of my officemates received her results of swab test and she turned out positive,” said Dori Leomo, a resident of Tamuning. “I cried after I heard the news. It’s my first time to feel anxiety. The following day, all of us at work went to get our swab tests. Thank God I tested negative.”

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“The vaccine could be making people suffer more severe outcomes.”

Victoria Australia: 95% of Those Hospitalized are Vaccinated (CTH)

Pay close attention to what Victoria, Australia, Health Minister Martin Foley says at the 2:45 minute mark of his comments. Health Minister Foley announced 867 new COVID cases recorded yesterday. During the statistical outline Foley identifies 375 people as hospitalized, 81 people in intensive care and 61 people on a ventilator. Then comes the statistic everyone in government and media ignore. Amid the recorded cases “78% of the hospital cases are fully vaccinated, and 17% are partially vaccinated (1 dose)”…. That means 95% of the COVID patients in Victoria hospitals are vaccinated. 356 people out of 375 patients are vaccinated, yet 81 people are still in intensive care with 61 on a ventilator.

What good are the vaccinations if 78% of those occupying the hospital are fully vaccinated? Keep in mind, this tracks with what we have been saying about sample populations around the world in general. The percentage of people sick and hospitalized is directly equivalent to the percentage of people vaccinated in the population. If 50% of the population is vaccinated, 50% of the hospitalized patients will be vaccinated. The vaccine makes no difference. Victoria is reflecting this same issue, perhaps worse. 78% of the hospital patients are fully vaccinated, that’s actually a higher percentage than the population vaccinated as a whole. Meaning vaccinated people are arriving at the hospital in greater percentage than they represent in the population. The vaccine could be making people suffer more severe outcomes.

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Don’t think the FT realized how hilarious their headline is. You mean we have no vaccine? Don’t tell the FDA!

At least the article is free. Someone was wondering if there’s a link between vaccine test sites and outbreaks on that map.

How Close Is A Coronavirus Vaccine? (FT)

All the possible inoculations broadly follow the same logic. They deliver a protein into the body that imitates or contains a part of the coronavirus called the spike, and triggers the immune system to produce antibodies and virus-fighting cells to fend off the infection. There are dozens of possible ways to transmit immunising proteins into the body, and researchers around the world are trying different approaches. Three of the Chinese phase 3 candidates use an inactivated virus as their vector. In other words, Sars-Cov-2, which has been killed by heat or chemicals. In theory, it will elicit the correct immune response but without any of the severe health impacts of the live virus.

AstraZeneca, J&J, China’s CanSino and Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute all use an adenovirus — a common virus that causes coughs and fever — that acts like a cloaked horseman, carrying the immunising protein into battle. Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech are both developing RNA-based vaccines, which use specific parts of the Sars-Cov-2 virus’ genetic code to trigger the immune response. All of the phase 3 vaccine trials are what is called “event-based”, meaning the trial only ends when a certain number of people across the vaccinated group and the control group — which receives a placebo — have contracted the virus and shown symptoms. Moderna, for example, has set the number of these “positive events” at 151. It also means that the more prevalent the disease is in the population at the time of trial, the quicker it is to gather results.

[..] Given the growing chorus of experts warning it is likely the vaccine will confer only temporary immunity, the capacity to “boost” the immune response at a later date with another shot is important. “The assumption at the moment is that we’ll be shooting to get to a year’s immunity,” said Kate Bingham, chair of the UK government’s Vaccine Taskforce. Seven of the vaccine candidates in phase 3 are designed to be taken in two doses, to increase the chance they will trigger an effective immune response. Only J&J and CanSino are trialing single dose shots. “Even if you have a vaccine with a second dose, you may need to boost every year,” Ms Bingham said.

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The Intercept does Horse Paste 2.0. They should be sued out of existence. This is vile.

Network Of Right-wing Health Care Providers Makes Millions Off HCQ, IVM (IC)

A network of health care providers pocketed millions of dollars selling hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and online consultations, according to hacked data provided to The Intercept. The data show that vast sums of money are being extracted from people concerned about or suffering from Covid-19 but resistant to vaccinations or other recommendations of public health authorities. America’s Frontline Doctors, a right-wing group founded last year to promote pro-Trump doctors during the coronavirus pandemic, is working in tandem with a small network of health care companies to sow distrust in the Covid-19 vaccine, dupe tens of thousands of people into seeking ineffective treatments for the disease, and then sell consultations and millions of dollars’ worth of those medications. The data indicate patients spent at least $15 million — and potentially much more — on consultations and medications combined.

The Intercept has obtained hundreds of thousands of records from two companies, CadenceHealth.us and Ravkoo, revealing just how the lucrative operation works. America’s Frontline Doctors, or AFLDS, has been spreading highly politicized misinformation about Covid-19 since the summer of 2020 and refers its many followers to its telemedicine partner SpeakWithAnMD.com, which uses Cadence Health as a platform. People who sign up then pay $90 for a phone consultation with “AFLDS-trained physicians” who prescribe treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19. The drugs are delivered by Ravkoo, a service that works with local pharmacies to ship drugs to patients’ doors. Of course, that’s if patients ever get the consultation; many customers told Time they never received the call after paying.

The data from the Cadence Health and Ravkoo sites was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous hacker who said the sites were “hilariously easy” to hack, despite promises of patient privacy. It was corroborated by comparing it to publicly available information. The Intercept is not publishing any individual patient data and has taken steps to secure the data. After The Intercept reached out, Cadence Health’s Roque Espinal-Valdez said he shut the platform down, not wanting any part in profiting off of Covid-19 “quackery.” America’s Frontline Doctors, which debuted in the summer of 2020, has close ties to a network of right-wing efforts to undermine public health during the pandemic, including the Tea Party Patriots. AFLDS’s founder, physician Simone Gold, was arrested and charged after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

She and other doctors have appeared in widely shared videos arguing that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin — which are primarily used to treat malaria in humans and parasitic worms in livestock, respectively — are effective treatments for Covid-19, despite warnings from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against using them. The extremely partisan group also misleads people about Covid-19 vaccines, which they refer to as “experimental biological agents,” and against public health measures like vaccine mandates, masking, social distancing, and restrictions on businesses. In a video titled “The Truth About Covid-19 Vaccines,” which has received over 1.3 million views, Gold falsely argues that Covid-19 is not very deadly and that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus itself. Over 690,000 Americans so far have died from the virus, and unvaccinated people now make up 99 percent of recent Covid-19 deaths.

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“United is the only one of the top four U.S. airlines to fire employees who do not comply with a vaccine requirement.”

United Airlines To Lay Off 600 Workers Who Refused To Get Vaccinated (Hill)

United Airlines will begin the process of laying off roughly 600 employees — less than 1 percent of its workforce — who refused to comply with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, it announced Tuesday. The Chicago-based airline said that 99 percent of its workforce provided proof of vaccination prior to a Monday deadline. United will move to fire those who did not seek an exemption or provide proof of vaccination, but the carrier will give them one more chance to comply with the mandate during the separation process. “This was an incredibly difficult decision but keeping our team safe has always been our first priority,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart wrote in a memo to employees Tuesday.

The percentage of vaccinated United employees excludes the less than 3 percent of the company’s 67,000 employees who sought a religious or medical exemption. Six United employees filed a lawsuit against the airline last week over its policy to put exempt employees on unpaid leave. United told reporters Tuesday that the company has seen an uptick in applicants after announcing the vaccine requirement from individuals who want to work in a safe environment. “Our rationale for requiring the vaccine for all United’s U.S.-based employees was simple — to keep our people safe — and the truth is this: everyone is safer when everyone is vaccinated, and vaccine requirements work,” the United executives wrote to employees Tuesday.

