Never has there been so much mass murder been committed for such a trivial cause. The pandemic could be stopped in a few weeks if Trump, DeSantis and other GOP leaders would tell their followers "get vaccinated!" They will not do this.
"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is urging Floridians to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, saying that the shots are "saving lives.""
Health Ministry official: Most people will end up being infected with COVID
Tal Brosh says real question is whether those who contract the virus are vaccinated, thereby mitigating risks of complications; asserts closing Ben Gurion not necessary
Health Ministry official: Most people will end up being infected with COVID | The Times of Israel
Most people will end up contracting the coronavirus, the head of the Health Ministry’s advisory committee for infectious diseases predicted on Monday.
“The [real] question is whether the infected person is vaccinated or not. It’s unavoidable that the pandemic will infect the majority of the population. It won’t disappear in another half a year,” Dr. Tal Brosh told the Kan public broadcaster.
Brosh, who also heads the infectious disease department at Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod, said he doesn’t see a reason to shutter Ben Gurion Airport, arguing that would distract “from the main problem — morbidity within in the country.”
“It can be just as dangerous to enter some cities within Israel,” he argued, though he acknowledged that there was some risk in keeping Ben Gurion open.
Also on Monday, Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash said that his office is concerned by the increased rate of infections and will weigh expanding restrictions, including limits on businesses, in the coming days.
Ash reiterated a call for Israelis to get vaccinated, saying that higher inoculation rates would allow the government to avoid imposing a nationwide lockdown.
“We are doing everything possible to avoid lockdown,” he assured reporters at a press conference.
Ash said his office was seeking to determine the point at which a lockdown will be required. Channel 12 reported Friday that health officials believe that will be when Israel reaches 600 to 700 serious cases. The Health Ministry director said Monday, though, that other factors are at play in the decision.
According to a Sunday Channel 12 report, senior ministers are weighing implementing an emergency plan to provide relief to the healthcare system and prevent a fourth national lockdown.
The three-pronged plan would see the number of hospital beds and nurses increased throughout the country; some of the responsibility for coronavirus treatment transferred from hospitals to health management organizations; and a portion of the seriously ill COVID-19 patients — such as those not hooked up to ventilators — released for treatment at home.
In doing so, health officials hope they’ll be able to prevent hospitals from overflowing, even if cases continue to spike. Because much of the decision to implement a national lockdown would be based on whether the hospital system can withstand the uptick in cases, the government hopes that the emergency proposal will, at the very least, buy additional time before a shutdown is required, or in the best case scenario, allow ministers to shelve such plans entirely, according to Channel 12.
Buying time for the government is particularly critical as Israel is still in the early stages of its distribution of the third dose of the coronavirus vaccine, which health officials hope will lead to a slowdown in cases, particularly serious ones.
Michael Osterholm, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, spoke to CNN on Monday and said that people should upgrade from cloth masks, bandanas and gators to more-effective N95 respirators.
I have heard this from various other sources, including my daughter, who is a biologist. She sent me some N95s.
Get an N95 if you can, but if all you have are the paper throw-away masks, you should use them. They are a lot better than nothing. You should not get the impression that a paper mask will do no good, so you might as well go with no mask at all.
In the Democratic districts of Georgia such as Atlanta, most people are wearing masks again. In the GOP districts, no one is wearing them -- judging by newspaper and TV news reports. The GOP leaders are encouraging this suicidal lunacy. Rep. Greene has been bragging about the south having the lowest vaccination rate. She got a huge applause for that in Alabama.
This is an extraordinary event. Nothing like this has happened in U.S. history, except perhaps the Civil War, but I think the stakes were higher than merely one election, or "owning the libs." These political leaders are deliberately, intentionally, setting out to murder 50,000 to 100,000 of their own citizens. Their own voters! The citizens are wildly enthusiastic at the prospect. They applaud Greene and others. They send them millions of dollars in contributions. The last time millions of people cheered the prospect of mass deaths in their own community was at the beginning of WWII in Germany and Japan. Those people in Germany and Japan cheered because they did not think they would lose the war. They did not think that millions of their soldiers would be killed in battle, and hundreds of thousands of civilians would be killed in bombing raids. Along the same lines, the deluded GOP voters who cheer DeSantis and Greene do not think COVID is real, or that they are in any danger from it. That's what they tell poll-takers. The believe the anti-vaxxer's nonsense. If they thought there was any real chance they themselves would get sick or die, most of them would get vaccinated, and they would not cheer Greene.
