Category: Coronapanic

New York Times discovers that a person cannot be killed twice by COVID-19

by philg

From this morning’s email, “The Covid death rate for white Americans has recently exceeded the rates for Black, Latino and Asian Americans.” by David Leonhardt, one of the New York Times journalists who enjoys covering numbers and economics.

One of the defining characteristics of the pandemic’s early stages was its disproportionate toll on Black and Latino Americans.

During Covid’s early months in the U.S., the per capita death rate for Black Americans was almost twice as high as the white rate and more than twice as high as the Asian rate. The Latino death rate was in between, substantially lower than the Black rate but still above average.

Covid’s racial gaps have narrowed and, more recently, even flipped. Over the past year, the Covid death rate for white Americans has been 14 percent higher than the rate for Black Americans and 72 percent higher than the Latino rate, according to the latest C.D.C. data.

In other words, the best minds of New York City have figured out that a person cannot be killed twice by COVID-19.

[A friend’s comment on the above: “Democrats previously advocated giving preferential access to COVID medical treatment to People of Color. Now that whites are dying at a higher rate, should whites get preferential access to medicine?”]

Let’s check in on Sweden. Given their horrific heresy, maybe COVID-19 is killing them twice?

The country that gave the finger to SARS-CoV-2 and kept its schools open has a much lower case rate than still-masked Portugal (“In Portugal, There Is Virtually No One Left to Vaccinate” (NYT), 2021) or the U.S. (cases trending up, despite Science-following leadership (TM) since January 20, 2021). Those are just “cases”, though, right? How about deaths? Same pattern…

Reminder: When COVID-19 hit, friends who are medical school professors said that humans would have to co-evolve with SARS-CoV-2 and all of the measures being taken and proposed were going to be counterproductive because they would slow down this co-evolution. (Also, that if they pointed this out publicly they would never get another research grant!)

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British Medical Journal weighs in on forced vaccination

by philg

Me: Should the COVID-19 injections be renamed to something other than “vaccine”?

#Science: “The unintended consequences of COVID-19 vaccine policy: why mandates, passports and restrictions may cause more harm than good” (BMJ Global Health)…

… we argue that current mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable and are likely to cause more societal harm than good. Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarisation, and adversely affects health and well-being. Current policies may lead to a widening of health and economic inequalities, detrimental long-term impacts on trust in government and scientific institutions, and reduce the uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines as well as routine immunisations.

The publicly communicated rationale for implementing such policies has shifted over time. Early messaging around COVID-19 vaccination as a public health response measure focused on protecting the most vulnerable. This quickly shifted to vaccination thresholds to reach herd immunity and ‘end the pandemic’ and ‘get back to normal’ once sufficient vaccine supply was available. In late summer of 2021, this pivoted again to a universal vaccination recommendation to reduce hospital/intensive care unit (ICU) burden in Europe and North America, to address the ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’.

There are also worrying signs that current vaccine policies, rather than being science-based, are being driven by sociopolitical attitudes that reinforce segregation, stigmatisation and polarisation, further eroding the social contract in many countries.

Two experiments in Germany and the USA found that a new COVID-19 vaccine mandate would likely energise anti-vaccination activism, reduce compliance with other public health measures, and decrease acceptance to future voluntary influenza or varicella (chickenpox) vaccines.

COVID-19 vaccines have also generated at least $100 billion profit for pharmaceutical companies, especially Pfizer.

The authors are from the School of Public Health, University of Washington, University of Edinburgh, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, Oxford, Harvard Medical School (!), and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Related:

  • “The Concept of Classical Herd Immunity May Not Apply to COVID-19” (J Infect Dis, March 2022, by David M Morens, Gregory K Folkers, and Anthony S Fauci (!)): SARS-CoV-2 appears not to substantially engage the systemic immune system, as do viruses such as smallpox, measles, and rubella that consistently have a pronounced viremic phase. Moreover, neither infection nor vaccination appears to induce prolonged protection against SARS-CoV-2 in many or most people. Finally, the public health community has encountered substantial resistance to efforts to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by vaccination, mask wearing, and other interventions.
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Safety first in Maskachusetts

by philg

Common sense measures to fight SARS-CoV-2 are back in various parts of Maskachusetts. “Mask Mandates Are Returning to Schools as COVID-19 Cases Surge” (TIME, May 25) says that the good old days never ended in Boston per se:

Boston public schools, for example, have maintained a mask requirement. City health officials said they would recommend lifting the school mask mandate once daily COVID-19 cases in the city fall to 10 new cases per 100,000 residents. The positivity rate currently stands at 54.5 new cases per 100,000 residents.

