Pandemic Lessons Learned
Earlier this month, The Lancet published an article titled “Shanghai’s life-saving efforts against the current omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic” by three renowned scientists at Shanghai’s top universities: Wenhong Zhang, Xinxin Zhang, and Saijuan Chen. The article praised the Chinese Communist Party’s draconian lockdown policy in Shanghai as “life-saving.”
Not long before that, however, Wenhong Zhang, then head of Shanghai’s COVID Control Experts Committee, spoke out in favor of coexisting with the virus.
“We cannot have the mindset of killing the virus at all costs. We must secure a normal life of our citizens, while at the same time controlling the spread of the virus,” he said publicly on March 24.
But what we have witnessed in Shanghai since April 5 is anything but “normal life” for its citizens. What changed? What made Dr. Zhang change his mind, from supporting living with the virus to killing the virus at all costs?
In a word, the CCP. The same regime that killed millions of its own citizens during peacetime and allowed SARS-CoV-2 to spread around the world in early 2020, is also capable of making people doubt what they see with their own eyes, deliberately peddling a falsehood, an evil practice that dates back to ancient China.
Zero-COVID Is Impossible
Under Xi Jinping, China has been implementing a zero-COVID policy to varying degrees since the beginning of the pandemic, using it to boost the regime’s “success” in controlling the spread of the virus as being superior to Western democracies.
The CCP not only has control of the movement of citizens and control of the media, it also attempts to control people’s thoughts.
However, it cannot control Omicron, despite its cruel lockdowns. In fact, Omicron is, like air, beyond the control of any government. Even World Health Organization director-general Tedros—an admirer of China’s handling of the virus outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic—said at a media briefing on May 10 that the WHO does not think China’s COVID policy is “sustainable considering the behaviour of the virus.”
“We have discussed about this issue with Chinese experts and we indicated that the approach will not be sustainable,” he said. “I think a shift would be very important.”
It seems Tedros is not trying to hide his opinion anymore. And at the same press briefing, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said: “We need to balance the control measures against the impact on society, the impact they have on the economy.” Sounds like Wenhong Zhang’s position in March.
Anyone with any microbiology or epidemiology training would look at the science of Omicron and conclude that zero-COVID in the era of this variant is impossible.
Why did Dr. Zhang change his mind, from a forward-thinking “live with the virus” position to the “zero-COVID” nonsense, and why did his two colleagues take the same stance?
Some choose to enforce the narrative of the CCP in the hope of being rewarded. I just hope that the authors of the Lancet propaganda piece did not write the article to get promoted.
I did my undergraduate at Fudan University, where Zhang Wenhong got his PhD and is now the director of a hospital affiliated with Fudan, and my master’s at Jiaotong University, where Saijuan Chen is director of the State Key Laboratory of Medical Genomics and where Xinxin Zhang is a doctor in the chemistry department.
As an alumnus of these universities, I must say that I am deeply disappointed that for all the education and experience these doctors have, they chose to praise and validate the CCP’s incredibly misguided zero-COVID approach, calling it life-saving while it has actually cost many lives.
The three did so in the most damaging way, i.e., using their influence to have their CCP propaganda piece published in The Lancet as science—a masterstroke in this new era of scientific misinformation.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/pandemic-lessons-learned-deer-are-not-military-horses_4481983.html
************************************************Are the Democrats losing silicon valley?
Barack Obama’s White House hosted so many Google executives that it was seen as a satellite office. The company’s chairman Eric Schmidt campaigned vocally for Obama’s election, and during Obama’s eight years in power, a Google employee visited the White House on average once a week.
Democrat ties to Silicon Valley did not stop at a single company. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s number two, worked for the Clinton administration. Obama’s political strategist David Plouffe went on to work for Uber and Mark Zuckerberg’s charitable foundation. The former president’s press secretary, Jay Carney, is now a senior executive at Amazon.
Elon Musk’s Tesla survived in its early days partly through hundreds of millions of dollars of Obama-era loans.
