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Coronavirus - the new strain XXIV

gavreid said:
BTW, private GP's adverts are now a feature of daytime TV
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That is very sad. Here in the US the TV is rammed with drug adverts, and local hospitals occasionally have adverts (more usually promotional pieces on local news). The local newspapers are full of ads for GP and specialty practices.

It's utter b*****t - patients have virtually no way to know if a particular doctor or medical facility it better than another and quality and price are never mentioned in the adverts - just slick pictures / videos of attractive medical professionals. Add in the insurance and it's a minefield - you have to check that the doctor is affiliated with your insurance, but also that the facility they practice in is also affiliated. A doctor may be in-network when working in one facility and out of network when working at another. Oh, and the lab they send your specimens too may be out of network, even if the doctor and facility are in network - which can stick you with a big bill.

It gives the right wingers the excuse to say that we have consumer driven healthcare, but the truth is we have a bunch of clueless healthcare consumers who are ripe to be ripped off by the medical system, both in over-treatment, and over-billing. And another 20+% of the population who have almost no access to healthcare because they can't afford it.
 
sean99 said:
That is very sad. Here in the US the TV is rammed with drug adverts, and local hospitals occasionally have adverts (more usually promotional pieces on local news). The local newspapers are full of ads for GP and specialty practices.

It's utter b*****t - patients have virtually no way to know if a particular doctor or medical facility it better than another and quality and price are never mentioned in the adverts - just slick pictures / videos of attractive medical professionals. Add in the insurance and it's a minefield - you have to check that the doctor is affiliated with your insurance, but also that the facility they practice in is also affiliated. A doctor may be in-network when working in one facility and out of network when working at another. Oh, and the lab they send your specimens too may be out of network, even if the doctor and facility are in network - which can stick you with a big bill.

It gives the right wingers the excuse to say that we have consumer driven healthcare, but the truth is we have a bunch of clueless healthcare consumers who are ripe to be ripped off by the medical system, both in over-treatment, and over-billing. And another 20+% of the population who have almost no access to healthcare because they can't afford it.
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I'm too tired to reply properly right now but that's exactly right!
 
 
mhv said:
A vaccine designed to target two different forms of Covid has been approved by the UK regulator for use as booster jabs in people over the age of 18.

It is now up to the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to decide whether it will be used in the planned autumn booster programme, expected to begin in September.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...o-variants-approved-use-in-uk-moderna-omicron
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But Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London, suggested the vaccine may not offer huge gains in the fight against these subvariants.

“This is a really difficult juncture for all policymakers in terms of vaccine booster procurement and booster programmes,” he said.

“We lack the certainties we had in early 2020 of which way to go with the vaccines, not least, how to keep up with evolution of the variants. BA.5 is highly immune evasive so that even boosted people have highly impaired protection. Even exposure to the original Omicron sequence – as used in this, new, bivalent vaccine booster – only gives a rather marginal advantage to the antibody response.”

He said that meant the outlook was complex. “We’re in a terribly vulnerable position heading into the winter, so any booster programme is better than nothing, and this bivalent booster almost certainly an improvement over the first generation vaccines.

“My view is that this approach offers a marginal improvement in our battle against BA.5, but actually, we still need to think harder about this and look more broadly at the diverse vaccine candidates. In the meantime, get boosted.”
 
So, the adverse events recorded may not be from the vaccine and may be due to undiagnosed or coincidental events in these children selected for this study? Ok folks.
 
Tony L said:
Finally some decent news: the autumn booster will be an update that also targets Omicron (BBC).
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The reports say that they will only have capacity to make 13 million doses by Autumn which is about half what is needed and so far no decision has been made as to who gets this new jab.
 
barryb said:
So, the adverse events recorded may not be from the vaccine and may be due to undiagnosed or coincidental events in these children selected for this study? Ok folks.
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Not sure if the ‘ok folks’ is quizzical. If so, recording all events that may or may not be related to the drug is standard (and legally required) practice. Attribution to the drug, or not, is done later according to standard criteria (definitely related, probably related, possibly related and so on) that are internationally agreed. It is also a requirement that the worst-case scenario for the treatment is reported (eg ‘unknown’ cause is reported as related to the treatment).

