Big controlled study of Ivermectin as a preventive

The only thing holding up official acceptance of Ivermectin is that Trump recommended it

They Just Issued Mandatory Ivermectin Use, What Happened Next…
Another proof that will slap the left about their disbelief on Ivermectin’s potential.

Previously, Dr. Volnei José Morastoni, City Mayor of Itajaí, a southern city in Brazil in the state of Santa Catarina has announced a citywide use of Ivermectin against COVID-19.

NIH Website reported that Mayor Volnei has distributed Ivermectin kits totaling 1.5 million tablets to the residents of Itajaí.

A comprehensive study confirms that regular usage of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death rates. The ivermectin non-users were two times more likely to die of COVID-19 than ivermectin users in the overall population analysis.

The summary of the study:

Materials and methods: We analyzed data from a prospective, observational study of the citywide COVID-19 prevention with ivermectin program, which was conducted between July 2020 and December 2020 in Itajaí, Brazil. Study design, institutional review board approval, and analysis of registry data occurred after completion of the program. The program consisted of inviting the entire population of Itajaí to a medical visit to enroll in the program and to compile baseline, personal, demographic, and medical information. In the absence of contraindications, ivermectin was offered as an optional treatment to be taken for two consecutive days every 15 days at a dose of 0.2 mg/kg/day. In cases where a participating citizen of Itajaí became ill with COVID-19, they were recommended not to use ivermectin or any other medication in early outpatient treatment. Clinical outcomes of infection, hospitalization, and death were automatically reported and entered into the registry in real-time. Study analysis consisted of comparing ivermectin users with non-users using cohorts of infected patients propensity scores matched by age, sex, and comorbidities. COVID-19 infection and mortality rates were analyzed with and without the use of propensity score matching (PSM).

Results: Of the 223,128 citizens of Itajaí considered for the study, a total of 159,561 subjects were included in the analysis: 113,845 (71.3% of the population above 18 years old) regular ivermectin users and 45,716 (23.3%) non-users. Of these, 4,311 ivermectin users were infected, among which 4,197 were from the city of Itajaí (3.7% infection rate), and 3,034 non-users (from Itajaí) were infected (6.6% infection rate), with a 44% reduction in COVID-19 infection rate (risk ratio [RR], 0.56; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.53-0.58; p < 0.0001). Using PSM, two cohorts of 3,034 subjects suffering from COVID-19 infection were compared. The regular use of ivermectin led to a 68% reduction in COVID-19 mortality (25 [0.8%] versus 79 [2.6%] among ivermectin non-users; RR, 0.32; 95% CI, 0.20-0.49; p < 0.0001). When adjusted for residual variables, reduction in mortality rate was 70% (RR, 0.30; 95% CI, 0.19-0.46; p < 0.0001). There was a 56% reduction in hospitalization rate (44 versus 99 hospitalizations among ivermectin users and non-users, respectively; RR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.31-0.63; p < 0.0001). After adjustment for residual variables, reduction in hospitalization rate was 67% (RR, 0.33; 95% CI, 023-0.66; p < 0.0001).

Of the 113,845 prophylaxed subjects from the city of Itajaí, 4,197 had a positive RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 (3.7% infection rate), while 3,034 of the 37,027 untreated subjects had positive RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 (6.6% infection rate), a 44% reduction in COVID-19 infection rate (risk ratio [RR], 0.56; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.53-0.58; p < 0.0001). An addition of 114 subjects who used ivermectin and were infected was originally from other cities but was registered as part of the program, in a total of 4,311 positive cases among ivermectin users. For the present analysis, the 4,311 positive cases among subjects that used ivermectin and 3,034 cases among subjects that did not use ivermectin were considered. After PSM, two cohorts of 3,034 subjects were created.

