Australian doctors are now being warned they “are obliged to” follow public health messages

Australia’s march toward medical authoritarianism continues.

Doctors are now being told they could face discipline for saying anything that contradicts “public health messaging,” even if what they are saying is “evidence-based.”

They may even face investigations for “authoring papers” that health authorities do not like.

Unfortunately, I am not exaggerating.

Like all physicians, Australian doctors can face disciplinary investigations for medical errors or other problems. In Australia, those investigations are called “notifications,” a nicely Orwellian euphemism. Ahpra, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency, oversees them.

On Feb. 28, a big Australian medical insurer warned physicians that to avoid Aphra notifications, they needed to “be very careful” not to contradict “public health messaging” in social media comments.

But the warning - although first mentioning social media - went even further. It also warned against “authoring papers” that contradicted the authorities’ favored views.

Further, even “views… consistent with evidence-based material” could lead to problems if they contradicted “public health messaging.”

The warning came from the Medical Indemnity Protection Society, which provides professional insurance coverage for doctors. Although these insurers do not speak officially for government agencies, doctors effectively cannot practice without professional insurance, so their pronouncements are powerful.

In other words, only a very brave physician in Australia would consider offering advice that’s not “consistent with public health messaging” anytime soon.

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/in-australia-doctors-are-now-being

************************************

How the media covered up the Hunter Biden laptop story

The New York Post is one of a tiny (yes, tiny) number of conservative newspapers in the United States. It also has something of a grand history. It was founded in 1801, making it the oldest continuously published paper in America. It was established by none other than Alexander Hamilton – the founding father killed in a duel by Aaron Burr and subject of the recent hit musical – as an outlet for federalist views. Oh, and the Post today has the fourth-largest circulation of US newspapers. So despite the fact many on the left will sneer (as they do) because it is these days owned by Voldemort, sorry by Rupert Murdoch, this is no Johnny-come-lately internet publication.

I bring up the NY Post because it was the newspaper that broke the Hunter Biden laptop story not long before – let me emphasise before – the 2020 US presidential election. The material on that laptop was damning to Joe Biden, for various reasons including because it contained one email showing what the Post characterised as a meeting between Joe Biden and the Ukrainian gas company Burisma which paid a fortune to Hunter Biden to be on its board despite his having no obvious skills at all (not the Ukrainian language, no knowledge of the oil business, nothing really other than a certain chromosomal set of advantages) and another email with Hunter complaining to his daughter about how Joe takes half his income from him. Let’s just say that if the laptop were authentic the material could have ruined Mr Biden’s presidential run. Or put differently, had the laptop been the property of one of Donald Trump’s children, and contained the exact same contents, it would have received 24- hour coverage every day up to the election by all the usual suspects including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC news, CBS news, the woke, lefty sports network ESPN, and let’s be honest by ‘our’ ABC here in Australia most of all.

Instead, these usual suspects, along with the entirety of Big Tech, kicked into gear and acted as the protection arm of the Democratic party. And no, that is not an unfair description of what happened. To start, Big Tech blocked the NY Post, so it could not circulate this story online. Then they pulled out the big guns. They claimed this laptop story was Russian disinformation and even got dozens and dozens of US intelligence and ex-intelligence officials to sign a letter declaring that this looked to them like a Russian disinformation campaign. Anyone broaching the story was ridiculed, attacked and preferably silenced.

But just last week the NY Times conceded the laptop was real and it was Hunter’s laptop. The NY Post has been scathing about its cross-town rival which as we all know is beloved by all the wokerati chattering classes. One Post headline read ‘All the news that’s fit to print… once Biden is elected’ (a play on the NY Times’ sanctimonious motto).The questions this raises are myriad and most of us can guess most of the answers. When did the NY Times realise this was a real story and not disinformation? Before or after the election? How could some 50-odd US intelligence officers claim this was Russian disinformation? Is the deep state really that much in the back pocket of the Democrats? And note that Miranda Devine, now with the Post, has contacted all the senior ex-intelligence officers who signed the ‘nothing to see here folks’ letter before the election. Not one apologised. Most refused to comment.

So can we now expect these organs of the Democrat party (oops, I mean the wholly impartial mainstream media outlets above) to look into the truth of what the Hunter Biden laptop contained? Will they check out the email where Hunter’s business partner writes that he moves money between Hunter’s and Joe’s chequing accounts? Or the one above where Hunter complains to his daughter that his dad is creaming fifty per cent of his Ukraine monies off the top? Well, to ask is to know isn’t it? Joe will be protected as long as that is in the best interests of the Left. This is why so many average Americans have next to no trust in the media and in journalists generally. This is why Donald Trump’s brutal description of the fourth estate as ‘fake news’ was and is far more right than wrong. And this is why any conservative politician who wants actually to do something – to achieve real change in a conservative direction be it with respect to the schools and universities, the economy, the culture wars, taking on the lawyerly and doctorly castes, free speech, anything really – has to be prepared to take on the press and its feral left-leaning bias. That willingness to fight is what drove some, not all, of its hatred of Trump. That is what drives the legacy media crazy about Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida. These rare sort of conservative politicians call out the bias of the journalists. And they hate it.

Which leaves me a few words tangentially related to the above. I refer to last weekend’s election in South Australia. There are two strategies for right-of-centre political parties. One is to stand and fight and differentiate themselves on matters of principle from the Left. The second is to become a pale imitation of the Left, but promise to remain a fraction of a smidgen of a soupçon to the right of the other guys. This was the view that prevailed inside the Libs’ party room when it opted to defenestrate Tony Abbott in favour of Turnbull. This is how Team Marshall governed in South Australia. This describes the NSW Liberal government to a tee. And let’s all be brutally honest. This is how Scott Morrison has governed. I have long said it’s a loser strategy if you have any goal other than winning a couple of elections. If you want to bring about outcomes you purport to care about this doesn’t work.

Take the pandemic. If you fall in line behind policies that amount to the worst erosions of our civil liberties ever, and you empower a public health clerisy, later on trying to argue ‘we were an eensy-weensy bit less despotic than they would be’ won’t help you. Some voters will opt for the Labor real thing. And some will abandon you for your abandoning all principle. You lose.

This my friends is the tragedy of every state Liberal operation. And this is why I’ve been predicting a Morrison loss ever since he sold us out on the moronic ‘net zero’ pledge in Glasgow. Nine years of Coalition government and other than stopping the boats they have delivered what any fair observer would call across-the-board Labor outcomes. Now they’re having to pretend we really have four per cent unemployment (see Terry McCrann for a stinging rejoinder) and that they’ve done a splendid job, really splendid. A NY Post headline might read ‘All for conservative stuff… until we’re elected.’

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-room-where-it-happened/

****************************************************

Authoritarianism gets women hot…

To understand why the rise of authoritarianism in once-liberal Western democracies is greeted – not by resistance, but rapturous applause – we must first understand why half the population seem predisposed to embracing authority.

In surveys that ask about government power, whether for pandemic management, social policy, or law and order, women routinely outdo men in the belief that greater intervention is a good thing and that governments are responsible for just about everything.

Academic research backs this up: consistently, women are more likely than men to approve of measures that expand the reach of the State. Even political preferences fall along these lines. Parties that zealously advocate for an increasingly authoritarian society and ever-dwindling freedom – for our own good, of course! – have a higher proportion of female supporters than parties that lean towards libertarianism and individual responsibility.

Any enquiry about why this occurs is obscured by fuzzy rhetoric like ‘the greater good’ and ‘thinking of others’. The common view, pushed ardently by players who stand to gain power, is that ‘the woman’s perspective’ is less selfish and more conscious of public wellbeing than men’s. What a massive lie this is. Whether because of biology, socialisation – or both – women support the exercise of power because the State has become what men, and especially husbands, have been to women throughout history.

With so many men painfully feminised and socially castrated, it is no wonder that women have turned elsewhere for a source of authority and strength.

Over fifty years ago, Germaine Greer wrote in The Female Eunuch that women who fail to seize emancipation do so because they not only still need, but actively crave, the command of men. She argued that even though the suffragettes threw open the door to the cage, the canary refused to fly out. The housewives of the 1950s shrugged their shoulders at the opportunities that their forebears had fought to bring about, and happily remained in a State of dependence by insisting that somebody else should exercise responsibility for them.

The only thing that has changed since then is the colour of the cage, because the patterns of behaviour are the same. Just as obeying one’s husband was once a virtue, obeying the State now is – while a challenge to the State is viewed as darkly as emasculating menfolk once was. Just as turning hard decisions over to a man was once seen to lift a burden from women, allowing the State to do the thinking now provides that soothing security blanket. And just as many women once secretly feared the power of men even as they clutched it desperately to themselves, now they secretly fear the power of the State even while they cheer it.

Oddly, it is often the women who most promote themselves as models of liberated thinking who are the loudest to demand that the State must take responsibility for all and be involved in every aspect of human existence. Show me one of these paragons of progressiveness and I will show you a woman harbouring a deep-down Mills and Boon-esque fantasy about a dominating alpha male who takes complete charge, making her feel delicate, special, and sheltered. This is so shameful that she cannot even admit it to herself, so it becomes sublimated into a cry that anything even hinting of such appealingly untamed masculinity must be destroyed.

Smash the patriarchy, sisters! And while we’re at it, lobby for more government control over the lives of the people because, oh, how we hunger to submit.

Political parties who resist authoritarianism do not have a woman problem. Rather, the women who sneeringly denounce those parties have a problem with the possibility of liberation. Women’s liberation necessarily requires libertarianism. Yet still women refuse to see past their own intense yearning to sit like canaries in gilded cages, gazing smugly at bars bearing the insignia of the State and being too foolish to realise that they remain well and truly trapped.