A conservative who opposes DeSantos concedes that this mass-murder strategy will probably work. QUOTE:
The worse things get in Florida, the better it is for DeSantis’s political future.
For a number of reasons:
(3) Most scientists reckon it is as likely to harm people as help them, given what we now know.
Our liar's brain is farting again. No scientist ever would say this as no evidence of this is known. But for $$$$$$$$ some even sell their wife..
So spike proteins could in principle affect the brain but that problem would be 1000s of times worse in natural COVID infection than from the vaccine,
More farting. The spikes are tied to the virus. In the Pfizer Gen therapy they are free floating and can reach any place also in a capillary blood vessel. The article you linked is from a dilettante:
We know now that the huge majority of such infections are spread by inhalation of virus-laden droplets from other infected people. This guy never read any paper...Aerosol would be the right term....
Of course, what followed in many localities were immediate pronouncements from public health authorities for mask mandates, regardless of what actual underlying data supported the CDC, and for that matter based on an apparent assumption “that masks can’t do any harm.”
Get an N95 if you can, but if all you have are the paper throw-away masks, you should use them.
We promoted FM95/98 since 1.5 years as we always said surgical masks do not protect against aerosols. So it took you 1,5 years to understand...How long will it take for the average American? Go to the graveyard...
Tal Brosh says real question is whether those who contract the virus are vaccinated, thereby mitigating risks of complications;
If they can reformulate the booster shot to make it more effective against Delta, they might be able to avoid having everyone infected. I doubt there is time for that. Giving everyone a booster with the present vaccines will be a tremendous help, in any case. It will prevent most serious cases and nearly all deaths, and most of the economic disruption. It is MUCH better than doing nothing.
A reformulated version of the vaccine should be available by the end of the year, I think. It will cover Delta. Unfortunately, there are likely to be other variants by that time. Let us hope that none of them cause severe problems such as killing children and young people preferentially like the 1918 influenza, or killing 5% to 10% of the infected people, or overcoming the present vaccines. That could happen. If it does happen, you know who to blame: the GOP and the deluded people who refuse to be vaccinated.
If tens of thousands of children start to die, I expect political leaders will mandate vaccinations for everyone. Even DeSantis might go along. Maybe not. Tens of thousands of people are getting sick in Florida but he will not lift a finger to help them, or even admit there is a problem.
A reformulated version of the vaccine should be available by the end of the year, I think.
No not available as a 3 months test is needed: (Exception Dr. Mengeles home state Israel...) They went all in for alpha and the RSA strain. Delta cheated them...
"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is urging Floridians to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, saying that the shots are "saving lives.""
Yeah, right. And then he turns around and forbids schools from mandating masks. And takes other steps to ensure more death and mayhem. He brags about it, and makes jokes about it, and sells campaign swag with the jokes. He attacks Fauci and other public health experts. He forbids private businesses and cruise ships from protecting the lives of their employees and customers. He tells voters it isn't his fault; that Biden is sending busloads of infected Mexicans. How many more vile lies does he have to tell before you see who he is? How many more people does he have to murder?
Oh, he's really into saving lives! I will bet a video will emerge of his supporters cheering the low vaccination rate, just as it did for Rep. Greene and others.
Study finds cholesterol drug cuts COVID infection by 70%, reduces spread
A licensed drug normally used to treat abnormal levels of fatty substances in the blood could reduce infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus by up to 70 per cent, reveals a study in the laboratory by an international collaboration of researchers.
The research team, led by the University of Birmingham and Keele University in the UK and the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Italy, has demonstrated that fenofibrate and its active form (fenofibric acid) can significantly reduce SARS-COV-2 infection in human cells in the laboratory. Importantly, reduction of infection was obtained using concentrations of the drug which are safe and achievable using the standard clinical dose of fenofibrate. Fenofibrate, which is approved for use by most countries in the world including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), is an oral drug currently used to treat conditions such as high levels of cholesterol and lipids (fatty substances) in the blood.
