If you need an appropriately cynical and funny take on big Pharma, there’s a nice series of Dilbert comics starting with this one and running til today at least ( about 10 strips).
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Monkey pox - If only we could propose 2 weeks to slow the spread, maybe that would be the end of it in the Western world. But especially during Pride Month, that would be too much to ask, not like locking down the world or anything. So instead the CDC has a bunch of “gay sex with fear of monkey pox” guidelines.
This guy just keeps getting lucky treating covid.
Cadegiani did the opposite of what the FDA and WHO recommended. He treated with a cocktail of generic, cheap, off-patent drugs, the same ones that he studied deeply and that are not recommended by these regulatory agencies. The next day, the patient had almost no symptoms. Three days later, calm, Jota was already on a plane to return to his city. With a rapid evolution and no more symptoms, his father’s health did not cause him the slightest concern.
Anyway, we all know. A single patient totally cured in three days says absolutely nothing for science. It does not serve to prove the efficacy of anything. This is known as an anecdotal case.
But on the other hand, this was Dr. Cadegiani’s COVID patient number 3,711. Among all of them, the total he treated during the entire pandemic, Cadegiani had only four hospitalizations, a single intubation, and zero deaths. That’s right. No one died.
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Those results would be more meaningful if it broke down the demographics of the patients he was treating. For the young and healthy, and especially children, expected results arent going to be much worse regardless of the treatments used. While if he had a very geriatric patient base, especially with preexisting conditions, those results are magnitudes more impressive.
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Sorry, but this guy could cure all varieties of cancer and it would receive no acclaim unless he did so with hugely expensive, on patent, drugs from the largest big pharma suppliers.
Nobody is gonna get credit for using off patent, inexpensive, drugs to cure anything. When it comes to medicine in 2022: Follow the money!
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Ivermectin showing not much effect in this US mild-to-moderate covid study. Dose was 400 mg/Kg (reasonable), and they found about 0.5 day faster resolution of symptoms without statistical significance, perhaps slightly better for those with worse risk factors and worse covid (again without meeting significance). No meaningful side effects noted.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.10.22276252v1.full.pdf
We did not find a clinically relevant effect for treatment of early COVID-19 with ivermectin 400 μg/kg daily for 3 days in this large trial that enrolled over 1500 participants in the United States.
While those with severe symptoms at baseline appeared to have beneficial treatment effect with ivermectin as compared with placebo, this subgroup was small, thus these findings should be considered exploratory.
Due to the broad study population, including almost 50% reporting vaccination, few participants progressed to severe COVID-19, limiting the power to study the treatment effect on relevant clinical outcomes like hospitalization and death. Due to the remote nature of the trial and constraints related to timing of randomization, the average time from start of symptoms to receipt of study drug was 6 days, which is later in the disease course than recent antiviral trials.
The main limitation I see is the fairly late beginning of treatment vs symptom onset, due to the remote nature and mailing of the drugs to the patients.
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That is rather significant, since the primary selling point/claim revolves around quick, or even proactive, treatment. I thought even most of even it’s most vocal advocates acknowledge that once an infection has set in, Ivermectin isnt going to help much?
That’s the biggie - it’s harmless, even if maybe not so effective, so why was such a deep and sacred line drawn against anyone even trying it?
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Because it’s for horseys, silly! :>
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The difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact is 1-2 years. WHO head Tedros believes the lab leak.
While publicly the group maintains that ‘all hypotheses remain on the table’ about the origins of Covid, the source said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), had recently confided to a senior European politician that the most likely explanation was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, where infections first spread during late 2019.
And the new mRNA vaccines are bad for your sperm too, although apparently only temporarily (3-6 months).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.13209
demonstrates selective temporary sperm concentration and TMC deterioration three months after vaccination followed by later recovery
Not sure that’s going to play well with annual covid boosters…
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Long covid cognitive issues continue in most long covid cases
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acn3.51578 (Paper)
Our pilot data from a longitudinal cohort of neuro-PASC suggest that while the symptom severity decreased for most participants, two-thirds had persistent neurologic symptoms at the 6-month follow-up with over half reporting continued impact on quality of life. The most prominent persistent symptoms were memory impairment and decreased concentration.
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In an admission that it’s impossible to get gay men to stop spreading STDs, the UK is offering the smallpox vaccine to them, which is supposed to be pretty good vs monkey pox.
The agency identified those at highest risk as men who have sex with men and who have multiple partners, participate in group sex or attend venues where sex occurs on the premises.
“By expanding the vaccine offer to those at higher risk, we hope to break chains of transmission and help contain the outbreak,” said the Health Security Agency’s head of immunization, Dr. Mary Ramsay.
UK has over 1/3 of the worlds identified monkey pox cases, but I’m sure we have our fair share, and growing, but we’re just not checking as carefully.
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bump
Here I thought I was unlucky at my Pride orgies to get monkey pox. In contrast, this stuff will kill you (and did for 1/3 of the cases in the small FL outbreak). Yes, they have a vaccine, and it’s only spread by very close contact.
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This guy has been giving the establishment a hard time about their vaccine policy for a while. He’s more down on some of the vaccines, but definitely is on the money for his policy comments.
——
I have been deeply involved in multiple prior outbreak responses including AIDS, the Post Anthrax/Smallpox scare, Pandemic Influenza, Ebola, Zika, and now SARS-CoV-2.
Prior to SARS-CoV-2, the teaching and practice in governmental response has been that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises state public health authorities, who have the authority and responsibility (based on U.S. Constitution) to manage their own public health policies and regulate the practice of medicine.
During prior outbreaks, CDC served as a reliable source of impartial, up to date and accurate public health data for physicians, state and local public health officers.
