Wednesday, October 19, 2022
A cure for long COVID? Drug used to treat alcohol and opioid addiction is found to relieve persistent brain fog and fatigue
A drug used to treat addiction could be what millions of long Covid sufferers around the world need to finally address their symptoms.
Naltrexone is a generic drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat both alcohol and opioid addicts.
But in small trials it has been able to relieve long Covid patients of lingering ailments like brain fog and fatigue that last months after the initial infection.
The drug - sold under the brand name Revia - is now being touted as a crucial piece of the puzzle of long Covid that has stumped experts for over two years.
Larger trials are underway and scientists are still searching for the mechanism as to why naltrexone seems to be so effective against chronic Covid.
Current treatments for long Covid include therapy targeted at the symptoms a person is feeling to manage the condition, though there are no universal treatments.
Treatments include physical therapy, and drug to manage symptoms like chronic pain, respiratory issues and others.
Lauren Nichols, a 34-year-old logistics expert for the US Department of Transportation in Boston, was a patient suffering from the condition.
She reported symptoms of impaired thinking and focus, fatigue, seizures, headache and pain since her COVID-19 infection in the spring of 2020.
In June, she was suggested the anti-addiction medication by the doctor. Within months, she could think clearly again and was pain-free.
The drug has previously shown promise against post-infection syndromes like chronic fatigue syndrome, suffered by people after a severe illness.
It works by blocking the euphoric and sedative effects of opioid drugs by blocking the brains receptors, and stopping cravings for the drug as a result. It is to be taken orally.
Common side-effects include nausea, headaches, dizziness, vomiting and other symptoms.
It also has anti-inflammatory properties and has been used in the past to treat conditions such as fibromyalgia, Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis.
'It should be at the top of everyone's list for clinical trials,' said Dr Jarred Younger, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Testing of naltrexone was included in a $1billion initiative by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to discover the causes and treatments for long Covid.
At least four clinical trials testing a low-dose naltrexone's (LDN) effectiveness against long Covid are now underway.
The condition is made up of a collection of some 200 symptoms ranging from pain and heart palpitations to insomnia and cognitive impairment.
At 50 milligrams (mg) naltrexone is approved to treat opioid and alcohol addiction. But in long Covid studies it is being used in tiny doses up to 10 times lower than that.
Dr Jack Lambert, an infectious disease expert at University College Dublin School of Medicine, had used the drug to treat pain and fatigue associated with Lyme disease.
During the pandemic, Lambert recommended naltrexone to colleagues treating patients with lingering symptoms after bouts of Covid.
It worked so well that he ran a pilot study among 38 long Covid patients. They reported improvements in energy, pain, concentration, insomnia and overall recovery from COVID-19 after two months, according to findings published in July.
Lambert, who is planning a larger trial to confirm those results, said he believes it may repair damage of the disease rather than mask its symptoms.
Other planned trials include one by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a pilot study by Ann Arbor, Michigan-based startup AgelessRx. That study of 36 volunteers should have results by year-end, said company co-founder Sajad Zalzala.
Scientists are still working on explaining the mechanism for how the addiction drug might work.
Experiments by Dr Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik of the National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases in Australia suggest long Covid symptoms arise from a significant reduction in function of natural killer cells in the immune system. In laboratory experiments, naltrexone has been shown to help restore their normal function.
Dr Hector Bonilla, co-director of the Stanford Post-Acute COVID-19 Clinic and a RECOVER adviser, has used naltrexone in 500 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, with half reporting feeling better.
He studied it in 18 long Covid patients, with 11 showing improvements, and said he believes larger, formal trials could determine whether it offers a true benefit.
There are also theories that long Covid is the product of the 'nocebo' affect, where a person's symptoms may be a result of a psychological effect, not physical illness.
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Moderna's CEO admits only the vulnerable need a COVID booster and likens the virus to flu
Not everyone needs to get an annual Covid booster, according to the head of pharma giant Moderna who also likened the virus to seasonal flu. Stéphane Bancel said his company's shots should mainly be targeted at over-50s and people with underlying health conditions.
His comments seem to be at odds with the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) which is urging everyone over the age of five to get boosted.
Covid is now predominantly only killing the most vulnerable because the US has built up strong immunity through high infection rates and repeated vaccine rollouts.
There are currently around 300 deaths from the virus across the country every day, compared to more than 1,000 this time last year.
Mr Bancel told a finance conference on Monday: 'I think it's going to be like the flu. If you're a 25-year-old, do you need an annual booster every year if you're healthy?
‘You might want to... but I think it's going to be similar to flu where it's going to be people at high-risk, people above 50 years of age, people with comorbidities, people with cancer and other conditions, people with transplants.’
Mr Bancel's comments come amid a sluggish vaccine booster rollout that has seen just one in 20 eligible Americans taking up their Omicron-specific shot. Despite there being little appetite for the new vaccines, the CDC last week approved Moderna and Pfizer's shot for children as young as five.
Pfizer recently joined forces with Marvel for a PR campaign that appeared to target children.
But Mr Bancel said it was ‘very important to think about’ whether or not to get Covid boosters.
He said there are around ‘1.5billion people’ globally who would fall into the vulnerable category. But he emphasized that younger people ‘are going to have to decide for themselves what they want to do’.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the country was 'ripe' for a resurgence because it has low levels of immunity.
Influenza has been largely sidelined during the pandemic due to lockdowns and social restrictions, leaving Americans with little protection against the seasonal bug.
But there are signs the flu is making a comeback as latest data shows cases have quadrupled in recent weeks — months before the virus normally strikes.
Flu season typically runs from late October to May, picking up in December and peaking in February.
But the southern hemisphere - which is normally a precursor for the US - suffered an early and brutal wave during its winter earlier in the year.
There are also concerns about flu vaccine uptake, with just 12million Americans having received the shot so far.
Dr Walensky told NBC News: ‘We've noted that flu activity is starting to increase across much of the country.
‘Not everybody got flu vaccinated last year, and many people did not get the flu. So that makes us ripe to have potentially a severe flu season.’
Roughly 14.8million Americans have now received the updated bivalent booster, out of 215million eligible people.
Mr Bancel defended the sluggish Covid booster uptake, pointing out that it is stronger than seasonal flu uptake.
He noted that it is the first time people are getting the booster in more of an endemic than pandemic setting, meaning people are less anxious to get a new vaccine.
‘You might do it to protect other people or because you don’t want to get sick and miss work, or miss vacation.’
But he has been getting the annual flu shot since the age of 30, he said. ‘Is it because I was worried of being hospitalized? Of course not. I just didn’t want to be sick, I wanted to be able to work.’
Controversy was sparked over the Covid vaccine drive when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) extended eligibility to children who are six months old earlier this year.
Many experts cautioned against the move at the time, saying children face a very low risk from the virus and warned it could interfere with other inoculations they need such as against polio or measles.
There is also now a prevailing sense that the Covid pandemic has come to an end, after President Joe Biden declared it was over on television last month.
He has since attempted to walk back from his words, but many are still under the impression that Covid no longer poses a threat.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Scientists Find Antibodies That Neutralize All COVID Strains
Previous monoclonal antibody treatments against COVID-19 have had mixed results against variants. However, new research uncovered two antibodies that work against all known strains of COVID-19.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Two antibodies have been uncovered that are so effective at neutralizing COVID-19 — and all of its variants — that they believe the antibodies could serve as an “effective substitute for vaccines”
The antibodies — TAU-1109 and TAU-2310 — bind to a different area of the spike protein than other antibodies, one that doesn’t undergo many mutations
TAU-1109 is 92% effective at neutralizing the omicron strain and 90% effective at neutralizing the delta strain
TAU-2310 has an efficacy rate of 84% at neutralizing omicron and a 97% efficacy rate against the delta variant
The researchers believe that with effective antibody treatment, “we will not have to provide booster doses to the entire population every time there is a new variant”
Researchers at Tel Aviv University revealed two antibodies that are so effective at neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 — and all of its variants — that they believe the antibodies could serve as an “effective substitute for vaccines.”1 One of the glaring failures surrounding COVID-19 shots is their lack of effectiveness against emerging COVID-19 strains.
