WanderLore
Veteran Member
I was greatly saddened to see that today in our county seat, small towns, the national guard is helping assist our hospital with these vaccines. South central Michigan.
CORONA Main Coronavirus thread
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marsh
On TB every waking moment
Top Pandemic Scientist Admits Emulating Communist Chinese Model to Strip Civil Liberties Away - The National Pulse+
Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist who played a key role in convincing the British government to adopt lockdowns, revealed that the country’s lockdowns were meant to emulate those carried out by the Chinese Communist Party – modeled to strip civil liberties and exert authoritarian...
thenationalpulse.com
Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist who played a key role in convincing the British government to adopt lockdowns, revealed that the country’s lockdowns were meant to emulate those carried out by the Chinese Communist Party – modeled to strip civil liberties and exert authoritarian control over citizens.
In Ferguson’s recent interview with The Times, he revealed that lockdowns he championed as part of Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Board, were rooted in those carried out by the Chinese Communist Party. Dubbed “Professor Lockdown” by many for his contributions to swaying the British government to adopt stringent lockdown measures, Ferguson ultimately stepped down from the SAGE board after he violated his own lockdown protocols.
In the December 25th interview, he noted that “there is an enormous cost associated with” lockdowns, especially concerning the restriction of civil liberties. He notes, however, once the Chinese Communist Party enacted their repressive lockdown “people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed”:
“I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March. […]If China had not done it the year would have been very different.”
While Ferguson was “skeptical at first” that China had “flattened the curve,” adding he “thought it was a massive cover-up by the Chinese,” he reveals the Chinese Communist Party’s data was what convinced him that lockdowns were “effective policy.”
Leaked documents reveal and even establishment media reports now concede that data emanating from the Chinese Communist Party at the onset of the pandemic – the impetus behind Ferguson championing lockdowns – was faulty.
He insists again in the interview that Britain’s lockdowns were designed to emulate those executed by the a “communist one-party state”, specifically the Chinese Communist Party:
“It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought. And then Italy did it. And we realized we could.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Bill Gates Wants You to Lock Down for Years, but His Bad Ideas Get Much Worse
By Bonchie | Dec 28, 2020 10:00 AM ET
Bill Gates is an interesting test of perspective on the right. To some Republicans (or ostensible Republicans), because he’s a billionaire capitalist, he’s seen as largely infallible. We see this same dynamic with big tech, where criticisms of their actions get deflected as just the market at work. “Go start your own social media platform!” they shout anytime someone complains about their monopolistic, speech-killing censorship.
Yet, I think most on the right see Gates for what he is. He’s a guy who has certainly spent money to do a lot of good things, but he’s also a guy with a savior complex and a strong desire to push left-wing pursuits he sees as beneficial to himself. Earlier in the year, while the World Health Organization was doing the bidding of China and lying to the world about the coronavirus, Gates took the position of defending the communists and attacking Donald Trump instead (see Bill Gates Stunningly Defends China, Immediately Gets Quoted By Chinese Propagandists).
Gates would go on to become a major proponent of lockdowns, asserting just a few weeks ago that bars and restaurants should stay closed another six months and that lockdowns overall shouldn’t end until 2022. How your average citizen is expected to survive that long without going to work isn’t a question he provided an answer for, but when you are a billionaire, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Gates can obviously hide away in a cave for the rest of his life in complete luxury if he wants to. Thus is the attitude of our upper class, willing to sacrifice the little people to soothe their own irrational fears.
Of course, because Gates appears to be completely self-absorbed in his supposed ability to save all of us from ourselves, his ideas get much worse.
The reason this is in the news again is because the team from Harvard has just secured the cooperation of Sweden to launch their first test balloon for their research. But I’m sure attempting to block out the sun’s rays will have no unintended consequences down the road, right? We are just supposed to trust our academic — and if this project gains more steam — our governmental overlords to tinker with the earth’s atmosphere. That’s the level of narcissism people like Gates possess, and if they screw something up as monumental as the earth’s atmosphere in pursuit of their vain wants, they have the money to adapt.
Meanwhile, these intellectual betters can’t be bothered to ever be right on any of their predictions regarding global warming. Yet, we are supposed to sit back and let them “fix” it with massive geo-engineering projects, without the consent of billions of people, before they even provide actual evidence the catastrophe they predict is real. Besides, I was assured we passed the point of no return a little while ago, at least by Democrat politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, so we might as well just enjoy ourselves.
Ragnarok
On and On, South of Heaven
Austria: A Cocoa-Cola Drink Tests Positive for COVID
“The coronavirus mass tests are worthless! This was also shown by a simple experiment in parliament, in which cola got a positive result! But this government spends tens of millions in taxpayers’ money for precisely these tests.”
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Long Covid patients haunted by ‘unbearable’ smells of fish, sulphur and burnt toast
www.independent.co.uk
COVID-19 survivors reportedly experiencing ‘disgusting’ smell of fish
nypost.com
“The coronavirus mass tests are worthless! This was also shown by a simple experiment in parliament, in which cola got a positive result! But this government spends tens of millions in taxpayers’ money for precisely these tests.”
Austrian Lawmaker Tests Coca Cola for COVID Infection Before His Colleagues and Drink Tests Positive | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
Austrian FPO lawmaker Michael Schnedlitz administered a COVID19 PCR test to a glass of Coca-Cola during a session of parliament earlier this month.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Long Covid patients haunted by ‘unbearable’ smells of fish, sulphur and burnt toast
Long Covid patients haunted by smells of fish, sulphur and burnt toast
Parosmia has emerged as a symptom for some long Covid patients
www.independent.co.uk
COVID-19 survivors reportedly experiencing ‘disgusting’ smell of fish
COVID-19 survivors reportedly experiencing ‘disgusting’ smell of fish
Some COVID-19 survivors claim the virus has wreaked havoc on their sense of scent — leaving them smelling “disgusting” odors such as fish and burnt toast. Dr. Nirmal Kumar, an ear…
nypost.com
PanBear
Veteran Member
Reminds me of the movie "Children of Men (2006)"
In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea.
Children of Men Official Trailer #1 - Julianne Moore, Clive Owen Movie (2006) HD
2:26 min
PanBear
Veteran Member
Sky News Australia
WHO doesn’t have evidence vaccines prevent people transmitting virus to others
Dr Soumya Swaminathan
Dr. Michael Ryan
The WHO has warned it does not have evidence COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from passing the virus on to other people and require the same precautions as people without the jab – such as quarantine.
WHO Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan made the remarks after the media questioned whether people who get vaccinated would still need to quarantine when visiting countries with low transmission rates.
“I don't believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it's going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on,” Dr Swaminathan said in a media conference.
“Until we know more, we need to assume that people who have been vaccinated also need to take the same precautions until there is a certain level of herd immunity.
“What we’re learning now, and we continue to wait for more results from the vaccine trails, is to really understand if these vaccines, apart from preventing symptomatic disease and severe disease and deaths, whether they’re also going to reduce infections or prevent people from getting infected with the virus, prevent them from passing it on, or transmitting it to other people.
“This is a dynamic and evolving field, and I think our understanding and our recommendations will change as we get more follow-up data from these trials.”
3:24 min - Dec 28, 2020
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHqdkMWzl5E
WHO doesn’t have evidence vaccines prevent people transmitting virus to others
Dr Soumya Swaminathan
Dr. Michael Ryan
The WHO has warned it does not have evidence COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from passing the virus on to other people and require the same precautions as people without the jab – such as quarantine.
WHO Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan made the remarks after the media questioned whether people who get vaccinated would still need to quarantine when visiting countries with low transmission rates.
“I don't believe we have the evidence on any of the vaccines to be confident that it's going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on,” Dr Swaminathan said in a media conference.
“Until we know more, we need to assume that people who have been vaccinated also need to take the same precautions until there is a certain level of herd immunity.
“What we’re learning now, and we continue to wait for more results from the vaccine trails, is to really understand if these vaccines, apart from preventing symptomatic disease and severe disease and deaths, whether they’re also going to reduce infections or prevent people from getting infected with the virus, prevent them from passing it on, or transmitting it to other people.
“This is a dynamic and evolving field, and I think our understanding and our recommendations will change as we get more follow-up data from these trials.”
3:24 min - Dec 28, 2020
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Surging Coronavirus Cases Cause L.A. County Hospitals to Reject Ambulances
The crisis at Los Angeles County hospitals reached unprecedented levels over the holiday weekend as patients continued to...
www.breitbart.com
Surging Coronavirus Cases Cause L.A. County Hospitals to Reject Ambulances
23
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ29 Dec 20200
The crisis at Los Angeles County hospitals reached unprecedented levels over the holiday weekend as patients continued to flow into emergency rooms.
The medical system is bracing for a second wave of coronavirus spread stemming from Christmas travel and holiday gatherings. Los Angeles County’s overall coronavirus death toll is expected to pass 10,000 this week, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“It’s a crisis — there’s no doubt about it,” said Memorial Hospital Chief Executive Kevan Metcalfe. “And they just keep coming.”
