I believe the 29 biggest studies that ivermectin enthusiasts (https://ivmmeta.com/) recommend are analyzed here:
Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ... astralcodexten.substack.com
As you see, these studies are invalid.
Invalid according to Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist, author, blogger
hmmm.
I can see why you might trust his opinion over Dr. Tess Lawrie and her Phd's and decades of experience.
Invalid according to Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist, author, blogger
hmmm.
I can see why you might trust his opinion over Dr. Tess Lawrie and her Phd's and decades of experience.
Scott rejected essentially the same papers as another researcher, mostly overlapping. I find his arguments decent. Also here is a very good discussion by the Swedish doctor (yep his pro ivermectin) so bad studies is raining like cat and dogs it seams. D-vitamine
Invalid according to Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist, author, blogger
hmmm.
No, invalid as you can see. If you can understand statistics, you can see this for yourself. Alexander points out the reasons, but you can judge whether he is right or wrong. Whether he is a psychiatrist, a steelworker, or a incarcerated thief makes no difference. You have to judge a scientific or mathematical paper on its own merits, without regard for the author's credentials.
Invalid according to Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist, author, blogger
hmmm.
I can see why you might trust his opinion over Dr. Tess Lawrie and her Phd's and decades of experience.
First: congrats on your board name. It is always good to acknowledge uncertainty especially in medicine!
I don't like to judge science by personality except in extreme cases. But you have raised the matter - so let us go there.
The scientific way to judge the overall evidence from a collection of studies is to look at meta-studies. There is a lot of experience now doing this. There are known methodologies that try to avoid historic problems - for example the common effect that clinical studies on drugs tend to show positive results even when there is in fact no real positive effect. Even randomised clinical trials, done with poor methodology, tend to show spurious positive effects. And without disciplined methodology you get the file drawer effect - positives get reported, negatives quietly buried.
Which is why there is strict methodology: a trial must be registered and its outcome measures and methodology all stated before it is started. Any change in any of that stuff must be recorded and explained. Thus cherry-picking of positive results from a whole raft of possibles after the data is in would not be possible - or if you did it would be reported and everyone could see that made the results unreliable.
Not all trials confirm to these high standards - in fact most over the world do not, because it is much more work to do trials properly than to do a quick and dirty study. The many ivermectin metastudies that have complied with good methodology have come in negative (or negative after a single large and clearly fraudulent study was withdrawn). Study of this effect (with ivermectin) here. Interestingly, papers that rate evidence against quality show a consistent picture that the low quality evidence is highly biassed, the high quality evidence neutral. This is not just ivermectin - it is what normally happens for good reasons.
Dr. Tess Laurie is indeed a real medical doctor. She specialises in gynaecology.
Theresa Lawrie practices in Bath, United Kingdom. Lawrie is highly rated in 2 conditions, according to our data. Her top areas of expertise are Gestational Trophoblastic Disease, Vulvar Cancer, Hydatidiform Mole, and Preeclampsia.
She has no expertise in evaluating anti-viral drugs. However she does have a very strong public PR profile, as the UK head of a political pro-ivermectin pressure group BIRD (the UK arm of US FLCC). She has other political views putting her firmly in the same camp as the well-funded anti-vaxxer tele-health marketer and vitamin supplement crowd.
I thought a video head-to-head would be enlightening for people.
Reddit comments from teh above link (but watch it for yourself to see if you agree):
I got a super weird vibe from Tess Lawrie. The part at the end where she wouldn't even agree that telling scared parents with autistic kids to not give their kids bleach is a really bad thing showed me that she is to far gone down the rabbit hole...
To be honest the average person didn't know who Tess Lawrie was before this whole ivermectin thing blew up and being a contrarian probably gives her a sense of purpose and importance.. that's the feeling I got out of her interview.
Absolutely. I tried hard not to judge her demeanour, but she seemed to have supreme self-conviction in her position, a big red flag, and she was hyper-sensitive to even a hint of criticism, another red flag. She has internalised the victimhood so that now she even identifies with people selling fake cancer cures to vulnerable people. A flash of self-awareness perhaps...
