SARS Cov 2: Science-only thread

[Joe Hillshoist]

This is a 34 page paper suggesting the origin of SARS2 is a lab.

I dunno if it has been peer reviewed yet and I haven't fully gone thru cos it is proper hardcore science and tho I can follow it I'm no expert.

I'll post the abstract, intro and link and if people want and can follow it they can read the whole thing.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.06199.pdf

In silico comparison of spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species; significance for the possible origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

Sakshi Piplani1,2, Puneet Kumar Singh2, David A. Winkler3-6*, Nikolai Petrovsky1,2*
1 College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University, Bedford Park 5046, Australia
2 Vaxine Pty Ltd, 11 Walkley Avenue, Warradale 5046, Australia
3 La Trobe University, Kingsbury Drive, Bundoora 3042, Australia
4 Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Parkville 3052, Australia
5 School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD. UK
6 CSIRO Data61, Pullenvale 4069, Australia

*Joint senior authors

Abstract

The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS–coronavirus 2 (SARS- CoV-2) has raised important questions on the origins of this virus, the mechanisms of any zoonotic transfer from exotic animals to humans, whether companion animals or those used for commercial purposes can act as reservoirs for infection, and the reasons for the large variations in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibilities across animal species. Traditional lab-based methods will ultimately answer many of these questions but take considerable time. Increasingly powerful in silico modeling methods provide the opportunity to rapidly generate information on newly emerged pathogens to aid countermeasure development and also to predict potential future behaviors. We used an in silico structural homology modeling approach to characterize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein which predicted its high affinity binding to the human ACE2 receptor. Next we sought to gain insights into the possible origins and transmission path by which SARS-CoV-2 might have crossed to humans by constructing models of the ACE2 receptors of relevant species, and then calculating the binding energy of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to each of these. Notably, SARS-CoV-2 spike protein had the highest overall binding energy for human ACE2, greater than all the other tested species including bat, the postulated source of the virus. This indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is a highly adapted human pathogen. Of the species studied, the next highest binding affinity after human was pangolin, which is most likely explained by a process of convergent evolution. Binding of SARS-CoV-2 for dog and cat ACE2 was similar to affinity for bat ACE2, all being lower than for human ACE2, and is consistent with only occasional observations of infections of these domestic animals. Snake ACE2 had low affinity for spike protein, making it highly improbable that snakes acted as an intermediate vector. Overall, the data indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is uniquely adapted to infect humans, raising important questions as to whether it arose in nature by a rare chance event or whether its origins might lie elsewhere.

Introduction
The devastating impact of COVID-19 infections caused by SARS–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has stimulated unprecedented international activity to discover effective vaccines and drugs for this and other pathogenic coronaviruses.1-16 It has also raised important questions on the mechanisms of zoonotic transfer of viruses from animals to humans, questions as to whether companion animals or those used for commercial purposes can act as reservoirs for infection, and the reasons for the large variations in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility across animal species.17-19 Understanding how viruses move between species may help us prevent or minimize these pathways in the future. Elucidating the molecular basis for the different susceptibilities of species may also shed light on the differences in susceptibilities in different sub-groups of humans.

Very recently, Shi et al. published the results of experiments to determine the susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 of ferrets, cats, dogs, and other domesticated animals.20 They showed that SARS- CoV-2 virus replicates poorly in dogs, pigs, chickens, and ducks, but ferrets and cats are permissive to infection. Other studies have reported the susceptibility of other animal species to SARS-CoV-2.17,20,21 Susceptible species such as macaques, hamsters and ferrets are used as animal models of SARS-CoV-2 infection.22-24 In the absence of purified, isolated ACE2 from all the relevant animal species that could be used to measure the molecular affinities to spike protein experimentally, computational methods offer considerable promise for determining the rank order of affinities across species, as a method to impute which species may be permissive to SARS-CoV-2.

Here we show how computational chemistry methods from structure-based drug design can be used to determine the relative binding affinities of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein for its receptor, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE)-2, a critical initiating event for SARS-CoV-2 infection, across multiple common and exotic animal species.25-27 The aim of these studies was to better understand the species-specific nature of this interaction and see if this could help elucidate the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the mechanisms for its zoonotic transmission.

