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The real question is why is this even news? The WHO is there to prevent mass pandemics from spreading and killing people, and they have not saved one single country in 2020. The US wasted $900 million dollars, 15% of the WHO budget, on an organization so corrupt it has been captured and become a Chinese advertising agency directly working against the interests of the Western nations that fund it.
Donald Trump says US will halt funding to WHO over handling of coronavirus pandemic
Mr Trump, speaking as the US death toll from COVID-19 passed 25,000, said the United Nations health agency had “failed in its basic duty and it must be held accountable”.
He said the group had promoted China’s “disinformation” about the virus, and said the outbreak could have been contained at its source and lives could have been saved if the WHO had done a better job of investigating initial reports coming out of China.
The big news is that Australia, and most other countries are still funding the WHO. When will our media start asking why we do that? Is Scott Morrison afraid of the UN, afraid of China, or afraid of […]
7.9 out of 10 based on 21 ratings
Studies may not be what they seem We need antibody tests to find the number of asymptomatic Covid-19 cases, but the German Heinsberg study was poorly done. Apparently there aren’t many good antibody tests available yet.
The early results of a small study in Germany on the town of Gangelt suggested that as many as 15% of the town might have caught an asymptomatic form of coronavirus and already had antibodies to it. This would mean that death rates to coronavirus were much lower — a mere 0.37%, not 2% (or so), and that aiming for Herd Immunity was a realistic policy. It was picked up in many newspapers and turned into headlines that may have misled a lot of people, including the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia.
“Coronavirus: Nearly 15% Europeans Now Immune in COVID-19”
“Many people may already have immunity to coronavirus, German study finds”
“Scientists say many more people than previously thought could have acquired coronavirus immunity after discovering 15% of people in city dubbed ‘German Wuhan’ could be carrying antibodies”
Five different reasons the results may be spurious The test may have detected antibodies to the harmless common cold form […]
Across the US all-cause mortality is down as as people avoid catching the flu, getting run over, and other risks. But in New York where coronavirus has hit hardest, all-cause mortality is at record highs.
This is nothing like the seasonal flu
For the whole month of March, deaths in New York were twice as high as normal. This includes not just extra coronavirus deaths but all other causes. Deaths were even higher than the number of known coronavirus deaths, leaving cardiologists worried that there may have been an increase in other conditions like heart attacks or strokes, because people were afraid to go to hospital or couldn’t get help in time.
This is an underestimate. The authors expect this number to rise as more paperwork gets completed. It’s still only a small excess in a giant country, but it hints at the scale of the event were no quarantine measures put in place, no flights stopped, and the virus allowed to spread naturally. The current epidemic is stabilizing in New York, but if major action wasn’t taken, this would be the early weeks of a pandemic about to sweep across all fifty states. And this would not be the […]
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7.8 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
Herd Immunity is not realistic
For the first time we have true randomized testing –and it shows that Austria was officially picking up about a quarter of the real number of infections in the population. So when Austria was officially saying 7,000 were infected, the true number was 28,500. Finally, this puts a solid limit on the chance that asymptomatic rate of infection was high. There is no iceberg.
About 75% of cases were mild or truly asymptomatic (and thus not getting officially tested), but it was still only a small slice of the population — just one third of one percent.
Less than 1% of Austrians infected with coronavirus, study shows
Peter Beaumont, The Guardian
The co-founder of Sora, Christoph Hofinger, told a news conference: “Based on this study, we believe that 0.33% of the population in Austria was acutely infected in early April.” Given the margin of error, the figure was 95% likely to be between 0.12% and 0.76%.
99% of the population is still vulnerable
The Austrian chancellor estimates only 1% of the population had had the infection (presumably he is including an estimate of people who had already had the virus, cleared […]
For doctors or nurses reading — there’s a call to share this widely
An information event on this online SUNDAY April 12 8pm US Eastern time. (Open, free to anyone who wants to listen). That’s 10am Monday morning EST Australia.
This is not the flu. Most of the time apparently it’s not ARDS either. Coronavirus it turns out — is a vascular disease as much as lung disease. In fact in 70-80% of ICU patients putting them on a ventilator straight away may make the situation worse.
Currently patients in ICUs have about a 50:50 chance of making it out alive. The odds are terrible. Doctors have been reporting how people can degenerate suddenly into a life threatening crisis situation. Now, perhaps this explains it. This kind of hypothesis is one of the reasons we really want to crush the curve, now, because we are so underprepared and there is so much to learn. If this is right it will save many lives.
