dailymail | The mother of a Marine killed in the Kabul
airport attack called President Joe Biden a 'dementia-riddent piece of
crap' as the president meets with families of the 13 fallen service
members on Sunday
'My son was one of
the Marines that died yesterday,' Kathy McCollum said in a radio
interview on Friday of her 20-year-old late son Rylee.
'[He
was] getting ready to come home from freaking Jordan to be with his
wife to watch the birth of his son,' McCollum said. 'And that feckless,
dementia ridden piece of crap just sent my son to die.'
'I woke up at four'o'clock this morning to Marines at my door telling me my son was dead,' she said in the emotional account.
President
Biden made an unannounced trip to Delaware on Sunday morning for a
ceremony to honor the service members killed by an ISIS-K suicide
bomber.
He stood in silence, his right
hand to his chest, as a succession of flag draped transfer cases were
carried past him from a C-17 Globemaster plane.
The
13 killed on Thursday were Navy corpsman Max Soviak, Army Staff
Sergeant Ryan Knauss, and Marines Hunter Lopez, Rylee McCollum, David
Lee Espinoza, Kareem Nikoui, Jared Schmitz, Daegan Page, Taylor Hoover,
Humberto Sanchez, Johanny Rosario, Dylan Merola and Nicole Gee.
Their
remains arrived at Dover Air Force Base, at 8am for a 'dignified
transfer,; when fallen troops' return to American soil is marked by a
solemn movement.
theconservativetreehouse | Mrs. Shana
Chappell is furious at the Biden administration, and now that we know
the military was aware of the pending attack before it took place – the
horrific event is even worse. Mrs. Chappell’s voice cries out in anger
and grief. The incompetence and failed leadership in the Afghan
withdrawal led to the death of her son, Kareem Nikoui. Her Facebook and
Instagram accounts have now been suspended.
nakedcapitalism | Last Friday, the CDC published “Outbreak Associated with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant in an Elementary School — Marin County, California, May–June 2021”
(“Outbreak”). This got a lot of play in the Northern California press,
with a good deal of reporting done (or at least original stories
written), because the study was led by Marin County Public Health, and they with other California epidemiologists and experts wrote the study up and then
submitted it to the CDC, which accepted it. Good for them! However,
there is a question “Outbreak” does not ask, and that the press did not
ask. Carefully avoiding spoilers — though few NC readers will be
surprised at the plot twist — I will first quote the “Outbreak” on the
incident. Then I will switch into media critique mode, and present the
headlines from Northern Califonia. After that, I will present the
implications drawn from the outbreak by the press (which are more broad
spectrum than the headlines). Finally, I will give the unasked question
from “Outbreak” a thorough airing, and conclude.
The outbreak location was an elementary school in Marin County,
California… Each grade includes 20 to 25 students in single classrooms.
Other than two teachers, one of whom was the index patient, all school
staff members were vaccinated (verified in California’s Immunization
Registry). The index patient became symptomatic on May 19 with nasal
congestion and fatigue. This teacher reported attending social events
during May 13–16 but did not report any known COVID-19 exposures and
attributed symptoms to allergies. The teacher continued working during
May 17–21, subsequently experiencing cough, subjective fever, and
headache. The school required teachers and students to mask while
indoors; interviews with parents of infected students suggested that
students’ adherence to masking and distancing guidelines in line with
CDC recommendations (3) was high in class. However, the teacher was
reportedly unmasked on occasions when reading aloud in class. On May 23,
the teacher notified the school that they received a positive result
for a SARS-CoV-2 test performed on May 21 and self-isolated until May
30. The teacher did not receive a second COVID-19 test, but reported
fully recovering during isolation.
The index patient’s students began experiencing symptoms on May 22.
During May 23–26, among 24 students in this grade, 22 were tested….
Twelve (55%) of the 22 students received a positive test result,
including eight who experienced symptom onset during May 22–26.
Throughout this period, all desks were separated by 6 ft. Students were
seated in five rows; the attack rate in the two rows seated closest to
the teacher’s desk was 80% (eight of 10) and was 28% (four of 14) in the
three back rows…
On May 22, students in a another classroom, who differed in age by 3
years from the students in the class with the index case and who were
also ineligible for vaccination began to experience symptoms. The two
classrooms were separated by a large outdoor courtyard with lunch tables
that were blocked off from use with yellow tape. All classrooms had
portable high-efficiency particulate air filters and doors and windows
were left open. Fourteen of 18 students in this separate grade received
testing; six tests had positive results. Investigation revealed that one
student in this grade hosted a sleepover on May 21 with two classmates
from the same grade. All three of these students experienced symptoms
after the sleepover and received positive SARS-CoV-2 test results. Among
infected students in this class, test dates ranged from May 24 to June
1; symptom onset occurred during May 22–31.
There is a unanimity of opinion by the headline-writing editors that
the source of the problem was the index case: the unvaccinated teacher.
Indeed, that’s without justification — that is, is not only a matter of aghastitude — given the “Implications for Public Health Practice” in the Summary section of “Outbreak”:
Vaccines are effective against the Delta variant, but
transmission risk remains elevated among unvaccinated persons in
schools. In addition to vaccination, strict adherence to multiple
nonpharmaceutical prevention strategies, including masking, are
important to ensure safe school instruction.
(I presume the Summary is tacked on to the submitted study by CDC.)
Now let’s turn to the bodies of the stories, where there is a broader
spectrum of opinion than in the headlines.
Harpers | In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and
they were good. Midcentury American man could come home after eight
hours of work and turn on his television and know where he stood in
relation to his wife, and his children, and his neighbors, and his town,
and his country, and his world. And that was good. Or he could open the
local paper in the morning in the ritual fashion, taking his civic
communion with his coffee, and know that identical scenes were unfolding
in households across the country.