[conniption]

SARS Cov 2: Science-only thread

Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Sat May 09, 2020 3:05 pm

Of course science is a slippery beast and a riot of consensus squabbling.. SO, all views welcome in this thread, as long as posts are framed around the scientific inquiry/method. Please don't post poli stuff or humor here, unless science based, use the Coronavirus Crisis main thread or elsewhere, please...

Hiya §ê¢rꆧ --

Here is something to sink your teeth into. It may be too long to post, then again I like to file it at RI (as if RI might still be standing) if or when Off_Guardian goes down ... anyway, here's the link, for now...

Off_Guardian




CCDH – The Centre For Cancel Culture And Digital Hypocrisy – Part 1

Iain Davis
Aug 11, 2020

The Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) are a UK based organisation who have misspelled “centre” in their name. Perhaps they have opted for the U.S spelling in the hope of selling their peculiar brand of morally bankrupt censorship to the American propaganda market.The Anti-Vaxx Industry, is a propaganda leaflet with two main objectives. The first is to create a false dichotomy in the public imagination and the second is to build a public-private censorship grid in anticipation of forthcoming government legislation. This is proposed to censor legitimate scientific opinion and evidence based debate on a wide range of issues the government and its corporate partners would rather silence. Including any questioning of vaccines...continues..

https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/11/ccd ... sy-part-1/

[Grizzly]

Pharmacist provides evidence that the SarsCov2 antibody tests also states that it picks up non-SarsCov2 strains such as Coronavirus HKU1, NL63, OC43 or 229E, virus' related to the common cold and regular flu.

[conniption]

LONG WAITED! PLANDEMIC 2 - PART 2 of INTERVIEW - of Dr Mikovits


LONG WAITED! PLANDEMIC 2 - PART 2 of INTERVIEW - of Dr Mikovits
4,219 views
•Aug 21, 2020
AstroGamma
We sat down with Dr. Mikovitz for a second time to hear her response to the impact of part one and to further disclose details of her story.

---

Moderator note: the video link was removed at conniption's request; the video was apparently substituted for a different one.

[liminalOyster]

Plandemic II is mostly just Mikovitz talking about the history of her HIV research and offering some general platitudes about why medical breakthroughs shouldn't be patentable/profitable. The only interesting thing was her suggestion of COVID in dog cell lines in the 2019 flu vaccine. What wasn't clear, to me, was if she was claiming this particular vaccine had been disproportionately administered to the elderly in Northern Italy. Overall, this video isn't honestly terribly interesting. I'd be surprised if anyone on this board would argue against making all vaccine research open source and unable to be patented. But unless I missed something (which is certainly possilbe - I was making dinner), there's nothing new here (other than her believable, reasonable self-defense against certain smears made against her.)

[conniption]

strategic-culture
(embedded links)

From Gekaufte Journalisten to Gekaufte Wissenschaftler
Stephen Karganovic
June 10, 2020

The two go hand-in-hand, of course. When several years ago the late Udo Ulfkotte published his revelations about the inner workings of the corrupt Western media (ostensibly printed in English by a minor publisher in 2017 but “unavailable” ever since, followed soon thereafter by convenient death by heart attack of the apparently healthy 57-year old German author) who would have suspected that in the fabled West identical processes were corroding other important areas of public life?

Just as a reminder, as the publisher points out in its blurb, “Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor for the German main daily newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), has first-hand knowledge of how the CIA and German Intelligence (BND) bribe journalists to write articles free of truth and with a decidedly pro-Western, pro-NATO bent or, in other words, propaganda. In his bestselling book Bought Journalists (“Gekaufte Journalisten”), Dr. Ulfkotte explains in great detail the workings of the U.S. and NATO s propaganda campaign and how a lack of compliance with it, on the part of a journalist, can cost a career.”

The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, whatever one may think of it, has exposed a situation in Western science that is ominously analogous to what Ulfkotte had described in what passes as its “journalism”.

