CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

psychgirl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Does anyone have the dosage for the horse paste ivermectin?

Pierre in his faq doesnt recommend it but if its all you have..
It goes by your weight.
Read the plunger in your tube, pull back to that amount. Lock it in, then squeeze to that amount.
Some brands use differing plungers so you need to pay attention to that

That’s all I know, but I used the paste a lot before obtaining the actual Rx human pills.
 

rob0126

Veteran Member
It goes by your weight.
Read the plunger in your tube, pull back to that amount. Lock it in, then squeeze to that amount.
Some brands use differing plungers so you need to pay attention to that

That’s all I know, but I used the paste a lot before obtaining the actual Rx human pills.

Im reading that the dosage is .2mg/kg of body wt
(lb÷2.2=kg)

So for me its roughly 16mg.

I just need to figure what that translates to with the tubes of 1.87%
 

Capt. Eddie

Veteran Member
16mg of 2% would be 800mg. I'm not a doctor nor am I giving medical advice, just doing math.

I've used the protocol I linked personally with great results.

ETA ... I've been BLESSED to be in a position to be able to supply the entire Ivermectin protocol to multiple close friends and all have had positive results. No hospital admissions and average recovery of under a week.
 
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Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic

Thank you for the tweet. I went to the 4hr 20 min spot in the video as prompted by the tweet. This was not an admission by the FDA, it was a presentation done by Steve Kirsch as a public comment to the FDA. Steve Kirsch is not an FDA person, he has been doing a really good job putting out info on the vaxx dangers though.

HD
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
What's going on in China is now reaching the New York Times. ....


(fair use applies)

China's COVID Surge Threatens Villages as Lunar New Year Approaches
David Pierson, Joy Dong, Claire Fu and Olivia Wang - NY Times
Sat, January 7, 2023, 10:11 AM EST

The infections in Dadi Village, a corn farming community tucked between verdant hills in China’s remote southwest, started in early December when a handful of young people returned from jobs in big cities.

The nearest hospital was an hour away, and few could afford the $7 bus fare there. The village clinic is not equipped with oxygen tanks or even an oximeter to detect if someone’s blood is dangerously deprived of oxygen. It quickly ran out of its stockpile of five boxes of fever medicine, so officials told sick residents to stay home and drink lots of water.

For three years, the villagers had avoided the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. But late last year, COVID-19 infections surged across China, forcing the government to abandon its stringent, yet ultimately futile, policy of mass lockdowns. It was only a matter of time before the virus wound its way out of the cities and arrived in poorer rural areas like Dadi, in Guizhou province, with the barest of medical care.

China is bracing for an onslaught of infections in its fragile countryside as millions of migrant workers crowd onto trains and buses to leave factory towns, construction sites and cities to return to their rural homes for the Lunar New Year holiday. The travel period, which begins Saturday and lasts 40 days, is expected to overwhelm the rural health care system only weeks after hospitals in wealthy cities like Beijing and Shanghai were buckled by the outbreak.

“What we are most worried about is that after three years, everyone … can finally go home for the new year to visit relatives,” Jiao Yahui, an official with China’s National Health Commission, told state media. With the populous countryside’s limited medical resources, she said, “how to deal with the peak of infection in vast rural areas has become a huge challenge.”

In Dadi, the local clinic is little more than a converted cottage with four rooms and a closet. At best, it can offer intravenous drips, but for no more than five or six people at a time. No one from the county government told the village to prepare for an outbreak, Gao Hong, a village official, said by phone.

Because cases in Dadi have so far been mild, Gao said, villagers were most in need of fever-reducing and cough medicines, but even those have been hard to come by. “We are too remote to get any medicine purchased online delivered,” he said.

Despite the lack of reliable government data, there are signs that COVID is already being transmitted freely in the countryside, particularly in places with large numbers of returning migrants like central Henan province.

Long lines of people have been forming outside village clinics there, according to state media. Such clinics and local community health centers are meant to serve as the first line of defense in a triage system and prevent overcrowding at county hospitals, which are often the closest places rural residents can be treated for serious medical conditions.

