“The vaccines we have prevent severe disease and death very well but they are missing two key things. First they still allow infections (‘breakthrough’) and the duration appears to be limited".

By Naveen Athrappully
January 15, 2022 Updated: January 15, 2022

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/vaccines-not-durable-omicron-might-turn-covid-19-endemic-bill-gates_4215163.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2022-01-16&mktids=f503932458c5420528777b9d936188b3&est=T78Qbe6srFygKlmIl6nzHwJopoq9uzBFIeQxG3ElJcdzBXxo0BX%2Bjqj64h8bY8N5QMz1

Bill Gates, in a Twitter discussion Tuesday, said that the current COVID-19 vaccines were missing two key factors, and claimed that Omicron might bring about a wave of immunity in communities it passes through.

Microsoft co-founder and one of the world’s richest men, Gates has invested in vaccine research through his foundation and given prominent talks regarding the pandemic. Recently, he chatted regarding the current situation of COVID-19, vaccines, and related issues with Devi Sridhar, a professor at the University of Edinburgh where she holds a Personal Chair in Global Public Health.

When asked about a breakthrough that could result in the biggest difference in ending the pandemic, he talked about the efficacy of vaccines.

“The vaccines we have prevent severe disease and death very well but they are missing two key things. First they still allow infections (‘breakthrough’) and the duration appears to be limited. We need vaccines that prevent re-infection and have many years of duration,” Gates said.

The effectiveness of vaccines has been questioned, especially with regards to the Omicron variant. The high number of mutations on the variant’s spike protein increases “the possibility of immune escape,” according to Moderna President Stephen Hoge. Hoge added that the “dent in our vaccine’s efficacy” applies to all manufacturers.

Omicron has spread rapidly across the world, with 98.3 percent of infections in the United States now attributed to it. Although highly transmissible, international studies have shown that the strain poses milder symptoms in infected people.

Recently, a notable international health charity called for treating COVID-19 “like the common cold.” Dr. Mike Tildesley, a University of Warwick professor, has forecast COVID-19 evolving to become less severe and endemic. He said the Omicron variant is the beginning of that process. Gates has seconded this perspective.

“Once Omicron goes through a country then the rest of the year should see far fewer cases so COVID can be treated more like seasonal flu,” he said, while recommending yearly COVID-19 shots that would be needed for some time.

Gates talked about a lot of “misinformation” regarding him spreading on social media. “People like you and I and Tony Fauci have been subject to a lot of misinformation. I didn’t expect that. Some of it like me putting chips in arms doesn’t make sense to me—why would I want to do that?”

The billionaire then discussed the availability of vaccines around the world. Although there was demand, logistical issues and inefficient health systems prevented the adequate supply of vaccines in developing nations.

Regarding the Chinese authorities’ theory that the coronavirus emerged from a bat in a wet market located in Wuhan, Gates defended this argument. This is despite mounting evidence suggesting that the novel coronavirus, otherwise known as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus escaped from a government lab in the Chinese city.

When Sridhar asked about the origin of the pandemic, Gates replied, “The data is pretty strong that it came from another species which is true for most pandemics. People will continue to speculate on this and we should make sure labs are careful. There will be future outbreaks coming from other species so we need to invest in being ready.”

Besides investments into vaccine research, Gates has made other investments related to COVID-19. In July, a consortium backed by George Soros and Gates was involved in a buyout of Mologic, a COVID-19 testing company.

Naveen Athrappully

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Naveen Athrappully is a news reporter covering business and world events at The Epoch Times.

Richard

On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 16:40 lsamurai wrote:

Current Thoughts on
Covid 19
By:Mark E. Meengs M.D.
December 30, 2021
(Emphasis added)

The three vaccines available have not worked as expected. The classical definition of a vaccine is an inoculation that prevents one from getting a disease. It is now apparent that vaccinated people can still get and spread covid. What does seem to be true is that one is significantly less likely to die or be hospitalized from covid if they are vaccinated. This fits the definition of a therapeutic agent as opposed to the classical definition of a vaccine. It is interesting that the CDC recently changed the definition to now include lessening the severity of an illness, rather than totally preventing it.

If vaccines work, unvaccinated people should not be a threat to vaccinated people. However, vaccines don’t work to eradicate the possibility of the disease in the recipient. They may lessen it, but the process is difficult to quantitate. Is an unvaccinated carrier of the disease (infected person) more of a threat to a vaccinated person than a vaccinated carrier (infected person) would be? We don’t know. Transmission of the disease depends on exposure time to the infected person in a confined space. It also depends on the viral load the infected individual is carrying (shedding). Children usually have a low viral load and hence don’t get very sick and aren’t usually good vectors of infection, much less likely to infect others than adults. Children have a much lower number of ACE receptors which is the pathway by which the infection enters the body in the respiratory endothelium (lining) of the upper respiratory tract. The virus replicates in the nose and throat for many hours to days before the infection becomes apparent. New research shows that it can be very effectively killed there by using a 1% solution of Povidone-iodine or Hydrogen peroxide. Using one of these after exposure by a nasal squirt bottle or lavage system and putting 4 or 5 drops in each nostril with the head tilted back, letting it run to the back of the throat kills the virus and prevents the disease. Gargling with it is also helpful. The recommendation is to do it twice a day if known exposure to an infected person has happened. If one develops a positive test, the recommendation is to do it every 4 hours. This will keep the viral load low and make it unlikely the disease will progress to a serious illness. This was discovered by ENT doctors in India and Bangladesh who were forced to do tracheostomies and bronchoscopies on infected patients, putting the doctors at extreme risk of infection, but prevented by these measures. Povidone-iodine is betadine. It comes in a 10% concentration, and you can buy it anywhere. 1cc of betadine and 9 cc of sterile water makes a 1% solution.

Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin are effective drugs for prophylaxis against this infection and have been widely used in other parts of the worldbut are suppressed here. The result is that the United States has a much higher death rate from Covid than even many third world countries. These drugs are available over the counter in much of the world.

Hydroxychloroquine is an ionophore – it opens pores in the cell and allows zinc to enter. Zinc is toxic to the viral replication process. This drug has no role late in the disease when viral replication has passed. When used with zinc (and sometimes azithromycin) early in the disease, it dramatically lowers the chance of serious disease and death. Henry Ford Hospital did a good study on it in 2020 and found it very effective. In areas of the world where it is used for malaria, covid rates are much less and death rates much lower. The government disparaged the Henry Ford study. The government did a study using a dose of 2400 mg a day (the usual dose is 200 mg twice a day) on hospitalized patients (late in the disease) and showed poor outcomes – no surprise – a study designed to fail. Many of the other studies done were done without the use of zinc, which is essential for the drugs’ mechanism of action. The government then restricted its use to hospitalized patients only, (late in the disease when viral replication is done), and found it ineffective. They then stated it was a toxic medicine (which it was at 2400 mg a day) and removed it from the market. However, the drug has been used for years to treat patients with lupus and Lyme disease, and rheumatoid arthritis very safely at doses of 200 mg twice a day, and the government has continued to allow this “toxic medicine” at that dose and for that purpose, but not for covid. They have forbidden its use and licensed doctors can’t prescribe it and if they do, pharmacies won’t fill it. Thousands of people have died needlessly as the result. There is a supplement called Quercetin which is also a zinc ionophore and can be used in place of hydroxychloroquine, 250 mg twice a day. You can get it on Amazon or maybe at a health food store. Using large doses of Vitamin D is also very helpful in preventing the disease.

Ivermectin is also an effective agent for preventing infection. It works as an ionophore but has many other mechanisms of action. This medicine was developed to treat parasitic infections in humans and the doctors who discovered it won the Nobel prize in medicine because of its efficacy and safety. Like many medicines, it has more than one use and was found to have strong antiviral properties when SARS1 happened. It works by at least three different mechanisms, one of which helps to block viral replication and reproduction and it also has strong anti-inflammatory properties. It is safer than Tylenol or aspirin. More than 4 billion doses have been given. It cost about 3 cents a pill in many parts of the world and is available without prescription there. Uttar Pradesh state in India (270 million people only about 5% of whom are vaccinated) had an outbreak of Covid this past summer. They gave Ivermectin to everyone who tested positive and to their contacts. The disease rate plummeted, and the disease has virtually disappeared there. You can look at maps of Africa where Ivermectin is commonly used for parasitic infections (people take it once a week), and covid is almost nonexistent there. It’s the same story in Bolivia and Paraguay and Mexico City and many other places. Taking 12 mg every 5 days prevents the disease quite well. If using it to treat the disease after it’s established, the dose is higher. The government has made it nearly impossible to get here. They have disparaged it as a “horse drug”. The man who won the Nobel prize for its discovery asked Merck (who manufactured the drug) to do a Covid study with it and was turned down. It is used in Japan and eliminated a surge there in August 2021. Soon after introduction, cases dropped to near zero. To date, there hasn’t been much interest in studying repurposed drugs in this disease. Why is that, you might ask?

