Just curious, anyone have a plan, or preps for global pandemic?

[mccoy]

AP, I would have perhaps preferred more COVID deaths than the death of democracy and scientific reasoning that we have witnessed. We were thrown back into inquisition times. That's not something that my logical thinking can tolerate happily.

After the abuses of the Italian government (similar to the abuses of states like California and Canada) according to the polls the only opposition party in Italy, Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), that opposed the mandatory vaccinations, is now the strongest with 20% and over of consensus. And that's what I'm going to vote for, I probably would not have this intention otherwise.

[BrianA]

I can tell you as a business owner the single biggest expense is people. Why suddenly are all businesses having to pay more for people in the past year (at least here in the US)? Because there's a lot less of them in the workforce than pre-pandemic. So if you want something to blame inflation on, here you go - just remember, every infection of this pandemic is leaving a lingering economic cost on average. Want lower inflation? Keep the employees safe from illness.

 

Global data reveal half may have long COVID 4 months on

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/04/global-data-reveal-half-may-have-long-covid-4-months

[Saul]

A new Pfizer phase 3 study, including a variation of the Pfizer covid vaccine that is modified to (hopefully) be more effective in protecting against the Omicron variants, targeting the highly modified Omicron spike structure.   The study is only open to adults 55 or older, who have been vaccinated and boosted with the Pfizer vaccine. There will be only a few thousand people admitted to the study.

Participants are randomly divided into 6 groups of equal size.  Each participant receives a single shot.

Group 1:  Get a standard dose of the standard Pfizer vaccine (30mg)

Group 2:  Get a double dose of the same (60mg)

Group 3:  Get a dose of the Phase 3 Pfizer Covid-OMI (30mg)

Group 4:  Get a double dose of the above (60mg).

Group 5:  Get a half dose (15mcg) of standard Pfizer and a half dose (15mcg) of Phase 3 Pfizer Covid-OMI (30mg total)

Group 6: Get a double dose of the Group 5 jab (60mg).

The (several purposes) of the study:

Is a fourth jab useful for older adults?

Is a fourth double jab useful for older adults?

Is the Phase 3 Pfizer Covid-OMI effective against Omicron?

Is a double dose of Covid-OMI better?

I had my jab last week; my wife (age 65) gets hers next Monday.

Note:  As usual, I had no reaction to the vaccine.  But, the day after, I felt pain in my right arm (which got the jab); while teaching my classes, the arm hurt while writing on the blackboard; never happened before with a Pfizer shot.  So, I suspect that I either had a double dose, or at least some Pfizer-OMI.  (But maybe not.)

  --  Saul

 

 

[Saul]

2 hours ago, BrianA said:

I can tell you as a business owner the single biggest expense is people. Why suddenly are all businesses having to pay more for people in the past year (at least here in the US)? Because there's a lot less of them in the workforce than pre-pandemic. So if you want something to blame inflation on, here you go - just remember, every infection of this pandemic is leaving a lingering economic cost on average. Want lower inflation? Keep the employees safe from illness.

 

Global data reveal half may have long COVID 4 months on

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/04/global-data-reveal-half-may-have-long-covid-4-months

The weakest aspect of this study:  It doesn't divide the group into those vaccinated and those not.

My guess:  all subjects in this study were unvaccinated.

  --  Saul

 

[Ron Put]

2 hours ago, BrianA said:

I can tell you as a business owner the single biggest expense is people. Why suddenly are all businesses having to pay more for people in the past year (at least here in the US)? Because there's a lot less of them in the workforce than pre-pandemic. So if you want something to blame inflation on, here you go - just remember, every infection of this pandemic is leaving a lingering economic cost on average. Want lower inflation? Keep the employees safe from illness....

This is an absurd assumption unless your employees are all seniors. Those under 40 were generally less affected by COVID than by a bout of bad flu.

The inflation and the reason why there is a shortage of younger employees is because of the lockdowns and crashed economy. The lockdowns were the excuse for canceled student loans, free rent, free business subsidies, and the other billions printed and doled out first by Trump and the House Democrats, and mostly blue states like California, NY, and NJ. Once Biden came in, it became a deluge, because the Left's economists really, really believed that rates will never again go up in the new woke economy. Between all the subsidies, it was more profitable for many to stay home and watch TV than to go to work. That's why one couldn't get an Uber...

As to long COVID, many other infections cause long-lasting effects. Even a mild bout of the flu causes lung scarring in 40% of young subjects for as long as 60 days after they were infected. But I guess COVID makes better headlines, and together with Putin makes for a better PR story for the Democrats about why we have such high inflation. Based on your post, it seems to work.

