Coronavirus

I understand and appreciate you holding me to a higher standard than the average deficient NYA. On that note I will reconsider your apology good sir.

MTB PH.D.

wizard-of-oz-scarecrow.jpeg
 
movetheboat said:
I understand and appreciate you holding me to a higher standard than the average deficient NYA. On that note I will reconsider your apology good sir.

MTB PH.D.

wizard-of-oz-scarecrow.jpeg
Click to expand...
I'm not a mind reader so I hold folks to what they post because these are the only data I have to evaluate.

Yeah, data is plural, datum is the singular, little known fact...
 

China reopens borders in final farewell to zero-COVID​

By Joyce Zhou
and Yew Lun Tian
HONG KONG/BEIJING, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Travellers streamed into China by air, land and sea on Sunday, many eager for long-awaited reunions, as Beijing opened borders that have been all but shut since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After three years, mainland China opened sea and land crossings with Hong Kong and ended a requirement for incoming travellers to quarantine, dismantling a final pillar of a zero-COVID policy that had shielded China's 1.4 billion people from the virus but also cut them off from the rest of the world.
 
Fact-checking for your wellness and convenience.

Rumor: The COVID vaccine causes strokes.

Truth: Close but not quite. Both the vaccine and the virus can trigger an immune response that, in extremely rare cases, can stimulate dangerous blood clotting, leading to strokes that can be fatal. This occurs far more frequently after an infection vs a vaccination.

If you’re concerned about strokes, your best defense is being vaccinated. “The COVID-19 vaccine definitely can help reduce the risk of a debilitating stroke,” the Stroke Foundation said in a recent announcement urging people to protect themselves after sobering research linked the virus to dangerous blood clots. “The fact is, the more severe case you have of COVID, the more likely you are to have a stroke,” they said.

Learn more at thestrokefoundation.org or reach out with your questions, comments, rumors and anecdotes to: [email protected]
 

China Reports Nearly 60,000 Covid-Linked Deaths Since Lifting Restrictions​

The unexpected disclosure was made as the country faces mounting criticism for providing unreliable data on its latest coronavirus outbreak.

China said on Saturday that it had recorded nearly 60,000 fatalities linked to the coronavirus in the month since the country lifted its strict “zero Covid” policy, accelerating an outbreak that is believed to have infected millions of people. The disclosure was the first time China has provided an official measure of the Covid wave now sweeping the country, and represents a huge spike in the official death toll.

Until Saturday, China had reported a total of just 5,241 Covid deaths since the pandemic began in the city of Wuhan in late 2019. That measure was narrowly defined as deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by Covid. The new figure released Saturday included those who had Covid, but died from other underlying illnesses.

China has faced mounting criticism from other countries and from the World Health Organization for not providing reliable data about the extent of its Covid outbreak and about the number of deaths across the country despite widespread scenes of overflowing hospitals, morgues and funeral homes in recent weeks.
Before the announcement, China said that only 37 people had died of Covid since Dec. 7, the day it ended its “zero Covid” policy.

The lack of transparency prompted several countries, including Japan and South Korea, to impose travel curbs on Chinese visitors after China reopened its borders last Sunday. Experts also warned that playing down the severity of the outbreak could lead people within the country to take fewer precautions.

China recorded 59,938 Covid-related deaths from Dec. 8 to Jan. 12, Jiao Yahui, an official with China’s National Health Commission, said at a news conference in Beijing. That figure included 5,503 people who died of respiratory failure directly caused by Covid. Another 54,435 fatalities were linked to other underlying illnesses, Ms. Jiao said.

Ms. Jiao said China was unable to release the data on Covid-related deaths sooner because it required a comprehensive examination of hospital reporting.

“We organized experts to conduct a systematic analysis on the death cases, so it took a long time,” Ms. Jiao said.

It was unclear whether the new figures mean that China has changed the way it discloses Covid deaths to include people with underlying diseases whose conditions were worsened by the virus. Officials have maintained that China’s official toll counts only those who died from pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by Covid. Other countries, such as the United States and Britain, count Covid deaths more broadly.

Experts said it was too soon to determine whether China had changed tack, but they welcomed the move to provide more data.

“We cannot make a judgment now, but it is obviously more reliable than the previous data saying there were only several deaths,” said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “I hope the government will be more transparent now.”

China has narrowly counted deaths from infectious diseases for a long time, including SARS in 2003 and seasonal flu. But during the Shanghai lockdown in the spring of 2022, the authorities made an exception and used a looser definition to justify the lengthy confinement of residents. Of the 588 Covid deaths the Shanghai city government reported at that time, one was ascribed to a heart attack, and the rest to “underlying conditions” or “tumors.” Despite this inconsistency, the National Health Commission has never expunged those deaths from the national toll on Covid deaths.

Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the actual death toll in China, like that in every country, was almost certainly higher. He said that China could have provided more reliable data on death and infection rates if it had tested hospital patients more vigorously.

“The one thing which is a bit surprising is that China has so much testing capacity but hasn’t been using it to confirm Covid in hospitalized patients,” Mr. Cowling said.

The National Health Commission’s data confirmed longstanding fears that China’s older population would be hit hard by an outbreak because so many did not receive enough vaccine doses. Of the nearly 60,000 fatalities, 56.5 percent involved someone at least 80 years old.

Covid deaths are a particularly sensitive political issue in China, because Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, had championed a strategy of harsh lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing to try to contain the virus. Mr. Xi boasted that the model could be adopted by other countries after it proved successful in suppressing transmission early in the pandemic.

As the highly infectious Omicron variant picked up steam last year, however, that strategy became untenable. As cases steadily rose across the country, protests erupted in November as more people grew weary of the Covid restrictions. Already under major economic strain, China then abruptly reversed its “zero Covid” policy without providing an opportunity for the country to stock up on medicine.

Officials have said in recent days that infections have peaked in major cities, though concern is growing about how the current coronavirus wave will affect the nation’s countryside, which has a far weaker health care system compared with China’s cities.
 

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

"Following the availability and use of the updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines, CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a near real-time surveillance system, met the statistical criteria to prompt additional investigation into whether there was a safety concern for ischemic stroke in people ages 65 and older who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent," reads a Friday statement.

"Rapid-response investigation of the signal in the VSD raised a question of whether people 65 and older who have received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent were more likely to have an ischemic stroke in the 21 days following vaccination compared with days 22-44 following vaccination," the release continues.
The bivalent vaccine includes "a component of the original virus strain to provide broad protection against COVID-19 and a component of the omicron variant to provide better protection against COVID-19 caused by the omicron variant," according to the FDA.
The agency notably did not see the same "preliminary signal" that prompted the investigation in the Moderna vaccine.
The agency added that it's "very unlikely that the signal in VSD represents a true clinical risk," and doesn't recommend any changes to vaccine protocols at this time.
According to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who chairs the House Commmerce Committee, has called on the CDC to "rapidly investigate" the matter.
"The lack of transparency over the past three years has broken Americans’ trust in our public health agencies," said McMorris in a Friday statement. "CDC and FDA have systems in place to monitor vaccine safety that have identified this preliminary signal."
"Now these agencies must rapidly investigate, in an open and transparent manner, whether or not the vaccine may have contributed to the reported strokes."
 

