Wednesday, February 09, 2022
CDC’s new study proves natural immunity is real and should lead to COVID policy changes
A recently released study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing that “persons who survived a previous [COVID] infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone” should lead to COVID policy and mandates changes.
The six-month long study of four groups of people in California and New York offers the best evidence so far that natural immunity is real. The report indicates researchers knew as early as October that natural immunity was stronger at preventing COVID than vaccines alone, yet the CDC chose to withhold their findings until late January.
Throughout last fall, President Joe Biden and his administration aggressively pushed vaccine mandates on private employers, members of the military, federal contractors, and federal workers.
In mid-December President Biden held a news conference in which he warned Americans “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated — for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.”
But the CDC knew at that time that millions of Americans already had natural immunity to COVID and ought to have been exempted from any vaccine mandates.
“This administration is the most dishonest in all of American history,” said Richard Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government. “Biden knew, or ought to have known in October that natural immunity was real, yet he chose to push mandates that impacted the livelihoods of about estimated 100 million Americans, nearly two-thirds of the American workforce.”
It is unclear how many Americans with natural immunity lost their jobs because of the mandates. What is clear is that the mandates are not based on science.
“I’m not a medical doctor but I didn’t need a CDC study to tell me that natural immunity is real,” Manning said. “Vaccines are man’s attempt to mimic naturally acquired immunity. There is no excuse for this administration’s persistence in pushing bad science.”
The Biden administration’s mandates and CDC guidelines appear to have influenced private employers and organizations to adopt discriminatory policies toward unvaccinated Americans.
In November Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and another player were fined by the NFL for attending a Halloween Party in violation of NFL COVID policies.
A tweet from ESPN’s Kevin Seifert shows just what those policies are, at least as of last summer. Unvaccinated players are subject to all sort of harassment, including being tested every day, masked at club facilities and during travel, banned from sauna, banned from eating with teammates, banned from promotional work, and being told “they may not leave hotel to eat in restaurants and may not interact with anyone outside of Team Traveling party during team travel.”
In November Rodgers tested positive for COVID and spoke out against COVID mandates and discriminatory practices. So-called media fact checkers attacked Rodgers’ claims of natural immunity as false.
“Where are those same fact checkers today?” Manning asked rhetorically. Of course, they are nowhere to be found.”
There hasn’t been a single update, correction, or retraction from the so-called fact checkers on Rodgers’ case.
And that is the problem with all of this. The Biden administration came into office promising to “follow the science,” but as the science has changed, they have dogmatically pushed mandates based on outdated, debunked, and outright false information.
The new CDC study, combined with the research by Johns Hopkins University showing that lockdowns are ineffective at preventing COVID spread, ought to point policy makers in a new direction. House and Senate lawmakers in Washington should vote to defund all of Biden’s vaccine mandates in next week’s Continuing Resolution spending bill.
“Any lawmaker who claims to be for limited government but votes for a spending bill that includes vaccine mandates, will be held accountable in November,” Manning concluded.
***************************************************
Demand for limited government makes a comeback amid national distress
The categorically bleak outlook of American voters on a broad range of issues nine months before the midterms could fuel demand for limited government solutions.
From skyrocketing energy prices to a constant tide of illegal aliens, a possible war in Eastern Europe, and inflation levels not seen since the early 1980s, our faith in the federal government has collapsed.
A new Gallup poll paints a startingly dismal portrait of voter sentiment one year into President Biden’s first term and reveals over two-thirds of Americans are dissatisfied with the size of the federal government.
Gallup reports that only 32% of Americans are satisfied with the size and power of the federal government, compared to 68% who are unsatisfied. Although Americans have been dissatisfied with the federal government for decades, this sentiment has spiked sharply since 2020.
There have been significant declines in voter satisfaction in ten policy areas since 2021, with satisfaction on energy policy, the nation’s military strength, and the state of the economy taking the biggest hits according to Gallup.
Satisfaction with the nation’s energy policies took the steepest dive this year, falling 15 percentage points since 2021.
“Of all the issues and societal aspects measured in the survey, satisfaction with energy policies has fallen the most this year,” Gallup reports. “Higher gas prices are likely the reason this sentiment has dropped 15 percentage points in the past year. … The 27% currently satisfied with energy policies is the lowest Gallup has measured in its trend.”
Satisfaction with the nation’s military strength and preparedness has also suffered greatly under the Biden administration and led to a 13-point decline in the past year. This shift is unsurprising considering President Biden led a disastrous exit from Afghanistan that cost 13 U.S. servicemembers their lives and returned the nation directly to the Taliban. To add insult to injury, Biden is flirting with a war with Russia, something that over two-thirds of the American public is opposed to.
Satisfaction with the economy has also taken a hit in the past year, suffering a 10-point decline since 2021 and clocking in at 33%. Despite a modest rise in national wages at the close of last year, inflation grew to 7%, resulting in a net pay cut for most Americans. On top of that, historically low housing inventory levels, increasing materials costs, and low interest rates have pushed the price of a home out of reach for many families.
While satisfaction with energy prices, military preparedness, and the economy fell the most in the past year, satisfaction with a number of other issues have fallen significantly since 2020.
Satisfaction with overall quality of life has dropped 15 points since 2020 from 84% to 69%, and satisfaction with our system of government and how it works has dropped 13 points from a barely acceptable 43% to a deeply troubling 30%.
Gallup’s survey comes on the heels of a sixty-page research survey released last November that shows over half of Americans say life has taken a turn for the worse since the 1950s.
The survey, released by a DC think tank called Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), found Americans say 52% to 47% that American culture and way of life have mostly changed for the worse since the 1950s. These results are a dire change from one year prior in the fall of 2020 when Americans said 55% to 44% that life had changed for the better since the 1950s.
The survey also found Americans say 52% to 48% that, “today, America is in danger of losing its culture and identity.” A full 80% of Republicans, 50% Independents, and even 33% of Democrats say America is in danger of losing its culture and identity.
A significant share of Americans also say they feel like strangers in their own country. A full 40% of Americans say, “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.” Republicans and Independents are more likely to say they feel like strangers in their own country (56% and 39% respectively), but three in ten Democrats (31%) also say they feel like strangers in their own country.
A January NBC News poll backs up the Gallup and PRRI sentiment and characterizes Americans as “divided, doubting democracy, falling behind, and tuning out”, in the words of Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt. NBC News reports that President Biden’s approval rating is in the low 40s and, “key Democratic groups are losing interest in the upcoming election.”
Republicans may be the most dissatisfied about the direction of the country at the moment, but according to NBC News, “Republicans enjoy a double-digit advance on enthusiasm ahead of November’s elections, with 61 percent of Republicans saying they are very interested in the upcoming midterms — registering their interest either as a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale — compared with 47 percent of Democrats who say the same.”
These findings reveal a nation in a state of deep concern not only about kitchen table issues like inflation and the economy, but about more intangible issues like a loss of identity with their country and a decline in quality of life.
While left-wing analysts are rightly worried about their party’s prospects and bracing for a battle this November, big government globalists and the GOP status quo should be worried too.
As Richard Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government warns, Republicans should not take the political winds blowing in their favor as an opportunity for passivity.
“The abrupt and surprising leftward lurch of the federal government on every issue has Americans returning to their limited government roots”, Manning says. “However, Republicans who think they can politically benefit by engaging in a passive resistance campaign will discover that Americans want them to stand up and challenge these Biden’s broadsides against American culture, history and greatness rather than simply providing meek complaints in fear of being cancelled.”
Americans want a change not just in leadership but in direction, away from the vast federal government’s failure. The temperament of the nation is looking a lot like it did in 2015, right before an unexpected non-politician walked out of left field and secured the presidency.
***********************************************
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)
*************************************
Tuesday, February 08, 2022
This Op-Ed on Masks and School Kids. It Will Probably Trigger the Left
The science is becoming clearer on mask-wearing as COVID becomes an endemic problem. It doesn't work. Everyone is going to get infected eventually. COVID is now part of our lives…forever. Have no fear; we do the same with cold and flu season. We have therapeutics. We have vaccines. It's time to move on with our lives. The masks requirements just need to die. Infections are all over the place. They have not curbed the spread.
This is classic "horse has left the barn" territory. And now, this protocol applied to school districts needs to die as well. Even ardent feminists and liberals are unsure about this requirement as its psychological impact is scarring their kids. Jennifer Block's young son had a self-drawing with no nose or mouth, which prompted her to call for a return to reason amid this "COVID and our schools" debate in the pages of The San Francisco Chronicle.
