Day 669: Counting the Days

PlagueBlog's day count is of the days since COVID-19 officially arrived in Massachusetts (straight from Wuhan), but others are also counting the days. At r/flattenthecurvecount, "it's day 632 of 15 days to flatten the curve." At artist/vlogger Sir Wizzo's Instagram it's "day 623 of the coronavirus catastrophe." But closest in pace to us is a more all-caps political COVID chronicle called Nextrush Free, where it's "Day [625] of the Dictatorship of COVID-19, Day [625] of America and the World held hostage to COVID shots." Don't be fooled by the miscount; the blog predates the jabs.

Of perhaps more interest than an all-caps history of the plague years is eugyppius' latest post linking the great awokening to coronavirus craziness on campus. He believes COVID may bring down the ivory tower in the end—but all without conspiracies or direction, because that's the nature of the bureaucratic West.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up two fifths of a percentage point.

Day 668: Not So Fast

One of the actual surprises of the Omicron variant was when thirteen or fourteen passengers (depending on which news report you read) apparently became infected with it aboard two flights from South Africa to the Netherlands. It turns out 61 of about 600 passengers tested during that Omicron airport panic had COVID of various lettering.

A reporter trapped aboard one of the planes after it landed reported that passengers had to be tested to board, making Omicron look very speedy indeed, but the Wall Street Journal reports that many of the vaccinated weren't tested because they held an EU vaccine passport. Though they quibble about whether the COVID cases occurred among the untested vaccinated or were acquired in mid-flight, the Dutch press reports that testing indicates the cases probably did not originate aboard the plane.

In you may already be a downer news, Steve Kirsch, who's been grousing lately about getting banned from Twitter for saying COVID vaccines cause prion disease, has put together some numbers from VAERS in order to estimate when people who die of the vaccines actually die: 45% in the first two weeks, and so on. Part of the data is behind his paywall, but the curve looks pretty smooth up until that point.

P.S. Massachusetts' case numbers for the weekend plus Monday average out to only a fifth of a percentage point increase, but there may be lingering data delays due to Thanksgiving.

Day 666 Retrospective: Nu Omicron

Saturday was day 666 of COVID-19 in Massachusetts. We're getting close to two years since an infected grad student from Wuhan touched down at Logan and became our first official case. To celebrate, we're freaking out on cue about a variant out of Africa that has killed no one that we know of to date. You may have heard the variant referred to as Nu early on, as that was next in the Greek alphabet, but the WHO decided Nu sounded too much like "new" and Xi sounded too much like Xi, so skipped ahead to Omicron.

You'd think people would be begging to let Omicrons into the country to push out our deadly Deltas the way Alpha banished the flu (however temporarily). But no, New York State announced a state of emergency over a probably harmless variant that isn't even in the country, never mind in the state.

Day 664: Soccer Kills

Israeli journalist Yaffa Shir-Raz attempts to quantify sudden soccer death syndrome the massive increase in players falling over on the field from cardiac events—all without mentioning the vaccines. Stephen Connolly collects and discusses her tweets about it here. She counts 183 "professional athletes and coaches" collapsing on or near the field in the past year, out of whom 108 died. For the sake of statistics, she counts up the recent deaths in FIFA specifically (21) compared to an annual rate of 4.2 over the past two decades, and finds that statistically signifcant.

Day 663: MIS-V

A ponderously-titled case report in Vaccines, Autoantibody Release in Children after Corona Virus mRNA Vaccination: A Risk Factor of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome?, recounts the difficulties in identifying and treating multisystem inflammatory syndrome in a Pfizer-vaccinated, COVID-negative 18-year-old, partly because MIS can occur up to 12 weeks after infection (or in this case, injection).

Interestingly, they note that multisystem inflammatory syndrome in adults (MIS-A) is a known side-effect of COVID vaccines and abbreviate it MIS-V, multisystem inflammatory syndrome after vaccination, following an earlier case study. They postulate a mechanism, "elevated functional autoantibodies against G-protein-coupled receptors", and casually note the negligible mortality rates of COVID in pediatric patients, as opposed to the real risks of MIS-V.

