A LETTER TO MY ATTORNEY FRIEND WHO I CONSULTED ABOUT LEGAL STRATEGIES TO GET REPURPOSED DRUGS TO COVID PATIENTS

A LETTER TO MY ATTORNEY FRIEND WHO I CONSULTED ABOUT LEGAL STRATEGIES TO GET REPURPOSED DRUGS TO COVID PATIENTS

Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite.by Michael Goodkin Dear John, I

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Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite.

by Michael Goodkin

Dear John,

I hope things with you and the kids are good. Our Zoom meeting with my COVID expert friend and your associates in your law firm 6 months ago was very interesting. He explained the fraud going on multiple fronts that is going on and the failure of the press to report it in large part due to the Trusted News Initiative. It has very likely resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide, innumerable unnecessary hospitalizations, untold economic damage and led to governments instituting insane lockdown policies and mandatory vaccination.

I’m sorry you didn’t feel there was a strategy you could pursue at that time. You seemed most interested in liability for the hospitals who denied ivermectin to patients who subsequently died. There will be strong legal strategies in the future. I have now written eight (8) articles on repurposed drugs for Trialsite News plus serve on the advisory committee.

Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone and several others could be expert witnesses for you in the future if they feel there is a strong case. Dr. Malone, a key early pioneer involved with the emergence of mRNA technology, served as a respectable virologist and government drug development insider. Today he led a group in Washington to fight for truth and medical freedom. He has 17,000 physicians and researchers who have signed a petition.

Hospital systems continue to refuse to give patients ivermectin when families request it. The patients who win in court usually live. Those who lose in court almost always die. I doubt that there will ever be a large enough study to prove that treating that type of patient with ivermectin works but other data exists as to its benefit as in Uttar Pradesh, India, 240 million where ivermectin has crushed COVID and Brazil where in a town of 223,000, 160,000 were randomized to ivermectin prevention or no treatment. Those who got a low dose of ivermectin about 4 times a month were 44% less likely to get infected, 56% less likely to be hospitalized and 70% less likely to die. The unvaccinated could certainly be helped by ivermectin prevention. Unfortunately, data like this, called observational data, is discounted by those in power in favor of randomized trial data which is at the mercy of the biases of those conducting the studies.

There are four large, randomized trials of ivermectin, all of which gave or are giving one third or less of the proper dose of ivermectin for early treatment of the delta variant. The results of the Together Trial were announced 8/6 as showing “absolutely no benefit” but the actual data showed a borderline statistically significant 9% decrease in admissions and 18% decrease in mortality.

Dr. Edward Mills, affiliated with a program that has received some Bill Gates funding, ran that trial. NIH chose not to study ivermectin until their ACTIV-6 trial started enrolling patients the same time as the Together results were announced. They decided to go ahead and give patients a lower dose than in Together where ivermectin showed borderline results. By then we had 80% delta. Dr. Pierre Kory found out that delta needed a much higher dose of ivermectin and put it on the FLCCC Alliance website. I made the ACTIV-6 principal investigator and others involved aware of their dosing snafu on 10/18. My email was acknowledged by NIAID deputy director Dr. Cliff Lane who said it would be addressed by the appropriate people. There was a rumor that they considered adding a new arm with appropriate dosing, but they did nothing.

ACTIV-6’s ivermectin data should be ready in about 2 months. Should ivermectin show no benefit they may or may not publicly admit that it was underdosed and it needs a new trial. If they don’t acknowledge it, someone will call out NIH for randomizing patients to placebo or a dose they knew was unlikely to work then doing nothing when they were made aware of their dosing error. An unacceptable ethical failing. I don’t think the principal investigator, Dr. Susanna Naggie from Duke, wants her career ruined.