United is the only one of the top four U.S. airlines to fire employees who do not comply with a vaccine requirement. Delta Air Lines will enact a $200 monthly surcharge on unvaccinated employees, while American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are only encouraging employees to get the shot.

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Second eloquent NBA player in a week. The other one below.

Liberal COVID Discourse is Devoid of Science (Greenwald)

The attempt to equate being unvaccinated with stupidity and ignorance suffered a massive blow on Wednesday night when NBA star Jonathan Isaac was asked why he was hesitant to take the vaccine. Like many unions, the NBA’s player union has refused a vaccine mandate, and Isaac, the 23-year-old player with the Orlando Magic who previously had and recovered from COVID, gave a stunningly compelling, informed, well-reasoned and thoughtful exposition on his rationale for not wanting the vaccine. Isaac also defended the right of individuals to make their own choice. One need not agree with his ultimate conclusion on the vaccine to see how groundless (and obnoxious) it is to claim that anyone who chooses not to take the vaccine — like him — is stupid, ignorant and primitive. I really encourage everyone to watch his two-minute master class in demonstrating why such a choice can, depending on one’s circumstances, be perfectly rational:

Is there anyone who can argue with a straight face that Isaac sounds stupid, ignorant or evil? One can cogently dispute the wisdom of his conclusion: while it is true that most people who recover from COVID (as he did) enjoy “natural immunity” in the form of antibodies — indeed, one major study found that “the natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine” — some studies conclude that immunity is stronger still with the vaccine.


Nonetheless, Issac is indisputably right that the risk of dying or becoming seriously ill from COVID is extremely low for someone like him: early 20s, healthy and with natural immunity. In fact, during the entire course of the pandemic, the total number of people aged 15-24 (Isaac’s age group) who have died of COVID — in a country of 330 million people — is 1,372: fewer than the number in that age group who have died of non-COVID pneumonia. Add onto that Isaac’s physical fitness and the fact that he already had COVID once, and it is clear that his risk from contracting the virus is vanishingly small.

Bradley Beal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1442930151352725504

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Forget about winning a war with these guys.

Pandemic A Unique Opportunity To Test Propaganda On Canadians (NP)

Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a newly released Canadian Forces report concludes. The federal government never asked for the so-called information operations campaign, nor did cabinet authorize the initiative developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, then headed by Lt.-Gen. Mike Rouleau. But military commanders believed they didn’t need to get approval from higher authorities to develop and proceed with their plan, retired Maj.-Gen. Daniel Gosselin, who was brought in to investigate the scheme, concluded in his report.

The propaganda plan was developed and put in place in April 2020 even though the Canadian Forces had already acknowledged that “information operations and targeting policies and doctrines are aimed at adversaries and have a limited application in a domestic concept.” A copy of the Dec. 2, 2020, Gosselin investigation, as well as other related documents, was obtained by this newspaper using the Access to Information law. The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for “shaping” and “exploiting” information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.

A separate initiative, not linked to the CJOC plan, but overseen by Canadian Forces intelligence officers, culled information from public social media accounts in Ontario. Data was also compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings and BLM leaders. Senior military officers claimed that information was needed to ensure the success of Operation Laser, the Canadian Forces mission to help out in long-term care homes hit by COVID-19 and to aid in the distribution of vaccines in some northern communities. BLM organizers have questioned why military officials gathered information on their initiative, pointing out they followed pandemic rules and did not hold any gatherings outside LTC homes.

Then chief of the defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance shut down the CJOC propaganda initiative after a number of his advisers questioned the legality and ethics behind the plan. Vance then brought in Gosselin to examine how CJOC was able to develop and launch the propaganda operation without approval. Gosselin’s investigation discovered the plan wasn’t simply the idea of “passionate” military propaganda specialists, but support for the use of such information operations was “clearly a mindset that permeated the thinking at many levels of CJOC.” Those in the command saw the pandemic as a “unique opportunity” to test out such techniques on Canadians.

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Replace Parliament with “public consultation” if that gets you better odds.

British Gov’t Trying to Bypass Parliament to Implement Vaccine Passports (SN)

The British government has been accused of trying to bypass Parliament in an effort to implement vaccine passports via the backdoor, with the scheme under review AGAIN despite assurances it wasn’t being considered. As we highlighted earlier this month, just a day after health secretary Sajid Javid asserted that the system had been scrapped, the government announced that vaccine passports would form an ‘integral’ part of its winter response to COVID if cases and hospitalizations rose. Under the government’s ‘Plan B’, vaccine passports will form a “first-line defence” against a winter wave of COVID, despite their widespread use in Israel having proven to have zero impact on minimizing COVID cases.

Aware that it may struggle to get a vaccine passport system through a Parliamentary vote, the government is now launching a ‘public consultation’ in an attempt to enlist support for the scheme. “The plans seemed to have been put on the backburner but on Monday night the Government launched a consultation, asking the public for views on the use of vaccine passports this autumn and winter if Covid-19 cases threaten to overwhelm the NHS,” reports the Telegraph. “The Plan B proposals also open the door to the number of venues being widened beyond nightclubs, music venues, outdoor festivals, concerts and sports events.”

With the government refusing to commit to a vote, many respondents saw the move as the start of an effort to sidestep Parliament. The utter stupidity of the scheme is proven by the fact that it will eliminate the option to provide a negative test to enter any of the venues. In other words, proving that you don’t have the virus won’t be good enough to gain entry, but proving you’ve complied and taken a vaccine with dodgy efficacy that means you could still be carrying the virus anyway will be good enough to gain entry.

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Confusing piece.

You Can’t Be Fat And Fit (DM)

It is not possible to be fat and fit at the same time, French experts have concluded. A study of 3million people found even volunteers who were obese but ‘metabolically healthy’ still had a much higher chance of suffering heart problems. Obese people with normal blood pressure and who were not diabetic were still at a 34 per cent increased risk of heart failure and a similar risk of an irregular heart beat. Lead author Dr Laurent Fauchier, a cardiologist at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Trousseau, said the idea that people can be ‘fat but fit’ was ‘simply untrue’. Last week, an American study found that people simply need to focus on exercise rather than dieting to live longer. The latest French research was presented to the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. It looked at the medical records of around 2.9 million adults, of whom about one in 10 were obese.

All participants had been admitted to French hospitals in 2013 and had not had any major cardiovascular issues in the past, including a heart attack or stroke. They were monitored for five years. Dr Fauchier said: ‘This new and best available evidence tells us that on a population level, the idea that large numbers of people can be obese but metabolically healthy is simply untrue.’ The cardiologist refutes the controversial claim made by Arizona and Virginia researchers last week that people can be fat and fit. American researchers who reviewed existing studies said that when it came to trying to get healthy and cutting the risk of dying early, increasing exercise and improving fitness was more effective than shedding flab. Numerous studies have shown how people around the world have been trying to lose weight over the past 40 years, and yet obesity has continued to rise.

The researchers said that adopting what they called a ‘weight-neutral approach’ did not mean weight loss should be ‘categorically discouraged’. They added: ‘But shifting the focus away from weight loss as the primary goal and instead focusing on increasing physical activity to improve cardio-respiratory fitness may be prudent for treating obesity-related health conditions.’ Their claims appear to contradict a study published this summer by Glasgow University researchers who tracked 381,263 adults over 11 years. They concluded it was not possible to be fat but fit – a misleading phrase that doctors should stop using. Those who were ‘metabolically healthy’ but obese were 22 per cent more likely to die than those of a normal weight. They were also 18 per cent more likely to have a heart attack or stroke, 76 per cent more likely to develop heart failure and four times more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes.