By choosing the spike protein on which to base COVID-19 shots, scientists picked a protein that not only was known to be toxic to humans but was not the part of the virus that prompted the best immune response.
Spike protein mutates rapidly, which essentially destroys virtually any protection that the shot provides shortly after it’s given. The end result is a seemingly never-ending series of annual shots and boosters, which can only offer rapidly waning protection. If the Israeli researchers’ findings are verified and the antibodies turn out to be as effective as suspected, it could eliminate COVID-19 booster shots entirely.2
Previous Antibody Treatments Had Mixed Results
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized multiple monoclonal antibody (mAb) cocktails for the treatment of COVID-19. However, as variants emerged, their effectiveness varied, with some becoming ineffective and others retaining their activity.
“This indicates that some antibodies elicited by infection are more variation-sensitive than others, and that antibody breadth of specificity, and not only potency, should be considered,” the researchers, from the department of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine,3 wrote in the journal Communications Biology.4
For instance, in January 2022, the FDA limited the use of two monoclonal antibody treatments — bamlanivimab and etesevimab, which are administered together, and REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab) — to patients infected with a variant known to be susceptible to them.5 The two antibody treatments mentioned had lost much of their effectiveness against the omicron variant, leading to the usage restriction in people infected with omicron.
On the other hand, in February 2022, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a monoclonal antibody treatment known as bebtelovimab, which retained activity against the omicron variant.6 According to the FDA:7
“Bebtelovimab works by binding to the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID-19, similar to other monoclonal antibodies that have been authorized for the treatment of high-risk patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 and shown a benefit in reducing the risk of hospitalization or death.”
The way the antibodies bind to the spike protein may hold the key to their ultimate effectiveness against various strains. In previous research conducted in October 2020, lead study author Natalia Freund and colleagues isolated nine antibodies from people who recovered from the original COVID-19 strain in Israel. Freund stated in a news release:8
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Informed consent and vaccine side-effects in Australia
Australia’s medical Code of Conduct, the statutory rules for medical practitioners, defines informed consent as ‘a person’s voluntary decision about medical care that is made with knowledge and understanding of the benefits and risks involved’.
In addition, the Australian Immunisation Handbook states: ‘For consent to be legally valid … it must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion, or manipulation … and it can only be given after the potential risks and benefits of the relevant vaccine, the risks of not having it, and any alternative options have been explained to the person.’
Think back to the last time you gave consent for a medical procedure or, dare I say it, a vaccination. Were you taken through this process?
There’s more. What happens to consent if you’re involved in a clinical trial?
Former barrister, Julian Gillespie, explains:
‘There is a portion towards the end of the medical Code of Conduct, which … clearly addresses if you are a medical practitioner and you are involved in a clinical or experimental trial … then there’s all these further procedures and protocols that must be satisfied.’
Surely that would only apply in the circumstances of an experimental trial, wouldn’t it?
As it happens, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past couple of years. ‘We heard it out of former health minister, Greg Hunt’s lips, and several others,’ Gillespie says. ‘It’s well acknowledged that these Covid vaccines have only been provisionally approved and are still subject to clinical trials.’
Julian Gillespie LLB, BJuris, is co-author, with Peter Fam LLB, of a recently published bombshell legal opinion casting doubt on the legal basis of AHPRA’s March 9, 2021 ‘gag order’.
The opinion was issued with a letter stating:
‘Contingent to a joint statement received from AHPRA and the National Boards on 9 March 2021, Australian Health Professionals … were essentially forbidden from publicly questioning the science underlying the emerging Covid injectables, let alone questioning any government messaging urging Australians to be vaccinated, because these products were deemed “safe and effective”.
‘The effect of this unilateral action … inserted AHPRA and the National Boards between the Clinician and their Patient, which resulted in a serious failure of evidenced-based information being shared by Health Professionals with patients … for the purpose of their providing legally acceptable Informed Consent to receiving Covid injectables.
‘This failure in Informed Consent has likely resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Australians agreeing to the administration of Covid injectables, where they would not have so agreed or consented had they been provided with all the available evidenced-based information… including that they expose a recipient to a real and significant risk of death, injury, or illness.’
What does this mean?
Essentially, the legal opinion posits that it was illegal for AHPRA and the National Boards to even produce the position statement. Health Professionals were always required to first observe their Codes of Conduct irrespective of the various coercive and threatening statements made in the March statement.
But wait, there’s more.
It also appears the public officers responsible for that statement are now legally exposed:
‘As the harm to Covid vaccine victims was foreseeable, in terms of these still remaining experimental gene-based therapies, these vaccine victims … can sue the public offices of AHPRA and the National Boards in their personal capacity,’ says Gillespie.
It doesn’t stop there. There may be further liability available to health practitioners who administered the vaccines in breach of their Codes of Conduct. Gillespie adds, ‘Should those health practitioners subsequently be sued by their patients … then those health practitioners may, in turn, be able to sue the public officers of AHPRA and the National Boards for coercing and threatening them to ignore their Codes of Conduct. Such illegal action would be the tort of misfeasance in public office.’
I’ll just let that all sink in.
The legal opinion was sent to all medical associations and colleges, nearly 70 of them, all Australia’s politicians, state, federal, and territory, and medical professional insurers.
Oh, and it was also sent to over 300 of Australia’s top personal injury and medical negligence lawyers.
No one’s missing out on this one.
The legal opinion was helpfully accompanied by a 107-page report reviewing the evidence and adverse event data for Covid vaccines. It’s an alarming read.
But wait – there’s (even) more.
Proposed changes to Health Practitioner National Law, due to be debated in the Queensland Parliament on October 11, 2022, are set to give AHPRA even more power to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship.
These proposed amendments have medical organisations extremely concerned including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Medical Network (AMN), and the Australian Medical Professionals Society.
If passed, ‘Doctors will no longer be able to express their opinion or use their experience, training, and education if their opinion goes against what the health bureaucrats say is in the best interests of public confidence in safety,’ says AMN.
And the changes won’t stop in Queensland. The amended National Law will then be rolled out to other jurisdictions. All Australians should be concerned.
The Australian Medical Professional Society says, ‘Health regulation is not being used to protect the public from legitimate professional misconduct but is being used to silence Health Professionals from questioning government policy as a matter of routine.’
If the legislation comes to pass, it begs the question: when a patient goes to visit their doctor how will they know if they are receiving the doctor’s professional opinion or the government’s latest edict?
The March 9, 2021 joint position statement has given Australia a taste of what might come if we don’t stand up to this obscene imposition by regulators in the consultation room.
In the words of ‘Dr Frank Mercy’ – an Australian doctor who writes under a pseudonym for fear of reprisal – ‘This is our Stalingrad. Defeat here will open the field to unlimited human resources for oppressive forces that can never be turned back. We must oppose this with all our resolve.’
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/covid-consent-and-the-code-of-conduct/
****************************************************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)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Monday, October 17, 2022
Menstrual Abnormalities Lasting for Months Following COVID-19 Shot ‘Very Concerning’: Doctor
The data collected from Israel’s adverse events reporting system showing that some women experienced menstrual disorders for more than 12 months after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine raises concerns, according to Dr. Shelly Cole, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Texas.
“Looking at the Israeli data is very concerning,” Cole told The Epoch Times.
Of the 282 Israeli women who reported menstrual abnormality following COVID-19 vaccination, 88 reports contained information on the duration of the condition. And of the 88 reports, 83 disclosed that the menstrual problems lasted over a week. Some of the women’s problems had still not resolved.
All but one of the reports were from adults. The single child report detailed a disorder lasting between one and six months.
Of the other 82 reports, 11 reported that their condition lasted between one week to one month, 42 that their condition lasted one to six months, 22 that they suffered for six to 12 months, and seven that their condition lasted for over 12 months.
The reports were from women who received a Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. The reports were submitted between December 2021 and May 2022. They were discussed during a secret meeting over the summer.