Meanwhile the COVID-OUT data will come out very soon. They were 3 months into their trial when Together was announced and 5 months into it and 75% subscribed before they knew of the new FLCCC recommendations. They had no more money, something ACTIV-6 can’t claim. Many patients in Brazil in Together had a nasty gamma variant and ivermectin was sold over the counter there so their trial could turn out positive despite using a similar dose. COVID-OUT has alpha, delta, and omicron patients. First, I hope that their study will show positive results. Next, I hope they will admit that the study was underdosed for delta and that patients probably would have done better with a higher dose. It will be interesting what NIH will do if their study is positive. An EUA is unlikely.

I doubt hospital systems will be vulnerable as their position is that the FDA recommends against ivermectin. Despite there being no evidence of toxicity and hospitals not having restricted doctors choices previously, it will be hard to win. Even if you prove the FDA was wrong, you will have to prove that the hospitals should have known the FDA was wrong. Hospitals have greatly benefitted from COVID financially. They are paid extra for the patients, extra if the patients die and extra for giving them remdesivir which is a lousy drug. They have a financial disincentive to see early treatment instituted widely which would decrease hospitalizations and have used their clout to punish those physicians who speak out against mandates and suppression of early therapies. ENT doctor Mary Bowden was suspended by Houston Methodist for publicly speaking out against vaccine mandates and giving her 2000 COVID patients successful early treatment. She is suing them to among other things find out about their finances during COVID.

A better target is pharmacists who will not stock or sell ivermectin. The few who do sell it charge exorbitant prices. They know there is no data showing that pharmacists selling ivermectin have toxicity. They will claim that the FDA recommends against it, and they are doing it to protect the public. These are the same guys who sold as much oxycontin as they could get. They stopped selling ivermectin because of their fear of the FDA. If ivermectin shows benefit in COVID-OUT they have no leg to stand on. If they still fail to stock and sell it, they will be a target for you. I will keep you informed.

The Wall Street Journal did an article 12/28 in which it chastised the government for not getting fluvoxamine to the public. It’s a generic SSRI. In the Together Trial, the results of which were announced 8/6 and published in The Lancet Global Health 10/27, in 1497 patients, in those who finished the trial, it lowered admissions 32% and deaths 91%. In addition, the sponsor, Steve Kirsch, reported that no one treated with it gets long COVID which is about 20% of those infected.

NIH says the data is insufficient to use a $1 a day drug with 30 years of safety data. Meanwhile Merck’s molnupiravir which may be dangerous and had similar data got emergency use authorization. Dr. Boulware who has done a video for TrialSite News on repurposed drugs, filed an emergency use application for fluvoxamine 12/21 which the FDA which has ignored,

He is running COVID-OUT testing ivermectin and fluvoxamine. Tom Avril of the Philadelphia Inquirer at my request did an article on fluvoxamine Friday. I’m hoping Tom will be doing more articles about repurposed drugs. Many newspapers declined to report on it even though it would have helped a lot of people, especially the unvaccinated.

The next drug to go public will be famotidine (Pepcid). A 56 patient randomized trial of famotidine 80 mg 3 times a day vs. placebo will be published in a major journal very soon showing great benefit. There was plenty of reason for NIH to have sponsored a large trial over a year ago. Famotidine blocks H2 receptors on mast cells which normally cause allergies by releasing histamine. The president and head of research for the big allergy/immunology group, AAAAI, 7000 allergists, were very excited about it. They sent my email to the coronavirus task force. 3 weeks later they suddenly turned cold and did nothing. I suspect the worst.

At some point we will have the data to support a claim that the government intentionally unreasonably failed to give emergency use authorization to fluvoxamine, failed to study then sabotaged the study of famotidine and failed to study ivermectin until August 2021 then did everything possible to sabotage it. The government appeared to have sabotaged hydroxychloroquine, but it will be harder to prove. The reason for the government’s actions is because the success of repurposed drugs would have increased vaccine hesitancy and possibly make vaccines unnecessary. Around the world where vaccines are unavailable, repurposed drugs would have made a tremendous difference. Getting damages from the government will be difficult but it could be a fee for service or even a pro bono case for the benefit of COVID infected people all over the world.

