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[Heliobas Disciple]

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September 2021 - Scotland launched it’s first investigation into an abnormal spike in newborn baby deaths that was triggered by surpassing a threshold in infant deaths that hadn’t been seen since the 1980’s. (Note- this spike did not occur in 2020, the Year of Covid)

Ashmedai over at Resisting the Intellectual Literati wrote an extensive report on fertility issues and the vaccine back in September 2021.

Resisting the Intellectual Illiteratti
Is There a Plausible Basis For Fertility Concerns?
In my own community, the most prominent concern on the minds of many of the vaccine hesitant, especially young women of childbearing age, is the fear of an adverse effect on fertility. Possibly because of this, fertility concerns have also been derisively dismissed by the doctors with more passion and vengeance than for any other type of adverse effect…
Read more
8 months ago · 49 likes · 40 comments · Ashmedai

August 2021- NPR reported on a survey out of the University of Chicago to investigate reports of changes in menstrual cycles after the vaccine. They received 140,000 responses.,

October 2021- VAERS looked like this:



I ran my own VAERS report using only a few pregnancy-related keywords. The list is 769 events long, and here’s a screenshot of just a few from the first page:



December 2021 - IVF clinics reported unusual issues after the mass vaccination campaign began. Steve Kirsch covered it thoroughly.

Steve Kirsch's newsletter
IVF clinics started having serious problems right after the vaccines started rolling out
I just got off the phone with a woman who works at a large IVF clinic. She has to remain nameless to avoid being fired for speaking out. Nobody is supposed to know about the serious problems happening in the IVF clinics. Let me tell you what is really going on and the scientific study that explains it…
Read more
5 months ago · 498 likes · 457 comments · Steve Kirsch

January 2022- NIH funded a study that was released that reported a slight causal relationship between the Covid-19 vaccines and a lengthier menstrual cycle.



February 2022- An EU health agency announced an investigation between Covid-19 and disruptions in menstrual cycles based on reports coming in.



Josh Guetzkow reported on data from Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel. Vaccinated mothers were experiencing spontaneous abortions/miscarriages/stillbirths at a rate that’s 34% higher than their unvaccinated counterparts.

Jackanapes Junction
Stillbirths, Miscarriages and Abortions in Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Women
Data from Rambam hospital in Haifa reveal a stillbirth, miscarriage and abortion (SBMA) rate of 6% among women who never received a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 8% among women who were vaccinated with at least one dose (and never had a SARS-Cov-2 infection…
Read more
4 months ago · 58 likes · 62 comments · Josh Guetzkow

March 2022- A 2nd investigation was launched in Scotland due to the high rate of infant deaths, totaling 18 for the month of March.



Pfizer, what say you?

After spending days reading reports about the horrible negative effects of fertility that are coming out in droves, I had to at least try and get some sort of response from Pfizer. After sitting on hold for a while, a gentleman named Ron got on the line. When I asked if the Covid-19 vaccine is safe for a pregnant woman to take, he read me the entire safety warning from Pfizer’s website. I then told him that I know many women who have had serious disruptions to their menstrual cycle, as well as numerous women who experienced miscarriages late term, shortly after getting one of the Pfizer vaccines. I asked him what he knows about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, given all the new information that’s come out from the FOIA requests.

He responded that he can pass me along to his managers, but first he has to read another statement, this time from the CDC. He proceeded to verbally read it for 10 minutes while I waited patiently. When he finished, surprised that I was still on the line, he asked if I had any more questions. I said yes, and asked if he wanted to be a whistleblower. He said he noted my response and passed me along to Olivia, which was pretty much a repeat of the first conversation.
I left contact information with both of them just in case, but somehow I highly doubt we’ll get a response. I did note to both of them that should they want to get on the right side of this scandal and begin to help those who are suffering, they should do so before the entire thing crumbles down.

Now What?

We’re now in May 2022. The claims of safety and efficacy don’t match their own internal documents that they tried to hide for 75 years. Yet academic institutions and public health agencies continue to insist it’s recommended for pregnant women to receive Covid-19 vaccines and boosters. Until when? Until the wave of misery gets so large that it’s no longer deniable? No one is coming to save us. Groups like DailyClout, VSRF, America’s Frontline Doctors, Children’s Health Defense, and ICAN are sources of inspiration that there are still good men out there, as well as a source of hope that through their strength and efforts, we’ll come out of the other side of this with some integrity still left in some medical professionals.”

SOURCE

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Dear Friends, Sorry to Announce a Genocide

It's Really True: They Know they are Killing the Babies

naomiwolf.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Dear Friends, Sorry to Announce a Genocide
It's Really True: They Know they are Killing the Babies
Dr Naomi Wolf
May 30

I’ve been silent for some weeks. Forgive me.

The truth is: I’ve been rendered almost speechless — or the literary equivalent of that — because recently I’ve had the unenviable task of trying to announce to the world that indeed, a genocide — or what I’ve called, clumsily but urgently, a “baby die-off” — is underway.

The WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers, a group of 3000 highly credentialled doctors, RNs, biostatisticians, medical fraud investigators, lab clinicians and research scientists, have been turning out report after report, as you may know, to tell the world what is in the 55,000 internal Pfizer documents which the FDA had asked a court to keep under wraps for 75 years. By court order, these documents were forcibly disclosed. And our experts are serving humanity by reading through these documents and explaining them in lay terms. You can find all of the Volunteers’ reports on DailyClout.io.

The lies revealed are stunning.

The WarRoom/DailyClout Volunteers have confirmed: that Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew by December 2020 that the MRNA vaccines did not work — that they “waned in efficacy” and presented “vaccine failure.” One side effect of getting vaccinated, as they knew by one month after the mass 2020 rollout, was “COVID.”

Pfizer knew in May of 2021 that 35 minors’ hearts had been damaged a week after MRNA injection — but the FDA rolled out the EUA for teens a month later anyway, and parents did not get a press release from the US government about heart harms til August of 2021, after thousands of teens were vaccinated. [PFIZER VACCINE: FDA Fails to Mention Risk of Heart Damage in Teens - DailyClout]

Pfizer (and thus the FDA; many of the documents say “FDA: CONFIDENTIAL” at the lower boundary) knew that, contrary to what the highly paid spokesmodels and bought-off physicians were assuring people, the MRNA, spike protein and lipid nanoparticles did not stay in the injection site in the deltoid, but rather went, within 48 hours, into the bloodstream, from there to lodge in the liver, spleen, adrenals, lymph nodes, and, if you are a woman, in the ovaries. [Internal Pfizer Documents Prove Knowledge that Lipid Nanoparticles (in mice subjects) do not Remain in Muscle but ‘Were Shown to be Rapidly Distributed in the Blood to the Liver" - DailyClout]

Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew that the Moderna vaccine had 100 mcg of MRNA, lipid nanoparticles and spike protein, which was more than three times the 30 mcg of the adult Pfizer dose; the company’s internal documents show a higher rate of adverse events with the 100 mcg dose, so they stopped experimenting with that amount internally due to its “reactogenicity” — Pfizer’s words — but no one told all of the millions of Americans who all got the first and second 100 mcg Moderna dose, and the boosters.

Pfizer skewed the trial subjects so that almost three quarters were female — a gender that is less prone to cardiac damage. Pfizer lost the records of what became of hundreds of their trial subjects.

In the internal trials, there were over 42,000 adverse events and more than 1200 people died. Four of the people who died, died on the day they were injected.

Adverse events tallied up in the internal Pfizer documents are completely different from those reported on the CDC website or announced by corrupted physicians and medical organizations and hospitals. These include vast columns of joint pain, muscle pain (myalgia), masses of neurological effects include MS, Guillain Barre and Bell’s Palsy, encephaly, every iteration possible of blood clotting, thrombocytopenia at scale, strokes, hemorrhages, and many kinds of ruptures of membranes throughout the human body. The side effects about which Pfizer and the FDA knew but you did not, include blistering problems, rashes, shingles, and herpetic conditions (indeed, a range of blistering conditions oddly foreshadowing the symptoms of monkeypox).

The internal documents show that Pfizer (and thus the FDA) knew that angry red welts or hives were a common reaction to the PEG, a petroleum-derived allergen in the vaccine ingredients — one that you are certainly not supposed to ingest.
Indeed, PEG is an allergen so severe that many people can go into anaphylactic shock if they are exposed to it. But people with a PEG allergy were not warned away from the vaccines or even carefully watched by their doctors, EpiPen in hand. They were left to their shock.

Pfizer knew that “exposure” to the vaccine was defined — in their own words - as sexual contact (especially at time of conception), skin contact, inhalation or lactation. [Vaccine ‘Shedding’: Can This Be Real After All? - DailyClout]. ‘Fact-checkers’ can deny this all they want. The documents speak for themselves.

Of course, people who have tried to raise any of these issues have been deplatformed, scolded by the President, called insane, and roundly punished.

Athletes and college students and teenagers are collapsing on football and soccer fields. Doctors wring their hands and express mystification. But BioNTech’s SEC filing shows a fact about which the CDC and the AMA breathe not a word: fainting so violently that you may hurt yourself is one of the side effects important enough for BioNTech to highlight to the SEC.

But not to highlight to you and me.

I was able to process all of this and keep simply reporting. But in the last few weeks the horror overcame me. Because now, the Volunteers, under the excellent leadership of Program Manager Amy Kelly, have confirmed that there is a genocide underway, intentionally driven or not. And Israeli journalist Etana Hecht has added her own superb analysis.

Here is Ms Hecht’s summary of the Volunteers’ findings:

Clown World - Honk​

Vaccinated Women​

The topic of pregnant and nursing moms getting vaccinated under encouragement and coercion is painful. It’s painful to research, painful to write about, and painful to learn how carelessly the most precious among us are being treated. The very essence of life and nature live within pregnant and nursing mothers. Reflecting on how little regard was paid t…​

4 days ago · 129 likes · 29 comments · Etana Hecht​

It seems that there can indeed be a happenstance genocide. Reproduction itself is targeted, intentionally or not, by the mRNA vaccines. And if you know that reproduction is harmed, and babies and fetuses are harmed, and you know that this is at scale, which everyone at Pfizer and at the FDA who read these documents, knew —and if you do not stop — then does that not ultimately become a genocide?

The WarRoom/DailyClout volunteers have confirmed that lipid nanoparticles, the tiny hard fatty casings that contain the MRNA, traverse the amniotic membrane. That means that they enter the fetal environment, of course. (They also traverse the blood-brain barrier, which may help explain the post-MRNA vaccination strokes and cognitive issues we are seeing).

The Volunteers have drilled deep into the Pfizer documents’ reports about pregnancy and found that the assurance that the vaccine is “safe and effective” for pregnant women, was based on a study of 44 French rats, followed for 42 days (the scientists who ran the study are shareholders or employees of BioNTech). [COVID-19 Vaccines & Pregnancy: Risky Business - DailyClout]

The Volunteers found that while pregnant women were excluded from the internal studies, and thus from the EUA on which basis all pregnant women were assured the vaccine was “safe and effective”, nonetheless about 270 women got pregnant during the study. More than 230 of them were lost somehow to history. But of the 36 pregnant women whose outcomes were followed - 28 lost their babies.

The Volunteers found that a baby died after nursing from a vaccinated lactating mother, and was found to have had an inflamed liver. Many babies nursing from vaccinated mothers showed agitation, gastrointestinal distress, and failure to thrive (to grow), and were inconsolable.

I am hearing anecdotal reports of these symptoms in babies nursing from vaccinated mothers, now, from across the country.

The Pfizer documents also show that some vaccinated mothers had suppressed lactation, or could produce no milk at all.
Doctors, of course, are stumped by all this. Stumped.

The NIH database has a preprint study making the case that there are negligible amounts of PEG in the breast milk of vaccinated women. [COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination in Lactation: Assessment of adverse events and vaccine related antibodies in mother-infant dyads]

But what is a negligible amount of a petroleum product in mother’s milk, when you are a tiny newborn with no immunities, just arriving in the world? The NIH preprint itself reported higher levels of GI distress and sleeplessness in the infants studied, and one mother had elevated PEG levels in breast milk, and the fine print concludes that more study is needed:

“Larger studies are needed to increase our understanding of transfer of PEG into human milk, and potential effects after ingestion by the infant. Although expert consensus states there is minimal or no potential risk for the infant from maternal COVID-19 vaccination(20,21), the minor symptoms that were reported (sleep changes and gastrointestinal symptoms) could be further investigated in future studies to determine if they are related to vaccination.”

Since no babies died in the brief time frame of the tiny study, the study concluded that nursing babies suffered no real ill effects from vaccinated mothers. But the study did not follow these poor babies, with their acknowledged sleeplessness and their confirmed GI distress, to see if they actually “thrived” — gained weight and developed normally.

On such faulty science were women assured that the vaccines were “safe and effective” for them and their nursing babies.
But — four of the lactating vaccinated women in the Pfizer documents reported “blue-green” breast milk. I am not making this up. And the nursing baby who died, with an inflamed liver — the case has been buried; has not made headlines.
Coincidentally — or not — the SAME FDA that turned a blind eye to vast harms to humans, and to the subcategory of moms and babies, in the Pfizer documents, declared that Abbot, a major producer of baby formula in the US, had to close its factory. [Abbott reaches agreement with FDA to reopen baby formula plant to ease nationwide shortage]

Coincidentally, with little formula available and with some or many (we don’t know) vaccinated moms having compromised breast milk, it turns out that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Mark Zuckerberg have all invested in a startup called "BioMilq” — which produces lab grown breast milk from mammary cells. [Bill Gates' climate-change investment firm bets on lab-produced breast milk]. Reports of this startup include this Frankenstein-like language as if this is normal: “The BIOMILQ team creates its product from cells taken from human breast tissue and milk, donated by women in the local community, who get a Target giftcard in return.” [This startup is creating 'human milk' in a lab]

As if all of this is not horrific enough, Ms Hecht drew studies from three countries — Canada, Scotland and now Israel - -to show that babies are dying disproportionately, during and after 2021, in highly vaccinated countries, and that newborns are dying disproportionately if they have vaccinated mothers versus unvaccinated mothers.

In highly vaccinated Scotland, almost twice the number of babies died in 2021 as died in baseline numbers.
[Investigation launched into abnormal spike in newborn baby deaths in Scotland]. In Ontario, Canada, 86 babies died in 2021, versus a baseline of four or five; this was a baby die-off so severe that a brave Parliamentarian brought the issue to Parliament. [https://nonvenipacem.com/2021/12/10...stillbirths-triggers-parliamentary-questions/].

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[Heliobas Disciple]

[CONTINUED FROM POST ABOVE]


In Israel, at RamBam Hospital in Haifa, there were 34% more spontaneous abortions and stillbirths to vaccinated women as to unvaccinated women.

Jackanapes Junction
Stillbirths, Miscarriages and Abortions in Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Women
Data from Rambam hospital in Haifa reveal a stillbirth, miscarriage and abortion (SBMA) rate of 6% among women who never received a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 8% among women who were vaccinated with at least one dose (and never had a SARS-Cov-2 infection…
4 months ago · 59 likes · 62 comments · Josh Guetzkow

Ms Hecht also notes that menstrual dysregulation in vaccinated women is fully confirmed now by many studies, with an average of one extra day of bleeding a month (a side effect about which I warned about in March of 2021, which in turn got me called names by a CNN commentator and permanently deplatformed from Twitter).

You don’t have to know more than eighth grade biology to know that a dysregulated menstrual cycle, not to mention spike protein accumulating in the ovaries, not to mention the traversing of the bodies’ membranes, including the amniotic sac, by tiny hard fatty lipid nanoparticles, not to mention PEG in breast milk, is all going to affect fertility, fetal health, childbirth, and babies’ GI wellbeing or distress, and thus their ability or failure to thrive (let alone to bond).

And now, the babies are dying. Now scale the data from Canada, Scotland and Israel to all the vaccinated nations in the world.

What do we do with all of this?

Knowing as I now do, that Pfizer and the FDA knew that babies were dying and mothers’ milk discoloring by just looking at their own internal records; knowing as I do that they did not alert anyone let alone stop what they were doing, and that to this day Pfizer, the FDA and other demonic “public health” entities are pushing to MRNA-vaccinate more and more pregnant women; now that they are about to force this on women in Africa and other lower income nations who are not seeking the MRNA vaccines, per Pfizer CEO Bourla this past week at the WEF, and knowing that Pfizer is pushing and may even receive a US EUA for babies to five year olds — I must conclude that we are looking into an abyss of evil not seen since 1945.

So I don’t know about you, but I must switch gears with this kind of unspeakable knowledge to another kind of discourse.

I am not saying that this is exactly like finding evidence of Dr Mengele’s experiments; but I am saying, with these findings, that now the comparison may not be that excessive. These anti-humans at Pfizer, speaking at the WEF; these anti-humans at the FDA; knowing what they know; are targeting the miraculous female body, with its ability to conceive, gestate, birth and nurture life. They are targeting the female body’s ability to sustain a newborn human being with nothing but itself. They are targeting the amniotic membrane, the ovaries that release the ovum, they are targeting the lymph and blood that help support the building up of mother’s milk, they are targeting the fetus in utero, helpless.

They are targeting the human fetus’ very environment, one of the most sacred spaces on this earth, if not the most sacred.

And they know it.

I don’t know about you, and I am not proselytizing, but as you may know if you read me here, these apocalyptic days, I turn to prayer. I have started to say in public, once I had to face the fact of the die-off of the babies, that this is a Biblical time; and I mean Old Testament Biblical.

It is a time like that of the construction of the Tower of Babel — of massive arrogance against divine plans. Men such Bill Gates tamper with and seek to outdo God’s best works in lab after lab, and Tech Bros “disrupt” the human competition for their unsought-after goods and services, by targeting human processes and by ruining the bodies made in the image of God.

It is a time like that when the ten plagues assailed the Egyptians in Exodus 11:4-6:

“4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt.5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. 7”This was the worst plague of all, the slaying of the firstborn.

It is a time of ha-Satan — Satan — “going to and fro in the earth, and […] walking up and down in it”, as Job 2 describes him.

It is a time of demons sauntering around in human spaces, though they look human enough themselves, smug in their Italian suits on panels at the World Economic Forum.

Ha-Satan - and his armies: ruining the conception, the milk, the menses, the touch, the cradling of the infant by its mother, ruining the feeding of the infant; ruining the babies themselves.

I read the Prophets a lot these days — because how could I not? I am looking for what writer Annie Lamott called “Operating Instructions.” What do you do when humanity itself is threatened? When there are professional battalions and bureaucratic departments of people who act with anathema toward the human race?

Surely there must be a clue.

So I reread the story of Noah, and the Book of Esther, a lot these days; I reread Jeremiah.

We’ve been here before. Embarrassingly often, when it comes to that.

The story is always the same, at least in the Hebrew Bible (in the New Testament, of course, God skips to the end and upends the plot).

At least in the Hebrew Bible, God is always trying to get our attention, always, it seems, simply asking us just to walk alongside him; simply asking us to keep his not--too-challenging commandments; not, indeed, asking a lot.

Jeremiah 1
13: “ The word of the Lord came to me again: “What do you see?” “I see a pot that is boiling,” I answered. “It is tilting toward us from the north.”
14 The Lord said to me, “From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land.
15 I am about to summon all the peoples of the northern kingdoms,” declares the Lord. “Their kings will come and set up their thrones in the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem; they will come against all her surrounding walls and against all the towns of Judah.
16 I will pronounce my judgments on my people because of their wickedness in forsaking me, in burning incense to other gods nd in worshiping what their hands have made.”

In the Hebrew Bible, anyway, the math is simple. We turn, we listen, and we are saved; or we carry on heedlessly, worshipping what our own hands have made, sluts to other gods — to “the science,” to media lies; to the narcissism of convention, these days, one might say — and thus we are lost.

We have been nearly lost, time after time after time.

This time could really be the last time; these monsters in the labs, on the transnational panels, are so very skillful; and so powerful; and their dark work is so extensive.

If God is there — again — after all the times that we have tried his patience — and who indeed knows? - will we reach out a hand to him in return, will we take hold in the last moment out of this abyss, and simply find a way somehow to walk alongside him?

Or will we this time, in losing the babies, and heedlessly carrying on nonetheless — be truly lost ourselves?

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Relics of the past

At some point one has to wonder whether The Science™ moves too slow to deal with novelty, or if the narrative’s veil is being shrouded over reality. Reading through the journal articles these days begs the simple question — “so what”? If, for example, a person were to open up the

jestre.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Relics of the past
Jestre
May 29

At some point one has to wonder whether The Science™ moves too slow to deal with novelty, or if the narrative’s veil is being shrouded over reality. Reading through the journal articles these days begs the simple question — “so what”? If, for example, a person were to open up the front page article on NEJM and take the article at face value, then they would draw completely different conclusions than if they had read the same article in the summer of last year. You know, when the observational data the study uses was actually collected.

The article in a nutshell is looking at how long it takes for immunity to wane in those who were vaccinated and those who were recovered from COVID-19. Noticeably, the never tested positive never vaccinated cohort were not included in the study. Here’s the rub — the study, which uses data prior to most vaccine passport schemes, clearly shows that natural immunity is better than vaccines in every possible way.

