The Playground

  • Canada secretly tracked 33 million phones during COVID-19 lockdown: report


    Canada secretly tracked 33 million phones during COVID-19 lockdown: report
    The Public Health Agency of Canada clandestinely tracked the devices to assess “the public’s responsiveness during lockdown measures.”
    nypost.com


    Canada’s federal government admitted to secretly surveilling its population’s movements during the COVID-19 lockdown by tracking 33 million phones.


    The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) clandestinely tracked the devices to assess “the public’s responsiveness during lockdown measures,” the agency acknowledged last week, according to Blacklock’s Reporter, which first reported the disclosure.


    Canada’s entire population totals 38 million, according to Statistics Canada.


    “Evidence is coming in from many sources, from countries around the world, that what was seen as a huge surveillance surge — post 9/11 — is now completely upstaged by pandemic surveillance,” David Lyon, author of “Pandemic Surveillance” and the former director of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University in Ontario, told the National Post.

    The PHAC bought location and movement data from Canadian telecom giant Telus to “understand possible links between the movement of populations within Canada and the spread of COVID-19,” an agency spokesperson said, according to the paper.


    The public health organization plans to continue tracking population movement for at least the next five years to control “other infectious diseases, chronic disease prevention and mental health,” the unnamed rep said.

  • The CDC is a freaking joke, the surge has already started and will end before they even realize it's started. Experts my ass!


    Omicron variant will create a surge in January or April, CDC predicts

    The omicron variant’s surge could happen in January or April based on recent modeling


    Omicron variant will create a surge in January or April, CDC predicts

    The omicron variant’s surge could happen in January or April based on recent modeling


  • Jeffrey Morris vs Steve Kirsch - Round 3.


    Steve Kirsch has recently posted a rebuttal of Jeffrey Morris's take-down of Kirsch's arguments re VAERS and COVID vaccine death rates.


    Now - perhaps all readers here view Kirsch as EITHER a kook incapable of logical though OR a profoundly poisonous liar. If not, they quite likely find his rebuttal convincing - especially because it includes ad hominem attacks on Morris:


    Is Professor Jeffrey S. Morris the "truth teller" he claims to be?
    No chance. Professor Jeffrey Morris, a biostats professor at UPenn, started writing critiques of my work claiming he was just interested in exposing the truth.…
    stevekirsch.substack.com


    You cannot always easily determine truth in these hard-fought debates. Even when truth is clear I find them fascinating because the way that people avoid questions tells you so much


    Here is Morris's reply:


    Response to Steve Kirsch's ad hominem attack, and clarifying the key sleight of hand in his argument
    Here I am pulling out an Appendix to a recent blog post that responds to Steve Kirsch's substack post he wrote in response to that blog post, that tries to…
    www.covid-datascience.com


    If you read the two texts in detail (it takes a while) who wins (Morris) is quite clear.


    I'll just highlight the key issue here.


    Kirsch's argument centres around estimates of vaccine adverse event rate based on calculating the VAERS URF (under-reporting factor). Obviously, if we know this, we can then estimate events that might be vaccine adverse events or might be background events.


    Morris argues:

    (1) In order to make his URF estimate Kirsch has to make an unproven assumption

    (2) Using a different more reliable dataset (CMS) which Kirsch also quotes, this assumption is provably badly wrong.


    Kirsch argues:

    (1) Morris does not address the question of what is the VAERS URF but brings up a whole load of other stuff to distract from this omission.

    (2) Morris does not address the question of what is the real vaccine adverse event rate


    What is interesting here is that the two ways Morris does not address the question Kirsch wants answered are logically inescapable.


    • The VAERS underreporting rate cannot be estimated in any correct way - it depends on unknown factors.
    • The vaccine adverse event rate cannot be determined from VAERS


    Kirsch is claiming an argument that cannot work, and then saying anyone who proves it can't work is wrong because they do not have an alternate argument of the same type that does work. Morris actually shows why this is true in detail.


    Unfortunately - none of this logic matters to the many followers of Kirsch.

    Nor, I'd guess, to quite a few of the readers of this thread.


    I'd love to know whether jox and FM1 and Zephir and W count with the Kirsch followers on this (and somehow avoid seeing the error here) or whether they see the Kirsch arguments as complete (typical antivaxxer) BS.


    THH

  • Is this really an outpatient treatment?


    As the omicron surge pummels a pandemic-weary nation, the first antiviral pills for Covid-19 promise desperately needed protection for people at risk of severe disease. However, many people prescribed Pfizer’s or Merck’s new medications will require careful monitoring by doctors and pharmacists, and the antivirals may not be safe for everyone, experts caution.


    Pfizer antiviral pills may be risky with other medications
    Pfizer Covid pills for symptoms may cause harmful reactions if taken with other prescription medications.
    www.nbcnews.com


    The Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer’s Paxlovid for mild to moderate Covid in people as young as 12 who have underlying conditions that raise the risk of hospitalization and death from the coronavirus, such as heart disease or diabetes. However, one of the two drugs in the antiviral cocktail could cause severe or life-threatening interactions with widely used medications, including statins, blood thinners and some antidepressants. And the FDA does not recommend Paxlovid for people with severe kidney or liver disease.


