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  1. #40751
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    "it's over"

    More than three-quarters of US hospital beds are currently in use due to COVID hospitalizations, which is largely in line with trends over the past three years.
    https://abc7.com/new-covid-variant-jn1-symptoms-leading-causes-of-us-cases/14218488/

  2. #40752
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    tl;dr

    hybrid immunity provides close to no protection against hospitalization without the xbb.1.5-updated booster, because SARS2 is evolving faster than vaccines.


  3. #40753
    notthewordsofonewhokneels Thread's Avatar
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    tl;dr

    hybrid immunity provides close to no protection against hospitalization without the xbb.1.5-updated booster, because SARS2 is evolving faster than vaccines.

    Big in' deal, Winestein. Commerce has once and again taken complete control. They ain't even toting up the deaths in public this time around.

  4. #40754
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    JN.1 is an Omicron-like evolutionary turn






  5. #40755
    The Boognish FuzzyLumpkins's Avatar
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    Zapping the Vagus Nerve Could Relieve Some Long COVID Symptoms

    Researchers are increasingly recognizing that long COVID is as much a neurological disorder as a cardiovascular and respiratory one. Treatment studies have highlighted the condition’s neurological aspects, including some that are potentially related to the vagus nerve. Early small-scale trials of vagal stimulation have seen reductions in hallmark long COVID symptoms such as chronic fatigue, headaches and irregular blood pressure. Another study demonstrated that the devices used to send electrical stimulation through the skin are safe and easy to use at home—offering convenience, accessibility and less risk of contagion. Scientists are still studying which long COVID symptoms this technique can reliably address, which patients will benefit and how long the effects last. In any case, the vagus nerve’s influence throughout the body appears to be key for treating some of the all-encompassing manifestations of long COVID.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ovid-symptoms/

  6. #40756
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    As of last year, COVID was the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.

    The burden of disease short of mortality is arguably worse, in human and economic terms.

    Appearing before a key U.S. Senate committee on Jan. 18, one of the world’s foremost authorities on long COVID-19 laid it on the line. “We developed vaccines at warp speed,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “We are doing trials for long COVID at snail speed.”

    These were strong words, backed by statistics and set against the backdrop of a feeble first swipe at long COVID by the National Ins utes of Health that has been widely viewed as a disastrous squander of time and money. But the issue is too serious to spend much time looking for scapegoats.

    Based on data collected in 2022, an estimated
    18 million people in the U.S. and 65 million worldwide have been hit with the debilitating effects of long COVID, and that count is almost certainly rising. In his Congressional testimony, Al-Aly said the U.S. number alone was at least 20 million.

    “It affects people across the lifespan, from children to older adults, and across demographic groups,” Al-Aly told the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). Further, he said, “The burden of long COVID, the burden of disease and disability when you measure it, is on par with the burden of
    cancer and heart disease.
    https://fortune.com/2024/01/24/exper...arolyn-barber/

  7. #40757
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    the evidence for immune dysfunction in Covid and Long Covid keeps stacking up

    Acute infections with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) cause a respiratory illness that can be associated with systemic immune cell activation and inflammation, widespread multiorgan dysfunction, and thrombosis. Not everyone fully recovers from COVID-19, leading to Long Covid, the treatment of which is a major unmet clinical need (1). Long Covid can affect people of all ages, follows severe as well as mild disease, and involves multiple organs. The persistence of lingering symptoms after acute disease creates a considerable challenge for understanding the specific pathophysiology and risk factors underlying Long Covid. On page 273 of this issue, Cervia-Hasler et al. (2) report a multicenter, longitudinal study of 113 patients who either fully recovered from COVID-19 or developed Long Covid, identifying localized activation of the innate immune defense complement system as a likely culprit that induces thromboinflammation and prevents the restoration of fitness after acute COVID-19.