[AlanPater]

On 4/18/2022 at 12:34 PM, Ron Put said:

AP, you appear to be under the impression that all who question the numbers and the policies do it because of ideology and this is why they "put so much effort."

Yes.

[BrianA]

22 hours ago, Ron Put said:

This is an absurd assumption unless your employees are all seniors. Those under 40 were generally less affected by COVID than by a bout of bad flu.

Ok you can tell that to one of my employees who is in his 30s and now on permanent disability after long-covid-triggered heart damage that accrued over several months after the initial infection, eventually requiring surgery. Yes he had multiple risk factors including making a really dumb decision to not be vaccinated despite my business offering everyone a bonus payment to do so.

 

You can also go look up the US labor participation rate statistics, and see that the overall percentage of the US population that is in the work force has still not recovered to where it was pre-pandemic. All those people still remaining out of work have their reasons, but in many cases it is often covid-related.

[BrianA]

I don't want to double-post, but this is relevant to this thread too. For a forum of people interested in anti-aging, some people here seem to want to keep downplaying getting infected by viruses as a pro-aging trigger. Here is more evidence that covid is pro-aging:

 

 

[corybroo]

Sometimes the numbers are obviously manipulated.  Here's a comparison of variability in deaths per million for the US and Russia.

[corybroo]

Only 29% of hospitalised COVID-19 patients fully well one year on: Study

The [UK] study involving more than 2,300 people also found that women were 33 per cent less likely to fully recover than men.

The study looked at the health of people who were discharged from 39 British hospitals with COVID-19 between March 2020 and April 2021, then assessed the recovery of 807 of them five months and one year later.

Just 26 per cent reported a full recovery after five months, and that number rose only slightly to 28.9 per cent after a year, according to the study published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal.

The most common long COVID symptoms were fatigue, muscle pain, poor sleep, slowing down physically and breathlessness.

[BrianA]

"In purely capitalistic terms, this affects the health of the economy along with the general populace. A Brookings Institute study released in January estimated that the labor market may be missing up to 1.6 million workers due to long Covid, with long-Covid patients either out of work or reducing their work hours because of their condition."

 

Long Covid Is America’s Forgotten Pandemic Problem

https://newrepublic.com/article/166174/long-covid-legislation-kaine-pressley

 

Is ‘long Covid’ worsening the labor shortage?

https://www.brookings.edu/research/is-long-covid-worsening-the-labor-shortage/

[Gordo]

When fear hits hysteria levels, very strange things happen, and the more controlling a government is, the worse the outcome:

 

[Ron Put]

On 4/20/2022 at 1:54 PM, BrianA said:

Ok you can tell that to one of my employees who is in his 30s and now on permanent disability after long-covid-triggered heart damage that accrued over several months after the initial infection, eventually requiring surgery.

Again, for those under 40 Covid was less dangerous than bad flu. Your anecdote doesn't change that fact. Neither does willful ignorance of the similarities between other common infections and this coronavirus, including longer-term effects.

The lockdowns and the fear were far more harmful to that group, and to the whole society, and the consequences were predictable. But open debate was snuffed out, opposing views and inconvenient data banned, and people personally attacked, fired, or had their careers destroyed. The impact of deferred treatment, increased drug use, depression and obesity, and often permanent job losses is yet to be fully felt.

The trillions of borrowed money doled out by the state over the last two years is the main reason for the rising inflation and for the mass exodus of low-skilled workers from the job market. Similarly to above, neither ignorance nor engaging in magical thinking change the way basic economics works.

 

[corybroo]

18 hours ago, Ron Put said:

Again, for those under 40 Covid was less dangerous than bad flu. 

Thanks for the link Ron, I see the statement there

CDC data also show that Americans, regardless of age group, are far more likely to die of something other than COVID-19. Even among those in the most heavily impacted age group (85 and older), only 13.3 percent of all deaths since February 2020 were due to COVID-19.

However, that compares covid with *all* deaths.  I looked for a head to head comparison of covid and flu and found this site:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu

which has this section [bolding added for emphasis] which recognizes that the statistics are fluid, but currently find Covid to be far more serious than the flu.

Coronavirus vs. Flu Deaths­

COVID-19: Current COVID-19 deaths*

Flu: The World Health Organization estimates that 290,000 to 650,000 people die of flu-related causes every year worldwide.

The COVID-19 situation continues to change, sometimes rapidly. Doctors and scientists are working to estimate the mortality rate of COVID-19. At present, it is thought to be substantially higher (possibly 10 times or more) than that of most strains of the flu.

