Israel's fourth vaccine dose and Omicron

There are two research results reported below and both were reported on very positively. The reports below portray vaccination as protective in an Omicron-infected population.

Being a retired academic, however I looked at the results more closely and was not convinced. The final conclusion from the study report of the healthcare workers agreed well with my conclusions. It reads:

"a fourth vaccination of healthy young health care workers may have only marginal benefits"

The second study -- of the elderly -- compared only the results of third and fourth vaccinations with one-another. There was no control group so no conclusions about absolute efficacy were possible.

My takeaway is that existing vaccinations are probably totally useless against Omicron

The Middle Eastern nation became the first place in the world to offer its adult citizens a second booster in January, just as the Omicron wave charged across the globe.

Any Israeli over the age of 18 was able to get the jab, as long as five months had passed since they received their previous booster or had recovered from the illness.

More than 830,000 Israelis — mostly the elderly, health workers and immunocompromised residents — have so far taken up that offer.

The World Health Organization is yet to give an official recommendation on the efficacy of a fourth COVID-19 dose.

Experts are divided on the efficacy of a second booster for younger people.

Earlier this year, researchers studied the effects of a fourth shot on the immune responses of young Israeli health workers.

The results suggest the effectiveness of the fourth dose is no different from the effectiveness of a third dose.

While the jury may be out on the benefits for younger people, Israeli researchers say one age group clearly receives significant additional protection.

Results of a newly published study by Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev showed the fourth COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of death by 72 per cent among Israel's elderly.

"This is a huge step forward to control the spread of COVID in Australia and other countries, that plan to introduce the fourth dose," lead researcher Khitam Muhsen said.

The study of 40,000 nursing home residents found those vaccinated with a fourth dose of the Pfizer vaccine had a 34 per cent reduced risk of contracting the Omicron variant.

They also had a 64 to 67 per cent reduced risk of requiring hospitalisation.

"When there was a variant that had so many mutations, there was a lot of questions about whether the vaccine would be protective, or effective," Dr Muhsen said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-14/covid-19-vaccine-fouth-dose-dramatic-impact-in-israel/101226794

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Worrisome reports of adverse vaccine events

Since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first vaccines for COVID-19 in late 2020, the government and much of the media have insisted that the medicines developed in record time are safe and effective. Those who raised questions about them have been routinely dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

And yet an online database co-administered by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control has compiled more than 1.3 million reports of vaccine-implicated “adverse events” running the gamut from mild to severe, including 29,000 deaths.

Representative entries include:

A 44-year-old male from California with a blood clot in the brain (CVST) five days after receiving Pfizer vaccine, dose unknown.

A 31-year-old female from Pennsylvania with heart inflammation (myocarditis) two days after receiving Moderna’s booster.

A 58-year-old female from California with blood clots in legs (DVT) after receiving Johnson & Johnson booster. She reported:
“Day after booster on 11/16/21 my right leg was aching. 7 days later on 11/23/21 my sole of my right foot was very painful upon walking. This resolved 2 days later by 11/25/21. On day 11 (11/26/21) my ankle was slightly swollen and painful to touch. These symptoms continued to migrate up my leg to my inner thigh. On 12/13/21 I was seen by my primary care Doctor and was sent for a d-dimer blood test which was 1.77. I was seen in vascular dept and ultrasound indicated multiple DVT from my groin to my ankle.”

These reports are not anecdotes from “anti-vaxxers” on the dark web. They come from the federal government’s open-source log, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It allows anyone to go online and report a bad reaction that could be linked to any vaccine, including those for COVID-19. (RealClearInvestigations has linked above to VAERS reports posted at Openvaers.com, an independently run and easier to navigate database that copies reports verbatim from the CDC’s less user-friendly “WONDER” system.)

While the reports are unfiltered and unexamined, the idea is that such public input will allow researchers to identify potential problems. But the sheer number of reports, and their specificity, have the attention of concerned scientists and even some politicians like Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has invited people harmed by vaccines to testify before Congress and advocates compensation for them.

Johnson's office said he has been admonishing the health authorities over the VAERS reports for a year. "The senator believes the CDC and FDA need to take their own adverse event early warning system seriously and be transparent with the American people," it said in a statement. "To date, they have not been."

VAERS was created in the late 1980s as an outgrowth of a congressional mandate to create a system for compensating vaccine victims and their families. In 2015, the CDC said the average number of annual reports was roughly 30,000. In 2021, there were nearly 1 million. Given the large increase during a politically charged pandemic, the usefulness of VAERS is the subject of great debate even among scientists

Some health experts believe that the number of reports is primarily a function of increased publicity around the COVID vaccines, a high number indicating only that many more people are aware of the system and concerned about potential side effects from the shots. Others say the number and strong indications in certain symptom categories – such as the cardiovascular examples cited above – paint a bleaker picture of the vaccines’ safety.

Dr. Peter McCullough, a renowned cardiologist and academic physician with over 600 papers published in medical literature, was one of the first professionals to publicly question the safety of the COVID-19 injections. On April 21, 2021, on his podcast The McCullough Report, he read out some of the early, alarming statistics from VAERS including reports of 502 heart attacks, 84 miscarriages, 321 cases of low blood platelet counts (thrombocytopenia) and 2,342 deaths. For Dr. McCullough, these numbers were a huge red flag. For comparison, he cites the last “mass vaccination program” undertaken in the United States, the 1976 swine flu vaccine. Dr. McCullough noted that there were approximately 55 million people vaccinated, with an accompanying 500 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, and around 25 deaths. “And the government officials at that time said, ‘we’re going to pull it.’”

Dr. McCullough said that by April 2021, VAERS reports were already so numerous that he felt the COVID vaccines should be pulled off the market. That same month, Fox News host Tucker Carlson voiced doubts about the vaccines' effectiveness, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's top medical adviser, blasted him for pushing "a typical crazy conspiracy theory."

As of today, the system has more than 29,000 reports of deaths.

VAERS reports, however, are not hard evidence. Its website explains: “A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described. It only confirms that the reported event occurred sometime after vaccine was given. No proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report. VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine.” Some of the FDA and CDC’s most senior veterans advise caution in interpreting the data.

Susan Ellenberg, PhD, the former Director of the Office of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the FDA’s Center for Biologics, told RCI that “anything that gets reported goes directly into the [VAERS] system … so mostly what you get is noise.” She said that it’s nearly impossible to prove causation with this dataset alone. Dr. Walter Orenstein, formerly the CDC’s director of immunization, concurs. He said, “That’s why it’s called adverse ‘events’ as opposed to reaction because reaction implies causation. Event is basically something that follows.” Elderly people, for example, die regularly; if they are dying days or weeks after being vaccinated, that does not necessarily mean the vaccine is killing them.

More here:

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/07/14/the_feds_pile_up_vaccine_adverse_event_reports_as_they_decry_scaremongering_elsewhere_841872.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)

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Fauci admits that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect 'overly well' against infection

He speaks from pure faith. He says that vaccines may not prevent infections but they do make the illness milder. How does he know that? He is just clutching at straws. The fact is that Omicron infections are GENERALLY milder, whether you have been vaccinated or not. We knew that from the very first cases of Omicron in South Africa. He is just blowing smoke

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci conceded that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect "overly well" against infection Tuesday on "Your World."

DR. FAUCI: One of the things that's clear from the data [is] that even though vaccines - because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus - don't protect overly well, as it were, against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death. And I believe that's the reason, Neil, why at my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn't protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease. And that's very likely why I had a relatively mild course. So my message to people who seem confused because people who are vaccinated get infected - the answer is if you weren't vaccinated, the likelihood [is] you would have had [a] more severe course than you did have when you were vaccinated.

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Dr. Malone Warns of Immune Imprinting After Fauci Floats Second Booster Shots

Dr. Robert Malone is warning of immune imprinting after Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled his backing for second COVID-19 vaccine boosters for all Americans aged 5 and older.

“I couldn’t design a vaccine if I wanted to, to be more likely to drive immune imprinting,” Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA technology the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built on, told The Epoch Times.

Immune imprinting refers to a phenomenon whereby initial exposure to a virus strain may prevent the body from producing enough neutralizing antibodies against a new viral strain.

The COVID-19 vaccines currently in circulation are based on the Wuhan strain of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.