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“I’m signing an executive order to prohibit state agencies that report to me, from aiding or abetting in any way what the federal government is doing right now. We’re not gonna be a party to this lawlessness.”

Florida AG Files Lawsuit Against Biden Admin for Not Protecting Border (TC)

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Tuesday for not adequately protecting the southern border. The suit alleges that the administration’s catch-and-release policy is a violation of federal immigration law. Moody argues in the suit that the immigration policy hurts Florida because the illegal migrants travel to the state and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. “I don’t care if it is extreme incompetence, if it is radical liberal policy agenda, no one, let me repeat that, no one is above the law,” Moody argued. “We are seeing dramatic effects at our border. It is an unmitigated crisis based on this president’s refusal to follow federal law.”


In addition to filing the lawsuit, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “Biden Border Crisis Executive Order” prohibiting state agencies from working with the Biden administration at the border until his policies change. “I’m signing an executive order to prohibit state agencies that report to me, from aiding or abetting in any way what the federal government is doing right now. We’re not gonna be a party to this lawlessness. We haven’t, to my knowledge, but we’re letting the marker down, know this is an absolute red line. We’re not gonna do it,” said DeSantis during a press conference about the lawsuit and the order. Moody also spoke at the press conference, saying that “criminal cartels are having a field day. I can assure you, their profits are skyrocketing.” “Had the government, the federal government, just done its job this would not have happened. They would not have been in that situation,” DeSantis added.

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Sep 172021
 


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Consummation of Empire 1836

 

 

First of all, if you live in a place where politicians and experts have, after 20 months into Covid, still not propagated and executed policies aimed at prophylaxis (prevention) and early treatment, get rid of these people ASAP or move away to an area that does have these policies.

Yes, I know, it might be easier to get rid of them, because there are no areas to move to that do early care. Do it. All anyone appears to do is lock people down and put garments in front of their faces. But that has now cost too many lives, and it has to stop. The other thing all of them do, of course, is try to “vaccinate” everyone. That, too, has to stop, and for the same reason: it kills too many people.

After 20 months of reading into the topic for hours every single day, if there’s one thing I’m convinced of, it’s that a simple sufficient daily intake of vitamin D, zinc and ivermectin or chloroquine (and you can “fancy that up”, check the site below) would have stopped, and still can stop, at least 70% of cases. Ergo: no more overwhelmed heath care, no more lockdowns, no more economic damage. We could, should, have done this 20 months ago. get rid of them.

And then if someone does get sick -immune systems can be heavily compromised, for instance in obese people-, there are protocols aplenty for early treatment. There are entire series of them at c19early.com. 90% of deaths have been entirely preventable. And 90% of those in the future, will be, too. But not for the same reason.

The reason these treatments are being kept from you is that they would destroy the legal basis on which the vaccines operate. But that would be a good thing, because these substances have started to make a lot of victims, killing people or maiming them, and it is enough. It is also what I am afraid of, that those numbers will absolutely skyrocket.

Repeat: The vaccines do not protect you from infecting others or being infected, or from severe disease or death (though that last bit takes time to sink in). They MAY have some effect for a few months, but then their effect starts waning, and you will need more of the same. In the meantime, they appear to enhance the infectiousness of the vaccinated. Who are given vaccine passports and QR codes, for heaven’s sake, so they can go infect more people.

 

The problem is that you are not allowed to know about any of this. But the next problem is they will not be able to hide that fact, for much longer, that the vaccines are killing machines. For now, vaccine deaths are all hidden in Covid death numbers, especially the “Delta cases”, a very convenient grab bag, if not for the fact that Delta was supposed to be a much milder variant than Alpha. And wouldn’t you know, there’s plenty tricks to list vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated.

Was that supposition so far off the mark, or is something else going on? The decrepit adverse reaction tracking systems like VAERS and MHRA already name 10s of 1000s of vaccine deaths and millions of other reactions while tracking 1-10% of cases. We’ve reported numbers into the 100s of 1000s of deaths.

 

Let’s start with Dr. McCullough: “We are very certain about this, the vaccine is directly killing individuals”.

 

Then move on to Gato Malo and his graph from Israel booster (third) shots. Still find that graph scary as hell.

 

 

And then John Ward, who wrote: “The growing consensus among vaccination researchers is that exposure to 5-8 of these mRNA jabs over a relatively brief period of time will – dependent on the underlying health of the individual – result in death.”

What the graph appears to show is that the third shot -perhaps after some time has passed- has a much more lethal effect than the first two. Which would make sense, since you’re loading up your body with huge amounts of spike proteins -trillions of them-, and at some point your immune system will just give up.

The time between 2nd and 3rd shot may be a factor in that the body has had time to form a lot of antibodies -or the potential to create them fast-, which can then help the spike attack your cells by binding to them. And that in turn is a great recommendation for ivermectin -and probably HCQ-, even that late in the game, because it prevents that binding.

Mind you, the VAERS deaths and paralyzations etc. so far are all after 1 or 2 shots.

 

It all looks like an inevitable sequence of events to me. We had a Twitter thread from Walter Chesnut yesterday, The Spike Will Not Be Found In The Blood. It Travels “Incognito”, that said “The amount of spike protein in cells continues to increase for up to 30 min..”, which is insanely long in virustime, and “..the S1 unit has been found in monocytes 15 months post infection.., which is even more insane.

Once you have put that stuff in your body, there’s no getting rid of it anymore. The only thing you can do, once the effect starts waning (probably after 2-3 months), is to do more of the same, putting your body under ever more stress and ever more risk. And then by shot 5 or 8 or whatever, depending on your health, your body gives up no matter what. I said yesterday:

“100s of millions have been “vaccinated”. If just 1 in 1000 (0.1%) become victims, that means 100s of 1000s. I think it will be close to if not more than 1%, 10 times more. I’m so scared, I can’t find the words to write about this.”

And that’s how I still feel. The last few days have scared the heebees out of me, even if we knew something like this might start to happen. It’s here, and they’re still trying to force you to take these things. I called it Russian Roulette a while back, but it’s worse than that.

Listen to this undertaker from Milton Keynes, who is sure almost all Covid deaths coming in now are vaccine deaths (disguised as Delta), and then tell me I’m afraid of nothing:

 

 

 

 

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Aug 232021
 


Vasily Polenov Moscow courtyard 1878

 

The FDA Is Begging You Not to Take Horse Dewormer for Covid-19 (RS)
How Does Covid-19 Affect The Brain? (NatGeo)
Potential Use Of Ivermectin For Treatment And Prophylaxis Of SARS-CoV-2 (SD) /span>
Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection (AJT)
Stop The Mandates Or People Die (Denninger)
Molecular Determinants of SARS-CoV-2 Variants (Cell)
Biden Team’s Misguided And Deadly Covid-19 Vaccine Strategy (WT)
100s Of Doctors Sign Open Letter: Need Debate On ‘Flawed Covid Guesses’ (Exp.)
Rescue Dogs Shot Dead By NSW Council Due To Covid-19 Restrictions (SMH)
Afghan Staff At US Embassy Losing Faith In Evacuation Efforts (NBC)
White House Announces They’ve Lost Kamala Harris (BBee)

 

 

 

 

A drug safely used by an estimated 3 billion people has been relabeled a horse dewormer. This is a dangerous campaign. Lives are being lost.