The Dynamics of Societal Collapse​

Natural immunity is better in every possible way.​

Vaccine enthusiasts are utterly obsessed with titers. No, not that kind! But one can be mistaken. The vaccine enthusiasts certainly pursue the antibody titer argument with a single-minded obsession rarely seen outside of juvenile males. Antibody Titers…​

Read more​

6 months ago · 11 likes · 5 comments · Jestre​

We knew that, of course, at the time, but public health officials, even with all this data at their fingertips, continually lied to us. The fact that this study took almost a year is pathetic. In reality, depending on the data structure, it would have taken a skeptic like me hours, maybe days, but certainly less than a week to clean the data in R. Analyzing the data and writing up a similar report to theirs would be even quicker — and the structure of the report would be less misleading. It is not hard.

The reason the report took so long, though, is because the natural conclusion from looking at the results of the study can only, and even must be, that vaccine passports were and still are immoral when there is no feasible way of knowing who has been infected with the virus on a grand scale.

Again, while the never tested positive never vaccinated cohort was not shown here, the study shows rapidly waning immunity in every person not infected. Immunity in those infected also waned, but even the authors of the study admit that much of this was likely due to the novelty of new variants.

Ironically, any existing protection from vaccines during the delta wave, which I have always been on the record did exist, just at much lower rates than public health officials were representing, no longer exists. So measuring the time until immunity wanes in a vaccine that no longer exists is irrelevant. So what. Yes, it waned for an extinct variant, but once omicron came along, it did not wane because it never existed.

See the graph below originally posted here.



Notice, in the above graph, the first few days are marked by the well understood healthy vaccine effect, in other words, people who are sick do not get vaccinated, then we see that… immunity is simply never gained. The only reason the cases drop down at the end is because almost no one in that cohort had been vaccinated long enough to get infected. That is not a sign of waning immunity. It is a sign of never acquired immunity.

This study should have been framed as an apology.

An apology for all the times we were called conspiracy theorists for pointing out quickly waning immunity, the need for endless boosters, and the fact that natural immunity is/was superior to vaccination. Instead, it will be used to convey the advantages of what they call “hybrid immunity”, which is getting vaccinated and being infected anyway, or being infected and getting vaccinated anyway.

In either case, the study shows nothing of the sort, but the way the data is laid out suggests as much because the researchers selectively included cohorts in different time frames and put the data far enough away to confuse the public.
Check out this graph from the study.



Note the time since last event column. If the authors had shown time since last event for each cohort on one visual, it would become clearer what is happening.

If we were to compare those with natural immunity (14 infections per 100k) to the double vaccinated (88.9 infections per 100k) at, say, 6-8 months, then we could say natural immunity effectiveness is 84.25%**. Or likely a lot better than the vaccine performed against the never infected never vaccinated (unobserved) in the same time period (in the 6-8 month time period, the vaccine may have been crossing the negative effectiveness threshold… I wonder if that is why the never infected, never vaccinated cohort was dropped from the study).

** keep in mind this is an underestimate of how mucu better natural immunity is than vaccination as some people in the vaccinated cohort are misclassified and are actually benefitting from natural immunity themselves

By the vaccine passport logic, anyone who had not been infected with the virus should have been cast out from society until they could present proof of an infection!

Here are the rates per 100k of the only two comparable time frames the authors decided to include, but placed beside each other:


YIKES!

There is actually no evidence here that the vaccine provides any benefit for someone with natural immunity. In fact, in the 6-8 month cohort, though the recovered, one-dose cohort is lower than the recovered, unvaccinated cohort, it is not a statistically different significance. Interestingly, the cohort of people that got vaccinated after being infected is statistically different than those who were infected first in that time frame.

Why?

That’s an important question. It may be a random event, and perhaps if we measured out further, the difference would disappear. But it could also be that those who got vaccinated before being infected are having their natural immunity slowly wiped out by the vaccine. That’s, obviously, idle speculation. Maybe if these data sets were released in full we’d need to do less idle speculation, but at least it would not take nearly a year for a study like this to come out…

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

New study OBLITERATES Paxlovid and Molnupiravir justification

Paxlovid barely does anything; Molnupiravir may make things WORSE.

jestre.substack.com

(fair use applies)

New study OBLITERATES Paxlovid and Molnupiravir justification
Paxlovid barely does anything; Molnupiravir may make things WORSE.
Jestre
May 30

Most long-time readers of this Substack will know I have been incredibly pushy about my open disdain for Molnupiravir, which I believe does nothing — at best — while posing unacceptable risks.

But I will do a very concise backgrounder for those who are interested. Scroll down to the section 2 if you have heard these rants on this before!

1. Backgrounder on Molnupiravir

Frankly, the “randomized” control trials were a joke. The interim results showed a strong benefit for the drug; however, the second leg of the trial clearly showed a large negative effect. The trial was stopped early “for ethical reasons”. In other words, the argument was that we can no longer deny this fantastic drug to the public!

Of course, the main problem in the trials was poor randomization. Prior to the interim analysis, individuals with the worst comorbidites were disproportionately found in the placebo group. I am curious if the trial runners did not have their hand slapped because in the post-interim period, the randomization was better (though, not weighted in favor of the placebo group to make up for the pre-interim period). And yes, I am implying this may be a classic case of the researchers not actually being blinded.

When the trial ended, the results were barely statistically significant. It may have even been a case where a single extra hospitalization in the drug-arm of the trial would have wiped out any statistical significance. Another reason I suspect the researchers were not blinded. Despite the trial being ended early, and fair randomization never achieved, the researchers did not adjust the analysis to account for the disproportion in comorbidities probably because there was no way to actually do so in a way that makes the drug look good.

There were also two subsequent trials out of India that ended early because no benefit from the drug could be found, though they never published the results (quite common in pharmaceutical research and an abhorrent practice in my opinion).

Yet, regulators still approved the drug. Absolutely nothing was mentioned about the poor randomization in the approval process. The regulators were aware of the ridiculous mechanism through which Molnupiravir is supposed to act — by inducing mutagenesis in the virus. Yet, they dismissed it as a non-factor. In fact, the biggest push-back in the approval process was from a woman who said she wouldn’t want to take this drug when pregnant. Shit. Fair enough. But I wouldn’t want to take this drug when not pregnant.

That’s the basic concerns I have with Molnupiravir, but if pressed I could find many more. I do not have a similar rant for Paxlovid. However, if you are interested, may I suggest reading some Igor Chudov?

Igor’s Newsletter​

Paxlovid, "Snake Oil" of the 21st Century?​

Paxlovid is a combination of a protease inhibitor Nirmatrelvir and a HIV medication Ritonavir. At $895, it is definitely going to be a moneymaker for Pfizer. But how well does it work for the patients? This is what we all heard: The first study, that lasted for four weeks only, reported amazing success and “89% prevention of severe symptoms”. That first s…​

Read more​

2 months ago · 292 likes · 238 comments · Igor Chudov​

2. Hong Kong study design

The study is a retrospective cohort study of 93,883 patients in Hong Kong with an observation period between February 16th and March 31st. In totality, there were 83,154 individuals that did not receive antiviral treatment; 5,808 received Molnupiravir; and 4,921 received Paxlovid. Individuals were identified in clinic settings through testing and were excluded from the evaluation if they were hospitalized on the same day as testing positive. Finally, characteristics of individuals in the different cohorts were then matched using propensity scores to adjust for in-group differences like underlying health conditions.

It should be noted that the main limitation of propensity score matching is potentially excluding important covariates. Building on this limitation, the researchers offer two potential explanations for Molnupiravir’s lack of effectiveness:

1. “The apparent lack of effectiveness in reducing hospitalization by molnupiravir might partly be related to its availability in earlier days when our local guideline limited its use to patients at highest baseline risk, namely advanced age (70 years old or above) and unvaccinated status".​

​

2. “In addition, molnupiravir was preferentially prescribed to more frail patients with multiple comorbidities and polypharmacy than those who received nirmatrelvir/ritonavir, perhaps because of the multiple DDIs associated with the latter".​

Both arguments against the results are weak if you believe the researcher’s choice in propensity score covariates. For what it’s worth, the researchers point out that there was no evidence to suggest that either point is a large concern.

Generally, I believe the researchers did not leave much out in the way of important covariates except, perhaps, those which they could not have observed due to the nature of the analysis. I do wonder if there could have been a justification for adding societal status/income level in this particular set of propensity scores. My reasoning would be that individuals with higher social status would be better cared for at home and would receive better treatment at hospitals. They would also be more likely to receive expensive antivirals.

In theory, this would make the antivirals appear more rather than less effective; however, my argument would be pure speculation. There is a wide literature of health economics that would suggest people higher in the societal ladder have better health outcomes, something that seems like it would be heightened in a place with a huge disparity in living standards, but I do not have case-specific proof of relevance. I am certain that the authors did not have that data available in any case.

3. Results

The results are, well, pretty devastating for both antivirals.

Molnupiravir in both the general population and those aged over 60 or under 60 with comorbidities did not reduce the risk of hospitalization or death even after weighting. In fact, the chance of hospitalization or ICU admission/IMV (invasive mechanical ventilation) use/death increased after using the antiviral. While the increase was not statistically significant, the best that can be said about the drug is that it did nothing at all.

For Paxlovid, the results were slightly better. The antiviral did result in a small reduction in the risk of hospitalization and a slight but not statistically significant reduction in ICU admission/IMV use/death; furthermore, the reduction in hospitalizations was significantly lower than in the randomized control trials. The inherent problem with most drugs is a small benefit is never enough due to side effects. In this case, one has to question whether the benefit is even enough to cover the risk of doctor mistakes, misconduct, or patient misuse of the drug (ie., not accounting for drug to drug interactions).

Below are visualizations taken from the study. First is cumulative incidence of hospitalizations:



And the second is cumulative incidence of ICU admission/IMV use/death.



Again, not a pretty picture for either drug, and a far cry from what the randomized control trials claimed.

4. What’s next?

We are currently waiting on the results of two more trials for both drugs, which will be some of the largest trials ever run on antivirals: RECOVERY and PANORAMIC. I am hopeful that these trials will bring forward a justification to outright revoke emergency use authorizations for Molnupiravir everywhere.

For Paxlovid, I am less hopeful. There is simply too much regulatory capture when it comes to Pfizer products and even a tiny amount of efficacy coming out of these trials will be enough to keep this drug on the market unless the Paxlovid rebound story gets enough negative publicity.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Taiwan reports 80,705 new COVID-19 cases, 90 deaths - Focus Taiwan

Taipei, May 31 (CNA) Taiwan on Tuesday recorded 80,705 new COVID-19 cases -- 80,656 domestically transmitted and 49 imported -- and 90 deaths from the disease, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).

focustaiwan.tw

(fair use applies)

CORONAVIRUS/Taiwan reports 80,705 new COVID-19 cases, 90 deaths
05/31/2022 03:57 PM

Taipei, May 31 (CNA) Taiwan on Tuesday recorded 80,705 new COVID-19 cases -- 80,656 domestically transmitted and 49 imported -- and 90 deaths from the disease, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).

The 90 deaths reported Tuesday ranged in age from their 40s to 90s, including 86 who had chronic illnesses or other severe diseases. Among the death cases, 44 had not received any doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, the CECC said.

The CECC also said Tuesday that 82 previously reported COVID-19 cases had since developed severe infections, while 108 other patients had developed moderate symptoms of the disease.



One of the severe infections is a 1-year-old boy who developed laryngotracheobronchitis and later recovered, Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC's medical response division, said at a CECC press briefing.

After developing a fever of 38 degrees Celsius and cough on May 18, the boy was taken to a hospital emergency room where he was confirmed as having COVID-19 on May 18, Lo said.

The boy was sent home with medication but returned to the hospital emergency room on May 20 after his oxygen level dropped to only 70 percent, Lo said, adding that the boy had not shown signs of pneumonia when x-rayed.

Lo said that the boy was initially intubated and treated with the antiviral medication remdesivir upon admission to intensive care on May 20.

After the boy's condition improved, he was taken off artificial ventilation on May 25 and discharged from hospital on May 28, Lo said.

The boy was in hospital for a total of eight days and is the second case in Taiwan of a child developing laryngotracheobronchitis after being infected with COVID-19, Lo said.

"The good news is that both cases have recovered and have been discharged from the hospital," Lo said.



More doses of the Moderna vaccine have been administered in Taiwan than the government has officially received because recipients of the Moderna booster shot are given half the standard dose of the first and second jab.

The other previously reported case was a child under the age of 1 who was discharged from hospital on May 22.

A total of 26 children in Taiwan aged 12 or younger infected with COVID-19 this year have developed severe complications from the disease, including 14 who developed encephalitis, Lo said.

The other previously reported case was a child under the age of 1 who was discharged from hospital on May 22.

All of the other new cases were either asymptomatic or had mild infections, the CECC said.

New Taipei reported the highest number of domestic cases on Tuesday, with 14,372, followed by Taichung with 10,586, and Kaohsiung with 10,380.

Taoyuan reported 7,826 cases, Taipei 6,707, Tainan 6,485, Changhua County 4,740, Pingtung County 2,960, Hsinchu County 2,064 Miaoli County 1,970, Hsinchu City 1,734, Yilan County 1,649, Keelung 1,631, and Yunlin County 1,610.

Nantou County reported 1,381, Hualien County 1,295 cases, Chiayi County 1,146, Taitung County 866, Chiayi City 776, Penghu County 263, Kinmen County 206, and Matsu Islands nine.



The figures do not include imported cases reclassified as domestic ones, nor retroactively removed cases. As of May 31, Taiwan recorded 2,005,338 domestic cases in 2022, while the total number of imported cases rose to 12,988 from 2,396 on Jan. 1.

Meanwhile, 18 of Tuesday's 49 imported cases were travelers who tested positive upon arrival in Taiwan, according to the CECC.

To date, Taiwan has recorded 2,032,983 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in early 2020, including 2,019,941 domestic infections.

With the 90 deaths reported Tuesday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the country rose to 2,255, of which 1,402 were reported this year, CECC data showed.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Shanghai moves toward ending 2-month COVID-19 lockdown

Shanghai authorities say they will take major steps Wednesday toward reopening China’s largest city after a two-month COVID-19 lockdown that has throttled the national economy and largely confined millions of people to their homes.

apnews.com

(fair use applies)

Shanghai moves toward ending 2-month COVID-19 lockdown
By EMILY WANG FUJIYAMA and KEN MORITSUGU
yesterday

SHANGHAI (AP) — Shanghai authorities say they will take major steps Wednesday toward reopening China’s largest city after a two-month COVID-19 lockdown that has set back the national economy and largely confined millions of people to their homes.

Already, a steady stream of people strolled in the Bund, the city’s historic waterfront park, on a pleasant Tuesday night, some taking selfies against the bright lights of the Pudong financial district on the other side of the river. Elsewhere, people gathered outside to eat and drink under the watch of police deployed to discourage large crowds from forming.
Lu Kexin, a high school senior visiting the Bund for the first time since late March, said she went crazy being trapped at home for so long. “I’m very happy, extremely happy, all the way, too happy,” she said. “I could die.”

Vice Mayor Zong Ming announced that full bus and subway service will be restored on Wednesday, as will basic rail connections with the rest of China. Schools will partially reopen on a voluntary basis, and shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and drug stores will reopen gradually at no more than 75% of their total capacity. Cinemas and gyms will remain closed.

“The epidemic has been effectively controlled,” Zong said. She added that the city will enter the phase of fully restoring work and life on Wednesday.

Officials, who set June 1 as the target date for reopening earlier in May, appear ready to accelerate what has been a gradual easing in recent days. A few malls and markets have reopened, and some residents have been given passes allowing them out for a few hours at a time. In online chat groups, some expressed excitement about the prospect of being able to move about freely in the city for the first time since the end of March, while others remained cautious given the slow pace and stop-and-go nature of opening up so far.

Workers took down some of the barriers that had been erected along sidewalks during the lockdown. A few people walked or biked on the still mostly empty streets. One man got his hair cut on the sidewalk, a common sight in recent days, as a worker or volunteer in full protective clothing looked on.

The most difficult part of the lockdown was psychological, said Cao Yue, who has worked in Shanghai for five years. She recalled the early days when it was difficult to buy food and she didn’t know what to do. “It was quite depressing to be locked at home and see the whole Shanghai under lockdown,” she said.

More than half a million people in the city of 25 million won’t be allowed out Wednesday — 190,000 who are still in lockdown areas and another 450,000 who are in control zones because they live near recent cases.

Shanghai recorded 29 new cases on Monday, continuing a steady decline from more than 20,000 a day in April. Li Qiang, the top official from China’s ruling Communist Party in Shanghai, was quoted as saying at a meeting Monday that the city had made major achievements in fighting the outbreak through continuous struggle.

The success came at a price. Authorities imposed a suffocating citywide lockdown under China’s “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to snuff out any outbreak with mass testing and isolation at centralized facilities of anyone who is infected.

Huge temporary facilities were set up in exhibition centers and other venues to house thousands of people who had tested positive. Teams of health care and other workers flew in from around the country to help run the massive undertaking.

Factories were shuttered, or were allowed to operate only if workers slept on site to prevent the spread of the virus.

Reduced production at semiconductor plants added to the global chip shortage. Containers backed up at the port of Shanghai because of a shortage of truck drivers to deliver them to their destinations.

Though it all, leaders of the ruling Communist Party repeatedly expressed a determination to stick to the “zero-COVID” policy even as other countries have opened their borders and are trying to “live with the virus.” Outside economists widely expect China to fall short of its 5.5% growth target for this year.

However, the latest economic data showed that Chinese manufacturing activity started to rebound in May as the government rolled back some containment measures.

Schools will reopen for the final two years of high school and the third year of middle school, but students can decide whether to attend in person. Other grades and kindergarten remain closed.

Outdoor tourist sites will start reopening Wednesday, with indoor sites set to follow in late June, the Shanghai tourism authority said. Group tours from other provinces will be allowed again when the city has eliminated all high- and medium-risk pandemic zones.

Beijing, the nation’s capital, further eased restrictions Tuesday in some districts. The city imposed limited lockdowns, but nothing near a citywide level, in a much smaller outbreak that appears to be on the wane. Beijing recorded 18 new cases on Monday.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

The numbers weren't posted yesterday for NK so I am posting the two days together:

Newstream | KCNA Watch

kcnawatch.org

(fair use applies)

Epidemic Spread and Treatment Results in DPRK
Date: 31/05/2022 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, May 31 (KCNA) -- According to information of the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters, more than 96,020 fevered cases, with 101,610 recoveries and no deaths, were reported from 18:00 of May 29 to 18:00 of May 30 throughout the country.

As of 18:00 of May 30 since late April, the total number of fevered persons is over 3,645,620, of which more than 3,462,610 (94.98%) have recovered and at least 182,940 (5.018%) are under medical treatment. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche111.5.31.)

Newstream | KCNA Watch

kcnawatch.org

(fair use applies)

Epidemic Spread and Treatment Results in DPRK
Date: 01/06/2022 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, June 1 (KCNA) -- According to information of the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters, more than 93,180 fevered cases, with 98,350 recoveries, were reported from 18:00 of May 30 to 18:00 of May 31 throughout the country.

As of 18:00 of May 31 since late April, the total number of fevered persons is over 3,738,810, of which more than 3,560,960 (95.243%) have recovered and at least 177,770 (4.755%) are under medical treatment. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche111.6.1.)

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Taiwan reports 88,293 new COVID-19 cases, 122 deaths - Focus Taiwan

Taipei, June 1 (CNA) Taiwan reported 88,293 new COVID-19 cases -- 88,247 domestically transmitted and 46 imported cases -- and 122 deaths from the disease on Wednesday, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).

focustaiwan.tw

(fair use applies)

CORONAVIRUS/Taiwan reports 88,293 new COVID-19 cases, 122 deaths
06/01/2022 02:53 PM

Taipei, June 1 (CNA) Taiwan reported 88,293 new COVID-19 cases -- 88,247 domestically transmitted and 46 imported cases -- and 122 deaths from the disease on Wednesday, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).

The 122 patients reported Wednesday to have died of COVID-19 complications ranged in age from one month to over 90 years. Of these patients, 55 had been unvaccinated, and 115 had chronic illnesses or other severe diseases.

Two of the patients who died were infants, a 1-month-old boy and a 5-month-old girl. Both passed away overnight in their homes, and the cause of death was ruled as COVID-19 and respiratory failure, and COVID-19 and heart and lung failure, respectively.

Their deaths bring the number of children, defined by the CECC as 12 years old and younger, who have died of COVID-19 in Taiwan to 12.



The CECC also said Wednesday that 104 previously reported COVID-19 cases had since developed into severe infections, while 136 other patients had developed moderate symptoms of the disease.

Among the patients with a severe infection is a 9-year-old boy with encephalitis symptoms. He is currently receiving treatment in hospital and is in a stable condition, the CECC said.

Of the 2,005,338 domestic cases recorded in Taiwan this year, 1,810 have been classified as severe infections and 3,905 as moderate, accounting for 0.09 percent and 0.19 percent of the total, respectively, according to CECC data as of May 31.

In all other cases, patients were either asymptomatic or had mild infections, the CECC said.



The figures do not include imported cases reclassified as domestic ones, nor retroactively removed cases. As of June 1, Taiwan recorded 2,093,585 domestic cases in 2022, while the total number of imported cases rose to 13,034 from 2,396 on Jan. 1.

Of the domestic cases Wednesday, New Taipei reported the highest number with 14,894 cases, followed by Taichung with 11,511 cases, and Kaohsiung with 11,499 cases.

Taoyuan reported 9,568 cases, Tainan 7,634, Taipei 7,480, Changhua County 4,852, Pingtung County 3,177, Hsinchu County 2,527, Hsinchu City 2,008, Miaoli County 2,008, Yunlin County 1,852, and Yilan County 1,622.