Health experts say the actual number of menstrual cases is much higher than what is being reported to the system and others like it. Many women may have thought that their condition was not vaccine-related, been unaware of the reporting system, or not been encouraged by their doctor to lodge a report.
Cole said that she wasn’t surprised that women were complaining of irregular menstruation, including abnormal bleeding following vaccination. She’s seen it “throughout the pandemic” in her clinic and discussed the matter with other doctors.
She was still shocked when she learned Israel’s Ministry of Health (MoH) presented a lower risk of menstrual abnormality than what the adverse event reports showed in a public report (pdf) published in August, two months after the closed-door meeting.
The MoH used the total vaccine doses administered since the shots were cleared—over 18 million—as a denominator to calculate the risk of adverse events. The shots were cleared in late 2020, but the new reporting system was not launched until December 2021.
“They took the 18 months of doses of the Pfizer vaccination and they only looked at the side effects for six months,” Cole said. “So how can this be even remotely valid?”
That minimized the calculated risks of the adverse events reported, including menstrual abnormalities. And they included doses given to males when calculating risks despite men not menstruating. “They minimized menstrual irregularity by implementing men in the data,” Cole said.
The MoH did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
“The reported phenomena are known phenomena in the professional literature and were also found in the previous reports of the Ministry of Health, and there was no observation of an increase in a new phenomenon (new signal),” the ministry said in the report. That statement was false, according to the presentation in the secret meeting.
Presentation
The MoH commissioned a group of researchers to analyze reports of adverse events submitted to their new reporting system following vaccination from December 2021 to May 2022. The researchers found that the duration of some events, including menstrual disorders, were not short-lived or mild as health authorities claim.
The researchers also said that Pfizer officials informed them that the company was unaware of any long-term symptoms. Pfizer didn’t return multiple emails requesting comments.
Sasha Zhurat, the main presenter at that time, said that many of the complaints of menstrual abnormalities lasted for several months and not the couple of days that is mentioned in the brochure distributed to vaccine recipients.
“But compared to the leaflet where it says that the symptoms go away after a few days, we saw that there were many reports, and only 5 percent had symptoms that lasted between two weeks and a month, all the rest were much longer,” Zhurat said.
She added that “over 90 percent of the reports in which there appears some kind of topic of duration and long-term changes,” 60 percent reported a change lasting three months.
In 10 percent of these women, Zhurat said that they experienced the same menstrual issue following additional vaccine doses, a phenomenon known as rechallenge.
Rechallenge is one factor to establish causality between a vaccine and an adverse event when the re-administration of the same vaccine causes the reoccurrence of a side effect that had gone away.
Some side effects are officially recognized by vaccine makers and health authorities, such as heart inflammation. But the researchers discovered that some others were also caused by the shot.
The meeting was recorded without the participants’ knowledge and leaked to Israeli journalist Yaffa Shir-Raz, who broke the story in August. The Epoch Times has reviewed the full recording.
Some of the findings, including the finding of rechallenge, were omitted from the MoH’s report to the public
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Israeli Ministry of Health Confirms Leaked Video Is Real, but downplays it
Israel’s Ministry of Health has confirmed that a leaked video showing an expert warning the agency about potentially facing lawsuits over COVID-19 vaccine side effects is real, but issued false statements about the discussion.
Video footage recorded during a meeting held behind closed doors over the summer showed that experts hired to analyze post-vaccination adverse event reports said the analysis proved a causal relationship between some of the events and the vaccines and warned about presenting the data in a certain way in order to avoid lawsuits.
In an official report authorities released about two months later, in August, they said, “The report presents all the cases that were reported in close proximity to the receipt of the coronavirus vaccine, and does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship between receiving the vaccine and the reported phenomenon.”
The ministry, or MoH, repeatedly declined to comment to The Epoch Times about the video and also did not return queries from Yaffa Shir-Raz, a health journalist and professor who obtained the video from a source.
Officials present during the meeting also declined to comment or did not respond to comments and have not commented publicly on the situation.
An unnamed official at the MoH now says the video is legitimate. The remarks were made to Reuters, which posted a “fact check” on clips of the meeting that Shir-Raz has posted online and in social media posts sharing the clips.
The official did not address why key portions of the discussion were left out of the final report. The official asserted that all the data presented during the meeting appeared in the final report. The official also claimed that the clips were “taken out of context.”
“The meeting participants can confirm that the sections were taken out of context,” the official said. “The leaked clips were carefully selected and edited in a biased manner, so that their presentation deliberately omits the fact that this is a discussion about raw data that has not undergone any analysis or standardization, during an initial attempt by an assisting team to understand from epidemiological professionals how to proceed and analyze raw data correctly.”
Shir-Raz told The Epoch Times that she found it interesting that an anonymous MoH source responded to Reuters when the ministry would not respond to repeated requests from her.
“It is unfortunate that the Ministry of Health does not have enough courage to stand behind its response officially, and instead prefers to hide behind an anonymous responder,” she said in an email.
Falsehoods
The MoH official offered several falsehoods in their comments to Reuters. The official falsely said, for instance, that the reports that were analyzed “cannot be verified,” when the reports were submitted to a new system that requires submitters to include information such as their name and a number from their citizenship certificate. The new system replaced an older system in December 2021 and the data was garnered through May 2022.
MoH also claimed that “there are no unknown side effects or new signals.”
But according to Sasha Zhurat, one of the presenters, that’s not true. She said during the meeting that the data “allowed us to really identify new phenomena like tinnitus, like hypoesthesia and paresthesia” and that “we actually identified new phenomena that do not appear in the consumer brochure such as dizziness, tinnitus, hypoesthesia, paresthesia.”
Zhurat also pointed out that the brochure, handed to prospective vaccine recipients, listed certain durations for possible side effects.
The leaflet says the problems are “supposed to pass within a few days and we saw that this was not the case,” Zhurat said. Some problems lasted for more than a year, including menstrual irregularities, with no end in sight.
Zhurat declined to comment on the discussion, telling The Epoch Times in a Facebook message that she’s no longer part of the team analyzing the data.
Shir-Raz had said on Twitter that one of the meeting portions showed that only one of the four health maintenance organizations (HMOs) in Israel provided adverse event reports. MoH said that reports were received from all of the HMOs, or organizations that provide citizens with healthcare.
The HMOs have not responded to requests for comment.
During the meeting, presenters said that many of the reports came from Meuhedet, one of the HMOs. Maccabi, another, “did not send that much because … they collected phenomena by themselves and not through your form,” Maya Berlin, another member of the team said.
Dr. Mati Berkovitch, the leader of the team, said the point was “super important.” “This means that there are HMOs that keep the information close to their chest,” he said.
Additionally, according to a draft copy of the report the MoH ultimately released, which Shir-Raz also obtained, a person on the team questions whether they should point out that “there are HMOs that did not send messages and therefore there is a bias in the reporting?”
The final report makes no mention of this point. “They could have reliably reported how many reports there were from each HMO. Why didn’t they do it?” Shir-Raz wondered.
Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Israeli native who has been closely following the situation, says that the MoH “lost the trust of the public in Israel exactly because of behaviors like that.”
It would take a new leadership and different behavior to undo the tremendous damage that was caused,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Sunday, October 16, 2022
Yes, they claimed the vaccines would prevent transmission
One of the most bizarre lies being told this week in response to Pfizer executive Janine Small’s testimony to EU Parliament is that, actually, the Covid vaccines were never supposed to stop the spread of the virus.
Asked by Dutch MEP Rob Roos whether the company had tested its vaccine on “stopping the transmission of the virus” before it rolled out globally, Ms Small said “no” because “we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market”.
“And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk,” she said.
In a viral Twitter video which has now been viewed more than 12 million times, Mr Roos described the response as “scandalous”, arguing “millions of people worldwide felt compelled to get vaccinated because of the myth that ‘you do it for others’”.
Mr Roos said the admission removed the entire basis for vaccine mandates and passports which “led to massive institutional discrimination as people lost access to essential parts of society”. “I find this to be shocking, even criminal,” he said.
