Friday, October 28, 2022
New fast spreading Covid variant arrives in Australia
A rapidly-spreading new “nightmare” Covid variant has hit Australia’s shores but experts say we should not panic.
The XBB strain, which is resistant to vaccines and antibodies from previous infections, emerged in Singapore a few weeks ago. Within a week, it went from making up one fifth of the country’s Covid cases to more than a half.
In Australia, there were 31,636 new cases of Covid reported in the week to October 25 — an increase of 2.2 per cent.
In NSW, there were 10,050 cases of Covid reported in the week ending October 27 — an increase of 13.7 per cent. There were 820 people in hospital and 16 deaths.
NSW detected 21 cases of XBB variant in the week ending October 15 and it made up 6.4 per cent of PCR tests subject to genomic analysis, a tenfold increase since the first cases were found on October 1.
In Victoria, cases surged by 24.7 per cent to 8537 in the week ending October 28 and hospitalisation rose 20.3 per cent to 172 patients. Seven lives were lost on average each day to Covid.
“Surveillance shows the presence of multiple Omicron subvariants in Victoria including rapid growth of (the Omicron subvariant) BQ. 1 and XBB in the past month, with a combined prevalence of approximately 10 per cent in wastewater and clinical sample,” Victoria’s chief health officer Professor Brett Sutton said in his latest update.
“Continued growth at these rates would see these subvariants overtake BA. 5 as the dominant varian.”
In Queensland, there were 4447 cases of Covid reported in the week to October 25, with 105 people in hospital and 18 people dying.
These jurisdictions do not report Covid variants.
Australian National University infectious diseases expert Professor Peter Collignon said so far, there was no evidence XBB was “more virulent, as judged by hospitalisations and deaths”.
And Deakin University infectious diseases expert Professor Catherine Bennett stressed Australians would have a stronger hybrid immunity to new variants, unlike the lead up to last Christmas when the Omicron and Delta strains ran wild.
“More than half the population has been both vaccinated and had an infection, and that does put you in a more resilient position in when facing future waves,” Professor Bennett said.
Professor Collignon estimated “80 per cent of Australians have had Covid”.
“We won’t see the same high hospitalisation and high death numbers that we saw between December and July, because that’s when all the variants were circulating and people were basically getting infected for the first time,” Professor Collignon said.
Around 64 per cent of current Covid cases analysed in Australia are of the Omicron subvariant BA. 5 — down from 71 per cent of cases at the end of September.
Researchers in China found XBB can escape the antibodies generated by a BA. 5 infection.
This means it is also likely to outwit the latest bivalent vaccines which protect against Omicron, as well as the original Wuhan variant.
Infectious disease specialist Maria Van Kerkhove, who works on the Covid-19 response at the World Health Organisation, posted a video to Twitter last week raising concerns about the XBB variant.
“We do know that this recombinant has a significant growth advantage, all of the sub-variants of Omicron are showing increased transmissibility and properties of immune escape,” Dr Van Kerkhove said.
Another new variant, detected in NSW, was the BQ. 1.1, which made up 3.3 per cent of cases that were subjected to genomic testing. In the US, surveillance showed BQ. 1.1 was spreading, accounting for 11 per cent of recent cases.
All up, the World Health Organisation has detected more than 300 variants of Covid that are circulating.
Dr Van Kerkhove expressed concerns, shared by Professors Collignon and Bennett, that systematic surveillance of Covid was declining.
“Surveillance has declined, testing has declined, sequencing has declined and that in turn has limited our ability as an organisation with our expert networks around the world to assess these,” Dr Van Kerkhove said.
Professors Collignon and Bennett are calling for a co-ordinated national Covid surveillance program involving regular sewage testing and tracking of patients with upper respiratory conditions presenting to hospitals and GPs.
Older Australians and immunocompromised Australians are entering a period when their fourth Covid vaccine is beginning to wear off 3-4 months after they received it and are being urged to mask up.
Health Minister Mark Butler said last week the Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation – ATAGI – was not likely to provide advice on whether the elderly and immunocompromised should have a fifth Covid vaccine until next year.
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CDC Pushed for COVID-19 Boosters Without Clinical Trials
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pressured U.S. regulators to clear COVID-19 boosters without clinical trial data, according to newly released emails.
CDC officials relayed to counterparts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early August 2021 that they wanted authorization for Moderna and Pfizer boosters as data began showing that the vaccines weren’t working as well as initially promoted.
