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Sunday, December 05, 2021

Links - 5th December 2021 (2 - Covid-19)

CNN spread distrust of Trump's COVID vaccine—now they are scolding others for 'vaccine misinformation' | The Post Millennial - "CNN declared the vaccine's creation and manufacture to be a political move that was sped up under Trumps' threats. Now CNN is reporting that social media companies must prepare for an onslaught of "COVID-19 vaccine misinformation," and find ways to guard against it... New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo also said that he would not trust a vaccine made from the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, and would not allow its distribution in New York... Interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sept. 3, CNN consistently inquired as to the likelihood that the shortened timeline for COVID vaccine development was politically motivated, and not for public health concerns... On Sept. 5, CNN discredited the coming vaccine, saying that "Trump has pressured administration health officials to accelerate the vaccine's development in an effort to convince voters of an impending end to the pandemic threatening his reelection."  On Sept. 14, CNN declared that most Americans "believe political pressure will cause [the] FDA to rush a coronavirus vaccine." They wrote that "If a Covid-19 vaccine was ready and available for free before the upcoming election, just over half of respondents, 54%, said they would not get one, while 42% said they would."  On Oct. 6, a CNN story on the vaccine said that "experts worry what Trump's undivided attention means for the fate of the vaccine. With so much obvious political pressure coming to bear, people may fear that the vaccines aren't safe for widespread use. Beyond that, they may lose trust in federal regulators and, possibly, in research science.""

Time for Singapore to firm up Covid-19 exit strategy: Experts - "Professor Ooi Eng Eong, who does viral research at Duke-NUS Medical School, suggested Singapore set a date on when it plans to ease restrictions as "a firm decision on when measures will change or be relaxed will provide a clear signal for all to act accordingly, as many who procrastinate or are undecided will be mobilised by deadlines".  He said the principle is to ensure that the benefits of disease control outweigh its cost to society. He said: "As the cases that truly need hospitalised management are now well within the limits of our healthcare resources, the cost of the current measures to the rest of society in Singapore, who are now mostly vaccinated, has inflated sizeably."... Now, people who have been vaccinated, whose livelihoods have been affected, whose plans for weddings and other social activities have been put on hold, are just waiting for the laggards to get vaccinated...   Prof Ooi is all for an early date to ease curbs since "cases have not abated despite the phase two (heightened alert) measures".  Pointing to the low impact of the lockdown in Sydney, Prof Ooi said such measures are less effective against the Delta variant than they were against the original wild strain... Prof Fisher agreed that easing of restrictions is important "because of the economic impact on small and large businesses and the country". He said: "There is also a huge social impact on weddings, funerals and family get-togethers."  Professor Teo Yik Ying, dean of the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said easing of measures can start now if done in a calibrated and phased manner.   Prof Teo suggested some differentiation to protect the unvaccinated.  "For example, dining in for vaccinated people can be permitted, perhaps in even larger group sizes of up to five. For unvaccinated people, dining in should still be restricted, maybe to one person or at most two."  The same principle should apply to social and fitness activities, he said, adding that "the differentiation is to protect the unvaccinated people, rather than to discriminate against them"... Prof Fisher said: "We have to let our hawkers and restaurateurs get back to work."... He also thinks contract tracing should be reduced or even stopped. "If this continues as restrictions ease, we will simply be putting more people in quarantine. Currently, there are 18,000 who cannot go to work or go to school. A halfway measure could be to identify only close contacts and therefore quarantine fewer."... Prof Tambyah added: "I think that we will be able to accept around 100 to 200 deaths a year which would be an improvement from the more than 500 deaths a year we used to see with influenza."  From May 2020 till June this year, Singapore has not had a single case of laboratory-confirmed influenza. There was one case last month.  A Ministry of Health (MOH) study published in 2006 found that close to 600 people died of influenza-associated deaths here each year, with the elderly facing more than 11 times the risk of death.  There has been little panic over flu deaths, although these can be prevented through vaccines too. Covid-19, however, has become a rather emotional issue for many... children here have made huge sacrifices over the past year, such as having their schooling disrupted, to protect the elderly from infection.  "It should be a matter of urgency to reduce the burden on children of pandemic-control measures, whose beneficiaries are the elderly who have been eligible for vaccination for half a year already.""
Covid hystericists mock those who ignore experts, but they themselves are contemptuous of experts who disagree with them. It's great that Prof Teo recognises that restrictions are not to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, as covid hystericsts think

Heavy use of hand sanitizer boosts antimicrobial resistance
Hygiene theatre is not just useless but actively harmful (beyond diverting resources for no reason)

