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COVID-19 'is going to be with us forever,' White House says
White House pandemic response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha delivered a grim message on Friday about the ever-evolving coronavirus pathogen that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates has infected more than 140 million Americans, including President Biden.
COVID-19 'is going to be with us forever,' White House says
Alexander Nazaryan -·Senior White House Correspondent
Fri, July 22, 2022, 5:31 PM
WASHINGTON — White House pandemic response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha delivered a grim message on Friday about the ever-evolving coronavirus pathogen that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates has infected more than 140 million Americans, including President Biden.
“This virus is going to be with us forever,” Jha said during a press briefing otherwise devoted to an update on the president’s health. “It’s really, really important that people build up their immunity against this virus,” he added, emphasizing that vaccination is the best means of doing so.
It was a bracing reminder that any hopes of fully eradicating the coronavirus are long gone. And while many Americans have sought a return to normal life, the coronavirus continues to cause economic and social disruptions.
“Dr. Jha is acknowledging the consensus among medical and public health experts — that COVID-19 is with us for our lifetimes and beyond,” Dr. Leana Wen, a public health expert closely aligned with the White House on the pandemic, told Yahoo News.
“But this is not the COVID-19 of 2020,” Wen said, pointing to the widespread availability of vaccines and treatments. “We now have many tools that allow us to live with this coronavirus.”
Biden is fully vaccinated and has received two booster shots. On Friday, he and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre both said his symptoms remained mild after the president tested positive for COVID on Thursday. The president’s infection returned the pandemic to the headlines after several months during which the war in Ukraine, inflation and gun control dominated news coverage.
Some public health experts saw Biden’s infection as a further sign of how complacent citizens have become. Like many Americans, Biden had ceased to wear a mask and had resumed travel, including abroad.
“The president likes to interact and engage with the American public,” Jean-Pierre said in response to a reporter’s question about whether Biden regretted the recent pace of his social and travel commitments.
The several waves of the Omicron variant that have washed over the United States have suggested that the virus initially known as SARS-CoV-2 is becoming increasingly transmissible, though not necessarily more virulent. While that is good news for people who are vaccinated and boosted, it does mean that the virus will almost certainly find new ways to evade immune protections, if only to ultimately cause relatively mild illness.
Even as the BA.5 variant continues to drive new infections, a new, even more transmissible strain known as BA.2.75 has been detected in the United States.
“The dominant strains are so contagious that it’s extremely difficult to avoid infection,” Wen told Yahoo News.
But even if the coronavirus lingers for years to come, it is for the most part the unvaccinated and the unboosted who risk serious illness or death. More than 1 million Americans have died due to COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
“We’re at a point now where, I believe, where we can prevent nearly every COVID death in America,” Jha said on Friday.
The week ended with about 400 people dying daily from COVID-19 across the country.
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BA.5 makes up nearly 80% of new COVID-19 cases. Here's what to know about the subvariant
Since the subvariant was first detected at the end of April, experts say, it's been a slow rise to the top for BA.5. Here's what else to know.
BA.5 makes up nearly 80% of new COVID-19 cases. Here's what to know about the subvariant
Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY
Thu, July 21, 2022, 12:39 PM
The BA.5 subvariant of omicron dominates the summer wave of COVID-19 in the USA, making up nearly 80% of new cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Nowcast model.
In the most recent week, ending Wednesday, 29 states reported more cases than the week before, a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. Twenty states had more deaths than a week earlier.
Hospitals in 35 states reported more COVID-19 patients, and hospitals in 25 states had more patients in intensive care beds, according to Health and Human Services data.
Here’s what you should know about BA.5.
When did BA.5 start?
BA.5 was detected in the USA at the end of April, experts said.
The subvariant was first seen in South Africa “but that doesn’t mean that it arrived (to the U.S.) from South Africa,” said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers don’t know where it came from because of limited surveillance.
The first cases appeared in the Northeast, then spread during the past month to Southern, Midwestern and Western states, Dowdy said.
“It’s been sort of a slow rise since that time,” he said. “It’s taken about two months to get to the current state where we think BA.5 probably accounts for about two-thirds of all COVID cases.”
What does BA.5 stand for?
The World Health Organization uses the Greek alphabet as a classification system to simplify understanding and avoid stigmatizing countries where strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are identified.
The WHO named the original B.1.1.529 variant after the 15th letter, omicron. Within variants, the agency assigns numbers to sublineages.
“These represent the numbers and types of mutations within that particular variant,” said Dr. David Weber, professor of medicine pediatrics and epidemiology at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “It’s a way of knowing which variant they’re dealing with.”
BA.5 is classified as an omicron variant but has mutations that distinguish it from other omicron subvariants, such as BA.1 and BA.2.
BA.5 variant symptoms in adults, kids
Clinicians said many BA.5 symptoms are similar to those seen in previous variants, including congestion, headaches, cough and fever.
Children tend to have more gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, compared with adults, said Dr. Claire Bocchini, an infectious disease specialist at Texas Children’s Hospital.
She’s seen more cases of croup in kids. The Mayo Clinic defines croup as an infection of the upper airways that obstructs breathing and causes a “barking” cough.
“Certainly this is an infection to pay attention to for parents of children because while most children don’t require hospitalization, a few do,” Bocchini said.
How long does BA.5 last?
Though some people don't experience any symptoms with BA.5, experts said those who do can expect to feel sick for a few days up to a few weeks.
“It varies on a wide spectrum,” said Dr. Mobeen Rathore, professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases.
Bocchini said the normal course of illness is “one to two weeks of acute symptoms,” but those who are hospitalized may have the disease for much longer.
“We are very familiar with the prolonged hospitalizations from complications from COVID,” she said.
Can you get BA.5 twice?
There's limited data to support whether a person can get BA.5 twice, but health experts said it's unlikely to happen within the first month after infection.
“For the first couple of weeks, if you have a healthy immune system, you’re probably going to be fully resistant to get reinfected,” Dowdy said.
That protection wanes, he said. If a person is exposed to COVID-19, it’s possible to get reinfected with the same variant two to four months after infection.
It’s unlikely BA.5 will keep circulating over the next few months as the population builds up immunity against the subvariant. It’s more likely that another variant or subvariant of omicron will emerge as the virus attempts to bypass that immunity and infect as many people as it can.
It’s a “bit of a cat and mouse game between the virus and our immune systems,” Dowdy said. “If we don’t see another subvariant emerge for the next couple of months, then yes, absolutely people will be reinfected with BA.5.”
What to do if you get infected by BA.5
If you test positive for the coronavirus or feel sick with related symptoms, the CDC recommendations say stay home for at least five days and isolate from other household members.
The agency advises wearing a well-fitted mask around others in the home.
If you're fever-free for 24 hours and symptoms improve after the five days, the CDC says you can end isolation, but take precautions for five additional days. This includes wearing masks and avoiding travel.
How are BA.4 and BA.5 different? What other COVID-19 variants are there?
BA.4 and BA.5 share mutations with other omicron subvariants, such as BA.1 and BA.2, but contain additional mutations within the spike protein, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a public health institute in South Africa.
The two subvariants are identical to each other in terms of spike protein mutations, the institute said, but differ in mutations that are outside the spike gene.
BA.5 evades immunity better than BA.4, Weber said; however, it’s not believed to be more transmissible or cause more severe disease.
Except for a few random cases, Dowdy said, there’s probably no other coronavirus variants in circulation outside omicron and its sublineages. Delta and the variants that preceded it are likely out of the picture.
“When we’re talking about COVID, we’re talking about omicron now,” he said.
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What the BA.5 Subvariant Could Mean for the United States
The most transmissible variant of the coronavirus is threatening a fresh wave of infections in the United States, even among those who have recovered from the virus fairly recently. The subvariant of omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and...
What the BA.5 Subvariant Could Mean for the United States
Lauren Leatherby - NYTimes
Thu, July 21, 2022, 1:29 PM·3 min read
The most transmissible variant of the coronavirus is threatening a fresh wave of infections in the United States, even among those who have recovered from the virus fairly recently.
The subvariant of omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and together with BA.4, another subvariant, it is fueling an outbreak of cases and hospitalizations.
Although the popularity of home testing means reported cases are a significant undercount of the true infection rate, the share of tests that come back positive is shooting upward and is now higher than during most other waves of the pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk from COVID-19 is increasing in much of the country.
“I think there’s an underappreciation of what it’s going to do to the country, and it already is exerting its effect,” said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, who has written about the subvariant.
BA.5 and BA.4, both subvariants of the omicron variant that swept the world during the winter, are the most capable versions of the virus yet at evading immunity from previous infections and vaccines. Both variants have mutations in their spike proteins that are different enough from earlier versions of the virus that they are able to dodge some antibodies.
Waves of infection — and the subsequent immunity that comes with them — vary across countries and make for imperfect comparisons. Vaccination rates also vary. But in places where BA.4 and BA.5 have been dominant for weeks or months, the subvariants have caused increases in cases and hospitalizations, despite some population immunity from previous waves.
The CDC says there is so far no evidence that BA.4 or BA.5 is inherently more severe than other omicron subvariants, but when more people become infected, the number of people hospitalized because of the virus may also rise.
Prior infection with another form of the omicron variant does confer some degree of immunity, Topol said, and that may explain why cases have not yet taken off sharply in the United States. “But it’s not anything like what we would hope,” he said. Omicron subvariants appear to represent a departure from earlier waves of the virus, when prior infection was more likely to protect against reinfection.
In Portugal, where vaccination rates are higher than in the United States, cases rose sharply after BA.5 became dominant in May, and hospitalizations neared their previous omicron peak.
Before BA.4 and BA.5 became dominant in South Africa in April, research suggested that 98% of the population had some antibodies from vaccination or previous infection or both.
Even with those protective antibodies, many people in the country still became infected with BA.4 and BA.5, and the subvariants caused a small increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Places just emerging from significant spring waves of the virus may not be spared, either. Several countries in Europe had big outbreaks of a different omicron subvariant, BA.2, that led to new waves of hospitalizations and deaths that peaked as recently as April. Yet in those countries, cases are ticking up again as BA.5 becomes dominant.
Experts say it is too early to fully predict what the latest subvariants may bring to the United States, which had an even more recent virus wave in May and June, driven by both BA.2 and yet another subvariant called BA.2.12.1. High shares of recent infections from BA.2.12.1 like that in the United States were uncommon among the countries now experiencing waves of BA.4 and BA.5 infections.
The United States also has a lower vaccination rate than many of those countries and a much lower share of older people who have had one or both booster shots.
“There’s a wave afoot; there’s no question about it,” Topol said. “My concern is the length of it.”
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I'm a Virus Expert and Here Are 5 Things You Need to Know About COVID Right Now
BA.5 is an Omicron variant that is showing a much higher transmissibility rate than the Delta variant. This means that people are being infected with this strain at a much higher rate than previous strains and as early data shows, even those with up-to-date vaccinations and recent COVID-19...
I'm a Virus Expert and Here Are 5 Things You Need to Know About COVID Right Now
Dr. Michael Blaivas - Eat This, Not That
Fri, July 22, 2022, 7:45 AM
BA.5 is an Omicron variant that is showing a much higher transmissibility rate than the Delta variant. This means that people are being infected with this strain at a much higher rate than previous strains and as early data shows, even those with up-to-date vaccinations and recent COVID-19 infections, are still able to be easily infected with BA.5. The good news is that the strain seems to have much more mild effects than the Delta virus and also lower hospitalization rates, partially resulting from the virus mutations which lessen disease severity and partially impact from immunization resulting from infection and/or from vaccinations. Read on to find out more—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had COVID.
