The first thing to emphasise is that this fall is not the result of some special temporary factor. It isn’t that there was a week of glorious sunshine, the temporary introduction of a new set of restrictions, a sudden change in the testing rules or even the dropping out of the numbers of a previous shock that had temporarily raised numbers. It’s simply that the collective immunity we now have, through a combination of vaccines and people recovered from illness, is sufficient that, given the way we behave (eg more working from home) and given the time of year (August) the virus cannot find enough susceptible people to infect for its rate of spread to accelerate. That means, that, by definition, we have reached what is called the “herd immunity threshold” (HIT) – the collective percentage immunity, across the whole population, at which the virus can no longer sustainably spread.
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Vaccines typically do not outperform natural immunity, so it should come as no surprise that Covid vaccines do not offer long-term protection against infection. At the same time, we can be confident that they will continue to work well to prevent severe clinical outcomes. The role of these vaccines is to offer protection to the clinically vulnerable; to foist them upon those who are at negligible risk in the hope of augmenting herd immunity is illogical…
Will boosters achieve what two doses could not? For those who are extremely vulnerable and show no evidence of mounting a significant immune response after two doses, it is entirely reasonable to attempt a third dose.
But it can be to no-one else’s individual gain to submit to a third jab, having already reduced the risk of severe disease (which was very small in the first place for most) by receiving two inoculations. For there to be the collective benefit of herd immunity, the booster would have to provide life-long protection against infection – unless we are willing to accept repeated mass vaccination into the foreseeable future. Aside from being a colossal diversion of limited resources, that would open the door to a permanent state of lockdown as we lurch from one booster campaign to the next.
Just as more provincial locations are turning high-street shop fronts into co-working spaces, big cities’ central business districts are going to have to become more residential. Another version of a 15-minute neighbourhood.
“We are seeing the death of an old central business district, but out of the ashes the creation of a new one,” urban studies theorist Richard Florida said in a virtual address to the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. He believes there will be a 20 per cent reduction in the demand for central office space, opening up the possibility of a downtown that’s less about the daily grind and more about social interaction. Instead of having a city centre, where we work, and a spread of suburbs, where we sleep, these areas will merge, he says, becoming a collection of 15-minute neighbourhoods.
Lisa Shaw, who worked for BBC Radio Newcastle, died at the age of 44 in May after developing headaches a week after getting her first dose of the vaccine.
…The coroner said: “Lisa died due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination.”
http://archive.today/2021.08.27-025930/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796
Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic, but in 2020, scientists embarked on a race to produce safe and effective coronavirus vaccines in record time. Researchers are currently testing 100 vaccines in clinical trials on humans, and 32 have reached the final stages of testing. More than 75 preclinical vaccines are under active investigation in animals.
The real-world study includes data on positive Covid PCR test results between May and July 2021 among more than a million people who had received two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine.
Protection after two shots of Pfizer decreased from 88% at one month to 74% at five to six months.
For AstraZeneca, the fall was from 77% to 67% at four to five months.
http://archive.today/2021.08.25-105339/https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58322882
The CDC did not include its finding that “required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional” in the summary of its report.
Excess deaths have not been this high since the week ending Feb 19, when 2,182 extra deaths were registered – 18.8 per cent above the pre-2020 five-year average.
Although some of the increase in excess deaths can be explained by the recent rise in deaths involving Covid, most were not linked to the virus.
Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University, said: “These excess deaths can’t all be explained by deaths of people who had Covid-19. In the most recent week, for England and Wales there were 1,270 more deaths than the five-year average – that’s 14 per cent higher than that average.
…Deaths in private homes have been well above the 2015-19 average almost every week since April last year. Before Covid, around a quarter of deaths occurred at home but that has since risen to one third, according to research by the King’s Fund.
The arrival of the Delta strain in New Zealand has prompted the country’s Covid-19 response minister to question the efficacy of its ambitious elimination strategy – an approach that has been the backbone of the country’s pandemic response.
