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After Data Show Vaccinated at Higher Risk of Dying From COVID, Canadian Province Ends Monthly Reports
After the Manitoba, Canada, public health agency reported data showing those fully vaccinated (not boosted) for COVID-19 are at higher risk of dying from the virus compared to unvaccinated individuals, health officials stopped reporting on the data — a trend seen in other countries, including Scotland, the U.K. and the U.S.

By Julie Comber, Ph.D. Madhava Setty, M.D.
08/29/22

Manitoba, population 1.4 million, was the first Canadian province whose public health agency reported data showing those who are fully vaccinated (not boosted) for COVID-19 are at higher risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated individuals.

The age-standardized data are from May 2022, but last appeared in Manitoba’s August 3 report:

chart 1 figure 6 age standardized data may 2022
Credit: Manitoba Public Health

As the figure above indicates, for the month of May, Manitoba Public Health reported a 40% increased risk of death associated with COVID-19 in “fully vaccinated” individuals compared to unvaccinated.

The risk of death for those who were boosted was the same as for unvaccinated individuals.

Though three months old, the May data are, as of this writing, the last reported by the Canadian province.

Manitoba’s trending risk of severe outcomes by vaccination status

The May data on severe outcomes by vaccination status are part of a monthly trend suggesting reduced vaccine effectiveness over time.

By the end of December 2021, 74.7% of Manitobans were vaccinated for COVID-19 and 18.7% were not vaccinated, according to Manitoba Public Health’s weekly report for December 19-25, 2021.

At that time, Manitoba was not reporting on severe COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status.

On Jan. 12, 2022, Global News reported that between Nov. 22, 2021, and Jan. 2, 2022, boosted individuals (purple bar) were 63 times less likely to die from COVID-19 than unvaccinated individuals (red bar):

chart-2-severe-outcomes-death
Credit: Global News

Boosted individuals also were 26 times less likely to be hospitalized:

chart-3-severe-outcomes-hospitalizations
Credit: Global News

And boosted individuals were 139 times less likely to be admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) than unvaccinated individuals:

chart-4-icu-admissions
Credit: Global News

The Manitoba Public Health’s weekly reports did not report this data at the time.

Manitoba first reported severe outcomes by vaccination status in March 2022, and then updated the numbers each month for the next three months.

In those reports, the risk of a severe outcome was age-standardized and reported per 100,000 person days.
Age-standardization, also called age-adjustment, is a statistical procedure that allows for the comparison of groups with different age structures. It is used because the risks of death and severe outcomes are different depending on a person’s age.

With COVID-19, for example, it is well known that older adults are at a higher risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. If older adults are more likely to opt for vaccination and boosting, then the vaccinated and boosted groups would have a greater proportion of older people, who are at higher risk of severe outcomes, than the unvaccinated group.

Without age-standardization, the statistics would not show the impact of vaccination independent of age.
Here were Manitoba Public Health’s first comparative data around COVID-19 age-standardized severe outcomes:

chart-5-age-standardized-severe-outcome-1024x664.jpg
Credit: Manitoba Public Health

Though there were nearly 5 of 16 weeks that overlapped with the time window on which Global News reported, the vaccine’s effectiveness against severe outcomes had somehow plummeted.

Then in the subsequent report that covered the month of March only, vaccine effectiveness dropped more (notice the 3 times greater risk of ICU admission in the partially vaccinated):

chart-6-vaccine-effectiveness-dropped
Credit: Manitoba Public Health

And in the next report, vaccine effectiveness dropped further still:

chart-7-vaccine-effectiveness-dropped-further
Credit: Manitoba Public Health

Manitoba Public Health, without explanation, stopped reporting the rate of severe outcomes in the “partially vaccinated.”

Finally, the most recent report showed us results from May 2022:

chart-8-may-2022
Credit: Manitoba Public Health

For the month of May, Figure 6 (above) shows that unvaccinated individuals were 40% less at risk of COVID-19-associated death than fully vaccinated individuals, and their risk was the same as boosted individuals.

Unvaccinated people also were 30% less likely to require hospitalization than vaccinated people, and 10% more likely to be hospitalized than boosted people.

Unvaccinated people were more likely to require ICU admission — 20% more than fully vaccinated people and 80% more likely than boosted individuals.

Manitoba did not report on these outcomes for the month of June or any time period since.

Manitoba’s latest report, dated August 11, announced:

“Monthly updates about severe outcomes after vaccination have been discontinued starting Week 31 [July 31-Aug. 6]. Manitoba Health will continue to monitor COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and report periodically when data allow.”

At the time of this writing, Manitoba Public Heath had not responded to a request to explain why it stopped reporting this data.

Despite their latest data showing an increased risk of death and hospitalizations in vaccinated individuals and no survival benefit in the boosted, the authors paradoxically summarize:

“COVID-19 vaccines continue to provide important protection against serious illness following infection due to all variants of concern (VOC) of COVID-19.”

Public health agencies stop reporting inconvenient data

Though independent journalist Alex Berenson brought attention to this official data, there have been no news reports in the mainstream media about this disquieting trend in Manitoba.

Nor have the media reported on why Manitoba suddenly stopped releasing this data. This appears to be part of a larger trend of public agencies ending reporting on severe COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status.

For example, the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC), like Manitoba, for a time produced weekly reports that included age-stratified data on severe COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status.

But at the end of July, the BC Centre for Disease Control website stated, “As of July 28, the Outcomes by Vax and Vax Donut Charts have been retired.”

CTV News Vancouver, a Canadian news station, asked the BC Ministry of Health for an explanation. An emailed response from a ministry spokesperson read, in part:

“As most of the population has now been vaccinated with at least two doses of vaccine and many more have been infected with COVID-19, the data became hard to interpret.”

Ontario, next door to Manitoba, also used to report weekly on severe COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status.
However, the “COVID-19 Vaccine Data in Ontario” website now states that hospitalization by vaccination status data and cases by vaccination status data will no longer be published as of June 30, and that case rates by vaccination status and age group data will no longer be published as of July 13.

Ontario continues to report deaths by vaccination status, but as raw data in a CSV file that can be downloaded and that requires the person who downloads it to generate the graph.

Scotland stops reporting data due to ‘increasing risk of misinterpretation from growing complexities’

Scotland releases weekly reports and used to report severe COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status.

In the weekly report released on March 2, Public Health Scotland (PHS) announced that severe outcomes by vaccination status “will no longer be reported on a weekly basis from 16 February 2022.”

Officials said:

“Due to the increasing risk of misinterpretation from growing complexities as the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year (as described below), PHS has taken the decision to no longer report COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths by vaccination status on a weekly basis.”

If we examine Scotland’s last published comparative data, we see the unvaccinated enjoyed significant protection from infection compared to the vaccinated:

chart-9-scotland-comparative-covid-vaccine-data
Credit: Public Health Scotland

The above table shows that the age-standardized case rate was growing in the fully vaccinated and boosted compared to the unvaccinated.

In other words, the vaccine effectiveness was negative and growing more negative as time went on.

With regard to severe outcomes like hospitalization, the fully vaccinated had a greater risk than the unvaccinated every week and approached nearly double of the unvaccinated by the end of the reporting period:

chart-10-scotland-severe-outcomes-hospitalization
Credit: Public Health Scotland

PHS highlighted the advantage the boosted had over the unvaccinated in green. Was that the intent? Or was it to distract us from what was happening in the fully vaccinated?

Finally, with regard to COVID-19 mortality, once again the fully vaccinated were at a greater risk of dying:

chart 11 scotland death severe outcomes
Credit: Public Health Scotland

Boosted Scots remained at lower risk of dying than the unvaccinated as the green shading accentuates.
Nevertheless, the last time Scotland reported these numbers the fully vaccinated were doing worse against the very disease the vaccine was intended to protect them from.

UK stops publishing data because . . . no more free COVID testing?

The UK Health Security Agency’s weekly reports also once included a section called “Vaccination status in cases, deaths and hospitalisations.”

However, in the Week 14 report, released April 7, the agency announced, “Data on the vaccination status of COVID-19 cases, and deaths and hospitalisations with COVID-19, is no longer published.”

In the relevant section of the report, it states:

“From 1 April 2022, the UK Government ended provision of free universal COVID-19 testing for the general public in England, as set out in the plan for living with COVID-19.

“Such changes in testing policies affect the ability to robustly monitor COVID-19 cases by vaccination status, therefore, from the week 14 report onwards this section of the report will no longer be published.

“For further context and previous data, please see previous vaccine surveillance reports and our blog post.”

The agency provided no explanation for why ending free COVID-19 testing would affect reporting of hospitalizations and deaths associated with COVID-19.

The previous week’s report, released on March 31, still had the data in “Table 14. Unadjusted rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.”

But unlike the Canadian provinces, the data did not include fully vaccinated individuals, only those who received a booster.

Nonetheless, the data still tell a disappointing story about vaccine effectiveness. Here is the last data reported by the U.K. that compares the unvaccinated to the boosted population:

chart-12-UK-covid-vaccine-data
Credit: UK Health Security Agency

This table was stratified by age group, and three doses appeared to have little impact on the already very low death rate in people under 50 years old, while deaths in those 80 and older were halved in the boosted group.

What is most remarkable is that in every age group, the risk of contracting COVID-19 was 3 to 5 times higher in boosted individuals than in the unvaccinated. Given the inferior protection provided by full vaccination alone, we can surmise that the fully vaccinated fared even worse.

The United States

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does report deaths by vaccination status, but does not include boosted individuals.

The data also are nearly three months old, despite assurances that these numbers are updated monthly. There are too few deaths in the under-18 age category to report.

CDC data indicate that as of May 2022, in the 30 to 49 age group, about 1 million people needed to be vaccinated to prevent a single COVID-19 death per week.

That number is nearly 3 million for adults ages 18 to 29.

When will the CDC resume its reporting on COVID-19 deaths, if ever? And, why did the CDC stop comparing hospitalizations in the unvaccinated to those who completed the primary series (unboosted) back in November 2021?
As in the U.K., comparisons are made with the boosted only.

Unlike the Canadian provinces, Scotland and the U.K., the CDC has yet to make a formal announcement about ending reporting of COVID-19 outcomes between the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Instead, the agency seems to have tacitly admitted that the available vaccines are essentially ineffective by issuing “streamlined” guidelines that do not differentiate by vaccine status as of August 11.

Though the CDC is signaling we can relax restrictions on the unvaccinated, let us not forget that the “latest data” from Manitoba, the U.K. and Scotland indicated COVID-19 outcomes were worse in the fully vaccinated and had been trending downward prior to the mysterious and concurrent decision by multiple public health agencies to end such reporting.

Some of the “latest data” were reported more than six months ago. How are the vaccinated doing now?

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Children's Health Defense.
 

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Judge Blocks Military From Discharging Marines Who Object to COVID Vaccine Mandate on Religious Grounds
By Zachary Stieber
August 19, 2022

Hundreds of U.S. Marines who have had their requests for religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate denied by the military branch are safe from discharge for now, after a ruling on Aug. 18 by a federal judge.

The Marines have failed to adhere to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires the federal government to prove that a compelling governmental interest requires a certain action and that no less restrictive alternatives exist, U.S. District Judge Steve Merryday, a George. H.W. Bush appointee, ruled.

That includes rejecting the vast majority of religious exemptions using boilerplate language, despite many Marines being deemed by chaplains to hold sincere religious beliefs, and not offering compelling reasons to support vaccinating the minority of Marines who want exemptions.

“Although each appellate denial affirms that which no party disputes—that COVID-19 vaccination might promote to some extent the health and readiness of the force—no denial demonstrates that accommodating a particular applicant will meaningfully impede the health and readiness of the 95% vaccinated force or meaningfully impede the military’s operations and duties,” Merryday said.

According to an Aug. 4 update, 95 percent of the Marines are fully vaccinated, or have received a primary series of a vaccine. As of that date, just 11 requests for religious accommodation have been approved, after zero were approved before February.

Filings from the Marines fail to focus on the circumstances for each applicant and utilize data primarily from 2020 and 2021, before the emergence of the Omicron virus variant, which is weaker and more immune-evasive than earlier strains, the judge noted.

He certified a class action for all active-duty and reserve Marines who were affirmed by a chaplain as having a sincere religious objection, who filed for a religious exemption before the deadline, whose initial request was denied, and who filed an appeal on time.

The Marines are forbidden from discharging any member of the class and from retaliating against them.

“Our courageous U.S. Marines finally have relief from these unlawful COVID shot mandates,” Mat Staver, chairman and founder of Liberty Counsel, said in a statement. The group is representing the Marines in the case.

“The Department of Defense has relentlessly violated the law and ignored their religious freedom. Today, that lawlessness ends,” he added.

The branch has already discharged 3,299 Marines for refusing to get a vaccine, but it’s unclear how many of those had been denied an exemption. According to the recent update, 3,722 Marines who asked for religious accommodation were either denied or have not yet had their request adjudicated. Other Marines have asked for medical exemptions. Officials have approved 534 medical exemption requests.

All Exemptions for Retiring Marines?

The three exemptions granted in February were to retiring members. There are no signs the other eight have gone to members who are not retiring.

“The record presents no successful applicant other than a few who are due for retirement and prompt separation,” Merryday said.

Those who haven’t received an exemption are either awaiting separation, or are rapidly proceeding to an “inevitable denial, which would then put them on track to discharge.

“The pertinent history in this action reports that not for one Marine in continuing service (of course, a token one or five or ten Marines among the 3,733 applicants would not change the case)—not for one bookkeeper or for one inventory manager; not for one data analyst; not for one ‘jarhead’ who served abroad ‘in harm’s way’ throughout 2020 and 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 epidemic but without vaccination; not for a single Marine, no matter how young, strong, or gloriously healthy and not even if the Marine already contracted COVID-19 and recovered without material consequence—in not one case has the Marine Corps agreed to allow any accommodation, including any already-proven-successful health and safety protocol, to reasonably accommodate both the health and readiness of the Marine Corps and the sincere religious belief of a fellow Marine,” Merryday wrote.

“What to make of that?” he wondered, adding that “One searches without success for a wholesome hypothesis that both accounts for these facts and complies with the RFRA,” or the religious freedom act.

The treatment of the exemption requests signals that “the class of religiously objecting Marines is substantially likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that the Marines never received a fair and particularized evaluation ‘to the person,'” the judge wrote.

Class Action

Liberty Counsel asked the court for class action relief in July.

In a memorandum in opposition, government lawyers said that plaintiffs were relying “on anecdotes and non-probative statistics” to allege the treatment of religious objectors wasn’t adequately individualized, and that each member’s claim should be treated separately, not as part of the same class.

Merryday sided with the plaintiffs.

“Because the record reveals the substantial likelihood of a systemic failure by the Marine Corps to discharge the obligations established by RFRA, a classwide preliminary injunction is warranted to preserve the status quo, to permit the full development of the record without prejudice to the plaintiffs, and to permit both a trial and a detailed, fact-based resolution of the controlling issues of fact and law,” he ruled.

Judges have previously issued similar injunctions for Air Force and Navy religious objectors.
 

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Nearly 300 Hong Kong Children Diagnosed With Long COVID
First reported Hong Kong case of temporary blindness linked to long COVID

By Eva Zhao
August 19, 2022

Hong Kong is currently experiencing its fifth wave of a COVID-19 outbreak. About 150,000 children and young people aged 19 and below are infected with the disease, some of whom have developed severe symptoms.

Furthermore, a study by Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong found that nearly 300 children developed long COVID or post-COVID conditions. A young girl reportedly experienced temporary blindness and hair loss.

Long COVID or post-COVID conditions (PCC) refer to the situation in which individuals who have been infected with COVID-19 experience long-term effects from their infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Some of its other names include long-haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19, post-acute sequelae of SARS CoV-2 infection (PASC), long-term effects of COVID, and chronic COVID.

Common symptoms of long COVID include headache, insomnia, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, and poor memory, according to Dr. Yat-Wah Kwan, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Princess Margaret Hospital.

“If the symptoms, not caused by other diseases, appear three months after one’s [COVID] infection and last for over two months, it can be inferred that the patient has been infected with long COVID,” Kwan said on the TV program “On a Clear Day” on Aug. 17.

Children With Severe Symptoms

The Hong Kong Hospital Authority (HA) has recently announced several severe COVID cases among young children and teenagers.

According to the statement, a boy aged 2 years and 3 months, who had symptoms of croup after diagnosis, has been hospitalized in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) since Aug. 12. A girl, aged 5 years and 9 months, developed symptoms of acute necrotizing encephalitis after diagnosis and is currently hospitalized in the PICU of Tuen Mun Hospital in critical condition.

According to Kwan, there were usually only one or two cases of childhood croup reported at Princess Margaret Hospital every three months, but recently, cases have been reported daily or every other day. He revealed that the recent announcement on childhood croup only included serious cases that required PICU admission, but not patients who only needed medication. Thus, the public only knows “the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Long COVID Among Children

A study by Princess Margaret Hospital of 288 diagnosed children shows that other than croup, 19 percent had at least one symptom of long COVID, and 5 percent had three or more symptoms—the most common being memory loss, cognitive dysfunction, and insomnia. Some also developed eczema, urticaria, and hair loss.

A girl aged 8, who had recovered from COVID, had been experiencing temporary blindness once or twice a day for about 10 to 30 seconds each time, according to Kwan. He added that this is the first reported Hong Kong case of temporary blindness linked to long COVID, and the cause is unknown.

Many other children also experienced hair loss after recovery, with some losing two-thirds of their hair and no new growth months later.

The study found that nearly 60 children developed multiple system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) after diagnosis, more than half of which required intensive treatment. Studies have found that the condition can have long-term effects on organs, with MIS-C patients suffering from inflammation of multiple organs, fever, “strawberry tongue,” and rash.

Kwan reminded parents to take their children to the hospital immediately if they noticed any similar symptoms, including dyspnea or mental retardation. He stressed that prompt treatment could prevent sequelae, but late hospitalization could lead to hypoxia in the brain and related sequelae.

He advised children with long COVID to get regular sleep, exercise, eat more vegetables, and have a balanced diet, adding that antioxidants in food may help reduce symptoms.
 

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Investigators describe mechanism that may cause post-COVID syndromes
by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
August 19, 2022

Investigators at Cedars-Sinai have proposed a theory for how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, infects the body. Their hypothesis, published in Frontiers in Immunology, could explain why some people still have symptoms long after the initial infection.

"We've put together different pieces of data to create a bigger picture that may explain what causes some people's immune systems to go haywire, leading to post-acute syndromes, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and long COVID in children and adults," said Moshe Arditi, MD, executive vice chair of the Department of Pediatrics for Research, part of Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children's, and senior author of the paper.

MIS-C is a rare but dangerous condition in children that may occur weeks after infection with SARS-CoV-2. Long COVID-19—often referred to as long COVID—is a term used to describe a constellation of health problems that some people experience as a result of their infection with SARS-CoV-2. Symptoms can last months or even years.

SARS-CoV-2 is thought to latch on to cells via spikes that exist on the surface of the virus. These spike proteins are comprised of molecular motifs, stretches of amino acids that make a protein. These tiny molecular motifs may have what the scientists call "superantigen" characteristics, meaning that the immune system can overreact to their presence.

The spike protein, according to the authors, may also have neurotoxic motifs that can cross the blood-brain barrier and damage brain cells. This hypothesis could explain the "brain fog" and other neurological symptoms associated with COVID-19 and long COVID.

The hypothesis is based on several published studies on COVID-19 and other diseases caused by viruses. One such study by Arditi and his longtime collaborator Ivet Bahar, PhD, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020. Bahar and Arditi created a computer model showing how molecular motifs on the spike protein interact with immune cells. The superantigen molecular motifs cause the immune cells to release an abundance of infection-fighting proteins known as cytokines that fight the virus but also may mistakenly attack the body's organs. In children, this may manifest as MIS-C.

Other studies have reported that people with long COVID may carry fragments of the virus in their gut or other parts of their bodies months after initial infection. Continuous exposure to motifs that lodge themselves in different parts of the body and have superantigen-like properties may cause autoimmune symptoms in people with long COVID and MIS-C, according to the authors.

"We need to conduct more research to prove if this is indeed the mechanism that causes long COVID so that we can develop treatments to block it," said Magali Noval Rivas, PhD, an investigator at Cedars-Sinai and first author of the paper.

Arditi, the GUESS?/Fashion Industries Guild Chair in Community Child Health at Cedars-Sinai who leads the Infectious and Immunologic Diseases Research Center, and colleagues are currently conducting a study in which they are analyzing cerebral spinal fluid samples from people with long COVID symptoms for evidence of neurotoxic motifs.
 

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Chronic neuropsychiatric symptoms confirmed after COVID-19

August 20, 2022

Chronic neuropsychiatric symptoms are observed following COVID-19 infection, although self-reported symptoms are not associated with quantitative dysfunction, according to a study published in the October issue of Brain, Behavior & Immunity: Health.

