Incorrect maybe a 15% reduction but our old friend hux will tell you, that is statistically insignificant
Whether 15% is statistically insignificant depends on the sample size and other factors.
For example that 15% Vit D + omega-3 autoimmune improvement is pretty definite.
Display MoreIncorrect maybe a 15% reduction but our old friend hux will tell you, that is statistically insignificant
Long COVID risk falls only slightly after vaccination, huge study shows
Results suggest that vaccines offer less protection against lingering symptoms than expected
Thanks for that. That paper shows clearly how difficult it is to get accurate info on Long Covid.
The researchers found that vaccination seemed to reduce the likelihood of long COVID in people who had been infected by only about 15%. That’s in contrast to previous, smaller studies, which have found much higher protection rates. It’s also a departure from another large study5, which analysed self-reported data from 1.2 million UK smartphone users and found that two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine halved the risk of long COVID.
The authors of the latest study also compared symptoms such as brain fog and fatigue in vaccinated and unvaccinated people for up to six months after they tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The team found no difference in type or severity of symptoms between those who had been vaccinated and those who had not. “Those same fingerprints we see in people who have breakthrough infections,” Al-Aly says.
There have been more than 83 million COVID-19 infections in the United States alone, he notes. If even a small percentage of those turn into long COVID, “that’s a staggeringly high number of people affected by a disease that remains mysterious”.
We thus do not know. FM1 is correct in noting that there is not good evidence that vaccination reduces Long Covid a lot. He is wrong in thinking the headline from that paper means we have evidence vaccination does not reduce Long Covid a lot.
So far:
Realistically, we will not be staying with 1st gen vaccines for much longer. The US will have BA4-5 + original mixed vaccine in October. Other countries will follow (if it works at national level to reduce disease burden). So these questions of VE will shift to newer vaccines.
We can expect better non-mRNA vaccines as well - but they take longer to make or tweak.
We can hope for better treatments. Antivirals as always seem really difficult to find: and don't seem to be as good as promised. That however is what we might expect given the difficulties in finding really good antivirals for other similar viruses.
Covid will continue to evolve. The best case is we end up with the sort of protection we have for Flu, and probably much better understanding of the long-term (vascular bleeding etc) nasties, and ways to help with them.
Flu is still a major killer of mainly the old. You can bet Covid will remain that too. The major differentiator is Long Covid which affects old and young. Maybe trials like PANORAMIC will give us good info on whether antivirals help prevent Long Covid.
THH
Display MoreOn the contrary, Uncle Sam and the pharma companies announced they will have BA.4 and BA.5 vaccines by October 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0…/fda-omicron-vaccine.html
QUOTE:
The [FDA] recommended that manufacturers produce a so-called bivalent vaccine targeting BA.4 and BA.5 along with the original coronavirus, believing that a match between current variants and the updated booster could provide stronger and more durable protection against whatever is in greater circulation months from now.
That is good news
Conclusions Vitamin D supplementation for five years, with or without omega 3 fatty acids, reduced autoimmune disease by 22%, while omega 3 fatty acid supplementation with or without vitamin D reduced the autoimmune disease rate by 15% (not statistically significant). Both treatment arms showed larger effects than the reference arm (vitamin D placebo and omega 3 fatty acid placebo).
That I agree - it was what I mentioned in my first post. It is a small but useful reduction. Just FYI it is not clear how much of the effect is Vit D and how much is omega-3.
The 2nd article is however very speculative.
but studies over the last 10 years using 50 Ng/mL as a base for vitamin d sufficiency show a huge benefit in all autoimne disease as well as a huge effect on all mortality
FM1 - I remember one RCT on auto-immune stuff. If there are others with better positive results I'd be interested.
Zero evidence for vitamin d? You are full of crap. Over 40 years of studies on the subject. 90% positive results meta analysis of all confirm the positive results
Yes: but only meta-analysis of predominately observational trials. GIGO.
We know not to trust those because when the most plausible benefits from observational evidence have been tested in RCTs they are found not to exist.