Over frequencies our American never tuned in to, red-baiting,
ultra-right-wing radio preachers hyperventilated to millions. In
magazines and books he didn’t read, elites fretted at great length about
the dislocating effects of television. And for people who didn’t look
like him, the media had hardly anything to say at all. But our man lived
in an Eden, not because it was unspoiled, but because he hadn’t
considered any other state of affairs. For him, information was in its
right—that is to say, unquestioned—place. And that was good, too.
Today, we are lapsed. We understand the media through a metaphor—“the
information ecosystem”—which suggests to the American subject that she
occupies a hopelessly denatured habitat. Every time she logs on to
Facebook or YouTube or Twitter, she encounters the toxic byproducts of
modernity as fast as her fingers can scroll. Here is hate speech,
foreign interference, and trolling; there are lies about the sizes of
inauguration crowds, the origins of pandemics, and the outcomes of
elections.
She looks out at her fellow citizens and sees them as contaminated,
like tufted coastal animals after an oil spill, with “disinformation”
and “misinformation.” She can’t quite define these terms, but she feels
that they define the world, online and, increasingly, off.
Everyone scrounges this wasteland for tainted morsels of content, and
it’s impossible to know exactly what anyone else has found, in what
condition, and in what order. Nevertheless, our American is sure that
what her fellow citizens are reading and watching is bad. According to a
2019 Pew survey, half of Americans think that “made-up news/info” is “a
very big problem in the country today,” about on par with the “U.S.
political system,” the “gap between rich and poor,” and “violent crime.”
But she is most worried about disinformation, because it seems so new,
and because so new, so isolable, and because so isolable, so fixable. It
has something to do, she knows, with the algorithm.
What is to be done with all the bad content? In March, the Aspen
Institute announced that it would convene an exquisitely nonpartisan
Commission on Information Disorder, co-chaired by Katie Couric, which
would “deliver recommendations for how the country can respond to this
modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions.” The fifteen
commissioners include Yasmin Green, the director of research and
development for Jigsaw, a technology incubator within Google that
“explores threats to open societies”; Garry Kasparov, the chess champion
and Kremlin critic; Alex Stamos, formerly Facebook’s chief security
officer and now the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory;
Kathryn Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s estranged daughter-in-law; and Prince
Harry, Prince Charles’s estranged son. Among the commission’s goals is
to determine “how government, private industry, and civil society can
work together . . . to engage disaffected populations who have lost
faith in evidence-based reality,” faith being a well-known prerequisite
for evidence-based reality.
The Commission on Information Disorder is the latest (and most
creepily named) addition to a new field of knowledge production that
emerged during the Trump years at the juncture of media, academia, and
policy research: Big Disinfo. A kind of EPA for content, it seeks to
expose the spread of various sorts of “toxicity” on social-media
platforms, the downstream effects of this spread, and the platforms’
clumsy, dishonest, and half-hearted attempts to halt it. As an
environmental cleanup project, it presumes a harm model of content
consumption. Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad
information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by
some standard. Otherwise, why care what people read and watch?
Big Disinfo has found energetic support from the highest echelons of
the American political center, which has been warning of an existential
content crisis more or less constantly since the 2016 election. To take
only the most recent example: in May, Hillary Clinton told the former
Tory leader Lord Hague that “there must be a reckoning by the tech
companies for the role that they play in undermining the information
ecosystem that is absolutely essential for the functioning of any
democracy.”
Trialsite | On August 25, NIH appeared in conference in federal court
in the District of New Jersey. The purpose of the appearance was for
resolution of Jin-Pyong Peter Yim v National Institutes of Health and
for scheduling of “motion practice”, if necessary. I am the plaintiff in
the case. Beneath the legal formalities, the case could reveal that NIH
deceived the nation on a treatment for COVID-19.
NIH is alleged to have violated the Freedom of Information
Act. NIH failed to respond to a document request made on January 28,
2021:
“All updates to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Treatment Guidelines that were endorsed by a vote of the Panel. (Date
Range for Record Search: From 01/01/2021 To 01/28/2021)”
The purpose of the FOIA request was not to obtain the
document. Rather, it was to know if a vote was held to endorse the NIH
recommendation on ivermectin. NIH violated FOIA because it did not
respond within the time defined by statute. A complaint was filed against the NIH on March 26, 2021 to appeal the non-response. NIH answered the complaint on June 30. The answer included an exhibit and testimony.
“You requested all updates to the Coronavirus Disease 2019
(COVID-19) Treatment Guidelines that were endorsed by a vote of the
Panel (Date range for record search from 01/01/2021 to 01/28/2021). All
approved updates to the guidelines are posted online and can be found here. The documents posted on this website respond to your request in full.”
I requested a change to the NIH response. The NIH response
is ambiguous as to whether the requested document exists. I provided a
URL that refers to a single document. I requested that that URL be given in the NIH FOIA response if that recommendation was endorsed by a vote.
The conference was presided over by Judge Lois H. Goodman.
She gave her opinion following discussion between the plaintiff and
defendant. She expressed skepticism of the legal basis for the
complaint. However, she urged further negotiation and allowed for
“motion practice” if no agreement was reached. Her concluding remarks
are here.
Following the conference, Judge Goodman also issued the following order:
“TEXT ORDER directing parties to confer to attempt
resolution to this dispute. Parties to report to the Court as to the
results of those efforts to resolve by 9/8/2021. If, matter cannot be
resolved, dispositive motions to be filed by 9/24/2021 and to be
returnable on 10/18/2021. Ms. Mahoney is directed to provide pro se
plaintiff with a copy of this text order. So Ordered by Magistrate Judge
Lois H. Goodman on 8/26/2021 .”
I had Covid. I had an antibody test to prove it. Am I protected (and do I need to get the vaccine)?
