No country can boost its way out of pandemic: WHO chief

He’s right, but nobody will listen, and quite frankly I don’t blame them. WHO messed up right at the beginning and it’s hard to get past that.

Until most people globally have been vaccinated, boosters will only offer a country a short term reprieve.

Yesterday, I read some news that Israel said, a 4th boost, 4 month after the third boost is nessesary, and that Israel started already preparations for that.

Can you believe that?

A 4th boost is already in preparation.

What a Grinch, advising people to avoid celebrations, even if boostered. All so we can avoid Omicron, aka the common cold.

Yesterday, I read some news that Israel said, a 4th boost, 4 month after the third boost is nessesary, and that Israel started already preparations for that.

Ok. If that's what the science shows is necessary, I'm in.

He’s right, but nobody will listen, and quite frankly I don’t blame them. WHO messed up right at the beginning and it’s hard to get past that.

Until most people globally have been vaccinated, boosters will only offer a country a short term reprieve.

Excellent post

Can anyone state a time when we "killed a virus at its tracks"?. Vaccines and boosters should only be an option not a mandate.

Money and effort should had been focused on strengthening our hospitals.

Shouldn’t people in other countries be allowed 2 vaccines before others get 3 and 4? Seems quite selfish.

There are therapeutics why are these totally ignored?

its like forcing to get a mandatory vaccine to not get a headache. Do people not know there is something called aspirin?

I have no respect for the WHO.

Hospitals are buckling in the US now. Nurses are resigning en masse, 29% plan to quit within the next 6 months and 66% are considering quitting.

Working in an ICU is dangerous, and they can make almost the same money working in retail without the stress or dangers. ICU’s are full of unvaccinated Covid patients.

Hospitals have to hire traveling nurses @ up to $3,000 per week. The majority of patients do not have insurance to cover the costs and taxpayer handouts to hospitals to treat the unvaccinated don’t even cover the costs of nursing staff now.

Your freedom to be unvaccinated is destroying the healthcare system. And is a drain on resources and freeloading on vaccinated taxpayers.

The booster only lessens the effects of the virus. This virus is here to stay and people have to accept it. The only way to stay out of the ICU is get the three doses and possibly a yearly top up as well.

I live in a rich country and the government has offered me 3 vaccines, I kindly turned them down so they could be donated via Covax to more needy people in less privileged areas.

Of course that appeal only works if you accept to be treated differently by rejecting the vaccines, else you have "kindly" done nothing.

Can you believe that?

A 4th boost is already in preparation.

Beleive that new variants can appear to make current immunity (by vaccines and the infection) less effective? yes, that is the whole point of the article you are commenting.

Can anyone state a time when we "killed a virus at its tracks"?. Vaccines and boosters should only be an option not a mandate.

A big hint would be the name of the virus causing the current pandemic "SARS-CoV-2" mandates are there to prevent people from making irrational reasons that affect public health, do you also think not smoking in certain places should also be "only an option"?

There are therapeutics why are these totally ignored?

If they work they are not, they are used routinely everywhere in the world, like dexamethasone that is hugely effective and as cheap as it can get.

What you are talking about are things that failed to demonstrate any effect on clinical trials, but precisely that is the reason why they are not used, no benefit and risks for the patients. Blindly believing people that have been found to lie and fabricate things when they tell you their favorite drug works is simply invalid, specially when the rest of the scientific community clearly say they are wrong.

I have no respect for the WHO.

Unfortunately that is irrelevant, they are not the only ones saying this. The scientific consensus is that yes, low vaccination rates and widespread transmission promotes the appearance of variants. If the experts of the world have proved this beyond any reasonable doubt then it does not matter who else is saying it, it does not becomes less true because of it.

"It's frankly difficult to understand how a year since the first vaccines were administered, three in four health workers in Africa remain unvaccinated," said Tedros

…

Tedros seems extremely naive!

These countries do not have the resources nor the organization to implement vaccination drives.

Pfizer is expected to donate their expensive magic bullets?