New Variant Alert: BA 2.75
While the BA.5 is now the dominant variant in the US, another Omicron variant has appeared, BA 2.75. The BA 2.75 variant seems to have similar traits to the BA.5 variant and is quickly spreading around the world, having recently been reported in the US. The Omicron variants continue to be a worry for scientists as the reinfection rate continues to rise and vaccination immunity wanes. It is too early to tell if BA 2.75 will become the dominant variant and what its full effects will be.
Why Getting COVID-19 is No Longer Seen as an "Immunity Boost
Early on in the pandemic and at the release of vaccinations, many people thought that contracting COVID-19, and surviving it, would help boost natural immunity to the virus and prevent them from contracting it again. With continued mutations, as well as extended time from initial vaccinations, immunity is beginning to wain while reinfections are continuing to rise. The idea that contracting COVID-19 may have an upside has always been on thin ice and although preliminary research has been done into the long-term effects of COVID-19, more research and more time are needed for the medical community to truly understand this virus and its full effects.
An Update on Testing Efficacy
Rapid antigen tests, typically the type of test used for at-home testing, can become more and more inaccurate as time passes and new variants come into play. The FDA has implemented that COVID-19 testing companies must regularly check the accuracy and ability of their tests against new variants as they appear. However, with rapid mutation of the COVID-19 virus, it is hard for individuals to know if their results are accurate as false negatives may appear. Likewise, the evaluation and mass production of tests against new variants is a troubling, time-consuming process. With multiple new variants, the best way to ensure accurate results at this point is through a molecular test at the healthcare facility, which have more built-in redundancy for methods of identifying a new variant.
What's next for our society
The majority of the world will no longer tolerate harsh measures in response to COVID-19. It is a natural process for the general public to become fatigued and complaisant in situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Although infection rates have been increasing, restrictions continue to be lifted as people push for more freedoms and liberties. Individuals need to remember the potential devasting effects of COVID-19 but at the same time, for researchers and developers to provide new, innovative solutions for keeping our communities safe and healthy with a key focus on convenience. An example of this would be accessible and accurate molecular testing with rapid results, something I personally am working to research, develop, and ultimately provide to the public. Unfortunately, some people are at higher risk from being infected by COVID than others, this includes older people and those with certain chronic illnesses. It is up to these individuals to take extra care when at risk for being exposed to COVID, even though others may seem to throw caution to the wind.
How to Stay Safe
It's important to keep safety precautions in mind given the easy transmissibility of this virus. If you have upcoming travel or events to attend, you may consider implementing safety recommendations like staying in, wearing an N-95 mask, and/or consistently sanitizing your hands. And to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.
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New Zealand COVID-19 death rate at record levels
New Zealanders are dying from COVID-19 at record rates as the country battles a new wave of the Omicron strain that is particularly affecting the older population. Deaths from the virus reached 151 in the seven days to July 16, compared with 115 in the worst week of the previous wave, in March...
New Zealand COVID-19 death rate at record levels
Lucy Craymer
Fri, July 22, 2022, 2:44 AM
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealanders are dying from COVID-19 at record rates as the country battles a new wave of the Omicron strain that is particularly affecting the older population.
Deaths from the virus reached 151 in the seven days to July 16, compared with 115 in the worst week of the previous wave, in March, according to Health Ministry data. In the latest 24 hours, 26 people died from COVID, all aged over 60, the ministry said in a statement on Friday.
The Omicron BA.5 sub-variant is driving the current wave in New Zealand, which has 5.1 million people. There have been 64,780 active cases in the past seven days, although authorities say many infections are unreported.
Once regarded as a model for preventing COVID infection, New Zealand's swift response to the pandemic and its geographic isolation kept it largely free from the virus until the end of last year.
The government dropped its zero-COVID policy this year once the population was largely vaccinated. Since then the virus has been allowed to spread.
Emergency departments, general practices and medical centres are under pressure. However, Health Ministry data shows hospitalisation levels remain below those seen during the March peak.
The government is resisting pressure from some doctors to reinstate curbs on public gatherings or mandate the wearing of masks at schools.
However, Education Ministry chief Iona Holsted said on Thursday the ministry had advised schools to enforce the wearing of masks as much as practicable when children returned from holidays next week.
"We understand that implementing mask policies can be a challenge but ask that you take action to strengthen your mask wearing policy as soon as possible," she said.
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Birx: 'Vaccines Were Not Going to Protect Against Infection' -- 'We Overplayed the Vaccines'
Former White House COVID response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told FNC "Your World" host Neil Cavuto that she was urging the vulnerable amid the current COVID-19 wave to take Paxlovid, an anti-viral medication as a means to protect against the virus. | Clips
www.breitbart.com
Birx: ‘Vaccines Were Not Going to Protect Against Infection’ — ‘We Overplayed the Vaccines’
by Jeff Poor
22 Jul 2022
Former White House COVID response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told FNC “Your World” host Neil Cavuto that she was urging the vulnerable amid the current COVID-19 wave to take Paxlovid, an anti-viral medication as a means to protect against the virus.
However, she also acknowledged the vaccines were not as effective as many were led to believe and admitted health officials overplayed it.
“Well, if you’re across the South, and you’re in the middle of this wave, what’s going to save you right now is Paxlovid,” he said. “But once we get through this wave, during that lull, you should get vaccinated and boosted because we do believe it will protect you, particularly if you’re over 70. I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection. And I think we overplayed the vaccines. And it made people then worry that it’s not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization. It will, but let’s be very clear — 50% of the people who died from the Omicron surge were older, vaccinated.”
“So, that’s why I’m saying, even if you’re vaccinated and boosted if you’re unvaccinated, right now, the key is testing and Paxlovid,” Birx continued. “It’s effective. It’s a great antiviral. And, really, that is what’s going to save your lives right now if you’re over 70, which, if you look at the hospitalizations, hospitalizations are rising steadily, with new admissions, particularly in those over 70. And so, if you live in the South — I know people keep talking about the fall. I’m worried about the South. I’m worried about rural America and our tribal nations that just don’t have access to testing and a primary physician like the president does. And I hope, coming out of COVID, we will address these rural counties.”
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Biden at Higher Risk for Stroke as Doctor Stops Blood Thinner Due to Paxlovid Treatment for COVID | The Gateway Pundit | by Kristinn Taylor
Joe Biden’s doctor said Friday he has stopped heart medications for Biden’s atrial fibrillation and high cholesterol due to his prescribing Paxlovid to treat Biden’s COVID infection.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Biden at Higher Risk for Stroke as Doctor Stops Blood Thinner Due to Paxlovid Treatment for COVID
By Kristinn Taylor
Published July 22, 2022 at 11:44am
Joe Biden’s doctor said Friday he has stopped heart medications for Biden’s atrial fibrillation and high cholesterol due to his prescribing Paxlovid to treat Biden’s COVID infection. Atrial fibrillation can cause strokes and is treated by blood thinners to reduce the risk of stroke-causing blood clots being formed. Biden,79, had brain surgery in 1988 after suffering two brain aneurysms. Biden has been in cognitive decline in recent and even without a stroke a bout with COVID could accelerate the decline with COVID-related brain fog or “Long COVID”, impairing Biden’s “executive function” ability.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, 52, the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, suffered a debilitating stroke due to untreated atrial fibrillation this year that knocked him off the campaign trail for the past two months. Fetterman has not yet fully recovered and has largely avoided public appearances.
Biden’s personal physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor, D.O., said in the statement issued Friday Biden’s heart medications are being stopped for the duration of his course of Paxlovid and for several days after. O’Connor indicated Biden would be given low-dose aspirin as an alternative, however that could aggravate Biden’s acid reflux.
“His apixaban (ELIQUIS) and rosuvastatin (Crestor) are being held during PAXLOVID treatment and for several days after his last dose. During this time, it is reasonable to add low dose aspirin as an alternative type of blood thinner.”
The New York Post is about the only news outlet to question O’Connor’s treatment of Biden (excerpt):
…Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus coordinator, said at a press briefing that it’s “very standard” to discontinue the medications during a five-day regimen of the antiviral Paxlovid.
Medical experts had expressed concern about Biden’s use of blood thinner Eliquis to treat atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat condition, while he takes Paxlovid. Biden also takes Crestor to lower his cholesterol.
Jha didn’t address the fact that the Food and Drug Administration specifically warns that “premature discontinuation of any oral anticoagulant, including Eliquis, increases the risk of thrombotic events,” meaning blood clots.
In 1988, Biden survived two brain aneurysms, which blood clots can cause. The drug Eliquis is marketed to lower the risk of stroke and clots for people who have atrial fibrillation.
…Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Eli Gelfand, a cardiologist, told The Post that “generally in patients who take Eliquis and are prescribed Paxlovid, the dose of Eliquis is reduced by half or the drug is temporarily held altogether.”
Gelfand, who also serves as section chief for general cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston, said that “whether to reduce the dose or hold Eliquis depends on the initial indication for Eliquis therapy.”
“The interaction between Paxlovid and Eliquis typically lasts for approximately eight days, meaning that the Eliquis is dose-reduced or held for three additional days after Paxlovid course is complete,” Gelfand added.
The issue of stopping the blood thinner only came up once in Thursday’s White House briefing but the word ‘stroke’ was not mentione:
Q: And has the President had to halt any of his regular medications now that he’s taking Paxlovid? And what are you doing to mitigate the risk from halting those medications?
DR. JHA: Yeah, so this is a — I had a conversation with — about this with Dr. O’Connor. There are two medicines. He’s on Eliquis and Crestor, a cholesterol-lowering medicine and a blood thinner for his atrial fibrillation, both of which need to be stopped when you take Paxlovid. It’s a very standard, common thing that we do when we give people Paxlovid. And you don’t need to do anything in those circumstances. They both get stopped for the five days that he’s on Paxlovid, and then they get restarted. And it’s totally fine and pretty normal practice.
In an appearance on NBC’s Today Show Friday morning, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha downplayed the stroke risk for Biden.
White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. @ashishkjha joins TODAY to discuss President Biden’s current condition after testing positive for COVID. He says the President told him he was “feeling just fine” on a phone call last night. pic.twitter.com/7DHQqztVxQ
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 22, 2022
Jha also said Biden did not have a fever which was contradicted by O’Connor’s letter Friday morning that said Biden had a fever of 99.4 that was treated with Tylenol.
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‘There’s no one long Covid’: Experts struggle to make sense of the continuing mystery
A two-day virtual conference convened experts to ask and answer questions about what causes long Covid, how to predict who gets it, how to treat it, and just possibly how to prevent it.
www.statnews.com
‘There’s no one long Covid’: Experts struggle to make sense of the continuing mystery
By Elizabeth Cooney
July 22, 2022
Robert Gallo apologized for still coughing. The day before President Biden tested positive for Covid-19, the famed HIV researcher said he was still recovering from a Covid infection that had left him unable to walk, put him in the hospital, and made him delusional, he said Wednesday during a roundtable discussion about long Covid.