The people I deal with only care about getting proper treatment for patients. A bonus would be to get rid of Fauci and assorted dangerous bureaucrats that say they’re pro-public health, yet their behavior indicates something altogether to the contrary. The public strongly disapproves of the vaccine mandates and associated haphazard public health by bureaucratic impulse, but Fauci’s irrational exuberance for his own top-down, hubris-driven program will crush the Democrats for many years when it’s exposed.

The press and social media have conspired with the government and drug companies, culminating in the Trusted News Initiative, to censor information different from the party line. I would think as attorneys you would find the suppression of information by those in power that would greatly decrease tremendous human suffering would be reprehensible and you would want to fight against it.

Think carefully about the true risk-benefit analysis associated with vaccination prior to subjecting your children to the regimen. The risk from COVID for healthy children is very low. Their risk from the vaccine appears to be higher. That’s why in the Nordic nations for example holds were placed on the Moderna vaccine for young people under 30.

While industry and public health authorities deny this reality, I put forth here that vaccines spread through your body and induce one’s cells to produce spike protein which is not the same as the one the virus has. The spike protein is toxic. So are the lipid nanoparticles used to deliver it. Insurance companies are reporting a 40% increase in all-cause mortality in 2021 for those 18-64 years old. One in 2700 young men is reported to get myocarditis which can shorten their life. I suspect that if a troponin blood test were done on every patient, that number would be a lot higher.

There have been hundreds of young athletes who died suddenly, far more than in the past. I’m sure the increase in all-cause mortality is multifactorial but I believe that sooner or later some of it will be attributed directly to the vaccines. 79,000 people in Australia have sued the government for damage from the vaccines. Unfortunately, vaccine makers are indemnified in America, but their executives could face criminal prosecution in the future.

The CDC has said that vaccine induced immunity was better than immunity from natural infection, but most data suggests the opposite. Wednesday the CDC admitted that since the delta variant, natural immunity is significantly better. The mandates which include mandating vaccination of the 50% of the country previously infected whose immunity is better than those who are vaccinated are absurd. The NIH/Biden logic is that if 100% of the country is vaccinated. we will have herd immunity. It is true that if 100% were vaccinated, fewer would be in the hospital and the vaccinated would be less likely to be infected by the unvaccinated but with these vaccines, the vaccinated people will always spread the virus to each other.

The Biden/NIH logic further goes that the only way to make sure that there is no one left unvaccinated is to vaccinate everyone whether they need it or not. Asking people for proof of previous infection has not been considered. Vaccines have toxicity as evidenced, despite denials by the government, by the 900,000 reports on VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system which is a gross underestimate of the problems caused by the vaccines. Many people who have had COVID fret that exposure to the vaccine only gives them risk and not surprisingly resist. Drug companies and the government are pushing the idea of needing a new shot every 3-4 months for life. It’s not working in Israel. No one has any idea what problems lifelong shots would cause. After All this has never been studied. What happened to the Declaration of Helsinki and good clinical practices?

I just watched Alex Witt and a guest on MSNBC covering Stop the Mandates in Washington DC. I hate Trump and love MSNBC during the election but every word they said today was false. She knows no science and sounds like a Fauci/Biden/ lobbyist. Her expert sounded like he worked for Pfizer. CNN wasn’t as bad but said the rally was about people who don’t trust the government. I’m not sure the press will ever tell people the truth about repurposed drugs even if it is conclusively shown that the government healthcare agencies deliberately tanked repurposed drugs that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I know your law firm has mostly Democrats. I hope that if I come to you with a strong, profitable case that will benefit COVID patients but hurt those that have seemingly conspired to thwart economically repurposed drugs at every turn, your law firm will be willing to take it on. Life is too short not to do the right thing.

