Covid-19 News

Quote from Fm1

but Pfizer and Moderna both declined, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday,

Of course: It's their story. They invented it! 20 billion EU contract was at stake!

How much money will Pfizer and Moderna make from their booster shots?

https://qz.com/1997697/will-pf…ovid-19-booster-shot/amp/

The Pfizer vaccine will need a booster shot, likely within a year of completing the first two doses, the company’s CEO, Albert Bourla, said in comments taped April 1, and released yesterday by Pfizer.

Moderna, too, announced a plan to have a booster shot ready its two-dose vaccine course ready by the fall.

This was always a possible scenario for the immunization campaign. Data on the duration of immunity so far shows both Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines—both made using mRNA technology—are highly effective six months after the shots, but the boosters would extend strong immunity further, and potentially protect against emerging variants.

More shots, more money for Pfizer and Moderna

Vaccines don’t come for free, though, and providing a booster shot for current regimens is likely to be the first indicator of how much drug companies can earn from their Covid-19 vaccines in the long term.

Pfizer and Moderna didn’t respond to Quartz’s request for details on prospective booster shot pricing, but it’s possible to estimate revenues for them based on a few considerations.

“Sold at present prices, this would represent roughly a 50% increase in revenue over the longer run,” says Christopher Snyder, an economics professor at Dartmouth who has been studying the economic aspects of vaccine development.

Moderna’s forecast for sales of the first two doses of the vaccine was $18.4 billion for 2021, so the booster shot could add about $9 billion to that. Pfizer projected at least $15 billion in sales for 1 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses, so the booster would bring an additional $7.5 billion to the pharma giant.

New Side Effect From mRNA COVID Vaccines?

— Surprise finding in Israeli case series

https://www.medpagetoday.com/i…ease/covid19vaccine/92106

Little has been known about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines among patients with rheumatic diseases, because immunosuppressed individuals were not included in the initial clinical trials, they explained.

Accordingly, an observational study has been conducted at the Tel Aviv Medical Center and the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, monitoring post-vaccination adverse events in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthropathies, connective tissue diseases, vasculitis, and myositis. This interim analysis included 491 patients and 99 controls, with events reported during the 6-week post-vaccination monitoring period. The prevalence among patients was 1.2% versus none in controls, Furer and colleagues reported in Rheumatology.

"We haven't seen any additional cases so far," Furer told MedPage Today. However, "further surveillance of potential adverse effects following anti-COVID-19 vaccination in patients with rheumatic diseases is warranted," she added.

The Cases

Case 1 was a 44-year-old woman with Sjogren's syndrome who was being treated with hydroxychloroquine. She had a history of varicella and had not received a shingles vaccine. Three days after the first dose of the vaccine, she developed a vesicular skin rash with pruritus, along with low back pain and headache. The symptoms resolved spontaneously within the subsequent 3 weeks without treatment, and she was given the second dose 4 weeks after the first.

Case 2 was a 56-year-old woman with a long history of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis who had received a variety of biologics and had achieved low disease activity with tofacitinib (Xeljanz) beginning in 2014. She had a history of varicella and had not been given the shingles vaccine.

After the first dose of the vaccine, she reported malaise and headache, and 4 days after the shot she developed severe pain in the left eye and forehead, along with a rash along the distribution of the ophthalmic division of the V cranial nerve -- herpes zoster ophthalmicus. Ocular examination revealed hyperemic conjunctivitis sparing the cornea. She was given a 2-week course of acyclovir and analgesics, and symptoms gradually cleared by 6 weeks. Tofacitinib was withdrawn for 2 weeks, but she did not experience an arthritis flare. She declined the second dose.

Case 3 was a 59-year-old woman with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis who had not responded to several biologic therapies and baricitinib (Olumiant), but 6 months earlier she initiated treatment with upadacitinib (Rinvoq) plus prednisone 5 mg/day and had a partial response. She had a history of varicella and had been given the live attenuated zoster vaccine in 2019.