Scientific Evidence Doesn’t Back Booster Covid Shots, Researchers Warn — Even For The Delta Variant - "The push to roll out Covid-19 booster shots is not being driven by sound scientific evidence, according to a group of international researchers writing in the the Lancet medical journal Monday, who said available evidence shows vaccines to be highly effective against the delta coronavirus variant and that unwarranted messaging about booster doses undermines overall confidence in vaccines...
The researchers, who included experts from the Food and Drug Administration and World Health Organization, warned that unnecessary calls for booster shots have “implications for vaccine acceptance that go beyond Covid-19 vaccines,” undermining vaccine confidence and public health messaging on the value of getting vaccinated, particularly if boosters are only used for one type of vaccine.
There is also the potential for “significant adverse reactions” if boosters are administered too soon or used too frequently—the researchers noted the small risk of myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of an mRNA vaccine—the researchers said, which could further undermine confidence in vaccines.
As well as not being backed up by available scientific evidence, the researchers said the limited supply of vaccines would be able to save more lives if used in people who had not received a vaccine yet, noting that “even if some gain can ultimately be gained from boosting, it will not outweigh the benefits” of protecting the unvaccinated."
This won't stop covid hystericists demanding them. So much for following the "science". Though maybe this is a feature, not a bug - by undermining confidence in the vaccines, vaxholes ensure that they will always have a group to demonise, hate and oppress

Michael Levitt on Twitter - "My keynote uninvited from https://t.co/KhepqykXW8 “... too many calls by other speakers threatening to quit if you were there. They all complained about your COVID claims”. Computational biology & biodesign are based on my work. Time to cancel them & me. New Dark Age Cometh."
Of course this has nothing to do with why all the "experts" agree with the narrative
So much for winning a Nobel Prize

Meme - Christine "Go Donate Blood" Rou... @crousselle: "We :) still :) aren't :) allowed :) to :) have :) a :) funeral :) this :) size :) for :) my :) dad :) indoors :) or :) outdoors :)"
"Hundreds gather to honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Portland vigil"

Meme - "Power doesn't come from imposing draconian rules. REAL power comes from handing out exceptions to those rules. This funeral, like the left-wing riots and mobs of protesters crowding the streets without coronavirus criticism, was a demonstration of raw power."
"I get it. My dad wasn't important. So it's ok to limit his funeral to 10 people tomorrow. *John Lewis funeral*"

Heidi🍁 on Twitter - "Doug Ford lifts Covid-19 restrictions for tonight's vigil being held at the London Muslim Mosque"
"This just proves that there is no logical reason to limit funerals. Are they trying to break our spirits? Because this sure as shit feels like a slap to the face to me & anyone else who has been unable to properly say goodbye to loved ones.
This is making me tear up, because I can’t understand why politicians get to decide who’s deaths are worth mourning. Why do the rules only apply to some? Why have I been unable to attend a funeral over a year after my uncles were murdered?   I’m tired of this shit."
The woke virus strikes again!

Meme - "14 days home to flatten the curve
Stay home until hospitals aren't overwhelmed
Wait until there is a vaccine
Wait until everyone can get the vaccine
Wait until everyone has had the vaccine
Just maybe, normalcy won't come from compliance."

Meme - Don Winslow: "I've been saying this shit for months. No surprise here. If you take Donald Trump's rushed "vaccine" you're an idiot."
Don Winslow: "We have to come together. We have to stop the lies and misinformation. More than 600,000 people are dead from #COVID in just the United States It's time that we all #UniteAgainstCovid"

Robert Reich on Twitter - "Please, for the love of god, do not rush an unsafe vaccine for political purposes. #Debates2020"
Robert Reich on Twitter - "Every company in America should require all workers to be vaccinated, period."

Meme - "Karen 54. Three times divorced, two times vaccinated, and one proud vote for our savior, Joseph Biden. If you expect anything physical, you must be wearing a mask until there is updated CDC sexual contact advice"

Chris Selley: Enough with the COVID moral panic over foreign travellers - "Guarded quarantine of people coming to Canada, citizens or otherwise, only makes sense as a part of a genuine “COVID zero” strategy, such as New Zealand and Australia have successfully deployed."
As with most covid measures, it was all political theatre. And it worked, given how many people bitched about flights

Malaysia in danger of perpetual MCOs, says expert
Of course, the alternative of ending covid hysteria is not considered

How Many SARS-CoV-2-Infected People Require Hospitalization? Using Random Sample Testing to Better Inform Preparedness Efforts - "The overall IHR was 2.1% and varied more by age than by race or sex. Infection-hospitalization ratio estimates ranged from 0.4% for those younger than 40 years to 9.2% for those older than 60 years. Hospitalization rates based on case counts overestimated the IHR by a factor of 10, but this overestimation differed by demographic groups, especially age."
One covid hystericist proclaimed that you don't know how many people have been infected, so you need to look at CFR instead of IFR. Apparently it is good to use misleading data (and this ignores the fact that even CFR isn't that accurate since you also have false negatives and positives)

Exclusive: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission - "More than half of Covid hospitalisations are patients who only tested positive after admission, leaked data reveal.  The figures suggest vast numbers are being classed as hospitalised by Covid when they were admitted with other ailments, with the virus picked up by routine testing.  Experts said it meant the national statistics, published daily on the government website and frequently referred to by ministers, may far overstate the levels of pressures on the NHS...   The majority of cases were not detected until patients underwent standard Covid tests, carried out on everyone admitted to hospital for any reason.   Overall, 56 per cent of Covid hospitalisations fell into this category, the data, seen by The Telegraph, show.   Crucially, this group does not distinguish between those admitted because of severe illness, later found to be caused by the virus, and those in hospital for different reasons who might otherwise never have known that they had picked it up.   Last month, health officials instructed NHS trusts to provide "a breakdown of the current stock of Covid patients", splitting it into those who were in hospital primarily because of the virus and those there for other reasons. So far, NHS England has failed to publish this data"

