Using a “research quality” antibody test, my sister and nephew have both tested positive for the covid antibodies. Hadnt done one in a few months, but they’d all been negative until now. The other three kids refuse to allow their finger to be pricked (and there’s no reason to force it). Kids being kids, there’s been numerous instances where they could’ve pontentially been sick, or just mildly under the weather with something else. I assume I’d be positive as well.
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Brain fog appears to be an autoimmune overreaction to inflammatory factors from covid that make it into the brain. Good research in mouse models for understanding the mechanisms involved, but nothing useful for people or even close.
Those horse paste enthusiasts and misinformation terrorists over at the FLCCC speculate that the fully-trialed-but-inexplicably-not-approved repurposed generic antidepressant fluvoxamine could reduce inflammation in the brain during covid, and thereby head off the cascade of inflammatory damage that leads to the autoimmune neurological damage in the brain. You need a script for that one (watch out for side effects), but a short course early during covid seems worth the risk/benefit and I got one. More general info on fluvoxamine below.
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If the pox doesn’t turn out to be a big problem, it’ll be no thanks to the CDC. They’re slow rolling everything just like they did at the start of covid, only this time they have no excuse since monkey pox is well known, studied, has vaccines, has tests, has drugs for it, etc.
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But there were far fewer reported cases at this time last year — fewer than 20,000 a day. Now, it’s about 109,000 — and likely an undercount as tests done at home aren’t routinely reported.
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I have believed from the jump it is best to avoid contracting COVID-19 if at all possible. It’s the virus from hell. And concerns about death are not what I have in mind.
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That It explains. I must have gotten Covid about 50 years ago … probably when Tricky Dick opened up relations with China. 
PFE’s pill now available for prescription directly from your pharmacist, no doc required. Make sure you don’t have drug interactions tho.
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Is that common? Because that doesnt feel like something that is commonly done.
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No, it’s the new Biden “test to treat” plan where you can get the Pfizer pill right away without wasting days to make and get an appointment, after which your covid may have gotten worse and the pill would be past the antiviral effectiveness window.
Or … after which your covid may have poofed away and the pill non-sale would not benefit Pfizer or generate a kickback to the big guy.
ETA: Yes, cynical, but …
If it walks like a duck,
always follow the money.
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Pox update, the NYC Pride edition. Turns out about 50% of people at some of these “large events” were getting sick.
18 gay men who contracted monkeypox told NBC News how it can cause unsightly and in some cases debilitatingly painful skin lesions — and has left them stuck glumly inside.
spent a couple of weeks traveling through Europe through early June. He made stops in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin, having sex with multiple partners along the way, he said, including in a bathhouse and a sex club in the German capital. “There’s hundreds of men in this club,” Jeff said, recalling considerable skin-to-skin contact between patrons. “Obviously, no one’s coming down to wipe down the sling.”
And, shall we say, the pox sores that show up in the involved areas can be really painful.
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Nah, turns out this is what they’re thinking about - new, less offensive names than “Monkeypox”, and presumably not “Gay Pox” or something.
In the context of the current global outbreak, continued reference to, and nomenclature of this virus being African is not only inaccurate but is also discriminatory and stigmatizing. The most obvious manifestation of this is the use of photos of African patients to depict the pox lesions in mainstream media in the global north. Recently, Foreign Press Association, Africa issued a statement urging the global media to stop using images of African people to highlight the outbreak in Europe [9].
Hurt feelings! That’s why they didn’t cancel the Pride Superspreader Month events.
WHO is also working with partners and experts from around the world on changing the name of monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes.
We will make announcements about the new names as soon as possible.
Controlling the narrative is clearly more important than controlling the outbreak, just like it was with covid. Too bad Brandon went back to paying them our taxpayer money to do this nonsense.
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While fears may be growing that another COVID-19 surge will be upon us in the coming months, there is some indication that the future is now.
“The truth is, there are probably several hundred thousand, four or five hundred thousand, infections today happening across the country.”
