New Drug Slashed Deaths Among Patients With Severe Covid, Maker Claims

An experimental drug halved the death rate among critically ill Covid patients who were receiving supplemental oxygen and were at high risk for serious lung disease and death, the drug’s developer announced on Monday.

There is a pressing need for new treatments for critically ill patients. Drugs like Paxlovid, made by Pfizer, are aimed primarily at patients who have mild or moderate disease. Other treatments administered to hospitalized patients in serious condition have shown limited effectiveness.

The new drug, sabizabulin, reduced deaths among hospitalized Covid-19 patients so drastically in a clinical trial that independent safety monitors recommended stopping it early, officials at Veru Inc., the drug’s maker, said. The trial was halted on Friday.

The results of that trial have not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal. Veru announced the findings at an early-morning news conference. The company’s stock soared in trading Monday following the announcement.

About half of the 52 trial participants given a placebo or dummy pill along with regular care died within 60 days, an indicator of how very sick they were. But the death rate was 20 percent among the 98 participants who received sabizabulin, who were just as ill. The drug was given once a day for up to 21 days.

“Sabizabulin is the first drug to demonstrate a clinically and statistically meaningful reduction in deaths in hospitalized patients,” Dr. Mitchell Steiner, chief executive of Veru, said. “This represents a big step forward.”

Coronavirus Drug and Treatment Tracker

Most Covid restrictions have been lifted in the United States after declining case numbers, but cases, hospitalizations and deaths around the world continue to be high, Dr. Steiner added. New variants are bound to emerge, and surges will follow.

Close to a million Americans have died of Covid, and there are still 570 fatalities every day on average.

The drug was granted so-called fast-track status by the Food and Drug Administration in January, Dr. Steiner said. The designation is intended to prompt faster development and review of new treatments that address unmet medical needs and target serious or life-threatening conditions.

Dr. Steiner said the company plans to meet with the agency later this month and will be applying for emergency-use authorization for sabizabulin. An F.D.A. spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the agency did not confirm, deny or comment on pending applications.

No safety concerns related to the drug were identified in the course of the clinical trial, company officials said.

“Despite it being two and a half years into the battle, we are still working hard to get highly effective drugs into the mix to treat this specific population of patients, and this is a fairly dramatic improvement in 60-day mortality,” said Dr. Michael Gordon, one of the trial investigators and chief medical officer at HonorHealth Research and Innovation Institute in Scottsdale, Ariz.

But Dr. Gordon leavened his optimism with caution, saying he was eager to see more detailed analyses. Additional data were still being analyzed on Monday, including the proportion of treated patients without respiratory failure, the number of days they spent in intensive care, the length of their hospital stay and how long they were on mechanical ventilation.

“No drug works for everybody,” Dr. Gordon said. “The benefit that was seen is mortality — who is living and who is dying — not who is getting off oxygen, though I anticipate we will see improvement in other parameters, too.”

Patients on both arms of the multicenter trial received all standard care and treatment. The participants were in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria, and they had been infected with both the Delta and Omicron variants. The drug is effective regardless of the variant type, Dr. Gordon and company officials said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/health/covid-sabizabulin-veru.html

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When will Fauci and liberal leaders apologize for the millions of lives damaged with pointless COVID restrictions?

Fauci finally admitted to the nation this weekend what has been obvious to everyone, except the most hysteria-prone slice of the population, since last summer: that the pandemic is now endemic. That means it’s here to stay, no matter what we do, so let’s learn to live with it. There is no point to the insane restrictions people insist on like latter-day Puritans denouncing each other for failing to carry out the prescribed rites to ward off the Devil.

“This is not going to be eradicated, and it’s not going to be eliminated,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take.”

Great! But what has changed? This is exactly the message Fauci needed to deliver to the people . . . approximately a year ago.

Let’s talk next steps. What’s he going to do to make up for all of the needless misery he caused? I’m not asking him to think like his fellow Italian Marc Antony and fall on his sword, so let’s turn our minds to the moderate and reasonable options. How many days is Fauci volunteering to place himself in stocks set up on the National Mall so that we can all pelt him with rotten eggs? One day for every completely wrong thing he ever said would be fair, but then he’d be there all summer. So let’s be charitable and just make it a long holiday weekend.

The nation’s 4-year-olds should be allowed to get to the front of the line, if any of them can squeeze in some time between appointments with all of the speech pathologists and psychotherapists they need because of Fauci’s insane policies.

Over the years, Fauci was very adamant about his findings and is sharing a complete different perspective now.

“We’re at that point where, in many respects, that we’re going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community,” Fauci also said Sunday.

COVID doves such as Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of San Francisco, saw all of this coming: wearing a rag over your face wasn’t going to stop an incredibly transmissible virus.

“We’re going to get it,” she predicted last September. “Unless you just sit in your room, you’re going to get it in your nose. But at least in this country, it will be manageable.”

“The emergency phase of the disease is over,” Stanford professor and health economist Jay Bhattacharya said last summer. “Now, we need to work very hard to undo the sense of emergency . . . panicking over case numbers is a recipe for continuing unwarranted panic,” because the vaccines provide superb protection against death or hospitalization.

Yet as recently as November, Fauci said, preposterously, that he was going to put off calling the virus endemic until we got the thing cornered: “We want control and I think the confusion is at what level of control are you going to accept it in its endemicity.”

Huh? Asserting “control” has nothing to do with “accepting its endemicity.” When you do the latter, you’re acknowledging the former isn’t possible. COVID is not subtle: ever since we learned in the middle of last year that even vaccinated people can catch it and spread it, it has been flashing a message as unmissable as the American Eagle signage in Times Square: “You can’t control me, bro. I’m coming for everybody. Get vaccinated and you’ll live.”

You may have missed it, but Fauci said something even stupider than “We gotta control this thing before we admit it’s endemic” in the November interview: that we shouldn’t get too excited about the distinction between such COVID outcomes as “getting killed” and “missing a day of work.”

Why did he say something so absurd? Because he’s Larry Lockdown and loves to create confusion and panic. Like another blustering egomaniac, the guy he used to work for, he can’t handle the idea of an America in which everyone isn’t talking about him all the time. In post-COVID America, guess who doesn’t get invited on Colbert and Kimmel and Meet the Press every week?

“I think we better be careful to not make too sharp a distinction between protecting against infection that’s symptomatic versus protection against hospitalization and deaths,” Fauci said in November. “I don’t know of any other vaccine that we only worry about keeping people out of the hospital. I think an important thing is to prevent people from getting symptomatic disease.”

By that reasoning, a head cold and stage-four lymphoma are the same thing. Ladies, and gentlemen, America’s doctor!

Fauci couldn’t grasp that the virus is two different animals depending on whether you’re vaccinated: A jab turns a venomous 100-foot dragon into an ill-tempered dog. For vaccinated and boosted Americans, you are at much higher risk of dying in a car accident than from the virus, yet people choose not to fear the Corolla the way they fear the Corona.

“Get vaccinated, then get on with your life,” should have been Fauci’s message from the start, except for small children, who were never at great risk in the first place and should therefore never have had to deal with idiotic restrictions such as mask mandates.

Vaccinated children are as well protected as vaccinated adults, and yet we continue to torture little kids by making them wear masks in day care, in schools, and on mass transit.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/11/when-will-fauci-and-liberal-leaders-apologize-for-the-millions-of-lives-damaged-by-pointless-covid-restrictions/

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The replication crisis has spread through science – can it be fixed?

It started in psychology, but now findings in many scientific fields are proving impossible to replicate. Here's what researchers are doing to restore science's reputation

I HAVE a confession to make: some of the articles that have appeared in New Scientist, including ones I have written, are wrong. Not because we deliberately misled you. No, our reports were based on research by respected scientists at top universities, published in peer-reviewed journals. Yet, despite meeting all the normal standards of credibility, some findings turned out to be false.

Science is in the throes of what is sometimes called the replication crisis, so named because a big hint that a scientific study is wrong is when other teams try to repeat it and get a different result. While some fields, such as psychology, initially seemed more liable than others to generate such “fake news”, almost every area of science has since come under suspicion. An entire field of genetics has even turned out to be nothing but a mirage. Of course, we should expect testing to overturn some findings. The replication crisis, though, stems from wholesale flaws baked into the systems and institutions that support scientific research, which not only permit bad scientific practices, but actually encourage them. And, if anything, things have been getting worse over the past few decades.

Yet as awareness of the problem has grown, so have efforts to tackle it. So, how are these opposing forces faring? Will the efforts to combat fake science succeed? And how can you know if the research you read about in New Scientist and elsewhere will ever make it out of the lab and start working in the real world?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433810-400-the-replication-crisis-has-spread-through-science-can-it-be-fixed/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Ivermectin as Treatment for COVID-19 May Become More Accessible in Tennessee

If you read the research reports that purport to discredit Ivermectin, you find that NONE of them observed the stipulation that it must be administered as soon as possible after onset of the illness -- e.g. here. A typical interval in the studies concerned is 5 days. It can work after that time but usually does not

Tennessee may make ivermectin accessible without a prescription for treatment against COVID-19 if legislation that was approved in the Senate on April 6 is signed by Gov. Bill Lee.