Two days after receiving the second dose of the COVID vaccine, she reported pain and had a vesicular skin rash on the lower abdomen, inguinal area, buttock, and thigh, and was given valacyclovir. The antiviral was given for 3 days but was discontinued because of adverse effects, and the skin lesions healed slowly over a course of 6 weeks.

The upadacitinib had been discontinued with the zoster eruption and she experienced a severe rheumatoid arthritis disease flare affecting multiple joints, and her arthritis treatment was subsequently switched to etanercept (Enbrel).

Case 4 was a 36-year-old woman with a long history of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis plus interstitial lung disease. For the previous 2 years she had been treated with rituximab (Rituxan), mycophenolate mofetil (CellCept), and prednisone in doses of 7 mg/day. She had a history of varicella and had not been given the shingles vaccine.

Ten days after receiving the first COVID-19 vaccine dose, she reported pain and a vesicular rash on the abdomen and back along the T10 dermatome, and was given acyclovir for 7 days. The rash resolved within 6 weeks, and she was given the second vaccine dose 4 weeks after the first. She had no further adverse effects to the vaccine and did not experience a rheumatic disease flare.

Case 5 was a 38-year-old woman with undifferentiated connective tissue disease and antiphospholipid syndrome who was being treated with aspirin and hydroxychloroquine. She had prior varicella exposure and had not received the shingles vaccine.

Two weeks after receiving the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, she developed an itchy vesicular rash on the right breast, and was given a week's course of acyclovir. Her zoster symptoms resolved within 3 weeks and she received the second vaccine dose on schedule with no further side effects or disease flare.

Case 6 was a 61-year-old woman with a long history of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis, who was being treated with tocilizumab (Actemra) and prednisone 5 mg/day at the time of the first dose of the vaccine. Two weeks later, a rash appeared along the T6 dermatome, and she was given valacyclovir for a week, which resulted in resolution of zoster symptoms within 10 days.

However, she did report a mild flare of arthritis and the prednisone dose was increased to 7.5 mg/day. The second dose was given uneventfully as scheduled.

Patterns and Mechanisms

Furer and colleagues noted that there had been no reports of herpes zoster in the clinical trials of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, and that, to their knowledge, this is the first case series of these events among patients with autoimmune/inflammatory diseases.

The pattern of disease was relatively mild, with no patients experiencing disseminated disease or post-herpetic neuralgia. It was notable, the researchers pointed out, that one case was in a patient who had received the shingles vaccine 2 years before the COVID-19 vaccination.

"Cell-mediated immunity plays an important role in the prevention of varicella zoster virus reactivation. Declining cell-mediated immunity with age or disease is associated with a reduction in varicella zoster virus-specific T cells, disrupting immune surveillance and increasing the risk of reactivation, with age being the major risk factor for 90% of cases of herpes zoster," the researchers wrote. Nonetheless, these cases were among relatively young women, whose mean age was 49 and whose rheumatic disease was mild or stable.

Other factors are also likely to have been involved. For instance, the risk of herpes zoster in the rheumatic disease population is higher than healthy individuals, with a pooled incidence rate ratio of 2.9 (95% CI 2.4-3.3). In addition, the risk among patients with rheumatoid arthritis specifically has been estimated to be twofold higher than in the general population.

Further raising risk are increased levels of disease activity and high doses of prednisone. Moreover, double the risk of herpes zoster has been reported for patients being treated with JAK inhibitors such as tofacitinib, as was the case with two patients in this series.

COVID-19 infection itself has been linked with varicella-like rashes, suggesting that the infection can interfere with the activation and function of CD4+ and CD8+ cells, which can influence immunity against viruses.

"Potential mechanisms that might explain the pathogenetic link between mRNA-COVID-19 vaccination and herpes zoster reactivation are related to stimulation of innate immunity through toll-like receptors," the researchers wrote.

They also noted that the vaccine can stimulate type I interferons and cytokines that can interfere with antigen expression.

A limitation of this analysis was that the diagnosis of herpes zoster was made solely on clinical grounds. Also, with only a small number of cases, causality cannot be assumed.

