The true COVID-19 death toll may be 12 million higher than official numbers state: study
A new report attempts to tabulate the true magnitude of lives lost during the pandemic — and the result is shocking
By NICOLE KARLIS

Last week, a consortium of health researchers published a harrowing report that reframed the magnitude of loss during the COVID-19 pandemic: an estimated 18.2 million people have lost their lives during the pandemic, they estimate, which is three times the official global death toll of 5.9 million COVID-19 deaths.

Researchers landed on the higher number, which was published in an analysis in The Lancet, based on their calculation of the number of "excess deaths." The term excess deaths refers to deaths that were above what would be expected on average over a given time, meaning that they were either caused directly or indirectly by the pandemic. The researchers looked at the difference between the number of deaths recorded from January 1, 2020, until December 31, 2021, and the number of expected deaths based on previous trends.

This report is the first estimate of global excess deaths to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"Our estimates of COVID-19 excess mortality suggest the mortality impact from the COVID-19 pandemic has been more devastating than ...

https://www.salon.com/2022/03/16/the-tr ... ate-study/

Parents in Virginia Win Right to Mask Classmates of Their Vulnerable Children
The White House is planning to hold the Easter Egg Roll for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.

A Virginia judge’s ruling allows 12 families to challenge the governor’s order against school mask mandates.

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled in favor of 12 Virginia families who argued that policies making masks optional in classrooms violated the rights of their children, who have health conditions that make them vulnerable to the virus. The case is only the latest example of the legislative back and forth that is accompanying the adjustment to new, post-pandemic norms.

The families filed suit against Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, and other state officials last month after the governor signed a bill that effectively bars mask mandates in schools.

The law, which went into effect on March 1, gives parents the right to exempt their children from mask-wearing without stating a reason. It codified a step that Mr. Youngkin took with an executive order on his first day in office in January, making mask-wearing optional in schools.

The Virginia Educators Association, which represents more than 40,000 teachers and other school employees, criticized the bill in February, saying that it “would remove local decision-making power from local school divisions and place it into the hands of the state.” Many other states had lifted universal mask mandates but left decisions about keeping the requirement in classrooms up to individual school districts.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon granted a preliminary injunction to allow the 12 families in the lawsuit to request mask requirements at their children’s schools if ...

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/24 ... es-vaccine

"In a December study, the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks U.S. health policy and outcomes, estimated that between June and November of 2021, unvaccinated American adults accounted for $13.8 billion in “preventable” COVID hospitalization costs nationwide.

Kaiser estimated that over that six-month period, which included the Delta wave, vaccinations could have averted 59% of COVID hospitalizations among U.S. adults. Kaiser tallied 690,000 vaccine-preventable hospitalizations, at an average cost of $20,000. And it estimated vaccinations could have prevented 163,000 U.S. deaths over the same period.

If vaccine hesitancy accounted for half of the more than 1 million new U.S. COVID hospitalizations since December, the added cost of preventable hospital stays could amount to another $10 billion, Reuters found."

Costs of going unvaccinated in America are mounting for workers and companies
By Joshua Schneyer

Nearly a year after COVID vaccines became freely available in the U.S., one fourth of American adults remain unvaccinated, and a picture of the economic cost of vaccine hesitancy is emerging. It points to financial risk for individuals, companies and publicly funded programs.

Vaccine hesitancy likely already accounts for tens of billions of dollars in preventable U.S. hospitalization costs and up to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, say public health experts.

For individuals forgoing vaccination, the risks can include layoffs and ineligibility to collect unemployment, higher insurance premiums, growing out-of-pocket medical costs or loss of academic scholarships.

For employers, vaccine hesitancy can contribute to short-staffed workplaces. For taxpayers, it could mean a financial drain on programs such as Medicare, which provides healthcare for seniors.

Some employers are looking to pass along a risk premium to unvaccinated workers, not unlike how smokers can be required to pay higher health premiums. One airline said it will charge unvaccinated workers $200 extra a month in insurance.

