DeSantis Versus Lockdowns: What the Data Reveals About Florida’s COVID-19 Policies

While many states remained locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Ron DeSantis took a drastically different approach in Florida. The exclusive documentary “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns” follows the journey of one governor standing against the mainstream COVID narrative. Presented by EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders host Jan Jekielek, who traveled to Florida during the height of the pandemic to get the full story.

Florida Residents Love Freedom

DeSantis graduated from Yale before he attended Harvard law school. He served his country as a Seal Team legal adviser in Iraq and became the youngest governor of Florida in more than a century. Jekielek traveled across the diverse state to get a taste of the people and the current political sentiment. From the cities to the countryside, the film features Americans telling their immigration stories and sharing their love for America and freedom.

DeSantis describes himself as “knee-jerk anti-communist.” Jekielek, whose parents escaped communist Poland in the ’70s, is also deeply moved by people’s stories of escape from communism. DeSantis explained that to people in Florida, tyranny does not seem distant like it might to those in other states. He also spoke about how the founders of the American Constitution held a vision for state autonomy to counter overreach from the federal government.

DeSantis Vows to Never Do Lockdowns Again

DeSantis has been the target of a barrage of media attacks revolving around Florida’s COVID policies. Despite this, the governor has widespread support from diverse groups within his state. The lockdowns of Wuhan, China, in 2020 led governments worldwide to follow suit. While many states were still shut down, Florida was taking steps toward reopening, with DeSantis saying in a press conference, “we will never do any of these lockdowns again.” This came only one month after instituting the initial lockdown. DeSantis noted that the lockdowns were a panic-driven approach and a departure from what the scientific recommendations had traditionally been for pandemics.

Dr. Scott Atlas, a Public Health Policy Expert and Senior Fellow at Standford University’s Hoover Institute, served as a key COVID adviser to DeSantis. According to Atlas, it was appropriate to shut down initially, given the information they had at that time. He believes most people bought into the extreme measures out of fear and because it was supposed to be temporary. The initial understanding was to lock the state down for 15 days to get their bearings and prevent hospitals from becoming overcrowded while they determined how to proceed. But Atlas notes that there was a dramatic shift in the goal: from preventing overcrowding to stopping cases. He says health policy experts shouldn’t just look at the disease but must also look at the impact of what they do to mitigate the effects of the disease.

Protecting the Most Vulnerable Without Causing Harm to Others

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and public health policy adviser. He is the co-author of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which recommended a focused protection approach. This strategy is based on the fact that COVID-19 poses significantly more harm to the older population than the younger population and that the effects of lockdowns are devastating to public health. For older populations, COVID poses more risk than lockdowns. For younger age groups, the lockdowns proved more harmful than the disease itself. Because of this, Bhattacharya considers it immoral to subject the younger population to lockdowns. Atlas said, “There’s a big reason why lockdowns were never recommended in prior pandemics. It is not true that people have the same risk for hospitalization.” He gives examples of the tens of thousands of cases on college campuses early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases induced excessive panic in the media but no perspective. Atlas cites that of the first 50,000 cases on college campuses, there were zero hospitalizations. Nevertheless, as the news kept tallying the case numbers, college campuses began shutting down. He said they were highlighting exceptions and throwing reason out the window.

Lockdowns Failed to Save the High-Risk

One of the main reasons these experts opposed the lockdowns was because the data showed the policy failed to save the elderly. Atlas said the elderly “were destroyed and killed by the lack of enough prioritization and enough resources.” He explained how public health resources were misallocated during the pandemic and how the lockdowns failed to stop the spread among the most vulnerable populations. For example, nursing home deaths comprised forty to fifty percent of all deaths. According to Atlas, the data showed all the cases in nursing homes came in from the staff in nursing homes, yet the recommendation was to test once per week. He said they should have been testing three or five times per week to prioritize the protection of the most high-risk. Fifteen days to slow the spread did not work, and DeSantis claimed it caused significant damage to people.

What Did DeSantis Do Differently?

In place of extreme lockdown measures, what did DeSantis do in Florida? The answer is simple: he made educated decisions based on accurate data that aimed to protect the vulnerable without harming the rest of the population. This EpochTV documentary shows recorded meetings of the governor going over current COVID-19 data in great detail. Examining the statistics and data with his policy experts, they worked to make decisions that would effectively protect the population. “You don’t have to be a medical scientist to understand the data,” said Atlas. “You just have to be a critical thinker.” DeSantis was concerned about the harms of the virus and the lockdowns alike. Dr. Bhattacharya said when he spoke with DeSantis, he didn’t recall citing an article that the governor had not already seen. Bhattacharya felt that the governor was more educated on the facts than his Stanford colleagues.

Protecting the most at-risk demographic was the primary concern for DeSantis. His policies focused on preventing the discharging of COVID positive patients back into nursing homes. DeSantis listened to the personal insights of family members and nursing home residents, guiding state policies accordingly.

Lockdowns Caused Excess Deaths

Atlas argued that the lockdowns did not just fail to stop the spread of COVID, but they also killed people. According to a CDC report, almost half of the patients in the United States who received chemotherapy skipped treatment during the lockdowns. Forty percent of people with an acute stroke were too afraid to call an ambulance. Thirty to 50 percent of heart attack patients did not come into the hospital. Eighty-five percent of live organ transplants did not get done during the two months of lockdowns.

One in four young adults reported serious thoughts of suicide. Atlas cited that 50 percent of people ages 18 to 24 said they were fearful of any social interaction. Over 300,000 child abuse cases during the pandemic lockdowns went undetected. Atlas called it “an enormous tragedy,” citing emails from people pleading with him to keep speaking out against the harms of the lockdowns. Many had family members who had died of suicide or attempted suicide.

With all this data readily available, why did Florida’s policies differ so drastically from other states? Atlas points out that the burden of proof for the lockdowns should be on the states that implemented them. According to the data, Florida did the best regarding age-adjusted deaths for ages 65 and older. In addition, Florida performed better than over half the states on the total number of deaths from COVID. The economy also did better, with the unemployment rate two to three times higher in California than in Florida at the time of the documentary.

Censorship of Scientific Debate

Nevertheless, DeSantis bore the brunt of much hostility and criticism from the media. He has called out Big Tech for censoring round table discussions, pulling his videos off their platforms, and censoring scientists and doctors who deviated from the mainstream COVID narrative. Atlas spoke to the serious threat facing any who dared to speak the truth about the data. “It’s off the rails. This is not the way civilization should be.” Bhattacharya said one side simply pretended to be correct and called the other side dangerous. In reality, the scientific community had many different opinions on what measures were appropriate and effective. Sadly, people weren’t allowed to hear the different views.

Bhattacharya said, “if you are going to censor scientific debate, you might as well not do science at all,” calling the one-sided narrative “absolutely shocking.” DeSantis said censorship is a telltale sign that the narrative is about enforcing orthodoxy, not about the facts. Interestingly, Florida’s approach never centered around herd immunity but advocated for protecting those at risk without harming those not at risk.

Florida’s Pandemic Legacy: Common Sense, Traditional Values, and Freedom

How did Western governments go from an alleged commitment to fundamental liberties to draconian measures such as lockdowns, censorship, and medical mandates? DeSantis said many leaders made mistakes but will never admit they were wrong. In Florida, they combatted COVID to the degree they could without causing further damage. DeSantis says he doesn’t mind taking criticism for his policies because that’s what the role of a leader is. He said he would rather people swing at him than have the residents of his state suffer. The governor’s philosophy is that a leader’s job is not to impose mandates and lockdowns but to listen, collaborate, and protect.

As a result, Jekielek found the state of Florida to be a breath of fresh air during the COVID-19 pandemic. DeSantis’s deep respect for the American Constitution and those who have fought to preserve freedom made him willing to fight and protect it. While much of the world was afraid and shut down, the EpochTV documentary shows Florida’s businesses were open. Contrary to what the mainstream media predicted, Florida’s legacy in the aftermath of the pandemic appears to be common sense, traditional values, and the desire to live the American dream.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/desantis-versus-lockdowns-what-the-data-reveals-about-floridas-covid-19-policies_4810784.html

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95 Percent of Corpses Had Received COVID Vaccination Within 2 Weeks of Death: Funeral Director

A funeral director from New Zealand says that 95 percent of the corpses he has been seeing had received a COVID-19 vaccine within two weeks of their passing away.

“Ninety-five percent of the people who have passed away through the work that I’ve done have been vaccinated within two weeks,” Brenton Faithfull said.

Faithfull has been working as a funeral director for the last 41 years and has been running his own mortuary business for the last 26 years. He recently spoke out about the apparent relationship between the COVID-19 vaccines and the deaths he has been observing.

“It’s very obvious, they die within two weeks of receiving the vaccination, a lot of them … almost appear to have died from anaphylaxis, almost a reaction straight away to the booster.”

