Association of Treatment With Nirmatrelvir and the Risk of Post–COVID-19 Condition

Nirmatrelvir is one component of Pfizer's Paxlovid antiviral. The differences observed below were weak but pervasive, suggesting some usefulness in preventing long Covid

Yan Xie et al

Key Points

Question Is treatment with nirmatrelvir in the acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection associated with a lower risk of post–COVID-19 condition (PCC)?

Findings In this cohort study of 281 793 people with SARS-CoV-2 infection who had at least 1 risk factor for progression to severe COVID-19 illness, compared with 246 076 who had no treatment, nirmatrelvir use in the acute phase (n = 35 717) was associated with reduced risk of PCC, including reduced risk of 10 of 13 post–acute sequelae in various organ systems, as well as reduced risk of post–acute death and post–acute hospitalization. Nirmatrelvir was associated with reduced risk of PCC in people who were unvaccinated, vaccinated, and boosted, and in people with primary SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection.

Meaning In people with SARS-CoV-2 infection and at least 1 risk factor for progression to severe COVID-19 illness, treatment with nirmatrelvir during the acute phase of COVID-19 was associated with reduced risk of PCC.

Abstract

Importance Post–COVID-19 condition (PCC), also known as long COVID, affects many individuals. Prevention of PCC is an urgent public health priority.

Objective To examine whether treatment with nirmatrelvir in the acute phase of COVID-19 is associated with reduced risk of PCC.

Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study used the health care databases of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to identify patients who had a SARS-CoV-2 positive test result between January 3, 2022, and December 31, 2022, who were not hospitalized on the day of the positive test result, who had at least 1 risk factor for progression to severe COVID-19 illness, and who had survived the first 30 days after SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis. Those who were treated with oral nirmatrelvir within 5 days after the positive test (n = 35 717) and those who received no COVID-19 antiviral or antibody treatment during the acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection (control group, n = 246 076) were identified.

Exposures Treatment with nirmatrelvir or receipt of no COVID-19 antiviral or antibody treatment based on prescription records.

Main Outcomes and Measures Inverse probability weighted survival models were used to estimate the association of nirmatrelvir (vs control) with post–acute death, post–acute hospitalization, and a prespecified panel of 13 post–acute COVID-19 sequelae (components of PCC) and reported in relative scale as relative risk (RR) or hazard ratio (HR) and in absolute scale as absolute risk reduction in percentage at 180 days (ARR).

Results A total of 281 793 patients (mean [SD] age, 61.99 [14.96]; 242 383 [86.01%] male) who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result and had at least 1 risk factor for progression to severe COVID-19 illness were studied. Among them, 246 076 received no COVID-19 antiviral or antibody treatment during the acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and 35 717 received oral nirmatrelvir within 5 days after the positive SARS-CoV-2 test result. Compared with the control group, nirmatrelvir was associated with reduced risk of PCC (RR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.72-0.77; ARR, 4.51%; 95% CI, 4.01-4.99), including reduced risk of 10 of 13 post–acute sequelae (components of PCC) in the cardiovascular system (dysrhythmia and ischemic heart disease), coagulation and hematologic disorders (pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis), fatigue and malaise, acute kidney disease, muscle pain, neurologic system (neurocognitive impairment and dysautonomia), and shortness of breath. Nirmatrelvir was also associated with reduced risk of post–acute death (HR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.46-0.61); ARR, 0.65%; 95% CI, 0.54-0.77), and post–acute hospitalization (HR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.73-0.80; ARR, 1.72%; 95% CI, 1.42-2.01). Nirmatrelvir was associated with reduced risk of PCC in people who were unvaccinated, vaccinated, and boosted, and in people with primary SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection.

Conclusions and Relevance This cohort study found that in people with SARS-CoV-2 infection who had at least 1 risk factor for progression to severe disease, treatment with nirmatrelvir within 5 days of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result was associated with reduced risk of PCC across the risk spectrum in this cohort and regardless of vaccination status and history of prior infection; the totality of findings suggests that treatment with nirmatrelvir during the acute phase of COVID-19 may reduce the risk of post–acute adverse health outcomes.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2802878

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Authors Conclude "Relatively Safe" as Dozens of Children Die After COVID-19 Vaccination

Peter A. McCullough

As an author and editor, I have always lived by a principle of medical publication that the conclusions must be supported by the data presented. Many have asked me why to do doctors still support COVID-19 vaccination with all safety data systems reporting record mortality after injection? Many cases occur on the same day or in the next few days after administration. The reason may be what doctors are concluding from the data in peer-reviewed manuscripts that does not match the information disclosed.

Villa-Zapata and coworkers published a report from VAERS on “safety” of COVID-19 vaccination in children aged 5 to 17, and in the data table there are 56 deaths! Also listed are other potentially fatal complications such as anaphylaxis and myocarditis. The authors concluded that COVID-19 vaccination in children is “relatively safe.”

Any person reading this report should be shocked and appalled with news of 56 children and adolescents losing their lives after COVID-19 vaccination.

The vast majority of reports to VAERS are made by doctors and healthcare providers who believe the vaccine was the cause of the problem reported. The CDC generates a temporary number followed by a permanent VAERS number when the event is confirmed (e.g., fatal events confirmed by death certificate or national death index). VAERS cases represent the tip of the iceberg and grossly under-represent reality. This means the number of childhood deaths could be 30-fold greater—or 1680 for 2021.

In summary, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught clinical scholars to ignore the written conclusions by the authors who may have conflicts of interest. They may have taken COVID-19 vaccines themselves and cannot psychologically recognize what is happening with catastrophic safety outcomes in populations studied.

The data must be evaluated independently and it is up to the reader to draw his or her own inferences. My conclusion is that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe for human use and one child lost after injection is one too many. They must be pulled off the market.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/authors-conclude-relatively-safe-as-dozens-of-children-die-after-covid-19-vaccination-7e22eed1

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Arthritis after COVID-19 Vaccination

Good response to steroids

Peter A. McCullough

Approximately a third of COVID-19 vaccine recipients develop transient fever. It is important to recognize that a constellation of symptoms in addition to fever should prompt recognition of Still’s Disease. Adult-onset Still’s disease, also known as systemic onset juvenile idiopathic arthritis, is a systemic inflammatory disorder characterized by inflammatory polyarthritis, daily fever and a transient salmon-pink maculopapular rash. A serum ferritin level of more than 1000 ng/ml is common in this condition.

Sharabi and colleagues described two cases of adult-onset Still’s disease after the Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Both cases were serious, involved myopericarditis, required hospitalization and treatment with pulsed corticosteroids.

The major points for patients and doctors to pay attention to are fever and associated symptoms after mRNA vaccination. There are vaccine injury syndromes that are steroid-responsive, and complicated courses including hospitalization can potentially be avoided.

Sharabi A, Shiber S, Molad Y. Adult-onset Still's disease following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination. Clin Immunol. 2021 Dec;233:108878. doi: 10.1016/j.clim.2021.108878. Epub 2021 Nov 9. PMID: 34763089; PMCID: PMC8575550.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/steroid-responsive-stills-disease-after-covid-19-vaccination-d3ce144a

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Biden Signs Measure Ending COVID-19 National Emergency

President Joe Biden on April 10 signed a measure that ends the COVID-19 national emergency more than three years after it was enacted, the White House announced.

HJ Res 7 passed through the Senate on March 29 by a 68-23 margin, with 21 Democrats joining 47 Republicans to support the measure.

Four Republicans and five Democrats did not cast a vote—and 23 Democrats voted against the short resolution—which was introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) last month and passed by the House 229-197 on Feb. 1.

Eleven Democrats voted against the House measure.

The legislation included a simple one-line description declaring that the pandemic national emergency “is hereby terminated.”

Before the Senate vote on the resolution. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) encouraged his fellow legislators to “end this chapter and let Americans get back to their own lives.”

“I ask my colleagues to join me again in a strong bipartisan fashion in sending this resolution to the president’s desk to end the national emergency declaration for COVID-19 once and for all today,” Marshall said.

President Donald Trump enacted the COVID national emergency on March 13, 2020, after establishing the COVID public health emergency on Jan. 31, 2020.

Originally, the White House planned to end both emergencies on May 11.