Nantou County recorded 1,496 cases, Hualien County 1,493, Keelung 1,423, Chiayi County 1,226, Taitung County 902, Chiayi City 677, Penghu County 215, Kinmen County 131, and Matsu Islands 52.


More doses of the Moderna vaccine have been administered in Taiwan than the government has officially received because recipients of the Moderna booster shot are given half the standard dose of the first and second jab.

To date, Taiwan has recorded 2,121,231 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in early 2020, including 2,108,143 domestic infections.

With the 122 deaths reported Wednesday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the country rose to 2,377, CECC data showed.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

U.S. asks court to reverse order lifting airplane mask mandate

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to overturn a U.S. District Court judge's April order that declared the government mandate requiring masks on airplanes, buses and in transit hubs unlawful. The Justice Department told the appeals court...

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)

U.S. asks court to reverse order lifting airplane mask mandate
David Shepardson
Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:08 PM·

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to overturn a U.S. District Court judge's April order that declared the government mandate requiring masks on airplanes, buses and in transit hubs unlawful.

Hours after the federal judge in Florida declared the mandate unlawful, the Biden administration said it would no longer enforce it.

The Justice Department told the appeals court that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order issued in January 2021 was "within" the agency's legal authority.

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on whether it would reinstate the requirement if the ruling was overturned.

Days before U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball's April 18 order, the CDC had extended mask requirements through May 3.

The CDC said earlier this month it still recommends travelers continue to wear masks in airplanes, trains and buses.

The Justice Department's appeal came just hours before a appeals court filing deadline.

"None of the district court's quarrels with the CDC order comes close to showing that the CDC has acted outside the 'zone of reasonableness,'" the Justice Department wrote, adding that the CDC findings in early 2021 provided "ample support for the agency's determination that there was good cause to make the order effective without delay."

The Federal Aviation Administration said this month the rate of unruly air passenger incidents fell to its lowest level since late 2020 soon after the judge's mask mandate ruling, which also lifted requirements for masks in taxis or ride-share vehicles.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Faulty oxygen readings delayed Covid treatments for darker-skinned patients, study finds

Covid-19 care was delayed for Black and Hispanic patients due to inaccurate oxygen readings from devices that can work poorly in darker-skinned people, a new study finds.

www.statnews.com

(fair use applies)

Faulty oxygen readings delayed Covid treatments for darker-skinned patients, study finds
By Usha Lee McFarling
May 31, 2022

Covid-19 care, including distribution of lifesaving therapies, was significantly delayed for Black and Hispanic patients due to inaccurate oxygen readings from devices that can work poorly in darker-skinned individuals, according to a study published Tuesday. The finding may be one reason much higher Covid-19 mortality rates have been seen in communities of color across the United States.

Widely used pulse oximeters, which measure oxygen levels by assessing the color of the blood, have been under increasing scrutiny for racial bias because they can overestimate blood oxygen levels in darker-skinned individuals and make them appear healthier than they actually are. A 2020 study comparing oxygen levels measured by the devices with readings taken from “gold standard” arterial blood samples found pulse oximeters were three times less likely to detect low oxygen levels in Black patients than in white patients. Two months after that report, the Food and Drug Administration issued a safety communication alerting patients and clinicians that the devices could be erroneous in those with dark skin.

The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows the inaccuracies in oxygen measurement occurred at higher rates than in white patients not only in Black patients, but also in Hispanic and Asian patients, and that those inaccuracies had real-world consequences. The study provided evidence that undetected low oxygen levels led to delays in Black and Hispanic patients receiving potentially lifesaving therapies such as the drugs remdesivir and dexamethasone, and in many cases, led to patients not receiving treatment at all.

“These are likely patients who were seen in emergency rooms and sent home,” said Tianshi David Wu, an assistant professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-lead author of the new study. He called pulse oximeters “de facto gatekeepers” for Covid treatment because low readings on these devices are key criteria for deciding how aggressively patients should be treated. “There are patients that probably should have had these therapies, and the majority were Black patients.”

The study used data from more than 7,000 patients who were seen in the emergency departments or admitted at one of five hospitals in the Johns Hopkins Health System in Baltimore. It found that more than one-fourth of them — mostly people from marginalized racial and ethnic groups — would have qualified for Covid-19 therapies before the pulse oximeter recognized their need of care. They found Black patients were 29% less likely than white patients to have eligibility for treatment recognized by the devices while non-Black Hispanic patients were 23% less likely to have their eligibility for treatment recognized.

The authors, both pulmonary critical care physicians who have been treating Covid patients, said they were motivated to determine whether the inaccuracies in readings were clinically relevant because they felt many physicians — despite the fact that concerns about bias in pulse oximeters have been raised in the scientific literature for decades — remained unaware of how the inaccuracies in these critically important diagnostic devices might impact patients of color. The issue has not been part of standard medical school curricula, they said.

“It’s not like this is new info, but I can certainly say I was not instructed about this,” said Ashraf Fawzy, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and a co-lead author of the study. “There is clinical relevance to this pulse oximeter inaccuracy, more so in racial and ethnic minorities. It’s a systematic failure.”

The study found that pulse oximeters overestimated oxygen levels by 1.2% in Black patients, by 1.1% in Hispanic patients, and by 1.7% in Asian patients. Those may sound like small differences, but because oxygen levels are so critical to health, treatment protocols for many diseases, including Covid, can differ dramatically when small differences are detected in oxygen levels.

For Covid, drug treatments are indicated when oxygen levels fall below 94%, yet the study showed many patients had blood oxygen levels below that level, despite what their pulse oximeters read. “It’s a good illustration of how a relatively small bias in accuracy can have a large effect,” said Wu.

Black patients whose eligibility for Covid treatment was eventually confirmed by pulse oximetry had treatment delayed by an hour, compared to white patients, the researchers found. (Patients who never received treatment were not included in this accounting.) Wu said it was not clear if that delay was clinically significant. The authors said more studies were ongoing to assess if such delays or lack of access to treatments led directly to greater mortality.

The study is an excellent addition to accumulating evidence that the inaccuracies in these devices are taking a large toll, said Thomas Valley, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan whose publication with colleagues in 2020 about the inaccuracy of devices in Black patients helped stoke widespread interest in how the bias may affect care. Previous studies have shown that undetected low oxygen rates can lead to sequential organ failure and death in patients of color, but those studies were not conducted specifically on Covid patients as the new study was.

“We’ve been searching for reasons Black and Hispanic people were more likely to die early in the pandemic,” Valley said. “This is pretty depressing that we had treatments available, many of those treatments tied to oxygen levels. Decisions on whether or not people were admitted to hospitals or put on ventilators, those were all based on blood oxygen levels.”

Valley said he’d like to see a study on how decisions to send people home from emergency departments or tell them not to come to the hospital based on blood oxygen levels may have impacted patients with darker skin. “We were recommending that all the time, ‘If your O2 levels are not low, don’t come to the hospital,’” he said. “We don’t know how much harm that caused.”

He said options for getting more accurate readings for darker-skinned patients, such as taking painful arterial blood samples when lighter-skinned patients can use a simple clip-on device for the same measurement, are “really just trading one bias for another.” Valley, a critical care pulmonologist, called the inaccuracy of the devices a huge problem for clinical care. “I’ll be honest, sometimes I don’t know what to do in the hospital,” he said.

He advised patients with darker skin to question their pulse oximeter results and speak with their physicians, especially if they feel poorly or see any drop in oxygen levels.

“There is in my opinion only one fix,” he added. “We need pulse oximeters that work as well in Black patients as they do in white patients.” Many biomedical engineers have said that fixing the devices is not difficult technically; the issue is in getting the devices tested and approved, and having hospitals replace tens of thousands of the devices, which are more costly than the consumer versions. The FDA continues to monitor the issue and work with device manufacturers, and will provide updates to consumers as new information is available, an FDA spokesperson told STAT. Improved devices that use more wavelengths of light for better results in all skin tones are available, but not in wide use.

Valley said he was also concerned to see in the new study that while Asian patients had inaccuracies in their oxygen levels, they did not experience delays in treatment at the same rate as Black and Hispanic patients. “I think that’s as concerning as the pulse oximetry findings,” he said. “It suggests we are treating people differently.”

Fawzy, the study author, said that due to a small number of Asian patients in the study, there may not have been enough statistical power to detect whether Asian patients experienced delays. More and larger studies are needed on Asian populations; an earlier study of undetected low oxygen levels found, in contrast to the new study, that measurements of Asian patients more closely resembled those of white patients.

One issue, Valley said, is that race is an imperfect proxy for skin color. Better studies might compare patients by actual skin color and not racial groupings.

Utibe Essien, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who works on issues of equal access to treatment, said addressing poor oxygen measurement in some racial and ethnic populations was long overdue and that excuses should not be made because of the cost of acquiring and using more accurate devices. He said he was frustrated by the lack of investment and urgency to address a problem that affects such a large percentage of the population and may be a matter of life and death.

“This doesn’t just matter to provide equity,” Essien said. “It actually affects treatment.”

Biased pulse oximetry is similar to the race- and ethnicity-based cutoffs for lung and kidney function that led physicians to underestimate disease severity and limit access to transplants or other therapy for many patients in marginalized groups, wrote a group led by Valeria Valbuena, a general surgery resident at the University of Michigan, in an editorial accompanying the new study. Valbuena called for hospital systems and clinicians to address the “historical neglect of” and “diminished concern for” patients of color by insisting on purchasing medical devices that work well in all patients.

“The decision to do nothing about a faulty device is a human one,” the authors wrote, “and one that can and should be corrected.”

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

CDC Director Issues Alert on Pfizer’s COVID-19 Pill

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)

CDC Director Issues Alert on Pfizer’s COVID-19 Pill: ‘You Might Get Symptoms Again’
By Jack Phillips
May 31, 2022

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky warned that Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill Paxlovid can lead to a rebound in symptoms.

“If you take Paxlovid, you might get symptoms again,” Walensky told CBS News on Tuesday. “We haven’t yet seen anybody who has returned with symptoms needing to go to the hospital. So, generally, a milder course.”

Another researcher who is not affiliated with the CDC said that he has observed such a scenario.

“People who experience rebound are at risk of transmitting to other people, even though they’re outside what people accept as the usual window for being able to transmit,” Dr. Michael Charness of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Boston told CNN on Tuesday.

After a patient recovers from COVID-19, the aforementioned rebound has occurred between two and eight days later, according to the CDC. The agency, however, told CBS that the benefits of taking Paxlovid outweigh the risks of COVID-19, namely among those who are at a high risk of developing severe symptoms from the virus.

About a week ago, the agency issued an alert to health care providers about the rebound, saying that patients who took Paxlovid either test positive for the virus after having tested negative or will experience COVID-19 symptoms.

“A brief return of symptoms may be part of the natural history of SARS-CoV-2 infection in some persons, independent of treatment with Paxlovid and regardless of vaccination status,” the federal health agency said at the time. SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

“Limited information currently available from case reports suggests that persons treated with Paxlovid who experience COVID-19 rebound have had mild illness; there are no reports of severe disease. There is currently no evidence that additional treatment is needed with Paxlovid or other anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapies in cases where COVID-19 rebound is suspected,” the CDC added.

The Epoch Times has contacted Pfizer for comment. Pfizer told CBS that it is observing a rebound rate of approximately 2 percent and is continuing to monitor patients.

“We have not seen any [COVID-19] resistance emerge to date in patients treated with Paxlovid,” a spokesperson for the company told Reuters this week.

In recent weeks, doctors have increasingly prescribed Paxlovid, which has been authorized to treat at-risk people. But some health care workers told Reuters they are putting off prescribing the medication.

“I am shying away from giving it to people who are very low- risk, and are not terribly ill, particularly people who are vaccinated and boosted,” said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology for Northwell Health, in an interview with the news agency. He will still prescribe the bill to people who have significant health conditions or are aged 75 and older.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Canada and G7 Partners Endorse ‘Global Network Approach’ to Handling Pandemics

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)

Canada and G7 Partners Endorse ‘Global Network Approach’ to Handling Pandemics
By Isaac Teo
May 31, 2022

News Analysis

Canada and its G7 partners recently signed a pact to address pandemic readiness with a focus on “collaborative surveillance” and “predictable rapid response.”

On May 19 and May 20, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos met with counterparts from G7 nations in Berlin, Germany, to discuss how to “advance a global network approach to enhance pandemic surveillance and response capabilities and capacities.”

The G7 is an informal inter-governmental forum that consists of the seven largest economies in the world, namely Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.

“We want to nurture an enhanced network for pandemic readiness with regional and national nodes on all continents,” said the G7 pact, released on May 20.

Noting that the world is still “insufficiently” prepared for future pandemics, the health ministers reasoned that enhancing readiness is necessary to elicit a faster response to outbreaks.

The pact promised to strengthen “integrated, interoperable and interdisciplinary, cross-sector surveillance capabilities and capacities” between member countries as part of its collaborative surveillance effort.

Having “swiftly available” measures is also part of the plan, including vaccines along with non-pharmacological interventions that responders, such as governments, can have access to.

To achieve their goal, the ministers pledged to provide technical, political, or financial support to international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO).

In addition, the ministers advocated for the WHO to have the authority to “proactively and immediately” make critical epidemiological signals public.

The group’s position matches that of U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration pushed amendments to the WHO’s governing regulations to give Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus unilateral authority to declare a public health emergency in any nation based on the evidence he chooses.

The United States forwarded proposed amendments to 13 articles within the International Health Regulations (IHR) to the WHO in January for consideration during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA), held in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 22 to May 28.

The WHA is the decision-making body of the WHO. It meets annually and is attended by delegations from all 194 member states. Its main function is to determine the policies of the organization.

Among the proposed amendments, one removes an existing requirement in Article 9 of the IHR that, before taking any action, the WHO must “consult with and attempt to obtain verification” from officials in a nation in which a health crisis is suspected.

The same amendment provides that the “WHO may take into account reports from sources other than notifications [from] or consultations [with]” the nation where the problem is allegedly occurring.

A proposed amendment to Article 10 requires that, in the event the nation with the suspected problem doesn’t cooperate within 48 hours, the WHO shall, “when justified by the magnitude of the public health risk, immediately share with other [nations] the information available to it.”

The G7 pact said member countries will foster standardization of common protocols to ensure a predictable rapid response, while at the same time strengthening WHO’s response capacities nationally, regionally, and globally.

“[T]he IHR underscores the role that country-level preparedness and response capacities can have in the world’s ability to effectively respond to health emergencies that transcend borders,” the health ministers said in a May 20 communiqué.

“We therefore support strengthening the IHR through targeted amendments in an inclusive process as recommended by the report of the Working Group on Strengthening WHO Preparedness and Response to Health Emergencies (WGPR) to be considered at the 75th WHA.”

In his speech at the WHA on May 23, Duclos commended the WHO for its role in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The health, economic and social costs of not being adequately prepared are catastrophic. That’s why Canada supports the idea of a new multilateral instrument to ensure better preparedness,” he said.

“This is also precisely why institutions like the WHO are so important. The WHO has played a key role in international health cooperation since its creation and, even more so, since the beginning of this pandemic,” he added.

“Canada believes that the WHO must be able to continue in this role. As we enter the third year of this pandemic, it is clearer than ever: the world needs a strong WHO. Like all multilateral institutions, a strong WHO needs to be sustainably financed, transparent, and accountable.”

WHO, COVID-19, and Canada

In the early days of the pandemic, the WHO actively advised against countries restricting travellers from China.
Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, who is a member of a WHO committee, gave the same advice in Canada, which was an outlier among several other countries that restricted travel from China.

Tam said in a House of Commons hearing on Feb. 5, 2020, that the WHO advises against travel restrictions on China, adding that, “China posted the virus genome very quickly. What are they getting out of it? I think the idea is to support China.”

A report published last June by the UK government stated that China has been using both aggressive and subtle means to gain control in multilateral organizations, such as the WHO, and using them to shift policies.
Meanwhile, the WHO has begun negotiations on a new international treaty on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

In a news release last December, Tedros said the purpose of the treaty is to “strengthen the global health architecture to protect and promote the well-being of all people.”

Mark Tapscott, Annie Wu, and Lily Zhou contributed to this report.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Our Creativity Has Increased as a Result of the COVID-19 Lockdown

How the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown influenced our creativity COVID-19 caught us off guard, and the unusual circumstances of the initial lockdown demanded extraordinary adaptability, particularly from our brains. A new study from the Paris Brain Institute (Inserm/CNRS/Sorbonne University/AP-HP

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Our Creativity Has Increased as a Result of the COVID-19 Lockdown
By Paris Brain Institute
May 31, 2022

How the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown influenced our creativity

Covid-19 caught us off guard, and the unusual circumstances of the initial lockdown demanded extraordinary adaptability, particularly from our brains. A new study from the Paris Brain Institute (Inserm/CNRS/Sorbonne University/AP-HP) has revealed how human creativity developed throughout this time period and the variables that may have impacted it.
Despite the lockdown, our creativity increased and we concentrated on tasks mainly related to the situation’s issues.

Creativity is one of the cognitive functions that enable us to be flexible in new environments and solve problems in unique scenarios. The exceptional circumstances surrounding the first Covid-19 pandemic containment required us to reconsider our routines, set new limits, and adapt… in short, to be creative.

Using a two-part questionnaire, a group of researchers from the Frontlab at the Paris Brain Institute conducted an online survey to analyze the influence of the lockdown on creativity. The first section consisted of questions designed to help participants evaluate their situation in March-April 2020 (Were you confined alone or with others? Was there more work or spare time than usual? ), their emotional states at the time (Did you feel more motivated? Did you notice a change in your mood or stress level?) and, lastly, if they felt more or less creative than before. The second section questioned participants about creative activities they did while confined, their frequency, their domain, their level of success, and the factors that drove or stopped them from doing so. The researchers gathered over 400 responses that could be analyzed.

Stressed but more creative

“Our first observation is that the lockdown was psychologically distressing for the majority of participants, which other studies have shown, but that on average they felt more creative,” says Théophile Bieth (AP-HP), co-first author of the study. “By correlating the two pieces of information, we showed that the better people felt, the more creative they thought they were.”

In contrast, when the researchers asked about the number of obstacles respondents had encountered, they observed a non-linear relationship. Whether the changes in creativity were positive or negative, participants felt they had encountered many obstacles. Indeed, many people encountered obstacles in their usual activities, which forced them to be creative in order to accomplish them, and conversely, some individuals felt that they were not creative because they faced too many problems to be creative.

More creative activities related to the issues of the situation

The second part of the questionnaire consisted of a list of 30 different activities, most of which are part of the international standards used in creativity research (Inventory Creativity Activities and Achievements). These included cooking, painting, sewing, gardening, decorating, and music. Participants were asked whether they had engaged in these activities in the past five years, whether their practice had increased during the lockdown, why and how often, and if not, why it had decreased.

“This section of the questionnaire tried to measure more objectively the quantitative and qualitative changes in creative behavior, whereas the first part was based on a subjective report of the situation,” explains Emmanuelle Volle (Inserm), the last author of the study. “Our results show that this measure of creative behavior is in line with the measure of subjective change reported by the subjects. In both cases, the changes observed were related to free time and emotional feelings.”

The five activities that increased the most during the lockdown were cooking, sports and dance programs, self-help initiatives, and gardening. On average, among the 28 activities investigated, which also included, for example, interior design, sewing, creating, or diverting objects, about 40% of those already practiced in the five years prior to confinement increased their practice.

A positive correlation between mood and creativity

The results of this study highlight an overall increase in creativity during the first lockdown. This positive change could be linked to having more free time, feeling more motivated, the need to solve a problem, or the need to adapt to a new situation. However, when negative changes in creativity were experienced, they were related to negative emotions, such as stress or anxiety, feeling pressured, or a lack of material resources or opportunities.

The correlation between positive mood and creativity is quite debated. “There is some evidence in the scientific literature that you need to feel good to be creative, while other evidence points the other way. Also, it is not known in which direction this process takes place: do we feel good because we are creative, or does being creative make us happier?”
concludes Alizée Lopez-Persem (Inserm), co-first author of the study, “Here, one of our analyses suggests that creative expression enabled individuals to better manage their negative emotions linked to confinement and therefore to feel better during this difficult period.”

Reference: “Through Thick and Thin: Changes in Creativity During the First Lockdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Alizée Lopez-Persem, Théophile Bieth, Stella Guiet, Marcela Ovando-Tellez and Emmanuelle Volle, 10 May 2022, Frontiers in Psychology.

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.821550

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Why We Can’t “Boost” Our Way Out of the COVID-19 Pandemic

You may be wondering whether the long-term plans for the COVID-19 pandemic call for an endless number of booster shots. They do provide a boost in immunity, at least for a little while, which can be helpful because the vaccines have failed at preventing breakthrough infections and providing long-ter

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Why We Can’t “Boost” Our Way Out of the COVID-19 Pandemic
By University of South Carolina
May 31, 2022

You may be wondering whether the long-term plans for the COVID-19 pandemic call for an endless number of booster shots. They do provide a boost in immunity, at least for a little while, which can be helpful because the vaccines have failed at preventing breakthrough infections and providing long-term immune protection. However, they cannot succeed in getting us out of the pandemic because the third dose (first booster) failed at providing long-term protection against infection, and frequent boosting can lead to immune exhaustion. We will need better vaccines that will trigger a long-lived antibody response.

With yet another COVID-19 booster available for vulnerable populations in the United States, many people find themselves wondering what the end game will be.

The mRNA vaccines currently used in the U.S. against COVID-19 have been highly successful at preventing hospitalization and death. The Commonwealth Fund recently reported that the vaccines have prevented over 2 million people from dying and over 17 million from hospitalization in the U.S. alone.

