Dissecting Leftism

Report claims Covid-19 lab leak theory ‘more probable’ than natural occurrence

What was once considered a far-fetched conspiracy theory has now been floated as a “more probable” answer to the million dollar Covid-19 question.

The origins of Covid-19 have been pontificated on by millions around the world after the first wave exploded through Wuhan, China in 2019.

The US National Library of Medicine claimed the virus that turned planet Earth on its head originated from pangolin samples “obtained by anti-smuggling operations in the Guangdong province of China”.

But sceptics have been highly critical of the assumption the virus, which was highly infectious to humans, naturally developed in the wild.

The Lancet, another major medical journal, boldly proclaimed that those suggesting the virus originated from a laboratory were attempting to “manipulate public opinion with political language”.

“Peer-reviewed evidence available to the public points to the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged as a result of spillover into humans from a natural origin,” the Lancet published in 2023.

But now, a major scientific paper led by Australian pandemic expert Professor Raina MacIntyre suggests that a lab leak is actually “equally or more probable” than Covid-19 springing from nature.

The paper, featuring scientists from the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW, says that while a lab leak theory is plausible, the true origin of the pandemic may never be confirmed.

The research used the Grunow-Finke tool, an epidemiological risk scoring method, contrasting with the genetic analysis methods more commonly used to investigate the virus’s origins.

“An unnatural origin of SARS-COV-2 is plausible, and our application of the Grunow-Finke tool suggests it is equally or more probable than a natural origin, although both remain possible,” the researches wrote.

“The gathering of intelligence may include open source, signals or satellite intelligence, political factors, as well as other ‘detective work’ to piece together the complex question of the origin of SARS-COV-2.

“This would include full records of viruses housed at the relevant laboratories, of experiments conducted, and records of accidents and illness among staff. The question of origin cannot be answered solely by phylogenetic analysis, as viruses resulting from gain-of-function research using serial passage in an animal model cannot easily be distinguished from naturally emerged ones.”

This analysis is presented against a backdrop of widespread dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis in scientific circles and by the World Health Organisation, which deemed a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology “extremely unlikely”.

The study analysed various factors, including the peculiar biological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2, its rapid human-to-human transmission rate, and unusual actions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak, such as military control takeover and removal of a large virus database from public access.

The paper’s findings, suggesting a 68 per cent likelihood of an unnatural origin of SARS-CoV-2 based on the modified Grunow-Finke tool, contrast sharply with other scientific opinions and WHO conclusions.

The research has been criticised by some international scientists, including Alice Hughes from the University of Hong Kong, who labelled the analysis method as potentially “dangerous and misleading” due to its subjective nature and reliance on conjecture.

As the world emerges from one of the most destabilising periods in recent history, more and more information about the potential cause of the pandemic has risen to the surface.

In November 2023, a whistleblower came forward to claim CIA analysts who favoured the lab leak theory were bribed to change their position.

The bribe was allegedly made to take the focus off China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The National Intelligence Council’s Director for Global Health Security, Adrienne Keen, worked as an independent consultant for the WHO from 2016.

Former Acting Assistant Secretary of State Thomas DiNanno said that Ms Keene tried to push Covid-19 was a natural occurrence, rather than a lab leak.

“I had found out that apparently she was an outside adviser also to the World Health Agency – they are a political agency, they are a UN agency,” Mr DiNanno said.

“It’s just not appropriate to do work for a foreign power and that would include in the United Nations.”

A few months prior, a report claimed that Covid-19’s “patient zero” was a Wuhan scientist carrying out experiments on souped-up coronaviruses,

According to the report, the scientist, Ben Hu, was conducting risky tests at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with two colleagues, Ping Yu and Yan Zhu.

It’s understood all three fell ill with Covid-like symptoms and needed hospital care weeks before China disclosed the virus outbreak to the world.

A bombshell report by journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi alleged the scientists were experimenting with coronaviruses when they became sick in 2019.

Many experts and intelligence officials have long suspected scientists at the lab accidentally spread Covid-19 during so-called “gain of function” experiments on bat coronaviruses.

The naming of “patient zero” could be the so-called smoking gun – adding to mounting circumstantial evidence of a lab leak.

It’s not clear who in the US government had the intelligence about the sick lab workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public.

Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organisation advisory committee on human genome editing, described it as a possible “game changer”.

“It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with Covid before anyone else,” he said.

“That would be the ‘smoking gun’. Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in (virologist Shi Zhengli’s) lab.”

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/report-claims-covid19-lab-leak-theory-more-probable-than-natural-occurrence/news-story/49d637b898a604e52839a3091f0fd6f1

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UK: Up to 20,000 prostate cancer diagnoses could have been missed during the pandemic, research suggests

Up to 20,000 diagnoses of prostate cancer could have been missed during the pandemic, research suggests.

Analysis of 24million patient records since 2020 found tens of thousands of men have missed potentially life-saving cancer diagnoses.

The study by the University of Surrey and the University of Oxford said there was 'unprecedented disruption' in the diagnosis of cancer with a drop in urgent referrals from GPs, caused by difficulties accessing care and longer waiting times.

They analysed prostate cancer incidence between January 2015 and July 2023 using data representing 40 per cent of the country. This revealed a 31 per cent drop in diagnoses of prostate cancer in 2020 and 18 per cent in 2021, returning to normal in 2022.

When extrapolated across the country, there were 19,800 fewer cases, according to the findings published in the British Journal of Urology International.

Lead author Dr Agnieszka Lemanska, of the University of Surrey, said: 'Understandably, during the pandemic, resources and attention in healthcare systems shifted towards preventing and managing the virus.

'It is important that we learn the lessons from the pandemic. However, to do this, we need to understand the scale of how diagnosis rates were impacted during this time.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13207815/Up-20-000-prostate-cancer-diagnoses-missed-pandemic.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Murthy v. Missouri Puts Government Censorship on Trial

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, formerly Missouri v. Biden, the president whose administration has been accused of strong-arming Big Tech to remove “objectionable posts.” The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, joined by doctors such as Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, argue that the administration censored dissenting speech on COVID-19 and other policies by pressuring tech platforms to remove or restrict posts.

Consider this account from Martin Kulldorff, former professor of medicine at Harvard and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBR) with Dr. Bhattacharya and Oxford University’s Sunetra Gupta, a leading infectious-disease epidemiologist. The GBR, signed by thousands of medical scientists, advocated an approach to the pandemic similar to the one taken by Kulldorff’s native Sweden, which declined to shut down schools.

Kulldorff recalls that although Sweden had the lowest excess mortality among major European countries and “despite being a Harvard professor, I was unable to publish my thoughts in American media. Twitter (now X) put me on the platform’s Trends Blacklist.” Twitter did the same to Dr. Bhattacharya.

“Seeking to prop up Anthony Fauci and the lockdown policies he promoted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the plaintiffs explain, “Twitter (and other Big Tech companies) intentionally blacklisted, censored, suppressed, and targeted the GBD and its signers.”

National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins smeared the GBD authors as “fringe epidemiologists,” but they were far more qualified than Collins, a “lab scientist with limited public-health experience,” according to Kulldorff. Fauci, longtime boss of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is a nonpracticing physician whose bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. The government’s white-coat supremacists were causing extensive damage, and the GBD scientists called them out.

“It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral damage,” notes Kulldorff, “not only on education but also on public health, including treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health. We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the world—all will suffer.”

As the ousted Harvard professor explains, “The pursuit of truth requires academic freedom with open, passionate, and civilized scientific discourse, with zero tolerance for slander, bullying, or cancellation.” That sort of activity has been going on at Facebook for some time.

In 2018, in his first public testimony before Congress, CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook was collaborating with the investigation of President Trump by former FBI director Robert Mueller. The FBI had interviewed some Facebook employees, but Zuckerberg would not say who they were “because our work with the special counsel is confidential.”

When Sen. Ted Cruz asked Zuckerberg if Facebook was a “neutral forum,” the CEO seemed puzzled by the concept. Sen. Cory Gardner asked if the government had ever demanded that Facebook remove a page from the site. “Yes, I believe so,” said Zuckerberg. He did not reveal the content of the page or when the removal had taken place.

Joe Biden has accused Facebook of “killing people” with vaccine misinformation. From the ordeals of Kulldorff, Bhattacharya and others, it’s now clear that the Biden administration was peddling misinformation, slandering the GBD scientists, and blocking them from setting forth the truth to the widest possible audience.

“In an environment where just about every decision tech platforms make becomes highly politicized,” one article previewing Murthy v. Missouri explains, “lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have grown accustomed to making pointed—if, often empty—threats at Big Tech. Now, the Supreme Court will decide just how far those threats can go.”

Murthy v. Missouri aside, it’s clear that white-coat supremacy and government censorship are incompatible with a free, safe, and healthy society.

https://blog.independent.org/2024/03/15/murthy-v-missouri-puts-government-censorship-on-trial/?omhide=true&trk=rm

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Mandatory lockdowns had almost no benefit—but did significant economic and health-related damage

Four years ago this week Vice President Mike Pence announced the White House’s “15 days to slow the spread” campaign. What followed was the unprecedented use of lockdowns, school closings and other sweeping measures to mitigate Covid-19.

Four years later, we know what many of us suspected then: None of those policies were successful, and many were gravely damaging.

The Covid health benefits of mandatory lockdowns were tiny. Lockdowns in the U.S. prevented between 4,000 and 16,000 Covid deaths. In an average year 37,000 Americans die from the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lockdowns also failed to reduce infections more than a trivial amount, in part because people voluntarily alter their behavior when a bad bug is in the air. Coercive government policies generated few benefits—and massive costs.

Public-health agencies exacerbated the damage by failing to keep their heads and follow standard pandemic-management protocols. Before 2020, it was recognized that communities respond best to pandemics when government measures are only minimally disruptive. During Covid, however, officials junked that practice by green-lighting restrictive practices and intentionally stoking fear. That response overlaid enormous economic, social, educational and health harms on top of those caused by the virus.

Those harms are captured, in part, in excess deaths—the number beyond what would have been expected without a pandemic. Non-Covid excess deaths from lockdowns, the shutdown of non-Covid medical care, and societal panic are estimated at nearly 100,000 between April 2020 and at least the end of 2021. The number of lockdown and societal-disruption deaths since 2020 is likely around 400,000, as much as 100 times the number of Covid deaths the lockdowns prevented.

The best measure of health performance during the pandemic is all-cause excess mortality, which captures the overall number of deaths relative to the expected level, encompassing Covid and lockdown-related deaths. On this measure Sweden—which kept most schools open and avoided strict lockdown orders—outperformed nearly every country in the world.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the U.S. “would have had 1.60 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Sweden, 1.07 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Finland, and 0.91 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of France.” In America, states that imposed prolonged lockdowns had no better health outcomes when measured by all-cause excess mortality than those that stayed open. While no quantifiable relationship between lockdown severity and a reduction in Covid health harms has been found, states with severe lockdowns suffered significantly worse economic outcomes.

Closing hospitals and cutting off access to non-Covid healthcare generated a fear of entering medical facilities. That was a profound mistake, as was encouraging the false belief that hospitals were too busy to treat people who needed care. Healthcare utilization rates were at low levels between 2020 and 2022. In spring 2020, nearly half of the nation’s some 650,000 chemotherapy patients didn’t get treatment, and 85% of living organ transplants weren’t completed. One study found that there were 35.6% fewer calls for cardiac emergencies after March 10, 2020, compared with the year prior. Emergency-room visits were down between 40% and 50%, according to an estimate in May 2020. That doubtless contributed to observed non-Covid excess deaths and may continue to do so, as Americans suffer from undetected cancers and other long-term conditions. Healthcare uptake is still lower than pre-pandemic levels.

The economic costs of lockdowns were also staggering. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 49 million Americans were out of work in May 2020. This shock had health consequences. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that the lockdown unemployment shock is projected to result in 840,000 to 1.22 million excess deaths over the next 15 to 20 years, disproportionately killing women and minorities.

Perhaps the worst policy error was prolonged school closings. Learning loss for children, especially in poor families, is already showing up in reduced standardized-test scores. These losses will affect earnings for decades. By one estimate today’s children will lose $17 trillion in lifetime earnings owing to school closings. They may also suffer shorter life expectancy, which is linked to income and educational attainment.

While school closings had no offsetting public-health benefits, the attendant isolation led to massive increases in psychiatric illness, self-harm, obesity and substance abuse. Healthy children were always at vanishingly small risk from Covid, and nearly all of them were infected at some point anyway, according to CDC data. Like a regressive tax, these harms were severest for lower-income and minority students.

One result of the government’s Covid response is that Americans have lost faith in public-health institutions. To earn back their confidence, Congress and the states should rewrite their statutes regarding public-health emergencies. Legislatures should place strict limitations on the powers conferred to public-health executives, in addition to implementing sunset clauses that require legislative majorities to extend them. Congress should likewise set term limits for all senior positions in U.S. health agencies.

The CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes for Health should be fully transparent about their deliberations. They should publish transcripts of their formal discussions on digital forums for public consumption. Congress should also restate that the CDC’s guidance is strictly advisory and that the agency doesn’t have power to set laws or issue mandates. The U.S. should halt all binding agreements with the World Health Organization until it also enhances transparency and accountability.

Most important, these institutions must acknowledge that lockdowns, school closings and mandates were egregious errors that won’t be repeated. Until they do, the American people should continue to withhold their trust.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lessons-learned-four-years-later-596a9fa9

New Canadian vaccine works

As SARS-CoV2 evolves into more distant Omicron variants, companies continue to invest in research and development and potentially vie for lucrative government contracts for future COVID-19 vaccine deals. In this context, the Canada based Providence Therapeutics mRNA platform appears to support the acceleration of next-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

Researchers affiliated the clinical-stage mRNA platform company developing vaccines for cancers and infectious disease, report on a study comparing their investigational mRNA vaccine with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 (Comirnaty). When considering this approach to mRNA vaccine development the company touts its “dynamic and adaptable responses, emphasizing the importance of sustained vaccination strategies.”

How did the Canadian company’s experimental vaccine targeting COVID-19 compare against Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 in a Phase 2 clinical trial?

With results of this study (NCT05175742) published in Nature Scientific Reports, the study team based out of Canada reports on the results of the head on comparison study leveraging trial sites in Canada and South Africa.

The Study

In this investigation, the sponsor-funded study looks at their COVID-19 vaccine called PTX-COVID19-B mRNA Humoral Vaccine, developed to prevent COVID-19 in a general population. Importantly, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine does not stop viral transmission but reduces the probability of morbidity and mortality.

For comparison of the vaccines, the study’s protocol was designed to produce the data to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of PTX-COVID19-B compared to Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in healthy seronegative adults aged 18 to 64.

An observer-blind, double-dummy, randomized immunobridging phase 2 study, the researchers compared the immunogenicity induced by two doses of 40 μg PTX-COVID19-B vaccine candidate administered 28 days apart, with the response induced by two doses of 30 µg Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (BNT162b2), administered 21 days apart, in Nucleocapsid-protein seronegative adults, again ranging in age from 18–64 years.

The study team reports that both vaccines were administrated via intramuscular injection in the deltoid muscle. Two weeks after the second dose, the neutralizing antibody (NAb) geometric mean titer ratio and seroconversion rate met the non-inferiority criteria, successfully achieving the primary immunogenicity endpoints of the study. PTX-COVID19-B demonstrated similar safety and tolerability profile to BNT162b2 vaccine.

Importantly, a non-inferiority trial is a study that determines if a new treatment is not worse than an active treatment it is being compared to. These trials are used when a placebo (an inactive treatment) cannot be used, or when the incremental benefits of newly developed treatments may be only marginal over existing treatments, which appears to be the case here.

While NAb with lowest response was detected in subjects with low-to-undetectable NAb at baseline or no reported breakthrough infection, the study investigators also found that the study result demonstrates induction of cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses by PTX-COVID19-B.

Cell-mediated immunity (CMI), also known as cell-mediated immune response or cell-mediated immune defense, is a crucial aspect of the immune system's defense mechanism. It involves specialized cells, primarily T lymphocytes (T cells), which directly attack and destroy infected or abnormal cell

Summary

According to the entry, the candidate PTX-COVID19-B demonstrated favorable safety profile along with immunogenicity similar to the active comparator BNT162b2 vaccine.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/canadian-mrna-develop-phase-2-head-on-evaluation-versus-pfizers-bnt162b2-meets-non-inferiority-endpoint-a726d6b1

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Now That Puberty Blockers Have Been Banned, it’s Time to Ban Covid Vaccines for Children Too

Puberty blockers have finally been banned in the U.K. The decision came after an independent review of services for children under 18 and a sharp rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which is closing at the end of March.

“We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty-suppressing hormones” an NHS spokesperson told the Telegraph on March 12th 2024.

MPs and media personalities have come out in support of this move. But in reality, most of them have remained silent on this issue up until now. It has previously been considered too politically sensitive and controversial to comment on, with the threat of being branded a ‘transphobe’ or ‘bigot’ no doubt playing a significant role in their collective silence. Nonetheless, I have yet to meet a single person, outside of social media, who agrees that puberty blockers are either ethical or safe. Thankfully, strong and courageous voices, such as J.K. Rowling, Allison Pearson, Molly Kingsley and Jordan Peterson have been calling out the dangers of this practice from the start. They are now clearly vindicated.

When the issue is stripped back to its essence, puberty blockers have been banned on the basis of long established medical ethics. Specifically, that children should never be given a medical intervention which they do not need and which poses known and serious risks to them – a view which before 2020 would have been the reasonable position to take. Indeed, to argue otherwise would have been regarded as extreme. The factor which changed after 2020 was the rollout of the Covid vaccines to children. Seemingly overnight, medical ethics was suspended and inverted in favour of pushing ahead with the vaccine rollout. However, if we apply the same principles behind the banning of puberty blockers to the Covid vaccines, they would also be banned for children with immediate effect.

The Covid vaccine rollout to children has always been controversial. Consider:

Covid vaccinations were not recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) for under-16s, a decision overridden by the Chief Medical Officers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

When Matt Hancock was Health Secretary, he stated in Parliament that the Covid vaccines were for the adult population only. He said that children would not be offered the vaccine because it had not been tested on children and that they were at low risk from Covid. Despite this, he then supported the rollout to the nation’s children.

There are still no long-term safety data for the Covid vaccines (and at the time of the rollout to children, incomplete short-term and no medium-term safety data).
Covid vaccines pose known and very serious risks (these include potentially fatal myocarditis, pericarditis etc.) Tragically, there have also been coroner confirmed deaths caused by the Covid vaccines.

A child can still catch and spread Covid when vaccinated against the virus.

Healthy children are at extremely low risk of serious illness from Covid, so the risks posed by the vaccines outweigh any possible benefit for a child.

When Sajid Javid was Health Secretary, he stated that 12 to 15 year-old children would have the final say on whether or not to receive the Covid vaccine. Children were told that they were allowed to override their parents’ decision. This remains, in my opinion, the most egregious act of the entire pandemic.

The Government chose Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company with a long history of criminal and medical negligence (and which paid the biggest criminal fine in U.S. history) as the company to provide the Covid vaccine for our children. This really should have been a red flag from the start.

One of the most controversial points was the decision by the U.K. Government to shut down its own Ethics Committee when its members raised serious concerns about the Covid vaccine rollout to children.

Like puberty blockers, the general public appears to have been opposed to the Covid vaccine rollout to children. In the end, 89.4% of five to 11-year-olds did not receive a single Covid vaccine or booster. This is despite a multi-million pound marketing campaign directed at children and their parents. Over 50% of the 12-15 year old cohort did not receive a single dose either.

The evidence keeps stacking up against the Covid vaccines

MPs have said they believe the MHRA were aware of heart and clotting issues caused by the Covid vaccines in February 2021 but did not highlight the problems for several months. The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on pandemic response and recovery raised “serious patient safety concerns”, claiming that “far from protecting patients” the regulator operates in a way that “puts them at serious risk”. Some 25 MPs across four parties wrote to the Health Select Committee asking for an urgent investigation.

The group also warned that the MHRA Yellow Card reporting system – which encourages patients and doctors to flag-up medicine side effects – “grossly” underestimates complexities, and in some instances picks up just one in 180 cases of harm.

MPs and peers have also accused the Health Secretary of withholding data that could link the Covid vaccine to excess deaths, and criticised a “wall of silence” on the topic. A cross-party group has written to Victoria Atkins to sound alarm about the “growing public and professional concerns” at the U.K.’s rates of excess deaths since 2020.

With the growing evidence that something is seriously amiss with the Covid vaccines, surely we should stop giving them to our children? Currently within the U.K., children who are considered vulnerable (including those with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and ADHD) and those living with clinically vulnerable adults are eligible for the vaccine. It is also possible for parents to privately purchase the Covid vaccine for their children if they are 12 years old or over. In light of the ban on puberty blockers, it makes sense to apply this thinking to the Covid vaccines too.

Things will change when members of the public speak up

Being critical of puberty blockers will become the accepted narrative now that they have been banned. Members of the public, media personalities and politicians will begin to openly express this position (which has always been the majority view). However, we need to get to a point when people begin to express opinions which they genuinely hold but are still considered controversial. Expressing lawful opinions about sensitive topics, particularly when it comes to safeguarding children against harm, should be encouraged and not vilified.

All of the safeguarding training across workplace sectors is easily dismantled and destroyed in the face of moral cowardice. As a former headteacher, with 30 years’ experience within the education sector, I had to attend annual safeguarding training which laid out what an education professional must do when he or she has concerns about a child. The training always highlighted examples in which entire organisations have been complicit in widespread abuse.

We are told that it is not just the perpetrators of the abuse who are accountable. Those who are not directly involved in the abuse, but who remain silent about it, are equally accountable under law. These individuals, woefully lacking in moral courage, place their self-preservation ahead of the needs of the children in their care. It is also a serious breach of their legal duty to safeguard children against harm.

Of course, cancel culture, as well as employers evangelised by whatever the latest thing happens to be, inhibits free speech. If an opinion goes against the current narrative, employees are likely to be attacked for expressing it. Whether that be criticism of puberty blockers, the Covid vaccines, climate alarmism, drag queen storytime or anything else. Expressing lawful opinions about controversial and politically sensitive topics will almost always result in some sort of attack. However, we must draw a line when it comes to safeguarding children against harm.

As the only U.K. headteacher to publicly express concerns about lockdowns, masking kids and the Covid vaccines for children, I have experienced multiple attacks and personal losses. This is why I am now taking my former employer, East Sussex County Council, to court. In the end, expressing my valid concerns in a lawful and moderate manner cost me my career. My employer tried to silence me through the complaints and investigation process, but I continued to express my concerns. I was fulfilling my legal and moral duty in doing so. My philosophical belief in the importance of critical thinking, freedom of speech and safeguarding children underpins my case. It is predicted to set an important legal precedent for free speech in the workplace and has gained the overwhelming support of the public, high-profile free speech advocates and the Daily Telegraph.

But it needn’t result in expensive court cases and conflict if everyone expressed their lawful opinions about the things which matter. The ban on puberty blockers is a fantastic development in the battle to protect our children, but those who were silent about it are partly responsible for the delay. This abhorrent medical intervention should have been banned long ago. The same principles applied to the ban on puberty blockers should now be applied to the Covid vaccines for children. Children do not need this medical intervention, which is ineffective and known to cause harm. The general public is clearly in agreement so the time to speak up about it is now. Silence should never be an option when safeguarding children against harm.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/19/now-that-puberty-blockers-have-been-banned-its-time-to-ban-covid-vaccines-for-children-too/

More Gobbledegook about masks

Smile Free has often highlighted the utter nonsense espoused by the U.K. Government’s public health experts and plethora of advisers on the issue of community masking. Who can forget the flip-flops of Dr. Jenny Harries and Professors Whitty and Van-Tam in June 2020, transitioning from urging healthy people not to wear face coverings into strident pro-mask advocates? Or the absurd claim of Professor Trish Greenhalgh that science is the “enemy of good policy“? But, not to be outdone, the Scottish leg of the U.K. COVID-19 Inquiry has confirmed that the gobbledegook around masks was not confined to England but also infected the ‘experts’ operating north of the border.

After the extended ramblings of Nicola Sturgeon – trying, in vain, to justify the convenient deletion of all her Covid-related WhatsApp messages – we were treated to the appearances of Professor Jason Leitch (National Clinical Director), Humza Yousaf (Scotland’s First Minister), Colin Poolman (Royal College of Nursing Scotland Director) and Devi Sridhar (Professor of Global Public Health). Chunks of their testimonies constitute a mix of ignorance, a detachment from reality and Monty Pythonesque comedy.

Did anyone understand the mask rules?

Clearly, Humza Yousaf (the then Scottish Health Secretary, no less) didn’t. During Leitch’s appearance at the inquiry it was revealed that, in November 2021, Yousaf asked Leitch whether he needed to wear a mask when stood talking at a social event. Leitch responded:

Officially yes. But literally no one does. Have a drink in your hands at all times. Then you’re exempt. So if someone comes over and you stand, lift your drink… That’s fun. You’ll go down a treat.