Baseline characteristics of the 7,345 subjects included before PSM and the baseline characteristics of the 6,068 subjects in the matched groups are shown in Table 1. Prior to PSM, ivermectin users had a higher percentage of subjects over 50 years old (p < 0.0001), higher prevalence of T2D (p = 0.0004), hypertension (p < 0.0001), and CVD (p = 0.03), and a higher percentage of Caucasians (p = 0.004), than non-users. After PSM, all baseline parameters were similar between groups

After employing PSM, of the 6,068 subjects (3,034 in each group), there were 44 hospitalizations among ivermectin users (1.6% hospitalization rate) and 99 hospitalizations (3.3% hospitalization rate) among ivermectin non-users, a 56% reduction in hospitalization rate (RR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.31-0.63). When adjustment for variables was employed, the reduction in hospitalization rate was 67% (RR, 0.33; 95% CI, 023-0.66; p < 0.0001).

https://dailyheadlines.net/they-just-issued-mandatory-ivermectin-use-what-happened-next/

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Where do we stand with Omicron?

There has been a flood of new data in the past few weeks regarding Omicron’s impact throughout the world, and specifically on the influence of vaccination (with or without boosters) on symptomatic infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, including durability. It’s actually remarkable how much and how quickly we are learning about Omicron and our ability to reduce its toll, considering this virus strain was reported less than 2 months ago.

The New Data

Clearly, there’s a major problem with vaccine breakthrough Omicron infections. Recall that with a booster vs Delta, the vaccine effectiveness was restored to ~95% as Ravin Gupta and I recently reviewed all of the reported studies in Science

The problem with the booster with Omicron is that instead of getting vaccine effectiveness vs infections (symptomatic or all) up to 95%, it is about 50% from 4 new reports, summarized in this Table. To date, the best study comes from Qatar with over 400,000 people boosted with either Pfizer or mRNA

The Math

That level—about 50% effectiveness for the booster (vs Omicron)—would be associated with 10-fold more breakthrough infections than seen with a 95% effectiveness (Delta) So it’s no wonder there is the public perception that Omicron breakthroughs are omnipresent, that “vaccines aren’t working”. They aren’t working well, but it isn’t true that they’re not working to protect vs infections and transmission. It’s just much less. For context, remember that the FDA criteria for approving a Covid vaccine was set at a 50% reduction of symptomatic infections, so there’s unquestionably some efficacy here, just not nearly what we’ve been accustomed to seeing.

As I was quoted in the Washington Post coverage, “A booster is essential for preventing severe disease, hospitalization and deaths,” said Eric Topol, a molecular medicine professor at Scripps Research, referring to the findings. Public health officials need to communicate clearly that although the vaccines and booster shots are “not holding up against omicron infections, they are holding up the wall against severe disease … and that’s phenomenal.”

Now let’s turn to hospitalizations where the data are extraordinary, consistent, potent protection, and by all we have to go on, very durable. There are 3 reports: the UKHSA, the Kaiser Permanente Southern California, and the new CDC MMWR as summarized in this Table. It is exceptionally rare to see such consistency in triplicate—88, 89, and 90 for booster effectiveness vs Omicron. That is substantially improved compared with 2 shots (44-68%). And, importantly, it appears to be quite durable (83-90%) after 3 months, an attrition level fully in keeping with what we have seen over time with the Delta variant. As I previously wrote, We’re very lucky. Damn lucky.

This new CDC graph compares the effectiveness of vaccination with or without a booster against Delta and Omicron hospitalizations. The 3rd dose gets to near parity for the 2 strains even though Omicron is the most immune evasive variant we’ve seen., with far more extensive waning of protection that with Delta.

There really is an Omicron booster vaccination dichotomy—protection vs infections vs protection vs severe disease (hospitalizations and deaths)—that has led to much confusion. The booster’s effect is dual: it induces neutralizing antibodies at high levels and expands memory B and T cells as previously reviewed. The latter is what really accounts for protection vs severe disease, and that also would be expected to be quite durable. Which makes the case that the 3rd shot may be long-lasting for such benefit, at least against Omicron. Early in the pandemic we focused on symptomatic infections (there primary endpoint of the pivotal clinical trials) since they tracked so closely with severe disease outcomes. That relationship markedly changed with Omicron; they are now dissociated to a substantial degree.