    Because of experts’ concerns about the potential side effects of Merck’s molnupiravir, the FDA has restricted its use to adults and only in scenarios in which other authorized treatments, including monoclonal antibodies, are inaccessible or are not “clinically appropriate.”


    The Paxlovid cocktail consists of two tablets of the antiviral nirmatrelvir and one tablet of ritonavir, a drug that has long been used as what is known as a boosting agent in HIV regimens. Ritonavir suppresses a key liver enzyme called CYP3A, which metabolizes many medications, including nirmatrelvir. In the case of Paxlovid treatment, ritonavir slows the body’s breakdown of the active antiviral and helps it remain at a therapeutic level for longer.


    The boosting effect was likely to have been crucial in driving Paxlovid’s high effectiveness in clinical trials.

    When Paxlovid is paired with other medications that are also metabolized by the CYP3A enzyme, the chief worry is that the ritonavir component may boost the co-administered drugs to toxic levels.


    Complicating matters, the drugs that pose interaction risks are widely prescribed to people at the greatest risk from Covid because of other health conditions.


    The medications include, but are not limited to: blood thinners; anti-seizure medications; drugs for irregular heart rhythms, high blood pressure and high cholesterol; antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications; immunosuppressants; steroids (including inhalers); HIV treatments; and erectile dysfunction medications.


    “Some of these potential interactions are not trivial, and some pairings have to be avoided altogether,” said Peter Anderson, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “Some are probably easily managed. But some we’re going to have to be very careful about.”

    In its fact sheet about Paxlovid, the FDA has published a detailed list of medications that may interact harmfully with ritonavir, including those that should not be paired with the Covid antivirals.


    However, pharmacists stress that many of the drug interactions are manageable and that they should not preclude most people from taking Paxlovid.


    “Pharmacists are highly trained experts in medication safety and monitoring and are an excellent source of information and advice about interactions between medications and also supplements and herbal products,” said Emily Zadvorny, a clinical pharmacist who is the executive director of the Colorado Pharmacists Society. “They will help determine if a significant interaction exists and devise solutions to mitigate the interaction if possible.”


    ‘A breakthrough drug’

    The good news is that health care providers have experience navigating ritonavir’s use among people with HIV — a group that often takes medications for other health conditions, in addition to antiretroviral therapy.

    Dr. William Werbel, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in transplant infectious diseases, advised people at high risk of Covid-19 complications to talk to their health care providers, as well as a savvy pharmacist, about changes they could make to their drug regimens should they need Paxlovid — even before they become infected with the virus.

    Anyone seeking Paxlovid, which must be prescribed within five days of the first symptoms, should be sure to let their prescribers and pharmacists know the complete lists of other medications and over-the-counter supplements they are taking, Anderson said.


    Some medications, such as particular statins, are most likely safe to stop taking during treatment with the Covid pills, Anderson said. For example, it might be better to stay on certain blood thinners but to lower the doses. Some heart rhythm drugs cannot be taken with Paxlovid.


    Conversely, some anti-seizure medications can boost liver enzymes’ metabolic action and thus lower the body’s Paxlovid levels, as can the herbal supplement St. John’s Wort. The FDA warned that they should not be combined with Paxlovid.

    Because the Paxlovid treatment is brief — 30 pills, taken as three pills twice a day for five days — experts are hopeful that the risk of adverse interactions with other medications is low.


    “Five days of interactions is not a big deal for the majority of drugs,” said Jason Gallagher, a clinical pharmacy specialist in infectious diseases at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.


    If a drug’s potential interaction with Paxlovid poses too much of a risk, Anderson said, a safe and effective alternative Covid-19 therapy would be GlaxoSmithKline’s sotrovimab — the sole authorized monoclonal antibody treatment that research indicates reliably neutralizes the omicron variant of the virus. Otherwise, the antiviral molnupiravir is an option, albeit one with a much lower efficacy than either Paxlovid or sotrovimab.


    Even with the concerns about taking Paxlovid with other prescription medications, experts are excited about the drug's potential.

    Paxlovid is a breakthrough drug,” Anderson said. “This could make a real difference in the pandemic by making an effective Covid treatment available to many people.”

  • Canada’s federal government admitted to secretly surveilling its population’s movements during the COVID-19 lockdown by tracking 33 million phones.

    FM/R/B country on an Orwell trip.

    My phone very often stays home. But people like their transponders....

    Omicron variant will create a surge in January or April, CDC predicts

    The omicron variant’s surge could happen in January or April based on recent modeling

    These idiots loaded CDC/FDA with FM/R/B brain dead clerks that barely made their exam without mafia support...


    The Omicron wave is now. Now is December. Look at Florida or New York figures!

    The Paxlovid cocktail consists of two tablets of the antiviral nirmatrelvir and one tablet of ritonavir, a drug that has long been used as what is known as a boosting agent in HIV regimens. Ritonavir suppresses a key liver enzyme called CYP3A, which metabolizes many medications, including nirmatrelvir. In the case of Paxlovid treatment, ritonavir slows the body’s breakdown of the active antiviral and helps it remain at a therapeutic level for longer.