FM

“What’s with all these negative waves, can’t you just say something righteous and uplifting for a change”?

(Oddball to Moriarity)

Comment removed - we don't do party politics here. Alan

Quote from Fm1

https://www.thedesertreview.

Responsible journalism is still alive in one spot of the USA..

Imperial Valley... the rest is politics and bribes

Quote from JedRothwell

MK-7110 -- other drug manufacturers would be thrilled to sell a bunch of ivermectin instead, even at a much lower cost.

As I have said before.in reply to JR

. Merck can't survive on a profit from 20c/ivermectin tablet...

Its the nature of dysfunctional pharmaceutical ecosystem...

the BIGpharma are the Bigfish like white sharks..

they need at least 2$ per tablet... that's why Merck was going after scabies in Australia

with their Stromectol brandname as recently as 2017

https://www.chemistwarehouse.c…-3mg-tablets-4-ivermectin

Merck would much prefer to have much chunkier

100$ per tablet of course from their new ivermectin competitor..molnupiravir,

but the bottom feeders ..the generic manufacturers in India can survive on smaller scraps..

at 10-20c per tablet..

the Big sharks have much higher running costs than the small fry...

and that's why they want to close out ivermectin for Covid..

and the MErck public statement contra IVM is just one of the tactics used by Bigpharma to close out generics,,

https://hbr.org/2017/04/how-ph…m-to-keep-drugs-expensive

unfortunately for Merck molnupiravir trials aren't going well..

https://www.statnews.com/2021/…in-hospitalized-patients/

Bloomberg; Covid is deadlier in Brazil than India and nobody knows why.

Clearly we are still learning about the Covid19 virus and its variants.

Why it manifests differently in different countries is not clearly understood.

However the case of Brazil is the ongoing experiment in what happens with leadership eschewing lockdowns and masks and other measures and letting the virus run rampant.

Anybody who thought the lockdown cure was worse than the disease just needs to look at Brazil.

I suppose I had better clarify that certainly lockdowns are not without a high cost both financially and healthwise and should be minimised.

From countries that have dealt more successfully with the pandemic some might feel the temptation to observe the Brazil disaster with aloofness. However the very imminent risk is the mutated variants that are incubated and then become a threat to everyone. Sadly, in this sense, we are all in it together. Hopefully the richer countries will acknowledge the critical need to help the rest of the world to manage and defeat this pandemic.

Quote from Fm1

New Side Effect From mRNA COVID Vaccines?

You can see the same with Sutherlandia. These drugs can cut out dormant virus (herpes is known so) from the DNA but these are complete strains and start action after ejection.

Quote from RobertBryant

and the MErck public statement contra IVM is just one of the tactics used by Bigpharma to close out generics,,

https://hbr.org/2017/04/how-ph…m-to-keep-drugs-expensive

The antitrust law should work here. But somebody has to sue them including the bribed FDA people. The application of the above procedure simply is illegal!

Doctors home in on cause of blood clots potentially linked with Covid-19 vaccines

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/0…possible-cause/index.html

(CNN)Doctors say they are homing in on the cause of blood clots that may be linked with certain coronavirus vaccines, and said their findings have important implications for how to treat the condition, regardless of whether vaccines cause it.

Even though the link is not firm yet, they're calling the condition vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia or VITT. It's characterized by unusual blood clotting combined with a low number of blood-clotting cells called platelets. Patients suffer from dangerous clots and, sometimes, hemorrhaging at the same time.

It's been linked most firmly with the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, which is in wide use in Europe and the UK.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration are checking to see if Johnson & Johnson's Janssen vaccine also might cause the blood clots. Both AstraZeneca's vaccine and the J&J vaccine use common cold viruses called adenoviruses as a carrier and some experts suspect the body's response to those viral vectors might underlie the reaction. AstraZeneca's vaccine is not authorized in the US.

The FDA and CDC have asked for a pause in giving out the J&J vaccine while they investigate.