Presented by the Global Virus Network, a coalition of leading virologists, the two-day virtual conference convened experts across disciplines and around the world to ask and answer questions about what causes long Covid, how to predict who gets it, how to treat it, and just possibly how to prevent it.
No one has the answers, but Gallo, who co-founded the group, puts his money on the amount of virus present right from the start. “We have definitive data that vaccine reduces virus, so if we can take that as a conclusion that the amount of virus is critical to predicting the future, you have a great biomarker,” he said. “I don’t think you can wait. I agree with those clinical people who want to go forward right away.”
To a person, scientists expressed eagerness for better studies, better funding, better participation, with urgency bubbling up from specialists in cardiology, neuroscience, epidemiology, pulmonology, and immunology. Yet these are still early days for research into long Covid. Recognized since 2020, its definition is still sometimes debated, although most definitions include symptoms that persist weeks or months after acute infection and include fatigue, headache, shortness of breath, memory problems, GI issues, and joint and muscle pain.
We still need a taxonomy, Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz said, to sort people and their myriad symptoms into groups so that scientists with different expertise can speak the same language as they try to better understand what is going wrong.
But when something seems to work, try it, was the consensus. “I don’t think we should wait just to thoroughly understand a mechanism before trying some reasonable interventions, especially if the interventions are low risk,” Krumholz said.
Epidemiologist Sairam Parthasarathy of the University of Arizona painted the picture of prevalence, setting it at 43% of all Covid cases based on pooled evidence of 50 studies. He called out the risk of long Covid as greater than the risk of developing diabetes and asthma, citing a study from Italy that estimated it at 25%. And in the U.S., disadvantaged populations, including Native American and Hispanic people, are disproportionately more likely to be hospitalized for Covid. “It’s a few that may actually carry the burden of the many, and we need to address this,” Parthasarathy said.
There are lessons from another familiar disease: cancer. Michelle Monje, a neuroscientist and neuro-oncologist from Stanford, has previously connected long Covid effects in the brain to the cognitive impairment called “chemo brain” that follows treatment with methotrexate. Now she says long Covid also resembles what happens in the cytokine storm that follows the cancer immunotherapy CAR-T. In all three cases, inflammation disrupts immune cells in the brain called microglia, which ordinarily maintain healthy neural circuit function but when inflammation strikes, become neurotoxic. In mice, she found that depleting microglia with a small molecule that targets a necessary growth factor receptor allows microglia to come back to normal and rescue the cognitive deficits after cancer therapies. “This is something that we have not yet tested, but are in the process of testing in the context of long Covid,” she said.
Monje has also zoomed in on a particular protein circulating in the brain at elevated levels sparked by inflammation in response to viral infection. In blood samples taken from patients who had relatively mild Covid in spring 2020 and then cognitive impairment later, higher levels of the chemokine CCL11 levels persisted. She also found a lot of the variability in CCL11 levels that could be explained by previous autoimmune disease.
“Inflammation causes neuroinflammation, which causes dysregulation of multiple cellular lineages. And, you know, we think that this is a relatively common mechanism contributing to cognitive impairment after Covid,” Monje said. “It really begs the question of how various immune challenges that might elicit different cytokine profiles might increase the risk for overlapping yet distinct constellations of neurological and psychiatric symptoms.”
There may be other targets to explore, and other biomarkers to guide the way. Here’s where some of the other scientists are devoting their attention:
James Harker of Imperial College London studies the impact of long Covid on the lungs, using CT scans and proteomic tools to see if there is lasting damage to the lungs after acute infection, such as the scarring known as fibrosis. As in other long Covid research, there wasn’t a strong link between severity of the disease and ongoing changes in the lungs. And the story goes beyond inflammatory responses to infection. “The proteins we see in the post-Covid lung are largely associated with things like cell death and wounding and altered oxygenation state and reactive oxygen status,” he said. “So they suggest that the lungs of those individuals might have ongoing cell death and tissue repair processes, that it is an altered metabolic state.”
James Heath of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle focuses his research on identifying factors that would put patients at risk of long Covid, applying multi-omic tools to query blood samples, electronic health records, and questionnaires. His work has turned up clues to what higher levels of autoantibodies — an antibody that the immune system aims at the body’s own proteins — mean when they set off a cascade of immune responses. In the cohort he studied, the presence of autoantibodies wasn’t strongly associated with disease severity, but they were linked to gastrointestinal problems and changes in exercise capacity. Some specific autoantibodies activated a particular immune pathway, one that the monoclonal antibody narsoplimab targets. Heath’s team has designed and proposed to the NIH a clinical trial to test the drug to treat long Covid patients, especially those who can be identified through the specific autoantibodies he has identified.
Speaking of NIH, Janko Nikolich-Žugich of the University of Arizona called for more funding of its Recover study, a national observational study of long Covid. The $1.2 billion that was allocated to it isn’t enough, he said. Recruitment is approaching 40% of its targets, which should be met by the January deadline, but “it’s actually falling quite short of everything that needs to be done,” he said. “Funding really needs to be tripled to extract the value of this study and to mobilize broadly the scientific community to participate in it in the best possible manner in a both scientific and medical sense.”
Brett Giroir, the four-star admiral formerly on the White House Covid task force, summed up research as it stands now. “We have mechanisms that are anywhere from persistence of SARS-CoV-2 to the activation of other viruses, to autoantibodies to distant inflammation in the brain, to profibrotic signals in the lung. And who the hell knows what’s going on in the cardiac system, as Harlan [Krumholz] said, because we really don’t have a clue,” he said. “We have a multiyear NIH study ongoing that could prove to be definitive. But what can we do in the short term? We can’t wait five to 10 years for the patients that Harlan has described who are in such suffering.”
Eric Rubin, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School and editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, pointed to the power of big data. “We have lots of patients and we have data,” he said. “I think we’re still looking for a collective sort of wisdom to bring to this question.” In an interview before the conference, Rubin told STAT “there are lots of different symptoms and we haven’t done a very good job of figuring out the vast majority of those,” he said. “What hasn’t worked so far, at least not in ways that I’ve seen it, is describing a syndrome or coming up with a list of criteria for a syndrome, which is how we ordinarily approach new diseases. This entity represents actually a lot of distinct entities. There’s no one long Covid.”
Paul Utz of Stanford University called for more and larger studies to explore autoimmunity and long Covid to understand who has or develops autoantibodies and how they might be contributing. He listed what we don’t yet know: the true prevalence of autoantibodies in Covid or in long Covid; whether it’s transient or permanent; and whether patients go on to develop autoimmunity. “Recover won’t answer this,” he said. Asked about the impact of vaccination on new autoimmunity, he said, “we don’t know if vaccination prevents it, but we speculate that it does.”
Meanwhile, Krumholz is urging people to pool whatever they know to keep patients from wandering in the wilderness of at-best partial solutions for their symptoms.
“It’s about this abyss of ignorance that’s pervading the entire field,” he said. “Most of our tests are insensitive to detect abnormalities, and yet we have people sitting in front of us who are not just lightly affected.”
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Los Angeles reportedly poised to reinstate indoor mask mandate as COVID cases continue to rise
Infections have been up in L.A. County and California for weeks
justthenews.com
Los Angeles reportedly poised to reinstate indoor mask mandate as COVID cases continue to rise
Infections have been up in L.A. County and California for weeks
By Just the News staff
Updated: July 22, 2022 - 2:26pm
Authorities in Los Angeles are reportedly poised to issue a new indoor mask mandate in the hopes that doing so will curb the rise in COVID cases observed locally and throughout the state over the last several weeks.
Los Angeles officials are "poised to impose new indoor mask rules next week," the L.A. Times reported this week, noting that "data show the hyper-infectious BA.5 Omicron subvariant is pushing coronavirus case counts higher."
Officials in the city and county have indicated in the past that they would re-impose a mask mandate if cases got high enough under CDC criteria. Confirmed infections in L.A. County have been steadily rising since April.
The looming mask mandate in one of the country's most populous centers is yet another sign of increased anxieties surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with higher case numbers throughout the United States sending authorities scrambling to counteract what are fears of another "surge" in the country.
Experts have cautioned that the present rise in COVID cases comes at a time when the U.S. is far better poised to deal with even heavier caseloads, due to factors such as natural immunity, vaccine-derived immunity and better understanding of COVID treatments after two years of experimentation.
County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, meanwhile, indicated to the Times that the mask mandate would likely be short-lived.
"It isn’t going to take much to move us back into that 'medium' community level if we can get our case numbers to go lower,” she told the paper.
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Vaccine-Induced Immune Response to Omicron Wanes Substantially: Federally Backed Study
www.theepochtimes.com
Vaccine-Induced Immune Response to Omicron Wanes Substantially: Federally Backed Study
By Jack Phillips
July 22, 2022
A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored study found that COVID-19 vaccine-induced antibody response to the Omicron subvariants wanes significantly over time.
The immune responses to several Omicron subvariants “waned substantially” among “all groups” of individuals who received either the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccine as well as a booster dose, or combinations of different vaccines. Neutralizing antibody levels dropped by up to five-fold three months after receiving the booster shot, the NIH said in a news release of the study earlier this week.
All vaccine combinations provided high levels of neutralizing antibodies to the initial Omicron BA.1 sub-lineage that was first reported in the fall of 2021. However, those who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and booster saw low antibody levels to BA.1, according to the NIH.
But when the Omicron subvariants BA.2.12.1 as well as BA.4/BA.5 emerged earlier this year, all vaccines performed poorly after three months as compared with the BA.1 strain, the researchers said. The vaccines provided even less protection against the subvariants than their ancestral COVID-19 strain known as D614G, they found.
“Omicron sub-lineages BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 were 1.5 and 2.5 times less susceptible to neutralization, respectively, compared to the BA.1 sub-lineage, and 7.5 and 12.4 times less susceptible relative to the ancestral D614G strain,” NIH wrote, noting that the BA.5 subvariant is currently is the dominant variant across the United States.
More Details
The researchers, who published their findings in Cell Reports Medicine on July 19 and have received virtually no mainstream news coverage so far, said they administered COVID-19 vaccines to adults who previously got one of the three vaccines that were available to people at the time. They evaluated six separate groups with around 50 participants per vaccine group who either received the initial vaccine regimen and the same booster or who mixed and matched vaccines and boosters.
Ultimately, they concluded that the “immune response to Omicron sub-lineages show reduced susceptibility to these rapidly emerging subvariants,” according to the NIH release. “The data could be used to inform decisions regarding future vaccine schedule recommendations, including the need for variant vaccine boosting.”
Between 29 days and 91 days after getting the booster, neutralizing antibodies among all groups decreased “2.4- to 5.3-fold for Omicron and no more than 2.4-fold for the (ancestral) D614G variant,” the researchers wrote.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study that found the efficacy of vaccine booster doses dropped under 50 percent after four months against COVID-19 subvariants. Both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines provided just 51 percent protection against COVID-19-linked urgent care encounters, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations as the Omicron BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 variants were spreading across the United States, it found.
After about 150 days, the efficacy of the vaccines dropped to 12 percent, the study said.
COVID-19 is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, sometimes known as SARS-CoV-2.
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Ex-White House Testing Czar Says Biden ‘At Risk’ After Contracting COVID-19
www.theepochtimes.com
Ex-White House Testing Czar Says Biden ‘At Risk’ After Contracting COVID-19
By Jack Phillips
July 22, 2022
Former White House COVID-19 testing chief Brett Giroir weighed in on former President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 diagnosis, saying that the president’s advanced age puts him “at risk” of severe symptoms.