One such county hospital in Henan was so inundated with patients from the surrounding countryside that it had to ration fever-reducing medicine to patients registering a body temperature of 101.3 degrees or higher. Officials at another county hospital in central Anhui province said they had received so many patients that the facility would soon run out of critical care beds and ventilators.

China’s countryside is less densely populated than its cities, which could mean the virus will spread less quickly. But omicron variants have proved so infectious that population density may not make a difference, especially as friends and families gather to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Rural areas are also home to a disproportionate number of older adults, because so many younger people have left for the cities to seek better job opportunities.

The rate of vaccination in the rural areas is unclear. Nationwide, older adults have lower booster rates in general. The government tried in 2021 to ramp up inoculations but encountered resistance among residents skeptical of the safety of the vaccines, state media reported.

“When people move around, we are very likely going to see a surge of cases in the countryside, but the health care system does not have the capacity to withstand the rapid increase of demand,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Other countries such as India have already experienced the devastating consequences of a runaway outbreak in rural areas with underdeveloped health care. What later became known as the delta variant tore through the Indian countryside in early 2021, leaving bodies floating in the Ganges and villagers clamoring for what little supplies of oxygen were available.

In China, few things highlight the inequities between urban and rural life as starkly as medical care. Despite ongoing health reforms, access to everything from ventilators to fever medicine remains scant for the 500 million people who live in the countryside. Staffing in rural health facilities is also woefully low. There are 1.3 million physicians and 1.8 million nurses in rural China — roughly less than half as many per 1,000 people as there are in the cities, government statistics show.

Rural communities are largely served by grassroots health workers who have only minimal medical training; less than 1% hold university degrees, and just over half have graduated from vocational high schools. They’re often called upon only when needed.

“Village doctor is only a side job. The doctors need to farm as well,” said Hunter Ge, a migrant worker describing the level of care in Maxiaoji, his village of about 700 people in Henan that’s been hit with a massive virus outbreak.

Ge said village doctors couldn’t be relied upon for treating major illnesses but were often the only local source of medicine.

“They are quite nice,” said Ge, who works at a factory. “You can call a village doctor at midnight, if needed.”

Village health workers can provide basic services such as vaccinating babies and treating minor ailments. But experts say it’s unrealistic to expect them to know how to effectively treat COVID. Their lack of training makes them risk-averse, increasing the odds they’ll send people to a hospital and exacerbate overcrowding.

“What you ideally want is for people with less severe conditions to stay away from the higher-tier hospitals,” said Sean Sylvia, an assistant professor of health policy at the University of North Carolina who has studied rural China. “And if you’re relying on village doctors to appropriately triage patients, there’s a big question as to whether they can do that.”

The government is scrambling to address the looming crisis with social distancing restrictions, vaccination campaigns and pledges to improve the supply of drugs.

In southwestern Sichuan province, officials recently ordered villages to restrict gatherings at weddings, banquets and mahjong parlors. And southern Yunnan province is urging returning migrants to stay away from crowds and older people.

As recently as last month, the National Health Commission called on health workers in the countryside to expedite efforts to fully vaccinate rural residents, particularly older adults. In the southern island of Hainan, teams of Communist Party cadres, doctors and nurses are going door to door to vaccinate villagers.

The shortage of cough and fever medicines has been widespread, a result of the explosion of infections and stockpiling by residents. But those drugs only relieve symptoms. Antiviral treatments such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid, which can reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, are far more expensive and scarcer, even in cities where health care services are better, let alone the countryside.

The State Council, China’s Cabinet, issued a directive last week calling on local authorities and Communist Party cadres to marshal resources to blunt the outbreak by, among other things, ensuring medical supplies, bolstering critical care and prioritizing older adults. The Cabinet called for grassroots health workers to distribute health kits packed with fever and cough medicine, rapid antigen tests and masks to vulnerable groups.

Public health experts say the last-minute efforts underscore how ill-prepared the country was for the U-turn in COVID strategy.

“The bottom line is that these measures should have been rolled out prior to the policy pivot,” Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations said of the State Council’s directive.