In a 60 Minutes interview last September Biden said, “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,” Biden said.

“If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”

The Biden administration wrote a letter to Congress on Jan. 30 highlighting the reasoning behind the decision to end the COVID national emergency and public health emergency on May 11.

“At present, the administration’s plan is to extend the emergency declarations to May 11, and then end both emergencies on that date.

“This wind down would align with the administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the PHE,” the letter read.

“To be clear, [the] continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct with regard to COVID-19,” the letter continued.

“They do not impose mask mandates or vaccine mandates. They do not restrict school or business operations. They do not require the use of any medicines or tests in response to cases of COVID-19.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-signs-measure-ending-covid-19-national-emergency_5185150.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Randomized Controlled Study: Twice-Daily Oral Zinc Helps Effectively Treat COVID-19!

Researchers from the Northern African nation of Tunisia investigate the use of twice oral zinc as a regimen targeting SARS-CoV-2. Semir Nouira at University of Monastir, Emergency Department and Laboratory Research and colleagues designed a prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled multicenter clinical trial investigating the use of zinc supplementation as a potential therapy targeting SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19.

Recruiting, randomizing and enrolling COVID-19 patients without end-organ failure, 231 patients were administered oral zinc and 239 participants were given a matching placebo for 15 days. The study protocol included the following primary endpoints: A) death due to COVID-19 and B) intensive care unit (ICU) admission ≤30 days post-randomization as well as secondary endpoints including A) length of hospitalization for inpatients and B) duration of COVID-19 symptoms for those outpatient subjects testing positive for the novel coronavirus. The findings suggest a twice-daily regimen of oral zinc helps treat SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19.

The study team reports in the published piece in Journal Clinical Infectious Diseases that the VIZIR study was conducted in three Tunisian university referral hospitals (Fattouma Bourguiba Hospital Monastir, Sahloul Hospital Sousse, Farhat Hached Hospital Sousse) and two non-university hospitals (Ksar Hlel Hospital, Teboulba Hospital). Patients were first screened in the COVID-19 triage unit of each participating center. Written informed consent was obtained from all patients before enrollment.

What did the Tunisian team discover?

Out of the total patient pool 190 of the subjects (40.4%) were ambulatory and 280 of the patients (59.6%) were hospitalized. The authors report in the peer reviewed result that at day 30 of the study [mortality was]

5% in the zinc group and 9.2% in the placebo group (OR: .68; 95% CI .34–1.35)

ICU admission rates were, respectively, 5.2% [zinc] and 11.3% (OR: .43; 95% CI .21–.87)

Combined outcome was lower in the zinc group versus the placebo group (OR: .58; 95% CI .33–.99)

Nouira and colleagues report consistent results observed in prespecified subgroups of patients aged <65 years, those with comorbidity, and those who needed oxygen therapy at baseline.

Moreover, those patients given zinc overall experienced shorter hospitalization duration than the placebo group—a difference of 3.5 days (95% CI 2.76–4.23) in the inpatient group. Also, the duration of COVID-19 symptoms decreased with zinc treatment versus the placebo subjects in the outpatient cohort (difference: 1.9 days; 95% CI .62–2.6).

The study investigators report no severe adverse events during the study.

Limitations

The authors report study limitations. These include:

Generalizability limited beyond patients with moderate clinical severity

The investigators report that they don’t know if larger doses than the amounts prescribed in this study would make a difference declaring this needs more investigation

The investigators ponder if longer treatment with zinc (over 15 days) could add more clinical benefit—they suggest the need for more data, investigation if zinc can help against risk of long COVID

Success of zinc may depend on zinc serum levels and they didn’t assess such levels in this study

Outcomes assessment completed via telephone

Investigator’s POV

A relatively strong study, the authors point out:

“To our knowledge, this study is the first well-powered, placebo-controlled clinical trial to report results of zinc for the treatment of patients with COVID-19. When administered orally to patients hospitalized with COVID-19 without end-organ failure, zinc demonstrated its efficacy to prevent ICU admission and to reduce hospital length of stay; for outpatients, zinc reduced symptom duration. Zinc should be considered for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.”

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/randomized-controlled-study-twice-daily-oral-zinc-help-effectively-treat-covid-19-b62143ab

Journal article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36367144/

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Masks Cause Headaches, Itching, and Lower Oxygen Intake

A systematic review of 2,168 studies that looked into the adverse effects of wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic has found that the practice led to negative health consequences, including itching, headaches, and restriction of oxygen.

“We found significant effects in both medical surgical and N95 masks, with a greater impact of the second,” states the review, published in the “Frontiers in Public Health” on April 5. A meta-analysis of multiple studies found that headache was the “most frequent symptom” among mask wearers, with a prevalence of 62 percent for general mask use and up to 70 percent when using N95 masks. Shortness of breath was observed at 33 percent for general mask use and 37 percent among N95 users.

While 17 percent of surgical mask wearers experienced itching, this number was at 51 percent among users of N95. Acne prevalence among mask users was at 38 percent and skin irritation was at 36 percent. Dizziness was found to be prevalent among 5 percent of subjects.

“Masks interfered with O2-uptake and CO2-release and compromised respiratory compensation,” the review states. “Though evaluated wearing durations are shorter than daily/prolonged use, outcomes independently validate mask-induced exhaustion-syndrome (MIES) and down-stream physio-metabolic disfunctions. MIES can have long-term clinical consequences, especially for vulnerable groups.”

The restriction of oxygen uptake and hindrance in carbon-di-oxide release was identified as more significant among users of N95 masks. Continuous rebreathing of carbon dioxide results in the “right-shift of hemoglobin-O2 saturation curve.”

“Since O2 and CO2 homeostasis influences diverse down-stream metabolic processes, corresponding changes toward clinically concerning directions may lead to unfavorable consequences such as transient hypoxemia and hypercarbia, increased breath humidity, and body temperature along with compromised physiological compensations,” the review states.

The review also said that several mask-related symptoms may have been misinterpreted as symptoms of long COVID. “In any case, the possible MIES contrasts with the WHO definition of health,” it states, referring to the World Health Organization.

It suggested that the side effects of face masks be assessed based on risk-benefit analysis after taking into consideration their effectiveness against viral transmissions. If “strong empirical evidence” showing the effectiveness of masks is absent, the study recommended that wearing masks should not be mandated, “let alone enforced by law.”

Sudden Mask Policy Change, Suppressing Studies

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, existing data on respiratory viruses had shown that there was no basis for wearing masks to prevent their spread. “All the studies done in the world until 2020 showed that there is no justification for this,” Yoav Yehezkelli, a specialist in internal medicine and a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, said in an interview with The Epoch Times in January.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the WHO issued guidelines that there was no need for wearing masks in the general public, he pointed out.

But in 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak, recommendations on mask-wearing around the world suddenly changed “without having any new professional support to confirm that it does indeed have effectiveness against respiratory infection.”

A December letter that he co-wrote and sent to the Israel Medical Association Journal pointed to multiple studies suggesting that wearing masks can end up causing harm.

Potential negative effects include headaches, shortness of breath, a dip in blood oxygen levels, a rise in carbon dioxide levels, concentration difficulties, and bacterial contamination. The accumulation of CO2 can end up causing tiredness, blurriness, and sleepiness, he noted.

There have also been attempts to subdue studies that expose the ineffectiveness of masks. A 2023 study published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews stated that wearing masks made “little or no difference” when it came to the transmission of COVID-19.

A columnist at The New York Times published an opinion piece titled “Here’s Why the Science Is Clear That Masks Work” and reached out to Cochrane for its view. The editor-in-chief at Cochrane then issued a statement saying that it’s an “inaccurate and misleading interpretation” to say the study shows that masks do not work, adding that the publication was “engaging” with the authors on updating the article’s abstract.

However, the authors refused to do so, with the lead author insisting that “there is just no evidence that [masks] make any difference … full stop.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/masks-cause-headaches-itching-and-lower-oxygen-intake-study_5181866.html

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Swiss National Health Authority Backs off from COVID-19 Vaccination: Recommendation Not, even for Vulnerable Populations

Recently several groups critical of the COVID-19 vaccines declared that Switzerland has banned COVID-19 vaccines. Is this true? Not quite in those terms. But the Switzerland’s Federal Health Agency (Bundesgesundheitsamt, BMG) made material changes to the national vaccination schedule that certainly hasn’t received mainstream press attention in North America.