Let me start with the usual disclaimer: THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. I AM NOT A PHYSICIAN.
But
the answer is now increasingly clear: natural immunity from Covid
following infection and recovery is HIGHLY protective against future
Covid infections. Rates of reinfection are very low.
Perhaps
natural immunity eventually wanes, but we don’t know when. In fact, a
little-noticed paper from June suggests it may actually strengthen for at least a year - and provide plenty of protection from Delta and other variants.
I
am not going into the problems with vaccine-generated protection today
or with our political unwillingness to recognize natural immunity.
(Remember, GOOD NEWS - we could all use it).
Let’s just look instead at why natural immunity works so well.
You immune response comes in two forms: “humoral” and “cellular.”
When
you are infected with Sars-Cov-2, your body’s “B-cells” - part of the
immune system - quickly pour out “antibodies.” These antibodies attack
the viral particles circulating in your blood and other fluids, hoping
to keep the virus from entering your cells and replicating itself.
This
is humoral immunity. Your B-cells make antibodies in many different
shapes. Some are better at sticking to the virus. Scientists call these
“neutralizing” antibodies because they neutralize the “antigen,” the
foreign body attacking you, keeping it from entering your cells.
Amazingly,
your B-cells quickly figure out which antibodies neutralize most
effectively and make more of them, while cutting back on those that
don’t work.
At the same time, another part of the immune system -
killer or CD8 T-cells - attacks cells that the virus has already
infected. You destroy your own cells to prevent the virus from using
them to make more copies of itself. This is cellular immunity.
For
a few days after you are infected, your immune system is in a race with
the virus. If you win the race, defeat the virus, and recover - as the
vast majority of people infected with Sars-Cov-2 do - within a week or
two you should have no measurable levels of virus in your body.
americanthinker | Prior to the 1950s, paralytic polio was a scourge. FDR was crippled
from it while in his 30s, the March of Dimes was started to combat it,
and photos of rows and rows of children in iron lungs were common in
the media. From this situation, vaccines were developed to combat the disease.
Polio is
caused by one of three types of poliovirus that can cause paralysis and
death. In the 1950s, two vaccines were independently developed to
combat it, one by Jonas Salk and the other by Albert Sabin. Polio
was eradicated, and today those vaccines are thought of
as miracle drugs. But were they?
In the early 1950s, Salk was the
first to come out with a vaccine. His was designed to treat all three
polio viruses at once. His approach seemed basic enough. It was to
grow polioviruses in the lab, kill them, and then inject healthy
children with the dead viruses. The idea was that the dead viruses
could not reproduce, so they could not harm the children. The
children's immune system, however, would detect the injected viruses and
produce effective antibodies against them, thus creating immunity
against polio.
Just prior to beginning mass inoculations, samples of the Salk vaccine were sent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for safety testing.
There, when bacteriologist Dr. Bernice Eddy injected
the vaccine into her monkeys, some of them fell down paralyzed. She
concluded that the virus was not entirely dead as promised. Instead,
the virus was active and could reproduce in its host. Eddy sounded the
alarm and presented her findings. A debate ensued in the corridors of
power. Advocates for caution were overruled, and the
mass inoculation proceeded on schedule.
The inoculation
of children began in 1955. Within days, some injected children were
coming down with polio. Some were even spreading the disease to
family members. Subsequent investigations determined
that the vaccine had caused 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children
with varying degrees of paralysis and ten dead. Alton Ochsner, a
professor of surgery at Tulane Medical School, was such a strong
proponent of proceeding with the inoculation program that he gave
vaccine injections to his grandchildren to prove that it was
safe. Ochsner's grandson died from polio a few months later, and his
granddaughter contracted polio but survived.
This fiasco has become known as the Cutter incident. It's
named after the manufacturer of the vaccine. The vaccine was recalled
and retested for safety, but the damage had already been done in the
mind of the public.
medical-net | Quantum biology is an emerging field of science, established in the
1920s, which looks at whether the subatomic world of quantum mechanics
plays a role in living cells. Quantum mechanics is an interdisciplinary
field by nature, bringing together nuclear physicists, biochemists and
molecular biologists.
In a research paper published by the journal Physical Chemistry
Chemical Physics, a team from Surrey's Leverhulme Quantum Biology
Doctoral Training Centre used state-of-the-art computer simulations and
quantum mechanical methods to determine the role proton tunneling, a
purely quantum phenomenon, plays in spontaneous mutations inside DNA.
Proton tunneling involves the spontaneous disappearance of a proton
from one location and the same proton's re-appearance nearby.
The
research team found that atoms of hydrogen, which are very light,
provide the bonds that hold the two strands of the DNA's double helix
together and can, under certain conditions, behave like spread-out waves
that can exist in multiple locations at once, thanks to proton
tunneling. This leads to these atoms occasionally being found on the
wrong strand of DNA, leading to mutations.
Although these mutations' lifetime is short, the team from Surrey has
revealed that they can still survive the DNA replication mechanism
inside cells and could potentially have health consequences.
Dr Marco Sacchi, the project lead and Royal Society University
Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, said: "Many have long
suspected that the quantum world - which is weird, counter-intuitive and
wonderful - plays a role in life as we know it. While the idea that
something can be present in two places at the same time might be absurd
to many of us, this happens all the time in the quantum world, and our
study confirms that quantum tunneling also happens in DNA at room
temperature."
There is still a long and exciting road ahead of us to understand how
biological processes work on the subatomic level, but our study - and
countless others over the recent years - have confirmed quantum
mechanics are at play. In the future, we are hoping to investigate how
tautomers produced by quantum tunneling can propagate and generate
genetic mutations."