    Ivermectin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Almost zero drug interaction. And best the new iodine treatment (total costs 10 cents) of the nostrils that leads to a 19x reduction of death!!! Look at the latest FLCCC video shown during teh last 10 minutes!


    Here once more the link ::https://odysee.com/@FrontlineC…CC-WEBINAR-121521_FINAL:9

  • The CDC is a freaking joke, the surge has already started and will end before they even realize it's started. Experts my ass!

    In the UK we can have some idea of how long the omicron surge will last based on:


    Number of positive people each week is as known from ONS random sample infection survey.


    If you know how long omicron infections keep people positive (on average) and put all this data together you can estimate the number of people who have had an omicron infection. Once this gets to > 50% of the population (given we also have some decent efficacy from recent boosters of maybe 40% of the population) we should get to the end of the omicron wave.


    There are some unknowns here obviously - which is why no-one is quite sure. The biggest one is how high the omicron rate will go.


    Here is most recent data for fraction of population positive.


    For the week 13-19 December: 1:35 people in population (England). 1:20 people in population (London) which seems to be getting close to a peak.


    I'd dearly like to know equivalent figures for SA where cases went up and then down v quickly. But they do not have accurate whole population random sample testing so I see no reliable way to get this.


    If you reckon omicron tests positive for on average about a week a max figure of 1:20 infected corresponds to about 10 weeks for the peak (50% infected).


    There is a lot of uncertainty here. We won't know much more until after Christmas when transmission rates go up again. Anyway, the UK experts reflect this uncertainty and seem to be about right (withy quite some variation due to uncertainty).


    THH

  • A Myth is Born: How CDC, FDA, and Media Wove a Web of Ivermectin Lies That Outlives The Truth


    A Myth is Born: How CDC, FDA, and Media Wove a Web of Ivermectin Lies That Outlives The Truth
    By Linda Bonvie and Mary Beth PfeifferThis article marks the start of a publishing collaboration between Trial Site News and Rescue.substack, where it
    trialsitenews.com


    By Linda Bonvie and Mary Beth Pfeiffer


    This article marks the start of a publishing collaboration between Trial Site News and Rescue.substack, where it first published on Dec. 23, 2021. Future articles by Mary Beth Pfeiffer will be simultaneously published in both outlets. Please subscribe to Rescue and Trial Site News for incisive pandemic reporting.


    New Mexico officials admit they were wrong: Two people died from covid. NOT from ivermectin. Yet the CDC generated the nation’s highest health alert and a thousand fake headlines on false cases.


    An ornament with a photo of the Texas cattleman, whose death was falsely attributed to ivermectin and used as part of a deliberate effort to make that perfectly safe drug appear to be highly dangerous, is lovingly hung on the family Christmas tree by his daughter.


    When a Texas cattleman, seventy-nine, died last September in New Mexico after contracting covid, his family never anticipated the worldwide headlines that would ensue. In a ballyhooed press conference, New Mexico Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase, the state’s top health chief, announced New Mexico’s first ivermectin “overdose,” soon adding a second fatality allegedly from “ivermectin toxicity.”


    Now, Scrase has acknowledged that his repeated, what he called “offhand,” assertions were groundless. Two deaths were not caused by ivermectin, a long-used generic drug that was emerging as a covid treatment. Instead, he said that the pair died because they “actually just delayed their care with covid.”



    That is a big difference.

    Scrase backpedaled on December 1 in a little-noticed online press briefing and only after we pressed his agency to provide evidence for its claims of so-called “ivermectin deaths.” Officials had repeatedly said they were awaiting a toxicology report on the cattleman’s death. Yet we learned that the report was never even ordered or done, and, moreover, the man’s death was ruled by the state’s coroner as being from “natural” causes.


    Not a single media outlet reported Scrase’s admission, even as dozens, including the The Hill and The New York Times, had eagerly covered his original assertions about ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015. “I don’t want more people to die,” read one early headline, quoting Scrase. “It’s the wrong medicine for something really serious,” Scrase said in the Times article.


    Doctors, scientists, and toxicologists worldwide were puzzled by the assertions, because ivermectin is an extraordinarily safe, FDA-approved drug. A fixture on the WHO’s list of 100 essential medicines all hospital systems are recommended to carry, nearly four billion doses have been given in four decades.


    New Mexico became a key player in a broad pattern of governmental deception late last summer to portray ivermectin as dangerous, in tandem with three related developments. Research strongly supported the drug’s efficacy against covid; prescriptions were soaring; and public health officials were single-mindedly focused not on treatment but on vaccination.


    We previously reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s tweeted warning last August against using ivermectin meant for livestock was prompted by incorrect—and unverified—information from Mississippi. Health officials there had posted an alert suggesting the state’s poison control center was deluged with hundreds of calls over ingestion of livestock ivermectin; in reality, we found, four reports were received.


    But, fueled by bits of contorted evidence like this, the anti-ivermectin train was unstoppable. We have now learned that, in the rush to bury a drug described as “astonishingly safe” and long used globally to quell animal and human parasites, FDA was not alone.


    Emails we obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control show that an influential August 26 national health alert on ivermectin was spurred, like the FDA tweet, by a sliver of evidence: just three cases of alleged ivermectin side effects, two involving animal formulations. No patient died; one appeared to have been hospitalized, and one declined any medical help.


