The Playground

Quote from Wyttenbach

Prior to the short omicron phase almost all India states had no cases hence no deaths..

Indeed, several districts with millions of people in them had no deaths from any cause, for months. Apparently they discovered the secret of immortality. Either that, or the public health statistics from these places are unreliable.

During the previous phases you refer to, millions of people in India died. By now, more than 3 million have died in India alone, and 15 million worldwide. Ivermectin and other quack remedies have done nothing prevent this. The government of India reported only 520,000 but that is a lie. You believe that lie because you hate vaccines and you want desperately to believe in ivermectin. You are living in a fantasy world, and a Death Cult.

As she makes clear, the main problem remains the need to contain plasma at a temperature of over 100 million degrees.

She explains the construction of tokamaks, the most likely practical form for fusion reactors, providing a containment through magnetic fields. If only it could be easier!

She touches on the controversy over cold fusion - possibly the best known debate on this subject.

In Odyssey 23, I speculated on the possibilities if gyroscopic antigravity, which sadly violates the laws of physics, could actually be true. One of our readers commented that the way some reputable scientists were taken in by this was similar to what had happened over cold fusion.It was amazing when, in 1989, two well-respected scientists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, claimed to have created what seemed to be a fusion reaction at room temperature. I well remember the television interviews at the time – we might be looking at effectively limitless, cheap, clean fusion power! It all seemed too good to be true. And

it was.

But just suppose it had been true. Or, more optimistically, imagine that the potential for cold fusion exists but we just haven’t identified the correct method yet. Around the time, Arthur C Clarke himself commented

that it seemed promising to him that nuclear reactions might occur at room temperature. And his foreword to Steven Krivit and Nadine Winocur’s 2004 book The Rebirth of Cold Fusion seems to be largely a plea to keep an open mind on the subject.

Returning to present reality, though, in her book Melanie describes how future fusion power stations might be constructed and operated, showing how the energy could be converted into electricity. Sources of the deuterium, tritium and lithium needed are explained, along with discussion of the materials needed to contain a plasma hotter than the Sun. For anyone wanting a more semi-technical overview, Melanie’s article The Fusion Era: How Today’s Technology Delivers Tomorrow’s Power in the November 2007 issue of Nexus News is well worth reading.

Gregory Byron Goble - A more user-friendly formatting might be an improvement. Alan

Edit by Curbina: Please Gregory, when pasting from another source check for unnecesary ends of line.

Quote from Gregory Byron Goble

As she makes clear, the main problem

remains the need to contain plasma at a

temperature of over 100 million degrees.

She who? Who are you quoting or commenting on here?

Medical University of Innsbruck Physician-Scientists Reveal Long COVID-19 Connection to the Microbiome

Medical University of Innsbruck Physician-Scientists Reveal Long COVID-19 Connection to the Microbiome

A group of Austrian researchers at Medical University of Innsbruck investigated long COVID, a rapidly emerging condition worldwide. Does SARS-CoV-2 antigen…

www.trialsitenews.com

A group of Austrian researchers at Medical University of Innsbruck investigated long COVID, a rapidly emerging condition worldwide. Does SARS-CoV-2 antigen persistence underlie long COVID? The investigation found that, in fact, COVID-19 lingers in the inspected tissues, including the gut mucosa, and consequently could lead to long COVID. Led by corresponding author Herbert Tilg, a physician at the Department of Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Endocrinology & Metabolism at Medical University of Innsbruck, the study team suggests that based on their findings that SARS-CoV-2 infected tissues serve to perpetuate immune agitation on an ongoing basis, long COVID must be validated in controlled clinical trials. To summarize, COVID-19-based antigens continue on in the microbiome (gut mucosa) for several months post an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in most irritable bowel syndrome (IBD) patients, regardless of immunosuppressive therapy or gut inflammation. Dr. Tilg and team associate viral antigen persistence with symptoms of long COVID.

This important finding adds to a growing body of data (and ultimately evidence) that the SARS-CoV-2 viral infection may persist in the microbiome. This was also recently discovered by researchers led by Dr. Sabine Hazan in Malibu, California and the group TrialSite reported on at Chinese University of Hong Kong (CHUK).

