Covid-19 News

    I think trialsitebiassednews is just trying to wind ,me up. I tried to find the study. No link. A link posted in the comments (somone else had the same problem) was a secure link - no access.


    The devil is always in the detail. No detail, no credibility. A pity, because this is interesting - like why were more transmissable variants less severe? It would be great if we have now got to this stage of course - it has not yet been true through alpha / delta.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    I think trialsitebiassednews is just trying to wind ,me up. I tried to find the study. No link. A link posted in the comments (somone else had the same problem) was a secure link - no access.


    The devil is always in the detail. No detail, no credibility. A pity, because this is interesting - like why were more transmissable variants less severe? It would be great if we have now got to this stage of course - it has not yet been true through alpha / delta.

    I guess your to busy to google


    Genomic Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 Infection During the Initial Pandemic Wave and Association With Disease Severity


    https://jamanetwork.com/journa…ftm_links&utm_term=042621

    Quote from JedRothwell

    We need to push COVID 19 into extinction. NOW.

    We live with the corona virus since more than 100 years now. Some parts of China for more than 1000 years. So your wish is just an intellectual brain fart.

    Best way to shut down CoV-19 is doing it like Uttar Pradesh. 8 Week Ivermectin to whole population and CoV-19 is gone or down to the soap slip risk...

    And guess how many did die from Ivermectin = 0. Total cost of eradication < 100mio $ for drugs.

    This is less than Gates gets from his Pfizer shares...

    I was googling (to no avail) for Walach's full "Mask" paper - referred to in his response.


    [ I didn't like retraction watch's comments, concentrating on mutual ad-hominems - and which ignored his specific technical responses. ]

    I did come up with this April 2020 rant :
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3608584
    (PDF at the link)


    Quote


    Thus, to return to our original observation, a new time of Grand Narratives has arrived. This time the narrative of salvation by science, vaccinations, genetic discoveries, and the like. And the media are distributing brain masks to prevent viruses of dissenting opinions from intruding and disturbing the clean picture of the new narrative. Politicians have become the new saviors. Virologists are the new apostles. Vaccines the new sacrament. And we are all waiting for the messianic event of salvation from evil and return to the blessed heaven of normal life. The only person in history who was so naïve and await the coming of the Messiah within weeks or months was Saint Paul. And we know he was wrong. The result was Christian theology. It was, however, more reflective than the new theology: virology.

    Your rather complex analysis does no such thing. How exactly do you come to that conclusion? Are you assuming again Thomas?

    • Official Post
    Quote from JedRothwell

    You do not need to vaccinate everyone to achieve that. Somewhere between 70% and 80% should be enough, according to various expert estimates

    https://usafacts.org/visualiza…d-vaccine-tracker-states/


    Here is a good site with a breakdown of US vaccination % by state, gender, and ethnicity. As a nation we are at 56%. And most of that is in the at risk, 50 and older demographic. Not bad, and estimating those with natural immunity, we are probably at that 70-80%, so looks like there is nothing to worry about.

    Children's C0V1D Vaccine, What 100% Effective Means & Critical Thinking!


    Probably too much critical thinking for youtube.. I think it was banned..

    Children are in Phase 3 trials...without informed consent...

    https://rumble.com/vjgebf-chil…nd-critical-thinking.html

    "You can't subject children to experimental trials..

    ... Dr Mengele did it..

    https://www.theguardian.com/wo…cine-children-coronavirus

    I get it. That guy does not like vaccines.


    No-one is forcing children to have vaccines - nor is that likely to happen. (We now have vaccines as requirement for certain jobs - e.g. care workers, with various exceptions - e.g. for those who cannot be vaccinated on medical grounds. i don't see a requirement to do something for a specific job as forcing poeple to do things - it is just the job. But job-related requirements do not affect children).


    Would I want my young children (if I now had any) to be vaccinated? Probably. I'd do the risk analysis as always. To add to the above figures, specially relevant for children


    https://jamanetwork.com/journa…kopen/fullarticle/2780861

    Incidence of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children Among US Persons Infected With SARS-CoV-2


    MIS-C incidence in people < 21 years:

    316 : 1,000,000


    MIS-C is treatable if recognised and children usually recover, but it can be serious. Were it a vaccine side effect it would be big news - with anti-vax links telling us the vaccines were unsafe in graphics terms.

    True - the vaccines are unsafe. So is COVID. You can be sure your children will get one or the other.


