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There is no virus but there is a vaccine
Oct 10, 2018 Sex crime and drugs: The dark side of North Dakota’s oil boomAn army of itinerant labor, almost all of it male, has flooded the region, attracted by the promise of good wages and lots of work. So-called "man-camps" -- prefab compounds thrown up overnight to feed and house these male workers -- dot the landscape.
"They're all over the place," complains Sanford.
Mayor Koeser says Williston has 5,000 to 6,000 guys living in man-camps a few miles outside of town.
"When they come in to go to the bar, they don't always behave themselves," he says.
I do not understand how people can be so ignorant claiming there is no virus while worldwide hospitals are full with patients and thousands of people die.
Coronavirus update: U.S. coronavirus deaths surpass 250,000, and hospitalizations reach another record
Last Updated: Nov. 19, 2020 at 1:26 p.m. ET
U.S. coronavirus deaths topped the grim quarter-million mark, as the latest wave of infections continues to surge across the nation.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, 251,029 Americans have died from COVID-19 so far, as confirmed cases climbed to 11.57 million.
The totals come after at least 1,923 people died from the coronavirus illness COVID-19 on Wednesday, according to New York
Times data, and 172,391 new cases were recorded. That lifted the daily average of new cases in the past week to 162,816, up 77% from the average two weeks ago.
Hospitalizations increased to 79,410 on Wednesday, marking a record for the ninth-straight day.....
Old age most likely. The situation is that we have a spike in the number of old people who in the normal course of events would be dead already. They have to die of something and basically anything can push them over the edge.
Yes it was event 201 that was the drill for the pandemic before the pandemic, hence suggesting foreknowledge.
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Is COVID-19 like the flu?
Perhaps one of the most frequently posed questions since the pandemic’s onset is how the new virus may compare to seasonal influenza.
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Oh Myoung-don, who leads the National Medical Center’s committee for clinical management of emerging infectious diseases, said during a press conference Tuesday that complications from “COVID-19 might not be more severe than the flu.”
“Certain cardiovascular and neurological complications have been associated with COVID-19. But the same could be said for the flu,” he said. “In fact, more recent data shows complications or long-term effects of COVID-19 aren’t as serious as those of the flu.”
In making his assessment, Oh cited findings from a Nov. 13 study published in the journal Science Advances.
The study said COVID-19 patients had less inflammation than influenza patients. Out of the 168 patients with COVID-19 the study looked at, only seven exhibited a potentially fatal immune response known as cytokine storm.
Oh clarified in a later exchange with The Korea Herald that his statement is “not intended to be interpreted as though COVID-19 is not more dangerous than the flu.”
COVID-19 is not ‘just the flu’
During a press conference Tuesday, infectious disease specialist Dr. Oh Myoung-don (right) suggested complications from COVID-19 "may not necessarily be more severe than those from the flu."
Many health experts say COVID-19 and the flu aren’t equivalent.
Respiratory disease specialist Dr. Chun Eun-mi of western Seoul’s Ewha Womans University Medical Center said the coronavirus is less virulent than initially thought, but it is still much deadlier than influenza.
“In Korea, the fatality rate for COVID-19 stands at around 1.67 percent. The rate for flu is estimated to be less than 0.1 percent,” she said.
Besides, there are effective antivirals against flu and rapid diagnostic tools to detect and treat the infection early that can reduce the risks of severe outcomes. “Whereas with COVID-19, the treatments are still to come,” she said.
“Without a treatment available, the chances of coming down with severe disease are higher if a person has COVID-19.”
Another respiratory disease specialist, Dr. Han Chang-hoon of National Health Insurance Service Hospital in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, said young and healthy people should be reminded that “they, too, are capable of getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19.”
“Young people are told to follow precautions to protect those who are more vulnerable. Which is true, but it’s also to protect themselves,” he said. “There haven’t been many cases of severe COVID-19 among young people in Korea so far. But if the virus continues to surge, we might start seeing such cases.”
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Kim Woo-joo of Korea University Medical Center in Guro, southern Seoul, said COVID-19 “is not ‘just the flu.’”
“Flu comparisons are often made to downplay the perils of COVID-19, and I think such messaging can have potentially dangerous consequences,” he said.