The Study

In this case, the Austrian-based team conducted a study involving endoscopy of 46 inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients 219 days (range 94-257) post confirmed SAR-CoV-2 infection. The physician-scientists investigated SARS-CoV-2 antigen persistence in small and large intestine via qPCR of four viral transcripts, immunofluorescence of viral nucleocapsid, and virus cultivation from the collected specimens.

To understand long COVID in participating subjects, the study team used a standard questionnaire as well as a systemic SARS-CoV-2 immune response evaluated by flow-cytometry and ELISA at endoscopy. As far as IBD-related observations, these were informed by clinical, biochemical, and endoscopic means, wrote the study authors.

Findings

The Medical University of Innsbruck team found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection via RNA in the gut mucosa approximately seven months after mild actuate COVID-19 in 32 of 46 of the IBD patients. Moreover, Dr. Tilg and team report viral nucleocapsid protein persisted in 24 of 46 patients in gut epithelium in addition to CD8+ T cells. The team couldn’t find any evidence of SARS-CoV-2 antigen in the stools of the subjects which had been discovered by others (e.g., Hazan).

Moreover, Tilg and team conclude that “viral antigen persistence was unrelated to severity of acute COVID-19, immunosuppressive therapy, and gut inflammation.”

Additionally, the Medical University of Innsbruck study team couldn’t culture the novel coronavirus pathogen from the collected gut tissues involving the viral antigen persistence. While most of the patients in the study that featured viral antigen persistence also presented long COVID, this wasn’t the case with patients without viral antigen persistence.

Funding

This research was supported by grants to various investigators and other financial assistance, including the following sources:

European Research Council

The Austrian Science Fund

Financial support also originated from the Excellence Initiative (Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies - COMET) of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG

Research Center of Excellence in Vascular Ageing Tyrol

VASCage (K-Project Nr. 843536) funded by BMVIT

BMWFW

Wirtschaftsagentur Wien and Standortagentur Tirol

Medical University of Innsbruck

Traditionally one of four historical faculties of the Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, the facility of what is now Medical University of Innsbruck became independent by 2004. Its days go way back to the foundation of the first hospital in the nearby silver-mining town of Schwaz in 1307. The initial university established in 1669 by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold included a medical faculty. Today, the university has an endowment approaching $300 million. The Austrian medical university has multiple internal and external funding sources for research and clinical trials.

The university has produced three Nobel Prize laureates.

Lead Research/Investigator

Herbert Tilg, MD, Department of Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Metabolism, Medical University of Innsbruck

Despite Albert Bourla's comments, FDA tells doctors not to re-treat with Paxlovid if symptoms rebound

Despite Albert Bourla's comments, FDA tells doctors not to re-treat with Paxlovid if symptoms rebound

Don't be alarmed: The FDA said Wednesday that it's aware some Covid-19 patients may see a reemergence of symptoms after completing a treatment course of…

endpts.com

Don’t be alarmed: The FDA said Wednesday that it’s aware some Covid-19 patients may see a reemergence of symptoms after completing a treatment course of Pfizer’s pill Paxlovid.

In some of these cases, Covid patients even tested negative and then positive again.

The BMJ’s Commitment to the ‘Patient Revolution’: Schizophrenic?

The BMJ’s Commitment to the ‘Patient Revolution’: Schizophrenic?

Recently, physician and editor-in-chief Kamran Abbasi with the British Medical Journal (The BMJ) wrote an important opinion piece on the critical nature…

www.trialsitenews.com

Recently, physician and editor-in-chief Kamran Abbasi with the British Medical Journal (The BMJ) wrote an important opinion piece on the critical nature of the patient revolution and how COVID-19, unfortunately, stalled this mission-critical societal unfolding. Declaring, “The voices of patients and citizens were lost amid responses to the pandemic that were too self-absorbed to consider the views of the people it affected most,” the BMJ editor most certainly hit an important point for TrialSite. While mega-billions of taxpayer dollars were directed into a few pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to develop blood-system-based vaccines and novel therapeutics, little if any attention focused on what can be done for early treatment, leading to arguably hundreds of thousands of deaths. Yet the one therapy that was considered a bottom-up movement—ivermectin—was the first example Dr. Abbasi used as an example of the “self-absorbed” approach, devoid of patient and citizen feedback—citing a BMJ piece titled, “Unethical studies of ivermectin for COVID-19,” which included a Mexico City population health initiative (it wasn’t research but a directed public health initiative), as well as a case in Arkansas where a physician prescribed ivermectin to prisoners, some without their acknowledgment.