“When the vaccines emerged it seemed like everyone wanted one and the big question was ...

https://www.reuters.com/business/costs- ... 022-03-25/

Who pays for the COVID lies?
Donald Trump and right-wing media sold their audiences on quack COVID cures — and not the vaccine. Why?
By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that a new study, the biggest to date, has determined that the anti-parasite drug ivermectin did not prevent hospitalization or death in COVID-19 patients. I'm sure you are shocked to learn this. After all, tens of thousands of your fellow Americans insisted that it had cured them. Unfortunately, many others died after having used it in lieu of the vaccines that likely would have kept the virus from being so deadly. The "ivermectin protocol" prescribed by many doctors, largely at the request of their patients, is bunk.

"There was no indication that ivermectin is clinically useful," Edward Mills, one of the study's lead researchers and a professor of health sciences at Canada's McMaster University, told the Journal.

The people who thought it cured them would have survived the virus anyway and those that eschewed the vaccines in favor of this drug and wound up in the hospital were placing their faith in something that didn't work. The new study clears up any confusion. If some people took ivermectin and survived COVID, it was a coincidence.

Right-wing celebrities touted the drug. Some, like notorious podcaster Joe Rogan, said that healthy people need not get vaccinated, caught the virus and lived to tell the tale. Others, such as conservative talk show host Phil Valentine, weren't so lucky.

And this wasn't the first dubious COVID cure out there. You'll remember that the first one that caught the popular imagination among the MAGA crowd was Hydroxychloroquine, a malaria and lupus drug. It, too, was highly touted by right-wing media, particularly ...

https://www.salon.com/2022/03/23/pays-for-the-lies/

Public health experts are horrified at the rift between red and blue states on COVID
Experts spoke to Salon about how the vaccination and risk difference is exacerbated by political beliefs
By MATTHEW ROZSA

In this (hopefully permanent) lull to the pandemic, the public has an opportunity to look back and reflect on the massive toll COVID-19 took on us. In terms of loss, the death toll in the United States is more than 970,000 at the time of this writing; meanwhile, the political rift widened by the pandemic is visible in other slightly more subtle ways — especially by differences in vaccination rates and, accordingly, death tolls.

Indeed, the numbers continue to reveal that Americans in red states who refuse to follow public health measures are suffering from COVID-19 in far excess of their blue state counterparts. Back in 2021, President Joe Biden was already referring to the pandemic as a "pandemic of the unvaccinated"; the data backed him up at the time, and remains true now, as the pandemic is perhaps poised to enter an endemic phase.

"Unquestionably vaccination is now the most important determinant of medically significant rates of infection, and as the populations of 'red states' are much less likely to be vaccinated they are at greatest risk of medically significant infection," Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon by email. He emphasized that these are not the only variables which make a difference — implementation of masking and social distancing guidelines, income differences, population density, underlying health conditions, age and many others.

"The unvaccinated have a 9-fold risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to those vaccinated and a 21-[fold] risk of dying compared to those vaccinated and boosted."

Yet those variables, while significant in many ways, do not reveal anything about people who deliberately make their COVID-related lifestyle choices based around their political philosophy. Breaking down COVID statistics based on red states and blue states, on the other hand, does precisely that.

"The scientific and public health data is clear and irrefutable: from the CDC as of January 2022, the unvaccinated have...

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/01/public ... states-on/

Why the Covid cult of ivermectin won't die
There has never been good clinical evidence to support the use of this drug. But the debate over its use is really about ideology and in-group signaling — not science.
By Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta

The rise of the ivermectin cult is one of the most nonsensical storylines — in a sea of nonsensical storylines — to emerge during the pandemic. Even now, as Covid begins to become a less dominant force in our lives, the ivermectin bunkum continues.

There have been several recent large, well-done, clinical trials, including one published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, that definitively show, according to one of the study’s authors, “there’s really no sign of any benefit.”

But this growing body of it-doesn’t-work evidence hasn’t stopped ivermectin champions from championing. “RETRACT PAPER @NEJM NOW!!!!!” an anti-vaccine physician posted on Twitter a few days after the study was published. In her view it is a “CRIMINAL PAPER” that is “PROMOTING MURDER.” (All caps and ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i ... -rcna22901

In their world not shooting somebody in the head is promoting murder.

Our bank is closed until further notice. Employees went maskless for a few days and now they're all at home or in hospital... sick with COVID.

