Neuroimaging research suggests that even mild cases of COVID-19 leave a lasting mark on the brain

[Trainwreck2100]

The U.S. spends lavishly on healthcare yet can’t answer basic questions about Covid-19. Some of the best research has come from Israel. American public health agencies should be producing data on breakthrough infections, boosters and natural immunity. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has failed to provide the information needed to inform a sound Covid strategy.

Israel began its vaccine rollout with Pfizer in December, only days after the U.S. But Israel kept good data, reported them out frequently and quickly, and used them to track subsequent Covid infections. When the White House announced its plan to recommend a booster shot for all Americans, it cited Israeli data. The World Health Organization and others criticized the plan, calling the evidence insufficient, and in what seemed like a coordinated protest, two top scientists at the Food and Drug Administration abruptly resigned.

The Biden administration recently got the supporting data it needed to justify its booster plan. But not from the CDC. Another Israeli study showed that a booster resulted in a 10-fold reduction in severe Covid illness in people over 60. The results were published mere weeks after the study’s completion, not months later as often happens in the U.S.

“There’s no doubt,” Anthony Fauci said of the findings in a press briefing, “from the dramatic data from the Israeli study that the boosts that are being now done there and contemplated here support very strongly the rationale for such an approach.” The FDA, trying to evaluate the question of boosters, scrambled to obtain the raw data from Israel.


The bigger question is: Why didn’t the CDC produce the research? The agency has 21,000 employees and a $15 billion annual budget. It has data on more than 40 million Americans who have tested positive for Covid and 200 million who have been vaccinated. The data include the vaccine type, dosing schedule and vaccination date. Calculating the rate of U.S. breakthrough infections and subsequent hospitalizations and deaths isn’t the Manhattan Project. It’s Epidemiology 101.

The CDC’s failure to report meaningful data has left policy makers flying blind. In the absence of good data to answer the basic questions Americans have been asking, political opinions have filled the vacuum. Strong data might have prevented much of the polarization over Covid.

Sound data from the CDC has been especially lacking on natural immunity from prior Covid infection. On Aug. 25, Israel published the most powerful and scientifically rigorous study on the subject to date. In a sample of more than 700,000 people, natural immunity was 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic infections.

Despite this evidence, U.S. public health officials continue to dismiss natural immunity, insisting that those who have recovered from Covid must still get the vaccine. Policy makers and public health leaders, and the media voices that parrot them, are inexplicably sticking to their original hypothesis that natural immunity is fleeting, even as at least 15 studies show it lasts.

Meanwhile, employers fire workers with natural immunity who won’t get vaccinated. Schools disenroll students who won’t comply.

The CDC did put out a study on natural immunity last month, forcefully concluding that vaccinated immunity was 2.3 times better than natural immunity. The CDC used these results to justify telling those with natural immunity to get vaccinated.

But the rate of infection in each group was less than 0.01%, meaning infections were exceedingly rare in the short two-month time period the agency chose to study. This is odd, given there are more than a year of data available. Moreover, despite having data on all 50 states, the CDC only reported data from Kentucky. Was Kentucky the only state that produced the desired result? Why else exclude the same data from the other 49 states?

Some public health officials are afraid to acknowledge natural immunity because they fear some will choose infection over vaccination. But leaders can encourage all Americans who aren’t immune to get vaccinated and be transparent with the data at the same time.

The CDC shouldn’t fish for data to support outdated hypotheses. Heeding the robust Israeli data on natural immunity could help restore the agency’s credibility and even help vaccination efforts.

Israel also contributed a brilliant study on vaccinating children. Researchers found that one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, instead of the normal two, was 100% effective in children ages 12 to 15. Such a finding could have significant implications for achieving broad immunity in adolescents while reducing the risk of heart complications, which have been clustered around the second dose.

These are the studies U.S. public health agencies should be doing but aren’t. By any metric, the CDC has failed in its primary task of preparing the country for a pandemic and telling us how to reduce harm from the novel Covid pathogen.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—And How To Fix It.”



https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-1...re-11631548306

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Socialized medicine

[DMC]

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Socialized medicine

Border wall

[boutons_deux]

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Socialized medicine

FDA/CDC has been under Trump/Repug sycophants' degradation for 3 years when the pandemic hit.

Repug states were LYING about cause of death in 2020, reporting "pneumonia" or "blank" cause of death on coroner reports to Wash DC.

Repugs and their cult base have made America is ungovernable.

[Thread]

FDA/CDC has been under Trump/Repug sycophants' degradation for 3 years when the pandemic hit.

Repug states were LYING about cause of death in 2020, reporting "pneumonia" or "blank" cause of death on coroner reports to Wash DC.

Repugs and their cult base have made America is ungovernable.

...not only good, but excellent. That's precisely what you did to President Trump for 4 years. Once & again, you can dish it, bouts, but you cannot take it.

[ChumpDumper]

Strong data might have prevented much of the polarization over Covid.

No chance in .

[ChumpDumper]

Border wall

No one is stopping you from building it.

Chop chop.

[Winehole23]

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Socialized medicine

amazing what fully-funded, public-facing, public-health oriented public healthcare can do.

must’ve been one of a tip jar.

[baseline bum]

Holy

Do you think people with "natural immunity" chose to get COVID? Their concern is that they already have immunity and should not be required to vaccinate.

If they got it after refusing vaccination, yeah they chose to get COVID.

[DarrinS]

If they got it after refusing vaccination, yeah they chose to get COVID.

Millions of people got it pre-vaccine.

[DMC]

If they got it after refusing vaccination, yeah they chose to get COVID.