They cite the only previous case study in children, a healthy 17-year-old from Denmark; the EU report on it mentions that MIS-C occurs naturally at a rate of 2–6 per 100,000, and MIS-A at less than 2 in 100,000. For the record, VAERS is now up to 54 cases of MIS-V ever, with two from other vaccines and two bad entries with no vax listed that are still clearly about COVID. (The new one is about a 15-year-old.) Nine cases are clearly in adults, while the rest are under 30 and may or may not be MIS-C, as the cutoff for pediatric cases is 20 but VAERS groups 18–29 together.

On another topic, one of the known side-effects of lying to and gaslighting people is named "confession by projection". You can see it in action by rereading this hit piece on Alex Berenson that The Atlantic ran in April, and observing who was really spouting the "half-truths, untruths, and obfuscations." (You'd think the CDC would admit to at least one vaccine death, if only to get people to stop quoting their unbelievable zero deaths.)

P.S. Masssachusetts cases were up four elevenths of a percentage point today.

Day 662: All of the Data So Far

I was skimming a New York Times article about the children's surge when I came across this laughable conclusion:

All of the data so far indicates that the vaccines are far safer than a bout of Covid, even for children.

I suppose with the FDA on the 50-year plan of releasing data about Pfizer's vaccine, some extremely ignorant journalist might feel he could get away with a howler like that. Sadly, the only thing that says the vaccines are safe for children at all is a lot of hot air from the CDC about "mild" myocarditis and zero, count them, zero deaths from the vaccines for all ages. Add to that obvious undercount their senseless exaggeration of the risks of COVID to healthy children, and you get a cure that's impossibly safer than the disease.

If you want a dose of reality, though, Dr. Meryl Nass elaborates on the actual data; children are at an uncertain but significant level of risk from the known and unknown dangers of an entirely new vaccine technology, and at statistically no risk from COVID.

Massachusetts cases were up a third of a percentage point today.

Day 661: Diseases of Heart

This past summer, a quant named Austin G. Walters blogged about the slow revision of weekly CDC deaths from an undetermined cause of death (often pending COVID test results) to "diseases of heart":

At this point, we will still have another three to four weeks to identify exactly what is going on here. January 2021 appears to have a seasonal increase due to COVID-19, correlating with a rise in all causes of death. The question, is whether or not the increase in diseases of heart continues to be high.

Currently, fatalities related to diseases of heart are running one to three thousand higher than in the summer and early fall of 2020. If the deaths associated with ICD10 R00-R99 [undetermined] continue to be changed to diseases of heart (seems likely, given the decreasing COVID19 cases) that would be somewhat alarming.

Unfortunately he stopped COVID-blogging soon after and never updated with the next month of data.

On a similar topic, an abstract of Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning claims that mRNA vaccines increased the likelihood of acute coronary events in the next 5 years from 11% to 25% among their patient group.

Day 660: Death by All Cause Mortality

There's a simple statistical test that a new medication used to have to pass: it should not increase the rate of death in the patient population. If it does somehow increase deaths by all causes we blame the medication, even when the precise mechanism is unknown.

Sadly, that does not always mean that we stop using the medication. Antipsychotic drugs increase mortality in all patients but the majority of effort seems to go into preventing their prescription for the elderly. Some drugs aren't intended to end in recovery, such as cancer drugs that just need to kill the patient more slowly than the disease, and get a lot of leeway from the FDA to prove it. But in general, the cure being worse than the disease used to mean the cure didn't go to market or stay on the market long.

Those were the days. Alex Berenson reports on a 20% increase in deaths after vaccination in Sweden and double the death rate for the vaccinated under 60 in England.

The English data is a bit of a mess, but Steve Kirsch reports on a solid pattern of excess deaths among the vaccinated in Germany. He's previously counted up excess American deaths six ways from Sunday to get 150,000.

If you want to jab according to your personal odds of excess death, a new preprint evaluates US and European data to determine that the vax is worse than the disease for all young people as well as "older adults with low occupational risk or previous coronavirus exposure". And Vinay Prasad blogs a bit about boosting (above the paywall); in short, we know nothing except that there's been a bit of post-Pfizer-booster myocarditis in Israel.

On an apparently different topic, PlagueBlog staff have been monitoring the vaccine-induced myocarditis paper that Elsevier took down "temporarily" over a month ago for no good reason. As of our last check it was still down, and author Peter McCullough is now suing his publisher:

Dr McCullough wants answers as to why Elsevier chose to withhold this important research from both the public and the scientific community. However, we know that the answer is that real and genuine science completely disproves the supposed “safety” and “effectiveness” of these vaccines.