A report issued Friday by the physician to the 79-year-old president (pdf) said that Biden had a temperature of 99.4 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday night and his “temperature has remained normal since then,” according to the White House. He also took the Pfizer drug Paxlovid and is “tolerating treatment well” while it is anticipated that Biden will “respond favorably” to the treatment.
But Giroir, a pediatrician, told Fox News Friday that because of Biden’s “advanced age” and “underlying health conditions,” he’s “at risk.
“I think we need to be quite careful because the president is at advanced age,” Giroir advised. “He also has underlying health conditions, including Atrial fibrillation. He’s had previous aneurysms and strokes. So, I would be cautious. I wouldn’t be so rosy … that everything is going to be fine. He is at risk.”
Data and numerous studies have shown that elderly people have the greatest risk of COVID-19-related hospitalization or death of any age group. Meanwhile, children and young adults have the lowest risk.
“The other issue I would say is Paxlovid is a very good drug, but it has drug-drug interactions with many of the drugs I believe the president is on, including blood thinners or anti-coagulants, and it could cause dangerous changes in that,” Giroir added. “So, I’m sure the White House medical unit is on this and is monitoring that. But that is one issue with Paxlovid in addition to the rebound that I would watch for in the president.”
Paxlovid
The former Trump administration testing chief was making reference to alerts sent out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) several weeks ago to healthcare providers about the so-called “COVID rebound,” or a recurrence of symptoms, associated with Paxlovid.
Last month, White House adviser Anthony Fauci revealed that he was taking Paxlovid for COVID-19 and developed a recurrence of symptoms after testing negative for three days. Fauci, who at age 81 is also at risk, said he tested positive on the fourth day.
“Over the next day or so, I started to feel really poorly, much worse than in the first go around,” the longtime federal employee told a panel in late June. “So, I went back on Paxlovid and right now I am on my fourth day of a five-day course.”
As for Biden, he released a video on Twitter Thursday while speaking from a White House balcony saying he’s “fine” and is “keeping busy.”
On Friday, his account said that “Biden continued working from the White House this morning, including speaking by phone with his national security team.”
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Rampant BA 5
18 min 31 sec
Jul 22, 2022
Dr. John Campbell
Rant warning. There is a significant rant in this video starting at 15 minutes 20 seconds. Viewer discretion is advised as some may find this objectionable. CDC variant nowcast https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-trac... BA.5 77.9% BA.4 12.8% BA.2.12.1 8.6% BA.2 0.6% BA.1 0% Delta 0% Others 0% https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2... Risk of death in vaccinated and unvaccinated Hospital admission risk goes up with age Mr. Biden, (79) isolating at home Fully vaccinated, had second booster, end of March Tested positive, Thursday. very mild symptoms Taking Paxlovid White House has stringent measures to prevent infection https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati... 5.77% in England (1 in 17 people) 6.03% in Wales (1 in 17 people) 4.82% in Northern Ireland (1 in 20 people) 6.48% in Scotland (1 in 15 people) Long covid, data to 27 May 2022 Coronavirus Infection Survey, 12 to 16 weeks laboratory-confirmed infection BA.1 4.5% BA.2 4.2% Delta 5.0% of triple-vaccinated adults, Zoe data https://health-study.joinzoe.com/data Japan, highest level of vigilance https://www.theguardian.com/world/202... New wave of infections Omicron BA.5 subvariant Cases, + 186,000, disproportionately affected children and young people Recent rise in cases, 60 + Lowest per capita rate of 38 OECD countries 246 per million people
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TWiV 921: COVID-19 clinical update #124 with Dr. Daniel Griffin
35 min 36 sec
Jul 23, 2022
Vincent Racaniello
In COVID-19 clinical update #124, Dr. Griffin discusses the results of a variant vaccine booster trial, the neutralization of variant sub-lineages by Novavax, the CDC’s recommendation of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine in adults, Paxlovid in patients who are immunocompromised and hospitalized, and inhaled fluticasone for outpatient treatment.
Show notes at TWiV 921: COVID-19 clinical update #124 with Dr. Daniel Griffin | This Week in Virology
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Watch: BA.5 Reinfection Protection After Omicron Infection (New Qatari Study)
22 min 24 sec
Streamed live 6 hours ago
Drbeen Medical Lectures
Omicron to BA.5 Protection (Qatari Study)
Many of us wonder about the protection offered by an Omicron infection against BA.4/BA.5. This fascinating study from Qatar presents this data. Let's review together.
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Historical mistrust in government, health care industry contributes to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for African Americans
While African Americans have disproportionately higher COVID-19 infection and mortality rates compared to white individuals, they also have disproportionately lower COVID-19 vaccination rates, which is partially fueled by vaccine hesitancy.
Historical mistrust in government, health care industry contributes to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for African Americans
by University of Missouri
July 23, 2022
While African Americans have disproportionately higher COVID-19 infection and mortality rates compared to white individuals, they also have disproportionately lower COVID-19 vaccination rates, which is partially fueled by vaccine hesitancy.
In an effort to address health disparities that negatively impact African Americans, MU's Wilson Majee led a study to better understand the factors that contribute to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among African Americans. He found compounding factors, including historical mistrust in government and personal experiences of racism within the health care system, contribute to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy for African Americans.
Majee interviewed church leaders, lifestyle coaches and participants of Live Well by Faith, a community faith-based wellness program run by the Boone County Health Department that promotes healthy living and addresses chronic health conditions in predominantly African American communities in Boone County, Missouri. Both historical mistrust in government and personal experiences of racism within the health care system were common themes among African American community members for not wanting to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
"The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was repeatedly mentioned as a popular example of unethical medical treatment toward African Americans by the federal government, and once that trust is lost, it can be hard to regain even as time goes on," said Majee, an associate professor in the MU School of Health Professions. "One respondent mentioned the common reminder from the federal government of never forgetting the tragic events of September 11, 2001, yet African Americans are expected to forget the unethical research practices and the history of injustice and racism from their own federal government."
Majee also told the story of another respondent who reflected on his own personal experience in the health care industry after he tested positive for COVID-19.
"This elderly man went to the hospital but was sent home, and after his health declined, he went back to the hospital but was sent back home again," Majee said. "When he went back a third time, he was told they had made a mistake and he was given a hospital bed so he could be monitored, and he could not help but wonder if his experience would have been different if he was not Black?"
Other factors contributing to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy included how fast the vaccine was developed, a lack of Black physicians providing the vaccines and misinformation spread on social media.
Majee added social determinants of health, including that African Americans tend to be poorer and have less access to education, health care and healthy foods, as well as structural determinants of health, including that African Americans tend to be affected by racism in the housing, education, employment and health care industries, all compound together to contribute to worse health outcomes for African Americans.
"African Americans are more likely to have lower-income, in-person jobs at crowded places that cannot accommodate work-from-home or social distancing, so they are more likely to be exposed to and infected by COVID-19," Majee said. "Combine that with African Americans already being poorer and less likely to be able to afford quality health insurance, the historical mistrust in government and personal negative experiences with the health care industry, and you quickly see how all these factors start to work together to negatively impact health outcomes for African Americans."
Community wellness programs like Live Well by Faith play a key role in helping to address these inequities, Majee said. Receiving accurate information about the COVID-19 vaccine from trusted community members, such as African American church leaders and lifestyle coaches, played a big role in promoting positive health outcomes.
"African American members of the congregation at Black churches believed in the information they were receiving because it was coming from people they trusted that looked like themselves," Majee said. "The key about the Live Well by Faith program is that is it rooted in the community, and we saw it was helpful in getting more African Americans to receive the COVID-19 vaccine."
Majee's main research goal is to find ways in which those with power, including local, state and federal governments, church leaders, researchers and adult role models, can distribute resources that engage vulnerable populations in their communities.
"My passion is to empower people in resource-limited communities by listening to their ideas and allocating resources to develop interventions that meet the needs of struggling people," Majee said. "There is a great need to elevate the health of minorities, as the disparities are huge and will continue to grow if we fail to act now."
"The past is so present: Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among African American adults using qualitative data" was published in Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.
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Study shows flies, roaches not likely to spread COVID-19
Insects like biting flies and cockroaches are not likely to spread the agent of COVID-19 to humans, according to a recently published article by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists.
Study shows flies, roaches not likely to spread COVID-19
by Texas A&M University
July 21, 2022
Insects like biting flies and cockroaches are not likely to spread the agent of COVID-19 to humans, according to a recently published article by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists.
Public health experts and officials know much more about the spread of COVID-19, but concerns remained about how the virus spreads indirectly from human to human through contaminated surfaces, animals or insects.
Insects are known to spread many infectious diseases among humans, so evaluating the role of insects in the potential transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was a high priority in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to study co-author Gabriel Hamer, Ph.D., AgriLife Research entomologist in the Texas A&M Department of Entomology.
The published article, "No Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 Among Flies or Cockroaches in Households Where COVID-19 Positive Cases Resided" in the Journal of Medical Entomology covers the project and the team's finding.
The team included Gabriel Hamer, Sarah Hamer, Ph.D., DVM, associate professor of epidemiology at Texas A&M's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, along with the help of research associates and graduate students and other faculty in the Department of Entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and School of Public Health. The lead author, Chris Roundy, Ph.D., was a post-doctoral student in the Department of Entomology at the time and is now working in the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
"We were sampling insects in homes with recent human COVID-19 cases, some of which also had dogs and cats actively infected with SARS-CoV-2," Gabriel Hamer said. "We suspected these were high-risk environments where insects may be able to become contaminated with the virus if they were contacting the infected humans, animals or contaminated surfaces. Instead, we did not detect evidence of the virus in the sampled insects from these homes."
Previous work by the research team, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discovered the transmission SARS-CoV-2 from humans to pet dogs and cats was occurring in households with confirmed positive human COVID-19 cases. More recently, the team has also been studying SARS-CoV-2 transmission among white-tailed deer in Texas.
Testing flies and cockroaches for COVID-19
Scientists, including the Texas A&M COVID-19 and Pets Project Team, discovered that animals like cats and dogs were susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and could shed infectious virus. But less was understood about the potential transmission by insects, especially through mechanical transmission of contaminated mouthparts.
Previous experimental studies done by other researchers had shown that both the infectious virus and viral RNA were detectable in house flies after being exposed to SARS-CoV-2 in a laboratory setting. The AgriLife Research field study did not find any evidence that these insects were obtaining SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in natural household settings.
Mechanical transmission would involve the pathogen being transmitted to a human via infectious particles on an insect's body parts, Hamer said. Biological transmission would involve the pathogen entering the insect then growing and increasing before being transmitted through the insect's saliva or feces.
Most vector-borne pathogens, for instance West Nile virus in mosquitoes, are spread biologically, Hamer said. But non-biting flies can transfer bacteria like Salmonella mechanically.
As part of the investigation, Hamer and other AgriLife Research scientists processed the contents of 133 insect traps in 40 homes that each had at least one confirmed human COVID-19 case present. Sticky traps collected more than 1,345 individual insects representing 11 different fly and roach species from June to September 2020.
The insects were tested using quantitative reverse transcription PCR. The liquid in additional trap types was also tested after RNA concentration. The individual insects were grouped into 243 pools, and all tested negative for SARS-CoV-2.
