Covid-19 News

1. mRNA vaccines are new, but the technology is not.

Researchers have been studying mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccines for decades. Dr. Rinderknecht says two closely related coronavirus diseases – SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2003 and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in 2012 – brought mRNA vaccine development to where it is today.

“Vaccines for those previous coronavirus diseases didn’t get finished, because the diseases were contained and never became a world-wide threat – unlike COVID-19. mRNA vaccines have also been studied for the prevention of influenza, Zika, rabies and cytomegalovirus,” Dr. Rinderknecht says.

The only MRNA treatment I'm aware of being used presently in medicine is in cancer tumors it's isn't used as a vaccine but in treating. It works by targeting the n protein, attacking the vessels feeding the tumor. So far great success as a treatment but no long term studies to date. No mRNA vaccine has ever been used before 2020 on any humans.

Like Flu, COVID-19 May Turn Out to Be Seasonal

https://www.webmd.com/lung/new…y-turn-out-to-be-seasonal

TUESDAY, Feb. 2, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Like influenza, could COVID-19 evolve to wax and wane with the seasons? New research suggests it might.

Early in the pandemic, some experts suggested that SARS-CoV-2 -- the virus that causes COVID-19 -- may behave like many other coronaviruses that circulate more widely in fall and winter.

To find out if that could be true, researchers analyzed COVID-19 data -- including cases, death rates, recoveries, testing rates and hospitalizations -- from 221 countries. The investigators found a strong association with temperature and latitude.

"One conclusion is that the disease may be seasonal, like the flu. This is very relevant to what we should expect from now on after the vaccine controls these first waves of COVID-19," said senior study author Gustavo Caetano-Anollés. He is a professor at the C.R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The same research team previously identified areas in the SARS-CoV-2 virus genome undergoing rapid mutation.

Similar viruses have seasonal increases in mutation rates, so the researchers looked for connections between mutations in SARS-CoV-2 and temperature, latitude and longitude.

"Our results suggest the virus is changing at its own pace, and mutations are affected by factors other than temperature or latitude. We don't know exactly what those factors are, but we can now say seasonal effects are independent of the genetic makeup of the virus," Caetano-Anollés said in a university news release.

Further research is needed to learn more about how climate and different seasons may affect COVID-19 rates, the team added.

The study authors suggested that people's immune systems may play a role. The immune system can be influenced by temperature and nutrition, including vitamin D, which plays an important role in immunity. With less sun exposure during the winter, most people don't make enough vitamin D.

"We know the flu is seasonal, and that we get a break during the summer. That gives us a chance to build the flu vaccine for the following fall," Caetano-Anollés said. "When we are still in the midst of a raging pandemic, that break is nonexistent. Perhaps learning how to boost our immune system could help combat the disease as we struggle to catch up with the ever-changing coronavirus."

The study was published online Jan. 26 in the journal Evolutionary Bioinformatics.

there is also T-cell mediated immunity ...Immunology 101..

its not just about antibodies..

". However, the absence of specific antibodies in the serum does not necessarily mean an absence of immune memory. "

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00436-4

Cold fusion is simpler than immunology..

Crocodile Dundee can't escape Hotel California..

or the ravages of age..

https://7news.com.au/sunrise/e…ng-kidney-issue-c-2808640

Quote from JedRothwell

The drop in the UK and Israel began immediately after vaccines began

How many lies can one person invent during one day??

When vaccination started (Israel) it took more than 6 weeks until the first stagnation occurred. This all due to the fact that among Pfizer vaccinated people the CoV-19 rate doubles for some weeks. Always when a new vaccination cycle started (3 times) there was an increase in cases.

Quote from JedRothwell

Also, it is winter in Israel, and the decline has been in the coldest season of the year there.

Oh yes the expert found a thin thread of hope.... Winter in Israel is rain season. Humidity is key for the sinking rate of droplets. Same here where it is always wet but the water content is temperature limited.

To be fair: CoV-19 is not strictly seasonal. Humidity/T must be in the right band. Only research can help here to find the exact transport limiting parameters.

If everybody has it ivermectin kit then CoV-19 is just one new version of cold.

Quote from Fm1

CDC Limits Review of Vaccinated but Infected; Draws Concern

It's against the FM/R/J business rules. You must help your brothers (Pfizer)...until they made enough money.

Quote from JedRothwell

At the start of May, the CDC shifted from monitoring all reported breakthroughs to only those that result in hospitalization or death,

Limiting detection to hospital = limiting it to your brothers that are obliged to deliver fake reports (help the brothers..) as the above mentioned case did show.

Quote from JedRothwell

Actually, it is 20 years of data. mRNA vaccines were developed 20 years ago, and given on an experimental basis to many animals and people.

Fairy tales: Paper please...

Quote from JedRothwell

ctually, it is 20 years of data. mRNA vaccines were developed 20 years ago

Cox inhibitors were developed decades ago..