The team is now calling for clinical trials to test the drug in hospitalised COVID-19 patients, to be carried out in addition to two clinical trials also currently underway in such patients in research being led by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in the US and Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, infects the host through an interaction between the Spike protein on the surface of the virus and the ACE2 receptor protein on host cells. In this study, responding to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the team tested a panel of already licensed drugs – including fenofibrate - to identify candidates that disrupt ACE2 and Spike interactions. Having identified fenofibrate as a candidate, they then tested the efficacy of the drug in reducing infection in cells in the laboratory using the original strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus isolated in 2020. They found fenofibrate reduced infection by up to 70%. Additional unpublished data also indicates that fenofibrate is equally effective against the newer variants of SARS-CoV-2 including the alpha and beta variants and research is ongoing into its efficacy in the delta variant.
Corresponding author Dr Farhat Khanim, of the University of Birmingham in the UK, explained: “The development of new more infectious SARS-CoV-2 variants has resulted in a rapid expansion in infection rates and deaths in several countries around the world, especially the UK, US and Europe. Whilst vaccine programmes will hopefully reduce infection rates and virus spread in the longer term, there is still an urgent need to expand our arsenal of drugs to treat SARS-CoV-2-positive patients.”
Co-corresponding author Dr Alan Richardson, of Keele University in the UK, added: “Whilst in some countries vaccination programmes are progressing at speed, vaccine uptake rates are variable and for most low middle income countries, significant proportions of the population are unlikely to be vaccinated until 2022. Furthermore, whilst vaccination has been shown to reduce infection rates and severity of disease, we are as yet unsure of the strength and duration of the response. Therapies are still urgently needed to manage COVID-19 patients who develop symptoms or require hospitalisation.”
Co-author Dr Elisa Vicenzi, of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, said: “Our data indicates that fenofibrate may have the potential to reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and also virus spread. Given that fenofibrate is an oral drug which is very cheap and available worldwide, together with its extensive history of clinical use and its good safety profile, our data has global implications - especially in low-middle income countries and in those individuals for whom vaccines are not recommended or suitable such as children, those with hyper-immune disorders and those using immune-suppressants.”
First author Dr Scott Davies, also of the University of Birmingham, concluded: “We now urgently need further clinical studies to establish whether fenofibrate is a potential therapeutic agent to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
The research, published today (Aug 6) in Frontiers in Pharmacology, was also carried out in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the University of Liverpool in the UK.
No not available as a 3 months test is needed: (Exception Dr. Mengeles home state Israel...) They went all in for alpha and the RSA strain. Delta cheated them...
Wyttenbach, you must have a lovely wife to have patience to tolerate the histrionics here. The Towne Criers haranguing and throwing emotional fits to convince us to push the needle in the arm is no longer even funny. It's like being in a mental institution where the inmates run the asylum.
And then he turns around and forbids schools from mandating masks.
What are you saying?? We here never had masks in junior schools... Do you want to mentally damage your offspring ??
Gov. DeSantis and other members of the GOP Death Cult have recently claimed the Delta COVID surge was caused by Biden. They say he is allowing hoards of sick illegal immigrants in from Mexico, putting them on buses, and sending them to Florida and other states. Most unvaccinated people are Republicans, and most of them believe this, as shown in this public opinion poll:
More pure political bull shit from Rothwell. He is so politically motivated he cannot even see it, as most liberal elites seem to be. "Liberal elite syndrome" it is called.
Biden IS letting THOUSANDS of infected migrants in and sending them across the country.. ...without quarantine requirements. Yet do you deny this?
Do you think that is OK and not causing any issues? I doubt you will address this because you cannot and keep Biden in a good light.
You completely dodge the real question by trying to throw BS and call names, which are mostly spinned lies anyway.
How about Obama's big maskless birthday bash? (Posts and videos from party goers were demanded to be deleted so the "crime" would not be seen. Really?)
How about Chicago's Lolapolooza's huge crowds ? Where the insane Democratic mayor attended. The mayor who recently had her own police force physically turn their backs on her as she tries to abolish the police.... as the liberal democrats are doing in all their cities...and record murder rates now in all of them..
(PS.. record marijuanna sales was made at Lolalopooza, I am sure smoking all those joints in crowds was really controlling the spread! 
)
Wait.. those don't count cause those were Democratic Socialist events... the virus stays away from those Democrat socialist events...just like the migrants crossing the border are immune to spreading it.
Yes, every time I see this "GOP death cult" crap, I will simply respond with "Liberal Democratic anarchists calling for police abolishment while the murder rate soars to record highs in Democratic lead cities) meme.
i guess we can call Rothwell the "anti-police murder cultist" since he is connected to that party and he seems to throw everyone into prejudiced collections, we can do the same to him! 
