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Proof that The vaccinated have less immunity.
CORONA Main Coronavirus thread
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Proof that The vaccinated have less immunity.
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How Many Lives Were Lost Due to NIH Corruption?
58 min 53 sec
Premiered 9 hours ago
Peak Prosperity
To hear more, continue to Part 2 at Peak Prosperity with the following link: https://peakprosperity.com/red-flags-... A new revelation of NIH greed and secrecy is really disgusting, yet sadly not shocking. With corruption now so deeply entrenched at all levels of life and government, new revelations of gross and corrupt behavior have lost their ability to shock. Today’s Tale of Corruption comes to us courtesy of Open The Books, a U.S. non-profit advocacy agency dedicated to tracking government expenditures. After being forced by the NIH to file a federal suit, Open The Books was able to determine that the NIH received over $350 million in kick-backs from pharma companies over the years. So, the model, such as it is, is that Fauci and the NIH distribute some $30 billion of taxpayer money to Big Pharma and then receive hundreds of millions from for-profit companies that then license some of the findings resulting from that money. And this is only the NIH. Presumably, university researchers similarly benefit from patent royalties developed using funds provided by U.S. taxpayers. Join the Tribe to find out more! Part 2 here: https://peakprosperity.com/red-flags-...
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Q&A #13: Why do Public Health authorities continue to promote C-19 vaccination of children? | Voice for Science and Solidarity
The single biggest issue is that ‘they’ are concentrating on hospitalizations, not on transmission.The more you turn the virus into a hi...
www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org
The single biggest issue is that ‘they’ are concentrating on hospitalizations, not on transmission.
The more you turn the virus into a highly-infectious pathogen (e.g.Delta, Omicron), the higher the likelihood you will start to see hospitalizations in children too.
As the vaccines still largely protect against severe disease and hospitalizations, ‘they’think it’s a good idea to get the kids jabbed too.
What these health authorities don’t seem to understand is that the C-19 vaccines, which do no longer induce neutralizing antibodies (Abs) because of Omicron, are in fact preventing severe disease by virtue of non-neutralizing Abs (see my manuscript). The non-neutralizing Abs prevent trans infection in distant organs (including the lungs) and thereby put high immune pressure on the virus’ virulence. Of course, they have no clue that together with the infection-enhancing effect of these Abs at the upper respiratory tract, this evolution is now only expediting the breeding of variants that are not only highly infectious but also more virulent. This is to say that the vaccines will soon no longer protect against severe disease. That’s where they can forget about keeping hospitalizations low.
Public Health authorities should, of course, always focus on keeping hospitalizations low and avoiding a crash of our health system.However, what these dummies need to learn is that you have to achieve this by curbing the chain of transmission! The vaccines can’t do this, but natural immunity can, and that’s the lesson they haven’t learned yet. Suppressing natural immunity (by vaccines) during a pandemic paralyzes the sterilizing immune capacity of the population, and therefore prevents herd immunity and promotes viral immune escape.
It will take time, and, unfortunately, many human lives, before they’ll understand. It’s only when hospitalizations in highly vaccinated countries will soon explode that they’ll at least understand that it’s time to hide…
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FDA approves COVID booster shot for healthy children 5 to 11, CDC must give final OK
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group could give final approval as early as Thursday
justthenews.com
FDA approves COVID booster shot for healthy children 5 to 11, CDC must give final OK
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group could give final approval as early as Thursday
By Just the News staff
Updated: May 17, 2022 - 12:07pm
Federal regulators on Tuesday authorized a COVID-19 booster shot for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must now decide whether to formally recommend the booster, with the agency's advisory group set to meet Thursday.
A booster shot is already recommended for patients 12 and older, and some people, including those 50 and older, can choose to get a second booster, according to the Associated Press.
The Food and Drug Administration’s authorization, if backed by the CDC, would allow elementary-age children to get a third shot of Pfizer’s vaccine – at least five months after their last dose.
Pfizer and its partner BioNTech make the only COVID-19 vaccine available for children of any age, the wire service also reports.
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Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
HIGHLIGHTING IN ARTICLE (not mine)
Kim Mobilizes Military To Tackle "Explosive" North Korean COVID Outbreak, Infected Told To 'Gargle Saltwater'
by Tyler Durden
Tuesday, May 17, 2022 - 11:25 PM
North Korea first acknowledged an "explosive" outbreak of COVID-19 last week, with health officials instructing residents to 'gargle' saltwater to treat the virus as medical supplies remain limited and a non-existent vaccine program, Reuters reports.
Leader Kim Jong Un blasted health officials over the slow response to counter the virus and the lack of medication for not reaching people quickly. Kim had to mobilize the army's medical corps to "stabilize the supply of medicines in Pyongyang City," according to the state news agency KCNA.
On Monday, North Korean health authorities reported more than 1.2 million have been fever-stricken, with 50 deaths.
With very few COVID treatments, state media have instructed people to use antibiotics, painkillers, and other remedies, such as gargling saltwater and drinking willow leaf tea.
Kim has placed himself in the spotlight of the country's infectious disease response team, overseeing daily meetings on the outbreak, which he already said has caused "great upheaval."
North Korea has rejected international help and vaccines for the last 2.5 years. Without immediate help, fatality and infection rates could soar in a country with one of the world's worst hospital systems.
Most people in the country remain unvaccinated and don't have strong immune systems because of poor appetite and depressed living standards.
Kim has taken a page out of China's book and issued a nationwide lockdown to stop the spread.
Some suspect North Korea is significantly underestimating infections and fatalities.
"When people die, North Korean authorities will say they've died of overwork or from natural deaths, not because of COVID-19," Nam Sung-wook, a professor at Korea University in South Korea, told ABC News. He said Kim is likely understating the outbreak to protect his "dignity."
South Korea's unification ministry has offered to send masks, test kits, and vaccines, but the North hasn't acknowledged its neighbor to the south.
Considering the lack of medical treatment, malnourishment and chronic poverty of the vast majority of the population, and lack of a credible hospital system, North Korea could be entering COVID hell.
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Scientists Reveal COPD Patients More Susceptible to COVID-19
www.theepochtimes.com
Australia
Scientists Reveal COPD Patients More Susceptible to COVID-19
By Epoch Times Sydney Staff
May 18, 2022
Australian researchers have found out why chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients face a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19, which could be critical in developing new drugs.
Researchers from the Centenary Institute and the University of Technology Sydney published their findings in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
COPD is an inflammatory lung condition that causes airway blockage and makes it difficult to breathe. The condition affects around 400 million people in the world.
In the study, the researchers infected differentiated airway cells from COPD patients and healthy people with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They found that the COPD airway cells had a massive increase in the amount of SARS-CoV-2 when compared to the healthy cells.
“We examined the genetic information of infected cells through advanced single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis,” said Dr. Matt Johansen from the Centenary UTS Centre for Inflammation, who is the lead author of the study. “Seven days after SARS-CoV-2 infection, there was a 24-fold increase of viral load in the COPD patient airway cells compared to the cells taken from healthy individuals.”
Additionally, infected COPD patient airway cells also have higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are linked to more severe COVID-19 and COPD outcomes, according to Dr Johansen.
“COPD is an inflammatory disease with patients having increased inflammation at baseline compared to healthy people. It’s highly likely that SARS-CoV-2 exacerbates this existing high inflammation level which leads to even poorer outcomes,” he said.
The researchers’ initial laboratory drug testing has successfully and substantially reduced SARS-CoV-2 viral levels in COPD patient cells, according to a media release of the institute on May 17.
“Collectively, these findings have allowed us to understand the mechanisms of increased COVID-19 susceptibility in COPD patients,” said Prof. Phil Hansbro, Director of the Centenary UTS Centre for Inflammation and the study’s senior author.
“We believe that new drug treatments targeting relevant enzymes and pro-inflammatory responses in SARS-CoV-2 infection could have excellent therapeutic potential in reducing the severity of COVID-19 in patients with COPD.”
The research was critical with hundreds of millions of people affected by COPD globally and with COVID-19 likely to be around for many years to come, Prof. Hansbro said.
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Yep! I posted a long article about this and posted a video of Del Bigtree discussing this, it was his lawyer's FOIA request that got them to admit it. it's a few pages back.
ETA: here's the link, it's post 62,331
CORONA - Main Coronavirus thread
https://www.theepochtimes.com/growing-number-of-covid-19-deaths-among-vaccinated-people-reports_4464399.html (fair use applies) HIGHLIGHTING MINE Growing Number of COVID-19 Deaths Among Vaccinated People: Reports By Katabella Roberts May 13, 2022 An increasing number of...
HD
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UK Toddlers Unable to Speak or Play Properly Due to COVID-19 Lockdowns
www.theepochtimes.com
UK
UK Toddlers Unable to Speak or Play Properly Due to COVID-19 Lockdowns
Therapists unable to keep up with demand
BY Owen Evans TIME
May 17, 2022
The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) say they are “very worried” about the number of toddlers in the UK that are struggling with communication because of repeated lockdowns.
Therapists and charities have expressed fears about a sharp decline in speech and motor skills, with referrals for language therapy doubling. Speech and language therapy sessions are provided to children (and adults) to help them communicate.
Unable to Keep Up
Kamini Gadhok, the chief executive of the RCSLT, told the Telegraph that its members were “very worried” about the number of toddlers struggling with communication and that its member therapists are unable to keep up with demand.
“The bigger the gap by the time the child is five, the more difficult it is to close,” she said. Gadhok warned that without early intervention, those children are far more likely to suffer emotional and behavioural problems.
Assessments showed that one in five children are not meeting expected standards by the age of two-and-a-half, with thousands likely to need help such as speech and language therapy.
In The Conversation, Yvonne Wren, founder and director of ChildSpeech wrote that masks “obscure facial expression, which contributes to how we understand the meaning behind the words we hear. When this is taken away, not only is the potential for misunderstanding (and mislearning) increased but there can also be an impact on children’s development of social and emotional skills.”
According to Wren, not only was there a reduction in children’s exposure to new vocabulary, but there was much less interaction with teachers, friends, and family, and these are some of the ways that lockdown affected children’s speech.
“Our members tell us that growing lists and waiting times for speech and language therapy are dramatically impacting on their ability to provide the support which children need for the best start in life,” said Gadhok.
Jane Harris Chief Executive of I CAN, UK’s leading children’s communication charity told The Epoch Times by email that “it is not surprising that COVID lockdowns left toddlers unable to speak or play properly.”
“There has been a sharp rise in child development issues in the wake of COVID. Our research suggests that 1.5 million children in the UK are struggling to learn to speak and understand language,” she said.
Harris said that 62 percent of primary school teachers and 60 percent of secondary school teachers it had surveyed were worried that children currently behind will not be able to catch up.
“Ongoing cuts to services post pandemic only serve to dramatically reduce the access to speech and language therapy provision, meaning that children and their families cannot get the right help at the right time,” she added.
“The new Integrated Care Boards must plan locally with education partners to get speech and language support to children that need it. Low-cost interventions delivered by teaching assistants can help, alongside more specialist support from Speech and Language Therapists,” said Harris.
Worrying Picture
Alison Morton, the executive director of the Institute of Health Visiting told the Telegraph that the latest data was a “worrying picture” and there was a backlog of children who needed support.
“The latest national child development data highlight a worrying picture with fewer children at or above the expected level of development at two to two-and-a-half years. While the majority of children are developing as expected, a significant and growing minority are not,” she said.
In March, a probe (pdf) by North Wales Community Health Council (NWCHC) found that the progress that was made by children in their speech was completely lost due to the first lockdown in March 2020.
“Many parents told us that they felt their children had lost services at a crucial stage in their development and that this was compounded by the absence of interaction with other children due to home schooling. Some parents felt that their children had lost all progress made in previous months and that the effect upon their child’s development had been devastating,” wrote NWCHC.
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LA Unified’s Unvaccinated, Online Teachers Might Soon Lose Jobs Despite Exemptions
www.theepochtimes.com
LA Unified’s Unvaccinated, Online Teachers Might Soon Lose Jobs Despite Exemptions
By Micaela Ricaforte
May 17, 2022
LOS ANGELES—A group of teachers and parents gathered in protest outside the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) headquarters in Los Angeles on May 16 after some online class teachers who are unvaccinated learned that they could soon lose their jobs if they don’t get fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by June 10.
Dozens of people held signs that read “Stop Discrimination,” “Medical Freedom,” and “LAUSD Stop Firing Teachers,” at the protest organized by Los Angeles Educators and Parents United—a group of “diverse LAUSD Educators & Parents unifying for freedom of choice,” according to its Instagram page.
Since the start of its employee vaccine mandate in November, the district moved more than 600 unvaccinated teachers from brick-and-mortar classrooms to City of Angels, the district’s online school, according to the organization.
The protest was triggered by an email sent by the district to an unknown number of unvaccinated online teachers last week.
The email informed the recipients that they would not be able to teach remotely next school year due to low enrollment in the district’s online academies.
Those teachers have three options, according to the email: They must either get vaccinated and return to campus, take a leave of absence, or resign—or retire—before the end of June.
Teachers who choose to stay must receive the first vaccine dose by May 20 and the second dose by June 10. Those who are temporarily or permanently leaving their positions should notify the district by May 20. Failure to do any of these could result in “potentially being separated” from the district.
An LAUSD spokesperson declined to release information about how many teachers received this email, or about how the district decided which teachers to send the email to.
However, the spokesperson said that the number of available online teaching assignments decreased as more students opted to return to campus in the fall.
“Reasonable accommodation approval for placement into the virtual academy has always been contingent upon availability and not a guaranteed assignment,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
Francis Moreno, an LAUSD teacher and co-founder of Los Angeles Educators and Parents United, told The Epoch Times she felt “angry and abandoned” when she received the email.
“We teachers have dedicated decades of our lives to the district, and now we feel like the ignored stepchild,” she said.
Moreno said the email came just weeks after her religious vaccine exemption was approved. Most of the remote teachers have already obtained either religious or medical exemptions from the district, she said.
“The district is discriminating against teachers based on our religious beliefs, and it’s not right,” Moreno said. “We’ve gone to our union for support, but don’t feel like they’re advocating for us either. We have no one on our side.”
