Covid19mathblog.com

A study came out Nature in regards to Vitamin D https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-24053-4 The most glaring statement from the study –

“When we extrapolate our results for vitamin D3 supplementation to the entire US population in 2020, there would have been approximately 4 million fewer COVID-19 cases and 116,000 deaths avoided.”

Vitamin D has been discussed numerous times on the blog showing many studies previously – dating all the way back to June 2020 https://covid19mathblog.com/2020/06/covid-6-20-20/ – it was noted the risk (limited) reward (large) benefits would produce a high Sharpe ratio therefore advisable to take it –

“…in summary of all the reading and analysis so far Vitamin C & D, Zinc, Exercise 30-1hour a day, Eat whole preferably vegan, and do Yoga – and you will be good from Covid PLUS improve on many other facets of your life!”

So much excuses were made that health takes time – yet during this time there was no vaccine yet. Then when the vaccine came out the message to take vaccine was so loud that it limited benefit of health discussed. And here we are going on 3 yrs – likely take 3-6 months of commitment and consistency for most to be healthier and additional benefits beyond covid would be obtained.

Very early on it was suggested to make vitamin D free which is significantly cheaper than vaccines, accessible, and offers other benefits (e.g. strong bones)- https://covid19mathblog.com/2020/11/covid-11-13-20/

“Vitamin D should be free for the public. Likely more effective than unenforceable laws/restrictions.”

Speaking about the cost of the vaccine – new vax deal w Pfizer – The old deal gave Pfizer $19.50 a dose. They’re now paying > $30. Pfizer raised price by over 50%. – https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/how-much-could-covid-19-vaccines-cost-the-u-s-after-commercialization/

Mandates for youth particularly in college does not produce significant cost benefit. Individual health and lifestyle should be incorporated and a general consultation with a doctor is how the vaccine should be administered. This study tries to quantify cost benefits and comes to the similar conclusions. https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/12/05/jme-2022-108449

“Our estimate shows that university COVID-19 vaccine mandates are likely to cause net expected harms to young healthy adults—for each hospitalisation averted we estimate approximately 18.5 SAEs and 1430–4626 disruptions of daily activities—that is not outweighed by a proportionate public health benefit. Serious COVID-19 vaccine-associated harms are not adequately compensated for by current US vaccine injury systems. As such, these severe infringements of individual liberty and human rights are ethically unjustifiable.”

Confirmations continue to grow significantly in Czechia, Japan, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand. US still leading in deaths but seems like a reporting issue relative to other countries and/or just showing the state of our health. The fatality rate is now over 1%!

Likely we will not see the ramp up like last year – with much of it because people home test and so it doesn’t get into the DB unless people report result. A very important point to recall there is not much perspective on all these confirmations as we don’t test and document for common colds or even flu as much as we have done for covid.

China has been spiking in confirmations but deaths are very low (data suspect).

The two states who had the most restrictive policy leads the confirmations – CA & NY. FL lead in deaths followed by NY and CA.

So far for the US relative to last two years numbers are down for death and confirmation. It has been warm but here is the cold shot. Confirmations likely will star rising like the last two years.

Unfortunately still not getting back to normal death levels seen in the red line.

Covid19mathblog.com

Its been exactly 7 months since the last write up. Why? Because the corona virus has similar structure as a common cold virus. As noted several times before the virus encapsulates itself in the cold thereby sustaining itself longer vs. the summer time – and hence you get the cold/flu season. You do have a bump in the summer time but as explained before the HVAC is heavily running in the south and inside those systems it gets cold enough for the virus to encapsulate and then being too hot to go outside many stay inside not aware the place is not well ventilated. Ventilation is the key and will always be one of the easiest things to focus on and actually have a material impact.

The US has not begun its upward trend as seen in the last two years but that’s largely as its been warm. This years accumulation of confirmations is up year on year. Deaths are actually lower year on year showing a much better outcome – perhaps this can be contributed to the vaccine. IF it was largely vaccine driven then fatality rates in the younger segments would have improved. If the vaccine was equally effective for ALL age group the breakdown of deaths by age should look the same as during the time when there was no vaccine.

Below chart we show the age% breakdown of listed covid deaths. The data is what it is – there are likely covid deaths listed that are not actual covid deaths. However this does not mean the data is completely a waste as long as the record keeping was consistent you can still draw some change trends and have curious questions. During the vaccine rollouts we know it was focused on the elderly first and therefore we can see there was a significant improvement to the elderly – at the same time we did change our nursing home practices. However this year 75+ categories has jumped back up. All the categories under 75 improved EXCEPT for the 0-24 which slightly went up. This is reaffirming covid risk is exponentially increasing with age.

If the vaccine actually delivered on its promise then society at some point SHOULD go back to normal levels of deaths. However we can see in the weekly chart not 1 week has hit the average since 2020. People are still dying at much higher levels in the past. Something is still not right. Below chart the red is the baseline (2014-2019 average deaths of ALL Causes) – the green and the various shapes represents the various years. 14% more deaths this summer than the previous baseline. There are lots of articles and media presentations about sudden deaths – largely as result of heart condition. Obviously with more people getting covid one could say that the after effects are potentially causing these deaths. There was a study to look at this https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/11/8/2219

“Retrospective cohort study of 196,992 adults after COVID-19 infection in Clalit Health Services members in Israel between March 2020 and January 2021. Inpatient myocarditis and pericarditis diagnoses were retrieved from day 10 after positive PCR. Follow-up was censored on 28 February 2021, with minimum observation of 18 days. The control cohort of 590,976 adults with at least one negative PCR and no positive PCR were age- and sex-matched.”

