CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

France, Italy Swept By Mass Protests Against COVID Health Pass

France saw its largest protests yet against the country's health pass, as thousands swept across major Italian town demanding an end to the infamous green pass.

On Saturday, Protesters took to the streets in France and Italy in opposition to COVID rules that they say infringe on their civil liberties but which officials argue are needed to curb the coronavirus pandemic. The protests come as European countries double down on efforts to get wide portions of their populations vaccinated in the face of the spreading delta variant — and in a bid to avoid further lockdowns.



Demonstrations against France's health pass and mandatory vaccines for health care workers entered their fourth weekend, with Saturday seeing the largest rally yet, Deutsche Welle reported. An estimated 237,000 people turned out nationwide, according to the Interior Ministry. The figure exceeds the attendance a week ago, which saw 204,000 protesters.

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While 17,000 people turned out in Paris, much of the focus was in southern France — where between 10,000 and 20,000 people marched in Nice alone. In contrast to prior weekends, the demonstrations were largely peaceful. The more major scuffles broke out between protesters and police in Lyon, France's third-largest city.


The city of Bayonne and other areas of southern France saw larger numbers of protesters.

The protests come on the heels of a Constructional Council ruling on Thursday.

The court approved the government's plan for the health pass and vaccine requirements for workers in hospitals in nursing homes. France is currently in the grips of a fourth wave of coronavirus infections. The county has seen a boost in vaccinations since French President Emmanuel Macron announced the health pass in July. Some two-thirds of the French population eligible for the jab have received one dose, while 55% are fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, protests also took place in several Italian cities over the weekend against against the implementation of the country's Green Pass, which is now required for teachers and for people to attend indoor events.


One of the posters at the ‘No Vax’ movement demonstration in central Rome on August 7th, 2021. Photo AFP

Thousands gathered in Piazza del Popolo in central Rome shouting “No Green Pass!” and “Freedom!”.


Members of the 'No Vax' movement take part in a demonstration against the introduction of a mandatory green pass at the Piazza del Popolo in central Rome on August 7th, 2021. Photo AFP

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Thousands more marched in Milan, with some comparing themselves to holocaust victims by wearing Star of David badges with the words “not vaccinated”, news agency ANSA reported.

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In Turin, angry citizens marched in front of the editorial offices of Italy's biggest dailies "La Repubblica" and "La Stampa" shouting "You are shit! Sold out!"

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Major protests also broke out in Florence...

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... and Padua

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.10 min

Protesters from the “No Vax” movement also gathered in Naples, objecting in particular to vaccinations for children, shouting “Hands off the children” and “Shame! Shame!”.

The health pass in France and the Green Pass in Italy are both digital certificates that provide proof of a person's coronavirus status. They contain data on whether the person is vaccinated against COVID-19, has recently tested negative, or has recovered from the virus.

The pass is already required in France for those who want to go to the movie theater or attend other major events. Starting on Monday, it will also be required for those who want to visit bars and restaurants, or for those traveling on long-distance trains or on airplanes.

In Italy, the Green Pass became compulsory in Italy on Friday and is required to enter museums, sports venues, cinemas and for indoor dining. School teachers, university staff and university students are also required to show the pass.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

UN Special Rapporteur On Torture: "Authorities Are Viewing Their Own People As An Enemy"

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer responded to police brutality dished out to anti-lockdown protesters in Germany last weekend by warning, “Authorities are increasingly viewing their own people as an enemy.”



As we highlighted earlier in the week, Melzer, a professor of international law, made a request for eyewitnesses after footage emerged of numerous examples of people being manhandled and beaten by police in Berlin merely for expressing their right to assemble.

One clip showed a female anti-lockdown protester in Berlin being grabbed by the throat and brutally thrown to the ground by riot police, while another showed a young boy being struck in the face as he tried to come to the aid of his mother.

The response to Melzer’s request was overwhelming, with over a hundred reports of violence flooding in, leaving him with the task of “calling for clarification as well as punishment and reparation for rule violations,” reports Berliner Zeitung.

The professor says there is clearly enough evidence “for an official intervention on my part with the federal government.”

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1421905660686573577

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1421905660686573577
.28 min

However, it was Melzer’s comments on the wider perspective of the crackdown that stirred the most interest.

After seeing similar scenes during anti-lockdown protests in European cities across the continent, as well as “police operations in demonstrations worldwide,” Melzer came to a sobering conclusion.

“Something fundamental is going wrong. In all regions of the world, the authorities are apparently increasingly viewing their own people as an enemy,” he stated.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1421878398503247876

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1421878398503247876
.06 min

Melzer went on to assert that it is totally unethical for police to engage in violence against the citizenry unless it is in clear self-defense.

“It is absolutely unacceptable when the police take action against defenseless demonstrators because of mere administrative offenses or civil disobedience with sometimes life-threatening violence,” he said.

The professor also noted the utter stupidity of police inflicting violence on demonstrators while claiming to do so in the name of “health protection.”

“If the police do not clearly communicate that they see themselves as friends and helpers, but rather treat their own population as an enemy, then a dangerous spiral has been set in motion: namely that the next thing is that the population will also regard the police as an enemy,” concluded Melzer.

As we previously highlighted, while authorities continue to direct police to meter out violence against protesters, Germany’s top newspaper recently profusely apologized for its fearmongering coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

[marsh]

Biden warns COVID 'knows no boundaries' as COVID+ migrants are released at southern border

The Department of Homeland Secretary currently lacks a formal policy that requires testing of migrants before they are released to U.S. localities.

justthenews.com

Biden warns COVID 'knows no boundaries' as COVID+ migrants are released at southern border

The Department of Homeland Secretary currently lacks a formal policy that requires testing of migrants before they are released to U.S. localities.

Updated: August 7, 2021 - 11:05pm

As concern over the COVID-19 Delta variant rises, President Biden is warning that the virus "knows no boundaries," even as thousands of migrants pour across the U.S.-Mexico border without a testing or vaccination system in place.

About 50,000 migrants caught at the border have reportedly been released into U.S. communities, and some have tested positive for COVID-19. The city of McAllen, Texas has discovered thousands of positive cases among migrants that U.S. authorities have released to local officials.

"Since mid-February of 2021 there have been over 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 positive immigrants released into the City of McAllen by CBP, including over 1,500 new cases in the past seven days," read a city document.

Overall, more than 1 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border between October 2020 and June 2021.

"The virus knows no boundaries," Biden said at the White House this week in discussing his administration's vaccination efforts. "You can't build a wall high enough to keep it out. There is no wall high enough or ocean wide enough to keep us safe from a vaccination in other — from the COVID-19 in other countries.

"In fact, just like the original virus that caused COVID-19, the Delta variant came from abroad. As long as the virus continue to rage outside the United States, potentially more dangerous variants could arrive at our shores again."

The Department of Homeland Security currently lacks a formal policy that requires testing of migrants before they are released to U.S. localities.

To date, the Biden Administration has only vaccinated a "limited number" of migrants whom authorities have stopped at the border before they are released, according to Reuters. The administration might adopt a policy that requires vaccinating migrants apprehended at the border but a formal policy has not been publicly announced.

According to a report published on Wednesday, the Biden Administration is also considering a vaccination requirement for foreign visitors entering the U.S. from other countries.

Just the News reached out to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ask if the U.S. government is going to require proof of vaccination for foreign travelers visiting the U.S.

"International travel poses additional risks, and even fully vaccinated travelers are at increased risk for getting and possibly spreading new COVID-19 variants," a CDC spokesperson said in response. "CDC recommends delaying international travel until you are fully vaccinated.

"All air passengers coming to the United States, including U.S. citizens and fully vaccinated people, are required to have a negative COVID-19 test result no more than 3 days before travel or documentation of recovery from COVID-19 in the past 3 months before they board a flight to the United States."

 

[marsh]

Inventor of COVID vaccine technology says Biden vaccine policy will 'cause more harm than good'

Universal vaccination strategy is "bad science and badly needs a reboot."

justthenews.com

Inventor of COVID vaccine technology says Biden vaccine policy will 'cause more harm than good'

Universal vaccination strategy is "bad science and badly needs a reboot."
Updated: August 7, 2021 - 10:53pm

The inventor of the basic technology used to develop the COVID-19 vaccines is warning that the Biden administration's aggressive universal vaccination policy is "bad science" that may very well "cause more harm than good."

Robert Malone, an immunologist and epidemiologist who identifies himself as the inventor of "the core mRNA technology being used by Pfizer and Moderna to produce their vaccines," wrote in the Washington Times this week that the Biden administration's "strategy to universally vaccinate in the middle of the pandemic is bad science and badly needs a reboot."

Malone, who coauthored the op-ed with former Trump Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator Peter Navarro, claimed that Biden's universal vaccination/herd immunity approach to ending the pandemic is "flawed," in part because "the virus is now so deeply embedded in the world population that, unlike polio and smallpox, eradication is unachievable."

Malone also argued that the vaccines, "while good at preventing severe disease and death ... only reduce, not eliminate, the risk of infection, replication, and transmission," and that they carry the risk of "by no means trivial" side effects, including "serious cardiac and thrombotic conditions, menstrual cycle disruptions, Bell's Palsy, Guillain Barre syndrome, and anaphylaxis."

Virologists, Malone claimed, also fear potential further side effects, including "existential reproductive risks," as well as "various forms of disease enhancement, i.e., the vaccines can make people more vulnerable to reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 or reactivation of latent viral infections and associated diseases such as shingles."

The vaccines also present the risk of an "arms race," warned Malone, arguing "the more people you vaccinate, the greater the number of vaccine-resistant mutations you are likely to get, the less durable the vaccines will become, ever more powerful vaccines will have to be developed, and individuals will be exposed to more and more risk."

"We are simply saying that just because you have a big vaccine hammer, it is not necessarily wise to use it for every nail," the authors write. "The American people deserve better than a universal vaccination strategy under the flag of bad science and enforced through authoritarian measures."

 

[marsh]

The Vaccinated burn health passports in protest…

In Italy the Vaccinated burn their green pass to protest against health passports.

citizenfreepress.com

[Italy] The Vaccinated burn health passports in protest…
Posted by Kane on August 8, 2021 4:07 pm

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1423371634220675072

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In Italy the Vaccinated burn their green pass to protest against health passports.

 

[marsh]

Texas Borderland Doctor States the Obvious: The COVID Surge Is Coming From Biden's 'Grossly Irresponsible' Border Policies

pjmedia.com

Texas Borderland Doctor States the Obvious: The COVID Surge Is Coming From Biden's 'Grossly Irresponsible' Border Policies

BY BRYAN PRESTON AUG 08, 2021 11:30 AM ET

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The mainstream media, (other than the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, notably) which isn’t reporting on the border much these days, says in unison that the current surge in COVID cases is not linked to the surge in illegal border crossings.

How they can say that with such confidence when they’re not reporting on the border and aren’t tracing issues such as the “COVID hotels” is a bit of a non-mystery. They’re saying these things because they don’t want to report the possibility, or is it probability, that Biden’s border policies are putting Americans all over the country in grave danger from COVID. They don’t want to call out New York Democrats such as Bill de Blasio for instituting a latter-day Jim Crow regime in the name of COVID and they don’t want to blame Joe Biden for letting Americans get sick and die.