Thus far all I have seen (other than rickets) is a small decrease in autoimmune disease. That is worth something, but not the grandiose claims made.
Evidence synthesis via the publication of systematic reviews, particularly when these contain meta-analytical combination of data, is now an established part of the repertoire of many scientific journals. The number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses has grown steadily over the last two decades (Fig. 1).1 Systematic reviews have significant benefits over conventional reviews in that all available data is presented, not just that chosen by the authors. However to ensure that this is the case, authors of systematic reviews must be sure to perform their review with rigorous attention to detail and report their methods to enable adequate scrutiny of their conclusions. In the reporting of the results from this type of research there is the potential for erroneous conclusions to be presented by the author or, drawn by the reader. If incorrect conclusions are used to guide clinical decision making this may lead to ineffectual or harmful treatment being administered. It should also be remembered that the results from any systematic review or meta-analysis are only as good as the source data upon which they are based. Without proper caution when combining studies potentially erroneous conclusions can be reached. This is a particular problem if the quality of the contributing studies is not considered or analysed.
Long COVID, like Covid severity is caused by a vitamin deficency. You become infected, it enters the lungs where the body now begins a bradykinin response weakening blood vessels allowing Covid to piggyback with your cholesterol infecting the Microbiome gut. This has a huge effect on B1, thiamine, B3, niacin, B12 and iron, depleting all while gut bacteria become infected. Covid is a vascular disease with respertory symptoms. Treat long COVID with weekly shots of high dose vitamin d, a broad vitamin B complex and iron. You still have a 20-30% chance of long COVID, vaccinated or not.
We will not agree on this. You credit to Vit D many things for which there is zero evidence, and which are alas juts not likely. I am not biased against Vit D - just realistic when the RCT results come in - and I remember how the observational studies and vague theoretical mechanisms do not stack up.
Similarly with this. Your statements here are unfounded speculation and suffer the "theory does not work" rule of biology.
What I mean by that is that in the human body you can find mechanisms for almost anything - whether they actually cause problems depends on both how muhc effect is there, and is the (maybe bad result buffered by other processes.
In the case of vitamins all disease depletes vitamin levels. That however does not mean that the bad consequences of disease are caused by vitamin levels. Whenever it has been tested that causal link has been found not to exist. (With a few exceptions - e.g. Vit D and rickets).
THH
Your second sentence said it all. 99% recover from Covid. It's the 1% that sees a benefit. No conclusions of any of the studies identifies this fact. The vaccine narrative is a hoax. The vaccines have no effect on 99% of the world's population. It doesn't stop infection!!!!!!!!!! Period!!!!
That is not true.
As an individual who has never had COVID there are three risks I care about from COVID: death, serious disease, and long COVID.
Death (for me) 1:200 before vaccination, 1:500 or better after
Serious disease: 1:10 (?) before vaccination, 1:50 (?) after
Long COVID: 1:10 (??) before vaccination, 1:50 (??) after
https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/0…%20phase%20of%20infection.
In one sense, the results are reassuring: the majority of people infected with coronavirus (88% to 97%) don’t experience symptoms beyond the first 12 weeks, and some of those who do will start to feel better over time. But for the minority of people who do go on to experience long-term symptoms, the effects can be debilitating, and we should remember that the absolute numbers could be considerable: our most recent population-level estimates suggest that 643,000 people in private households in the UK could be experiencing activity-limiting long COVID symptoms.
Obviously once you have run all these risks once, catching COVID, they reduce further 2nd time, vaccinated or no.
Anyway, for me, the serious disease think and the long COVID thing are both a big deal. I don't want to get either. and 1:10 is a risk higher than I like. Like seelcting a blank or real bullet with equal probability and then playing Russian Roulette once.
The vaccines have a significant effect on 10% of the world's population.
But even if it was 1%, that is still worth it. Childhood vaccines (if we still had those diseases) similarly have no effect on 99% of children. But the 1% that would be seriously ill are helped, and that is enough for them to be a big deal personally quite independently have the population effect.