“We are seeing a lot of reinfections within months of prior infections. It’s a reminder that an infection does not give you lifelong immunity”
The number of hospitalized patients in intensive-care units has increased 16% in two weeks to top 4,000 for the first time since March 18
.
Special request:
Given current circumstances surrounding COVID-19, it would be wise I think to establish a separate thread for monkeypox. This needs to be done by a forum participant having interest in monkeypox, else I would start the new thread myself.
Thank you for reserving this thread for COVID-19.
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School lockdown failures.
New data suggest that the damage has been worse than almost anyone expected. Locking kids out of school has prevented many of them from learning how to read properly
Around the world children have fallen further behind in maths than in reading.
The estimated effect of the pandemic on education in poor countries was less awful. The most likely explanation, alas, is that schools in such places were so bad before the pandemic that children did not miss out as much when they closed.
Mr Saavedra says school closures have caused perhaps “the worst educational crisis for a century, and certainly since the world wars”. He worries that too few countries have recognised the scale of the disaster, and that the true cost will not be visible for years. “My fear is that 15 years from now people will be writing papers documenting consistently lower earnings, productivity and well-being for people who are now between six and 20 years old,” he says. “I don’t see societies taking this seriously.”
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Review of the big “ivermectin doesn’t work” trial that finally came out with their negative results many months later than originally planned. The scientists and media seemed very happy to report “no evidence of ivermectin helping against covid”. Here is one such example.
More interesting was this critique of that trial, which, among other things, pointed out that although the trial didn’t reach statistical significance, there were only some 600 patients in each arm and the ivermectin group did better in their health outcomes, just not in a statistically significant way.
https://www.cato.org/regulation/summer-2022/ivermectin-together-trial
In short, many bad health outcomes seemed to be improved by ivermectin, but the effect was not quite large enough or the trial didn’t have enough people to reach the “<5% by chance” statistical threshold of evidence.
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What makes BA.5 different? Eric Topol, a cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, has called BA.5 “the worst version of the virus we’ve seen.” He explained in a recent newsletter: “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond earlier versions of Omicron.
Sounds like it’s time for 'ol Doc Fauci to take center stage (presuming he is no longer the highest paid federal employee, not including “incentives”) … along with expanding voting opportunities so as not to disenfranchise the “most vulnerable” amongst us.
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Politics corrupts, the public health edition. Inside takes from the CDC, FDA, NIH.
One CDC scientist told us about her shame and frustration about what happened to American children during the pandemic: “CDC failed to balance the risks of Covid with other risks that come from closing schools,” she said. “Learning loss, mental health exacerbations were obvious early on and those worsened as the guidance insisted on keeping schools virtual. CDC guidance worsened racial equity for generations to come. It failed this generation of children.”
An official at the FDA put it this way: “I can’t tell you how many people at the FDA have told me, ‘I don’t like any of this, but I just need to make it to my retirement.’”
“It seems criminal that we put out the recommendation to give mRNA Covid vaccines to babies without good data. We really don’t know what the risks are yet. So why push it so hard?” a CDC physician added. A high-level FDA official felt the same way: “The public has no idea how bad this data really is. It would not pass muster for any other authorization.”
And yet, the FDA and the CDC pushed it through.
That was a theme we heard over and over again—people felt like they couldn’t speak freely, even internally within their agencies.
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I find it rather funny how, 2 years ago, everyone was so insistent that covid-19 was way more infectious than anything we’ve ever seen. It’s “novel”, they all said, and the neysayers werent grasping the scope and couldnt conceive the terribleness of it.
And now, 2+ years later, attempted explanations of why the current variant is so terrible includes noting how the initial versions were on par with other sometimes-common diseases we’ve known and handled over the years.
Simply put, I dont believe anyone who tries to “mansplain” how bad this virus is. I’ll draw my own conclusions based on the actual numbers showing how bad it is, thank you.
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