Turning the very idea of libertarian values into something ugly and terrifying from which only the State can offer protection, is exactly how men once convinced women that the world outside the home was too rough and nasty a place to expose their pretty little heads to, and that they needed a man to look after them. Those who champion the erosion of libertarianism are doing nothing more than validating feminised inability or unwillingness to move beyond a State of dependence on something bigger and stronger than oneself.

If this is what ‘the future is female’ means, then we should all be terrified.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/authoritarianism-gets-women-hot/

***********************************************

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)

**************************************************

People with Covid super immunity, key to better vaccines, scientists find

Further research into people who have yet to contract Covid could help create better vaccines, scientists say.

Dubbed as people with Covid ‘super immunity,’ a study published in Naturelooked at how some healthcare workers appeared to have a natural immunity against Covid-19 and continued to test negative to the virus, despite exposure.

The research was led by Leo Swadling – an immunologist Leo Swadling from the University College of London – and his colleagues.

As this study was conducted during UK’s first wave of the pandemic in March 2020, a vaccine had yet to become available.

Stream the latest news on COVID-19 with Flash. 25+ news channels in 1 place. New to Flash? Try 1 month free. Offer ends 31 October, 2022 >

The study found that repeated exposure to previous coronaviruses prior to the pandemic had equipped these individuals with better T-cell reactivity. This mean they were able to fight off the genetic elements of Covid-19 upon initial infection as they were similar to previous coronaviruses.

For reference, coronavirus is merely the name given to a family of viruses which cause respiratory and intestinal illnesses in humans and animals. For example, the 2002 to 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China was another kind of coronavirus, however there are milder forms of the virus too.

A similar effect is also seen in individuals with immunity against hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV and Japaneses encephalitis, the study said.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Dr Swadling said the healthcare workers showed the ability to control the virus “very quickly”.

“We were particularly interested in people who are exposed to the virus, but control it very quickly, clearing the virus before it can replicate to detectable levels and before it induces an antibody response,” Dr Swadling said. “It may help us better understand what immunity is best at protection from reinfection.”

Their research also found that “long-lived” T-cells – which stop the development of a virus – may offer better and more lasting protection than antibodies which attack a virus once it enters the body. Although previous infection and vaccines help the body produce more antibodies against a virus, this protection wanes after a certain period.

Using this information, scientists may be able to create vaccines which can create “cross-reactive” T-cells which target multiple different coronaviruses. This means the vaccines could be effective against combating new variants and offer better protection without the need for additional doses.

Despite exposure to the virus, some people showed better immunity to Covid. Picture: iStock/Violeta Stoimenova.
Despite exposure to the virus, some people showed better immunity to Covid. Picture: iStock/Violeta Stoimenova.
In January 2021, a study from the UK’s renowned Imperial College London also looked at the importance of T cells in offering protection against contracting Covid-19.

Led by a research team from the Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Institute, Rhia Kundu, she found that T cells from even the common cold (another kind of human coronaviruses) can give people better protection.

The research was conducted by investigating blood samples from 52 people who lived with a Covid-positive case.

“Being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t always result in infection, and we’ve been keen to understand why,” said Dr Kundu.

“We found that high levels of pre-existing T cells, created by the body when infected with other human coronaviruses like the common cold, can protect against Covid-19 infection.”

However, vaccination was still a crucial part of protection against the virus. “While this is an important discovery, it is only one form of protection, and I would stress that no one should rely on this alone,” Dr Kundu said.

“Instead, the best way to protect yourself against Covid-19 is to be fully vaccinated, including getting your booster dose.”

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/health/people-with-covid-super-immunity-key-to-better-vaccines-scientists-find/news-story/9a736caa841aa0dc6b417469f69feb79

**********************************************

Professor Nick Coatsworth wants schools to end mask mandate for students

Australia’s former deputy chief health officer says mask mandates for school students in Victoria and WA are having a “detrimental” impact on kids.

Children in Victorian and West Australian schools attending grades 3-6 are required to wear masks inside the classroom.

No other Australian state and territory is enforcing masks requirements for students.

The infectious diseases physician and Associate Professor at the Australian National University was asked about the mandates by 3AW host Neil Mitchell on Friday.

He said not only should schools ditch masks for children, but Victoria and all other Australian states and territories are nearing a point where counting daily cases is redundant.

“It’s absolutely time to do away with the rules,” Prof Coatsworth said.

“Victoria was an outlier at the start, is still an outlier with regard to masks in schools. The only other place that’s doing it is Western Australia.”

Mitchell put to Prof Coatsworth that Australia is seeing a spike in cases from the latest Omicron subvariant BA. 2 and a corresponding rise in the number of deaths.

“Why wouldn’t you just cover (childrens’ faces) with the masks,” Mitchell asked.

Prof Coatsworth said children are not at risk of becoming seriously ill themselves from Covid-19.

“You’re not actually protecting the kids themselves because it’s a very, very mild disease in children with or without the vaccine,” he said.

“It doesn’t stop them from getting very sick because they don’t get very sick.

“Yes … there’s lots of cases around. The people who are getting very sick with this are the very frail elderly … in nursing homes. Or the people with severe underlying conditions.

“There is an overemphasis on the risks posed by Covid in a fully-vaccinated population and an overemphasis on the benefits of masking kids.”

Prof Coatsworth said he had just spent a week working on a hospital ward where he wore a mask and found it difficult to communicate with people.

“I have trouble communicating with my patients (while wearing a mask),” he said.

“It’s hard for them to hear me, it’s hard for them to know who I am, and if that’s hard for me then I can only conclude that it would be detrimental to kids.”

Prof Coatsworth said it would be reasonable for people over 70 to keep wearing masks in indoor settings until the current Omicron wave subsides.

When that happens, he said, it will be time to stop counting daily Covid-19 case numbers.

“This needs to move beyond cases now. There needs to come a time when we need to stop counting the cases. That’ll probably be when the Omicron curve comes well and truly down.”

Victoria’s chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton said in February that his advice remains the same regarding masks in schools.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/professor-nick-coatsworth-wants-schools-to-end-mask-mandate-for-students/news-story/7e370467bdf7dac40ac7b029231444ee

*************************************************

Russian rouble bounces back to pre-invasion levels

Some predict that it will become MORE valuable than it was

Russia’s rouble has recovered nearly all of its value after crippling sanctions in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine last month sent the currency plummeting to less than one cent against the US dollar.

The rouble was trading at around 84 per dollar most of Wednesday after gaining around 20 per cent in the previous two sessions, and touched the 82.55 level for the first time since February 25 – the day after Moscow launched its “special operation” sending tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion sparked an unprecedented financial response from the US and Europe – including the freezing of the Russia’s foreign currency reserves and its expulsion from the SWIFT interbank messaging network – aimed at crippling the country’s economy and crashing its currency.

The rouble went into free fall as a result, bottoming out at around 150 per dollar on March 7 after Joe Biden announced a ban on US imports of Russian oil and gas – with the President boasting that the rouble had been reduced to “rubble”.

But the currency has steadily regained ground over the past month, spurred by Mr Putin’s announcement last week that Russia would demand payment for natural gas in roubles from European countries.

“When you look at it in a non-geopolitical sense but just the basic economic building blocks of the currency, it’s extremely bullish for the rouble,” said currency forecaster Clifford Bennett, chief economist with ACY Securities.

Mr Bennett said the rouble’s recovery was being fuelled by a near-total collapse in imports, even as Russia continued to export essential commodities including natural gas, oil and nickel.

While the pre-crisis level of 76-72 “is probably about right” considering the geopolitical risks and trade account imbalances, Mr Bennett said it was possible the rouble “could go to 50 to the US dollar”.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/russian-ruble-bounces-back-to-preinvasion-levels/news-story/4b2e0a67d97557a435c355cb37a1d619

***********************************************

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)

**************************************************

Sweden Now Has One of the Lowest COVID Mortality Rates in Europe

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, I asked a simple question. Could Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the coronavirus actually work?

Unlike its European neighbors and virtually all US states, the Swedes had opted to not shut down the economy. The country of 10 million people took what was at first described as “a lighter touch.”

While other countries closed schools and businesses, life in Sweden stayed pretty normal. Kids went to public pools and libraries, while adults sipped wine and had lunch in local bistros. Though mass gatherings were prohibited, children kept going to school, though students older than 16 were encouraged to attend classes remotely. The Swedish government also encouraged people to work remotely and asked people over 70 to isolate themselves, if possible.

For taking this approach, Sweden—and the architect of its public health policies, Anders Tegnell—was widely condemned.

It was an avalanche of criticism Sweden received for not locking down its economy like other governments around the world.

The Other Side of the Story

I spent a great deal of time in 2020 and 2021 arguing that the media was getting the narrative wrong on Sweden, pointing out that Sweden’s response had resulted in exponentially fewer deaths than modelers had predicted and lower mortality overall than most of Europe.

The BBC also noted Sweden’s economy had not suffered nearly as much as the economies of other European nations, and, more importantly, as other countries were implementing more lockdown measures in 2021, daily COVID deaths in Sweden had reached zero.

That was nearly 9 months ago, however. How does Sweden rank compared to other European countries today?

Like many countries, Sweden saw cases spike with the arrival of Omicron, which resulted in a new wave of COVID deaths. However, the wave was much smaller than in other countries. In fact, Sweden’s overall COVID-19 mortality rate throughout the pandemic is one of the lower rates you’ll find in all of Europe.

