Connect with us

Government

USA Appears Unable to Contain Its First Wave, Isn’t Asking About a Second Wave Moot?

Is a Second Wave coming?

Published

on

This article was originally published by AppliedMacro.

The very good news being reported in many countries is that we are past the first peak, especially in those which have enacted lockdown type restrictions. Even better is that we have not seen a rapid move to a second peak as restrictions have started to be lifted. What is a Second Wave? I only recently understood that this term has two different meanings, a medical definition and one which most people mean, and this can cause a lot of confusion. Medical definition: “Second wave: A phenomenon of infections that can develop during a pandemic. The disease infects one group of people first. Infections appear to decrease. And then, infections increase in a different part of the population, resulting in a second wave of infections” Spanish flu is a well-known example of this. In the spring of 1918, in the first wave, it is estimated that 75% of the French military were infected. The virus spread peaked and then declined due to the internal dynamics of the virus – the susceptibility and immunity of the population. One theory assumes it then mutated to a far more deadly form returning in the autumn with a much higher mortality rate which is the “second wave” we see in the chart below. What most people mean: “Second wave – rising infection and death rates to a level similar to or greater than what we saw in early April.” What is the difference? In the current situation, measures were implemented to stop the spread of the virus. This created a peak but not from the internal dynamics of the virus, such as growing levels of immunity in the population. We could easily never see a “second wave” using the medical definition whilst having a new peak in infections and deaths many times larger than what we have seen so far as the first wave continues after interruption. This “second peak” in infections could be defined as the completion of the “first wave”. A simple projection would be that the rest of the country reaches infection levels seen in London and New York. The results of the antibodies tests last month in the UK were that 17% of Londoners had had the virus and only 3% of people in the rest of the country. It could of course be far higher if the lockdowns in London and New York had prevented far larger outbreaks there. Let’s look at the question we really want to be answered Will there be a second peak? Some people are arguing that we will not see a second peak in COVID-19. Let’s look at the key arguments.
  1. Why should there be?
This is the view of Prof Pennington, a retired microbiologist, whose opinion has received a great deal of sympathetic coverage in the Telegraph and Daily Mail. “I think it’s very unlikely that there will be a second wave” as people are relying on models based upon flu which are not relevant to Covid. This is an interesting point as flu mutates very quickly which is why we have so little resistance every year. Mutations then expose new parts of the population which drives a second wave. For COVID-19 so far, there has been a very limited mutation of the virus https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-mutation-rate.html which is a good reason to think that there may not be a second wave. If this is what he means then I likely agree, but it is not what people care about. What people care about is a second peak. This does not require the virus to change but simply for people not yet infected to become exposed.
  1. The virus is getting less deadly
Some researchers in Italy have suggested this but it has been widely discounted. It may resurface as a theory as it would be great if it were true, although it is worth noting it runs opposite to the logic from the previous point that the virus is not mutating. I have heard a few people confident that viruses get less dangerous over time, but I have not found any evidence to support this. For example, as mentioned in the introduction, the second wave of Spanish flu had a much higher mortality rate which is potential because it mutated into a more deadly form.
  1. The Lockdown policies we have relaxed so far are safe.
This seems a pretty reasonable idea. The main source of transmission comes from being indoors and spending time close to others and we have adapted our behaviour to social distancing and handwashing. The main easing of restrictions so far has been in areas which are the least dangerous, for example socialising outside. Looking at infection data it is likely that the R number has risen a little with these measures, to perhaps just under 1 in the UK, perhaps around 1 in much of the US and still perhaps below 1 in some EU countries. A best-case theory to support this would be that the big driver of transmission is a few “super-spreaders”. It is a few people who pass it to perhaps hundreds, not the vast majority passing it to a few. In this case the restrictions on mass gatherings such as sporting events would make an outsized difference allowing other activities to carry on largely unaffected. If this hypothesis is correct, it is important to carefully track what happens as we relax the restrictions. In the UK, it is critical but made difficult by the number of simultaneous easings we are seeing at the moment. For the US and UK, we also need to be vigilant as we are relaxing restrictions with infection rates far above other countries who are doing the same.
  1. We are already immune
This remains rather a fringe view that we have already reached herd immunity, notably pushed by Professors Gupta, of the Oxford study, and Friston. Prof Gupta is extremely optimistic and expects a release of lockdown to not lead to a resurgence in case numbers. She thinks the fall in case and death numbers “the driving force was the build-up of immunity” not lockdown and the first wave was completed with a massive spread of the virus and a majority of non-symptomatic cases. Unfortunately, her view requires several important leaps which I cannot follow. For example, the antibodies test data suggest that only 7% of the population have been infected but she conjectures that more people have been infected but for some reason do not have the antibodies. In addition, I have struggled to understand how the Infection Fatality Rate can be “definitely less than 1 in 1000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000” since more than 1 in 1000 people has ALREADY died from COVID in the UK. Furthermore, if all of the countries has already been infected why is it overwhelmingly Londoners who have been ill? Prof Friston has been getting a lot of press for this model recently. It is rather complex, hidden behind some fiendish maths adapted from physics. In essence, his model does not conclude that lockdowns had no effect, it assumes it. After assuming lockdowns and policy are irrelevant, he has to find other variables to cause the peak in infections and his proposal is slightly different from Gupta’s. It is not that we have all already been infected by the virus, it is that perhaps 80% of us were immune already. He looks at the UK and Germany and concludes there is an immunity difference in the populations that makes lots more Germans immune to COVID than British people. I have not seen his opinion on why Brazil’s death rate keeps rising but since it cannot be their lack of lockdown it must be because Brazilians are naturally less immune than everyone else or we are about to see a rapid spontaneous fall in Brazil’s cases.
  1. Summer makes a difference
It seems certain that this is true to some extent. We still see outbreaks in warm countries, but there is some indication that warm weather and higher humidity affects the virus and, of course, in hotter climate behaviours are likely to be different anyway in terms of socialising outside. Summary Unfortunately, I do not agree with the most optimistic arguments that there is no risk of easing lockdown. Since we are so much safer outside than inside, and as approach summer it may well be that we will not see a rapid resurgence of the virus which will give us all some respite and time to reassess our approach.

