Resurrection of Covid’s Fear Mongering

The usual suspects are clamoring for greater health restrictions as the media talks about increasing covid cases. WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Encourage the government While adopting “trial and error measures” such as masking and testing, various British “Independent SAGE” celebrities demand a return to indoor masking Free lateral flow test.

It is certainly true that these measures have been “tried and tested”. Universal masking has been tried in Hong Kong since January 2020. Full compliance outside the homeHighest Covid mortality rate in the world Recorded There in March of this year.South Korea is It has been welcomed for a long time “Overcome the pandemic” “Successful test and trace system”. Strategy abandoned In February due to a record Omicron infection.Of course, both masking and test and trace have been tried in different combinations across high-income countries, including the UK, but nevertheless, the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom Estimated in April More than 70% of Britons were infected with Covid.

This is not surprising. There was really no scientific case of universal masking. This was clear based on pre-pandemic literature. Therefore, WHO (along with prominent public health professionals such as CDC and Anthony Fauci) Initially advised to oppose mass maskingSubsequent research confirmed that “Existing data does not support the use of universal, often inappropriate face masks in the general population as a safeguard against Covid-19.”but New York Times Accepting and doing this, at least in part a piece May 31st, entitled “Masks work, but mandates don’t.” When it comes to contact tracing, the pre-2020 consensus is even tighter, WHO 2019 Report He argues that “non-pharmaceutical public health measures to mitigate the risks and effects of epidemics and pandemic influenza” should not be adopted “under any circumstances” due to their limited effectiveness. (No evidence The blockade had a permanent impact on the Covid-19 epidemic. actually, They may have made it worse.. )

At this time, proponents of these “tried and failed” restrictions hope they will achieve, given that the majority could not be prevented when combined with several doses of the Covid vaccine. It’s not really clear that you are. The number of people infected with Covid. Mark Woolhouse, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, wrote: The year when the world went crazy, Blockade and related non-pharmaceutical interventions cannot eliminate the virus or even prevent infection. They can only delay them, but still for a short while.

Still, earlier this week, Sir Kamal, the British Minister of Health, said: Limits may be returned When the NHS struggles to deal with the increase in Covid cases.Meanwhile, in Italy, Health Minister Andrea Costa Could not be excluded The reintroduction of Covid restrictions in the face of an increase in incidents is simply saying that it will not come back “for now”. You can see the resurrection of Covid’s Fear Mongering. This has done a lot to prevent rational discussions about the best way to deal with a pandemic.Target of fear at the time Is the latest Omicron subvariant BA.5 and seems to be more contagious than any previous variant. In that case, it simply means that non-pharmaceutical interventions prove to be even more wasteful in containing the spread. In other words, reintroducing restrictions is completely illogical.

There is no evidence to claim. Recently The Daily Beast paper He claimed that this new variant was “the most dangerous ever”. Latest research (Preprint) concludes as follows.[d]The severity of the disease is similar between diagnosed Covid-19 cases during the BA.4 / BA.5 and BA.1 periods, with increased immunity to SARS-CoV-2 due to previous infection and vaccination. In context, both were strongly defensive. ” , in the meantime Another 1 (Under review) “[n]The newly emerging Omicron strain BA.4 / BA.5 continues to show reduced clinical severity compared to previous mutants, as observed with Omicron BA.1. Dr. David Daudi, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said: work insider: “Our body is adapting just as the virus is adapting,” he continued. “Not all variants are getting worse. If anything, our bodies are smarter and we have fewer and less serious infections.”

Still, many people Previous infections provide virtually no immunity to BA.5. — Therefore, we should all be ready for the next vaccination. In fact, the data does not show that. Population-level data clearly show that previous infections immunize. In fact, in the latest research on this subject, World-leading publications New England Journal of MedicineShowing that previous Covid infections provided better protection against symptomatic omicrons (BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants). More than 1 year after infection Three or more doses of vaccine more than one month after the last dose.

But Covid’s Horror Wizard has another string on their bow.Covid’s death toll Stay flatThere is increasing attention to “long covid” (LC) as a debilitating condition that requires new restrictions to prevent more people from suffering from it, and yet another mass vaccination. Should our leaders listen?

