COVID-19 ... how we cope :)

[Patrick Gougeon]

Sid,you start being funny, please go on. In these difficult times, humour brings some smiles on the face of your readers, if they find time to read you, ....

You wrote on this forum you had a scientific education, If so, I now seriously doubt you believe in what you write in this forum, or you maybe have forgotten what you've learnt during your youth? You probably have time to write always the same things and like reading comments from others. It could explain why you continue sending texts you find on Internet to support your point. I am sure it takes a lot of time. Why not, you as others are free to write and we are free to read or not. Personally, when I have time, I have many other things to do than forwarding news (on a chess forum) which are obviously biased (very right and conservative oriented) and absolutely not scientifically proved. But why no, if you like it, as long as the moderator accepts it.

A scientist does not believe, he analyzes the facts with a methodoly conform to what it should be. He thinks with his brain and rejects biased information. Scientists could disagree when something new appears, this is perfectly sound and normal. Finding the correct explanation (we can't have two true explanations at the end), having the good understanding of new phenomena, new viruses, new bacteria, new chemical reactions,...can take time. However, at the end of these normal scientific processes and debates, all scientists (= recognized by peer reviewed papers in high impact scientific journals) agree. You surely remember all papers which were published in 1989 and in the following years on cold fusion. It took time to explain and find a reasonable explanation proving this was not a proof of the existence of a new energy. It is not always instantaneous to find explanations, and sometimes, after many years scientists could ever change their mind after new experiments. This is the way science progresses. Einstein himself was more than skeptical about some concepts in quantum physics ('God does not play dice with the universe').

We are not living anymore in the 17th century when Galileo had to fight against the religious authorities. In the 21st century, news spread all over the World in less than 24 h via Internet and other modern communication tools. Internet is a useful tool for all of us. People can write anything they want on Internet and there will always be someone, somewhere believing that it is true, Normally, it shouldn't be dangerous, but sometimes, for obscure reasons, fear of unknown, lack of education, etc, more and more people believe (not think, they only believe as if it was religious) that what they read on Internet is true.

I don't say you believe in all you read, but I have concerns about the choice of Internet links or texts you quote in your messages on this chess forum. Did you use your critical mind before publishing?

I like debating with people who don't agree with me. The purpose is not to convince that I am right. It could of course occur that I am wrong, too, the point is not there. First of al, I need to understand why two persons having received a scientific education (should be similar) have a point of view so opposite. Is it useful I say I do not work for any pharma company, neither any institutions or company related to health.
.
So, in order to help me understanding your point of view, I have 2 questions for you. I expect clears answers, no grey answers as policians usually do. Facts and only facts as established by science. Could you please quote in this forum peer-reviewed papers (page, volume, issue, , authors) prooving that:

1. getting the Covid vaccines (2 shots of Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, or one shot of Johnson and Johsnon) is stastically more dangerous for human beings (all health, age conditions in Canada or other developed countries let's say G7 countries ) than being infected by Covid-19 (including all existing variants up to know).

2. early treatments (to be defined, what is early?) using HCQ, Ivermectine or other treatments you suggest on this forum are more efficient that treatments authorized in Canada for hospitalized patients. Statistics is important here, the papers should be able to compare apples with apples (same age, same health conditions, same 'early' definition). Comparison can easily be biased if the method is not good.

These papers should have been already officially published (not pre printed) and not already retracted by the journal editor. In order to compare high quality papers, these papers should be published in one of the 10 best scientific journals in immunology or virology. We could agree to rank these journals based on their impact factor, which is not perfect to compare quality of papers but it gives a rather good idea:

https://www.immunofrontiers.com/top-...urnals-of-2021

https://www.immunofrontiers.com/top-...urnals-of-2021

I am already impatient to read the papers you will quote. We'll discuss after.

Thanks for reading and I apologize for my mistakes in English

[Patrick Gougeon]

About situation in Denmark:

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coro...-rules-2509641

I quote:

Over 60 percent of the population has received a full course of the vaccine.

"We now have good control of the infection across society," Helene Bilsted Probst, deputy director of the national health agency said in a statement.

"Therefore, we can adapt the prevention recommendations in such a way that people can maintain a normal daily life while respecting the principle of prevention."

...
Masks will remain obligatory on planes and in the country's airports, where international air-transport rules apply.


The Danish government considers that having 60% of vaccinated people in the country is sufficient. It is their decision, but already 60% of fully vaccinated people is not bad. I haven't read that the Danish Government thinks vaccination should be avoided and principle of prevention forgotten. Mask are not compulsory, that's all.