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

Who Can You Trust?

Who Can You Trust?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“I’m sick and tired of hearing Democrats whining about Joe Biden’s…

Published

on

Who Can You Trust?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“I’m sick and tired of hearing Democrats whining about Joe Biden’s age. The man knows how to govern. Just shut up and vote to save Democracy.”

- Rob Reiner, Hollywood savant

Perhaps you’re aware that the World Health Organization (WHO) is cooking up a plan to impose its will over all the sovereign nations on this planet in the event of future pandemics.

That means, for instance, that the WHO would issue orders to the USA about lockdowns, vaccines, and vaccine passports and we US citizens supposedly would be compelled to follow them.

Why the “Joe Biden” regime would go along with this globalist fuckery is one of the abiding mysteries of our time - except that they go along with everything else that the cabal of Geneva cooks up, such as attacks on farmers, and on oil production, and on relations between men and women, and on personal privacy, and on economic liberty throughout Western Civ, as if they’re working overtime to kill it off. And all of us with it.

I think they are working overtime at that because the sore-beset citizens of Western Civ are onto their game, and getting restless about it. So, the Geneva cabal is in a race against time before the center pole of their circus tent collapses and the nations of the world are compelled to follow the zeitgeist in the direction of de-centralizing, foiling all their grand plans.

The “Joe Biden” regime is pretending to ignore the reality that this WHO deal is actually a treaty that would require ratification by a two-thirds vote in the senate, an unlikely outcome. In any case, handing over authority to the WHO — in effect, to its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — to push around American citizens like a giant herd of cattle would be patently unlawful.