Does it Fit the Narrative?

It's quite interesting what Abbasi and the BMJ decide to identify as the primary example of ethical challenges robbing the patient voice during the pandemic. Ho Chi Minh City’s public health program in Vietnam established a Molnupiravir program before the drug was even out of clinical trials, but that didn’t catch a mention. While BMJ to their credit, did acknowledge the Pfizer whistleblower, what they don’t dare utter are the implications for pervasive, systematic ethical breaches in that rushed, pivotal study and the results of which were used to ramrod vaccine mandates at local and federal levels—a top-down non-democratic process to say the least. Notably, an entire medical freedom movement has emerged as a result, yet not a mention in this very cursory piece about the “patient revolution.”

Abbasi moves on to point out, correctly, the ad hoc, reactionary, and authoritarian-leaning measures that have been taken, as “COVID was also a free pass to tighten, loosen or avoid public health measures, with little consultation or input from the public.” Declaring, “The wisdom of hastily assembled, and generally unrepresented, advisory committee and advisors was never more important, and the exact opposite of the patient centered logic of ‘nothing about us, without us.’” Yes, Dr. Abbasi’s patients aren’t “widgets,” and people’s preferences about their own care does matter. He provides some fine examples, such as a patient’s wish for assisted death versus doctor’s resistance, or a woman’s decline of sodium valproate in pregnancy when fully aware of the risks. Of course, the editor-in-chief doesn’t dare utter that hundreds of cases of patients requesting ivermectin after hospital protocols failed to stop the worsening viral infection, leading to countless lawsuits. Why wouldn’t such a newsworthy point make it to the pages of an account of the patient revolution? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative nor the role of medical journals like the BMJ in the current health system.

Politicization, Corruption, and Suppression of Science

But the good news: The BMJ’s attempts to bridge the gap between “perspective and information” via use of “patient editors” is judged humbly as a “success.” Abbasi suggests thanks to the patient-editor role, this improved not only their “decision making,” but also their “published articles,” while it also helped to challenge their thinking. Declaring his journal a success on the patient revolution front, he casts doubt on his competitors—the others (journals) have failed. While The BMJ undoubtedly has good intentions here to empower patients, unfortunately, the economics and culture of the medical journal business doesn’t allow them to really do so. The British publication’s leadership does embrace transparency, acknowledging the importance of industry revenue in the form of advertising and the like.

Still, the BMJ should be applauded over many of the others because they have at least more than most tried to call attention to problems of politicization and corruption during the pandemic. For example, as far back as November 2020, Abbasi wrote the piece “COVID-19: politicization, ‘corruption,’ and suppression of science,” which showcased at least four examples in Britain of “politicians and governments suppressing science for power, position and in some cases money.”

An elephant in this room that Abbasi cannot escape himself—because he is part of a corrupted system—is that he continues marketing a vaccine product that is no longer working particularly well, declaring, “Many people still avoid vaccination, despite evidence of effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines continuing to grow,” pointing to a population-wide CDC study Public health impact of covid-19 vaccines in the US: observational study | The BMJ as well as an Oxford study pointing to the benefits of the vaccine. The benefits of large-scale covid-19 vaccination | The BMJ Yet, there is a whole other side to this—the durability challenges and the injuries that the BMJ lacks the courage to dare utter. A judge in an Italian court reviewing EudraVigilance did, however, declare recently in Italy that vaccine mandates with the COVID-19 vaccines were constitutionally questionable—thus, the case was sent to Italy’s Constitutional Court. An inordinate amount of serious adverse events, including deaths, weighed heavy on the Sicilian judge’s mind.

TrialSite asks the BMJ what about that side of people’s reality?