One of quite a few (but never enough) scientists in the U.S. with integrity to resist the intense career-costing pressure to distort scientific data and conform it to the marketing requirements of huge pharmaceutical concerns is renowned microbiologist Dr. Judy Mikovits. Dr. Mikovits played a leading role in HIV research in the 80s and was fulsomely praised at the time for her contribution to suppressing that epidemic. But her stellar scientific credentials notwithstanding, she quickly became persona non grata for the gekaufte scientific establishment once she started to question some of the sacrosanct verities of the current Corona commotion. “The hammer began to fall,” she explains, “and I was told to deny the data, to misrepresent the data, to throw the data away, and when I refused to do so I was fired. My lab was locked down on September 29 [2019] and my two offices and my entire 30-year career and everything, my notebooks, was confiscated.”

The symbiosis of “Big Science,” “Big Pharma,” and their executive committee (unfortunately the Leninist expression does work best here), also known as “the government,” manifested itself vividly in the Neil Ferguson Oxford College fiasco, using a rigged mathematical model and disregarding hard data to conjure up a phantasmagorical pandemic disaster scenario which subsequently resulted in a genuine economic, social, and for hapless millions personal, disaster of incalculable magnitude. In a shameless puff piece devoted to the quack Ferguson, he was praised by Business Insider for having “modeled the spread of all those outbreaks, advising five UK prime ministers in the process. But all that seems like a practice run for 2020.” Indeed, it was, as we are finding out. Left unmentioned, of course, was the appalling track record of Ferguson’s infelicitous consultations, all his predictions in previous epidemics (as well as the current one) having proven flat out wrong every single time. In the end, hemmed in by irrefutable facts, Ferguson was obliged to admit, with the “greatest respect” for Swedish scientists, that Sweden had managed to suppress the Corona virus without resorting to tough restrictions, and he even had the effrontery to add – after the damage caused by his recommendations had turned irreversible – that Sweden had used “the same science as the UK” to achieve a successful public health result at a far lower social cost. But as Ferguson’s like-minded friend George Soros, unequivocally and with amazing frankness, recently put it, “even before the pandemic hit, I realized that we were in a revolutionary moment where what would be impossible or even inconceivable in normal times had become not only possible, but probably absolutely necessary.” The agenda indeed must be advanced at any cost, and as another person from the same unsavoury circle observed not long ago, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

So now we come to one of the gekaufte Wissenschaft sources of the current global hysteria, as unexpectedly revealed by a most unlikely journalistic authority, The Guardian: “A Guardian investigation can reveal the U.S.-based company Surgisphere, whose handful of employees appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult-content model, has provided data for multiple studies on Covid-19 co-authored by its chief executive, but has so far failed to adequately explain its data or methodology.”

It turns out that this obscure outfit’s impact on the policies and practices of governments and international organizations has been nothing short of spectacular: “Data it claims to have legitimately obtained from more than a thousand hospitals worldwide formed the basis of scientific articles that have led to changes in Covid-19 treatment policies in Latin American countries. It was also behind a decision by the WHO and research institutes around the world to halt trials of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine. On Wednesday, the WHO announced those trials would now resume.” In other words, what The Guardian uncovered within the Western scientific and governmental nexus was a huge, utterly discreditable case of fraud.

But it was not fraud just in the abstract sense of the word. It had tangible consequences in the real world, affecting directly the life and health of countless human beings.

As when, on May 22, 2020, and entirely based on the “scientific” findings put forward by Surgisphere Corporation, Britain’s prestigious medical journal The Lancet published “Hydroxychloroquine or Chloroquine With or Without A Macrolide For Treatment of COVID-19: a Multinational Registry Analysis”. It was described (and later the article was mercifully retracted) as an observational study purportedly involving more than 96,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients in 671 hospitals across six continents. What was not disclosed is the fact that the two lead co-authors have significant, relevant financial conflicts of interest that just may have biased the reported findings.

As if on cue, within days of Lancet’s publication of these bogus data, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), referring to HCQ, declared on CNN “The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy.” A media blitz against hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) created a panic: clinical trials aimed at testing hydroxychloroquin for COVID-19 were suspended by international public health institutions, including the World Health Organization, the UK government regulatory agency, and the French government. As Stephen Smith, a U.S. doctor with professional integrity, has pointed out “COVID-19 Patients Died Because of Bogus Lancet Study that Disparaged Hydroxycholorquine.”

