The Totally Civil Covid Thread. (Closing 31/05)

Quote from Fm1

Double-blind, Randomized Clinical trials (DB-RCTs) Have Miserably Failed in COVID-19 – and Became No Longer the Gold Standard Type of Clinical Study

https://www.trialsitenews.com/…f-clinical-study-551bb258

Double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials (DB-RCT) represent the most respected type of study in medical and clinical science. The only types of studies that can have stronger evidence are actually reviews: systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which are statistical analysis of systematic reviews.

Why are DB-RCTs considered the most powerful type of study? Some key points: 1. The effect of placebo (improvement due to a belief that the intervention is bringing the improvement – irrespective of the actions of the intervention itself) is nullified because patients are blind; 2. Medical doctors who take care of patients are also blind, so they do not force or postpone actions, such as hospital discharges, avoidance of intubation or inclusion of additional drugs, based on the fact that their patients are taking the drug (or intervention) or not – it is natural for medical doctors to act differently according to the drugs patients are taking, so keeping blind avoid differences in terms of management between groups; 3. Randomization avoids purposely and inconscient biased or even grouped allocation according to whether it is drug or placebo, leading to naturally similar groups, in particular in larger trials; and 4. All other variables are controlled and equal between groups, so the sole variable that will drive outcomes is the intervention proposed in the DB-RCT.

Great. So we must believe in DB-RCTs blindly, as a religion.

No. Not at all.

And DB-RCTs have miserably failed in COVID-19, and consequently lost credibility (for any serious scientist or scientific community).

Why?

Because a DB-RCT is only a truly great study if the intervention proposed respects the disease pathophysiology, disease course, and is implemented following the expected mechanisms of action that have been hypothesized to bring the benefits for the disease to be studied.

Hence, we must understand the disease pathophysiology, mechanisms of pathogenicity and disease course in order to design an appropriate DB-RCT.

In practical terms, what must be addressed in a design, and consequently, what can lead to failure of DB-RCTs?

This is a short list of a vast array of factors that can mislead results of DB-RCTs:

Treatment duration – too-short of a treatment can lead to rebound or lack of improvement in the analyses of the longer-term outcomes

Treatment timing – too-early can be harmful instead of helpful; too late can do nothing

Lack of combined therapies (interestingly, this was particularly common for unpatented drugs in the case of COVID-19) for diseases known to have complex pathophysiology, such as viruses including HIV, hepatitis B and C, and SARS-CoV-2 – DB-RCTs performed with a single drug only will hardly achieve great effect size (could this be a strategy to annihilate therapeutic options – one-by-one – to fit into a ‘script’?)

Insufficient dose – The minimal effective concentration may vary according to the disease for which the intervention or drug is proposed

Inappropriate population – Too low-risk population or too-high risk population for a certain intervention

It seems that after two years of COVID-19, we still have not fully understood the disease.

To make things worse, outcomes matter. And some of them have always mattered and are considered as important surrogate markers of efficacy. However, for unknown reasons, previous assumptions in infectious disease were cancelled for COVID-19, such as considering viral load as a predictor of disease severity. This used to be and is still the case for the vast majority of the other viral infections.

Strangely, from an ethical perspective, until we find data on more important and direct outcomes, such as COVID-19 mortality rate, we were supposed to use what we could have in hand in terms of evaluation for prediction of efficacy. Hence, reduction of viral load should have been considered as a relevant outcome.

Interestingly, for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, COVID-19 mortality rate and chances of dying from COVID-19 were not required – exactly because we could not wait for more solid data.

So, why did we act in the opposite direction when it came to treatments?

As an additional sign that we are not looking at patients, we pretended that viral load could not predict long-COVID, which is entirely wrong. I mean, under uncertainties, if we had focused on patients, instead of spreadsheets alone, we would have realized that viral load could have been used as a predictor of long COVID, a relevant outcome that brought burden to the planet.

Yes, where is long COVID as an outcome for DB-RCT in terms of treatments for COVID-19? Mortality is by far the most important outcome. However, is not dying enough for everyone? How many DB-RCTs have been designed also focusing on prolonged COVID, everlasting COVID, long COVID or post-COVID?