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

  • CDC’s VAERS safety signal analysis based on reports from Dec. 14, 2020 – July 29, 2022 for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines shows clear safety signals for death and a range of highly concerning thrombo-embolic, cardiac, neurological, hemorrhagic, hematological, immune-system and menstrual adverse events (AEs) among U.S. adults.
  • There were 770 different types of adverse events that showed safety signals in ages 18+, of which over 500 (or 2/3) had a larger safety signal than myocarditis/pericarditis.
  • The CDC analysis shows that the number of serious adverse events reported in less than two years for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is 5.5 times larger than all serious reports for vaccines given to adults in the US since 2009 (~73,000 vs. ~13,000).
  • Twice as many mRNA COVID-19 vaccine reports were classified as serious compared to all other vaccines given to adults (11% vs. 5.5%). This meets the CDC definition of a safety signal.
  • There are 96 safety signals for 12-17 year-olds, which include: myocarditis, pericarditis, Bell’s Palsy, genital ulcerations, high blood pressure and heartrate, menstrual irregularities, cardiac valve incompetencies, pulmonary embolism, cardiac arrhythmias, thromboses, pericardial and pleural effusion, appendicitis and perforated appendix, immune thrombocytopenia, chest pain, increased troponin levels, being in intensive care, and having anticoagulant therapy.
  • There are 66 safety signals for 5-11 year-olds, which include: myocarditis, pericarditis, ventricular dysfunction and cardiac valve incompetencies, pericardial and pleural effusion, chest pain, appendicitis & appendectomies, Kawasaki’s disease, menstrual irregularities, vitiligo, and vaccine breakthrough infection.
  • The safety signals cannot be dismissed as due to “stimulated,” exaggerated, fraudulent or otherwise artificially inflated reporting, nor can they be dismissed due to the huge number of COVID vaccines administered. There are several reasons why, but the simplest one is this: the safety signal analysis does not depend on the number of reports, but whether or not some AEs are reported at a higher rate for these vaccines than for other non-COVID vaccines. Other reasons are discussed in the full post below.
  • In August, 2022, the CDC told the Epoch Times that the results of their safety signal analysis “were generally consistent with EB [Empirical Bayesian] data mining [conducted by the FDA], revealing no additional unexpected safety signals.” So either the FDA’s data mining was consistent with the CDC’s method—meaning they "generally" found the same large number of highly alarming safety signals—or the signals they did find were expected. Or they were lying. We may never know because the FDA has refused to release their data mining results.
 
dsedy said:

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

"Following the availability and use of the updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines, CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a near real-time surveillance system, met the statistical criteria to prompt additional investigation into whether there was a safety concern for ischemic stroke in people ages 65 and older who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent," reads a Friday statement.

"Rapid-response investigation of the signal in the VSD raised a question of whether people 65 and older who have received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent were more likely to have an ischemic stroke in the 21 days following vaccination compared with days 22-44 following vaccination," the release continues.
The bivalent vaccine includes "a component of the original virus strain to provide broad protection against COVID-19 and a component of the omicron variant to provide better protection against COVID-19 caused by the omicron variant," according to the FDA.
The agency notably did not see the same "preliminary signal" that prompted the investigation in the Moderna vaccine.
The agency added that it's "very unlikely that the signal in VSD represents a true clinical risk," and doesn't recommend any changes to vaccine protocols at this time.
According to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who chairs the House Commmerce Committee, has called on the CDC to "rapidly investigate" the matter.
"The lack of transparency over the past three years has broken Americans’ trust in our public health agencies," said McMorris in a Friday statement. "CDC and FDA have systems in place to monitor vaccine safety that have identified this preliminary signal."
"Now these agencies must rapidly investigate, in an open and transparent manner, whether or not the vaccine may have contributed to the reported strokes."
Click to expand...
Cant be true MTB posted a link saying so Covid can cause strokes as well as back pain
 
dsedy said:

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com www.zerohedge.com

  • CDC’s VAERS safety signal analysis based on reports from Dec. 14, 2020 – July 29, 2022 for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines shows clear safety signals for death and a range of highly concerning thrombo-embolic, cardiac, neurological, hemorrhagic, hematological, immune-system and menstrual adverse events (AEs) among U.S. adults.
  • There were 770 different types of adverse events that showed safety signals in ages 18+, of which over 500 (or 2/3) had a larger safety signal than myocarditis/pericarditis.
  • The CDC analysis shows that the number of serious adverse events reported in less than two years for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is 5.5 times larger than all serious reports for vaccines given to adults in the US since 2009 (~73,000 vs. ~13,000).
  • Twice as many mRNA COVID-19 vaccine reports were classified as serious compared to all other vaccines given to adults (11% vs. 5.5%). This meets the CDC definition of a safety signal.
  • There are 96 safety signals for 12-17 year-olds, which include: myocarditis, pericarditis, Bell’s Palsy, genital ulcerations, high blood pressure and heartrate, menstrual irregularities, cardiac valve incompetencies, pulmonary embolism, cardiac arrhythmias, thromboses, pericardial and pleural effusion, appendicitis and perforated appendix, immune thrombocytopenia, chest pain, increased troponin levels, being in intensive care, and having anticoagulant therapy.
  • There are 66 safety signals for 5-11 year-olds, which include: myocarditis, pericarditis, ventricular dysfunction and cardiac valve incompetencies, pericardial and pleural effusion, chest pain, appendicitis & appendectomies, Kawasaki’s disease, menstrual irregularities, vitiligo, and vaccine breakthrough infection.
  • The safety signals cannot be dismissed as due to “stimulated,” exaggerated, fraudulent or otherwise artificially inflated reporting, nor can they be dismissed due to the huge number of COVID vaccines administered. There are several reasons why, but the simplest one is this: the safety signal analysis does not depend on the number of reports, but whether or not some AEs are reported at a higher rate for these vaccines than for other non-COVID vaccines. Other reasons are discussed in the full post below.
  • In August, 2022, the CDC told the Epoch Times that the results of their safety signal analysis “were generally consistent with EB [Empirical Bayesian] data mining [conducted by the FDA], revealing no additional unexpected safety signals.” So either the FDA’s data mining was consistent with the CDC’s method—meaning they "generally" found the same large number of highly alarming safety signals—or the signals they did find were expected. Or they were lying. We may never know because the FDA has refused to release their data mining results.
Click to expand...
Stop it they sent years and a gazillon hrs of testing before they released the VAX for Covid
 
Karma is truly a bi-atch!!

China’s Latest Source of Unrest: Unpaid ‘Zero Covid’ Workers​

Companies that reaped windfalls helping the government implement strict ‘zero Covid’ controls are now struggling to pay and keep workers.

After China’s abrupt reversal of “zero Covid” restrictions, the nation’s vast machinery of virus surveillance and testing collapsed, even as infections and deaths surged. Now, the authorities face another problem: Angry pandemic-control workers demanding wages and jobs.

In the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, hundreds of workers locked in a pay dispute with a Covid test kit manufacturer hurled objects at police officers in riot gear, who held up shields as they retreated. Standing on stocks of inventory, protesters kicked and tossed boxes of rapid antigen tests on to the ground, sending thousands of tests spilling.

In the eastern city of Hangzhou, witnesses said several workers climbed on the roof of a test kit factory and threatened to jump to protest unpaid furloughs. And at a separate test manufacturing plant in the city, workers protested for days over a wage dispute.

The unrest this month highlights a little-noticed aspect of the social and economic fallout from China’s “zero Covid” policy U-turn. Mass testing was a cornerstone of China’s strategy of isolating the virus before it could spread. But Covid testing of any sort is no longer in high demand. Companies that manufactured test kits and analyzed results in a lab are seeing their revenues plummet, leading to layoffs and pay cuts for their workers. One report suggested that mass testing in large cities accounted for about 1.3 percent of China’s economic output.

The consequence has been a new source of turmoil that challenges the ruling Communist Party’s efforts to maintain stability amid high youth unemployment, a flagging economy and an explosion of Covid across the country. China said on Saturday that it had recorded nearly 60,000 fatalities linked to the coronavirus in the month since it lifted “zero Covid,” though experts said the actual death toll was likely much higher.

The New York Times visited three Covid test making factories in Hangzhou where workers and residents confirmed that there had been labor protests in recent days. At one plant operated by a firm called Xinyue Biotech, a fire truck, an ambulance and a police van could be seen in the factory yard on Wednesday responding to a worker who had climbed on to the fifth-floor roof and threatened to jump to protest unpaid wages. The shuttered plant had been the scene of days of demonstrations, witnesses near the factory said.

The Times also examined videos that have circulated on social media of protests in Hangzhou as well as Chongqing, where workers confronted the police in large numbers.

The disputes in Chongqing and Hangzhou could portend more unrest to come. Many among China’s armies of “big whites,” low-level government workers charged with enforcing Covid restrictions and named after their signature white hazmat suits, have been let go, muddying an already volatile labor market.

Factories across China are still strapped for cash amid the broader slowdown. Workers have next to no recourse to resolve their grievances other than to lash out, said Li Qiang, founder and executive director of China Labor Watch, a New York-based Chinese labor rights group.