    Nonetheless, those three reports, obtained by Atlanta-based CDC from the Georgia poison control center, sealed the decision to issue the nation’s highest-level health warning, according to the emails.



    Shortly after learning of three cases, CDC’s Michael Yeh writes, “we have evidence of significant toxicity.”


    Referring to planning for the health alert, “the consensus was that unless we’re seeing bad adverse effects from ivermectin, we’d hold off,” wrote a CDC medical toxicity officer, Dr. Michael Yeh, in an August 17 email. “Now it sounds like we have evidence of significant toxicity.”


    That email was written seventy-two minutes after brief information on three reports arrived in a separate email.


    While CDC’s intention might have been to protect people, the alert is emblematic of what had become a national obsession: Portray an early treatment for covid—whether in the animal or human form—as potentially toxic.


    CDC hopped aboard.

    In an email later that day, Yeh laid out the evidence. The most serious case involved a man, seventy-seven, who had was said to have taken a dose of ivermectin “apparently meant for an 1800 lb. bovine.” He had “hallucinations and tremors, which improved but he was eventually diagnosed with COVID-19” for which he needed only supplemental oxygen, Yeh notes.


    In two other cases, a woman who took the human form of the drug was said to have suffered “some confusion.” Another woman had “subjective visual disturbances” after taking “a product meant for sheep” but declined medical help. These side effects are in keeping with what the National Institutes of Health calls a “well-tolerated” anti-parasitic drug with such adverse effects as “dizziness, pruritis, nausea, or diarrhea.”


    French researchers published a review last March of 350 ivermectin articles in the medical literature and found adverse effects to be “infrequent and usually mild to moderate.” The study, by the French drugmaker MedinCell, noted that no deaths were reported even after accidental overdoses or suicide attempts.


    In view of ivermectin’s well-established safety profile, our request for CDC documents under the Freedom of Information Act sought the rationale for the health alert and specifically asked for the data CDC used from the American Association of Poison Control Centers, to which state centers report. (AAPCC had refused to provide it.)


    In response to the FOIA request, CDC asserted, quite remarkably, that it “no longer possesses or has access to the data” because its “licensing agreement” with AAPCC had lapsed. The data might have specified, for example, just how many calls were related either to animal or human formulations; the alert instead lumps all reports together, making it difficult to fathom the extent of livestock ivermectin use.



    The CDC asserts in a letter to us that it no longer possesses the data on which a national health alert was based.


    An increase in ivermectin calls to poison control centers in 2021 is not in dispute, especially as doctors learned of studies showing fewer deaths, shorter hospitalizations, and outpatient success. Poison control centers often see upticks in calls when new drugs come into use, with many callers seeking only information. Centers also field calls on old, long-established medications. Acetaminophen alone generated 47,000 reports in 2019 and led to 164 deaths, according to the AAPCC.


    This context, of course, was missing from CDC’s alert. Calls to poison control centers for use of animal and human ivermectin grew five- to eight-fold from “pre-pandemic levels,” the alert ominously reported. At the same time, it said, ivermectin prescriptions had soared twenty-four-fold—in a perfectly legal trend led by physicians but one the CDC clearly found unacceptable and alarming.


    No distinction was made between animal and human formulations in the alert, which was peppered with phrases like “ivermectin misuse and overdose;” “seizures, coma, and death;” “sheep drench,” “severe illness,” and “rapid increase.” The message: Don’t use either form, even as seventy-one studies show 64 percent of 50,180 patients improved after taking ivermectin for covid.


    Despite the alert and New Mexico’s unfounded pronouncements, no one has died from ivermectin poisoning among 2,112 cases logged by AAPCC from January 1 to December 14, 2021. Two percent of those reports, about forty-two, involved a “major” effect, an AAPCC bulletin states. Seventy percent were dismissed as having no effect, “nontoxic exposure,” and the like.


    One category of those calls might rightfully have been classified as anti-ivermectin hysteria. New Mexico, for example, urged citizens to report any known ivermectin use to the state’s poison control center, even if “someone you know has taken it.”


    We asked Dr. Paul Marik, a founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, his thoughts on the effort to vilify ivermectin as dangerous.


    “Ivermectin is one of the safest medications on this planet; far safer than aspirin or acetaminophen,” he said. “This is a fairy tale. Disney could not come up with a better fairy tale.”


    But it was no kind of fantasy for the cattleman’s family when he got sick. It was a painful experience with a politicized health system.


    A “Very Puzzling” Phone Call

    It wasn’t a secret that a cattleman, who died while in New Mexico from covid, took an animal formulation of ivermectin. It is a drug he was well versed in using, having routinely administered it to his herds in Texas.


    Others in the family also used Ivomec, a liquid formulation of ivermectin for cattle, since news spread of ivermectin’s effectiveness against covid. “Practically everyone I know takes it,” we were told by a close family friend and business associate of the Texan. (We are withholding the man’s name at the family’s request.)


    Ivermectin is just one of 167 drugs tested for safety and approved by the FDA for both animals and humans. Yet those who take either form of ivermectin for covid have been characterized as being anti-science and influenced by “misinformation.”