*This information comes from the Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases map developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

BTW, the Current COVID-19 deaths linked above shows that in less than three years there have 6,230,212 covid deaths.  That's over 2M a year vs the 290,000 to 650,000  flu deaths every year.  

 

[Todd Allen]

21 hours ago, corybroo said:

BTW, the Current COVID-19 deaths linked above shows that in less than three years there have 6,230,212 covid deaths.  That's over 2M a year vs the 290,000 to 650,000  flu deaths every year. 

We have discussed several times now that "covid deaths" is an uninteresting essentially meaningless number.  It was derived by counting people who died within a significant period of time typically measured in weeks of a positive PCR test.  The PCR test does not in any way indicate one has, had or will get the syndrome of Covid-19.  It never indicated infectiousness or even any degree of symptoms.  This likely explains the tight correlation between "covid deaths" and death in general across age and risk groups.  We don't know how many died FROM covid.  That number could be much smaller.  If institutional standard of care guidelines for the mistreatment of Covid-19 had not been issued the number of deaths might have been negligible as they were throughout much of Africa and many 3rd world countries.

[AlanPater]

One-Year Trajectory of Cognitive Changes in Older Survivors of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.
Liu YH, Chen Y, Wang QH, Wang LR, Jiang L, Yang Y, Chen X, Li Y, Cen Y, Xu C, Zhu J, Li W, Wang YR, Zhang LL, Liu J, Xu ZQ, Wang YJ.
JAMA Neurol. 2022 Mar 8:e220461. doi: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.0461. Online ahead of print.
PMID: 35258587
Abstract
Importance: Determining the long-term impact of COVID-19 on cognition is important to inform immediate steps in COVID-19 research and health policy.
Objective: To investigate the 1-year trajectory of cognitive changes in older COVID-19 survivors.
Design, setting, and participants: This cohort study recruited 3233 COVID-19 survivors 60 years and older who were discharged from 3 COVID-19-designated hospitals in Wuhan, China, from February 10 to April 10, 2020. Their uninfected spouses (N = 466) were recruited as a control population. Participants with preinfection cognitive impairment, a concomitant neurological disorder, or a family history of dementia were excluded, as well as those with severe cardiac, hepatic, or kidney disease or any kind of tumor. Follow-up monitoring cognitive functioning and decline took place at 6 and 12 months. A total of 1438 COVID-19 survivors and 438 control individuals were included in the final follow-up. COVID-19 was categorized as severe or nonsevere following the American Thoracic Society guidelines.
Main outcomes and measures: The main outcome was change in cognition 1 year after patient discharge. Cognitive changes during the first and second 6-month follow-up periods were assessed using the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly and the Telephone Interview of Cognitive Status-40, respectively. Based on the cognitive changes observed during the 2 periods, cognitive trajectories were classified into 4 categories: stable cognition, early-onset cognitive decline, late-onset cognitive decline, and progressive cognitive decline. Multinomial and conditional logistical regression models were used to identify factors associated with risk of cognitive decline.
Results: Among the 3233 COVID-19 survivors and 1317 uninfected spouses screened, 1438 participants who were treated for COVID-19 (691 male [48.05%] and 747 female [51.95%]; median [IQR] age, 69 [66-74] years) and 438 uninfected control individuals (222 male [50.68%] and 216 female [49.32%]; median [IQR] age, 67 [66-74] years) completed the 12-month follow-up. The incidence of cognitive impairment in survivors 12 months after discharge was 12.45%. Individuals with severe cases had lower Telephone Interview of Cognitive Status-40 scores than those with nonsevere cases and control individuals at 12 months (median [IQR]: severe, 22.50 [16.00-28.00]; nonsevere, 30.00 [26.00-33.00]; control, 31.00 [26.00-33.00]). Severe COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of early-onset cognitive decline (odds ratio [OR], 4.87; 95% CI, 3.30-7.20), late-onset cognitive decline (OR, 7.58; 95% CI, 3.58-16.03), and progressive cognitive decline (OR, 19.00; 95% CI, 9.14-39.51), while nonsevere COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of early-onset cognitive decline (OR, 1.71; 95% CI, 1.30-2.27) when adjusting for age, sex, education level, body mass index, and comorbidities.
Conclusions and relevance: In this cohort study, COVID-19 survival was associated with an increase in risk of longitudinal cognitive decline, highlighting the importance of immediate measures to deal with this challenge.