Only when Tedros is dreaming…

What you are talking about are things that failed to demonstrate any effect on clinical trials,

Nope, you assume much.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/22/health/pfizer-antiviral-pill-authorized/index.html

so if you actually get COVID you just take this. So can the “get vaccinated” screaming at people stop now?

what need is there now for a mandate and firing people who refuse? 1 omicron death still and it’s 80% of COVID out there.

Peter Neil

The USA is a poor example to use as they are the worlds worst hit by Covid.

I’d say some reasons why it has been hit so hard is the poor personal physical health of many people, and how divided everyone is about it, thus making things like masks and rules political issues.

I actually do not know if Omicron is a dangerous variant or not.

Delta wasn’t very dangerous except to the elderly and already ill, so I am glad they are coming up with oral medicines and the likes.

Seems like a better idea for mass distribution and is more about treating those who need it fast instead of trying to treat everyone.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/22/health/pfizer-antiviral-pill-authorized/index.html

sooooo… not aspirin then…. and something that has proved effective. Looks like Rex was correct.

Nope, you assume much.

That is even more irrational, you are complaining why nobody used something that just got approval for use. If your argument requires a time machine to work that means it is not a very good argument. Let the drug be used, prove effective (even on vulnerable people), safe and economic enough to be widely used and then you could argue for it.

Fauci Foresees Potential Record Death Rate From Omicron: 'I Think That Is Going to Happen'

That’s the signal to start sliding all the future deaths into the omicron column.

All so we can avoid Omicron, aka the common cold.

Not surprising the pandemic denier/aanti-vaxx herds immune to scientific reason are now trying to use media to convince the intellectually vulnerable the common cold is no big deal. Apparently the it's just a cold/flu crowd are not aware of how the common cold affects the economy.

Catching a cold isn't cheap says a new study by the U-M Health System (UMHS), published in the Feb. 24 edition of Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers report that the cost to the U.S. economy is $40 billion a year—substantially more than other conditions such as asthma, heart failure and emphysema. 

And though I have had many colds, I cannot recall a single one I thought was just fine. Same with the flu. And I am not obese, actually am in very good health.

Catching a cold isn't cheap says a new study by the U-M Health System (UMHS), published in the Feb. 24 edition of Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers report that the cost to the U.S. economy is $40 billion a year—substantially more than other conditions such as asthma, heart failure and emphysema. https://www.ur.umich.edu/0203/Mar10_03/15.shtml

"No country can boost its way out of the pandemic," he told reporters.

Seeing the results in highly vaccinated countries makes it painfully obvious that vaccines are not the solution. They should be recommended for the more vulnerable, while the rest should educated on how to improve their immune system and over all health. The latter has been practically nonexistent.

Countries that have not rejected repurposed meds have done much better than those that relied on vaccines, perhaps they could teach us a lesson, if we are willing to listen.

A big hint would be the name of the virus causing the current pandemic "SARS-CoV-2"

Yes, very good point, the first SARS-CoV disappeared without vaccines...

sooooo… not aspirin then…. and something that has proved effective. Looks like Rex was correct.

Nope. You don’t need a headache vaccine because if you get one you just take a therapeutic, aspirin. Headache “prevention” isn’t necessary.

you now don’t need a COVID vaccine because if you get COVID, you can also take a “proven effective” (your words) therapeutic. Or you can still try to prevent it, if you want. But that’s not mandatory when there is a therapeutic.

Nope.

Yup. You said they are ignoring effective therapeutics. Clearly the link provided shows they are not.

Like taking a stomach indigestion pill before you eat spicy food. Can if you want but you can also just eat and then if your stomach hurts, take the medicine to resolve it.

Because even stomach medicine has side effects. So no reason to really take it in advance if you end up not needing it.

Simple solution: if you're unvaccinated, no hospital for you.

You made the choice, then deal with the consequences on your own.

Yup. You said they are ignoring effective therapeutics. Clearly the link provided shows they are not.

“They” are the winter of death doomsayers in the current administration.

therapeutics were not even mentioned as an option in that speech. Vaccine mandate and boosters or you will die. That was their message. Until they flip flop again anyway.