But in recent months, the once-strong ties between US Democrats and Silicon Valley, the new heart of American corporate power, have broken down. In the last week, the tech industry’s two wealthiest individuals have attacked Joe Biden’s party, while a growing number of senior figures have questioned the administration.
“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday. “But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”
Earlier this month, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos launched a rare political intervention, attacking Biden over his record on inflation. In response to Biden calling for higher taxes on corporations to fight price rises, Bezos accused the US president of “misdirection”.
“Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent,” he added.
For years, Silicon Valley and its workers appeared to be natural allies of the US Left. The web’s pioneers boasted of libertarian ideals and the end of censorship, an antidote to conservative fears over violent video games and rap music that paralleled its rise. Its workers were primarily young, university-educated and socially liberal.
Santa Clara County, the home of Apple, Google and Facebook, voted for Republicans Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, but has swung blue in every presidential race since 1988.
It became a mutually beneficial relationship. For Democrats, Silicon Valley was the acceptable face of capitalism, mission-driven, vibrant and diverse, not to mention a huge source of funds. Silicon Valley donations to Obama in 2012 outpaced those to Mitt Romney roughly tenfold. In turn, the Clinton and Obama administrations brought light-touch regulation, such as the Section 230 protections that broadly granted legal immunity to social networks. In 2012, the Obama administration decided not to bring monopoly abuse charges against Google, and waved through acquisitions such as Facebook’s takeover of Instagram.
Tech’s Right-wing only occasionally stuck their head above the parapet. Former eBay boss Meg Whitman unsuccessfully ran for California governor as a Republican in 2010. When Peter Thiel, a PayPal founder and early Facebook investor, spoke in support of Donald Trump at 2016’s Republican National Convention, he became a pariah to much of the tech industry.
The Biden White House has been more hostile to tech companies and their owners, however. Biden has accused companies such as Facebook of “killing people” for not regulating Covid posts more strictly. He has also appointed a string of senior officials who have called for Big Tech to be broken up, such as Tim Wu and Lina Khan, two stars of the antitrust movement.
Biden has also strongly supported unions, putting him in conflict with the likes of Amazon and Tesla. The Tesla billionaire has also grumbled at Biden’s apparent reluctance to credit his company with driving the electric vehicle revolution, while heaping praise on Ford and General Motors.
In contrast, Trump cut taxes on the huge stashes of overseas funds that Apple, Google and Microsoft held, which were returned to grateful shareholders.
But it is Democrats’ tax policies that have caused the biggest stir among Silicon Valley’s wealthiest. Last year, US senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren proposed taxing the richest 700 Americans on their unrealised gains, such as the soaring value of their shares. The plan was scuppered by moderate Democrats but earned Musk’s ire.
“Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you,” he wrote in October. Later, he sold 10 per cent of his Tesla shares, resulting in a tax bill of about $US11 billion. “I’m paying the largest amount of tax of any individual in history,” he said.
Zach Graves, executive director of the Lincoln Network, a technology policy group, says: “There has always been a libertarian kind of flair in Silicon Valley, but sometimes that’s been more underground. They don’t wear it on their sleeve. The convention that Silicon Valley leans pretty strongly to the Left is right. But you do see notable exceptions.
“People have become more successful, maybe they have had their exit [a major payday such as an IPO]. They feel more comfortable in their political views.”
A string of top Silicon Valley investors such as Paul Graham, the Welsh born founder of Y Combinator, and Marc Andreessen, the head of one of Silicon Valley’s top venture firms A16Z, have become more outspoken about Left-wing censorship.
“It used to be that censorship was something the Right did, and free speech was something the Left were in favour of. But over the last few decades, banning ‘problematic’ ideas has become a huge component of Left culture,” Graham wrote last month.