[Ron Put]

On 4/20/2022 at 10:50 AM, AlanPater said:

Yes.

You are a "true believer" and as all true believers, you acknowledge and absorb only information that reinforces your beliefs. This has become your identity and it explains why instead of addressing opposing arguments on their merits, you attack their sources. I wouldn't particularly care, but the true believers invariably attempt to enforce their beliefs on the rest of society, by force if necessary.

This is why we ended up with the greatest societal disruption since WWII, and why locales such as San Francisco and Los Angeles continue to force everyone to wear masks while using public transport or Uber, after the CDC was forced to abandon the mandates and after Fauci himself declared the pandemic to be over. And despite the fact that the effectiveness of the mask mandates for the healthy is dubious at best, and contradicts numerous studies going back to the mid-1950s.

 

On 4/28/2022 at 11:39 AM, corybroo said:

Thanks for the link Ron, I see the statement there

You see the statement, but you do not seem to see or address the argument. See Todd's comment too, it may help.

 

On 4/29/2022 at 6:23 PM, AlanPater said:

One-Year Trajectory of Cognitive Changes in Older Survivors of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: A Longitudinal Cohort Study.

Yeah, well..., just like other viral and bacterial infections, including influenza. Also, my guess is that the lockdowns and isolation did a lot more damage to the cognitive abilities of the elderly than Covid. But nowadays any study with Covid in the name can get published and make headlines, and the scarier, the more viral it becomes and the more citations it gets.

China started the lockdown snowball and Xi's reputation as a "great leader" and protector hinges on it. Just as it does for all the leaders who jumped on the bandwagon and locked up their population, suppressed debate, crashed their economies, and negatively impacted the long-term public health of the majority of the population.

And lest we forget, it's worth repeating that the initial justification was that SARS-2 is not easily transmittable and it can be stopped by employing draconian measures:

"On Monday, Tedros said, “We have never seen before a respiratory pathogen that’s capable of community transmission but at the same time which can also be contained with the right measures. If this was an influenza epidemic, we would have expected to see widespread community transmission across the globe by now and efforts to slow it down or contain it would not be feasible.”

People should try to protect themselves individually from flu strains, said Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s emergencies program, but at a societal and global level, “we don’t necessarily attempt to contain or stop them because we fundamentally believe they will spread unabated.”

 

[Ron Put]

Speaking of Covid deaths, here is an interesting freedom of information dump from the UK. Essentially, it resurrects the argument made by Stanford's Michael Levitt in 2020 that if we tested for, defined and counted flu deaths the way we are counting Covid deaths, we might get similar numbers and permanently move to live under our beds, masked and all.

A determined minority within our society was able to use Covid to dramatically change all established methodology, from the definitions of a "pandemic" and "infection," to mandating absurdly high cycle-count mass PCR testing, to how we calculate the death rate. And it ain't over yet.

Anyway, food for thought:
 

 

[AlanPater]

22 hours ago, Ron Put said:

On 4/20/2022 at 11:50 AM, AlanPater said:

Yes.

You are a "true believer"

Right back atcha.

[AlanPater]

23 hours ago, Ron Put said:

"On Monday, Tedros said, “We have never seen before a respiratory pathogen that’s capable of community transmission but at the same time which can also be contained with the right measures. If this was an influenza epidemic, we would have expected to see widespread community transmission across the globe by now and efforts to slow it down or contain it would not be feasible.”

People should try to protect themselves individually from flu strains, said Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s emergencies program, but at a societal and global level, “we don’t necessarily attempt to contain or stop them because we fundamentally believe they will spread unabated.”

The same article said:

"By making a distinction between the viruses, Tedros has sought to rally global action against the new microbe. He and other WHO officials urged governments confronting the coronavirus to implement the public health measures that have been shown to reduce viral spread, such as isolating infected people, following those who come in contact with cases to see whether they develop illness, and suspending activities that bring together lots of people."

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/03/who-coronavirus-different-than-influenza-can-be-contained/

Edited May 2, 2022 by AlanPater

[Gordo]

I could see the CCP deciding to kill people off immediately after infection to limit the spread (/sarc):

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/china/shanghai-morgue-care-home-resident-intl-hnk/index.html

😉

'What is going on in Shanghai': Horror as elderly man taken to morgue in body bag -- while still alive

By Jessie Yeung, CNN

 

Updated 6:37 AM ET, Tue May 3, 2022

 

Shanghai resident mistakenly sent to morgue while still alive 00:41

(CNN)An elderly Shanghai resident was mistakenly declared dead and taken to a morgue in a body bag, in the latest sign of dysfunction in the Covid-stricken city where millions of people remain under government-enforced lockdown.