Anaphylaxis is an acute reaction of the body to an antigen, such as that of a bee sting, or an injection.

“They die the same day, the following day after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. This isn’t a one-off case, this is the majority of cases that have come through our facility,” Faithfull said in an interview.

Similar data has been discussed by funeral director John O’Looney in the UK and Richard Hirschman from Alabama, previously reported by The Epoch Times.

“From the very moment these injections went into arms, the death rate soared beyond belief. They labeled them all as COVID deaths, but the reality is they were almost exclusively the people who were vaccinated,” O’Looney told The Epoch Times.

“We now see record numbers of deaths in the vaccinated and in record numbers of young people. They die from a mixture of sudden very aggressive cancers or blood clots, which cause heart attack and stroke,” he added.

Doctors Comment

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, who has been informing the public on the dangers of vaccines for over two decades, weighed in on Faithfull’s testimony:

“On Dec. 2, 2020, UK regulators granted emergency-use authorization (EUA) to Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot. Within a week, MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency] Chief Executive Officer June Raine said in a statement that ‘Any person with a history of anaphylaxis to a vaccine, medicine or food should not receive the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.’ She went on to say that ‘allergic reactions had not been a feature of Pfizer’s clinical trials,'” Dr. Tenpenny told The Epoch Times.

However, Tenpenny further noted that anaphylaxis was the “first identified risk.”

“Pfizer was forced to release their findings by a Texas federal judge in January 2022. Within that first tranche of documents, you will find Table 3–Safety Concerns–on page 10 of this document [pdf]. The first identified risk is anaphylaxis. In a risk survey … conducted between Dec. 1, 2020, and Feb. 28, 2021, a mere three months, 1,833 cases of anaphylaxis had been observed and four individuals died from anaphylaxis on the same,” she said.

In certain cases, Faithfull and his staff try to get the coroner involved.

Faithfull shared one instance where a man insisted that his father should not get the vaccine, but his sister pressured their father. When the father conceded and took the shot, he died four days later.

“When I started counting in August of last year, it was one after the other, after the other, after the other, and when I got to 20, it was 19 who had died within two weeks [of getting the vaccine],” Faithfull said.

“So the first 20 days, I counted 19 of them—that’s 95 percent,” the funeral director explained. “The next number was 100 percent of the people who died had been vaccinated within two weeks.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/95-percent-of-corpses-had-received-covid-vaccination-within-2-weeks-of-death-funeral-director_4798942.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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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Republican governors pledge to fight children's COVID vaccine mandate, Dems largely silent

New guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urging children to be vaccinated against the coronavirus to attend school have sparked a polarized response from the nation's governors.

GOP chief executives have largely denounced the voluntary guidelines, pledging to block school districts from adopting a coronavirus vaccination as a prerequisite for attendance.

"Under my watch, there will be no COVID vaccine mandates for kids — period," said Gov. Kim Reynolds, R-Iowa. "In fact, we signed a law that prevents it. It’s the parent's decision, not the government’s."

Other Republican governors were similarly quick to denounce the idea. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a potential front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, even argued that, given the relatively new nature of the coronavirus vaccine, the shot might not be suitable for young children.

"I get a kick out of it when people kind of compare it to (measles, mumps and rubella shots) and things that have been around for decades and decades," said DeSantis. "These are new shots."

Earlier this week, the CDC voted to add coronavirus inoculation to the Vaccines for Children Program. The inclusion does not make the shots mandatory for children but places it on a list of recommended vaccinations the CDC provides to physicians.

GOP governors fear the guidelines will be adopted wholesale by school districts across the country.

"I will never mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for Idahoans of any age group, especially children," said Gov. Brad Little, R-Idaho. "As long as I am governor, that decision will be determined solely by parents, families and individual citizens."

Democratic chief executives have followed a different course. Many have remained largely silent about the new guidelines. Of the 22 Democratic governors contacted by Fox News Digital Friday about their position on the topic, only three returned requests for comment.

Some, like Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, said the new guidelines are voluntary and have no immediate impact on either children or parents.

"The main impact of the CDC recommendation is that health insurance companies will be required to cover the cost of the immunization and that the federal government can continue to provide it for free to low-income families," a spokesman for Newsom said. "It's interesting that Republican states are criticizing this as schools already require vaccinations for chickenpox, polio, measles and more."

Still, others took a more muted stand. Democratic Gov. Janet Mills of Maine said she would not ask the state legislature to adopt the vaccine requirement for children.

"Maine has one of the highest vaccination rates in the nation. Any COVID-19 vaccine requirement for Maine children would need the approval of the state legislature," a spokesman for Mills told Fox News Digital.

"The governor will continue to encourage Maine people to be vaccinated, but she has no plans to ask the legislature to require the COVID-19 vaccination for children."

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado took a similar position, telling Fox News Digital there were no plans to require a coronavirus vaccination for school attendance.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/republican-governors-pledge-fight-childrens-covid-vaccine-mandate-dems-largely-silent

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There was no basis for Covid passports and Covid vaccine mandates -- Pfizer admission

The admission Dutch conservative member of the European Parliament, Rob Roos, dragged out of Pfizer representative Janine Small has thrown the vaccine passport and vaccine mandate narrative into disarray. It dismantled the lie that we should be taking – specifically – Covid vaccines to protect others.

Roos switched to English when asking his controversial question, which helped the answer turn viral on social media where it was viewed at least 20 million times in the days that followed.

‘…and I will speak in English so there are no misunderstandings. Was the Pfizer Covid vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market? If not, please, say it clearly. If ‘yes’ are you willing to share the data with this committee? And I really want straight answer, ‘yes or no’ and I’m looking forward to it.’

‘No,’ was Small’s reply, followed by a little laugh – as if it were some kind of joke. ‘We had to really move at the speed of science.’ A comment that was shortly followed by the statement, ‘We had to do everything “at risk”.’

‘The speed of science… Honestly,’ said Rowan Dean, on The World According to Rowan Dean, which airs Tuesday-Thursday at 9pm on Sky News Australia.

He spoke with Rob Roos last night.

‘I was thrilled when you asked that question in English. You knew how important that question was. I remember, you started in Dutch and then went, “Hang on, I’m going to ask this question in English…!” Well done, and thank you so much. What led you to asking that particular question?’

‘Since the implementation of the Covid vaccines I’ve been searching for the answer to this question,’ replied Rob Roos. ‘I also asked it of AstraZeneca and Moderna because it’s important. Millions of people were placed outside society because of Covid passports. People lost their jobs and it was all based on that the vaccine would stop transmission, otherwise there would be no point in excluding unvaccinated people from society. If the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission, then vaccinated people spread the virus too. So, I found this to be an incredibly important question.’

‘Rob, you’re right, it is the single most important question because certainly here in Australia we had some of the worst lockdowns, we had this vicious persecution of unvaccinated people, we had our state premiers going on television and saying they wouldn’t be in the same room as the unvaccinated. It was this endless repetition of “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated”. We had health authorities – health bureaucrats – telling the public that they were going to make life incredibly difficult for you if you weren’t vaccinated. This was persecution, I don’t know if it was the same in Europe, but it certainly happened here in Australia. You got that critical answer that they hadn’t even tested if it would stop transmission. Were you surprised by the answer? What’s it been like since you exposed this scandal?’

‘Well, I wasn’t that surprised,’ admitted Roos, ‘because the answer was as I suspected. We have all seen the daily practice during the Omicron variant but our governments keep telling the story – the fiction – that vaccination was necessary to protect others. But I was surprised about the honesty with which the Pfizer representative responded because the implications are massive. This means that there was no basis for Covid passports and Covid vaccine mandates.’

‘What has been the result in the European Parliament? It was the executive [from Pfizer] who turned up and spoke but it was the CEO who was invited. The CEO declined to come on to your interrogation and questioning… Maybe the executive wasn’t even aware of what dynamite she was exposing by giving the answer she gave?’ added Dean. ‘Are we going to see governments backing down and apologising for these vaccine passports? What’s been the response?’

‘There has been a massive response to the video. Worldwide people are angry because their governments lied to them. Austrians were denied access to their dying parents, for example. People all over the world – not only Europe. I also think a lot of people are now starting to see the government’s response for what it was. They have abused their power, maybe [they were] even tyrannical. They only cared about pushing vaccinations. There was no respect for people’s body autonomy and integrity. So, on the one hand, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, massively so. At the same time, I have been attacked by establishment media who claimed I spread “fake news”. But, when they attack me they don’t attack my actual argument, they attack a strawman. I am not claiming Pfizer lied, I am claiming our governments lied because they based their narrative on the idea that you do this for others and that vaccination stops transmission for which there was no evidence. And all fact-checkers have to admit that the government messaging was plain wrong and government policies undermined fundamental rights in an unprecedented way – a way which we thought would never be possible in a liberal democracy. But it was. And that’s shocking, because it tells us a lot about the state of our fundamental rights.’