“Post COVID-19 infection was not associated with either myocarditis (aHR 1.08; 95% CI 0.45 to 2.56) or pericarditis (aHR 0.53; 95% CI 0.25 to 1.13). We did not observe an increased incidence of neither pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering from COVID-19 infection.”

IF true this is concerning – as infection of covid is not driving myocarditis – whereas there are reports showing the vaccine showing signs of resulting in myocarditis.

Perhaps many want to go back to mask or more vaccinations to solve this problem – UNLESS the vaccines improve those two solutions do not show societal benefit. They do show individual benefits for certain demographics.

The best way to look at those issues is to look at last winter with the large jump in confirmations and compare within the state the counties with mandates and those without. The charts would show IF effective the counties with mask vs without mask have lower confirmation per capita (spreadability). The counties with higher vaccines rates should also show lower confirmation per capita IF the vaccine was offering societal benefits. Reality is reality and perhaps there are legitimate reasons for this which at this time is likely human behavior. The results are presented below and actually shows the more vaccinated the more spreading occurs – and this is likely due to behavior – the more vaccinated the more leaving your guard down? Nothing clear on mask mandates. Doesn’t show any significance.

Zoom of Michigan winter – no clear societal value for spreading covid for vaccine or mask.

Overlapping the extreme states in terms of policy CA & NY vs FL & TX – there was no discernable value in mitigating spread via vaccination or local policies.

Balancing the mask discussion this study shows mask was a significant variable is spread. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278385v1.full.pdf

“ We estimate that lifting of school masking requirements was associated with an additional 44.9 (95% CI: 32.6, 57.1) COVID-19

cases per 1,000 students and staff over the 15 weeks since the lifting of the statewide school masking

requirement, representing nearly 30% of all cases observed in schools during that time”

A few questions come to mind in reading the study – the amount of testing that occurred was it uniformed from district with and without mask mandates? How accurate is the school reporting system relative to the federal reporting system? Do the county data match with school district results? IF true perhaps the micro control setting of a school and officials that can control the student body makes the mask more effective. In the societal view above it is not showing this result.

The two countries who did follow draconian methods are seeing very high confirmations this year relative to past years – New Zealand & China.

The benefit in delaying society open is two fold – a vaccine could be developed so the spread can stopped – treatment could be developed so if you got sick the odds of dying is less. What actually transpired is now the vaccine is a prophylactic and helps you not get as sick and/or die. The vaccine does not help stop the spread so the first value of draconian measures is not working out for NZ and China. Hopefully the vaccine is preventing enough deaths to make up for the societal disruptions particularly for the youth and the active society.

The infections seems quite inevitable. Looking at just the US and Europe (in theory better reporting) so far the average confirmation per capita is above 30%. This should likely be the expectation that 30% of society be tested and confirmed to have had covid. Based on our China data their confirmation per capita sits below 1%! New Zealand confirmation per capita is now at 40%.

Likely the data is wrong from China but it would have to be many times wrong as they have a lot of confirmations coming to them. With the current vaccines trying to trap the virus from spreading is an impossible task unless you plan to closed down society for a very long time.

The US leads in deaths 360. Confirmation leaders is Japan. (the clean city as everyone was noting in the beginning). The confirmation per capita level they are at 19% – so they still have some more confirmations coming. France is over 57% confirmed.

On the US front we have NY leading confirmation and FL leading deaths. No matter what policy the confirmation of all states over 20%. Infection is inevitable and the vaccines did not deliver as initially promised in terms of stopping the spread.

County view LA leads the confirmation pack nearly 2000 – still lots of testing!

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The big topic of recent is the airline mask mandate. Policy/Mandates range in effectiveness. Policy/Mandates should be viewed in the following light – #1 If followed does it do what its intended to do. #2 Policing policy/mandate capability – Enforcement and punishment.

In the beginning we noted common sense would say a mask effectively worn would reduce some probability of infection largely as viruses would at the very least be found on liquid aerosol and would be captured even on cloth mask. However the data suggest this policy/mandate does not work. We can easily measure counties with mandates (school mask mandates – typically also have mask mandates in other areas).

In general (NY/CA) many more mandates vs. (FL/TX)

Michigan had clear county distinctions for School Mask Mandates – no large differences in outcome

Many areas show that mandates actually increase transmission. Hypothesis to this is due #2 Policing – enforcement and punishment. Clearly when people don’t want to do something but still do it they don’t do it very well. The degree of failure of mask from not putting over nose to using the right materials are areas where a person who is against will push the limits. In most cases you are depending on fight attendants/ teachers to police the situation. I doubt many were trained in policing and proper face wearing and identification of materials that would be sufficient as mask. Punishment was a reprimand? Kicked off the plane can’t go to school to work? Who was in charge of enforcing this punishment? Trained to do this? Wearing a mask is similar to other hygiene routines (in terms of actions) which we don’t mandate – washing hands after going to bathroom – covering mouth when sneezing/coughing – etc…The reason is its hard to enforce and police. Certainly a societal recommendation and pressure seems to suffice for most. The biggest issue with mask mandates which likely caused more transmission than places without – it is hypothesized because of the mandates the board/management team did not further do other things to mitigate as the mask was supposed to be sufficient given the govt mandate. Their logic could be -Why would the govt not mandate what is sufficient? Would the govt. mandate something less inferior than another effective action? However there is something that would have been more effective and easy to police and actually be effective – A national CO2 ppm guideline for public spaces. A CO2 sensor is a cost effective measuring device <$100. OSHA could have easily done this and even offer grants for areas not achieving CO2 levels to help them fix it. The policing and effectiveness of this mandate is superior over mask mandates and I would contend be better than a mask. Now someone can still do both and be ultra safe but a CO2 mandate would have and is a superior policy to mask mandates.