The conversation took place on a call that was described by Dr. Phil Krause, a top FDA official, to several other FDA workers.
“Take a deep breath before reading this next paragraph. On that call, the CDC evidently stated that they will assemble all the data they are aware of on third dosing in this setting and send it to us in the hope that we will (very soon) authorize the third dose for immunocompromised as part of the EUA,” Krause wrote in the Aug. 5, 2021, email (pdf).
EUA stands for emergency use authorization.
All of the COVID-19 vaccines were authorized under emergency conditions at that time.
No boosters had been authorized and no clinical data were available for the boosters.
The emails show that “the CDC wanted the booster approved without a trial,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, wrote on Twitter.
The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Krause was responding to Doran Fink, who also works for the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, charged with evaluating vaccines.
Fink sent along a post that had been made to an infectious diseases forum regarding whether doctors should be giving additional vaccine doses to patients with compromised immune systems despite the lack of authorization.
Dr. Richard Nathan of Idaho had written that other countries, including Israel, had cleared boosters.
“Pfizer recommends it and I trust their guidance over the turmoil at our federal agencies. With millions of doses of vaccine set to expire, you should do what you think is best for your patients. I can’t believe you would get pushback from anyone. Keep in mind, nearly everyone in this group is six to seven months out from the second dose of the vaccine and many have significant daily exposure to the virus,” Nathan wrote.
Fink said the post “accurately reflects more widespread thinking that I am hearing in other forums as well,” including among doctors who advise the CDC on vaccines.
“Providers are losing confidence in FDA/CDC to do the right thing for their patients,” Fink said.
Less than two weeks later, the FDA authorized boosters for certain people, including immunocompromised persons.
The agency said that “a thorough review of the available data” concluded the group “may benefit” from a third dose.
The only data cited on efficacy were from two studies, one conducted by French researchers and another by Canadian researchers. Pfizer and Moderna hadn’t completed trials.
“As we’ve previously stated, other individuals who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and do not need an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine at this time,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s top official said.
But just weeks later, Woodcock and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s top official, signed onto a joint statement saying that vaccine protection was waning and that boosters “will be needed to maximize vaccine-induced protection and prolong its durability.”
In September 2021, the FDA and CDC authorized Pfizer boosters for many other Americans. The authorization was expanded to Moderna and Johnson & Johnson shots, and virtually all other Americans, later in the year.
Krause and Dr. Marion Gruber resigned from their positions because of opposition to the booster strategy.
Judicial Watch obtained the newly published emails as part of ongoing litigation against the Biden administration for not properly responding to a Freedom of Information Act request.
An earlier tranche of emails showed that Gruber was “very concerned” in late August 2021 about pressure from companies such as Pfizer over vaccine authorization.
“We need to be given time to consider their data and cannot be pushed by these companies and, for that matter the Administration, who try to impose timeless [sic] that make no sense,” Gruber wrote to Dr. Peter Marks, a top FDA official.
“These FDA records further document top officials’ concerns about the controversial COVID-19 booster shots,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “That it has taken months and a federal lawsuit to uncover this critical material is a scandal.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Thursday, October 27, 2022
Looking back:
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New York Supreme Court Reinstates Unvaccinated Employees With Back Pay
A New York judge ordered Monday that Department of Sanitation employees terminated for refusing to get vaccinated be reinstated to their full employment status, writing that the vaccination mandate for city employees was “not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance.”
Judge Ralph J. Porzio wrote in his ruling that if the vaccine mandate was about “safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued.”
“If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for vaccination for all residents,” he continued. “In a City with a nearly 80% vaccination rate, we shouldn’t be penalizing the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down.”
Porzio’s ruling states that the Oct. 20, 2021, and Dec. 13, 2021, rulings from the commissioner of health and mental hygiene ordering that all employees get vaccinated are “arbitrary and capricious,” ordering that the petitioners be reinstated to their full employment status, and entitled to back pay in salary from date of termination.
“Yesterday marked a historic victory for sanitation workers, all the brave NYC employees who serve the public and our representative democracy,” attorney Chad LaVeglia told The Daily Signal. “The court struck down NYC’s draconian, arbitrary, vaccine mandate on multiple constitutional and legal grounds. The thousands of city employees who were ignored now have a voice. And as the court recognized, they deserve better.”
