There is zero funding for dealing even with the current pandemic, let alone preventing the next one. The FDA not only is in no hurry to approve a vaccine for children, the new highlight is its focus on creating a dire shortage of specialty baby formula. Covid doesn’t kill children, merely causing governments to mandate they not get to have their childhoods, but 40% of formula being out of stock is a much more directly and physically dangerous situation. The FDA has a history of killing children via not letting them have the nutrition they need to survive, last time it was an IV formulation that was incomplete but couldn’t be updated for years, so we shouldn’t act all surprised when this threatens to happen again.
Maybe you’ve touched on this before, but do you think the prevalence of home tests that don’t get reported could be suppressing the case numbers, perhaps by a lot? Anecdotally, more of my friends and colleagues have tested positive in the last 2 weeks than at any other point in the pandemic.
Pfizer is buying radio and TV ads that explain that there is an oral treatment you take at home for COVID and telling people to call their doctor as soon as they have symptoms. It never explicitly mentions Paxlovid because then they have to put in all the disclaimers, side effects, and drug interactions. I've seen the ads during NBA and NHL playoff games and on local sports radio programs.
On the issue of alcohol wipes, I've got Type 1 Diabetes and inject insulin and prick my finger multiple times per day. Every instruction I've ever seen/gotten says to clean the site before hand with alcohol or soap & water. I've never done that and over 10 years and 1000's of injections & finger pricks, nothing has ever happened. From conversations with other diabetics, the vast majority don't clean before injections and also haven't seen any issues. It's not an RCT, but there should be an enormous amount of data you could collect to see if there's any meaningful risk of not cleaning an injection site.
This baby formula thing might be the first time I wished Trump was here. His solution would be poorly aimed and slipshod, but he'd also be firing people until something changed, so it would actually get changed instead of people sitting secure that it's someone else's problem.
I had the paxlovid rebound! I am 38, no underlying health conditions, first vaccine was J&J in April 2020 and my booster was Moderna in Dec 2021, and I have no prior covid infection. Whenever something happens to me I assume it's not rare but not sure if that's logical? I have reported it as an adverse reaction to Pfizer.
> Properly administered, this provision will be an essential tool in constraining Canada’s ability to dump unlimited quantities of dairy products onto global markets
I’m so dumb I didn’t even know Canada possessed a limitless supply of milk
Notes on the article about Australia's vaccine rollout:
There's an election in two weeks, so certain groups of people are understandably keen to write articles about how terribly the current government screwed things up. And this article just happens to be written by an opposition MP, so perhaps shouldn't be taken at face value.
The article is correct in pointing out that things would have been a lot better if we'd finished our vaccination program as early as Israel, but unconvincing in its claims that government screw-ups had anything to do with it. Australia's vaccination rate was limited entirely by how quickly we could get deliveries from Pfizer, and it's not clear if there's anything we could have done to move ourselves up the queue. To a large extent, Pfizer seems to have (sensibly) prioritised countries with high covid rates. Much was made at the time of the fact that Australia didn't order Pfizer until it had already been shown to be successful, but on the other hand we ordered Moderna in our first round of vaccine orders and we didn't get Moderna until very late either.
Anyway, the figure comes from comparing Australia to Israel, but an Israel-pace vaccination program was never a possibility for Australia.
Yesterday evening my father called me up to say that he'd come down with a cold, gone to get tested as a precaution, and tested positive. The testing center urged him to call his doctor and try to get a paxlovid prescription but by then it was too late in the day to reach anyone at that office. The testing center itself was not a test-and-treat center.
He spent a miserable night getting no sleep, coughing, getting weaker, etc. He's double-vaccine-boosted, too, so this damn thing doesn't fuck around.
The next morning I called his doctor to try to get a prescription arranged by phone and spoke to an assistant there. I also called a local test-and-treat center and was told we could come in person there and they had paxlovid they could dispense. His doctor's office called me back and approved the prescription, and gave some guidance about temporarily discontinuing another medication that my dad takes that reacts badly with paxlovid. I went down and picked up the prescription within a half hour or so of getting the call, and had it at my dad's door soon after.
So total time between diagnosis and first paxlovid dose was ~17 hours. This all took place in San Luis Obispo, California.
Do you have thoughts as to how covid is going to play out in Taiwan? I’m wondering if we should expect the recent surge to be analogous to the January east coast surge
Yesterday, I summarized your welcome line of thinking about our Covid failure in my short post below titled:
"Why Does our Government Prioritize Killing Russians Over Saving American Lives?"
