Pandemic 2020

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DIY-HP-LED

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12 people are behind most of the anti-vaxxer disinformation you see on social media (mashable.com)

12 people are behind most of the anti-vaxxer disinformation you see on social media

If you catch your old college roommate sharing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on Facebook, the odds are that these falsehoods are coming from one of twelve people.

That’s right. Just twelve individuals.

A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Vax Watch found that up to 65 percent of “anti-vaccine content” on Facebook and Twitter originated from twelve influencers within the anti-vaxxer movement.

The report focused on these twelve accounts after an analysis of content that was shared and posted on Facebook and Twitter 812,000 times between Feb. 1 and March 16.

On Facebook alone, the content from these individuals, which the reports dubs as the “Disinformation Dozen,” accounts for 73 percent of all anti-vaxxer content posted or shared on the platform in the last two months.

The largest anti-vaxxer influencer on social media, according to the report, is Joseph Mercola. Mercola is an alternative medicine promoter who runs a multimillion dollar online business selling treatments and dietary supplements. The FDA recently sent Mercola a warning over his sham treatments for COVID-19.

Another major culprit is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Kennedy, the nephew of John F. Kennedy, is perhaps one of the most high profile influencers in the anti-vaxxer community. Last month, Instagram banned him from the platform for violating the site’s coronavirus vaccine misinformation policy.

However, despite calls to deplatform him from Twitter and Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, Kennedy’s accounts remain on those social media services.

The other social media users in the “Disinformation Dozen” include Ty and Charlene Bollinger, Sherri Tenpenny, Rizza Islam, Rashid Buttar, Erin Elizabeth, Sayer Ji, Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper, and Kevin Jenkins.

While Facebook and Twitter have both committed to banning anti-vaccine content and the users who spread disinformation about vaccines, a majority of these twelve users have active accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. According to the report, all of them have an active account on at least one of these platforms.

Health misinformation was a huge problem in 2020 amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, more than 59 million people were reached on social media platforms at the end of last year by the 425 anti-vaxxer accounts which the organization tracks.

And, as the pandemic continues, the problem has not gone away. In fact, as coronavirus vaccines have begun to roll out over these past few months, anti-vaccination content has continued to surge.

For example, a recent report from Media Matters For America found that beyond the 12 major influencers mentioned in this article, “micro-influencers” are having a moment on Instagram. Smaller accounts pushing misinformation are growing a following, violating Instagram’s vaccine misinformation policies, and operating undetected on the platform.
 

CCGNZ

Well-Known Member
I waited three hours for a left over dose last Saturday, well worth it.
Piece of mind for sure,do your part, to think people don't WANT it is crazy,When this all started and New York was completely overwhelmed along w/pictures of poor Italians gasping for air in ICU units if you were to say effective vaccines will be in circulation in less than a year who would believe it?Man, Dr. Fauci was saying he'd be happy w/a vaccine w/a efficacy % of 65%, We've easily surpassed that in record time and there are people who DON'T WANT IT. INCREDIBLE ccguns
 

injinji

Well-Known Member
New numbers out. 67% instead of 69%. Humans are such idiots. Why would they do this to themselves.
 

printer

Well-Known Member
They found samples with multiple mutations in Brazil also. There are some mutations that are the same in different parts of the world and it seems they occured naturally without being transported there. It does make sense that it could happen given the amount of replications in the body and multiplied that by the amount of people getting infected.

The new more contagious varients are the result of the spike which docks with out cells has been changed and 'sticks' better to the docking site on the cells. The vaccines have been designed to reproduce the spike portion of the virus and the body makes antibodies that identifies the spike as the virus cells. The change in the spike shape that the new variants carry can evade the antibodies a little better. There was talk about the change in the spike where it changed enough that the vaccine antibodies do not reconize it and they would have to re-engineer the vaccines and we may need booster shots. So life may get back to sort of normal but we won't be free of this virus for a while.
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
Merck (MRK) Molnupiravir Pill Could Change the Fight Against Covid - Bloomberg

Merck’s Little Brown Pill Could Transform the Fight Against Covid
The antiviral drug molnupiravir, still in clinical trials, would give doctors an important new treatment and a weapon against coronaviruses and future pandemics

The story of what might become the next major breakthrough in Covid-19 treatment starts on a hotel hallway floor in January 2020, months before you were worried about the virus, weeks before you likely knew it existed. A scientist and a business executive were at a health-care conference in San Francisco, hatching a plan to get a promising drug out of academia and into research trials for regulatory approval. George Painter, president of the Emory Institute for Drug Development, and Wendy Holman, chief executive officer of Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, had met at the Handlery Union Square Hotel to discuss a compound Painter had started developing with funding from the National Institutes of Health. They got so enthusiastic about the possibilities that their meeting ran long and a group of lawyers kicked them out of their room. So they continued on the hall floor, hours after they’d started.

Painter and Holman weren’t talking about targeting Covid at the time. The disease and the coronavirus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2, weren’t major concerns at the J.P. Morgan-run conference, where handshakes and cocktail parties with hundreds of guests were still the norm. Rather, Painter was hoping his drug, molnupiravir, could get more funding to speed up flu studies. Holman was eager to see if it worked on Ebola. That’s the thing about molnupiravir: Many scientists think it could be a broad-spectrum antiviral, effective against a range of threats.

A few days later, Holman arrived in Atlanta to see the labs at Emory and pore through the early data. As she and Painter hashed out the terms of a deal in which Ridgeback would buy the drug and start studying its safety and efficacy in people, Covid was seeping into the public consciousness. By the time Ridgeback announced its acquisition of molnupiravir, on March 19, the world had shut down, and it was clear which threat the drug needed to be tested on right away. Clinical trials for the pill kicked off in April. The next month, Merck & Co., which has a deep history of public-health development work, including on HIV and Ebola, struck a deal to buy molnupiravir from Ridgeback and start the types of large-scale trials that could get it authorized by regulators. Those began in the fall.

Even as vaccines are rolling out worldwide, the coronavirus and its mutations still pose a major health threat. Not everyone who’s eligible for a shot will agree to get one. The hundreds of thousands of people who continue to contract Covid each day have few treatment options. There’s no simple, inexpensive pill that can prevent those at the earliest stages of infection from later needing to be hospitalized. The monoclonal antibody therapies that doctors now have available for those most at risk of getting severely ill need to be administered by infusions at specialized medical centers. And for those who do become hospitalized, the antiviral remdesivir, from Gilead Sciences Inc., speeds recovery, but hasn’t been shown to reduce deaths.

Drugmakers see an opportunity to add to the arsenal of potential therapies. There are 246 antivirals in development, according to the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry trade group. And companies as big as Pfizer Inc. and as little-known as Veru Inc. are testing them in pill form. Merck’s molnupiravir is among the furthest along. Its developers hope the pills can be prescribed widely to anyone who gets sick. Think Tamiflu for Covid.

The hurdle, beyond ensuring the drug works, is making sure it’s safe. Developers of antivirals have been dealing with the thorny issues they pose for decades. Should Merck succeed in demonstrating that molnupiravir is effective and free of serious side effects, it could be a boon to the company, and to society, for many years to come.

Viruses are uniquely difficult to attack with drugs. They hijack human cells and set up machinery to churn out copies of themselves, creating a challenge: destroying the virus without harming the cells. Success, when it comes, can be fleeting, because viruses mutate to survive.

The first antiviral approved in the U.S. was idoxuridine, a herpes treatment regulators green-lit in 1963, generations after the discovery of antibiotics. It’s among a widely used class of drugs called nucleoside analogues—synthetic versions of nucleosides, critical building blocks of DNA and its counterpart, RNA, the messenger molecule that delivers instructions to a cell’s protein-making factories. Nucleoside analogues prevent viruses from replicating, or from replicating effectively, inside cells.

Concerns that idoxuridine was toxic to the heart led it to be recommended only for topical use—the sort of hurdle that kept antiviral drug development slow. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s invigorated the field. “Until HIV came along, there were precious few antivirals,” says Saye Khoo, a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool. Rising death rates and the public outcry about the virus prompted companies and governments to pour millions of dollars into an area that hadn’t seen that kind of investment before.

The breakthroughs were meaningful. Khoo says scientists discovered that some people appeared to have a natural resistance to getting HIV—they lacked a receptor allowing the virus to enter cells—leading to a new class of drugs. They also realized that antivirals would need to be adaptable enough to deal with mutations, and that potent combination therapies involving multiple drugs could prevent the evolution and spread of drug resistance. At the same time, some of the new treatments had serious side effects, including anemia and liver problems, pushing drugmakers to continually improve upon their treatments.

During this era, the U.S. government also started to boost its pandemic preparedness, with an emphasis on guarding against bioterrorism. President Bill Clinton, alarmed after reading the Richard Preston novel The Cobra Event, in which a terrorist unleashes a virus that causes a fictional ailment called brainpox, convened a group of cabinet members and scientists in April 1998 to assess such threats. That led to the formation of what’s now called the Strategic National Stockpile, whose objective was to have enough emergency medicines and materials to deploy within 12 hours of an official request in times of crisis. Following the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks of 2001, the Bush administration directed the stockpile to procure products such as smallpox vaccines. Then, in 2006, Congress authorized the formation of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda, to help develop treatments and vaccines for public-health threats.
more...
 

CCGNZ

Well-Known Member
Astro-Zeneca has been the funkiest most distrustful of all vaccine candidates, it's to the point that their credibility is shot, glad US is not relying on it, feel bad for Euro's, lot of paranoia and drama w/Astro-Zenica, sure as hell happy that US isn't using it.ccguns
 

potroastV2

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DIY-HP-LED

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Don't usually post FOX stuff, but this is relevant and seems on the up and up. A lot of older folks have been immunized in Michigan and it's starting to show. Protect the elderly and vulnerable and hospitalizations and deaths should drop, I assume this data includes some of the new variants too.

I wonder when insurance companies will start dropping covid coverage for those who choose not to be vaccinated? These folks will cost someone a lot of money and we all know republicans care about money!
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'Alarming' rise in COVID-19-related hospitalizations among unvaccinated adults in Michigan: officials | Fox News

Alarming' rise in COVID-19-related hospitalizations among unvaccinated adults in Michigan: officials
Data showed a correlation between hospitalization rates and vaccination rates among older populations

While recent seven-day averages concerning COVID-19-related hospitalizations across the country have remained stable, health officials in Michigan have noted an "alarming" rise among unvaccinated individuals. In the first three weeks of March, officials tallied a 633% increase in hospitalizations among adults ages 30-39, and an increase of 800% among those ages 40-49.

"Michigan is making progress at ultimately defeating the COVID-19 pandemic through increasing vaccination rates, but the war is not yet over," Gary Roth, DO, Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA) medical officer, said in a news release. "Now is not the time to let our guard down and risk contracting COVID-19 with more contagious variants emerging and vaccines becoming widely available."

On Monday, the state opened up vaccine eligibility to adults ages 50 and up, as well as people ages 16 and up who have disabilities or other medical conditions. Caregivers and guardians of eligible people ages 16 and up are also now able to get the vaccine. The state will open up eligibility to all adults beginning April 5.

"My prescription to all Michiganders is to wear your mask, wash your hands, avoid crowds and when it is your turn, get your vaccine," Roth said. "You must continue to take preventative measures even after you’re vaccinated because it takes at least two weeks for a vaccine’s full protection to kick in following the last dose, and it will take time to vaccinate everyone."

The data showed a correlation between hospitalization rates and vaccination rates among older populations. Those aged 80 and over had both the highest vaccination rate hovering between 40 and 50%, and also saw the lowest hospitalization rates near 0%. Officials said the correlation shows the effectiveness of the vaccines.

"The data also indicates that, although older adults still have a higher risk of hospitalizations, the percentage of hospitalized patients who are younger than 40 years old has doubled, showing that adults of any age are vulnerable to complications from the disease," the news release said.
 

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
Will insurance companies send out notices to people telling them if the choose not to be vaccinated and are hospitalized for covid they won't be covered?

After vaccinations have been offered, your health insurance could require a vaccination for coverage on covid and related conditions. We don't worry about that stuff in Canada, but your insurance company might be interested in saving many billions of dollars! Since the healthcare insurance lobbyist own the GOP establishment in congress and the democrats want as many people to be vaccinated as possible ASAP...

I wonder what the cutoff date will be? ;)
 

printer

Well-Known Member
Will insurance companies send out notices to people telling them if the choose not to be vaccinated and are hospitalized for covid they won't be covered?

After vaccinations have been offered, your health insurance could require a vaccination for coverage on covid and related conditions. We don't worry about that stuff in Canada, but your insurance company might be interested in saving many billions of dollars! Since the healthcare insurance lobbyist own the GOP establishment in congress and the democrats want as many people to be vaccinated as possible ASAP...

I wonder what the cutoff date will be? ;)
That would have to be written in the contract.
 

CCGNZ

Well-Known Member
Canada thanks you for your Astro-Zeneca vaccines you are loaning us. I think.
I don't know bro, hope you get the Pfizer or Moderna at your age,might be prudent to pass on As.Zen if offered to you(to many lies from them),can't be much longer for you,until then 6ft++++.ccguns
 
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