It all makes solid financial sense, of course. Hydroxychloroquin is a dirt cheap, widely available remedy the proceeds from which would not fill anybody’s coffers and which would not lend itself to any of the further “crisis exploitation” agendas Messrs. Soros, Gates, Ferguson et al. might have in mind. The threatened globally injected vaccine in the making, however, meets all their sinister requirements, and it offers the prospect of virtually limitless juicy profits to boot. Case closed.

But that is just one of the things that happens when nations and their gekaufte governments allow rascals and charlatans to bamboozle them.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/ ... schaftler/

More interesting articles by the author, Stephen Karganovic at Strategic Culture, HERE.

[Nordic]

Plandemic II is mostly just Mikovitz talking about the history of her HIV research and offering some general platitudes about why medical breakthroughs shouldn't be patentable/profitable. The only interesting thing was her suggestion of COVID in dog cell lines in the 2019 flu vaccine. What wasn't clear, to me, was if she was claiming this particular vaccine had been disproportionately administered to the elderly in Northern Italy. Overall, this video isn't honestly terribly interesting. I'd be surprised if anyone on this board would argue against making all vaccine research open source and unable to be patented. But unless I missed something (which is certainly possilbe - I was making dinner), there's nothing new here (other than her believable, reasonable self-defense against certain smears made against her.)

Yeah. You basically missed a ton of the movie s as Nd I have to doubt that you actually saw it.

You didn’t even mention this guy: David E Martin phd. He’s the star of Plandemic2.



Not sure how you could have missed him.

[liminalOyster]

Maybe because I clicked the link posted above by Conniption which, based on your comment, I investigated and appear to not be the whole thing but only an interview with her?

Will look for the whole thing but the bio of the "star" is literally already totally contradictory to Miskovitz's anti-patent themes:

Speakers: David E. Martin, PhD
Dr. David Martin is the founding CEO of M∙CAM Inc. M∙CAM is the international leader in intellectual property-based financial risk management. From auditing patent quality for governments and patent offices, to providing state-of-the-art actuarial risk management systems and solutions to the largest banks and insurance companies, M∙CAM has established a global standard in patent quality and commercial validity assessment and management.

A spokesperson for global intellectual property accountability and quality reform, Dr. Martin has worked closely with the United States Congress, numerous trade and finance regulatory agencies in the United States, Europe and Asia, in advocating and deploying infrastructure to support growing reliance on proprietary rights in business transactions. M∙CAM has supported the modernization of intellectual property, tax, and accounting laws through its work with oversight agencies and policy makers.

Dr. Martin has founded several for-profit and non-profit companies and organizations and serves of several boards. He was the founding CEO of Mosaic Technologies Inc., a company that developed and commercialized advanced computational linguistics technologies, dynamic data compression and encryption technologies, electrical field transmission technology, medical diagnostics, and stealth/anechoic technology. He was a founding member of Japan’s Institute for Interface Science & Technology. He founded and served as Executive Director of the Charlottesville Venture Group. He has served as a board member for the Research Institute for Small and Emerging Business (Washington D.C.), the Academy for Augmenting Grassroots Technological Innovations (India), the IST (Japan) the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce (Virginia), and the Charlottesville Industrial Development Agency (Virginia).

As former Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine, Dr. Martin founded the University’s first wholly-owned, for-profit, research and development and technology transfer corporation. Engaged in domestic and international technology transfer, clinical research, and financing, this company pioneered new techniques innovation management that have become industry standards. In 1999, Dr. Martin was appointed by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia to serve on the Joint Commission on Technology and Science and has served the General Assembly and Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology on numerous occasions.

Dr. Martin’s work with the Batten Institute at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia and his related work at the Indian Institute for Management in Ahmedabad India has brought unprecedented curricular focus to areas of intangible asset risk management, finance, and accounting standards. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Martin has closely advised intellectual property based finance and investment programs in India, China, Denmark, the European Union, the United Kingdom, South Africa, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.