A team led by Dr. Marie Scully, a hematologist at University College London Hospitals, studied 22 patients who developed the syndrome after receiving AstraZeneca's vaccine, and found they had an unusual antibody response. These so-called anti-PF4 antibodies had only been seen before as a rare reaction to the use of the common blood thinner heparin.

The findings support a theory that an immune reaction might underlie the rare blood clots, but the findings don't yet explain it, Scully and colleagues reported in the New England Journal of Medicine Friday. What may be going on is a reaction by the immune system with platelets to cause uncontrolled clotting.

If vaccines cause it, it's still very rare and unusual, they wrote. It might not even be happening any more often in recently vaccinated people than among the population in general.

"The risk of thrombocytopenia and the risk of venous thromboembolism after vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 do not appear to be higher than the background risks in the general population, a finding consistent with the rare and sporadic nature of this syndrome," they wrote.

The events reported in this study appear to be rare, and until further analysis is performed, it is difficult to predict who may be affected. The symptoms developed more than five days after the first vaccine dose," they added.

"In all cases reported to date, this syndrome of thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) and venous thrombosis (blood clot) appears to be triggered by receipt of the first dose of the (AstraZeneca) ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine. Although there have been a few reports of patients with symptoms consistent with this clinical syndrome after the receipt of other vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, none have yet been confirmed to fulfill the diagnostic criteria," they added.

But if vaccination can cause the condition, it would be important to recognize that and treat it appropriately -- because the usual treatment for blood clots is not recommended for VITT.

Researchers Detail More Cases of Rare Clots Tied to COVID Vaccines

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/949473

New evidence emerged today tying vaccines for COVID-19 to extremely rare cases of people who develop blood clots and low platelets within weeks of being vaccinated.

A team of researchers in the United Kingdom conducted an in-depth investigation of 22 patients who developed serious blood clots combined with a drop in blood platelets after receiving a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is now called Vaxzevria. They also tested an additional patient who had clinical signs of a drop in blood platelets after vaccination. Nearly all the patients — 22 of 23 — tested positive for unusual antibodies to platelet factor 4, a signaling protein that helps the body coordinate blood clotting.

The presence of the antibodies suggests that the vaccines are somehow triggering an autoimmune attack that causes large clots to form that then diminish the supply of platelets in the blood.

The study and an editorial on the cases are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

This is at least the third study detailing the presence of these antibodies in patients with blood clots and low platelets after vaccination, and doctors say the emerging evidence suggests that doctors should remain vigilant for this new syndrome in anyone who experiences symptoms of blood clots anywhere in the body, not just the brain.

James Zehnder, MD, director of the coagulation laboratory at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, said that the mounting evidence pointing to a "maladaptive immune response" was quite remarkable. He was not involved in the research.

Zehnder says that why this syndrome, which seems to be some kind of an autoimmune attack on a blood signaling protein, develops in a small number of people after they get the anticoagulant heparin or a vaccine for COVID-19 is still very much a mystery.

He says that while the catastrophic cases of large clots in areas of the brain where doctors don't usually see them stand out, he wonders whether other, less obvious cases are going undetected.

"Then the question is, you know, how much more of this is going on in a more subtle way? And so I think the true magnitude of it is not known," he says, noting that it will be important in the coming weeks and months to figure out if particular groups of people are at higher risk than others, like young women. "There are many more questions than answers now," he says.

Key Symptoms to Watch

The symptoms to watch for include shortness of breath, headaches, dizziness, muscle weakness, or abdominal pain, back pain, or nausea and vomiting in anyone who is within 3 weeks of their vaccinations, including men.

People who have not been vaccinated can also develop these types of clots, called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. These cases — whether they happen after a vaccine or not — are extremely rare. On average each year, there are two to 14 cases of these clots in vessels that drain blood from the brain for every million people, according to Peter Marks, from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Doctors say that, on the whole, all the vaccines authorized to protect people from the new coronavirus are extremely safe. In fact, the risk of developing a life-threatening blood clot is far higher with COVID than with a vaccine.

"The chances of this happening to you are about between 1 and 100,000 to 1 in 1 million," said John Wherry, PhD, director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "If you're an American, the chances of dying from COVID are 1 in 600," Wherry continued, citing statistics on US COVID cases and deaths maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

It seems that some vaccines ARE killing people!!