…“It does mean that all of our existing protections … start to look less adequate and less robust as a result of that we are looking very closely at what more we can do there. At some point we will have to start to be more open in the future.”
Most blue surgical face masks used by many during the pandemic are not enough to avoid people from being infected with COVID-19, an alarming new study has found.
“We could be digging ourselves into a hole, for a very long time, where we think we can only keep Covid away by boosting every year,” Prof Eleanor Riley, an immunologist from the University of Edinburgh, told me.
Prof Adam Finn, a government vaccine adviser, said over-vaccinating people, when other parts of the world had none, was “a bit insane, it’s not just inequitable, it’s stupid”.
http://archive.today/2021.08.21-104255/https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58270098
Recycling Is Garbage – The New York Times
Published June 30, 1996.
Believing that there was no more room in landfills, Americans concluded that recycling was their only option. Their intentions were good and their conclusions seemed plausible. Recycling does sometimes makes sense — for some materials in some places at some times. But the simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill. And since there’s no shortage of landfill space (the crisis of 1987 was a false alarm), there’s no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative. Mandatory recycling programs aren’t good for posterity. They offer mainly short-term benefits to a few groups — politicians, public relations consultants, environmental organizations, waste-handling corporations — while diverting money from genuine social and environmental problems. Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.
Fully vaccinated people carry the same amount of Covid as the unvaccinated, scientists have found in a new study that calls into question the effectiveness of vaccine passports and changes to the NHS app.
…[E]ven the fully jabbed carry high levels of the virus if they become infected and are also more likely to be symptomatic than vaccinated people who pick up an alpha infection.
The results suggest those who are fully jabbed could be as capable of passing on Covid as the unvaccinated, although they are less likely to pick up the virus in the first place.
Government agencies such as health departments might be more inclined to intervene if findings from a study they commissioned are not as expected or if they are heavily invested in the health intervention — such as an education or health programme — being trialled, she adds.
A 2016 inquiry into the delayed publication of research commissioned by UK government agencies identified cases in which publication was “manipulated to fit with political concerns”. More recently, the British Medical Journal reported four instances of politicization and suppression of science in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
http://archive.today/2021.08.20-134039/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02242-x
What [covid jabs] won’t do, according to an increasing body of evidence, is prevent you from being a carrier and thus a danger to others. This somewhat defeats the whole point – and is certainly the only reason international travel has resumed of late.
Last week, in news that hasn’t got nearly enough airtime, Public Health England said in a statement: “Some initial findings […] indicate that levels of virus in those who become infected with Delta having already been vaccinated may be similar to levels found in unvaccinated people. This may have implications for people’s infectiousness, whether they have been vaccinated or not.”
Proceeds from the sale are marked for research and development expenses and the manufacturing and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. The New York-based pharmaceutical company sees the vaccine bringing in $33.5 billion of revenue this year, which would make it one of the top-selling medicines ever.
People with a PhD are the most hesitant when it comes to getting the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a paper by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Researchers surveyed just over five million US adults in an online survey, with 10,000 reporting that they were educated to PhD level.
The report showed a surprising U-shaped correlation between willingness to get a Covid vaccine and education level – with the highest hesitancy among those least and most educated.
Pfizer’s Covid vaccine may pose more of a risk to boys, a study claimed today amid growing calls for No10 to rethink plans to dish out jabs to children.
New research has suggested boys are 14 times more likely to be struck down with a rare heart complication called myocarditis.
The data, from the US, will likely fuel an already fierce debate over Britain’s decision to press ahead with inoculating all 16 and 17-year-olds.
Millions of Britons will be offered the Pfizer vaccine as a booster shot next month. As more jabs make their way into arms, researchers continue to carefully study their potential adverse effects – some of which have already become a source of concern. A new study has observed higher rates of deep vein thrombosis and thrombocytopenia – both conditions that affect the blood – among those who receive the Pfizer vaccine.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1473409/pfizer-vaccine-deep-vein-thrombosis-risk