You can register for free on-line access. Donations are optional.
Someone has to map out a route out of the current political cesspit. I wonder if the press will turn up or report it? Last anti-lockdown demo in London was probably genuinely over half a million people, nothing on the BBC.
Peter
39 comments:
👍🏻
Our media (Dutch) are telling me that you actually go out of lockdown on July 19th. So congrats I think, or is there a catch?
Sybella, yes, and these are the people who will in all probability be the core source of information when it comes to the public enquiry in to the healthcare disaster which lockdowns have been.
Stefan, yes. We are told that all restrictions will end on the 19th. The biggest problem is that I saw a brief video clip of our Prime Minister making the announcement and there is absolutely no doubt that his lips were moving as he spoke. And we all know what that means.
However there does seem to be an emerging split globally along political lines with those on the right having a more sensible approach to ineffective restrictions. Though the BBC never mentions Florida or Texas, all of the world leaders absolutely know they exist and are fully open. Face saving and deferring the political costs of their gross mistakes are the biggest obstacles to opening up.
If next winter we revert to the long established pandemic plan I will be well pleased.
Peter
So what is the story on Florida and Texas? I occasionally get to see headlines that some states are vaccine hesitant and have more new infections. Now that you mention this, I don't remember seeing headlines that numbers went through the roof when the eased restrictions earlier than others. But are there numbers / studies to look at?
I keep track of European numbers by temperature zone. The Netherlands and France had more relaxed rules and eased earlier than say Germany and have had consistently 2-5x higher numbers throughout most of this year. Switzerland is kind of an outlier. They had a hell of a peak earlier this year when the eased probably prematurely, then fought their way down to be only slighly higher than Germany by April and then reopened very radically. Very much to my surprise, they remained in a corridor of 1.5 to 2x compared to Germany.
Spain is very high again, Portugal has been for a while, and Italy is slowly creeping up. Whatever wonders milder weather seems to be doing in temperate regions, this effect seems to stop where or when it gets hot enough for people to start using air conditioning.
Mortality due to Covid currently has no correlation at all to new infections. Maybe protocols for attributing deaths are different, or some countries keep straggler in intensive care longer than others so are still seeing deaths from infections contracted months ago.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01299-y
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.15.21257017v1
Stretching the interval for the Biontech vaccine from 3 to 12 weeks increases antibody count in over 80s 3.5-fold but decreases T-cell count.
I wonder what the mechanism is and what is more beneficial for whom. Surely older folk have a weaker T-cell response anyway. Is it better to boost their T-cells or antibodies?
What about younger people? EMA recommendation is 19 - 24 days as this is the interval used in more than 95% of the trial participants. Allowed interval is 3-6 weeks.
In Germany, policy until last week was to hit exactly 6 weeks to stay within licence but stretch the doses as far as possible. Now with better availability, 60% delta and reduced demand for vaccinations, they allow 3-6 weeks again but fail to say whether one or the other is better.
I suppose there just aren't any studies looking at 3 vs. 6 weeks?
From the comment section of the second link. This speaks volumes. Not to my question, but to the cavalier attitude with studies:
The JVCI seem to be using this paper as the sole source for justifying an 8-week gap for Pfizer in younger cohorts, despite the fact that the sample for this paper is 172 people aged 80 or over. Not by any stretch a fair representation of the population. It would be hard to argue that it is even possible to get a fair representation of genders, ages and ethnicities with a sample of 172 alone.
With this is mind, what response do the authors give to the fact that this paper is being used to justify the current 8-week policy for second doses of Pfizer and Moderna when this paper does not make any attempt to back up that justification for younger cohorts, especially when the manufacturer and WHO recommend a 21-28 day gap between doses?