Of course, fact checkers were not happy.
This is not the bombshell it is being presented as, they argue, because it was public knowledge that the primary outcome measured in Pfizer’s clinical trials was reducing risk of disease, but not transmission.
Moreover, as the Therapeutic Goods Administration stressed, “transmission effects” are “not an approved indication of any Covid-19 vaccine” currently available in Australia.
That might be technically true, but it feels like just that — a technicality.
And this is why Mr Roos’ video, while not strictly being new information, struck such a nerve.
Because setting aside what it says in the fine print, the public was told repeatedly, for months, both explicitly and implicitly, that the vaccines would prevent transmission.
They’re all on tape saying it.
US President Joe Biden, for example, said in July 2021 that “you’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations”.
White House chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said in May 2021 that vaccinated people become “dead ends” for the virus.
CDC director Rochelle Walensky said in March 2021 that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick”.
In Australia, politicians and health officials held millions of people hostage for months, lecturing and threatening them to get vaccinated to regain their “freedoms”.
The vaccines were the “way out” of the pandemic, they were not to just to protect ourselves but to “protect others”, they would “stop the spread”, and not getting vaccinated was “selfish”.
Vaccine passports, the “vaccinated economy”, were necessary so people who “did the right thing” would feel “safe” knowing they weren’t “mixing” with the unvaccinated, who were a “risk to the community”.
By late 2021 and early 2022, as Omicron became dominant and it was clear vaccinated people were still catching and spreading the virus, the messaging changed.
“Stopping the spread? What are you talking about? It’s about reducing hospitalisation and death. We have always been at war with hospitalisation and death.”
That’s all well and good — but it’s an entirely different moral calculation.
Vaccine mandates, like other Covid restrictions, were always a balancing act between personal choice and public health. But with the vaccine no longer stopping the spread of the virus, mandates are effectively like the police kicking down your door and forcing you to eat your vegetables at gunpoint.
Or like protecting immunocompromised people by simply welding them inside their homes.
This is not a new argument. In January this year, Nobel Prize-winning virologist Luc Montagnier and constitutional scholar Jed Rubenfeld argued in The Wall Street Journal that, in the face of the Omicron variant, the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates were obsolete.
“It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to the public interest for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target,” they wrote.
“Mandating a vaccine to stop the spread of a disease requires evidence that the vaccines will prevent infection or transmission (rather than efficacy against severe outcomes like hospitalisation or death).”
Even the World Health Organisation, as far back as April 2021, cautioned that “if mandatory vaccination is considered necessary to interrupt transmission chains and prevent harm to others, there should be sufficient evidence that the vaccine is efficacious in preventing serious infection and/or transmission”.
At that time, evidence was still emerging about the vaccines’ ability to stop transmission of the original strain of the virus — and besides, as everyone now tells us, that was never the primary goal, but merely a nice added bonus.
And yet mandates were introduced anyway.
Yes, politicians and health officials have changed their tune and no longer talk about vaccines stopping transmission. Yes, newer strains of the virus changed the situation. But it’s insane to claim, as many now try to, that they never did in the first place.
A simple “sorry, we were wrong” would go a long way.
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Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly downplayed long COVID while justifying end of isolation requirements, medical specialist says
A leading medical specialist and long COVID patients say the chief medical officer (CMO) downplayed the state of long COVID in Australia while justifying the end of national isolation requirements.
Steven Faux, who heads up a long COVID clinic at a Sydney hospital, called the comments "unusual" and akin to "pulling the sheet over your head".
During a press conference last month, when the October 14 mandatory isolation end date was announced, Paul Kelly said health authorities were still assessing the extent of long COVID in Australia. "We're not seeing a major picture of long COVID," he said.
"For the majority of Australians, we were not exposed to COVID before we had at least two vaccines.
"We know that the major risk factors for long COVID are having had infection before vaccination, being unvaccinated, having severe illness and having other types of COVID that were not Omicron."
Professor Faux, who co-directs the long COVID clinic at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, said Professor Kelly's comments did not accurately represent the patients who were presenting at his practice.
"Mostly we're seeing people who got [COVID-19] in December and that's the Omicron wave … and the majority we are seeing are vaccinated," Professor Faux said.
Long COVID still a risk
The rehabilitation and pain physician pointed to international research that showed those who were triple vaccinated and infected with Omicron had a long COVID rate of 5 per cent.
"That's not a major problem, unless you consider that over 10 million Australians have had COVID," he said.
"That's not insubstantial when you consider that the public health services are at maximum capacity."
The St Vincent's clinic has been inundated with hundreds of people seeking help, with some specialists booked out until the middle of next year.
"We've been getting phone calls from Victoria, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland about people wanting to come down and we've been sending them back," Professor Faux said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Aged Care told the ABC that Professor Kelly's comments were based on research conducted overseas and stressed that people who were vaccinated were less likely to develop symptoms of long COVID.
"In addition, studies have shown that infection with the Omicron variant is less likely to lead to symptoms of long COVID than infection with the Delta variant."
Comments not based on data, say advocates
The CMO's comments have been met with sadness and anger by long COVID advocates, who say patients like them are not being seen or heard. "He has no data on which to base those claims," academic Pippa Yeoman said.
"He's making a political statement about how clever they were to close the borders and get everybody vaccinated and saying that means we will be different [to other countries]. If you make a claim, you need to be able to back it up."
Dr Yeoman is a member of the Australia Long Covid Community Facebook group, which has about 2,600 members.
The group has been collecting survey data on its members in a bid to present the information to an approaching parliamentary Inquiry into Long COVID and Repeated COVID Infections.
Members said their preliminary data analysis of almost 300 survey respondents showed that the vast majority were double vaccinated before developing long COVID and were infected during the Omicron wave.
There is no official national data on the number of people with long COVID in Australia and not every state has a dedicated long COVID clinic, making it difficult to quantify the number of people with the condition or the impact it has on their lives.
The Department of Health and Aged Care said analysis of health data had begun in order to help develop a national response to long COVID.
"The Department is also working with states and territories to better understand the prevalence of long COVID in Australia," it said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Friday, October 14, 2022
Not up to snuff: AstraZeneca's nasal spray Covid vaccine FAILS to protect against virus
AstraZeneca's leading Covid nasal spray vaccine does not protect well against the virus, a study has shown — dashing hopes it could replace traditional jabs.
The University of Oxford — which is developing and running trials of the vaccine — said only a minority of patients mounted an immune response.
Even those who did react to the jab had lower antibody levels than someone given a shot-in-the-arm vaccination.
It is another blow for AstraZeneca which has so far failed to break the US vaccine market — after concerns about its original jab's link to blood clots.
Researchers across the world have placed high hopes on nasal spray vaccines because they may have the potential to stop Covid infections entirely.
It was thought that prompting an immune response directly in the airways would be able to shut the virus down before it spreads to the rest of the body.
But Dr Sandy Douglas, who ran the UK-based AstraZeneca trial, said the spray did not perform 'as well as we had hoped'.
China and India have already approved nasal spray Covid jabs, although there is no public data on how well they work.
The US has spent billions purchasing more than 800million doses of Covid vaccines, but a third of Americans are still yet to get their first shots.
It was hoped that nasal vaccines could offer an alternative inoculation because they are easy to administer and don't cause pain. Scientists also believed they might 'enhance' protection because they target the lining of the nose, where the virus infects first.
But today's results — thought to be the first on a nasal spray for Covid — suggest more research is needed.
What is the advantage of nasal sprays for Covid vaccines?
Scientists have been chasing a nasal spray Covid vaccine as an alternative to the needle-based method. They hope that it could 'enhance' immune responses because it is administered to the lining of the nose, the first place the virus infects.
Experts also say it can help people with a fear of jabs get the vaccine. The fear — known as trypanophobia — affects about 10 per cent of adults.
There is still little evidence that they are as good as standard jabs, however. Oxford University found they only sparked immunity in a minority of participants.
The sprays have been approved for use in China and India. But studies on this are yet to be released.