“The most notable finding is that this myocarditis heart inflammation that occurs typically on the second shot after either Pfizer or Moderna, it is explosive and it happens within a few days of the second shot,” Dr. McCullough said.

In other apparently unrelated news, Sergio Agüero is retiring from soccer due to the sudden arrhythmia he suffered on the field last month. He is 33 years old and has been playing professionally since he was 15.

P.S. Mathew Crawford untangles the UK death data to show the vaccines are merely ineffective, not doubling the death rate. However, he believes in 100,000 excess deaths caused by mRNA vaccines in the US and frequently mistaken for COVID deaths. This is especially interesting because vaccination is "known" to temporarily increase susceptibility to COVID.

Day 659: Return of the Lab Leak

Alert readers may have noticed the recent rehabilitation of the lab leak hypothesis. Tablet Magazine doesn't quite explain its renaissance, but does give a detailed account of its original fall from grace:

The backlash to Cotton’s comment, swift and vociferous, would mark a turning point in the media’s approach to covering and investigating the origins of the virus. On Feb. 17, The New York Times and The Washington Post ran twin reports accusing Cotton of repeating a noncredible “fringe theory” about the origins of the virus, and taking particular issue with his comments on Fox News the previous day that “we don’t have evidence that this disease originated [in the Wuhan lab], but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says. And China right now is not giving any evidence on that question at all.” Both stories claimed that there was a consensus among experts that the so-called lab leak theory had been comprehensively dismissed.

Cotton’s line at the time was difficult to distinguish from mainstream coverage of The Lancet paper, and from presidential candidate Joe Biden’s later insistence to CNN that “I would not be taking China’s word for it. I would insist that China allow our scientists in to make a hard determination of how it started, where it’s from, how far along it is. Because that is not happening now.” So what was wrong with what Cotton said?

While the top-line reporting was the same from the Post and the Times, each paper took a different approach to the nuances of the story. The Post conflated Cotton’s remarks about a possible accidental leak from a scientific lab with an assertion that the virus might have been connected to a Chinese bioweapons program—something Cotton never claimed, and which no statement from anyone on or off the record had even suggested. (The Post issued a correction to the article over a year later, removing the terms “debunked” and “conspiracy theory” and noting that “then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus.”)

And so on...

Day 658: Respiked and Rereiched

Moderna gloats that the FDA has approved their half-strength booster for all adults:

“This emergency use authorization comes at a critical time as we enter the winter months and face increasing COVID-19 case counts and hospitalizations across the country,” said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. “We thank the FDA for their review, and are confident in the robust clinical evidence that a 50 µg booster dose of mRNA-1273 induces a strong immune response against COVID-19.”

The booster dose is to be administered at least six months after completion of any primary series COVID-19 vaccination. On October 20th, the FDA authorized for emergency use a booster dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the 50 µg dose level for people aged 65 and older as well as adults aged 18 to 64 who are at high risk of severe COVID-19; and people aged 18 to 64 with frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2. The Moderna COVID-19 booster vaccine is authorized for adults ages 18 and above regardless of occupational risk factors in many international markets. This follows the earlier approval of the 100 µg mRNA 1273 third dose in immunocompromised individuals.

The FDA based this EUA on the totality of scientific evidence shared by the company including a data analysis from the Phase 2 clinical study of mRNA-1273, which was amended to offer a booster dose of mRNA-1273 at the 50 µg dose level to interested participants 6-8 months following their second dose (n=344). Neutralizing antibody titers had waned prior to boosting, particularly against variants of concern, at approximately 6 months. Notably, a booster dose of mRNA-1273 at the 50 µg dose level boosted neutralizing titers significantly above the Phase 3 benchmark. The safety profile following the booster dose was similar to that observed previously for dose 2 of mRNA-1273.

The FDA followed up with a Pfizer approval soon after. They await the usual CDC rubber stamp. [P.S.: Halfway stamped already... Smell that rubber burn!]