So as you can see, we can throw political BS right back at you as well!
Absolute political blindness indeed! You have lost all credibility. By the way... how is your "a leader that should be followed" thoughts turning out?
Gov. Cuomo -- who I now designate a world-class expert on this subject
Really!?? Ask all the New York nursing home families about this who lost thousands of loved ones... talk about who caused deaths! But Cuomo is a liberal and must not be criticized! But a GOP will be called a death cultist simply because they are a republican.
Here is a SUPERB presentation by Gov. Cuomo of New York. This is one of the best analyses of the situation I have seen. It is one of the best examples of good leadership since FDR.
Hmmm. good leadership indeed..... Let's see... who is getting impeached lately??? Yes, good leadership indeed!
Oh well... this just goes to show how a person's view is so clouded by political affiliation.... 
A WHO expert explains why she believes the rush for Covid-19 boosters is premature
When the World Health Organization last week called for a moratorium on giving Covid-19 booster shots, except in rare circumstances, it said it was concerned wealthy countries would start giving their populations a third dose before the people at highest risk from the disease — health workers and older adults — in many countries get their first.
But Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s director of immunization, vaccination, and biologics, recently insisted on an additional reason: Providing booster shots without strong evidence that the shots are needed is ill-advised. “If we’re not really grounded in that clarity, we’re going to be in a place where we have forever uncertainty about what actually should be done,” she cautioned.
STAT spoke to O’Brien to about what she meant by that warning — sparking a discussion about why she thinks the current use of Covid vaccines is “out of kilter
I’ll give you an example. In the U.S., the use of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is a four-dose schedule for infants. The vast majority of other countries around the world are giving either three doses or two doses of that vaccine. You have to ask the question — I do — why is the U.S. still giving four doses of pneumococcal vaccine when demonstrably other countries have [gone to] two doses or three doses?
And the answer is it’s a really hard step for policymakers to step back from doses, because there is a trade-off. There’s almost always an incremental benefit to somebody of getting a dose more than what we’re already giving. So the policy question is always — when we’re expanding doses — do we have a strong evidence base on which a population-level recommendation will be made to invest those resources and ask people to go ahead and get whatever that expanded dose is?
When we are in a position where the evidence is weak and yet people proceed with the intervention, it’s really difficult to walk back from that. One can envision that there would be a world five years from now, 10 years from now where we’ve sort of backed our way into giving doses where we actually can’t fully defend the evidence on which that decision was reached.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have been saying they think booster shots are going to be needed. Are they saying, “Our vaccine should be three doses the first time you get it,” or are they talking about something like a tetanus booster — an additional shot given at a later date? Do you know?
You’re asking a really spot-on question. We’re talking about in general — let’s put [the one-dose] Johnson & Johnson aside because that sort of complicates things — but we’re talking about third doses here. And there’s a lot of different language that’s being used. It’s being referenced as “a booster dose.”
But the timing of that dose, and the rationale that some stakeholders are making, is not about boosting. It’s actually about whether or not you need a third priming dose, for a primary series — for certain populations.
For some vaccines, for some of the studies and for some subpopulations, there seems to be evidence coming forward, more about people who are having a failure of the primary series and evidence on whether or not a third priming dose would help.
Like people who are immunocompromised?
Right.
And yet the bigger conversation is around whether or not additional doses will be needed for everyone, and then you have to say: needed for what? Is it needed for maintaining the effectiveness that the vaccines have already had? Is it about needing additional doses to enhance the effectiveness around variants of concern?
Related: WHO calls for a temporary moratorium on administering booster shots of Covid-19 vaccines
I think it’s fair to say that the majority of the experts that we’re engaging with, we’re seeing evidence from, the people who are involved in policymaking — the general view is that the evidence does not speak in favor at this time of a need for advancing to third doses in a general sense.
Israel has announced it is giving a third dose to everybody over 60. Britain is starting a booster-shot campaign in early September for older adults and care home residents. Is there a consensus on using an age cutoff as a proxy for “these people need more boosting”?
I think the much more important message is we really have huge inequity right now in just getting primary doses to people. And I think what we’re really trying to say is: Does a third dose need to be given? I think you can draw your own inferences about, well, wait a minute, how many [national advisory] committees have actually made this decision? It’s precious few.
At this point, we’ll just continue to emphasize that we’re looking at the evidence around this broad topic. And it is there’s no compelling, clear answer of “There is a need for X, Y and Z.”