The FDA Is Begging You Not to Take Horse Dewormer for Covid-19 (RS)

“You are not a horse. You are not a cow,” the Food and Drug Administration tweeted on Saturday alongside a link to a page on their website explaining “Why you should not use Ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19.” Why? Because Ivermectin, a medication usually reserved for deworming livestock, is responsible for a spike in poison control calls in Mississippi as people duped by conspiracy theories have purchased the drug and ingested it, hoping it will treat or prevent Covid-19 — something the drug is not proven to do. According to an alert issued by the Mississippi Department of Health on Friday, 70 percent of all recent calls to poison control in the state “have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers.”

Although most callers (85 percent) only reported mild symptoms, one person was advised to seek additional treatment. “Animal drugs are highly concentrated for large animals and can be highly toxic in humans,” the alert said. Ivermectin is sometimes used in humans to treat parasites or scabies, but in much smaller doses than are given to livestock. The calls have clearly baffled health officials in the state. “I think some people are trying to use it as a preventative which is really kind of crazy,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer, said. “So please don’t do that.”

“You wouldn’t get your chemotherapy at a feed store,” Dobbs added. “You wouldn’t treat your pneumonia with your animal’s medication. It can be dangerous to get the wrong doses of medication, especially with something meant for a horse or a cow.” But the obvious risks of humans ingesting Ivermectin haven’t stopped people at Fox News — including hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson — from dangerously suggesting that it is a safe and effective treatment for Covid-19, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her Friday night show where she showed clips of Fox personalities pushing the drug consistently over the last six months.

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Very little is clear. Only thing to do is keep people from being infected. And the vaccines don’t do that:

..an internal document from the C.D.C. states that some 35,000 vaccinated people experience symptomatic coronavirus infections each week..

How Does Covid-19 Affect The Brain? (NatGeo)

If SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t infect brain cells, how is so destructive to cognition? There are two leading hypotheses. The first is that the infection somehow triggers inflammation in the brain. Some COVID-19 patients have suffered encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, which can cause confusion and double vision, and in serious cases, speech, hearing, or vision problems. If left untreated, patients can develop cognitive problems. Viruses like West Nile and Zika can cause encephalitis by directly infecting the brain cells, but how COVID-19 may lead to brain inflammation is less clear. An immune response run amok, known as autoimmunity, might be to blame for some instances of inflammation throughout the body, including the brain.

When the immune system is fighting a disease like COVID-19, it unleashes antibodies to do battle against the infection. But sometimes a person’s immune system becomes hyperactive and instead starts making self-attacking antibodies, known as autoantibodies, which can contribute to inflammation and blood clots. These autoantibodies have been found in the cerebrospinal fluid of COVID-19 patients with neurological symptoms. In the Columbia study, researchers found clusters of microglia—special immune cells in the brain whose job is to clear out damaged neurons—that appeared to be attacking healthy neurons. The phenomenon is called neuronophagia. Most of these rogue microglia were in the brain stem, which regulates heartbeat, breathing, and sleeping.

The researchers think these microglia may get activated by signaling molecules called inflammatory cytokines found in patients with severe COVID-19. These molecules are supposed to help regulate the immune system, but some people’s bodies release too many inflammatory cytokines in response to a viral infection. When researchers at Stanford looked at brain tissue from eight patients who died of COVID-19, they also observed signs of inflammation compared to 14 control brains. Using a technique called single-cell RNA sequencing, they found that hundreds of genes associated with inflammation were activated in brain cells from COVID-19 patients compared to controls.

They also noted molecular changes in the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain involved in decision-making and memory that suggested signaling imbalances in neurons. Similar imbalances have been seen in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The results were published in Nature in June. A second explanation for cognitive issues is that COVID-19 may restrict blood flow to the brain and deprive it of oxygen. In patients who have died of COVID-19, researchers have found evidence of brain tissue damagecaused by hypoxia, or the lack of oxygen.

Read more …

Slow but sure take-up by serious medical journals.

Science Direct (Elsevier). Current Research in Translational Medicine
Volume 69, Issue 4, October 2021, 103309

Potential Use Of Ivermectin For Treatment And Prophylaxis Of SARS-CoV-2 (SD)

Ivermectin performs its function mainly through inhibition of nuclear transport mediated by the imported heterodimer a/b1 , which is responsible for the translocation of proteins of several viral species (Human Immunodeficiency Virus, type 1- HIV1, and Simian Virus 40 – SV40; a known oncogenic DNA), and such translocation is, in turn, essential for viral replication [7,8]. This inhibition appears to affect a considerable number of RNA viruses. It has recently been shown that ivermectin inhibits the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in vitro [8, 9], although it is not clear how this occurs. However, since the causal agent of COVID-19 is an RNA virus, the interference with the same proteins and molecular processes described above can reasonably be expected.

However, these studies were conducted at concentrations substantially higher than expected in the plasma and lungs of humans who receive the approved dose of ivermectin. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that in order to achieve the plasma concentrations required for in vitro antiviral efficacy, it would be necessary to administer doses up to 100 times higher than approved for human use. However, increasing the dose/kg of body weight may be a strategy to increase efficacy, the increase of the risk of toxicity is not conclusive. Currently, there is a noteworthy absence of efficacious treatments for patients with early infection. Although most patients present mild or moderate symptoms, up to 5-10% may have a bad disease progression, so there is a pressing need for effective drugs to be administered early in the course of infection, even before the appearance of severe symptoms, i.e. when the course of the disease is more modifiable to prevent disease progression and longer-term complications.

In fact, it is known that the earlier the antiviral therapies are started, the greater the benefits for patients, in both influenza [15] and SARS infections [16], as well as, more generally, for all infections. Given the need to find an effective drug that can mitigate the harmful consequences of COVID-19, a large number of studies are being carried out in order to assess the effectiveness of different existing drugs, including ivermectin, with promising results. This narrative review summarizes and outlines the evidence-based effectiveness and safety of ivermectin in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, recommending the drug for the treatment of COVID-19 especially in the early stages of the disease.

Read more …

American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021

Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection (AJT)

Ivermectin is a well-known medicine that is approved as an antiparasitic by the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration. It is widely used in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to treat worm infections. Also used for the treatment of scabies and lice, it is one of the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines. With total doses of ivermectin distributed apparently equaling one-third of the present world population, ivermectin at the usual doses (0.2–0.4 mg/kg) is considered extremely safe for use in humans. In addition to its antiparasitic activity, it has been noted to have antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, leading to an increasing list of therapeutic indications.8

Since the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, both observational and randomized studies have evaluated ivermectin as a treatment for, and as prophylaxis against, COVID-19 infection. A review by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance summarized findings from 27 studies on the effects of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection, concluding that ivermectin “demonstrates a strong signal of therapeutic efficacy” against COVID-19.9 Another recent review found that ivermectin reduced deaths by 75%. Despite these findings, the National Institutes of Health in the United States recently stated that “there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19,”and the World Health Organization recommends against its use outside of clinical trials.

Ivermectin has exhibited antiviral activity against a wide range of RNA and some DNA viruses, for example, Zika, dengue, yellow fever, and others.13 Caly et al14 demonstrated specific action against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro with a suggested host-directed mechanism of action being the blocking of the nuclear import of viral proteins that suppress normal immune responses. However, the necessary cell culture EC50 may not be achievable in vivo.16 Other conjectured mechanisms include inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 3CLPro activity(a protease essential for viral replication), a variety of anti-inflammatory effects,19 and competitive binding of ivermectin with the viral S protein as shown in multiple in silico studies. The latter would inhibit viral binding to ACE-2 receptors suppressing infection. Hemagglutination via viral binding to sialic acid receptors on erythrocytes is a recently proposed pathologic mechanism that would be similarly disrupted. Both host-directed and virus-directed mechanisms have thus been proposed, the clinical mechanism may be multimodal, possibly dependent on disease stage, and a comprehensive review of mechanisms of action is warranted.

