COVID News We Should Pay Attention To
Two news stories from the UK that are important if you believe in following the science.
The first pill to treat symptomatic COVID has been approved for use in the UK. This is big!
The pill, Molnupivavir, developed by US companies Merck, MSD, and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is given twice daily to COVID positive patients. The treatment in trials has shown to cut hospitalization in half. The trials were on 775 patients who recently caught COVID. Of that number none who were treated with Molnupivavir died while 8 patients who were given the placebo passed away from the disease.
In the UK the treatment will be given to both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients. Talk about a great way to "flatten the curve." And since it only needs to be taken when necessary - it would also negate the need for any more booster shots (which could be viewed as a negative from the Big Pharma perspective). It is estimated to cost roughly $700 per patient.
Why was a treatment from American firms approved in the UK before getting US approval? Perhaps because taking a pill also negates the need for vaccine mandates? The pill just needs a better name. Pfizer and other companies are said to also have similar therapeutics in development.
The second story from the UK to pay attention to is more about public policy.
This past summer in Scotland there was an excess mortality of over 3,000 deaths above the five year average. The Government in Scotland attributes just 45% of those excess deaths directly to COVID. Deaths from dementia and Alzheimer's, circulatory disease and cancer were all above 5-year averages. But the biggest cause for non-COVID excess deaths fell into a category that the Government classifies as "Other."
"As noted earlier the phenomenon of excess deaths in the presence of a Covid epidemic was not seen in summer 2020, but is seen in summer 2021. What differs between the two years? The glaringly obvious answer is the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccination."
The data presented seems to support this argument. Especially the near spot on of increased deaths by age group as the vaccines were rolled out to those groups.
Every death does leave a grieving family but that grief is made worse when the deaths could have been preventable. If government health policies are shown to be worse then the disease - wouldn't it be common sense to change those policies?
Professor Ennos further pushes back against the government's narrative. In regard to directly attributing 45% of the excessive deaths to COVID the Professor writes; "This proposition relies on the assumption that all Covid deaths represent excess deaths, a position that is hard to sustain given that Covid deaths are associated with multiple comorbidities, and therefore are unlikely to be exclusively in addition to deaths that would have occurred anyway from other causes."
Very true. We have seen this very thing in the US. The good Professor continues:
"Your second explanation is that non-clinical responses to COVID-19 put in place by the Scottish Government (mask-wearing, social isolation, etc.) have had unintended deleterious consequences on public health and have dramatically increased the rates of death in the Scottish population. This is an admission of abject failure of the Scottish Government's public health response to Covid. Public health policy is all about balancing the benefits and risks of interventions to achieve the lowest possible impact during a health emergency [emphasis added]."
The Government is not here to save you. Mask wearing has not been shown scientifically to have any impact. Six foot social distancing is a made up concept (show me a study that shows six-feet distancing is somehow a magic number). And lockdowns don't work - just look at the Nordic countries that aren't doing any of this.
The UK and Israel have the best science and data on the pandemic. That is largely because the numbers from the US cannot be trusted. We need to follow the science. We need to end public health policies that ARE NOT WORKING. We need therapeutics like the new Merck pill and inexpensive rapid testing.