And now, two scientists have joined the chorus of experts who are finally starting to talk sense, though it's still too few and far between. They're in the heart of liberal America. Berkeley, California, schools said that KN95 masks would be required for everyone attending school. They looked at the data. The risks done to kids wearing masks far outweighed the benefits. They were blunt: it's not going to work for a variety of reasons, not least being that every child needs a mask that's custom-fitted and approved by OSHA. Second, kids' faces are too small for this type of mask. Third, even when properly fitted, the mask is a nightmare to wear, even causing bruising among those with approved KN95s (via Newsweek):
The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in the SF Bay Area where we live, announced on Tuesday that it was planning on "transitioning all students and staff" to KN95 respirators. If worn properly, such respirators filter 95 percent of particles the size of those that carry the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The BUSD has proposed this measure as a means to slow the spread of COVID-19 and keep schools open. These respirators would be required for the entire school day, including outdoors during gym and recess.
Unfortunately, the effectiveness of respirators is vastly overestimated, and there is scant evidence that they stop community transmission. Moreover, NIOSH-approved respirators are tight, uncomfortable, and can impede breathing. OSHA requires both fit testing and a medical evaluation before workers can wear them. We've all seen images of health care workers with bruised faces from properly worn respirators.
The truth is, the burdens of these masks outweigh their benefits for kids. We need to consider more effective, less harmful interventions as we come together to keep schools open and safe.
We know masks have become a highly contentious issue. But as a physician with a PhD in computational mathematics and a professor of data science, we have read the studies on this topic. We both have children and want them to be safe. But we also don't want them burdened with measures that won't help protect them or their peers. And mandating respirators on kids is out of step with CDC guidance and international norms.
What is the evidence for respirators stopping the spread of covid19? Studies on Influenza provide guidance. Though respirators provide better filtration in perfect laboratory conditions, people who wear them are just as likely to catch flu whether they are wearing a surgical mask or a respirator. Though respirators have higher filtration capabilities, a Cochrane review and an independent metanalysis both revealed there were not clear differences between the effectiveness of surgical masks and respirators in preventing infections like Influenza. The Influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 virus are of comparable size and rates of transmission of infection between close contacts are similar.
The good news is that this piece was published on January 24. The school district then backtracked and said the KN95 mask requirement wouldn't be mandatory. Shed your fear, folks. The virus is already here. It's already spread. There's little a mask can do when it's everywhere. Given that COVID is now something we must deal with annually throughout the course of our lives, most people are eventually going to get infected. Just like a ton of people get colds every year. And just like tens of millions contract the flu every year. Everyone is done with this kabuki theater.
And Joe Biden, of all people, should be looking to pivot away from this since more people will soon have died of COVID under him than Trump
****************************************************
Israeli study offers strongest proof yet of vitamin D’s power to fight COVID
Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death.
Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels.
Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One.
The study is based on research conducted during Israel’s first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling.
Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on the vitamin, according to one study from 2011. By taking supplements before infection, though, the researchers in the new Israeli study found that patients could avoid the worst effects of the disease.
“We found it remarkable, and striking, to see the difference in the chances of becoming a severe patient when you are lacking in vitamin D compared to when you’re not,” said Dr. Amiel Dror, a Galilee Medical Center physician and Bar Ilan researcher who was part of the team behind the study.
He noted that his study was conducted pre-Omicron, but said that the coronavirus doesn’t change fundamentally enough between variants to negate vitamin D effectiveness.
“What we’re seeing when vitamin D helps people with COVID infections is a result of its effectiveness in bolstering the immune systems to deal with viral pathogens that attack the respiratory system,” he told The Times of Israel. “This is equally relevant for Omicron as it was for previous variants.”
Health authorities in Israel and several other countries have recommended vitamin D supplements in response to the coronavirus pandemic, though data on its effectiveness has been sparse until now.
In June, researchers published preliminary findings showing that 26 percent of coronavirus patients died if they were vitamin D deficient soon before hospitalization, compared to 3% who had normal levels of vitamin D.
They also determined that hospitalized patients who were vitamin D deficient were 14 times more likely, on average, to end up in severe or critical condition than others.
While the scientific community recognized the importance of the results, questions arose as to whether recent health conditions among the patients might have been skewing the results.
The possibility was raised that patients could have been suffering from conditions that both reduce vitamin D levels and increase vulnerability to serious illness from COVID-19, meaning the vitamin deficiency would be a symptom rather than a contributing factor in disease severity.
To zero out that possibility, Dror’s team delved deeper into the data, examining each of its patients’ vitamin D levels over the two-year stretch before coronavirus infection. They found that the strong correlation between sufficient vitamin D levels and ability to fight the coronavirus still held, and the level of increased danger in their preliminary findings remained almost identical.
“We checked a range of timeframes, and found that wherever you look over the two years before infection, the correlation between vitamin D and disease severity is extremely strong,” Dror said.
“Because this study gets such a good picture of patients’ vitamin D levels, by looking at a wide timeframe instead of just the time around hospitalization, it offers much stronger support than anything seen so far emphasizing the importance of boosting vitamin D levels during the pandemic,” he added.
A flood of dubious claims about natural remedies to the coronavirus, including a theory that Israelis had immunized themselves with lemons and baking soda, have left some skeptical about claims of vitamins warding off the virus.
But Dror insisted that his team’s research showed that the importance of vitamin D was not based on incomplete or flawed data.
“People should learn from this that studies pointing to the importance of taking vitamin D are very reliable, and aren’t based on skewed data,” he said. “And it emphasizes the value of everyone taking a vitamin D supplement during the pandemic, which, consumed in sensible amounts in accordance with official advice, doesn’t have any downside.”
***************************************************
Nick Coatsworth shares US Covid data comparing states with mask mandates
The face of Australia's Covid vaccine rollout has shared US data which shows states that introduced mask mandates only had slightly more cases than those which did not.
Australia's former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth used the controversial statistics to rail against calls to make N95 masks mandatory.
He also branded demands to install stringent air ventilation systems in all buildings a 'colossal cost and minimal benefit'.
The graph shared by Dr Coatsworth shows little difference in Covid case numbers in the US from November 1 to January 31, despite face mask mandates.
The data does not show that masks are ineffective against transmitting the virus, as those living in states without mandates may still be wearing face coverings at comparable levels.
It could also be possible that infection rates in states with mandates may have been far higher if the restrictions were not introduced.
But Dr Coatsworth suggests enforcing face mask mask requirements has a muted effect in society.
'When plausibility meets reality. The null hypothesis lands a knockout punch on the precautionary principle,' he tweeted alongside the graph.
***********************************************
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)
*************************************
Monday, February 07, 2022
US Officials’ Handling of the Pandemic Is ‘Catastrophic Exercise in Bad Government’: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized federal public health officials for their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that not enough supporting scientific evidence and data have been provided to the public to warrant the various mandates.
“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Kennedy told NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23. It’s “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” Kennedy added.
Kennedy said that this lack of scientific integrity has created chaos and doubt in the public, which cannot tell if mandates are based on facts or meant to scare people into compliance.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Director Rochelle Walensky admitted in August 2021 that the vaccines prevent severe illness but do not stop transmission of the virus.
“Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death—they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”
Kennedy, along with thousands of others who attended the Defeat the Mandates Rally, wants to see an end to mandates on vaccines. Many who are already vaccinated say forcing people to vaccinate is unamerican.
“What’s happening in our country is the cruelty of the mandates, the irrationality of the mandates, a violation of all of our traditional values in this country, and ultimately our humanity. And the irrationality of it all, what good is that doing to anybody? It’s punitive. And it’s very, very sad for America,” Kennedy said of the policies that prevented an unvaccinated man from getting a heart transplant.
Another criticism Kennedy had was that natural immunity has been completely overlooked by the Biden administration in the rush to require vaccines.
“The natural exposure to infection is more protective over time. Now, that doesn’t mean that vaccines are always worthless, what it means is that you have to carefully assess the risk from disease and risk from the vaccine, and you have to make a cost-benefit analysis. And that is really the basis of the problem here. There was never any scientific citation. There was never any democratic process,” said Kennedy.
Dr. Scott Atlas, a former White House COVID-19 Task Force adviser during the Trump administration, also criticized officials for not recognizing natural immunity after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decide to uphold the health care worker vaccine mandate on Jan. 13.