She has used Ivermectin advocacy to funnel money to her private consultancy firm, the ironically named "Evidence Based Medicine Consultancy Ltd"
She even used her work with BIRD to start a crowd-funder to pay her company to promote Ivermectin.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-get-lifesaving-drug-approved-for-covid19
The idea that these are somehow citizen scientists, driven purely by passion and good will, and are therefore trustworthy in a way that universities and drug companies are not is a fiction. They stand to gain personally from Ivermectin advocacy far more than the researchers at Oxford University currently conducting a much larger RCT for Ivermectin on covid than has been performed by these kooks.
Tess Lawrie seems the worst of the bunch to me. She was on UK talk radio recently and made a number of misleading claims. She's part of an ivermectin advocacy group called BIRD which takes donations. They've raised £200k so far according to their website.
The worst claim being she wants the vaccines pulled from use as she thinks the UKs adverse reaction reporting shows they're unsafe. Adverse reactions reporting was talked about on Sam's pod and is a nonsense claim as she doesn't compare the reported issues with the baseline expected within the population.
She's also of the belief that Ivermectin would end the pandemic, that masks don't work and that lockdowns don't work.
Some of her claims are here: https://healthfeedback.org/authors/tess-lawrie/
Lockdown and mask claim here: https://twitter.com/camus37/status/1417343351708340234
Submission statment: Sam has waded in on the ivermectin debate with his recent podcast on vaccinations. He has also called out his former IDW colleague, Bre Weinstein, for pushing misleading information and discouraging vaccination. This is a discussion with the lead advocate of ivermectin, Tess Lawrie, alongside two researchers, Graham Walker and Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, who are very critical of ivermectin as current data stands.
I think that Tess comes across very poorly here. I think there are various red flags in the way that she argues and her general disposition. I have selected a couple below:
Appeal to authority
After Fuller asks her what people should think about the level of consensus among scientists about ivermectin, Tess claims that people should just accept her authority on the matter. She basically says that she alone is fit to judge ivermectin and that other people should defer to her expertise.
Dismissing weak data
Here she refuses to even acknowledge the weak data, seemingly because she doesn't want to criticise a doctor she knows personally. Well, it turns out that that study is almost certainly fraud (see here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1419557546872819719.html) She applies almost zero pushback against the study despite it clearly being suspect. This raises more major red flags over her objectivity.
Another aspect that is very concerning is her absolute faith in her position. Fuller asks if there is anything that would make her question the effectiveness of ivermectin. She just laughs and said nothing will change her mind. Why? Because ivermectin works.
A final point (sorry, I didn't get a timestamp for this either) is that she says that her founding of an ivermectin advocacy group has no bearing on her objectivity. She claims this is because she began the advocacy after seeing the evidence. Firstly, this makes me question whether she was far too hasty in doing advocacy given the data must have been very poor at that early stage (especially considering we are still where we are). And also, that is not how bias works. Being the front for an advocacy group absolutely impacts the objectivity of a scientist.
Anyway, I think this makes a good contribution to the ivermectin debate.
Whereas - if you wanted a more objective overview you could look the at the various non-FLCC/BIRD meta-analyses. They generally show thus far no evidence for ivermectin working. Of course iot might work, and unbiassed doctors hope it will which is why it is currently in state-funded large trials for at-home treatment in US (Activ-5) and UK (PRINCIPLE). These trials are expensive, and they report results immediately when drugs either do muhc worse or better than placebo. Good news is no reporting yet, so ivermectin is not obviously harmiong anyone. Bad news is that it is also not obviously helping - or the trials would terminate with positive interim results as has happened for many of teh effective COVID treatments so far discovered.
Or, if you want somone doing research on this topic and clearly initially favouring ivermectin, try Chaccour, who ran his own ivermectin trial early on hoping to see an effect. Chaccour is a leading parasite researcher who pioneered the successful use of ivermectin to combat parasites - he is naturally hopeful about its use against COVID!
good video from Chaccour March 2021:
Well worth watching. He is broadly in favour but cautions that the evidence is variable so we do not yet know, and that the pressure group (FLCC & BIRD) hysteria has caused already a number of worrying things (like commercial ivermectin formulations sold for a lot of money as COVID beaters with worrying additives).