One of the sponsors of Senate Bill 2188 (pdf), state Sen. Frank Niceley, a Republican, told The Epoch Times, “It’s one of the most important bills we’ve passed this year.”

“The bill would put it behind the counter with a consultation, which means you would explain your symptoms to the pharmacist, fill out a sheet listing your preexisting conditions and what other medication you’re on in order for the pharmacist to determine the right dosage,” Niceley said.

“Ivermectin is one of the many therapeutic options, like vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and anti-virals, that have proven to be effective in the treatment of COVID-19,” Republican state Sen. Rusty Crowe, a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “This bill will provide for a safe and effective way for patients to quickly access ivermectin over the counter, and under the supervision of their pharmacists and the physician with whom the pharmacists have their collaborative agreement.”

Ivermectin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration as an anti-parasitic drug but isn’t authorized for treatment of COVID-19.

In 2021, ivermectin joined hydroxychloroquine as one of the controversial early treatments for COVID-19. Many medical professionals were threatened with losing or lost their medical licenses for prescribing both drugs to treat COVID-19, based on the allegation of misinformation.

“Ivermectin clearly works,” Niceley said. “We’ve had doctors in the Senate who prescribe it all the time. You’ve got to take it early. As with any disease, early treatment is better than late,” he said, adding that he took ivermectin when he tested positive for COVID-19.

Niceley said one of the reasons for the bill is to make ivermectin safer so that people aren’t getting the wrong dose, as many have resorted to purchasing the farm-grade veterinary horse de-wormer. Though some have reported positive results even from using the veterinary version of the drug, media reports focused on allegations of people overdosing and crowding emergency rooms, leading to a false report that gunshot victims were being prevented from receiving care.

“Ivermectin is safer than Tylenol,” Niceley said. “There’s no reason to not try it.”

Because the efficacy of ivermectin depends on early treatment, the bill will facilitate a person’s ability to get the drug in the early stages.

“If you have to make an appointment with a doctor and wait two weeks to get in, it’s too late for early treatment,” Niceley said.

In a March Senate Health and Welfare Committee hearing, Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance co-founder Dr. Paul Marik, who has advocated for the use of ivermectin, spoke in support of the bill.

“It’s probably one of the safest medications ever made,” Marik said. “Over 3.7 billion people have been given ivermectin for the treatment of parasitic diseases in Africa, Asia, and South America.”

More people have died from Tylenol, which is also referred to as Panadol in some parts of the world, than from ivermectin, Marik said.

“One couldn’t have asked for nature to give us a more perfect drug because it kills the virus, via a number of mechanisms, and it also has potent anti-inflammatory properties. So it really is the perfect drug for the treatment of COVID-19,” Marik said.

There has been a propaganda campaign to dismiss the drug as a toxic horse de-wormer, he said, though “it’s probably the most effective drug against SARs-CoV-2.”

“It’s an outrage that there’s been such a profound propaganda to limit its use to silence doctors who prescribe it and to limit pharmacists from dispensing it,” he said. “If we had utilized our protocol, which we had published in March 2020, it’s my belief we could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives because the key to COVID is early treatment.”

Dr. Denise Sibley, a Johnson City, Tennessee, physician who said she had adopted Marik’s and the Front Line protocols using ivermectin in treating “almost 4,400 folks,” including members of the Tennessee House and Senate, said she’s used ivermectin not only for COVID-19 symptoms in her patients but also for vaccine injuries. Unfortunately, it became difficult to obtain after “a certain letter went out” in September 2021, she said.

The Misinformation Inquisition

In July 2021, the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), a non-profit organization, issued a statement warning that physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”

Medical boards such as the American Medical Association and the American Pharmacists Association followed suit.

In September 2021, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners (TBME) adopted the FSMB’s statement.

Throughout this time, the safety and efficacy of the vaccine has also come into question, with more reports of people contracting COVID-19 after getting the jab, as well as people experiencing sometimes fatal side effects.

After the TBME issued its own warning, Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan said the board didn’t have the authority to create a new disciplinary offense without lawmakers’ approval.

The board pulled the statement from its website, but the question remained as to whether the board would continue to investigate and charge physicians. To date, there isn’t a precedent for the board upholding a policy that was not published on its website.

Ragan had told The Epoch Times that the adopted policy moved out of “the guardrails of the law” and gives the board arbitrary judgment on what misinformation is.

“I explained that if they are going to have a policy on this sometime in the future, they need to define what misinformation and disinformation are because otherwise what you have is the Inquisition,” Ragan said. “It then becomes a situation of, ‘Heresy is what I say it is, and I’ll know it when I see it kind of thing.’”

In October 2021, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill that emphasized the legislature’s role in drafting laws that establish disciplinary offenses regarding dispensing and prescribing medication for COVID-19.

Still, the stigma around the drug continued, and physicians such as Sibley reported the drug close to impossible to find.

“I’ve had patients drive four hours on a Sunday to a pharmacy that had ivermectin, so it’s very difficult to obtain,” she said. “Any increased access to ivermectin would help save lives.”

A Placebo?

In an April 6 Senate floor discussion on the bill, Republican Sen. Richard Briggs said Marik and other “experts that we had testifying on this may be spreading more misinformation than actual information on it,” and said that, based on his research, he believes ivermectin has a placebo effect.

However, he went on to say that ivermectin must be administered within the first 48 hours “or it doesn’t work.”

Briggs’s concern, he said, is that by making ivermectin more accessible, it would show to the public that ivermectin is as effective as other drugs such as Remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies.

“We’re going to have patients on a scientifically proven ineffective drug rather than getting the treatment they need for COVID,” Briggs said.

Others who spoke in opposition to the bill, such as Democrat Sen. Jeff Yarbro, echoed Briggs’s argument, pointing to research that he said proved ivermectin is ineffective, and that what he called misinformation surrounding ivermectin had led to overdoses.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ivermectin-as-treatment-for-covid-19-may-become-more-accessible-in-tennessee_4391967.html

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Proof that blue states DID fail their people during pandemic: Harsh lockdowns caused huge deaths rates, ruined kids' education and destroyed business, bombshell research FINALLY shows

States that imposed the harshest lockdowns had the most devastating impact on the public, the most wide-ranging study into Covid restrictions in the US to date has found.

New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois were panned for their pandemic performance after bringing in draconian measures to shut their citizens in their homes.

Those states' Democrat Governors' policies caused high death rates, ruined children's education and destroyed businesses due to the severe curbs on freedom, researchers found as they slapped them with an F-grade.

Nine out of the ten worst responses to the pandemic were in blue states, the report said, with only Republican-run Maryland bucking that trend and coming seventh last.

Meanwhile places that allowed their residents more freedom as coronavirus swept across the country appeared to fair better over the last two years.

Florida fared sixth, with its Governor Ron DeSantis condemned in the early days of the pandemic for what critics claimed was a reckless desire to reopen too quickly.

Utah, Nebraska, Vermont, Montana and South Dakota were also praised by analysts for their pandemic response which did not cause more Covid deaths. Maine was the only Democrat-run state in the top nine best responses, and came eighth.

The Republican-led areas - which dominated nine out of the top ten places in the study - have seen their economies remain strong and unemployment figures stay steady due to fewer restrictions.

The report, by the National Bureau of Economic Research and Committee to Unleash Prosperity, said shutting down during the pandemic was 'by far the biggest mistake governors and state officials made'.

It judged states on their economy, education and mortality and compiled a comprehensive list showing how they now stand as coronavirus dies down.

The bombshell study comes amid fears coronavirus restrictions may be phased back in as cases of the virus creep up, with Philadelphia bringing back its indoor mask mandate only a month after lifting it.

Co-founder Steve Moore told Fox: 'Shutting down their economies and schools was by far the biggest mistake governors and state officials made during Covid, particularly in blue states.

'We hope the results of this study will persuade governors not to close schools and businesses the next time we have a new virus variant.'

New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois were joined in the bottom ten for overall performance by New Mexico, Maryland, Nevada, Connecticut and Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia.

New Jersey, District of Columbia, New York, New Mexico, California, and Illinois were all branded with an F grade for their responses to the pandemic - with New Jersey slapped with a score of zero out of a possible 100.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10708225/The-states-FAILED-protect-people-COVID.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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A vaccine crash coming?

One who says so is Edward Dowd, a Wall Street hedge fund consultant who worked with BlackRock for a decade from 2002 to 2012 and managed a $14 billion equity portfolio. He says the world is on course for a global vaccine crisis as bad as the global financial crisis.

Dowd points to data which shows that in the US the millennial generation, aged 25-44, suffered its worst-ever excess mortality starting last autumn, when vaccine mandates were imposed, and booster shots approved. This cohort are not at risk from Covid, yet after vaccines were rolled out their all-cause mortality peaked at 80 per cent in September and is rising again to almost 60 per cent at present.

Dowd sheets home the blame to vaccines, pointing to the Pfizer clinical trial data which showed higher all-cause mortality in the vaccine group than in the placebo group. He also points to the Food and Drug Administration which fought in a court this year not to reveal the Pfizer clinical trial data for 75 years. What are they hiding, he asks? Meanwhile, insurance companies are reporting skyrocketing death claims and will seek to show that vaccines are the cause which will limit their liability. This would trigger financial collapse in the value of the Covid vaccine manufacturers, says Dowd.