THH
The highest probability now is that most of our UK population has been infected with Omicron. When I was vaccinated (twice) with Pfizer's mRNA jab I suffered no effects whatsoever. When I was exposed to Omicron by other members of my family on a visit to Cornwall I still suffered no symptoms despite a positive lateral flow test. I simply put all this down to my continuous intake of anti-virals which we outlined in Anti-Bat. A simple broad statement of the TRUTH!
Some of our students have had COVID (with symptoms and positive PCR test) but continuously negative lateral flow test!
Many friends and family have been getting COVID the last few weeks. All are vaxxed, and except for 1 neighbor, all have described it as a horrible experience. So while the vax may keep them out of hospital, they still get very sick. One of them down the street called the FLCCC for Ivermectin, and after 16 days sick, he was up and moving 24 hours after taking.
Ironically, 2 of my best friends refused the jab, both old and cancer survivors, and neither has gotten sick.
It is ironic: although I notice you do not say how many times said un-vaxxed old friends have previously caught COVID, nor how well they are isolated? If either factor applied it would reduce the irony.
I think we have pretty good evidence that vax or no, Omicron COVID will infect pretty well everyone exposed to it?
Putting lipstick on a pig, it doesn't stop infection or transmission but a great sales pitch!
Increasing SARS-CoV2 cases, hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated elderly populations during the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant surge in UK
I guess it depends who you are. Personally I reckon the chances of everyone catching COVID at some point are high, so I judge vaccine based on does it harm me more or less than catching COVID (for the 1st time). And I would do that for anyone else as well.
For original and alpha COVID it had an added benefit in reducing community transmission (or transmission to close family, for example). That pretty well vanished with delta.
Note that no government has yet thought it worth going for a "tweaked" vaccine just to reduce transmission of the current variant.
Your second claim is completely unevidenced. I think I've already given the (rather obvious) reason why that paper shown only the different infection/case rate? Let me know if I'm wrong and need to read it more carefully?
Otherwise, that paper I linked explains many of the other pitfalls that can lead even quite decent people to wrong conclusions when looking at individual study data. There is a reason that these types of studies give very conflicting results - and it is not because the scientists are corrupt or innumerate. Rather it is because getting true causal relationships from real world data is difficult.
Here is a review of the VE against serious omicron disease of 3 doses vaccine over time.
That, for most of us, and for society as a whole, is the most important thing, and also one of the hardest to find good data on.
Anyone here still interested in the science might want to read this because of the fascinating (and well explained) way that confounders can make the statistics misleading. Whether you like the overall conclusion here or no, the ways that the figures shown in various studies are influenced (a lot) by effects due to when different groups of people are given jabs is well worth reading.
What isn't fair he is allowing people to post negative things about Rossi now, but those banned before for saying the same thing YEARS AGO are still banned. Should they not be reinstated with an apology from Frank? And don't get me started on Mats Lewan. I think his book is still for sale right?
Yay! I want my Frank apology! Though I don't think it will encourage me to go post there...
Display MoreZephir,
I'm glad you posted this again, because I know you like to understand stuff and will appreciate what I am about to say (again).
Comparing risks from vaccines in a trial quantitatively with COVID risks from the same trial makes no sense (without a large adjustment factor).
Obviously, the risks from the trial depends on the trial length and the COVID rate. By this standard none of the childhood vaccines would pass, because the viruses they protect against are (now) rare. The COVID vaccine trials were very short - designed to be minimum length because this was an emergency deployment. Therefore few people on them ever caught COVID.
The correct comparison is vaccine risk (per jab) against the difference in risk, if you catch covid, between being vaccinated and unvaccinated, since we know almost everyone ended up catching COVID and since the advent of delta (let alone omicron) it was pretty obvious that would happen.
The comparison made here would rate a vaccine 10X better just because it was conducted at a time and place when the local COVID rate was 10X higher. That can't be right!