Hospitals are so full of patients that they are forced to place patients in gift shops and conference rooms, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
People wait in line to get a Covid-19 test at a testing center in Los Angeles, California. – The situation has grown severe across southern parts of California, which was praised for its response at the start of the pandemic in spring, but which has seen Covid-related hospital admissions soar sixfold since mid-October. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
Even though hospitals are coming up with creative ways to manage space, many facilities just do not have the space for patients and are forced to turn incoming ambulances away.
On Sunday, 94 percent of L.A. County hospitals that accept patients stemming from 911 calls had to turn ambulances away.
“But soon, there won’t be any places for these ambulances to go,” said Dr. Christina Ghaly, the L.A. County health services director. “If every hospital is on diversion, then no hospital is on diversion.”
The number of people with coronavirus in L.A. County’s intensive care units has broken records for 16 days straight, increasing to 1,449 on Sunday, the most recent data available.
The county has also been testing to discover if a more contagious strain of the coronavirus coming from the United Kingdom has spread to Los Angeles County amid a surge in cases
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Reports: Los Angeles Hospitals at Capacity, Turning Away Ambulances, Planning for Rationed Care as COVID Death Toll Mounts
Los Angeles area hospitals are at breaking point due to the coronavirus pandemic in Southern California, where the mounting death toll has overwhelmed intensive care units and led to contingency plans for possibly rationing care.
www.breitbart.com
Reports: Los Angeles Hospitals at Capacity, Turning Away Ambulances, Planning for Rationed Care as COVID Death Toll Mounts
35
REBECCA MANSOUR29 Dec 2020555
Los Angeles area hospitals are at a breaking point due to the coronavirus pandemic in Southern California, where the mounting death toll has overwhelmed intensive care units and led to contingency plans for possibly rationing care.
Though coronavirus hospitalizations are stabilizing in parts of California, patients are still overwhelming hospitals in a large swath of the state, leading California Gov. Gavin Newsom to warn that the state must brace for the effect of a “surge on top of a surge” from recent holiday travel.
Intensive care units in Southern California and the agricultural San Joaquin Valley have no capacity remaining, according to state figures.
Over the weekend, most Los Angeles County hospitals reached a crisis point where they had to divert ambulances because they didn’t have beds available.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Sunday night was the breaking point for hospitals like USC Medical Center, where at least 30 patients could not get beds for intensive or intermediate care, and the hospitals was forced to turn away all ambulance traffic for 12 hours.
Other Los Angeles County hospitals were hit as hard, forced to divert ambulances and even place patients in conference rooms and gift shops due to the overflow, the Times reports:
L.A. County’s number of ICU patients with COVID rose to 1,449 on Sunday, breaking records for 16 consecutive days with a net increase of 35 new patients per day. This has not yet reached the county’s 44 per day peak from mid-December, but the strain on resources and personnel has led Newsom to declare that his latest stay-at-home order would be extended Tuesday in places where hospital ICUs have less than 15 percent capacity.
Newsom said Monday that even with hospital admissions plateauing in some places, the state was destined to move into a “new phase” that it’s been preparing for as it sets up hospital beds in arenas, schools, and tents, though it is struggling to staff them.
“As we move into this new phase, where we brace, where we prepare ourselves for what is inevitable now … based on the travel we have just seen in the last week and the expectation of more of the same through the rest of the holiday season of a surge on top of a surge, arguably, on top of, again, another surge,” Newsom said.
State officials also notified hospitals that the situation is so dire they should prepare for the possibility that they will have to resort to “crisis care” guidelines established earlier in the pandemic, which allow for the rationing of care. In a rationed care situation, doctors would have to triage care by determining the most effective use of their limited resources on the patients most likely to get well. This was the situation doctors in Italy were forced into during the darkest days of that county’s coronavirus pandemic, when hospitals were forced to turn away some elderly patients due to lack of resources.
Huntington Hospital in Pasadena has already released an information sheet informing the public of the possibility that they may have to ration care, the Los Angeles Times reports:
“The sad reality is that all indicators tell us that our situation may only get worse as we begin 2021,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.
Last week, after L.A. County’s COVID death toll reached record highs on consecutive days, Ferrer stated, “A person now dies every 10 minutes in L.A. County from COVID-19.”
Los Angeles County, which accounts for a quarter of California’s nearly 40 million residents, has about 40 percent of the state’s 24,000 deaths. The county is approaching a milestone of 10,000 deaths.
“These are figures that can’t be normalized,” county Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “Just like the sound of ambulance sirens, we can’t tune this out.”
The surge of infections is due in large part to Thanksgiving travel and celebrations, which happened despite warnings from health officials not to gather because the nation’s most populated state was already seeing explosive growth in cases.
It’s created the greatest challenge for California’s health system since the pandemic began, with case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 regularly breaking records.
While daily coronavirus cases were down to 31,000 Monday from a seven-day average of above 37,000, it was likely due to a lag in data from the weekend, Newsom said.
Models used for planning show hospitalizations more than doubling in the next month from about 20,000 to more than 50,000.
The state has several makeshift hospitals that are taking patients, but more health care workers are needed to staff them, the governor said. The state has deployed more than 1,000 people to 116 hospitals and other facilities through a volunteer corps or the National Guard. On the upside, Newsom said California finally expects to receive more of the traveling health care workers it had requested in anticipation of the shortage.
The Department of Public Health is sending an emergency medical team to Los Angeles to help better distribute patients among hospitals. Some hospitals are well above capacity and others are below, Newsom said.
Meanwhile, the state’s funeral industry is also having difficulty keeping up with the demand on their services due to the pandemic death toll. The Daily Beast reports that the death industry is “overloaded and overwhelmed” with “bodies piling up in area crematoriums, casket makers facing a shortage of supplies, and gravediggers struggling to keep up with equipment breakdowns.”
One funeral home in East Los Angeles rented a 52-foot refrigerated trailer to store cadavers because the 20-foot trailer they rented in the summer for the COVID overflow was no longer enough, according to the Daily Beast.
A local casket manufacturer told the Daily Beast that they are running low on caskets due to this surge in death:
Meanwhile, California health office are moving quickly to vaccinate health workers and people at nursing homes and then expand to other groups, likely including teachers, the Associated Press reports.
The state expects to have received 1.7 million doses of vaccine by the end of the week, Newsom said. He also announced that CVS and Walgreens pharmacies would begin vaccinating residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
11:04 min
Here's how the left used COVID 19 to DESTROY us & our kids
•Dec 29, 2020
Glenn Beck
COVID 19 was used to not only destroy businesses, morale, and education, but to destroy us and our kids, too. The left is in control of nearly everything now, and they've used that power to make us feel alone. Glenn says he believes a miracle could happen to turn this great nation back towards the principles on which it was founded — BUT, we must turn back towards God first. Life DOES have meaning and tomorrow WILL be better.
Mprepared
Veteran Member
Like they actually did tests and know for sure 28 days means anything.
naegling62
Veteran Member
There's something up with 28 days, my friends 2nd dose is 28 days after the 1st dose.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
ER nurse tests positive for COVID-19 days after first dose of vaccine, reminder protection not instant
Health experts are weighing in after a local nurse tested positive for COVID-19 more than a week after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
www.10news.com
ER nurse tests positive for COVID-19 eight days after receiving vaccine
Health experts are weighing in after a local nurse tested positive for COVID-19 more than a week after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
By: Michael Chen
Posted at 4:03 PM, Dec 28, 2020
and last updated 9:16 AM, Dec 29, 2020
SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - Health experts are weighing in after a local nurse tested positive for COVID-19 more than a week after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
In a Facebook message posted on December 18, Matthew W., an ER nurse at at two different local hospitals, talked about receiving the Pfizer vaccine that day. He told ABC 10News his arm was sore for a day but he suffered no other side effects.
Six days later on Christmas Eve -- after working a shift in the COVID-19 unit -- Matthew, 45, became sick. He got the chills and later came down with muscle aches and fatigue.
The day after Christmas, he went to a drive-up hospital testing site and tested positive for COVID-19.
"It's not unexpected at all. If you work through the numbers, this is exactly what we’d expect to happen if someone was exposed," said Dr. Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist with Family Health Centers of San Diego. He serves on the clinical advisory panel for the county’s vaccine rollout.
He points out, it is possible Matthew was infected before receiving the vaccine, as the incubation period may be as much as two weeks. Dr. Ramers says if Matthew did contract it after the vaccine, it’s still in line with what we know.
"We know from the vaccine clinical trials that it’s going to take about 10 to 14 days for you to start to develop protection from the vaccine," said Dr. Ramers.
Dr. Ramers says he knows of several other local cases where health care workers became infected around the time they received the vaccine. He says all the cases illustrate the fact that results aren’t immediate. Even after you start receiving some protection, it won't be full protection.
"That first dose we think gives you somewhere around 50%, and you need that second dose to get up to 95%," said Dr. Ramers.
Dr. Ramers says Matthew’s story also shows that even with vaccines, the pandemic isn’t going to turn around instantly.
"You hear heath practitioners being very optimistic about it being the beginning of the end, but it’s going to be a slow roll, weeks to months as we roll out the vaccine," said Dr. Ramers.