A number of strains have emerged and become dominant since the Wuhan strain was prevalent, including the currently dominant Omicron variant.

Researchers with Imperial College London and the United Kingdom Health Security Agency found that people who received three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and were infected with the Wuhan strain had a lower level of protection against later strains when compared to people who had not been infected. Other groups, including researchers with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have found the vaccines much less effective against Omicron subvariants than the Wuhan strain.

A number of studies have found negative effectiveness among vaccinated groups. That means those who get vaccinated are more likely to get infected.

In some areas, the vaccinated account for a majority of those infected or in hospitals or dying with COVID-19. In Louisiana, for example, 70 percent of the deaths recorded between June 23 and June 29 were among the vaccinated.

Second Booster Push

The vaccines were originally promoted as two-shot primary regimens (Pfizer and Moderna) or a one-shot immunization (Johnson & Johnson). They were said to have efficacy as high as 100 percent against symptomatic infection.

Due to waning effectiveness against the emerging variants, U.S. officials authorized booster doses. In March, because the effects of the boosters against infection didn’t last long, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cleared and recommended second boosters for all adults over the age of 50.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser, is now saying Americans 5 to 50 should be allowed to get a second booster dose.

Fauci told the Washington Post that the United States “need[s] to allow people who are under 50 to get their second booster shot, since it may have been months since many of them got their first booster.”

“If I got my third shot [in 2021], it is very likely the immunity is waning,” he added.

Fauci has no authority over authorizing or recommending boosters, but has signaled major changes in U.S. vaccine policy in the past.

White House, FDA Respond

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters on July 12 that “we have conversations all the time about what are possible things we could be doing to better protect the American people” but that the decision on second boosters will be made by the FDA and the CDC.

Fauci uttered a similar statement during the briefing.

“The FDA is evaluating the current situation, including the emerging epidemiology indicating increased hospitalization, and will be open to all potential options to address this, if necessary,” an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Vaccine makers and the FDA are working together to develop variant-specific shots for the fall, which they say will offer better protection. But the updated shots aren’t yet on the market.

Many U.S. adults have received a primary series of a vaccine, including 91 percent of those 65 and older and 77 percent of those 18 and older. But booster doses have been a harder sell. Only 70 percent of elderly persons who got a primary series have received a first booster, along with just 51 percent of those 18 and older, according to CDC data. A second booster has only been administered to 28 percent of the population 50 and older.

Few of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates included a booster, and most of the mandates have been rescinded due to factors like plunging COVID-19 metrics and the waning effectiveness of the vaccines.

The new BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants—which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness—are “more likely to lead to vaccine breakthrough infections,” researchers with Columbia University found.

‘Vaccine-driven Disease’

The COVID-19 metrics in the United States have been creeping up in recent weeks, with the weekly average of cases jumping by 75 percent since late March and hospitalizations with COVID-19 doubling since April.

Officials blame the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness.

People should get a booster as soon as they’re eligible, which is typically about five months after their last shot, Jha and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said. “Don’t delay,” Jha said.

But Malone is among the scientists who are challenging the idea that the old vaccines are the solution.

“You got a major problem with the new Omicron, that’s the BA.5. The people that are getting infected chronically and hospitalized and dying are predominantly the vaccinated. It’s happening all over the world,” Malone said. “Now they’ve got a problem because they have driven this because of immune imprinting. This is increasingly becoming a vaccine-driven disease.”

Fauci, a major vaccine proponent, “has basically created a situation through the insistence on the hyper vaccination where he’s actually driving the disease in the United States,” he added.

Government officials disagree. Walensky said CDC data show that people who either have not received a vaccine or have not been boosted have less protection than those who have been boosted, including against infection, even as studies show the boost against infection quickly drops after the first and second booster.

Fauci said that people who were previously infected, or have natural immunity from surviving COVID-19, “don’t have a lot of protection” against the new subvariants.

Neither mentioned how natural immunity, according to a new study, remains stronger than the protection from vaccines even with boosters, particularly against severe disease.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dr-malone-warns-of-immune-imprinting-after-fauci-floats-second-booster-shots_4592464.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)

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Australian Chief Health Officer: Take personal responsibility to save lives

This is a refreshingly moderate official warning but, even so, it is heavily faith-based. His faith in vaccines is surprising, given that there is no evidence that vaccines protect against Omicron. We are in fact largely at the mercy of how good our innate immune systems are. I seem to have born lucky in that -- even though I am well into the age-based high-risk group. I turn 79 this week but have had no hint of Covid

It has been 2½ years since I treated the state’s first coronavirus case.

In that time, more than 1330 people in Queensland have died with the virus and we’ve recorded more than 1.3 million Covid-19 cases.

We’ve endured two waves and a third is still at least a month away from peaking.

Our hospitals are under immense pressure – the number of Covid-19 patients has risen by 140 per cent just in the past month because of the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.

It’s tragic how something so minuscule (a SARS-CoV-2 virion is roughly half the size of a light dust particle) can wreak so much devastation.

Despite the passage of time and our mighty fight to suppress this disease, Covid-19 is still a major health threat that requires us to remain cautious and sensible.

That said, public health directions and mandates have served their purpose.

They helped us keep cases to a minimum, slowed transmission, and allowed us to vaccinate as much of the population as possible.

There is still a need for some health directions to remain in place, mainly to protect vulnerable people such as the elderly and immunocompromised, but we are no longer dealing with a novel virus.

Now is the time to adjust our measures to reflect this, to responsibly transition away from mandates towards taking personal ­responsibility.

By now Queenslanders are accustomed to the precautions and measures that have protected them against Covid-19. We should all be well-versed in wearing masks when we need to, physically distancing in public, staying away from others when we’re ill, and self-testing.

I have every confidence in the ability of Queenslanders to do this.

Being responsible also means making sure you and your family are vaccinated. The latest ATAGI advice recommends that people aged 50 and older get the winter booster dose.

Sadly, 97 per cent of Queenslanders who have died with Covid-19 were over 50 years old. About 91 per cent were older than 65.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/cho-dr-john-gerrard-take-personal-responsibility-to-save-lives/news-story/f15fefd675a1c093337f13e23a7a4ab4

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British hospitals to enforce mask wearing as Covid hospital infections rise 100%

Dangerous hospitals

The NHS will enforce mask wearing again amid huge increases of Covid infections in hospitals, a leaked letter reveals.

Staff, patients and visitors will be asked to wear masks within all NHS hospitals, GP practices and dentists in the Midlands, according to the letter seen by The Independent.

The letter, sent on 7 July to NHS chiefs in the Midlands by NHS England said: “It is apparent that we have entered the next Covid-19 wave. Across the last seven days we have had a 97 per cent increase in our nosocomial Covid-19 cases in acute trust settings and a 25 per cent increase in out mental health settings, this has also included a rise in the numbers of patients who have been admitted into critical care beds. In addition, we have also observed an increase in Covid-related staff absences.

“As a result of this, we are advising that, in line with [UK Health Security Agency] UKHSA guidance, all providers review their mask wearing guidance with a view to moving back towards universal mask wearing for staff. This includes colleagues in primary care settings.”

NHS directors in the Midlands, which covers almost 60 hospitals, were also told to encourage patients and visitors to wear a mask but warned as there was no mandate to do so they may decline.

The national guidance comes after hospitals around the country have already begun to reintroduce mask mandates just weeks after dropping the measures.

During a board meeting on Thursday, NHS medical director Stephen Powis said Covid hospital admissions were likely to reach 15,000 in the next few days. The last time figures were this high was in April during the peak of the fourth wave.

During the January 2021 Covid wave the number of patients in hospital beds hit a high of more than 34,000.

Data from the ZOE Covid app recorded 325,337 Covid infections on 4 July. Around one in 10 hospital beds in England is currently taken up by Covid positive patients, more 11,000 beds occupied.

https://au.yahoo.com/news/nhs-enforce-mask-wearing-covid-140004778.html

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‘Hopeful Sign’: 72% Still Proud to Be American, Poll Finds

A new poll finds that patriotism is alive and well among most Americans, with nearly 3 in 4 saying they are proud of their country despite divisive domestic issues and the findings of other recent surveys.