Louie Slocombe, PhD Student, Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre and Study Co-Author
Jim Al-Khalili, a co-author of the study and Co-Director of the
Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre at the University of
Surrey, said: "It has been thrilling to work with this group of young,
diverse and talented thinkers - made up of a broad coalition of the
scientific world. This work cements quantum biology as the most exciting
field of scientific research in the 21st century."
discovermagazine |With photosynthesis, scientists show
for the first time that there are quantum effects in living systems.
This could lead to better solar panels, energy storage or even quantum
computers. (Credit: Shutterstock) We all probably learned about photosynthesis,
how plants turn sunlight into energy, in school. It might seem,
therefore, that we figured out this bit of the world. But scientists are
still learning new things about even the most basic stuff (see also
the sun and moon), and photosynthesis is no different. In particular, according to a study released Monday in Nature Chemistry,
an international team of scientists showed that molecules involved in
photosynthesis display quantum mechanical behavior. Even though we’d suspected
as much before, this is the first time we’ve seen quantum effects in
living systems. Not only will it help us better understand plants,
sunlight and everything in between, but it could also mean cool new tech
in the future.
The Quantum Conundrum
First, let’s back up. While photosynthesis may be taught in classrooms
the world over, quantum mechanics is a bit less popular, in part because
it’s so weird. Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist Richard Feynman
once said, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum
mechanics." It’s so impenetrable to non-experts that the same metaphors
come up whenever someone tries to explain it. You might have heard of Schrödinger's Cat,
which is both alive and dead at the same time thanks to quantum
weirdness — in particular, because electrons can be in two states at the
same time. It’s only when we observe the system that the weirdness
collapses and reality “picks” one state: the cat’s actually alive (or
dead), the electron’s actually at this end of the room (or that end).
But quantum effects are typically limited to the very small, and only
really observable in perfect, laboratory conditions. A living being,
with its wet, messy systems, would be a tough place to find some quantum
weirdness lurking — and yet we have.
Molecular Madness
Scientists zoomed in on the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex, a key component of green sulfur bacteria's machinery
for photosynthesis. It’s been a historical favorite for such research
because we’ve long known its structure and it's fairly easy to work
with. Previous experiments had seemed to show light-sensitive molecules
in this area in two different states at the same time — that’s quantum
weirdness — but the effect lasted more than 1 picosecond, which is much
longer than expected. This new study shows that it was really just
regular vibrations in the molecules, nothing quantum about it. But
researchers have been excited about the possibilities of quantum biology
for years, so having disproved the earlier experiments, the authors
wanted to find some new evidence of their own. “We wondered if we might
be able to observe that Schrödinger cat situation,” says co-author
Thomas la Cour Jansen in a press release. And observe it they did! With a
technique called two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy, researchers
saw molecules in simultaneous excited states — quantum weirdness akin to
a cat being alive and dead at the same time. What’s more, the effect
lasted exactly as long as theories predicted it, suggesting this
evidence of quantum biology will last. As the authors succinctly put it,
“Thus, our measurements provide an unambiguous experimental observation
of excited-state vibronic coherence in the FMO complex.” What could be
simpler? The results shed light (haha) on how to harvest energy from
light, and the team thinks they’re “generally applicable” to a variety
of systems, living and non-living alike. This means it could result in
engineering benefits such as better solar panels, energy storage or even
quantum computers. And, of course, updated textbooks for tomorrow’s
lessons on photosynthesis.
quantamagazine | It’s not surprising that quantum physics has a reputation for being
weird and counterintuitive. The world we’re living in sure doesn’t feel
quantum mechanical. And until the 20th century, everyone assumed that
the classical laws of physics devised by Isaac Newton and others —
according to which objects have well-defined positions and properties at
all times — would work at every scale. But Max Planck, Albert Einstein,
Niels Bohr and their contemporaries discovered that down among atoms
and subatomic particles, this concreteness dissolves into a soup of
possibilities. An atom typically can’t be assigned a definite position,
for example — we can merely calculate the probability of finding it in
various places. The vexing question then becomes: How do quantum
probabilities coalesce into the sharp focus of the classical world?
Physicists sometimes talk about this changeover as the
“quantum-classical transition.” But in fact there’s no reason to think
that the large and the small have fundamentally different rules, or that
there’s a sudden switch between them. Over the past several decades,
researchers have achieved a greater understanding of how quantum
mechanics inevitably becomes classical mechanics through an interaction
between a particle or other microscopic system and its surrounding
environment.
One of the most remarkable ideas in this theoretical framework is
that the definite properties of objects that we associate with classical
physics — position and speed, say — are selected from a menu of quantum
possibilities in a process loosely analogous to natural selection in
evolution: The properties that survive are in some sense the “fittest.”
As in natural selection, the survivors are those that make the most
copies of themselves. This means that many independent observers can
make measurements of a quantum system and agree on the outcome — a
hallmark of classical behavior.
This idea, called quantum Darwinism (QD), explains a lot about why we
experience the world the way we do rather than in the peculiar way it
manifests at the scale of atoms and fundamental particles. Although
aspects of the puzzle remain unresolved, QD helps heal the apparent rift
between quantum and classical physics.
Only recently, however, has quantum Darwinism been put to the
experimental test. Three research groups, working independently in
Italy, China and Germany, have looked for the telltale signature of the
natural selection process by which information about a quantum system
gets repeatedly imprinted on various controlled environments. These
tests are rudimentary, and experts say there’s still much more to be
done before we can feel sure that QD provides the right picture of how
our concrete reality condenses from the multiple options that quantum
mechanics offers. Yet so far, the theory checks out.
virginiastoner | Vaccine dangers hiding in plain sight
FACT: There has been a massive increase in deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) this year. That’s not a ‘conspiracy theory’, that’s an indisputable fact. You can try to explain it or justify it, or even argue it doesn’t matter, but you can’t deny it.