When challenged by the Lead Counsel as to whether this was an example of a “work-around” to “get out of complying with the rules”, Leitch’s denial was less than concise:

There was an ambiguity here that I faced as well, as we re-opened in this period, of the country, and that ambiguity was that we were allowing social occasions… And there was an ambiguity around mask-wearing when you were seated, eating, drinking, because these events are – often involve a dinner. And there was some difficulty with the interpretation of mask-wearing inside those rooms when you were eating, drinking or moving around… but there were occasions, particularly when the country was opening up again, where there was of course nuance around the guidance and the rules, and this I think was one of those occasions: when you were at a dinner, eating and drinking, and somebody approached you… I think this was a tricky area that I found tricky as well.

Well, that clears things up!

And – as observed by the KC during his questioning of Yousaf – “When you, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, feel the need to clarify the rules about face masks, what chance do others have in understanding the rules?” When this absurdity was put to Leitch, the Clinical Director’s response was, inadvertently, illustrative of the mask nonsense:

I understood the rules and I understood what we were trying to do, but the reality of life and the environment in which we were trying to do these things perhaps suggests this guidance was nuanced rather than entirely right.

If only our leaders had paid a smidgeon more attention to the “reality of life” we wouldn’t all have had to endure the imposition of masks (or, indeed, many of the other counterproductive Covid restrictions).

If only the masks had been a tad smaller

Colin Poolman, representing the Scottish RCN, lamented that the face masks provided were often too large for the NHS workforce. “Nursing is a predominantly female profession and many of the masks were not designed in smaller sizes so we had huge issues at times,” he told the inquiry, implying that a better-fitting strip of plastic would have provided an effective shield against the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. Given that the use of surgical masks to block respiratory viruses is akin to using a tennis net to hold back grains of sand, it’s hard to see how a bit less of a gap around the edges would have made any significant difference to the level of protection afforded.

Neglect of inconvenient evidence

The wealth of pesky evidence demonstrating that face coverings constitute an ineffectual viral barrier has always been a problematic truth to the pro-mask brigade: their guiding rule seems to be, “If the science doesn’t support our ideological preferences, dismiss it.” In Scotland, the doppelganger to England’s Trish Greenhalgh, appears to be Professor Devi Sridhar.

Sridhar is saturated with globalist credentials. She is Professor of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University and has worked closely with the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the Wellcome Trust and the World Bank. During her testimony at the COVID-19 Inquiry, Sridhar demonstrated a conveniently flexible attitude to empirical research. For instance, while bemoaning that “we spent too long debating whether masks work”, Sridar asserts that “in clinical settings they work, surgeons use them, on construction sites, the mask itself works”. This esteemed academic seems blissfully unaware that surgeons primarily don face coverings to avoid potential exchange of bodily fluids (such as saliva and blood) rather than to reduce the transmission of viruses. And as for construction sites, keeping dust and fragments of concrete and masonry at bay is a somewhat different challenge to avoiding inhalation of microscopic pathogens.

Like many of her pro-mask public health colleagues, Sridhar appears to struggle to grasp what happens in the real world. Thus, she rightly acknowledges that “masks at a population level are often not used correctly, people wear them over their mouth not their nose, they take them off to eat and drink”, but then asserts that “if it is used appropriately it is probably one of the best interventions you can use to protect yourself”. So, apparently, in Sridhar’s surreal ecosphere, if people wore masks perfectly all of the time, never tugged and fiddled with them and – uh – stopped eating and drinking, they would provide some benefit. If only we all lived in a parallel universe.

Sridhar clearly has an emotional attachment to mass masking in the community, perhaps because it chimes with her ideological beliefs about collectivism, the sense that we’re all in it together and must behave in socially responsible ways. Empirical evidence be damned if it does not support one’s political proclivities. This phenomenon is illustrated in Sridhar’s inquiry interview; when the KC states that the science had concluded that public use of face coverings achieved a “near non-existent” degree of benefit, and then asks her, “Is this the sort of debate and discussion that you think we should have bypassed?” Sridhar replies, “Exactly”. It is reasonable to propose that double standards are on display here; if robust studies had found in favour of masks, Sridhar and her ilk would have been screaming it from the Davos rooftops.

Ignorance around mask harms

Throughout the Covid event, there has been one common factor inherent to all the narratives beseeching us to cover our faces with strips of cloth and plastic: a failure to acknowledge the wide-ranging harms of masking healthy people. This omission – due either to ignorance or wilful avoidance – is evident once again in Sridhar’s Covid Inquiry testimony. For instance, in her attempt to defend her partisan championing of community masking, she asserts that “the cost is slight… so, for me, recommending masks seems a low-cost measure of something easy, like hand-washing, you can tell people to do”.

I sometimes imagine engaging in a prolonged attempt to impress upon Sridhar (or, for that matter, any other pro-mask zealot) the raft of negative consequences (physical, social and psychological) associated with routine masking. And, in this thought experiment, I then envision asking her the question, “What possible harms could there be from masking children and adults in healthcare, education and other community settings?” I suspect her response might be something like:

There are no appreciable harms to masking [awkward silence]. Okay, well apart from dermatitis, headaches, perpetuating fear, stunting infants’ cognitive and emotional development; excluding the hard-of-hearing, evoking fatigue, reducing lung efficiency, tormenting the autistic, increasing falls in the elderly, re-traumatising the historically traumatised, the inhalation of micro fibres, concentration impairment, reducing the quality of healthcare, discouraging patients from attending hospital, impeding school learning, the aggravation of existing anxiety problems, encouraging harassment of the mask exempt, enabling criminals to escape conviction, and polluting our towns and waterways .. [deep breath] what possible harms could there be?

I’m sure the Monty Python team would have approved.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/22/devi-sridhars-mask-gobbledegook-on-full-display-at-the-covid-inquiry/

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Senate votes against vaccine-injured Australians

I am a vaccine-injured Australian, writing under a false name to protect my identity. The reason I do this is because I don’t want my claim to be affected. No one in power wants to believe me, they just want me to curl up and disappear. I am an inconvenience that threatens the narrative. But there are tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of Australians like me, and we are not going to go gently into the night.

Today, I watched as Gerard Rennick, an LNP Senator for Queensland, moved for an inquiry into the federal COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme. Senator Rennick is one of the only voices that stands up for us. He stands up for us loudly. But his calls for an inquiry were shot down by his colleagues.

According to the parliamentary Hansard, Senator Rennick specifically wanted an inquiry into the scheme’s eligibility criteria, the time in processing claimants’ applications, the differences between the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s assessments and specialists’ assessments reported in vaccine injury claims, the adequacy of the scheme’s compensation of claimant’s injuries, mental health and lost earnings, the risks that inadequate support and compensation for vaccine-related injuries might exacerbate vaccine hesitancy, and other related matters.

In speaking to his motion, Senator Rennick told his colleagues how, in Australia, the government has done a woeful job of acknowledging and compensating those people who it has injured through drugs that it has prescribed. He talked about the victims of thalidomide, and how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s apology came 60 years too late. He talked about how Australians had suffered in the 1980s when the Red Cross and CSL Limited allegedly infected tens of thousands with AIDS and Hepatitis C. He talked about mesh injuries, and how his uncle had been left blind after taking a sulfa drug. He talked about how the pharmaceutical industry has a history of putting their wallets in front of people’s health. He said that Australians ‘were told the vaccine was safe and effective.’ He asked, ‘If we [politicians] aren’t here to protect the people, what exactly are we here for?’ He said that Australians ‘should not be made to suffer for following the advice of the government that said they would be protected’.

Later in the debate, another senator said that no one else had spent more time talking to vaccine-injured Australians than Senator Rennick. ‘He speaks with a good heart and from a place of deep conviction.’ And that’s right. Senator Rennick does. He talked about and said all the right things. He gave me and all those other vaccine-injured Australians a voice. He was fighting for us, and he was winning.

Then the Albanese government’s chief spokesperson in the chamber, Katy Gallagher, stood up.

Senator Gallagher used her speaking time to gaslight Senator Rennick, describing his views as ‘irresponsible’. She said that the government would consider the recommendations made to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, which advocates for a national no-fault vaccine injury compensation scheme. ‘There is no need for another inquiry,’ she finished.

Except that’s exactly what the recommendations made to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee demand: a review of the COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme. How can you conduct a review if you can’t have another inquiry? How, Senator Gallagher, how? She said that the government had only received the report earlier this week, and implied that decisions were being rushed. No, Senator Rennick was just getting on with the job, fighting the good fight. Fighting for us.

When Rennick’s motion went to a vote, a division was required. The bells were rung. Coalition senators rocked up to support their colleague, as did Malcolm Roberts from One Nation, but it wasn’t enough. The Labor government, the Greens, Jacquie Lambie’s mob, and Lidia Thorpe all voted against the motion. It was defeated 24 votes to 31.

This is what the government thinks of us. We are the problem that, in their collective mind, deserves no solution. Australians are dying because they were forced to take an experimental drug and were told that if they didn’t, they would lose their jobs, their livelihood. They were ridiculed and shamed into submission. At least the Coalition seems to have the courage to admit it got it wrong, and under Senator Rennick wants to try and repair the damage as best it can. Why, now, is the Labor Government so frightened of uncovering the truth?

And I cannot believe that Senator Rennick won’t be on the LNP’s ticket at the next federal election. One of the last blokes with any real guts in Canberra, prepared to stand up to the powerful, has been, like we have, shoved aside.

This is a dark day for Australia, but it’s just another day in the last four years for me, for all those Australians injured by the Covid vaccines.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/03/senate-votes-against-vaccine-injured-australians/

The Harm of College Vaccine Mandates

Who would have believed we’d still be talking about Covid vaccine mandates in 2024, but given how resistant authority figures are to accepting reality, or defeat or acknowledging mistakes, it seems likely we’ll unfortunately be subjected to talking about them forever.

Dozens of colleges are continuing to enforce vaccine and booster mandates on students, refusing to accept, in the face of all available evidence and data, that there is no external health benefit whatsoever to forcing 18-year-olds to get injected with a vaccine with minimal, transient benefits but with potentially harmful side-effects.

This is made even more frustrating by the fact that the former director of the FDA recently admitted that the Covid vaccine approvals process, which gave colleges and universities licence to unnecessarily force mandates onto young people, was catastrophically and fatally flawed.

Now a few researchers have turned their efforts towards attaching specific, conclusive data to expose just how damaging and harmful these mandates have been for young college students.

And it’s not good news.

Covid Booster Mandates Were Completely Unnecessary

The results from this study in the Journal of Medical Ethics are jaw-dropping, both for the harms caused by booster mandates and how utterly meaningless those mandates are to preventing any negative outcomes from Covid.

As the authors explain, thousands if not millions of college students risked having their lives and educations upended if they refused to comply with Covid booster mandates. One would imagine that to risk the possible futures of their students, colleges and universities must have required clear-cut evidence that such mandates were necessary, effective and justifiable given the epidemiological circumstances.

That evidence did not exist.

The underlying assumption of booster mandates is that a mass wave of hospitalisations and serious Covid-caused health issues would occur if students weren’t forced to stay ‘up to date’ with their vaccinations. Another assumption was that immunity from previous infection was effectively nonexistent.

As this study clearly shows, both assumptions were wildly, unimaginably wrong.

Based on an examination of booster efficacy, specifically among the 18-29 age group that makes up the overwhelming majority of college and university students, the authors estimated that 22,000-30,000 young adults must be boosted to prevent one COVID-19 associated hospitalisation.

And even that’s an overstatement. It’s 22,000-30,000 uninfected adults.

We estimate that 22,000-30,000 previously uninfected adults aged 18-29 must be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent one [COVID]-19 hospitalisation.

Given the prevalence of infection-acquired immunity, especially among young people, by the time booster mandates came into effect in late 2021 and early 2022, it’s likely that schools with large enrollments in the 20,000-25,000 range may not have prevented a single Covid hospitalisation with booster mandates.

Not one.

Assuming 70% of students had already contracted Covid by 2022 – an easily achievable number considering seroprevalence estimates at that time – a school with 20,000 students would also have had 14,000 with natural immunity. Meaning that at the higher end of the study’s estimates, you’d have to look through five major universities with booster mandates before finding a single avoided Covid hospitalisation.

This potentially life-changing policy, affecting millions of students and their futures, was almost entirely meaningless. And that’s only telling half the story.

‘Net Expected Harm’

Beyond the clear uselessness in terms of reducing hospitalisations, the researchers also found that there was likely a “net expected harm” from mandates thanks to the often-ignored vaccine side-effects.

Using CDC and sponsor-reported adverse event data, we find that booster mandates may cause a net expected harm: per [COVID]-19 hospitalisation prevented in previously uninfected young adults, we anticipate 18 to 98 serious adverse events, including 1.7 to 3.0 booster-associated myocarditis cases in males, and 1,373 to 3,234 cases of grade 3 or higher reactogenicity which interferes with daily activities.

Effectively, for every 22,000-30,000 students subjected to booster mandates, there could be as many as nearly 100 serious adverse events. And one prevented hospitalisation.

Not to mention quite literally thousands of side-effects that could interfere with “daily activities”.

So in order to possibly prevent one hospitalisation among tens of thousands of students, colleges and universities essentially subjected young adults, especially men, to a risk of serious adverse effects that was 18 times to 98 times higher.

A graphic from the study indicates how significant the gap between benefits and harms is in practice.

If you’re wondering how that makes any sense, I can assure you that it doesn’t. And again, these risk-benefit ratios fail to factor in the prevalence of natural immunity among young people. As the researchers point out, this obvious but purposefully ignored reality makes this policy even more inexcusable.

“Given the high prevalence of post-infection immunity, this risk-benefit profile is even less favourable,” the authors write. That makes the entire policy “unethical”, meaning that those impacted by it are more likely to be harmed by the intervention than helped.

University booster mandates are unethical because: 1) no formal risk-benefit assessment exists for this age group; 2) vaccine mandates may result in a net expected harm to individual young people; 3) mandates are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given the modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; 4) U.S. mandates violate the reciprocity principle because rare serious vaccine-related harms will not be reliably compensated due to gaps in current vaccine injury schemes; and 5) mandates create wider social harms.

Quite literally, there is a “net expected harm” for individual young people that were coerced into getting boosted rather than see their educational careers destroyed or futures derailed.

The very “experts” and administrators who admonished critics with endless appeals to authority, claiming that they were “following the science” while detractors were “anti-science” extremists, likely caused a net harm to thousands, if not millions of their students.

Booster mandates were unnecessary, unethical and harmful, with vanishingly small benefits and massive increases in risk. Many schools have quietly dropped their policies and mandates without acknowledging the harm they caused. But that doesn’t make it any less real, or any less inexcusable.

The actual science said they were wrong. Yet as has been so often the case during Covid policy debates, the actual science took a back seat to panic, fear, malicious coercion and inexcusable ignorance.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/23/the-harm-of-college-vaccine-mandates/

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Vaccine mandates for NSW health workers to be dropped

NSW health workers will no longer need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 under a plan to phase out vaccine mandates.

Health workers in NSW will no longer be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as the state government moves to ditch mandates for the sector.

Health Minister Ryan Park confirmed the change would be going ahead after consulting with the state's health workforce.

'We know that COVID is still around but we've got to get back on with life,' he told Sydney radio 2GB.

'That means having a look at the measures we put in place during this period and seeing whether they still apply.

'We think this is one that we can engage with the workforce on and have a look to see if it's still applicable now.'

Public health orders mandating vaccines for health professionals were brought in during the pandemic and workers who refused either quit or were sacked.

While the order expired in November 2022, some workplaces have still been able to require mandatory vaccination under their own work, health and safety obligations.

Mr Park said if a decision was made to drop the mandates, workers who lost their jobs would be able to reapply to available positions through the usual recruitment processes.

He said COVID was still a public health threat and encouraged people to keep up with their vaccinations.

'But we've also got to make sure that we get on with running a health system after COVID and we can't continue in the same way that we did in the middle of the pandemic,' he said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13233833/Vaccine-mandates-NSW-health-workers-dropped.html

Lockdowns could cause more harm than Covid-19 and there was no evidence that wearing masks was useful

Germany's top public health agency knew that Covid lockdowns could be more damaging than the virus itself as early as December 2020 and said mask mandates were not backed by evidence, it has been revealed.

Newly published documents from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) show its researchers explicitly warned that their analysis showed lockdowns in Africa showed 'an expected rise in child mortality'.

'The consequences of the lockdowns are in parts more severe than the virus itself,' the December 2020 report said, with another document dated to October 2020 suggesting that there was 'no evidence' to support that FFP2 medical masks could prevent the spread of Covid.

But the findings were never made public, despite researchers clearly advocating for the open communication of their research in meeting minutes, with the German government choosing to pursue legislation their own researchers advised against.

The revelations come after a two-year legal battle between the RKI and German magazine Multipolar, which ultimately won the court case to publish documents that were heavily redacted by the health agency.

Multipolar has since launched another legal claim in an attempt to secure full access to the unredacted documents, which may conceal a trove of Covid policy recommendations that the RKI and the German government opted not to share with the public.

The saga now threatens to trigger a fallout in the German government, with Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki telling German media: 'The protocols of the RKI crisis team, some of which have now been released, raise considerable doubts as to whether the political measures to deal with the corona pandemic were really taken on a scientific basis.'

Kubicki told German outlet Bild that 'the top of the RKI, of all people, followed the political guidelines of the respective federal government and thus provided the necessary scientific facade for Corona policy.'

Seven in ten scientists say ministers failed to consider the long-term damage of lockdowns during the Covid pandemic

He also called on Germany's Federal Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, to 'present all protocols to the public without redactions in order to create complete transparency about the internal discussions and the basis for decisions.

'If Karl Lauterbach does not follow my request, as a parliamentarian I will work to persuade him to make this disclosure so that the clarification can finally be satisfied.'

Meanwhile, the former leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union party Armin Laschet has declared the RKI must go public with its findings.

Speaking with German broadcaster ZDF, the parliamentarian said: 'We have to disclose everything.

'You can see how differentiated the discussions were at the RKI back then and how little of this diversity of opinion ultimately found its way into concrete policy,' he continued, recalling how debates over Covid policy became 'moralised'.

'Either you are for one measure or you are a Corona denier. But there was a lot in between,' he concluded.

Meanwhile, a minute from an RKI meeting in January 2021 expressed concerns with the viability of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, with researchers warning its use 'should be discussed' because the jab was 'not as perfect'.

That same jab - that was offered to millions in the UK - was later discontinued and not offered as a booster after reports surfaced of people developing blood clots in combination with low platelet levels.

The shocking revelations come as public health experts in the UK slammed the government's Covid inquiry for 'bias', claiming it has failed to investigate the harmful impact of lockdown on British society.

More than 50 scholars and academics from some of the UK's top universities wrote to inquiry chairman Baroness Heather Hallett earlier this month urging her to 'address its apparent biases, assumptions and impartiality'.

They accuse the inquiry of 'not living up to its mission to evaluate the mistakes made during the pandemic', including whether measures such as lockdowns and restrictions on mass gatherings were 'appropriate'.

Letter co-author Dr Kevin Bardosh, director of think-tank Collateral Global, accused the inquiry of handing 'softball' questions to architects of government policy, while 'grilling' witnesses who were opposed to mass restrictions on public freedoms.

He told the Mail: 'The inquiry is not seriously questioning their (scientific advisers') assessments around the justification for their policies.

'The inquiry is not interested in whether these policy decisions were good for the country, and that seems a mistake.'

The terms of reference setting out the scope of the inquiry were established by the Government following public pressure for an inquiry.

But Dr Bardosh accused Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, of being more 'obsessed with reading out swear words in private WhatsApp messages than getting to the substance' of decision-making.

He said: 'He seems to be concerned a lot with political theatre and having these 'gotcha' moments.'

Cancer specialist Professor Karol Sikora, who signed the letter, described the inquiry as 'completely useless'.

He added: 'It is structured to assess blame and not the scientific basis of the decision making. That's the difference between lawyers and scientists.

'The decisions made during the pandemic were clearly wrong - 'how' wrong has to be a scientific assessment.

'The current framework for the current inquiry is a legal one - totally unsuited to addressing the key questions.

'We're not interested in WhatsApp gossip. We have to learn from the past - it's not about the apportioning of blame but simply how to do better next time.'

The inquiry began hearing evidence in June last year, with testimony from the likes of prime minister Rishi Sunak, Covid-era premier Boris Johnson, and ex-health secretary Matt Hancock, as well as a host of the most senior scientific and medical advisers to the Government.

The bill for the inquiry has already topped £78 million up to the end of last year, according to its latest financial report.

In its letter, the group said: 'The inquiry originated in legal petitions brought by bereaved family groups. Yet there has been little opportunity for petitions to be brought by those who have suffered from the negative effects of pandemic policy decisions.

'This is preventing a more holistic assessment of impacts on population health and wellbeing. This lack of neutrality appears to have led to biassed reasoning and predetermined conclusions, for example, to lockdown faster next time.'

It said the inquiry, which is due to run until 2026, has 'adopted a legal format that prevents a systematic evaluation of the evidence by biomedical and social scientists on the harms of restrictions to the British public' and is instead 'focused on who did or said what, rather than asking fundamental scientific questions'.

It said the probe 'appears unsuited to the task' of investigating 'the interplay between harms, benefits and best practice' in order to prepare for the next pandemic.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13239595/Lockdowns-cause-harm-Covid-19-no-evidence-wearing-masks-useful-German-health-body-admitted-coronavirus-pandemic-released-documents-show.html

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"COVID Revisited" Conference to Shed Light on Australia's Pandemic Response

Almost four years since the pandemic began, COVID-19 continues to leave its mark on Australia, affecting healthcare and society in general. While the vaccines offered some degree of protection, controversies remain around the pandemic response. These include a case brought against pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna and calls seeking transparency from the Australian government about its pandemic measures. TrialSite has reported before on Australian analysts challenging the pandemic narrative driven by the government.

To discuss the lessons learned and examine past challenges, the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) is organizing a conference named “COVID Revisited: Lessons Learned, Challenges Faced, and the Road Ahead.” The event aims to provide a platform from which to discuss the government’s decisions during the pandemic and policies to guide future responses.

As time passes, the controversies surrounding the lockdown measures and vaccine mandates in Australia seem to intensify. TrialSite previously reported on a legal case filed against Pfizer and Moderna in the Federal Court of Australia accusing them of lacking transparency regarding alleged DNA contaminants and GMOs in their vaccines. This case was filed by Dr. Julian Fidge and handled by lawyer Katie Ashby-Koppens and former barrister Julian Gillespie.

Providing an update in a February 2024 Substack article, Gillespie explained that the presiding judge, Hon Helen Mary Joan Rofe, had at the time delayed a final decision on the defendant's application for a case dismissal. However, on March 1, 2024, Rofe dismissed Fidge’s lawsuit against Pfizer and Moderna. For the time being, this ruling has put a halt to any likely legal challenges gaining traction against the mRNA vaccines.

We also reported in February 2024 that Australians were demanding a COVID-19 Royal Commission to investigate the vaccine mandates and pandemic measures implemented in the country. Ashby-Koppens was among those calling for this Royal Commission. According to Gillespie, the Senate Terms of Reference Committee is currently deliberating this.

Despite Rofe’s ruling, the critics are not backing down. With the AMPS’s conference looking to help people learn and discuss better ways to handle future pandemics through the “COVID Revisited” program and the ongoing process at the Senate Terms of Reference committee, the critics believe that the upcoming conference “reflects the Australian people's wish for a review of the government response to COVID-19.”

The “COVID Revisited” conference

The conference is scheduled for April 2, 2024, and will take place in the State Library NSW Auditorium. According to AMPS, top medical and academic professionals from around the world will be in attendance, with the event garnering support from notable organizations like the National Institute of Integrative Medicine (NIIM), Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM), World of Wellness International (WOW) and Children’s Health Defense Australia Chapter (CHD).

Speaking about the conference’s mission, AMPS secretary Kara Thomas stated, "Our mission is clear. We aim to generate tangible policy recommendations that substantially influence the management of future pandemic crisis situations."

Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy, one of the speakers, provided insights into the event’s structure and its focus on examining the government's handling of the COVID-19 response. “This symposium is structured to reflect the collective views of those involved in this response,” Clancy said, “with a particular focus on lessons learned as to mistakes made and how best to go forward with the best plan to handle health challenges of similar ill when next encountered.”

He further stated, “Presentations from professionals covering these disciplines will be followed by an interactive workshop with an expert panel charged with identifying outcomes. The day will conclude with a reception allowing informal discussion amongst participants and attendees. A book including presentations and outcomes will be published.”

According to AMPS, the conference will produce a set of well-defined resolutions, to be shared widely with practitioners, public health authorities and government bodies. These resolutions will identify practical measures to ensure safe and effective responses. In doing so, they aim to reduce mishandling in crisis management that could potentially compromise Australians’ health.

Progress achieved and challenges faced during the pandemic

The Australian government’s pandemic measures yielded a mixed set of outcomes. The Financial Times reported that while Australia’s initial zero-COVID strategy showed positive results in containing the virus, some critics argued that it was too strict with potential adverse economic implications.

The government’s actions included closing international borders to non-residents and, at times, restricting internal state border crossings. Widespread testing and contact tracing enabled authorities to suppress community transmission and by June 2021, Australia had recorded low COVID-19 case numbers compared to other countries.