‘You’ve used a phrase that I’ve been using a lot over the past few months, the abuse of power,’ replied Rowan Dean. ‘And, for me, that is what the absolute pivot of this is all about. I agree with you. We’ve seen a lot of people coming out and saying, “Oh… well, they never claimed that they had tested for transmission therefore there’s nothing in this story.” It’s complete rubbish. As you have put your finger on, the point is that our politicians led us to believe, in fact, they insisted at every level. Whether it was Anthony Fauci in the States or our own politicians here in Australia – at every level our health bureaucrats insisted that the vaccines prevented transmission and this was the rationale for mandatory vaccination which, in this country – and in other places – many people lost their jobs. Many people are still out of work. Many people had their lives turned upside down and destroyed because they insisted to us that it did stop transmission. This isn’t a problem with Pfizer, as you say, Rob, this is absolutely about the abuse of power by politicians who are either too stupid, or too lazy, or too corrupt to actually check out the facts and were prepared to abuse their power. What happens next?’

‘That’s a very good question. What should happen, in my opinion, is that politicians are held accountable. The people who were responsible for these policies should resign if they are still in office. This has been the most damaging violation of fundamental rights in decades. Its impact is lasting. Small businesses are still going bankrupt because of high inflation after they were already weakened by Covid lockdowns. Young people are still more often depressed and lost out on valuable life experience – our society suffers from an obesity epidemic – and this was not because of some force of nature, it was because politicians decided to enact these policies. Those who did should resign and this violation of fundamental human rights should never happen again.’

As Rowan Dean says, Rob Roos belongs in the history books for what he has done exposing the lies of our government officials during the pandemic years.

The fact-checkers can complain all they like that Pfizer never said or implied that their tests would prevent transmission. This is the excuse official fact-checkers use to call ‘fake news’ on Rob Roos. Are outfits such as Politifact so dense (or disingenuous?) that they don’t realise they are debating the wrong fact? Let’s have a ‘fact-check’ on the claims of politicians, such as President Joe Biden. As Rob Roos correctly states, it was the lies of government and the lies of health officials drafting policy, that matter. And they certainly lied.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/rob-roos-and-rowan-dean-on-the-abuse-of-rights/

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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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CENSORED

As a conservative writer I do of course run the risk of being censored by the establishment media. It's an advance on book burning. Now the book is no longer published in the first place.

Facebook has been pretty heavy with me, which is why I no longer put up much there. But the cancer has now spread to my PCWatch blog. If you try to access it via Google, you get some lurid and quite false warnings about it. What happens when you try to access it directly, I am not sure. If you just access it directly using the usual link in the list of blogs below, I hope you will still get straight through.

Anyway, I always create a backup whenever I post something so that should enable continued access to the blog. I normally upload backups only once a month but from now on I will upload them daily. So see http://jonjayray.com/pcoct22.html for that

Feedback would be appreciated

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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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The truth about Australia's Covid lockdowns is FINALLY exposed: Damning report slams school closures and politically-driven decisions - 'it was WRONG'

An independent review into Australia's Covid response has slammed politically driven health orders and the excessive use of lockdowns - finding they ultimately failed to protect the nation's most vulnerable people,.

The 97-page review, led by former secretary to the prime minister's office Peter Shergold, urged federal and state governments to learn from their mistakes and overhaul their processes in order to restore trust.

The report, funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, John and Myriam Wylie Foundation and Andrew Forrest's Minderoo Foundation, found the country's school closures were also a failure.

'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments,' the review said.

'For children and parents [particularly women], we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.

'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'

The review carried out over a six month period involved more than 350 confidential submissions and consultations from health experts, economists, public servants, business and community groups.

It consisted of more than 160 submissions, 3,000 hours of research and policy and data analysis.

The review concluded various lockdowns and shutting of borders should have been used as a 'last resort'.

'Too many of Australia's lockdowns and border closures were the result of policy failures in quarantine, contact tracing, testing, disease surveillance and communicating effectively the need for preventive measures like mask wearing and social distancing,' the review stated.

'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.

'As with lockdowns, border closures – particularly between states and territories – should be used sparingly and only in extreme situations. They should be applied with greater empathy and flexibility.'

The review noted despite the pandemic affecting everyone, 'its burden was not shared equally'.

DAMNING QUOTES FROM COVID REPORT

'It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments.'

'Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response.'

'Lockdowns, especially when targeted at a particular location, brought a deep sense of inequity among those who were most restricted. Lockdowns, overall, created a universal feeling that the pandemic was being policed rather than managed.

It stated that the failure to plan adequately for the 'differing impact of Covid' meant the disease 'spread faster and more widely'.

The review also noted while Australia had early success in limiting infection rates and deaths, in comparison to other countries, this success 'started to falter in 2021'.

'Cases and deaths have risen even further during 2022, dramatically reversing our early competitive advantage,' the review notes.

'As of September 30, 2022, Australia has recorded 378,617 cases per million people in 2022. 'The latest available official data shows that by May 2022 excess deaths in Australia had spiked to almost 359 per million people in 2022.'

The document also said the 'absence of transparency' in the expert health advice 'helped mask political calculations'.

'Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions,' the review stated.

'It is neither realistic nor desirable to remove politics from decision-making in an accountable democracy. 'But the absence of transparency in the expert advice going to leaders helped mask political calculations.

'It was difficult to gauge the trade-offs that were being considered between health and economic outcomes. It made it easier for leaders to be selective in the 'expert advice' they followed.'

The paper went on to explain the damning effect overreach had on the confidence of Australian citizens.

'Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response,' it read.

'Many Australians came to feel that they were being protected by being policed. These actions could have been avoided if we had built fairness into our planning decisions and introduced compassion into their implementation.'

The review recommended six measures to be implemented in order to avoid the same mistakes being repeated in another health crisis.

These included; establishing an independent, data-driven Australian Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, clearly defining national cabinet roles and responsibilities in a crisis, publicly releasing modelling used in government decision-making, regular pandemic scenario testing and the sharing and linking of data between jurisdictions.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11333647/Australia-Covid-review-finds-lockdowns-border-closures-schools-shut-avoidable.html

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Ivermectin Key for Early COVID-19 Treatment: Dr. Paul Marik

Ivermectin is a key drug for early COVID-19 treatment, Dr. Paul Marik says.

Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug, has shown efficacy against COVID-19 in some studies as a prophylactic and treatment.

The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which Marik helped start, features ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in its early treatment protocol.

“Ivermectin is a remarkable drug,” Marik told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” during a recent conference.

“It’s antiviral, so it works against a whole host of RNA viruses. This is indisputable. It is anti-inflammatory. We know that there are multiple studies showing that ivermectin is a very powerful anti-inflammatory drug. We know that what it does is it stimulates a process called autophagy, which is very important in the process of healing. And it’s one of the main mechanisms that we use to help patients get rid of spike protein. And ivermectin, believe it or not, stimulates autophagy. The other thing it does, which is important, is it changes [and] improves the microbiome,” Marik added.

Ivermectin is used off-label to treat COVID-19 in the United States. It is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat conditions caused by parasites.

The FDA says ivermectin should not be used to treat COVID-19, pointing to studies that have found little or no benefit for the drug against the disease. Other research has found ivermectin can be effective as a preventative and a therapy, including one from FLCCC doctors that found the drug lowered mortality rates.

Off-Label

Health care providers can prescribe drugs “off-label.” That means a drug is used for a purpose other than that for which it is authorized or approved.

“From the FDA perspective, once the FDA approves a drug, healthcare providers generally may prescribe the drug for an unapproved use when they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient,” the FDA says on its website.

But a number of medical boards and other health bodies intervened during the pandemic, restricting or banning prescriptions for drugs used off-label for COVID-19, such as ivermectin.

Marik said he thinks many people misunderstand off-label, and aren’t aware that many hospitals use off-label drugs every single day.

“It’s common practice. And in fact, the FDA promotes—the FDA themselves, if you go to their website—promotes the use of off-label drugs. And what they say is that doctors are fully entitled to use FDA-approved off-label drugs at their own discretion at the discretion of the physician,” Marik said.

“But suddenly, with COVID, the rules changed. You couldn’t use an off-label drug. And you have to ask why. And obviously, they don’t want people to use off-label drugs, they want you to use, firstly, the expensive drugs and it obviously would compete with the mandate for the vaccine, because if there were cheap, effective drugs that could treat COVID, why would you want to be vaccinated with an experimental vaccine whose safety has never been established?”

Early treatment using off-label drugs, he added, was a “valid alternative for people who wanted a choice.”

Marik is one of the doctors who sued the FDA in June for allegedly violating the law by interfering with doctors who sought to treat patients with ivermectin. The case is still ongoing.