[AlanPater]

I do not subscribe to the New York times.

Death Toll During Pandemic Far Exceeds Countries’ Reported Totals, W.H.O. Says

Excess deaths were nearly 15 million, the W.H.O. said, a number that drastically exceeded estimates based on reporting by countries. Here’s the latest on Covid.

https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/05/05/who-nearly-15m-deaths-associated-with-covid-19.html

Edited May 5, 2022 by AlanPater

[corybroo]

It may be premature to celebrate the end of Covid

S.Africa's daily COVID cases soar 50% in one day amid new surge

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said that two Omicron sub-variants, BA.4 and BA.5, were behind the surge in cases in South Africa.

But he said it was "too soon to know whether these new sub-variants can cause more severe disease than other Omicron sub-variants."

The South African government on Thursday retracted its earlier announcement stating school children were no longer required to wear masks.

The withdrawal came 16 hours after the health ministry dropped the requirement for school children to wear masks.

[16 hours is not long enough for the dropped requirement to have much, if any, effect.  Just an unfortunate coincidence.   CB]

When the Next Covid Wave Breaks, the US Won’t Be Able to Spot It

All the indicators suggest the US is likely poised for a new surge of Covid; in some parts of the country, that surge may already be arriving. But in our zeal to declare the pandemic over, we may have maneuvered ourselves into a position where it is now harder to detect a coming wave. “More and more, the relaxation of public health requirements, mandates, has placed responsibility on the individual and the employer,” says Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist

The seven-day moving average calculated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stood at 42,605 cases last week, which was 35 percent higher than one week earlier. The number of counties that score high and medium on the CDC’s “community levels” map both increased last week.

 

 

 

[Ron Put]

On 5/2/2022 at 11:11 AM, AlanPater said:

Right back atcha.

Right back at me what, exactly?

By definition, true believers are so certain of their truth, that all non-believers are deemed heretic enemies, evil by nature, and must either see the light or be destroyed. Your (wrong) beliefs make you unable to let others choose, you want to force everyone else to do what you believe is right for everyone.

Am I trying to make you not wear a mask, or wear one if you have a cold?

Am I trying to force you to take multiple shots and ban you from public venues and from being able to work if you don’t comply, and carry a card proving that you did?

Am I trying to ban you from the virtual public square if you disagree with me, and censure your arguments and attack you personally, so that I don’t have to answer them?
 

On 5/2/2022 at 11:28 AM, AlanPater said:

The same article said:

"By making a distinction between the viruses, Tedros has sought to rally global action against the new microbe. He and other WHO officials urged governments confronting the coronavirus to implement the public health measures that have been shown to reduce viral spread, such as isolating infected people, following those who come in contact with cases to see whether they develop illness, and suspending activities that bring together lots of people."

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/03/who-coronavirus-different-than-influenza-can-be-contained/

Maybe you should carefully reread both what I wrote and the WHO statements. You don’t appear to grasp the issue, instead, your bolded quote above supports my argument.

To restate, again:

1. The WHO claimed that SARS-2 is NOT CONTAGIOUS like the flu, and it is not easily spread (more like Ebola); therefore

2. isolating those infected would limit infections among the general population and contain the disease; therefore

3 the West should immediately follow China’s lockdown and mass tracing example to stop SARS-2.

 

2 hours ago, corybroo said:

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said that two Omicron sub-variants, BA.4 and BA.5, were behind the surge in cases in South Africa.

 
Why is anyone talking about "cases?" These variants are asymptomatic or milder than the current flu for most, why is The WHO not sounding a flu warning and calling for flu vaccine mandates?

Why did we abandon all pandemic preparedness plans and change the way we count, the way we test, and the way we discuss scientific matters?

Largely, it was led by The WHO as a proxy for Chinese policies. Tedros was rammed through by China, partially because the US did not consider the UN as important as it should have, and allowed China to consolidate power in key positions.

Currently, China is fighting a battle to prove that its zero-Covid policy is superior to the West's bumbling and thankfully less draconian response. Tedros is again carrying water for China, just like he did in March of 2020 (see the posts above).
 

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by Ron Put

[Ron Put]

A good lecture and Q&A.

Touches on the shoddy Covid studies and models flood,.

Also speaks of 2020 compared to past pandemics, such as 1968, 1957, and 1918, and the death counts.

He is obviously censoring himself, as the left tried to get him fired from Standford, but it's still very informative:

 

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by Ron Put