However, the vaccines have failed to provide long-term protective immunity to prevent breakthrough infections – cases of COVID-19 infection that occur in people who are fully vaccinated.

Because of this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently endorsed a second booster shot for individuals 50 years of age and older and people who are immunocompromised. Other countries including Israel, the U.K., and South Korea have also approved a second booster.

However, it has become increasingly clear that the second booster does not provide long-lasting protection against breakthrough infections. As a result, it will be necessary to retool the existing vaccines to increase the duration of protection in order to help bring the pandemic to an end.

As immunologists studying immune response to infections and other threats, we are trying to better understand the vaccine booster-induced immunity against COVID-19.

Activating longer-term immunity

It’s a bit of a medical mystery: Why are mRNA vaccines so successful in preventing the serious form of COVID-19 but not so great at protecting against breakthrough infections? Understanding this concept is critical for stopping new infections and controlling the pandemic.

COVID-19 infection is unique in that the majority of people who get it recover with mild to moderate symptoms, while a small percentage get the severe disease that can lead to hospitalization and death.

Understanding how our immune system works during the mild versus severe forms of COVID-19 is also important to the process of developing more targeted vaccines.

When people are first exposed to SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – or to a vaccine against COVID-19, the immune system activates two key types of immune cells, called B and T cells. The B cells produce Y-shaped protein molecules called antibodies. The antibodies bind to the protruding spike protein on the surface of the virus. This blocks the virus from entering a cell and ultimately prevents it from causing an infection.

However, if not enough antibodies are produced, the virus can escape and infect the host cells. When this happens, the immune system activates what are known as killer T cells. These cells can recognize virus-infected cells immediately after infection and destroy them, thereby preventing the virus from replicating and causing widespread infection.

Thus, there is increasing evidence that antibodies may help prevent breakthrough infections while the killer T cells provide protection against the severe form of the disease.

Why booster shots?

The B cells and T cells are unique in that after they mount an initial immune response, they get converted into memory cells. Unlike antibodies, memory cells can stay in a person’s body for several decades and can mount a rapid response when they encounter the same infectious agent. It is because of such memory cells that some vaccines against diseases such as smallpox provide protection for decades.

But with certain vaccines, such as hepatitis, it is necessary to give multiple doses of a vaccine to boost the immune response. This is because the first or second dose is not sufficient to induce robust antibodies or to sustain the memory B and T cell response.

This boosting, or amplifying of the immune response, helps to increase the number of B cells and T cells that can respond to the infectious agent. Boosting also triggers the memory response, thereby providing prolonged immunity against reinfection.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eMh0Vpyoik
T-cell activation explained.
6min 53 sec


COVID vaccine boosters

While the third dose – or first booster – of COVID-19 vaccines was highly effective in preventing the severe form of COVID-19, the protection afforded against infection lasted for less than four to six months.

That diminished protection even after the third dose is what led the CDC to endorse the fourth shot of COVID-19 vaccine – called the second booster – for people who are immunocompromised and those aged 50 and older.

However, a recent preliminary study from Israel that has not yet been peer-reviewed showed that the second booster did not further boost the immune response but merely restored the waning immune response seen during the third dose.

Also, the second booster provided little extra protection against COVID-19 when compared to the initial three doses.

So while the second booster certainly provides a small benefit to the most vulnerable people by extending immune protection by a few months, there has been considerable confusion over what the availability of the fourth shot means for the general population.

Frequent boosting and immune exhaustion

In addition to the inability of the current COVID-19 vaccines to provide long-term immunity, some researchers believe that frequent or constant exposure to foreign molecules found in an infectious agent may cause immune “exhaustion.”

Such a phenomenon has been widely reported with HIV infection and cancer. In those cases, because the T cells “see” the foreign molecules all the time, they can get worn down and fail to rid the body of the cancer or HIV.

Evidence also suggests that in severe cases of COVID-19, the killer T cells may be exhibiting immune exhaustion and therefore be unable to mount a strong immune response. Whether repeated COVID-19 vaccine boosters can cause similar T cell exhaustion is a possibility that needs further study.

Role of adjuvants to boost vaccine-induced immunity

Another reason why the mRNA vaccines have failed to induce sustained antibody and memory response may be related to ingredients called adjuvants. Traditional vaccines such as those for diphtheria and tetanus use adjuvants to boost the immune response. These are compounds that activate the innate immunity that consists of cells known as macrophages.
These are specialized cells that help the T cells and B cells, ultimately inducing a stronger antibody response.

Because mRNA-based vaccines are a relatively new class of vaccines, they do not include the traditional adjuvants. The current mRNA vaccines used in the U.S. rely on small balls of fat called lipid nanoparticles to deliver the mRNA. These lipid molecules can act as adjuvants, but how precisely these molecules affect the long-term immune response remains to be seen. And whether the current COVID-19 vaccines’ failure to trigger strong long-lived antibody response is related to the adjuvants in the existing formulations remains to be explored.

While the current vaccines are highly effective in preventing severe disease, the next phase of vaccine development will need to focus on how to trigger a long-lived antibody response that would last for at least a year, making it likely that COVID-19 vaccines will become an annual shot.

Written by:

• Prakash Nagarkatti – Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, University of South Carolina
• Mitzi Nagarkatti – Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, University of South Carolina

This article was first published in The Conversation.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

New Strategy Discovered To Potentially Reduce Fatigue After COVID-19 Vaccination

Mouse experiments suggest a switch from intramuscular to subcutaneous injection may ease fatigue. Currently, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are injected deep into the muscles, which is called intramuscular injection. An alternative type of shot is called subcutaneous injection, where a short needle

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New Strategy Discovered To Potentially Reduce Fatigue After COVID-19 Vaccination
By PLOS
May 31, 2022

Mouse experiments suggest a switch from intramuscular to subcutaneous injection may ease fatigue.

Currently, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are injected deep into the muscles, which is called intramuscular injection. An alternative type of shot is called subcutaneous injection, where a short needle can inject medication (in this case a COVID vaccine) in the tissue between the skin and the muscle. In experiments done on mice, researchers found that subcutaneous injection of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines may reduce the adverse post-vaccination effects, such as fatigue, while still providing similar immune-system responses.

Despite their high efficacy against SARS-CoV-2, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are associated with adverse post-vaccination effects, such as fatigue. How can this be avoided?

In a new study publishing today (May 31st, 2022) in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, Ayesa Syenina of the Duke–NUS Medical School in Singapore and colleagues report that a new analysis of blood samples from people vaccinated for COVID-19 has identified distinct molecular characteristics linked to an increased likelihood of post-vaccination fatigue. Additionally, experiments in mice suggest that switching the vaccine injection strategy could potentially ease such adverse effects.

Adverse post-vaccination effects may influence people’s willingness to get vaccinated or receive a booster dose, hampering efforts to reduce the spread and severity of COVID-19. However, the molecular underpinnings of adverse post-vaccination effects have been unclear.

To improve understanding, Syenina and colleagues analyzed blood samples from 175 healthcare workers who received BNT162b2, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Specifically, they used the blood samples to analyze a snapshot of each participant’s gene expression, or which genes are turned on or off.

This analysis revealed that people who experienced moderately severe fatigue after vaccination were more likely to have higher baseline expression of genes related to the activity of T cells and natural killer cells—two key cell types in the human immune system.

The researchers also tested two different vaccination injection strategies in mice. Some mice received BNT162b2 through intramuscular injection, the current method used for human patients, in which the vaccine is injected into the muscles. Other mice received a subcutaneous injection, in which the vaccine is injected into tissue just under the skin.

After vaccination, compared to mice that received intramuscular vaccination, mice that received subcutaneous vaccination showed immune-system responses that are in line with a lower likelihood of adverse effects such as fatigue. However, subcutaneous injection did not appear to compromise the protective effects of vaccination.

Further research will be needed to build on these findings and explore their clinical significance. Still, they boost understanding of post-vaccination fatigue and offer a potential strategy to reduce its likelihood.

Coauthor Eng Eong Ooi adds, “This study provides a first insight into the molecular basis of a side effect that many have experienced following mRNA vaccination. We hope that this finding would spur more studies to fully understand the underpinning mechanisms behind vaccine-associated side effects and collectively contribute to developing even more tolerable vaccines.”

Reference: “Adverse effects following anti–COVID-19 vaccination with mRNA-based BNT162b2 are alleviated by altering the route of administration and correlate with baseline enrichment of T and NK cell genes” 31 May 2022, PLOS Biology.

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001643

Funding: This study was supported by the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Open Fund-Large Collaborative Grant (OFLCG19May-0034) and Senior Clinician-Scientist Award (MOH-000135-00) to E.E.O, and the Open Fund-Young Investigator Research Grant (MOH-OFIRG18nov-0004) to R.D.A. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Research scientists publish first head-to-head comparison of four COVID-19 vaccines

Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have published the first analysis of how four types of COVID-19 vaccines prepare the body to fight SARS-CoV-2. Their in-depth look at how T cells, B cells, antibody levels shift in the six months following vaccination is critical for...

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Research scientists publish first head-to-head comparison of four COVID-19 vaccines
by La Jolla Institute for Immunology
May 31, 2022

Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have published the first analysis of how four types of COVID-19 vaccines prepare the body to fight SARS-CoV-2. Their in-depth look at how T cells, B cells, antibody levels shift in the six months following vaccination is critical for understanding of how to protect people in the ongoing pandemic.

The new investigation, published in Cell, is the first study in history to compare how three different vaccine platforms trigger an immune response against the same pathogen.

"This study is important because it lets us answer how different vaccine platforms perform in terms of inducing immune responses," says LJI Professor Alessandro Sette, Dr. Biol. Sci.

The researchers studied human immune responses to an mRNA platform (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines), a recombinant protein-based adjuvanted vaccine platform (Novavax), and a viral vector-based platform (Janssen/J&J). All four vaccines in this study were designed to prepare the immune system to fight the same target, called the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein.

"We aren't giving a vaccine scorecard," says LJI Research Assistant Professor Daniela Weiskopf, Ph.D., who co-led the study with Sette and LJI Professor Shane Crotty, Ph.D. "This kind of side-by-side analysis has never been done before with people who received different vaccines at the same time—in a real life setting. Just understanding the immune responses to these vaccines will help us integrate what is successful into vaccine designs going forward."

Key findings:

• Antibodies: After six months, those given Moderna had highest levels of neutralizing antibodies, followed by those given the Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax vaccines. The Janssen/J&J vaccine led to the lowest neutralizing antibody levels.
• B cells: Participants given the Janssen/J&J vaccine had the highest percentage of memory B cells after six months.
• CD4+ T cells: All participants retained a similar percentage of memory CD4+ "helper" T cells against the virus.
• CD8+ T cells: The Novavax vaccine led to the lowest levels of CD8+ "killer" T cells. A higher CD8+ response was seen in those given Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Janssen/J&J vaccines. Overall, after six months, only 60 to 70 percent of participants retained memory CD8+ T cells.

"This is a very valuable, comprehensive immunological evaluation of these four different vaccines," says Crotty.

The new study confirms that most people retain some immune response to SARS-CoV-2, regardless of which vaccine they receive. The researchers caution that this immune memory may not prevent infection, but it appears to help fight severe disease.

"Even if it is difficult to maintain a high level of neutralizing antibodies long term, the presence of a stable cellular immunity shows that the immune system can be reactivated very quickly, in a matter of days, if there is an infection," says Sette.

LJI serves as a COVID-19 research hub

This research was possible thanks to the efforts of LJI's recently opened John and Susan Major Center for Clinical Investigation. The center staff and scientists drew blood from local volunteers and processed many samples sent by study collaborators. The study leaders then worked with these samples to compare the four vaccines.

"LJI is a great place for collaboration in science," adds Crotty. "We were doing fifteen kinds of immune system measurements, and there are very few places that can handle that kind of complexity and have that kind of expertise."

"With this study, we have the same people, in the same lab, using the same tests to study immune responses," says Weiskopf.

Going forward, the researchers are interested in the effects of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots on long-term immune memory. The scientists are also keeping a close eye on immune cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 variants and are currently analyzing immune responses in people who were vaccinated and experienced "breakthrough" infections.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Three doses of the same or mixed COVID jabs work equally well against infections

Three doses of either the same vaccine or a combination of different vaccine types work comparably well in preventing COVID-19 infections, even against different variants, finds a study published by The BMJ today.

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Three doses of the same or mixed COVID jabs work equally well against infections
by British Medical Journal
May 31, 2022

Three doses of either the same vaccine or a combination of different vaccine types work comparably well in preventing COVID-19 infections, even against different variants, finds a study published by The BMJ today.

The findings suggest that the number of vaccine doses seems to be the key to improving immunity rather than the combinations of vaccine types (which includes mRNA and adenoviral vector vaccines only in this study), and should help inform future public health decision making, say the researchers.

While the effectiveness of individual vaccines for COVID-19 are well known, the effectiveness of vaccine combinations is less clear, especially for particular groups, such as older people and those who are immunocompromised.

Despite a rapid decline in COVID-19 infections and deaths, concerns about waning vaccine immunity and new variants makes it important to understand which vaccine combinations are most effective.

To explore this, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) searched 38 WHO COVID-19 databases for published studies and preprints on a weekly basis from 8 March 2022.

They identified 53 studies involving over 100 million participants with 24 combinations of approved COVID-19 vaccine courses (regimens) and 7 different vaccine types for analysis.

Receiving three doses of the same vaccine is known as a homologous regimen, while receiving a third dose that differs from those given as primary doses is known as a heterologous regimen.

After taking account of differences in study design and quality, the researchers found that three doses of any mRNA vaccine appear to be most effective (96%) against non-severe COVID-19 infections and most effective (95%) in reducing COVID-19 related hospital admission.

Using an mRNA booster after two doses of adenovirus vector vaccines also has a satisfactory effectiveness of 88%.

The results also show that any three dose regimen (heterologous or homologous) induces higher immunity in all age groups, even in the over 65s, than a two dose homologous regimen.

A third booster dose is needed to prevent infection caused by the omicron variant.

And in immunocompromised patients, a third mRNA booster dose, as part of a heterologous or homologous regimen, greatly improves protection compared with two doses.

However, the effectiveness of three dose vaccine regimens against COVID-19 related death remains uncertain.

These are statistical analyses of observational and randomized controlled trial findings. The researchers acknowledge that they didn't evaluate the optimum time interval for prime boost or boosting regimens, owing to limited information.

Nevertheless, this is a well-designed study that summarizes the effectiveness of all available COVID-19 vaccine regimens and determines the relative effects of various primary and boosting regimens as assessed in current clinical studies.

As such, the researchers conclude that while a three dose mRNA regimen seems to be the most effective in preventing COVID-19 infections, any heterologous and homologous three dose regimens work comparably well in preventing COVID-19 infections, even against different variants.

This study is a living systematic review, so will be updated as new evidence becomes available.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

COVID-19 vaccine impact on chest CT of pneumonia in symptomatic patients

According to ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), evaluating chest CT findings offers an additional approach for demonstrating the efficacy of different COVID-19 vaccines in reducing the impact of a COVID-19 diagnosis.

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COVID-19 vaccine impact on chest CT of pneumonia in symptomatic patients
by American Roentgen Ray Society
June 1, 2022


"The visual observation by radiologic imaging of the protective effect of vaccination on lung injury in patients with breakthrough infections provides additional evidence supporting the clinical benefit of vaccination," the authors of this AJR article reiterated. Credit: American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS), American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR)

According to ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), evaluating chest CT findings offers an additional approach for demonstrating the efficacy of different COVID-19 vaccines in reducing the impact of a COVID-19 diagnosis.

"Pneumonia frequency and severity were lower in patients with full vaccination by mRNA and adenovirus vector vaccines experiencing breakthrough infections, in comparison with unvaccinated patients," wrote corresponding author Davide Bellini from the department of radiological sciences, oncology, and anatomical pathology at "Sapienza" University of Rome.

Bellini and colleagues' single-center study included 467 patients (250 men, 217 women; mean age, 65 years) who underwent chest CT between December 15, 2021 and February 18, 2022 during hospitalization for symptomatic COVID-19, confirmed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction assay. A total of 216 patients were unvaccinated, while 167 and 84 patients were fully vaccinated—having received a second dose at least 14 days before COVID-19 diagnosis—by the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine or the ChAdOx1-S adenovirus vector vaccine, respectively.

The frequency of an absence of pneumonia was 15% in unvaccinated patients, versus 51% and 29% in patients fully vaccinated with BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1-S vaccines, respectively. Additionally, mean CT-SS was significantly higher in unvaccinated patients (9.7) than in patients fully vaccinated with BNT162b2 (5.2) or ChAdOx1-S (6.2) vaccines (both p<.001).

"The visual observation by radiologic imaging of the protective effect of vaccination on lung injury in patients with breakthrough infections provides additional evidence supporting the clinical benefit of vaccination," the authors of this AJR article reiterated.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

COVID-19 superspreader events found to originate from small number of carriers

Among several infectious disease terms to enter the public lexicon, superspreading events continue to make headlines years after the first cases of the COVID-19 pandemic. How features of the SARS-CoV2 virus lead to some events becoming superspreading events while leaving others relatively benign...

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COVID-19 superspreader events found to originate from small number of carriers
by American Institute of Physics
May 31, 2022




The probability density function, a measure of infection probability, and number of infections in each restaurant, demonstrate the group's ability to simulate and analyze which events pose a low probability of superspreading. Credit: Arnab Mukherjee and Swetaprovo Chaudhuri

Among several infectious disease terms to enter the public lexicon, superspreading events continue to make headlines years after the first cases of the COVID-19 pandemic. How features of the SARS-CoV2 virus lead to some events becoming superspreading events while leaving others relatively benign remains unresolved.

In Physics of Fluids, researchers in Canada and the United States created a model to connect what biologists have learned about COVID-19 superspreading with how such events have occurred in the real world. They used real-world occupancy data from more than 100,000 places where people gather across 10 U.S. cities to test several features ranging from viral loads to the occupancy and ventilation of social contact settings.

They found that 80% of infections occurring at superspreading events arose from only 4% of those who were carrying the virus into the event, called index cases. The top feature driving the wide variability in superspreading events was the number of viral particles found in index cases, followed by the overall occupancy in social contact settings.

The researchers' methods take aim at the curious observations that the variability between infection events is higher than one would expect, a situation called overdispersion.

"It is now well known that COVID-19 is airborne, and that is probably the dominant pathway of transmission," said author Swetaprovo Chaudhuri. "This paper connects indoor airborne transmission to the evolution of the infection distribution on a population scale and shows the physics of airborne transmission is consistent with the mathematics of overdispersion."

The group's model draws on numerical simulations and research by others on viral loads and the number of virus-laden aerosols ejected by people, as well as data on the occupancy of a restaurant or area from SafeGraph, a company that generates such data from anonymized cell phone signals.

"While there are uncertainties and unknowns, it appears it is rather hard to prevent a superspreading event if the person carrying high viral load happens to be in a crowded place," Chaudhuri said.

Chaudhuri said the findings not only underscore the importance of efforts to curb the spread of the virus but also help describe how integral properly planning can be for each situation.

"To mitigate such superspreading events, vaccination, ventilation, filtration, mask wearing, reduced occupancy—all are required," he said. "However, putting them in place is not enough, knowing what size, type, parameters can mitigate risk to certain acceptable levels is important."

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Mandating flu jab, but not COVID-19 jab, ethically justified for healthcare staff

Mandating the flu jab for healthcare staff is ethically justified, but the same can't be said of the COVID-19 jab, argue leading ethicists in an extended essay published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

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Mandating flu jab, but not COVID-19 jab, ethically justified for healthcare staff
by British Medical Journal
May 31, 2022

Mandating the flu jab for healthcare staff is ethically justified, but the same can't be said of the COVID-19 jab, argue leading ethicists in an extended essay published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Unlike the COVID-19 jab, the pros outweigh the cons for all age groups: the flu jab is safe and has few side effects; it cuts the risk of infection; and it minimizes staff shortages and 'presenteeism', they suggest.

And healthcare workers have professional obligations to protect patients from a virus that is particularly deadly for older people who are overrepresented among hospital patients. Such obligations trump curbs on personal freedom, the authors contend.

In light of the infection control issues raised by the pandemic, and the steps taken by various countries to overcome vaccine hesitancy, the authors compare the ethical criteria for mandating vaccination of healthcare staff against COVID-19 and seasonal flu.

A vaccine mandate for healthcare workers would align with existing professional requirements, based on preventing harm to patients. But not every professional obligation is also a legal requirement.

Further ethical criteria are therefore required to justify such a policy, the authors explain. These include the pros and cons of the vaccines and the availability of less restrictive alternatives to achieve comparable health benefits.

During the pandemic, several countries mandated COVID-19 vaccination for healthcare workers: France; Italy; many US states; several Canadian provinces; and Australia.

The UK government also planned to do the same, but stopped short amid fears of staff losses and perceived heavy-handedness in light of the emergence of the milder Omicron variant.

However, it did consult on mandating the seasonal flu jab for healthcare workers, around 1 in 4 of whom don't get vaccinated against the virus.

Flu kills more than 11,000 people every year in England alone, a toll that rose to more than 22,000 in 2017-18.

Data from London University College hospitals during the 2018–2019 flu season suggest that 15% of inpatients with flu caught the infection while in hospital (nosocomial infection).

In some flu seasons large numbers of unvaccinated staff fall ill, prompting shortages or 'presenteeism'—-where staff with the infection keep on working—so heightening the risk of spreading it to patients and colleagues.