Serious Adverse Events

Rarely in science or in life is there just one simple truth, usually we see a spectrum of data, and reality that people face day-to-day. Abbasi does not point to the growing evidence that the vaccines markedly wane in performance in the face of variants such as Omicron, nor to the vast government overreach around the world in forcing vaccination on populations (you know—the patients Abbasi refers to). TrialSite has chronicled many accounts, such as the oppressive measures many local leaders in various Chinese provinces embraced to ensure people were vaccinated—e.g., withholding retirement pay and even health insurance and other critical benefits. In the USA, school districts have moved to mandate the vaccines on children; yet due to the waning effectiveness, they do not even necessarily stop viral transmission, a fundamental prerequisite for such a mandate—to control the pathogen.

The risk-benefit analysis for vast vaccination programs involving children under 12 still hasn’t surfaced in any public dialogue. We can’t find such calculus in Abbasi’s BMJ. Yet he emphasizes, like this media, the importance of translating complex medical-scientific topics into language more people can appreciate and understand.

Then there are the safety issues actively suppressed; The BMJ editor is guilty of the very thing he points out in politicians and governments. TrialSite just wrote that 1,200 certified victims, or their family members, of the COVID-19 vaccine—including serious injury and death cases—have yet to be paid in England.

In the meantime, under the PREP Act in America, those that experience serious adverse events associated with the vaccines have little recourse. There is no industry liability, and the government has some small amount, a pittance of $50,000, they make available if the patient’s family or loved ones have the wherewithal to navigate the entangled government bureaucracy. But the damages won’t go far for the loss of a family breadwinner. In the meantime, Pfizer generates history-breaking revenues.

Raise any questions such as the previous and immediately get labeled Anti-vaxxer—something this media is definitely not.

Where’s the patient revolution

Pfizer-Moderna nonspecific effects...CV risk....not in the BIGnews

excellent presentation

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The Indian ivermectin miracle explained

Now the WHO and others are coming up with totals for COVID deaths - culled from excess deaths statistics, it is time to do this again.

Apparently super-low deaths in India come from two different effects:

1. Under-recording of deaths in official statistics (estimated by WHO as 10X for India, 3X for Russia)

2. In India, and other developing countries, median age of population is lower. As a result with no medical treatment the death rate is lower according to the exponential COVID age/death curve.

US (median age 38)

Kerala (median age 31)

Uttar Pradesh (median age 20)

Doing the age dependence properly:

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7888669/

we have IFT ~ exp(alpha * age)

where alpha = 0.115 [1] equation 8

exp(alpha*x) = 2^(alpha * 1.44 * x ) = 2^(1.69 * age/years)

Hence deaths double for every 6 years of age

So relative to the US we have expected death rates (just based on demographics) of:

Kerala = 2.2X lower

Uttar Pradesh = 8X lower

Those who have followed this thread will note that many antivaxxer blogs about how low death rates in India - and specifically Uttar Pradesh - proves ivermectin works.

Those low death rates are explained by the two factors above, which multiply together to provide a larger factor. In addition, for Uttar Pradesh, which is the least developed Indian province (and has a provincial government that controls information), we expect under-reporting higher than the Indian average of 10X, just as for Kerala - the most developed Indian province, we expect lower under-reporting than average.

I find teasing out these factors is fascinating. They explain the extraordinarily eye-catching figures trumpeted by the pro-ivermectin antivaxxers. I don't rest myself when anomalies are highlighted till I understand them. Unlike the antivaxxers I actually look widely for the explanations rather than fitting everything to a "vaccines are bad, cheap drugs are good" preconceived idea. I use the word antivaxxer to describe those on this thread propagating these false comparisons who have had the "Indian non-miracle miracle" explained to them many times but still persist.

None of this tells us whether ivermectin actually works - you need other more precise data for that - and it is not settled. In fact it is difficult to know whether any drug works or not a small amount when you have an illness with a low and very age dependent IFR like COVID. You need a lot of daat to get statistically meaningful results and other factors prevent it except with good quality RCTs It explains why many people could unwittingly believe it works if they listen to these widely circulated (even here) cross-country or cross-province comparisons.