Neighboring Brookline, however, was briefly mask-free. “Brookline reinstates indoor mask mandate for schools, town buildings” (WCVB, May 23):

The mandate that began Monday requires everyone to wear a face covering over their mouth and nose while inside the library, senior center, all public schools and any other town-owned indoor spaces where the public gathers.

Student Alice Gametchu-Walker said she noticed several of her classmates were absent from Pierce Elementary School.

“I thought it was a good idea because a lot of kids have been out with colds and COVID,” she said. “I decided to keep wearing a mask because I just felt safer wearing it.”

Now that climate change has brought months of brutal heat to Maskachusetts, maybe people could cool off and stay fit to fight off COVID-19 by swimming across Walden Pond? “Massachusetts DCR again restricts open-water swimming at Walden Pond while lifeguards are on duty” (Boston Herald):

Walden Pond State Reservation on Saturday announced that last year’s open-water swimming rules would return, effective Sunday. That means swimming is not allowed outside the area designated by ropes and buoys from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. while lifeguards are on duty.

Open-water swimming is only allowed during park operating hours when lifeguards are not on duty, DCR said in a statement, stressing the policy helps ensure that lifeguards keep their focus on designated swim areas inside the ropes and buoys. The allowed open-water swimming hours are from 5 to 10 a.m. and then from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

“We want visitors to our designated swimming areas to have fun while cooling off from the summer heat, but we also want to stress safety and the importance of taking precautions to keep yourself and your family safe this summer,” said Acting DCR Commissioner Stephanie Cooper. “Our lifeguards are a valuable resource, but we also count on the public to take an active role in watching their children when they are in the water, using caution when swimming at unguarded beaches, and utilizing safe swimming practices to avoid a tragedy.”

In Florida, meanwhile, you can swim in the open ocean when the surf’s up and the lifeguards have put out their red “you’d be an idiot to go out” flags. And, of course, wear a mask at your discretion.

Related:

  • They’re back to masks in Alameda County, California (NYT): “Alameda is the first county in California, and the largest jurisdiction in the United States, to issue a universal indoor mask order since the end of the winter Omicron surge.”
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Harvard hosts an unmasked mass gathering

by philg

Science (it’s actually in the URL: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/community-levels.html) says that Middlesex County, Maskachusetts, where the main Harvard campus is located, currently has a “High” level of COVID-19.

How do the geniuses graduating from Harvard respond to this information? By gathering en masse with no masks (source):

Photos on the page show hundreds of Harvard affiliates and just a handful with masks (including in a tent that is mostly enclosed (i.e., indoors but without the benefit of a standard indoor ventilation system)).

Merrick Garland showed up and gave a talk about the January 6 insurrection:

Now that land war is upon us. Russia’s unprovoked and unjust invasion of Ukraine this February has been accompanied by heart-breaking atrocities: murders of civilians, the shelling of hospitals, the bombing of a theater in Mariupol where hundreds had sought shelter, the demolished residential apartment buildings of Bucha and other cities.

At home, we are also facing threats to democracy – different in kind, but threats, nonetheless.

We see them in efforts to undermine the right to vote.

We see them in the violence and threats of violence that are directed at people because of who they are or how they serve the public.

We saw them when a violent mob stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Members of Congress had to be evacuated.

And proceedings were disrupted for hours — interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.

Like the threat to voting rights, this kind of direct attack on an American institution is something I never worried about as I was graduating from college. There had been such attacks on foreign capitals in foreign lands. But a storming of the U.S. Capitol itself had not taken place since the War of 1812.

Finally, the preservation of democracy requires our willingness to tell the truth. Together, we must ensure that the magnitude of an event like January 6th is not downplayed or understated. The commitment to the peaceful transfer of power must be respected by every American. Our democracy depends upon it. (Applause.)

You are the next generation that must devote yourselves to preserving our democracy and helping others protect theirs.

And although what I am asking of you is daunting, I know that you are the next generation that will fulfill the promise this country represents.

In other words, the 20-year-olds who meekly cowered at home for two years to avoid becoming infected with a virus that kills 80-year-olds will bravely defend the nation against enemies foreign and domestic.