"Vaccine mandates are typically controversial as they entail limitations of individual liberties for the sake of the collective good," acknowledge the authors.

"However, when it comes to [healthcare workers], liberty-based counter-arguments are more difficult to apply. Quite simply, [healthcare workers] have an ethical and professional obligation not to harm patients, or to minimize the risk of harm to patients, which other people do not have," they point out.

"It is already commonly accepted that [healthcare workers] should take on at least some additional health risk for the sake of their patients…The issue at stake is not if this is justified, but how much extra risk is justifiable by contractual and professional obligations," they add.

COVID-19 vaccines are associated with a small risk of blood clots and myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), and given the relatively low risk of serious illness from COVID-19 among younger staff, the cons may very well outweigh the pros, they suggest.

Nor do the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines seem very effective at preventing spread, while the protection they afford against symptoms tails off within months.

What's more, COVID-19 illness severity has reduced, due to changes in the circulating form of the virus, high vaccine uptake in those at highest risk, high rates of natural immunity and increasingly more treatments becoming available, point out the authors.

These issues don't apply to the seasonal flu vaccine, which has been used for decades, has a well established safety profile, and few and mostly minor side effects, they highlight.

Higher flu jab uptake minimizes risk of harm to patients, not just by reducing the risk of infection, but also by reducing the risk of staff shortages due to illness. And the evidence suggests that compulsory flu jabs increase uptake more than less severe measures, say the authors.

But the question remains as to what level of coercion is ethically acceptable. "One way to strike a balance between individual freedom and patients' interests is to make vaccination a condition of entry into the profession rather than mandating those already employed, and adopt a conditional mandate if at all possible for those already in the profession," they write.

"Ultimately, there is an ethical balance to be drawn between protecting patients (including their own right to not acquire serious but preventable nosocomial infections) and coercing some healthcare professionals into having a vaccine that they would prefer not to receive."

They conclude: "For reasons that we have given above, the balance of risks and benefits suggests that an influenza vaccine mandate, but not a COVID-19 mandate, would currently be ethically proportionate."

But they caution: "Mandates should be introduced on a disease-specific and vaccine-specific basis. The problem must be a significant one; the vaccines must be safe and effective at preventing illness and/or transmission; mandatory measures must be superior to less coercive alternatives; and the costs in loss of liberty and risk to health professionals must be proportionate in professional terms to the benefits to patients."

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

International study reveals factors contributing to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among health care providers

A new 23-country study by a multidisciplinary team of researchers in the journal Vaccine sheds light on the factors that contribute to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among health care providers.

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)

International study reveals factors contributing to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among health care providers
by The City University of New York
May 31, 2022

A new 23-country study by a multidisciplinary team of researchers in the journal Vaccine sheds light on the factors that contribute to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among health care providers.

To assess the associations between self-reported vaccine hesitancy and a number of sociodemographic and COVID-19 vaccine perception factors, CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) Senior Scholar Jeffrey Lazarus, Dean Ayman El-Mohandes, and colleagues from the School of Health Administration at Dalhousie University in Halifax and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health developed a cross-sectional survey relating to perceptions of risk, efficacy, safety and trust, and current COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

The survey was administered to 23,000 adults in Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States in June 2021. Among the respondents, 3,295 identified as health care providers, such as physicians, nurses and community health workers.

Responses revealed that, although most health care providers had received one or more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, a substantial minority reported hesitancy. Four hundred ninety-four (15.0%) of the participants reported being reluctant to accept a COVID-19 vaccine, and 132 (4.0%) of those said they would outright refuse it.

Of the health care providers surveyed, physicians were the least hesitant. Vaccine hesitancy was more likely to occur among those with less than the median income and, to a lesser degree, younger age. Safety and risk concerns and lack of trust that vaccines would be equitably distributed were strongly associated with hesitancy, less so were concerns about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

Previous studies have aimed to assess the potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine among health care providers, but few have been published since the vaccines became widely available.

"These findings are troubling," says Dean El-Mohandes. "Since health care workers' hesitancy may influence community perceptions negatively, especially among patients and family members, and can contribute to their refusal or delayed uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine."

"Vaccine hesitancy can impede the potential success of global vaccination campaigns, and, in turn, our ability to control the COVID-19 pandemic," says Dr. Lazarus. "Training and campaigns reinforcing vaccine safety, dissemination of scientific data underpinning vaccine development, in addition to clear, consistent, and comprehensive information and engagement supporting the equitable distribution of vaccines are all potentially useful strategies to encourage health care professionals who are hesitant to vaccinate."

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Generally I have not been posting Monkeypox related articles to this thread but this one is from Robert Malone and is somewhat connected to Covid so I am making an exception.

Monkey Pox Update

May 31, 2022. There has been a significant development.

rwmalonemd.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Monkey Pox Update
May 31, 2022. There has been a significant development.
Robert W Malone MD, MS
21 hr ago


Will the blatant fearporn ever stop? The controlled media have no shame.



If Ronald Reagan were still with us, I suspect we would be hearing “There you go again” replays. First came the coordinated media blast of public health-related fearporn. For example, the image from Jake Tapper’s CNN broadcast program “The Lead” of May 20,2022 (above) which appears to me to be a case of smallpox, not monkeypox. Another example involves the self-explanatory paired images below.



And of course the Bill and Melinda Gates - funded GAVI text which is quite blatant, claiming 10% mortality, which I covered in my prior substack article concerning Monkeypox and fearporn.

I almost cannot believe that I am writing this, but since my original substack article on this topic, we had the reveal of an Event 201-style wargame exercise modeled around a bioterror-related release of an engineered Monkeypox virus “caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight.” With amazing (coincidental?) prescience, the “table top exercise” of March 2021 (one year and three months into the Covidcrisis) models a Monkeypox bioterror attack initiated on May 15, 2022. Note the date of the CNN/Jake Tapper fearporn piece - May 20, 2022. The modeling deployed in the scenario upon which the “exercise” was based predicts 3.2 billion cases and 271 million deaths by December 01, 2023. Of course, the predictive accuracy of the simplistic public health models such as that used to support this scenario have repeatedly proven to be absolutely horrid, and these types of models should be either relegated to the trash heap (or ongoing dumpster fire) as unscientific speculation which is all too frequently weaponized by the fearporn peddlers such as CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post.

By now we all know the usual USG and WEF-controlled media players.



As the Italian’s like to say:

Niente e lasciato al caso.​

Nothing happens by chance.​

​

As we now know, the amazing foresight of this modeled date immediately preceded a seminal WHO meeting which has just concluded, in which international health regulation (IHR) modifications which would grant the WHO unprecedented powers to bypass national constitutions (proposed on January 23, 2022 by the US HHS) were actively considered but tabled for a future meeting (~November 2022?) largely due to African nation concerns regarding infringement of national sovereignty. The stated purpose of the “exercise” was remarkably well aligned with the stated objectives and topics proposed by US HHS in the submitted IHR modifications:

• To establish a new global biosecurity entity dedicated to reducing emerging biological risks that can accompany certain technology advances. Its mission will be to reduce the risks of catastrophic consequences due to accidents, inadvertent misuse, or deliberate abuse of bioscience and biotechnology by promoting stronger global biosecurity norms and developing tools and incentives to uphold them.
• To explore the possibility of establishing a new Joint Assessment Mechanism to investigate high consequence biological events of unknown origin. This new mechanism would operate at the “seam” between existing mechanisms—including World Health Organization (WHO) outbreak investigation capabilities and the United Nations Secretary-General’s Mechanism for investigating alleged deliberate bioweapons use—thereby strengthening UN system capabilities to investigate pandemic origins.
• To advocate for establishing a catalytic, multilateral financing mechanism for global health security and pandemic preparedness. The goal is to accelerate sustainable biosecurity and pandemic preparedness capacity-building in countries where resources are most needed.

[CONTINUED NEXT POST]

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

[CONTINUED FROM POST ABOVE]

So, do we have yet another example of a “Plandemic”? All I can say is ~

"Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive"
(Sir Walter Scott, Marmion)

Or perhaps the more appropriate quote would be ~

The Italians having a Proverb, “He that deceives me once, its’ his fault; but if twice, its’ my fault.”
Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (1651)

In my prior substack entitled “Monkey Pox, Truth versus Fearporn”, I concluded the essay with the following caveat:

Unless there has been some genetic alteration, either through evolution or intentional genetic manipulation, it is not a significant biothreat, and has never been considered a high threat pathogen in the past.

Which brings us to this May 23, 2022 report from the Portuguese National Institute of Health.



Just to set the stage, the outbreak seems to be tightly associated with a point of origin at what appear to have been two large European dance party events (“Raves”), in the Canary Islands (“Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew some 80,000 people”) and “a Madrid sauna”. The Canary Islands event was the 20th anniversary of “Maspalomas Gay Pride”, which took place from May 05 to May 15 (the precise date of the previously modeled Monkeypox bioweapon release). The organizers anticipated “a huge parade with over 100,000 participants, boat trips, pool parties and more!”.

So, basically, pretty much a perfect opportunity for a Monkeypox super spreader event, whether intentional or inadvertent. Donning my “cynical skeptic” tinfoil hat for a moment, if one was looking for an opportunity to seek a pathogen into a highly mobile international population, mindful of the early history of HIV-based AIDS, this would be just what the doctor (Mengle…) ordered.

Multiple cases were soon detected in Portugal, and to their great credit, INSA Portugal got busy and promptly did the deep sequencing necessary to enable building a phylogenic map of the Monkeypox variant associated with the outbreak.
Based on their findings, they have rapidly disclosed both their data as well as a series of startling hypothesis regarding the origin of the currently circulating Monkeypox (West African Clade) Monkeypox. Cutting to the chase, having reviewed their data and paper, I now have to conclude that one of the many “working hypotheses” concerning the origin of this particular virus must be that it is the product of laboratory-based manipulation - precisely as previously modeled by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI):Bio/Munich Security Conference . True story. Truth continues to be stranger than fiction.
The authors briefly (and elegantly) summarize the study purpose and methods as follows:

Following the (First draft genome sequence of Monkeypox virus associated with the suspected multi-country outbreak, May 2022 (confirmed case in Portugal) 184), we now release 9 additional genome sequences of Monkeypox virus causing a multi-country outbreak. These sequences were obtained from clinical specimens collected from 9 patients on May 15th and 17th, 2022 through high throughput shotgun metagenomics using Illumina technology (see details bellow), with depth of coverage throughout Monkeypox genome ranging from 38x to 508x (mean of 201x).

The rapid integration of the newly sequenced genomes into the Monkeypox genetic diversity, also including the sequence released by USA* (Gigante et al, Monkeypox virus isolate MPXV_USA_2022_MA001, complete genome - Nucleotide - NCBI 156).

They then proceed to raise the following main observations:

• The multi-country outbreak most likely has a single origin, with all sequenced viruses released so far* tightly clustering together (Figure 1).
• Confirmation of the phylogenetic placement unveiled by the first draft sequence Isidro et al, 183: the outbreak virus belongs to the West African clade and is most closely related to viruses (based on available genome data) associated with the exportation of monkeypox virus from Nigeria to several countries in 2018 and 2019, namely the United Kingdom, Israel and Singapore (1, 2).
• Still, the outbreak virus diverges a mean of 50 SNPs from those 2018-2019 viruses (46 SNPs from the closest reference MPXV_UK_P2, MT903344.1) (Table 1_2022-05-23.zip (15.0 KB)), which is far more than one would expect considering the estimated substitution rate for Orthopoxviruses (3).
• As also mentioned by Rambaut (Discussion of on-going MPXV genome sequencing 228), one cannot discard the hypothesis that the divergent branch results from an evolutionary jump (leading to a hypermutated virus) caused by APOBEC3 editing (4)
• We have already detected the first signs of microevolution within the outbreak cluster, namely the emergence of 7 SNPs (Table 2_2022-05-23.zip (10.9 KB)), leading to 3 descendant branches (Figure 1) including a further sub-cluster (supported by 2 SNPs) involving 2 sequences (PT0005 and PT0008). Notably, these two sequences also share a 913bp frameshift deletion in MPXV-UK_P2-010 gene coding for an Ankyrin/Host Range (Bang-D8L); D7L protein (MT903344.1 annotation). Gene loss events were already observed in the context endemic Monkeypox circulation in Central Africa, being hypothesized to correlate with human-to-human transmission (5).

Those not versed in academic science talk may be shaking their head by this point, and probably getting ready to post a comment along the lines of “Why don’t you just tell us that this means in simple language?”

So, at the risk of oversimplification:

1. Looks like the Monkeypox outbreak comes from a single original virus source. Following the teachings of the “Multiple working hypothesis” model for arriving at scientific “truth” (which was a core part of my education as a young scientist), a) this could be (for example) a “natural” single jump event from some infected animal into a single human somewhere in the world (who presumably had some relationship to the Maspalomas Gay Pride event). Or b) it could have come from an intentional release of a viral isolate. Mixed news - could be good or bad
2. The authors have confirmed that this new outbreak virus maps to the "(less disease-causing) West African group (clade) of Monkeypox viruses. Good news
3. This single source virus could have come from West Africa or could have come from United Kingdom, Israel or Singapore (consistent with either hypothesis a or b). Mixed news - could be good or bad
4. Despite the sequences indicating that the virus is most closely related to those isolated in 2018-2019, it is significantly different. This could be due to natural evolution or due to laboratory engineering/gain of function “research” (consistent with hypotheses a) and b). Generally bad news. Basically, the authors are indicating that they believe that genome of this virus is either evolving more rapidly than one would expect from a double stranded DNA poxvirus, (left unsaid, or somebody has been messing around with it).
5. The authors speculate that the pattern of mutations are consistent with the effects of a natural cellular protein with the abbreviated name of APOBEC3. For those who want to dive into the molecular virology of APOBEC3, here is a nice 2015 J Immunology review. For those seeking the “Cliff Notes” abridged version, see Wikipedia. For the obsessives or aficionados, note that APOBEC3 is associated with specific pattern of base changes- (C→ U). On the basis of their hypothesis regarding the potential role for APOBEC3, I infer that the authors must have detected a statistically significant fraction of C→ U changes in the current isolates relative to the 2018-2019 isolates. Mixed news - could be good or bad. Still does not differentiate between hypothesis a) or hypothesis b).
6. Here is the rub. While APOBEC3 is associated with cellular resistance (yet another form of “innate immunity” - isn’t molecular virology and cell biology amazing!) to HIV (and presumably other retroviruses), a quick pubmed search reveals that Poxviruses are resistant to the mutational effects of APOBEC3! For example, see this 2006 paper published in “Virology”. Frankly, whether through lack of curiosity or fear of attack from government controlled media and journals, the failure of the authors to even mention this Virology article is a major oversight at best. My inference and interpretation? On the basis of this sequence analysis report from the INSA team cited above, to me this is looking more like a laboratory manipulated strain than a naturally evolved strain. Bad news.
7. Furthermore, this double stranded DNA virus, infections by which have historically been self-limiting, appears to be evolving (during the last few days!) to a form that is more readily transmitted from human to human. Bad news.

In conclusion, the preponderance of current evidence is pointing towards a hypothesis for the origin of this outbreak which is increasingly consistent with prior “war game” scenario planning, remarkably akin to that which occurred during Event 201, which posits emergence of an engineered Monkeypox virus into the human population during mid-May of 2022.

Draw your own conclusions, and do your own diligence.

In related news:



Link here.

One day after the close of the Maspalomas Gay Pride superspreader event. Link Here.



Emergent BioSolutions, already flush with products against public health threats like anthrax attacks and opioid overdoses, is expanding its arsenal of medical countermeasures by scooping up global rights to smallpox newcomer Tembexa.

Emergent will furnish developer Chimerix with $225 million in upfront cash plus upward of $100 million in milestone payments for worldwide rights.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

MONKEYPOX update: Malone

I include Robert's update & I re-include my prior substack below his update on this issue...it seems the media is full in on the fear porn at this stage; don't forget Event 201-style wargame MUNICH

palexander.substack.com

(fair use applies)

MONKEYPOX update: Malone
I include Robert's update & I re-include my prior substack below his update on this issue...it seems the media is full in on the fear porn at this stage; don't forget Event 201-style wargame MUNICH
Dr. Paul Alexander
16 hr ago

This event which you, like I, would say “hhhhhmmmm, is it that coincidental that they can game this out just a few months before cases emerge”?

[I AM NOT RECOPYING THE MALONE SUBSTACK AS IT'S POSTED ABOVE THIS! ]

Paul Alexander’s prior stack:

Smallpox vaccine to prevent monkeypox (MONEYpox) could cause global smallpox (vaccinia) epidemic; I warn, don't be stupid, understand you have damaged immune systems of (b)illions with COVID vaccines
Experts are saying smallpox vax 85% effective in monkey pox; this is NOT good news, for millions/billions are now immunocompromised from COVID vax; CDC sounds alarm for gay-bisexual men
Dr. Paul Alexander
May 21

The scare and risk from monkeypox is IMO simply that. Scare tactic, over-reaction, hyperbole. It is a defined population at elevated risk (MSM, close contact) and not elevated risk of severe outcome if you do get it.

UPDATE, May 27th 2022:

SOURCE:

CDC: Although some of the U.S. patients have a history of travel to areas where monkeypox has been spreading recently, that's not true for every one. Given that, Walensky said, "we need to presume that there is some community spread." Nearly all of the cases are so far all among men who have sex with men, though Walensky emphasized that "the risk of exposure is not limited to any one particular group."

First, I would ask POTUS Biden to go back out to the nation and address his prior statement about monkeypox (MONEYpox) risk which was misinformed and served to scare the nation (‘Everybody Should Be Concerned’ About Monkeypox, Biden Warns’).There was no basis for Biden to say what he did and whomever cleared him to say that e.g. para ‘concerned about monkeypox’, should be fired. This has caused needless concern by the general population. The legacy media must be shut down for the utter reckless manner in which they report on this monkeypox and it is clear they are seeking to cause panic and hysteria when the general population, children, low-risk persons etc. are not at risk. Based on all we know today, the fear mongering MUST be stopped.

Now an i) update from CDC on the risk-group that monkeypox is focused in (as of Monday 23rd May 2022), ii) updated evidence of transmission by WHO expert, iii) some preliminary thoughts on the failed COVID mRNA vaccine, iv) the WHO pandemic treaty, and then v) further details on this issue of smallpox vaccination and monkeypox with a special shoutout to Dr. Vinay Prasad for his balance and common sense in this.

i)Update from CDC on the risk-group that monkeypox is focused in:

“CDC officials sound alarm for gay and bisexual men as monkeypox spreads in community. PUBLISHED MON, MAY 23 20223:12 PM EDTUPDATED 6 HOURS AGO

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday alerted gay and bisexual men that monkeypox appears to be spreading in the community globally, warning people to take precautions if they have been in close contact with someone who may have the virus and to be on the lookout for symptoms.
Dr. John Brooks, a CDC official, emphasized that anyone can contract monkeypox through close personal contact regardless of sexual orientation. However, Brooks said many of the people affected globally so far are men who identify as gay or bisexual.”

ii)WHO Expert: Monkeypox likely spread by sex at 2 raves in Europe

We knew this and have said this. Then why the hysteria and misinformation and duplicity by the media? “We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission”…”Health officials say most of the known cases in Europe have been among men who have sex with men”…“It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions on the genitals, hands or somewhere else, and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact,” Heymann hypothesized. “And then there were these international events that seeded the outbreak around the world, into the U.S. and other European countries.”

iii)The failed COVID mRNA vaccine:

Let me start with this for it remains critical: the COVID vaccines, the mRNA platform, is a complete failure! This vaccine will harm and kill and is killing innocent healthy people coerced into taking it to put bread on the table. The vaccine is ineffective (you may say its a gene delivery platform, an injection and not a vaccine and I agree) and not properly safe. It is dangerous and I state and warn AGAIN, do not take it, do not take anymore of it, do not under any circumstance give to your children. No healthy child. None!

This vaccine is non-sterilizing and the non-neutralizing vaccinal antibodies (Abs) binds to the virus’s spike (infectiousness of the virus) but does not stop infection or eliminates the virus. In fact, it enhances/facilitates infection. We have been saying this one year now (Vanden Bossche, Yeadon, McCullough, myself etc.). The vaccinal Abs and its sub-optimal immune pressure is causing selection pressure (Darwinian natural selection) to select the fittest, most infectious variants/clades to then become the new dominant more infectious variant. Among these, could be a more virulent/lethal variant. This could devastate humanity and if we wish to keep this pandemic ongoing for 100 years, with needless ineffective booster after booster, then we keep vaccinating with these failed mRNA vaccines.

Remember, we have the data (UK, Denmark, Scottish etc.) that shows the 2 nd shot and the 3rd (1st booster) shot causes massive infection in the vaccinated, resulting in hospitalization, and death. Persons 50 years and over are at greatest risk as per data. If we want to harm and weaken and ‘slow kill’ the population with IMO a ‘bioweapon’, we keep going with these mRNA vaccines. This vaccine functions as a bioweapon. These vaccines have had no benefit, skews only to harm and again, do not, under no condition, give your children these vaccines.

iv)WHO pandemic treaty:

This intended WHO pandemic treaty (Global leaders unite in urgent call for international pandemic treaty) is huge and under no condition must the US cede any public health responding or decision-making to WHO, a bunch of inept, incompetent, corrupted, officials. This hill we defend. The US must withdraw from WHO fully. The WHO is a failed public health agency that functions today to waste (corrupt/misuse) donor money and has zero credibility. The WHO initially claimed and devastatingly so that there was no human-to-human transmission of COVID virus in China and this was a pure lie by WHO, blocking for China. This damaged the world. They also praised China for it’s COVID lockdown response and this too was a pure lie for the Chinese initial lockdown was a humanitarian and catastrophic failure. This was to mislead other global nations to lockdown to gain the same success China had, which was a pure lie. There was no Chinese success, similar to the devastation and failure we see now (April-May 2022) in Shanghai and Beijing with the insane ZERO-COVID lockdowns (Dr. Redfield: China's failed 'zero-COVID' policy proves lockdowns don't work).

