TallGuyJohninBKK

Per the Los Angeles Times in the following news report. ..."Trump claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Vice President Harris, whom he has dubbed “Comrade Kamala,” “wants this country to go communist.” ... But his wild punches aren’t landing.... So why is Trump’s free-swinging rhetoric failing? For one thing, Harris isn’t — and never has been — a Marxist, and most voters appear to recognize that. ... To be doubly certain, I consulted a leading historian of American Marxism, Paul Buhle, a retired lecturer at Brown University. He said he had looked into Harris’ history and found no evidence of Marxist leanings. “It’s a slur,” he wrote in an email. (more) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-calls-harris-a-marxist-a-communist-even-a-fascist-why-his-wild-punches-don-t-land/ar-AA1pQtYt

Long Covid symptoms in kids aren’t one-size-fits-all, study shows Headaches dominate in very young, fatigue in adolescents Aug. 21, 2024 Rachel Gross wants to clear up misconceptions about children and Covid-19. A pediatrician and population health researcher, she recalls a time four years ago when people didn’t think children could even contract the disease. Then, after accepting kids’ vulnerability to the virus, it was thought only adults could suffer from the myriad symptoms that persist or crop up post-infection, collectively known as long Covid. Now that it’s clear kids can also develop long Covid, Gross wants to correct assumptions that the condition looks the same in adults as in children, no matter their age. In new research published Wednesday in JAMA, Gross and the RECOVER-Pediatrics Consortium report that school-age children and adolescents experience similar long Covid symptoms across multiple organ systems, but those symptoms cluster in ways that vary depending on their age while diverging to some degree from the pattern seen in adults. As part of the federally funded RECOVER initiative focused on post-acute sequelae of SARS-Cov-2, or PASC for short, the study found that school-age children (6 to 11 years old) with prolonged symptoms were more likely than uninfected children to experience headaches (57%); trouble with memory, focusing, and sleeping (44%); and abdominal pain (43%) at least four weeks after Covid. Infected adolescents (12 to 17 years old) more often had daytime fatigue, sleepiness, and low energy (80%); body, muscle, or joint pain (55%); and trouble with memory and focusing (47%) post-infection than uninfected peers. (more) STAT https://www.statnews.com/2024/08/21/long-covid-symptoms-children-recover/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2822770

Here the concluding passage from the original New York Times opinion piece: "Whatever our politics, Trump brings out the worst in all of us. He nurtures hate on his side that we mirror. So let’s take a deep breath, summon F.D.R.’s empathy for the forgotten man, follow Clinton’s advice — and, for the sake of winning elections as well as of civility, remember that the best way to get others to listen to us is to first listen to them." Well, if nothing else, it's a rarity to find the words "Trump" and "civility" mentioned anywhere close to each other. But I do agree with the author's primary conclusion: "Trump brings out the worst in all of us." That's reason enough that he never should serve as U.S. president again, for the sake of the U.S. and the world.

A recent report found 5.8 million U.S. kids have long COVID. Here’s what you need to know now. Updated Aug 26, 2024 ...a new large analysis published this year in the journal Pediatrics found 5.8 million American kids have long COVID—symptoms lasting at least six months after infection. The report estimated that, much like adults, 10% to 20% of kids who get sick with COVID-19 develop this complex, poorly understood post-infection syndrome that can affect almost every system in the body. The problem is, it can be really hard to diagnose and even harder to find someone who recognizes the signs and knows how to help your child get better. Who Develops Long COVID? As we found out firsthand, any kid can develop long COVID. “Research indicates that long COVID can affect previously healthy children and adolescents, including those who experienced only mild cases of COVID-19,” says Carlos Oliveira, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. At the same time, he adds, kids who got severely ill during that initial infection have a potential double whammy, as they are “significantly more likely to develop long COVID.” ... The stakes are high, as many kids across the country and world are having their lives upended by long COVID, says Jessica Snowden, M.D., chief of pediatric infectious disease and vice dean for research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, AR. “I hear from parents and children all the time who are struggling with a wide variety of long COVID symptoms, from school problems to breathing concerns.” (more) Health Central https://www.healthcentral.com/condition/coronavirus/pediatric-long-covid https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/153/3/e2023062570/196606/Postacute-Sequelae-of-SARS-CoV-2-in-Children