Dr. Martin has publications in law, medicine, engineering, finance and education. He maintains active research in the fields of linguistic genomics, fractal financial risk modeling, as well as continuing his over 15 years of research in cellular membrane ionic signaling.

[Elvis]

Interesting that some who say the virus is a hoax also say hydroxychloroquin cures it.

I have no doubt that any cheap or free and readily available cure will be brushed aside in favor of some remedy that will make someone billion$.

Someone was touting thyme and thymol as an antiviral agent that kills Covid; I was skeptical until I Googled "thymol" and "covid-19" together. It seems that impregnating face masks with thymol greatly enhances their effectiveness. Why isn't that a thing?

Also true for nano-silver, which is used in hospitals everyday as an antibacterial/antiviral agent. Google "colloidal silver" and "covid-19" together, there's work being done, but seems inadequate given the potential.

And neither of these substances present anything like "injecting bleach."

[conniption]

LONG WAITED! PLANDEMIC 2 - PART 2 of INTERVIEW - of Dr Mikovits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cXtdrUoNt0

LONG WAITED! PLANDEMIC 2 - PART 2 of INTERVIEW - of Dr Mikovits
4,219 views
•Aug 21, 2020
AstroGamma
We sat down with Dr. Mikovitz for a second time to hear her response to the impact of part one and to further disclose details of her story.

Elvis,
Wonder what happened here? That is not the video I posted. idk what to say...I guess you can just remove it...?
That's funny.

[Elvis]

Elvis,
Wonder what happened here? That is not the video I posted. idk what to say...

I think the video was deleted by YouTube and the gaming video substituted in its place? Not sure how that works but a couple of viewer comments suggest it.

[lucky]

https://www.bitchute.com/video/4u7rt61YeGox/

Try this

[Iamwhomiam]

Sorry to see such litter in your well intended thread, §ê¢rꆧ. Joe, thanks for that report.

[liminalOyster]

I sure hope Louise Mensch chimes in on this immediately.

Safety and immunogenicity of an rAd26 and rAd5 vector-based heterologous prime-boost COVID-19 vaccine in two formulations: two open, non-randomised phase 1/2 studies from Russia

Summary

Background

We developed a heterologous COVID-19 vaccine consisting of two components, a recombinant adenovirus type 26 (rAd26) vector and a recombinant adenovirus type 5 (rAd5) vector, both carrying the gene for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike glycoprotein (rAd26-S and rAd5-S). We aimed to assess the safety and immunogenicity of two formulations (frozen and lyophilised) of this vaccine.

Methods

We did two open, non-randomised phase 1/2 studies at two hospitals in Russia. We enrolled healthy adult volunteers (men and women) aged 18–60 years to both studies. In phase 1 of each study, we administered intramuscularly on day 0 either one dose of rAd26-S or one dose of rAd5-S and assessed the safety of the two components for 28 days. In phase 2 of the study, which began no earlier than 5 days after phase 1 vaccination, we administered intramuscularly a prime-boost vaccination, with rAd26-S given on day 0 and rAd5-S on day 21. Primary outcome measures were antigen-specific humoral immunity (SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies measured by ELISA on days 0, 14, 21, 28, and 42) and safety (number of participants with adverse events monitored throughout the study). Secondary outcome measures were antigen-specific cellular immunity (T-cell responses and interferon-γ concentration) and change in neutralising antibodies (detected with a SARS-CoV-2 neutralisation assay). These trials are registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04436471 and NCT04437875.

Findings

Between June 18 and Aug 3, 2020, we enrolled 76 participants to the two studies (38 in each study). In each study, nine volunteers received rAd26-S in phase 1, nine received rAd5-S in phase 1, and 20 received rAd26-S and rAd5-S in phase 2. Both vaccine formulations were safe and well tolerated. The most common adverse events were pain at injection site (44 [58%]), hyperthermia (38 [50%]), headache (32 [42%]), asthenia (21 [28%]), and muscle and joint pain (18 [24%]). Most adverse events were mild and no serious adverse events were detected. All participants produced antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 glycoprotein. At day 42, receptor binding domain-specific IgG titres were 14 703 with the frozen formulation and 11 143 with the lyophilised formulation, and neutralising antibodies were 49·25 with the frozen formulation and 45·95 with the lyophilised formulation, with a seroconversion rate of 100%. Cell-mediated responses were detected in all participants at day 28, with median cell proliferation of 2·5% CD4+ and 1·3% CD8+ with the frozen formulation, and a median cell proliferation of 1·3% CD4+ and 1·1% CD8+ with the lyophilised formulation.