    Rules for trials on children

    https://www.who.int/clinical-t…inical-trials-in-children


    Nature on COVID vaccine trials in children

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01061-4


    Pfizer link on its 12+ trials

    https://www.pfizer.com/science/clinical-trials/children

    Quote from Shane D.

    https://usafacts.org/visualiza…d-vaccine-tracker-states/


    Here is a good site with a breakdown of US vaccination % by state, gender, and ethnicity. As a nation we are at 56%. And most of that is in the at risk, 50 and older demographic. Not bad, and estimating those with natural immunity, we are probably at that 70-80%, so looks like there is nothing to worry about.

    For some reason nearly all of the US information is still out of date and ignores delta (we can't do that here in the UK). Delta's greater R means you need more immunity to get herd immunity. It is likely 80-90%.


    But as you say natural immunity gets added in, and with a decent amount of vaccination you need less natural immunity. the way to think about it is that everyone will be vaccinated or get COVID.


    What you forget is that the 56% is not uniform across the US. The low vax states will have no herd immunity for quite a while, and the (larger) number of at risk people there who are reading anti-vax lies etc in their social media will have a tough time. You might call it Karma but I can't see it is. Those people are the victims of a massive (unprecedented) and very well funded anti-vax disinformation campaign led by those who are much more knowledgable (like Waller) and privileged - many of whom I'd bet (no information though!) personally are vaccinated.



    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01260-6

    Investigations show that those spreading misinformation that undermines the rollout of vaccines against COVID-19 are well financed, determined and disciplined. To counter their activities, we need to understand them as an industry actively working to sow doubts about the deadliness of COVID-19, vaccines and medical professionals’ integrity.



    Interesting sociological analysis of how anti-vax memes - traditionally extreme-left - have taken over the the extreme-right:


    https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/arti…nti-vaccine-movement-2020

    And according to a recent massive analysis of 100 million Facebook users worldwide, online supporters of anti-vaccine views have been more successful by some measures than those of us publicly supporting vaccines. They are smaller numerically but occupy a more central position in the network; they are heavily involved with clusters of Facebook users who haven’t made up their mind about vaccines; and they offer a wide variety of “potentially attractive” stories (about safety concerns, about government conspiracies, about natural immunity) that can attract a greater diversity of people compared to pro-vaccine messaging which tends to be one-note. This diversity is also encouraged by social media companies. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube want to hold onto your eyeballs so they recommend other content. Renee DiResta, a security researcher, told BuzzFeed News that as she joined more anti-vaccine parenting groups on Facebook for the purpose of investigating them, the platform recommended more and more conspiracist groups: about chemtrails, about the flat Earth, about the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. She called this phenomenon “radicalization via the recommendation engine.” And as Anne Borden was telling me, there is active cross-pollination happening on social media with the far right. “Right-wing movements have deeply infiltrated the social media spaces of the antivaxx and vaccine-hesitant homeschoolers and alt-schoolers. They recruit in antivaxx and Facebook groups related to complementary and alternative medicine.”

    This, from the UK, is pretty scary in terms of likely resources needed to cope with it long-term


    That gold-mine of info, the UK ONS infection survey, asking questions about long-term symptoms (long COVID). This is self-reporting so there will be some over-counting.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplep…nfectionintheuk/1july2021


    0.7% of UK population have long COVID symptoms after 1 year. I'm not sure how many COVID infections we had by June 2020 - - a lot more than the case count but I expect < 20% of the country? So that puts very long COVID rate at > 3.5% of those infected. 30% of these reported difficulty concentrating. 20% said ability to carry out day-to-day activity was limited a lot.


    Unlike mortality, long COVID does not peak in higher age groups. Highest numbers are female age 53-69.

    Herd immunity is probably unreachable


    (NB - we are now at 89% antibodies in England for those > 16 years, and our COVID cases are increasing at approx 60% per week.)


    Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible
    Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach.
    www.nature.com


    As COVID-19 vaccination rates pick up around the world, people have reasonably begun to ask: how much longer will this pandemic last? It’s an issue surrounded with uncertainties. But the once-popular idea that enough people will eventually gain immunity to SARS-CoV-2 to block most transmission — a ‘herd-immunity threshold’ — is starting to look unlikely.

    That threshold is generally achievable only with high vaccination rates, and many scientists had thought that once people started being immunized en masse, herd immunity would permit society to return to normal. Most estimates had placed the threshold at 60–70% of the population gaining immunity, either through vaccinations or past exposure to the virus. But as the pandemic enters its second year, the thinking has begun to shift. In February, independent data scientist Youyang Gu changed the name of his popular COVID-19 forecasting model from ‘Path to Herd Immunity’ to ‘Path to Normality’. He said that reaching a herd-immunity threshold was looking unlikely because of factors such as vaccine hesitancy, the emergence of new variants and the delayed arrival of vaccinations for children.

