As I have been saying all along... "Are they actually sick??"

[Leongsam]

theguardian.com

Delta variant renders herd immunity from Covid ‘mythical’​

Natalie Grover

4-5 minutes

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Reaching herd immunity is “not a possibility” with the current Delta variant, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group has said.
Giving evidence to MPs on Tuesday, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard said the fact that vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid meant reaching the threshold for overall immunity in the population was “mythical”.
“The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population,” he told the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on coronavirus.
“The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus … and we don’t have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission.”
Although the existing vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness and death, they do not stop a fully vaccinated person from being infected by the virus that causes Covid-19.
The concept of herd or population immunity relies on a large majority of a population gaining immunity – either through vaccination or previous infection – which, in turn, provides indirect protection from an infectious disease for the unvaccinated and those who have never been previously infected.
Data from a recent React study conducted by Imperial College London suggests that fully vaccinated people aged 18 to 64 have about a 49% lower risk of being infected compared with unvaccinated people. The findings also indicated that fully vaccinated people were about half as likely to test positive after coming into contact with someone who had Covid (3.84%, down from 7.23%).
About 75% of all UK adults have now received both their jabs.
The health secretary, Sajid Javid, said on Tuesday that plans were in place to start offering Covid booster jabs to the most vulnerable groups in the UK from next month. He said that the flu jab would be offered at the same time.
But Pollard – who chairs Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) but is not specifically a member of the Covid JCVI committee – questioned whether boosters would be needed.
“The time we would need to boost is if we see evidence that there was an increase in hospitalisation – or the next stage after that, which would be people dying – amongst those who are vaccinated. And that is not something we are seeing at the moment,” he said.
Even if vaccine-induced antibody levels waned, our immune systems would probably remember the vaccination for decades and offer a degree of protection if exposed to the virus, he said. “So, there isn’t any reason at this moment to panic. We’re not seeing a problem with breakthrough severe disease.”
The question of whether or not to vaccinate under-16s, as countries including the US, Ireland and Israel have done, has also provoked scientific debate in the UK.
The JCVI has recommended only vulnerable children aged 12 to 15 be vaccinated, and those who live with at-risk adults. Some critics have said that rich countries with high adult vaccine coverage, such as the UK, should not be hoarding doses for children but should donate those doses to poor countries, many of which have barely vaccinated any of their most at-risk populations.
But Prof Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, pointed out that the only vaccine authorised for use in children aged 12 to 15 in the UK was the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
“I think actually the real issue is not about vaccinating kids versus the world – it’s what do we do about boosters that is being discussed in rich countries, because those are the doses that could be going abroad,” she said.
“Luckily … we have a very effective vaccine in AstraZeneca that can be used for the world, but it’s not going to solve our children issue here.”

 

[Thick Face Black Heart]

We are ALL going to get Covid in our lifetimes. Most of us will be infected multiple times. I am personally looking forward to my 1st Covid infection - but preferably early next year as I intend to enjoy my year end festivities.

But through vaccination, we can render Covid no different from the common cold. Maybe a barely noticeable sniffle. Or a fever which one easily mistakes for fatigue or dehydration.

So it is no big deal anymore - provided you are vaccinated.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

Scary new post-Covid symptoms revealed​

• Singapore has 80 per cent of population fully vaccinated against COVID-19
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  Survey: Majority of Australians want preferential treatment for the fu...
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  NSW limo driver who sparked Bondi delta outbreak fined for COVID breach
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  Most SA residents want state borders to open once vaccinations reach c...
  3:30