Whether it’s cock-up or conspiracy, officials are still feeding the public misleading statistics - "Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, took the public through slides showing that there were currently 7,891 people in hospital with Covid in the UK.  What she failed to mention is that this figure does not only include people admitted with Covid, but also those who test positive for coronavirus while in hospital for another condition. Hospitals were instructed to distinguish between the two groups earlier this year, but so far it has not filtered down into the official figures...  many experts seized on 223 reported deaths to argue that Britain should enact Plan B restrictions.   But the reported death data does tend to jump around depending on the day of the week and reflects deaths over several days. Look at the figures by “date of death”, and it is clear to see the situation is largely plateauing...   A quick look at the figures from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) show a marked increase in cases reported to the regulator over the past year."

COVID Hospitalization Numbers Can Be Misleading - The Atlantic - "From the start, COVID hospitalizations have served as a vital metric for tracking the risks posed by the disease... there are many COVID patients in the hospital with fairly mild symptoms, too, who have been admitted for further observation on account of their comorbidities, or because they reported feeling short of breath. Another portion of the patients in this tally are in the hospital for something unrelated to COVID, and discovered that they were infected only because they were tested upon admission. How many patients fall into each category has been a topic of much speculation. In August, researchers from Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical Center, and the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System decided to find out. Researchers have tried to get at similar questions before. For two separate studies published in May, doctors in California read through several hundred charts of pediatric patients, one by one, to figure out why, exactly, each COVID-positive child had been admitted to the hospital. Did they need treatment for COVID, or was there some other reason for admission, like cancer treatment or a psychiatric episode, and the COVID diagnosis was merely incidental? According to the researchers, 40 to 45 percent of the hospitalizations that they examined were for patients in the latter group. The authors of the paper out this week took a different tack to answer a similar question, this time for adults. Instead of meticulously looking at why a few hundred patients were admitted to a pair of hospitals, they analyzed the electronic records for nearly 50,000 COVID hospital admissions at the more than 100 VA hospitals across the country. Then they checked to see whether each patient required supplemental oxygen or had a blood oxygen level below 94 percent. (The latter criterion is based on the National Institutes of Health definition of “severe COVID.”) If either of these conditions was met, the authors classified that patient as having moderate to severe disease; otherwise, the case was considered mild or asymptomatic. The study found that from March 2020 through early January 2021—before vaccination was widespread, and before the Delta variant had arrived—the proportion of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease was 36 percent. From mid-January through the end of June 2021, however, that number rose to 48 percent. In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease. This increase was even bigger for vaccinated hospital patients, of whom 57 percent had mild or asymptomatic disease. But unvaccinated patients have also been showing up with less severe symptoms, on average, than earlier in the pandemic: The study found that 45 percent of their cases were mild or asymptomatic since January 21. According to Shira Doron, an infectious-disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, in Boston, and one of the study’s co-authors, the latter finding may be explained by the fact that unvaccinated patients in the vaccine era tend to be a younger cohort who are less vulnerable to COVID and may be more likely to have been infected in the past.... [According to Shira Doron, an infectious-disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, in Boston] “As we look to shift from cases to hospitalizations as a metric to drive policy and assess level of risk to a community or state or country,” Doron told me, referring to decisions about school closures, business restrictions, mask requirements, and so on, “we should refine the definition of hospitalization. Those patients who are there with rather than from COVID don’t belong in the metric.”"
Of course, only a conspiracy theorist would seek to distinguish the numbers of people who die with covid from those who die of covid
Covid hystericists like to claim that studies they don't like are outdated, but the nature of scientific research means that papers can never use real-time data. Of course it's convenient for them since they can fear-monger all they want

COVID pandemic corroded Canadians' trust in politicians — even their neighbours, poll finds
Of course, it is notable that divide and conquer is a long-established tactic for control

Taylor C. Noakes: Dismissing anti-lockdown protesters as racists is just virtue signalling - " Article content  What concerns me is a broader trend amongst politicians — of all stripes — that reinforces an “us vs. them” mentality when unity is in short supply. Further dividing the population for the sake of scoring political points is anathema to our collective interest in conquering these inter-related crises. The pandemic has provided an opportunity for far-right nationalist groups to infect the general population. Though we tend to focus on the death toll, for the majority of Canadians the pandemic has been an economic disaster first and foremost, and It’s the second such disaster in less than fifteen years. For too many Canadians, the once prosperous middle class country they grew up in no longer exists. Even if the country starts getting back to some semblance of normality this year, for those who have lost their livelihoods, the recovery is going to take much longer."
Just like having concerns about one vaccine - or even opposing mandatory vaccination - means you're an "anti-vaxxer" now

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