Carlos Chaccour, a global-health researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health in Spain, says it has been difficult to conduct rigorous studies on ivermectin. That’s partly because funders and academics in wealthy countries haven’t supported them, and, he suspects, have often dismissed trials of ivermectin because most of them have been done in lower-income countries. Furthermore, says Rodrigo Zoni, a cardiologist at the Corrientes Cardiology Institute in Argentina, it is difficult to recruit participants because many people — particularly in Latin America — are already taking the widely available drug in an attempt to prevent COVID-19.
Adding to the difficulty are conspiracy theories holding that ivermectin has been proven to work and that drug companies are depriving the public of a cheap cure. Chaccour says he has been called ‘genocidal’ for doing research on the drug rather than just endorsing it.
Although the jury is still out on ivermectin, many say the [Elgazzar] retraction speaks to the difficulty of assessing research during a pandemic. “I personally have lost all faith in the results of [ivermectin] trials published to date,” says Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia who helped Lawrence to analyse the Elgazzar paper. It’s not yet possible to assess whether ivermectin works against COVID-19 because the data currently available are not of sufficiently high quality, he says, adding that he is reading other ivermectin papers in his spare time, looking for signs of fraud or other problems.
Chaccour and others studying ivermectin say that proof of whether the drug is effective against COVID-19 rests on a handful of large, ongoing studies, including a trial in Brazil with more than 3,500 participants. By the end of 2021, says Zoni, around 33,000 people will have participated in some kind of ivermectin trial.
“I think it is our duty to exhaust all potential benefits,” says Chaccour, especially given that most countries still do not have widespread access to vaccines. “Ultimately if you do a trial and it fails, fine, but at least we tried.”
Since March a lot of evidence has come in. Recently, Chaccour has mostly recanted. That Brazilian Study - Together - dropped ivermectin as showing no benefit in July 2021:
We now have ...." and "es wird langsam..." is quite a difference...
The last two week 50% of the deaths have been double vaxx. Quite "langsam"...
So vaccine-induced myocarditis is a big deal. And in children, it’s way more serious and more prominent than a post-COVID myocarditis.”
Something more you enjoy to see - very "langsam"....
The authors report that the vitamin D cohort benefited from a decreased mortality rate by 2.4 times.
Something more you don't enjoy....
I just want to highlight the video in my post above as a great piece of non-confrontational and non-biassed journalism that lets the protagonists on both sides speak for themselves but also challenges them.
I'd recommend anyone here interested in the evidence on ivermectin and how it is presented to view it all.
Ivermectin, For and Against, with Tess Lawrie, Graham Walker & Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz
Theresa Lawrie practices in Bath, United Kingdom. Lawrie is highly rated in 2 conditions, according to our data. Her top areas of expertise are Gestational Trophoblastic Disease, Vulvar Cancer, Hydatidiform Mole, and Preeclampsia.
Our clown still believes that a bicycle mechanician can repair a Rolls-Royce ... OK she is a woman - good for marketing...
Clowns don't like raw data. Why? Can no longer be faked...
Increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection associated with emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa
We assume always a higher risk of reinfection when a virus significantly changes. This also happened with measles and yearly with flu.
But the paper walks on very thin ice as just using case data from a database without CT value can give you an error anywhere in the range of 1...1000. We know that at least 50% of all PCR tests are false positive. So already from this 0.5 * 0.5 gives only 1/4 for the risk they claim. But what if all reinfections have high CT values ?? So basically this study is useless. To improve it they should do it for different periods and compare alpha, Delta etc.. (marginally done)
An other problem is the Beta variant, that was a local speciality and heavily infected almost all vaccinated. So we do not know to what degree vaccines did promote claimed re-infections.
Newest Swiss weekly report.
Good news: Hospitalizations did not change between weeks 46,47. Despite much higher case count due to more younger affected.
But: Double vaxx death rate is 50% of all CoV-19 deaths. Absolute number 52 thereof 39 age > 80! No deaths age < 50.....
So CoV-19 is an illness of the old and oldest!
And as said its a pandemic of the vaccinated that takes of....
For people that like data here week 46: BAG_COVID-19_Woechentliche_Lage 46.pdf
Cases increase in India... https://www.mygov.in/covid-19
+1 in Uttar Pradesh...
