CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

[jward]

WebMD

People with a vitamin D deficiency are more likely to have a severe or critical case of COVID-19, according to a new study. Study: Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Severe COVID

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1493049863713480711

View: https://twitter.com/WebMD/status/1493049863713480711?s=20&t=i9BIPAQx5Dx8IvEcrECi4Q

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Pfizer Board Member Says New Data Questions the Efficacy of the Vaccine Prompting FDA to Delay Decision to Vaccinate Kids Under 4 | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hᴏft

The Food and Drug Administration postponed its meeting of expert advisers on February 15 about using Pfizer’s two-dose Covid-19 on young kids under five years old after new data was submitted late last week.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

(fair use applies)

Pfizer Board Member Says New Data Questions the Efficacy of the Vaccine Prompting FDA to Delay Decision to Vaccinate Kids Under 4
By Jim Hoft
Published February 14, 2022 at 9:05pm

The Food and Drug Administration postponed its meeting of expert advisers on February 15 about using Pfizer’s two-dose Covid-19 on young kids under five years old after new data was submitted late last week.

On Friday, Pfizer said that it would wait for its data on a three-dose series of the vaccine.

“Given that the study is advancing at a rapid pace, the companies will wait for the three-dose data as Pfizer and BioNTech continue to believe it may provide a higher level of protection in this age group,” Pfizer said in a statement.

Former FDA Commissioner and Pfizer Board Member Dr. Scott Gottlieb said the FDA delayed its decision to vaccinate kids 6 months old to 4 years old due to new data about the vaccine’s efficacy during his interview on Face the Nation.

“There were no new safety issues coming out of the data set. The issue here is the ability for the FDA and provider to clearly define the level of efficacy that the vaccine is delivering,” Gottlieb said during the interview.

“It’s hard for the FDA to give its advisors a fixed snapshot of what the absolute efficacy is of this clinical trial, of the data set. And so if they wait a little longer, if they administer the third dose in that clinical trial, they’re not only going to have perhaps a better measure of effectiveness from this trial, but they’ll also have a settled data set. They’ll have a very firm picture of what level of effectiveness the vaccine is delivering,” he continued.

VIDEO 5 min 9 sec

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjOYb57Tm8o

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Omicron BA.2 variant to become dominant worldwide -WHO regional director

Dr. Dorit Nitzan explains the difference between Omicron and the new sub-variant, and why there may be bigger issues at hand.

www.jpost.com

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Omicron BA.2 variant to become dominant worldwide - WHO regional director
Dr. Dorit Nitzan explains the difference between Omicron and the new sub-variant, and why there may be bigger issues at hand.
By SHIRA SILKOFF
Published: FEBRUARY 6, 2022 16:16 | Updated: FEBRUARY 8, 2022 14:58

While the original Omicron variant first detected in South Africa in late November is still the dominant virus strain in most countries, others are starting to worry about a new sub-variant that has been halting the downward trend in infections – the BA.2 sub-variant.

One of three Omicron sub-variants, BA.2 has become the main strain circulating in several countries including Denmark, the UK, India and South Africa. According to a February 3 Financial Times report on the sub-variant, it has as many as 27 mutations that are not found in the original Omicron variant, BA.1.

But is this enough to make it a real threat to countries still struggling to recover from the Omicron wave and the unprecedented rate of infections it caused?

Public health bodies in both Denmark and the UK have determined the variant to be between 30%-34% more infectious than BA.1, according to the Times, and the UK designated BA.2 to be a variant under investigation back in mid-January. The World Health Organization is also currently investigating it as a Variant of Concern, as they are with all Omicron sub-lineages.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Dr. Dorit Nitzan, the WHO's regional emergency director, explained the expected trajectory of the sub-variant, and what it could mean for the future of the pandemic.

“The expected trajectory is that it will become the new dominant variant, as once it crosses past a certain threshold it becomes dominant – like we’re seeing in Denmark and the UK,” she said in answer to whether or not other countries can expect to see a similar rise in sub-variant cases in the coming weeks.

However, she said, there does not seem to be a risk of reinfection for those who have already contracted the original Omicron variant, as the two variants are not different enough, although there is not yet enough research to be certain.

In terms of the similarities and differences between BA.1 and BA.2, Nitzan explained that the most prominent difference right now is the transmissibility of the sub-variant.

“It moves from person to person much faster,” she explained. “If you’re with someone in a room who has the virus, you will get it. The moment you take your mask off to drink and eat – you never know when you’ll get it. We can see this in Denmark – it moves so quickly.”

Regarding the incubation period – the time between contracting the virus and becoming sick – some people have reported a shorter incubation period of just two to three days after exposure. Others have reported unusually long incubation periods, sometimes taking up to two weeks for symptoms to show after exposure.

Nitzan said it’s hard to get an accurate reading of the incubation period in places like the UK and Denmark because so many people are carrying the virus, and a positive case can often not be traced to one specific point of infection.

Other than the increased transmissibility of BA.2, she said there are not many significant differences that have been found during initial research into the variant.

“There are three main sub-types of Omicron: the original, BA.2 and BA.3, and we are following them and need to be aware of them and to learn more about them,” Nitzan said, before explaining why there are bigger concerns than just one or two Omicron sub-variants.

“What we will probably see in Europe is that most of the mutations and changes in the virus will occur now within the Omicron tree, but in the meantime, under our noses in Africa and other places that have no access to vaccines, we might have totally different variants developing right now," she said.

"I think that Omicron right now is not the mega-issue. We have to focus on allowing and ensuring vaccine access in other parts of the world.”

IN SOME places, 80% of the most vulnerable population have yet to receive even one vaccine, the WHO regional director explained, adding that it would be impossible to say what variants are developing in these areas of the world and to know whether they could be similar to Delta or even worse.

“Virus mutations occur in the immunodeficient, and these countries have a lot of malnutrition and chronic or communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS," she said. "And these are the people that the virus likes to stay with for a longer time – their body gives fertile ground to the variants. That’s why we need to focus on them.”

Does this mean countries trying to get the variant under control are wasting their time?

“It’s good to focus on other variants [like BA.2],” she stressed. “We still need to save lives here and now and we need to do whatever we can to protect ourselves and allow the health services to take care of all who need them, not just those with coronavirus.” At the same time, however, she added, “We need to lend a shoulder to the rest of the world, and that will protect us too.”

Asked if the vaccine shortages in developing countries means that Omicron and the subsequent BA.2 variant will not mean the “end of the pandemic” as many have been suggesting, Nitzan was skeptical, saying it could be, but only if the rest of the world is provided with the vaccines they are currently lacking.

“Omicron gives us hope [for the end of the pandemic] but this is a window of opportunity for us to take care of the rest of the world," she said. "If we do it quickly and in the right way, Omicron could lead us to the end of the pandemic, but if we keep focusing on ourselves and not on the rest of the world, we will not be able to call it the endgame yet.”

In conclusion, she said that countries are correct to be vigilant when it comes to the Omicron sub-variants, but there is no use hoping that they signal the end of the pandemic while vulnerable people still lack access to vaccines.

“It’s very important that we do everything we need to do locally, but we also have to care globally," Nitzan said. "I don’t think we should stop what we’re doing, but it’s not enough – and we can’t defend ourselves without protecting the rest of the world.”

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Video: Biden Declares “Personal Freedom” Comes Second To COVID Mandates

summit.news

(fair use applies)

Video: Biden Declares “Personal Freedom” Comes Second To COVID Mandates
“Think of the children.”
Steve Watson
Published 13 hours ago on 14 February, 2022

Joe Biden managed to cobble together a sentence during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt over the weekend, declaring that his message to people who want COVID to be over is that their personal freedoms come second to his mandates.

“What’s your message to people who want desperately for [Covid] to be over and to be able to resume the lives they remember?” Holt asked Biden.

“If your exercising personal freedom puts someone else in jeopardy, their health in jeopardy, I don’t consider that freedom,” Biden sarcastically stated in response, before telling people who don’t want to continue wearing masks or getting jabs to “think of the children.”

Watch:

As we fight COVID-19, we should all be working to keep our communities safe.​

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"If your exercising personal freedom puts someone else in jeopardy, their health in jeopardy, I don't consider that freedom." –@POTUS pic.twitter.com/aO8UdEEJl4​

— CAP Action (@CAPAction) February 13, 2022​

Someone should get the memo to Biden that it’s election season, and his unscientific mandates are not conducive to winning votes.

A CNN poll revealed Sunday that a majority of Democrats now don’t even want Biden as the nominee in 2024.

The survey noted that just 45 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters want Biden to run for reelection, with 51 percent saying they believe someone else should be the nominee.

In addition, the survey found that “While 70 percent of Democratic voters who strongly approve of the way he’s handling the job said they’d like to see him renominated, that drops to just 35 percent among Democrats who said they approve moderately.”

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

'We've known how to cure COVID since about March of 2020': Dr. Robert Malone

"This is a clear pivot consequent to their horrible polling numbers," Malone said, referring to the recent scramble by Democratic governors to lift COVID-19 mandates.

justthenews.com

(fair use applies)

'We've known how to cure COVID since about March of 2020': Dr. Robert Malone
"This is a clear pivot consequent to their horrible polling numbers," Malone said, referring to the recent scramble by Democratic governors to lift COVID-19 mandates.
By Natalia Mittelstadt
Updated: February 14, 2022 - 10:50pm

COVID-19 mask mandates were never necessary, says Dr. Robert Malone.

"We've known how to cure COVID since about March of 2020," the mRNA-vaccine-pioneer-turned-critic told "Just the News, Not Noise" TV show cohosts John Solomon and Amanda Head.

The sudden scramble two years later by democratic governors to lift mask mandates "is a clear pivot consequent to their horrible polling numbers," Malone said. "It's exactly what I predicted when people were asking me, 'How will we know when this thing is over?' I've said, 'Well, you'll know it because they'll all start giving awards to each other and claiming that they're the ones that are responsible for curing it.'"

Malone also discussed explosive new data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) regarding possible COVID vaccine side effects, which three military medical whistleblowers recently came forward with when they saw a significant increase in common vaccine injuries during 2021.

"DMED was something that Lt. Col. Theresa Long and some of her colleagues queried when they were busy doing diligence to try to understand what they were seeing with their own warfighter communities that they were sworn to protect as physicians," Malone explained.

"And they were seeing signals that were unusual, and so they consulted the DMED database and were shocked to find enormous increases in 2021, when the vaccine mandates were implemented to the military, compared to 2020 in a wide variety of diseases, including cancers, things related to reproduction and female reproductive health."

Malone was asked about recently released emails exposing a plan by three top federal public health officials to discredit the anti-lockdown epidemiologists behind the Great Barrington Declaration. The exchange showed the three — then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, and NIAID Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Dr. Clifford Lane — coordinating "a quick and devastating takedown" of the premises of the declaration, which espouses "focused protection," a mitigation strategy prioritizing the most vulnerable populations.

"[T]hey slandered and defamed those three as 'fringe' epidemiologists, ut they happen to be full professors at the obscure universities Oxford, Stanford and Harvard, I believe," Malone said sarcastically, referring to Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D., Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., and Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., respectively.

"And please note that neither Dr. Fauci nor Dr. Collins nor Dr. Lane have any formal training in epidemiology," Malone added.

Malone also reacted to the news that the South African doctor who discovered the Omicron variant said she was pressured not to call the new COVID variant a "mild" illness in public.

"So what we're looking at," he said, "is really quite shocking: It runs across all of health care, it runs all the way through Health and Human Services, it runs across all the Western nations — there seems to be some odd collusion, and that has been focused on amplifying the fear and suppressing any counter-narrative."

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN8ThMh-zww
35:48 min

Shocking! mRNA and Spike protein found 8 weeks after vaccination in some people

Premiere in progress. Started 15 minutes ago


Peak Prosperity

We’ve been told that mRNA vaccines degrade within the human body in a few hours, or days at most, and that the spike proteins they generate would also be gone in days or hours. A new peer-reviewed study in the journal CELL reveals that in some people mRNA and the spike protein can be detected in their lymph nodes up to 8 weeks later!

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

New York City fires over 1,400 workers who failed to meet deadline for COVID-19 vaccinate

More than 1,000 of the employees had already been placed on leave for missing earlier vaccine deadlines.

justthenews.com

(fair use applies)

New York City fires over 1,400 workers who failed to meet deadline for COVID-19 vaccinate
More than 1,000 of the employees had already been placed on leave for missing earlier vaccine deadlines.
By Sophie Mann
Updated: February 15, 2022 - 10:19am

New York City recently fired nearly 1,500 municipal workers who failed to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, officials said Monday.

City officials said 1,430 workers were fired Friday and that the number represents less than 1% of the city's 370,000-person workforce. The number was also far smaller than what they had predicted.

"City workers served on the front lines during the pandemic. And by getting vaccinated they are once again showing how they are willing to do the right thing to protect themselves and all New Yorkers," said Democrat Mayor Eric Adams. "Our goal was always to vaccinate, not terminate, and city workers stepped up and met the goal placed before them."

The mandate was put in place in October by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. Adams appear to wait to order the firings until after it became clear enough municipal workers had been vaccinated to keep the city running without those who were unvaccinated.