People with rare blood clots after a COVID-19 jab share an uncommon immune response

https://www.sciencenews.org/ar…eneca-johnson-johnson/amp

Evidence is building that an uncommon immune response is behind dangerous, but incredibly rare, blood clots associated with some COVID-19 vaccines. But the good news is that there is a test doctors can use to identify it and get patients the right care.

A small number of people out of the millions vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s or Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 shots have developed severe blood clots, such as ones in the sinuses that drain blood from the brain (SN: 4/7/21; 4/13/21). A few have died.

Studies suggest that some inoculated people develop an immune response that attacks a protein called platelet factor 4 or PF4, which makes platelets form clots. Those platelets get used up before the body can make more. So these patients wind up with both the rare clots and low levels of blood platelets.

Of 23 patients who received AstraZeneca’s jab and had symptoms of clots or low platelets, 21 tested positive for antibodies to PF4, researchers report April 16 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Of those, 20 people developed blood clots. The finding adds to previous studies that found the same antibodies in additional patients who got AstraZeneca’s shot and had the dangerous clots.

Five out of six women who had clots after receiving Johnson & Johnson’s shot in the United States also had PF4 antibodies, health officials said April 14 during an Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting. That advisory group to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is assessing what needs to be done to lift a temporary pause on administering the Johnson & Johnson jab that was prompted by blood clot concerns (SN: 4/13/21). One man had developed brain sinus clots during the shot’s clinical trial and a seventh case is under investigation, the pharmaceutical company said during the meeting.

“Because we are aware of this syndrome… we know how to treat it,” says Jean Connors, a clinical hematologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was not involved in the studies. And unlike the people who developed the clots before officials pinpointed the link, “we can diagnose it faster and treat it more appropriately if it does happen, so that the outcomes will be better.”

worried about faulty Covid tests? Get a dog!!!

Discrimination of SARS-CoV-2 infected patient samples by detection dogs: A proof of concept study

https://journals.plos.org/plos…1371/journal.pone.0250158

Abstract

While the world awaits a widely available COVID-19 vaccine, availability of testing is limited in many regions and can be further compounded by shortages of reagents, prolonged processing time and delayed results. One approach to rapid testing is to leverage the volatile organic compound (VOC) signature of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Detection dogs, a biological sensor of VOCs, were utilized to investigate whether SARS-CoV-2 positive urine and saliva patient samples had a unique odor signature. The virus was inactivated in all training samples with either detergent or heat treatment. Using detergent-inactivated urine samples, dogs were initially trained to find samples collected from hospitalized patients confirmed with SARS-CoV-2 infection, while ignoring samples collected from controls. Dogs were then tested on their ability to spontaneously recognize heat-treated urine samples as well as heat-treated saliva from hospitalized SARS-CoV-2 positive patients. Dogs successfully discriminated between infected and uninfected urine samples, regardless of the inactivation protocol, as well as heat-treated saliva samples. Generalization to novel samples was limited, particularly after intensive training with a restricted sample set. A unique odor associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection present in human urine as well as saliva, provides impetus for the development of odor-based screening, either by electronic, chemical, or biological sensing methods. The use of dogs for screening in an operational setting will require training with a large number of novel SARS-CoV-2 positive and confirmed negative samples.

Mississippi man partially paralyzed, unable to talk after J&J vaccine

https://nypost.com/2021/04/15/…alk-after-jj-vaccine/amp/

NEWS

Mississippi man partially paralyzed, unable to talk after J&J vaccine

By Jackie Salo

April 15, 2021 | 5:20pm

A Mississippi man who experienced a blood clot after receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, has been left paralyzed on one side and unable to talk, his family said.

Brad Malagarie, 43, of St. Martin, suffered a stroke soon after stepping out last week to get the one-dose shot, news station WLOX reported.

“They called me and said he had that vaccine and something is wrong, we think it’s a stroke,” his aunt, Celeste Foster O’Keefe, told the outlet.