[Sid Belzberg]

Sid,you start being funny, please go on. In these difficult times, humour brings some smiles on the face of your readers, if they find time to read you, ....

You wrote on this forum you had a scientific education, If so, I now seriously doubt you believe in what you write in this forum, or you maybe have forgotten what you've learnt during your youth? You probably have time to write always the same things and like reading comments from others. It could explain why you continue sending texts you find on Internet to support your point. I am sure it takes a lot of time. Why not, you as others are free to write and we are free to read or not. Personally, when I have time, I have many other things to do than forwarding news (on a chess forum) which are obviously biased (very right and conservative oriented) and absolutely not scientifically proved. But why no, if you like it, as long as the moderator accepts it.

A scientist does not believe, he analyzes the facts with a methodoly conform to what it should be. He thinks with his brain and rejects biased information. Scientists could disagree when something new appears, this is perfectly sound and normal. Finding the correct explanation (we can't have two true explanations at the end), having the good understanding of new phenomena, new viruses, new bacteria, new chemical reactions,...can take time. However, at the end of these normal scientific processes and debates, all scientists (= recognized by peer reviewed papers in high impact scientific journals) agree. You surely remember all papers which were published in 1989 and in the following years on cold fusion. It took time to explain and find a reasonable explanation proving this was not a proof of the existence of a new energy. It is not always instantaneous to find explanations, and sometimes, after many years scientists could ever change their mind after new experiments. This is the way science progresses. Einstein himself was more than skeptical about some concepts in quantum physics ('God does not play dice with the universe').

We are not living anymore in the 17th century when Galileo had to fight against the religious authorities. In the 21st century, news spread all over the World in less than 24 h via Internet and other modern communication tools. Internet is a useful tool for all of us. People can write anything they want on Internet and there will always be someone, somewhere believing that it is true, Normally, it shouldn't be dangerous, but sometimes, for obscure reasons, fear of unknown, lack of education, etc, more and more people believe (not think, they only believe as if it was religious) that what they read on Internet is true.

I don't say you believe in all you read, but I have concerns about the choice of Internet links or texts you quote in your messages on this chess forum. Did you use your critical mind before publishing?

I like debating with people who don't agree with me. The purpose is not to convince that I am right. It could of course occur that I am wrong, too, the point is not there. First of al, I need to understand why two persons having received a scientific education (should be similar) have a point of view so opposite. Is it useful I say I do not work for any pharma company, neither any institutions or company related to health.
.
So, in order to help me understanding your point of view, I have 2 questions for you. I expect clears answers, no grey answers as policians usually do. Facts and only facts as established by science. Could you please quote in this forum peer-reviewed papers (page, volume, issue, , authors) prooving that:

1. getting the Covid vaccines (2 shots of Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, or one shot of Johnson and Johsnon) is stastically more dangerous for human beings (all health, age conditions in Canada or other developed countries let's say G7 countries ) than being infected by Covid-19 (including all existing variants up to know).

2. early treatments (to be defined, what is early?) using HCQ, Ivermectine or other treatments you suggest on this forum are more efficient that treatments authorized in Canada for hospitalized patients. Statistics is important here, the papers should be able to compare apples with apples (same age, same health conditions, same 'early' definition). Comparison can easily be biased if the method is not good.

These papers should have been already officially published (not pre printed) and not already retracted by the journal editor. In order to compare high quality papers, these papers should be published in one of the 10 best scientific journals in immunology or virology. We could agree to rank these journals based on their impact factor, which is not perfect to compare quality of papers but it gives a rather good idea:

https://www.immunofrontiers.com/top-...urnals-of-2021

https://www.immunofrontiers.com/top-...urnals-of-2021

I am already impatient to read the papers you will quote. We'll discuss after.

Thanks for reading and I apologize for my mistakes in English

"Published in a peer reviewed respectable journal" is just dead today. Gone. Dead. The corruption of medical journals is well established. Watch Dr. Jason Fung from 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6IO2DZjOkY

The only way to draw "evidence-based" conclusions is to review and think about each of the individual studies oneself. It doesn't matter which journal they are in, published or preprint. More work, but that is the only way.