In the Phase I clinical trial scientists recruited 30 healthy volunteers who had not previously been vaccinated. The purpose of the study was to perfect the dosage size and timing.
All received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a nasal spray, and half also got a second dose. These were given as low, medium or high doses.
Blood tests and swabs showed 'little evidence' all those who got one dose had an immune response.
After the second spray just four participants — or 30 per cent of the total — had evidence of an immune response.
But this was much weaker than that triggered by standard vaccines.
In a second arm of the trial, 15 double-vaccinated people were given the nasal spray as a booster dose.
But again this did not appear to trigger an immune response — with antibody levels remaining 'indistinguishable' from the unvaccinated individuals.
No adverse safety effects were spotted during the trial.
The results were published today in the journal eBioMedicine.
Dr Douglas, from Oxford University's Jenner Institute, said: 'The nasal spray did not perform as well in this study as we had hoped.
'One possibility is simply that the majority of the nasal spray vaccine ends up being swallowed and destroyed in the stomach – delivery to the lungs could avoid that.
'A further challenge is that researchers don’t fully understand the relationships between the strength and types of immune responses within the airways and protection against infection.'
She called for more research into these vaccines, to determine whether another method could help develop a nasal version.
'[Our results] were quite different from recent data from China, which has suggested good results can be achieved by delivery of a similar vaccine,' she said.
'A nasal spray vaccine has recently been approved for intranasal use in India and we are looking forward to the peer-reviewed publication of the clinical trial data used to support that.'
China gave emergency approval for a nasal spray Covid vaccine — from CanSino Biologics Inc — last month.
CanSino said studies indicated that its vaccine induced a strong immune response, although trial data is yet to be released.
Unlike AstraZeneca's it is given via a nebuliser device, a machine that turns a liquid into a fine mist that is then breathed in.
India's health ministry also approved a nasal spray Covid vaccine last month by Bharat Biotech.
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Dangerous vaccines
More on the great unravelling of the Covid vaccine story
It’s Dreamtime down under as Australian politicians and the media, led by their health authorities, sleepwalk through 2022.
Last Saturday, Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, released analysis showing that Covid-19 mRNA vaccines increased the risk of cardiac-related death by a staggering 84 per cent among men aged 18 to 39 within 28 days of injection. Ladapo had already recommended against Covid vaccination in children aged 5 to 17 in March. Now he has added children aged less than five and men aged 18 to 39, tweeting, ‘Florida will not be silent on the truth’.
Ladapo is not alone. In mid-September Denmark recommended against Covid shots for any healthy person under 50 years. A fortnight later, Norway recommended against the jabs for healthy people aged under 65. In the UK healthy children who turned five on or after 1 September will not be vaccinated until they turn 12 unless they live with someone with a weakened immune system.
Esteemed UK cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, an erstwhile TV talking head in support of Covid vaccines has gone further. His peer-reviewed paper published a fortnight ago calls for their immediate suspension. ‘Until all the raw data on the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines have been independently analysed, any claims purporting that they confer a net benefit to humankind cannot be considered to be evidence based,’ he says.
On 16 September, an international group of scientists and doctors, led by French scientist Alexandra Henrion-Caude and American doctor Sally Priester issued a declaration of an international medical crisis due to diseases and death related to Covid vaccination. They pointed to high excess mortality in countries with high vaccination rates, ‘the large number of sudden deaths in previously healthy young people’, ‘the high incidence of miscarriages and perinatal deaths’, and the ‘large number of adverse side effects, including hospitalisations, permanent disabilitie, and deaths’.
Yet, it is as if none of this happened to the somnambulists running Australia. This week, Karen Andrews, the former minister for Home Affairs who cancelled Novak Djokovic’s visa twice ranted that he must not be allowed to compete in the next Australia Open just because ‘he’s a high-ranking tennis player with many millions of dollars’. ‘It shouldn’t be just one rule for (him) and a different rule for everyone else,’ she pontificated. Yet preventing Djokovic from entering applies a harsher rule to him than anyone else, since nobody has been required to be vaccinated to enter Australia since 6 July. And if Florida and the dissenting doctors are correct, Andrews should be apologising to Djokovic for trying to coerce him to get a vaccine that could have killed him.
Equally, if the dissenting doctors and scientists are right, it is also the ongoing mass Covid vaccination campaigns that underlie Australia’s shocking excess mortality which started rising in March 2021, just when the Covid vaccines started to be rolled out and is now running at 17 per cent. This year, there had been 13,524 excess deaths by 30 June of which less than 40 per cent (5,387) were due to Covid. What caused the deaths of the other 8,137 Australians? And why is it that Australian health officers who lamented every Covid death when there were only 905 in 2020 and 1,342 in 2021, have said nothing about excess mortality in 2022 which is ten times worse than Covid mortality in 2021?
Australian Medical Association president Professor Steve Robson described Australia’s excess mortality as a ‘worrying’ trend that mirrored countries such as the UK but said he couldn’t explain it adding, ‘there needs to be some research into why this is happening’. There has been none. Why not? Instead, Australia’s health authorities still recommend repeatedly jabbing everyone from the age of six months up intoning the mantra that the vaccines are ‘safe and effective’.
Yet that’s not what the NSW data, the most complete in Australia, shows. Vaccinated people in NSW are six times more likely to get Covid than the unvaccinated, 77 times more likely to be hospitalised, ten times more likely to end up in ICU, and 1.1 times more likely to die even though the people most likely to die of Covid – people in palliative care, severe illness, the frailest elderly – are often unvaccinated because they are so close to death.
NSW does not release the data it collects on the comorbidities of those who are hospitalised or die with or of Covid. If it did we could compare like with like and establish the risk of the virus to healthy or sick people in each age group, and the risks or benefits of vaccination to those same groups. Why don’t health authorities do this? Are they just woefully obtuse or do they fear that the results would reveal that the vaccine is neither safe nor effective?
Despite the incompleteness, the NSW statistics strongly suggest that the vaccine is increasing the risk of illness and death. This was a known danger. Are Australia’s health authorities actively monitoring for it? It seems not. Yet Dr. Fauci warned in May 2020 that there was a ‘possibility of negative consequences’ because ‘certain vaccines can actually enhance the negative effect of the infection’. This was true for a vaccine developed for respiratory syncytial virus which was never approved and a measles vaccine developed in the 1960s which was withdrawn.
Why are the Covid vaccines not being withdrawn, asks Dr Malhotra. He notes the swine flu vaccine developed in 1976 was withdrawn because of a 1 in 100,000 risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome and the rotavirus vaccine was withdrawn because of a 1 in 10,000 risk of bowel obstruction. He estimates the true prevalence of serious adverse events from Covid-19 mRNA vaccines is between 1 in 800 and 1 in 1,000.
What about excess mortality? The easiest way to establish whether vaccination is contributing would be to identify the vaccine status of all those who died since Covid immunisation commenced, together with their age and comorbidities. It’s not hard.
That’s what Florida, and presumably Denmark and Norway have done. But not Australia. Its leaders slumber on at the wheel as the nation careens towards a calamitous awakening.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/dangerous-dreamtime
****************************************************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)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Wednesday, October 12, 2022
The Conspiracy To Hide The True Dangers Of The COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines
On Friday, October 7, 2022, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo released a study on the dangers of the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines and recommended that adult men under 40 stay away from the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
"The Florida Department of Health (Department) conducted an analysis through a self-controlled case series, which is a technique originally developed to evaluate vaccine safety,” a news release from the Florida Department of Health states. “This analysis found that there is an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group.”
Newsweek reported the analysis clarified that COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a "modestly increased risk for cardiac-related mortality" 28 days after receiving the vaccine.
The primary analysis was conducted on Floridians who were 18 years and older "who died within 25-weeks of COVID-19 vaccination" since the vaccines were first rolled out in December 2020.
However, noted Newsweek staff writer Fatma Khaled, the analysis excluded individuals who had a confirmed COVID-19 infection, received a booster or received their last COVID-19 vaccination after December 8, 2021. The study concluded on June 1.
