Covid-19 News

Quote from JedRothwell

Both changed radically to prevent anything like that from happening again.

It happened again..2001. . Are the lessons of Vioxx already forgotten?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779871/

Bad Merck ..Never trust Bigpharma prognostications...and don't trust NEJM.

"

Merck subsequently admitted that it had incorrectly described the statistical approach, and the New England Journal of Medicine issued a correction indicating that statements regarding an increase in risk after 18 months should be removed from the article.^w14 Again, mistakes that favoured the company, with colossal economic implications, made it through the journal peer review process to the profession and the public.

Medical journals

The New England Journal of Medicine has had a prominent role in the story. It published the VIGOR and APPROVe studies, responding to their inaccuracies with “an expression of concern”^{w9 w10} and a correction^w14 and publishing a methodological paper^w15 and other related comments and editorials.^w16-w24 But other academic medical journals also played important parts.

https://www.npr.org/series/503…xx-the-downfall-of-a-drug

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called the Covid-19 vaccine "the greatest medical advance in the world's last hundred years.

Whereas Pfizer's vaccine is one of the worst in adverse effects (source). Most of the volunteers required medication for the symptoms of the vaccine. In principle it seems that the vaccine is worse than being immunized with the virus itself in non-risk groups.. The preliminary evaluation was deliberately delayed changing their own protocol on the fly.

Many people in risk groups, where the vaccine would make the most sense, are excluded from phase III trials. There are so many causes of exclusion that on the official essay page, in the section "Exclusion Criteria" when reaching paragraph 23 they say "truncated due to characters limitation." The designer of the page had not foreseen it, or the hard disk has been full

When they start vaccinating people we will see many protests against it.

Quote from Zeus46

"The Phase 3 clinical trial of BNT162b2 began on July 27 and has enrolled 43,538 participants to date, 38,955 of whom have received a second dose of the vaccine candidate as of November 8, 2020."

https://www.pfizer.com/news/pr…vaccine-candidate-against

Excellent,

Are the results positive?

Any negative results?

Quote from Zephir_AWT

Whereas Pfizer's vaccine is one of the worst in adverse effects (source). Most of the volunteers required medication for the symptoms of the vaccine.

Not yet. As the dose has been reduced to 30um. But no broad tests within risk groups make it of no value at all. So phase IV will be cash-in among the ones that don't need any vaccination and are strong enough to survive any potential damage. Phase 5 will target the old people at risk and we will see a lot of stock options being sold to keep the gains....

A bad example was: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesaf…rns/concerns-history.html

Every history book and every modern case study of the 1918 pandemic shows that cities that enforced masks and closed movie theaters suffered far lower infections and deaths than the ones that did not do this. The mandates are 100% lawful. Such public health mandates have been part of U.S. law since colonial times. The enforcement used to be a lot stricter than it is now. In 1918, you could go to jail for not wearing a mask, as shown in this photo:

I don't disagree, masks have a place but you fail to understand that many people don't feel as you do mandates will bring protest, are you forgetting michigan already? Super spreading events will begin once the first national mandate goes into effect. It happened in 1918. If you don't learn from history your doomed to repeat. Also I appreciate your toned down response.

Quote from Fm1

Super spreading events will begin once the first national mandate goes into effect. It happened in 1918. If you don't learn from history your doomed to repeat. Also I appreciate your toned down response.

How to shoot a duck? Throw a stone in the pond.

Quote from Dr Richard

Unfortunately the pharmaceutical industry has a sad history of using under-tested drugs or therapies - remember thalidomide?

Are you suggesting it would be better to add pregnant women into the trial cohorts for new drugs?

Quote from Roseland67

Excellent,

Are the results positive?

Any negative results?