The agency has backed away from recommending COVID-19 vaccination this spring and summer. Of course, it’s off-season for respiratory viruses, which could be part of the explanation. However, what else does the national Swiss health authority now promulgate on the topic of COVID-19 vaccination?

As mentioned above the BMG withdraws any COVID-19 recommendation for the spring and summer of 2023. However, the agency remains open for COVID-19 vaccine assessment for at-risk individuals, meaning the elderly, persons with comorbidities, those with immunosuppressed conditions.

The agency notes that a majority of the population has been vaccinated, an implicit message that the COVID-19 vaccine products do contribute to some protection against the Omicron-based variants. However, BMG also conveys that many have been infected already acknowledging that natural immunity can potentially be superior to vaccination itself while they acknowledge the overall Omicron pathogen becomes far less acute.

On that note, TrialSite recently reported that on one study in China covering the BA.5 Omicron subvariant—over 90% of the study participants infected with SARS-CoV-2 omicron were asymptomatic!

Of course, come the colder seasons later in 2023 and BMG reminds the agency will re-evaluate the recommendations.

Is BMG recommending COVID-19 vaccine for “particularly vulnerable people?”

In what could be a surprise move from a North American perspective the Swiss national health authority is backing off on any recommendation for COVID-19 vaccine. Clearly the agency has some concerns they are not overtly sharing with the masses.

BMG recommends that if individuals seek a COVID-19 vaccine they can consult with their physicians as “Vaccination can be useful in individual cases because it improves protection against serious illness for several months.”

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/swiss-national-health-authority-backs-off-of-covid-19-vaccination-recommendation-not-even-for-vulnerable-populations-b038366a

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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) Also here

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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New Medical Codes for COVID-19 Vaccination Status Used to Track People, CDC Confirms

This sounds disturbingly totalitarian -- easily capable of misuse, particularly if you are an antivxxer. Antivaxxers have experienced a lot of legal pressure so have reason to be concerned. Time has shown their resistance to be reasonably founded but that is unlikely to win them any forgiveness for defying the State. A lady in my life is a confirmed anti-vaxxer and she is to this day restricted in her travel plans, to her considerable frustration

Medical codes introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to show when people are unvaccinated or undervaccinated for COVID-19 are being used to track people, the top U.S. public health agency has confirmed.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made the confirmation in emails that The Epoch Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The CDC had said in documents and public statements that the goal of the new codes, in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) system, was “to track people who are not immunized or only partially immunized.”

The CDC now says it does not have access to the data, but that health care systems do.

“The ICD codes were implemented in April 2022, however the CDC does not have any data on the codes and does not track this information,” CDC officials said in the emails.

“The codes were created to enable healthcare providers to track within their practices,” the officials added.

The emails were sent to news outlets. The CDC has not answered queries from The Epoch Times about the codes, which the CDC added to the U.S. ICD system in 2022.

How Providers Are Using the Codes

The CDC proposed the codes in 2021. “There has been interest expressed in being able to track people who are not immunized or who are only partially immunized,” Dr. David Berglund, a CDC medical officer, said during a meeting about the proposal.

One code is for being “unvaccinated for COVID-19.” Another is for being partially vaccinated, or not having received a primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In comments to the CDC about the proposal, health care providers said they supported adding the codes—with some detailing how they’d be used.

Identifying people who are unvaccinated or undervaccinated for COVID-19 “will help health insurance providers identify emollees [sic] who may benefit from outreach and further education about vaccination,” Danielle Lloyd, a senior vice president at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and Adam Myers, senior vice president at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, said in a joint letter to the CDC.

“Creating ICD-10 codes that can be tracked via claims would provide health insurance providers key information to help increase immunization rates,” they added.

In another missive, Nancy Andersen, a director with Kaiser Permanente Health Plan and Hospitals, and Erica Eastham, executive director at The Permanente Federation LLC, told the CDC: “These codes provide valuable data for understanding immunization rates and for follow-up with under-immunized patients.”

Andersen and Eastham urged the CDC to advise providers entering one of the new codes to also enter an additional code indicating why a person was unvaccinated or undervaccinated, with reasons including due to a contraindication or due to “belief or group pressure.”

The comments were obtained by The Epoch Times through the Freedom of Information Act.

Most of the providers and other health care groups, including the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), that commented did not respond to inquiries.

AHIP declined to say what education it offered to people tracked through the new codes. A spokeswoman pointed to a Feb. 28, 2022, article that outlines steps providers have taken to promote vaccination.

The codes are part of the ICD’s 10th edition. The World Health Organization of the United Nations holds the copyright for ICD-10 but has allowed the U.S. government to adopt the edition, according to the CDC. The new codes are not part of the World Health Organization’s ICD.

All health care entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act must use the U.S. version of the ICD. The U.S. version is updated at least once a year. Coded ICD data from providers enable public health officials to “conduct many disease-related activities,” according to the CDC. Purposes include enabling a doctor seeing a new patient to easily retrieve the patient’s medical history.

Support

Health care officials largely said they supported adding the codes because being unvaccinated or undervaccinated was a “risk factor.”

“AHIMA supported the new codes for underimmunization for COVID-19 status because being unvaccinated or partially vaccinated because this status is a health risk factor, increasing the individual’s risk of morbidity and mortality,” a spokeswoman for AHIMA told The Epoch Times via email.

“The ICD-10-CM coding system includes codes for many health risk factors, and being underimmunized for COVID-19 status represents another type of risk factor. It is important to be able to identify factors influencing a patient’s health status so that healthcare providers are aware of the person’s increased risk,” the spokeswoman added.

Some experts have said there is no medical indication for the new codes, given the small risk most Americans face from COVID-19.

“I have a hard time clinically seeing the medical indication of using them,” Dr. Todd Porter, a pediatrician, told The Epoch Times previously. “We do not do this for influenza, which in the younger age groups has a higher IFR [infection fatality ratio] than COVID-19. Using these codes also disregards the contribution of natural immunity which research evidence shows is more robust than vaccine immunity.”

CDC Refuses to Answer Members of Congress

The CDC, meanwhile, has refused to answer questions from members of Congress about the codes.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and nine other members said they were concerned about the federal government apparently gathering data on the personal choices of Americans and said they believe the data “serves no sincere purpose in treating patients’ medical conditions.”

“The ICD system was originally intended to classify diagnoses and reasons for visiting the doctor, not to conduct surveillance on the personal medical decisions of American citizens. Given the profound uncertainty and distrust felt by many Americans toward the CDC and the medical apparatus at large, it is important for the CDC to make clear the intent and purpose of these new codes,” the members said, asking for answers to questions such as what steps the CDC is taking to make sure Americans’ private health information is protected.

The CDC has not replied to the Feb. 14 letter, members told The Epoch Times.

“I have asked five simple questions about the CDC’s unprecedented tracking of why Americans declined the COVID-19 vaccine. The CDC has so far refused to answer these basic questions. The American people deserve answers on what data CDC is gathering on Americans and why,” Roy told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

“The American people deserve to know what the CDC is doing with their personal data. It has now been more than a month and a half, and the CDC still refuses to tell us why it is tracking Americans’ reasons for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine,” added Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.). “The CDC must be held accountable to the American taxpayer.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-medical-codes-for-covid-19-vaccination-status-used-to-track-people-cdc-confirms_5173498.html

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China must share data on COVID-19's origins 'immediately,' WHO scientist demands

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/kYAb6JgeB2KB6ocF5rP83N-1200-80.jpg.webp

Scientists in China collected key coronavirus data in 2020 from a market in Wuhan — ground zero of the first reported outbreak of COVID-19 — but didn't share the raw data publicly until March 2023. And experts suspect that China has much more data from the early pandemic that "have yet to be shared" with the global research community.

That's according to a new editorial, published Thursday (April 6) in the journal Science(opens in new tab) and penned by Maria Van Kerkhove(opens in new tab), the COVID-19 technical lead for the World Health Organization (WHO). China likely has data that could shed light on how the pandemic began, Van Kerkhove wrote, and the country's failure to disclose the data makes the whole world more vulnerable to future pandemics.

