By Michael
Shields , Ludwig Burger
ZURICH
(Reuters) - Austrian authorities have suspended inoculations with a batch of AstraZeneca’s
COVID-19 vaccine as a precaution while investigating the death of one person
and the illness of another after the shots, a health agency said on Sunday.
“The Federal Office for Safety in
Health Care (BASG) has received two reports in a temporal connection with a
vaccination from the same batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the district
clinic of Zwettl” in Lower Austria province, it said.
One 49-year-old woman died as a
result of severe coagulation disorders, while a 35-year-old woman developed a
pulmonary embolism and is recovering, it said. A pulmonary embolism is an acute
lung disease caused by a dislodged blood clot.
“Currently there is no evidence of a
causal relationship with the vaccination,” BASG said.
Austrian newspaper Niederoesterreichische
Nachrichten as well as broadcaster ORF and the APA news agency reported that
the women were both nurses who worked at the Zwettl clinic.
BASG said blood clotting was not
among the known side effects of the vaccine. It was pursuing its investigation
vigorously to completely rule out any possible link.
“As a precautionary measure, the
remaining stocks of the affected vaccine batch are no longer being issued or
vaccinated,” it added.
An AstraZeneca spokesman said:
“There have been no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the
vaccine,” adding that all batches are subject to strict and rigorous quality
controls.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-austria-nurse/austria-suspends-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-batch-after-death-idUSKBN2AZ0AO
U.S. Government Scientists
Skeptical of One-Shot Regimen for Pfizer, Moderna Covid Vaccines Some members of Congress have
urged to allow for just one dose to speed up vaccinations February 6, 2021
WASHINGTON—U.S. government scientists are pushing back against
calls for one-dose regimens for two Covid-19 vaccines designed to be administered with two
shots, saying there isn’t enough evidence that a single dose provides long-term
protection.
“It is essential that these vaccines be used as authorized
by FDA in order to prevent Covid-19 and related hospitalizations and death,”
Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s center that
oversees vaccines, told The Wall Street Journal.
The FDA late last year approved a two-dose regimen for
vaccines from Moderna Inc. and from a partnership of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech
SE. More recently it approved use of a one-dose regimen for a vaccine from
Johnson & Johnson .
Some scientists and lawmakers have called for shifting to a one-dose regimen for all the vaccines ,
citing preliminary studies showing one shot can be effective. They contend
shifting to one shot will allow the U.S. to accelerate the pace of
vaccinations.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-scientists-skeptical-of-one-shot-regimen-for-pfizer-moderna-covid-vaccines-11615064919?mod=latest_headlines
All of the Covid-19 Vaccines Are
Equally Worthy of Your Arm Headlines about the Johnson & Johnson
trial results cite an efficacy rate lower than Pfizer’s and Moderna’s. But one
figure doesn’t tell the whole story.
03.05.2021 01:24 PM
Last week, the FDA authorized the one-shot Johnson & Johnson adenovirus-DNA
vaccine in the United States for Covid-19, adding this option to the two mRNA
vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) already authorized in December. Its
authorization is a huge public health win for our country. But in the days
since, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has somehow received a bad rap
compared to its competitors.
Unlike the mRNA vaccines that first came to market, the
Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a nonreplicating human adenovirus-DNA vaccine , which means it
works using tried technology that is more familiar to the public and has few
side effects. This is not to say, however, that this vaccine is low-tech or in
some way inferior. Cursory news headlines about the trial outcomes often cite
an overall efficacy of 66 percent, which, compared to Pfizer and Moderna’s
efficacy rates, may seem suboptimal. But a closer look at the trials and their
results reveals important context for that number—and it shows that Johnson
& Johnson's one-dose vaccine offers protection equal to that of the mRNA
vaccines under certain circumstances. It was also the only vaccine of the three
to show high protection against severe disease from the circulating variants
during its trials, since testing was conducted after many were already
prevalent. So while it might not have had the same efficacy as the mRNA
vaccines against mild disease in this initial evaluation, this newest vaccine
is no less worthy of your arm.
More
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-vaccines-equally-worthy-of-your-arm/?bxid=5cc9e09a3f92a477a0e84d6d&bxid=5cc9e09a3f92a477a0e84d6d&cndid=52110326&cndid=52110326&esrc=Wired_etl_load&esrc=Wired_etl_load&hasha=51795d9ef38d316d0a8b791c47d95a9d&hasha=51795d9ef38d316d0a8b791c47d95a9d&hashb=327a6dd0733c699cd325f763961d024592a4e823&hashb=327a6dd0733c699cd325f763961d024592a4e823&hashc=427dabf021c0657f2ce4fe4260f86229ce001b054a4a374ed7059797c19bdfd2&hashc=427dabf021c0657f2ce4fe4260f86229ce001b054a4a374ed7059797c19bdfd2&mbid=mbid%3DCRMWIR012019%0A%0A&mbid=mbid%3DCRMWIR012019%0A%0A&source=EDT_WIR_NEWSLETTER_0_DAILY_ZZ_Intro_Rate_PanelA&source=EDT_WIR_NEWSLETTER_0_DAILY_ZZ_Intro_Rate_PanelA&utm_brand=wired&utm_brand=wired&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_content=A&utm_content=A&utm_mailing=WIR_Daily_030621_CMTest&utm_mailing=WIR_Daily_030621_CMTest&utm_medium=email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl&utm_source=nl&utm_term=list1_p4&utm_term=list1_p4
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on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported.