At the heart of the crisis is regulatory capture, says Dowd, just as it was during the GFC, when credit agencies gave triple-A ratings to mortgage-backed securities worthy of junk bond status. This time around, the captured agencies are the FDA in the US and the Therapeutic Goods Administration in Australia which receive much of their funding from pharmaceutical companies.

While the release of its clinical trial data is putting the spotlight on Pfizer, Moderna is also under scrutiny. In February, scientists published a paper showing that a sequence of the Sars-CoV-2 spike protein which enhances the infectiousness of the virus was patented by Moderna in 2016. The first name listed on the patent is none other than Stéphane Bancel, chief executive of Moderna.

When Bancel was asked about the discovery by Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business he said, ‘My scientists are looking into those data to see how accurate they are or not’.Really? Does Bancel expect us to believe that his scientists turned the Covid spike protein into a vaccine without noticing that it contained the gene sequence he’d patented three years earlier?

The implications of the discovery are dramatic. To patent a sequence, a scientist must be able to show that it does not occur naturally so how did it turn up in a virus that evolved in a bat cave or a wet market? It appears to be unmistakeable evidence of human intervention. The question is by whom and to achieve what?

The patented sequence is part of a human DNA repair gene called MSH3 but instead of repairing gene damage it causes a mismatch leading to several diseases including cancer and to an increased susceptibility to viral infection. Its appearance in the Covid virus appears to be prima facie evidence that the virus was bioengineered through gain-of-function research.

That’s what Bancel suggests to Bartiromo saying, ‘As I’ve said before, the hypothesis of an escape from a lab by an accident is possible… It is possible that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China was working on virus enhancement or gene modification and then there’s an accident where somebody was infected in a lab — and then infected family and friends.’

If anyone else suggested this, they would be branded a conspiracy theorist and banned on social media but as we now know, despite Dr Fauci’s repeated denials, gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, which was banned in the US because it was considered too dangerous, was funded at the WIV by the US National Institutes of Health through grants it provided to the New York headquartered EcoHealth Alliance.

As it turns out, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, Dr Peter Daszak, wasn’t too worried about a lab leak. Indeed, in a talk in March 2015 he said, ‘An infectious disease crisis’ could be useful in driving funding for a ‘pan-coronavirus vaccine’ and explained that ‘a key driver is the media… We need to use that hype to our advantage… Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of (the) process.’

Bancel was more than ready when the crisis arrived. Documents published by online investigative media outlet the dailyexpose.uk show that Moderna and Dr Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) agreed to transfer ‘mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates developed and jointly owned by NIAID and Moderna’ to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in December 2019 where virologist Ralph Baric worked, a long-time collaborator with Shi Zhengli of the WIV.

Baric and the NIAID technology transfer specialist signed the agreement on 12 December 2019, 19 days before the World Health Organisation even announced, ‘a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause.’ It gave Moderna a handy head start. Two years later, the company, which had never turned a profit in its history, posted $13 billion in pre-tax profits in 2021. If there is a vax crash coming, Bancel will be alright; he earnt $18 million last year and has a golden parachute of $926 million.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/04/coming-soon-the-great-vax-crash/

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Dr Fauci discovers the individual

Dr Fauci FINALLY concedes that it's up to Americans to decide themselves how much 'risk they want to take' because Covid isn't going away

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci conceded on Sunday that Americans now must use their own best instincts when it comes to dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fauci, speaking to Jonathan Karl on ABC's This Week, was asked about an op-ed in the Washington Post by former public health official Dr. Lena Wen who said that we will likely have to accept at some point that Covid infections will keep occurring.

Karl asked Fauci if we've reached the point where we 'accept there is going to be a risk' and get back to a new normal.

'There will be - and we've said this many times even in our own discussions between you and I, that there will be a level of infection,' Fauci said.

'This is not going to be eradicated and it's not going to be eliminated. And what's going to happen is that we're going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take in going to indoor dinners and in going to functions.'

Fauci insisted that people still should consider their age, status and if they live with anyone potentially vulnerable to the virus when they attend events like the Gridiron Dinner, were several public figures were infected last week, but said that overall Wen was correct.

The United States is averaging just over 28,000 cases a day, according to the CDC, a slight uptick in recent weeks. The nation's averaging about 516 deaths per day and hospitalizations continue to decrease, while 82 percent of Americans have taken at least one dose of a Covid vaccination.

'We're going to have to live with some degree of virus in the community. The best way to mitigate that, Jon, is to get vaccinated. If you're not, to get boosted if you're eligible to be boosted.'

He also urged Congress to pass another pandemic aid package. The White House has been sending out increasingly dire warnings about the federal government's dwindling ability to help Americans through the pandemic, including running out of supplies of monoclonal antibody treatments, COVID pills and the capacity to manufacture tests.

A $10 billion funding package that was meant to pass last week died in the Senate after Republicans demanded that an amendment be added stopping Biden from lifting Trump-era migrant expulsion policy Title 42.

Meanwhile the Omicron subvariant known as BA.2 is spreading like wildfire through the country after wreaking havoc in Asian and Europe.

'I hope the Congress comes through and gives us the resources, so that as we get into what might be another surge, that we're prepared with all of the tools that we need to address it,' Fauci said.

Fauci noted that he's concerned about the uptick in cases with the BA.2 subvariant, it was to be expected giving the loosening of Covid restrictions.

'It was said that if we do start seeing an uptick, particularly of hospitalizations, we may need to revert back to being more careful and having more utilizations of masks indoors,' Fauci said. 'But right now, we're watching it very, very carefully, and there is concern that it's going up, but hopefully we're not going to see increased severity.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10705647/Fauci-FINALLY-concedes-individual-Americans-decide-deal-pandemic.html

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Omicron symptoms last HALF as long as the common cold for those who are triple jabbed: 'Boosters are worth it'

Omicron symptoms disappear in half the time of the common cold, provided the sufferer has had a Covid booster shot, a new study has shown.

Scientists at King’s College London studied 62,000 vaccinated people during the Omicron outbreak in the UK and found remarkable differences in recovery times depending on how many doses they had received.

Those who were triple jabbed reported symptoms that lasted an average of 4.4 days, compared to 8.3 days for those who had received two vaccinations.

That was about half the time of symptoms from the common cold, which lingers for seven to ten days.

For those with a booster, Omicron infection was 3.3 days shorter than a Delta infection, which lasts for 7.7 with a third dose or 9.6 days for the doubled-jabbed.

The findings indicated both that the Covid virus was evolving to be less virulent over time, and also that getting a booster drastically reduces the symptomatic period.

'Every time you boost immunity, even if it is not enough to stop infection, it helps you get over symptoms faster,' Professor Catherine Bennett, the chair in epidemiology at Deakin University in Melbourne, told Daily Mail Australia.

'But it also makes sense that it would clear the infection faster which means if you get vaccinated you won't have to put up with it for the same time.'

Professor Bennett said research shows the risk of catching Covid is also halved after having a booster shot.

However, while vaccination reduces the duration of illness, each person's experience is based on a number of factors.

'It also depends on the strength of your immune system, how long it has been since you had the booster, and the initial infecting dose,' she said.

'If you come across someone who is very infectious and get a big viral load in one hit, you may feel the impact more. 'But if it is a smaller viral load, it might be easier for your body to fight it off.'

Professor Bennett said the UK has been leading many studies into Covid-19 through out the pandemic as they have strong systems in place to conduct population based research.

While infection and immunity rates - through vaccination or catching the virus- previously varied significantly between countries, the worldwide spread of the more contagious but less virulent Omicron has made medical findings relatable across the globe.

'Now that we have had Omicron in every state and territory, we start to look more like the UK, and it makes their immunity information comparable to Australia.

'This research shows that booster are worth it. Even if you aren't likely to have a serious infection, Covid isn't pleasant to get.

'But if you have a booster, you halve the infection risk, are less infectious, have shorter symptoms, and your symptoms are more mild.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10705859/Omicron-symptoms-HALF-long-common-cold-triple-jabbed.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Corrupt Federal Statistics Mask Government Cons

Federal agencies don’t count what politicians don’t want to know. President Joe Biden and other Democrats perennially invoke “science and data” to sanctify all their COVID-19 mandates and policies. But the same shenanigans and willful omissions that have characterized COVID data have perennially permeated other federal programs.

The rule of experts?

During his update on his Winter COVID Campaign in December, President Biden declared, “Almost everyone who has died from COVID-19 in the past many months has been unvaccinated.” This was true from the start of the pandemic in early 2020 until the vaccines’ efficacy began failing badly in recent months. Oregon officially classifies roughly a quarter of its COVID fatalities since August as “vaccine breakthrough deaths.” In Illinois, roughly 30 percent of COVID fatalities have occurred among fully vaccinated individuals. According to the Vermont Department of Health, “Half of the [COVID] deaths in August were breakthrough cases. Almost three-quarters of them in September were,” as Burlington, Vermont, TV station WCAX summarized.