Fourteen traps in seven homes were placed into homes the same day dog or cat samples tested positive for the virus, further increasing the opportunity for the insects to come into contact with contaminated animals or surfaces.
The study presents evidence that biting and non-biting flies and roaches are not likely to spread the virus via mechanical transmission or be useful as a surveillance tool to track the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
"This study provides more evidence to help narrow down transmission routes of SARS-CoV-2 and evaluates different methods for novel surveillance techniques," Hamer said. "It was a team effort that allowed us to rapidly deploy these traps in high-risk settings to directly assess the role of insects in the COVID-19 pandemic."
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Heart issues after Covid jabs very rare but research lacks clarity
Research shows that the risk of developing heart conditions after a messenger RNA COVID vaccine is very low, and should not call into question the value of life-saving vaccination campaigns rolled out across the world.
Heart issues after Covid jabs very rare but research lacks clarity
July 22, 2022
Research shows that the risk of developing heart conditions after a messenger RNA COVID vaccine is very low, and should not call into question the value of life-saving vaccination campaigns rolled out across the world.
But the risk is "non-negligible", and the available evidence is difficult to assess precisely, researchers have said, calling for better data on the subject.
"That we are now more than a year and a half into mass mRNA vaccination and still do not have strong certainty about the incidence of this clinically important outcome is disappointing," US researchers Jing Luo and Walid Gellad wrote in a commentary in the BMJ journal in mid-July.
Their opinion piece was based on a large study in the same issue which reviewed the available research about the frequency of myocarditis and pericarditis, two inflammations in the heart, following vaccination with Pfizer and Moderna's mRNA shots.
It has been a delicate subject for the scientific community. The risks were quickly identified after the launch of mass vaccinations campaigns last year, but were then greatly exaggerated by vaccine sceptics seeking to oppose all jabs.
The heart conditions have been very rare after vaccination and most of the time have not caused serious complications. The fact that COVID itself presents cardiovascular risks is also part of the equation.
'Question of major importance'
So the value of mRNA vaccines has not been called into question. But for the researchers writing in the BMJ, the current state of knowledge about the risks remains inadequate.
"Clearly, the incidence of myocarditis is rare after vaccination," they wrote. "Just how rare remains a question of major importance."
The review they commented on, in which other researchers analysed the results from around 50 previous studies, provides some answers.
It largely confirmed previous findings, including that the risk of myocarditis after vaccination appears to be higher for young men than any other group.
And, though the conclusions are less clear, there also seems to be a slightly higher risk after a dose of Moderna's vaccine, compared to Pfizer's.
That would appear to bolster the decision by some countries, including France, to only allow people over 30 to get the Moderna vaccine. Other countries such as the United States have made no such distinction.
The research pointed towards a lack of clarity in other areas.
It found that some results could vary widely depending on different methodologies while others could be seen as unsatisfactory.
That was the case for a particularly sensitive topic: vaccinating children.
Numerous countries have authorised vaccination for young children, but uptake has often been sluggish due in part to the reluctance of parents.
Myocarditis in children aged five to 11 years is "very rare", the researchers said, but added that the "certainty was low".
Boosters less of risk?
The researchers raised other issues.
Most cases of myocarditis and pericarditis were resolved without serious illness. But they were rarely followed over a long period of time, meaning they could not rule out future complications.
The research was also unclear about whether a booster dose posed as much risk as initial vaccination.
It could be a pressing question as many developed countries with largely vaccinated populations consider how often they should roll out additional doses.
However a French study released on Friday shed some light on the subject.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, was conducted by Epi-Phare, part of France's medicine safety agency ANSM, looking at the public health data of millions of French people.
It found less risk of myocarditis from booster doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines than during initial vaccination.
"In addition, the risk decreases with the length of time between each successive dose," the researchers said.
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Neutralization efficacy of antibodies against omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 declines quickly
The omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first detected in South Africa in November 2021. The high level of infectiousness of the virus and its ability to quickly spawn additional variants has also been observed in Germany: Since January 2022 the omicron variant BA.1 has dominated here...
Neutralization efficacy of antibodies against omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 declines quickly
by Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
July 22, 2022
The omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first detected in South Africa in November 2021. The high level of infectiousness of the virus and its ability to quickly spawn additional variants has also been observed in Germany: Since January 2022 the omicron variant BA.1 has dominated here, followed in subsequent months by the variant BA.2. In the meantime, the virus has mutated further, and since June the variants BA.4 and BA.5 have superseded their predecessors.
This poses major challenges for the immune system of the human body: antibodies are formed in the course of a SARS-CoV-2 infection and these attach themselves to the surface structures of the virus, thus preventing it from penetrating human cells. The viral spike protein plays the key role here.
In the omicron variants, this has changed in more than 50 sites compared to the first SARS-CoV-2 virus identified in Wuhan. The consequence: the antibodies formed after an infection or a vaccination do not recognize the variants as efficiently. This is why despite having overcome an infection, people can again become infected with a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, or there are breakthrough infections. However, how good the immunity response is to an infection depends on more than just antibodies.
Researchers in Frankfurt headed by Marek Widera and Professor Sandra Ciesek from the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital of the Goethe University Frankfurt have now examined how long the antibodies present in blood after a vaccination or recovery from an infection were still able to neutralize the virus variants omicron BA.1 and BA.2.
To this end, they collected blood samples from people who had been vaccinated twice or three times (booster shot), placed the liquid blood component (blood serum), which contains antibodies, together with SARS-CoV-2 viruses on cultivated cells and observed how many of the cells became infected. Furthermore, in each case they ascertained the quantity of antibodies in the samples that recognized the spike protein.
The result: six months after the second vaccination, the tested sera practically had no neutralizing effect on the omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2. The effect of a booster vaccination declined rapidly: although the sera still provided very good protection shortly after the booster vaccination, three months later the protective effect was merely very weak, with the effect that the tested sera were no longer capable of neutralizing the two virus variants.
"This is due to the fact that the antibody titer in serum—the amount of antibodies, so to speak—after a vaccination or infection declines in the course of time," explains Widera. "Because the antibodies have a significantly lower ability to recognize newer virus variants, a lower level of antibodies is then no longer sufficient to neutralize the virus variants and prevent an infection of the cells in a cell culture. However, the data from this study does not allow any conclusions to be drawn regarding protection against the seriousness of the course of the disease." The decisive factor for the immune function is not just the antibody titer, but also the cellular immune response, which was not examined in this study, Widera adds.
These results are particularly problematic for the use of monoclonal antibodies, which are administered to patients with a compromised immune system as a precautionary measure, for example, says Professor Sandra Ciesek.
Ciesek is the Director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the University Hospital Frankfurt and the senior author of the study. She explains that "as an example we studied three such monoclonal antibodies in laboratory experiments and saw that their efficacy is very heavily dependent on the virus variant. So that we are able to protect vulnerable patients with such preparations, it is absolutely essential to also test in patients the extent to which such antibodies can neutralize the virus variants that are currently prevalent, therefore."
Admittedly, the virus variants BA.1 and BA.2 examined in the study are no longer dominant in Germany in the meantime, adds the virologist. "Our study shows, however, that we cannot afford to let up in adapting our protective measures in line with the genetic changes in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, at present to the omicron variants BA.4 und BA.5."
The research was published in eBioMedicine.
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COVID-19 vaccine does not negatively affect placental health
Vaccination against COVID-19 had no impact on the health of placentas in pregnant women, according to new research by pathologists at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The findings, published June 27 as a research letter in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology...
COVID-19 vaccine does not negatively affect placental health
by Weill Cornell Medical College
July 22, 2022
Vaccination against COVID-19 had no impact on the health of placentas in pregnant women, according to new research by pathologists at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. The findings, published June 27 as a research letter in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, further emphasize the safety of vaccination during pregnancy for babies and pregnant women, the investigators note.
Most previous studies on the impact of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy have focused on maternal and infant outcomes. By contrast, for this study, the investigators examined 18 indicators of placental health, such as the presence of lesions, blood clots and inflammation associated with a higher risk of adverse health issues for babies and their mothers. They also collected data from clinical records on the babies' birth weights and the score that assesses babies' well-being at one minute and five minutes after birth, called the Apgar score.
The researchers analyzed findings for 431 women who gave birth to single babies at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center between April 2020 and July 2021 and compared results for 164 women who were fully vaccinated during pregnancy, defined as having received at least two doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna), with 267 unvaccinated women. All women included in the study had no evidence of current or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. The investigators found no significant differences in placental health indicators, birth weights or Apgar scores between vaccinated and unvaccinated women.
As expected from previous research, 95 percent of babies born to vaccinated mothers had detectable antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in umbilical cord blood. Other studies have shown that vaccinating mothers during pregnancy not only protects them from severe illness from COVID-19, but also helps protect their babies for several months after birth.
Overall, the findings add to the existing body of knowledge demonstrating that COVID-19 vaccines are safe during pregnancy, the authors concluded.
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Your body remembers common cold coronaviruses from childhood. How can you get the same immunity to COVID-19?
For a glimpse into the future of SARS-CoV-2 immunity, scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) are investigating how the immune system builds its defenses against common cold coronaviruses (CCCs).
Your body remembers common cold coronaviruses from childhood. How can you get the same immunity to COVID-19?
by La Jolla Institute for Immunology
July 22, 2022
For a glimpse into the future of SARS-CoV-2 immunity, scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) are investigating how the immune system builds its defenses against common cold coronaviruses (CCCs).
According to a new study, published recently in Cell Host & Microbe, adults have stable memory responses of CCC-fighting antibodies and T cells, presumably derived from multiple exposures to CCCs in childhood. Thanks to this immune cell army, CCC infections in adulthood tend to be infrequent and mild.
These findings may be a clue to how immunity can build up against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and the leading researchers think the COVID-19 booster shots available today may be critical for long-term immunity.
What do coronaviruses have in common?
With the omicron 5 subvariant on the loose, more and more people are suffering from breakthrough infections and reinfections.
"Everyone is wondering where this is going to go. Will we need to keep getting boosters or redesigning the vaccines?" says Alessandro Sette, Professor at the Center for Autoimmunity and Inflammation and the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
These big questions prompted Sette and his colleagues to wonder if coronaviruses pose any special challenges to the immune system. SARS-CoV-2 has circulated for barely two years—and has continued to evolve in that time—so the researchers instead looked at long-term immune memory of common cold coronaviruses.
In order to not muddle the data, they needed to analyze samples from people never exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Luckily, they had blood samples taken for a previous study launched at LJI before the pandemic. The patients in this group were all young adults, and it was safe to presume they had been exposed to CCC multiple times.
Well-trained immune cells remember coronaviruses
As anyone with small kids knows, common colds seem to strike young kids over and over again. These childhood illnesses prompt a strong immune memory. As kids go through the germ gauntlet of early schooling, their immune system gets schooled as well.
The researchers found that adults have stable immune memory and tend to catch CCCs only about every eight years. "The immune response is remarkably stable and durable, over time," says LJI Instructor Ricardo Da Silva Antunes, Ph.D., who co-led the study with Sette.
SARS-CoV-2 is different from CCCs, but they have many structural similarities, and previous work at LJI suggests the immune system recognizes similarities between different coronaviruses.