    Patients with Long Covid display signs of immune dysfunction and exhaustion (1), persistent immune cell activation (3), and autoimmune antibody production (1), which are also pathological features of acute COVID-19.
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn1077

  8. #40758
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Measles is nbd, say Florida Surgeon General, yet more proof that COVID made people dumber.

    https://kffhealthnews.org/news/artic...sles-outbreak/

  9. #40759
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    “This is not a parental rights issue,” said Scott Rivkees, Florida’s former surgeon general who is now a professor at Brown University. “It’s about protecting fellow classmates, teachers, and members of the community against measles, which is a very serious and very transmissible illness.”

    Most people who aren’t protected by a vaccine will get measles if they’re exposed to the virus. This vulnerable group includes children whose parents don’t get them vaccinated, infants too young for the vaccine, those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, and others who don’t mount a strong, lasting immune response to it. Rivkees estimates that about a tenth of people in a community fall into the vulnerable category.

    The CDC advises that unvaccinated students stay home from school for three weeks after exposure. Because the highly contagious measles virus spreads on tiny droplets through the air and on surfaces, students are considered exposed simply by sitting in the same cafeteria or classroom as someone infected. And a person with measles can pass along an infection before they develop a fever, cough, rash, or other signs of the illness. About 1 in 5 people with measles end up hospitalized, 1 in 10 develop ear infections that can lead to permanent hearing loss, and about 1 in 1,000 die from respiratory and neurological complications.

    “I don’t know why the health department wouldn’t follow the CDC recommendations,” said Thresia Gambon, president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a pediatrician who practices in Miami and Broward, the county affected by the current measles outbreak. “Measles is so contagious. It is very worrisome.”

    Considering the dangers of the disease, the vaccine is incredibly safe. A person is about four times as likely to die from being struck by lightning during their lifetime in the United States as to have a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction to the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.

    Nonetheless, last year a record number of parents filed for exemptions from school vaccine requirements on religious or philosophical grounds across the United States. The CDC reported that childhood immunization rates hit a 10-year low.

  10. #40760
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Civilizational toll, tbh.

    Wrecked public health, still wrecking minds.

    Taken together, these studies show that COVID-19 poses a serious risk to brain health, even in mild cases, and the effects are now being revealed at the population level.

    A recent analysis of the U.S. Current Population Survey showed that after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional 1 million working-age Americans reported having “serious difficulty” remembering, concentrating or making decisions than at any time in the preceding 15 years. Most disconcertingly, this was mostly driven by younger adults between the ages of 18 to 44.

    Data from the European Union shows a similar trend – in 2022, 15% of people in the EU reported memory and concentration issues.

    Looking ahead, it will be critical to identify who is most at risk. A better understanding is also needed of how these trends might affect the educational attainment of children and young adults and the economic productivity of working-age adults. And the extent to which these shifts will influence the epidemiology of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is also not clear.

    The growing body of research now confirms that COVID-19 should be considered a virus with a significant impact on the brain. The implications are far-reaching, from individuals experiencing cognitive struggles to the potential impact on populations and the economy.
    https://theconversation.com/mounting...-scores-224216

  11. #40761
    notthewordsofonewhokneels Thread's Avatar
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    Civilizational toll, tbh.

    Wrecked public health, still wrecking minds.

    https://theconversation.com/mounting...-scores-224216
    Boiled down:

    Trump killed 400k
    Biden killed over 3/4 of a million...AND COUNTING.

  12. #40762
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    The big news is that COVID shots appear to confer protection against DVTs, pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks.

    As we recently hit—March 11, 2020—the 4-year anniversary of when WHO finally declared Covid a global pandemic, and today, March 13th, when the US declared it a national emergency, we’re still learning every day about SARS-CoV-2’s impact, its evolution, protection from vaccination, and more. Here’s a quick summary of what I think is worth reviewing:

    Impact

    The global excess mortality has reached about 30 million lost lives attributable to Covid, and the Global Burden of Disease published a major paper this week in The Lancet on the toll it has taken for reducing life expectancy in 204 countries summarized as "The COVID-19 pandemic caused the most severe drops in life expectancy seen in 50+ years." The study did not address disability among survivors, with multiple concurrent studies reinforcing the prevalence of Long Covid in tens of millions of people.