The answer to the above question is complex. Most drugs are approved after randomized double-blind studies show they are safe and effective. It’s hard to do these studies. It takes huge amounts of money. Big Pharma has that money, so they sponsor the studies and in return, they get to patent and market the medicines and make huge amounts of money. Many times, the study population is very limited to exclude younger patients, older patients, pregnant patients, lactating patients, etc. Only ideal patients are used. Once the drug is approved, its market tends to expand to many of these groups. The companies have zero interest in studying a cheap off-patent drug like Ivermectin because they will not get back the money they spent on the study and there is no profit to be made on a cheap drug. In addition, they try to get off-patent drugs removed from the market, so they don’t need to compete with them. Just today Pfizer was approved for an oral covid drug which looks similar to ivermectin but probably will not work as well or be as safe but will cost thousands of times more. Merck just did the same thing (molnipiravir). These big companies have little difficulty getting drugs approved. On the board of directors of Merck, Johnson and Johnson, and Pfizer sits a former head of the FDA. These three men are paid handsomely to grease the skids and oil the approval machine. In addition, the FDA and CDC each own many medical patents, and more than half of their budget comes from payments from big pharma and their own drug business. The same is true for the National Institutes of Health. The NIH could finance studies on repurposed drugs but they have no interest in that. They get much of their money from big Pharma. Then they give out grants for medical research to academia. Do you think a doctor is likely to get a grant to study a cheap repurposed drug? It would be in the public’s best interest, but the answer is no. The studies that do get done get published in medical journals. That process is also tightly controlled. Even a good study on a drug like Ivermectin (more than 64 studies are showing it is effective in Covid) cannot achieve publication in a reputable journal. If it was done, the source of revenue for the editor and his colleagues (research grants) would dry up. Then the government goes to the media and says there aren’t any good studies on Ivermectin published in mainstream journals – the very thing they kept from happening. It gets worse. They get reputable journals to publish bogus studies. Earlier this year both the Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine published 2 such studies. The Lancet article data was from a group called Surgisphere which put together a study showing hydroxychloroquine was ineffective. It rapidly got major press. Then independent doctors looked at the data more carefully. It soon became apparent that the data could not be real and was forged. The study was retracted but the damage was done. The same thing happened with the New England Journal. But how did that happen? It’s not easy to get a study published in those journals and they have a reputation for a reason. The editors are supposed to be experts at analyzing data. It usually takes many months from the time of submission to publication while the data and conclusions are carefully assessed. That didn’t happen here which raises the obvious question of who paid off whom? I hope you now begin to get insight into what is going on with medicine in America.

There are very few independent doctors left. Most are owned by hospitals. Hospitals are primarily funded by the government through Medicare and by insurance companies. These groups establish guidelines for the treatment of conditions. They initiate “pay for performance” programs where reimbursement is tied to treatment pathways. Thus, they control hospital medicine. If a doctor tries to use Ivermectin on a hospitalized patient he is likely to be removed from staff, even though in the opinion of many doctors it should be tried. Families have had to go to court to try to get their loved ones treated. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes not. Since the drug is known to be extremely safe and most of these patients are doing very poorly, what’s the downside of giving the medicine? The only downside is that if it works, the hospital looks bad – better that the patient dies, in their opinion. Sad but true.

Hospitalized patients currently get oxygen. They also get Remdesivir (an expensive drug that has not shown mortality benefit but may decrease the length of stay). It is very toxic to the kidneys and likely does more harm than good. However, every time the hospital uses it they get $7000. (Nurses have been known to refer to this drug as “Run-death-is-near”) Patients also get steroids (probably at doses that are too low to be optimum). Some get anticoagulants. Most (80%) that get on a ventilator die. They spend the last 15 to 40 days sedated on a ventilator and isolated from their loved ones until life support is withdrawn. The hospital also gets additional payments for ventilator patients. In a few of these patients who were given Ivermectin by court order, some who seemed hopeless have recovered, likely due to its strong anti-inflammatory properties.

It’s important to recognize this disease has three phases. The first is viral replication. The second is the immune response (cytokine storm). An immune response is needed to clear the virus, but the response often gets way too active and causes the capillaries in the lungs to leak fluid producing adult respiratory distress syndrome (shock lung). Steroids are useful in suppressing this response – likely Ivermectin is too. The third phase is hypercoagulation where the disease causes micro blood clots usually in the lungs but in other places also potentially causing strokes, heart attacks, and organ failure. When the lungs fail they are the first in a cascade of organ failure due to inadequate oxygen delivery to the other organs.

I have some Ivermectin that I ordered from India. Although I am a licensed physician and it is an approved and very safe drug, I can’t get it here. If I prescribe it, Pharmacies won’t fill it.

Why is the government inhibiting the ability of me and other doctors to treat patients in the best way we can? Dr. Fauci is an academic who hasn’t treated patients in years. Many excellent doctors in this country have treated thousands of patients with Ivermectin and are convinced of its efficacy. Many of them have lost their hospital privileges and their jobs for trying to do their best for their patients. These are very highly published and reputable physicians. You can check them out at Covid19criticalcare.com They have established protocols for prophylaxis, early treatment, and hospitalized patients, all of which are available at that website. They are very courageous.

Early on, if you got covid and presented to an emergency room, you would be sent home with no treatment in hopes you would get better on your own and were told to return if you developed breathing difficulty. Independent doctors developed treatment protocols to decrease viral replication which markedly decreased the hospitalization rate and death. Instead of being lauded, these doctors have been vilified and the medicines they used have been suppressed.

I ordered more Ivermectin from India on October 27. I see in online conversations that the FDA has leaned on the U.S. Postal Service to interdict these shipments and I suspect that is why I haven’t received it. Why is the government working against the people?

There are three reasons things happen in the secular world, money, sex, and power. Covid has nothing to do with sex but lots to do with the other two and the American people are paying the cost for the current Covid treatment situation and manipulation with their lives. Never have I seen such evil.

If you want more insight into these matters, watch the Joe Rogan interview with Dr. Peter McCullough on Odysee orread The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert Kennedy Jr. Or try A Plague on our House by Dr. Scott Atlas. I have read the former but not the latter.

If you test positive for Covid and are in a high-risk category, monoclonal antibody infusions are helpful, the earlier in the course, the better the result.