Divergent COVID Responses Catalyze a Deeper Debate

Divergent COVID Responses Catalyze a Deeper Debate

On the very day President Joe Biden delivered a three-hour speech last week repeatedly encouraging all Americans to continue to wear masks and “get

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On the very day President Joe Biden delivered a three-hour speech last week repeatedly encouraging all Americans to continue to wear masks and “get vaccinated please, and get your booster,” the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament members “mandatory certification” of vaccination will end as of this week. The gap between the two nations at the nexus of the Anglosphere could not have been starker yet reflect a broader and deeper set of divisions possibly indicative of the casualty spawned by the attack on scientific truth in the age of COVID-19.

Global COVID Policies Sharply Diverge

It is a widening gap, with some governments such as Austria, Australia and the United States redoubling their efforts to enforce vaccine requirements with increasing severity even as others, like the United Kingdom, Israel and Spain reconsidering mandate policies given the unfolding scientific and medical data.

Biden’s intense focus on vaccination, core to the underlying premise that universal vaccination represents a fundamental step toward SARS-CoV-2 pathogen eradication, was also undermined last week by the second of two major blows against his sweeping mandate orders by federal courts. Less than a week after the Supreme Court ruled against his September 2020 order requiring private businesses with more than 100 employees to enforce mandates, a federal judge in Texas blocked a similar requirement for all federal employees.

Zero-COVID Policies & Universal Vaccination Vs. Endemic Realities

These contradictory trends are being driven, in large part, by the onset of the Omicron variant, which has exposed the futility of both “zero-COVID” policies (e.g., the trend to attempt to block out SARS-CoV-2 from entrance into a country in the first place–such as applied in China and even Australia) and universal vaccination (the brilliant sounding but hubris-driven scheme that one batch of novel vaccines could entirely eradicate a highly volatile, novel virus around the world in a matter of a year or so) to the inevitability of COVID’s endemicity.

Governments are taking contradictory policy positions against a backdrop of data showing record high case rates and suggesting negative efficacy among some of the world’s most vaccinated nations. As cases subside in societies previously hard-hit by Omicron, data are also showing extremely resilient natural immunity. While countries like China can boast about far less infections than the West, the unsustainable costs associated with regime’s zero tolerance schemes were partially exposed when the government there had to also embrace the universal vaccination stratagem starting in the summer of 2021. As it turns out despite huge trade surpluses and rapidly growing economic muscle their public finance coffers also must ultimately account to the law of economics.

Moving forward countervailing forces intensify the debate over vaccine mandates, morphing from one focused on interpretations of medical evidence and specific public health approaches to broader debates about global governance and individual liberty. Additionally, an underlying mass plebeian current drives a demand for normalcy. Society-wide buy-in, key for any sustainable long-term public health program weakens when the crowd smells slick, Madison Avenue-inspired spin originating from the confluence of big government, industry and health systems–backed intellectually by some prominent key opinion leaders in the academic ivory tower and of course for unified positioning and messaging, the spin masters from the heavily consolidated corporate media.

As Old COVID Narratives Fade New Debates Come to the Fore

Thus, these broader debates, marginalized until now, emerge as nation-states’ policy positions coalesce the stakes of these divergent positions, becoming clearer to more people, despite distortion.

Despite the demise of zero-COVID as a practical matter (e.g., started by China and its heavy investment to keep out the pathogen using every authoritarian tool at its’ government’s disposal), as well as the universal vaccination program promulgated accepted by most developed nation-states while championed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for execution in the low-and middle-income countries, many governments continue to leverage those earlier tropes for their policies.

But as societies take different paths away from “flattening-the-curve,” masking, shutdowns, vaccinating for “herd immunity,” vaccinating to “spare neighbors” and “to save grandparents,” or perhaps as in the case of China to keep the virus out to “outlast the competition” more essential arguments will have an opportunity to move to the fore of global discourse.

In a world where bordering states and nations have similar COVID infection and fatality rates, yet wildly different public health policies, the only way to bridge the gap is to address the planet’s fundamental divisions over transparency, governance and liberties necessary for vibrant economies and civil societies. That debate is overdue

New NIH COVID Treatment Guidelines: Real Questions

NIH treatment guidelines. Big problem, most if not all, not available!