"Individuals with preexisting cardiac conditions, such as myocarditis and pericarditis, should take particular caution when considering vaccination and discuss with their health care provider," the state's health department said in the statement.
"Based on currently available data, patients should be informed of the possible cardiac complications that can arise after receiving a mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac related death among men in this age group," it added as new guidelines.
The analysis said that men over 60 years old had a 10 percent increased risk of cardiac-related death within 28 days of receiving vaccines that contain mRNA. It also said that vaccines without mRNA didn't have these increased risks among any population.
No sooner had Dr. Ladapo released the study, than the tweet announcing the release of the study was taken down by Twitter for "disinformation." Twitter restored the post on Sunday morning after a firestorm of criticism.
Ladapo is an outspoken skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines who has questioned both the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. Ladapo's concerns are shared by many who point out that, while the vaccines were originally sold as a traditional preventative vaccine, now the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine narrative has shifted to claim the vaccine may prevent the disease and may lessen its symptoms.
POLITICO reported that Dr. Ladapo has previously recommended that young children should not receive the Covid-19 vaccine. The Florida Department of Health over the summer did not pre-order vaccines for children aged 5 and under even though 49 other states did in the lead-up to the Food and Drug Administration issuing emergency authorization for young kids to receive the Pfizer and Moderna shots.
Bryan Griffin, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, called Twitter’s actions “an unacceptable and Orwellian move for narrative over fact.”
Critics of the study and Dr. Ladapo’s conclusions from it have objected that it has yet to be peer reviewed and have questioned its methodology.
However, those same critics were nowhere to be found when flawed, and even fraudulent, studies and projections of COVID mortality were released at the beginning of the pandemic (or as we prefer to call it, the Chinese Communist biological weapons attack).
On Monday, Ladapo created a new thread on Twitter discussing the study’s results and process, saying he loved the “discussion that we’ve stimulated” and praising discussing science “transparently instead of trying to cancel one another.” In the thread, Ladapo responds to three critiques of the study.
The critiques, and responses:
Our view is that studying the COVID virus and vaccines should proceed along the same scientific method path of inquiry that scientists and physicians have used since the Italian physicist Galileo Galilee began the modern age of scientific inquiry over 400-years ago. If the monumental work of Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein can be continually tested, questioned, and refined, surely the pronouncements of a second-rate bureaucrat like Anthony Fauci and the profit-driven results of companies like Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna can and should be subjected to continued scientific inquiry.
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'Covid is NOT over': White House's top doctor undermines Biden and urges Americans to get their booster shot before Halloween
The White House's lead Covid chief said that the pandemic is not over, contradicting statements made by President Joe Biden last month. Dr Ashish Jha, the White House's COVID-19 response coordinator responded to faltering booster uptick rate by warning Americans that the pandemic is ongoing.
His words counter that of President Biden, who told 60 Minutes last month that it had ended - though he would walk back his comments in the following days.
This is not the first time leading US officials have flip-flopped on the pandemic. Earlier this year, Dr Anthony Fauci told PBS Newshour the pandemic was over before going back on his words days later.
The rollout of the bivalent booster shots has largely been a failure to this point.
Most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that only 11 million Americans have receive the jab so far.
The lack of booster uptake seems to have had little affect on the spread of cases, though. Covid cases have plummeted over the past two months - a period where the opposite trend would have been expected. On August 3, America was recording 118,000 cases per day. That figure has dropped to 40,000 as of October 11.
An expected BA.5-variant fueled surge over summer did not materialize either.
Despite this, Dr Jha is pushing for Americans to receive the new Covid jab before Halloween at the end of the month.
'The President was very clear. Covid is not over, there is a lot of work to do,' Dr Jha said at a White House press briefing Tuesday. 'We still have 300 to 400 Americans dying every day, tens of thousands of people getting infected every day, there is a lot of work to do.
'What we know is that if we want to keep people safe and protect them from serious illness, which is obviously priority number one, the number one thing that people need to do is get vaccinated.'
Jha urged Americans to get the additional shot before Halloween so it would be fully effective in their body for Thanksgiving gatherings.
This contradicts statements by President Biden last month, who told CBS' 60 minutes: 'The pandemic is over.
'We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. 'If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape, and so I think it's changing.'
Dr Jha used the briefing to urge Americans to receive the bivalent booster shot - which the White House touted throughout the summer.
Latest official data shows there were more than 1,000 patients with flu in the week ending October 1 — up 303 per cent compared to the first week of August. This is a vast underestimate because the US does not routinely test for influenza in the same way as Covid.
Test positivity — the share of swabs for the virus that are coming back positive — has risen from 0.49 per cent to 2.5 per cent in the same time.
Dr Fauci said Monday that the nation should keep its guard up in the coming months as cases of both the flu and Covid are expected to rise. Cases and hospitalization for the flu and related illnesses often surge in cold weather months were people spend more time indoors - which makes it easier for viruses to spread.
But Covid cases are currently plummeting in the US. The nation is averaging 42,000 daily cases, dropping more than 60 per cent from the 100,000 per day average in early August.
The flu largely vanished in recent years as viral interference from Covid and pandemic-related restrictions and mask orders stopped its spread.
America's overall vaccination rate is relatively high, with 80 per cent of the overall population and 90 per cent of adults having received at least one shot.
The additional booster doses have never proved to have appeal among the American population, though. The third doses were rolled out the public just over a year ago, yet still only 50 per cent of the population has gotten the shots.
A large portion of those who did receive the third jab did so not when they first were made available during fall either, instead waiting till the end-of-the-year Omicron surge where it appeared the shot was necessary.
Rollout of the the fourth doses, targeted towards Americans 50 and older, has been abysmal as well. The CDC reports that only 38 per cent of eligible Americans have received the second booster.
Despite this, the impact the virus has had on the life of Americans has faltered throughout the year. After the Omicron-fueled surge began to recede in March, case figures have steadied.
A high point was reached over summer at around 140,000 cases per day - a figure dwarfed by the over 800,000 case-per-day mark reached in January.
Deaths never reached the same devastating totals they had reached in previous surges as well, lingering between 300 to 500 cases per day throughout summer.
This spurred many to put the pandemic behind them - even some of the nation's leading health officials.
Dr Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said in April to PBS Newshour that: We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.
'Namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now.
'So, if you're saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are. What we hope to do, I don't believe — and I have spoken about this widely — we're not going to eradicate this virus.'
He would walk the comments back after backlash from others in the field.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, October 11, 2022
Independent task-force releases new report into origins of COVID-19
A new report by a team of independent global scientists has found it “highly likely” the origins of Covid-19 was bats who passed the virus to animal hosts and then to people working in the wildlife trade at a seafood market in China.
The report, published Tuesday by the Independent Task Force on Covid-19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) concluded that based on the available evidence it was highly unlikely the virus was created in or released from a laboratory.
The team of 12 internationally renowned experts from a diverse range of disciplines included Dr Danielle Anderson from Victoria.
The team found the evidence strongly indicated that Covid-19 originated via a pathway similar to SARS-CoV, involving a spillover from bats to animals to people leading to the first known cluster of Covid-19 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in China in December 2019.
Dr Anderson, from the Royal Melbourne Hospital and a research scientist at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) at the Doherty Institute, said the team looked at hundreds of research papers and preprints – papers yet to be peer-reviewed and published – and interviewed those who had an opinion on the pandemic.
Dr Anderson, an expert on bat-borne viruses who also worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak, said based on the evidence the team reviewed, there were no big surprises.
“We did this to understand some of the information people were referencing,” she said.
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Are COVID Jabs Causing Leukemia? A Preliminary Analysis of Adverse Event Cases
On November 23, 2021, former South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan died at the age of 90. According to South Korea’s JTBC TV, a former Cheong Wa Dae (South Korean presidential palace) secretary revealed that Chun had not eaten properly for 10 consecutive days since he received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. His health deteriorated rapidly and he lost 20 pounds. And he was diagnosed with leukemia and was hospitalized for 12 days. One of his former aides suspected that his leukemia was related to the side effects of the vaccine.