In my professional experience, during all prior outbreaks and vaccine development programs, risks and benefits have always been evaluated and stratified by risk group, and public health recommendations have been tailored to account for differences in risk/benefit ratios (often adjusted based on actuarial “quality adjusted life year” calculus).
This approach has not been implemented curing the COVID crisis. During the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 outbreak, new policies and practices have been implemented.
The NIH (and particularly) NIAID have developed and propagated treatment protocols throughout the United States. These protocols have been developed in a non-transparent manner without hearings or significant public comment or independent practicing physician input, apparently largely under the strong influence and oversight of a small number of government officials (predominantly Dr. Anthony Fauci and his former trainee Dr. Deborah Birx).
Development of vaccine products has been accelerated and historic non-clinical, clinical development and regulatory practices have been discarded in a quest for speed under specific pressure from the executive branch.
Development of repurposed drugs and treatment strategies have paradoxically been aggressively blocked or inhibited by both NIH and FDA, apparently due to requirements in the federal Emergency Use Authorization statute language requiring lack of available alternatives as a predicate to granting EUA to a new (vaccine) product.
The CDC has played a more supportive role to NIH, in contrast to prior where NIH/NIAID has focused on clinical research and early product development, and CDC focused on public health policy.
CDC has become politicized, particularly during the current administration, and has actively withheld information which has been deemed as posing risk for exacerbating “vaccine hesitancy”.
During the current outbreak, CDC has not fulfilled its traditional role as a neutral collector, arbiter and reporter of public health data. CDC has, under FOIA, admitted to failing to perform obligated monitoring, analysis and reporting of VAERS and related vaccine safety data. As a consequence, neither patients, physicians, nor public health officials have been able to access up-to-date information concerning vaccine effectiveness and safety. This has compromised the informed consent process.
CDC has actively promoted and marketed vaccination with unlicensed (emergency use authorized) products, with over $1 Billion USD in federal funding expended to both market the products and to censor those who have raised concerns regarding vaccine safety and effectiveness
FDA, NIH, and CDC (together with WHO) have cooperated to actively restrict, demean, and deprecate use of multiple currently available licensed drugs for treatment of COVID-19 by licensed practicing physicians, and have facilitated retaliation against physicians who do not follow the treatment guidelines established and promoted by the NIH – which has neither mandate nor significant prior experience in developing and implementing universal treatment guidance and protocols, and which has done so in a unilateral manner without seeking meaningful input from practicing physicians.
NIH leadership have acted to restrict and retaliate against highly qualified, independent physicians and medical scientists who have questioned federal management policies, most notably in the case of the Great Barrington Declaration and the primary authors of that document.
On a national basis, without respect for state boundaries or coordination with state governments, NIH and CDC have actively engaged with and directly paid corporate media and technology/social media companies to promote federal positions and policies, and to censor any discussions of policies, risks, adverse events, or treatment options other than those which they have endorsed.
There is evidence, in the case of the State of Florida and Governor Ron Desantis, that the Federal Government has intentionally withheld monoclonal antibody therapeutics as political retaliation for COVID crisis management policies implemented by the State of Florida, which are not aligned with Federal Government policies and mandates.
—-
I’m less sure about his comments on immunological imprinting causing vaccine effectiveness issues.
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No surprises here, the pox edition
“Large events”
- US HEALTH OFFICIALS ANNOUNCE NEW MONKEYPOX VACCINATION STRATEGY
“Not yet an emergency”
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Bump #2
The goggles, and the masks - they do nothing. Even SF admits mandates were worthless and if you wanted to actually protect yourself, you’d need an N95 or similar.
https://www.sfgate.com/coronavirus/article/bay-area-mask-mandate-results-17271294.php
“Mask mandates may create a false sense of reassurance to those who truly need the extra protection,” Noble said in April. “The severely immunocompromised person … should be using an N95 in crowded spaces when viral prevalence is high. They should not opt for a cloth or surgical mask because other people around them are masked and therefore assume it is ‘safe enough’ to avoid the tight fitting and uncomfortable N95.”
You know, like the ones Fauci told us not to buy to protect ourselves early in the pandemic?
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Maybe the pox is going to be trouble, if the late-to-the-action WHO is going to start thinking about it? Eh, probably not, but failure to shut down some bath houses for Pride month might kill a few kids if we get unlucky.
WHO SAYS CONCERNED 'STARTING TO SEE ’ MONKEYPOX SPREAD INTO VULNERABLE GROUPS, INCLUDING SEVERAL REPORTS OF CHILDREN INFECTED
“Hey there, Bert, I don’t know if that bathhouse in Madrid was worth it,” Ernie was heard saying as muppet CDC bolted the door to their studio apartment shut.
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The Science got covid, as you heard. You may not have heard that after getting PFE’s paxlovid, he got a “rebound” where after the 5 day course of that antiviral, his symptoms returned and he said they were worse than before.
Over the course of the next day, he began to feel “really poorly,” and “much worse than in the first go around,” he added.
The rebounding phenomenon, which is described as a recurrence of COVID-19 symptoms or the development of a new positive viral test after having tested negative, has been found to occur between two and eight days after initial recovery.
This is entirely consistent, if not particularly common, as an outcome. However, the EUA is clear the PFE pill is only authorized for high risk people for a 5 day course. Guess who got a script for another 5 days?
However, after his COVID-19 recurrence, Fauci was prescribed another course of Paxlovid, he said. As of Tuesday, he is on his fourth day of a five-day course.
There is no data for whether additional courses of paxlovid after the initial 5 days provide any benefit, and certainly no clinical trials to support it. One could say there’s more evidence for a certain horse medicine at this stage than what The Science is doing personally.
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