We’re not talking about a modest increase in death reports, something we might chat about in concerned voices over Chai tea and bagels at a company mixer. We’re talking about a huge and unprecedented increase—so massive that in the last 4 months alone, VAERS has received over 40% of all death reports it has ever received in its entire 30+year history. So massive it’s literally “off the chart.” The first chart in the pair below shows VAERS death reports from 2014 thru 2020. If you tried to add the 2021 data to it, it would be way, way off the chart. The second chart shows how much detail was lost when the 2021 data was squeezed in.
The pair of charts below are another illustration. Notice all age groups had an increase in death reports from the COVID-19 vaccines—with both the 18-64 and 65+ age groups experiencing a dramatic “off the chart” increase.
The increase in VAERS death reports is not due to more vaccination
Even with the COVID-19 shots, the estimated total vaccines administered so far this year is less than the yearly average–because we are only a quarter of the way through this year. No doubt the vaccine count will climb much higher by the end of this year, but it’s not the reason for the massive increase in VAERS death reports over the last 4 months.
The following chart compares estimates of vaccines administered with deaths reported to VAERS, separating COVID-19 vaccines from other vaccines. The rate of reported deaths for other vaccines looks fairly normal; the massive increase is mainly from the COVID-19 vaccines.
There are many notes at the end of this paper about how the vaccine data was estimated, and where the data for these charts was obtained, along with the data table.
abcnews | Washington County's sheriff confirmed Tuesday night that jail inmates
had been prescribed ivermectin, but did not say how many. It wasn't
clear if all the inmates who were prescribed the medication had tested
positive for COVID-19.
“There is an open investigation and we can’t comment on it right now," Embry told The Associated Press.
Dr. Rob Karas, the jail's physician, has said no inmates were forced to take the drug.
The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ivermectin for
use by people and animals for some parasitic worms, head lice and skin
conditions. The FDA has not approved its use in treating or preventing
COVID-19 in humans. According to the FDA, side effects for the drug
include skin rash, nausea and vomiting.
“Using any treatment for
COVID-19 that’s not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a
clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” the FDA said in a
warning about the drug.
Embry declined to say who was the target
of the board's investigation. The board has authority over physicians,
but not jail facilities.
Sheriff
Tim Helder did not return a message Thursday, and a spokesperson for
the sheriff's office did not immediately respond to questions about the
drug's use.
In a lengthy statement released to the AP Thursday,
Karas defended the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Karas said he
has prescribed it to inmates and patients at his clinics who are
significantly sick with COVID-19 since late 2020. He did not respond to
questions about the investigation and the number of inmates who have
have been prescribed the drug.
“I do not have the luxury of
conducting my own clinical trial or study and am not attempting to do
so," Karas wrote. “I am on the front line of trying to prevent death and
serious illness."
The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
reported that the sheriff's office said Helder had learned of the drug's
use at the jail on Tuesday. In a July 20 email to Helder, Karas
recommended the sheriff's staff take it as a preventive measure against
COVID-19 but did not mention its use on inmates. Karas has said he's
taken the drug, as have members of his family.
dailymail | A jail doctor in Washington County, Arkansas, has been using an animal deworming drug to treat inmates with Covid-19 even though the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has specifically warned against it.
Ivermectin
is often used as a dewormer in animals including cows and horses, and
is not recommended for treating the virus. The FDA said it 'can cause
serious harm'.
During a finance and
budget committee meeting for Washington County on Tuesday night the
jail's physician Dr Rob Karas asked for a 10 per cent increase in the
medical services contract, even after the county sheriff confirmed that
the jail health provider had been prescribing the drug.
Dr Karas has faced calls to resign over the revelation.
County-elected Justice of the Peace Eva Madison brought the issue back
up towards the end of the meeting after jail officials presented their
2022 budget. 'I learned today that Dr Karas is giving ivermectin - cow
dewormer - to the inmates at the jail,' she said.
Madison told members of the Washington
County quorum court - the county's governing body - that a jail official
and county employee, who asked to stay anonymous, told her they had
been sent to the jail's clinic to get tested for Covid-19.
When
the unidentified person tested negative they told Madison they were
given a $76 prescription for ivermectin, as reported by CBS News.
'They
were concerned about the prescription, asked their primary care
physician about it and the doctor told him to 'throw that in the trash,'
she said.
'(The person) tested
negative, was given a prescription for ivermectin, was told to go to Dr
Karas's pharmacy just off campus to have it filled,' Madison told the
committee.
She added: 'He's out $76
because of Dr Karas prescribing dewormer to a county employee for
treatment of a condition that he didn't have.
'The
employee had the good fortune to have a physician that he could go to
and ask for a second opinion. Our inmates do not have that choice.'
Washington
County Sheriff Tim Helder did not say how many inmates at the 710-bed
facility had been given ivermectin and defended Dr Karas, who has been
prescribing the medication.
medrxiv | CONCLUSIONS: “This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared
to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.
Background:
Reports of waning vaccine-induced immunity against COVID-19 have begun
to surface. With that, the comparable long-term protection conferred by
previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear.
Methods:
We conducted a retrospective observational study comparing three groups:
(1)SARS-CoV-2-naive individuals who received a two-dose regimen of the
BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine, (2)previously infected
individuals who have not been vaccinated, and (3)previously infected and
single dose vaccinated individuals. Three multivariate logistic
regression models were applied.
In all models we evaluated four
outcomes: SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease, COVID-19-related
hospitalization and death. The follow-up period of June 1 to August 14,
2021, when the Delta variant was dominant in Israel.
Results:
SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11)
increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant
compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection
or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The
increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as
well.
When allowing the infection to occur at any time before
vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning
natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naive vaccinees had
a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough
infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for
symptomatic disease.
SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees were also at a greater
risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were
previously infected.
Conclusions:
This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and
stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and
hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to
the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were
both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the
vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.
thedailybeast | The massive surge of COVID-19 infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries on earth, is pointing to a complicated path ahead for America.