The trial on Paxlovid that led to its approval for COVID-19 is a great example of pitfalls on RCT for COVID-19:

A 5-day treatment regimen was already known to be insufficient, according to the duration of the viral replication in COVID-19. Importantly, we demonstrated, with a different molecule (proxalutamide – pruxelutamide), that shorter courses could lead to relapse, and due to our sensible analysis, we were able to correct and increase the treatment duration to seven days right in the beginning of the trials. We published a paper over a year ago informing that treatment duration was critical – and too-short treatment courses could be even worse for patients. We shared via social media. And we know almost everyone reads., but they ignored.

Subjects enrolled after 03 days of symptoms were excluded. They realized that timing matters. Interestingly, the median time to start treatment in trials with ivermectin was five to six days – and, oppositely to what happened with Paxlovid, in these trials subjects enrolled with more than 03 days of disease were not excluded.

Paxlovid is a combination between two antiviral agents. They knew the importance of the synergistic effects between different molecules for a disease with multiple targets as COVID-19. Why this has not been considered for unpatented drugs, like ivermectin and nitazoxanide, is unknown.

The vast majority of the studies gave ivermectin too little, too late. At times not too little, but still too late.

Serious scientists can never conclude that ivermectin does not work. Serious scientists would rather say: if ivermectin is administered not so early in COVID-19, or more than 04 days of disease, it tends to be insufficiently effective or ineffective.

Interestingly, even observing a trend of efficacy (I am not presuming that ivermectin is effective here), serious scientists must have proposed combined therapies aiming higher efficacy through synergistic actions between groups for further DB-RCTs. Have you seen any organization, authority, or ‘mainstream’ medical society recommending this?

The vast majority, if not virtually all DB-RCTs with repurposed drugs that have been published in highly prestigious journals are fatally wrong. Paradoxically, other DB-RCTs with much better quality in terms of drug treatment timing, dosing, duration, targeted population, appropriate outcomes measured – but maybe not belonging to friends of the editor, of the Big Pharma or of Big Universities – have been systematically rejected without sufficiently plausible arguments. Coincidently, these DB-RCTs that have been rejected were positive for repurposed drugs.

What has happened?

Is it because we ‘unlearned’ science and got blind to what truly makes actual valid DB-RCTs? Or is there something else we still need to know?

Display More

More antivaxxer misinformation from TSN. They sound as though they have got up with a hangover on the day of writing their articles and so are bad-tempered finding fault in everything.

Why this [combination therapies] has not been considered for unpatented drugs, like ivermectin and nitazoxanide, is unknown.

Since you have maybe 20 vaguely plausible repurposed drugs for COVID, of which ivermectin (before the massive testing effort with negative results) is one, without clear mechanism you would need to test 400 combinations of two drugs. So what doctors do is find, first, drugs that work, then try them together - when they often work better in tandem. Ivermectin is one of many candidates and has no better evidence for working than the other 20 - and less good than 2 or 3 which are known to work.

The COVID "combination therapies" that work are where the mechanism is clearly understood and the drugs are specifically chosen to be synergistic, as are adjuvants for vaccines.

I have heard many possible mechanisms for ivermectin, none shown to be clinically relevant, and to my knowledge all so vague and unclear that working out synergistic drugs is not possible. If anyone who advocated ivermectin had a clear unique mechanism, and another drug that helped it, I am sure a high quality combination trial would be advocated.

The vast majority of the studies gave ivermectin too little, too late. At times not too little, but still too late.

(1) Unless you want to keep the entire population dosed up on ivermectin the whole time - something which no responsible regulator would be happy with - you can start it only whether the recipients realise they have COVID. That is done in some "at home" trials for example PRINCIPLE.

PRINCIPLE is still open on ivermectin - and they are getting a decent number of people with the high UK COVID rate. So it will be fascinating to see what they eventually conclude. Maybe ivermectin will have some small positive or negative effect? It cannot have a large positive effect or they would have announced results (nor can it have a large negative effect, for the same reason).

(2) FLCC, like all fanatics, change their arguments whenever facts come in contrary to their beliefs. The doses used in the later trials were higher, and nearer to the level at which safety is worrying, than those used earlier. The point is that you would expect some effect even with a non-optimal dose, if the drug is effective.

THH

Quote from Mark U

the one actually shot into the arms of the public

I have a very polite (I hope everyone notices how very polite i am on this thread when discussing the poor arguments of teh antivaxxers) suggestion for why the US has such a strong political antivaxxer element.