Moreno said she recently ran a poll among members of her group. Of the 164 participants, 90 percent have religious exemptions from the district, and 67 percent received the email.
Also, 88 percent of all participants are members of the local teachers’ union, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA).
The Los Angeles Educators and Parents United have spent the past few months seeking to meet both LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and the vice president of UTLA—only to be brushed off by both parties.
“UTLA claims to be a democratic union, but it worries more about social justice issues than about being a labor union and representing its teachers,” she said.
Last month, Moreno and other educators and parents also organized a protest to ask the district to bring unvaccinated teachers back to in-person instruction after the superintendent announced a plan to fill 400 vacant teaching positions with administrators and other district staff.
Carvalho announced on April 27 that 98 percent of teaching vacancies were temporarily filled with credentialed non-teaching staff who formerly held teaching positions, and that those staff members would return to their regular positions after the current school year ends. It is currently unclear how the district plan to fill the vacancies permanently next school year.
Another educator advocacy group, California Educators for Medical Freedom, is suing the district over its staff vaccine mandate. The case will be heard in March 2023.
UTLA did not respond to requests for comment by press deadline.
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Fauci on Whether School Shutdowns Were Worth It: ‘Only Time Will Tell’
www.theepochtimes.com
Fauci on Whether School Shutdowns Were Worth It: ‘Only Time Will Tell’
By Jack Phillips
May 17, 2022
White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said it’s “very tough to tell” whether shutdowns of schools over the CCP virus had a positive impact.
When questioned during a Senate hearing, Fauci was asked whether COVID-19-related school shutdowns, which led to the rise of virtual learning, were worth it.
“I think it’s very difficult to give a definitive answer to that. I know, in the very beginning, when we had really no other protection prior to vaccinations that were available to contain … the spread of the virus,” Fauci said in terms of what would “protect children as well as the rest of the population” from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
But now, policymakers “have felt more than just recently that it’s very important to keep the children in school for the simple reason that we know of the deleterious effects both psychologically mentally and developmentally and children, to keep them out of school,” Fauci added, repeating that it is “very tough to tell” and “only time will tell” whether children suffered.
Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said that he still believes closing schools was the right decision from a public health standpoint.
Researchers at the University of Chicago last month published a working paper that examined how states responded to the pandemic, noting that the shuttering of schools might have been the most harmful policy decision.
“School closures may ultimately prove to be the most costly policy decision of the pandemic era in both economic and mortality terms,” University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and fellow authors Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity said in the paper.
Noting that school closures were entirely the responsibility of policymakers, they estimated “that learning losses from pandemic era school closures could cause a 3 percent decline in lifetime earnings, and that a loss of just one-third of a year of learning has a long-term economic impact of $14 trillion.”
The Republican-led states of Utah, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota, Florida, New Hampshire, Maine, Arkansas, and Idaho were ranked in the top 10. Vermont, which is led by Democrats, was also ranked with those states, according to researchers. But at the bottom were Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Nevada, Maryland, Illinois, California, New Mexico, New York, the District of Columbia, and New Jersey—all led by Democrat elected officials.
This week, Fauci, 84, also generated headlines when he told CNN that he likely would retire if former President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024. “Uh, well, no,” Fauci replied when asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta about whether he’d serve if Trump took office. And again, when asked by CNN if Fauci would “not serve with Trump again,” Fauci replied: “Right, for sure. Yeah.”
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Biden Administration Offers Another Round of Free COVID-19 Tests
www.theepochtimes.com
Biden Administration Offers Another Round of Free COVID-19 Tests
By Naveen Athrappully
May 17, 2022
The Biden administration is giving out free COVID-19 test kits to households for a third time, with the U.S. Postal Service delivering eight free rapid antigen tests to any household throughout the country.
Tests can be ordered via the COVIDtests.gov website, which appeared active on Monday with the new offer. The results can be obtained within 30 minutes and can be taken anywhere.
According to the website, people should only take an at-home test if “you begin having COVID-19 symptoms like fever, sore throat, runny nose, or loss of taste or smell, or at least 5 days after you come into close contact with someone with COVID-19, or when you’re going to gather with a group of people, especially those who are at risk of severe disease or may not be.”
The first round of free tests was distributed in January and February, with citizens getting four tests per household. In March, a second round of distribution gave four more free tests. The current distribution of eight tests per household takes the total number of tests offered per household since the program began to 16.
President Joe Biden had committed to making one billion at-home tests available to American citizens for free in January, including 500 million made available via the COVIDtests.gov website.
Since then, 350 million free tests have been delivered, according to a May 17 White House fact sheet. More than 70 million households have ordered at-home tests via the website.
The current third round of tests has been purchased by the federal government using funding secured from the American Rescue Plan.
Biden’s administration blamed Congress for failing to provide additional funding for the COVID-19 response, warning that it might jeopardize the federal government’s ability to offer free tests in the future.
“As the highly transmissible subvariants of Omicron drive a rise in cases in parts of the country, free and accessible tests will help slow the spread of the virus,” said the fact sheet. Most tests ordered via the website are delivered by the U.S. Postal Service within 48 hours of shipping.
The program has been criticized since a sizable portion of the test kits were sourced from California-based iHealth Labs, which is a subsidiary of Chinese medical gear manufacturer Andon Health.
Since December 2021, both federal and state governments combined have given over $2.1 billion worth of contracts to the company. Even the Department of Defense has awarded contracts to the firm.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) called the involvement of a Chinese company in COVID-19 test kits a “national security” as well as a “national health security” issue.
“The fact that the United States is mass distributing Chinese-manufactured COVID-19 tests further highlights the need to bring back U.S. manufacturing for critical industries,” Wenstrup told The Epoch Times.
The third round of free tests comes as COVID-19 cases in the United States have surged in recent weeks. The 7-day moving average of cases hit 90,337 on May 15, up from below 25,000 on March 29, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 tracker.
The 7-day average of hospital admissions with confirmed COVID-19 was 2,698 through May 14, up 8.3 percent from the week prior. Deaths linked to COVID-19 remain low, with just 40 counted on May 15. Most COVID-19 cases don’t require hospital care or lead to death.
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Canada
Mask Mandate Lifted for Public Servants, Workplaces to Return to Full Capacity: Health Canada
By Andrew Chen
May 17, 2022
Mask mandates are being lifted for public servants while government departments and agencies will return to the workplace at full capacity, Health Canada said in an update of its occupational health guidance on May 16.
“Masks can be removed when physical distancing can be maintained at a workstation or in a meeting,” the federal health agency said in a news release, adding that people should continue to wear medical masks or respirators in indoor spaces where it is difficult to maintain physical distancing such as elevators, entrances, hallways, and stairwells.
Health Canada said government departments and agencies can return to full building occupancy with “appropriate use of workplace preventive practices” in a “layered approach” to control the spread of COVID-19 in occupational environments.
Active screening of employees and visitors is no longer required in most workplaces but signs will remain in place to prevent symptomatic individuals from entering commercial or administrative buildings. Other preventive practices such as ventilation, sanitation, and hand hygiene are still recommended in federal workplaces.
While employees who have been in close contact with a confirmed or presumed case of COVID-19 can enter worksites if they are symptom-free, employees who test positive or have symptoms are asked to stay away for at least seven days until they are asymptomatic.
The updated guidance, developed by the health agency’s Public Service Occupational Health Program (PSOHP), says the advice is “not prescriptive.” Instead, Health Canada said federal departments and agencies will implement their own preventive approaches to curb the spread of COVID-19 and their deputy heads are ultimately responsible for the health and safety of employees.
Under PSOHP, Health Canada is in charge of providing occupational health medical advice and guidance to over 125 departments and agencies representing over 250,000 Canadian public servants.
PSOHP has required public servants to wear masks indoors since the onset of the Omicron wave in December 2021, and asked departments and agencies to review building occupancy levels and increase working remotely.
The lifting of mask mandates for public servants comes months after some provinces began to loosen face-covering restrictions. Despite phasing out some restrictions in March, government employees were still required to wear masks indoors and in crowded settings outdoors.
On March 1, Alberta and Saskatchewan were the first provinces to remove mask mandates with most other provinces dropping the public health measure the same month. On May 14, Quebec became the last province to lift masking mandates in public spaces.
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China’s Protracted Lockdowns Cause Critical Shortages in West
www.theepochtimes.com
China’s Protracted Lockdowns Cause Critical Shortages in West
By Dorothy Li
May 16, 2022
Hospitals in the United States are on high alert, with some doctors prioritizing patients in critical condition as the prolonged COVID-19 lockdown in Shanghai has caused a global shortage of chemicals used in medical imaging.
Some of the largest U.S. hospitals said earlier this month they were facing significant shortages of iodinated contrast media products, which are dyes given to patients so that their internal organs and vessels can be picked up by CT scans, X-rays, and radiography.
The dwindling supply was due to the temporary closure of the production facility of General Electric’s health care unit in Shanghai, a trade hub that has been locked down for nearly two months. Though the factory has been allowed to resume operation gradually, the Greater New York Hospital Association warned that an 80 percent reduction in supply might last through the end of June, according to a May 5 statement.
Some hospitals have started to conserve use of the medical dye. For example, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System said they activated a response to aggressively ration the supply of intravenous contrast to address the shortage, according to a May 7 statement. The efforts mean doctors are prioritizing urgent scans and postponing elective tests.
U.S. health care facilities aren’t alone in feeling the economic consequences. From Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla, to Adidas, Estée Lauder, and Starbucks, global companies have warned of the spillover effects of China’s protracted COVID-19 lockdowns.
As the fast-moving Omicron variant spread across the country, Chinese cities, from large to small, have imposed various degrees of restrictions under the regime’s “zero-COVID” playbook. The biggest lockdown in Shanghai led to many of the city’s 25 million residents enduring a food shortage. Officials on May 15 said the city has started to reopen, but residents said they still couldn’t step out of their homes.
As of May 10, some 41 cities across the country were under partial or full lockdown, according to estimates by Japanese bank Nomura, accounting for almost 30 percent of China’s economic output.
Production Disrupted
With factory workers and consumers stuck at home and many businesses forced to suspend operations, China’s export growth last month was at a two-year low. Exports in dollar terms decelerated to 3.9 percent in April from a year earlier, tumbling from a 14.7 percent growth in March, China’s customs reported on May 9.
The sluggish figures from the trade sector, which accounts for about a third of gross domestic product, added to a string of signs that the world’s second-largest economy was slowing down. Factory activity had already contracted at a sharper pace in April, industry surveys show.
Chinese authorities promised to allow some businesses to resume operations within a so-called “closed loop” system where workers live where they work. But only 19 percent of 460 German companies have permits to operate under such conditions, according to a survey by the German Chamber of Commerce in China published on May 12. Of those allowed to produce under lockdown, facilities are running at less than half of their capacity, on average.
“Closed loop productions are inacceptable as a long-term solution for German companies to operate in China,” Maximilian Butek, the executive director of the chamber, said in a statement.
The flash survey, echoing the results of recent findings by the U.S. and European business groups in China, underscored signs that foreign employees were increasingly planning to leave the country due to the regime’s strict COVID-19 strategy.
Wary Investors
Strict COVID-19 curbs and the resulting supply chain chaos have rattled foreign business confidence, according to several surveys by foreign lobby groups.
A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that over half of its 121 members have already delayed or reduced investments as a result of the lockdown. Some 51 percent have already decreased their revenue projections for the year, according to the poll conducted from late April to early May.
“Revenue forecasts for this year are down, but, more worryingly, members don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” said AmCham China Chairman Colm Rafferty in the statement.
A gloomier picture was painted by European businesses in the country. The number of companies weighing a shift of investments out of China reached its highest proportion in a decade, according to a survey by the European Chamber of Commerce in China published on May 5.
The survey, conducted in late April, found that nearly a quarter of the 372 respondents were considering moving current or planned investments out of China, more than double the number at the beginning of the year. About 60 percent of businesses have cut their business revenue projections this year, while 92 percent said they had been affected by recent port closures, a decline in road freight, and rising sea freight costs.
China’s zero-COVID policy is the last straw for many foreign investors, who have already been dealing with headwinds like trade conflicts and a deteriorating business environment, said Frank Tian Xie, an associate professor of marketing at the University of South Carolina–Aiken.
Stronger Reverberations
At a May 5 meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s most powerful body, the Politburo Standing Committee, Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued warnings against anyone who criticized, questioned, or distorted the regime’s zero-COVID policy.
“We have won the battle to defend Wuhan,” Xi said, according to the official news outlet Xinhua. “We can certainly win the battle to defend greater Shanghai.”
Economists have repeatedly warned of the consequences of the strict COVID-19 curbs. Top Chinese economist Xu Jianguo warned at a May 8 webinar that the economic impact of the latest outbreak was 10 times more severe than in early 2020, when the regime initially locked down Wuhan, South China Morning Post reported.
He estimated the curbs, including lockdown and travel restrictions, have cost the country $2.68 trillion this year, the report said.
Even with the threat of exodus by foreign investors and a possible economic recession, the communist regime will not give up its zero-COVID policy, as maintaining its power is its ultimate priority, according to Xie. He said that in the worst-case scenario, China could end up going back to being a planned economy.
Gordon Chang, author and a senior fellow of Gatestone Institute, said Xi is likely to double down on his zero-COVID policy if he secures an unprecedented third term in office at an important party conclave this autumn.
“China is determined to apply Mao Zedong’s man over nature narrative,” Chang said in a recent interview with The Epoch Times. “It just isn’t working.”
Donna He and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Young Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Recipients More Likely to Get Infected After 5 Months
www.theepochtimes.com
Young Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Recipients More Likely to Get Infected After 5 Months
By Zachary Stieber
May 14, 2022
The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine turned negatively effective after five months, according to a new study.
Researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed test results from sites across the United States and determined that the vaccine was 60 percent effective two to four weeks after 12- to 15-year-olds got the second of the two-dose primary regimen.
But the effectiveness, measured against symptomatic illness, quickly plummeted, hitting 20 percent around month two and zero around month five.
After that, recipients in the age group were more likely to be infected by the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.
