expose-news | Dr. Nathan Wolfe was a founding citizen of Ghislaine Maxwell’s
TerraMar Project; a member of the Edge Foundation; a self-proclaimed
“virus hunter” whose area of research is zoonotic diseases with a
special focus on bats; with links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and
EcoHealth Alliance; who previously bungled epidemic responses while
selling pandemic insurance; whose company Metabiota which is funded by
Rosemont Seneca, Google, The Skoll Foundation, among others, was awarded
a sub-contract with the US Military’s DTRA program for work in
Ukrainian biolabs.
A few days before the end of March
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marija Zakharova published a
timeline of US-Ukraine bioresearch headed “BioBiden.” Of the 23
timeline points she listed, Nathan Wolfe or organisations associated
with him – Metabiota and Global Viral – were explicitly mentioned in 8
of them:
2007 – US DoD employee Nathan Wolfe founded Global Viral
Forecasting Institute (subsequently – Global Viral), a biomedical
company. The mission stated in the charter is non-commercial study of
transborder infections, including in China.
2014 – Metabiota, a
private commercial organisation specialising in the study of pandemic
risks is detached from Global Viral. Neil Callahan and John DeLoche,
employees of Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Partners are
appointed to the board of Metabiota. Global Viral and Metabiota begin to
get funding from the US Department of Defence.
2014 – Metabiota
shows interest in Ukraine and invites Hunter Biden to “assert Ukraine’s
cultural & economic independence from Russia”.
2014 – Metabiota and Burisma Holdings begin cooperation on an unnamed “science project in Ukraine”.
2014
– Metabiota, Global Viral and Black & Veatch Special Projects begin
full-fledged cooperation within the US DoD programmes.
2014-2016 – Implementation of Metabiota and US DoD contracts, including a $300,000 project in Ukraine.
2016 – former US Assistant Secretary for Defence Andrew Weber is appointed head of Metabiota’s global partnerships department.
2016
– EcoHealth Alliance, a Global Viral founder Nathan Wolfe’s structure,
is engaged in the study of bat-transmitted coronaviruses at the research
centre in a Wuhan laboratory, China.
Considering the accusation is US
political elites’ involvement in the military biological activity in
Ukraine, it perhaps indicates Moscow has identified Nathan Wolfe as a
person of interest in what Zakharova termed “this truly diabolical
plan.”
“If an alien
visited Earth, they would take some note of humans, but probably spend
most of their time trying to understand the dominant form of life on our
planet –microorganisms like bacteria and viruses.”
Nathan Wolfe, Business Continuity and The Pandemic Threat Robert A Clark (2016)
From 1999 to 2006 Wolfe conducted
research as a postdoctoral student and then as an assistant professor at
Johns Hopkins University. There he worked with American epidemiologist
Donald Burke, who suspected that the practice of hunting bushmeat in
Africa had exposed a source of HIV. Based in Cameroon, Wolfe studied the
local hunters and their hunting practices. In 2004 he and his
colleagues found that 1% of bushmeat hunters were infected with the
simian foamy virus – a virus that is closely related to HIV and carried
by nonhuman primates.
In 2006 he joined the department of
epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began
pursuing ways to monitor, predict, and prevent animal-to-human transfer
of viruses and conducted projects in Africa and Southeast Asia. In
China, he collaborated with scientists to investigate wet markets (food
markets that sell live animals) as a source of zoonoses (diseases from
wild animals).
thesaker.is | The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
continues analysing the military-biological activity of the USA and its
allies in Ukraine and other regions of the world in view of new
information received at the liberated territories
and at the branch offices of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
that form a unified information network.
We have previously stated that the Ukrainian
project of the Pentagon do not meet the pertinent healthcare problems of
Ukraine, while their implementation has not led to any improvement of
the sanitary-epidemiological situation.
The special military operation has led to forming the final report on DTRA activity dated from 2005 to 2016.
The document contains the data on evaluation of
healthcare, veterinary and biosecurity system efficiency prepared by a
group of U.S. experts in 2016.
This report is a concept document designed for
further planification of military-biological activity of the Pentagon in
Ukraine that contains conclusions on implementation of the programme
guidelines.
Despite the more than 10-year-long period of
cooperation in the alleged '...reduction of biological threats...', the
experts have stated:
'...There is no legislation on the control of
highly dangerous pathogens in the country, there are significant
deficiencies in biosafety... The current state of resources makes it
impossible for laboratories to respond effectively to public
health emergencies...'
The document emphasises that '...over the past five
years, Ukraine has shown no progress in implementing international
health regulations of the World Health Organisation'.
The report pays particular attention to
non-compliance with biosafety requirements when working and storing
microbial collections.
It has been stated '...that most facilities are
characterised by numerous gross violations, such as unlocked fencing
systems, unlatching windows, broken or inactive pathogen restriction
systems, lack of alarm systems...' The results of
the review conclude that there is no system for protecting dangerous
pathogens in Ukraine.
At the same time, the activities of the Defence
Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) have been assessed positively: the
organisation has managed to bring the national collection of
microorganisms to the United States, to organise biological assessment
work and to implement projects to study particularly dangerous and
economically significant infections that could cause a worsening
(changing) epidemic situation.