1
•
Reply
•
Share ›
Avatar
smithak DainHendrix • 3 days ago
The authors definitely need to clear up this distinction. I tried to get a 2nd vaccination as an end-of-day walk-in (I'm 33) at a vaccine clinic in Oxford, as I figured it would be better for me to get a 2nd vaccine, and better for the clinic to use up thawed doses of the Pfizer vaccine. I was told that, although they had doses leftover in the clinic, they would not be giving out any vaccines to anyone based on a study showing they needed to wait 8 weeks.
When I pressed further, they flat-out told me the vaccines weren't effective unless there was an 8 week gap between doses, so it seems like this paper is being used to spread a false narrative among the local CCG's and clinics around the UK.
Eric, De Santis in Florida removed all bar elderly protection in September last year. He followed the Great Barrington Declaration. He had to eventually ban face masks from Democrat pockets of resistance in his state. Florida did better than New York or California as well as you can compare.
No one knows if the vaccines work or how well they do so. Enhancing antibody production while suppressing T cell response is a recipe for ADE in the elderly. Science is essentially dead as far as the vaccines are concerned The disconnect between cases and deaths could simply represent that most susceptible people are now dead, rather than vaccine efficacy. If only healthy people catch covid it will be a cold, as the delta variant seems to be in the UK currently. Bear in mind that for an 85 year old a “cold” might be lethal, more so in winter…
Peter
BTW, I find Republican politics uncomfortable and De Santis is a strong supporter of ex President Trump. But he absolutely did the correct thing re covid. The Democrats weaponised covid to defeat Trump. This was effective, alarming and despicable. I find both ends of the spectrum unacceptable. But De Santis made the right call. Eventually followed by Texas and lots of other republican states. Much of the USA is open but along political lines
Currently I'm still half expecting Bojo to cave about re opening on the 19th. After all he has a spine made of soft faeces, like the rest of him, and breathes by lying.
Peter
Peter's comment at 4:08 -- Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, howdy!
(American slang for, Yes!)
Current and total case load for all of Europe by region, provice or state (hover to get local numbers, use buttons above to toggle between current and total):
https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/corona-zahlen-europa-weltweit-aktuell-karte
Czech republic probably has the highest total infections and highest total deaths in Europe after Bosnia-Herzegovina, but is extremely low now (why?). UK has highest new infections, with Northeast England and Tayside extremely high.
Only if Delta among those who can still catch it is a harmless sniffle is complete abolishment a good idea. In particular, what is the problem with continuing to require people to wear masks in indoors public spaces or crowded areas?
In my county, we are currently at 5 infections per week and 100,000. Masks are still mandatory in shops or in cinemas (where you also need to be vaccinated or have an antibody test that is no more than 24 h old). They are not mandatory outside except if one cannot distance, so it is put in poeple's judgement. The mask mandate for the pedestrian zone and the farmers' market was lifted. My impression yesterday at the market was that 99% were wearing a mask and 98% correctly. That's actually better than when the mandate was in place.
off topic but maybe interesting
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jul/10/raw-dog-food-may-be-fuelling-spread-of-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria
Eric, go check on Florida.
Re raw pet food: Of course. Do you have any idea of the money spent on "supporting" small animal educational congresses by per food manufacturers? A lot. Do vets recommend crapinabag. Of course. Anti raw? Of course. Except those with brains. Many feline experts do raw feed but they aint saying so in public.
Antibiotic resistance is not new. Antibiotics merely tap in to techniques already used by microbes against other microbes. The strongest driver of selection for resistance to antibiotics is antibiotic usage. The higher the dose, the longer the course, the more meticulous the administration the better the selection pressure. Ergo, ITU units are the absolute best generators of selection for favouring antibiotic resistance emergence, which they are.