This is so obviously (to anyone thinking about it seriously) wrong it counts as antivaxxer rhetoric. Anyone making this argument is either very naive and being misled by others, or deliberately misleading people.
THH
This is the playground - so I'll get all political.
I find myself detecting in Putin and Trump the same phenomenon we have here.
Now I don't mind getting laugh reactions for myself.
I really detest The Putin/Trump way that institutions and norms are trashed, replacing fact with bare-faced lies and treating with derision and contempt anyone who asserts that yes, facts exist, not everything is a politically decided post-fact opinion.
Hi -I have flagged your post up for discussion by the team, but it will take awhile. BTW, I thought the topic would be passé by now. But Covid is the gift that keeps on giving....
It has mostly turned into an interesting review and rebuttal of antivaxxer memes - which as you say keep on coming.
Maybe not interesting to many, but I like thinking about this stuff. I think the "best" way to deal with antivaxxers, like trolls, is to ignore them - because by showing the clear mistakes in their arguments you are legitimising them. And antivaxxer-followers do so for real emotional reasons that need to be addressed through understanding - intellectual arguments do not help. Weird but true.
Anyway I am not much worried about PR here. I like some others here still get satisfaction out of demolishing the rhetoric taht claims to be science occasionally - and having blocked W the signal-to-noise ratio of this thread is better!
Display MoreCovid Vaccines More Likely to Put You in Hospital Than Keep You Out, BMJ Editor’s Analysis of Pfizer and Moderna Trial Data Finds.
Dr. Doshi and colleagues found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest of 10.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Pfizer and 15.1 events per 10,000 vaccinated for Moderna (95% CI -0.4 to 20.6 and -3.6 to 33.8, respectively). When combined, the mRNA vaccines were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated (95% CI 2.1 to 22.9).
The authors note that this level of increased risk post-vaccine is greater than the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalisation in both Pfizer and Moderna trials, which was 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna. This means that on this measure, the Pfizer vaccine results in a net increase in serious adverse events of 7.8 per 10,000 vaccinated and the Moderna vaccine of 8.7 per 10,000 vaccinated.
Their results are compatible with a another recent analysis of COVID-19 vaccine trials by Benn et al., which found “no evidence of a reduction in overall mortality in the mRNA vaccine trials”, with 31 deaths in the vaccine arms versus 30 deaths in the placebo arms (a 3% increase; 95% CI 0.63 to 1.71).
Zephir,
I'm glad you posted this again, because I know you like to understand stuff and will appreciate what I am about to say (again).
Comparing risks from vaccines in a trial quantitatively with COVID risks from the same trial makes no sense (without a large adjustment factor).
Obviously, the risks from the trial depends on the trial length and the COVID rate. By this standard none of the childhood vaccines would pass, because the viruses they protect against are (now) rare. The COVID vaccine trials were very short - designed to be minimum length because this was an emergency deployment. Therefore few people on them ever caught COVID.
The correct comparison is vaccine risk (per jab) against the difference in risk, if you catch covid, between being vaccinated and unvaccinated, since we know almost everyone ended up catching COVID and since the advent of delta (let alone omicron) it was pretty obvious that would happen.
The comparison made here would rate a vaccine 10X better just because it was conducted at a time and place when the local COVID rate was 10X higher. That can't be right!
This is so obviously (to anyone thinking about it seriously) wrong it counts as antivaxxer rhetoric. Anyone making this argument is either very naive and being misled by others, or deliberately misleading people.
THH
Maybe you should look at Mexico city who passed out ivermectin to positive patients. During the experiment, hospitalized and mortality fell like a rock, yet it was called unethical and the government stopped treatment. Although information wasn't suppressed it was called unethical and the media followed. Kory in my opinion has every right to be upset with the way ivermectin information is being peddled by a bought and paid media. You included!!!
and the withdrawn paper details: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/r93g4/
It seems there were severe conflicts of interest here. And the author who agreed with the retraction was a data analyst...