The report makes the case for continuing this work on behalf of the Pentagon that has cost more than $250 million since 2005.
The document is annexed with ambiguous comments
about the sponsors and implementers of the Biological Threat Reduction
Programme in Ukraine that have nothing to do with biosecurity issues. In
particular, the Soros Foundation is mentioned
with the notation '...contributed to the development of an open and
democratic society...'
It confirms again that the official activities of
the Pentagon in Ukraine are just a front for illegal military and
biological research.
We have repeatedly mentioned the role of U.S.
Democratic Party representatives in funding bioweapons activities in
Ukraine and the intermediary organisations that have been used for this
purpose.
I would like to refer to one of the key Pentagon contractors receiving money from Hunter Biden's investment fund, Metabiota.
The available data suggests that the company is
merely a front for internationally dubious purposes and is used by the
U.S. political elite to carry out opaque financial activities in various
parts of the world.
There is a specific example: Metabiota was involved
in the response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The activities of
the company's employees have raised questions from the World Health
Organisation (WHO) in terms of their compliance
with biosafety requirements.
This is the report of the international panel of
experts from the Haemorrhagic Fever Consortium who were involved in the
fight against Ebola virus disease in Sierra Leone in 2015.
According to the document, Metabiota staff had
failed to comply with handling procedures and concealed the involvement
of Pentagon staff who were using the company as a front. The main
purpose of these activities was to isolate highly virulent
variants of the virus from sick and dead people, as well as to export
its strains to the USA.
In view of the apparent failure of Metabiota's
activities to meet the goals of controlling the spread of the disease,
the World Health Organisation's Ebola coordinator, Philippe Barbosa,
recommended to recall the staff of the company saying
he was extremely concerned about the potential risks of such
collaboration to WHO's reputation.
The U.S. military contractor's heightened interest
in the Ebola virus is not a coincidence: the disease is one of the most
pathogenic to humans. During the outbreak that began in 2014, 28,000
people were contaminated, over 11,000 of them
died, the mortality rate was around 40%.
The special military operation has led to receiving
documents that reveals the plans of Metabiota and the Ukrainian
Scientific-Technological Centre to study the Ebola virus in Ukraine.
This is the request for U.S. funding to diagnose
highly dangerous pathogens in Ukraine, including Ebola virus. This kind
of requests are part of U.S. strategy to redeploy high-risk work with
dangerous pathogens to third countries.
The research was to be carried out at the Mechnikov
Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa. As the disease is not endemic and has
never been recorded in Ukraine indeed, there is a legitimate question
about the need for such research and its true
purpose.
We have already noted that Ukraine and other
post-Soviet states have become a testing ground for biological weapons
not only for the USA, but also for its NATO allies; on the first place,
Germany. Various projects have been carried out
on behalf of the Joint Medical Service of the German Armed Forces.
Bundeswehr professionals paid particular attention
to the Congo-Crimean fever pathogen. A large-scale screening of the
susceptibility of the local population to this infection was carried out
and included summarising demographic, epidemiological
and clinical data. This kind of approaches allows to identify new
regional virus genotypes and to select strains that cause latent
clinical forms.
The study of natural foci of Crimean-Congo fever
was carried out under the pretext of improving the Ukrainian
epidemiological surveillance system, with the participation of the
Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Kiev and the Mechnikov
Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa.
Bundeswehr's interest in Crimean-Congo fever stems
from the fact that mortality can be as high as 30% and its outbreaks
create a need for lengthy and costly treatment, preventive and special
handling measures.
This is a quote from Bundeswehr's instructions:
'...pay particular attention to fatal cases of infection with
Crimean-Congo fever as it allows the virus strains with maximum
pathogenicity and virulence for humans to be extracted from the
dead individuals...'
Apart from Germany, microbiologists from the USA
have shown a keen interest in tick-borne infections; research in this
area has been funded by DTRA through the UP-1 and UP-8 projects.
A separate project on ixodid ticks that are vectors
of a number of highly dangerous infections (tularemia, West Nile fever,
Congo-Crimean fever) has been implemented by the University of Texas.
Ticks used to be collected in the south-eastern
regions of Ukraine, where natural foci of infections characteristic of
the territory of the Russian Federation are located. At the same time,
the period of implementing this work coincided
with a rapid increase in the incidence of tick-borne borreliosis among
the Ukrainian population, as well as the increase in the number of ticks
in various regions of Russia bordering Ukraine.
This issue is being studied by competent Russian
professionals in coordination with professionals from the Ministry of
Defence of Russia.
We have previously pointed out the significance of
the results of the military-biological projects codenamed UP for the
Pentagon.
Note the report prepared for the U.S. Defence
Department by Black & Veatch and Metabiota. According to the
document, Veterinary Projects codenamed 'TAP' were implemented
simultaneously with the UP projects in Ukraine.
Their main guideline lies in economically
significant quarantine infections capable of damaging the agriculture of
several countries and entire regions, such as glanders, African swine
fever (ASF), classical swine fever, highly pathogenic
avian influenza and Newcastle disease.
African swine fever with two projects dedicated to this pathogen represented particular interest to U.S. military biologists.
The TAP-3 project was aimed to study the spread of
ASF pathogen through wild animals. The migration routes of wild boar
through Ukraine had been examining within its framework. The TAP-6
project scaled this process up to Eastern European
countries.