“Many of the problems we are seeing in rural China are fundamentally problems in China’s health care reform, and you cannot expect to fix them in such a short period of time,” he said. “In short, they won’t be effective in significantly mitigating the harmful effects of the unbridled spread of COVID-19 in the countryside.”

Gao, the official in Dadi, said donors and nongovernmental groups recently delivered medicine to his village, offering relief for the community’s 760 residents. He estimates that 300 migrants will return to Dadi in the coming weeks and fuel infections, which currently stand at more than 150. Even if the medicine runs out, most will try to ride out the illness at home.

“This is not a rich village. It’s quite poor, actually,” Gao said. “It’s not realistic for villagers to spend 50 yuan to take a bus and buy medicine in the county. Even if they did take a bus, there’s no guarantee they’d get medicine because of the extreme scarcity.”
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


'Big uptick' in Ottawa's coronavirus wastewater levels in recent days
Public health recommendations still to mask, vaccinate and stay home when sick

Joseph Tunney · CBC News
Posted: Jan 06, 2023 4:00 AM ET

Levels of coronavirus in Ottawa's wastewater are comparable to last January when the Omicron subvariant was at its first peak, some experts say.

"We're seeing a big uptick," said Tyson Graber, associate scientist at the CHEO Research Institute and co-lead investigator on the COVID-19 wastewater project in Ottawa.

According to the data, the SARS COV-2 signal in Ottawa's wastewater roughly doubled between the third and fourth weeks of December, Graber said.

While Graber said the new XBB.1.5 COVID-19 subvariant likely isn't in the nation's capital in large quantities, it does remain a cause for concern.

But what's likely driving the high levels, according to preliminary data, is the BQ.1.1 subvariant that appears to have entered Ottawa in November and spread through holiday celebrations, Graber said.

But while BQ.1.1 may be responsible for what brought us here, some experts believe XBB.1.5 — a mutated version of Omicron — could "outcompete" other subvariants with its already rapid rise in the U.S.

ottawa-coronavirus-wastewater-january-2-2023.jpg

The amount of novel coronavirus in Ottawa's wastewater is slightly higher than the peak of January 2022. The most recent data is from Jan. 2, 2023. (613covid.ca)

The situation in Canada is more murky, given delays in data collection from across the provinces over the holidays, but Graber's team expects to see more of XBB.1.5 in the coming weeks.

"We do have some clinical sequences with XBB, and particularly XBB.1.5, in Ontario," he said. "So it is indeed here. It's just a matter of how fast that grows — and we don't know yet."

Graber also said people shouldn't panic, adding it's just the latest subvariant trying to find its niche.

In an email, Ottawa Public Health said its recommendations for what people should do to protect themselves and others don't change for any particular variant or subvariant of the virus.

Those recommendations include wearing a mask in indoor settings, having up-to-date vaccines — including a flu shot — screening oneself for even mild symptoms and staying home when necessary.

It said in its weekly Wednesday update coronavirus and other respiratory virus activity in the city was rising, while flu activity was stable after two weeks of dropping.

Difficult to know what's in store

Dr. Doug Manuel, a physician and senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and a professor at the University of Ottawa, said COVID-19 is on the rise in the northern hemisphere, with the nearby northeastern U.S. being one hotspot.

Manuel said new variants like XBB.1.5 are coming to Ottawa, but many questions remain.

"The question is, how much is this going to get into our vulnerable populations, our long-term care homes, our older folks, and result in a lot of morbidity and hospitalizations?" he said.

While it may be more transmissible, XBB.1.5 isn't believed to be more severe, Manuel said.

"We don't know yet. We don't think so," Manuel said. "But, again, worldwide, it's difficult to get this information quickly."

Graber said it's difficult to forecast what the presence of variants paired with already high levels of the virus in wastewater means for Ottawa.

"It's pretty safe to say at this point, we are in another wave. What is extremely difficult to predict is how high we will go," he said.