In
June, there were several days with zero new COVID infections in Israel.
The country launched its national vaccination campaign in December last
year and has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 80
percent of citizens above the age of 12 fully inoculated. COVID, most
Israelis thought, had been defeated. All restrictions were lifted and Israelis went back to crowded partying and praying in mask-free venues.
Fast forward two months later: Israel reported 9,831 new diagnosed
cases on Tuesday, a hairbreadth away from the worst daily figure ever
recorded in the country—10,000—at the peak of the third wave. More than
350 people have died of the disease
in the first three weeks of August. In a Sunday press conference, the
directors of seven public hospitals announced that they could no longer
admit any coronavirus patients. With 670 COVID-19 patients requiring
critical care, their wards are overflowing and staff are at breaking
point.
“I don’t want to frighten you,” coronavirus czar Dr. Salman
Zarka told the Israeli parliament this week. “But this is the data.
Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.”
Israel vaccinated its population almost exclusively with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine,
which received full FDA approval on Monday and remains the gold
standard for the prevention of severe illness due to the coronavirus.
But in early July, with citizens over the age of 60 almost completely
vaccinated, Israeli scientists began observing a worrisome rise in
infections—if not in severe illness and death—among the
double-vaccinated.
Fully vaccinated people with weakened immune systems appeared particularly vulnerable to the aggressive Delta variant.
By
mid-July, Sheba Hospital Professor Galia Rahav began to experiment with
booster shots for oncology patients, transplant patients, and the
hospital’s own staff. A group of 70 elderly vaccinated Israelis with
transplanted kidneys were the first to receive a third dose.
The success of Rahav’s trials
in boosting immunity at about the sixth-month mark contributed to the
Centers for Disease Control decision, announced last week, to begin
offering booster shots to Americans in September.
In order to keep
severe illness and the number of COVID deaths down, and avoiding a
fourth national lockdown, Israel has embarked on an aggressive effort to
provide all adults with boosters in a matter of weeks.
MedPageToday | Over the last week, the topic of COVID-19 booster shots -- a third
dose of mRNA vaccine for healthy Americans -- has been thrust into the
spotlight. The surgeon general, CDC director, Anthony Fauci, MD, and
President Biden have announced that they wish for boosters to be
available by late September for healthy adults who are 8 months out from
their original two-dose series. While this will be contingent on an FDA
evaluation to determine the "safety and effectiveness of the third dose,"
a clear path forward has already been set. And just like everything
else throughout the course of the pandemic, the choice has been made
with a dearth of data and an abundance of political pressure.
Diminishing vaccine effectiveness supposedly makes the case for
boosters. But there are two big questions here: First, what is current
vaccine effectiveness? And second, what justifies boosters? Let's
consider these in turn.
What Is Vaccine Effectiveness Now?
We have to be honest, many vaccine effectiveness studies are poorly
done. All studies compare the rate of getting a breakthrough infection
among vaccinated people against the rate of infection in unvaccinated
people. But there are some issues with this approach. First, as time
goes on, more unvaccinated people have had and recovered from COVID-19
(and these individuals may be less likely to go on to get a shot). This
means that their risk of getting COVID-19 a second time is far less than
the typical unvaccinated person who has never been sick. Even if
vaccines "work" as well as before, this factor alone will result in the
appearance of diminishing vaccine effectiveness.
Decisions about boosters have to be based in science and made by
vaccine regulators. They should not be subject to the pressure of
manufacturers, politicians, or political appointees. They should not be
rushed. On Sunday television, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, was
specifically asked if the third shot was safe. His response: "the plan is contingent on that..."
Excuse me? We don't know that to be true, and yet, our top medical and public health experts are pushing for boosters? Drug safety expert Walid Gellad, MD, MPH, tweeted: "It was irresponsible to push for boosters in healthy people before safety review."
Two days after the White House's announcement, two people with knowledge of the FDA's deliberation told The Washington Post that the agency was investigating myocarditis signal with the Moderna vaccination.
Canadian data suggest the risk may be 2.5 times that of Pfizer's
vaccine. The timing of this internal information leaking to reporters
naturally leads me to wonder if reviewers in the agency are attempting
to counteract political pressure, and create space to conduct a thorough
review of booster data.
politico | The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is using outdated and unreliable data oncoronavirus
breakthrough infections to help make major decisions, such as who gets
booster shots, according to three officials with direct knowledge of the
situation.
The agency originally tried to track
all infections in vaccinated people, from mild to severe. But in May it
decided to focus on the most severe cases, saying that would allow it to
better monitor overall conditions and make more informed, targeted
policy decisions.
Forty-nine states are now regularly
sending CDC information on hospitalized breakthrough patients. But more
than a dozen told POLITICO that they do not have the capacity to match
patients’ hospital admission data with their immunization records.Instead,
those states rely on hospital administrators to report breakthrough
infections. The resulting data is often aggregated, inaccurate and omits
critical details for teasing out trends, such as which vaccine a person
received and whether they have been fully vaccinated, a dozen state
officials said.
The
gaps in this crucial data stream raise questions about the Biden
administration’s ability to spot and respond to changes in the virus’s
behavior — such as the rapid spread of the Delta variant, which crowded
out other strains — or vaccines’ performance. It also underscores the
extent to which the CDC and public health departments across the country
are still struggling to collect and study critical Covid-19 information
18 months after the pandemic began.
“I
think it would be really challenging [for the CDC] to interpret the
results or to interpret the data when you have only some jurisdictions
reporting [breakthrough infections],” said Theresa Sokol, lead
epidemiologist for Louisiana’s state public health department, which is
working closely with the CDC on studies of breakthrough infections. “I
know that there are some jurisdictions that don't even have access to
their vaccination data. They don't have the authority or their
permission.”
