+100
Is that true?
Someone should start a poll on this, as many of us have used it prophylactically (occasionally or often) or as treatment. I suspect the story is full of anal incontinence.
I would not be surprised if the story is false, anything that is an alternative to the vaccines is discouraged.
(fair use applies)
Trained Sniffer Dogs Accurately Detect Airport Passengers With COVID-19
Likely to be especially valuable in the early stages of any pandemic, suggest researchers. Trained sniffer dogs can accurately detect airport passengers infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, finds research published today (May 16, 2022) in the open access journal BMJ Globascitechdaily.com
Trained Sniffer Dogs Accurately Detect Airport Passengers With COVID-19
By BMJ
May 16, 2022
Likely to be especially valuable in the early stages of any pandemic, suggest researchers.
Trained sniffer dogs can accurately detect airport passengers infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, finds research published today (May 16, 2022) in the open access journal BMJ Global Health.
According to the researchers, this form of detection is likely to be very important not just in the early phases of a pandemic when other resources may not yet be accessible, but also in helping to contain an ongoing epidemic.
Dogs have an extremely acute sense of smell, and can pick up a scent at levels as low as one part per trillion, far exceeding any available mechanical techniques.
It is thought that they are able to detect distinct volatile organic compounds released during various metabolic processes in the body, including those generated by bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections.
Preliminary data suggest that dogs can be trained within weeks to detect samples from patients with COVID-19 infection, with a degree of accuracy comparable to that of a standard PCR nose and throat swab test.
While promising, these lab data results needed to be replicated in real-life conditions. The researchers, therefore, trained 4 dogs to sniff out SARS-CoV-2 in Spring 2020. Each of the dogs had previously been trained to sniff out illicit drugs or dangerous goods or cancer.
To test the dogs’ detection skills, 420 volunteers provided four skin swab samples each. The 4 dogs each sniffed the skin samples from 114 of the volunteers who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a PCR swab test and from 306 who had tested negative. The samples were randomly presented to each dog over 7 trial sessions.
Overall, the diagnostic accuracy of all samples sniffed was 92%: combined sensitivity— accuracy of detecting those with the infection—was 92% and combined specificity—accuracy of detecting those without the infection—was 91%.
Only minor variation was seen among the dogs: the best performance reached 93% for sensitivity and 95% for specificity; the worst reached 88% for sensitivity and 90% for specificity.
Some 28 of the positive samples came from people who had had no symptoms. Only one was incorrectly identified as negative and two weren’t sniffed, meaning that 25 of the 28 (just over 89%) were correctly identified as positive: the lack of symptoms didn’t seem to affect the dogs’ performance.
The 4 dogs were then put to work sniffing out 303 incoming passengers at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport, Finland, between September 2020 and April 2021. Each passenger also took a PCR swab test.
The PCR and sniffer results matched in 296 out of 303 (98%) of the real-life samples. The dogs correctly identified the samples as negative in 296 out of 300 (99%) PCR negative swab tests and identified three PCR positive cases as negative.
After re-evaluation with clinical and serological data, one was judged to be SARS-CoV-2 negative, one SARS-CoV-2 positive, and one a likely post-infectious positive PCR test result.
Similarly, the dogs indicated 4 PCR negative cases as positive. These were all judged to be SARS-CoV-2 negative.
Because the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 among the airport passengers was relatively low (less than 0.5%), 155 samples from people who had tested positive on a PCR swab test were also presented to the dogs.
The dogs correctly identified just under 99% of them as positive. Had these ‘spike’ samples been included in the real-life study, the dogs’ performance would have reached a sensitivity of 97% and a specificity of 99%.
Based on these results, the researchers then calculated the proportion of true positive results (PPV) and the proportion of true negative results (NPV) in two hypothetical scenarios reflecting a population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 of 40% and 1%.
For the prevalence of 40%, they estimated a PPV of 88% and an NPV of 94.5%. This means that the information provided by the dog increases the chances of detection to around 90%.
For a population prevalence of 1%, on the other hand, they estimated a PPV of just under 10% and an NPV of just under 100%.
