Update Nov. 25, 2021
See also Post Ivermectin and the African Enigma

Hot Air reports An African mystery: Where did COVID go? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

There’s something strange happening in Africa which, according to the Associated Press, has scientists “mystified.” The curious situation is particularly prevalent in Zimbabwe. It’s a nation with a population of 14.8 million people and a vaccination rate of less than 6%, a fact that the World Health Organization lectures us about endlessly. And yet in the past week, they recorded a total of 33 COVID deaths. How is this possible? The AP interviewed a number of people who were shopping in a township outside Harare, almost none of whom were wearing masks. One man declared that the virus was “gone” and asked the reporter, “when did you last hear of anyone who has died of COVID-19?” He said that he carries a mask in his pocket because the police demand bribes from people without masks or they are threatened with arrest, but he rarely puts it on. Doctors have a few theories they are tossing around, though many are simply stumped. But I bet some of us who aren’t medical professionals could make a guess.

When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions. Although it’s still unclear what COVID-19’s ultimate toll will be, that catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize in Zimbabwe or much of the continent.

Scientists emphasize that obtaining accurate COVID-19 data, particularly in African countries with patchy surveillance, is extremely difficult, and warn that declining coronavirus trends could easily be reversed.

But there is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said.

As already noted, one of the most stunning statistics in that story is that the vaccination rate in Zimbabwe is only 6%. If you found a single county in the United States with a 6% vaccination rate, Joe Biden would probably already have ordered everyone to be shipped off to prisons. If it happened in Australia they would likely have started executing people by now. But in Africa, it’s just a fact of life.

Reading through the commentary provided to the AP by various medical experts, there seem to be three general theories being suggested to explain the absence of a COVID catastrophe in most of Africa except for the nation of South Africa where they have a significantly higher caseload. The first theory is that the COVID epidemic is just as bad as everywhere else but we simply don’t collect enough data to realize it. The second theory is that scientists should be studying the African people to see if they are somehow more naturally resistant to the novel coronavirus. The final theory is that the average age of people in Zimbabwe (for example) is roughly 20 because life expectancies are much lower. Younger people are less likely to die from the disease.

Let’s consider all of these ideas from the layman’s point of view. Is it possible that there are a lot more cases of COVID in Africa than are being reported? Of course. That only makes sense because most areas in countries like Zimbabwe simply don’t have the resources to be testing everyone. In many cases, the only people being tested are the ones who show up at a medical center displaying symptoms. But one thing they are fully able to record is the number of people who are dying. If deaths of all sorts aren’t rising significantly, then not that many people are dying from COVID.

The idea that Africans are somehow naturally more immune to the virus sounds a bit wacky, at least at first glance. In the United States we have plenty of African-Americans who should be essentially drawing from the same gene pool, right? And yet COVID rates in those communities (where vaccine hesitancy remains higher than the national average) have been quite high during surges in the pandemic. Something doesn’t add up here.

And then there’s the idea that a population with a much lower average age won’t produce as many deaths. While that should statistically be accurate, I would suggest that we can expand on that theory. Residents of Zimbabwe have lower life expectancies so their average age is considerably lower. That much is true. And their vaccination rate is in single digits. Now let’s combine those facts with the reality that almost nobody is being tested for the virus and add in the fact that the COVID survival rate for younger and otherwise healthy people is well over 99%.

Putting all of that together, isn’t it just possible that most of the people in Zimbabwe have already had COVID, developed their own antibodies, and just gotten on with their lives?

Dare we use the forbidden words that the American media refuses to speak and suggest that just maybe the people of Zimbabwe have developed herd immunity? We know the virus exists in the country because a few people died of it last week. We also know how contagious it is. Doesn’t it just make sense that COVID swept through the country and there are no large pockets of people who have never been exposed, so the damned virus is simply dying out on its own?