Getting eradication or elimination of the Delta variant…
The horrific and lasting effects of Covid-19 on people – asymptomatic or not – has been published in a new study, as scientists and health experts learn more about the long-term toll the virus can take.
Long-Covid has long been known about, but this study – which compared the Covid-19 sufferers with cancer patients – shows just how devastating its impact can be for sufferers. It found many had trouble with everyday chores or even difficulty walking up a flight of stairs months after recovering from the virus.
The new data from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals more about the experience of “post Covid-19 conditions”. It comes as the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged people struggling with the effects to seek medical help.
The study, Outcomes Among Patients Referred to Outpatient Rehabilitation Clinics After Covid-19 diagnosis, compared both the physical and mental effects of 1295 patients with post-Covid-19 symptoms with another group of 2395 cancer patients (who have not had Covid), from January 2020 until March this year. All patients had been referred to outpatient rehabilitation.
Post-Covid conditions can range from new, returning or ongoing health problems, with scientists becoming “more and more concerned” about long-Covid.
The research revealed more than one-third of people with post Covid-19 symptoms are struggling to work from home, navigating stairs or running errands.
A greater number of Covid-19 patients also said their mental health was poor.
Some of those in post-Covid care were found to be twice as likely as the cancer patients to be in poor physical health or in pain.
“Among patients referred to outpatient rehabilitation, those recovering from Covid-19 had poorer physical health and functional status than those who had cancer, or were recovering from cancer but not Covid-19,” the research said.
The authors wrote: “Compared with control patients, post-Covid-19 patients were more likely to be male, younger, in the labour force.”
Post-Covid-19 patients were also more likely than the control group to have received a diagnosis of generalised muscle weakness or fatigue (72.7 per cent versus 42.3 per cent), and had higher prevalences of reported fair or poor general health (32.9 per cent versus 25.4 per cent), poorer physical health (44.1 per cent versus 32.6 per cent) and difficulty with physical activities (32.3 per cent versus 24.2 per cent).
Post-Covid-19 patients also reported a higher prevalence of fair or poor overall mental health than control patients (19.1 per cent versus 15.3 per cent).
There was also increased difficulty completing chores (38.2 per cent versus 25.2 per cent), navigating stairs (40.2 per cent versus 18.3 per cent), running errands or shopping (34.3 per cent versus 16 per cent) and walking for 15 minutes (38.2 per cent versus 16.6 per cent).
Meanwhile almost 40 per cent of Covid-19 patients had difficulty working at home versus 20 per cent of the control patients, adding it was a challenge to participate in activities.

A nurse is seen working at a Covid-19 pop-up testing clinic in Auburn Town Centre in southwest Sydney as case numbers continue to rise. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gaye Gerard

A Covid-19 patient is monitored in a triage tent at the Pierre Zobda-Quitman University hospital on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Picture: Alain Jocard/AFP
More than 200 post-Covid symptoms have been reported, including chest pain, tingling, rashes and “brain fog”, according to WHO.
The study’s authors warned that the new research has “implications during and after the Covid-19 pandemic” as post-Covid conditions become a growing threat to the healthcare system.
“Post-Covid-19 patients did not perform as well as control patients on a measured
assessment of physical functioning,” the report concluded.
“Post-Covid-19 patients used more rehabilitative services than control patients.
“These findings indicate that among patients referred to outpatient rehabilitation, those recovering from Covid-19 might have poorer physical health and functional status than do patients with cancer but not Covid-19, and could benefit from additional clinical support, including tailored physical and mental health rehabilitation services.

A nurse cares for a Covid-19 patient inside the ICU at Adventist Health in Sonora, California. In 27 days the hospital had 72 hospitalisation due to Covid-19 of which 11 have died from complications of the virus. Picture: Nic Coury/AFP
LONG-COVID NOT LINKED WITH AGE
In an article for The Conversation neurologist Professor Trevor Kilpatrick and laboratory head Professor Steven Petrou of the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health backed research that long-Covid is no longer thought to be directly linked with either age or how severely ill they get.
“So younger people, and people with initially mild Covid, can still develop long-Covid symptoms,” they write.
The professors noted a study from the Imperial College London suggesting symptoms remain for up to 24 per cent of confirmed Covid cases, “at least three to four months after infection”.
As healthcare facilities struggle around the world coping with Covid-19 admissions – oxygen supplies are running out in the United States and NSW hospitals are already “under stress” as Covid infections surge – the news that Covid-19 patients averaged nine outpatient rehabilitation visits compared with five visits for the control group are concerning.
“These findings have implications for healthcare systems during and after the Covid-19 pandemic,” the study’s authors write.
“Patients recovering from Covid-19 might require tailored physical and mental health rehabilitation services.”