The poll results come amid nationwide controversy in recent months over issues such as record-high gas prices, mass shootings, the House’s ongoing Jan. 6 investigation, and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Although national sentiments are far from uniform, our survey’s results display that most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, share feelings of patriotism and national pride,” a summary of the poll says.

The poll, conducted in May by FixUS, found that 72% of those surveyed agreed with the statement “I’m proud to be an American.” That number included 91% of Republicans surveyed and 62% of Democrats.

Also, 73% of those surveyed agreed that they would “prefer to live in the U.S. than in another country.”

The FixUS poll asked 2,000 participants a series of questions to determine the current climate of American patriotism. FixUS is part of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The poll contrasts with others released before Independence Day, including a Gallup poll finding that only 38% of adults surveyed say they are “extremely proud” to be an American—although 65% say they are “extremely” or “very proud.”

Similarly, a Fox News poll of registered voters found that only 39% said they are “proud of the country today,” echoing a poll by The Economist and YouGov America finding that 40% considered themselves “very patriotic” and 53% agreed that Americans are becoming less patriotic.

Most participants in the FixUS poll agreed on fundamental ideals such as America being a land of opportunity, equality, justice, and limited government. Participants rated each ideal as “highly important” on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being “extremely important.”

Americans typically gave each ideal a rating over 8, the poll found, “with no notable differences by party.”

The poll also found that 85% said they agree that progress has been made to achieve these fundamental ideals and that it’s patriotic to criticize and strive to perfect the country.

Partisan disagreements surfaced with more specific statements.

One was “People who do not wholeheartedly support America should live somewhere else,” to which 59% of Republicans surveyed agreed and 63% of Democrats disagreed.

A total of 65% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans said they agreed with this statement: “For the most part, people who protest and demonstrate against U.S. policy are good, upstanding people and valued members of our society.”

Similarly, 94% of Republicans agreed that seeing the American flag flown or hearing the national anthem sung makes them feel good or very good, while only 49% of Democrats agreed.

Another large disparity between the two major parties was seen in response to the question of whether American life and culture has changed for better or worse since the 1950s.

Although 50% of Democrats said the nation’s culture has improved in the past 70 years, fully 75% of Republicans said it has deteriorated.

On related questions, 85% of those surveyed agreed that they are concerned about national polarization and 59% agreed that that they feel unheard by politicians.

Although some findings are concerning and should be openly discussed, the overall findings should be encouraging, said Michael Murphy, chief of staff for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“While it would be naïve to disregard the country’s deep divisions, it’s encouraging to discover that most Americans share fundamental beliefs about American values, history, and ideals,” Murphy said.

“A majority of Americans are patriots who value the American experiment and what it represents, and at a time when it has never been more important to put citizenship over partisanship, that’s a hopeful sign,” he said.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/07/07/hopeful-sign-72-still-proud-to-be-american-poll-finds

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Booster value ‘uncertain’ for the under-50s

Top vaccine experts have advised younger people that having a second booster shot is unlikely to substantially reduce their risk of catching Covid-19, with very limited evidence available on the efficacy of fourth doses in reducing transmission and hospitalisation in those under 50.

The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation said the rapidity with which immunity from the first booster shot wanes just as Australia faces a worsening winter Omicron wave had prompted it to lower the age at which it recommends fourth shots from 65 to 50.

ATAGI is advising older people to get a fourth shot three months after their initial booster.

It also said that young people who wanted to reduce their risk of catching Covid-19, avoid having to take time off work and minimise the risk of long Covid should be allowed to have a vaccine if they chose, even though there was uncertainty as to how much of a boost in immunity they’d gain.

It was largely pressure from healthcare workers who have been demanding a fourth jab that prompted ATAGI’s change of position on second boosters.

Australia will become the first country in the world to open up fourth shot vaccination to healthy people aged between 30 and 50.

ATAGI and the government’s key focus, however, is on protecting older people from severe disease. The fourth shot will boost that protection at least fourfold.

ATAGI said a key reason for lowering the recommended age for fourth shots was the pressure on hospitals as a result of the winter Omicron wave, but it said other public health and social measures such as mask wearing and wider use of antivirals would have a bigger impact on limiting transmission and severe illness.

“Increasing the uptake of winter booster doses of Covid-19 vaccine in populations most at risk during this time is anticipated to play a limited, but important role in reducing the risk from Covid-19 to individuals and pressure on the healthcare system,” ATAGI said in a statement.

The number of people in hospital is below the peak of the January Omicron wave of 5000 people, but the current BA. 5 strain is even more infectious and experts predict numbers in hospital will eclipse January levels.

The take-up of first boosters is only 70 per cent nationwide, and only 59.5 per cent of those currently eligible had a fourth shot.

ATAGI said the evidence was uncertain.

“ATAGI recognises that some people aged 30 to 49 years would also like to reduce their risk of infection from Covid-19 and therefore may consider a winter booster dose,” its statement said.

“While rates of hospitalisation, severe disease, and death from Covid-19 are low in this age group, other factors … may influence an individual’s decision to have a winter booster dose.

“The impact of vaccination on transmission and maintenance of healthcare capacity in this age group is uncertain but likely to be limited.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/fourth-shots-will-boost-immunity-but-effect-on-winter-wave-limited/news-story/5f8fc4ed0834ba9dc10ce23f8b8fdc3e

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Joe Biden is at 29% approval rating, BEFORE we are officially in a recession

by Rick Manning

The Civiqs poll daily tracking service has President Joe Biden’s overall approval rating at 29 percent of registered voters. In contrast, 58 percent disapprove of how he is handling his job.

Joe Biden has done the seeming impossible, he has twice as many people believing that he stinks at his job than that he is good at it.

With the us against them mentality reining supreme in America, Biden would almost have to be trying to make people mad at you to have that few Americans think you are doing a good job. But this just proves that Joe Biden is keeping one of his promises – he is uniting America – around the idea that he is a terrible president.

It has gotten so bad that even the New York Times is noticing that Joe is slowing down just a wee bit and has written that some Democrats are wondering if he is up to the job.

Perhaps the permission that establishment media dependent voters are now receiving to disapprove of Joe accounts for part of his collapse, but it is likely simpler than that.

Rather than calming things down after President Trump’s hard push back against the left’s war on energy, blue-collar jobs, China and cultural norms, along with the COVID fatigue that caused Americans to give 2020 a zero out of five star rating, Biden’s team has frenetically sought to fundamentally transform America.

At a time when Americans wanted to catch their collective breaths, Joe Biden, who campaigned as a safe, known politician, has governed as a one administration wrecking crew.

Joe has brought us dramatically higher gasoline prices, much higher grocery costs, astronomically higher used car prices and he thinks it is Vladimir Putin’s fault. All Americans know is that every time they go to the grocery store serves as an anti-Biden ad.

Our nation’s southern border is a sieve with historic numbers of illegals crossing the border and our Border Patrol and ICE officers are hogtied by Biden open border policies.

Meanwhile on the culture front, parents were shocked to learn that their school boards viewed them as terrorist threats due to concerns about critical race theory-based curricula, gender focused teaching that shames students who think biological parts matter in sexual identification, and shockingly explicit sex education targeting innocent primary grade students. The permission slip that parents give to public schools to teach their children has been abused, and Joe Biden’s administration prompted the National School Board Association to send a letter putting parents who complained under investigation.

Speaking of permission slips, the Biden administration spent more than a year demonizing anyone questioning the safety of the vaccine and/or trying to provide treatments to those afflicted with the COVID virus. Today, two and a half years since the s has hit our shores, someone who tests positive for COVID has few treatment options and are largely at the mercy of the disease.

Crime is up. Homicides are skyrocketing. Prosecutors in many of our largest cities and counties refuse to prosecute property crimes and 30,000 more people died last year of drug overdoses than had in the previous year. Those who burn down city blocks are not pursued, while we’ve spent a year and a half focused on and prosecuting the January 6th Capitol break-in, with most cases being disposed of after months and months of no bail allowed incarceration with “parading” charges.

No kidding the country is ill at ease. The President can barely mumble out a sentence, seems incoherent much of the time and can’t be trusted by his own staff to say what they approve.

And this is before our country has even formally entered into a recession. Friday’s jobs numbers showed that those who wanted a job could get one, even if inflation is eroding paychecks faster than pay raises can take hold. However, initial unemployment claims have risen significantly and steadily since April and it is somewhat likely that the July 7 Labor Department claims report signals the beginning of the end of the job growth economy.