These undisclosed data likely include details of China's wild- and farmed-animal trades, as well as the operations of labs in Wuhan that work with coronaviruses, according to the editorial. The data also may include details about the earliest potential cases of COVID-19 detected in China and the diagnostic testing that was conducted in humans and animals in the early days of the pandemic.

"WHO continues to call on China and all countries to share any data on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, immediately," Van Kerkhove wrote. "The world needs to move away from the politics of blame and, instead, exploit all diplomatic and scientific approaches so that the global scientific community can do what it does best — collaborate, focus on this health crisis, and find evidence-based solutions to thwart future pandemics."

Van Kerkhove's statement was prompted by events that took place last month. In early March, researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) uploaded never-before-seen coronavirus data to Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID), an open-access database that includes data on influenza viruses and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The data was later removed from GISAID but not before being downloaded by researchers outside China.

This international team of researchers reported that the data showed that SARS-CoV-2 genetic material and the DNA of common raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) were present in and around the exact same stalls at Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in January 2020. The data cannot prove that the raccoon dogs, a fox relative, were actively infected with SARS-CoV-2 at the time, but they strongly raise the possibility that infected animals were at the market, potentially spreading the virus to other animals and to humans.

This analysis prompted a meeting of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), the China CDC researchers and the international team that analyzed the newly released raccoon dog data. China's failure to share the data back in 2020 is "simply inexcusable," Van Kerkhove wrote in her editorial.

"Still needed are studies that trace and test those animals to their source and serologic studies of the workers in live animal markets in Wuhan or in the source farms," Van Kerkhove wrote. "Without such investigations, we cannot fully understand the factors that led to the start of this pandemic."

"Every new piece of data could potentially move the world closer to stopping another pandemic — perhaps a worse one — in the future," she wrote.

https://www.livescience.com/china-must-share-data-on-covid-19s-origins-immediately-who-scientist-demands

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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) Also here

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Dr. Redfield’s Bombshell Testimony

Robert W Malone

Yesterday, we witnessed the ex-director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), under oath, directly blame Dr. Fauci and the U.S. government for the deaths of millions of people.

However, if you went to the headlines of Google News—there was nary a news story. I guess Google felt it wasn’t important enough to warrant above-the-fold status

The actual testimony of Redfield was explosive. Yet none of these headlines belie the gravity of Redfield’s testimony. Redfield directly linked gain-of-function research and the creation of SARS-CoV-WIV to Fauci, and to the U.S. government—including the Department of Defense (DOD). He absolutely believes and gives sworn testimony to the effect that Fauci and Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and soon be the chief scientist at the World Health Organization, covered up the lab leak information. Redfield himself was excluded from the meetings when the processes, strategy, and tactics for covering up the lab leak were developed.

This winter, we had a high-level federal employee on the farm. He/she came to me anonymously to express concerns about what had happened in the execution of this corrupt and failed public health response, and in particular to how the vaccines were developed and implemented. She/he discussed how all of the high-level meetings on the clinical trials, the safety of the vaccine, and the public health response, were all done under complete secrecy. Recorders were turned off, plus cell phones and computers were not allowed in the meetings. So there are literally NO RECORDS of these meetings.

This person believes that finding evidence of the malfeasance in the meeting minutes or recordings is going to be difficult. So when the New York Times headliner (above) cynically states that the Republicans lack a “smoking gun,” I believe they know damn well why. The New York Times reporting and editorial staff are many things, but they are not stupid.

But here is the thing, I do speak to people working on these issues in Congress. I have been told that the federal government has a large paper trail that documents the corruption over the past three years.

Written Statement of Dr Robert Redfield Before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. March 8, 2023

Chairman Wenstrup, Ranking Member Ruiz, and members of the Committee, my name is Dr. Robert Redfield. I am pleased to testify today in support of this subcommittee’s important work—to investigate the origin of the COVID-19 virus that resulted in the deaths of over one million Americans.

As I know this Committee is aware, from 2018-2021 I served as the 18th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Trump administration. As CDC Director, I oversaw the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the earliest days of its spread and served as a member of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force.

But perhaps more relevant to the purpose of this hearing, my 45 years in medicine has been focused on the study of viruses. I am a virologist by training and practice. Prior to my time at the CDC, I spent more than 20 years as a U.S. Army physician and medical researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research where I served as the Chief of the Department of Retroviral Research and worked in virology, immunology, and clinical research at the forefront of the AIDS epidemic and other viral threats. In 1996, I co-founded the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in partnership with the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, and the University System of Maryland where I served as the Director of Clinical Care and Research and also served as a tenured professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology; chief of infectious disease; and vice chair of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. After my time at CDC, I served as the senior public health advisor to Governor Hogan and the State of Maryland.

As COVID-19 began to spread across the world, there were two competing hypotheses about the virus’s origin that needed to be vigorously explored. The first hypothesis is the possibility that COVID-19 infections in humans were the result of a “spillover event” from nature. This is a situation in which a virus naturally mutates and becomes transmissible from one species to another—in this case, from bats to humans via an intermittent species. This is what happened in previous outbreaks of SARS and MERS, earlier coronaviruses that emerged from bats and spread through an intermediate animal. The second hypothesis is the possibility that the virus evolved in a lab involved in gain-of-function research. This is a type of research in 2 which scientists seek to increase the transmissibility and or pathogenicity of an organism in order to better understanding the organism and inform preparedness efforts and the development of countermeasures such as therapeutics and vaccines. Under this theory, COVID-19 infected the general population after it was accidentally leaked from a lab in China.

From the earliest days of the pandemic, my view was that both theories about the origin of COVID-19 needed to be aggressively and thoroughly examined. Based on my initial analysis of the data, I came to believe—and still believe today—that it indicates COVID-19 infections more likely were the result of an accidental lab leak than the result of a natural spillover event. This conclusion is based primarily on the biology of the virus itself, including its rapid high infectivity for human to human transmission which would then predict rapid evolution of new variants, as well as a number of other important factors to include the unusual actions in and around Wuhan in the fall of 2019, all of which I am happy to discuss today.

Even given the information that has surfaced in the three years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, some have contended that there is no point in investigating the origins of this virus. I strongly disagree. There is a global need to know what we are dealing with in the COVID-19 virus because it affects how we approach the problem to try and prevent the next pandemic.

Understanding the origins of COVID-19 is critical for the future of scientific research, particularly as it affects the ongoing ethical debate around the conduct of gain-of-function research. Gain-of-function has long been controversial within the scientific community, and, in my opinion, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a case study on the potential dangers of such research. While many believe that gain-of-function research is critical to get ahead of viruses by developing vaccines, in this case, I believe it had the exact opposite result, unleashing a new virus on the world without any means of stopping it and resulting in the deaths of millions of people. Because of this, it is my opinion that we should call for a moratorium on all gain-of-function research until we can have a broader debate and come to a consensus as a community about the value of gain-of-function research. This debate should not be limited to the scientific community. If the decision is to continue gain-of-function research then it must be determined how and where to conduct this research in a safe, responsible and effective way.

Thank you again for inviting me to be here today as we explore these important topics. I look forward to answering your questions.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/dr-redfields-bombshell-testimony_5112580.html

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Omicron BA.5 Overpowers China’s Vaccines in Study: After 3 Months Sinopharm Useless Against Transmission

Researchers affiliated with Chinese academic medical centers including the University of Hong Kong, Xinjiang Medical University, Capital Medical University and the Urumqi Center for Disease Control and Prevention led by Shi Zhao, Ph.D., and Yaoqin Lu, Ph.D. sought out to better understand the transmission characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5 variants and whether inactivated vaccines used in China associated with a protective outcome against the transmission of these COVID-19 variants.

Designing a cohort observational study involving 1139 participants with COVID-19, the authors report that despite significant levels of contact tracing, high vaccination rates and other intensive control measures employed in Mainland China, Omicron BA.5 variants represent a high risk for transmission in household settings across all age cohorts.

When comparing persons vaccinated with a 2-dose inactivated vaccine versus those with primary series and a booster dose, the latter is associated with a more protective outcome against Omicron BA.5 transmission. While Omicron BA.5 represents a highly transmissible pathogen, the combination of vaccine and nonpharmaceutical interventions may be linked to some reduced transmission.