For the new study, the LJI researchers also showed that antibodies and T cells from this group of healthy adults could cross-react with SARS-CoV-2. This cross-reactivity may actually help protect a person from severe COVID-19, and the finding reinforces the idea that the immune system sees CCCs and SARS-CoV-2 in a similar way.
If the pattern seen in CCC immunity holds true for SARS-CoV-2, as more immunity builds in the population, reinfections should become less frequent over time and COVID-19 symptoms should be less severe. The rise of new SARS-CoV-2 variants may complicate the process of building immunity, but "there is certainly reason to assume that eventually this will be the end result; but we are not there yet," says Sette.
Don't lower your defenses—yet
There's a good chance that SARS-CoV-2 will be here to stay. A pathogen that maintains a steady level in a community and does not cause day-to-day disruption is called "endemic." But endemic diseases are still a threat. Influenza is endemic, and while most people don't get a life-threatening case of the flu, the influenza virus still killed 53,544 Americans in 2020 alone (and that was a lower number than usual).
Sette and Da Silva Antunes stress that endemic SARS-CoV-2 would still be serious. Based on their data on CCC immunity, they agree that the best strategy right now is for people to stay up-to-date on their booster shots.
"At this stage of the pandemic, we're still mounting that immunity to SARS-CoV-2," says Da Silva Antunes.
"It's really important to get the vaccine boosters—the third and fourth doses," adds Sette.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
Researchers track cellular and antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccine
In a technical tour de force, a collaborative team of Vanderbilt researchers has characterized the antigen-specific immune response to the Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 RNA vaccine.
Researchers track cellular and antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccine
by Leigh MacMillan, Vanderbilt University
July 22, 2022
Schematic of vaccination schedule and sample collection. All participants were vaccinated with BNT162b2 on days 0 and 21 and samples were collected early in 2021. A 10 healthy participants underwent serial phlebotomy that was performed pre-vaccination (day −3 to 0), on day 28–30, and on day 105–108. PBMCs were isolated at each time point, and citrated plasma was stored when possible. PBMCs from these participants were utilized for CyTOF and in vitro stimulation studies. Plasma was used both for SARS-CoV-2 ELISAs and vesicular stomatitis virus pseudoneutralization assays. B A single healthy participant underwent serial phlebotomy pre-vaccination and on days 8, 14, 28, and 42. PBMCs and citrated plasma were isolated at each time point and used for transcriptional analysis of SARS-CoV-2-specific B cells. Credit: Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31142-5
In a technical tour de force, a collaborative team of Vanderbilt researchers has characterized the antigen-specific immune response to the Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 RNA vaccine.
The group used multiple single-cell technologies, unbiased machine learning, and traditional immunological approaches to track cellular and antibody responses in samples collected over time from a cohort of healthy participants. The findings, published in Nature Communications, could guide testing for vaccine response and booster timing.
"There is a lot of debate in the clinical immunology field about what is an appropriate vaccine response: What actually protects someone against disease?" said Erin Wilfong, MD, Ph.D., instructor in Medicine and one of three co-first authors of the paper with Kevin Kramer, Ph.D., and Kelsey Voss, Ph.D. "How do we know who's had a good response, and who hasn't? How do we know when people need a booster?"
When VUMC began vaccinating its workforce against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in December 2020, the collaborative team was in a unique position to explore these questions.
The researchers—including the groups of Jonathan Irish, Ph.D., Ivelin Georgiev, Ph.D., Rachel Bonami, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Rathmell, Ph.D., all co-senior authors of the Nature Communications paper—had been working together through the Human Immunology Discovery Initiative (HIDI), which was funded in 2019 by a Vanderbilt Trans-Institutional Programs (TIPs) award.
"The TIPs grant brought together researchers with disparate technologies and expertise focused on trying to understand how the human immune response works," said Rathmell, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Immunobiology, which coordinates HIDI.
Kramer, who was a graduate student in Georgiev's lab, suggested that the group study the response to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in healthy volunteers who had not had the disease COVID-19.
"It's challenging to find a setting where you can study the human immune response to something new," Rathmell said. "This was an opportunity for us to see what happens for the very first time with an entirely new class of vaccines, the RNA-based vaccines. From a basic science standpoint of 'What do these vaccines do?' that was very interesting."
Within hours of getting Institutional Review Board approval and sending out an email to a faculty list, the team had volunteers ready to donate blood samples ahead of being vaccinated, and several times afterwards.
Irish and Georgiev have both pioneered single-cell technologies and unbiased analytical approaches to find and identify the rare immune cells directed at specific antigens—in this case the SARS-CoV-2 viral spike protein. Bonami is a B cell biologist who developed single-cell analytical pipelines to identify which of the functionally distinct subsets or "flavors" of antigen-specific B cells expanded with vaccination.
Using these technologies alongside other single-cell and traditional approaches, the group identified and characterized the SARS-CoV-2-directed B cells that instruct T cells and produce antibodies and the T cells that can kill virus-infected cells and also help direct antibody production.
"Right now, the way that we test if vaccines are working is by measuring antibodies," Rathmell said. "You really need both antibody-producing B cells and T cells for an effective immune response, and we're not measuring either of the cells."
The team was able to develop strategies for using a more common technology—flow cytometry—to find the B and T cells that respond specifically to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
"We're still a long way off, but this is a first step towards being able to test whether someone had a good cellular response," Wilfong said.
The researchers expect such measurements will be useful, particularly for determining the vaccine response of high-risk individuals and for defining if and when booster doses might be beneficial.
One of the participants who did not have the identified vaccine-induced cell populations had a breakthrough COVID-19 infection, they reported.
The group was also intrigued that the vaccine-induced T cells they identified had unique characteristics that didn't match previously described categories of T cells.
"I think we found a new phase in an immune response," Rathmell said. "It's going to be an interesting set of cells to study in the future. These cells are the ones that correlate best with the antibody response."
Rathmell noted that the "cellular analysis platform" the group developed can be broadly applied to study cellular immune responses, for example in patients with kidney cancer who are being treated with immunotherapies, patients on immunosuppressant therapies following cardiac transplant, and patients with lupus.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
International study identifies risks for long COVID in children
Nearly 6 percent of children who presented to the Emergency Department (ED) with COVID-19 reported symptoms of long COVID 90 days later, according to a study conducted in eight countries and published in JAMA Network Open. Initial hospitalization of 48 or more hours, four or more symptoms at the...
International study identifies risks for long COVID in children
by Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
July 22, 2022
Nearly 6 percent of children who presented to the Emergency Department (ED) with COVID-19 reported symptoms of long COVID 90 days later, according to a study conducted in eight countries and published in JAMA Network Open. Initial hospitalization of 48 or more hours, four or more symptoms at the initial ED visit, and age 14 years or older were associated with long COVID.
"We found that in some children, illness with COVID-19 is associated with reporting persistent symptoms after 3 months," said Principal Investigator Stephen Freedman, MDCM, MSc, with the Cumming School of Medicine at University of Calgary, and Alberta Health Services. "Our results suggest that appropriate guidance and follow-up are needed, especially for children at high risk for long COVID."
The study included 1,884 children with COVID-19 who had 90-day follow-up. Long COVID was found in nearly 10 percent of hospitalized children and 5 percent in children discharged from the ED.
"Reported rates of long COVID in adults are substantially higher than what we found in children," said Co-Principal Investigator Nathan Kuppermann, MD, MPH, from University of California, Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento. "Our findings can inform public health policy decisions regarding COVID-19 mitigation strategies for children and screening approaches for long COVID among those with severe infections."
The most reported persistent symptoms in children were fatigue or weakness, cough, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath.
"Our finding that children who had multiple COVID-19 symptoms initially were at higher risk for long COVID is consistent with studies in adults," said Co-Principal Investigator Todd Florin, MD, MSCE, from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "Unfortunately, there are no known therapies for long COVID in children and more research is needed in this area. However, if symptoms are significant, treatment targeting the symptoms is most important. Multidisciplinary care is warranted if symptoms are impacting quality of life."
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
The vaccines have failed
The mRNA vaccines have failed. Provably. Indisputably. The risk estimates released by Centers for Disease Control are politicized garbage, based…
alexberenson.substack.com
The vaccines have failed
Alex Berenson
10 hr ago
The mRNA vaccines have failed.
Provably. Indisputably. The risk estimates released by Centers for Disease Control are politicized garbage, based on hospital and state data that intentionally underestimate the number of vaccinated Americans who have been hospitalized or died.
The raw numbers from other countries far are more trustworthy - and consistent. They show that six months after injection, the basic two-dose mRNA vaccine regimen does not protect against Omicron and may even increase its risk. This failure is not confined merely to infection but to severe outcomes like hospitalization.
Boosters increase protection, but the increase is temporary. Worse, a fourth dose appears to provide less additional protection than a third and to fade more quickly.
At best - absolute best - the shots appear to have bought a few months in 2021 of a false dawn, at a cost that is still rising.
—
The reality of mRNA jab failure is deeply unpleasant for governments and health bureaucrats.
They have spent the last 18 months touting and sometimes mandating these shots, with the active assistance of legacy and social media outlets. In the last couple of months, as the failure has become increasingly apparent, they have taken steps to cushion the blow:
Pushing boosters, which temporarily hide the problem - at a long-term cost that remains unclear;
Clamping down on data about hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated people they once readily provided;
Most of all, hoping that the antiviral drug Paxlovid, immunity from prior infection, and Omicron’s relative mildness would keep death counts low even as infections and hospitalizations rocket higher.
That third bet looked to be working for most of spring 2022.
But once again the virus is not cooperating.
The new Omicron subvariants elude vaccine protection almost immediately and are at least as virulent as earlier Omicron variants. Infections are headed higher. Despite the fact that many tests are taken at home and not reported, reported positives have nearly doubled since mid-June. They are higher than at any point in the epidemic except for the winter Omicron peak.
Deaths remain low - in part because many governments have tightened their rules on reporting Covid deaths - but they are almost certain to rise notably. One of the epidemic’s core truths is that deaths lag. When reported case counts rise, deaths follow eventually.
—
Just as striking, all-cause mortality - that is, deaths from Covid AND other causes - remain extremely high in the highly vaccinated countries. In Europe, which has good and timely data on deaths, reported excess mortality is now far above average for the third year in a row.
This trend runs contrary to the expectations two years ago of demographers and infectious disease experts. They predicted publicly that deaths would quickly return to normal as Covid rolled out - since the coronavirus generally targeted a small number of people who were nearly at the end of their lives.
Instead, the wave has not rolled out, and non-Covid excess deaths are running high.
Worse, among young Europeans, reported excess mortality is trending higher this year than in 2020 or 2021. In fact, before the widespread rollout of the jabs in mid-2021, Europe had NO excess mortality among people under 45. Now it does.
Squint hard enough, and you can find explanations other than the mRNA vaccines for this crisis - delayed health care or a return to risky behavior.
But none of them make as much sense as the obvious one. And none of them square with what governments and the media promised on that Monday morning in November 2020 when Pfizer and BioNTech reported their first results from their pivotal clinical trial of BNT162b2.
The vaccines have failed. They were a noble(ish) experiment, but they’ve failed us.
Now we are failing them, by insisting they can do what they cannot, and increasing the risks they pose to all of us. The push for boosters, especially, needs to end today.
Wherever Covid goes next - and at this point we don’t yet know - the mRNA shots will play no role in ending it. They are part of the problem, not the solution.
It is time, well past time, to admit the truth.