Alex K. Chen, from the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, and colleagues recruited COVID-19-positive adult patients (50 percent African American) from inpatient and outpatient settings in Georgia to examine the severity and chronicity of neurologic findings observed during the acute phase of infection during a five-year period following infection. The study reported preliminary results from the first 200 patients who were 125 days past having a positive COVID-19 test, on average.

The researchers found that the most reported symptom in the study cohort was fatigue (68.5 percent). Overall, 30 percent of participants had hyposmia and 30 percent had hypogeusia. There was no correlation for self-reported neurologic dysfunction with dysfunction on quantitative neurologic testing. There were associations observed for self-reported symptoms and comorbidities with depression and anxiety. Compared with demographically matched controls, the study cohort performed worse on cognitive measures; on all quantitative cognitive testing, African American patients scored lower than non-Hispanic White patients.

"Novel findings include evidence that self-reported symptoms may not correlate with quantitative testing," the authors write. "These data underscore the importance of quantitative testing in the accurate assessment of deficits."
 

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What's the secret of the 15% of British people who've never had COVID?
by London Medical Laboratory
August 19, 2022

Many people have contracted COVID at least three times, yet around 3 in 20 Brits have never caught it at all. A leading testing expert reveals whether vaccines, lifestyle or blood group are the key to their escape.

As the U.K. prepares to be the first country to launch a top-up COVID jab which includes the omicron variant, why is it that some people have suffered several bouts, while others have never caught the virus? Around 15% or more Brits are thought to have entirely escaped the disease.

The leading testing expert, Dr. Quinton Fivelman Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at London Medical Laboratory, says that "there is a fast-growing number of people who have had COVID three times or more, including myself. Even if they have only suffered a relatively mild case, it's still unpleasant, often causing temperatures, headaches, aches and pains and other symptoms."

"All those people who are fed-up with having caught the virus several times will welcome the fact the U.K. is the first country to approve a vaccine covering both the original coronavirus strains and the newer omicron variants. It's likely that a top-up jab which produces antibodies against omicron will reduce the number of people catching—or re-catching—the disease, as well as reducing the severity of symptoms for those who do fall ill."

"The new omicron jab has come none-too-soon, so many people are now suffering repeated COVID infections. That's because the new omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants do not produce as high an immune response as the previous strains, so re-infection is more likely to occur. Higher levels of antibodies are important to neutralize the virus, stopping infection and limiting people transmitting the virus to others."

"However, as well as successful vaccines, there could be two further reasons why some people have escaped every form of COVID so far. Lifestyle is thought to play an important part in reducing our chance of catching the virus, while, somewhat unexpectedly, what blood type we are also looks to be playing a part."

"In terms of lifestyle, obviously those people who are cautious about visiting crowded areas, continue to wear masks on public transport and limit indoor socializing are less likely to catch the virus at all, or at least reduce the frequency with which they catch it."

"Lifestyle is more than just exercising caution; however, our socio-economic status is a big factor. It can influence how well we can afford to eat, our ease of access to healthcare, the number of vitamins we take, etc. Age and health are also key factors. On the positive side, older people may be less likely to visit crowded clubs and festivals, limiting their potential exposure to the virus. On the other hand, if you're older or have an underlying disease like cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, you're more likely to develop a severe illness if you do catch it."

"There is now strong evidence that another factor entirely beyond our control is also at play. There have now been too many studies to ignore which reveal that people have a lower chance of people of catching the virus, or developing a severe illness, if they have blood group O."

"It was a 2020 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that first caught headlines with its conclusion that blood group O is associated with a lower risk of acquiring COVID-19 than non-O blood groups (i.e. A, B, AB groups), whereas blood group A was associated with a higher risk. Newspaper coverage claimed people with blood type O were 35% less likely to be infected than other blood groups. Conversely, it was reported that people with blood type A had a 45% increased risk of being infected."

"This result has been largely reinforced in an analysis [published in Seminars in Vascular Surgery] of the nine most recent COVID blood type studies. This study revealed eight out of the nine papers found an association between blood type and susceptibility to COVID infection. Again, people with blood group O showed the lowest instances of catching the virus or developing more serious symptoms or death. As with the earlier study, some of these papers also linked group A to increased susceptibility and severity."

"Our blood group is determined by the genes we inherit from our parents and is based on which proteins are on the surface of our red blood cells. According to the NHS, blood group O is the most common blood group. Almost half of the U.K. population (48%) has blood group O. And 36% of the population has O+, the most common type."

"It's easy to discover your blood type by donating blood or taking a test such as London Medical Laboratory's new Blood Group test which is available in over 50 clinics, pharmacies, and health stores across London and nationwide. It will tell you to which blood group you belong (A, B, AB or O) and whether you are RhD positive or RhD negative. Some studies have found being RhD negative can also mean greater COVID protection."

"However, that doesn't mean to say that, if you do know your blood group, you should relax entirely if you are group O or panic if you are A. By far the most important factor is the number of antibodies you carry, from inoculations and previous infections, together with your level of overall health and fitness."

"If anyone is concerned about their own immune response to the jabs and how well they continue to produce antibodies, the new generation blood tests available from London Medical Laboratory are highly accurate, quick and simple to carry out, either at home through the post, or at one of the many drop-in clinics that offer this test across London and the U.K."
 

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Finally, One Honest Doctor Comes Forward to Report the Death and Devastating Injuries Linked to the COVID-19
Vaccine
By Wayne Allyn Root
August 21, 2022

It's really that bad. I believe the COVID-19 vaccine is clearly the worst medical experiment and health care disaster in history. The results are all around us. Just tune in to the news. Or sports. Or TMZ. Celebrities, athletes, even doctors are dropping dead left and right — in numbers never seen in history.

If you don't believe me, why not ask the life insurance executives? They're reporting deaths up anywhere from 20% to 40% since the vaccines debuted. These are non-COVID-19 deaths. This is a number never seen in history. Even during World War II, deaths were not up by 20% to 40% across the USA. Not even close.

Recently, I reported on my personal experience. So many of my friends and even wedding guests (from just this past November) are dead, dying or very sick. It's a cluster of cancer, heart attacks, strokes and serious illness — but only among the vaccinated. No one I know who is unvaccinated is sick. Not one person.

Then just days ago, I reported on seven doctors who died suddenly in Canada in a 14-day period. All not just vaccinated, but based on Canadian mandates, almost certainly quadruple vaccinated. Included in that remarkable list are five dead doctors — all young — who died within just a few days of one another in one city: Toronto.

But the real issue is the ones who aren't dead from the COVID-19 vaccine but are injured and/or disabled. They'll be vulnerable to pain, misery and poverty for the rest of their lives.

Based on what a "trusted source" just disclosed to me, we are in for a world of trouble. A credible doctor has come forward. He/she wants to remain anonymous, for fear of losing his/her medical license for telling the truth about vaccine injuries.

Let's call this doctor Dr. Smith. Let's say he practices on the East Coast. As a podiatrist his practice is over 60% older (65 years old and above). Dr. Smith believes about 95% of his patients are vaccinated. The results are devastating.

The unvaccinated patients are fine — no major illness or problems. But Dr. Smith says over 80% of the vaccinated patients are very sick since vaccination.

What is Dr. Smith seeing? First, the vaccinated are dying off. Second, he's seeing heart attacks, strokes and blood clots in incredible numbers. Third, they're getting rare and advanced (stage 4) forms of cancer. Many of his patients were in cancer remission, but suddenly post-vaccine the cancer has come roaring back — except now it's spread everywhere in their bodies. He used to see skin cancer once or twice a month; now he sees it several times a week. Thyroid cancer has skyrocketed — and he reports that it's always diagnosed after they get the booster jab.

They're suffering terrible neurological disease, such as Parkinson's disease. They're experiencing terrible shingles outbreaks. They're suffering serious intestinal issues like colitis and diverticulitis.

Other strange issues he has never seen before: So many of his patients are experiencing terrible eye issues. One patient went suddenly blind in one eye while driving. He's also seeing more elderly patients experiencing falls than ever before.

After hip or knee replacement, Dr. Smith's patients used to recover quickly. Now if they're vaccinated, they often experience terrible postoperative complications and need to be hospitalized.

After seeing or hearing about all these injuries, Dr. Smith always asks, "What's changed? Are you doing anything different? Are you on any new medications?" The answer is always, "Nothing new, but I just got my COVID-19 booster shot."

Then there's the issue of aging. Dr. Smith's older patients have aged horribly, literally overnight — since being vaccinated. They feel it and say it themselves. They say, "I'm falling apart." "I've aged so badly in the past year. I feel like I'm 100 years old." "What's happening? I feel so old. Nothing in my body works anymore." But everything worked fine one year ago. They were aging slowly and beautifully. What changed so radically? They were vaccinated. It's been all downhill since.

Finally, just today one of Dr. Smith's older patients announced his 4-year-old great granddaughter has cancer. He was devastated. Dr. Smith asked, "Was she vaccinated?" The patient replied, "Yes, why do you ask?"

No one gets it. It's as if everyone is brain-dead, clueless, delusional or brainwashed. The signs are everywhere. How many of you know someone who was vaccinated and died or suffered a bad illness soon thereafter?

We all do.

Wake up, America. I believe this COVID-19 vaccine is the worst medical experiment and health care disaster in history.

And here's the really frightening part: This is just the beginning. The vaccines only became widely available about 18 months ago. It surely is only going to get much worse.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)



Doctors want more money to kill people with covid jabs
Dr. Vernon Coleman
18th August 2022

During the last two and a half years I have, on many occasions, found myself shaking my head in disbelief at the widely discredited actions of thousands of members of my former profession – a profession which now fills me with nothing but shame and embarrassment.

I am reminded of the fact that for several decades after the end of World War II, it was common for non-Germans to ask (in their minds and hearts if not in words) ‘How could you let it happen? How could you be so blind?’

But we don’t need to ask that question of the doctors who have been jabbing millions of trusting patients with a toxic experimental drug which they should have known did not do what the politicians and the celebrities said it did (in that it didn’t stop people getting covid, the rebranded flu, and it didn’t stop them spreading it) because we now know exactly why they all closed their eyes, their ears and their hearts.

It was all about money.

And here’s the proof.

Today I read something which seemed to me so ruthless, so utterly unprincipled that it sent shivers of despair and loathing running up and down my spine.

As is now well-known the drug company Moderna has been given clearance for its new, so-called ‘improved’ covid jab to be given to millions.

And doctors have been asked to prepare themselves to earn vast quantities of money by allowing their practice nurses to jab, jab, jab all day long.

But they don’t think they can do it.

Have they seen the light?

Are they awake at last to the truth?

Are they frightened that they might be arrested as war criminals when the covid fraud is exposed?

None of those I’m afraid.

It’s all about money.

They say that they have serious concerns about the autumn roll out because a cut in government funding means they can no longer afford to offer the jabs.

The British Medical Association, the doctors’ trade union, says it has serious concerns and has called for the funding to be increased because the Government has cut the payment per jab from £12.58 per dose to £10.06 per jab.

One doctor says there are just not enough GPs and practice nurses to do the day job.

Another doctor says: ‘we just can’t make the money work’.

So, there it is.

Doctors aren’t worried about the new jab because they fear it may not have been tested enough. And they aren’t worried because the last jab is linked to a gazillion deaths and serious injuries. They don’t worry about the evidence that the epidemic of myocarditis currently killing children and young people might be linked to the jab.

It’s all about the money. Doctors are blinded by greed.

You might expect that if they believed the vaccine was important and useful they’d be jabbing away as fast as their little hands could go. Or, rather, as fast as their practice nurses could do the jabbing.

After all, we know damned well that doctors have not been taking the time to tell patients that they are taking part in an experiment and they haven’t been listing possible side effects. (Both are crimes which will take thousands of doctors into court and jail.)

But, no.

The money isn’t enough.

Last year GPs made £50,000 to £100,000 out of allowing their practice nurses to give covid jabs. That’s on top of their £100,000 plus a year for a 26 hour week. (No, that’s not a misprint. GPs currently work an average of a 26 hour week.)

Oh, and the salaries for the practice nurses are largely paid for by the NHS – by taxpayers.

How long does it take to give a jab? A minute? Two minutes perhaps if you say `hello’ `this won’t hurt a bit but it might kill you’? At £10.06 a jab, that’s £300 an hour for telling someone else to do something. That’s £2,400 a day. And £12,000 a week.

And it’s not enough for the greedy bastards.

(Though just why doctors should be paid extra to give jabs is a mystery anyway.)

Well, maybe, there’s a golden lining.

Perhaps doctors won’t be killing and maiming quite so many people this autumn.

(Though if they get another £2.52 per jab they’ll probably be able to find the time, after all.)
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


MISinformed Consent
The CDC is either astonishingly incompetent, or they have been blatantly lying to the American Public.

James Roguski
15 hr ago

This article is a guest blog by Michael Briskin.

Yes, the CDC Did Perpetuate an Overt Falsehood to Get Americans to Take the Johnson & Johnson Jabs.


From the very beginning of 2020, We the People have been actively MISinformed about nearly every aspect of the disease commonly referred to as “COVID-19.”

As bad as it is to assure the American public of something before doing the studies first (such as informing everyone an exceedingly novel drug mechanism is “safe” without any long-term human testing), it is far worse to state something that is incontestably known to be false at the time.

The mRNA (Pfizer and Moderna) “vaccines” have received the lion’s share of the attention during the COVID era, in large part because those are the vaccines the majority of Americans received.

However, roughly 17 million people received the Johnson & Johnson jabs. These injections, along with the AstraZeneca vaccines used abroad, are known as adenoviral vectors that were designed to deliver their injected DNA into the nucleus of human cells.

For many months, the CDC claimed that the COVID-19 “vaccines” provided “immunity.” Once it became clear that the “vaccines” were neither preventing disease nor stopping transmission, the CDC merely changed the definition of the word “vaccine.”

For at least 8 months (April to December 2021), the CDC website provided CLEARLY inaccurate information to the general public. The CDC told the American Public that the DNA injected via the Johnson & Johnson “vaccine” did NOT enter the nucleus of cells. They definitely should have known better.




Below is a screenshot from the CDC website from April 15, 2021:



COVID-19 Vaccine Facts

There are at least two pieces of MISinformation, DISinformation and/or MALinformation (MDM) within the highlighted areas above that were spread by the CDC for many months in 2021.


CDC MISinformation #1:​

IMMUNITY or IMMUNE RESPONSE?​

The first inaccurate claim from the screenshot above:

“All COVID-19 vaccines work with the body’s natural defenses to safely develop immunity to disease.”

This claim was quietly removed after 5pm on July 8, 2021 because it was demonstrably UNTRUE. However, that didn't stop the government and the media from continuing to push the narrative of “safe and effective”.

Then, on September 2, 2021, the CDC changed the definition of the word “vaccine” to remove the claim that vaccines provide immunity.

OLD DEFINITION (Up to and including September 1, 2021): “Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”

NEW DEFINITION (September 2, 2021 and thereafter): “Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”

Rather than honestly address the fact that the COVID-19 “vaccines” were not effective in preventing the disease or its transmission, the CDC decided to change the definition of the word “vaccine”.​

In the past, vaccines provided “immunity.” Now “vaccines” merely stimulate an “immune response.”

Yes. That is a big difference.


CDC MISinformation #2:​

DNA FROM THE SHOTS DOES NOT ENTER THE NUCLEUS, OR DOES IT?​

The inaccurate claim:

“the material never enters the nucleus of the cell.”

This claim was finally changed (on December 16, 2021) to…

“Viral vector COVID-19 vaccines deliver genetic material to the cell nucleus”

From April 15, 2021 to December 15, 2021, the CDC was CLEARLY spreading disinformation regarding the way the Johnson and Johnson injectables were DESIGNED to work. The “vaccine” was designed so that the injected DNA would enter the nucleus of the cell. To say otherwise was blatantly false.

Readers can decide for themselves whether the CDC was spreading MISinformation, DISinformation or MALinformation.

• Misinformation: Unintended or accidental mistakes such as inaccurate captions, dates, statistics, translations, or when satirical contents are taken seriously by the consumers of information. Take note that although the information are false, they are not created with the intention of causing harm​
• Disinformation: Fabricated or intentionally manipulated and construed contents and messages, including purposely created conspiracy theories or rumors. These false information are deliberately and maliciously created to harm a person, social group, organization, or country.​
• Malinformation: Deliberate publication of private information for personal or private interest, as well as the deliberate manipulation of genuine content. Take note that these are not false information but instead, are real information based on reality, but are used and disseminated to harm others.​

Misinformation vs. Disinformation vs. Malinformation - Konsyse

Regardless of the reader’s opinion, the information presented by the CDC claiming that the injected DNA did not enter the nucleus of the cell was and is FALSE. Many other sources clearly stated otherwise.


On December 29, 2020, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) published the following:


What are viral vector-based vaccines and how could they be used against COVID-19?


On February 25, 2021, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published the following:


SOURCE: News & Views: Getting Familiar with COVID-19 Adenovirus-replication-deficient Vaccines | Children's Hospital of Philadelphia


On March 1, 2021, JAMA Network published a graphic that clearly showed how the “vaccine” was DESIGNED to deliver the DNA into the nucleus.


SOURCE: Patient Information: The Johnson & Johnson Vaccine for COVID-19


On March 17, 2021, the American Society for Microbiology reported:


SOURCE: COVID-19 Vaccine FAQs | ASM.org


On July 1, 2021, PBS News Hour published a video in which they clearly stated:

“Once injected, the vaccine delivers this modified DNA into the nucleus of immune cells and nearby muscle cells”





SOURCE: CLICK HERE


At some point before October 18, 2021, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published a detailed video that clearly showed how DNA from the injections were delivered into the nucleus.

How COVID-19 Viral Vector Vaccines Work | Children's Hospital of Philadelphia


Despite the clarity of the published information above, and the obviousness of the design of the Johnson & Johnson product, the grossly negligent CDC maintained their MISinformation, DISinformation, and MALinformation campaign until December 15, 2021:​

COVID-19 Vaccine Facts


December 16, 2021 was a very fateful day in the saga of the viral vector vaccines. On that day the CDC issued its official panel recommendation of preference for mRNA vaccines over J&J, effectively ending Johnson & Johnson’s vaccination campaign in America.

The CDC finally corrected their inaccurate information within 24 hours of recommended against using the Johnson & Johnson injections.

In short, millions of people who received the J&J shot prior to December 16, 2021 did so with the publicly issued assurance from the CDC that no genetic material would enter the nucleus of their cells. This was scientifically known to be false the entire time.

Misinforming the general population about nuclear penetration for 8 months is about as awful a violation of informed consent as can be imagined. One can hardly imagine a more invasive drug mechanism about which to falsely proselytize the public.

The CDC recommended Pfizer, Moderna vaccines over J&J shots for adults due to rare blood clot cases:

CDC recommends Pfizer, Moderna vaccines over J&J shots for adults due to rare blood clot cases

The CDC recommended people not get J&J vaccine if Pfizer, Moderna are available

CDC recommends people not get J&J vaccine if Pfizer, Moderna are available

Here is what the CDC website says now:​


https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html

That’s right. The CDC only bothered to correct the brazen falsehood in the exact 24 hour period in which it became too late to matter. In other words, they revealed the truth about the mechanism of action only at the exact time they decided to stop promoting the Johnson & Johnson “vaccine.”

The CDC clearly MISinformed the public for many months, saying that entry of DNA into the nucleus didn’t happen.

They only stopped MISinforming the public at a point when it no longer mattered.

I’m not a lawyer, and I can’t say whether a lawsuit will come of this. However, I can say that if there ever is one, it could potentially bring somewhere in the ballpark of 17 million plaintiffs along with it.


Michael Briskin’s original article is below…

 
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Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


news about elevated death rates is leaking out
and we're running out of excuses to deflect blame

el gato malo
17 hr ago

you’re probably not going to see a great deal about this in the US press, but it’s starting to leak out in places like the UK where the hand in glove aspect of mainstream media and state is not quite as complete.



we are, however, still mired in ideas of “unexplained” which feels like a bit of a figleaf and media and state alike are grasping around for “reasons” that are not too damaging for narrative. and easy early one onto which to latch is “lockdowns did this” and treating it as some sort of hangover effect.

the argument largely goes like this:



and while there is likely some truth to it, this explanation does not seem terribly satisfactory.



you can certainly increase deaths by swamping care and preventing early detection of risks, but it does not generate this kind of rise in overall mortality. these claims are associative, but lack any clear linkage.

it feels like a mantra being spoken over and over to focus the mind away from what might actually be going on and to “plead poor to get more funding” which is, of course, the oldest trick in the public services book. (and one that seems less than convincing when there sure still seems to be plenty of dosh for the diversitycrats and their endless woke depredations)

these deaths look concentrated in cancers and heart conditions. both are known side effects of the covid vaccines. both were warned against endlessly but these warnings were ignored.

in their place, we got sustained campaigns of gaslighting like the infamous “everything causes heart attacks in young people now” and the myth of covid caused myo and pericarditis that has since been disproven.

and so the story had to change from this to something new.