Vaccine effectiveness “was no longer significantly different from 0 during month 3 after the second dose,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Pfizer, its partner BioNTech, and the CDC didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The analyzed tests were performed between Dec. 26, 2021, and Feb. 21, 2022. Some 47,700 tests among 12- to 15-year-olds were included, with about half being unvaccinated. The testing data was on the Increasing Community Access to Testing, a program funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that contracts with pharmacy chains to perform drive-through testing. The testing data was supplemented by information in questionnaires filled out by adults with the adolescents.
Limitations of the study included vaccination being self-reported.
The study was funded by the U.S. government.
The study also found that vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection plunged quickly for those 5 to 11 years old, starting at 60 percent but hitting 23 percent just one month later.
One way to combat the negative effectiveness, researchers said, was to get a booster dose.
Of the 906 12- to 15-year-olds who got a third, or booster, dose, the effectiveness was measured at 71 percent two to six weeks after receipt.
Other studies, though, show that the protection from a booster, like that from the primary regimen, quickly wanes.
“Given the well-established pattern of waning mRNA VE after 2 doses and early evidence of waning of booster dose protection in adults, monitoring the duration of protection from booster doses in adolescents will be important,” researchers said.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. VE refers to vaccine effectiveness.
In another study published by the same journal on May 13, New York researchers reported the gap of infection and hospitalization risk between unvaccinated and vaccinated youth narrowing over time, with vaccinated 5- to 11-year-olds being infected at a rate of 62 per 100,000 and unvaccinated being infected at a rate of 70 per 100,000.
That was an incidence rate ratio of 1.1; the rate ratio for 12- to 17-year-olds was 2.
The protection also waned considerably against hospitalization over time, researchers found.
They said that the findings support “efforts to increase vaccination coverage in children and adolescents.”
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines – Like Pfizer and Moderna – Work Better Against Variants of Concern
A comparison of four COVID-19 vaccinations shows that messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines — Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — perform better against the World Health Organization (WHO)’s variants of concern (VOCs) than viral vector vaccines — AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (J&J)/Janssen. Although t
scitechdaily.com
mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines – Like Pfizer and Moderna – Work Better Against Variants of Concern
By PLOS
May 17, 2022
Researchers find that mRNA vaccines fare better against COVID-19 variants of concern. Credit: Carlos Reusser Monsalvez
A comparison of four COVID-19 vaccinations shows that messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines — Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — perform better against the World Health Organization (WHO)’s variants of concern (VOCs) than viral vector vaccines — AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (J&J)/Janssen. Although they all effectively prevent severe disease by VOCs, the research, publishingtoday (May 17th, 2022) in the open access journal PLOS Medicine, suggests that people receiving a viral vector vaccine are more vulnerable to infection by new variants.
By March 2022, COVID-19 had caused over 450 million confirmed infections and six million reported deaths. The first vaccines approved in the US and Europe that protect against serious infection are Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which deliver genetic code, known as mRNA, to the bodies’ cells, whereas Oxford/AstraZeneca and J&J/Janssen are viral vector vaccines that use a modified version of a different virus — a vector — to deliver instructions to our cells. Three vaccines are delivered as two separate injections a few weeks apart, and J&J/Janssen as a single dose.
Marit J. van Gils at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and colleagues, took blood samples from 165 healthcare workers, three and four weeks after first and second vaccination respectively, and for J&J/Janssen at four to five and eight weeks after vaccination. Samples were collected before, and four weeks after a Pfizer-BioNTech booster.
Four weeks after the initial two doses, antibody responses to the original SARS-CoV-2 viral strain were highest in recipients of Moderna, followed closely by Pfizer-BioNTech, and were substantially lower in those who received viral vector vaccines. Tested against the VOCs – Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron – neutralizing antibodies were higher in the mRNA vaccine recipients compared to those who had viral vector vaccines. The ability to neutralize VOCs was reduced in all vaccine groups, with the greatest reduction against Omicron. The Pfizer-BioNTech booster increased antibody responses in all groups with substantial improvement against VOCs, including Omicron.
The researchers caution that their AstraZeneca group was significantly older, because of safety concerns for the vaccine in younger age groups. As immune responses tend to weaken with age, this could affect the results. This group was also smaller because the Dutch government halted use for a period.
van Gils concludes, “Four COVID-19 vaccines induce substantially different antibody responses.”
Reference: “Antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2 variants induced by four different SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in health care workers in the Netherlands: A prospective cohort study” by van Gils MJ, Lavell A, van der Straten K, Appelman B, Bontjer I, Poniman M, et al., 17 May 2022, PLOS Medicine.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003991
Funding: This work was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) ZonMw (Vici grant no. 91818627 to R.W.S., S3 study, grant agreement no. 10430022010023 to M.K.B.; RECoVERED, grant agreement no. 10150062010002 to M.D.d.J.), by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (grant no. INV002022 and INV008818 to R.W.S. and INV-024617 to M.J.v.G.), by Amsterdam UMC through the AMC Fellowship (to M.J.v.G.) and the Corona Research Fund (to M.K.B.), and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program (RECoVER, grant no. 101003589 to M.D.d.J). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Desktop Air Curtain System Developed That Prevents Spread of COVID-19
Device suitable for use in hospital wards, blood labs, and reception counters. In efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, miniaturizing air curtains for hospital wards, labs, and other health care settings is gaining popularity as a practical solution to inadequate face masks or when social dist
scitechdaily.com
Desktop Air Curtain System Developed That Prevents Spread of COVID-19
By American Institute of Physics
May 17, 2022
Device suitable for use in hospital wards, blood labs, and reception counters.
In efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, miniaturizing air curtains for hospital wards, labs, and other health care settings is gaining popularity as a practical solution to inadequate face masks or when social distancing is not a realistic option.
Researchers in Japan developed a desktop air curtain system (DACS) that blocks all incoming aerosol particles, as described in a new article in AIP Advances, published by AIP Publishing.
“We envisage this system will be effective as an indirect barrier for use in blood-testing labs, hospital wards, and other situations where sufficient physical distance cannot be maintained, such as at a reception counter,” co-author Kotaro Takamure said.
An air curtain, sometimes known as an air door, is a fan-powered ventilation system that creates an air seal over an entryway. They are used in hospitals to prevent ambulance fumes and other contaminants from reaching the inside of an emergency room.
One challenge in developing smaller air curtains is fully blocking emitted aerosol particles over time because it is difficult to maintain the air wall over a long distance. As a result, the devices gradually lose air-discharge intensity, creating a turbulent flow that allows infected aerosol particles to escape into the surrounding environment.
The DACS contains a discharge and suction port to help address this problem. A generator at the top of the DACS produces the airflow, which is guided to the suction port at the bottom of the device. This prevents airflow dispersion, thus leading to the collection of all the aerosol particles at the suction port. A high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter can be installed inside the suction port for air purification.
The researchers are developing an accompanying virus inactivation system equipped with ultraviolet light that connects to the suction port. After the air is sanitized with the UV light, it is recirculated to maintain airflow of the air curtain and air pressure in the room.
The researchers tested their device by using an air compressor connected to a mannequin to simulate breathing. Dioctyl sebacate, a widely used solvent that spreads easily, was added to the airflow to create aerosol particles. Particle image velocimetry and high-speed cameras were used to determine the DACS’s blocking effect.
The aerosol particles approaching the DACS abruptly bent toward the suction port, signifying that air curtain flow fully blocked all incoming aerosol particles.
When the researchers placed the mannequin’s arm through the DACS to imitate a blood-collection scenario, they found the airflow above the arm was disrupted. However, the aerosol blocking performance remained unaffected.
The DACS was tested on patients during blood collection at Nagoya University Hospital. The researchers are looking at lowering the suction port, so the arm can be placed below the heart for proper blood collection.
Reference: “Blocking effect of desktop air curtain on aerosols in exhaled breath” by Kotaro Takamure, Yasuaki Sakamoto, Tetsuya Yagi, Yasumasa Iwatani, Hiroshi Amano and Tomomi Uchiyama, 17 May 2022, AIP Advances.
DOI: 10.1063/5.0086659
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North Korea hails recovery as WHO worries over missing data
North Korea said Wednesday more than a million people have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 just a week after disclosing an outbreak it appears to be trying to manage in isolation as global experts express deep concern about the public health threat.
North Korea hails recovery as WHO worries over missing data
by Kim Tong-Hyung
May 18, 2022
North Korea said Wednesday more than a million people have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 just a week after disclosing an outbreak it appears to be trying to manage in isolation as global experts express deep concern about the public health threat.
The country's anti-virus headquarters announced 232,880 new cases of fever and another six deaths in state media Wednesday. Those figures raise its totals to 62 deaths and more than 1.7 million fever cases since late April. It said at least 691,170 remain in quarantine.
Outside experts believe most of the fevers are COVID-19 but North Korea lacks tests to confirm so many. The outbreak is almost certainly larger than the fever tally, since some virus carriers may not develop fevers or other symptoms.
It's also unclear how more than a million people recovered so quickly when limited medicine, medical equipment and health facilities exist to treat the country's impoverished, unvaccinated population of 26 million. Some experts say the North could be simply releasing people from quarantine after their fevers subside.
Globally, COVID-19 has killed about 6.3 million people with the true toll believed to be much higher. Countries with outbreaks of a similar size to North Korea's official fever tally have confirmed thousands of deaths each.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday that North Korea has not responded to its request for more data about its outbreak.
Before acknowledging COVID-19 infections for the first time last week, North Korea had held to a widely doubted claim of keeping out the virus. It also shunned millions of vaccine shots offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, likely because of international monitoring requirements attached to them.
North Korea and Eritrea are the only sovereign U.N.-member countries not to have rolled out vaccines, but Tedros said neither country has responded to WHO's offers of vaccines, medicines, tests and technical support.
"WHO is deeply concerned at the risk of further spread in (North Korea)," Tedros said, also noting the country has worrying numbers of people with underlying conditions that make them more likely to get severe COVID-19.
WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said unchecked transmission of the virus could lead to new variants but that WHO was powerless to act unless countries accepted its help.
The North has so far ignored rival South Korea's offer to provide vaccines, medicine and health personnel, but experts say the North may be more willing to accept help from its main ally China. South Korea's government said it couldn't confirm media reports that North Korea flew multiple planes to bring back emergency supplies from China on Tuesday.
North Korean officials during a ruling party Politburo meeting Tuesday continued to express confidence that the country could overcome the crisis on its own, with the Politburo members discussing ways for "continuously maintaining the good chance in the overall epidemic prevention front," the official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday.
There's suspicion that North Korea is underreporting deaths to soften the blow for Kim, who already was navigating the toughest moment of his decade in power. The pandemic has further damaged an economy already broken by mismanagement and U.S.-led sanctions over Kim's nuclear weapons and missiles development.
At the Politburo meeting, Kim criticized officials over their early pandemic response, which he said underscored "immaturity in the state capacity for coping with the crisis" and he blamed the country's vulnerability on their "non-positive attitude, slackness and non-activity," KCNA said.
He urged officials to strengthen virus controls at workplaces and redouble efforts to improve the supply of daily necessities and stabilize living conditions, the report said.
North Korea has also deployed nearly 3,000 military medical officers to help deliver medicine to pharmacies and deployed public health officials, teachers and students studying health care to identify people with fevers so they could be quarantined. The country has been relying on finding people with symptoms and isolating them at shelters since it lacks vaccines, high-tech medicine and equipment, and intensive care units that lowered hospitalizations and deaths in other nations.
While raising alarm over the outbreak, Kim has also stressed that his economic goals should be met. State media reports show large groups of workers are continuing to gather at farms, mining facilities, power stations and construction sites, being driven to ensure their works are "propelled as scheduled."
North Korea's COVID-19 outbreak came amid a provocative run in weapons demonstrations, including its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile in nearly five years, in a brinkmanship aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
U.S. and South Korean officials also believe North Korea could conduct its seventh nuclear test explosion this month.
The North Korean nuclear threat is expected to top agenda when U.S. President Joe Biden meets South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during a visit to Seoul this week. Kim Tae-hyo, Yoon's deputy national security adviser, told reporters Wednesday that North Korea probably won't conduct a nuclear test this week but that its preparations for another ICBM test appeared imminent.
Kim Jong Un during Tuesday's Politburo meeting affirmed he would "arouse the whole party like (an) active volcano once again under the state emergency situation" to prove its leadership before history and time and "defend the wellbeing of the country and the people without fail and demonstrate to the whole world the strength and the spirit of heroic Korea once again," KCNA said. The report did not make a direct reference to a major weapons test.
Recent commercial satellite images of the nuclear testing ground in Punggye-ri indicate refurbishment work and preparations at a yet unused tunnel on the southern part of the site, which is presumably nearing completion to host a nuclear test, according to an analysis released Tuesday by Beyond Parallel, a website run by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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TB Fanatic
Early warning system forecasts who needs critical care for COVID-19
Scientists have developed and validated an algorithm that can help healthcare professionals identify who is most at risk of dying from COVID-19 when admitted to a hospital, reports a study published today in eLife.
Early warning system forecasts who needs critical care for COVID-19
by eLife
May 17, 2022
Scientists have developed and validated an algorithm that can help healthcare professionals identify who is most at risk of dying from COVID-19 when admitted to a hospital, reports a study published today in eLife.
The tool, which uses artificial intelligence (AI), could help doctors direct critical care resources to those who need them most, and will be especially valuable to resource-limited countries.
"The appearance of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, waning immune protection and relaxation of mitigation measures means we are likely to continue seeing surges of infections and hospitalizations," explains the leader of this international project and senior author David Gómez-Varela, former Max Planck Group Leader and current Senior Scientist at the Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Vienna, Austria. "There is a need for clinically valuable and generalizable triage tools to assist the allocation of hospital resources for COVID-19, particularly in places where resources are scarce. But these tools need to be able to cope with the ever-changing scenario of a global pandemic and must be easy to implement."