He adds this case is a good reminder of why masks, handwashing, and other COVID protocols are important, even after receiving the vaccine.
Matthew says he’s feeling better since his symptoms peaked on Christmas Day but still feels fatigued.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Science | AAAS
www.sciencemag.org
Some people suspect polyethylene glycol may have triggered severe reactions in at least eight people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the past 2 weeks.
CARLOS OSORIO/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Suspicions grow that nanoparticles in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trigger rare allergic reactions
By Jop de VriezeDec. 21, 2020 , 5:10 PM
Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.
Severe allergy-like reactions in at least eight people who received the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech over the past 2 weeks may be due to a compound in the packaging of the messenger RNA (mRNA) that forms the vaccine’s main ingredient, scientists say. A similar mRNA vaccine developed by Moderna, which was authorized for emergency use in the United States on Friday, also contains the compound, polyethylene glycol (PEG).
PEG has never been used before in an approved vaccine, but it is found in many drugs that have occasionally triggered anaphylaxis—a potentially life-threatening reaction that can cause rashes, a plummeting blood pressure, shortness of breath, and a fast heartbeat. Some allergists and immunologists believe a small number of people previously exposed to PEG may have high levels of antibodies against PEG, putting them at risk of an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine.
Others are skeptical of the link. Still, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was concerned enough to convene several meetings last week to discuss the allergic reactions with representatives of Pfizer and Moderna, independent scientists and physicians, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
NIAID is also setting up a study in collaboration with FDA to analyze the response to the vaccine in people who have high levels of anti-PEG antibodies or have experienced severe allergic responses to drugs or vaccines before. “Until we know there is truly a PEG story, we need to be very careful in talking about that as a done deal,” says Alkis Togias, branch chief of allergy, asthma, and airway biology at NIAID.
Pfizer, too, says it is “actively seeking follow-up.” A statement emailed to Science noted it already recommends that “appropriate medical treatment and supervision should always be readily available” in case a vaccinee develops anaphylaxis.
Anaphylactic reactions can occur with any vaccine, but are usually extremely rare—about one per 1 million doses. As of 19 December, the United States had seen six cases of anaphylaxis among 272,001 people who received the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a recent presentation by Thomas Clark of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the United Kingdom has recorded two. Because the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines use a new platform, the reactions call for careful scrutiny, says Elizabeth Phillips, a drug hypersensitivity researcher at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who attended an NIAID meeting on 16 December. “This is new.”
News reports about the allergic reactions have already created anxiety. “Patients with severe allergies in the US are getting nervous about the possibility that they may not be able to get vaccinated, at least with those two vaccines,” Togias wrote in an invitation to meeting participants. “Allergies in general are so common in the population that this could create a resistance against the vaccines in the population,” adds Janos Szebeni, an immunologist at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, who has long studied hypersensitivity reactions to PEG and who also attended the 16 December gathering.
Scientists who believe PEG may be the culprit stress that vaccination should continue. “We need to get vaccinated,” Phillips says. “We need to try and curtail this pandemic.” But more data are urgently needed, she adds: “These next couple of weeks in the U.S. are going to be extremely important for defining what to do next.”
Toothpaste and shampoo
Pfizer’s and Moderna’s clinical trials of the vaccines, which involved tens of thousands of people, did not find serious adverse events caused by the vaccine. But both studies excluded people with a history of allergies to components of the COVID-19 vaccines; Pfizer also excluded those who previously had a severe adverse reaction from any vaccine. People with previous allergic reactions to food or drugs were not excluded, but may have been underrepresented.
The two vaccines both contain mRNA wrapped in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that help carry it to human cells but also act as an adjuvant, a vaccine ingredient that bolsters the immune response. The LNPs are “PEGylated”—chemically attached to PEG molecules that cover the outside of the particles and increase their stability and life span.
PEGs are also used in everyday products such as toothpaste and shampoo as thickeners, solvents, softeners, and moisture carriers, and they’ve been used as a laxative for decades. An increasing number of biopharmaceuticals include PEGylated compounds as well.
PEGs were long thought to be biologically inert, but a growing body of evidence suggests they are not. As much as 72% of people have at least some antibodies against PEGs, according to a 2016 study led by Samuel Lai, a pharmaco-engineer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, presumably as a result of exposure to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. About 7% have a level that may be high enough to predispose them to anaphylactic reactions, he found. Other studies have also found antibodies against PEG, but at lower levels.
“Some companies have dropped PEGylated products from their pipeline as a result,” Lai says. But he notes that the safety record of many PEGylated drugs has persuaded others that “concerns about anti-PEG antibodies are overstated.”
Szebeni says the mechanism behind PEG-conjugated anaphylaxis is relatively unknown because it does not involve immunoglobulin E (IgE), the antibody type that causes classical allergic reactions. (That’s why he prefers to call them “anaphylactoid” reactions.) Instead, PEG triggers two other classes of antibodies, immunoglobulin M (IgM) and immunoglobulin G (IgG), involved in a branch of the body’s innate immunity called the complement system, which Szebeni has spent decades studying in a pig model he developed.
In 1999, while working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Szebeni described a new type of drug-induced reaction he dubbed complement activation-related pseudoallergy (CARPA), a nonspecific immune response to nanoparticle-based medicines, often PEGylated, that are mistakenly recognized by the immune system as viruses.
Szebeni believes CARPA explains the severe anaphylactoid reactions some PEGylated drugs are occasionally known to cause, including cancer blockbuster Doxil. A team assembled by Bruce Sullenger, a surgeon at Duke University, experienced similar issues with an experimental anticoagulant containing PEGylated RNA. The team had to halt a phase III trial in 2014 after about 0.6% of 1600 people who received the drug had severe allergic responses and one participant died. “That stopped the trial,” Sullenger says. The team found that every participant with an anaphylaxis had high levels of anti-PEG IgG. But some with no adverse reaction had high levels as well, Sullenger adds. “So, it is not sufficient to just have these antibodies.”
At the NIAID meeting, several attendees stressed that PEGylated nanoparticles may cause problems through a mechanism other than CARPA. Just last month, Phillips and scientists at FDA and other institutions published a paper showing patients who suffered an anaphylactic reaction to PEGylated drugs did have IgE antibodies to PEG after all, suggesting those may be involved, rather than IgG and IgM.
Other scientists, meanwhile, are not convinced PEG is involved at all. “There is a lot of exaggeration when it comes to the risk of PEGs and CARPA,” says Moein Moghimi, a nanomedicine researcher at Newcastle University who suspects a more conventional mechanism is causing the reactions. “You are technically delivering an adjuvant at the injection site to excite the local immune system. It happens that some people get too much excitement, because they have a relatively high number of local immune cells.”
Others note the amount of PEG in the mRNA vaccines is orders of magnitude lower than in most PEGylated drugs. And whereas those drugs are often given intravenously, the two COVID-19 vaccines are injected into a muscle, which leads to a delayed exposure and a much lower level of PEG in the blood, where most anti-PEG antibodies are.
Nevertheless, the companies were aware of the risk. In a stock market prospectus filed on 6 December 2018, Moderna acknowledged the possibility of “reactions to the PEG from some lipids or PEG otherwise associated with the LNP.” And in a September paper, BioNTech researchers proposed an alternative to PEG for therapeutic mRNA delivery, noting: “The PEGylation of nanoparticles can also have substantial disadvantages concerning activity and safety.’”
Katalin Karikó, a senior vice president at BioNTech who co-invented the mRNA technology underlying both vaccines, says she discussed with Szebeni whether PEG in the vaccine could be an issue. (The two know each other well; both are Hungarian and in the 1980s, Karikó taught Szebeni how to make liposomes in her lab.) They agreed that given the low amount of lipid and the intramuscular administration, the risk was negligible.
Karikó emphasizes that based on what we know so far, the risk is still low. “All vaccines carry some risk. But the benefit of the vaccine outweighs the risk,” she says.
Szebeni agrees, but says he hopes that’s also true in the long run. He notes that both mRNA vaccines require two shots, and he worries anti-PEG antibodies triggered by the first shot could increase the risk of an allergic reaction to the second or to PEGylated drugs.
Stay for 30 minutes.
To understand the risk, Phillips says, it’s crucial to unravel the mechanisms underlying the immune reactions and find out how often they are likely to occur. The known U.S. cases are currently under study, but key clues may have vanished: Anaphylactic reactions produce biomarkers that only remain in the blood for a few hours. At the NIAID meeting, participants discussed ways to ensure that blood samples from future cases are taken immediately and tested for those markers.
If PEG does turn out to be the culprit, the question is, what can be done? Screening millions of people for anti-PEG antibodies before they are vaccinated is not feasible. Instead, CDC guidelines recommend not giving the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to anyone with a history of severe allergic reaction to any component of the vaccine. For people who have had a severe reaction to another vaccine or injectable medication, the risks and benefits of vaccination should be carefully weighed, CDC says. And people who might be at high risk of an anaphylactic reaction should stay at the vaccination site for 30 minutes after their shot so they can be treated if necessary.