Marik and colleagues founded FLCCC after seeing U.S. authorities fail to provide or recommend COVID-19 treatments early in the pandemic.

Even after months into the pandemic, no treatments were advised for patients, even those admitted to hospitals. Remdesivir was authorized for hospitalized patients on May 1, 2020.

Further, when hospitalized patients’ conditions worsened, they were placed on ventilators. Many of the patients who ended up on ventilators died.

“It just goes against the basic foundation of medicine, that you would have a disease, which had a high fatality rate and you wouldn’t try something—something—just to treat these patients,” Marik said.

The doctors figured out that COVID-19 attacks the lungs, causing fatal lung failure, inflammation, and clotting.

They turned to known anti-inflammatories like methylprednisolone, a type of corticosteroid that also helps with the lung issues. Heparin, used to prevent blood clots, was also part of the inpatient protocol, which became known as MATH+.

“At that time, we were heavily criticized, for firstly, using corticosteroids and then Heparin,” Marik recounted. “People said, ‘You can’t do it, it’s a viral disease, you’re gonna kill people.’ They were outraged. But we saw it worked. We were at the bedside. There’s nothing like being a doctor at the bedside, seeing what happens. And then, of course, six months later, the RECOVERY trial came around and showed, believe it or not, corticosteroids save lives. So unfortunately, in that study, they use the wrong steroid and the wrong dose. But steroids are so potent that it actually was was able to reduce mortality. So we were vindicated.”

At the time, Marik was chair of the Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, and helping treat patients at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

The protocol helped save lives, Marik said.

The group later developed a list of drugs effective for early, outpatient treatment for people who contracted COVID-19. The main goal was to prevent hospitalizations.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel says multiple trials indicate corticosteroids help people hospitalized with COVID-19. The panel also recommends against using ivermectin against COVID-19 except in clinical trials.

Other Drugs

Under “first line agents,” FLCCC lists hydroxychloroquine with ivermectin. Hydroxychloroquine is approved as an antimalarial, but it and a similar drug, chloroquine, are not recommended by U.S. authorities for treating COVID-19. Similar to ivermectin, some studies have shown efficacy while others have not, with debates raging regarding proper dosing and timing. And similar to ivermectin, the drug is cheap because generic versions are widely available.

Aspirin, another anti-coagulant, is also advised with vitamin D3 and melatonin. Zinc, vitamin C, and antiviral mouthwash are among the other aspects of the first phase.

The NIH panel does not advise for or against vitamins C, D, or zinc due to what it describes as insufficient evidence.

If symptoms persist for five or more days, FLCCC recommends a second set of treatments. They include sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody; fluvoxamine, an anti-depressant; and spironolactone, typically used to treat high blood pressure.

The panel has no guidance on spironolactone. It previously recommended sotrovimab but does not any longer because it says the monoclonal does not perform well against newer Omicron subvariants. The panel also says there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against fluvoxamine. The FDA rejected a request from a doctor to authorize fluvoxamine for COVID-19.

Marik believes the emphasis always should have been on repurposed drugs, which have repeatedly been downplayed or ignored by U.S. authorities.

“If you kind of think about a pandemic, what you want to control it are repurposed drugs, because by their very nature these are cheap, inexpensive, easy to manufacture. And since this is a global issue, it then is very easy to distribute these drugs around the entire world and control the pandemic, which was the obvious answer, is the use of cheap, repurposed, effective, safe drugs,” he said. “Hydroxychloroquine is safe, if you use it in the right dose, which is really important.

And ivermectin is exceedingly safe, you could use 10 times the recommended dose and it’s safe. And vitamin D, vitamin C, nigella sativa, there’s a whole host of medications—melatonin—that are highly effective as a repurposed drug for controlling this disease. But it went against the narrative.”

Marik used the example of chloroquine, which was effective against SARS-CoV-1, and touted by the NIH as one of a number of drugs effective against MERS. But once COVID-19, or SARS-CoV-2, came around, “that didn’t apply anymore,” Marik said. “And clearly there were severe conflicts of interest. It was inconvenient. It was inconvenient for them.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ivermectin-key-for-early-covid-19-treatment-dr-paul-marik_4804865.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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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COVID Vaccines Causing Death Can Be proven

There are various ways to show that COVID vaccines can kill people. Likely the best is conducting a very good autopsy.

A new medical article by a German researcher details the findings of an autopsy that proved death was caused by COVID vaccination. The title is “A Case Report: Multifocal Necrotizing Encephalitis and Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination against COVID-19.”

Here is the abstract:

“The current report presents the case of a 76-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who died three weeks after receiving his third COVID-19 vaccination. The patient was first vaccinated in May 2021 with the ChAdOx1 nCov-19 vector vaccine, followed by two doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine in July and December 2021. The family of the deceased requested an autopsy due to ambiguous clinical signs before death. PD was confirmed by post-mortem examinations. Furthermore, signs of aspiration pneumonia and systemic arteriosclerosis were evident. However, histopathological analyses of the brain uncovered previously unsuspected findings, including acute vasculitis (predominantly lymphocytic) as well as multifocal necrotizing encephalitis of unknown etiology with pronounced inflammation including glial and lymphocytic reaction. In the heart, signs of chronic cardiomyopathy as well as mild acute lympho-histiocytic myocarditis and vasculitis were present. Although there was no history of COVID-19 for this patient, immunohistochemistry for SARS-CoV-2 antigens (spike and nucleocapsid proteins) was performed. Surprisingly, only spike protein but no nucleocapsid protein could be detected within the foci of inflammation in both the brain and the heart, particularly in the endothelial cells of small blood vessels. Since no nucleocapsid protein could be detected, the presence of spike protein must be ascribed to vaccination rather than to viral infection. The findings corroborate previous reports of encephalitis and myocarditis caused by gene-based COVID-19 vaccines.”

And here are the conclusions:

”Numerous cases of encephalitis and encephalomyelitis have been reported in connection with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines, with many being considered causally related to vaccination [31,38,39]. However, this is the first report to demonstrate the presence of the spike protein within the encephalitic lesions and to attribute it to vaccination rather than infection. These findings corroborate a causative role of the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines, and this diagnostic approach is relevant to potentially vaccine-induced damage to other organs as well.”

Another recent study found the following:

“We report the autopsy results, including microscopic myocardial findings, of 2 teenage boys who died within the first week after receiving the second Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 dose. The microscopic findings are not the alterations seen with typical myocarditis. This suggest a role for cytokine storm, which may occur with an excessive inflammatory response, as there also is a feedback loop between catecholamines and cytokines.”

And yet another study found similar results;

“In these two adult cases of histologically confirmed, fulminant myocarditis that had developed within 2 weeks after Covid-19 vaccination, a direct causal relationship cannot be definitively established because we did not perform testing for viral genomes or autoantibodies in the tissue specimens. However, no other causes were identified by PCR assay or serologic examination.”

Unlike the German study these two US studies seemed reluctant to state the obvious causality between the COVID vaccine and death.

Here is part of a pertinent news story with this title: “FDA Withholding Autopsy Results on People Who Died After Getting COVID-19 Vaccines.”

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to release the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines.

The FDA says it is barred from releasing medical files, but a drug safety advocate says that it could release the autopsies with personal information redacted.”

Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who advises the FDA as part of the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, said that the reports could be released with personal information blacked out.

“The personal information could easily be redacted without losing the potential learnings from [the] autopsy,” Witczak told The Epoch Times via email.

People make the choice to submit autopsy results to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, Witczak noted.

“If someone submits their experience to VAERS they want and expect to have it investigated by the FDA. This includes autopsy reports,” she said.

Autopsies are examinations of deceased persons performed to determine the cause of death.

“Autopsies can be an important part of postmortem analysis and should be done especially with increased deaths following COVID-19 vaccination,” Witczak said.the

A review of the scarcity of autopsies concluded:

“To ensure public safety, postmortem investigations on all fatalities associated with COVID-19 vaccination should be done. Autopsies should be publicly funded, carried out by independent pathologists, with results published free of authoritarian censorship that supports deceiving narratives. Pathologists must be protected against intimidation and retaliation if their reports differ from results desired by officialdom.”

Data analysis

Besides autopsies, a number of analysts have done data studies that lead to the conclusion that COVID vaccines explain many deaths. Here is a conclusion from one such analysis of Massachusetts data:

“It is apparent that as you move younger through the age groups that overall mortality and COVID-19 mortality gets relatively worse in 2021 than 2020. This is in stark contrast to the claims that the COVID-19 vaccine is both safe and effective.”