One border doctor is speaking out, Fox News reports.

Dr. Antonio Falcon, a highly regarded physician in the border town of Rio Grande City, Texas told Fox News that his practice has seen a significant “uptick in cases in the last couple of weeks.” Falcon’s region reported a 900% increase in the number of illegal detainees who tested positive for COVID-19 last month.

Coincidence? He thinks not.

“The uptick in cases locally is certainly linked to the number of those coming across the border who have already contracted the virus,” Falcon said.

The Texas border city of McAllen, just 30 miles south of Rio Grande, reported that more than 7,000 COVID-positive migrants have been released into the city since February, and more than 1,500 in the past week.

How could this, the COVID hotels, and the Biden administration’s policies of not quarantining COVID+ illegals plus shipping them around the country without telling state or local authorities not be at least partly causing the surge in COVID cases? It defies logic. COVID is a highly contagious virus, we’re told. We have in this issue a population that’s carrying the virus and not being quarantined.

What’s the logic at work in insisting that they’re not spreading COVID? We live in a time when logic will get you censored by the masters of social media, who all work in lockstep with the leftist Democrats.

Those Democrats have allowed/encouraged over 1 million (known) people to enter the United States illegally in just the first six months of Biden’s term. That’s more people than currently live in Austin, Texas, and it would be the nation’s 10th largest city. It’s more than the entire population of several whole states.

Currently, the tenth largest city is San Jose, Calif., with a population of 1.03 million.

To date, the number is also greater than each of the populations of Wyoming (581,075), Vermont (623,251), Alaska (724,357), North Dakota (770,026), South Dakota (896,581), Delaware (990,334), Rhode Island (1,061,509), Montana (1,085,004) and the District of Columbia (714,153).

If the numbers continue at the current rate, those crossing the southern border illegally will total close to the population of the fourth largest city of Houston, with a population of 2.3 million, a population greater than 15 states and the District of Columbia.

These numbers exclude the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 who reportedly evade capture every month.

That’s probably a low estimate.

Doctor Falcon, who can probably expect to be canceled for speaking obvious truths, says Biden isn’t following the science.

“That is absolutely not the way to handle such an infectious disease of this scope, especially one that’s so easily transmittable with the new variant,” Falcon said.

Right?

You don’t do what Biden is doing with regard to the border if you really have Americans’ health and interests at heart. If Biden had any interest in upholding his oath of office to defend the country, he would not be doing what he is doing on the border.

And you certainly don’t mull a crackdown on travel from Europe even for the vaccinated in the name of science while leaving the border as porous as he has.

The U.S. is reportedly working on a plan that will allow foreign travelers to enter the country only if they are fully vaccinated.

The path forward will eventually include easing travel restrictions that ban many countries’ residents from traveling to the U.S., a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday.

The official said that interagency groups are developing a “new system ready for when we can reopen travel,” which will include “a phased approach that over time will mean, with limited exceptions, that foreign nationals traveling to the United States (from all countries) need to be fully vaccinated.”

Politico frames that positively, but the fact is, requiring vaccines in order to travel here legally is an escalation when compared to the southern border and Biden’s open COVID hotels.

Biden’s policies endanger Texas border communities, the entire state, and the entire country. This is simply logical. When COVID+ migrants are allowed to leave the hotels where the administration has been stashing them and go to popular burger joints right next to a highway and in the middle of towns, you have the makings of a super spreader event. To deny that possibility is to deny the science of the transmissibility of the coronavirus.

Or does the virus have sentient awareness that it’s not supposed to make Democrats and the media look like liars?

“It’s grossly irresponsible for anyone…to allow somebody with COVID into the community knowing good and well the situation that we’re living under right now,” Falcon responded.
Asked whether he recommends that the administration take on more aggressive measures to sequester COVID-positive migrants, Falcon answered plainly, “I would recommend that they do not allow them to cross unless it’s done legally, and in the way that we already have laws that dictate the immigration processes.”

Right? But grossly irresponsible is a way of life for the Biden government.

 

[155 arty]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

UN Special Rapporteur On Torture: "Authorities Are Viewing Their Own People As An Enemy"

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer responded to police brutality dished out to anti-lockdown protesters in Germany last weekend by warning, “Authorities are increasingly viewing their own people as an enemy.”



As we highlighted earlier in the week, Melzer, a professor of international law, made a request for eyewitnesses after footage emerged of numerous examples of people being manhandled and beaten by police in Berlin merely for expressing their right to assemble.

One clip showed a female anti-lockdown protester in Berlin being grabbed by the throat and brutally thrown to the ground by riot police, while another showed a young boy being struck in the face as he tried to come to the aid of his mother.

The response to Melzer’s request was overwhelming, with over a hundred reports of violence flooding in, leaving him with the task of “calling for clarification as well as punishment and reparation for rule violations,” reports Berliner Zeitung.

The professor says there is clearly enough evidence “for an official intervention on my part with the federal government.”

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1421905660686573577

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1421905660686573577
.28 min

However, it was Melzer’s comments on the wider perspective of the crackdown that stirred the most interest.

After seeing similar scenes during anti-lockdown protests in European cities across the continent, as well as “police operations in demonstrations worldwide,” Melzer came to a sobering conclusion.

“Something fundamental is going wrong. In all regions of the world, the authorities are apparently increasingly viewing their own people as an enemy,” he stated.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1421878398503247876

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1421878398503247876
.06 min

Melzer went on to assert that it is totally unethical for police to engage in violence against the citizenry unless it is in clear self-defense.

“It is absolutely unacceptable when the police take action against defenseless demonstrators because of mere administrative offenses or civil disobedience with sometimes life-threatening violence,” he said.

The professor also noted the utter stupidity of police inflicting violence on demonstrators while claiming to do so in the name of “health protection.”

“If the police do not clearly communicate that they see themselves as friends and helpers, but rather treat their own population as an enemy, then a dangerous spiral has been set in motion: namely that the next thing is that the population will also regard the police as an enemy,” concluded Melzer.

As we previously highlighted, while authorities continue to direct police to meter out violence against protesters, Germany’s top newspaper recently profusely apologized for its fearmongering coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And the people see the police state for what is also ...you want woke? Well they are awake now!

 

[155 arty]

Texas Borderland Doctor States the Obvious: The COVID Surge Is Coming From Biden's 'Grossly Irresponsible' Border Policies

pjmedia.com

Texas Borderland Doctor States the Obvious: The COVID Surge Is Coming From Biden's 'Grossly Irresponsible' Border Policies

BY BRYAN PRESTON AUG 08, 2021 11:30 AM ET

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The mainstream media, (other than the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, notably) which isn’t reporting on the border much these days, says in unison that the current surge in COVID cases is not linked to the surge in illegal border crossings.

How they can say that with such confidence when they’re not reporting on the border and aren’t tracing issues such as the “COVID hotels” is a bit of a non-mystery. They’re saying these things because they don’t want to report the possibility, or is it probability, that Biden’s border policies are putting Americans all over the country in grave danger from COVID. They don’t want to call out New York Democrats such as Bill de Blasio for instituting a latter-day Jim Crow regime in the name of COVID and they don’t want to blame Joe Biden for letting Americans get sick and die.

One border doctor is speaking out, Fox News reports.




How could this, the COVID hotels, and the Biden administration’s policies of not quarantining COVID+ illegals plus shipping them around the country without telling state or local authorities not be at least partly causing the surge in COVID cases? It defies logic. COVID is a highly contagious virus, we’re told. We have in this issue a population that’s carrying the virus and not being quarantined.

What’s the logic at work in insisting that they’re not spreading COVID? We live in a time when logic will get you censored by the masters of social media, who all work in lockstep with the leftist Democrats.

Those Democrats have allowed/encouraged over 1 million (known) people to enter the United States illegally in just the first six months of Biden’s term. That’s more people than currently live in Austin, Texas, and it would be the nation’s 10th largest city. It’s more than the entire population of several whole states.




That’s probably a low estimate.

Doctor Falcon, who can probably expect to be canceled for speaking obvious truths, says Biden isn’t following the science.

Right?

You don’t do what Biden is doing with regard to the border if you really have Americans’ health and interests at heart. If Biden had any interest in upholding his oath of office to defend the country, he would not be doing what he is doing on the border.

And you certainly don’t mull a crackdown on travel from Europe even for the vaccinated in the name of science while leaving the border as porous as he has.



Politico frames that positively, but the fact is, requiring vaccines in order to travel here legally is an escalation when compared to the southern border and Biden’s open COVID hotels.

Biden’s policies endanger Texas border communities, the entire state, and the entire country. This is simply logical. When COVID+ migrants are allowed to leave the hotels where the administration has been stashing them and go to popular burger joints right next to a highway and in the middle of towns, you have the makings of a super spreader event. To deny that possibility is to deny the science of the transmissibility of the coronavirus.

Or does the virus have sentient awareness that it’s not supposed to make Democrats and the media look like liars?



Right? But grossly irresponsible is a way of life for the Biden government.

No shit?

 

[marsh]

Fauci: Covid Booster Shots Coming Soon (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

It’s Sunday so Fauci is out on the fake news circuit spreading fear about the ‘ta’ variant.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Fauci: Covid Booster Shots Coming Soon (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila
Published August 8, 2021 at 7:50pm

It’s Sunday so Fauci is out on the fake news circuit spreading fear about the ‘Delta’ variant.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked Fauci if the Covid vaccines protect against the ‘Delta’ variant.

Fauci said ‘it’s complicated’ – of course it is.

Fauci said the vaccines are keeping people out of the hospital ‘for the most part’ – but Covid booster shots are coming soon.

“We don’t need boosters right now for otherwise healthy people who have been vaccinated but it’s entirely conceivable, if not likely, that we’re gonna at some time — what we do is you follow it in real time and when you get below a certain threshold, that triggers a recommendation for a booster,” Fauci said.

“We need to look at them in a different light. We would certainly be boosting those people before we boost the general population that’s been vaccinated, and we should be doing that reasonably soon,” he added.

VIDEO:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424388588305797123

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424388588305797123
8:09 min

Shut up, line up and take your shot.

Moderna announced last week that due to the new strains of the coronavirus they are recommending a third shot before winter.

And Fauci is helping Moderna push that message out to the masses.

What a surprise.

On Thursday Moderna also announced their COVID vaccine brought in more than $4 billion in second-quarter sales, helping to push the vaccine developer into a profit.

 

[marsh]

Johns Hopkins doctor: COVID vaccines ‘should not be required for all Americans’

Unvaccinated people "pose no public health threat to those already immune."

justthenews.com

Johns Hopkins doctor: COVID vaccines ‘should not be required for all Americans’

Unvaccinated people "pose no public health threat to those already immune."

Updated: August 7, 2021 - 9:49am

A professor at Johns Hopkins University is arguing that the one-size-fits-all approach to universal vaccination being pushed in the U.S. is misguided and based on bad science.

Marty Makary, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, said in U.S. News and World Reports that "the notion that we have to vaccinate every living, walking American – and eventually every newborn – in order to control the pandemic is based on the false assumption that the risk of dying from COVID-19 is equally distributed in the population."

"It's not," he continued. "We have always known that it's very hard for the virus to hurt someone who is young and healthy. And that's still the case. While vaccine requirements for health care workers make sense, we would never extend those requirements outside of health care for, say, the flu shot."