The first question to answer is how serious the LC is. Like almost everything related to Covid, opinions are polarized — and, as is often the case, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.in the meantime Some studies It suggests that it also occurs in 30% of people infected with the virus. others The total number was found to be 7%.One of the most detailed studies to date, in May 2022 Annual report of internal medicine, Could not find a biological explanation for LC symptoms.Of course, this doesn’t mean that LC is all in people’s minds, like the researchers who did the research. Was enthusiastic about stress.. (Sure, we know people near us who are suffering from it, so we can testify to the fact that it’s a serious problem.) But the study LC has us. It suggests that it may be a much more complicated phenomenon than you can imagine.

In fact, LC in children and adolescents is difficult to determine if it is caused by the most common symptoms usually associated with LC (sadness, tension, anger, depression, anxiety, malaise, sleep disorders). Existence has been the subject of much debate. To Covid itself or other (joint) factors. One of the earliest cohort studies on LCPublished in August 2021, it was concluded that:

“The symptoms associated with Long Covid may actually be a mixture of factors related to pandemics and blockades, rather than the viral infection itself, such as social isolation, anxiety, depression, and educational concerns. Factors may be the root cause of these symptoms in children and adolescents, with or without SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Given that it is devastating and well documented Impact of Blockage and School Closure on Children’s Mental HealthThis doesn’t seem unreasonable.

More recent research According to the Italian Pediatric Society, “Physical symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 tend to regress spontaneously or during treatment within a few months, even if they persist 4 weeks after infection. Mental problems can last longer. ” given that “[s]Mental health problems have several factors that indicate that children are dependent on the stressful state they experience during a pandemic, “the researchers conclude. Directly to the infection. “

One thing is clear: we don’t know much about LC yet. So, as a patient, you need to step up your status studies. Have been requested for a long time. However, it is acceptable to use the very realistic distress of those patients as a weapon to justify a new non-pharmaceutical intervention that failed in all possible accounts, or a new round of compulsory high-dose vaccination. There will be no.

The wisdom received from political science institutions over the past year or so has been that universal vaccination leads to herd immunity and thus to the end of infection (and thus the end of LC). But given what the European Union has so far, Ordered 4.2 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine, Most of them are from Pfizer and are given almost 10 doses to all men, women and children of all ages in the EU, but even at this institution, universal vaccination is herd immunity. Obviously, I didn’t expect to be connected (or at least not quickly).But now even political authorities (and others) Bill Gates etc.) Admit that the vaccine does not eliminate the infection and does not provide long-term protection. Large-scale survey of more than 13 million people in May 2022 Was announced in Nature medicine We also found that “long Covid risk is slightly reduced after vaccination.” The number of cases is increasing, and there is pressure to “do something”. But if neither vaccines nor non-pharmaceutical interventions can prevent Covid infections and even some non-hospitalized people develop LC symptoms, what is the solution?

Here it is worth going back to the first few months of the pandemic. There was no certainty No Covid vaccine can be found. In those early months, treatment was considered by many to be as hopeful as a vaccine. You may remember the turmoil around hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that was quickly touted as a “cure for Trump,” but one of France’s most cited scientists, Didier Raoult ( And one of 400) Most cited scientist in the world), Also claim It had a great effect on the treatment of Covid symptoms in the early stages of the pandemic. You may also remember the controversy over ivermectin.

These treatments were controversial, but some scientists initially believed (and still believes) that early-stage Covid had effective treatments. Indeed, is this a path worth exploring? While huge amounts of money have been spent on the Covid vaccine, much less has been invested in the development of early-stage treatments. If treatments are approved by regulatory agencies such as remdesivir, they tend to be late-stage courses.

Of course, vaccines are the key to preventing serious illness and death in people at high risk for Covid, but in reality, as post-study studies show, this is always a relatively small part of the population. did. Now that it has become clear that vaccines do not prevent infection, it is time to shift the focus to the essential types of initial treatments to prevent the development of potential LCs. Insisting on the same restrictions and vaccine-centric strategies as in the last few years and expecting different results is simply insane, as Einstein may have said.