Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom, warned on Friday that the number of newly registered COVID-19 cases and deaths continues to climb in numerous countries across the globe. Commenting on new coronavirus variants, Dr. Tedros argued there will be more versions of the virus as long as the spreading lasts. “Hard-won gains in fighting COVID-19 are being lost,” he insisted at WHO’s press briefing. Dr. Tedros concluded by reiterating that the WHO’s goal remains to support every country to vaccinate at least 40% of its population by the end of the year and 70% by the middle of 2022.
EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! CDC calls Delta strain as contagious as chickenpox EMERGENCY EMERGENCY
July 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has described the Delta variant of the coronavirus to be as contagious as chickenpox and could cause severe illness, the New York Times reported, citing an internal CDC document.
The variant was also more likely to break through protections afforded by the vaccines, the report said, adding that the agency’s reverse course on masking guidelines for fully vaccinated Americans on Tuesday was based on this document.
However, CDC’s figures show that the vaccines are highly effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalization and death in vaccinated people, the report said, citing experts.
New research showed the vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant carried tremendous amounts of the virus in the nose and throat, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told the Times.
The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, the report said.
The immediate next step for the agency is to “acknowledge the war has changed,” the report cited the document as saying. CDC is expected to publish additional data on the variant on Friday, the NYT said.
Experts ask to see data behind CDC new mask policy
The agency on Thursday announced that fully vaccinated individuals can ditch their masks in most settings, but some public health experts raised concerns about how to prove vaccination. The CDC on Thursday announced that fully vaccinated individuals can ditch their masks and social distancing indoors and outdoors in most settings. Masks must still be worn “where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance,” according to the guidance. There are also exceptions for correctional facilities and homeless shelters, and people who are immune compromised should speak to their doctors before abandoning their masks. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky cited declining coronavirus cases, increasing vaccine supply and emerging data on the performance of vaccines as reasons for the guidance change. States including North Carolina, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Kentucky, Washington and Kansas all announced changes to their mandates following the CDC guidance. “Today is a great day,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper tweeted Thursday as he lifted most mandatory mask requirements for his state. “But the work is not yet done and people getting vaccinated will get it done. The CDC’s guidance affirms that getting vaccinated is the way through this. We can take this step today because the science shows our focus on getting people vaccinated is working.” But some public health experts were left with questions and concerns about unvaccinated people abandoning their masks. According to CDC data, just over 36% of Americans are fully vaccinated. “On one hand, people may feel more incentivized to get the vaccine if they see that by getting the vaccine, they no longer have to wear a mask and can resume pre-pandemic activities,” Rupali J. Limaye of Johns Hopkins University said in a statement. “On the other hand, it may not be enough of an incentive to get the vaccine, and may signal to people that they can go maskless while being unvaccinated, as there is no way to know who is vaccinated and who is not.” “This could lead to a situation where those that are unvaccinated may be maskless in settings where there are other unvaccinated individuals, leading to higher risk of exposure,” she continued. Leana Wen, a visiting professor at George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, wrote in an opinion piece for The Washington Post that the CDC “has gone from one extreme to the other, from over-caution to throwing caution to the wind.” She said that the new guidance “would be very welcome if not for one big problem: There is no concurrent requirement for proof of vaccination.” Leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci acknowledged that “you’re going to be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they were vaccinated or not and responsible enough to be wearing … a mask, not only for their own protection but also for the protection of others.” The federal government has repeatedly said it will not require vaccine passports or similar certifications. But beyond concerns about putting trust in the public, questions swirled on the guidance. Could a fully vaccinated workforce go back to the office without wearing masks and social distancing? Should private businesses like grocery stores that currently implement mask mandates follow CDC guidance and shed the requirements for vaccinated people, or would that risk workers facing retaliation for implementing vaccine policing? The United Food and Commercial Workers, America’s largest union for front-line retail and grocery workers, criticized the guidance, calling it “confusing” and accusing the agency of failing “to consider how it will impact essential workers who face frequent exposure to individuals who are not vaccinated and refuse to wear masks.” Fauci told CNN that while some businesses might choose to require proof of vaccination, he does not suggest policing behaviors. “People feel very put upon if you are essentially judging them on the basis of whether they have been vaccinated,” Fauci added. “I think there is going to be a pushback against questioning somebody when they walk in.” And what about parents who are vaccinated who have young children who aren’t eligible for the shot yet – how will they convince the youngsters to keep their masks on as more and more people go without them? Fauci told CNN that children still need to wear masks “when they’re out there playing with their friends and, you know, particularly in an indoor situation.” Elementary school-aged children likely won’t be vaccinated until the end of the year, according to Fauci. That leaves parents to navigate starting the school year without vaccinations for their youngest kids, and both Walensky and Fauci have supported the idea of all schools holding in-person education five days a week by the fall.