That center pole of the circus tent is the wobbling global economy. It’s barely holding up the canvas over the three rings of the circus. In the center ring, the death-defying spectacle of the Biden Family crime case is playing out before a huge audience (us). This week, a gun went off at the FBI and smoke is curling out of the barrel. FBI Director Christopher Wray was forced to verify that he’s been sitting on an incriminating document for three years from a “trusted” confidential human source, i.e., an informant, stating that the Biden Family received a $5-million bribe from a foreign entity when “JB” was vice-president.

That’s only one bribe of many others, of course, as documented in the Hunter Biden laptop, and it must be obvious it represents treasonous behavior that will demand resignation or impeachment. As this spools out in the weeks and months ahead, do you think Americans will be in the mood to accept further insults such as “Joe Biden” surrendering our national sovereignty to the WHO?

Anyway, you must ask yourself: why on earth should I trust the WHO about anything? Did they not participate in laying a trip on the world with Covid-19? How did those lockdowns work out? Do you think they destroyed enough businesses and ruined enough households? How’s the vaccination program doing? Effective? Safe? Yeah, maybe not so much. Maybe killing a lot of people, wrecking immune systems, sterilizing reproductive organs, causing gross disabilities, shattering lives.

Of course, in over three years neither the WHO nor the US medical authorities showed the slightest interest in helping to figure out how the Covid-19 virus was made in a lab, and exactly how it got loose in the world. Lately, Dr. Ghebreyesus has warned the world about much worse future pandemics supposedly coming down at us. Oh? Really? What does he know that we don’t? That possibly new efforts to concoct chimeric diseases are ongoing in labs around the world? (You know that dozens of such labs were discovered in Ukraine as the war got underway there in 2022.) What’s Dr. Ghebreyesus doing to stop that?

If US orgs and citizens are involved in this “research,” why doesn’t the WHO alert our government leaders so they can stop it? (Would they? I’m not so sure.) And, who is behind it this time? The Eco-Health Alliance again, like with Covid-19? By the way, that outfit got another whopping grant last fall from the NIH to “study” bat viruses — right after the NIH terminated a previous grant on account of The Eco-Health Alliance failing to turn over notebooks and other records.

No, you cannot trust the WHO about anything. The “trust horizon” (a concept introduced by the great Nicole Foss, late of The Automatic Earth dot com) is shrinking. You can no longer trust any distant authorities. You also cannot trust the US federal government (especially the executive branch behind “Joe Biden”). And notice: the trust horizon is shrinking just as the world is de-centralizing. This, you see, is the main contradiction behind all the Globalists’ twisted ambitions to control everything, including you. They are working against the current tide of human history which is pushing everything toward down-scaling, re-localization, and re-assertion of the sovereign individual person.

That trend will become increasingly evident as things organized at the giant scale start to implode — giant retail chains, medical behemoths, hedge funds, big banks, you name it. The world no longer has the mojo for globalism. There’s reason to wonder these days whether the USA has the mojo to remain a unified national polity of states. Our federal government is not only financially bankrupt beyond any coherent reckoning, it is also morally bankrupt, and it has decided to make war against its own people. None of this is satisfactory and none of this is working. It’s time to figure out who and what you can trust and act accordingly.

Tyler Durden Sun, 06/04/2023 - 09:20

Read More

Continue Reading

International

Removing antimicrobial resistance from the WHO’s ‘pandemic treaty’ will leave humanity extremely vulnerable to future pandemics

Drug-resistant microbes are a serious threat for future pandemics, but the new draft of the WHO’s international pandemic agreement may not include provisions…

Published

on

By

Antimicrobial resistance is now a leading cause of death worldwide due to drug-resistant infections, including drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, pneumonia and Staph infections like the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus shown here. (NIAID, cropped from original), CC BY

In late May, the latest version of the draft Pandemic Instrument, also referred to as the “pandemic treaty,” was shared with Member States at the World Health Assembly. The text was made available online via Health Policy Watch and it quickly became apparent that all mentions of addressing antimicrobial resistance in the Pandemic Instrument were at risk of removal.