“At least [anaphylaxis] is something that happens quickly,” Philips says. “So, it’s something that you can be very much alerted to, prepared to recognize early and be prepared to treat early.”
jward
passin' thru
The Denver Post
@denverpost
BREAKING: Colorado public health officials on Tuesday confirmed the presence of the new variant of COVID-19 first discovered in the U.K., saying the state is the first to identify the strain in the United States.
@denverpost
BREAKING: Colorado public health officials on Tuesday confirmed the presence of the new variant of COVID-19 first discovered in the U.K., saying the state is the first to identify the strain in the United States.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
[COMMENT: Note - this is RT ]
www.rt.com
Sacrificing freedom for the environment? German MP suggests restrictions ‘similar’ to Covid-19 lockdowns to fight climate change
28 Dec, 2020 17:00
FILE PHOTO: Activists project a slogan against the facade of the European central bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, on December 9, 2020. © Reuters / Kai Pfaffenbach
Humanity should sacrifice “personal freedom” just as many nations did during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to successfully fight climate change, a German MP has said, adding that there will “never” be a vaccine against CO2.
Germany had barely started its coronavirus vaccination campaign when a Social Democratic MP, Karl Lauterbach, warned that his compatriots need to brace themselves for yet another challenge: global warming.
“We need measures to deal with climate change that are similar to the restrictions on personal freedom [imposed] to combat the pandemic,” the professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne wrote in a guest piece for Die Welt newspaper. He added that he hoped climate change issues would play “a dominant role” during the upcoming election campaign ahead of the federal ballot scheduled for September 2021.
The politician said he “had an impression” that Germany, Europe, and particularly the US “would not have been able to defeat the Covid pandemic without the development of a vaccine.” All these nations are still quite far from defeating the virus, as their vaccination campaigns have only just started, and the number of new infections in these nations remains relatively high. But he appeared much more concerned about the fact “there will never be a vaccine against CO2.”
Lauterbach admitted he was rather skeptical about whether his dream future, in which humanity would beat climate change through the sacrifice of freedoms, would ever be achieved. “My experience of combating the coronavirus pandemic has unfortunately made me extremely pessimistic about whether we will be able to successfully stop climate change in time,” he admitted.
According to the MP, the problem lies with the fact that Germans have “underestimated” the pandemic and continue to do so. Now, as the vaccination campaign kicks off, some might be too tempted to throw off the shackles of yet another lockdown well before the time is right to ease the restrictions, he warned.
It is “necessary” for the lockdown to remain in place until the number of new cases falls “well below 50 per 100,000 people in a week,” the epidemiologist said, calling on fellow citizens to “have discipline, altruism and … patience to achieve this.”
However, many Germans seem unlikely to agree with such advice. The nation has repeatedly seen massive protests against coronavirus restrictions. The government’s decision to re-introduce a partial lockdown in early November sparked a new wave of demonstrations, some of which turned violent. Some of those opposing the lockdown went as far as to compare themselves with the anti-Nazi resistance, provoking a harsh rebuke from Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
The fact that Christmas parties in Germany were limited to close family members would have done little to brighten the nation’s mood. The ban on drinking alcohol in public and buying fireworks for use on New Year’s Eve probably came as unwelcome news too.
The nation launched its vaccination campaign on Saturday – a day ahead of the joint EU inoculation drive. Ensuring the German population is immune to the virus will likely still take some time, since each European country has so far received only around 10,000 doses. More are expected to be delivered in January.
Sacrificing freedom for the environment? German MP suggests restrictions ‘similar’ to Covid-19 lockdowns to fight climate change
Humanity should sacrifice “personal freedom” just as many nations did during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to successfully fight climate change, a German MP has said, adding that there will “never” be a vaccine against CO2.
Sacrificing freedom for the environment? German MP suggests restrictions ‘similar’ to Covid-19 lockdowns to fight climate change
28 Dec, 2020 17:00
FILE PHOTO: Activists project a slogan against the facade of the European central bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, on December 9, 2020. © Reuters / Kai Pfaffenbach
Humanity should sacrifice “personal freedom” just as many nations did during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to successfully fight climate change, a German MP has said, adding that there will “never” be a vaccine against CO2.
Germany had barely started its coronavirus vaccination campaign when a Social Democratic MP, Karl Lauterbach, warned that his compatriots need to brace themselves for yet another challenge: global warming.
“We need measures to deal with climate change that are similar to the restrictions on personal freedom [imposed] to combat the pandemic,” the professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne wrote in a guest piece for Die Welt newspaper. He added that he hoped climate change issues would play “a dominant role” during the upcoming election campaign ahead of the federal ballot scheduled for September 2021.
The politician said he “had an impression” that Germany, Europe, and particularly the US “would not have been able to defeat the Covid pandemic without the development of a vaccine.” All these nations are still quite far from defeating the virus, as their vaccination campaigns have only just started, and the number of new infections in these nations remains relatively high. But he appeared much more concerned about the fact “there will never be a vaccine against CO2.”
Lauterbach admitted he was rather skeptical about whether his dream future, in which humanity would beat climate change through the sacrifice of freedoms, would ever be achieved. “My experience of combating the coronavirus pandemic has unfortunately made me extremely pessimistic about whether we will be able to successfully stop climate change in time,” he admitted.
According to the MP, the problem lies with the fact that Germans have “underestimated” the pandemic and continue to do so. Now, as the vaccination campaign kicks off, some might be too tempted to throw off the shackles of yet another lockdown well before the time is right to ease the restrictions, he warned.
It is “necessary” for the lockdown to remain in place until the number of new cases falls “well below 50 per 100,000 people in a week,” the epidemiologist said, calling on fellow citizens to “have discipline, altruism and … patience to achieve this.”
However, many Germans seem unlikely to agree with such advice. The nation has repeatedly seen massive protests against coronavirus restrictions. The government’s decision to re-introduce a partial lockdown in early November sparked a new wave of demonstrations, some of which turned violent. Some of those opposing the lockdown went as far as to compare themselves with the anti-Nazi resistance, provoking a harsh rebuke from Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
The fact that Christmas parties in Germany were limited to close family members would have done little to brighten the nation’s mood. The ban on drinking alcohol in public and buying fireworks for use on New Year’s Eve probably came as unwelcome news too.
The nation launched its vaccination campaign on Saturday – a day ahead of the joint EU inoculation drive. Ensuring the German population is immune to the virus will likely still take some time, since each European country has so far received only around 10,000 doses. More are expected to be delivered in January.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Joe Biden Struggles to Read Teleprompter as He Trashes Trump Administration's Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution Efforts (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila
78-year-old Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered remarks on Covid-19 vaccine distribution.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Joe Biden Struggles to Read Teleprompter as He Trashes Trump Administration’s Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution Efforts (VIDEO)
By Cristina Laila
Published December 29, 2020 at 4:00pm
78-year-old Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered remarks on Covid-19 vaccine distribution.
Biden struggled to read the teleprompter as he trashed the Trump Admin’s efforts to distribute the Covid vaccine to Americans.
As a result of President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed,” Pfizer announced in November that its Covid vaccine is more than 90 percent effective.
Big Pharma purposely waited until after Election Day to announce that a Covid vaccine was ready in an effort to hurt Trump’s reelection efforts.
Despite Big Pharma’s efforts to derail President Trump, a Covid vaccine is now being distributed to Americans in record time.
Joe Biden however trashed the Trump Admin’s vaccine distribution efforts.
Even though Joe Biden has accomplished nothing and has never had an original thought in his entire life, he vowed to “move heaven and earth to get us going in the right direction.”
“The Trump administration’s plan to distribute vaccines is falling behind, far behind,” Biden said. “The Biden-Harris administration will spare no effort to make sure people get vaccinated.”
Joe Biden can barely read the teleprompter and he has no idea what he’s talking about.
WATCH:
Joe Biden has no ground to stand on about the Covid vaccine.
Both Biden and Kamala undermined confidence in the Covid vaccine, despite assurances from experts.
Joe Biden even suggested the Covid vaccine wouldn’t be “real” and may not be “safe.”
WATCH:
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1344020429586001920
.44 min
Attachments
marsh
On TB every waking moment
HERE WE GO: First Confirmed Case of "Significantly More Contagious" Covid-19 Variant Found in US | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila
The Covid-19 variant found in the UK is now in the United States and the tyrants will no doubt use it as an excuse to impose stricter lockdowns.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
HERE WE GO: First Confirmed Case of “Significantly More Contagious” Covid-19 Variant Found in US
By Cristina Laila
Published December 29, 2020 at 4:47pm
The Covid-19 variant found in the UK is now in the United States and the tyrants will no doubt use it as an excuse to impose stricter lockdowns.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) announced on Tuesday that State Public Health Officials discovered its first case of the Covid-19 variant B.1.1.7, the same variant discovered in the UK.
“The Colorado State Laboratory confirmed and notified the Center for Disease Control (CDC) of the case. The individual is a male in his 20s who is currently in isolation in Elbert County and has no travel history,” the Governor said in a statement.
“There is a lot we don’t know about this new Covid-19 variant, but scientists in the United Kingdom are warning the world that it is significantly more contagious,” he added.