But the takeaway was stark. After three months, the authors found the vaccines afford absolutely no protection against transmission. 90.7% of infected cases were asymptomatic, demonstrating how mild COVID-19 has actually become—at least, for purposes of this study in this city of over 4 million in China’s far northwest.

Published recently in JAMA Network, this study was conducted in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of China. BA.5 was in heavy circulation during the time of this study—an outbreak in the region from August 7 to September 7, 2022. The study occurred before China dropped its zero-tolerance policy. The investigators sought out to evaluate the transmission characteristics of this particular transmissible form of Omicron known as BA.5 as well as the overall effectiveness of the Chinese inactivated vaccines, centering on BBIBP-CorV (Sinopharm) against transmission of the virus.

The study

In this observational study known as a cohort study, the investigators embraced data from an Omicron-seeded COVID-19 outbreak in Urumqi during August 7 to September 7, 2022. Study participants had to have confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections along with their close contacts so that the team could compare a booster dose to 2 doses of inactivated vaccine along with identified risk factors.

The study design factored in a range of data from demographic characteristics and timeline records from exposure to laboratory testing outcomes to contact tracing history and contact setting. The study team used models to estimate mean and variance of key time-to-event intervals of transmission. Categorizing and analyzing various disease-control measures across a variety of contact settings, the study team analyzed transmission risks and contact patterns. Employing use of multivariate logistic regression models, Zhao, Lu and colleagues estimated the effectiveness of the Chinese inactivated vaccines with a prime focus on Sinopharm.

What were the findings?

The study included 1139 people diagnosed with COVID-19 as reported by the authors in JAMA Network. 630 (55.3%) of the total were females while the mean [SD] age, 37.4 [19.9] years) and 51?323 close contacts who tested negative for COVID-19 (26?299 females [51.2%]; mean [SD] age, 38.4 [16.0] years), the means of generation interval, viral shedding period, and incubation period were estimated at 2.8 days (95% credible interval [CrI], 2.4-3.5 days), 6.7 days (95% CrI, 6.4-7.1 days), and 5.7 days (95% CrI, 4.8-6.6 days), respectively.

Zhao, Lu and colleagues wrote in JAMA Network that rigorous contact tracking, intensive control measures and nearly universal vaccination (86% received ≥2 doses of vaccine) in this region 980 persons were recorded with infections. The authors report, “High transmission risks were found in household settings (secondary attack rate, 14.7%; 95% CrI, 13.0%-16.5%) and younger (aged 0-15 years; secondary attack rate, 2.5%; 95% CrI, 1.9%-3.1%) and older age (aged >65 years; secondary attack rate, 2.2%; 95% CrI, 1.5%-3.0%) groups.”

The authors report a vaccine effectiveness rate against Omicron BA.5 booster dose vs. two doses at 28.9% (95% CrI, 7.7%-45.2%) and 48.5% (95% CrI, 23.9%-61.4%) for 15-90 days after booster dose. A troubling report—“no protective outcome was detected beyond 90 days after the booster dose.” Thus, the inactivated vaccines used in China against COVID-19 are essentially worthless after three months.

While the booster provided some protection it wasn’t that robust, meaning that Omicron BA. 5 spread rapidly even among vaccinated persons in households. Past three months the vaccine afforded no protection against transmission.

Limitations

The study authors acknowledge a number of limitations.

Recall bias and underreporting during contact tracing may impact accuracy of identified transmission pairs, thus biasing the GI estimates

Vaccine effectiveness rates may not be generalizable to other vaccines, such as mRNA vaccines

7% of SARS-CoV-2 infections asymptomatic—this means that the findings may not be extendable to persons who are infected with severe COVID-19.

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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) Also here

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Is the cost of living leap caused by excessive government spending?

It is conventional economics to say it is. If a government prints a lot of new money to finance a big increase in their spending, it must devalue each individual dollar. There will be more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services so prices must go up to ration out the available goods and services. It's pretty simple logic.

But Leftists don't like that logic. They like to think that governments can spend as much as they like as long it is in a good cause. They just ignore the economics of the matter.

But a prominent Leftist economist has come to their rescue. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel prize winner and one of the many Jews who support Leftist causes.

I am referring to an academic article under the title "The Causes of and Responses to Today’s Inflation". It is here:

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/RI_CausesofandResponsestoTodaysInflation_Report_202212.pdf

In it, economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Ira Regmi argue that excessive government spending is NOT the cause of our current inflation. It is dated December 2022 so there should have been some critique of it by now but I can find none. So I thought I might note what I think is a basic problem with it.

For a start, nobody disputes that cost-push factors have had a significant role. Government lockdowns greatly disrupted supply chains and thus drove up shortage-driven prices. And the sanctions in response to Vladimir Putin's war were a further huge supply chain limitation.

But was that all that there was to it? Stiglitz & Co. say it was and they justify that by saying that consumption during the the recent inflationary period has not been high. They say: "Real personal consumption, even after recovering from the depths of the pandemic, was only slightly above trend and not commensurate with the level of inflation seen during the same time."

He is here using absolutes rather than relativities. The demand might have been subdued in absolute terms but that fails to take account of the already mentioned supply deficiencies and their price consequences. That demand remained at or a bit above previous levels DESPITE the higher prices and poor availability of some goods, shows that cost push pressures were not the only influence at work. We also have to look at people's RESPONSE to the cost push pressures. And when we do that we see that demand was in fact high in the circumstances. And what pressure kept that demand surprisingly high? Demand pull, that good old profligate government spending and its usual effect of creating high demand

Stiglitz tries to get government spending off the hook as a cause of inflation but we see that government spending did have an expansionary effect on demand if we look at demand in context.

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COVID-19 Vaccine Injured: Left Alone, in Often, Dire Declining Health, Mounting Debt & Absolutely No Help from Government

Most recently, KOMO News, a Seattle-based ABC Television affiliate owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest and most diversified broadcast companies in America, drills into this crisis, covering some of the devastating challenges faced by individuals identified as COVID-19 vaccine injured. From debilitating injuries to mounting debt and the specter of bankruptcy, the government offers no real help.

Introducing local case stories of patients injured in the Pacific Northwest region and beyond, Brooke Conrad with the National Desk reports that out of 12,000 COVID-19 vaccine-related injury or death-related claims with the U.S. government under its horribly broken Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), absolutely none have been compensated for as of March 1, 2023, while 23 have been deemed eligible for compensation but not paid. The reporter reminds the reader that 300 have been denied claims associated with the dysfunctional vaccine injury scheme used during the national public health emergency.

As TrialSite has reported since early in the pandemic, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) offers industry and the vaccine administration supply chain near universal immunity except for some extremely difficult-to-prove exceptions. It turns out, industry refused to develop vaccines unless elected officials years ago voted to include universal liability waivers.

So, despite the acceleration of novel mRNA and viral vector technology and the government’s absolute protection of industry, the only thing protecting consumers is the “deeply flawed” CICP, and the track record is awful. Conrad reports that from 2010 through 2021, the program only compensated 6% of all non-COVID-related claims, or 29 out of 491 claims totaling $6 million in payouts. Most of the claims involved the H1N1 vaccine.

Summarizing the program’s impact is Renee Gentry, Director of the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at George Washington University Law School:

“The countermeasures program is basically a black hole. It’s your right to file and lose. I don't think it was ever anticipated to handle the number of vaccinations that have happened under COVID.”

Select COVID-19 vaccine injured stories

The recent piece from the mainstream media introduces a handful of COVID-19 vaccine injury stories such as Steve Wenger, who eventually became paralyzed from the waist down for a time from the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Mr. Wenger now finds himself deep in a financial hole due to the circumstances. Only very expensive IVIg infusions twice per month plus Rituximab every six months has helped.

Another person injured by the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was introduced--Michelle Zimmerman. Vaccinated in March 2021, Zimmerman experienced severe pain shooting down her arm just five minutes after the jab. Her tongue and throat swelled up for about 20 minutes leading to a “harrowing cascade of other adverse events.” This COVID-19 vaccine-injured patient was ultimately diagnosed with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (brain damage triggered by lack of oxygen or blood flow).

Facing mounting financial losses, over $400,000 as insurance repeatedly declined to cover many of her clinic visits, a combination of lost wages have led her parents, who were supposed to retire, to continue working to support their daughter. While Zimmerman filed a CICP compensation case in October 2021, she wasn’t assigned a case number until January 2023, when she received ongoing conflicting messages from CICP.