Image

and as can be seen above, we’re onto “lockdown deferred care” as “explication du jour” but i doubt this one will hold up either.

the fact is that we’ve been casting around all year for some explanation that the public will buy that explains the truly dissonant state of what’s going on in the all cause deaths arena. and the public is rapidly running out of credulity.

you only get to change your answer to this question so many times before no one listens to you anymore and the retrenchment back to “blaming policy” instead of the dozens of exogenous causes that have one by one failed to pan out and fallen by the wayside represents a start of the move into “endgame.”

this is the beginning of the acceptance of policy culpability and that’s a very meaningful change.

and it’s going to set up the next shoes to fall. and there are some no fooling around clodhoppers getting ready to drop…

the data on heart risk and heart damage from covid vaccines is pretty unequivocal at this point. they have been discontinued in the young in many countries because the risk clearly outweighs the benefit and the elevated death rates are concentrated in the young and healthy, precisely those who seem to bear the worst brunt of this adverse event.

Jamie Jenkins @statsjamie
‘Deaths in 10-14 year olds are 11.7% above average, 30-34 are 11% above average, 35-39 are 12.5% with double digit above average in 55-64 year olds’ Chat with @Iromg on #excessdeaths We are worryingly seeing more deaths than you would expect in young age groups
August 18th 2022
945 Retweets1,652 Likes
https://twitter.com/statsjamie/status/1560381694749851649?s=20&t=yZKyaOBVZflaFP4iYiAcEg
and the newfound lack of trust is really showing up in spades. nobody is getting their under 5’s vaxxed. the rate is about 2.8% in the US. we have finally wised up to the “this is not good risk reward for the young and healthy and never was.”

and it’s not like that was ever subtle.

and once suspicion starts, it tends to grow

but the real doozie lies here in the tireless and desperately needed work being done by gatopal™ ethical skeptic who has done such an excellent job of pulling together data from disparate sources to replace the CDC data that’s not being reported because of “updates.”

Twitter avatar for @EthicalSkeptic Ethical Skeptic ☀ @EthicalSkeptic
A reminder - 331,000 younger persons died between 4 Apr 2021 and 23 Jul 2022 • From a factor - we won't or can't say what • Covid is now at 1,700 deaths per week • This factor is killing 4,870 per week (6.2 sigma high) • Cancer is at an 8.9 sigma high
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August 3rd 2022
1,545 Retweets2,955 Likes

and as can be readily seen, the alignment of this cancer variance and the excess non-covid natural death is quite tight and both go near vertical in trend commencing week 14 2021. (MMWR = mortality and morbidity weekly report)



it’s useful to understand what else was happening then:

(and you’d expect a bit of lag here, maybe a week or two on heart issues, perhaps more on cancer)



it appears we may have another coinciditis outbreak on our hands.

the next surge of vaccine dosing was in nov-dec 2021 and that coincides with the next sudden spike in cancer and death. these were the boosters. and there is strong reason to suspect that boosters had considerably higher adverse events effect than prior doses. in march, we see a “4th dose” round coming through and yet again see surge after the deep dip when vaccination stopped in feb-mar 2022.

i have not run a regression here, but this eyeballs in awfully compelling fashion and as we have specific, indented biological reason to expect linkage, causality seems a dominant assumption to “spurious correlation.” and we’re in a point where data really needs explication.

covid deaths ytd are down on the US



but look at excess mortality (through july 3rd) has risen vs year ago and remains dramatically elevated.



tantalizingly, this elevation looks very similar to UK levels. that would seem more in keeping with a hypothesis of “this is a rate of vaccine AE” than “two countries with very different health systems and lockdown impacts are having the exact same outcome.”

there is an awfully large pachyderm in the parlor here.

and you can’t just toss a dustcloth over it.

at some point, it’s going to have to be called by name.


too many linkages and timings are FAR too exact and the “big book of biology excuses” is getting pretty threadbare.



and the costs are about to blow out.

people with heart damage will pop every round of vaxxes. the cancer issue will likely just keep rising as the CG enriched nature of the mRNA vaxxes takes its toll.

and who is going to pay for it? who is going to take care of the bills for heart treatment and cancer?

the payors are seeing this spike and i know they are because several have told me. they also know full well what’s doing it and who they want to go after, but the liability shields prevent it.

how much water can build up behind this dam before it breaks?
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


What the Actual F is going on here?
This seems troubling.

Sheldon Yakiwchuk
Aug 19

CTV News is reporting a Canada-Wide Shortage of liquid Children’s Tylenol.

Something is going on here that nobody is talking about →Link

It’s not because a pharmaceutical company is throttling back on production…it’s because they can’t keep up with demand.

Check it:



We’ve been in the COVID Pandemic for our 3rd summer now…but now…we’re running short of pain meds for Kids?

“We know there are challenges”:



Now…I want you to appreciate what is really going on here.

Pharmaceutical Companies, over the last 20 months, produced, packaged, shipped, distributed billions of doses of vaccines into people around the world.

Do logistics have seemed to cause any shortages in vaccines?

NO.

They Never Did…in 20 months.

But now….they are having issues sourcing raw materials?

This is odd…but the thing that is most troubling is why are we having so much cold, flu and fever pain during non-Cold/Flu Season?

What is causing these children to have increased the demand for Pain Meds…that we didn’t see over the last 3 summers?

I think I’ve got an idea or 2…

You?
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


CDC Used the Wrong Primers: Dr. Lee's Letter to Director Rochelle Walensky
On August 14, 2021, Walensky was informed that the CDC was using the wrong primers for a reasonable PCR test for SARS-CoV-2.

James Lyons-Weiler
18 hr ago

Dr. Lee has subsequently determined that Sanger sequencing is required to confirm any RT-PCR amplicon targeting SARS-CoV-2.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky Via Email Delivery
Director
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30329
director@cdc.gov

August 14, 2021

Subject: Implement CDC’s 2003 SARS-CoV Testing Protocol

Dear Dr. Walensky:

As reported by Jon Miltimore in an article titled “What Is the True Vaccine Breakthrough Rate? The CDC Doesn't Want You to Know” on August 13, 2021, the data have been a total mess throughout the pandemic. COVID, the New York Times recently observed, has shown the CDC is utterly broken. What Is the True Vaccine Breakthrough Rate? The CDC Doesn't Want You to Know | Jon Miltimore

This letter urges that the CDC immediately switch to its 2003 amplicon sequencing protocol, the SARS-CoV Specific RT-PCR Primers https://www.who.int/csr/sars/CDCprimers.pdf?ua=1 , for accurate diagnosis of COVID-19 and determination of variants by sequencing a 348-400 bp cDNA PCR amplicon to verify the authenticity of the amplified product. The currently widely used RT-qPCR and whole genome sequencing technologies have not been proven useful for patient management and case tracing. All commercial RT-qPCR test kits were granted EUA “for the presumptive qualitative detection of nucleic acid from the 2019-nCoV” only. The entire country is now under siege from the scare of Delta, Lambda or other created variants without even a method to test for them. We cannot make public health policies based on presumptive data because it has serious negative impacts on the national economy.

It must be pointed out that the CDC abandoned its established 2003 SARS-CoV Specific RT-PCR Primers test protocol to promote its flawed unproven RT-qPCR test kits for SARS-CoV-2 in February 2020. This action of the CDC was primarily for its institutional agenda rather than for national interests based on US patent 7,776,521. Among others, the latter CDC-owned patent specifically claims “6. The kit of claim 4, further comprising a SARS-CoV probe that hybridizes to the SARS-CoV nucleic acid amplified by the pair of primers, wherein the SARS-CoV probe is labeled with a 5'-reporter dye and a 3'-quencher dye.”

Now is the time for the CDC to change its course to use PCR amplicon sequencing for accurate case diagnosis to avoid further chaos, which will continue to negatively impact on the lives of all citizens.

Sincerely yours,
Sin Hang Lee, MD
Director
Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory
2044 Bridgeport Avenue
Milford, Connecticut 06460
http://www.dnalymetest.com/
Email shlee01@snet.net
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Biden Admin officials scramble to escape blame for unlawful Pentagon order mandating mRNA for troops
Former Pentagon official Terry Adirim says she was directed by the Secretary of Defense to justify the mandate.

Jordan Schachtel
15 hr ago

Lawyers representing America’s service members are beginning to produce victories defending the U.S. Armed Forces against forced compliance with biomedical gene therapy experiments, and suddenly, nobody in the Pentagon wants to take accountability for their legally dubious mRNA injection order.


It all began on August 24, 2021, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a memo mandating mRNA “vaccination” for the active military, but with the stipulation that this mandate only applied to fully licensed products. This was because, as The Dossier understands, it is illegal to force service members to take an EUA vaccine.



Sec Def Lloyd Austin memo



The Sec Austin memo and the guidance that followed created an issue, because, as The Dossier readers are well aware of by now, the FDA licensed versions of the mRNA shots never actually made it to market, rendering the initial vaccine mandate useless.

This is where the infamous September 14, 2021 memo comes into play.



Dr Terry Adirim, the woman who signed the memo, is a devoted democrat political activist and, as a medical doctor, advocates for “gender-affirming prescriptions” for “transgender” children. At the time, she was the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs (under a Biden political appointment). Adirim’s memo attempted to justify mandating EUA shots as if they were FDA approved.


Terry Adirim Twitter profile

Dr Adirim’s deceptive memo described the EUA and FDA licensed vaccines as “interchangeable,” adding that the Defense Department can “use doses distributed under the EUA to administer the vaccination series as if the doses were the licensed vaccine.” Adirim failed to note that the EUA vaccines were only administratively interchangeable, but not *legally* interchangeable, as made clear by the FDA. This should have rendered any mandate unenforceable.




In other documents and statements, she routinely made claims that FDA licensed vaccines were available to troops, when that was not in fact the case.


JanineG385 @JanineG385
@DeptofDefense @SecDef @US_FDA Terry Adirim has made multiple claims that the DOD has licensed vaccines. CDC as of May 24 says they're ONLY orderable. A lot of separations from commanders issuing unlawful orders. Approved not available. A lot of insubordinate activity to me.

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June 2nd 2022
5 Retweets5 Likes


Following the mRNA injection order, untold thousands of service members were coerced — under threat of both administrative and criminal action — to take a “vaccine” that they wanted no part of. Unsurprisingly, this mandatory novel gene therapy injection has harmed combat readiness and produced widespread, serious, long term injuries throughout the armed forces.

The Dossier
Military whistleblowers: DOD's legally dubious mRNA mandate has harmed readiness, produced widespread injuries
A group of active U.S. military pilots are coming forward as whistleblowers to challenge both the legal and moral nature of the Department of Defense mRNA mandate, and they’ve produced some shocking testimonials that challenge virtually all of the mainstream narratives about a supposedly “safe and effective” mRNA vaccine…
Read more
2 days ago · 188 likes · 59 comments · Jordan Schachtel


Kristina Wong @kristina_wong
As the CDC relaxes its COVID guidance, just reminding people of this report from 30 days ago... US Military Might Lose $4 Billion Due To Pentagon’s COVID Vaccine Mandate, According To @RepMattGaetz
dailycaller.com/2022/07/14/us-… via @DailyCaller
August 15th 2022
106 Retweets260 Likes


The Pentagon’s unlawful order is being challenged in court by lawyers representing all branches of the military. On Thursday, the Marine Corps became the latest service branch granted a class wide injunction against the mandate.


Robert Barnes @barnes_law
Marines win classwide injunction against vaccine mandate discrimination!

U.S. MARINES GRANTED CLASSWIDE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION!Connect with VivaBarnesLaw and other members of VivaBarnesLaw communityvivabarneslaw.locals.com

August 19th 2022
1,279 Retweets4,005 Likes


Since leaving the Pentagon, Adirim has sought to distance herself from the letter, claiming that “crazy” attempts to hold her accountable are misguided, because it was “The Secretary” (Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin) who “directed vaccinations.” Neither Austin nor the Pentagon has confirmed that the Secretary of Defense ordered Adirim to sign off on the unlawful mandate.



Adirim remains in government as the program executive director of the VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office. As a government official, both she and the Secretary of Defense are easily accessible to testify via a congressional subpoena, should congress want to investigate their controversial memos. As Adirim’s memo has come under scrutiny, she has decided to lock her social media accounts.

Who, if anyone, will be held accountable?
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Massive increases in Excess Deaths and Serious Ambulance Call-Outs
In the UK

NE - nakedemperor.substack.com
24 hr ago

Excess deaths in England and Wales have been consistently high for months now. The latest week of data (5 August 2022) shows 1,350 excess deaths which is 14.4% higher than the 5-year average. Only 6.8% of these are involving COVID-19, even fewer directly caused by Covid.

However, these are deaths in all ages and I was curious to find out where the increases are coming from. In previous years, after a bad flu season, you would expect fewer excess deaths due to deaths being pulled forwards. So why are we seeing so many excess deaths after Covid and in the middle of the summer?

For this analysis I used the “Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional” datasets, compiled by the Office of National Statistics. I have used the figures from 2015-2019 to provide a five year average with which to compare as 2020-2021 are too disjointed.

First the good news. For children, there are no excess deaths. So far this year, under 1s are almost 12% under the 5-year average and 1-14 year olds are 2% under average. In fact, over the period I am looking at in this analysis (up to week 31), under 15 deaths were below average in 2020 and 2021.

However, these are the only below average age groups.

15-44

The next age group, 15-44 year olds, have excess deaths of almost 7% above the average so far this year. This is just over 600 more individuals dying than would be expected. Week 31, on its own, is close to 11% above average and in recent weeks it has reached 22% and 19% before dipping back down again.

When separated by sex, women fare worse than men. For the year so far, men are 5.4% above average whilst women are over 9%. In recent weeks women have reached 29% and 39% above average.



The trend for this age group looks flat which suggests, unless anything changes, excess deaths will remain at this level for the foreseeable future.

45-64

In the 45-64 age group, excess deaths are at 8.6% higher for the year. This represents almost 3,300 additional deaths. However, for individual weeks that number is worse and in the latest week has reached 18% higher than the 5 year average. For females it is even worse with the latest week showing an excess death rate of 25%.



This time, the trend was downwards until mid-April (week 15/16), at which point the trend changed and is now firmly upwards. There may be a suspicion that this was due to the spring booster but, in the UK, this was mainly given to those aged 75 and over.

65-74

Cumulatively, this age group has one of the smallest excess death rates at 2.5%. This represents an addition 1,300 deaths. However, as before this is on the rise with the latest week showing 13.5% excess deaths. For males, the latest excess death rate is 16.5%.



The trend has again been rising since mid-April when the rest of the year it was reasonably flat.

75-84

In this age group there has been an excess death rate of around 8% over the year. This represents around 7,400 additional deaths. But as with the previous age groups, this has been on the rise. In the most recent week, this has reached an excess of 20% with males worst off with an excess of 23.5%.



Once again, the trend has been very firmly up since early April.

85+

This age group has a similar cumulative excess death rate as the 65-74 years olds at 2.5%. For the year, this results in approximately 3,200 additional deaths. However, to show how many recent excess deaths there have been, up to mid April there were -4,784 excess deaths. Almost negative 5,000 excess deaths. Since then there have been almost 8,000 excess deaths.



Once again, the trend is upwards and has been since mid February.


So far this year we have seen approximately 15,783 excess deaths in over 15 year olds. However, if we start from mid-April, there have been almost 19,200 excess deaths.

What is most concerning is that the trendlines are either rising or flat, indicating that the amount of excess deaths will rise week by week unless something changes. And going into the Autumn and Winter this change is unlikely to happen.

This is also evident in the ambulance data. Overall, until around April 2021, category 1 ambulance call-out rates were relatively flat at around 50,000-60,000 per month. (There was a peak of around 70,000 in December 2019, which as I have argued before, could indicate that Covid was in the UK much earlier than stated and peaked months before the Government decided to panic everybody).

Category 1 call-outs are the most serious call-outs and require an immediate response to a life threatening condition , such as cardiac or respiratory arrest.



In April 2021, something changed and these serious call-outs quickly reached 80,000. Since then numbers have oscillated between 70,000 and 80,000 call-outs per month but have not dropped back down to their long term average. In fact, the latest month of July shows another sharp increase up to 85,397.

What is causing this increase in serious ambulance call-outs and excess deaths? Some of this is Covid related but I thought the vaccines were meant to stop this? There is no doubt that lockdowns are one of the major causes but it would be stupid to not even consider vaccines. Investigate whether they have contributed to these excess deaths in any way, present the evidence and then say no they haven’t. But don’t just dogmatically say they are safe and not look into it.

Why, did ambulance rates only start rising in April 2021, a full year after the first (supposed) Covid peak and lockdown? Why have excess deaths been rising so rapidly since April this year?

Questions which the government don’t seem to be interested in looking at - I wonder why (sarcasm)? But if they don’t start getting some answers these numbers will only continue rising, especially into the Winter.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
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Preventive protocols are powerful
How I got COVID again when not using the protocols correctly.

KoolBeens Cafe
16 hr ago

Note: the following is not a medical advice. It is my experience of the COVID and its management during the acute phase in outpatient setting.


Koolest Beens,

I believe I contracted COVID on the way back from Charleston. Here is how it went:

1. Returned from Charleston on Tuesday. No mask. No nasal spray. Ivm daily during the travel. Low on vitamin D. No other prophylaxis. My thought was that with my previous infection I am fine. Clearly not.

2. Thursday evening and Friday I developed bronchitis.

3. Developed high-grade fever (>= 102F).

4. Called Dr. Berkowitz. He prescribed ZPack.

5. Night between Friday to Saturday was rough as I could not sleep. I will wake up every hour to urinate.

6. Missed my morning walk on Saturday. Which is an indicator of how exhausting this episode was.

7. Started vitamin D, B12, Nigella, Manuka Honey, Allegra, Ibuprofen, Curcumin, Quercetin, zinc, Saline nasal spray, lozenges, hydration, sunbathing, etc. (These should have been a regimen as prophylaxis, but, here we are.)

8. Started feeling better. Cough was not going away. My wife made me Ajwain tea (just once) and cough reduced. Fever and tiredness continued.

9. My son came down with COVID as well. He was handling it better, till two days ago when his high grade fever started spiking between 99F to 104F. I tried all my medical tricks to keep the fever in control but nothing. Took him to emergency. They did nothing but tested him for COVID, gave him antiemetic and IV saline. Sent him home in a few hours.

10. Started him on the same regimen.

11. Two days ago my wife came down with COVID. She never had fever in her life. This is the first time since I know her that she developed fever.

12. My son did not develop anosmia. I did. And, my wife started olfactory paresthesia.

13. I increased my Ivm for anosmia and added more zinc. Got a little bit dizzy and blurry visioned but anosmia improved within a day. Today I felt 60% back to smelling things.

14. For my wife and son's sleep issues Dr. Zaharakis asked to administer Afrin and to give Nyquil. Afrin is a real potent nasal decongestant. It worked so potently that my son has refused to take another spray of it at all because of the rapidity of mucus drying.

15. Nyquil, was the best thing that happened to both of them. They slept with it and got up almost recovered.

Status today: I am back to working from the morning. Wife is recovered but fatigued. My son is recovered but has a nasal congestion.

Fastest recovery was by my wife. 2 days. I was the slowest to recover.

Sunlight is miraculous during COVID. Sun is anti-inflammatory, offers vitamin D, and improves immunity. What a wonder sun is.



My lessons are the following:

1. Must take a break after an infection from further exposure to allow immune system to fully bounce back, or you are vulnerable to COVID again and other infections.

2. Prophylaxis are powerful recipes. I spent two years during the most intense time of the pandemic with simple solutions like mask (can be replaced with nasal sprays now), distance, preventive regimen from FLCCC and my cocktails. Spraying the lids of the Starbucks' cups with sanitizers etc. and was safe. As soon as I went lax on the prophylaxis I contracted the infection multiple times.

3. Starting the prevention again. Will see if I get the infection again or not. It will be an interesting test.

4. Ivm alone now a days may not be good enough. Rest of the regimen is important.

5. Sun is amazing.

6. Keep cough in check as it can cause pressure on lungs, can cause microscopic injuries in the bronchi to invite secondary infections, and cause pressure in the head and neck area which can result in stress on the brain, ears, and eyes. If cough is dry lozanges are great. But, Ajwain Tea is the best. If cough is productive then control it with meds but do not 100% suppress it. The phlegm needs to exit.

7. Nyquil is so important during the sleep disturbed time.

Keep on taking the preventive regimen in FLCCC protocols.

p.s. my family has banned me from going to Starbucks :-(


Love you all.