The study of vector populations of dangerous
zoonotic infections was carried out by staff of the Institute of New
Pathogens of the University of Florida (Gainesville) in Volyn, Rovno,
Zhitomir and Chernigov regions of Ukraine, as well as
in the areas bordering Belarus and Russia.
Note the worsening situation of African swine fever
in Eastern European countries: According to the International Office of
Epizootics, since 2014, outbreaks have been recorded in Latvia (4,021
cases), Estonia (3,814) and Lithuania (4,201).
In Poland, more than 13,000 cases of ASF have been detected, and
agricultural losses from the disease have exceeded 2.4 billion euro.
We have already emphasised the use of biological
weapons in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, I would like to focus on
U.S. military-biological activities during the Korean War.
In March 2022, the U.S. Army Strategic Studies
Institute published a report on the U.S. chemical and biological weapons
programme during the Korean War. This report was aimed to create a
possible line of defence against allegations of illegal
activities carried out by U.S. biolaboratories in Ukraine.
The document attempts to refute the testimony of 38
U.S. military pilots who have admitted using biological weapons in
China and Korea.
According to the document, while preparing for the
Korean campaign, '...the U.S. Air Force secured additional funds to
purchase large quantities of chemical and biological munitions, obtained
a testing range for them in Canada and carried
out an extensive conceptual work on their use...'
At that time, the Americans considered brucellosis
pathogens and economically important infections, including wheat stem
rust, as priority biological agents. 2,500 munitions of this type the
U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command planned
to use, including '...to attack Soviet grain crops...'
Analysis of the data mentioned in the report shows
that the U.S. command uses the results of the research received from the
Japanese military-biological programme and a certain 'continuity' of
the works previously carried out by the Detachment
731 led by Shiro Ishii.
This is the record of the closed session of CIA,
State Department and the Pentagon representatives dated July 7, 1953.
The document clearly shows that the Americans are focusing on techniques
to manipulate public opinion and launch an aggressive
counter-attack within their strategies aimed to defend from
allegations.
The report states that the officials are reluctant
to actual investigations of chemical and biological incidents due to
fears of revealing the activities carried out by the U.S. Eighth Army.
Thus, the comparative analysis of U.S. activities
during the Korean War and currently in Ukraine demonstrates the
persistence of the U.S. policy of building up its own military and
biological capabilities in circumvention of international
agreements.
In conclusion, I would like to present real data on
the health condition of the voluntarily surrendered Ukrainian
servicemen. This diapositive presents the data on presence of antibodies
to contagious disease agents without mentioning personal
data of these servicemen.
The results are as follows: 33% of the examined
servicemen had had hepatitis A, over 4% had renal syndrome fever and 20%
had West Nile fever. The figures are significantly higher than the
statistical average. In view of active research
of these diseases held by the Pentagon within the Ukrainian projects,
there is reason to believe that servicemen of the Armed Forces of
Ukraine (AFU) were involved as volunteers in experiments to assess the
tolerance of dangerous infectious diseases.
The lack of therapeutic effect of antibacterial
medication has been reported during in-patient treatment of AFU
servicemen in medical facilities. High concentrations of antibiotics,
including sulphonyl amides and fluoroquinolones, have
been detected in their blood.
This fact may indicate preventive use of
antibiotics and preparation of personnel for operating in conditions of
biological contamination, such as cholera agent, that indirectly proves
the information of the Russian Defence Ministry that
Ukrainian special units were planning to use biological agents.
The data will be included in the U.S. military-biological dossier and we will continue to examine it and keep you informed.
Letter of Support for Anthony Fauci - A statement from the scientific and public health communities to the American public in support of Dr. Anthony Fauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci has served the USA with wisdom and integrity for
nearly 40 years. Through HIV, Ebola, and now COVID, he has unswervingly
served the United States guiding the country to very successful
outcomes. He has our unreserved respect and trust as a scientist and a
national leader.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci has provided the American
political leadership and the public with sagacious counsel in these most
difficult of times. His advice has been as well informed as data and
the rapidly evolving circumstances allowed. And importantly, he has
given his advice with humility, being clear about what we know and what
is unknown, but requires judgment. He has consistently emphasized the
importance of mask-wearing, social distancing and vaccination. These are
standard and necessary public health measures that we all support.
Scientists can and do express dissenting viewpoints, but a right to an
opinion does not mean the opinion is right. We are grateful that Dr.
Fauci has consistently stated the science in a way that represents the
facts as they emerge, without unwarranted speculation.
Sadly, in these politically polarized times where misinformation
contaminates the United States’ response to the pandemic, routine public
health measures have become unnecessarily controversial, undermining
the effectiveness of our country’s response.
We deplore the personal attacks on Dr. Fauci. The criticism is
inaccurate, unscientific, ill-founded in the facts and, increasingly,
motivated by partisan politics. It is a distraction from what should be
the national focus – working together to finally overcome a pandemic
that is killing about 500,000 people a year. We are grateful for Dr.
Fauci’s dedication and tireless efforts to help the country through this
pandemic and other health crises.
clinicaltrials | On the topic of immune escape: Gauteng, the province where the Omicron cluster was detected, has just come out of heavy Delta wave. This suggests that the antibodies binding to Delta might not do that much for Omicron.
