Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People who tested positive for COVID-19 and took ivermectin as a treatment recovered faster than a comparison group, a new study found.

The time to self-reported recovery was a median of two days faster among the ivermectin recipients, according to the large UK study.

The quicker recovery period was statistically significant.

People who received ivermectin were also less likely to be hospitalized or die, with 1.6 percent of ivermectin recipients being hospitalized or dying versus 4 percent of the comparison group, which received typical care, which in the UK is largely focused on managing symptoms.

Ivermectin recipients also enjoyed a reduction of severe symptoms and sustained recovery, according to the study.

The paper was published by the Journal of Infection on Feb. 29.

The study covered an open-label trial that involved 2,157 ivermectin recipients and 3,256 who received typical care from June 23, 2021, to July 1, 2022. Participants were randomized and reported symptoms and recovery.

Researchers Say Findings Don’t Support Using Ivermectin

The authors, including Christopher Butler, a University of Oxford professor and joint chief investigator of the trial, downplayed the positive findings in part because the hazard ratio of 1.14 was lower than what authors pre-specified as a meaningful ratio, or 1.2. Hazard ratios are a way to determine whether a treatment is beneficial.

The authors also focused on the lack of differences in the number of days participants felt sick in the previous two weeks, impact on work, and likelihood of using the health care system at 3, 6, and 12 months following treatment.

“Overall, these findings, while evidencing a small benefit in symptom duration, do not support the use of ivermectin as treatment for COVID-19 in the community among a largely vaccinated population at the dose and duration we used,” the authors said.

Funding for the research came from the UK government.

Conflicts of interest included one researcher receiving grants from pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, and other authors receiving grants from the University of Oxford.

The trial, known as PRINCIPLE, was touted by investigators as “the world’s largest clinical trial of possible COVID-19 treatments for recovery at home and in other non-hospital settings.”

“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,” Dr. Christopher Butler, a University of Oxford professor and joint chief investigator of the trial, said when it was announced ivermectin would be assessed. “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.”

Doctors Weigh In

Dr. Pierre Kory, an American physician who was not involved in the trial, said that the authors wrongly downplayed how ivermectin improved recovery from COVID-19.

“PRINCIPLE was a profoundly positive study that was instead analyzed and written up as a negative one,” Dr. Kory, who has long promoted ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment, wrote in an essay.

He accused the authors of undertaking “statistical chicanery” by coming up with the pre-specified hazard ratio (HR), noting that no such level was used in other parts of the PRINCIPLE trial.

“A hazard ratio does not need a pre-specified level. If the HR is > 1.0, and it is statistically significant, it is a robust finding,” he said.

The positive findings should also be interpreted in the context of recipients only receiving one dose per day across three days and being directed not to eat food before ivermectin, Dr. Kory said.

Dr. Butler and his co-authors said “no food should be taken two hours before or after administration” despite previous research finding that taking ivermectin with food increases plasma concentration.

Participants also received ivermectin a median of five days after symptom onset, a period of time considered by some to be too late to have much of an impact. Ivermectin works best when applied within 24 hours of symptom manifestation, according to a meta-regression of ivermectin studies.

Dr. Butler did not respond to a request for comment.

There have been additional studies that found ivermectin worked against COVID-19. The drug, commonly used for purposes such as combating malaria, has divided scientists since 2020, when doctors around the world began using it to treat COVID-19.

Some other research, including a U.S. trial, has found that ivermectin did not improve time to recovery.

Dr. David Boulware, another American doctor, who helped run that trial, argued on X that the faster recovery recorded in the UK trial was similar to the quicker recovery reported in an open-label trial of molnupiravir, an antiviral sometimes used to treat COVID-19.

“Molnupiravir also had a 2 day faster improvement in symptoms over ‘usual care’ yet no benefit existed in double-blind trial,” Dr. Boulware said on X. “Placebo effect influences self-reported symptoms.”

Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new study found that COVID-19 infection can cause cognitive deficits that persist for over a year and lower IQ scores in severe cases. Those with persistent symptoms that resolved had small cognitive deficits similar to those with a shorter illness duration.