Physically spreading bacteria around, as raw fed pets undoubtedly do, is not "causing" antibiotic resistance. They are no worse than meat lorries delivering mince to a supermarket. In fact, if those raw fed pets are healthier and require less antibiotics because they get less pancreatitis, hepatitis, skin infections etc over their lifetime they many result in a reduction of antibiotic usage, so a reduction in selection pressure. Active selection is primarily done by excellent doctors doing excellent work in the ITU, without whom many would die. MRSA is a common commensal in the nose of many consultant surgeons. They didn't catch it from their pet. And reporters in the Grauniad understand nothing about anything, except they like a backhander from pet food manufacturers. Oh, and that lockdowns work, masks work and vaccines are perfect.
Peter
Hmm, since we only own quail, I am not so well versed in pet food. They wrote that they looked at 55 samples from 25 manufacturers, among these 14 frozen, so I think it is safe to assume they were talking about industrially manufactured raw frozen stuff. Of course, dog food does not drive selection in bacteria, but it contains them, and dogs can be sloppy eaters. Getting meat and scraps from your local (organic?) butcher may be a better idea.
That being said, some people are surprisingly lax in how they handle raw meat and don't need the help of a dog. I have a colleague who'll rinse chicken breasts (supermarket variety), dry them with the dish towel and hang it back and dry his hands on it a few minutes later.
About Florida, it is surprisingly hard to get reports or comparative data for the US, whereas data are readily available for Europe. What I found is this:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/florida-covid-cases.html
About 3400 new cases yesterday for 21 million inhabitants, 250 new infections / 1000,000 and 7 days, and up 114% from a fortnight ago. Much like the Netherlands and the UK, and a lot compared to the US national average which is about 35 / 100,000 and week. Boils down to the question: how much serios illness, suffering and death is involved here?
Deaths were 25 yesterday, roundabout 12% of US deaths for about 6% of the population, and about the same as UK, France, Italy, Germany, all of which have 3-4x the population of Florida.
By the way, in Europe, deaths are no longer linked to incidence. It has become even harder these days to tell which deaths were really from Covid, and reporting guidelines may have diverged. There was also the head of an ICU here who said that what Covid patients remained in critical care had been there for months, so some of the deaths may be stragglers. It still surprises me that the Netherlands report only one death, given that they have been running highish numbers all of this year.
"Do you have any idea of the money spent on "supporting" small animal educational congresses by per food manufacturers? A lot. Do vets recommend crapinabag. Of course. Anti raw? Of course. Except those with brains."
Just like with humans, nobody seems to have paid much attention to the fact that so many pets today are fat and cancer-ridden. This was not always the case. Even five or six years after my own low-carb enlightenment, it never occurred to me to apply the same principle to my cats, which as obligate carnivores are even less adaptable to crapinabag than dogs or humans. My older cat got fat, had all but three of his teeth pulled, and spent an expensive stretch in the ICU with a blocked urethra. I was even feeding him Science Diet Light, in hindsight probably the worst thing for him.
A few years ago I ran across a wonderful book, "Dogs, Dog Food, and Dogma: The Silent Epidemic Killing America's Dogs and the New Science That Could Save Your Best Friend's Life" by Daniel Schulof. Not only does he extensively document the pernicious financial influence on veterinary medicine by pet food companies, as Peter pointed out, but he was greatly influenced by Gary Taubes, whom he cites repeatedly.
So when my younger cat was four, I threw away all the dry food. We live in a rural areas; she eats a lot of rodents, the birds and lizards I can't rescue in time, and regular raw chicken necks and meat scraps, supplemented with some canned cat food. Now nine, she's svelte, healthy, and happy.
One question for Peter: do you think regular worming is a good idea, or only if there appears to be a problem?
Peter, what I have been meaning to ask you: what do you mean by weaponizing? That they pointed out how erratic, clueless and cynical Trump had been and what they proposed to do? That's the job of an opposition party. Or do you mean they exaggerated dangers in any way? I have followed the election very closely as I used to live there and still have plenty of personal and business contacts there and didn't see anything of that kind.