The new Israeli data for a 4th dose (2nd booster) vs the initial booster during its Omicron wave shows a similar pattern of reduction of infections (very) short term, but we await data regarding hospitalizations and deaths, which are incubating.

The Patterns

It is quite clear in reviewing the patterns from some of countries hit hard by Omicron that vaccination and booster rates are playing a critical role in keeping severe disease in check. One example is Portugal, with 90% 2-shot vaccinated and over 40% boosted. New cases have gotten extremely high during its Omicron wave, but the impact for ICU admits or deaths, fortunately, has been small to date.

Similar patterns, perhaps less pronounced with respect to the case vs ICU/deaths dissociation, are evident in Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, all going through Omicron waves.

However, this is a very different look from the United States, where hospitalizations have soared to a new record, ICU admits are close to their pre-vaccination phase peak, and deaths are again on a steep rise (nearly 4,000 reported yesterday, one of the highest for the US pandemic). These severe disease outcomes are likely a function of very low vaccination rates (63%) and booster rate (24%) compared with the European countries cited. It is also noteworthy that the United States was into its second Delta surge at the time when Omicron emerged in December, so these increases are superimposed. Further, in comparison to South Africa and some other countries, there are different demographics, such as age, and co-existing conditions, such as obesity or diabetes.

There’s been a lot written about Omicron’s sharp case descent, which was seen in Gauteng and throughout South Africa. But it isn’t so clearcut in other countries yet, especially normalized for reduced testing. It actually is somewhat wobbly, stuttering in the United Kingdom, one of the first countries outside of South Africa to begin its descent. So Omicron’s future trajectory isn’t clear, and we cannot rule out 2nd surges of Omicron at this point in places around the world. That occurrence may be influenced, at least in part, by the immunity wall built prior to and during the Omicron wave (from prior Covid, vaccinations and boosters), and only time will tell.

The Exit?

So where do we go from here? Is Omicron, by infecting “up to half the world’s population” going to serve as our exit ramp from pandemic to a contained, endemic state?

That isn’t clear and it would be foolish to predict that, even though that occurred this week Omicron’s going to help in building an immunity wall, but whether that will be sufficient is indeterminate. We’re so far from containing the virus at this point, enabling further accelerate evolution to a new variant that could potentially have a higher level of immune evasion (not so lucky as with Omicron), more fully evading our current vaccines, or even the Omicron-specific vaccine expected later this year.

That is why it’s so essential to push on the pan-coronavirus vaccine, oral and nasal vaccines that build mucous immunity and help block transmission, and get mass production of Paxlovid along with other safe and effective anti-Covid pills that are very likely variant-proof, not relying on our immune system.

As the Washington Post editorial board wrote today, and which I’m in total agreement":

“Ultimately, in chasing variants, we are always going to be behind the curve. Along with the immediate battle with omicron, renewed effort must be made to develop next-generation vaccines that will provide broader and longer protection and dampen transmission. Ideally, scientists will develop a universal coronavirus vaccine that encompasses all of these characteristics, capable of protecting against many — or all — known variants. That day cannot come soon enough.”

Now is not the time to rely on sharp descents and that somehow “it’s over". If that happens, and we quickly get to containment and low levels of circulating virus that are no more threatening than annual flu, terrific. It seems quite unlikely with so much of the world’s population, especially in low and middle income countries, have yet to be vaccinated. If there's one thing we learned about predicting the path of SARS-CoV-2, it’s that it’s unpredictable. So we shouldn’t plan on a rosy picture. There’s too much we can do right now to seize control in case the most optimistic scenarios don’t play out.

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/where-do-we-stand-with-omicron (See the original for graphics)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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Scripps Research discovery could enable broad coronavirus vaccine

LA JOLLA, CA—The COVID-causing virus SARS-CoV-2 harbors a vulnerable site at the base of its spike protein that is found also on closely related coronaviruses, according to a new study from Scripps Research. The discovery, published Feb 8 in Science Translational Medicine, could inform the design of broad-acting vaccines and antibody therapies capable of stopping future coronavirus pandemics.