Another analysis, also of Massachusetts data, came to this cocnlusion:

“the official Massachusetts database of death certificates contains proof that C19 gene modification biological injectable products killed thousands of people in Massachusetts in 2021. There is not another dataset out there like that one that definitely proves prolonged excess death in causes specific to the circulatory system and in numbers in the thousands of lives and in younger people than expected. C19 was over in Massachusetts in June 2020. What has happened since then has been a hidden disaster of biological injectable product madness

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/covid-vaccines-causing-death-can-be-proven-c3ebf991

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Real-World Evidence in Hong Kong Evidence Material Benefits of COVID-19 Oral Antivirals

According to the results of a recent Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and University of Hong Kong (HKU) study, COVID-19 death rates plummet by 80% when inpatients are prescribed oral antiviral medication, and such a regimen also reduces the risk of hospital admission in outpatients by 90%. A prominent study team suggests the observational, real-world evidence investigation points to the need for a triage mechanism for an expeditious antiviral prescription for mild to moderate COVID-19 patients.

Before summarizing the Hong Kong-based observational study results, TrialSite takes a trip back in time to early in the pandemic when physicians such as Dr. Peter McCullough, a well-known, highly published cardiologist and clinical investigator created controversy for daring to take on the medical establishment regarding treatment approaches. His key points, “Four Pillars of COVID-19 Care,” emphasize the critical importance of treating COVID-19 patients early on with repurposed combinations of oral antivirals (and other known regimens), given the complete absence at the time of any approved pharmaceuticals or vaccines.

Early on American Doctors Called Out This Need

Early on during the pandemic, while shunned and even ridiculed by the mainstream, front-line physicians such as Dr. Peter McCullough of Dallas, Texas called out the need for combinations of repurposed, oral and other therapies based on the unfolding observations of the lifecycle disease states of COVID-19. McCullough shared his views on the various treatments associated with the “Four Pillars of COVID-19 Care,” which involved combinations of repurposed therapies, especially in the early stages of the infection.

McCullough’s Four Pillars included 1) contagion control or efforts to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, 2) Early ambulatory or home treatment of COVID-19 syndrome to reduce hospitalization and death, 3) late-stage hospitalization treatment or a “safety net for survival,” and 4) vaccination to “herd immunity.”

Although ignored by much of the medical establishment that opted for a government-directed, top-down approach centered on pharmaceutical company-driven studies, front-line providers early on emphasized the unfolding, real-world observations of the COVID-19 disease states, using their experience, expertise, and wisdom to pair various medications at various stages of the lifecycle of the disease. This critical contribution by McCullough, an advisor to TrialSite, in many ways becomes validated, as the Dallas-based doctor was always pro-pharmaceuticals. He just didn’t want to sit back and do nothing while society waited for novel therapeutics that underwent clinical trials.

Other doctors and pharmacists also reported success with repurposed drug regimens following McCullough’s thesis. Others followed their own paradigm, such as a pharmacist from Adventist Health, reported on by TrialSite, who developed the ICAM protocol that appeared to be saving hundreds of lives. It turns out that that particular health system had a contract with Pfizer that precluded such real-world tinkering while they served as a trial site for vaccine trials.

Another group was the Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, and several independent groups and individuals, but the guidance from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and most of academic medicine was to do nothing despite a mounting death toll. They chose to wait for the vaccines that were authorized on an emergency basis in December 2020, and any novel, branded pharmaceuticals that ensued with provisional authorizations.

But what were front-line doctors to do with their patients? What about the Hippocratic Oath to do something? Was doing nothing better than doctors’ best efforts at something? The point here is that the lessons of COVID-19 must bring back together critically minded, independent front-line physicians and the healthcare systems. After all, the goal is the health of the patient above all.

Enter the Recent Hong Kong Real-World Evidence Study
Hong Kong-based researchers have verified that using the oral antiviral agent Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir-Ritonavir) may reduce the risk of death in hospitalized patients by as much as 78% along with a lowering the risk of hospital admission (among outpatients) by as much as 88%. These are impressive numbers that the Hong Kong researchers argue could save considerable money per patient when compared to usual methods of care.

Recently published in The Lancet Regional Health—Western Pacific, the study team, led by the Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care at CU Medicine and the Department of Emergency Medicine at HKU Med, report on the findings of their retrospective, cohort analysis involving 54,355 COVID-19 outpatients in designated clinics and inpatients in public hospitals in Hong Kong associated with the fifth COVID-19 wave between February and March 2022.

Both Pfizer’s Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir-Ritonavir) and Merck’s Molnupiravir (Lagevrio) were significantly associated with a reduced death rate among inpatients. What did the Hong Kong-based team find?

For inpatient scenarios, antivirals led to a reduction in all-cause mortality.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/real-world-evidence-in-hong-kong-evidence-material-benefits-of-covid-19-oral-antivirals-d64faf1a

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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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A cure for long COVID? Drug used to treat alcohol and opioid addiction is found to relieve persistent brain fog and fatigue

A drug used to treat addiction could be what millions of long Covid sufferers around the world need to finally address their symptoms.

Naltrexone is a generic drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat both alcohol and opioid addicts.

But in small trials it has been able to relieve long Covid patients of lingering ailments like brain fog and fatigue that last months after the initial infection.

The drug - sold under the brand name Revia - is now being touted as a crucial piece of the puzzle of long Covid that has stumped experts for over two years.

Larger trials are underway and scientists are still searching for the mechanism as to why naltrexone seems to be so effective against chronic Covid.

Current treatments for long Covid include therapy targeted at the symptoms a person is feeling to manage the condition, though there are no universal treatments.

Treatments include physical therapy, and drug to manage symptoms like chronic pain, respiratory issues and others.

Lauren Nichols, a 34-year-old logistics expert for the US Department of Transportation in Boston, was a patient suffering from the condition.

She reported symptoms of impaired thinking and focus, fatigue, seizures, headache and pain since her COVID-19 infection in the spring of 2020.

In June, she was suggested the anti-addiction medication by the doctor. Within months, she could think clearly again and was pain-free.

The drug has previously shown promise against post-infection syndromes like chronic fatigue syndrome, suffered by people after a severe illness.

It works by blocking the euphoric and sedative effects of opioid drugs by blocking the brains receptors, and stopping cravings for the drug as a result. It is to be taken orally.

Common side-effects include nausea, headaches, dizziness, vomiting and other symptoms.

It also has anti-inflammatory properties and has been used in the past to treat conditions such as fibromyalgia, Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis.

'It should be at the top of everyone's list for clinical trials,' said Dr Jarred Younger, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Testing of naltrexone was included in a $1billion initiative by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to discover the causes and treatments for long Covid.

At least four clinical trials testing a low-dose naltrexone's (LDN) effectiveness against long Covid are now underway.

The condition is made up of a collection of some 200 symptoms ranging from pain and heart palpitations to insomnia and cognitive impairment.

At 50 milligrams (mg) naltrexone is approved to treat opioid and alcohol addiction. But in long Covid studies it is being used in tiny doses up to 10 times lower than that.

Dr Jack Lambert, an infectious disease expert at University College Dublin School of Medicine, had used the drug to treat pain and fatigue associated with Lyme disease.

During the pandemic, Lambert recommended naltrexone to colleagues treating patients with lingering symptoms after bouts of Covid.

It worked so well that he ran a pilot study among 38 long Covid patients. They reported improvements in energy, pain, concentration, insomnia and overall recovery from COVID-19 after two months, according to findings published in July.

Lambert, who is planning a larger trial to confirm those results, said he believes it may repair damage of the disease rather than mask its symptoms.

Other planned trials include one by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a pilot study by Ann Arbor, Michigan-based startup AgelessRx. That study of 36 volunteers should have results by year-end, said company co-founder Sajad Zalzala.

Scientists are still working on explaining the mechanism for how the addiction drug might work.

Experiments by Dr Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik of the National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases in Australia suggest long Covid symptoms arise from a significant reduction in function of natural killer cells in the immune system. In laboratory experiments, naltrexone has been shown to help restore their normal function.

Dr Hector Bonilla, co-director of the Stanford Post-Acute COVID-19 Clinic and a RECOVER adviser, has used naltrexone in 500 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, with half reporting feeling better.

He studied it in 18 long Covid patients, with 11 showing improvements, and said he believes larger, formal trials could determine whether it offers a true benefit.

There are also theories that long Covid is the product of the 'nocebo' affect, where a person's symptoms may be a result of a psychological effect, not physical illness.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11328891/Generic-drug-used-treat-alcohol-opioid-addiction-relieves-persistent-brain-fog-fatigue.html

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Moderna's CEO admits only the vulnerable need a COVID booster and likens the virus to flu

Not everyone needs to get an annual Covid booster, according to the head of pharma giant Moderna who also likened the virus to seasonal flu. Stéphane Bancel said his company's shots should mainly be targeted at over-50s and people with underlying health conditions.

His comments seem to be at odds with the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) which is urging everyone over the age of five to get boosted.

Covid is now predominantly only killing the most vulnerable because the US has built up strong immunity through high infection rates and repeated vaccine rollouts.