“These protests have been very violent because the channels to defend workers’ rights are very limited, while the trust toward the government and laws is low,” Mr. Li said. “It demonstrates that if a company ignores workers rights, especially the most vulnerable temporary workers, it will face serious consequences.”

In Chongqing, protesters at a test kit manufacturer chanted “Pay me back” as they faced off with lines of police on Jan. 7. It was not immediately clear what sparked the dispute between workers and the test kit manufacturer, Zybio. Videos posted on social media leading up to the protests warned of labor agencies in the area exploiting job seekers by inflating how much work Covid test manufacturers were offering and how much they would pay.

The Times verified the location of the Zybio protest videos by matching buildings in videos with online photos and satellite images of the industrial park. One clip showed protesters throwing plastic containers, stools and a traffic cone at police equipped with riot gear. The company did not respond to requests for comment, and several protesters contacted by The Times declined to be interviewed.

In Hangzhou, protests flared after workers at the Acon Biotech plant were told at the start of this month they would be furloughed for two weeks because the company’s revenues had dwindled since “zero Covid” measures were dropped.

One employee who participated in the protests, who agreed to speak only if not quoted by name given the political sensitivity of labor unrest, said workers were enraged by the furlough because it meant they could not earn money before the Lunar New Year, which starts this weekend.

At one point, distraught employees threatened to jump off the roof of a company building. The workers were finally given 3,000 yuan, or roughly $445, apiece a week ago, and the bulk of the work force then left for the holiday.

Many Chinese testing companies had been amassing fortunes during nearly three years of stringent Covid containment measures. But the emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant made containing the virus all but impossible, and China abandoned the strategy in early December.

Even without Omicron, China’s strategy of mass testing was proving financially unsustainable. Many local governments — already under significant financial pressure from the slowdown and a dearth of land sales for real estate development — struggled to pay for the millions of free swabs that residents were ordered to take virtually every day.

To fund testing and other pandemic controls, money was diverted from public projects in some provinces, while cities cut bonuses for officials and imposed pay cuts on civil servants. Several provinces and municipalities, including Guizhou in China’s southwest, began charging for the tests.

Lab testing firms that earlier reaped huge windfalls began reporting that governments were late on payments, leaving them exposed to bad debt. Among them was Dian Diagnostics, a large testing company in Hangzhou, which reported in October that the amount of money it was owed had surged by nearly 80 percent compared to a year before.

Shenzhen Hezi Gene Tech, another fast-growing testing firm, opened six new labs across China in October only to shutter half of them in the last few weeks. It was unclear if the closures were spurred by debt or a lack of business. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

“The whole industry has been hit particularly hard with the elimination of mandatory testing in the country. The demand is no longer there,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, who argued that “zero Covid” had been partly prolonged because it served so many business interests.

“They made a lot of money working for the government implementing ‘zero Covid,’” Mr. Huang said of labs and test manufacturers.

Just how disruptive the collapse of testing and all the employment associated with Covid controls will be to China’s economy remains to be seen. The lifting of “zero Covid” will remove constraints on economic activity, and that could spur growth that would overshadow the loss of Covid-related businesses, said Taylor Loeb, a senior economic analyst for Trivium China, a consulting firm.

“A lot of these jobs were never going to be long-term, stable employment opportunities,” Mr. Loeb said.
To many migrant workers, the timing could not be worse. Employees are usually eyeing bonuses and counting their savings in the weeks leading up to Lunar New Year so that they can travel home for the holiday, settle debts and lavish their family and friends with gifts.

In Hangzhou, a tense standoff between the police and hundreds of workers at an Alltest Biotech factory devolved into a shoving match Jan. 9, a video showed. Dozens of them were taken away by the police, several eyewitnesses said in interviews.

Protesters faced off with the police outside an Alltest Biotech factory on Jan. 9.

Workers hired by a temporary employment agency on Alltest’s behalf had complained they were being paid less than permanent workers, according to an employee interviewed at the factory gate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. An employee who answered a phone at Alltest said operations had returned to normal, but declined to provide a name or discuss the unrest.
 
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