The Biden administration guaranteed that the vast majority of “breakthrough” infections would not be counted when the Centers for Disease Control in May ceased keeping track of “breakthrough” infections unless they resulted in hospitalization or death. Ignoring that data permitted Biden to go on CNN in July and make the ludicrously false assertion: “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” But federal data on fully vaxxed COVID fatalities is far flimsier and less reliable than the numbers compiled by some states. Biden’s attempt to define vaccine failure out of existence collapsed spectacularly with the arrival of the omicron variant in December, producing record numbers of COVID cases.

The same policymakers who claim to be guided by data have little or no idea how many Americans have been hit by COVID. According to CDC, there had been 51,115,304 COVID cases in America through mid-December. But a different CDC web page estimates that there had been 146.6 million COVID infections in the United States as of October 2, 2021. That CDC analysis estimated that only one in four COVID infections have been reported, which would mean that, based on the latest official case numbers, more than 200 million Americans have contracted COVID. For Biden policymakers, a potential error of 150 million COVID infections is “close enough for government work.” Relying on the lower number is convenient for policymakers who want to continue ignoring the natural immunity acquired by 199 million Americans who survived COVID infections.

Deceptive federal COVID data is not an anomaly. The same charades permeate the official data guiding both domestic and foreign policies.

https://www.aier.org/article/corrupt-federal-statistics-mask-government-cons/

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America's lurch to the Left

Victor Davis Hanson

The last 14 months have offered one of the rare occasions in recent American history when the hard Left has operated all the levers of federal government. The presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the permanent bureaucratic state are all in progressive hands. And the result is a disaster that is uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists whose crazy ideas are tearing apart the fabric of the country.

For understandable reasons, socialists and leftists are usually kept out of the inner circles of the Democratic Party, and especially kept away from control of the country. A now resuscitated Bernie Sanders for most of his political career was an inert outlier. The brief flirtations with old-style hardcore liberals such as George McGovern in 1972 and Mike Dukakis in 1988 imploded the Democratic Party. Their crash-and-burn campaigns were followed by corrective nominees who actually won the presidency: Southern governors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Such was the nation’s innate distrust of the Left, and in particular the East Coast elite liberal. For nearly half a century between the elections of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, it was assumed that no Democratic presidential candidate could win the popular vote unless he had a reassuring Southern accent.

How did the extreme Left manage its rare takeover of the country between 2018 and 2020? Certainly, Obama’s election helped accelerate the woke movement and energized identity politics. One could also argue over the political opportunities in 2020 following the devastation of COVID-19.

In the long term, the medicine of lockdowns and quarantines probably proved more calamitous than the disease, and this crisis mode made doable what had once been unimaginable.

State governors such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and Andrew Cuomo did not let the pandemic crisis go to waste. It was a rare occasion to leverage agendas that otherwise had no public support in ordinary times.

In the chaos of 2020, both laws and customs were altered or scrapped—changing the very way we vote.

Over 102 million ballots were either mailed in or cast during so-called “early voting”—strangely resulting in far lower rejection rates in most states than in past “normal” years of predominantly in-person voting on Election Day. Indeed, in just one year, Election Day went from an American institution to an afterthought.

The hatred of Donald Trump prompted an influx of hundreds of millions of dark dollars from Silicon Valley to supplant the responsibilities of registrars in key precincts with armies of paid activists.

A non compos mentis, basement-bound Joe Biden was cynically given an “Ol’ Joe from Scranton” moderate veneer to pursue a calibrated hard-Left agenda.

So Americans ended up with a neo-socialist government.

It is proving as disastrous as it is bitterly instructive—reminding this generation of Americans what the Left does when it grasps power. As all restraints came off, the hard and now unbridled Left went to work to turn America into something like a looney, one-party California. A wide-open border followed. We may see 3 million illegal aliens cross at the southern border during the first 18 months of the Biden Administration. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allotted to reward those illegally entering America, who can expect free legal support from the U.S. government to ensure they are not subject to the laws of the United States.

In a sane world, Biden would have been impeached for deliberately destroying the very federal laws he swore to uphold. On the prompt of his hard Left controllers, he was eager to alter the electoral demography of the nation rather than ensure immigrants came in reasonable numbers, legally, with audit and background checks, and safely in a time of a pandemic. The former illegal arrivals were seen as needed constituents, the latter legal immigrants too politically unpredictable.

The Left in about a year has negated American gas and oil independence. Biden, who promised to end America’s use of fossil fuels on his watch, cast adrift millions of his fellow citizens to choose between driving and eating. Much of what the Left had traditionally demonized and wanted gone from American life—from gasoline to beefsteak to new pickup trucks—became so inflated in price as to be nearly unattainable.

The electrician now pays five times more for his wire, the carpenter eight times more for his plywood, the plumber six times more for his pipe—as all three have to pay off-the-books cash for rare workers who prefer to get checks from the Biden Administration. The Biden printing press has destroyed both the idea that all citizens will work if there are just good-paying jobs, and that affordable necessities for life—food, fuel, and shelter—form the basis for a middle-class life.

If the Left did all that in 14 months, imagine what it can still do before losing the Congress in 2022.

The Biden Administration’s profligate multitrillion-dollar budget, inflation of the currency, de facto zero interest rates, destructive subsidies that undermined labor participation, and incompetence at addressing the supply-chain and clogged port crises will all by midyear likely achieve a 10 percent annualized inflation rate. Carter-era stagflation is on the near horizon.

When an American president predicts a food shortage in what used to be the breadbasket of the world, then we see the wages of socialism in all their unapologetic cruelty. When the Left can scarcely hide its glee that diesel fuel hit $7 a gallon in California, the public is finally seeing that the Bidens, Newsoms, and AOCs of the world care nothing for the real-life consequences of their elite utopian green fantasies. How did America ever stoop to begging communist Venezuela, theocratic Iran, and dictatorial Russia to pump oil for us that we have in abundance but will not produce? Which insane person thought up the idea of using Vladimir Putin’s Russia as our mediator to restart the Iran Deal?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/victor-davis-hanson-nihilism-left

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COVID-19 drug to ‘reduce hospitalisations’ now subsdized in Australia

Australians at risk of severe COVID-19 will soon be able to access two drugs that can lessen the disease’s impact through their GP after the federal government listed a second anti-viral treatment on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

Health Minister Greg Hunt will announce the PBS listing of Paxlovid, a combination of the drugs nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, on Saturday, as state governments prepare to scrap close contact rules once the Omicron BA.2 wave of infections has subsided.

Eligible adults who test positive to COVID-19 through a PCR or rapid antigen test will be able to get Paxlovid, which can prevent severe disease if taken within five days of onset, from their local pharmacy with a GP prescription from next month.

“This medicine will help reduce the need for hospital admission,” Mr Hunt said.

Lagevrio, the trade name for molnupiravir – another anti-viral used to treat COVID-19 – was listed on the PBS on March 1 and has since been used to treat about 5000 patients. Both listings followed the recommendation of the independent Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.

State and territory governments have agreed to the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee’s recommendation that close contact isolation rules be scrapped when it is safe to do so.

Paxlovid will be available on the PBS from May 1 to people aged 65 or older, with two other risk factors for severe disease, or one factor for those aged 75 and over. It will also be subsidised for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander patients aged 50 or over with two other risk factors and patients who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.

Patients will pay a maximum of $42.50 a script and $6.80 with a concession card.

Mr Hunt said it was important that patients “continue to follow local health guidance to isolate if they test positive for COVID-19”.

“It’s recommended they use telehealth to consult their doctor and ask their pharmacy to arrange for Paxlovid to be delivered to their home, if necessary,” he said.

The federal government has access to 1 million courses of Paxlovid, with 500,000 arriving last year and a further 500,000 secured for delivery throughout 2022 for supply through both state and territory health departments and the PBS. More can be procured if needed.

Paxlovid is already available to COVID-19 patients through state health hospitals, which can access it through the national medical stockpile, and patients ineligible under the PBS can still be treated with the drug through this pathway, which has been used 42,867 times.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/covid-19-drug-to-reduce-hospitalisations-listed-on-pbs-ahead-of-close-contact-rule-change-20220408-p5abzr.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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The FDA's Own Experts Have No Idea Why It Approved Another COVID Booster Dose

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bypassed many of its own protocols to speed through the authorization of Pfizer’s second booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine last week.

Multiple medical experts, including some who sit on the FDA’s top vaccine advisory committee, said they had no idea why the agency skipped over its normal approval process to authorize the fourth vaccine dose for Americans aged 50 and older. The authorization was even broader than the drug company requested, which was that it be greenlit for those aged 65 and older.

That FDA vaccine panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), is meeting Wednesday, and part of the agenda will be to discuss the fourth vaccine dose and the Israeli studies which are being used to exhibit its effectiveness. Typically, the vaccine authorization process would involve a meeting and vote by VRBPAC on whether to recommend authorization, followed by the FDA head granting that authorization. Then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine committee would vote on how to recommend the vaccine, which would then be determined by the CDC director.

Dr. Paul Offit, a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and member of VRBPAC, said he couldn’t explain why the FDA didn’t present its data to the committee first before moving ahead with authorization: “The way it’s working here is that the government basically just declares that this is what they’re going to do.”

In an interview with the Daily Caller, Offit expressed concern that the data used to authorize the second booster could be flawed. The Israeli studies examine the outcomes of individuals who got a 4th shot versus those who declined one. Offit explained that this is lacking compared to a randomized, controlled clinical trial.