There are currently around 300 deaths from the virus across the country every day, compared to more than 1,000 this time last year.

Mr Bancel told a finance conference on Monday: 'I think it's going to be like the flu. If you're a 25-year-old, do you need an annual booster every year if you're healthy?

‘You might want to... but I think it's going to be similar to flu where it's going to be people at high-risk, people above 50 years of age, people with comorbidities, people with cancer and other conditions, people with transplants.’

Mr Bancel's comments come amid a sluggish vaccine booster rollout that has seen just one in 20 eligible Americans taking up their Omicron-specific shot. Despite there being little appetite for the new vaccines, the CDC last week approved Moderna and Pfizer's shot for children as young as five.

Pfizer recently joined forces with Marvel for a PR campaign that appeared to target children.

But Mr Bancel said it was ‘very important to think about’ whether or not to get Covid boosters.

He said there are around ‘1.5billion people’ globally who would fall into the vulnerable category. But he emphasized that younger people ‘are going to have to decide for themselves what they want to do’.

Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the country was 'ripe' for a resurgence because it has low levels of immunity.

Influenza has been largely sidelined during the pandemic due to lockdowns and social restrictions, leaving Americans with little protection against the seasonal bug.

But there are signs the flu is making a comeback as latest data shows cases have quadrupled in recent weeks — months before the virus normally strikes.

Flu season typically runs from late October to May, picking up in December and peaking in February.

But the southern hemisphere - which is normally a precursor for the US - suffered an early and brutal wave during its winter earlier in the year.

There are also concerns about flu vaccine uptake, with just 12million Americans having received the shot so far.

Dr Walensky told NBC News: ‘We've noted that flu activity is starting to increase across much of the country.

‘Not everybody got flu vaccinated last year, and many people did not get the flu. So that makes us ripe to have potentially a severe flu season.’

Roughly 14.8million Americans have now received the updated bivalent booster, out of 215million eligible people.

Mr Bancel defended the sluggish Covid booster uptake, pointing out that it is stronger than seasonal flu uptake.

He noted that it is the first time people are getting the booster in more of an endemic than pandemic setting, meaning people are less anxious to get a new vaccine.

‘You might do it to protect other people or because you don’t want to get sick and miss work, or miss vacation.’

But he has been getting the annual flu shot since the age of 30, he said. ‘Is it because I was worried of being hospitalized? Of course not. I just didn’t want to be sick, I wanted to be able to work.’

Controversy was sparked over the Covid vaccine drive when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) extended eligibility to children who are six months old earlier this year.

Many experts cautioned against the move at the time, saying children face a very low risk from the virus and warned it could interfere with other inoculations they need such as against polio or measles.

There is also now a prevailing sense that the Covid pandemic has come to an end, after President Joe Biden declared it was over on television last month.

He has since attempted to walk back from his words, but many are still under the impression that Covid no longer poses a threat.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11327615/Modernas-CEO-admits-vulnerable-need-Covid-booster-shot.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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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Scientists Find Antibodies That Neutralize All COVID Strains

Previous monoclonal antibody treatments against COVID-19 have had mixed results against variants. However, new research uncovered two antibodies that work against all known strains of COVID-19.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

Two antibodies have been uncovered that are so effective at neutralizing COVID-19 — and all of its variants — that they believe the antibodies could serve as an “effective substitute for vaccines”

The antibodies — TAU-1109 and TAU-2310 — bind to a different area of the spike protein than other antibodies, one that doesn’t undergo many mutations

TAU-1109 is 92% effective at neutralizing the omicron strain and 90% effective at neutralizing the delta strain

TAU-2310 has an efficacy rate of 84% at neutralizing omicron and a 97% efficacy rate against the delta variant

The researchers believe that with effective antibody treatment, “we will not have to provide booster doses to the entire population every time there is a new variant”

Researchers at Tel Aviv University revealed two antibodies that are so effective at neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 — and all of its variants — that they believe the antibodies could serve as an “effective substitute for vaccines.”1 One of the glaring failures surrounding COVID-19 shots is their lack of effectiveness against emerging COVID-19 strains.

By choosing the spike protein on which to base COVID-19 shots, scientists picked a protein that not only was known to be toxic to humans but was not the part of the virus that prompted the best immune response.

Spike protein mutates rapidly, which essentially destroys virtually any protection that the shot provides shortly after it’s given. The end result is a seemingly never-ending series of annual shots and boosters, which can only offer rapidly waning protection. If the Israeli researchers’ findings are verified and the antibodies turn out to be as effective as suspected, it could eliminate COVID-19 booster shots entirely.2

Previous Antibody Treatments Had Mixed Results
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized multiple monoclonal antibody (mAb) cocktails for the treatment of COVID-19. However, as variants emerged, their effectiveness varied, with some becoming ineffective and others retaining their activity.

“This indicates that some antibodies elicited by infection are more variation-sensitive than others, and that antibody breadth of specificity, and not only potency, should be considered,” the researchers, from the department of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine,3 wrote in the journal Communications Biology.4

For instance, in January 2022, the FDA limited the use of two monoclonal antibody treatments — bamlanivimab and etesevimab, which are administered together, and REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab) — to patients infected with a variant known to be susceptible to them.5 The two antibody treatments mentioned had lost much of their effectiveness against the omicron variant, leading to the usage restriction in people infected with omicron.

On the other hand, in February 2022, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a monoclonal antibody treatment known as bebtelovimab, which retained activity against the omicron variant.6 According to the FDA:7

“Bebtelovimab works by binding to the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID-19, similar to other monoclonal antibodies that have been authorized for the treatment of high-risk patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 and shown a benefit in reducing the risk of hospitalization or death.”

The way the antibodies bind to the spike protein may hold the key to their ultimate effectiveness against various strains. In previous research conducted in October 2020, lead study author Natalia Freund and colleagues isolated nine antibodies from people who recovered from the original COVID-19 strain in Israel. Freund stated in a news release:8

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/scientists-find-antibodies-that-neutralize-all-covid-strains_4793641.html

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Informed consent and vaccine side-effects in Australia

Australia’s medical Code of Conduct, the statutory rules for medical practitioners, defines informed consent as ‘a person’s voluntary decision about medical care that is made with knowledge and understanding of the benefits and risks involved’.

In addition, the Australian Immunisation Handbook states: ‘For consent to be legally valid … it must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion, or manipulation … and it can only be given after the potential risks and benefits of the relevant vaccine, the risks of not having it, and any alternative options have been explained to the person.’

Think back to the last time you gave consent for a medical procedure or, dare I say it, a vaccination. Were you taken through this process?

There’s more. What happens to consent if you’re involved in a clinical trial?

Former barrister, Julian Gillespie, explains:

‘There is a portion towards the end of the medical Code of Conduct, which … clearly addresses if you are a medical practitioner and you are involved in a clinical or experimental trial … then there’s all these further procedures and protocols that must be satisfied.’

Surely that would only apply in the circumstances of an experimental trial, wouldn’t it?

As it happens, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past couple of years. ‘We heard it out of former health minister, Greg Hunt’s lips, and several others,’ Gillespie says. ‘It’s well acknowledged that these Covid vaccines have only been provisionally approved and are still subject to clinical trials.’

Julian Gillespie LLB, BJuris, is co-author, with Peter Fam LLB, of a recently published bombshell legal opinion casting doubt on the legal basis of AHPRA’s March 9, 2021 ‘gag order’.

The opinion was issued with a letter stating:

‘Contingent to a joint statement received from AHPRA and the National Boards on 9 March 2021, Australian Health Professionals … were essentially forbidden from publicly questioning the science underlying the emerging Covid injectables, let alone questioning any government messaging urging Australians to be vaccinated, because these products were deemed “safe and effective”.

‘The effect of this unilateral action … inserted AHPRA and the National Boards between the Clinician and their Patient, which resulted in a serious failure of evidenced-based information being shared by Health Professionals with patients … for the purpose of their providing legally acceptable Informed Consent to receiving Covid injectables.

‘This failure in Informed Consent has likely resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Australians agreeing to the administration of Covid injectables, where they would not have so agreed or consented had they been provided with all the available evidenced-based information… including that they expose a recipient to a real and significant risk of death, injury, or illness.’

What does this mean?

Essentially, the legal opinion posits that it was illegal for AHPRA and the National Boards to even produce the position statement. Health Professionals were always required to first observe their Codes of Conduct irrespective of the various coercive and threatening statements made in the March statement.

But wait, there’s more.

It also appears the public officers responsible for that statement are now legally exposed:

‘As the harm to Covid vaccine victims was foreseeable, in terms of these still remaining experimental gene-based therapies, these vaccine victims … can sue the public offices of AHPRA and the National Boards in their personal capacity,’ says Gillespie.