You talked about how hard it is to unring the bell once the decision is made to add doses. Could these decisions lock countries into giving annual shots? If you start giving a third shot in the autumn of 2021, aren’t you going to be pushed to give a fourth shot in the autumn of 2022?
I think you’re asking excellent questions, the kind of questions that should be asked to the committees that have been making those decisions to move forward. Those are exactly some of the questions that the SAGE Covid vaccine working group is deliberating on. [SAGE is the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization.]
And I think the important part is: Can we point to the evidence that we’re all looking at that says you should move forward with giving a third dose?
Now, it’s legitimate that different groups will come to different conclusions. Clearly, countries have their own country context. But what we’re really trying to say is a country may be looking at this from their own country context, but they live in a world of a global context. And so I think we’re really just trying to emphasize the importance of realizing we need a strong evidence base in order to make decisions that have implications for the whole world.
The focus [of Covid vaccination] really is on reducing serious disease, hospitalizations, and death. And when you look at the deployment of the vaccines globally, a whole lot of those vaccines have gone to people who have extremely low risk of that happening, while at the same time there are huge numbers of people who do fall into that risk group who haven’t been vaccinated.
We’re just really out of kilter here.
Display MoreThat's what metanalysis is for.
.it beats rhetoric anytime
ivmmeta.com
the WHO one got 81%..
it's nothing new
here's some helicobacter pylori.. but notice the years..
has anyone tried it for electrolysis LENR?
Groudhog day. I'm not doing it again! Perhaps you can remember...
What are you saying?? We here never had masks in junior schools... Do you want to mentally damage your offspring ??
W seems to be implying that the kids and teachers in open, maskless schools in Switzerland and Sweden were not leading the charge in infecting others? How radical!
Meanwhile in the US
World’s Most Vaccinated Nations are Also Some of the Highest at Risk for COVID-19 Surges: What Happened?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently updated its list of riskiest countries for travel due to growing pandemic waves associated with SARS-CoV-2 and variants of interest such as the Delta variant. Interestingly, a recent review of this list reveals most of the countries ranked high on the Johns Hopkins list of the most vaccinated continue to be categorized by the CDC as ‘high’ or ‘very high’ in association with the risk of travel due to COVID-19. TrialSite took an independent look at the data and can verify that the opposite of what was to be expected is now occurring in most cases: heavily vaccinated nations experience considerable waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection growth. This clearly evidences mass breakthrough infections. TrialSite does concur, however, that it would appear vaccinated individuals, all things being equal, fall less sick than the unvaccinated. Yet, serious questions are being raised about the fundamental premise of mass vaccination. Vaccines were to stop transmission and lead to mass herd immunity. But that vision was never realistic due to a confluence of real-world factors and forces, from a market system that favors rich countries to grave global health inequities, corrupt national leaderships, ineffectual global organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), and predatorial multinationals that in their bid to survive the pandemic, thrive and dominate as they outmaneuver their own governments.
TrialSite has long argued that in addition to smart, safe, and effective vaccines, government health authorities must add a portfolio of treatments for early-onset care, the 90% plus of COVID-19 cases involving asymptomatic to mild-to-moderate cases. These treatments overwhelmingly reduce disease progression and include low-cost, repurposed generic drugs (e.g. ivermectin, fluvoxamine, Vitamin D, possibly hydroxychloroquine when used early on, and others). Treatments also include branded, safe novel drugs for wealthier markets that demand such products, with prospects from Merck, Roche, Pfizer, and others. Such therapies should be combined with smart and locally contextual public health policies that don’t economically devastate the working class and small business entrepreneurial sector. Chinese Communist Party-style authoritarian lockdowns during pandemics impressed key stakeholders in the World Health Organization (WHO). While such extreme lockdowns may work in particular cultures, they don’t work in diverse, economically liberalized, individualistic societies. Implementing such regimes leads to extreme political polarization and, if not checked, more extreme forms of politics threaten democracy itself.
Top 15 Most Vaccinated Nations
See the vaccination data below:
Country Full Vaccination Rate
Malta 79%
United Arab Emirates 73%
Iceland 71%
Uruguay 66%
Chile 65%
Bahrain 65%
Qatar 64%
Aruba 63%
Belgium 63%
Bhutan 62%
Canada 62%
Mongolia 62%
Portugal 60%
Spain 60%
Israel 60%
Correlating COVID-19 Situation
The CDC recently came out with a report of risky nations due to COVID-19 surges, including Malta, United Arab Emirates, Seychelles, Chile, Uruguay, Bahrain, and Mongolia. Malta, the most vaccinated (79%, according to data from the New York Times), is also on the list.