Long COVID is a $1 trillion problem with no cure. Experts plead for governments to wake up August 9, 2024 ... This form of COVID is particularly perilous because, for many people, its symptoms may last years (or a lifetime) and their effects may trigger all sorts of associated problems and costs. Long COVID “affects nearly every organ system,” the review notes, including the cardiovascular, immune, gastrointestinal and reproductive systems. While more than 200 symptoms have been identified, common symptoms include memory problems, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, heart palpitations, chronic cough, shortness or breath and recurring headaches. Chillingly, most people who develop long COVID did not have particularly vicious cases of the virus initially. That’s in part because so many more people experience a mild form of COVID rather than a severe one. (Across most studies, long COVID risk does increase with the severity of the initial infection.) And each time people become reinfected with the virus, they’re at risk of developing long COVID, even if they didn’t experience it previously. The authors note that studies on recovery from long COVID are “sparse and inconsistent.” But those that have closely evaluated individual manifestations of the virus have found recovery rates to be fairly low at one year, and only 7% to 10% fully recovered after two years. For millions and millions of people, the debilitating effects of long COVID are just that. (more) Fortune https://fortune.com/well/article/long-covid-cost-1-trillion-treatment-cure/

The condition has put significant strain on patients and society — at a global economic cost of about $1 trillion a year, a new report estimates. Aug. 9, 2024 About 400 million people worldwide have been afflicted with long Covid, according to a new report by scientists and other researchers who have studied the condition. The team estimated that the economic cost — from factors like health care services and patients unable to return to work — is about $1 trillion worldwide each year, or about 1 percent of the global economy. ... About 6 percent of adults globally have had long Covid. The authors evaluated scores of studies and metrics to estimate that as of the end of 2023, about 6 percent of adults and about 1 percent of children — or about 400 million people — had ever had long Covid since the pandemic began. They said the estimate accounted for the fact that new cases slowed in 2022 and 2023 because of vaccines and the milder Omicron variant. ... Many people have not fully recovered. The authors cited studies suggesting that only 7 percent to 10 percent of long Covid patients fully recovered two years after developing long Covid. They added that “some manifestations of long Covid, including heart disease, diabetes, myalgic encephalomyelitis and dysautonomia are chronic conditions that last a lifetime.” ... Treatment remains one of the biggest challenges. There is still too little known about treating long Covid, the authors wrote, and there remains a “near-total absence of evidence from randomized clinical trials to guide treatment decisions.” (more) New York Times https://archive.ph/IefAs https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03173-6

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for Aug. 25 - 31, 2024: For the week: --569 new COVID hospitalizations (red) --1 new COVID death (gray) --212 COVID patients currently hospitalized in serious condition (pneumonia type symptoms) (dark purple) --91 COVID patients currently hospitalized requiring ventilation/intubation in order to breathe (light purple) https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

New Covid Vaccines Are Coming. Here’s What to Know. We asked experts about the right time to get a shot, and how long protection will last. Aug. 22, 2024 [Among the questions answered in the full New York Times report linked below:] How are the new shots different? What if I just had Covid? How fast does protection kick in? When should I get vaccinated? New York Times https://archive.ph/iZasE

It's kind of weird (to use that popular term lately)! The OP opinion piece here is actually about what the author thinks could be a political civil war within the Republican Party if Trump loses the election. But a lot of the comments here in this thread have ended up being about the potential other kind of real civil war, like the U.S. got a brief taste of during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Normally, you wouldn't think the latter even fathomable... But then you look at a lot of the absurd extremist political rhetoric being dished out here on this forum (some share of it probably by non-Americans), and you begin to wonder.... What happens if Harris wins the election, but the Trump election deniers that Republicans have placed in many election departments around the country refuse to count or certify the ballots. Or Republicans in Congress go another round at attempting to do the same with the state election results? We seem to be living in perilous times. New Report Details Terrifying Threat of Trump’s Election Deniers Election deniers hold crucial roles in elections in multiple swing states At least 70 pro–Donald Trump election denialists are working as election officials in key swing states, according to a report published Monday from Rolling Stone and the right-wing extremism research newsletter American Doom. Officials who had promoted election conspiracy theories were identified in at least 16 counties in six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. These individuals were identified through scouring coverage of refusals to certify 2020 election results and other denialist behavior, as well as sifting through the social media profiles of election officials in these states. Across these swing states, Trump loyalists stand ready to disrupt the results of democratically held elections—at least 22 of them have already refused or delayed certification in recent years, indicating likely chaos in November. (more) https://newrepublic.com/post/184340/trump-election-deniers-power-swing-states https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-how-georgia-officials-wrote-rules-deny-election-results-1235089385/