The Costs of Lockdowns—New and Old

The point in sharing this information is not to take a victory lap. The point is to learn from the mistakes made during the pandemic.

In March of 2020, when public health officials realized COVID-19 was more deadly than they previously believed, they panicked. Instead of pursuing similar courses humans had pursued in previous pandemics, public health authorities decided to copy the strategy of China—one of the most totalitarian regimes on the planet—and use the government to force entire sectors of the economy to shutdown. (Americans were told this was just for 15 days to “flatten the curve,” something that was quickly proven to be untrue.)

The strategy failed miserably. Study after study after study has shown the lockdowns failed to adequately protect populations, which is why non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been scrapped by countries around the world.

Shutting down society, however, came with serious and deadly consequences. The World Bank reported last year that global poverty surged during the pandemic, with 97 million more people living on less than $1.90 per day. In the United States, 8 million more people fell into poverty in 2020, tens of millions lost jobs, and hundreds of thousands of businesses went under. To mitigate these harms, the government “flooded the system with money,” which has resulted in surging inflation. The losses went beyond financial costs, of course. Cancer screenings plunged and drug overdoses reached record highs, resulting in an untold number of deaths.

And on Tuesday, The New York Times revealed the latest unintended consequence of the government’s lockdown experiment: a new study shows alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020, increasing 25 percent from the previous year.

“The assumption is that there were lots of people who were in recovery and had reduced access to support that spring and relapsed,” said Aaron White, one the report’s authors and a senior scientific adviser at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The Lesson of Secondary Consequences

Public officials made two serious mistakes above all others in their response to the virus. The first was assuming they possessed the knowledge and ability to contain a highly contagious respiratory virus through lockdowns and other NPIs.

Many world-leading epidemiologists at the time, like Tegnell, saw the futility of such an approach.

“In early March 2020, when Italy and Iran started to report many COVID deaths as the first countries outside China, it was clear to any knowledgeable infectious disease epidemiologist that the virus would eventually spread to all parts of the world,” Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2015 to 2021, told me. “At the time, we only knew a small proportion of the actual cases, so it was clear that it had already spread elsewhere and that it would be futile to try and eliminate the disease with contact tracing and lockdowns.”

The second mistake public officials made was not considering the unintended consequences of their actions. The writer and economist Henry Hazlitt once pointed out this is one of the perennial flaws in policymaking.

“[There’s a] persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy,” Hazlitt wrote in Economics in One Lesson, “and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups.”

Hazlitt described this as “the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.”

Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s strategy who recently joined the World Health Organization, was one of the only public health officials in the world who acknowledged these secondary consequences, predicting that “the consequences of shutting down the economy [would] far outweigh the benefits.”

Tegnell was right, the data show. And the critics of Sweden’s policy should acknowledge that.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2022/03/29/sweden-lowest-covid-mortality/

***************************************************

Omicron BA.2 sub-variant now globally prevalent

A sub-variant of the highly transmissible omicron version of coronavirus known as BA.2 is now dominant worldwide, prompting surges in many countries in Europe and Asia and raising concern over the potential for a new wave in the United States.

BA.2 now represents nearly 86% of all sequenced cases, according to the World Health Organization. It is even more transmissible than its highly contagious omicron siblings, BA.1 and BA.1.1, however the evidence so far suggests that it is no more likely to cause severe disease.

As with the other variants in the omicron family, vaccines are less effective against BA.2 than against previous variants like alpha or the original strain of coronavirus, and protection declines over time. However, according to UK Health Security Agency data, protection is restored by a booster jab, particularly for preventing hospitalization and death.

The rise of BA.2 has been blamed for recent surges in China as well as record infections in European countries like Germany and the UK. Yet some European countries are now seeing a slower uptick in new cases, or even a decline.

BA.2 has been called the "stealth variant" because it is slightly harder to track. A missing gene in BA.1 allowed it to be tracked by default through a common PCR test. BA.2 and another sibling, BA.3, which is also increasing in prevalence but is currently at low levels, can only be found by genomic sequencing, which some countries do more of than others.

A key concern about BA.2 was whether it could re-infect people who had already had BA.1, particularly as a number of countries seemed to be experiencing "double peaks" in infection rates surprisingly close together. But data from both the UK and Denmark have shown that while omicron can reinfect people who had other variants, such as delta, only a handful of BA.2 reinfections in people who had BA.1 have been found so far among tens of thousands of cases.

Scientists say a possible explanation for the recent rise in BA.2 could be that the global uptick happened at the same time that many countries lifted public health interventions.

"In some ways, it could just be that BA.2 was the variant that was circulating when all these people stopped wearing masks," said Dr Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Study shows higher diabetes risk after COVID infectionVideo
As such, other U.S. experts such as Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, said it was "a little too early" to call whether the U.S. too would see a significant BA.2 wave.

But whatever the reason for BA.2's rise, scientists said it was a reminder that the virus continues to cause harm, particularly among unvaccinated, under-vaccinated and vulnerable populations.

"It is still a huge public health problem and it is going to continue to be," said Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/omicron-ba-2-sub-variant-now-globally-prevalent

***********************************************

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)

**************************************************

Dishonest comment from the Mayo clinic about kids and Covid

The medical community’s overreactions toward COVID with Children mostly play the major effects on them not due to the coronavirus itself.

Before the pandemic started, people have high respect for the US medical community, but since COVID-19 started they start to follow only orders that they were told and no longer looked at the facts and data. This made a lot of people lose respect and trust in the medical community.

I mean who could blame them?

A lot of doctors around the country are like this, they are pushing their clients to take the vaccine while telling them that not taking the COVID vaccine is like “riding a bike without a helmet”. Despite the fact of how dangerous COVID vaccines are. It’s no longer new to hear news reporting how people were dying from the vaccine and witnessing a lot of people losing their jobs just because they said No to these jabs. This is absolutely alarming.

And one of the most neglected members of society when it comes to the COVID-19 effects is the children. We already knew since the start of the pandemic that the disease was not killing children and those who were affected the most were the elderly and sickly with comorbidities. Still, nothing has changed.

Knowing that children are not dying from the disease made a lot of people ask why children were kept home from school or made them wear masks when in public?

In a statement, the Mayo Clinic responded to these obvious questions as they released information stating that “COVID is affecting kids”.

But their released argument only proved that they have the most significant negative impacts on children and not COVID itself. Yet they walk around this and don’t address it.

The clinic started the statement by pushing the vaccine on children:

One of the most common questions parents ask Dr. Ameenuddin is whether children really need to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

“What I’ve stressed to them is that we’ve actually gotten a lot of good information over the past couple of years (about COVID-19’s effects on children), especially the last year, that the vaccines are incredibly effective in preventing very severe side effects,” says Dr. Ameenuddin.

One particular rare and serious side effect of COVID-19 is multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C. Dr. Ameenuddin says among those who have gotten multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, almost all were unvaccinated.

“Vaccination, even if a child still gets sick, makes them much less likely to be sick enough to be hospitalized or die, which, unfortunately, has been happening.”

There is still other information that Mayo Clinic failed to share. Given the fact that a lot of medical communities are reported getting paid by Big Pharma for their COVID-related responses which Mayo Clinic didn’t include in their report.

The reasons that the clinic provided for giving children the vaccine were so bizarre. After reasoning out they then started to jump to the negative side effects that children are suffering from, but what they mentioned were all not COVID related but only connected to the medical community.

http://2020conservative.com/what-the-mayo-clinic-just-said-about-kids-and-covid-is-absolutely/

****************************************************

Australian Covid-killing ‘fog’ guards Singapore Airport

Hi-tech hand sanitisers, nasal sprays, pills and even cannabis have all been spruiked as treatments to kill or ease symptoms of Covid-19. But could crushing the virus be as simple as using water?

Or more specifically, electrified water, with a sprinkling of salt, that can create a potent dis­infectant?

The nation’s peak science agency, the CSIRO, thinks so and has backed a South Australian company that has developed a Covid-killing “fog” that will be deployed at Singapore Airport in coming months.

The technology has received approval from Australia’s health regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, as well as undergone testing from the world’s two biggest airline manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing.

For the company, Ecas4, it is proof that life can really present bouquets. It originally developed the technology to extend the shelf life of fresh cut flowers.

The “fog” involves electrolysis of salt and water, creating a pH-neutral disinfectant solution known as Ecas4-Anolyte. This solution can be sprayed onto a surface or fogged in an enclosed space using a specialised machine, such as an aircraft cabin, to sanitise all the surfaces it comes into contact with.

Crucially, it has no harsh chemicals or side effects, meaning people can breathe it in (and out), helping stop the spread of Covid.

It is similar technology to the salt chlorinators commonly used in swimming pools, and Ecas4 director Tony Amorico cites this connection when highlighting its safety.

“Chlorine about 2000mg/litre becomes a dangerous, hazardous product. Below that it’s safe. We’re producing at levels two to 300 where we know we kill bacteria and Covid effectively, instantly,” Mr Amorico said.

After international borders reopened last month, Industry Minister Angus Taylor said Ecas4’s technology would help give people the confidence to return to the skies following two pandemic-plagued years.

“From incredible inventions such as rapid breath Covid tests, mRNA technology, to innovations such as this cleaning and sanitising solution from Ecas4 helping to get us back in the skies, this is the kind of groundbreaking innovation the Morrison government is supporting to grow our economy, create new jobs and help our nation reach the other side of the pandemic,” Mr Taylor told The Australian.