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23 May, 2022
CDC Advises Doctors to Be on Alert for Monkeypox as WHO Confirms Outbreaks in 11 Countries
This is one occasion when we oldies have the last laugh. We will not get this pox. Why? Because when we were young vaccination against smallpox was compulsory if we wanted to travel overseas. And poxes are related. Our vaccination against smallpox will protect us against monkey pox too
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an advisory on Friday asking doctors across the United States to be on the watch for monkeypox, as the World Health Organization has confirmed 80 confirmed cases across 11 countries.
Monkeypox is a viral disease typically endemic to central and western Africa, but since the start of May, dozens of confirmed cases have been reported in several countries outside of the continent. Many more suspected cases are being investigated.
The CDC is asking doctors to “be vigilant to the characteristic rash associated with monkeypox” and describes the rash as involving “vesicles or pustules that are deep-seated, firm or hard, and well-circumscribed,” adding that the lesions “may umbilicate or become confluent and progress over time to scabs.”
It adds that doctors should be more suspicious for the disease and consider it as a possible diagnosis if, in addition to having a characteristic rash, their patient has traveled to countries with recently confirmed cases of monkeypox; reports having had contact with anyone who had monkeypox, or suspected monkeypox, or have a rash similar in appearance to monkeypox; or is a man who regularly has close or intimate in-person contact with other men.
“Lesions may be disseminated or located on the genital or perianal area alone,” the CDC also stated in its advisory.
“Some patients may present with proctitis, and their illness could be clinically confused with a sexually transmitted infection (STI) like syphilis or herpes, or with varicella zoster virus infection,” the agency adds. Proctitis is inflammation of the lining of the rectum and can cause rectal pain, diarrhea, bleeding, and discharge.
Prior to May, cases outside of Africa were among people with a recent history of travel to Nigeria or contact with another person confirmed with monkeypox, the CDC noted. But there have been confirmed cases since the start of the month without a history of travel to Africa, the CDC noted, adding that the source of the cases “is unknown.”
Cases outside Africa have been reported in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Canada, as well as across Europe including Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, France, and Germany. The number of confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.K., where the disease was first detected outside of Africa, has reached 20 as of May 20.
The CDC noted that in the case of the United Kingdom, there was a “temporally clustered group of cases involving four people who self-identify as gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with men.”
“Some evidence suggests that cases among [men who have sex with men] may be epidemiologically linked; the patients in this cluster were identified at sexual health clinics,” it stated. “This is an evolving investigation and public health authorities hope to learn more about routes of exposure in the coming days.”
The WHO said on Friday that the recent outbreaks across 11 countries so far are “atypical, as they are occurring in non-endemic countries.” It said there are about 80 confirmed cases and 50 pending investigations, with more cases likely to be reported in the near future.
“People who closely interact with someone who is infectious are at greater risk for infection: this includes health workers, household members and sexual partners,” the WHO stated.
Monkeypox starts off with flu-like symptoms that include fever, muscle aches, and fatigue, as well as swelling of the lymph nodes. Within days after fever, a rash appears on the face and body, which can also include the genital or perianal area, the CDC states. The incubation period—time from infection to symptoms—can range from 5 to 21 days.
The disease usually self-resolves with the symptoms lasting from 2 to 4 weeks, although severe cases can occur and can even result in death, with recent death rates being around 3 to 6 percent, according to the WHO.
The United States has one confirmed case of monkeypox in Massachusetts, the first this year. The CDC said it is working with the state’s health department to investigate the case. The patient involved has the West African strain of monkeypox virus, and is currently isolated, the CDC stated. He had recently traveled to Canada, where the first two monkeypox cases were confirmed late on May 19 in Quebec.
Another suspected monkeypox case is being investigated in New York City.
In 2021, the United States had two confirmed cases of monkeypox, one in Maryland and one in Texas. Both cases involved people who had recently traveled to Nigeria, where the virus is endemic.
The Biden administration on May 18 placed an order for millions of doses of a vaccine intended to protect against smallpox and monkeypox from Bavarian Nordic, a Denmark-based biotech company. The vaccine is approved under the name Jynneos in the United States, available to those at high risk of smallpox and monkeypox.