Today something a
little different. The whole article is well worth the read.
A Plague on Both Our Houses Growing
indications that viral enhancement research gone awry is still in play as a
possible cause of the pandemic February 18, 2021
The World Health Organization officials investigating the
origins of the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, otherwise known as
COVID-19, were finally let into China on Jan.
14 , and spent two weeks “investigating.” The most contentious question was,
did the virus that supposedly first infected people in a Wuhan wet market
originate in one of the two virology labs close to the markets, at least one of
which specialized in such viruses? The delegation discounted that, saying it
was “extremely unlikely”—so unlikely that the WHO would end additional study of
the matter. But the delegation revealed no evidence, or explanation, as to why
they were so certain the case must be closed.
The idea of a lab leak wasn’t wild speculation, it was
proposed in February 2020 by two Chinese researchers when they saw that one of
the Chinese virus labs was eight miles from the wet market, and another, the
Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a mere 300 yards away.
Mysteriously, their article “disappeared” from the internet (though it was
retrieved using the Wayback Machine.) The other leading hypothesis was that the
virus (the nearest relatives of which were known to be in bat caves about 1,000
miles away from Wuhan) jumped from an animal to human. To these two
possibilities, the WHO added two more favored by the Chinese government: That
it was introduced into China by people from outside the country, or that it
arrived in frozen food from elsewhere, but provided little evidence for these.
Thus, the investigation went well for the Chinese
government, and they made sure it did: It was delayed for a year, during which
time viral evidence and witnesses disappeared. It only lasted two weeks (the
committee was in quarantine two weeks), only several hours were spent in the
lab in question, asking questions, not looking at samples or doing forensics,
and the itinerary was controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, as, for that
matter, was the committee composition, which included 17 Chinese members.
“International members” included the very high profile researcher Peter Daszak , who
himself closely collaborated with, and passed funding to, the Wuhan Institute
of Virology (WIV), and who was thus basically investigating and absolving
himself. He praised those there for allowing a “Frank, open discussion.”
The Chinese participants were of course aware of what
happened to physicians and researchers who spoke their minds on the issue.
Chinese physicians who had sounded the alarm during the original outbreak were
threatened with prison for sharing information with medical colleagues and the
world. They were not interviewed. Dr. Ai Fen, head of the Emergency Department
at Wuhan Central Hospital, saw many of the first cases and would have known
where her patients might have been prior to getting sick. She dared to publish
an article on the topic in China’s People . But the article
disappeared, within hours, and then she disappeared .
Censoring speech, and erasing brave people often go hand in hand.
On news of the outbreak, public health officials in other
countries wanted access to the original virus samples to develop therapeutics.
But key samples from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were also “disappeared”
over a year ago. Chinese officials even admitted
to destroying some of them—as a precaution to protect the public, of
course—lest the coronavirus escape from the lab. (Was there ever a more
superfluous precaution taken, considering the virus was already out and about
in China and had infected tens of thousands?) The WHO committee made no comment
on these forensic mysteries.
All this raises two questions: Why would a government
eliminate evidence and witnesses, stall for a year, curate every detail, and
stack the WHO investigating delegation, if a fair investigation would have
shown the virus had an innocent, “natural” origin, had been introduced into
China by a foreigner, or had arrived in a package of frozen food from another
country? And why would the WHO go along?
There is, arguably, another way to
approach this matter, which involves sorting through some of the most likely
reasons the samples were destroyed and witnesses to the origins were silenced;
an approach which may also help explain the WHO’s aiding and abetting such an
obvious sham. It is to take into account that, among other things, the WIV lab
was performing a form of research called “gain-of-function.”
If you can’t quite figure out what
the term means, that is intended, because, GoF is a euphemism for a practice
that might seem rather Dr. Strangelovian, and the furthest thing from
forethought or prudence, or preventative medicine. It involves deliberately
making viruses much more dangerous, to the point that they will cause a
pandemic. “Gain-of-function” is the perfect term if you need a grant from a
scientifically illiterate public composed of nervous types who, for some
reason, don’t like or trust the idea of experts making invincible killer germs.
“Viral-deadliness enhancement” would be a turnoff, but gain-of-function sounds
like the title of a promising self-help fad. To call it a “euphemism” is a
euphemism, because it is really doublespeak, like those military obfuscations
such as “pacification,” which mean almost the opposite of what they appear to.
---- In 2017, the moratorium on GoF research was
reviewed in secret, and then quietly lifted by the NIH, in part because Drs.
Fauci and Frances Collins, head of the NIH, did not want the funding to end,
and thought it a risk worth taking. As reported in New York magazine,
Dr. Fauci told a reporter, “Nature is the worst bioterrorist.”
It should be no surprise that the
first reports that the SARS-CoV-2 virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of
Virology were minimized by many in the American research establishment (which,
in part, funded such research in China), and of course by the Chinese
government. It became easy to lead the public to believe that concerns that the
virus might have come from the lab was just a “conspiracy theory” encouraged by
President Trump. But with Trump out of office, some scientists are suddenly
stating publicly that the idea is a serious possibility.
More, much more.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/plague-on-both-our-houses
“Inflation
is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can
be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in
output.”
Milton Friedman.
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