But like most fledgling companies with great ideas, committing precious funds for research and development can be risky and cost-prohibitive. And this is where the CSIRO comes in via its Innovation Connections scheme, part of the Australian government’s Entrepreneurs’ Program.

CSIRO introduced Ecas4 to the University of South Australia, which began investigating whether the solution could eliminate traces of Covid-19. The project was successful, and the solution subsequently received approvals from TGA and major aircraft manufacturers.

Other beneficiaries of the CSIRO’s innovation fund include plant-based meat start-up V2food, which formed a partnership with Jack Cowin’s Competitive Foods to launch the Rebel Whopper at Hungry Jacks.

For Ecas4, getting Singapore Airport on board was challenging, given international travel bans prevented them from installing the system in-person.

“Because the cost of transporting a solution to them was prohibitive, we built a purpose built machine to allow a batch production, which we can remotely connect to and we remotely see how much they’re producing,” Mr Amorico said.

“The best part of it is we can switch it off if I need to, as well for any reasons to stop them from producing if we want them to. And that’s how we ensure the quality of the product is produced on a regular basis because we can measure the conductivity of the solution and we can also measure the current and the voltage that we’re providing through that process.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/aussie-covidkilling-fog-guards-singapore-airport-as-csiro-backs-adelaide-startup-ecas4/news-story/15e9a74a3cf292b44903e9e9b6581379

********************************************

We actually live in a New World Order

Remember folks when Biden talks about the New World Order it’s just one of those lovable dementia moments, like finding grandad in his slippers wandering the streets at 3am.

It’s nothing to do with all that conspiracy theory nonsense about the New World Order.

When Klaus Schwab dresses up like the Klingon ambassador in an episode of Star Trek and talks about the desirability of depopulating the world, it’s just a lovable quirk and not at all worrying that this man heads one of the most powerful political institutions on the entire planet.

It’s nothing to do with all that conspiracy theory nonsense about the New World Order.

When the Bank of England does research on a fully digital currency including a system where the Bank and government decides whether to approve your every purchase or refuse to allow you to buy things they deem irresponsible purchases, remember it’s nothing to do with all the conspiracy theory nonsense about a New World Order in which you will own nothing and be happy.

Remember when the WEF produces expensive propaganda that says you will own nothing and be happy it’s nothing to do with you owning nothing and being miserable or those absurd conspiracy theories about a New World Order in which you own nothing.

When every western government is drafting and passing laws which prevent peaceful protests against New World Order measures and policies and which allow those governments to seize your assets and freeze your bank accounts and put you in jail for honking a horn remember it’s nothing to do with that ridiculous conspiracy theory about a New World Order in which all the old democratic norms have been swept away.

When every media outlet and every western government conspires to ignore and have you ignore claims that a Presidential candidate’s son has a laptop full of child sex images, proof of multi million dollar corruption including the candidate and foreign powers, and disturbing evidence of incestuous child abuse involving a 14 year old member of the candidate’s family, remember that this is perfectly normal for a free press and a fully functioning democracy and nothing to do with a New World Order in which leaders are selected rather than elected.

Remember when old ladies are run down by cavalry charges and people who did nothing but wander into a public building and support the wrong political candidate are imprisoned and tortured for over a year that is the sort of thing that happens all the time in the Free World and not in the least bit the kind of thing that happens in a New World Order where nobody in charge is accountable in the least for their actions no matter how criminal they are.

Remember when you are subjected to constant psy ops campaigns that have you one minute hating your neighbour for refusing a dangerous experimental treatment and the next minute cancelling dead Russian composers this is all perfectly rational and sensible and not at all the kind of thing that New World Order manipulative psychopaths would do to keep you constantly harassed, fearful and distracted whilst your fundamental rights and freedoms are gradually removed from you.

When anything at all no matter how devastating, scandalous and truthful can be labelled as misinformation and blocked from all social media, all news programming, all television stations, all radio stations, and every public method of communication there is so that debate of or investigation of crimes by those in authority is impossible remember to be proud that you are part of the Free World and not a repressive tyranny like Russia where the exact same thing happens but about different news items.

Remember when a senior Ukrainian politician says they are fighting for a New World Order it’s nothing to do with the New World Order of the absurd conspiracy theory, but an entirely different and wholesome New World Order which only means democracy and peace. Like the Old World Order.

https://libertarianism.uk/2022/03/23/nwo-move-on-nothing-to-see-here/

***********************************************

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)

**************************************************

FDA Tells Doctors in 8 States to Stop Using COVID-19 Treatment

U.S. drug regulators have directed health care workers in eight states to stop using a COVID-19 treatment because it may not be effective against an Omicron coronavirus subvariant that’s rising in prevalence.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody used to treat COVID-19, can no longer be used in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Providers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands also have been told to stop using stotrovimab.

Regulators believe that the treatment, which was given emergency use authorization in May 2021, “is unlikely to be effective against the BA.2 subvariant,” the FDA said in a statement.

BA.2 is a subvariant of Omicron, a variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19.

According to genomic surveillance conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BA.2 was responsible for 12.6 percent of COVID-19 cases in the United States in the week ending on March 5. But the agency projected an increase to 35 percent in the week ending on March 19, and the subvariant was pegged as circulating widely in the northeast.

Based on the estimates, BA.2 is responsible for the majority of the cases in the states where the administration of sotrovimab is now limited.

The FDA had indicated in February that it would limit the treatment.

Several studies have indicated that sotrovimab doesn’t perform well against BA.2, including one published in Nature Medicine.

But GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology, the makers of the drug, have said that testing suggested that the treatment retained neutralizing activity against BA.2.

The companies said on March 25 that they were aware of the FDA’s move and are preparing to send a data package to the agency and other regulatory authorities that show a higher dose of sotrovimab works against BA.2.

COVID-19 treatments that do appear to be effective against BA.2 include Pfizer’s pill, paxlovid; the antiviral from Gilead Sciences known as remdesivir; and the recently authorized bebtelovimab, a monoclonal made by Eli Lilly, according to the FDA.

“We will continue to monitor BA.2 in all U.S. regions and may revise the authorization further to ensure that patients with COVID-19 have effective treatments available. Health care providers should also monitor the frequency of BA.2 in their region as they choose appropriate treatment options for patients,” the agency said.

The FDA previously cut off authorization for REGEN-COV, a monoclonal from Regeneron, and a separate treatment from Eli Lilly because laboratory testing suggested that they didn’t hold up well against Omicron.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-tells-doctors-in-8-states-to-stop-using-covid-19-treatment_4364197.html

****************************************************

What can people who have health problems linked to the COVID-19 vaccine do to help themselves?

The food recommendations below are fairly "alternative" but may be worth a try

If you believe your COVID-19 vaccination may be responsible for certain conditions that developed afterward, you could be right, and you may need to take measures to recover.

As information and data surrounding the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines have become increasingly available, scientists and doctors continue to express concerns regarding the negative health effects being documented around the world, including in Germany, Israel, Scotland.

In May of 2021, Drs. Stephanie Seneff and Greg Nigh published a comprehensive overview of the potential problems associated with the COVID-19 vaccines.

“In this review, we first describe the technology underlying these vaccines in detail. We then review both components of and the intended biological response to these vaccines, including production of the spike protein itself, and their potential relationship to a wide range of both acute and long-term induced pathologies, such as blood disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune diseases.”

A study published in CELL on Jan. 24, 2022, demonstrated that people who have received COVID-19 vaccines produce higher levels of the spike protein for longer periods of time than those who were unvaccinated and were infected with the natural virus. The researchers also found that synthetic vaccine mRNA persisted in the lymph nodes of the vaccinated for 60 days, the entire length of the study.

Another study published in Frontiers in Immunology found that the S1 segment of spike protein from natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 can persist in the body for 15 months. The spike protein is known to be toxic to the human body. This raises concerns over the potential for cumulative toxicity of the spike protein with vaccine booster doses.

These findings raise significant questions regarding how long the synthetic mRNA and spike protein actually persist in the bodies of the vaccinated. A recent interview with Drs. Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, and Steve Kebe provides a more detailed discussion of the significance of these findings.

On March 1, 2022, a pre-print paper published on medRxiv demonstrated that the synthetic mRNA from the Moderna injection didn’t degrade as rapidly as the company claimed it would. After incubating both mouse and human cell lines with the Moderna vaccine, spike protein began to be produced in approximately 6 hours and continued for 12 to 14 days.

In testimony before the Tennessee State legislature, Dr. Ryan Cole said, “These vaccines do not prevent acquisition of the disease … do not prevent transmission of the disease, do not prevent illness from the disease, and do not prevent death from the disease.”

In a recent podcast, McCullough claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines are not sufficiently safe or effective, and “the mass vaccination program worldwide has failed. In fact, [it] has made things worse.”

A U.S. insurance executive noted that during the second half of 2021, there was an excess mortality rate of 40 percent for employed people aged 18 to 64. Hundreds of professional and amateur athletes have collapsed, with many dying on playing fields, often on live TV. After an analysis of CDC data, former BlackRock executive Edward Dowd recently showed that more millennials aged 25 to 44 (61,000) died in the second half of 2021 than the total number of U.S. soldiers (58,000) who died during the whole of the Vietnam war.

Peer-reviewed medical papers have documented that the COVID-19 injections damage the innate immune system T-cells and Natural Killer cells and suppress our own tumor suppressor genes, which interferes with the body’s natural ability to stop cancer growth. Additionally, a paper in Current Issues in Molecular Biology published Feb. 22, 2022, showed that the Pfizer synthetic mRNA was inserted into the DNA of human liver cells in just six hours.