New NIH COVID Treatment Guidelines: Real Questions

Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite. Joel S. Hirschhorn What our

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What our government is telling physicians boggles this author’s mind. Read the following from a publication aimed at doctors.

This was reported:

“Due to the Omicron variant and the short supply of COVID therapeutics, NIH recommends certain therapies over others for patients at high risk of progressing to severe COVID, said federal officials on a call with clinicians Wednesday [January 12].

In order of preference, clinicians should use the oral antiviral nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid), the monoclonal antibody sotrovimab, the IV antiviral remdesivir (Veklury) and finally, the oral antiviral molnupiravir, said Alice Pau, PharmD, of the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines panel.

While the drugs were ranked from 1 to 4, she noted that nirmatrelvir-ritonavir, sotrovimab, and IV remdesivir three times a day all had similar clinical efficacy, with a relative risk reduction of 88%, 85%, and 87% in hospitalizations and deaths, respectively, versus placebo. However, molnupiravir, with its 30% efficacy, should be used only if the other three choices are not available, Pau noted.”

Here are the main reasons why the NIH list of preferred COVID treatments should not reassure the public:

1. The first preferred action, using the Pfizer drug Paxlovid, makes little sense because there is nearly no availability of it. And even if people could get prescriptions filled, would they be acting fast enough to get benefits. In the clinical trials people had to start the drug within three days of symptoms; even though they now talk of starting within five days, that too is totally impractical and unrealistic. Few people would be able to distinguish symptoms being COVID and not the flu or a bad cold quickly, getting an appointment with the doctor quickly and getting a prescription filled quickly. And the safety has not been adequately assessed. A new article written for physicians details concerns about interactions with commonly used medicines.

2. The monoclonal antibody sotrovimab is nearly impossible to get because of extremely limited supply. And here too, a sick person would have to get medical attention quickly, that is extremely difficult. Even your local hospital might not have it.

3. The very expensive drug remdesivir has a terrible history of being both ineffective and having terrible side effects. It is mostly given to very ill patients in hospitals.

4. Then you get to the absolutely head-scratching fourth option, the new Merck antiviral that has a real question of effectiveness and that has not been proven safe. An absolutely questionable choice.

Most troubling according to this author, the NIH continues to ignore ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine as real-world treatment options. It disregards positive-impact, real-world treatment protocols of frontline doctors like Dr. Fareed and Dr. Zelenko that do NOT include any of the four NIH preferences.

Of special importance is that NIH has ignored a recent detailed study of ivermectin and aimed at informing clinical guidelines reached these conclusions: “…large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.” An even newer study found remarkable benefits of using IVM, including a 68% reduction in mortality and 56% reduction in hospitalization. NIH is not respecting positive results for IVM. And their guidelines could make it difficult for states trying to make IVM easily available.

Is U.S. taxpayer money properly used for the benefit of the people?

The real message for the public: We must question the government and whether the present-day recommendations are in fact protecting human health. The pandemic has exposed the challenges with the present-day public health apparatus, evidencing greater risks to the broader population. While agencies such as the NIH accuse others of propagating misinformation, in reality, that apex research institution in fact projects their own complicity in such an unfortunate ongoing undertaking

Quote from Wyttenbach

No: Yare wrong. More vaxx die than unvaxx die. Just check the numbers . Unknown is vaxx. Just vaccine unknown...

Here again...cannot see there are more (numbers!) vaxx, than unvaxx who died... except for one single day (Jan 11), where the total number of vaxxed deaths 5 (incl. unknown status) was +1 higher than unvaxxed. Does this justify your strong claim???

Quote from zorud

Here again...cannot see there are more (numbers!) vaxx, than unvaxx who died... except for one single day (Jan 11),

Almost all days past 5 jan. As said you have to add the numbers . May be you suffer from the same undergrad math problem like THH...What is 30+19+18... Is it smaller or greater 59?

Quote from Mark U

Odd, I thought that mandates for NHS workers in England are not due to be in place until the spring. Scotland and Wales say they aren't planning mandates, but I'm sure they'll quickly follow suit with England if indeed England proceeds with the mandates. But I have a hunch that England will abandon its mandate threat to NHS workers.