“That assumes that someone who chooses to get a fourth dose is just like someone who doesn’t. But you could argue that someone who chooses to get another dose is more attentive to their health, more likely to exercise, less likely to smoke,” he said.

Dr. Cody Meissner is a childhood vaccination expert at Tufts University who also sits on VRBPAC. He similarly couldn’t explain why his insight, along with the other committee members, wasn’t sought out before authorizing Pfizer’s fourth dose. (RELATED: Co-Inventor Of Rotavirus Vaccine, Two Former FDA Officials Take Stand Against Booster Mandates, Support Natural Immunity)

“I haven’t seen that data, they haven’t brought it to the committee… but this decision has been made, and certainly will not be reversed,” he told the Daily Caller. “You’d have to ask the FDA why they decided to go ahead and make this particular decision… because again, I have not seen the data.”

Like Offit, Meissner shared some skepticism about the Israeli data and the overall lack of studies about the fourth dose. “What all of the facts were, that were presented to the FDA, all the data, I don’t know. From what’s been available in the press that everyone has had a chance to see, the numbers are pretty small,” he said.

Some experts who spoke with the Daily Caller said that even though the authorization for the fourth shot was rushed and abnormal, it was still a reasonable decision to go ahead with greenlighting it. That isn’t a universal opinion. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Drs. Philip Krause and Luciana Borio lay out a case for why most Americans don’t need a fourth shot.

Krause and Borio would be authorities on the subject. The former was the deputy director of vaccines research and review at the FDA before resigning last year amid political pressure from the Biden administration after more than a decade at the agency. The latter was formerly the acting chief scientist at the FDA.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California San Francisco who does not sit on the FDA vaccine committee, said it was rare for the FDA to ram through an authorization in this way: “I am concerned about the FDA making decisions on booster shots without input from the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. This is rare for the FDA not to consult with advisory committees before making approvals that affect millions of Americans, especially without a randomized trial or better data on the need for younger populations like 50 and over.”

It’s also incredibly rare for the agency to grant an applicant a broader authorization than it asked for, such as authorizing Pfizer’s fourth dose for Americans aged 50 and older when the pharmaceutical giant only asked for approval for ages 65 and older. Offit said the decision to do so “completely shocked” him.

There’s always a possibility to have too much of a good thing. The rush to get fourth doses could have downsides, experts told the Daily Caller. Both Offit and Gandhi independently raised the issue of original antigenic sin — a phenomenon in which the immune system continually produces an immune response targeted at the first encounter with a pathogen, rather than updated strains or variants. It’s possible that this process could render variant-specific vaccine doses or boosters ineffective, because the body bases its immune response on the original vaccine dose.

Offit added that there are other possible drawbacks, from run-of-the-mill side effects from the shots like fatigue and pain to immune system exhaustion. There are diminishing returns to each booster dose, he explained. “The other thing that it’s created here, which I think is concerning, is the notion that there’s just no downside to this, that you can just get booster after booster after booster and there’s no downside – and I don’t think that’s true.”

Gandhi echoed that sentiment, saying simply pumping in booster after booster may be a result of a failure to understand how the immune system actually deals with the coronavirus: “Without a knowledge of the immune system, this discussion of antibodies alone will lead us to want to boost every 4 months, which is not logistically feasible and is unprecedented.” (RELATED: Man Investigated After Allegedly Getting 90 COVID-19 Vaccine Shots To Sell Vaccination Cards In Germany)

For his two cents, Meissner said it wasn’t entirely clear that there was even widespread need for further boosting, even if the fourth dose is safe and effective: “We aren’t seeing a lot of breakthrough disease in people who are appropriately immunized, so I’m not quite sure what motivated the FDA… why at this time?”

Ultimately, all of these concerns, tradeoffs and questions of necessity are the kinds of topics which would be debated at the VRBPAC meeting that would precede authorization. That didn’t happen, and nobody who spoke with the Daily Caller could guess why.

“I can’t really answer the question. The question’s a good one, but I cannot explain it,” Meissner said.

“I don’t know. Ask the FDA. Ask the Biden administration. Ask David Kessler (the chief science officer of the White House COVID-19 response team),” said Offit.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/06/fda-covid-19-coronavirus-second-booster-authorized-pfizer/

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Ukraine war pushes world food prices to record high

Russia and Ukraine account for a huge share of the globe's exports in several major commodities, including wheat, vegetable oil and corn.

World food prices hit an all-time high in March following Russia’s invasion of agricultural powerhouse Ukraine, a UN agency said on Friday, adding to concerns about the risk of hunger around the world.

The disruption in export flows resulting from the Feb 24 invasion and international sanctions against Russia has spurred fears of a global hunger crisis, especially across the Middle East and Africa, where the knock-on effects are already playing out.

Russia and Ukraine, whose vast grain-growing regions are among the world’s main breadbaskets, account for a huge share of the globe’s exports in several major commodities, including wheat, vegetable oil and corn.

Ukrainian ports have been blocked by a Russian blockade and there is concern about this year’s harvest as the war rages on during the spring sowing season.

“World food commodity prices made a significant leap in March to reach their highest levels ever, as war in the Black Sea region spread shocks through markets for staple grains and vegetable oils,” the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement.

The FAO’s food price index, which had already reported a record in February, surged by 12.6% last month, “making a giant leap to a new highest level since its inception in 1990”, the UN agency said.

The index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, averaged 159.3 points in March.

The jump includes new all-time highs for vegetable oils, cereals and meats, the FAO said, adding that prices of sugar and dairy products “also rose significantly”.

Famine fears

Russia and Ukraine together accounted for around 30% and 20% of global wheat and maize exports respectively, over the past three years, the FAO said.

Wheat prices rose by almost 20%, with the problem exacerbated by concerns over crop conditions in the US, the organisation said.

The FAO’s vegetable oil price index surged by 23.2%, driven by higher quotations for sunflower seed oil, of which Ukraine is the world’s leading exporter.

Spanish supermarkets have rationed the sale of sunflower oil to stop customers stockpiling over shortage fears due to the war.

The US has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of creating “this global food crisis”.

France has warned that the war has increased the risk of famine around the world.

Ukraine on Thursday called on the European Union to provide aid to its farmers. The European Commission has been asked to coordinate the delivery of fuel, seeds, fertilisers and agricultural machines to the country.

For his part, Putin warned on Tuesday that, against the backdrop of global food shortages, Russia would “have to be prudent with supplies abroad and carefully monitor such exports to countries that are clearly hostile towards us”.

The conflict has also sent oil and gas prices through the roof, causing inflation to rise further across the world and raising concerns that it could derail global economic growth.

https://www.malaysianow.com/out-there-now/2022/04/09/ukraine-war-pushes-world-food-prices-to-record-high/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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A doctor explains why you haven’t caught Covid yet

I haven't had it yet. I have been double vaxxed but that was relatively recently and I had plenty of exposure before that. So I think I am not going to get it in the future. I am not bothering about a booster. I do seem to have an unusually good immune system. It has even defeated some cancers -- JR

By now, it’s likely you’ve either had Covid or you’ve been a close contact of somebody who did. If you’re in the latter group and you haven’t caught it yourself, chances are you’re feeling very smug right now — but scientists are trying to work out why.

Australian National University lecturer and epidemiologist Dr Katrina Roper suggests there are three main factors that could be helping you avoid Covid.

Your immunity

Yes, of course, your immunity may just be better suited to avoiding Covid, or if you’re vaccinated and have been exposed, your vaccine may have been working more strongly at the time.

“Immunity to infection varies between people,” Dr Roper explained to news.com.au. “For example, compare the immune level of a younger person versus an elderly person.

“Immunity can also vary according to a person’s health status at any point in time. If a person is stressed — be that emotionally or physically — this can lead to reduced immunity and increased susceptibility to illness”.

While many scientists are talking about underlying health conditions, obesity and old age being the main factors that make a person more susceptible, Roper says that even the healthiest among us could be suffering from a weakened immune system.

“Even elite athletes, if they start over training, can stress their body and result in reduced immunity — despite being very fit for their sport”.

The circumstances of your exposure

I caught Covid at the start of this year from my boyfriend, when we were isolating in a studio apartment, but I know lots of people who avoided the virus despite being in close proximity with infected people.

We’ve all heard of boyfriends who never caught it from their girlfriend even though they live together. Or six-year-old boys who never passed it on to their sister or parents, despite them catching nearly every other cold under the sun from him.

So why are some people so lucky? Roper suggests it can have a lot to do with factors other than immunity.

“In households, there would also be other factors,” she explained, “such as how much time one person spends in close proximity to an infected person in comparison with another.

“The size of the household would also have an impact on why there is more transmission in some homes compared with another. Two people living in a one-bedroom apartment is not the same as two people living in a three-bedroom house, and their opportunities for exposure will be different”.

Prior infections

As it turns out, previous infections of any kind may have helped you escape Covid, according to research.

“Having a prior infection to another cold virus can confer some protection to Covid, or other respiratory viruses,” said Roper.

”Exposure to other respiratory viruses can prime parts of the immune system, leading to better defence against infection by the SARS CoV-2 infection”.