TrialSite sought to verify what is going on with these heavily vaccinated nations, so we include a table demonstrating whether COVID-19 is surging upward or downward. The data utilized here derives from Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE).
Country Full Vaccination Rate COVID-19 Direction
Malta 79% Huge spike starting July, it’s back on the way down but the country has experienced one of its worse surges since being heavily vaccinated. Risks are still considerable.
United Arab Emirates 73% Risks are high as the number of average cases remains high based on the country’s size. They are over 1,500 new cases per day, and this trend is not headed downward.
Iceland 71% TrialSite reported they are experiencing their worst surge since the onset of the pandemic. High risk.
Uruguay 66% Downward trend—Uruguay appears to be managing the pandemic with less risk now.
Chile 65% Much like Uruguay, there were high infection rates recently even with most of the population vaccinated, but the rates are on a downward trend, hence reducing risk.
Bahrain 65% Bahrain’s cases are way down, and risks are lower. They appear to be managing the pandemic.
Qatar 64% While not rising, the cases aren’t necessarily going down either—with over 200 new cases per day based on a 7-day average, risks are still here.
Aruba 63% High risk. Cases skyrocketed in August. The complete opposite of what’s to be expected.
Belgium 63% High risk—Belgium’s experiencing a resurgence of COVID-19, despite high vaccination rates, with over 1,700 new cases per day.
Bhutan 62% Bhutan is volatile but not many cases.
Canada 62% Canada is experiencing a slight uptick with a 7-day new daily average of 988 cases as of Aug. 8. Moderate risk.
Mongolia 62% High risk—the cases have shot up despite high vaccination rates. Most recently, 2,534 cases were recorded in one day.
Portugal 60% Generally, there has been an upward trend since mass vaccination although there is a slight dip. By Aug 8, the 7-day new average equaled 2,290 new cases. Risks are here.
Spain 60% Spain has entered a Delta-driven crisis with huge growth in cases despite over 70% receiving at least one dose. Most recently, the 7-day new case number is an extremely high 20,155.
Israel 60% Israel’s cases are skyrocketing as over 3,000 new cases were recorded just on Aug 8th, representing high risk.
12 of the top 15 vaccinated nations face material problems involving the Delta variant, waning vaccine strength, and breakthrough infections. The outcomes here are not what should be expected. Of course, not all vaccines are equal. As TrialSite has reported, the mRNA Western vaccines such as Pfizer-BioNTech (U.S. and Germany) and Moderna (U.S) are superior to Sinovac (China), Sputnik V (Russia), and even the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine (UK). But even in nations with pervasive Western vaccination, such as Israel’s use of BNT162b2, breakthrough surges are undeniable. Even Pfizer’s vaccine has waned below 40% efficacy.
TrialSite can attest that the world’s most vaccinated nations are overwhelmingly going through a surge of COVID-19 cases, raising the risk for travel and showcasing the combination of the potent Delta variant with waning vaccine efficacy. Here, we don’t break down vaccinated cases and assume that the vaccinated avoid hospitalization and death more than the unvaccinated. The vaccinated are generally safer from a worse infection, but this appears to be changing with the rising risk factors.
The vaccinated are getting infected in unprecedented numbers. These figures shatter the premise that vaccination is the only answer to eradicating the pandemic by stifling transmission and leading to “herd immunity.”
Moreover, in America, the ruling party points the finger at the unvaccinated and declares the surge is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” This is proven incorrect worldwide.
TrialSite has emphasized that a combination of safe and effective vaccines—that must probably be advanced due to the evolving pathogen—plus early treatment options is of fundamental importance. This is especially the case in nations that don’t have huge budgets to spend on pharmaceuticals. But branded medicines that show safety and efficacy will also be needed, especially in the wealthier markets demanding such products. Also mission-critical is sound, rational, and data-driven public health policies, not herd, group-think-based hyperbolic reactions with political undertones.
An assumption involving worldwide herd immunity based on mass vaccination must factor in the realities of global market systems, structural inequities, corruption at the regional, national level and above, and the profit motive associated with pharmaceutical companies.