Here is a study since that’s what is needed to merit common sense concerns and data interpretation skills seem to be limited for many- https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

“Conclusion:

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.”

Also we have shown multiple times before that airplanes are very well ventilated compared to public buildings given the requirement to bring in fresh air into the cabin. We also have multiple studies showing relatively minimal spread in airplane even though confirmed patients on plane – https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/11/20-3299_article

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30314-5/fulltext

I have to talk about this last topic. I attended my nephew service age 21 a couple of weeks ago – still processing. Perhaps the direct line to covid policy is hard here – but I know for a fact my own teenage kids have had an awful 2 years. My son missed his prom – had his first year of college in his dorm room. All this took a great toll on him – perhaps he needs to “man up” and realize how many elderly he has saved from staying in his dorm room and sacrificing his prime fun youth time period. My daughter sophomore/junior HS has been awful. Social media bullying is much more prominent when people don’t have to physically see each other. It is akin to driving a car and how one can do things they would not do if they were not surrounded by 1+ton of metal to remove them from their connection to another human being. I truly empathize to our youths including those in China – just shocking. Here is study which shows this issue – unfortunately the study time period is not long enough to actually get the true social impact but it’s a start – https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00082-2/fulltext

“In conclusion, although the effects of lockdowns on overall population mental health were small, there were substantial and clinically relevant effects for some groups. The adverse mental health effects were largely seen in women with dependent children, who are likely to have borne the burden of the additional workload associated with working from home, as well as caring for and educating children. As such, the lockdown exaggerated existing inequalities in the responsibility for household and caring duties. These mental health effects should be accounted for when evaluating the merits and costs of the Australian COVID-19 policy approach.”

The US still leads in deaths – but Germany, S. Korea, France, and Italy have higher confirmations. On a per capita basis Australia and NZ alarming. Many European countries approaching 50% per capita confirmation.

US surge likely not going to happen till a few weeks from now when it gets hot to drive everyone inside in the South.

Australia pushed out their issues with massive quarantines – hopefully this means fatality rates will be lower as they can get vaccinated to reduce fatality – but they are seeing very high confirmations now.

New Zealand admired by many now still in a confirmation bubble – approaching 600 deaths this year.

Germany is observing one of the longest confirmation bubbles – most countries spike and then come off – this has been elevated since Feb. Deaths are half of last year.

Who knows if China data is accurate but we are still seeing elevated confirmation – deaths are coming off.

Ukraine has issues more important than covid – 0 reported confirmations for awhile

Our two most regulated states NY and CA lead confirmation and deaths. Note confirmation per capita all converging no one is becoming an outlier showing their policies of limiting transmission was better.

Covid19mathblog.com

The big covid news of recent is the study release showing IVM does not work – https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115869

Disclaimer: I did take IVM along with the drugs noted on FLCC protocol when I got covid AFTER a few months from taking a vaccine shot – as most of the suggestions presented minor risk with a potential good reward – https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/FLCCC-Protocols-%E2%80%93-A-Guide-to-the-Management-of-COVID-19.pdf Whether it directly helped me I don’t know but I wasn’t going to do nothing when I COULD make it better without much risk.

When data is involved a combination of little nudges likely produces the outcome one desires. Why would I say all this – well why wasn’t the IVM tested along with Paxlovid? Why not have both set in the same setting – https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115869

Perhaps pure coincidences but every nudge was made for Paxlovid. One interesting claim for IVM – its effectiveness requires Zinc. Many point out then thats not IVM but something else – guess what Paxlovid is combo drug – packaged as one – https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-first-oral-antiviral-treatment-covid-19 “Pfizer’s Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir tablets and ritonavir tablets, co-packaged for oral use)”

Perhaps the IVM cheerleaders should have announce IVZ (IVM with Zinc) and then a test would have been done on the connection of each other. The study did not note taking IVM with any other supplements.

Lets go through the nudges – as always LOOK AT AND STUDY THE DEMOGRAPHICS –

IVM Study

Paxlovid Study

NUDGE ALL TO FAVOR THE OUTCOME TO PAXLOVID

Size – smaller in Paxlovid

Age – lower in Paxlovid – in fact the Placebo was higher in Paxlovid whereas IVM was fairly balanced.

Female/Male Ratio (Females overall better outcomes from Covid) – More males in Placebo for Paxlovid

Times of infection – Paxlovid majority under 3 days – IVM majority over 3 days

Dosage 3 days in IVM 5 days in Paxlovid

Conflict of interest – IVM study none – Paxlovid all https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2118542/suppl_file/nejmoa2118542_disclosures.pdf

Others are also noting some concerns doing the study in Brazil for IVM – given the availability of IVM perhaps not the best place for the placebo group. Did they exclude this – there was no mentioned of this as this person noted – https://twitter.com/alexandrosM/status/1509400149608448000?t=Mn6_qx1wiaIRh3XT3I8DeQ&s=19

A potential outcome could be both drugs are a complete bust – but the fact remains the IVM study touted as PROOF IVM is useless has holes in it. Everyone should do their own risk/reward – many people still take Vitamin C/D drink tea with honey etc.. for colds – likely reason its minor risk and potentially a good reward – no study needed.

USA confirmations are minor now compared to many countries S. Korea, Germany, France etc…Deaths are still the most. Our fatality rates are very high – perhaps a sign of overclassification?

S. Korea so much confirmation but fatality rates are so low – IS this a real bad flu season? Looks like it has peaked.

Germany has a new surge – fatality rates still very low

Is France going through another cycle?