It’s not a foolproof system, however. Roper notes that some virus can live in your body together — like influenza and SARS CoV-2.

Of course, there’s also a good chance you did have Covid and just didn’t realise it, according to Immunologist, Professor Stuart Tangye.

“When we first started doing PCR testing, it was really done on symptomatic people … so we were obviously missing a lot of those asymptomatic people,” Tangye told the ABC.

“I’m sure we missed a lot of positive cases over December and January too, where there was a supply and demand problem in terms of getting tests”.

Or, it could just be your genetics

Earlier in 2022, UK researchers performed the first human-challenge trial of its kind for Covid.

The study found 36 young and healthy people who had no evidence of previous Covid infection or vaccination. It exposed all 36 of these people to the virus, and only about half of them actually caught it — which was defined by two positive PCR tests in a row.

Of those who didn’t catch Covid, about half of them did briefly show low levels of the virus. This suggests their immune systems shut it down pretty quickly.

“There’s probably a few people … who would have a really strong innate immune response [that] just quells the infection, without enabling the virus to get too far ahead,” said Tangye.

“There are going to be people who are less susceptible to viral infection because they have differences in their genes, such as genes that are important for viral entry into your cells”.

Although that group would be very small, Tangye also suggested this wasn’t the first time some people have been found to have a genetic resistance to diseases.

“With HIV, for example, there is a very, very small number of people who are genetically resistant to infection,” he said.

“That’s because they have naturally occurring genetic mutations in a certain gene so the virus can’t physically infect their T cells.”

So maybe you’re genetically lucky, but more likely you were just lucky at the time of your exposure to Covid — or never realised when you had it.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/a-doctor-explains-why-you-havent-caught-covid-yet/news-story/d57a08a08278abf27f43c29fcfe87196

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New Verdict in Capitol Riot Case Throws a Wrench Into Political Narrative

A federal defense contractor who had been charged with four misdemeanors for walking into the Capitol on Jan. 6, fought the charges and was acquitted on all counts today by Judge Trevor McFadden. Matthew Martin was charged with: entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, as well as parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.

But Martin didn’t commit any violence or break into the building. He argued that he believed that the Capitol Police had allowed him into the building, and he just walked in.

From Politico:

McFadden said that, based on video of the scene, that assertion was at least “plausible” and that prosecutors failed to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“People were streaming by and the officers made no attempt to stop the people,” said the judge [….]

“I do think the defendant reasonably believed the officers allowed him into the Capitol,” the judge said.

McFadden said that the government did not show any evidence of Martin crossing police lines, and that Martin’s “conduct was about as minimal….as I can imagine.”

This is a significant verdict. While some are charged with more serious offenses, many of the people charged for Jan. 6 offenses are in a similar position to Martin — they didn’t do much beyond walk into the building. Some have argued — as Martin did — that the police let them in.

McFadden has pointed out disparities in the way Jan. 6 defendants have been treated in the past. He said that he thinks there is a difference in the way that the prosecutors are handling the Jan. 6 cases versus cases in the past (that may have involved leftist protesters).

“It does feel like the government has had two standards here, and I can’t abide by that,” McFadden said. The judge added that before Jan. 6, 2021, he could not remember seeing a nonviolent, first-time misdemeanant “sentenced to serious jail time … regardless of their race, gender or political affiliation.”

But in the case of Jenny Cudd, McFadden said the prosecution had asked for 75 days in jail for misdemeanor trespassing on Jan. 6. But meanwhile, the judge noted the same prosecutors’ office asked for 10 days in jail in the case of a repeat offender activist Tighe Barry connected to the left-wing group Code Pink.

The judge said that the same prosecutor’s office in 2019 sought 10 days behind bars for Barry, who stood on a chair, held up a poster, and shouted at senators from the back row in one of Kavanaugh’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in September 2018, and returned to protest three weeks later in violation of a stay-away order.

“The government’s sentencing recommendation here is just so disproportionate to other sentences for people who have engaged in similar conduct,” said McFadden, who added that Barry, a frequent demonstrator with 14 prior arrests, had accidentally knocked a chair into a bystander when Capitol Police arrested him. “I don’t believe in some sort of aggregate justice.”

We’ve seen another judge question the treatment of Jan. 6 defendants in the past.

McFadden’s decision, in this case, is likely to throw a wrench into the political narrative about the riot — and it’s already causing some on the left to melt down.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/04/06/new-verdict-in-capitol-riot-case-throws-a-wrench-into-political-narrative-n546438

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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The State and Local Leaders Who Aren’t Ready to Give Up Pandemic Power

While many government leaders sound the all clear message on COVID-19, dropping vaccine restrictions and mask mandates, some states and municipalities are clinging to the emergency powers that allowed them to govern people's behavior in unprecedented ways.

Citing the need to direct emergency funding and oversee hospitals, they have held on to their emergency orders even as many restaurants, shopping centers, and sports arenas are once again packed and lingering pandemic concerns have faded into the background of a more normal life.

Emergency orders at the state level are usually issued in response to temporary threats, especially weather disasters, and are wrapped up in a few days or weeks. Soon after the new coronavirus exploded in March 2020, most governors issued broad executive orders. Under these powers, governors banned crowds, closed businesses, and imposed mask and vaccination mandates. They have also deferred to unelected public health officials in imposing restrictions.

Critical lawmakers are now challenging the power to take such sweeping actions – and keep the measures in place indefinitely – saying pandemic lockdowns exposed leaders’ unduly stringent authoritarian impulses.  

Ruling by decree over an extended period during the pandemic “is part of a broader move to condense power to the executive branch,” said Nick Murray, policy analyst at the conservative Maine Policy Institute, who has studied emergency policies. “You see these things come into play during a crisis and then [remain in place] to give more executive power,” Murray said. “It’s a theme that has devolved into bureaucracy.”

In Nevada, the state of emergency has been declared in perpetuity, even as state lawmakers have unsuccessfully tried to pass measures limiting the authority of Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.

In Kansas, the emergency authority of Gov. Laura Kelly, also a Democrat, extends to January 2023. She has clung to the order even as the state’s director of public health – a now-estranged former political ally – questioned the need for a continued state of emergency.

And in North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in November vetoed legislation that would require wider input from elected leaders if he wished to continue his ability to issue restrictions under a declared emergency. The Republican-controlled legislature got around the veto by attaching provisions to the state’s budget bill, which prevent Cooper from again declaring a state emergency and exercising singular authority for longer than 30 days. Yet Cooper last week extended the emergency due to expire in April even as cases waned. 

Lawmakers in most states have either passed laws or introduced legislation aimed at curtailing governors’ emergency authority. These laws include prohibiting mask mandates and business closures and set time limits on emergency orders.

Twelve states, seven of them with a Democratic governor and legislature, have emergency orders still in place. The remaining states have either ended their emergency or have announced a date to terminate it.  

Supporters of an extended emergency, which include many in the health care field, argue that the effort to limit the ability of governors and health care officials to respond to future crises is dangerous.

“You can’t have this sweeping legislation based on a single event,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, which represents workers in 2,800 municipal public health offices and which issued a report last year criticizing legislative moves to rein in the authority of public health officials and governors. “There is a balance that can be found, but some of these have gone to the opposite end of the spectrum that allows them to prohibit [health officials] from doing anything.”

Jason Mercier, director of the right-leaning Center for Government Reform in Washington State, largely agrees with Freeman. “We’re not as worried about emergency orders; it’s the restrictions that need to be subject to legislative oversight,” he said.

States have varying laws regarding the ending of emergency power; in some states, only the governor can end an emergency. In others, legislators can. Mercier noted that in his state, where the party of Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee also controls the statehouse, a state of emergency can be extended indefinitely and has been, with Inslee insisting he can rule without agreement from any other officials.

“What we have here is one person behind closed doors enacting policy,” Mercier said.

The struggle over emergency powers is also happening within states. Some cities and counties also declared emergencies in early 2020, using them to enact local restrictions, often in political clashes with state leadership they did not agree with.

In Texas, leaders in mostly urban cities and counties have ignored Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s COVID-19 rules, insisting they have the right under a local state of emergency to impose masking and other measures. Abbott contends he has full authority to issue emergency orders, which void local mandates declared under the same state emergency statute. Legal battles have moved through the court system since summer 2021.

Some municipalities, like the city of Phoenix, have refused to set a date to lift the declaration. City Council spokeswoman Stephanie Barnes did not respond to an email seeking comment.

“Most existing emergency management statutes, with some exceptions, are blunt instruments,” said Luke Wake, an attorney with the California-based Pacific Legal Foundation. The conservative group represented several businesses in legal battles to remain open.

“The orders are either on or off, but as long as they remain in place the governor has all of the power,” Wake said. “This experience has taught us that we need to rethink how broad the powers we give these people are. Most people had never looked at this, and [COVID-19] gave us all a good reason to do so.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom locked down people and closed businesses under the state’s emergency powers act, which remains in place despite persistent calls by mostly Republican forces for it to be removed.

Dozens of lawsuits challenging emergency authority have been filed against governors of both political stripes. The plaintiffs run from business owners and open meetings advocates to regular citizens who insist emergency powers used in some places are unconstitutional. Many of these cases have been settled as restrictions ended or agreements were struck.