China’s lie that there was no human-to-human transmission when there was human-to-human transmission, their closures of their borders to incoming yet allowing flights to leave China, the WHO (Tedros) lying for China in agreement and praising a failed lockdown response designed to trick and coerce the world (US) into lockdown, and Fauci going on several media talk shows at the same time claiming Americans had nothing to worry about, seriously hobbled and damaged the US’s response. The tri-fector hydra of China-WHO-Fauci was devised to confuse POTUS Trump and mislead him and at some level, we must give him great praise for going against Fauci et al. and closing the border to China, albeit I argue it should have been closed much sooner. Recall Biden and Pelosi were some of the high level officials then (early 2020) railing against POTUS Trump for that bold move.

v)Smallpox vaccination and monkeypox:

Now to the core focus of this substack, ‘monkeypox’. Someone very high level in COVID pandemic response, top level intellect, came to me and said “Paul, I do not think it is even real”. He further said that they are well capable of juicing this up and creating this panic out of nothing. Fabricated. He said he needs to see a real case, a real image. He is not convinced. He shared his thoughts that were quite interesting. He asked me if I believed him. I said ‘very possible’. Given the cast of characters we have had to deal with who have led this pandemic response. Why can’t they bring a fake monkeypox outbreak/epidemic?

When you have hysterical idiots like Eric Feigl-Ding rushing to write the utter claptrap garbage he wrote for 2 years on COVID and being wrong on all, then I smell a rat. These idiots have zero credibility and reside in their own mental world to not realize NO ONE listens to the junk they spew. I will read the writing of independent journalists like Jordan Schachtel all day long, for he gets it. Jeffrey Tucker of Brownstone. He gets that the public simply wishes the truth, the facts, no more lies, no opinions, no junk science. Just honesty.

To me, anything is possible if viewed from the vantage of the last 2 years 2 months of pure lies by governments and their moronic duplicitous COVID experts. That we needed to do nothing, absolutely nothing in response to COVID, nothing. Not one single action. No mass testing with a flawed PCR test, no mass quarantine etc. None. If you were unwell, just stay home. Just always protect the vulnerable. Yet look at what we were subjected to by people ‘doing good by us’. Harms and death. None of it was needed. And the devastating part of this was that not only were the lockdown lunatic policies useless, but those implementing them knew way before that they were useless.

I told him you know what my brother, I could also ‘get there’, in that malevolent subversive people can fabricate anything to achieve dark nefarious subversive aims. I am no conspiracy theorist and deal with actual data and facts myself so I need to see a bit more. I have to trust but this cast of characters have zero credibility. But I am open to all things, and he is impeccable, topmost, so he got me thinking. I have some thoughts and will leave that there for now, so put a pin in it for now. Let us assume that this is a real situation of credible monkeypox cases in Europe and North America, so as to have this discussion.

First, assuming it is real, we need to calm down and think this monkeypox issue through, and use the effective public health tools we already have. The risk is being grossly exaggerated by the media, the governments, and inept medical experts, banging their fear drum. This monkeypox emergence appears to be localized to a certain high-risk group and principally transmitted with close intimate-type contact (largely in men who have sex with men). Acute contact tracing is optimal and the right course of action at this time (as well as update diagnostic capability for orthopoxviruses and PPE for relevant health professionals; also no ignorance and stigmatization and we have to PSA to MSM on what signs and signals to look for). This virus is not easily spread human-to-human as it demands very close physical contact (highest risk being in contact with open and weeping sores/lesions/pustules of an infected person). One needs to have close physical contact with the lesions/pustules (content of the lesions/pustules). It can also be transmitted via respiratory droplets from lesions/blisters in the mouth of an infected person.

The truth is this virus is yet to be be properly studied. To get our arms around monkeypox (if it has emerged as reported) and to address it successfully, we should seek to collect data from females in such similar same-sex relationships to establish if there is a risk differential by gender. Dr. Howard Tenenbaum (electronic communication) raises a very important point relevant to monkey pox characterization and could help with other such infection surveillance. He remarked para “One other extremely important measure would be to assess COVID vaccine status, especially the number of doses. If the entire gay community (or nearly whole) is vaccinated, then we will not learn much BUT if there is a dose response we will! And that would be between Moderna and Pfizer (dose response due to mRNA loads) and a dose response vis a vis the numbers of shots taken.”

So how should we optimally move forward at this time?

i)Importantly, there must be no stigmatization or demeaning based on sexual preference, we focus on the pathogen; stigmatization damaged the proper response to HIV as an example, even by the medical and research community as the focus was not on the pathogen; the lesson has been learnt

ii)Implementation of acute contact tracing

iii)Update diagnostic capability for orthopoxviruses

iv)In preparation, assess relevant Personal Protective Equipment for relevant health professionals and secure as needed

v)PSA (message) MSM and persons in bisexual relationships on what signs and signals/symptoms to look for in their sexual partners.

This last suggestion (v) will go a long way to reduce exposure and transmission. This virus is not easily spread human-to-human as it demands very close physical contact, and as such, govern yourself accordingly. The vast majority of the population including children, are at very low risk. As more is learnt, we will update the intelligence and respond accordingly. Based on medical knowledge to date, the risk is exceedingly low for the general population and unless dramatically different evidence emerges, the media et al. needs to stop the fear mongering panic porn. We know the at-risk group, we have a reasonably clear understanding on how it is transmitted, and we know how to mitigate spread with appropriate PSA messaging and reach out, acute contact tracing, and isolation of infected etc. The vast majority of the population will largely be just very fine. The media et al. needs to stop the fear mongering panic porn.

The inept COVID medical experts and lockdown lunatics and global predators are at it again and these experts have already pivoted to smallpox vaccine and are saying the smallpox vaccine is 85% effective in monkeypox. This is NOT necessarily good news, for millions/billions are now potentially immunocompromised from the COVID vaccine. While a theoretical risk, by initiating smallpox vaccination, if the vaccine contains smallpox or vaccinia virus, we could potentially re-introduce smallpox and vaccinia to populations. This could be catastrophic.

We need some deep breaths and think about this carefully and as mentioned, arrest this monkeypox with tried and tested and successful public health containment tools like acute contact tracing/surveillance and isolation of infected/symptomatic persons. We focus where the risk behavior is and NOT mass vaccination of the population or ‘ring’ vaccination (key is we need to assess which vaccines are even available for if any contains smallpox or vaccinia or are replicating (means it can reproduce in human cells), that can be a catastrophe; this needs serious debate) and NOT mass chaos in the general low risk population by nonsensical, fear-mongering media messaging.

IMO, there is no basis, none, zero, for mass population/global vaccination with any vaccine as a response to monkeypox. IMO, only in the identified at-risk group e.g. bisexual, men who have sex with men etc. (persons who are at risk) if there is a decision to vaccinate. This has to be studied carefully for even HIV/AIDS persons who have been COVID vaccinated, they have 2 existing challenges beyond the risk of monkeypox which are 1) their immune suppressed state to begin with due to the HIV infection and 2) their compromised /dysregulated/damaged immune system (innate and acquired-adaptive) due the the devastation wrought by the COVID vaccine. So a decision to rush off vaccinating HIV positive persons (or certain groups) for monkeypox risk must be taken very seriously. The COVID vaccine has done tremendous damage to immune systems and we have no idea what the response will be even with non-replicating vaccines, if HIV positive persons (or similar) are mandated to be vaccinated.

The known suppression of the immune system for 2 weeks post COVID vaccine has been a serious concern as vaccinees have always been vulnerable to COVID and other viral infections/pathogen during this immediate post shot period. White blood cells are depressed during this period and thus why there are so many adverse events, hospitalizations, and deaths in the first 2-3 weeks post vaccine. The fact that the CDC and NIH etc. do not count these as occurring among the ‘vaccinated’ was to defraud the data to make it look like its a pandemic among the unvaccinated. The duplicitous CDC fraudsters count the first 2 weeks post vaccine as ‘unvaccinated’ which is IMO a means to deceive and manipulate the data.

Fauci, Francis Collins, Walensky, Bourla et al. thus failed to inform vaccinated persons how vulnerable they were for a period right after the jab. Yet I think it is more than this. Worse than this. We may have extensively damaged our innate and acquired-adaptive immune systems due to the COVID vaccine, in a way that vaccinated persons are at risk of developing a broad range of illnesses. Our immune systems may now be seriously compromised (in vaccinated persons) due to the COVID vaccine. We warned about this (Vanden Bossche, Yeadon, myself etc.) and our fears may well be materializing. Monkeypox may be the tip.

[CONTINUED NEXT POST - AND THE POST AFTER THAT]

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

[CONTINUED FROM POST ABOVE]

I will start with this statement before delving deeper: Stop the panic porn, stop lying to the public. Focus on where the risk is, NOT the general population. If it is being spread principally by sexual contact and among men-who-have-sex-with-men, then say so, and we orient the debate properly and no politics. We orient the debate where the risk behavior is. Reporting suggests: '‘The community transmission is largely centred in urban areas and we are predominantly seeing it in individuals who self-identify as gay or bisexual, or other men who have sex with men."

We keep the debate only on the mechanisms of transmission (viral transmission mechanics) and not on sexual preferences etc. It appears to be transmitted as a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and thus we react in public health as we would for STDs. Do we do anything extra societally as to this monkeypox? No. Do we be scared? No. Do we wear masks? No. Do we shut down anything, schools, business, society? No. Do we do some contact tracing? If we think it warrants. Do we mass quarantine? No. There is no need. Do we order shelter-in-place? No. We just live life as normal and turn off the insane corrupted media. That is all. Turn it off!

It is spread among men who have sex with men (MSM) mainly as per reporting. Contact trace there. Focus there. Do not taboo it. Do not react and behave in a manner that causes stigmatization and smears and attacks on MSM. Stop now! Calm down and have rational discussions. Use the routine public health tools that work, and operate as normal. The rise in European and North American cases may likely be due to travel that is exporting out of traditional foci. Focus there where it seems to be the foci, and with some outreach, some PSAs, some acute surveillance to characterize. Yes, we always keep an eye on ‘unusual’ occurrences and while the extra cases in North America and Europe raises some questions, what the media etc. is engaging in is inexcusable fear mongering.

If it is as reported, showing up in mainly males, young males and MSM (some reports due to gay parties), then it will be prudent to acute focus there and begin a second and third generation type of surveillance system, if there is that much of a concern and if cases rise. Again, if the reports of mainly in MSM. Now as with HIV when it initially emerged, what helped more acutely characterize the virus and thus efforts to tamp down the transmission and to see where it was, we implemented what was known as second and third generation surveillance systems in low-risk mothers (prenatal and antenatal clinics) and in heterosexual relationships. The expectant woman etc. stands always as the lowest risk group for sexually transmitted diseases given her likely monogamy.

We must take a quick look at transmission risk among HIV infected persons and how it may be instructive here given the transmission picture that has emerged thus far. Knowing we are early in the situation. The issue we realized was that MSM and bisexuals were causing the HIV to be transmitted broadly (and into the heterosexual communities) when they engaged in contact with non-homosexual partners. MSM can have (and have been known to have) partners outside of the homosexual community. At the height of the HIV epidemic, heterosexual husbands who also visited sex workers etc. took the virus home to low-risk women who thought they were in monogamous low-risk relationships. Heterosexual husbands who visited sex workers who were also injecting drug users were also at heightened risk of exposure. We also had to focus on the hydra and the floating migrant worker as part of the transmission chain. So, looking at the bisexual community for monkeypox and also women seeking pre-natal and antenatal pregnancy services could be of value as it was for HIV in understanding the virus. It will help us understand the extent of spread.

When a virus like HIV spread into the lowest risk expectant mother population, we knew the virus was spreading extensively due to high-risk behaviors by their partners. Highly monogamous expectant women were not to be HIV infected (always the lowest risk group in terms of high-risk behaviors in any society) unless getting it from their husbands and we traced backwards to understand what was happening and where to acutely focus surveillance and prevention and control strategies.

Again, I do not think this type of sophisticated acute surveillance is needed and we may well be ahead of our skis, but I am only giving this explanation as a tip, a brother to another brother tip, to the idiotic public health persons in USA and Canada and elsewhere who showed in COVID that they are full fledged epidemiological morons! Complete buffoons.
Academically sloppy and cognitively dissonanced. In that if the foci is in MSMS, then this is where you focus and do not ‘pretend’ for politics and the like. Pure dolts for everything, every single COVID restrictive policy and action these inept health officials and governments in Canada, US, UK, Australia etc. took failed, all lockdowns, all school closures, all mask mandates, all shelter-in-place, all social distance, all. Every COVID restrictive policy failed! They, these craven government and health officials killed people with their fraudulent over-cycled over sensitive used RT-PCR test and the lockdowns.
They killed people with their lockdown lunacy!

This type of acute heightened surveillance is not needed but if there is more spread outside of Africa, we may want to focus on these low-risk groups to better understand the extent of spread beyond the MSM group if this is the principle at-risk/high-risk group for monkey pox dissemination. If what the media is reporting as to the predominance of monkey pox cases. We may also wish to focus on injecting drug users who tend to engage in other high-risk behaviors. If human-to-human spread is occurring in persons who are engaging in close physical contact through sexual intimacy etc. and as being reported at this time, and likely with persons who are symptomatic at some level, then this is where the debate and focus should be.

I guess that will not happen for the media will not talk about this. This aspect will be covered up and sidelined if this monkeypox became a larger spread issue. This is the putrid politics and games we face. I talk it as it is, so you will always get the truth from me.

I write here as an infectious diseases epidemiologist, COVID expert, and with training in bioterrorism and biowarfare. I write having worked at World Health Organization, PAHO, the Canadian Government, IDSA, and US government in various epidemiology, EBM roles. That actually shows I may be an idiot too! So do not pay attention to that part of me!

I actually had some schooling under Dr. Donald Henderson at Johns Hopkins school of bioterrorism, who eradicated smallpox. It was in bioterrorism and biological warfare preparations if/when a city is attacked with chemical, radiological, and biological weapons. I asked Dr. Henderson to supervise my doctorate and he agreed, but for funding, better funding, I went to McMaster under the founder of EBM Guyatt. The EBM school at McMaster should be closed now as it is sold out to big pharma and grants. Sadly. The garbage COVID research and fraud corrupted studies by Pfizer and Moderna and FDA, in olden days, EBM giants would have torn it up. No more, follow the money!

So, is monkeypox the new COVID? IMO, we should calm down and not succumb to the fear mongering and recognize its the very same inept, incompetent, arrogant, illogical, irrational, stupid, absurd, specious, non-sensical, hubris-laden, moronic media and so called ‘television medical experts’ at it again. They, these ever preening abysmally stupid television medical experts, have shown an appalling lack of competence in all things COVID. They are matched only by the COVID Task Force experts. Pure idiots! Did I use enough descriptives as to the depth of breath taking incompetence? Are there any others I may use?

So calm down. No evidence that this monkeypox is a threat, it is very non-lethal thus far and likely will not be a public health threat based on all we do currently know. Is this an attempt to scare you and drive panic? Likely. Is judiciousness and prudence needed? Always it is needed. But within reason. Balance with the facts and the ‘likelihood. Is it a public health threat today? No. I see none, zero! Do we know what to do to contain monkey pox? Absolutely. Contact trace. Again, with all I know as of today, there is the media driving needless fear and panic. It’s reprehensible what they are doing.

As of today, there have been zero deaths due to the cases that have emerged in Europe and North America (I believe near 100 to date and principally in young men). Stop the lying, Mr. news media and idiotic ‘medical expert’ talking heads on television that children are at risk. I ask you, where is the evidence of this? Where? What data? You have none and you know it! You lie as usual to panic parents. Filthy animals you are! Pure filthy stink nasty demonic animals trying to do this, scaring the public needlessly.

So as more is learnt, calm down and turn off FOX and CNN. The same idiots are on there spewing garbage drivel to you. Moronic idiots as usual in the media. Relax. If there are issues to be concerned about, you know folk like me will advise immediately. You know I love to write;-).

Above all, take no more COVID vaccines based on what we know today as to the ineffectiveness and improper safety profile. COVID is and was done! It is continuing due to the continued vaccination with the non-sterilizing, non-neutralizing vaccine with antibodies (Abs) that are targeting the infectiousness of the virus (the spike) yet can only bind to the virus’s spike epitope but not sterilize (eliminate) the virus. You as the ones being vaccinated, are driving the variants/clades/sub-variants. Say NO! None for your children. Not one health official in US, Canada, UK, anywhere… has made any case as to why these failed COVID vaccines are needed in low-risk healthy children. You will be part of harming and killing children with these vaccines. Your children. This is the hill you hold, this is the hill you as parents be prepared to lay your life down on. This is it, all your life now comes to now, all of our lives!

Fauci and Walensky and Bourla of Pfizer and Bancel of Moderna and the kingpin himself Francis Collins of NIH, and the new addition to the clown car show, the blinker Ashish Jha, show they are grossly inept, incompetent, idiotic, and do not think of the health and well-being first. They think fame and money$. Some say nefarious. I do not know enough to comment on that in a properly informed manner but it is clear. It is either pure ineptness or malfeasance. One of the two or a combination. You decide. I have my own thoughts.

So with that open, let me begin on monkey pox and I have to start with smallpox as this is being used to panic you. Smallpox vaccine (smallpox is caused by the variola virus (variola major or variola minor), it is of the genus orthopoxvirus; humans are the only known reservoir) is emerging as a topic of conversation and possible importance in the emergence of monkeypox. IMO, too many unknowns in the era of having mass vaccinated the populations with COVID vaccines, to consider vaccinating for monkeypox with smallpox vaccines; too much damage from COVID vaccines. Smallpox vaccines on top of COVID ineffective and harmful vaccines is insanity! I remind you that “Inoculation with vaccinia virus is highly effective for the prevention of smallpox infection, but it is associated with several known side effects that range from mild and self-limited to severe and life-threatening.”

We have to think outside of the box, and challenge conventional wisdom for everything they did (COVID lockdown lunatics) has not worked and they continue to be clueless. A critical statement thus to set the table:
“Increasing the number of vaccinated persons will inevitably lead to increases in morbidity and mortality due to vaccinia, and current evidence suggests net harm would result if smallpox vaccine were made available to the general public on a voluntary basis.”

SOURCE:
Belongia & Naleway: Smallpox Vaccine: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

First, we have said, Vanden Bossche, McCullough, myself etc. that these sub-optimal ineffective and harmful COVID vaccines must be stopped! Completely. They cannot be justified. Zero! None in children! Pfizer (Bourla) and Moderna (Bancel) and Fauci and Walensky and Francis Collins are criminals for pushing this on near statistical zero risk healthy children.

I warn, this is in part to scare you to vaccinate your child with COVID vaccine and even small pox vaccine. Be warned. They, scientists, are saying good news, I am saying not good news if you went thinking you morons that you can vaccinate people for monkeypox with the smallpox vaccine.

Slow your roll on this one, the same players are involved, hysterical, and the same complicit media! Slow your roll!
COVID vaccinated persons have depressed subverted immune systems (documented) and thus are at risk for latent and existing pathogen (and cancers), that would not have infected them prior. Very valid to conjecture on this that it is the COVID vaccine and what it has done immune system wise, that has caused monkey pox to emerge in Europe and North America. COVID vaccinated persons could be at dramatic risk to monkeypox and a host of other pathogen/virus.

Next, it is true that persons under 40 years old do not have the smallpox vaccine (a vaccine that has had a questionable history as to safety), yet the real issue is the catastrophic outcome should we vaccinate millions and millions with smallpox vaccine who have subverted immune systems now due the the sub-optimal non-sterilizing COVID vaccine. I warn, by taking people who have compromised immunity as are COVID vaccinated persons (e.g. increased risk of infection and are getting infected post vaccine), and as such immunocompromised, and you give them the smallpox vaccine for monkeypox (orthopoxvirus) prevention, you could create devastation.

I just described COVID vaccinated persons. Immunocompromised vaccinated persons. The smallpox vaccine can potentially then drive cases of smallpox as well as vaccinia in subverted immunity, immunocompromised COVID vaccinated persons, including among young people and children. This is at present a theoretical risk, but can become a reality if how I explained it above is so.

The smallpox vaccine (based on vaccination with vaccinia virus is known to be very ruthless (potentially causing the orthopoxvirus ‘smallpox’ viral disease itself) in immunocompromised persons. The smallpox vaccine can also cause progressive vaccinia (vaccinia virus). Vaccinia induces both cellular and humoral immunity to variola virus (remember, smallpox is caused by the variola virus).