In late January, as many as 4,000 workers were notified that they would have to show proof of receiving at least two doses of the vaccine if they wished to remain employed with the city.

Hundreds of workers opted to produce evidence of vaccination following the notification. However,75% of those who received notifications had already been placed on leave without pay after missing an earlier vaccine deadline.

Nearly two-thirds of the workers who were fired worked for the city's department of education. The city's public school teachers' union said last week that about 700 of its members had signaled that they were about to be fired. Legal attempts to prevent the firings have been unsuccessful.

The city has implemented some of the strictest vaccine mandates in the country, requiring nearly all city employees to be vaccinated and ensuring that most private employers require their employees get vaccinated too.

During the second week of February, NYC averaged about 1,700 new cases of the virus per day – down from 41,000 per day at the peak of the Omicron wave at the beginning of January.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Fauci says annual boosters may not wind up being necessary, but situation remains fluid

The country's chief medical adviser has changed guidance as the virus has spread, muted, receded

justthenews.com

(fair use applies)

Fauci says annual boosters may not wind up being necessary, but situation remains fluid
The country's chief medical adviser has changed guidance as the virus has spread, muted, receded
by Sophie Mann
Updated: February 15, 2022 - 1:13pm

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Adviser to the Biden administration, said last week that annual COVID-19 boosters may not be needed, as he once said he thought they would be.

Instead, Fauci is now discussing boosters relative to other health factors that pertain to one's immune system and ability to fight a virus that has, in the vast majority of cases, proven to be something from which healthy young people can easily recover.

"If you are a normal, healthy 30-year-old person with no underlying conditions, you might need a booster only every four or five years," Fauci told the Financial Times.

For several months now, Fauci has been saying that it is no entirely clear what will be required as pandemic enters its third year.

Some countries, including Israel and Germany, are already offering fourth shots, and the British health service had ordered 114 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna boosters to be delivered in 2022 and 2023.

Large pharmaceutical companies are also on board for annual shots – though their incentives are worth examining.
Meanwhile, researchers and virologists across the U.S. and beyond are also working through their policy positions on the issues.

The dean of National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Peter Hotez, says "there’s a high probability that it could be three [doses] and done."

While others, including Vanderbilt infectious disease specialist William Schaffner, say the situation remains fluid and we will likely need to continue "learning as we go."

"None of us would be surprised if there would be a need for boosters at some interval. Would it be a year, two years, five years? We don’t know," he said.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Washington, D.C., lifting COVID mask, vaccine mandates but face-covers still required in schools

Neighboring Maryland has suspended similar mandates, yet the state, D.C. and Virginia still require masks in schools

justthenews.com

(fair use applies)

Washington, D.C., lifting COVID mask, vaccine mandates but face-covers still required in schools
Neighboring Maryland has suspended similar mandates, yet the state, D.C. and Virginia still require masks in schools
by Joseph Weber
Updated: February 15, 2022 - 10:06am

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is lifting the city's COVID-19 vaccine mandate and will not extend its mask requirement into March.

The Democratic mayor also says that as of Tuesday many businesses in the nation's capital will no longer be required to check that customers have at least one dose of the vaccine before allowing them to enter. However, they will still be allowed to make such a request on their own, according to dcist.com.

"We are in a much better place now," Bowser said Monday, pointing out COVID cases have decreased by more than 90% and hospitalization rates 95% since the virus’ highly contagious Omicron variant hit the country in late December. "We put these measures in place. We’ve seen a precipitous drop in case levels. This is where we’ve landed."

However, masks will still be required in schools, child care facilities, public libraries and other facilities were a lot of people congregate. In addition, the vaccine requirement for D.C. government workers will remain in place.

The scaling back follows similar efforts across the country as virus numbers drop.

Also on Monday, Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan announced that he was ending the indoor mask mandate for state buildings as of Feb. 22, He also repeated his request from last week to the State Board of Education to rescind its mask-wearing policies for schools across the state, dcist.com also reports.

Meanwhile, Virginia lawmakers are pushing forward on legislation to lift mask mandates for schools in the commonwealth.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

How the CDC Abandoned Science

Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda

www.tabletmag.com

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How the CDC Abandoned Science
Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda
by Vinay Prasad
February 14 2022

The main federal agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and welfare with other priorities of the executive branch.

Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s use of this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped lead to a growing divide in trust in science by political party. Science now risks entering a death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into subsidiary verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford to allow this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than ever, but it is unclear how we can achieve it.

In November 2020, a CDC study sought to prove that mask mandates slowed the spread of the coronavirus. The study found that counties in Kansas which implemented mask mandates saw COVID case rates start to fall (light blue below), while counties that did not saw rates continue to climb (dark blue):

CDC.GOV

The data scientist Youyang Gu immediately noted that locales with more rapid rise would be more likely to implement a mandate, and thus one would expect cases to fall more in such locations independent of masking, as people’s behavior naturally changes when risk escalates. Gu zoomed out on the same data and considered a longer horizon, and the results were enlightening: It appeared as if all counties did the same whether they masked or not:

Youyang Gu

The CDC had merely shown a tiny favorable section, depicted in the red circle above, but the subsequent pandemic waves dwarf their results. In short, the CDC’s study was not capable of proving anything and was highly misleading, but it served the policy goal of encouraging cloth mask mandates.

When it comes to promoting mask mandates in school, in October 2021 the CDC famously offered a comparison of masked and unmasked schools in Arizona’s Pima and Maricopa counties in their own journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The analysis claimed that schools with no mask requirement were 3.5 times more likely to experience a COVID outbreak when compared with schools that mandated masking. But the analysis did not adjust for rates of vaccination among either teachers or students. The paper also looked at two counties in Arizona with different political preferences, and thus did not separate mask mandates from other patterns of behavior that fall within partisan lines. Democratic voters, for example, are much more likely to embrace mask mandates and are more likely to otherwise curtail their behavior as they report greater overall concern about COVID. Elementary schoolchildren generally do better with COVID than high school kids, but the CDC’s analysis lumped all ages together, and might have been biased by the fact that mask mandates were more common at ages when outbreak detection occurs less often.

These were only a few of the CDC paper’s problems. When the reporter David Zweig investigated it for The Atlantic, he found that the exposure times varied: The mask mandate schools were open for fewer hours per day, with less time for outbreaks to occur. Zweig also found that the number of schools included did not add up. He hypothesized that some schools conducting remote learning might have been wrongly included, but when he asked the paper’s authors to provide him a list of the schools, they didn’t. In short, the more one examined this study, the more it fell apart.

Masking is not the only matter in which the CDC’s stated policy goal has coincided with very poor-quality science that was, coincidentally, published in their own journal. Consider the case of vaccination for kids between the ages of 5 and 11. COVID vaccination in this age group has stalled, which runs counter to the CDC’s goal of maximum vaccination. Interestingly, vaccinating kids between 5 and 11 is disputed globally; Sweden recently elected not to vaccinate healthy kids in this age group, and some public health experts believe that it would be preferable for kids to gain immunity from natural exposure instead. Stalling U.S. uptake therefore reflects a legitimate and open scientific debate, regardless of whether the CDC’s policy goal would like to consider it closed.

Enter the CDC’s new study. Widely covered in news outlets, the January 2022 study claims that kids below the age of 18 who get diagnosed with COVID are 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. “These findings underscore the importance of COVID-19 prevention among all age groups,” the authors write, “including vaccination for all eligible children and adolescents.” But a closer examination of the study again reveals problems.

First, it does not adjust for body mass index. Higher BMI is a risk factor for COVID, prompting hospitalization and diabetes, and yet the CDC analysis does not adjust for weight at all. Second, the absolute risks the study finds are incredibly low. Even if the authors’ finding is true, it demonstrates an increase in diabetes of up to 6 in 10,000 COVID survivors. Third, the CDC’s analysis uses billing record diagnoses as a surrogate for COVID cases, but many kids had and recovered from COVID without seeking medical care. Without a true denominator that conveys the actual number of COVID cases, the entire analysis might be artifact. As the former dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey Flier told The New York Times, “The CDC erred in taking a preliminary and potentially erroneous association and tweeting it to specifically create alarm in parents.” Some might view it as a mistake, but after observing these matters for almost two years, I believe it was the entire point of the study: Alarm might boost flagging vaccine uptake in kids. (Already, a better study out of the United Kingdom finds no causal link between COVID and diabetes in kids.)

Manufacturing alarm at the very moment an age or other demographic cohort is targeted for vaccination has become a pattern for the CDC. On May 10, 2021, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization for the 12- to 15-year-old cohort to receive the Pfizer vaccine. On June 11, the CDC published a study in MMWR claiming to demonstrate rising hospitalization among this age group; widespread media coverage of the study quickly followed. But the absolute rates for this age group were, in reality, amazingly low: Less than 1.5 per 100,000, which was lower than they had been in the previous December. Meanwhile, a safety signal was being investigated—myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle—which was more common after the second dose, and reported to be as frequent as 1 in 3,000-6,000, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. Other countries became reluctant to push two doses within the standard 21- to 28-day timeline for these ages. By July, the U.K. had decided against pushing vaccines for this cohort, a decision that was walked back only slowly.

CDC.GOV

The CDC was undeterred, and in recent weeks the agency’s director has started to push for more doses at these ages. Against the advice of an FDA advisory committee, Rochelle Walensky has moved forward with recommending boosters for 12- to 15-year-olds. This view differs from WHO guidance and that of other countries, including Canada, which is not authorizing boosters for healthy adolescents aged 12-17. But when it comes to vaccination, the CDC has a single policy: All Americans should get three doses, regardless of age or medical conditions. This is not science as such, but science as political propaganda.

If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider a final example: the CDC’s near-total dismissal of natural immunity. Many other countries consider recovery from prior infection as a vaccination equivalent or better, an assumption that makes both medical and intuitive sense, but the CDC has steadfastly maintained that everyone needs the same number of vaccinations whether they have recovered from a COVID infection or not. This view is countered by data showing that vaccinating people who have recovered from COVID results in more severe adverse events than vaccinating people who have not had COVID.

In order to bolster the claim that people who have recovered from COVID benefit from vaccination as much as those who never had it, the CDC published a fatally flawed Kentucky-based analysis. The August 2021 study compared people who had contracted COVID twice against those who had it just once, and concluded that those who had it once were more likely to have had vaccination. But the study could have easily missed people who had two documented cases of COVID but might have had severe underlying medical conditions—such as immunosuppression—that predisposed them to multiple bouts of infection in a short period. In addition, people who had COVID once and then got vaccinated might not have sought further testing, believing themselves invulnerable to the virus. The study did not adequately address these biases. Months later, the CDC published a stronger, cohort study showing clearly that natural immunity was more robust than vaccine-induced immunity in preventing future COVID hospitalizations, and moreover, that people who survived infection were massively protected whether vaccinated or not.

But to listen to Walensky tell it, none of these complications even exist. On Dec. 10, 2021, she told ABC News that the CDC had seen no adverse events among vaccine recipients, and denied seeing any cases of myocarditis among vaccinated kids between 5 and 11. On that same day, however, data from her own agency showed the CDC was aware of at least eight cases of myocarditis within that age group, making her statement demonstrably false.

So why does the supposedly impartial CDC push weak or flawed studies to support the administration’s pandemic policy goals? The cynical answer is that the agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently scientific), but captured by the country’s national political system. That answer has become harder to avoid. This is a precarious situation, as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused search for alternative sources of information.

Once that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic. Expecting the executive agency tasked with conducting the science itself to also help formulate national policy—which must balance both scientific and political concerns and preferences—has proven a failure, because the temptation to produce flawed or misleading analysis is simply too great. In order to firewall policymaking from science, perhaps scientific agency directors shouldn’t be political appointees at all.

Ultimately, science is not a political sport. It is a method to ascertain truth in a chaotic, uncertain universe. Science itself is transcendent, and will outlast our current challenges no matter what we choose to believe. But the more it becomes subordinate to politics—the more it becomes a slogan rather than a method of discovery and understanding—the more impoverished we all become. The next decade will be critical as we face an increasingly existential question: Is science autonomous and sacred, or a branch of politics? I hope we choose wisely, but I fear the die is already cast.

Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

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Breakthrough Research Finds Link Between 'Long COVID' And Vagus Nerve Damage
by Tyler Durden
Tuesday, Feb 15, 2022 - 10:25 PM

New research out of Israel has just confirmed that the puzzling long-COVID phenomenon, which has caused so much fuss around the world, might be caused by damage to one of the most influential nerves in the human body.

For those among us who aren't familiar with the vagus nerve, it's the 10th cranial nerve, and the longest and most complex in that category. Still, repairing nerve damage will be essential since the nerve exerts control over the gastrointestinal tract, along with the face and chest.

New research is set to be presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases investigates the connection between post-COVID syndrome, also known as long COVID, and the vagus nerve.

This 'pilot study' was authored by Dr. Gemma Lladós and Dr. Lourdes Mateu of the Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital Badalona, Spain, and its findings will be presented at the congress, taking place between April 23-26 in Lisbon.

