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Covid: Australian vaccine abandoned over false HIV response – BBC News

A promising Australian candidate for a coronavirus vaccine has been abandoned after trial participants returned false HIV positive results.

Australia had previously agreed to buy 51 million doses of the vaccine being developed by Australian firm CSL and the University of Queensland (UQ).

The government said orders of other vaccines would now fill the shortfall.

CSL and UQ stressed that the positive results were false – meaning trial participants’ health was not at risk.

http://archive.today/2020.12.11-112743/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55269381

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News

Italian scientists find perfect match of Wuhan strain in sample taken from boy – South China Morning Post

Scientists in Italy have identified a sample of the novel coronavirus collected from a young boy late last year that they say is genetically identical to the earliest strain isolated in the Chinese city of Wuhan almost a year ago.

The sample was collected on December 5, 2019 in Milan from a boy who was first thought to have contracted measles, according to the researchers from the University of Milan.

It was a “100 per cent match” of a genome segment of the first Sars-CoV-2 viral strain collected from a seafood market worker in Wuhan on December 26, they said.

“These findings, in agreement with other evidence of early Covid-19 spread in Europe, advance the beginning of the outbreak to late autumn 2019,” said the team led by Professor Elisabetta Tanzi.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201210220258/https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3113444/coronavirus-italian-scientists-find-perfect-match-wuhan-strain

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News

No cases of flu recorded by HSE so far this winter – The Journal

LATEST FIGURES SHOW that no cases of flu have been transmitted in Ireland this winter.

Figures released by the HSE show that there have been no outbreaks of the illness since early October, the period when annual counts traditionally begin.

The health service noted that the low figures are due to the disruption that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused to influenza networks across the globe.

Figures from the same time last year show that there were two deaths and 107 new confirmed cases of the flu reported during the same week in 2019, with 143 patients in hospital with the illness on 8 December.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201212103906/https://www.thejournal.ie/winter-flu-cases-ireland-2020-5296226-Dec2020/

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News

Dozens of GP practices in England opt out of Covid vaccine rollout – The Guardian


More than 100,000 patients will not be able to get the Covid vaccine from their family doctor after their GP surgeries decided not to take part in its deployment, the Guardian can reveal.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211122855/https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/11/gp-practices-england-opt-out-covid-vaccine-rollout

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News

White House Reportedly Told FDA Head: Approve Vaccine Today Or Resign – Forbes

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told the head of the Food and Drug Administration on Friday to either sign off on Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine by the end of the day or hand in his resignation, the Washington Post reported, another push by the White House to approve the vaccine as quickly as possible after a panel of scientists ruled it safe this week.

http://archive.today/2021.10.01-091702/https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2020/12/11/white-house-reportedly-told-fda-head-approve-vaccine-today-or-resign/?sh=3d4ac9d21a0e

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Publications

How kids’ immune systems can evade COVID – Nature

Young children account for only a small percentage of COVID-19 infections — a trend that has puzzled scientists. Now, a growing body of evidence suggests why: kids’ immune systems seem better equipped to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 than are adults’.

“Children are very much adapted to respond — and very well equipped to respond — to new viruses,” says Donna Farber, an immunologist at Columbia University in New York City. Even when they are infected with SARS-CoV-2, children are most likely to experience mild or asymptomatic illness.

Another clue that children’s response to the virus differs from that of adults is that some children develop COVID-19 symptoms and antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 but never test positive for the virus on a standard RT-PCR test. In one study, three children under ten from the same family developed SARS-CoV-2 antibodies — and two of them even experienced mild symptoms — but none tested positive on RT-PCR, despite being tested 11 times over 28 days while in close contact with their parents, who had tested positive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211205033/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03496-7

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Publications

Weekly national Influenza and COVID-19 surveillance report – Public Health England

Figure 49: Daily excess all-cause deaths in all ages, England, 1 January 2020 to 2 December 2020

https://web.archive.org/web/20201210142405/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/942969/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w50_FINAL.PDF

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Publications

Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19: A Tale of Three Models – medRxiv

Results While model 1 found that lockdown was the most effective measure in the original 11 countries, model 2 showed that lockdown had little or no benefit as it was typically introduced at a point when the time-varying reproductive number was already very low. Model 3 found that the simple banning of public events was beneficial, while lockdown had no consistent impact. Based on Bayesian metrics, model 2 was better supported by the data than either model 1 or model 3 for both time horizons.

Conclusions Inferences on effects of NPIs are non-robust and highly sensitive to model specification. Claimed benefits of lockdown appear grossly exaggerated.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.20160341v3

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Publications

Conflicts of interest among the UK government’s covid-19 advisers – BMJ

Little is known about the interests of the doctors, scientists, and academics on whose advice the UK government relies to manage the pandemic. Attempts to discover more are frequently thwarted, finds Paul D Thacker.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201210214506/https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4716

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News

Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the world, finds report – The Guardian

The state of civil liberties around the world is bleak, according to a new study which found that 87% of the global population were living in nations deemed “closed”, “repressed” or “obstructed”.

The figure is a 4% increase on last year’s, as civil rights were found to have deteriorated in almost every country in the world during Covid-19. A number of governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to curtail rights such as free speech, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, according to Civicus Monitor, an alliance of civil society groups which assessed 196 countries.

By using methods such as detention of protesters, excessive use of force, censorship, attacks on journalists, and harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders, many governments have used Covid-19 to “introduce or implement additional restrictions on civic freedoms”, the report said.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/dec/09/covid-used-as-pretext-to-curtail-civil-rights-around-the-world-finds-report

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News

More than 10,000 patients caught Covid-19 while being treated in hospital – The Telegraph

More than 10,000 people acquired coronavirus when they were being treated in hospital for other illnesses, The Telegraph can disclose.

Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said that 139 out of 357 Covid-19 patients they had treated had caught the virus there – 38.9 per cent – with board papers showing that five patients had died.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201209213632/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/09/exclusive-10000-patients-caught-covid-19-treated-hospital/

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Publications

Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in an Oropharyngeal Swab Specimen, Milan, Italy, Early December 2019 – CDC

We identified severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 RNA in an oropharyngeal swab specimen collected from a child with suspected measles in early December 2019, ≈3 months before the first identified coronavirus disease case in Italy. This finding expands our knowledge on timing and mapping of novel coronavirus transmission pathways.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201209020309/https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/2/20-4632_article

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News

Data showing rising cases before second lockdown quietly revised down – Telegraph

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data – which showed soaring coronavirus cases before the second lockdown – has been quietly revised down and now suggests that cases were largely plateauing at the time, it has emerged.

Many experts have complained that the data presented by the Government ahead of the lockdown was “riddled with errors” and exaggerated the need for a second lockdown, while Greg Clark, the chairman of the Commons science and technology committee, said the belated admission of errors was “of great concern”.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201208165734/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/08/data-showing-rising-cases-second-lockdown-quietly-revised/

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Publications

Medical Tests and Bayes’ Theorem

Suppose that you are worried that you might have a rare disease. You decide to get tested, and suppose that the testing methods for this disease are correct 99 percent of the time (in other words, if you have the disease, it shows that you do with 99 percent probability, and if you don’t have the disease, it shows that you do not with 99 percent probability). Suppose this disease is actually quite rare, occurring randomly in the general population in only one of every 10,000 people.

If your test results come back positive, what are your chances that you actually have the disease?

Do you think it is approximately: (a) .99, (b) .90, (c) .10, or (d) .01?

Surprisingly, the answer is (d), less than 1 percent chance that you have the disease!

This fact may be deduced using something called Bayes’ theorem…

https://math.hmc.edu/funfacts/medical-tests-and-bayes-theorem/

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Publications

Pandemrix vaccine: why was the public not told of early warning signs? – BMJ (2018)

“We fully support the swine flu vaccination programme … The vaccine has been thoroughly tested,” they declared in a joint statement.

Except, it hadn’t. Anticipating a severe influenza pandemic, governments around the world had made various logistical and legal arrangements to shorten the time between recognition of a pandemic virus and the production of a vaccine and administration of that vaccine in the population. In Europe, one element of those plans was an agreement to grant licences to pandemic vaccines based on data from pre-pandemic “mock-up” vaccines produced using a different virus (H5N1 influenza). Another element, adopted by countries such as Canada, the US, UK, France, and Germany, was to provide vaccine manufacturers indemnity from liability for wrongdoing, thereby reducing the risk of a lawsuit stemming from vaccine related injury.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200408051329/https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3948

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Publications

Safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (AZD1222) against SARS-CoV-2: an interim analysis of four randomised controlled trials in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK

Randomised control trial study showing safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccine has clear conflicts of interest.

Safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine AZD1222

https://salud.edomex.gob.mx/cevece/documentos/covid/Safety%20and%20efficacy%20of%20the%20ChAdOx1%20nCoV-19%20vaccine%20AZD1222.pdf

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News Opinion Videos

The hidden cost of Covid lockdowns – Channel 4 News

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Videos

Evidence of inhumane window visits at UK care homes

To guard against censorship, this is a mirror of the video posted by Leandra Ashton on 5 December.

New guidelines right? We can all see our loved ones if we have a negative test right?

On Dec 2nd my Mum asked for an in-person visit and was told ‘We have no tests’. Don’t worry, replied my Mum, I’ll get one done. The next day, having been tested she emailed a negative test result. This was met with another no: “We’re waiting for vaccinations before visiting can take place”.

The only option? Another inhumane window visit. Today, at the end of her 10 minute ‘visit’, kneeling on concrete by the window trying to connect with my Nan, my Mum raised concerns with the care assistant about how my Nan was looking. This is the response she was greeted with…

https://web.archive.org/web/20201207150651/https://www.facebook.com/632235360/posts/10164597604145361/?d=n

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Publications

Nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies that use real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for detection of SARS-CoV-2 – WHO

WHO has received user feedback on an elevated risk for false SARS-CoV-2 results when testing specimens using RT-PCR reagents on open systems.

As with any diagnostic procedure, the positive and negative predictive values for the product in a given testing population are important to note. As the positivity rate for SARS-CoV-2 decreases, the positive predictive value also decreases. This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as positivity rate decreases, irrespective of the assay specificity. Therefore, healthcare providers are encouraged to take into consideration testing results along with clinical signs and symptoms, confirmed status of any contacts, etc.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201215013928/https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users

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News

ER visits, long waits climb for kids in mental health crisis – AP News

When children and teens are overwhelmed with anxiety, depression or thoughts of self-harm, they often wait days in emergency rooms because there aren’t enough psychiatric beds.

The problem has only grown worse during the pandemic, reports from parents and professionals suggest.

With schools closed, routines disrupted and parents anxious over lost income or uncertain futures, children are shouldering new burdens many are unequipped to bear.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201205170423/https://apnews.com/article/anxiety-mental-health-boston-coronavirus-pandemic-massachusetts-004adb5ee0ef17ff4b5e2e294e36ff3d