Australia is going through another cycle

Very hard to be so concerned about Covid in US with confirmations approaching 2020 levels – summer spike coming?

The big leaders in the states are the big three NY, TX and CA for confirmation

Amazing to see that Chattahoochee GA is now at 62% confirmed per capita. Note there is a military base there.

Perhaps optimism – but it looks like this might be the first showing that total deaths are finally below the “normal” line. Have to wait till next week to confirm it is real.

Covid19mathblog.com

As noted very early on – our policy choices have consequences beyond covid. The worse part of consequences/collateral damage is if it is happening to the group who is less impacted by covid (young/healthy) because you have just traded their lives for someone who has lived most of their lives naturally – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/health/alcohol-deaths-covid.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

“Among adults younger than 65, alcohol-related deaths actually outnumbered deaths from Covid-19 in 2020; some 74,408 Americans ages 16 to 64 died of alcohol-related causes, while 74,075 individuals under 65 died of Covid. And the rate of increase for alcohol-related deaths in 2020 — 25 percent — outpaced the rate of increase of deaths from all causes, which was 16.6 percent.

The alcohol-related deaths went up for everybody — men, women, as well as every ethnic and racial group. Deaths among men and women increased at about the same rate, but the absolute number of deaths among men was much higher.”

We know for certain that age and health is a big driver in Covid. We know behavior drives transmission and mask do work individually but mask mandates don’t work as the behavior to mandates overwhelm any benefit.

The best graphic still is from Canada which incorporates the vaccine jabs taken – the health – and age. This graphic clearly shows policy to restrict or thwart activities of healthy youth (<50,< 3 at risk conditions) was asking them to sacrifice for very little reward particularly if they took the vaccine too.

A truly great graphic is one that you still learn from even weeks later. The above graphic also points out the policy to promote health over vaccine is a lot more compelling. If you are in 60-69 age group and you took all 3 doses but are unhealthy your odds of hospitalization is 13X vs being very healthy! IF you didn’t take any vaccine and are very healthy female in the 60-69 category you have 26% better odds of not being hospitalized than the 3 dosed unhealthy 60-69! Below shows the comparison of the table. For Males this health message is much more important. As a young male you can reduce your odds of hospitalization from covid if you were very healthy by over 50% vs. taking 3 doses of vaccine! The only category that vaccines was better than being very healthy is a female over 80+

WHY not promote the healthy lifestyle – WHY not give choice to those that are healthy! Too many excuses to not promote this message – the biggest one I hear it takes a long time to get healthy – LOL we are going on 3 years!!! People rather force/coerce people to take a shot that they may not want in their body vs promoting a healthy lifestyle and rewarding those with healthy lifestyle the right to choose to take a vaccine?

In terms of fatalities we know under 50 and heathy fatalities are near 0. The table below doesn’t incorporate health but it certainly is obvious if you are healthy the fatality rates drop significantly as you won’t even be going to the hospital per graphic above.

People comparing life lost to wars is wrong and illogical given the wars are typically young men and women who have much life to live vs. the covid deaths. All deaths are sad but in reality of lifespans the younger ones are significantly more tragic.

Policies not considering age impacts are tragic. Personally I know many youths who have been impacted by covid policies way too much – and worse of all for little gain as noted above.

Chile surpasses the US in deaths over the last 7 days. Countries who have fared well are continuing to see a surge in Covid – Iceland, S. Korea, NZ, Germany etc….the positive news the fatality rates have been low – but deaths are climbing to much higher levels than the past few years.

Iceland confirmation surge at least slowing down – deaths surpassed both previous years combined

Germany confirmation continue to rise – the good news deaths are still below last years level

In South Korea confirmations hopefully slows down – deaths are still climbing surpassing the past two years

New Zealand in all its grand attempts to isolate is now seeing a huge surge in deaths – confirmations are leveling off

Suspect on the China stats but it is now showing a leveling off of confirmations and deaths

US confirmations and deaths continue to be below last years levels.

Interesting data to show 0 confirmation for FL but they do lead the death count with CA leading the confirmation count

Hot spots for transmissions are in NV

Even with Covid deaths in US down – we are still producing more deaths than usual on a weekly basis

Covid Winter 2021/2022 coming to an end – unfortunately the improvement on deaths from previous year is not as significant as forecasted. Evolution of covid to be more transmissible was probably lacking along with the optimism for the vaccine to reduce fatalities. All the vaccine push (mandates, vitriol to the unvaccinated) and mask mandates only improved deaths by under 20% from the previous winter that had no vaccine!

Covid19mathblog.com

If you look at Asia as a whole a covid spike is not unexpected given the pattern from last year. What is interesting it was India & Turkey growing in confirmation last year – however it is not India Turkey but China, S. Korea, Thailand, Vietnam now.

India is at the bottom of a previous surge – last year started growing at this point

Turkey is coming off now whereas last year started growing at this point

China is in unprecedented territory at least in reporting confirmations and deaths.

South Korea has gone exponential – however the fatality rates are extremely low given the reported confirmations – still highest deaths ever.

Thailand has seen this spike before

Vietnam is going parabolic in confirmations but the deaths are staying low. Are we measuring a cold/flu like virus now?

New Zealand confirmations and death are all time highs

Here in the US things are down below last year in both deaths and confirmations.

US tops deaths still but way below many countries for confirmation.

519 death revision in MA. CA leads in deaths and tied with TX in confirmation.

Unfortunately mask or vaccination rates were not the key variable in controlling transmission rates (TX FL typically no mask mandate vs. CA NY mask mandates) – X axis vaccination rates.