TrialSite has supported COVID-19 vaccine-injured group React19, the largest COVID-19 patient advocacy group in the United States if not the world. With over 20,000 identified members, Chris Dreisbach heads up the organization’s lead affairs department.

Himself injured by the Pfizer vaccine in March 2021, he since then struggled with a diagnosis including chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuritis which has led to involuntary muscle spasms, modified gait, back pain and a headache disorder called occipital neuralgia not to mention brain fog and electrical pulses from head to toe.

The React19 legal counsel went on the record with Ms. Conrad: “Without having their experts’ fees paid, the COVID vaccine-injured hands are absolutely tied behind their backs.” He concluded, “These cases often come down to the battle of the experts.”

On the prospect of CICP and its standard of proof to secure vaccine injury award—difficult to say the least, what with so much research still left essentially leading to that conflict among the experts. But the highly funded certainly have the advantage.

In another case covered by Conrad, just 30 minutes after Cody Flint received his Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, the pilot experienced debilitating pain in the form of a “severe, stabbing headache.” Just two days later, Flint, who flies crop dusting missions, nearly blacked out in the air! He underwent two ear surgeries, and his physician has gone on the record that the injuries are likely linked to the COVID-19 vaccine. With no insurance at the time, Flint faces a mountain of debt.

Devoid of humanity

Flint’s claim was ultimately denied. Along the way, he provided testimony—at the year mark awaiting determination from CICP. His case was discussed during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-MISS directly addressed the matter with Biden administration Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, asking:

“Can you tell me what you’re going to do to address the thousands of claims currently in the backlog at HHS, and what you are doing to improve the transparency of the CICP process so that Americans like Mr. Flint are properly compensated in a reasonable time period?”

The response speaks for itself, as Becerra switched the topic, avoiding the issue at hand, declaring lots of Americans suffer from long COVID, and that fraudsters are misappropriating money designated for COVID-19 purposes. The Biden HHS head expressed absolutely no empathy, no real humanity—just a bureaucrat protecting the program despite the reality of his agency’s mission statement:

“The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health and social services.”

Targeted transition

As reported by KOMO News a movement grows to push for the COVID-19 vaccines to be transferred from CICP to the primary vaccine injury program known as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program or “VICP.” Operating via a court process rather than an administrative one, VICP covers much of the routine scheduled vaccines reports Conrad. While compensation claim success is certainly higher than CICP, critics lament that VICP is a horribly broken system as well.

But with no real options COVID-19 vaccine injured advocates push on that something is better than nothing. For example, from 2006 to 2021, Conrad states that the program compensated almost three-quarters of all adjudicated petitions (7,418 out of 10,342) paying out about $4.9 billion since the program onset in 1988.

The largest COVID-19 vaccine injured organization network, React19 provides a breakdown comparison of the two programs.

KOMO News reports three “hurdles” faced by advocates that seek to transfer the COVID-19 vaccine injured from CICP to VICP, including 1) vaccine placed on routine CDC recommended schedule (this has been cleared), 2) Congress must pass an excise tax to fund the compensation program and 3) the standing Secretary of Health and Human Services needs to add the COVID-19 vaccines to the Vaccine Injury Table, delineating both injuries and conditions associated with the vaccines.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/covid-19-vaccine-injured-left-alone-in-often-dire-declining-health-mounting-debt-absolutely-no-help-from-government-9bc2bc78

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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) Also here

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Risk Factors Associated With Post−COVID-19 Condition: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Vasiliki Tsampasian, et al.

Yikes! Big study in a major medical journal shows that vaccination gave you virtually no protection against long Covid: Tiny OR of 0.57

Abstract

Importance Post−COVID-19 condition (PCC) is a complex heterogeneous disorder that has affected the lives of millions of people globally. Identification of potential risk factors to better understand who is at risk of developing PCC is important because it would allow for early and appropriate clinical support.

Objective To evaluate the demographic characteristics and comorbidities that have been found to be associated with an increased risk of developing PCC.

Data sources Medline and Embase databases were systematically searched from inception to December 5, 2022.

Study Selection The meta-analysis included all published studies that investigated the risk factors and/or predictors of PCC in adult (≥18 years) patients.

Data Extraction and Synthesis Odds ratios (ORs) for each risk factor were pooled from the selected studies. For each potential risk factor, the random-effects model was used to compare the risk of developing PCC between individuals with and without the risk factor. Data analyses were performed from December 5, 2022, to February 10, 2023.

Main Outcomes and Measures The risk factors for PCC included patient age; sex; body mass index, calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared; smoking status; comorbidities, including anxiety and/or depression, asthma, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, immunosuppression, and ischemic heart disease; previous hospitalization or ICU (intensive care unit) admission with COVID-19; and previous vaccination against COVID-19.

Results The initial search yielded 5334 records of which 255 articles underwent full-text evaluation, which identified 41 articles and a total of 860 783 patients that were included. The findings of the meta-analysis showed that female sex (OR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.41-1.73), age (OR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.11-1.33), high BMI (OR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.08-1.23), and smoking (OR, 1.10; 95% CI, 1.07-1.13) were associated with an increased risk of developing PCC. In addition, the presence of comorbidities and previous hospitalization or ICU admission were found to be associated with high risk of PCC (OR, 2.48; 95% CI, 1.97-3.13 and OR, 2.37; 95% CI, 2.18-2.56, respectively). Patients who had been vaccinated against COVID-19 with 2 doses had a significantly lower risk of developing PCC compared with patients who were not vaccinated (OR, 0.57; 95% CI, 0.43-0.76).

Conclusions and Relevance This systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrated that certain demographic characteristics (eg, age and sex), comorbidities, and severe COVID-19 were associated with an increased risk of PCC, whereas vaccination had a protective role against developing PCC sequelae. These findings may enable a better understanding of who may develop PCC and provide additional evidence for the benefits of vaccination.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2802877

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Does NIH’s RECOVER Trial Planning (long COVID) Deviate from Emerging Science?

While the community of long COVID patients were supportive of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) initiative with an aim of finding effective treatments for the condition, patient communities have been actively challenging the NIH on approach.

With a recent petition from an organization Long COVID Justice and multiple letters sent by Santa Monica, CA-based #MEAction USA, long COVID patient advocates are concerned about the extensive levels of exercise trials involved in the program, a problematic issue given emerging scientific evidence suggesting a large percentage of the long COVID cohort struggles with “post-exertional malaise” (PEM). Long COVID patient advocates are rightly concerned. Involving a worsening of symptoms from fatigue to difficulty regulating body temperature and cognitive dysfunction after even a light exercise session, the long COVID patient advocacy groups point out a significant delta between the reality of this common condition associated with long COVID and imminent NIH study protocols that introduce the potential for outright danger to the participants at least in some cases.

In reality, the critics are pointing out the possibly detached nature of clinical research planning at the NIH and academic medical center partners—a delta between the academic researchers’ assumptions and the real-world conditions, needs and demands on the ground.

What is the RECOVER initiative?

As TrialSite has chronicled, the RECOVER initiative was announced by the NIH in early 2021. The program was made possible by a Congressional injection of $1.15 billion for over four years to the NIH to support research into the prolonged health consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection, announced the NIH’s director at the time.

The NIH organized a team of mostly academic-based researchers to identify the most pressing research questions plus areas of what they deemed greatest opportunity to address what the NIH identifies as an emerging public health propriety.

The research first started with the “NIH PASC Initiative” in a bid to learn more about how COVID-19 may lead to widespread and lasting symptoms in addition to developing ways to treat or even prevent such symptoms.

Out of the total funding from U.S. Congress, $172 million has been allocated to conduct clinical trials at Duke Clinical Research Institute. The NIH wasn’t forthright with the journal Nature as to how much of those funds would be used to fund exercise trials.

A real problem

Fast forward a couple of years, and the problems have only worsened. Recently, Rachel Fairbank addressed this matter in a recent entry in the journal Nature. Introducing that up to 23 million people in America alone struggle in one way or another with long COVID, TrialSite has chronicled that across multiple populations the rate appears to range from 10% to as high as 30% during different periods of the pandemic. According to one report associated with an analysis of long COVID workers’ compensation claims in the State of New York between January 1, 2022 and March 31, 2022, 18% of persons with long COVID have yet to return to work over a year after recovering from COVID-19.