Mastercard profit jumps 36% on vaccine-fueled spending boost
July 29 (Reuters) – Mastercard Inc reported a nearly 36% jump in second quarter profit on Thursday, helped by an improvement in overall spending and a recovery in cross-border volumes. Net income, excluding exceptional items, rose to $1.9 billion, or $1.95 per share, from $1.4 billion, or $1.36 per share a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected a profit of $1.75 per share, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Twitter closes NY, SF offices over Delta variant concerns…. Google is pushing back its reopening until October LinkedIn employees to work remotely, reversing course
Twitter is re-closing its New York and San Francisco offices shortly after they reopened, the company said Wednesday. The announcement comes amid a spike in COVID-19 cases due in large part to soaring Delta variant cases and rampant anti-vaccination sentiment. Many companies are slowing down their reopenings due to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated guidelines that recommend masks indoors even for people who’ve received one of the vaccinations. “After careful consideration of the CDC’s updated guidelines, and in light of current conditions, Twitter has made the decision to close our opened offices in New York and San Francisco as well as pause future reopenings, effective immediately,” Twitter said, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. The social media company had just reopened the offices two weeks ago, the Chronicle said. Twitter was one of many tech companies to announce it was allowing workers to work remotely indefinitely. Google announced Wednesday it was pushing back its reopening until at least October and requiring employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Covid: CDC isn’t tracking breakthrough delta infections of vaccinated
- The CDC stopped monitoring non-severe COVID-19 cases among vaccinated people in May.
- It’s hard to assess Delta’s risk without knowing what mild breakthrough cases look like – or whether they’re becoming more common.
- Vaccines still seem highly effective against the variant, though.
It was great news: From January to April, just 0.01% of vaccinated Americans – around 10,000 out of 100 million people – got breakthrough infections, or cases of COVID-19 diagnosed after they were fully immunized. That’s according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also indicated that certain coronavirus variants were to blame for most of these breakthrough cases. However, the CDC only had genetic sequencing for around 5% of the post-vaccine infections, and the report didn’t include data about the Delta variant. That strain, first detected in the US in March, might pose the greatest challenge to vaccine efficacy. But before more data could be collected to answer these lingering questions, the CDC stopped tracking breakthrough infections that resulted in asymptomatic, mild, or moderate cases. Since May 1, the agency has only reported and investigated coronavirus infections among vaccinated people that resulted in hospitalization or death. Sequencing efforts in the US haven’t ramped up much, either: The country is still only sequencing about 1.4% of its coronavirus cases, according to data from GISAID, a global database that collects coronavirus genomes.
That means it’s difficult to tell exactly how much of a risk the Delta variant poses to vaccinated people. Researchers still don’t know whether Delta makes breakthrough cases more common, or what the typical symptoms of a breakthrough infection caused by Delta look like.
As a result, vaccinated people may have a hard time weighing the risks of returning to normal social activities or knowing what to expect should they develop a rare breakthrough case.
In a recent blog post for Harvard Health Publishing, Robert Shmerling, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, called the CDC’s decision not to track all breakthrough cases “surprising” and “disappointing.”
“By tracking only cases requiring hospitalization or causing death, we may miss the chance to learn how people with ‘milder’ disease are affected by Delta or other variant infections, such as how long their symptoms last and how the infection may disrupt their lives,” Shmerling told Insider. He added that the US could also miss important information about which vaccines are most effective against Delta, how long vaccine protection against the variant lasts, and whether the timing of a second vaccine dose might determine one’s likelihood of a breakthrough case. The CDC told Insider that in a substantial proportion of reported breakthrough cases, data on symptoms is missing, “which is one reason why CDC is publicly reporting hospitalized and fatal cases.” The agency added that its Emerging Infections Program is still working with nine states to obtain sequencing data from breakthrough cases – including asymptomatic and mild ones. So far, data suggests that vaccines hold up extremely well against Delta: Public Health England analyses have found that two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine are 96% effective at preventing hospitalizations in cases involving the variant, and 88% effective at preventing symptomatic illness. Two doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, meanwhile, are around 92% effective at preventing hospitalizations and 60% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from Delta. Moderna announced on Tuesday that its vaccine is also highly effective against Delta based on lab studies, though the efficacy was slightly diminished compared to the original strain. And South African researchers recently found that among people who’d received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, 94% of breakthrough infections were mild – including those caused by Delta. However, Public Health England found that one shot of either Pfizer’s or AstraZeneca’s vaccines was just 33% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from Delta. Israeli health officials also reported last week that as many as half of new COVID-19 cases in Israel are among vaccinated people, with the majority of cases being driven by the Delta variant. (However, vaccinated people in Israel appeared to develop milder cases than unvaccinated people.) Shmerling said that finding out which variants are responsible for most breakthrough cases – whether it’s Delta or another strain – could help vaccine manufacturers learn whether they need to modify their current shots or roll out boosters more quickly. “It’s possible that tracking the severe cases would give us enough information about which variants are responsible for most breakthrough infections,” he said. “But, again, the more we know about all breakthrough cases, the better we’ll understand how they occur.”