There is no hiding that Joe Biden is in deep political trouble.

Only 55 percent of Biden’s most dependable supporters, blacks, think he’s doing a good job. He is substantially upside down with Hispanics, whites and other races.

Young people pan him overwhelmingly with 60 percent saying he is doing a bad job and only 20 percent giving him the thumbs up. Interestingly, his approval actually increases the older the person gets peaking at 38 percent for people 65 and older.

Joe Biden is in deep, deep political trouble. This is not a good thing as our nation faces many foreign and domestic challenges. Unfortunately, Biden’s troubles are largely of his own making. He is a President who inherited the goose that lays golden eggs and cooked and ate it. Now he finds himself wondering where the golden eggs went.

https://dailytorch.com/2022/07/joe-biden-is-at-29-approval-rating-before-we-are-officially-in-a-recession/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Natural Immunity 97 Percent Effective Against Severe COVID-19 After 14 Months: Study

The protection against severe illness from so-called natural immunity remains superior to the protection bestowed by COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new study.

People who survived COVID-19 infection and were not vaccinated had sky-high protection against severe or fatal COVID-19, researchers in Qatar found.

“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3 percent … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning. Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age,” Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad, with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, and colleagues said after studying long-term natural immunity in unvaccinated people.

That percentage is higher than the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, according to other studies and real-world data.

Swedish researchers, for instance, found in May that two doses of a vaccine were just 54 percent effective against the Omicron variant of the virus

South African scientists, meanwhile, found the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines peaked at 88 percent, and quickly dropped to 70 percent or lower.

The Qatar group found natural immunity for over 14 months after a person’s first infection “remains very strong, with no evidence for waning, irrespective of variant.”

The study was published ahead of peer review on the website medRxiv.

Few researchers have studied natural immunity long-term among unvaccinated persons, in part because many of the people have eventually received a COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccines, meanwhile, have waned against both infection and severe illness over time, triggering recommendations for booster doses, with some Americans even getting five doses within 10 months.

The vaccines were once said to provide close to 100 percent protection against symptomatic infection. They now provide under 50 percent protection against infection after a short period of time, even after booster doses, following the emergence of Omicron.

That strain and its subvariants are dominant in countries around the world, including the United States and Qatar.

Natural immunity was thought to provide strong protection against reinfection. But the Qatari researchers found it also provides poor protection against reinfection from Omicron.

Poor protection against Omicron

Pre-Omicron infection against pre-Omicron reinfection was as high as 90.5 percent, and remained around 70 percent by the 16th month, according to the study. But pre-Omicron infection against Omicron reinfection was just 38 percent effective, although it was higher among people infected with the original Wuhan strain or with the Delta variant, and lower among those who got sick from the Alpha or Beta strains.

Modeling signaled a drop to zero percent protection by 18 months, but the shielding still appears to last longer than that of vaccines, researchers said.

“Vaccine immunity against Omicron subvariants lasts for <6 months but pre-Omicron natural immunity, assuming Gompertz decay, may last for just over a year,” they wrote.

Limitations of the study included differences in testing frequency among the cohorts studied, and depletion of groups who had a COVID-19 infection due to deaths.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/natural-immunity-97-percent-effective-against-severe-covid-19-after-14-months-study_4586731.html

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Biden and Fauci Botched the Covid Pandemic Response

There are many lessons to be gleaned from the U.S. pandemic response. House Democrats don’t care to study them.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last month issued a deeply partisan report demonizing doctors who purportedly espoused “a dangerous and discredited herd immunity via mass infection strategy.” The report took aim at the Trump administration’s embrace of the October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, in which epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), Sunetra Gupta (Oxford) and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) advocated protecting the elderly and vulnerable while allowing schools and businesses to reopen. This wasn’t a strategy to infect masses of people on purpose. The goal was to minimize deaths and social and economic harm until the country reached herd immunity through infection or vaccination.

The Great Barrington strategy of “focused protection” helped minimize the pandemic’s collateral damage until vaccines became available. The Biden administration then undertook a strategy of herd immunity via vaccination. But when this strategy failed, it doubled down with vaccine mandates.

From the outset of the pandemic, the mainstream medical establishment and government bureaucracy were aligned behind a lockdown-at-all-costs strategy. The Trump White House tapped Scott Atlas, a Hoover Institution fellow and radiologist, for a contrarian perspective. Dr. Atlas endorsed the elements of the Great Barrington strategy. The House report criticizes him for a memo in which he argued that “stopping all cases is not necessary, nor is it possible. It instills irrational fear into the public. Non-prioritized testing is jeopardizing critical resources for truly critical testing and is creating problematic delays in test results for the most important populations.”

He was right on every point. Indiscriminate use of a scarce resource reduces public welfare. When tests were in short supply, Dr. Atlas’s recommendation to save them for high-risk groups such as nursing-home residents made eminent sense. His prescriptions and those of the Great Barrington Declaration aimed to maximize public welfare.

Democrats claim in their report that 130,000 lives could have been saved with more “mitigation,” but this is doubtful. California and New York, which adopted mask mandates and lockdowns during the 2020-21 winter, fared no better than Florida and Texas, which didn’t. What’s more, employment continues to lag significantly in liberal lockdown states. Had all 50 states stayed shut down until vaccines were available, with the federal government paying tens of millions of people not to work—as Democrats ostensibly would have done—we might now be experiencing high unemployment and even higher inflation.

Vaccines ultimately saved the day by reducing the Covid disease burden and giving Democratic states a reason to lift their destructive lockdowns. But the Biden administration bet too heavily on vaccines to confer herd immunity. In December 2020, Anthony Fauci projected that a 75% to 85% vaccination rate could provide a “blanket of herd immunity.” This proved too optimistic.

An ever-mutating and increasingly transmissible virus, combined with waning vaccine effectiveness, made herd immunity a moving target. By spring 2021, Pfizer’s clinical trial data showed that its vaccine was becoming less protective against infection as time passed. Four months after the second dose, vaccine efficacy had declined to 84%, making breakthrough infections more likely and imperiling the Biden administration’s goals. Yet Pfizer honcho Albert Bourla writes in his new book, “Moonshot,” that federal public-health officials feared disclosing this waning efficacy would breed more vaccine hesitancy. The Biden administration kept it under wraps until July, when breakthrough infections in Provincetown, Mass., made it impossible to deny. Stories in the media were corroborated by a study from Israel the same month showing vaccine protection against infection falling to 39%.

Only after the Washington Post published a leaked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention slide presentation showing that vaccine efficacy was declining did the agency acknowledge it. Still, Dr. Fauci in August insisted that herd immunity could be achieved “really easily if we get everyone vaccinated.” He should have known by then that was false.

None of these realities stopped the Biden administration from mandating vaccines for private workers and arguing in court, despite evidence to the contrary, that doing so was “necessary to protect unvaccinated workers from the risk of contracting COVID-19” and “that vaccines dramatically reduce the risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19.” After the Supreme Court blocked the mandate in January, the administration pivoted to a strategy of focused protection—e.g., distributing antiviral and monoclonal-antibody treatments and booster shots to the vulnerable. Alas, the administration’s orders were too little, too late to help when deaths and hospitalizations soared in winter 2021-22.

Nearly 600,000 Covid deaths have occurred on Mr. Biden’s watch despite vaccines and better treatments—about 180,000 more than under Donald Trump. One lesson is the importance of diverse opinions. The Biden administration paid too much heed to experts such as Dr. Fauci and ignored those who argued against placing all its eggs in the vaccine basket.

Another lesson is that science evolves, and there’s no shame in admitting error. Most scientists were wrong about what it would take to achieve herd immunity. But it’s better to correct mistakes than compound them, which is what the Biden administration did. Why it did is something for a future GOP Congress to investigate.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-fauci-botched-the-covid-response-infection-vaccine-paxlovid-testing-11657211031

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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New omicron variant BA. 2.75 erupts out of India

Evolution can’t be held back. Especially when it comes to the Covid-19 virus. Yet another variant has appeared. This time in India. And it appears adapted to evade our immune response.

It passes through 1000 generations each month. That’s more than enough genetic dice rolls for successful mutations to establish their dominance.