Nine Million in Mourning

The United States will surpass 1 million coronavirus deaths this week. On average, each of those deaths affected nine close relatives, not including close friends, neighbors or extended family members, leaving more than 9 million Americans mourning the loss of a loved one during the pandemic.

The Biden administration on Friday warned that a fall surge could infect up to 100 million people, my colleagues Yasmeen Abutaleb and Joel Achenbach reported. New omicron subvariants that appear to be very good at evading immunity could drive a sharp increase in cases in coming months. And a possible summer surge in the South could use up the nation’s supply of antivirals and tests just before the fall arrives.

Millions of people retired early during the pandemic, but they are returning to the workforce in droves now that many offices have reopened and restrictions have been lifted. An estimated 1.5 million retirees reentered the labor market in the past year, according to the Labor Department.

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/? ... linktot=50

Hidden benefit: Face masks may reduce COVID-19 severity, researchers find
BY MICHELLE DONOVAN



McMaster researchers who study the dynamics of infectious disease transmission have investigated the population-level consequences of variolation: a potentially significant — and unobvious — benefit of wearing masks.

For the study, the researchers developed a model to investigate COVID-19 variolation — an incidental but potentially beneficial form of immunization achieved by inhaling smaller doses of the virus than would be inhaled without a mask.

A form of variolation was deliberately used in the 18th century to control smallpox. It involved infecting a healthy individual with small doses of the live virus taken from a dried scab or pustule of a person infected with smallpox.

Variolated individuals often experienced far less severe disease than those who were infected naturally, but nevertheless were immune to further infection.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it was suggested that people who were infected while masked might experience mild illness and could be considered “variolated”.

The new mathematical model allows researchers to estimate the potential impact of this effect on the population as a whole.

“If the variolation effect is strong, then the number of severe cases, and consequently pressure on health-care systems, could be substantially reduced if most people wear masks — even if masks don’t ...

https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/artic ... hers-find/

Why the return to the office isn’t working
“I don’t gain anything besides a commute.”
Rani Molla

Andres is back to the office three days a week, and like many knowledge workers, he’s not happy about it. He says that while he and the other executive assistants at his Boston law firm have been forced back, the attorneys haven’t been following the rules. That’s partly because the rules don’t quite make sense, and people in all types of jobs are only coming in because they have to, not because there’s a good reason to go in.

“People have adapted to remote work, and truthfully, the firm has done a tremendous job at adapting in the pandemic,” said Andres, who would prefer going in two days, as long as others were actually there. “But I think it’s more the returning to work that they’re struggling on.” He, like a number of other office workers, spoke with Recode anonymously to avoid getting in trouble with his employer.

Andres enjoys working from home and thinks he does a good job of it — and it allows him to escape a long commute that has only gotten 45 minutes longer thanks to construction projects on his route.

The majority of Americans don’t work from home, but among those who do, there’s a battle going on about where they’ll work in the future. And it’s not just people who enjoy remote work who are upset about the return to the office.

Those who want to be remote are upset because they enjoyed working from home and don’t understand why, after two years of doing good work there, they have to return to the office. People who couldn’t wait to go back are not finding the same situation they enjoyed before the pandemic, with empty offices and fewer amenities. Those who said ...

https://www.vox.com/recode/23161501/ret ... ot-working

After a short period in 2020 of complete remote work, I started going in 1 day a week and in March of 2021 began going in two days a week. Throughout this time we were not allowed to eat together or have in person meetings and we had to be masked in the building. Traffic was getting worse and parking was getting tighter as time went on. Local restaurants were not open for lunch, even for takeout. In March 2022 we were told we had to return to full time at the office with few exceptions. Masks not required, no restrictions on meeting together or eating together. Traffic is worse than I ever remember it and the parking garage is full a half hour before we have to be there. Gas prices are high. Many meetings are still conducted remotely because people from further away can attend more easily.

When we first started working remotely it was hard. It took more steps to get things done and lots of creative workarounds were developed. You didn't dare let a call go to voicemail so no one would doubt your availability or honesty about working. The "usual suspects" complained often about their technology being wonky or their internet being down.

I mostly miss the extra hours of sleep in the morning, making lunch ( packing lunch is not the same), dog walks at lunchtime, being home in time to pick up coffee from the local roastery after work, and having windows in my workspace.