Interpretation

The heterologous rAd26 and rAd5 vector-based COVID-19 vaccine has a good safety profile and induced strong humoral and cellular immune responses in participants. Further investigation is needed of the effectiveness of this vaccine for prevention of COVID-19.

[b]Funding[/b
]Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 40-6736(20)31866-3/fulltext

[fruhmenschen]

https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/


Thursday, September 3, 2020
Roughly 500,000 Americans, who were not previous users, got HCQ scripts in March and April--at the time 1 M cases were diagnosed
The CDC has just released information, in its MMWR Weekly Report, on the prescribing of hydroxychloroquine in March and April in the US.

Approximately 500,000 prescriptions dispensed by retail pharmacies were "new," or dispensed to persons who had not received a previous prescription of the medication in the prior 12 months. These are presumed to have been in response to Covid-19.

By April 30, there were 1,075,000 confirmed or probable Covid cases in the US.

CDC's report has not examined how many of those receiving HCQ also tested positive for Covid.

Nonetheless, it appears that a considerable number of Americans and their physicians saw value in using the drug to prevent or treat Covid, especially compared to the number of total known cases. Where are their voices now? Did the medication help? Hurt?

The rest of the country is dying to know.


Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 10:26 PM 0 comments
Hydroxychloroquine: the EVIDENCE you have nothing to worry about. Doctors must speak up!
For those who are worried about the “harms" caused by hydroxychloroquine—have you taken it? Prescribed it for a family member with Covid? Prescribed it for probably 200+ patients over 2 decades? Studied the literature? Well, I have done all of these.


Here are 3 recent studies discounting the drug’s cardiac toxicity:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 3620305288

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20155531v2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 7520300998

If you lack a solid grounding in this medication, which BTW was being tested for many dozens of different conditions including obesity, cancer, heart disease prevention, miscarriage prevention, and osteoarthritis BEFORE Covid hit, because it was so very safe, even in pregnancy (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14613284/), and potentially effective for them (see https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results? ... ity=&dist=), then please inform yourself. Clinical trials.gov today lists 500 trials ongoing or completed using HCQ.

The true harms of HCQ appear to be no greater than for drugs like the OTC NSAIDS (ibuprofen, aleve). The excessive harms that have been claimed were pulled out of thin air, just like the Lancet’s Mehra/Desai/Surgisphere paper, for the same purpose. That purpose is propaganda. It is the responsibility of medical doctors to seek to distinguish between propaganda and fact.

This is not an intellectual exercise. We are talking about a pandemic that has crashed the world economy, caused famines, and governments show no signs that things are going to change any time soon. So if there is a magic bullet or perhaps many (see lab data on repurposed drugs for coronaviruses) -- the bullets need to be used asap, and not withheld to make way for remdesivir (about 3000x more costly and also more dangerous (https://www.drugs.com/sfx/remdesivir-side-effects.html) and poorly tested vaccines that use novel platforms and, if used under Emergency Use Authorizations, will waive manufacturer and government liability.

Pay attention to the pre-Covid literature vs the post-Covid literature on HCQ harms.

In 2007 the Oxford journal Rheumatology
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17202178/ found: "Conclusion: PR interval, QTc interval and heart rate were not different from normal values. The rate of heart conduction disorders was similar to what is expected in the general population, and contrasted with prior results in CQ-treated patients. Our results add further evidence on the safety of HCQ compared with CQ.” [BTW, excessive or prolonged doses can cause damage that will not occur in those treated for Covid, briefly, with standard doses.]