In both scenarios, the high NPV backs the use of sniffer dogs for screening, with the aim of excluding people who don’t need a PCR swab test, say the researchers.
And they suggest that: “dogs could be used both in sites of high SARS-CoV-2 prevalence, such as hospitals (to prescreen patients and personnel), as well as in low prevalence sites, such as airports or ports (to prescreen passengers).” This could save both considerable time and resource, they say.
The researchers acknowledge that dogs trained to sniff out other substances may mistakenly identify these substances as SARS-CoV-2 positive. The required storage period of the training and spiked samples may also have affected the viability of the volatile organic compounds, they say.
A key finding was that the dogs were less successful at correctly identifying the alpha variant as they had been trained to detect the wild type. But this just goes to show how good dogs are at distinguishing between different scents, say the researchers.
“This observation is remarkable as it proves the scent dogs’ robust discriminatory power. The obvious implication is that training samples should cover all epidemiologically relevant variants. Our preliminary observations suggest that dogs primed with one virus type can in a few hours be retrained to detect its variants.”
Reference: “Scent dogs in detection of COVID-19: triple-blinded randomised trial and operational real-life screening in airport setting” 16 May 2022, BMJ Global Health.
DOI: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-008024
Funding: Evidensia; Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland; The Finnish Kennel Club; Finnish Cultural Foundation
DW still says I'm full of it.
I have used a bunch of it and not one side effect. It’s listed on Drugs.com as a rare side effect. If I am not mistaken that’s less than 1% not 68%
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This is child abuse plain and simple(fair use applies)FDA Authorizes Pfizer Booster for Kids 5 to 11, Bypasses Advisory Panel
he U.S. Food and Drug Administration today granted Emergency Use Authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 booster for children ages 5 to 11, without convening its vaccine advisory panel and despite the latest data showing higher case rates in vaccinated children compared with those not vaccinated.
FDA Authorizes Pfizer Booster for Kids 5 to 11, Bypasses Advisory Panel
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today granted Emergency Use Authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 booster for children ages 5 to 11, without convening its vaccine advisory panel and despite the latest data showing higher case rates in vaccinated children compared with those not vaccinated.
By Megan Redshaw
05/17/22
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, without convening its vaccine advisory panel of independent experts to discuss Pfizer’s data on 5- to 11-year-olds — and based on a study subset of only 67 children, CNBC reported.
The FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the boosters despite data showing higher infection rates among fully vaccinated children in the 5 to 11 age group compared to unvaccinated children, no studies testing the efficacy of the vaccine against the current dominant BA.2 COVID-19 variant and two new studies showing that for vaccinated people who get Omicron, the infection provides better protection against future infections than a second booster dose.
The vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is scheduled to meet Thursday. The agency and its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, are expected to sign off on the boosters, The Washington Post reported.
Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said data increasingly show protection provided by two shots wanes over time, but the agency determined a third shot could help boost protection for children in the 5 to 11 age group and the “benefits outweigh the risks.”
The FDA authorized the third shot after analyzing data from an ongoing Pfizer clinical trial in which a small subset of only 67 children in the age group had higher antibody levels one month after receiving a booster dose.
As The Defender reported, antibody levels alone are not indicative of immune protection. When it comes to COVID-19, T cell and natural killer cell responses are the crucial part of immune protection.
Pfizer has not published its actual data, precluding experts from conducting this analysis.
The authorized booster dose, the same strength as the first two doses, generated neutralizing antibodies to Omicron and the ancestral Wuhan version of the virus, according to The New York Times.
The FDA said it did not identify any new safety concerns and found the children in the trial experienced the same mild side effects other people do after receiving a booster.
However, a subset of only 67 children is not large enough to detect potential adverse events like myocarditis, and it is unknown how rapidly any protection provided wanes because trial participants were not followed beyond a 28-day period.
About 8.1 million, or 28%, of children ages 5 to 11, received their primary series of two COVID-19 vaccine doses as of May 11, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Those children will now be eligible for a third dose five months after their second dose based on data obtained from the 67 children who were followed for only one month.
COVID cases higher in vaccinated children aged 5 to 11, CDC data show
According to the latest CDC data, since February, higher COVID-19 case rates were recorded among fully vaccinated children compared to unvaccinated children in the 5 to 11 age group.