    Here in the United States, it is striking to review the updated data on partisan gap death rates, as reflected by counties who voted Republican in the 2020 election. As you can see below from Ashley Wu, graphics editor at the New York Times, the curves are continuing to diverge, both weekly and ulatively. There was no divergence when vaccines were first administered (right panel below) but since that time the death rates continue to worsen in counties with 70%+ Republican voters compared with <30%.






    Multiple state level data, such as Washington’s below, indicate the protection from death with a booster, almost halving the rate in people age 65 and older






    Evolution of the Virus






    The JN.1 variant took over globally and a number of subvariants (JN.1.11.1, JN.1.18, JN.1.13, JN.1.18) are showing up with added e mutations such as R346T and F456L, but without signs of wastewater levels on the rise or other concerning metrics.

    But BA.2.87.1, as mapped below, is the major “Omicron-like” event out there that has been the subject of 5 recent papers/preprints (here, here, here, here and here). That, in itself, should tell you it’s a variant of interest. It’s chock full of new mutations compared with the variants that came long previously, and many of these are deletions (blue below)..




    In itself, it is not a threat as there’s no sign it is more immunoevasive or transmissible. In fact, the consensus it that it’s less evasive of our immune response, the current booster works to achieve good levels of neutralizing antibodies, and some of the monoclonal antibodies that were previously found to be resistant to earlier variants my be effective again. That’s great news. But as Yunlong Cao and his team appropriately warned us, “BA.2.87.1 may not become widespread until it acquires multiple [receptor binding domain] RBD mutations to achieve sufficient immune evasion comparable to that of JN.1.”

    It’s much too early to know whether (and when) this will take place, but after 4 years if there’s anything to predict, it is that the virus will find its way (through selection) to infect more hosts and repeat human hosts.

    Protection from Vaccines

    A big study was reported yesterday that addressed the question of protection from Covid shots against blood clots—deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure. The data are from 3 countries—UK, Spain and Estonia, from electronic health records of over 20 million people. All these outcomes were reduced by prior Covid vaccination compared with no vaccination, especially in the first 30 days after an infection, but many showed durable protection out to 1 year follow-up (stroke, TIA, heart failure, DVT, PE).






    This is different from the 40-50% protection of vaccinations vs Long Covid symptoms. It’s specifically addressing major cardiovascular outcome protection from being vaccinated. Major welcome news!

    One More Thing

    I remain very disappointed and surprised by the recent change (1 March) of CDC policy towards isolation, without regard to using rapid antigen tests. Their own data shows that at least 1 in 3 people will still be infectious at 5 days after symptom onset! That’s by culturable virus, the gold standard, which tracks very closely with the rapid tests. To reduce infecting others, especially high risk vulnerable individuals, no less adding to the toll of Long Covid, rapid tests should be used before people circulate.






    Thanks for reading Ground Truths and please share the post to your network of friends and colleagues if you found it useful.
    Covid, 4 years on - by Eric Topol - Ground Truths (substack.com)

  13. #40763
    notthewordsofonewhokneels Thread's Avatar
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    The big news is that COVID shots appear to confer protection against DVTs, pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks.

    Covid, 4 years on - by Eric Topol - Ground Truths (substack.com)
    Americans Trump killed: 400k
    Americans Biden killed: 3/4 of a million. & counting.

  14. #40764
    Savvy Veteran spurraider21's Avatar
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  15. #40765
    Savvy Veteran spurraider21's Avatar
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  16. #40766
    notthewordsofonewhokneels Thread's Avatar
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    ^^^^^^^^^
    Americans Trump killed: 400k
    Americans Biden killed: 3/4 of a million. & counting.

  17. #40767
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    Aside: viruses aren't all bad.

    In fact, scientists don't know what most of them do.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2024...r-nerve-cells/

  18. #40768
    notthewordsofonewhokneels Thread's Avatar
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    Aside: viruses aren't all bad.

    In fact, scientists don't know what most of them do.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2024...r-nerve-cells/
    But we knew precisely what COVID was gonna do: ("Mr. President (Hussein/Trump/Biden), Americans are going to die. Nothing will touch it.")---and could do nothing about it.