COVID-19 has a longer incubation period, higher infectivity and greater lethality than the flu in most age groups with the exception of children, he said. “But these are only part of the characteristics that sets the coronavirus apart from the influenza.”
One of the other reasons that COVID-19 calls for more wariness is the aberrant ways that it manifests.
Unlike normal pneumonia, the pneumonia caused by COVID-19 is sometimes difficult to detect as patients do not experience noticeable breathing difficulties. “This condition is known as ‘silent hypoxia,’ which is when patients who do not appear to be short of breath are actually in worse health,” he said.
“Long COVID,” which refers to the long-term effects among some former patients, is another example of an unexpected phenomenon linked to the disease.
“We still don’t know enough about COVID-19 to speak definitively about it,” he said.
COVID-19 vs. flu
Dr. Jerome H. Kim of the International Vaccine Institute gives a lecture at the Moroccan ambassador`s residence in Seoul on Tuesday evening.
Dr. Jerome H. Kim, the director general of the International Vaccine Institute, said during a lecture at the Moroccan ambassador’s residence in Seoul on Tuesday evening that while symptoms of COVID-19 and flu overlap, there were key disparities.
“Common flu symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose, fatigue, muscle and body aches. All of those symptoms are present in COVID-19. One thing that may distinguish COVID-19 is this loss of a sense of taste or smell,” he said.
For both COVID-19 and flu, there are people who never develop symptoms. This is known as asymptomatic infection.
“About 80 percent of people with COVID-19 are mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic. Fifteen percent of people are hospitalized. Five percent are put on ventilators, so machines can help them breathe. One to 2 percent die,” he said.
If people have COVID-19, it can take longer for them to develop symptoms than if they had the flu.
“The incubation period for COVID-19 is usually four to five days. Influenza’s incubation period is slightly shorter,” he said.
COVID-19 is also much more contagious than the flu, but they spread in similar ways.
“A very striking difference is in the transmissibility. Basically, COVID-19 spreads from person to person more efficiently than the standard flu,” he said. “If you have influenza, you might transmit that infection from 1.4 to 1.6 people. With COVID-19, you could transmit that to two to six people.”
Another thing that characterizes COVID-19 is what we call superspreader events, he added. “You hear stories of a single infected person leaving almost over 90 percent of the people in the same room infected.”
COVID-19 transmission takes place through exposure to respiratory droplets, much like the flu.
“So typically, you’re safe (from COVID-19) if you’re more than a meter away. But there is some aerosolization, which is actually more dangerous because the viral particles can actually drift in the air and travel meters before settling,” he said. “Respiratory droplets are also how influenza transmits, although there’s dispute now over whether it can be transmitted by aerosols.”
Not so fast, Japan experts say, as COVID-19 vaccines raise hopes
Could the world soon kiss the coronavirus goodbye and return to the good old days before the pandemic?
The news that experimental COVID-19 vaccines produced by U.S. drugmakers Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. were about 95% effective in late-stage trials helped push up global stock markets and offered a ray of hope around the globe.
But not so fast, say some medical experts in Japan.
Masayuki Miyasaka, professor emeritus of immunology at Osaka University, said in a Lower House committee meeting last week that the vaccines being developed by Pfizer and Moderna look to be highly effective. The two pharmaceutical companies say their interim analysis of the late-stage trials reported no serious safety concerns.
But Miyasaka, nevertheless, voiced worries about their safety over the long term.
“Vaccines usually take 10 years or more to develop, but the world is racing to develop COVID-19 vaccines in just a year,” he said.
Pfizer, for example, says it conducted the late-stage trials in the U.S. and five other countries. The European Union and the U.S. have a “mutual recognition agreement,” which allows the drugs to be used within each other’s borders to avoid the duplication of clinical trials.
But Japan, which is one of the very few countries that require additional clinical trials within the country to ensure safety, could have difficulty conducting a successful late-stage trial. The recent rate of infections in Tokyo was estimated at only several out of 1,000 people, which might be too low to make a valid assessment in a late-stage trial in Japan to replicate the high efficacy of the vaccines confirmed overseas, Miyasaka said.
That would mean the country may need to skip the late-stage trials, which Japan has done in the past. But skipping the trials — or relying only on the results of overseas trials — could have severe consequences, experts say.