Many
of the hurdles facing CDC and state officials trying to gather data
during the age of the Delta variant are the result of the patchwork of
public-health agency data systems, many of which cannot communicate with
each other. For more than a decade, states have pleaded with the
federal government for money to make it easier to gather and study
disease trends electronically. The pandemic has overloaded those arcane systems, revealing the disorganized nature of public health reporting and case investigation.
yomiuri shimbun |During the Tokyo Olympics, Delta strains originating in India raged and the number of infected people continues to increase. Why
is Japan not trying to use ivermectin, which has few reports of side
effects and has been reported to be effective in clinical trials in
other countries? On August
5, we had an urgent interview with Mr. Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo
Metropolitan Medical Association, who had been proposing effective uses
of ivermectin from early on.
The peak of infection spread that is not yet visible
――It seems that the explosive spread of infection, which is also called the 5th wave, is still rising. The
number of people waiting at home and receiving medical treatment is
increasing rapidly. How is the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association
responding?
"When
the number of people waiting at home and receiving medical treatment
increased sharply in the third wave of January, this was no good, and
the Tokyo Metropolitan Medical Association and the Tokyo Metropolitan
Medical Association worked together to build a system with the goal of
24-hour support. We have been able to handle up to 37 of the 47 district
medical associations. However, the current situation where more than
1000 home caregivers are piled up every day is beyond the limit. ,
Vaccination, medical examination, home visit, etc. are not available.
Now, the health center is coordinating hospitalization. There is also a
hospitalization coordinating center in Tokyo, but there is a system that
can quickly accept and treat suddenly changed corona patients. I
haven't gotten to the point of being established. "
Many clinical trial results are "effective for prevention and treatment"
--If
you read the papers on clinical trials of ivermectin that have been
published around the world, there are many examples that are effective
for both prevention and treatment.
"I
am aware that there are many papers that ivermectin is effective in the
prevention and treatment of corona, mainly in Central and South America
and Asia. There is no effective therapeutic drug, although it is
necessary to deal with patients who develop it one after another. The
vaccine is not in time. At such an imminent time, there is a paper that
ivermectin is effective for corona, so it is a natural response for
clinicians to try using it. Doctor-led clinical practice That's why many
test papers came out. "
--Usually,
pharmaceutical companies conduct large-scale clinical trials to see the
effects, but ivermectin has been selected by the World Health
Organization (WHO) as a silver bullet for tropical diseases such as
onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis. It is a drug
approved by countries around the world more than 20 years ago. If it is effective for the new corona, it is not applicable, but it is unavoidable that we decided to use it in a pandemic.
"That's
right. The medical field of a pandemic is a battlefield. It's the same
as a field hospital. Patients are brought in and their condition
deteriorates one after another and they die. So I can understand the
feelings of the doctor who clings to this and administers it. "
"The
other day, a research group at the All India Institute of Medical
Sciences / AIIMS, which sets guidelines for the treatment of corona
infections in India, has published a paper investigating the preventive
effects of ivermectin. According to the report, about 3,900 medical
workers (staff and students) were given 0.3 mg / kg of ivermectin twice
at 3-day intervals, only once, and then. As a result of conducting
clinical trials divided into three groups of those who did not, it is
said that those who received ivermectin twice reduced the new corona
infection by 83%. It was the first time in the world to publish a paper.
It's a class research group, so it's very reliable. "
Why is no one interested in India anymore with respect to the Coronapocalypse? Can a couple of weeks really make such an incredible difference? The contrast from July to August is really stark. When the news was bad you couldn't turn to a news outlet that wasn’t reporting about the continuous megadeath in India. Now, not nary a peep...,
Speaks volumes how reporting is being used to gin up fear beyond what is suggested by the "science". Since the Indian coronapocalypse has fallen off the official narrative radar, I went over to the Times of India to have a look. They have a “Covid Tracker” that says that there were 382 deaths on Aug 22 related to Covid-21. New Cases are down 30%, to 25,320.
Now if you do the math, India has ~1.4 billion people. These Covid-21 figures don't even amount to rounding errors. Given that Ivermectin is in the Indian Covid-21 treatment protocol - AS ACROSS PARTS OF THE AFRICAN CONTINENT - maybe the 1.4 billion horse-paste eating Indian animals are getting some type of prophylactic and curative benefit from their veterinary medicine?
This site is another good place to watch and keep track of the numbers. I follow Uttar Pradesh. Their deaths from Covid today (with a population above 500 million) were …. zero, niente, rien, zed. aka none.
Of course there were likely a few, but I challenge anyone to prove that India’s numbers are as through the roof as the U.S. There are no funeral pyres burning, floating bodies in the Ganges, hospitals overflowing, shortages of O2 canisters, etc.
Ivermectin use? High.
Vaccination rate? Still in the single digits.
Florida? Under reporting did you say?
Texas? Pediatric wards packed.
Oregon? Sending children to hospital in Seattle due to lack of beds?
onafhanklik | The low frequency of cases and deaths from the SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 virus
in some countries of Africa has called our attention to the unusual
behavior of this disease. Data from 19 countries that participated in
the WHO sponsored African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC),
from 1995 until 2015, intended to treat over 90 million people annually
and protect an at-risk population of 115 million, were compared with
thirty-five (Non-APOC), countries that were not included. The
statistics show a significant 28% lower mortality (0.72 IC 95%
0,67-0,78) and 8% lower rate of infection (0.92 IC95% 0,91-0,93) due to
COVID-19. It was concluded that the incidence in mortality rates and
number of cases is significantly lower among the APOC countries compared
to non-APOC countries. Additional studies are needed to confirm it.