Work on the Pandemic Instrument began in December 2021 after the World Health Assembly agreed to a global process to draft and negotiate an international instrument — under the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) — to protect nations and communities from future pandemic emergencies.


Read more: Drug-resistant superbugs: A global threat intensified by the fight against coronavirus


Since the beginning of negotiations on the Pandemic Instrument, there have been calls from civil society and leading experts, including the Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance, to include the so-called “silent” pandemic of antimicrobial resistance in the instrument.

Just three years after the onset of a global pandemic, it is understandable why Member States negotiating the Pandemic Instrument have focused on preventing pandemics that resemble COVID-19. But not all pandemics in the past have been caused by viruses and not all pandemics in the future will be caused by viruses. Devastating past pandemics of bacterial diseases have included plague and cholera. The next pandemic could be caused by bacteria or other microbes.

Antimicrobial resistance

Yellow particles on purple spikes
Microscopic view of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that cause bubonic plague, on a flea. Plague is an example of previous devastating pandemics of bacterial disease. (NIAID), CC BY

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the process by which infections caused by microbes become resistant to the medicines developed to treat them. Microbes include bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites. Bacterial infections alone cause one in eight deaths globally.

AMR is fueling the rise of drug-resistant infections, including drug-resistant tuberculosis, drug-resistant pneumonia and drug-resistant Staph infections such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). These infections are killing and debilitating millions of people annually, and AMR is now a leading cause of death worldwide.

Without knowing what the next pandemic will be, the “pandemic treaty” must plan, prepare and develop effective tools to respond to a wider range of pandemic threats, not solely viruses.

Even if the world faces another viral pandemic, secondary bacterial infections will be a serious issue. During the COVID-19 pandemic for instance, large percentages of those hospitalized with COVID-19 required treatment for secondary bacterial infections.

New research from Northwestern University suggests that many of the deaths among hospitalized COVID-19 patients were associated with pneumonia — a secondary bacterial infection that must be treated with antibiotics.

An illustrative diagram that shows the difference between a drug resistant bacteria and a non-resistant bacteria.
Antimicrobial resistance means infections that were once treatable are much more difficult to treat. (NIAID), CC BY

Treating these bacterial infections requires effective antibiotics, and with AMR increasing, effective antibiotics are becoming a scarce resource. Essentially, safeguarding the remaining effective antibiotics we have is critical to responding to any pandemic.

That’s why the potential removal of measures that would help mitigate AMR and better safeguard antimicrobial effectiveness is so concerning. Sections of the text which may be removed include measures to prevent infections (caused by bacteria, viruses and other microbes), such as:

  • better access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene;
  • higher standards of infection prevention and control;
  • integrated surveillance of infectious disease threats from human, animals and the environment; and
  • strengthening antimicrobial stewardship efforts to optimize how antimicrobial drugs are used and prevent the development of AMR.

The exclusion of these measures would hinder efforts to protect people from future pandemics, and appears to be part of a broader shift to water-down the language in the Pandemic Instrument, making it easier for countries to opt-out of taking recommended actions to prevent future pandemics.

Making the ‘pandemic treaty’ more robust

Measures to address AMR could be easily included and addressed in the “pandemic treaty.”

In September 2022, I was part of a group of civil society and research organizations that specialize in mitigating AMR who were invited the WHO’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to provide an analysis on how AMR should be addressed, within the then-draft text.

They outlined that including bacterial pathogens in the definition of “pandemics” was critical. They also identified specific provisions that should be tweaked to track and address both viral and bacterial threats. These included AMR and recommended harmonizing national AMR stewardship rules.

In March 2023, I joined other leading academic researchers and experts from various fields in publishing a special edition of the Journal of Medicine, Law and Ethics, outlining why the Pandemic Instrument must address AMR.