And pundits say Covid wasn't that big a factor anyway and may even have rallied diehard supporters around him or attracted new ones who weren't happy with mask mandates and stuff.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article247141899.html
By the way, in Germany, the anti Covid restrictions movement made for some very strange bedfellows. AfD (our UKIP), neo-Nazis, former communists, flower kids, anthroposophs, you name them. The extreme right saw it as an opportunity to sow and channel discontent.
Eric, from my view (heavily influenced by many Democrat faithful on facebook) there was an unremitting attribution of the USA deaths from COVID-19 to Trump's mis-management of the pandemic. It went on and on relentlessly. It had the continuous use of absolute numbers vs per capita numbers and featured all of the sustained misinformation the UK's PHE is using to frighten us but the tirade in the USA was aimed specifically at blaming Trump. I have no love of Trump but to think that anything any government has done has had any effect (other than Hancock and Cuomo actively infecting care homes) is preposterous. And the Democrats can look at Florida, Texas and numerous other now-open states and either ignore them or suggest they are lying about their numbers.
My politics are centre-leftish but the Democrats disgusted me. So does Trump BTW.
The USA has done rather better than I expected given their prevalence of metabolic syndrome.
Peter
So, does anyone have some insight into what is a really going on in China wrt covid?
The official statistics are ( totals to date)
Coronavirus Cases:
92,066
Deaths:
4,636
Recovered:
86,952
The charts show a small blip in Jan/Feb to approx 1800 active cases but then back down to ongoing levels of approx 400 almost lost in the noise floor. I do not believe anything much that any official anywhere says about vaccines but I suspect the ruckus about sinovax effectivity in the Seychelles(?) was most likely politically or commercially ( both/either/and/or) driven poppycock and might not have had much foundation in reality. It was in the Grauniad ... Perhaps it is a more effective Vax than was alleged. But there is not much credible information to go on either way, certainly not in the official Chinese stats.
Cavenewt "We live in a rural areas; she eats a lot of rodents, the birds and lizards"
We used to be cat people but it only takes one dead Fairy Blue Wren to turn your point of view. We were always concerned about Toxoplasmosis wrt cats vs rodents and feral cats are a huge problem for wildlife here however the wildlife can fight back sometimes and our last cat died of the effects of a snake bite. Venomous place, Au.
Funny that you should mention toxoplasmosis. There was this big hype 10 years ago about risky behavior and how most drivers in car crashes had it. The other day I wondered what had become of that, then today I read something about it causing bipolar disorder and some brain tumors, and then there is your post.
There are vaccines for everyone
https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-in-israel-immunocompromised-can-get-jab-today-health-min-673464
cave, I worm my hunting cat when I remember. I mean to do it once a month, for tapeworm. The indoor cats only very occasionally, usually if we have had a flea outbreak (different tapeworm, same wormer).
Toxo is interesting. It's usually harmless to all species but just occasionally it can be very, very nasty. It's also neurotrophic and behaviour-influencing. It makes mice find the smell of cats very attractive so aids the completion of its life cycle. For one of the smallest eukaryotes in the world I find that impressive.
Peter
alta, phew, they'll all be fine then!
Peter
Eric, yes, but you have to ask about the PCR cycle number used to determine if a person has toxo!
Peter
Peter (and all),
I guess you've seen this, and it certainly won't be a surprise, but just in case it's new to anyone:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-health-research-is-fraudulent-until-proved-otherwise/
Malcolm
@passthecream re cats...one of my biggest cognitive dissonances. Having been a cat owner my entire life, it's an addiction impossible to kick. And keeping them locked inside, where I live, is impractical and seems cruel. Cats do have a challenging existence here; coyotes, owls, cougars, etc. being the biggest threats. Much as I'd love to, I won't put up a birdfeeder or hummingbird feeder so as not to provide a lunch counter. She does get lavish praise for the rodents.
Toxoplasmosis: one of the required tests when I was pregnant in 1996. Assuming the test was accurate (!), I was mildly shocked when I came up negative, considering that lifetime of cat ownership, and always being the one responsible for the litterbox.
