Sunday, July 23, 2023
Study Shows Breast Milk Conferred Immunity to Infants Against Covid-19
Previous studies have indicated that breast milk of women who’ve been vaccinated against Covid -19 can transfer immunity to their infants. “The data suggests a likely positive impact as measured by antibodies which are imputed to imply protection against COVID-19.” There is some disagreement on the long term effects of a vaccinated mother breast feeding her infant. “Post-marketing studies have shown that mRNA passes into breast milk and could have adverse effects on breast-fed babies. Long-term expression, integration into the genome, transmission to the germline, passage into sperm, embryo/fetal and perinatal toxicity, genotoxicity and tumorigenicity should be studied in light of the adverse events reported in pharmacovigilance databases.” Now, a recent study confirms breast milk conferred immunity to infants against Covid-19.
The study
A multi-national peer reviewed study published in Cureus found that “the abundance of immunoprotective characteristics found in breast milk, coupled with the lower incidence and severity of infections in breastfed children, suggests that breastfeeding may play an important role in protecting infants from COVID-19.
The presence of antibodies, particularly IgA, in breast milk, can provide passive and active immunity to the infant, thereby aiding in the prevention of respiratory diseases.
Recent findings indicate that breast milk from mothers who have been vaccinated or recovered from a SARS-CoV-2 infection contains maternal antibodies against the virus, offering acquired protection for the newborn and a low risk of infection. Although rare instances of detecting SARS-CoV-2 RNA in breast milk samples have been reported, the virus has not been successfully cultured from these samples, suggesting a minimal risk of transmission to breastfed babies.
Nevertheless, additional research is required to comprehensively understand the extent of protection provided by breast milk against COVID-19 and the potential impact of different stages of lactation.
Large-scale cohorts are needed to investigate the timing of viral shedding in milk and the neutralizing capacity of transmitted antibodies to draw appropriate conclusions on breastfeeding-acquired immunity against COVID-19. However, based on the current evidence, breastfeeding is considered safe and beneficial for both newborns and mothers during the ongoing pandemic. Promoting breastfeeding, along with appropriate safety measures, can contribute to the overall health and well-being of infants in the face of COVID-19.”
Method
The study team employed systematic review of multiple studies, seeking to better understand the scientific evidence involving breast milk and immunity against COVID-19.
The team conducted a systematic review of 55 articles published over the past 27 years, tapping into PubMed and Science Direct.
Breast milk
The study emphasizes that human breast milk is an important factor in a newborn’s development. “Although the newborn's immune system is exposed to the mother's microbial flora during pregnancy, the infant's microbial environment undergoes abrupt changes during and after birth, making the infant highly vulnerable to illnesses. The components of breast milk assist newborns in developing immunocompetence and provide active and passive immunity. With the rapid evolution of pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 and the infant's immature immune system, infants rely on defense factors from their mothers. Immune transfer is achieved through the transplacental transport of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies during the fetal period and the transport of immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies through breast milk after birth.”
The study concludes by saying human breast milk is renowned for its qualities in providing infant nutrition and provides a wide range of antimicrobial components, including virus-neutralizing antibodies which offer numerous health benefits to protect a newborn. Regarding Covid-19, the researchers point out more study is needed but breast feeding is a necessity for the health and wellbeing of a newborn even during the Covid pandemic.
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Australia: Many censored social media posts did not contain Covid-19 misinformation
Many of 4000 social media posts secretly censored by government during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic contained factual information and reasonable arguments rather than misinformation, new documents reveal.
Digital posts released after Freedom of Information applications show the censored information shared facts such as the ineffectiveness of vaccines in preventing Covid-19 infection and transmission or argued against measures such as mask mandates and lockdowns.
For instance, the then Coalition government sought the removal of an Instagram post in April 2021 that claimed “Covid-19 vaccine does not prevent Covid-19 infection or Covid-19 transmission”.
That statement clearly was accurate yet the official intervention via the Home Affairs Department claimed it breached Instagram’s community guidelines because it was “potentially harmful information” that was “explicitly prohibited” by the platform.
A large proportion of posts the government targeted for removal by the digital platforms promoted wild conspiracy theories and misinformation but many others simply questioned the effectiveness of lockdowns and masks, shared information now accepted as accurate, and urged people to protest against pandemic measures.
An April 2021 tweet was challenged because it claimed “Covid-19 was released or escaped from Wuhan laboratory in China and that it was funded by the US government”.
The Home Affairs Department claimed this was “explicitly prohibited” under Twitter’s rules because it might “invoke a deliberate conspiracy by malicious and/or powerful forces”, yet American intelligence agencies have found the most likely source of the virus was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it has been revealed that some work at the laboratory was funded by the US.
Over three years up until last month, the federal government paid World Services Australia, an arm of London-based global communications firm M&C Saatchi, more than $1m to monitor Covid-19 posts online and alert it to controversial material.
The Weekend Australian previously revealed how the federal government, under the Coalition and later Labor, intervened more than 4000 times seeking the removal of social media posts by digital giants such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, using the companies own community standards as the trigger.
The information came to light as a result of FOI applications by Liberal senator Alex Antic.
Questions on notice from Senator Antic have now produced details of these interventions, revealing extensive efforts to suppress even factual information.
Senator Antic said this had confirmed his worst fears. “During the Covid period, Home Affairs actively sought censorship of true statements such as ‘lockdowns are ineffective’ and compelled social media companies to penalise dissent from the government’s position,” Senator Antic said.
“This is gravely concerning for all Australians who care about freedom of speech.”
One Facebook video post in January 2021 was targeted for removal because it encouraged “civil disobedience”.
It depicted a “recognised misinformation influencer” in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens “blatantly walking up to signs that ask people to maintain physical distancing and hiding them from view”.
Many other social media posts were censored for opposing mask mandates and questioning the effectiveness of lockdowns and vaccines.
This was censorship on an industrial scale, with the private contractor tasked to trawl through social media posts 24/7.
Senator Antic said the revelations were “gravely concerning” to all Australians who cared about freedom of speech.
He said this amounted to a “censorship industrial complex” and raised fears about this type of intervention being expanded under the proposed Misinformation Bill that would allow for the issuing of multimillion-dollar fines against platforms found to be hosting “misinformation or disinformation”.
“It’s never been more imperative that we protect freedom of speech in Australia and reject this bill,” Senator Antic said.
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Left Demands Boycott of In-N-Out Burgers Over Mask Policies
Conservatives successfully boycotted Bud Light, due to the organization’s explicit political goal. However, it now appears the left has discovered an alternative boycott objective after becoming enraged with In-N-Out Burger.
By informing staff that the coronavirus crisis has ended, meaning there is hardly a need for masks in work environments, the fast food behemoth has drawn the wrath of the left.
Really, why couldn’t the gigantic burger chain do this? There is no serious evidence that proves masking prevents the transmission of COVID. Masks simply don’t work as they should.
Left-wing Dr. Lucky Tran became so enraged that he began a lengthy Twitter stream in which he bemoaned the burger chain and exhorted his fellow leftists to engage in online harassment of the business.
Tran, a mask fanatic who refers to himself as “a global scientist,” was upset after a judge in the state of California decided that staff members are unable to sue their employer if they contract COVID-19 while at their jobs.
Then, Tran wrote that this week, In-N-Out prohibited its workers from using masks. This is awful, he complained. On top of that, the doctor began displaying links to the burger joint’s comments area.
Other Democrats picked up the onslaught against In-N-Out. Babs, a Twitter user, encouraged leftists to contact the hotline number of the business and voice their complaints.
Liberals were encouraged to “BE LOUD” in their criticism of In-N-Out for its masking practice by another strident leftist.
“On this, we must fight back. We must voice our disapproval LOUDLY! Email and phone In-n-out! Instruct them that this is not appropriate.”
“Organizations and policymakers should voice their opinions. Businesses can’t ban masks while endangering the lives and health of their employees,” she stated.
Boycotts Demanded
Additionally, “oh dear”, a user of Twitter demanded a boycott against the fast food restaurant.
https://thedailybeat.org/left-demands-boycott-of-in-n-out-burgers-over-mask-policies/ ?
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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, July 21, 2023
US Military Confirms Myocarditis Spike After COVID Vaccine
Cases of myocarditis soared among U.S. service members in 2021 after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, a top Pentagon official has confirmed.
There were 275 cases of myocarditis in 2021—a 151 percent spike from the annual average from 2016 to 2020, according to Gilbert Cisneros Jr., undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, who confirmed data revealed by a whistleblower earlier this year.
The COVID-19 vaccines can cause myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that can lead to mortality, including sudden death. COVID-19 also can cause myocarditis.
The diagnosis data comes from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database.
Mr. Cisneros provided the rate of cases per 100,000 person-years, a way to measure risk across a certain period of time. In 2021, the rate was 69.8 among those with prior infection, compared to 21.7 among members who had been vaccinated.
“This suggests that it was more likely to be [COVID-19] infection and not COVID-19 vaccination that was the cause,” Mr. Cisneros said.
No figures were given for members who had been vaccinated but were also infected. The total rate, 20.6, also indicates that some members weren’t included in the subgroup analysis.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has been investigating problems with the database, questioned how the military came up with the figures.
“It is unclear whether or how it accounted for service members who had a prior COVID-19 infection and received a COVID-19 vaccination,” Mr. Johnson wrote to Mr. Cisneros.
Department of Defense (DOD) officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Johnson asked for the information no later than Aug. 2.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist and president of the McCullough Foundation, looked at the newly disclosed data.
“The large increase in myocarditis cases in our military in 2021 was most likely due to ill-advised COVID-19 vaccination,” he told The Epoch Times via email, pointing to a study from Israel that found no increase or myocarditis in COVID-19 patients.
Some other papers have found COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis. COVID-19 has been linked elsewhere to myocarditis, although the vaccines have never prevented infection and have become increasingly ineffective against it.