The mandates are in place (care homes) and due to start soon (NHS)

England:

From 11 November 2021 care homes must only allow individuals who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (or exempt) entry inside of a care home. This requirement will apply to those visiting a care home in a professional capacity unless exempt.

NHS: April 1st

Scotland & Wales, no mandates, plans to have them.

A Scottish Government spokesperson told Pulse: ‘There are no plans to introduce mandatory vaccinations for NHS and social care staff in Scotland.

‘Uptake rates are incredibly high amongst NHS and social care staff in Scotland and we are grateful for their efforts during the pandemic.’

And a Welsh Government spokesperson said it also does ‘not see the need for compulsory measures’ amid ‘high’ take-up of the Covid vaccine among health and social care staff in the country.

You don't need vaccine mandates if not politicised and not good breeding ground for antivaxxers.

Israel today reports a new record of 80'000 infected by Omicron. Also the absolute numbers of Booster death is raising according the booster share of the population. May be some older folks do profit from 4x boosters but then some younger suffer from boosters...(like some idiot German footballers that recently got a booster.. and then Omicron...)

As said all vaccine statistics are faked by the high number of recovered included, that get no or much fewer/harmless infections due to being protected by better fitting antibodies.

Today the lower limit to be use for recovered is 70%. But now also recovered are only 4x better protected from Omicron than before 40x.

Age < 50 :: Please stay away from RNA Boosters & Oxford crap - except J&J. Or newest real vaccines.

Truckers Convoy heading to

Ottawa.

Anti-vaccine-mandate truck convoy passing through Alberta on way to Ottawa | CBC News

A national truck convoy is making its way through Alberta Sunday, on its way to Ottawa to protest the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for truckers that cross the…

www.cbc.ca

Quote from Wyttenbach

Almost all days past 5 jan. As said you have to add the numbers . May be you suffer from the same undergrad math problem like THH...What is 30+19+18... Is it smaller or greater 59?

Not sure why you change the topic again...didn't I said you were wrong on your numbers of deaths? Why do you come up now with hospitalizations and your common BS insults? Is that intentionally? Because you were not right on the number of deaths? Just asking. Other's here admit if proven to be wrong sometimes...

Quote from zorud

Not sure why you change the topic again...didn't I said you were wrong on your numbers of deaths?

This is the only page that usually perfectly correlates with deaths. The one you reference is faked as the numbers never did match with the official report. The two last official reports did show an increasing fraction more vaccine deaths than unvaxx deaths.

As said this page is very suspect as the statistical fluctuation is out of bounds for some days like 5.1/7.1. Just look at the UK data and you will understand how far off this data is....

Quote from Zephir_AWT

The Vaccine Death Charts Could Shock All Americans: In most countries the number of Covid-10 deaths started to grow AFTER introduction of vaccines

There is nothing remotely "shocking" about this.

Obviously this is because it takes a while to vaccinate a significant fraction of the population, and because it takes two month to administer two doses. This graph shows the introduction of vaccines in January 2021, shortly after the vaccines went into production. It was not possible to vaccinate more than a small number of people before the peak of deaths in February. As soon as the number of vaccinated elderly people became significantly high, deaths dropped sharply. That proves the vaccine was working.

What else would you expect? Do you think that after the first few vaccinations, the death rate would magically drop to zero? Among people who were still not vaccinated? How would that work?

Quote from Wyttenbach

As said all vaccine statistics are faked by the high number of recovered included, that get no or much fewer/harmless infections due to being protected by better fitting antibodies.

Shouldn't we see then a significant lower severe infection rate, illness or death rate among unvaccinated? If all infected would have been fully recovered and never got a vaccination (= unvaccinated?), wouldn't the Israel statistics show these as "unvaccinated"? I would expect that a recovered person with an after-jab doesn't count as unvaccinated anymore.

Just to make sure we all agree on the same wording....