The study suggests that vagus nerve damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 dysfunction could be responsible for many of the symptoms of long COVID, including persistent voice problems, difficulty swallowing, dizziness, abnormally fast heart rate - aka tachycardia - low blood pressure and digestive issues.

Here's more on the study's findings from the Jerusalem Post:

Long COVID is a condition characterized by persistent and continuous health issues caused by COVID-19 after the patient has recovered from the initial infections. It can affect nearly every organ in the body, as well as cause a range of mental health and nervous system disorders. Some of the most common symptoms of long COVID include fatigue, headaches, shortness of breath, loss of smell and taste, and muscle weakness.​

​

In order to further understand the phenomenon, the researchers used imaging and functional tests, as well as a morphological and functional evaluation of the vagus nerve, in an assessment of long COVID patients presenting one or more signs of VND.​

​

Out of the 348 patients taking part in the study, two-thirds (228) had at least one symptom of VND among their long COVID symptoms. After the initial assessments were completed, further evaluations were conducted on a test group of 22 patients, all presenting VND symptoms.​

Tachycardia and dizziness were two of the most commonly-reported symptoms of long COVID.

Of the 22 subjects analyzed, 20 were women with a median age of 44, and on average the symptoms had been present in the participants for 14 months.​

​

The most frequent VND symptoms presented were diarrhea (73% of subjects), tachycardia (59%), and dizziness, difficulty swallowing, and voice problems (45% each). An additional 14% of patients suffered from low blood pressure.​

​

All in all, 86% of the patients assessed had at least three different VND-related symptoms.​

While the findings were revelatory, opening up a new avenue of research for scientists inside and outside Israel, the dynamics driving the vagus nerve damage remain a mystery.

As the exact cause of long COVID and the reason why symptoms present in such a varied way from patient to patient is not currently known, the study’s findings could impact and change the understanding and treatment of the condition significantly going forward.​

​

"In this pilot evaluation, most long COVID subjects with vagus nerve dysfunction symptoms had a range of significant, clinically-relevant, structural and/or functional alterations in their vagus nerve, including nerve thickening, trouble swallowing, and symptoms of impaired breathing," summarized the study's authors.​

​

"Our findings so far thus point at vagus nerve dysfunction as a central pathophysiological feature of long COVID."​

But given the prevalence of long COVID this breakthrough will certainly be remembered as a relief for researchers and patients both.

.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Are They Finally Admitting Natural Immunity? ⋆ Brownstone Institute

That such an obvious, settled point of science became taboo is a scandal for the ages. Now we know it was a deliberate decision. Why?

brownstone.org

(fair use applies)

Are They Finally Admitting Natural Immunity?
By Jeffrey A. Tucker February 14, 2022 Media, Public Health, Vaccines 6 minute read

In late January, the CDC published a report that made what might have been regarded as a shocking claim. If you have had Covid, the CDC demonstrated in a chart, you gain robust immunity that is better than that of vaccination, especially concerning duration.

That should be nothing surprising. Brownstone has chronicled 150 studies making that point. What made this new chart different was that it came from the CDC, which has buried the point so deeply for so long as to amount to a near denial.
So there: the CDC says it. So nonchalant! So uneventful!

If people had understood this two years ago, plus been made more completely aware of the dramatic risk gradient by age and health, lockdowns would have been completely untenable.

The society-wide mandates and lockdowns depended on keeping the public ignorant on settled points of cell biology and immunology, plus pressuring social media companies to censor anyone who didn’t fall in line. Here we are all this time later and the truth is coming out.

Had the knowledge of risk gradients and immunities been in the forefront of policy makers’ minds – instead of wild fear and obsequious deference to Fauci – we would have focused on protecting the vulnerable and otherwise allowed society to function normally so that the virus would become endemic. We would not only have saved thousands of lives; we could have avoided the vast economic, educational, cultural, and public-health wreckage all around us.

Somehow at the time, that point was made unsayable for reasons on which we can only speculate. And yet today, the New York Times had said exactly this. In a piece by David Leonhardt called Protecting the Vulnerable, he writes:

With the Omicron wave receding, many places are starting to remove at least some of their remaining pandemic restrictions. This shift could have large benefits. It could reduce the isolation and disruption that have contributed to a long list of societal ills, like rising mental-health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime and, as Substack’s Matthew Yglesias has written, “all kinds of bad behavior.”

At the same time, there remain those who are vulnerable and they deserve protection: “They include the elderly and people with immunodeficiencies that put them at greater Covid risk. According to the C.D.C., more than 75 percent of vaccinated people who have died from Covid had at least four medical risk factors.”

You can read that again: unhealthy but vaccinated people still die. What these people need is to enjoy the protection of herd immunity, the point at which the virus exhausts itself in the face of widespread immunity.

If you have followed this debate, you know exactly the origin of that precise idea now being pushed in part by Leonhardt: The Great Barrington Declaration. This is the document on which Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci ordered a media hit back in October 2020. It advocated nothing more than traditional public health measures as a moderate solution between lockdowns and complete negligence of the virus threat.

As decent as this article is, it overlooks a huge issue, namely why would non-vulnerable populations be forced to get a non-durable vaccine with risks when natural immunity is a known option? Leonhardt doesn’t go there but he should have.

Today, even Anthony Fauci is singing a different tune. He told the Financial Times:

“There is no way we are going to eradicate this virus,” he said. “But I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the Covid restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.”

Further:

As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of Covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated. There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”

Again, this is straight out of the Great Barrington Declaration, almost to a word, but without acknowledgement.
There can be no question that early on in lockdowns, Fauci, the CDC, and the WHO all decided to bury the point that we would get to endemicity the same way we always have.

How did that happen? Paul Allan Offit is an epidemiologist who advises (or did advise) the Biden administration in the early days. He is not my favorite guy but, as things go, he is no Anthony Fauci. He seems sincere and intelligent.

Offit variously appears on podcasts. Last week, he let slip an astonishing thing. He said that early on in the pandemic, he met at the White House with Walensky, Fauci, Collins, and one other person. The topic was whether the Biden administration should recognize natural immunity to Covid — the most well-established fact about cell biology. He and one other person said absolutely. The rest said no.

Here is the remarkable clip.

How did the consensus against recognizing natural immunity to COVID arise? In a closed-door meeting described here by insider Paul Offit, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins simply decided against recognizing natural immunity—and that was that. “Consensus”pic.twitter.com/f8vcuf8y2I
— Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) February 11, 2022

Offit is fascinating in this interview because it was pretty clear to him that he was revealing something very important but he did not know whether this was going to be some kind of problem. He then proceeded to tell the story. He did not speculate about the reasons. He was smiling and laughing throughout the interview.

The immunity passports in place in three of the biggest American cities (though DC just repealed its own), the entire public sector, plus the attempt to impose them on the whole of the private sector, probably constitute the most invasive, aggressive, and controversial public policy since the Vietnam War draft. It all could have been fixed by a recognition of the immunological reality: the exposed and recovered are protected. That point of science was rejected by Fauci, Collins, and Walensky. The whole Biden administration went along.

We didn’t know until last week that this Offit meeting had even occurred. And surely this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more that time goes on, the more questions are piling up about this gang that wrecked liberty in the US after Inauguration Day 2021, a time when they could have reversed all the restrictions but instead went the other way.

Central to the concern here is what precisely happened in February 2020 to cause Fauci to forge plans to lock down the entire American economy for a virus that he previously said repeatedly could not be stopped. Why did he change his mind? We have plenty of evidence that his change of mind was related to his fear — real or imagined — that the pathogen was made in a lab and was leaked either deliberately or accidentally and that he would likely bear responsibility. Fauci and his friends were on burner phones for weeks and holding secret meetings. The HHS document ordering lockdowns were all forged in these weeks.

If the Republicans take back Congress, they are going to have a real time discovering the inner workings of the deep state here, if they find the courage to look deeply enough. That such an obvious and settled point of science became taboo for a time is truly a scandal for the ages. Now we know that it was a deliberate decision. Why? And why are we only now hearing about it, long after knowing this truth might have saved so much destruction?

.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

I know marsh posted videos from this youtube channel, this is the lastest.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTW-8eUPnQI


TWiV 865: COVID-19 clinical update #101 with Dr. Daniel Griffin
Feb 12, 2022
49 min 24 sec

In COVID-19 clinical update #101, Daniel Griffin discusses children and COVID, human challenge study results, effectiveness of mask use, Omicron boost in macaques, mucosal vaccine candidate, long-term cardiovascular outcomes, and global vaccine perceptions.

Show notes at https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-865/

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

The latest from Dr. John Campbell. I don't remember where marsh left off, so I'll post a few. I haven't watched these so I can't do a summary, I don't think she posted a summary either. If there's a summary on the page, I will copy that over.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56gG_OD9KjM


Ivermectin in Oklahoma
Feb 15, 2022
17 min 6 sec

Oklahoma Physicians Are Not Prohibited From Prescribing Off-Label Medicines to Fight COVID-19 https://www.oag.ok.gov/articles/attor... The Attorney General’s office finds no legal basis for a state medical licensure board to discipline a licensed physician for exercising sound judgement and safely prescribing an FDA-approved drug – like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine – for the off-label purpose of treating a patient with COVID-19 Attorney General John O’Connor I stand behind doctors who believe it is in their patients’ best interests to receive ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine Our healthcare professionals should have every tool available to combat COVID-19. Public safety demands this. Physicians who prescribe medications and follow the law should not fear disciplinary action for prescribing such drugs The Attorney General’s office neither condones nor condemns a specific course of treatment for COVID-19. Our office maintains that proper healthcare decisions are to be made between a patient and his or her physician, and the government should not interfere with their relationship. FDA position unchanged

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myh9GN7kaUw


Cases declining rapidly
Feb 15, 2022
23 min 52 sec

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJnEr7GTkQ4


BA 2 Omicron progresses
Feb 12, 2022
28min 42sec

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_CvfiJ3QRQ


Infection generates natural immunity
Feb 14, 2022
27min 41sec

(go to link for long list of reference article)

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Robert Malone references the article I posted above in post 60,890 (which I found on zerohedge, who also posted it).

Views and News Today

February 15, 2022

rwmalonemd.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Views and News Today
February 15, 2022

Robert W Malone MD, MS 10 hr ago

603 87

How the CDC Abandoned Science. Tablet Magazine, by Vinay Prasad. February 14, 2022

This article is an important read. It has real life examples that show just how biased and politicized the CDC has become. Unfortunately, this is also indicative of how the entire Health and Human Services enterprise has been compromised.

Although the top level analysis is quoted below, please go read the article - it is mind blowing.

Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s use of this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped lead to a growing divide in trust in science by political party. Science now risks entering a death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into subsidiary verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford to allow this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than ever, but it is unclear how we can achieve it…

So why does the supposedly impartial CDC push weak or flawed studies to support the administration’s pandemic policy goals? The cynical answer is that the agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently scientific), but captured by the country’s national political system. That answer has become harder to avoid. This is a precarious situation, as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused search for alternative sources of information.

Once that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic. Expecting the executive agency tasked with conducting the science itself to also help formulate national policy—which must balance both scientific and political concerns and preferences—has proven a failure, because the temptation to produce flawed or misleading analysis is simply too great. In order to firewall policymaking from science, perhaps scientific agency directors shouldn’t be political appointees at all.
Ultimately, science is not a political sport. It is a method to ascertain truth in a chaotic, uncertain universe. Science itself is transcendent, and will outlast our current challenges no matter what we choose to believe. But the more it becomes subordinate to politics—the more it becomes a slogan rather than a method of discovery and understanding—the more impoverished we all become. The next decade will be critical as we face an increasingly existential question: Is science autonomous and sacred, or a branch of politics? I hope we choose wisely, but I fear the die is already cast.

The high price of being right about COVID Washington Examiner by Kaylee McGhee White, February 14, 2022
This well written article sounds the alarm bells over the “group think” and authoritarianism in the USA. The author believes that this level of malfeasance has not happened in a very long time and that something must change.

One of the most alarming developments of the past few years has been pandemic groupthink and the ferocity with which it has stifled dissenting views and debate. Anyone who questioned the efficacy of lockdowns was accused of deliberately endangering the lives of others. Those who sought out alternative COVID-19 treatments rejected by mainstream experts, such as hydroxychloroquine, were shamed and even deplatformed by social media companies. The message was simple: Question the COVID narrative, and there will be consequences.
But there were still many brave enough to buck the mob mentality. And as time has gone on and scientific data on COVID and pandemic restrictions have become more accurate, it has become clear that the dissenters were right. Lockdowns didn’t save lives; in fact, they likely cost more lives than they saved. Masks, specifically the cloth masks experts pushed on the public, are ineffective at stopping the spread of the virus and are harmful to children's development. Hydroxychloroquine might actually help COVID patients in some cases. The list goes on.

This is not just a pandemic of a virus. It is also a pandemic of mania that has produced some of the most egregious acts of intolerance many of us will ever witness. The latter is the real crisis, as people like Sey and Flannery have learned the hard way. But if we're to break through and dismantle the stifling groupthink that still hangs over society, we'll need many more like them: people who have the courage to stand for what they believe is right, even if it's unpopular, no matter what it costs them.