Makary further pointed out that at least some individuals have already acquired natural immunity to COVID.

"Requiring the vaccine in people who are already immune with natural immunity has no scientific support," he argued. "While vaccinating those people may be beneficial – and it's a reasonable hypothesis that vaccination may bolster the longevity of their immunity – to argue dogmatically that they must get vaccinated has zero clinical outcome data to back it."

"The goal of our pandemic response should be to reduce death, illness and disability," he said, "but instead what you're seeing is a movement that has morphed from being pro-vaccine to vaccine fanaticism at all costs."

 

[marsh]

COVID: 88% of people who receive 3rd shot feel similar or better than 2nd

Some 14 people out of more than 400,000 who were vaccinated with a third shot were diagnosed with the virus, among them two who were hospitalized.

www.jpost.com

COVID: 88% of people who receive 3rd shot feel similar or better than 2nd

Some 14 people out of more than 400,000 who were vaccinated with a third shot were diagnosed with the virus, among them two who were hospitalized.

By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN
AUGUST 8, 2021 22:20

Third vaccine doses being administered at the Amigdor Retirement Residence by Magen David Adom (MDA), Jerusalem, August 5, 2021.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)


Some 88% of people who received the third shot of the coronavirus vaccine said they felt “similar” or “better” compared to how they felt in the days following receiving the second vaccine, according to a new report by Clalit Health Services.

The health fund released a first report on the side effects of the third shot, based on data it captured from some 4,500 people over 60 out of the 240,000 of their members who received it.

Some 31% reported one or more side effects.

Some 24% reported pain at the site of injection, 6% swelling in the injection area and 1% swelling in the armpit.

Another 15% of respondents said they experienced at least one systemic side effect.

Some 9% reported fatigue, 6.1% feeling generally unwell, 4.3% headaches, 4.3% muscle pain, 2.1% joint pain, 1.4% fever, 0.7% vomiting or diarrhea and 0.1% rash.

Only 1% of respondents experienced any other symptoms: 0.4% reported difficulty breathing and 0.3% irregular heartbeat or chest pains.

Similarly, only 1% of respondents said they sought medical treatment due to one or more of these side effects.

“Although we do not yet have long-term research on the efficacy and safety of the third dose,” said Prof. Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer, “these findings continue to point to the benefit of immunization now, in addition to careful behavior by older adults and avoiding gatherings in closed spaces during these weeks.”

At the same time, a small number of older people who were vaccinated with a third COVID shot were infected with coronavirus, The Jerusalem Post has confirmed.

The report was first published by N12.

Some 14 people out of more than 400,000 who were vaccinated with a third shot were diagnosed with the virus, among them two who were hospitalized – one in mild condition and the other in moderate condition, according to the Health Ministry.

The individuals were infected seven or more days after receiving the vaccine. The majority were over age 60, but three were under 60 and had received a third dose because they were immunosuppressed.

But Cyrille Cohen, head of the immunology lab at Bar-Ilan University, told the Post that this number should not cause alarm.

“Approximately 15% of daily cases are people over the age of 60,” he explained.

“Last week, there was an average of 3,000 to 3,300 new cases per day, which means that around 3,500 people above the age of 60 got infected out of 1.6 million people this age – 0.2% of older people got infected.”

Fourteen out of 400,000 people is even less, roughly 0.0035%.

“I believe it is too early to say anything one way or the other regarding the efficacy of the third vaccine,” Cohen said. “We will have to wait a few more weeks.”

He added that the vaccines were never 100% effective. Even against the original Wuhan strain, the Pfizer vaccine was only 95% effective in preventing symptomatic infection. As such, “we should not be surprised right now.”

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjGPMm-lMQ
22:26 min

Delta Variant: Top 10 COVID Questions and How to Prepare

Aug 7, 2021


MedCram - Medical Lectures Explained CLEARLY

A coronavirus (COVID-19) variant has become dominant in the USA and Roger Seheult, MD of MedCram responds to 10 common questions including: 00:00 If someone is fully vaccinated or already had COVID, how worried should they be about the Delta Variant? 02:16 Should we be getting booster COVID vaccine doses? 05:36 Will there continue to be more variants, perhaps even variants more challenging that the Delta variant? 07:24 Is Long COVID occurring in the fully vaccinated? 08:26 When is this surge going to peak? Can we learn from other countries? 12:52 Are more children getting hospitalized with COVID 19 Delta variant? 14:03 What happens when school starts? 16:06 Have treatment and testing strategies changed for Delta variant? 19:45 What can we do to protect ourselves and our communities from the coronavirus Delta variant and future COVID mutations?

This video was recorded on August 6, 2021

Roger Seheult, MD is the co-founder and lead professor at https://www.medcram.com He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine and an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine.

LINKS / REFERENCES: COVID-19 Ventilator Course: https://www.medcram.com/courses/COVID... Lung Ultrasound in COVID 19: https://www.medcram.com/courses/Lung-... Delta Variant vs. Previous COVID-19 Infection | MedCram: https://youtu.be/5RWGh19yTXw Delta Variant vs. Vaccines | MedCram: https://youtu.be/hXV7i1yxu6c 10 Tips If You Get COVID-19 | MedCram: https://youtu.be/vN30emwcNS4 Worldometer: https://www.worldometers.info/coronav... Covid-19 Breakthrough Infections in Vaccinated Health Care Workers List of authors | NEJM: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/sc... WHO calls for halting COVID-19 vaccine boosters in favor of unvaccinated | https://www.reuters.com/business/heal... AMA Physicians Survey | https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center... Covid-19 Breakthrough Infections in Vaccinated Health Care Workers | NEJM: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056... Six Month Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine | MedRxiv: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.11... The key numbers from the CDC’s new assessment of the delta variant | WP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politi... All coronavirus updates are at MedCram.com (including more discussion on delta variant covid, delta plus variant COVID, COVID delta variant, and more).

 

[marsh]

WATCH: Dr. Scott Gottlieb calls for kids to wear N95-type masks in schools

twitchy.com

WATCH: Dr. Scott Gottlieb calls for kids to wear N95-type masks in schools

Posted at 6:10 pm on August 8, 2021 by Greg P.

A few days ago, former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb made some waves when he said that masks will have a “negligible impact” on the spread of the Delta COVID-19 variant and that the CDC’s mask guidance for vaccinated people doesn’t make much sense:



But this morning he was on “Face the Nation” where he said kids should absolutely be masked up in schools:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424413247734697987

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424413247734697987
1:33 min

And not only does he want kids masked up, but he also wants them in the higher quality N95-type masks:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424455834734522369

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424455834734522369
2:06 min

He suggested making these masks available to school districts like what Utah is doing:



But as NY Post contributor Karol Markowicz points out, this is ignoring what Europe did last year when they kept schools open without masks:



Sigh:



One thing we’re also seeing is they now want kids to change their masks multiple times per day:



How to buy KN95 masks for kids, according to experts pic.twitter.com/6BWMTNIxFq
— NYC Angry Mom (@angrybklynmom) August 8, 2021[/QUOTE]

Exit question: Who is going to pay for that?

 

[marsh]

Doctor who vaccinated 900 calls blood clots at capillary level an ‘absolutely new phenomenon’

by WorldTribune Staff, August 8, 2021 A Canadian doctor who has given the Covid vaccine to more than 900 patients has reported that 62 percent of those patients are positive for blood clots. Dr. Ch…

www.worldtribune.com

Doctor who vaccinated 900 calls blood clots at capillary level an ‘absolutely new phenomenon’

By World Tribune on August 8, 2021

by WorldTribune Staff, August 8, 2021

A Canadian doctor who has given the Covid vaccine to more than 900 patients has reported that 62 percent of those patients are positive for blood clots.

Dr. Charles Hoffe, who has been practicing medicine for 28 years in British Columbia, said he has given about 900 doses of the Moderna experimental mRNA vaccine and the core problem he has seen are microscopic clots in his patients’ tiniest capillaries.

Hoffe said the blood clots are “occurring at a capillary level. This has never before been seen. This is not a rare disease. This is an absolutely new phenomenon.”

The micro-clots, Hoffe said, are too small to show up on CT scans, MRI, and other conventional tests, such as angiograms. They can only be detected using the D-dimer blood test, he said.

Using the D-dimer test, Hoffe said he found that 62 of his patients injected with an mRNA shot were positive for clotting, Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn noted in an April 7 op-ed for the No Q Report.

The spike proteins in the vaccine become “part of the cell wall of your vascular endothelium,” the doctor said. “This means that these cells which line your blood vessels, which are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly now have these little spikey bits sticking out. … When the platelet comes through the capillary it suddenly hits all these Covid spikes and it becomes absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form to block that vessel.”

Hoffe added: “The blood clots we hear about which the media claim are very rare are the big blood clots which are the ones that cause strokes and show up on CT scans, MRI, etc. The clots I’m talking about are microscopic and too small to find on any scan. They can thus only be detected using the D-dimer test. … The most alarming part of this is that there are some parts of the body like the brain, spinal cord, heart and lungs which cannot re-generate. When those tissues are damaged by blood clots they are permanently damaged.”

Hoffe continued: “Blood vessels in the lungs are now blocked up. In turn, this causes the heart to need to work harder to try to keep up against a much greater resistance trying to get the blood through your lungs. This is called pulmonary artery hypertension – high blood pressure in the lungs because the blood simply cannot get through effectively. People with this condition usually die of heart failure within a few short years.”

In an April letter to the provincial Ministry of Health, Hoffe cited a high rate of serious side-effects from the vaccine he was administering: “It must be emphasized, that these people were not sick people, being treated for some devastating disease. These were previously healthy people, who were offered an experimental therapy, with unknown long-term side-effects, to protect them against an illness that has the same mortality rate as the flu. Sadly, their lives have now been ruined.”

In a June report, Dr. Peter McCullough noted: “So, this is a very different type of blood clotting that we would see with major blood clots in the arteries and veins. For instance, blood clots involved in stroke and heart attack.”

McCullough added: “Blood clots involved in major blood vessels in the legs. This was a different type of clotting and in fact the Italians courageously did some autopsies and found micro blood clots in the lungs. And so, we understood in the end, the reason why the lungs fail is not because the virus is there. It is because micro blood clots are there. … When People can’t breathe, the problem is micro-blood clotting in the lungs. … The spicule on the ball of the virus itself which damages blood vessels that causes blood clotting.”

McCullough has also openly stated that none of the Covid vaccines are safe for most people at little risk from the virus.

Hirschhorn noted that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in July confirmed 27 cases of vaccine-related blood clotting in Canadians who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine, with five deaths among those cases.

A Yale University report on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine reported 6 of 28 deaths following vaccine-related blood clotting.

“Also noted was that these were a particularly rare and dangerous blood clot in the brain, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), because it appears in the brain’s venous sinuses Also noted that there were abnormally low platelet levels in their blood, an unusual situation also found for those impacted by the AstraZeneca vaccine,” Hirschhorn noted.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Old vaccine for tuberculosis may help protect older people against COVID-19

A team of researchers from the CMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis and the ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology, both in India, has found evidence suggesting that an old vaccine used to reduce the threat of tuberculosis may give older people some protection against COVID-19...