    QUESTION EVERYTHING


    QUESTION EVERYTHING
    Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite. By Abir Ballan, MPH “The art and
    trialsitenews.com


    By Abir Ballan, MPH


    “The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge” – Thomas Berger


    Asking questions is at the heart of science. Science is not an institution and not an authority. Science is never settled. It is forever evolving through conjecture and criticism. Questions form the basis of all scientific inquiry and scientific progress. Without challenging existing concepts – usually held by a majority – there is no new knowledge creation. Censoring dissenting voices eliminates the mechanism of error correction and pushes humanity back into the dark ages.


    From the beginning lockdowns were a questionable public health tool, even described as ‘pro-contagion’ by Professor Ioannidis of Stanford University. As early as June 2020, papers showed that lockdowns and other NPIs had no effect on reducing deaths. We were all aware that lockdowns would have a terrible economic impact and a devastating human toll, especially in the developing world. We went along with this ‘cure’ because we were told it would save lives – it was necessary for 2 to 3 weeks to flatten the curve of infections and prevent healthcare system strain. Yet the goal posts kept shifting endlessly, moving towards a ZERO COVID world: a completely unrealistic and unachievable goal. Such an anti-science goal brings with it huge collateral damage: job losses, economic devastation, suicides, mental health crises and hurt to children and young people.


    Is NOW the time to question absolutely everything?


    The pandemic response was disproportionate. If infected, the average mortality with COVID is similar to the flu at 0.15%, globally. Why did the WHO, in March 2020, highlight the figure of 3.4% representing deaths among cases? Those cases included only high-risk individuals in hospitals with a far higher likelihood of mortality than the rest of the population. This figure did not take into account all infections that lead to mild disease or even no symptoms at all. It did not include individuals who are protected by past immunity. It certainly did not reflect that the elderly are several thousand times more likely to die with COVID than the young. Even Fauci predicted, in March 2020, “The consequences of COVID-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza”. Why then are we treating COVID as if it were Ebola?


    The common sense approach would have been to focus efforts and resources on protecting the high-risk group (people above 60, suffering from other health conditions), treating them early, and in turn reducing deaths. Telling people, “Don’t do anything until you are very sick and need to be hospitalised,” is deadly. There are cheap, generic, safe and effective treatments available, such as Ivermectin, that are saving lives. Why are treatments being ignored, suppressed and attacked? Why aren’t the media or public health officials informing the public about them?


    The CDC, the WHO and ‘experts’ have flip-flopped multiple times. In February 2020, Fauci said, “In all the history of respiratory-born viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.” However, all the pandemic measures were based on the assumption that people who are healthy might be sick without knowing it. On June 8, 2020, Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO stated that asymptomatic spread of SARS-CoV-2 is very rare. The next day she walked back her comment saying that studies, based on computer modeling not real-life data, show that asymptomatic spread is cause for concern. A systematic review and meta-analysis paper, published in 2020, falsified this assumption. Asymptomatic spread is simply not the main driver of disease. What should be of even less concern is transmission in the open air, likely to be below 0.1% of all transmissions. How can anyone catch the virus from just passing by healthy people on the streets? Unfortunately, the CDC overestimated outdoor spread, claiming that it represented 10% of transmissions. This exaggeration was used to justify futile outdoor mask mandates. They later admitted their error, too little, too late. Why are we still testing healthy people and locking populations indoors?


    The CDC and the WHO confused the public with their social media recommendations about masks: ‘Masks don’t work in the community. Everyone should wear masks in the community. Everyone should wear two masks. Even if you are vaccinated you should still wear a mask and finally, if you are vaccinated you can do without a mask.’ Behind the scenes, the CDC published a policy review in May 2020 stating, “We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission”. The WHO also published an Interim guidance in June 2020 stating “At present, there is no direct evidence on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community” and Fauci’s leaked emails showed that he didn’t believe in the power of masks either. He said in February 2020 in his email to Sylvia Burwell, “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.” Why were masks mandated even when the data showed that they made no difference?


