Humans have never been particularly good at eradicating entire viruses, and COVID-19 might not be any different.
More than 19 million people have tested positive for the coronavirus globally, and at least 722,000 have died. In the U.S., nearly 5 million people have tested positive and more than 160,000 have died. While scientists are racing to find a cure for the virus, there’s a chance COVID-19 will never fully go away — with or without a vaccine.
Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch, told NPR’s Weekend Edition that one of the more likely scenarios is that the spread of COVID-19 will eventually be slowed as a result of herd immunity. He said that he’d be surprised “if we’re still wearing masks and 6-feet distancing in two or three years” and that in time, the virus could become no more serious than the common cold.
The first thing to remember is that we haven’t been successful at eradicating many viruses at all. Really the lone exception is smallpox, but many of these viruses exist not only in the human population but in animal populations. So coronaviruses may be removed from the human population, like SARS coronavirus in 2002, but we know that those viruses or viruses that are similar to it still exist in nature and at any time they may gain the tools to reemerge in humans again.
Tag: Vaccination
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
Sky News host Alan Jones says people are being swept up into a sense of hysteria and alarmism around COVID-19.
There are only 17 people in hospital with the coronavirus in NSW, eight of them in intensive care, while the World Health Organisation continue to maintain that 99 per cent of all cases will experience mild symptoms.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a vaccine, and we’re going to have to learn to live with this,” Mr Jones told Sky News host Chris Smith.
“But we learned to live with a whole lot of other communicable diseases.
“More people are dying from the flu with a vaccine than are dying from coronavirus without a vaccine.”
- Your immune system’s ‘memory’ T cells keep track of the viruses they have seen before.
- New study led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) shows that memory helper T cells that recognize common cold coronaviruses also recognize matching sites on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
- Having a strong T cell response, or a better T cell response may give you the opportunity to mount a much quicker and stronger response.
- 40%-60% of people never exposed to SARS-CoV-2 had T cells that reacted to the virus showing that their immune systems recognized the virus.
- This finding turned out to be a global phenomenon and was reported in people from the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and Singapore.
- This discovery suggests that fighting off a common cold coronavirus can induce cross-reactive T cell memory against SARS-CoV-2.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-exposure-common-cold-coronaviruses-immune.html
- Article based on experience working as a doctor in the emergency room of one of the big hospitals in Stockholm, Sweden, and of living as a citizen in Sweden.
- Unlike other countries, Sweden never went in to complete lockdown. Non-essential businesses have remained open, people have continues to go to cafés and restaurants, children have remained in school, and very few people have bothered with face masks in public.
- COVID hit Stockholm like a storm in mid-March. One day I was seeing people with appendicitis and kidney stones, the usual things you see in the emergency room. The next day all those patients were gone and the only thing coming in to the hospital was COVID. Practically everyone who was tested had COVID, regardless of what the presenting symptom was. People came in with a nose bleed and they had COVID. They came in with stomach pain and they had COVID.
- Then, after a few months, all the COVID patients disappeared.
- At the peak three months back, a hundred people were dying a day of COVID in Sweden, a country with a population of ten million. We are now down to around five people dying per day in the whole country, and that number continues to drop. Since people generally die around three weeks after infection, that means virtually no-one is getting infected any more.
- The risk of dying is at the very most 1 in 200 if you actually do get infected.
- In total COVID has killed under 6,000 people in a country of ten million.
- Sweden has an annual death rate of around 100,000 people. Considering that 70% of those who have died of COVID are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway.
- COVID will never even come close to major pandemic numbers like 1918 flu.
- If herd immunity hasn’t developed, where are all the sick people? Why has the rate of infection dropped so precipitously?
- The reason we test for antibodies is because it is easy and cheap. Antibodies are in fact not the body’s main defence against virus infections. T-cells are. But T-cells are harder to measure than antibodies, so we don’t really do it clinically.
- Sweden ripped the metaphorical band-aid off quickly and got the epidemic over and done with in a short amount of time, while the rest of the world has chosen to try to peel the band-aid off slowly.