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/why-does-our-government-prioritize?s=w
Maybe you’ve touched on this before, but do you think the prevalence of home tests that don’t get reported could be suppressing the case numbers, perhaps by a lot? Anecdotally, more of my friends and colleagues have tested positive in the last 2 weeks than at any other point in the pandemic.
"Many people don’t know about Paxlovid."
Pfizer is buying radio and TV ads that explain that there is an oral treatment you take at home for COVID and telling people to call their doctor as soon as they have symptoms. It never explicitly mentions Paxlovid because then they have to put in all the disclaimers, side effects, and drug interactions. I've seen the ads during NBA and NHL playoff games and on local sports radio programs.
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/bAea/pfizer-inc-move-fast-oral-treatment
On the issue of alcohol wipes, I've got Type 1 Diabetes and inject insulin and prick my finger multiple times per day. Every instruction I've ever seen/gotten says to clean the site before hand with alcohol or soap & water. I've never done that and over 10 years and 1000's of injections & finger pricks, nothing has ever happened. From conversations with other diabetics, the vast majority don't clean before injections and also haven't seen any issues. It's not an RCT, but there should be an enormous amount of data you could collect to see if there's any meaningful risk of not cleaning an injection site.
This baby formula thing might be the first time I wished Trump was here. His solution would be poorly aimed and slipshod, but he'd also be firing people until something changed, so it would actually get changed instead of people sitting secure that it's someone else's problem.
I had the paxlovid rebound! I am 38, no underlying health conditions, first vaccine was J&J in April 2020 and my booster was Moderna in Dec 2021, and I have no prior covid infection. Whenever something happens to me I assume it's not rare but not sure if that's logical? I have reported it as an adverse reaction to Pfizer.
My toddler + 4/18
Me - 4/19
Me + 4/20, day 1 of paxlovid
Me + 4/22, day 2 of paxlovid
Me + 4/24, day 3 of paxlovid
Me + 4/26, day 4 of paxlovid
Me - 4/27, day 5 of paxlovid
Me + 4/30
Me + 5/2
Me - 5/4
> Properly administered, this provision will be an essential tool in constraining Canada’s ability to dump unlimited quantities of dairy products onto global markets
I’m so dumb I didn’t even know Canada possessed a limitless supply of milk
Notes on the article about Australia's vaccine rollout:
There's an election in two weeks, so certain groups of people are understandably keen to write articles about how terribly the current government screwed things up. And this article just happens to be written by an opposition MP, so perhaps shouldn't be taken at face value.
The article is correct in pointing out that things would have been a lot better if we'd finished our vaccination program as early as Israel, but unconvincing in its claims that government screw-ups had anything to do with it. Australia's vaccination rate was limited entirely by how quickly we could get deliveries from Pfizer, and it's not clear if there's anything we could have done to move ourselves up the queue. To a large extent, Pfizer seems to have (sensibly) prioritised countries with high covid rates. Much was made at the time of the fact that Australia didn't order Pfizer until it had already been shown to be successful, but on the other hand we ordered Moderna in our first round of vaccine orders and we didn't get Moderna until very late either.
Anyway, the figure comes from comparing Australia to Israel, but an Israel-pace vaccination program was never a possibility for Australia.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/uk-government-data-shows-nobody-should?s=r
As always, my most informative read of the day/week/whatever your frequency is. Thank you.
FWIW: my experience getting paxlovid.
Yesterday evening my father called me up to say that he'd come down with a cold, gone to get tested as a precaution, and tested positive. The testing center urged him to call his doctor and try to get a paxlovid prescription but by then it was too late in the day to reach anyone at that office. The testing center itself was not a test-and-treat center.
He spent a miserable night getting no sleep, coughing, getting weaker, etc. He's double-vaccine-boosted, too, so this damn thing doesn't fuck around.
The next morning I called his doctor to try to get a prescription arranged by phone and spoke to an assistant there. I also called a local test-and-treat center and was told we could come in person there and they had paxlovid they could dispense. His doctor's office called me back and approved the prescription, and gave some guidance about temporarily discontinuing another medication that my dad takes that reacts badly with paxlovid. I went down and picked up the prescription within a half hour or so of getting the call, and had it at my dad's door soon after.
So total time between diagnosis and first paxlovid dose was ~17 hours. This all took place in San Luis Obispo, California.
Do you have thoughts as to how covid is going to play out in Taiwan? I’m wondering if we should expect the recent surge to be analogous to the January east coast surge