This could solve several mysteries at once
This virus causes heart damage, it raises clotting factors. People seem fine, then they relapse.
One recent paper found people with high levels of D-dimer, a clotting factor, […]
Locking up the olds and letting this rip still has some drawbacks.
Coronavirus: Nearly 800 people under the age of 50 have died in the US
Alex Woodward, The Independent
Nearly 200 people in the US in their thirties have died from coronavirus, among the nearly 800 people under age 50 who have died following the outbreak.
At least 45 Americans in their twenties have died from the Covid-19 disease caused by the virus, not including another nine deaths involving people under 20 years old, according to data collected by The Washington Post.
One third of young deaths had no known co-morbidity. Doctors have little idea what factors increase their risk. It may be genes, which is yet another reason to hammer this down and delay this round. Gene and blood tests might enable us to figure out who was high risk of being hospitalized.
How many deaths among the under 50 will the average person tolerate before they stop sending their kids to school out of fear?
Hundreds of young Americans have now been killed by the coronavirus, data shows 8 out of 10 based on 37 ratings […]
Australia remains the star Lucky Country compared to overseas. Infections are low, deaths are even lower. It’s all so much better than the desperate situation in Europe and the US. These are enviable, fantastically small numbers. Politicians are afraid to say so, lest the population relax, and party too much this Easter and the “unknowns” increase. (Which might well happen).
At the moment, the trend that matters most is the daily new cases of unknown transmission and it is trending down. There is community spread, but social isolation is shrinking it. This is what “Crushing the Curve” looks like. Right now there are still asymptomatic spreaders out there, but they are infecting less than one other person each (Ro < 1), so the infection is on its way to extinguishing itself — assuming we keep up the distancing.
But these great figures are not a reason to let up on social isolation, they’re a reason to go harder. We want to achieve the Golden Holy Grail — no new infections, and business as usual with no lockdowns, no curfews and a zone of freedom.
Australia is the Lucky Country, and doing the right thing
Why is the situation so good […]
Finally, one world leader calls a spade a turkey. The US is the largest funder to the World Health Organisation, yet the WHO acts in China’s best interests. On January 31 the WHO could have saved the world by isolating China. Instead, the chief raved about President Xi and advised that flights should stay open because it will harm the economy:
“Travel restrictions can cause more harm than good by hindering info-sharing, medical supply chains and harming economies,” the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. [Jan 31]
As I said then: How many people will the WHO kill with this advice? It was reckless negligence.
Donald Trump has placed a “hold” on funding the World Health Organisation after they got so much wrong on Coronavirus.
Charlie Speerling, Breitbart
“We want to look into the World Health Organization because they really called it wrong,” Trump said. “They missed the call, they could have called it months earlier, they would have known, they should have known, and they probably did know.”
The president noted that the WHO actually criticized his travel ban from China that he set […]
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9.4 out of 10 based on 9 ratings
Missing out on the Sunshine Vitamin?
We’re throwing billions at Coronavirus but missing cheap wins.
After masks and soap, the next bargain to reduce the impact of coronavirus is Vitamin D supplements.
Vitamin D deficiency is so common it’s an epidemic affecting a billion people around the world. Ponder that half the population of many western nations are clinically deficient by the end of winter. Add that to a novel virus and consider that higher Vitamin D levels reduce the risk of respiratory tract infections like influenza by as much as 40%.
As Grant et al say:
“Low vitamin D status in winter permits viral epidemics.”
Vitamin D levels also correlate with lower rates of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, heart disease, dental caries, preeclampsia, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. Vitamin D influences over 200 genes. It’s so crucial, it was likely the reason northern Europeans evolved whiter skin. The lack of sunlight and the introduction of grains in diets (as opposed to eating liver and whales) meant that Europeans weren’t getting enough D from either food or sun. The selective pressure was so strong that lighter skin rapidly took over all the northern […]
9.3 out of 10 based on 15 ratings
Cardinal George Pell
George Pell was on the wrong side of every fashionable cause: An old white man, a christian, and a climate skeptic. He threatened the religion of political correctness in every way, and a witch hunt made him target number one. Despite his position of power and influence, the best evidence the pogrom could find was the word of one boy, decades later, with no corroborating evidence. The irrational groupthink fashion swept through juries, judges and even the Victorian Court of Appeal. But today in Australia the High Court, the final last chance for justice, freed George Pell from jail 7-0.
Great news, Australia still has a justice system.