"The basic research leading to the discovery of COX-2 inhibitors has been the subject of at least two lawsuits. Brigham Young University has sued Pfizer, alleging breach of contract from relations BYU had with the company at the time of Simmons's work.^[26][27] A settlement was reached in April 2012 in which Pfizer agreed to pay $450 million"

And Vioxx( rofecoxib) ...??

Vioxx had been taken by some 4 million Americans. Out of those patients who took Vioxx, the arthritis drug may have caused approximately 140,000 heart attacks resulting in an estimated 60,000 deaths,"

We may have to await the outcome of the current mass experimentations to be able to say that Biontech

is safe in the medium term.. long term..

FDA has approved the Biontech for adolescents..follow the blind science.. and the money..

Francis Collins.."safe and effective"

https://www.cnbc.com/video/202…o-normal.html?jwsource=cl

Quote from RobertBryant

FDA has approved the Biontech for adolescents..follow the blind science.. and the money..

Francis Collins.."safe and effective"

FDA since long time is not an independent state organ. The same here in Switzerland where Swiss Medics is run at the Rotary round table.

Basically the head of FDA is a criminal institution. A report did reveal that 80% of the medical deciding board income comes from Big Pharma.

Nobody can sue these criminals as they are protected by state law and always can claim missing data.

More criminal actions from the WHO and merck

WHO warns against use of Ivermectin to treat Covid-19

https://m.timesofindia.com/ind…_articleshow/82546558.cms

NEW DELHI: A day after Goa's health minister Vishwajit Rane recommended Ivermectin to all above 18 to combat Covid in the state, the World Health Organisation on Tuesday has warned against its use.

'Safety and efficacy are important when using any drug for a new indication. @WHO recommends against the use of ivermectin for Covid-19 except within clinical trials,' Soumya Swaminathan, the global health body's chief scientist, said in a tweet

The Goa state government on Monday cleared a new Covid treatment protocol which recommends all residents above the age of 18 to take five tablets of the ivermectin drug, in order to prevent the steep and sometimes fatal viral fever, which accompanies a Covid-19 infection.

Rane, while speaking to reporters, said that the ivermectin drug would be made available at all health centres in the state and should be taken by all residents, irrespective of whether they have Covid-19 symptoms or otherwise.

Last week, a peer-reviewed research had claimed that global ivermectin use can end Covid-19 pandemic, as the medicine significantly reduces the risk of contracting the deadly respiratory disease when used regularly.

The peer review, which included three US government senior scientists and was published in the American Journal of Therapeutics, touted the common anti-parasitic ivermectin as a miracle cure for Covid-19 by doctors and campaigners the world over.

In her tweet, Swaminathan also attached a warning issued by the German health care and life sciences giant Merck.

'Scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all available and emerging studies of ivermectin for the treatment of Covid-19,' read the statement from Merck.

.to-date, our analysis has identified: No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against Covid-19 from pre-clinical studies; No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with Covid-19 disease, and a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies,' the statement added.

The WHO had, in March, issued a similar warning against the use of ivermectin in treating Covid patients.

The global health agency said that there was a 'very low certainty of evidence' on ivermectin's effects on mortality, hospital admission and getting rid of the virus from the body.

Rane also stated that expert panels from the UK, Italy, Spain and Japan, found a large, statistically significant reduction in mortality, time to recovery and viral clearance in Covid-19 patients treated with ivermectin.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had also, in April last year, recommended against the use of ivermectin in treating Covid patients. Besides, the Union ministry of health and family welfare had also reportedly opted out from including Ivermectin in its official Clinical Management Protocol for Covid-19 last year.

Required reading for the liars and deniers, the WHO, FDA, and the CDC

Regular ivermectin use may cut risk of contracting COVID-19, claims study

The study found large, statistically significant reduction in mortality, time to recovery and viral clearance in COVID-19 patients treated with ivermectin

https://www.eastmojo.com/coron…ng-covid-19-claims-study/

New Delhi: Regular use of the oral antiparasitic drug ivermectin may significantly reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19, according to a review of available data by researchers who claim the medicine can help end the pandemic.

The research, published in the May-June issue of the American Journal of Therapeutics, is the most comprehensive review of the available data on ivermectin taken from clinical, in vitro, animal, and real-world studies, its authors said.

“We conducted the most comprehensive review of the available data on ivermectin,” said Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), a group of medical and scientific experts, which led the study.

“We applied the gold standard to qualify the data reviewed before concluding that ivermectin can end this pandemic,” Kory said in a statement.

A focus of the study was on the 27 controlled trials available in January 2021, 15 of which were randomised controlled trials (RCT’s). The authors found large, statistically significant reduction in mortality, time to recovery and viral clearance in COVID-19 patients treated with ivermectin.

To evaluate the efficacy of ivermectin in preventing COVID-19, three RCT’s and five observational controlled trials including almost 2,500 patients were analysed. All studies reported that ivermectin significantly reduces the risk of contracting COVID-19 when used regularly, the authors said.

Many regions around the world now recognise that ivermectin is a powerful prophylaxis and treatment for COVID-19, the researchers said.