To develop such a tool, the team used biochemical data from routine blood draws performed on nearly 30,000 patients hospitalized in over 150 hospitals in Spain, the US, Honduras, Bolivia and Argentina between March 2020 and February 2022. This means they were able to capture data from people with different immune statuses—vaccinated, unvaccinated and those with natural immunity—and from people infected with every SARS-CoV-2 variant, from the virus that emerged in Wuhan, China, to the latest Omicron variant. "The intrinsic variability in such a diverse dataset is a great challenge for AI-based prediction models," says lead author Riku Klén, Associate Professor at the University of Turku, Finland.
The resulting algorithm—called COVID-19 Disease Outcome Predictor (CODOP)—uses measurements of 12 blood molecules that are normally collected during admission. This means the predictive tool can be easily integrated into the clinical care of any hospital.
CODOP was developed in a multistep process, initially using data from patients hospitalized in more than 120 hospitals in Spain, to "train" the AI system to predict hallmarks of a poor prognosis.
The next step was to ensure the tool worked regardless of patients' immune status or COVID-19 variant, so they tested the algorithm in several subgroups of geographically dispersed patients. The tool still performed well at predicting the risk of in-hospital death during this fluctuating scenario of the pandemic, suggesting the measurements CODOP is based on are truly meaningful biomarkers of whether a patient with COVID-19 is likely to deteriorate.
To test whether the time of taking blood tests affects the tool's performance, the team compared data from different time points of blood drawn before patients either recovered or died. They found that the algorithm can predict the survival or death of hospitalized patients with high accuracy until nine days before either outcome occurs.
Finally, they created two different versions of the tool for use in scenarios where healthcare resources are either operating normally or are under severe pressure. Under normal operational burden, doctors may opt to use an "overtriage" version, which is highly sensitive at picking up people at increased risk of death, at the expense of detecting some people who did not require critical care. The alternative "undertriage" model minimizes the possibility of wrongly selecting people at lower risk of dying, providing doctors with greater certainty that they are directing care to those at the highest risk when resources are severely limited.
"The performance of CODOP in diverse and geographically dispersed patient groups and the ease of use suggest it could be a valuable tool in the clinic, especially in resource-limited countries," remarks Gómez-Varela. "We are now working on a follow-up dual model tailored to the current pandemic scenario of increasing infections and cumulative immune protection, which will predict the need for hospitalization within 24 hours for patients within primary care, and intensive care admission within 48 hours for those already hospitalized. We hope to help healthcare systems restore previous standards of routine care before the pandemic took hold."
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
Pfizer's Paxlovid Fails As A Prophylactic Therapy for COVID-19
In a disappointment for Pfizer, Paxlovid failed to protect the household members of COVID positive patients.
mobeensyedmd.substack.com
Pfizer's Paxlovid Fails As A Prophylactic Therapy for COVID-19
In a disappointment for Pfizer, Paxlovid failed to protect the household members of COVID positive patients.
KoolBeens Cafe
May 10
My video on this topic
Paxlovid Failed to Prevent COVID-19
20 min 05 sec
Cliff notes for my talk about this topic on May 10th 2022. Once the lecture is done, then I will add that link here as well.
Summary:
- COVID-19 Therapy:
- Paxlovid is a combination of two antiviral drugs. Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir.
- EPIC-HR trial: Paxlovid is associated with 89% lower risk of progression to severe COVID-19 disease.
- EUA for COVID-19 (confirmed positive) patients that are at-risk of progressing to severe disease or death and are 12+ years of age and weigh at least 40kg.
- Prophylaxis: Pfizer conducted another trial called EPIC-PEPthat started recruiting in September 2021. Trial was for the prevention of COVID-19 in household members of COVID-19 patients.
- Paxlovid was started from day 1 for 5 or 10 days.
- Primary end-point was to reduce the risk of confirmed and symptomatic COVID-19 in adults who were exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 positive patient.
- Paxlovid failed to show any statistically significant positive result.
- The 5 days group had a chance occurrence of 32% efficacy and the 10 days group had a chance occurrence of 37% efficacy.
- Details:
- 2,957 persons participated. These persons had exposure within past 96 hours to a COVID-19 positive patients.
- Participants had to be asymptomatic and PCR negative.
- Each patient was randomized to receive either Paxlovid for 5 days followed by placebo for 5 days, or Paxlovid for 10 days, or placebo for 10 days.
- Again, Paxlovid failed to show a statistically significant protection.
- Viral rebound: In the trial and now in production there are incidences of the viral load increase (rebound) after the management with Paxlovid. Company says this happened in placebo receiving patients as well, hence, they are confident that Paxlovid is amazing (paraphrasing.)
- Competition (Molnupiravir): Interestingly Molnupiravir has shown disappointing efficacy against severe COVID and deaths.
Paxlovid - How Does It Work?
26 min 45 sec
References
DrBeen: Medical Education Online
https://www.drbeen.com/
EPIC-HR: Study of Oral PF-07321332/Ritonavir Compared With Placebo in Nonhospitalized High Risk Adults With COVID-19 - Full Text View - ClinicalTrials.gov
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04960202
Oral Nirmatrelvir for High-Risk, Nonhospitalized Adults with Covid-19 | NEJM
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118542
Clinical Studies | PAXLOVID™ (nirmatrelvir tablets; ritonavir tablets)
https://www.covid19oralrx-hcp.com/clinical-studies?source=google&HBX_PK=s_paxlovid+results&skwid=43700068281649038&gclid=Cj0KCQjwmuiTBhDoARIsAPiv6L_CQ8C5C7AQsXGYtMhZx5rjk7W8pNjd3gdK_Z1BYWY8X7Ifv_-iu5UaAm6-EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Paxlovid HCP FS 04142022
https://www.fda.gov/media/155050/download
EUA 105 Pfizer Paxlovid DHCP 04142022
https://www.fda.gov/media/155071/download
Pfizer Shares Top-Line Results from Phase 2/3 EPIC-PEP Study of PAXLOVID™ for Post-Exposure Prophylactic Use | Pfizer
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-shares-top-line-results-phase-23-epic-pep-study
Paxlovid Mouth Is Real—And Gross - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/pfizer-paxlovid-covid-pill-side-effects/629772/
Pfizer says COVID treatment Paxlovid fails to prevent infection of household members | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-says-covid-treatment-paxlovid-fails-prevent-infection-household-members-2022-04-29/
FDA warns Paxlovid as COVID treatment option
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/fda-rebukes-pfizers-suggestion-take-more-paxlovid-if-covid-19-symptoms-return
Covid-19 cases that return after Paxlovid antiviral treatment puzzle doctors - CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/health/paxlovid-covid-rebound/index.html
FDA EUA Note for Paxlovid
https://www.fda.gov/media/155194/download
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
Why do the Vaccine Injuries Seem Disproportionate?
I started digging and really don't like what I discovered.
sheldonyakiwchuk.substack.com
Why do the Vaccine Injuries Seem Disproportionate?
I started digging and really don't like what I discovered.
Sheldon Yakiwchuk
May 16
For some time, the Health Canada posting on Adverse Reactions to the Jabs has had me troubled.
Not just because there are over 114k reports in 45+k people. The fact that we’ve harmed more people with Jabs than COVID has killed has always bothered me.
The fact that we aren’t reporting deaths and ICU admissions in accordance with Good Pharmacovigilance Practices (GVP) Guidelines (GUI-0102) practices has been troubling, but we already knew this, right?
The fact that now there are more SERIOUS Adverse Events being reported in the Vaccinated than just the more mild allergic reaction and site pain…is pretty troubling, to be sure.
I mean, there are a lot of things quite troubling about the vaccinations but one thing struck me really odd with the following chart:
In that, why are the people at the most risk showing the least adverse reactions?
Are we really getting the full picture of what is happening here?
So, I decided to dive into the data and see what I could find in this…and I’m going to be full on honest here…I didn’t like what I found.
You see…Health Canada has been missing a lot of information lately, in their updated reports and I have been doing some Twitter Threads on this due to the limitations in the amount of pictures through substack.
What I have found - to get you up to speed on this is that Health Canada is now up to 8,642 Deaths Missing from their able 2. Characteristics and severe outcomes reporting.
And, what’s even scarier is that they’ve also seemingly missed reporting 34,467 Hospitalizations on this same report. I dug into this here:
So, I figured that I should maybe drill into this and see why the people who have the highest cases of Hospitalizations, ICU admissions and Deaths.
In doing this, instead of just breaking down the Table 2, I went and drilled into the actual data behind cases. This doesn’t line out who was vaccinated or not, but given the high rate of boosters in the Elderly Community, I figured I could do a comparative analysis on just this and see if there were any additional hidden injuries in these cases.
Instead…what I found was that there was a massive increase in Hospitalizations and ICU admissions following jabs and no decrease in mortality. Looks like this:
3x more hospitalizations, 2x more ICU admissions and an increase in deaths!
I want to wrap this in a little context because I’ve broken this out using a few selected criteria. First, for all ages and second by specific dates.
To expand, have a look at the following:
I used December 14th, 2020 as a base reference, this is when vaccines rolled out in Canada, but of course, the entire population of Canada was not vaccinated on this date. All deaths before this date were 100% Unvaccinated.
I used the End of September as the second point of reference because this is when the High Risk Aged population started getting boosters.
And lastly, the current rates.
How I calculated:
(May 13, 2022 Reports - September 24, 2021)/December 14, 2020.
Because, by September 2021 the Majority of these had already been vaccinated and were on booster shots. The rate of increase in Hospitalizations following boosters in this group was 2.5-3x HIGHER than before Vaccines even Rolled out.
Read that again…
Following boosters, there was 2.5-3x more risk than before vaccines.
The 60+ make up 65% of the hospitalizations.
YIKES!
Even more scary is when you look at the entire span of ages:
And see that on 0-19, there is an 11x Risk;
Ages 20-29 a 5x Risk; and
Ages 30-39 4x Risk.
They didn’t get boosters but on September 24, 2021 Canada was at 70.4% vaccinated, currently we are 82.5% fully vaccinated, meaning these number should have decreased, even according to the lowered bar of “Reduces Severity”, instead of actually providing immunity.
This same trend carried on in ICU Admissions increased risk 2x across the board:
And Mortality, where the 60+ group still makes up 90% of the Total Deaths during this snapshot, following being Fully Vaccinated and rolling out the boosters:
When comparing this case wise… those aged 60+ make up 65% of Hospitalizations, 60% of ICU admissions and 90% of deaths Following Vaccinations and Boosters, while only making up 17% of all COVID Cases in Canada:
While I didn’t find any actual Adverse Reactions by way of Health Canada’s current symptoms and definitions, what I found was way worse - an increase in Risk, not only to those who are most vulnerable but to all ages, across the board on Hospitalizations, ICU Admissions and Deaths.
And I’m even more troubled now than when I started!
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
"Vaccine Against Variants" is Impossible and Will Endanger the Naturally Immune
Creating Another Vaccine will Lead to Disaster
igorchudov.substack.com
Purple text highlighting is mine
"Vaccine Against Variants" is Impossible and Will Endanger the Naturally Immune
Creating Another Vaccine will Lead to Disaster
Igor Chudov
May 16
This article will explain that, while any talk about effective variant Covid vaccines is a pipe dream, variant vaccines will ENDANGER THE UNVACCINATED, who have decent natural immunity now, while not solving anything for the vaccinated.
Introduction
Remember the original rush to create the “Covid Vaccine”? Moderna claimed that it developed mRNA-1273 in just two days. (If you still believe that it took two days, buy a bridge from me, or read this article of mine from Feb 2022).
When we realized, in 2021, that the original vaccine does not work, much talk began about creating “variant vaccines”. It should be easy, right? If the first vaccine was designed in “2 days”, surely the updated vaccine could be done in maybe 3-4 days at most?
About half a year later, here we are, with no vaccine in sight, and lots of failures.
What is happening? Why no rapid “triumph of science”? Why no easy “Omicron vaccine”? Let’s explore.
Why “Omicron Vaccine” is Impossible
Creating Vaccines is Hard
Before we start looking into “Omicron vaccines”, let me mention that creating a good vaccine, that prevents illness, and has an acceptable safety profile, is extremely difficult and takes many years. Many pathogens resisted all attempts to find vaccines that work against them. Chief among them are the HIV virus, dengue virus, and coronaviruses. There never was a successful coronavirus vaccine. Of all known diseases, only one disease, smallpox, was declared to be “eradicated with vaccines”.
This is the general background.
The “Covid vaccine” released in late 2020, despite having an unacceptable safety profile, had at least a brief few-months period during which it showed moderate effectiveness, which deteriorated rapidly as time went on. Covid Vaccine is also an unsuccessful experiment, however, it showed some brief signs of working.
No “Omicron vaccine” will show any effectiveness at all.
There is no Single “Omicron Variant”
The main reason is that there is no one “Omicron Variant”. Sars-Cov-2 is mutating out of control, faster than ever, and recent variants are very genetically distant from each other.
The so-called “Omicron Variant” is a very inclusive term that includes “every Sars-Cov-2 descendant after Delta”. It is best to think about it as a marketing term giving an excuse why Covid vaccines do not work, rather than as a scientific term.
For example, the Ba.1 and Ba.2 variants are MORE distant from each other, than they are from any past Sars-Cov-2 variants.
The explosion of mutations was not exactly unexpected. Geert Vanden Bossche wrote a prescient letter, proven to be prophetic, that vaccination will drive new variants.
In addition, interestingly, Sars-Cov-2 has an overlooked genetic designer “feature” that did not exist in SARS-Cov-1, which makes spanning new viral variants easier.
Igor’s Newsletter
Was Sars-Cov-2 DESIGNED to Spawn so Many Variants?
As new variants of Sars-Cov-2 keep appearing faster and faster, we have to ask what makes the Sars-Cov-2 quasispecies mutate so fast, so much faster than the original Sars from 2003, spawning endless new variants. It turns out that science may have the answer for us! A well known genius scientist Ralph Baric published an…
2 months ago · 274 likes · 194 comments · Igor Chudov
Therefore, unlike in 2020, there is no single variant against which to make a “vaccine”.