They use, colloquially, expressions like "shot into the arms" when talking about vaccine dose administration. And those same words trigger unconscious danger signals relating to gun culture, which is a clear and present thread in the US, and also so culturally central that no citizen can ignore it.

Thus the antivaxxer rhetoric is particularly effective there.

I realise this faux psychoanalytic analysis will not be to the taste of many here - and indeed i admit to having absolutely no expertise in this area. That makes this comment at least as relevant as all of the TSN comments - but shorter.

THH

Quote from Mark U

Just search "shot into arms"

and you will see that leftist, globalist, authoritarian, vax zealot sources use the same expression.

Maybe the expression is a ploy to appeal to the gun loving right hehe.

bump:

I'm curious how exactly you know they have no long-term health problems. Did you poll the students? Or was it simply that none dropped their courses, and you are inferring from that there is no long term health problems?

Display More

Students with health problems report them - for obvious reasons.

Were I an antivaxxer there would be possible long-term health problems from every vaccine because no-one can ever be certain that a given diet, trace pollution, medicine, or even vaccine does not in some subtle way do long-term harm (or good).

The studies trying to establish that are full of confounding variables which can never be properly controlled.

So we live in a continual state of medical uncertainty.

Personally, were I inclined, as antivaxxers do, to panic, i would do so about diet (first), pollution (second), long-term medicines (third), and vaccines (last). That is because vaccines ahve a known and very transient effect on the body the strongly mimics the early stages of pathogens. There are an enormous variety of pathogens which our immune systems are exquisitely adjusted to deal with an an adaptive and helpful way.

Problems go wrong with the immune system of course: but vaccines are no more likely to cause this than pathogens - rather less likely because they have limited effect in both time and action. Finally, COVID vaccines, unlike all those other unknown threats, have had immense world-wide whole population testing and scrutiny by independent regulators in many different countries.

One point however to consider. Most of these other things (pollution, long-term medicines, etc) were around before Bill Gates, 5G, or microchip technology. So they are inherently safer, in the sense that they cannot be subject to interference from Bill Gates, nor can 5G technology be used to trigger implanted magnetic components in some perfidious way (or at least they were not originally designed with that in mind.

Whereas a good section of the antivaxxer community think such possibilities are well worth considering.

THH

Quote from Mark U

vax zealot sources

Good one.

Great new phrase, Do you have a definition? And does the use of the word zealot here indicate veiled antisemitism?

Quote from Mark U

Look carefully and you will see that document is for the Comirnaty vaccine, which is licensed. Pfizer has successfully dazed and confused both officials and the public into believing that the Comirnaty vaccine is equivalent to its EUA vaccine.

Do you seriously believe that Pfizer is violation the pure food and drug act? Do you have any idea what would happen to them if they did this? It is certain this illegal activity would be discovered. Billions of doses have been given. They are in the international news spotlight. Rival companies would surely find out, test the vaccines, and tell the public, because this incident would destroy Pfizer. When this crime is revealed, top managers would go to prison. This is not the kind of crime they give you a slap on the wrist for. Why do you imagine the managers would risk such a thing?? What possible motivation would they have?

This is like suggesting that Macdonald's would surreptitiously serve horsemeat, hoping that no one would find out. Of course they would find out!

This is a preposterous conspiracy theory. It is astounding that you are so naïve, and so trusting, that you sincerely believe this kind of thing. Apparently, anyone can fool you. You talk as if you were a hard-boiled cynic who knows how the world works, yet you fall for conspiracy theories that would not fool a sensible 12-year-old kid. Are you incapable of thinking for yourself? Incapable of questioning the slop you dredge up from the internet?

Quote from Mark U

The rules that apply to a truly 'approved' product are not the same as those under 'authorization' for emergency use.

The law says you have to inform the patient of the ingredients, warnings and adverse reactions. Not doing that is a criminal violation. There is no exception for authorization for emergency use, and in any case, all COVID vaccines are now fully authorized, not just for emergency use.

Quote from Mark U

I find it highly unlikely that out of 1000 students none are suffering longer term consequences of their covid injection.

No one in million students suffer from long term consequences from any modern vaccine. Not COVID, diphtheria, tetanus, polio or any of the other vaccinations all children are given. The double blind tests proved that the COVID vaccines produce far fewer problems than 1 in 1000, and the billions of subsequent doses proved that the injury rate is far below 1 in a million.

