Wuhan Flu Truth and Big Brother Narratives

[Pyrrho]

Link: https://twitter.com/jameshamblin/status/1487170517958373379?t=JGAPw9ln0uic6NvctDvC3Q&s=19

[Pyrrho]

Emo Philips
@EmoPhilips
covid levels in wastewater seem to be dropping; it won’t be long now before we can enjoy it again

[Tommy Palven]

A billion Chinese already live under the boot of big brother. And there isn’t a single thing you or I can do about it. And we will still buy shit made there in the next week, and lose no sleep over it.

If you have not been to China I urge you to check it out. You will enjoy yourself.

I've been to China several times, and have taken this Gate 1 Travel tour with three different wives:
https://www.gate1travel.com/specials/tr ... china.aspx

Many young Chinese speak flawless English and many have a nice sense of humor. It seems they know more about the positives and negatives of their government than we Americans know about ours, and they are willing to discuss anything.

[Pyrrho]

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/saf ... munication

Date Issued: January 28, 2022

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning people to stop using the Empowered Diagnostics CovClear COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test and ImmunoPass COVID-19 Neutralizing Antibody Rapid Test. These tests were distributed with labeling indicating they are authorized by the FDA, but neither test has been authorized, cleared, or approved by the FDA for distribution or use in the United States. The FDA is concerned about the potentially higher risk of false results when using unauthorized tests.

Empowered Diagnostics is recalling the CovClear COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test and the ImmunoPass COVID-19 Neutralizing Antibody Rapid Test, and the FDA has identified this issue as a Class I recall, the most serious type of recall.

Recommendations
Do not use the Empowered Diagnostics CovClear COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test and ImmunoPass COVID-19 Neutralizing Antibody Rapid Test.

[robinson]

They might have more bogus results than the approved test

[robinson]

Meanwhile

Nations that simply stopped travel still have no Covid cases or deaths

[robinson]

They also disinfected anything coming in as well

[robinson]

While the Antarctic research station, where everybody was vaccinated, and the 19 new guys all quarantined for two weeks before arriving, had a huge outbreak 12 days after the new guys showed up

[robinson]

Vaccinated crew members had to be evacuated

Who had been isolated for 6 months before the new guys showed up, who of course all tested negative before arrival

[robinson]

Big Brother will not be reporting that on the evening news

[Pyrrho]

https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 022-01-31/

Japanese trading and pharmaceuticals company Kowa Co Ltd (7807.T) on Monday said that anti-parasite drug ivermectin showed an "antiviral effect" against Omicron and other coronavirus variants in joint non-clinical research.

The company, which has been working with Tokyo's Kitasato University on testing the drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19, did not provide further details.

https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/ ... 9284837381

The press release apparently is about in vitro non-clinical research that is completely separate from Kowa's ongoing Phase III Clinical trials in human subjects.

[Doctor X]

"In vitro non-clinical research?"

Who is the vitro?

The criticism by the Tweeter is apt.

– J.D.

[robinson]

Must be the Malaria stopping Covid

[Anaxagoras]

https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 022-01-31/

Japanese trading and pharmaceuticals company Kowa Co Ltd (7807.T) on Monday said that anti-parasite drug ivermectin showed an "antiviral effect" against Omicron and other coronavirus variants in joint non-clinical research.

The company, which has been working with Tokyo's Kitasato University on testing the drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19, did not provide further details.

https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/ ... 9284837381

The press release apparently is about in vitro non-clinical research that is completely separate from Kowa's ongoing Phase III Clinical trials in human subjects.

The only new information in the press release about ivermectin is that they found a similar "antiviral effect" against Omicron as they had previously found for other variants.

Presumably in vitro, although the press release didn't use that word. It only characterized it as "non-clinical" research.

Of course, there are lots of things that can kill a virus in a petri dish, where you don't have to worry about also harming the infected patient. You can kill it with bleach or any number of poisons, or UV light, but these things would also harm a living body.

[Doctor X]

KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!!!!

Sorry . . . no I have not been drinking.

– J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

Some Japanese scientists have done some simulations with a supercomputer:

Supercomputer underscores need for ‘distance’ to fight Omicron

OSAKA—The probability of infection with the Omicron variant is greatly lowered with distance, mask wearing and other measures, but the strain still spreads more easily than the Delta strain, according to Fugaku supercomputer simulations.

Before conducting the simulations, the team at the Riken research institute estimated that the Omicron variant was 1.5 times more contagious than the Delta variant, based on results of epidemiological research and other sources.