They are at a Dead End
The following are insurmountable problems for any “variant vaccine”:
- The existing Sars-Cov-2 variants are so distant, that no spike antigen can create antibodies against all existing variants
- Even disregarding time-consuming “safety testing” and “efficacy testing”, which as we know the “safe and effective vaccines” do not need, the design and production cycle takes months. During this time, new variants will appear that will make the vaccine obsolete.
- Almost nobody is “Covid naive”. Most people have had one or several Covids, and most people were vaccinated. This makes the immunological situation vastly more complicated than it was in 2020.
- People finally woke up and new uptake of “Covid vaccines” and second booster is, fortunately, negligible. A newfangled “Hail Mary” variant vaccine, designed in haste and marketed by the same crooks, to the remaining vaccine enthusiasts, will never make an epidemiological difference. So why make it? Pfizer and Moderna know that it will not sell and will not make money for them.
- Boosted and vaccinated people cannot develop proper immunity to any new Sars-Cov-2 variant antigens, anyway.
Instead, the vaccinated people, having their immune systems saturated and boosted with the obsolete Wuhan spike protein from 2 years ago, simply make more of the same old antibodies to that obsolete protein, even when challenged with newer antigens.
This is not a “new and unexpected” problem. Moderna had access to reinfection data during their Phase III trial and knew that vaccinated people do not develop broad immunity. Despite having access to that information, Moderna never disclosed it to the public.
Igor’s Newsletter
Moderna Knew Vaccinated People Will Never Acquire Proper Immunity After Breakthrough Infections
`Ever wondered why some vaccinated people seem to be having endless Covids? An interesting study came out. This study looked at two sides of the Moderna Phase 3 vaccine trial: the vaccinated group and the control group. They looked at unvaccinated people having Covid, versus vaccinated people having so called “break-through Covid infections…
21 days ago · 438 likes · 380 comments · Igor Chudov
To summarize, any discussion of “updated Omicron vaccine” is simply empty talk. I would not discount the possibility that Pfizer and Moderna would concoct something just to sell more doses, but be aware that any such concoction would be “dead on arrival”.
The above was just an introduction to my most important point below.
Variant Vaccines will Endanger the Unvaccinated
As Geert predicted, most changes in Sars-Cov-2 involve spike protein, which is the feature evolutionarily pressured by spike-based “Covid vaccines”. As the masses of vaccinees developed antibodies to Sars-Cov-2 spike protein, that instantly forced viral evolution towards more mutations in the spike, to evade spike vaccines. We ended up where we are, with endless variants having mutated spike genes, infecting and reinfecting the vaccinated.
The immune systems of the unvaccinated, upon infection, developed natural immunity to much more than “spike”. For example, among numerous other antibodies, we the unvaxxed have “nucleocapsid” antibodies, as explained in my above-quoted Moderna article, and much more. This is why most unvaccinated people have lasting immunity to Sars-Cov-2.
Yours truly, for example, had COVID in Nov 2020 and not again so far, despite zero mitigation measures.
Great, right?
All this “happily unvaccinated” immunity may end soon, because of efforts to create new vaccines targeting new antigens. As I explained, these efforts are unlikely to lead to mass vaccinations, but if they do, we are in trouble:
There is now talk about “variant vaccines” targeting non-spike proteins that remain relatively un-mutated. But they are not mutated precisely because they were not used as a basis of vaccination!
What will the result of this be? If such vaccines for non-spike Sars-Cov-2 proteins get created, and if they create evolutionary pressure on the virus to evolve, the pathogen will eventually evolve enough to mutate those areas enough to evade vaccine antibodies.
But that could make the virus evade the natural non-spike antibodies that I, and most of my unvaccinated Covid-recovered readers, have that keep us healthy in this mayhem!
So the result of these eventually leaky vaccines, just like the spike vaccines, will be that the vaccination will be as useless as before — but the healthy unvaccinated people will be left with no defenses!
The only good result for this would be to satisfy schadenfreude among some upset vaccinators.
“We finally found a way to make the unvaxxed sick again”.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
FDA Approves Pfizer Booster COVID Shot for Children - Liberty Counsel
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amended the emergency use authorization (EUA) and authorized a booster dose of the...
lc.org
FDA Approves Pfizer Booster COVID Shot for Children
May 17, 2022
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amended the emergency use authorization (EUA) and authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot for children 5 through 11 years of age. The booster shot is 10 micrograms, which is the same dosage for this age group in their primary series and a third of that given to people aged 12 and older.
The decision will now go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for approval.
On April 28, 2022, Moderna submitted a request to the FDA for EUA for its two-dose COVID-19 injection for children ages six months to under six years old.
When it comes to COVID, public health officials have consistently downplayed and ignored natural immunity among children. Yet 81 research studies confirm that natural immunity to COVID is equal or superior to any “vaccine immunity.”
Research shows that there is no benefit to children receiving a COVID shot, and in fact, the shots can cause potential harm, adverse effects and death. According to Pfizer’s own study trial data, the chance of death in children from the shot is 107 times higher than death from COVID.
In fact, the CDC recently reported higher COVID-19 case rates have been recorded among fully vaccinated children than unvaccinated in the age group 5-11 since February 2022. That’s the first time CDC recorded a higher case rate among fully vaccinated young children since data was first collected in December 2021.
In addition, the Office for National Statistics revealed that children are up to 52 times more likely to die following the COVID-19 injection than children who have not received it. In December 2021, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a dataset containing details on “deaths by vaccination status in England” per 100,000 people between January 1, 2021 and Oct 31, 2021. The data revealed that vaccinated children aged 10-14 were statistically 10 times more likely to die than unvaccinated children, and vaccinated teenagers aged 15-19 were statistically two times more likely to die than unvaccinated teenagers.
However, the ONS data also shows during that time period, teenagers aged 15-19 who had two COVID shots were statistically three times more likely to die than teenagers who were not vaccinated. Children aged 10-14 who were double vaccinated were statistically 52 times more likely to die than unvaccinated children.
Scientific studies show that children are at very low risk of spreading the COVID infection to other children, to adults as seen in household transmission studies, or becoming very ill or dying. According to a 2020 Yale University report, scientists have observed that children fare much better than adults and have very diverse and different immune system responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and have far less illness or mortality from COVID. Studies by Ankit B. Patel and Dr. Supinda Bunyavanich show the virus has limited expression and presence in the upper respiratory area in young children.
This partly explains why children are less likely to be infected in the first place, or spread it to other children or adults, or even get severely ill. Research published in August 2021 by J. Loske also revealed that “the airway immune cells in children are primed for virus sensing resulting in a stronger early innate antiviral response to SARS-CoV-2 infection than in adults.”
For more information, visit www.LC.org/vaccine.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Our precious children should not be the guinea pigs of pharmaceutical companies. There is overwhelming evidence that these COVID shots are not safe or effective, and that children are the least likely population to be adversely affected by COVID. Pharmaceutical companies merely see children as a budget item to increase their bottom line and they continue to ignore the serious adverse events and deaths caused by these experimental genetic shots. Instead of being the watchdog for the public, the FDA and the CDC have become the lap dogs for the pharmaceutical industry.”
naegling62
Veteran Member
Lots of people that work on a local military base are getting Covid again. They're all vaccinated and boosted. I don't think any are serious. Not hearing civilians getting sick.
onetimer
Veteran Member
CDC data on U.S. 5 to 11 year-olds: ~2% to ~30% HIGHER SARSCOV2 infection rates among C19 vaccinated vs. C19 unvaccinated, from Feb.12 through 3rd week in March, 2022, i.e. most recent data available. COVID Data Tracker https://t.co/tsdvn1yhLG
View: https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1526886011686510594?t=qM5WgYXZLJN1OU27GLdRVQ&s=19
View: https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1526886011686510594?t=qM5WgYXZLJN1OU27GLdRVQ&s=19
Zoner
Veteran Member
Important to understand. Thanks HD(fair use applies)Q&A #13: Why do Public Health authorities continue to promote C-19 vaccination of children? | Voice for Science and Solidarity
The single biggest issue is that ‘they’ are concentrating on hospitalizations, not on transmission.The more you turn the virus into a hi...
The single biggest issue is that ‘they’ are concentrating on hospitalizations, not on transmission.
The more you turn the virus into a highly-infectious pathogen (e.g.Delta, Omicron), the higher the likelihood you will start to see hospitalizations in children too.
As the vaccines still largely protect against severe disease and hospitalizations, ‘they’think it’s a good idea to get the kids jabbed too.
What these health authorities don’t seem to understand is that the C-19 vaccines, which do no longer induce neutralizing antibodies (Abs) because of Omicron, are in fact preventing severe disease by virtue of non-neutralizing Abs (see my manuscript). The non-neutralizing Abs prevent trans infection in distant organs (including the lungs) and thereby put high immune pressure on the virus’ virulence. Of course, they have no clue that together with the infection-enhancing effect of these Abs at the upper respiratory tract, this evolution is now only expediting the breeding of variants that are not only highly infectious but also more virulent. This is to say that the vaccines will soon no longer protect against severe disease. That’s where they can forget about keeping hospitalizations low.
Public Health authorities should, of course, always focus on keeping hospitalizations low and avoiding a crash of our health system.However, what these dummies need to learn is that you have to achieve this by curbing the chain of transmission! The vaccines can’t do this, but natural immunity can, and that’s the lesson they haven’t learned yet. Suppressing natural immunity (by vaccines) during a pandemic paralyzes the sterilizing immune capacity of the population, and therefore prevents herd immunity and promotes viral immune escape.
It will take time, and, unfortunately, many human lives, before they’ll understand. It’s only when hospitalizations in highly vaccinated countries will soon explode that they’ll at least understand that it’s time to hide…
Zoner
Veteran Member
Well, if Jesus doesn't come soon, we're all going to be dead!(fair use applies)"Vaccine Against Variants" is Impossible and Will Endanger the Naturally Immune
Creating Another Vaccine will Lead to Disaster
Purple text highlighting is mine
"Vaccine Against Variants" is Impossible and Will Endanger the Naturally Immune
Creating Another Vaccine will Lead to Disaster
Igor Chudov
May 16
This article will explain that, while any talk about effective variant Covid vaccines is a pipe dream, variant vaccines will ENDANGER THE UNVACCINATED, who have decent natural immunity now, while not solving anything for the vaccinated.
Introduction
Remember the original rush to create the “Covid Vaccine”? Moderna claimed that it developed mRNA-1273 in just two days. (If you still believe that it took two days, buy a bridge from me, or read this article of mine from Feb 2022).
When we realized, in 2021, that the original vaccine does not work, much talk began about creating “variant vaccines”. It should be easy, right? If the first vaccine was designed in “2 days”, surely the updated vaccine could be done in maybe 3-4 days at most?
About half a year later, here we are, with no vaccine in sight, and lots of failures.
What is happening? Why no rapid “triumph of science”? Why no easy “Omicron vaccine”? Let’s explore.
Why “Omicron Vaccine” is Impossible
Creating Vaccines is Hard
Before we start looking into “Omicron vaccines”, let me mention that creating a good vaccine, that prevents illness, and has an acceptable safety profile, is extremely difficult and takes many years. Many pathogens resisted all attempts to find vaccines that work against them. Chief among them are the HIV virus, dengue virus, and coronaviruses. There never was a successful coronavirus vaccine. Of all known diseases, only one disease, smallpox, was declared to be “eradicated with vaccines”.
This is the general background.
The “Covid vaccine” released in late 2020, despite having an unacceptable safety profile, had at least a brief few-months period during which it showed moderate effectiveness, which deteriorated rapidly as time went on. Covid Vaccine is also an unsuccessful experiment, however, it showed some brief signs of working.
No “Omicron vaccine” will show any effectiveness at all.
There is no Single “Omicron Variant”
The main reason is that there is no one “Omicron Variant”. Sars-Cov-2 is mutating out of control, faster than ever, and recent variants are very genetically distant from each other.
The so-called “Omicron Variant” is a very inclusive term that includes “every Sars-Cov-2 descendant after Delta”. It is best to think about it as a marketing term giving an excuse why Covid vaccines do not work, rather than as a scientific term.
For example, the Ba.1 and Ba.2 variants are MORE distant from each other, than they are from any past Sars-Cov-2 variants.
The explosion of mutations was not exactly unexpected. Geert Vanden Bossche wrote a prescient letter, proven to be prophetic, that vaccination will drive new variants.
In addition, interestingly, Sars-Cov-2 has an overlooked genetic designer “feature” that did not exist in SARS-Cov-1, which makes spanning new viral variants easier.
Therefore, unlike in 2020, there is no single variant against which to make a “vaccine”.
They are at a Dead End
The following are insurmountable problems for any “variant vaccine”:
The last point is familiar to the regular readers of my substack but is worth briefly repeating. It turns out that upon “breakthrough infections”, the vaccinated do NOT acquire multifaceted, natural immunity like the unvaccinated do.
- The existing Sars-Cov-2 variants are so distant, that no spike antigen can create antibodies against all existing variants
- Even disregarding time-consuming “safety testing” and “efficacy testing”, which as we know the “safe and effective vaccines” do not need, the design and production cycle takes months. During this time, new variants will appear that will make the vaccine obsolete.
- Almost nobody is “Covid naive”. Most people have had one or several Covids, and most people were vaccinated. This makes the immunological situation vastly more complicated than it was in 2020.
- People finally woke up and new uptake of “Covid vaccines” and second booster is, fortunately, negligible. A newfangled “Hail Mary” variant vaccine, designed in haste and marketed by the same crooks, to the remaining vaccine enthusiasts, will never make an epidemiological difference. So why make it? Pfizer and Moderna know that it will not sell and will not make money for them.
- Boosted and vaccinated people cannot develop proper immunity to any new Sars-Cov-2 variant antigens, anyway.
Instead, the vaccinated people, having their immune systems saturated and boosted with the obsolete Wuhan spike protein from 2 years ago, simply make more of the same old antibodies to that obsolete protein, even when challenged with newer antigens.
This is not a “new and unexpected” problem. Moderna had access to reinfection data during their Phase III trial and knew that vaccinated people do not develop broad immunity. Despite having access to that information, Moderna never disclosed it to the public.