    The Texan is one of two individuals who, according to repeated statements from New Mexico officials, died from “ivermectin toxicity.” While their identities were not revealed by the department of health, a source familiar with the cases released them to us during this investigation.


    Documents and interviews with those knowledgeable about the death of the rancher tell a different story than the narrative put forth by New Mexico health officials.


    When the cattleman arrived at the ER on the evening of September 2 with his wife, he was soon diagnosed as suffering from acute dehydration as well as being covid positive.


    His daughter arrived at the hospital several hours later.


    In an interview, she told of the surprise eightieth birthday party for her dad the weekend before, where eight of the eleven family members attending ended up with covid. Everyone seemed to have mild symptoms, she recalled.


    With her dad in New Mexico and not feeling well, she suggested he be checked out. “My father was not very good at keeping himself hydrated,” she said, and at that point he didn’t seem to be drinking at all.


    He arrived at the hospital dehydrated to the point that his kidneys had become damaged, doctors told the family. Lacking a proper dialysis machine at the Lincoln County Medical Center, the family was told that they were trying to locate another hospital to send him to. Unfortunately, he never made it out of Ruidoso, dying on September 3.


    But what happened while his wife and daughter anxiously waited outside the ICU, soon after being informed that the Texan was likely going to pass away, struck them as most peculiar.


    His daughter recalled a “very puzzling” phone call her mother received—so disturbing, in fact, that she felt like “yanking the phone from her.”


    An unknown man was on the line asking if her father took ivermectin. It was the only time she remembers that particular drug being discussed in the hospital. “I feel like they were pushing her. It was really irritating,” she said, adding, “it was not a doctor or nurse, but mom cannot remember who it was or what they represented.”


    They were most interested, she recalled, in grilling her mother about her dad’s use of Ivomec.


    At the very next press briefing, Dr. Scrase announced that a “reliable source” reported the state’s “first death” from someone who took ivermectin. While he hedged his bets about the role of ivermectin—and mentioned delayed care—he nonetheless repeatedly characterized the man’s death and one other as specifically being caused by ivermectin.


    However, the cattleman’s death certificate, filed at the end of September, says otherwise. It stated he passed away from “natural” causes. His death was not listed as requiring any type of “pending investigation,” and the medical examiner’s office confirmed the fact that no autopsy or toxicology report was done.


    But Dr. Scrase’s original tale proved to be very popular with the media. USA Today liked it so much the paper released several versions. “Two die of ivermectin poisoning,” it announced the same day the death certificate was officiated. Five days after that, a headline in The Hill trumpeted, “New Mexico reports two deaths from ivermectin.”


    The New Mexico Department of Health has yet to respond to any questions about why a straightforward correction was not made to the media early on regarding the two deaths that were erroneously attributed to ivermectin. It is also not clear why at a recent press briefing the agency was continuing to perpetuate this fallacy even after admitting it was untruthful, rather than correcting the record—and why they have alleged another ivermectin-related death, again without offering any evidence to that effect.


    The second supposed ivermectin death involved a thirty-eight-year-old woman from Cuba, New Mexico, reportedly of Navajo heritage. An autopsy was done, but the results have yet to be released.


    While Scrase has acknowledged that the two deaths were from covid, not ivermectin, he nonetheless announced what he called yet a “third” ivermectin death at his December 1 briefing.


    The new death, Scrase said, is a “60-year-old man who took a horse preparation. This gentleman took 150 milligrams, [suffered] liver failure, kidney failure and actually died from the ivermectin without the covid.”


    As with the first two cases, the cause of death remains to be seen.


    According to Dr. Marik, 150 milligrams of ivermectin can be safely tolerated. “I do not know of a single case of liver failure and organ failure due to ivermectin,” he wrote in an email.


    Both the CDC and New Mexico Department of Health declined to answer questions for this article.



    Despite ongoing requests by the New Mexico Department of Health for residents to report any ivermectin use, as this slide displayed during a December 1 press conference shows, only 29 calls came into the state’s poison control center for most all of 2021. The graphic also states that ivermectin caused three deaths in the state, despite the fact that during that very same press briefing it was acknowledged that the first two of the alleged deaths were due to covid, not ivermectin (with no evidence released to support the third claim).


    The CDC emails suggest it took very little to convince the agency to issue a national warning about the use of ivermectin. Details on those three cases are scant, the emails show.


    Ivermectin dosages are missing or, in one case, described as “concentration unknown.” One woman “was sent to the hospital, but her baseline mental status was unclear.” Another woman was to be contacted for follow-up after declining aid, but there is no indication this was done.


    These anecdotal bits are the threads from which a mythical tapestry about so-called “ivermectin toxicity” has been woven. This myth lives on in easily accessed online articles.


    Among them:


    Mississippi’s health alert on August 19 said 70 percent of poison-control calls were for ingestion of livestock ivermectin. The actual figure was 2 percent; it was not corrected for forty-six days.

    FDA claimed last March to have “received multiple reports” of injury and hospitalization after people took livestock ivermectin. In reality, the agency relied on four reports, a spokesperson said in an email. CDC officials referenced the FDA “consumer warning” when planning their own contribution to the myth of ivermectin harm.