This is also quite possibly the reason for Omicron being discovered there – researchers encountered an unexpected and unexplained uptick in Covid numbers, prompting them to look a bit harder. Of course luck favours the prepared – the research teams there are capable, in possession of good sequencing kits and know how to use them.
I would not be surprised if Omicron arose somewhere else completely, and just got detected in Gauteng. The vast number new of mutations could be explained by an unknown population outside RSA, whether nearby in Zimbabwe or at the other ends of Africa be it in Senegal or Egypt.
This does suggest that blocking flights from RSA might already be too late. This is not to say that quarantining international flyers is a bad thing – if I were in charge that would be the case for any international arival anywhere. Pets have always been quarantined – if your dog has to do it, you should too.
Finally I have a theory why the WHO is so reluctant to ban international air travel: WHO staff are probably among the most frequent of fliers – one day in Geneva at a conference, the next day in Canada to lobby for funding and the next week in the DRC to worry about Ebola. This means that blocking flights is unthinkable for them, even if it is a sensible course of action.
nakedcapitalism | I see two themes running through his speech. The first is he
is betting the house on vaccines. Forget masks, forget
social-distancing, etc., just everybody has to get a vaccine. And I
suspect that the reason why is the weakness of the Professional
Managerial Class – it is measurable. Having people wear masks and other
social measures is a bit fuzzy to get a handle on. But with vaccines, it
is easy. You can put that info into an Excel chart as in
‘unvaccinated’, ‘first shot’, ‘second shot’, and of course
a new row soon called ‘booster shot’. You can analyze those hard
figures, play with them, break them down by region, age group, etc. –
all the sorts of things that managers love to do. Mask-wearing? How do
you measure that? Dunno. This PMC viewpoint is also
why he did not thank all the doctors, nurses, first responders, etc in
his speech like he should have. Managers want it to be all about them
and not to share the credit.
The second theme is that he has decided to go full divisive. He has
set up those unvaccinated to be the fall-guy for all that goes wrong
with America dealing with the pandemic. If things blow up, it is not the
fault of Biden and his regime – it is all
the fault of the unvaccinated. The pandemic is still raging next year?
It is all their fault. A new variant turns up that blows past these
vaccines? It is still the fault of the unvaccinated. It is a signal and a
blank cheque to turn loose the attack dogs on
them by all right-thinking people. They are to be trolled and harassed
and are to be banned from restaurants, parks, gas stations until they
get vaccinated. You could never call Biden a Unity President. And when
he says his plan is ‘protecting our economic
recovery’ you wonder whose economy he is actually talking about. But
keeping the schools open will only ensure that the pandemic still
spreads as they will be the new vector for virus spread. Suffer the
little children indeed.
As for why all this was not done back in January or July, it is
simple. They never had a plan going into government. I have made the
point before that even though the US was in the middle of a world-wide
pandemic last year with bodies stacking up, there
was no task force set up to work out what to do before he went into
the Presidency as he had task forces set up for other matters. Think
about that. The pandemic undermined the Trump Presidency and without it,
Trump would probably still be President. But
yet it was not thought worthy enough a subject to form a distinct task
force by Biden and the Democrats.
I’m not sure about that; see STAT here.
I believe the thinking was that Mr. Ebola, Ron Klain, was tapped
as Biden’s chief-of-staff exactly because of his presumed expertise in
managing pandemics. Either Klain was over-rated, or he couldn’t manage
Biden (meaning he was over-rated in a different way).
cepi | As the COVID-19 pandemic shows, in a world characterised by
increasing population density, human mobility, and ecological change,
emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) pose a real and growing threat to
global health security.
Epidemic diseases affect us all. They do not respect borders.
The costs of EIDs are vast, in both human and economic terms. As well
as the devastating death toll and disruption to societies, COVID-19
could cost the global economy $4.1 trillion, or almost 5% of global
gross domestic product. Even small epidemics can cause tremendous
economic disruption.
Vaccines are one of our most powerful tools in the fight to outsmart
epidemics. The development of vaccines can help save lives, protect
societies and restabilise economies.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations’ (CEPI’s) mission
is to stimulate and accelerate the development of vaccines against
emerging infectious diseases and enable access to these vaccines for
people during outbreaks.
Historically, vaccine development has been a long, risky, and costlyendeavour. Planning
for emerging infectious diseases is especially challenging: the market
potential for vaccines against these diseases is limited and testing
such vaccines is difficult.
We need a better system to speed the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.
Events like the devastating 2014/15 outbreak of Ebola in West
Africa—which killed more than 11,000 people and had an economic and
social burden of over $53 billion—showed us that very few vaccines are
ready to be used against these threats.
The world’s response to this crisis fell tragically short. A vaccine
that had been under development for more than a decade was not deployed
until over a year into the epidemic. That vaccine was shown to be 100% effective, suggesting that much of the epidemic could have been prevented.
The creation of CEPI
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness
Innovations (CEPI) was launched at Davos 2017 as the result of a
consensus that a coordinated, international, and intergovernmental plan
was needed to develop and deploy new vaccines to prevent future
epidemics.