“Jynneos does not contain the viruses that cause smallpox or monkeypox. It is made from a vaccinia virus, a virus that is closely related to, but less harmful than, variola or monkeypox viruses and can protect against both of these diseases,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stated in September 2021, at the time of the vaccine’s approval. “Jynneos contains a modified form of the vaccinia virus called Modified Vaccinia Ankara, which does not cause disease in humans and is non-replicating, meaning it cannot reproduce in human cells.”
According to the CDC, because the monkeypox virus is related to the virus that causes smallpox, the vaccine can protect people from getting monkeypox.
“Past data from Africa suggests that the smallpox vaccine is at least 85 [percent] effective in preventing monkeypox,” the CDC stated. “The effectiveness of [Jynneos] against monkeypox was concluded from a clinical study on the immunogenicity of Jynneos and efficacy data from animal studies.
“Smallpox and monkeypox vaccines are effective at protecting people against monkeypox when given before exposure to monkeypox. Experts also believe that vaccination after a monkeypox exposure may help prevent the disease or make it less severe.”
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Australians dying of COVID while life-saving drugs go unused, doctors say
Top doctors have warned that vulnerable patients who test positive to COVID-19 are missing out on potentially life-saving antiviral treatments, with just a fraction of those at risk of serious disease having accessed the new drugs.
Figures from the federal health department show 1379 patients received antiviral medication Paxlovid through their GP in the first weeks in May, after the drug was listed on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.
“We are still getting quite a number of deaths – and making sure people know antivirals are available is one way of trying to address this,” infectious disease physician Professor Allen Cheng said. “We don’t have many levers left to pull [to protect those at risk of severe illness]. It is easy for people to fall through the cracks”.
With tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases recorded each week, experts say a major awareness campaign is needed to make sure at-risk people know that highly effective treatments can help prevent severe disease if they are taken within five days of symptom onset.
There were more than 680,000 coronavirus cases recorded nationally in the first two weeks in May and 563 deaths.
Fourth ‘winter’ COVID vaccine recommended for people over 65
“Clearly not everyone eligible or those that would benefit are getting access to the treatments,” Cheng said. A major push is needed to make sure older patients with other risk factors, those with co-morbidities, people who are immunosuppressed and unvaccinated are aware treatments are available, he said.
Evidence from trials show that for every 10 to 20 patients treated with Paxlovid one person will be prevented from being hospitalised, Cheng said.
Paxlovid, a combination of the drugs nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, was listed on the PBS last month. Eligible adults who test positive to COVID-19 through a PCR or rapid antigen test can access the treatment from their local pharmacy with a GP prescription.
Paxlovid is available to people aged 65 or older, with two other risk factors for severe disease, or one factor for those aged 75 and over. It is subsidised for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander patients aged 50 or over with two other risk factors and patients who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.
Another antiviral drug, Lagevrio – the trade name for molnupiravir – was also listed on the PBS in March and has since been used to treat more than 15,000 patients, including about 7000 in NSW.
“Clearly not everyone eligible or those that would benefit are getting access to the treatments.”
President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Karen Price said doctors need to tell “eligible patients proactively that if they contract COVID-19 they should contact their GP”.
“A lot of people are sitting at home with a positive rapid test. We must make sure they know about the medication they can access which could stop them ending up in hospital.”
Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid said an awareness campaign was needed for vulnerable people, especially because treatments were previously only available from hospital.
“If you get a positive test, and you’re at risk, a telehealth appointment is all that is needed to be assessed for treatment”.
“Paxlovid has many drug interactions, so it does take time for GPs to have a good grasp of who should be having antivirals. There are definitely barriers in accessing medication”.
Last month Health Minister Greg Hunt said the antiviral PBS listings would support the national plan to transition Australia’s COVID-19 response, which outlines steps to remove all remaining coronavirus restrictions in the community.
“This medicine will help reduce the need for hospital admission,” Mr Hunt said.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
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