The military encouraged COVID-19 vaccination after U.S. regulators cleared the vaccines for use in late 2020. Military officials were among the first in the world to raise concerns about myocarditis after vaccination and published an early case series of 22 previously healthy members who suffered myocarditis within four days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. U.S. officials have since said the vaccines definitely cause myocarditis.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated the vaccines in 2021, a requirement that remained in place until Congress forced its withdrawal.
Military officials have struggled to provide accurate data on 2021 diagnoses.
Whistleblowers revealed in 2021 that myocarditis, as reflected in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), had soared to 2,868 percent higher than the average from 2016 to 2020. They downloaded the data in August 2021.
The number of 2021 myocarditis diagnoses, though, had plummeted from 1,239 to 263 when the data was downloaded later, prompting concerns of manipulation.
Military officials said they reviewed the data and found it was “faulty.” They said the data for the years 2016 to 2020 were “corrupted” during a “database maintenance process,” which resulted in the display of only 10 percent of the actual medical encounters for that time period.
Officials told Mr. Johnson in 2022 that the problem had been fixed. The fix significantly changed the records. Instead of a 2,181 percent increase in hypertension in 2021, for instance, the increase was just 1.9 percent. Female infertility, instead of increasing 472 percent, increased 13.2 percent.
The updated percentages, though, were called into question when another whistleblower looked at the database in 2023 and found they were different.
Testicular cancer, initially pegged as increasing 369 percent, was placed at 3 percent by the military. But the actual increase was 16.3 percent, the whistleblower found. Pulmonary embolism was among the other conditions that occurred more often in 2021 than the military had conveyed.
The whistleblower alerted Mr. Johnson, the top Republican on the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, who asked military officials for answers.
Mr. Cisneros acknowledged that the data given to the senator was incomplete. He said the change stemmed from December 2021 figures not being available when the corrected data was offered. There was a data “lag by about three months,” meaning the data wasn’t available in February 2022, when officials provided Mr. Johnson with the corrected data, Mr. Cisneros said.
Pentagon officials replicated the analyses from the whistleblower and found the data “are similar” to the data the whistleblower sent to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Cisneros said.
Military officials hadn’t previously mentioned any data lag previously while communicating with Mr. Johnson or the public, and they didn’t incorporate the available data when they sent him another missive in mid-2022.
“Without the whistleblower’s disclosure, I doubt DOD would have ever acknowledged that it provided incomplete information to my office in February 2022 and again in July 2022,” Mr. Johnson said.
He said the DOD had demonstrated “a complete disregard for transparency” and urged officials to make clear whether it has investigated whether any of the medical conditions for which diagnoses spiked are associated with the vaccines.
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Healthcare Provider Tracks Rising Number of Cardiac Arrests in Israel in the Last Two Years
In the era of post Covid vaccination, perhaps the ramifications of an emergency-driven accelerated vaccine may be emerging. In Israel, which is one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world during the pandemic, a flaw was detected with the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA (BNT162b2) vaccine. An Israeli doctor discovered a high rate of myocarditis among adolescent men, for example. When he reported his findings to Pfizer, he was ignored. It was only after the doctor authored an article in The New England Journal of Medicine when the pharmaceutical giant started noticing. It appears the connection between myocarditis and the Covid vaccine has continually been played down. This has been a trend in multiple nations during the pandemic. The impact of the adverse effects of this novel vaccine becomes more apparent in the eastern Mediterranean nation.
Cardiac arrest diagnosis rises in Israel
In a recent tweet, Dr. Eli David, a tech entrepreneur and a co-founder of Marpai Health in Israel, posted a chart of the significant rise in cardiac arrest diagnosis in the Middle Eastern Country. The chart chronicles the years 2021 and 2022, and the rise in cardiac arrest is significant.
In his tweet, Dr. David asks the question, “What could have possibly caused the huge surge in 2021 and 2022?” The graph is based on information from Clalit Health Fund, the largest healthcare provider in Israel.
This coincides with a study published in Scientific Reports in April of 2022, which examines the increased emergency cardiovascular events among the under 40 population in Israel during the vaccine rollout and third Covid-19 wave.
However, the publication does make the disclaimer that “readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the editors.” The study is a “retrospective population-based study that leverages the IEMS data system and analyzes all calls related to CA and ACS events over two and a half years, from January 1st, 2019, to June 20th, 2021. The IEMS call data are coupled with data on COVID-19 infection rates, as well as the respective vaccination rates over the same period of time.”
The results of the study were, “Of the 30,262 cardiac arrest and 60,398 ACS calls included in the study population (see Supplemental Results for details), 945 (3.1%) and 3945 (6.5%) calls were for patients of age 16–39, respectively, from a population of close to 3.5 million people in this age group.”
Era of sudden deaths
It seems in the current era of commonplace Covid vaccination, there are a lot of sudden unexplained deaths. A celebrity doctor in Mexico with his own television show who was also a huge vaccine proponent dies in his sleep. He was only 42 years old. Another case is that of a professional basketball player who died during a stress test. It is believed he had myocarditis and blamed the Covid vaccine. He was only 28 years old.
Yet on the other hand, sensationalists routinely review the obituaries to point out the cause of death, irrespective of substantiation.
Growing numbers are convinced that there are no coincidences and a growing statistical pattern associating the COVID jabs and myocarditis. How linked these dynamics are is complex, and unfolding, with different points of view depending on material interests.
The issue here is, it seems these are not coincidences and now there appear to be statistics to verify the relationship between the Covid vaccine and myocarditis.
One pressing question involves the responsibility for the skepticism about the association between inflammation of the heart and the Covid vaccine? The answer is obvious.
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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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Thursday, July 20, 2023
Bivalent Booster Bomb: Latest mRNA Vax Only 30% Effective—More Doses Equals Greater Risk for COVID-19
A group of prominent Cleveland Clinic physicians and biomedical researchers have led a few major, real-world data-driven studies, the results of which have fundamentally challenged the official COVID-19 vaccine narrative. Infectious disease doctor Nabin Shrestha, MD along with infection control practitioner Patrick Buke, MPH CIC and biomedical researcher Amy Nowacki, PhD and colleagues first demonstrated in early summer 2021 in a study of 52,238 health care employees at the prestigious Cleveland integrated health system the power of natural immunity.
TrialSite was the first media to showcase the findings and no other major media or trade press such as STAT bothered to cover such results at the time. Why? The data went counter to politics given under the national public health emergency the executive branch was driving a specific agenda. Then by late 2022 in a bombshell of a study the trio and their colleagues were at it again. This time conducting a large retrospective study of 51,977 subjects, including 10,804 healthcare employees receiving the bivalent mRNA booster dose, Cleveland Clinic investigators’ data revealed that the greater the number of mRNA doses, the more the incidence of SARS-CoV-2, in what TrialSite declared was not a good look for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
TrialSite authored multiple reports on this troubling unfolding set of data that was picked up on by some conservative media by this point. The major media and trade press remained generally silent on the matter. Last month the Cleveland Clinic team uploaded to the preprint server more troubling COVID-19 vaccine data. Finding that among 51,011 Cleveland Clinic employees, the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster was 30% in preventing infection during the time when the virus strains predominant in circulation in the Cleveland area was also factored into the vaccine.
True, all of the aforementioned research remained in preprint form, meaning for whatever reason these large, well-designed observational studies were not peer reviewed. But many times, neither were many study/press releases industry released during the pandemic, which the New York Times and trade news like STAT pounced on. What’s going on? Is Cleveland Clinic’s large data set not worthy of mention?
The Latest Bombshell Data
Tracking 51,011 employees of the integrated health system, the trio of study authors and their colleagues sought to understand the level of protection the bivalent mRNA vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna would afford the 51,011 study subjects.
Examining the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 over the weeks after administration of the bivalent BA.4/BA.5 vaccine—the only version of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines now available in the United States—the study authors ran Cox proportional hazard regressions against vaccine protection time-dependent covariants of the data.
Shrestha and colleagues do note an overall vaccine effectiveness of 30% (95% CI, 20-39%). These are not very good results, and most certainly were not touted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or for that matter, not surprisingly, the White House press office.
They finalize that for the retrospective study subjects last exposure 6-9 months previously associates with twice the risk of COVID-19. Moreover, those subjects that were last exposed 9-12 months previously faced a 3.5 times higher risk when comparing both to the last exposure to COVID-19 within 90 days of the study.
But the bombshell, the elephant in the room cannot be ignored by the major media and trade press anymore. The authors reiterate their findings which first surfaced in 2022:
“Risk of COVID-19 increased with time since the most recent prior COVID-19 episode and with the number of vaccine doses previously received.”
Limitations
Like all studies this latest Cleveland Clinic observational investigation brought with it limitations. In the preprint manuscript the study authors explain the limitations followed by possible mitigating factors. TrialSite reminds that the scientific community is not supposed to take study findings that haven’t been peer-reviewed and claim as evidence. Although this practice occurred all the time during the pandemic. The CDC would often provide limited data for example, not peer reviewed and the White House would embrace and use in their COVID-19 press conferences justifying the mass vaccination program.
Importantly the real-world investigators acknowledge that more systematic study of persons that have received multiple doses of COVID-19 vaccine must be further studied.
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Uncovering COVID-19’s Origins: How Team Biden Is Stonewalling
The Biden administration is stonewalling efforts to get to the bottom of the origins of the pandemic that has been blamed for the loss of over 1.1 million American lives.
Pursuant to the unanimously enacted COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, the administration is required to provide Congress with detailed, declassified information on specific research activities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, especially the institute’s coronavirus experiments on behalf of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and incidents of early illness among the institute’s researchers. But the administration hasn’t complied with the law as written and has only released a portion of the information that it has.
Anticipating such obstruction, on June 14, Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Mike Braun, R-Ind., the act’s authors, strongly reminded President Joe Biden that the law requires the administration to “declassify any and all information” relating to these issues.
“The act does not allow for redactions based on your administration’s view of ‘national security’ broadly defined, as you claimed in your signing statement,” the senators wrote to the president. “Rather, the act only provides for much narrower redactions to protect intelligence sources and methods. Your administration should comply with the law as written and not undermine clear congressional intent to provide as much transparency to the American people as possible.”