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)

Old vaccine for tuberculosis may help protect older people against COVID-19
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress
August 5, 2021

A team of researchers from the CMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis and the ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology, both in India, has found evidence suggesting that an old vaccine used to reduce the threat of tuberculosis may give older people some protection against COVID-19. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine as a possible preventive measure for older people. Valerie Koeken with Radboud University Medical Center has published a Focus piece in the same journal issue explaining why inflammation is more of a concern with older people and outlining the work by the team in India.

As Koeken notes, as people grow older, they tend to develop low-grade, chronic inflammation, which makes them more susceptible to many types of diseases—it can also increase symptoms from diseases such as COVID-19, which explains in part why older people are much more likely to die from such infections. In this new effort, the researchers took a new look at an old vaccine to find out if it might prove useful for unvaccinated older people.

The study involved vaccinating 82 volunteers between the ages of 60 and 80 with the BCG vaccine and then studying blood samples taken a month later. In analyzing the samples, the researchers found decreases in several cytokines that have been associated with promoting inflammation: IL-6, type 1 interferons, interleukin-2 (IL-2) and TNF-alpha GM-CSF. The levels of the same cytokines were also found to be lower than those for a control group of unvaccinated volunteers. The researchers found that the BCG-vaccinated volunteers also had lower levels of some chemokines, such as matrix metalloproteinases and phase proteins, both of which have also been associated with promoting inflammation.

The researchers note that many of the cytokines that were reduced in the BCG volunteers have been identified as drivers of more severe COVID-19, which they also note suggests that the BCG vaccine might prove useful as a stop-gap measure for older people awaiting vaccination—if it could reduce inflammation in infected patients, it might save lives.

Explore further
Study links vaccine immune response to age
More information: Nathella Pavan Kumar et al, Effect of BCG vaccination on proinflammatory responses in elderly individuals, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg7181

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

A COVID-19 biomarker: Low blood levels of sphingosine predict symptomatic infections

Researchers remain perplexed as to why some patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, remain asymptomatic while other patients develop severe disease symptoms. This question is once again at the front of mind as the Delta variant spreads across the country. In a new...

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)


A COVID-19 biomarker: Low blood levels of sphingosine predict symptomatic infections
by Medical University of South Carolina
August 5, 2021

Researchers remain perplexed as to why some patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, remain asymptomatic while other patients develop severe disease symptoms. This question is once again at the front of mind as the Delta variant spreads across the country. In a new retrospective study, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) discovered a specific and sensitive biomarker in blood samples that predicts which patients will develop COVID-19 symptoms. Their results, published online on July 9 in Scientific Reports, show that reduced levels of a specific lipid, sphingosine, are significantly associated with developing COVID-19 symptoms. Conversely, elevated levels of sphingosine, as well as a protein involved in its production, acid ceramidase (AC), are associated with asymptomatic infections.

"We developed this project at a time when there wasn't a successful vaccine," said Besim Ogretmen, Ph.D., director of the Lipidomics Shared Resource at Hollings Cancer Center and leader of the Hollings Developmental Cancer Therapeutics Research Program. "We wanted to contribute to the field and know which patients who were exposed to this virus would be symptomatic versus asymptomatic."

Over the past 16 months several waves of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the U.S. have resulted in more than 35 million cases and almost 630,000 deaths. Despite the development of multiple safe and effective vaccines, we are currently experiencing another wave of infections.

The mortality of COVID-19 is thought to result from an overactive immune response to the virus in the lungs of infected patients that causes severe respiratory distress. However, symptoms vary widely, and scientists and clinicians don't understand why some patients develop severe symptoms while others remain asymptomatic.

It is known that sphingolipids, a class of molecules that are important for the integrity of the cell membrane and communication between cells, can regulate inflammation and the immune system in response to various infections. The Ogretmen laboratory has decades of expertise in analyzing the production and processing of different lipids, including sphingolipids, using a global measurement method called lipidomics.

Using this expertise, the Ogretmen lab undertook an unbiased analysis of COVID-19 patient serum samples from the MUSC COVID-19 Biorepository to look for changes in sphingolipid levels.

The results were striking.

"Just by looking at the data, you can clearly separate the different patient groups, even without doing technical statistical analyses," said Alhaji Janneh, lead author and graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

In asymptomatic patients who tested positive for a SARS-CoV-2 antibody, the researchers found a slight increase in serum sphingosine levels—and only sphingosine—compared to patients who tested negative. Remarkably, in patients who developed COVID-19 symptoms, there was a 15-fold reduction in sphingosine levels. Conversely, almost 75% of asymptomatic patients had elevated AC levels while most symptomatic patients had no detectable AC. The presence of serum AC correlates with the increased levels of sphingosine.

"Can this be an alternative way to predict which patients are the most vulnerable to severe disease?" asked Ogretmen, who is also a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the SmartState Endowed Chair in Lipidomics and Drug Discovery. "If we can separate asymptomatic patients from symptomatic patients, we can use limited remedies and resources for patients who are more vulnerable."

Overall, there is a 99% probability of correctly determining which patients, who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, will develop disease symptoms versus remain asymptomatic, using blood levels of sphingosine.

These striking results would not have been possible without the MUSC COVID-19 Biorepository and collaboration with the South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute (SCTR). SCTR set up the biorepository to serve as a resource for COVID-19 research, and SCTR co-principal investigator Patrick Flume, M.D. is its director and one of the authors of the article.

Analyzing levels of various lipids from patient samples is expensive and requires sophisticated equipment, making this type of analysis prohibitive under most circumstances. However, the development of an ELISA-based assay—like those used to diagnose HIV infection—to detect levels of AC could provide a cost-effective alternative that could be widely implemented.

There are several outstanding questions remaining. How does vaccination impact sphingosine levels? How do sphingosine levels change with the introduction of more variants? Nevertheless, the ability to identify at-risk patients quickly could vastly improve treatment of COVID-19 and allow for effective distribution of scarce resources.

Explore further
Any COVID infection leaves strong antibody levels in kids: study
More information: Alhaji H. Janneh et al, Alterations of lipid metabolism provide serologic biomarkers for the detection of asymptomatic versus symptomatic COVID-19 patients, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-93857-7
Journal information: Scientific Reports

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Potential COVID-19 medication found among tapeworm drugs

A group of medications long prescribed to treat tapeworm has inspired a compound that shows two-pronged effectiveness against COVID-19 in laboratory studies, according to a new publication appearing online in the journal ACS Infectious Disease.

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)

Potential COVID-19 medication found among tapeworm drugs
by The Scripps Research Institute
August 6, 2021

A group of medications long prescribed to treat tapeworm has inspired a compound that shows two-pronged effectiveness against COVID-19 in laboratory studies, according to a new publication appearing online in the journal ACS Infectious Disease.

The compound, part of a class of molecules called salicylanilides, was designed in the laboratory of Professor Kim Janda, Ph.D., the Ely R. Callaway, Jr. Professor of Chemistry and director of the Worm Institute for Research and Medicine at Scripps Research, in La Jolla, CA.

"It has been known for 10 or 15 years that salicylanilides work against certain viruses," Janda says. "However, they tend to be gut-restricted and can have toxicity issues."

Janda's compound overcomes both issues, in mouse and cell-based tests, acting as both an antiviral and an anti-inflammatory drug-like compound, with properties that auger well for its use in pill form.

Salicylanilides were first discovered in Germany in the 1950s and used to address worm infections in cattle. Versions including the drug niclosamide are used in animals and humans today to treat tapeworm. They have also been studied for anti-cancer and antimicrobial properties.

The modified salicylanilide compound that Janda created was one of about 60 that he built years ago for another project. When the SARS-CoV-2 virus became a global pandemic in early 2020, knowing that they may have antiviral properties, he started screening his old collection, first in cells with collaborators from Sorrento Therapeutics and The University of Texas Medical Branch, and later, after seeing promising results, working with Scripps Research immunologist John Teijaro, Ph.D., who conducted rodent studies.

One compound stood out. Dubbed simply "No. 11," it differs from the commercial tapeworm medicines in key ways, including its ability to pass beyond the gut and be absorbed into the bloodstream—and without the worrisome toxicity.

"Niclosamide is basically digestive-track restricted, and that makes sense, because that's where parasites reside," Janda says. "For that reason, simple drug repurposing for a COVID treatment would be counterintuitive, as you want something that is readily bioavailable, yet does not possess the systemic toxicity that niclosamide has."

About 80 percent of salicylanilide 11 passed into the bloodstream, compared to about 10 percent of the antiparasitic drug niclosamide, which has recently entered clinical trials as a COVID-19 treatment, Janda says.

The experiments showed that of the many modified salicylanilides he had built in his laboratory, No. 11 affected pandemic coronavirus infections in two ways. First, it interfered with how the virus deposited its genetic material into infected cells, a process called endocytosis. Endocytosis requires the virus to form a lipid-based packet around viral genes. The packet enters the infected cell and dissolves, so the infected cell's protein-building machinery can read it and churn out new viral copies. No. 11 appears to prevent the packet's dissolution.

"The compound's antiviral mechanism is the key," Janda says. "It blocks the viral material from getting out of the endosome, and it just gets degraded. This process does not allow new viral particles to be made as readily."

Importantly, because it acts inside cells rather than on viral spikes, questions about whether it would work in new variants like Delta and Lambda aren't a concern, he adds.

"This mechanism is not dependent on the virus spike protein, so these new variants coming up aren't going to relegate us to finding new molecules as is the case with vaccines or antibodies," Janda says.

In addition, No. 11 helped quiet potentially toxic inflammation in the research animals, Janda says, which could be important for treating acute respiratory distress associated with life-threatening COVID infections. It reduced levels of interleukin 6, a signaling protein which is a key contributor of inflammation typically found in advanced stages of COVID-19.

Better medications against COVID-19 are urgently needed, as highly infectious new variants drive renewed surges of illness and death globally. But Janda says salicylanilide No. 11 was created long before the pandemic.

After fighting an unpleasant bacterial infection called Clostridioides difficile about 10 years ago, he saw a clear need for better treatment options. Multi-drug-resistant strains of C. difficile have become a major cause of drug-resistant diarrheal disease outbreaks in health care institutions globally, and among people using antibiotics. As director of the Worm Institute, which focused on parasitic infections, Janda was very familiar with salicylanilides, and knew of their antimicrobial properties. His laboratory created a "library" of modified salicylanilides several of which showed strong efficacy against C. difficile, and the collection was subsequently licensed by pharmaceutical firm Sorrento Therapeutics. Among them was salicylanilide 11.

"Salicylanilide 11 actually was placed on the back burner in my laboratory against C. difficile because it's not as gut-restricted as we would like it to be," Janda says. "But salicylanilide 11 has got a lot of really positive things going for it as a potential therapeutic for COVID."

Explore further
Serendipitous discovery points to possible treatment for C. difficile epidemic
More information: Steven Blake et al, Salicylanilides Reduce SARS-CoV-2 Replication and Suppress Induction of Inflammatory Cytokines in a Rodent Model, ACS Infectious Diseases (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.1c00253

 

[ainitfunny]

A COVID-19 biomarker: Low blood levels of sphingosine predict symptomatic infections

Researchers remain perplexed as to why some patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, remain asymptomatic while other patients develop severe disease symptoms. This question is once again at the front of mind as the Delta variant spreads across the country. In a new...