.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
If you watched the Dr. Campbell video I just posted he was ranting about how Japan was doing so well because they all eat seaweed (Iodine). I don't know if he saw this study (?).
NEW: Japan — Leading In Mask Wearing & Over 62% Of The Population "Boosted" — Suffers VAIDS, Reporting 195,161 New COVID Cases, The Highest Single-Day Increase On Record
2nd Smartest Guy in the World
16 hr ago
The CogDis prevents a rigorously honest reassessment of the Death Cultists’ participation in their very own ritual mass suicides by slow kill bioweapon injections.
Clearly, this is what VAIDS looks like:
Expect similar looking charts across the 7-day averages for both hospitalizations mortality surges over the late fall into winter periods.
Will these mass formation programmed victims ever make the connections?
Stay tuned.
...
NEW: Japan — Leading In Mask Wearing & Over 62% Of The Population "Boosted" — Suffers VAIDS, Reporting 195,161 New COVID Cases, The Highest Single-Day Increase On Record
2nd Smartest Guy in the World
16 hr ago
The CogDis prevents a rigorously honest reassessment of the Death Cultists’ participation in their very own ritual mass suicides by slow kill bioweapon injections.
Clearly, this is what VAIDS looks like:
Expect similar looking charts across the 7-day averages for both hospitalizations mortality surges over the late fall into winter periods.
Will these mass formation programmed victims ever make the connections?
Stay tuned.
...
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
UK Government confirms the Triple / Quadruple Vaccinated account for 91% of all COVID Deaths since the beginning of 2022
by THE EXPOSÉ The British public has been distracted for the past few weeks with non-stop news of Boris Johnson’s resignation as Prime Minister of the UK, speculation over who will replace him, and doomsday scenarios over a two-day heatwave that has now been and gone.
2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com
UK Government confirms the Triple / Quadruple Vaccinated account for 91% of all COVID Deaths since the beginning of 2022
2nd Smartest Guy in the World
19 hr ago
by THE EXPOSÉ
The British public has been distracted for the past few weeks with non-stop news of Boris Johnson’s resignation as Prime Minister of the UK, speculation over who will replace him, and doomsday scenarios over a two-day heatwave that has now been and gone.
But while the mainstream media had the public attention focused on the above, the UK Government quietly published a report on Covid-19 deaths.
That report reveals that since the beginning of 2022, the vaccinated population have accounted for over 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths in England, and a shocking 91% of those deaths have been among the triple/quadruple vaccinated.
A UK Government agency, known as the Office for National Statistics (ONS), has just published data on deaths by vaccination status in England up to 31st May 2022.
The latest dataset from the ONS is titled ‘Deaths by Vaccination Status, England, 1 January 2021 to 31 May 2022‘, and it can be accessed on the ONS site here, and downloaded here.
Source
Table 1 of the latest dataset contains figures on the mortality rates by vaccination status for all-cause deaths, deaths involving Covid-19, and deaths not involving Covid-19. And it is here that we are able to ascertain the vaccination status of everyone who has died of Covid-19 since the beginning of 2022.
Here’s how the ONS presents the figures for the month of January 2022 –
We’ve taken the figures provided by the ONS for each month in 2022, and produced the following chart showing Covid-19 deaths per month by vaccination status in England between 1st January and 31st May 2022 –
January saw the most deaths among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated population in England, with 3,914 deaths among the vaccinated, and 693 deaths among the unvaccinated. However, this is where the similarities end because we can see that except for the month of May, deaths rose among the vaccinated from February onward, whilst falling among the unvaccinated.
The following chart shows the percentage of Covid-19 deaths by vaccination status per month in England between 1st January and 31st May 2022, according to the latest ONS dataset –
The above chart illustrates perfectly how things have worsened for the vaccinated month on month, whilst they have improved for the unvaccinated month on month.
In January, the vaccinated accounted for 85% of Covid-19 deaths, whilst the unvaccinated accounted for 15%. By March, the vaccinated accounted for 93% of Covid-19 deaths, whilst the vaccinated accounted for just 7%. And by May, the vaccinated accounted for 94% of Covid-19 deaths, whilst the vaccinated accounted for just 6%.
Many people may believe that this is simply because, according to data published by the UK Health Security Agency, 50% of the population of England refused the third jab, and those vaccinated deaths are among the double vaccinated and partly vaccinated. But unfortunately, those people are wrong.
Source
Source Data – Page 65
The following chart shows the overall number of deaths by vaccination status in England between 1st Jan and 31st May 2022, and it includes the number among the triple/quadruple vaccinated –
Overall, there were 15,113 Covid-19 deaths by 31st May 2022, and a shocking 13,666 of those deaths were among the vaccinated population. But what’s even more shocking than this is that 12,442 of those deaths were among the triple/quadruple vaccinated population.
This means the triple/quadruple vaccinated population have accounted for a frightening 91% of all Covid-19 deaths among the vaccinated since the beginning of 2022.
Whilst the vaccinated population as a whole has accounted for a shocking 90% of all Covid-19 deaths since the beginning of 2022.
However, as we demonstrated above, the vaccinated are accounting for a larger percentage of Covid-19 deaths as each month passes, and whilst they may have dropped all-round in May, we are now being told that they are rising significantly again with the mainstream media publicising idiotic calls for Covid-19 restrictions to return.
Source – The Guardian
Which can only mean one thing, based on the data that was quietly published by the UK Government whilst you were distracted by Boris Johnson’s resignation and doomsday sunshine, thousands and thousands of triple/quadruple vaccinated people are still dying of Covid-19.
With data showing daily deaths are now nearly matching the alleged first wave to hit the UK in March/April 2020, it certainly looks like this is the case –
Source – The Independent
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Judging by the latest calls for a 5th jab to be administered by the autumn, it looks like “experts” in the UK really have lost their marbles and we’re going to be seeing thousands of deaths among the triple/quadruple and quintuple vaccinated.
Oh no, this is anything but insanity, this is premeditated global genocide by slow kill bioweapon injection.
The majority of doctors were sufficiently indoctrinated by their schooling, and were mass formation brainwashed by the PSYOP-19 scheme: their livelihoods depend on it.
...
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
MALONE, URSO, KORY: “STOP VACCINATING”
The HighWire with Del Bigtree
Published July 15, 2022
37 min 48 sec
Round table general Covid discussion between Del Bigtree, Dr. Malone, Dr. Urso and Dr. Kory about latest covid news. In Las Vegas this week, had the discussion for the video in front of a live audience, before hitting the stage for their presentations. Interestingly at around the 20 minute mark, Dr. Malone disagrees with Geert about what is causing immune escape. He thinks it's the immunocompromised. I would love to see a Geert rebuttal!
When I posted that video - I posted the comment in the quote box which I will repeat out of the box so you can see it:
Round table general Covid discussion between Del Bigtree, Dr. Malone, Dr. Urso and Dr. Kory about latest covid news. In Las Vegas this week, had the discussion for the video in front of a live audience, before hitting the stage for their presentations. Interestingly at around the 20 minute mark, Dr. Malone disagrees with Geert about what is causing immune escape. He thinks it's the immunocompromised. I would love to see a Geert rebuttal
! Well, I got my wish!
Geert replied to that video in his twitter feed. This is what he said, I reformatted the 8 tweets it took to post it, put sentences together and made paragraph breaks - if you want to see it as posted, go to the link, I think it's easier to read this way:
View: https://twitter.com/GVDBossche/status/1550465758697857030?cxt=HHwWjIC9-ZGZroQrAAAA
Geert Vanden Bossche @GVDBossche
9:00 AM · Jul 22, 2022
I've been completely baffled by R. Malone’s recent statement on the Highwire. Here comes my reaction: I have now been repeatedly contacted regarding a statement R. Malone made in a recent interview on the Highwire. In that interview, R. Malone stated that I have been wrong in concluding the mass vaccination program has been responsible for driving the dominant circulation of naturally selected SC-2 immune escape variants, and that this phenomenon was simply due to chronic infection of immunosuppressed individuals.
While I've been in relative agreement on several topics with R. Malone up until this point, it is extremely difficult to grasp why he (suddenly) thought it would be important to reverse course and publicly negate my insights on this phenomenon. During our various prior interactions, R. Malone had shared that – as far as this topic was concerned – he was learning from me. However, without proposing dialogue or debate regarding this critical issue, he now accepts the (corporate?) narrative and assigns blame to the immunosuppressed.
I'm having difficulty understanding how someone who's often been critical of the lack of open debate within the scientific community suddenly goes down this path without so much as referencing the specific literature that led to this change in stance. I've attempted to contact Robert in private to address this vital issue, but have been unable to elicit a response. If Robert feels so strongly about mass vaccination *not* being the single most important driver of the relentless succession of antigenically shifted SC-2 variants dominating the scene, I kindly invite him to educate me on his new insights and to elaborate in a public debate on why he thinks my arguments are wrong.
This is not about ego – this is about understanding the underlying mechanism of what I soon predict will cause a dramatic crisis in highly vaccinated countries.
~~
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
I just posted it. I think he's right, I posted at the time the video came out that I found it interesting Malone was saying he didn't agree with Geert. I'm glad he responded.
Here is an interesting video about Robert Malone from Lee Merritt. I hesitated to post it, but I think it may add some fuel to this discussion. ETA: I will say Malone has been upfront in interviews about who he's worked with in the past and it lends credibility to him, he's always introduced as the inventor of this technology, but it adds to the discussion because he got so much funding in the past and if he's still working on vaccines or doing any research for a future one (I don't remember if he said he was or wasn't, I know Geert is working on one) maybe he will lean toward another excuse as to why the vaccines don't work (????) Geert also has a long history of working with team vaxx for years - he himself says he worked with Gavi and Bill Gates in the past. So these guys have long histories and there are things that enter into their equations from those histories that we can't know how it influences how they think or behave.
2 min 3 sec
"WE SHOULD BE VERY SUSPICIOUS" : DR. LEE MERRITT ABOUT DR. ROBERT MALONE
"WE SHOULD BE VERY SUSPICIOUS" : DR. LEE MERRITT ABOUT DR. ROBERT MALONE https://www.bitchute.com/video/FTMs9HqSUBzS/
rumble.com
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Zoner
Veteran Member
Thanks for reformatting the tweets.When I posted that video - I posted the comment in the quote box which I will repeat out of the box so you can see it:
Round table general Covid discussion between Del Bigtree, Dr. Malone, Dr. Urso and Dr. Kory about latest covid news. In Las Vegas this week, had the discussion for the video in front of a live audience, before hitting the stage for their presentations. Interestingly at around the 20 minute mark, Dr. Malone disagrees with Geert about what is causing immune escape. He thinks it's the immunocompromised. I would love to see a Geert rebuttal
Well, I got my wish!
Geert replied to that video in his twitter feed. This is what he said, I reformatted the 8 tweets it took to post it, put sentences together and made paragraph breaks - if you want to see it as posted, go to the link, I think it's easier to read this way:
View: https://twitter.com/GVDBossche/status/1550465758697857030?cxt=HHwWjIC9-ZGZroQrAAAA
Geert Vanden Bossche @GVDBossche
9:00 AM · Jul 22, 2022
I've been completely baffled by R. Malone’s recent statement on the Highwire. Here comes my reaction: I have now been repeatedly contacted regarding a statement R. Malone made in a recent interview on the Highwire. In that interview, R. Malone stated that I have been wrong in concluding the mass vaccination program has been responsible for driving the dominant circulation of naturally selected SC-2 immune escape variants, and that this phenomenon was simply due to chronic infection of immunosuppressed individuals.