Team Biden missed the June 18 deadline and then released an underwhelming declassified report after hours on Friday, June 23—the standard “Friday-Night Dump,” a well-honed Washington ploy to evade media and congressional notice at the end of the weekly news cycle.
In their follow-up June 27 letter to Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, Hawley and Braun noted that the Biden administration’s response was a “paltry” five pages of information, plus a cover page and a glossary of terms. “Obviously,” they declared, “the U.S. government is in possession of more information than that. This half-baked effort falls woefully short of the statutory requirements and undermines congressional intent.”
The senators also told Haines that if she failed to provide the legally required information, “we would welcome your testimony before Congress on this matter so you may answer questions under oath. The American people deserve to know the truth about China’s role in the origins of COVID-19.”
Regardless of how Haines or other administration officials respond, Congress must probe deeper and secure the underlying documents and individual testimony of federal officials under oath, either publicly, if appropriate, or in executive session.
Section 3 of the act requires disclosure of information on work the Wuhan Institute of Virology performed with the People’s Liberation Army. The Biden administration’s thin report confirms that the institute had teams of researchers focused on coronaviruses: “Both teams separately used transgenic mouse models to better understand how the viruses infect humans as well as related vaccine and therapeutics research” (Page 4).
However, the report also claims that while the work between 2017 and 2019 was designed to “enhance China’s knowledge of pathogens,” including coronaviruses, the report says that none of these “could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 [the COVID-19 virus].”
The report also says that the intelligence community has no information that any “genetic engineering work” involved SARS-CoV-2 or a “close progenitor” of SARS-CoV-2 or any “backbone virus” that is “closely related enough to have been the source of the pandemic” (Page 4). The report does note, however, that “some of the WIV’s [Wuhan Institute of Virology’s] genetic engineering projects on coronaviruses involved techniques that could make it difficult to detect intentional changes” (Page 5).
The report also confirms a widely known problem at the Wuhan lab: “Some WIV researchers probably did not use adequate biosafety precautions at least some of the time prior to the pandemic in handling SARS-like coronaviruses, increasing the risk of accidental exposure to viruses” (Page 5).
The timing of COVID-19’s onset and earliest infection among Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers is a crucial piece of the pandemic puzzle. That is why Section 3 of the act also requires disclosure of the researchers’ names, symptoms, role at the institute, their involvement with coronavirus research, and records of hospitalization.
The Biden administration report does meet these statutory requirements. It does not contain the names of any of the researchers and only states that they experienced COVID-19-like symptoms in the “Fall of 2019.” The administration’s key declaration on this point is that “some of their symptoms were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19” (Page 6)—an obvious issue for a deeper probe.
The report also says that American intelligence has “no indications” that any of these researchers were hospitalized with COVID-19-like symptoms. Moreover, the report notes that Dr. Shi Zhengli (known as the “Bat Woman”), the lead coronavirus researcher at Wuhan, said that her lab employees’ samples “all tested negative” for COVID-19 antibodies (Page 6).
Since Jan. 3, 2020, as The Heritage Foundation noted, Communist Chinese officials forbade the release of any COVID-19-related information without government approval. Congress, therefore, obviously has no business taking such an assertion seriously, even if it is repeated in an official American intelligence report. (The Daily Signal is the news and commentary outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
The issue of patient identification is a crucial point of inquiry. The Biden administration report fails to provide legally required identifications. But independent journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag have already published the names of “patients zero”: Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.
Among the journalists’ sources is an unnamed federal official who insists, with “100 Percent” certainty, that their patient identification is correct. Among others, Congress must question this unnamed government official, perhaps in executive session.
While acknowledging the plausibility of either a natural or a laboratory origin for COVID-19, the Biden administration report reconfirms the division within the American intelligence community over the issue.
Particularly troublesome is the failure of the Central Intelligence Agency to make an assessment of the lab leak theory. In contrast to the Department of Energy and the FBI, which have assessed the probability of a lab leak, the CIA still claims that it has gathered insufficient information to provide Congress with a formal assessment of the pandemic’s origins.
That stance is entirely unjustifiable, and the consequences are intolerable. Congressional investigators must compel Haines and other members of the intelligence community to testify under oath to find the true answers on the origins of COVID-19.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/12/uncovering-covid-19s-origins-how-team-biden-is-stonewalling
*************************************************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, July 19, 2023
Anthony Fauci accused of perjury: Former White House doctor 'LIED under oath about funding gain-of-function research in China - which is feared to have started Covid pandemic', Republican Senator claims
Dr Anthony Fauci was tonight accused of lying under oath over his knowledge of dangerous virus research in China — which is feared to have caused the pandemic.
DailyMail.com can reveal Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week calling for an investigation into whether Dr Fauci, 82, committed perjury when he testified in front of a Senate committee in 2021.
In a showdown with Republicans, including Sen Paul, in July that year, Dr Fauci testified that his former ‘has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.'
Dr Fauci was the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until the end of 2022 and was responsible for signing off on research grants.
Yet newly released emails dated February 1, 2020 show Fauci acknowledged that 'scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.'
Perjury is a federal offense that carries up to five years in prison. While the emails show that Fauci was aware of gain-of-function going on in the lab, he never admitted that the NIH funded it.
But the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined last month that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan University did receive NIH funding, Sen Paul said in his letter to AG Garland.
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Covid: Gambling with Australian lives
At the beginning of the Covid vaccination rollout in Australia on 21 February 2021, then Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared the vaccines to be ‘safe and important’. The official narrative is that the vaccines are safe and efficacious. Yet there is compelling evidence that the official narrative, fanatically promoted by politicians and health bureaucracies, and ruthlessly enforced by politicised police forces, is misleading and neglectful in the light of the side effects.
Freedom of information documents acquired by Senator Alex Antic show that the former Morrison Government, under domestic terrorism response protocols, colluded with social media companies to censor people who dared to question the safety of vaccines, the utility of lockdowns and vaccine mandates including doctors who disagreed with official public health information. Deregistering doctors who provided vaccine exemptions and/or prescribed ivermectin to treat COVID was especially egregious. According to Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy AM, the nation’s leading clinical immunologist:
As patients were being treated in Sydney and Melbourne with impressive results … the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia made the extraordinary move to shut down the prescription of IVM by front-line doctors for the treatment and prevention of Covid-19. The TGA had form, as they made a similar ruling for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the other re-purposed off-patent drug shown to be effective in treating Covid-19.
The UK government admits that the vaccines damaged the natural immune system of those who were vaccinated. In its ‘COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report’ for Week 42 the UK Department of Health Security states, on page 23, that ’N antibody levels appear to be lower in people who become infected after two doses of vaccination’ and the reduction in antibodies is essentially permanent.
It was evident within months of vaccination that the vaccinated can still catch and transmit the virus. A study conducted by the Upper Midwest Regional Accelerator for Genomic Surveillance, which is founded by the Rockefeller Foundation, confirmed that they are as likely to infect others as the unvaccinated.
Writing in The Lancet, Carlos Franco-Paredes, an American professor of infectious diseases, comments:
There is growing evidence that peak viral titres in the upper airways of the lungs and culturable virus are similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals… [R]esearchers in California observed no major differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in terms of SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in the nasopharynx, even in those with proven asymptomatic infection.
A member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisations (ATAGI) has acknowledged that ‘the more doses you get, the less benefit you derive from them, and then we start to worry about causing side effects’.
It’s not just that you get less benefit, according to a study by Cleveland Clinic researchers of 48,344 Cleveland Clinic employees, people who received two or more doses of the mRNA vaccine are more likely to get Covid and those not up-to-date on vaccination had a lower risk of infection.
This makes vaccine mandates incomprehensible and immoral. As Dr Jayanta Bhattcharya, a professor of medicine and health research and policy at Stanford University put it, ‘If a vaccine fails to stop disease transmission, then the idea that you need to vaccinate other people so that I’m protected is just false.’
It gets worse. There has been a surge of sudden and unexpected age-inappropriate deaths in at least 30 countries in the industrialised world. In his book Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths, Ed Dowd argues that ‘The sudden deaths in young people in industrialised countries are due to mRNA vaccines.’
The suspicion that official claims of safety and efficacy are false has been strengthened by the discontinuation of official reporting on unvaccinated and vaccinated populations. For example, New South Wales ceased to publish weekly surveillance reports about the vaccination status of those who were hospitalised at the end of 2022. The data in the last two weeks showed that of the 1,779 patients admitted to hospitals with a COVID-19 diagnosis, none of those who died were unvaccinated. In addition, mathematician and Covid commentator Igor Chudov calculated that the risk of hospitalisation increased dramatically with each dose and was highest for those who had received four or more doses and had a 217 per cent relative risk of death compared with the unvaccinated.
A cost-benefit analysis by a senior research scientist at MIT looked at publicly available official data from the UK and the US for all age groups to determine all the factors leading to the risk of dying from COVID-19. She writes,
All age groups under 50 years old are at greater risk of fatality after receiving a COVID vaccination than an unvaccinated person is at risk of a COVID death…. (And ) all age groups under 80 years old have virtually not benefited from receiving a COVID vaccine, and the younger ages incur significant risks.
Yet the Australian government continues to listen to ATAGI which recommends COVID-19 vaccination for everyone starting with babies aged 6 months and advises parents to tell their children that, ‘The COVID-19 vaccine is a safe way to protect you, your family, and your friends from getting sick,’ and that parents would allow their children to be injected if the vaccines ‘were not safe’. This is deeply disturbing because some children have died directly after vaccination.
On 19 July 2021, the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advised the UK Department of Health Security against the mass rollout of vaccines to children under the age of 18 warning that,
JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks.
One serious risk is myocarditis – inflammation of the heart. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges that mRNA vaccines have caused many types of heart conditions, including myocarditis. Even Pfizer scientists acknowledge that there have been increased cases of myocarditis after vaccination. On 24 November 2022, Dr Ross Walker, a practicing cardiologist with 40 years of clinical experience said:
I don’t think we should be having the mRNA vaccines. I’ve seen in my own practice as a private cardiologist 60-70 patients over the past 12 months who have had similar reactions to this. Whether it’s pericarditis or the more serious myocarditis. I’ve seen a lot of people get chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations.