“Our continued denial of superior protection in recovered individuals, with or without vaccination, compared to vaccinated individuals who’ve never had the infection,” he said. “The denial of that is simply unprecedented in modern history, proven fact and decades of fundamental immunology are somehow denied.”
Atlas told The Epoch Times that the ruling is “another serious denial of scientific fact” specifically mentioning the denial of natural immunity in health care worker vaccine mandates.
Kennedy, who has been a long-time environmental lawyer and has litigated cases with officials for shortcutting the regulatory process, said the same process should be required before any mandate and detailed information about infections and deaths should be collected and shared with the public.
“If you are managing a pandemic, in an ideal situation you have very rigorous information gathering analytics and reporting protocols, [but] what we saw was absolutely none of that,” Kennedy continued. “We don’t know what the infection-fatality rate is. We never got the stratified data that says that elderly people are 1,000 times more at risk and that the statistical risk to the young is zero. The networks weren’t reporting that, nobody knew it because Fauci wasn’t giving it to us.”
Dr. Peter McCullough, a leading U.S. cardiologist and epidemiologist who has over 600 peer-reviewed articles under his belt, told The Epoch Times that U.S. public health officials are not abreast of the latest on prevention and treatment for COVID.
“I think they’re running about nine months behind on the data. And the recent book that came out by Scott Atlas, who was on the White House Task Force, he agrees. He believes we basically have a crisis of incompetence, they don’t have top-shelf doctors, like myself and Dr. Atlas,” said Dr. Peter McCullough. “They don’t have those doctors in positions of authority running our public health agencies, and boy do we need them.”
*********************************************
New Drug for Seriously Ill COVID-19 Patients Shows Promise Under Right to Try Act
New information collected under the federal Right to Try Act shows promise for the new drug ZYESAMI, now in clinical trials for the treatment of serious cases of COVID-19.
The information was collected by a hospital in the U.S. southwest, drug developer NRx announced in a news release Jan. 26.
ZYESAMI, developed by the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based pharmaceuticals company, currently is being tested with patients as part of the approval process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company hopes to earn emergency-use authorization (EUA) that would allow widespread use of the drug in the treatment of COVID-19.
For now, the drug has progressed far enough in the process to be used by more patients under the federal Right to Try Act. That law allows the use of investigational drugs for patients diagnosed with life-threatening diseases or conditions, who have tried all approved treatment options, and who cannot participate in a clinical trial to access certain unapproved treatments.
The hospital reported that 16 of the 19 patients treated with ZYESAMI for COVID-19 respiratory failure “survived the ICU,” NRx announced. ZYESAMI is the brand name of aviptadil, a synthetic version of a natural chemical made in the human body called human vasoactive intestinal polypeptide.
ZYESAMI is a bio-identical synthetic version of a natural chemical made in the human body called vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP). It may help COVID-19 patients by boosting the production of surfactant in the lungs and blocking toxic cytokines, the drug developer, NRx says. (NRx)
The hospital’s report said there were no serious adverse events associated with the use of the drug, according to the company’s statement. Patients were treated during the Omicron surge at the first onset of respiratory failure, after first trying remdesivir and other approved therapies.
Under Right to Try, NRx currently provides the drug for just the cost to overnight it to the patient, company spokesman Jack Hirschfield told The Epoch Times. Requests can be made through the form on the company’s website. The only catch is that the request must be made by the patient’s doctor.
And that can keep patients from actually trying it.
The family of Arizona businessman Stephen Judge repeatedly asked Banner Ironwood Medical Center in Queen Creek, Arizona to allow alternative treatments, including ZYESAMI, when the hospital’s standard protocols for COVID-19 failed. The hospital said no to every request, said Judge’s daughter, Caitlin Judge Treister.
The Epoch Times was in receipt of letters between the family and the hospital, showing the hospital was not willing for the new drug to be used under Right to Try. The Epoch Times has sent multiple requests for comment to Banner Ironwood Medical Center’s media and public relations department, but has received no response.
After Judge died, his daughter was working with another family wanting to try ZYESAMI, after all other COVID-19 treatments failed to help their loved one in a Minnesota hospital. For two weeks, the family waited for the drug to be given, only to find out that the request was never submitted to NRx, Treister said. That patient suffered a massive heart attack before the drug could be obtained, she said.
“Unfortunately, not everyone is able to get the hospital to cooperate with Right to Try,” NRx CEO Jonathan Javitt, M.D., affirmed.
The company has shared a document on its website explaining the technicalities of how the new drug works. In simplified terms, when the virus that causes COVID-19 gets in the lungs, it causes toxin build-up and restricts the production of surfactant.
Surfactant is the natural substance made in the body that helps keep the hundreds of thousands of tiny air sacs in the lungs open. When those air sacs are open, they allow oxygen to move from the lungs into the blood and throughout the body. COVID-19 causes those air sacs to stop functioning properly.
ZYESAMI works by binding to cells in the lungs, increasing surfactant production, preventing production of virus-related toxins, and blocking virus replication, Javitt told The Epoch Times. The drug continues to be tested in an ongoing National Institutes of Health (NIH) trial.
Roofing contractor Joel Webb, 40, of Colleyville, Texas enthusiastically shared his story of using ZYESAMI as part of an earlier trial in mid-October. His recovery, the husband and father of four said, was nothing short of miraculous.
When he first realized his COVID-19 infection was getting serious, he resisted going to the hospital. Three friends from church had already died from the virus. Checking into the hospital seemed to mean certain death, he told The Epoch Times.
But when a doctor friend urged him to get checked out at an emergency clinic where she was working, he agreed.
He’d been sick for about seven days, and “I was to the point where I didn’t even know where I was,” he said.
A CT scan showed his lungs looked full of shattered glass. Immediately, his doctor at the Frisco, Texas hospital offered ZYESAMI, telling Webb it was still in trials. Webb and his family declined. It seemed too risky to try an unapproved medication, he said.
Over the next few days, Webb’s condition worsened dramatically. He required increasing amounts of oxygen. The next step, he was told, was to go on a ventilator.
Devastated, his family gathered around him in the intensive care unit and prayed. Suddenly, he said, they were at peace about trying ZYESAMI and told his doctors.
Shortly after, a courier delivered the drug, he said. That night, he remembers nurse technician Daniel Igheghe holding his hand, praying with him, and singing a Christian worship song to help Webb drift off to sleep, as he struggled to breathe.
By the next day, something amazing had happened, he said. His vital signs rapidly improved, Webb said, and his need for oxygen dramatically decreased. The trend continued steadily. Soon, he was out of the ICU. And nine days after being admitted to the hospital, he left, no longer on oxygen.
Recently, he returned, though, to personally thank the nurse who held his hand and prayed with him, the doctor who recommended the trial drug, and the pharmacist who filled the prescription. He said he had no side effects from ZYESAMI, other than feeling flushed and hot, as the drug dripped into his vein.
“Then you get cold,” he said with a chuckle. “You can feel it and you know you’ve gotten something.”
This past weekend, he went on a three-mile hike and gave thanks for the drug he believes saved his life.
*********************************************
'80% of serious COVID cases are fully vaccinated' says Israeli hospital director
Are Israeli hospitals really overloaded with unvaccinated COVID patients? According to Prof. Yaakov Jerris, director of Ichilov Hospital’s coronavirus ward, the situation is completely opposite.
“Right now, most of our severe cases are vaccinated,” Jerris told Channel 13 News. “They had at least three injections. Between seventy and eighty percent of the serious cases are vaccinated. So, the vaccine has no significance regarding severe illness, which is why just twenty to twenty-five percent of our patients are unvaccinated.”
Jerris also revealed some of the confusion in reporting cases. Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Sunday, he told ministers, “Defining a serious patient is problematic. For example, a patient with a chronic lung disease always had a low level of oxygen, but now he has a positive coronavirus test result which technically makes him a ‘serious coronavirus patient,’ but that’s not accurate. The patient is only in a difficult condition because he has a serious underlying illness.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321674
******************************************************************
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)
*************************************
Sunday, February 06, 2022
The COVID Narrative is Falling Apart
Joe Biden claims this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated and wants everyone in the world vaxxed with the “safe and effective” vaccines. In addition, he plans to distribute millions of "effective" N-95 masks. Anyone paying attention knows this is a big lie. Masks may be a comforting placebo, but even the N95s don’t work as advertised. And new revelations about dangerous vaccine side effects have surfaced despite media suppression.
New Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin made masks and vaccinations optional for state employees and public schools. Immediately some parents, teachers, and school boards threw a hissy fit (at least seven lawsuits have resulted so far). Meanwhile, those who voted for him see this as much-needed relief from a pandemic that has run its course.
Why is there so much disagreement? The late Malcolm Muggeridge put it this way; “People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.” Think about it; the Left and their media allies have terrified our children and ordinary citizens so much that they desperately want to believe masks and vax mandates are the only answer. Anyone who disagrees must be silenced, socially destroyed, or even allowed to die by withholding organ transplants or life-saving therapeutics.
I was taught the only way to fight a lie is with the truth. However, I also know those who placed all their hope in the big COVID lie will do whatever it takes to silence anyone who disagrees. Just ask Joe Rogan about being silenced. It is nearly impossible to overcome emotion with facts, but I will present some anyway:
1). Alarming vax side effects reported by military whistleblowers. This story made a few waves last week when Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) included a mention in his five-hour Senate hearing. The information came from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), a mundane accounting tool used to track all medical diagnoses of military personnel and dependents for insurance billing purposes. DMED did better than the CDC’s ineffective Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Following is a summary of the most alarming vax side effects:
Myocardial infarction (heart attack) -- 269% increase
Cancer diagnoses -- 300% increase
Miscarriage -- 300% increase
Bell’s palsy -- 291% increase
Congenital malformations (for children of military personnel) – 156% increase
Female infertility -- 471% increase
Pulmonary embolisms -- 467% increase
Neurological issues -- 1,000% increase
2). Athletes are mysteriously dying of sudden heart attacks: In Dec. 2021, Lorphic News, a non-traditional news source reported on the extraordinary number of physically fit, fully vaccinated athletes experiencing fatal heart attacks. This claim was systematically denied by most news sources. However, a chart compiled by the Federation Internationale de Football [soccer] Association (FIFA) confirms this is real and like the above military data, is based on a large sample size. FIFA has member athletes from 209 countries and has routinely tracked athlete health data for 20 years. Their long-term data confirms a fivefold increase in sudden cardiac deaths in only six months of 2021.
3). Vaccines now have negative efficacy: Data has surfaced claiming that continued use of the original vax is causing negative efficacy. Negative efficacy doesn't mean the protection fades. It means the opposite: it means the vaccines are now weakening the immune system. It became clear that countries with the highest vax rates were the most likely to experience a surge in both cases and deaths. You can monitor five representative countries' daily death rates here. Note that India is included because India was the only one to allow the widespread early use of inexpensive therapeutics. Initially, their protocol included hydroxychloroquine but when the more deadly delta variant hit they switched to a protocol that included ivermectin. India had far better results than the others in taming COVID.
In the above sample, Australia had the most severe police state lockdowns, mask mandates, and a high vax rate of around 80%. After some initial success, it has suddenly gone from near zero cases and deaths to having an explosion in both. Since spring of 2021 Sweden, noted for its minimal mandates, had maintained near-zero cases and deaths as a result of achieving herd immunity early. All that changed when for reasons unknown Sweden pushed vaccinations despite the herd immunity achievement. As a result, Sweden’s flat-lined case and death rate also spiked, thus indicating its herd immunity achievement is compromised by vax negative efficacy.
4). Omicron provides long-lasting natural immunity: A peer-reviewed article titled “Cross-reactive memory T cells associate with protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in COVID-19 contacts” published Jan. 10 in the scientific journal Nature provided a warning and some encouragement:
Once widespread infection (such as the Omicron wave) occurs across the world, the virus will eventually circulate endemically, meaning that infections may still happen but with milder symptoms and much less mortality.
There are two reasons that the transition from pandemic to endemic didn’t happen until Omicron: 1) all the widely used vaccines are based on the spike protein, which doesn’t induce a protective long-lasting T-cell response, and 2) natural immunity wasn’t widespread.
In other words, the current vaccines too narrowly target only the original Alpha spike protein and ignore the rest of the virus proteins. This inhibits the production of long-lasting memory T-cells that can more readily adapt to new variants and this omission for those most heavily vaccinated appears to have changed omicron from mild to more dangerous.
Conclusions: Considering the dangerous vax side effects described above, it’s time to recognize that COVID is becoming endemic like the closely related common cold or seasonal flu. This means the safest way for the unvaccinated to produce the necessary long-lasting memory T-cells may be by catching omicron.
For those facing omicron with an immune system weakened by multiple vaxxes and boosters, age, or comorbidities, an emergency use authorization by the FDA for the therapeutics (chiefly ivermectin) India used could be a lifesaver. However, the political climate today makes FDA authorization unlikely -- many hospitals have already allowed patients to die rather than try these proven, safe therapeutics. And last week, effective monoclonal antibody treatments have mysteriously lost their FDA approval.
Therefore, it wouldn’t hurt to fortify your immune system with a daily dose of over-the-counter vitamin D3, C, and zinc (all are included in India’s COVID kit). Around 80 to 85 percent of people who died from COVID were deficient in these vitamins and the most vulnerable are senior citizens and the obese (because fat cells absorb vitamin D before it can reach where needed). I’m no doctor so ask yours for dose rates since each can vary widely by weight, age, etc. We are still on our own for an early treatment option so it may be better to contact an organization of rebel doctors like the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).
U.K. PM Boris Johnson did the right thing by ending all vax and mask mandates and letting nature take its course. (The Remnant features an excellent analysis of the politics behind the COVID tyranny.) Denmark has just followed his lead. Will 50,000 fearless Canadian truckers succeed in bringing a strong enough emotion to Canada or the U.S. to end the mandates?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/the_covid_narrative_is_falling_apart.html
***************************************************Natural Immunity to COVID-19 Detected at 20 Months After Infection: Study
Protection against the virus that causes COVID-19 among the recovered was detected by researchers at 20 months post-infection, adding to the body of evidence that such protection, known as natural immunity, is long-lasting.
Researchers found antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) in 99 percent of study participants who tested positive for COVID-19, with some having had the illness as long as 20 months prior.
SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19. Antibodies are a form of protection against the virus.
The researchers, led by Dr. Dorry Segev, the director of the Epidemiology Research Group in Organ Transplantation at Johns Hopkins University, put out a call for unvaccinated, healthy adults in the fall of 2021 and divided them into three groups. The first group consisted of 295 participants who had test-confirmed COVID-19 infections in the past; the second consisted of 275 participants who believed they recovered from COVID-19 but did not get a test; the third consisted of 246 people who did not think they ever had COVID-19 and had never tested positive.
In the first group, all but 2 of the participants tested positive for the antibodies, and there was no indication that the level of protection waned over time.
About 55 percent of the second group tested positive for anti-RBD antibodies, and the median level among those who did was lower.
The third group had the lowest percentage, 11 percent, of participants who had the antibodies and the level among those who did was the lowest.
“The major takeaway is that natural immunity … is strong and durable,” Segev told The Epoch Times in an email.
The peer-reviewed study, which was funded by charitable donations from the Ben-Dov family, was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Nasia Safdar, a professor in the Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health, said the results were encouraging, “but likely applicable only to a healthy adult population, with the ability and resources to go get a blood draw.”
“We are probably missing the immunocompromised, older, frail group of people where immune response may be very different than other groups,” Safdar, who was not involved in the study, told The Epoch Times via email.
Researchers noted that it antibodies are just one measure of immunity and that it remains unclear whether the anti-RBD antibodies will protect people against emerging virus variants.
The Omicron variant became dominant in the United States in December 2021 and research suggests it can evade protection from vaccines and prior infection better than Delta, the strain it displaced.
Most previous studies have found that natural immunity is superior to vaccination, including while Delta was dominant. One study was backed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A key question about the protection, though, is how long it will last. Some experts recommend people get at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine even if they’ve recovered from the disease due to the uncertainty, though others point to research indicating the vaccines would only give a small boost in protection to the naturally immune.
The new study was published several weeks after a different, non-peer reviewed paper found evidence of natural immunity at 18 months past infection in a collection of vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
Segev said he and other scientists are studying how Omicron affects the naturally immune, with plans to publish results on a preprint server soon.
*********************************************
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)
*************************************
Friday, February 04, 2022
The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid
By Dr. Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.
For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.
Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity—the combination of prior infection and vaccination—was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who had already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.
Similarly, the National Institutes of Health repeatedly has dismissed natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.
The CDC study and ours confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found: The immune system works. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness.
