Back last August I was tossing up whether or not I'd travel overseas to deal with some urgent business-related issues - in the end I decided not to. I was even prepared to honour the '3 months' period and not just say that I would & return earlier (if I got a flight that is).
Today there is no way I would contemplate that.
Too much new information has been released since then - to me the most alarming is the 'long CV' syndrome impacting otherwise healthy individuals aged from the early 20s through to 100 year olds.
Almost a year into the global pandemic, doctors and scientists are grappling with a puzzling phenomenon.
www.news.com.au
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For countries to open their international borders without fear of closing them down (if not reeling from a collapsing economy) requires confidence that resuming international travel will not make things worse.
In Australia's case there are more Australians, Aust Perm residents etc - who go overseas on holiday each year then there are foreign nationals who holiday in Australia. Indeed the ABS is considering having to change their assumptions on how international students contribute to the 'tourism balance' as the working assumption was the cost of their education/accom/food was sent in from overseas and not mostly funded by working in Australia.
Even so, Australia runs a travel/tourism deficit of > $20 bn per annum. The travel industry has been using the spin doctors to try & portray Chinese tourists (bow to the Chairman now) as the economy's saviour by saying they spend multiples of what an Australian domestic tourist does. What they do not say though is that in total Australian domestic tourists spend over 4x as much as ALL international tourists (including students which we now know as massively over-stated).
WA has operated the hardest internal borders yet their domestic tourism (not predominantly focused on high spending international tourists like up-market hotel chains, resorts, restaurants etc) has reportedly had one of their best years. A recent ABC piece on NSW regional tourism interviewed a number of accomodation providers (owner operators) who reported good to best ever results for 2020. Byron Bay region were amongst those reporting best ever results.
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Due to the design of many of these drug trials - seemingly none checked to see whether it made recipients non-contagious.
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The spin doctors have taken over the messaging from science.
Look up any source for the definition of Vaccine and it will say something along these line:
"a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide
immunity against one or several diseases"
So far none of the 'emergency approved' drugs provide immunity - they appear to lessen the symptoms or decrease the severity which is far better than not. Calling them vaccines though is a bit of a stretch.
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Late last week there were some articles about 'long covid' where people are suffering serious (potentially lifelong) side effects of contracting CV. A common trait is the inflammation of membranes in the brain, lungs, heart and other organs. What is slowly gaining more focus is that younger seemingly healthy to extremely healthy people who had mild CV (non-symptomatic) and had no previous underlying medical conditions are now suffering potentially life-threatening conditions.
Many of these people were only detected as having previously had CV when they were admitted for their current issues & tested by the respective hospital.
Whilst decreasing the seriousness of CV - these 'vaccines' may have the unintended consequence of making a much more insidious outcome across the entire community. If this is a widespread outcome then the potential cost to treat could make the costs-to-date from CV seem minor.
This is a good article about just one of such outcomes:
We're still learning about the lasting COVID-19 effects on the brain, but new University of Melbourne research finds Post-COVID-19 Neurological Syndrome is real
pursuit.unimelb.edu.au
If we look to Europe, a series of large online questionnaires focusing on COVID-19 recovery found that less than one percent of surveyed patients were symptom-free 79 days after the infection – which suggests the high likelihood of PCNS in over 90 per cent infected people.
The European survey involved more than 2,000 non-hospitalised younger COVID-19 patients and just over 100 hospitalised (but only mildly affected) COVID-19 patients with a mean age 47 years and good health before the COVID-19 infection.
(Chinese study) A total of 730 COVID-19 clinically stable patients were assessed and a large percentage – 96.2 per cent – were found be suffering from severe PTSD; something we believe is one of the first signs of PCNS.
Similar reports have previously been reported following the SARS epidemic in 2009. Almost 50 per cent of people recovering from the virus developed PTSD symptoms that were still evident four years after infection.
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The 'Phase 3 trial' methodolgy for the 2 MRNA based vaccines probably would not have been allowed in non-pandemic times - but as the saying goes "A drowning man will clutch at a straw".
None of the 'expedited' Phase 3 trials for any of the currently in use globally 'drugs called vaccines' (AFAIK or can find) have released any data on whether they prevent or even lessen the degree to which someone infected with CV may pass it on to others. BTW these trials are still ongoing which is why the 'Emergency use' or 'Conditional' approvals have been given - in Pfizer's case it runs for 2 years post treatment.
So the final results of the Pfizer trial will not be gathered until mid to late 2022.
The Pfizer trials did not do physical testing along the way (Astra Zeneca did though) - instead it had researchers call the participants once a fortnight and ask about their daily diary. "Did you experience any symptoms in the past fortnight?"
"symptomatic illness occurs ≥ 15 days post second dose of study intervention. Otherwise, a participant is not defined as a COVID-19 case"
So it misses all non-symptomatic cases - the same as it would for those participants given the placebo.
This very short piece in the British Medical Journal provides a few good questions & has links to the methodlogies used in the leading trials. Downloads as a two page PDF.