I’m sure I’ll be locked up in the COVID “misinformation” jail for suggesting this, and I will once again repeat the disclaimer that I have no formal medical training. But it’s something to think about. Perhaps the situation in Zimbabwe really isn’t all the much of a “mystery” after all. Maybe… just maybe… all we’re seeing is mother nature taking her natural course. The human body contains all sorts of marvels and surprises from time to time. We just recently learned of the second person confirmed to have completely recovered from HIV without any medical treatment. It makes me wonder how many other people have contracted HIV but were never tested for it and went on to fight it off on their own. When was the last time anyone tested you for HIV? I haven’t had a test since right before I was married, nearly 30 years ago. Just some food for thought for you on a Friday.

Footnote:

From Zimbabwe Independent (July 23, 2021): Sharpe donates US$50 000 for Covid-19 drug

Property mogul Ken Sharpe last Friday donated US$50 000 to government for the purchase of Ivermectin, which he said saved both his life and that of his wife after they contracted the Covid-19 virus.

The donation, which was made during an event held at the State House headed up by President Emerson Mnangagwa, was Sharpe’s way of giving back after missing death by a whisker.

Sharpe who is the chairperson for West Property said he would not have made it if he had not taken Ivermectin after contracting the virus .

Ivermectin is a broad spectrum anti-parasitic agent.

It is included in WHO essential medicines list for several parasitic diseases and is used in the treatment of onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil transmitted helminthiasis.

“It is a fact that I had been vaccinated and I believe, as you can see, I am a strong man in good health of just under 50 years of age. However, even having observed all the Covid-19 protocols of social distancing, without the assistance of the medicine that I took … I would not be standing here today,” he said .

He shared how he battled with the most severe symptoms until he started taking Ivermectin to which he owes his life.

Sharpe, however, said it was hugely unfair that currently the life-saving drug was pegged at a high price and yet a bit of research had proved that it could be sourced for a few cents.

This he said, would expand and widen access to many people who were currently failing to buy at the current prices.

 

Here are five reports raising concerns that these Covid vaccines are not what they are cracked up to be.

1.  Bureaucrat obsession with “silver bullet” vaccines

As Scott Atlas observes in his book about the US pandemic response:

Dr. Birx, Dr. Redfield and Dr. Fauci—often called “the nation’s top expert in infectious disease”—dominated all discussions about the health and medical aspects of the emerging pandemic. One thing was very clear: all three were cut from the same cloth. First, they were all bureaucrats, with a background in various government agencies. Second, they shared a long history in HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis. That was problematic, because HIV couldn’t be more different from SARS2 in its biology, its amenability to testing and contact tracing, its spread and the implications of those facts for its control.

Indeed, the three of them spent many years focusing on the development of a vaccine, rather than treatment, for HIV/AIDS—a vaccine that still does not exist.

Drs. Birx and Fauci commandeered federal policy under President Trump and publicly advocated for a total societal shutdown. Instead of focusing on protecting the most vulnerable, their illogical and extraordinarily blunt response—despite its predictable, wide-ranging harms—was instituted as though it were simple common sense.

How Panic Spread in the Early Days of COVID-19

As we all recall, the lockdowns were initially for two weeks to protect the health system, and then were perpetuated as being necessary until vaccines were available. That initial obsession with a vaccine-only solution has grown tyrannical with “No Jab, No Job” mandates.

2.  Cancellation campaign against repurposing anti-viral medicines

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson together with his Solicitor General and Assistant Attorney General issued their opinion in response to a request by Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services CEO, Dannette Smith. She wanted the AG’s office to examine carefully whether doctors could face legal action or be subject to discipline if they prescribed the meds for COVID treatment.

“Allowing physicians to consider these early treatments will free them to evaluate additional tools that could save lives, keep patients out of the hospital, and provide relief for our already strained healthcare system,” AG Doug Peterson wrote.

The Office of AG pointed to multiple medical journal articles, research, and case studies. They mentioned the study from Lancet that was later on retracted because of its flawed statistics regarding the use of HCQ.   Because of conflicting data on the treatments by the principal authors, “We find that the available data does not justify filing disciplinary actions against physicians simply because they prescribe ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat COVID-19,” the opinion said.