The CDC on Feb. 12 reported a weekly case rate of 250.02 per 10,000 population in fully vaccinated children ages 5 to 11, compared to 245.82 for unvaccinated children in the same age group.
The trend continued through the third week of March, which is the latest week of available data.
“Several factors likely affect crude case rates by vaccination and booster dose status, making interpretation of recent trends difficult,” CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Limitations include higher prevalence of previous infection among the unvaccinated and unboosted groups, difficulty in accounting for time since vaccination and waning protection, and possible differences in testing practices (such as at-home tests) and prevention behaviors by age and vaccination status,” Reed said. “These limitations appear to have less impact on the death rates presented here.”
According to CDC data, the gap between fully vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in all age groups has grown increasingly smaller, with the death rate showing the same trend for people over age 50.
For people under age 50, death rates are almost identical between the vaccinated and unvaccinated since the beginning of the vaccine rollout.
Data show COVID-19 vaccines have a “negligible effect” on people, said Dr. Peter McCullough, a prominent cardiologist and epidemiologist.
“With these results in hand, it is clear the vaccines are having a negligible effect in populations,” McCullough told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Given the overall poor safety profile and lack of any assurances on long-term safety, Americans should be cautious in considering additional injections of these products.”
Having COVID may be more effective than getting a booster, studies show
Two new studies show, for people who are vaccinated against COVID-19, getting a breakthrough Omicron infection may provide better protection than receiving a second booster, Fortune reported.
One study conducted by German biotechnology company BioNTech SE assessed vaccinated individuals who had breakthrough COVID-19 infection associated with the Omicron variant.
BioNTech found these individuals had a better B-cell response than individuals who had received a booster but had not been infected.
According to MD Anderson Center, B cells are a type of white blood cell that create antibodies that bind to pathogens or foreign substances and neutralize them. B cells bind to a virus and prevent it from entering a normal cell causing infection. They also recruit other cells to help destroy infected cells.
A second study by the University of Washington and Vir Biotechnology investigated the immune responses of various groups based on vaccination and infection status.
The study analyzed blood samples of individuals who had been vaccinated and then caught the Delta or Omicron variants and compared them with those who had COVID-19 first and were then vaccinated, those who had been vaccinated but were not previously infected and those who were infected but had never received a COVID-19 vaccine.
The study found vaccinated individuals with breakthrough Omicron infection produced antibodies that formed a strong defense against other variants of the virus. Unvaccinated people who caught Omicron did not have a similarly robust immune response.
Efficacy of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine wanes rapidly
A study published May 13 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found protection from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine turned negatively effective among children and adolescents five months after receiving a second dose — meaning recipients were more likely to get COVID-19 five months after being vaccinated.
Vaccine effectiveness “was no longer significantly different from 0 during month 3 after the second dose,” the researchers wrote. They also found protection against hospitalization waned significantly over time.
In adolescents, the authors said, efficacy increased again with boosters.
Most non-randomized studies attempting to determine vaccine efficacy (VE) had “common flaws,” including no accounting for baseline prior COVID-19 infection, no reporting for those who received a booster within a six-month time window and no adjudication of hospitalization or death due to COVID-19 or other conditions, McCullough told The Epoch Times.
“As a result, most studies of COVID-19 VE have biases towards overestimating any clinical benefit of vaccination,” McCullough said.
As The Defender reported on May 13, a different study published in JAMA showed second and third doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine provided protection against the Omicron variant for only a few weeks.
“Our study found a rapid decline in Omicron-specific serum neutralizing antibody titers only a few weeks after the second and third doses of [the Pfizer-BioNTech] BNT162b2,” the authors wrote.
A preprint study released in February showed Pfizer’s two-dose regimen of its COVID-19 vaccine for children was only 12% effective against Omicron in children ages 9 to 11, and the effectiveness of the vaccine “declined rapidly” for children 5 to 11.