The latest coronavirus variant identified as a potential cause for concern is variant BA 2.75 – nicknamed “Centaurus”.

It was first identified in India, but has already been detected in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand – and Australia.

“There’s minimal data about this variant so far,” says Austrian Academy of Sciences geneticist Dr Ulrich Elling. “But it has a couple of attributes that have made us take notice.”

The Centaurus variant is a mutation of a mutation, developed from the older Omicron BA. 2 variant.

It’s the BA. 5 variant that is currently causing so much concern as it takes hold in Australia. What makes it more successful is the great ease with which it infects new hosts.

But BA. 2.75, which is only in the early stages of study, appears able to dodge any immunity built up against its parent BA.2.

Put simply, that means anyone who had Covid BA. 2 will be just as susceptible to catching it again as they were the first time around. And its even greater difference to BA. 5 could also result in a lack of immune system “recognition”.

European researchers have found BA. 2.75 to have eight extra spike protein mutations. These are the nodules found on the surface of a virus that act as “keys” to unlock a host’s cells.

The locations of these “keys” give scientists clues about their capabilities.

In the case of BA. 2.75, they’re clustered in a way that could conceal its identity to an immune system familiar with its parent. And that makes it even more distinct from the current dominant coronavirus strain – BA.5.

They’re in what’s called the N-terminal domain (NTD) – one of the more prominent protuberances of the virus.

“The NTD is decorated with mutations in BA. 2.75 in and around the neutralising antibody binding “supersite” and could thus enhance immune evasion in that region,” Dr Elling explains.

And circumstantial evidence supports this: BA. 2.75 has already been able to establish footholds around the world with extraordinary speed.

Dr Elling says the number of mutations in BA. 2.75 is “remarkable”. Omicron Delta had a similar number, but just three mutations were enough to supercharge BA.5.

“Thus, the 11 mutations distinct between BA. 5 and BA. 2.75 could allow for yet another wave as BA. 5 immunity might not protect,” Dr Elling warns. “I really hope this highly speculative thread will turn out to be a false alarm!”

“Before we are done with the BA. 5 wave, we might already have to prepare for the next,” Dr Elling tweeted. “Confirmed cases are very few still today. But the international distribution excludes sequencing errors and makes it highly likely that the real numbers are way higher.”

And the warning signs are in place.

“It is really too early to know if BA. 2.75 will take over relative to BA. 2 or even relative to BA. 5,” he adds, “but it is remarkable to note that BA. 2.75 carries alternative “solutions” in the regions mutated in BA.5.”

Viruses evolve fastest in chronic infections. It’s where one host’s immune system spends the greatest time fighting back. And the weakened nature of that fightback exposes multiple generations of the virus to a greater variety of “counter-attacks”. Those mutations that dodge these counter-attacks then go on to breed.

Imperial College London virologist Tom Peacock said he believed such cases were likely to be the cause of such significant changes seen in the likes of BA. 2.75.

“None of these individually really flag as that worrying but all appearing together at once is another matter,” he tweeted.

“It looks like something is headed toward us,” says Dr Elling. “But there’s no sure-fire evidence just yet.”

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/new-omicron-variant-ba-275-erupts-out-of-india/news-story/ea0326b67afa55858cbf342de0aac5b5

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COVID Vaccines Increase Menstrual Irregularities

New disturbing pharmacovigilance signals from VAERS surrounding the use of the COVID vaccines on women of reproductive age prompted a group of doctors to call for a ban on the gene therapy COVID-19 vaccines.

Over the past two weeks, Dr. James Thorp, a maternal-fetal medicine expert, painstakingly analyzed and verified the most recent Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data related to COVID-19 vaccines and compared them to the influenza vaccines.

“COVID-19 vaccines compared to the influenza vaccines are associated with increases in menstrual disorders, miscarriage, fetal chromosomal abnormalities, fetal cystic hygroma, fetal malformations, fetal cardiac arrest, fetal cardiac arrhythmias, fetal cardiac disorders, fetal vascular mal-perfusion abnormalities, abnormal fetal surveillance testing, abnormal fetal growth patterns, placental thrombosis, and fetal death,” Thorp told The Epoch Times last week.

His findings are listed below:

Abnormal uterine bleeding (menstrual irregularity) is 1000-fold greater
Miscarriages are 50-fold greater
Fetal chromosomal abnormalities are 100-fold greater
Fetal malformation is 50-fold greater
Fetal cystic hygroma (a major malformation) is 90-fold greater
Fetal cardiac disorders are 40-fold greater
Fetal arrhythmia is 50-fold greater
Fetal cardiac arrest is 200-fold greater
Fetal vascular mal-perfusion is a 100-fold greater
Fetal growth abnormalities are 40-fold greater
Fetal abnormal surveillance tests are 20-fold greater
Fetal placental thrombosis is 70-fold greater

Thorp said that he verified his analysis with a DOD (Department of Defense) statistical consultant that agreed to help him on the condition of anonymity.

Lack of Safety Testing

Regarding the VAERS data, vaccinologist Dr. Robert Malone, a key contributor of mRNA technology, told The Epoch Times on Thursday: “The risky strategy of authorizing the emergency use of mRNA ‘vaccine’ products prior to completion of rigorous non-clinical animal testing for reproductive and genotoxicity risks, followed by advocacy of widespread use in pregnancy, now appears to have resulted in substantial and avoidable reproductive toxicity.”

“Prior non-clinical (animal model) data from the Pfizer Emergency Use Authorization data package, together with the absence of adequate data and testing of safety during pregnancy have resulted in avoidable reproductive and fetal toxicities,” Malone further noted.

He stressed that expectant mothers should avoid the “experimental” COVID vaccines and that their infants should not be injected with them.

“These new VAERS data and analyses demonstrate that both reproductive-aged mothers and their infants have been damaged by accepting unlicensed, inadequately tested, emergency use authorized genetic vaccines,” Malone said.

Earlier this year Jessica Rose Ph.D. co-authored a VAERS analysis that got withdrawn by the academic journal Elsevier.

She told The Epoch Times that Thorp’s analysis aligns perfectly with hers.

“I do believe it is not only important, but necessary, to pull these products from pregnant/breastfeeding women and infants since there is no long-term safety data and the short-term data looks bad. As per both Moderna and Pfizer’s safety documents presented to VRBPAC pre-EUA granting for 0- 4-year-olds, this applies. They both showed terrible risk,” Rose said.

Christiane Northrup, MD., a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, also stands by the analysis.

“Having been on the front lines of the DES disaster as a young OB/GYN, I am astounded that we are repeating the same kind of mistake but on a far more devastating level. COVID-19 shots must be stopped immediately in all pregnant women before further damage is done to the next generation,” Northrup told The Epoch Times.

Thorp continued: “All of these adverse outcomes are statistically significant (p value < 0.0001)–in other words, the probability of these adverse outcomes occurring by chance alone is less than 1 in 10,000. It was incumbent upon the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, FDA, CDC, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology to have demanded this safety data prior to pushing these dangerous ‘vaccines’ in pregnancy.”

“These institutions have violated the golden rule of pregnancy: new substances be it nutraceuticals, drugs, or vaccines have NEVER been allowed in pregnancy until long-term outcome data are available. Now, the COVID-19 vaccines make prior obstetrical disasters of diethyl stilbesterol (DES) and thalidomide look like prenatal vitamins. I am calling for a worldwide ban and moratorium on the use of any experimental gene therapy and/or COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ in pregnancy until long-term safety data are irrefutable,” Thorp stated.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/covid-vaccines-increase-menstrual-irregularities-thousandfold-fetal-abnormalities-hundredfold-doctors-vaers-analysis_4564754.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)

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Corrupt science in a leading medical journal

"Lancet" has been Left-run for some time. They even campaigned against George Bush and the Iraq war. See here

There is supposed to be a clear line between medical publishing and propaganda. No less so than in the pages of the Lancet, previously considered a relative bastion of integrity in publishing. Honesty in medical publishing, meaning publication on the basis of transparent rigorous review and impartiality, is of particular importance to medicine and public health. The outcomes of such publications contribute to saving or killing people.