Mobeen
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Novel bivalent C-19 vaccines: What does common immunological sense predict in regard to their impact on the C-19 pandemic?
By Geert Vanden Bossche
August 20, 2022


Download and read the pdf here

Bivalent mRNA booster candidates[1] have been developed as a next step in the development of C-19 vaccines to combat the virus; these new vaccines target the induction of a broader immune response than the original vaccines and have to some extent already been approved by regulatory authorities (e.g., FDA, MHRA).

One wonders though why studies conducted to test these new vaccines have only enrolled baseline seronegative participants whereas the new vaccines will predominantly be administered to people who have already been vaccinated with first generation C-19 vaccines. This is quite striking as usage of these updated C-19 vaccines to fight dominantly circulating Omicron variants in previously C-19-vaccinated populations is highly contra-indicated as it violates all basic principles of vaccinology. The latter dictate that infection-enhancing antibodies (IEABs), which are directed at a conserved antigenic site comprised within spike protein (S), will be rapidly re-stimulated by the Omicron-adapted S-based vaccine. While re-stimulation of these antibodies (Abs) will not require cognate T help (Th), priming of immune responses against variable and previously unrecognized antigenic motifs (so-called ‘epitopes’) of S is cognate T help-dependent and will therefore require uptake, processing, and presentation of the corresponding antigenic peptides (i.e., derived from those epitopes) by antigen-presenting cells (APCs).

As previously reported, C-19 disease in C-19 vaccinees is most likely mitigated by inhibition of trans infection of viral particles that are tethered to the surface of tissue-resident dendritic cells (which subsequently migrate to distant organs) and by strengthening activation of cytotoxic CD8+ T cells/ lymphocytes (CTLs) directed at a universal epitope comprised within S protein (Geert Vanden Bossche Predictions on evolution Covid 19 pandemic [UPDATE May 2022] | Voice for Science and Solidarity; Monkeypox | Voice for Science and Solidarity). Both mechanisms are facilitated by IEABs that typically enhance receptor-mediated viral entry when anti-S Abs lose their neutralizing capacity due to growing resistance of SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) variants. Sustained, Th-independent activation of CTLs will allow these lymphocytes to also recognize and kill APCs that cross-present (on MHC class I molecules) the universal, S-associated CTL epitope following uptake and processing of vaccinal antigen (Ag) by professional APCs (i.e., dendritic cells). This will prevent these APCs from priming Th-dependent Ab responses towards new (i.e., Omicron-specific) immunogenic B cell epitopes comprised within vaccinal Omicron-derived spike protein. More specifically, immune responses in healthy vaccinees not only sideline the innate immune response but also prevent APCs from inducing new adaptive immune responses either by blocking Ag uptake (i.e., due to adsorption of SC-2 particles to their surface) or preventing Ag presentation by killing professional APCs after they’ve internalized the vaccine-derived S antigen (comprising the conserved CTL epitope) as previously illustrated (see figure attached below).

Consequently, the immunological effect of vaccination in thoroughly C-19 vaccinated subjects is much different from that of a natural (breakthrough) infection. In the case of a breakthrough infection, the aforementioned defense mechanisms largely fail to result in APCs preventing trans infection or activating cytotoxic CD8+ T cells, and thus fail to protect the host against C-19 disease.

This implies that the immune system of a C-19 vaccinated person cannot rely on conventional Ag-presentation to enable immune recognition of new, S-associated epitopes unless the virus breaks through the host’s (temporary) immune defense facilitated by short-lived IEABs. However, increased frequency of re-infection (i.e., as a result of enhanced susceptibility of vaccinees to infection; Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron VOC subvariants BA.1 and BA.2: Evidence from Danish Households) leads to a reduced likelihood that the virus will break through the fragile, Th-independent immune defense of vaccinees. This in turn will lower the chances for the vaccinees to generate natural immunity against any new variant, or for that matter any new S-derived vaccinal antigen (i.e., regardless of the antigenic characteristics of the Omicron (sub)variant it originates from).

Conclusion:​

Updated C-19 vaccines comprising new mRNA- or protein-derived S-associated sequences of one or more Omicron (sub)variants will only further deteriorate the already dire consequences of C-19 mass vaccination—abundant cell surface-expressed and/ or free circulating S protein will cause a unilateral and potentially protracted recall of IEABs without priming neutralizing Abs against new Omicron-specific antigenic sequences in the vast majority of healthy vaccinees. Whereas the purpose of these novel vaccines is to enhance protection against continuously evolving variants, they will have exactly the opposite effect, in that they will enhance the evolutionary dynamics of the virus. Continued mass vaccination with novel Omicron-adapted vaccines will only increase population-level immune pressure on viral virulence by the IEABs (which currently have a virulence-inhibiting effect at the level of the lower respiratory tract). Large scale vaccination with these updated vaccines will merely expedite natural selection and expansion of SC-2 variants that will exhibit a high level of virulence and infectiousness in vaccinees, while sparing the unvaccinated from this impact.

Figure:​

(from Epidemiologic ramifications and global health consequences of the C-19 mass vaccination experiment):

Acute, self-limiting viral infections that don’t lead to systemic/severe disease (and possibly death) are terminated by M(ajor) H(istocompatibility) C(omplex)-unrestricted, cytotoxic CD8+ T cells that have no memory and the activation of which is triggered by a universal, pathogen-nonspecific Tc epitope comprised within the spike (S) protein. Unless an infected person progresses to developing severe disease, this is what allows a fairly rapid recovery from disease after primary productive infection (and certainly before fully functional virus-neutralizing Abs peak) [according to 2a-2b-2c-2d pathway]. However, rather than stimulating de novo generation of new neutralizing Abs towards variants that escaped the neutralizing activity of vaccine-induced Abs, exposure of vaccinees to these immune escape variants will rapidly recall their non-neutralizing, infection-enhancing Abs (those are directed against an antigenic site that is conserved within the N-STD of all SC-2 variants).

In vaccinees with poor experience in fighting productive infection (and hence, poor training of their innate immune defense according to pathway
1a-1b-1c) prior to C-19 vaccination, infection-enhancing Abs[2] that are responsible for preventing severe disease by binding to DC-tethered virus (according to 3a-3b-3c-3d pathway) can synergize with strongly activated cytotoxic CD8+ Tc-mediated killing (3c’) to even prevent C-19 disease all together and hence, render vaccinees asymptomatic despite their high susceptibility to re-infection (B + C  D). As prevention of disease is not due to prevention of productive infection but to accelerated abrogation of infection, these vaccinees will continue to shed and transmit SC-2 upon re-infection. Whereas innate immune effector cells are MHC-unrestricted and polyspecific (i.e., NK cells) and, therefore, don’t drive immune escape, the infection-enhancing-Abs are Ag-specific (i.e., S-specific) and – if sustained at high enough titers for a long enough time by a large part of the population – will promote natural selection of immune escape variants that can resist the virulence-inhibiting capacity of these Abs. This is because vaccinees cannot prevent productive viral infection; consequently, the immune pressure they exert on viral virulence is suboptimal in that it cannot prevent the expansion in prevalence of immune escape SC-2 variants that have the capacity to overcome this immune pressure. Resistance of viral variants to the virulence-inhibiting activity of infection-enhancing Abs will inevitably cause Ab-dependent enhancement of severe disease (ADESD).

62ffaa6d767b3a6944655bc6_Schermafbeelding%202022-08-19%20om%2017.15.40.png



[1] Based on both the original Wuhan variant and either Omicron subvariant BA.1 or Omicron subvariant BA.4/5 lineage

[2] As previously explained, the non-neutralizing, infection-enhancing Abs are currently hampering trans infection at the level of distant organs such as the lower respiratory tract; this is what’s currently exerting population-level immune pressure on viral virulence: Geert Vanden Bossche Predictions on evolution Covid 19 pandemic [UPDATE May 2022] | Voice for Science and Solidarity).
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


VSS Scientific Updates During Pandemic Times #33
By Geert Vanden Bossche
August 19, 2022

1. Bombshell Study: Vaccinated 5X More Contagious Than the Unvaccinated 10 Days After SARS-CoV-2 Infection​

“Published recently in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a study led by Massachusetts-based physician-scientists leads to a disturbing discovery: individuals fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 actually recover markedly more slowly from the illness and surprisingly, even remain contagious for lengthier periods of time as compared to unvaccinated persons.”

Bombshell Study: Vaccinated 5X More Contagious Than the Unvaccinated 10 Days After SARS-CoV-2 Infection


2. CDC Confirms First Human Infection with Flu Virus from Pigs During 2022​

From Geert: In my recent article, I explained how C-19 vaccinated populations will soon serve as a reservoir for zoonotic viral disease not only for Monkeypox but also for zoonotic flu. Although I thought avian flu would be the most likely candidate, swine flu should obviously be considered too! Like the situation with Monkeypox, I expect to see more and more cases of zoonotic flu occurring and spreading in the human population. If this is the case, we can conclude that asymptomatic human-to-human transmission is happening! We’ll know very soon…

CDC Confirms First Human Infection with Flu Virus from Pigs During 2022 | CDC


3. Discovery of Separate Monkeypox Strain Suggests Two Outbreaks Are Happening​

“A monkeypox strain has been spotted that is different from the one behind the ongoing outbreak in the West, raising questions about just how long the virus could have been around.”

Discovery of separate monkeypox strain suggests two outbreaks are happening


4. 41% of Recent COVID Deaths Among Fully Vaccinated and Boosted Individuals​

And another 26% were fully vaxxed but not boosted. That’s 67% of recent C-19 deaths in San Diego…

41% of recent COVID deaths among fully vaccinated and boosted individuals -

62ffae712edebf6bfd22982a_Afbeelding4.png

5. Children in London Offered Polio Boosters After Virus is Detected in Sewage​

While most of the samples contained vaccine-like virus, some showed “sufficient mutations to be classified as vaccine derived poliovirus.” The UKHSA said this was more concerning as such virus behaves more similarly to “wild polio and may, on rare occasions, lead to cases of paralysis in unvaccinated individuals.”

Around 1 million children in London offered polio boosters after virus is detected in sewage


6. C.D.C. Eases Covid Guidelines, Noting Virus Is ‘Here to Stay’​

“I think they are attempting to meet up with the reality that everyone in the public is pretty much done with this pandemic,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, referring to the C.D.C.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/health/virus-cdc-guidelines.html


7. Time to Assume that Health Research is Fraudulent Until Proven Otherwise?​

“Many of the trials came from the same countries (Egypt, China, India, Iran, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey), and when John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford University, examined individual patient data from trials submitted from those countries to Anaesthesia during a year he found that many were false: 100% (7/7) in Egypt; 75% (3/ 4) in Iran; 54% (7/13) in India; 46% (22/48) in China; 40% (2/5) in Turkey; 25% (5/20) in South Korea; and 18% (2/11) in Japan. Most of the trials were zombies. Ioannidis concluded that there are hundreds of thousands of zombie trials published from those countries alone.”

Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise? - The BMJ
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
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NAC & COVID
Examining some of the evidence for NAC use in treating and preventing COVID.

Modern Discontent
Aug 17

So far we’ve gone over some of the pharmacological effects of NAC and pointing to its ability to restore glutathione levels being its main mechanism of action.

Here, we’ll look at some of the clinical data in regards to NAC use against COVID and see what the evidence tells us.

A few important studies

...
That was a two parter post, see the post under it for the continuation. This is a follow up post, it's going to be in 3 parts.


(fair use applies)


NAC, L-cysteine, Glutathione?
A review of L-cysteine derivatives with pros/cons of supplementing with each, as well as considerations for if NAC is actually necessary.

Modern Discontent
Aug 19

This review follows the preceding articles on NAC & COVID as well as the Pharmacology of NAC.

This review of NAC has got me going down an antioxidant rabbit hole, and I’m still just barely scratching the surface.

However, a few people have asked (and I had questions myself) if NAC supplementation would be the best, or if use of Glutathione itself would be better. Or maybe if L-cysteine would be better than NAC since it’s so widely available from foods and supplements.

We’ve essentially narrowed down the therapeutic effects of NAC to its ability to replete L-cysteine levels, which can then lead to formation of the main antioxidant GSH following a pathway below:


Because of this, wouldn’t it be easier to just take L-cysteine or GSH. And considering that L-cysteine is an amino acid can’t we make it ourselves or get some L-cysteine from food sources?

Essentially, is NAC supplementation really necessary?

There’s plenty of ways to tackle this question, and this review certainly won’t be exhaustive. Here, we’ll take a look at a few of the evidence in support of either NAC or any of the other compounds listed above.

NAC or L-cysteine?​

On appearance alone, NAC is just a a fancier, acetylated (N-acetylated) version of the common amino acid L-cysteine. If L-cysteine is really the money maker here, would it make more sense to just take L-cysteine instead? Or possibly obtain L-cysteine from food sources?

The review from Pedre, et. al.1 that I've cited previously provides some explanations as to why L-cysteine may not be more suitable than NAC. Most, if not all, of the information in this section will be derived from the Pedre, et. al. review as that is one of the only robust reviews that includes the comparison between NAC and L-cysteine.

I’ll include the introductory paragraph here as Pedre, et. al. raises the same questions

It may be asked why all the treatments and experiments were (and still are) done with NAC and not with Cys. Given the fact that NAC shares the thiol group with Cys and is a prodrug for Cys, why not directly use Cys? Arguably, Cys would look like the more obvious choice. Is this just a historical accident, i.e. somebody having started with NAC and everybody else following? Does NAC have positive properties that Cys does not have? Or does Cys have negative properties not shared by NAC?

One explanation given relates to one of the original mucolytic researchers Sheffner, who found that solutions of L-cysteine oxidized far too rapidly to form the Cys-S-S-Cys dimer called cystine (cysteine without the -e).

Cystine - wikidoc
The structure of cystine, a dimer created through the oxidation and sulfur bridge formation between two L-cysteine molecules.

His observations suggested that cystine is less soluble than reduced L-cysteine and precipitated out of solution, and that this form of cystine may actually be an irritant if inhaled. That certainly would be counterproductive for its use as a mucolytic agent if it may irritate the lungs:

As Sheffner, the originator of NAC-based mucus liquefaction, explained in his initial publications, Cys was not considered ideal for therapeutic use, because in solution it oxidized rather rapidly, the oxidized form (cystine, Cys-S-S-Cys) being mostly insoluble and precipitating from the solution (Sheffner, 1963a). The crystalline cystine precipitates were feared to cause irritation in the respiratory tract.

Sheffner’s observations apparently found that NAC was more stable and had a more “agreeable” taste and odor. Not quite sure what counts as “agreeable”, but ease of administration and tolerability are huge factors to consider when designing a drug. Compliance is a huge issue in the medical field- we likely know of people who have trouble taking their medications already, including antibiotics, so anything that makes it easier for the patient is greatly valued in drug design and administration.

Pedre, et. al. further explains that multiple studies have validated the lower rate of oxidation of NAC compared to L-cysteine2:

Sheffner’s argument about the greater stability of NAC in solution is borne out by numerous experiments. Freshly prepared NAC solutions are more resistant to air oxidation than corresponding Cys solutions. In one experiment, NAC was 50% oxidized (to NAC-S-S-NAC) after 13.7 h, while Cys was already 50% oxidized (to Cys-S-S-Cys) after 5.2 h (Held & Biaglow, 1994).

It’s worth noting that this study appears to have been conducted in an in vitro setting, and therefore is not representative of the actual cellular environment. As a counterargument, it’s suggested that free L-cysteine tends to exist in the form of cystine within plasma, which raises questions as to whether other factors are needed to aid in solubilizing cystine that may not be controlled for in certain lab conditions.

Going along with this thought, one study was conducted by Whillier, et. al.3 which suggests that NAC may actually serve as a reducing agent to reduce the disulfide bonds in cystine to release reduced L-cysteine.

I have not read this study in full so remember to keep a deal of skepticism with the results (it was an in vitro study looking at erythrocytes (red blood cells) that also relied on mathematical modeling to map NAC concentrations needed for glutathione production), but I’ll post the conclusion here to provide a bit of information on this study:

Although at high concentrations in the plasma, cystine is not an effective source of cysteine for GSH synthesis by RBCs. NAC reacts with cystine, reducing it to cysteine and producing NAC-NAC and NACcysteine. Analysis of the reaction scheme with a mathematical model demonstrated that, at the plasma concentrations of NAC achieved therapeutically, cysteine would be produced at a sufficiently high rate by reduction of cystine to support rates of synthesis that are sufficient to sustain normal GSH concentrations even in oxidatively stressed RBCs

Yes, so not only is it possible that NAC may become deacylated and increase intracellular levels of L-cysteine, but that L-cysteine restoration may actually stem from reduction of plasma cystine because of NAC. Just even more confusion added to the whole NAC/L-cysteine issue, but that’s what happens when you go down the rabbit hole!

A theoretical scheme is provided in the Whillier, et. al. study:


From Whillier, et. al. This scheme is similar to one we looked at in the mucolytic post and the breaking of disulfide bridges in mucous. Essentially, the thiol of NAC can act as a nucleophile and target one of the sulfurs from the cystine disulfide bridge, essentially changing partners. This would free one L-cysteine and lead to the intermediate NAC-cys. Another NAC molecule can come in, target the sulfur of the NAC that is part of the disulfide bridge and release the second L-cysteine. In the end, this reaction essentially swaps the 2 NAC for 2 L-cysteine molecules through a redox reaction where the NAC molecules become oxidized in exchange for the cystine being reduced.

HOWEVER, remember that Pedre, et. al. has provided rebuttal to NAC as a reducing agent. The supposed mucolytic activity of NAC requires that it works as a strong reducing agent, to which Pedre, et. al. has provided some pushback:

In summary, like other small monothiols, NAC clearly has the ability to directly reduce disulfide bonds in proteins or other molecules. However, the low reactivity and correspondingly slow kinetics argue against a widespread and general role as an extracellular disulfide reductant, limiting this mechanism to situations where the NAC concentration is at least reaching into the mM range. Also, the related idea that NAC taken up by cells (to be addressed below), is directly contributing to the reduction of intracellular disulfide bonds appears very unlikely. As will be discussed later, uptake of NAC into cells is rather slow and the disulfide reduction rate afforded by NAC is negligible when compared to the highly efficient enzymatic reducing systems (Nagy, 2013).

This sort of confuses the matter even further, but keep in mind this explanation relates to the mucolytic effects of NAC and may not necessarily apply to the scenario specific to cystine. In fact, further down we’ll notice that this slow reduction reaction may actually provide a benefit to NAC supplementation.

NAC safer than L-cysteine?​

Pedre, et. al. does provides probably one of the most critical explanations as to why NAC may be more appropriate than L-cysteine alone, and that is toxicity:

Beyond the basic chemistry, there is another, far more critical argument in favor of NAC, namely its well-documented safety. NAC turned out to be safe in adults and children, even at very high doses, and studies in mice and rats show that toxic effects are only observed at very high dosages, above 6 g/kg when given orally and above 2 g/kg when injected intravenously (Bonanomi & Gazzaniga, 1980). For Cys, the situation looks very different. It has long been known that Cys can be toxic when administered at supraphysiological levels. Cys overdosing (oral LD50 ~6 g/kg in rats (European Chemicals Agency, 2021) can have severe pathophysiological consequences.
[…]
These and other observations have led to the notion that high concentrations of Cys are potentially toxic. It is interesting to note that normal intracellular Cys concentrations are lower than those of other amino acids (Bergström, Fürst, Norée, & Vinnars, 1974; Piez & Eagle, 1958; Soley & Alemany, 1980) and at the same time appear to be tightly regulated.

Measures of elevated blood cysteine may be indicative of metabolic and cardiovascular disease due to its role in producing oxidative damage4. However, care must be taken in understanding that the presence of cysteine may not be the cause of metabolic disease but a consequence of it.

Interestingly, Pedre, et. al. provides another argument in that L-cysteine may also be responsible for the production of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a highly toxic agent which may also explain the cytotoxic effects of L-cysteine.

Several enzymatic pathways are responsible for the production of H2S from L-cysteine via desulfuration (removal of the sulfur). However, note that the direct association between H2S and L-cysteine cytotoxicity has not been fully elucidated:

Fig. 4
From Pedre, et. al. These pathways are not necessary for our discussion aside from pointing out the possible production of H2S from L-cysteine. H2S is a very toxic agent and high levels can lead to oxidative stress and release of ROS.
This would also raise questions as to whether these issues would be intrinsic to NAC as well. NAC is, after all, responsible for replenishing GSH via L-cysteine.



[continued next 2 posts]
 
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Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
[continued from post above and in next post]

Overall, these ideas are rather interesting. When you look up labels for NAC supplements you’ll notice that they are labeled for “immune support” or as a “free-radical scavenger”. However, L-cysteine supplements are labeled for “structural support”. What structural support? Disulfide bonds are important for hair, skin, and nails so it’s likely where these labels are going (if you tend to have curly hair, it’s likely many of the proteins in your hair are full of disulfide bridges).