Wake and the Pacific Legal Foundation are handling the case of Ghost Golf, an indoor recreation center in Fresno that challenged Newsom’s order to close. Several other businesses also sued the state to remain open, but dropped their cases when Newsom allowed businesses to open in June 2021. The Ghost Golf case continues, however.

“The governor lifted the restrictions, but he could reimpose those at any point as long as the emergency exists,” Wake said. “With every variant, people have to worry that the reason the governor hasn’t allowed it to lapse is to make it possible for him to take the same action again.”

In Michigan, it took a 4-3 state Supreme Court ruling to remove the vast emergency powers invoked by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which she used to issue sweeping and detailed restrictions in the first year of the pandemic. At one point, her orders prohibited residents from purchasing specific “nonessential” items, including house paint, while the state’s recreational marijuana dispensaries were allowed to remain open.

Whitmer sidestepped the court ruling by handing over those same powers to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, where a political appointee and public health official enforced her orders. A group calling itself Unlock Michigan has battled Whitmer and her administration, filing petitions challenging the authority of her and her health department.

“To upend society and destroy people’s business, you should get some elected officials involved,” Fred Wszolek, a spokesman for the group, said. “We want whoever takes control in an emergency to have checks and balances.”

The authoritarian impulses of governors are not limited to Democrats. When legislatures in three GOP-controlled states passed bills curbing the emergency powers of chief executives, the Republican governors of Ohio, North Dakota, and Indiana vetoed the bills. Those vetoes were successfully overridden, however, and enacted into state law.

Proponents of strong emergency powers also claim that because legislatures in most states are not full time, a prompt response to a crisis requires that a single individual be able to designate a situation as a lethal health crisis.

Yet, four of the states with the most extensive restrictions during the pandemic all have full-time legislatures. All four (Michigan, California, New York, and Pennsylvania) are led by Democratic governors, although two of them – Michigan and Pennsylvania – have Republican-controlled legislatures.

Andy Baker-White, senior director for state health policy for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, noted in a recent legislative briefing to association members that maintaining legal authority to impose mask-wearing and other restrictions is “crucial” to preparing for outbreaks.

Baker-White said in an interview with RCI that some of the proposals to limit emergency authority “are like tying a hand behind your back before getting into the boxing ring.”

“These powers and authorities are part of the toolbox to prevent the spread of infectious disease,” he added. “These often need to be flexible and swift when dealing with these diseases. Limiting these powers can have an impact on the ability to respond, and without an adequate response, a disease can cause more harm.”

The flexibility to govern in an authoritarian fashion, though, is exactly what is being targeted by state lawmakers around the U.S.

“It’s so bonkers that any legislature did not put an expire time on these emergency orders,” said Wszolek of Unlock Michigan. “When you consider what these powers allow, we really need to think about that. This is a muscle that really got used.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/04/06/the_state_and_local_leaders_who_arent_ready_to_give_up_their_pandemic_power_824949.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

<a href="https://edwatch.blogspot.com">http://edwatch.blogspot.com</a> (EDUCATION WATCH)

<a href="https://antigreen.blogspot.com">http://antigreen.blogspot.com</a> (GREENIE WATCH)

<a href="https://pcwatch.blogspot.com">http://pcwatch.blogspot.com</a> (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

<a href="https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/">http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/</a> (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

<a href="https://snorphty.blogspot.com/">http://snorphty.blogspot.com/</a> (TONGUE-TIED)

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Russia Threatens to Limit Vital Exports of Agriculture Products to ‘Friendly’ Countries Only

A senior Russian government official has threatened to limit exports of agriculture products to “friendly” countries only amid sanctions from Western nations in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, who previously served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of the country’s security council, took to Telegram on April 1 where he warned of the potential move.

Medvedev said that many counties depend on supplies of food from Russia, a major global wheat exporter, writing: “It turns out that our food is our quiet weapon. Quiet but ominous,” according to Breitbart.

“The priority in food supplies is our domestic market. And price control,” he continued. “We will supply food and crops only to our friends (fortunately, we have a lot of them, and they are not at all in Europe and not in North America). We will sell both for rubles and for their national currency in agreed proportions.”

He then explained that Russia would not supply products and agricultural products to those countries it deems as “enemies.”

“And we won’t buy anything from them (although we haven’t bought anything since 2014, but the list of products prohibited for import can be further expanded),” he continued. Russia previously imposed a ban on imports of certain agricultural products from the EU and other Western countries in 2014 after its annexation of Crimea.

Russia serves as a major global exporter of several commodities, including sunflower oil, barley, and wheat; the latter of which it mainly supplies to Africa and the Middle East.

It is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, having exported $10.1B in wheat in 2020 alone, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic and various supply chain issues.

The European Union and Ukraine are its main competitors in the wheat trade, which manifests as items such as pasta, bread, cereal, and fried foods for consumers.

A ban on exports of certain agriculture products to so-called “unfriendly” countries could put further pressure on those nations that are already bracing for potential food shortages resulting from the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent western sanctions.

Speaking of possible shortages, U.S. President Joe Biden said during a press conference at the White House on March 24 that “it’s going to be real,” noting that “the price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia, it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

Biden said the United States and Canada may need to boost their food production to avoid shortages in Europe and other places.

However, it is unlikely that the United States would likely experience any significant shortages, whereas European countries that are more dependent on Russia for imports, as well as less economically developed nations, could see fewer products on supermarket shelves.

Medvedev’s remark comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin set a deadline for customers from “unfriendly” countries, which includes all member states of the European Union, to start paying for Russian gas deliveries in roubles or face being cut off.

Multiple European buyers of Russian energy have so far refused to comply with the demand. However, Slovakia’s minister of the economy on Sunday said his country is willing to do so.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/russia-threatens-to-limit-vital-exports-of-agriculture-products-to-friendly-countries-only_4380520.html

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The personal effects of inflation and how it creates recessions

By David Potter

Historically speaking, high inflation—greater than 5 percent—has always preceded many of the recessions in the United States. The causality follows a simple chain of events. Household budgets for items such as housing, food, and energy are fixed — or at least rigid — for most Americans. When these costs rise, income must be reallocated to these three categories from different areas of one’s budget such as entertainment, travel, and other non-essentials.

Unfortunately, with overall inflation up 7.9 percent the last twelve months — the worst since 1982 — it is reasonable to expect Americans will begin to restrict their spending and enter survival mode.

Housing costs have been on the rise for years after falling during the financial crisis. 2021 was exceptionally expensive for renters and homebuyers. The national average cost of rent was 10.1 percent higher in 2021 than in 2020. Additionally, rent costs grew 5 times faster in 2021 than 2020. Even more shocking, the national average of home prices increased 19 percent in 2021. In the 50 years since this metric has been tracked, a yearly increase like this has never happened before. Combine this with the fact that the dollar lost 4.7 percent purchasing power last year and you have a recipe for impending economic and financial trouble.

Personally, my rent has increased 7.7 percent from last year. Witnessing one’s salary become less useful is demoralizing. During the last major recession in 2008, I was 18, in college, and very poor even for a college student’s standards. Living off campus, I vividly remember not being able to socialize as much as I’d like outside of class as my beater Chevrolet costed too much to fill the tank. Ramen noodles became an even larger staple of my diet.

Now, in my early 30s, the 2021 inflation hits different. The inflation from the 2008 financial crisis most substantially affected my day-to-day living. Today, the major impact of the 2021 inflation is on my future. As with most Americans my age, my current ability to invest, save for retirement, save for a home down payment, and pay off student loan debt has been decreased. It’s not that I can no longer do these things, but the speed at which I can achieve financial milestones has been diminished.

While housing is typically the most expensive item in a person’s or family’s budget, the 2021 increase in food costs was substantial. Prices for at home food increased 7.4 percent and prices for food away from home increased 6.4 percent. Even more expensive, the price of meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 12.2 percent.

While inflation greatly impacts the prices of gas and housing, it also makes groceries more expensive. For American families, this can be a serious problem, as food is often in the top 5 expenses in the household budget. During times of economic recession, inflation can be a major contributing factor to rising poverty rates. This is because families must spend more of their income on basic necessities like food, leaving less money for other essentials like healthcare and education.

For me, I’ve still been able to buy all the foods I regularly consumed in 2020 and 2021, but I have had to trim my budget in other areas to continue to do this. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts is one of my favorite simple, healthy meats to eat. In my area, the cost of 3 pieces (1.5 pounds) increased from $7 to $9.50. My favorite caffeinated beverages such as cold brew coffee (privileged, I know) increased as much as 20 percent. Even though I am unhappy about the increased prices, economic downturns and inflation force me to remember that life is easier in America (for most people) during the bad times than it is during the best of times in some poor, less fortunate countries.

Perhaps one of the most apparent signs of inflation is the 40 percent price increase of gas. Historically, it’s common for inflation and the cost of crude oil to be positively correlated. One contributing factor is the increased transportation costs of fuel and energy during inflation. Natural gas costs rose 23.9 percent in 2021. Electricity prices rose 10.7 percent. As a result, people will travel less and reconsider their thermostat settings at home. Less travel in general equates to brick-and-mortar businesses receiving less traffic and income.