However, these actions by the government had some negative impact on businesses and families, as business owners complained that the lockdown lingered for too long. According to a Lancet study, the Australian government was accused of discriminatory travel restrictions against specific countries, leaving many Australians stranded abroad for long periods. Moreover, as new variants emerged, maintaining zero-COVID became increasingly difficult. The Australian authorities then shifted their focus to pushing vaccination campaigns and moved from their zero-COVID policy in September 2021.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/covid-revisited-conference-to-shed-light-on-australias-pandemic-response-36b828bf

Four Years Later

Has the dust settled?

Far from it. It is everywhere. We are choking on it. The storm cloud comes in many forms: inflation, learning losses, ill-health, high crime, non-functioning government services, broken supply chains, shoddy work, displaced workers, substance abuse, mass loneliness, discredited authority, a growing real estate crisis, censored technology and overweening state power.

For that matter, consider that Easter, the day to celebrate the Son of God’s triumph of life over death, itself was cancelled for public worship just four years ago. That actually happened. Not even at the height of World War II was there a consideration of such a thing, or even cancelling baseball. When the idea was suggested in a famous movie script, Spencer Tracy asked “Why would you abolish the thing you are trying to preserve?” (Woman of the Year 1942).

Good question. What precisely was the point of the hell we went through? Who did it and why? Why did it last so long? Why has there been no official accounting?

The lack of any real accountability or even so much as an apology is a foreshadowing: they will keep their newfound powers and try it all again.

Meanwhile, the world is on fire with war, mass killings, crime, hunger and revolution.

All of this traces to lockdowns that began March 2020, the subject about which no one in polite society speaks. It was a painful period, to be sure. The people who did this to us are hoping that we are too traumatised to pursue accountability, much less justice. To the extent we feel that way, we are playing right into their hands.

Even now, there are hundreds and even thousands of questions.

Why were there no widespread seroprevalence tests of the population before locking down? This would have been a great way to measure the level of pre-existing exposure and assess whether Deborah Birx’s stated objective to bring about Zero Covid had any chance of success.

Where did the World Health Organisation get the completely bogus 3.4% infection fatality rate number and why did it push it out?

For that matter, why did the lockdown architects not bother with the vast literature already extant, accepted as definitive in the public-health world, that lockdowns achieve only destruction and there was no form of physical intervention that had any hope of stopping a virus destined to spread to the whole population?

These were known about at the time, as were the broad outlines of the impact of this virus. So let there be no more talk about how little we knew at the time. We knew.

We still don’t know:

how they talked Trump into reversing his anti-lockdown stance on or around March 10th 2020;

to what extent the sudden spread of the virus was fuelled by testing or even how accurate the tests were;

whether the sudden wave of early death was panic-based or iatrogenic or actually the virus;

how it is that previously obscure agencies gained the power to manage the U.S. workforce and censor media;

who precisely gave the order to lock down U.S. hospital care and why;

how it came to be that the Government tried to drive conventional antivirals out of the marketplace;

who had pre-written the thousand-page bills that authorised $2 trillion in spending that broke the budget and unleashed an experiment of universal basic income.

Strangely, much of this can be explained by the crazed ambition to preserve population-wide immunological naïveté while waiting for the vaccine to arrive in mid-November, eight months later. Was that always the idea, in which case the “15 Days to Flatten Curve” was known to be complete gibberish? If that is actually true, the arrogance and sadism of the policy goal here boggles the mind.

And if that is true, why? Was it to deploy a new platform technology called mRNA that otherwise would obtain no chance for a generalised trial through normal paths? Is that the reason that Anthony Fauci went after the J&J vaccine early on, as a tactic to drive it out of the market and prepare a clean slate for Pfizer and Moderna?

If that was the goal, was it ever stated in private and by whom? Who knew the goal from the beginning?

That anyone among the ruling class could even consider conscripting the whole population into such a biological experiment gives rise to wartime ghouls of a past we thought we had left behind.

These questions only scratch the surface. Even after four years of researching this topic as part of a very large team that has scoured through a million pages of documentation and stories, having written two books and many thousands of articles, and being fuelled by a burning desire to know, most of us still have no clear answer to the profound question: why and how did this happen to us?

There are many theories, all with plausibility but none with the capacity to explain the whole.

We might say that pharma was behind the whole thing. That seems credible. The goal of testing mRNA on the global population explains a lot, especially given the trumped-up emergency situation. But the very notion that hundreds of governments around the world became surreptitiously captured stretches plausibility.

We might observe that digital tech manipulated policy to give itself a boost. The first big and viral article on the whole lockdown idea was by Thomas “Hammer-and-Dance” Pueyo, a CEO of an online learning hub that became a huge winner. Streaming platforms benefited and so did Amazon as a grocery and goods source, as did Uber Eats and DoorDash and others such as Zoom.

But are we really supposed to believe that human liberties the world over were wrecked to boost profits of this one industry? Again, that’s a stretch. And the same could be said of the theory that media was the driving force. Yes, they won big time, deploying censorship as an industrial tactic against new media startups. But how in the world would they have gained so much power the world over?

Then there is the view that the whole monstrous scheme was concocted to drive Trump out of office by creating chaos and greenlighting mail-in ballots that are difficult if not impossible to check for validity. That seems to check many empirical boxes. No question that there was some major effort to confuse the public as if the presence of the virus was a metaphor for the Trump administration itself that needed to be strangled.

There is surely truth here but how does that account for the hundreds of other governments around the world following the same path? That the response was not just national but global raises real questions.

In that context we might draw attention to the role of the CCP, which first deployed lockdowns amidst theatrically produced videos of people dying in the streets and then leaning on its power over the World Health Organisation to recommend lockdowns to the whole planet.

There’s truth in that theory too.

In the deeper realms, we are wise to visit the depths of the RFK Jr. book The Wuhan Cover-Up, which explains the history of the U.S. bioweapons programme dating back to the end of World War II. There are secret labs all over the world supported by the U.S., including in Wuhan. Their activities and funding are covered by classified restrictions from public access.

The purpose of gain-of-function research is said to be not to discover solutions to emerging new pathogens but to create new pathogens with antidotes that we have and the enemy does not have.

Was the release of this one pathogen part of this programme? If so, that would explain why the intelligence and security bureaucracies became involved very deeply early on and also explain why so many FOIA requests about every aspect of this come back heavily redacted and why we are having such a hard time getting information in general.

Any time a policy matter touches the realm of national security and intelligence, it is covered by an impenetrable veil of secrecy that no law or court seems to be able to control. This site has often explored this path of inquiry too with a great deal of evidence supporting it. In this case, we are really talking about a next-level theory, that of a digital-age coup by Deep State masters against civilian society and democracy itself.

You can probably generate another 10 or more compelling theories about the whole episode. Connecting the dots is a full-time job.

A wise man mentioned to me yesterday the astounding fact that we still do not have a full explanation of why and how the Great War came to be. That war ended old-world civilisation as we knew it. In some ways, now looking back, it was the beginning of the end of what we might call high civilisation and the prospects for peace. It unleashed the Bolshevik Revolution, caused Western-style freedoms to be mitigated by administrative state actors, introduced the idea of total war, recruited whole populations to become soldiers and otherwise shredded near-global expectations for ever rising prosperity and peace.

And yet, we still don’t know fully why or how it happened. Error piled on error and malice on malice. Once that kind of sadistic chaos tempts a ruling class, many other institutions sign up to join the party of pillage and plunder and society finds itself picked apart by interest groups that care nothing for the good of all, much less human rights.

That’s a pretty solid description of what happened to us four years ago. They broke the world.

[The Great War was certainly a great horror and a great turning point. It seems crazy in retrospect. I have argued, however, that it was a rational response to the circumstances of its time:

http://jonjayray.com/short/ww1.html

JR]

We may never get the truth but we can get closer to the truth. There will be no stopping the efforts.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/25/four-years-later/

Study Shows 1 in 5 Australians Experiencing Long COVID After Positive Test

Around one in five Australians who tested positive for COVID-19 displayed symptoms consistent with long COVID, according to a study by the Australian National University (ANU).

This comes after Queensland’s Chief Health Officer John Gerrard called for the term “long COVID” to be scrapped following a study that found the long-term effects of the virus were no different from the seasonal flu, and that long-term COVID symptoms were not “unique and exceptional” to other viral infections.

Long COVID is described by the World Health Organisation as the continuation or development of new symptoms three months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, with these symptoms lasting for at least two months without any alternative explanation.

The ANU study drew on nearly 71,000 participants in Western Australia (WA) who tested positive for COVID-19 from July 16, 2022, to Aug. 3, 2022.

Of the 70,876 adult participants who consented to the research, 11,697 (16.5 percent) provided complete responses provided by the researchers.

Among the respondents, 2,130 respondents (18.2 percent) satisfied the researchers’ criteria for long COVID—reporting new or ongoing symptoms or health problems 90 days after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result.

The study found the following:

Long COVID risk was greater for women, people aged 50–69 years or with pre-existing health conditions, and those with two or fewer COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Common long COVID symptoms included fatigue and concentration difficulties.

In a highly vaccinated population not broadly exposed to earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, 18 percent of people infected with the Omicron variant reported symptoms consistent with long COVID 90 days after infection.

18 percent of these people had not fully resumed previous work or study by 3 months, and 38 percent required care from general practitioners for their symptoms 2 to 3 months after infection.

Higher Risk of Developing Long COVID from Omicron Variant
Lead researcher Mulu Woldegiorgis said the results show the risk of developing long COVID from the Omicron variant is higher than originally thought.

“It is more than double the prevalence reported in a review of Australian data from earlier in the pandemic, and higher than similar studies done in the UK and Canada,” Ms. Woldegiorgis said.

“Our finding is, however, lower than that of a recent Queensland study, which found that 21 percent of people reported ongoing symptoms twelve weeks after PCR-confirmed infections with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant,” the researchers wrote.

“Despite reports that the risk of long COVID may be lower following Omicron infections than with earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, we found that the burden of long COVID may be substantial 90 days after Omicron infections.”

Ms. Woldegiorgis added: “The risk of long COVID was greater for women and people aged 50 to 69, as well as those with pre-existing health conditions and people who’d had fewer vaccine doses.”

Additionally, the study found that 90 percent of the study participants with long COVID reported experiencing multiple symptoms, such as tiredness and fatigue (70 percent), followed by difficulty thinking or concentrating (“brain fog”), sleep problems, and coughing.

A third of women with long COVID also reported changes in their menstrual cycle.

“More than a third of individuals with persistent long COVID—38 percent—had sought medical care in the month prior to the survey,” she said.

“This most frequently involved a visit to a GP, hospitalisations or trips to the emergency department were thankfully less common.”

The study also found that 64 percent of participants with long COVID were able to fully return to work or study within a month of their infection, but 18 percent reported still not being well enough to do so three months after their infection.

The authors noted a number of limitations to the study, including the unclear diagnosis of long COVID, not comparing participants to non-positive participants, and not including asymptomatic or undetected infections.

Link Between Vaccination and Long COVID

While the above study did not look at the link between vaccination and the development of long COVID, a study by Germany’s Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg has shown that unvaccinated people infected with the Omicron variant had the lowest risk of long COVID.

The study found that while previous infections reduce the risk of long COVID by 86 percent, vaccination status prior to COVID infection is irrelevant to a person’s risk of developing long COVID.

“Vaccination offered no meaningful protection against developing PCC [post-COVID condition] in case of an infection. In contrast, there was … strong evidence that a previous infection reduced the risk of PCC,” the authors wrote.

However, the authors of the German study acknowledged that none of the participants were given an actual diagnosis of long COVID or tested for comorbidities.

At the same time, a long COVID clinic in England reported a 79 percent drop in referrals that followed the rollout of the second dose of COVID-19 vaccinations, despite having four times as many cases of COVID-19 over the same period.

Meanwhile, a study published by the Lancet found higher rates of lung, brain, and kidney injuries among those with long COVID in the UK, compared with those who did not contract COVID-19.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/1-in-5-australians-experiencing-long-covid-after-positive-test-study-5617692?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-australia-top-news-8

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Neurologic Devastation Hits Young Canadian Mother Left to Survive in New Post-Vaccine Reality

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

Good doctors learn from every patient they see and hear about. I was very impressed with the vignette disclosed by Kayla Pollock. She courageously appeared with myself and Greg Boulden, the highly acclaimed journalist, producer and managing editor of America Emboldened.

Kayla’s story is similar to the case described by Rabbani et al at the University of Oklahoma. They called what they found “longitudinally-extensive” transverse myelitis, in a 60-year old man who had received a Moderna mRNA vaccine ten days earlier. Transverse myelitis is a form of spinal cord inflammation caused by COVID-19 vaccines that is analogous to a spinal cord transection that would occur with severe trauma.

You have to listen to this report from Kayla, who is a young mother who was already managing Type 1 diabetes. Boulden and myself were shocked with the gaslighting and terrible care she received in the Canadian health system in metro Toronto. Kayla’s story is one of tragedy and perseverance. You can tell that I was trying to view her case on the bright side with suggestions to give her the best chance of recovery (Base Spike Detoxification, high-dose corticosteroids, IVIG, plasma exchange, rituximab, hyperbaric oxygen, advanced physiotherapy).

The interview turned dark when Kayla told us that the Canadian government, instead of doing everything they could to help her recover, offered MAID. Canada updated its law on medical assistance in dying (MAID) in 2021 to allow people with “grievous and irremediable” mental illness to seek death at the hands of a physician. This was astounding given Kayla is a young mother in her thirties and has a 9 year old son to raise.

I followed up and can confirm The Wellness Company will be supplying Kayla with The Ultimate Spike Detox trio of products that is featured in McCullough Protocol Base Spike Detoxification.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/moderna-mrna-induced-longitudinally-extensive-transverse-myelitis-bd5d2c07

COVID-19 Vaccines Performance Decline--Only 38% of At Risk Immunocompromised Kept out of Hospital

TrialSite continues to monitor the observational study output of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded VISION Network, a research collaboration involving multiple hospitals/sites with integrated electronic health records (EHR) across America. This is part of an ongoing real-world data effort to evaluate how well vaccines protect against seasonal viruses such as influenza or COVID-19.

In this latest study, the substantial VISION team utilizes a test-negative design to estimate COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE). And the outcomes are not great, in fact, some could argue this latest vaccine bombed.

Why? Any commercial vaccine designed to keep people, especially at-risk cohorts out of the hospital, should perform at least at 50% vaccine effectiveness. At 38% between days 7-59 and 34% in the 60-119 days after the receipt of the updated dose, the only reason CDC can justify recommending the product includes A) because they are not considering full safety risks for this cohort and B) the logic that 38% protected is better than no one and for this latter point there is some rationale. Only 14% of immunocompromised opted to get the vaccine suggesting a near collapse in market demand for COVID-19 vaccines given the risks associated with this demographic.

The data reported herein results from the CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Report (MMWR) titled “Interim Effectiveness of Updated 2023-2024 (Monovalent XBB.1.5) COVID-19 Vaccines Against COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization Among Adults Aged ≥18 Years with Immunocompromising Conditions — VISION Network, September 2023–February 2024.

Background

By September 2021, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended updating 2023–2024 (monovalent XBB.1.5) COVID-19 vaccination for all persons aged ≥6 months to prevent COVID-19, including severe disease. The agency did not consider a risk-based approach like in most other nations at this point given the following:

Omicron has become much milder (e.g., case fatality rate at the level of influenza for most)

Large segments of the U.S. population have pre-existing immunity at some level

Growing recognition that some safety signals present (e.g., risk of myocarditis/pericarditis in young males, etc.).

Available treatments such as Paxlovid—while not accepted yet by the National Institutes of Health or the CDC,

accumulation of data that vitamin D supplementation very important to avoid more severe symptomatic COVID-19

The CDC suggests additional boosters for immunocompromised conditions should be considered, in this case representing a risk-based approach to public health.

In this latest observational study, the study team assesses how well the COVID-19 vaccines perform at helping immunocompromised persons infected with COVID-19 avoid hospitalization based on the data linked to hospitalization during the period September 2023-February 2024.

Findings

Few persons (18%) in this high-risk study population had received the updated COVID-19 vaccine. All persons aged ≥6 months should receive updated 2023–2024 COVID-19 vaccination; persons with immunocompromising conditions may get additional updated COVID-19 vaccine doses ≥2 months after the last recommended COVID-19 vaccine.

Out of 14,586 patients with immunocompromising conditions who were hospitalized with COVID–19–like illness, the study team included 1,392 case patients and 13,194 control patients.

The most common immunocompromising conditions among both case patients and control patients were solid organ malignancy (36% and 43%, respectively) and other intrinsic immune conditions or immunodeficiency (38% and 35%, respectively).

A total of 195 (14%) case patients had received an updated COVID-19 vaccine dose compared with 2,401 (18%) control patients. VE against COVID–19–associated hospitalization was 38% in the first

More Specifics

The CDC-funded VISION team reports only nine persons who received >1 updated COVID-19 vaccine dose were included!

The team estimated Odds ratios (ORs) using multivariable logistic regression comparing persons who received an updated COVID-19 vaccine dose with those who did not, irrespective of the number of previous original or bivalent COVID-19 vaccine doses received (if any), among case- and control patients.

They adjusted their regression models for age, sex, race and ethnicity, calendar time, and geographic region. While they calculated VE as (1 − adjusted OR) × 100%. Analyses were conducted using R software (version 4.3.2; R Foundation). This activity was reviewed by CDC, deemed not research, and was conducted consistent with applicable federal law and CDC policy.†† VISION activities were reviewed and approved by the Westat and site institutional review boards.

How does CDC rationalize this VE?

According to the VISION team, “Effectiveness estimates in this report were slightly lower than those in a recently published analysis from VISION and another CDC VE network showing COVID-19 VE against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in adults without immunocompromising conditions was approximately 50%, but this report includes the analysis of an additional month of data compared with the previous report.”

The group still implies recommended vaccination because “persons with moderate or severe immunocompromising conditions are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 and might have decreased response to vaccination.” (2).

Limitations

The VISION team discloses two primary limitations to this study. These include the following:

The use of selected discharge diagnoses as surrogates for presumed immunocompromised status and the absence of medication and other relevant data might have led to misclassification of immunocompromise status, which might have biased estimated VE in either direction

Immunocompromising conditions are heterogeneous and likely to create differential risk for severe COVID-19, as well as differential response to vaccination

CDC suggested implications

Although the VE of 38% to keep immunocompromised individuals out of the hospital evidences a waning performance (in fact under 50% and regulators used to question the overall value of the vaccine), the CDC team argues that “receipt of an updated COVID-19 vaccine dose provided increased protection against COVID-19–associated hospitalization among adults with immunocompromising conditions compared with no receipt of an updated dose.”

And the CDC takes the increasingly unpopular and isolated decision to continue to recommend that all Americans age ≥6 should get the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of fundamentally changing risk-benefit calculus.

That only 14% of the immunocompromised population opted to get this latest vaccine is most certainly telling of the market’s proclivity to go out and opt for this vaccine. At TrialSite, we have reported on a growing number of peer-reviewed studies evidencing instability in the current mRNA platforms. Is it a good idea to vaccinate children 6 months and above en masse given the risk-benefit calculus factors discussed above? Even the New York Times recently reported on the fact that the U.S. was now an outlier in recommending systematic COVID-19 vaccination of young children, especially when we factor in risks for myocarditis/pericarditis in young healthy males.

We suggest this latest vaccine effectiveness performance portends an ominous future for this class of vaccine.

TrialSite Critical View

The protection of mRNA vaccines is so transient TrialSite suggests a new metric for their assessment, at least when it comes to protection against infection. Peak efficacy in the first few weeks’ post immunisation is clearly completely irrelevant. What about calculating average 6- or 12-month efficacy?

This would be akin to measuring area under survival curve. Hence depending on the shape of the curve a vaccine that had 90% efficacy at two weeks and 10% efficacy at six months, may have an overall 6-month efficacy of say 20% if the curve falls steeply at the start or 60% if it falls steeply at the end.

We know from the Israeli data in July 2021 that Pfizer had fallen to just 12% efficacy at 6 months so its true overall 6-month efficacy must have been less than 50% even although they continued to quote >90% efficacy in the media.

Also say a vaccine drops from 90% efficacy at two weeks to 0% efficacy at 4 months – how then to describe its overall efficacy over 6 months – intuitively it should be 0% not the average as over the last two months no one is protected, so everyone will now get infected if exposed, even if they got some protection over the first 4 months – i.e. their infection was just delayed.

This requires sophisticated biostatistician input. After all, COVID-19 infections are not linear over time, but highly clustered into outbreaks. If an outbreak occurs at the 5-month post vaccine point in the previous example, then true vaccine efficacy is 0% or may even go negative at least when measuring protection against infection.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/cdc-vision-study-covid-19-vaccines-performance-decline-only-38-at-risk-immunocompromised-kept-out-of-hospital-1afb2124

Study Finds New Drugs Effective Against COVID-19 and Other Viruses

Studying the ways viruses impact cellular pathways during infection may help in developing treatments for infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

A new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta and published in the npj Viruses journal found that certain cancer treatment drugs can promote cells to secrete antiviral interferons. These drugs target the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, and are also effective against multiple pathogenic RNA viruses.

Interferons are natural proteins that bolster the body’s immune system in combating infections and diseases like cancer. They earned their name because they interfere with viruses, stopping them from spreading.

Both COVID-19 and some cancers activate the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway—a chain reaction inside the cell. Drugs that block this pathway, originally made to treat cancer, might also help fight COVID-19.

When the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway gets activated, it slows down the production of interferons. This pathway also negatively impacts the immune system.

In a study, scientists tested two drugs, KYA1797K and E7449, that block the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway. They found that these drugs reduced the amount of virus in the lungs of mice. The drug E7449 was especially good at preventing weight loss and lung damage in the infected mice.

Tom Hobman, a professor of cell biology at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and one of the study authors, explained in a press release that after using these drugs, cells produced interferons in response to viral infections at levels four to six times higher than before. Additionally, experiments also revealed that the virus was inactivated to less than one-ten-thousandth of its original levels.

He pointed out that interferons prevent infected cells from producing more viruses primarily in two ways, “It shuts down the infected cell, often resulting in cell death, and it also acts on the surrounding cells to prevent them from being infected.”

The researchers also tested viruses other than COVID-19 and found that the drugs exhibit broad-spectrum activity against a variety of RNA viruses. These include coronaviruses, responsible for seasonal respiratory infections, as well as mosquito-borne viruses like Zika and Mayaro.

Ongoing Drug Trials for COVID-19

In addition to drugs targeting the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, other drugs are also being explored for the potential to alleviate the COVID-19 virus.

A clinical trial published in February, which involved 1,821 mild to moderate COVID-19 patients, indicated that a drug called ensitrelvir significantly shortened the duration of symptoms in patients with COVID-19.

A phase II to III clinical trial of the anti-COVID-19 drug Simnotrelvir, involving 1,208 patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 infection, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results showed that patients who received Simnotrelvir treatment within 72 hours of COVID-19 symptom onset had their “time to sustained resolution of symptoms” shortened by 35.8 hours. In a subgroup with risk factors for severe COVID-19, Simnotrelvir reduced the time by 60 hours.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/study-finds-new-drugs-effective-against-covid-19-and-other-viruses-5611023

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Immunologists Call Out mRNA Vaccines—The Good, Bad & Ugly: Time to Go Back to Science

More data and analysis from various peer-reviewed journals raises serious concerns about the externalities associated with the mass countermeasures developed by the United States government in response to COVID-19. While the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been positioned as modern marvels of medicine—safety, effective and representative of the future of medicine, mounting literature not widely touted by American media implicates a different point of view.

Microbiologist and immunologist Botond Z. Igyártó, Ph.D., from Jefferson University in Philadelphia and immunology researcher Zhen Qin in the most recent edition of the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Immunology suggest the latest, accumulation of data points to the need for concern covering both safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and Pfizer in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech.

TrialSite has published article after article over the past couple years hinting at considerable challenges with mRNA platforms. The literature in the peer-reviewed journals amasses leading to questions for investors in the platform developers.

The authors herein call out for a security that represents an absolute must for the scientific community. With an unprecedented mass vaccination scheme via the use of an investigational product “that minimally protects from getting infected and spreading the virus during a pandemic,” the need for critical reflection becomes of paramount concern.

Was the strategy sound? Was her immunity a realistic expectation? Did the strategy as proposed by Geert Vanden Bossche lead to an actual acceleration of mutations? Should governments have focused on more vulnerable populations during the pandemic? Why was a novel mRNA platform opted for in the emergency over more known methods? Why focus on a single virus protein with a high mutation rate as TrialSite called out early on? Were the vaccine’s benefits (supposedly faster production, ease of updating for new variants, etc.) beneficial? Why did research leadership at the NIH for example ignore basic immunology knowledge during the pandemic?

Igyártó and Qin in this latest peer-reviewed output identify safety considerations, seeking to better understand the mechanisms of observed adverse events related to the mRNA jabs. Can such identified risk factors be mitigated by altering the mRNA platforms?

Describing the standard and non-standard components of the mRNA-LNP COVID-19 vaccines, Igyártó and Qin then address what the pair of authors describe as “concerning” assumptions made in regard to this technology.