"My prediction right now is that this won't be a large wave, but I'm really not going to hang my hat on this. Because we've been wrong in the past and will be wrong again."
 

jward

passin' thru

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


China’s Covid wave threatens another snarl of U.S. medical supply chain
Shannon Pettypiece - NBC News
Sun, January 8, 2023, 1:04 PM EST

WASHINGTON — As Covid infections surge across China, the U.S. again risks falling short of medical supplies as that country struggles to keep factories running and goods flowing out of its ports.

U.S. hospitals, health care companies and federal officials worked to lessen their dependence on China for medical goods after the first wave of Covid infections in 2020 laid bare the major role China plays in manufacturing such crucial items as masks, latex gloves and surgical gowns, along with the key drugs and components in many medical devices.

Those efforts over the past three years are expected to be tested in the coming weeks and months as the virus rolls through China following the lifting of nearly all Covid restrictions there last month. China has stopped releasing official figures for infections and deaths, but media reports show hospitals overwhelmed with patients, funeral homes out of space for bodies, and factories unable to operate with so many workers ill.

The U.S. is already grappling with unrelated shortages of medications for children, including pain relievers and antibiotics.

U.S. officials and medical suppliers said in interviews that they were closely monitoring the situation in China and had yet to see any shortages directly linked to the latest wave of infections there. Biden administration officials said they had been coordinating across federal agencies to monitor the supply chain and didn't anticipate significant shortages, unlike at the start of the pandemic, because of government efforts to bolster U.S. stockpiles and moves by companies to lessen their dependence on China.

“We’re looking a lot for potential early warning signs in the medical supply chain for any kinds of disruptions,” said an administration official. “At this point, we haven’t detected any current or likely disruptions, at least to the flow of drugs or devices or supplies of PPE (personal protective equipment) to the United States given what’s going on in China.”

But health care executives and supply chain analysts warn the impact of China's latest Covid wave could take months to work its way through the supply chain and much will depend on the trajectory of the pandemic in the coming weeks, something officials in the U.S. have limited insight into given the lack of data from China.

“One major concern throughout the entire pandemic has been that because of China’s zero Covid policy, shutdowns greatly reduced manufacturing capacity in China. This is obviously that type of activity on steroids,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “This is by far the worst of the supply chain challenges we’ve seen so far in the pandemics from China.”

Potential shortages could range from generic drugs, like antibiotics and blood thinners, to electronic components used in advanced medical devices. Despite efforts over the past two years by the Biden administration to bolster the country’s domestic medical supply chain, the complexity, costs and regulations involved in health care manufacturing has limited companies’ ability to shift production.

“When you have specific intellectual property that’s attached to a specific manufacturer or you have very expensive factory production, which is typical in pharma and critical componentry like integrated circuits, those aren’t flip moves, there’s a lot that goes into that,” said Douglas Kent, executive vice president of corporate and strategic alliances at the Association for Supply Chain Management.

The U.S. imported $3.2 billion in drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients directly from China in 2020, including antibiotics, antidepressants, birth control pills and drugs for chemotherapy, according to a 2021 supply chain analysis by the White House.

More than a quarter of facilities making the active ingredients in blood thinners for the U.S. and nearly 20% of those making a type of anesthetic are based in China. Drugs imported into the U.S. from other countries, such as India and those in Europe, also get the vast majority of their ingredients from China, the report found.

The U.S. health care system has already been grappling with a range of shortages over the past year as a result of China’s Covid policies that caused factories to shut down and disrupted the flow of goods around the country. Last spring, doctors had to limit medical scans after a GE plant making an imaging agent used in the procedure was shutdown for weeks.

The Health Industry Distributors Association found that shipping delays for medical goods have persisted for the past year in part because of bottlenecks created by China’s rolling Covid disruptions. The group found as many as 10,000 medical containers were delayed an average of 25 days in October.

"While the situation has improved compared to the early stages of Covid back in 2020, the manufacturers and distributors are still facing shortages, long lead times and supply risks, combined with increased operational costs," said Vijay Mohan, a vice president at o9 Solutions, which provides supply chain management technology to health care companies. "The new wave of Covid that has started to re-emerge will further amplify the challenges."