In a large-scale observational study published on Feb. 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), researchers invited 800,000 people with varying levels of COVID-19 exposure and duration to take an online cognitive assessment and follow-up survey. Cognitive difficulties have been implicated in numerous syndromes following COVID-19, including long COVID, suggesting infection may have lasting effects on the mental processes of the brain.

The study’s authors hypothesized there would be measurable cognitive deficits after COVID-19 that would scale with the severity and duration of the illness. They also speculated that objective impairments in executive and memory function, especially poor memory and brain fog, would be observable in those with persistent symptoms.

Using an assessment tool for cognitive function, researchers estimated global cognitive scores among participants with a history of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection who had symptoms for at least 12 weeks—whether resolved or not—and among a control group of uninfected participants. While cognitive and memory deficits were small for people with mild infection who recovered from COVID-19 quickly, impairments were more pronounced in those with severe disease.

Greater Impairment With More Severe Disease

Of 112,964 participants who completed the survey, those who recovered from COVID-19 with symptoms that resolved in less than four weeks or by 12 weeks post-infection had similar small deficits in global cognition compared with those who had never had COVID-19.

Participants who had mild COVID-19 with resolved symptoms experienced a 3-point drop in IQ compared to uninfected participants. Those with unresolved persistent symptoms had a 6-point loss in IQ, and those with COVID-19 admitted to the intensive care unit experienced a 9-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 caused an additional loss in IQ of nearly 2 points compared to those who were not reinfected. An IQ, or intelligence quotient, is a number used to represent the relative intelligence of an individual.

According to the study, memory, reasoning, and executive function tasks were the strongest indicators of impaired cognitive function, and these scores correlated with brain fog symptoms reported by participants. More significant deficits were seen in those with unresolved persistent symptoms and those infected with earlier variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus compared with those who never had COVID-19. Additionally, study participants who were hospitalized had greater deficits in cognitive function compared to those who were not hospitalized. 

“By using an innovative cognitive test which has also been completed by people who did not have COVID-19, this important and well-conducted study provides the first accurate quantification of the scale of cognitive deficits in people who had COVID-19,” Maxime Taquet, a fellow in psychiatry at the National Institute for Health and Care Research at the University of Oxford, said in a statement. 

Mr. Taquet said researchers found a small but obvious association between COVID-19 and cognition that was more pronounced at extremes.

“The risk of having more severe cognitive problems was almost twice as high in those who had COVID-19 compared to those who did not, and three times as high in those who were hospitalized with COVID-19,” he noted.

In an editorial published Feb. 29 in the NEJM, Drs. Ziyad Al-Aly and Clifford Rosen said the study’s results are concerning and have broad implications that require further evaluation to determine the functional impact of a 3-point loss in IQ and why one group of participants was more severely affected than another. 

“Whether these cognitive deficits persist or resolve along with predictors and trajectory of recovery should be investigated. Will Covid-19-associated cognitive deficits confer a predisposition to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia later in life? The effects on educational attainment, work performance, accidental injury, and other activities that require intact cognitive abilities should also be evaluated,” they wrote. 

Study Implications for People With Long COVID

The study’s participants were part of a larger community sample of nearly 3 million people in the Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT) study assessing SARS-CoV-2 transmission in England. Although the researchers did not say whether participants in the study had long COVID, people with long COVID frequently report persistent cognitive impairment.

There is no accepted universal definition for the condition, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) broadly defines long COVID as “signs, symptoms, and conditions that continue to develop after acute COVID-19 infection” that can last for “weeks, months, or years.” The term “long COVID” also includes post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, long-haul COVID, and post-acute COVID-19.

Nearly 7 percent of U.S. adults surveyed by the CDC in 2022 said they’ve experienced long COVID. Although U.S. regulatory agencies claim vaccinating against COVID-19 can reduce the risk of developing long COVID and the current paper suggests vaccination with two or more doses may provide a slight cognitive advantage, a recent paper published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine did not find a significant link between the presence of comorbidities or infection severity and the emergence of long COVID symptoms.

The NEJM study has several limitations, including reliance on subjective reporting to identify individuals with ongoing symptoms and self-selection bias. People with long COVID may have enrolled in the study, but those with more severe impairments may not have been able to participate in the survey. Additionally, certain groups were overrepresented in the study compared with the base population. Baseline cognitive data before SARS-CoV-2 infection was also unavailable, so researchers could not assess cognitive change or infer causality.