(Separately, my mom was walking around Harvard Yard a few decades ago as the workers were setting up chairs for commencement. Potential rain was in the forecast. Mom overhead one of the workers say to another “I hope it rains like hell on those Harvard sons of bitches.”)

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Americans were too busy in lockdown to breastfeed

by philg

One reason for the baby formula shortage is that the FDA protects American infants from being poisoned by Swiss-made baby formula from Nestlé, the company that invented baby formula. What flies off a French hypermarché shelf is strictly illegal here. (Let’s hope that it continues to be illegal to import Nestlé’s noxious formula and that, instead, we will import their Swiss-made chocolate and consume it to maintain our robust Covid-fighting BMIs.)

Another reason for the shortage turns out to be that American fathers, mothers, and formerly pregnant people of other gender IDs were too busy at home in lockdown to breastfeed. “Baby-Formula Shortage Worsened by Drop in Breast-Feeding Rates” (WSJ, May 29):

One of the contributing factors in the U.S. baby-formula shortage is a significant shift in the way parents feed their babies: Breast-feeding declined during the pandemic, reversing a decadeslong trend, health practitioners say.

Since 2020, the share of breast-fed one-year-olds has plummeted from an estimated 34% to an estimated 14% this year, according to surveys conducted by Demographic Intelligence, a forecasting firm that specializes in births and works with formula manufacturers including Abbott Laboratories and Nestlé. Because of the small sample size, the firm’s 2022 estimate has a range of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.

After Covid-19 restrictions were introduced in March 2020, many new mothers had shorter hospital stays and were discharged before their milk had come in or their baby had latched successfully to their breast, breast-feeding experts say. Some infants weren’t given skin-to-skin contact with their mothers after birth because of concerns about Covid-19 transmission.

Some lactation consultants were furloughed, redeployed or designated nonessential personnel; others offered only virtual appointments. Parents had less access to in-person assistance from doulas and peer-support groups. They also had less help from family and friends, who stayed away to avoid exposing newborns to the coronavirus.

(I’m not sure why the article refers to “mothers” given that “fathers” can also breastfeed.)

Hillary Clinton’s wisdom remains important even as the torch of wise Science-informed leadership has been passed to Joe Biden:

“It takes a village,” Dr. Spatz said. During the pandemic, she said, “all the in-person, peer-to-peer support went away.”

Science is fickle:

Breast-feeding rates in the U.S. reached a low point in the 1970s, when many doctors told parents that formula was the best food for babies. Then a movement to promote breast-feeding, and growing research showing the benefits of breast-feeding over formula, led to a decadeslong increase in breast-feeding.

The share of one-year-olds who are fed with at least some breast milk climbed from 16% in 2001 to 36% in 2017, then plateaued in 2018 and 2019, according to latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Skin color matters:

The recent drop in breast-feeding has been particularly steep among lower-income families and people of color, Dr. Spatz said.

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Monkeypox motivates Science to find something essential other than alcohol and marijuana

by philg

The Science-following states, e.g., Maskachusetts, California, and New York, closed public schools for 12-18 months while keeping alcohol and, at least in MA and CA, marijuana stores open as “essential.”

Let’s look at a recent tweet from one of America’s top scientists, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Medicine (smart enough to stop SARS-CoV-2 but not smart enough to notice an administrator stealing $40 million):

I think we can infer from the above that the bathhouse joins the marijuana and the liquor store in the “essential” category, as determined by Science.

Maybe Professor Gonsalves was always anti-lockdown? It is possible to search by date range within Twitter, e.g., “from:gregggonsalves school since:2020-08-15 until:2020-09-01”

In August 2020, Science wanted schools kept closed:

(the idea of “all schools open”, pushed by Donald Trump, was a mark of “surrender”)

And in July 2020:

Danger is everywhere, and especially in open schools:

So I think it is safe to say that, like in-person marijuana and alcohol retail, the bathhouse has been found by scientists to be more important than K-12 education.