This was also demonstrated in this study – https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4046809

“Interpretation: FCM mandates in schools were not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 incidence or transmission, suggesting that this intervention was not effective. Instead, age-dependency was the most important factor in explaining the transmission risk for children attending school.”

When they conclude age – it really means behavior. Certain behaviors particularly in certain age groups lead to transmission. AND/OR the age group classrooms were somehow different than the others.

Unfortunately we continue to see how levels of deaths vs. normal levels (2014-2019)

Covid19mathblog.com

Human behavior is the missing link in most covid analysis. A lab experiment/outcome drove the “science” from mask to vaccination. In general one has to start from somewhere and initially it made sense. However as the data came in we can clearly see human behavior played a large role. Many counties with mask mandates had high confirmations even greater than counties that could care less about mask and vaccine mandates. How is that possible when the science and logic intuition would say something is being reduced? Even the worse data sampling for cloth mask shows only a 10% capture – but still 10% is still greater than 0. Vaccines were shown to reduce viral load therefore logically less transmission. How did counties with mask and vaccination mandate not fare better? Mask/Vaccination mandates gave a false sense of security leading to multiple human actions which drive more transmission not less – here are a few examples not in any particular order:

• Because of mask/vaccine mandates people went out more often than without and perhaps stayed at places longer than one would without a mask or vaccine mandates.
• Facilities thought a mask/vaccine mandate was good enough therefore did not look into ventilation and filtration/purification systems.
• Rule following without belief lead to poor mask wearing (e.g. not covering nose, loose cloth) vs. those who believed in mask wore mask properly and perhaps even up spend and used N95 mask.
• A dismissal of cold like symptoms because vaccinated perhaps never even got tested vs. – not vaccinated people were much more cautious and stayed home when confronted with cold symptoms or even got tested.

In general CA and NY are school mask mandates plus general mask wearing counties whereas FL and TX are in general mask less mandated counties.

Below chart shows the current stats in order of Death per capita from covid by country – stopping at 0.2%. The first top 10-15 one could argue a social economic impact. Then you hit the US. What sticks out is our BMI level relative the rest of the countries. Hopefully this will be a wake up call to evaluate our food system and also our message to the public. Pharma solutions vs. healthy lifestyle needs to seriously be questioned IF we do care about lives.

The beginning of going over all of Pfizer vaccine documents (55K pages) – here summary of all the adverse events – https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/pfizer-doc-5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf#page=30

List 1291 – safe for everyone? Shouldn’t we spend time on finding those that could be harmed by the vaccine?

US still leads the world in deaths but confirmation has dropped significantly – perhaps sending home tests will result in this since not being reported anymore? Likely over 25% of US population has had covid and at the very least have some natural immunity. This also means more chance for long-covid – good news OTC allergy medicine shown to help – https://www.salon.com/2022/02/21/long-haulers-may-have-finally-found-relief-in-inexpensive-over-the-counter/

Denmark things are amazing with almost 50% confirmation per capita. Unfortunately deaths are rising.

Ukraine is no longer reporting covid as they have bigger issues.

Russia covid deaths continue to sustain.

As discussed US confirmation now equivalent to last year. Deaths are staying under last year but not by much.

Covid19mathblog.com

Amazing chart below to think about – now with 3 years of data.

First set shows the 7 day average confirmation cases. This gives the indication of how rapidly the virus is spreading.

The second charts shows the 7 day average deaths.

The 3rd chart shows the 30 day moving average of deaths/confirmation. This is trying to show the fatality rate giving an indication of how well our medical treatment and/or vaccine effectiveness to reduce fatalities.

The fourth chart shows the fully vaccinated over the population – vaccination rate 18+

The fifth chart is the annual running tally of deaths each year.

Important to see we have been over 60% vaccinated this year whereas last year this time less than 7%. Yet we have way more confirmation – hence the vaccine did not stop transmission – even just a little bit – and even though those were the promises made in the beginning – https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/10/07/biden_vaccinated_protected_from_covid_cannot_spread_it_to_you.html

The politicizing of covid would eventually catch up as the ability of govt to actually control and limit an unknown in a discrete time period is nearly impossible without some nature luck – deaths in the US last year was way above the bar of 220K as stated – this certainly did not age well – https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1319446692236791814?t=gChxktazKr1lyWUzrJLrqw&s=19

One of the best graphics on covid was developed in Canada. They realize reporting totals without age, health, and vaccination amount can skew the view and create unnecessary fear. https://news.gov.bc.ca/files/1.21.22_COVID_Hospitalizations.pdf

Stay healthy and the odds will be in your favor – as you get older 50+ vaccination is advised even when healthy. This is the message that should have been told in the beginning.

An interesting piece which perhaps causes some vaccination hesitancy but perhaps valid. As noted the bioaccumulation aspect of spike protein would be concerning on a long time line. Elderly less risk of this being an issue. Data from Pfizer and Moderna could be used to alleviate some of these concerns but this data is still limited. https://covidmythbuster.substack.com/p/what-happens-to-those-billions-of?utm_source=url

“The number of nanoparticles (NP) injected in a dose of these anti-COVID vaccines is utterly flabbergasting: up to 50 billion viral vectors for AstraZeneca, 40 billion LNPs for Moderna, and likely 10 for Pfizer. It’s not very clear how many intact messenger RNA are in each LNP , but even if we agree to only 1, and that each one produces 1000 spike protein, we are talking your body having to deal with a minimum 30 trillion pathogenic spike proteins2 in a few months time…

Those are numbers way beyond very severe SARS-COV-2 infections: typically at infection peak between 1 and 100 billion virions, are present in the body.