The vaccine terror state Kerala did dig out an other 300 deaths. Without this India would be far below 100 deaths/day now. Keralas terror baby Mizoram (1.1 mio.) still has the highest case/death rate. But has not to dig out old death cases at least...
Thanks to India we know that vaccines do not work compared to a "Ziverdo kit" treatment, prophylaxis.
Vaccines - CoV-19 RNA gene therapies - are the death road for the brainless fake science followers...
Radioactive waste and CMNS transmutation technologies are of particular interest to me. The Department of Energy has a role to play.
The following DoE project is a candidate for integration as CMNS transmutation technologies advance. How the new DoE CMNS tech patent may be relevant to this project is not clear to me yet. I'm still studying and investigating elements of the patent.
Also... Studying this...
Department of Energy Project
PNNL
IDREAM EFRC
The Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) is a PNNL-led partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Washington, and Washington State University.
This interdisciplinary team is exploring complex chemical phenomena to enable innovations in retrieving and processing high-level radioactive waste and resolving knowledge gaps that have perplexed industrial aluminum process chemists for more than a century.
A Foundation for New Discoveries
The mission of IDREAM is to master fundamental interfacial chemistry in complex environments characterized by extremes in alkalinity and low-water activity. We are especially interested in chemical phenomena driven far from equilibrium by ionizing radiation. This information fills a critical knowledge gap around complex chemistry and radiolysis of highly alkaline systems, which can aid in accelerating processing of legacy high-level radioactive waste.
Since August 2016, IDREAM has created a transformative new understanding of key aspects of aluminum chemistry in highly alkaline electrolytes and the influence of ionizing radiation. Our work has resulted in key breakthroughs and is directly challenging long-held beliefs and surmounting barriers through our integrated computational and multi-modal experimental approaches.
Thanks to Jurg above, I ordered some Z-packs (Ziverdo kits) from India last night.
10 packs for less than $3 each, and $35 shipping to Canada.
Ordered November 14, and a cute little package just arrived today (December 3) in the mailbox. I was getting a little concerned after I heard Austria customs was stopping ivermectin, but good thing Canada customs seems more relaxed, at least for now.
10 packs, each of a 14 day course of ivermectin,Doxycycline and Zinc. Plus (surprise to me!) 40 tablets of dexamethasone put in for good measure.
I now have the distinct impression that India is serious about actual covid healthcare for its citizens, but the west is serious about ... control. A doctor in Canada would have his license for practising medicine suspended if he prescribed what I got. What the hell has happened to us?
First: congrats on your board name. It is always good to acknowledge uncertainty especially in medicine!
Thanks, I came to this forum for the physics
I now have the distinct impression that India is serious about actual covid healthcare for its citizens, but the west is serious about ... control. A doctor in Canada would have his license for practising medicine suspended if he prescribed what I got. What the hell has happened to us?
You can understand the reaction of most (not all) doctors best by listening to a pro-ivermectin expert who knows in drug discovery that data needs to come before prejudice.
Chaccour pionered the use of ivermectin as an anti-parasitic, and, based on intial indications, he had strong hopes it would be effective against COVID.
He ran his own (small) RCT study, which was inconclusive. He looks forward with cautious optimism to the much larger RCTs currently running.
Note in his video how he shows that the positive and negative evidence balances thus far, and that by allowing drugs on popular demand you get bad outcomes for patients. He does not favour an approach where any doctor should be allowed to prescribe any drug for anything with impunity! And he shows specifically the problems once you have an unproven drug which has been adopted by public opinion as a treatment for COVID.
It is a complex and interesting story. I suggest that if you listen to the various arguments it is only politics (an absolutist preference for freedom over regulation) that would lead you to come down strongly on the pro-ivermectin side.
Most doctors do not have that same political bias - though obviously (and avowedly) Tess Laurie does.
Most people would say that a balance between freedom and regulation is needed. And that passionate advocates for more regulation, or less regulation, can always be found. The COVID debates bring out both sides in a strident form because when dealing with a new pandemic the choices are stark, and matter.
It’s Delta variant stupid: why the vapors and clutching of pearls over Omicron then?
Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite.