Given the already known potential harms of the Covid vaccines, of which myocarditis is just one, and their entirely unknown long-term adverse effects, the decision of the Australian Government to continue to vaccinate everyone, regardless of age or health conditions, is wrong. As Gareth Iacobucci wrote in relation to the vaccination of teens aged 12-15 in September 2021 in the British Medical Journal:
From a public health standpoint, it makes poor sense to impose vaccine side effects on people at minimal risk of severe COVID-19. The argument that it protects others is weak or contrary to the evidence.
Yet about half of all Australian children aged 5 to 15 are now vaccinated. This might explain why the TGA has been ‘slow to update‘ the country’s Database of Advance Event Notifications (DAEN) despite the deaths of children aged as young as 7 and 9 being reported to the TGA as being suspected of being caused by the vaccine. As Professor Clancy noted:
There is a push to vaccinate children under 12 who neither get severe disease nor significantly spread it. The cost/benefit of immunising children has been widely criticised, while misinformation continues to be delivered through the press.
According to Dr John Ionnidis, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Stanford University, the fatality rate for Covid for most of the population could be as low as that of influenza when adjusted for age and the fact that more than 80 per cent of those who get the virus have mild or no symptoms.
With such low risks for most people, why has the entire population of Australia been coerced into getting vaccinated with experimental vaccines? This question is important given the potential for side effects that can lead to death.
Australia closely followed the WHO guidelines during the pandemic and, by the end of 2021, 80 per cent of the population was vaccinated. Yet last year, there were 190,775 deaths according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which was 25,235, and 15.3 per cent more than the historical average. This represents the highest number of excess deaths on record since the end of the Second World War.
So why does the website of the Department of Health and Aged Care tell all Australian adults they should get a booster for ‘additional protection against severe illness from COVID’ and why parents are advised that their children aged 5 to 17 years should get a booster dose ‘if it has been 6 months since their last dose or COVID-19 infection’.
The official government narrative which placates people’s concern about the safety of the vaccines is based on research conducted by the pharmaceutical companies selling the vaccines. Unsurprisingly, it has financially benefited the pharmaceutical companies, with the stock price of Pfizer and Moderna soaring. The question which should be asked however is why this pharmaceutical research has been accepted unquestioningly by the government, academia, and the media. Professor Clancy writes:
The media has a concerning role in the propagation of misinformation, preferring to support an ideological narrative, rather than to engage in responsible journalism. Misinformation driven by pharmaceutical companies to protect their vaccines, and strongly reinforced by academic, government, and health authorities leads to many unnecessary hospital admissions and deaths.
It is difficult to know how many Australians have died from these vaccines. The many accounts of the tragic consequences of Covid vaccination, mandatory or voluntary, are entirely credible. Those responsible must be held fully accountable for the loss of Australian lives and livelihoods.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/gambling-with-australian-lives/
*************************************************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, July 18, 2023
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Impacts on Menstrual Cycles—The Unfolding Science
A recent study led by researchers at Boston University (BU) looked into the impact of COVID-19 vaccines on menstrual cycles.The researchers sought to better understand what have been many anecdotal reports that vaccines were changing women’s periods. Reports of cycles arriving earlier with heavier bleeding were relatively commonplace. Interestingly, the recent study results represented by corresponding author Amelia Wesselink, Ph.D., MPH Department of Epidemiology, BU’s School of Public Health reported that indeed, there can be observed changes in menstrual cycle, however, such changes are likely not the fault of the COVID-19 vaccines but rather the result of individual’s immune system reacting to the vaccine.
Yet this very answer implies an impact of the vaccine. What do other studies suggest? The overall data ranges but generally, point to some impact of COVID-19 vaccination on menstrual cycle, at least temporarily. Of course, long term study data is needed.
In an underlying prospective cohort study, the BU-led researchers found one-day average delay I menses plus a higher incidence of long menstrual cycles post COVID-19 vaccination. However, these deviations mostly were resolved by the next menstrual cycle. The study team argued, “Other menstrual cycle characteristics, including cycle regularity, bleed length, heaviness of bleed and menstrual pain, were not strongly associated with COVID-19 vaccination.”
What are the findings of another research?
TrialSite has covered the topic as objectively as possible, chronicling several studies involving menstrual cycles and COVID-19 vaccines. For example, a retrospective study published in the journal Women’s Health found some interesting results. Led by Maria Christina Martinez-Avila, a clinical epidemiologist at the BIOTOXAM Research Group, University of Cartagena, the team conducted via survey across targeted social networks. The Columbian investigators queried 950 women in the 18–41-year age range between July and September 2021, to better understand the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on menstrual cycles. Ultimately, 408 of the subjects met the inclusion criteria. The study authors concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination can influence the menstrual cycle and cause alterations.” This class of study comes with limitations.
In another piece in 2021, TrialSite surveyed unfolding reports of menstrual cycle issues possibly linked to the COVID-19 vaccines.
In the heavily vaccinated Mediterranean nation social media was abuzz during 2021, with women sharing their experiences, ranging from irregularity to unusual amounts of bleeding. In other cases, postmenopausal women report bleeding. At the same time, medical establishment experts cannot explain the observations or even link such a phenomenon to the jabs, perhaps in part, because these observations could be associated with any number of other causes.
Regardless of the ever-growing number of complaints after vaccination by 2021, clinical investigators sought to study the situation in more detail. For example, the American government has put $1.76 million to study the subject in a study led by Johns Hopkins University’s Mostafa Borahay, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In Israel, chairman of the Israel Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Professor Roni Maimon of Shamir Medical Center, initiates Israel’s first investigation into the matter.
By early 2022, another major National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study sponsored by Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and led by Dr. Alison Edelman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, demonstrated that COVID-19 vaccination can cause changes to the timing of menstruation. A survey conducted by anthropologists found numerous reports of unusually heavy flows and even breakthrough bleeding among some people who hadn't menstruated in years. However, the results of the study also show the effects are temporary.
By quarter one 2023, Dr. Peter McCullough reported that according to the “EVA Project,” 78% of participating women reported at least some menstrual changes post COVID-19 vaccination. In regard to both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, McCullough wrote, “Both forms of the vaccine use lipid nanoparticles which for years have been known to be taken up by reproductive glands (ovaries and testes) and dump their payload of genetic code for the WIV BA4/BA5 Spike protein which starts producing the tissue damaging Spike within an hour .” The mainstream fact checkers would label this “misinformation” but was it fully that?
The outspoken critic of the COVID-19 vaccines continued:
“The mRNA is now known to circulate in the bloodstream for 28 days and continues to bombard the ovaries with more mRNA throughout the ovulatory cycle. Genetic vaccines loaded on lipid nanoparticles, are almost by design as depicted by Wang et al. destined to influence ovulatory cycles, gametocyte production and viability, thus interfering with the complex and delicate reproductive cycle of human beings.”
By April 2023, TrialSite reported that even the mainstream Washington Post was allowing editorials with a critical view of the mRNA jabs. Were they impacting women’s menstrual cycles?
Arnie Mazer reported for TrialSite that in the recent editorial, Kate Clancy, a biological anthropologist and professor at the University of Illinois, wrote about how after she received her first dose of the Covid vaccine she got her period, and the bleeding was so heavy she “was swapping out overnight-strength pads every hour.”
In one TrialSite reporter’s review of possible COVID-19 vaccine side effects, Simay Bayatli shared case series involving alternations to menstrual cycles associated with the COVID-19 vaccine. Yet this evidence isn’t as strong.
In an opinion piece, Ronald Kostoff showcases the high number of menstrual issues reported in association with the COVID-19 vaccines when compared to influenza vaccine. This data was derived from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which was designed to detect safety signals, but individual cases are often not conclusive proof as often they are not adjudicated.
A group of outspoken critics of the COVID-19 vaccines, including McCullough and women’s health physician Dr. James Thorpe and others, again used VAERS data to identify safety signals involving menstruation.
The group, criticized by the medical establishment, reported that “COVID-19 vaccines, when compared to the Influenza vaccines, are associated with a significant increase in AE with all proportional reporting ratios of > 2.0: menstrual abnormality, miscarriage, fetal chromosomal abnormalities, fetal malformation, fetal cystic hygroma, fetal cardiac disorders, fetal arrhythmia, fetal cardiac arrest, fetal vascular mal-perfusion, fetal growth abnormalities, fetal abnormal surveillance, fetal placental thrombosis, low amniotic fluid, and fetal death/stillbirth (all p values were much smaller than 0.05). When normalized by time-available, doses-given, or persons-received, all COVID-19 vaccine AE far exceed the safety signal on all recognized thresholds.”
Thorpe et al. concluded in a preprint that pregnancy and menstrual abnormalities are significantly more frequent following COVID-19 vaccinations than that of influenza vaccinations.” Again, mainstream critics would argue that self-reported cases in VAERS isn’t necessarily conclusive proof.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) organized a working group looking into the matter. The VSD Menstrual Irregularities Working Group (MI-WG) protocol sought an evaluation of possible association between COVID-19 vaccination and abnormal uterine bleeding. In partnership with Kaiser Permanente, their researchers included Stephanie Irving, Tia Kauffman, Allison Naleway, Kim Vesco, Michelle Henninger while CDC VSD Site Investigators included Heather Lipkind, Malini DeSilva; and CDC Investigators included Naomi Tepper, Christine Olson and Eric Weintraub.
The CDC-sponsored investigation included “Background Reports” acknowledging that “menstrual irregularities following COVID-19 vaccine have been increasing, especially on social media platforms and in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.”
The reports prompted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to release a Notice of Special Interest for investigating these claims. While there are a handful of publications around menstrual changes and COVID-19 infection, the conclusions range from “women should be reassured that SARS-CoV-2 has no impact on abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) of any type including the symptoms of heavy and/or irregular menstrual bleeding” to “patients had various extents of transient menstrual changes, mainly manifesting as prolonged cycles and decreased volume.”