Trust in elected leaders and media hits bottom Washington Examiner by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist |February 15, 2022 03:12 PM

According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, just 2% of adults have a “great deal of confidence” that elected officials can be trusted with national affairs. And for journalists, it’s similarly dismal at just 6%.

Honestly, is this a surprise to anyone?
I could not verify the following meme, except that Mr. Young is definitely still on Spotify now. Even still, it is a nice thought that the aging rocker can continue to make a buck on Spotify. But I am not sure either whether Mr. Young even bothered to listen to the Rogan/Malone podcast before starting his tirade. I certainly don’t want to see Mr. Young suffer or end up unable to pay for his nursing home expenses.



'We've known how to cure COVID since about March of 2020': Dr. Robert Malone Just the News By Natalia Mittelstadt February 15, 2022

"This is a clear pivot consequent to their horrible polling numbers," Malone said, referring to the recent scramble by Democratic governors to lift COVID-19 mandates.”

Malone was asked about recently released emails exposing a plan by three top federal public health officials to discredit the anti-lockdown epidemiologists behind the Great Barrington Declaration. The exchange showed the three — then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, and NIAID Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Dr. Clifford Lane — coordinating "a quick and devastating takedown" of the premises of the declaration, which espouses "focused protection," a mitigation strategy prioritizing the most vulnerable populations.
"[T]hey slandered and defamed those three as 'fringe' epidemiologists, but they happen to be full professors at the obscure universities Oxford, Stanford and Harvard, I believe," Malone said sarcastically, referring to Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D., Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., and Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., respectively.
"And please note that neither Dr. Fauci nor Dr. Collins nor Dr. Lane have any formal training in epidemiology," Malone added

Lastly, my publisher Tony Lyons has asked that I put in a plug for my new book that will be published in June, 2022 (links to pre-orders here).

 

[ainitfunny]

Robert Malone references the article I posted above in post 60,890 (which I found on zerohedge, who also posted it).

Views and News Today

February 15, 2022

rwmalonemd.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Views and News Today
February 15, 2022

Robert W Malone MD, MS 10 hr ago

603 87

How the CDC Abandoned Science. Tablet Magazine, by Vinay Prasad. February 14, 2022



This article is an important read. It has real life examples that show just how biased and politicized the CDC has become. Unfortunately, this is also indicative of how the entire Health and Human Services enterprise has been compromised.

Although the top level analysis is quoted below, please go read the article - it is mind blowing.



The high price of being right about COVID Washington Examiner by Kaylee McGhee White, February 14, 2022
This well written article sounds the alarm bells over the “group think” and authoritarianism in the USA. The author believes that this level of malfeasance has not happened in a very long time and that something must change.






Trust in elected leaders and media hits bottom Washington Examiner by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist |February 15, 2022 03:12 PM

Honestly, is this a surprise to anyone?
I could not verify the following meme, except that Mr. Young is definitely still on Spotify now. Even still, it is a nice thought that the aging rocker can continue to make a buck on Spotify. But I am not sure either whether Mr. Young even bothered to listen to the Rogan/Malone podcast before starting his tirade. I certainly don’t want to see Mr. Young suffer or end up unable to pay for his nursing home expenses.



'We've known how to cure COVID since about March of 2020': Dr. Robert Malone Just the News By Natalia Mittelstadt February 15, 2022

Lastly, my publisher Tony Lyons has asked that I put in a plug for my new book that will be published in June, 2022 (links to pre-orders here).

THANK YOU, Heliobas Disciple for finding and posting this!
It is exceptionally well written from an angle not usually taken.

 

[jward]

BBC News (World)

Austria and Germany decide to ease Covid rules

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1494041487469907968

View: https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1494041487469907968?s=20&t=2qe3_OWBUmwcLvVvp07HwA

 

[jward]

CBS News

MASK MADNESS: The CDC says it may soon loosen its COVID masking guidelines as a growing number of states have already done so, despite an ongoing debate about masking in schools. CDC may update indoor mask guidance as states loosen restrictions

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1494128190402486273

View: https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1494128190402486273?s=20&t=2qe3_OWBUmwcLvVvp07HwA

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

CDC Casually Admits Covid Nose Swabs Ended Up in a Lab for Genomic Sequencing Analysis | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

The CDC on Wednesday casually admitted some of the Covid nose swabs ended up in a lab for genomic sequencing analysis.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

(fair use applies)

CDC Casually Admits Covid Nose Swabs Ended Up in a Lab for Genomic Sequencing Analysis
By Cristina Laila
Published February 16, 2022 at 12:50pm

The CDC on Wednesday casually admitted some of the Covid nose swabs ended up in a lab for genomic sequencing analysis.

But don’t worry because only the virus will be used for the genomic sequencing analysis, the CDC said.

Many Americans were forced to take nose swabs processed with a PCR test in order to work, travel or get life-saving surgical procedures.

Now those swabs are being used by scientists to track Covid variants.

“Remember that COVID-19 nose swab test you took? What happened to the swab? If it was processed with a PCR test, there’s a 10% chance that it ended up in a lab for genomic sequencing analysis.” – the CDC said on Wednesday.

VIDEO:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TllUFqyKdtc
How Nose Swabs Detect New Covid-19 Strains | WIRED
Jan 27, 2022
6min 15sec

Remember that #COVID19 nose swab test you took? What happened to the swab? If it was processed with a PCR test, there’s a 10% chance that it ended up in a lab for genomic sequencing analysis. Learn more about the process and its importance: How Nose Swabs Detect New Covid-19 Strains | WIRED @WIRED @CDC_AMD​

— CDC (@CDCgov) February 16, 2022​

​

.​

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Study suggests increased risk of mental health disorders after COVID-19 infection

A study published by The BMJ today finds that COVID-19 is associated with an increased risk of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and sleep disorders, up to one year after initial infection.

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)


Study suggests increased risk of mental health disorders after COVID-19 infection
by British Medical Journal
February 16, 2022

A study published by The BMJ today finds that COVID-19 is associated with an increased risk of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and sleep disorders, up to one year after initial infection.

The findings suggest that tackling mental health disorders among survivors of COVID-19 should be a priority.

Some studies have suggested that people with COVID-19 might be at increased risk of anxiety and depression, but they included only a small selection of mental health outcomes and tracked patients over a maximum of six months.

A comprehensive assessment of the mental health manifestations in people with COVID-19 at one year has not yet been undertaken.

To address this, researchers used data from the US Department of Veterans Affairs national healthcare databases to estimate the risks of mental health outcomes in people who survived at least 30 days after a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result between March 2020 and January 2021.

They identified data for 153,848 individuals and matched them to two control groups without COVID-19: 5,637,840 contemporary controls and 5,859,251 historical controls who predated the pandemic.

Participants were mostly white men with an average age of 63 years.

The COVID-19 group was further divided into those who were or were not admitted to hospital during the acute phase of infection, and information was collected on potentially influential factors including age, race, sex, lifestyle, and medical history.

The researchers then followed all three groups for one year to estimate the risks of a set of prespecified mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression and stress disorders, substance use disorders, neurocognitive decline, and sleep disorders.

Compared with the non-infected control group, people with COVID-19 showed a 60% higher risk of any mental health diagnosis or prescription at one year (equivalent to an additional 64 per 1,000 people).

When the researchers examined mental health disorders separately, they found that COVID-19 was associated with an additional 24 per 1,000 people with sleep disorders at one year, 15 per 1,000 with depressive disorders, 11 per 1,000 with neurocognitive decline, and 4 per 1,000 with any (non-opioid) substance use disorders.

Similar results were found when the COVID-19 group was compared with the historical control group.

The risks were highest in people admitted to hospital during the initial (acute) phase of COVID-19, but were evident even among those who were not admitted to hospital.

People with COVID-19 also showed higher risks of mental health disorders than people with seasonal influenza, while people admitted to hospital for COVID-19 showed increased risks of mental health disorders compared with those admitted to hospital for any other reason.

This is an observational study, so can't establish cause, and the researchers acknowledge that some misclassification bias may have occurred. What's more, the study included mostly older white men, so results may not apply to other groups.

Nevertheless, they say their findings suggest that people who survive the acute phase of COVID-19 are at increased risk of an array of incident mental health disorders, and that tackling mental health disorders among survivors of COVID-19 should be a priority.

We now have a clearer picture of the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, says Scott Weich, professor of mental health at the University of Sheffield, in a linked editorial.

Drawing on results from previous studies, he explains that for the general population, COVID and lockdown caused transient distress (related to threat) and those who contracted COVID-19 were at moderately increased risk of anxiety and depression, for the first 6 months or so (though the risk was greatest in month 1).

"Taking stock, it could be argued that much of the research concerned with the mental health impacts of COVID-19 represents more hindsight than insight," he adds. And he says we now need to focus on advancing our understanding of the causes of mental ill health or undertaking research that evaluates treatments for mental disorders more generally.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Judge blocks Air Force enforcement of COVID vax mandate against religious objector

"'Your religious beliefs are sincere, it's just not compatible with military service,'" the judge quoted the Air Force officer's chain of command.

justthenews.com

(fair use applies)

Judge blocks Air Force enforcement of COVID vax mandate against religious objector
"'Your religious beliefs are sincere, it's just not compatible with military service,'" the judge quoted the Air Force officer's chain of command.
By Natalia Mittelstadt
Updated: February 16, 2022 - 11:23pm

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Air Force to stop its enforcement of the military COVID-19 vaccine mandate against an officer whose religious accommodation request was denied.

This is the first preliminary injunction granted against the Air Force's vaccine mandate.

The Thomas More Society filed the lawsuit, Air Force Officer v. Austin, et al., early last month on behalf of an Air Force officer in the Reserves who has served in the military for over 25 years. The officer declined to take the COVID vaccine because it is associated with aborted fetal cells.

Despite the officer having COVID antibodies, working remotely, wearing a mask, social distancing, and getting tested periodically, the Air Force rejected her appeal of their denial of her religious accommodation request.

Following the denied appeal, the Air Force gave the officer three options: Get vaccinated, retire, or "refuse the vaccine in writing." If the officer refused the vaccine, she would be involuntarily reassigned "to the Individual Ready Reserve without pay, benefits, or regular responsibilities," according to the decision written by Judge Tilman Self of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

"'Your religious beliefs are sincere, it's just not compatible with military service,'" the judge quoted the officer's chain of command. "That's about as blunt as it gets," Self wrote, adding in a footnote: "This is how Plaintiff's chain of command paraphrased why he thought she was denied a religious exemption from a COVID-19 vaccine. True, he undoubtedly spoke for himself, but when considering the Air Force's abysmal record regarding religious accommodations requests, it turns out he was dead on target."

The lawsuit was filed against the secretary of defense, the secretary of the Air Force, and the surgeon general of the Air Force. In his decision, Self wrote that the officer is likely to prevail on her claims that the Air Force violated both the First Amendment of the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In his ruling, the judge also relied on a decision by U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor last month that granted a preliminary injunction against the Navy's vaccine mandate for plaintiffs seeking religious exemptions.

"Although the Air Force claims to provide a religious accommodation process, it proved to be nothing more than a quixotic quest for Plaintiff because it was 'by all accounts ... theater,'" wrote Self, quoting O'Connor.

"Despite thousands of requests for religious exemption, the Air Force hadn't granted a single one of them when Plaintiff filed her Complaint," Self continued.

Noting that he is a former Army artillery officer, the judge acknowledged that "judges don't make good generals." But, by the same token, "generals don't make good judges —especially when it comes to nuanced constitutional issues," he argued. "It's that simple. Whether Defendants' COVID-19 vaccination requirement can withstand strict scrutiny doesn't require 'military expertise or discretion.'"

"This is a great victory for religious freedom," declared Stephen Crampton, senior counsel with Thomas More Society.

"The Air Force had granted over 1,500 medical exemptions by the time we filed this lawsuit, but not a single religious exemption — not one," he said. "After we filed, it suddenly decided to start granting or claiming to grant religious exemptions, albeit only a handful. It is disgraceful how the military in general has disrespected fundamental First Amendment rights. We are grateful that the court has restored the Free Exercise rights of this courageous officer and are hopeful that her victory will help to protect the rights of conscientious objectors everywhere."

.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

(fair use applies)

Is The Omicron Wave Finally Over? US Cases Fall To One-Fifth Of Holiday Peak
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Feb 16, 2022 - 11:09 AM

As more states abandon their masking mandates (while LA County bizarrely refuses to budge), it's becoming increasingly clear that - just like last year - the omicron driven COVID wave that started just after Thanksgiving is finally coming to an end.

Let's take a look at the latest numbers. As more states abandon their mask mandates, California dropped its mandate yesterday, unleashing Bay Area residents from a mask mandate that they have been living with since March of 2020.

"I'm for no mask," one San Francisco resident, Nichole, told Fox News. "I think no matter what, everybody is going to encounter the virus."​

​

"We have to start somewhere," she continued. "We can't be masked up forever."​

The US is averaging 151,056 new COVID cases per day over the last week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. But while the number of newly reported COVID cases and hospitalizations keep tumbling, more than 2K Americans are still dying every day from COVID. Still, the drop in cases is notable for its speed: cases have dropped 44% from last week. After the latest drop, new COVID cases have plummeted to less than one-fifth of the peak of more than 800K cases per day a month ago. For the first time since Christmas, the US reported fewer than 200K new COVID cases a day on Friday.