What’s the issue?

At least some of the long COVID clinical trial protocols developed by the NIH as part of RECOVER involve extensive exercise as part of the study. Yet given the incidence of PEM, patient advocates have heightened concern that long COVID trial participants won’t be appropriately informed about possible risks, nor will the participants be properly screened for PEM nor will the monitoring be adequately directed to monitor patients for the harm that too much exercise can introduce.

Succinctly summarizing the issue, Lisa McCorkell, a co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative for long COVID, a Washington D.C.-based research and advocacy group calls the whole problem out:

“In a world where there’s hundreds of things to trial, why are we choosing this one thing that we know has the potential to cause harm to a substantial portion of patients?”

What’s RECOVER’s response?

According to the recent piece in Nature, Duke Clinical Research Institute serves as the RECOVER Clinical Trials Data Coordinating Center, sending a statement to Nature on behalf of the NIH declaring, “Trials being planned for RECOVER — which stands for Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery — have not yet launched and that the agency is working with patient representatives in shaping the exercise trial protocol.”

Interestingly, while the communication assured the journalist that the study investigators are in fact, meeting with the long COVID patient representatives to discuss the matters raised in the letters and petition, the NIH failed to make any such representatives available to the prominent publication for an interview in time for the published entry. The full protocols for RECOVER research studies haven’t been reviewed by an institutional review board meaning no research has commenced. Only after that point will the NIH share the protocol which is strange—this is a publicly funded research affair. Why the secrecy?

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/does-nihs-recover-trial-planning-long-covid-deviate-from-emerging-science-d5340240

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W.H.O. Do You Trust?

By SCOTT W. ATLAS

Trust in public health has been shattered—half of America has lost faith in the scientific community altogether. Apparently blind to that loss of trust and the urgent need for transparency, our current government is doubling down on World Health Organization (WHO) decrees that directly circumvent public oversight.

The WHO has drafted a new global Pandemic Accord. Before seeing anything final in what will be legally binding, the U.S. ambassador to the WHO, Pamela Hamamoto, on February 27 imprudently promised “The United States is committed to the Pandemic Accord.”

This comes immediately after the exposure of yet another disgrace undermining trust in public health institutions. It turned out the February 2020 Lancet article calling the lab origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus a “conspiracy theory” was itself the true conspiracy, contrived behind closed doors contemporaneously with a March 2020 publication in Nature. If that coordinated media campaign was designed to conceal malfeasance by Drs. Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci—who, as leaders of America’s National Institutes of Health, reportedly sent American tax dollars to fund China’s dangerous gain-of-function research and circumvent Obama administration-introduced restrictions—we may be witnessing the deadliest cover-up scandal in history.

News media are also beginning to acknowledge facts that refute the original reasons behind lockdowns. Those facts shouldn’t be partisan. Both the Trump and Biden administrations rejected the science—D.A. Henderson’s classic 2006 review of pandemic data clearly demonstrated lockdowns were not effective, and were extremely harmful. Both administrations rejected the alternative—targeted protection—that had been recommended since March 2020. And the lockdowns failed to stop the death (see evidence presented by Christian Bjornskov, Eran Bendavid, Virat Agrawal, Jonas Herby, and Phil Kerpen).

Truth seems to be prevailing, but being proven right is not sufficient. We have a crisis of trust that threatens the credibility of all future health guidance.

Americans should be concerned that the latest WHO agreement-in-progress is not classified as a treaty. America’s treaties require congressional approval. That’s key to a representative government—the public gets input into how they are governed. But executive-signed “accords” circumvent the authority of the people. After all the public has endured in this pandemic at the hands of government, is there any doubt that health emergency powers must have full, public vetting?

Despite protestations to the contrary, all signers of the Pandemic Accord clearly relinquish critical autonomy to the WHO. Most ominous is that WHO defines “public health emergency” on its own terms—giving it full leeway to determine the fundamental justification for public restrictions. We already know there is ambiguity within the U.S. on that definition. When you’re going to invoke emergency measures, there must be clarity on the terms and time limits of the emergency. Why should any sovereign nation allow a third party to legally define and impose such a critical state?

WHO’s accord also explicitly claims oversight over intellectual property, including patent limits and drug prices. And far beyond the purview of a pandemic agreement, it imposes WHO’s preferred social policies, enforceable by law. For instance, the nebulous term “equity” appears 10 times in the accord, as it does in WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ January report on health emergencies. Isn’t that the responsibility of autonomous nations, rather than global organizations, to determine for themselves?

Just as the truth about COVID-19 is prevailing, are we going to simply ignore the WHO’s record? The WHO has had major successes in its 75-year history, including the eradication of smallpox, but a series of missteps in emergencies prior to COVID cannot be disregarded—its overreaction and lack of transparency in the 2009-10 H1N1 flu pandemic, its delayed response to the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa, and its flawed response to the Zika virus, for example.

What about the COVID-19 pandemic? Tedros began the pandemic by backing China’s early cover-up. On January 28, 2020, he said, “we appreciate the seriousness with which China is taking this outbreak, especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated”—despite China’s broadly reported efforts to block information access and punish those who disobeyed. Tedros further proclaimed, two days later, that “the speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome, and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, and beyond words. So is China’s commitment to transparency.” He also backed China‘s false claim that COVID exhibited no human-to-human transmission. And, of course, he failed to strongly protest China’s consistent stonewalling a full lab inspection.

Beyond supporting China’s false narratives, WHO disregarded evidence for guidelines on mitigation, censored its own staff for acknowledging the limits of asymptomatic spread, and erratically changed fundamental definitions like “herd immunity” to influence behavior.

In his most alarming failure of all, Tedros backed China’s reckless lockdowns and massive human rights violations, stating “the Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak” as Beijing used pseudoscience to justify imprisoning its citizens. Tedros insisted that “WHO continues to have confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak” until May 2022, more than two years too late. How would one explain that praise, given the director-general’s explicit warning in March 2020 that he had “never before seen a pandemic that can be controlled?” We must hope Tedros was incorrect when he said “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”

Allocating authority to the WHO requires being naïve about its financial backing. More than 80 percent of its $6.1 billion 2022-2023 budget comes via voluntary donations often earmarked for specific initiatives. For instance, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alone is responsible for over 88 percent of the philanthropic donations to the WHO—that may or may not be in the best interest of any nation’s citizens, especially considering the outsized legal authority of WHO agreements.

The WHO does not deserve public trust, yet Americans are about to be newly bound by its decrees. At what point are transparency and accountability to the people required of America’s leaders? Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) have appropriately introduced a bill to reclassify the Pandemic Accord as a treaty. Now is the time to demand WHO reform and ensure stricter oversight, not to further relinquish authority to such an untrustworthy institution.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14465&omhide=true&trk=rm

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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) Also here

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Have we militarised medicine?

Julie Sladden

‘In the absence of information, we make up stories.’ These words remind me we need truthful, unhindered, and accurate information to build understanding. The way to get information is to ask questions. And the way to get good information is to ask good questions.

Plenty of questions have been raised over the past three years, even with all the censorship. But things have taken off in recent weeks with ‘corker’ questions being asked in the US Government, the UK Parliament, and even our Australian Senate.

It’s made for some popcorn-worthy viewing.

Questions… Over the Covid era I’ve had plenty of them. Some answered, but most are not.

Questions like:

Why did our governments propagate so much fear during the pandemic?

Why wasn’t there any effort dedicated to exploring early treatment options?

Why were possible early treatment therapeutics banned from use in Australia despite widespread use overseas?

Why did AHPRA feel the need to tell medical professionals to effectively ‘fall in line’ with the vaccine rollout?

Why were healthy populations forced to vaccinate, or lose their jobs, access to education, or essential services?

Why does the provisional approval of the Covid so-called ‘vaccines’ continue despite data clearly showing alarming rates of significant adverse events? Rates that have seen previous vaccines suspended.

Why?!!!

Thankfully, I’m not the only one asking questions.