What the medical and public health community hasn’t realised is that all the healthy cells that will be “infected”3 by these nanoparticles will eventually be destroyed by the immune system. When you take the Pfizer vaccine 3 times, you accept sacrificing up to 45 billion of your healthy cells… with AstraZeneca it’s 150 billion!”

Public message to get well and healthy is becoming more and more important with over 23% of the population confirmed with covid. Those recovered from covid hold some long term heart issues (also noted with vaccination) – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01689-3

“Our results provide evidence that the risk and 1-year burden of cardiovascular disease in survivors of acute COVID-19 are substantial. Care pathways of those surviving the acute episode of COVID-19 should include attention to cardiovascular health and disease.”

Exercise is important – you cannot pill/vaccinate your way to health as demonstrated – https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abl4988

“we demonstrate that skeletal muscle NADPH oxidase 4 (NOX4), which is induced after exercise, facilitates ROS-mediated adaptive responses that promote muscle function, maintain redox balance, and prevent the development of insulin resistance. Conversely, reductions in skeletal muscle NOX4 in aging and obesity contribute to the development of insulin resistance. NOX4 deletion in skeletal muscle compromised exercise capacity and antioxidant defense and promoted oxidative stress and insulin resistance in aging and obesity. The abrogated adaptive mechanisms, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance could be corrected by deleting the H2O2-detoxifying enzyme GPX-1 or by treating mice with an agonist of NFE2L2, the master regulator of antioxidant defense. These findings causally link NOX4-derived ROS in skeletal muscle with adaptive responses that promote muscle function and insulin sensitivity.”

So here I will present some conflicting paper – first we start with paper declaring vaccine is superior over natural immunity and note the funding sources – https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.10.22270789v1

“while Omicron-based immunogens may be adequate boosters, they are unlikely to be superior to existing vaccines for priming in SARS-CoV-2 naïve individuals.”

“Funding Statement

PLM is supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Innovation and National Research Foundation of South Africa, the SA Medical Research Council SHIP program, the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA). We acknowledge funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through the Global Immunology and Immune Sequencing for Epidemic Response (GIISER) program. SIR is a LOreal/UNESCO Women in Science South Africa Young Talents awardee.”

Now papers supporting natural immunity superior – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788894

“Although evidence of natural immunity in unvaccinated healthy US adults up to 20 months after confirmed COVID-19 infection is encouraging, it is unclear how these antibody levels correlate with protection against future SARS-CoV-2 infections, particularly with emerging variants. The public health implications and long-term understanding of these findings merit further consideration.”

“Funding/Support: This work was supported by charitable donations from the Ben-Dov family.

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The Ben-Dov family had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data, preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript, and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.”

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2200133

“Overall, in a national database study in Qatar, we found that the effectiveness of previous infection in preventing reinfection with the alpha, beta, and delta variants of SARS-CoV-2 was robust (at approximately 90%), findings that confirmed earlier estimates.1-3 Such protection against reinfection with the omicron variant was lower (approximately 60%) but still considerable. In addition, the protection of previous infection against hospitalization or death caused by reinfection appeared to be robust, regardless of variant.”

“Supported by the Biomedical Research Program and the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Biomathematics Research Core at Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar; the Qatar Ministry of Public Health; Hamad Medical Corporation; and Sidra Medicine. The Qatar Genome Program and Qatar University Biomedical Research Center supported viral genome sequencing.”

Given the above which view would you take for natural immunity?

Now we have data censorship because we cant interpret data and/or cant handle the truth? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10537161/CDC-refusing-publish-data-collected-booster-effectiveness-aged-18-49.html

“CDC is refusing to publish data it has collected on booster effectiveness for 33 MILLION Americans aged 18-49 over fears it might show the vaccines as ineffective: FDA expert tells CDC to ‘tell the truth’

Two weeks ago the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published data about the effectiveness of boosters against COVID-19

The CDC failed to publish a tranche of their data, however – omitting the impact on those aged 18-49, who are least likely to benefit from boosters

The CDC are also being criticized for failing to publish their information about child hospitalization rates and comorbidities

A spokeswoman for the CDC said they were concerned that the data would be misinterpreted, pointing out that it was incomplete and not verified

Critics said that it was always better to publish the information rather than withhold, and allow scientists to analyze and explain what they could”

The US is finally not the top confirmation country – still tops on death.

Iceland over 80% vaccinated but they are soaring in confirmations – deaths are also approaching the highs in 2020.

TX leading confirmations and deaths now – followed by CA.

TX death is in the population centers.

Relative to last year a large spike in confirmation – but deaths have been in the same region until recently

Similar picture in CA – large spike but rapid drop in confirmation.

Similar in NY – rapid fall in confirmation

Added NY and FL to the graph. NY generally masked – FL not. What is interesting to see is Miami/Dade and Queens have one of the highest vaccination rate among all the major counties/cities yet also observe very high transmission rates.