Hmmm - why would that be I wonder. Observational studies are very error-prone, even when well-conducted. Little details of how data is processed make a big difference to results. My question to you is why do you think this study is useful, when everyone else (except for like-minded antivaxxers and FLCC fanatics) thinks it is very low reliability? That is specially true for COVID where COVID rates vary so much over time and with age, so that comparing one set of results with another is very challenging. We have worked through all those stuff in detail here before, if you remember, when this thread was less of a political stomping ground for antivaxxers.
This study may or may not have been unethical - but was certainly poorly conducted.
We have any number of poorly conducted low reliability studies on ivermectin. It is pretty clear from evidence I posted a year ago that greater reliability => less strong results. The data fro this is compelling. In which case a low reliability trial with positive results tells us nothing.
The ethical issue is quite interesting on the issue - raised by you and otehrs here - of why reliable studies do not use ultra-high doses of ivermectin.
Two recent ethics scandals have cast a further shadow over ivermectin research. First, a report of an experimental study in Mexico City that gave almost 200 000 ivermectin based medical kits to residents with covid-19 was retracted from the preprint server SocArXiv.10 The report was retracted, says SocArXiv’s director, because the experiment was conducted “without proper consent or appropriate ethical protections.”11 Second, in an experiment in a jail in Arkansas, USA, four incarcerated men developed severe side effects after a physician gave them high dose ivermectin as a supposed covid-19 treatment without their knowledge.10 The four men are suing the jail.
Lack of consent was not the only ethical violation in these two scandals. The research participants were exposed to a risk of drug side effects without knowing they had been given ivermectin. In Mexico, the failure to give information to the participants infringed on a human right established in Mexico’s constitution: the right to access information.12 The Arkansas case raises additional concerns as it involved incarcerated people, who risk coercion and exploitation when they are enrolled in clinical research.
It is also arguably unethical and a waste of resources to conduct drug research in an emergency that is of such low quality that no conclusions can be drawn about the drug’s efficacy. That is the situation we find ourselves in today—it is still unclear whether ivermectin is safe or has any benefit in the treatment or prevention of covid-19.13 The flawed and potentially fraudulent research represents a huge missed opportunity to answer an important research question.
At the doses suggested higher than those used in all the properly recorded trials side effects become a real issue. Since most people recover from COVID fine, in early-stage treatments, even 1% severe side effects are a real issue in a drug that works. We have as yet no evidence that ivermectin works, if it worked say 20% of the time that means that 0.2% bad side effects becomes relevant.
This highlights the difference between politics, where facts are hard to find and even those well attested (like the validity of a US election) get trashed by politicians who find them inconvenient, And science where everyone admits to the (relative) certainties and uncertainties, and people are cautious, waiting for a coherent relationships between sets of studies before coming to conclusions and using known past information (e.g. that observational studies in preprint tend to bias results and that the urgency of COVID has greatly magnified this tendency) to inform views, rather than doing a political "cite only the views that support your position" thing.
We cannot know that ivermectin in some form is not useful. But the big RCTs having results that are not clearly positive is very strongly inconsistent with all that FLCC evidence. Since the evidence is highly inconsistent (proven) we cannot give the least reliable bits of it weight. So your, and FLCCs arguments on this not scientifically justified.
I could agree with the doses are too small argument if you had good data to contradict the maximum safe dose levels that everyone (even FLCC) seems to use for early-stage therapy. That could be discussed here properly with complete references till we get to the bottom of what evidence we have of lack of side effects at very high doses? It would need to include the time ivermectin stays in the body and the dose regime over time, compared with things we know are safe.
THH
Display MoreYou are distorting his message...again. He was/is an advocate of early treatment. That includes many therapeutics, along with Ivermectin/HCQ. Doctors who have treated soon, and aggressively have seen much better results preventing progression to hospitilization/death than those who have followed the "do nothing until patient is sick enough to check into the hospital" advice given by the public health hierarchy.