The scientists had previously isolated an antibody from a COVID-19 survivor that can neutralize not only SARS-CoV-2 but also several other members of the family of coronaviruses known as beta-coronaviruses. In the new work, they mapped at atomic scale the site, or “epitope,” to which the antibody binds on the SARS-Cov-2 spike protein. They showed that the same epitope exists on other beta coronaviruses, and demonstrated with animal models that the antibody is protective against the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

“We’re hopeful that the identification of this epitope will help us develop vaccines and antibody therapies that work against all beta-coronaviruses, including coronaviruses that may jump from animals to humans in the future,” says study co-senior author Raiees Andrabi, PhD, an institute investigator in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research.

Beta-coronaviruses have emerged recently as major, ongoing threats to public health. These coronaviruses include SARS-CoV-1, which killed about 800 people, mostly in Asia, in a series of outbreaks in 2002-04; MERS-CoV, which has killed about 900 people, mostly in the Middle East, since 2012; and, of course, SARS-CoV-2, which by now has killed over 5 million people worldwide in the COVID-19 pandemic. Two other beta coronaviruses, HCoV-HKU1 and HCoV-OC43, cause only common colds, but are suspected of having caused deadly pandemics centuries ago, when they first jumped from animals to humans. Researchers widely believe that future coronavirus pandemics initiated by animal-to-human spread are inevitable.

That prospect has spurred efforts towards the development of a pan-beta-coronaviral vaccine or antibody therapy. Scripps researchers took an initial step in that direction in 2020 when they identified an antibody, in a blood sample from a COVID-19 survivor, that could neutralize both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1. Although neutralizing tests weren’t available for all other beta-coronaviruses, they found that the antibody at least bound to most of these viruses.

In the new study, the team used X-ray crystallography and other techniques to precisely map the antibody’s binding site on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. They showed that the same site is found on most other beta coronaviruses—which helps explain the antibody’s broad effect on these viruses.

“The site is on the stem of the viral spike protein and is part of the ‘machinery’ the virus uses to fuse with cell membranes in its human or animal hosts after the virus has initially bound to a cell-surface receptor,” says study co-senior author Dennis Burton, PhD, Chair of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research. “Fusion allows the viral genetic material to enter and take over host cells, and the crucial role of this machinery explains why the site is consistently present across beta-coronaviruses.”

By contrast, the receptor binding site at the top of the viral spike protein mutates relatively rapidly and thus tends to vary greatly from one beta-coronavirus to the next—making it a poor target for broad beta-coronavirus vaccines or antibody therapies.

The researchers now are following up with efforts to find other, perhaps even more broadly effective antibodies, in their search for optimal antibodies and vaccines against coronaviruses.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi9215

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Decades-Old Drug May Help Protect Against Severe COVID-19 Symptoms: Study

A drug that was approved by U.S. regulators more than 70 years ago may help protect against two major COVID-19 symptoms, according to a new study.

Disulfiram, approved to treat alcoholism, protected rodents infected with COVID-19 from lung injury in the preclinical study done by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Certain white blood cells called neutrophils form inside some people suffering from COVID-19, damaging the lungs. No drugs have yet been found to prevent this from happening, researchers said.

Disulfiram, though, dramatically reduced the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NET), which cause fluid to accumulate in the lungs and sometimes lead to blood clots.

Researchers dosed the mice with disulfiram a day before and three hours after infecting them with the virus that causes COVID-19. Some 95 percent of those mice survived, compared to 40 percent not treated with the drug.

The new study and a previous one that linked disulfiram with reduced NET formation and improved survival “suggest that disulfiram could be useful in the management of pathologies involving NETs, including lung injuries, sepsis, thrombosis, and cancer,” the researchers said in the paper, which was published by The Journal of Clinical Investigation on Feb. 8.