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)


A COVID-19 biomarker: Low blood levels of sphingosine predict symptomatic infections
by Medical University of South Carolina
August 5, 2021

Researchers remain perplexed as to why some patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, remain asymptomatic while other patients develop severe disease symptoms. This question is once again at the front of mind as the Delta variant spreads across the country. In a new retrospective study, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) discovered a specific and sensitive biomarker in blood samples that predicts which patients will develop COVID-19 symptoms. Their results, published online on July 9 in Scientific Reports, show that reduced levels of a specific lipid, sphingosine, are significantly associated with developing COVID-19 symptoms. Conversely, elevated levels of sphingosine, as well as a protein involved in its production, acid ceramidase (AC), are associated with asymptomatic infections.

"We developed this project at a time when there wasn't a successful vaccine," said Besim Ogretmen, Ph.D., director of the Lipidomics Shared Resource at Hollings Cancer Center and leader of the Hollings Developmental Cancer Therapeutics Research Program. "We wanted to contribute to the field and know which patients who were exposed to this virus would be symptomatic versus asymptomatic."

Over the past 16 months several waves of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the U.S. have resulted in more than 35 million cases and almost 630,000 deaths. Despite the development of multiple safe and effective vaccines, we are currently experiencing another wave of infections.

The mortality of COVID-19 is thought to result from an overactive immune response to the virus in the lungs of infected patients that causes severe respiratory distress. However, symptoms vary widely, and scientists and clinicians don't understand why some patients develop severe symptoms while others remain asymptomatic.

It is known that sphingolipids, a class of molecules that are important for the integrity of the cell membrane and communication between cells, can regulate inflammation and the immune system in response to various infections. The Ogretmen laboratory has decades of expertise in analyzing the production and processing of different lipids, including sphingolipids, using a global measurement method called lipidomics.

Using this expertise, the Ogretmen lab undertook an unbiased analysis of COVID-19 patient serum samples from the MUSC COVID-19 Biorepository to look for changes in sphingolipid levels.

The results were striking.

"Just by looking at the data, you can clearly separate the different patient groups, even without doing technical statistical analyses," said Alhaji Janneh, lead author and graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

In asymptomatic patients who tested positive for a SARS-CoV-2 antibody, the researchers found a slight increase in serum sphingosine levels—and only sphingosine—compared to patients who tested negative. Remarkably, in patients who developed COVID-19 symptoms, there was a 15-fold reduction in sphingosine levels. Conversely, almost 75% of asymptomatic patients had elevated AC levels while most symptomatic patients had no detectable AC. The presence of serum AC correlates with the increased levels of sphingosine.

"Can this be an alternative way to predict which patients are the most vulnerable to severe disease?" asked Ogretmen, who is also a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the SmartState Endowed Chair in Lipidomics and Drug Discovery. "If we can separate asymptomatic patients from symptomatic patients, we can use limited remedies and resources for patients who are more vulnerable."

Overall, there is a 99% probability of correctly determining which patients, who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, will develop disease symptoms versus remain asymptomatic, using blood levels of sphingosine.

These striking results would not have been possible without the MUSC COVID-19 Biorepository and collaboration with the South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute (SCTR). SCTR set up the biorepository to serve as a resource for COVID-19 research, and SCTR co-principal investigator Patrick Flume, M.D. is its director and one of the authors of the article.

Analyzing levels of various lipids from patient samples is expensive and requires sophisticated equipment, making this type of analysis prohibitive under most circumstances. However, the development of an ELISA-based assay—like those used to diagnose HIV infection—to detect levels of AC could provide a cost-effective alternative that could be widely implemented.

There are several outstanding questions remaining. How does vaccination impact sphingosine levels? How do sphingosine levels change with the introduction of more variants? Nevertheless, the ability to identify at-risk patients quickly could vastly improve treatment of COVID-19 and allow for effective distribution of scarce resources.

Explore further
Any COVID infection leaves strong antibody levels in kids: study
More information: Alhaji H. Janneh et al, Alterations of lipid metabolism provide serologic biomarkers for the detection of asymptomatic versus symptomatic COVID-19 patients, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-93857-7
Journal information: Scientific Reports

Ahh, just did a quick 30 min look up (3:30am bedtime) of sphingosine levels and found elevated levels sphingosine levels HELP CANCER GROW. I think they said cancer pts have higher levels. If im not too sleepy to read.
i don't think I want to try to figger out how to boost my sphingosine levels.

Considering the central role of ceramide in mediating physiological as well as pharmacologically stimulated apoptosis, ceramide can be considered a tumor-suppressor lipid. In contrast, sphingosine-1-phosphate can be considered a tumor-promoting lipid, and the enzyme responsible for its synthesis functions as an oncogene.

Cancer treatment strategies targeting sphingolipid metabolism - PubMed

Ceramide and sphingosine-1-phosphate are related sphingolipid metabolites that can be generated through a de novo biosynthetic route or derived from the recycling of membrane sphingomyelin. Both these lipids regulate cellular responses to stress, with generally opposing effects...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[iboya]

From what I've been researching, Ivermectin is effective against all covid variants going forward.

 

[marsh]

Dystopian Nightmare: French Police Patrol Restaurants Checking Patrons' Covid Passports (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

Last month French President Emmanuel Macron announced that a Covid passport would be required in order to enter restaurants and theaters.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Dystopian Nightmare: French Police Patrol Restaurants Checking Patrons’ Covid Passports (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila
Published August 9, 2021 at 1:03pm

Last month French President Emmanuel Macron announced that a Covid passport would be required in order to enter restaurants and theaters.

Macron also announced a new mandatory vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers.

Tourists visiting France will have to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test via a digital passport.

Macron’s ‘big stick’ approach to forcing vaccination includes threats of heavy fines and prison time for both business owners and patrons who don’t comply with his covid passport mandate.

The Covid passport requirement went into effect and French police are patrolling restaurants checking patrons’ Covid passports.

“The first checks of Police started as a preventive measure at Paris in cafes and restaurants where the Pass Sanitaire is mandatory as of today. Verbalization of 135 euros from next week, up to 9,000 euros in the event of a repeat offense.”

Reuters reporter Antony Paone said on Monday.

VIDEO:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424730996738568195

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424730996738568195
.17 min

 

[marsh]

Pentagon Will Require Covid Vaccine For All Active Duty Troops by September 15 | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin The Pentagon will require all active duty troops to receive the Covid vaccine by September 15, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Pentagon Will Require Covid Vaccine For All Active Duty Troops by September 15

By Cristina Laila
Published August 9, 2021 at 12:21pm

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin

The Pentagon will require all active duty troops to receive the Covid vaccine by September 15, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press.

Last month Joe Biden announced he was asking the Defense Department to “look into how and when” it will add the Covid jab to the list of mandatory military vaccinations.

Initially the Pentagon said it would likely wait until the Covid vaccine was FDA approved before making the jab mandatory for the troops.

Via The Associated Press:

The Pentagon will require members of the U.S. military to get the COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 15, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press. That deadline could be pushed up if the vaccine receives final FDA approval or infection rates continue to rise.

“I will seek the president’s approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September, or immediately upon” licensure by the Food and Drug Administration “whichever comes first,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says in the memo to troops, warning them to prepare for the requirement. “I will not hesitate to act sooner or recommend a different course to the President if l feel the need to do so.”

The memo is expected to go out Monday.

Austin said in his memo says that the military services will have the next few weeks to prepare, determine how many vaccines they need, and how this mandate will be implemented. The additional time, however, also is a nod to the bitter political divisiveness over the vaccine and the knowledge that making it mandatory will likely trigger opposition from vaccine opponents across the state and federal governments, Congress and the American population.

The Pentagon a couple weeks ago said 70% of service members have received their first dose of the Covid vaccine and 62% were fully vaccinated.

 

[marsh]

Vindication for the Swedish model of non-coercive pandemic mitigation?

Mask-free Sweden had near zero COVID-19 daily deaths in July, fared better than expected economically with no lockdowns in place

justthenews.com

Vindication for the Swedish model of non-coercive pandemic mitigation?

Mask-free Sweden had near zero COVID-19 daily deaths in July, fared better than expected economically with no lockdowns in place

Updated: August 8, 2021 - 11:20pm

While many U.S. policy makers are suggesting that states return to lockdowns and impose vaccine or mask mandates to engage in everyday life as new coronavirus variants surface, Sweden's population of 10.3 million fared better than expected after implementing no lockdowns over the last year.

In April of last year, Björn Olsen, professor of infectious medicine at the University of Uppsala, issued a report suggesting that if lockdowns weren't implemented a "tragedy" would soon befall Sweden.

An Imperial College model suggested that 85,000 people would die without a lockdown, and an Uppsala University team projected that 40,000 people would die from COVID-19 by May 1, 2020 and nearly 100,000 by June.

But by May, Sweden reported roughly six deaths for every one million people, according to the Financial Times, with 48.9% of its initial coronavirus deaths taking place in nursing homes, according to an analysis by the Swedish Public Health Agency.

More than a year later, Sweden recorded 1.1 million coronavirus cases with 1.07 million people having recovered from the virus, and 14,620 coronavirus-linked deaths, according to woldometers.info as of Aug. 8, 2021.

Of the currently 12,248 people who have tested positive for COVID-19, 12, 219 are experiencing mild symptoms (99.8%) and 29 (0.2%) are in serious or critical condition, according to woldometers.info.

While the Financial Times warned that Sweden wouldn't likely see an economic benefit from its no-lockdown approach, in May 2020, Sweden fared better than expected. According to an analysis by Nordetrade.com: "Covid-19 has had a rather limited impact on [Sweden's] economy compared with most other European countries. Softer preventative restrictions against Covid-19 earlier in the year and a strong recovery in the third quarter contained the GDP contraction."

With the rise of the so-called Delta variant, Sweden has held fast in not imposing a lockdown or a mask mandate, having lifted its last face covering requirement on public transit July 1. Still, its population had a total of eight coronavirus-related deaths in July, or an average of 0.26 coronavirus-linked deaths a day.

Daily hospitalizations were also close to zero in July, with between zero and two COVID-19 cases requiring hospital treatment nationwide.

Sweden's numbers are considerably lower compared to 74 and 329 coronavirus-related daily fatalities in the U.K. and U.S., respectively, over the same period.

Sweden announced it plans to administer booster doses of the COVID-19 shots for its most vulnerable citizens beginning in September. "The assessment is that it is not possible to eradicate the virus and therefore vaccination work should be long-term and focused on reducing serious illness and death," Anders Tegnell, Sweden's chief epidemiologist recently announced.

Sweden's Public Health Agency expects its entire adult population will have received two doses of COVID-19 shots by the fall, and that many will receive a third shot next year.

Tegnell said there is "a lot we do not know" about Delta and that it had been circulating in Sweden "for quite some time" with little impact, especially in high-risk environments like nursing homes.

His remarks came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the Delta strain is more transmissible than the original coronavirus, even as contagious as chicken pox, and could potentially cause severe illness.

The agency has not explained its testing methodology, as critics have pointed out tests to determine variants are not available on a national scale, making it difficult to determine if someone who tests positive for the coronavirus has a variant or not.