Temperature testing at the entrance to Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
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But there’s still a lot we need to learn, according to Professor Kilpatrick and Professor Petrou.
“There are major unanswered questions about long-Covid which require investigating, including how the disease takes hold, what the risk factors might be and the range of outcomes, as well as the best way to treat it,” they wrote.
“It’s crucial we begin to understand what causes the wide variation in symptoms.
“This could be many factors, including the viral strain, severity of the infection, the effect of pre-existing disease, age and vaccination status, or even the physical and psychological supports provided from the start of the disease.”
We recommend

 

[Sideswipe]

I had an unusual heavy flu which lasted for a day a month ago. is it that damn Covid19 ?

 

[syed putra]

Scary new post-Covid symptoms revealed

Some footballers after getting infected are still scoring goals.

 

[Leongsam]

sebastianrushworth.com

What is long covid?​

12-15 minutes

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I’ve been getting questions about long covid and my standard answer has been that I don’t think it’s any different from post-viral syndrome, a condition that affects some people after a viral infection but that usually clears up within a few months. I’ve been generally sceptical of claims of long covid as some distinct entity for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s generally impossible to separate out cause and effect from anecdote and observational data. If you have a respiratory infection and then you continue to feel tired afterwards, was it the respiratory infection that caused it or something else? Was it really after the infection that you started to feel more tired, or had you been feeling tired for an extended period of time, but the infection gave you something convenient to blame it on?

To me, long covid has felt a lot like amalgam poisoning, electricity allergy, and chronic Lyme disease – i.e. conditions that some people diagnose themselves with (doctors rarely diagnose them), but for which there are no diagnostic tests, and for which there is no scientific evidence. In other words, I’m inclined to think of it as a phantom condition that is used in place of the real explanation for how a person feels, whether that be depression, an anxiety disorder, sleep problems, alcohol abuse, or something else. For those who have been seriously sick with covid and required intensive care, PTSD is also something that could easily be misinterpreted as long covid (PTSD is actually quite common after intensive care, affecting one in ten patients). Apart from that, some studies have found that almost 60% of people treated in intensive care (for any condition, not covid specifically) still have cognitive impairments twelve months after being discharged – obviously, if you’ve had covid you’ll tend to attribute that to “long covid”, when it is actually a consequence of severe illness and ICU treatment more generally.

Second, covid is not some magical entity, it’s a coronavirus, and it behaves like other coronaviruses, and other respiratory viruses more generally. It would be strange for covid to cause symptoms that other respiratory viruses don’t. And since I’ve never heard of “long rhinovirus” or “long influenza”, I’m inherently doubtful of claims that there’s such a thing as “long covid”. That being said, I understand why patients might want to diagnose themselves with long covid, and why media might want to write articles about long covid.

One thing that is clear about long covid is that it is a social media phenomenon. The disease wasn’t discovered by doctors or scientists. It was “discovered” by people who found each other on the internet. In that sense, it shares something very much in common with conditions that most doctors agree are bogus, but for which there are aggressive patient advocacy groups, such as the aforementioned amalgam poisoning, electricity allergy, and chronic Lyme disease.

But maybe I’m just letting my biases get in the way. So, I decided to try to see what the published literature had to say about covid. That turned out to be easier said than done. My Pubmed search for “long covid” didn’t generate a single article. My searches on Google scholar and medRxiv did generate a few hits, although most turned out to be opinion pieces, not scientific research. There were a few studies of interest though, which I will spend the rest of this article discussing.