I can't think of one thing that more exemplifies how terribly mislead we were than the fact the public health leaders never established some type of preemptive health care protocol for those testing positive. Making it even worse, they actually threw up obstacles for those like Kory who did. Many who took the initiative to do something have been, and are being prosecuted.
Anyway, I doubt you care, but the American Board of Internal Medicine is taking action against him (Kory), and he could lose his license for successfully treating patients and preventing many deaths, and hospitilizations. That is so wrong, and what he is basically writing about in his article.
And you are wrong about what the "big RCT's now coming in" are showing us. The Together has been ripped to shreds by just about everyone who internet peer reviewed it. And the Activ actually showed some small benefit, even though the initial dose was too small. They are following up with more study using higher doses on moderate/severe cases. Then of course, there were the Brazil mega observational study, India, and many more on the list.
Shane - do you mean he was not a founder of FLCC? Or am I distorting FLCC? Confused.
More generally - just as he was convinced early treatment with ivermectin saved lives, so he and others may be convinced early treatment with other stuff saves lives.
The reason for caution is pretty obvious - the things that have been tried in RCTs do not deliver the "its obvious - lets do it" results that guys like Kory expect.
But no-one is against early treatment options - if we can find them. It is only in the US this could become the stuff of talk shows and politics. The reason for special caution with early treatment is you have to medicate everyone - not just those with severe disease. So a medicine that does even a tiny but of harm, and no good, kills people. The same ultra-caution over safety applies to vaccines - the earliest type of early treatment. In past epidemics we have rushed to early treatment options that proved (eventually) to have killed more people than they saved.
Anyway - have you heard of early treatment for the common cold? Or Flu? (I think we have an antiviral for Flu now, it took a long time).
The Together has been ripped to shreds by just about everyone who internet peer reviewed it. And the Activ actually showed some small benefit, even though the initial dose was too small.
I was exactly correct about trials:
TOGETHER - negative - though stopped early (clearly they did not like the idea getting death threats via social media from FLCC promoters if their results were negative) so tolerance of error +/- allows small positive
ACTIV - negative - the results were within what you expect statistically for something that has no effect. Sceintists do not say that "shows small positive effect". They say "that shows no effect".
PRINCIPLE - fairly neutral - or it would have reported by now, but we will know exactly how neutral in a few months.
I said "at most a small positive effect".
Advocates of drugs (like FLCC) can always claim higher doses are more effective. The reasons for limiting doses is side effects.
THH
PS - PRINCIPLE has found budesonide reduces recovery time in the population as a whole. This paper just shows how tough it is to know whether early treatment options do good or harm.
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)01744-X/fulltext
and it is currently withdrawn as a UK early treatment option - not because Uk doctors want to kill people - because they no that useless treatments still have unwanted side effects and occasional interactions with other medicines:
So what early treatment options do Shane's internet doctors know about that would improve our non-political treatment in the UK? I am sure the doctors here will listen to any real evidence?
Display MorePreprint from late June and not yet peer reviewed https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…101/2022.06.28.22276926v1
My underlining
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND There were increased SARS-CoV2 hospitalizations and deaths noted during Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant surge in UK despite decreased cases, and the reasons are unclear.
METHODS In this observational study, we analyzed reported SARS-CoV2 cases, hospitalizations and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. We also analyzed variables that can affect the outcomes. The vaccine effectiveness among those ≥18 years of age (August 16, 2021 to March 27, 2022) was analyzed.