This research team shared a report of one study indicating 16% of female or non-binary patients with COVID-19 infection reported changes in menstruation, which correlated with a greater number of COVID-19 symptoms. See the link.
A large observational study in Sweden found that COVID-19 vaccination was not tied to an increase in hospital admissions or visits with a healthcare professional due to menstrual changes or bleeding in premenopausal women. This study included 2,946,448 Swedish participants aged 12 to 74 years.
The study team did report, “Postmenopausal women were more likely to have contact with the healthcare system because of vaginal bleeding in the months following their shot compared with when they were unvaccinated, with the highest risk after the third dose, although the associations were weak.”
“These findings do not provide substantial support for a causal association between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and healthcare contacts related to menstrual or bleeding disorders,” the researchers wrote in The BMJ.
The EMA COVID-19 vaccine safety update identified the distinct possibility of an association of menstrual irregularities, such as heavy menstrual bleeding, to the Moderna mRNA vaccine (mRNA-1273).
Prasad S. Nishtala, Department of Life Sciences, University of Bath and colleague conducted a systematic review of safety incidence associated with COVID-19 vaccines including menstrual cycle and other related issues.
One cohort study examined reports made to V-Safe, finding that from 63,815 respondents who reported irregularities or vaginal bleeding, 41.9% received the mRNA-1273 vaccine, demonstrating a plausible link between mRNA-1273 and menstruation. See the study.
One study suggests that “many of these reports could be a case of positive rechallenging where the menstrual change has occurred after the first dose and has resumed following the second dose, indicating the possibility that the vaccine has triggered the irregularities.” See EMA report.
Prasad Nishtala and colleague reports that the study could confirm this hypothesis, meaning more monitoring is necessary.
According to another study, menstruation represents “a process of endometrium shedding, which occurs monthly as the body discards the buildup of the uterus lining and is regulated by levels of estrogen and progesterone hormones.” See the link.
The UK-based study authors point out that the immune response to the Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine may lead to the endometrium (a component of the immune system) to adapt its immune environment to protect the uterus leading to abnormal menstrual changes such as those observed, as suggested in a piece published by the University of British Columbia.
Yet the phenomenon of menstrual irregularities, common with women, can also be observed in the absence of COVID-19. Can a true correlation between Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and such irregularities be established, especially if select studies cannot compare incidence with baseline rates? See the link.
In another study, Edelman A, Boniface ER, Benhar E, et al., “Association between menstrual cycle length and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination: a U.S. Cohort Obstet Gynecol. 2022,” the group investigated menstrual cycle data between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals finding that less than 1-day change in cycle length in association with both COVID-19 vaccine doses (0.64 day-increase (98.75% CI 0.27–1.01). Of this population, 35% had received the mRNA-1273 vaccine. The authors suggest the boost in cycle length is mostly driven by persons who received their COVID-19 vaccine doses within a single cycle period.
In 2023, Iranian investigators from University of Tehran had their systematic review published in the August 2023 edition of the Journal of Reproductive Immunology, finding that 1) many women experience menstrual disturbances post COVID-19 jab 2) vaccine-induced menstrual disturbances raises the concern among reproductive-age women and 3) COVID-19 vaccines can lead to menstrual disturbances through changes in immune and endocrine pathways.
As observed above, is it a bit disingenuous to evade vaccine root cause by pointing to an immune system response?
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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, July 17, 2023
Fauci’s Fraudulent ‘Cover-Up’ of the True Origins of Covid Revealed In Un-Redacted Docs
After the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic unearthed newly redacted documents this week, a former State Department pandemic investigator suggested there is proof Dr. Anthony Fauci knew about the gain-of-function research.
In the redacted documents, Fauci wrote a letter on February 1, 2020, to "folks,” suggesting that the viral sequence found in the coronavirus strain contained "mutations in the virus that would have been most unusual to have evolved naturally in bats," adding there had been "suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted.”
He said it was possible the Coronavirus could have evolved naturally with these mutations.
Additionally, the scientists at Wuhan University are known for working on gain-of-function experiments that lead to the determination of the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection and the Covid-19 outbreak, which originated in Wuhan.
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) suggested that Fauci intentionally misled the public.
“He absolutely knew what was going on,” McCormick said. “As a matter of fact, several scientists were discussing this and agreeing with each other that it made no sense that it came from a natural selection process.”
The Republican was unsurprised that Fauci has shied away from the lab leak theory because as more and more evidence comes to light, theory is beginning to ring true.
Earlier this year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) claimed Fauci didn't want to draw attention to the lab-leak theory because his office had supported and allegedly funded gain-of-function research with U.S. taxpayer funds for years.
“He's even quoted as saying in 2012 if a pandemic should occur if a scientist should be bitten by an animal and the virus gets out of the lab, it would be worth the knowledge," Paul said in March.
Citing emails between Fauci and now-retired NIH Director Francis Collins, Paul said another reason the corrupt Democrat didn’t want the damming evidence revealed is that it would not be good for China or “the money that changes hands.”
Former State Department investigator Dr. David Asher also accused Fauci of covering up significant facts behind the true origins of COVID-19, telling Fox News Fauci orchestrated an extensive cover-up to his the fact he was involved in COVID’s release.
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Affordable Diabetes Drug Reduces Long-COVID Risk by 41 Percent
Is there a way to prevent long COVID? A new study in the United States found that taking metformin, an affordable first-line Type 2 diabetes drug, shortly after diagnosis of COVID-19 can reduce the risk of developing long COVID by about 41 percent.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Minnesota, and the paper was published in the international medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases in June.
Long COVID refers to persistent discomfort for weeks or months after being infected with COVID-19. Common symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, cognitive impairment, headache, chest pain, and joint pain, among others, which affect daily life.
Through remote recruitment, the researchers screened 1,126 participants who agreed to long-term follow-up. They were overweight and obese people aged 30 to 85, had symptoms of COVID-19 infection for fewer than seven days, tested positive for COVID within three days of trial enrollment, and had no previous known SARS-CoV-2 infection.
In this randomized trial, about half of the participants took metformin, and the other half took a placebo. They were also randomly assigned to receive either ivermectin, fluvoxamine, or placebo.
After 300 days of follow-up, 10.4 percent of participants who took the placebo were diagnosed with long COVID, while 6.3 percent who took metformin were also diagnosed.
The results of the study showed that taking metformin reduced the risk of developing long COVID by 41 percent. In subjects who took metformin within three days of symptom onset, the risk of developing long COVID was reduced by 63 percent.
The study also proved that taking metformin reduced the risk of developing long COVID in people infected during the peak period of the three SARS-CoV-2 variants, Alpha, Delta, and Omicron.
However, the study found that taking ivermectin or fluvoxamine showed no signs of protection against long COVID.
Metformin, originally developed from the French lilac (Galega officinalis), is inexpensive and has no significant side effects. For decades, it has been the drug of choice for Type 2 diabetes treatment worldwide.
Researchers believe metformin could be used as a therapeutic drug for outpatients infected with COVID-19. It has the merits of proven clinical efficacy, is available all over the world at a low cost, and is safe to use.
It is important to note that the trial did not demonstrate whether metformin was effective in preventing COVID-19 in patients requiring emergency treatment or hospitalization due to COVID-19, nor did it prove that metformin was effective in people who already had long COVID.
The study is not without its limitations. First, there is an obvious sample selection bias, because the people who participated in the clinical trial and completed the 10-month follow-up survey may not represent the general population affected by COVID-19 and long COVID. The trial also excluded low-risk groups for severe COVID-19, namely adults with a normal body mass index (BMI), and people under the age of 30. Whether the above findings apply to these groups remains to be seen.
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Risk of Autoimmune Diseases Triples After COVID-19 Infection, 6 Tips to Reduce Susceptibility to Long COVID
The long-term chronic effects of COVID-19 cannot be ignored. Studies have shown that six months after being diagnosed with COVID-19, the risk of developing an autoimmune disease is three times that of an uninfected person. Virology experts say following six health guidelines can help reduce the incidence of long COVID.
A research team analyzed data from TriNetX, a global electronic medical records database, which included more than 3.81 million participants (880,000 confirmed and more than 2.9 million undiagnosed) who underwent PCR screening from 2020 to 2021. After tracking them for 180 days, the risk of autoimmune diseases in those diagnosed was three times that of those not infected.
Compared with the undiagnosed control group, the probability of suffering from various immune system diseases in confirmed patients was as follows:
2.98 times for rheumatoid arthritis
3.21 times for ankylosing spondylitis
2.99 times for systemic lupus erythematosus
1.96 times for vasculitis and dermatopolymyositis
2.58 times for systemic sclerosis
2.62 times for Sjögren’s syndrome
3.14 times for mixed connective tissue disease
2.32 times for Behçet’s disease
2.90 times for polymyalgia rheumatica
2.91 times for psoriasis
1.78 times for inflammatory bowel disease
2.68 times for celiac disease
2.68 times for Type 1 diabetes
1.20 times for mortality rate
The research results were published in EClinicalMedicine, a sister journal of The Lancet Discovery Science.
Dr. Wei Zhengzong, the paper’s author and vice director of the Affiliated Hospital of Chung Shan Medical University in Taiwan, said that a confirmed case of COVID-19 will activate the immune response, resulting in a cytokine storm. The structure of the virus antigen may also be similar to one’s self-antigen, causing a cross-reaction that attacks self-tissue cells and organs, inducing autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Wei said that if the diagnosed person suffers long-term joint pain, skin rash, unexplained hair loss, fever, mouth ulcers, etc., after recovery, he or she is advised to seek medical attention immediately.
Pathogenesis of Long COVID
An article published in Nature Immunology in 2022 explored the pathogenesis of long COVID, including the persistent chronic inflammatory state the disease induces, autoimmune system abnormalities, and the virus’ long-term existence in the body.
Dr. Dong Yuhong, a European expert in virology and infectious diseases, explained on the NTDTV program “Health 1+1” that although the virus may no longer be detected in the respiratory tract, it does not mean it is no longer in the body. It may lurk in relatively hidden tissues like the brain and gastrointestinal tract.