Read more …

You can’t force people. And you shouldn’t be trying.

Stop The Mandates Or People Die (Denninger)

Better watch this one folks and let it sink in.

“If I don’t show up for my job, as I just explained to you, people die. On Saturday night at 10 p.m. I got a page. I did not want to go to work. Somebody was having a very critical problem, they were dying. I worked until 6 a.m. the next day. If I had not of showed up, there would have been nobody to do my job. These guys can’t show up to their job, and I’m sorry, your jobs are not as important as mine.” There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people just like him They’re everywhere in the health care system. They have unique skills without which the system does not function, and when you need those skills you need them now, not later. There is no “later”; there is either now or death. Take someone on dialysis. This is not a “robotic procedure”; each patient has specific levels of various drugs and their specific metabolic reactions to them that must be individually managed.

The people who do that job are not replaceable on short notice, if at all. If you need dialysis and do not get it, you die. This is not a “maybe” or “might die” you WILL die with absolute, 100% certainty. Things happen at odd hours of the day and night. Most real medical emergencies are not scheduled — heart attacks, strokes, car wrecks, gunshots and similar. They happen when they happen and either someone is there to respond to it and deal with it or the person in question dies. Those hundreds of thousands of people who are utterly essential to people not dying every single day — hundreds if not thousands who will otherwise die if those employees refuse to show up — and exactly zero of those people can be compelled to work. This is America. It is not the Soviet Union. It is not North Korea.

NOBODY is a slave and EVERYONE has the right to say “**** you” and walk out. EVERYONE. ALL THE TIME. Then there are of course both cops and firefighters. You want someone to put your house out if its on fire, right? What if the firefighters say “**** you” to a jab mandate and quit? Who’s going to put the fire out? Do you even have a wrench to get the hydrant open, say much less the correct fittings and hose? What happens when your child is in that burning house and there is no firefighter to put it out? He or she dies. You cannot arrest and jail someone for quitting their job or refusing a mandate and being fired. All employment is voluntary, no matter how “essential” the position. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS and there is no way to replace the people who do these jobs without which hundreds of people per day WILL DIE.

Therefore you have a choice to make America and you have to make it NOW. You will stand up and stop these mandates. You will do it now. You will do it or every single person who dies as a result of your failure to do so, and the refusal of others to consent, is YOUR responsibility. Not their person who quits — YOURS. THEY are not slaves. THEY cannot be compelled to consent. THEY have NO obligation to put up with your bull****. You’d better get this through your thick ******n skull RIGHT NOW. YOU are why that person who needs dialysis will be dead. YOU are why the person who is in critical trouble in a hospital and there is no perfusionist available right now will die. YOU either stop this madness, right now, by whatever means are necessary, without exception from top to bottom or YOU are responsible for those deaths and those deaths WILL come.

Read more …

“While replication-associated mutations generate small changes in the viral genome, recombination may introduce more important modifications, leading to dramatic changes in the phenotype of SARS-CoV-2..”

Molecular Determinants of SARS-CoV-2 Variants (Cell)

Accumulation of genomes with replication-associated random mutations within the same cell has the potential to generate a heterogeneous mix of viral proteins, including spike protein, which brings into question the true diversity of the spike on the surface of individual virions and subsequent tissue-level spread of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. If a more orderly molecular process to regulate the homogeneous distribution of spike protein variants on individual virions exists, it remains to be identified. Regular RNA sequencing analyses are unable to identify these differences since they can only be captured by ultra-high-resolution single-virion protein sequencing, the technology for which is in its infancy.


The SARS-CoV-2 genomic mutation rate in humans is estimated at 0.8-2.38 x 10-3 nucleotide substitutions per site per year largely based on analysis of sequencing data archived in public repositories. Emerging studies are attempting to confirm this mutation rate using experimental investigations. By comparison, mutations rates for influenza A virus and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV) are 2.3 x 10-3 and 1.12 x 10-3 nucleotide substitutions per site per year, respectively. Human CoVs (HCoV)-OC43 and HCoV-229E have an average mutation rate of 3-6 x 10-4 nucleotide substitutions per site per year. Emerging experimental data suggest that SARS-CoV-2 is capable of mutating and accumulating changes when facing a new cell type, albeit in the absence of immune surveillance in a single-cell-type infection model. A clinical study also reported the rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants in the presence of antibodies from convalescent plasma therapy. While random errors during replication may induce genetic mutations in SARS-CoV-2, multiple extrinsic factors, such as individual and population-level immunity, play a vital role in the selection of these variants. More research is warranted to fully understand the cellular and molecular drivers of genomic mutation and selection in SARS-CoV-2. As SARS-CoV-2 accumulates new genetic changes, we shall need to reassess the mutation rate to better understand the contribution of replication-associated random mutations and its impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission and emergence of new variants.


Figure 1 Replication-Associated Generation of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Variants.

While replication-associated mutations generate small changes in the viral genome, recombination may introduce more important modifications, leading to dramatic changes in the phenotype of SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 2). Discontinuous transcription of CoV genomes enables recombination in a cell coinfected with more than one CoV species or variant via ‘strand switching’ by the viral RdRp (Figure 2A). This process leads to the production of chimeric subgenomic RNA and proteins. Chimeric proteins may have consequences for the fate of infected cells and for cellular and tissue tropism of progeny virions. As technology evolves, we might be able to track the spread of individual virions, along with deciphering the heterogeneity of their composition.


Figure 2 Recombination-Induced Variants.

Read more …

Dr. Robert Malone and Peter Navarro.

Biden Team’s Misguided And Deadly Covid-19 Vaccine Strategy (WT)

The Biden administration’s strategy to universally vaccinate in the middle of the pandemic is bad science and badly needs a reboot. This strategy will likely prolong the most dangerous phase of the worst pandemic since 1918 and almost assuredly cause more harm than good – even as it undermines faith in the entire public health system. Four flawed assumptions drive the Biden strategy. The first is that universal vaccination can eradicate the virus and secure economic recovery by achieving herd immunity throughout the country (and the world). However, the virus is now so deeply embedded in the world population that, unlike polio and smallpox, eradication is unachievable. SARS-CoV-2 and its myriad mutations will likely continually circulate, much like the common cold and influenza.

The second assumption is that the vaccines are (near) perfectly effective. However, our currently available vaccines are quite “leaky.” While good at preventing severe disease and death, they only reduce, not eliminate, the risk of infection, replication, and transmission. As a slide deck from the Centers for Disease Control has revealed, even 100% acceptance of the current leaky vaccines combined with strict mask compliance will not stop the highly contagious Delta variant from spreading. The third assumption is that the vaccines are safe. Yet scientists, physicians, and public health officials now recognize risks that are rare but by no means trivial. Known side effects include serious cardiac and thrombotic conditions, menstrual cycle disruptions, Bell’s Palsy, Guillain Barre syndrome, and anaphylaxis.

Unknown side effects which virologists fear may emerge include existential reproductive risks, additional autoimmune conditions, and various forms of disease enhancement, i.e., the vaccines can make people more vulnerable to reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 or reactivation of latent viral infections and associated diseases such as shingles. With good reason, the FDA has yet to approve the vaccines now administered under Emergency Use Authorization. The failure of the fourth “durability” assumption is the most alarming and perplexing. It now appears our current vaccines are likely to offer a mere 180-day window of protection – a decided lack of durability underscored by scientific evidence from Israel and confirmed by Pfizer, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other countries.