We are an innovative global partnership between public, private,
philanthropic, and civil society organisations working to accelerate the
development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and enable
equitable access to these vaccines for affected populations during
outbreaks.
Close collaboration with global partners are crucial to ensure the success of our
work. Therefore, we will support coordinating activities to improve our
collective response to epidemics, strengthening capacity in countries
at risk, and advancing the regulatory science that governs product
development.
endpts | Two of the FDA’s most senior vaccine leaders are exiting from their positions, raising fresh questions about the Biden administration and the way that it’s sidelined the FDA.
Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research & Review and 32-year veteran of the agency, will leave at the end of October, and OVRR deputy director Phil Krause, who’s been at FDA for more than a decade, will leave in November. The news, first reported by BioCentury, is a massive blow to confidence in the agency’s ability to regulate vaccines.
The bombshell announcement comes at a particularly crucial moment, as boosters and children’s shots are being weighed by the regulator. The departures also come as the administration has recently jumped ahead of the FDA’s reviews of booster shots, announcing that they might be available by the week of Sept. 20.
A former senior FDA leader told Endpoints that they’re departing because they’re frustrated that CDC and their ACIP committee are involved in decisions that they think should be up to the FDA. The former FDAer also said he’s heard they’re upset with CBER director Peter Marks for not insisting that those decisions should be kept inside FDA. What finally did it for them was the White House getting ahead of FDA on booster shots.
FDA’s former acting chief scientist Luciana Borio added on Twitter, “FDA is losing two giants who helped bring us many safe and effective vaccines over decades of public service.”
“These two are the leaders for Biologic (vaccine) review in the US. They have a great team, but these two are the true leaders of CBER. A huge global loss if they both leave,” Former BARDA director Rick Bright wrote, weighing in on the news. “Dr. Gruber is much more than the Director. She is a global leader. Visionary mastermind behind global clinical regulatory science for flu, Ebola, Mers, Zika, Sars-cov-2, many others.”
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].
WaPo | The delta variant of the coronavirus
appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants and spreads
as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal federal health
document that argues officials must “acknowledge the war has changed.”
The
document is an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
slide presentation, shared within the CDC and obtained by The Washington
Post. It captures the struggle of the nation’s top public health agency
to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures,
including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States and new research suggests vaccinated people can spread the virus.
The
document strikes an urgent note, revealing the agency knows it must
revamp its public messaging to emphasize vaccination as the best defense
against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different
novel virus, leaping from target to target more swiftly than Ebola or
the common cold.
It cites a combination of recently obtained, still-unpublished data
from outbreak investigations and outside studies showing that
vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the
virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated. Vaccinated people
infected with delta have measurable viral loads similar to those who are
unvaccinated and infected with the variant.
“I
finished reading it significantly more concerned than when I began,”
Robert Wachter, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University
of California at San Francisco, wrote in an email.
The
data and studies cited in the document played a key role in revamped
recommendations that call for everyone — vaccinated or not — to wear
masks indoors in public settings in certain circumstances, a federal
health official said. That official told The Post that the data will be
published in full on Friday. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky privately
briefed members of Congress on Thursday, drawing on much of the material
in the document.
One
of the slides states that there is a higher risk among older age groups
for hospitalization and death relative to younger people, regardless of
vaccination status. Another estimates that there are 35,000 symptomatic
infections per week among 162 million vaccinated Americans.
The
document outlines “communication challenges” fueled by cases in
vaccinated people, including concerns from local health departments
about whether coronavirus vaccines remain effective and a “public
convinced vaccines no longer work/booster doses needed.”
The
presentation highlights the daunting task the CDC faces. It must
continue to emphasize the proven efficacy of the vaccines at preventing
severe illness and death while acknowledging milder breakthrough infections
may not be so rare after all, and that vaccinated individuals are
transmitting the virus. The agency must move the goal posts of success
in full public view.
FT | “There are a lot of questions that must be answered by Dr Fauci,” said Donald Trump, the former president whom Fauci served as an adviser, following the release of the emails. Trump’s supporters, many of whom accuse Fauci of having exaggerated the severity of the pandemic, have gone further. Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, on Friday urged Fauci to resign.
Fauci himself admits to being worried. Not about the blowback, however, but about what it says about America. “It worries me about what it says about this country,” he told the Financial Times.
“The emails show someone who is always assessing the data as they evolve. But people are selectively pulling emails out to distort what the reality is.”
The 80-year-old Fauci is one of America’s best-known and most well-respected doctors.
Having advised every president since Ronald Reagan, he achieved renown in the scientific world for his work on HIV in the 1980s when he was one of the first public medics to sound the alarm about a strange new disease identified among gay men. He won the respect of gay activists after helping to change the way medical trials were run so that more people could get access to potentially life-saving treatments.
“Tony revolutionised how clinical trials are done for HIV,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a longtime friend of Fauci.
“He is a great medic, but he is also a natural leader, and knows how to get things done.”
Fauci played a prominent role in the American responses to Sars, Mers and the Ebola outbreak of 2014-16, when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came under fire over its response.
“There was a time when CDC was being attacked unfairly,” said Tom Frieden, who was CDC director at the time. “Many people in that situation would have stood by or even quietly piled on, but Tony did exactly the opposite. He stood up for us internally and he stood up for us, publicly. He is a mensch.”