COVID hospitalizations are also declining, with 82,842 patients currently hospitalized with COVID, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. That's a 23% drop from last week.



But as far as the government sees it, the job is unfortunately not yet done: While most Americans, some 64%, have been fully vaccinated, only 28% have received a booster dose, according to CDC data. That's lower than the rate in Canada.

Over the past week, case rates were highest in Alaska, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia -- with each state reporting more than 100 new cases for every 100,000 residents each day. The rates of new cases were lowest in Maryland, New Jersey, Kansas and New York -- each reporting less than 25 new cases for every 100,000 residents each day.
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[Heliobas Disciple]

CBS News

MASK MADNESS: The CDC says it may soon loosen its COVID masking guidelines as a growing number of states have already done so, despite an ongoing debate about masking in schools. CDC may update indoor mask guidance as states loosen restrictions

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1494128190402486273

View: https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1494128190402486273?s=20&t=2qe3_OWBUmwcLvVvp07HwA

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

(fair use applies)

Leading From Behind: CDC Hints COVID Mask Mandate Will End 'Next Week' Now That States Have Moved First
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Feb 16, 2022 - 01:01 PM

For the umpteenth time since the start of the COVID pandemic, the US CDC is leading from behind.

Already, more than a dozen states including California (the largest by population) had already decided on their own to lift COVID-inspired masking measures in most public places, the federal agency is only now just ready to admit that they have served their purpose, and are ready to be retired.

NBC News apparently got the scoop: they were the first to report that teh CDC is planning to finally drop its federal mask mandate - or "loosen" its guidelines on indoor masking, as NBC News writes it - as early as "next week". CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky later confirmed as much during a CDC press briefing.

Here's what she reportedly told NBC News:

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC, is expected to discuss masking guidance Wednesday at a White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing. ​

Nothing has been finalized yet, but the CDC is considering a new benchmark for whether masks are needed, basing it on the level of severe disease and hospitalizations in a given community, two people familiar with the situation said.​

The White House has been eager for the CDC to provide an update on its indoor mask recommendation, although it wants the agency to get it right and it doesn’t want to appear as though it is putting political pressure on the agency, said the two people familiar with the plans, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.​

To be sure, as Walensky herself insisted yet again (perhaps on the off chance that cases come soaring back next week, which, judging on prior data, seems highly unlikely, but we suppose not impossible) no final decisions have yet been made.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci himself has suggested that he now feels it might be appropriate to abandon the masking guidance as the number of newly confirmed COVID cases falls sharply.

States’ making changes to their mask rules is "entirely understandable," Fauci said. "At the local level, there is a strong feeling of need to get back to normality."​

​

Senior administration officials have asked Walensky to provide an update on masks before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1, one of the people said.​

​

The agency currently recommends universal indoor masking in areas with substantial or high transmission, which is determined by the number of cases per 100,000 and the test positivity rate. The vast majority of counties in the U.S. fall under those criteria, according to CDC data.​

A few hours after the NBC News story broke, Dr Walensky confirmed some of the details during a press briefing, saying the mask guidance could finally be changed some time in late February or "early March".

Dr. Rochelle Walensky signals CDC is not changing mask guidance yet, citing substantial or high community transmission in over 97% of U.S. counties and noting that hospitals are still overwhelmed.​

​

"If and when we update guidance, we will communicate that clearly,” she says.​

— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) February 16, 2022​

Cases and hospitalizations have fallen sharply in recent weeks, though deaths have been stubbornly high in the US.



NBC News concluded by noting that most states and localities have decided to "shift their strategies" as new "tools" like COVID therapeutics have been made available. Call it a triumph of "the science".
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[Heliobas Disciple]

There Was No Exit Plan from “Slow the Spread” ⋆ Brownstone Institute

During this time of insanity, some of us went about our lives as best we could and ignored the restrictions. The rest of the world is now coming to terms with the understanding that the “precautions” don’t do much. At best what is going to happen anyway, happens.

brownstone.org

(fair use applies)

There Was No Exit Plan from “Slow the Spread”
By Robert Blumen
February 13, 2022

Last year, cartoons began to appear depicting an endless cycle of variants and government responses. They call to mind the definition of insanity (misattributed to Einstein) as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Or perhaps the less well known line from a 1990s Stephen King miniseries “Hell is repetition.”

The direction of public health policy over the past two years has been difficult to understand. It may be a fool’s errand to use logic and reason for something that by design makes no sense. But coming at it as I do with no prior education in medicine or epidemiology, crude tools such as logic and common sense may still be useful: The basic principles of reality are true for all endeavors. For a plan to work, it must work within a finite time; for every on ramp, there must be an exit.

We started out with “Two weeks to flatten the curve.” If nothing else can be said in favor of this plan, credit must be given for how well it was explained. Pictures like this were clear enough. With my university-level education in math and physics, I understood that the area under the curve was expected to remain equal under both alternatives: the one with and the other without “precautions” (as the label in the diagram euphemistically refers to life under communism). The peak of the curve would be lower, at the cost of the epidemic being extended in duration.

While the plan might or might not work, it is possible to state the premise without contradicting laws of logic or common sense. The flattening plan does accept that nearly everyone will eventually be exposed and the contagion will exhaust itself. If the plan enables some people to delay their exposure, up to a point, that could buy doctors some time to better learn how to treat them. Or perhaps a miraculous vaccine will be introduced that would create sterilizing immunity and halt the outbreak in its tracks enabling those who had delayed to avoid infection entirely.

And doctors did learn how to treat the disease, but treatment is actively fought by the medical establishment. The FDA – the drug regulator in the US – tweeted you should only get treated for covid if you are a horse. Even today, you can get banned from social media for suggesting that it is possible to treat the disease. So any possible advantage in developing a treatment was wasted.

While the plan was clear, it was not guaranteed to work. Subtle effects could undermine the simple story told by the picture. Perhaps everyone staying at home will not help because people will get infected at home. Or perhaps too many people must leave home because essential critical infrastructure workers such as marijuana dispensaries must remain open to keep society running.

Some suggested then a policy that postpones population immunity would give the virus more time to mutate. Given enough time, people who were infected and have developed natural immunity to an earlier variant would face a virus sufficiently different that they might become infected again. Along these lines, biotech executive Vivek Ramaswamy and medical professor Dr Apoorva Ramaswamy MD, writing in the Wall Street Journal, question whether we should even try to slow the spread when “Speeding It May Be Safer.” Cognitive scientist Mark Changzi suggests “slowing the spread among the healthy not-at-risk, which just raises the frail’s chances of getting infected.” “Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who have been asserting that you can’t vaccinate your way out of a pandemic for months” believe that vaccination during an outbreak accelerates the evolution of the virus away from the version targeted by the vaccine.

Quite likely the “precautions” did nothing to make the curve flatter. With the benefit of hindsight we can observe that outbreaks of the virus in proximate US states (or neighboring nations that are similar in size and demographics in other regions of the world) rise and fall side by side in cyclical surges, regardless of when or if efforts to slow the spread were made. There is no impact on the variability of any public health metric based on when a “precaution” was undertaken.

After the hospitalizations peaked and then declined to near zero in the spring of 2020, I naively expected that we had done what we could, and it was over. Whether we had flattened the curve, or, the virus did what it would have done anyway, was at that point irrelevant. Instead of ending the precautions, there was an unstated shift from the original strategy to a new one. Unlike the original, the new policy was not clearly explained. I suspect the reason is that it could not have been explained without it becoming obvious that it did not make any sense.

“Flatten the curve” assumes contagions come to an end – either through immunity or viruses burn themselves out for reasons we do not fully understand. All things come to an end. Even the plague of the Black Death ran out of gas before it wiped out the entire human race. If an outbreak ends when most of us have been exposed (and either died or developed immunity), how can slowing it down be said to save lives? Is it not the best we can hope for that some people are exposed and suffer the consequences later rather than sooner?

Evidence of the new reality appeared to me one day when I was stuck in a traffic jam, on a trip I (and many of my neighbors) made in violation of my locality’s “shelter in place” order. As I puzzled over this new reality, I noticed overhead digital signage (paid for by my governor’s massive ad spend on Covid propaganda), stating: “Stay at home: save lives.” This was the initial wave of a propaganda tsunami imploring us to “slow the spread.”

A story about a superspreader who went to a party and infected multiple people who subsequently died attributed the deaths to the careless person who probably did not wear a mask. Was there some alternate version of reality in which the dead partygoers lived out the rest of their natural life never being exposed to a virus to which they were vulnerable? Should the superspreader be held responsible for their exposure, or was it only a matter of time until the virus found them, one way or another?

Sanctimonious lockdowners heaped scorn and ridicule on countries that did not slow the spread. A small industry of curve-fitting explanations were offered to explain the “success stories:” they locked down, they wore face masks, they tested, they quarantined, they contact-traced, they social distanced. They did as they were told. They obeyed authority. And we should do likewise.

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci MD, it was the time for us ornery Americans to do as we were told. In retrospect every one of the virtuous nations had its own spike or two, or three, often after getting fully vaccinated, taking a victory lap, and dislocating both of their shoulders by patting themselves on the back overly vigorously.

Consider testing. Some virtuous nations tested. Based on the long lines of cars to get into the popup centers, the United States tested a lot too. When former president Donald Trump suggested that – perhaps – we were overtesting, he was subjected to enormous ridicule. Yet how could testing help slow the spread of a virus? By itself testing does nothing other than identify sick people.

Can a test do a better job at identifying sick people than they can do on their own simply by noticing whether they have symptoms? If testing once a week does not help, does testing twice a week? And if so, then why do we care about a test result, if asymptomatic people are not contagious? In reality testing produced too many false positives to be useful.

Testing could in theory help if combined with contact tracing and quarantines to isolate the infected people. Contact tracing was another ritual of the success stories – yet contact tracing could not possibly work if someone could be infected by coming within six feet of a sick person or walking down the same side of the street because the second-order contacts of contacts would rapidly explode to include everyone in an entire city or region. This was another instance of Yogi Berra’s observation that “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

I wondered what the goals of the new policy of “slow the spread” could be. Was it zero-covid? Zero-covid was the objective of a small cult of fanatics that never gained much traction in the US. A serious go at it would require a country to permanently ban inbound international travel. This was done in a small and tightly controlled nation where a friend of mine lives. According to my friend, they had very low levels of infection; however, the nation’s economy was tourism-based and the continued success of the policy requires that travelers not enter the country. The operation was a success, the patient died.

Several other countries tried and failed zero-covid. Antarctica, which should have been a slam dunk, could not pull it off. Nor could an isolated island in the Pacific. In one hilarious story from the zero-aspiring nation of Australia, the virus escaped from jail when a Covid security guard hooked up with a detained person at a quarantine facility.

We were not flattening the curve, nor did it look like a strategy of total eradication. We were in a strange middle ground. At best we were pushing the pain into the future but with no plan to ever deal with it. The goals and exit conditions of the plan were not clearly explained. I did at one point find a statement by Dr. Fauci that preventive measures could drive the disease down to a very low level. Was it assumed to remain low forever? If not, then from that low base, outbreaks could be somehow contained?

University of California Professor Dr. Vinay Prasad MD wrote about a similar message from President Biden:

So when people heard in Summer 2020 that Biden aimed to “get covid under control,” some people imagined an optimistic state of affairs whereby, once we all got vaccinated or wore masks for just 100 days (link), covid might be suppressed to such a permanently low level that most of us could forget about it, just as we forget about polio. Such people imagined a one-time, short-term effort to “get covid under control,” like unlocking a door.​

​

If we are to believe that a worldwide pandemic grew from an outbreak of twelve people in Wuhan, China to infect nearly the entire world (even indigenous tribes in the Amazon jungle who are by definition quarantined) why would it not do the same when we emerged from our underground fallout shelters? What if through assiduously standing in small circles painted on the floor in grocery stores and wearing underwear on our faces, we succeeded in driving the number of Covid infections down to a very small number? To pick a number, for example, twelve people. Why would the contagion not, in the absence of broader acquired immunity, spread again from that new base of twelve, until eventually reaching all of those remaining uninfected?

It took me some time to give it a name. I settled on “suppression.” The fundamental reason that suppression is not a policy is that it has no exit. For a thing to work it must work within a limited time. If the measures to slow the spread succeeded in slowing it, then what? The nature of the off ramp is the answer to the question, “What happens when we stop doing it?” If the answer is, “It would go right back to what it was doing before,” then there is no exit.

During 2020 I had people tell me that we could not end the lockdown because the epidemic would pick up right where it left off and millions would die AND (sometimes the same people ) that if we keep up the restrictive measures for a while then we could stop because the virus would not come back. A bit logic rules out the possibility that the virus could both come back and not come back.

Do we then spend the rest of our lives acting out Covid theater? Dr. Fauci said that he would never shake hands again. Blue check marks fret about quarantining their children. Jenin Younes reflected on a survey in which hypochondriac epidemiologists who are afraid to open their mail explain that they now consider a normal life to be dangerously reckless. Substack author Eugyppius writes about a medical journal editor who “can’t work out what we’re even doing here, but he wants us to keep doing it.”