Here, we are already being warned of the need for universal “booster” shots at six-month intervals for the foreseeable future. The obvious broader point that militates for individual vaccine choice is that repeated vaccinations, each with a small risk, can add up to a big risk. It’s an arms race with the virus.

Read more …

Still not sure what they’re mad about, other than lockdowns.

100s Of Doctors Sign Open Letter: Need Debate On ‘Flawed Covid Guesses’ (Exp.)

A hundred and thirty three doctors, nurses, psychiatrists paramedics and midwives signed the letter released today which states that despite a “complete lack of widespread approval among health professionals,” of the pandemic policies, “no attempt” has been made to measure the harms of lockdown policies. The letter, also addressed to the Health Secretary and First Ministers for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland states: “You have failed to engage in dialogue and show no signs of doing so. You have removed from people fundamental rights and altered the fabric of society with little debate in Parliament.” The signatories, from a broad range of specialities, came forward despite the risk of doing so to both their jobs and reputations.

Founding signatory Dr Ros Jones, a retired paediatric consultant said: “We wrote the letter as a group of healthcare professionals, connected only by our deep concern and shared commitment to “first do no harm.” We can no longer stand by in silence. We are not the first group of medically and scientifically qualified professionals to write in such terms to the Government. In March, 22 eminent scientists publicly called for drastic policy change. We sincerely hope we will be the last who feel the need to write such a letter.” Dr Alan Mordue, another founding signatory said: “To move forward now our governments urgently need to facilitate a wider and open debate within the medical and scientific community, for the short term as we lift restrictions, and the longer term to improve how we manage winter respiratory viruses and pandemics in the future.”

Concerns voiced in the letter include accusations that no Minister responsible for policy “has engaged in an open and full discussion of alternative ways of managing the pandemic,” despite being aware of other medical and scientific viewpoints. It adds the pandemic response policies have caused “significant, permanent and unnecessary harm” to the UK and “must never be repeated.” The letter focuses on 10 areas where the UK’s approach to COVID failed. It argues the nature of the covid threat has been exaggerated, it claims the use of behavioural science to generate fear was “inappropriate and unethical” and it argues the role of asymptomatic spread has been overplayed and used to promote public compliance with restrictions.

Finally it states that restrictions have been imposed with an overreliance on modelling data whilst ignoring real world data. The signatories called for a “sea change within the Government “which must now pay proper attention to those esteemed experts outside its inner circle who are sounding these alarms.”

Read more …

New normal. I see videos every day from Australia that make me want to vomit.

Rescue Dogs Shot Dead By NSW Council Due To Covid-19 Restrictions (SMH)

Several impounded dogs due to be rescued by a shelter have instead been shot dead by a rural council in NSW under its interpretation of COVID-19 restrictions, alarming animal activists and prompting a government probe. Bourke Shire Council, in the state’s north-west, killed the dogs to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals last week, according to council’s watchdog, the Office of Local Government. “OLG has been informed that the council decided to take this course of action to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission,” a spokesman from the government agency said.

The spokesman said the agency was examining the circumstances of the incident to find out whether companion animal and cruelty prevention laws had been broken. The Herald attempted to contact the council administration multiple times, but received no response, and a member of Rural Outback Respite/Rescue – the shelter that was supposed to receive the dogs – declined to comment. A source who is familiar with the arrangement said the shelter volunteers are distressed and had COVID-safe measures in place to handle the dogs, one of which was a new mother. According to NSW Health, there have been no recent locally acquired COVID-19 cases in Cobar, although fragments of the virus have been found in the area’s sewerage system.

The Office of Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock, who has previously faced questions in Parliament over the shooting of animals in council pounds, did not comment. However, animal liberation campaigner Lisa Ryan called for an urgent investigation. “We are deeply distressed and completely appalled by this callous dog shooting and we totally reject council’s unacceptable justifications that this killing was apparently undertaken as part of a COVID- safe plan,” Ms Ryan, Animal Liberation’s regional campaign manager, said.

Read more …

“It would be better to die under the Taliban’s bullet” than face the crowds again..”

Afghan Staff At US Embassy Losing Faith In Evacuation Efforts (NBC)

Local staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul are “deeply disheartened” by U.S. evacuation efforts and have expressed a sense of betrayal and distrust in the U.S. government, according to a State Department diplomatic cable obtained by NBC News. The cable, which was sent Saturday, said memos were sent Wednesday inviting Afghan staff members at the embassy to head to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. It told them to take food and to prepare for difficult conditions. “However, no one anticipated the brutal experience that occurred,” the cable said.

Staffers reported being jostled, hit, spat on and cursed at by Taliban fighters at checkpoints near the airport, it said, adding that criminals were taking advantage of the chaos while the U.S. military tried to maintain order “in an extremely physical situation.” Some staff members reported that they were almost separated from their children, while others collapsed in a crush of people and had to be taken to hospitals with injuries, the cable said. Others said they had collapsed on the road because of heat exhaustion, it said. “It would be better to die under the Taliban’s bullet” than face the crowds again, a staff member was quoted as saying in the cable.

“Happy to die here, but with dignity and pride,” another said, while a third accused the U.S. of prioritizing Afghan government elites with contacts in the U.S., who already had the correct paperwork and other ways to flee the country. A local embassy staff member reported that his home had been tagged with spray paint — a tactic the Taliban have used in the past to identify homes’ occupants for further questioning, the cable said, adding that the family had been forced to flee their home but was unable to get to the airport. Others shared concerns about conditions in Qatar, where many refugees have been flown before they make their way to other locations.

The U.S. began evacuating its citizens, diplomatic staff members and Afghans who aided its mission in the country last week after the Taliban seized control of much of Afghanistan before they finally walked into Kabul last Sunday without firing a shot. A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. has a “special commitment” to local embassy staff members who “have suffered hardship, pain and loss because of their dedication to working with us to build a better future for all Afghans.”

Read more …

… But They’re Also Not Looking For Her Very Hard

White House Announces They’ve Lost Kamala Harris (BBee)

In an interview with Morning Joe, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield revealed they have lost Kamala Harris and have no idea where she’s gone, although she admitted nobody is really looking for her all that hard. “Yeah, I dunno. She’s somewhere, I guess. I mean, she didn’t just disappear,” said Bedingfield. “We have some people looking for her I think, but we’re not too worried, honestly. I’m sure she’ll turn up sooner or later.” “Wait, wait, wait,” said the show’s host. “You mean to tell me that in this time of crisis, you have literally no idea where the Vice President of the United States is?”

“Well, it sounds bad when you put it that way,” replied the Communications Director. “I don’t really see how this is a big deal. It’s been kind of nice and quiet around here since she left… we’re not even quite sure what she does, anyway,” she said with a shrug. Anonymous sources have suggested Kamala may be somewhere around Camp David, as locals reported the sound of cackling through the night.

Read more …

 

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Feb 082021
 
 February 8, 2021  Posted by at 6:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  10 Responses »


Paul Cézanne River Bend (Coin de rivière) 1865

 

 

At the Automatic Earth, we have been talking about COVID prevention and treatment for a year now. Of course, things have been evolving, fine-tuned. One of our most vocal commenters on the issue is John Day, a physician from Texas. John wrote down the current state of affairs.

 

 

John Day MD:

Concerned Parties,

  The question that I, as a COVID-19 Early Treating Physician, blogger, and human being with friends and family, get asked about COVID is “What can I do myself, because my doctor says there’s no treatment outside the hospital”.