Renowned US cardiologist, Dr Peter McCullough, has been asking questions and has not stopped since the pandemic began. For the past three years McCullough, and doctors like him, have dedicated their lives to researching, treating and ultimately saving the lives of Covid patients around the globe.

I had the opportunity to ask Dr McCullough a few of my questions on his recent visit to Australia. He started with an interesting comparison between Australia and Texas.

‘Texas has 29 million people, Australia, 26 million people. Texas has great cities, like Australia has great cities. It’s the same virus, we’re largely the same people… Texas and Australia would be a fair comparison.

‘Our hospital made its own decisions about the closure of operating rooms and catheterisation laboratories and when to reopen them. Quickly, in Texas, many different doctors and clinics began to learn how to treat the illness. And that took a lot of anxiety away from people and they felt like there was a way in which the problem could be managed and avoid hospitalisation and death. That was really the critical feature.’

He added:

‘Texas was not perfect. We certainly had hospitalisations and deaths. But we had strong advocates. We had a senator, from the very beginning, who reached out to many of us – Senator Bob Hall. And he said: “I want to know what’s going on. I want to have town halls. I want the doctors to get on calls and tell me what’s going on in your ERs in your health systems. Are you learning how to treat it? Are there innovations?”’

In Australia, it was a different story. The ‘top-down’ flow of information involved very little consultation from coal-face doctors who were faced with managing the disease. As Australian doctors watched the pandemic unfold around the world, we had the advantage of learning from doctors abroad who were gaining extensive experience in early treatment. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Watching McCullough testify to the Texas Senate Committee in late 2020, his frustration at the lack of focus on treatments for patients with Covid was clear. Undeterred he, and others like him ,including Dr Pierre Kory who joined McCullough on his visit to Australia, have been instrumental in providing information to the world about how to treat the infection. Their protocols included drugs like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and repurposed drugs known for their pharmaceutical abilities to address various stages of the disease.

Meanwhile, Australia banned hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of Covid on March 2020. March! Ivermectin followed later in September 2021, curiously around the time many mandates came into effect as people were funnelled down the ‘vaccine or bust’ route.

Why?!!!

‘I have the same question,’ mused McCullough, who says hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are currently used as first-line treatment in two dozen countries around the world.

I asked McCullough what his thoughts were on the role of medical boards and medical regulation.

‘You’re referring to AHPRA,’ McCullough deduces. ‘The role of that body, in my view, is clinical competence. And then, being sure that the doctor or the professional is free of major behavioural issues, drug abuse, etc. That’s their role. That is the role. Prior to Covid, they had no special stake in any disease… The aberration was Covid. And we saw, both in the United States and Australia, these bodies take a particular interest in Covid. That they were going to determine what can be said and what couldn’t be said they weren’t going to determine what drugs could be used and not used. This is the first time in medicine that these bodies took on this very unusual aberrant behaviour.’

Aberrant is one word for it.

We explored the other ‘aberrant’ behaviours of the pandemic response along with The Spectator Australia’s Alexandra Marshall and historian John Leake. Leake co-authored Courage to face Covid-19 with McCullough. Soon we arrived at one of my biggest ‘why’ questions: why had we been funnelled down a ‘vaccine or bust’ path?

One word: countermeasures.

Countermeasures are devices and strategies used to eliminate an attack by an enemy force.

I first heard this term back in December 2022 thanks to the work of Katherine Watt and Sasha Latypova, who researched the legislative framework that enabled the ‘warp speed’ response to the virus. A framework that had its foundations laid decades ago. Indeed, it’s the only explanation I’ve heard that helps make sense of the ‘aberrant’ behaviours we’ve witnessed over the past 3 years.

‘The military has biological threat programs. There’s one for smallpox, monkeypox, there’s one for anthrax,’ explains McCullough in a recent presentation. ‘The military came up with the idea of messenger RNA vaccines, not Pfizer or Moderna, and NOT operation warp speed.’

Turns out the military has been playing with mRNA vaccines for over a decade. And the combination of three legislative items – Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA), Other Transaction Authority (OTA), and the PREP Act – enabled what many suspect could be the origins of the first worldwide military operation in medicine. The EUA gets rid of the FDA ‘safety and efficacy’ regulations under EUA so the FDA has no oversight; the OTA enables the Department of Defence to order undisclosed ‘military prototypes’ from pharma; and the PREP Act, which enables the plan to be rolled out.

‘A military program was announced by Health and Human Services … and the Department of Defence, who ushered us into this vaccine era,’ continues McCullough. ‘The military emergency use authorisation is a mechanism to get rapid new technology into the military. It’s not a mechanism for the public. Its first application broadly to the public was the Covid pandemic. That’s the reason why the FDA doesn’t seem like they have any ownership over this. They can’t seem to respond to it. Because it’s a military program. This has a military origin to it. And the program is executed like a military program. No one will be spared. There are no exceptions.’

Think about it. If a virus emerged (from a US-funded lab, no less) and was interpreted as an act of ‘bioterrorism,’ what would a response to that look like?

Would it look like a single-minded, fear-fuelled, authoritarian-style military operation to get every man, woman and child ‘countermeasured’?

It might just look like that.

I have more questions.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/have-we-militarised-medicine/

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COVID-19 Vaccine Developed in Spain Authorized by European Medicines Agency

Yet another COVID-19 vaccine was recently authorized in Europe. This time, a COVID-19 vaccine developed in Spain and plagued by delays has been recommended for authorization by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Bimervax (previously COVID-19 Vaccine HIPRA). It is now authorized in Europe as a booster in people aged 16 years and above who have been vaccinated with an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

Developed by HIPRA Human Health S.L.U., Bimervax contains a protein produced in the laboratory that consists of part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from the Alpha and Beta virus variants.

The CHMP concluded that sufficiently robust data on the quality, safety and immunogenicity of the vaccine are now available to recommend its marketing authorization in the EU.

What’s the basis for the decision?

Bimervax is approved based on an immunobridging trial, which compared the immune response triggered by this new vaccine with that triggered by the authorized mRNA vaccine Comirnaty that targets the original (Wuhan) SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

The study involved 765 adults who had previously completed primary vaccination with 2 doses of Comirnaty and who were subsequently given a booster dose of either Bimervax or Comirnaty. Although Bimervax triggered the production of lower levels of antibodies against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 than Comirnaty, it led to higher levels of antibodies against the Beta and Omicron variants and comparable levels against the Delta variant.

Supportive data were provided from an ongoing study that included 36 adolescents aged 16 to 17 years old, with immune response data available for 11 of them. The study found that Bimervax given as a booster produced an adequate immune response in these adolescents, with antibody production comparable to that seen in adults who received Bimervax.

The CHMP, therefore, concluded that a booster dose of Bimervax is expected to be at least as effective as Comirnaty at restoring protection against COVID-19 in people aged 16 years and older.

What about the safety profile?

The safety profile of Bimervax is comparable to that of other COVID-19 vaccines. The most common side effects seen with Bimervax were pain at the injection site, headache, tiredness and muscle pain. These were usually mild to moderate and cleared within a few of days after vaccination.

The safety and effectiveness of the vaccine will continue to be monitored as it is used across the EU, through the EU pharmacovigilance system and additional studies by the company and European authorities.

Final risk-benefit analyses

Based on the available evidence, the CHMP concluded that the benefits of Bimervax outweigh its risks and recommended granting a standard marketing authorization in the EU. See the product information for the vaccine product plus a package leaflet for members of the public and details of the vaccine’s authorization.

How Bimervax works

Bimervax works by preparing the body to defend itself against COVID-19. It contains part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein from the Alpha and Beta virus variants, which have been combined into a single protein in the laboratory. The spike protein is found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and is used by the virus to enter the body’s cells. The vaccine also contains an ‘adjuvant’, a substance to help strengthen the immune responses to the vaccine.

When a person is given the vaccine, their immune system will identify the combined protein in the vaccine as foreign and produce natural defenses — antibodies and T cells — against it. If, later on, the vaccinated person comes into contact with SARS-CoV-2, the immune system will recognize the spike protein on the virus and be prepared to attack it. The antibodies and immune cells can protect against COVID-19 by working together to kill the virus, prevent its entry into the body’s cells and destroy infected cells.

A booster injection of Bimervax is given into the muscle, usually of the upper arm, at least 6 months after the last dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

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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) Also here

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

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

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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