Fauci has been one of the most prominent faces of the US Covid response. He has become famous for frequent television appearances in which he discusses in plain terms and in his broad New York accent the seriousness of the pandemic.
technologyreview | The eureka
moment was when the two scientists determined they could avoid the
immune reaction by using chemically modified building blocks to make the
RNA. It worked. Soon after, in Cambridge, a group of entrepreneurs began setting up Moderna Therapeutics to build on Weissman’s insight.
Vaccines
were not their focus. At the company’s founding in 2010, its leaders
imagined they might be able to use RNA to replace the injected proteins
that make up most of the biotech pharmacopoeia, essentially producing
drugs inside the patient’s own cells from an RNA blueprint. “We were
asking, could we turn a human into a bioreactor?” says Noubar Afeyan,
the company’s cofounder and chairman and the head of Flagship
Pioneering, a firm that starts biotech companies.
If so, the
company could easily name 20, 30, or even 40 drugs that would be worth
replacing. But Moderna was struggling with how to get the messenger RNA
to the right cells in the body, and without too many side effects. Its
scientists were also learning that administering repeat doses, which
would be necessary to replace biotech blockbusters like a clotting
factor that’s given monthly, was going to be a problem. “We would find
it worked once, then the second time less, and then the third time even
lower,” says Afeyan. “That was a problem and still is.”
Moderna
pivoted. What kind of drug could you give once and still have a big
impact? The answer eventually became obvious: a vaccine. With a vaccine,
the initial supply of protein would be enough to train the immune
system in ways that could last years, or a lifetime.
A second
major question was how to package the delicate RNA molecules, which last
for only a couple of minutes if exposed. Weissman says he tried 40
different carriers, including water droplets, sugar, and proteins from
salmon sperm. It was like Edison looking for the right filament to make
an electric lamp. “Almost anything people published, we tried,” he says.
Most promising were nanoparticles made from a mixture of fats. But
these were secret commercial inventions and are still the basis of
patent disputes. Weissman didn’t get his hands on them until 2014, after
half a decade of attempts.
When he finally did, he loved what
he saw. “They were better than anything else we had tried,” he says. “It
had what you wanted in a drug. High potency, no adverse events.” By
2017, Weissman’s lab had shown how to vaccinate mice and monkeys against
the Zika virus using messenger RNA, an effort that soon won funding
from BioNTech. Moderna was neck and neck. It quickly published results of an early human test of a new mRNA influenza vaccine and would initiate a large series of clinical studies involving diseases including Zika.
Pivoting
to vaccines did have a drawback for Moderna. Andrew Lo, a professor at
MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, says that most vaccines lose money.
The reason is that many shots sell for a “fraction of their economic
value.” Governments will pay $100,000 for a cancer drug that adds a
month to a person’s life but only want to pay $5 for a vaccine that can
protect against an infectious disease for good. Lo calculated that
vaccine programs for emerging threats like Zika or Ebola, where
outbreaks come and go, would deliver a -66% return on average. “The
economic model for vaccines is broken,” he says.
deagel |There have been many questions about the countries forecast specially the one focusing
on the United States of America (USA). They won't be answered one by one but
below you can find some explanation, thoughts and reflections. We are going to
keep this as short as possible.
The majority of the economic and demographic data used in the making of
the
forecasts is widely available by institutions such as the CIA, IMF, UN,
USG,
etc. You can see the most relevant data at every single country's page.
There is a tiny part of data coming from a variety of shadow sources
such
as Internet gurus, unsigned reports and others. But all these sources
are from
the internet and are of public domain for at least a minority. For
example, several years
ago Dagong, the Chinese ratings agency,
published a report analyzing the physical economy of the States
comparing it with those of
China, Germany and Japan. The conclusion was that the US GDP was
something
between $5 to $10 trillion instead of $15 trillion as officially
reported by the
USG. We assume that the official data, especially economic, released by
governments is fake, cooked or distorted in some degree. Historically it
is well
known that the former Soviet Union was making up fake statistics years
before
its collapse. Western as well as other countries are making up their
numbers
today to conceal their real state of affairs. We are sure that many
people out
there can find government statistics in their own countries that by
their own
personal experience are hard to believe or are so optimistic that may
belong to
a different country.
Despite the numeric data "quantity" there is a "quality" model which has not a
direct translation into numeric data. The 2014 strain of Ebola has a death rate
of 50-60% but try to imagine what would happen if there is a pandemic of Ebola
with hundreds of thousands or millions infected with the virus. So far the few
cases of Ebola-infected people have "enjoyed" intensive healthcare with
anti-viral and breathing assistance but above all with abundant human support by
Physicians and nurses. In a pandemic scenario that kind of healthcare won't be
available for the overwhelming number of infected leading to a dramatic increase
of the death rate due to the lack of proper healthcare. The "quality" factor is
that the death rate could increase to 80-90% in a pandemic scenario from the
stated 50-60% rate. The figure
itself is not important what is relevant is the fact that the scenario can
evolve beyond the initial conditions from a 50% death toll to more than 90%. By
the way, no pandemic or nuclear war is included in the forecast.