The British National Institute of Health Research organized a focus group earlier this year with members of the “Long covid” Facebook group, and the results were published in October. Members of the focus group described symptoms “moving around their bodies” and “coming and going”, and described pretty much all different types of symptoms from every different organ. Even symptoms from the urinary tract were identified as symptoms of long covid.
To me, this is clear evidence that long covid is not one thing, but rather many different things. It’s basically whatever the person who thinks they have it says it is. Anything and everything can be attributed to long covid. Here is a quote from the study, by a woman who has diagnosed herself with long covid:
My journey with Covid19 began on 27th April. I’m still unwell five months on and haven’t been able to resume a normal life since. My worst and scariest experience with this illness was in week 6, when I was rushed to A&E as I had a sudden relapse of symptoms and found myself gasping for air, with the top of my head numb and tingling and a headache so blinding that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I got worse in the hospital and was shaking visibly, so much so that the nurse couldn’t perform an ECG as I just couldn’t stay still.

Despite having been diagnosed with suspected Covid by my GP and a doctor in a Covid clinic (swab testing wasn’t available to the public at the time) and told I had pleurisy during a visit to A&E two weeks earlier, the doctor on duty didn’t take this into account. Instead, he dismissed me with anxiety, advising a course of anti-depressants, and chose not to investigate these concerning symptoms further. Of course I was anxious, but that was a consequence of the physical symptoms, not the cause!

To me (and I suspect other doctors reading this) it is pretty obvious that the woman was having a panic attack, which the doctor in A&E diagnosed correctly. But she is completely certain that what she had was a “long covid” attack, even though, as is clear from the text, it isn’t even certain that she ever had covid in the first place.

On MedRxiv, there is a pre-print awaiting peer review of a prospective cohort study that followed 4,182 people with positive PCR tests for covid over the course of a few months, to see what symptoms they had, and how quickly they recovered. Participants reported their symptoms in a phone based app.
So, how fast did people recover from covid? 86% had completely recovered within four weeks. At the eight week mark, that number had increased to 95% and by twelve weeks 98% said that they had recovered fully. So, if we assume that this study was reasonably accurate, then one in 50 people who get covid still have symptoms at the twelve week point, at least according to their self-estimation. Unfortunately the study didn’t go on longer than that – it would have been interesting to see how many still felt they had symptoms at the six month mark, to really get an estimate of what the prevalence of long covid is.

The most common symptoms in people with long covid (defined in the study as still having symptoms after four weeks) were fatigue (98%) and intermittent headache (91%). These are both extremely unspecific symptoms, i.e. there is nothing about them that is specific for covid. I’ve had a couple of headaches personally in the last month, probably due to excessive caffein consumption and sharing a home with two screaming toddlers. If I thought I had long covid, I might have attributed the headaches to that instead.

So, what can we conclude from this study?

First, long covid is rare. Around one in fifty people still have symptoms at the twelve week mark, and since the number with symptoms dropped significantly at one, two, and three months, it is likely that the reduction continues after twelve weeks, and that it is a tiny fraction who still have symptoms at six months.
Apart from that, symptoms of long covid are extremely unspecific, so it is probable that long covid is actually a whole bunch of different things, of which I would think post-viral syndrome is likely a significant part. Considering the media fear-mongering going on during virtually all of 2020, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the so called long covid cases are actually suffering from an anxiety disorder that has been exacerbated by the media response to the virus.

I’m going to finish up by discussing another pre-print currently up on medRxiv. This was another cohort study in which 201 individuals with continuing symptoms four months after infection underwent an MRI of the chest and abdomen to see if there were any signs of “organ impairment”. Now, this study has so many problems that I seriously debated with myself whether to bother writing about it, but for the sake of completeness I decided in favor, especially since it is the only study so far that could be claimed to provide hard evidence for long covid as a distinct entity. If nothing else it will provide a good education in how to use the mantle of “science” to manipulate people so that you can sell more product.