Amazing (amusing?) how someone who claimed that vaccinating kids should be the parents' choice is going out of their way to make that choice for them.

Every state but Florida pre-ordered COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 5
MICHAEL WILNER

Every state has placed an order with the federal government to ensure coronavirus vaccines for young children are delivered as soon as regulators authorize their use — except for one.

Florida missed a Tuesday deadline to request delivery of COVID-19 pediatric vaccines for children under 5, guaranteeing a delay in access for parents across the state, according to two U.S. government sources.

All other 49 states placed pre-orders, which will be delivered in two tranches beginning as early as Monday to thousands of pediatricians’ offices, children’s hospitals, pharmacies and health centers across the country. Those facilities in Florida will not have access during this time and will remain without supply until Florida places an order.

Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for the Florida Department of Health, confirmed the department “chose not to participate” in the vaccination program because the state health department is not following federal public health recommendations.

“The Florida Department of Health has made it clear to the federal government that states do not need to be involved in ...

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politi ... 37502.html

Maybe if his father hadn't made the name "Giuliani" synonymous with bat shit crazy???

Andrew Giuliani claims he’s being discriminated against by NY1 because he’s not vaccinated
Janon Fisher

Republican gubernatorial wannabe Andrew Giuliani claims he’s being picked on by New York’s local news station NY1, which barred him from its studios for the next candidates’ debate because he is unvaccinated.

The son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani says that he should be allowed to debate his political rivals, Lee Zeldin, Harry Wilson and Rob Astorino, at either a neutral location or ...

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politi ... story.html

Supreme Court Allows Vaccine Mandate for New York Health Care Workers
Doctors and nurses challenged a state coronavirus vaccine requirement that had medical but not religious exemptions, saying it violated their right to free exercise of their faiths.
Adam Liptak

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to block New York’s requirement that health care workers be vaccinated against the coronavirus even when they cite religious objections.

As is often the court’s practice in rulings on emergency applications, its unsigned order included no reasoning. But Justice Neil M. Gorsuch filed a 14-page dissent saying that the majority had betrayed the court’s commitment to religious liberty.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Justice Gorsuch’s dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas also said he would have blocked the vaccine requirement, but ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/p ... hcare.html

New COVID-19 Omicron mutation sparks concern in India and beyond
By Laura Ungar and Aniruddha Ghosal

The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious Omicron mutant that’s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States.


Scientists say the variant – called BA.2.75 – may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It’s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other Omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5.

“It’s still really early on for us to draw too many conclusions,” said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “But it does look like, especially in India, the rates of transmission are showing kind of that exponential increase.” Whether it will ...

https://globalnews.ca/news/8980549/new- ... ion-ba275/

Not that I expect the conspiracy theorists to accept this but ....

The COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Dead. Here’s How We Know The Virus Came From A Wuhan Market
The evidence points to the Huanan market.
EDWARD C HOLMES

My colleagues and I published the most detailed studies of the earliest events in the COVID-19 pandemic last month in the journal Science.

Together, these papers paint a coherent evidence-based picture of what took place in the city of Wuhan during the latter part of 2019.

Time For A Career Change? Here's Your Chance To Master Design & More In The Online Space
The take-home message is the COVID pandemic probably did begin where the first cases were detected – at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

At the same time this lays to rest the idea that ....

https://www.iflscience.com/the-covid-la ... rket-64896

Instagram and Facebook suspended Children's Health Defense this week after the anti-vaccine group led by Robert Kennedy Jr. repeatedly violated rules prohibiting misinformation about COVID-19.

RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine group kicked off Instagram, Facebook
Instagram and Facebook suspended Children's Health Defense this week after the anti-vaccine group led by Robert Kennedy Jr. repeatedly violated rules prohibiting misinformation about COVID-19.

A non-profit, Children's Health Defense is one of the most influential anti-vaccine organizations active on social media, where it has spread misleading claims about vaccines and other public health measures designed to control the pandemic.

In a statement, Kennedy compared Facebook's actions to government censorship, even though Facebook is a private company that can set and enforce its own rules about ...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/rfk-jr- ... -1.6032956