One Fugaku simulation was of a maskless person infected with the Omicron variant who talked to someone for 15 minutes at a distance of 1 meter.

The probability of the variant infecting the other person was around 60 percent on average, but the rate could surpass 90 percent at most, according to the researchers.

When the team conducted the same simulation of a maskless person with the Delta variant, the highest infection probability was just over 80 percent, while the average infection probability was around 50 percent.

If a maskless person infected with the Omicron variant maintained a 2-meter distance, the amount of space between talkers recommended by Japanese authorities, the highest infection probability reached around 60 percent, while the average infection probability was just over 20 percent.

Even if someone infected with the Omicron wore a nonwoven face mask, the highest infection probability reached around 10 percent if the person stayed only 50 centimeters from the person he or she was talking to.

When the team cut the distance to 25 centimeters, the highest infection probability was around 30 percent. Distances of 50 or 25 centimeters are about the space between people on a crowded train or between people whispering to each other in meetings.

However, when the team increased the distance from the mask wearer to 1 meter, the risk of spreading the virus fell to near zero.

The team also conducted a simulation on 16 people, consisting of customers or staff members, at a small restaurant furnished with tables and counters.

If one of the 16 people was infected with the Omicron variant, another person would become infected after an hour if the restaurant only used its original mechanical ventilation system, the research team said.

If the restaurant also used a kitchen duct system and an air conditioner for ventilation, the risk of infection was halved.

If the restaurant also used partition boards, the infection risk was reduced to almost one-third of the level under the original scenario.

Although droplet particles traveled in the restaurant when it used a kitchen duct system and an air conditioner, they accumulated and posed an infection risk in fewer areas inside the facility. This means using a kitchen duct system and an air conditioner can help lower the risk of infection.

If these simulations are correct, wearing a nonwoven mask seems to make an enormous difference, if someone is talking face to face.

This could help explain why you don't hear much about people being infected on trains in Japan, even though a lot of people are closely gathered in a small space. They are almost all wearing masks. Also, the trains are pretty well ventilated. Either some windows are opened or they have a fancy new ventilation system. Or both.

But these are computer simulations, so who knows how well they model reality.

[Doctor X]

The probability of infection with the Omicron variant is greatly lowered with distance, mask wearing and other measures. . . .

Evidences?

Thanks.

– J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

Of course, it does matter how you wear the mask.

[Anaxagoras]

The probability of infection with the Omicron variant is greatly lowered with distance, mask wearing and other measures. . . .

Evidences?

Thanks.

– J.D.

It's a computer simulation. Like I said, who knows how well they model reality.

But not just any computer, a supercomputer! :D

But what sort of evidence would you accept?

How can we study this more rigorously?

Have doctors and nurses in hospitals been wearing them for no reason all these years? Even before the pandemic? Why do surgeons wear them?

[Doctor X]

But what sort of evidence would you accept?

Just pointing out they made a claim without evidence, without an endorsement from Harter, and expect the reader to accept it uncritically. I would apply the same criticism to someone claiming the vaccines do not "work."

How can we study this more rigorously?

They would just have to do a literature search to reveal the lack of efficacy of masks with viral infections. That even Brandon handlers have admitted that suggests they had no interest in researching it, when it was known before the pandemic.

Oh but now, my poor son, you wander into a Latin Fallacy:

Have doctors and nurses in hospitals been wearing them for no reason all these years?

A couple of them in fact. Shall I discourse upon excluded middles, false dichotomies, and faulty premises?

The answer is with your Question Pedestrian:

Why do surgeons wear them?

Bacterial infections.

Consider also the context which was excluded:

• 1. Open wound.
  2. Close proximity.
  3. Over a significant period of time.
  4. In the rain.

There is some ritual involved: people are taught to do things and believe they are sacrosanct since "that is how it is done." So, for example, how long, and with what, should you scrub a site prior to incision? "Back in the day," the scrubs were long. More modern – as in last ten years – it appears that such only abrades the skin, and, potentially, pulls out more Wee Beasties from the hair follicles!

So how much does a mask prevent a wound infection?

Let me just say that whatever degree of prevention changes if you sneeze into an open abdomen.

That being said, post-operative patients do not tend to come down with viral infections.

– J. "川だよ！" D.

[Anaxagoras]

They would just have to do a literature search to reveal the lack of efficacy of masks with viral infections. That even Brandon handlers have admitted that suggests they had no interest in researching it, when it was known before the pandemic.