While formally, the public has been told that mRNA vaccines do not allow for reverse transcription into DNA, meaning that there is no risk of insertion into the human genome, the authors raise some questions for consideration.

In particular instances, RNA can in fact be reverse transcribed into DNA. The authors note, “With the Pfizer mRNA-LNP vaccine, it has been shown experimentally that the vaccine mRNA can be reverse-transcribed into DNA in an immortalized human hepatocyte cell line.”

Also, the pair of authors note other possibilities for this concerning action, plus localization of the spike protein. A series of studies suggest the possibility of transcribed possibilities.

The authors point out:

“While to our knowledge similar studies have not been performed with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that code for full-length pre-fusion fixed form of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, comparable transport of spike protein/mRNA to the nucleus could be expected. Because the mRNA can enter the nucleus, where it might be reverse-transcribed into DNA, this increases its potential to integrate into the genome.

Furthermore, the mRNA-LNP diffuses throughout the body and can accumulate in both the testes and ovaries and is reported to alter the menstrual cycle in women. Therefore, it could potentially be reaching the stem cells of the reproductive organs. These findings highlight the need to take these data and concerns seriously and conduct specific experiments to address them.”

On the topic of the mRNA vaccine product degrading in vivo in hours or a matter of a few days, the authors challenge this misinformation to argue that the vaccines do not disrupt normal cell biology.

While it’s likely that this assumption (rapid product degradation) likely arose given that unmodified mRNAs have overall short in vivo half-life, real-world since points to a very different situation.

For example, “…human lymph node biopsies taken at different time points post-exposure to the mRNA-LNP revealed detectable levels of vaccine mRNA and spike proteins up to eight weeks.” And of course, TrialSite has reported on peer-reviewed data featuring the distribution and circulation of spike protein derived from the mRNA vaccines in humans for periods over a year.

Also, the effects of modified ribonucleotides (incorporated into the vaccine products to lower innate reactogenicity) just recently became more apparent.

Igyártó and Qin point out, “Incorporation of N1-methylpseudouridine into mRNA resulted in +1 ribosomal frameshifting in vitro and cellular immunity in mice and humans to +1 frameshifted products from BNT162b2 vaccine mRNA translation occurred after vaccination.”

A key message from the authors on the overall topics: it’s dangerous to “assume and extrapolate in science” then apply existing paradigms to novel, untested platforms and technologies.

And just how safe and effective are the COVID-19 mRNA countermeasures?

Reviewing many of the same recent peer-reviewed journal entries, case reports and publicly available adverse event database as TrialSite, the current authors argue that this fact “cast doubts on the safety and effectiveness of these products.”

For example, on the topic of safety the authors point to a range of formidable entries calling out one concern to another. As TrialSite has editorialized many of the studies cited by Igyártó and Qin on the topic of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine safety suggest concern.

Similar outcomes can be found when probing efficacy. As the authors point out, “The effectiveness of these therapeutics in preventing infections and limiting the spreading of the virus has been highly eroded from the early reports, and nowadays, their efficacy is mainly limited to potentially decreasing the disease severity and death in susceptible people.” Pointing out that the efficacy that has been reported likens to the immune suppressive characteristics of these mRNA products, the authors urge for a “rigorous pre-clinical studies to limit potential unexpected consequences for novel platforms.”

Final Thoughts

Pointing out that “several fundamental questions persist surrounding the pandemic measures and the adoption of this new vaccine platform,” the scientists cogently argue “rather than advocating for retraction and censorship” rather there should be a movement in science to foster for open dialogue, considering all perspectives.

And for those that despite the findings above would still justify all that was done during the pandemic as the efforts saved lives, Igyártó and Qin point out that “the robustness of supporting data raises important inquiries.”

True trust is necessary to not undermine science and foster vaccine hesitancy, argue the authors of this important peer-reviewed paper. Seek to rebuild trust? Then, the authors argue it’s “crucial to return to the fundamental principles of scientific inquiry

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/immunologists-call-out-mrna-vaccinesthe-good-bad-ugly-time-to-go-back-to-science-43567db9

Doctors Force FDA To Remove False Statements About Ivermectin

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has agreed to remove social media posts and webpages that urged people to stop taking ivermectin to treat COVID-19, according to a settlement dated March 21

The FDA has already removed a page that said:

“Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? No.”

Within 21 days, the FDA will remove another page titled, “why you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19,” according to the settlement announcement, which was filed with federal court in southern Texas.

“The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals,” the page currently states. It also says that data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19, despite how some studies it cites show ivermectin is effective against the illness.

The FDA in the settlement is also agreeing to delete multiple social media posts that came out strongly against ivermectin, including one that stated:

“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

In exchange, doctors who sued the agency are dismissing their claims, the filing states.

“FDA loses its war on ivermectin and agrees to remove all social media posts and consumer directives regarding ivermectin and COVID, including its most popular tweet in FDA history,” Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, one of the doctors, said in a statement. “This landmark case sets an important precedent in limiting FDA overreach into the doctor-patient relationship.”

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the settlement as it is a victory for every doctor and patient in the United States,” added Dr. Paul Marik, chief scientific officer of the FLCCC Alliance and another plaintiff.

“The FDA interfered in the practice of medicine with their irresponsible language and posts about ivermectin. We will never know how many lives were affected because patients were denied access to a lifesaving treatment because their doctor was ‘just following the FDA.’”

An FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency:

“has chosen to resolve this lawsuit rather than continuing to litigate over statements that are between two and nearly four years old.”

“FDA has not admitted any violation of law or any wrongdoing, disagrees with the plaintiffs’ allegation that the agency exceeded its authority in issuing the statements challenged in the lawsuit, and stands by its authority to communicate with the public regarding the products it regulates,” the spokesperson said.

“FDA has not changed its position that currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. The agency has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19.”

Ivermectin was approved by the FDA in 1996 to treat several conditions, including onchocerciasis, a tropical disease caused by a parasitic worm.

In the United States, it’s common for doctors to prescribe medicine off-label, or for a different purpose than the one for which the medicine is approved.

After some doctors began prescribing ivermectin for COVID-19, the FDA ramped up its campaign, including the Aug. 21, 2021, post on Twitter, now known as X.

Dr. Bowden and two other doctors sued the FDA, arguing the agency’s actions went beyond its authority, as conferred on it by Congress.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown dismissed the case in 2022, ruling that the FDA did not act outside the authority. But an appeals court in 2023 ruled in favor of the doctors, finding that the agency “has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ‘stop’ taking medicine.”
Between the time of the ruling and the settlement, the FDA refused to change any of its statements on ivermectin, and asked for a fresh dismissal of the suit.

The Case

Drs. Robert Apter, Bowden, and Marik brought the case in 2022. They said they suffered repercussions after prescribing ivermectin to patients with COVID-19, and that the FDA was to blame.

Dr. Apter, for instance, said that pharmacists refused to fill the prescriptions, citing the FDA.

“This refusal delays his patients in obtaining their prescribed treatment—when early intervention is paramount—while they look for a pharmacy to fill their prescription, if they can find one at all,” the suit states.

He also said that insurance companies were refusing to pay for ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

The suit said the FDA illegally interfered with the relationships between the doctors and patients. The doctors said with regard to ivermectin, the FDA overstepped the authority conferred on it in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Government lawyers argued that the FDA was acting within the confines of the law, and succeeded in getting the dismissal.

Judge Brown, appointed under President Donald Trump, said the FDA’s powers were only limited with regard to medical devices.

“As there is no statute limiting the FDA’s actions here, it cannot have acted outside of any statutory limitations,” he wrote in his ruling. “Further, it cannot be said that the FDA had no colorable basis of authority. The FDA is charged by Congress with protecting public health and ensuring that regulated medical products are safe and effective, among other things.”

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit disagreed, finding that the law did not authorize the FDA to give medical advice.

“FDA can inform, but it has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ‘stop’ taking medicine,” U.S. Circuit Judge Don Willett, appointed under President Trump, wrote for the court.

The appeals court remanded the case back to the district court.

https://principia-scientific.com/doctors-score-win-forcing-fda-to-remove-statements-about-ivermectin/

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Another Outlandish Overreach by the CDC

Easter weekend was lovely in every way.

And yet I could not stop thinking about the strange manner in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has had such an outsized role in the ruination of American rights and liberties. This agency is supposed to be tracking infectious disease and finding ways out. This mandate became the leverage to allow them to impose nationwide mask mandates, a rental moratorium, a shutdown of the cruise industry, and otherwise send the whole country into fits of hysterics for two years and more.

So it occurred to make an inquiry into how the CDC handles questions of election processes. This is rather important in a democracy. This is how we select our leaders and the central way in which we can claim that the people have some influence over the regime that rules us. It is because of elections that we can claim to be better than ancient despotisms or medieval feudalism. We rule ourselves through the vote. That’s the whole idea.

As it turns out, the CDC had quite a large role in guiding election processes. Not that you can find the evidence on their website now. Nope, it’s all been scrubbed. However, if you look at the Wayback Machine, you can find an interesting little point. The CDC strongly recommended mail-in, absentee, and early voting as a means of disease control.

The theory was that people gathering in a polling place would be a super-spreader event. What science did they cite to demonstrate this? None at all. So far as I know, and I’ve looked far and wide, there is not a single study anywhere that purports to show some relationship between disease spread and in-person voting. The CDC just made that up... for whatever reason.

The day was March 12, 2020. This was the same day that President Trump went on national television in the evening to announce that there would be no more travel from the United States to Europe, the UK, and, later, Australia and New Zealand. He further said that all Americans living abroad needed to come home right away or be stuck.

That was a pretty shocking announcement. Nothing like this had ever happened in American history, not even this broadly in wartime. It seemed to come out of nowhere, our rights to travel suddenly deleted.

It seems that President Trump was following the advice of his scientific advisors who later turned out to be snake oil salesmen. Indeed, he seemed extremely uncomfortable making this announcement, almost like he knew that it was weird and probably unwarranted. Strange night.

As it turns out, earlier that day, the CDC decided that the whole country really ought to be voting by mail. They went into the website and edited the page that very day and produced the following checklist.

You can see for yourself at the Archive link. So far, the CDC has not proven itself powerful enough to scrub also its bread crumbs from the archive source, not yet in any case. The time might come. If they succeed, their role in creating the biggest voting scandal in a hundred years might never have been known by future generations.

There is simply no way that the CDC could not have known about the uncertainties and vagaries created by absentee ballots. They are banned by half the countries in the world for that reason. Those that do allow them govern them very strictly. You have to request a ballot. They are sent to your home. You have to provide extensive identity verification. You have to have a darn good excuse. It’s only for hardship cases and never the norm.

It was the CDC that decided to throw all that in the trash. Who even cares about the whole history of democracy, because, after all, there is a virus floating around! It’s amazing that this happened. But just as amazing is the idea of throwing out property rights, which they also did. But there it is.

To be sure, they could not actually force this result. But they sure could grant some scientific heft behind the idea. It also helped that only 10 days later, the U.S. Congress voted $2 trillion in payments to the states, a portion of which was to implement CDC recommendations. Most states were happy to do so, again, with full knowledge that this strategy would yield results that were sketchy at best.

As it turns out, of course, it was the mail-in ballots that might have made the difference in the election, or seemed to in any case. Everything got so much mixed up that it’s hard to say. And it’s not like people did not have warning signs of trouble. The primary season of that spring and summer yielded a slew of controversies about what was and was not true. There were more than enough controversies swirling about by the time of the general election.

The crucial point here is that the CDC massively overstepped the bounds of its mandate by intervening in the processes by which Americans select its leaders, strongly pushing a method that was a known source of fraud. Nor has the CDC ever been held to account for this, not to my knowledge in any case.

They were sued over the rent moratorium and the evil nationwide mask mandate. They lost both cases. But there has been no litigation against the CDC for disrupting the whole system by which we regulate elections. One might suppose that if an executive agency were to do something like this, they would have needed some permission from somebody. Surely such a gigantic change would and should require more than a low-level employee with logins to change a website text.

Speaking of which, who actually did this and why? Aren’t these interesting questions? Why is no one asking them? Where are the investigations? Where is the outrage?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/another-outlandish-overreach-by-the-cdc-5619202?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=opinion-6

Will NIH & Industry Consider Universal Coronavirus Vax Developed by Scientists in Georgia/Wisconsin & Tokyo?

Georgia Institute of Technology Scientists, in collaboration with investigators from University of Wisconsin—Madison as well as University of Tokyo continued pursuing the optimal coronavirus vaccine since the Covid-19 pandemic started. The mRNA vaccines developed through the federal government's "Operation Warp Speed" program were a massive innovation; however, annually updating those boosters for specific SARS-CoV-2 variants is inefficient for scientists and patients, although the spin given to the public by the leadership at the time at the National Institutes of Health and the companies was the opposite.

Now, the collaborators have developed a new vaccine that offers broad protection against not only SARS-CoV-2 variants, but also other bat sarbecoviruses. The groundbreaking trivalent vaccine has shown complete protection with no trace of virus in the lungs, marking a significant step toward a universal vaccine for coronaviruses. Findings were recently presented in “Broad protection against clade 1 sarbecoviruses after a single immunization with cocktail spike-protein-nanoparticle vaccine,” published in the February edition of Nature Communications.

For context, SARS-CoV-2 is just one member of the Sarbecovirus (SARS Betacoronavirus) subfamily (others include SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2002 SARS outbreak, as well as other viruses circulating in bats that could cause future pandemics).

According to Ravi Kane, professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, “We had been working on strategies to make a broadly protective vaccine for a while.” Professor Kane continued, “This vaccine may protect not just against the current strain circulating that year, but also future variants.”

Research goes back in time

Kane and his research group have been working on the technologies to develop more widely protective vaccines for viruses since he joined Georgia Tech in 2015. Although the team didn’t specifically foresee Covid-19 arising when it did, pandemics have regularly occurred throughout human history. While the team pivoted their vaccine research to address coronaviruses, they were surprised by how rapidly each new variant arose, making their broader vaccine even more necessary.

Once they realized the challenge inherent in how fast SARS-CoV-2 mutates, they had two options for how to build a vaccine: design one to be widely preventative against the virus, or use the influenza vaccine, which updates annually for the anticipated prevalent variant, as a model.

Considering Durability, Breadth

Making a broad vaccine is more appealing because it enables patients to get one shot and be protected for years. To create their general vaccine, Kane’s team capitalized on the key to the original mRNA vaccines — the spike protein, which binds the virus to healthy cells. Their vaccine uses three prominent spike proteins, or a trivalent vaccine, to elicit a broad enough antibody response to make the vaccine effective against SARS-CoV-2 variants as well as other sarbecoviruses that have been identified as having pandemic potential.

“If you know which variant is circulating, you can immunize with the spike protein of that variant,” Ph.D. student and co-author Kathryn Loeffler said. “But a broad vaccine is more difficult to develop because you’re protecting against many different antigens versus just one.”

It Starts with Preclinical Animal Research

Collaborators in the Kawaoka group at the University of Wisconsin tested their vaccine in hamsters, which they had previously identified as an appropriate animal model to evaluate vaccines and immunotherapies against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine was able to neutralize all SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants tested, as well as non-SARS-CoV-2 coronaviruses circulating in bats. Even better, the vaccine provided complete protection with no detectable virus in the lungs.

Kane hopes that the vaccine strategy his team identified can be applied to other viruses — other coronavirus subfamilies as well as other viruses such as influenza viruses. They also expect that some of the specific antigens they describe in this paper can be moved toward preclinical trials. Someday, a trivalent vaccine could comprise a routine part of people’s medical treatment.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/will-nih-industry-consider-universal-coronavirus-vax-developed-by-scientists-in-georgiawisconsin-tokyo-fd0725fe

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Australia: COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects Under Scrutiny: Ralph Babet initiates Senate Inquiry Targeting Excess Mortality

Babet is the lone libertarian senator so it is good to see him having an effect

Australians concerned about excess deaths in recent years are now able to have their voice heard by the parliament as a new Senate inquiry has gone online.

Following the establishment of a Senate inquiry into excess mortality in the week ending March 31, the Australian parliament has opened a new page for the inquiry on its website, allowing concerned individuals and organisations to make submissions.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, excess mortality rose from minus 3.1 percent in 2020 to 1.6 percent in 2021 and 11.7 percent in 2022 before dropping to 6.1 percent in 2023.

Notably, there were almost 20,000 cases of excess deaths in 2022 alone.

The inquiry was established after the parliament narrowly passed a motion moved by United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet with a 31-30 vote on Feb. 26.

Mr. Babet had the support of the Opposition, One Nation Party, and some independent senators, while the Labor and the Greens opposed the motion.

In a social media post, Mr. Babet said this was an opportunity for Australians to have a say on the issue.

“Many submissions are expected to be received from both individuals and professional organisations, with the opportunity for public hearings to follow later this year,” he wrote.

“This is your opportunity to have your say. If you have a personal story, knowledge, or expertise in this space, please prepare a submission for the committee.”

Australians can make submissions online via the parliament website, or they can send letters and emails to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, which is responsible for investigating the matter.

Mr. Babet also said the committee was expected to finalise a report by the end of August. “May this committee process give a voice to the family members of the deceased and deliver the answers that our nation so desperately needs,” he wrote.

In an interview with 2GB Radio, Mr. Babet said the inquiry would look into the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines to determine whether they were connected to excess deaths.
“There would have to be at least a part of this, which is due to the vaccine,” he said.

“I want an answer at the end of this to say hey, that vaccines were a part of this, or the vaccines were not a part of the sport, or we don’t know, let’s investigate more.”

At the same time, the senator mentioned the challenges he faced during the process of establishing the inquiry, alleging that many politicians did not want to investigate the issue.

“For the last two or three years, none of the other senators … most of them have not wanted to take a look,” he said.

“They want to sweep things under the carpet. That’s what they’ve wanted to do.

“It’s not okay. It’s not how you do things. This is Australia. This is not a communist dictatorship.”

Meanwhile, Labor Senator Tim Ayres criticised the idea of having the parliament investigate excess deaths, saying it was opportunistic behaviour.

“Some people in the political system, of course, where they see fear, see opportunity. Where they see a capacity to divide people, to isolate them, and to frighten them, that is an opportunity,” he said.

While independent Senator David Pocock did not believe in COVID-19 vaccine “conspiracies,” he said there was a need to investigate the issue of excess mortality.

“I don’t accept the conspiracy theories that have been featured so heavily in Discord around COVID-19 vaccines,” he said.

“However, I do acknowledge there is data showing excess mortality rates that have increased in recent years.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/inquiry-into-excess-deaths-now-open-for-submissions-5620720

The biggest challenge in vaccinology: Countering immune evasion

The claim below that Covid will evolve into something that is once again novel seems reasonable but we have coped with novel viruses before so it may not be as big a problem as he prophesies. We cope with novel flu strains every year

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

People are rightfully concerned, some even outraged, by my predictions of how this Covid-19 pandemic will end. Understandably, some also blame me for the timeline I proposed not being accurate. Of course, not everyone understands that the interplay between the virus/pathogen and the host population's immunity is complex and constantly determined by the pressure exerted by the population's adaptive immunity on the virus and the virus's adaptation to the changing immune environment. This game of cat and mouse continues because highly Covid-19 (C-19) vaccinated populations cannot develop herd immunity.

What we will eventually observe is that this highly effective process of viral adaptation will ultimately confer an absolute fitness advantage to a Coronavirus (CoV) that is both structurally and functionally completely different from SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) and its variants. It will be featured by many changes in spike and other viral proteins and have additional O-glycosylation sites while being resistant to neutralizing antibodies (Abs), virulent and highly productive/ replicative. It will use polyreactive nonneutralizing Abs (PNNAbs) to cause Ab-dependent enhancement of infection, thereby causing enhancement of severe disease (basically, as a result of rapid virus dissemination and replication in all organs). It will spread as a ‘strange’ but dominating lineage as a kind of ‘extraterrestrial dictator’ that outcompetes all previously circulating SC-2 lineages.

The ongoing phenomenon of immune escape runs parallel to the increasing incidence of acute (IgG4 Ab-mediated) and chronic (CD8+ T cell-mediated) immune pathology (including cancers), both of which stem from dysregulation of the adaptive immune system in C-19 vaccine recipients.

The unvaccinated individuals who are in good health and have not previously suffered from severe C-19 disease will not be affected by this new CoV (I call it ‘HIVICRON’: a highly virulent CoV that will replace the entire Omicron family). This is because, unlike those who are fully C-19 vaccinated, they have managed to train their cell-mediated innate immunity through exposure to increasingly infectious variants (through epigenetic reprogramming).

As the immune escape pandemic will transition from its ‘chronic’ phase (i.e., characterized by a high prevalence of ‘Long COVID’!) to its final, hyperacute stage, we will observe a reduction in circulating Omicron descendants, and cryptic lineages will become increasingly undetectable in wastewater. Despite low virus concentrations in wastewater and low C-19 hospitalization and C-19 mortality rates, cases of Long COVID will continue to steadily increase. Given the insidious nature of the current evolution, I am referring to the current period as 'the calm before the tsunami’ and warning that ‘societies in highly C-19 vaccinated countries will be caught off guard’.

Those who naively believe that the pandemic will simply die out without major casualties or will be controlled by regular (updated) vaccine booster doses fail to grasp that it is no longer the C-19 vaccination itself but rather the recurrent vaccine breakthrough infections (even if largely asymptomatic in terms of acute C-19 disease!), initiated by Omicron as a result of mass vaccination (hence why Omicron has been a scourge, not a blessing!), that are fueling the progression of viral immune escape and immune pathology.

In other words, neither an extended period of vaccine abstention nor a recently updated shot will affect the remaining evolutionary trajectory of this immune escape pandemic (Hence the title of my book: ‘The Inescapable Immune Escape Pandemic’).

I can't help but conclude that all pieces of the puzzle are fitting nicely together and that the science behind all this is undeniably compelling. My analysis is the result of a thorough, prolonged, and painstaking exercise in deep diving into these matters, leaving no stone unturned. My journey through this pandemic has been quite different from that of our health authorities, so-called health experts, and leading scientists. To summarize the mess they have made of it, I prefer to use a quote from a good friend: “They have been throwing shit against a wall to see what sticks”! Some of that shit did indeed stick to the wall at the very beginning of the C-19 mass vaccination campaign, but then dripped off, first as watery diarrhea, then as pure bloody diarrhea…

I seriously doubt the stakeholders of this mass vaccination program were clever enough to realize that their ‘shit’ experiment would quickly emerge as the most spectacular gain-of-function experiment ever conducted in the history of biology (one that was directly conducted on our very own human species!!!). Whether intentional or not, I won't judge. The fact remains that soon it will become evident how, due to their actions, a fairly harmless virus was transformed into a bioweapon of mass destruction.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/how-often-have-i-said-to-you-that-when-you-have-eliminated-the-impossible-whatever-remains-however-improbable-must-be-the-truth-ecda3b88

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Experts call for more research into long COVID, as study reveals high prevalence in Western Australia

Researchers say more support is needed for patients suffering from long-term illness associated with a COVID-19 infection, with new data showing a large number of West Australians have been left unable to work due to their crippling symptoms.

The Australian National University (ANU) study surveyed 11,000 people who tested positive to COVID during a significant outbreak of the Omicron variant in WA in 2022.

The study published in March found almost 20 per cent of those patients were still suffering symptoms of fatigue, memory loss and concentration difficulties three months after they first became sick.

Lead researcher Mulu Woldegiorgis said there was little pre-existing data available on the topic, but that the new research suggested there was a high rate of long-term COVID-19 symptoms in WA.

"It is more than double the prevalence reported in a review of Australia data from earlier in the pandemic, and higher than similar studies done in the UK and Canada," she said.

In their report, Dr Woldegiorgis and her colleagues acknowledged one of the limitations of the ANU survey was that it relied on subjective symptom descriptions from patients, and the reported impact of their symptoms on work or study was not independently verified.

Dr Woldegiorgis said it was important for patients' symptoms to be taken seriously. "I think it's real and it needs more investigation," she said.

"When we see its impact on work or study, more than one in six of those who used to work before their infection were not able to fully return to work or study due to their ongoing symptoms."

'Life has become small'

Joanna Lewis caught COVID almost two years to the day. When she still had symptoms weeks later she thought she might have contracted Ross River virus again. "I could be standing at the kitchen bench and I'd feel short of breath," she said.

"It was almost like my body had forgotten to breathe, which is really bizarre."

She experienced tachycardia and POTS – postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome – which meant her heart rate shot up more than 30 beats a minute when she sat or stood up.

She had to take leave from work and suffered financially, burning through her savings and taking on students as boarders to bring in enough money to survive.

These days the 42-year-old is most afflicted by fatigue.

"I do have, I've found, about six hours on average … upright, I do have to spend probably most of my day lying down and resting," she said. "It just means life becomes very small."

Government urged to do more

Rural GP Michael Livingston said he was seeing large numbers of people through his practice in Narembeen, in WA's Wheatbelt, with unexplained fatigue and brain fog. "I'm seeing younger people who just aren't bouncing back the way they thought they would do," he said.

"Some people think they have dementia, such is their concern about their memory and ability to recall simple tasks."

Dr Livingston suspects long COVID could be to blame and urged people not become complacent about COVID prevention. "We really need to be questioning the why of this and what personal choices we're making and how complicit we are being around this," he said.