A study published in Nature showed that about four months after the infection of 14 asymptomatic infected persons, half of them had the COVID-19 virus’ nucleic acid in their intestines, indicating that the virus can remain in the body for a long time.
In addition, some inflammatory factors will still be present in the patient’s body. One of these is interleukin-6, related to many diseases, including mental anxiety and depression.
Moreover, COVID-19 patients’ inflammatory cells will continue to be activated, causing dysfunction of monocytes, T cells, and dendritic cells. This activation is closely related to immune system dysfunction, leading to pulmonary fibrosis and chronic inflammation of the neurological system.
6 Health Guidelines to Reduce Risk of Long COVID
Dr. Dong emphasized that long COVID is primarily a result of insufficient immunity, leading to the loss of one’s normal ability to clear the virus. An unhealthy lifestyle will further aggravate long COVID. The more severe the inflammatory state, the harder it is for the body to eliminate the virus.
She cited a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine that indicates adhering to the following six guidelines can reduce your risk of developing long COVID. If you follow at least five of these six, you will reduce the risk of developing long COVID by 49 percent:
Maintain a healthy body mass index (BMI): This is your weight in kilograms divided by the square of height (in meters). A healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9.
Don’t smoke: This includes e-cigarettes.
Exercise regularly: Get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity weekly.
Drink alcohol in moderation: Consume only 5 to 15 grams (0.2 to 0.5 ounce) of alcohol daily. Dr. Dong pointed out that drinking a small amount of alcohol may stimulate blood circulation but that everyone’s ability to metabolize alcohol differs.
Eat a high-quality diet: Dr. Dong said a high-quality diet should be based on natural, unrefined whole foods. The less processed the food, the more nutrients available.
Get enough sleep: An average adult needs at least seven hours of sleep every day. However, more sleep is not always better. Studies have found that people who sleep less than seven hours have a 12 percent higher risk of death, and those who sleep more than nine hours have a 30 percent higher risk of death. More sleep does not equate to quality sleep.
Dr. Dong added that a healthy lifestyle can prevent other common chronic diseases, such as hyperlipidemia, high blood pressure, and hyperglycemia.
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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, July 16, 2023
Case Series: 3rd Pfizer mRNA Booster Triggers Giant Cell Arteritis
A group of physicians at Toho University in Tokyo, Japan conducted a case series study concerning a 77-year old male who developed fever, general fatigue and headache after receiving the third dose of COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2). Observing nodular (lump-like) swelling plus tenderness of the bilateral temporal arteries, the study team determined that an autoimmune vasculitis affecting large and medium-sized blood vessels known as giant cell arteritis (GCA) was the culprit, likely linked to the mRNA vaccination.
It turns out, although not widely published in American trade media and especially not in mainstream press, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been associated with the development of immune-mediated diseases, such as this one--a condition that if left undiagnosed can lead to blindness and stroke due to inflammation and damage to the affected blood vessels.
What is giant cell arteritis?
GCA can also be called temporal arteritis and represents a chronic inflammatory disease mostly impacting the large arteries, but especially the temporal arteries located in the head. Characterized by inflammation and damage to the arterial walls, it can lead to other symptoms and complications. Importantly, if left undiagnosed, GCA can lead to serious complications ranging from permanent vision loss or stroke.
The case series
The Toho University-based group of physician-researchers report in the peer-reviewed journal Medicine that the patient was given methylprednisolone 1000 mg for 3 days. That regimen was followed up with prednisolone 1 mg/kg/d, which was decreased by 10 mg every week to 30 mg. From day 16 of hospitalization, the patient received tocilizumab 162 mg/wk every other week. After a 38-day hospitalization, the doctors tapered his regimen of prednisolone to 30 mg/d as the patient’s condition improved.
Takeaway
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are associated with the development of immune-mediated diseases. In this case, the Pfizer-BioNTech third dose triggered immediately thereafter an incident of GCA.
Corresponding author Kaichi Kaneko, based in the University of Toho Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, and colleagues note that doctors should be on the lookout for the signs of mRNA vaccine induced GCA including fever, fatigue and headache, even though these are also standard side effects as well. Should these symptoms persist, GCA may be a factor.
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New Omicron Vaccine will be Obsolete on Arrival
From Rita Rubin, Science Reporter for JAMA: “On June 15, members of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously to recommend updating the COVID-19 vaccine composition to a monovalent XBB lineage.”
On June 16, the FDA announced that it had advised manufacturers planning to update their COVID-19 vaccines that they should specifically target XBB.1.5. Scientists from Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer had told the FDA and its advisory committee that their XBB.1.5 monovalent vaccines could be ready to inject into arms by late July or early fall.
Although the FDA decides what antigens the COVID-19 vaccines should include, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is responsible for deciding who should get them and when. As soon as the FDA greenlights an XBB.1.5 vaccine, “I’m sure the ACIP will have a specially called meeting to decide how it should be used,” William Schaffner, M.D., chair of the department of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said in an interview.
ACIP stands for the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, on which Schaffner serves as the liaison representing the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, where he is medical director. At the ACIP meeting on an XBB.1.5 vaccine, “I think there will be a rather elaborate discussion on who will receive this vaccine,” Schaffner predicted.”
****************************************************
Australia: Protecting children takes courage: Just ask Dr Jillian Spencer, a child and adolescent psychiatrist
Julie Sladden
The announcement of the Labor Government’s proposed ‘misinformation’ Bill, while alarming, is not surprising. Anyone paying attention in recent years, especially the last three, will have noticed that our ‘freedom of speech’ has already been significantly curtailed through online censorship, government censorship (thank you, Department of Home Affairs), and self-censorship.
Nowhere has this been more palpable or alarming than the censorship of freedom of inquiry in science and medicine. During the Covid years, we discovered just how captured the medical profession is. Like lifting the lid on Pandora’s box, anyone who spoke out soon discovered the evil treasures in store for those who dared to question the narrative. The result was spectacular and tragic. Doctors who wanted to keep their jobs had to shut up, roll up their sleeves, and work on it. Those who spoke up or questioned the forced jab were marginalised, censored, sacked, or suspended. The message was clear, speak out at your peril. Despite the messaging, I was still shocked at how many capitulated. Surely this was the time we were meant to speak up and ask questions? Especially the hard ones. Isn’t this what we trained for?
Every so often, I meet someone who helps restore my hope in the medical profession. Last week that person was Dr Jillian Spencer, a senior staff Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist who was recently suspended from clinical practice at the Queensland Children’s Hospital. She now faces serious threats to her position, professional career, and livelihood, including potential regulatory action. Her crime, it seems, is to question out loud the affirmation model of transgender care.
Spencer says she is not alone in her concerns, ‘I would say that the vast majority of Child and Adolescent psychiatrists hold very serious concerns about the affirmation model, but to speak up in the current climate or even to take a more cautious clinical approach puts their employment at risk,’ she shared at a recent forum.
If there is any doubt that questioning ‘the narrative’ is dangerous for medical professionals, Spencer can set the record straight. Her experience of raising concerns within the organisation through the ‘proper channels’ has not gone well.
‘The process is to raise concerns internally (within an organisation) so that you’re doing it professionally and appropriately, rather than having to speak out. But when I pushed that to the maximum internally, it went very badly. So now I’m in the position of speaking out (publicly). The majority of child psychiatrists (are silent) for good reasons and self-preservation. The good reasons being wanting to be available to help people and to not be perceived as biased. But also, a lot of it is fear. And I don’t think my case has helped either, as I’m at risk for my employment and my (registration). It’s very serious. And so, I can’t blame them.’
But the costs of speaking out extend beyond the doctor involved. Patient care and service delivery stand to suffer too.
‘The danger of speaking out is that you lose the capacity to help more people,’ Spencer shares. ‘For example, a gender-questioning young person might be reluctant to see me now that I’ve spoken out, and that’s not something I want because I want young people to feel comfortable with me. My job is to listen and understand and to do what I can to help them.’
Now, this job is on hold indefinitely. However, Spencer is undeterred. Rather than quietly waiting for the ‘powers that be’ to hand down judgment, she demonstrates a commitment to her convictions by continuing to speak out. Loudly and often. To an outsider, it would appear Spencer has reached a point of reluctant acceptance of her situation and that she might as well go ‘all in’. Arriving at this point has come through painful reflection, ‘dark times’, and the realisation that the organisation Spencer has served faithfully for decades has apparently abandoned her.
‘It’s a really difficult employment situation,’ says Spencer. ‘Some people say, “Well, if your organisation is doing something that you disagree with, then the appropriate pathway is to resign.” But if you’ve been with an organisation for 20 years, you feel a part of that organisation. I feel like part of the family and part of changing the culture internally. It’s part of my job.’
‘People say “You need to resign or accept it.” But it’s also a responsibility to try and help your organisation do the right thing and… ‘speak up for safety.’
Listening to her speeches, presentations, and interviews, it is hard to argue that Spencer is motivated by anything other than safety. Child safety appears at the core of her message time and again.
‘It’s a really hard situation for child and adolescent psychiatrists… and for any mental health clinicians who work with children. Because there’s a lot of organisational and social pressure to affirm children,’ Spencer shares. ‘But when we start to look at the evidence base behind the affirmation model, we find the studies have major flaws, and they don’t show sufficient benefit to outweigh the risks and the harms.’
‘Previously, our discipline always took a developmental approach, which means that the years of childhood and adolescence were understood to be a period of incredible growth and change. We didn’t label children with long-term conditions, such as personality disorders, because we knew that a lot of conditions would ease with maturity, and indeed, the eleven studies that were conducted before the affirmation model was in use when they used a watchful waiting approach found that 60 to 90 per cent of children with gender dysphoria became comfortable in their own bodies with maturity.’
‘I assure you that this is not part of a culture war. This is a really serious child protection issue. We entered our field to try to assist children to thrive, but the gender clinics have been set up, and psychiatrists are being forced to affirm the social transition of all children and go along with the idea that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will lead to benefit.’