In 2020 the Lancet published an apparently fraudulent study discrediting the use of hydroxychloroquine in the management of COVID-19. While this was later withdrawn, it should not have passed first glance of a serious editor, as the data published by a previously unknown institution could not be credibly collated in the timeframe concerned.

A Lancet ‘commission’ to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2 included people who had direct conflict of interest, as they would potentially be culpable if its findings revealed a lab-based origin. This followed the publication of a letter stating that a lab-release origin of SARS-CoV-2 was a ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘misinformation,’ despite the first cases being reported within a few miles of the Wuhan Institute of Virology where research on SARS-like viruses was being performed, hundreds of miles from the habitat of the putative zoonotic hosts.

The Lancet again apparently missed the obvious conflict of interest in this letter’s authorship until forced to confront it.

Together with the Lancet’s unquestioning acceptance of mass vaccination in countries with very low mortality and high competing priorities, and its pushing of ‘zero-Covid’ in the context of a global spread with no transmission-blocking interventions, the journal’s poor history on COVID-19 does suggest an intentional bias.

Modeling Fantasy for Profit

Last week, the Lancet published a modeling study by Oliver Watson and others from Imperial College London, funded by, among others, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This predictive model from Imperial College suggests that COVID-19 vaccination introduced at the end of 2020 saved 14.4 to 19.8 million lives in the subsequent 12 months. A summary is provided here. The Imperial College modeling team previously massively overstated anticipated COVID-19 deaths in 2020.

Models should pass basic credibility criteria to be published, based on plausibility. Alternatively, a lack of coherence with real-world data or known biology should be stated. For reasons upon which one can only speculate, the Lancet again seems not to have actually assessed the credibility of the paper prior to publication. This matters, as others who lack an apparent basic understanding of scientific process, such as The Economist and various commentators on social media, then disseminate the model’s predictions as fact.

People can die when public health is twisted in this way.

Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 commenced in late 2020, and significant vaccination rates were not achieved in most populations until at least a few months into 2021. In a respiratory virus outbreak the most vulnerable, most likely to die, are likely to be overrepresented in mortality in year one. However, this first year did not produce anything like the mortality claimed to have been ‘saved’ by the vaccines in 2021. Lockdowns and other nonpharmaceutical interventions don’t account for this.

Post-infection immunity is effective in mitigating COVID-19, and more so than vaccination alone. Serological surveys indicate that most people gained post-infection immunity by mid- to late-2021. As infection rates are higher than vaccination rates for much of the world’s population, post-infection immunity would be expected to play a larger role than vaccination in reducing subsequent mortality. The African continent, with the lowest vaccination rate, has the lowest mortality rate—a multi-factorial relationship but one that should have given the Lancet, The Economist, and any thinking person pause for thought.

One could argue that vaccination was more targeted to the highly vulnerable and so disproportionately impactful—but this would run against the Lancet paper’s claim that higher vaccination rates would save even more people. The vaccine is not transmission-blocking, so the vulnerable minority account for nearly all possible vaccine impact.

The suggestion by Watson et al. that all-cause mortality can be used as a proxy for COVID-19 also runs foul of the evidence in two areas:

Firstly, randomized controlled trials of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines show a small excess all-cause mortality in the vaccinated group over the placebo. This alone makes a substantial reduction in overall mortality through vaccination unlikely, with adverse events possibly promoting non-COVID-19 mortality.

Secondly, a large increase in all-cause mortality is associated with, and expected from, lockdown measures. This is evidenced by rising malaria and tuberculosis, reduced childhood vaccination, and over 75 million added people in extreme poverty. Poverty raises mortality, killing infants in particular. UNICEF estimated 228,000 child lockdown deaths in the 6 countries of South Asia in 2020 alone, and when extrapolated across sub-Saharan Africa and through 2021 this is a lot of dead children. So lockdown deaths, which are not from COVID-19, comprise a large part of excess mortality.

Modeling or reporting COVID-19 ‘mortality’ or ‘lives saved’ raises a further issue that the Lancet and the wider media have consistently overlooked. COVID-19 deaths are concentrated in the elderly (age >75 years) with multiple comorbidities. This is the population sub-group most likely to die in the next months or year.

A child saved from malaria is likely to gain 70 years of life, while a person saved from COVID-19 is likely to gain one year or less. While that year is important, relatively few would equate it to their grandchild’s potential loss. It also means the term ‘saved’ requires considerable nuance, as those that Watson et al. claim were ‘saved’ by the vaccines in the first half of 2021 are likely to have died by now from something else.

This is why metrics incorporating life-years lost or disabled were standard up to 2020, including in the Lancet’s lucrative partnership with IHME on the Global Burden of Disease assessments funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. To abandon these metrics when a pandemic appears that overwhelmingly targets those with the shortest life expectancy is extraordinary.

Weighing Lives and Profit

Tens of billions of dollars are being generated for large pharmaceutical companies and their investors through mass vaccination for COVID-19. The Lancet is a business, and as such is dependent on pleasing these dominant influencers of medical research. As diversion of resources from diseases of higher burden to mass-vaccination of young immune populations in low-income countries is demonstrably harmful to overall health through resource diversion and general impoverishment, this presents difficulties for the Lancet.

Killing children en masse is a bad look for a medical journal, but the evidence indicates this resource diversion will do, and the Lancet clearly feels inclined to support it. When a major Lancet partner faces significant income loss if the mass-vaccination paradigm is questioned, standing on principle and ethics would have taken courage and incurred risk.

This is the ethical dilemma that the high level of private investment in public health has brought. Pharma investors sponsor ‘global health’ schools, research, modeling and the public health institutions, including the WHO, which use their outputs. For-profit publishing houses must be aligned with these funding sources to thrive.

The losers in all this are the populations who have commodity (i.e. vaccine) ‘equity’ forced on them at the expense of health equity and the freedom to choose. As malaria, malnutrition, and other diseases of poverty increase, public health and its medical journals must focus elsewhere on areas profitable to their funders.

Succumbing to conflicts of interest is hardly new in human society, and humans are excellent at justifying it. This is why we need external oversight in areas where such conflicts can cause great harm. New rules on conflict of interest and transparency are needed in medical publishing, including reforms to ensure transparent peer review and open access to rebuttals of published papers. For-profit institutions cannot be the main arbiter in determining what health information reaches the public.

For now, though, it is difficult to see a path to improvement unless the publishers themselves value integrity, and the journalists interpreting them value truth. We have allowed vested interests to dominate public health discourse because we value their money more than the printed word. This matters because honesty in medical publishing determines the quality of life, and likelihood of death, of people. It is not an abstract problem.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-to-model-fallacy-according-to-the-lancet_4578200.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)

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The CDC Is Breaking Trust in Childhood Vaccination

On June 18, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recommended Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for all children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years. While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the agency responsible for authorizing emergency use of vaccines, it’s the CDC that crafts subsequent messaging, makes specific recommendations, and prioritizes who can, should, or should not get vaccinated. In her briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky strongly urged all parents of the nearly 20 million American children in this age group to vaccinate them as soon as possible.

For some parents, Walensky’s briefing came as a huge relief. But if polling from May is anything to go by, a larger number of parents likely greeted the recommendation with skepticism. Even before the underwhelming trial results came out, only 18% of surveyed parents reported that they planned to vaccinate their babies and toddlers. Nationally, uptake in minors between the ages of 5 and 11 as of June 22, 2022, was 29% receiving two doses, and 36% receiving one, but vaccine requirements for sports, camps, and other activities likely drove an unknown percentage of vaccination in this age group.

The Dissidents

There remains, moreover, no solid consensus among physicians about the importance of vaccinating healthy children against COVID-19. A survey from December 2021 indicates that as many as 30%-40% may not be recommending COVID vaccination for children ages 5 to 17, to say nothing of infants. A recent editorial in The Lancet expressed uncertainty about whether the benefits of vaccinating healthy 5- to 11-year-olds outweigh the risks, especially in those with a history of infection.

The gap between the CDC’s enthusiasm for vaccinating all children against COVID and that of parents and health care providers is unlikely to be bridged by approval under Emergency Use Authorization. Approval for the COVID vaccines in infants and toddlers is based on two trials that used changes in antibody levels as an estimate of efficacy, but did not assess protection from severe disease, hospitalization, or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), important outcomes that parents worry about. In a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) meeting on June 28, Pfizer Vice President for Viral Vaccines Kena Swanson even acknowledged that “there is no established correlate” between antibody levels and protection from disease.