None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity. In a study published in May 2020, Covid-recovered monkeys that were rechallenged with the virus didn’t get sick.
Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do. They used the wrong starting hypothesis, ignored contrary preliminary data, and dug in as more evidence emerged that called their position into question. Many, including Rochelle Walensky, now the CDC’s director, signed the John Snow memorandum in October 2020, which declared that “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.”
Many clinicians who talk to other physicians nationwide had have long observed that we don’t see reinfected patients end up on a ventilator or die from Covid, with rare exceptions who almost always have immune disorders. Meanwhile, public-health officials recklessly destroyed the careers of everyday Americans, rallying to fire pilots, truck drivers and others in the supply-chain workforce who didn’t get vaccinated. And in the early months of the vaccine rollout, when supplies were limited, we could have saved many more lives by giving priority to those who didn’t have recorded natural immunity.
The failure to recognize the data on natural immunity is hurting U.S. hospitals, especially in rural areas. MultiCare, a hospital system in Washington state, fired 55 staff members on Oct. 18 for being out of compliance with Gov. Jay Inslee’s vaccine mandate—and that was in addition to an undisclosed number of staffers who quit ahead of the vaccination deadline. The loss of workers contributed to a full-blown staffing crisis.
It got so bad that the hospital summoned staff who were Covid-positive to return to work even if they were sick, according to an internal memo obtained by Jason Rantz of KTTH radio. The memo stated that “positive staff with mild to moderate illness” could work, so long as they wear appropriate personal protective equipment, don’t take breaks with others, and agree to stay home “if symptoms worsen.” Managers were recommended to assign Covid-positive staff to Covid-positive patients and vaccinated patients, but not immunosuppressed patients.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took the hospital mandate national by decreeing that all medical facilities under its jurisdiction require vaccination for employees, including those with natural immunity. The Supreme Court upheld the rule on Jan. 13, the same day it issued a stay against a similar mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which OSHA formally withdrew Tuesday.
Connecticut has suspended its vaccine mandate for state employees, and Starbucks is rehiring employees fired for being unvaccinated. Other states and businesses should follow their lead. Politicians and public-health officials owe an apology to Americans who lost their jobs on the false premises that only unvaccinated people could spread the virus and only vaccination could prevent its spread. Soldiers who have been dishonorably discharged should be restored their rank. Teachers, first responders, and others who have been denied their livelihood should be reinstated. Everyone is essential.
*************************************************
Release the Covid data. Now!
The British Medical Journal (or the BMJ), is a respected, weekly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the British Medical Association. Published for over 180 years, it has authority. In an April 2021 editorial, while broadly supportive of vaccine passports, it did point out the numerous ethical dilemmas associated with the policy. Now, the journal has well and truly broken with the narrative.
In an editorial on 19 January, the journal demanded the full and immediate release of all data related to Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, saying it would be in the public interest. The editorial titled ‘Covid-19 vaccines and treatments: we must have raw data, now’ pointed out how a lack of transparency in the past had deleterious consequences for people’s health, and how that those mistakes are now being repeated, and the lack of transparency is even greater than before.
‘Today, despite the global rollout of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, the anonymised participant-level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public—and are likely to remain that way for years to come,’ the editorial states. ‘This is morally indefensible for all trials, but especially for those involving major public health interventions.’
The BMJ also accused pharmaceutical companies of ‘reaping vast profits without adequate independent scrutiny of their scientific claims,’ pointing to Pfizer, whose Covid vaccine trial was ‘funded by the company and designed, run, analysed, and authored by Pfizer employees’.
‘We are left with publications but no access to the underlying data on reasonable request,’ the authors wrote. ‘This is worrying for trial participants, researchers, clinicians, journal editors, policymakers, and the public. The journals that have published these primary studies may argue that they faced an awkward dilemma, caught between making the summary findings available quickly and upholding the best ethical values that support timely access to underlying data. In our view, there is no dilemma; the anonymised individual participant data from clinical trials must be made available for independent scrutiny.’
Tellingly, the authors of the editorial added that regulators are not there to ‘dance to the tune of rich global corporations and enrich them further’ but to protect the general public’s health and for that reason, they said, we need ‘complete data transparency for all studies, we need it in the public interest, and we need it now’.
This bombshell editorial comes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had asked a judge to keep all data concerning the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine suppressed for 75 years. The judge, thankfully, did not accede to this request, ordering the FDA to make public 12,000 pages of the data it used to make decisions regarding approvals for the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine by the end of January. In accordance with the same ruling the FDA must also release Pfizer’s vaccine data at a rate of 55,000 pages per month until all of the requested pages are public.
This is not the only crack that has appeared in the narrative recently. Earlier in January, Professor Clive Dix, the former chairman of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, called for an end to mass vaccination and that Covid should be treated as an endemic virus similar to flu. Additionally, Professor Andrew Pollard, who helped develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, stated around the same time on BBC Radio 4’s Today program that ‘it really is not affordable, sustainable or probably even needed to vaccinate everyone on the planet every four to six months,’ adding ‘In the future, we need to target the vulnerable’.
Such views are not just being expressed in the UK, but also in Israel, once seen as the ‘gold standard’ in terms of the vaccine rollout. Professor Cyrille Cohen, head of immunology at Bar Ilan University and a member of the advisory committee on vaccines for the Israeli government, confirmed that, ‘No, the vaccines are not protecting us, they are not causing what we call sterilising immunity’.
Professor Cohen added that Israel’s Green Pass vaccine passport was no longer relevant. ‘We don’t see virtually any difference between people vaccinated and non-vaccinated, both can get infected with the virus more or less at the same pace,’ he said.
Those comments came after another leading Israeli immunologist slammed the government’s pandemic response.
Writing for N12 News, Professor Ehud Qimron, head of microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv University, wrote a scathing open letter excoriating the government for its coronavirus policy debacle. Qimron did not pull any punches, alleging that health authorities had ignored established epidemiological science and pandemic plans at the outset – and then refused to adjust policies in the face of real-world data.
‘Two years late, you finally realise that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail,’ Professsor Qimron wrote.
‘You do not admit it, because you have admitted almost no mistake in the last two years, but in retrospect it is clear that you have failed miserably in almost all of your actions, and even the media is already having a hard time covering your shame.
‘You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge. You insisted on attributing every decline of a wave solely to your actions, and so through false propaganda “you overcame the plague”.
‘You refused to admit that recovery is more protective than a vaccine, despite previous knowledge and observations showing that non-recovered vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than recovered people. You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations. Based on this, you hoped to achieve herd immunity by vaccination – and you failed in that as well.’
For two years what the British Medical Journal and these professors have called for was dismissed arrogantly as ‘misinformation’. Let us see now if true science, not propaganda, will prevail.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/release-the-covid-data-now
*********************************************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)
*************************************
Thursday, February 03, 2022
Lockdowns only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2%, study finds: 'Lockdowns should be rejected out of hand'
Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies.
"While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."
The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen's Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.
"We find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates," the researchers wrote.
The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.
Studies that looked at only shelter-in-place orders found they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 5.1%, but studies that looked at shelter-in-place orders along with other lockdown measures found that shelter-in-place orders actually increased COVID-19 mortality by 2.8%.
The researchers concluded that limiting gatherings may have actually increased COVID-19 mortality.
"[Shelter-in-place orders] may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness," the researchers wrote.
"But often, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe (indoor) places."
The researchers also examined studies that focused on specific lockdown measures and found that the only intervention that reduced COVID-19 mortality was the closure of non-essential businesses, which reduced mortality by 10.6%, but this effect was likely driven by the closure of bars.
Researchers also pointed out other unintended consequences of lockdowns, such as rising unemployment, reduced schooling, an increase in domestic violence incidents, and surging drug overdoses.
From May 2020 to April 2021, the U.S. recorded 100,306 drug overdose deaths, a 28.5% increase from the 78,056 deaths that were recorded in the previous 12-month period, according to CDC data.
A study from the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice last year found that domestic violence incidents increased 8.1% in the U.S. after lockdown orders were issued.
About 97% of U.S. teachers said that their students have experienced learning loss during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Horace Mann survey last year.
The unemployment rate peaked nationwide at 14.8% in April 2020, but declined to 3.9% in December, which is still slightly higher than the 3.5% rate it was at in February 2020.
"These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best," the researchers in the Johns Hopkins University study wrote.
"Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument."
President Biden has pledged to focus on testing and vaccinations to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 instead of the lockdowns that characterized the earlier part of the pandemic.
