Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 169

Another study showing what is now obvious to everyone–lockdowns did nothing to stop the spread of CV-19 and imposed a higher health toll than did the virus.    (SSRN Study)

Longtime readers know that notwithstanding my current despair over the sensational and baseless claims being made about vax safety, I also have been opposed to vax mandates and have said that it did not appear to me that there was a justification for the vaccination of almost all children and young adults.  This study supports that perspective in regard to young adults, particularly in regard to university students.  As the article notes, there is an extremely low risk of serious illness caused by CV-19 in this group and there is some risk of adverse events, making a vaccine mandate for the group ethically questionable.  The design of the study is odd, doing a supposed analysis in regard to previously uninfected young adults, of which there are approximately zero.  And the confidence interval for the risks is extremely wide.  (SSRN Study)

Somehow the vax safety nuts are turning this study into “vax destroy natural immunity”, instead of focussing on what it really says, which is that in children aged 5 to 11 neither vax nor prior infection provides lasting protection against infection against Omicron strains.  Not a word about the effect on natural immunity.  In fact the study says that a combination of prior infection and vax in these children appears more effective than either alone.  There were incredibly low rates of hospitalization in the study group and no deaths.  (NEJM Study)

If you are going to claim the vax are causing serious adverse events, you have to know what the background rates of those events are.  Only events in excess of those background rates could even possibly be linked to the vax, and in the case of an epidemic, you would have to prove that they were caused by the vax and not the infection, which is extremely widespread in vaxed persons.  This study gives those background rates for a number of adverse events, using an extremely large set of US health databases.  There are seasonal and other trends in these background rates, which obviously have to be included in analyses, but usually aren’t.  This is the best data source for understanding if the vax, or CV-19 infection, have increased rates of certain health events.  And there is no research using these data sources finding any significant number of deaths related to vaccines.    (SSRN Study)

All the isolation of children worsened their general immune system functioning and left them more vulnerable to serious cases of common childhood infections.  This story says that Illinois hospitals are experiencing a dramatic surge in common respiratory infections in children, including rhinovirus and enterovirus.  Congratulations to all the tunnel vision public health experts.  (Becker Story)

This paper estimates, and I emphasize the word estimates, that a lot of people aren’t working because of long-term CV-19 health impacts.  I think, and there is some research supporting this, that there are a lot of malingerers in this group who simply don’t want to work and having had CV-19 is a good excuse.  The study does nothing to validate the supposed long-term impacts of CV-19, it merely assumes that if you had it and you aren’t working, that must be why.  The biggest flaw is that this is based on survey data, so has response bias and the people who did respond about not working have a strong motivation to blame in on CV-19.  And there is no comparison to reductions in working that might be caused by other serious diseases.  So I don’t buy the garbage conclusion that CV-19 has greatly reduced the workforce.  I think slackers who were never that interested in working have reduced the workforce.  (NBER Study)

The first line of defense against respiratory pathogens is in the upper respiratory tract.  This research indicates that even after hospitalization for CV-19 infection, antibodies in the nasal passages tend to drop to low levels and are not re-boosted by subsequent vaccination.  This is a likely explanation for why previously infected and vaxed persons have high rates of subsequent infection.  I keep saying, the immune system is smart, it isn’t going to waste a lot of energy on a pretty harmless pathogen.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study finds that a vaccine delivered in the mucus passages of the upper respiratory tract prompts a superior T cell response.  (Medrxiv Study)

Rates of infection are far higher than those reported.  This study from the Vancouver, Canada area found that by August 2022, 70% to 80% of children, 60% to 70% of adults aged 19 to 50, and 40% of adults over age 60 had been infected, which was about 12 times the number of reported infections.  (Medrxiv Paper)

I never know what to make of these studies on supplements.  Glucosamine is taken frequently, and apparently with some effectiveness, by people with arthritis and other joint problems.  According to this research from China, routine use of glucosamine lessened the risk of CV-19 hospitalization or death, but not infection.  (Medrxiv Study)