Where is the peer-reviewed paper?

State your sources!

“They” are the winter of death doomsayers in the current administration.

therapeutics were not even mentioned as an option in that speech. Vaccine mandate and boosters or you will die. That was their message. Until they flip flop again anyway.

Why would "They" suggest people to rely on therapeutics? Focus should absolutely be on not getting sick at all. When there are therapeutics that are authorized and being used to treat people, that alone shows "They" have not ignored it at all.

Focus should absolutely be on not getting sick at all. 

hasnt worked and will never work. even during lockdowns and events with 100% vaccinated people, COVID still spread.

"cases" are at all time highs and even double and triple vaccinated ted people getting sick- a lot.

vaccinated people close to our President -and- VP have been sick. Our government officials are sick. All are vaccinated to the maximum amount already.

“They” are the winter of death doomsayers in the current administration.

You forgot the last administration too....and specifically that President....

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-urges-all-americans-to-get-covid-vaccine-its-a-safe-vaccine

therapeutics were not even mentioned as an option in that speech. Vaccine mandate and boosters or you will die. That was their message.

That was the message of this guy too - until he got laughed at and booed by his own supporters....LOL....

https://time.com/6130569/donald-trump-booster-shot-booed/

Until they flip flop again anyway.

And start back with the Clorox and horse dewormer...

Peter NeilToday  08:11 am JST

Hospitals are buckling in the US now. Nurses are resigning en masse, 29% plan to quit within the next 6 months and 66% are considering quitting.

Working in an ICU is dangerous, and they can make almost the same money working in retail without the stress or dangers. ICU’s are full of unvaccinated Covid patients.

Hospitals have to hire traveling nurses @ up to $3,000 per week. The majority of patients do not have insurance to cover the costs and taxpayer handouts to hospitals to treat the unvaccinated don’t even cover the costs of nursing staff now.

Your freedom to be unvaccinated is destroying the healthcare system. And is a drain on resources and freeloading on vaccinated taxpayers.

One of the main reasons that nurses are resigning en masse is because of vaccine mandates. These nurses are seeing first-hand the adverse effects from the vaccines on patients, and don't want to suffer the same fate just to keep their jobs. Moreover, whistleblowers have reported that they're forced to ignore the close correlation of vaccine injuries with symptoms and are strongly discouraged from reporting vaccine injuries through VAERS (and similar in the UK and Australia). It's not the so-called anti-vaxxers who are threatening the healthcare system, it's the vaccination mandates and dishonest reporting policies.

Plus hospitals stupidly fired all the unvaccinated nurses with no consideration for natural immunity from already having COVID and no consideration of medical/religious exemptions.

ira a self inflicted labor shortage, as vaccinated nurses can also transmit/get COVID

Seeing the results in highly vaccinated countries makes it painfully obvious that vaccines are not the solution.

All the measures togheter are the solution, the only ones that make the false argument that vaccines were supposed to be an all mighty measure that could replace all others are the antivaxxer propagandist. So they make up an imaginary argument they can defeat because they can't do the same with the actual argument used.

They should be recommended for the more vulnerable, while the rest should educated on how to improve their immune system and over all health. 

The scientific community has uniformly said the "solution" you propose is not only a bad one, but that it would make things much worse, somehow nameless people on the internet saying the scientific consensus is wrong is not enough.

Countries that have not rejected repurposed meds have done much better than those that relied on vaccines, perhaps they could teach us a lesson, if we are willing to listen.

That is of course a fantasy based argument without any basis on reality, Japan is doing very well thanks to vaccination and social distancing (as predicted by science) even when nobody uses ivermectin nor HCQ which are the drugs you keep pushing. Countries that resorted to them (like Brazil) got instead widespread infection and deaths.

Yes, very good point, the first SARS-CoV disappeared without vaccines...

So what does that prove? that instead of vaccines you could use a time machine so you can stop COVID before it became pandemic?