What does the evidence currently tell us? It tells us that those people who have died since Biden has become President died under Trump. The medical industry and government, along with Fauci, tried to blame Trump for the deaths under him. Then why the silence about the deaths since Biden is President? What say you, Fauci? Could someone go find Dr. Fauci for me please and tell him do not panic, this is not a ‘gain-of-function’ Wuhan lab leak question.
The data also show that there are more US deaths in 2021 than in 2020, the critical variable being in 2021 there has been the implementation of the COVID vaccines. How is that? We found out that the vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission, but does it promote death? We need this investigated immediately for we should not be having more deaths ‘after’ the implementation of the vaccines that were sold to us by Fauci and Walensky, Pfizer and Moderna, as the means out of the pandemic. And why when the evidence is clear that the vaccines have failed against Delta variant, are we being pushed to get a booster 3rd shot, with the very same failed vaccine? Our evidence-based review in Brownstone Institute shows this. And now we are being scared into getting the shot for the Omicron variant, yet with a failed vaccine for Delta? This makes absolutely no sense. Is there something other than science at play here? Is this what ‘follow the science’ really means? Those advocating here seem clearly academically sloppy and technically lazy for they seem ignorant and oblivious to the real science, or cannot read it or understand it, or are just blinded to it by their biases. Is this the reason? This is staggering. Is this to drive the new definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ by adjusting the goalpost to 3 and beyond shots, as is being done in Canada/Ontario?
Why the panic and vapors by governments and their COVID Task Forces with this new Omicron variant? For by all accounts this new variant appears very mild relative to Delta and far less virulent. Less pathogenic. Persons involved in patient care indicate that symptoms are mild with no serious illness. “As of this morning, a total of 59 cases of the new strain had been conformed in 11 European Union…countries…all of the patients were either asymptomatic or were experiencing mild symptoms…no severe cases or deaths related to the variant reported…”
Hey, you medical, political, and media establishment, it’s the Delta stupid, pay attention, regain your focus. Deep breathes. Calm down! Focus more on Delta and other pressing issues while keeping Omicron in sight. Nothing, no data I have seen, and I argue no one at this time, warrants this ridiculous fetish on Omicron. Yes, we always be guarded and be cautions, but this is a clown car response when we have problems with the Delta and especially with a vaccine that is not needed, failing, and potentially driving transmission and emergence of harsher, more pathogenic variants. Stop the needless insanity! Stop this illogical, irrational, hysterical, nonsensical reaction and calm down! We are limited at this time and do not have enough information to warrant these reactions. We are making these dramatic harsh policies and restrictions with no evidence to underpin them. Focus on the science or what is in front of you, ‘if you could for once’! Good grief, could someone call the adult into the room please, someone, somebody, anybody, Bueller, Bueller
WHO pandemic treaty a well-kept secret?
By Richard Carroll
The Special Session of the World Health Assembly concluded recently, with the passing, without objection, of a decision to draft and negotiate an agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. What that decision is exactly is not clear. The World Health Organization (WHO) site declares, “Decisions. No documents for the moment… The definitive versions of the resolutions and decisions adopted…will be made available in due course.” The committee writing this decision was headed by Chile and Australia. WHO expects to finalize this expanded power effort in 2024.
Support from Several Countries
The session included primarily statements from nations and groups expressing their support for this largely unknown and unpublicized agreement. Should this agreement be binding? Opening speakers Angela Merkel, the President of Chile, the PM of Bahrain, the President of the European Council, Ursula van der Leyden for the EU Commission, and the CEPI spokesman all think so. WHO head, Adenom Tedros, thinks “voluntary mechanisms have failed” and the “only way” to have a comprehensive, coordinated effective response is to have a binding “WHO convention, agreement, or other international instrument.” This enthusiasm for “legally binding” was expressed by numerous speakers, among them from Tunisia, Cyprus, Zambia, Thailand, Singapore, Albania, Columbia, Fiji, UK, Netherlands, and South Africa.
How much power should the WHO have?
A hint of WHO direction can be found in the Report of the Member States Working Group…(SSA2/3), which can be found on the WHO special session site. The document proposes structural solutions to promote “high level political commitment and a whole of society and whole of government approach,” provide “an opportunity to enhance, update and strengthen the leading and coordinating role of WHO to act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health.” “An article 19 instrument under the WHO Constitution would be legally binding on state parties that opt to ratify it.” The statement on MISINFORMATION and DISINFORMATION is quite concerning: “Member States recognize the need for global coordinated actions to address misinformation, disinformation, and stigmatization that undermine public health.”