Although we shouldn’t look to supplement labels for contextual information, it’s pretty interesting that these two compounds are labeled differently, and maybe that might mean something for how these two supplements work.


Note that I am using these images as comparisons. I have no affiliation with any of the brands shown in this article and do not receive any compensation.


Does NAC bypass L-cysteine toxicity?​

https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d0f338a-f1e6-4264-bafc-16e72aa279c5_623x351.jpeg

From Pedre, et. al. The above proposal suggests some of the ways in which NAC may enter into the cell. NAC can either reduce extracellular cystine, and the new NAC-S-S-Cys complex may be carried into the cell for additional reduction (noted in orange). NAC may also be taken up into the cells in a slow process, with deacetylation occurring to release L-cysteine into the intracellular space (noted in blue).


As such, it appears that NAC would be a more attractive supplement for the mere fact that it may show less toxicity than direct supplementation with L-cysteine.

And this point is made further by Pedre, et. al. Remember that NAC must first be deacetylated in order to become L-cysteine. This reaction itself is rather slow, meaning that the conversion is a slow, controlled process rather than a large, immediate load at one time:

Most likely, the answer is connected to the pharmacokinetic bottlenecks that are imposed by the N-acetyl group. It appears that NAC releases Cys slowly, thus preventing acute exposure of tissues to high (i.e. supraphysiological) concentrations of Cys, and thus of H2S. Although we could not find studies directly comparing the pharmacokinetics of Cys and NAC, the idea of NAC being a ‘slow donor’ of Cys is well supported by cell-based studies which show a much slower catabolism of NAC relative to Cys (Banks & Stipanuk, 1994; Raftos, Whillier, Chapman, & Kuchel, 2007).

As indicated above, keep in mind that this framework is rather hypothetical. In fact, much of the work here may be considered hypothetical with a few supporting evidence from studies that have not been fully substantiated.

In addition, NAC can undergo 2 possible pathways of cellular entryway. One is that NAC can pass into the cell. This process is slow due to the N-acetyl group which hinders both active and passive transport of the molecule into the cell. After NAC enters the cell it becomes deacetylated by the enzyme Aminoacylase 1, which again is a slow process5. Together, these two processes lead to slow uptake and utilization of NAC, as indicated by the slow increase in serum concentration of NAC:

The slow cellular uptake and deacetylation of NAC explains the time needed to reach peak concentration (≥0.5 h) (Holdiness, 1991) and the mean residence time in the bloodstream (≥2 h) (Borgström, Kågedal, & Paulsen, 1986; Olsson et al., 1988) following oral administration.

The other pathway is one argued in the Whillier, et. al. study, and that is NAC as a reducing agent for plasma cystine which may lead to uptake of reduced L-cysteine by cells (Pedre, et. al.):

The second mechanism of NAC-to-Cys conversion is indirect and involves disulfide exchange between NAC and disulfide-linked Cys in the extracellular space (mainly Cys-S-S-Cys and Cys-S-S-Protein), generating corresponding NAC mixed disulfides (NAC-S-S-Cys and NAC-S-S-Protein) and releasing reduced Cys that can be taken up by surrounding cells, presumably by the ASCT1 transporter mentioned above (Radtke et al., 2012; Raftos et al., 2007) (Fig. 5).

This process is also slow, including both the reduction of cystine as well as the transport of Cys-S-S-NAC dimers. Again, this may actually be a benefit as it dampens the immediate release of L-cysteine.

Overall, NAC may be considered more beneficial by virtue of being a more slow, controlled release of L-cysteine that may attenuate much of the oxidative damage that may come with high levels of L-cysteine:

In summary, it seems that NAC delivers Cys at such a slow and (presumably) steady pace that it avoids the toxic effects that have been associated with corresponding dosages of unmodified Cys. In other words, N-acetylation of Cys slows down the delivery of Cys, making NAC a Cys-prodrug that feeds cells with a trickle of Cys over a prolonged period of time.


Fig. 9
From Pedre, et. al. A general scheme showing the benefits of NAC over L-cysteine supplementation, derived predominately from the acute, sudden increase in L-cysteine.

What about NAC over GSH?​

We’ve covered (rather exhaustively) why NAC may be considered better than L-cysteine as a supplement. Now, we may want to look at GSH.

First off, I’ll warn that this review will be spotty due to lack of research in the literature compared to NAC, so we will make do with what we have.

Anyways, compared to NAC why not go all the way, cut out the middle man and just go full throttle into the active antioxidant in question?

One main concern with GSH is that it is a tripeptide (3 amino acids), making it susceptible to digestion by enzymes or through other reactions.

One review by Minich, D. M., & Brown, B. I.6 takes a look at GSH literature and provides some conflicting evidence:

It would seem to be most efficient to administer oral glutathione as a preformed compound to override the effects of potentially inefficient SNPs and related enzymes. However, there has been some debate regarding whether glutathione given orally would be degraded by digestive peptidases [37,38]. In further support of this theory, some studies [39,40,41] have shown no change in glutathione levels or in parameters of oxidative stress despite acute [40,41] or chronic (four weeks) [39] oral glutathione supplementation.
There is also some evidence to the contrary. One six-month, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial [42] found that taking oral glutathione at either 250 or 1000 mg/day led to significant increases in the body stores of glutathione in 54 non-smoking adults in a dose-dependent manner. There was also a decrease in the markers for oxidative stress at six months as indicated through an improvement in the oxidized (GSSG) to reduced (GSH) glutathione ratio in whole blood, in conjunction with favorable increases in natural killer cell cytotoxicity.
While the data on providing oral glutathione are mixed and inconclusive, recent research suggests that when glutathione is administered in liposomal or sublingual forms it may be made more bioavailable and favorably impact systemic glutathione levels.

Similar remarks were made in an exercise review from Kerksick, C. & Willoughby, D.7 that looked at evidence of NAC and GSH within the context of exercise:

Supplementation with glutathione has been met with little success as the bioavailability of glutathione is low due its transient transport throughout the cellular network. At the current time, the bioavailability of glutathione is thought to be extremely poor due to the hydrolytic enzymes that break down the glutathione upon ingestion. Nevertheless, popularity for glutathione administration and supplementation is high due to its primary role to minimize the oxidative stress seen with exercise.

Liposomal GSH takes GSH and places it into a film of lipids which may decrease the metabolism of GSH into its constituent parts. Modern research into GSH appears to focus on this form of GSH, and some of the current studies utilizing liposomal GSH as a therapeutic agent seem promising8,9,10.

From this, it’s important to examine the delivery mechanism of GSH used in studies. It’s likely that sublingual and intravenous administration of GSH may bypass the digestive mechanisms, and the inclusion of liposomal forms may aid in the protection of this molecule as well. This is likely where much of the conflicting results are derived as liposomal GSH may be far more superior than standard oral GSH.

But does this mean that supplementation with GSH would be futile?

Not necessarily. Remember that GSH metabolism would lead to the 3 amino acid constituents- cysteine, glycine, and glutamic acid. Afterwards, cells can then uptake these precursors and resynthesize GSH to restore intracellular GSH levels.

Essentially, GSH may be broken down only to be remade once again- a continuous cycle of GSH recycling.


I may not be using this meme right...

A pretty big hassle, but the body won’t necessarily know what it should do with some of the nutrients and macromolecules that enter into it, so metabolism and easy transport is a general method of distributing nutrients. There is the possibility that these precursors for GSH could be used for other biochemical pathways, and under times where enzymatic processes may be attenuated (either by cellular stress or drugs that may serve as inhibitors for GSH enzymes) reformation of GSH may not be possible or greatly hindered.

On the other hand, elevated intracellular levels of L-cysteine can overcome the rate-limiting step and can provide the necessary limiting reagent to drive the synthesis of GSH.

It’s worth noting that breakdown of extracellular GSH for uptake and resynthesis of GSH is not quite out of the ordinary for cells, with some evidence provided in a review by Zhang, H., Forman, H. J., & Choi, J.11.

Much of the metabolism of GSH first starts with the enzyme γ‐Glutamyl Transpeptidase12, an enzyme found on the membrane of cells which cleaves the bond between glutamic acid and cysteine leaving cysteinylglycine (the dipeptide comprised of cysteine and glycine). This dipeptide gets further broken down by other enzymes, and eventually the constituents amino acids are taken up by cells to reform GSH (Zhang, H., Forman, H. J., & Choi, J.):

GGT catalyzes the transfer of γ‐glutamyl moiety from GSH, GSH S‐conjugates, and other γ‐glutamyl compounds to acceptors such as amino acids, dipeptides, and H2O. The catalytic mechanism of GGT is well known (Taniguchi and Ikeda, 1998; Tate and Meister, 1981). As discussed previously, GGT plays a key role in γ‐glutamyl cycle (Fig. 1) in the de novo synthesis of GSH (Meister, 1974; Stark et al., 2003). Here, GGT breaks down extracellular GSH to generate γ‐glutamyl compounds and cysteinylglycine, which is further cleaved by membrane‐bound dipeptidases. The constituent amino acids are then taken up and used by cells for intracellular resynthesis of GSH. One of the amino acids that are thus supplied by GGT is cysteine, the limiting substrate for GSH biosynthesis. Importantly, cysteine is a preferred acceptor for glutamate‐amino acid conjugation reaction by GGT, and the product, γ‐glutamylcystine, can be transported inside the cells and, after reduction to γ‐GC, used directly for GSH biosynthesis (Anderson and Meister, 1983; Meister, 1984). This GSH salvage pathway bypasses the rate‐limiting reaction catalyzed by GCL in de novo synthesis of GSH (Griffith et al., 1981) and may play an important role in the maintenance of GSH in cells.

There’s also the fact that extracellular GSH levels tend to be elevated by pulmonary epithelium, and so extracellular GSH may be important for aiding in some of the symptoms associated with ARDS.

Overall, GSH supplementation may be considered rather futile unless provided in a form that can bypass digestion such as the more recent liposomal form. There are a few forms that appear to be available, although I can’t speak of the veracity of these supplements.

Liposomal Glutathione Setria® 700mg - 60 capsules | NutriFlair
Again, no affiliation and no compensation. Just an image for an example.

However, even if one were to use typical, non-liposomal GSH the constituents will still be there even if GSH is broken down. The body can still uptake the constituent amino acids and reform GSH within the intracellular space, and there’s evidence to suggest that this occurs as a method of maintaining GSH homeostasis. So not all hope is lost if one were to use regular GSH, but we’ll look at one last option for boosting L-cysteine and GSH levels, and that’s through doing things that our bodies and ancestors have been doing for millions of years: eating and making it ourselves.

[continued in next post]
 
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Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
[continued from post above this and above that]

Homegrown or Eating out: making and sourcing L-cysteine from foods​

Supplements are usually considered to be a last-line resort so to speak, which should usually be used in instances where someone is heavily deficient in the given compound or vitamin. I supplement with Vitamin D3 because my family is Vitamin D3 deficient, and so for me that makes sense that I should take daily Vitamin D3.

Although vitamins and supplements are relatively cheap compared to the grander scheme of drugs and pharmaceuticals, we may wonder if we should be taking capsules when we can just eat foods to obtain the necessary nutrients- our ancestors have always done it this way.

Sourcing L-cysteine from foods​

Compared to other nutrients, the sourcing of amino acids is probably one of the easiest things we can do. Much like carbohydrates, amino acids serve as one of the pivotal building blocks of all life, so by eating a variety of foods we’re bound to come across L-cysteine and GSH at some point.

L-cysteine is considered a semiessential amino acid since our body can produce it in low amounts, however some researchers have considered L-cysteine to be conditionally essential because of the significance of sulfur compounds on health, especially for formation of GSH.

It’s a bit difficult to source literature detailing foods high in L-cysteine, but the general consensus may not be one that would make my vegetarian/vegan readers all too happy.

Most dietary sources of L-cysteine is derived from animal products such as meat, eggs, and cheese.

Top 10 Foods Highest in Cystine (Cysteine)
From myfooddata.com

I can’t speak to the veracity of this chart specifically, but meat appears to be a consistent food source mentioned.

Some research may suggest that reduced protein intake may be correlated with reduced GSH production (Minich, D. M., & Brown, B. I.):

Since the precursors and foundation of glutathione are amino acids, intake of dietary protein may influence the amino acid pool from which to draw to synthesize glutathione. Changes in protein consumption [69], including reducing protein levels but remaining within safe levels, may alter plasma glutathione synthesis levels contributing to a reduction in antioxidant capacity. In this study, the researchers found that while individuals were able to recover from a reduction in protein (that remained above the lowest amount considered safe) in terms of nitrogen balance, it took longer for the functional changes in glutathione levels to equilibrate. Urinary excretion of 5-L-oxoproline was suggested as a marker to track glutathione kinetics, particularly the availability of glycine.

So dietary intake of protein may be pivotal to GSH production. Maybe Danny DeVito was onto something: "Can I offer you an egg in this trying time".


L-cysteine supplementation research has been quite extensive, with one review coming from Clemente Plaza, et. al.13


From Clemente Plaza, et. al. The chart provides a brief overview of some of the clinical trials conducted to examine the effects of L-cysteine on health.

However, research into dietary L-cysteine and supplementation has provided mixed reviews, indicating the importance of balancing the redox potential of L-cysteine and cysteine conjugates- will L-cysteine form antioxidant conjugates, or will some of these sulfur conjugates cause oxidative damage (Clemente Plaza, et. al.):

Despite the high volume of evidence describing positive impacts of l-Cys on human health, it is worth noting that the number of works describing no effects or negative effects is also significant [20,77,78]. Negative effects of l-Cys derivatives on human health have been reported [79,80]. Thus, although most of the studies on l-Cys highlight its role in the homeostasis of redox status, some studies suggest that redox modulation is not involved during l-Cys actions and that l-Cys might act as a competitive antagonist of GABAA ρ1 receptors for instance [20]. Also, some in vivo studies have shown that several S-conjugates are nephrotoxic and that the toxicity is associated with β-lyase-dependent bioactivation [79]; in other cases, toxic effects of l-Cys on the nervous system have also been reported (oxidized l-Cys derivatives or compounds such as cysteine alpha-carbamate caused neuronal degeneration) [78].

L-cysteine enrichment seems to have reached a field that all of us strive for but probably aren’t getting enough of, and that’s fitness through the use of whey protein. Some researchers have examined whether whey protein would be a good source of L-cysteine and GSH14.

Minich, D. M., & Brown, B. I. provides additional context:

Although it is not necessary for most people to supplement with protein to meet their daily requirement, one potential beneficial source when additional protein is necessary is whey protein, likely due to its higher cysteine content [70]. In a small study (n = 18) of healthy individuals, whey protein supplementation at a dose of 15, 30, or 45 g/day for 14-days resulted in a dose dependent increase in lymphocyte glutathione levels with the 45 g/day dose increasing lymphocyte glutathione by 24% [71]. In another small randomized control study on cancer patients (n = 23) [72], consuming 40 g of whey protein isolates in addition to zinc and selenium increased the glutathione levels (11.7%) as well as functional immune markers, including an increase of 4.8% in their immunoglobulin G levels compared with the control group (n = 19). Additionally, a small study of patients with Parkinson’s disease [70] found that supplementing with whey protein compared with soy protein led to a significant increase in the glutathione levels in the blood and the GSH/GSSG ratio, although there was no significant impact on the clinical markers of the disease.

This has led some people to consider enriching protein powder with L-cysteine to provide additional antioxidant benefits. However, protein powders have been known to have their protein levels doctors by the addition of inefficient amino acids, and so to the extent that protein powders would be a good source of L-cysteine would weigh (whey?) heavily upon the transparency of manufacturers.

If GSH is more to your liking you’ll actually be in luck. Plants utilize the antioxidant properties of GSH the same way that we do, and so many fruits and vegetables are rich in GSH in order to combat oxidation.

Glutathione rich foods | Autism Resources | Pinterest | Food
Again, cannot speak to the veracity of this chart (many of these foods may be rich in sulfur compounds; not necessarily GSH) but you’re likely to come across many other sources of GSH.

It’s important to note that older foods that appear discolored are visual signs that oxidation and free radical formation is likely occurring within these foods, and so keep that in mind when considering eating rotten fruits and vegetables- you may be eating more free radicals rather than free radical scavengers.

Is NAC really necessary?​

As mentioned above L-cysteine is a semiessential amino acid because our body has pathways to produce it ourselves.

One example can be seen below from Minich, D. M., & Brown, B. I. This is one pathway used by our liver to produce both L-cysteine and GSH. Note all of the cofactors (in blue) needed for this pathway.


From Minich, D. M., & Brown, B. I. The relevant molecules are boxed in different colors above. Note that many cofactors are necessary for these pathways.

So if the ingredients and machinery are there to make GSH is supplementation really necessary?

I’ve mentioned this circumstance previously, but under times where cellular stress is high our cells may not be able to produce GSH. GSH depletion may be a consequence of our cells’ inability to replenish new GSH.

And there are plenty of maladies associated with GSH deficiency such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, and aging being a few.


From Minich, D. M., & Brown, B. I.

What’s not noted in the list above is the significance of the gut microbiome, as many of our B vitamin cofactors come from our gut bacteria- reduced production due to gut dysbiosis is likely to affect cellular processes and thus GSH production.

So this creates a strange, paradoxical phenomenon. By virtue of these diseases and their potential oxidative damage GSH may be depleted in an attempt to attenuate the oxidative stress. However, a sick body itself may not be able to produce the necessary components due to reduced cell function. Most studies may not take into account the cause/effect relationship between chronic illness and GSH depletion, therefore missing out on some important subtleties.

When it comes to aging, there’s clear evidence of GSH deficiency owing to the aging body. Gut dysbiosis, reduced nutrient absorption, lower cellular mechanisms, and reduced digestion capacity caused by senescence all factor into the deficiency seen among the elderly. The same goes for many other nutrients, and so in such a population it may be worthwhile to supplement with GSH or NAC because the body no longer has the capacity to do so on its own. It’s why much of the research into GSH has looked at its role in neurodegenerative disease.

But that really hammers down an important point here. In our discussion we’ve explained all of the possible benefits of supplements when weighed with the possible harms, but we never really consider the role our body plays in producing some of these nutrients. When our body fails to produce these necessary compounds in acute disease, it may be worth it to try supplementing with exogenous substances.

However, if we place ourselves into a chronic state of illness and disease, therefore damaging our body’s own capacity to make its own nutrients, then we may need to reconsider exactly what purpose supplements may serve. In such a state, supplements may be nothing more than a bandage placed over the disease. It ironically serves as a method of reducing the symptoms rather than doing something to deal with the actual disease in question.

Rather than supplement, we may want to examine why our bodies are failing to make the necessary nutrients in the first place- and that goes the same for my family’s reduced vitamin D3 levels and much of the W.E.I.R.D.15 world.

Are there dietary reasons for why we are missing out on vital nutrients, owing to modern eating habits that usually follow the mantra, “brown food tastes good”, and therefore sacrificing nutrient-density over flavor and sugar-laden, processed commodities? Or maybe it’s lack of sunlight and the outdoor environment that is causing our deficiencies.

Obesity and diabetes are a consequence of modernity, and if GSH deficiency occurs in these populations wouldn’t we want to consider whether losing weight and proper management of diabetes would restore much of the cellular processes required to produce GSH ourselves rather than relying on supplements that don’t get to the root of the problem?

I’ve been thinking about this issue more after reader Zade raised interesting concerns about Melatonin in my post from June. In it she (or he?) mentioned that melatonin is considered a neurohormone in Europe and therefore falls under different regulations, and linking to this interesting study from Guardiola-Lemaître B.16 about possible toxicity in regards to Melatonin.

I haven't read it fully and only skimmed a bit, but what stood out is that much of the concerns over Melatonin aren't necessarily rooted in its toxicity or disruption of the circadian rhythm, but that supplementing with Melatonin may be done in response to altered sleep-wake cycles as seen in those with night-shift work. The review also mentions alterations in Melatonin production as a consequence of late-night eating, and so in essence exogenous Melatonin may be a correction for behaviors and lifestyle choices than run counter to what our bodies would normally want.

I haven’t taken Melatonin in a while and the new form I bought has given me really strange dreams. But this revelation sort of puts into perspective why I would personally want to use Melatonin.

Is it for good sleep? I normally get that already so that’s not quite the issue. Maybe there are people such as the elderly that can’t quite produce Melatonin anymore and needs to supplement. Or maybe there are people whose lives don’t quite allow for regular sleep schedules and Melatonin may help put them to sleep.

It’s the last one that we should take notice of. If we are using Melatonin as a compensation for poor behaviors wouldn’t it be far more beneficial to attempt to correct those behaviors to the best of our ability before turning to supplements?