    It matters little that false Mississippi figures were corrected (at our behest) by The New York Times, twice, and The Washington Post. What matters is the hurricane of fear, whipped up by New Mexico, Mississippi, the FDA, and CDC—and abetted by media—made ivermectin into something it was not.


    So where do we stand as vaccines fail and cases rise?


    On October 28, WisPolitics.com reported the case of a family that failed to convince a court to give FDA-approved ivermectin to their dying loved one.


    “There have been multiple reports nationally,” the website reported, “of people taking the version of the drug intended for animals to combat COVID-19 and sickening themselves in the process.”


    Unsupported in the medical literature, the false image of ivermectin convinced doctors in that case to suggest that “the prescribed dosage may be lethal.”


    Indeed, the invented peril, rather than promise, of ivermectin has become ingrained in the national media and consciousness.


    That is the story that lives

  • An ornament with a photo of the Texas cattleman, whose death was falsely attributed to ivermectin and used as part of a deliberate effort to make that perfectly safe drug appear to be highly dangerous, is lovingly hung on the family Christmas tree by his daughter.

    A Zaire doctor ordered a disparate province doctor to feed a dying patient in total 3x of a horse package ivermectin. The patient did survive. But it is not clear whether a horse would do the same...


    I hope all these criminals that killed about 700'000 US citizen by depriving them an ultra save medication like HCQ & Ivermectin get jailed for a very long time...

  • I hope, that someday the science& medicine etc are known so we are positive what happens and we have real “experts” that know how to treat this.

    Not just a couple of guys that think this might work based on what they’ve seen in a small sample size.

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    A recent educative video. Crying for People to at least consider this is good.

  • Gates Funded Study Indicates COVID-19 Vaccines Lose Efficacy Against Omicron



    Gates Funded Study Indicates COVID-19 Vaccines Lose Efficacy Against Omicron
    Recently, a group of research scientists affiliated with Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons along with colleagues from Hong
    trialsitenews.com



    Recently, a group of research scientists affiliated with Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons along with colleagues from Hong Kong delved deeply into the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 (B.1.1.528) just detected in early November in South Africa. Now spreading rapidly around the world, this highly contagious mutant includes many spike mutations that potentially mitigate or disrupt the effectiveness of current COVID-19 vaccines and antibody therapies. This recent study confirms and even amplifies these concerns. Led by corresponding author David D. Ho, MD, Director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University, the study team shared that based on their study results, Omicron is noticeably resistant to convalescent plasma as well as four prominent COVID-19 vaccines. They conclude that this mutant poses a real problem for public health authorities in the war against COVID-19. The implications of these findings cannot be discounted if they hold up. Mass breakthrough infections could ensue.


    Already peer reviewed, these findings are published in an advanced review format. This means that the study findings are already accepted for publication in the prestigious Nature journal, yet are “provided in this format here as a response to the exceptional public-health crisis.” However, this indicates the manuscript could undergo further copy editing and formatting.


    The study’s corresponding author has been investigating infectious diseases for over 25 years centering on HIV investigation. Dr. Ho is joined by other colleagues from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, as well as investigators from the University of Hong Kong, Center for Virology, Vaccinology, and Therapeutics.


    The Vaccines under a Microscope

    The team tested the neutralizing activity of sera from individuals who received one of four of the most popular vaccines in the West including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and AstraZeneca.



    What about MaBs?

    The study team included 19 well-characterized monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in the testing of their neutralization profile to the spike protein including 17 directed to the RBD and two directed to the N-terminal domain (NTD).


    Monoclonal antibodies tested included those from Regeneron and Brii Biosciences and others, including specialized developments provided by NIH and MIT.


    Findings

    The study team reported a comprehensive analysis across a panel of monoclonal antibodies associated with all known epitope clusters on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. They found that Omicron mutations adversely impacted 17 of 19 tested antibodies—meaning they were “abolished or impaired” including those authorized for use in patients.


    Also, four (4) mutations in the spike of SARS-CoV-2 (S371L, N440K, G446S, and Q493R) suggest far greater antibody resistance to Omicron. Thus, this mutant poses real problems associated with existing COVID-19 vaccines and antibodies.


    It is troubling that even individuals boosted with mRNA-based vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) show diminished neutralizing power against Omicron.


    Funding

    Gates Foundation

    JPB Foundation

    Health@InnoHK

    National Science Foundation

    Peggy Cherng (billionaire behind Panda)

    Conflicts?

    In the conflict section of this study, a handful of the research team filed a patent and provisional patent on behalf of Columbia University for several SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies discussed in the research manuscript.


    The lead study author, Dr. David Ho, is the founder of the monoclonal antibody biotech venture TaiMed Biologics.


    Columbia University & TaiMed Biologics Deal

    Back in August of last year, Columbia University licensed some of the neutralizing antibodies discussed in this study. For example in this exclusive contract Columbia licensed specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies to the venture for the development, manufacture, and commercialization of the Columbia University intellectual property (IP) developed by Ho and his colleagues.


    Lead Research/Investigator

    David D. Ho, MD, Director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University


    The rest of the author team can be viewed at the source.