While I've been in relative agreement on several topics with R. Malone up until this point, it is extremely difficult to grasp why he (suddenly) thought it would be important to reverse course and publicly negate my insights on this phenomenon. During our various prior interactions, R. Malone had shared that – as far as this topic was concerned – he was learning from me. However, without proposing dialogue or debate regarding this critical issue, he now accepts the (corporate?) narrative and assigns blame to the immunosuppressed.
I'm having difficulty understanding how someone who's often been critical of the lack of open debate within the scientific community suddenly goes down this path without so much as referencing the specific literature that led to this change in stance. I've attempted to contact Robert in private to address this vital issue, but have been unable to elicit a response. If Robert feels so strongly about mass vaccination *not* being the single most important driver of the relentless succession of antigenically shifted SC-2 variants dominating the scene, I kindly invite him to educate me on his new insights and to elaborate in a public debate on why he thinks my arguments are wrong.
This is not about ego – this is about understanding the underlying mechanism of what I soon predict will cause a dramatic crisis in highly vaccinated countries.
~~
you caught it early on good for you and I missed your comment until now.
I guess we’ll just have to wait to see how Dr. Malone responds.
Zoner
Veteran Member
Wow and here I thought Malone was on our side. It is telling that Malone did not respond to Dr. Geert’s messages to him.I just posted it. I think he's right, I posted at the time the video came out that I found it interesting Malone was saying he didn't agree with Geert. I'm glad he responded.
Here is an interesting video about Robert Malone from Lee Merritt. I hesitated to post it, but I think it may add some fuel to this discussion:
"WE SHOULD BE VERY SUSPICIOUS" : DR. LEE MERRITT ABOUT DR. ROBERT MALONE
2 min 3 sec
"WE SHOULD BE VERY SUSPICIOUS" : DR. LEE MERRITT ABOUT DR. ROBERT MALONE
"WE SHOULD BE VERY SUSPICIOUS" : DR. LEE MERRITT ABOUT DR. ROBERT MALONE https://www.bitchute.com/video/FTMs9HqSUBzS/
Zoner
Veteran Member
“If Robert feels so strongly about mass vaccination *not* being the single most important driver of the relentless succession of antigenically shifted SC-2 variants dominating the scene, I kindly invite him to educate me on his new insights and to elaborate in a public debate on why he thinks my arguments are wrong.”
I think Malone has folded to the corporate pressure behind the scenes. We’ll see. Merrit talks about the billions of dollars he’s received in funding vaccination research. Maybe they threaten to pull that away if you continue to agree with Geert.
I think Malone has folded to the corporate pressure behind the scenes. We’ll see. Merrit talks about the billions of dollars he’s received in funding vaccination research. Maybe they threaten to pull that away if you continue to agree with Geert.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
I'm not going to guess what's going on behind the scenes but I don't think Malone would fold unless he wanted to fold. he is a tough man (in the good way) and I don't think anyone tells him what to do or say. I'm really glad Geert's attention was drawn to the comment (which shocked me when I heard it which is why I commented) and that he responded. I trust Geert first (and Del - and those two have also disagreed but they did it out in the open with a full discussion). I didn't know then and still don't know why Malone made that comment out of left field and it looks like Geert agrees...
I hope we hear back and what would be great is if Del hosted another debate between the two (they did a debate and a round table for Epoch Times a few months back, they are friends, they appear together at events, etc.).HD
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Zoner
Veteran Member
Well Malone is not responding to Geert which has caused Geert to go public and call Malone out. Either it's just ego as Geert has suggested and Malone feels a need to be "the expert", or he really disagrees with Geert and they need to resolve it. When a person wants the truth above all else, they will not mind saying I'm wrong. That is the price a person pays for truth. Ego and money and pressure from others can get in the way. I can't believe Malone would leave Geert's call unanswered. He didn't seem that kind of person to me. If Malone really feels Geert is wrong he should give Geert the courtesy and respect and communicate with him. A lot of people are waiting....I'm not going to guess what's going on behind the scenes but I don't think Malone would fold unless he wanted to fold. he is a tough man (in the good way) and I don't think anyone tells him what to do or say. I'm really glad Geert's attention was drawn to the comment (which shocked me when I heard it which is why I commented) and that he responded. I trust Geert first (and Del - and those two have also disagreed but they did it out in the open with a full discussion). I didn't know then and still don't know why Malone made that comment out of left field and it looks like Geert agrees...
HD
naegling62
Veteran Member
A squabble between GVB and Malone at this point is as unproductive as Protestant vs. Catholic, they're both Christian.
(fair use applies)BA.5 makes up nearly 80% of new COVID-19 cases. Here's what to know about the subvariant
Since the subvariant was first detected at the end of April, experts say, it's been a slow rise to the top for BA.5. Here's what else to know.news.yahoo.com
BA.5 makes up nearly 80% of new COVID-19 cases. Here's what to know about the subvariant
Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY
Thu, July 21, 2022, 12:39 PM
The BA.5 subvariant of omicron dominates the summer wave of COVID-19 in the USA, making up nearly 80% of new cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Nowcast model.
In the most recent week, ending Wednesday, 29 states reported more cases than the week before, a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. Twenty states had more deaths than a week earlier.
Hospitals in 35 states reported more COVID-19 patients, and hospitals in 25 states had more patients in intensive care beds, according to Health and Human Services data.
Here’s what you should know about BA.5.
When did BA.5 start?
BA.5 was detected in the USA at the end of April, experts said.
The subvariant was first seen in South Africa “but that doesn’t mean that it arrived (to the U.S.) from South Africa,” said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers don’t know where it came from because of limited surveillance.
The first cases appeared in the Northeast, then spread during the past month to Southern, Midwestern and Western states, Dowdy said.
“It’s been sort of a slow rise since that time,” he said. “It’s taken about two months to get to the current state where we think BA.5 probably accounts for about two-thirds of all COVID cases.”
What does BA.5 stand for?
The World Health Organization uses the Greek alphabet as a classification system to simplify understanding and avoid stigmatizing countries where strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 are identified.
The WHO named the original B.1.1.529 variant after the 15th letter, omicron. Within variants, the agency assigns numbers to sublineages.
“These represent the numbers and types of mutations within that particular variant,” said Dr. David Weber, professor of medicine pediatrics and epidemiology at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “It’s a way of knowing which variant they’re dealing with.”
BA.5 is classified as an omicron variant but has mutations that distinguish it from other omicron subvariants, such as BA.1 and BA.2.
BA.5 variant symptoms in adults, kids
Clinicians said many BA.5 symptoms are similar to those seen in previous variants, including congestion, headaches, cough and fever.
Children tend to have more gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, compared with adults, said Dr. Claire Bocchini, an infectious disease specialist at Texas Children’s Hospital.
She’s seen more cases of croup in kids. The Mayo Clinic defines croup as an infection of the upper airways that obstructs breathing and causes a “barking” cough.
“Certainly this is an infection to pay attention to for parents of children because while most children don’t require hospitalization, a few do,” Bocchini said.
How long does BA.5 last?
Though some people don't experience any symptoms with BA.5, experts said those who do can expect to feel sick for a few days up to a few weeks.
“It varies on a wide spectrum,” said Dr. Mobeen Rathore, professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases.
Bocchini said the normal course of illness is “one to two weeks of acute symptoms,” but those who are hospitalized may have the disease for much longer.
“We are very familiar with the prolonged hospitalizations from complications from COVID,” she said.
Can you get BA.5 twice?
There's limited data to support whether a person can get BA.5 twice, but health experts said it's unlikely to happen within the first month after infection.
“For the first couple of weeks, if you have a healthy immune system, you’re probably going to be fully resistant to get reinfected,” Dowdy said.
That protection wanes, he said. If a person is exposed to COVID-19, it’s possible to get reinfected with the same variant two to four months after infection.
It’s unlikely BA.5 will keep circulating over the next few months as the population builds up immunity against the subvariant. It’s more likely that another variant or subvariant of omicron will emerge as the virus attempts to bypass that immunity and infect as many people as it can.
It’s a “bit of a cat and mouse game between the virus and our immune systems,” Dowdy said. “If we don’t see another subvariant emerge for the next couple of months, then yes, absolutely people will be reinfected with BA.5.”
What to do if you get infected by BA.5
If you test positive for the coronavirus or feel sick with related symptoms, the CDC recommendations say stay home for at least five days and isolate from other household members.
The agency advises wearing a well-fitted mask around others in the home.
If you're fever-free for 24 hours and symptoms improve after the five days, the CDC says you can end isolation, but take precautions for five additional days. This includes wearing masks and avoiding travel.
How are BA.4 and BA.5 different? What other COVID-19 variants are there?
BA.4 and BA.5 share mutations with other omicron subvariants, such as BA.1 and BA.2, but contain additional mutations within the spike protein, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a public health institute in South Africa.
The two subvariants are identical to each other in terms of spike protein mutations, the institute said, but differ in mutations that are outside the spike gene.
BA.5 evades immunity better than BA.4, Weber said; however, it’s not believed to be more transmissible or cause more severe disease.
Except for a few random cases, Dowdy said, there’s probably no other coronavirus variants in circulation outside omicron and its sublineages. Delta and the variants that preceded it are likely out of the picture.
“When we’re talking about COVID, we’re talking about omicron now,” he said.
Do you believe ANY of this crap?
psychgirl
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Agree 100%!!
psychgirl
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Exactly.
While arguing can be productive in the process of discovery, this squabbling makes me nervous.
All of this does.
Or maybe I’ve just had too much coffee.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
Your rudeness isn't appreciated ...just saying...
ONCE AGAIN, if you actually read this thread instead of coming in and posting a hit and run - this is first and foremost a NEWS ARCHIVE THREAD, with subsequent discussion of articles posted or other info or reports. There is an important function that having an archive of the day's news serves, especially in our Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" times of erasing articles or denying what was said or done when it's no longer convenient. I don't have to believe what I post, I post what I find was reported each day to keep a record. As I've repeatedly said, and which you would know if you actually read the thread, the board software doesn't let me like or dislike my own posts but there are plenty of posts I would give a thumbs down to myself if I could. I also try to be balanced with vaccine stuff - I think about half the board is vaccinated and half isn't. This isn't a bash vaccines thread, that would not be fair to half the board. I try to do a balance - pro vaccine articles and anti-vaccine articles (which are only found on substack, and I post a few of those a night to balance it all out).
HD
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Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
This is not a they're both Christian type argument. I wish it was that simple. And it definitely should make you nervous, but not because "mommy and daddy are fighting" (ie: authority figures not presenting a unified front) but because of what Malone actually said and what he is positing. Geert is 100+ % right to confront it. In a nutshell, it's only a half a step away from saying "it's the immune compromised for whom the vaccines don't work who are generating mutations" to "it's the unvaccinated who are generating mutations". THINK! both the immune compromised and the unvaccinated have that in common - they don't have vaccine immunities to fight covid. Dwell on that and realize what Malone so casually threw into the dicussion. Geert is right to confront it, thank God for Geert, he may be the only thing standing between the unvaxxed and the pitch forks, and this better be sorted out now, not later.
HD