Office of AG also used the study from the Mahmud and Niaee research team and many more about Ivermectin’s role as prophylaxis.

The office of AG even attacked the company, Merck, on their agenda.

Why would ivermectin’s original patent holder go out of its way to question this medicine by creating the impression that it might not be safe? There are at least two plausible reasons. First, ivermectin is no longer under patent, so Merck does not profit from it anymore. That likely explains why Merck declined to “conductI] clinical trials” on ivermectin and COVID-19 when given the chance.

Second, Merck has a significant financial interest in the medical profession rejecting ivermectin as an early treatment for COVID-19. “[The U.S. government has agreed to pay [Merck] about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of its experimental COVID-19 treatment, if it is proven to work in an ongoing large trial and authorized by U.S. regulators.”

That treatment, known a “molnupiravir, aims to stop COVID-19 from progressing and can be given early in the course of the disease.” On October 1, 2021, Merck announced that preliminary studies indicate that molnupiravir “reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half,” and that same day its stock price “jumped as much as 12.3%.” Thus, if low-cost ivermectin works better than–or even the same as-molnupiravir, that could cost Merck billions of dollars.

Nebraska AG Frees Doctors and Patients to Use HCQ and IVM

3.  Covid vaccine-induced immunity is incomplete

THE FOURTH issue is the recognition that genetic vaccines have limited value. While doctors support the current vaccine roll-out, reported “danger signals” must be clarified. Both the DNA-vector vaccine (AstraZeneca) and mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) behave as predicted by biology relevant to airways’ protection (something not understood by the vast majority of “experts”): short duration of protection limited to control of systemic inflammation, with little impact on infection of the airways.

Israel was used as a laboratory for the Pfizer vaccine. Six months after vaccination, there was essentially no protection against infection or mild disease, although protection against severe disease remained at 85-to-90 per cent. Thereafter came a rapid and progressive loss of protection against more severe disease. Infected vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects have similar viral loads and transmission capacity.

Immunity following natural infection is better and more durable than that induced by vaccination, so there is no sense in immunising those who have had COVID infection in the preceding six months.

We Can’t Vaccinate This Pandemic Away

4. Pandemic policies driven by opinion polls

From zerohedge Jordan Peterson: Government Adviser Told Me COVID Rules Based On Opinion Polls, Not Science. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Jordan Peterson says he spoke to a senior government adviser who told him Canada’s COVID restriction policies are completely driven by opinion polls and not science.

“In relation to the COVID restrictions, I talked to a senior adviser to one of the provincial governments a couple of weeks ago,” said Peterson.

“He told me flat out that the COVID policy here is driven by nothing but opinion polls related to the popularity of the government,” he added.

“No science, no endgame in sight, no real plan, and so what that means is that the part of the population that is most afraid of COVID,” are driving the policy.

Peterson pointed to figures that prove people vastly exaggerate the risk of being hospitalized by COVID due to relentless government fearmongering campaigns.

The author said he found the conversation “extremely disheartening” because he had hoped lockdown policies were “at least driven by something remotely resembling a scientifically informed plan.”

Peterson said the government adviser was “irate at what had been happening, enough to consider resigning.”

5.  Under 60 unvaccinated have better life expectancy than vaccinated

A previous post reckoned that the drive to mandate 100% vaccination is motivated by the need to eliminate the unvaccinated as a control population for comparative evaluation.  That possibility is now allowing discovery of ground truth, as evidenced by the UK medical records, and also worldwide data.  From Gateway Pundit Shocking UK Study Stuns Medical Community: Vaccinated People 60 and Younger Are Twice As Likely to Die as Unvaccinated People  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Vaccinated people under 60 are dying at twice the rate of unvaccinated people in the same age group.

The original data is here.

This ought to be the death knell for the push for mandatory vaccines. Will it?

Via Alex Berenson.