    Call to Action: New interventions must be developed to deal with the continually unfolding and mutating SARS-CoV-2. But TrialSite raises some questions. Weren’t the mRNA vaccines considered superior for exactly this reason? That they could be rapidly and economically updated based on deltas in the pathogen? Does Dr. Ho and team have TaiMed have advantages now for R&D efforts


    Striking antibody evasion manifested by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2
    Discover the world’s best science and medicine | Nature.com
    www.nature.com

  • Yes, I guess targeting the N protein belongs in the playground, right Huxley!


    First “variant of concern” evolved to evade immune system

    Alpha, Delta and Omicron contain mutations in the same DNA regions


    First “variant of concern” evolved to evade immune system
    The Alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2—the first “variant of concern”—evolved mutations that allowed it to more efficiently suppress the immune system’s early…
    www.eurekalert.org


    The Alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2—the first “variant of concern”—evolved mutations that allowed it to more efficiently suppress the immune system’s early response to infection, according to a new study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) and University College London.


    The researchers have discovered that the variant has ramped up production of a protein that it uses to stifle infected cells’ immune-stimulating signals. The mutations responsible for this change likely help the Alpha variant evade immune detection and accelerates its transmission, and importantly similar mutations exist in Omicron. The findings are reported in the December 23rd issue of Nature.


    The team, led by senior authors Nevan Krogan, Ph,D, of the University of California, San Francisco and Claire Jolly, PhD, and Greg Towers, PhD, of University College, London, found that Alpha’s enhanced infectivity arose from mutations outside of “spike,” the proteins that have attracted much of scientists’ attention since the start of the pandemic. Spike, which the virus uses to enter the cells of its host, is critical to infection and is the target of all available Covid-19 vaccines. But it is just one of many tools that the virus uses to manipulate its host.


    While scientists have closely monitored mutations in the spike region of new variants—Omicron has over 30—Krogan emphasized that changes in other regions might also have important impact.


    “The mutations in spike allow the virus to get into cells more effectively. But what about after the virus gets into cells? There may be other mutations that allow it to replicate more,” said Krogan, who also leads UCSF’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) and its Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG).


    After it was first detected in the United Kingdom in late 2020, Alpha spread rapidly around the world, suggesting it was significantly more transmissible than the original virus.


    But experiments in Towers’ lab indicated that the new variant replicated no faster than its predecessor. Seeking an explanation, the QCRG set out to learn if the new variant interacted differently with the cells it infected.


    The team, which also included researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, compared the variant’s impact on host cells to that of virus isolated early in the pandemic.


    To do so, postdoctoral scholar Mehdi Bouhaddou, PhD, QBI senior scientist Lorena Zuliani-Alvarez, PhD, both co-lead authors on the study, measured the activity of each gene and monitored protein levels in lab-grown cells infected by the virus. They also surveyed the phosphorylation status of the proteins—an analysis that detects chemical modifications that can temporarily adjust proteins’ function.


    Using this data to compare the response to infection with Alpha and the original virus, the researchers found that many of the significant differences involved the innate immune response, the body’s first line of defense against pathogens. Many of the genes involved in rallying this defense were barely activated in the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant.


    In addition, the team discovered that the Alpha-infected cells contained large amounts of three viral proteins know to help the virus evade the body’s immune response. Further experiments showed that one of them, called Orf9b, accomplishes that task by latching on to a protein that switches on immune-stimulating genes.


    The findings suggest it may be possible to help the immune system fight SARS-CoV-2 by developing drugs that block this interaction and a potential strategy for doing so.


    Alpha has since been outpaced by newer variants whose mutations spur even more aggressive transmission. “The virus will keep evolving and adapting to the host, and every time it will adapt better and better,” said Zuliani-Alvarez. “That's why Omicron has 53 mutations.”


    Both the Delta and Omicron appear to be cousins of Alpha, each having mutations in two of the three regions the team studied, suggesting they may have similar effects on the innate immune system.


    The findings demonstrate the value of understanding the full scope of changes shaping the behavior of viral variants. “Studying the variants of concern gives us ideas about how SARS-CoV-2 evolves,” said Bouhaddou. “Now we have a sense of the proteins that are mutating most frequently, and the biological consequences of those mutations. I think this helps us prepare for what might come next.”


    Link to study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04352-y


    About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at ucsf.edu or see our Fact Sheet.


    About QBI: The Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) fosters collaborations across the biomedical and the physical sciences, seeking quantitative methods to address pressing problems in biology and biomedicine. Motivated by problems of human disease, QBI is committed to investigating fundamental biological mechanisms, because ultimately solutions to many diseases have been revealed by unexpected discoveries in the basic sciences. Learn more at qbi.ucsf.edu.