Meanwhile, Austria is rapidly leaping from Reich to Reich, with the recent lockdown of the unvaccinated expanding now to a full lockdown and universal vaccination mandate. Martin Lichtmesz describes the eerily familiar demonization of the unvaxxed at eugyppius' blog, without mentioning a single yellow star:

When will the police be at the door? When will vaccine refusal have criminal consequences? When will it result in fines of the sort that will destroy people of modest means? In the climate that is descending around us, anything seems possible. Social, legal, and medical-ethical standards are rapidly disintegrating, state overreach is becoming the norm. Already, among the unvaccinated, the feeling is spreading that they are outlaws and have their backs against the wall.

Of course, these “tightened measures” at the expense of the unvaccinated have not had the slightest effect on “the numbers,” which, according to the press, are once again “exploding.” They have finally, and totally predictably, resulted in this “lockdown for all.” Perhaps they intended this from the beginning, and were merely waiting for a dramatic spike to cause emotions to boil over.

This renewed “lockdown for all” will make a lot of people who have dutifully gone along with everything to this point extremely angry, and so the political and the media establishment have already provided a target for this anger and frustration: The blame for everything – for the lockdown, the high incidences, the high ICU occupancy, the alleged triage, the corpses piling up in the corridors [link to an article in German about false media propaganda], and so forth – lies with the well-poisoners, the “vaccine refuseniks”, the “hesitants,” the “Querdenker” [the “lateral thinkers” – a populist grassroots Corona sceptic movement in Germany and Austria], etc. No few people are now openly wishing death upon these noncompliants.

Had they been vaccinated – so goes their conspiratorial narrative – we’d all be free of Corona and the national government would not be forced by lack of alternative to impose these draconian measures. They’ve brought all of this on themselves. Whining just amounts to an insubordinate miming of the victim's role. They must be punished, educated, and forced, if argument and persuasion cannot help. The mob are so certain of themselves, they have even produced smiling priests who publicly boast that they have “no sympathy for the unvaccinated.”

Read the whole thing. It makes Massachusetts' groupthink look positively open-minded.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up a third of a percentage point today.

Day 657: More Mask Myths

I have been pondering for a long time, how our entire response to Corona every day grows more bizarre and detached from any conceivable, realisable goal or rational purpose. I understand why many detect behind this broken response the machinations of evil conspirators, and indeed it often seems that all of this is being managed for maximum chaos and destruction. I’ve tried to offer different explanations: Perverse bureaucratic incentives, managerial blindness and iterative institutional processes surely all play a role here, but a failure this profound will have many facets. — eugyppius

On to the topic of the day: more mask efficacy numbers pulled out of thin air. On this pandemic episode of Sesame Street, the number of the day is 53%. Vinay Prasad fisks this number down to 11% or less:

Interestingly, in the only published cluster RCT [randomized controlled trial] to date during COVID19, surgical masks had an 11% risk reduction and cloth masks had no effect at all on the primary endpoint of symptom driven lab positive results. That cluster RCT took place in a location with essentially no vaccination (aka circumstances which would give masks the best chance to show the best effect size).

The only other completed RCT during the pandemic, DANMASK was null as to the effect of surgical masks, and had been powered to detect a 50% reduction. At the time, many complained DANMASK was underpowered. Masks worked, but not that well, they argued. Yet, it appears now DANMASK was adequately powered if one is to believe the 53% estimate. So which is it? Was DANMASK adequately powered or not? Is 50% plausible or not?

Before you answer, let’s remember that even the authors of the 53% study write, “Risk of bias across the six studies ranged from moderate to serious or critical.” I never thought I would be wishing for ‘mild’!

It goes on like that, and he also co-authored a 25,000-word review of mask research, if you're really, really interested in the topic.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up four tenths of a percentage point today.

Day 656: Pfizer Can’t Count

Alex Berenson notes that Pfizer's COVID vaccine trial data has been mysteriously updated to include more deaths, with a notable increase among the vaccinated rather than the controls:

Pfizer said publicly in July it had found 15 deaths among vaccine recipients by mid-March. But it told the FDA there were 21 - at the same data cutoff end date, March 13.

21.

Not 15.

The placebo figure in the trial was also wrong. Pfizer had 17 deaths among placebo recipients, not 14. Nine extra deaths overall, six among vaccine recipients.

Could the discrepancy result from some odd data lag? Maybe, but the FDA briefing book also contains the number of Covid cases that Pfizer found in vaccine recipients in the trial. Those figures are EXACTLY the same as those Pfizer posted publicly in July.

Yet the death counts were different.

Pfizer somehow miscounted - or publicly misreported, or both - the number of deaths in one of the most important clinical trials in the history of medicine.