“The health and safety of Coloradans is our top priority and we will monitor this case, as well as all COVID-19 indicators, very closely,” Governor Polis said.
Newsmax contributor Dr. David Samadi said the new Covid-19 variant is more contagious but less severe.
“There is no cause for panic. The same therapeutics and vaccines can treat this strain as well. Stay calm,” he said.
jward
passin' thru
@AdamJKucharski
Mathematician/epidemiologist at
@LSHTM
@WellcomeTrust
fellow and
@TEDFellow
. Author of The Rules of Contagion. Views own.
Reminder to people plugging vaccine numbers into herd immunity calculations (e.g. (1/E) x (1-1/R) where E is vaccine effectiveness) - these calculations assume vaccination prevents onwards transmission. If they don't prevent transmission, there won't be herd immunity effects. 1/
From what we know about SARS-CoV-2, it's likely there will be some effect on transmission. But need to avoid suggestions of "70% vaccinated and it's all over" - vaccines will have huge impact on reducing disease, but some transmission could remain. 2/
More on herd immunity thresholds for vaccination: academic.oup.com/cid/article/52… 3/3
Mathematician/epidemiologist at
@LSHTM
@WellcomeTrust
fellow and
@TEDFellow
. Author of The Rules of Contagion. Views own.
Reminder to people plugging vaccine numbers into herd immunity calculations (e.g. (1/E) x (1-1/R) where E is vaccine effectiveness) - these calculations assume vaccination prevents onwards transmission. If they don't prevent transmission, there won't be herd immunity effects. 1/
From what we know about SARS-CoV-2, it's likely there will be some effect on transmission. But need to avoid suggestions of "70% vaccinated and it's all over" - vaccines will have huge impact on reducing disease, but some transmission could remain. 2/
More on herd immunity thresholds for vaccination: academic.oup.com/cid/article/52… 3/3
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:35:54 min
Immune 40: COVID-19 nuances
•Dec 29, 2020
Vincent Racaniello
Immune reminisces about a year in COVID-19 immunology, Steph's receiving the Pfizer vaccine, and answer to listener questions about a challenge study with common cold CoVs, T cell exhaustion, how CD4 T cells control infections, and more.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
5:56 min
Vitamin D for SEVERE Covid 19? (And other final 2020 Thoughts)
•Dec 30, 2020
Doctor Mike Hansen
2020 Is finally coming to an end. But the virus won't be anytime soon. Especially if people don't get the vaccine. December 2020 was the worst pandemic month. And January will be even worse. Ivermectin for COVID 19? Vitamin D for SEVERE Covid 19? Let's talk.
Timestamps, click to skip ahead! 00:00 - Intro 00:11 - January The Worst (COVID 19) 02:38 - COVID 19 Vaccine Allergic Reactions Issue 04:32 - Ivermectin Update for COVID 19 04:51 - Vitamin D Update for COVID 19 More people traveled through US airports this past Sunday than any other day this pandemic, about 1.3 million. Simultaneously, more Americans were hospitalized this past week than any other week of the pandemic.
This past week, about 40% of all ICU patients in the US had Covid 19, according to data published Monday by the US Department of Health and Human Services. That's up from 16% in late September, 22% in late October, and 35% in late November. More than 63,000 Americans have already died so far this month, which is the worst month of this entire pandemic. And next month is only going to be worse. Three big reasons. One, because of holiday travel and indoor gatherings. Two, because of colder temperatures. And three, that new coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, that is more contagious, more transmissible… it's nowhere in the US, first identified in a Colorado man. So I think that January is going to be the worst month of this entire pandemic.
Of course, the way we fight this is with distancing and masks, and the more people do this, the better the numbers will be. And the more people who get the vaccine, the higher the likelihood of bringing this pandemic to an end. Most experts believe that about 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Most polls show that about 60% of Americans want the vaccine. Based on my YT poll, 10,000 of you voted. And 47% want the vaccine. 37% don’t want it. And 16% are still undecided.
So this virus will not be extinguished anytime soon unless these numbers change. The soonest I expect this pandemic to be over would be by next fall. But people need to get the vaccine to make this happen. I’m glad that I was able to get my Pfizer vaccine back on Dec 15th. Other than some arm soreness in the first 24 hours or so, I didn’t have any side effects. So, I feel great. And I’m going to get by second shot a week from now. With the second shot, the chances of developing side effects are slightly higher than the first shot, so we’ll see, and I’ll keep you posted. One concern with these vaccines is the potential for allergic reactions. Reactions to vaccines, in general, are rare. The American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (ACAAI) has updated its advice regarding allergic reactions to these new mRNA vaccines. They say that anyone with a severe allergic reaction to the first shot should not get the second shot. People with allergies to medications, foods, insects, and latex are no more likely than the general public to be allergic to these vaccines.
It's still unclear whether having had an allergic reaction to an older type of vaccine means people will react badly to the mRNA vaccines. For people who have had a previous allergic reaction to a specific component of the new vaccine, such as propylene glycol or lipid nanoparticles, they should hold off on getting the vaccine. Regardless, these people should discuss the vaccine's benefits and risks with their health care providers, ideally, an allergist. These are the latest recommendations at the time of this video, and they are subject to change.
Now, with this new coronavirus variant, which scientific experts are saying is more contagious. Does that mean the vaccine will be less effective? This is still an unknown at this point. And if the vaccine is less effective against this new variant, how much so? Again, an unknown. Most scientists think that the vaccine will remain effective against it. Also, because these are mRNA vaccines, they can easily be tweaked to make it more effective against the new strain. A lot of people are also talking about the parasitic drug Ivermectin. Is it useful against COVID 19? Too early to tell. Some weak studies that show it might help against COVID 19, but nothing conclusive so far. We will need a large RCT to know if it works or not, and that hasn’t happened yet. What did just come out, though, from Brazil, is an RCT for giving Vitamin D to patients with severe COVID 19? We know that low vitamin D levels are linked with a higher risk for severe COVID 19. Still, when vitamin D was given to critically ill COVID 19 patients who had lower vitamin D levels, it did not shorten their length of stay in the hospital or decrease mortality. The way that I look at it, it's important not to be vitamin D deficient in the first place, as getting a large dose of vitamin D when you are critically ill is not going to save you.
Doctor Mike Hansen, MD Internal Medicine | Pulmonary Disease | Critical Care Medicine
marsh
On TB every waking moment
30:52 min
December 19, 2020 ACIP Meeting - Update and Clinical Considerations
•Dec 30, 2020
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Update on COVID-19 vaccines and Anaphylaxis; Clinical Considerations for use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:20 min
Fauci says he altered public scientific estimates based on opinion polls
•Dec 30, 2020
Just The News
Admission he lowballed estimated herd immunity threshold follows earlier acknowledgement he misled on efficacy of masks.
COVID-19 & grocery stores: Could you get infected while grabbing groceries?
Health experts said that it's difficult to pinpoint where someone has contracted the virus.
nbc-2.com
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Sen. Marco Rubio: Dr. Fauci lied about coronavirus to manipulate our behavior — that's appalling
Few have paid attention to an important interview that Dr. Anthony Fauci gave last week, in which he acknowledged that he selectively lied to the American public about the coronavirus and what was needed for our national recovery.
www.foxnews.com
Sen. Marco Rubio: Dr. Fauci lied about coronavirus to manipulate our behavior — that's appalling
Placing blind faith in unelected celebrity scientists has its limits, and we must not be afraid to call them out
By Sen. Marco Rubio | Fox News
VideoFauci under fire for moving herd immunity goalpost
Thanks to our news media’s monomaniacal obsession with President Trump, few have paid attention to an important interview that Dr. Anthony Fauci gave last week, in which he acknowledged that he selectively lied to the American public about the coronavirus and what was needed for our national recovery.
The story is straightforward. For most of this year, Dr. Fauci and other scientists in our public health establishment have been telling Americans that about 60 to 70 percent of the nation would need a vaccine in order for us to reach herd immunity and make the coronavirus a non-issue.
But, speaking with The New York Times, Dr. Fauci admitted that he believes the real number is in fact significantly higher — perhaps 75 to 90 percent — and he declined to be forthright because he felt the country wasn’t ready to hear it. Only now did he say that he feels he has the freedom to "nudge this up a bit" without discouraging the nation.
I am sure that Dr. Fauci — the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — made the decision to mislead with nothing but good intentions. However, let’s be clear about what he was doing: lying to the American people in order to manipulate their behavior.
The American people deserve the truth; they also deserve accountability. When elected representatives make decisions, they can be held responsible by the public. But when public health officials with decades of experience and leadership within our nation’s institutions short-circuit the political process and make these decisions themselves, they deny the American people that same opportunity — and to change course if desired.\
After all, accountability is a central tenet of representative government. It’s the best way to ensure that the vision of what is being enforced by decision-makers matches the values of the population who have elected them.
Over the past year, difficult choices have had to be made: How do we allocate scarce personal protective equipment? Is it safe to play a high school football game? How should we prioritize vaccine distribution?