Thus, depending on how the data are reported in the paper, it is entirely possible that Dr Campbell has grabbed data from the wrong table or misunderstood how the events were reported.
 
hc25036 said:
Not sure if the ‘ok folks’ is quizzical. If so, recording all events that may or may not be related to the drug is standard (and legally required) practice. Attribution to the drug, or not, is done later according to standard criteria (definitely related, probably related, possibly related and so on) that are internationally agreed. It is also a requirement that the worst-case scenario for the treatment is reported (eg ‘unknown’ cause is reported as related to the treatment).

Thus, depending on how the data are reported in the paper, it is entirely possible that Dr Campbell has grabbed data from the wrong table or misunderstood how the events were reported.
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Indeed quizzical and perplexed. Unsatisfactory to read of coincidence in this context - in a phase 3 clinical trial, surely the burden of proof must be that the vaccine didn't cause such events.

Also, I was of the impression that children had strong natural immunity to disease caused by the virus?
 
“Flatpopoley : Where is your evidence he is a shill?“


At the beginning of his YouTube career per his commentary on covid he posted sensible information and was very circumspect regarding promoting unqualified research or personal interpretation of scientific data, as his channel and YouTube following (income?) grew he often used his “medical” background and qualifications to obfuscate the represented scientific data and come to conclusions that were not supported by the authors of the scientific papers.

Unfortunately he has become a victim of his own hype and is now often quoted as “telling the truth” by a section of society that is untrusting of accepted best medical practice.

His channel has grown from approximately 500,000 views per month to over 10,000,000, "On one video he stated the following “I think most people in the UK and the United States are giving the vaccines wrongly." Referencing a mouse study, he said when not performing aspiration (checking the needle does not hit a blood vessel by initially drawing back the plunger) myocarditis could result. The video was referenced by American comedian Jimmy Dore on his YouTube talk show to make the misleading claim that a failure to aspirate was a cause of myocarditis. This was also repeated on podcast shows such as Joe Rogan, Eric Weinstein and many others creating a fear and mistrust of the vaccine.

I’ll copy the rest of his nonsense from Wikipedia as it is phrased better than I could, and it’s far easier.


“Ivermectin
See also: Ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic
In November 2021, Campbell said in a video that ivermectin might have been responsible for a sudden decline in COVID-19 cases in Japan. However, the drug had never been officially authorised for such use in the country; its use was merely promoted by the chair of a non-governmental medical association in Tokyo, and it has no established benefit as a COVID-19 treatment.[3] Meaghan Kall, the lead epidemiologist for COVID-19 at the UK Health Security Agency, said that Campbell was confusing causation and correlation. Further, Kall said that there was no evidence of ivermectin being used in large numbers in Japan; rather, she said it "appears this was based on anecdata on social media driving wildly damaging misinformation".[3]

In March 2022, Campbell posted another video on ivermectin, in which he misrepresented a conference abstract to make the claim that it "unequivocally" showed ivermectin to be effective at reducing COVID-19 mortality, and that ivermectin was going to be a "huge scandal" because information about it had been suppressed. The authors of the study have had to rebut such misrepresentations of their paper; one tweeted that "people like John Campbell are calling this a 'great thought out study' when in reality it's an abstract with preliminary data. We have randomized controlled trials why are we still interested in retrospective cohort data abstracts?".[21]

COVID-19 vaccine
See also: COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy
In November 2021, Campbell quoted from a non-peer-reviewed journal abstract by Steven Gundry saying that mRNA vaccines might cause heart problems.[5] Campbell's video was viewed over 2 million times within a few weeks and was used by anti-vaccination activists as support for the misinformation that COVID-19 vaccination will cause a wave of heart attacks.[5] According to a FactCheck review, Campbell had in his video drawn attention to typos in the abstract, and a lack of methodology and data, but he did not mention the expression of concern that had been published for the abstract, saying instead that it could be "incredibly significant".[5]

In March 2022, Campbell posted a misleading video about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, claiming that a Pfizer document showed it was associated with 1,223 deaths. The video was viewed over 750,000 times and shared widely on social media. In reality, the documents cited explicitly disclaimed any connection between vaccinations and deaths reported.[4]