Olympic host Tokyo’s daily coronavirus cases hit new record
Tokyo reported a record daily number of Covid cases on Tuesday as the virus spreads in the Olympic host city. The number of new infections record a high of 2,848 on day 4 of the Games, official figures showed, exceeding the earlier record of 2,520 cases from 7 January. That was double Monday’s figure of 1,429, which itself was almost double the number on the same day a week earlier. It takes the total number of cases in Tokyo, which is under its fourth state of emergency, to more than 200,000 since the pandemic began last year. Tuesday’s figure also marked the eighth day in a row that Tokyo has recorded more than 1,000 reported cases. Other prefectures outside the capital have reported record levels of infections in recent days. Hospitals in Tokyo are making more beds available for Covid patients in response to the surging case rates, Japanese media reported. Fears about a surge in Covid cases in Japan linked to the competition have threatened to overshadow the Games and led to opposition from sections of the Japanese public to the country hosting the spectacle. Olympics visitors have already brought fast-spreading variants of the virus into a nation that is only approaching 25 per cent fully vaccinated. Olympics organisers reported 16 new Games-related cases on Monday, bringing the total since 1 July to 148. Several athletes have had to withdraw from their fixtures after becoming infected and organisers have decided to bar spectators from most venues as a Covid precaution. Medals are presented on a tray due to Covid protocols and judges, coaches and other officials must wear masks.
Around 85% of New COVID Delta Infections in Israel are Fully Vaccinated
Israeli Health Ministry announcement, It is the vaccinated who are more likely to be hospitalized and develop critical illness. If Israel was a ‘world experiment,’ as Benjamin Netanyahu presented it at one stage, this experiment is now turning into a disaster (at least for the vaccinated). “In Israel, the vaccinated are becoming infected at a growing rate and as such are spreading the virus rather than stopping it. We also have a good reason to believe that the rest of the Western world will witness a similar pattern as it has followed the Israeli vaccine doctrine.” On July 9, we learned that Pfizer planned to ask U.S. and European regulators to authorize an urgent booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, “based on evidence of greater risk of infection six months after inoculation and the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.”
On the same day we also learned that the FDA and CDC weren’t very enthusiastic about the idea. In a joint statement both institutions announced that “Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster COVID-19 shot at this time.”
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also said that “it was too early to determine whether more than the two shots that are currently required would be called for, saying it was confident for now that the established regimen was sufficient.”
It was revealed later that day that Pfizer’s emergency booster request was initiated following some catastrophic data from Israel.
Searching for a clue in Hebrew media sources, I came across a spectacular revelation dated 6 July that showed around 85% of new COVID Delta infections in Israel are fully vaccinated.
The above data suggests that while in the youngest age group (20-29) the vaccinated were about 2.3 over-represented amongst COVID infection cases. In some of the older age group (50-59 for instance), the vaccinated were over-represented by even more than 15-fold. We should take into consideration that in Israel most senior citizens are fully vaccinated. And yet, since in Israel only 57% of the population is fully vaccinated, one would expect the balance between Delta cases in Israel to be shared by a rate that doesn’t exceed beyond a 6:4 ratio between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Clearly this is not the case. On average, according to the data above the vaccinated are more likely to catch delta by a ratio of 5:1 on average.
Being slightly suspicious of the above data and its origin, I asked my Israeli partners to trace an official government document that could confirm the above numbers. Within a few minutes the Israeli Health Ministry announcement for July 6 surfaced in my email inbox and it validates the above finding.