THH

Went to the grocery store yesterday at a time I usually don't go, around 1pm. Large lineups at the grocery checkouts. A man in front of me, tall, intelligent-and-fit-looking, about 50 years old was transferring his considerable groceries to the checkout counter from his cart. His last item was at the very bottom rack of his cart near the floor - a 12 pack of drink cans. He was hesitating to even stoop down to lift it up. I've seen that before, but with older men, and I picked it up for him, putting it onto the counter while saying "I can tell you've injured your lower back or your hip." He was very grateful, and admitted that yes, his back and hips and his knees were in trouble. I was expecting to hear a story about an accident - since he was so fit looking. He shared how he was into fitness : he regularly biked into work in downtown Toronto to a certain high level government office ; he frequented the gym, did rowing, etc. He said everything changed after he got his second vaccine dose. He developed heart palpitations, and among other things, severe joint pain. No more biking into work, no more gym. He said he wasn't intending to take the vaccine, but staff were told if they didn't take it they would have to get tested almost daily. (Most government workers had no choice but to get the vaccine or be fired, but those in the more rarified positions had the 'luxury' of keeping with their jobs while getting tested frequently.) He decided to forego the hassle and get vaccinated. To add insult to literal injury, he said that after he was fully vaccinated they changed policy and even the fully vaccinated ended up having to be regularly tested.

I told him that I've read hundreds of stories of similar Covid-19 vaccine injuries, and that he wasn't alone. He seemed relieved to hear me respond that way, giving me the impression he was too often given the cold shoulder by others.

One of the last things he said to me before leaving the checkout and parting was, in a matter of fact fashion : "I'm half the man I used to be." That hurt. I hope the cashier and the people behind us, who would have clearly heard us talking, took note and absorbed into their souls a very human moment.

The folks on JONP are betting on when the paper reaches 100,000 fake reads, right now it's at 99,975.

They should rather bet on when the most read paper on Researchgate will be cited the very first time since the summed up 30 citations refer to other papers from the magician.

Why pick on Rossi? He is understandably trying to keep his E-cats above water. So he fabricates data? No, he is truthful about his E-cats as far as the context of the questions arise. His LENR technology is as valid as anyone else's. He just does not (himself alone) understand the science, as revealed by the gobbledegook he publishes in his JONP papers. But then again, if we all did understand the science underlying LENR (gosh, eureka it's all so simple as E=mc squared) why are any of us asking any of these questions anyway? FOOD FOR THOUGHT?

A plant based vaccine, what a novel idea -full article it is behind a paywall

WHO COVID-19 Vaccine Insiders Declare Time for Version 2.0 Vaccines

WHO COVID-19 Vaccine Insiders Declare Time for Version 2.0 Vaccines

Recently, Dr. Hannah Nohynek with the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and Dr. Annelies Wilder-Smith with the Institute of Preventive and Social…

www.trialsitenews.com

Recently, Dr. Hannah Nohynek with the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and Dr. Annelies Wilder-Smith with the Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine at the University of Bern discussed the COVID-19 pandemic and mass vaccination programs. Both of these scientist-physicians are active with the World Health Organization (WHO). Nohynek serves as chair of the WHO Strategic Advisory Experts (SAGE) Working Group for pandemic vaccination and as the secretary of the national Immunizations Technical Advisory Group of the Finish Institute for Health and Welfare, while Wilder-Smith is also involved with the WHO SAGE Working Group for COVID-19 vaccines. Their key message aligns with an argument TrialSite has made for several months now: the version 1.0 mRNA vaccine is insufficient, costs too much money to produce, distribute, and store, and while the authors don’t dare utter this, their safety signals are too strong. But both Nohynek and Wilder-Smith are clear that the transition to next-generation COVID-19 vaccines is a must as they acknowledge the current ones don’t even stop viral transmission well, hence failing to control the novel coronavirus.

The two recently wrote an essay for the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) arguing for massive investment in a diverse array of vaccines to combat COVID-19 and other conditions.

Omissions

Both authors, unfortunately, fail to recognize a massive COVID-19 vaccine glut and pervasive surpluses of products across the world. Rather, they argue that “The vaccine supply will no longer be a limiting factor in efforts to provide more equitable coverage.” Pointing out that 11.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered around the world, they argue that the WHO has been successful in ensuring wide coverage of vaccine availability.