"It doesn’t include shutdowns or lockdowns, but widespread vaccinations and boosters and testing a lot more," Biden said in December about his winter plans for fighting the pandemic.
Several cities and states around the country still have mask mandates, remote learning, and other measures in place.
**********************************************
New Study on Ivermectin ‘Should Convince Any Naysayer’: Dr. Pierre Kory
So why has Ivermectin been officially scorned? No mystery: Trump recommended it
A recently published study indicating the anti-parasitic ivermectin worked well as a prophylactic against the virus that causes COVID-19 should help sway critics of the drug, according to Dr. Pierre Kory, president of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).
“That should convince any naysayer,” Kory told The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders.” “What they found was astounding.”
The Brazilian city of Itajaà launched a program that gave ivermectin to any residents that wanted any. The period that was studied was from July 7, 2020, to December 2, 2020.
Researchers found that the program, which had over 100,000 residents participate, was linked to a 44 percent drop in COVID-19 cases.
Approximately 3.7 percent of ivermectin users contracted the illness during the trial period, compared to 6.6 percent of residents who didn’t take the drug.
The program was also associated with a statistically significant decrease in hospitalization and mortality.
The peer-reviewed study was published in Cureus on Jan. 15.
“Ivermectin MUST be considered as an option, particularly during outbreaks,” Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, one of the study’s authors and a founding member of FLCCC, told The Epoch Times in an email.
FLCCC focuses on early treatment of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. The group has recommended ivermectin since early 2020.
Kory said the lack of reporting on the study despite it being peer-reviewed highlights how some scientific developments are ignored by many media outlets and scientists.
“You would think this would lead major headlines everywhere. And yet, nothing. And this is not new, this censorship of this highly effective science and evidence around repurposed drugs. The censoring of it, it’s not new, it’s just getting more and more absurd. And it has to stop,” he said.
Studies on ivermectin against COVID-19 have shown mixed results, with some being associated with no or little benefit and others suggesting a strong benefit. It’s been widely used in India and other countries as a preventative measure, but in the United States and much of Europe many official health care bodies recommend against its use or do not endorse it.
Ivermectin has been approved for certain uses by the Food and Drug Administration, but not for use against COVID-19. That means doctors can prescribe it off-label.
The National Institutes of Health’s COVID-19 treatment guidelines panel currently says that there is not enough evidence to advise either for or against using ivermectin to treat COVID-19. It does not address its potential use as a prophylactic.
While the new study was celebrated by some, others questioned the findings and pointed out that the conflicts of interest disclosures show both Cadegiani and another author have received funding from or contracted with Vitamedic, a company that manufactures ivermectin.
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an Australian epidemiologist, for instance, called it “a fairly simple example of observational research that you’d do on routine medical data” but alleged the controls for confounding factors such as occupation and risk factors were “pretty inadequate given the purpose.”
Cadegiani said the criticism was unfounded, saying he wasn’t convinced before the study that ivermectin would work as a preventative medicine and that researchers controlled for “all relevant factors,” including comorbidities, age, sex, and race.
“Their inability to focus on the data provided by the study itself is … proof of the extreme high quality of the study,” the doctor said, adding later that “To us, this is the best observational study on COVID-19 to date, with a power almost equivalent to a huge randomized clinical trial.”
The researchers plan on publishing multiple additional papers regarding the program, including papers on the biochemical effects of ivermectin and the effectiveness of the drug in preventing hospitalization.
*********************************************
Japanese firm says ivermectin shows ‘antiviral effect’ against Covid-19
The controversial drug ivermectin showed an “antiviral effect” against Omicron and other coronavirus variants in joint non-clinical research, a Japanese drug company said on Monday.
Trading and pharmaceutical company Kowa Co Ltd, which has been working with Tokyo’s Kitasato University testing the drug as potential treatment for Covid-19, did not provide further details, Reuters reported.
Ivermectin has been popularised as a Covid-19 treatment by some doctors and the likes of podcast host Joe Rogan, even as health authorities and the drug’s manufacturer Merck warn against its use, citing lack of evidence that it works against the virus.
A clinical trial being run in the UK by Oxford University, announced in June 2021, is ongoing.
The Oxford researchers told Reuters on Monday that they did not want to comment until they have results to report.
Ivermectin first began to be touted as a therapeutic for Covid-19 in early 2020 after scientists in Melbourne found it could inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in the lab in high doses.
“It was enthusiastically adopted by some clinicians and healthcare systems before any significant human trials were conducted, and subsequent trials have been largely small and conflicted,” Associate Professor Justin Denholm, principal investigator on the Australasian Covid-19 Trial (ASCOT), wrote in August 2021.
“Now, a number of retrospective reviews and meta-analyses have been released, which mostly agree that studies to date have generally been of low quality and high risk of bias, but offering different conclusions about whether ivermectin improves outcomes.”
*********************************************
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)
*************************************
Hotmail problems
Not sure what this is all about but Microsoft have severely downgraded their Hotmail service in Australia. It started being very slow to load and for the last week it has usually come up without file managing tools. I can read or delete messages but not answer them, move them or mark them as spam. Very pesky!
So for personal emails I have moved to my Gmail a/c. jonjayray@gmail.com . I have left Hotmail as a receptacle for political emails
I am crossing my fingers that Gmail will stay normal
******************************************
Wednesday, February 02, 2022
Denmark returns to ‘life as we knew it’ despite Omicron
Omicron is running wild across the world — and its impact is being felt keenly in Europe where several nations have imposed strict new rules and vaccine mandates over the course of the northern hemisphere winter.
But as cases increase to levels never seen before across the continent, one nation has made a move that has caught many by surprise.
Denmark on Tuesday becomes the first European Union country to lift all of its Covid restrictions despite record numbers of cases, relying on its high vaccination rate to cope with the milder Omicron variant.
After a first attempt at lifting all its restrictions between September and November, the Scandinavian country is once again ditching its face masks, Covid passes and limited opening hours for bars and restaurants.
“I’m so happy that this is all going to be over tomorrow. It’s good for life in the city, for night-life, just to be able to be out longer”, 17-year-old student Thea Skovgaard told AFP the day before the lifting.
Nightclubs reopen on Tuesday, when limits on the number of people allowed at indoor gatherings also come to an end.
Only a few restrictions remain in place at the country’s borders, for unvaccinated travellers arriving from non-Schengen countries.
The easing comes as Denmark registers around 40,000-50,000 new Covid cases a day, or almost one per cent of the country’s 5.8 million inhabitants.
“We have an extremely high coverage of adults vaccinated with three doses,” epidemiologist Lone Simonsen of the University of Roskilde told AFP.
More than 60 per cent of Danes have received a third dose — one month ahead of health authorities’ schedule — compared to an EU average of just under 45 per cent.
Including those who have recently had Covid, health authorities estimate that 80 per cent of the population are protected against severe forms of the disease.
“With Omicron not being a severe disease for the vaccinated, we believe it is reasonable to lift restrictions”, Simonsen said.
The broad spread of the Omicron variant is also expected to lead to a “more robust and long-lasting immunity”, helping the country fend off future waves, she said.
Two years after the outbreak of Covid-19, the Danish strategy enjoys broad support at home.
In a poll published Monday by daily Politiken, 64 per cent of Danes surveyed said they had faith in the government’s Covid policy.
Personal responsibility
Going forward, Danes are being urged to exercise personal responsibility, Simonsen said.
“Without a Covid pass there will be a shift of responsibility”, she said. Danes have increasingly used home tests to detect infection, but these are now being phased out and instead, anyone with symptoms is advised to stay home.
The Danish Health Authority currently “recommends” those who test positive to isolate for four days, while contact cases no longer need to quarantine.
Face masks and the Covid pass are also recommended for hospital visits. The government said it does not expect to have to revert to new closures again but has remained cautiously optimistic.
“We can’t provide any guarantees when it comes to biology”, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said last week when announcing the country’s return “to life as we knew it before corona”.
“It’s really nice that this is ending but will we really live without any restrictions now? I doubt it,” said Cille Hjort, a fast-food vendor eager to see her patrons’ faces without masks again.
This is the second time Denmark has tried to return to a pre-pandemic lifestyle. On September 10, the country lifted all its restrictions, before reintroducing some of them in early November.
Museums, cinemas and theatre and concert venues then closed just before Christmas, and reopened again in early January.