Bad news about antibody treatment. It doesn't work against omicron.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/covid-antibody-treatments-suspended-houston-hospitals-due-to-ineffectiveness-against-omicron/285-d21abbbe-847a-4736-bb7c-67f8a4a33bf8

Americans Have Had Enough!

No more boosting, bro:

CDC has ranked states based on Covid-19 booster rate. This is the number of “fully vaccinated” residents who have also gotten a booster.

No state has reached close to half of its vaccinated residents getting the extra recommended shot.

Vermont tops them all with 44.9% of “fully vaccinated” also getting a booster.

Next are Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.

At the bottom are West Virginia, Hawaii and New Hampshire. New Hampshire has just 9.8% of fully vaccinated residents choosing to get a booster, so far.

It’s obviously better to have never submitted to the vaccine regime. But we purebloods should enthusiastically help those who are determined, however belatedly, to stop chasing the dragon's tail of Big Pharma.

We would have now a corona-free world and no infection numbers in poor countries and also no need of such a discussion two years after, if WHO and you, Mr. Ghebreyesus, would have right from the beginning… (I think you already exactly got the point even if I don’t waste my time with continuing of typing)

let people decide freely if they want be vaccinated or not.

i am healthy and have no health issues.did not get even cold for years.trying keep healthy lifestyle,sports,normal food,fresh veggies,fruits,reduce canned food.no smoking,no drinking alcohol,no drugs.no overweight.

i see no reason to be vaccinated by some experimental vaccine registered for emergency use only/with many side effects recorded worldwide and some even resulted by deaths/.i see no reason to damage my natural body immunity by some chemicals and feel totally unecessary to do so.

i dont attend mass gatherings,avoiding visits of crowded places,avoiding visits of gym/doing sports in forest instead/.i am lucky that i dont need to use public transport as well/commuting to work by car everyday/.i reduce chance to get infected.

same time i accept fact that there are some travel limitations if want travel abroad so no plans to travel out of Japan for a while-instead of that doing travel in Japan-lucky that this country have many different and interested places.

i understand that many may disagree with me and are keen to take risks of vaccination and also worry of many resulting from daily "newsmassage abt covid".

i am ok to leave my jabs for ones who are in need or want be vaccinated-either in Japan or abroad.

take care of you guys,build your body immunity and stay safe,have nice Xmas.

Japan is doing very well thanks to vaccination and social distancing (as predicted by science) even when nobody uses ivermectin nor HCQ which are the drugs you keep pushing.

Japan was doing well even before vaccination, and its vaccination rate is not all that high, there are plenty of countries with higher vaccination rates that are doing much worst. And social distancing, have you been on a train in Tokyo in the past few months? Or anywhere in Tokyo? A number of clinics have been prescribing IVM since the Tokyo Medical Association chairman recommended it in August (based on science), and many people have ordered it online from overseas.

Bradley, they signed their own death warrant. If you are that scared of a relatively benign virus, even after taking all possible precautions yourself, then you should stay home. Your choice. Any time a person ventures outside they are exposing themselves to myriad risks. Not just Covid, but traffic accident, crime, etc. There is no way to be 100% bubble wrapped safe.

Basically, your premise contains far too many "ifs". IF you get infected, then IF you come in contact with someone, and IF they get the virus from you and IF they get ill and IF they suffer more due to comorbidities and IF...... nah, society doesn't work that way.

let people decide freely if they want be vaccinated or not.

As long as they assume the consequences of an irrational decision with impact on public health. The same as people are left to decide if they want to smoke or drink or not.

i see no reason to be vaccinated by some experimental vaccine registered for emergency use only/with many side effects recorded worldwide and some even resulted by deaths/.i see no reason to damage my natural body immunity by some chemicals and feel totally unecessary to do so.

There is no need, you understand there is a fully aproved vaccine without any "emergency use" also in Japan none of the vaccines are experimental, the other thing is that the vaccines do not damage the body immunity, COVID on the other hand does.

i am ok to leave my jabs for ones who are in need or want be vaccinated-either in Japan or abroad.