To summarize, any discussion of “updated Omicron vaccine” is simply empty talk. I would not discount the possibility that Pfizer and Moderna would concoct something just to sell more doses, but be aware that any such concoction would be “dead on arrival”.
The above was just an introduction to my most important point below.
Variant Vaccines will Endanger the Unvaccinated
As Geert predicted, most changes in Sars-Cov-2 involve spike protein, which is the feature evolutionarily pressured by spike-based “Covid vaccines”. As the masses of vaccinees developed antibodies to Sars-Cov-2 spike protein, that instantly forced viral evolution towards more mutations in the spike, to evade spike vaccines. We ended up where we are, with endless variants having mutated spike genes, infecting and reinfecting the vaccinated.
The immune systems of the unvaccinated, upon infection, developed natural immunity to much more than “spike”. For example, among numerous other antibodies, we the unvaxxed have “nucleocapsid” antibodies, as explained in my above-quoted Moderna article, and much more. This is why most unvaccinated people have lasting immunity to Sars-Cov-2.
Yours truly, for example, had COVID in Nov 2020 and not again so far, despite zero mitigation measures.
Great, right?
All this “happily unvaccinated” immunity may end soon, because of efforts to create new vaccines targeting new antigens. As I explained, these efforts are unlikely to lead to mass vaccinations, but if they do, we are in trouble:
There is now talk about “variant vaccines” targeting non-spike proteins that remain relatively un-mutated. But they are not mutated precisely because they were not used as a basis of vaccination!
What will the result of this be? If such vaccines for non-spike Sars-Cov-2 proteins get created, and if they create evolutionary pressure on the virus to evolve, the pathogen will eventually evolve enough to mutate those areas enough to evade vaccine antibodies.
But that could make the virus evade the natural non-spike antibodies that I, and most of my unvaccinated Covid-recovered readers, have that keep us healthy in this mayhem!
So the result of these eventually leaky vaccines, just like the spike vaccines, will be that the vaccination will be as useless as before — but the healthy unvaccinated people will be left with no defenses!
The only good result for this would be to satisfy schadenfreude among some upset vaccinators.
“We finally found a way to make the unvaxxed sick again”.
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
Pfizer Document Dump Shows Doctor With Ties to Gates Foundation Deleted Trial Participant’s Vaccine Injury
An 80,000-page cache of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sheds light on Pfizer’s extensive vaccine trials in Argentina, including the unusually large size of the trials and the story of a trial participant whose vaccine reaction was...
childrenshealthdefense.org
Pfizer Document Dump Shows Doctor With Ties to Gates Foundation Deleted Trial Participant’s Vaccine Injury
An 80,000-page cache of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sheds light on Pfizer’s extensive vaccine trials in Argentina, including the unusually large size of the trials and the story of a trial participant whose vaccine reaction was deleted.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.
05/18/22
An 80,000-page cache of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sheds light on Pfizer’s extensive vaccine trials in Argentina, including the unusually large size of the trials and the story of a trial participant whose vaccine reaction was “disappeared.”
The case of Augusto Roux in Argentina suggests that in at least one instance, a trial participant whose symptoms were determined to be connected to the COVID-19 vaccine was later listed, in official records, as having experienced adverse events that were not related to the vaccination.
Vaccine trials in Argentina also appear to have glossed over adverse events suffered by other trial participants, and the potential connection between the adverse events and the vaccine.
The FDA on May 2 released the latest cache of documents, which pertain to the Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer’s vaccine, as part of a court-ordered disclosure schedule stemming from an expedited Freedom of Information Act request filed in August 2021.
As previously reported by The Defender, the documents included Case Report Forms from Pfizer COVID vaccine trials in the U.S., and the “third interim report” from BioNTech’s trials conducted in Germany, both of which listed adverse events sustained by participants in the U.S. and German trials.
Many of these adverse events were indicated as being “unrelated” to the vaccines — even in instances where the patients were healthy or otherwise had no prior medical history related to the injuries they sustained.
Story of ‘disappeared patient’ goes public
Several bloggers and online investigators called into question various aspects of the Argentine vaccine trials, pointing out the number of participants in the Argentine trials dwarfed that of other, typically smaller trials at other locations in different countries.
They also pointed out the large number of participants appeared to have been recruited to the trial in a remarkably short time, and questioned the connections between one of the key figures of the Argentine trial to vaccine manufacturers, Big Pharma and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The large number of trial participants in Argentina may be related to the fact that the trial appears to have been held simultaneously in 26 hospitals.
The large number of participants is revealed in another of the documents released this month, where on page 2,245, the list of randomized participants at trial site 1231 begins, while on page 4,329, the list of participants at trial site 4444 begins.
Site 1231 refers to the main trial site location and 4444 (page 24) most likely refers to the disparate hospitals participating in the trial outside the main location.
Commenting on the revelation, blogger David Healy wrote:
“About 5,800 volunteers were enrolled, half getting the active vaccine. This is almost 4 times more than the next largest centre in this trial.
“Amazingly 467 doctors were almost instantly signed up and trained as assistant investigators in the study.”
In all, 4,501 patients participated in the Argentine trials, representing 10% of all Pfizer trial participants worldwide.
Complete information about adverse events during this extensive trial in Argentina does not appear to have been released as of this writing.
However, Roux’s experience has since become public.
Roux, often referred to as the “disappeared” patient, volunteered for the trial (volunteer number 12312982) and received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Aug. 21, 2020.
According to Healy, Roux “felt pain and swelling in his arm right after the injection. Later that day he had nausea, difficulty swallowing, and felt hungover.”
After a series of symptoms, Roux — during a clinical trial visit on Aug. 23, 2020 — was classified as experiencing a “toxicity grade 1 adverse effect.”
He nevertheless received his second dose on Sept. 9, 2020.
According to Healy:
“On the way home by taxi, he started feeling unwell. At 19:30, he was short of breath, had a burning pain in his chest and was extremely fatigued. He lay on his bed and fell asleep. He woke up at 21:00 with nausea and fever (38-39 C) and was unable to get out of bed due to the fatigue.
“Over the next two days, he reports a high fever (41 C) and feeling delirious.
“On September 11, he was able to get out of bed and go to the bathroom when he observed his urine to be dark (like Coca-Cola). He felt as if his heart expanded, had a sudden lack of breath and fell unconscious on the floor for approximately 3 hours.
“Once he recovered, he felt tired, was uncomfortable, had a high heart rate on minor movement, was dizzy when changing posture. He had a chest pain which radiated to his left arm and back.”
On Sept. 12, 2020, Roux was admitted to the Hospital Alemán, where he stayed for two days. It was initially believed he had COVID-19, but he tested negative for the virus. His symptoms also were found to not correspond with viral pneumonia.
After a series of X-rays, CT scans and urine tests, Roux was discharged Sept. 14, 2020, after being diagnosed with an adverse reaction — specifically, an unequivocal pericardial effusion — to the coronavirus vaccine (high probability), according to his discharge summary.
Doctor who altered Roux’s record had ties to Gates, NIH, Big Pharma
However, on Sept. 17, Dr. Fernando Polack, Pfizer’s lead investigator for the Argentine trials according to a Pfizer document released in December 2021, reported in Roux’s record that his “hospitalization was not related to the vaccine.”
Even after Roux’s discharge, his health difficulties continued. As reported by Healy:
“On November 13 [2020], he had negative IgG and IgM SARS COV-2 (QML technique), which is unusual post vaccine.
“On February 24, 2021, a liver scan showed a minor degree of abnormality. In March 2021 and February 2022, his liver enzymes remained abnormal.”
Ultimately, Roux lost 14 kilograms (30.8 pounds) in a period of three to four months, and continued to suffer from fever and bouts of breathlessness for several months afterward.
Polack, who reported Roux’s hospitalization as unrelated to the vaccination, is known for his close ties with various vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For instance, he is listed as the lead author in a Dec. 31, 2020, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article on the purported efficacy of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
According to Healy, Polack also appears to be the founder of iTRIALS, a trial site management company, and another organization located at the same physical headquarters, the Fundación INFANT.
Healy wrote:
“When COVID struck Argentina, [Polack] and his Fundación became involved in a trial of immune plasma, taken from patients who had recovered from COVID, given to patients who had recently acquired the disease.
“In May 2020 he speculated that this would make COVID like an ordinary cold, and the Gates Foundation would offer financial support. He used high-profile press conferences to disseminate his exciting message.”
The conclusion of the study published in the NEJM following the plasma study reads:
“Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Fundación INFANT Pandemic Fund; Dirección de Sangre y Medicina Transfusional del Ministerio de Salud number, PAEPCC19, Plataforma de Registro Informatizado de Investigaciones en Salud number, 1421, and ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04479163.”
According to Healy, “[a] subsequent systematic review and meta-analysis failed to confirm these findings, noting ‘very serious imprecision concerns.’”
Healy pointed out that Polack, in his NEJM disclosure statement, did not indicate any conflict of interest or financial interest in the COVID-19 vaccine trials in Argentina, but:
“Polack reported grants from Novavax and personal fees from Janssen, Bavarian Nordic A/S, Pfizer, Sanofi, Regeneron, Merck, Medimmune, Vir Bio[technology], Ark Bio, Daiichi Sankyo outside the submitted work.
“At least eight of these companies are engaged in RSV vaccine research in babies and pregnant women. Fernando has mentioned a combined RSV, flu and COVID vaccine.”
And, in relation to Polack’s relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Healy reported:
“[Polack] also doesn’t mention his extensive financial involvement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This organization supports industry vaccine trials including Covid and RSV. Fernando is heavily involved through his Gates-sponsored Fundación INFANT in Buenos Aires in RSV trials and research.
“Gates sunk $82,553,834 into Novavax’s RSV vaccine ResVax which was shown to be ineffective in clinical trials in pregnant women.”
Polack’s own bio from a 2017 medical conference states “[h]is work is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes of Health [NIH], the Thrasher Research Fund, the Optimus Foundation and other international organizations.”
That same year, Polack testified at an FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting, where he “acknowledged having financial interests in or professional relationships with some of the affected firms identified for this meeting, namely Janssen [producer of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine], Novavax, and Bavarian Nordic.”
According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, Polack “also happens to be a consultant for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC),” and “a current adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.”
Heliobas Disciple
TB Fanatic
"Effective"? Latest CDC Data Shows FULLY Vaccinated Children Have Higher Covid Infection Rates Than Unvaccinated Children | The Gateway Pundit | by Julian Conradson
As the Biden Administration green-lights another experimental jab of mRNA for 5-11-year-olds, the latest CDC data reveals children of that age have a higher Covid infection rate than their unvaccinated peers.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
“Effective”? Latest CDC Data Shows FULLY Vaccinated Children Have Higher Covid Infection Rates Than Unvaccinated Children
By Julian Conradson
Published May 18, 2022 at 10:10pm
As the Biden Administration green-lights another experimental jab of mRNA for 5-11-year-olds, the latest CDC data reveals children of that age have a higher Covid infection rate than their unvaccinated peers. In other words, kids who are jabbed are more likely to catch Covid, which also means the vaccinated are spreading the virus more than the unvaccinated.
So, these kids must take their boosters… Must be that dang sCiEnCe again.
According to the latest CDC data, children aged 5-11 have been contracting Covid at a higher rate if they have been fully vaccinated since February, which is the first time the agency recorded more vaccinated Covid cases than unvaccinated.
On Feb. 12, the CDC reported a weekly case rate among fully vaccinated children aged 5-11 of 250.02 per 100,000, compared to 245.82 among the unvaccinated children in the same age group.
Although the vaccines were billed as and promised to be ‘effective,’ they definitely aren’t living up to being anything close to it. Since February, the infection rate among vaccinated children remained higher through the third week of March, which is the latest available data published – and things are trending in the wrong direction.
As of March, the difference in the case rates has nearly doubled, with the most recent numbers showing a -11 gap (36.23 per 100,000 [vaxxed] / 26.98 per 100,000[unvaxxed]).
The breakdown of the case rate for 5-11-year-olds between Feb. and Mar. is as follows:
February 19: 136.61 per 100,000 [vaxxed] / 120.63 per 100,000[unvaxxed]
February 26: 71.81 per 100,000 [vaxxed] / 61.52 per 100,000[unvaxxed]
March 5: 56.67 per 100,000 [vaxxed] / 40.61 per 100,000[unvaxxed]
March 12: 42.56 per 100,000 [vaxxed] / 28.75 per 100,000[unvaxxed]
March 19: 36.23 per 100,000 [vaxxed] / 26.98 per 100,000[unvaxxed]
The Biden Administration and the FDA authorized the experimental vaccine for children in this age group in November of 2021. In just three short months, enough children had become vaccinated and the case rate flipped. Any protection the jab provided quickly wore off, making the fully vaccinated children more susceptible to and more likely to spread the virus than the unvaccinated.
In all, there are over 28 million children aged 5-11 in the United States. Unfortunately, a whopping ~8 million of them (or 28.8%) have been fully vaccinated already, according to the Mayo Clinic. Not only is the virus proven to be effectively non-lethal for children, especially ones of this young age (99.995% or higher recovery rate), but the experimental vaccine has proven to have negative effectiveness – aka higher infection rate – across multiple age groups.
In addition to the poor results, the mRNA vaccine has been directly linked to serious and life-threatening side effects that have become prevalent in the wake of its rollout. Most concerningly of which – myocarditis – is popping up at an unprecedented rate in otherwise healthy children and young people all across the world. According to heart experts like Dr. Peter McCullough, who is the most published Cardiologist in the world, “an extraordinary number of young individuals that are going to have permanent heart damage” because of this experimental jab.
Keep in mind, Fauci, Biden, and the rest of the tyrannical public health bureaucracy just Ok’d boosters for 5-11-year-olds. Considering everything that’s publicly available, let alone what the federal government has compiled, this is beyond criminal. How much more data is needed to pull these shots off the market?
Meanwhile, Pfizer is cashing in at a tune of $1,000 per second. Those Fed kickbacks are coming in hot.