Best read the link chief: https://www.pfizer.com/news/pr…vaccine-candidate-against

Quote from Fm1

I don't disagree, masks have a place but you fail to understand that many people don't feel as you do mandates will bring protest, are you forgetting michigan already? Super spreading events will begin

Of course I know that many people disagree. They have been egged on by Trump. Wearing a mask has become a political issue. It should not be, but it is. I can't see any way to fix that, so tens of thousands more people will die unnecessarily. We can't fix it, but we can make it better. The best way is to ask all national chains such as Walmart to insist the people wear masks in all stores, even in states where there is no mandate.

Super spreading events are ending. Trump held the largest ones in the world. If anti-mask people want to hold super-spreading events . . . I hope kill mainly themselves and their families, as they did in the Strugis motorcycle rally, one of causes of the disaster in S. Dakota.

Note there was a lot of opposition to masks in 1918. See:

https://www.history.com/news/1…u-mask-wearing-resistance

Quote from Shane D.

I don't think so. IMO, the *right* to chose to wear a mask, or not, has become political.

Does anyone claim the right to piss on the produce in the grocery store? Would it be political to claim you can run red lights? The assertion that such rights exist in a sane society is absurd. We are faced with 130,000 infections a day and 1000 deaths, which will soon increase. This is a catastrophe as bad as WWII at its peak. It is the worse public health disaster in 100 years. Are you suggesting people have a right to infect others with a deadly disease?!?

Quote from Shane D.

No one , including Trump/Kemp, is saying "do not wear a mask",

Trump and his supporters have said that time after time. They have said that wearing a mask is unmanly. That it does no good. That it is their right. They are claiming the right to commit involuntary manslaughter. It is no different from saying: "I have the right to drive through neighborhoods ignoring stop signs at 50 mph." Okay, granted, it is somewhat less likely to kill and mangle people, but that is only a matter of degree. Going without a mask in a crowded area such as grocery store is roughly as dangerous as skydiving. Of course, if you want to risk skydiving, you have every right to do that. The problem is that you are not only risking yourself at that rate, you are imperiling everyone else in the store. The other customers, the cashier . . . you are dragging them into the airplane and making them skydive whether they want to or not. And you think you have a right to do that?? Do you also claim the right to fire live ammunition up in the air and in random directions in a city?

Quote from Shane D.

Like most things right/left political; I think it comes down to whether one trusts citizens to do the right thing when given the information they need to decide, or trusts government more to decide for them.

This is not right or left political issue any more than traffic laws are. Or laws that stop you from pissing on other people's food. The government has not "decided" anything here. This is science. These are indisputable facts. Medical science have proved beyond doubt that masks greatly reduce the infection rate, and the death rate. They might have saved 200,000 lives!

You seem to think people can "decide" whether masks save lives or not. What else can they decide? That bacteria and viruses cause infectious disease? That the earth revolves around the sun? A large fraction of the U.S. population does not believe that. It is a matter of choice? Of course not.

Are we going to leave it up to people to decide whether they stop at red lights and abide by speed limits? If they feel like firing off automatic weapons at people's houses, is that okay? Your freedom to wave your fist ends at my nose. You are free to kill yourself, but you have no right to endanger me by infecting me with COVID. My right to live greatly outweighs your "right" to ignore doctors, ignore science, act like an ignorant lunatic, and endanger everyone. You -- and everyone -- owes society. You must abide by laws, pay your taxes, and avoid killing people. Society gives you everything necessary for a civilized life: clean water, hospitals, roads, education . . . At times, you have to give back, and do your share. Doctors and nurses put themselves in danger everyday. The least you can do for them -- the very least -- is not make their jobs harder by infecting yourself and others with this dread disease.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

When they start vaccinating people we will see many protests against it.

I am sure there will be no involuntary vaccinations. No one has suggested that anyone be forced to vaccinate. So why will there be protests? If idiots want to leave themselves open to sickness and death, and I can be 90% assured they will not harm me, I have no objection. The dead will deserve a Darwin Award.

Perhaps we should insist that when people who refuse vaccination and infect themselves voluntarily, against the advice of doctors, they should not get any treatment at public expense. Let them suffer and die at home. I suppose that would be uncivilized. I would not seriously advocate that, but I would be tempted.