Among the serious side effects of the COVID-19 shots being reported are the following: myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle; blood clots throughout the body that can lead to stroke, heart attack, pulmonary emboli, or amputation; vasculitis or inflammation of the lining of the blood vessels; autoimmune diseases, recrudescence of previously controlled infections such as herpes, shingles, and tuberculosis; increase in rapid spread of cancers that had been in remission as well as the development of new cancers; multisystem inflammatory syndrome; and immune system dysfunction comparable to that seen in AIDS.

Despite all this overwhelming and frightening information, there is hope for those who received these injections either voluntarily or under duress. There are ways to rebuild your immune system, fight the emergence of latent infections, reduce the risk of cancer, manage the likelihood of blood clots, and help your body clear any circulating spike proteins.

This Is What I Tell My Patients:

Diet is most important. We literally are what we eat. The body’s only fuel to heal, replace, grow, and renew is the food you eat. You must drink plenty of fresh, clean water. Your diet should consist of organic whole foods, 100 percent grass-fed meat, free-range poultry, wild-caught fish, plenty of green leafy vegetables, nuts, healthy fats such as coconut oil, organic olive oil, grass-fed lard and butter, limited grains, minimal fruit sugars, and a complete avoidance of GMO, pre-processed, or highly refined foods, especially those high in added sugars.

Many respond well to a gluten-free diet, as gluten itself is inflammatory, and many glutinous foods contain high levels of residual agricultural products such as glyphosate. It’s also advisable for some to eliminate dairy from the diet for the same reasons.

Avoid processed vegetable oils and trans fats. Sugar is damaging to the body in many ways and should be avoided altogether, especially sugary drinks and sodas, except for that found in nutrient-packed fruits such as berries. Caffeine intake should be restricted to roughly 100 mg daily and aspartame-containing dietary beverages or foods should be strictly avoided.

It’s also important to avoid all kinds of environmental toxicities, including cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, toxic household cleaners, and non-organic personal care products and makeup.

Immune system support starts with a good organic multivitamin with trace minerals. Support T cells and NK cells with adequate vitamin D3 with K2, zinc with an ionophore such as quercetin to take zinc intracellularly where it’s needed, and vitamin C. Herbs that help support immune system function include andrographis, ashwagandha, cat’s claw, echinacea, Japanese knotweed, garlic, ginseng, morinda or noni, and turmeric. Herbs that help regulate an overactive or dysfunctional immune function include astragalus, berberine (from Coptis chinensis), curcumin, milk thistle, and scutellaria or Chinese skullcap.

Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, artemisinin (from Artemisia annua), isatis (Isatis tinctoria), morinda (Morinda citrifolia), neem (Melia azadirachta), oregano oil, olive leaf extract, star anise (Illicium verum) as well as the amino acid L-lysine can protect against new and recrudescent viral infections.

Reduce the risk of blood clotting and help break up circulating spike proteins by taking omega 3 fatty acids, fibrinolytic enzymes (lumbrokinase and nattokinase), proteolytic enzymes (serrapeptase), lipases, bromelain, and vitamin E, as well as herbs that support the cardiovascular system such as Chrysanthemum morifolium flower petals, danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza), and scutellaria. Low doses of aspirin may also be needed.

Antioxidant support can include alpha-lipoic acid, beta-carotene, coenzyme Q 10, EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate, the most abundant catechin in tea, which is also a zinc ionophore), glutathione, lycopene, lutein, manganese, NAC (n-acetyl cysteine), quercetin, selenium, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and zeaxanthin. Herbs that have strong anti-oxidant qualities include olive leaf and scutellaria. Spices such as cinnamon, clove, garlic, ginger, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and thyme are also anti-oxidants.

Cancer-fighting foods include berries, carrots, citrus fruits, cruciferous vegetables (bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, garden cress), the garlic family of vegetables (chive, garlic, leeks, onions, shallots), green tea, and tomatoes. Herbs that help protect against cancer include artemisinin, blackberry leaves, Chrysanthemum morifolium flower petals, danshen, morinda, and scutellaria.

Inflammation in the body will be significantly reduced by following all of the above recommendations. Additionally, extracts of shea nut, turmeric, green tea, black tea, broccoli, stinging nettle leaf, black cumin seed, and grape seed; herbs such as andrographis, holy basil, manjistha (Rubia cordifolia), and scutellaria; and antioxidants such as pterostilbene and resveratrol can all help reduce inflammation.

To be healthy, we must clean up our bodies by eating well, reducing incoming toxins, enhancing outgoing toxins, exercising regularly, sleeping well, spending time in nature, and reducing external stress.

It’s likely no coincidence that many of these habits define the daily lifestyles of people in “blue zones.” These are areas of the world where people live the longest and have an unusually high number of centenarians.

These people also share another common feature—they belong to a spiritual community. In other words, they practice a faith.

This is important for several reasons. It reduces stress, teaches self-restraint, and provides companionship. But perhaps even more importantly, these traditions impart morality and belief in the divine.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ask-a-doctor-health-problems-after-covid-jab_4333760.html

***********************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

**************************************************

'Very few, if any' Americans require a FOURTH COVID-19 vaccine - even as Pfizer and Moderna push for more shots

America's two leading vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna, are both hoping to push a fourth COVID-19 dose out the door sometime soon, but some experts doubt they are needed as cases continue to fall in the U.S. and the virus poses less of a threat to Americans.

Dr Anna Durbin is an international public health expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has been a critic of Pfizer, Moderna and the White House's insistence to rollout COVID-19 booster shots before they are needed. This week, she told ABC that she does not believe many Americans will benefit from additional shots.

'There are very few, if any, people who, in my opinion require a fourth dose,' she said.

In August, when the White House was laying out plans to roll out the first batch COVID-19 booster shots, Durbin was also a critic, telling DailyMail.com that there was little science backing up the decision.

A very small number of Americans are already eligible for fourth COVID-19 shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises people who are immunocompromised to receive the additional shot now, despite the lack of authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Only around one in every 30 Americans is immunocompromised and is eligible for that fourth shot right now, though.

Pfizer and Moderna are hoping to get their fourth doses out to the rest of Americans as well. Earlier this week, Moderna submitted data to the FDA in a bid to have a fourth dose approved for all U.S. adults. This comes after Pfizer submitted data for a fourth shot for all Americans 65 and older.

The FDA is expected to grant authorization for both companies to add an additional shot to their Covid regimen.

'In general, it's too early to recommend a fourth dose, except for those who are immune compromised,' Dr Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told ABC.

Americans' interest in receiving additional Covid shots has stagnated as well, with the nation's booster rollout reaching a low point this week.

Cases and deaths caused by the virus are continuing to fall as well, and the 'stealth' variant that took over much of Europe in recent months has failed to make much ground in the U.S. so far.

The U.S. is averaging 29,490 Covid cases every day as of Friday, a 10 percent drop over the last seven days according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The nation is averaging 892 daily deaths as well, a 25 percent fall over the past seven days.

The 'stealth' variant, which earned the moniker from its ability to avoid detection through some sequencing methods, is believed to be the most infectious version of Covid yet - but is just as mild as the BA.1 version of Omciron that took over the world last last year.

According to the most recent data revealed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week, BA.2 makes up 35 percent of active Covid cases in the U.S., with BA.1 still being dominant.

BA.2's share of Covid infections in America is growing, though, with the variant only accounting for 23 percent of cases in the week previous.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said this week that he expects the U.S. to suffer a BA.2-fueled surge sometime soon, though, and that his company's vaccine will be needed to control it.

'Already several countries around the world have some of the 4th dose testing in people at high risk,' Bancel told CNBC's Squawk Box. 'There's a big wave of BA.2 variant in Europe right now, as many public health experts have said this should start in the U.S. very soon.'

A growing list of experts are saying the exact opposite, though.

'I would not be surprised at all, if we do see somewhat of an uptick,' Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and someone who has frequently been among the more cautious voices during the pandemic, said at a Washington Post event this week.

'I don't really see, unless something changes dramatically, that there would be a major surge.'

Experts at Harvard University said that the BA.2 stealth variant, which is believed to be the reason for the recent uptick of cases, would have likely already started the beginning of a surge in America if it was going to do so anytime soon.

'There's really no indication of an increase in cases or deaths in the region that corresponds to this increase in BA.2 infections that we're seeing,' Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance at Harvard's Broad Institute, told the Harvard Gazette this week.

While it has failed to make a major impact yet on case numbers, data from overseas - referenced by Bancel - is cause for some concern.

Some countries that had experienced declining cases for months, like the UK, France and Denmark, suddenly saw infection rates start to surge last week. Cases seem to have stabilized in these nations and the growth has stopped for now, though.

Internationally, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that there were over 12 million Covid cases globally last week, a seven percent jump from the previous week.

Deaths dropped, though, down 23 percent to under 33,000 - another sign of the virus's falling mortality.

The increase in cases was entirely clustered in the Western Pacific region, where daily infections jumped 23 percent last week. In Europe, infections stabilized after slightly rising two percent last week.

A fourth dose may be inevitable anyway, even if case numbers remain low. Fauci, Bancel and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla have been among those saying an additional dose was on the way for months, with Bourla even saying annual jabs will be needed for the next decade to control the pandemic.

While the shots have been deemed safe and effective by health officials around the world, and have likely saved millions of lives over the past year, Pfizer and Moderna's goals in the vaccine rollout are not exactly humanitarian.

The companies have each made billions off of the sales of vaccines to the U.S. and other nations around the world.