Spencer’s words highlight the dangerous waters our children are in. Treatment pathways and models of care are being imposed while the evidence is unclear, pathways that have modalities with irreversible and devastating consequences for children in terms of fertility, sexual and long-term health. Anyone who would step into these waters without a cautious approach does not understand the potential ramifications.
One of the arguments used to justify support for the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers is mental distress and the risk of suicide in those experiencing gender dysphoria, as highlighted in a recent Four Corners report. However, Spencer paints a broader picture. ‘There’s no evidence to show that the social transition or the use of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones reduces the death rate or improves psychological functioning.’
‘What we know from the eleven studies that were conducted before the affirmation model was in use – so that’s when they didn’t use puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones – is that the vast majority of (children with gender dysphoria) grew up to become comfortable with their body if they’re allowed to go through the full course of adolescence.’
‘My personal opinion is that we could disallow the prescription of puberty blockers… (and)… Australia aligned itself with all the European countries that have conducted systematic reviews of the evidence behind puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. From those systematic reviews, they realised that no child should be prescribed puberty blockers outside of a clinical research trial or in exceptional circumstances. And in the UK, they’ve even gone further in recommending caution around social transition.’
In voicing concerns at a recent rally, Spencer stumbled on another issue facing doctors who dare speak out. Soon after, the hospital told Spencer she allegedly broke the Queensland public services Code of Conduct through her public statements. It’s an allegation Spencer contests, saying she was speaking as a private citizen. In the speech, Spencer neither identifies herself as a doctor nor makes mention of her role or employer. The question is, where does a doctor’s autonomy begin and the employer’s jurisdiction end?
Have we already entered the era where the reach of our employers and regulatory authorities extends fully into our capacity to speak publicly anywhere?
The AHPRA Code of Conduct for medical professionals outlines several expectations of health professionals to question, examine and discuss the potential risks and benefits of treatment in addition to advocating for vulnerable communities, including children. It would seem, therefore, that Dr Spencer is simply doing her job.
‘We are not being allowed any professional discretion,’ she argues. ‘It is incredibly distressing to be forced into harming other people’s children, or otherwise face the potential loss of one’s career, livelihood or to be cast out of the workplace as has happened to me. But this is too important, so I will not be silenced.’
Dr Spencer is calling for an urgent Federal inquiry into the model of care for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria.
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
***************************************************
A group of physicians at Toho University in Tokyo, Japan conducted a case series study concerning a 77-year old male who developed fever, general fatigue and headache after receiving the third dose of COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2). Observing nodular (lump-like) swelling plus tenderness of the bilateral temporal arteries, the study team determined that an autoimmune vasculitis affecting large and medium-sized blood vessels known as giant cell arteritis (GCA) was the culprit, likely linked to the mRNA vaccination.
It turns out, although not widely published in American trade media and especially not in mainstream press, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have been associated with the development of immune-mediated diseases, such as this one--a condition that if left undiagnosed can lead to blindness and stroke due to inflammation and damage to the affected blood vessels.
What is giant cell arteritis?
GCA can also be called temporal arteritis and represents a chronic inflammatory disease mostly impacting the large arteries, but especially the temporal arteries located in the head. Characterized by inflammation and damage to the arterial walls, it can lead to other symptoms and complications. Importantly, if left undiagnosed, GCA can lead to serious complications ranging from permanent vision loss or stroke.
The case series
The Toho University-based group of physician-researchers report in the peer-reviewed journal Medicine that the patient was given methylprednisolone 1000 mg for 3 days. That regimen was followed up with prednisolone 1 mg/kg/d, which was decreased by 10 mg every week to 30 mg. From day 16 of hospitalization, the patient received tocilizumab 162 mg/wk every other week. After a 38-day hospitalization, the doctors tapered his regimen of prednisolone to 30 mg/d as the patient’s condition improved.
Takeaway
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are associated with the development of immune-mediated diseases. In this case, the Pfizer-BioNTech third dose triggered immediately thereafter an incident of GCA.
Corresponding author Kaichi Kaneko, based in the University of Toho Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, and colleagues note that doctors should be on the lookout for the signs of mRNA vaccine induced GCA including fever, fatigue and headache, even though these are also standard side effects as well. Should these symptoms persist, GCA may be a factor.
*****************************************************
New Omicron Vaccine will be Obsolete on Arrival
From Rita Rubin, Science Reporter for JAMA: “On June 15, members of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously to recommend updating the COVID-19 vaccine composition to a monovalent XBB lineage.”
On June 16, the FDA announced that it had advised manufacturers planning to update their COVID-19 vaccines that they should specifically target XBB.1.5. Scientists from Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer had told the FDA and its advisory committee that their XBB.1.5 monovalent vaccines could be ready to inject into arms by late July or early fall.
Although the FDA decides what antigens the COVID-19 vaccines should include, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is responsible for deciding who should get them and when. As soon as the FDA greenlights an XBB.1.5 vaccine, “I’m sure the ACIP will have a specially called meeting to decide how it should be used,” William Schaffner, M.D., chair of the department of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said in an interview.
ACIP stands for the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, on which Schaffner serves as the liaison representing the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, where he is medical director. At the ACIP meeting on an XBB.1.5 vaccine, “I think there will be a rather elaborate discussion on who will receive this vaccine,” Schaffner predicted.”
****************************************************
Australia: Protecting children takes courage: Just ask Dr Jillian Spencer, a child and adolescent psychiatrist
Julie Sladden
The announcement of the Labor Government’s proposed ‘misinformation’ Bill, while alarming, is not surprising. Anyone paying attention in recent years, especially the last three, will have noticed that our ‘freedom of speech’ has already been significantly curtailed through online censorship, government censorship (thank you, Department of Home Affairs), and self-censorship.
Nowhere has this been more palpable or alarming than the censorship of freedom of inquiry in science and medicine. During the Covid years, we discovered just how captured the medical profession is. Like lifting the lid on Pandora’s box, anyone who spoke out soon discovered the evil treasures in store for those who dared to question the narrative. The result was spectacular and tragic. Doctors who wanted to keep their jobs had to shut up, roll up their sleeves, and work on it. Those who spoke up or questioned the forced jab were marginalised, censored, sacked, or suspended. The message was clear, speak out at your peril. Despite the messaging, I was still shocked at how many capitulated. Surely this was the time we were meant to speak up and ask questions? Especially the hard ones. Isn’t this what we trained for?
Every so often, I meet someone who helps restore my hope in the medical profession. Last week that person was Dr Jillian Spencer, a senior staff Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist who was recently suspended from clinical practice at the Queensland Children’s Hospital. She now faces serious threats to her position, professional career, and livelihood, including potential regulatory action. Her crime, it seems, is to question out loud the affirmation model of transgender care.
Spencer says she is not alone in her concerns, ‘I would say that the vast majority of Child and Adolescent psychiatrists hold very serious concerns about the affirmation model, but to speak up in the current climate or even to take a more cautious clinical approach puts their employment at risk,’ she shared at a recent forum.
If there is any doubt that questioning ‘the narrative’ is dangerous for medical professionals, Spencer can set the record straight. Her experience of raising concerns within the organisation through the ‘proper channels’ has not gone well.
‘The process is to raise concerns internally (within an organisation) so that you’re doing it professionally and appropriately, rather than having to speak out. But when I pushed that to the maximum internally, it went very badly. So now I’m in the position of speaking out (publicly). The majority of child psychiatrists (are silent) for good reasons and self-preservation. The good reasons being wanting to be available to help people and to not be perceived as biased. But also, a lot of it is fear. And I don’t think my case has helped either, as I’m at risk for my employment and my (registration). It’s very serious. And so, I can’t blame them.’
But the costs of speaking out extend beyond the doctor involved. Patient care and service delivery stand to suffer too.
‘The danger of speaking out is that you lose the capacity to help more people,’ Spencer shares. ‘For example, a gender-questioning young person might be reluctant to see me now that I’ve spoken out, and that’s not something I want because I want young people to feel comfortable with me. My job is to listen and understand and to do what I can to help them.’
Now, this job is on hold indefinitely. However, Spencer is undeterred. Rather than quietly waiting for the ‘powers that be’ to hand down judgment, she demonstrates a commitment to her convictions by continuing to speak out. Loudly and often. To an outsider, it would appear Spencer has reached a point of reluctant acceptance of her situation and that she might as well go ‘all in’. Arriving at this point has come through painful reflection, ‘dark times’, and the realisation that the organisation Spencer has served faithfully for decades has apparently abandoned her.
‘It’s a really difficult employment situation,’ says Spencer. ‘Some people say, “Well, if your organisation is doing something that you disagree with, then the appropriate pathway is to resign.” But if you’ve been with an organisation for 20 years, you feel a part of that organisation. I feel like part of the family and part of changing the culture internally. It’s part of my job.’
‘People say “You need to resign or accept it.” But it’s also a responsibility to try and help your organisation do the right thing and… ‘speak up for safety.’
Listening to her speeches, presentations, and interviews, it is hard to argue that Spencer is motivated by anything other than safety. Child safety appears at the core of her message time and again.
‘It’s a really hard situation for child and adolescent psychiatrists… and for any mental health clinicians who work with children. Because there’s a lot of organisational and social pressure to affirm children,’ Spencer shares. ‘But when we start to look at the evidence base behind the affirmation model, we find the studies have major flaws, and they don’t show sufficient benefit to outweigh the risks and the harms.’
‘Previously, our discipline always took a developmental approach, which means that the years of childhood and adolescence were understood to be a period of incredible growth and change. We didn’t label children with long-term conditions, such as personality disorders, because we knew that a lot of conditions would ease with maturity, and indeed, the eleven studies that were conducted before the affirmation model was in use when they used a watchful waiting approach found that 60 to 90 per cent of children with gender dysphoria became comfortable in their own bodies with maturity.’
‘I assure you that this is not part of a culture war. This is a really serious child protection issue. We entered our field to try to assist children to thrive, but the gender clinics have been set up, and psychiatrists are being forced to affirm the social transition of all children and go along with the idea that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will lead to benefit.’