Equity in practice?
The areas which WHO seeks to improve include sharing of biological samples and pandemic prevention, rapid risk assessment, detection, and response. A major goal is “Equity,” which means “Equitable and timely access to and distribution of medical countermeasures…as well as related issues such as research and development, intellectual property, technology transfer, and empowering/scaling up local and regional manufacturing capacity.”
Slogans or PR Program?
The remarks of the speakers are chock full of slogans repeated by many. “No One Is Safe Until Everyone Is Safe.” “All of Government All of Society.” “One Health.” “Equity, Solidarity, Inclusiveness.” The effect of this sloganeering is rather disconcerting. A fundamental interest of WHO is the creation of an expanded, secure financing base. Several speakers followed Dir. Tedros’ lead in urging member states to come up with 50% of needed funds.
Vaccines: A crisis of imagination
But when all is said and done, vaccines remain the primary focus of the WHO. Virtually every speaker refers to the need to expand vaccination coverage. There is repeated reference to the goals of 40% of the world population by the end of this year, and 70% by the middle of 2022. In his closing remarks, Tedros asserts that the low 25% vaxxed rate in South Africa and Botswana allowed the Omicron variant to emerge. He calls for more vaccines for Africa, even though Africa has the lowest Covid deaths, without vaccination! He wants the rich nations to forgo boosters and ship them to the poor. All this despite the now acknowledged fact that these injections do not stop transmission or infection.
So, where is the science?
So where is the science? There is no mention whatsoever of injection injuries and deaths. There is no mention of vitamin deficiencies or the effective treatments which have been used and proven worldwide. Most striking, there is still no acknowledgment of natural immunity after all this time and substantial clinical verification.
WHO failed who?
Systematic failures of global governance are cited as the great problem of the pandemic response, but is that true? Didn’t most countries adopt the WHO recommendations for universal testing using a deeply flawed method? Didn’t most countries follow social distancing and isolation? Didn’t many sign up for the WHO vehicle to get the vaccine to poor countries—COVAX?
Evidence suggests Covid-19 spreads through microscopic particles which disperse over a large area and cannot be stopped by masks. Many suspect the 5 million deaths WHO cites throughout this meeting are inflated by the changes made to death certification. WHO seems to be constructing reality with particular aims in mind.
At the beginning of the special session, an announcement was made: “All delegates must observe safety measures, including wearing masks at all times.” Does WHO really believe this? At one time the advice was against mask wearing. To date, they aren’t doing any real study of natural immunity.
Learning valuable lessons
They haven’t mentioned the striking situation in Africa—where COVID-9 rates are low yet so are vaccination rates, and in nations with high vaccination rates spikes and surges persist—the most glaring example recently was Gibraltar, with a 100% vaccination rate. The British territory just experienced its largest surge of infection since the onset of the pandemic.
Do we really want these people compelling us, through our governments, to do what they tell us to do, for our own health?
Watch TrialSite News #BetterWayTownHall on this subject: https://trialsitenews.com/tria…world-council-for-health/
Read TSN’s coverage of the subject in October: https://trialsitenews.com/who-…-covid-19-for-power-grab/
Read this WHO guide to a pandemic treaty document: WHO_guide-Pandemic-Treaty_30nov2021.pdf
Omicron variant may have picked up a piece of common-cold virus
NEW YORK, Dec 3 (Reuters) - The Omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 likely acquired at least one of its mutations by picking up a snippet of genetic material from another virus - possibly one that causes the common cold - present in the same infected cells, according to researchers.
This genetic sequence does not appear in any earlier versions of the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, but is ubiquitous in many other viruses including those that cause the common cold, and also in the human genome, researchers said.
By inserting this particular snippet into itself, Omicron might be making itself look "more human," which would help it evade attack by the human immune system, said Venky Soundararajan of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based data analytics firm nference, who led the study posted on Thursday on the website OSF Preprints.
This could mean the virus transmits more easily, while only causing mild or asymptomatic disease. Scientists do not yet know whether Omicron is more infectious than other variants, whether it causes more severe disease or whether it will overtake Delta as the most prevalent variant. It may take several weeks to get answers to these questions.