Pfizer, its partner BioNTech, and Moderna estimate a combined $50 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales this year, and those figures will soar even higher if fourth doses are approved.

Just before Moderna made its submission, Pfizer submitted an application to the FDA to get a fourth Covid jab approved for Americans 65 and older.

Both companies also are hoping to roll out jabs to young children in the near future. Currently, the Moderna shot is only available to adults in the U.S., with Pfizer's available to those five and older.

On Wednesday, Moderna announced that it had successfully completed Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials for its COVID-19 shot in children aged six months old to 17.

The shots, which are a quarter of the size of those given to adults, proved to be around 40 percent effective at preventing infection from the Omicron variant - similar to protection levels it provides adults.

Pfizer has run into some issues in getting its vaccine out to the youngest age groups. The company had to shift its Covid vaccine regimen for the youngest children up to three doses from two, as the smaller, three microgram doses, were almost entirely ineffective in children three and four years old.

The New York City-based firm also submitted data to regulators for its Covid jab in children under the age of five, though the approval process was paused earlier this year.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10652091/Very-Americans-require-FOURTH-COVID-19-vaccine-Pfizer-Moderna-push-it.html

************************************************

‘They didn’t die from Covid, but because of Covid’: the inseparable couple torn apart by the pandemic

Of all the thousands of moments that made up her parents’s lives, it’s their final laboured breaths that their daughter Alexa Every struggles to forget.

Both of Every’s parents died in institutions during the pandemic – Kathleen on Mother’s Day 2020 after a short and distressing stint in an aged care facility, and John in hospital a year later, on Christmas Eve.

Her family wasn’t alone in this unnatural grieving process. Thousands went through what Every calls “Covid-adjacent deaths” – the experience of losing a loved one not from Covid, but wrapped up in the pandemic and its associated pains.

“They didn’t die directly from Covid, but I believe they both died because of Covid,” Every says.

“Kathleen was only five months into living in a nursing home and was still adjusting,” she says. “Once they went into lockdown and we couldn’t visit her, she went into a terrible spiral of terror and confusion and died five weeks later.

“I’m sure a huge part of her very fast decline was fear and confusion because she couldn’t see her family.”

Kathleen was living with early-stage dementia when she entered aged care at the end of 2019, three months before the pandemic. Her 88-year-old husband would visit and eat lunch with her most days.

Then the facility locked down, and her lifeline – her family – was suddenly cut off from her.

“She got really agitated and angry … she was always saying ‘When are you coming?’ to my dad. She always depended on him, to be without him would have been absolutely terrifying … then she just declined before our eyes.”

Within a fortnight, the change was drastic. Eventually, Kathleen was admitted to hospital and died 10 days later.

“She couldn’t live without Dad, she didn’t know how, and died in real fear,” Every says. “I think it broke her heart.”

In the months after Kathleen passed, John had a few small bouts of time in hospital for physical ailments. In early December, he was booked into a busy Melbourne ward for what was expected to be a routine few days.

Three weeks later, on 23 December, the hospital administered final routine blood tests and asked to keep him for 24 hours to track the results. John pushed the doctor to be sent home. But he would never make it there.

“He was really a sharp and competent advocate for himself: he said three weeks is enough – it’s starting to get me down,” Every says.

“I rang the doctor and said same the thing but … they were so busy. It was terrible to see how overworked the nurses were, they were so tired.”

At 3am on Christmas Eve, Every received a call to say her dad had fallen out of bed. She still has no idea what happened (John was perfectly sound of mind) but the injuries he suffered were “catastrophic” – he was conscious but in severe pain.

Every immediately jumped in the car, but Covid protocols were strict and it was late at night. She spent crucial time running around the hospital trying to find an entry point.

“We’d been texting each other a few hours before [the accident]. He still had life to live … and this was an extremely unpleasant way to die … they both died in pain in different ways.”

When she finally arrived, John had just lost consciousness. She had missed him “by a whisker”.

“It’s nobody’s fault, the system was under so much pressure,” Every says.

“So many people have had that experience. But I would’ve liked him to have seen me. It just wasn’t the way to have finished.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/28/they-didnt-die-from-covid-but-because-of-covid-the-inseparable-couple-torn-apart-by-the-pandemic?fr=operanews

***********************************************

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)

**************************************************

Why more and more experts say lockdowns didn't prevent people dying of Covid - and call it a 'monumental mistake on a global scale

While there is no doubt that robust measures were necessary against a new and devastating virus, was lockdown truly the only route through those dark days of the pandemic, or the right one?

For the past few weeks, in a series of reports probing the science that has underpinned key pandemic decisions, The Mail on Sunday has investigated the accuracy of PCR tests and the chaotic way Covid-related deaths were recorded.

Today, in the final part, we talk to the growing number of experts who say that lockdowns had little benefit – a cure that was worse than the disease.

One of them is Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, who has recently published a book, The Year The World Went Mad, about the UK's pandemic policy failures.

Speaking this week on The Mail on Sunday's Medical Minefield podcast, Prof Woolhouse said: 'I think that lockdown will be viewed by history as a monumental mistake on a global scale, for a number of reasons.

'The obvious one is the immense harm the lockdown, more than any other measure, did in terms of the economy, mental health and on the wellbeing of society.

'Clearly things needed to be done to bring waves of infection under control.

'But many analyses suggest that lockdown itself didn't have a huge impact on reducing the health burden. That was achieved in other ways.'

Analysing the effect of any single Covid measure is difficult, and researchers have managed it with varying degrees of success.

In the UK, 'lockdown' refers specifically to the stay-at-home order. But some studies also include school and border closures, business closures and curfews in their definition of lockdown.

And when all these measures are looked at together, they do indeed have an impact – reducing infection rates by up to 80 per cent.

One paper that did attempt to tease out the benefits of individual measures, published last month, found stay-at-home orders reduced global Covid deaths by just 2.9 per cent.

By comparison, business closures cut deaths by ten per cent and school closures by nearly five per cent.

The authors, economists linked to Johns Hopkins University in the US, have been accused of bias – one has repeatedly equated lockdown measures with fascism – and 'cherry-picking' papers to suit their hypothesis.

'If you start with a premise and select studies which are likely to back that premise, you don't come to an objective answer,' says epidemiologist and Government adviser Dr Raghib Ali, at the University of Cambridge.

But intriguingly, Dr Ali and others also admit the researchers have a point.

In a critique of the paper, Australian epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz describes it as an 'extremely poor quality study'.

But he also points out that, while the figures quoted are 'pretty meaningless, the general idea is not totally wild'.

He wrote: 'If we define lockdown as 'the marginal benefit of stay-at-home orders on top of many other restrictions' it's probably fair to argue that the benefit might be quite small.

'Indeed, that's been shown before, and is quite a reasonable position based on the evidence.'

Another study that backs this, published in Science in February last year, found 'stay at home' measures reduced Covid transmission by an average of 13 per cent on top of other measures such as closing schools and non-essential shops, and banning small gatherings.

The study, which looked at evidence from 41 countries around the world, concluded this was a 'small effect' and meant 'some countries could control the epidemic while avoiding stay-at-home orders'.

It also found something intriguing: lockdowns could, in a worst-case scenario, actually increase transmission of the virus by up to five per cent.

This may be an effect of allowing it to spread within households, experts say.

Prof Woolhouse has argued that, if the aim was partially to protect society's most vulnerable, lockdowns failed.

'We focused on this idea that if we stopped the virus transmitting among everybody, that this would somehow be sufficient to protect those who were at risk,' he says. 'And it wasn't.'

Prof Woolhouse also argues that for lockdown to have had an effect it would need to have been imposed earlier.

This is what worked in Australia and New Zealand, which pursued a 'zero Covid' strategy.

'We passed that point in the second half of February 2020,' he says.

'Lockdown as an intervention only makes sense in the context of zero Covid, and by the time it was imposed it was no longer the appropriate tool.

'There are ways we could have responded to the pandemic that would have avoided most of the lockdown, and saved more lives.

'But lockdown happened anyway because by that stage no one – including me – was prepared to risk waiting to find out if [restrictions introduced prior to our full lockdown on March 23] had worked.'

But that stay-at-home order was, for most, the hardest part of the pandemic. 'It made everything so much harder than it might have been,' he adds.

Countries that had earlier lockdowns, better testing capacity and were able to identify and isolate cases fared better during the initial wave of the pandemic.

In the UK, lockdown was seen – at a point of desperation – as the only option left remaining.

But Prof Woolhouse argues people had already become more cautious. Studies using anonymised mobile phone location tracking data show contacts between people plummeted in early March (although the biggest drop was March 24, the day after lockdown).

Dr Ali says: 'The purpose of lockdown is to reduce contacts, but if people are doing that anyway, the additional benefit [of making it a legal requirement to stay at home] is obviously somewhat reduced.

'Case numbers at the time weren't really available because there was no community testing, so we've had to work backwards from hospital admissions. From that, there's actually some evidence that Covid cases may have peaked before lockdown came in, or around that time.

'If we had known then what we know now, I don't think we would have needed to lock down.'

A recent inquiry by officials in Sweden into the handling of its pandemic – where there was no lockdown and the population was expected to voluntarily follow 'advice and recommendations' – found this reliance on people's behaviour was 'fundamentally correct'.

Lockdowns across Europe were also neither necessary nor defensible, the report added.

Would this have worked in the UK? The evidence shows the impact of interventions were less effective in the second wave precisely because people were already socialising less frequently and masks, hand sanitiser and safety screens were in use.

This led Dr Ali and others to advise Ministers not to impose lockdown a fourth time in December 2021, with the emergence of highly transmissible Omicron.

