By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | January 31, 2023
With the resignation of Jacinda Ardern, my thoughts were dragged back to Covid once more. Jacinda, as Prime Minster of New Zealand was the ultimate lockdown enforcer. She was feted round the world for her iron will, but I was not a fan, to put it mildly. Whenever I heard her speak, it brought to mind one of my most favourite quotes:
‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’ C.S. Lewis
At one point she actually said the following:
“We will continue to be your single source of truth” “Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.’
If I ruled the world, anyone who said, that, or anything remotely like that, would be taken as far as possible from any position of power, never to be allowed anywhere near it again. Ever.
Yet, there are still many who believe her to have been a great and caring leader. She certainly hugged a lot of people with that well rehearsed pained/caring expression on her face.
Enough of that particular woman. But it got me thinking about lockdowns again and the whole worldwide madness of Covid. This was a time of such blundering idiocy that I find increasingly difficult to believe it ever happened. A bad dream.
‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling…’ Cue, everyone running about in panic. People, allegedly, dropping dead on the streets. Mortuaries, allegedly, overflowing. Freezer lorries, allegedly, stacked with dead bodies. Bring out your dead!
I worked with doctors who strode around the wards in positive pressure protective gear. There were GPs who simply refused to visit elderly residents in nursing homes. On my patch this was all GPs and all nursing homes. Meanwhile I happily visited away with a mask stuck to the top of my head.
During the Covid pandemic I travelled far past angry, to reach a point of utter weariness. Instead of becoming outraged by the latest rubbish that was being pronounced, I very nearly washed my hands of it. However, after learning of Jacinda’s resignation I roused myself to have another look at what actually did happen. Or to be more specific, what was the impact of Covid on overall mortality. The only outcome that really matters.
Rid your mind of the numbers claimed to have died of Covid. The, never to be clarified distinction between those who died ‘of’ or ‘with’ Covid. Or those who read an article on Covid and then, overwhelmed with fear, stepped out in front of a bus. Thus, becoming a Covid related… associated, something, anything to do with Covid, death.
Over time the Covid figures became so ridiculous and unreliable as to become meaningless. I should know, I wrote some of the death certificates myself. Let me think… ‘She died of COVID, she died of COVID not. Eeny, meeny, miney mo…’
I am not saying that Covid did not kill a large number of people. But the fact that deaths from influenza disappeared completely for two years tells me all I need to know. ‘Roll up, roll up, Ladies and Gentlemen, to see the amazing lady influenza disappear before your very eyes.’ An astonishing trick, all the way from La La Land. ‘You expect me to believe that? Ho, ho, ho, very funny…. Oh, sorry, you actually do.’
Anyway, to clear my internal database of horribly unreliable figures, I went back to look at my favourite graphs on EuroMOMO. This website looks at overall mortality, and only overall mortality. Their data comes from countries who do know how to record deaths, honestly. Unlike some others, who shall be nameless … China.
However, the main reason to focus on EuroMOMO is that overall mortality is something you cannot fake. About the only thing you can do to manipulate the figures is hold back data for a month or two – which has been done, but not to any great degree. So, without further ado, let us move onto EuroMOMO. Below is a recent graph. I have deliberately removed most of the information you need to know what it is showing. I wanted people to avoid jumping to conclusions … that they might then find it difficult row back from.
I found myself examining this graph idly and thought. Imagine if you had no idea what you were looking at here. What would you think? It’s a squiggly line, yes. Very good, gold star. What else?
To give you a bit more detail. This is a graph of overall mortality, across a large number of European countries. All of those who provide data to the EuroMOMO database anyway. Norway, the ultimate European lockdown champion, has mysteriously disappeared from the database. Maybe they shall return …. I have begun to see everything as a conspiracy nowadays.
The graph itself begins in January 2017 and finishes in January 2023. As you can see (if not terribly clearly) there are two wavy dotted lines. These lines rise up in the winter, and then fall back down in the summer. Something seen every year. This is because, every year, more people die in the winter than in the summer.
Everyone thinks they know the reason for this winter summer effect, but I am not so sure they do. But that is an enormously complicated topic for another time.
The lower, dotted lines represent the ‘average’ mortality you would expect to see [with upper and lower ‘normal’ limits] year on year. Above those wavy dotted lines sits a solid spikey line. This represents the actual number of deaths that occurred. Not just from Covid, but from everything.
This does raise an immediate question. If we keep seeing more deaths than we would expect in the winter, year on year, then the ‘average’ number of deaths should rise? Thus, the wavy dotted lines ought to be going up and up, in the winter. But they don’t.
I am not entirely sure why this is not the case. But it is a statistical question of such mind-boggling complexity that I am, frankly, unable to answer it. I have looked into it, but I was scared off by the sheer scale and difficulty of the mathematics involved. Too many equations for my poor wee brain.
Anyway, this graph starts in the winter of 2017 and ends about now. The vertical lines are drawn at midnight on Dec 31st each year. Which means that we have almost exactly six years of data. Excellent data, not manipulated in any way. I say this because, whilst the diagnosis of ‘Covid death’ may be disputed, the diagnosis of death cannot.
What stands out? Well, there was a very sharp peak of deaths in early 2020. This, as you have probably worked out, was when Covid first hit. I find it fascinating that it was so transient. It came, it went… gone. For a bit anyway.
Was the precipitous fall due to strict lockdowns? Some will doubtless argue this. However, we all locked down again in autumn 2020 and the death rate went up, and stayed up, for about six months. Until, that is, January came along, and it all settled down again. Which follows pretty much the pattern of 2017, 2108 and 2019. And the pattern of all pandemics. They come, and they go. Some a little earlier, some a little later.
What else do you see – now that we are all pretty much fully vaccinated? I think another thing that stands out is the sudden and sharp rise in mortality in November 2022. Which is virtually identical to the spike in 2020. Strange?
However, to my mind, the thing that shouts most loudly about this graph is that the years of Covid pandemic panic really do not look that much different from the previous three years. Half close your eyes, and there is almost nothing to see. The Covid peaks were a little higher, and a little longer – maybe.
If you knew nothing about the Covid pandemic I don’t think you would exclaim. ‘My God, look at these vast waves of death in 2020, 2021. What amazing, never seen before thing, happened here?’ Yes, first spike of early 2020 was certainly sharp, and unusual, but it was short. And very little different to the spike at the end of 2022. As for the rest?
Now, I would like to turn your attention to Germany. The most populous country in Europe. Here it is even more clear that the years of the Covid pandemic are not remotely unusual. If I had removed the calendar years off this graph, you would be hard pressed to spot the Covid pandemic. In truth, you would be more than hard pressed. You couldn’t.
The 2018 influenza spike was equally dramatic to Covid peak of 2021, if not more so. [You may have noticed that there was no peak in 2020] In addition, at the end of 2022, we have the highest peak of all. Future historians might well look at this graph and ask. ‘Tell me, why did the world go mad in 2020, and remain mad through 2021? Why did everyone lockdown in March 2020, and then do nothing whatsoever in December 2022?’
It almost goes without saying that, had we locked down again in November 2022, it would have been claimed that lockdown saved us all. Look at how quickly it came, then went. Well, they could have claimed it. But we didn’t lock down again, did we? In direct contrast to Germany. What of the people living in Luxembourg?
Luxembourg is surrounded by Belgium France and Germany. People move freely from one to the other, always have done, and still do. The ‘deadly’ Covid pandemic raged all around them. Here, absolutely nothing happened. Mind you, they also seem to have been unaffected by influenza.
Whilst the Germans were dying in large numbers in 2018, the Luxembourgians carried on serenely, not an extra death to be seen. Why? Discuss. [It seems that most/all countries unaffected by Covid, were also unaffected by earlier flu epidemics].
I know some of you may be thinking that Germany is much bigger than Luxembourg so … so what? If you are going to see an effect on mortality, you are more likely to see it happen, more dramatically, and rapidly, in a country with fewer people.
I should explain that the figures on the left axis, on the German and Luxembourg graphs (unlike the first one), do not represent total deaths, they are the ‘Z score’. That is, the deviation from the mean.
The upper dotted line represents a Z score of five. That means, five standard deviations above the mean. It has been decreed that if you hit more than five standard deviations above the mean, for any length of time, this is a signal that ‘something bad’ is happening. The alarm starts goes off, and epidemiologists run around bumping into each other. ‘The sky is falling… etc.’
If you use the Z score it makes no difference how large the population is. It has been specifically designed to make it possible to compare changes in overall mortality, in populations of very different sizes. I feel the need here to make it clear that Luxembourg is not that small. It has more than twice the population of Iceland, for example.
Enough of the maths already.
So, deep breath, and trying to bring all these random thoughts together. What does EuroMOMO tell us? It tells us that Covid was a bit worse than a bad flu season, with 2018 being a good reference point. [There have been far worse flu epidemics than 2018, and I am not talking about 1918/19].
What EuroMOMO makes most clear, at least to me, is that Covid was not, repeat not, a pandemic of unique power, and destructiveness. It could have never remotely justified the drastic actions that were taken to combat it.
Belatedly, this is becoming recognised, as has the damage associated with lockdowns. Here is the abstract of an article from 2022. A bit dry, but worth a read. ‘Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?’
‘The present coronavirus crisis caused a major worldwide disruption which has not been experienced for decades. The lockdown-based crisis management was implemented by nearly all the countries, and studies confirming lockdown effectiveness can be found alongside the studies questioning it.
In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth. Our aim was to learn lessons and analyze ways to improve the management of similar events in the future.
The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past.
The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic.’ 1
In the face of such evidence, the argument for lockdown seems to be transforming into a somewhat pathetic whinge. ‘We didn’t know. It’s all very well people saying we shouldn’t have locked down now. We didn’t hear you saying it at the time. We were just following The Science, don’t blame us. Better safe than sorry. Don’t blame us … I think you’re being very nasty to us.’
This, of course, is nonsense. There were plenty of scientists arguing against lockdown at the time. However, they were all ruthlessly censored, attacked, and silenced. Experts such as Prof. John Ioannidis, Prof. Karol Sikora, Prof. Sunetra Gupta, Prof. Carl Heneghan. These last two UK professors argued very strenuously against lockdowns. They were ignored, then vilified. Here from an article written in January 2021:
‘… Sunetra Gupta. She’s been getting flak from the mob for months but it reached a crescendo yesterday when she was on the Today programme. Why is the BBC giving space to a nutter, people asked? She isn’t a nutter, of course. She’s an infectious disease epidemiologist at Oxford University. But she bristles against the COVID consensus and that makes her a bad person, virtually a witch, in the eyes of the zealous protectors of COVID orthodoxy. Professor Gupta has written about the barrage of abuse she receives via email. ‘Evil’, they call her.’
‘… her chief crime, judging from the hysterical commentary about her, is that she is critical of harsh lockdowns. She is a founder of the Great Barrington Declaration, which proposes that instead of locking down the whole of society we should shield the elderly and the vulnerable while allowing other people to carry on pretty much as normal. It is this perfectly legitimate discussion of a social and political question — the question of lockdown — that has earned Gupta the most ire.’ 2
I would like to point out that I was arguing against lockdown, right from the very beginning. Yes, I do enjoy saying, ‘I told you so’ from time to time. It is one of the few satisfactions I get in life nowadays. Here is a section from a blog I wrote in March 2020. Once again, right from the start:
‘… However, there is also a health downside associated with our current approach. Many people are also going to suffer and die, because of the actions we are currently taking. On the BBC, a man with cancer was being interviewed. Due to the shutdown, his operation is being put back by several months – at least. Others with cancer will not be getting treatment. The level of worry and anxiety will be massive.
Hip replacements are also being postponed and other, hugely beneficial interventions are not being done. Those with heart disease and diabetes will not be treated. Elderly people, with no support, may simply die of starvation in their own homes. Jobs will be lost, companies are going bust, suicides will go up. Psychosocial stress will be immense.
In my role, working in Out of Hours, we are being asked to watch out for abuse in the home. Because we know that children will now be more at risk, trapped in their houses. Also, partners will suffer greater physical abuse, stuck in the home, unable to get out. Not much fun.
Which means that we are certainly not looking at a zero-sum game here, where every case of COVID prevented, or treated, is one less death. There is a health cost.
There is also the impact of economic damage, which can be immense. I studied what happened in Russia, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the economic and social chaos that ensued. There was a massive spike in premature deaths.
In men, life expectancy fell by almost seven years, over a two to three-year period. A seven-year loss of life expectancy in seventy million men, is forty-nine million QALYs worth. It is certainly a far greater health disaster than COVID can possibly create…’ 3
And lo, the damage is coming to pass. Maybe not so many people dying of starvation as I predicted, at least not in the West. In poorer countries, however …
Another terrible thing that happened during lockdown was the vilification of anyone who dared question the official narrative. Yet almost everything they predicted has come true. Have the likes of Professor Gupta been forgiven and welcomed back into the fold? Have a wild guess on that one.
What of those who deliberately whipped up the panic and led the dreadful behavioural psychology teams. They quite deliberately frothed the population into a state of terror. What of those, whose ridiculous models kicked the whole damned thing off? The Professor Neil Fergusons of this land? Yes, you.
These people are all still comfortably ensconced, advising away. Their positions fully secure. In the UK they were mostly given knighthoods, damehoods, and other shiny gongs to impress their friends with. This, I find hard to swallow.
More worrying is that there will never be an honest review on the pandemic. Why, because so many people in positions of power would be seriously threatened by it. Which means that any such review will end up as a completely bland whitewash. ‘In general the actions taken were reasonable, and in a situation where so much was unknown, it was better to try and protect the public … blah, blah.’ Case closed.
The reality is that these lockdowns were a complete disaster. A complete disaster. The fact that we will never have a proper debate about them, means that we will learn nothing from what happened. This, in turn, means that another disaster is on the way. Those who should be listened to will be attacked, silenced and censored, again.
Those who got it all horribly wrong last time will be handed even greater powers … next time. The reason why lockdowns did not work, they will argue, is because they were not strict enough, or long enough. We need proper lockdowns next time. You have been warned. Cast your eyes over China.
I will leave you with the conclusion of the paper ‘Are lockdowns effective in managing pandemics?’
Which can probably be summed in in the words: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.
The central guiding principle of medicine that was hurled out of the window in March 2020 by people who seem not to exhibit a scrap of humility, or humanity. Nor apology.
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9368251/
2: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-censorious-war-on-lockdown-sceptics/
3: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/03/29/a-health-economic-perspective-on-covid-19/
By J.D. Rucker • The Liberty Daily • February 1, 2023
The House of Representatives is very different than it was a year ago. Back then, any notion of ending vaccine mandates was shuffled into a memory hole. Anyone who opposed them was dismissed as an anti-vaxxer. Today, we may be seeing progress. Finally.
On Tuesday, Congressman Thomas Massie gave a speech explaining the reasons the vaccine mandate against healthcare workers must end.
“I rise in support of this resolution because it would facilitate the passage of HR 497, the Freedom for Healthcare Workers Act,” he said. “What does that bill do? It ends the unscientific, illogical, immoral, unconstitutional, unethical vaccine mandate on healthcare workers that is predicated on lies.”
He listed the five predicates for the mandate that turned out to be lies:
As he put it, “We’re living under medical malpractice martial law right now under the PREP Act and the EUAs.”
He concluded by dropping the ultimate truth bomb. “This is the epitome of hypocrisy. Nobody in this room was mandated to take a vaccine, and we’re voting on whether we’re going to force people who want to take care of people whether they have to take the vaccine.”
By Roger Watson | TCW Defending Freedom | January 28, 2023
More good news on vaccine, folks. First, you may be required to take only one Covid-19 shot per year, and if all goes well you will not even have to do that. You will be able to drink or even inhale your vaccine. No more painful injections, just a quick slurp or a snort and the job’s a good ’un. That’s you safe from the deadly virus for another year.
We could even make it fun. Why not hold Covid-19 vaccine parties? A selection of flavours in shot glasses (they don’t call them shot glasses for no reason) or add your vaccine to a vape and puff away until your immune system is primed.
I glean all this garbage from Global Health Now, the daily newsletter from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The first story concerns how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States is considering ‘simplifying the Covid vaccination schedule, allowing most people to get the currently available booster, regardless of how many doses they had received before that’. This means that if you are boosted up to the eyeballs or have never had one before and suddenly made the incomprehensible decision to start now, then Bob’s your uncle; roll up your sleeves.
Please note that nothing has changed; there is no new vaccine and no new threat. The FDA is just making an arbitrary decision to change the schedule. Clearly the aim is to get more people to accept the vaccination. But it is also clear that they are making this stuff up as they go along. They have no further evidence that the vaccines will work any better this way.
The information that is available to them is the abundant and accumulating evidence of vaccine harms which, incredibly, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) in the United Kingdom admits can be serious while insisting that the vaccines are safe. If truth is the first casualty of war – it certainly died early in the Covid-19 madness – logic is not far behind it. The MRHA is willing to trade off serious vaccine side effects against minimal protection from a virus which is virtually harmless to the vast majority of people. Perhaps the FDA is trying to reduce the number of boosters it says people will need in the hope that vaccine injuries will go away. Alternatively, it may be keen to accelerate the rollout before the general population wakes up to the fact that they are being conned, if they are lucky, and killed if they are not.
The potential for a drinkable/snortable/inhalable vaccine comes courtesy of US Speciality Formulations, a company which has produced the QYNDR vaccine. If QYNDR is a bit of a consonant-rich mouthful, then be informed that the official pronunciation if ‘KINDER’. And the advent of QYNDR is closer than you think. Phase 1 trials have already been completed in New Zealand (where else?) and all that is required is more funding to proceed with further trials. Apparently, it is very difficult to formulate a vaccine that survives the vicissitudes of the digestive tract.
And why do we need these vaccines? Well, according to US Speciality Formulations: ‘Covid-19 is still here and deadly.’ Also, I imagine that the inventors and investors envisage that this will make them shedloads of money. It clearly pays to perpetuate the Covid-19 narrative and to pepper it with as much panic as possible.
At some point in the panic-demic, the vaccine rollout became a juggernaut. Large and hard to stop. With the widespread and obvious extent to which people are gullible, government and drug manufacturers are willing to lie, health professionals are willing to stay silent and there are bucks to be made, it is unlikely that the juggernaut will be halted any time soon.
Who knows what’s next? Perhaps they will develop a vaccine that one can stick up one’s bottom. Whether or not they do, I strongly advise them that is what they can do with the present products.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | February 2, 2023
Top Cardiologist and The HighWire Contributor, Dr. Peter McCullough, was sued by health giant Baylor Scott & White, over an alleged violation of his separation agreement. On January 23rd, a Dallas County District Court dismissed the case with prejudice. Del announces the development, and offers his thoughts as well as congratulations to Dr. McCullough over the ‘win for freedom.’
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | February 2, 2023
The Covid emergency is over in America… in three more months says the White House. Why now? Is politics at the heart of this decision? And what does it mean for the EUA vaccines and therapies? The HighWire gets to the facts behind the headlines.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 3, 2023
Merck’s oral antiviral pill for COVID-19, molnupiravir — marketed under the name Lagevrio — may be fueling the development of new and potentially deadly variants of COVID-19, according to the authors of a new preprint study.
The study, released Jan. 27 by a team of U.S. and U.K researchers, found, “It is possible that some patients treated with molnupiravir might not fully clear SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the potential for onward transmission of molnupiravir-mutated viruses.”
Merck received significant taxpayer funding from the Biden administration to develop and distribute molnupiravir, and the U.S. government bought nearly 2 million courses of the drug on the taxpayer’s dime.
The study, which is pending peer review, followed the discovery by a middle school science and math teacher in Indiana who found numerous variants of COVID-19 emerged after molnupiravir began to be widely distributed.
Scientists had long warned that the development of such mutations from the use of molnupiravir was possible.
“It’s not a surprise that molnupiravir could cause [the] escape of mutant virus strains or substrains into the population,” said Dr. Harvey Risch. “Its main function is to get the virus to mutate faster.”
Risch, professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Defender :
“The idea is that it will mutate itself to death. But some live mutants could get out, and this paper gives evidence that they have.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, said the study’s authors scanned global SARS-CoV-2 sequence databases looking for mutations characteristic of those by molnupiravir (G-to-A and C-to-U) and found an uptick of those mutants starting in 2022 — after molnupiravir was put on the market and specifically in countries where molnupiravir was distributed.
“Although this isn’t ‘direct proof’ that the mutations came directly from molnupiravir use,” Hooker told The Defender, “the evidence is very compelling, confirming the fears of many who warned of this prior to FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] approval of the drug in late 2021.”
The FDA granted molnupiravir Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) on Dec. 23, 2021, for use in mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infections in patients 18 and over.
The EUA came just one day after the FDA authorized Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid.
Merck this week announced massive revenues from sales of molnupiravir in 2022, but projected a significant decrease in those sales in 2023.
The FDA on Wednesday removed the requirement that a person has to test positive for COVID-19 in order to get a prescription for molnupiravir or Paxlovid.
‘I think we are courting disaster’
Molnupiravir “works by creating mutations in the COVID-19 genome that prevent the virus from replicating in the body, reducing the chances it will cause severe illness,” according to Bloomberg.
However, according to Science, the findings of the preprint study suggest “some people treated with the drug generate novel viruses that not only remain viable, but spread.”
This finding “underscores the risk of trying to intentionally alter the pathogen’s genetic code,” leading some researchers to “worry the drug may create more contagious or health-threatening variations of COVID,” Bloomberg reported.
Virologist William Haseltine, Ph.D., chair and president of ACCESS Health International, has repeatedly raised such concerns about molnupiravir.
“It’s very clear that viable mutant viruses can survive [molnupiravir treatment] and compete [with existing variants],” Haseltine told Science. “I think we are courting disaster.”
According to the Gateway Pundit, “When one studies how Lagevrio works, this should not come as a shock. The pill attacks the COVID virus by trying to alter its genetic code.”
The Gateway Pundit reported:
“Once inside a human cell, a virus can make 10,000 copies of its genetic code in a few hours. Each copy made increases the risk the virus makes a rare mistake and creates an inexact replica.
“This is how mutations happen as we have seen with COVID. A drug that deliberately alters a virus’s genetic code would greatly increase the mutation risk.”
Dr. Jonathan Li, a virologist and the director of Li Laboratory, associated with Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told Bloomberg :
“There’s always been this underlying concern that it could contribute to a problem generating new variants. This has largely been hypothetical, but this preprint validates a lot of those concerns.”
According to Science, Haseltine and other scientists have long worried that molnupiravir would create COVID-19 mutations that “would survive and propagate — and perhaps turn out to be more transmissible or virulent than before.”
A Merck spokesperson described that theory as “an interesting hypothetical concern,” prior to the drug receiving EUA.
The same scientists also worried that aside from the virus, the DNA of those receiving the drug might also mutate, Science reported.
These concerns led “researchers and citizen scientists” to examine COVID-19 genome sequences cataloged in the international GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data) database, seeking to identify mutations likely to be caused by molnupiravir.
‘Clearly something is happening here’
Searching for these mutations was based on the premise that, “Rather than inducing random changes in the virus’ RNA genome, [molnupiravir] is more likely to cause specific nucleic acid substitutions, with guanine switching to adenine and cytosine to uracil,” added Science.
Through this process, Ryan Hisner, a middle school science and math teacher from Monroe, Indiana — described by Science as a “virus hunter” — ultimately “identified dozens of sequences that showed clusters of those hallmark substitutions.”
Hisner took to Twitter with his concerns, where he came into contact with Thomas Peacock, Ph.D., a virologist at the Imperial College London. They and other U.K. and U.S. researchers “systematically reviewed more than 13 million SARS-CoV-2 sequences in GISAID and analyzed those with clusters of more than 20 mutations,” according to Science.
The team found “a large subset showed the hallmark substitutions; all dated from 2022, after molnupiravir began to be widely used,” Science reported.
According to the preprint study, Molnupiravir, “acts by inducing mutations in the virus genome during replication. Most random mutations are likely to be deleterious to the virus, and many will be lethal.”
However, the researchers wrote:
“It is possible that some patients treated with molnupiravir might not fully clear SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the potential for onward transmission of molnupiravir-mutated viruses.
“We set out to systematically investigate global sequencing databases for a signature of molnupiravir mutagenesis. We find that a specific class of long phylogenetic branches appear almost exclusively in sequences from 2022, after the introduction of molnupiravir treatment, and in countries and age groups with widespread usage of the drug.
“Our data suggest a signature of molnupiravir mutagenesis can be seen in global sequencing databases, in some cases with onwards transmission.”
Peacock told Science these “signature clusters” were up to 100 times more likely to be identified in countries where molnupiravir was widely used, including the U.S., U.K. and Australia, as compared to countries such as Canada and France, where it was not in widespread use.
“Clearly something is happening here,” said Peacock.
Merck: ‘no evidence’ any antiviral agent has contributed to the emergence of circulating variants’
Theo Sanderson, Ph.D., a geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute and co-author of the preprint, told Science “We are not coming to a conclusion about risk” just yet, with regard to whether or not these mutations may lead to more severe COVID-19 variants.
Indeed, according to the preprint study, the variants identified by the researchers have not been shown to be more lethal or more evasive to immunity than other existing strains of COVID-19.
However, Haseltine illustrated the potential risk via the analogy of owning a pet lion: “Just because it didn’t bite you yesterday doesn’t mean it won’t bite you today.”
According to the Gateway Pundit :
“Merck was warned by multiple scientists their drug might create problematic mutations which would render the virus more dangerous and difficult to treat. The company decided to blow off any concerns and put Lagevrio [molnupiravir] on the market anyway.”
As previously reported by The Defender, Dr. James Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry Medical College and member of Biden’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, expressed concerns about mutant variants escaping.
In 2021, Hildreth told an FDA advisory panel, “Even if the probability is very low, one in 10,000 or 100,000, that this drug would induce an escape mutant from which the vaccines we have do not cover, that could be catastrophic for the whole world actually.”
Also in 2021, Haseltine told Science :
“You are putting a drug into circulation that is a potent mutagen at a time when we are deeply concerned about new variants. I can’t imagine doing anything more dangerous.
“If I were trying to create a new and more dangerous virus in humans, I would feed a subclinical dose [of molnupiravir] to people infected.”
Two other recent studies also called out molnupiravir, questioning its effectiveness and raising concerns the drug may help lead to the development of new COVID-19 variants.
A December 2022 preprint by a team of Australian researchers, found “this commonly used antiviral can ‘supercharge’ viral evolution in immunocompromised patients, potentially generating new variants and prolonging the pandemic.”
And a study published Jan. 28 in The Lancet found, “Molnupiravir did not reduce the frequency of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations or death among high-risk vaccinated adults in the community.”
University of Cambridge clinical microbiologist Ravindra Gupta, Ph.D., told Science that while it’s unclear whether molnupiravir will cause deadlier COVID-19 variants, the overall results of these recent studies “call into question whether molnupiravir should be used.”
Merck spokesperson Robert Josephson defended the product, telling Bloomberg, “There is no evidence that any antiviral agent has contributed to the emergence of circulating variants.”
Molnupiravir ‘different’ than Paxlovid — and ‘riskier’
Although molnupiravir is similar to Paxlovid in that both are oral antiviral treatments for COVID-19, Hooker told The Defender there are significant differences in how the two drugs work:
“Molnupiravir acts on the SARS-CoV-2 virus by directly inducing mutations in the RNA genome. This is a completely different mode of action compared to Pfizer’s product, Paxlovid, and in my estimation is quite dangerous.
“Merck claimed the mutation rate induced by molnupiravir would kill the virus and that mutants wouldn’t escape, but that has been shown to be false in studies of immunocompromised patients.”
Hooker said Paxlovid — and the COVID-19 vaccines — can potentially lead to the development of mutations as well.
But in his view, the “mechanism of action” used by molnupiravir is different — and far riskier — than Paxlovid and COVID-19 vaccines, which merely increase the virus’ lifetime in the human body, giving the virus a greater opportunity to naturally mutate.
Hooker said:
“In contrast, molnupiravir directly induces mutations and thereby vastly increases the mutation rate of the virus in the human host.
“In my estimation, this is a very dangerous way to treat such an infection, given the implications of creating random mutants.”
Merck made billions from molnupiravir — thanks to taxpayers
In 2022, sales of Merck’s molnupiravir hit $5.68 billion, fueled in part by strong fourth-quarter sales of the drug in Asia.
Fourth-quarter sales of molnupiravir reached $825 million, more than doubling analyst expectations of $358 million.
These strong earnings were boosted by government — or taxpayer — support.
In June 2021 — with molnupiravir still in clinical trials, which weren’t completed until October 2021 — the federal government signed a $1.2 billion contract with Merck for 1.7 million courses of the drug, at a cost of approximately $712 per patient.
An analysis by Melissa Barber of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Dzintars Gotham of King’s College Hospital in London found the cost of production of molnupiravir was approximately $1.74 per unit — or $17.74 for a five-day regimen.
By those calculations, the U.S. government paid a near-4,000% markup.
In March 2022, during his State of the Union address, President Biden announced the “Test to Treat” initiative, which allowed those who tested positive for COVID-19 at a pharmacy to obtain free antiviral pills — including molnupiravir — on the spot.
One month earlier, the Biden administration had proceeded with a new purchase of 3.1 million courses of molnupiravir, with the option to purchase more.
Estimates for Merck, and other COVID-19 drugmakers, are less rosy for 2023, as the public tires of all things pandemic and Biden looks to end the COVID-19 national emergency in May.
According to Reuters, sales of molnupiravir are expected to fall to about $1 billion this year, contributing to an expected decline in sales for Merck from $59.3 billion in 2022 to $57.2-$58.7 billion this year.
Merck’s stock price dropped by about 2% with Thursday’s announcement.
Despite these large earnings, overall sales of molnupiravir lagged significantly behind Paxlovid in 2022. Sales of Paxlovid reached $18.9 billion last year.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 1, 2023
The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine on Tuesday held its third hearing on the suspension of Dr. Meryl Nass related to her treatment recommendations for patients with COVID-19.
As it did on day two of the hearings, held on Oct. 27, 2022, the board focused on Nass’ alleged “sloppy” record-keeping for three patients she treated and on her prescribing of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for those patients.
The board suspended Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board, on Jan. 12, 2022, without a hearing.
The board initially accused Nass of “unprofessional” and “disruptive” behavior, spreading “misinformation” and prescribing hydroxychloroquine and a “deworming medication” (ivermectin) to patients.
However, the board withdrew the accusations of “misinformation” on Sept. 26, 2022, just prior to her first hearing date, Oct. 11, 2022.
The board’s case now rests on Nass’ alleged non-adherence to the medical “standard of care” as it pertained to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 and on the alleged “record-keeping” issues.
Two witnesses hired by the board — Dr. Thomas Courtney of the Maine Medical Center and Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts and instructor at Harvard Medical School — testified during Tuesday’s proceedings, and Nass’ attorney, Gene Libby, cross-examined Courtney.
Cross-examination pokes holes in ‘expert witness’ testimony
Throughout his testimony, Courtney repeated his assertion that Nass did not follow an adequate standard of care in prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to three patients, alleged improprieties in her communication and remote (telemedicine) consultations with the patients, and claimed Nass’ record-keeping was lacking.
But Courtney was obliged to walk back significant portions of his earlier testimony under his cross-examination by Libby.
For instance, Courtney claimed Nass did not adhere to an appropriate standard of care because she failed to advise two of her patients who didn’t recover as expected to seek care at an emergency room.
But under cross-examination, he acknowledged Nass had, in fact, advised the patients to go to the ER.
Courtney also criticized Nass for not prescribing monoclonal antibodies to her patients, one of whom was pregnant.
However, when cross-examined, Courtney admitted that, unlike hydroxychloroquine, monoclonal antibodies were not recommended for pregnant women and most monoclonal antibodies available at the time Nass was advising her patients were known to be ineffective against the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the dominant strain of the virus at that time.
Libby pointed out that the pregnant patient fully recovered eight days after the onset of her illness and had a normal birth, during which she was administered hydroxychloroquine and monoclonal antibodies.
Because evidence shows monoclonal antibodies are ineffective for pregnant women, the patient’s full recovery was credited to hydroxychloroquine.
Courtney also criticized Nass for making decisions about a patient’s care, including which medications to prescribe, on the basis of incomplete medical records.
He later walked back those claims after Libby demonstrated that Nass had received extensive documentation about the condition of one of the patients from his spouse, who provided Nass with vital signs, including the patient’s blood oxygen level.
Libby noted the three patients had specifically requested not to be treated with remdesivir, had asked to be prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine — and were fully within their rights as patients to request such treatment. Courtney was obliged to concur.
Libby also pointed out that off-label prescriptions of medications such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, even for uses other than their primary purpose, are well within the generally accepted standard of care for physicians, and that federal agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health do not issue binding requirements in this regard.
Courtney confirmed these statements.
In another characteristic exchange, Courtney, who had previously been critical of alleged gaps in Nass’s record keeping, was forced to concede that he did not “personally have a strong opinion on it.”
Referring to Courtney’s testimony, Nass wrote on her blog that despite his “opining that I lacked the fitness to practice medicine, he was unable to identify a single thing I had done wrong in my records.”
“I sent 2 patients to the ER when they did not recover as expected, although one of the board’s initial charges against me was that I failed to do so,” Nass wrote.
She likened the board’s accusations against her to “simply throwing lots of spaghetti on the wall to try and overwhelm me with charges so I would wilt and surrender my license.”
Referring to the medical claims Courtney made, Nass wrote:
“Courtney did not know the difference between an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] product and a licensed drug. He incorrectly repeated a false claim made only once by FDA that the EUA for HCQ [hydroxychloroquine] was withdrawn because you would need to administer a toxic dose to get benefit. He had clearly failed to give that assertion any thought. Nor had he evaluated the U.S. government literature showing it to be false.
“He thought I should have treated 2 outpatients with monoclonal antibodies, but eventually agreed that cases in December 2021 were a mix of Omicron and Delta when the patients were ill, that none of their variants had been sequenced so we did not know which variant they had, and the monoclonals would not have worked against Omicron variants, which were likely to have been present then.”
“Doctor Courtney doesn’t read journal articles,” Nass wrote. “He sticks by the recommendations of government agencies and his specialty organization, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).”
Nass noted that the IDSA was sued by the State of Connecticut “for denying the existence of chronic Lyme disease.”
In the brief time that was available for Faust to begin his testimony, he focused on attacking the credibility of Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiologist at the Yale University School of Public Health, for a journal article he wrote finding that treatments such as hydroxychloroquine were effective against COVID-19.
Nass had relied in part on Risch’s findings in dispensing hydroxychloroquine to her patients. During his testimony, Faust claimed, “There’s no disagreement here among the most prestigious experts in this area” with regard to the purported lack of effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients.
Nass wrote:
“Faust was the Board’s epidemiology expert. He got some of the epidemiology right and he got a lot wrong. His arrogance when he was not sure of the answer was off-putting. He insulted Yale epidemiology professor Harvey Risch. He insulted my ability to read a journal article and he had a novel theory that this was sufficient disqualification to justify revoking my license.
“No one mentioned that Dr. Courtney could not cite journal articles used for forming his opinions on COVID treatment, having solely relied on pronouncements from government agencies.
“Should his license be revoked for that? Of course not.”
Nass also pointed out that Faust is a proponent of pregnant women receiving multiple mRNA injections. For instance, he was the lead author of “Pregnancy should be a condition eligible for additional doses of COVID-19 messenger RNA vaccines,” published in November 2022 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology MFM.
Nass also wrote that Faust “publicly melted down when the mask mandate on planes was lifted,” accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of “killing babies.”
Next hearing set for March 2
The Maine board has scheduled two more hearings, the next one for March 2.
However, according to Nass, “The questioning of Dr. Faust is likely to take half a day more. Then I have 8 witnesses to go, including 3 patients who are at issue.”
About 140,000 people tuned in to Tuesday’s live broadcast of the proceedings, according to Nass.
Children’s Health Defense is providing support for Nass’ legal team.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
BY NICK DENIM | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 28, 2023
We all know, I hope, about the significant and sustained number of excess deaths since May 2022. Most recently, you probably saw Esther McVey MP asking if the Department of Health would commit to an urgent and thorough investigation.
Maria Caulfield MP, one of the health ministers, replied saying that it’s also happening elsewhere and there is a range of factors. Implicitly, she was refusing to investigate. Outrageous.
However, it actually reminded me that way back in February 2021, MHRA promised to do a whole range of routine population-level data analysis “to quickly detect a potential safety signal” for the Covid vaccines. It announced it here under the section “Rapid Cycle Analysis and Ecological Analysis“. It explains what it involves as follows:
[A]s COVID-19 vaccination records (i.e., those given outside of GP surgeries) begin to get updated within GP systems, the MHRA will implement a form of active surveillance known as ‘Rapid Cycle Analysis’. This method involves proactive, weekly analysis of a range of pre-defined events (theoretical side effects) to quickly identify safety signals – it again involves ‘observed vs expected’ analyses (i.e. comparing rates after vaccination to rates in unvaccinated comparator groups) but doesn’t rely on people directly reporting any concerns through the Yellow Card scheme. It is also a more robust way to quickly determine if rates are likely to be consistent with a coincidental association. It also uses the MaxSPRT approach with adjustments made for the expected delays in the recording of events presenting to and diagnosed in secondary care settings. The list of pre-defined events of special interest is not fixed and can be expanded at any time.The MHRA will also use the CPRD data to conduct ‘ecological analyses’. This involves monitoring trends in the rates of pre-defined events within given population cohorts, based on prioritisation groups for vaccine roll out, to see if they are occurring to a greater extent amongst those targeted for vaccination after it is deployed compared to historical rates from the pre-deployment period. Comparisons can also be made to trends seen in groups not targeted for vaccination at the same time. This approach is most useful when we see high vaccine uptake and is another way to quickly detect a potential safety signal.
So I had a poke around MHRA’s website to see how it is getting on with this. Not very well, it turns out.
One of MHRA’s five divisions is called Clinical Practice and Research Datalink (CPRD) and it maintains a bibliography of peer-reviewed research and reports which have used data provided by MHRA from NHS datasets for things like ICU, A&E, inpatients, outpatients, cancer registration and pregnancy. When I looked, the bibliography had been updated as recently as January 9th 2023. So well and truly up-to-date. So far, so good.
Imagine my surprise when I could only find two population-level studies relating to the Covid vaccines, both relating to thrombocytopenia (low blood platelet count), one from February 2022 and one from October. So just one type of adverse event has been put through MHRA’s promised ecological analysis in the last two years. It doesn’t say much for MHRA’s commitment to use population-level data “to quickly detect a potential safety signal”.
Imagine my further surprise that none of the datasets which MHRA’s CPRD Division provides for research contains data after June 2021.
So in conclusion, all about as useless as the other strand of Covid vaccine surveillance it promised, Targeted Active Monitoring, which I noted in a recent article it quietly dropped 15 months ago.
For me, there are only two possible conclusions: either the MHRA is not doing the Covid vaccine surveillance it promised, or it is doing it and not making the results publicly available. Either way, it’s high time that MPs, the Covid Inquiry and the media started asking MHRA some searching questions.
Until Nick retired a few years ago, he was a Senior Civil Servant in a Government Department.
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By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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