Japan approved the Arava rheumatoid arthritis drug in 2003 without conducting a late-stage trial in the country. The drug was administered to around 5,000 patients but 25 of them died, Miyasaka said. It was later found that the dosage should have been lower in Japan than it was overseas, he said.
“My conclusions are that the efficacy (of those drugs) should be high, but safety has not been guaranteed, and we have to treat them with extreme caution,” he said.
Because of the possible side effects, Miyasaka said people should have the choice of whether they would get a shot.
“Only those who wish to have vaccinations should do so. It’s highly questionable to prioritize medical workers (for vaccinations). Individual wishes should be respected.”
His comments are in sharp contrast to those of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, who said the vaccines under development by Moderna and Pfizer are “extraordinarily impressive” and brushed aside concerns about the speed of development.
“The process of the speed did not compromise at all safety, nor did it compromise scientific integrity,” Fauci said during a briefing at the White House last Thursday. “It was a reflection of the extraordinary scientific advances in these types of vaccines, which allowed us to do things in months that actually took years before. So I really want to settle that concern that people have about that.”
Last Thursday, the Lower House approved a bill to provide vaccinations to all residents for free and allow the government to shoulder any liability damages for the pharmaceutical companies.
The health ministry plans to prioritize vaccinations for the elderly, followed by those with chronic diseases, when the vaccines become available.
Older people are at least a dozen times more likely to develop severe complications compared with healthy adults, while those suffering from heart or chronic lung illness, cerebrovascular disease or renal dysfunction face risks a few times higher, according to the ministry.
Although the bill stipulates that efforts should be made to vaccinate residents, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato has said that it’s ultimately up to the individuals whether to get the shot considering there are potential side effects.
Dr. Tetsuo Nakayama, a project professor at Kitasato Institute for Life Sciences and director of the Japanese Society of Clinical Virology, says although the vaccines under development by Pfizer and Moderna successfully created antibodies in trials, there are still doubts about whether those antibodies remain a year or two after vaccination.
There are also underlying concerns about the vaccines’ safety over the long term. Judging from past precedents, their safety and effectiveness are not something that can be determined until at least a year after a massive number of vaccinations have been administered, experts say.
In a worst-case scenario, antibodies could worsen the disease by essentially helping the infection of cells — a phenomenon called antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) — rather than fighting the virus pathogens.
For example, a dengue fever vaccine made by Sanofi, based on a yellow fever vaccine embedded with a part of the dengue virus genome, at first appeared to be effective. But it caused the deaths of children who had been given the vaccination due to the ADE phenomenon.
“Concerns over ADE still remain. I am an elderly person myself, but if I were asked, I would say I don’t want to get a shot,” Nakayama said. “Not all of the 120 million people (in Japan) should get the vaccinations. Children, for example, would not need it because there’s scarcely any risk of severe cases.”
Pfizer said that its COVID-19 vaccine under development could obtain emergency U.S. and European authorization next month, saying that its final trial confirmed no serious side effects.
So far, the Japanese government has signed an agreement to receive 120 million doses, enough to inoculate 60 million people, from Pfizer by the end of June. It also would receive 50 million doses, which could cover 25 million people, of Moderna’s vaccine from Takeda Pharmaceuticals Co. by the end of September.
Some medical professionals say that society needs to take a hard look at the fact that the majority of people getting infected with the coronavirus only experience minor symptoms, with there being a relatively low chance of developing a severe condition or dying.
“The U.S. and Europe put priority on the vaccine’s effectiveness first, followed by the side effects, in a bid to reduce the number of infections amid the pandemic, but the Japanese have a tendency to worry about both effectiveness and safety,” Nakayama added.
More than 500,000 people have died in the U.S. and Europe, but Japan’s total death toll has been much smaller, at around 2,000.
“The development of drugs should come first, to make people feel at ease in the event they get infected,” he said.
A treatment for the disease would be a game-changer. Fujifilm Holdings Corp. last month filed an application with the health ministry to have its anti-influenza drug Avigan approved for treating COVID-19.
“We still don’t have established therapeutics yet to cure COVID-19, but if medicine that could be used for mild symptoms like Avigan were approved, it could change the situation,” Nakayama said.
A PDF of Vernon Coleman's banned book called, 'Covid-19: The Greatest Hoax in History' http://www.vernoncoleman.com/greatesthoax.pdf