The brown line represents weekly deaths from all causes of vaccinated people aged 10-59, per 100,000 people.

The blue line represents weekly deaths from all causes of unvaccinated people per 100,000 in the same age range.

I have checked the underlying dataset myself and this graph is correct. Vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are running well above normal.

Now we know why the globalists want to hide the Pfizer vaccine results for 55 years.

See also at Daily Expose UK A Deadly Pandemic of the Fully Vaccinated – Worldwide data from 185 nations proves the highest Covid-19 Death rates are in the most vaccinated countries

The charts and graphs show…

1. The above shows that the incidence of cases increases fairly linearly with the percentage of vaccinated people at a rate of 800 cases per million per extra percentage vaccinated.
2.  Heavily vaccinated countries (over 60%) have 3x the case rates of lightly vaccinated countries (under 20%) and have 7x the case rates of very lightly vaccinated countries (under 10%).
3. Raw death rates from Covid-19 increase with vaccination percentage from 0% to 50-60% and then decrease thereafter. Heavily vaccinated countries (over 60%) have twice the Covid-19 death rates of lightly vaccinated countries.
4. The death rates are very high for partially vaccinated countries and come down for highly vaccinated countries because the old are vaccinated first. This skews the early or partially vaccinated death rates against vaccination because the unvaccinated group have a lower average age.

But by the time 80-90% are vaccinated, everyone has had the chance to be jabbed and the age skewing will have almost vanished. So the age adjusted death rate will run in a straight line from around 120 deaths per million for unvaccinated nations to around 600 deaths per million for fully vaccinated nations.

On that basis this data shows that each percentage of vaccination increases the death rate by around 6 deaths per million

5.  This data shows that a 2nd Jab offers no significant benefit over a 1st jab.

The inescapable conclusion from all the data we have up to October 31 is that vaccines increase case numbers by 3x-7x and increase death rates from Covid-19 by 2x-4x..

This is not a representative sample of a few thousand cases or deaths from one nation. It is the full study of all the cases so far in every reporting nation. The results are in. There is a massive positive correlation between vaccination percentage and case numbers and deaths.

Covid-19 vaccination has been the largest experimental intervention in the history of medical science. The work of every Government statistics department in 185 nations collated by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has produced the largest cohort study ever to be considered. We include the full dataset used below for further analysis by interested parties.

 

 

 

Scott W. Atlas writes at Newsweek on the panic response instilled in the US from the beginning in his article with the same title.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

It was February 2020, and news accounts had been describing increasingly alarming information about a deadly new virus emanating from Wuhan, China. Apart from my general concern about the spread of the infection, I was confused about some of the basic numbers being aired. The overall message coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) seemed to have obvious flaws. The extremely high risk estimates seemed very misleading. Even worst—the reported fatality rates were based only on patients who were sick enough to seek medical care rather than on the undoubtedly much larger population of infected individuals. I was stunned that this basic methodological flaw was being overlooked by almost everyone, while the resulting fatality rate of 3.4 percent was highlighted throughout the media. Every legitimate medical scientist should have called that out. Their silence was puzzling.

In the United States and throughout the world, a naive discussion about statistical models ensued. To an extraordinary and unprecedented extent, these epidemiological models were featured front and center in news coverage, with no perspective on the models’ usefulness. Reminiscent of other legendary frenzies in history, like the tulip bulb mania or the tech stock bubble, hypothetical extreme-risk scenarios went seemingly unchallenged and were given absolute credence.

At the same time, common sense and well-established principles of medicine were being ignored. Every second-year medical student knew that the elderly were almost certainly the most vulnerable group of people, since they were virtually always at highest risk of death and serious consequences from respiratory infections. Yet this was not stressed. To the contrary, the implication of reports and the public faces of official expertise implied that everyone was equally in danger. Even the initial evidence showed that elderly, frail people with preexisting comorbidities—conditions that weakened their natural immunological defenses—were the ones at highest risk of death. This was a feature shared by other respiratory viruses, including seasonal influenza. The one unusual feature of this virus was the fact that children had an extraordinarily low risk. Yet this positive and reassuring news was never emphasized. Instead, with total disregard of the evidence of selective risk consistent with other respiratory viruses, public health officials recommended draconian isolation of everyone.

The architects of the American lockdown strategy were Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. With Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, they were the most influential medical members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Dr. Birx, Dr. Redfield and Dr. Fauci—often called “the nation’s top expert in infectious disease”—dominated all discussions about the health and medical aspects of the emerging pandemic. One thing was very clear: all three were cut from the same cloth. First, they were all bureaucrats, with a background in various government agencies. Second, they shared a long history in HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis. That was problematic, because HIV couldn’t be more different from SARS2 in its biology, its amenability to testing and contact tracing, its spread and the implications of those facts for its control.

Indeed, the three of them spent many years focusing on the development of a vaccine, rather than treatment, for HIV/AIDS—a vaccine that still does not exist.

Most others on the task force were juggling several concerns or had no medical background. This was one more responsibility added to their portfolios, so they deferred to those deemed medical experts. Drs. Birx and Fauci commandeered federal policy under President Trump and publicly advocated for a total societal shutdown. Instead of focusing on protecting the most vulnerable, their illogical and extraordinarily blunt response—despite its predictable, wide-ranging harms—was instituted as though it were simple common sense.

Over those first several weeks, fear had taken hold of the public. Media commentators and even policy experts, many of whom had no expertise on health care, were filling the airwaves and opinion pages with naive and incorrect predictions. This misinformation was going unchecked, and was indeed repeatedly endorsed and sensationalized. Some whom I had previously considered among my smartest colleagues and friends expressed great confusion and a striking absence of logic in analyzing what was happening.

I asked myself time and again, “Where are the critical thinkers?”

After more than 15 years a health policy researcher and decades in medical science and data analysis, I had never seen such flawed thinking. I was bewildered at the lack of logic, the absence of common sense and the reliance on fundamentally flawed science. Suddenly, computer modelers and people without any perspective about clinical illnesses were dominating the airwaves. Along with millions of other Americans, I began witnessing unprecedented responses from those in power and nonscientific recommendations by public health spokespeople: societal lockdowns including business and school closures, stay-at-home restrictions on individual movements, and arbitrary decrees by local, state, and federal governments.

These recommendations were not just based on panic; they were responsible for generating even more panic. COVID rapidly became the most important health policy crisis in a century.

Scott W. Atlas, M.D. is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution.

 

John Gibson provides this timely analysis at Brownstone Institute: The Economic and Health Effects of Mass Covid-19 Vaccination.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

On or about the 1st of December 2021, the world will pass a notable milestone: more doses of Covid-19 vaccines will have been administered than there are people in the world. The two ‘clocks’ that let me predict this date are here and here. Of course, some people have had three (or more) doses, and others none but already a majority of the world’s population have been jabbed at least once with a Covid-19 vaccine.

Given this massive rollout, we should start to see some effects in the aggregate data. Such data provides observational evidence—correlations rather than causal relationships. Yet these correlations can be informative, especially as pivotal randomized control trials for Covid-19 vaccines, that might be expected to reveal causal effects, were not designed to answer the questions many people have about the vaccines.

It was therefore disingenuous, dishonest even, for health bureaucrats Walensky, Walke, and Fauci to write a “Viewpoint” in JAMA in February 2021 that claimed:

“…Clinical trials have shown that the vaccines authorized for use in the US are highly effective against COVID-19 infection, severe illness, and death.”

Quite rightly, Dr Peter Doshi, a BMJ editor and expert on critiquing clinical trials, wrote a comment showing the claim is false.

Of course this claim, along with many others purportedly based on the trials, is untrue. Given that the clinical trials have been so prone to misinterpretation, and that they were unblinded early, meaning that efficacy beyond six months cannot be established from the trial data, we have to look elsewhere for evidence.

Irrespective of reasons for this prior invisibility, economists are now starting to emerge from their cocoons and their analyses of the aggregate data are becoming available. In terms of the global vaccine rollout, it seems that economic conditions matter more than health conditions. Across 112 countries, the rollout was faster for richer not sicker countries. Amongst OECD countries, which have timely and reliable mortality data and are highly vaccinated, rollout was faster for countries where the negative economic shock in 2020 had been bigger, but not where the health shock (excess mortality) had been bigger.

Evidence is also emerging on aggregate effects (and non-effects) from mass vaccination. For 68 countries with full data available, a simple scatter plot shows there was no relationship between the percentage of the population fully vaccinated (by early September, 2021) and new Covid-19 cases in the last 7 days. A concern with such cross-sectional studies is that omitted factors drive the correlations.

A standard economics approach to these issues is to use panel data (repeated observations on the same countries). With such data we can remove the effect of (time-invariant) unobserved characteristics of countries and (spatially-invariant) unobserved features of time periods to mitigate the impact of omitted factors in driving correlations.

Such panel data for 32 highly vaccinated OECD countries (over 1.3 billion doses to date) that also have high frequency all-cause mortality data indicate that aggregate effects of mass vaccination are showing up in the political-economy sphere but not in health terms. The chart below shows relationships between the fully-vaccinated rate and two health outcomes (deaths from Covid-19 and from all-causes), three economic outcomes (personal mobility to various types of places tracked by Google), and one policy outcome (stringency of lockdown rules).

The outcomes are the change from the same month of 2020, when vaccines were unavailable, versus 2021, when mass vaccination was underway (for each month to September). The units for the chart are standard deviations, to allow comparisons across outcomes in various native units (an index for lockdowns, percentage changes for mobility, rates for deaths).

A standard deviation higher fully vaccinated rate is associated with lockdown stringency of one-half a standard deviation lower. This reflects politicians of all stripes tying lockdown to vaccination rates. For example, in September 2021 the New Zealand Prime Minister said “We’re in lockdown because we do not have enough New Zealanders currently vaccinated…” Earlier in the year, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said “The way to ensure this [lockdown easing] happens is to get that jab when your turn comes, so let’s get the jab done.”

The rebound in economic activity, as measured by change in consumer mobility compared to the same month of 2020 (so accounting for seasonal factors) is more than one-half a standard deviation higher per standard deviation of the fully vaccinated rate, for retail and recreational locations (and almost as large for transit stations). Conversely, time spent in residential places is about one-half a standard deviation lower, compared to the same month of 2020, in months or countries where the fully vaccinated rate is one standard deviation higher.

Is this rise in being out-and-about due to the vaccines per se, perhaps by making people feel safer, or is it just the response to relaxed lockdown controls? It turns out that it is just the relaxation in lockdown stringency that drives the rise in consumer mobility. Once this is accounted for, there is no independent effect of the vaccination rate on the Google Mobility indicators.

So we can think of the jabs as being a jab in the arm of politicians to relax their iron grip on the freedom of movement for people.

While the correlations for mobility (as an economic activity proxy) and lockdown stringency are large and precisely estimated, the corresponding effects on aggregate health indicators are not apparent. Specifically, for these countries through September 2021, vaccination rates have no relationship with changes in new Covid-19 deaths per million, nor with changes in all-cause mortality. After 1.3 billion doses for these countries (and seven billion doses worldwide), one would expect to see some reduction in deaths. Yet such an effect does not show up in these data.

From these results it seems that mass vaccination is some sort of get-out-of-jail card, as a way to get out of ruinously expensive lockdowns and allow some rebound in economic activity. Yet it was politicians and health bureaucrats who put us in jail in the first place. At any time they could undo what they imposed, with or without mass vaccination. As lockdowns failed to control the virus, and did not reduce excess mortality, politicians could have undone these costly and ineffective interventions without needing to rely on mass vaccination.

Click to access 2111-johngibson.pdf