And the FDA’s figures paint a notably more worrisome picture of the vaccine than the public July numbers. Though the absolute numbers are small, overall deaths were 24 percent higher among vaccine recipients.

The update also shows that 19 vaccine recipients died between November and March, compared to 13 placebo recipients - a difference of almost 50 percent.

Sadly, the mystery of the missing deaths may not be solved until 2076, if Pfizer has anything to say about it.

Against the New York Times' advice, I went down this rabbit hole and found something rather different, a report challenging the CDC's assurances that mRNA vaccines are safe in pregnancy. The article disappeared from ResearchGate sometime this week (see the wayback machine version), but is still around at the bottom of the rabbit hole:

The use of mRNA vaccines in pregnancy is now generally considered safe for protection against COVID-19 in countries such as New Zealand, USA, and Australia. However, the influential CDC sponsored article by Shimabukuro et al. (2021) used to support this idea, on closer inspection, provides little assurance, particularly for those exposed in early pregnancy. The study presents falsely reassuring statistics related to the risk of spontaneous abortion in early pregnancy, since the majority of women in the calculation were exposed to the mRNA product after the outcome period was defined (20 weeks’ gestation). In this article, we draw attention to these errors and recalculate the risk of this outcome based on the cohort that was exposed to the vaccine before 20 weeks’ gestation. Our re-analysis indicates a cumulative incidence of spontaneous abortion 7 to 8 times higher than the original authors’ results (p < 0.001) and the typical average for pregnancy loss during this time period. In light of these findings, key policy decisions have been made using unreliable and questionable data. We conclude that the claims made using these data on the safety of exposure of women in early pregnancy to mRNA-based vaccines to prevent COVID-19 are unwarranted and recommend that those policy decisions be revisited.

Which is to say, the CDC can't count, either.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up a third of a percentage point today.

Day 655: COVID as Mass Hysteria

I have no doubt that COVID-19 is the greatest threat to humanity we have ever faced; not because of a virus; … but because of our response to it.

Fired ethicist Professor Julie Ponesse

Technically, today's topic is Mass Formation rather than mass hysteria (h/t Mark Wauck), but that only makes it worse:

Free-Floating Anxiety is the most painful psychological phenomena to experience and leads to panic attacks. In this state of unfocused anxiety the mind tries to connect it’s anxiety to something, an “Object of Anxiety”. The next piece of the puzzled is a strategy to deal with this Object of Anxiety.

So when these pre-conditions are highly present within a population and then the media provide a narrative which indicates a focal-point for this anxiety while at the same time describing a strategy to deal with this object of anxiety then all the anxiety connects to this object of anxiety.

If a large segment of people are willing to follow this strategy to deal with this object of anxiety no matter the cost, then in a second step people start a collective & heroic battle with this Object of Anxiety and in that way a new kind of social bond emerges & with that a new kind of “sense making” or purpose. Suddenly life is all directed towards battling this Object of Anxiety. This creates new sense of connectedness with others in the Mass-Formation.

In other news, New Jersey reports a mysterious increase in MIS-C cases among children in the past week. COVID cases didn't rise, so it's a complete mystery what could have happened. The article suggests "variability" or "luck" to explain "the biggest jump in a week that we’ve had in quite some time."

PlagueBlog suspects Mass Formation may be a factor, as there are already 43 or 44 reports of MIS-C associated with COVID vaccines in VAERS this year, and only two other reports, ever, for other vaccines. (One of the 44 reports is significantly typoed but is clearly about COVID, just not so clearly about a vaccine.)

P.S. There are so many challenges to the federal vaccine mandate that the circuit courts held a lottery to see who'd hear one, and the sixth circuit won. While possibly not as slap-happy as the fifth circuit, it's a relatively conservative court where the mandate may fare ill.

P.P.S. Massachusetts cases were up a quarter of a percentage point today.