“The court also recognized a commonsense principle that has somehow eluded politicians like Eric Adams: Forcing one—and only one—segment of the population to get vaccinated during a worldwide outbreak is unconstitutional and arbitrary,” he added. “Sixteen sanitation workers fought back against tyranny. And won. This is a historic victory for individual rights, and the system of government mandated by the Constitution.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/25/new-york-supreme-court-reinstates-unvaccinated-employees-with-backpay
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Judge Orders Fauci, Psaki, Top Officials Be Deposed in Big Tech Censorship Case
A federal court ordered on Oct. 21 that Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top officials testify under oath at depositions in a case that has uncovered evidence of alleged federal government collusion with Big Tech companies to censor users.
The attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and other plaintiffs allege that Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, and other defendants colluded and coerced social media companies to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content” regarding COVID-19.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty went a step further than a previous ruling that forced written testimonies and ordered Fauci and other defendants to testify under oath at depositions.
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden Administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a statement.
“It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) joined the lawsuit in August, representing renowned epidemiologists Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, as well as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty and Jill Hines.
NCLA attorney Jenin Younes said she looks forward to learning just how far the accused government officials went to push their COVID-19 “perspective.”
“For the first time, Dr. Fauci and seven other federal officials responsible for running an unlawful censorship enterprise will have to answer questions under oath about the nature and extent of their communications with tech companies,” Younes said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
Doughty also ordered the depositions of former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan.
Fauci’s ‘Self-Serving Blanket Denials’
In his ruling, Doughty said he agreed with plaintiffs that Fauci’s previous “self-serving blanket denials” about his role in censoring views on social media couldn’t be taken at face value.
“Plaintiffs argue that even if Dr. Fauci can prove he never communicated with social media platforms about censorship, there are compelling reasons that suggest Dr. Fauci has acted through intermediaries, and acted on behalf of others, in procuring the social-media censorship of credible scientific opinions,” Doughty said in his ruling (pdf). “Plaintiffs argue that even if Dr. Fauci acted indirectly or as an intermediary on behalf of others, it is still relevant to Plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction motion. The Court agrees.
“Lastly, Plaintiffs argue that Dr. Fauci’s credibility has been in question on matters related to supposed COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ since 2020. Specifically, Plaintiffs state that Dr. Fauci has made public statements on the efficacy of masks, the percentage of the population needed for herd immunity, NIAID’s funding of ‘gain-of-function’ virus research in Wuhan, the lab-leak theory, and more.
“Plaintiffs urge that his comments on these important issues are relevant to the matter at hand and are further reasons why Dr. Fauci should be deposed. Plaintiffs assert that they should not be required to simply accept Dr. Fauci’s ‘self-serving blanket denials’ that were issued from someone other than himself at face value. The Court agrees.”
The plaintiffs argued that Fauci allegedly insisted on the censorship of “speech backed by great scientific credibility and with enormous potential nationwide impact” that contradicted his views.
For example, he communicated in a long-shielded phone call with some scientists to discredit any theory that COVID-19 was the result of a “lab leak” in Wuhan, China. The scientists went on to write a paper severely reprimanding others who were open to the theory.
If the lab leak theory were true, in turn, it would mean that Fauci could be potentially implicated in funding the research on viruses that caused the COVID-19 pandemic that killed millions of people worldwide, the plaintiffs argued. This is because he funded risky “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through intermediaries such as EcoHealth Alliance.
In late January 2020 and early February 2020, Fauci was also in touch with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in oral communications about the government’s COVID-19 response. Facebook then allegedly went on censor the lab leak theory, according to the plaintiffs.
‘Overwhelming’ Need to Depose Officials
The court also found that Flaherty, Psaki, Andy Slavitt, and other officials also have personal knowledge about the alleged censorship issues and ordered them to be deposed.
Doughty said there’s an “overwhelming” need for Flaherty to be deposed to determine whether fundamental rights to free speech were “abridged” as a result of alleged collusion between senior Biden administration officials and Big Tech.
The plaintiffs argued that Flaherty had “extensive” oral meetings with Twitter, Meta, and YouTube on vaccine hesitancy and combatting misinformation related to COVID-19.
The judge said there’s a “substantive need” for the deposition of Slavitt, who served as the White House’s senior COVID-19 adviser. Doughty noted that Slavitt’s remarks on a podcast “showed he has specific knowledge as it relates” to the issues in the lawsuit.