And the same goes for NAC supplementation- wouldn’t it be far more better to understand exactly what is going on and why our bodies may not be able to replenish GSH before we find methods of supplementing that may gloss over these issues? Remember that these goes for things that we have control over, and not for things such as diseases of unknown etiology or things with no known viable treatments.

We usually discuss our relationship with food and how that affects our bodies, but we should probably be doing the same when it comes to supplements. The whole purpose for me writing about drugs and supplements is so that people gain a better understanding of their relationship to the things they put in their bodies.

We’ve made plenty of righteous remarks about vaccines, yet we should make sure to do the same with supplements rather than taking things for the sake of being told to do so.

As we enter into the weekend, consider taking some time and rummaging through your medicine cabinet (or wherever you keep supplements). Take a look at what you are taking. See if you have good, valid reasons for taking the supplements you are, or maybe see if you are taking them because word-of-mouth or secondhand comments have told you these were good. Are you taking Melatonin even though you get good sleep? Do you take Vitamin D3 even though you are outside most of the day? Have some Quercetin on-hand? Well so does fruits and vegetables, so why not try with whole foods instead?

I should take care to note that this SHOULD NOT be used as medical advice, but to argue that we should gain some perspective and understanding for what we take.

As to NAC, I mostly bought it because I was told I couldn’t have it. But given these findings I’m going to consider whether I find it necessary to take on a daily basis.

This post has gone far longer than I thought it would, and it’s nowhere near finished scratching the surface.

But hopefully it gives you an understanding of NAC, and whether we may find it necessary to supplement.
 
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Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaqrEJ_HVGQ
Long COVID: SARS-COV-2 Persists in Almost All Tissues of The Body (NIH Preprint Study)
49 min 28 sec
Streamed live 7 hours ago
Drbeen Medical Lectures

In this study from NIH, the authors demonstrate the presence of replication competent virus genome in a vast array of human organs and cells even after asymptomatic infection. Let's review.

URL list from Friday, Aug. 19 2022

Covid-19 Can Stay in Body for Months, Study Finds - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...

SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence throughout the human body and brain | Research Square
https://www.researchsquare.com/articl...

v1_covered.pdf
https://assets.researchsquare.com/fil...

Defective Measles Virus in Human Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis Brain - ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

Defective measles virus in human subacute sclerosing panencephalitis brain - PubMed
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8030228/


ETA: this is the abstract from the study discussed in the video:


SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence throughout the human body and brain


This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

COVID-19 is known to cause multi-organ dysfunction1-3 in acute infection, with prolonged symptoms experienced by some patients, termed Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC)4-5. However, the burden of infection outside the respiratory tract and time to viral clearance is not well characterized, particularly in the brain3,6-14. We performed complete autopsies on 44 patients with COVID-19 to map and quantify SARS-CoV-2 distribution, replication, and cell-type specificity across the human body, including brain, from acute infection through over seven months following symptom onset. We show that SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, even among patients who died with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple extrapulmonary tissues early in infection. Further, we detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in the body, we observed a paucity of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside of the lungs. Our data prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes systemic infection and can persist in the body for months.

The Bloomberg article referenced in the video:

Coronavirus Can Persist for Months After Traversing Body
NIH scientists release findings of comprehensive autopsy study
New research may inform understanding of long Covid symptoms

by Jason Gale
December 26, 2021, 3:10 AM EST Updated onDecember 26, 2021, 4:12 PM EST

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can spread within days from the airways to the heart, brain and almost every organ system in the body, where it may persist for months, a study found.

In what they describe as the most comprehensive analysis to date of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s distribution and persistence in the body and brain, scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health said they found the pathogen is capable of replicating in human cells well beyond the respiratory tract.

The results, released online Saturday in a manuscript under review for publication in the journal Nature, point to delayed viral clearance as a potential contributor to the persistent symptoms wracking so-called long Covid sufferers.
Understanding the mechanisms by which the virus persists, along with the body’s response to any viral reservoir, promises to help improve care for those afflicted, the authors said.

“This is remarkably important work,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the clinical epidemiology center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, who has led separate studies into the long-term effects of Covid-19.
“For a long time now, we have been scratching our heads and asking why long Covid seems to affect so many organ systems. This paper sheds some light, and may help explain why long Covid can occur even in people who had mild or asymptomatic acute disease.”

The findings and the techniques haven’t yet been reviewed by independent scientists, and mostly relate to data gathered from fatal Covid cases, not patients with long Covid or “post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2,” as it’s also called.

Contentious Findings​

The coronavirus’s propensity to infect cells outside the airways and lungs is contested, with numerous studies providing evidence for and against the possibility.

The research undertaken at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, is based on extensive sampling and analysis of tissues taken during autopsies on 44 patients who died after contracting the coronavirus during the first year of the pandemic in the U.S.

The burden of infection outside the respiratory tract and the time taken to clear the virus from infected tissues aren’t well characterized, particularly in the brain, wrote Daniel Chertow, who runs the NIH’s emerging pathogens section, and his colleagues.

The group detected persistent SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple parts of the body, including regions throughout the brain, for as long as 230 days following symptom onset. This may represent infection with defective virus particles, which has been described in persistent infection with the measles virus, they said.

“We don’t fully understand long Covid, but these changes could explain ongoing symptoms,” said Raina MacIntyre, professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. MacIntyre wasn’t involved with the research, which she said “provides a warning about being blasé about mass infection in children and adults.”

Precautionary Approach​

“We don’t yet know what burden of chronic illness will result in years to come,” she said. “Will we see young-onset cardiac failure in survivors, or early onset dementia? These are unanswered questions which call for a precautionary public health approach to mitigation of the spread of this virus.”

In contrast to other Covid autopsy research, the NIH team’s post-mortem tissue collection was more comprehensive and typically occurred within about a day of the patient’s death.

The researchers also used a variety of tissue preservation techniques to detect and quantify viral levels, as well as grow the virus collected from multiple tissues, including lung, heart, small intestine and adrenal gland from deceased Covid patients during their first week of illness.

“Our results collectively show that while the highest burden of SARS-CoV-2 is in the airways and lung, the virus can disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout the entire body, including widely throughout the brain,” the authors said.

The study provides pathologic data that support findings of previous research showing, for example, that SARS-CoV-2 directly kills heart muscle cells, and that those who survive an infection suffer cognitive deficits, said MacIntyre at the University of New South Wales.

‘Viremic’ Phase​

The N.I.H. researchers posit that infection of the pulmonary system may result in an early “viremic” phase, in which the virus is present in the bloodstream and is seeded throughout the body, including across the blood-brain barrier, even in patients experiencing mild or no symptoms. One patient in the autopsy study was a juvenile who likely died from unrelated seizure complications, suggesting infected children without severe Covid-19 can also experience systemic infection, they said.

The less-efficient viral clearance in tissues outside the pulmonary system may be related to a weak immune response outside the respiratory tract, the authors said.

SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in the brains of all six autopsy patients who died more than a month after developing symptoms, and across most locations evaluated in the brain in five, including one patient who died 230 days after symptom onset.

The focus on multiple brain areas is especially helpful, said Al-Aly at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System.

“It can help us understand the neurocognitive decline or ‘brain fog’ and other neuropsychiatric manifestations of long Covid,” he said. “We need to start thinking of SARS-CoV-2 as a systemic virus that may clear in some people, but in others may persist for weeks or months and produce long Covid -- a multifaceted systemic disorder.”

(Adds comment from scientist starting in 10th paragraph.)
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Covid’s Harmful Effects on the Brain Reverberate Years Later
Study finds ongoing risk of psychotic disorders and dementia
Research highlights burden of pandemic-induced chronic disease

By Jason Gale
August 17, 2022, 6:30 PM EDT

Covid-19 survivors remain at higher risk of psychotic disorders, dementia and similar conditions for at least two years, according to a large study that highlights the mounting burden of chronic illness left in the pandemic’s wake.

While anxiety and depression occur more frequently after Covid than other respiratory infections, the risk typically subsides within two months, researchers at the University of Oxford found. In contrast, cognitive deficits known colloquially as “brain fog,” epilepsy, seizures and other longer-term mental and brain health disorders remained elevated 24 months later, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Psychiatry.

The findings, based on the records of more than 1.25 million patients, add to evidence of the virus’s potential to cause profound damage to the central nervous system and exacerbate the global burden of dementia -- which cost an estimated $1.3 trillion in the year the pandemic began. Oxford researchers showed in March that even a mild case is associated with brain shrinkage equivalent to as much as a decade of normal aging.

“The results have important implications for patients and health services as it suggests new cases of neurological conditions linked to Covid-19 infection are likely to occur for a considerable time after the pandemic has subsided,” said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry and the study’s lead author, in a statement. The work highlights the need for more research to understand why this happens, and what can be done to prevent and treat these conditions, he said.

What Experts Know About ‘Long Covid’ and Who Gets It

The study analyzed data on 14 neurological and psychiatric diagnoses from the TriNetX electronic health records network, containing de-identified information on roughly 89 million patients, ranging from children to seniors. The 1.28 million people with a confirmed Covid diagnosis during the two-year study period were matched to an equal number of patients with another respiratory infection that acted as a control group.

The likelihood of most neurological and psychiatric diagnoses after Covid was lower in children than in adults. Unlike adults, they weren’t at an increased risk of mood or anxiety disorders, and any cognitive deficit they experienced tended to be transient.

‘It Is Worrying’

“It is good news that the higher risk of depression and anxiety diagnoses after Covid is relatively short-lived and there is no increase in the risk of these diagnoses in children,” co-author Max Taquet said. “However, it is worrying that some other conditions, such as dementia and seizures, continue to be more frequently diagnosed after Covid, even two years later.”

The fact that these risks remain elevated for so long suggests the underlying mechanisms driving them persists well past the acute infection, the researchers said. Potential causes include damage to the cells that line blood vessels, leading to blood clots, and leakage of the blood-brain barrier.

Previous vaccination is associated with reduced or unchanged risks of most neurological or psychiatric outcomes, the authors said. The rates of these problems were similar after the emergence of the omicron and delta variants, suggesting that coronavirus infections may continue to spur neuropsychiatric illnesses even when they cause otherwise less severe disease.

The study is the first to attempt to examine some of the disparate and lingering neurological and psychiatric consequences of Covid in a large dataset, Jonathan Rogers and Glyn Lewis from University College London wrote in an accompanying comment piece.

“It highlights some clinical features that particularly merit further investigation,” they said, adding that more research is needed to validate the findings.
 

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New study suggests covid increases risks of brain disorders
Frances Stead Sellers - WP
Fri, August 19, 2022, 4:41 PM

A study published this week in the Lancet Psychiatry showed increased risks of some brain disorders two years after infection with the coronavirus, shedding new light on the long-term neurological and psychiatric aspects of the virus.

The analysis, conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford and drawing on health records data from more than 1 million people around the world, found that while the risks of many common psychiatric disorders returned to normal within a couple of months, people remained at increased risk for dementia, epilepsy, psychosis and cognitive deficit (or brain fog) two years after contracting covid. Adults appeared to be at particular risk of lasting brain fog, a common complaint among coronavirus survivors.

The study was a mix of good and bad news findings, said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford and the senior author of the study. Among the reassuring aspects was the quick resolution of symptoms such as depression and anxiety.

"I was surprised and relieved by how quickly the psychiatric sequelae subsided," Harrison said.

David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, who has been studying the lasting impacts of the coronavirus since early in the pandemic, said the study revealed some very troubling outcomes.

"It allows us to see without a doubt the emergence of significant neuropsychiatric sequelae in individuals that had covid and far more frequently than those who did not," he said.

Because it focused only on the neurological and psychiatric effects of the coronavirus, the study authors and others emphasized that it is not strictly long-covid research.

"It would be overstepping and unscientific to make the immediate assumption that everybody in the [study] cohort had long covid," Putrino said. But the study, he said, "does inform long-covid research."

Between 7 million and 23 million people in the United States have long covid, according to recent government estimates - a catchall term for a wide range of symptoms including fatigue, breathlessness and anxiety that persist weeks and months after the acute infection has subsided. Those numbers are expected to rise as the coronavirus settles in as an endemic disease.

The study was led by Maxime Taquet, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford who specializes in using big data to shed light on psychiatric disorders.

The researchers matched almost 1.3 million patients with a diagnosis of covid-19 between Jan. 20, 2020, and April 13, 2022, with an equal number of patients who had other respiratory diseases during the pandemic. The data, provided by electronic health records network TriNetX, came largely from the United States but also included data from Australia, Britain, Spain, Bulgaria, India, Malaysia and Taiwan.

The study group, which included 185,000 children and 242,000 older adults, revealed that risks differed according to age groups, with people age 65 and older at greatest risk of lasting neuropsychiatric affects.

For people between the ages of 18 and 64, a particularly significant increased risk was of persistent brain fog, affecting 6.4 percent of people who had had covid compared with 5.5 percent in the control group.

Six months after infection, children were not found to be at increased risk of mood disorders, although they remained at increased risk of brain fog, insomnia, stroke and epilepsy. None of those affects were permanent for children. With epilepsy, which is extremely rare, the increased risk was larger.

The study found that 4.5 percent of older people developed dementia in the two years after infection, compared with 3.3 percent of the control group. That 1.2-point increase in a diagnosis as damaging as dementia is particularly worrisome, the researchers said.

The study's reliance on a trove of de-identified electronic health data raised some cautions, particularly during the tumultuous time of the pandemic. Tracking long-term outcomes may be hard when patients may have sought care through many different health systems, including some outside the TriNetX network.

"I personally find it impossible to judge the validity of the data or the conclusions when the data source is shrouded in mystery and the sources of the data are kept secret by legal agreement," said Harlan Krumholz, a Yale scientist who has developed an online platform where patients can enter their own health data.

Taquet said the researchers used several means of assessing the data, including making sure it reflected what is already known about the pandemic, such as the drop in death rates during the omicron wave.

Also, Taquet said, "the validity of data is not going to be better than validity of diagnosis. If clinicians make mistakes, we will make the same mistakes."

The study follows earlier research from the same group, which reported last year that a third of covid patients experienced mood disorders, strokes or dementia six months after infection with the coronavirus.

While cautioning that it is impossible to make full comparisons among the effects of recent variants, including omicron and its subvariants, which are currently driving infections, and those that were prevalent a year or more ago, the researchers outlined some initial findings: Even though omicron caused less severe immediate symptoms, the longer-term neurological and psychiatric outcomes appeared similar to the delta waves, indicating that the burden on the world's health-care systems might continue even with less-severe variants.

Hannah Davis, a co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, which studies long covid, said that finding was meaningful. "It goes against the narrative that omicron is more mild for long covid, which is not based on science," Davis said.

"We see this all the time," Putrino said. "The general conversation keeps leaving out long covid. The severity of initial infection doesn't matter when we talk about long-term sequelae that ruin people's lives."
 

jward

passin' thru
nothin' to see here, n just coinkidink my lil black funeral dress gets worn more than my lil black cocktail dress this year?? :(





Dr. James E. Olsson
@DrJamesOlsson
5h

Just within the past 24 hours, one Baseball player collapses in the bullpen on national TV, and another is taken to the ER with "shortness of breath" during a Friday night MLB game...

Replying to
@DrJamesOlsson
We r now at 600+ professional football ( the real foot kind ) players who have suddey died or fallen on the field. Since May 2021. Virtually 0 incidence of this type of thing prior. They've also come in clusters surrounding vax shot campaigns and intervals between # 1, 2, 3
 

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"Long COVID" response ramps up, with plans to test new treatments
Alexander Tin - CBS News
Fri, August 19, 2022, 9:25 AM

It's been one of the biggest mysteries of the COVID-19 pandemic: Why do some people experience at-times debilitating symptoms that linger for months after the initial infection came and went? And what can be done to help those suffering from "long COVID"?

The National Institutes of Health is now hoping to launch its first big clinical trials of potential treatments for patients experiencing long-term symptoms from COVID-19 as early as October, according to a top federal official overseeing the plans.

It's part of the Biden administration's response to the millions suffering from long COVID, with initiatives expected to ramp up over the coming months.

"We're hoping October, November, we could start something big. We might start something small sooner, just to do a pilot first. It depends how the tests work," says Dr. Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Koroshetz is part of the team that has helmed the NIH's RECOVER initiative to study the wide constellation of lingering symptoms grouped as "long COVID" or "post-COVID" conditions.

Those symptoms can include fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, "brain fog," insomnia, diarrhea, or loss of smell.

Apart from the hoped-for trials of treatments for long COVID, RECOVER has already enrolled close to 7,000 volunteers — and conducted 50 autopsies — to build out an understanding of the lingering effects of the disease, Koroshetz told CBS News.

Harder to recruit have been people early on after they test positive, to study how they later recover over time.

"They're not going into hospitals, which is oftentimes where we have the best ability to enroll, and also, because of home testing, they're not going to doctors," said Koroshetz.

Similar to the agency's "master protocol" studies, which evaluated treatments reducing the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, Koroshetz says the agency has been working for months to spin up sweeping trials for drugs that might be able to address some of the underlying causes for long-term symptoms.

One promising thread in that research is medications that might work for people whose symptoms doctors now suspect are likely caused by the virus persisting in the body, stubbornly infecting patients for months after they first tested positive.

Studying those drugs will first require first tests that can quantify whether the treatments are actually working to clear out simmering SARS-CoV-2 infections. Lingering virus cannot explain every long COVID symptom. Scientists believe the causes range widely, with some patients suffering extended symptoms due to organ damage from the initial infection, or from an overcharged immune response that persists after the virus seems to have cleared.

"If you just throw something at a group of people with post-COVID, you'd have to be really lucky to see anything because of the heterogeneity of this, and because you don't know if you don't know what you're targeting, you have no way of deciding on a dose or duration," said Koroshetz.

NIH is also working on a number of other protocols and grants to develop new treatments across the wide spectrum of long COVID symptoms, Koroshetz added. These include therapy for concentration problems and drugs that might manage cardiac issues.

In the meantime, federal researchers say they hope to soon step up research into helping patients manage and treat their long-term symptoms.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs plans to scale up an effort to coordinate their approach to how their doctors are caring for long COVID patients across their system.

Their new Long COVID Clinic Practice Based Research Network plans to start gathering uniform data on their long COVID patients, which the department hopes could help answer key questions around diagnosis and treatment. They also plan to fund several studies of their own, now being proposed this month from doctors across the V.A.'s hospitals, a spokesperson told CBS News.

The V.A. also recently published a guide for doctors caring for patients with long-term symptoms, which it estimates could number between 24,000 and 42,000 veterans.

"At the time of this writing, it is estimated that 4-7% of those diagnosed with COVID-19, or 2% of the U.S. population, will develop Long COVID," the guide's authors wrote.

However, the authors acknowledged that estimates of the prevalence of long COVID symptoms continues to vary widely depending on how they are measured around the world.

In the United Kingdom, surveys suggest that around 2.8% of the population — or some 1.8 million people — are currently experiencing symptoms that have lasted more than a month since their infection.

In the U.S., 7.5% of adults surveyed say they have symptoms that have lasted at least three months after they first contracted the virus, according to U.S. Census Bureau data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June.

More estimates are expected by next summer from the CDC's ongoing National Health Interview Survey, which is expected to wrap up collecting its data at the end of this year.

Data from the CDC-backed INSPIRE cohort study suggests that the most commonly reported symptoms a year after surviving an infection are head-related complaints like headache, loss of taste or smell, or runny nose.

Figuring out how much of that is a result of the virus is tricky. While 29.9% of people who tested positive for COVID reported those symptoms one year later, so did 29.9% of people in the study who tested negative.

The Biden administration has pledged to embark on more research to unlock answers around long COVID, including better surveillance of its prevalence and how to treat it. Officials have called on Congress to fund their "ambitious goals," including a new permanent office to coordinate different agency efforts.

Congress has already set aside some money aimed at tackling long COVID, including $1.15 billion first appropriated in December 2020 that led to the creation of the RECOVER initiative.

Senator Tim Kaine, who has long been a proponent of funding long COVID efforts, said he was optimistic Capitol Hill might be able to devote more money to the issue – despite other long-stalled COVID-19 requests from the White House.

"In terms of the bipartisan nature of this, in the long COVID space, I feel like I've got really good support on both sides of the aisle, in both houses," the Virginia Democrat told CBS News earlier this month.

Kaine — who has spoken out about suffering from long COVID symptoms himself — was among three Democrats to introduce a bill to fund more long COVID efforts back in March. Kaine also cited the spending bills for next year, released last month by Senate Democrats, which include proposals to fund more research at the CDC and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Of course, the spending bills remain far from the president's desk.

"Democrats know the path to a successful appropriations process, but today they chose to move in a different direction," Republican Senator Richard Shelby said in a statement late last month, decrying the proposals as "filled with poison pills" and "wasteful, off-budget spending."