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Nevada Officials Are Investigating Chicago Laboratory That Missed 96% of COVID Positive Cases | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
Nevada officials are investigating a Chicago laboratory after they found that 96% of their tests missed 96% of positive COVID cases.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Nevada Officials Are Investigating Chicago Laboratory That Missed 96% of COVID Positive Cases
By Jim Hoft
Published May 18, 2022 at 8:20pm
Nevada officials are investigating a Chicago laboratory after they found that 96% of their tests missed 96% of positive COVID cases.
State public health officials found that Chicago-based Northshore’s PCR tests missed 96% of the positive cases.
They would have had better luck with a thermometer.
This also reveals the COVID virus was not the serious public health threat we were led to believe or there would have been mass deaths in the state. There weren’t.
ProPublica reported:
A ProPublica investigation into the company’s operations in Nevada, including a review of more than 3,000 pages of internal emails obtained through public records requests, shows the Chicago laboratory’s testing was unreliable from the start. As evidence mounted that Northshore was telling infected people that they had tested negative for the virus, government managers in Nevada ignored their own scientists’ warnings and expanded the lab’s testing beyond schools to the general public.
Ultimately, state public health officials found that Northshore’s PCR tests missed 96% of the positive cases from the university campus — errors that sent people infected with COVID-19 back into the community. But to date, neither state nor county health officials have alerted the public to the inaccurate tests.
ProPublica’s investigation also found that Northshore used political connections, including contracting with the sons of a close friend to the governor, to fast-track its state laboratory license application and secure testing agreements with five government entities in the state. Those agreements not only gave Northshore the exclusive right to test and bill for thousands of people a week, they also gave its lab a legitimacy lacking among upstart testing companies that had set up shop in strip malls and parking lots across the country.
In mid-January, when state regulators finally launched an investigation into Northshore, they found the company had been operating unlicensed sites across Nevada. They allowed the company to continue its rapid antigen testing anyway.
Read the rest here.
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Here We Go: US Government to Extend Covid-19 Public Health Emergency Past July | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hᴏft
The US government has extended again for the nth time the Covid-19 public health emergency past mid-July even though daily new cases of COVID-19 infection have declined since the Omicron surge.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Here We Go: US Government to Extend Covid-19 Public Health Emergency Past July
By Jim Hoft
Published May 18, 2022 at 3:45pm
The US government has extended again for the nth time the Covid-19 public health emergency past mid-July even though daily new cases of COVID-19 infection have declined since the Omicron surge.
The Department of Health and Human Services has continually extended the public-health emergency since its implementation in January 2020.
The declaration allows the US to grant emergency authorizations of drugs, vaccines, and other medical countermeasures and has enabled millions of Americans to get health coverage through Medicaid, among other benefits, according to Bloomberg.
On April 16, Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, extended the public health emergency an additional 90 days through mid-July.
Now, HHS is set to extend the public health emergency again for another month.
Bloomberg reported:
The US government will extend the Covid-19 public-health emergency past mid-July, a move to continue pandemic-era policies as the nearly 2-1/2-year outbreak drags on.
On April 16, HHS extended the public-health emergency an additional 90 days through mid-July. The declaration will be extended beyond that period, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named as the details aren’t yet public. That means various measures to relax restrictions in how care is accessed across the health system will continue.
An HHS spokesperson said that the public-health emergency currently remains in effect, and the department will continue to provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration.
National health organizations, including the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have lobbied for the designation to continue.
Last week, the groups wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra urging the Biden administration to maintain the emergency “until it is clear that the global pandemic has receded and the capabilities authorized by the PHE are no longer necessary.”
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My comment: when looking for NK news, it seems they are about to test another ICBM and another nuke. Not really a discussion for this thread but I thought it was interesting that Kim isn't letting Covid stop him. Maybe he's trying to show the world that despite the pandemic in his country he's not vulnerable
.
kcnawatch.org
(fair use applies)
Spread of Epidemic and Result of Treatment Informed
Date: 19/05/2022 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source
Pyongyang, May 19 (KCNA) -- According to information of the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters, over 262 270 persons with fever, some 213 280 recoveries and 1 death were reported from 18:00 of May 17 to 18:00 of May 18 throughout the country.
As of 18:00 of May 18 since late April, the total number of persons with fever is over 1 978 230, of which more than 1 238 000 have recovered and at least 740 160 are under medical treatment.
The death toll stands at 63. -0-
www.kcna.kp (Juche111.5.19.)
.Newstream | KCNA Watch
kcnawatch.org
Spread of Epidemic and Result of Treatment Informed
Date: 19/05/2022 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source
Pyongyang, May 19 (KCNA) -- According to information of the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters, over 262 270 persons with fever, some 213 280 recoveries and 1 death were reported from 18:00 of May 17 to 18:00 of May 18 throughout the country.
As of 18:00 of May 18 since late April, the total number of persons with fever is over 1 978 230, of which more than 1 238 000 have recovered and at least 740 160 are under medical treatment.
The death toll stands at 63. -0-
www.kcna.kp (Juche111.5.19.)
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North Korea's suspected COVID-19 caseload nears 2 million- Republic World
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday reported 262,270 more cases of people with suspected symptoms of COVID-19 as its pandemic caseload neared 2 million — a week after the country acknowledged the outbreak and scrambled to slow the rate of infections despite a lack of health care...
www.republicworld.com
North Korea's Suspected COVID-19 Caseload Nears 2 Million
North Korea's suspected COVID-19 caseload nears 2 million
Written By Associated Press Television News
First Published: 19th May, 2022 06:15 IST | Last Updated: 19th May, 2022 06:17 IST
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday reported 262,270 more cases of people with suspected symptoms of COVID-19 as its pandemic caseload neared 2 million — a week after the country acknowledged the outbreak and scrambled to slow the rate of infections despite a lack of health care resources.
The country is also trying to prevent its fragile economy from deteriorating, but the outbreak could be worse than officially reported because of scarce resources for virus testing and the possibility that North Korea could be deliberately underreporting deaths to soften the political impact on authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea's anti-virus headquarters reported a single death in the 24 hours to 6 p.m. Wednesday to bring its death toll to 63, which experts have said is abnormally small compared to the suspected number of infections.
The official Korean Central News Agency reported that more than 1.98 million people have become sick with feverish symptoms since late April, which are mostly believed to be coronavirus omicron variant infections, although the country has only confirmed a small number of infection cases because of the scarcity of tests. At least 740,160 people are in quarantine, the news agency reported.
After maintaining a dubious claim that it had kept the virus out of the country for two and a half years, North Korea acknowledged its first COVID-19 infections last Thursday, saying that tests from an unspecified number of people in capital Pyongyang showed they were infected with the omicron variant.
Kim has called the outbreak a “great upheaval” and has imposed what the country described as maximum preventive measures that strictly restricted the movement of people and supplies between cities and regions.
He mobilized more than 1 million workers to find and quarantine people with fevers and other suspected COVID-19 symptoms. Thousands of troops were ordered to help transport medicine in the capital of Pyongyang.
State media images showed health workers in white and orange hazmat suits guarding the city’s closed-off streets, disinfecting buildings and streets and delivering food and other supplies to apartment blocks.
But large groups of workers continue to gather at farms, mining facilities, power stations and construction sites to spur production because Kim has demanded that economic goals must be met, the Korean Central News Agency reported.
Experts have said Kim cannot afford to bring the country to a standstill because that would unleash further shock on a broken economy damaged by mismanagement, crippling U.S.-led sanctions over his nuclear weapons ambitions and pandemic border closures.
The country faces an urgent push to protect crops amid an ongoing drought that hit the country during a crucial rice-planting season, a worrisome development in a country that has long suffered from food insecurity. North Korean state media also said that Kim’s trophy construction projects, including the building of 10,000 new houses in the town of Hwasong, are being “propelled as scheduled.”
“All sectors of the national economy are stepping up the production to the maximum while strictly observing the anti-epidemic steps taken by the party and the state,” Korean Central News Agency reported, referring to the travel restrictions and a virus controls at workplaces, including keeping workers separated in groups by their job classifications.
The news agency added: “Units are quarantined reasonably at major construction sites in which the cherished desire of our party is coming into reality and at key industrial sectors including metal, chemical, electricity and coal industries. And construction and production are being steadily accelerated, with precedence given to the anti-epidemic work.”
Kee Park, a global health specialist at Harvard Medical School who has worked on health care projects in North Korea, said the country’s number of new cases should start to slow because of the strengthened preventive measures.
But it will be challenging for North Kore to provide treatment for the already large number of people with COVID-19 and deaths may possibly approach a scale of tens of thousands, considering the size of the country’s caseload, Park said.
It’s unclear whether North Korea’s admission of the outbreak communicates a willingness to receive outside help. The country has shunned millions of vaccine shots offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, likely because of international monitoring requirements that are required to receive the vaccines.
Kim Tae-hyo, deputy national security adviser for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, told reporters on Thursday that North Korea has ignored offers of help from South Korea and the U.S. to contain the outbreak.
Experts have said North Korea may be more willing to accept help from China, its main ally.
(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
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Q&A with A&V Livestream 5/18/22 8:00 PM
2 hrs 11 min 17 sec
Streamed live 6 hours ago
Vincent Racaniello
Virologists Amy Rosenfeld and Vincent Racaniello answer your COVID-19 questions (or any virus questions) on this livestream of 5/18/22 at 8:00 PM eastern US.
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Feds say spike in COVID-19 numbers could mean return of masks, as NYC requests usage in schools
COVID-19 case rates have risen nationally 26% in the last week.
justthenews.com
Feds say spike in COVID-19 numbers could mean return of masks, as NYC requests usage in schools
COVID-19 case rates have risen nationally 26% in the last week.
by Sophie Mann
Updated: May 18, 2022 - 2:58pm
Federal federal health officials warned Wednesday that COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are again increasing, with higher numbers projected for the coming months, and that the hardest-hit areas should consider reinstating an indoor mask mandate.
The rising numbers are currently concentrated n the Northeast and Midwest, but "prior increases of infections, in different waves of infection, have demonstrated that this travels across the country," said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
"We urge local leaders to encourage use of prevention strategies like masks in public indoor settings and increasing access to testing and treatment," she also said.
In New York City schools, masks are no longer required, except for the youngest of students. However, city health officials are now asking that all students, teachers and staff wear face coverings inside as the city's COVID risk level went from medium to high Tuesday.
"We urge you to take the following proven precautions to protect your family and our communities: wear a mask," Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan and Schools Chancellor David Banks said in a letter to parents. "We recommend that everyone age 2 and older wear a well-fitting mask in all public indoor settings, including at school and early childhood education programs, even if not required."
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha warned that Congress must immediately new funding for more vaccines and treatments, or risk becoming increasingly vulnerable to the virus this coming fall and winter.
The most recent wave of the virus hit the U.S. during December and January and was driven by the more contagious but generally milder omicron variant.
Walensky noted Wednesday that the U.S. is now seeing another rise in cases, including a 26% national increase in the last week. Experts believe the rising case numbers are being driven by an omicron subvariant.
Though hospitalizations remain low, and much lower than during the omicron wave, they have risen 19% since last week.
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A third of US should be considering masks, officials say
COVID-19 cases are increasing in the United States — and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking. Increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting...
A third of US should be considering masks, officials say
ZEKE MILLER and MIKE STOBBE AP
Wed, May 18, 2022, 12:06 PM·4 min read
WASHINGTON (AP) — COVID-19 cases are increasing in the United States — and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking.
Increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting more of the country under guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that call for masking and other infection precautions.
Right now, about a third of the U.S. population lives in areas that are considered at higher risk — mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. Those are areas where people should already be considering wearing masks indoors — but Americans elsewhere should also take notice, officials said.
“Prior increases of infections, in different waves of infection, have demonstrated that this travels across the country,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said at a White House briefing with reporters.
For an increasing number of areas, “we urge local leaders to encourage use of prevention strategies like masks in public indoor settings and increasing access to testing and treatment,” she said.
However, officials were cautious about making concrete predictions, saying how much worse the pandemic gets will depend on several factors, including to what degree previous infections will protect against new variants.
Last week, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha warned in an interview with The Associated Press the U.S. will be increasingly vulnerable to the coronavirus this fall and winter if Congress doesn’t swiftly approve new funding for more vaccines and treatments.
Jha warned that without additional funding from Congress for the virus would cause “unnecessary loss of life” in the fall and winter, when the U.S. runs out of treatments.
He added the U.S. was already falling behind other nations in securing supplies of the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines and said that the domestic manufacturing base of at-home tests is already drying up as demand drops off.
Jha said domestic test manufactures have started shuttering lines and laying off workers, and in the coming weeks will begin to sell off equipment and prepare to exit the business of producing tests entirely unless the U.S. government has money to purchase more tests, like the hundreds of millions it has sent out for free to requesting households this year.
That would leave the U.S. reliant on other countries for testing supplies, risking shortages during a surge, Jha warned.
About 8.5 million households placed orders for the latest tranche of 8 free tests since ordering opened on Monday, Jha added.
The pandemic is now 2 1/2 years old. And the U.S. has seen — depending how you count them — five waves of COVID-19 during that time, with the later surges driven by mutated versions of the coronavirus. A fifth wave occurred mainly in December and January, caused by the omicron variant.
The omicron variant spread much more easily than earlier versions.
Some experts are worried the country now is seeing signs of a sixth wave, driven by an omicron subvariant. On Wednesday, Walensky noted a steady increase in COVID-19 cases in the past five weeks, including a 26% increase nationally in the last week.
Hospitalizations also are rising, up 19% in the past week, though they remain much lower than during the omicron wave, she said.
In late February, as that wave was ebbing, the CDC released a new set of measures for communities where COVID-19 was easing its grip, with less of a focus on positive test results and more on what’s happening at hospitals.
Walensky said more than 32% of the country currently live in an area with medium or high COVID-19 community levels, including more than 9% in the highest level, where CDC recommends that masks and other mitigation efforts be used.
In the last week, an additional 8% of Americans were living in a county in medium or high COVID-19 community levels.
Officials said they are concerned that waning immunity and relaxed mitigation measures across the country may contribute to a continued rise in infections and illnesses across the country. They encouraged people — particularly older adults — to get boosters.
Some health experts say the government should be taking clearer and bolder steps.