The researchers of this special issue argued that the Pandemic Instrument was overly focused on viral threats and ignored AMR and bacterial threats, including the need to manage antibiotics as a common-pool resource and revitalize research and development of novel antimicrobial drugs.

Next steps

While earlier drafts of the Pandemic Instrument drew on guidance from AMR policy researchers and civil society organizations, after the first round of closed-door negotiations by Member States, all of these insertions, are now at risk for removal.

The Pandemic Instrument is the best option to mitigate AMR and safeguard lifesaving antimicrobials to treat secondary infections in pandemics. AMR exceeds the capacity of any single country or sector to solve. Global political action is needed to ensure the international community works together to collectively mitigate AMR and support the conservation, development and equitable distribution of safe and effective antimicrobials.

By missing this opportunity to address AMR and safeguard antimicrobials in the Pandemic Instrument, we severely undermine the broader goals of the instrument: to protect nations and communities from future pandemic emergencies.

It is important going forward that Member States recognize the core infrastructural role that antimicrobials play in pandemic response and strengthen, rather than weaken, measures meant to safeguard antimicrobials.

Antimicrobials are an essential resource for responding to pandemic emergencies that must be protected. If governments are serious about pandemic preparedness, they must support bold measures to conserve the effectiveness of antimicrobials within the Pandemic Instrument.

Susan Rogers Van Katwyk is a member of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Governance of Antimicrobial Resistance at York University. She receives funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

Repeated COVID-19 Vaccination Weakens Immune System: Study

Repeated COVID-19 Vaccination Weakens Immune System: Study

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

Repeated COVID-19…

Published

on

Repeated COVID-19 Vaccination Weakens Immune System: Study

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

Repeated COVID-19 vaccination weakens the immune system, potentially making people susceptible to life-threatening conditions such as cancer, according to a new study.

A man is given a COVID-19 vaccine in Chelsea, Mass., on Feb. 16, 2021. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

Multiple doses of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines lead to higher levels of antibodies called IgG4, which can provide a protective effect. But a growing body of evidence indicates that the “abnormally high levels” of the immunoglobulin subclass actually make the immune system more susceptible to the COVID-19 spike protein in the vaccines, researchers said in the paper.

They pointed to experiments performed on mice that found multiple boosters on top of the initial COVID-19 vaccination “significantly decreased” protection against both the Delta and Omicron virus variants and testing that found a spike in IgG4 levels after repeat Pfizer vaccination, suggesting immune exhaustion.

Studies have detected higher levels of IgG4 in people who died with COVID-19 when compared to those who recovered and linked the levels with another known determinant of COVID-19-related mortality, the researchers also noted.

A review of the literature also showed that vaccines against HIV, malaria, and pertussis also induce the production of IgG4.

“In sum, COVID-19 epidemiological studies cited in our work plus the failure of HIV, Malaria, and Pertussis vaccines constitute irrefutable evidence demonstrating that an increase in IgG4 levels impairs immune responses,” Alberto Rubio Casillas, a researcher with the biology laboratory at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico and one of the authors of the new paper, told The Epoch Times via email.

The paper was published by the journal Vaccines in May.

Pfizer and Moderna officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Both companies utilize messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in their vaccines.

Dr. Robert Malone, who helped invent the technology, said the paper illustrates why he’s been warning about the negative effects of repeated vaccination.

“I warned that more jabs can result in what’s called high zone tolerance, of which the switch to IgG4 is one of the mechanisms. And now we have data that clearly demonstrate that’s occurring in the case of this as well as some other vaccines,” Malone, who wasn’t involved with the study, told The Epoch Times.

So it’s basically validating that this rush to administer and re-administer without having solid data to back those decisions was highly counterproductive and appears to have resulted in a cohort of people that are actually more susceptible to the disease.”

Possible Problems

The weakened immune systems brought about by repeated vaccination could lead to serious problems, including cancer, the researchers said.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Sat, 06/03/2023 - 22:30

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending