Same can be said about the local farm supply shop. They probably got Ivermectin behind a glass case.
Coronavirus Thread: Worldwide Pandemic
- Thread starter 88m3
- Start date
Same can be said about the local farm supply shop. They probably got Ivermectin behind a glass case.
I never heard about these broads before.
Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid
In some patients, remnants of the coronavirus in the gut may stifle production of serotonin, an important neurotransmitter, researchers suggest.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Dr. Lucky Tran :verified: (@luckytran@med-mastodon.com)
Attached: 2 images Pfizer says it will price Covid treatment Paxlovid at nearly $1,400 for a five-day course, which researchers estimate only costs Pfizer $13 to produce. That's a 10,000%+ markup. Shameful.
WSJ News Exclusive | Pfizer Prices Covid Drug Paxlovid at $1,400 for a Five-Day Course
The drugmaker, which has begun negotiating with pharmacy-benefit managers and health plans this week, is expected to offer steep discounts to ensure wide access.
www.wsj.com
'For Shame': Pfizer to Charge $1,390 for Lifesaving Covid Drug That Costs Just $13
"Pfizer treats Paxlovid like a Prada handbag; a luxury for the few rather than a treatment for the many," said one consumer advocate.
www.commondreams.org
Schools cut covid-19 sick days by 20 per cent using HEPA air filters
The eagerly awaited finding comes from the first randomised trial of putting HEPA filter machines into classrooms
www.newscientist.com
Schools cut covid-19 sick days by 20 per cent using HEPA air filters
Placing HEPA air filters into classrooms in the Bradford area of the UK reduced the number of covid-19-related absences among students by more than 20 per centBy Clare Wilson
20 October 2023
A HEPA filter in a classroom at Bowling Park Primary School in Bradford, UK
University of Leeds
Air filter machines put into a handful of UK schools reduced the number of covid-19-related sick days by more than 20 per cent, the first such randomised trial of the intervention has found.
HEPA filters, devices about the size of a tall kitchen waste bin, were placed in the classrooms of schools in the Bradford area. The results haven’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but one of the researchers revealed the 20 per cent fall …
at a conference last month.
“You could still have outbreaks even if you have HEPA filters in your classrooms, but the underlying illness absence was over 20 per cent reduced when you have got the air cleaners in place,” said Catherine Noakes at the University of Leeds, UK, at the World Health Organization Europe Indoor Air Conference.
The trial was carried out between September 2021 and March 2022, during which time the UK had a large wave of covid-19 infections caused by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Ten schools were given HEPA filters, with two or three put into each classroom, depending on the room size. These were compared with another 20 schools – similar to the first 10 in terms of buildings, the students’ ethnicities and their families’ income levels – that didn’t have the filters.
The 20 per cent fall was only in absences related to covid-19, but the machines probably also cut sickness due to flu and other pathogens that cause coughs and colds, says team member Mark Mon-Williams, also at the University of Leeds. “This should reduce school absences related to any airborne illness,” he says. “There’s nothing fundamentally different between covid and flu, they’re both a virus that gets filtered out of the air.”
Having air filters in schools could also make families less likely to keep children off school as a precaution during a surge of flu or covid-19, says Mon-Williams. “We need to demonstrate that schools are safe, healthy environments.”
But when the full trial results are published, funders will need to weigh up the benefits of the machines compared with their cost, says Michael Absoud at King’s College London. HEPA filters can cost several hundred pounds each.
Read more
Covid boosters: Why are US and UK vaccine policies so different?
There might be more benefit from spending the money on school nurses or support for children with special needs, he says. “People say that’s a false dichotomy, but it’s not. There are a lot of other priorities.”
Air filters have other potential downsides. They can be noisy and tend to generate a cold draught, says Stephen Baker at the University of Cambridge, who helped run a trial of HEPA machines in two wards at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, the results of which are still awaited. And the number of machines needed for the air volume of a room is unclear, he says.
Nevertheless, the headline result from the schools trial is “excellent”, says Baker. “The dream scenario would be as we rebuild public places, then having appropriate air filtration in them would make them safer long term for a whole host of things.”
What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
The Cochrane Library, a trusted source of health information, misled the public by prioritizing rigor over reality
www.scientificamerican.com
PUBLIC HEALTH
What Went Wrong with a Highly Publicized COVID Mask Analysis?
The Cochrane Library, a trusted source of health information, misled the public by prioritizing rigor over reality- By Naomi Oreskes on November 1, 2023
Scientific American November 2023 Issue
Credit: Izhar Cohen
The COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing, but in May officials ended its designation as a public health emergency. So it's now fair to ask if all our efforts to slow the spread of the disease—from masking, to hand washing, to working from home—were worth it. One group of scientists has seriously muddied the waters with a report that gave the false impression that masking didn't help.
The group's report was published by Cochrane, an organization that collects databases and periodically issues “systematic” reviews of scientific evidence relevant to health care. This year it published a paper addressing the efficacy of physical interventions to slow the spread of respiratory illness such as COVID. The authors determined that wearing surgical masks “probably makes little or no difference” and that the value of N95 masks is “very uncertain.”
The media reduced these statements to the claim that masks did not work. Under a headline proclaiming “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote that “the mainstream experts and pundits ... were wrong” and demanded that they apologize for the unnecessary bother they had caused. Other headlines and comments declared that “Masks Still Don't Work,” that the evidence for masks was “Approximately Zero,” that “Face Masks Made ‘Little to No Difference,’” and even that “12 Research Studies Prove Masks Didn't Work.”
Karla Soares-Weiser, the Cochrane Library's editor in chief, objected to such characterizations of the review. The report had not concluded that “masks don't work,” she insisted. Rather the review of studies of masking concluded that the “results were inconclusive.”
In fairness to the Cochrane Library, the report did make clear that its conclusions were about the quality and capaciousness of available evidence, which the authors felt were insufficient to prove that masking was effective. It was “uncertain whether wearing [surgical] masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses.” Still, the authors were also uncertain about that uncertainty, stating that their confidence in their conclusion was “low to moderate.” You can see why the average person could be confused.
This was not just a failure to communicate. Problems with Cochrane's approach to these reviews run much deeper.
A closer look at how the mask report confused matters is revealing. The study's lead author, Tom Jefferson of the University of Oxford, promoted the misleading interpretation. When asked about different kinds of masks, including N95s, he declared, “Makes no difference—none of it.” In another interview, he called mask mandates scientifically baseless.
Recently Jefferson has claimed that COVID policies were “evidence-free,” which highlights a second problem: the classic error of conflating absence of evidence with evidence of absence. The Cochrane finding was not that masking didn't work but that scientists lacked sufficient evidence of sufficient quality to conclude that they worked. Jefferson erased that distinction, in effect arguing that because the authors couldn't prove that masks did work, one could say that they didn't work. That's just wrong.
Cochrane has made this mistake before. In 2016 a flurry of media reports declared that flossing your teeth was a waste of time. “Feeling Guilty about Not Flossing?” the New York Times asked. No need to worry, Newsweek reassured us, because the “flossing myth” had “been shattered.” But the American Academy of Periodontology, dental professors, deans of dental schools and clinical dentists (including mine) all affirmed that clinical practice reveals clear differences in tooth and gum health between those who floss and those who don't. What was going on?
The answer demonstrates a third issue with the Cochrane approach: how it defines evidence. The organization states that its reviews “identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria.” The problem is what those eligibility criteria are.
Cochrane Reviews base their findings on randomized controlled trials (RCTs), often called the “gold standard” of scientific evidence. But many questions can't be answered well with RCTs, and some can't be answered at all. Nutrition is a case in point. It's almost impossible to study nutrition with RCTs because you can't control what people eat, and when you ask them what they have eaten, many people lie. Flossing is similar. One survey concluded that one in four Americans who claimed to floss regularly was fibbing.
In fact, there is strong evidence that masks do work to prevent the spread of respiratory illness. It just doesn't come from RCTs. It comes from Kansas. In July 2020 the governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring masks in public places. Just a few weeks earlier, however, the legislature had passed a bill authorizing counties to opt out of any statewide provision. In the months that followed, COVID rates decreased in all 24 counties with mask mandates and continued to increase in 81 other counties that opted out of them.
Another study found that states with mask mandates saw a significant decline in the rate of COVID spread within just days of mandate orders being signed. The authors concluded that in the study period—March 31 to May 22, 2020—more than 200,000 cases were avoided, saving money, suffering and lives.
Cochrane ignored this epidemiological evidence because it didn't meet its rigid standard. I have called this approach “methodological fetishism,” when scientists fixate on a preferred methodology and dismiss studies that don't follow it. Sadly, it's not unique to Cochrane. By dogmatically insisting on a particular definition of rigor, scientists in the past have landed on wrong answers more than once.
We often think of proof as a yes-or-no proposition, but in science, proof is a matter of discernment. Many studies are not as rigorous as we would like, because the messiness of the real world prevents it. But that does not mean they tell us nothing. It does not mean, as Jefferson insisted, that masks make “no difference.”
The mask report—like the dental floss report before it—used “standard Cochrane methodological procedures.” It's time those standard procedures were changed.
This article was originally published with the title "Masked Confusion" in Scientific American 329, 4, 90-91 (November 2023)
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1123-90
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University. She is author of Why Trust Science? (Princeton University Press, 2019) and co-author of The Big Myth (Bloomsbury, 2023).It's still crazy to me a bigger deal wasn't made of these bozo Republican politicians calling COVID a hoax but made sure the schools their children attended had upgraded air filtration.Schools cut covid-19 sick days by 20 per cent using HEPA air filters
The eagerly awaited finding comes from the first randomised trial of putting HEPA filter machines into classrooms
Schools cut covid-19 sick days by 20 per cent using HEPA air filters
Placing HEPA air filters into classrooms in the Bradford area of the UK reduced the number of covid-19-related absences among students by more than 20 per cent
By Clare Wilson
20 October 2023
A HEPA filter in a classroom at Bowling Park Primary School in Bradford, UK
University of Leeds
Air filter machines put into a handful of UK schools reduced the number of covid-19-related sick days by more than 20 per cent, the first such randomised trial of the intervention has found.
HEPA filters, devices about the size of a tall kitchen waste bin, were placed in the classrooms of schools in the Bradford area. The results haven’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but one of the researchers revealed the 20 per cent fall …
at a conference last month.
“You could still have outbreaks even if you have HEPA filters in your classrooms, but the underlying illness absence was over 20 per cent reduced when you have got the air cleaners in place,” said Catherine Noakes at the University of Leeds, UK, at the World Health Organization Europe Indoor Air Conference.
The trial was carried out between September 2021 and March 2022, during which time the UK had a large wave of covid-19 infections caused by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Ten schools were given HEPA filters, with two or three put into each classroom, depending on the room size. These were compared with another 20 schools – similar to the first 10 in terms of buildings, the students’ ethnicities and their families’ income levels – that didn’t have the filters.
The 20 per cent fall was only in absences related to covid-19, but the machines probably also cut sickness due to flu and other pathogens that cause coughs and colds, says team member Mark Mon-Williams, also at the University of Leeds. “This should reduce school absences related to any airborne illness,” he says. “There’s nothing fundamentally different between covid and flu, they’re both a virus that gets filtered out of the air.”
Having air filters in schools could also make families less likely to keep children off school as a precaution during a surge of flu or covid-19, says Mon-Williams. “We need to demonstrate that schools are safe, healthy environments.”
But when the full trial results are published, funders will need to weigh up the benefits of the machines compared with their cost, says Michael Absoud at King’s College London. HEPA filters can cost several hundred pounds each.
Read more
Covid boosters: Why are US and UK vaccine policies so different?
There might be more benefit from spending the money on school nurses or support for children with special needs, he says. “People say that’s a false dichotomy, but it’s not. There are a lot of other priorities.”
Air filters have other potential downsides. They can be noisy and tend to generate a cold draught, says Stephen Baker at the University of Cambridge, who helped run a trial of HEPA machines in two wards at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, the results of which are still awaited. And the number of machines needed for the air volume of a room is unclear, he says.
Nevertheless, the headline result from the schools trial is “excellent”, says Baker. “The dream scenario would be as we rebuild public places, then having appropriate air filtration in them would make them safer long term for a whole host of things.”
Bboystyle
Bang Bang Packers gang!
I get mine next week. Aint looking forward to the aftermath
Former British PM Boris Johnson was 'bamboozled' by COVID stats, inquiry hears
Boris Johnson struggled to come to grips with much of the science during the coronavirus pandemic, his chief scientific adviser tells a public inquiry.
www.abc.net.au
Former British PM Boris Johnson was 'bamboozled' by COVID stats, inquiry hears
Posted 1h ago1 hours agoBoris Johnson stood down as the UK's prime minister in 2022.(PA via AP: Ben Birchall)
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson struggled to come to grips with much of the science during the coronavirus pandemic, his chief scientific adviser has told an inquiry.
Key points:
- Sir Patrick Vallance told the inquiry Mr Johnson was "bamboozled" by graphs and stats
- He claimed the same was true of several world leaders
- Mr Johnson's actions and decisions are being put under the microscope at the hearings
In a keenly awaited testimony to the country's public inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday, Sir Patrick Vallance said he and others faced repeated problems getting Mr Johnson to understand the science and that he changed his mind on numerous occasions.
"I think I'm right in saying that the prime minister gave up science at 15," he said.
"I think he'd be the first to admit it wasn't his forte and that he struggled with the concepts and we did need to repeat them, often."
Extracts from Sir Patrick's mostly contemporaneous diary of the time were relayed to the inquiry.
In them, he wrote that Mr Johnson was often "bamboozled" by the graphs and data and that watching him "get his head round stats is awful".
Patrick Vallance makes a point at a press conference in London last year.(Supplied: Jack Hill/Pool via Reuters)
During the pandemic, Sir Patrick was a highly visible presence in the UK.
He and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, regularly flanked Mr Johnson at the daily COVID-19 press briefings given from the prime minister's offices on Downing Street.
Sir Patrick, who stepped down from his role as the British government's chief scientific adviser earlier this year, said Mr Johnson's struggles were not unique and that many leaders had problems in understanding the scientific evidence and advice, especially in the first stages of the pandemic in early 2020.
"I would also say that the meeting that sticks in my mind was with fellow advisers from across Europe, when one of them — and I won't say which country — declared that the leader of that country had enormous problems with exponential curves, and the telephone call burst into laughter, because it was true in every country," he said.
"So I do not think that there was necessarily a unique inability to grasp some of these concepts with the prime minister at the time, but it was hard work sometimes to try and make sure that he had understood what a particular graph or piece of data was saying," Sir Patrick added.
Johnson 'unable to concentrate' after diagnosis
Mr Johnson was hospitalized with the virus in April 2020 less than two weeks after he put the country into lockdown for the first time.Sir Patrick conceded the prime minister was "unable to concentrate" on things when he was really unwell but that after his recuperation "there was no obvious change between him and what he was like beforehand".
The UK has one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls in Europe, with the virus recorded as a cause of death for more than 232,000 people.
Mr Johnson, who was forced to step down as prime minister in September 2022 following revelations of lockdown rule-breaking parties at his Downing Street residence during the pandemic, is due to address the inquiry before Christmas.
The probe, led by retired judge Heather Hallett, is expected to take three years to complete.
Mr Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold a public inquiry after heavy pressure from bereaved families, who have hit out at the evidence emerging about his actions.
The inquiry is set to hear from current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was Mr Johnson's Treasury chief at the time, and as such had a particular focus on the economic impacts of Britain's lockdowns.
When he does appear at the inquiry, Mr Sunak is likely to face questioning about his "Eat Out to Help Out" initiative, which sought to encourage nervous customers back to restaurants in August 2020 as the first set of lockdown restrictions were being eased and before subsequent lockdowns were enacted.
Sir Patrick said scientists weren't aware of the restaurant program until it was announced and that the messaging around it ran "opposite" to the need to limit mixing between households.
"I think it would have been very obvious to anyone that this inevitably would cause an increase in transmission risk," Sir Patrick said.
Soon after, positive cases started rising and the government came under huge pressure to institute a second national lockdown, something Johnson eventually announced at the end of October 2020.
The inquiry was shown a diary entry Sir Patrick wrote before that lockdown and which referred to Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson's chief political adviser at the time, saying that Mr Sunak "thinks just let people die and that's OK".
I’m in Dubai with my family and both my parents got Covid here last week. They went out to the Somali mall area and dude helping them was coughing all over them 
Both my parents tested negative today though.
Both my parents tested negative today though.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Chinese hospitals ‘overwhelmed with sick children’ after surge in respiratory illness
China has reported an increase in respiratory illnesses as it enters its first full flu season since lifting Covid restrictions. The WHO says the spike is caused by known pathogens, and does not pose a global threat.
www.nbcnews.com
Chinese hospitals ‘overwhelmed with sick children’ after surge in respiratory illness
China has reported an increase in respiratory illnesses as it enters its first full flu season since lifting Covid restrictions. The WHO says the spike is caused by known pathogens, and does not pose a global threat.oh, okay then...