Spencer’s words highlight the dangerous waters our children are in. Treatment pathways and models of care are being imposed while the evidence is unclear, pathways that have modalities with irreversible and devastating consequences for children in terms of fertility, sexual and long-term health. Anyone who would step into these waters without a cautious approach does not understand the potential ramifications.
One of the arguments used to justify support for the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers is mental distress and the risk of suicide in those experiencing gender dysphoria, as highlighted in a recent Four Corners report. However, Spencer paints a broader picture. ‘There’s no evidence to show that the social transition or the use of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones reduces the death rate or improves psychological functioning.’
‘What we know from the eleven studies that were conducted before the affirmation model was in use – so that’s when they didn’t use puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones – is that the vast majority of (children with gender dysphoria) grew up to become comfortable with their body if they’re allowed to go through the full course of adolescence.’
‘My personal opinion is that we could disallow the prescription of puberty blockers… (and)… Australia aligned itself with all the European countries that have conducted systematic reviews of the evidence behind puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. From those systematic reviews, they realised that no child should be prescribed puberty blockers outside of a clinical research trial or in exceptional circumstances. And in the UK, they’ve even gone further in recommending caution around social transition.’
In voicing concerns at a recent rally, Spencer stumbled on another issue facing doctors who dare speak out. Soon after, the hospital told Spencer she allegedly broke the Queensland public services Code of Conduct through her public statements. It’s an allegation Spencer contests, saying she was speaking as a private citizen. In the speech, Spencer neither identifies herself as a doctor nor makes mention of her role or employer. The question is, where does a doctor’s autonomy begin and the employer’s jurisdiction end?
Have we already entered the era where the reach of our employers and regulatory authorities extends fully into our capacity to speak publicly anywhere?
The AHPRA Code of Conduct for medical professionals outlines several expectations of health professionals to question, examine and discuss the potential risks and benefits of treatment in addition to advocating for vulnerable communities, including children. It would seem, therefore, that Dr Spencer is simply doing her job.
‘We are not being allowed any professional discretion,’ she argues. ‘It is incredibly distressing to be forced into harming other people’s children, or otherwise face the potential loss of one’s career, livelihood or to be cast out of the workplace as has happened to me. But this is too important, so I will not be silenced.’
Dr Spencer is calling for an urgent Federal inquiry into the model of care for the treatment of children with gender dysphoria.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/protecting-children-takes-courage/
*************************************************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
***************************************************
Friday, July 14, 2023
Thursday, July 13, 2023
University of Zurich COVID-19 Vax Adverse Effect Study
A team at the University of Zurich, Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute (EBPI) led a population-based cohort study involving 575 individuals who received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, and as part of the study, were monitored and followed up over 12 weeks, with participants sharing commonly reported adverse effects, mostly local pain, fatigue, headache and fever. Not surprisingly, a majority of adverse effects were mild to moderate and resolved within three days. The findings here are comparable to other reported prevalence and severity of adverse effects in randomized controlled trials. Hospitalizations out of the cohort totaled 0.7%.
Context
The results of this Swiss study concerning the prevalence and severity of adverse effects are overall similar to previously reported data from randomized controlled trials and other observational studies as cited by the Swiss-based study authors.
The team provides an overview of other important safety surveillance studies for some perspective. For example, in one online survey among persons who received either the Pfizer (BNT162b2), Moderna (mRNA-1273) or J&J (JNJ-78436735), study team of Beatty et al. reported that 80.3% of participants experienced adverse effects, with comparable estimates for each vaccine type.
The proportion of adverse effects that were self-reported as severe or required hospitalization in the current study (14.7%) was well below that of Swiss and European governmental surveillance systems (37.9% in Swiss ElViS). These are actually high rates.
Furthermore, safety surveillance systems in America reveal higher estimates of serious adverse events based on hospitalization rates, serious illness and deaths (9.2% vs. our 0.7%). The Swiss authors propose: “These higher estimates from governmental reporting systems are likely related to the underreporting of mild symptoms and underscore the importance of real-world data.”
Reports on prevalence of anaphylaxis and severe allergic reactions vary from 0.03% to 3% based on differing definitions. In the current University of Zurich study, two (0.4%) participants reported allergic reactions, without the need to consult a medical professional.
The study
Data is derived from participants at a University of Zurich vaccination center. Individuals receiving BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273 vaccines were recruited between March 10, 2021, and July 21, 2021, while participants receiving JNJ-78436735 were recruited between October 20, 2021, and January 27, 2022.
The findings
Out of the entire study population, 454 participants reported experiencing at least one adverse event up to three months post-vaccination equaling 79.0% of the total. The study showed a total of 2233 adverse events meaning on average there were 3.88 adverse events reported per study participant.
**************************************************
Canadian Investigators Discovery Unique Blood Plasma Protein Patterns in Long COVID Patients
A Canadian research unit may come up with a way to treat at least some long COVID patients more effectively. The condition has emerged since the pandemic as a real problem. With anywhere from 10-20% of people that have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 susceptible to long COVID, some estimate north of 14 million people in America alone struggling with the condition, which can last for many months. Often impacting the quality of life, symptoms from brain fog and fatigue to breathing difficulties can be outright debilitating. Led by Dr. Douglas Faser, a professor in pediatrics at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentist, and physician at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) a team of Canadians designed a study using artificial intelligence (AI) as part of advanced research to discover unique patterns of blood plasma proteins in patients with suspected long COVID, with an aim on improving patient outcomes. Enter the “plasma proteome,” as the research centers on proteins identified in blood plasma, released by cells often playing a vital role in pathogen immune response.
With study results recently published in the Journal of Translational Medicine this study team sought out to better understand how these plasma cells impact patients with long COVID, and why some patients struggle more than others.
Corresponding authors Dr. Douglas Faser and Cristiana Losef, both with Children’s Health Research Institute, Victoria Research Laboratories, and colleagues investigated possible mechanisms, and to inform the prognosis and treatment of long COVID.
This technology allowed researchers to determine unique patterns in the blood proteins. The team discovered that people with suspected long COVID have prolonged inflammation associated with changes in their immune cells and blood vessels. These changes may lead to problems in specific organs, like the brain and the heart, as reported by Western University.
Called “the plasma proteome,” the proteins are found in blood plasma and are released by cells that often play an important role in the body’s immune response to viruses. The research team is studying how those proteins adapt and change in long COVID.
The study
With a green light from the local Ethics Committee (Western University), the study team enrolled patients from London Health Sciences Center in London, Ontario, Canada and St. Joseph's including patients diagnosed with long COVID as well as acutely ill COVID-19 patients.
Upon diagnosis of long COVID, study patients were referred to a specialist clinic based on prolonged, diffuse symptoms according to the author's account in the Journal of Translational Medicine.
Conducting a series of tests including venous blood work, the study team analyzed patient plasma. COVID-19 patients were approached when they were admitted to the hospital or medical ward or intensive care unit. Healthy subjects were included—persons without disease, acute illness or any prescription medicine, but previously banked by the Translational Research Center in London, Ontario.
All samples in the study were matched by age and gender (e.g., long COVID patients to acutely ill patients to healthy controls).
Results
Unlike acutely ill COVID-19 patients as well as healthy subjects---both matched by age and sex—the long COVID outpatients evidenced natural killer cell redistribution with a dominant resting phenotype, opposite to active and neutrophils formed in extracellular traps.
The study team reports a possible “resetting of cell phenotypes” likely resulting from “prospective vascular events mediated by both angiopoietin (ANGPT1) and vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGFA).
Validating several biomarkers (ANGPT1, VEGFA, CCR7, CD56, citrullinated histone 3, elastase) the authors report also that “Signaling of transforming growth factor-β1 with probable connections to elevated EP/p300” pointed to both vascular inflammation as well as tumor necrosis factor- α driven pathways. The authors suggested that the progression from acute COVID-19 to long COVID was “a vascular proliferative state associated with hypoxia-inducible factor 1 pathway.”
Fraser and Losef write that this “vascular-proliferative process predicted in Long-COVID might contribute to changes in the organ-specific proteome reflective of neurologic and cardiometabolic dysfunction.”
PI Point of View
Cristiana Losef, a research analyst at Children’s Health Research Institute (CHRI), a program of Lawson went on the record, “We used novel technologies for this study, allowing us to analyze more than 3,000 proteins in blood plasma at the same time with multiple patients.”
Losef continued:
“We used a novel bioinformatic pipeline, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), to analyze the proteins to determine the specific changes that occur in long COVID.”
Dr. Michael Nicholson, associate scientist at Lawson, and respirologist at St. Joseph’s Health Care London reports on the influence of this study, “Trying to understand this mechanism is quite important because it provides further insight into how patients are affected,” says Dr. Michael Nicholson. He continued, “This paper sheds further light on a possible mechanism that may provide insight into why some patients have certain symptoms.”
Michael Knauer, an associate scientist at Lawson shared for Western University, “The saved blood plasma samples we are using helped us determine the long-term responses to COVID-19; serial blood plasma samples from individuals that had a COVID-19 infection and now presumed long COVID will help us determine how proteins are changing over time.”
What’s the potential value from a therapeutic perspective?
Dr. Faser, a professor at Schulich Medicine, said the proteins discovered could act as a potential drug target. The team is now examining potential new drug therapies with the hopes of improving outcomes for these patients.
Fraser emphasized:
“When we identify these signaling patterns within the blood plasma, we can then take the information and screen drug databases to better understand which drugs would be best to target the changes we identified in long COVID patients.” Pointing to the potential of these findings, “With this understanding, the identified drugs may be used in future long COVID clinical trials.”
Key Point: This research, which used multiple state-of-the-art technologies, was enabled by existing expertise and infrastructure through Children’s Health Research Institute (CHRI). It reveals that the findings point to a “vascular-proliferative process in Long-COVID that is likely initiated either prior hypoxia (localized or systemic) and/or stimulatory factors (i.e., cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, angiotensin, etc.). Analyses of the plasma proteome, used as a surrogate for cellular signaling, unveiled potential organ-specific prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets.”
*************************************************
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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