This confluence of factors and forces makes mass, high-quality vaccination exceedingly tricky. Groups such as the World Health Organization and their COVAX facility have fallen considerably short in their mission.
In the meantime, Moderna and Pfizer have exploited the pandemic conditions, thus generating exorbitant profits based on incredibly high revenues. All the while finding ways for the state [e.g. government actors such as Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Health (NIH) or the U.S. Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)] to subsidize clinical trials as Moderna recently did with its KIDCOVE trial. TrialSite reported that even though Moderna was now approaching $20 billion in turnover with several billion in the bank, they still wrung $144 million out of U.S. taxpayers to subsidize the conduct of a children’s study involving babies as young as six months old.
What’s clear is that hyper-crony capitalism has gone global in the age of the pandemic. As pharmaceutical companies were heavily subsidized in the West during the pandemic for clinical development and “at-risk” production costs, they take on aspects of the state-owned enterprises of the East (e.g. China and Russia). For example, vaccine maker Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, has become the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical company due to the pandemic. Or take the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which owns the Russian Sputnik V vaccine; they accelerated development, taking shortcuts along the way, to be the first to “register” a vaccine. The RDIF has been doing deals worldwide, yet much like the Chinese vaccines, the quality of their product could be in question. The revenues redistribute from nation to multinational, whether a state-owned enterprise or a state-subsidized firm, as is the case in the West where taxpayer money heavily supported clinical costs.
What’s clear during the age of COVID-19 is that select multinational corporations have exploited the pandemic to drive record revenues and profits. TrialSite cannot blame these firms for such aggressive practices. The global market system forces such behavior in that they must turn over ever-growing revenues and profits for shareholder return unless the shareholder system opted to delay returns during a pandemic for the broader public good. What are the chances of that happening? The blame goes to government agencies such as Health and Human Services or its units such as NIH’s NIAID or BARDA that have cozy relationships with the pharmaceutical vendors. Reform is probably needed at the government level, with much more oversight. If it turns out that this crisis was the result of government gain of function research, then reforms are the least of what will need to happen.
More pure political bull shit from Rothwell.
Not from me. From DeSantis, Cruz, Hannity and other leading Republicans. They are telling their base that the Delta surge is caused by Biden sending in busloads of infected Mexicans. The base believes them. That is what the polls show.
You are blaming me for what DeSantis says!
Really!?? Ask all the New York nursing home families about this who lost thousands of loved ones...
That was a mistake. He did it on the advice of experts, and they were mistaken. That happens early on during a worldwide disaster.
Hmmm. good leadership indeed.....
Cuomo's leadership in COVID was superb. He ultimately saved thousands of lives, and prevented economic damage. His personal life is an abomination and he should resign immediately in my opinion, but that has no bearing on his COVID policies and leadership.
People are complicated. Sometimes they are evil in their jobs and kind at home. Sometimes the opposite. I once saw Hitler's home movies taken at the Berghof. He seemed like a very nice chap. He was jolly; undemanding; he let his secretaries and staff choose the movie; and they were all laid back and genuinely relaxed and amused.
The positive studies show that it may reduce hospital stays by a few days. Perhaps. Depending on the study, which may in turn depend on the dose or what strain of COVID the patients have, or some other unknown variable. Reducing hospital stays is good, but not something to celebrate on the streets.
In disputes of this nature, it sometimes happens that both sides are right. And both are somewhat wrong. There may be a hidden variable that explains why one study produces good results and another does not.
Even if it is shown that ivermectin works, we should be wary of it for the reasons THH gave above. The biggest objection is that people might rely on it instead of getting vaccinated. So, we should not promote it. It should never be used instead of a vaccination, but only if the vaccination fails in a serious breakthrough case.
Of course doctors should use it if it works.
In disputes of this nature, it sometimes happens that both sides are right. And both are somewhat wrong.
That goes for LENR too..in a waffly "disputes of this nature" kind of way..
the electrolytic LENR results..
how many cells actually worked out of how many?
Perhaps a metaanalysis has been done
At least for ivermectin there are quite a few metaanalyses... rather than platitudes
The biggest objection is that people might rely on it instead of getting vaccinated. So, we should not promote it
Some poorer /smaller countries like Slovakia/Czechia couldn't bargain for the Pfizer vaccine
and ivermectin was better than Sinovac
In China much of the current infections wave of infections are among the doubly vaccinated