In the Pfizer trial, the confidence interval—which shows the possible range of protection level—was alarmingly wide, with the lower bound suggesting the possibility of a 380% increase in the chance of infection after the third dose. Additionally, neither trial met the 50% efficacy requirement established by the FDA for approval of adult COVID vaccines. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine official, told Congress in May that the efficacy requirement would be lowered for the pediatric vaccine simply because vaccine efficacy against the omicron variant was lower in general.

With rates of severe disease now much lower in children than at the start of the pandemic—due to higher levels of natural immunity and lower rates of severe disease caused by omicron—trials would have needed to enroll hundreds of thousands of children, if not over a million, in order to detect a significant impact of the pediatric vaccine against severe disease. Vaccine companies could have conducted such time-consuming and costly trials, especially if there had been interest in international collaboration. But there was no economic incentive to do so, and every economic incentive not to: Speed, not providing meaningful information to parents and physicians about safety and efficacy, was the priority of U.S. regulatory agencies.

Because Pfizer and Moderna were permitted to seek approval for pediatric COVID vaccines under the emergency use pathway, Moderna only enrolled 6,300 total children in trials (4,700 in the vaccine group and 1,600 in the placebo group), and Pfizer only enrolled 4,526 total (2,750 in the vaccine group and 1,776 in the placebo), with two-thirds dropping out before the third dose. The trials, in other words, enrolled only a fraction of the number of participants that would have been required to determine efficacy against end points like severe disease, hospitalization, and rare adverse events such as myocarditis, which has been linked to COVID vaccination in males in the 12- to 17-year-old age group at a rate of up to 1 in 2,700.

Furthermore, the follow-up time after the second dose of Moderna and the third dose of Pfizer was only 1-3 months. Data from adults show protection against infection is transient, though protection against severe disease so far seems longer lasting. For the Moderna vaccine, efficacy against infection was not statistically significant for children between 6 months and 2 years, according to one of the company’s two analyses. In the Pfizer trial, there was no evidence of efficacy for the first two doses against omicron for this age group; the “effect” seen after the third dose was so uncertain that it is impossible to draw firm conclusions about how well the vaccine worked to prevent cases.

Still more puzzling is the fact that neither Pfizer nor Moderna—despite continued assurances that mRNA vaccines are uniquely flexible, allowing manufacturers to quickly tweak vaccines to match new variants—has released an updated version of their product: The pediatric vaccines now being administered target an outdated variant. In addition, the infant and toddler trials were mostly limited to children who had not been previously infected with COVID (estimates based on blood work showed less than 15% of children enrolled had previously been infected). With 75% of children nationally having already been infected by February 2022, the immune-naive children enrolled in the trial were not representative of their age group at large.

The general trust deficit is more troubling than skepticism toward this particular vaccine.

Even in the already troubled context of the last two years, the CDC’s unqualified recommendation to vaccinate every young child against COVID may further contribute to the profound chasm of trust between U.S. citizens and their public health agencies. In January, a Hart poll found that only 44% of respondents said they believe what the CDC says; a March Gallup poll put it at 32%. Evidence of trust slippage can be seen even in highly vaccinated places like Portland, Oregon, where CDC recommendations were for the most part embraced unquestioningly during the pandemic. Despite the CDC’s recommendation that all children 5 and up should receive a booster, as of June 26 only 8.7% of children ages 5-11 in the Portland area are boosted, compared to 3.9% in the entire state of Oregon. (The CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics have not made nationwide data available.)

The general trust deficit is more troubling than skepticism toward this particular vaccine, because it could conceivably drive down uptake of other childhood vaccines that we know are more important to children’s health, such as those against measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, polio, and Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib). This is not an alarmist or trivial concern, as vaccinations are one of the most lifesaving medical interventions in human history, rivaled perhaps only by antibiotics. In 1800, 46% of American children did not make it to age 5, and the majority died from what are now vaccine-preventable diseases. The smallpox vaccine alone is estimated to have saved 150 million to 200 million lives. Rates of diseases such as tetanus, rubella, polio, Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) have declined by 99% since widespread childhood vaccination became commonplace in the 20th century.

It is therefore worth our attention when, for example, a recent letter in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that flu shot uptake has decreased over the pandemic, which the authors suspect may be due to growing vaccine hesitancy in general. The CDC published a study in April showing that childhood vaccination rates fell by only 1% in 2021, a small proportion of the total when spread over 70 million children. But given that many of these vaccines require two or three doses for full coverage, this still translates to several million missing doses, and could threaten herd immunity for diseases such as measles, which require very high percentages of the population to be vaccinated. It is also difficult to separate out the factors behind this drop in coverage, because schools and local clinics—where many low-income children receive vaccines—were closed for much of the last two years. But it is reasonable to at least assume that low trust in the CDC, the agency responsible for making evidence-based recommendations about vaccines, is not helping.

Compare the CDC’s response to vaccine hesitancy during COVID to a similar challenge in the late 1990s and early 2000s: rotavirus. Only a year after Andrew Wakefield’s false claims in 1998 that the MMR vaccines caused autism—leading to one of the most disastrous setbacks for vaccination uptake in history—Wyeth’s RotaShield vaccine was pulled off the market due to evidence it caused a rare and serious intestinal malfunction (intussusception) in babies. The effect of the RotaShield withdrawal so hard on the heels of the Wakefield disaster is hard to isolate, but CDC officials acknowledged that the combined events led to “a particularly turbulent period” for U.S. vaccine programs. Referring to vaccine hesitancy that might result from the RotaShield adverse events, the CDC’s Dr. John Livengood remarked at the time that the CDC “shouldn’t be seen as withholding information right now.”

The original trial for RotaShield had enrolled 10,054 vaccine recipients and 4,633 placebo recipients. During a February 1998 meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (the same body that recently met to discuss the pediatric COVID vaccines), an FDA panel member, Dr. Margaret Rennels, noted that more babies in the vaccine group experienced intestinal intussusception than in the placebo group by about 2.5-fold, with a rate of 1/2011 (0.05%) in the vaccine group compared with 1/4633 (0.02%) in the placebo. But because the absolute numbers were small, and the trial was also relatively small, intestinal intussusception did not achieve statistical significance. RotaShield was licensed by the FDA in 1998, widely rolled out, and championed by the CDC in the spring of 1999. Intussusception was not mentioned further, and the issue was buried in a 19-page document where it was listed as a side effect that did not occur significantly more often in vaccinated babies than in the control group.

By summer, however, officials at the CDC grew concerned about a growing number of intussusception reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and were anxious not to lose gains made during the Carter and Clinton administrations in raising general childhood vaccination rates. By the end of President Clinton’s first term, toddler immunization rates had achieved what was then an all-time high, thanks to Vaccines for Children, a program that expanded access to free and low-cost vaccination.

The CDC was also cognizant that Wakefield’s false claims were continuing to spur a growing movement of vaccine hesitancy. As a result, the CDC—then under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Koplan—immediately launched a large-scale investigation into the RotaShield VAERS reports. The investigation concluded that one additional case of intussusception was attributable to the vaccine for every 5,000-10,000 infants vaccinated—lower than rates of myocarditis due to vaccine injury in COVID-vaccinated adolescent males age 12-17.

RotaShield was pulled off the market that October. To justify the decision to pull a vaccine that was 85% effective at preventing hospitalization from a viral infection that had killed hundreds of thousands of infants worldwide, CDC personnel wrote the following:

At a time when many parents express concerns about the safety of vaccines and vaccine adverse events are the focus of increasing attention by the public, media, and U.S. Congress, the wisdom of recommending a vaccine that causes a severe adverse reaction in an estimated 1 in 10,000 infants must be considered.

The next vaccine against rotavirus—RotaTeq, made by Merck and released in 2004—was only released after the Rotavirus Efficacy and Safety Trial (REST) trial, which was notable for its “[randomized] design, large sample size, detailed execution, continuous safety monitoring, and lengthy duration,” and was undertaken in direct response to the perceived failures of the RotaShield trial. The authors of a paper describing its execution wrote, “The design and conduct of this study may serve as a useful tool for planning other future clinical trials, especially those evaluating uncommon adverse events.” The REST trial was conducted in 11 countries at more than 500 study sites and enrolled 70,000 subjects (including over 35,000 infants from the United States), making it one of the largest vaccine clinical trials ever conducted pre-approval. Post-approval, Merck conducted an additional study enrolling more than 85,000 infants.