It doesn't delineate it that way. It simply says natural immunity (i.e. already have COVID) vs vaccination alone. The CDC plays semantical games with it, saying something like "Vaccine proves more resistance to COVID than does natural immunity" then when you read the article it's saying if you already had COVID then got the vaccine, you have more immunity than just natural immunity. Once again the CDC is playing politics and issuing guidance based on political motives instead of following the science.

New CDC Study: Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection (this would make you think it's a study of those who are vaccinated who never had COVID vs those who had COVID and were never vaccinated. But no, there's more)

In today’s MMWR, a study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus. These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.



"but they mean well"

Also.. lol "Kentucky".,

I think the WSJ does a good job calling that cherry picking out.

[DMC]

amazing what fully-funded, public-facing, public-health oriented public healthcare can do.

must’ve been one of a tip jar.

That's behind a border wall with a very low immigration level in a country that's financially buoyed by American tax dollars.

Would you like a government like Israel has?

Yes or no?

[Winehole23]

That's behind a border wall with a very low immigration level in a country that's financially buoyed by American tax dollars.

Would you like a government like Israel has?

Yes or no?

I’d like healthcare like they have.

[DMC]

I’d like healthcare like they have.

I didn't ask you that. Do you want their government so that you can also have their healthcare?

Yes or no?

Why can't we be more like Israel?

If your neighbor drives a new Audi A6 and lives in a trailer home, would you like to drive an Audi A6? Are you willing to live in a trailer home to do so?

Surely you're not that naive

[Winehole23]

I didn't ask you that. Do you want their government so that you can also have their healthcare?

Yes or no?

Why can't we be more like Israel?

If your neighbor drives a new Audi A6 and lives in a trailer home, would you like to drive an Audi A6? Are you willing to live in a trailer home to do so?

Surely you're not that naive

I reject your stipulations. We can have single payer healthcare without resembling Israel.

Tbh, all we'd have to do is pass enabling legislation and fund it. Lowering Medicare eligibility to age zero would be a good start.

[Thread]

I reject your stipulations. We can have single payer healthcare without resembling Israel.

TBF, all we'd have to do is pass enabling legislation and fund it.

Maybe at 3.2 trillion, but Manchin put the stopper in the bottle on that amount. 2.2 trillion won't brook it.

[DMC]

I reject your stipulations. We can have single payer healthcare without resembling Israel.

Tbh, all we'd have to do is pass enabling legislation and fund it. Lowering Medicare eligibility to age zero would be a good start.

But you didn't open the can of worms based on socialized medicine, but on how Israel's system worked for them. You cannot ignore how you got there. I mean, just look at all the scientific breakthroughs the Nazis had! Justifies their government, right? Why can't the US test people until they die to see what extremes the human body can endure?

[Winehole23]

But you didn't open the can of worms based on socialized medicine, but on how Israel's system worked for them. You cannot ignore how you got there. I mean, just look at all the scientific breakthroughs the Nazis had! Justifies their government, right? Why can't the US test people until they die to see what extremes the human body can endure?

To become Israel, we would already have to have been Israel, true.

That wasn’t what I was talking about though. It’s curious how you prefer to reorient the discussion to the conversation you’re having with yourself, in your head. What you take for logical necessities are often idiosyncratic leaps based on misunderstandings or distortions of what others have said.

[DMC]

To become Israel, we would already have to have been Israel, true.

That wasn’t what I was talking about though. It’s curious how you prefer to reorient the discussion to the conversation you’re having with yourself, in your head. What you take for logical necessities are often idiosyncratic leaps based on misunderstandings or distortions of what others have said.

Your socialized medicine epiphany didn't go well. You're trying to recover.

[pgardn]

The U.S. spends lavishly on healthcare yet can’t answer basic questions about Covid-19.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-1...re-11631548306

This doctor claims we spend lavishly on health care and then says we cant answer basic questions about Covid.
Then claims the CDC and other government agencies are playing games?

Again the hypocrisy is amazing. MOST of the Massive amounts of money spent on health care DOES NOT GO to research on Covid.
Always the hypocrisy. He brings out some good points after he has done the same thing himself. And basic questions on something this new are still very difficult. There are some basic molecular questions that are indeed still difficult because we dont know how different immune systems react. Part of this is the vast difference in immune responses in the DIVERSE POPULATIONS the virus infects. This point is consistently left out.

[pgardn]

Millions of people got it pre-vaccine.

Yep.
And at that time it was the sniffles until it was'nt.
And even then, fear the needle!

[Winehole23]

Your socialized medicine epiphany didn't go well. You're trying to recover.

Pretty sure if it ever goes down here it’ll involve lowering the age of Medicare eligibility, either progressively or instantly.

[Ef-man]

No one is stopping you from building it.

Chop chop.

Thought Mexico paid for the wall because we do not want socialist border security, amirite?

[pgardn]

Thought Mexico paid for the wall because we do not want socialist border security, amirite?

Its the Mexicans from all the wanna be Cowboy states and their governors.
Those are the Mexicans. Abbott and his Wyoming benefactor are also Mexicans.

[DMC]

Pretty sure if it ever goes down here it’ll involve lowering the age of Medicare eligibility, either progressively or instantly.

It won't go down here. There's too much money with too many decision makers that's based on it staying how it is.

[DMC]

Its the Mexicans from all the wanna be Cowboy states and their governors.
Those are the Mexicans. Abbott and his Wyoming benefactor are also Mexicans.

There was one guy with a cowboy hat on. No one else in the photo was dressed like a cowboy.
you thought the general was guarding the group