The study was funded by the National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging (NCIMI), which sounds very progressive and nice. This organization is of course in turn funded by multiple companies involved in producing MRI machines, such as General Electric, Alliance Medical, and Perspectum. As it happens, one of the authors of the paper is the CEO of Perspectum. I’m sure you can see where I am going with this. The study was run by people with a strong financial interest in getting hospitals to increase their use of MRI machines. What better way to do that than to “find” a bunch of damaged organs, which no-one would have ever known about if not for MRI?

Ok, so, what they did was this. They got 201 patients who had been diagnosed with covid, either through a positive PCR test, or a positive antibody test, or by having two clinicians independently decide that they had covid, and who still had symptoms at four months. As an aside, those must have been some pretty incredible clinicians, considering that there are no symptoms that are specific for covid, as distinct from other respiratory viral infections. The average age of the participants was 44 years.

The researchers then shoved the patients (metaphorically, not literally) in to an MRI scanner, and scanned their lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and spleen. They then analyzed the images, and compared them with standardized “healthy” reference values. What did they find?

32% of participants had signs of impaired heart function. 33% had signs of impaired lung function. 12% had signs of impaired kidney function. 10% had signs of impaired liver function. 17% had signs of impaired pancreas function. And 6% had signs of impaired spleen function. Overall, 66% of participants had signs of organ dysfunction in at least one organ.

That sounds pretty awful. So what is the catch?

The catch is that they didn’t compare the patients to a control group. This is a standard trick when you want to make something seem really bad, since readers will naturally assume that if there had been a control group then 0% in the control group would have had signs of impaired organ function. And 32% with signs of a heart disorder on MRI is a lot more than 0% .

However, that is actually extremely unlikely. For all we know, more people would have had signs of impaired heart function in the control group than in the long covid group. Since this study didn’t include a control group, it doesn’t tell us anything. The study is useless.

And, as an aside, the study found no correlation between the symptoms the patients had and the findings on MRI. So, double useless. The MRI findings were completely incidental.

So, that pretty much sums it up. There is no hard evidence to support long covid as a distinct disease entity, and the wildly varying, non-specific, and intermittent symptom picture suggests it is actually a conglomerate diagnosis that is being used to describe a large number of different disease entities, and which is being used by politicians and the media in an attempt to scare the hell out of people. Regardless, 98% of people with covid have recovered fully within three months.

Maybe it will turn out that long covid is a real entity after all (distinct from post-viral syndrome, PTSD, anxiety disorder, and so on) when better research is done down the line, but we can’t just assume it based on anecdote, fear-mongering, groupthink, and low quality science. That doesn’t benefit anyone, least of all people with other underlying health issues that are not properly investigated because it’s so easy to just blame everything on covid.

 

[laksaboy]

The PCR test could be inaccurate... or worse, rigged.

 

[laksaboy]

By the way, some Tiongs have already dropped dead of anthrax pneumonia in China. The latest was a 14-year old kid.

That has a super high fatality rate.

Look on the bright side, if that hits Sinkieland, you probably don't need lockdowns or tokens or masks or ambassadors or 'stay hotel' quarantine etc.

The flowchart goes something like this:
Fall sick -> Die -> Cremate, within 24-48 hours everything settled.

https://www.ettoday.net/news/20210831/2068716.htm

 

[face the facts]

Some footballers after getting infected are still scoring goals.

world champions south africa rugby players too, covid today, 2 weeks later, played for country

 

[Leongsam]

Tour de France champ 2019 had Covid in June now riding in Tour of Spain.

 

[red amoeba]

There is a new variant Miu upcoming that will make delta look like a school boy. Heard Modena and Pfizer was doing tests in Columbia where the Miu was discovered. Coincidence ?

it’s gonna be a glory year for these two companies. Hitting on the path of trillion dollar club. Anti vax ppl will have a field day.

 

[zhihau]

it’s gonna be a glory year for these two companies. Hitting on the path of trillion dollar club. Anti vax ppl will have a field day.

Altogether now!!! HUAT AH!!!