Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

There could be an element of that but it's not something I necessarily disagree with based on the below rationale:

"It's about a part of the world where we have concerns about transparency," he told national broadcaster ABC.

Asked if the restrictions were politically motivated, Chalmers said he didn't "see it precisely like that".

"There certainly is a lot of concern around the global health community about the transparency and quality of data that we see out of China on Covid."

https://www.barrons.com/news/australia-defends-covid-tests-for-china-arrivals-01672787109

The Chinese seemed to end the restrictions due to public backlash rather than as part of a roadmap. I think the regime wanted to maintain the ultra cautious approach - probably due to abundance of caution, an element of social control but could it be due to something else they were trying to keep a lid on?

It's so not much about a directly deadlier strain evolving necessarily but a strain that evades vaccination \ prior infection immunity - which would indirectly be deadlier.

Wow, a P Value of .001 on a study of 50,000 people.

It'll be interesting to see how they debunk this one!!!

How right you were 😀 😂🤣

Chinese stated aims and actions should not be taken at face value as Communist dictatorships, and this Communist dicatorship in particular, are made up of habitual liars.

The most recent lockdowns in China could be cover for a military buildup, or a consolidation of Xi's rule, or something else.

'Peer review is a relatively recent innovation in the history of scientific publication. The first journal (which is still in print!) was launched in 1665 by the Royal Society in London, (Phil Trans R Soc B), while peer review as we know if began in the mid 1970s.'

Peer review is essentially an evaluation by a committee of other scientists prior to publishing. Is committee evaluation fundamental to science? No of course not. Its just a bureaucratic mechanism which has been agreed upon, for now.

I posted that study last week. I think its the 3rd one to show such an association. It's fingers in ears about it though. Isn't it weird how some people literally will not hear a bad word said against these vaccines. Is that what science is supposed to be, blind faith?

Another possibility could be that the immune systems get ‘messed up’ by a cumulative effect of mRNA vaccinations, making every subsequent vaccine less and less effective and/or waning faster.

it is interesting to see that the older the cohort, the lower the effectiveness of the bivalent vaccine.

Since the bivalent mRNA was developed for a known strain of BA4/5 virus, one would expect that it’s efficacy would be in a range of 90% as such was apparently the case with the first vaccines. The argument that has been repeated at nausea by the vaccine zealots here was that vaccines were extremely effective if it was not for the virus to always changing into a new type and thus ‘dodging’ the vaccines. Such argument does not hold the water in this case as it is a BA4/5 vaccine that proves to be ineffective in preventing the very same virus strain it was developed for.

vaccine effectiveness of 30% would not pass the original criteria for covid-19 vaccine approval.

You are right, it is not just Omicron that was taken into consideration, other variants came into play in the last few weeks of the study. from that paper:

“The circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 varied over the course of the study. The majority of infections in Ohio were caused by the BA.4 or BA.5 lineages of the Omicron variant during the first 10 weeks of the study, based on SARS-CoV-2 variant monitoring data available from the Ohio Department of Health. By December, the BQ.1, BQ.1.1, and BF.7 lineages accounted for a substantial proportion of the infections.”

However there were other publications that focused solely on the BA4/5 infections when evaluating the bivalent vaccine effectiveness and results were very much in the 20-40% range (age dependent, lower for elderly).

I presume you have a peer reviewed paper that provides clear data supporting your statement that bivalent vaccines are very effective in preventing Covid and hospitalisation?

Happy to read it

There's a difference between science and "the science" .

The Indo has it splashed as main story.

Time to keep getting back on with living as normal

Anyone know if the current booster program uses the updated vaccine or the original?