August 30, 2024 A growing proportion of Americans believe COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and are unwilling to be vaccinated or to recommend it to others, according to the latest national health survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. ... False beliefs proliferate As of July, 28% of survey respondents mistakenly believed that COVID-19 vaccines have caused thousands of deaths, up from 22% in June 2021, while the proportion who know this is untrue fell from 66% to 55% over the same period. Twenty-two percent of Americans believe the falsity that it's less risky to get infected with COVID-19 than to get the vaccine, more than double the 10% with the belief in the months following the 2021 vaccine rollout. The proportion of respondents who mistakenly think that COVID-19 vaccines change human DNA reached 15%, nearly double the 8% who believed it in 2021. ... The skepticism extends to other vaccines as well, with 32% unsure of the effectiveness of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine aimed at young people, 23% uncertain about the pneumonia vaccine, 19% doubting the shingles vaccine, and 47% unsure about the RSV vaccine during pregnancy or at age 60 and older (37%). (more) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/survey-reveals-growing-american-distrust-vaccines-covid-other-infectious-diseases COVID-19 Misinformation & Vaccine Perceptions Perceptions of Vaccine Safety and Efficacy "Vaccines are one of the great success stories of public health. Vaccination has eliminated or nearly eliminated some diseases (e.g., smallpox and polio). For others, such as COVID-19, it has significantly decreased the number of people experiencing severe illness, hospitalization, and death because of infection. Unfortunately, recent years have seen declines in Americans’ perceptions that a variety of vaccines are safe and effective (see Figure 5). Although most respondents still report these vaccines as safe (65-81%) and effective (61-83%), respondents surveyed showed significant declines in perceptions of safety for MMR and COVID-19 vaccines, and in perceptions of efficacy for MMR, seasonal flu, and pneumonia vaccines. COVID-19 Vaccine Perceived as Less Safe & Effective than Other Vaccines: Our respondents consider MMR and seasonal flu vaccines, which have existed for decades, safer and more effective (75-83%) than the more recent COVID-19 vaccines (65-66%). Evidence from the CDC suggests that COVID-19 vaccines are actually more effective than flu vaccines. There has also been an increase in perceptions that the COVID-19 vaccines are very or somewhat unsafe (from 18% to 24%)." https://cdn.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/asaph-report-summer-2024.pdf

Obviously you mean post-election like this: January 6 United States Capitol attack "On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. was attacked by a mob[39][40][41] of supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. They sought to keep Trump in power by occupying the Capitol and preventing a joint session of Congress counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the certification of the election results. According to the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capitol_attack

See above for a rebuttal of your incorrect claim, at least as regards THIS particular article.

Maybe you should actually read just who wrote the original version of the Opinion piece above. Desperate stuff from the left??? Try again! If Trump loses, expect a Republican civil war by Myra Adams, Opinion Contributor - 08/30/24 7:00 AM ET ... "Myra Adams is an opinion writer who served on the creative team of two Republican presidential campaigns, in 2004 and 2008." https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4853672-trump-biden-2024-republican-party/ https://x.com/MyraKAdams https://myraadams.com/about-2/

That might be what you get, sometimes, when the article in question is an OPINION article!

Just for some U.S. background on that: I did a count the other day of the U.S. CDC's weekly COVID deaths reports. By the early part of August, U.S. COVID deaths were approaching 30,000 for thus far in calendar year 2024, if I did my maths right. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00 In the CDC's recent report on the top 10 U.S. causes of death for 2023, COVID was number 10 on the list. Influenza was somewhere further down on the list just based on death counts. https://aseannow.com/topic/1335279-covid-drops-to-10th-leading-provisional-cause-of-death-in-us-for-2023/

COVID is estimated to be infecting nearly 1 million people per day in the U.S. right now, and the weekly COVID death toll rose to almost 900 with the latest CDC update. Neither is the case for the flu, as shown below: Respiratory Illnesses Data Channel Reported on Friday, August 30th, 2024. "Seasonal influenza and RSV activity are low nationally, but COVID-19 activity is elevated in most areas. COVID-19 COVID-19 activity is elevated nationally, with continued increases in many areas and early signs of decline in others. COVID-19 test positivity, emergency department visits, and rates of COVID-19–associated hospitalizations remain elevated, particularly among adults 65+ and children under 2 years." https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data/index.html