COVID-19 deaths
See also: COVID-19 misinformation § Misreporting of morbidity and mortality numbers
A popular misconception throughout the pandemic has been that deaths have been overreported.[6] In January 2022, Campbell posted a YouTube video in which he cited figures from the UK's Office of National Statistics (ONS) suggesting they showed deaths from COVID-19 were "much lower than mainstream media seems to have been intimating" and concentrated on a figure of 17,371 death certificates where only COVID-19 was recorded as a cause of death. Within a few days the video had been viewed over 1.5 million times.[22] It was shared by British Conservative politician David Davis who called it "excellent" and said that it was "disentangling the statistics", and American comedian Jimmy Dore used it to claim that COVID-19 deaths had been overreported and that it proved the public had been the victim of a "scaremongering campaign".[23][6] The ONS responded by debunking the claims as spurious and wrong.[24]An ONS spokesman said "to suggest that [the 17,000] figure represents the real extent of deaths from the virus is both factually incorrect and highly misleading".[23] The official figure for COVID-19-related deaths in the UK for the period was over 175,000; in 140,000 of those cases the underlying cause of death was listed as COVID-19.[6][25]

Monkeypox parallels
In July 2022, Campbell posted a video in which he promoted the misleading idea that "parallels" could be drawn between the 2022 monkeypox outbreak and SARS-CoV-2 virus, because the pathogens were being studied in laboratories prior to an outbreak occurring. The misinformation was embraced and amplified by Jimmy Dore and his comedy co-host Kurt Metzger, achieving wide currency on social media.[26]”


So there you go, from my perspective it is clear where his loyalty lies and it is not with current established medical facts, it is obvious he has enjoyed a financial lift from his YouTube content, absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that per se but when he posts contrarian facts he is lauded by skeptics and invited to comment and appear on broadcasts, whether that be podcasts/videos/shows etc - the majority of these are based in America where he has a following from the covid denial and skeptical crowd as a “truth teller”.

That just about does it for my evidence, whether you agree with me is of no concern to myself but if it gives one person pause for thought before repeating his false claims then perhaps it’s worth pointing out that he’s basically just a nurse with zero specialist knowledge of coronaviruses who’s discovered he has an audience that is willing to listen to him, he’s not the messiah, he’s just shilling misinformation.
 
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barryb said:
Indeed quizzical and perplexed. Unsatisfactory to read of coincidence in this context - in a phase 3 clinical trial, surely the burden of proof must be that the vaccine didn't cause such events.

Also, I was of the impression that children had strong natural immunity to disease caused by the virus?
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I’m not an expert on childhood immunity, so can’t answer that.

Regarding adverse events in clinical trials, I have plenty of experience. The only way to prove that a drug did not cause an event is to do what is called ‘dechallenge and rechallenge’. It is rarely done, and definitely not done in children. It requires either waiting for the drug to be excreted (or give an antidote) and then giving the drug again to see if the same reaction occurs. Not terribly ethical.

What happens in reality is that the hospital clinician treating the patient, who does not know what drug the patient received, observes the patient for visible adverse events and then asks a non-leading question (how has it been, how are you finding the drug, how are you feeling etc) and writes down what the patient says, and then asks about time of onset, severity and duration using standard language (eg for severity it includes ‘unable to carry out normal activity’, ‘normal activity limited’, ‘aware of the event but normal activity unaffected’ for severe, moderate and mild). Based on that information, the clinician then assigns causality (definitely drug related, possibly….etc) again based on agreed criteria. For instance the patient may have a sore throat, but also has a cold which would be a ‘possibly’.

These allocations and causality are reviewed at various times and at the end of the study to ensure that they agree with the patients’ medical records by both company personnel and a random selection reviewed by inspectors from the MHRA. Company ‘drug safety medics’ will also review adverse events - still blind as to the drug use - with the very clear brief from the MHRA that they are to be concerned only with patient safety and not the fate of the drug. The MHRA review will see safety data presented in many various ways, and they go through them very carefully.

In practice, hospital staff and company staff tend to allocate to the drug even if there is some doubt because to do otherwise causes delay and hassle from the authorities if they suspect any obfuscation.
 
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