    The WHO flip-flopped on the definition of herd immunity, which is the point at which an infectious disease stops being a cause for concern because most of the population is immune to it. They removed natural immunity from the definition and limited herd immunity to that reached via vaccination only. After this meddling caused an uproar, they went back again and included both forms of immunity as contributing to herd immunity. Furthermore, they changed their recommendations about the PCR test, first allowing very high cycle thresholds of 45 (which is the number of times the genetic material of the virus is multiplied until it is detected) and recommending that cases are diagnosed based on a positive PCR test, regardless of symptoms – previously unheard of in medicine. Patients are usually diagnosed with a disease if they are sick. Later the WHO rectified their stance, clarifying that the diagnosis of cases requires clinical symptoms and that high cycle thresholds lead to false positives. Why did the WHO make recommendations contrary to established medical practice for infectious diseases? The PCR test was not designed to diagnose infectiousness. It merely detects viral genetic material, dead or alive. Studies indicate that 25 cycles are enough to detect an infectious virus. How much have the false positive results affected the number of cases and in turn the number of deaths? How many deaths were wrongly attributed to COVID instead of other diseases?


    Science doesn’t flip-flop like that. Politics does. Science has become politicized. We need to decouple science from politics. It is being manipulated to serve corporate and political agendas. Anyone criticizing ‘The Science’ is silenced harshly. People are smart and if given accurate information they can make the right decisions for themselves and their communities. Unfortunately, people are being misinformed and fear-mongered with non-stop death reports, apparently vanishing immunity and the threat of new variants. Fear is not good for us. It’s not good for our immunity, our health or our ability to think rationally. To calm the fear, we need to know that cases are meaningless, deaths are overestimated and immunity – whether natural or vaccine-induced – is long-lasting and can protect us from future variants. Variants are not unique to COVID. All respiratory viruses mutate. The variants are so minutely different from each other that our immune system will recognize them and protect us. It’s like your friend wearing a cap. Can you still recognize him? In the same way, your immune system also recognizes the variants. How much longer should we let those variants haunt us?


    Did the COVID-19 response foster public health or public harm? Was the ‘cure’ worse than the disease?


    NOW is the time for error correction. Start at the beginning and question everything: lockdowns, asymptomatic transmission, mask mandates, claims about short-lived immunity and dreadful variants. NOW is the time for a better solution.


    “The important thing is to never stop questioning” – Albert Einstein


    Mark your calendar for The Question Everything: Lockdowns Summit, on the 17th of July 2021, where pre-eminent experts from science, social sciences, law and industry will evaluate the response to COVID-19.


    Author BIO:


    Abir Ballan, MPH- has a background in public health, psychology, and education. She’s been a passionate advocate for the inclusion of students with learning difficulties in schools. She has also published 27 children’s books in Arabic. [She is particularly concerned for the wellbeing of the young, the elderly and people in the developing world in the midst of the disproportionate COVID-19 response. (can be shortened).] Abir is a member of the Executive Committee at PANDA (Pandemics- Data & analytics).

    This is truly scary and a very good reason to vaccinate. I talk with my kids about this and showed all the data to date. They have decided for now to wait it out. They will vaccinate if passports become required or delta does prove more deadly, I applaud that they are open-minded and have prepared Incase of infection. Plus they were taking 5000 units of vitamin d during flu months and 2000 units a day now, just like dear old dad!!!!

    Antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and BNT162b2 vaccine in Israel


    Antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and BNT162b2 vaccine in Israel
    Neutralizing antibodies targeting the Spike protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) block viral entry to host cells, preventing…
    www.medrxiv.org


    Abstract

    Neutralizing antibodies targeting the Spike protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) block viral entry to host cells, preventing disease and further spread of the pathogen. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in serum is a reliable indicator of infection, used epidemiologically to estimate the prevalence of infection and clinically as a measurement of an antigen-specific immune response. In this study, we analyzed serum Spike protein-specific IgG antibodies from 26,170 samples, including convalescent individuals who had coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and recipients of the BNT162b2 vaccine. We find distinct serological patterns in COVID-19 convalescent and vaccinated individuals, correlated with age and gender and the presence symptoms.


    Discussion

    In this study, we characterized the antibody response to the BNT162b2 vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 infection, in relation to demographic and clinical parameters.


    The serum anti-RBD IgG antibodies that were assayed are highly accurate markers of infection10 and strongly correlate with neutralizing activity11 and disease severity7, but can not be used as sole predictors of anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing ability12. Convalescent individuals recovering from symptomatic COVID-19 typically have low plasma titres of RBD-specific antibodies, however, the antigen-specific memory B cells that facilitate the antibody response, maintain and enhance their potency for years11,13,14.