I thought they said that cloth masks don't work, but others such as N-95 masks do. Surgical masks are sort of in-between I think. :notsure:

[Pyrrho]

IIRC something I read somewhere talked about how masks don't block the virus but they do keep exhaled breath from circulating as quickly. What effect that has in circulating air in an enclosed area such as an aircraft, I have no idea. Cloth masks being less effective than what my doctor's office and the hospital call "isolation masks" which are this type of thing:

https://i.imgur.com/DT3KAAc.jpg

I really do not know, so I defer to those who do.

I do know that I won't sit in the small conference room next week for the "town hall" meeting at the office. I would prefer not to be in close proximity to blowhards in any case.

[Ben Trovado]

They would just have to do a literature search to reveal the lack of efficacy of masks with viral infections. That even Brandon handlers have admitted that suggests they had no interest in researching it, when it was known before the pandemic.

I thought they said that cloth masks don't work, but others such as N-95 masks do. Surgical masks are sort of in-between I think. :notsure:

But with those masks:

- the doctors and nurses are trained to use them properly
- they have education and then must still practice not handling them or touching their face (unlike 99% of us at Wal Mart)
- they are not put into their pocket or onto a car seat between uses
- instead, they must go into a sterile, but not airtight, environment between uses
- staff must use a different mask for each day of the week (otherwise the warm moist breath causes more problems than the mask solves)
- after 3-4 uses (at the very outside), they need a fresh mask


Granted, if everyone followed those procedures, it might do some good. I'd still like to see a practical study, though.


* ETA: Forgot top add that everyone must be clean shaven and that the mask must be tight enough to cause marks on the face after an hour of use.

[Doctor X]

. . . but others such as N-95 masks do. Surgical masks are sort of in-between I think. :notsure:

"They," as in the article you quote, do not say that.

The results for the N-95 also remain questionable.

– J.D.

[Doctor X]

What effect that has in circulating air in an enclosed area such as an aircraft, I have no idea.

The air in an aircraft is circulated.

– J.D.

[Pyrrho]

What effect that has in circulating air in an enclosed area such as an aircraft, I have no idea.

The air in an aircraft is circulated.

– J.D.

Yup. Fat lot o' good a mask is going to do...and do they "deep clean" the aircraft after each flight? I know how they "deep clean" the office, judging by the food crumbs and napkins I found on my workstation desk the last time I was there, and I'd never sat at that desk before. But rest assured, masks are required at the office, so I'm "safe".

[Doctor X]

To be honest, I was surprised to learn about the airplane circulation. I was the victim of the assumption you are in a tube, air is in the tube, farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies!

Still, no one is talking about laminar flow or UV lights!

Now here is a point "in favor" of snakes masks on a plane: you lessen the amount you touch your face which you then touch your tray which the next poor slob touches, because, as you state, the crew sterilizes the plane right after landing.

– J.D.

[robinson]

https://twitter.com/michaelmantzmd/stat ... 88099?s=21

[Pyrrho]

...aaaannnnddd in California there's an effort to pass a law requiring private employers to require all employees to be vaccinated. No. Just no. That's just wrong.

[Doctor X]

That will not survive a challenge, but I notice a lot of companies are trying to do that, particularly with new hires.

– J.D.

[Pyrrho]

https://twitter.com/pdmcleod/status/149 ... p5eGQ&s=19

https://twitter.com/pdmcleod/status/1493366898754527232

[Pyrrho]

Link: https://twitter.com/AnaCabrera/status/1494716790815002628

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain ... 3682dca39b

Among 490 patients included in the primary analysis (mean [SD] age, 62.5 [8.7] years; 267 women [54.5%]), 52 of 241 patients (21.6%) in the ivermectin group and 43 of 249 patients (17.3%) in the control group progressed to severe disease (relative risk [RR], 1.25; 95% CI, 0.87-1.80; P = .25). For all prespecified secondary outcomes, there were no significant differences between groups. Mechanical ventilation occurred in 4 (1.7%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.13-1.30; P = .17), intensive care unit admission in 6 (2.4%) vs 8 (3.2%) (RR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.27-2.20; P = .79), and 28-day in-hospital death in 3 (1.2%) vs 10 (4.0%) (RR, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.09-1.11; P = .09). The most common adverse event reported was diarrhea (14 [5.8%] in the ivermectin group and 4 [1.6%] in the control group).

[Doctor X]

FAKE NEWS!11!!!1!

– J.D.