The results as seen in this latest study demonstrate that the ivermectin distribution campaigns repeatedly led to “rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality,” they said.

Our latest research shows, once again, that when the totality of the evidence is examined, there is no doubt that ivermectin is highly effective as a safe prophylaxis and treatment for COVID-19,” said Paul E. Marik, founding member of the FLCCC and Chief, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in the US.

“We are calling on regional public health authorities and medical professionals around the world to demand that ivermectin be included in their standard of care right away so we can end this pandemic once and for all,” Marik added.

More required reading for the ministry of propaganda!

Professor Explains Flaw in Many Models Used for COVID-19 Lockdown Policies

https://www.theepochtimes.com/…policies_3807048.html/amp

Economics professor Doug Allen wanted to know why so many early models used to create COVID-19 lockdown policies turned out to be highly incorrect. What he found was that a great majority were based on false assumptions and “tended to over-estimate the benefits and under-estimate the costs.” He found it troubling that policies such as total lockdowns were based on those models.

They were built on a set of assumptions. Those assumptions turned out to be really important, and the models are very sensitive to them, and they turn out to be false,” said Allen, the Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, in an interview.

Allen says most of the early cost-benefit studies that he reviewed didn’t try to distinguish between mandated and voluntary changes in people’s behaviour in the face of a pandemic. Rather, they just assumed an exponential growth of cases of infection day after day until herd immunity is reached.

In a paper he published in April, in which he compiled his findings based on a review of over 80 papers on the effects of lockdowns around the world, Allen concluded that lockdowns may be one of “the greatest peacetime policy failures in Canada’s history.”

He says many of the studies early in the pandemic assumed that human behaviour changes only as a result of state-mandated intervention, such as the closing of schools and non-essential businesses, mask and social distancing orders, and restrictions on private social gatherings.

However, they didn’t take into consideration people’s voluntary behavioural changes in response to the virus threat, which have a major impact on evaluating the merits of a lockdown policy.

“Human beings make choices, and we respond to the environment that we’re in, [but] these early models did not take this into account,” Allen said. “If there’s a virus around, I don’t go to stores often. If I go to a store, I go to a store that doesn’t have me meeting so many people. If I do meet people, I tend to still stand my distance from them. You don’t need lockdowns to induce people to behave that way.”

Allen’s own cost-benefit analysis is based on the calculation of “life-years saved,” which determines “how many years of lost life will have been caused by the various harms of lockdowns versus how many years of lost life were saved by lockdowns.”

Based on his lost-life calculation, lockdown measures have caused 282 times more harm than benefit to Canadian society over the long term, or 282 times more life years lost than saved.

Furthermore, “The limited effectiveness of lockdowns explains why, after one year, the unconditional cumulative deaths per million, and the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown across countries,” writes Allen. In other words, in his assessment, heavy lockdowns do not meaningfully reduce the number of deaths in the areas where they are implemented, when compared to areas where lockdowns were not implemented or as stringent.

Today, some 14 months into the pandemic, many jurisdictions across Canada are still following the same policy trajectory outlined at the beginning of the pandemic. Allen attributes this to politics.

He says that politicians often take credit for having achieved a reduction in case numbers through their lockdown measures.

“I think it makes perfect sense why they do exactly what they did last year,” Allen said.

“If you were a politician, would you say, ‘We’re not going to lock down because it doesn’t make a difference, and we actually did the equivalent of killing 600,000 people this last year.’”

You wouldn’t, he said, because “the alternative is they [politicians] have to admit that they made a mistake, and they caused … multiple more loss of life years than they saved.”

Allen laments that media for the most part have carried only one side of the debate on COVID-19 restrictions and haven’t examined the other side. Adding to the concern, he says, is that views contrary to the official government response are often pulled from social media platforms.

He says he has heard that even his own published study has been censored by some social media sites.

“In some sense these are private platforms. They can do what they want. But on the other hand, I feel kind of sad that we live in the kind of a world where posing opposing opinions is either dismissed, ignored, or … name-called, [and] in some ways cancelled,” Allen said.

our minister of propaganda referenced Japan and it glowing handling of the pandemic but the reality is a bit different from the real people in the know! The Olympics are now again in jeopardy of cancellation

Japan’s Fragmented COVID Response: A Systemic Failure of National Leadership

https://www.theepochtimes.com/…policies_3807048.html/amp

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Japan, the Japanese government has attempted to orchestrate a coherent nationwide response to the public health crisis, but with mixed results. In the following, I examine the government’s COVID-19 response from January 2020, when the first cases were reported, to March 3 of this year, when Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide announced another extension of the state of emergency for the Tokyo region. After a brief description of the legal framework for government action in such a crisis, I offer a chronological account of steps taken by two successive administrations, the Abe administration and the Suga administration, and the obstacles they encountered at the local level owing to systemic constraints on the prime minister’s powers in responding to the pandemic crisis.