Here is the most infamous retraction from The Lancet of the anti-HCQ Gilead sponsored anti HCQ study drug that even though retracted is still the basis to ban this drug both in Canada and the United States. a massive scientific fraud culminating in the retraction of a peer-reviewed study is unparalleled in medical history and is directly responsible for close to 4,000,000 COVID death that should have been treated pre-hospitalization.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...180-6/fulltext

Here are peer-reviewed papers in respected medical journals supporting early treatment

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002...673-2/fulltext
https://scholarlycommons.henryford.c...eases_articles
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2767593
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7587171/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8178530/
https://www.hackensackmeridianhealth...-19-infection/
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S...534-8/fulltext
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...06987721001419

I will submit more evidence on vaccine efficacy vs natural immunity and Ivermectin shortly
more information on Ivermectin
https://ivmmeta.com
Here is data on Canada's main treatment Remdesevir
https://c19rmd.com/smeta.html

The standard treatment in Canada is Remdesevir. In a clinical or outpatient setting health Canada recommends no treatment at all as per the NIH guidelines despite that many papers as per above show between 75-84% reduction in hospitalization by treating early,


No Trial ever showed that this drug had favorable outcomes with mortality and in fact causes severe side effects When used for Ebola trials Remdesevir was halted due to the extreme toxicity of the drug.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....13.21261992v1
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/642

This preprint from The Lancet (sorry the Delta variant is so new that preprint is as good as you will get) shows four things about the vaccine

• The vaccines do not prevent health care workers from getting infected; the antibodies are ineffective.
• When health care workers get infected post-vaccination with Delta they are not becoming infected from the community; they are passing it among each other.
• Their viral loads and thus infectiousness are extremely high; in other words they become a reservoir of extreme infection risk to other employees in the facility and, it must be assumed to the patients in their care.
• A reasonable hypothesis (but not proved) is that the vaccines are in fact potentiating viral replication via ADE-type effects, specifically other papers point to the act of encouraging or even forcing medical workers to take the jabs is leading to higher viral loads and thus greater infectiousness -- that is, greater risk to patients rather than less.

"Breakthrough Delta variant infections are associated with high viral loads, prolonged PCR positivity, and low levels of vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, explaining the transmission between the vaccinated people."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=3897733


However, in the case of the Delta variant, neutralizing antibodies have a decreased affinity for the spike protein, whereas facilitating antibodies display a strikingly increased affinity.

https://www.journalofinfection.com/a...392-3/fulltext

Israel is one of the most completely vaccinated countries in the world. They got that special deal from Pfizer. Their cases started going UP as more people got vaccinated, and now...
Health officials predict thousands of seriously ill COVID patients within month

https://www.timesofisrael.com/health...-within-month/

Here are the most recent COVID death Stats for Israel this month as well as severe illness, seems like the data supports the above article and the notion of ADE


India, birthplace of the 'Delta variant" (previously known as "the Indian strain"), uses ivermectin based treatment for COVID. Uttar Pradesh is 2/3 the population of the USA, and much poorer, much more congested. There is good reason to be dubious of any statistics from India, but the clearly beat COVID in New Delhi.
At 17, Uttar Pradesh Logs Lowest Ever Daily Covid Figure, Active Caseload Drops to 419
https://www.news18.com/news/india/at...9-4093550.html

By the way in the United States the bulk of hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the January through June time period occurred well before May. Anybody not receiving a second vaccine 2 weeks or more before being diagnosed with COVID was counted as "unvaccinated".
That's how they got that "pandemic of the unvaccinated" line. It was. Now it looks more like a"pandemic of the vaccinated.".
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and most mainstream media, what we have now is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” with 95% to 99% of COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths being attributed to the unvaccinated.
To achieve that statistic, the CDC included hospitalization and mortality data from January through June. The vast majority of the U.S. population was unvaccinated during that timeframe.
By Jan. 1 only 0.5% of the U.S. population had received a COVID shot. By mid-April, an estimated 31% had received one or more shots and as of June 15, 48.7% were fully “vaccinated.”


In Canada the therapeutic combo of Ivermectin/HCQ Zinc and doxycycline is forbidden for Dr's to prescribe, This combo has saved millions of lives world wide and is more important then ever to. administer now that the particularly deadly ADE (Antibody Dependent Enhancement) is upon us from the delta variant that evolved from vaccines. Those who are denied early treatment are at a high risk of hospitalization and death. With the data the Delta has 251x the viral loads in the vaxxed compared to unvaxxed prior strains, (see Chau above) we are in for a long ride now.

[Brian Hartman]

Hi, I am neutral as to this debate.

However, I would point out that one of my clients is involved in relevant research - see for example: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...566-X/fulltext - This was also reported in the Globe and Mail (Feb 5, 2021). His team is now in a large scale Phase 3 trial. There seem to be other promising therapeutics afoot too - my perplexity over what is occurring is the communication methods (e.g., if someone simply cites relevant research they are labeled "anti or pro vax", or do you "believe" in vaccinations, akin to how religious zealots sound). It seems perfectly logical to equally review/consider vaccination, preventatives, and therapeutics, and decide for oneself.