There are some early signs of slowdowns at China’s biggest ports and in the completion of manufacturing orders, according to CNBC data. Other shipping data shows ocean crossings have continued to decline. But industry analysts say it will take several more weeks to determine how much of that is from the virus and how much is driven by waning demand from U.S. consumers brought on by other economic drivers.

The lack of data coming out of China about the number and location of infections, the mortality rate and variants has made it particularly difficult for companies to assess where they may run into disruptions. Logistics executives said they have been relying on their network of Chinese contacts and analytical data, which so far haven't indicated any major issues.

“We have this colossal and unprecedented and very rapidly moving pandemic that is going to be hitting multiple peaks in multiple different geographies with different timings, and we’re a little blind on the data that would begin to give us some more insight into what’s happening,” said Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Still, Morrison doesn’t expect the disruptions to be prolonged or widespread because health care companies have already been shifting their operations away from China.

“There’s been a lot of adjusting going on by industry, which has already begun to calculate that in terms of their strategic interests, they needed to lessen their exposure in China and diversify. So it’s a different reality now,” said Morrison. “If this had happened at the front end of the pandemic, the impacts would have been bigger, but we’ve had three years of recalibration.”

Businesses may also have to grapple with the risk that China will divert drugs and medical supplies to meet its own population’s needs, and move away from exporting those goods to other countries.

“If you build stuff that’s needed to keep your people healthy and there’s not enough to go around you’re going to revert to domestic satisfaction. I think that would be a natural response,” said Douglas Kent, executive vice president of corporate and strategic alliances at the Association for Supply Chain Management.

Chinese media reports indicate the country has been running low on items that reduce fevers, such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen, with Chinese companies adjusting production to meet those demands. But U.S. officials said they didn't anticipate there would be any significant shortages of those medications in the U.S. Johnson & Johnson, which makes Tylenol and Motrin, said it didn't get any of the active ingredients for those medications from China.

Health care officials say they hope that the U.S. is in a better place to withstand any shocks from China. After hospitals saw shortages of gloves, gowns and masks in the early days of the pandemic, many moved to keep larger stockpiles on hand. Hospitals have also increasingly looked to diversify which countries their essential supplies come from.

“We’ve seen a lot of success up and down the supply chain with ensuring that inventories are where they need to be,” said Kyle MacKinnon, senior director of operational excellence at Premier, which helps health care providers manage their supply chains. “It feels like there’s room to absorb some potential impacts of this. Now down to what degree is kind of harder to put your thumb on due to the potentially very large-scale level of Covid cases.”
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


China’s ‘mass migration’ begins amid COVID surge
Reuters
Sat, January 7, 2023, 3:32 PM EST

Amid a wave of COVID-19 infections across the country, China on Saturday (January 7) marked the first day of “chun yun”, the 40-day period of Lunar New Year travel… the first since 2020 without domestic travel restrictions.

More than two billion passengers are expected to take trips over the next 40 days, according to China’s ministry of transportation.

The Lunar New Year holiday officially runs from January 21.

There are widespread concerns that the great migration of workers in cities to their hometowns will cause a surge in infections in smaller towns and rural areas that are less equipped to handle the sick.

This Beijing resident said he’s concerned but will make the trip anyway.

“I haven’t gotten COVID-19 yet, so if the relatives are not positive, I’m afraid of carrying the virus back with me and infecting them. That would affect their health. But they have recovered from COVID-19 for a while now, so I am planning to visit them and spend the Lunar New Year with them. My grandparents have also told me many times that they miss me a lot.”

Over the last month China has seen the dramatic dismantling of its "zero-COVID" regime following historic protests.

While investors are hoping the reopening will reinvigorate China’s $17-trillion economy... the abrupt changes have exposed many of China's 1.4 billion people to the virus for the first time.

Chinese officials and state media have defended the handling of the outbreak and downplayed the severity of the surge.

Authorities say they are boosting grassroots medical services, opening more rural fever clinics and instituting plans for high-risk patients.