You find this "highly unlikely" because you know nothing about this, and you believe the nonsense peddled on the internet by lunatic members of the death cult. If you would look at actual science you would see this is all nonsense.

Quote from JedRothwell

Drugs must also include a full list of known warnings, precautions and adverse reactions.

But these fake vaccines had no disclaimer telling people that the "vaccine" does not protect from the illness, that it leads to immune suppression and that parts of the "vaccine" travel to all organs and may cause micro cloths.

And worst it causes a monoclonal immun memory that just helps for one virus version. This is the microsoft selling trick. Always adding 20 bugs to force the customer to an upgrade...

Quote from JedRothwell

No one in million students suffer from long term consequences from any modern vaccine.

When do you get it???

Pfizer RNA monoclonal gene therapy is not a vaccine!!

A vaccine protects you from an illness RNA gene therapy does not! It may help you to circumvent damage from an illness, but for this purpose we have much better drugs.

At best you can say that RNA gene therapy promotes to some extent a vaccine like reaction.

So its double irony that our clown THHuxleynew is a true anti vaxxer as he promotes non vaccine therapy...

Quote from Mark U

Is your use of the word 'veiled', an unconscious (hi)jab at our muslim brethren?

hahaha

Seriously, 'zealot' is a toned down, rather polite version of fanatic.

"One who is zealous, one who is full of zeal for his own specific beliefs or objectives, usually in the negative sense of being too passionate; a fanatic."

Display More

The semitic reference is much stronger (that is, apparent to casual readers like me) from the word zealot. I notice you changed the word in your reply.

As for being too passionate - that can indeed be true on any side - it is just that the antivaxxers (including you) are arguing against all of the establishment experts - who are hardly fanatics. Somone who maintains an unconventional position very strongly against mass opposition is surely more likely to be too passionate than the boring consensus?

Quote from JedRothwell

Do you seriously believe that Pfizer is violation the pure food and drug act? Do you have any idea what would happen to them if they did this? It is certain this illegal activity would be discovered. Billions of doses have been given. They are in the international news spotlight. Rival companies would surely find out, test the vaccines, and tell the public, because this incident would destroy Pfizer. When this crime is revealed, top managers would go to prison. This is not the kind of crime they give you a slap on the wrist for. Why do you imagine the managers would risk such a thing?? What possible motivation would they have?

This is like suggesting that Macdonald's would surreptitiously serve horsemeat, hoping that no one would find out. Of course they would find out!

This is a preposterous conspiracy theory. It is astounding that you are so naïve, and so trusting, that you sincerely believe this kind of thing. Apparently, anyone can fool you. You talk as if you were a hard-boiled cynic who knows how the world works, yet you fall for conspiracy theories that would not fool a sensible 12-year-old kid. Are you incapable of thinking for yourself? Incapable of questioning the slop you dredge up from the internet?

agreed

Quote from JedRothwell

No one in million students suffer from long term consequences from any modern vaccine. Not COVID, diphtheria, tetanus, polio or any of the other vaccinations all children are given. The double blind tests proved that the COVID vaccines produce far fewer problems than 1 in 1000, and the billions of subsequent doses proved that the injury rate is far below 1 in a million.

You find this "highly unlikely" because you know nothing about this, and you believe the nonsense peddled on the internet by lunatic members of the death cult. If you would look at actual science you would see this is all nonsense.

The COVID vaccines do have side effects which are serious. Take, for example, death as the result of the vaccine.

Here is a good (UK unbiassed) explanation of the different figures

How many people have died as a result of a COVID-19 vaccine? | National Statistical

This gives 4 deaths up to August 2021 at which point there had been 40 million fully vaccinated people in the UK.

so that is 1:10,000,000

Obviously there will be other long-term serious side effects other than death - and probably more of them. It is really difficult to find data (unless you count how many of Mark U's acquaintances are affected in which case the long-term effect rate must be close to 100%).

No - seriously - the difficulty in finding data is that at these very low rates you get a lot of coincidental long-term illnesses. Working out which of these might not have happened without the vaccine is really difficult.

Trying to get this another way: blood clots are a well-publicised and easily detectable side effect of Astrazeneca vaccine. They often have long-term consequences. They are the worst of the known COVID vaccine side-effects, and were picked up quickly because of a fairly high rate.

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informa…20clot%20in%20the%20brain.

We have a 1:100,000 rate of a mild condition:

Analysis of data from over 2.5 million people in Scotland who have received their first dose of coronavirus vaccine has shown that in rare cases, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been linked to mild cases of a bleeding disorder called idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.