Unfortunately, I expect that parents will be allowed to endanger their children by not vaccinating them. That is a moral abomination. It is like letting parents get drunk and zoom around at 90 mph with the children in the car. But that's modern life for you. People are given the "right" to kill and maim others in the name of "freedom" with no regard to the rights and freedom of the victims.

The fact that parents are allowed to not have their children vaccinated for things like tetanus is a moral abomination. It should be unthinkable in any modern society. It was unthinkable when I was child in the 1950s and 60s, and it should still be. Those were conformist times. People had to do many things they did not want to. Nowadays we are more free to do as we please. This is the golden age of personal freedom, unlike anything in Colonial or U.S. history. On the whole I like how things have developed. I am pleased to see people having sex in all kinds of ways with both sexes, and pleased to see the mass media no longer controls information. But I think the pendulum has swung too far. As a person of the 1950s I see some advantages to conformity, abiding by the rules, and doing what the experts say you should do. Of course it sometimes led to abuses.

By the way, you should not think that everyone in the 50s was a conformist. My parents were not. Allen Ginsburg was not. He was one of the greatest poets of our time, and he described the era masterfully. See:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl

Quote from Shane D.

I am saying that the elderly, and unhealthy, have the right to protect themselves from getting infected by others.

I am elderly. Tell me, how the hell can I protect myself from a crowd of ignorant lunatics in Walmart going around without masks? Yes, if I wear a mask, it reduces the likelihood of infection. But it would reduce it far more if they would wear masks.

I was in Walmart the other day for the first time in months. The place was swarming with people not wearing masks, laughing, coughing and carrying on. A petri dish!

Quote from Shane D.

I would like to see that quote.

You don't need to see any quote. Look at a photo of a Trump rally. Many people are not wearing masks. They are carrying signs claiming that masks do no good, and that wearing a mask interferes with their freedom. Or look at the White House superspreader events. Trump has never asked his audience to put on masks. You have visual proof of his views, and his followers' views. What people do tells you more than what they say. Their contempt for science and their ignorance is on display for all the world to see. It shows how the low the U.S. has fallen, and how bad our education systems have become. To think that we led the world in science and technology for most of the 20th century! It is a disgrace.

Quote from JedRothwell

Every history book and every modern case study of the 1918 pandemic shows that cities that enforced masks and closed movie theaters suffered far lower infections and deaths than the ones that did not do this. The mandates are 100% lawful. Such public health mandates have been part of U.S. law since colonial times

Wearing masks is one thing ; not going to crowed movie theatres is another. The latter would be far more effective.

Masks were shown to not have a pronounced effect in the 1918 pandemic, contrary to what you are saying.

From https://www.healthaffairs.org/…blog20200508.769108/full/

Quote

Did masks prevent the spread of influenza? Experts reviewing evidence from 1918 concluded that flu masks failed to control infection. In December 1918, the American Public Health Association recommended that the “wearing of proper masks” should be compulsory for medical staff, occupations such as “barbers, dentists, etc.,” and “all who are directly exposed to infection.” The committee also found, however, that the evidence “as to beneficial results consequent on the enforced wearing of masks by the entire population at all times was contradictory,” and thus the committee did not recommend “the widespread adoption of this practice.” The committee did recommend that persons “who desire to wear masks” should be “instructed as to how to make and wear proper masks, and encouraged to do so.”

In 1919, Wilfred Kellogg’s study for the California State Board of Health concluded that mask ordinances “applied forcibly to entire communities” did not decrease cases and deaths, as confirmed by comparisons of cities with widely divergent policies on masking. Masks were used most frequently out in public, where they were least effective, whereas masks were removed when people went inside to work or socialize, where they were most likely to be infected. Kellogg found the evidence persuasive: “The case against the mask as a measure of compulsory application for the control of epidemics appears to be complete.”