- I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place, because all those countries are going to end up with the same number of dead at the end of the day anyway. Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years.
- COVID has at present killed less than 6000 in Sweden. It is very unlikely that the number of dead will go above 7,000. An average influenza year in Sweden, 700 people die of influenza. Does that mean COVID is ten times worse than influenza? No, because influenza has been around for centuries while COVID is completely new.
- So it is quite possible, in fact likely, that the case fatality rate for COVID is the same as for influenza, or only slightly higher, and the entire difference we have seen is due to the complete lack of any immunity in the population at the start of this pandemic.
Original source: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/08/04/how-bad-is-covid-really-a-swedish-doctors-perspective/
AstraZeneca has been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful by most of the countries with which it has struck supply agreements, a senior executive told Reuters.
With 25 companies testing their vaccine candidates on humans and getting ready to immunise hundred millions of people once the products are shown to work, the question of who pays for any claims for damages in case of side effects has been a tricky point in supply negotiations.
“In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest,” he said, adding that Astra and regulators were making safety and tolerability a top priority.
Clinical trials:
- Phase I clinical trials simply test the safety of a drug or vaccine in a small number of healthy volunteers — usually brave and naïve college students.
- Phase II trials are responsible for testing its effectiveness in a larger number of subjects.
- A hyped-up and exuberant response to a Phase I trial as seen with Moderna press release is rare and nearly unheard of.
- Little information is gleaned from an investigational drug in Phase I that has many more hurdles to overcome before it successfully gets to market
- 77 percent of vaccines for infectious diseases make it through Phase I, but only 33 percent make it through the entire process overall.
Moderna’s RNA vaccine
- Upon examining Moderna’s non-peer reviewed press release, the actual data on the vaccine’s success is even more flimsy.
- When it comes to finding out whether the vaccine elicits an antibody response that could potentially fight the coronavirus, they only had data on eight patients out of the 45 patients who received the vaccine.
- The only data Moderna mentioned when it comes to determining whether the vaccine was clinically effective against the coronavirus were from mice.
- History also proves that success in animal models is often not replicated in human studies.
- Moderna’s messenger RNA vaccine is completely new and revolutionary. Messenger RNA vaccines have never before been brought to market for human patients
- It uses a sequence of genetic RNA material produced in a lab that, when injected into your body, must invade your cells and hijack your cells’ protein-making machinery called ribosomes to produce the viral components that subsequently train your immune system to fight the virus.
- Some messenger RNA vaccines are self-amplifying. That means they can force the cell to replicate more copies of itself.
- There are unique and unknown risks to messenger RNA vaccines, including the possibility that they generate strong type I interferon responses that could lead to inflammation and autoimmune conditions.
Oxford Vaccine Group’s vaccine:
- Oxford Vaccine Group has a competing vaccine that does not need to invade and hijack our cells’ own machinery.
- From a medical and clinical perspective, there is less risk of generating a type I interferon response and autoimmunity because there is no messenger RNA floating around our blood, invading our cells.
- In July Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed that conspiracy theorists are putting lives at risk
- The UK government’s Vaccine Damage Payment scheme is proof that vaccines can be unsafe
- Eligibility criteria Vaccine Damage Payment changed in 2015
- Update October 2020: AstraZeneca protected from vaccine liability
- Update November 2020: MHRA expects high volume of COVID-19 vaccine adverse drug reaction
- Update December 2020: Pfizer is given protection from legal action by the UK government
Discussion around vaccinations can be very contentious. There’s great nuance in this area and a short post will not do justice to the complex issues surrounding the usefulness and safety of vaccines. Nevertheless, while vaccines may have their role in protecting target populations from disease, not all have been proven safe to an acceptable level as shown in the resources below.
The UK government’s Vaccine Damage Payment scheme is probably the strongest proof that vaccines can be unsafe. Under the Vaccine Damage Payment scheme, people who have been severely disabled as a result of a vaccination against certain diseases can be eligible for a one-off tax-free payment of £120,000.