  19. #40769
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
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    'Tis a mystery

    A record number of people who are economically inactive due to ill-health mean that Britain remains the only G7 economy yet to return to pre-pandemic employment levels, but fast falling inflation means that real wages are growing at their fastest rate outside the pandemic in nearly five years, the Resolution Foundation said today (Tuesday).

    The latest ONS labour market statistics – including the return of the labour force survey after a four month absence – showed a cooling labour market, an-inflation driven boost to real pay packets, and rising long-term sickness continuing to hold back growth.

    The labour market continues to cool slightly, with the number of job vacancies fell for the 19th consecutive month and nominal pay growth weakening, although employment also nudged up.

    Private sector nominal regular pay rose only 2.5 per cent at an annualised rate in the three months to December – a rate the Bank of England will be comfortable with. But with inflation falling even faster than wage growth, real regular wages grew by 1.8 per cent in the three months to December – the strongest level of growth outside of the pandemic since October 2019.

    However, the Foundation cautions that unless the UK begins to see productivity growth, this mini real wage revival is likely to prove short-lived.

    The combination of a cooling labour market and rising inactivity mean that the employment rate is flatlining around 75 per cent – below its pre-pandemic rate of 76 per cent. Policy makers will be particularly concerned about long-term sickness rising to a record 2.8 million – a trend that, unless addressed, will put a brake on Britain’s jobs recovery, put pressure on the public finances and NHS, and limit people’s economic opportunities.
    https://www.resolutionfoundation.org...-mini-revival/

  20. #40770
    notthewordsofonewhokneels Thread's Avatar
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    Been waitin', on ya, Winester, since mid-week. Bout time...Let us proceed...

    Massive New COVID Report Details Horrifying Cost Of Fauci’s Failures

    [COLOR=var(--theme_red_primary)]Ian Miller
    PublishedMarch 21, 2024 5:15 PM EDT|UpdatedMarch 21, 2024 5:15 PM EDT

    In the post-pandemic period of COVID, there's now a concerted effort to understand and explain the damage that was caused by our hysterical overreaction. There's a long list of policy failures to examine; mask mandateswere a disaster that accomplished nothing of value and led to tremendous harms, many of which continue today.
    Children were forced into masks for years on end, millions of people still wear masks when traveling or inside stores and restaurants, permanently convinced of the lie that masks are effective prevention tools. Perhaps most ominously, healthcare workers are often still required to mask in blue cities. Some hospitals have required masking continuously since 2020, while others are now enforcing rolling mandates based on the delusions of administrators.
    It gets worse though. Much, much worse.
    Research into the economic cost of many of our COVID policies and mandates is still ongoing, but a new, extremely detailed report on school closures has created a horrifying context for just how damaging Anthony Fauci's advocacy was during the pandemic.


    All Of Our COVID Policies Failed

    The research opens with an obvious acknowledgment of failure on the part of COVID mandates. Despite wildly different policies, there was virtually no difference in outcomes between countries.

    "From the available evidence, it is difficult to identify the specific responses to the pandemic that led to better outcomes," they write. "Countries clearly responded to the challenges in very different ways, from essentially no school closures (Sweden) to multiple years of closures (Uganda and Indonesia). Yet, simple statistics such as the length of school closures or overall health policies cannot explain much of the variance in outcomes."
    Lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine passports…none of it mattered or explains the variance in outcomes between countries. Why? The obvious answer is that none of these policies had the slightest chance of preventing transmission of a highly infectious respiratory virus.
    Instead, the likely explanation for variance in outcomes is down to differences in accounting for COVID cases and deaths, underlying health and age demographics, or pre-existing immunity from exposure to similar coronaviruses. That last explanation was almost certainly the reason why countries in Asia performed much better than western countries during the early part of the pandemic, but was conveniently ignored in favor of "experts" maintaining the wishful thinking that "mask culture" was responsible.
    Regardless of the explanation, the fact that there is no consistent factor to attribute better outcomes to is in itself an indictment of our COVID policies and mandates. If it's impossible to predict why a country did better or worse than another country, any justification for continued restrictions disappears. If only someone told Fauci or his allies in the public health establishment in 2020-2021 when they forcefully criticized anyone, like Ron DeSantis, who realized that reality.