RESULTS Of the total cases (n= 22,072,550), hospitalizations (n=848,911) and deaths (n=175,070) due to COVID-19 in UK; 51.3% of cases (n=11,315,793), 28.8% of hospitalizations (n=244,708) and 16.4% of deaths (n=28,659) occurred during Omicron variant surge. When comparing the period of February 28-May 1, 2022 with the prior 12-weeks, we observed a significant increase in the case fatality rate (0.19% vs 0.41%; RR 2.11 [2.06-2.16], p<0.001) and odds of hospitalization (1.58% vs 3.72%; RR 2.36[2.34-2.38]; p<0.001). During the same period a significant increase in cases (23.7% vs 40.3%; RR1.70 [1.70-1.71]; p<0.001) among ≥50 years of age and hospitalizations (39.3% vs 50.3%;RR1.28 [1.27-1.30]; p<0.001) and deaths (67.89% vs 80.07%;RR1.18 [1.16-1.20]; p<0.001) among ≥75 years of age was observed. The vaccine effectiveness (VE) for the third dose was in negative since December 20, 2021, with a significantly increased proportion of SARS-CoV2 cases hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated; and a decreased proportion of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the unvaccinated. The pre-existing conditions were present in 95.6% of all COVID-19 deaths, various ethnic, deprivation score and vaccination rate disparities noted that can adversely affect hospitalization and deaths among compared groups.
CONCLUSIONS There is no discernable vaccine effectiveness among ≥18 years of age, vaccinated third dose population since the beginning of the Omicron variant surge. Pre-existing conditions, ethnicity, deprivation score, and vaccination rate disparities data need to be adjusted for evaluating VE for hospitalizations and deaths. The increased cases with significantly increased hospitalizations and deaths among the elderly population during the Omicron variant surge underscores the need to prevent infections in the elderly irrespective of vaccination status with uniform screening protocols and protective measures.
Not sure whether this is actually written by antivaxxers, but as a UK resident well aware of the data here the headline here shows great ignorance.
CFRs are never reliable, because cases are not the same as infections.
In the Uk we have well documented case rates, but also via the wonderful ONS survey very accurate whole-population infection rates.
Over the period here - the government policy relaxed from mandating PCR and LFT tests, meaning case rates track infection rates much better, towards discouraging tests.
Guidelines for business similarly changed making it much less likely that infections will be detected as cases.
In addition omicron resulted in stealth infections indistinguishable from common cold and therefore not recorded as cases unless LFTs are mandated.
Any comparison of CASE rates with hospitalisation, rather than comparing the much more reliable ONS survey infection rates with hospitalisation, is just plain silly.
Or maybe not so silly if you have an antivaxxer agenda?
Anyway, let us be generous, and note that the thing which is a mystery to the researchers here is for any UK resident quite obvious: case rates have gone down over this period due to deliberate government policy which discourages testing as part of a "live with COVID" agenda - infection rates have not tracked case rates.
Stop the War on Doctors | RealClearHealth
"People are tired of arrogant public officials and compromised institutions who believe they have all the answers but constantly get it wrong and make no apologies as they steamroll those who don’t support the current narrative."
Another good example.
Pierre Kory is as we all know a founder of FLCC and strong advocate of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID. As the big RCTs are now coming in we find for sure that it has no (or at most very little) benefit. Kory was arguing that RCTs were not needed because the benefits were so obvious they needed no proof.
He was wrong. Definitely, absolutely. Even though whether ivermectin has some very small benefit or harm is not yet known it is not the transformative drug that FLCC claimed. Black swans happen, but swans are usually white. And this swan had been color-checked 100s of times and the elusive black spots vanish when examined in more detail.
I don't criticise Kory for being wrong, or even fanatically wrong. That is part of science, and medicine, you get isolated fanatics. Just occasionally it does good. In medicine getting things wrong kills people, but that is not the fault of the doctors who being human will make mistakes or just sometimes do the wrong thing because everyone is mistaken.
I criticise Kory, as here, for his arrogance in blaming everyone else and assuming therefore they must be corrupt or badly-meaning.
And this meme from him has power - corrupting public discourse. Look at Shane here who accepts it as a true part of the US debate on institutions. I expect US medical institutions are all wrong. The extreme privatisation of medicine in the US is a great example of where the capitalist system just does not work. Not that it in principle could not work - but as currently run and regulated there are too many conflicts of interest between profit motive and proper behaviour, with nothing to correct that. Hooking up Kory's weird complaints to this is a distraction, and a harmful one, for anyone seeking health reform in the US.