It doesn’t stop there. There may be further liability available to health practitioners who administered the vaccines in breach of their Codes of Conduct. Gillespie adds, ‘Should those health practitioners subsequently be sued by their patients … then those health practitioners may, in turn, be able to sue the public officers of AHPRA and the National Boards for coercing and threatening them to ignore their Codes of Conduct. Such illegal action would be the tort of misfeasance in public office.’

I’ll just let that all sink in.

The legal opinion was sent to all medical associations and colleges, nearly 70 of them, all Australia’s politicians, state, federal, and territory, and medical professional insurers.

Oh, and it was also sent to over 300 of Australia’s top personal injury and medical negligence lawyers.

No one’s missing out on this one.

The legal opinion was helpfully accompanied by a 107-page report reviewing the evidence and adverse event data for Covid vaccines. It’s an alarming read.

But wait – there’s (even) more.

Proposed changes to Health Practitioner National Law, due to be debated in the Queensland Parliament on October 11, 2022, are set to give AHPRA even more power to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship.

These proposed amendments have medical organisations extremely concerned including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Medical Network (AMN), and the Australian Medical Professionals Society.

If passed, ‘Doctors will no longer be able to express their opinion or use their experience, training, and education if their opinion goes against what the health bureaucrats say is in the best interests of public confidence in safety,’ says AMN.

And the changes won’t stop in Queensland. The amended National Law will then be rolled out to other jurisdictions. All Australians should be concerned.

The Australian Medical Professional Society says, ‘Health regulation is not being used to protect the public from legitimate professional misconduct but is being used to silence Health Professionals from questioning government policy as a matter of routine.’

If the legislation comes to pass, it begs the question: when a patient goes to visit their doctor how will they know if they are receiving the doctor’s professional opinion or the government’s latest edict?

The March 9, 2021 joint position statement has given Australia a taste of what might come if we don’t stand up to this obscene imposition by regulators in the consultation room.

In the words of ‘Dr Frank Mercy’ – an Australian doctor who writes under a pseudonym for fear of reprisal – ‘This is our Stalingrad. Defeat here will open the field to unlimited human resources for oppressive forces that can never be turned back. We must oppose this with all our resolve.’

https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/covid-consent-and-the-code-of-conduct/

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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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Menstrual Abnormalities Lasting for Months Following COVID-19 Shot ‘Very Concerning’: Doctor

The data collected from Israel’s adverse events reporting system showing that some women experienced menstrual disorders for more than 12 months after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine raises concerns, according to Dr. Shelly Cole, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Texas.

“Looking at the Israeli data is very concerning,” Cole told The Epoch Times.

Of the 282 Israeli women who reported menstrual abnormality following COVID-19 vaccination, 88 reports contained information on the duration of the condition. And of the 88 reports, 83 disclosed that the menstrual problems lasted over a week. Some of the women’s problems had still not resolved.

All but one of the reports were from adults. The single child report detailed a disorder lasting between one and six months.

Of the other 82 reports, 11 reported that their condition lasted between one week to one month, 42 that their condition lasted one to six months, 22 that they suffered for six to 12 months, and seven that their condition lasted for over 12 months.

The reports were from women who received a Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. The reports were submitted between December 2021 and May 2022. They were discussed during a secret meeting over the summer.

Health experts say the actual number of menstrual cases is much higher than what is being reported to the system and others like it. Many women may have thought that their condition was not vaccine-related, been unaware of the reporting system, or not been encouraged by their doctor to lodge a report.

Cole said that she wasn’t surprised that women were complaining of irregular menstruation, including abnormal bleeding following vaccination. She’s seen it “throughout the pandemic” in her clinic and discussed the matter with other doctors.

She was still shocked when she learned Israel’s Ministry of Health (MoH) presented a lower risk of menstrual abnormality than what the adverse event reports showed in a public report (pdf) published in August, two months after the closed-door meeting.

The MoH used the total vaccine doses administered since the shots were cleared—over 18 million—as a denominator to calculate the risk of adverse events. The shots were cleared in late 2020, but the new reporting system was not launched until December 2021.

“They took the 18 months of doses of the Pfizer vaccination and they only looked at the side effects for six months,” Cole said. “So how can this be even remotely valid?”

That minimized the calculated risks of the adverse events reported, including menstrual abnormalities. And they included doses given to males when calculating risks despite men not menstruating. “They minimized menstrual irregularity by implementing men in the data,” Cole said.

The MoH did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

“The reported phenomena are known phenomena in the professional literature and were also found in the previous reports of the Ministry of Health, and there was no observation of an increase in a new phenomenon (new signal),” the ministry said in the report. That statement was false, according to the presentation in the secret meeting.

Presentation

The MoH commissioned a group of researchers to analyze reports of adverse events submitted to their new reporting system following vaccination from December 2021 to May 2022. The researchers found that the duration of some events, including menstrual disorders, were not short-lived or mild as health authorities claim.

The researchers also said that Pfizer officials informed them that the company was unaware of any long-term symptoms. Pfizer didn’t return multiple emails requesting comments.

Sasha Zhurat, the main presenter at that time, said that many of the complaints of menstrual abnormalities lasted for several months and not the couple of days that is mentioned in the brochure distributed to vaccine recipients.

“But compared to the leaflet where it says that the symptoms go away after a few days, we saw that there were many reports, and only 5 percent had symptoms that lasted between two weeks and a month, all the rest were much longer,” Zhurat said.

She added that “over 90 percent of the reports in which there appears some kind of topic of duration and long-term changes,” 60 percent reported a change lasting three months.

In 10 percent of these women, Zhurat said that they experienced the same menstrual issue following additional vaccine doses, a phenomenon known as rechallenge.

Rechallenge is one factor to establish causality between a vaccine and an adverse event when the re-administration of the same vaccine causes the reoccurrence of a side effect that had gone away.

Some side effects are officially recognized by vaccine makers and health authorities, such as heart inflammation. But the researchers discovered that some others were also caused by the shot.

The meeting was recorded without the participants’ knowledge and leaked to Israeli journalist Yaffa Shir-Raz, who broke the story in August. The Epoch Times has reviewed the full recording.

Some of the findings, including the finding of rechallenge, were omitted from the MoH’s report to the public

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/menstrual-abnormalities-lasting-for-months-following-covid-19-shot-is-very-concerning-doctor_4797543.html

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Israeli Ministry of Health Confirms Leaked Video Is Real, but downplays it

Israel’s Ministry of Health has confirmed that a leaked video showing an expert warning the agency about potentially facing lawsuits over COVID-19 vaccine side effects is real, but issued false statements about the discussion.

Video footage recorded during a meeting held behind closed doors over the summer showed that experts hired to analyze post-vaccination adverse event reports said the analysis proved a causal relationship between some of the events and the vaccines and warned about presenting the data in a certain way in order to avoid lawsuits.

In an official report authorities released about two months later, in August, they said, “The report presents all the cases that were reported in close proximity to the receipt of the coronavirus vaccine, and does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship between receiving the vaccine and the reported phenomenon.”

The ministry, or MoH, repeatedly declined to comment to The Epoch Times about the video and also did not return queries from Yaffa Shir-Raz, a health journalist and professor who obtained the video from a source.

Officials present during the meeting also declined to comment or did not respond to comments and have not commented publicly on the situation.

An unnamed official at the MoH now says the video is legitimate. The remarks were made to Reuters, which posted a “fact check” on clips of the meeting that Shir-Raz has posted online and in social media posts sharing the clips.

The official did not address why key portions of the discussion were left out of the final report. The official asserted that all the data presented during the meeting appeared in the final report. The official also claimed that the clips were “taken out of context.”

“The meeting participants can confirm that the sections were taken out of context,” the official said. “The leaked clips were carefully selected and edited in a biased manner, so that their presentation deliberately omits the fact that this is a discussion about raw data that has not undergone any analysis or standardization, during an initial attempt by an assisting team to understand from epidemiological professionals how to proceed and analyze raw data correctly.”

Shir-Raz told The Epoch Times that she found it interesting that an anonymous MoH source responded to Reuters when the ministry would not respond to repeated requests from her.

“It is unfortunate that the Ministry of Health does not have enough courage to stand behind its response officially, and instead prefers to hide behind an anonymous responder,” she said in an email.

Falsehoods

The MoH official offered several falsehoods in their comments to Reuters. The official falsely said, for instance, that the reports that were analyzed “cannot be verified,” when the reports were submitted to a new system that requires submitters to include information such as their name and a number from their citizenship certificate. The new system replaced an older system in December 2021 and the data was garnered through May 2022.

MoH also claimed that “there are no unknown side effects or new signals.”

But according to Sasha Zhurat, one of the presenters, that’s not true. She said during the meeting that the data “allowed us to really identify new phenomena like tinnitus, like hypoesthesia and paresthesia” and that “we actually identified new phenomena that do not appear in the consumer brochure such as dizziness, tinnitus, hypoesthesia, paresthesia.”