The two believe they are on a trajectory to have 70% of the world’s population immunized against COVID-19 by mid-2022—that mythical WHO target TrialSite has reported on before. Ostensibly, the goal of 70% was to control the pathogen. However, starting with Delta and then Omicron and now BA.2, the vaccine's effectiveness wanes in stopping the prevention of infection and thus community transmission. Moreover, for the vaccines to be effective, one booster after another is needed. Remember, the current vaccines were developed against the wild-type variant in Wuhan, which never made it to places like America or Europe.

But while they acknowledge later on in the piece that the current vaccines don’t stop viral transmission, they fail to connect to problems with their 70% target number.

Why do we still need vaccines?

But back to the anything-but-objective WHO pair, who ask the question, “So why do we still need new COVID-19 vaccines?”What follows is a breakdown of their arguments.

First, the duo educates that 344 COVID-19 vaccine candidates have either been developed or are currently under development. While 31 of these are in large-scale use post conditional approval from regulatory agencies or on WHO Emergency Use Listing, they note a diversity of vaccine platforms, including:

? mRNA ? viral vectored ? inactive whole virus ? Protein subunit ? Plasmid DNA approaches

Both Nohyne and Wilder-Smith point out that many factors are driving the need for a diverse array of vaccine products “with the aim of bringing the pandemic under control.” They note that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work with this mass vaccination scheme, pointing out that “different countries and health care settings, as well as different subpopulations and age groups, may benefit from different vaccine products developed on different platforms.”

Additionally, based on Phase 3 studies, safety and efficacy are not the only outcomes to consider in making country-level decisions for standard vaccine programs or booster initiatives. Cost, ease of distribution, production scalability, “acceptability by communities,” and other factors will be considered. Here, they essentially point out that a top-down, big pharma approach with just a few companies may not be the best approach.

The Recommendation

The authors go on to actually recommend the development of two novel vaccines recently described in a couple of journals, including Hager et al. (recombinant plant-based adjuvanted vaccine) and Dai et al. (RBD-Dimer-Based COVID-19 Vaccine ZF2001 in Adults).

Why do the two WHO operatives recommend these COVID-19 vaccines? First, the authors note that both vaccines are produced on novel platforms. They also reason that both vaccines capitalize on not needing extreme cold-chain procedures for storage.

Critics argued from the start of the pandemic against the use of mRNA vaccines in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) due to the lack of appropriate infrastructure. Moreover, they argue that participation in Phase 3 clinical trials is critical, and this wasn’t possible in LMICs with the mRNA technology. These most recent trials covered multiple variants but not omicron and related sub-variants.

What’s the benefit of the plant-based coronavirus-like particle vaccine?

Studied across Latin America, the UK, and the United States, this vaccine presented prefusion spike glycoprotein of ancestral SARS-CoV-2 combined with Adjuvant System 03 (AS03) and was investigated as a two-dose regimen. The authors reported, “The vaccine efficacy against polymerase-chain-reaction–confirmed symptomatic infection was 69.5% (95% confidence interval [CI], 56.7 to 78.8). In a post hoc analysis, the overall vaccine efficacy against preventing moderate-to-severe disease was 78.8% (95% CI, 55.8 to 90.8), and among participants who were seronegative at baseline, vaccine efficacy against any severity of disease was 74.0% (95% CI, 62.1 to 82.5). It is interesting to note that the median viral load among vaccinated participants with breakthrough cases was more than 100 times as low as that among the placebo recipients with incident cases of Covid-19.”

What about the receptor-binding domain (RBD)-dimer-based vaccines?

In this trial conducted in places as diverse as Ecuador, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan to Pakistan (efficacy and safety) and China (safety), the authors (e.g., Dai et al.) report that “the RBD-dimer–based Covid-19 vaccine was evaluated as a three-dose regimen. During the 6-month follow-up period, vaccine efficacy against PCR-confirmed symptomatic disease with an onset of at least 7 days after the third dose was 75.7% (95% CI, 71.0 to 79.8), and against severe to critical Covid-19, vaccine efficacy was 87.6% (95% CI, 70.6 to 95.7). Most of the incident cases occurred during a period in which B.1.617.2 (delta) was the dominant variant.”

What was the demographic in both trials?

Most participants were working-age adults, thus precluding vaccine efficacy data for high-risk elderly, for example. Again, omicron data is lacking as well as vaccine durability data—the latter clearly represents a problem with the version 1.0 vaccines in production today. They failed to secure data for protection in other at-risk populations, such as the immunocompromised or pregnant women.