The condition means there is a reduction in blood platelets (the cells that help your blood to clot), which can lead to more bruising, bleeding gums and internal bleeding.

This has affected around 1 in 100,000 people who have had the AstraZeneca vaccine. It has not caused any deaths. The condition was more likely in older people with existing health conditions, including heart and circulatory disease and diabetes.

The same research found no link between the Pfizer vaccine and this condition.

Other vaccines, such as the flu vaccine and MMR vaccine, have also been linked to this disorder in rare cases.

Covid-19 can also lead to the same condition. The risk of this condition (and of much more serious health complications) from Covid-19 is much higher than from the vaccine. So you shouldn't let this rare condition put you off from getting the vaccine.

and

A study by the University of Oxford shows that having Covid-19 puts you at a much higher risk of developing dangerous blood clots than the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines.

The study, based on the health records of 29.1 million people in England, suggests while there is a slightly increased risk of developing low platelet levels and blood clots in the veins after a first dose of AstraZeneca, being infected with the virus raises this risk much more, and for longer.

The researchers estimate that for every 10 million people who are vaccinated with AstraZeneca, there are 66 extra cases of blood clots in the veins and seven extra cases of a rare type of blood clot in the brain. Infection with Covid-19 is estimated to cause 12,614 extra cases of blood clots in the veins and 20 cases of rare blood clots in the brain.

This research is more evidence that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks for most people.

So if you reckon any blood clot is a long-term effect we do indeed get 7 in 1,000,000. However these blood clots are normally treatable. For blood clots in the brain - I'd call those serious - we have 20 cases from 10,000,000 people.

So in fact we do have a 2 in 1,000,000 incidence of a rare but nasty and long-term side effect from a COVID vaccine. I deliberately picked the one with the poorest safety record when looking for this.

This does not disprove Jed's comment which was restricted to students and I do not know how the rate varies for subgroups. However that vaccine would not be given to under-40s in the UK because of risk concerns so it is not relevant.

What Mark U et al cannot reconcile is that the regulators through the world are very very cautious - and each country makes independent decisions. You need a really strong conspiratorial bent, or knowledge that 100% of the world is affected by 5G towers and mind controlled by Bill Gates, to think the high risk rates that Mark U claims are plausible.

But partly it is misrepresentation. Vaccines result in a transient fever etc - like the diseases the mimic (and for the same reasons) only less severe. Where you have old people some of them given such a reaction will have palpitations etc. Nothing more than any mild infection would produce - but what Mark U friend's would call heart problems. And of course for old people close to death (say within 1 year of death) you expect 1 to die anyway within any 1 week period quite coincidentally.

THH

Quote from THHuxleynew

establishment experts

First true word. These folks are just establishment not experts - stamped by FM/R/F/B...

But our anti vaxxer clown will never understand it.He prefers posting FM/R/F/B lies about vaccine deaths...

All press controlled by FM/R/F/B just now has world wide launched a new Long-Cov propaganda. Nobody I know has Long-CoV but all have new symptoms like long vaxx, long lockdown.

The FM/R/F/B mafia also promotes sales of 1000% useless "new" gene therapies that still contain the dangerous alpha spike. So lets wait and see how many useless boosters our clown will survive...

North Korea was happy with no vaccination against Omicron....but of course we cannot control how happy they are...They should ask Cuba for a real vaccine or India for the Ziverdo kit.

To repeat it: Ziverdoo 1$/person in total 4 billion for western world . Fake RNA vaccines, fake drugs like Gilead crap 1000 billions and no remaining immunity.

One more failure of the FM/R/F/B mafia that killed the normal live of millions of people.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16428-4.pdf

Despite severe economic damage, full‑service restaurants and bars have been closed in hopes of suppressing the spread of SARS‑CoV‑2 worldwide. This paper explores whether the early closure of restaurants and bars in February 2021 reduced symptoms of SARS‑CoV‑2 in Japan. Using a large‑scale nationally representative longitudinal survey, we found that the early closure of restaurants bars decreased the utilization rate among young persons (OR 0.688; CI95 0.515–0.918) and those who visited these places before the pandemic (OR 0.754; CI95 0.594–0.957). However, symptoms of SARS‑CoV‑2 did not decrease in these active and high‑risk subpopulations