The father of seven was rushed to the hospital, where it was determined that he had a stroke as a result of a blood clot in his brain, the outlet reported.

“I said be sure to tell the doctors he took that J&J vaccine and that, to me, is what caused his stroke,” his aunt said.

O’Keefe said he took medication for high blood pressure, but was otherwise a “young, healthy” man.

Now, the medical episode has left him paralyzed on the right side of his body, she said.

“He can’t talk now and he can’t walk. He’s paralyzed on the right side. He knows who we are and he will just cry when he sees us,” O’Keefe said.

She said doctors don’t know how long it will take him to recover.

“We want him to be able to communicate, to be able to walk and talk again, even if it’s not perfect,” O’Keefe said.

Federal regulators paused the use of the one-dose J&J shot on Tuesday after six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed blood clots, including one who died.

FDA rescinds emergency authorization for COVID-19 antibody treatment bamlanivimab

https://thehill.com/policy/hea…19-antibody-treatment?amp

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rescinded its emergency use authorization for the monoclonal antibody bamlanivimab to be used on its own as treatment against COVID-19 due to variants' resistance to the therapy.

The federal agency declared its cancelation of bamlanivimab-only COVID-19 therapy hours after the company Eli Lilly requested the FDA revoke the emergency authorization because the variants resistant to the treatment have become more common.

With the number of resistant infections growing, the agency concluded that the benefits of treating COVID-19 with only bamlanivimab "no longer outweigh the known and potential risks for its authorized use."

The FDA cited data that as of mid-March about 20 percent of variants in the U.S. were expected to be resistant to bamlanivimab, compared to 5 percent in January.

But the FDA still grants bamlanivimab and another monoclonal antibody, etesevimab, to be used together to treat COVID-19 under an emergency use authorization. In a March study, Eli Lilly determined the combination of monoclonal antibodies - lab-created proteins that copy how the immune system responds to viruses - reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 by 87 percent.

"Other monoclonal antibody therapies authorized for emergency use remain appropriate treatment choices when used in accordance with the authorized labeling and can help keep high risk patients with COVID-19 out of the hospital," Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a release.

"We urge the American public to seek out these therapies when needed while we continue to use the best data available to provide patients with safe and effective treatments during this pandemic," Cavazzoni added.

The emergency use authorization for bamlanivimab-only COVID-19 treatment, granted in November, was the first monoclonal antibody approved to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 cases. It originally allowed it to be used alone for mild-to-moderate COVID-19 adult patients and some children at high risk of severe coronavirus illness or hospitalization.

The federal agency said it will work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to monitor how variants impact the treatments authorized for emergency use.

Eli Lilly called for the FDA to end emergency authorization for bamlanivimab-only COVID-19 treatment "due the evolving variant landscape in the U.S. and the full availability of bamlanivimab and etesevimab together." The company noted its request for authorization to be revoked was "not due to any new safety concern."

United States cases rising, British drop in cases have leveled and Europe is a freaking mess and india is screwed! Question... Do these vaccines work at all? Follow the evidence!

Chile leads the Western Hemisphere in vaccinations. The coronavirus is still surging.

https://www.washingtonpost.com…c-vaccine/?outputType=amp

Chile might have celebrated too soon.

This South American nation of 19 million, which secured enough potential coronavirus vaccine doses to inoculate its population twice over, leads the Western Hemisphere in vaccinations per capita. More than 7.5 million Chileans have received at least one dose, and 5 million are now fully vaccinated. Only Israel and Britain have performed better.

At the same time, new cases of covid-19 are surging. The country has reported more than 7,000 daily cases nine times this month, outstripping its first-wave peak of 6,938 last July, and sounding an alarm for the United States and other countries that have raced out ahead on the vaccination curve.