What’s the bombshell argument?

The two WHO scientist-physicians argue that “The first COVID-19 vaccines used during the pandemic may not be the best long-term solution.” In this way, the authors concur with TrialSite as we’ve made a case for nearly a year that the version 1.0 COVID-19 vaccines of today will need to give way to more advanced, safer, and more durable products. For example, both Nohynek and Wilder-Smith argue that “The next generation of Covid-19 vaccines will need to have broader epitope coverage to provide cross-immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants, confer a longer duration of protection, and be easy to update in a timely manner for protection against any new variants.The authors acknowledge that the existing vaccines fall short to control the pandemic, declaring, “currently available vaccines have only modest effectiveness against mild infection and transmission, which is further reduced in the context of the newly emerging omicron sub-variants. Hence, to slow down the circulation of the virus and to limit the speed at which further variants emerge, new vaccines that have a substantial effect on reducing mild infection and transmission are needed, even as the world attempts to learn how to live with SARS-CoV-2.”

Do the authors argue that consumer choice is key to finding the right vaccines?

Essentially, yes. While acknowledging the need for agility and trade-offs, the authors point out, “with more vaccine platforms available, we can possibly improve decision-making regarding the selection of a vaccine platform available.” They also argue for potentially improving vaccine selection decision-making.

Why is the diversity of vaccine products important?

The authors point out that various vaccine platforms may benefit, or be more suitable for, certain age groups and subpopulations (e.g., immunocompromised and pregnant women, for example). They also argue that the mixing and matching of vaccines may be required to capitalize on synergies between different products.

What’s a major contradiction in their argument?

First, the authors are not honest about the massive gluts of COVID-19 vaccines, especially in LMICs. In places like India and Sub-Saharan Africa, TrialSite has covered that few want to vaccinate for COVID-19 anymore. This has resulted in a surplus of vaccine supplies.While the two possibly get some bonuses or other kudos for hitting their 70% target, the reality is that they fell far short in many countries, especially in Africa.

Moreover, while they declare mRNA technology as not suitable for LMICs (e.g., the costs of development, cold-chain storage, and the like), the authors then add, as a positive note, that “The decision by representatives of the African region to establish a network of six mRNA technology hubs is a sign that countries are motivated to build local and regional capacity and expand self-sufficiency not only in planning and participating in key clinical trials but also in designing and manufacturing vaccines to better meet the needs of their populations during pandemic threats.”

Yet they acknowledge the limitations of mRNA, declaring “such technology hubs will need to embrace technologies beyond the mRNA approach.”

Lead Research/InvestigatorDr. Hannah Nohynek, MD, Ph.D., Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

Dr. Annelies Wilder-Smith, MD, Ph.D., Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Bern

Quote from Mark U

He said everything changed after he got his second vaccine dose. He developed heart palpitations, and among other things, severe joint pain.

Every indication is that that was a coincidence. The same thing would have happened to him without the vaccine dose. If that outcome had anything to do with the vaccine, it would show up in statistically significant numbers in the VAERS data (or the Canadian equivalent). Every single serious outcome of this nature that is reported is investigated. If this person did not go to the hospital for a full set of medical tests, he made a huge mistake.

You have absolutely no reason to think the vaccine caused this. When you say it did, you reveal that you understand nothing about statistics, causality or medical science.

Furthermore, even if the vaccine did cause this, it has prevented many orders of magnitude more deaths and severe long-haul illness than it caused. You need to look at risks versus benefits. Saying you should not get vaccinated because a small number of people have suffered adverse effects, or even died, makes no sense. That is like saying you should never get out of bed and walk down the street because pedestrians are sometimes run over by cars. The risks of never getting out of bed far exceed the risk of getting run over by a car. Everything you do in life has risks. Eating a peach can choke you and kill you. Aspirin is far more dangerous than the COVID vaccine. Would you advise this person -- or anyone -- to avoid ever taking aspirin because it kills 3,000 people per year? It probably saves more lives than that, and even if it does not, relieving pain, headaches and high temperature from a fever is definitely worth the risk of dying.