The fact that toxo can influence behavior is endlessly fascinating. Like that parasite that causes ants to climb to the top of a plant so it can be predated by something else (going from memory here which is no doubt inaccurate).
I live in the US, and Peter's take on the politics of Covid is identical to my own. I'm pretty liberal and find it viscerally difficult to credit Trump for anything, but console myself with the fact that even though some of his actions about Covid may eventually be shown to be right, it was for the wrong reasons.
Eric's faith in publically-provided stats is touching, but I'm to the point where I don't believe any of it any more.
cave, that's the liver fluke, Dicrocoelium dendriticum (googled the name), the ants on grass bit is embedded in all vet students very early.
Malcolm, I'd not seen it but I was fairly aware it was a problem. This last year or so has been quite revelatory about the depth of the problem, the depravity of anyone who wants to be in charge of a country and the execrable nature of people in science who rise to the top political posts. And don't start me on modellers.
Peter
I can't suppress the feeling that we might be watching the beginning of the end of our current civilisation. I really hope not and that the problems have always been there, just nowadays they show better. But things are bad.
Peter
Pass, re China: can anyone believe that they have no covid? Maybe if the Aussie police go around welding doors shut......
Peter
Btw, I heard today that standard treatment in Aus hospitals for covid infected people is a combination of the antiviral Adefivir plus Dexamethasone, and they are getting good results with it. (No mention of Ivermectin anywhere.)
Adefivir is interesting from a personal angle as it was one of the drugs a family member's lab was investigating against hepatitis B, (DHBV model), in combo with Lamivudene and a range of other -virs and
-denes.
And here's a short but pithy interview with Dr Peter Doherty.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/the-origins-of-sars-cov-2/13441308
Correction, Adefivir is not exactly standard treatment, only used for people who are very ill. And it is highly successful together with the dex., and used Australia wide. This info comes from medical people I do trust.
OTOH it is impossible to trust any published statistics anywhere.
"It's the fact they didn't stop th planes flying out of China.". My gut feeling is that this hit China a year earlier and they didn't say anything about it.
Pass, everything works well while the vulnerable are protected. I recall how impressive Germany's ITU record was in the first wave based on early, effective anticoagulation and usual care for their first ripple (Eastern Europe missed out on the first wave) and then reality hit in the autumn of 2020.
Justin, I think they are just using a different label. So they have no COVID-19 now. If you retrospectoscope the UK's cases the number who died of uncomplicated COVID-19 is very low compared to the reported PCR positives at time of death. Just label the death as what caused it without testing for COVID and there would be very few cases.
Peter
As time goes by, it's becoming a bit clearer that a Coronavirus (Sic) is not so much the issue with COVID-19 as it does appear more and more that a host of metabolic complications lie at the core of this débâcle, and that somewhere back-in-time we can now see that the science of virology took an exomorphic left turn instead of a right, and that now, as a direct consequence, it's becoming increasingly more evident that it is the cross-reactivity with an Enronvirus that is the principal problem.
I've not been vaccinated, and I'm Just not interested in acquiescing, in any form, with anything to do with the utter madness of the whole... simplistic, yet utterly avaricious charade of the BIGGER Covid circus. Anyway, at the monthly management meeting of my golf club, a motion was put forward to ban the entry of unvaccinated members (er, um, me & one other), to the clubhouse. Thankfully, it was defeated (I am an club-Captain). I'm not given naturally to violence (I'm 70 and have played rugby for 50-odd years), but I have very clearly informed the golf club secretary, and the committee, that if anyone cares to try and stop me from entering our clubhouse, that they will suffer. Badly. Very badly.
The ease with which 95% of the populace has been manipulated is utterly fascinating. So easy. So effective. It illustrates very clearly how incomprehensible events such as genocides can be committed by perfectly normal people.
Peter
Post a Comment