Related:

  • “Monkeypox outbreaks across Europe linked to gay sauna and fetish festival” (PinkNews): Twenty-three new cases were confirmed in Spain on Friday (May 20), with regional health chief Enrique Ruiz Escudero telling reporters that most of the cases had been traced from a single adult sauna, used by queer men for sex, according to Reuters. Authorities have also confirmed the first cases of monkeypox in Belgium, which have been linked to visitors of the Darklands fetish festival which took place from 4-9 May.
  • Darklands: Life is great, but it is even better in your favorite fetish gear. Darklands Belgium encourages visitors to explore their sexuality and develop a safe and sane interest for the many fetishes in our community. The event is a collaboration of different groups, organizations, clubs and over 150 volunteers. The various tribes in the gay fetish community (Leather, rubber, army, skinhead, puppies, …) come together to create a unique spectacle of fetish brotherhood. [i.e., it was “safe” except for the monkeypox]
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Should we take the neighbor’s 5-year-old in for a COVID-19 vaccine booster?

by philg

From the Journal of Popular Studies: “FDA Grants Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer COVID Booster for Kids 5 to 11.” Children are facing an “emergency”, according to the scientists at the FDA. If there weren’t an emergency, by definition, the shots wouldn’t be available until completely tested and approved via normal procedures.

If a child in the neighborhood is facing an emergency, you’d be morally obligated to take him/her/zir/them to the local hospital, right? You wouldn’t let a 5-year-old bleed out on the sidewalk in front of your apartment when you could simply load the injured kid into the minivan (or Tesla if you’re a douche and/or dog lover!) and zip over to the ED.

Suppose that we suspect some of our neighbors (most of them physicians or dentists) are deplorably failing to respond to the emergency facing their young children. Are we obligated to snatch up the neglected children and rush them to to the nearest healing center for an injection? If not, why not?

If you’re at Disney World in the sexual orientation and gender identification dark ride for kindergarteners and discover that a child in the next car hasn’t received his/her/zir/their booster…

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How’s the miracle drug Paxlovid doing against COVID-19?

by philg

“Paxlovid is a miracle drug,” says a primary care doc whom I know, “because it is a miracle when I can prescribe it. Anyone who is sufficiently vulnerable to serious consequences from COVID-19 is already on drugs that have interactions with Paxlovid.” The other docs with whom I’ve talked about this drug, especially cardiologists, are generally negative regarding the drug. In their view, it will interact badly with other drugs, have bad side effects, and/or result in SARS-CoV-2 attacking the patient as soon as he/she/ze/they stops taking Paxlovid.

Chinks in the miracle drug’s armor are beginning to be described in our otherwise cheerleading media. Example from the NYT, March 25:

Certain medications or supplements, including painkillers, statins and even St. John’s Wort, may have adverse interactions with Paxlovid. So you may be advised to hold off on taking them for a week while being treated, Dr. Gandhi said. But for some medications, like drugs that regulate heart rhythm, abstaining for a week may not be possible. In those cases, your doctor may recommend molnupiravir for Covid-19 instead.

From Yale, where they understand medicine if not accounting, “13 Things To Know About Paxlovid, the Latest COVID-19 Pill”:

The FDA authorized Paxlovid for people ages 12 and older who weigh at least 88 pounds. But in order to qualify for a prescription, you must also have had a positive COVID-19 test result and be at high risk for developing severe COVID-19.

That means you must either have certain underlying conditions (including cancer, diabetes, obesity, or others) or be 65 or older (more than 81% of COVID-19 deaths occur in in this group). The more underlying medical conditions a person has, the higher their risk for developing a severe case of COVID-19, according to the CDC.

Since Paxlovid is cleared by the kidneys, dose adjustments may be required for patients with mild-to-moderate kidney disease, explains Dr. Topal. “For patients with severe kidney disease—or who are on dialysis—or those with severe liver disease, Paxlovid is not recommended; the levels of the drug can become too high and could cause increased side effects,” he says.

There is a long list of medications Paxlovid may interact with, and in some cases, doctors may not prescribe Paxlovid because these interactions may cause serious complications.

The list of drugs that Paxlovid interacts with includes some organ anti-rejection drugs that transplant patients take, as well as more common drugs like some used to treat heart arrhythmias. Paxlovid also decreases the metabolism of anticoagulants, or blood thinners, that many older adults depend on, driving up levels of those medications in the body to a point where they are unsafe, Dr. Topal explains.

It also interacts with cholesterol-lowering medications like Lipitor, but that’s less challenging for patients to overcome. “If you stop taking your Lipitor for five days, nothing bad is going to happen,” he adds.

If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, the FDA recommends discussing your options and specific situation with your health care provider, since there is no experience using the drug in these populations. If you could become pregnant, it’s recommended that you use effective barrier contraception or do not have sexual activity while taking Paxlovid.

So the ideal Paxlovid patient is morbidly obese with the blood pressure and heart health of a 22-year-old tennis star.