Researchers at the New York State Department of Health and the University at Albany School of Public Health examined the effectiveness of the vaccine in children 5 to 11 and adolescents 12 to 17 from Dec. 13, 2021, to Jan. 30, 2022, and determined the effectiveness of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine declined rapidly for children, particularly those 5-11 years.
According to a Danish study of 128 people who had received two or three doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, levels of Omicron-specific “neutralizing” antibodies decline rapidly after a second and third dose of Pfizer’s shot.
Compared to original and Delta variants, researchers found the proportion of Omicron-specific antibodies detected in participants’ blood dropped “rapidly” from 76% four weeks after the second dose to 53% at weeks 8 to 10 and 19% at weeks 12 to 14.
After the third shot, neutralizing antibodies against Omicron fell 5.4-fold between week 3 and week 8.
Last month, Moderna requested EUA for its COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 6 months to 6 years. Pfizer plans to seek EUA for a three-dose regimen for the same age group.
The FDA’s top vaccine official told a congressional committee on May 6 COVID-19 vaccines for children under 6 will not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain EUA.
At least they’re attempting treatments instead of asking them to ride it out and only go to the hospital if it’s really really bad like they’re doing in the West. Gargling does help especially with antiseptic mouthwash and the tea has quinine in it. They just need to add zinc with that quinine.Posting because it's interesting, but I have no idea if it's true. Could be complete garbage...
(fair use applies)N Korea directs citizens to gargle saltwater to cure COVID as Kim Jong-un faces 'dilemma'
North Korea has asked citizens to "gargle with salt water," drink tea to treat COVID infections while Kim Jong-un is distraught over the rapid surge in cases.
N Korea Directs Citizens To Gargle Saltwater To Cure COVID As Kim Jong-un Faces 'dilemma'
North Korea has asked citizens to "gargle with salt water," drink tea to treat COVID infections while Kim Jong-un is distraught over the rapid surge in cases.
Written By Dipaneeta Das
17th May, 2022 15:33 IST
North Korean citizens have been asked to "gargle with salt water" and drink willow leaf tea to treat COVID-19 infections as the country's authoritarian leader Kim Jong-un faces a "dilemma" over sourcing remedies amid the explosive outbreak.
According to North Korean state media, the measures were advised by the reclusive regime leader himself following which he ordered the military to stabilise medicine supplies in the country. Mostly unvaccinated, a population of 26 million is ripping through a massive COVID outbreak.
At least 50 people have died due to COVID-19 infections in Pyongyang within a week, the Telegraph reported. In addition, some 1.2 million are suffering from fever, KCNA said. While most of the world is recovering from the pandemic, on Monday, the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) recorded 392,920 cases. Grappling with a lack of medicine and vaccination supply, at least 564,860 are believed to be forcibly quarantined in the country.
'Catastrophic' combination
In the wake of the burgeoning COVID infections, the ruling Politburo met for an emergency discussion where Kim reportedly lashed out at the lax attitude of the Cabinet, KCNA said in a report. He called out the public health sector for its "irresponsible" actions in mitigating the escalation of cases. Noting the potential repercussions from the under-resourced health system and increasing daily caseload, health experts from outside flagged that the combination is "catastrophic" in nature.
Kim Jong-un has reportedly ordered the powerful forces of his Army's medical corps to ensure "immediate stabilisation of medical supplies in Pyongyang city". Earlier this week, Kim reportedly expressed discontent over ill-equipped staff and protective gear to deal with infected patients. Meanwhile, the authoritarian leader has repeatedly shunned external offers, including from China, Russia, and the US to help the country to quell the rapid spread of the potentially deadly virus.
Kim Jong Un in 'huge dilemma'
For more than a decade, Kim Jong-un has attempted to make North Korea "self-reliant" in a desperate attempt to fix the battered economy. But with the outbreak of a pandemic that has infected millions, Kim is now standing at a critical crossroad. “Kim Jong Un is in a dilemma, a really huge dilemma. If he accepts U.S. or Western assistance, that can shake the self-reliance stance that he has steadfastly maintained and public confidence in him could be weakened," said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, AP quoted.
Some observers have also claimed that Pyongyang is underreporting the death toll given the fact that the majority population of the country is not jabbed and only has limited access to adequate medicines.
