Just got my COVID booster and everything hurts. But what hurts worse was the pharmacist telling me that she had to turn away people WHO WANTED THE SHOT because their insurance providers wouldn't cover it (manufacturers are charging ~$120*).
If your insurance provider won't cover this (or if you don't have insurance) the CDC's Bridge Access Program can help! It covers no-cost COVID-19 vaccines until 12/31/24, info here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/bridge/index.html
The Economist used global excess deaths to arrive at the true death toll from the pandemic with a 95% confidence interval.
"Although the official number of deaths caused by #COVID19 is now 7m, our single best estimate is that the actual toll is 27.5m people. We find that there is a 95% chance that the true value lies between 17.8m and 30.8m additional deaths."
With the new #COVID vaccine approved, a reminder that we’re all indebted to the ancient & wondrous horseshoe crab.
Their blue blood contains Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) which clumps at contact with bacterial toxins. They are caught for their blood to test sterility of medical equipment & injections.
Unfortunately the harvest is unsustainable & populations are in decline. An effective synthetic substitute has been around for 2 decades & we just need the biomedical industry to switch.
"Moderna is quadrupling the cost of covid vaccines, from $26/dose to $110-130. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel calls the price hike "consistent with the value" of the mRNA vaccines. Moderna's manufacturing costs are $2.85/dose, for a 4,460% markup on every dose...
What will Moderna do with the billions it reaps through price-gouging? It won't be research. To date, the company has spent >20% of its covid windfall profits on stock buybacks and dividends, manipulating its stock price, with more to come...
It's not an outlier. Big Pharma is a machine for commercializing publicly funded research and then laundering the profits with financial engineering. The largest pharma companies each spend more on stock buybacks than research."
"The story of the Moderna vaccine isn't one of a company taking huge gambles with shareholder dollars. It's the story of the US government giving billions and billions of dollars to a private firm, which will now charge the US government – and the American people – a 4,460% markup on the resulting medicine." https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#herd-immunity#covid
If you paid for funeral expenses for someone who died in the US, and their death certificate mentions COVID as a cause, you may be eligible for up to US$9,000 in funeral expense assistance from the US federal government.
Some claim scientific studies show masks don’t work, or that surgical masks are as good as N95s. Just released paper shows this claim is false. Masks work, and N95 respirators give a much higher benefit than surgical masks.
The controversy about N95 respirator and mask efficacy is based on claims that studies (RCTs and meta-analyses) have no observed effect. Our paper shows these claims result from the use of incorrect mathematical equations.
From Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
"Until now, people who suffered mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 were thought to have dodged the brunt of the virus’s brutal side effects. But new evidence has revealed that anyone infected with COVID is at higher risk for heart issues—including clots, inflammation, and arrhythmias—a risk that persists even in relatively healthy people long after the illness has passed."
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who identified a chemical tweak to messenger RNA that laid the foundation for vaccines against #Covid19, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/ Medicine.
As this photo shows, both scientists are wearing masks and NOT relying on the "vax and relax".
“We don’t stop hand washing because norovirus cases are down. We don’t stop wearing gloves because HIV cases are down. As a doctor, if you’re arguing that you should be able to expose patients to COVID because infection control annoys you, you should not be a doctor. Find a new career. I bet you’d love denying insurance claims. I bet you’d be a natural.”
A few weeks ago, my 70-something firecracker aunt went on a river cruise, caught #covid, developed pneumonia, was hospitalized, seemed to be recovering, and then suddenly died. I hate exposing my family’s private grief, but I want to remind you that covid is not fucking over.
“Air was brought from the outside and blown through a series of water sprays or screens, heated to any desired degree, then forced through a system of ducts which distributed it to every part of the building through hundreds of small pipes which opened beneath the seats. A complete change of air took place every 3 minutes, & with the aid of these huge air-washers, clean, dust-free air of even temperature was ensured at all times.”
"#Meta acknowledged…to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms ["covid" and "long covid"] and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words…“coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words." https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/11/threads-covid-coronavirus-searches-blocked/
(#paywalled)
Back when I was still in university, sometimes my professors appeared in news articles. More often than not, they didn't appear, but the same 2-5 others experts of the country appeared (again and again and again).
As students we asked some professors how this all came to be. Who appeared where and how? We got the following explanation:
A news outlet decides they want to create an article or video. The tone and conclusion of the piece have already been decided. Then they contact many experts in that field. For example, a query they would send out is: "Hello, we're looking for experts to talk to about X."
Not many experts respond, but some do. The query they will get in response will be something like: "Thanks for your interest, we are looking for someone to confirm that X leads to Y and Z."
My professors told me that in their naive days, they would still keep interacting and correcting and suggesting other takes. "Actually, Y and Z aren't like that, it's too simplistic, but I could talk about A and B and how it leads to maybe Y in your article."
What would happen? They were ghosted of course. 😂
Among many experts, news outlets would eventually always find one or two people willing to confirm their shitty clickbait shit. And once these experts work along, they get contacted more frequently than others. Experts who keep correcting and being difficult, aren't contacted again.
I studied in a very niche field and I know all experts in that field in my country. I started to recognize who would work along and what they would gain from it. I now know who's blacklisted and who is being kept out of the news and why.
This has been in the back of my mind during the #pandemic. I assume things work the same way among virologists, epidemiologists, and other related experts. It's frustrating because they carry the title of expert, they come across as knowledgeable and the media spreads their words everywhere. It's made to appear as if these experts represent their whole field and all others in it.
But how many experts have these news outlets had to contact before finding someone who was willing to collaborate with their minimizing?
Never believe minimizers who lie and say there’s nothing more we can do to mitigate the spread of #COVID. This would be a huge game-changer!
Scientists are developing a breathalyzer that can detect coronavirus in just one or two breaths and provide results in less than 1 minute. The test could be more accurate than rapid home tests and faster than PCR tests.