In a comprehensive study published in 1921, Warren T. Vaughn declared “the efficacy of face masks is still open to question.” The problem was human behavior: Masks were used until they were filthy, worn in ways that offered little or no protection, and compulsory laws did not overcome the “failure of cooperation on the part of the public.” Vaughn’s sobering conclusion: “It is safe to say that the face mask as used was a failure.”

It's outcomes like this which had Antony Fauci at first saying that masks do not provide the protection that people think they do. What he said back then is correct. Then rather mysteriously Fauci and so many health industry bureaucrats worldwide changed their tune - with no gold standard, groundbreaking new scientific study to base it on. The edict comes down, and like good little employees they do as they're told.

JedRothwell - Sure, ships are not safe accounting for the high price of maritime insurance especially around Cornish coastlines. The difference here is that the pharmaceutical big brother industries have the finances to protect themselves legally whilst the patients rely only on personal life insurance on their deaths to acquire compensation for the PHARMA mistakes. Which is TOTALLY UNFAIR - as is the case for all big brother businesses!

"SARS-CoV-2 can mutate to evade immunity, with consequences for the efficacy of emerging vaccines and antibody therapeutics. Herein we demonstrate that the immunodominant SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) receptor binding motif (RBM) is the most divergent region of S, and provide epidemiological, clinical, and molecular characterization of a prevalent RBM variant, N439K. We demonstrate that N439K S protein has enhanced binding affinity to the hACE2 receptor, and that N439K virus has similar clinical outcomesand in vitroreplication fitness as compared to wild-type. We observed that the N439K mutation resulted in immune escape from a panel of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, including one in clinical trials, as well as from polyclonal sera from a sizeable fraction of persons recovered from infection. Immune evasion mutations that maintain virulence and fitness such as N439K can emerge within SARS-CoV-2 S, highlighting the need for ongoing molecular surveillance to guide development and usage of vaccines and therapeutic."

https://www.biorxiv.org/conten…0.11.04.355842v1.full.pdf

Quote from Ahlfors

"SARS-CoV-2 can mutate to evade immunity, with consequences for the efficacy of emerging vaccines and antibody therapeutics. Herein we demonstrate that the immunodominant SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) receptor binding motif (RBM) is the most divergent region of S, and provide epidemiological, clinical, and molecular characterization of a prevalent RBM variant, N439K. We demonstrate that N439K S protein has enhanced binding affinity to the hACE2 receptor, and that N439K virus has similar clinical outcomesand in vitroreplication fitness as compared to wild-type. We observed that the N439K mutation resulted in immune escape from a panel of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, including one in clinical trials, as well as from polyclonal sera from a sizeable fraction of persons recovered from infection. Immune evasion mutations that maintain virulence and fitness such as N439K can emerge within SARS-CoV-2 S, highlighting the need for ongoing molecular surveillance to guide development and usage of vaccines and therapeutic."

https://www.biorxiv.org/conten…0.11.04.355842v1.full.pdf

This seems to make sense. The growing numbers of infections are climbing and accelerating in the nnorthern hemisphere. If this is now the direction the virus is taking, it may mean nobody has any imunity.

Quote from JedRothwell

Are you suggesting people have a right to infect others with a deadly disease?!?

Do you agree that doctors have the right to kill people without giving them the known working drugs? 3 out of 4 deaths should not happen at all! But if you want to keep your place at the Rotary table you have to shut -up!

Quote from JedRothwell

Unfortunately, I expect that parents will be allowed to endanger their children by not vaccinating them. That is a moral abomination. It is like letting parents get drunk and zoom around at 90 mph with the children in the ca.

Children have almost 0 risk. Giving them an untested vaccine will potentially give away the live of your and the countries future. Also 80% at least of all people are immune against CoV-19 what means these show at most minor symptoms. So please stop your panic mode. The older - like you - should take the vaccine and then you should hope that this does not increase the flue risk!