“As we learn more about the underlying biology of these lung injuries, we may be able to specifically target the processes that are damaging the lung tissue,” Dr. Robert Schwartz, an associate professor of medicine in the gastroenterology and hepatology division at Weill Cornell Medicine, said in a statement.

“Currently there aren’t any good treatment options for COVID-related lung injury, so disulfiram appears to be worth investigating further in this regard, particularly in severe COVID-19 patients.”

Disulfiram has previously been associated in observational studies with lowering the risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2, also known as the CCP virus, which causes COVID-19.

One study of the drug in human patients with moderate COVID-19 was completed in 2021, but results haven’t yet been posted. A separate trial testing the drug against COVID-19 in humans has not yet been completed.

The new study was funded by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center and the Pershing Square Foundation, among other institutions.

Other drugs approved for different uses have shown some success against COVID-19, including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and fluvoxamine, though U.S. health officials primarily recommend ones such as paxlovid that are specifically approved for combating the illness.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/decades-old-drug-may-help-protect-against-severe-covid-19-symptoms-study_4266727.html

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‘There’s No Law’: Physician Experienced in Investigating Biological Warfare Challenges Medical Board’s Misinformation Allegation

Though Dr. Meryl Nass, a board-certified internal medicine physician, has been untangling narratives of dis- and misinformation long before COVID-19, it wasn’t until recently that her license was temporarily suspended under the allegation that she is now spreading it.

Her research has brought her before Congress and state legislatures to give testimonies on bioterrorism, Gulf War syndrome, and vaccine safety.

Throughout her career, she’s consulted for international health and intelligence agencies regarding prevention, investigation, and mitigation of chemical and biological warfare and pandemics.

She spent three years investigating what had been deemed a naturally occurring anthrax outbreak during Rhodesia’s civil war.

Nass was able to prove that it was due to biological warfare, with her findings published in a 1992 paper that marked a new achievement in scientific research.

“This was important because it was the first time in history potential perpetrators learned they could be identified,” Nass told The Epoch Times. “You couldn’t just start an epidemic somewhere and assume that no one was ever going to prove it because there wasn’t any scientific way to prove that it was done. I established that way.”

She was the main author, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (author of “The Real Anthony Fauci”) and Children’s Health Defense, of a citizen’s petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its vaccine advisory committee regarding the authorization of COVID vaccines and why she said they’re not suitable for children.

As censorship and disinformation have thickened around the COVID narrative, Nass has followed and written about the suppression of early-treatment medication such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

Given this background, the Maine Medical Board of Licensure nevertheless saw it appropriate to charge Nass—a physician for 41 years—with misinformation, an allegation that came with no explanation as to what misinformation she was spreading.

“Never before has any censorship been imposed by a collection of organizations who are attempting to make law by whining in unison about misinformation with threats to licenses and board certifications—while there is no legal mechanism by which they can strip certification,” Nass said. “There are no rules, regulations, or laws underpinning the threats of punishment for ‘spreading misinformation.’”

The Maine Medical Board of Licensure didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/theres-no-law-physician-experienced-in-investigating-biological-warfare-challenges-medical-boards-misinformation-allegation_4247726.html

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Big Tech Censored Dozens of Doctors, More Than 800 Accounts for COVID-19 ‘Misinformation,’ Study Finds

Major technology companies and social media platforms have removed, suppressed or flagged the accounts of more than 800 prominent individuals and organizations, including medical doctors, for COVID-19 “misinformation,” according to a new study from the Media Research Center.

The study focused on acts of censorship on major social media platforms and online services, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Ads, and TikTok.

Instances of censorship included Facebook’s decision to flag the British Medical Journal with a “fact check” and “missing context” label, reducing the visibility of a post, for a study delving into data-integrity issues with a Pfizer vaccine clinical trial.

Facebook also deleted the page of the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter led by dozens of medical professionals, including Dr. Jay Battacharya, a Stanford epidemiologist, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a former employee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advocated for less restrictive measures to address the dangers of COVID-19.