Dr Livingston said authorities should develop a "clean air policy", and could consider fitting classrooms, workplaces and public transport with specialised air filters.

WA Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said the government was keeping a close eye on any evidence relating to long COVID. "I think there's some conflicting views globally around the impact of long COVID but we continue to watch it closely," she said at a press conference on Tuesday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-03/research-finds-long-covid-rates-high-in-wa/103647042

Popular Paper on Ivermectin and COVID-19 Contains False Information

Meta analyses are very open to abuse.. I reported recently on another dubious meta-analysis of Ivermectin use. See:

https://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2024/02/effect-of-higher-dose-ivermectin-for-6.html

A popular study that claims ivermectin has shown no effectiveness against all-cause mortality contains false information but remains uncorrected.

The meta-analysis, published in 2021 by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, explores how groups in randomized, controlled trials fared after receiving ivermectin compared to control groups.

Among five trials included for the portion on all-cause mortality, none showed an effect for ivermectin, the authors claimed.

Ivermectin “did not reduce all-cause mortality,” they wrote.

But the claim is wrong. One of the five trials was described as finding ivermectin recipients were more likely to die, but actually found that ivermectin recipients were less likely to die. “The risk base estimation ... confirmed that the average mortality obtained in all of ivermectin treated arms was 3.3%, while it was about 18.3% in standard care and placebo arms,” the authors of that paper said.

Dr. Adrian Hernandez, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut’s School of Pharmacy, and other authors of the meta-analysis are aware of the false information. The group released their study as a preprint before the journal published it. The first version included the false information. A corrected version properly portrayed the trial’s results for all-cause mortality in a figure summarizing the results, but still falsely said none of the trials showed a benefit against all-cause mortality.

Dr. Hernandez and Clinical Infectious Diseases did not respond to requests for comment.

The lingering false information is in a paper that has attracted numerous citations in other studies, in the press, and on social media. Altmetric, which tracks engagement, scores it at 5,900. A score of 20 or means a paper is doing “far better than most of its contemporaries,” according to the company.

Morimasa Yagisawa of Kitasato University and other researchers pointed out the issue in a March review of ivermectin trials, saying they were “concerned about the spread of misinformation and/or disinformation” about trial results.

“The articles on systematic reviews and meta-analyses are often erroneous or misleading. This is perhaps because the authors were not involved in the clinical trials or patient care and only searched for and analyzed articles and databases on clinical trial results,” they wrote. The problems are “particularly serious” in the paper for which Dr. Hernandez was the corresponding author, the researchers said.

“Although it was a clear error, the wrong content of the preprint was published as a major article in Clinical Infectious Diseases, the official journal of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, without being changed,” they wrote. “Many comments were made questioning the insight of the reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief for publishing a paper with such inconsistencies, but the paper is still published without correction. Since this is a prestigious journal of a prestigious society, an early corrective action is required.”

“There have been several fraudulent meta-analyses, and this is a striking one,” Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief officer of the FLCCC Alliance and author of the book The War on Ivermectin, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“In this meta-analysis, they selected only 10 of the 81 controlled trials, 33 of which were randomized, on ivermectin that were available at the time. Eight of the ten they selected involved mild COVID-19. Typically, mild COVID does not lead to death. And here they were looking at death rates and, as expected, saw very few. The inclusion criteria they used were intended to show no effect. And they succeeded. Conflicted researchers have been doing this to hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin since the beginning of the pandemic,” he added.

Issues in other meta-analyses include the improper inclusion of papers that did not describe clinical trial results, Mr. Yagisawa and his co-authors said.

They noted that a number of trials have found ivermectin recipients were better off. That includes trials cited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in its position that ivermectin is not effective against COVID-19.

The FDA recently settled a lawsuit over that position, agreeing to take down several web pages and social media posts.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/popular-paper-on-ivermectin-and-covid-19-contains-false-information-5622457?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=us-news-left-4

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Jacinda Ardern’s zero Covid madness has finally come home to roost

When The Guardian goes into rhetorical overdrive, we can be confident the person, party or policy railed against will finish on the right side of history.

In March 2020, The Guardian lectured Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on his “Russian roulette-style” Covid-19 strategy. It reported “leading experts” were critical of Lofven for prioritising economic activity over public health. The country’s Covid death toll had reached the alarming total of 25. “How many lives are they prepared to sacrifice so as not to risk a greater impact on the economy?” asked epidemiologist Joacim Rocklov.

By contrast, The Guardian and other pro-lockdown news outlets were fulsome in their praise of Jacinda Ardern and her plan to eliminate the virus in New Zealand. Ardern had responded “with clarity and compassion”, The Guardian gushed back in April 2020.

“New Zealand isn’t just flattening the curve. It’s squashing it,” wrote Washington Post correspondent Anna Fifield.

Fifield had just been to South Korea, where she was “shocked” that airport officials had failed to take her temperature. “I was told simply to self-isolate for 14 days,” she said.

Ardern’s announcement in June 2020 that the virus had been eliminated in New Zealand proved to be somewhat premature. The curve wasn’t flattened. That was delayed until March 2022, when the country eventually crawled out from under the bed.

The chart measuring Covid cases in New Zealand from April 2022 mirrors the chart for Sweden two years earlier: a steep rise to around 2.5 million cases within the first six months, at which point it begins to flatten. New Zealand’s official tally of Covid deaths per million is 1163, 40 per cent higher than it is among the thermometer-dodging South Koreans. It is higher than every state in Australia, except Victoria. It is three times higher than Singapore and 40 per cent higher than the global average.

In October 2021, Ardern told New Zealanders “there is clear evidence the virus finds it harder to spread in vaccinated environments”. Yet in New Zealand, as in Australia, all but a handful of deaths occurred after the rollout of the vaccines, which suggests, at the very least, they were not all they were cracked up to be.

The health benefits of lockdowns were marginal at best. The costs to our social fabric and wellbeing were incalculable.

Among the hundreds of submissions to the federal government’s Covid inquiry released last week are gruelling personal testimonies that speak to the human cost: Australians trapped in India and banned from returning home; forced imprisonment in mediocre hotel rooms upon return; increases in mental illness and family violence, and; unvaccinated Australians treated as lepers.

Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finley concludes that Australians endured “some of the most significant restrictions of our human rights ever imposed during peacetime”.

The Commission received 2662 complaints, the biggest response to a single issue since it was established.

It would be nice to put this horrible period behind us and move on. Yet the fiscal burden of Covid will be on our shoulders for some time. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten that closing borders and social distancing are inherently expensive. Businesses and individuals must be compensated, and even the most ridiculous regulations must be enforced.

So it is hardly surprising government spending in Australia and New Zealand was among the highest in the world. Australian governments, both state and federal, spent the equivalent of 18.2 per cent of GDP to fight Covid, according to data compiled by the International Monetary Fund.

New Zealand was second in the Covid spending rankings at 19.3 per cent of GDP. The US was in first place at 25 per cent of GDP. By contrast, South Korea spent 6.4 per cent of its GDP on pandemic management, and Sweden spent just 4.2 per cent. It would be unfair to criticise Ardern based on hindsight. Like Scott Morrison, she was not to know the path the pandemic would take, nor that attempts to flatten the curve would eventually be futile.

It seemed reasonable to use their countries’ advantages of distance, secure borders and expertise in quarantine procedures to keep the virus out. Equally, however, we must now be honest enough to acknowledge that our governments made the wrong call, unless we are determined to make the same mistakes next time around.

The New Zealand economy will be burdened with the long fiscal tail of the 2020-2022 pandemic for years, if not decades, to come. Australia’s strong economic recovery has masked the fiscal cost of Covid. It vindicates the Morrison government’s decision to direct spending to temporary programs to keep people in jobs and businesses trading rather than bake in permanent welfare spending.

In part, it stems from the good fortune of a resource-driven economy. New Zealand, however, is in a world of pain. Its debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from 27 per cent in 2019 to 37 per cent today. The cost of servicing debt is a significant budget item.

Worse still, it has the second-highest structural deficit in the world, according to the World Bank’s data. The gap between what the government is committed to spend and the revenue it can raise has considerably widened.

The country’s new Prime Minster, Christopher Luxon, has made strong progress in unwinding Ardern’s woke legacy, as the leader of a three-party coalition between the Nationals, Winston Peters’ New Zealand First and David Seymour’s ACT party.

He has reversed the Maorification program, insisting English should remain the country’s first language, begun refocusing the curriculum and banned smartphones from schools, repealed Ardern’s ute tax, scrapped the prisoner reduction target and introduced legislation to crack down on crime gangs.

But the fiscal burden remains his biggest challenge. Fixing it will need far deeper cuts to public spending than Luxon has so far countenanced. Not fixing it will place a drag on the New Zealand economy for years.

Meanwhile, lockdown-phobic Sweden’s economy isn’t exactly roaring, but it’s doing OK by European standards. Sweden’s Covid death toll is on par with or even lower than that in comparable European countries that pursued a lockdown strategy.

In 2019, its debt-to-GDP ratio was eight points higher than New Zealand’s, at 35.6 per cent. Now, it’s five points lower at around 32 per cent. Making trade-offs between health and economic goals turned out to be not such a wicked thing after all.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/jacinda-arderns-zero-covid-madness-has-finally-come-home-to-roost/news-story/377501a9ee67e6a5e1c5d1c29a3cd923

Scientist’s Video on Vaccination Status in Pregnancy Censored for ‘Misinformation’

A mathematician has had a YouTube video taken down after pointing out that the government is counting women who had the COVID-19 vaccines before conceiving as “unvaccinated,” effectively obscuring any potential link between the jabs and negative pregnancy outcomes.

Professor Norman Fenton, who specialises in risk analysis and decision making at Queen Mary University, London, used the example of Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist, Dame Laura Kenny, who has spoken publicly about suffering a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy.

In the video, he speculated that Dame Laura, who is married to fellow Olympic champion Sir Jason Kenny with whom she has two sons, is likely to have received two doses of the vaccines in order to be allowed to compete at the Toyko Olympics in August 2021.

Dame Laura, 31, whose first son was born in 2017, revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at nine weeks in November 2021, shortly after the delayed Tokyo games in August. She also had an ectopic pregnancy in January 2022, before going on to have her second child in July 2023.

Mr. Fenton told The Epoch Times it was not his intention to upset Dame Laura, but she had not been in touch with him to make any comment or clarification about the video.

Women Jabbed Before Pregnancy Labelled Unvaccinated

According to the way the UK Health and Security Agency (HSA) records vaccine status, if Dame Laura did not receive any COVID-19 shots during her pregnancies, she would be counted as “unvaccinated” along with the “never vaccinated” women, even if she had received the jabs before conceiving.

Mr. Fenton said, “The way they were doing that particular pregnancy statistic is one of the worst examples of data obfuscation—to lump the never vaccinated in with the vaccinated, who in theory could have been vaccinated a day before (they got pregnant) is absolutely outrageous.”

“If there is a safety signal, it would just be hidden. You wouldn’t see it.”

In the video, he said: “She would’ve had to be double vaxxed shortly before the games to be allowed to take part. While there may be no reason to suspect this had anything to do with Laura’s two unfortunate outcomes, both would be classified in the UKHSA ‘no doses in pregnancy’ category.”

Mr. Fenton posted the censored video on YouTube at 5:30 p.m. on Good Friday, where he said it received 2,000 views within an hour. The platform took the video down after just 80 minutes, claiming it was a violation of its policy on “medical misinformation.”

‘Obfuscating Possible Vaccine Adverse Reactions’

YouTube said the “violation” occurred at three minutes and 47 seconds into the video, when Mr. Fenton said, “Once again we are reminded not just of the extent to which the government has gone to obfuscate possible vaccine adverse reactions, but also the insanity that led to the strongest and fittest people in Great Britain being forced to take a useless vaccine that they never needed and for which—even then—there were many known safety signals, and even to this day, the full vaccine pregnancy safety data has never been released.”

The platform sent Mr. Fenton a message saying he had been censored because anything that contravenes advice by the World Health Organisation is considered to be “medical misinformation.”

The British Olympic Association (BOA) said in May 2021 that “all athletes and support staff will be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before leaving for Japan ahead of this year’s Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

“The BOA is set to secure the vaccines after the International Olympic Committee struck a deal with Pfizer BioNtech to donate doses to athletes heading to the Games.”

Mr. Fenton shared the video on other platforms, including Odyssey, Rumble, and Bitchute.

Dame Laura is the most successful British female Olympian of all time, with only her husband, Sir Jason, and fellow cyclist Chris Hoy winning more gold medals. She retired from the track in March 2024, having suffered a series of injury problems as well as becoming a mother for the second time.

She shared her sadness over her baby losses in an Instagram post in April 2022, revealing that she had conceived just after the Tokyo games.

“Since the Olympics we haven’t had much luck and it’s been the hardest few months I’ve ever had to go through,” she wrote.

“Jason and I fell pregnant immediately after the Games and we were absolutely chuffed to bits. But unfortunately in November when commentating at the track champions league I miscarried our baby at nine weeks. I’ve never felt so lost and sad. It felt like a part of me had been torn away.”

“I then caught COVID in mid-January and found myself feeling really very unwell. I didn’t have typical COVID symptoms and I just felt I needed to go to hospital. A day later I found myself in A&E being rushed to theatre because I was having an ectopic pregnancy. Scared doesn’t even come close. I lost a fallopian tube that day.”

The government maintains the jabs are “safe and effective” for everyone, including for pregnant women, in spite of concerns raised by doctors and in several studies that women were suffering menstrual irregularities and linking the jabs to higher rates of miscarriage.

A peer-reviewed report from February suggests mRNA in the vaccines does not remain at the injection site but can “spread systemically” to the placenta and umbilical cord blood of the fetus.

The HSA said in a statement to The Epoch Times it has worked with a range of partners, “to document the benefits and safety of vaccination with respect to pregnancy, with surveillance clearly suggesting that women who have been vaccinated (both before and during pregnancy) have better COVID-19 disease outcomes than unvaccinated women for themselves, the pregnancy and for their baby.”

“The vaccination in pregnancy table in the UKHSA COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report were set up to compare the rate of adverse outcomes in women who received the vaccine during pregnancy with those who had not received the vaccine during pregnancy.

“As the report sets out these rates were estimated for “women giving birth between [the report dates], who received one or more COVID-19 vaccination doses during their pregnancy compared with those who did not (either because they were unvaccinated or had only received vaccine doses prior to pregnancy).”

The HSA pointed to research done by the University of Edinburgh, and added: “More detailed analysis taking other factors into account, including timing of vaccination, as published for Scotland, is underway.”

In its latest COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report, published in January this year, the HSA said that pregnant women are still advised to have booster shots and that this is “strongly recommended” by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives.

‘A Statistical Illusion’

Mr. Fenton referred to the “statistical illusion” of many studies which claim to show the jabs are “safe and effective” by miscategorising partially vaccinated people as unjabbed.
He and two other academics carried out a study—accepted as a pre-print but not yet peer-reviewed—in which they examine such “miscategorisation bias” across 39 papers.

“We’ve been arguing that most of these big, well cited studies that claim 95 percent efficacy and that the vaccines are saving lives, anything claiming vaccine efficacy published in the big journals, every time we have looked at them, there [are] systemic flaws in them.

“The most common one is the miscategorisation one, where they are simply classifying people who had got COVID and hadn’t had every booster shot as unvaccinated, which obviously creates bias where you could show efficacy even with a placebo.”

“In some cases, we have written to the journals asking them to either make a clarification or correction to the paper, but they never did.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/scientists-video-on-vaccination-status-in-pregnancy-censored-for-misinformation-5621115?ea_src=frontpage&ea_med=latest-news-posts-4

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Some Questions Australia’s COVID-19 Inquiries Must Ask

The Australian Senate will soon release its report on the proper terms of reference for a COVID Royal Commission to be established in 2024.

During the inquiry, held by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, a large volume of submissions were submitted, while the government’s own COVID-19 Response Inquiry received over 2,000 submissions.

This indicates high public interest in getting to the truth of what happened, why particular decisions were made, and what the right lessons for the future.

This is especially important so Australia can be better prepared next time and also to put the WHO’s new pandemic accords in perspective.

Contrary to dire warnings, there have been only five pandemics in the last 105 years: the Spanish, Asian, Hong Kong, swine flus, and COVID-19.

In that time, great strides in medical knowledge, training, and technology have expanded disease response toolkits along the spectrum of prevention, treatment, and palliative care.

Average life expectancy has improved dramatically as a result. Countries have exchanged best practices on disease prevention and management.

Despite these gains in understanding and treatment protocols, when COVID-19 struck, many countries including Australia abandoned existing well-prepared plans to deal with pandemics, and instead, reacted with panic.

This is never a good basis on which to make either individual or public policy decisions.

Yet the public health messaging deliberately tried to spread panic to the population to increase compliance with pandemic management measures.

The herd panic of early 2020 led to an abandonment of good process, an abandonment of preparedness plans, and a centralisation of decision-making in a narrow circle of heads of government, ministers, and health experts.

The damage to physical health, mental health, social, educational, and economic problems will continue to impact public life for many years into the future.

Did Australia’s COVID-19 policy interventions represent the greatest triumph of public policy, with an unprecedentedly high number of lives saved as a result of timely, decisive, and appropriate measures instituted by governments acting on the science- and evidence-based advice of experts?

Or will they prove to be the biggest public policy disaster of all time?

Why Were Established Practices Swept Aside?

These are big questions that deserve a rigorous, independent, and impartial inquiry.

The first question is: why exactly were the existing pandemic preparedness plans and medical decision-making practices abandoned?

Suspect data from one city, Wuhan, in one country should not have been deemed sufficient to overturn a century of data, experience, and scientific research.

In particular, rather than responding to herd panic elsewhere to order mass house arrests for the entire population, did Australian scientists and public health officials test overseas claims against hard data locally on the extent, virulence, and lethality (the infection and case fatality rates) of the new virus?

Until these facts, as they apply to Australia, are authoritatively and credibly elucidated by a duly-empowered independent inquiry, public trust in health experts and institutions is unlikely to be restored to pre-pandemic levels.

How Was the Threat Level Assessed?

Another set of questions is about assessing the threat of a disease outbreak against other killer diseases, and the opportunity costs of allocating human, financial, and hospital resources to the different health risks.

The standard metric used to assess one side of this equation is the quality-adjusted life years (QALY) measure that, logically and sensibly, holds that the death of a healthy child, adolescent or young person is a greater tragedy and loss to society than that of someone above the average life expectancy.

From the start, it was known that the average death of those dying with COVID was higher than the average life expectancy.

That being the case, were standard cost-benefit analyses undertaken of the different policy interventions, including the risks of side effects and collateral harms?

If so, why were they not published? If not, why not?

More here:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/some-questions-australias-covid-19-inquiries-must-ask-5623457

As an Epidemiologist, I Could See Straight Away That Covid Was Being Over-Hyped

BY DR EYAL SHAHAR

It was an evening in mid-March 2020. Almost two years had passed since I retired from the University of Arizona, where I was a Professor of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health.

I was watching the news from Israel, the country in which I lived during the first three decades of my life. The reporters were broadcasting a forthcoming catastrophe, a doomsday in the making. It was all about a new coronavirus epidemic which erupted in China and had reached Israel, Europe and parts of the U.S.

Like everyone, I have been following the news from the Far East since the beginning of the year. Although infectious diseases were not my subject matter research, epidemiologists are trained to think critically, to question what many accept at face value. The picture that emerged was far from clear. A few observations did not fit well with the apocalyptic predictions.

So, I decided to write a short article in Hebrew and submit it as an op-ed to a newspaper in Israel. That’s how the series of essays now published as The Covid Pandemic: Unconventional Analytical Essays (2020-2023) started. It was supposed to have ended about three years later with my summary of what has actually happened in Israel (as opposed to the official narrative), but I added a few more later articles on Covid vaccines. In between, I wrote about many aspects of the pandemic, drawing upon data from Sweden, Denmark, Europe, Arizona, the US, the U.K. and Israel.

Forty essays are included in the book. The first one was titled ‘Hold off on that Apocalyptic Consensus About the Coronavirus’ (March 24th 2020). All of them were written for the public at large and were data driven. They were not based on ‘opinion’ or ‘intuition’. They are science, as best as I know it. If written in a formal, academic style, many of these essays could have been submitted to epidemiology journals. Whether they would have passed the guards of official narratives is a different question.

What will you find in the book?

Back in 2020, I devoted several essays to lockdown-free Sweden and showed, unequivocally, the futility of lockdowns and the misleading comparison of Sweden to neighbouring Nordic countries. The last one in this series, published in 2022, was titled ‘Sweden or the World: Which was a Cautionary Tale?’, paraphrasing headlines that claimed the opposite in the spring of 2020.

Several essays have estimated the death toll of panic-triggered responses to the pandemic. By September 2021, before the return of the flu, between 15% and 30% of the excess mortality in the U.S. may be attributed to the so-called mitigation efforts (‘The Mystery of Unaccounted Excess Deaths in the U.S.’). These were lives that were lost in vain — at least 115,000 deaths and possibly twice as many. The consequences of lockdowns and disruptions of normal life did not end in 2021. Lives have continued to be lost in many countries, including the U.K. Some of the mechanisms are described in my essay ‘Covid: The Death Toll of Panic’.

In numerous essays, I studied excess mortality and explained why trends should be examined over an entire winter (‘flu years’), not by calendar years. Using this approach, I estimated the excess mortality in Europe (‘How Severe was the Pandemic in Europe?’). In the first year (2019-2020), it was only somewhat higher than in a previous season with severe flu (2017-2018). The second year (2020-2021) was very harsh but far from apocalyptic – about twice as severe as 2017-2018. In both years, all-cause mortality would have been lower without lockdowns.

Over a dozen essays cover various aspects of Covid vaccines. I showed severe biases in influential studies from Israel and estimated the correct effectiveness against Covid death, which ranged from mediocre to zero or sometimes negative, in the frail elderly. Using data from the U.K., I showed the questionable effectiveness of the first booster and the futility of the second (fourth dose). In three essays, I estimated the short-term fatality rate of Covid vaccines, which was unacceptable but fortunately not as high as others had suggested. Long-term fatality is difficult to estimate. One essay describes unacceptable rates of side-effects, as found in a largely unknown official survey in Israel (‘Downplaying the Side Effects of Boosters’).

Did Covid vaccines save millions of lives? Not according to a comparative analysis of Israel with Sweden in the winter of 2020-2021 (‘Thousands of Averted Covid Deaths in Israel: Science Fiction’). Nor did they reduce the delayed death toll of Covid in Denmark (‘Lockdown and Vaccines: Lessons from Denmark’).

In the last essay, which imagines a future perspective on Covid vaccines, I wrote:

Twenty years later, we are still studying the long-term morbidity and mortality consequences of disseminated lipid nanoparticles (the mRNA carriers), self- manufactured toxic spike protein and aberrant proteins in various tissues, elevated levels of IgG4 antibodies after repeated injections, and the integration of foreign DNA fragments into the genome.

These days, a group of scientists is studying cancer cells from vaccinated patients to determine if foreign DNA is present there. Chances are that you will not find much on this topic or on other vaccine-related effects in mainstream media. So, keep following the Daily Sceptic and Brownstone, as I have been doing for a long time. No end is in sight to the saga of Covid vaccines.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/08/as-an-epidemiologist-i-could-see-straight-away-that-covid-was-being-over-hyped/

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UK Watchdog Accuses Pfizer of Promoting ‘Unlicensed’ COVID Vaccine on Social Media

A UK pharmaceutical watchdog said that Pfizer has breached its regulatory code five times, including “promoting an unlicensed medicine,” due to a social media post made by a Pfizer employee.

The Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) issued the ruling after receiving a complaint in February 2023 regarding a post on X that was made by a Pfizer employee in the United States.

The post included Pfizer’s press release announcing the conclusion of the Phase 3 Study of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which was later shared by a Pfizer senior employee in the United Kingdom.

PMCPA ruled that Pfizer has breached its regulatory code, including “bringing discredit” on the pharmaceutical industry, promoting an unlicensed medicine, and making a misleading claim.

The pharmaceutical company was also accused of “making claims that did not reflect the available evidence regarding possible adverse reactions,” and failing to maintain high standards.

The complaint raised concerns about “Pfizer’s misuse of social media to misleadingly and illegally promote their COVID vaccine,” alleging that the post lacked safety information about the vaccine.

According to the complainant, “such misbehavior was even more widespread than they had thought, extended right to the top of their UK operation and was apparently continuing to this very day.”

The complainant argued that the post has remained visible on the Pfizer UK senior employee’s X feed for over two years.

“In the circumstances the complainant thought that the British public had the right to expect Pfizer UK to have conducted some sort of audit of its social media accounts (at least of its significant accounts, amongst which they would include its UK senior employees) to ensure that anything which was similarly in breach of the code was removed—even to the extent of deleting accounts if necessary. This clearly was not done,” the complaint stated.

Social Media Post Was Not Intended to Be Promotional

Pfizer told the PMCPA that it took its commitment to the regulatory code “extremely seriously” and that it had conducted a thorough investigation into the matter.
The company claimed that the post “was not intended to be promotional in nature” and that it contained “a statement of fact of the efficacy endpoints of the study.”