From Expert Opinion on Drug Safety 2011:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21417950/: "Expert opinion: HCQ has been shown by numerous studies over the past 15 years to be efficacious in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus, discoid lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. HCQ does not appear to be associated with any increased risk of congenital defects, spontaneous abortions, fetal death, prematurity or decreased numbers of live births in patients with autoimmune diseases. Therefore, in the author's opinion, HCQ is safe for the treatment of autoimmune diseases during pregnancy.”

But it is too dangerous for patients with Covid? Who is fooling who?

When tested in OUTPATIENTS (so the side effects of the drug are not confused with the clinical damage caused by Covid or other meds being used) the drug is safe, according to the second cardiotoxicity link I provided above:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20155531v2 "Conclusion: Data from three outpatient COVID-19 trials demonstrated that gastrointestinal side effects were common but mild with the use of hydroxychloroquine, while serious side effects were rare. No deaths occurred related to hydroxychloroquine. Randomized clinical trials can safely investigate whether hydroxychloroquine is efficacious for COVID-19.”

Yet today, in Queensland, a doctor who prescribes HCQ for a patient with Covid is subject to 6 months in prison or an A$13,000 fine. https://www.health.qld.gov.au/system-go ... -direction

What a precedent! If doctors don't educate themselves and speak up about what is happening, who else can?

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Doctors, this is your wheelhouse. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 4:39 PM 0 comments
Covid-19 deaths in Italy: 96% had pre-existing conditions, 99% were age 50 or older...Basically confirming the CDC stats that only 6% of deaths were from Covid alone
The CDC informed the world several days ago that 94% of Americans who died from Covid-19 had other medical conditions. When many people said, 'Aha! That means the pandemic is mainly killing those who are already ill," the mass media and fact-checkers went to work to debunk them.

USA Today quickly claimed that people were saying the deaths weren't caused by Covid-19, and it was a conspiracy theory.

But what I was hearing was simply that Covid-19 was mainly striking down people who were not otherwise healthy. While they might be dying from Covid, most were already weakened by something else.

Here is what CDC wrote:
For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.
But it turns out Bloomberg wrote about the same stats from Italy back in May, and guess what? 96% of those who died had co-morbidities, also known as pre-existing conditions. Sixty per cent of those who died had 3 or more preexisting illnesses. And the average age at death was 80:
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti ... -illnesses
"Italy Says 96% of [Corona] Virus Fatalities Suffered From Other Illnesses.
Virus killing mostly older Italians with previous conditions
Only 1.1% of fatalities were under 50, with average age of 80"

Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 2:42 PM 0 comments
Monday, August 31, 2020
How CDC and WHO Rewrote the history of the 2009 swine flu pandemic--reprinted from 2012
The article below I wrote 8 years ago, but it has relevance to today. I describe some of the tricks that were pulled when a pandemic vaccine was rushed into use in 2009, and how the agencies that rushed it covered their tracks over the next several years--Meryl

Saturday, August 4, 2012
Rewriting the history of pandemic swine flu (to justify vaccine policies?)

Remember the 2009 Swine Flu Pandemic? There were going to be a huge number of illnesses and deaths, but then it turned out the flu virus caused less severe disease than usual.
Since then, the H1N1 swine flu virus has remained in circulation, and we have continued to have fewer reported flu deaths in the US and abroad than in prior, recent years.
Children, lacking prior immunity, were said to be at terrible risk--but then it turned out that although there were 2-3 times as many pediatric flu deaths in 2009-10 as during an average season, the flu season lasted much longer than usual. CDC reported 133 child flu deaths in 2008-9, 282 in 2009-10, 122 in 2010-11 and 33 in 2011-12.
We were in dire need of vaccines, so it was said. Therefore a bizarre vaccine approval process was instituted.
This process was crafted to mislead the public. Vaccines were approved on the basis of prior testing of so-called "mock-up vaccines". The mock up vaccines were actually old bird flu vaccines tested years earlier for a potential bird flu epidemic. They contained the same adjuvants as swine flu vaccines, but the antigens were completely different. According to WHO:
... some manufacturers have conducted advance studies using a so-called “mock-up” vaccine. Mock-up vaccines contain an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations and thus mimics the novelty of a pandemic virus. Such advance studies can greatly expedite regulatory approval.
Approval of the new vaccines rested on sleight of hand: regulatory agencies made the claim that the two vaccines were substantially identical. Therefore, data from tests of old bird flu vaccines provided the proof needed to demonstrate safety and effectiveness of new swine flu vaccines. According to the Guardian:
The clinical trials on which approval was based involved more than 6,000 people for each vaccine, each of whom received a version which was basically the same as the one to be rolled out, but originally contained an avian flu (H5N1) strain – which had been expected to cause a pandemic – instead of H1N1.
And POOF! -- hundreds of millions of people received the new, untested vaccines.