[CONTINUED NEXT POST]

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

[CONTINUED FROM POST ABOVE THIS AND FROM POST ABOVE THAT ONE TOO]

See these passages:

“Smallpox vaccine is less safe than other vaccines routinely used today. The vaccine is associated with known adverse effects that range from mild to severe. Mild vaccine reactions include formation of satellite lesions, fever, muscle aches, regional lymphadenopathy, fatigue, headache, nausea, rashes, and soreness at the vaccination site.13,18,19 A recent clinical trial reported that more than one-third of vaccine recipients missed days of work or school because of these mild vaccine-related symptoms.18…

In the 1960s, serious adverse events associated with smallpox vaccination in the United States included death (1/million vaccinations), progressive vaccinia (1.5/million vaccinations), eczema vaccinatum (39/million vaccinations), postvaccinial encephalitis (12/million vaccinations), and generalized vaccinia (241/million vaccinations).20 Adverse events were approximately ten times more common among those vaccinated for the first time compared to revaccinees.20 Fatality rates were also four times higher for primary vaccinees compared to revaccinees.21…

Progressive vaccinia (a.k.a. vaccinia necrosum, vaccinia gangrenosum) is defined as an uncontrolled replication of vaccinia virus at the vaccination site that leads to a slow and progressive necrosis of surrounding tissue.24 Satellite necrotic lesions typically develop, and ultimately vaccinia virus may be found in other tissues and organs.24 This condition typically affects individuals with incompetent immune systems.24,25 The cardinal clinical signs of progressive vaccinia include an unhealed vaccination site >15 days post vaccination, and the lack of inflammation or an immune response at the vaccination site.24,25 Untreated progressive vaccinia is fatal, but treatment with VIG or the antiviral cidofovir may be effective in some cases.”

SOURCE:
Belongia & Naleway: Smallpox Vaccine: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

“There are more than 100 million doses of another vaccine, ACAM2000. This is an older generation vaccine meant to prevent smallpox, but could also be used to prevent monkeypox, McQuiston said. That vaccine, however, can come with significant side effects, and would be considered only for very close personal contacts of those with monkeypox infection, as well as health care workers.”

SOURCE:
CDC investigating more monkeypox cases

Study this carefully, think properly. Take your time. Slow your roll with considering smallpox vaccine for monkeypox. Let us stop and examine what these monkeypox cases are about and if they are directly linked to the immuno-suppression due to the COVID vaccines. Again, as we have said repeatedly, stop the COVID vaccines!

Look at the sheer disasters we have made in COVID responding and the vaccines already. At present, there is no cause for concern based on what is being reported. We should look at the transmission in men-who-have-sex-with-men, as there are reports of heightened cases among young men. This needs investigation before this can be declared as credible, for it is unclear at the moment. Lots of the monkeypox news is unclear and really hysterical and meant to scare you. Drives needless fear. We keep an eye out but as of now, this is not a public health threat. Far from it.


Primer on monkeypox:

“Animal-to-human transmission can happen as a result of direct contact with the blood, bodily fluids, or cutaneous or mucosal lesions of infected animals…

Secondary or human-to-human transmission can happen through close contact with respiratory secretions, skin lesions of an infected person or recently contaminated objects…

Transmission via droplet respiratory particles usually requires prolonged face-to-face contact, putting health workers, family members and other close contacts of infected people at greater risk…

On Monday, the WHO signaled that some of the cases confirmed recently in Britain surfaced among gay men…

Although the current cluster of cases is in men who have sex with men, it is probably too early to make conclusions about the mode of transmission or assume that sexual activity was necessary for transmission, unless we have clear epidemiological data and analysis," Michael Skinner, a virology specialist from London's Imperial College, told Science Media centre(SMC) website…

The World Health Organization however says human-to-human transmission is limited.

Symptoms in humans of monkeypox include lesions, eruptions on the face, palms or soles, scabs, fever, muscle ache and chills…

Most people recover within several weeks and monkeypox has only been fatal in rare cases…

It is usually a self-limited disease with symptoms lasting from two to four weeks.”

SOURCE:
Good news: Smallpox vaccine 85% effective in preventing monkeypox

Key for you to know is this. The cases may be occurring due to exposures to a common source (several infected animals). This is what we pay attention to and if there is human-to-human spread, how infectious/extensive e.g. what is the reproductive number (R naught e.g. how many persons can one infected person spread to and if 1.0 and below, then this is great news as it appears to be). Human-to-human transmission appears to be a minimal (negligible and only with very close physical contact to bodily fluids, lesions, droplet etc.). Sexual intimacy appears to be a player and we should focus on messaging there. Usual containment measures are appropriate e.g. contact tracing, consideration of advisement and quarantine of ONLY persons in contact with bona fide infected persons, or who are symptomatic or in contact with symptomatic persons. Balance is needed still. No mass vaccination. Again, smallpox vaccine has serious safety issues and can be deadly (driving smallpox and/or vaccinia) in the era of depressed immune systems in persons vaccinated with COVID vaccines.

There is no indication whatsoever of any asymptomatic transmission (best knowledge to date), the fraud and lie they sold to us in COVID. No asymptomatic transmission of monkeypox. if there is spread, it is via (based on our evidence to date) contact, actual contact person-to-person (infected persons/had illness to uninfected person). The cases so far are among men who have had sexual contact with other men (MSM) and thus close intimate physical touch. Besides close physical contact (e.g. sexual in MSM), the virus may spread by larger respiratory droplet infection (landing in an uninfected person’s nasopharyngeal passages), as well as direct contact with the lesions or pustules in a symptomatic monkeypox infected person (potentially clothing with content from the infected lesions/pustules).

SOURCE:
CDC, CDC Advises Doctors to Be on Alert for Monkeypox as WHO Confirms Outbreaks in 11 Countries

Key statements:

“In 2021, the United States had two confirmed cases of monkeypox, one in Maryland and one in Texas. Both cases involved people who had recently traveled to Nigeria, where the virus is endemic.

According to the CDC, because the monkeypox virus is related to the virus that causes smallpox, the vaccine can protect people from getting monkeypox.

“Past data from Africa suggests that the smallpox vaccine is at least 85 [percent] effective in preventing monkeypox,” the CDC stated.

“People who closely interact with someone who is infectious are at greater risk for infection: this includes health workers, household members and sexual partners,” the WHO stated.

Monkeypox starts off with flu-like symptoms that include fever, muscle aches, and fatigue, as well as swelling of the lymph nodes. Within days after fever, a rash appears on the face and body, which can also include the genital or perianal area, the CDC states. The incubation period—time from infection to symptoms—can range from 5 to 21 days.

The disease usually self-resolves with the symptoms lasting from 2 to 4 weeks, although severe cases can occur and can even result in death, with recent death rates being around 3 to 6 percent, according to the WHO.

The United States has one confirmed case of monkeypox in Massachusetts, the first this year. The CDC said it is working with the state’s health department to investigate the case. The patient involved has the West African strain of monkeypox virus, and is currently isolated, the CDC stated. He had recently traveled to Canada, where the first two monkeypox cases were confirmed late on May 19 in Quebec.

The CDC noted that in the case of the United Kingdom, there was a “temporally clustered group of cases involving four people who self-identify as gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with men.”

“Some evidence suggests that cases among [men who have sex with men] may be epidemiologically linked; the patients in this cluster were identified at sexual health clinics,” it stated. “This is an evolving investigation and public health authorities hope to learn more about routes of exposure in the coming days.”

It adds that doctors should be more suspicious for the disease and consider it as a possible diagnosis if, in addition to having a characteristic rash, their patient has traveled to countries with recently confirmed cases of monkeypox; reports having had contact with anyone who had monkeypox, or suspected monkeypox, or have a rash similar in appearance to monkeypox; or is a man who regularly has close or intimate in-person contact with other men.’

Bottom line:

My understanding says relax, calm down, turn off CNN and FOX, two of the same idiotic misinformation outfits. This monkeypox virus is basic to Africa and is zoonotic and as such can jump from animals to humans. If it does, transmission is via close physical contact e.g. reports of spread between MSM (needs to be clarified), bodily fluid, touch of infected lesions/pustules, and possibly clothing from infected persons. Death rate is vanishingly low and no evidence more deadly for children. Based on all data we know of, globally. IMO, this is no public health concern, no threat, and as before, was never a virus to lose sleep over. We keep an eye on it, and we use traditional public health control measures e.g. contact tracing, if and when need be. No mass vaccination using smallpox vaccine and especially within the immune compromised devastation caused by the COVID vaccines. Smallpox vaccine in this context and era of depleted exhausted immune systems with all the ineffective and deadly boosting, could cause smallpox epidemics and vaccinia.

SOURCE:
Sarracenia purpurea

Check out this 1863 British Medical Journal treatment for smallpox, published 160 years ago, as a correspondence. Very interesting and I love the writing 160 years ago, content and style.

In conclusion, there are also very suspicious events taking place and which have taken place that raises massive questions:

1)Simulation of a global pandemic of monkeypox was recently conducted

SOURCE:
Strengthening Global Systems to Prevent and Respond to High-Consequence Biological Threats


Dr. Vinay Prasad, huge praise for your commonsense and balance on monkeypox.
Vinay

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

CDC's and FDA's Bedford slides are fascinating & he titled it "Continuing SARS-CoV-2 evolution under population immune pressure"; he is not WRONG, it's sub-optimal population VAX immune pressure

These 3 pieces of information tells the story & I like his work here but his take on why immune escape is happening so fast is misguided; its the infectious pressure on top of sub-optimal vax pressure

palexander.substack.com

(fair use applies)

CDC's and FDA's Bedford slides are fascinating & he titled it "Continuing SARS-CoV-2 evolution under population immune pressure"; he is not WRONG, it's sub-optimal population VAX immune pressure
These 3 pieces of information tells the story & I like his work here but his take on why immune escape is happening so fast is misguided; its the infectious pressure on top of sub-optimal vax pressure
Dr. Paul Alexander
17 hr ago

Update: I have to update this post. Why? Because my brain read this title etc. as virus immune pressure. That would be WRONG. The adaptations and evolution on the spike are a consequence of the sub-optimal vaccinal immune pressure mounting from the population (sub-optimal non-neutralizing antibodies (Abs)) so Dr. Bedford is actually correct. He should have placed the word ‘vaccinal’ before immune pressure but his graphs show us the alarm we felt would happen and are happening. This is why FDA/CDC did not pay him two minds. I must give his work the credit it deserves and fix my bad.

I have changed the title too to reflect this. He deserves credit for his graphs line up with what Geert VB and myself and others have been arguing. It is clear that there is substantial immune escape due to the vaccines, NOT the virus. Though if we were to reduce the infectious pressure (large amounts of circulating virus in a pandemic and virus not returning to baseline post new curve/wave) in light of the mounting immune pressure, that would leave less/little virus spike to be pressured by the sub-optimal vaccinal Abs and thus reduce the selection pressure to select for more infectious variants.
Its the sub-optimal pressure due to an immature developing incomplete, population immune response that is pressuring the virus’s spike and driving selection pressure for more infectious variants.

We have grossly underestimated the evolutionary capacity of the virus to evolve and adapt to the ongoing infectious pressure on top of the mounting sub-optimal immune pressure driving selection of infectious variant after variant.

SOURCE
Dr. Trevor Bedford at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center; good work. His lab. Brave work too.

This chart shows that vaccine effectiveness declines markedly due to two doses and booster. This is due to the mutated spike and thus viral immune escape. More for Omicron.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

South Africa's infections/cases to date and deaths; 97% immunity in the population, so why would it get this 5th wave OMICRON? Has low vaccine rate, so do they need vaccine? Why deaths so low?

Let us debate, I have my ideas, very interesting but IMO, we know this is exactly how it will unfold, remember, OMI has approx. 15 mutations on spike and more now in new sub-variant...so will ESCAPE!

palexander.substack.com

(fair use applies)

South Africa's infections/cases to date and deaths; 97% immunity in the population, so why would it get this 5th wave OMICRON? Has low vaccine rate, so do they need vaccine? Why deaths so low?
Let us debate, I have my ideas, very interesting but IMO, we know this is exactly how it will unfold, remember, OMI has approx. 15 mutations on spike and more now in new sub-variant...so will ESCAPE!
Dr. Paul Alexander
16 hr ago

Remember, vaccine confers protection to only the spike, one protein, one antigen…natural immunity looks at the entire surface of the virus and the internal N (nucleocapsid) protein. So natural immunity will always be broader and more potent etc. Durable and long lasting. It is the cellular immunity that counts more, not the spikes in antibodies due to vaccine. Are 15 and more mutations in RBD in spike protein capable (spike binding regions, receptor binding domain or N-terminus domain) of making it look so much different to the acquired antibodies in even natural innate and acquired-adaptive immunity? So that it can evade? Seems so. But the issue is recovery. Are their symptoms or mild symptoms? Is this really a breach of natural immunity or more of an ‘immune rechallenge’? Remember, Geert warns that this capacity in vaccinated persons would end soon (enhanced infection in URT by non-neutralizing Abs while blocking of severe illness in the LRT/deeper in the lungs by Abs). Vaccinated persons.

The SA data is intriguing. What we can see in the last graph on this page is that deaths bubbled a bit but not a high peak in the 5th case wave. We normally see a death spike 2-3-4 weeks post the case spike. Can we argue that even though OMI challenged natural immunity (remember, SA’s immunity is largely from natural exposure as only about 30-40% vaccinated based on reporting), likely broke through INNATE and acquired-adaptive immunity, then dealt with it, and as such, the innate/acquired offered protection enough to stave of severe outcomes? Even from sub-variants of OMI that were very very different from prior variants/initial Wuhan strain?

But remember, we have to tease apart data to see the vaxxed vs unvaxxed for it is likely we will see huge spikes in infection in the vaccinated in SA, as well as hospitalization and even death. We warned about this and the UK, Scottish, and Israeli and Danish and all the data showed this.

Share your thoughts.



Large clearer death graph:



New Omicron variants are so infectious that South Africa had a 5th wave even though 97% had antibody protection



COMMENT:
Barry Varkel
15 hr ago
I live in Cape Town, South Africa.
All my "vaxxed" middle class mates, family and work colleagues are getting sick now as winter commences with flu, stomach bugs, fevers, and other strange illnesses.
The majority of the SA working class population however remains unvaxxed and perfectly healthy.
There is therefore only one conclusion to be drawn - covid injections impede and diminish peoples' general immunity.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Alamer et al.: "Side Effects of COVID-19 Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA Vaccine in Children Aged 12–18"

This study shows the types of alarming specific side effects we are warning about and why these are dangerous...

palexander.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Alamer et al.: "Side Effects of COVID-19 Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA Vaccine in Children Aged 12–18"
This study shows the types of alarming specific side effects we are warning about and why these are dangerous...
Dr. Paul Alexander
17 hr ago

“In the present study, 571 of the study participants reported side effects following vaccination, representing 60% of the total study subjects (Table 2). The most frequently reported side effects among those who reported side effects after vaccination were pain or redness at the site of injection (90%), fatigue (67%), fever (59%), headache (55%), nausea or vomiting (21%), and chest pain and shortness of breath (20%).”

“Taken together, this data shows clearly that more significant side effects are reported after the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccine compared to the first dose in our study cohort.”

SOURCE

 

[psychgirl]

The drumbeats for vaccine dangers and injury are slowly beating louder and louder.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Pfizer again asks FDA to authorize Covid vaccine for youngest kids

Pfizer-BioNTech said Wednesday that it asked the FDA to authorize the Covid vaccine for children under age 5. The request will be considered later this month.

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)

Pfizer again asks FDA to authorize Covid vaccine for youngest kids
Berkeley Lovelace Jr. - NBC News
Wed, June 1, 2022, 6:04 PM

Pfizer-BioNTech said Wednesday that it asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize its Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 4 years — the only group that remains ineligible for vaccination.

The request will be now considered by the FDA, which will review the data and could grant emergency use authorization for the age group later this month.

The FDA’s advisory group, called the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, is scheduled to convene on June 15 to offer guidance on the pediatric doses.

The FDA could clear doses for the age group within days of a favorable recommendation from the committee. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will still need to sign off on the doses, as the agency has done for all other age groups.

Wednesday's announcement may bring some relief to parents eagerly awaiting to vaccinate their littlest children.
Covid-19 cases are rising again across the United States, including among children.

Pfizer's application to the FDA included clinical trial data that found three doses of the vaccine for the youngest children were safe and generated a strong immune response. In addition, interim results from the trial showed that the vaccine was 80 percent effective against the omicron variant of the coronavirus, though that figure may change as more results come in.

The vaccine regimen is two doses, given three weeks apart, followed by a third dose at least two months later. The shots are 3 micrograms each, one-tenth the dosage given to adults.

Pfizer asked the FDA to authorize a two-dose vaccine for the youngest children in early February.

An advisory committee meeting to review the two-dose regimen, however, was postponed after Pfizer said that two doses didn’t generate a strong enough immune response in an ongoing trial of children ages 2 to under 5.

Pfizer said it would wait for its data on a three-dose series of the vaccine before seeking authorization.

Moderna submitted its application for a two-dose vaccine regimen for children under 6 at the end of April, although the company has said it expects to seek authorization for a booster dose for the age group.

That vaccine is given as two 25-microgram doses four weeks apart.

The FDA's advisory committee will review Moderna's application alongside Pfizer's at the June 15 meeting.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

WHO says COVID in N.Korea likely 'getting worse, not better'

The World Health Organization has cast doubts on North Korea's claims of progress in the fight against a COVID-19 outbreak, saying it believes the situation is getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data. North Korean state media has said the COVID wave has abated, after...

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)

WHO says COVID in N.Korea likely 'getting worse, not better'
Josh Smith and Joori Roh
Wed, June 1, 2022, 8:01 PM

SEOUL (Reuters) - The World Health Organization has cast doubts on North Korea's claims of progress in the fight against a COVID-19 outbreak, saying it believes the situation is getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data.

North Korean state media has said the COVID wave has abated, after daily numbers of people with fever topped 390,000 about two weeks ago.

Pyongyang has never directly confirmed how many people have tested positive for the virus but experts suspect underreporting in the figures released through government-controlled media, making it difficult to assess the scale of the situation.

"We assume the situation is getting worse, not better," WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan said during a video briefing Wednesday.

He said the WHO did not have access to any privileged information beyond the numbers publicly reported by state media.

"We have real issues in getting access to the raw data and to the actual situation on the ground," Ryan said, adding that the WHO is working with neighbours like South Korea and China to try to get a better picture.

The WHO has offered assistance on multiple occasions, including vaccines and supplies, he said.

North Korea reported 96,610 more people showing fever amid its nationwide lockdown aimed at containing the impoverished country's first confirmed COVID-19 outbreak, state news agency KCNA said on Thursday.

The media, however, did not mention whether there were any new deaths.

KCNA said provinces were "intensifying" their anti-epidemic campaigns, including enforcing some lockdowns and coastal blockades, increasing production of drugs and medical supplies, and carrying out disinfection work.

Key work such as farming continued, however.

North Korean Premier Kim Tok Hun inspected a pair of pharmaceutical factories, amid a push to put the country's drug industry on a "on a new higher level," including meeting international standards, KCNA reported.

"Sufficient production and supply of medicines serve as a prerequisite to protecting the people's lives and health in the current rigorous anti-epidemic campaign," he said.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Newstream | KCNA Watch

kcnawatch.org

(fair use applies)

Epidemic Spread and Treatment Results in DPRK
Date: 02/06/2022 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, June 2 (KCNA) -- According to information of the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters, more than 96,610 fevered cases, with 108,990 recoveries, were reported from 18:00 of May 31 to 18:00 of June 1 throughout the country.

As of 18:00 of June 1 since late April, the total number of fevered persons is over 3,835,420, of which more than 3,669,950 (95.686%) have recovered and at least 165,390 (4.312%) are under medical treatment. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche111.6.2.)

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Taiwan - 144 deaths, 50 unvaxxed (which means 94 were vaxxed = 65 percent of the 144 deaths reported on June 2nd were vaxxed). Keep in mind, deaths usually follow by a few weeks from infection so the numbers are only now coming in for the last weeks infection rise. I am following what's happening in Taiwan because of Geert... (and NK because it seems like an interesting herd immmunity study as no one is vaxxed in NK)

Taiwan reports 76,986 new COVID-19 cases, 144 deaths - Focus Taiwan

Taipei, June 2 (CNA) Taiwan reported 76,986 new COVID-19 cases -- 76,967 domestically transmitted and 19 imported cases -- and 144 deaths from the disease on Thursday, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).

focustaiwan.tw

(fair use applies)
Bolding mine

CORONAVIRUS/Taiwan reports 76,986 new COVID-19 cases, 144 deaths
06/02/2022 02:46 PM

Taipei, June 2 (CNA) Taiwan reported 76,986 new COVID-19 cases -- 76,967 domestically transmitted and 19 imported cases -- and 144 deaths from the disease on Thursday, according to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC).

The death toll was just shy of the current single-day high of 145 deaths reported on May 29.

The 144 patients reported Thursday to have died of COVID-19 complications ranged in age from 9 years old to over 90 years old. Of these patients, 50 were unvaccinated, and 135 had chronic illnesses or other severe diseases.

One of the cases who died was a 9-year-old boy. He began vomiting on May 28, and he lost consciousness the next day before being sent to hospital. He had no vital signs when he arrived, and his polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test came back positive for COVID-19.

The boy was pronounced dead on May 29, with his death attributed to COVID-19 and heart and lung failure, the CECC said.

His death brings the number of children - defined by the CECC as 12 years old and younger - who have died of COVID-19 in Taiwan to 13.

The CECC also said Thursday that 122 previously reported COVID-19 cases had since developed into severe infections, while 291 other patients had developed moderate symptoms of the disease.

Of the 2,093,540 domestic cases recorded in Taiwan this year, 1,970 have been classified as severe infections and 4,158 as moderate, accounting for 0.09 percent and 0.20 percent of the total, respectively, according to CECC data as of June 1.