'In the second and third lockdowns, in November 2020 and again in January 2021, we have a better idea of when cases peaked and again it seems this happened just before lockdown came in,' Dr Ali says.

Mr Meyerowitz-Katz adds: 'A lot of people underestimated the impact of voluntary behaviour change on Covid-19 death rates.'

Prof Woolhouse believes that the second and third lockdown are 'very hard to defend'. 'We had the tools in place, the knowledge in place, the systems in place to do it a different way,' he says. 'And we didn't do that.' But again, it's easy to say in hindsight.

Dr Ali, who backed all three lockdowns, says: 'At the time of the second lockdown we hadn't started the vaccination programme, we had predictions that hospitals would be overwhelmed, particularly intensive care units, so for that reason alone I thought it was reasonable.

'The third was different – we had vaccines, so lockdown was about flattening the curve, postponing infections until people had their jabs.'

The UK is now facing a significant further wave of infections from a more transmissible variant of Omicron, but with a highly vaccinated population even the most cautious experts agree the benefits of another lockdown are unlikely to outweigh the harms.

Like many experts, Professor Stephen Griffin, virologist at the University of Leeds and a member of Independent Sage, believes there is 'no question whatsoever' that locking down first time round 'prevented hospitalisations and deaths'.

He says: 'In the absence of a vaccine – and we need to remember we didn't have anything to treat this virus back then other than oxygen – we needed to reduce cases.

'If we'd let it run, we'd have had an even more profoundly upsetting mortality rate than we've already seen.'

However, he adds: 'No one would realistically say lockdown should be a strategy any more. There are so many things we could do to get transmission down.'

Samir Bhatt, professor of statistics and public health at Imperial College London, agrees.

'Once you close the shops, suggest people stop going out to work in an office and stop people gathering, the incremental effects of each measure become less and less.

'But that doesn't mean lockdowns weren't necessary to drive the R rate below one.'

In the end, what we don't know is what scientists call 'the counterfactual' – in other words, what would have happened in the UK if we had not locked down.

Looking just at home nations, which are comparable because of broadly similar populations, Dr Ali says that 'despite England having less stringent restrictions we've had, if anything, a slightly lower death rate [than in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland]. It suggests there's no obvious relationship between restrictions, mandatory interventions and death rates.'

A study published in The Lancet came to a similar conclusion. Sweden, which took a relatively relaxed approach, recorded a similar rate of deaths to neighbouring Denmark and Finland – both of which imposed strict lockdowns – at about 90 per 100,000.

In comparison, the UK – which had tougher restrictions than all three – recorded 127 excess deaths per 100,000. Yet that is still well behind Spain, at 187, and Italy at 227 – both of which had particularly stringent lockdowns.

Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Singapore, which had strict border controls, quarantine and testing regimes, did not record any excess deaths.

In Hong Kong, where the zero Covid strategy failed spectacularly to keep Omicron out, the death rate at present is bewilderingly high.

And China, still attempting to keep Covid out, has just put vast swathes of the country under lockdown.

As Dr Ali puts it: 'Some people say lockdowns were beneficial, others that they were really terrible.

'The reality actually is much closer to the idea that it didn't make much difference either way.'

For those who made painful sacrifices, that won't be an easy truth to swallow.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10655171/Englands-lockdown-did-NOT-prevent-people-dying-Covid-say-growing-number-experts.html

***********************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

**************************************************

Trying to Solve a Covid Mystery: Africa’s Low Death Rates

This is not much of a mystery. Africa has long been plagued by health challenges -- viruses, bacteria and parasites. Most Africans, for instance, are full of worms. You have to be very robusts and have a very good immune system to survive and function there. The less robust have long ago been "weeded out" of the gene pool. So Covid infections are easily resisted

The coronavirus was expected to devastate the continent, but higher-income and better-prepared countries appear to have fared far worse.

KAMAKWIE, Sierra Leone — There are no Covid fears here.
The district’s Covid-19 response center has registered just 11 cases since the start of the pandemic, and no deaths. At the regional hospital, the wards are packed — with malaria patients. The door to the Covid isolation ward is bolted shut and overgrown with weeds. People cram together for weddings, soccer matches, concerts, with no masks in sight.

Sierra Leone, a nation of eight million on the coast of Western Africa, feels like a land inexplicably spared as a plague passed overhead. What has happened — or hasn’t happened — here and in much of sub-Saharan Africa is a great mystery of the pandemic.

The low rate of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths in West and Central Africa is the focus of a debate that has divided scientists on the continent and beyond. Have the sick or dead simply not been counted? If Covid has in fact done less damage here, why is that? If it has been just as vicious, how have we missed it?

The first iteration of the virus that raced around the world had comparatively minimal impact here. The Beta variant ravaged South Africa, as did Delta and Omicron, yet much of the rest of the continent did not record similar death tolls.

Into Year Three of the pandemic, new research shows there is no longer any question of whether Covid has spread widely in Africa. It has.

Studies that tested blood samples for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the official name for the virus that causes Covid, show that about two-thirds of the population in most sub-Saharan countries do indeed have those antibodies. Since only 14 percent of the population has received any kind of Covid vaccination, the antibodies are overwhelmingly from infection.

A new W.H.O.-led analysis, not yet peer-reviewed, synthesized surveys from across the continent and found that 65 percent of Africans had been infected by the third quarter of 2021, higher than the rate in many parts of the world. Just 4 percent of Africans had been vaccinated when these data were gathered.

So the virus is in Africa. Is it killing fewer people?
Some speculation has focused on the relative youth of Africans. Their median age is 19 years, compared with 43 in Europe and 38 in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is under 25, and only 3 percent is 65 or older. That means far fewer people, comparatively, have lived long enough to develop the health issues (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease and cancer) that can sharply increase the risk of severe disease and death from Covid. Young people infected by the coronavirus are often asymptomatic, which could account for the low number of reported cases.

Plenty of other hypotheses have been floated. High temperatures and the fact that much of life is spent outdoors could be preventing spread. Or the low population density in many areas, or limited public transportation infrastructure. Perhaps exposure to other pathogens, including coronaviruses and deadly infections such as Lassa fever and Ebola, has somehow offered protection.

Since Covid tore through South and Southeast Asia last year, it has become harder to accept these theories. After all, the population of India is young, too (with a median age of 28), and temperatures in the country are also relatively high. But researchers have found that the Delta variant caused millions of deaths in India, far more than the 400,000 officially reported. And rates of infection with malaria and other coronaviruses are high in places, including India, that have also seen high Covid fatality rates.

So are Covid deaths in Africa simply not counted?

Most global Covid trackers register no cases in Sierra Leone because testing for the virus here is effectively nonexistent. With no testing, there are no cases to report. A research project at Njala University in Sierra Leone has found that 78 percent of people have antibodies for this coronavirus. Yet Sierra Leone has reported only 125 Covid deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Most people die in their homes, not in hospitals, either because they can’t reach a medical facility or because their families take them home to die. Many deaths are never registered with civil authorities.

This pattern is common across sub-Saharan Africa. A recent survey by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa found that official registration systems captured only one in three deaths.

But many scientists tracking the pandemic on the ground disagree. It’s not possible that hundreds of thousands or even millions of Covid deaths could have gone unnoticed, they say.
“We have not seen massive burials in Africa. If that had happened, we’d have seen it,” said Dr. Thierno Baldé, who runs the W.H.O.’s Covid emergency response in Africa.

“A death in Africa never goes unrecorded, as much as we are poor at record-keeping,” said Dr. Abdhalah Ziraba, an epidemiologist at the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya. “There is a funeral, an announcement: A burial is never done within a week because it is a big event. For someone sitting in New York hypothesizing that they were unrecorded — well, we may not have the accurate numbers, but the perception is palpable. In the media, in your social circle, you know if there are deaths.”

Dr. Demby, the Sierra Leone health minister, who is an epidemiologist by training, agreed. “We haven’t had overflowing hospitals. We haven’t,” he said. “There is no evidence that excess deaths are occurring.”

https://archive.ph/HTzhV

***********************************************

Scientists identify antibodies that can neutralize omicron

An international team of scientists have identified antibodies that neutralize omicron and other SARS-CoV-2 variants. These antibodies target areas of the virus spike protein that remain essentially unchanged as the viruses mutate.

By identifying the targets of these "broadly neutralizing" antibodies on the spike protein, it might be possible to design vaccines and antibody treatments that will be effective against not only the omicron variant but other variants that may emerge in the future, said David Veesler, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. "This finding tells us that by focusing on antibodies that target these highly conserved sites on the spike protein, there is a way to overcome the virus' continual evolution," Veesler said.

Veesler led the research project with Davide Corti of Humabs Biomed SA, Vir Biotechnology, in Switzerland. The study's findings were published Dec. 23 in the journal Nature. The lead authors of the study were Elisabetta Cameroni and Christian Saliba (Humabs), John E. Bowen (UW Biochesmistry) and Laura Rosen (Vir).

The omicron variant has 37 mutations in the spike protein, which it uses to latch onto and invade cells. This is an unusually high number of mutations. It is thought that these changes explain in part why the variant has been able to spread so rapidly, to infect people who have been vaccinated and to reinfect those who have previously been infected.

"The main questions we were trying to answer were: how has this constellation of mutations in the spike protein of the omicron variant affected its ability to bind to cells and to evade the immune system's antibody responses," Veesler said.

[Veesler and his colleagues speculate that omicron's large number of mutations might have accumulated during a prolonged infection in someone with a weakened immune system or by the virus jumping from humans to an animal species and back again.]