Having successfully raged, ranted, lied, and yelled through the State of The Union, President Biden can go back to his crypt now.

Whatever 'they' gave Biden, every American man, woman, and the other should be allowed to take it - though it seems the cocktail brings out 'dark Brandon'?

Tl;dw: Biden's Speech tonight ...

• Fund Ukraine.

• Trump is threat to democracy and America itself.

• Abortion is good.

• American Economy is stronger than ever.

• Inflation wasn't Biden's fault.

• Illegals are Americans too.

• Republicans are responsible for the border crisis.

• Trump is bad.

• Biden stands with trans-children.

• J6 was the worst insurrection since the Civil War.

(h/t @TCDMS99)

Tucker Carlson's response sums it all up perfectly:

"that was possibly the darkest, most un-American speech given by an American president. It wasn't a speech, it was a rant..."

Carlson continued: "The true measure of a nation's greatness lies within its capacity to control borders, yet Bid refuses to do it."

"In a fair election, Joe Biden cannot win"

And concluded:

“There was not a meaningful word for the entire duration about the things that actually matter to people who live here.”

Victor Davis Hanson added some excellent color, but this was probably the best line on Biden:

"he doesn't care... he lives in an alternative reality."

https://t.co/HVFuuHOVjc

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 8, 2024

*  *  *

Watch SOTU Live here...

*   *   *

Mises' Connor O'Keeffe, warns: "Be on the Lookout for These Lies in Biden's State of the Union Address." 

On Thursday evening, President Joe Biden is set to give his third State of the Union address. The political press has been buzzing with speculation over what the president will say. That speculation, however, is focused more on how Biden will perform, and which issues he will prioritize. Much of the speech is expected to be familiar.

The story Biden will tell about what he has done as president and where the country finds itself as a result will be the same dishonest story he's been telling since at least the summer.

He'll cite government statistics to say the economy is growing, unemployment is low, and inflation is down.

Something that has been frustrating Biden, his team, and his allies in the media is that the American people do not feel as economically well off as the official data says they are. Despite what the White House and establishment-friendly journalists say, the problem lies with the data, not the American people's ability to perceive their own well-being.

As I wrote back in January, the reason for the discrepancy is the lack of distinction made between private economic activity and government spending in the most frequently cited economic indicators. There is an important difference between the two:

• Government, unlike any other entity in the economy, can simply take money and resources from others to spend on things and hire people. Whether or not the spending brings people value is irrelevant

• It's the private sector that's responsible for producing goods and services that actually meet people's needs and wants. So, the private components of the economy have the most significant effect on people's economic well-being.

Recently, government spending and hiring has accounted for a larger than normal share of both economic activity and employment. This means the government is propping up these traditional measures, making the economy appear better than it actually is. Also, many of the jobs Biden and his allies take credit for creating will quickly go away once it becomes clear that consumers don't actually want whatever the government encouraged these companies to produce.

On top of all that, the administration is dealing with the consequences of their chosen inflation rhetoric.

Since its peak in the summer of 2022, the president's team has talked about inflation "coming back down," which can easily give the impression that it's prices that will eventually come back down.

But that's not what that phrase means. It would be more honest to say that price increases are slowing down.

Americans are finally waking up to the fact that the cost of living will not return to prepandemic levels, and they're not happy about it.

The president has made some clumsy attempts at damage control, such as a Super Bowl Sunday video attacking food companies for "shrinkflation"—selling smaller portions at the same price instead of simply raising prices.

In his speech Thursday, Biden is expected to play up his desire to crack down on the "corporate greed" he's blaming for high prices.

In the name of "bringing down costs for Americans," the administration wants to implement targeted price ceilings - something anyone who has taken even a single economics class could tell you does more harm than good. Biden would never place the blame for the dramatic price increases we've experienced during his term where it actually belongs—on all the government spending that he and President Donald Trump oversaw during the pandemic, funded by the creation of $6 trillion out of thin air - because that kind of spending is precisely what he hopes to kick back up in a second term.