Cells in the lungs and in the gastrointestinal system can harbor SARS-CoV-2 and common-cold coronaviruses simultaneously, according to earlier studies. Such co-infection sets the scene for viral recombination, a process in which two different viruses in the same host cell interact while making copies of themselves, generating new copies that have some genetic material from both "parents."
This new mutation could have first occurred in a person infected with both pathogens when a version of SARS-CoV-2 picked up the genetic sequence from the other virus, Soundararajan and colleagues said in the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.
The same genetic sequence appears many times in one of the coronaviruses that causes colds in people - known as HCoV-229E - and in the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, Soundararajan said.
South Africa, where Omicron was first identified, has the world's highest rate of HIV, which weakens the immune system and increases a person's vulnerability to infections with common-cold viruses and other pathogens. In that part of the world, there are many people in whom the recombination that added this ubiquitous set of genes to Omicron might have occurred, Soundararajan said.
"We probably missed many generations of recombinations" that occurred over time and that led to the emergence of Omicron, Soundararajan added.
More research is needed to confirm the origins of Omicron's mutations and their effects on function and transmissibility. There are competing hypotheses that the latest variant might have spent some time evolving in an animal host.
In the meantime, Soundararajan said, the new findings underscore the importance of people getting the currently available COVID-19 vaccines.
"You have to vaccinate to reduce the odds that other people, who are immunocompromised, will encounter the SARS-CoV-2 virus," Soundararajan said.
Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 harbors a unique insertion mutation of putative viral or human genomic origin
Good news, Omicron is 5 times more infectious and it looks like it's a cold virus. Stockup on vitamins D,C and zinc, it's just a cold after all!
UF researchers make a major discovery in Omicron variant’s mutations
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) - As concerns about the new COVID-19 variant circulate around the world, researchers at the University of Florida have made a major discovery in its mutations.
Researchers say the key finding is that the Omicron variant has substantially more mutations at four sites on the virus compared to the Delta variant.
Researchers also confirmed the new variant is five times more transmissible than Delta.
Germany and Sweden have followed very different Covid paths.
Sweden has been mostly open, Germany mostly closed. Germany has been mask obsessive, even mandating N95’s in many places. They have also been vaccine obsessive and pushed aggressive mandates and requirements. they have locked down where Sweden did not.
Current polices also diverge massively. Germany is locking down, masking up, and mandating all manner of discrimination against the unvaxxed. Sweden is mostly normal.
Their vaccination rate curves are strikingly similar both in timing and in magnitude, we’re talking about 70% vs 68% fully vaxxed. This sheds real doubt on the idea that vaccine mandates and hectoring drive much in the way of uptake, unless you want to argue that Germans are unusually bad about following rules, and that seems like a loser of an argument. We’ve seen similar in the US. at a certain point, it actually backfires and people start wonder why, if this is so great, they must be forced to take it.
Germany and Sweden have historically had similar seasonality. Last winter, despite wide variance in policy, their seasonal surges were nearly identical, despite Sweden’s more inclusive Covid death counting methodology. But so far this winter, Sweden has had nearly no rise in deaths while Germany is ramping rapidly and is at basically the same level as this date last year. If masks, lockdowns and vaccines worked, this is not at all what one would expect. In fact, it’s very much the opposite. See also:
FDA documents show over 150K serious adverse events in first 3 months of Pfizer jab approval - LifeSite The FDA has made public the first batch of documents it used to authorize Pfizer’s COVID shots, including a report detailing over 150,000 serious adverse events and more than 1,200 deaths connected to the jabs.
The FDA released the documents on November 19, months after the governmental agency was hit with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by attorney Aaron Siri on behalf of a group of some 30 scientists, academics, and researchers who demanded transparency about the information that had been used to assess the safety profile of the injections.
In response, the FDA moved to challenge the group’s request in court, raising eyebrows when it asked a federal judge to grant it 55 years to fully release the documents it reviewed before ultimately granting full approval for the Pfizer shots for people age 16 and up in August.
It would be interesting to correlate these numbers with reports from VAERS database, which is said to be unreported by 8 to 10 factor.