The CDC community level guidelines are confusing to the public, and don’t give a clear picture of how much virus transmission is occurring in a community, said Dr. Lakshmi Ganapathi, an infectious diseases specialist at Harvard University.
When the government officials make recommendations but do not set rules, “it ultimately rests on every single individual picking and choosing the public health that works for them. But that’s not what is effective. If you’re talking about stemming hospitalizations and even deaths, all of these interventions work better when people do it collectively,” she said.
___
Stobbe reported from New York.
___
The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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It's happening again: COVID-19 cases are back on the rise. There are 3 main reasons why.
COVID-19 infections are up, driven by new variants, waning immunity from vaccines and past infections and fewer people masking, health officials say.
It's happening again: COVID-19 cases are back on the rise. There are 3 main reasons why.
Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Wed, May 18, 2022, 6:02 PM·4 min read
COVID-19 infections continue to rise, driven by new and more infectious omicron subvariants, waning immunity from both vaccines and previous infections and fewer people masking up, health officials said at a White House briefing Wednesday.
About a third of Americans now live in an area with medium or high COVID-19 rates, with reported cases up 26% from last week, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control an Prevention.
On average, about 3,000 Americans are being hospitalized per day and 275 are dying. Walensky urged people in communities with higher infection and hospitalization rates to protect themselves by masking in indoor public places and to get a booster shot if vaccinated and to get vaccinated if they're not.
Areas of increased infection and hospitalization include the Northeast and the eastern corridor, as well as parts of the upper Midwest.
"We've always said, put your mask aside when infection rates are low and pick it up again when infection rates are higher," she said.
WHAT IS YOUR COMMUNITY'S COVID-19 LEVEL?
Current COVID-19 Community Levels
A rising tide of omicron subvariants is in part behind the rise, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
There are now at least four omicron subvariants circulating in the United States. BA.2 is dominant, making up 50.9% of cases but BA.2.12.1 is almost equal to it with 47.5%. The newer strains are even more infectious than previous strains, adding to the increase in cases.
He urged people who test positive for COVID-19 to reach out to their health care providers "as soon as possible" to see if a treatment is appropriate for them, as treatments work better if begun quickly.
Omicron doesn't protect against other variants
The administration's continuing push for boosters and vaccination comes as a paper published Wednesday in the journal "Nature" showed a case of omicron in unvaccinated people provides very little immunity against other variants of the virus that causes COVID-19.
"Because omicron is so infective, we were really hoping that it would help bring us closer to 'herd immunity,'" said Dr. Melanie Ott, a virologist at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco and lead author on the paper.
Instead, the findings showed people infected with omicron only get protection against infections from omicron subvariants, not infections from other strains of the virus. So far, there have been five main variants, alpha, beta, gamma, delta and omicron.
That's bad news for anyone who expects a recent case of COVID-19 will protect them against future cases of the rapidly mutating virus. But the good news, said Ott, is if they get vaccinated they have a shot at "super immunity."
People who've had omicron and also been vaccinated had the ability to neutralize all tested variants, not just omicron subvariants, the research showed.
"If you had omicron, why miss out on the benefit of getting that great enhanced immunity from infection plus vaccination?" she said.
Funding for vaccines & treatments
A new generation of COVID-19 vaccines are expected this fall or winter, said Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House's new coronavirus response coordinator. He and others are talking with Congress to ensure funding is available so everyone who wants them can have them.
"We do not have the resources to do that right now," he said.
Jha is on leave from his position as dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and began his new White House position in March. He said he was spending "a lot of time up on the Hill" to convince Congress to authorize more emergency aid money for COVID-19, an effort which has thus far failed as Congress wrestles with more funding for Ukraine.
The same goes for promising new treatments several companies are now working on, he said.
"No one in the United States is in negotiations with these companies for these treatments because we don't have the resources. The companies know that, and therefore we can't ensure that Americans get access to the next generation of therapies," he said.
The COVID-19 briefing was the first the White House has held in six weeks and also the first led by Jha.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why are COVID-19 cases rising and will an omicron infection protect me?
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CDC urges people to mask where COVID is spiking
Federal public health officials said on Wednesday that masking should return in parts of the country with rapidly rising rates of coronavirus infection. But local and state leaders have thus far shown little willingness to reimpose mask mandates.
CDC urges people to mask where COVID is spiking
Alexander Nazaryan Senior White House Correspondent
Wed, May 18, 2022, 2:36 PM
WASHINGTON — Desperate to keep the coronavirus pandemic from spoiling a third consecutive summer, federal public health officials said Wednesday that masking should return in parts of the country with rapidly rising rates of infection. But although cases have been rising for several weeks, local and state leaders have thus far shown little willingness to reimpose mask mandates, even in Democratic municipalities and states.
“We urge local leaders to encourage the use of prevention strategies like masking in public indoor settings and increasing access to testing and to treatment,” the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said at a briefing of the White House pandemic response team.
She also said that given the efficacy of one-way masking and the over-the-counter availability of testing, people do not need to wait for government action to take action of their own.
“In areas where community levels are high, everyone should be using prevention measures and wearing a mask in public indoor settings,” Walensky said, adding that in areas of moderate community spread, people should “consider” masking as well, based on individual risk factors like age and overall health.
She noted that 32% of Americans now live in a community with high or moderate coronavirus levels, an increase of 8% on the previous week. Hospitalizations are rising, too, though deaths remain at a relatively low level, a testament to the effectiveness of treatments like Paxlovid.
Shortly after the pandemic briefing concluded, the White House revealed that President Biden’s daughter, Ashley, had tested positive for the coronavirus. She had been expected to travel with first lady Jill Biden to Latin America but, as millions of Americans have had to do over the last two years, was forced to cancel her plans and isolate instead.
“There’s a lot of infections across America,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who heads the pandemic response team, said on Wednesday. The nation is now recording some 94,000 new cases per day, he noted. By contrast, early April saw daily averages of as few as 25,000 cases.
“What is primarily driving that is these incredibly contagious subvariants,” Jha said, referring to strains like BA.2.12.1, which is highly transmissible but less virulent than earlier iterations of the virus.
“We have a pretty high degree of immunity in our population,” from either vaccination or infection from an earlier variant, Jha acknowledged. But vaccine immunity wanes, and immunity gained from prior infection does not guarantee that an individual will not be infected again.
A mainstay in the early days of the pandemic, White House coronavirus-related briefings had become increasingly rare this spring. But with cases in the Northeast rising thanks to the Omicron subvariant, the White House is eager to show that it is still taking the pandemic seriously, as it addresses other pressing issues, including the war in Ukraine, access to abortion and white supremacist violence.
Local and state leaders have been reluctant to reimpose mask mandates, in part because of political resistance from conservatives but also in recognition of the fact that getting people to again follow guidance that has been revoked could prove challenging.
In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams — who has pushed for the city to reopen — acknowledged that cases are rising again. He nevertheless resisted a step that some public health officials believe is necessary whenever such spikes occur.
“We’re not at the point of mandating masks,” he said Monday.
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Dr. Fauci Warns All Vaccinated People "It Is So Important" to Do This Now
With mask mandates being lifted, health officials dropping vaccine requirements, and top virus experts talking about the end of the country's pandemic phase, many of us have started picturing our lives without the coronavirus. But even if we're ready to let COVID go, the virus is holding fast to...
Dr. Fauci Warns All Vaccinated People "It Is So Important" to Do This Now
Kali Coleman - BestLife
Wed, May 18, 2022, 5:28 PM·4 min read
With mask mandates being lifted, health officials dropping vaccine requirements, and top virus experts talking about the end of the country's pandemic phase, many of us have started picturing our lives without the coronavirus. But even if we're ready to let COVID go, the virus is holding fast to the ground. Numbers are back on the rise again in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In just the last week alone, infections have increased by more than 30 percent, while hospitalizations have gone up by over 17 percent.
As a result of the rising cases and hospitalizations, top U.S. health officials held their first coronavirus briefing in six weeks. These press conferences are led by the White House COVID-19 Response Team, who update the public on the current progression of the pandemic and how they can keep themselves safe.
During the May 18 briefing, Ashish Jha, MD, the new White House COVID-19 response coordinator, warned that the number of infections in the county is "actually substantially higher" than what the CDC is reporting right now, which is about 100,000 cases a day. According to Jha, the underreporting is likely the result of many people being diagnosed by at-home tests. Jha said that the large number of infections is being primarily driven by "incredibly contagious" subvariants of Omicron.
"We were hit with the BA.1 wave of infections in December, January. We saw BA.2. And now we're seeing, in a large chunk of the country, BA.2.12.1," he explained. "They are more contagious with more immune escape, and they are driving a lot of the increases in infection that we're seeing across the nation right now. And that is—that is a huge challenge."
Top White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci, MD, said that the new subvariants pose a tough challenge for the U.S., and they've been allowed to rise up because people are still getting infected in large numbers around the world. "Variants will continue to emerge if the virus circulates globally. We can keep the level of virus to the lowest possible level, which is the best way to avoid variants. Because the less replication, the less mutation; the less mutation, the less variants," he noted.
Variants make it impossible to eliminate COVID entirely, but there are ways to mitigate the risks and reduce the spread of the virus. According to the experts, the most effective step for individuals is to get every coronavirus vaccine or booster they are eligible for.
"Immunity does wane, and that is why it is so important to stay up to date with vaccines and particularly boosters," Fauci said.
According to the CDC, about 220.3 million people, or more than 66 percent of the total U.S. population has been fully vaccinated as of May 12. But out of those, only 101.5 million people have received a booster dose—meaning about half of the total booster-eligible population has still not gotten their additional shot.
During the briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, said that boosters are important for all individuals, especially for those more vulnerable to severe COVID, as an additional dose "may help strengthen their protection against infection, urgent care visits, and especially hospitalization and death."
"So whether it is your first booster or your second, if you haven't had a vaccine dose since the beginning of Dec. 2021 and you're eligible, now is the time to get one," Walensky advised.
Fauci also noted that vaccinations have already made a huge impact in the U.S., despite the amount of work that still needs to be done. "Vaccines continue to provide strong protection against severe disease. And that's the reason why, as cases go up and even more infections than are recorded cases, the discrepancy or ratio between hospitalization and cases clearly is much less than it was, for example, in the Delta wave," Fauci said.
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How Often Can You Get COVID-19? Experts Say Reinfection Is More Common Than You Think
COVID reinfections are on the rise, so how often can you get COVID-19? Doctors weigh in on possible frequency of infection and how the new COVID-19 variants play a role.
How Often Can You Get COVID-19? Experts Say Reinfection Is More Common Than You Think
Korin Miller - Prevention
Wed, May 18, 2022, 11:33 AM
Earlier in the pandemic, it was easy to assume that, once you got COVID-19, you were immune from getting it again—or, at least, protected for a while. But reinfections became increasingly common as the pandemic wore on and it’s now not uncommon to hear of someone getting COVID twice—or more.
Unfortunately, reinfections can happen after you’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19, too. All of that raises a huge question: How many times can you get COVID? And, with that, how often can you get COVID?
Experts point out that we’re still only two years into this pandemic. And, with that, health experts are still figuring a lot of this out. “We’re still learning,” says Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York. Still, there are some things doctors know about COVID reinfections at this point. Here’s a breakdown.
So, how many times can you get COVID-19?
There’s no hard and fast answer here and, unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a limit on how many times you can get COVID-19. “Based on experience with other coronaviruses that are endemic, people will get COVID multiple times during their lives,” says Amesh A. Adalja, MD, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
A recent study published in the journal Science analyzed epidemiological surveillance data in South Africa and found that reinfections of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) seem to be more common with the Omicron wave. Among the 2.9 million people with a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19, there were 105,323 suspected reinfections.
The researchers also included this note: “Individuals with identified reinfections since November 1, 2021 had experienced primary infections in all three prior waves, and an increase in third infections has been detected since mid-November 2021. Many individuals experiencing third infections had second infections during the third (Delta) wave that ended in September 2021, strongly suggesting that these infections resulted from immune evasion rather than waning immunity.”
Meaning, even when these people had immunity from a previous infection, they were still vulnerable to a new COVID infection with a different variant.
As for how many times you can get infected, “the answer is ‘we don’t know,’” Dr. Russo says. “More than once is clearly the answer,” he adds.
The big issue is variants, Dr. Russo says. While a previous infection can provide some level of protection against future variants, it doesn’t seem to completely get rid of your risk of getting reinfected. “If you were infected with an earlier variant, they’re quite imperfect in protecting against Omicron,” he says. “And even with Omicron, you have BA.1, BA.2, and BA.2.12.1 to think about.”
How often can you get COVID-19?
Public health experts used to think that, once you got COVID, you were protected from another infection for at least three months. But that’s not really the case anymore, Dr. Russo says.
“We thought you were good for three months in terms of waning immunity but we’ve learned that the variant is critical as well,” he says. “People who might have gotten Delta are at risk of Omicron. The same is playing out with people who got BA.1 over the holidays—BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 shows up and they’re getting infected with those variants.”
In general, Dr. Adalja says, reinfections “will usually be separated by several months to a year.” But, he adds, “With a virus like SARS-CoV-2, and the current vaccine technologies, I think that reinfections are unavoidable.”
How to protect yourself from a COVID-19 reinfection
The ways of protecting yourself from a COVID reinfection are similar to how you’d protect yourself from a first COVID infection, Dr. Russo says. “Get vaxxed to the max and, when there’s high community burden of disease, avoid risky situations and wear a mask,” he says. “Our vaccines are imperfect against preventing infections, but that is your best strategy.” (See our guide to the best N95 and KN95 masks).
Dr. Russo cautions against relying on immunity from a previous infection. “If you’ve been infected previously, your best protection is packaging that with vaccination,” he says. “You shouldn’t feel like, ‘I’ve had COVID, this is behind me and it’s all good.’ That’s just not the reality.”
This article is accurate as of press time. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly evolves and the scientific community’s understanding of the novel coronavirus develops, some of the information may have changed since it was last updated. While we aim to keep all of our stories up to date, please visit online resources provided by the CDC, WHO, and your local public health department to stay informed on the latest news. Always talk to your doctor for professional medical advice.