    School Closures Caused Unimaginable Harms

    The researchers spent most of their time attempting to assess the damage caused by one of the pandemic's most inexcusable policies: school closures. And the results of their estimates are jaw-dropping.

    "Based on the available research on lifetime earnings associated with more skills, the average student in school during the pandemic will lose 5 to 6 percent of lifetime earnings," they found. "Because a lower-skilled workforce leads to lower economic growth, the nation will lose some $31 trillion (in present value terms) during the twenty-first century. This aggregate economic loss is higher than the US GDP for one year and dwarfs the total economic losses from either the slowdown of the economy during the pandemic or from the 2008 recession."
    That's not a misprint: $31 trillion.
    Teachers unions, Fauci, the CDC, politicians, they all ensured that the American economy will be decimated in the next century because they refused to admit they were wrong. As cost of living skyrockets thanks to rampant inflation, also caused by our incompetence and malicious, purposeful ignorance, children forced to learn under school closures will be irreparably set back, costing themselves hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of earned income throughout their lives.
    It's easy to suggest that maybe these harms could be erased or mitigated over time. The researchers addressed that too, without providing much hope for the future.
    "Finally, we provide a few observations about recovery from the learning losses. History suggests that these losses are likely to be permanent unless the schools become better than they were before the pandemic," they conclude.

    With incompetent political activists like Randi Weingarten controlling schools, disgraceful DEI policies infiltrating every aspect of public education, the lack of acknowledgment from Fauci and other organizations that COVID mandates were a failure, and the complete ideologcal capture of the education system, it's impossible to reasonably expect that schools will ever "become better than they were."
    The damage they caused is locked in, forever.
    Once Again, Florida Provides The Alternative

    Importantly, school closures didn't affect everywhere equally. In far left states like California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, school closures persisted well into 2021.
    But Florida was one of the few states, and perhaps the only big one, to make reopening schools a priority. Despite the objections of teachers unions and media outlets that attempted to label the governor as "DeathSantis."
    And it's going to pay off, relatively speaking. A figure presented in the research shows that Florida's economic state loss in GDP is nearly equal to Pennsylvania, despite a population that's nearly 75% bigger than Pennsylvania. And California's estimated losses, roughly $1.3 trillion, are more than 116% higher than Florida, much larger than the population difference. Similarly, New York's economic losses far exceed Florida's, despite a smaller population.




    DeSantis followed the actual science, listened to competent outside expert advisors, and his state is set to benefit in the future massively as a result, when compared to other major states. It's, yet again, another indictment of the blue states that followed the Fauci blueprint to economic disaster.
    And make no mistake, this is a disaster.
    No Accountability For Failure

    The researchers compared the learning loss trainwreck to the 2008 recession, showing that the COVID response is responsible for substantially more damage than even that economic cycle.
    "The lopsided attention to the business-cycle losses from the 2008 recession and from the pandemic is startling once we see the comparable pandemic learning loss figures," they wrote. "The economic losses from the loss of human capital are fully six times the total losses from the 2008 recession, which was labeled the largest recession since the Great Depression."
    Six times the total losses from the 2008 recession, already considered one of the worst in modern economic history. All because Fauci and his band of "experts" seized an opportunity to enforce their view of control onto society. And because they refused to admit failure when many were desperately trying to make them.

    It's an inexcusable, historic set of decisions with lasting consequences both in soft cultural terms and harder economic ones. $31 trillion is the loss of GDP just from school closures. That doesn't even account for the loss of business income, the years-long set back in terms of new business, or the loss of GDP from adults who gave up on career plans or other pursuits out of despair or lack of opportunity.
    The damage the "experts" caused is incalculable. But attempts to calculate it have come up with horrifying estimates. And not one of those responsible is willing to acknowledge it.

    ~~~~~~~~~

    "How's that for wet work, huh?"

    tee, hee.





    [/COLOR]

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