The court order cited a series of public comments made by Psaki when she served as White House press secretary, including calling on social media platforms for consistency in banning disfavored speakers.
“Psaki has made a number of statements that are relevant to the Government’s involvement in a number of social-media platforms’ efforts to censor its users across the board for sharing information related to COVID-19,” Doughty said in his ruling.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-orders-fauci-psaki-top-officials-be-deposed-in-big-tech-censorship-case_4813336.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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Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Confidence through censorship: The (medical) Ministry of Truth
On Wednesday, October 12, the Queensland Labor government – with support from the LNP opposition – passed a dystopian and dangerous bill.
The Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 refocuses the guiding principles of medicine to prioritise public confidence over public health and safety. It allows bureaucrats to name and shame doctors, a move which the AMA described as ‘incoherent zealotry’.
This bill, if passed by other jurisdictions in Australia, will essentially legislate national medical censorship as a means to ensure public confidence in government health services.
Adherence to the Good Medical Practice code of conduct means that advocating for patients (which is our primary concern) is being overridden by external demands to comply with public health messaging. Our code of conduct is predicated on The Hippocratic Oath, the Declaration of Geneva, and the International Code of Ethics which outlines our dedication to serving humanity: To first do no harm, making our patients our primary consideration.
Political-based medicine has now replaced evidence-based medicine.
History has proven that unquestioning compliance to government directives is dangerous. In 1947, the World Medical Association agreements were formed in the aftermath of the second world war due to the gross systematic human rights abuses which took place under enforced national laws. Tragically, the political currents in Australia appear to be heading towards bureaucratic medical compliance enforced through regulatory threats, soon to be legislative threats.
In 2015, the federal government passed The Australian Border Force Act 2015 which made doctors who advocated for their refugee patients liable to face up to two years imprisonment. Doctors for Refugees challenged this law in the High Court a year later. A major basis for their argument, according to their submission to the Medical Board’s 2018 Code of Conduct review, was that the Code doctors had sworn to uphold and advocate for the rights of their patients could not be overridden by the vagaries of domestic laws.
The government eventually backed down on this law and had that problematic section repealed.
Interestingly, their submission was in response to the Medical Board attempting to insert into the medical code the concerning phrase ‘doctors must comply with relevant laws’. The response to the word comply was fierce as the idea that the medical code of conduct could enforce compliance to political decree was antithetical to what doctors had sworn to uphold.
With the arrival of Covid came the bureaucratic decree through the March 9, 2021 joint statement by AHPRA and the National Boards that made undermining public confidence in the government’s Covid public health messaging equivalent to professional misconduct. Questioning ‘the message’ is now subject to investigation and disciplinary action, including immediate suspension of registration.
Letters received by practitioners who have questioned the government response to Covid are chilling in their implication. After being suspended by National Boards under the immediate action clauses for allegedly being a threat to public health and safety, they are accused of the crime of non-compliance. They are deemed a threat because they failed to comply with public health orders, undermined the Board’s position on the promotion of Covid vaccination, and undermined public confidence because their medical expert opinion contravened government health authorities.
In summary, health professionals are not permitted to question the ‘secret health advice’ without losing their registration to practise.
Consider that in response to Covid, our health bureaucracy overturned the medical industry’s well-researched 2019 pandemic preparedness plans – doing almost the total opposite of what was recommended by health professionals. Interestingly, Dr Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, told employees recently: ‘To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes from testing, to data, to communications.’
In December 2020, the FDA outlined, ‘At this time, data is not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.’ Our health bureaucrats, regulatory agencies, and politicians mandated provisionally approved vaccines by telling the population repeatedly that they stopped transmission and people were selfish granny killers if they didn’t get jabbed.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question government statements on transmission without losing our registration to practise.
On September 2021, a delegate of the Secretary of the Department of Health rescheduled ivermectin, in effect banning it for use as an off-label treatment option for Covid stating ‘subsection 52E(1) of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, in particular paragraph (f), which empowers the Secretary to act on any other matters that the Secretary considers necessary to protect public health’.