[Pyrrho]

Threads.

https://twitter.com/upulie/status/1494990552105840652

https://twitter.com/upulie/status/1494991553659506689

https://twitter.com/upulie/status/1494993950809100292

[Doctor X]

We should stick to the opinions of music stars! :hyper:

– J.D.

[Ben Trovado]

We should stick to the opinions of music stars! :hyper:

– J.D.

Pat Sajak has recently noted the alarming, recent trend of *not* seeking the opinions of people working in Hollywood.

He is rightfully appalled.

[robinson]

https://twitter.com/jaggermickoz/status ... 25024?s=21

[Anaxagoras]

Here is a non-paywalled version of the New York Times article cited above:

The C.D.C. Isn’t Publishing Large Portions of the Covid Data It Collects

I have to say it really is rather outrageous. I feel condescended to. Just give us the straight poop!

For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public.

When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected.

So they are in effect cherry-picking which data to release to the public and which data to withhold. For our own good, I'm sure! :roll:

Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.”

Well, gee. we're only 2 years into this thing. And why exactly does the data need to be "ready for prime time"? Is that because the data doesn't show what the CDC wants it to show? Data is just whatever it is. It may show something significant, or it may not. Either way, I prefer transparency.

Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.

I'm sure that there will be people who misinterpret the data. But I don't think that is enough to justify withholding it from the public.

The C.D.C. also has multiple bureaucratic divisions that must sign off on important publications, and its officials must alert the Department of Health and Human Services — which oversees the agency — and the White House of their plans. The agency often shares data with states and partners before making data public. Those steps can add delays.

“The C.D.C. is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization,” said Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute. “The steps that it takes to get something like this released are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the C.D.C.”

The performance of vaccines and boosters, particularly in younger adults, is among the most glaring omissions in data the C.D.C. has made public.

Last year, the agency repeatedly came under fire for not tracking so-called breakthrough infections in vaccinated Americans, and focusing only on individuals who became ill enough to be hospitalized or die. The agency presented that information as risk comparisons with unvaccinated adults, rather than provide timely snapshots of hospitalized patients stratified by age, sex, race and vaccination status.

But the C.D.C. has been routinely collecting information since the Covid vaccines were first rolled out last year, according to a federal official familiar with the effort. The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public, the official said, because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.

Ms. Nordlund confirmed that as one of the reasons. Another reason, she said, is that the data represents only 10 percent of the population of the United States. But the C.D.C. has relied on the same level of sampling to track influenza for years.

Some outside public health experts were stunned to hear that information exists.

“We have been begging for that sort of granularity of data for two years,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist and part of the team that ran Covid Tracking Project, an independent effort that compiled data on the pandemic till March 2021.

A detailed analysis, she said, “builds public trust, and it paints a much clearer picture of what’s actually going on.”

Concern about the misinterpretation of hospitalization data broken down by vaccination status is not unique to the C.D.C. On Thursday, public health officials in Scotland said they would stop releasing data on Covid hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status because of similar fears that the figures would be misrepresented by anti-vaccine groups.

But the experts dismissed the potential misuse or misinterpretation of data as an acceptable reason for not releasing it.

“We are at a much greater risk of misinterpreting the data with data vacuums, than sharing the data with proper science, communication and caveats,” Ms. Rivera said.

See, they are actually playing right into the hands of "anti-vaccine groups" who will happily say that the government is withholding that information because it would show that vaccines don't actually work.

Be transparent with the data, and I'm well aware that some of it needs to put in the proper context to understand what it means.

Like just looking at top-line numbers for a whole country doesn't help. You need to look at it broken down by age, by co-morbidities, by tentacles, and of course per capita.

Like, some here try to say that if a majority of people hospitalized "with" Covid are vaccinated, it means the vaccines don't work. But if old people and people with co-morbidities are also more likely to be vaccinated, and if more people are vaccinated than unvaccinated, that may not be the case. So you pick a standard number like "per 100,000 people" in each of categories X, Y and Z and compare the results.

And it's not like withholding the data will stop "anti-vaccine groups" from spreading misinformation anyway.

[robinson]

It’s just politics and rhetoric as always

Like calling anyone who points out problems with a new experiment in mRNA vaccines “an anti-vaxxer”

It’s just more bullshit to avoid reality

[Anaxagoras]

Like calling anyone who points out problems with a new experiment in mRNA vaccines “an anti-vaxxer”

Well, if you don't take a balanced view, by which I mean considering all of the evidence, not just cherry-picking the evidence that supports the view that vaccines are bad, while ignoring evidence to the contrary, people are going to eventually peg you as one.