Dr Prasad explained the difference between finite and infinite strategies:

Even if most of Biden’s voters agreed with his campaign promise to “get covid under control” in the abstract, this slogan does not specify whether the state of being “under control” involves a one-time effort, or a sustained effort over time. If you unlock a door, you do it once and you can forget it; if you lift an overhead hatch, maybe you have to keep holding it up so that it doesn’t fall back down again.​

Slowing the spread – if such a thing is even possible – means we get to the same place later rather than sooner. Flat or not, it is over when you reach the right tail of the curve. The strange middle ground of slowing the spread with no exit condition, would, if tried, ruin our lives forever. Are you willing to live under covid restrictions for the rest of your life? And your children for the rest of their lives and all subsequent generations? For some measures that slow the spread of disease, such as indoor plumbing, garbage removal and better diet, the answer is yes. But had our forebears during the plague of the Black Death had adopted a covid-like attempt at suppression, no one would have gone outdoors since the 15th century.

During this time of insanity, some of us went about our lives as best we could and ignored the restrictions. The rest of the world is now coming to terms with the understanding that the “precautions” don’t do much. At best what is going to happen anyway, happens. If there is no off ramp then the change is either permanent or it will go on until failure is evident and people stop caring. Then they will go back to normal one by one.


Robert Blumen is a software engineer and podcast host who writes occasionally about political and economic issues


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[Heliobas Disciple]

Patricians vs. Plebeians: The Realignment ⋆ Brownstone Institute

Lockdowns and mandates have created a clearer demarcation between the Zoom-class Patricians and the freedom-loving Plebeians.

brownstone.org

(fair use applies)

Patricians vs. Plebeians: The Realignment
By Jeffrey A. Tucker
February 16, 2022

When I was a kid — and the same with my parents when they were young — you could count on certain fundamentals in politics. The Chamber of Commerce represented business, and business generally favored free enterprise. Not always, but mostly.

Small businesses could become big and big could become small, but they generally opposed socialism, big government, regulation, and high taxes. For this reason, they generally supported the Republican Party.

It was also a time of class malleability, with people moving in and out and up and down. There were always gaps between rich, middle, and poor but they were not as wide as now, and there was a healthy rotation among them.

In the last ten years, and accelerating dramatically in the last three, this has changed. Big business consolidated and centered on tech and finance. Then it became entrenched. The laptoppers educated at woke universities ported their values into the workplace, gained managerial control, and deployed HR departments as their mechanism of control. The politics of these industries followed, and now it is the base of the Democrats.

It’s strange because I’m old enough to remember when everyone on the left defended: civil liberties, freedom of speech, the working classes, schooling, small business, the poor, public accommodations for everyone, peace, and democracy. It opposed witch hunts, segregation, class privilege, big business, war, and dictatorship. Or so it seemed.

Anyone paying a modicum of attention to modern political trends knows that this is no longer true, and that accounts for why so many on the left are disaffected (and that includes many writers at Brownstone). The evidence is everywhere (the apostasy of Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein come to mind) but sealed by two reliably left publications: The Nation and Mother Jones. The former’s push for forever lockdowns has been relentless while the latter just launched an anti-trucker campaign against what everyone used to think were basic civil liberties. (Both sites are hard to navigate for all the pop-up ads and commercial pushes.)

All of this happened almost imperceptibly sometime after the turn of the millennium, and set the stage for the rise of Trump in all his working-class appeal. That cemented the deal. The Republicans lost the backing of the most influential sectors of economic life, and the Democrats could count on the backing of the most highly capitalized and powerful players in the whole information economy.

Which is to say that the Democrats are the party of the rich. And the entrenched rich somehow found themselves on the side of lockdowns and mandates.

The Democratic Party was built by people who have for many decades pretended to be the champions of the poor, the vulnerable, the workers, the proletariat, and so on. They built huge systems to address them and serve them. Then it changed. They became the champions of closures. They shut the schools and churches, and wrecked small businesses. Their policies imposed unconscionable burdens on the very people they claimed to support.

Comments Jacob Siegel of the Tablet:

It’s not simply that the rich have gotten richer, though that’s certainly true as America’s billionaires added $2.1 trillion to their net worth during the pandemic. It’s Silicon Valley corporations with close ties to the Democratic party, like Google, that have benefited most.​

​

While the tech companies have few actual employees compared to older productive industries, their largesse now directly subsidizes whole sectors of the professional class economy, including journalism. Individual professionals may not have become richer during the pandemic but, unlike hundreds of thousands of American workers who lost their jobs — many of whom worked in the small businesses that were shuttered over the past two years — their employment was mostly secure.​

​

Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that those professionals would instinctively internalize Covid policies that enriched their tech oligarch patrons as a personal victory and defense of their own status.​

​

As a result, the Democrats have massively alienated their voter base, leaving them with only strongly reliable support among elite classes.

And what of the Republicans? I can sum it up in a word: truckers. The policies of the last two years relied on them fundamentally but forgot about them otherwise. They were pushed too far, in all countries. Now they have said: enough.

They are in revolt, as a proxy not only for transportation workers but the whole of the working class, including independent businesses.

Don’t forget that the number of “excess deaths” among small businesses during the pandemic in the US was 200,000. One of the most striking facts is that 41% of black-owned businesses were destroyed. It really amounted to a kind of slaughter that has fundamentally shaken the whole commercial sector in the US and all over the world. What you see on the streets of Ottawa today (also in DC and Jerusalem) is the result of this realignment.

It feels like class war because it is. It’s not the one Karl Marx dreamed of, where the workers and peasants rise up against the rich to demand their surplus value. It’s the rich working with the government, media, and tech to put down the demands of the less privileged in society who are calling for a restoration of simple freedom and rights.

Among the less privileged are workers, small businesses, moms pushed out of professional life during lockdowns, religious people who still have an attachment to their communities, and generally people who value their personal independence.

All this kindling was in place when the vaccination mandates finally lit the fire. Forcibly jabbing people with a medicine they do not believe they need is a good way to alienate people forever. They might go along to keep their jobs, but they will come out on the other side more furious than ever.

That fury is boiling over around the world today. Some mayors are responding by getting rid of all controls and mandates. This happened in DC this week, without explanation. The real reasons likely trace to the hospitality and restaurant industry in DC, which had been devastated by the mandates that have driven so many people to surrounding states. In addition, the large African American community in DC seriously resented the mandates. Among DC whites, 71% are vaccinated but that’s true of only 56% of blacks. The appalling reality is that nearly half of the blacks in DC were banned from public accommodation under the mandates. That’s truly untenable.

We’ll likely see New York and Boston flip soon too. Meanwhile, other governments are taking the totalitarian route. Justin Trudeau in Canada has invoked emergency powers to become the would-be dictator over the whole country.

Long an admirer of China’s authoritarian, one-party rule, his new dictatorship seems completely untenable, but we shall see. We thought that rule by the Chinese Communist Party looked untenable in light of the masses gathered at Tiananmen Square. We know how that ended. Will Trudeau attempt a Tiannamen solution?

To top it all off, most of the country is on the verge of experiencing double-digit inflation, a policy that is utterly wrecking the poor and reducing the purchasing power of everything. Despite all the promises and predictions that the worst would be over by now, the worst certainly lies ahead.

People yesterday were once again pretending to be shocked at the Producer Price Index, which saw a one-month increase of 1% and a 9.7% increase year-over-year. That can only translate to ever higher prices for the consumer.
Check out this chart on who is being hurt the most.

This might be the most portentous moment in our political lives: the commercial elite, the new Patrician class, is drifting full fascist, while the Plebeians (the ancient designation of commoners) are pushing for uncompromised freedom. That’s an upheaval that realigns nearly everything.

All of this should remind us that the history of liberalism (in its traditional sense meaning freedom) is a history of revolt against elites. It was a brief moment in history in the twentieth century when liberal values reliably overlapped with the interests of big business – and hence why there remains such confusion today in the world over what is liberal, what is conservative, what is left, and what is right.

Lockdowns and mandates have reshuffled political alliances, it would appear. They have created a clearer demarcation than we’ve seen in our lifetimes between the Zoom-class Patricians and the freedom-loving Plebeians. Engaging that struggle with intelligence and clarity is what’s necessary to recapture the cultural affection for, and the political practice of, the liberty we once knew.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. tucker@brownstone.org

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[BUBBAHOTEPT]

Take a look at this chart. Interesting???
Think about what it indicates…

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Youngkin signs school mask-mandate ban into law - WTOP News

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday signed into law a long-promised ban on mask mandates in the commonwealth’s schools.

wtop.com

(fair use applies)

Youngkin signs school mask-mandate ban into law
Rick Massimo
February 16, 2022, 4:24 PM

Calling it “a win for all Virginians,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday signed into law a long-promised ban on mask mandates in the commonwealth’s schools.

The bill, SB739, allows parents to “elect for [their] child to not wear a mask while on school property,” regardless of any COVID-19 protection mandates passed by local school boards or issued by state agencies.

At the signing ceremony in Richmond, Youngkin said of the move, “We are reaffirming the rights that we know all parents have,” citing “parents’ rights to make decisions for their children.”

Also speaking at the signing ceremony, student Breonna McAllister said that though “My teacher been there to help … it is hard to breathe in [a] mask. It’s hard to hear my teacher and it has been hard to connect and make friends.”

The bill passed the Virginia Senate on a bipartisan 21-19 vote last week and a party-line 52-48 vote in the House on Monday.

Under regular rules, the bill wouldn’t go into effect until July 1, but the General Assembly passed a Youngkin amendment that lets the law go into effect immediately, and gives school districts until March 1 to comply.

‘That’s what Virginia is all about’

In an interview with Fox News, Youngkin noted that Democrats were key to the bill’s passage and that he was pleased to see it draw bipartisan support.

“If you choose your child shouldn’t wear a mask, you can make that decision, and if you want your child to wear a mask, you can make that decision as well. And that’s what Virginia is all about,” he said.

Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, a Republican and a key supporter of the ban, began her remarks at the signing by telling the crowd of parents, children and lawmakers, “I want to start by saying how wonderful it is to see your beautiful faces.”

She said “It is time to stop putting kids last” and claimed, “Decisions about protecting yourself in health are never made well globally, because we’re all different.”

“Parents make the decisions for their children; the political entities need to get out,” the senator said. “Parents … you talk to your doctors all the time; you can read what the recommendations are, and you can look at the complexity of your child and decide what’s right.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal masking in schools.

Challenges

The constitutionality of the bill has been challenged in court, since it takes away powers that have been traditionally given to locally elected school boards.

There was a brief discussion Wednesday on the House of Delegates floor about whether it’s constitutional to enact legislation on an emergency basis by a simple majority vote.

Typically it requires a 4/5th supermajority of each body of the General Assembly to enact a law on an emergency basis for it to take immediate effect. But if the legislature passes a bill and the governor amends it, such amendments are adopted by a simple majority vote.

Democratic Del. Marcus Simon found a 2010 precedent from former Republican Speaker Bill Howell indicating that governors can’t do an end run around the supermajority rules simply by adding an emergency clause amendment.

But Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert overruled Simon’s objection. Gilbert cited numerous examples in the past two years when then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, amended bills to add an emergency clause and the legislature accepted them on a majority vote.

Simon has said he expects a court challenge on the question.

Youngkin tried to ban mask mandates by executive order last month, on his first day in office. The move was immediately greeted with lawsuits by parent groups and school boards across the commonwealth. An Arlington County judge has sided with those groups against the executive order, and the issue remains tied up in the courts.

At that point, moderate Democratic Sen. Chap Petersen joined with Republicans to pass legislation giving parents the final decision on whether their children wear masks to school.

Petersen and two other Democrats joined with Republicans to push the legislation through the Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow 21-19 advantage.

In a statement Wednesday, Petersen said, “I listened closely to my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus and spoke with the governor directly about incorporating their comments into the final version of SB 739. We achieved some of the requested edits but not all.”

Petersen said he was “glad that the Petersen Amendment on ‘parental option’ for student masking was kept in the bill” and added, that the final bill “allows the governor to reimpose mandatory mitigation measures if absolutely necessary.”

“We are in a different world than we were two years ago,” Petersen added. “The vaccine works and is widely available. Universal mask mandates, especially for children who are healthy and vaccinated, is an onerous and outdated measure that will now end on March 1.”

The final passage Wednesday in the GOP-controlled House came on a party-line 52-48 vote.

Passage and signing of the bill won’t stop Arlington court case, but makes it rather an academic question for parents.

The bill specifies “public” schools; WTOP has asked spokespeople for Youngkin and Virginia’s Department of Education and Department of Health what the rules are for private schools.
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[Heliobas Disciple]

ICELAND

Iceland to REMOVE all restrictions.

Freedom is spreading, Iceland is now following its Scandinavian neighbors and will be removing all restrictions.

petersweden.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Iceland to REMOVE all restrictions.
Freedom is spreading, Iceland is now following its Scandinavian neighbors and will be removing all restrictions.
Peter Imanuelsen
12 hours ago

It’s happening. On the 25th of February Iceland is planning to lift all remaining domestic restrictions, but the Health Minister, Willum Þór Þórsson, says it could happen even sooner if conditions allow it.

Among the restrictions being removed in Iceland is the requirement for people who test positive to isolate. Instead, the responsibility will be on the individual to stay at home if they are sick, which they are encouraged to do.

”But then it’s important to remember, that just like in general when people get sick, you need to get better and be careful. The more we lift restrictions the more we appeal to the individual’s responsibility to take care of their health.” the Health Minister said.​

​

So Iceland is following Scandinavia in removing restrictions. Denmark has removed all restrictions, Sweden has done so too. Norway has removed almost all restrictions and now Iceland is following. Finland is also planning on removing all restrictions by the 1st of March.

Imagine that. It all started with Denmark to remove all restrictions, and all of a sudden country after country in the Nordics are following suit.

In Scandinavia there are no covid passports in use and face masks are not required. As I have mentioned before, Norway has removed all travel restrictions, so it is looking like a mighty fine holiday destination this year with everything being open. Besides, the nature landscape in Norway is fantastic, with some of the best views in the world.

So to summarize:

• Denmark removed all restrictions.
• Sweden removed all restrictions.
• Norway removed almost all restrictions.
• Iceland is removing all restrictions.
• Finland will be removing all restrictions.

Are other countries in the world going to look to these countries and follow? Only time will tell, but there are signs indicating that other places in the world are easing restrictions.

In Scandinavia, especially in Sweden and Norway we never really had very draconian restrictions to begin with during the pandemic, and now we are leading the way in removing restrictions all together.

This is interesting because as you may have heard, Scandinavian countries are very Socialist. The governments in Sweden, Denmark and Norway are run by Socialist democrat parties. These are the governments that have now lifted restrictions.

Imagine that, Socialist parties have been among the first to remove restrictions. As you might know, I’m not a Socialist, but it is really interesting to see how they have removed restrictions before other countries that have so called Conservative or self proclaimed liberal governments.

If Socialist countries are better at standing for freedom than countries who claim to be conservative, something weird is going on.

I’m suspecting that the reason goes deeper than that. In Scandinavia we have lived with the Soviet Union close to our borders for decades, and been occupied by tyrants in the past. We still have that in memory and we know that freedom is of high value. But that is something that is of speculation for another article…

For now we know that freedom is coming more and more, and I will keep you updated on what is happening.
.

 

[psychgirl]

Something MOST definitely is going on, so why does it give me the willies?

 

[marsh]

Common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) efficiently blocks the interaction between ACE2 cell surface receptor and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein D614, mutants D614G, N501Y, K417N and E484K in vitro

On 11th March 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). To date, there are rapidly spreading new “variants of concern” of SARS-CoV-2, the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7), the South African...

www.biorxiv.org

bioRxiv posts many COVID19-related papers. A reminder: they have not been formally peer-reviewed and should not guide health-related behavior or be reported in the press as conclusive.

New Results Follow this preprint

Common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) efficiently blocks the interaction between ACE2 cell surface receptor and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein D614, mutants D614G, N501Y, K417N and E484K in vitro

View ORCID ProfileHoai Thi Thu Tran, Nguyen Phan Khoi Le, Michael Gigl, View ORCID ProfileCorinna Dawid, View ORCID ProfileEvelyn Lamy
doi: Common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) efficiently blocks the interaction between ACE2 cell surface receptor and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein D614, mutants D614G, N501Y, K417N and E484K in vitro
Now published in Pharmaceuticals doi: 10.3390/ph14101055

0000202543

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Abstract
On 11th March 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was declared as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). To date, there are rapidly spreading new “variants of concern” of SARS-CoV-2, the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7), the South African (B.1.351) or Brasilian (P.1) variant. All of them contain multiple mutations in the ACE2 receptor recognition site of the spike protein, compared to the original Wuhan sequence,
which is of great concern, because of their potential for immune escape. Here we report on the efficacy of common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) to block protein-protein interaction of spike S1 to the human ACE2 cell surface receptor. This could be shown for the original spike D614, but also for its mutant forms (D614G, N501Y, and mix of K417N, E484K, N501Y) in human HEK293-hACE2 kidney and A549-hACE2-TMPRSS2 lung cells. High molecular weight compounds in the water-based extract account for this effect. Infection of the lung cells using SARS-CoV-2 spike pseudotyped lentivirus particles was efficiently prevented by the extract and so was virus-triggered pro-inflammatory interleukin 6 secretion. Modern herbal monographs consider the usage of this medicinal plant as safe. Thus, the in vitro results reported here should encourage further research on the clinical relevance and applicability of the extract as prevention strategy for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Significance statement SARS-CoV-2 is steadily mutating during continuous transmission among humans. This might eventually lead the virus into evading existing therapeutic and prophylactic approaches aimed at the viral spike. We found effective inhibition of protein-protein interaction between the human virus cell entry receptor ACE2 and SARS-CoV-2 spike, including five relevant mutations, by water-based common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) extracts. This was shown in vitro using human kidney (HEK293) and lung (A549) cells, overexpressing the ACE2 and ACE2/TMPRSS2 protein, respectively. Infection of the lung cells using SARS-CoV-2 pseudotyped lentivirus was efficiently prevented by the extract. The results deserve more in-depth analysis of dandelions’ effectiveness in SARS-CoV-2 prevention and now require confirmatory clinical evidence.

(continued)

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

D.C. City Council to hold emergency vote to reinstate COVID vaccine mandate mayor lifted

The capital's council will hold a special session Friday to attempt to revive the vaccine requirement.

justthenews.com

(fair use applies)

D.C. City Council to hold emergency vote to reinstate COVID vaccine mandate mayor lifted
The capital's council will hold a special session Friday to attempt to revive the vaccine requirement.
By Sophie Mann
Updated: February 17, 2022 - 12:25pm

The Washington, D.C., City Council is scheduled to hold a special session Friday to vote on a measure to reinstate a recently lifted COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the nation's capital.

The move follows Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser on Tuesday lifting the vaccine mandate for businesses.

Council member Brianne Nadeau, also a Democrat, quickly drafted an emergency bill to reinstate the vaccine requirement.

The The measure – considered emergency legislation – will need nine votes on the xx-member council to pass.
According to a recent poll, Washingtonians heavily favor the vaccine requirement that Bowser rescinded just one month after it went into effect.

Nadeau argued that the mandate allowed residents to "go out to dinner, to go out for drinks, to go to the movies, to go shopping, because they haven’t had to worry about whether other people in that space are vaccinated."

Critics point out that 70.9% of the city's population is fully vaccinated and the virus weekly case rate has reportedly dropped from about 235 per 100,000 residents, compared to 1,300 per 100,000 residents just before Christmas.

Nadeau said she want to "eradicate" the virus' high-contagious Omicron variant before getting rid of the vaccine mandate.

"But then, we need to prepare for the next variant," she also said. "We just don’t know what’s coming down the road."
.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

(fair use applies)

Roughly 75% Of Americans Are Already Immune To Omicron
by Tyler Durden
Thursday, Feb 17, 2022 - 02:04 PM

Now that the CDC's leadership has publicly acknowledged its plans to roll back the federal mask mandate as soon as next week, the Biden Administration and its 'scientific advisors' are laying the foundation for convincing Americans that it's time to 'return to normal'.

And we saw one of the most egregious examples of this on Thursday morning via the AP: One influential model uses those factors and others to estimate that 73% of Americans are, for now, immune to omicron, the dominant variant - a figure that could rise to 80% by mid-March.



As hospitalizations and new cases fall, many hospitals and their staff are finally getting a break from the relentless churn of the omicron wave - even as the average number of deaths per day remains stubbornly high.

One professor of "health metrics" quoted by the AP said the model has helped reassure them that humanity - or at least the US - has turned a corner.

“We have changed,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. “We have been exposed to this virus and we know how to deal with it.”​

​

The thing is, as the AP pointed out, SARS-CoV-2 is no longer "novel": "Two years ago it arrived in a nation where nobody’s immune system had seen it before. The entire population - 330 million people - were immunologically naive, that is, susceptible to infection."

If the US experiences another 'summer wave', it should be far less deadly than the prior.

But the coronavirus is no longer new. Two years ago it arrived in a nation where nobody’s immune system had seen it before. The entire population — 330 million people — were immunologically naive, that is, susceptible to infection.​

​

"I am optimistic even if we have a surge in summer, cases will go up, but hospitalizations and deaths will not," said Mokdad, who works on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model, which calculated the 73% figure for The Associated Press.​

What's not clear is how much of this 73% number accounts for natural immunity caused by infections. By the end of the omicron surge, researchers at Johns Hopkins expect that 3/4ths of all Americans will have been infected by the variant, regardless of their vaccination status. Of course, insinuating that these "natural" infections had a major impact on population immunity would be a major violation of "the science".

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates that about three out of four people in the United States will have been infected by omicron by the end of the surge.

“We know it’s a huge proportion of the population,” said Shaun Truelove, an epidemiologist and disease modeler at Johns Hopkins. “This varies a lot by location, and in some areas we expect the number infected to be closer to one in two."​

​

That means different regions or groups of people have different level of protection — and risk. In Virginia, disease modelers are thinking about their population in terms of groups with different levels of immunity.​

Going forward, a lot will depend on how the virus mutates and evolved, and what future variants will look like. But one thing is for sure: humanity is much better protected now than it was two years ago.
.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-E7HNWZW-k


Natural immunity with Dr Pilz
Feb 17, 2022
36min 20 sec
Dr. John Campbell

Direct link to paper, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35149... SARS-CoV-2 reinfections: Overview of efficacy and duration of natural and hybrid immunity Dr Stefan Pilz, MD, PhD. Thank yo uoso much for this facinating and practical discussion Stefan. Consultant for endocrinology and for internal medicine and a general practitioner. Associate professor at the Department of Endocrinology and Diabetology at the Medical University of Graz, Austria. PhD from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Main research interests are cardiovascular endocrinology, vitamin D and related mineral disorders, and steroid hormones with a focus on endocrine hypertension.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcsHKUZhB4E


Vaccines for all 5 year olds
Feb 17, 2022
29min 49sec
Dr. John Campbell

Is the vaccine interval advice in the United States sub-optimal, increasing myocarditis? Link to Wefwafwa’s channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzsL...
E mail for interested academics wefandrew@gmail.com
JCVI updates advice on vaccinations for 5 to 11 age group December 22nd JCVI recommended the vaccine be offered to at-risk 5 to 11 year olds, rollout of which officially began at the beginning of February https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jc... 5 million Although this age group is generally at very low risk of serious illness from the virus, a very small number of children who get infected do develop severe disease. Latest evidence suggests that offering the vaccine ahead of another potential wave, will protect this very small number of children from serious illness and hospitalisation, and will also provide some short-term protection against mild infection across the age group. The committee has therefore advised a non-urgent offer to all 5 to 11 year olds of 2 (10mcg) doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech paediatric vaccine. The 2 doses should be given with an interval of at least 12 weeks between doses. International data from adult
programmes https://www.gov.uk/government/publica...

a longer interval between doses (greater than the 3 to 4-week schedule widely used in the United States) is associated with a lower reporting rate of myocarditis following vaccination. This association is expected to also apply to the paediatric dose and formulation when used in children. Professor Wei Shen Lim, Chair of COVID-19 immunisation on the JCVI The main purpose of offering vaccination to 5 to 11 year olds is to increase their protection against severe illness in advance of a potential future wave of COVID-19. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England will advise on their plans for operationalising the latest JCVI recommendations in due course. Professor Paul Hunter https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022...

I would lean against offering it to this age group for a number of reasons they are actually falling really quickly at the moment and we’re seeing fewer than half the cases in this age group than we saw in little more than a week ago The only reason why they were given it was to hopefully protect them against disruption to schooling and we haven’t seen that vaccines have done a huge amount to stop those interruptions Mr Javid The NHS will prepare to extend this non-urgent offer to all children during April so parents can, if they want, take up the offer to increase protection against potential future waves of Covid-19 as we learn to live with this virus https://www.gov.uk/government/publica...

It is estimated that over 85% of all children aged 5 to 11 will have had prior SARS-CoV-2 infection by the end of January 2022, with roughly half of these infections due to the Omicron variant. Natural immunity arising from prior infection will contribute towards protection against future infection and severe disease. use of the Pfizer-BioNTech 10 mcg paediatric formulation vaccine should be encouraged for all pupils in the relevant academic year for children aged 11 to 12 to reduce complexity in programme delivery and expected reactogenic events for individuals This advice on the offer of vaccination to 5 to 11-year olds who are not in a clinical risk group is considered by JCVI as a one-off pandemic response programme. As the COVID-19 pandemic moves further towards endemicity in the UK, JCVI will review whether, in the longer term, an offer of vaccination to this, and other paediatric age groups, continues to be advised.

ONS https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati... 10 January to 17 January, antibodies Children, 12 to 15, 90.2% to 93.3% Children, 8 to 11, 63.3% to 72.7% At or above 42 ng/ml Antibodies concentration in nanograms per millilitre (ng/ml) Immunoglobulins IgG, based on SARS-CoV-2 trimeric spike protein A negative antibody test does not mean that a person is not protected https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/04/28/an... A person may have tested positive for antibodies at one time, but then have a negative test result later Antibody threshold levels and unit measurement https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati...