To assess the effect of these mutations, the researchers engineered a disabled, nonreplicating virus, called a pseudovirus, to produce spike proteins on its surface, as coronaviruses do. They then created pseudoviruses that had spike proteins with the omicron mutations and those found on the earliest variants identified in the pandemic.

The researchers first looked to see how well the different versions of the spike protein were able to bind to protein on the surface of cells, that the virus uses to latch onto and enter the cell. This protein is called the angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) receptor.

They found the omicron variant spike protein was able to bind 2.4 times better than spike protein found in the virus isolated at the very beginning of the pandemic. "That's not a huge increase," Veesler noted, "but in the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, mutations in the spike protein that increased affinity were associated with higher transmissibility and infectivity." They also found that the omicron version was able to bind to mouse ACE2 receptors efficiently, suggesting omicron might be able to "ping-pong" between humans and other mammals.

The researchers then looked at how well antibodies against earlier isolates of the virus protected against the omicron variant. They did this by using antibodies from patients who had previously been infected with earlier versions of the virus, vaccinated against earlier strains of the virus, or had been infected and then vaccinated.

They found that antibodies from people who had been infected by earlier strains and from those who had received one of the six most-used vaccines currently available all had reduced ability to block infection.

Antibodies from people who had previously been infected and those who had received the Sputnik V or Sinopharm vaccines as well as a single dose of Johnson & Johnson had little or no ability to block—or "neutralize"—the omicron variant's entry into cells. Antibodies from people who had received two doses of the Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, and AstraZeneca vaccines retained some neutralizing activity, albeit reduced by 20- to 40-fold, much more than any other variants.

Antibodies from people who had been infected, recovered, and then had two doses of vaccine also had reduced activity, but the reduction was less, about fivefold, clearly demonstrating that vaccination after infection is useful.

Antibodies from people, in this case a group of renal dialysis patients, who had received a booster with a third dose of the mRNA vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech showed only a 4-fold reduction in neutralizing activity. "This shows that a third dose is really, really helpful against omicron," Veesler said.

All but one antibody treatments currently authorized or approved to be used with patients exposed to the virus, had no or had markedly reduced activity against omicron in the laboratory. The exception was an antibody called sotrovimab, which had a two- to three-fold reduction of neutralizing activity, the study finds.

But when they tested a larger panel of antibodies that have been generated against earlier versions of the virus, the researchers identified four classes of antibodies that retained their ability to neutralize omicron. Members of each of these classes target one of four specific areas of the spike protein present in not only SARS-CoV-2 variants but also a group of related coronaviruses, called sarbecoviruses. These sites on the protein may persist because they play an essential function that the protein would lose if they mutated. Such areas are called "conserved."

The finding that antibodies are able to neutralize via recognition of conserved areas in so many different variants of the virus suggests that designing vaccines and antibody treatments that target these regions could be effective against a broad spectrum of variants that emerge through mutation, Veesler said.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12-scientists-antibodies-neutralize-omicron.html

***********************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

**************************************************

Deltacron: What scientists know so far about this new hybrid coronavirus

In many countries, as restrictions lift and freedoms are restored, there's a general feeling that the pandemic is over. There is, however, still the significant concern that a dangerous new variant could emerge.

This happened when Omicron arrived, but we got lucky with that one. Omicron turned out to be more transmissible, but mercifully it hasn't caused an increase in severe disease in most countries where it is dominant.

The race is on to find a variant-proof vaccine

In a state-of-the-art science lab, nestled into the genteel slopes of the NSW Southern Highlands, a group of genetically engineered mice have become frontline soldiers in the fight against COVID-19.

But this wasn't guaranteed. Variants crop up randomly, and new ones have the potential to be more dangerous than previous ones. Another has just arrived, and is currently going by the name deltacron. It is – as you can probably guess – a hybrid of Delta and Omicron, the two variants dominant most recently.

Deltacron's story begins in mid-February, when scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris uploaded a genetic sequence of the coronavirus that looked very different from previous sequences. The virus sample had come from an elderly man in northern France and looked odd. Most of its genetic sequence was the same as Delta's, which was dominant worldwide up until late last year, but the part of the sequence that encodes the virus's spike protein – a key part of its external structure, which it uses to get inside cells in the body – came from Omicron.

By March, three further hybrid genetic sequences had been reported, this time in the US. There are now over 60 logged across France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the US and the UK.

There may, however, be different deltacrons. Scientists at the Institut Pasteur have said the deltacron sequences reported in the UK and US have certain differences from those found in other countries. They've said that it might be necessary to add a number to these different forms of deltacron, to indicate which is which.

It's not unusual for viruses to mix and match parts of themselves if two different viruses infect one cell. This is called "recombination", as one virus combines parts of its genetic sequence with parts from another related virus as it assembles copies of itself. It appears to happen at random during viral replication.

What will our next COVID winter look like?

With influenza infections dropping to record lows during the social distancing phase of the pandemic, we are in uncharted waters as we approach winter with a new sub-variant in play.

However, when there's a transfer of power from one viral variant to another – with one variant becoming less common and another more so, meaning both are circulating in the population and there's a chance for them to simultaneously infect people – the chance of recombination happening increases. This will have been the situation as Omicron emerged to displace Delta as the most dominant form worldwide.

Recombination usually creates a new virus that isn't viable, as the mixing of different genes can interfere with the virus's ability to make the proteins it needs to survive. But sometimes one does survive, and that appears to be what's happened with deltacron.

Indeed, as the deltacron hybrids found in the US/UK appear to be different from those found in mainland Europe, it's possible that this has happened multiple times separately.

A chip off the old block?

At the moment it's hard to say in what ways deltacron will resemble its parents. Delta and Omicron are quite different viruses. They differ in how they infect cells and how they evade immunity. We still don't know enough about deltacron to be able to tell how different it's going to be to either.

Because it's been found in multiple nearby countries, it's likely that deltacron can spread. However, Omicron itself is continuing to spread widely in Europe, so it's still the variant we need to be watching carefully right now.

Time will tell if deltacron will displace Omicron, and whether deltacron will be any better at evading immunity and if it will cause more severe disease. There are currently too few deltacron cases to draw any conclusions on these issues. What we need are experiments to determine the properties of deltacron – scientists have started that process and have been able to infect cells with it, so hopefully we'll have answers in time.

In the meantime, we need to keep an eye on it. The fact that deltacron has probably spread across borders emphasises the need for ongoing genomic surveillance to keep tabs on how the virus is changing and moving. As the coronavirus is continuing to spread widely and infect large numbers of people, it's likely that more variants will emerge – including through recombination.

We can, though, be somewhat confident that prior infection with other variants, as well as vaccination, will offer protection from severe disease should deltacron begin to dominate. We know that vaccines, which are based on the original Wuhan strain of the virus, also protect against severe disease with the more recent variants. Time will tell whether Delta and Omicron have produced a wild child for us to worry about.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-23/hybrid-coronavirus-delta-omicron-deltacron-what-scientists-know/100931924

*******************************************

A patch instead of an injection?

Australian biotech firm Vaxxas says it will conduct the world’s first human clinical trial of a Covid-19 vaccine patch after securing exclusive rights to a US developed vaccine candidate.

Vaxxas CEO David Hoey said an agreement with the University of Texas and the National Institute of Health gave it exclusive usage of the vaccine in patches, and meant that Vaxxas could now timetable phase one trials of the Covid patch in Adelaide later this year.

Mr Hoey said 50 to 100 people would take part in the trial. They would need to have already been vaccinated three times with an approved vaccine. He said an independent investigator would conduct the trial which was primarily about the safety of the vaccine.

“We’ll then go into a phase two study based on the outcome of phase one and then to a larger phase three study as well.”

Vaxxas argues that vaccine patches are not only less painful and less invasive than regular injections, they also enable vaccines to be dispensed more efficiently over time. The vaccine candidate being used was a relatively inexpensive non mRNA vaccine that survived at room temperature.

Mr Hoey said it could be mailed as Covid patches in the post, or distributed in the developing world. “It’s appropriate for every geography on the planet,” he said.

“As the Covid pandemic transitions to becoming some kind of endemic disease … we see this as a patch that doesn’t need to be refrigerated, is easy to administer, and is something that can have global appeal.

“It’s taking Australian technology, and putting it at the centre of addressing a real global problem and this is the first step.”

Mr Hoey said Vaxxas would look at the blood response to vaccination and see how much it increased the immune response to Covid-19.

He paid tribute to biologist Jason McLellan who with fellow researchers had invented “the next generation of the core piece” of current approved vaccines and the vaccine used in the patch was from the same stable.

McLellan, professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at The University of Texas, is also credited with leading a team that produced the first molecular structure of the virus’s spike protein in early 2020.

Mr Hoey said Vaxxas wanted to have its Covid patches available in the market in less than 36 months.

Meanwhile, work is continuing on building Vaxxas’s hi-tech laboratory at Northshore, Hamilton in Brisbane, where the company plans to employ 120 people. Vaxxas plans to produce up to 300 million patch doses each year at full capacity.

Mr Hoey said Vaxxas also had been working on a patch for influenza. It had conducted a study with more than 200 people published two years ago where influenza vaccine was stable at 40 degrees Celsius for 12 months. That again would enable easier distribution of patches at room temperature.

The flu patch was due to go into clinical trials in Australia next year.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/vaxxas-covid19-patch-set-for-human-trials/news-story/ba224d06889495327f0b72cc39a056c1

***********************************************

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)

**************************************************