Quote from JedRothwell

Every indication is that that was a coincidence. The same thing would have happened to him without the vaccine dose. If that outcome had anything to do with the vaccine, it would show up in statistically significant numbers in the VAERS data (or the Canadian equivalent).

Well over one million adverse events have been reported to VAERS now for the Covid vaccine, more than all other vaccines combined over all other years, and you say there is "every indication" that it was a coincidence. I would think you're joking, but you're not. But hey, who knows, maybe he got bit by a tick and got Lyme disease shortly before or immediately after his vaccination, and it produced his symptoms.

Quote from JedRothwell

Every single serious outcome of this nature that is reported is investigated.

How can you say this, when time after time people who have reported to VAERS and suffer debilitating illness say that neither the CDC or NHS has contacted them. They are left alone to fend for themselves.

Quote from JedRothwell

If this person did not go to the hospital for a full set of medical tests, he made a huge mistake.

He didn't tell me of any hospital visits, so I don't know. Yet anyone hearing or reading the testimonies of the vaccine injured quickly sees a common theme : almost always, hospital tests come back negative for what they test for. The hospitals see the real, superficial clinical symptoms - like skyrocketing block pressure, heart arrhythmias, neuropathies, etc, but no underlying cause can be determined. This is because the cause is from something new and almost entirely unexplored : a covid vaccine.

Quote from Mark U

Well over one million adverse events have been reported to VAERS now for the Covid vaccine,

But only a tiny fraction of that number were caused by the vaccines. The rest were coincidental. All serious outcomes including deaths were investigated by panels of doctors, and found to have other causes. The reasons the VAERS database has more entries for COVID than other vaccines are explained in detail at covid-datasciences.com. For example:

Does McCullough's paper really "establish a mechanistic framework" for mRNA vaccine harm?

Peter McCullough & colleagues have just published a paper in Food and Chemical Toxicology that posits biological mechanisms underlying purported innate immune…

www.covid-datascience.com

Are the vaccines really safe? What VAERs does and doesn't tell us about vaccine safety.

Many people have been genuinely excited about the positive results from the Moderna and Pfizer/Moderna phase 3 trials suggesting the vaccines were safe and…

www.covid-datascience.com

One of the main reasons is that far more COVID vaccines have been given in the last year than any other vaccine in history. Normal vaccines are administered 1 to 3 times in a lifetime, about 80 times less frequently than this one. Also, the reporting window and rules for the COVID vaccines are much more stringent than other vaccines.

Quote from Mark U

How can you say this, when time after time people who have reported to VAERS and suffer debilitating illness say that neither the CDC or NHS has contacted them.

Where did you get that information? How many of these people are there? Did they contact their doctors, and did the doctors contact the CDC?

I ask because the doctors have a legal obligation to contact the CDC, and the CDC must -- by law -- investigate all serious or unexpected adverse effects from all vaccines. Not just COVID. That is clearly spelled out in the CDC website and in the Federal laws. I think it is extremely unlikely that large numbers of doctors are ignoring their professional obligations and risking the loss of their medical licenses. It is equally unlikely that the people at the CDC are ignoring or flouting the laws. They would be fired for doing that. So, I conclude that what you say here is an unverified report, probably made up by an antivaxxer or someone in Russia. I recommend you apply a bullshit filter more carefully, and stop believing things which violate common sense and everyday experience.

I also recommend you try to understand the concept of risks versus benefits. You should realize that every time you drive to the grocery store, you risk injury or death at a far higher rate than getting a COVID vaccine. That would be true even if many of the reported injuries and deaths were actually caused by the vaccines. Since they were not caused by the vaccines, the actual risk is vanishingly small. I trust you do drive to the grocery store. You probably fly on airplanes, even though air crashes still kill people on rare occasions. In other words, you take far greater risks than getting the vaccine, and the risk of not taking it are many, many orders of magnitude higher than taking it. Do you understand that, or not? You are innumerate if you do not understand it.

Note also that if this person did not go to the doctor, or inform his doctor or the CDC, the CDC will not hear about it. They are not omniscient.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Those low death rates are explained by the two factors above,

Clowns have an own style to explain. So new math is introduced 8xy = 0 for all x,y if median age is 20...

So zero death is given by clown math or better thanks to Ziverdo prevention.