He was convicted and imprisoned over the most heinous of all crimes on the word of one anonymous complainant, whose testimony was unsupported by any other witnesses, or any forensic evidence. The same fate could befall any Victorian.
The media lynch mob and the entire Victorian legal system stand condemned. The unanimous decision of the High Court is a conclusive repudiation of everyone involved in the false imprisonment of Cardinal George Pell, every politician, every cop, every lawyer, every journalist, every coward…
April 7th, 2020 | Tags: Legal Action, Religion | Category: Free Speech, Global Warming, Ideology, Legal |  Print This Post | |
The US can no longer even make vitamin C or aspirin any more, or 80% of their antibiotics. Something like 90% of the starting chemicals for essential US medicines are made in Chinese factories. And there aren’t many alternatives — fully 70% of competing products from India start with chemicals from China too. And now Chinese companies are shifting up into generic drugs as well.
The West, asleep, let the takeover happen. Western companies were driven out of business trying to compete with Chinese companies which were are subsidized by the CCP. But we were happy to take the cheaper drugs. That was, until we discovered what huge leverage we have given China. It’s a
As Gibson points out — personnel of the US Navy in the South China Sea are thus “dependent on their adversary for their medicine.”
Azithromycin (the antibiotic in the favourite Coronavirus treatment trio) is made in China. So is propofol which is used with ventilators.
December last year:
U.S. policymakers worry about China ‘weaponizing’ drug exports
Doug Palmer and Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post
A watchdog report last month by the U.S.-China Economic […]
“A single treatment able to effect ∼5000-fold reduction in virus at 48h in cell culture.”
–Caly et al 2020
It’s another day in freaky chemistry — researchers at Monash University found that one of the main components of sheep drench is also very good at reducing Coronavirus, at least in test tubes. Ivermectin’s an unsung hero of the world of biochemistry, called a “Wonder Drug” and a “Blockbuster” because it works against roundworms, lungworms, mites, lice, scabies and hornflies, as well as cattle-ticks. Most importantly, it kills the worm that causes River Blindness, saving the vision of thousands in sub-saharan Africa, and places like Ecuador.
That’s doesn’t mean it will work in vivo — and it may be a month before human trials begin so we can find out.
Possibly, in a few months you might be able to kill off Coronavirus and deworm yourself at the same time.
Though the human experiment is already probably happening in countries where it is being used already and coronavirus is circulating. Surely we can track those cases?
And at least in Australia, unlike Chloroquine — which we don’t have much of — with 70 million sheep I can’t […]
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8.5 out of 10 based on 19 ratings
Ignore the mixed, junk messaging, if the WHO tells you not to wear a mask, that’s President Xi speaking. It’s a reason to wear one. We should all be wearing masks in public. It may be the cheapest way to reduce the R0, and get us out of coronavirus-jail fast.
Countries which wear masks have lower transmission. Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea. UPDATE: Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer says Australians shouldn’t use masks because they are not clever enough to use them properly or something like that. Seriously. Don’t wait for bureaucrats to get the message right. It protects other people from those who don’t even have symptoms who are shedding virus. It protects you: It reduces your chance of breathing in droplets of virus that float in the air. Viruses are tiny, but studies show that masks work, even a thin surgical mask prevented nearly 3 out 4 parents from catching influenza from their infected children. The N95 style are better but any mask is better than nothing. There are no guarantees –– the virus can sneak in the side, and still enter through your eyes (wear glasses to reduce at least to stop you touching your eyes). […]
Closed rooms with many people talking are hot-beds of infection. Invisible clouds of virus hang suspended in the air. Open the windows. Turn up the airflow. Wear masks. (Wear goggles too, if you are high risk, the virus can get in through the wet surface of your eyes).
Blow that virus outdoors where the sun will fry it. We need to change the way we handle air in planes and on cruise ships, and public transport — even when there is no pandemic.
This is why I am not shopping without PPE. Make a mask. Mail order and delivery is so much safer. Do carpark pick ups. It’s also why eating uncooked fruit and vege that people may have breathed on is still a risk. The virus will likely survive 28 days in the fridge at 4 degrees C and even longer in the freezer. At 40 degrees it will last about 6 hours. Time will not protect you unless things are warm.
When I did research in a lab, if we wanted to save viruses we’d put them in a freezer (minus 70C).
A virus is more like a chemical than a living thing.
Thanks to MichaelSmithNews.
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Just remind me if I forget OK?
9.2 out of 10 based on 10 ratings
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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