The key element to understand the process that the USA will enter in the
upcoming decade is migration. In the past, specially in the 20th
century, the
key factor that allowed the USA to rise to its colossus status was
immigration
with the benefits of a demographic expansion supporting the credit
expansion and
the brain drain from the rest of the world benefiting the States. The
collapse
of the Western financial system will wipe out the standard of living of
its
population while ending ponzi schemes such as the stock exchange and the
pension
funds. The population will be hit so badly by a full array of bubbles
and ponzi
schemes that the migration engine will start to work in reverse
accelerating
itself due to ripple effects thus leading to the demise of the States.
This
unseen situation for the States will develop itself in a cascade pattern
with
unprecedented and devastating effects for the economy. Jobs offshoring
will
surely end with many American Corporations relocating overseas thus
becoming
foreign Corporations!!!! We see a significant part of the American
population
migrating to Latin America and Asia while migration to Europe -
suffering a
similar illness - won't be relevant. Nevertheless the death toll will be
horrible. Take into account that the Soviet Union's population was
poorer than
the Americans nowadays or even then. The ex-Soviets suffered during the
following struggle in
the 1990s with a significant death toll and the loss of national pride.
Might we
say "Twice the pride, double the fall"? Nope. The American standard of
living is
one of the highest, far more than double of the Soviets while having
added a services economy that will be gone along with the financial
system. When
pensioners see their retirement disappear in front of their eyes and
there are
no servicing jobs you can imagine what is going to happen next. At least
younger
people can migrate. Never in human history were so many elders among the
population. In past centuries people were lucky to get to their 30s or
40s. The American downfall is set to be far worse than the Soviet
Union's one. A confluence of crisis with a devastating result.
The Demographic crisis in the former Soviet Union countries has extended for
over two decades, if we accept that it ended early in this decade (2010s). The
demographic crisis will hit the World in the near future and is projected to
last between three and eight decades more or less depending on technological
breakthrough and environmental issues. The aftermath is more likely a frozen
picture with the population numbers staying the same for a very, very long
period of time. The countries forecast population numbers do reflect
birth/deaths but also migratory movements. Many countries are going to increase
their gross population due to immigration while their native population may
shrink.
Over the past two thousand years we have witnessed the Western civilization
built around the Mediterranean Sea shifting to Northern Europe and then by the
mid 20th century shifting to an Atlantic axis to finally get centered into the
States in the past 30 years. The next move will see the civilization being
centered in Asia with Russia and China on top. Historically a change in the
economic paradigm has resulted in a death toll that is rarely highlighted by
mainstream historians. When the transition from rural areas to large cities
happened in Europe many people unable to accept the new paradigm killed
themselves. They killed themselves by a psychological factor. This is not
mainstream but it is true. A new crisis joins old, well known patterns with new
ones.
Sorry to disappoint many of you with our forecast. It is getting worse and worse
every year since the beginning of the pre-crisis in 2007. It is already said
that this website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our
information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees.
We are not linked to any government in any way, shape or form. We are not a
death or satanic cult or arms dealers as some BS is floating around the internet
on this topic. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a model
whether flawed or correct. It is not God's word or a magic device that allows to
foresee the future.
fivethirtyeight | Trying to pin 2014 as the start of a new era is a subjective
exercise, perhaps a fool’s errand. But if politics is driven by emotion
and memory, so in this case is its hindsight analysis. 2014 was in my
book an annus horribilis, a blur of mortality. Perhaps if Gallup had called me, I’d have told them I’d lost trust.
In June 2014, someone I knew well was murdered. In July, Eric Garner
died on Staten Island, in the city where I’d just moved. In August, I
remember sitting on a fluorescent-lit subway car and reading about the
beheading of a journalist named James Foley by some group called ISIS. A
year later, I’d have to watch his beheading video and speak with his
family for a magazine story
I fact-checked about the vain attempts to save him and other Americans.
Michael Brown was killed in August, too. September brought another ISIS
beheading video. In October, a doctor in New York City was diagnosed
with Ebola — a global terror of its own kind — and I found myself
thinking uncontrollable thoughts about biohazards let loose on the
subway. In November, Tamir Rice was killed in my hometown, and the
midterm election gave the Republicans control of the U.S. Senate —
though that’s only a blip in my memory. The emotions stirred by 2014
lingered longer with me than its discrete politics.
Perhaps that’s why the themes of fear and mortality that hovered over
the 2016 election made some sense to me with 2014 in the rearview
mirror. It’s hard to tell how long it takes for emotional responses like
mine to get into the political bloodstream of a country, but when
pricked by the right needle, America’s primal worry and righteous anger
bled out over an election.
alt-market | Back in 2014 during the Ebola scare in the US I published an article
warning about how a global pandemic could be used by the elites as
cover for the implementation of an economic collapse as well as martial
law measures in western nations. My immediate concern was the way in
which a viral outbreak could be engineered or exploited as a rationale
for a level of social control that the public would never accept under
normal circumstances. And this could be ANY viral outbreak, not just
Ebola. The point is the creation of an “invisible enemy” that the
populace cannot quantify and defend itself against without constant
government oversight.
I noted specifically how the government refused to apply air travel
restrictions in 2014 to nations where the outbreak had taken hold when
they could have stopped the spread in its tracks. This is something
that was done again in 2020 as the UN's WHO and governments including
our government in the US refused to stop air travel from China,
pretending as if it was not a hot zone and that the virus was nothing to
worry about.