The most significant information is produced by the following table.
The above study reveals that while in February 2020 (31/1-27/2) the unvaccinated dominated the COVID cases by a ratio of 20:1, six months later in June 2020 (6/6-3/7) it is actually the vaccinated who are prone to be infected by a ratio of 5:1. It is the vaccinated who happen to develop symptoms by a ratio of 5:1. It is the vaccinated who are more likely to be hospitalized and develop critical illness. If Israel was a ‘world experiment,’ as Benjamin Netanyahu presented it at one stage, this experiment is now turning into a disaster (at least for the vaccinated). In Israel, the vaccinated are becoming infected at a growing rate and as such are spreading the virus rather than stopping it. We also have a good reason to believe that the rest of the Western world will witness a similar pattern as it has followed the Israeli vaccine doctrine. People like to fiddle with statistics and draw the conclusions that suit them. If only 11 out of the 1271 vaccinated cases develop critical illness, we are dealing with slightly less than 1% of the vaccinated developing critical illness. At the same time more than 2% of the unvaccinated develop critical illness. Yet, since Delta cases are 5 times more common amongst the vaccinated as time passes by, I may suggest that we are facing a possible emerging disaster as far as the Pfizer-vaccinated are concerned.
I guess that Pfizer scientists understand all of this very well and this is why they asked for an immediate booster approval.
Ivermectin, media outlets “debunk” as an effective antiviral
Michael Capuzzo, a New York Times best-selling author , has just published an article titled “The Drug That Cracked Covid”. The 15-page article chronicles the gargantuan struggle being waged by frontline doctors on all continents to get ivermectin approved as a Covid-19 treatment, as well as the tireless efforts by reporters, media outlets and social media companies to thwart them. Because of ivermectin, Capuzzo says, there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.” Yet media outlets have done all they can to “debunk” the notion that ivermectin may serve as an effective, easily accessible and affordable treatment for Covid-19. They have parroted the arguments laid out by health regulators around the world that there just isn’t enough evidence to justify its use. For his part, Capuzzo, as a reporter, “saw with [his] own eyes the other side [of the story]” that has gone unreported, of the many patients in the US whose lives have been saved by ivermectin and of five of the doctors that have led the battle to save lives around the world, Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, José Iglesias, Pierre Kory and Joe Varon. These are all highly decorated doctors. Through their leadership of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, they have already enhanced our treatment of Covid-19 by discovering and promoting the use of Corticoid steroids against the virus. But their calls for ivermectin to also be used have met with a wall of resistance from healthcare regulators and a wall of silence from media outlets.
“I really wish the world could see both sides,” Capuzzo laments. But unfortunately most reporters are not interested in telling the other side of the story. Even if they were, their publishers would probably refuse to publish it.
That may explain why Capuzzo, a six-time Pulitzer-nominated journalist best known for his New York Times-bestselling nonfiction books Close to Shore and Murder Room, ended up publishing his article on ivermectin in Mountain Home, a monthly local magazine for the of the Pennsylvania mountains and New York Finger Lakes region, of which Capuzzo’s wife is the editor. It’s also the reason why I decided to dedicate today’s post to Capuzzo’s article. Put simply, as many people as possible –particularly journalists — need to read his story.
As Capuzzo himself says, “I don’t know of a bigger story in the world.”
Total News Blackout
On December 8 2020, FLCCC member Dr Pierre Kory gave nine minutes of impassioned testimony to the US Homeland Security Committee Meeting on the potent anti-viral, anti-inflammatory benefits of ivermectin. A total of 9 million people (myself included) saw the video on YouTube before it was taken down by YouTube’s owner, Google. As Capuzzo exhaustively lays out, both traditional and social media have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep people in the dark about ivermectin. So effective has this been that even in some of the countries that have benefited most from its use (such as Mexico and Argentina) many people are completely unaware of its existence. And this is no surprise given how little information is actually seeping out into the public arena.
A news blackout by the world’s leading media came down on Ivermectin like an iron curtain. Reporters who trumpeted the COVID-19 terror in India and Brazil didn’t report that Ivermectin was crushing the P-1 variant in the Brazilian rain forest and killing COVID-19 and all variants in India. That Ivermectin was saving tens of thousands of lives in South America wasn’t news, but mocking the continent’s peasants for taking horse paste was. Journalists denied the world knowledge of the most effective life-saving therapies in the pandemic, Kory said, especially among the elderly, people of color, and the poor, while wringing their hands at the tragedy of their disparate rates of death.