    Evolution of enhanced innate immune evasion by SARS-CoV-2 - Nature

    Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) suggests viral adaptation to enhance human-to-human transmission1,2. Although much effort has focused on characterisation of spike changes in VOCs, mutations outside spike likely contribute to adaptation. Here we used unbiased abundance proteomics, phosphoproteomics, RNAseq and viral replication assays to show that isolates of the Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant3 more effectively suppress innate immune responses in airway epithelial cells, compared to first wave isolates. We found that Alpha has dramatically increased subgenomic RNA and protein levels of N, Orf9b and Orf6, all known innate immune antagonists. Expression of Orf9b alone suppressed the innate immune response through interaction with TOM70, a mitochondrial protein required for RNA sensing adaptor MAVS activation. Moreover, the activity of Orf9b and its association with TOM70 was regulated by phosphorylation. We propose that more effective innate immune suppression, through enhanced expression of specific viral antagonist proteins, increases the likelihood of successful Alpha transmission, and may increase in vivo replication and duration of infection4. The importance of mutations outside Spike in adaptation of SARS-CoV-2 to humans is underscored by the observation that similar mutations exist in the Delta and Omicron N/Orf9b regulatory regions.

  • So here at last we have real facts highlighted by antivaxxers!


    This is a gold standard self-controlled case study "you had better believe it".


    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v1.full.pdf



    Some comments:


    • Of the 4 subgroups, this is the one where myocarditis is by far the highest, and relatively worst compared with COVID
    • These events are very rare - expressed per million doses - numbers you can't directly get from the table:


    • Associations were strongest in males younger than 40 years for all vaccine types with an
      additional 3 (95%CI 1, 5) and 12 (95% CI 1,17) events per million estimated in the 1-28 days
      following a first dose of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively; 14 (95%CI 8, 17), 12 (95%CI 1,
      7) and 101 (95%CI 95, 104) additional events following a second dose of ChAdOx1, BNT162b2
      and mRNA-1273, respectively; and 13 (95%CI 7, 15) additional events following a third dose of
      BNT162b2, compared with 7 (95%CI 2, 11) additional events following COVID-19 infection


      Note the confidence intervals - because for subgrouping even though they are tracking the WHOLE UK population the baseline pericarditis events are rare the relative risk figures are not that accurate. Even the absolute per million risks are pretty inaccurate here for all except the much higher Moderna vaccine 2nd dose risk.
    • The Moderna vaccine (with its higher dosage) looks particularly bad: 3 Moderna doses for this subgroup is maybe not optimal, given how safe everything else is, and that protection against severe disease holds after two doses even though protection against infection does not. (Not sure about omicron, but we can reasonably hope based on data so far).
    • The main take-home from this is the increase in mRNA vaccine rate with each dose - although the data on 3rd dose is sparse - it looks as though continued boosters of these vaccines beyond 3 will not be sensible for young people where most of the reactogenicity is.
    • COVID myocarditis is on average much worse than vaccine myocarditis, which is typically very mild and atypical for myocarditis
    • Myocarditis is the worst side effect of the mRNA vaccines: but no where near the worst side effect of COVID! So this comparison does NOT tell you the relative risks of vaccination of COVID or vaccine


    The COVID vaccines are all more reactogenic than most common vaccines. These figures show that. We will want something better for continued once-per-year doses for young people - though as with Flu when we get to some equilibrium and once per year doses it is > 40 group who will be the priority.


    One of the issues here is that you need data on the relative overall risks of COVID infection for those who have / have not had a booster if you want to do a personal risk analysis (rather than what is good for those older in your family). We don't have that for this subgrouping.


    THH

  • Myocarditis is not new with CoV-19 gene therapy. Also small-pox and flu vaccines cause the same or even worse effects. It looks like all these facts have been hidden from public....


    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4368609/pdf/pone.0118283.pdf


    Results

    New onset chest pain, dyspnea, and/or palpitations occurred in 10.6% of SPX-vaccinees and 2.6% of TIV-vaccinees within 30 days of immunization (relative risk (RR) 4.0, 95% CI: 1.7-9.3). Among the 1081 SPX-vaccinees with complete follow-up, 4 Caucasian males were diagnosed with probable myocarditis and 1 female with suspected pericarditis. This indicates a post-SPX incidence rate more than 200-times higher than the pre-SPX back-ground population surveillance rate of myocarditis/pericarditis (RR 214, 95% CI 65-558). Additionally, 31 SPX-vaccinees without specific cardiac symptoms were found to have over 2-fold increases in cTnT (>99th percentile) from baseline (pre-SPX) during the window of risk for clinical myocarditis/pericarditis and meeting a proposed case definition for possible subclinical myocarditis. This rate is 60-times higher than the incidence rate of overt clinical cases. No clinical or possible subclinical myocarditis cases were identified in the TIV-vaccinated group.

  • Also small-pox and flu vaccines cause the same or even worse effects. It looks like all these facts have been hidden from public....

    Just a point here. Clearly none of these facts have been hidden from the public. It is just that the antivaxxer scare-stories about them are not believed - subclinical transient side effects are not exactly worrying, or noticed.

  • COVID myocarditis is on average much worse than vaccine myocarditis,

    Why?? Most cases post CoV-19 happen among age > 50 that already have preconditions. Most vaccine cases have remaining livelong restriction not so for most CoV-19 induced cases...

    And the most endangered gene therapy victims are age 18...35... that have a very long damage phase ahead....


    So one more clown post...


    Especially as our fascist clown denies the proper treatment of CoV-19 patients, what would avoid 100% of all cases, what simply is impossible after gene therapy ("vaccines...").


    Gene therapy in the worst case (blood vessel hit) is a burst infection of all organs. Much more devastating (un- treatable) as CoV-19.

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