Local Government in the Driver’s Seat

First, let us take a look at the political actors involved in the pandemic policy process. At the national level, they consist of the prime minister and the cabinet; the chief cabinet secretary; the state minister in charge of the coronavirus response; the minister of health, labor, and welfare; and various senior administrative officials attached to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare and the Prime Minister’s Office. They are assisted, in an advisory capacity, by a panel of experts—currently, the Subcommittee on Novel Coronavirus Disease Control under the prime minister’s Advisory Council on Countermeasures against Novel Influenza and Other Diseases (which replaced the Novel Coronavirus Expert Meeting established initially under the government’s Novel Coronavirus Response Headquarters). At the local level, the key actors are the governors of the 47 prefectures (understood here to include metropolitan Tokyo) and the local public health centers (hokensho) that operate under their direction as well as majors of major cities and wards.

Japan adopts a defacto “federal” system to respond to a pandemic crisis.

The powers of the political actors at the national level are limited. Under the Infectious Disease Act, the cabinet has the power to designate infectious diseases which have not been categorized under the law, and on January 28, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a “designated infectious disease.” (It was later incorporated as a category II disease in the amended Infectious Disease Act, passed in February 2021.) In addition, the 2012 Act on Special Measures for Pandemic Influenza and New Infectious Diseases Preparedness and Response (hereafter, Pandemic Special Measures Act) assigns the cabinet and the Ministry of Health responsibility for drawing up basic policies for responding to a pandemic with the input of a panel of experts. The Pandemic Special Measures Act also allows the prime minister to declare a state of emergency to respond to a pandemic. However, as I explain below, the prime minister’s powers are quite limited even under a state of emergency.

In terms of concrete measures, the legal framework puts the bulk of the pandemic response in the hands of the prefectural governors and the public health centers under their jurisdiction. Under the Infectious Disease Act, each governor must ensure that the regional health system is equipped to provide adequate in-patient and out-patient medical care. The prefectural government is also responsible for a wide range of measures to contain the infection, such as cluster surveillance, testing, contact tracing, and notification of individuals recommended for examination, treatment, hospitalization, and so forth. The prefectural government is also in charge of issuing any requests to limit the movements of the people to curtail the expansion of a pandemic. It can issue requests on the people to refrain from going out and on businesses to curtail or suspend operations.

It is important to note that the public health centers under the direction of either the governor, in the case of the prefectures (including Tokyo) or the mayor, in the case of cities and wards with their own public health centers, carry out most of the aforementioned missions except the provision of health system as well as issuing of orders aimed at restricting the movement of the people.

To understand Japan’s somewhat muddled pandemic response it is important to note that the central government, preferecutural governments and city and ward governments are mutually independent with regard to public-health matters. To be sure, the Pandemic Special Measures Act gives the prime minister the power to declare a state of emergency in any or all prefectures, draw up a basic national policy, and issue instructions (shiji) to the affected prefectures as needed to coordinate implementation of that policy. Similarly, the Infectious Disease Act permits the Minister of Health to issue instructions to governors and mayors. But in the end, enforcing such instructions has proven extremely difficult.

The Pandemic Special Measures Act is anything but clear as to the extent of the prime minister’s powers in various situations, leaving plenty of room for disagreement between the central government and the prefectures. And neither the prime minister nor the minister of health is invested with any coercive powers vis-à-vis the local authorities that bear actual responsibility for implementation. Ultimately, it is up to the governors to decide whether to follow the central government’s instructions regarding the functions for which they bear responsibility. By the same token, governors have little power to impose their decisions on the cities or special wards in their jurisdictions.

Legal Authority of Central and Prefectural Governments in Responding to COVID-19

Measures to contain infection

Allowed Not allowed

Central government

Designate COVID-19 an infectious disease

Craft national policy

Declare state of emergency

Allocate public funds

Direct governors and public health centers

Directly oversee testing

Governors

Prohibit suspected patients from attending work

Request businesses to suspend or curtail operations; impose fines for noncompliance (granted under Infectious Disease Act, February 2021)

Disclose names of noncompliant businesses

Directly oversee public health centers

Directly oversee testing

Order businesses to suspend operations

Governors and mayors who oversee regional public health centers

Request public compliance with measures to contain infection

Conduct testing

Compel suspected patients to be hospitalized

Conduct epidemiologic surveys

Compel suspected patients to be tested or impose fines for refusal

Compel suspected patients or those with mild symptoms to stay at accommodation facilities

Medical System

Allowed Not allowed

National government

Set targets for securing hospital beds

Allocate funds

Establish payment system for medical services

Direct governors

Directly procure hospital beds (excluding some facilities like Self-Defense Force hospitals)

Governors

Oversee procurement of hospital beds

Establish emergency medical facilities

Secure use of accommodation facilities for suspected patients or those with mild symptoms

Directly procure hospital beds (excepts at municipal and prefectural hospitals)

Early COVID-19 Response

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Japan was reported on January 15, 2020, in a man believed to have contracted the case in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the pandemic. On January 23, with the coronavirus spreading rapidly in Wuhan, the Chinese government placed the city in lockdown. On January 28, regional authorities in Japan confirmed the first cases of COVID-19 among residents who had not been to Wuhan.