Faced with a lower level of hospitalisations than in previous waves, several European countries, including France, Ireland and the United Kingdom, have announced the lifting or a considerable reduction of their restrictions, despite record or very high cases.
“Two years into the pandemic, populations in most countries have reached high levels of immunity, from vaccines or natural illness”, Simonsen said.
“This is how it ends, judging from what we have seen with historical pandemics”. According to the World Health Organisation, 73 per cent of the European population has contracted Covid-19 at least once since January 2020.
Tyra Krause of Denmark’s public health and research institution SSI said meanwhile she expected Covid-19 to return in regular waves, “like the flu”.
“We may end up having to vaccinate risk groups ahead of the autumn to prevent severe cases”, she told science magazine Videnskab.
*********************************************************
Future lockdowns should be ‘rejected out of hand’, new international report says
Lockdowns have “had little to no effect on” reducing deaths from Covid-19 and should be “rejected out of hand” for dealing with the next pandemic, according to a new international study that comes amid falling confidence in public health authorities in the US.
Business closures and stay at home orders in the US and Europe reduced deaths by 0.2 per cent on average, according to a new analysis by American and Swedish researchers that questioned whether the novel health policy, pioneered by China in Wuhan in early 2020, would pass a cost-benefit analysis.
“Lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century,” the authors said, suggesting their “marginal at best” benefits needed to be compared with their “devastating effects”.
“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy.”
The study, conducted by Steve Hanke, a founder of the Johns Hopkins School of Applied Economics, Jonas Herby and Lars Jonung, a Swedish economist, comes amid debate over the effectiveness of mandates in “slowing the spread” of Covid-19 as the pandemic enters its third year and cases and hospitalisations from surge to new highs.
Americans’ confidence in public health authorities has fallen during the pandemic, from 55 per cent in 2020 to 44 per cent, according to a national NBC poll conducted earlier this month. Forty-three per cent specifically said they did not trust the Centre for Disease Control’s recommendations.
Governments imposed lockdowns of various severity and duration, including seven in Victoria totalling more than 260 days, from March 2020 onwards, after British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, who was advising the UK government, forecast that lockdowns would reduce deaths by “up to 98 per cent”.
Pandemic plans published prior to Covid-19 had either advised specifically against lockdowns, which until now had been a fringe, untried “nuclear option”.
Difficulties in enforcement, voluntary social distancing, and unintended consequences, such as confining infected and uninfected people together at home and stopping socialising at safe, outdoor areas such as parks and beaches, may have worked against the effectiveness of lockdowns, the study suggested.
“Countries like Denmark, Finland, and Norway that realised success in keeping Covid-19 mortality rates relatively low allowed people to go to work, use public transport, and meet privately at home during the first lockdown,” they said.
“Island nations are birds of a different feather in more ways than one. In addition to Australia and New Zealand, Iceland, Japan, South Korea (a de facto island), Singapore and Taiwan have had very few Covid deaths. But some of them had very mild lockdowns, too.
“And let’s not forget the UK. It’s had one lockdown after another and relatively high rates of mortality, too.”
Proponents of the radical policies have struggled to explain how jurisdictions that imposed no or few lockdowns, such as Scandinavian nations, Japan, or southern states of the US, have ended up with Covid-19 outcomes not greatly different or even better than other jurisdictions.
The lockdown study, a “meta-analysis” that aggregated the findings of other studies, whittled down 117 empirical analyses of lockdowns published before July 2020 to 34, discarding any that used computer modelling to predict counterfactuals.
Lockdowns were defined as any mandatory policy that reduced movement or mandated masks. “Shelter in place orders”, a subcategory, reduced deaths by 2.9 per cent, it found.
A separate survey found three quarters of American adults said they were “tired and frustrated” with the pandemic while 77 per cent said it was inevitable people would catch Covid-19, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The UK and Denmark have dumped all Covid-19 restrictions, while major US cities have introduced new vaccine passports and extended mask mandates indefinitely.
President Joe Biden recently ruled out a return to lockdowns as daily deaths from Covid-19, which have increased to more than 2,500 during the current Omicron wave, surpass earlier peaks.
***********************************************
The war on natural immunity
The ability for the body to produce memory cells is what allows for natural immunity to occur. Given that the memory cells last for a long period of time, antibodies can be produced quickly each time an individual is subsequently infected by the same virus. It is indeed a marvellous system.
It does, however, have one fatal flaw – at least in the eyes of Big Pharma. It is not profitable. There is no money to be made in natural immunity because it is a part of us that we are born with and do not have to pay a subscription for.
And that is why companies who thrive on medicating people see natural immunity as a significant problem that must be dealt with accordingly.
The solution? Convince the masses natural immunity does not exist, or, if that fails, play down its efficiency. This is what politicians, bureaucrats, so-called ‘experts,’ and scientists (who should know better) have been attempting to do throughout the Covid era.
To ensure the protection of their own pecuniary interests, these people have pushed vaccines as the only way out of the pandemic. Never mind that Covid vaccines do not prevent you from getting the virus, spreading it to others, or becoming sick.
They are denying the effectiveness of natural immunity against disease by claiming it only lasts for a short period of time against Covid, and telling people to get the vaccine even if they have already had the virus. This is completely unnecessary. Vaccine-induced antibodies are temporary. This is evident in that the vaccines only provide immunity for a few months, which is a pretty poor effort for what is supposed to be an ‘effective’ vaccine.
Generally, if a vaccine is effective, you do not need a ‘booster’ every three months. This booster schedule is not only absurd, but also likely dangerous. Even the European Union’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), have stated as much. The EMA’s head of vaccines strategy, Marco Cavaleri, said that ‘repeat vaccinations within short intervals will not represent a sustainable long term strategy’ and that if we give them frequently, even every four months, ‘we will end up potentially having problems with immune response and immune response may end up not being as good as we would like it to be, so we should be careful in not overloading the immune system with repeated immunisation.’ Constant boosters could easily do more harm than good to the immune system and render an individual more susceptible to disease.
Natural immunity is real, and it works. The US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) had to admit that natural immunity was six times more effective than vaccines when it came to the Delta variant. With more people contracting Omicron, it stands to reason that there will be a greater saturation of the population with natural immunity, which could actually put an end to the virus.
But that would not be politically nor financially convenient for the big players. When the virus recedes into obscurity, so does their source of fear-inducement, power, and profit. Our governments have already signed contracts with vaccine companies like Pfizer for millions of vaccines, and they cannot return them and get our money back. With two hundred million plus vaccines on standby for a population of twenty-five million, it stands to reason they will continue to push booster after booster. And the denial of natural immunity will persist.
Conservative commentator Michael Knowles sums it up brilliantly in his book Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
‘These “experts” lend credibility to the politically correct regime, not by furnishing it with facts, but by redefining scientific terms to better accord with the dictates of progress. Calls for more modest regulations in the pursuit of herd immunity threatened the radicals’ plans for cultural transformation, which benefited from the massive transfer of wealth and power brought about by the lockdowns.’
That transfer of wealth has been from the lower and middle class to big corporations and Big Pharma. It is one of the main reasons natural immunity is admonished and vaccines hailed.
Our immune systems have enabled us to survive for millennia, and they are not going to stop just because a bunch of greedy, power-hungry elites say so.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/02/the-plot-against-natural-immunity/
*********************************************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)
*************************************
Tuesday, February 01, 2022
The Covid Narrative Falls Apart in South Africa
Last week, China Daily published an article that perfectly encapsulates the magical thinking taking place worldwide around Covid-19. Titled “Plea for jabs even as Africa infections trend lower,” the piece described how African “health experts” are “stepping up calls for more people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in a bid to ward off future outbreaks even as trends point to a decline in the growth rate for new infections.”
That’s right, despite a clear downward trend in mostly-mild Omicron cases, “health experts” want shots imposed indiscriminately throughout the whole population. And adding even more to the cognitive dissonance here are the reasons they cite for the decrease:
“John Nkengasong, director of the Africa CDC, attributed South Africa’s decrease in new infection cases to increased population levels of antibodies, meaning that many people have been infected so hence developed antibodies combined with the high vaccination rate in the country,” wrote Edith Mutethya before adding the kicker: “To date, South Africa has fully vaccinated 27.3 percent of its population.”
This is, of course, a perfect example of how ‘health officials’ massage and manipulate the facts to suit their narrative. In this case, in his drive to get more “jabs,” Nkengasong laughably tells us the country’s “high vaccination rate” is partially responsible for the decline in Omicron cases. A “high vaccination rate,” in this case, of… wait for it… 27.3 percent.