Pfizer wants you to take your Paxlovid every day… “FDA rebukes Pfizer CEO’s suggestion to take more Paxlovid if COVID-19 symptoms return”:

The FDA rebuked Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s proposed solution to reports that some patients experienced a relapse of COVID-19 symptoms after treatment with the company’s antiviral Paxlovid.

After reports said some patients who took Paxlovid rebounded and started feeling symptoms again, the CEO told Bloomberg that patients can take another course, “like you do with antibiotics.”

“There is no evidence of benefit at this time for a longer course of treatment … or repeating a treatment course of Paxlovid in patients with recurrent COVID-19 symptoms following completion of a treatment course,” John Farley, M.D., director of the Office of Infectious Diseases, said in a post.

Science is complex!

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Should the COVID-19 injections be renamed to something other than “vaccine”?

by philg

When coronapanic hit and various public health prophets went on television calling themselves “scientists,” friends who are medical school professors said that, when the predictions of these physicians and public health bureaucrats inevitably failed the public’s confidence in medicine would be reduced. They cringed every time Anthony Fauci was in the spotlight, for example.

I wonder if the same thing could be happening with the shots that are currently marketed as “vaccines”. People who’ve had 3 or 4 shots are regularly getting sick with COVID-19. Some are being hospitalized and, in the long run, nearly all of the COVID-19 deaths will be among this heavily-jabbed population. By contrast, the childhood vaccines that we desperately want people to apply to their kids, e.g., the measles vaccine, actually stop humans from getting sick with measles.

Now that we know that COVID-19 vaccines don’t work like “regular vaccines” is it time to rename them so that their ineffectiveness doesn’t tarnish the reputation of the “real vaccines”?

Ignoring any serious harm that the COVID-19 vaccines might cause, the closest analogy that I can think of to the situation is what we call “the flu shot”. Americans don’t usually say “I am vaccinated against influenza.” We say “I had all of my childhood vaccinations and this year I got a flu shot.” The flu shot is put in a “can’t hurt; might help” category. When a person who had the flu shot gets the flu anyway, that doesn’t result in him/her/zir/them or his/her/zir/their social network to lose confidence in “vaccine vaccines.”

Readers: What do you think of the idea? Half of the hardest core Mask and Vaccine Karens whom I know seem to have gotten COVID-19 within the past few months. Wouldn’t the overall image of vaccines be improved if we said “They had a COVID-19 shot, which was good prep for their COVID-19 infection” rather than “They were vaccinated against COVID-19 three times and then got COVID-19 anyway”?

Related:

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Sitting at home for 18 months results in long COVID (at least for unionized schoolteachers)

by philg

Does closing schools for 18 months protect teachers from COVID-19? Apparently not. “1 in 5 Educators Say They’ve Experienced Long COVID” (EducationWeek):

Two years into the pandemic, many Americans are eager to leave COVID behind. But that won’t be so easy for as many as 1 in 5 educators who, according to a recent EdWeek survey, have experienced the emerging, mysterious illness known as long COVID.

In a workforce that tops 6 million people, that percentage suggests hundreds of thousands of people who serve the nation’s K-12 students have suffered long-lasting symptoms after contracting COVID.

Working full-time has been impossible for Kathleen Law, an elementary school teacher in Oregon, since she contracted COVID in August. She’s had foggy thinking ever since, and she gets bone-tired easily.

Chimére Smith, 39, was a middle school teacher for Baltimore City Public Schools—until March 2020, when she contracted a severe case of COVID that has hardly abated since. She experienced everything from sharp spinal pain and migraines to overwhelming exhaustion, memory lapses, gastrointestinal issues, hallucinations, and suicidal ideation.

For months, doctor after doctor told Smith that her symptoms were nothing to worry about. Smith, who is Black, says she encountered racist skepticism at every turn.

What’s the biggest challenge after racism?

The first challenge for long COVID sufferers: recognizing you’re one of them

Sarah Bilotti, superintendent of the North Warren schools in New Jersey, said numerous students and several staff members in her district have disclosed that they have long COVID—or they’ve confessed that they have concerning symptoms that won’t go away, without knowing why.

“I think people are so unaccustomed to that diagnosis and this language that people aren’t sure what’s going on,” she said.

The federal government last summer officially designated long COVID as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That means school employees are entitled to accommodations from their employer if they can offer documentation of their condition.

If you gave me unlimited paid sick leave and union job protection so that I could go back to work whenever I wished to, I am confident that I could develop long COVID!

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