Three days after Kory’s testimony, an Associated Press “fact-check reporter” interviewed Kory “for twenty minutes in which I recounted all of the existing trials evidence (over fifteen randomized and multiple observational trials) all showing dramatic benefits of Ivermectin,” he said. Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.” Like many critics, she didn’t explore the Ivermectin data or evidence in any detail, but merely dismissed its “insufficient evidence,” quoting instead the lack of a recommendation by the NIH or WHO. To describe the real evidence in any detail would put the AP and public health agencies in the difficult position of explaining how the lives of thousands of poor people in developing countries don’t count in these matters.
Not just in media but in social media, Ivermectin has inspired a strange new form of Western and pharmaceutical imperialism. On January 12, 2021, the Brazilian Ministry of Health tweeted to its 1.2 million followers not to wait with COVID-19 until it’s too late but “go to a Health Unit and request early treatment,” only to have Twitter take down the official public health pronouncement of the sovereign fifth largest nation in the world for “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information.” (Early treatment is code for Ivermectin.) On January 31, the Slovak Ministry of Health announced its decision on Facebook to allow use of Ivermectin, causing Facebook to take down that post and removed the entire page it was on, the Ivermectin for MDs Team, with 10,200 members from more than 100 countries.
In Argentina, Professor and doctor Hector Carvallo, whose prophylactic studies are renowned by other researchers, says all his scientific documentation for Ivermectin is quickly scrubbed from the Internet. “I am afraid,” he wrote to Marik and his colleagues, “we have affected the most sensitive organ on humans: the wallet…” As Kory’s testimony was climbing toward nine million views, YouTube, owned by Google, erased his official Senate testimony, saying it endangered the community. Kory’s biggest voice was silenced.
Continue reading “Ivermectin, media outlets “debunk” as an effective antiviral”
Ivermectin to be investigated as a possible treatment for COVID-19 in Oxford’s PRINCIPLE trial
- PRINCIPLE is one of UK Government’s national priority platform trials of COVID-19 treatments, and the world’s largest currently taking place in community settings looking for treatments at home.
- Ivermectin, a widely used antiparasitic drug, has been added to the trial and is being evaluated in participants from today.
- For COVID-19, ivermectin has shown promising results as a potential treatment in small studies in humans.
- Anyone eligible and with COVID-19 symptoms can join the trial from anywhere in the UK, either online, over the phone or via their health care professional.
From today, ivermectin is being investigated in the UK as part of the Platform Randomised Trial of Treatments in the Community for Epidemic and Pandemic Illnesses (PRINCIPLE), the world’s largest clinical trial of possible COVID-19 treatments for recovery at home and in other non-hospital settings.Led by the University of Oxford, PRINCIPLE is investigating treatments for people at more risk of serious illness from COVID-19 which can speed up recovery, reduce the severity of symptoms and prevent the need for hospital admission. The study has so far recruited more than 5,000 volunteers from across the UK.
Ivermectin is a safe, broad spectrum antiparasitic drug which is in wide use globally to treat parasitic infections.
With known antiviral properties, ivermectin has been shown to reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication in laboratory studies. Small pilot studies show that early administration with ivermectin can reduce viral load and the duration of symptoms in some patients with mild COVID-19. Even though ivermectin is used routinely in some countries to treat COVID-19, there is little evidence from large-scale randomised controlled trials to demonstrate that it can speed up recovery from the illness or reduce hospital admission. Professor Chris Butler, from the University Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, Joint Chief Investigator of the PRINCIPLE trial, said, ‘Ivermectin is readily available globally, has been in wide use for many other infectious conditions so it’s a well-known medicine with a good safety profile, and because of the early promising results in some studies it is already being widely used to treat COVID-19 in several countries. By including ivermectin in a large-scale trial like PRINCIPLE, we hope to generate robust evidence to determine how effective the treatment is against COVID-19, and whether there are benefits or harms associated with its use.’ Following a screening questionnaire to confirm eligibility, participants enrolled in the study will be randomly assigned to receive a three-day course of ivermectin treatment. They will be followed-up for 28 days and will be compared with participants who have been assigned to receive the usual standard of NHS care only. People aged 18 to 64 with certain underlying health conditions or shortness of breath from COVID-19, or aged over 65, are eligible to join the trial within the first 14 days of experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or receiving a positive test. People with severe liver disease, who are on the blood-thinning medication warfarin, or taking other treatments known to interact with ivermectin, will be excluded.