They’re not easy questions, but people should be trusted to make these decisions for themselves armed with facts honestly presented by public officials. And when it comes time to make decisions as a community, elected officials at every level of government must lead.
Passing the buck to unelected technocrats avoids accountability and means falling back on two fallacies: first, that science gives us a straightforward playbook for answering questions facing decision-makers; and, second, that those technocrats are the only legitimate interpreters of the facts.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear, things are never so clear-cut. For example, early on in the pandemic, there was a question of whether wearing a mask could be an effective tool to stop the spread.
In March, Dr. Fauci said "there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask" and cautioned that "there are unintended consequences" with wearing them. That guidance was confounding at the time, and it quickly became politicized.
But some of the first people to make decisions not based on science were the scientists who, as Dr. Fauci admitted this past June, initially decided not to recommend masks to the general public because they were supposedly "concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply."
The point here is not to stop trusting public health guidelines. Beating the coronavirus will mean coming together as a nation and continuing to make sacrifices to reduce its spread, as more and more Americans get vaccinated thanks to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.
But it does mean that placing blind faith in unelected celebrity scientists — elevated by a media that award Emmys to negligent politicians with their own grisly records — has its limits, and we must not be afraid to call them out when they’re caught overstepping their legitimate authority.
I do not question Dr. Fauci’s motives — I trust they are noble — but I am appalled by his arrogance. If he wants to lead the nation, he should run for office. Otherwise, he should give us an honest and transparent reading of the science, not polling data, and let the rest of us —policymakers and the American people who have elected them — do our jobs.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
6:06 min
Sinovac Delays Release of Vaccine Trials, Effectiveness Questioned | Epoch News | China Insider
•Premiered 2 hours ago
The Epoch Times
Chinese company Sinovac Biotech Ltd. is delaying the release of the results of a phase III clinical trial of its CCP virus vaccine until January. Before that, Sinovac had delayed its announcement twice, which raised questions about the effectiveness of the vaccine.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
ER Nurse Tests Positive For COVID 8 Days After Being Vaccinated
WEDNESDAY, DEC 30, 2020 - 8:15
In the latest reminder that COVID vaccines might not be as protective as the highly publicized Phase 3 trial data suggests, a local ABC News affiliate station in San Diego just reported that a nurse who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine came down with the virus 8 days later.
This isn't unprecedented. Data from the Phase 3 trials indicated that it could take up to two weeks to develop protections from the virus after receiving the shot.
Still, with so much about the process unknown, the incident deserves more scrutiny. And according to the report, local health experts are weighing in.
The report makes a point of emphasizing the fact that this development is "not unexpected at all" and that it's likely at least some nurses will be infected with the virus either just before, or just after, receiving their first dose of the vaccine, during the post-jab "incubation period".
The doctor then estimated that the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine could deliver protection that's somewhere around 50%.
Of course, a top WHO scientist recently warned that people shouldn't stop social distancing and wearing masks after receiving the vaccine. After all, as she added, the trial data tells us nothing about the vaccines' impact on viral transmission.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
We Sold Our Souls To The "Science"
WEDNESDAY, DEC 30, 2020 - 11:05
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
...the big problem in my view that we face these days is that our media have become one-dimensional, the exact opposite of what they should be. This became clear through the Trump era, and the incessant hammering of one actor vs the deafening silence about all others in the same theater and on the same stage.
And we see that again today: try, if you can, to find in the MSM a critical opinion about lockdowns, or facemasks, or about the newly-fangled vaccines. It’s very hard if not impossible. This one-dimensionality hides behind “the science”. Which is something that doesn’t really exist, as we know because scientists in different countries contradict each other, as do those in the same country, and scientists even often contradict themselves.
If you want people to “follow the science”, you need to convince them that this is the right thing to do. You can’t just force them to do it. Or, rather, you can try that for a short period of time, and then they will come after you. People don’t live their lives in one dimension; they can’t.
Are facemasks useful? Sure, in crowded indoor spaces. But outdoors? I have yet to see the first evidence of that, and I do read an awful lot. Let’s inject some nuance here: if there is a risk of 1 in 100,000 that someone gets infected outdoors, it that worth forcing 99,999 people to put facemasks on? Or would you rather ask them to wear those where it demonstrably matters?
Are lockdowns useful? Sure, but they can only ever be emergency measures, short and “sweet”. Because they risk destroying entire economies and societies. Lockdowns should only be used when there are no other measures available anymore.
But we haven’t exhausted the scope of all other measures, not at all. There are no governments promoting the large scale use of vitamin D, or the proper use of hydroxychloroquine, and Chris Martenson even sees his videos about ivermectin banned from YouTube. As all three substances show great promise in preventing infections, and/or limiting the consequences of being infected.
We’ve been reduced to one-dimensional lives. By now, politicians and “scientists” would rather see everyone be infected, and then “cured” by a vaccine, than not get infected in the first place. In one dimension, the world easily gets turned upside down. You just wouldn’t be able to see it, because you need three dimensions to recognize what “upside down” looks like.
The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines may work very well, but we don’t know, because we haven’t researched that. Which, if you want to “follow the science”, is a very strange thing to do. Of course we would all like the virus to be gone, but ignoring the science doesn’t look like the way to achieve that. And that’s what we’re doing: we’re not following the science, we’re ignoring it where that fits our purposes.
We don’t know if the Pfizer vaccine protects you from being infected, we don’t know if it keeps you from infecting others, but we do know governments and airlines are talking about requiring evidence that you’ve received a dose. But for what purpose, then, exactly? Just to let all the MPs and CEOs people claim they did what they could?
'Too' many people have lost their jobs and their businesses without any country seriously having tried to stop people from becoming infected through the use of vit. D, HCQ, ivermectin. Many of these jobs and businesses will never come back. Is this worth it? Maybe if we could say we tried everything we could, but we obviously haven’t.
We sold our souls to the “science” and then to the vaccine. Which are two very very different things.
If there’s ever been a time to ask questions, it must be now. About lockdowns, facemasks and viruses, about people, communities, societies, economies. That we are being pressured into not asking those questions, makes them even more necessary.
Anyway, those are all issues and questions that will need to be addressed in 2021, we’ve run out of 2020 time. It’s just that it wouldn’t have been necessary; we could easily have done much if not most of it this year. But we have become information-poor, and by design to boot.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
At Least 3 Shipments Of COVID Vaccine Have Spoiled On Their Way To Texas
WEDNESDAY, DEC 30, 2020 - 12:34
Despite all the talk about Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine being more accessible than the Pfizer-BioNTech iteration due to the less-stringent temperature requirements, it appears that several batches of the vaccine shipped out to Texas last week have effectively spoiled due to "straying from their temperature requirements," according to Bloomberg.
With the US vaccination program lagging far behind Operation Warp Speed year-end targets, at least three shipments of spoiled Moderna vaccines arrived in Texas last week, prompting a delay in future deliveries to the Lone Star state as investigators scramble to figure out what happened.
Several shipments that had been scheduled for delivery before the holiday were held back, said Carrie Kroll, vice president of advocacy, quality and public health for the Texas Hospital Association.
It's unclear how many doses were affected, or who might be culpable for the mistake. While the affected shipments have been replaced by the federal government, and others were held back by US officials as they looked into issues with temperature sensors, Kroll told reporters that many hospitals in the state were only just now getting doses that were expected a week ago.
As of Monday, only 2.13MM Americans had received the shots, despite the fact that 11.45MM doses of the vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer have been distributed to the states.
Many of the larger states like New York and California have lagged, so West Virginia and other smaller states are reporting the highest rates so far.
Source: Bespoke
When asked by the press, officials from the Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed that doses had been delayed but didn’t directly respond to specific questions about what went wrong.
Though, if nothing else, the delays explain Texas's conspicuously low vaccination rate...
...While offering another reminder that OWS's optimistic vaccination timeline seems more grounded in fantasy than reality right now.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Remember, We're All In This Together...
WEDNESDAY, DEC 30, 2020 - 18:20
Authored by Eric Peters via Eric Peters Autos,
An easy way to establish the fatuity – the evil – at the core of what’s going on would be to apply it universally.
Every “lockdown” applies to everyone – including every politician and every government worker. If anyone is forced by decree to stop earning their living then everyone is forced to stop earning their living. The big box stores are shuttered, too.
Aren’t we “all in this together”?
Of course, “we” aren’t. There is the essential class – which issues and enforces the “mandates” – which it is important to constantly repeat are not laws but literally the arbitrary decrees of politicians grown fat, like blood-gorged ticks, with limitless power somehow acquired in the name of gesund – even though we’re healthy, thanks – and there is the rest of us, deemed non-essential.
We are supposed to just make do; figure out a way to keep a roof over our heads and food in the ‘fridge – without a paycheck. Or a third of one. To pay 100 percent of our mortgages/rent and power bills and so on.
Shutter our businesses; send our employees home to do nothing — while their bills pile up.
The essentials lecture, finger-point – and enforce. But never miss a paycheck. Which we are forced to pay for.
Their bills do not go unpaid. There is no sacrifice by those demanding it – the usual practice of the coercive sector as distinct from the private sector. The latter can only ask for your business; the former can force you to close it – and then make you pay them for doing it.