Pfizer also said that there was no intent by the UK senior employee to promote or to advertise its vaccine candidate, adding that the post was re-shared “in error.”

According to the company, the senior employee was an infrequent user of X and has only 321 followers, the majority of whom are professional individuals involved in, or with an interest in, the UK healthcare and research sector.

“Pfizer UK had a comprehensive policy on personal use of social media in relation to Pfizer’s business which prohibited colleagues from interacting with any social media related to Pfizer’s medicines and vaccines,” it said.

In its response to the PMCPA, Pfizer said it has taken actions to address the complaint, including issuing a UK company-wide instruction urging employees to check their social media accounts to ensure their activity complied with the Pfizer social media policy.

“Pfizer accepted that these colleagues acted in error and these errors regretfully were likely to have resulted in the promotion of an unlicensed vaccine to the UK public in a manner that was not consistent with the requirements of Clause 2,” it stated.

However, the PMCPA stated in its report that the post has resulted in “an unlicensed medicine being proactively disseminated on Twitter to health professionals and members of the public in the UK.”

The watchdog considered that the corrective and preventative actions taken following previous breaches of the code with respect to employee activity on social media “had not been implemented to the standard which was expected or required.”

It also stated that the post made no reference to adverse events of the vaccine.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/business/uk-watchdog-accuses-pfizer-of-promoting-unlicensed-covid-vaccine-on-social-media-5625184

Decision Reserved in Case of Ontario Doctor Who Questioned COVID Lockdowns

An Ontario doctor who was critical of COVID lockdowns argued her case in court on April 10.

Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill was trying to quash three cautions placed on her public file by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO). The cautions were made after two tweets in 2020 by Dr. Gill, in which she questioned COVID lockdowns. Dr. Gill became well known during the COVID-19 pandemic for her online challenges to the government’s public health restrictions.

The panel of three judges of the Divisional Court of the Ontario Superior Court reserved their decision on the judicial review, which means there is no set date on which the decision will be released.

Dr. Gill, who specializes in pediatrics, allergy, and clinical immunology, amassed a significant following on X, formerly known as Twitter, where she expressed opinions and concerns about government’s pandemic response, including the potential negative effects of lockdowns and other mandates.

Because of that, she became the subject of seven public complaints lodged with the CPSO, along with a separate investigation by the college’s registrar.

All eight cases were reviewed by the CPSO committee known as the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) in February 2021.

While the committee dismissed five of the complaints, it issued orders for three separate cautions to be placed on her public file.

On March 24, Elon Musk’s X announced that it would help pay her legal bills in trying to get the cautions overturned, saying in a post, “X is proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech.”

That prompted a heartfelt thank you on X from Dr. Gill: “elonmusk’s @X contacted me directly confirming Elon’s committment to pay remainder of campaign to reach $300K AND Elon has committed to assisting my appeal of 3 CPSO cautions, for my 2020 tweets opposing lockdowns, to the very end (ONCA&SCC if needed) May Waheguru bless you.”

Dr. Gill is represented by Libertas Law. In a news release from Libertas, lawyer Lisa Bildy said, “The CPSO issued guidance that doctors’ opinions during Covid-19 had to align with the government and took steps to censure ethical physicians who raised alarm bells about public health policies.”

“But the stifling of scientific debate, especially on novel measures being imposed on a massive scale, is not reasonable, in our submission, nor is it in the public interest,” Ms. Bildy continued.

The two tweets from August 2020 that were the subject of the cautions questioned if there were valid reasons for the lockdowns.

The first said, “There is absolutely no medical or scientific reason for this prolonged, harmful and illogical lockdown.”

The second tweet said, “If you have not yet figured out that we don’t need a vaccine, you are not paying attention.”

In a series of posts on X from the judicial review on April 10, JRwatch_ON said Dr. Gill’s lawyer argued that her client’s tweets were based on evidence, and that debate is important in a democratic society.

In the news release, Libertas Law said while some have portrayed Dr. Gill as an “anti-vaxxer,” it is not true.

“She has always been a proponent of routine childhood vaccines in her clinical practice,” adding that “she also supports Covid vaccines for high-risk individuals with informed consent.”

It says there was no COVID-19 vaccine authorized anywhere in the world in August 2020 when Dr. Gill posted the tweet about vaccines.

“The comment was in relation to a press conference that day by Dr. Theresa Tam in which she stated that, despite the anticipated authorization of a vaccine, possibly by that year’s end, it would not be a silver bullet and lockdowns and restrictions could persist for at least another two or three years,” said the release.

In addition, it said that “the use of widespread and prolonged lockdowns of healthy and low-risk people was contrary to all prior pandemic planning and principles of public health,” adding “evidence of lockdown harms has continued to mount.”

For its part, the CPSO has argued that the evidence indicated lockdowns in China and South Korea were having an effect, and said Dr. Gill was making misinformed and misleading statements, adding it was irresponsible to make such statements on social media during a pandemic.

The hearing is the latest in Dr. Gill’s legal battles. Last fall, she was scheduled for a disciplinary hearing by the CPSO, which was suddenly dropped in September, without the CPSO providing any specific reasons.

In a post at the start of the April 10 judicial review, Dr. Gill posted to X, “I’m at the Divisional Court of the Superior Court of Ontario today with my brilliant lawyer @LDBildy and the support of @elonmusk’s @X.”

And at the end of the hearing, Dr. Gill posted: “and that’s a wrap. A sincere thank you to all who sent their prayers & well wishes, & all who followed along the @JRwatch_ON live-tweets.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/decision-reserved-in-case-of-doctor-who-questioned-covid-lockdowns-5626576?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=world-left-medium-0

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High Dose Spirulina Regimen Remarkably Reduces COVID-19 Mortality, Improves Hospital Discharge Rate in 7-Day Window

A biomass of cyanobacteria, meaning blue-green algae, spirulina (arthrospira platensis), a cyanobacterium is consumed by both humans and animals, cultivated worldwide. Purported to have anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antioxidant effects, in Western society any claims must be backed by well-designed, randomized controlled trials.

The form Arthrospira is used as a dietary supplement or whole food. What’s the effect of high-dose Spirulina supplementation on hospitalized adults with COVID-19? With not a lot of research backing such a question, a Persian team of scientists affiliated with Pasteur Institute of Iran, Bahalrloo Hospital at Tehran University of Medical Sciences and even one of the scientists affiliated with Tufts University in the U.S. sought to evaluate the efficacy and safety of high-dose Spirulina platensis for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The results are frankly remarkable, but the study has limitations—the open-label introduces the opportunity for biases, and the study size suggests the need for larger confirming studies, the results published in the Frontiers in Immunology peer-reviewed journal point to a significant finding. Western medicine would not accept these findings as particularly earth shaking but nonetheless, TrialSite points out some possibly intriguing outcomes.

Brief Background

The general class of product is used as feed supplement across aquaculture, aquariums and poultry industries. The use of this natural product started in the Americas—actually in present day Mexico by the Aztecs and other Mesoamericans until the 16th century. Upon the Spanish conquest soldiers of Cortes documented its use. Fast forward to modern day in addition to use as a supplement and for the industries mentioned above, spirulina is under investigation to address food security and malnutrition, plus as dietary support in scenarios such as space flight or even the Mars mission. With less need for land and water than livestock, the supplement represents an economical source of protein and energy.

What’s the basis for this Persian study?

In many societies, dietary supplements are reportedly helpful as supplements in response to viral infections. Take Spirulina, the filamentous, gram-negative cyanobacterium—a blue-green microalga that is a non-nitrogen-fixing photoautotroph according to the authors of this study recently published in Frontiers in Immunology.

Rich in protein (over 70%), plus vitamins, minerals (e.g., D, B12, provitamin A (beta carotene) and iron), numerous other ingredients are present such as phycocyanobilin (PCB), according to the Persian authors, which is a blue pigment protein with anti-inflammatory, anticancer and antioxidant properties.

Citing previous research, the authors of this study articulate that Spirulina consumption boosts B-group vitamins, especially B6, while decreasing interleukin-4 (IL-4) levels in persons with allergic rhinitis. But the substance also increases immunoglobulin A levels in saliva, suggesting that it could possibly enhance mucosal immunity. The supplement is also known to increase function of natural killer (NK) cells while boosting interferon-y (IFN-y) secretion, thus in aggregate overall better innate immune system health.

Finally, with a substance known as calcium spirulan (Ca-Sp) also present, the Iran-based investigators cite in vitro studies suggesting that this substance inhibits growth of select enveloped viruses, such as mumps virus, measles virus, influenza A (IAV), HIV-1, human cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex type 1. But in Western society, this is not widely touted, at least not in medical establishment circles. Evidence requires well-designed randomized studies.

Corresponding authors for this study included Seyed Ahmad Seyed Alinaghi, M.D., M.Phil, Ph.D. with Tehran University of Medical Science, Iranian Research Center for HIV/AIDs, Iranian Institute for Reduction of High-Risk Behaviors.

The Study

The Persian team designed a randomized controlled trial (IRCT20210216050373N1) investigating the research hypothesis: can high dose Spirulina supplement reduce COVID-19-related mortality or accelerate hospital discharge within seven days; secondary endpoint involved overall discharge or mortality?

This study was an open-label trial, conducted in a multi-center environment involving both Ziaeian Hospital and Baharloo Hospital, both affiliated with Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The trial site team recruited patients from July 27, 2021, through to February 17, 2022.

Importantly, the trial site team had to change the study from single-blind trial due to the patients in the Tehran hospitals not trusting the placebo, meaning recruitment was too challenging. This is why the investigators had to remove the placebo. The authors appeared to have followed good clinical practices, triggering protocol change, etc.

Randomized and controlled, the study team’s trial involved 189 patients with COVID-19, randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to an experimental group receiving 15.2g of Spirulina supplement plus standard of care (44 non-intensive care units and 52 ICU).

Conducted over a six-day period, the trial site team monitored immune mediators on days 1,3,5 and 7.

What were the study findings?

By day 7 of the study, no deaths associated with COVID-19 were reported in the Spirulina group. 15 deaths (15.3%) occurred in the control group. Within seven days, the Persian study team reported, “A greater number of patients discharged in the Spirulina group (97.7%) in the non-ICU compared to the control group (39.1%) (HR, 6.52; 95% CI, 3.50 to 12.17).”

The study team reports mortality was overall higher in the control group (8.7% non-ICU, 28.8% ICU) compared to the Spirulina group (non-ICU HR, 0.13; 95% CI, 0.02 to 0.97; ICU, HR, 0.16; 95% CI, 0.05 to 0.48).

Additionally, the team reports those patients in the ICU and in the Spirulina, arm evidenced “significant decrease in the levels of MIP-1α and IL-6.” Meanwhile, in those subjects in the intervention group (Spirulina) across ICU and non-ICU subgroups as intervention time increases reported IFN-y levels were significantly higher. Of course, this latter observation represents a cytokine playing a critical role in the immune response against both viral and bacterial infections, as well as in regulating immune response, inflammation and tumor surveillance.

The study authors report no presentation of side effects related to the Spirulina supplements.

Conclusion

The Persian team finds that high-dose Spirulina combined with the standard of care regimen in that part of the world targeting COVID-19 “may improve recovery and remarkably reduce mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19.”

Limitations

The Western medical world will not respond to this study result for a number of reasons. First, as the Persian authors self-declared, the study was not blinded, but as mentioned above, the investigators had to adjust to ensure sufficient level of recruitment.

TrialSite points out that non-blinded studies introduce several issues into interpreting the study result. From the potential of bias (selection bias, performance bias and detection bias) to placebo effect to observer bias and less objectivity, to mention some issues, blinded status becomes important for medical establishment acceptance.

Also, because use of traditional and herbal medicine is widespread among Persian (Iranian) peoples, the data obtained from follow-up post discharge can easily be unreliable. Importantly the authors point out this use of traditional and herbal medicines markedly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. While follow-up was not part of the study protocol, the physician-scientists running this study to their credit “tried our best to follow up with patients long term.”

But many patients were not interested in follow-up post discharge due to a confluence of standard reasons one would find across much of the world.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/high-dose-spirulina-regimen-remarkably-reduces-covid-19-mortality-improves-hospital-discharge-rate-in-7-day-window-7b8a6234

Washington Post sides with the vaccine establishment

The Covid pandemic opened up a new era, one that likely has significant implications across medicine. Because of the worst epidemic in modern history, there is no longer a blind acceptance of the pharmaceutical industry, or at least some of the players within that industry, which, because of the coronavirus, appeared to put profit over care.

From the onset of the pandemic, TrialSite chronicled how Pfizer not only cut corners concerning regulatory matters (e.g., no IND-enabling studies, no sufficient pharmacodynamics) but also shamelessly exploited the pandemic for profit, a form of profiteering during the worst breakout of a disease in a century. Additionally, the imposition of vaccine mandates which led to deepening political divisions within the United States.

Compounding this is the behavior of Big Pharma with their seemingly relentless crusade to avoid price oversight for medications in any possible way and the additional effort to deny and deflect responsibility for possible Covid vaccine injury, or “long-vax.”. Even U.S. government agencies mandated with protecting the public seem stubbornly steadfast in aligning with industry over the people on the issue of vaccine injury.

Given history and the controversy surrounding the politicization of the Covid pandemic it is, perhaps, a given the “vaccine wars” could persist as an ongoing political hot potato topic. And what a topic for instilling tension and divisiveness, all helpful in ensuring advertiser interest.

Mainstream Media’s Rush to Judgement?

Recently, The Washington Post ventured into the vaccine wars when it published an article on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s newly announced running mate, Nicole Shanahan. A tech lawyer who was once married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Shanahan has a history of being involved in Democratic politics, but not anymore.

Also, a mother, Shanahan has opened up that her own child has been vaccine injured, or so she believes. It turns out Shanahan’s daughter was diagnosed with autism and as reported in the Washington Post this led the very successful mother to investigate the disease.

Shanahan doesn’t deny the importance of the pharmaceutical sector, quoted by the fourth largest daily in the U.S. by circulation “Pharmaceutical medicine has its place, but no single safety study can assess the cumulative impact of one prescription on top of another prescription, and one shot on top of another shot on top of another shot, throughout the course of childhood. We just don’t do that study right now and we ought to. We can and we will. Conditions like autism used to be one in 10,000. Now here in the state of California it is one in 22.”

While Shanahan has expressed serious skepticism about certain vaccines, she and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are not “anti-vaxxers” as she has explained. The VP choice referred to an interview Kennedy did with Newsweek magazine saying he is only concerned with vaccine injuries. The New York Times also did a profile of Shanahan in which she also expressed her concern about vaccine injuries.

Checked with Experts

The Washington Post checked in with five autism experts to question the view of Shanahan, and the group concluded Shanahan’s views are “misguided, wrong or lacking context.” The article then goes on to accuse Kennedy of being a long purveyor of falsehoods about vaccines, spreading misinformation, particularly about a measles outbreak in Samoa.

Clearly not objective, any questioning of the autism rates of today has nothing to do with any vaccines, goes the Ministry of Truth. Yes, Wakefield was proven to be wrong, and despite the fact that the childhood vaccination schedule has exponentially increased, and there have been no longitudinal studies tapping into observational real-world data, doesn’t seem to matter to The Washington Post.

The article concludes “Shanahan does not quite say that vaccines cause autism, but she implies it, demanding a study that is not feasible because it would be unethical. Not true at all. Real-world evidence are used frequently to study medical and health-related trends, less the need for randomized controlled trials and the use of a placebo.

Does The Washington Post’s immediate dismissal of any of Shanahan’s concerns evidence the true bias associated with this media?

The media points out that Shanahan cites numbers that claim that autism has spiked, without acknowledging it as the main reason for this trend: the very definition of autism has expanded over time. But how do we know this latter point is the only answer? Should it not be investigated?

Assuming the role of arbiter of truth The Washington Post effectively establishes that anybody that dares question vaccine policy equals a proponent of anti-vaccine rhetoric. Meaning according to the Jeff Bezos owned asset (via Nash Holdings) “The overall effect is to cast doubt on the safety of vaccines.”

Whether or not Shanahan is right or wrong doesn’t appear to be an issue for the Bezos’ controlled media.

Yet the childhood vaccination schedule continues to grow, along with waiver of liability since the 1986 Vaccine Act. That initial waiver was put in place to ensure vaccine makers were incentivized to step into what were at the time low margin businesses.

However, times have changed. Vaccines can be quite profitable, and with limited liability along with advancing science uncovering new targeted opportunity this has led to a growing supply of vaccines. Pfizer generated nearly $100 billion on COVID shots alone.

Denying what vaccines have done for modern health is silly. One only needs to look at smallpox, polio, measles and the associated morbidity and mortality figures pre- and post-vaccination, to get an appreciation of the progress.

But raising targeted questions is most certainly what science should be all about, and while Kennedy can seem slippery on some of the issues, he has also consistently taken on corporate power in the courts on the behalf of consumers--in the spirit of consumer rights activist Ralph Nader.

Some recent polls evidence an appreciation for Kennedy’s message, which to a great extent seems to align with an interesting fusion of the traditional social democrats of yesteryear challenging both corporate power and the polarization of socio-economic class division yet the whole campaign is infused with both libertarian and national populist strains.

In some recent polls, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. polls in the double digits, not seen since the independent candidate Ross Perot made his run.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/jeff-bezos-washington-post-fires-first-salvo-in-vaccine-wars-it-must-be-election-season-1072160f

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Biden quietly revokes COVID executive order requiring masks in federal buildings

President Biden retracted several COVID-19 executive orders Friday — including one imposed on his first day in office to require people to wear masks in federal facilities.

Biden’s Executive Order 13991 — titled “Protecting the Federal Workforce and Requiring Mask-Wearing” — was issued after the wearing of face masks became heavily polarized, with outgoing President Donald Trump and his aides rarely wearing them and focusing on “reopening” from lockdowns.

The order is “hereby revoked,” the White House said in a Friday afternoon announcement more than four years after the virus brought mobile morgues to New York and shut down schools and businesses across the country.

Under the prior order, federal agencies were told to “immediately take action” to “require compliance with CDC guidelines with respect to wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, and other public health measures by: on-duty or on-site Federal employees; on-site Federal contractors; and all persons in Federal buildings or on Federal lands.”

The enforcement of mask requirements long ago subsided, with the White House lifting its own internal mask requirements more than two years ago in March 2022 after the CDC adjusted its mask recommendations to account for local risk reflected by hospitalization rates.

Biden on Friday also retracted Executive Order 13998, adopted on Jan. 21, 2021, that sought to impose mask mandates on flights, trains and buses, and Executive Order 13910, adopted by Trump on March 23, 2020, to forbid the hoarding of medical supplies.

The announcement additionally terminated federal positions created to manage the pandemic.

“The positions of COVID-19 Response Coordinator [vacant since June 2023] and Deputy Coordinator of the COVID-19 Response… are hereby terminated,” Biden decreed.

The developments mark a near complete return to pre-pandemic rules after a gradual easing of enforcement.

Biden in June 2022 ended requirements that travelers entering the US — including American citizens — present negative COVID-19 tests. That rule was announced in January 2021 in the final days of the Trump administration.

Biden in May 2023 ended his mandate, imposed in September 2021, that all federal workers submit to COVID-19 vaccination or lose their jobs unless they had a qualifying religious or medical exemption.

Other pivots back to the pre-pandemic status quo have worried Biden’s critics, including his administration’s April 2023 decision to resume funding for the EcoHealth Alliance, a group that did risky US-financed “gain of function” research on coronaviruses at a lab in Wuhan, China, before the pandemic’s origin in the same city in late 2019.

https://nypost.com/2024/04/12/us-news/biden-rids-covid-executive-order-requiring-masks-in-federal-buildings/

COVID Infection Not the Only Cause for Long COVID: Immunologist

Long COVID may not be solely caused by a COVID-19 infection given the lack of long-term safety data associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, an immunology professor has said.

In an externally peer-reviewed op-ed published by the Australian Journal of General Practice, Emeritus Professor Robert Tindle said that public health officials are “flying blind” when it comes to linking long COVID to post-COVID-19 vaccination.

“There is no consensus on what causes lingering COVID-19 symptoms long after the acute infection has cleared,” Mr. Tindle opined, adding that patients who are unable to secure a diagnosis for long COVID have sought multiple medical opinions only to be told the condition is due to “anxiety or post-pandemic mental issues.”

Long COVID is described by the World Health Organisation as the continuation or development of new symptoms three months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, with these symptoms lasting for at least two months without any alternative explanation. This definition is now accepted by the Australian government.

The median time for long COVID symptoms is five months, with 10 percent of patients having symptoms at 12 months, according to a study.

Fatigue, shortness of breath, and difficulty concentrating have been reported in patients up to two years post-infection.

Mr. Tindle said that the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 exhibits pathogenic characteristics, and is a possible cause of acute symptoms after a COVID-19 infection or post-vaccine.

“COVID-19 vaccines utilise a modified, stabilised prefusion spike protein that might share similar toxic effects with its viral counterpart,” Mr. Tindle said.

“A possible association between COVID-19 vaccination and the incidence of POTS (postural orthopaedic tachycardia syndrome) has been demonstrated in a cohort of 284,592 COVID-19-vaccinated individuals, though at a rate that was one-fifth of the incidence of POTS after SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

Mr. Tindle listed other associations with long COVID following the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine, including an increase in myocarditis post-vaccination, elevated spike proteins in muscle tissues, the lymphatic system, and the circulatory system, and elevated levels of IgG4 antibodies that are linked to the promotion of cancer.

“There are clear implications for vaccine boosting where these and similar observations relating to COVID-19 vaccination and the incidence of long COVID-like symptoms are substantiated, adding further to public health officials’ concerns,” he said.

“Understanding the persistence of viral mRNA and viral protein and their cellular pathological effects after vaccination with and without infection is clearly required.

“Because COVID-19 vaccines were approved without long-term safety data and might cause immune dysfunction, it is perhaps premature to assume that past SARS-CoV-2 infection is the sole common factor in long COVID.”

Moreover, Dr. Aseem Malhotra—Britain’s high-profile cardiologist and previous supporter of mRNA COVID vaccines—previously told The Epoch Times that heart complications—such as cardiac arrhythmia, heart failure, cardiac arrest, myocarditis, and pericarditis—have seen an uptick since the vaccine rollout.

“Long vax” is the colloquial term used to describe long COVID caused by vaccination.

Long COVID From Omicron Variant

Meanwhile, a study by the Australian National University (ANU) has found the risk of developing long COVID from the Omicron variant is higher than originally thought.

The Australian study found that in a highly vaccinated population not broadly exposed to earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, 18 percent of people infected with the Omicron variant reported symptoms consistent with long COVID 90 days after infection.

“Despite reports that the risk of long COVID may be lower following Omicron infections than with earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, we found that the burden of long COVID may be substantial 90 days after Omicron infections,” lead researcher Mulu Woldegiorgis said.

Additionally, the study found that 90 percent of the study participants with long COVID reported experiencing multiple symptoms, such as tiredness and fatigue (70 percent), followed by difficulty thinking or concentrating (brain fog), sleep problems, and coughing. A third of women in the study reported changes in their menstrual cycle.

However, a study by Germany’s Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg has shown that unvaccinated people infected with the Omicron variant had the lowest risk of long COVID.
The study found that while previous infections reduce the risk of long COVID by 86 percent, vaccination status prior to COVID infection is irrelevant to a person’s risk of developing long COVID.

However, the authors of the German study acknowledged that none of the participants were given an actual diagnosis of long COVID or tested for comorbidities.

Long COVID Presents Health and Financial Challenges

Mr. Tindle outlined the health and financial challenges faced by Australians who have long COVID, saying that support measures need to be in place for those who suffer from the chronic condition.

According to a 2022 study (pdf) by the Australian National University (ANU), approximately 500,000 adult Australians, or 4.7 percent have experienced long COVID.

Mr. Tindle described the frustrations expressed by long COVID support groups, such as the Australian Long COVID Community Facebook Support Group, including inadequate health system responses in dealing with long COVID.

“The outcome for some of those experiencing long COVID is self-prescribed medication using over-the-counter remedies and dietary changes based on potentially conflicting or misleading online information. Some speak of a substantial proportion of their income being used this way,” he said.

However, Mr. Tindle did acknowledge the listings of antiviral drugs for COVID such as Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) and Lagevrio (molnupiravir).

An estimated 240,000 of those with long COVID no longer work full time, thus affecting the economy, Mr. Tindle said.

“Reduced to working part-time to cope with unwellness, those with long COVID commonly report having to wait a year or more before receiving a diagnosis,” he said.

“Without a definitive diagnosis, those with long COVID are not eligible for Job Seeker, the Disability Support Pension and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) protection under the Fair Work Act, thereby conferring long-term financial difficulties for themselves and their dependents.

“There is a need for guidelines on how those with long COVID can access social security and employment protection.”

Mr. Tindle added that both the federal and state health departments need to provide more guidance to primary healthcare providers on handling long COVID.

“Although some states have established long COVID clinics, some of these at least are of little help to the patient in providing substantive treatment guidelines or support and are little more than incident report centres,” he said, adding that the wait time for a long COVID clinic is usually months, with some GPs unaware of the clinics’ existence.

“Long COVID is not an easy medical condition for clinicians, health administrators, support systems, or patients. The Australian health system is already stretched in coping with other chronic medical conditions,” he said.