During the second half of January, the Japanese government, headed by Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, focused its efforts on the repatriation of Japanese citizens in Wuhan. In early February, Abe invoked the Quarantine Act to place the cruise ship Diamond Princess under quarantine in Yokohama to contain an outbreak of COVID-19 among the passengers and crew.

In the second half of February, with community transmission of the virus on the rise, the cabinet issued its Basic Policies for Novel Coronavirus Disease Control, and the government took a series of rigorous measures aimed at containing the infection, including the suspension of all large-scale gatherings and temporary closure of elementary, junior high, and high schools.

On March 9, the government placed new restrictions on travelers entering Japan from China and South Korea. On March 13, the Diet passed legislation amending the Pandemic Special Measures Act. On the 24th, the International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee announced a one-year postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics.

State of Emergency

In the wake of the restrictions imposed in February and early March, the epidemic seemed more or less under control within Japan. As the earlier sense of crisis dissipated, the movement of people picked up. However, by the end of February, the virus was spreading rapidly across Europe, and Japanese citizens returning home from overseas brought the virus back with them. A lack of appropriate and prompt border restrictions by the Japanese government, combined with the rebound in movement within Japan, led to wide dispersion of the virus. By late March, the number of new daily infections was surging, and Prime Minister Abe was under mounting pressure to declare a state of emergency.

Abe was forced to take action in early April, as outbreaks began to overwhelm local healthcare systems. On April 7, he declared a state of emergency for the most hard-hit prefectures, and on April 16 he extended the declaration to the rest of the country. By mid-May, the curve had flattened again. The state of emergency was lifted for the majority of prefectures on May 14 and for the rest of the nation on May 25.

Another surge began in June 2020, but this time, instead of declaring a state of emergency, the central government left it to the governors to contain the spread, and this time, too, case numbers subsided. On July 22, the government launched Go To Travel, a program offering subsidized discounts to promote domestic tourism and consumption. (Tokyo, with its relatively high caseload, was initially excluded from the promotion.) On August 28, Abe announced his resignation, citing chronic health problems. Suga Yoshihide took over as prime minister on September 16.

Mixed Signals

Prime Minister Suga, a key promoter of the Go To Travel campaign launched under the previous administration, was keen to use that program to resuscitate the moribund economy. On October 1, his cabinet expanded the program’s scope to include Tokyo.

Criticism of Go To Travel escalated in the second half of October, as daily case numbers began to rise again. By mid-November, hospitals in a number of prefectures were struggling to cope with the latest wave. On several occasions, beginning November 20, the Subcommittee on Novel Coronavirus Disease Control urged the government to rethink the travel program. But Suga was still unwilling to suspend the policy, though he went as far as excluding the cities of Sapporo and Osaka.

An opinion poll conducted on December 12 by the daily Mainichi Shimbun indicated that public support for the Suga cabinet had sunk to 40%, while disapproval had risen to 49%. A full 67% of respondents were of the view that Go To Travel should be shut down. The prime minister finally succumbed to public pressure and terminated the program entirely on December 28.

On December 31, Tokyo reported more than 1,300 new cases, and the surge showed no signs of subsiding. On January 2, Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko, backed by the governors of neighboring Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba Prefectures, appealed to the central government to declare a state of emergency. On January 7, Suga responded by declaring a second state of emergency for the four jurisdictions, and on January 13, he extended the emergency to seven other prefectures, including Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyōgo.

Before long, the number of new cases outside the Tokyo area subsided, easing pressure on regional healthcare systems. Suga lifted the state of emergency for Osaka, Aichi, and four other prefectures on February 28, a week before it was set to expire. In the capital area, however, hospital capacity was still badly strained. On March 2, the news media reported that the governors of Tokyo and the three neighboring prefectures were considering submitting a joint request for another extension. The following day, March 3, Suga indicated that he would extend the state of emergency.

Meanwhile, on February 3, the Diet passed a revised Pandemic Special Measures Act and other legislation making it possible for governors to order businesses to curtail their hours or close temporarily and to impose penalties for noncompliance.

Ungovernable Governors

One of the distinguishing features of Japan’s policy response to the COVID-19 crisis has been the frequent inability of the central government—first under Abe and then under Suga—to implement its policies as it envisioned owing to constraints on the prime minister’s authority because of the “federal” system. One major constraining factor, mentioned above, is the tense and ambiguous power relationship between central and local government.

When Prime Minister Abe imposed the first state of emergency in April 2020, it was for the purpose of implementing stricter social-distancing and other measures to contain the virus. The revised edition of the Basic Policies adopted on April 7 called for steps to “reduce the contact among people by 70% at minimum or 80% ideally.” The government’s original plan was to have the governors call on residents to stay at home whenever possible for a period of two weeks, at the end of which period the experts would reassess the situation and decide whether it was necessary to ask businesses to suspend or curtail their operations. In the event, the governors set their own agenda.