Ivermectin is one of the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines. It was fully approved by the TGA and found to be very safe according to their own 2013 Australian Public Assessment Report for Ivermectin. Two of the reasons the TGA gave for denying Australians access to a drug that showed great promise in the treatment and prevention of Covid-19 was that it was all of a sudden unsafe and its availability might dissuade people from getting vaccinated. Behaviour modification was undertaken, with the TGA appearing to act in partnership with other government nudge units to promote vaccination.
We as health professionals are not permitted to advocate for ivermectin without losing our registration to practice.
In July 2021, as Australians were being mandated through coercive techniques to get vaccinated with poorly tested provisionally approved gene-based vaccines that our Health bureaucrats and politicians repeatedly told us had been proven safe and effective, the TGA was amending the Therapeutic Goods Regulation Act to further reduce the safety and efficacy requirements for any medicine that is for the treatment or prevention of Covid. Not only do manufacturers have six years to provide the government with safety and efficacy data on these provisionally approved jabs, they also no longer have to demonstrate they could provide a greater benefit than other available medicines or that the medicine is likely to provide a major therapeutic advance.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question the safety and efficacy without losing our registration to practise.
Recently, the TGA has granted provisional approval to Moderna for the active immunisation and prevention of Covid in high-risk babies and young children. The report concluded the vaccinations had low levels of protective efficacy against infection, they didn’t know how long any efficacy lasted, and while the (Advisory Committee on Vaccines) recommended the provisional approval to children at high risk they noted high-risk children were excluded from the study. Across the world, pandemic policy and guidelines vary. Denmark is no longer recommending vaccination for people under 50, Norway no one under 65, but our regulatory body is expanding approvals to 6-month to 4-year-olds.
We, as health professionals, are not allowed to question this approval without losing our registration to practise.
Whenever governments want to enact laws to suppress free expression, censor and punish dissenters through threats to careers and livelihood, to control public perception as a means of creating confidence through enforced public ignorance, it is time to ask some serious questions.
If this bill passes nationally and the government becomes the single authority on all health advice, then unquestioning compliance becomes the new accepted standard of good medical practice. That is the end of medicine and the death of science. George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth has arrived. Public confidence in politicians and their bureaucrats should never come at the expense of people’s right to full, free, and unhindered access to scientific evidence and emerging data.
The Australian Medical Professionals Society is dedicated to fighting for medical free speech for the safety of those we swore to protect, our patients. Prioritising public confidence in government through censorship has led to what Professor Bhattacharya has said is the single biggest public health mistake in human history. With Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British Cardiologist, recently describing the mandates as ‘perhaps the greatest miscarriage of medical science we will witness in our lifetime’. We must stop medical censorship and allow doctors to be doctors. This bill is dangerous to the future of medicine and the health of our nation.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/confidence-through-censorship-the-medical-ministry-of-truth/
*********************************************New Covid Boosters Aren’t Better Than Old Ones, Study Finds
Bivalent booster shots from Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. failed to raise levels of protective proteins called neutralizing antibodies against the dominant omicron strains any more than four doses of the original Covid vaccine, according to an early independent study on a small group of people.
Researchers at Columbia University and the University of Michigan compared levels of neutralizing antibodies in blood samples from 21 people who got a fourth shot of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech SE bivalent boosters against antibody levels in 19 people who got four shots of the original vaccines.
Three to five weeks after a fourth shot, those people who received the new boosters aimed at BA.4 and BA.5 variants “had similar neutralizing antibody titers as those receiving a fourth monovalent mRNA vaccine,” the authors conclude in a manuscript posted on the preprint server bioRxiv.org. This held true for antibodies that protect against BA.4, BA.5 and older variants such as the original omicron strain, according to the study.
Moderna shares rose 2.7% to $136.57 at the close in New York trading. Pfizer stock was little changed.
The results don’t mean that getting a bivalent shot has no benefit, and it will need to be confirmed in much larger studies. However, they raise the question of whether the switch to a new version of the vaccine was necessary.
The results also contrast sharply with an Oct. 13 press release from Pfizer and BioNTech touting “positive early data” from a clinical trial suggesting that its bivalent vaccine “is anticipated to provide better protection.” The statement was based on data collected from subjects in the first seven days after immunization, and the company has not yet released details.
“So far we don’t see the benefit” of the bivalent shots over the old ones, said study senior author David Ho, a virologist who heads the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University. A clear difference between the boosters could emerge over longer periods of time, he said in a telephone interview. It could also turn out that a second booster shot with the bivalent vaccine may be needed, he said.