Moreover, an open letter from a group of Mainland Chinese leukemia patients was circulating on Chinese social media platforms in early May 2022, but it was quickly taken down. In the letter, the patients, aged 3 to 70 years old and from more than 30 provinces and central government directly controlled municipalities across China, stated that they had developed leukemia after receiving COVID-19 vaccines and suspected that their disease was a severe vaccination adverse event. And they hoped that the government would investigate the matter.
So, is it possible that vaccination can cause leukemia? What are the possible causes of the disease, and how can we prevent it?
Principles of Pharmacovigilance
Dr. Yuhong Dong, virologist and infectious disease doctor, has also worked in pharmacovigilance department for cancer drugs at a major international pharmaceutical company.
According to the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) Good Clinical Practice (GCP) Guideline E2A (Page 4): “An adverse event (AE) is any untoward medical occurrence in a patient or clinical investigation subject administered a pharmaceutical product and which does not necessarily have a causal relationship with this treatment.” (pdf)
In the pharmacovigilance industry, there is a generally accepted principle: “It is better to make 3,000 misjudgments rather than to miss one case.”
Regardless of the source of the adverse event report and whether the report was made by a professional or not, every piece of information regarding a potential adverse experience of a new drug or vaccine must be properly taken as an AE. And it has to be included in the vaccine adverse event report database for medical analysis. The purpose is to collect as much information as possible to find patterns in these cases and monitor any potential serious adverse events proactively.
According to international good practice principles in the pharmaceutical industry in monitoring vaccine adverse events, an adverse drug or vaccine event is considered eligible to be reported if the piece of information meets the following four conditions:
There is an identifiable patient;
There is an identifiable reporter;
There is exposure to a drug or vaccine;
There is an adverse experience (symptoms or signs or lab test, etc), regardless of whether a causality relationship with the drug or vaccine has been established or not
The key rationale is that after the new vaccine or drug is applied in a large population, the top priority would be safety rather than efficacy. There are many examples of pharmaceuticals or vaccines that have been recalled or even withdrawn from the market due to safety issues. So if there is a safety concern, it must be addressed immediately and proper actions shall be taken in order to protect humanity’s safety.
Case Study: Almost 1,000 People Suspected of Developing Leukemia after Vaccination
A veteran journalist has provided Dr. Dong with two large excel sheets of adverse leukemia events made collectively by mainland Chinese-manufactured vaccine recipients. These data sheets contain adverse events reported by nearly 1,000 patients as of June 4, 2022, at 10 p.m. EST. The adverse events are mentioned in great detail, and the reports’ contents are alarming.
Due to time constraints, we have so far conducted a preliminary analysis of 235 valid cases, accounting for approximately 20 percent of the total.
What we presented here in this paper is the preliminary data analysis, but a more complete analysis will be performed during the coming weeks.
In terms of gender, the victims in 56 percent of these 235 cases were male; 2 percent were female; and 42 percent of the cases didn’t specify gender information. There is currently a lot of missing information, and the gender ratio is predicted to be around 1:1 in the complete data, with the number of men possibly slightly larger.
Their age range was 3 to 79 years old, with an average age of 30 years old.
Vaccines are mainly from Sinovac Life Sciences Co., Ltd, but some are produced by Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd., Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd., and several others.
Among the vaccine related adverse events concerning leukemia, the most common is acute myeloid leukemia (49 percent of the cases). It is followed by acute lymphoblastic leukemia (34 percent), aplastic anemia (9 percent), and several other hematological malignancies such as lymphoma.
In 44 percent of the cases, symptoms or diagnoses of these adverse events were reported to occur on average 84 days after the second dose.
In 16 percent of the cases, these leukemia-like events were reported to occur on average 52 days after the third dose. This is a reasonable time frame, as leukemia involves genetic mutations, and there would be a pathological process, which is a chronic adverse reaction. It does not occur in a short period of one or two weeks like the acute side effects of myocarditis or blood clots.
In 16 percent of the patients, the symptoms appeared on average 40 days after the first dose of the vaccine. During this time period, many people might have already received a second dose. So it is likely that they are still classified as having received a second dose, as the patients’ reporting habits vary.
Most of these patients are currently undergoing treatment, with some requiring organ transplantation and/or chemotherapy, and there hasn’t been any case of recovery so far.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/leukemia-preliminary_4530742.html ?
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‘Not having a big impact’: COVID drug fails to beat placebo in major trial
A COVID-19 medication that was thought to strongly reduce the risk of the illness becoming life-threatening and was bought in bulk by the federal government works no better than a placebo, preliminary findings from a major new study suggest.
Molnupiravir, sold in Australia under the brand name Lagevrio, disrupts the coronavirus’ ability to copy itself and was the first COVID-19 antiviral to win government subsidy here.
The medication is intended for people at high risk of serious illness – those aged over 50 who have risk factors, and the immunocompromised – after they test positive to COVID-19 but before they are sick enough to need a hospital. Australia was one of the most aggressive movers in securing access to molnupiravir, buying 300,000 courses in late 2021, before it was approved by medical regulator the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
But some scientists have long been suspicious of strange results in the drug’s early trials. Data from the new trial has hardened their scepticism.
The University of Oxford’s PANORAMIC trial enrolled 25,783 people with COVID-19, half of whom got molnupiravir. After 28 days, 103 people given molnupiravir had died, compared with 96 in the second group.
“Clearly, it isn’t having a big impact,” said Professor Peter Wark, an expert on antivirals at the University of Newcastle. “I think we’d have to look very critically as to the cost-effectiveness of continuing in this sort of way.”
Governments keen to end COVID restrictions had leant on antivirals as a way out of the pandemic, Wark said. “A slower relaxation of restrictions probably would have had a bigger impact than relying heavily on these antivirals.”
Dr Kyle Sheldrick – a University of NSW researcher who co-authored a paper earlier this year on molnupiravir’s problems – is critical of the TGA’s approach. “I did not think it should have been approved before PANORAMIC,” he said “I certainly don’t think it should be now.”
The Health Department did not answer questions on how much it had spent on the drug, but the US paid about $US700 ($1099) a dose at the same time.
Australia’s National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce said it was reviewing the study and would probably soon update its recommendations, which endorse molnupiravir.
A spokesman for the drug’s sponsor Merck said PANORAMIC had focused on a low-risk group, and pointed to other studies showing the treatment was effective.
In April Merck predicted it would make $US5 billion to $US5.5 billion selling the drug this financial year.
In an effort to get more people using the drug, the Australian government widened eligibility in July and Merck launched an advertising campaign.
Due to uncertainties about the clinical trial evidence, molnupiravir remains unapproved by the European Union; France cancelled its order in December.
Merck’s spokesman argued the patients in PANORAMIC were relatively healthy, whereas in Australia, the drug is reserved for people with major risk factors. “Other recent real-world studies, including the Clalit study from Israel, have indicated that [molnupiravir] was associated with a significant reduction in hospitalisations and mortality due to COVID-19 in patients 65 years and above,” he said.
Initial uncertainties about molnupiravir stemmed from strange results in the original Merck trial that got the drug approved.
Merck’s trial recruited about 1500 patients and gave half the drug. Early results from the first half of patients tested were so positive – a halving of the chance of death – that the trial was stopped early so everyone could get the apparently life-saving treatment.
But when data from the remaining half of patients in the trial was published a month later, it told a different story. The second group had done far worse than the first. In fact, the data suggested molnupiravir did not improve their outcomes. Combined, the full trial suggested molnupiravir may not cut the risk of death.
“We think this is unprecedented. None of us had ever seen anything like this before,” said Sheldrick.
The strange results may have been caused by a new coronavirus variant emerging mid-trial, he said. Merck disputes that, and claims the early results were the key ones.
Wark said it was possible the drug was of less use in a highly vaccinated population faced with a milder variant such as Omicron.
Sheldrick said the PANORAMIC results suggested governments need to think differently about rushing to approve drugs with limited evidence – even in the middle of a pandemic.