From the start, Tokyo Governor Koike had wanted to move quickly to request business closures and shorten the business hours of dining and drinking establishments, but the prime minister preferred a more modest approach. Koike wrangled with the government and then, on April 10, announced a long list of closures and shortened hours that differed only minimally from her original plan. The other prefectures quickly followed Tokyo’s lead.

Such an outcome should not be surprising. After all, it is the governors who are legally empowered to adopt and implement measures to prevent and contain the spread of infectious disease.

Abe again found his leadership thwarted during the surge that began in June 2020.

Since March, experts had been warning about clusters of cases originating at nightclubs and bars where customers are entertained by hosts or hostesses. In early June, the Shinjuku ward in Tokyo had begun a program of targeted testing of employees and customers in the Kabukichō nightlife district with the cooperation of the local business association, and the Toshima ward had followed suit. In early July, Nishimura Yasutoshi, state minister in charge of the pandemic response, announced a plan to deploy the same sort of targeted large scale testing nationwide. But in most locales, the initiative fizzled and we can only find some instances of large scale testing carried out by health stations in large cities under the supervision of city and ward mayors. Under the law, in major urban areas, only city and ward mayors have authorities to conduct such testing, relying on local public health centers. Without cooperation from city and ward mayors, there is little the central government can accomplish testing on a nationwide scale including large cities.

The Prime Minister’s Feeble Pandemic Powers

Prime Minister Suga encountered similar resistance from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in November 2020. With case numbers mounting in the capital area, Suga called on Governor Koike to reinstate the metropolitan government’s earlier request to curtail the business hours to restaurants and bars. At first, Koike demurred. Eventually she compromised by asking such businesses to close by 10 pm, beginning November 28. In December, as new cases continued to rise in Tokyo, Suga urged the metropolitan government to move the requested closing time up to 8 pm, but to no avail.

It can certainly be argued that Suga’s demands were inconsistent with his own unflagging support for the Go To Travel program, which was not halted until December 28. But these episodes symbolizes the fact that the central government currently has no way of directly implementing nationwide policies to control a pandemic, a quandary illustrated by the foregoing examples.

Since the 1990s, Japan has implemented numerous political and administrative reforms aimed at strengthening the executive powers of the prime minister. It has revamped the electoral system, streamlined the administrative apparatus, reformed the civil service system, and beefed up the policy-making functions of the Cabinet Secretariat and the Prime Minister’s Office. However, an examination of the political processes surrounding the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveal that the prime minister’s ability to lead the nation through such a crisis is crippled by the flawed distribution of authority among different levels of government, including municipalities. This should be the next target of government reform.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Digital signage at JR Shinagawa Station in Tokyo displays the change in the number of people passing through the station compared with January 2020. © Jiji.)

Not my type of treatment but I would suggest this for the heads of WHO, FDA and the CDC

Indian doctors warn against cow dung as COVID cure

https://www.reuters.com/world/…ng-covid-cure-2021-05-11/

Doctors in India are warning against the practice of using cow dung in the belief it will ward off COVID-19, saying there is no scientific evidence for its effectiveness and that it risks spreading other diseases.

The coronavirus pandemic has wrought devastation on India, with 22.66 million cases and 246,116 deaths reported so far. Experts say actual numbers could be five to 10 times higher, and citizens across the country are struggling to find hospital beds, oxygen, or medicines, leaving many to die for lack of treatment.

In the state of Gujarat in western India, some believers have been going to cow shelters once a week to cover their bodies in cow dung and urine in the hope it will boost their immunity against, or help them recover from, the coronavirus.

In Hinduism, the cow is a sacred symbol of life and the earth, and for centuries Hindus have used cow dung to clean their homes and for prayer rituals, believing it has therapeutic and antiseptic properties.

"We see ... even doctors come here. Their belief is that this therapy improves their immunity and they can go and tend to patients with no fear," said Gautam Manilal Borisa, an associate manager at a pharmaceuticals company, who said the practice helped him recover from COVID-19 last year.

He has since been a regular at the Shree Swaminarayan Gurukul Vishwavidya Pratishthanam, a school run by Hindu monks that lies just across the road from the Indian headquarters of Zydus Cadila (CADI.NS), which is developing its own COVID-19 vaccine.

As participants wait for the dung and urine mixture on their bodies to dry, they hug or honour the cows at the shelter, and practice yoga to boost energy levels. The packs are then washed off with milk or buttermilk.

Doctors and scientists in India and across the world have repeatedly warned against practising alternative treatments for COVID-19, saying they can lead to a false sense of security and complicate health problems.

"There is no concrete scientific evidence that cow dung or urine work to boost immunity against COVID-19, it is based entirely on belief," said Dr JA Jayalal, national president at the Indian Medical Association.

"There are also health risks involved in smearing or consuming these products - other diseases can spread from the animal to humans."

There are also concerns the practice could contribute to the spread of the virus as it involved people gathering in groups. Madhucharan Das, in charge of another cow shelter in Ahmedabad, said they were limiting the number of participants.