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Waning Immunity: Study Shows Declining Effectiveness of 3rd Dose of mRNA COVID Vaccines

Data also show people who are Hispanic or Black half as likely to receive booster than people who are white. A nationwide study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the first to show that immunity against severe COVID-19 disease begins to wane 4 months after receipt o

scitechdaily.com

(fair use applies)

Waning Immunity: Study Shows Declining Effectiveness of 3rd Dose of mRNA COVID Vaccines
By Regenstrief Institute
February 17, 2022

Data also show people who are Hispanic or Black half as likely to receive booster than people who are white.

A nationwide study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the first to show that immunity against severe COVID-19 disease begins to wane 4 months after receipt of the third dose of an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna). Waning immunity was observed during both the Delta and Omicron variant waves in similar fashion to how mRNA vaccine effectiveness wanes after a second dose. Although protection decreased with time, a third dose was still highly effective at preventing severe illness with COVID-19.

Until this study, little was known about durability of protection following three doses, especially during periods of Delta or Omicron predominance in the U.S.

“The mRNA vaccines, including the booster shot, are very effective, but effectiveness declines over time. Our findings suggest that additional doses may be necessary to maintain protection against COVID-19, especially for high-risk populations,” said study co-author Brian Dixon, PhD, MPA, Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health director of public health informatics. “We also found that people who are Hispanic or Black are half as likely to have a third vaccine dose than people who are white, making people who are Hispanic or Black more vulnerable to severe COVID and highlighting the need for public health officials to double down on efforts to protect these vulnerable populations.”

According to a CDC dashboard, as of February 8, 2022, among Americans 65 years or older who received a booster dose: 72.3 percent were people who are white, 8.9 percent were people who are Hispanic, and 7.6 percent were people who are Black. The rates among people who are Black or Hispanic are lower than the proportion of those groups with two doses, and these proportions are lower than the percentage of the U.S. population composed of people from those groups, indicating disparities in who has received third doses in the U.S. In the last two weeks, however, higher rates of vaccination have been observed among these minority groups (16.9 percent of recent boosters are among people who are Hispanic; 12.7 percent of recent boosters are among people who are Black). In the study, among patients who are white in the ED/UC, 12 percent had received a third dose compared to 7 percent of patients who are Hispanic and 6 percent of patients who are Black. Similar disparities in third dose administration were observed among those patients hospitalized for severe COVID-19.

Overall, the study reported that individuals with second and third doses of an mRNA vaccine had greater protection against hospitalizations (severe disease) than against emergency department/urgent care (ED/UC) visits (symptoms which may not require hospitalization). Vaccine effectiveness was also lower overall during the Omicron period than during the Delta period.

Vaccine effectiveness against ED/UC visits declined from 97 percent within the first two months of receipt of a booster to 89 percent effectiveness at four months or more during the Delta-predominant period (summer/early fall 2021). During the Omicron-predominant period (late fall 2021/winter 2021-22), vaccine effectiveness against ED/UC visits was 87 percent during the first two months after a third dose, decreasing to 66 percent at four months after a third dose.

After the third dose, protection against Delta variant-associated hospitalization declined from 96 percent within two months to 76 percent after four months or longer. Vaccine effectiveness against Omicron variant-associated hospitalizations was 91 percent during the first two months declining to 78 percent at four months.

“Our findings confirm the importance of receiving a third dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to prevent moderate-to-severe COVID-19 illness, especially among those with comorbidities,” said study co-author Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., vice president for data and analytics at Regenstrief Institute and professor of family medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine. “That protection conferred by mRNA vaccines waned in the months following a third vaccine dose supports further consideration of booster doses to sustain protection against moderate-to-severe COVID-19 illness.”


“Waning Effectiveness 2-dose and 3-dose mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19-Associated Emergency Department and Urgent Care Encounters and Hospitalizations Among Adults During Periods of Delta and Omicron Variant Predominance — VISION Network, 10 States, August 2021–January 2022” is published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The CDC collaborated with six U.S. healthcare systems plus the Regenstrief Institute, to create the VISION network to assess COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness. In addition to Regenstrief Institute, other members are Columbia University Irving Medical Center, HealthPartners, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Kaiser Permanente Northwest and University of Colorado. Regenstrief contributes data and expertise to the VISION Network.

Authors of the study are from 10 states and 14 institutions, including the public sector, research, clinical and academia. Regenstrief Institute authors, in addition to Drs. Dixon and Grannis, are William F. Fadel, PhD, a Regenstrief fellow; Nimish Ramesh Valvi, DrPH, MBBS, a Regenstrief fellow and Peter J. Embi, M.D., M.S., former Regenstrief president and a current affiliate scientist.

Authors on this paper are Jill M. Ferdinands, PhD, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Suchitra Rao, MBBS, MSCS, School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Brian E. Dixon MPA, PhD, Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health; Patrick K. Mitchell, ScD, Westat; Malini B. DeSilva, M.D., MPH, HealthPartners Institute; Stephanie A. Irving, MHS, Center for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente Northwest; Ned Lewis, MPH, Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research; Karthik Natarajan, PhD, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York Presbyterian Hospital; Edward Stenehjem, M.D., MSc, Division of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Epidemiology, Intermountain Healthcare; Shaun J. Grannis M.D., MSc, Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine; Jungmi Han, B.S., Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center; Charlene McEvoy, M.D., MPH, HealthPartners Institute; Toan C. Ong, PhD, School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Allison L. Naleway, PhD, Center for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente Northwest; Sarah E. Reese, PhD, Westat; Peter J. Embi, M.D., MS, formerly with Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine; Kristin Dascomb, M.D., PhD, Division of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Epidemiology, Intermountain Healthcare; Nicola P. Klein, M.D., PhD, Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research; Eric P. Griggs, MPH, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; I-Chia Liao, MPH, Baylor Scott & White Health; Anupam B. Kharbanda, M.D., MSc, Children’s Minnesota; Duck-Hye Yang, PhD, Westat; William F. Fadel, PhD, Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health; Nancy Grisel, MPP, Division of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Epidemiology, Intermountain Healthcare; Kristin Goddard, MPH, Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research; Palak Patel, MBBS, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Kempapura Murthy, MBBS, MPH, Baylor Scott & White Health; Rebecca Birch, MPH, Westat; Nimish R. Valvi, DrPH, Center for Biomedical Informatics, Regenstrief Institute; Sue Reynolds, PhD, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Julie Arndorfer, MPH, Division of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Epidemiology, Intermountain Healthcare; Ousseny Zerbo, PhD, Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research; Monica Dickerson, B.S., CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Chandni Raiyani, MPH, Baylor Scott & White Health; Jeremiah Williams, MPH, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Catherine H. Bozio, PhD, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Lenee Blanton, MPH, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Jennifer R. Verani, M.D., CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Stephanie Schrag, DPhil, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Alexandra F. Dalton, PhD, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Mehiret H. Wondimu, MPH, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Ruth Link-Gelles, PhD, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Eduardo Azziz-Baumgartner, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Michelle A. Barron, M.D., School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Alicia Fry, M.D., CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Manjusha Gaglani, MBBS FIDSA, FPIDS, FAAP, Baylor Scott & White Health; Mark G. Thompson, PhD, CDC COVID-19 Response Team; Bruce Fireman, M.A., Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research.

About Brian E. Dixon, PhD, MPA 

In addition to his role as Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health director of public health informatics, Brian E. Dixon, MPA, PhD, is a research scientist at Regenstrief and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Fairbanks School of Public Health, located on the IU campuses at Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. He is also an affiliate scientist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Center for Health Information and Communication, Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center.

About Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S.

In addition to his role as the vice president of data and analytics at Regenstrief Institute, Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S., is the Regenstrief Chair in Medical Informatics and a professor of family medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.

About Regenstrief Institute

Founded in 1969 in Indianapolis, the Regenstrief Institute is a local, national and global leader dedicated to a world where better information empowers people to end disease and realize true health. A key research partner to Indiana University, Regenstrief and its research scientists are responsible for a growing number of major healthcare innovations and studies. Examples range from the development of global health information technology standards that enable the use and interoperability of electronic health records to improving patient-physician communications, to creating models of care that inform practice and improve the lives of patients around the globe.
Sam Regenstrief, a nationally successful entrepreneur from Connersville, Indiana, founded the institute with the goal of making healthcare more efficient and accessible for everyone. His vision continues to guide the institute’s research mission.

About the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health 

Located on the IU campuses at Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health is committed to advancing the public’s health and well-being through education, innovation and leadership. The Fairbanks School of Public Health is known for its expertise in biostatistics, epidemiology, cancer research, community health, environmental public health, global health, health policy and health services administration.

About IU School of Medicine

IU School of Medicine is the largest medical school in the U.S. and is annually ranked among the top medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The school offers high-quality medical education, access to leading medical research and rich campus life in nine Indiana cities, including rural and urban locations consistently recognized for livability.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

U.S. Govt Advisors SHRED Documents Detailing Fauci Agency’s Obama-Era Work With The Wuhan Lab.

Source: Natalie Winters The National Institutes of Health has repeatedly failed to comply with congressional requests for documents related to its involvement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, instead forcing agency personnel to “shred notes and other documents” referencing the Chinese...

nworeport.me

(fair use applies)

U.S. Govt Advisors SHRED Documents Detailing Fauci Agency’s Obama-Era Work With The Wuhan Lab.
Date: February 17, 2022Author: Nwo Report
Source: Natalie Winters

The National Institutes of Health has repeatedly failed to comply with congressional requests for documents related to its involvement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, instead forcing agency personnel to “shred notes and other documents” referencing the Chinese Communist Party-run lab and its work with the U.S. government during the Obama administration.

Members of the Republican House Committee on Oversight and Reform wrote a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Director Xavier Becerra urging the release of the documents, which could prove highly relevant to the origins of COVID-19.

“Rather than be transparent with Committee Republicans, HHS and NIH have chosen to hide, obfuscate, and shield the truth,” argues the letter.

The letter reveals that an NIH advisor was “forced by NIH to shred notes and other documents pertaining to the WIV grants as early as 2014.” An email from an individual, whose name has been redacted, to a committee staff member on November 5th, 2021 revealed the following:

“I signed a confidentiality agreement in which I agreed not to discuss any grant with anyone except with other members of the study section, and – once the meeting was over – that I would destroy any notes that I had taken during the meeting (we did this by tossing them in shred box in the meeting room)).”​

The letter outlines how, “to date, HHS and NIH have refused to produce any responsive documents or information.” The congressional committee requested documents from former NIH Director Francis Collins surrounding a 2014, Obama-era grant awarded from Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to EcoHealth Alliance and the WIV in May and July of 2021.

Despite Republican committee staff repeatedly amending their requests, making them broader in scope and easier for the federal agency to fulfill, both federal agencies have refused to turn over any documents.

“Since our July 15, 2021, request invoking §2954, Republican Committee staff have provided the following accommodations to HHS and NIH: time extensions, reducing the scope of the request, prioritizing certain documents, and engaging in in camera review of certain documents. Throughout this time, Republican Committee staff made clear to HHS staff that Committee Republicans may, at a later date, request full, unredacted copies of the documents reviewed in camera and all other documents responsive to the Requests,” explains the letter.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Publix Drops Mask Requirement for Vaccinated Workers

Publix is one of the latest major grocery chains to modify its mask mandate for employees, now allowing vaccinated workers to forgo masks.

www.breitbart.com

(fair use applies)

Publix Drops Mask Requirement for Vaccinated Workers
Hannah Bleau
17 Feb 20220

Publix is one of the latest major grocery chains to modify its mask mandate for employees, now allowing fully vaccinated workers to forgo masks while on the job.

The grocery chain made the announcement on its coronavirus FAQ page, reiterating that it does not require customers to wear a mask in the store. While it did, however, require employees to wear a mask, it modified that requirement. As of February 14, fully vaccinated employees no longer have to wear a mask while working. The company attributed the move to a “decrease” in coronavirus cases and the mass availability of the vaccine:

As a result of the decrease in COVID-19 cases and wide availability of the vaccine, fully vaccinated associates have the option not to wear face coverings beginning Feb. 14, 2022, unless required for their job duties or by a state or local order or ordinance. Pharmacy associates, regardless of vaccination status, are still required to wear face coverings when​

administering vaccines. ​

​

The move coincides with Walmart dropping its mask rule for vaccinated workers as well, affecting its roughly 1.6 million employees. However, like Publix, workers in “clinical care” settings must remained masked up.

Several blue state leaders this past week have announced the end of mask requirements in their states as well, including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D), Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Delaware Gov. John Carney (D).

However, President Biden believes these moves are “probably premature,” as he continues to promote masking, requiring them on public modes of transportation, despite the fact that prior to taking office, he pitched “just” 100 days of masking to the American people.

While Dr. Anthony Fauci insisted that states dropping their remaining mask mandates has nothing to do with politics, prominent conservatives, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), said the timing is suspicious, as the science has not changed. Rather, they say Democrats are simply making these moves because of the upcoming midterm election, hoping the American people forget the rules and restrictions they imposed upon them the past two years.