“Big Tech set up a system where you can’t disagree with ‘the science’ even though that’s the foundation of the scientific method,” Dan Gainor, MRC vice president of Free Speech America, told the Daily Caller National Foundation. “If doctors and academic journals can’t debate publicly, then it’s not science at all. It’s ‘religion.’”

Big Tech also scrubbed podcast host Joe Rogan’s interviews with scientists Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone, the latter of whom was instrumental in pioneering mRNA technology. Twitter banned Malone from its platform permanently in late December over the virologist’s tweets questioning the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We tallied 32 different doctors who were censored, including mRNA vaccine innovator Dr. Robert Malone,” Gainor said. “Censoring views of credentialed experts doesn’t ensure confidence in vaccines. It undermines faith in government COVID-19 strategies.“

In addition to medical doctors, the study examined instances in which members of Congress were censored by tech platforms.

These included an incident last August in which YouTube suspended Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for posting a video arguing that “cloth masks” are not effective against the coronavirus, a view later echoed by many prominent medical commentators.

Twitter also flagged a tweet from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., in which he wrote “studies show those with natural immunity from a prior infection are much less likely to contract and spread COVID than those who only have vaccine-induced immunity.”

The study also examined Big Tech censorship of prominent media personalities, such as Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and Dan Bongino.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/02/09/big-tech-censored-dozens-of-doctors-more-than-800-accounts-for-covid-19-misinformation-study-finds

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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Matters of concern in the defense data dump

"Data appears to show a marked increase in 2021 in conditions that have been observed to be *side effects* of the COVID-19 vaccines"

By ROBERT W. MALONE

These are dangerous times, and we are in a 21st century global information war. Cannon balls are flying, and there are false flag operations and concern trollery to the left, right and center of us. And yet onward we ride. The Light Brigade.

And then unexpectedly, onto the public stage, steps Drs. Samuel Sigoloff, Peter Chambers, and Theresa Long. Department of Defense whistleblowers who downloaded a massive trove of unclassified data (to download the Excel file see the link “Data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) shows”) on the incidence of various diseases before and after the onset of illegal forced genetic COVID-19 vaccination of our military forces.

Now these are basically raw data from the Defense Medical Epidemiological Database (DMED). For the detail oriented, this is the scrubbed and de-identified (HIPAA compliant) database derived from the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS), which pulls directly from patient records and other US Department of Defense-related medical record information streams. These data were pulled with full chain-of-custody documentation based on various CPT codes that are related to known genetic COVID-19 vaccine side effects.

As raw data, this information needs to be reviewed with care and considered to be both rough and preliminary. For the uninitiated, there are major risks associated with reliance on large, raw (uncorrected) data sets for retrospective (backwards in time) data analyses. The key technical term here is “confounding variables”, but data entry errors (such as multiple entries for the same diagnostic event) or process changes can also introduce huge sources of bias into large data sets like this. With raw data, it is most useful to consider any data plotting to be sort of a first draft, useful for identifying potential trends or topics that deserve more detailed analysis. But sometimes, when the observed effect size in the raw data is very large or potentially important, alarm bells start ringing even before full analysis is completed. And that seems to be the case with these data.

Nick Hudson, the Chairman of the South African PANDATA group (a leader in providing accurate data analysis throughout this pandemic), summarizes the situation like this “The DMED record data appears to show a marked increase in 2021 in conditions that have been observed to be side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines. For many of these, mechanistic explanations have been established or at least proposed. It is important to rule out distortions owing to recent changes to the system, such as increased coverage (for example, broader selections of personnel or inclusion of family members), changes in handling of multiple records from single cases, and changes in propensity to report owing to changes in policy, access to the system, participating entities or recent advisories or advertising of the system. An instructive test would be to check that we do not see a similar rise for conditions that could not plausibly exhibit a significant association with the vaccines, such as broken legs or burns. This is especially important since the total reports of diseases and injuries have apparently risen by an order of magnitude, which would suggest extremely high prevalence of adverse events among a population that is likely healthier and fitter than the general population. The data are presented in summary format. Underlying data with dates and depersonalized patient indices, together with vaccination records for the population covered by the database would likely deliver swift and incisive conclusions.”