"It is difficult to say how contagious Delta is, [as] when it comes to chickenpox, we have been able to follow the disease for several years," Tegnell told Sweden's Aftonbladet. "The infectivity [of Delta] seems to be very uneven — in some cases, one person infects a hundred people, then we have other occasions when an infected person does not infect anyone at all."

Sweden's public health agency has recommended that Swedes continue to social distance and work remotely but has not issued mask or face covering mandates in public spaces. Sweden remains open while other countries are considering reinstituting lockdowns, and still others like France, have announced vaccine mandates as a condition to be able to participate in society.

 

[marsh]

Fauci Defends Masking K-Third Graders -- 'Starting to See Pediatric Hospitals Get More and More Younger People'

During Monday's broadcast of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the move to require masks for children in kindergarten through third grade amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. | Clips

www.breitbart.com

Fauci Defends Masking K-Third Graders — ‘Starting to See Pediatric Hospitals Get More and More Younger People’

TRENT BAKER9 Aug 202190

Interview Enterprise podcasting made simple with Omny Studio 19:27 min

During Monday’s broadcast of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the move to require masks for children in kindergarten through third grade amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Fauci told host Hugh Hewitt that although it is a “difficult situation,” there is an uptick, as a result of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, of younger children being hospitalized with a “more severe disease.” He advised that the masking of that age group could be a “temporary thing.”

“[W]e have a disagreement that I want to air with you,” Hewitt said to Fauci. “My friend, Chuck Todd, disagrees with me, too. It’s about children K-3. And as the grandfather of three of them, and I talk to a lot of parents, they don’t believe masks are a good thing. They believe they are developmentally difficult to deal with. They can hide developmental disabilities. They impair speech and hearing, and that they’re not very effective. And boy, they feel this strongly, and it’s what the UK felt. My grandkids were in school in England last year. Why do you disagree with the UK specialists and with the Wall Street Journal this morning, article by Dr. Makary and Dr. Meissner?”

“You know, Hugh, that is a difficult situation because you really do have to balance the risk of transmission versus the real risk, and I’m not putting down what you’re saying. It’s not comfortable, obviously, for children to wear masks, particularly the younger children,” Fauci replied. “But you know, what we’re starting to see, Hugh, and I think it’s going to unfold even more as the weeks go by, that this virus not only is so extraordinarily transmissible, but we’re starting to see pediatric hospitals get more and more younger people and kids not only numerically, but what seems to be more severe disease.”

“Now we’re tracking that, the CDC is tracking that really very carefully, so it’s going to be a balance that we would feel very badly if we all of a sudden said OK, kids, don’t wear masks, then you find out retrospectively that this virus in a very, very strange and unusual way is really hitting kids really hard,” he added. “That’s the thing. Nobody feels comfortable at all about having children be put in a situation where it might ultimately, the way some people study, have some impact on them. But hopefully, this will be a temporary thing, temporary enough that it doesn’t have any lasting negative impact on them.”

 

[mzkitty]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424831276670914562

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424831276670914562

 

[mzkitty]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424835011291852801

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424835011291852801

 

[Mprepared]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424831276670914562

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424831276670914562

If I owned a business there I would be worried when it gets dark tonight.

 

[marsh]

IM Doctor Sounds The Alarm On Breakthrough Cases…

This was posted today at Naked Capitalism by an internal medicine doctor who is a regular contributor. IM Doc August 8, 2021 at 8:33 am We continue to have quite a bit o…

citizenfreepress.com

IM Doctor Sounds The Alarm On Breakthrough Cases…
Posted by Kane on August 9, 2021 4:58 pm



This was posted today at Naked Capitalism by an internal medicine doctor who is a regular contributor.

IM Doc

August 8, 2021 at 8:33 am

We continue to have quite a bit of infection in the community. In my own practice, I am usually seeing 5-15 cases a day of COVID. The majority of these cases are vaccinated breakthroughs. There have been 2 whole days this week where the entire day were all vaccinated breakthroughs. Please note this is the outpatient side.

Despite Dr. Walensky’s reassurance to Americans that these are very rare, this has not been my experience at all. These breakthroughs continue to happen in clusters. While the unvaccinated positives tend to be more isolated and far less likely to spread and sicken contacts. The clusters are almost always vaccinated as well. I have no explanation for this. It is my feeling the virus is trying to tell us something. This seems to be consistent with constant news reports of cluster events among the vaccinated all over the country.

The unvaccinated positives are likely underrepresented in my office sample. They are likely younger. They are likely to have no insurance or high copays so very hesitant to get tested. They are likely to get fired if they miss a day of work so they just do not want to know if they are positive. Furthermore, it seems that every effort has been made to make it very difficult for anyone to get tested. Why bother?

As far as the hospital it remains about 50/50 vaccinated/unvaccinated. The percentage of vaccinated patients seems to be slowly creeping up daily. I am hearing from my friends all over the country that the same is true. You no longer hear about 1% vaccinated anymore in the hospital. A slow but surely increasing prevalence of the vaccinated in the hospitals. The vaccinated inpatients tend to be older and vaccinated at the beginning in DEC or JAN. The unvaccinated are younger usually 40-60 almost always with obesity or diabetes. Unlike the last wave, the majority of these patients are in and out in a day or two. I am not saying there are not sick people there are. Just not nearly as many as before. This too is confirmed by my friends. The critically ill are few but are almost entirely made up of the unvaccinated. We have had but 2 vaccinated in the ICU this whole time. The stories you are hearing of crashed hospitals in the big cities are happening because large numbers of non-critical patients are being admitted and discharged with continued large numbers coming into the ER. The other factor is staffing. Nurses have become depressed and are leaving in droves. And the ancillary staff in many places has been decimated by employees leaving because of the vaccine mandates. There is more at work than patient numbers by the panic porn that is all over the MSM.

The vaccines are clearly not working as promised. Large numbers of vaccinated patients are getting sick. I remember when I did the guest post back in December about the Pfizer trials. I was and am gravely concerned about the medical establishment in the guise of the Editors of NEJM referring to these miraculous vaccines, perfect in every way, as a triumph. There are lots of things in medicine the past decades that are indeed miracles. But calling something a triumph before a shot was in the first arm betrayed to me a certain level of hubris and I knew in my heart at that very moment that Nemesis, Hubriss best friend, would soon be making a visit.

These vaccinated patients that are sick are not very happy at all. Many of them are profoundly angry. The lies and misrepresentations are very soon going to start catching up with our leaders. And what I never dreamed would happen has begun to happen this week close to half of my positive COVID patients in an unsolicited manner are demanding to be placed on alternative therapy such as ivermectin. In a very angry manner.

I have no problem using this drug. I used it quite a bit in the first big crash in the fall and winter and started using it again about 6 weeks ago. Using the scientific method as I was so carefully trained to do decades ago, and with the limited tools I have, I have been able to make some observations.

Once a patient, vaccinated or not, becomes positive for COVID in my practice, my nurses or myself call them once in the AM and once in the PM. There is a form we fill out on each of these calls to describe their clinical condition with parameters fever, congestion, shortness of breath, coughing, pulse ox, etc. When the patients have cleared every single one, we quit calling them. We usually have between 15-20 active cases this past few weeks daily. A pattern became very obvious very quickly in this process and I have distilled it with 2 raw numbers.

The Ivermectin patients are cleared of symptoms (N of 44) in average of 2.4 days. The Non-Ivermectin patients (N of 19) are cleared of symptoms after 5.7 days. Furthermore, on day 5 of the illness, we always have the patients go and get tested again. The Ivermectin patients have literally a 100% negative rate by Day 5. The non-Ivermectin patients have a 58% clearance rate by Day 5.

I want to make one thing very clear. This is the scientific method. These numbers are consistent with the overall signal that all kinds of studies are showing with this drug. However, I am just one clinician in one office. Nothing dispositive can be said or done with these numbers.

However, it is an indication of yet another complete fail on the part of our medical leaders. These signals have now been out there for about a year. It is at this point, a national embarrassment that nothing has been done to fully evaluate this drug. I will say again, our leaders are not practicing medicine, they are practicing business.

 

[marsh]

Must Watch: Dr. Dan Stock Delivers a Masterclass on the Real Science Behind Covid and Vaccines to the Mt. Vernon School Board - The Liberty Daily

If you love the news, check out The Liberty Daily's homepage. The vast majority of school boards across the nation are embracing the guidance being delivered to them by the CDC, NIH, and state health boards. As we’ve demonstrated with literally hundreds of articles here, the “guidance” is...

thelibertydaily.com

Must Watch: Dr. Dan Stock Delivers a Masterclass on the Real Science Behind Covid and Vaccines to the Mt. Vernon School Board

By J.D. Rucker • Aug. 9, 2021

The vast majority of school boards across the nation are embracing the guidance being delivered to them by the CDC, NIH, and state health boards. As we’ve demonstrated with literally hundreds of articles here, the “guidance” is agenda-driven, not science-driven. They are pushing for universal adoption of the Covid-19 injections, embracing totalitarian control over businesses, and herding the people into a dystopian future with ubiquitous face masks and perpetual fear of a disease with a 99.97% recovery rate for those under the age of 45.

The Mount Vernon School Board in Indiana is adopting the same vaccine and face masks mandates that other school districts are forcing onto staff and students. But they at least had the courage to sit before the people and hear their concerns, something that many school boards have avoided. During one such meeting, Dr. Dan Stock came armed with facts, and boy did he deliver them.

Watch:

Rumble video on website 6:29 min

As Dr. Stock noted, there’s a reason why vaccines have not stopped other coronaviruses like the flu or the common cold. It’s because they cannot. They can mitigate symptoms, though it’s questionable whether the so-called Covid-19 “vaccines” actually do that, either.

And as Dr. Stock said after having treated Covid-19 patients himself, there are far better inexpensive treatments available that include combinations of Ivermectin, Vitamin-D, and Zinc among others. These treatments have been panned by the CDC for one simple reason: The Emergency Use Authorization for the “vaccines” requires that no effective treatment is available.

This video needs to be shared far and wide. There really are sane and unindoctrinated doctors out there, like Dr. Dan Stock, who are willing to stand up for the science instead of falling for the CDC’s false narratives.