If reelected, the president wants to "revive" parts of his so-called Build Back Better agenda, which he tried and failed to pass in his first year. That would bring a significant expansion of domestic spending. And Biden remains committed to the idea that Americans must be forced to continue funding the war in Ukraine. That's another topic Biden is expected to highlight in the State of the Union, likely accompanied by the lie that Ukraine spending is good for the American economy. It isn't.

It's not possible to predict all the ways President Biden will exaggerate, mislead, and outright lie in his speech on Thursday. But we can be sure of two things. The "state of the Union" is not as strong as Biden will say it is. And his policy ambitions risk making it much worse.

*  *  *

The American people will be tuning in on their smartphones, laptops, and televisions on Thursday evening to see if 'sloppy joe' 81-year-old President Joe Biden can coherently put together more than two sentences (even with a teleprompter) as he gives his third State of the Union in front of a divided Congress. 

President Biden will speak on various topics to convince voters why he shouldn't be sent to a retirement home.

The state of our union under President Biden: three years of decline. pic.twitter.com/Da1KOIb3eR

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) March 7, 2024

According to CNN sources, here are some of the topics Biden will discuss tonight:

• Economic issues: Biden and his team have been drafting a speech heavy on economic populism, aides said, with calls for higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy – an attempt to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans and their likely presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

• Health care expenses: Biden will also push for lowering health care costs and discuss his efforts to go after drug manufacturers to lower the cost of prescription medications — all issues his advisers believe can help buoy what have been sagging economic approval ratings.

• Israel's war with Hamas: Also looming large over Biden's primetime address is the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has consumed much of the president's time and attention over the past few months. The president's top national security advisers have been working around the clock to try to finalize a ceasefire-hostages release deal by Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that begins next week.

• An argument for reelection: Aides view Thursday's speech as a critical opportunity for the president to tout his accomplishments in office and lay out his plans for another four years in the nation's top job. Even though viewership has declined over the years, the yearly speech reliably draws tens of millions of households.

Sources provided more color on Biden's SOTU address: 

The speech is expected to be heavy on economic populism. The president will talk about raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. He'll highlight efforts to cut costs for the American people, including pushing Congress to help make prescription drugs more affordable.

Biden will talk about the need to preserve democracy and freedom, a cornerstone of his re-election bid. That includes protecting and bolstering reproductive rights, an issue Democrats believe will energize voters in November. Biden is also expected to promote his unity agenda, a key feature of each of his addresses to Congress while in office.

Biden is also expected to give remarks on border security while the invasion of illegals has become one of the most heated topics among American voters. A majority of voters are frustrated with radical progressives in the White House facilitating the illegal migrant invasion. 

It is probable that the president will attribute the failure of the Senate border bill to the Republicans, a claim many voters view as unfounded. This is because the White House has the option to issue an executive order to restore border security, yet opts not to do so

Maybe this is why? 

Most Americans are still unaware that the census counts ALL people, including illegal immigrants, for deciding how many House seats each state gets!

This results in Dem states getting roughly 20 more House seats, which is another strong incentive for them not to deport illegals.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2024

While Biden addresses the nation, the Biden administration will be armed with a social media team to pump propaganda to at least 100 million Americans. 

"The White House hosted about 70 creators, digital publishers, and influencers across three separate events" on Wednesday and Thursday, a White House official told CNN. 

Not a very capable social media team... 

The State of Confusion https://t.co/C31mHc5ABJ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 7, 2024

The administration's move to ramp up social media operations comes as users on X are mostly free from government censorship with Elon Musk at the helm. This infuriates Democrats, who can no longer censor their political enemies on X. 

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers tell Axios that the president's SOTU performance will be critical as he tries to dispel voter concerns about his elderly age. The address reached as many as 27 million people in 2023. 

"We are all nervous," said one House Democrat, citing concerns about the president's "ability to speak without blowing things."

The SOTU address comes as Biden's polling data is in the dumps. 

BetOnline has created several money-making opportunities for gamblers tonight, such as betting on what word Biden mentions the most. 

As well as...

We will update you when Tucker Carlson's live feed of SOTU is published. 

Fuck it. We’ll do it live! Thursday night, March 7, our live response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech. pic.twitter.com/V0UwOrgKvz

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 6, 2024