Nevertheless, Kaine said he continues to hear from others who are still suffering from long COVID symptoms like himself. That kinship, he believes, could fuel further support for funding research and treatments.

"I'm not finding it hard to convince my colleagues that this is a priority," said Kaine.
 

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Comirnaty, Spikevax Become Available for First Time in the United States
By Zachary Stieber
August 20, 2022

A small number of Comirnaty and Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine doses have become available in the United States in recent weeks, according to court filings and U.S. health departments.

Vials of vaccines labeled Comirnaty started being available to members of the U.S. military in May and tens of thousands of the vials have since been ordered, according to military officials. Dozens of vials were spotted at a clinic in Alaska in June, according to a Coast Guard officer.

Several states, meanwhile, confirmed to The Epoch Times that providers are now able to order the vials.

Comirnaty is the approved version of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Spikevax is the approved version of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. Approval means drug regulators granted a biologics license application (BLA). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2021 approved Comirnaty for adults 16 and older, and in January approved Spikevax for individuals 18 and up. Before that, the vaccines were available under emergency use authorization (EUA).

The differences matter due to federal law. A biologics license requires a higher threshold of evidence, and certain aspects of emergency clearance don’t apply to approved products.

Even after the approvals were issued, no approved versions were available in the United States, according to the vaccine makers and federal and state officials.

Military members, among others, have cited the unavailability of Comirnaty and Spikevax in legal actions against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

One lawsuit, for instance, said that “the only currently available COVID-19 vaccines are authorized under EUA only, and therefore cannot be mandated.”

Thousands of Doses

U.S. regulators and health officials say the approved versions of the vaccines have the same formulations as the older versions, and that the versions are interchangeable. At the same time, the versions “are legally distinct with certain differences,” according to the letters of approval.

The FDA has declined to explain what that means, while a Pfizer spokesperson told The Epoch Times previously that it refers to the differences in manufacturing information included in the submissions for authorization and approval.

Military officials have defended the COVID-19 vaccine mandate despite Comirnaty and, later, Spikevax not being available by claiming that the older versions can be treated as if they’re the licensed versions, a claim challenged in legal cases.

They’re maintaining that position, but also asserting that objections to the mandate centered on the vaccines’ availability are no longer relevant.

“While it is the Defendants’ position that all EUA-authorized Pfizer-BioNTech doses for adults are interchangeable for the purposes of the mandate to vaccine, in order to address Plaintiffs’ assertions they were unable to obtain a Comirnaty or BLA-manufactured doses, I wanted to confirm in writing that any of the Plaintiffs still subject to the mandate may receive the Comirnaty-labeled vaccine,” Amy Elizabeth Powell, a government lawyer, said in an email in June to lawyers for service members challenging the mandate.

At the time, over 35,000 doses had been obtained by the military, with 3,300 available at specific bases.

The disclosures that Comirnaty has become available were made in the case Coker et al v. Austin et al.

States have also recently been able to start ordering vials of Comirnaty and Spikevax for the first time.

The Delaware Department of Health has ordered 300 doses of Comirnaty, but has not administered any due to lack of demand, a spokesperson for the department told The Epoch Times in an email.

South Carolina received over 38,000 doses of Comirnaty and nearly 53,000 doses of Spikevax, and has enabled health care providers to order them from the state, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control told The Epoch Times in an email.

Providers in Arizona can also order the doses from the Arizona Department of Health Services, a spokesperson for the agency told The Epoch Times in an email, and some providers have already ordered some.

“There is supply to meet the demand. Because these vaccines are identical to the EUA-branded presentations, and because there are still large stocks available in the state, very few Spikevax/Comirnaty doses have been ordered,” the spokesperson said.

States order vaccines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which makes them available for no cost.

The CDC did not respond to emailed questions.

Whistleblower Concerns

Under the approvals, the vaccines must only be manufactured in certain locations, but vials at a Coast Guard medical clinic in Juneau, Alaska, may have been produced at a location that has not been approved.

Each vial has a lot number on it. Lt. Chad Coppin, with the Coast Guard, asked a Pfizer customer service representative where the lot number was produced, and she said that it was manufactured in France on Jan. 28, according to a recording reviewed by The Epoch Times.

The FDA approved manufacturing of Comirnaty in Massachusetts and Belgium (pdf).

“It’s fishy,” Coppin told The Epoch Times.

Pfizer, the FDA, the Coast Guard, and the Pentagon did not return requests for comment.

Coppin outlined the concerns in a whistleblower report (pdf) to members of Congress, calling for an investigation to determine whether the Comirnaty lots are being properly manufactured. Army First Lt. Mark Bashaw also said in the report that the lot number in question was listed under emergency authorization in a CDC database.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), after reviewing the report, asked the Pentagon, the FDA, and the CDC for answers, calling for “complete transparency” regarding the vaccines.
 

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COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Undercut by Updated CDC Guidance: Lawsuit
By Zachary Stieber
August 20, 2022

An amended lawsuit filed Aug. 19 urges a court to rule against Rhode Island’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, pointing in part to updated COVID-19 guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dr. Stephen Skoly is challenging Rhode Island’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, alleging it unconstitutionally discriminates against people with protection from prior infection.

The mandate imposed by state officials allowed medical exemptions but not ones on the basis of prior infection, or natural immunity. That violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, according to the 34-page complaint, filed in federal court in Rhode Island.

The mandate “irrationally discriminates between different types of unvaccinated health care workers—the preferred unvaccinated (those with accepted medical exemptions) are allowed to wear N95 masks and work, and the unpreferred (those with a not accepted medical condition, or natural immunity, or a religious belief) are compelled to suffer loss of livelihood however willing to be N95 masked,” it states.

Skoly has suffered from Bell’s Palsy, a condition that has been linked to COVID-19 vaccines. He has also recovered from COVID-19, which gives him a high level of protection. After consulting with his doctor, Skoly decided not to get vaccinated.

Lawyers for Skoly listed two studies showing that natural immunity is superior to vaccination. They also noted how the CDC on Aug. 11 changed its guidance, which is utilized by officials across the country in imposing regulations.

The guidance says that the risk for severe COVID-19 “is considerably reduced by immunity derived from vaccination, previous infection, or both” and that people “who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.” It also rescinds stricter quarantine for unvaccinated people.

“Even the CDC has finally admitted that it makes no sense to distinguish between vaccine immunity and natural immunity,” the suit says.

It asks the court for damages and to permanently block state officials from enforcing the mandate against him, as well as unemployment benefits and an injunction against a future denial of unemployment benefits.

No Adjustment

Mark Chenoweth, president and general counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, told The Epoch Times after the CDC update that the legal group would be noting the update in future filings, including in Skoly’s case.

If entities do not respond to the update, he said, then more lawsuits will be filed.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have finally come around to admit the scientific fact that recovery from COVID-19 embues [sic] people with naturally acquired immunity to the virus. Rhode Island’s leaders are apparently slower learners. By continuing to treat Dr. Skoly like he poses a threat to vulnerable patients, even though he has antibodies to the COVID-19 virus, the state’s irrational order cannot withstand a court’s scrutiny,” Chenoweth said in a statement.

Outside New Jersey, no states appear to have updated policies based on the CDC update.

A spokesperson for the Rhode Island Department of Health, one of the defendants in Skoly’s suit, did not respond when asked whether the state will do so.

Rhode Island imposed the mandate originally on Oct. 1, 2021. Officials extended the temporary mandate in February, and later replaced it with one that allowed masking instead of vaccination, a provision carried over to the permanent mandate that took effect in mid-June.

In a motion to dismiss that month, defendants noted the change and said it supported dismissing the complaint. They also said that the mandates have been based on “specific CDC guidance and the scientific knowledge available at that time.”

The permanent mandate, however, adds a new section that request all Medicare and Medicaid certified providers and workers to get vaccinated, the amended complaint says. That rule means the masking alternative isn’t available for facilities that accept federal funds, and reimposes the “arbitrary discrimination” that violates the Constitution.
 

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US National Institutes of Health Ending Subaward for Lab in Wuhan, China
By Zachary Stieber
August 20, 2022

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has ended a subgrant to the laboratory in China located where the first COVID-19 cases were identified in 2019.

U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance was granted $3.7 million, starting in 2014, to study bat-related coronaviruses. It conveyed some of the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in China.

The grant was renewed in 2019, but suspended in 2020 because of concerns the grantees were failing to comply with conditions attached to the money.

The NIH’s review of the concerns has concluded, Dr. Michael Lauer, an NIH deputy director, revealed in a letter on Aug. 19. It determined that all of the problems cannot be fixed.

Therefore, the NIH informed EcoHealth Alliance that the subaward to the Wuhan lab is terminated “for failure to meet award terms and conditions requiring provision of records to NIH upon request,” Lauer wrote to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee.

‘Cannot Be Remedied’

Grants from the U.S. government come with certain conditions, including timely reporting of results, and adequate monitoring of experiments.

The EcoHealth Alliance failed to perform a review of the research conducted under the grant, which included making bat coronaviruses more dangerous, the NIH said in October 2021. The agency in January said EcoHealth Alliance failed to comply with other conditions with the grant, R01AI110964, and other awards.

The NIH asked for plans to correct the failures, which was provided on Feb. 4, Lauer said Friday, and the NIH determined that the plans were sufficient.

Separately, though, the NIH asked EcoHealth in late 2021, and again in January, for lab notebooks and original files from the research conducted at the Wuhan lab. It has not received them, according to the new letter.

EcoHealth executives have said that it passed along the request but have not heard back from WIV.

The refusal to provide the materials led to the just-announced termination of the subaward.

“NIH has determined that WIV’s refusal to provide the requested records, and EHA’s failure to include the required terms in WIV’s subaward agreement represent material failures to comply with the terms of award,” Lauer told Drs. Aleksei Chmura and Peter Daszak, the executives, in a letter released on Friday by Comer. “NIH has further determined that in these circumstances, WIV’s refusal to provide records cannot be remedied by imposing additional conditions, and that a partial termination of award (i.e., termination of the subaward to WIV) is the only appropriate action.”

EcoHealth did not respond to requests for comment. An email sent to the Wuhan lab bounced back.

Will Keep Funding EcoHealth


The NIH is not terminating any of the awards in question, R01AI110964, 1U01AI151797-01, and 1U01AI153420-01—at least for now.

When grantees are not compliant with requirements, the preference is to work with them to bring them into compliance rather than termination, Lauer said.

EcoHealth has successfully implemented the NIH-approved corrective plans for the latter two awards, according to the NIH. While EcoHealth will be forbidden to dole money out to WIV under the other grant, it will be able to renegotiate the objectives of the grant with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

If an agreement is reached, the revised grant will move forward. If it is not, the grant may be terminated.

EcoHealth was asked to outline within 30 days how it will accomplish the purpose of the grant without WIV. That will require a change in scope but the change may not depart significantly from the original project, Lauer said.

Comer said the NIH should have ended the award entirely.

“Terminating EcoHealth Alliance’s partnership with the Wuhan Lab is the bare minimum. It’s unacceptable that the NIH continues to allow EcoHealth Alliance to receive taxpayer dollars even though it is confirmed EcoHealth violated the terms of its grant contract,” he said.

“EcoHealth’s dangerous experiments in Wuhan and possible efforts to cover up any evidence may have started the pandemic. EcoHealth should not receive a penny of American taxpayer dollars for their gross mismanagement of Americans’ hard-earned money,” he added.
 

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMixianYoPo
UK vaccination, adverse reactions
14 min 30 sec

Aug 20, 2022
John Campbell

Excess deaths remain high https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati... UK week ending 5 August 2022 799 deaths involving COVID-19 registered (6.5%) Down from 923 in the previous week (7.3%) (First decrease following six weeks of increases) Lag of three weeks between infection and dying as a result of infection Total number of deaths registered in the UK, W/E 5 August 2022 12,126 13.9% above the five-year average (1,480 excess deaths) Please provide the number of deaths caused by the Covid-19 vaccination https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transp... Up to January 2022 15 deaths registered in England and Wales 10 of these deaths have ICD-10 U12.9 as the underlying cause. no deaths registered under the age of 35. https://www.gov.uk/government/publica... ADR to the Yellow Card Scheme https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk US, Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ens... COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer- BioNTech vaccine analysis print 9th December 2020 to 20th April 2022 https://assets.publishing.service.gov... Total reactions for the drug, 488,232 Total reports, 169,660 (172,476) Total fatal outcome reports, 747 COVID-19 vaccine AstraZeneca analysis print 4th January 2021 to 27th July 2022 https://assets.publishing.service.gov... Total reactions for the drug, 871,710 Total reports, 245,996 Total fatal outcome reports, 1,297 COVID-19 Moderna Vaccine Analysis Print Up to 27th July 2022 https://assets.publishing.service.gov... Total reactions for the drug, 133,392 Total reports, 40,270 Total fatal outcome reports, 65 488,232 + 871,710 + 133,392 = 1, 493,334 747 + 1,297 + 65 = 2,109 Covid vax, yellow card summary https://www.gov.uk/government/publica... Yellow card, coincidental temporal correlations May indicate over reporting, That is ADR numbers are actually lower, less than 2,109 https://assets.publishing.service.gov... A report of a suspected ADR to the Yellow Card scheme does not necessarily mean that it was caused by the vaccine, only that the reporter has a suspicion it may have. Underlying or previously undiagnosed illness unrelated to vaccination can also be factors in such reports. The relative number and nature of reports should therefore not be used to compare the safety of the different vaccines. Yellow card under reporting May indicate under reporting, That is ADR numbers are actually higher, more than 2,109 Yellow Card: please help to reverse the decline in reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions https://www.gov.uk/drug-safety-update... https://wchh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/... Don’t wait for someone else to report it It is estimated that only 10% of serious reactions, and between 2 and 4% of non-serious reactions are reported.
 

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UN Recruited Over 100,000 ‘Digital First Responders’ to Push Establishment COVID Narrative
October 2020 admission gets fresh attention.

18 August, 2022
Paul Joseph Watson

At the height of the pandemic, the United Nations recruited over 100,000 “digital first responders’ to push the establishment narrative on COVID via social media.

The revelation actually slipped out in October 2020 during a World Economic Forum podcast called ‘Seeking a cure for the infodemic’, although it is only going viral on Twitter today.

In the podcast, Melissa Fleming, head of global communications for the United Nations, explains how the COVID pandemic and lockdowns created a “communications crisis” in addition to a public health emergency.

Fleming acknowledged that in order to fight so-called “misinformation” about the pandemic, the UN tapped up 110,000 people to amplify their messaging across social media.

“So far, we’ve recruited 110,000 information volunteers, and we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels,” Fleming stated.

That was nearly 2 years ago. It is not known how many ‘digital first responders’ have been recruited up to this point.

Similar efforts to create astroturf campaigns to push a specific message are nothing new, but when entities such as oil companies engage in it, they are lambasted for rigging the discussion.

However, when globalist technocrats at the UN or the WEF do it, apparently it’s fine.

Last year, it was revealed that the British government used “propagandistic” fear tactics to scare the public into mass compliance during the first COVID lockdown, according to a behavioral scientist who worked inside Downing Street.

Scientists in the UK working as advisors for the government admitted using what they later conceded to be “unethical” and “totalitarian” methods of instilling fear in the population in order to control behavior during the pandemic.

As we previously highlighted, the World Economic Forum is now advocating for the merger of human and artificial intelligence systems to censor “hate speech” and “misinformation” online before it is even allowed to be posted.

In what some dubbed “preemptive censorship,” the WEF is creating a system that would block posts from appearing if they fail the censorship filter.

Of course, the WEF, which is infamous for blocking its critics on Twitter, would never abuse such a system to shield itself from scrutiny.
 

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Podiatrist: Death and devastating injuries linked to the COVID-19 Vaccine in 80% of elderly patients
A podiatrist contacted Wayne Allyn Root to disclose his personal experience. He had to keep his identity confidential because he doesn't want to lose his license. What he said is absolutely stunning.

Steve Kirsch
21 hr ago

Check out this story: Finally, One Honest Doctor Comes Forward to Report the Death and Devastating Injuries Linked to the COVID-19 Vaccine.

Do I believe the story? Yes.

I’ve asked Wayne for the contact info of the doctor to verify the story, but I have no reason to doubt it at this point. First, this is consistent with what I’m hearing from others: cancers go up, recovery from surgeries are slow, mental decline accelerates, etc. Why would he risk his license to make up a story like this with such detail? The name of the podiatrist isn’t even revealed. It’s not for fame, not for business. Maybe he’s just malicious, but that seems unlikely. But as I said, I’ll reach out to validate it.

According to Wayne, his podiatrist sees about 80 patients a week. That’s more than enough for strong statistical significance over 20 months (over 5,000 patients) especially with such a large effect size. 95% are vaccinated.

Wayne reports that the podiatrist sees unprecedented rates of injury and death since the vaccines rolled out. He estimates that 80% of his vaccinated elderly are worse off and there is no significant change for his unvaccinated patients.

This isn’t “bad luck” because the p-values are too small to be just “bad luck.” I used Julia’s HypothesisTests library to calculate it and the chance of this happening by bad luck is less than 1e-99. That is the power of a single anecdote. But there are likely hundreds of similar anecdotes with extremely strong p-values. Are they all wrong? It’s very unlikely especially when we aren’t able to find a single anecdote showing the opposite.


All these death and injury reports will be treated by the medical community as anecdotes

Until the medical boards allow doctors to speak out without fear of retribution, these stories will never be published in medical journals and will all be just “anecdotes” that the medical community will ignore.

One doctor asked me “if his story is true, why doesn’t he publish it?”

This shows how naïve doctors are. They think if they submit it to a journal, the journal will publish it and the medical boards will praise the doctor. Neither is true.

In fact, it was the medical boards themselves that told the journal to retract the Lyons-Weiler paper.


“Telling the truth” is not protected speech in medicine: it can lead to license revocation in every state in the US

The HHS agencies, the AMA, the medical journals, or the medical community could speak out about this abuse by the medical boards. They could say that doctors who tell the truth should never be retaliated against.

Not a single doctor or mainstream medical association would dare do that.

Maybe Vinay Prasad might call for this, but he hasn’t AFAIK.

The view of all these people is that it is a state matter and if the states want to punish doctors for telling the truth about what they observe, this is 100% OK with them.

The bottom line is this:

telling the truth about what you observe is NOT protected speech in medicine. It can and will get you retaliated against.

The social media companies, HHS agencies, hospitals, lawmakers, and medical boards all believe it is their duty to silence doctors who tell the truth if what they say goes against the popular narrative.


People who come to the aid of people who are targeted get retaliated against as well

From the comments:

Yes, very interesting. I testified before the medical board in favor of a urologist who was about to lose his license, and was audited by a team from the department of revenue the very next day. The upshot was that I was found to be in full compliance and thanked for my cooperation, but the message was very clear and the attempt to disrupt my practice was quite real even though it failed.


Summary

Paul Thomas and Andrew Wakefield spoke the truth about what they observed: their reputations and careers were destroyed.

That is how science works today: if you find evidence that disagrees with mainstream opinion, if you don’t keep your mouth shut, you will pay the price for the rest of your life.

“Telling the truth” is not an acceptable defense to a medical license revocation proceeding. No doctor has the courage to speak out against the medical boards seeking retribution against doctors who simply report what they observe. Can you find any op-ed anywhere calling for protection of doctors who speak the truth?

People who tell the truth must be silenced.

Why? Because the medical community cannot explain anecdotes like this one. If the podiatrist isn’t lying, something is causing this, and it is 100% correlated with vaccination.

So if it isn’t the vaccine, what is it?

The medical community doesn’t know and they don’t want to know because it would make them look bad for pushing the vaccine.

Is it any wonder why this doctor is afraid to speak publicly?
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Massive Miscarriage Rates Among Vaccinated Pregnant Women Found Buried In The Pfizer Documents
The pharmaceutical industry has committed crimes for decades, paying $30 billion in civil and criminal fines since 2000. The Pfizer documents reveal their latest criminal assault on our health.

Pierre Kory, MD, MPA
8 hr ago

Let’s start with the fact the PFDA (the P is not a typo) asked a federal court for 75 years to make public the many thousands of pages of data submitted to them by Pfizer to support the EUA they (the PFDA) issued.

One interpretation of this action is that they wanted the data to stay hidden for a long time to hide fraud and/or criminality (same thing). The other is that they only had enough staff to complete this task within 75 years. Let’s ignore the 2nd one as absurd on its face (especially since they seem to be pouring out documents monthly after the judge ordered them to). Where there is a will there is a way apparently.

Now why would they want to keep the data hidden? What lies within the realm of possibilities is that at the time they went to court, they knew the EUA and the resulting massive national and global vaccine campaign were pre-determined and independent of whatever “science” emerged to support or not support the campaign. Unfortunately for them, the “science” was not supportive. At all. So they tried to suppress the serious troubling toxicity and lack of efficacy data contained within those documents.