Granted, 27.3 percent is higher than the meager 10 percent full vaccination rate for the rest of Africa. But given these low percentages, especially by Western standards, one would be forgiven for thinking Covid-19 was raging like a wildfire across the continent, overwhelming hospitals and leaving massive levels of death and severe illness in its wake.
Except, that’s not the case at all. Not even close. In fact, deaths per million are surprisingly low for the vast majority of countries in Africa. Tunisia, a small country of 12 million, leads the pack at ~2,200, and only five others—South Africa, Namibia, Seychelles, Eswatini, and Botswana—are even above 1,000. That’s a stark contrast to the United States’ ~2,600, Brazil’s ~2,900, or Bulgaria and Hungary with more than 4,000 each.
Still, according to World Health Organization regional emergency director Abdou Gueye: “Although Africa appears to be emerging from the peak of its fourth pandemic wave, vaccination which is a pivotal measure against the virus remains far too low. About 50 percent of the world’s population is fully vaccinated. In Africa, this is just 10 percent.”
After a peak of 37,875 reported cases on Dec. 12, 2021, South Africa—‘home’ of the Omicron variant that now dominates the globe—has seen its case numbers decline steadily since. How can this be? Nkengasong, to his credit, tells a partial truth by partially crediting natural immunity. He should have stopped there. Why didn’t he? I submit that it’s because of the magical thinking around Covid vaccines. Even a paltry 27.3 vaccination rate, he reasons, must have contributed to the decline. Would that ‘health officials’ here in the States were so generous. Instead, the third of the country that remains unvaccinated is blamed for everything from virus spread to the Black Death.
We’re told that vaccines against a spike protein that is no longer dominant are the keys to ending the pandemic, but they refuse to explain in light of recent data exactly how. Instead, our overlords allow the majority of the public to falsely blame the unvaccinated for contraction and spread, even while knowing full well that the vaccinated are just as responsible.
Why is the virus raging again in Israel, the most vaccinated and boosted country on the planet? Why is there no statistical difference between virus infection rates in highly vaccinated versus lower uptake areas in the United States? Why do the unvaccinated have the lowest infection rate according to disturbing newly revealed data from Scotland? I could go on and on. (And yes, we have asked the same questions about mask use.)
The sad, tragic fact is that their measures, from lockdowns to masks to even vaccine mandates, have done little to nothing to curb the spread of this highly contagious respiratory virus, and taken as a whole they’ve likely done more harm than good.
I take no pleasure in pointing this out. Truly, I wish something HAD worked. If so, we wouldn’t be talking about this two years in. But alas, the only thing that’s working is viral attenuation and Omicron infecting everything it touches, regardless of masking or vaccine status.
It’s not that these vaccines don’t have their uses. If someone is at high risk for a bad outcome from Covid, taking the “jab” and even endless boosters could be a smart move. But we were promised something else a year ago, weren’t we? “Take the shot,” we were told, “and you can live a normal life free of masks and restrictions.”
That promise, like so many others, has been broken and memory-holed, relegated to the dustbin of so many other Faucian ‘noble lies.’
Try to get into a restaurant in New York City or Chicago with eight masks on but without a vaccine card and see where that gets you. Walk into almost any large restaurant or retail establishment in the country, even here in eastern Tennessee, and every employee will be forcibly masked. It seems like the more the vaccines don’t work to stop this pandemic, the more our overlords double down on nonsense. Thankfully, the prevalence of Omicron is exposing their absurdity for the world to see, if people would only look.
“But but but … it would have been worse,” people smugly retort. To that, I would simply point to South Africa, where Omicron is on its last legs despite a poor healthcare system, much of its population living in poverty, and a vaccination rate that would have Joe Biden really losing his patience.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-covid-narrative-falls-apart-in-south-africa_4243565.html
*************************************************One-off wonder jab could fight off all strains of flu for LIFE by targeting a completely different part of the virus
Every year, millions of Britons have a flu jab — and every year it’s a different version, as flu viruses mutate so quickly that vaccines have to be reformulated.
But what if there were a one-off flu jab, possibly for life, that not only protected against currently circulating strains but also all future versions?
The so-called ‘universal’ jab has been the holy grail of flu vaccine research for decades — but has proved elusive.
That’s because the flu virus is constantly swapping genes between strains. In this way, it creates variants that dodge any immunity people have from previous flu infections or vaccines.
This process of mutation, called antigenic drift, can happen even within the six to nine months it takes from the World Health Organisation identifying the particular strains that are a threat (usually around February) to the vaccine being ready in the autumn, so making it much less effective.
But now scientists think they are closer than ever to finding the answer. And it involves targeting vaccines at a completely different part of the virus than current jabs aim for.
All flu jabs are made to attack hemagglutinins — proteins dotted all over the surface of flu viruses. These proteins help the flu virus bind to healthy cells, before breaking into them and taking over their internal machinery so the virus can replicate and spread.
Vaccines are currently made with a weakened version of hemagglutinin so that the immune system recognises it as foreign and produces the antibodies needed to fight flu.
If they later encounter the real virus, the antibodies lock on to the bulbous ‘head’ of the hemagglutinin protein, blocking the virus’s attempts to bind to healthy cells.
This part of the protein sticks out from the virus’s surface and is an easy target for antibodies to strike. But it’s also the part that mutates most.
Hemagglutinin is very important in terms of the flu virus binding to cells and getting inside them, explains Professor Peter Openshaw, an immunologist at Imperial College London. ‘But nearly all of the big genetic variations that occur in the flu virus happen up on the globular-shaped head of this protein,’ he adds.
Once those mutations occur, the antibodies triggered by the vaccine are largely powerless to fight infection.
One way round this is to make vaccines that target not the head of the protein but the ‘stalk’ region, where the hemagglutinin protein joins the main body of the virus.
Mutations occur much less frequently here than in the head, as the genetic material found there is vital for the virus’s survival, and constantly changing it could jeopardise this. The genetic make-up of the stalk region of hemagglutinin is also almost identical in all flu strains — making it an ideal target for a universal jab.
‘The stalk region is part of the basic structure of the protein and is needed to help the flu virus bind with cells so it can gain entry to them,’ says Professor Openshaw. ‘It cannot mutate as easily as the head part of the protein [can] as this would be lethal for the virus.
‘What scientists are now trying to do is use the stalk region as the basis of a vaccine. ‘Such a vaccine will hopefully activate the immune system to produce antibodies that will attack this area, rather than the head.
‘In theory, these antibodies would then recognise a wide variety of different flu viruses and cope not just with whatever current strain is in circulation but potentially all those that emerge in future — even ones capable of causing a pandemic.’
But it’s not that simple, and previous attempts to make a stalk-based flu jab have faltered. This is because, even when the head area of the protein has mutated, some of its genetic material stays the same.
The immune system, after years of exposure to flu infections or vaccines, remembers this material and pumps out antibodies in response.
Despite these potentially not being the right antibodies to fight off infection (because the virus has mutated), this drowns out the production of antibodies needed to target the stalk region.
But a few weeks ago, researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York revealed they had got round this by genetically tinkering with the protein.
They replaced the head of the protein with new genetic viral material that the immune system would be less likely to recognise and attack.
This allowed the immune system to instead produce much higher levels of antibodies to target the stalk region.
They tested the experimental jab on 51 volunteers and found a single dose triggered ‘remarkably high’ levels of anti-stalk antibodies, they wrote in the journal Nature Medicine.
Now the scientists hope to set up larger trials, although this is likely to take several years.
But another one-off jab, using a different approach, is already undergoing trials in the U.S.
FluMos-v1 is similar to some existing jabs in that it produces antibodies to the hemagglutinin protein from the four different types of flu virus (two influenza type A strains and two influenza type B strains) that usually circulate. (Flu jabs usually protect against strains of A and B.)
But whereas existing vaccines carry just one copy of the protein from each of the four strains, FluMos-v1, which is being tested at the U.S. National Institutes for Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has 20.
The hope is that it fires up a much more potent immune response, enough to see off all future invading flu viruses. First results are expected in 2023.
‘I’m more optimistic than I used to be about the chances of developing a universal flu vaccine,’ says Professor Openshaw. ‘Progress is definitely being made,’ he says, though adding a note of caution: ‘But it could still be another ten years before we get there.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10461359/One-wonder-jab-fight-strains-flu-LIFE.html
*********************************************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)
*************************************
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