 

[marsh]

CDC Director Admits Claim That Over 99% of In-Hospital Covid Deaths Were Among Unvaccinated People Was Junk

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted during a press briefing last week that her claim that over 99% of covid patients dying in hospitals were unvaccinated was a load of

www.informationliberation.com

CDC Director Admits Claim That Over 99% of In-Hospital Covid Deaths Were Among Unvaccinated People Was Junk Chris Menahan InformationLiberation Aug. 09, 2021

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted during a press briefing last week that her claim that over 99% of covid patients dying in hospitals were unvaccinated was a load of crap. The claim, which was also echoed by Anthony Fauci, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and other top officials, was shown to be a lie by the CDC's own data released by the Washington Post on July 29. The CDC's data showed the number of covid patient in-hospital deaths in May were 15% among the vaccinated, not 0.5% as they all claimed -- which is 30x higher than they stated. The CDC and White House officials didn't tell the public that because they were in overdrive trying to scare everyone into taking Big Pharma's experimental mRNA "vaccines" despite their rapidly waning protection. After being questioned Thursday on the 99% number by a CNN reporter, Walensky said that "those data were data that were from analyses in several states from January through June and didn't reflect the data that we have now from the Delta variant." In other words, to get the 99% number they not only cherry-picked data from what ever states they wanted but they included data from January when covid deaths were at their peak and less than 10 percent of Americans had even taken the vaccine. Additionally, they excluded the most recent data showing the vaccines' protection was waning! What an astonishing act of fraud! WATCH: View: https://youtu.be/26xwZVEOKFU 26:56 min Transcript: CNN's Kaitlan Collins: Several of you and the President have repeatedly cited figures saying that 99 percent of those who die from COVID-19 are unvaccinated and 95 percent, around that, are hospital- -- who are hospitalized are unvaccinated. With the Delta variant, do you still stand by these numbers, and do you have government data to back them up? CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky: Yes, thank you for that question, Kaitlan. So those data were data that were from analyses in several states from January through June and didn't reflect the data that we have now from the Delta variant. We are actively working to update those in the context of the Delta variant. I do want to reiterate, though, that based on the data we're seeing -- and we don't have fully updated numbers -- universally, as we look at our hospitalizations and as we look at our deaths, they are overwhelmingly unvaccinated people. Reports are coming out of Israel indicating the claim that vaccinated people aren't getting seriously ill is nonsense. https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1423322271503028228 View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1423322271503028228 .42 min The endless misinformation and disinformation coming from our public health "authorities" is astonishing. At the same time they're being caught in lie after lie and flip-flopping all over the place they're demanding everyone who calls out their misinformation be banned from the internet! View: https://youtu.be/AVACnQ_M6To 1:41 min Meanwhile, the Federation of State Medical Boards is trying to silence doctors for telling the truth by getting their medical licenses pulled!

 

[marsh]

Vaccinated people may play key role in aiding evolution of more dangerous COVID variants, study says - LifeSite

According to research published last week in Scientific Reports, the highest risk for establishing a vaccine-resistant virus strain occurs when a large fraction of the population has already been vaccinated but the transmission is not controlled.

www.lifesitenews.com

Vaccinated people may play key role in aiding evolution of more dangerous COVID variants, study says
According to research published last week in Scientific Reports, the highest risk for establishing a vaccine-resistant virus strain occurs when a large fraction of the population has already been vaccinated but the transmission is not controlled.

Megan
Redshaw,
J.D.

Mon Aug 9, 2021 - 11:20 am EDT

(Children’s Health Defense) – According to research published last week in Scientific Reports, vaccinated people may play a key role in helping SARS-CoV-2 variants evolve into those that evade existing COVID vaccines.

The researchers concluded three specific risk factors that favor the emergence and establishment of a vaccine-resistant strain. They are: a high probability of initial emergence of the resistant strain; high number of infected individuals; and low rate of vaccination.

However, the analysis also showed the highest risk for establishing a resistant strain occurs when a large fraction of the population has already been vaccinated but the transmission is not controlled.

Virologists have a name for variations of a virus that slip past vaccine- or illness-induced immune defenses — they’re called “escape mutants.”

“When most people are vaccinated, the vaccine-resistant strain has an advantage over the original strain,” Simon Rella of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, told CNN.

“This means the vaccine-resistant strain spreads through the population faster at a time when most people are vaccinated,” said Rella, who worked on the study.

The data is consistent with a study released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which showed vaccinated people may transmit the Delta variant — now responsible for 80% of COVID cases in the U.S. — just as easily as the unvaccinated.



The team of scientists who published the data in Scientific Reports said their findings follow what’s known as selective pressure — the force that drives any organism to evolve.

“Generally, the more people are infected, the more the chances for vaccine resistance to emerge,” said Fyodor Kondrashov of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.

“So the more Delta is infectious, the more reason for concern,” Kondrashov said. “By having a situation where you vaccinate everybody, a vaccine-resistant mutant actually gains a selective advantage.”

Experts warned for months vaccines could cause more dangerous COVID variants.

Based on the scientific evidence, the narrative that unvaccinated people are viral factories for more dangerous variants is false, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Mercola, a physician and best-selling author, said just as antibiotics breed resistance in bacteria, vaccines put evolutionary pressure on viruses to speed up mutations and create more virulent and dangerous variants.

Mercola explained:

“Viruses mutate all the time, and if you have a vaccine that doesn’t block infection completely, then the virus will mutate to evade the immune response within that person. That is one of the distinct features of the COVID shots — they’re not designed to block infection. They allow infection to occur and at best lessen the symptoms of that infection.”

“In an unvaccinated person, the virus does not encounter the same evolutionary pressure to mutate into something stronger,” Mercola added.

“So, if SARS-CoV-2 does end up mutating into more lethal strains, then mass vaccination is the most likely driver,” he said.

According to Rob Verkerk Ph.D., founder, scientific and executive director of Alliance for Natural Health International, variants can become more virulent and transmissible, while also including immune (or vaccine) escape mutations if we continue on the vaccine treadmill — trying to develop new vaccines that outsmart the virus.

Verkerk said, “if we put all our eggs” in the basket of vaccines that target the very part of the virus that is most subject to mutation, we place a selection pressure on the virus that favors the development of immune escape variants.

Scientists and vaccine developers are trying to work their way around these viral variants, but there’s no guarantee of the outcomes. It’s an experiment in which vast numbers of citizens have become unwitting participants, Verkerk explained.

In March, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a vaccinologist who worked with GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization in Geneva, put out a call to the World Health Organization — supported by a 12-page document –– describing the “uncontrollable monster” that global mass vaccination will create.
Vanden Bossche said:

“There can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns will enable new, more infectious viral variants to become increasingly dominant and ultimately result in a dramatic incline in new cases despite enhanced vaccine coverage rates. There can be no doubt either that this situation will soon lead to complete resistance of circulating variants to the current vaccines.”

The Defender reported March 26 that a combination of lockdowns and extreme selection pressure on the virus induced by the intense global mass vaccination program might diminish the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the short-term, but ultimately, would induce the creation of more mutants of concern.

This is the result of what Vanden Bossche calls “immune escape” (i.e. incomplete sterilization of the virus by the human immune system, even following vaccine administration).

This will trigger vaccine companies to further refine vaccines that will add to — not reduce — the selection pressure, producing ever more transmissible and potentially deadly variants.

The selection pressure will cause greater convergence in mutations that affect the critical spike protein of the virus that is responsible for breaking through the mucosal surfaces of our airways, the route used by the virus to enter the human body, Vanden Bossche argued.

The virus will effectively outsmart the highly specific antigen-based vaccines that are being used and tweaked, dependent on the circulating variants.

This could lead to a hockey stick-like increase in serious and potentially lethal cases — in effect, an out-of-control pandemic.

“We are going to pay a huge price for this. And I’m becoming emotional because I’m thinking of my children, of the younger generation. I mean, it’s just impossible what we are doing. We don’t understand the pandemic,” Vanden Bossche said.

 

[marsh]

VAXX Misinformation Leads Kids Directly Into Danger, Hospitalization, Death

Many healthcare workers are coming forward revealing that the majority of extremely ill patients are 'double-jabbed' and referred to as 'fully-vaccinated'. Despite those staff blowing the whistle on t

rumble.com

VAXX Misinformation Leads Kids Directly Into Danger, Hospitalization, Death
Stew Peters Show Published August 2, 2021
Rumble video on website 14:19 min

Many healthcare workers are coming forward revealing that the majority of extremely ill patients are 'double-jabbed' and referred to as 'fully-vaccinated'.
Despite those staff blowing the whistle on the shots being falsely referred to as 'vaccines', leaders in America are incessantly pushing every American toward the jab.

Dr. Jane Ruby joined Stew Peters to reveal the CDC data suggesting that children are in extreme danger if they should be inoculated.
www.StewPeters.tv | www.DrJaneRuby.com

 

[mzkitty]

France.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1424882787073601536

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1424882787073601536

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Ahh, just did a quick 30 min look up (3:30am bedtime) of sphingosine levels and found elevated levels sphingosine levels HELP CANCER GROW. I think they said cancer pts have higher levels. If im not too sleepy to read.
i don't think I want to try to figger out how to boost my sphingosine levels.

Cancer treatment strategies targeting sphingolipid metabolism - PubMed

Ceramide and sphingosine-1-phosphate are related sphingolipid metabolites that can be generated through a de novo biosynthetic route or derived from the recycling of membrane sphingomyelin. Both these lipids regulate cellular responses to stress, with generally opposing effects...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

That is fascinating information. Lots to chew on here. I wonder if they did a study to find out if cancer patients, or recovering cancer patients, are more or less likely to get critically ill with covid. I don't remember if it's one of the listed co-morbidities, wouldn't it be interesting if it wasn't in light of these studies? Thanks ainit for finding and posting this.

HD

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Doctors May Lose Their License If They Spread 'Misinformation' On Covid Jabs, Medical Panel Threatens

The Federation of State Medical Boards under president and CEO Humayun Chaudhry sent out a statement last week threatening doctors that they may lose their medical licenses

www.informationliberation.com

(fair use applies) EMPHASIS IS IN ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Doctors May Lose Their License If They Spread 'Misinformation' On Covid Jabs, Medical Panel Threatens
Chris Menahan
Aug. 08, 2021

The Federation of State Medical Boards under president and CEO Humayun Chaudhry sent out a statement last week threatening doctors that they may lose their medical licenses if they spread "misinformation" about covid vaccines.

From Becker's Hospital Review, "Physicians who post COVID-19 vaccine misinformation may lose license, medical panel says":

The Federation of State Medical Boards warned July 29 that physicians and other healthcare professionals could be at risk of losing their medical licenses if they spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on social media, online and in the media.​

​

FSMB, a nonprofit that represents all U.S. state medical boards, said any clinicians who create or spread vaccine misinformation or disinformation risk disciplinary action by state medical boards, including suspension or revocation of their medical license, according to a statement emailed to Becker's Hospital Review.​

​

"Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not," FSMB said. "They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health."​

​

Note the key term -- "consensus-driven."

They're ordering doctors not to step out of line and do research for themselves on how they can best help their patients but instead just blindly follow whatever the medical establishment tells them.

Remember when the consensus was to put everyone under medically-induced comas and on ventilators and it killed some 85 percent of patients who received the "treatment"?

That could still be the standard today if Chaudhry's consensus-based rules were widely enforced.

FSMB has not yet formally defined "misinformation" or "disinformation" in its policy, but the organization's ethics committee is studying the issues of physician misinformation and disinformation and plans to provide more guidance at a later date, an FSMB spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Becker's.​

​

"However, we currently view misinformation as sharing or distributing verifiably false information," the spokesperson said. "We define disinformation as sharing or distributing information that the distributor knows is false."​

​

While FSMB has not formed a recommendation yet for the definitions of misinformation and disinformation, state and territorial medical boards may use various terms, such as "professional misconduct" or "ethics violation," in their own procedures to address concerns surrounding misinformation and disinformation, FSMB said.​

​

The statement went on to say that spreading "inaccurate" COVID-19 vaccine information "threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk."

Is pulling doctors' licenses for disagreeing with you really going to increase "public trust" in the medical profession?

