Placebo Effect Accounts for More Than Two-Thirds of COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events, Researchers Find

... But the city has been brought to its knees with the arrival of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. The number of reported cases has soared to more than 66,000 in just a couple of months...

... "Because of our success, paradoxically, people had been lulled into a sense of false security,"...

.... one key problem is the low vaccination rate among the elderly. Some 76.2% of those aged above 11 are fully vaccinated - but fewer than one-third of people aged 80 and above have had two jabs...

Hong Kong's healthcare system has been overwhelmed by a huge surge in Covid-19 cases, with infected patients being treated outside crowded hospitals...

... More than 10,000 people are waiting to be admitted to hospitals, as experts warn cases could surge to 28,000 daily. Nine people died from the virus in the past 24 hours, including a three-year old girl...

Staff at Antrim Area Hospital were "traumatised" by the considerable pressure of patient numbers on Tuesday...

... major incident was declared when the hospital had no available beds. ... there was "no physical space to stand, never mind to receive critically ill patients"...

... At one point on Tuesday there were 62 patients delayed in the emergency department, many of whom had been there more than 12 hours and some for a number of days.

She added that 661 out of 12,000 staff were off due to Covid-19 or self-isolation across the trust...

... Tuesday was "not a single event", but one that had "been building for some time", she added. "We've been struggling at full capacity now for months," ...

... "I am talking about really sick patients here..." ...

... more than a quarter of the hospital's patients - 86 - have tested positive for Covid-19...

... "Part of the issue is that Covid is still a problem," the consultant told BBC Radio Foyle. Dr Lavery said the health service required "planned change" rather than "emergency change when services fall apart"...

.....the covid pandemic is very much ongoing:

• ... England ... around 1 in 25 people...
  
  
• ... Wales ... around 1 in 30 people...
  
  
• ... Northern Ireland ... around 1 in 14 people...
  
  
• ... Scotland ... around 1 in 20 people...
  

... But also, how many newly with "Long Covid" disabilities?...

• ... England ... around 1 in 30 people...
  
  
• ... Wales ... around 1 in 30 people...
  
  
• ... Northern Ireland ... around 1 in 17 people...
  
  
• ... Scotland ... around 1 in 19 people...
  

But also, how many newly with "Long Covid" disabilities?

Those are still very high numbers but with a good hint that they are slowly subsiding. Yet we are already (too soon?) throwing away all restrictions and throwing healthy caution to the winds!

The big gamble is for how well our health service can continue whilst continuing to be relentlessly so badly overstretched.

And the Dido "Test 'n' Trace" numbers are now [useless] PR fiction.

About 37 million infected in omicron wave, and 58% of kids were infected at some point

An estimated 140 million people in the US—around 43 percent—have had COVID-19, according to the latest analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using data from the end of January.

The estimate of people infected with COVID-19 is nearly double the CDC's cumulative tally of cases reported at the end of January, which totaled around 74 million. These numbers are expected to differ because many COVID-19 cases are not detected or reported—i.e., people may not get tested at all, or they take a home test that is not reported. That means official case counts are expected to be a significant undercount of actual infections...

... The latest data from that surveillance system is from December. At that time, the CDC estimated that about 95 percent of people ages 16 and older in the US had antibodies against the pandemic coronavirus from prior infection and/or vaccination.

That protection didn't stop the omicron variant from causing the largest surge of cases so far. Overall, the antibody tests in both surveillance systems do not indicate that people are protected from infection or reinfection. The tests merely detect the presence of antibodies...

... The 95 percent seroprevalence estimate from December is likely to explain, in part, the relatively lower rates of hospitalization and death seen during the surge of omicron cases...

....The unfolding outbreak of the virus in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and SA has been declared a communicable disease incident of national significance.

It can cause severe neurological illness with headaches, convulsions and reduced consciousness in some cases.

It spreads by mosquitoes carrying it from either pigs or water birds, but it doesn’t transmit from animal to animal, or animal to human, or human to human.....

People who have suffered mild Covid-19 are likely to have “significant” long-term effects on their brains, a new peer-reviewed study has found.

Parts of the brain that affect memory, smell and emotion were more likely to display evidence of tissue damage, and patients also displayed an average reduction in the size of their entire brain.

The study, led by researchers from the University of Oxford, compared brain scans from 401 people aged 51-81, before and after mostly mild Covid infections.

Of those, only 15 people had been hospitalised over their infection. 384 people without Covid were also tested as a comparison.

Following the infected patients’ second brain scans, the researchers found grey matter reduction and tissue damage in the parahippocampal gyrus and the orbitofrontal cortex, the areas of the brain responsible for smell and memory.

The patients were also asked questions in standard cognitive tests, with those who had caught Covid taking longer to answer. This could potentially explain the brain fog people feel after catching the disease.

Even when those who had been hospitalised for Covid were excluded from the results, the effects were still seen, suggesting even a mild illness could have consequences for brain health....

... Note also: Vaccinated less likely to develop long Covid


And very close to home:

I have a good friend now suffering covid. As a 'just-in-case', she's been put on an experimental antiviral. She's triple vaccinated so hopefully she won't be suffering any long term problems.

More than 18 million people - three times higher than official records suggest - have probably died because of Covid, say researchers.

Their report comes two years to the day from when the World Health Organization first declared the pandemic.

The Covid-19 excess mortality team at the US's Washington University studied 191 countries and territories for what they call the true global death figure.

Some deaths were from the virus, while others were linked to the infection.

This is because catching Covid might worsen other pre-existing medical conditions, such as heart or lung disease, for example.

The measure used is called excess deaths - how many more people have been dying than would be expected compared to recent years, before the pandemic hit.

Another new COVID-19 variant has been detected.

The World Health Organization has confirmed that the new variant, dubbed Deltacron — a combination of Delta and Omicron — has been detected in the France, Denmark and the Netherlands.

"The hybrid genome harbors signature mutations of the two lineages," said IHU Méditerranée Infection's Philippe Colson in a study published Tuesday.

While evidence of the new variant has been observed, cases are few. According to Reuters, researchers have identified 17 confirmed instances in both Europe and the United States.

The IHU study also noted that more cases would need to emerge for researchers to be able to effectively detect the severity of the variant.....

• ... England ... around 1 in 25 people...
  
  
• ... Wales ... around 1 in 30 people...
  
  
• ... Northern Ireland ... around 1 in 13 people...
  
  
• ... Scotland ... around 1 in 18 people...
  

But also, how many newly with "Long Covid" disabilities?

See: Message 2095313

The big gamble is for how well our health service can continue whilst continuing to be relentlessly so badly overstretched.

And the Dido "Test 'n' Trace" numbers are now [useless] PR fiction.

The latest UK covid numbers update for last week (11th March 2022) are painfully deteriorating with:...

... "prudent" to keep mask rules in place due to a spike in [covid] cases...

For something so simple and effective, why ever not save lives?