New ex-vivo cell research seems to show a reason why Omicron causes mostly milder illness? Different to Delta the Omicron variant seems much more vulnerable by the interferon response of infected human cells...

"In conclusion, our comparison of Omicron and Delta isolates in different cellular models shows that Omicron viruses remain sensitive to a broad range of anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs and drug candidates with a broad range of mechanisms of action. Moreover, Omicron viruses are less effective at antagonizing the host cell interferon response, which may explain why they cause less severe disease."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-022-00619-9.pdf

Quote from zorud

I would expect that a recovered person with an after-jab doesn't count as unvaccinated anymore.

This is the problem. All recovered are better protected than any vaccinated at least as of today. All recovered must be excluded from the vaccine group as the vaccines add nothing there. To get the real vaccine protection rates we are only allowed to count non recovered vaccinated, what e.g. today in UK is 30% at most of the vaccinated group.

Quote from zorud

Different to Delta the Omicron variant seems much more vulnerable by the interferon response of infected human cells...

And exactly this (interferon response) is suppressed by Pfizer boosters and at 1/5 of Pfizer rate by Moderna boosters.... May be this explains the 4x higher (than unvaxx) CoV-19 rate among boostered... (If we correct the rates for recovered then in look even much worse...)

Covid-⁠19 Schweiz | Coronavirus | Dashboard

Covid-⁠19 Pandemie Schweiz und Liechtenstein: Fallzahlen, Virusvarianten, Hospitalisationen, Re-⁠Wert, Spitalkapazitäten, internationale Lage, Zahlen zu Tests,…

www.covid19.admin.ch

Switzerland:: Over the weekend we had a positive rate of 40% and about 30'000 cases/day in average. Hospitalizations constantly go down. So we can confirm that Omicron even at peak case load does not produce a hospitalization peek. We are now 30% below the last delta peek that had a fraction (1/10) of today's cases with a far (8..10x) lower positive rate.

So Omicron is at least 100x more harmless than all other CoV-19 virus before! I would be interested to know how many really die just from Omicron. As Zürich did report no ICU cases with Omicron admitted only other patients diagnosed on entry this looks to be a very unlikely szenario.

Quote from Wyttenbach

https://www.covid19.admin.ch/de/overview

Switzerland:: Over the weekend we had a positive rate of 40% and about 30'000 cases/day in average. Hospitalizations constantly go down. So we can confirm that Omicron even at peak case load does not produce a hospitalization peek. We are now 30% below the last delta peek that had a fraction (1/10) of today's cases with a far (8..10x) lower positive rate.

So Omicron is at least 100x more harmless than all other CoV-19 virus before! I would be interested to know how many really die just from Omicron. As Zürich did report no ICU cases with Omicron admitted only other patients diagnosed on entry this looks to be a very unlikely szenario.

Yep, this was expected but the studies showed different numbers and according to those hospitals should be overwhelmed. So the conclusion is that the researchers are smoking something or what.

Anyhow I talked with a friend who is a senior statistician involved in cancer research. He is complaining that papers that show now effect of some claimed medication where difficult to publish, not even in the paper that published positive effects using a few people (He (they) could do a register study of the full Swedish population and prove a null result). Lots of economical interests seam to destroy our medicine.

Lockdown during early pandemic saved lives.

There has been a lot of discussion here about the good vs bad of lockdowns.

This study is an attempt to quantify some of the figures from the first lockdown in the USA.

Other studies have evaluated an economic cost. This one attempts to evaluate lives saved.

Unfortunately the conclusion seems to be that every situation is different so a lockdown may turn out to be worthwhile, or not, but maybe cannot be evaluated till after the event.

But they do make a case that the first lockdown early in the pandemic was probably worthwhile but a lockdown at this current stage of the pandemic may not be.

Here are some snippets, but the full report is available at the link above.

A new University of Michigan-led study shows the early lockdowns implemented in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic saved lives––but the decision to use lockdowns is much more nuanced and the research shouldn't be used to justify lockdowns now or to retroactively endorse that approach, said health economist Olga Yakusheva, associate professor at the U-M School of Nursing.