Ontario tightens lockdown.

https://nationalpost.com/news/…rsh-new-lockdown-measures

Some Police Services not going

along.

https://apple.news/AKydszAwAQbuOULy-BwxI0g

Look, here's what I'm saying: I don't want politics mixed in with my medical decisions! And now that everything is politics, that's all we do! If their side says 'COVID is nothing,' our side has to say it's everything. Trump said it would 'go away like a miracle,' and we said it was World War Z," Maher complained. "And now, of course, we find out that all that paranoia bout surfaces was bulls--- anyway... If you lie to people, even for a very good cause, you lose their trust."

Maher praises DeSantis, knocks Cuomo, 'liberal media' for getting COVID wrong: 'Those are just facts'

The HBO star slammed 'blue states' for keeping schools closed despite minimal health risks to children

https://www.foxnews.com/entert…r-getting-covid-wrong.amp

Real Time" host Bill Maher had some tough words for liberals over their handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

In his closing monologue Friday night, Maher took aim at the media's "panic porn" during the pandemic, citing a Dartmouth study showing that "nearly 90 percent" of U.S. national media coverage was negative in comparison to other countries even as conditions were getting better.

Maher also called out politicians who "lie" to "save their own asses."

When all of our sources for medical information have an agenda to spin us, yeah, you wind up with a badly misinformed population, including on the left," Maher told viewers. "Liberals often mock the Republican misinformation bubble ... but what about liberals? You know, the high-information, behind-the-science people?"

"Liberals often mock the Republican misinformation bubble ... but what about liberals? You know, the high-information, behind-the-science people?"

— Bill Mahe

Maher then pointed to a Gallup survey that showed the vast majority of Democrats incorrectly overestimate the probability of being hospitalized from COVID, with 41 percent believing it's at least 50 percent while only 10 percent of Democrats correctly said that the probability is only 1-to-5 percent while 26 percent of Republicans said the same, stressing that Democrats were "wildly off on this key question."

Democrats] also have a greatly exaggerated view of the danger of COVID to and the mortality rate among children, all of which explains why today the states with the highest share of schools that are still closed are all blue states," Maher lamented. "So if the right-wing media bubble has to own things like climate change denial, shouldn't liberal media have to answer for 'How did your audience wind up believing such bunch of crap about COVID?'"

The HBO star blasted The Atlantic magazine for shaming the media's use of beach photos as a concern of furthering the spread of the virus "even though it's increasingly looking like the beach is the best place to avoid it."

Sunshine is the best disinfectant and Vitamin D is the key to a robust immune system," Maher exclaimed. "Texas lifted its COVID restrictions recently and their infection rates went down in part because of people getting outside to let the sun and wind do their thing. But to many liberals, 'That can't be right because Texas and beach-loving Florida have Republican governors,' but life is complicated!"

Maher then praised Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for being "a voracious consumer of the scientific literature."

"And maybe that's why he protected his most vulnerable population, the elderly, way better than did the governor of New York," Maher said, knocking Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. "Those are just facts, I know it's irresponsible of me to say them."

Florida Gov. DeSantis "protected his most vulnerable population, the elderly, way better than did the governor of New York."

— Bill Maher

Look, here's what I'm saying: I don't want politics mixed in with my medical decisions! And now that everything is politics, that's all we do! If their side says 'COVID is nothing,' our side has to say it's everything. Trump said it would 'go away like a miracle,' and we said it was World War Z," Maher complained. "And now, of course, we find out that all that paranoia bout surfaces was bulls--- anyway... If you lie to people, even for a very good cause, you lose their trust."

"I think a lot of people died because of Trump's incompetence and I think a lot of people died because talking about obesity became a third rail in America... it is the key piece of the puzzle, by far the most pertinent factor, but you dare not speak its name.Imagine how many lives could have been saved if there had been a national campaign ala Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move' program with the urgency of the pandemic behind it," Maher continued. "If the media and the doctors made the point to keep saying, 'But there's something you can do,' but we'll never know because they never did because the last thing you want to do is say something insensitive. We would literally rather die. Instead, we were told to lock down. Unfortunately, the killer was already inside the house. And her name is Little Debbie."

Quote from Shane D.

Is there some evidence lockdowns work they are basing this decision on? I read articles every day saying at best the evidence is inconclusive.

poking the bear shane?