Now for some reason, although this database has apparently been managed for years by the same NIH subcontractor, and has been included in the CDC datasets including those reviewed by the CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical (VaST) Work Group, the geniuses that have been managing it have never identified any issues before the whistleblowers grabbed this download. Does not inspire confidence, no matter what the final “official” explanation becomes.

Based on this presentation dated 04 February, Slides 3 and 13 both indicate that Fauci and colleagues at the NIH are working with the DoD, and the data from the DMED database was being shared. This makes it VERY difficult to argue that Fauci did not know this data. It also makes it even harder to believe that, with all these agencies watching the same data, no one thought the historical data was incorrect until the whistleblowers sounded their alert.

Despite this, as the data entered the public sphere with the “second opinion” public Senate hearing convened by Senator Ron Johnson, the DoD saw fit to communicate with Politifact rather than the Senator, providing the following statement:

“But Peter Graves, spokesperson for the Defense Health Agency’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division, told PolitiFact by email that "in response to concerns mentioned in news reports" the division reviewed data in the DMED "and found that the data was incorrect for the years 2016-2020."

Officials compared numbers in the DMED with source data in the DMSS and found that the total number of medical diagnoses from those years "represented only a small fraction of actual medical diagnoses." The 2021 numbers, however, were up-to-date, giving the "appearance of significant increased occurrence of all medical diagnoses in 2021 because of the underreported data for 2016-2020," Graves said.

The DMED system has been taken offline to "identify and correct the root-cause of the data corruption," Graves said.”

As noted above, among the many curious aspects of this statement is that the CDC VaST has apparently been monitoring these data for years, and never identified this “data corruption” as an issue.

So, what do the original data show (prior to Defense Health Agency’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division correction of the “data corruption”)?

In reviewing these data, what we see are baseline data from 2016 to 2019 (pre SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19), 2020 (the first year of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 when no vaccines were available), and 2021 (the year that vaccines were available and mandated for the US Military).

As noted above, there are many potential confounding variables, but whatever the cause, if these data are not due to longstanding and previously undiscovered “data corruption”, then we have a major issue with the overall health of our armed services.

And if they are due to previously undiscovered “data corruption”, why wasn’t someone running around with their pants on fire trying to figure out what is going on here long before the whistleblowers brought this to national attention?

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13987&omhide=true&trk=rm

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Covid drugs a booster for Pfizer sales

As Pfizer forecasts strong sales this year for its Covid-19 vaccine and treatment, the drugmaker is on the hunt for deals to bolster its pipeline of experimental products.

Pfizer said on Tuesday night that surging sales of its Covid-19 treatment and continued demand for its shots should boost the company’s revenue to around $US100bn ($140bn) this year. The company estimated that sales of its antiviral pill Paxlovid will reach about $US22bn while the vaccine will add $US32bn.

That is on top of last year’s sales of $US36.8bn for the vaccine, also known as Comirnaty, the highest annual sales total for any pharmaceutical product. Paxlovid sales last year totalled $US76m.

The company has done a handful of recent acquisitions and partnerships to bolster its pipeline of drugs and vaccines, including several partnerships announced last month to boost its growing mRNA business. In December, Pfizer said it would acquire Arena Pharmaceuticals for $US6.7bn. Pfizer says it has invested $US25bn on business development since 2019.

With a growing chest of cash, Pfizer says its deal-making strategy will focus on drugs in early and late-stage development in areas the company is already focusing on, such as oncology, immunology and rare diseases. The New York-based drugmaker forecasts new deals to generate $US25bn in additional revenue by 2030. “We would like to deploy capital in scientific areas that we have expertise in so we can choose the right targets,” chief executive Albert Bourla said in an interview.