The obvious drawback of a trial like REST is that it took four years to complete (though today it could almost certainly be completed faster due to advances in recruitment methods). A multiyear trial was simply not an option during COVID, which is why the notably small and short COVID vaccine trials were allowed to serve as the basis for approval under the emergency use provision. But because COVID so rarely causes severe disease in children, and current COVID vaccines do not reliably prevent transmission, especially after a few months, it is difficult to understand how such small trials could be justified without meaningful endpoints for this age group.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/cdc-is-endangering-childhood-vaccination-progress

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

<a href="https://edwatch.blogspot.com">http://edwatch.blogspot.com</a> (EDUCATION WATCH)

<a href="https://antigreen.blogspot.com">http://antigreen.blogspot.com</a> (GREENIE WATCH)

<a href="https://pcwatch.blogspot.com">http://pcwatch.blogspot.com</a> (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

<a href="https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/">http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/</a> (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

<a href="https://snorphty.blogspot.com/">http://snorphty.blogspot.com/</a> (TONGUE-TIED)

<a href="https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/">https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/</a> <b>(IMMIGRATION WATCH)</b>

<a href="https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/">https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/</a> (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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Infection of wildlife biologist highlights risks of virus hunting

The illness was mysterious. A 25-year-old graduate student had been hospitalized with a high fever, muscle and joint pain, a stiff neck, fatigue, sores in her throat, and a metallic taste in her mouth. She soon developed an angry rash. To make the diagnosis, her doctors had an important data point to consider: Days earlier, the woman had returned to the United States from a field expedition in South Sudan and Uganda, where she had been capturing and collecting the blood and tissue of bats and rodents. That information proved critical — and is newly relevant given concerns that the pandemic may have come from a research accident. Three days after she was admitted to the hospital in 2012, tests determined that the student was infected with a novel virus that infects a type of fruit bat that lives in the rural areas of Uganda.

The graduate student recovered and left the hospital two weeks later. But the incident, which was written up in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases in 2014, proved scientifically important. Not only did it allow for the identification of the Sosuga virus — a paramyxovirus named for Southern Sudan and Uganda — and the knowledge that the bat virus can infect and sicken people, the woman’s infection also pointed to the dangers posed by the kind of research she was doing: trapping, manipulating, and dissecting animals suspected of being infected with novel disease-causing viruses.

Biosafety experts have long worried over the possibility that scientists seeking dangerous viruses in the wild could inadvertently become infected in the course of either capturing or coming into contact with the saliva, urine, or feces of the animals. The case of the Sosuga virus shows that those concerns are well founded.

Virus hunter Michael Callahan, an infectious disease doctor who has worked for federal agencies on global disease outbreak and the tracking of wildlife pathogens, has vividly described the high risks faced by field researchers. “Squirming, clawed and toothy animals bite and scratch during collection of body fluids. Teeth and talons easily penetrate the thin gloves required to maintain dexterity when handling fragile wildlife,” he wrote in Politico in 2021. “The fact that researchers are not infected every time they do a field collection is a question that continues to stump us.”

With more than 6 million people now dead from Covid-19, the catastrophic potential of a researcher becoming infected with a wildlife pathogen has become inescapable. While the origins of the current pandemic are still unclear, it remains possible that virus hunting could have been the cause. Rocco Casagrande, a biochemist who was hired by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Science Policy to assess the risks of gain-of-function research, thinks a natural spillover of the virus from animals to people, a lab accident, or what he calls a “prospecting based accident” are equally likely potential causes of the initial outbreak. He imagined the prospecting scenario as “the researchers in Wuhan looking for bat viruses found one and got infected outside of the lab.”

Even as the very real chance remains that the search for new viruses led to this cataclysmic event, scientists hoping to prevent viral outbreaks continue to seek out new bat coronaviruses and other potential pandemic pathogens around the world.

Ask the Bats

The search for pathogens that infect animals is driven by the desire to prevent and prepare for their possible transmission to people. But that work, which spans the globe and is funded in large part by the U.S. government, can sometimes result in human infection — exactly the outcome it is meant to prevent.

Virus hunting — or wildlife disease ecology, as DeeAnn Reeder prefers to call it — is a field that has come under increasing scrutiny during the Covid pandemic. For Reeder, a professor of biology at Bucknell College who led the 2012 expedition on which the graduate student was infected, one of the central purposes of her research in Africa on bats’ immune responses to viruses is to understand how humans might react to the same infectious agents, knowledge she says can protect us if the pathogens jump from animals to humans. “If you want to understand how to survive a coronavirus, or if you want to understand how to survive a filovirus — Ebola fits within that context — you need to ask the bats because they know how to do it,” said Reeder.

Reeder, who put up her first bat net in South Sudan in 2008, continues to do wildlife research in Uganda. No one has previously reported her connection to the work. “I’ve never been contacted by a reporter on that particular story,” Reeder said, after being asked whether the Sosuga virus infection occurred during research on one of her projects. “I’ve always been surprised about that.” Reeder would not confirm the identity of the researcher on her project who was sickened, citing privacy concerns.

The Sosuga case shows that concerns about viral transmission from wild animals to researchers are not just theoretical. It is still unclear exactly how the infection occurred. While the graduate student only occasionally used protective gear when working with animal specimens, when she visited the bat caves she wore a paper Tyvek suit that’s become the hallmark of virus hunters, gum boots, bite-resistant gloves, and even an air-powered respirator known as a PAPR that looks like an astronaut’s helmet. The researcher did not report being bitten or scratched by any of the animals she encountered.

“Maybe outside the cave before they put the respirators on, she leaned against a rock that had been peed on, because we know that it could be in the kidneys of this particular bat species,” said Reeder. “But that’s just conjecture, which is the scary part.”

https://theintercept.com/2022/07/02/virus-infection-bat-biosafety

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Australians to get Omicron booster

Australia is set to be one of the first countries in the world to get access to an Omicron booster jab.

Moderna’s new Covid vaccine designed to fight the original Wuhan strain of the virus, as well as the Omicron variant, is currently being assessed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

“If approved, the company will be able to supply this new Omicron-containing bivalent booster vaccine within weeks- putting Australia among the first countries in the world to have access to this new COVID-19 vaccine,” Moderna’s managing director in Australia Michael Azrak told News Corp.

Health Minister Mark Butler told News Corp he wanted to be on “the front foot” in accessing the most up to date vaccines.

“I’ve had encouraging discussions with Moderna and Pfizer about the challenges of the new sub-variants and the positive developments in vaccine technology,” Mr Butler said.

“My department is in negotiations about future supply arrangements, including for under 5-year-olds and the variant vaccines,” he said.

Epidemiologists and other experts have been calling for more Australians to get a fourth jab as hospitals and health services buckle under massive pressure from both Covid and the flu.

The government’s expert advisory group on vaccines the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) was meeting on Wednesday to decide whether more Australians should get access to a fourth Covid booster.

There are more than 16 million unused doses of the existing Covid vaccines siting in warehouses and doctors clinics.

Currently a fourth dose is only available to the elderly and those who are immunocompromised or suffering certain chronic conditions.

The existing Covid vaccines were designed to work against the original Wuhan variant.

A fourth dose of these vaccines has been shown in Israel to provide a 10-30 per cent increase in resistance to infection but this protection wanes within five to eight weeks.

However, this could be enough to get Australia through the worst of the winter outbreak.

But there is concern about whether the original jab provides much protection against the new BA. 4 and BA. 5 variants sweeping the nation.

These variants appear resistant to the existing vaccine and the antibodies produced by people who were infected with the original Omicron variant.

Mr Butler has appointed former Health Department chief Jane Halton to review Australia’s vaccine purchasing arrangements. She is expected to report within weeks.

Moderna said it “continues to have constructive discussions with the Australian Government regarding the supply of Moderna’s next generation Omicron containing bivalent vaccine booster for people 18 years and older”.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/omicron-booster-jab-being-assessed-by-tga/news-story/9a80767d004229d01c0f11abdfd6e7ce

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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