Brian

[Patrick Gougeon]

Brian,

Thanks for your comments and the paper on benefits of Interferon lambda-1 as a potential therapy for outpatients with Covid-19. Science always makes progress, this is the most important point.

It's possible I didn't express myself correctly in my previous messages on Covid-19. As you could read, English is not my first language.

I quote a part of your text 'my perplexity over what is occurring is the communication methods (e.g., if someone simply cites relevant research they are labeled "anti or pro vax", or do you "believe" in vaccinations, akin to how religious zealots sound).

I shouldn't have written 'believe in vaccinations'. You are 100% right, that was not written in a correct form and sounds 'religious'. It is my mistake. It should be replaced by 'Why do you think people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in Canada will statiscally have more health problems (now or in the future) than people who are not vaccinated as long as we have a pandemic crisis. Question concerns any of the current authorized vaccines in Canada. It is not a question or 'bellieve and not believe', It's a question to Sid to help me understanding what are the scientifc proofs he considers to come to this conclusion. Sorry for that, but as many scientists (if not all), I try to understand things which seem strange to me.

You're also right that scientific papers should not be labeled "anti or pro vax". Scientific papers present results, the methodology which is used to get these results and the results analysis by the authors. No corruption, no orientation to sell such or such drugs, only reproducible results. The debate is not there.

The question which is debated here is to know where we can find sources / documents describing the status of the current research on Covid-19 (vaccines, therapies,...). My point is that these sources are (at least) peer reviewed papers, ideally published in internationnaly well acknowledged journals. Ranking the papers quality by their impact factors is a way, but others could be considered if explained.

Concerning another part of your text 'It seems perfectly logical to equally review/consider vaccination, preventatives, and therapeutics, and decide for oneself'' I totally agree, that's obvious, All possible ways to reduce the Covid impact on human beings health have to be considered, they all contribute to build pillars of our fortress against the virus. I may be wrong, but for me step 1 is to find a way to avoid being infected (vaccines, preventive drugs, health precaution,...), which does not mean that reseach on therapies to help infected people is less important. These approaches are complimentary.

However, I don't think it is responsible (to say the least) to spread information which are not scientifically proved (as far as I know). Spreading false science could have bad consequences on our society (past is speaking loudly), and concerning Covid it has already bad consequences and still will have if it continues to be spreaded.

Anyone decides if she/wants or doesn't want to be treated and/or vaccinated. Each her/his choice! Hopefully we still live in a free and democratic country.

[Sid Belzberg]

Spreading false science could have bad consequences on our society (past is speaking loudly)

As per your request the science was posted. Which science have I quoted that is false? You have a big mouth for someone who is so ignorant about virology.

[David Ottosen]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....13.21261992v1
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/642

This preprint from The Lancet (sorry the Delta variant is so new that preprint is as good as you will get) shows four things about the vaccine

Literally, the first page of this study says:
69 vaccinated workers got the virus
1 required oxygen
All recovered "uneventfully"

I think there is some merit to the question of how effective the vaccine is at preventing spread, especially in situations such as the one described in this paper (close indoor quarters, poor ventilation, non mandatory mask-wearing). I also think this is becoming somewhat more generally accepted.

I don't think there's merit in questioning that the vaccine is effective in reducing the seriousness of getting infected.

[Sid Belzberg]

Literally, the first page of this study says:
69 vaccinated workers got the virus
1 required oxygen
All recovered "uneventfully"

I think there is some merit to the question of how effective the vaccine is at preventing spread, especially in situations such as the one described in this paper (close indoor quarters, poor ventilation, non mandatory mask-wearing). I also think this is becoming somewhat more generally accepted.

I don't think there's merit in questioning that the vaccine is effective in reducing the seriousness of getting infected.

Please carefully look at the most recent data from Israel that I posted. 81% of severe critical hospitalizations in Israel are fully vaxxed. This is an ADE disaster. By the way ADE is treatable but Canada has banned Dr's from prescribing the therapy I posted above as is the case in many western countries who would prefer people die rather than get treated before going to the hospital promoting already obsolete experimental "vaccines" and "booster shots" as the only approach.

[David Ottosen]

Please carefully look at the most recent data from Israel that I posted. 81% of severe critical hospitalizations in Israel are fully vaxxed. This is an ADE disaster. By the way ADE is treatable but Canada has banned Dr's from prescribing the therapy I posted above as is the case in many western countries who would prefer people die rather than get treated before going to the hospital promoting already obsolete experimental "vaccines" and "booster shots" as the only approach.

I checked the two Israel articles you post.

