Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Re: Second COVID-19 booster shot authorized for Americans 50 and older - NBC News

I may consult with my physician before I get the fourth dose.  I would like to know what the evidence is on the 4th shot?

I had the booster six months ago.  I am wondering what the ideal time frame would be for the fourth shot?

On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 8:30 PM Albert wrote:
You can get your 4th shot now.

Second COVID-19 booster shot authorized for Americans 50 and older - NBC News


https://apple.news/AILkUQy3WQ-6spkICRlZNAQ

Monday, March 28, 2022

Fwd: Shanghai

From: John Coffey 

It seems unlikely that you could suppress Omicron.  Best to let it run its course.

I'm hoping that my booster from six months ago will still protect me, but if not, I would be willing to have another booster if the evidence supports it.

On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 8:46 AM Larry wrote:
Shanghai a city of 26 million shuts down tunnels, bridges and highways in a covid lockdown to begin mass testing.
Oil dropped almost 3% in response.


Saturday, March 19, 2022

COVID update

It is helpful to see where we are at.  

We have gone from 1 out of 11 people being infected to roughly 1 out of 15.  Still, that seems high to me.  The number of new cases is surprisingly low.  The number of deaths is approaching a million, but the daily deaths have dropped quite a bit.

I think that we got lucky with the Omicron variant.  I've been saying that it is like a different disease because it has slightly different symptoms.  Reportedly it is ten times more infectious but ten times less deadly.  It is like comparing cowpox to smallpox, where cowpox acts as a natural vaccine to smallpox.

This video is predicting a surge of the BA 2 variant...






--

Friday, March 18, 2022

Fwd: Overwhelmed by Omicron, Hong Kong Runs Out of Space for Its Dead - The Wall Street Journal

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Albert 
Date: Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 1:31 PM

It's not over until it's over. We should be cautious about putting our guard down on covid. Mainstream news has been avoiding covid stories because the Russo-Ukraine War brings more viewers and clicks. Nevertheless, as you and I know, the covid story will continue long after the Russo-Ukraine War is over.

Overwhelmed by Omicron, Hong Kong Runs Out of Space for Its Dead - The Wall Street Journal

https://apple.news/A4yDI5zQhTHKEqEV1zU4dkw

--

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

The Pfizer documents. Adverse effects and death


Normally I have been a fan of Dr. John Campbell's videos, but here he takes a more anti-Pfizer vaccine position with a conspiracy theory tone.  I'm kind of disappointed because I took him to be a reliable source of information.

In response to his video, I wrote the following comment:

It is irresponsible to say that the 1,223 deaths were due to vaccination. Reportedly, anyone can submit an adverse event whether it was caused by the vaccine or not. Two out of every 100,000 vaccinated people got myocarditis, but 20 to 30% of the people hospitalized with COVID-19 developed heart problems.

The purpose of the adverse event reporting system is to determine if adverse events occur beyond what would be normal.    During the vaccine trial, 6 people died, mostly from cardiac events, and 4 of those deaths came from the placebo group.  https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pfizer-health-concerns/fact-check-clarifying-claims-around-pfizer-vaccine-deaths-and-side-effects-idUSKBN28K2R6

However, let us take the 1,223 death number at face value for a moment.  From what I can tell, by the end of February 2021, 20% of American adults were vaccinated. That's around 51 million people, mostly older people from which we could expect some deaths regardless.  If 1,223 died from vaccination, then that is 1 out of 41,700.  However, the risk from COVID is greater with 1 out of 333 Americans dying from the disease.

It appeared as if my comment to the video was posted and then deleted within seconds.  I don't understand this unless some automatic filter is eliminating my comment.  I tried a couple of more times and got the same result.










Man given genetically modified pig heart dies - BBC News

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Cookies


Even Mild Cases of COVID Can Cause Brain Damage and Shrinkage

Those who had COVID-19 had significantly more brain tissue loss and shrinkage, the researchers found. People typically lose around 0.2-0.3% of gray matter each year with normal aging, and those who had COVID-19 were losing far more, up to 2%. They also lost more overall brain volume and had higher amounts of tissue damage.

The damage was equivalent to at least an extra year of aging, Gwenaëlle Douaud, an associate professor at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Oxford and the paper's lead author, told NBC News.

"It is brain damage, but it is possible that it is reversible," she said. "But it is still relatively scary because it was in mildly infected people."

https://people.com/health/even-mild-cases-of-covid-can-cause-brain-damage-and-shrinkage-study-finds/

This is like the mother of all diseases.

Ivermectin, more evidence


I'm neutral on this.  It might take more studies to verify this.  Too many times we have seen the results of studies that were refuted later.

Saturday, March 5, 2022

COVID Cases and Deaths

Whereas the new cases have dropped considerably, the number of active cases is still lingering, going from about 1 out of 11 people to roughly 1 out of 13. The daily death rate remains fairly high, but what I can tell is about half of the recent peak






Thursday, March 3, 2022

New Study Finds COVID-19 DNA Linked to Moderna Patent Filed in 2016, Sparks Discussion on Lab Leak Theory

"We're talking about a very, very, very small piece made up of 19 nucleotides," Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, was quoted as saying to Daily Mail.

"So it doesn't mean very much, to be frank, if you do these types of searches, you can always find matches.

"Sometimes these things happen fortuitously, sometimes it's the result of convergent evolution (when organisms evolve independently to have similar traits to adapt to their environment).