China reported three new COVID deaths on Friday, but international health experts believe Beijing’s narrow definition of COVID deaths does not reflect a true toll... and some predict more than a million could die this year.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Health Experts Warily Eye XBB.1.5, the Latest Omicron Subvariant

Carl Zimmer - NY Times
Sun, January 8, 2023, 10:24 AM EST

Three years into the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to impress virus experts with its swift evolution.

A young version, known as XBB.1.5, has quickly been spreading in the United States over the past few weeks. As of Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that it made up 72% of new cases in the Northeast and 27.6% of cases across the country.

The new subvariant, first sampled in autumn in New York state, has a potent array of mutations that appear to help it evade immune defenses and improve its ability to invade cells.

“It is the most transmissible variant that has been detected yet,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead at the World Health Organization, said at a news conference Wednesday.

XBB.1.5 remains rare in much of the world. But Tom Wenseleers, an evolutionary biologist at KU Leuven in Belgium, expects it to spread quickly and globally. “We’ll have another infection wave, most likely,” he said.

Advisers at WHO are assessing the risk that XBB.1.5 poses. Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the surge in cases would not match the first omicron spike that Americans experienced a year ago. “Is it a Category 5 hurricane?” he said. “No.”

Still, he warned that XBB.1.5 could worsen what is already shaping up to be a rough COVID winter as people gather indoors and don’t receive boosters that can ward off severe disease.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator, said the Biden administration was monitoring the emergence of XBB.1.5 and urging people to take advantage of existing countermeasures. Preliminary studies suggest that bivalent vaccines should provide decent protection against XBB and its descendants. Paxlovid will also remain effective at fighting infections.

“We feel pretty comfortable that our countermeasures are going to continue to work,” Jha said. “But we’ve got to make sure people are using them.”

One thing Lemieux and other experts are confident about is that XBB.1.5 is not the last chapter in the coronavirus’s evolution. In fact, they expect that a descendant of XBB.1.5 may soon gain mutations that make it even better at spreading.

That descendant may already exist, infecting people without raising notice yet. But sequencing efforts have declined so much worldwide that the discovery of the next generation of XBB.1.5 may be delayed. “As sequencing becomes less and less available at a global level, it’s difficult for us to track each of the subvariants of omicron,” Van Kerkhove said.

Scientists have reconstructed the evolution of XBB.1.5 (which some have nicknamed Kraken) by poring over new sequences of coronaviruses in online databases. The first major step came last year when two earlier forms of omicron infected the same person. As the viruses replicated, their genetic material was shuffled together. A new hybrid form emerged, with genetic material from both viral parents. Virus-watchers named it XBB.

This mixing, called recombination, happens fairly often among coronaviruses. Over the course of the pandemic, scientists have found a number of recombinant forms of SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID.

Most recombinant SARS-CoV-2 viruses have dwindled away in a matter of weeks or months, unable to outcompete other lineages. XBB, on the other hand, got a winning ticket in the genetic lottery. From one parent, it gained a set of mutations that helped it evade antibodies from previous infections and vaccinations. From the other parent, it gained a separate set of mutations that made it even more evasive.

“XBB literally picked up the most possible mutations that it could possibly pick up from those two parents,” said Thomas Peacock, a virus expert at Imperial College London. The new combination made XBB one of the most evasive omicron subvariants in existence last summer.

Recent experiments suggest that XBB paid a steep price for its power to evade immunity. The mutations allow it to escape antibodies by altering the shape of the protein, called spike, that covers its surface. But some of those mutations also make it harder for XBB spike proteins to grab tightly to cells — the first step required for an infection.

That loose grip may have lessened XBB’s advantage against other forms of the virus. In late 2022, it jostled alongside a number of other omicron subvariants. In Singapore, XBB caused a surge in October, for example, while remaining rare in many other parts of the world.

As XBB multiplied, it continued to mutate into new forms. The earliest samples of XBB.1.5 were isolated in October in New York. The new subvariant gained one crucial mutation, known as F486P.