How about we all pay?
Them and us – alike.
If they decree we may not work, then they must be “in it” with us, together. No paycheck for us? None for them as well. No forcing us to pay for their paychecks, either. The taxes that pay for them held in abeyance until the cases! the cases! recede.
If, in fact, that is truly what this is all about.
In fact – literally – it’s not.
This store is not “closed due to COVID.” It is closed by decree of “essential” government workers.
As should by now be obvious to anyone still capable of rational thought. What conclusions can be drawn from the coercive class declaring itself essential – and us, not? From our being “locked down” – told by them we may not move without their permission, while they are free to move as they like?
Ordered to accept economic death while they continue to feed – off of us?
While we get to watch them ignore their own “mandates”?
The restaurant owner in California who used his truck prevent an essential government worker from working was trying to make the point – to both the essential government worker and the essential government enforcers who came to make sure the essential government worker could go about his essential work.
It is easy to be unctuous when there is no cost to you – and possibly much to gain.
The essentials who are getting paid – by us – have more than just our money to pay their bills. The have our money to buy our losses. When a non-essential’s home goes into foreclosure or his business is shuttered, someone else is going to acquire the property. It will inevitably be someone with the means to pay for it.
That will be someone who hasn’t been bled white. It will probably be someone essential, who has spent the past year bleeding the non-essentials white.
Who, having taken everything away from the previous owner will now use the previous owner’s money – transferred via taxes – to own everything that was taken away.
Probably at a fire-sale price, too.
The same process is under way at the corporate level. The Big Box retailers were not locked down – which is why their profits have gone up (skyrocketed up) during the worst year – for us – since 1929. It is not hard to understand why. Wal-Mart and the rest were open while everything not Big Box wasn’t, by “mandate.”
The non-essentials were forced to do business with the essentials. Forced to facilitate the transfer of wealth from local, privately owned stores to massive, shareholder-owned corporations, who sold the same stuff and were not attacked by swarms of gesundpolizei for allowing more than 10 people within their stores at a time.
A simpleton should be able to draw the obvious conclusions.
The essentials want to use the corporations as feed lots are used for cattle. We – the nonessentials – are to be herded onto these feedlots, where we will be obliged to be obliging, else no more “corn” for us. The essentials want to be able to partner with a handful of big corporations who will employ everyone who is still allowed to work and sell everything we’re still allowed to buy.
When there are no alternatives, there are no options.
When you can work for yourself or work for someone who owns the business you work for, you are much less under the thrall of a pyramidal hierarchy that mandates things which can be appealed – or avoided.
When there is no work except corporate work, the corporations own you. And then the coercive sector controls you . . . via the corporations. Neat, sweet and not petite.
It is all very essential – and has nothing to do with “stopping the spread.” If it did, then everything would be closed, everyone “locked down.”
If, in fact, we are “all in this together.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
LIVE
COVID-19 Q&A with A&V Livestream 12/30/20
•Started streaming 58 minutes ago
Vincent Racaniello
Virologists Amy Rosenfeld and Vincent Racaniello answer your COVID-19 questions on this livestream 12/30/20
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Llama blood may pack a blow against COVID, military researchers say
Cormac the llama, along with others of his kind, produces tiny antibodies that can reach where larger antibodies cannot.
justthenews.com
Llama blood may pack a blow against COVID, military researchers say
Cormac the llama, along with others of his kind, produces tiny antibodies that can reach where larger antibodies cannot.
Image
Cormac the llama
(Courtesy Triple J Farms)
By Susan Katz Keating
Updated: December 29, 2020 - 11:18pm
Military health system scientists may have found a promising lead on COVID-19 antibody treatment — lurking within the blood of a llama named Cormac.
Cormac, along with others of his kind, produces what researchers describe as "nanobodies," otherwise known as miniature antibodies that can reach where larger antibodies cannot. The tiny proteins appear to protect against COVID-19, and can be used in liquid or aerosol form to protect human lungs, scientists say.
"We hope that these anti-COVID-19 nanobodies may be highly effective and versatile in combating the coronavirus pandemic," said Dr. David Brody, who helped lead the study for the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. The organization he works for is a federal health sciences university and research facility within the Military Health System.
Animals in the camelid family — camels, alpacas, and llamas — produce nanobody proteins within their immune systems, the researchers said. The proteins weigh about one-tenth what most human antibodies weigh. Portions of the nanobodies work to repel microscopic invaders such as viruses and bacteria.
When the pandemic began, scientists at a number of facilities ramped up their efforts to decode the curative properties of llama blood. Among them were Brody and his USU teammate, Thomas J. "T.J." Esparza.
"For years, T.J. and I had been testing out how to use nanobodies to improve brain imaging," Brody said. "When the pandemic broke, we thought this is a once in a lifetime, all-hands-on-deck situation, and joined the fight."
The USU team found that Cormac produced one particular nanobody that is particularly helpful in fighting what are called "spike proteins" that enable infections to take hold.
The wooly, tan-colored Cormac shares virus-fighting abilities with others in an ad hoc herd.
In Texas, a brown llama named Winter has donated blood to scientists at the University of Texas. Scientists there work with llama antibodies in order to develop therapeutics, researcher Daniel Wrapp told Texas Monthly.
"With a vaccine, you give a person something that looks like the virus, so they raise their own antibodies against it," Wrapp said. "With a therapeutic, you just administer the antibodies directly. The goal with both a vaccine or a therapeutic is to get antibodies that recognize the virus and neutralize it into a person's bloodstream."
A black llama named Wally similarly has helped scientists at the University of Pittsburgh.
Experimenting with llama blood is not new to the pandemic. Some scientists, noting that such research requires access to llamas, have looked for other ways to obtain camelid antibodies. Researchers two years ago at the University of California produced the antibodies from specially engineered yeast.
The USU team, meanwhile, has shown that Cormac's nanobodies were effective when sprayed through a nebulizer onto a petri dish.
"One of the exciting things about nanobodies is that, unlike most regular antibodies, they can be aerosolized and inhaled to coat the lungs and airways," Brody said. "This is promising in that it could potentially be used to protect the lungs from infections."
Researchers have not said if nor when the llama therapeutics would be available to the public.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Gavin Newsom Announces New UK Strain of Coronavirus Found in California
Gavin Newsom said the new, more easily transmissible strain of coronavirus found recently in the UK had been found in California.
www.breitbart.com
Gavin Newsom Announces New UK Strain of Coronavirus Found in California
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JOEL B. POLLAK30 Dec 2020374
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that the new, more easily transmissible strain of coronavirus found recently in the United Kingdom had also been discovered in California.
Newsom made the announcement during a discussion on Facebook Live with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Fauci explained that while the new strain seemed to bind more easily to target cells, there was “no indication at all that it increases the virulence” of the disease, meaning that it would not make patients sicker or more susceptible to dying.
Moreover, he said, it seemed that the new strain would not re-infect people who had already had the old strain, and was not resistant to the vaccines that are being rolled out across the U.S.
The first known case of the new coronavirus strain was announced Tuesday in Colorado.
California is going through an intense surge in COVID-19 cases, and has reached “zero” ICU capacity, as hospitals across the state implement “surge” capacity to expand their ability to take in coronavirus patients.
Newsom recently extended a stay-at-home order for Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, which will last into mid-January if it not canceled.
Fauci told Newsom that the politicization of the coronavirus was worse than anything he had experienced in his career, and had complicated efforts to take public health measures against its spread.
He specifically criticized the federalist structure of the U.S., saying that some states had opened up their economies again in defiance of federal guidelines.
Fauci served on President Donald Trump’s coronavirus team and has accepted a similar role in President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Trust science? Fauci's admission he misled public puts scrutiny on Biden alliance
Fauci's "apparent willingness to mislead the public in support of his preferred policy objective should disqualify him from providing public policy advice in any official capacity," said Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University.
justthenews.com
Trust science? Fauci's admission he misled public puts scrutiny on Biden alliance
Fauci's "apparent willingness to mislead the public in support of his preferred policy objective should disqualify him from providing public policy advice in any official capacity," said Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University.
By Carrie Sheffield
Updated: December 29, 2020 - 8:32am
Joe Biden's decision to hold over Dr. Anthony Fauci in his administration as his chief medical advisor as a symbol of his commitment to "trust science" is coming under new scrutiny following Fauci's recent admission that he altered public scientific estimates based on opinion polls.
In a Christmas Eve interview with the New York Times, Fauci acknowledged he had offered a lower estimate of the level of herd immunity necessary to stop the COVID-19 pandemic because he thought Americans would be demoralized by his true thoughts on the issue.
Fauci recently raised his estimate on the herd immunity threshold "partly based on new science," the newspaper reported, "and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks."
Fauci had previously admitted that in the spring, during the early phase of the pandemic, he misled the public about the efficacy of face masks in limiting the spread of COVID-19.
Fauci's admission that he tailored his herd immunity threshold estimate to PR needs drew the ire of Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University. Bhattacharya is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for replacing "devastating" coronavirus lockdown policies with a new, less restrictive strategy.