Zhurat also pointed out that the brochure, handed to prospective vaccine recipients, listed certain durations for possible side effects.

The leaflet says the problems are “supposed to pass within a few days and we saw that this was not the case,” Zhurat said. Some problems lasted for more than a year, including menstrual irregularities, with no end in sight.

Zhurat declined to comment on the discussion, telling The Epoch Times in a Facebook message that she’s no longer part of the team analyzing the data.

Shir-Raz had said on Twitter that one of the meeting portions showed that only one of the four health maintenance organizations (HMOs) in Israel provided adverse event reports. MoH said that reports were received from all of the HMOs, or organizations that provide citizens with healthcare.

The HMOs have not responded to requests for comment.

During the meeting, presenters said that many of the reports came from Meuhedet, one of the HMOs. Maccabi, another, “did not send that much because … they collected phenomena by themselves and not through your form,” Maya Berlin, another member of the team said.

Dr. Mati Berkovitch, the leader of the team, said the point was “super important.” “This means that there are HMOs that keep the information close to their chest,” he said.

Additionally, according to a draft copy of the report the MoH ultimately released, which Shir-Raz also obtained, a person on the team questions whether they should point out that “there are HMOs that did not send messages and therefore there is a bias in the reporting?”

The final report makes no mention of this point. “They could have reliably reported how many reports there were from each HMO. Why didn’t they do it?” Shir-Raz wondered.

Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Israeli native who has been closely following the situation, says that the MoH “lost the trust of the public in Israel exactly because of behaviors like that.”

It would take a new leadership and different behavior to undo the tremendous damage that was caused,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/israeli-ministry-of-health-confirms-leaked-video-is-real-issues-false-statements_4791302.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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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Yes, they claimed the vaccines would prevent transmission

One of the most bizarre lies being told this week in response to Pfizer executive Janine Small’s testimony to EU Parliament is that, actually, the Covid vaccines were never supposed to stop the spread of the virus.

Asked by Dutch MEP Rob Roos whether the company had tested its vaccine on “stopping the transmission of the virus” before it rolled out globally, Ms Small said “no” because “we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market”.

“And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk,” she said.

In a viral Twitter video which has now been viewed more than 12 million times, Mr Roos described the response as “scandalous”, arguing “millions of people worldwide felt compelled to get vaccinated because of the myth that ‘you do it for others’”.

Mr Roos said the admission removed the entire basis for vaccine mandates and passports which “led to massive institutional discrimination as people lost access to essential parts of society”. “I find this to be shocking, even criminal,” he said.

Of course, fact checkers were not happy.

This is not the bombshell it is being presented as, they argue, because it was public knowledge that the primary outcome measured in Pfizer’s clinical trials was reducing risk of disease, but not transmission.

Moreover, as the Therapeutic Goods Administration stressed, “transmission effects” are “not an approved indication of any Covid-19 vaccine” currently available in Australia.

That might be technically true, but it feels like just that — a technicality.

And this is why Mr Roos’ video, while not strictly being new information, struck such a nerve.

Because setting aside what it says in the fine print, the public was told repeatedly, for months, both explicitly and implicitly, that the vaccines would prevent transmission.

They’re all on tape saying it.

US President Joe Biden, for example, said in July 2021 that “you’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations”.

White House chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said in May 2021 that vaccinated people become “dead ends” for the virus.

CDC director Rochelle Walensky said in March 2021 that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick”.

In Australia, politicians and health officials held millions of people hostage for months, lecturing and threatening them to get vaccinated to regain their “freedoms”.

The vaccines were the “way out” of the pandemic, they were not to just to protect ourselves but to “protect others”, they would “stop the spread”, and not getting vaccinated was “selfish”.

Vaccine passports, the “vaccinated economy”, were necessary so people who “did the right thing” would feel “safe” knowing they weren’t “mixing” with the unvaccinated, who were a “risk to the community”.

By late 2021 and early 2022, as Omicron became dominant and it was clear vaccinated people were still catching and spreading the virus, the messaging changed.

“Stopping the spread? What are you talking about? It’s about reducing hospitalisation and death. We have always been at war with hospitalisation and death.”

That’s all well and good — but it’s an entirely different moral calculation.

Vaccine mandates, like other Covid restrictions, were always a balancing act between personal choice and public health. But with the vaccine no longer stopping the spread of the virus, mandates are effectively like the police kicking down your door and forcing you to eat your vegetables at gunpoint.

Or like protecting immunocompromised people by simply welding them inside their homes.

This is not a new argument. In January this year, Nobel Prize-winning virologist Luc Montagnier and constitutional scholar Jed Rubenfeld argued in The Wall Street Journal that, in the face of the Omicron variant, the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates were obsolete.

“It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to the public interest for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target,” they wrote.

“Mandating a vaccine to stop the spread of a disease requires evidence that the vaccines will prevent infection or transmission (rather than efficacy against severe outcomes like hospitalisation or death).”

Even the World Health Organisation, as far back as April 2021, cautioned that “if mandatory vaccination is considered necessary to interrupt transmission chains and prevent harm to others, there should be sufficient evidence that the vaccine is efficacious in preventing serious infection and/or transmission”.

At that time, evidence was still emerging about the vaccines’ ability to stop transmission of the original strain of the virus — and besides, as everyone now tells us, that was never the primary goal, but merely a nice added bonus.

And yet mandates were introduced anyway.

Yes, politicians and health officials have changed their tune and no longer talk about vaccines stopping transmission. Yes, newer strains of the virus changed the situation. But it’s insane to claim, as many now try to, that they never did in the first place.

A simple “sorry, we were wrong” would go a long way.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/yes-they-claimed-the-vaccines-would-prevent-transmission/news-story/a176eb002c29e603fc29ef9fe0b33b18

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Australian Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly downplayed long COVID while justifying end of isolation requirements, medical specialist says

A leading medical specialist and long COVID patients say the chief medical officer (CMO) downplayed the state of long COVID in Australia while justifying the end of national isolation requirements.

Steven Faux, who heads up a long COVID clinic at a Sydney hospital, called the comments "unusual" and akin to "pulling the sheet over your head".

During a press conference last month, when the October 14 mandatory isolation end date was announced, Paul Kelly said health authorities were still assessing the extent of long COVID in Australia. "We're not seeing a major picture of long COVID," he said.

"For the majority of Australians, we were not exposed to COVID before we had at least two vaccines.

"We know that the major risk factors for long COVID are having had infection before vaccination, being unvaccinated, having severe illness and having other types of COVID that were not Omicron."

Professor Faux, who co-directs the long COVID clinic at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, said Professor Kelly's comments did not accurately represent the patients who were presenting at his practice.

"Mostly we're seeing people who got [COVID-19] in December and that's the Omicron wave … and the majority we are seeing are vaccinated," Professor Faux said.

Long COVID still a risk

The rehabilitation and pain physician pointed to international research that showed those who were triple vaccinated and infected with Omicron had a long COVID rate of 5 per cent.

"That's not a major problem, unless you consider that over 10 million Australians have had COVID," he said.

"That's not insubstantial when you consider that the public health services are at maximum capacity."

The St Vincent's clinic has been inundated with hundreds of people seeking help, with some specialists booked out until the middle of next year.

"We've been getting phone calls from Victoria, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland about people wanting to come down and we've been sending them back," Professor Faux said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Aged Care told the ABC that Professor Kelly's comments were based on research conducted overseas and stressed that people who were vaccinated were less likely to develop symptoms of long COVID.

"In addition, studies have shown that infection with the Omicron variant is less likely to lead to symptoms of long COVID than infection with the Delta variant."

Comments not based on data, say advocates

The CMO's comments have been met with sadness and anger by long COVID advocates, who say patients like them are not being seen or heard. "He has no data on which to base those claims," academic Pippa Yeoman said.

"He's making a political statement about how clever they were to close the borders and get everybody vaccinated and saying that means we will be different [to other countries]. If you make a claim, you need to be able to back it up."

Dr Yeoman is a member of the Australia Long Covid Community Facebook group, which has about 2,600 members.

The group has been collecting survey data on its members in a bid to present the information to an approaching parliamentary Inquiry into Long COVID and Repeated COVID Infections.

Members said their preliminary data analysis of almost 300 survey respondents showed that the vast majority were double vaccinated before developing long COVID and were infected during the Omicron wave.

There is no official national data on the number of people with long COVID in Australia and not every state has a dedicated long COVID clinic, making it difficult to quantify the number of people with the condition or the impact it has on their lives.

The Department of Health and Aged Care said analysis of health data had begun in order to help develop a national response to long COVID.

"The Department is also working with states and territories to better understand the prevalence of long COVID in Australia," it said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-11/cmo-paul-kelly-downplayed-long-covid-says-medical-specialist/101522054

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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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