Conspiracy theorists are putting lives at risk?
It is an objective fact that a compensation scheme exists for those who have been damaged by vaccines. Nevertheless, Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed that conspiracy theorists are putting lives at risk:
“Those who promulgate lies about dangers of vaccines that are safe and have been approved–they are threatening lives…”
Source: The Independent, 20 July 2020
Clearly, concerns about the safely of vaccines cannot be lies if there is a vaccine damage compensation scheme in place.
Eligibility changed in 2015
Eligibility requirements for vaccines covering certain diseases are listed and change over time. Interestingly, sometime around 2015, damage from vaccines for influenza caused by pandemics are explicitly listed as not eligible.
We do not know how the government compiles is eligibility criteria or why this change was made. However, it would be worthwhile to keep an eye on this list to see if the status of the upcoming COVID-19 vaccines.
AstraZeneca protected from vaccine liability
Update 1 August 2020: On 30 July 2020, Reuters reported that AstraZeneca, the UK government’s partner for developing its COVID-19 vaccine, will be exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries. The countries have not been named but Ruud Dobber, a member of Astra’s senior executive team, commented:
“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in … four years the vaccine is showing side effects.
In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest.”
MHRA expects high volume of COVID-19 vaccine adverse drug reaction
Update November 2020: It came to light in mid-November that the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) put out a contract award notice for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool. It appears they expect a high volume of COVID-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) from the upcoming vaccines:
…it is not possible to retrofit the MHRA’s legacy systems to handle the volume of ADRs that will be generated by a Covid-19 vaccine. Therefore, if the MHRA does not implement the AI tool, it will be unable to process these ADRs effectively.
Pfizer given legal indemnity
Update 2 December 2020: According to the Independent, Pfizer now has a legal indemnity from being sued by patients who develop any complications from its new mRNA vaccine that will be rolled out in the UK. NHS staff providing the vaccine will also be protected.
Resources
- UK Government Vaccine Damage Payment (gov.uk)
- Ministers lose fight to stop payouts over swine flu jab narcolepsy cases (The Guardian)
- Dengue vaccine fiasco leads to criminal charges for researcher in the Philippines (Science Magazine)
- Polio outbreaks in Africa caused by mutation of strain in vaccine (The Guardian)
- Pakistan accused of cover-up over fresh polio outbreak – (The Guardian)
- The Vaccination Debate (The Guardian)
- AstraZeneca to be exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries (Reuters)
- Zostavax Lawsuit (ClassAction.com)
- Pfizer to pay £50m after deaths of Nigerian children in drug trial experiment (The Independent)
- MHRA urgently seeks software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (Tenders Electronic Daily)
- Pfizer given protection from legal action by UK government (The Independent)
View all articles related to COVID-19 and vaccination.
AstraZeneca has been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful by most of the countries with which it has struck supply agreements, a senior executive told Reuters.
A critical factor that makes the elderly more susceptible to infectious diseases is what immunologists call “immunosenescence”: the decline in the immune system’s functionality as people age. This is also associated with an increase in the incidence of inflammatory diseases, because an elderly body tends to be in a state of chronic low-grade inflammation. This “inflamm-aging” is one reason why older people have tendencies to develop more severe forms of respiratory diseases.
The key problem with SARS-CoV-2 infection is inflammation in the respiratory tract, which can be exacerbated in individuals predisposed towards potent inflammatory responses.
Immunosenescence also results in diminished responses to vaccination. Indeed, annual flu vaccines are notoriously less effective in the elderly. This phenomenon is very important in the context of the massive efforts and funds being invested worldwide into the ultra-rapid development of vaccines for COVID-19.
The fact that elderly people do not respond well to immunizations has largely been ignored in most discussions of COVID-19 vaccines, despite this being the group in greatest need. Most of the scientific community’s experience with vaccine development for any disease has been focused on vaccinating the relatively young.