"Dr. Fauci's apparent willingness to mislead the public in support of his preferred policy objective should disqualify him from providing public policy advice in any official capacity," Bhattacharya told Just the News on Monday. "Dr. Fauci's advice throughout the epidemic has ignored the science regarding the devastating physical and psychological harms of the lockdowns, to which he seems utterly blind. For a policy advisor, science should inform policy preference, not the other way around."
Dr. Harvey Risch, professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale University, said Monday that Fauci seems to have ignored the acquired immunity of the 20 million Americans who have tested positive for COVID-19, as well as the estimated 125 million Americans who have had the infection asymptomatically.
"I don't believe that Fauci has ever provided unvarnished, truthful advice," Risch told Just the News. "What he really meant is that 90% of the population needs to be immune for the pandemic to more-or-less go away completely. But this is not what he said."
"Also, you may notice that the WHO removed the fact that having the infection provides immunity," Risch continued, "now bizarrely stating that immunity only occurs from vaccination. You can guess why WHO (and Dr. Fauci) would manipulate public opinion against scientific knowledge."
Fauci's office at the National Institutes of Health did not respond to request for comment from Just the News.
With no vaccination, the pandemic "will be largely over by spring in the Upper Midwest and by summer in a large part of the U.S., with the states that have had the strongest lockdowns continuing their epidemics the longest, perhaps into the fall," Risch said. "Vaccination may help to make this earlier. The issue is mortality not case counts. Everyone is focused on case counts but that is wrong. Whether by natural immunity or vaccination, we need people to become immune, that is what ends the pandemic."
Fauci's New York Times interview drew a scathing rejoinder from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who tweeted: "Almost everything Fauci has said this year has been exaggerated, misleading, and/or flat-out wrong. He is not to be trusted under any circumstances. Americans must reject his doctrine of destruction before his fantasies lead to the end of our freedoms."
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Scientists: Common sleep aid could be used to help prevent or treat COVID-19
"People who take melatonin are nearly 28% less likely to test positive for COVID"
justthenews.com
Scientists: Common sleep aid could be used to help prevent or treat COVID-19
"People who take melatonin are nearly 28% less likely to test positive for COVID"
By Joseph Curl
Updated: December 30, 2020 - 6:16pm
Researchers at the renowned Cleveland Clinic say melatonin, a dietary supplement that is used as a sleep aid for people suffering from insomnia, could be employed to help prevent or treat COVID-19.
Melatonin was associated with a nearly 30% reduction in the likelihood of contracting the virus, the scientists said in research published in the journal PLOS Biology, KIRO-TV reported.
"Lead researcher Dr. Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D., and his team used artificial intelligence to comb through a COVID-19 registry at the Cleveland Clinic, which included nearly 27,000 people. They found people who take melatonin are nearly 28% less likely to test positive for COVID," the station reported.
The study also found melatonin usage "is associated with a 52% reduced likelihood of a positive laboratory test result for SARS-CoV-2 in African Americans.”
The researchers, though, said more studies are needed to determine if the over-the-counter supplement would be effective.
“It is very important to note these findings do not suggest people should start to take melatonin without consulting their physician,” Cheng said in a statement, WebMD reported.
“Large-scale observational studies and randomized controlled trials are critical to validate the clinical benefit of melatonin for patients with COVID-19,” said Cheng, who works in the Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute. “But we are excited about the associations put forth in this study and the opportunity to further explore them.”
The study was published last month, but an article in The Atlantic brought awareness of its findings. The magazine said eight clinical trials are currently underway around the world to see if the melatonin findings can be confirmed.
Another study conducted by researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center found that when patients were given melatonin after getting intubated, they had better outcomes.
“Melatonin can also help us improve our human body, what we call tolerance, to help us reduce the tissue or organ damage induced by COVID infection,” Cheng said.
In addition, University of Toronto researchers found that melatonin can be used to increase the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines, according to News-Medical.net.
When President Trump contracted COVID-19 in October, he received melatonin as part of his treatment, along with zinc, vitamin D, famotidine and aspirin. He was also treated with experimental polyclonal antibodies, the antiviral drug remdesivir and the steroid dexamethasone.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Travelers may need a COVID vaccine passport to travel in 2021
Credentials could also be required to enter concert venues, stadiums, movie theaters, offices.
justthenews.com
Travelers may need a COVID vaccine passport to travel in 2021
Credentials could also be required to enter concert venues, stadiums, movie theaters, offices.
By Joseph Curl
Updated: December 30, 2020 - 5:38pm
Travelers may need to show proof that they have taken the COVID-19 vaccine in order to travel in 2021.
"Several companies and technology groups have begun developing smartphone apps or systems for individuals to upload details of their COVID-19 tests and vaccinations, creating digital credentials that could be shown in order to enter concert venues, stadiums, movie theaters, offices, or even countries," CBS-Miami reported.
"The Common Trust Network, an initiative by Geneva-based nonprofit The Commons Project and the World Economic Forum, has partnered with several airlines including Cathay Pacific, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, as well as hundreds of health systems across the United States and the government of Aruba," the station reported.
Thomas Crampton, chief marketing and communications officer for The Commons Project, told CNN Business that a simple and easily transferable set of credentials, or a "digital yellow card," could be the answer.
Last week, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said "immunity passports" for Americans to prove they have taken the COVID-19 vaccine might help the country get "back to a new normal."
Dr. Thomas Frieden told CBS that "done right, immunity passports could be one of a series of things that could help us get to a new normal as soon as possible."
"We don’t know if this is going to happen, but fundamentally we're seeing companies and countries giving people a certificate of vaccination," he said. "The risk of this is it will make inequality even worse. If people have both susceptibility to the virus and less access to the vaccine, they’ll have even more problems."
Frieden, who served as director of the CDC from 2009 to 2017, said for the passports to work, there would need to be "absolute privacy," adding that the vaccine should be "absolutely opt in."
"Fundamentally, we're facing a very difficult few weeks and few months. There's not enough vaccine yet and we’re seeing the highest levels of cases, hospitalizations and deaths the U.S. has since the start of this pandemic," he said.
In an op-ed published this week in The Washington Post, Frieden and co-author Aaron Schwid, a human rights lawyer, wrote: "As more and more people are vaccinated, it's time to carefully design a system of 'immunity passports.'"
"These passports would serve as a form of proof of immunity, allowing people who have immunity to engage in some activities others cannot. That could make it possible to ratchet down protective measures, such as stay-at-home orders and business closures, without increasing health risks," they wrote.
If enacted, businesses and other sites like sports arenas and music venues "could finally reopen."
"Visitors could return more freely to nursing homes and prisons. International travel could increase. As universal vaccination becomes available, passports will help everyone, not just the lucky few, move from fear to freedom," they wrote.
Last month, a top travel industry association said it was in the final stages of developing a digital passport for international travelers so they can prove they've been vaccinated for COVID-19.
The International Air Transport Association said that the passport could be key to saving the tourism industry.
"Testing is the first key to enable international travel without quarantine measures," association CEO Alexandre de Juniac said in a statement obtained by The Hill. "The second key is the global information infrastructure needed to securely manage, share and verify test data matched with traveler identities in compliance with border control requirements."
For travelers who receive the vaccine – when one becomes available – proof will be linked to their official passports. While no country now requires such proof, industry experts say that's likely coming.
Airlines for America, a trade association that represents major carriers, also has not declared that flyers will need proof of a vaccine before flying, saying U.S. airlines are "committed to restoring service in a manner that prioritizes the safety and wellbeing of our passengers and employees."
But CEO Alan Joyce of Qantas Airlines, an Australian carrier, said this month that proof will become standard practice around the world.
"We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say for international travelers that we will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft," Joyce told The New York Times.
The Australian government has said that coronavirus vaccines will be "as mandatory as you can possibly make it."
Griz3752
Retired, practising Curmudgeon
WELL & TRULY SAID!
I think we had the same classes.
Part of our current issue is (in my view) the people behind the mike, giving the advice, seldom do it in plain, unequivocating language; they persist in talking about 'the data', 'trends' & 'likelihoods'. Many degreed professional never grasp how to communicate clearly to those who don't have PHDs or use bland, Gov-speak normally.
I'm not entirely sure what COVID-19 is, but something is killing people and historically it has been proven avoiding groups in general and practising good sanitation & hygiene is going to help keep me healthy, longer in such a situation.
155 arty
Veteran Member
My middle child was diagnosed pos.with the rona a week ago ... only effects were loss of smell and partly taste ...other than that nothing goes back to work this Monday...6 month old and her hubby have nothing ,husband came back negative and they have slept in the same bed the entire time ...and my daughter is still breast feeding the 6 month old !
marsh
On TB every waking moment
28:59 min
Mayor RESIGNS In Fear As Backlash ERUPTS Over COVID Lockdown, America Near Full REVOLT Over Lockdown
•Dec 31, 2020
Tim Pool
Mayor RESIGNS In Fear As Backlash ERUPTS Over COVID Lockdown, America Near Full REVOLT Over Lockdown. Democrats locked down their states destroying the economy and now people are becoming angry and desperate.