Coronavirus intentionally released, Chinese govt leading misinformation campaign: Dr Le-Meng Yan| Interview

In an interview with India Today, Chinese virologist Dr Le-Meng Yan claims that the coronavirus came from a virology lab and was intentionally released by the Chinese government

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/…ng-yan-1801107-2021-05-11

In the backdrop of media reports referring to documents obtained by the US State Department alleging that Chinese military scientists investigated weaponising coronaviruses five years before the Covid-19 pandemic and may have predicted a World War III fought with biological weapons, India Today's Gaurav Sawant speaks to Chinese virologist Dr Le-Meng Yan on the issue.

What do you make of this report? Is this ‘smoking gun’ evidence?

Dr Yan: Yes, this document is one of the ‘smoking gun’ that can prove China has a long-term programme of non-traditional bio-weapons and [China plans] to use it to conquer the whole world. The document you mentioned, and also my report published in March, talks about how to develop non-traditional bio-weapons. Also, the objective is to deny and use misinformation to mislead the world when people realize it has come from the lab.

You have argued that the virus did not emerge from the wet market at Wuhan, that it came from a Chinese military lab. Is there evidence to back this claim?

Dr Yan: I started telling people via YouTube anonymously from last January that this virus came from the PLA lab and that they discovered coronavirus after a lot of investment. They finally got a human-target virus and it was intentionally released. Also, the Chinese government knows it and that’s why they immediately had a response after the waiting hours

You said it was ‘intentionally’ released and not an ‘accidental’ release. Is this then a bio-weapon unleashed, as the report argues, to cause the enemies’ medical system to collapse?

Dr Yan: Yes, the medical system is one of the areas targeted by using these unrestricted bio-weapons.

So basically, in that report, senior officials five-six years ago had said that this bio-weapon, this should not be a high mortality one. The secondary use is to damage the enemies’ medical system and also the society. During a community trial in Wuhan last year, Wuhan was a mess.

The Chinese media says this report has no facts, that it is too far-fetched.

Dr Yan: Response from the Chinese government is also encoded in the textbook, which is a misinformation campaign. Chinese government in the report clearly writes that to identify whether the virus has the nature or not is to say whether this virus matches the nature of evolution history.

On the other hand, I have provided enough solid scientific evidence together with intelligence evidence which China can’t deny, but the only thing they can do is spread a misinformation campaign, including getting NIH, WHO, Nature to dismiss it.

Chinese scientists and PLA commanders may have talked about the genetic engineering of viruses in 2015. Can that 2015 report directly be linked to spread of coronavirus in 2020-21?

Dr Yan: The report is published by military medical press and is for military students in universities. The preface to the book clearly mentions, and this must be emphasised, that this is not the beginning of their study of contemporary bio-weapons. This is just one step in study of bio-weapons that we now have evidence of.

But after that, they have also modified a lot and they have recruited a lot of labs under the cover of silo labs, under the cover of international labs, and working with the military to develop it. So they have better knowledge and experience after five-six years and that’s what made Covid-19 happen.

Quote from Fm1

1. mRNA vaccines are new, but the technology is not.

I do not understand this sentence. The technology is more than 20 years old. That means the vaccines are more than 20 years old. What is the difference between "vaccines" and "technology" in this sentence?

They have been improved a great deal in 20 years.

Quote from Fm1

“Vaccines for those previous coronavirus diseases didn’t get finished, because the diseases were contained and never became a world-wide threat – unlike COVID-19. mRNA vaccines have also been studied for the prevention of influenza, Zika, rabies and cytomegalovirus,” Dr. Rinderknecht says.

I read that the vaccines were developed and tested in humans, but not mass produced. They were not needed.

The COVID vaccines were tested in very large double blind tests in 2020. There were more test patients than all of the patients ever given some narrow-use drugs.

Although still very high cases down 100,000 yesterday and beginning a slow decline. Vaccines, no, ivermectin, maybe, seasonal, hmmmmmmm and once again look to vitamin d levels as we progress into summer!

India’s COVID spike sees slight fall amid WHO warning on strain

Daily cases rise by 329,942 and deaths by 3,876, according to health ministry, as WHO says virus variant first found in India poses a global concern.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/…mid-who-warning-on-strain

India’s coronavirus crisis has shown scant sign of easing despite a seven-day average of new cases now at a record high and international health authorities warning the variant of the virus first found in India poses a global concern.

India’s daily coronavirus cases rose by 329,942, while deaths from the disease rose by 3,876, according to the health ministry’s data on Tuesday.

India’s total coronavirus infections are now at 22.99 million, while total fatalities rose to 249,992, though experts believe both the figures have been underestimated.

The seven-day average of new cases is at a record high of 390,995.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the coronavirus variant first identified in the country last year was being classified as a variant of global concern, with some preliminary studies showing that it spreads more easily.

“We are classifying this as a variant of concern at a global level,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead on COVID-19 told a briefing in Geneva on Monday. “There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility.”