Categories
Preventing a covid-19 pandemic – BMJ
A randomized placebo-controlled trial in children showed that flu shots increased fivefold the risk of acute respiratory infections caused by a group of noninfluenza viruses, including coronaviruses. (Cowling et al, Clin Infect Dis 2012;54:1778) From Table 3, vaccine recipients had 20 noninfluenza virus-positive ARIs and 19 virus-negative ARIs; non-recipients had 3 noninfluenza virus-positive ARIs and 14 virus-negative ARIs. These figures yield an odds ratio of 4.91 (CI 1.04 to8.14).
Such an observation may seem counterintuitive, but it is possible that influenza vaccines alter our immune systems non-specifically to increase susceptibility to other infections; this has been observed with DTP and other vaccines. (Benn et al, Trends in Immunology, May 2013) There are other immune mechanisms that might also explain the observation.
The mRNA-1273 vaccine is being developed to prevent COVID-19, the disease resulting from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The study is designed to primarily evaluate the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 to prevent COVID-19 for up to 2 years after the second dose of mRNA-1273.
| Actual Study Start Date : | July 27, 2020 |
| Estimated Primary Completion Date : | October 27, 2022 |
| Estimated Study Completion Date : | October 27, 2022 |
For a commentary on this trial, please see the video embedded below.
This study tests different messages about vaccinating against COVID-19 once the vaccine becomes available. Participants are randomized to 1 of 12 arms, with one control arm and one baseline arm. We will compare the reported willingness to get a COVID-19 vaccine at 3 and 6 months of it becoming available between the 10 intervention arms to the 2 control arms.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04460703
Commentary by Dave Cullen.
Naturally acquired herd immunity to COVID-19 combined with earnest protection of the vulnerable elderly – especially nursing home and assisted living facility residents — is an eminently reasonable and practical alternative to the dubious panacea of mass compulsory vaccination against the virus.
This strategy was successfully implemented in Malmo, Sweden, which had few COVID-19 deaths by assiduously protecting its elder care homes, while “schools remained open, residents carried on drinking in bars and cafes, and the doors of hairdressers and gyms were open throughout.
Lockdown deaths:
The really concerning thing is that if all the deaths taking place during lockdown are put down as Covid-19 deaths, we are going to miss the fact that the lockdown policies have caused an increase in deaths from many other things. There has been a 50 per cent reduction in people turning up to A&E. It is clear that people just do not want to bother the doctors. And a number of these people will be dying. If we muddle the Covid-19 statistics in with the other statistics, we might think the lockdown has prevented a certain number of deaths, when it has actually caused a large number of deaths.
NHS capacity:
You hear this idea that all NHS staff have been working 20 times as hard as they have ever done. This is complete nonsense. An awful lot of people have been standing around wondering what the hell to do with themselves. A&E has never been so quiet.
The chances of children dying from COVID-19:
How many people aged 15 or under have died of Covid-19? Four. The chance of dying from a lightning strike is one in 700,000. The chance of dying of Covid-19 in that age group is one in 3.5million. And we locked them all down. Even among the 15- to 44-year-olds, the death rate is very low and the vast majority of deaths have been people who had significant underlying health conditions. We locked them down as well. We locked down the population that had virtually zero risk of getting any serious problems from the disease, and then spread it wildly among the highly vulnerable age group.
On vaccines:
It is not clear that getting the virus actually makes you immune to it in the future, and it is not clear a vaccine would either.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/26/the-lockdown-is-causing-so-many-deaths/
A coronavirus vaccine professor at Oxford University says there is now ‘little chance’ of proving if it works due to low transmission rates in the UK.
Professor Sarah Gilbert, leading the University of Oxford vaccine trial, said that when Covid-19 transmission was high, lockdown was imposed to bring the rate down.
But since then rates have dropped, and the trial relies on a sufficient number of volunteers to have been exposed to the virus to see whether a vaccine protects them or not.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/vaccine-professor-oxford-university-says-22241101
Professor Matteo Bassetti said he is convinced the virus is ‘changing in severity’ and patients are now surviving infections that would have killed them before.