U.S. FDA authorizes Novavax’s updated Covid vaccine, paving way for fall rollout Aug 30 2024 The Food and Drug Administration authorized Novavax’s updated protein-based Covid vaccine for emergency use in people ages 12 and up on Friday, paving the way for the shot to compete with Pfizer and Moderna’s jabs this fall and winter. Novavax’s vaccine targets the highly contagious omicron subvariant JN.1, which began circulating widely in the U.S. earlier this year. JN.1 only accounted for 0.2% of cases circulating nationwide as of this week, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Novavax manufactures protein-based vaccines, which cannot be quickly updated to target another strain of the virus. Despite that, the biotech company has noted that its shot provides protection against descendants of JN.1 that are currently dominant in the U.S., including KP.2.3, KP.3, KP.3.1.1 and LB.1. ... Public health officials see Novavax’s vaccine as a valuable alternative for people who don’t want to take mRNA shots from Pfizer and Moderna, which use a newer vaccine method to teach cells how to make proteins that trigger an immune response against Covid. (more) https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/30/fda-authorizes-novavax-protein-covid-vaccine.html

The latest August 30 COVID projections by independent COVID tracker and infectious disease modeler Jay Weiland, who is forecasting that the current surge should soon begin subsiding: https://twitter.com/JPWeiland/status/1829650388511047960

My summary: Amid the country's continuing mid-year COVID surge, U.S. weekly COVID deaths rose again to a partial tally of 881 for the week ending August 10, nearly triple the weekly low of 308 COVID deaths in early June. Still, the current weekly COVID deaths tally also remains about one-third of that reported at the beginning of 2024 amid the now-typical year-end surge. The rate of sampled hospitalizations due to COVID also continued increasing for the week ending August 10. But two other publicly reported COVID forward-looking indicators showed moderation in the latest update through August 24, with the rates of sampled emergency department COVID visits and COVID testing positivity both declining slightly, albeit the latter to a still very high 17% rate. CDC COVID update for August 30, 2024: "COVID-19 activity is elevated nationally, with continued increases in many areas and early signs of decline in others. COVID-19 test positivity, emergency department visits, and rates of COVID-19–associated hospitalizations remain elevated, particularly among adults 65+ and children under 2 years. Surges like this are known to occur throughout the year, including during the summer months." https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data/index.html https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home * the three gray columns above indicate totals for those recent weeks remain partial. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00 With the absence of any comprehensive COVID infection testing and reporting program in the U.S. and reduced reporting of COVID hospitalization data, public health officials increasingly have turned to wastewater monitoring of COVID viral content as a primary forward-looking indicator of COVID activity and trends in the country, as follows: "Wastewater (sewage) can be tested to detect traces of infectious diseases circulating in a community, even if people don’t have symptoms. You can use these data as an early warning that levels of infections may be increasing or decreasing in your community." https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-nationaltrend.html https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/COVID19-currentlevels.html

Here's the charts from the latest UKHSA weekly COVID update for England as of Aug. 29: My text summary - Newly reported weekly COVID deaths (at 166, down 17% for the week ending Aug. 16) fell to their lowest level in the past month, while two other publicly reported COVID indicators both showed substantial improvement in the government's latest weekly COVID update. Those included a 19% decline in new weekly COVID cases (not an especially reliable indicator these days due to sparse testing), and the good sign of a fifth consecutive weekly decline in the positivity rate for COVID testing (7-day rolling average), which dropped from 11.4% to 10% as of Aug. 17. In comparison, the testing positivity rate had peaked at almost 16% and weekly deaths had hit a recent high of 216 in mid-July. There was no updated data for COVID new hospital admissions since the last weekly report. The latest numbers are a possible sign that the spring COVID surge is finally easing. https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/ https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-19#deaths Weekly COVID deaths from the recent low in May: Weekly data for deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate in England Up to and including 16 August 2024 (some recent prior week figures have been revised vs prior weekly reports): Date -- Amount 16 Aug 2024 -- 166 9 Aug 2024 -- 200 2 Aug 2024 -- 194 26 Jul 2024 -- 177 19 Jul 2024 -- 216 12 Jul 2024 -- 205 5 Jul 2024 -- 165 28 Jun 2024 -- 186 21 Jun 2024 -- 149 14 Jun 2024 -- 158 7 Jun 2024 -- 146 31 May 2024 -- 113 24 May 2024 -- 147 17 May 2024 -- 168 10 May 2024 -- 93 https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/ https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/ https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/topics/covid-19#testing