This attitude of nonchalance serves a purpose. The establishment
NEEDS the pandemic to spread, because then they have a rationale for
strict controls of pubic activities and movements. This is the end
goal. They have no care whatsoever for public health or safety. The
end game is to acquire power, not save lives. In fact, they might
prefer a higher death count in the beginning as this would motivate the
public to beg for more restrictions in the name of security.
Authorities went from downplaying the outbreak and telling people not to bother with preparations like purchasing N95 masks, to full blown crisis mode only weeks later. In January Trump initially claimed
he "trusted" the data out of China and said that "everything was under
control"; as usual only a couple months down the road and Trump
flip-flopped on both assertions. The World Health Organization refused
to even label this outbreak a "pandemic" until the virus was entrenched
across the globe. The question people will ask is, was this all due to
incompetence, or was it social engineering?
The Ebola event six years ago seems to have been a dry run for what
is happening today. I believe it is entirely deliberate, and I will
explain why in this article, but either way, governments have proven
they cannot be trusted to handle the pandemic crisis, nor can they be
trusted to protect the people and their freedoms.
At the same time, the pandemic itself is tightly intertwined with
economic collapse. The two events feed off one another. The pandemic
provides perfect cover for the crash of the massive debt bubble central
banks and international banks have created over the years. I noted in
February that the global economy was crashing long before the coronavirus ever showed up. At the same time, economic chaos increases 3rd
world conditions within each country, which means poor nutrition and
health care options that cause more sickness and more deaths from the
virus. As outlined in 2014:
“Who would question the event of an economic collapse in the
wake of an Ebola (virus) soaked nightmare? Who would want to buy or
sell? Who would want to come in contact with strangers to generate a
transaction? Who would even leave their house? Ebola (viral) treatment
in first world nations has advantages of finance and a cleaner overall
health environment, but what if economic downturn happens
simultaneously? America could experience third world status very
quickly, and with it, all the unsanitary conditions that result in an
exponential Ebola (pandemic) death rate.
...Amidst even a moderate or controlled viral scenario,
stocks and bonds will undoubtedly crash, a crash that was going to
happen anyway. The international banks who created the mess get off
blameless, while Ebola (viral outbreak), an act of nature, becomes the
ultimate scapegoat for every disaster that follows.”
lpeblog | It is now clear that we are entering a new phase of the global
COVID-19 pandemic. The virus appears in new countries around the world
each day. New cases are now regularly reported in the United States, and
as testing is scaled up, that number will increase, probably
substantially. It is clear now that the virus will spread in a sustained
way in the community here. The estimated mortality rate derived from
the data from China resembles that of the 1919 flu, which killed 50-100
million people around the world. As we are better able to track mild
cases, we may find that it is substantially, even an order of magnitude,
less deadly. Under every plausible scenario, however, this outbreak is
likely to be extraordinarily disruptive. It will surprise no reader of
this blog that the US is ill-prepared for this, and that the harms of
this pandemic will not be equally visited on all. Yesterday, I worked
with a group of more than 450 law and public health experts to put out a public letter
addressed to federal, state, and local leaders, to identify essential
aspects of an effective and fair response. It may be worth a read for
those thinking about the political economy of pandemics. It illustrates
some familiar LPE themes, and shows how features of our socio-legal
context that drive injustice and inequality will undermine the COVID-19
response.
Slowing the spread of the disease, for example, will be
extraordinarily hard without major surge of social support and a
commitment to something like basic social solidarity. Measures like
contact tracing and isolation and other forms of “social distancing”
(closing schools and minimizing public events) are the main mitigation
tools we have. But as the letter points out, whether they are effective
depends on whether they are enacted fairly, and we put people in a
position to cooperate. We cannot expect people to stay home, identify
contacts, or seek recommended care and testing, if it throws them or
their loved ones into harm’s way. Staying home may create an existential
threat for millions of low-wage and gig-economy workers. If we send
children home from schools and ask families to care for the mildly ill
at home, how will the millions now juggling paid work and care work
manage? Immigrants will be discouraged from seeking care and disclosing
contacts if they fear immigration enforcement.
The letter calls for direct interventions to try to reduce the
precarity in which so many workers, carers, and migrants today in the US
live, so that everyone is in a position to cooperate with
recommendations that will benefit us all. This includes direct payments
or other compensation to individuals who are affected, sick pay, and
immediate assurances that the COVID-19 response will not be linked to,
or trigger, immigration enforcement. It notes that we need to consider
the impact of policing on health, given how jails can drive epidemics.
It sets out the legal requirements and risks of carceral measures like
quarantine (building in part on earlier work I did with others on the
disastrous Ebola quarantines),
and makes clear that voluntary measures are more likely to earn
cooperation and trust. The letter also demands that our leaders address
the potentially catastrophic ways that our for-profit healthcare system
intersects with what may be rapidly mounting need for testing and care.
Chat GPT chooses 42
-
Ask ChatGPT to pick a number between 1 and 100 - which does it pick?
(by @Leniolabs_) pic.twitter.com/94xqfucd9C
— Information is Beautiful (@infobeautifu...
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