And if the virus’s weakening is true, Covid-19 could even disappear without a for a vaccine by becoming so weak it dies out on its own, he claimed.
Professor Bassetti suggests this could be because of a genetic mutation in the virus making it less lethal, because of improved treatments, or because people are not getting infected with such large doses because of social distancing.
But other scientists have hit back at the claims in the past and said there is no scientific evidence that the virus has changed at all.
At the start of June, in response to Professor Bassetti’s claim, Dr Angela Rasmussen, from Columbia University, tweeted: ‘There is no evidence that the virus is losing potency anywhere.’
On March 25, just a day after Britain shut down, economist Professor Philip Thomas, of Bristol University, made a grim prediction.
If the country remained in lockdown for longer than two months, he warned, any lives saved would be wiped out by those lost from the impact of the inevitable recession.
Britain hit that timeline more than a fortnight ago, but restrictions largely remain in place and there is growing alarm among economists that the cure has become far deadlier than the disease.
Prof Thomas now estimates that 150,000 people could die from Covid-19 over five years under the intermittent lockdown conditions necessary to keep infection rates, or the reproduction ‘R’ number, below one if a vaccine is not found.
A British pharmaceutical giant is already manufacturing an unproven coronavirus vaccine as it hopes to dish out hundreds of millions of doses by September.
The Cambridge-based firm expects to have distributed hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine this year and at least 2billion by mid-2021.
It has signed deals to produce 400million doses for the US and 100million for the UK if it is successful in human trials. Results are expected in August.
Britain has agreed to pay for the doses ‘as early as possible’ – with ministers hoping for a third of those to be ready for September if proven effective.
Note: The video has been removed from Vimeo but has been archived on BitChute (see embedded below highlights).
James talks with Professor Dolores Cahill, a world renowned immunologist who has advised the Irish government and the EU.
- We should end the lockdown. Quarantining healthy people was a huge mistake, should never have been done and should never happen again.
- All the available information tells us there’s no longer any basis for the lockdowns. The economic harm and resulting health effects could be five times higher than those caused by the virus. The adverse health implications of poverty is well-known and has lots of supporting data.
- The immunology community knew in January and February that there was nothing very special about COVID-19.
- There are lots of clinical trials showing the usefulness of vitamins C, D and Zinc for preventing symptoms of corona-type viruses.
- It is also very well established that hydroxychloroquine, which is a very safe drug, can be used as a treatment.
- There was no need to ramp up the hospital care system because there were established methods for prevention and treatment.
- It was known that the virus would circulate the world in a month. Professor Cahill was surprised at the lockdown because the ‘virus was gone.’ There is clearly enough data for this.
- COVID-19 (also known as SARS-CoV-2) is about 80% the same as SARS-CoV-1 in 2003. These types of viruses last about 6 weeks in each location before naturally ‘dying off’ as people become exposed and then developing immunity.
- 80 out of 100 people would have developed antibodies within 10-11 days and become immune for life without experiencing symptoms.
- Although COVID-19 is a novel virus, it can be ‘recognized’ by the immune system of anyone who had already been exposed to SARS-CoV-1. This is because of COVID-19’s 80% similarity to the earlier 2003 virus.
- With these types of viruses, you will be negative for the PCR test (which tests for the presence of the virus) after recovery but you will test positive for the antibodies.
- You don’t need the lockdown if you boost your immune system. in fact, the lockdown made matters worse by depressing people’s immune system. Sunshine, interacting with people, shaking hands–all these help to boost your immune system.
- Elderly people should be taking vitamin C, D and Zinc to protect their immune systems. People with underlying conditions, or those who develop symptoms, should contact their doctor to consider prescribing off-label hydroxychloroquine.
- Symptoms: flu-like for the first five days. If it gets worse and you develop a cough, that’s when you need to ring your doctor for treatment. Treatment includes hydroxychloroquine for 3-5 days, with Zinc and AZT antibiotic. This is an established protocol that has been used in many clinical trials in 2020.