Ho said that the study has been submitted for publication in a scientific journal.
Slow Rollout
Rollout of the bivalent vaccines has been slow so far. Only about 20 million Americans have received the latest version of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The lackluster results for bivalent boosters could be due to a phenomenon called imprinting, Ho said. That means that the immune system most strongly remembers the first version of a virus it encounters. After it mutates, the response to a vaccine -- even one targeting newer strains -- may still be tilted toward fighting the original pathogen.
Ho said he personally has gotten four doses of the original generation of mRNA shots, and that he is waiting for more data to roll in to decide what to do about a fifth dose.
Pfizer declined to comment on outside research. A spokesperson said the company would reveal additional 30-day data on its bivalent shot in the coming weeks. Moderna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In early October, Moderna researchers published data from the clinical trial of a different bivalent booster that is tailored to the original omicron strain. That study, in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that a fourth shot of that bivalent vaccine produced higher levels of antibodies compared to four shots of Moderna’s original vaccine. Moderna’s bivalent vaccine against the original omicron strain, called mRNA-1273.214, is not authorized in the U.S., but has been cleared for use in numerous countries including the UK and Canada.
Nonetheless, scientists have harbored doubts about the benefit of switching up the shots’ composition. Before the US began rolling out updated boosters in September, John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College said the new vaccines would be “little or no better” than earlier formulations.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Another dubious study of Ivermectin
This study concluded that ivermectin was no help for outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19. But like many previous studies, it appears to have ignored the time factor. Enrolment in the study appears to have been very relaxed, with no attention paid to how long the patient had had Covid symptoms. Since Ivermectim is one of the drugs that normally need to be taken very soon after symptoms become evident, this study tells us effectively nothing -- JR
Effect of Ivermectin on Time to Resolution of Symptoms Among Adults With Mild COVID-19
Susanna Naggie et al
Abstract
Importance: The effectiveness of ivermectin to shorten symptom duration or prevent hospitalization among outpatients in the US with mild to moderate symptomatic COVID-19 is unknown.
Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of ivermectin, 400 μg/kg, daily for 3 days compared with placebo for the treatment of early mild to moderate COVID-19.
Design, Setting, and Participants: ACTIV-6, an ongoing, decentralized, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled platform trial, was designed to evaluate repurposed therapies in outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19. A total of 1591 participants aged 30 years and older with confirmed COVID-19, experiencing 2 or more symptoms of acute infection for 7 days or less, were enrolled from June 23, 2021, through February 4, 2022, with follow-up data through May 31, 2022, at 93 sites in the US.
Interventions: Participants were randomized to receive ivermectin, 400 μg/kg (n = 817), daily for 3 days or placebo (n = 774).
Main Outcomes and Measures: Time to sustained recovery, defined as at least 3 consecutive days without symptoms. There were 7 secondary outcomes, including a composite of hospitalization or death by day 28.
Results: Among 1800 participants who were randomized (mean [SD] age, 48 [12] years; 932 women [58.6%]; 753 [47.3%] reported receiving at least 2 doses of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine), 1591 completed the trial. The hazard ratio (HR) for improvement in time to recovery was 1.07 (95% credible interval [CrI], 0.96-1.17; posterior P value [HR >1] = .91). The median time to recovery was 12 days (IQR, 11-13) in the ivermectin group and 13 days (IQR, 12-14) in the placebo group. There were 10 hospitalizations or deaths in the ivermectin group and 9 in the placebo group (1.2% vs 1.2%; HR, 1.1 [95% CrI, 0.4-2.6]). The most common serious adverse events were COVID-19 pneumonia (ivermectin [n = 5]; placebo [n = 7]) and venous thromboembolism (ivermectin [n = 1]; placebo [n = 5]).
Conclusions and Relevance" Among outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19, treatment with ivermectin, compared with placebo, did not significantly improve time to recovery. These findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2797483 ?
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Children's Health Defense Demands Lawmakers Stop COVID Vaccine Mandates
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee on Thursday voted that the agency should update its recommended immunization schedules to add the COVID-19 vaccine, including to the schedule for children.
Committee members said the vote doesn’t affect what vaccines are required for school attendance, the CDC is merely codifying its pre-existing recommendation. School mandate decisions are made at the state, county and municipal levels, the committee said. “This discussion doesn’t change that,” a committee member said.