“Nevertheless, we must do better than in the approximate three years since long COVID was first reported.”

https://www2.theepochtimes.com/world/immunology-professor-challenges-long-covid-cause-to-virus-alone-citing-vaccine-safety-data-gap-5626619

Google have just deleted my post of 24 March about myocarditis in children. It is however still available at its original source:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/pfizer-finally-releases-myocarditis-study-for-children-who-received-covid-19-vaccine-5611209

Esteemed Australian Immunologist/Virologist on Long COVID & Long Vax: Spike Protein Pathogenicity

An author with the Australian Journal of General Practice, Emeritus Professor in Immunology, University of Queensland, Faculty of Science, now retired and independent to speak his mind, Robert Tindle, Ph.D. is no lightweight. Heavily published deep into the science of virology and immunology, he presently educates his peers about the plight of long COVID and long Vax patients.

Elaborating on the scope and severity of the crisis while directing attention to the patient's plight, Prof Tindle explains to the Australian medical establishment the mechanism of action now evidenced by mounting scientific literature concerning both long COVID and the vaccine injured, or long-Vax, the latter being not yet accepted, at least overtly, by medical establishments of the West. To alleviate patient suffering, a growing economic toll and a debilitated medical establishment, we must open our eyes to science, embrace the truth, and forge a new path forward.

Anywhere from 2% to 20% of individuals who are infected with SARS-Cov-2, the virus behind COVID-19, end up with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC or long COVID), according to the World Health Organization (WHO), European Union and the UK and US governments. This condition occurs >12 weeks after the initial COVID-19 infection and can endure for many months, even years. Recently the University of Queensland Australia Emeritus Professor elaborates on the condition millions of people struggle with worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of people in Australia coping with either long COVID or long Vax.

The recent paper was published as a viewpoint in the Australian Journal of General Practice, emphasizing that the plight of long COVID patients cannot be underestimated. Prof Tindle reports the presence of long COVID digital support groups emerging as a civil society safety net, but the lack of institutional scientific and medical support leads to a mounting crisis for patients. They are not listened to, and health systems are not prepared for delivering the right care, meaning long COVID patients resort to self-prescribed medication with use of over-the-counter remedies for example, diet changes and the like.

A heterogeneous disease with myriad of symptoms (cardiac, pulmonary, hematological and neurological), the retired Australian scientist points to overlap with myalgia encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, postural orthopedic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and other post-viral manifestations.

What’s behind lingering COVID-19 symptoms despite the clearing of the infection? No one can be certain and according to the Australian scientist, “Public officials are flying blind when it comes to long COVID and vaccination.” But Tindle introduces some of the unfolding science for explanations.

While patients are not able to find a trustworthy diagnosis, they are often required to seek multiple medical positions, and these patients are often told they are merely struggling with anxiety or post-pandemic mental health issues.

What’s the medium duration of long COVID symptoms? According to Tindle, it is five months, however, 10% of long COVID patients may experience symptoms at month 12. In fact, fatigue, shortness of breath and difficulty concentrating can persist with this patient cohort still by year two after infection.

Still what is up in the air is whether some people may never recover.

What are some biomarkers involved?

Patients struggling with long COVID may present elevated inflammatory biomarkers, such as interleukin-6, C-reactive protein, tumor necrosis factor-α), possibly functioning as a core set of blood biomarkers that can be used to diagnose and manage long COVID patients in clinical practice.

Economic Contagion

Prof Tingle reports that 20% of long COVID patients in the UK either stopped working or were not able to return to work six months after their initial infection. In Australia, 240,000 persons with long COVID can no longer work full time. Meanwhile, absenteeism on the job only grew, accelerated with long COVID.

Make no mistake, economies are impacted. From reduced working time to loss of earning capability, and the lack of diagnosis in countries like Australia, this means that many won’t be eligible for disability schemes.

With no guidelines for how long COVID patients can access social security and employment protection, the working classes are particularly vulnerable.

Nowhere to Turn?

Efforts at establishing long COVID clinics have not translated into sustained access to care. Without substantive treatment guidelines or support they become “little more than incident report centers.” Moreover, waiting times in such long COVID clinics can equate to many months. In fact, in places like Australia, Prof. Tindle informs us that many GPs are not even aware of such clinics!

However, some progress has been made in Europe, reports Tindle. Some European nations and the UK offer more established long COVID clinics offering everything from online recovery platforms to GP training and even specialty access for children.

Bombshell: COVID-19 Vaccination & Long COVID

While TrialSite has reviewed some study results suggesting that vaccination may have put a dent in long COVD, other credible studies imply no such connection. Frankly, the evidence is both mixed, and not strong enough for any claims that the COVID-19 vaccines inhibit long COVID.

But Prof. Tindle goes on the record, expressing his concern that “COVID-19 vaccination per se might contribute to long COVID, giving rise to the colloquial term ‘Long Vax.”

Importantly, while most national medical establishments in the West such as the United States or the UK don’t yet accept the premise that the spike protein manifested from mRNA vaccines can lead to damage, Tindle in this established Australian General Practitioners journal expresses his viewpoint that “the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 exhibits pathogenic characteristics and is a possible cause of post-acute sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 vaccination.”

Supporting the mRNA vaccine-induced spike protein as a pathogenic agent hypothesis, Tindle continues, “COVID-19 vaccines utilize a modified, stabilized prefusion spike protein that might share similar toxic effects with its viral counterpart.”

The Australian virologist/immunologist proffers, “A possible association between COVID-19 vaccination and the incidence of POTS have been demonstrated of 284,592 COVID-19 vaccinated individuals, though at a rate that was one-fifth of the incidence of POTS after SARS-CoV-2 infection.” He points to Kwan et al.

Hammering on a topic deemed taboo for at least a while in medical establishments, the vaccine induced spike protein pathogenicity represents a real problem, pointing to very real-world, well-established links to myocarditis risk.

And what about the problem of mRNA biodistribution? Throughout the pandemic, medical establishment actors and representatives informed that the COVID-19 vaccination was safe and effective, and that there were no risks of the mRNA-induced spike protein circulating in the body for longer periods of time, and in the process, ending up in far flung tissues and organs. The mRNA would simply flush out via the lymphatic system in a matter of days, maybe a week at the most.

Of course, TrialSite has chronicled the incidence and studies disproving this continuous myth, at least in a percentage of individuals receiving COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Prof Tindle verifies this reality, reporting, “mRNA vaccines can result in spike protein expression in muscle tissue, the lymphatic system, cardiomyocytes and other cells after entry into the circulation,” citing Trougakos et al.

Moreover, growing evidence suggests, and Tindle confirms in his viewpoint that individuals receiving at least two doses of mRNA vaccine “display a class switch to IgG4 antibodies.” Citing Uversky et al., Tindle articulates an important point as “abnormally high levels of IgG4 might cause autoimmune disease, promote cancer growth, autoimmune myocarditis and other IgG4-related diseases (IgG4-RD) in susceptible individuals.”

Long Vax, Another Crisis

Tindle steps into the controversial topic of COVID-19 vaccine injured, or long vax, seamlessly and with ease and backed by the unfolding science, comparing it to long COVID in many ways.

Reaffirming a growing body of evidence observing COVID-19 vaccination, including boost courses, with “incidence of long COVID-like symptoms, adding further to public health officials’ concerns.”

And key to any resolution, including therapeutic options, would be to scientifically comprehend the cellular and pathological effects of COVID-19 vaccination with and without infection. Yet vaccine approvals, accelerated during the pandemic crisis, lacked any long term-safety data, a growing concern according to Prof Tindle given the possibility of immune dysfunction.

A key point Tindle seeks to make here is that it’s quite likely at least among susceptible individuals COVID-19 vaccinations could be associated with long COVID. Put another way, “It is perhaps, premature to assume that the past SARS-CoV-2 infection is the sole common factor in long COVID.”

Where to Go from Here?

From expressing hope that $50 million in Australia’s Medical Research Future Fund may help advance practical medical and scientific knowledge into the matter, Tindle also seems somewhat hopeful about a national center for disease control providing a national interrogative repository for what have been to date, “fragmented incidence and outcome data for long COVID.”

Tindle also points to a promising study last year led by scientists at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia demonstrating in a preclinical study involving a model of peptide inhibitor of nuclear angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. The scientists reported in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications that this led to reversing “persistent inflammation driving long COVID” while also “reducing the latent viral reservoir in monocytes/macrophages” while associated with “reduced SARS-CoV-2 spike protein expression in monocytes from individuals who are recovered from infection.” Clinical trials were pending at the time last year, and TrialSite will do a follow up article on that discovery.

The message from this important viewpoint published in GP’s journal in Australia--more clearly needs to be done to help struggling patients, whether they are diagnosed with long COVID or long Vax.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/esteemed-australian-immunologistvirologist-on-long-covid-long-vax-spike-protein-pathogenicity-49d322e2

Rand Paul Pulls Back Curtain on the ‘Great COVID Cover-up’

In an explosive new op-ed, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) claimed that at least 15 separate federal agencies knew that attempts to create a COVID-19-like coronavirus were being undertaken at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as early as January 2018.
Yet heads of these agencies did not reveal this information to the public; for years, they actively refused to release information on the project to lawmakers such as Dr. Paul, who were attempting to provide congressional oversight.

“For years, I have been fighting to obtain records from dozens of federal agencies relating to the origins of COVID-19 and the DEFUSE project,” Dr. Paul, who in March revealed he was formally launching a bipartisan investigation into the virus’s origins with Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, wrote.
The DEFUSE project refers to a proposal submitted by EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization headed by British zoologist Peter Daszak, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The purpose of the proposal was to “insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus.”

Dr. Paul also identified two additional parties that were part of the original plan to create chimeric coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the federal agency formerly headed up by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Dr. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology and one of the authors of the now-disgraced “Proximal Origin” paper. The authors of the paper, which was published in Nature in March 2020, stated that evidence clearly indicated that SARS-CoV-2 emerged naturally, even though privately, the authors expressed clear concerns that evidence suggested the virus was genetically designed.

Some scientists have already raised ethical concerns in response to the revelation.

“We now know Ian Lipkin was part of the initial DEFUSE proposal,” Bryce Nickels, a professor of genetics at Rutgers University, said in response to the revelation. “Everything he has said about COVID origins and his role in the fraudulent ‘Proximal Origins’ paper must now be reconsidered in the wake of these new revelations.”

It’s not just Lipkin, of course.

All of these parties failed to speak up when COVID-19, one of the deadliest viruses in a century, emerged from Wuhan, Dr. Paul said, and details of the DEFUSE project may not have come to light at all if not for a whistleblower (identified as Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy).

More details of what the Kentucky senator calls “the Great COVID Cover-up” are likely to materialize as Dr. Paul and Mr. Peters continue their investigation. But an abundance of evidence already shows it’s no exaggeration to use that word: coverup.

Dr. Paul is hardly the first government official to use the term.

Nearly a year ago, David Asher, a bioweapons specialist who led the State Department’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, sat down with New York magazine journalist David Zweig and explained why there has been so little progress made in discovering the origins of COVID: Those with institutional power don’t want answers.

“It’s a massive coverup spanning from China to DC,” Mr. Asher said. “Our own state department told us, ‘Don’t get near this thing; it’ll blow up in your face.’”

Other government whistleblowers have also attempted to expose the coverup.

In August, the CIA confirmed that the agency was “looking into” allegations from a CIA whistleblower who claimed that analysts tasked with determining the origins of COVID were offered “significant” financial incentives to change their assessment that COVID likely emerged accidentally from the Wuhan lab. (It’s worth noting that Dr. Fauci allegedly was admitted to agency headquarters “without a record of entry” while the CIA was conducting its investigation into COVID’s origins.)

The reason the government would cover up DEFUSE becomes obvious when one analyzes the nature of the proposal, which British author Matt Ridley weeks ago noted included a great many “wacky” (and reckless) ideas such as spraying vaccines into bat caves to immunize them.

“In the end, what they were doing was making more dangerous viruses, with a view of understanding them,” Mr. Ridley said. “It looks very strongly as if in trying to prevent a pandemic they may have caused one.”

While we still do not know this for certain, it looks increasingly likely that COVID-19 was born of gain-of-function research that was partially funded by the U.S. government.
Though this result would be shocking to many, especially those who see the state as virtuous and infallible, it’s far less surprising to students of history and economics.

“The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments,” Ludwig von Mises wrote in “Omnipotent Government.” “The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.”

The reason for this is obvious. The more power is concentrated, the less accountable it becomes, and power without accountability is a recipe for disaster.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/rand-paul-pulls-back-curtain-on-the-great-covid-cover-up-5629596?ea_src=frontpage&ea_med=opinion-6

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Australia: Senator Claims TGA ‘Overriding’ Experts While Processing Vaccine Injury Claims

Senator Gerard Rennick has alleged—under parliamentary privilege in the Senate—that the Therapeutic Goods Administration is “overriding the decision of the specialists” in refusing claims for vaccine injury from people who received COVID-19 vaccinations.

Services Australia administers the scheme, which offers people a way to seek a one-off compensation payment, instead of going through legal proceedings, if they experienced harm from a vaccine.

The Scheme was designed to “compensate for losses due to the harm ... suffered” and not for “pain and suffering.” The compensation covers lost earnings, out-of-pocket expenses, paid attendant care services, and “deceased ... vaccine recipient payments and funeral costs.”

To meet the criteria for the payment, Services Australia’s website says a person must have:

received an approved COVID-19 vaccine.

met the definition of harm, for example, an administration-related injury or one of the clinical conditions listed in the policy.

been admitted to hospital as an inpatient, or seen in an outpatient setting for an eligible clinical condition.

been admitted to hospital as an inpatient for an administration-related injury.

experienced losses or expenses of $1,000 or more.

The site also lists the eligible conditions including myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and the autoimmune disorder Guillain Barre Syndrome.

A claimant must have their condition verified by “a medical specialist in the relevant field of practice” (for instance, a cardiologist for myocarditis), and then send the medical report and evidence of the expenses being claimed for assessment by Services Australia.

Senator Claims to Have ‘Insider’ Informant

Mr. Rennick told the Senate that he had spoken to “an insider from the TGA” who had since resigned, and who “played a big role in designing this scheme.”

“The whole point of that scheme was that once the injured person got a specialist to say that the person was injured by the vaccine, he or she would be entitled to compensation. Now that is not happening,” the senator said.

“What is happening is Services Australia make these people wait [on average] 297 days to get a decision. Many of them can no longer work. They are seriously ill. They have to do all the legwork of trying ... see a specialist, a cardiologist or a rheumatologist, and that takes a lot of work. It’s very expensive. You’ve got to go and get MRIs or something to back [it] up. And then they’ve basically been neglected.”

He alleged that, once the claim came up for a decision, “what they do is [refer it] back to the TGA, [and the] TGA is a turning around and saying ‘we are overriding the decision of the specialists who actually examined the patient.’”

“Now my insider tells me these doctors at the TGA are not qualified to be overriding specialists. And I believe that if you haven’t examined the patient who you decide this isn’t actually a vaccine injury, how would you know?”

Mr. Rennick said he had talked to scientists—whom he did not name—who told him that “you will never know while a person’s leaving because you can’t take tissue samples from living people. So we are operating in the dark here in regards to our ability to examine what’s really going on as a result of these vaccine injuries.”

Only 14 Deaths Recognised as Vaccine-Related

Senator Rennick claimed there were 1,000 reports of suspected deaths due to the vaccines in the country.
“And how many have the TGA recognised? 14,” he said.

“When you press the TGA and you say to them, ‘Can you actually prove this wasn’t a vaccine?’ They say, ‘No, we can’t.’

He also claimed there were 10,000 unexplained excess deaths during the period between May and December 2021 when the vaccines were being administered.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/senator-claims-tga-overriding-experts-while-processing-vaccine-injury-claims-5614072

Japanese Epidemiological Bombshell: Investigators Link Mass mRNA Vaccination and Adverse Cancer Outcomes

Physician-Epidemiologist Miki Gibo affiliated with Matsubara Clinic and National Health Insurance Yusuhara Hospital in Yusuhara, Kochi, Japan and colleagues recently had a disturbing paper published in Cureus. Peer reviewed, the team for Japanese researchers look into the question of excess deaths during and after COVID-19 and incidence of cancer mortality after the third MRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

While talk or “turbo cancer” is rampant on social media such as X any such claims require significant evidence. TrialSite has chronicled real world data and tracked the growing number of case series involving some form of cancer in association to COVID-19 vaccines. But case series-based studies are not designed to establish causation. In collaboration with React19, TrialSite supported that patient advocacy’s development of the Scientific Publications Directory. Now managed by React19, approximately 200+ studies involving cancer and COVID-19 vaccination are available in this online study hub.

Dr. Gibo and colleagues discuss in their Cureus piece excess deaths including cancer in Japan, a population that was heavily exposed to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, and one that is rapidly aging. Their recent output was published just days ago in Cureus. Importantly, while the findings herein raise profoundly disturbing questions, this study output does not equate to confirmatory evidence that COVID-19 vaccines and cancer have some causal linkage. More investigation is necessary.

The Study

The team in this study evaluated how age-adjusted mortality rates (AMRs) for different types of cancer in Japan changed during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022).

Tapping into official Japanese statistics and employing logistic regression analysis, the investigators compared observed annual and monthly AMRs with predicted rates based on pre-pandemic (2010-2019) figures.

What are the findings?

Interestingly, the team observed no significant excess mortality during the first year of the pandemic (2020). This data point resonates with other national data TrialSite reviewed in the United States, for example.

Disturbingly, Dr. Gibo and colleagues observed excess cancer mortality in 2021, after mass vaccination with the first and second vaccine doses. This data includes what the medical researchers report observations involving “significant excess mortalities” for all cancers, along with upward trends with select types of the disease.

This study discusses possible explanations for these increases in age-adjusted cancer mortality rates but is not designed to prove causation.

Conclusion

The Japanese medical researchers raise disturbing questions with this significant study. For example, as published in the peer-reviewed Cureus the team observed in 2022, after mass population exposure to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines “statistically significant increases in age-adjusted mortality rates of all cancer and some specific types of cancer, namely, ovarian cancer, leukemia, prostate, lip/oral/pharyngeal, pancreatic, and breast cancers.”

Declaring that the data exhibit “particularly marked increases in mortality rates of these ERα-sensitive cancers,” Dr. Gibo and colleagues suspect that the findings “may be attributable to several mechanisms of the mRNA-LNP vaccination rather than COVID-19 infection itself or reduced cancer care due to the lockdown,” the latter of which could just as well be an explanation.

But the former could be an explanation as well, and that’s a real problematic proposition needing immediate investigation. Gibo and colleagues certainly recommend more research.

Limitations

Not clinically validated, the team taps into official data sources employing descriptive statistics. The authors suggest more statistical investigation associated with vaccination status is necessary to bolster any evidence.

The Study Authors’ Questions

Why are AMRs of ovarian cancer, leukemia, prostate, lip/oral/pharyngeal, pancreatic, and breast cancers increased significantly beyond the predicted rates, especially in 2022, in Japan?

Does the research of Solis et al. on the binding ability of S-protein of SARS-CoV-2 against over 9,000 human proteins matter here? In that research, the authors point out that S-protein specifically binds to ERα and upregulates the transcriptional activity of Erα. Importantly, all of the identified cancers are known as estrogen and estrogen receptor alpha (ERα)-sensitive cancers.

The present study points out more estradiol (E2) to human breast cancer cells can lead to proliferation of the cancer cells, whereas the addition of raloxifene, a selective ERα modulator, inhibits proliferation.

Could ERα-mediated transcription induce endogenous DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in ER-sensitive cancers? According to some research, “Transcriptionally activated ERα induces DSBs by topoisomerase II and the recently known R-loop/G-quadruplex structures formation, significantly increasing the need for BRCA1 for their repair in breast cancer cells.”

Dr. Gibo and colleagues point out that in their study they present “nuclear translocation of mRNA and S protein with the nuclear localization signal [90], and an in silico bioinformatic analysis showed interactions between the S2 subunit of S-protein and BRCA1, BRCA2, and P53 [91], possibly resulting in their sequestration and dysfunction.”

Could it be the case that a possible co-occurrence of high BRCA1 demand to repair DNA damage triggered by activated transcription via ERα bound with S-protein along with dysfunction of BRCA1 sequestrated by S-protein raises concerns about increased cancer risk in ERα-sensitive cells in mRNA-LNP SARS-CoV-2 vaccine recipients?

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/japanese-epidemiological-bombshell-investigators-link-mass-mrna-vax-cancer-outcomes-as-likely-connected-b8d363c9

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Reportedly, During Covid, The Elderly Were the First to be Sacrificed

Last month, it was reported former New York State governor Andrew Cuomo had been subpoenaed by Congress over elderly Covid deaths under Cuomo’s administration. The ex-governor was accused of using under-reported numbers to bolster his handling of COVID-19 especially with the number of deaths which occurred in 2020, when Cuomo required nursing homes to accept elderly Covid positive patients. As a result of this policy, Cuomo has been accused of causing the death of over 15,000 New Yorkers. His deposition in front of the Republican led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is scheduled for May.

“After misleading the public and filtering the truth from the American people regarding how many COVID-19 deaths occurred in nursing homes, Andrew Cuomo has been dodging our committee, delaying our investigation and refusing to take accountability,” New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island), one of the panel’s members, said in a statement. Malliotakis added, “His misguided policies led to the deaths of more than 15,000 New Yorkers. His testimony is crucial to helping us prevent a tragedy like this from occurring ever again.” But the bigger question is, was this the only occurrence of Covid neglect? Apparently not.

United Kingdom

In 2023, TrialSite reported on a lawsuit against the British Government by the families of elderly patients who died in nursing homes. The families claimed not enough was done to take care of their loved ones and infected patients were transferred into nursing homes and spread the virus. This is eerily similar to the events which will soon have former New York State governor Andrew Cuomo appearing in front of a Congressional committee. It seems, however, there are more instances of Covid elder abuse in the UK.

DNR’s

In a recent article in the Daily Mail, there is a report of Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) papers being forged. Relatives of elderly patients say their loved ones were left to die against the wishes of the families. This is now being investigated by the Scottish Covid-19 inquiry which has named the use of DNRs as one of the primary reasons for its investigation. According to one relative of an elderly woman who died, the relative’s name and signature were on a DNR authorization but the relative never saw nor signed the document.

The Scottish government insisted there was no change in advice given to clinicians during the pandemic regarding the use of DNRs, but the evidence in this area has shown, so far, this not to be true. Administrators at some elder care homes in Scotland have been accused of having a culture where health professionals urged nursing homes to update their “anticipatory care plans” for residents. One administrator says she was told, “You need to look at who doesn't have DNRs because they will now need to have one.” Allegedly, after this conversation DNRs were in place for all residents of the nursing home and the administrator wondered to what extent family members had been consulted. The impression the administrator had was if an elderly resident became ill with Covid, they wouldn’t go to the hospital. The administrator added, “You could clearly see that, if they went to hospital, they had a really good chance of improving, of getting over what was making them unwell in the first place. But it was almost like, you were not playing God, but it was just 'no, you can't go, so you just have to stay.” According to the administrator it was difficult for the nursing home to access ambulances, paramedics or hospital beds.

It is alleged the Scottish government allowed this practice. In January, TrialSite reported Scottish police were looking into the possibility of an “industrial sized’ cover up by Scottish ministers regarding deaths of elderly patients in nursing homes due to Covid. Twenty-two official internal complaints were raised concerning the Scottish government’s official response to the nursing home deaths. Again, on this issue, DNRs were involved.

Covid Devastated Nursing Homes
The pandemic neglect in nursing homes wasn’t limited to the UK. According to an article by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2022, Covid deaths in elder care facilities accounted for at least 23% of all Covid deaths in the United States as of January 2022. Canada was ranked last for the amount of deaths caused by Covid in nursing home facilities.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (2021) reported 570,626 nursing home residents' infections and 112,383 residents’ deaths in the USA before the wide availability of COVID-19 vaccination in 2020 for nursing home residents (e.g., Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson). Since the mass vaccination program another 57,808 residents have died, at least a percentage of them, fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

TrialSite chronicled disproportionate morbidity and mortality among the nation’s most vulnerable, sick and elderly residents.

According to the Centers for Medicare data 170,191 elderly died in long term care during the pandemic. In what seems a low rate, only 43.3% of long-term care residents are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines. Why would this be the case?

What is truly unfortunate is it seems the elderly have become political pawns and tragically, easily dispensable. It is problematic when a politician actually admits he covered up elderly deaths because the political data would be used against him. The shame of all of this remains the reality that this represents a worldwide problem (at least in developed nations in English speaking countries) and a sad comment on health care, politics and the world when the elderly—that is our parents and grandparents-- are so easily tossed away.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/reportedly-during-covid-the-elderly-were-the-first-to-be-sacrificed-7bad5921

Japanese Real-World Observational Study: mRNA Vaccines how Low efectiveness

From February 1 to March 17, 2022, Epidemiological, public health and health economic researchers representing Hiroshima University in Japan along with Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Health Insurance Bureau, Medical Economics Division conducted a test-negative case-control study using a dataset of 117,335 individuals, collected through the COVID-19 J-SPEED form in the PCR center at Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.