  There are multiple effective supplements and repurposed medicines to treat COVID outside the hospital, which people should take to avoid having to go inside the hospital and get IVs and breathing machines.

  As a Public Health Physician (MD), acting in the interest of the good of other human beings, with no anticipation of reward, I would like to give advice to all readers, to reduce their risk of mortality and morbidity during this pandemic.  This is the advice I give my patients. I won’t accept any payment for this advice.  Give your neighbor a bottle of vitamin-D. Don’t try to give me anything of value.

 

An Ounce of Prevention:

  Vitamin D deficiency is a major risk factor for catching COVID-19, being sick enough to need hospitalization, and dying from it. Don’t take that risk, please. Vitamin-D comes from sunshine entering superficially into the skin, and causing a photochemical reaction that creates vitamin-D. The great majority of people who do not work outdoors are deficient in vitamin-D, mildly, moderately or severely. Black people in New York and in Northern Europe, rich and poor alike, were some of the most deficient in vitamin-D last spring. Do you recall how that went?

Above and below the sub-tropics, the winter sun is too weak to produce vitamin-D, even if you can bare your skin at midday. Vitamin-D supplementation is cheap, safe and effective. Somebody may have already screamed, “Don’t take too much” at you. I agree. What’s a good dose and what’s “too much”. The dose I have taken for over a decade is 1/8 of 1 milligram per day. That is 125 micrograms, or 5000 units. 1 mg of vitamin-D3 is 40,000 units. Weird, right? 1 mg sounds like nothing, and 40,000units sounds like WAY TOO MUCH.

I have been checking pre-treatment and treatment vitamin-D levels on people since 2006 and I’ll say that if you weigh 100# or more, you can safely take 5000 units per day of vitamin-D for as long as you may live. I have seen a couple of people get slightly high levels after years of 10,000 units per day, not any sign of toxicity, and they backed off to 5000 units after a month off. Levels normalized. You can take 10.000 units (1/4 mg) per day for the first 2 months, to get your level up into the normal range.  I recommend it, especially if you have extra fat. Vitamin-D distributes into fat, slowing the rise in blood level. Upper mid normal blood level appears to be ideal.

 

  Zinc has been known since the 1990s to shorten the severity and duration of  “some common colds”, namely those caused by coronaviruses. The studies used treatment dosages of roughly 150 to 250 mg per day of zinc, usually as lozenges, spread out through the day in divided doses.  What zinc does inside a cell, infected by a coronavirus, is to reduce its ability to make more coronaviruses. That is ideal in the period of exposure and early infection, to reduce viral replication enough to let the innate immune system keep the virus from getting the better of you. Take 50 mg per day of oral zinc, as a tablet or lozenge, together with 250 mg of Quercetin, also readily available, a natural product of onions and other vegetables. Quercetin helps zinc get into cells, which is where zinc is effective. (It’s really hard to eat enough onions to get that much.)

 

  Prescription antiviral prophylaxis may also be appropriate for some people with weaker immune systems and higher risk of severe COVID-19, such as those with diabetes, obesity, sleep apnea, heart disease, kidney disease and cancer. Almost no western doctors will prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin for this purpose, after the politicization of hydroxychloroquine last spring when then President Trump advocated for it.  The science of its efficacy in prophylaxis has been borne out.  In medical workers, both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin weekly prophylaxis are about 75% effective, reducing infections by 75% in the group taking either, compared to the similar groups not taking weekly prophylaxis.

  You likely just heard the unfair bad press, not things like The Lancet admitting later that its anti-HCQ data from “Surgisphere”, compiled from all of those hospitals, was actually not compiled from hospitals, but fabricated. Big headline; small retraction much later.  Hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis would need to be prescribed, and is dangerous enough in overdose to have killed the poor guy who took the fish tank product last year. I’m not advising you to try to get any, nor to take it. (It is preferable as prophylaxis in pregnancy, an uncommon need.)

 

  Ivermectin has a remarkably broad safety profile, and has been served up about as many times as McDonald’s hamburgers, to man and beast alike, for various forms of worms and parasites. It does cause birth defects in rats, when given at high doses, so don’t use it in pregnancy, please. Like most medicines to treat coronavirus illness, ivermectin does different things against the virus, than it does on regular days. Ivermectin inhibits the transport of the viral RNA into the cell nucleus, where it would be transcribed, manufacturing new viruses. It does other things, like reduce inflammation during cytokine-storm, in the second and third weeks of illness, helping the people who get really badly sick. Ivermectin is effective in prophylaxis, in early illness and also in later, severe illness, and through multiple mechanisms. Ivermectin is what I prescribe since last August.

  Ivermectin is now available mail-order from India, and from a reliable source.  https://www.medicinesdropshipper.com/antiparasitic-drugs.html#iverlast-12mg-tablet

The preventive, “prophylactic” dose of ivermectin is based upon body weight, and it can be taken weekly, once an initial level inside of the cells is established. Ivermectin leaves the cells very slowly, so it can just be topped-off once per week. There are some slight variations on this, but I’ll describe the one I prescribe. It uses the same body-weight dosing that you will find wherever you look up ivermectin dosing for humans or animals. For every 5 kg, or 11 pounds of body weight, a person takes 1 mg of ivermectin at that dose. For most people I treat, that is 12 to 18 mg of ivermectin per dose. For COVID-19 prophylaxis, this dose is taken Day #1, Day #2 and then every seventh day after that.  If you forget, take it when you remember, and get back to the original schedule after that.

 

The Pound of Cure:

  I’m sorry if you have to do this, but it is mostly the same, with higher doses, and some more additions, to help avoid systemic damage. If you have not been taking vitamin-D3 for long, increase your dose to 5000 units 3 times per day for 10 days.  The best thing is if you can get calcifediol, an immediately bioavailable form of vitamin-D, which does not need slow activation in the liver, and which saved lives and reduced ICU admissions in a Spanish hospital study. We can’t get it in the US. Increase your dosing of 50 mg zinc and 250 mg quercetin to 3 times per day, also. Add 1000 mg of vitamin-C 3 times per day to the vitamin-D, zinc and quercetin.

  Aspirin is sometimes added in treatment of active disease, because SARS-CoV-2 inflames the lining of arteries and arterioles, causing clotting in small and large blood vessels. Aspirin is used as an anti-clotting agent. If you have mild illness, related to nasal symptoms, some fatigue, headaches and body aches, but no fever, no diarrhea, and no breathing problems, you probably don’t need aspirin. However, if you have systemic illness, including fever, breathing problems and/or gut problems like diarrhea and vomiting, you stand to benefit from 1 to 2 tablets of 325 mg aspirin per day. The sicker you are the more likely that 325 mg twice per day is for you. 

Clotting issues persist, so this should continue 30 days. If you have been taking 2 per day, and feel pretty well after 10 days, then it is good to back down to 1 per day. A lot of lung problems come from the blood-vessel side, not the air side. This is a weird infection.

  Ivermectin dose for treatment is the same for the first 2 days, the cellular loading dose of 1 mg per 5 kg or 11# on days #1 and 2 of treatment. This is followed with that same dose on days #4 and 6 of treatment, and that is the full course.  Many physicians dose for fewer than 4 days, and so have I, but this seems to reduce the number of days of feeling bad in my experience.

 

  I typically also treat with 10 days of 100 mg doxycycline twice per day, which is Dr Borody’s protocol, as widely used in India, to very good effect. Doxycycline is a broad spectrum antibiotic, which will treat any secondary bacterial infection on top of COVID Pneumonia, and which also has some antiviral benefits. It is also anti-inflammatory, which is of benefit.