Covid19mathblog.com

11 unfortunate truths that the data has shown us:

1. Vaccination does not prevent transmission at levels seen in previous vaccination programs. High vaccination rate counties do not show a material reduction in community transmission compared to adjacent or similar counties with low vaccination rate.
2. Vaccination has shown to reduce extreme harm from covid (fatalities and hospitalization).
3. Extreme harm from covid – hospitalization and death – a majority (always exceptions) come from elderly which shows a co-correlation with amount of comorbidity typically 2 or more. Less than 50 yr old extreme harm are connected to multiple comorbidities.
4. Unvaccinated elderly and/or combination of unhealthy lifestyle has lead to a majority of hospitalization and deaths over the winter 2021.
5. However unvaccinated by itself is NOT the major contributor of the extreme harm. A healthy (less than 2 comorbidity) less than 50 yr old – the majority – do not show up being hospitalized and therefore not dying. The subset of the unvaccinated being hospitalized represents less than 2% of the entire unvaccinated. Those unvaccinated and unhealthy are typically a result of poor lifestyle choices being extended into the choice of vaccination. The inability to value health and effort to maintain health is showing up in the decision to not vaccinate for this small subset of the unvaccinated.
6. Healthy lifestyle is positive outcome for covid and many other health issues in society.
7. Vaccines do cause harm to some people – these harms (heart, zoster reactivation) could also come from covid itself but one could choose to live more secluded and/or be very well insulated from the world (e.g. double layered n95, facemask, etc..) to reduce probability of harm to close to 0 and have NO harm from either vaccination or covid infection. By vaccination you are guaranteeing a subset of the population some harm – potentially fatal harm.
8. Vaccination harm likely can be identified to a subset of the population giving them a better choice of living more protected or risking the vaccine harm. Data shows people with heart conditions and previous zoster virus infections have an increase of adverse effect.
9. Long-term bio accumulation impacts of spike protein in the body is unknown – potentially positive or negative.
10. Natural immunity is superior compared to vaccine in both variant protection and longevity. Not trying to compare to the act of getting covid – this is an after effect – no promotion in voluntarily getting covid. Not enough data to confirm.
11. School mask mandates do not work to reduce community transmission. Individually they can work. Usually when an individual makes the personal choice to wear a mask they typically have a high regards for mask and wear it effectively and likely use a superior mask e.g. N95. Perhaps mask mandates do not show effectiveness because as a collective the mask mandate may cause administrators and building managers to not do other preventive practice (ventilation, purification) thinking mask mandates are sufficient.

So what? Combining 1 through 10 unfortunate truths changes the view of the policy to vaccinate ALL at all cost. Most agree to reduce extreme harm (hospitalization and deaths) should be a primary goal. One can achieve a significant reduction of extreme harm WITHOUT forcing a vaccination to the entire public. In theory one could also achieve the goal of reducing extreme harm if successful in vaccinating all – but this will be with a cost per #7 and #9. Perhaps a smaller extreme harm subset is worth it as long as you are not part of the smaller subset.

However the path to smart vaccination policy which minimizes those harmed from vaccination is also a possibility. Without a reduction of transmission there is not a moral argument that your vaccination is guaranteed to help society. It would help society IF you were to be going to the hospital IF you caught covid – but the majority of those people can be very well defined per the data (50+ and/or multiple comorbidity). A smarter vaccine policy would have been to have each person visit a doctor to get a health examination. Health really matters #6 and many people don’t realize they are living unhealthy. The doctor can then let the patient know IF they fall into the category to have an above average chance to be hospitalized IF they caught covid. They can educated them on the value of being healthy and explain what one can do to get or maintain being healthy. In addition, they could also help identify whether person would have an adverse effect from the vaccine and potentially should live a more secluded lifestyle in order to mitigate virus and vaccination harm. Vaccinating people with 0 chance of extreme harm takes away from the global supply of vaccination plus erodes the confidence in policy makers in making smart vs. blunt policies.

The #11 truth is what we have been working on for the past month. It is unfortunate that school masking is not helping reduce community spread. Who wouldn’t want something so simple to work? Individually it makes sense – we have always noted the science of the bioaccumulation of virus on droplets. However we are talking about youths who first of have been noted to hold less viral load than adults. They are also not being extremely harmed by covid. We do know early age infection leads to robust immunity into adulthood. Behavior plays a large role and is being discounted in outcome. Lab and scientific measurements are one thing – and are overall a good indication but many times peoples behavior overwhelm the results. Logically you can see if people believe in mask mandates – they may not do other practical solutions that could reduce transmission more effectively (ventilation/purification). The behavior of a vaccinated person probably contributed to #1 – perhaps if they maintain cautiousness like they were unvaccinated perhaps transmission reduction by vaccine would be more apparent. However it is a fact most people took the vaccine in order to obtain their freedoms back – but it is those very freedoms that likely cause the transmission. The unvaccinated were likely more cautious – wearing n95 mask appropriately etc…and less social. Not all unvaccinated are your stereotypical MSM portrayal. Many unvaccinated are young healthy professionals who perhaps have calculated risk/reward including #9 and #10 and/or have been previously infected. Vaccination rate by age clearly shows society as an overall has appropriately weighed the risk/reward. The only reason 75+ is lower than the 65-74 likely due to health reasons e.g. end of life.

FULLY VACCINATION by AGE GROUP (2/12/2022) CDC https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/COVID-19-Vaccination-and-Case-Trends-by-Age-Group-/gxj9-t96f

This chart below really highlights all the above. This shows the counties in both TX and CA. TX is generally a no school mask mandate state whereas CA is an all school mandate state. Y axis represent all the confirmed cases since Oct 21 divided by the population of the county – giving an effect transmission rate – the higher the number the more people in the county has gotten covid since Oct 21. The X axis is the full vaccination rate of the county for those 18 and older. The more vaccinated the county the farther it is on the right.

Ideally what we wanted to see dots sloping from the far upper left to the bottom lower right – this would indicate vaccination can help in reducing transmission. In addition we would want to see green dots being lower than orange dots to prove that school mandates reduce transmission.

Unfortunately the idealistic world doesn’t exist here. There is no statistical significance on transmission rate and vaccination rate nor school mask mandates effectively assisting in reducing community transmission.

For the school mask mandates we even looked into within a state to account for behavior and temperature and yet we still find no statistical significance in reducing community spread in counties with school mask mandates.