The prospect of further deal making could address concerns from analysts and investors who are watching what Pfizer does with its windfall from the pandemic. Sales from the pandemic vaccine and treatment will taper over time and the company faces drops in sales as innovative products lose their patent protection. Pfizer shares had fallen more than 4 per cent on Tuesday night following its earnings. The drop was because investors were expecting Pfizer’s guidance on this year’s earnings per share to be higher than $US6.35 to $US6.55, according to Evercore ISI analyst Umer Raffat.

“It’s our all-time record high,” chief financial officer Frank D’Amelio said, regarding the company’s guidance. He said analysts may have had higher expectations because of the pandemic products, but noted that Pfizer’s estimates only include finalised agreements.

Pfizer is in discussions with more than 100 countries for Paxlovid, so revenues are likely to come in higher than the $US22bn should it strike more agreements.

To fight Omicron surges, some countries are handing out second booster shots. In Israel, early data suggest a…
Paxlovid is cleared for use in people in the US 12 years and older who are at high risk of developing severe disease. The company said it expects to begin a study of the drug for children 6 years to 18 by the end of March. Results from studies of the drug in adults who are at standard risk for severe disease and household exposure should come later this year, Pfizer said.

The drug remains in short supply, and has been difficult to find in the US as Pfizer increases production to 120 million courses of treatment this year.

While Pfizer says Paxlovid works safely, and was effective against the Omicron variant in laboratory studies, it says it is working on a new treatment, too. The potential drug is designed to counter possible viral resistance to Paxlovid, require fewer pills in a course, and to work without the aid of the antiviral ritonavir that is given with Paxlovid, but carries safety risks for patients taking some common medications, according to Pfizer.

“We are not taking any chances; we’re going to stay on the forefront of the scientific efforts to battle the pandemic,” said Mr Bourla.

The company says it will begin studying the new Covid-19 treatment in the second half of this year.

While Pfizer says demand for the vaccine may wane, it expects growing demand for the treatment. Yet sales of both will combine for more than half of annual $US98bn to $US102bn Pfizer forecasted revenue for 2022. Pfizer says the virus won’t be fully eradicated in the near term because it is difficult to contain, has been shown to mutate, and that data shows natural infections don’t lead to long-term protection needed to prevent transmission and mutations.

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and partner BioNTech SE has grown into one of the most widely used shots globally. Pfizer’s booster shots have also seen the greatest use in the U.S. Nearly 50 million have been administered.

In the last three months of 2021, Pfizer’s vaccine achieved $US12.5bn in sales, contributing to overall revenue of $US23.84bn. A year earlier, Pfizer’s fourth-quarter revenue was $US11.63bn.

Adjusted earnings grew to $US1.08 a share, from 43c a share in the year-ago quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet had forecast adjusted earnings of 87c a share on sales of $US24.16bn.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/pfizer-forecasts-us54-billion-in-2022-sales-from-covid-vaccine-treatment/news-story/eb5bf1e4b1529874e84aaa567876fe61

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

https://dailytorch.com/2022/02/cdcs-new-study-proves-natural-immunity-is-real-and-should-lead-to-covid-policy-changes/

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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.

https://dailytorch.com/2022/02/demand-for-limited-government-makes-a-comeback-amid-national-distress/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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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

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/02/03/newsweek-allowed-this-oped-on-masks-and-schools-kids-be-published-it-will-probably-trigger-the-left-n2602800

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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.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-offers-strongest-proof-yet-of-vitamin-ds-power-to-fight-covid/

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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.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10479231/Covid-Australia-Dr-Nick-Coatsworth-shares-shock-mask-mandate-graph-rallies-against-mandates.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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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.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-officials-handling-of-the-pandemic-is-catastrophic-exercise-in-bad-government-robert-f-kennedy-jr_4250992.html

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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.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-drug-for-seriously-ill-covid-19-patients-shows-promise-under-right-to-try-act_4247983.html

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'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

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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The 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

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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.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/natural-immunity-to-covid-19-detected-at-20-months-after-infection-study_4256564.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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The 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.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-high-cost-of-disparaging-natural-immunity-to-covid-vaccine-mandates-protests-fire-rehire-employment-11643214336

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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

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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