Don't believe the UK, the subject of the thread here, has ever recommended COVID vaccines for the entire group of "toddlers" -- which typically means those aged 1 to 3. But as the study below reports, COVID vaccines in the UK have had a "favourable safety profile" among children/young people in general, and better health outcomes for the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated. Safety outcomes following COVID-19 vaccination and infection in 5.1 million children in England 27 May 2024 "The United Kingdom (UK) approved COVID-19 vaccination for all children aged 12 and over in September 2021. This was extended to 5–11-year-olds in April 2022 in a one-off programme offering a primary course of COVID-19 vaccination to children who were not in a vulnerable or high-risk group." ... In the UK, the vast majority of vaccinated children received the BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) COVID-19 vaccine, as the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) advised against using ChAdOX1 (AstraZeneca) in people under 40 or mRNA-1273 (Moderna/SpikeVax) in children under 18 during the time period that most children were vaccinated3 ... They have advised to continue vaccinating clinically vulnerable children aged 6 months and above and to vaccinate otherwise healthy children aged 12 years and above living with immunosuppressed individuals4. ... We report a favourable safety profile of COVID-19 vaccination in under-18s." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47745-z

A nonsense paper by several authors, among others, affiliated with the RFK Jr. anti-vax quack group Children's Health Defense, along with others whose backgrounds very fittingly are food-agriculture and psychiatry. "Overall, we rate the Children’s Health Defense a strong conspiracy and quackery level advocacy group that frequently promotes unsupported claims. We also rate them low for factual reporting due to the promotion of propaganda and several failed fact checks. ... Besides promoting anti-vaccination propaganda, the Children Health Defense has also promoted the debunked conspiracy that fluoride lowers the IQ in children. At this time, there is not enough evidence to make that claim. Other conspiracies and/or pseudoscience promoted on this website includes the dangers of 5G. During the Coronavirus pandemic, the group accused the United States government of supporting research on a vaccine as part of a plan to increase revenues for the pharmaceutical industry. Further, as seen below they routinely promote false and misleading claims regarding Covid-19 and vaccines." https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/childrens-health-defense/ And further on the general anti-vaxer claims relating to spike proteins: The spike protein encoded in the COVID-19 vaccines has been the subject of much alarmism from anti-vaxxers. None of it is actually worrisome. 8 Jun 2024 "Our office recently celebrated its 25th anniversary—25 years of, among other things, separating sense from nonsense on scientific matters. I would argue that our work is harder now than it has ever been: as the dance of science becomes ever more convoluted, pseudoscience follows in its footsteps, imitating its complexity and looking more and more convincing. ... The COVID vaccines, administered over 13 billion times, are really, really safe. A massive review looking at 41 randomized controlled trials of 12 different COVID-19 vaccines on a total of nearly half a million participants concluded that there was probably little to no difference between most vaccines and placebos when it came to serious side effects. ... Take-home message: - The claim that the spike protein or its messenger RNA can be detected for weeks or months after vaccination is based on studies where fragments were barely detectable, often trillionths of a gram, which is in keeping with our understanding of biology." McGill University Office for Science and Society Separating Sense from Nonsense https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-medical-critical-thinking/spikeopathy-speculative-fiction-contaminates-blood-supply