Interesting to see Mongolia observing large transmission over the last 30 days

Reduction in confirmed cases for sure – deaths are still holding up globally.

US total deaths are only higher than the beginning of the crisis YOY comparison. A change in administration did not assist in reducing deaths. 2022 is only slightly below pace of last year even though over 64% vaccinated compared to 2021 which averaged under 40%.

TX is leading both deaths and confirmations now for the US

TX confirmation cases have dropped rapidly – now below last year peak. Deaths still shows an upward projection but still below last years peak.

Unfortunately we are still running above normal deaths in the US

Covid19mathblog.com

Continuing looking at school mask mandates by state by county – we look at CA and TX. CA has a state mandate – TX has an inverse mandate (gov not allowing mask mandates) but a few school districts continue to disobey. Overall since Oct 2021 there is no clear separation with CA. In fact comparing the major city Houston,Austin vs. San Diego, Los Angeles – the TX cities are doing better in reducing transmission. Also to note you have very high vaccinated counties observing high transmission relative to the others (Imperial CA, Irion TX, Maverick TX, Webb TX)

As we have been showing even before Omicron – vaccination status does not have significant impact on transmission. Here is study noting the results for Omicron – https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1279005/v1

“…index vaccinated cases seem to have the same transmission capacity that non-vaccinated people. This did not happen with Delta, where significant SARs differences were observed in global, household and occupational settings (Table 1) within groups.”

They finally did a human trial with covid. The important takeaway is they KNOW who to choose so they don’t have a fatal result or adverse effects. If they know this then they should also be able to pinpoint the vaccine vs. shotgun approach. IF they know this then why make those that you would purposely infect be vaccinated? Also shows that even purposely given the dose not everyone in the category got infected – only 53%! None of them got to the point needing Regeneron. Also they used essentially 1 nasal droplet for infection. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1121993/v1

“To establish a novel SARS-CoV-2 human challenge model, 36 volunteers aged 18-29 years without evidence of previous infection or vaccination were inoculated with 10 TCID50 of a wild-type virus (SARS-CoV-2/human/GBR/484861/2020) intranasally. Two participants were excluded from per protocol analysis due to seroconversion between screening and inoculation. Eighteen (~53%) became infected, with viral load (VL) rising steeply and peaking at ~5 days post-inoculation. Virus was first detected in the throat but rose to significantly higher levels in the nose, peaking at ~8.87 log10 copies/ml (median, 95% CI [8.41,9.53). Viable virus was recoverable from the nose up to ~10 days post-inoculation, on average. There were no serious adverse events. Mild-to-moderate symptoms were reported by 16 (89%) infected individuals, beginning 2-4 days post-inoculation.
Anosmia/dysosmia developed more gradually in 12 (67%) participants.”

“Thirty-six healthy volunteers aged 18-29 years old were enrolled according to protocol-defined inclusion/exclusion criteria. Screening included assessments for known risk factors for severe COVID-19, including
co-morbidities, low or high body mass index, abnormal safety blood tests, spirometry and chest radiography (Figure 1a & Protocol). The protocol had been given a favourable opinion by the UK Health Research Authority – Ad Hoc Specialist Ethics Committee (reference:
20/UK/2001 and 20/UK/0002).”

“greater than mild CT imaging changes or SaO2 ≤94%) were defined for triggering of rescue treatment with monoclonal antibodies (Regeneron), but no such treatment was ultimately required.”

“following SARS-CoV-2 human challenge, viral shedding begins within 2 days of exposure, rapidly reaching high levels with viable virus detectable up to 12 days post-inoculation, and significantly higher VL in the nose than the throat despite its later onset.”

NZ finally opening up – interesting time to open up with the surge at its highest point ever – perhaps needed to open up so can diffuse the issue of pending deaths to justify quarantine? –

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-new-zealand-4513b42df9301b9baacb874c7b91cb30

Another vitamin D study – once again a very asymmetric risk/reward to take Vitamin D – clearly being deficient of Vitamin D is not a good thing – and too much generally just leaves the body.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0263069

“Of 1176 patients admitted, 253 had records of a 25(OH)D level prior to COVID-19 infection. A lower vitamin D status was more common in patients with the severe or critical disease (<20 ng/mL [87.4%]) than in individuals with mild or moderate disease (<20 ng/mL [34.3%] p < 0.001). Patients with vitamin D deficiency (<20 ng/mL) were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical disease than patients with 25(OH)D ≥40 ng/mL (odds ratio [OR], 14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4 to 51; p < 0.001).”

“Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients, pre-infection deficiency of vitamin D was associated with increased disease severity and mortality.”

Natural immunity looks to be better in terms of longevity relative to vaccination – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788894

“Although evidence of natural immunity in unvaccinated healthy US adults up to 20 months after confirmed COVID-19 infection is encouraging, it is unclear how these antibody levels correlate with protection against future SARS-CoV-2 infections, particularly with emerging variants. The public health implications and long-term understanding of these findings merit further consideration.”

An awful mask study supporting mask – just done so bad in so many ways and then spun in a way to show efficacy – https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm

The good thing is many people saw the same issues so I don’t have to get into it – https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/mask-studies-reach-a-new-scientific

US still leads in deaths and confirmation – 23% of population has been infected now – greater than the princess diamond cruise ship. France is at 32%!

France with over 80% vaccinated having an historic surge and deaths near last year certainly doesn’t show much confidence in their vaccine program.

US confirmation falling but deaths continue to rise.

Winter deaths have surpassed our forecast back in Sept. – should still be better than last year but not as much as one would think with over 85% vaccinated in the 50+ category.

Deaths in the USA is better than last year – confirmations are up from last year.

OK and TN are the hotspots for transmission