- There was some reason to be scared of COVID-19 during the very early stages (around January) because because we didn’t know anything about it. However, the media and WHO was fearmongering when they used Wuhan as an example of what would happen everywhere.
- From February onward, the immunology community recognized that COVID-19 is the same as a normal virus in most parts of the world. There was something different about Wuhan, Bergamo and New York but t here was no reason to lockdown the rest of the world.
- Vaccines have their place and can be safe. However, studies show that animal and human subjects that were given a type of influenza vaccine later reacted badly when they encountered a coronavirus ‘in the wild’. The reaction caused a cytokine storm that either killed the subject or made the subject very ill. The reaction between different types of vaccinated and wild viruses is called viral interference.
- People in Wuhan and Bergamo were given a certain type of influenza vaccine. It became apparent around April-May that the high death rates in both cities could be due to viral interference from the administered influenza vaccine.
- It has not been possible to make a safe and effective vaccine for the SARS-CoV-1 in 2003. If we have not been able to make a vaccine for this coronavirus, we should not expect a safe vaccine for COVID-19 any time soon. A vaccine developed for COVID-19 would be a complete experiment on those who take it.
- Vaccines containing alluminium, Thimerodal or mercury are intrinsically unsafe.
- The global death rate for COVID-19 is around the same as a bad influenza. Outside of Wuhan, Bergamo and New York, the death rate appears to be less than the normal flu.
- Current data shows that the real death rate for COVID-19 is 20 or 30 times less than the initial estimates from the WHO. We now know the death rate is about one in a thousand for the vulnerable and one in five thousand for the healthy. In the under 70s age range, this is lower than the average flu.
- It was well-known in February that there was no need for the lockdowns.
- There have been no cases of transmission from children.
- If we were to end the lockdown, we would need 10 days to prepare. This is because people have not been out and exposed to sunlight. Preparation include taking vitamins C, D and Zinc; getting fresh air; avoiding stress; and making sure doctors have hydroxychloroquine.
- It is almost as if the current advice is geared to making sure people get sick in order to support more lockdowns.
- There will be no second spike if people take the above precautions to strengthen their immune system.
- A recent study shows that people who continued working were healthy. Engaging with other keeps you healthy by strengthening the immune system.
- There hasn’t been an open debate in any country about the harm versus benefits of the lockdown. This may be a big reason for why the lockdowns are continuing.
- Dr. Rashid A. Buttar and Dr. Judy Mikovits are trying to open the debate about prevention and treatments but their voices are being censored.
- The use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment has been politicized.
- Evidence is being cherry-picked in order reach a predetermined goal: a money-making vaccine. The existing prevention and treatment methods don’t make money for big-pharma.
- Masks and social distancing is appropriate for something like ebola but not for coronaviruses.
- We will build up herd immunity within about two weeks.
- We know how COVID-19 is transmitted because it belongs to the family of coronaviruses. It is not transmitted through the air. This has been proven because groups of people in encloses spaces (for example, plane-loads of fruit-pickers) did not all come down with the sickness.
- The two meter rule is unnecessary.
- There was enough information from many sources for the government and their advisors to know that all these measures are wrong. There should be legal implications for those who advocate continued lockdown. Hundreds of unnecessary deaths should be grounds for a legal tribunal.
- There is a high risk of a death spike after lockdown due to other causes, such as cancers, that will attributed to COVID-19. This will be used to support more lockdowns.
- The politicians, broadcasters, newspaper editors, ministers for health–everyone complicit in censoring and withholding information from the public about the true nature of COVID-19 needs to be held personally liable for the deaths caused.
Injected influenza vaccines probably have a small protective effect against influenza and ILI (moderate-certainty evidence), as 71 people would need to be vaccinated to avoid one influenza case, and 29 would need to be vaccinated to avoid one case of ILI. Vaccination may have little or no appreciable effect on hospitalisations (low-certainty evidence) or number of working days lost.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD001269/ARI_vaccines-prevent-influenza-healthy-adults