MedPageToday has more:

The FSMB is aiming to remind physicians that words matter, that they have a platform, and that misinformation and disinformation -- especially within the context of the pandemic -- can cause harm, said president and CEO Humayun Chaudhry, DO. "I hope that physicians and other licensees get the message," he added.​

​

Vaccine resistance and hesitancy across the country have concerned the group, noted Chaudhry, as have reports of disinformation and misinformation being spread by physicians.​

​

Because of the somewhat stagnant national vaccination rate and spreading Delta variant, Chaudhry is "really concerned" about more mutations and variants emerging, he said, "to the point where we may have a situation in hand where the vaccine isn't even effective." The U.S. is "not there now," he added, but the vaccines are a key piece in preventing that.​

​

"When the state boards get a complaint, they will investigate and if they determine there's grounds for taking action, they will," he said. Such actions could range from reprimanding physicians in a phone call, to license suspension or revocation.​

According to the head of the CDC, the vaccines no longer prevent transmission of covid.

“Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tells @wolfblitzer. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death – they prevent it. But what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission." pic.twitter.com/s83YyBQqeh​

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) August 5, 2021​

Doctors in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, are reporting similar.

"95% of the severe patients are vaccinated".​

"85-90% of the hospitalizations are in Fully vaccinated people."​

"We are opening more and more COVID wards."​

"The effectiveness of the vaccine is waning/fading out"​

(Dr. Kobi Haviv, earlier today on Chanel 13 @newsisrael13 ) pic.twitter.com/SpLZewiRpQ​

— Ran Israeli (@RanIsraeli) August 5, 2021​

Many doctors are concerned the vaccines may be causing new variants and could lead to antibody-dependent enhancement.

I got a 12 hour suspension in June for saying this pic.twitter.com/prODIooy95​

— Dr. Benjamin Braddock (@GraduatedBen) July 30, 2021​

Continuing to push universal vaccination is reasonably likely to drive development of a "supervirus" variant that will be completely resistant to spike antigen-driven vaccine immune responses. Universal vaccination- bad policy based on naive understanding of viral evolution.​

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) August 7, 2021​

They need to stop just reacting based on naive biases and to start actually thinking about long term tactics and strategy that benefits world health (and well established medical ethics principles).​

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) August 7, 2021​

Pulling doctors' medical licenses for pointing this all out is not going to make these issues disappear.


See also:

Physicians who post COVID-19 vaccine misinformation may lose license, medical panel says

The Federation of State Medical Boards warned July 29 that physicians and other healthcare professionals could be at risk of losing their medical licenses if they spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on social media, online and in the media.

www.beckershospitalreview.com

Spreading False Vax Info Might Cost You Your Medical License

Federation of State Medical Boards threaten disciplinary action

www.medpagetoday.com

.

 

[ainitfunny]

Then again doctors have been known to strike/"retire"/ quit when pushed too hard they will unite and have much power in doing so.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Could The Delta Variant End The Chinese Communist Party?

MONDAY, AUG 09, 2021 - 11:00 PM
Authored by Gordon Chang via 19fortyfive.com,
COVID-19 is ravaging China.



The Delta variant is spreading across the country fast, and Beijing has no answer to the new strain other than draconian, totalitarian brute-force measures—and blaming foreigners.

Millions of Chinese residents are now in various forms of lockdown. The recent infections constitute the most widespread coronavirus outbreak since the disease first hit China, sometime in late 2019.

The new flare-up, which quickly slipped beyond the control of the authorities, is undermining core Communist Party propaganda narratives.

Chinese authorities trace the latest series of infections to a flight landing at the Nanjing Lukou International Airport from Russia on July 20. Nine Chinese airport workers tested positive after cleaning the plane.

Since then, the disease has ripped through China, infecting people in almost half of the country’s 33 provinces and provincial-level cities and regions. “Delta has broken through the country’s virus defenses, which are some of the strictest in the world,” notes Bloomberg News.

Delta is now appearing in places with no reported cases for months. Of particular concern for the regime is the cluster in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the disease. The city’s infection-free status has been, as Bloomberg reports, “a source of pride in China.”

Covid has also reached Beijing, the heart of Chinese power. There, travel restrictions are strict. Tourists are now not admitted to the city. Only “essential travelers” are allowed in, but only if they produce negative Covid tests.

Government and state enterprise employees may not leave the city. Beijing residents have been told not to travel elsewhere “unless necessary.”

There have been more than 30 outbreaks around China after the initial cases in Wuhan of last year, including a particularly devastating flare-up hitting Guangdong province ports beginning in late May. Draconian measures were seemingly successful in isolating China’s COVID-19 cases, however. The Party, beginning early last year, used its handling of the virus as proof of the superiority of its system over, among others, “Western democracy.”

Totalitarian-style tactics, unfortunately for China’s rulers, have not worked with the hardy Delta variant.

The coronavirus, unlike other pathogens, has become more transmissible and more virulent over time. Delta, as a result, is now killing off the triumphalism of the Communist Party.

Therefore, a nationwide spread of the disease is a potentially existential threat to the Party. At the moment, Delta is running through many societies around the world, but China appears to be the only one where the variant could end the ruling group’s tenure.

Therefore, it should be no surprise that Party propagandists went berserk for a few days last month when Bloomberg named the U.S. No. 1 in the world in its “Covid Resilience Ranking.” “What a joke,” People’s Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, remarked.

Denigration of the U.S. cannot solve the Party’s main problem, however. None of China’s five coronavirus vaccines are particularly effective.

Beijing, claiming to have administered more than 1.5 billion doses of its vaccines in China, reports 40% of Chinese citizens are fully vaccinated.

China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention says Chinese vaccines “can still have good preventative and protective effects” against the Delta strain, but that seems unlikely as countries turn their backs on the Chinese jabs if they have an alternative. Most of the new cases in Nanjing were vaccinated.

No society will fully recover from this disease until it has an effective and safe vaccine, and Beijing is a long way off from developing one of them, even though its researchers had months of head start in coming up with a good jab.

Until China can administer an effective vaccine across the country, its regime will have no choice but to fall back on propaganda. Narrative control has been key from the very beginning of the epidemic. This became clear when the Communist Party on January 26 of last year announced the formation of its Central Leading Small Group for Work to Counter the New Coronavirus Infection Pneumonia Epidemic, China’s task force. There was only one public health official on the nine-person roster, which was heavy with political hacks and propaganda officials. The Party’s propaganda czar, Wang Huning, was vice-chair. Maintaining control of the narrative and Xi Jinping’s dictatorial rule were—and remain—the Leading Group’s primary goals.


A Chinese soldier guarding the southern entrance of the Forbidden City in Beijing, dominated by a giant portrait of Mao Zedong.

The Party’s propagandists evidently believe blaming foreigners for the Delta outbreak is good politics. They were quick to say the origin of the most recent contagion was passengers on the plane from Russia to Nanjing, for instance, implying Russia was the source. Media also attributes a cluster of cases in Zhengzhou to two hospital cleaners in contact with patients from abroad.

In the most irresponsible move of all, China’s foreign ministry in March of last year publicly maintained that the global coronavirus pandemic started in the United States. Since then, Chinese propagandists have continually pushed the notion that the coronavirus was hatched in Frederick, Maryland, in the U.S. Army’s Fort Detrick.

China’s rulers have run out of options when it comes to the uncontrolled—and perhaps uncontrollable—spread of the newest variant of COVID-19.

Is their fate now in the hands of a virus named “Delta”?

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Fauci Tells MSNBC Who's Next For Vaxx Mandate: "I'm Going To Upset People On This"

TUESDAY, AUG 10, 2021 - 12:45 PM

First it was all federal workers, and then then all service members of the military, and now a national vaccine mandate is being discussed for all school teachers.

Or rather, the federal government would encourage and back state and local government efforts to require that teachers get vaxxed.

This as the debate over making school children mask up is raging, as major school districts like Dallas and others across the nation have said the school year will take place in masks. On Tuesday the US government's top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said during an appearance on MSNBC: "I'm going to upset people on this but I think we should [mandate teacher vaccinations]."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1425057007766282247

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1425057007766282247
1:04 min

"I mean, we are in a critical situation now. We have had 615,000 deaths and we are in a major surge now as we're going into the fall, into the school season.

This is very serious business."

The provocative comments came after the head of the American Federation of Teachers issued a statement in support of a nationwide coronavirus vaccine mandate for teachers across the country. "COVID-19 vaccinations should be required for U.S. teachers to protect students who are too young to be inoculated, the head of the nation's second-largest teachers' union said on Sunday, shifting course to back mandated shots as more children fall ill," Reuters wrote of Randi Weingarten's statement in support of a national mandate.

Fauci in his latest comments still acknowledged the difficulty of fighting local governments on this, given for example the current standoff over mandating masks in places like Texas and Florida... "You would wish that people would see why it's so important for people to get vaccinated," Fauci said. "But you're not going to get mandates, centrally, from the federal government."

But Fauci still made it clear that the federal government will fully support local governments that order its school teachers and staff to get the vaccine. The fresh comments are also sure to give local authorities the political momentum some have sought from national leaders to push for just such a campaign in local school districts.

iStock image
"I'm sorry I know people must like to have their individual freedom and not be told to do something," Fauci said. "But I think that we're in such a serious situation now, that under certain circumstances, mandates should be done."

He had previously explained over the weekend: "You surround them with those who can be vaccinated, whoever they are - teachers, personnel in the schools, anyone - get them vaccinated. Protect the kids with a shield of vaccinated people," in a separate NBC interview.

* * *
Speaking of the "protect the kids" rationale offered by Fauci and others pushing for new sweeping mandates, a recent New York Magazine piece analyzing COVID-19 and risk to children concluded based on the hard data by age group:

First, we should do what we can to actually, finally, process the basic, astounding fact of the pandemic age skew — to try to put aside our reflex to shield children from any threat of infection, to put aside the additional fear we’ve all felt, all year, because of the simple novelty of this disease, and to instead endeavor to see clearly the real scale of the direct threat to kids, which is and always has been minimal.

 

[Krayola]

FLCCC is saying Delta variant is virulent and patients in ICU are not responding to their protocol. I felt a separate thread was warranted - here is the link

CORONA - FLCCC says Delta variant is ruthless, more virulent, patients deteriorating more quickly

View: https://twitter.com/Covid19Critical/status/1425084297934000136 Also quoted from their twitter acct: ** IMPORTANT ** The Delta variant is ruthless & is presenting MAJOR challenges for treating physicians. **EARLY TREATMENT IS LIFESAVING** The FLCCC protocols are for both vaccinated &...

www.timebomb2000.com

 

[marsh]

Doctor Explains | Why the Delta Variant explosion may quickly collapse…

Visit the post for more.

citizenfreepress.com

Doctor Explains | Why the Delta Variant explosion may quickly collapse…
Posted by Kane on August 10, 2021 2:06 pm

View: https://youtu.be/YdRZJKG7rhw
11:32 min

 

[CapeCMom]

Just now on the Boston news they admitted there has been a 50 percent rise in “Breakthrough“ cases. 409 hospitalized and 109 have died. They are looking at demographics to see why the trend and they are looking at whether the vaccine effectiveness is waning, or whether the new strains are evading the vaccines. I thought it was interesting that it was the lead story.