A spokeswoman for the TGA said the drug remained provisionally approved for use. “It is noted that while, in the PANORAMIC trial, hospitalisation and death was not reduced by molnupiravir for adults under 65 years, the time to first self-reported recovery was six days shorter.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Monday, October 10, 2022
Mother, 32, fears condition that almost killed her during pregnancy was sparked by COVID - after studies linked the virus with stillbirths and other dangerous complications
A Brooklyn mother has issued an alarming warning about the risk catching the coronavirus can have on giving birth. Lauren Phillips told how she suffered from preeclampsia after having her baby and linked it to going down with the virus earlier in her pregnancy.
The 32-year-old attorney said she was rushed back into hospital with dangerously high blood pressure just days after having her son.
She urged would-be parents to avoid coronavirus during pregnancy and seek immediate medical advice because she says it saved her life.
It comes as experts fear catching Covid could cause deadly complications with childbirth and even lead to stillbirths.
A swathe of studies during the pandemic found women had a 60 percent greater risk of having preeclampsia if they had suffered from the virus.
Phillips sailed through an easy pregnancy aside from becoming infected with COVID in her second trimester, which she described in her blog as a 'mild cold.'
But a few days after her baby son Arthur was born in April, the Brooklyn-based attorney was rushed to the emergency room as her blood pressure hit 160/116.
Phillips, who was up to date with her vaccinations and was careful with masking, found she had preeclampsia doctors believe was linked to a February Omicron infection.
She wrote: 'In the last hours of labor before the c section my blood pressure started to rise, but after delivery it came down enough that I was discharged on day 3 post delivery.
'On day 5, I experienced a severe dizzy spell. I was sitting down at the time. It felt like a sudden pulse or pressure wave, making the room spin. I'd never experienced anything like it, it felt bizarre, and it frightened me. 'I called my doctor and she told me to call back if it happened again. A few hours later, it did.
'My husband ran out to Rite Aid and bought a blood pressure cuff, which indicated my pressure was up to 140/90.
'I also noticed that my ankles were starting to swell and had become much more swollen than they had even been during pregnancy. I called the doctor and she had me come to the emergency room.
'I was brought back to the labor and delivery ward for observation, where over the course of a few hours my pressure spiked to 160/116. 'Once it hit that level, the medical team started me on a magnesium drip and admitted me for severe preeclampsia. 'I stayed in the hospital for two days before the doctors had me stable on blood pressure-reducing medication (nifidipene).
'Happily, my hospital allowed my spouse and son to stay in the hospital with me for those two days, so I could give him a steady supply of milk and hold or breastfeed him when I was stable enough to do so.'
She added: 'After discharge with instructions to take my pressure 4 times per day at home, my pressure spiked again less than 24 hours later, necessitating a return to the hospital. 'There they gave me a high dose of blood pressure medication (labetelol) intravenously.
'I was able to return home the same day on two drugs which kept my pressure out of the danger zone.
'About 5 weeks later, after steady drops in my pressure week by week, I was able to come off both drugs. 'Now 3 months postpartum, my blood pressure has returned to the healthy levels I had pre-labor.'
Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy that results in 70,000 maternal and 500,000 fetal deaths worldwide each year, the Seattle Times reported, and the number of cases jumped during the pandemic.
The illness is just one part of a slew of information scientists are studying to learn more about how Covid affects pregnancy.
Experts say women who contracted Covid-19 during their pregnancy also face an elevated risk of stillbirths.
But they believe vaccination can help prevent these cases, with statistics showing unvaccinated women at higher risk of complications.
Earlier on in the pandemic, many thought the coronavirus didn't affect unborn fetuses because few babies were born with the infection.
But in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology study published in September, it was revealed that the infection damages the placenta's immune response to further infections.
'What we're seeing now is that the placenta is vulnerable to COVID-19, and the infection changes the way the placenta works, and that in turn is likely to impact the development of the fetus,' Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf said.
Scientists also believed Covid to be a virus that mainly affected the respiratory system - but it has now been proven to wreak havoc with the circulatory system too.
Doctors also fear a Covid infection may 'unmask' health conditions that a pregnant woman's immune system would otherwise be able to shield her from.
The placenta, an organ that attaches to the womb during pregnancy, connects with the umbilical cord and provides oxygen and nourishment from the mother's bloodstream to the baby.
In the fall and winter of 2021, Amy Heerema McKenney, a Cleveland Clinic pathologist whose job involves figuring out why some babies die, began receiving eerily similar reports of stillbirths, The Times reported. She recalled feeling 'pretty panicked' as she began to look into the cases, which happened in quick succession.
While a normal placenta is spongy and dark reddish hue, which shows the nourishing blood flowing through it, the ones she was studying from mothers who lost their babies were like nothing she'd ever seen.
They were firm, discolored, scarred, and more of a tan color. 'The degree of devastation was unique,' she said.
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Florida warns young men on Covid boosters
Florida, the third most populous US state, has warned young men they face a greater risk of dying after receiving Covid-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, as the US government forks out billions of dollars on a new (third) round of Covid-19 boosters.
The Florida health department on Friday (Saturday AEDT) specifically warned 18 to 39 year old men against seeking Covid-19 vaccinations that use mRNA technology, citing new research that found this group had an 84 per cent higher chance of cardiac-related death within 28 days of vaccination.
“With a high level of global immunity to COVID-19, the benefit of vaccination is likely outweighed by this abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death among men in this age group,” the state’s health department said in a statement.
However the baseline chance of a heart attack among young adults was miniscule according to a 2020 Norwegian study of around 33,000 people: 2.1 per 100,000 people for those aged 20-29 and 16.9 for those aged between 30 and 39.
The warning comes amid growing debate in the US over the wisdom of mandating Covid-19 vaccines — which critics say failed to prevent transmission, illness or death — and waning interest among parents in vaccinating their children.
“Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health,” said Florida’s Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo.
“Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed – these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.”
Separate figures from the US Centre for Disease Control, released a day earlier, indicated 11.5m Americans had received one of the new ‘bivalent’ boosters so far, or around 5.3 per cent of the 212 million Americans who were eligible to receive the shots.
The US government in July contracted to pay Pfizer and Moderna around US$4.9bn for 171 million bivalent booster shots.
Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University, said complaints that the new shots, which are meant to protect against all the Sars-Cov2 variants including Omicron, weren’t working were misleading.
“We‘ll likely see more of these. It doesn’t mean vaccines failed. The primary goal of vaccination – to reduce severity of illness – has not changed,” she said on social media on Friday.
Florida’s move to restrict Covid-19 vaccine coverage came after similar moves by jurisdictions in Europe, where Covid-19 boosters are no longer offered to healthy individuals under 65 and 50 in Norway and Denmark, respectively.
In the US, the CDC recommends a primary series of Covid-19 vaccination for everyone aged six months and up, boosters for those aged 12 and over.
Before the bivalent booster rollout began on 4th September, after the two shots received “emergency use authorisation” from the Food and Drug Administration, fewer than half of eligible Americans had received their first booster.
The Supreme Court in January overturned a Biden administration directive to compel all workers to receive the Covid-19 vaccines, reflecting efforts throughout the world to link Covid-19 vaccination to employment, education, in-person commerce, and freedom of movement.
Elite US universities, including Harvard and Stanford, and some healthcare settings have kept booster mandates for students, including the latest bivalent booster, a source of ongoing legal action and debate.
“Hey university presidents and trustees — how many cardiac deaths are acceptable as collateral damage?”, asked Todd Zywicki, as law professor at George Mason university, on social media soon after the Florida research was released.
Florida, which has a population around 21.5 million, stood out among US states in its response to Covid-19, ending lockdowns and mandates in early 2020, and last year banning ‘vaccine passports’, which were widely used across the US, throughout the state, to protect the unvaccinated against discrimination.
A federal appeals court upheld the state’s vaccine passport ban on Friday after a challenge by Norwegian cruise lines, based in Miami, which had sought to enforce vaccination among passengers.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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