Ivermectin has been banned in South Africa to used for Covid19
– there is no vaccine and those “promised vaccines” all over, are also
not of any guarantee to anybody. For how long is those vaccines, for a
year perhaps? And people still need to wear masks and closed down
businesses to harm all economies. No income, no food and no employment.
Mass control and manipulation.
What are the benefits of Ivermectin? There were already various trials in different countries.
Regarding the Covid-19 virus, it was earlier stated on 2 November 2020,
that when Covid-19 arrived in Tanzania, their President Magufuli didn’t
believe in his people to stay at home. He wanted his people to get into
the churches and mosques to pray.
Speaking
during a political rally in Chato Geita, Magufuli said his government
did not bow to pressure to lockdowns. He stated that many threatened
us with dire consequences, they wanted us to shut down the economy so
that we run away from the problem but in reality, leadership is about
carrying the problems on those you lead on your shoulders that is why
today we are here. He is not the only country that decided not to
close down the businesses and economy.
Tanzania’s
economy must go ahead as it is more important than coronavirus, which
has killed 21 people in the East African country, according to the
president.
nature | Considering
the urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, detection of various new
mutant strains and future potential re-emergence of novel coronaviruses,
repurposing of approved drugs such as Ivermectin could be worthy of
attention. This evidence-based review article aims to discuss the
mechanism of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 and summarizing the
available literature over the years. A schematic of the key cellular
and biomolecular interactions between Ivermectin, host cell, and
SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 pathogenesis and prevention of complications have
been proposed.
Introduction
A
relatively recent surge in zoonotic diseases has been noted over the
past few decades. Several reasons could be responsible for this
“spill-over” of disease-causing agents from animals to humans. These
include an exponential rise in the global population causing man to
encroach new ecological habitats in search of space, food, and resources
as well as improved opportunities for rampant wildlife trade causing
inter-species pathogen jumps. The 1980s was known for HIV/AIDS crisis
that originated from the great apes, while the Avian flu pandemic in
2004-07 came from the birds. The pigs lead to the Swine flu pandemic in
2009 and bats were the original hosts of Ebola, Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS), Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS), and
probably Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
outbreak as well.
COVID-19 has already caused millions of deaths
worldwide and has paralyzed not only the world’s healthcare system but
also the political and economic relations between countries [1].
The fact that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been thought to have originated
from wildlife and may have “jumped” into humans, not only highlights
future risks from animal-borne diseases but also provides an important
clue to its resolution.
In such a scenario, where this “jump” has been
made from animal to human, it seems only logical to review a drug that
has worked efficiently against a disease-causing agent and is available
in a form that is safe for human consumption since the early 1980 s.
Ivermectin
belongs to a group of avermectins (AVM), which is a group of 16
membered macrocyclic lactone compounds discovered at the Japanese
Kitasato institute in 1967 during actinomycetes cultures with the fungus
Streptomyces avermitilis [2].
This drug radically lowered the incidence of river blindness and
lymphatic filariasis and was discovered and developed by William C.
Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for which they received the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine in 2015 [3, 4]. Ivermectin is enlisted in the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines [5].
Drug
repurposing, drug redirecting, or drug reprofiling is defined as the
identification of novel usages for existing drugs. The development
risks, costs as well as safety-related failure, are reduced with this
approach since these drugs have a well-established formulation
development, in vitro and in vivo screening, as well as pharmacokinetic
and pharmacodynamic profiles. Moreover, the first clinical trial phases
of many such drugs have been completed and can be bypassed to reduce
several years of development. Therefore, drug repurposing has the
potential to reduce the time frame for the whole process by up to 3–12
years and carries great potential [6].
Although
several drugs received Emergency Use Authorization for COVID-19
treatment with unsatisfactory supportive data, Ivermectin, on the other
hand, has been sidelined irrespective of sufficient convincing data
supporting its use. Nevertheless, many countries adopted ivermectin as
one of the first-line treatment options for COVID-19.
With the
ongoing vaccine roll-out programs in full swing across the globe, the
longevity of the immunity offered by these vaccines or their role in
offering protection against new mutant strains is still a matter of
debate. The adoption of Ivermectin as a “safety bridge” by some sections
of the population that are still waiting for their turn for vaccination
could be considered as a “logical” option.
Several
doctor-initiated clinical trial protocols that aimed to evaluate
outcomes, such as reduction in mortality figures, shortened length of
intensive care unit stay and/or hospital stay and elimination of the
virus with ivermectin use have been registered at the US
ClinicalTrials.gov [7].
Real-time data is also available with a meta-analysis of 55 studies to
date. As per data available on 16 May 2021, 100% of 36 early treatment
and prophylaxis studies report positive effects (96% of all 55 studies).
Of these, 26 studies show statistically significant improvements in
isolation. Random effects meta-analysis with pooled effects using the
most serious outcome reported 79% and 85% improvement for early
treatment and prophylaxis respectively (RR 0.21 [0.11–0.37] and 0.15
[0.09–0.25]). The results were similar after exclusion based sensitivity
analysis: 81% and 87% (RR 0.19 [0.14–0.26] and 0.13 [0.07–0.25]), and
after restriction to 29 peer-reviewed studies: 82% and 88% (RR 0.18
[0.11–0.31] and 0.12 [0.05–0.30]). Statistically significant
improvements were seen for mortality, ventilation, hospitalization,
cases, and viral clearance. 100% of the 17 Randomized Controlled Trials
(RCTs) for early treatment and prophylaxis report positive effects, with
an estimated improvement of 73% and 83% respectively (RR 0.27
[0.18–0.41] and 0.17 [0.05–0.61]), and 93% of all 28 RCTs. These studies
are tabulated in Table 1.
The probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as
positive for the 55 studies to date is estimated to be 1 in 23 trillion (p = 0.000000000000043).
The consistency of positive results across a wide variety of cases has
been remarkable. It is extremely unlikely that the observed results
could have occurred by chance [8].
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