“This is the first known paper to measure the effect of pandemic lockdown mitigation measures on lives saved and lost, as opposed to typical economic evaluations, which examine the cost per life saved”, she said.

The study found that from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other mitigation in the United States potentially saved more lives (866,350 to 1,711,150) that the number of lives potentially lost (57,922 to 245,055) that were attributable to the economic downturn.

However, the results are more ambiguous when looking at the quality-adjusted life expectancy added by lockdown (4,886,214 to 9,650,886) vs. quality-adjusted life years lost (2,093,811 to 8,858,444) due to the economic downturn.

This is because many of the people saved were high-risk older adults with multiple illnesses and fewer healthy years left to live, while those most impacted by the economy were younger people in service jobs and other lower-paying occupations who found themselves without employer-provided health insurance and, in many cases, unable to pay for health care or even life-saving medications. A quality adjusted life year is one year of life in perfect health.

The study, published in PLOS One, should not be used to justify more lockdown measures, Yakusheva said. Nor is it a retroactive endorsement of the strict economic lockdown approach the U.S. imposed during the first six months of the pandemic.

"We evaluated the full packet of public health measures as it was implemented in the beginning of the pandemic, but lesser mitigation measures may have worked just as well to reduce lives lost," Yakusheva said. "The fact is, we just will never know. At the time, we had to work with the information that we had. We knew the pandemic was deadly, and we did not have therapeutics or a vaccine."

The situation has changed dramatically since the pandemic began, and we have more tools to battle the virus, Yakusheva said. Vaccines and therapeutics are available, as are other mitigation measures.

A review of the Japanese government COVID response:

Opinion | What Japan Got Right About Covid-19

The country embraced the science of the coronavirus early.

www.nytimes.com

What Japan Got Right About Covid-19

By Hitoshi Oshitani

Dr. Oshitani is a professor of virology at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. He has helped advise the Japanese government on its Covid-19 response.

SOME QUOTES:

Japan’s unique way of contact tracing also gave us more clues into how the virus spread. While other countries focused on prospective contact tracing, in which contact tracers identify and notify infected people’s contacts after they are infected, we used retrospective contact tracing. . . .

I suggested a basic concept: People should avoid the three C’s, which are closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings. The Japanese government shared this advice with the public in early March, and it became omnipresent. The message to avoid the three C’s was on the news, variety shows, social media and posters. “Three C’s” was even declared the buzzword of the year in Japan in 2020. . . .

Drastic measures, such as lockdowns, were never taken because the goal was always to find ways to live with Covid-19. (Japanese law also does not allow for lockdowns, so the country could not have declared them even if we had thought them necessary.) . . .

When it comes to the numbers of cases and deaths, Japan has fared well compared to other countries. It has had about 146 deaths per million people in the pandemic so far. The United States has had about 2,590 deaths per million.

Quote from ZenoOfElea

"We evaluated the full packet of public health measures as it was implemented in the beginning of the pandemic, but lesser mitigation measures may have worked just as well to reduce lives lost," Yakusheva said. "The fact is, we just will never know. At the time, we had to work with the information that we had. We knew the pandemic was deadly, and we did not have therapeutics or a vaccine."

I think that is the critical point. It is all very well to say that in retrospect we should have done this, or we shouldn't have done that, and maybe the lockdowns went too far in some cases. But, when you do not know much yet and lives are at stake, is is better to overreact than to underestimate the danger.

I am reminded of a quote from WWII. During Congressional testimony a Senator asked a general, "How many tanks do we really need? Are we sending too many to Europe?" The general answered, "better a thousand too many than one not enough."

India:https://www.mygov.in/covid-19

Majority of states already in recovery mode. The Omicron peak - so far was lower than expected what points to very high immunity of recovered and a working treatment solution...Lets wait one more week for a final call...

Will be nice to see how the infamous control group Kerala progresses...