Later came the bad news.

The epidemic was actually mild, and most of those affected had few if any symptoms.

The vaccines had been given late, when most of the epidemic had passed, and many vaccinated people were already immune. The vaccine probably had little impact on the pandemic.

The shot itself was dangerous. Glaxo's version caused 13 times the expected number of cases of narcolepsy in children, and different versions increased the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome.

WHO was awash with conflicts of interests: the names of its advisory groupmembers were kept secret; many, it turned out, had ties to vaccine manufacturers. A watering down of the way a pandemic was defined by WHO led to calling swine flu a pandemic early on. This activated preexisting contracts between nations and pharmaceutical manufacturers, requiring vaccines to be made and countries to purchase them: creating a captive vaccine market.

The Council of Europe got into the act, investigating WHO and the provenance of the contracts to understand how billions of healthcare dollars were spent to buy and administer unnecessary vaccines.

WHO (the World Health Organization) didn't take the assault lying down. It arranged for its own investigation, which unsurprisingly found no big mistakes.

In 2010, CDC thought the US vaccine caused nearly a doubling of GBS cases. In July, new Canadian evidence revealed a doubling or tripling of the Guillain Barre rate after swine flu vaccination to 2 cases per million doses. An even greater increase to 5 cases of GBS per million swine flu vaccine doses was identified in a Harvard Med School study in June.

Instead of acknowledging these findings and planning for better vaccine testing, the swine flu pandemic's history was rewritten.

Although Bloomberg/Businessweek mentioned the study showing a doubling of the GBS rate, it concluded flu vaccine was safe in pregnancy:
Today’s research and a Canadian study looking at the vaccine’s effect on Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder in which the body attacks its nervous system, shows the shot is safe and should be used as a precaution to prevent infection, he said.
More whitewashing of the data followed: there were no problems with fertility in women vaccinated during any trimester of their pregnancy. Here's a link to the Danish study published in JAMA.

Then came more bluster: actually, it was a really, really bad flu with huge numbers of deaths. We missed them because we didn't look carefully enough: they tended to occur in the underdeveloped countries, which is why it took 3 years for CDC to find them.

Except CDC didn't find them; instead, it estimated them. What was the authors' conclusion?
Although no estimates of symptomatic case fatality ratios were available from Africa and southeast Asia, a disproportionate number of estimated pandemic deaths might have occurred in these regions.
A different review published by CDC scientists in May 2012, honestly noted:
Human infection with H1N1 has generally resulted in low mortality, although certain subgroups... have significantly higher risk of severe disease.
Let's examine the claim of vaccine safety during pregnancy.

In the US, the major birth defect rate is about 3%. In the Danish study cited, the major birth defect rate in offspring of women vaccinated during their first trimester was 5.45%. But in the Danish control group, the major birth defect rate was 4.54%.

The authors were able to dismiss the high birth defect rate by selecting a control group with a higher than expected rate, and by using groups small enough that the 0.91% increased rate in the vaccinated cohort was not statistically significant.

Anders Hviid, the last author on the study, was involved in an earlier study that was not sufficiently powered to detect a 2.7-fold increase in GBS following swine flu vaccinations. He was then able to conclude that "The risk of occurrence of Guillain-Barré syndrome is not increased after pandemic influenza vaccine."

I imagine these are only the first volleys in CDC's attempt to rewrite the history of swine flu and its vaccine, and justify its vaccine policies despite evidence to the contrary. Keep an eye out for what's next.
Posted by Meryl Nass, M.D. at 9:30 PM 0 comments