    In agreement with previous studies, levels of IgG serum antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were significantly higher than those of convalescent individuals11,15,16 and inversely correlated with age17 (Fig 3). In the month following the second BNT162b2 dose, older individuals had lower antibody levels in the seroconversion phase, followed by an earlier and steeper decline compared to younger age-groups (Fig 5). Despite decreasing quantities, the potency of the antibodies is mostly unaffected by aging18 and neutralizing activity is possible at much lower concentrations11. Taken together with the results of large-scale epidemiological studies19,20, the evidence currently suggests that BNT162b2 maintains its efficacy in the oldest age groups.


    Among unvaccinated convalescent individuals, antibody levels were highest in young children, decreasing to stable low levels in young adulthood, then increasing again in later adulthood (Fig 4). The prevalent association of elevated antibody levels to increased COVID-19 severity is contradicted by the highest antibody concentrations belonging to the youngest and least vulnerable age-group21,22. Like many other aspects of the pediatric immune response to SARS-CoV-2, this phenomenon remains largely unexplained22.


    Overall, seropositive unvaccinated individuals recovering from symptomatic COVID-19 had higher antibody levels than their asymptomatic counterparts, however, this difference was highly gender and age-dependent (Fig 4). Among children and young adults, there was a very slight, insignificant increase in antibody levels in severe cases, which was previously associated with asymptomatic and mild COVID-1923. In later adulthood, the antibody levels of the symptomatic COVID-19 group increased significantly more than the asymptomatic group and the gap between the two grew larger with age. Among females, the difference in antibody levels between the symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID-19 groups was the most significant in age 51 and older, while in males this separation occurs much earlier, at about 35 years of age.


    Women are at significantly lower risk of developing severe COVID-19, this is mostly attributed to the immunomodulatory effect of estrogen, which serves as a protective factor24,25. According to our data, the disproportionate increase in antibody levels of women recovering from symptomatic COVID-19 starts at age 51, coinciding with the mean age of menopause26. It is therefore implied that rising antibody levels in women over the age of 51 might be the result of the menopausal drop in estrogen, which nullifies it’s immunomodulatory effect, increasing the incidence of immune dysregulation associated with the more severe and symptomatic COVID-1927.


    Following this conclusion, it can be postulated that the early separation between the symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID-19 groups in men reflects increased susceptibility and coincides with a major COVID-19 risk factor. It is currently estimated that male testosterone levels decrease significantly by age 4028, roughly coinciding with the formation of a gap between symptomatic and asymptomatic men. Unlike estrogen, however, the effect of testosterone on COVID-19 pathology is less consistent and the association is not as robust29,30.


    In conclusion, the humoral response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination is distinct and varied across age and gender. Disparities in antibody levels between the various groups are reflective of numerous under-explored phenomena with potential clinical implications, such as the discordance between symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID19 in relation to age and sex.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Investigations show that those spreading misinformation that undermines the rollout of vaccines against COVID-19 are well financed, determined and disciplined. To counter their activities, we need to understand them as an industry actively working to sow doubts about the deadliness of COVID-19, vaccines and medical professionals’ integrity.

    Thanks for the daily big Pharma marketing propaganda!

    Ivermectin 10000% replaces vaccines.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    MIS-C incidence in people < 21 years:

    316 : 1,000,000

    It is really disgusting how THH handles data and spreads FUD 316 is for all age groups not fro children where it is rare


    What the paper says:

    Compared with White persons, MIS-C incidence estimates per 1 000 000 SARS-CoV-2 infections were higher among Black persons (aIRR, 5.62 [95% CI, 3.68-8.60]),

    characteristics and clinical spectrum of MIS-C,5,12-17 information on incidence of MIS-C is limited. One report by Dufort et al5 describing MIS-C in New York state estimated the incidence to be 2 cases per 100 000 persons younger than 21 years during March 1 to May 10, 2020. A study from New York City by Lee et al18 estimated the incidence of MIS-C to be 11.4 per 100 000 persons younger than 20 years during March 1 to June 30, 2020. Available


    The other question not handled by most papers. Did teh syndrome exist before the infection. Was somebody just PCR positive = not sick or did he have symptoms.


    Quote from THHuxleynew

    0.7% of UK population have long COVID symptoms after 1 year. I'm not sure how many COVID infections we had by June 2020 - - a lot more than the case count but I expect < 20% of the country?

    33% in Switzerland Geneva. Same population as UK. Also same virus.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Read the last para of the abstract. Carefully.

    Increased severity does not =mortality. Delta is more infectious agreed and symptoms seem a little more intense yet mortality at this moment is lower than alpha. Come august and September as we begin flu season we may see a rise in mortality but as of now you are assuming

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