Day 653: Slapdowns

This week was big on dissing the vaxx: the Fifth Circuit stayed OSHA's overreaching vaccine mandate, in language that forebodes a final slapdown to come:

On the dubious assumption that the Mandate does pass constitutional muster—which we need not decide today—it is nonetheless fatally flawed on its own terms. Indeed, the Mandate's strained prescriptions combine to make it the rare government pronouncement that is both overinclusive (applying to employers and employees in virtually all industries and workplaces in America, with little attempt to account for the obvious differences between the risks facing, say, a security guard on a lonely night shift, and a meatpacker working shoulder to shoulder in a cramped warehouse) and underinclusive (purporting to save employees with 99 or more coworkers from a "grave danger" in the workplace, while making no attempt to shield employees with 98 or fewer coworkers from the very same threat). The Mandate's stated impetus—a purported "emergency" that the entire globe has now endured for nearly two years, and which OSHA itself spent nearly two months responding to threat). The Mandate's stated impetus—a purported "emergency" that the entire globe has now endured for nearly two years, and which OSHA itself spent nearly two months responding to—is unavailing as well. And its promulgation grossly exceeds OSHA's statutory authority.

A smaller slapdown comes from some Swedish doctors and researchers, who have an extremely anti-vaxx response to recent whistle-blowing documented by the British Medical Journal:

The group’s statement in a November 5 press release came in light of a whistleblower’s testimony to the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ), alleging that a Pfizer subcontractor company had falsified data, unblinded trial participants, and neglected the timely follow-up of subjects experiencing adverse events as they conducted a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trial in the fall of 2020.

Brook Jackson, a “trained clinical trial auditor” with more than “15 years’ experience in clinical research coordination and management,” worked for Ventavia Research Group of Texas for two weeks in September 2020 and was fired the day she raised her concerns to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

It's starting to look like an Ayn Rand novel around here...

Day 651: Armchair Epidemiologists

Today's title refers not to semi-qualified disease bloggers such as infest PlagueBlog Headquarters, but to completely unqualified heads of state who feel the need to override their dedicated health bureaucracies in order to prescribe, say, COVID boosters for all without a license. The latest entry in this scarily overcrowdyed space is Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who's declared a booster free-for-all for his state because he doesn't like their case rate.

Mr. Polis’s order justified broadening access to boosters by saying that since the entire state of Colorado has seen significant spread of the virus, it qualified as the kind of high-risk environment for which federal regulators cleared boosters.

Sure it is...

P.S. Massachusetts' approximate case rate (due to yesterday's holiday) was two ninths of a percentage point.

Day 650: Russia Sets Records

Russia edged out the US last week with 200 more deaths (for the week), according to the Moscow Times. Russia's overall numbers have gotten a lot of attention, but rates are rising all over Europe. Heavily vaccinated Germany hit 50,000 new cases in one day today. The Netherlands also broke records with 16,000 new cases today. Their neighbors aren't doing any better; central Europe is particularly hot.

While we're looking at the numbers, it's worth noting that the world has exceeded 250 million cases and 5 million deaths from COVID-19. Massachusetts is currently 18th in total cases in the US, with Missouri hot on our tail.

P.S. The MDPH took the holiday off.

Day 648: Where in the World is Gavin Newsom

COVID isn't all sniffles and anosmia; sometimes it's fun and games, like when the First Partner [sic] of California Governor Gavin Newsom lashes out on Twitter over uppity speculation from the peanut gallery about why he hasn't been doing his job for over a week now. After his last public appearance receiving a booster shot on October 27th, he cancelled on a climate change conference in Scotland and didn't even attend virtually. Rumor placed him at a Getty heir's wedding at San Francisco city hall this weekend, but he did not attend the reception.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up two elevenths of a percentage point today.

Day 644: Three Deaths in Thailand

The Bangkok Post has an interesting story about three deaths from unspecified COVID vaccines. The interesting part is that there were another 100 or so deaths where the vaccine couldn't be ruled out, out of the 842 deaths examined so far. (The numbers in the article don't quite add up, perhaps because the categories of death did not quite translate.)

On his own death watch, eugyppius mocks the UK's health agency dancing around another week of the vaxx is worse than the disease statistics. He predicts the politicians will just force them to stop publishing the numbers soon.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up a fifth of a percentage point again today.

Day 643: More Original Antigenic Sin

There's a rather odd paper in Clinical Immunology Communications about original antigenic sin, antibody dependent enhancement, and back boosting. While it's a great description of those mechanisms and their history in other coronaviruses, it provides no data or citations about their role in COVID-19, only theoretical possibilities. So it's particularly jarring that they conclude on the basis of nothing at all that OAS and ADE have played no role in undermining the success of the vaccines:

Conclusions and perspectives

From the data thus far, there are no indications that the current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines lead to ADE or that the effectivity would be impaired because of the OAS. Yet, sometimes (social) media reports hint towards a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection following vaccination. Furthermore, the concepts of OAS and ADE should be kept in mind when vaccines against novel SARS-CoV-2 variants are developed and tested, and the same would hold true for pan-coronavirus vaccines.