But as Dr. Robert Malone pointed out, pediatricians and state public health officials use the CDC schedule.
Writing on Substack, Malone said:
“State public health systems use the schedule to determine which vaccines to require for children to enter schools. Yes, some states have more stringent requirements than others. Some states allow for ‘opt-outs,’ but in the end, most states follow the CDC guidelines. The ACIP functionally establishes ‘standard of care’ in this area.”
Commenting on the vote, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman of the board and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said:
“This reckless action is final proof of the cynicism, corruption and capture of a once exemplary public health agency. ACIP members have again demonstrated that fealty to their pharma overlords eclipses any residual concerns they may harbor for child welfare or public health.”
This is an act of child abuse on a massive scale.
The regulatory agencies and their advisory committees have gone amok. It’s time for people to stop consenting and stop complying. To tell your state’s leaders “No COVID vaccine mandates for our state’s kids” click the link.
Despite immense blowback, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously to add COVID-19 injections to its recommended schedule of vaccinations for infants, children and adolescents. The committee members’ votes solidify their steadfast loyalty to protecting pharma profits at the cost of children’s lives. This is the first step to granting permanent, blanket liability protection for all current and future COVID-19 injections.
This is a declaration of war on our children. The responsibility to be unrelenting as we defend the next generation from Big Pharma now falls on us. In the coming months, nearly every state in the nation will universally adopt the CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule.
Fortunately, the CDC doesn’t have the authority to set school immunization requirements, and the vote doesn’t mandate the vaccine for schoolchildren. That’s a decision left to the states.
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Persian Pilot Study: Atorvastatin Efficacious in Mild to Moderate Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients
Recently, investigators looked at the broadly used cholesterol-reducing generic atorvastatin (Lipitor®). Atorvastatin is a lipid-lowering drug included in the statin class of medications. By inhibiting the endogenous production of cholesterol in the liver, statins lower abnormal cholesterol and lipid levels and ultimately, reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Statins have been theorized to be potentially helpful against Covid-19 for quite a while now, as highlighted in this published mechanistic paper from April 2020. They have multiple mechanisms that might provide benefits, such as pleiotropic effects on inflammation and oxidative stress, which contribute to their beneficial impact on cardiovascular diseases. They modulate the immune response, restore the vascular redox balance by reducing reactive oxygen species and increasing antioxidants, and ameliorate nitric oxide bioavailability, endothelial function, and integrity.
The Persian research team was aware of the many clinical benefits of statins, along with their excellent safety profile, low cost, and their broad availability. As a result, they conducted a triple-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial evaluating atorvastatin in mild to moderate hospitalized Covid-19 patients. There were 52 patients who were randomized 1:1 into the treatment group to receive 40mg atorvastatin once daily for 14 days or the placebo group. They tracked patients' symptoms and laboratory markers at baseline and during the follow-up period. They also evaluated the duration of hospitalization and supplemental O2 therapy. The results were reported in Pubmed and Eureka Select.
Results
After a 14-day of follow-up, the oxygen saturation (SaO2) was significantly higher, and the serum high-sensitivity C-reactive protein.
The (hs-CRP) level was lower in the treatment group compared to the placebo group. Moreover, at the end of the follow-up in the treatment group, the lymphocyte count was higher, and the duration of symptom resolution was shorter but not significant. Also, in the treatment group, the length of supplemental oxygen therapy and hospitalization duration were meaningfully shorter. The investigators shared the study results reveal that the mortality rate was almost twice higher in the placebo group compared to the treatment group, without any significant adverse drug reaction.
Conclusion
Atorvastatin significantly reduces supplemental oxygen need, hospitalization duration, and serum hs-CRP level in mild to moderate hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
TrialSite contributor Paul Elkins tracked this study and reported on the potential cost of such a course of treatment of atorvastatin for a patient who doesn't have insurance. Checking GoodRX.com, the retail price at Walmart Pharmacy is $15 for a 30-day supply of 40mg. That would treat two Covid-19 patients on the dosing regimen tested in this trial or $7.50 per patient. Of course, TrialSite isn't making medical recommendations, and this was a small study that would need further validation. The point: If we are moving to the endemic stage of COVID-19, consumers in America need low-cost, repurposed regimens that can help lower the cost of care. The NIH and academic health systems should be seriously investigating low-cost repurposed therapeutic regimens.
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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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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.
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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.”
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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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