Article 1 talks about a prediction for what will happen. It doesn't provide any indication how those numbers were derived, or if the influx of expected hospitalizations are from vaccinated or non vaccinated people. A quick look shows Israel around 60% fully vaccinated; from a 9M population, that still leaves millions unvaccinated. I'm not too sure what this proves. I'd also argue your point that case rates have increased due to more people getting vaccinated; by my check, it looks like about 4.9M people were vaccinated by April 18; as of August 18 (four months later), the total is now 5.4M. The rate of vaccination in Israel has fallen massively over the last 4 months compared to initial rollout.

Here's what I see:

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-why-are-...ael/a-58887131

(Something I like to include when posting a link is a "source trustworthiness check": dw appears to be a publicly funded broadcaster in Germany; similar to PBS in the USA or the BBC in the UK as far as I can tell, so I'll believe they're as unbiased as you can expect any major news source to be; they also cite https://www.gov.il/en/departments/mi...l-landing-page as a data source)

Taking a sample from August 16, 2021:

• 154.7 severely ill patients in Israel were unvaccinated.
• 48.4 severely ill patients were partially vaccinated
• And 19.8 severely ill patients were fully vaccinated

I can't find the source of your chart to determine why we have such different data. I can't find your chart anywhere on:

https://www.gov.il/en/departments/to...orona-main-sub

and I couldn't find it anywhere in my semi-brief scroll through MOHreport on telegram.

[Sid Belzberg]

Taking a sample from August 16, 2021:

• 154.7 severely ill patients in Israel were unvaccinated.
• 48.4 severely ill patients were partially vaccinated
• And 19.8 severely ill patients were fully vaccinated

please provide the exact link, not just the landing page where you got this data.

[David Ottosen]

[I]
please provide the exact link, not just the landing page where you got this data.

It looks like the data in that article is coming from here:

https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/...edium=referral

however, I'll admit I'm looking at a google translated to english version so I'm not 100% certain I can interpret what it's saying correctly.

[Erik Malmsten]

A medical friend posted this link to Virologist Dr. Loftus.

He recommends using a twice-daily nasal spray to coat your nose with an antiviral coating. You can buy Viruseptin, a Swedish product, off eBay or Bonanza. It contains carrageenan. Xlear is an American product that also confers protection; it contains grapefruit seed extract (GSE). There are other nasal spray brands similar to Xlear with GSE. Studies show broad antiviral traits of carrageenan and GSE in the test tube, including against SARS-CoV-2. Since the nose is where COVID gets a foothold, usually, I think nasal sprays are important protection. Ultimately I think better COVID vaccines will be given by nasal spray rather than shots.

He claims oral antiviral pills are coming. Unlike the vaccines, they target internal proteins of the virus.

https://lissarankin.com/what-you-nee...ENp9znhkNGZRkw

He recommends listening to the Osterholm podcasts:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars

[Sid Belzberg]

It looks like the data in that article is coming from here:

https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/...edium=referral

however, I'll admit I'm looking at a google translated to english version so I'm not 100% certain I can interpret what it's saying correctly.

This was stated Aug 5 on Channel 13 News in Israel.

"Israel top health official Dr. Kobi Haviv, who is also the Director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, says:

“95% of the severe patients are vaccinated. 85-90% of the hospitalizations are in Fully vaccinated people. We are opening more and more COVID wards. The effectiveness of the vaccine is waning/fading out,” Dr. Haviv said."



This interview is in Hebrew, however, these two English publications reference the interview and statement
https://techstartups.com/2021/08/07/...gfading-video/
https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/mos...for-australia/

This was earlier in the month so the statement seems to correspond with the data I posted, I will look at your links and translate directly.

The results are not surprising as the "vaccine" is now obsolete and induces antibodies for a different virus hence a booster shot will not help as it is the same obsolete vaccine.

This is the Telegram Israel MOH Daily update link you were asking about

https://t.me/MOHreport

I have downloaded the daily update that includes the 81% of severe hospitalizations vaccinated figure and can email it to you directly, the file is too big
to attach.

[Brian Profit]

[Sid Belzberg]

Funny how someone who is a "science teacher" does not even understand basic physics. Labels Dr's like below "COVIDIOTS". Does not even understand the concept that CO2 accumulates in a mask faster than it escapes hence published articles as I already posted here on how they propose to deal with the CO2 issue in the operating theatre. These researchers are COVIDIOTS according to our local "science teacher".
If the Dr below is "COVIDIOT" where does that leave you Brain?
Show me one RCT ever that shows masks stopped viral transmission. All the scientists that authored all those RCT mask papers for the last 40 years are all "COVIDIOTS"?
.