Well the court ordered them to make public thousands of pages of documents each month. My hypothesis above seems to be validated by the uncovering of what is not just troubling, but absolutely terrifying data on the lack of safety in pregnancy. While Dr Naomi Wolf and the WarRoom/DailyClout Research Volunteers recently corrected a report that overcounted miscarriages in one section of the Pfizer documents, they are right to have early and often called attention to signals about this issue overall. Indeed in May 2022, they broke the story of another section of the Pfizer documents, in which the mortality rate of fetuses and babies of women vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA injection was about 80 per cent.

Now, let’s do a dive on just one page of the many thousands. See below, Section 5.3.6, Page 12 of the document called “Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports.”



Looking at the first bullet under the header:

Pregnancy cases: 274 cases including:

In this paragraph, at first read, it is just a list of adverse events and numbers, detailed in a way that is confusing at best, and obfuscating at worst. I think it is the latter because, if you do some simple arithmetic trying to parse that paragraph, you end up with this:

270 pregnancies were reported in vaccinated women during the first 12 weeks of the vaccine campaign. In 238 of them, “no outcome was provided.” So, they only knew the outcome of 32 pregnancies reported. What happened in those 32 pregnancies they followed up on?

My hands are literally trembling as I write this, but here goes. In these 32 pregnancies, there were:

- 23 spontaneous abortions​
- 2 spontaneous abortions with intra-uterine death​

- So, 25 of the 32 pregnancies with known outcomes resulted in a miscarriage, a rate of 78%. Note that miscarriage normally occurs in only 12-15% of pregnancies​

- 2 premature births with neonatal death​
- 1 spontaneous abortion with neonatal death​
- 1 normal outcome​

Note that this only adds up to 29 known outcomes, but then they note that “two different outcomes were reported for each twin” and then they talk about “fetus/baby cases as separate from mother cases.” I have no idea how to interpret this explanation of outcomes, so it may have been one or two less (or more) deaths then.

So, of the 32 pregnancies they knew the outcome of, 87.5% resulted in the death of the fetus or neonate. Burying this data in the way and not alerting the world to what they found, is criminal activity yet again. This is what they do and have always done when one of their novel products begins to cause death. It is just these kinds of actions that hav resulted in the billions of criminal and civil fines they have paid in the last 20 years alone. They have done this with numerous newly launched medications such as Avandia, Bextra, Vioxx, and let’s not forget oxycodone. Many hundreds of thousands of deaths have resulted with the burying of adverse event and death data around newly launched products until they are caught, pay massive fines, and then carry on doing the same thing.

Check out this article reviewing their decades of criminality in which this quote appears:

While the defense industry used to be the biggest defrauder of the federal government under the False Claims Act (FCA), a law enacted in 1863 to prevent defense contractor fraud, the pharmaceutical industry has greatly overtaken the defense industry in recent years. The pharmaceutical industry now tops not only the defense industry, but all other industries in the total amount of fraud payments for actions taken against the federal government under the False Claims Act."

This one is bigger though. And maybe why I keep hearing of a bunch of folks now starting to short their stock as they see this fraud as potentially bankrupting these companies. Maybe, maybe not. They are really good at surviving their frauds and scandals.

Further, in looking at the Pfizer documents more broadly you find so many fragmentations and obfuscations of data in the way they present the data, combined with inexplicable categorizations of deaths as unrelated to the vaccine when they could never have known that (yet should have assumed it until proven otherwise). No wonder it takes an army of volunteers months to dissect and pull out what the actual data indicates.

Now, ignoring and obfuscating the massive toxicity to the fetuses of pregnant women exposed to the vaccine also has major implications on fertility.

And this is where it gets even more horrifying. Birth rates are plummeting in many countries around the world, but the way in which they are plummeting is unprecedented. They are large drops, and they are occurring, almost like clockwork, approximately 9 months after pregnant women around the world started to be vaccinated . This is occurring after women the world over were told it is “safe and effective” in pregnancy despite the fact the trials did not include pregnant women.

Yet, in the first 12 week post-vaccine rollout surveillance report submitted by Pfizer to the PFDA, of the 270 pregnancies reported, they followed 32 of them and found a horrifying rate of fetal/neonatal deaths. Again stirs up memories of one of the most historically shocking statements ever uttered by an FDA voting member, my “friend” Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of my favorite journal, the New England Journal of Medicine (this is a joke), “but we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.” Dr. Rubin and I have a little history. In a NY Times Magazine article which partly profiled me, he was quoted as saying I “got lucky” when I testified in the Senate on the critical need for corticosteroids in hospitalized COVID patients in May of 2020, months before Oxford’s trial made it the standard of care overnight.

Well they started giving it all right. Now let’s see if there are any data to suggest the vaccines are having an impact on birth rates. Note that although birth rates can vary from year to year, and have small peaks and valleys within the year, you don’t typically see large decreases suddenly from one month to the other, in numerous countries around the world. This data is even more horrifying, some of which I obtained from Peter Imanuelson’s Substack called the Freedom Corner with Peter Sweden.

In Stockholm during the first quarter of 2022, birth rates plummeted by 14%, shocking a Professor in Demographics:

"It is a drastic and remarkable reduction beyond the usual. We have never seen anything like this before, that the bottom just falls out in just one quarter" said Gunnar Andersson, professor in demographics at Stockholm University to Dagens Nyheter.

As someone who has been witness to massive censorship, much of it voluntary (i.e self-censorship), what the Professor says next is completely expected and in-line with what is now almost two years of many leading (cowardly) scientists, researchers and physicians who have willingly avoided making conclusions that might put the vaccines in a bad light, despite the immensely disturbing data on COVID vaccine toxicity screaming from VAERS, the life insurance industry, and disability statistics since the roll-out. Here is what he says in a newspaper interview:

"It correlates exactly in time with the mass vaccination program in April, May last year. People understood that the lock downs ended and now we had to go out in the world again. Demographists in other parts of Europe see the same timing" the professor said.

His interpretation is that lockdowns ended, vaccines were provided, thus giving everyone the freedom to start newly re-exploring the world instead of making babies? Although I find this almost too absurd to explore, I will say this: Sweden never really had any significant lock-downs. I am so sick and tired of hearing idiotic alternative explanations for truly disturbing data on the vaccines. Things like “anyone can put a report into VAERS”, or “working age people died at higher rates because of unemployment and deaths of despair.” Yet in 2021, lockdowns were over, unemployment rates were at historic lows, and drug overdoses have been on a fairly constant (but not precipitous) rise for years. I could go on, but you know what I am talking about, the constant explaining away of “inconvenient truths," with my personal favorite (favorite is not the right word), the explosion in articles about Sudden Adult Death Syndrome in trying to explain all the healthy, active young people dropping dead all over the world.

Now check out Germany’s first quarter births compared to the first quarter in previous years:



Switzerland data from the Swiss Policy Research Report here:



Hungary is down 20% since the vaccine roll-out and this massive decrease was addressed by one member of parliament is this widely circulated video from the RAIR foundation. Other reports are even more shocking: Taiwan is down 27%, UK, North Dakota are reporting 12-13% declines, and Norway 6.2%. Admittedly these are a subset of countries, this is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis globally, but the month to month drop still needs explaining.

Further, disastrous impacts on fertility should not come as a surprise. Although censored, many in my network were aware of massive Facebook groups of women reporting and discussing severe menstrual irregularities as a result of these “vaccines.” These groups were shut down by Facebook. Remember, the vaccination campaign had only one enemy: “vaccine hesitancy” and our Federal government paid $1 Billion to media companies to support a favorable view of the vaccines. Massive groups of women reporting severe menstrual irregularities would drive vaccine hesitancy, so such talk must be suppressed at all costs (or minimal cost to Facebook).

We knew about the University of Illinois researchers who were trying to survey 5,000 women to study the effects on menstruation and were besieged with over 30,000 responses in like a day or two. The results were disturbing (and were either explained away as temporary or just ignored).

Google searches find many dozens of articles actually addressing the widespread menstrual irregularities reported by women but always concluding the problems were transient/temporary. But never forget the inaction, ignoring, and suppression of these data by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG). Never forget the Infectious Disease Society of America’s (IDSA) distortion and rejecting of the immense data supporting ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Never forget the American Neurological Association and American Heart Associations ignoring of the massive rises in strokes and heart attacks among young healthy people with no co-morbidities. Never forget the Deans of the nations’ 126 Academic Medical Centers who had to have been aware of what was happening in their University hospitals, yet said and did nothing. It is an endless list of leaders in Academic Medicine who either were cowardly or willfully complicit in the suppression and ignoring of these data or who simply fell victim to what should have been easily detectable propaganda.

I appreciate the efforts of some who explore alternative “hypotheses” to explain these suddenly dropping birth rates. Fine, prove them. Unless you can, as per the now ignored, but long standing regulatory standard, when a new medicine or device is introduced, you must first assume any adverse effects or deaths reported to be related to the intervention until proven otherwise. That is what I am doing here. We must assume the vaccines are impacting fertility unless some other provable or credible explanations for a sudden drop in month to month birth rates. So stop the shots until you can prove they are not (this would be the 189th reason to stop the shots).

Too many young people dying, too many becoming disabled, too many pregnancies resulting in fetal or neonatal death as above, and now we find out that if we continue with this vaccine obsession, they will not be replaced. This is a humanitarian catastrophe heaped atop the one caused by dangerous gain-of-function research. When will the world wake up to this rapidly unfolding horror? For those of us who know what is going on, it is hard not to feel helpless as we are forced to watch increasingly apparent and widespread needless death. But we will continue to try to get these truths out despite the massive censorship and propaganda overwhelming the globe. We have a moral and ethical obligation and take that responsibility seriously no matter what befalls us. Stop the vaccines, now. And if we can’t stop them, we must try to convince everyone we know to no longer agree to get vaccinated. Their lives and our future depend on it.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Contaminated AstraZeneca batches may have caused Adverse Reactions and reduced Effectiveness
Article in eLife Sciences

NE - nakedemperor.substack.com
18 hr ago

A new peer-reviewed study in eLife Sciences, conducted by the Department of Gene Therapy at the University of Ulm, Germany, was published in July this year. It found concerning evidence of contamination of AstraZeneca vaccine batches by proteins derived from the human cell lines in which they were produced. This may have reduced the effectiveness of the vaccine by lowering the immune response. Moreover, it may have caused a variety of adverse reactions.

The editor of the journal correctly notes that “this paper is important because lot purity and processing of vaccines is rarely scrutinized in the scientific realm, and instead is typically analyzed only by the companies themselves.”

Protein content and protein composition of the AstraZeneca vaccine were analysed and the authors found that four out of four (4/4) lots contained significantly higher than expected levels of host cell proteins (HCPs) and free viral proteins.

The most abundant contaminating HCPs belonged to the heat-shock protein and cytoskeletal protein families. The HCP content exceeded the 400 ng specification limit per vaccine dose, as set by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for this vaccine, by at least 25-fold and the manufacturer’s batch-release data in some of the lots by several hundred-fold.

Image

The authors conclude that the vast majority of the proteins detected are in low abundance so would not cause adverse effects. However, they speculated that some of the contaminants may enhance vaccine reactions such as flu-like symptoms. Furthermore, some HSPs can exacerbate pre-existing inflammatory conditions, have been associated with autoimmunity and can even become targets of the autoimmune response itself.

They finish by saying that the detection of different contaminants in the vaccine poses the question as to whether or not they might have long term immune-related side effects in some of the vaccinees.

One of the peer-reviewers of the the article comments:

It is highly astonishing that no response by authorities (EMA) or manufacturer (Astra) is found in the manuscript. To the reader, this indicates that those bodies either are not aware of the study data or that they did not respond. It might therefore be of high general interest to add a short statement to the discussion.

This is another example of why ‘warp speeding’ vaccines isn’t the most sensible idea. It might sound exciting and like something out of science fiction to the geeks but in reality it means steps are skipped, things are missed or not checked and ultimately mistakes are made. Mistakes which cause harm and deaths.

If ‘warp speeding’ was truly necessary then only those most at risk should have been offered the vaccine. Young and healthy individuals should have been warned of the risks and given the choice whether to take the vaccine or not. Adverse events should not have been brushed under the carpet and any talk about them supressed. Governments and the media should not have used mandates and guilt tactics to force people to have something they did not need.

A full, thorough and transparent investigation needs to be undertaken into these contaminated vaccines, otherwise it will further the distrust in big pharma and public health that has exponentially increased over the last two years.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


The Mystery of Fall 2021
Edward Dowd presents another set of data that backs up his claim that Millenials suffered a catastrophe one year ago.

Etana Hecht
15 hr ago

Back in March, Edward Dowd made a claim using CDC data that Millenials suffered an unacceptable excess mortality rate of 84% during the fall of 2021. Mr. Dowd’s theory is that the deaths of the ~61,000 young working-age people in that time period were largely connected to the rollout of vaccine boosters and employment mandates.

Clown World - Honk
The Rate of Change is the Signal
Following last month’s findings by Ed Dowd, he and his actuarial insurance expert partner have dug even further into the raw data and came back with a not so pretty picture. Ed went on Daniel Horowitz’s podcast last week to break down the numbers and explain his theory as to what it all means. He took the CDC data on all deaths, established a baseline r…
5 months ago · 111 likes · 25 comments · Etana Hecht

The argument is that even if a portion of those excess deaths were due to overdoses and suicides, there’s no explanation as to why those deaths would be concentrated into such a short time span, rather than spread out evenly throughout the pandemic. The rate of change in Q3 of 2021 indicates that there was an outside intervention connected to those deaths. Mandates and boosters fit right in to that timeline, and last night on Warroom, Mr. Dowd has revealed another leg for that theory to stand on.


Link to Video 7 min 51 sec

The Society of Actuaries Research Institute put out a report on mortality from group life insurance claims that represent about 80% of such plans in the United States. Their report shows the same Q3 2021 spike in death that Mr. Dowd discovered, and then a decrease to a ~20% increase over baseline rate towards the end of 2021 and continuing into 2022.



The Society of Actuaries report confirms the underlying data that Dowd claimed using CDC data months ago. Dowd is using the math to further cement his argument that the vaccines are a disaster, and he’s calling for an immediate end to the vaccine program, which he defines as a democide.

The evidence is becoming overwhelming, and the shift in narrative from the CDC earlier this week seems to Mr. Dowd to be an indication that they know what’s coming, and the bodies won’t stay hidden for much longer.


Link to Video 11 min 11 sec


Dr. Naomi Wolf and Dr. Robert Malone also appeared on Warroom last night, and broke down the challenges the CDC is deservedly facing now under Dr. Rochelle Walensky’s failed leadership:

  • A Grand Jury Petition from Senators Thatcher and Linthicum, and Dr. Henry Ealy names Rochelle Walensky personally as a defendant. That petition is currently at the end of the 60-day\ period that she had to respond to their demand. The petition alleges that she and the CDC engaged in willful misconduct to provide documentation unlawfully to a third party, which led to serious mistakes in public health.


  • A lawsuit from America First Legal is being filed in response to learning about the coordinated efforts between the CDC and Twitter to remove journalists off their platform via a FOIA request.
Dr. Malone published a fantastic piece about the rot at the CDC, and their public plan to pivot the official Covid response away from the mess that Rachelle Walensky created. He pointed out that while that might seem like a cause for optimism, they’re not doing any serious introspection or post-mortem analysis on the damage caused by their guidance. They’re not even acknowledging all the damage that’s been caused by their guidance, which makes it appear that they’ve learned absolutely nothing, and will continue with nonsense guidelines through future pandemics.

Who is Robert Malone
Rochelle Walensky gets an intervention
Per Wikipedia- Rochelle Paula Walensky (née Bersoff; born April 5, 1969) is an American physician-scientist who is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Prior to her appointment at the CDC, she was the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at M…
2 days ago · 412 likes · 89 comments · Robert W Malone MD, MS

At this point, it seems that anything short of a full dismantling of the CDC will not be enough to restore medical freedom in the US. On that note, Dr. Naomi Wolf announced that she’s launching a center for exactly that. A place where we, the people, can rebuild institutions that will be expected to operate with integrity.

In her own words:

"Liberty House is a new destination, near Hudson, New York, dedicated to convening and hosting thought leaders and advocates of the movement to defend Constitutional and human rights.

“We need to rebuild American civil society, from medicine to politics to journalism, in ways free of corruption, and we need to teach America’s best ideals to the next generation, lest they be lost. Liberty House aims to welcome leaders from all backgrounds and walks of life who have programming ideas, or work to do, or communities to build, along these lines; and we also aim to provide a permanent home, archive, and institutional memory, to support the ideals of Constitution, freedom and human rights into the future.”

As Dr. Wolf said to Mr. Bannon, NOTHING will stop the thousands of volunteers who have come together in an almost miraculous manner to push back against a wildly out-of-control administrative state, and reclaim our freedoms for ourselves.
 

jward

passin' thru

jward

passin' thru

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
https://twitter.com/mildanalyst
Pandemic News
@mildanalyst
2h

3 ppl infected w/ BA.2.76 boarded a plane from Lhasa 36 people on the same flight were infected Everyone wears a mask Passengers 13 rows away are also infected "BA.2.76 is the most infectious so far"
View: https://twitter.com/mildanalyst/status/1561490300572516353?s=20&t=rYcb_-pMz6YTC5-tlYcFxA

Two replies on that (alarming) thread:

View: https://twitter.com/flowermusickids/status/1561493387789885442


I WON’T vote 4 Harris/Buttigieg/AOC in 2024 @flowermusickids
Replying to @mildanalyst
7:20 PM · Aug 21, 2022

I read the article you linked to. The author is reporting a reproductive time of 2 days, high viral loads, & an incubation of 2ish days too. Not good


View: https://twitter.com/flowermusickids/status/1561570992736067584


I WON’T vote 4 Harris/Buttigieg/AOC in 2024 @flowermusickids
Replying to @flowermusickids and @mildanalyst
12:28 AM · Aug 22, 2022

I’m seeing many (justifiably) alarmed by the stats in the report. Here’s a translated section of this part of the report for those curious:

tweeet.jpg
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Jill Biden rejoins president after negative COVID-19 tests

DARLENE SUPERVILLE
Sun, August 21, 2022, 9:33 AM

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — First lady Jill Biden left COVID-19 isolation on Sunday after twice testing negative for the coronavirus and reunited with President Joe Biden at their Delaware beach home.

She had been isolating in South Carolina, where she tested positive for the virus as the couple wrapped up a vacation there last week. The president made a brief stop at the White House before going to Wilmington, Delaware. He arrived in Rehoboth Beach on Saturday night.

The White House announced Tuesday that the 71-year-old first lady had tested positive for the virus. She first had symptoms last Monday. Like the president, she has been twice-vaccinated and twice-boosted with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

President Biden, 79, recovered from a rebound case of the virus on Aug. 7.

Jill Biden was prescribed the antiviral drug Paxlovid and isolated for five days at the home on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, where they vacationed, before receiving negative results from two consecutive COVID-19 tests, spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said Sunday.

The first lady rejoined the president in Rehoboth Beach on Sunday afternoon, an aide said.
 

Heliobas Disciple

TB Fanatic
(fair use applies)


Japan PM Kishida's support tumbles, hit by questions over church and COVID
By Elaine Lies and Ju-min Park
Sun, August 21, 2022, 9:02 PM·2 min read

TOKYO (Reuters) -Support for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government has tumbled, battered by questions about the ruling party's ties to the Unification Church and its response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a public opinion poll.

Links to the church, founded in South Korea in the 1950s and famous for its mass weddings, have become a headache for Kishida since July 8, when former premier Shinzo Abe was shot and his suspected killer said his mother was bankrupted by the church and blamed Abe for promoting it.

According to a survey done at the weekend by the Mainichi Shimbun daily, Kishida's support fell to 36% from 52% a month ago, the lowest since he took office last October.

Those who believed ties between the Unification Church and Kishida's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) were either "an extreme problem" or "something of a problem" hit 87%. Only 4% believed it was not a problem at all.

Kishida reshuffled his cabinet on Aug. 10 and removed some cabinet members with ties to the church in an attempt to bolster support, but 68% of respondents said they did not approve of the move against only 16% who did.

"Regarding the issues related to the Unification Church, we should pay enough attention to relationships with organisations that are socially criticised, so people won't have concerns," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said at a regular news conference.

New coronavirus cases remain persistently high, prompting 55% of respondents to say they did not approve of the government's handling of the situation. On Sunday, Kishida himself tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing him to cancel a trip to an aid conference in Tunisia.

Matsuno said Kishida's condition was stable and he would be working remotely until Aug. 30.

On the question of the state funeral for Abe set for Sept. 27, which will be paid for by the government, 53% said they were against the idea.
 
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