  You would be well served to have an accurate thermometer and pulse oximetry devices at home. You need to know if you have a fever. You can presume that you have systemic illness at that point. You need a decision point and a fever over 100.5 degrees F is a good one. Temps between 99.5 and 100.5 might mean early/mild illness. Early experience in China was that people fared worse with things like ibuprofen and naproxen. I have not seen good follow up on that in the west. Still, I’d choose acetaminophen for symptoms. The pulse oximeter shows pulse and calculates blood oxygenation. It’s good for measuring heart rate.  Sicker people’s hearts beat faster. I see it all the time. A heart rate over 110 means you are getting much sicker.  Don’t ignore it!

It is good to buy an inexpensive pulse oximeter and get to know what your usual baseline is. For most people it is 97% to 99% saturation. It will be lower if you live at high altitude. Dropping 2 points from normal means your lungs are not working right. It likely means COVID Pneumonia, if you have a positive test, already. Some people will read a little higher than they really are, so if you read a little low (95%), and feel short of breath, you may actually need oxygen. You may need to go to a hospital. If your pulse oximeter reads 93% or below, you really should be promptly evaluated at a hospital.  You might need to check in.

  One dramatically important feature of COVID-19 is just how fast people can go from not-too-bad to choosing between ICU and the morgue. Really fast. An hour or two. Rising heart rate and falling oxygen mean that it is time to go to the nearest real hospital ER. Don’t drive yourself, please. You may become confused or pass out at the wheel.

 

 

Resources:

Swiss Policy Research has a very good list of medical articles about all the treatments I have listed, except doxycycline here. (Thanks Bill)

On the Treatment of Covid-19

Swiss Policy Research has information about how ivermectin works here, and it is also the group who arranged for the delivery of ivermectin from India to those abroad who place orders. Jeremy in Devon informed me of this link, and he also informed me that his shipment came in, “enough to treat his whole village”. I think that was a little under 2 weeks for him, but it might have been a little over that. (Brexit notwithstanding…)

Why Ivermectin works, and where to buy it

Yours In Service,

John Day MD

 

 

 

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Oct 062020
 


Jacob Lawrence Struggle: From the History of the American People, Panel 8 1954

 

 

From the Automatic Earth’s most vocal resident physician, Dr. John Day, in Texas. Who thinks Trump’s meeting with COVID should start a change in America (back) towards preventive healthcare. Why is Trump doing so well so fast? Because his treatment started much earlier.

 

 

John Day: The Trumpster was never taken out of action by the virus that has been ravaging Big-Mac consumers his age all year. Uh, how come?

 

After Returning To White House, Trump Implores Americans Not To Let COVID-19 “Dominate Your Life”

Update (1515ET): Dr. Conley has confirmed that although President Trump isn’t out of the woods yet, he has recovered enough to warrant his safe return back to the West Wing, as the president announced via tweet.

Doctors said that Trump has maintained a full work schedule at Walter Reed. He will receive his fourth dose of remdesivir Monday evening, before taking the fifth and final dose on Tuesday. When pressed by a reporter about the safety risks to the Secret Service agents during Trump’s ride outside Walter Reed Sunday evening, Dr. Conley said that the agents wore PPE, as they have in recent days, and that the trip took place over a “very short period of time”.

Circling back to Trump’s mental acuity, reporters asked whether there had been any fogginess as a result of the medication, or the virus, Dr. Conley assured reporters that “he’s back” and that Trump has been a “great” patient.

Looking ahead, Dr. Conley said advanced diagnostic techniques will be used to detect when the last traces of ‘live’ virus have left the president. Dr. Conley said that people are most at risk of shedding the live virus during the first 5 days of infection, but usually by ten days the last traces have left.

 

Trump got treated with antiviral medicines shortly after he was diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, based upon a screening test. A super-spreader cluster was identified at the White House, with 29 people now positive, from that event. The unmasking in the Rose Garden for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is blamed, but the people who got sick were all inside without masks for the reception afterward.

I think that’s where the viral cloud got ’em.

 

 

We have all been told that the only advantage to early and frequent testing is early isolation to reduce spread. All the drugs the Chinese used, and the rest of the world uses, have not been shown to save lives in America, where nobody is allowed to have them until they are almost dying. These antiviral drugs only worked in cell cultures, China which is to blame, and fakes results, and poor countries like India.

Just stay at home until you need a ventilator. Do NOT use drugs from India and Bangladesh! Are you CRAZY?! Trump announced in May that he was taking hydroxychloroquine/zinc prophylaxis, but no mention is made of it now. None. Was it stopped sometime in the summer? Anyway, nobody says he was taking it last week and he’s not taking it now. Hydroxychloroquine/Zn does seem to work as prophylaxis in studies.

There is a progression in the attack of SARS-CoV-2 upon the human body. It’s moderately well understood now, but understandings are broadly misrepresented to the public by the national medical bureaucracy. Many treating physicians have been mocked and belittled in the press for saying that there are treatments to reduce morbidity and mortality from COVID.

Rheumatic fever, from untreated Strep Throat used to be a major cause of death and morbidity in the US. That stopped when strep throat started to be treated promptly with penicillin. Now it’s unheard of. In HIV, we discovered that all the “AIDS-defining-illnesses” like pneumocystis pneumonia, and Kaposis’s Sarcoma would just never happen if viral infection was detected early and antivirals were started before the virus had caused widespread injury. Even Tony Fauci knows that.

 

Now, with the way Donald Trump is being treated, with antivirals reserved for the hopelessly ill, and getting a rapid recovery from early symptoms, when we know he’s exactly the target this virus likes to find, maybe we can get a national reprieve and Make-America-Average-Intelligent-Again.

What if everybody took a little saliva test every Monday and Thursday? What if people at higher risk or even higher anxiety level, got treated as soon as the test was confirmed, like President Trump did, and some of the other party-goers probably are? Hey, what if all the people who tested positive before elective surgery got treated that way for starters? I bet we could set up a study proposal to do that in about 3 months, and have it reviewed for possible approval by next spring!

To have convincing scientific evidence you have to go through the process. It takes a lot of time. Just treating people, like in the old days, can’t give you convincing evidence that it is better to take ordinary drugs for a life threatening infection, before your life is already threatened. Some people might want to do that if they test positive, of course, but it’s not to be condoned, is it?

 

What if it was somebody in your family? You know how stressful that can be, right? What if great-aunt, or grandma isolated at home and took some safe, purportedly antiviral combination like ivermectin, zinc and doxycycline, or hydroxychloroquine and zinc if her EKG was ok? Would you go for that? Would it seem OK to you? If auntie-grandma just got a positive screening test after 3 visits to the ER , and couldn’t get the surgery she needed, would you think she should take some treatment, even before she got sick with fever, diarrhea, hurting all over, and gasping for air?

How would you know the medicine really worked if she never got sick enough to be sure? Can’t have that, can you?

Our family is treating Auntie-Grandma. Judge us if you must, but we are weak and subject to temptation. We fear the guilt which would come from inaction if she did get badly sick and suffered, and maybe died. She has started ivermectin, doxycycline, and will get the zinc in a couple of hours when the family-courier gets it to her. We’ll letcha know how it works out. Maybe she can get her surgery without too long of a wait.

We may be on the cusp of paradigm shift. I sure hope we are. Take 5000 units per day of vitamin-D. “Auntie Grandma” is taking 5000 units 3 times a day with her zinc, vitamin-C and NAC 600 mg for the next 10 days.

 

 

 

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