"It's a quirky observation, but I wouldn't call it a smoking gun because it's too small.

"It doesn't get us any further with the debate about whether COVID-19 was engineered," Young said.

A statement from the US drug maker Moderna is awaited, the report said.

Vitamin D

The recommended Daily Value (DV) for vitamin D is 800 international units (IU), or 20 mcg per day for all adults and children over 4 years old. For children aged 1–3, it's 600 IU or 15 mcg per day (1).

With the exception of fatty fish like salmon, which contains 447 IU in a 3-ounce (85-gram) serving, very few foods are good sources of vitamin D. Instead, most vitamin D is made in your body when your skin is exposed to the sun (2Trusted Source).

Many people don't meet the recommendations for vitamin D. In fact, one study found that 25% of Canadians don't meet their needs through diet alone (3Trusted Source).

People who live in northern latitudes where sunshine is limited in the winter, as well as those who don't spend much time in the sun, often have lower blood levels of vitamin D (2Trusted Source3Trusted Source).

Other factors, such as having obesity or underweight, being physically inactive, and having certain genetic mutations, can also put you at risk of having lower vitamin D levels (4Trusted Source).

Taking a supplement and using fortified foods like vitamin D milk are good ways to increase your intake and blood levels of vitamin D.

Vitamin D Milk: Everything You Need to Know (healthline.com)


In some countries, including Canada and Sweden, vitamin D is added to cow's milk by law. In the United States, it's not mandated, but most milk manufacturers add it voluntarily during milk processing (5Trusted Source).

It has been added to cow's milk since the 1930s when the practice was implemented as a public health initiative to reduce rickets, which causes poor bone development and deformities in children (6Trusted Source).

While milk doesn't naturally contain vitamin D, it's a good source of calcium. These two nutrients work well together, as vitamin D aids calcium absorption into your bones, thus helping strengthen them.

The combination of calcium and vitamin D also helps prevent and treat osteomalacia, or soft bones, which accompanies rickets and can affect older adults (7Trusted Source8Trusted Source).

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows manufacturers to add up to 84 IU per 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of vitamin D3 to cow's milk and 84 IU per 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of vitamin D2 to plant-based milk alternatives (9Trusted Source).

Drinking vitamin D milk increases the amount of vitamin D people get and improves levels of vitamin D in the blood (5Trusted Source).

Studies in Finland, where vitamin D milk has been mandatory since 2003, found that 91% of milk drinkers had vitamin D levels at or above 20 ng/ml, which is considered sufficient according to the Institute of Medicine (7Trusted Source10Trusted Source).

Prior to the fortification law, only 44% had optimal vitamin D levels (7Trusted Source10Trusted Source).

SUMMARY

Vitamin D milk is enhanced with vitamin D during processing. This vitamin is added because it works with the calcium in milk to strengthen your bones. Drinking vitamin D milk can also help boost your vitamin D levels.

Drinking milk that contains both calcium and vitamin D is recommended as a way to strengthen your bones and prevent rickets and osteomalacia (8Trusted Source).

However, large studies don't show that it helps prevent osteoporosis, which is characterized by a thinning of the bones, or bone fractures in older adults (11Trusted Source12Trusted Source).

Still, having higher levels of vitamin D is linked to important health benefits — and they extend beyond improved bone health.

Vitamin D is needed for proper cell growth, nerve and muscle function, and a healthy immune system. It likewise helps reduce inflammation, which is thought to contribute to conditions like heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and cancer (2Trusted Source).

Studies that have compared vitamin D levels with disease risk suggest that having lower blood levels of the vitamin is linked to a higher risk of a wide range of chronic diseases, while having adequate or higher levels seems to result in a lower risk (13Trusted Source).

May reduce heart disease risk

A major risk factor for heart disease is a cluster of conditions known as metabolic syndrome. It includes high blood pressure, insulin resistance, excess abdominal weight, high triglycerides, and low HDL (good) cholesterol.

People who have higher levels of vitamin D tend to have less severe metabolic syndrome and a lower risk of heart disease (13Trusted Source).

Additionally, higher levels of vitamin D are linked to healthier blood vessels (14Trusted Source).

A study in nearly 10,000 people found that those who got more vitamin D from supplements or diet — including fortified milk — had higher blood levels of the vitamin, less stiffness in their arteries, and lower blood pressure, triglyceride, and cholesterol levels (14Trusted Source).

May reduce cancer risk

Because vitamin D plays a major role in healthy cell division, development, and growth, it's thought that it may also play a role in preventing the growth of cancer cells.

Research that looked at vitamin D levels and cancer risk in 2,300 women over the age of 55 found that blood levels greater than 40 ng/ml were associated with a 67% lower risk of all types of cancer (15Trusted Source).

Furthermore, Australian scientists who followed 3,800 adults for 20 years found the same benefit for breast and colon cancer, but not all types of cancer (16Trusted Source).

Though these studies looked only at vitamin D levels and not how the vitamin was obtained, a review of studies investigating the link between dairy milk and cancer found that it was protective against colorectal, bladder, stomach, and breast cancer (17Trusted Source).

Vitamin D and autoimmune diseases

Low vitamin D levels are often observed in those with autoimmune diseases, including: (18Trusted Source)

  • Hashimoto's thyroiditis
  • rheumatoid arthritis
  • multiple sclerosis
  • systemic lupus erythematosus
  • type 1 diabetes
  • psoriasis
  • Crohn's disease