Nations around the globe have sent oxygen cylinders and other medical gear to support India’s crisis as many hospitals around the nation are struggling with a shortage of the life-saving equipment.

Eleven people died late on Monday in a government hospital in Tirupati, a city in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, due to a delay in the arrival of a tanker carrying oxygen, a government official said.

“There were issues with oxygen pressure due to low availability. It all happened within a span of five minutes,” said M Harinarayan, the district’s top bureaucrat said late on Monday, adding the SVR Ruia hospital now had sufficient oxygen.

At least 16 faculty members and a number of retired teachers and employees who had been living on the campus of Aligarh Muslim University, one of India’s most prestigious institutions, had died of coronavirus, the university said in a statement.

Adding to the strain on medical facilities, the Indian government has told doctors to look out for signs of mucormycosis or “black fungus” in COVID-19 patients as hospitals report a rise in cases of the rare but potentially fatal infection.

The disease, which can lead to blackening or discolouration over the nose, blurred or double vision, chest pain, breathing difficulties and coughing blood, is strongly linked to diabetes, which can, in turn, be exacerbated by steroids such as dexamethasone, used to treat severe COVID-19 disease.

Doctors in the country had to warn against the practice of using cow dung in the belief it will ward off COVID-19, saying there is no scientific evidence for its effectiveness and that it risks spreading other diseases.

In the state of Gujarat in western India, some believers have been going to cow shelters once a week to cover their bodies in cow dung and urine in the hope it will boost their immunity against, or help them recover from, the coronavirus.

There is no concrete scientific evidence that cow dung or urine work to boost immunity against COVID-19, it is based entirely on belief,” said Dr J A Jayalal, the national president at the Indian Medical Association.

India’s second wave has increased calls for a nationwide lockdown and prompted a growing number of states to impose tougher restrictions, hitting businesses and the wider economy.

The production of the Apple iPhone 12 at a Foxconn factory in the southern state of Tamil Nadu has slumped by more than 50 percent because workers infected with COVID-19 have had to leave their posts, two sources told Reuters.

Quote from Fm1

our minister of propaganda referenced Japan and it glowing handling of the pandemic but the reality is a bit different from the real people in the know! The Olympics are now again in jeopardy of cancellation

The pandemic was handled well compared to the U.S., as you see from the statistics:

U.S. cases per 1 million population: 100,750, deaths: 1,792

Japan cases per 1 million population: 5,120, deaths: 87

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Do you do numbers? Can you tell the difference between 5,120 and 87? Hint: 5,120 is BIGGER. 87 is SMALLER. The smaller number is better. It means fewer people died. Do you understand, or do you think that is propaganda?

The vaccine rollout has been a fiasco.

Quote from JedRothwell

Do you do numbers? Can you tell the difference between 5,120 and 87? Hint: 5,120 is BIGGER. 87 is SMALLER. The smaller number is better. It means fewer people died. Do you understand, or do you think that is propaganda?

Here's another thing you can tell from the numbers. The per capita death rate in Japan was 60 times lower than the U.S. In the U.S. ~600,000 people have died. If the U.S. public health, healthcare system, case tracking and so on had been as good as Japan's, only ~10,000 people would have died. So, 590,000 Americans died in vain. It could easily have been avoided. This would also have prevented school closings and nearly all lockdowns. Japanese restaurants and most businesses stayed open. So we could have avoided ~$1 trillion in losses, if we had only done what the WHO and the CDC experts urged us to to, and what the governments in Japan and Korea did. All those deaths, the suffering, the economic loss, the lockdowns and the year without schools -- almost all of it could have been avoided, if we had only listened to scientists instead of ignorant politicians and the Death Cult lunatics. Masks, case tracking and few other steps that cost practically nothing prevented this tragedy in other countries, and they would have in the U.S. as well.

See Fm1??? That's the power of numbers. Numbers tell us what is real, and what isn't. They allow us to make fact-based comparisons. They are not propaganda. So I suggest you learn what they mean instead of spouting off about propaganda.

Also, by the way, regarding seasons: It is the same season in all of Europe. Yet the numbers are declining rapidly in the UK but not in France or Germany, which are right next door. The numbers correlate with vaccinations, and with nothing else. What does that tell you??? Think. It isn't seasons.

Quote from JedRothwell

I do not understand this sentence. The technology is more than 20 years old. That means the vaccines are more than 20 years old. What is the difference between "vaccines" and "technology" in this sentence?

They have been improved a great deal in 20 years.

I read that the vaccines were developed and tested in humans, but not mass produced. They were not needed.

The COVID vaccines were tested in very large double blind tests in 2020. There were more test patients than all of the patients ever given some narrow-use drugs.

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Jed if you read they have used MRNA vaccines on any humans before 2020, I'd really like to read that study as I haven't been able to find these studies. As I have said mRNA treatments have been used in clinical trails for cancer research and Covid hospitalized patients but I'm not aware of any vaccine used before trials began in 2020. Please post the study.