The study team, represented by corresponding author Yui Yumiya, Ph.D., MPH, Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences (Medical), estimated a propensity score matching for vaccine status based on participants’ demographic characteristics. Thereafter, the team calculated the odds ratio from logistic regression to determine any association between COVID-19 vaccination status and test positivity rate adjusting for symptoms, exposure to close contact, as well as previous history.

The Hiroshima University-led team of researchers established vaccine effectiveness as a formula (1 –aORs) ×100%). The team concluded that the data generated points to the protective effect of the COVID-19 vaccines against the Omicron strain. However, that’s interpreted in such a way because more unvaccinated are infected than vaccinated. If measured against the World Health Organization standard for vaccine approval, the mRNA vaccines as assessed in this study would fail the WHO 50% vaccine effectiveness test, as even boosted vaccine effectiveness equaled 26.4%.

The results of this AMED-funded observational study were published in PLOS, Global Public Health.

The authors of this study emphasize some strengths, such as the comprehensive data collection conducted across all PCR centers in collaboration with the Hiroshima prefectural office. Considered an “extensive and unique epidemiological survey,” it represents a material contribution, “with no comparable large-scale study conducted in other prefectures of Japan.”

Of course, many limitations with such a study exist (and are mentioned below), but the authors promote their use of detailed information representing occupation and various risk factors (likelihood of close contact and pre-existing conditions) that they articulate enhancing the study’s robustness. Such factors, adjusted within the model, account for potential confounding influence.

PCR Positivity Rates by Vaccination Status: the X axis represents the study period; y axis represents the test positivity rate. The figure displays PCR positive rates for three distinct groups: non-vaccinated, vaccinated with two doses and vaccinated with three doses (booster).

Finding

Reporting PCR test positivity rates were 7.9%, 4.5%, and 2.8% for the non-vaccinated (non-vaccinated, vaccinated with a single dose, and vaccinated with two doses less than 14 days ago), vaccinated with two doses (vaccinated over 14 days ago), and three doses, respectively.

Presenting both unadjusted and adjusted analyses, vaccine effectiveness of two doses against infection were 38.5% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 32.8%–43.8%) and 34.7% (95%CI: 28.4%–40.4%), respectively, compared to the non-vaccinated group. Vaccine effectiveness of three doses was 33.8% (95%CI: 25.0%–41.5%) and 26.4% (95%CI: 16.4%–35.2%), respectively, compared to those vaccinated with two doses.

While the authors cite these results in the positive (vaccine affords protection), not only should the actual vaccination effectiveness rate be questioned, but also noted that three dose rates is lower than the VE for two jabs. The authors emphasize the protective influence of the vaccine countermeasures.

Limitations

All observational studies fall short in terms of evidentiary strength as compared to randomized controlled trials. Consequently, the team’s findings should be interpreted with caution and consideration of such inherent limitations, which include:

No specified estimation of VE for individual vaccine types, booster types (heterologous or homologous), time-sensitive effectiveness (effectiveness at different intervals post-vaccination), or the interval between vaccine doses.
The generalizability of our results may be affected due to the nature of this study population. For example, PCR test recipients who visited a PCR center may have a higher level of health consciousness compared to those who didn’t visit a PCR center.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/japanese-real-world-observational-study-mrna-vaccines-fall-well-short-of-whos-50-ve-threshold-3765f65e

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Another finding of low waccine effectiveness

How durable was the original monovalent mRNA vaccine when measured against prevention of COVID-19 Omicron-associated hospitalization involving children and adolescents? The Overcoming COVID-19 investigator network recently reported on this data between 2020 and 2023.

The results are challenging, evidencing rapidly waning vaccine effectiveness (VE) based on the known confluence of factors from mutating viral pathogens to the possibility of immunological imprinting (antigenic sin), and frankly, vaccines not engineered for breadth or durability results.

How severe is the waning VE? It is significant. For example, when measuring against hospitalization, VE should be substantially high, as the threshold is different for this class of product than preventing transmission. When the hospitalization incidence occurs a mere four months or more after the hospitalization event the VE rate equals 19% and ranges from as low as 2% to up to 32%. This is a remarkably weak rate evidencing serious concern about the longer-term viability of the COVID-19 countermeasures. The targeted threshold of effectiveness needs to be significantly higher for our children and adolescents.

Background

Authoring this study paper was the Overcoming COVID-19 investigators, part of a study seeking to characterize the development of COVID-19 complications in children and young adults as a consequence of exposure to COVID-19 including the Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MSI-C).

MIS-C emerged as a significant concern during the SARS-CoV-2 delta surge but waned during Omicron.

A real-time surveillance and observational study, the investigation included prospective enrollment of study participants with collection of blood and respiratory samples. What were the risk factors and outcomes of COVID-19 critical illness in the pediatric population? What defined complications in this young vulnerable court and linked to SARS-CoV-2? What about predictive markers of these complications? Finally, what characterized the development and maintenance of adaptive immunity? The Overcoming COVID-19 investigators sought to answer these, and other questions.

How durable is pediatric vacation with use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine countermeasures? This was a central question driving this investigation. Overall, parents have increasingly opted to keep their children away from the COVID-19 countermeasures.

The authors, represented by corresponding author Laura Zambrano, Ph.D., M.D., senior epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), report that during December 19, 2021–October 29, 2023, the Overcoming COVID-19 Network evaluated vaccine effectiveness (VE) of ≥2 original monovalent COVID-19 mRNA vaccine doses against COVID-19–related hospitalization and critical illness among U.S. children and adolescents aged 5–18 years, using a case-control design.

The authors report, “Too few children and adolescents received bivalent or updated monovalent vaccines to separately evaluate their effectiveness” which most certainly is a telling data point as to the reality of demand for COVID-19 vaccines among parents and their children and adolescents.

For this particular study, the authors led by Zambrano point out that a majority of individuals tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 fell in the unvaccinated category, “despite the high frequency of reported underlying conditions associated with severe COVID-19.”

Findings

So, what was the vaccine effectiveness of the original monovalent vaccine against COVID-19–related hospitalizations?

According to the findings here, VE equaled 52% (95% CI = 33%–66%) when the most recent dose was administered <120 days before hospitalization, and 19% (95% CI = 2%–32%) if the interval was 120–364 days. TrialSite suggests the rate of 19% VE in preventing hospitalization 4 months and on represents an incredibly weak record.

Another measure, or slice of the data, was a vaccine administered any time within the previous year, which looks at least somewhat better than the pathetic 19% figure, especially for this category of the original monovalent vaccine against COVID-19–related hospitalization was 31% (95% CI = 18%–43%).

When looking at the definition of hospitalization with more granularity, diffident VE rates emerge. For example, looking at the category “COVID-19-related illness” defined as receipt of noninvasive or invasive mechanical ventilation, vasoactive infusions, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and illness resulting in death and VE rates equaled the following:

VE Scenario

VE was similar after excluding children and adolescents with documented immunocompromising conditions.

The CDC authors emphasize that the receiver of ≥2 monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are associated with fewer COVID-19 hospitalizations during the Omicron period in children and adolescents aged 5–18 years. But this
“protection from original vaccines was not sustained over time, necessitating increased coverage with updated vaccines.”

A majority of hospitalized kids were unvaccinated, and few had received updated vaccine doses despite a high prevalence of underlying comorbidities associated with more severe disease.

The social determinants of health continue to be a factor in vaccination trends, with vaccination rate decline associated with social vulnerability.

The authors acknowledge carefully the overall dismal VE rates, stating:

“VE of original monovalent doses against COVID-19–related pediatric hospitalizations were lower than previous VE estimates reported by the Overcoming COVID-19 Network before Omicron emergence.”

The CDC does not include any risk-benefit analysis within its recommendations, e.g., avoids discussion of myocarditis/pericarditis risk to young adolescent males and avoids the topic of natural immunity when recommending that “all children and adolescents receive updated COVID-19 vaccines to protect against severe COVID-19.”

Limitations

Not surprisingly, many limitations suggest any interpretation done so with caution. Dr. Zambrano and team identify four major limitations including:

SARS-CoV-2 infection-induced immunity was not assessed

Limited viral sequencing data prevented consideration of subvariant-attributed immune evasion

Limited coverage with bivalent vaccines and currently recommended updated monovalent vaccines precluded the estimation of VE of these formulations

Previously healthy children and adolescents accounted for <20% of case-patients, limiting generalizability

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/4-months-post-mrna-vaccination-rate-of-preventing-pediatric-hospitalization-abysmal-at-19-major-cdc-investigation-4947e805

Fighting an invisible illness: the curse of Long Covid

Note that she fell ill AFTER being vaccinated

By MILANDA ROUT

The first time I got Covid it landed me in hospital on Christmas Day. It was 2022 and my husband dropped me off outside Emergency, our two worried kids watching from the car. I didn’t want to leave them but I had no choice: I’d been experiencing wave after wave of horrible nausea, and I had never felt my heart beat so fast. I felt on the verge of collapse. Being Covid positive, I was told by hospital staff to wait on a bench outside and that’s where I sat, miserably, until a nurse came to see me.

“So you have Covid,” she said. “Well, what did you come here for? Do you think I have a magic pill that’s going to make you feel better?” The rational, fact-finding journalist part of my brain knew what she said was correct – there wasn’t a quick fix, and being Christmas the hospital was operating with skeleton staff who were overworked and exhausted at this point in the pandemic. But I had never felt so sick in my life, and I simply did not know what else to do. Surely there was someone who could help me?

What I didn’t realise in that moment was that, 16 months later, I would still be struggling with this same feeling of utter desperation, hopelessness and fear. Because since the acute phase of the infection ended, I have been struggling with the mysterious and debilitating condition known as Long Covid.

I am not alone: it is estimated that one in 10 people who contract Covid develop Long Covid, which is defined in Australia as being symptomatic three months after the original infection. According to research publishedlast year, as many as 65 million people have Long Covid worldwide, with numbers increasing with each new wave of the viral infection. In Australia, there is no national registry keeping tabs on the number of cases but a recent federal parliamentary inquiry into Long Covid heard there could be anywhere between 200,000 and two million sufferers.

What is clear from data collected globally since the pandemic began is that Long Covid affects more women than men, especially women in their thirties and forties. (Being a 45-year-old woman, I am a fairly typical case.) As a patient, and as a journalist, I wanted to understand why Long Covid remains largely a mystery, even though scientists and physicians have had more than four years to get to grips with it. The first key question, for me: why are women getting Long Covid more than men?

“I wish I could tell you but we just don’t know yet,” says Professor Steven Faux, who co-founded one of the first Long Covid clinics in Australia, at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. “There are a handful of reasons [being explored]. One is psychosocial, that we put women in harm’s way when it comes to caring for people because most nurses are women. “

There is another issue, he says. “A group of researchers in the US said, ‘We think it is happening in that period because they’re perimenopausal and no one is looking at that. Is that possible?’”

But, Faux says, the most fascinating theory is US immunologist Professor Akiko Iwasaki’s research around the hormonal response – that the female’s immune system is more aggressive than the male’s, and turns on faster and stronger to protect any potential unborn child. But it then exhausts itself and it can’t keep fighting against the virus and stop it from developing reservoirs in different organs.

Faux sees more women than men at St Vincent’s Long Covid clinic (55 per cent female patients compared with 45 per cent male). The most common age group is 31-45 years, followed by 46-60 years. This echoes the experience of other clinics in Australia and overseas and was also noted as a concern by the parliamentary committee inquiry into Long Covid. “There’s just a lot more women,” Faux says.

The reason I am talking to Faux in his tiny office at St Vincent’s between clinic appointments on a Thursday afternoon is not only because is he one of the leading Long Covid experts in Australia and I selfishly want to pick his brain, but because he is the first person in this country to have written a comprehensive guide to the illness. To be published in May, Long Covid: Expert Advice, from Diagnosis to Treatment and Recovery is aimed at patients, people just like me, who have been struggling to get better. It also advocates for us. And it does so in a particularly empathetic way.

“If you are living with Long Covid, we know that in your own ways you try to keep going, try to be the person you were, while battling the fear that you will never be the same,” Faux writes early on, setting the tone. “This book is an attempt to say to all of you: we see you.”

Those few sentences in the book encapsulate my experiences in a way that no other doctor has been able to. It’s comforting to simply read Faux’s acknowledgment of the awful symptoms – the erratic heartbeat, the exhaustion, the brain fog, the doctors’ appointments, the specialists’ appointments, juggling work, juggling children and the heavy weight of waking up every morning and not feeling any better.

“One of the things about Long Covid is that it’s a largely invisible illness,” Faux writes. “When you have it, you don’t necessarily look any different. It is not like you’ve lost a limb or have a cast on your harm. Fatigue or cognitive impairment is often subjective; it’s hard to show people you are fatigued because the only way to do that is to complain about the symptom.”

Faux is the Director of Pain Medicine at St Vincent’s, and previously spent 22 years as the director of rehabilitation. He has spent almost 30 years helping people recover from injury and illness. He and his colleagues recognised early on in the pandemic that there was a need to plan beyond the acute infection stage. And after working on the front line in the Covid wards for months, he saw first-hand what was coming. “What I knew of previous pandemics, and the effects of viral illnesses such as HIV and polio, was that the pandemic was about to deliver thousands of people who would be damaged by this infection and who would require rehabilitation,” he writes.

His unit soon started getting referrals for Covid patients who still had symptoms after three months. They called themselves “long haulers” on social media and were reporting breathlessness, coughing and exhaustion.

“We initially thought it was because the virus was destroying their lungs and they needed pulmonary rehab – but then a lot of the people we were seeing couldn’t go back to work because they couldn’t concentrate,” Faux tells me.

“I had colleagues emailing me saying, ‘Are you using brain injury rehab for these people?’ and it was then I realised that if we didn’t do something proactively, we were going to end up with an army of people who were disabled for some time.”

More than 200 different symptoms are now ascribed to Long Covid. According to a 2021 review quoted by Faux in his book, the most common is fatigue (45.1 per cent), followed by breathlessness, then insomnia, difficulty waking, anxiety, depression, brain fog, muscle pain, palpitations, headaches and a loss of taste and smell. But it can be hard to pin down. “People with Long Covid often say they don’t feel themselves, or are unable to get on with things as they used to, but many can’t really articulate what they feel,” he writes. “At the St Vincent’s clinic I’ve seen people lose their jobs as a result of Long Covid. I’ve seen it place stress on relationships and cause untold anxiety.”

Faux estimates there could be as many as one million Australians living with Long Covid, given that around one in ten people who get Covid develop Long Covid and more than 11 million Australians are thought to have contracted Covid since the pandemic began. “This figure would place Long Covid high on the list of the most significant medical conditions affecting the Australian population,” he points out. “Compare this with type 2 diabetes at 1.3 million, asthma at 2.7 million, heart disease or stroke at 1.2 million and cancer at 1 million.”

I managed to avoid Covid for the first two years of the pandemic, and I was beginning to think I was one of the lucky ones until I finally tested positive. This, of course, was well after the peak of the pandemic, after lockdowns, and after almost every Australian had been vaccinated. By then, we had certainly heard of Long Covid. The Weekend Australian Magazine had reported on the condition back in 2020 – a growing army of Covid “long-haulers”, many of whom had only a mild case of Covid-19, describing “a medley of lasting symptoms”.

When I fell ill, three days after my son tested positive in December 2022, I wasn’t too worried. I was fully vaccinated. The symptoms were initially mild: I had a temperature for a few days, a slight cough and felt generally unwell. But the symptoms dramatically escalated one evening when I was cooking dinner for my family. A wave of nausea and dizziness hit, my heart started beating fast and erratically and I thought I was going to faint. I immediately stopped what I was doing and lay down on the couch, waiting for it to pass. It didn’t.

During my first hospital visit on Christmas Day, they checked my heart and found nothing wrong, then hooked me up to a bag of IV fluids. I overheard the doctor ask a nurse whether I was eligible for antiviral drugs. “No, she’s too young,” came the reply. I was discharged a few hours later as there was nothing more they could do. I was back in hospital on New Year’s Eve with the same frightening symptoms. This time I underwent exhaustive tests and spent a night in the Covid ward before being discharged. Two weeks later, I finally tested negative to Covid – though my symptoms remained.

“They will lift,” a close friend reassuringly messaged me. But even as time went by, there was no easing of the symptoms. The godawful nausea meant I had no appetite and lost five kilos, and I couldn’t do anything physical without feeling dizzy. My husband had to take care of me and keep the kids occupied during a month of school holidays. Worst of all, my heart was behaving very strangely. All of a sudden I would feel it beating as if it would leap out of my chest, then I would get this horrible jittery feeling like when you’ve had too much coffee. Sometimes this would last for days.

I attempted to go back to my job as a journalist for The Australian’s WISH magazine in the middle of January 2023. I was working from my parents’ house – they were helping look after my children. One day I’d been working for about two hours when another wave of nausea and dizziness hit. I remember crying in despair in front of my husband and kids, frightened that this illness would rob me of my career.

Then came the dreaded “brain fog” reported by many Long Covid sufferers: I kept forgetting words and confusing things. The words and memories were there, I just couldn’t access them. It took away my confidence to write – a key part of my job – as well as my ability to function day-to-day as a mother and wife with school-age children.

Many studies have found that Long Covid affects the brain, and it’s a key part of the rehabilitation program at the St Vincent’s clinic – even though Faux admits the medical profession is at a loss to explain what causes the fog. “It’s unclear whether the effects on the brain are due to the persistence of the virus or to the immune system’s response, but brain imaging studies have shown that the parts of the brain involved include the orbitofrontal areas (above the eyes) close to where the olfactory (smelling) nerves enter the brain, and near some of the areas of the memory centres (the hippocampus and limbic systems),” he writes. “There is also evidence of thinning of the brain’s grey matter in those with Long Covid who have brain fog.”

The other debilitating symptom Faux sees that has also changed my life is post-exercise malaise. It means you can’t tolerate any type of exercise, and your body tells you afterwards – not during – with a swift return of symptoms. We’re not talking about the serious exertion of running or lifting weights in the gym; it can be triggered by the expending of energy in almost any way. Carrying too many groceries one evening meant I woke up the next day to find my nausea had returned powerfully, and I found getting out of bed incredibly difficult. The day before, I’d felt fine.

As I grew to understand, people living with Long Covid don’t have a linear recovery. You can have a good day, or even have a good week – and then you can overdo it physically, without realising, and be back to square one. For me, this was when the fear crept in and I found myself panicking that I might never recover.

“Living with uncertainty is one of the big issues for Long Covid,” explains Faux. “We always advise people with Long Covid a bit like we approach cancer rehabilitation – if you’re having a good day, enjoy it and don’t expect it to be the same tomorrow. And if you are having a shit day, then ride it out and maybe tomorrow will be completely different.”

While I was undergoing a series of tests last year to find out why my heart was beating erratically, a doctor helpfully told me that Long Covid is a post-viral syndrome much like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and the sheer volume of cases mean the symptoms cannot be dismissed as psychosomatic. “One of the things that people were initially saying with Long Covid is that these people are histrionic, they are putting it on,” Faux says. “But it became clear to me when we opened the clinic and talked to the first patients that they were not.

“The patients we see can’t work and they want to work. They need money and they have to put bread on the table. They don’t have a history of chronic pain or diagnosable illnesses. These are people with very little to gain by being sick.”

There is a six- to nine-month waiting list to get into the St Vincent’s Long Covid clinic. Faux and Associate Professor Anthony Byrne, a respiratory physician, set up the team that includes nurses, physiotherapists, a sleep specialist, a neurological rehabilitation expert and a psychologist. Each patient who is referred by their GP gets an assessment and a tailored rehabilitation program. It’s a slow process, but it does work. “If patients are identified early and they get a psychologist and a physio, or a physio and occupational therapist, whatever they need, and they start treatment early, the evidence from overseas is that they recover faster,” explains Faux. “And the evidence from our clinic is that there is a substantial return to work at six months following the commencement of rehabilitation.”

Last April, a federal parliamentary committee made nine recommendations following its inquiry into Long Covid. Among them was that the government should partner with state health departments to develop and fund more multidisciplinary Long Covid clinics. Yet when Health Minister Mark Butler released the federal government’s response to the inquiry, this was not one of the recommendations it supported. In the same month, the government committed $50 million of funding for research into Long Covid and established a national database on the disease. In fact, despite the demand for Long Covid clinics and the committee’s recommendations, governments appears to be withdrawing their support for them. In an RMIT study published last October co-lead author Dr Shiqi Luo stated: “We have insufficient Long Covid clinics to meet the demand”. An ABC investigation last December found five of the country’s 23 clinics have either been scaled back or closed.

Unlike me, Julie Lamrock contracted Covid early in the pandemic, in 2019, when a passenger she collected in her shuttle bus from the Overseas Passenger Terminal disembarked from the Ruby Princess cruise ship.When The Weekend Australian Magazine reported on Covid “long-haulers” in 2020, Julie was still experiencing pain, fatigue and brain fog. Her symptoms have never abated. Today, she describes her now four-year battle with Long Covid as a “living nightmare”. “Only last year did I start to go out again,” she says. “but the pain is always there. The fatigue is always there. I actually go to sleep in pain and I wake up in pain … and I’m living this every day.”

She says her treatment includes visits to a pain specialist and a pain psychiatrist, but after Nepean Hospital ceased its Covid-19 follow-up service she was no longer being treated as any part of a cohesive Long Covid treatment plan. “There’s nothing happening. Why haven’t I been told to go and see a [particular specialist] doctor? Why isn’t there a system where every doctor can turn around and say, ‘Well, here’s a number you can call and yes, here’s a referral to this clinic, get this done, get that done’?”

I was referred to a Long Covid clinic by my cardiologist last April. I received a call in June asking me what I needed help with; I told them. I didn’t hear anything back until October last year when I received another call saying the clinic was moving online and Long Covid case management was going back to GPs. I have since learned that what was once my Long Covid clinic is now an eight-week online education program and a support group.

When, in writing this article, I asked Health Minister Mark Butler about the future of Long Covid clinics, he did not directly respond, noting only the need for “multidisciplinary team-based healthcare for people with chronic and complex conditions like Long Covid.” The Department of Health and Aged Care released a plan in February this year addressing Long Covid, now referred to in government circles as PASC (Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19). There is no mention of Long Covid clinics. “States and territories decide the mix of the services and functions delivered in their jurisdiction … some have used funding to establish clinics for the management of people with PASC,” the plan states. “People with PASC will be able to benefit from the Government’s … commitment” to “expand general practices”.

Faux thinks this approach is flawed, and Long Covid patient care should be done in multidisciplinary rehab clinics because it’s not easy to treat. “The GPs are doing their best, but there’s not enough GPs and it’s very complicated because you’ve got to rule out everything else first,” he says.

People are not going to stop getting Covid and, in turn, Long Covid. “In January of this year, 100,000 positive cases were registered in the country. 100,000 people got Covid. That means about 10,000 people got Long Covid,” Faux tells me. “And every month there’ll be another 10,000. There’s lower vigilance with respect to Covid vaccinations and so we expect that people will get it a little bit more. There’s been no decrease in demand at the clinic.”

Faux quotes research in his book that shows 91 per cent of Long Covid sufferers have improvement in symptoms within 12 months; I was also told this by my cardiologist, who urged me just to hang on, as it was most likely I would get better within a year. And I did. I remember cycling with my family to a pool in February this year and feeling totally fine – fit, even. I had also gone back to reformer pilates. “Finally, I’m properly myself again,” I said to my husband.

But three days later, I tested positive for Covid. This time I was prepared.

After multiple conversations with my kind GP, I found out that even with Long Covid I wasn’t eligible for the antiviral drug Paxlovid as I was too young and was not severely immunocompromised. But I could get a course of antivirals privately for $1200.

It was an extraordinary amount of money, but I was willing to pay it in order to avoid a repeat of what I’d been through before. I dispatched my husband to get the antivirals that night; within two days I’d tested negative to Covid and my symptoms were almost gone. I was due to finish the five-day antiviral course on a Sunday, and I was already planning to go back to work on the Monday. But as soon as I finished the antivirals, my Long Covid symptoms came back: the crippling nausea, the irregular heartbeat, the exhaustion. I started to panic. How could I be back here again?

Five weeks later, I’m sitting in Faux’s office. “The statistics say you will get better,” he kindly reassures me. I tell him how I’m still struggling with nausea, fatigue and post-exercise malaise. I’ve stopped all exercise and I am back mostly working from home. “It’s going to be slow, and that will be very frustrating – but you have to try and look after yourself in that time,” he says. The empathy and understanding he shows me during our hour-long interview is also apparent in every single chapter in his book. Faux not only truly sees me and all people living with Long Covid, he has compiled a comprehensive management plan to help. “Your road to recovery may be a long one, unfortunately, but you are not alone and you are already one step closer to your destination,” he writes.

As for the future, Faux is full of hope. He says there is a lot of research being done around the world on the condition, from examination of its causes to trials of drugs to treat it. “It is already better now than it was a year ago, and we’re optimistic that this trajectory will continue,” he notes. “The more we know, the better the outcomes for people with Long Covid will be.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/women-are-the-new-face-of-long-covid-im-one-of-them/news-story/874c98c8350a96554dc90736f27367b5

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