In all other cases, patients were either asymptomatic or had mild infections, the CECC said.

Of the domestic cases reported Thursday, New Taipei recorded the highest number with 12,910 cases, followed by Taichung with 10,707, and Kaohsiung with 10,530.

Taoyuan reported 7,854 cases, Taipei 6,237, Tainan 6,144, Changhua County 4,541, Pingtung County 2,773, Hsinchu County 2,282, Miaoli County 1,633, Hsinchu City 1,585, Yilan County 1,426, and Yunlin County 1,410.

Nantou County reported 1,320 cases, Hualien County 1,218, Keelung 1,190, Chiayi County 1,168, Taitung County 897, Chiayi City 756, Penghu County 216, Kinmen County 145, and Matsu Islands 25.

To date, Taiwan has recorded 2,198,161 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began in early 2020, including 2,185,056 domestic infections.

With the 144 deaths reported Thursday, the number of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the country rose to 2,521, CECC data showed.

(By Chiang Yi-ching)

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Zerohedge

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

www.zerohedge.com

(fair use applies)

BOLDING IN ORIGINAL (not mine)

"The Nightmare Has Ended": Shanghai Reopens After Two-Month COVID Lockdown
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Jun 01, 2022 - 05:05 PM

Relieved residents danced in the streets after Shanghai on Wednesday officially lifted a two-month virus lockdown that triggered public outrage while dealing a huge blow to the economy, sending it reeling to depths not seen since the global shutdown in Q1 2020.

Dozens of cities across China have been under full or partial lockdown for months as the country with the "zero covid" policy battled its worst COVID-19 outbreak since early in the pandemic. But the Shanghai shutdown was the biggest, with most of the city's 25 million residents confined to their homes since late March, turning the once-bustling metropolis into a ghost town.



That changed at midnight on Wednesday, when Shanghai authorities started taking down metal barriers and yellow plastic blockades that had blanketed one of the world's biggest cities. Residents spilled into the streets to celebrate what was for many their first taste of freedom since the lockdown orders.

As the Nikkei reports, some residents cheered and posed for photos, others danced and drank in the streets until the early hours of Wednesday morning while parks filled up with kids and their parents. The end of the lockdown meant a green light for neighborhood businesses and major manufacturers to restart operations. But dining inside restaurants was still banned, bars are open but don't serve alcohol, and movie theaters and gyms remain closed. Supermarkets, convenience stores and pharmacies were to reopen gradually with capacity limits.

Restarted public transit filled up with white-collar workers making their way back to the office. "I am glad the nightmare has ended," said a banker surnamed Chen as he returned to work in the Lujiazui financial district. "But only about half of the staff will be back to the office this week due to COVID-prevention rules before we fully resume next week," Chen said.

Chen was among hundreds of thousands of unlucky people hauled off to makeshift quarantine facilities after being suspected of coming into contact with a virus-infected person. He described his two-week stay at the bare-bones site as a "horrifying experience."

Some more details from Nikkei:

Shanghai lifted the lockdown after confirmed infections this week plunged into the low double digits from highs topping 20,000 a day in April.​

​

But the draconian measures sparked widespread anger as they left some homebound people jobless and others desperately struggling to keep businesses afloat. Food shortages and limited access to medical care aggravated the outrage, which often spilled on to social media despite government efforts to portray the shutdown as orderly and well managed.​

​

The restrictions in Shanghai and other cities, including the capital Beijing, have taken a bite out of the economy and raised questions about whether China can hit its 5.5% growth target this year. There were signs, however, that factory activity was rebounding modestly as production shutdowns and other virus restrictions are eased.​

To be sure, China is already "benefiting" from the reopening, with the latest PMI print seeing a bounce from recent lows. Expect these numbers to rise materially in coming months as more lockdowns ease.



On Wednesday, people walked their dogs on Shanghai's streets and seniors practiced tai chi in public squares while barbers welcomed shaggy-haired residents in need of a trim. But the jubilation was mixed with caution, as many feared another outbreak could prompt nervous authorities to bring back restrictions.

"We feel happy, but at the same time we worry about another outbreak," a husband and wife duo told Nikkei Asia as they walked along the Bund, Shanghai's historic riverside district. "Many people think the pandemic is over ... but it is clearly not."

Some shopping malls threw open their doors Wednesday, while many retailers spent the day cleaning and disinfecting shops before welcoming back shoppers.

"Customers will likely to stay away for the first few weeks, just like what we went through in 2020," said Jia Hong, a hot bun seller in the Jing'an central business district. "Many are wary about the risks of eating outside."​

China's biggest lockdown tested President Xi Jinping's signature zero-COVID policy, which relies on heavy restrictions, including mass testing and lockdowns, to quash outbreaks at any cost.

The government has said it is sticking with that approach in a bid to save lives and stop its health care system from being overwhelmed, even as much of the world moves toward living with the virus. That means Shanghai residents must now take a PCR test every three days at one of thousands of temporary screening booths in order to use public transit or enter shops.

"We will have to do this endlessly," said Bai Ying, a property agent who was getting tested. "The risk of catching the virus is higher here than at home, but we have no choice."

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Justice Department Appeals to Get Masks Back on Airlines, Buses, and Trains ⋆ Brownstone Institute

The CDC, by appealing the ruling overturning its masks-on-a-plane mandate, is moving us one step closer to a world without Chevron.

brownstone.org

(fair use applies)

Justice Department Appeals to Get Masks Back on Airlines, Buses, and Trains
By Alex Washburne
June 1, 2022

I am not a gambling man.

As an investor, financial data analyst, and rock climber, I may appear on the surface to be a massive risk-taker, but in fact I see myself as a proactive risk-manager. It’s critical to know the stakes of the game, and to manage all the risks we can. Sometimes, that means keeping money in bonds or REITs, taking my rock-climbing gear for a hike to the cliff and back without ever climbing rocks, and choosing to stay inside instead of skiing on unstable snowpack.

Meanwhile, the CDC, goaded by a community of epidemiologists firing tweets from their armchairs, is proving to be quite the gambler, going so far as to take a loan on our administrative state in its latest game of public health policy roulette.

The world’s epidemiologists first displayed an uncanny appetite for gambling when they manufactured consent for the containment of COVID in 2020. At the time, we had vaccines in development that were positioned to undergo phase 3 trials, but we had no proof that these vaccines would work. The prior history of vaccines for coronaviruses was not promising. Despite decades of monitoring strain evolution and developing real-world vaccines, our influenza vaccines averaged ~30% effectiveness at reducing infections, and we had never before seen a coronavirus vaccine make it through phase 3 trials.

The stakes of the vaccine gamble were extraordinarily high as containment policies carried massive costs. From just our brief lockdowns, and the whack-a-mole lockdowns occurring sporadically throughout Europe, it was clear that tens of millions of people predominately in Africa and Asia would be severed from our contracting global trade networks, and these people would starve.

Up to 120 million people were at risk of facing acute hunger if we pursued aggressive containment policies through all of 2020, and thankfully (or tragically, if your not a gambler and your bleeding heart still beats), only >20 million people were thrown into acute hunger and >100 million kids thrown into multidimensional poverty.

The vaccine gamble didn’t quite break even. While vaccines were shown to be safe and effective, the world’s control groups – South Dakota, Florida, Sweden, among others – already saw their pandemic COVID outbreaks come and go prior to the arrival of vaccines, with much lower mortality than estimated by vaccine gamblers had estimated. It’s not clear vaccines saved “millions” of lives in the US. They clearly saved many during the Delta wave, but there’s no solid evidence they saved “millions” in the US, whereas entering into this gamble with containment policies clearly sent tens of millions into hunger, over a hundred million kids into poverty, caused millions of kids to drop out of school, caused a mental health crisis in children, and more.

Just when we thought the pandemic was over, and epidemiologists would retreat to sharing fantastical compartmental models in dusty journals, the CDC has croaked back into our lives with yet another high-stakes gamble. Instead of gambling on vaccines, this gamble is on masks on planes, a slightly more important topic of public health than Snakes on a Plane. Slightly. Like the vaccine gamble, the stakes of the Masks On A Plane gamble are much higher than the gamblers are letting on.

To bring you up to speed, amidst the vaccine gamble the CDC issued a rule requiring travelers wear masks on planes, trains and automobiles. As vaccines became widely available in the US at the expense of vaccine availability in low-income countries, and after Pfizer and Moderna pocketed billions of dollars of American taxpayers’ hard-earned money, the mandate was set to expire.

Then, in April 2022, almost a year and a half after cases peaked in South Dakota, but following a series of outbreaks driven by novel variants capable of evading immunity from vaccines, the CDC extended its masks-on-a-plane order.

Meanwhile, the Health Freedom Defense Fund had filed a case against Joseph Biden in his capacity as President, arguing that the CDC exceeded its statutory authority when requiring masks-on-a-plane. The plaintiffs didn’t like masks, arguing that their anxiety and other conditions aren’t included as exemptions in this mandate, and so the plaintiffs have standing because the CDC imposed a legal obligation for these people to wear masks on the plane despite the plaintiffs not liking masks and having decent reasons for not liking masks.

A Florida district court judge sided with the Health Freedom Defense Fund, arguing the CDC exceeded its statutory authority. Like any 59-page ruling, there’s a lot going on in the judge’s ruling. If you zoom in with the same myopia with which we zoomed in on COVID at the expense of poverty and hunger in 2020, you see the judge’s argument against the CDC’s definition of “sanitation”. As everyone talked exclusively about COVID in 2020, now pundits talk exclusively about “sanitation”, saying the ruling’s definition of sanitation is too narrow.

Sanitation seems important because under the ancient Section 264 of the Public Health Services Act of 1944, the CDC the power to enforce regulations that “in its judgement” are necessary to prevent the spread of communicable diseases. Specifically, this section “informs kinds of measures that could be necessary: inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, and destruction of contaminated animals and articles.”

So, now everyone’s talking about sanitation, and in their serial myopia they’re missing a bigger picture. Athony Fauci, the head of NIAID and controversial figurehead motivating the vaccine gamble of 2020 while coordinating with the head of NIH to orchestrate devastating take-downs of people who didn’t like that gamble, argued that “the court overruling a public health judgement… is a disturbing precedent.” In part goaded by a field filled with myopic gamblers, the CDC appealed the Florida district court’s decision critiquing the definition of sanitation.

The CDC’s briefing, in efforts to defend its broader definition of “sanitation”, appeals to the next topic of serially myopic media coverage, monkeypox, saying this law is used “to prohibit the capture, distribution, or release of certain animals to prevent the spread of monkeypox.” Of course, that action is well covered under “pest extermination, and destruction of contaminated animals”, and not at all related to “sanitation”, but who cares about the specifics at this point? There’s another scary virus made scarier by massive media coverage, and public health authorities want more public health power.

What the magicians are distracting us from in this act, however, is that the stakes are much larger than the definition of “sanitation.” While some argue the stakes are so high because “sanitation” is so important, the stakes are, in fact, even higher. Sanitation is the topic of parts 1 and 2 of section A of the Florida judge’s ruling. What about part 3? That part is titled “Chevron Deference”.

Part 3 starts off noting “the government invokes Chevron deference, arguing that even if its reading of § 264(a) is not the best one, the Court should adopt it anyway.” That’s a pretty good summary of Chevron deference which, broadly, says that courts should take agencies’ words for it whenever agencies interpret their own powers. Congress passes a law saying something like “The CDC has the power to clean things” and the CDC gets the benefit of the doubt when interpreting what “the power to clean things” means.

Let’s zoom out even further, beyond COVID, beyond sanitation, and beyond the CDC. Our federal government regulates an increasingly complex society filled with risks ranging from pollutants and complex financial derivatives to foods and toys and, yes, diseases. The complexity of our society seems beyond the reach of any one person, so Congress usually sets up agencies to be filled with people devoted to specific problems. The FDA regulates food and drugs, the SEC regulates securities and exchanges, the EPA regulates all things “environment” from endangered species to pollutants, the CDC regulates diseases, and so on.

Executive agencies, at their best, have proven adept at managing our complex society. Staffed with subject matter experts for the problems under the purview of their statutory authority, executive agencies stay up-to-date on the latest developments in a way Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi can’t. Rather than pretend ol’ Mitch is an expert on cryptocurrencies and Web3 despite the fact that he probably still uses AOL and a blackberry, the US Treasury Department is staffed with experts to ensure the financial security of the United States, and these experts are staying up-to-date on cryptocurrencies, DeFi, and so on.

Rather than requiring Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi chime in to legislate on e.g. how to regulate novel cryptocurrencies or how to ensure financial security of DeFi credit networks, we usually “defer” to the experts in their best efforts to interpret their own “power to clean” whatever crazy innovation society cooks up and whatever mess it’s about to make. Chevron deference is the legal precedent that makes it all happen.

It’s well known that some members of the Supreme Court don’t like Chevron. Chief among them is not-Chief-Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh sees Chevron deference as an abdication of the court’s responsibility to interpret what Congress meant by “the power to clean”, including the court ruling that congress was not sufficiently clear. Maybe “the power” is too broad, or “clean” too ambiguous. Maybe “sanitation” is too murky. I’m not a gambling man, but I’d bet that Kavanaugh, and the majority of current Supreme Court justices who tend to side with Kavanaugh, would be as happy to overturn Chevron as they apparently are to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Zooming out, it’s easier to see the massive stakes of the CDC’s Masks-on-a-Plane gamble. While they’re focusing on “sanitation”, at stake is the very real possibility of the SCOTUS overturning Chevron. While myopic pundits talk about how a narrow definition of “sanitation” can make it difficult for the CDC to “sanitate” in other contexts, they have not disclosed to the public the other part of the Florida ruling, that the judge basically said “F*** Chevron Deference, I’m a judge and I get to decide what a law says” and that ruling is now going up the chain towards the Supreme Court. If the myopic appeal ends up trickling through to Kavanaugh’s desk, it’s reasonable to expect he will ecstatically also say “F*** Chevron Deference” and Chevron v. NRDC will be as dead as Roe v. Wade.

At stake will be the EPA’s ability to interpret its own statutory authority to regulate pollutants, and many extractive industries will surely capitalize on this to say the EPA’s reliance on Chevron deference is no longer sufficient to determine what “clean air” means or what an “endangered species” is. Pharmaceutical and other companies may object to FDA’s interpretation of “safety” in our food and drugs. And so on. No longer will experts in executive agencies be given the deference to decide what “the power” they were granted is.

Kavanaugh isn’t evil, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to dial back agency deference, since we’ve clearly seen in COVID that, sometimes, experts are wrong and other times experts are unrepresentative of the will of the American people. The “Endangered Species Act” is still an act passed by congress, so the real question will be to debate what “endangered” means and what a “species” is, and that may mean grizzly bears in Montana are not “endangered” and the Mexican gray wolf of New Mexico is not a “species”, and so these cornerstones of our ecosystems and cherished environmental icons may die at the hands of ranchers who don’t like them and hunters who want to shoot them while they lap water from a stream and taxidermy them in menacing poses.

However, it’s also clear that our Congress is inept at representing the will of the American people. While some believe passing the statutory ball back to Congress can jolt them back to deliberative life, that, too, is a gamble.

Yet that gamble is down the road, and will only be taken if some stubborn executive agency imposes regulations people really don’t like and gives the Supreme Court an invite to the poker table. The CDC, by appealing the ruling overturning its masks-on-a-plane mandate, is moving us one step closer to a world without Chevron.

That is a gamble I’m not comfortable with. Yet, ironically, it also reveals the limits of executive agencies. They are making a gamble unrepresentative of the will of the American people, they believe they have the statutory authority to do so, and at stake is the whole idea that agencies beyond the CDC, including agencies that have been more or less representative of the will of the people, have the power to do so.

To paraphrase Jim Jefferies, our laws are made to regulate the lowest common denominator. While Jim is great at speeding, one guy speeds and kills a family of four, and then we have speed limits. While Jim’s takes cocaine like a champ, a few people die of overdoses or get withdrawals and rob stores, and cocaine becomes illegal. While the EPA may be moderate in its reliance on agency deference, the CDC may have taken things too far with Masks-on-a-Plane mandates.

By forcing mandates that many people don’t like, and by myopically sending an appeal arguing about “sanitation” towards a SCOTUS able to overturn Chevron, the CDC is nominating itself as the lowest common denominator of our executive agencies. Over a silly definition of “sanitation”, the CDC appears willing to gamble a pillar of our modern society’s constitutional law, a legal cornerstone of our executive agencies, and perhaps, should the CDC lose, its willingness to gamble will be precisely the reason why we can’t have that nice thing of Chevron deference.

Republished from the author’s Substack

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Fauci Says Biden DOJ Asked Federal Appeals Court to Reverse Order Lifting Airplane Mask Mandate to Preserve Power (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

Dr.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

(fair use applies)

Fauci Says Biden DOJ Asked Federal Appeals Court to Reverse Order Lifting Airplane Mask Mandate to Preserve Power (VIDEO)
By Cristina Laila
Published June 1, 2022 at 6:45pm

Dr. Fauci on Wednesday admitted that Biden is putting up a fight over the travel mask mandate in order to preserve power.

Biden’s Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to overturn a federal judge’s order that declared the travel mandate unlawful.

A Trump-appointed federal judge last month struck down Biden’s airplane mask mandate.

Fauci told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that it’s all about maintaining power.

“One of the issues, Neil, that I have articulated in the past and I will in the future – it’s less about mandates on the plane than it is about who has the right and the authority and the capability of making public health decisions,” Fauci said. “And I believe that the Department of Justice is operating on the principle that decisions that are public health decisions belong with the public health agency, in this case, the CDC.”

“So it’s more of a matter of principle of where the authority lies than it is about whether or not there’s gonna be a mandate on a plane or not,” Fauci added.

Last month then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted forced masking on planes had nothing to do with science or keeping people from getting infected with Covid.

The Biden Regime knows masks don’t work and Psaki admitted it’s all about power.

“The Department of Justice has indicated that they would appeal, not just because they think it’s entirely reasonable…but because they think for current and future public health crises, uh, we want to preserve that authority for the CDC to have in the future,” Psaki said on April 20.

“Our focus here was seeing what power we had to preserve,” Psaki said.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCGcb-2Bbkg
Q&A with A&V Livestream 6/1/22 8:00 PM
1 hr 54 min 56 sec
Streamed live 7 hours ago
Vincent Racaniello

Virologists Amy Rosenfeld and Vincent Racaniello answer your COVID-19 questions (or any virus questions) on this livestream of 6/1/22 at 8:00 PM eastern US.

 

[Heliobas Disciple]

Shark antibodies may have the teeth to stop COVID-19

To combat viruses, one of humankind's oldest threats, researchers are studying predators with the oldest adaptive immune system in the animal kingdom: sharks.

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)

Shark antibodies may have the teeth to stop COVID-19
by Kristen Mally Dean, Argonne National Laboratory
June 1, 2022

To combat viruses, one of humankind's oldest threats, researchers are studying predators with the oldest adaptive immune system in the animal kingdom: sharks.

Fossil evidence suggest sharks first existed 420 million years ago, predating humanity, Mount Everest and even trees. Over the course of time, sharks and other fish with cartilage skeletons developed what is now believed to be the oldest adaptive immune system in the animal kingdom.

According to a recent study published in Nature Communications, these ancient predators and their prehistoric immune systems may also be key to developing effective COVID-19 treatments.

Professors Aaron LeBeau of the University of Wisconsin and Hideki Aihara of the University of Minnesota used the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, to look at nurse shark antibodies. With exquisite resolution, the APS's extremely bright X-ray beams showed that variable new antigen receptors (VNARs), the smallest unit of a shark antibody, can stop SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 and its variants.

An antibody, whether human or shark, binds to a virus protein when a region of molecules called amino acids from the antibody encounters a similar region on the virus protein. In humans, these amino acid regions tend to only bind one flat surface to another, just as a sticker would adhere to a bowling ball. In sharks, the VNARs' amino acids bind not only to flat parts of a target protein, but also bind snugly inside deeper grooves. This means that instead of sticking only to the surface of the bowling ball, shark VNARs could bind tightly and flexibly into the ball's finger holes as well. This heightened molecular dexterity means shark VNARs can access pockets in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that existing human antibodies cannot.

In their study, the researchers put three shark VNARs to the test against SARS-CoV-2. They used the Northeastern Collaborative Access Team (NE-CAT) beamlines 24-ID-C and 24-ID-E at the APS to observe crystalline structures of the samples.

"Structurally, it was surprising that the two VNARs had such different modes of recognition of the virus spike protein," said Cornell University's Surajit Banerjee, a staff scientist at NE-CAT and an author on the paper. "The shark antibodies neutralized the proteins in ways we weren't expecting."

Functionally, however, the shark VNARs proved highly stable, as effective as or better than current treatments for COVID-19, and resilient to the changing structures of variants. This may help in the development of new treatments for SARS-CoV-2 variants, such as delta and omicron.

The VNARs also showed promise as therapeutics for other known beta coronaviruses and future emergent diseases. They appear able to identify and bind to regions of amino acids that are the same among different coronaviruses.

The small size of the VNARs, their resilience and their cost-effective availability are all reasons why the researchers believe there is more to learn from the study of shark adaptive immune systems. It may even be possible to formulate VNAR "cocktails" to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection in individuals who are already infected or who are at immediate high risk of infection. Such a therapy would not replace vaccination, but it would be a useful tool for critically ill patients.

"The crystallography studies at APS allowed us to make reliable conclusions about the nature of the VNAR-spike interactions," said LeBeau. "That will pave the way for the next phases in development of VNAR therapy for COVID-19."