Yunlong Cao of Peking University and his colleagues tested out XBB.1.5 in dishes of cells, comparing how it fared against earlier forms of XBB. The researchers found that the F486P mutation allowed XBB.1.5 to grab tightly to cells again. But the new subvariant could still evade antibodies as well as earlier forms of XBB.

Cao and his colleagues posted their results online Thursday. The data has not yet been published in a scientific journal.

XBB.1.5 most likely evolved somewhere in the northeastern United States, where early samples were first identified and where it remains most common. Once scientists could recognize it, they could track its growth.

In Connecticut, for example, Nathan Grubaugh at Yale University and his colleagues found that by mid-December, other omicron subvariants were falling. Only XBB.1.5 cases were growing. Grubaugh estimates that it is about 20% more transmissible than BQ.1, which had been the dominant form.

“It doesn’t have those signs of a really big wave like we saw before,” he said. “It’s not going to come close to what it was last year.”

How severe XBB.1.5 infections are compared with other forms of the coronavirus is not yet clear. “It’s serious,” Grubaugh said. “I just don’t necessarily know if it’s really more serious than some of the other omicron lineages in terms of the overall impact.”

XBB.1.5 has already spread to other countries and is growing rapidly in Germany, Denmark and elsewhere in Europe. But its impact is likely to differ from place to place. In India, for instance, it will encounter many people who were infected with its parental strains last year, so it may face stronger immunity, Peacock said.

In China, which experienced a large surge of cases in late 2022, its prospects are even harder to predict. For most of the pandemic, China almost never shared virus sequences with international databases. Cooperation has increased in the past few weeks, but the databases may still not reflect the state of play in the country.

Much of XBB.1.5’s advantage in the United States comes from its ability to evade existing immunity, including that which is against other omicron subvariants. In China, where there is less immunity, it may not have that edge. Peacock speculated that after other variants spread through China, it may then be XBB.1.5’s turn to rise.

Wenseleers said the spread of XBB.1.5 outside China made him skeptical that restrictions on Chinese travelers would keep cases down. “It’s kind of pointless,” he said. “It would be better to make sure the elderly are well vaccinated.”

As XBB.1.5 spreads, it continues to mutate, and experts believe that it can become even better at evading antibodies.

Scientists are already scanning new sequences being uploaded to an international database called GISAID in the hopes of spotting an upgraded version of XBB.1.5. But their job is getting harder because governments are pulling back on sequencing efforts. “Worldwide, sequencing has taken a real hit,” Peacock said.

The United States, which once lagged behind other nations, has managed to maintain a fairly strong sequencing effort. Without it, Peacock said, XBB.1.5 might have stayed below the radar for much longer. If XBB.1.5’s next generation is evolving somewhere with little sequencing, it may go undetected for some time to come.

Lemieux said paring back on sequencing was a mistake, given how many infections and deaths the virus is still causing. “This is a part of public health,” he said.

And Peacock said that XBB.1.5 demonstrated that the evolution of the coronavirus would not slow down anytime soon. “Give it another two years, and maybe we can reassess where we think this is,” he said.
 

psychgirl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID response coordinator, said the Biden administration was monitoring the emergence of XBB.1.5 and urging people to take advantage of existing countermeasures. Preliminary studies suggest that bivalent vaccines should provide decent protection against XBB and its descendants. Paxlovid will also remain effective at fighting infections.
He forgot to mention IVM.
 

Zoner

Veteran Member
I have NO idea who this man is….I stumbled on his long thread while reading Dr Haider Twitter feed….truly, just read what he has to say about the blood and clotting issue. :eek:
It’s very compelling.
And frightening.


View: https://twitter.com/Parsifaler/status/1512570968719429648


View: https://twitter.com/DrSyedHaider/status/1611956571231367171?cxt=HHwWhsDR2cD96N4sAAAA
That is scary. I’ve been reading how Covid as a bioweapon is destroying the NAD in the cell. NMN and NAC replace it.
I also have those two supplements Dr. Haider refers to in his tweet.

What have these evil people unleashed on the human race?
Can God‘s judgment be that far away?
 
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Zoner

Veteran Member
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