A valid option, but only as long as you make no effort to be treated as if you were vaccinated.

And as I said in a post that has somehow evaporated, young people have little to fear. In Canada only 100 people under 30 have died from/with Covid in 18 months, whereas 25,000 over the age of 70 have perished. It is just one more among a myriad of risk factors that we face by virtue of living on this planet.

Japan was doing well even before vaccination, and its vaccination rate is not all that high, there

Japan was doing much worse than it closest neighbors and its vaccination rate is quite high for the delay it had to begin with. Also vaccination is not the only measure that is being highly used in Japan, the full set is what makes the virus stops spreading. Social distancing works specially when people are not eating and talking without their masks on, which make trains not an specially dangerous place because even in close proximity people do not normally engage in risky activities.

 A number of clinics have been prescribing IVM since the Tokyo Medical Association chairman recommended it in August (based on science)

You mean zero clinics? because zero is a number, and no, the recommendation was never done according to science but according to a personal flaw easily recognized as he never used an actual scientific argument to demonstrate the consensus is wrong. Ivermectin has risks for the patients, and offers no benefit. That is why there is no merit in using it for COVID, the same as antibiotics for the common cold.

And as I said in a post that has somehow evaporated, young people have little to fear. In Canada only 100 people under 30 have died from/with Covid in 18 months, whereas 25,000 over the age of 70 have perished. It is just one more among a myriad of risk factors that we face by virtue of living on this planet.

Then how come the health experts do not support that conclussion? may it be that the measures that make it not as risky for them are not something that can be maintained indefinitely? it may also be important that death is not the only negative result from the infection, and that people can recover from the disease but still cause infections on much more vulnerable people, or even that needing hospitalizations can also cause that the available services are not enough and people that would have become part of them instead become part of the statistics as deaths.

It's certainly interesting seeing all the far-right, so-called conservatives here dissing the vaccine and all those that recommend it....

Like this so-called conservative - who specifically urged his supporters take it (and was then booed)....

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/12/20/donald-trump-got-covid-booster-gets-booed-m/8972452002/

Then there's conservative Repub hero Texas Gov Greg Abbott who's Dept of Health and Human Services released a study this week saying the unvaccinated were 20 TIMES more likely to die from COVID than the fully vaccinated....

https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news/releases/2021/20211108.aspx

Some real dissonance and conflict going on in MAGA-world....

The U.N. health agency has long decried the glaring inequity in access to COVID vaccines.

Another U.N. agency is the WIPO, handling intellectual property. Perhaps if they refused to grant or enforce patents on vaccines and treatments for any disease that reaches pandemic proportions, even just partially for greater good, poorer countries could roll out such vaccines and treatments much faster.

Instead of accusing rich countries of hogging vaccines, we should be questioning why poor countries with advanced medical systems cannot manufacture them.

Economic inequity, as if that has never been a factor. The so-called rich countries able to garner sufficient amounts of vaccine. Poor countries unable to access such. The way the world is and will remain. For the wealthy countries, SARSCoV-2 is seen as an inconvenience, interfering with holiday plans & celebrations. Need anymore be said.

Meanwhile, complete lunatics aka anti-vaxxers refuse to be inoculated based on queer pathologies and demented psyches. Which feeds the evolution of variants - some twisted souls claiming that omicron is the 'common cold' - all of which determines 'no end in sight'. Keeping to protocols viewed as tiresome by many which speaks volumes.

Japan, is a geographic isolate. With specific policies and rigid enforcement, SARSCoV-2 can not only be contained but mostly eradicated. It requires no lockdown. Simply, it needs to close the borders to any and all foreigners, except those who are resident. And enact and enforce not by fiat, but purposeful containment within confined areas of quarantines, without exception.

kurisupisu

Tedros seems extremely naive!

Tedros says whatever his CCP paymasters want him to say.

These countries do not have the resources nor the organization to implement vaccination drives.

....and neither do they have a significantly different Corona problem from others. The correlation between the Corona deaths and the mRNA shots that the vaxxers claim does not exist.