It should be realized that the effects of OAS not necessarily are negative, under some circumstances it can be beneficial because it can offer protection against antigenically related virus strains. Especially the back boosting aspect of OAS can have a relative protective effect when novel virus variants emerge, such as has been shown for influenza.

Speaking of side-effects, there's also a paper out about myocarditis in recently-vaccinated adolescent males who had received an mRNA-based vaccine and had not had a prior case of COVID:

Of 52 patients who underwent cardiac MRI during the study period, 5 underwent MRI for suspected myocarditis after recent COVID-19 mRNA vaccination without known prior COVID-19. These 5 patients were all males with age ranging from 16 to 19 years (mean, 17.2±1.0 years) who presented within 4 days of the second dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Troponin levels were elevated in all patients (mean peak troponin I, 6.8±4.1 ng/mL). Alternate possible causes of myocarditis were deemed clinically unlikely based on medical history, physical examination, myocarditis viral panel, and toxicology screen. Cardiac MRI findings were consistent with myocarditis in all 5 patients based on Lake Louise criteria, including early gadolinium enhancement (EGE) and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) in all patients and corresponding myocardial edema in 4 patients. All 5 patients had a favorable hospital course and were discharged in stable condition with improved or resolved symptoms after mean hospitalization length of 4.8 days. Two patients underwent repeat cardiac MRI that showed persistent, though decreased, LGE. Three patients reported mild intermittent self-resolving chest pain after discharge; 2 patients had no recurrent symptoms after discharge.

That's practically the entire paper, but there's some interesting speculation on Reddit about what the mechanism might be.

Massachusetts cases were up a sixth of a percentage point yesterday, and [p.s.] a fifth today.

Day 641: Vitamin D Again

A meta-analysis of "much" COVID vs. calcidiol research concludes

Results: One population study and seven clinical studies were identified, which reported D3 blood levels preinfection or on the day of hospital admission. The two independent datasets showed a negative Pearson correlation of D3 levels and mortality risk (r(17) = -0.4154, p = 0.0770/r(13) = -0.4886, p = 0.0646). For the combined data, median (IQR) D3 levels were 23.2 ng/mL (17.4-26.8), and a significant Pearson correlation was observed (r(32) = -0.3989, p = 0.0194). Regression suggested a theoretical point of zero mortality at approximately 50 ng/mL D3.

Conclusions: The datasets provide strong evidence that low D3 is a predictor rather than just a side effect of the infection. Despite ongoing vaccinations, we recommend raising serum 25(OH)D levels to above 50 ng/mL to prevent or mitigate new outbreaks due to escape mutations or decreasing antibody activity.

If you're curious about how much vitamin D you can take, here's some unintentional advice from the Mayo Clinic:

The main consequence of vitamin D toxicity is a buildup of calcium in your blood (hypercalcemia), which can cause nausea and vomiting, weakness, and frequent urination. Vitamin D toxicity might progress to bone pain and kidney problems, such as the formation of calcium stones.

Treatment includes stopping vitamin D intake and restricting dietary calcium. Your doctor might also prescribe intravenous fluids and medications, such as corticosteroids or bisphosphonates.

Taking 60,000 international units (IU) a day of vitamin D for several months has been shown to cause toxicity. This level is many times higher than the U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for most adults of 600 IU of vitamin D a day.

A less authorotative but more detailed source puts the dangerous dose somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 units a day (although the latter dose was proven safe in pregnancy).

Euggyppius strikes again, with a nice graph of case rates being higher in the vaccinated over 30 in England:

I had to make the graph myself, because they’re not publishing it anymore. Instead, we just get the tables, which they’ve festooned with hilarious disclaimers pleading that these numbers are “unadjusted,” by which they mean “inconvenient.”

CNN reports that the CDC is deciding today whether to jab the children. (A pro-forma approval from the director is to be expected after that.) Pfizer has the vials in place already.

Perhaps the Commonwealth will release case numbers today, but no promises...

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up a seventh of a percentage point.