The COVID pandemic has claimed many millions of lives since its start in 2020, including some 7 million officially found directly caused by COVID, which is widely considered an undercount. But there also have been many other less direct victims of the pandemic, people who didn't get the medical care they needed for other conditions, and yes, a comparatively much smaller number who incurred injuries and deaths believed related to COVID vaccines. Any death, whether due to COVID itself or due to other factors relating to the pandemic, is sad and regrettable. But considering that the BBC decided to spend some 60 paragraphs (by my count) in their article on two particular deaths believed related to what a government spokesman in the BBC report called "extremely rare" cases of blood clotting associated with the already discontinued Astra Zeneca COVID vaccine, there's a lot of additional context on that topic that could have been, but wasn't, provided. Such as: --More people are dying and have been dying of COVID every week in England, some 200 from the last weekly update, even now 4-1/2 years into the pandemic than ALL of the claimed UK blood clotting deaths believed related to the Astra Zeneca vaccine since the beginning --The blood clotting deaths in the UK that have been attributed to the AZ vaccine, some 80+ in total, occurred out of some 50 million AZ doses that were given in the UK in the late 2020, mostly 2021 period of time, rendering those a very rare side effect of the vaccine, which is why the clotting issue didn't surface in the vaccine's original clinical trials. --Balance against that, COVID vaccines are estimated to have prevented some 400,000 COVID deaths just in the UK, including preventing up to 130,000 UK deaths early in the pandemic thru fall 2021 when the AZ vaccine was being used along with two others. --The COVID virus/illness itself during the pandemic, even with the use of vaccines, still has ended up claiming more than 232,000 lives in the UK. As the UK-based fact checking site Full Fact reported in 2023: "Overall, the vaccines have therefore saved vastly more lives than they have cost." --The risk of blood clots was HIGHER from COVID itself than it was from the AZ vaccine: "The risk of a serious blood clot [from the vaccine] is about 1 in 250,000 people or 4 in 1 million. COVID-19 carries a much higher risk of blood clots: 7.8 percent of people who have had COVID-19 also had a pulmonary embolism, and 11.2 percent experience deep vein thrombosis." https://www.healthline.com/health/adult-vaccines/astrazeneca-vaccine#blood-clot-risk And last, as the BBC report finally adds near the end of its long report -- the AZ vaccine has been credited with saving more than 6 million lives worldwide in the first year of the COVID vaccines rollout. "From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects. ... "According to independent estimates, over six million lives were saved in the first year of use alone and over three billion doses were supplied globally." So, by all means, those believed harmed by COVID vaccines deserve full and fair investigations into their cases, and to have their days in court to seek judgments and compensation for those who choose to pursue that path, if they prevail in their cases. But for every report like the BBC one presented here, let's also not forget or fail to recognize the hundreds of thousands of UK residents and many more around the world who are still living today because they were protected by those vaccines.

Sheryl, just a query about your comment above. AFAIK, lots of people during the course of the pandemic had COVID infections and were never formally tested for them for various reasons, including both those who had symptoms at the time and those who didn't, at least to the level of recognizing them as such. Thus, the absence of a positive COVID test result doesn't necessarily mean someone never became infected with COVID. Though I believe there are retrospective blood tests (serology) that can better answer that one way or the other.

And more of the same from Agence France-Presse (AFP): Experts rubbish Covid vaccine 'detoxification' supplement July 19, 2023 "Sponsored social media posts advertise a "detoxification supplement" called nattokinase that can supposedly counteract harmful effects from Covid-19 shots. This is false; experts and public health authorities told AFP there is no evidence the product -- which regulators are reviewing for unproven claims -- destroys harmless spike proteins from the jabs. ... Anti-vaccine advocates have for years promoted supplements and pseudoscientific treatments as a way to "detox" or reverse the purported negative effects of the Covid-19 shots. AFP has previously debunked such claims. Posts touting nattokinase are similarly unfounded, experts say -- and regulators in the United States and Canada have acted against companies hawking the supplement." https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.33PA8L4 along with... No scientific evidence for the claim that nattokinase can treat long COVID or “detox” COVID-19 vaccines 2023-03-24 "Nattokinase is an enzyme that was first isolated from natto, a traditional Japanese dish made of fermented soybeans. Research so far has shown that it can break apart proteins involved in blood clotting, which enables it to dissolve blood clots. While one study by Tanikawa et al. found that nattokinase could break down spike protein, the study was unrelated to long COVID and the experiments were performed in cells in the lab. Therefore, the results may not reflect what happens in the human body and also provide no information about its effects on long COVID. ... Incorrect: There’s no evidence that the spike protein generated through vaccination causes harm. COVID-19 vaccines haven’t been shown to be toxic, so it is unnecessary to “detox” from it. Unsupported: The nattokinase study cited was performed only in vitro, not in people, so it provides no information about nattokinase’s effect in people with long COVID. The exact cause of long COVID still remains unknown. The assertion that long COVID is due to persistent spike protein and can be treated with nattokinase is unsupported by scientific evidence. https://science.feedback.org/review/no-scientific-evidence-for-claim-nattokinase-treat-long-covid-detox-covid19-vaccines/