Thankfully, the cost of my lease covers electricity, so I haven’t had to make any drastic changes there. Gas, however, is a different story. I am now less likely to go explore new places within my region of the state and within my city. I am also more hesitant to plan long-distance trips to visit family and friends. I miss the gas prices of the Trump days. I could go exploring with less guilt and not thinking about it as much.

In summary, inflation is the gradual loss of purchasing power of a currency. Inflationary effects can be seen in the prices of goods and services, which rise over time as the currency loses value. The financial pressure created by inflation forces average Americans to decrease their spending.

It’s happening right now. Less spending means less money re-entering the economy. Before we know it, as consumer spending takes a hit prices stayed too high for too long, soon businesses will be laying people off and some even closing their doors — leading to the next recession.

https://dailytorch.com/2022/04/the-personal-effects-of-inflation-and-how-it-creates-recessions/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=adc66422-fe0d-4c12-adfc-f90f48cbf906

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The Moron's gun control call out of touch with reality

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to President Joe Biden's call for federal gun control after a shooting in Sacramento, California left six dead:

"President Joe Biden's predictable call for gun control in the wake of the murder of six people in Sacramento, California demonstrates that the President does not have any actual functioning tools in his anti-crime toolbox. California has amongst the most restrictive requirements regulating the individual ownership of firearms in the nation, and to try to mirror those laws on a national level in response to their failure in the Golden State is beyond absurd. Perhaps the President should reevaluate the turnkey criminal justice system advocated by himself and his political allies that puts police on trial rather than criminals in order to get to the root of the dramatic increase in homicides and gang activity since he took office and to reestablish the rule of law in America."

https://getliberty.org/2022/04/bidens-gun-control-call-out-of-touch-with-reality/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Covid-19 first-of-its-kind study saw volunteers infected for science

The first “controlled investigation” of Covid-19 has been carried out and it has allowed researchers to dispel a widespread myth about the way people become infected.

The human challenge study involved people being deliberately infected with a virus — in this case it was SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

The study, published last week in the journal Nature Medicine, found that only the most minuscule amount of the virus is needed to infect a person — as much as a single airborne droplet from a person sneezing, coughing or talking.

It also found that, despite what most people have been told, viral shedding and transmissibility occur at high levels when a person is infected regardless of whether they have severe or mild symptoms.

Researchers from University College London Hospital, Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, among others, were also able to bust another myth, one pushed mostly by anti-maskers.

They found the virus is “present at significantly higher (levels) in the nose than the throat”, a finding they said provides “clear evidence that emphasises the critical importance of wearing face coverings over the nose as well as the mouth”.

“Deliberate human infection of low-risk volunteers enables the exact longitudinal measurement of viral kinetics, immunological responses, transmission dynamics and duration of infectious shedding after a fixed dose of a well-characterised virus,” authors wrote.

“Experimental challenge with human pathogens requires careful ethical scrutiny and regulation but can deliver unparalleled information that may inform clinical policy and refinement of infection control measures.”

Those “unparalleled findings” were made possible thanks to 36 volunteers aged between 18-30 years.

The participants were each given a dose of the virus via a small tube into their nose, then housed in a high-containment quarantine unit at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust with 24-hour close medical monitoring and full access to clinical care.

Researchers found that 18 participants — equating to 53 per cent — became infected with a viral load “rising steeply and peaking five days after inoculation”.

They said the virus was “first detected in the throat but rose to significantly higher levels in the nose”.

“Viable virus was recoverable from the nose up to 10 days after inoculation, on average.”

The researchers found that most of those who became infected recovered quickly. There were no serious adverse events and “mild-to-moderate symptoms were reported by 16 (of the 18) infected participants”.

The other two who were infected remained asymptomatic.

The researchers also looked at how Covid-19 impacts a person’s sense of smell.

They used smell identification tests with help from the University of Pennsylvania and found that 15 of the 18 participants who were infected reported “some degree of smell disturbance”.

Nine participants experienced complete smell loss, known as anosmia, but researchers said they “improved noticeably before day 28”.

Six months after the study ended, one of the participants has still not regained their full smell.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/covid19-firstofitskind-study-saw-volunteers-infected-for-science/news-story/770261dddb58d36048136a78e4c961b1

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Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Results Not Strong Enough to Warrant Authorization for Children: Experts

Regulators in the United States and elsewhere should not clear Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for children based on a clinical trial that found the shot under 50 percent effective in preventing infection, experts say.

Moderna is pushing for emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its jab for kids as young as 6 months of age, based on the results of the trial.

The decision to authorize would mean some 20 million of the youngest children in America could get a COVID-19 vaccine for the first time since the pandemic started.

Some parents and experts want that to happen sooner rather than later and are willing to accept less than ideal results. But others aren’t convinced that most of the age group needs a vaccine, especially a shot that doesn’t perform well against emerging variants.

While some children have died or gotten seriously ill from COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus, their vulnerability is much smaller compared with older people, and most youth experience mild or no symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A recently published study found T-cells, a form of protection, worked better against the virus in infant mice than in adult mice; while another concluded infants and toddlers who contract the virus have a superior immune response when compared to adults.

The very low risk of severe COVID-19 for children presents a much different risk-benefit calculus, experts say.

Particularly for children, “you’ve really got to show the benefits markedly outweigh any risks,” Dr. Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician at Canberra Hospital, told The Epoch Times over Zoom.

In 5- to 11-year-olds, for instance, a British government panel determined that 2 million vaccine doses would prevent as few as 17 hospitalizations due to acute COVID-19. Amid a less severe future variant, some 4 million doses would be needed to prevent a single intensive care unit admission.

“No prospective clinical or epidemiological data that I am aware of has been provided to show that younger age groups [tested] in the Moderna study would fare any differently,” Dr. David Gortler, an FDA policy oversight fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who used to work for the FDA, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Does the Trial Meet Regulatory Standards?

The trial from which Moderna announced interim results is called KidCOVE. It involves two groups: children 6 months of age to under 2 years, and children 2 years of age to 5 years.

The U.S.-based company, on March 23, released a summary of interim data, announcing the trial met its endpoint, which was a certain threshold of neutralizing antibody response in both age groups after receiving a two-dose series of the vaccine.

The results were so positive that “we are working with the U.S. FDA and regulators globally to submit these data as soon as possible,” Stephane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said in a statement.

But the actual clinical impact was substandard.

During the wave driven by the Omicron virus variant, the vaccine was just 43.7 percent effective in the youngest group, and 37.5 percent effective in the other children.

Both measures are lower than the 50 percent bars established by the FDA and the World Health Organization for emergency authorization.

“That’s not acceptable by the FDA’s own standards,” Dr. Steven Hatfill, a virologist who advised the Trump administration, told The Epoch Times.

“Our approach has always been to conduct a regulatory review that’s responsive to the urgent public health needs created by the pandemic, while adhering to our rigorous standards for safety and effectiveness. While we cannot comment on any submissions pending before the agency, we remain committed to conducting a timely and thorough evaluation of the available data and information on the use of COVID-19 vaccines in the youngest children,” Alison Hunt, an FDA spokeswoman, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Moderna did not respond to requests for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/moderna-trial-results-not-strong-enough-to-warrant-emergency-authorization-for-children-experts_4375665.html

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Long Covid a serious problem

By the end of the year, modelling suggests tens of thousands of Australians will have experienced lingering symptoms of the virus.

Health economist Professor Martin Hensher warns that long COVID poses a serious public health threat and critical data is missing.

“At the moment we really have no idea of the extent of long COVID in Australia,” he said. “We are flying pretty blind.

Professor Hensher, who worked alongside a team modelling long COVID at Deakin University, estimates that at 12 weeks post infection, anywhere between 80,000 and 325,000 of the more than two million Australians infected during the first Omicron wave alone will have ongoing symptoms.

And, while a large proportion are predicted to recover within six months, thousands are expected to experience persistent symptoms.

He is part of a growing chorus of experts calling for the urgent rollout of a national survey to measure the scale of long COVID in Australia and a database to track symptoms.

In Australia, up to 30 per cent of seriously ill COVID-19 patients have reported at least one symptom persisting after six months. The most common symptom was shortness of breath, but others included fatigue, headaches and a loss of taste or smell.

Ms Costello, who was double vaccinated six months before contracting the virus, and before boosters were approved, is one of an estimated more than 90,000 Australians who have a smell or taste disorder after six months.

The figure in Australia is far below other parts of the world where Delta was the prevalent variant.

Studies have found up to 60 per cent of people who had Delta lost their sense of smell and/or taste, compared to one in five with Omicron, the most common variant in Australia. About two per cent of those people will have impaired senses long term.

People’s experiences range from complete or partial loss to distorted and imagined senses. Some people complain certain foods taste like garbage or rotting meat, while others can smell faeces or smoke when neither are nearby. Ms Costello often gets phantom garbage smells.

Exactly why this occurs is still unknown, but there is an emerging consensus, including by a team studying the phenomena at Harvard Medical School, that smell loss occurs when the coronavirus infects cells that support neurons in the nose.

To the frustration of sufferers, there is no easy cure for olfactory dysfunction.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-ve-given-up-experts-call-for-long-covid-data-as-patients-despair-20220329-p5a8sa.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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