Lockdown opponent wins Madrid election

She Kept Madrid Open in the Pandemic. Voters Rewarded Her | New York Times - Raphael Minder:

May 5, 2021 - "She is a conservative who campaigned on a slogan that came down to one word: freedom. She offered herself as a champion of small business and scoffed at national coronavirus restrictions. Her critics called her a 'Trumpista.' But Isabel Díaz Ayuso is now a rising force in Spanish politics. Voters rewarded the right-wing leader of the Madrid region with a landslide victory on Tuesday after she defied the central government by keeping the capital’s bars and shops open throughout much of the pandemic.

"She suggested that her victory showed that pandemic fatigue and economic distress had left Spaniards unwilling to endure more of the measures favored by the left-wing national government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez....

"Ms. Ayuso’s Popular Party more than doubled its number of seats in Madrid’s regional assembly, trouncing other parties, including Mr. Sánchez’s Socialists. Her party fell just short of an absolute majority but will hold onto power with support from the far-right Vox party.

"She is the most talked-about politician in Spain right now. But with nationwide elections not planned for another two years, analysts are divided over whether she could make the leap to the national political stage, or would even want to. Even so, Ms. Ayuso’s victory could signal that a shift to the right is underway more broadly as the country struggles to emerge from the ravages of the pandemic.

"Ms. Ayuso, 42, stuck to a simple and clear message that connected with voters who have endured more than a year of pandemic, said Lluís Orriols, a professor of politics at the Carlos III University in Madrid. 'Maintaining Madrid open and economically active was something visible to all, while demonstrating that lockdown measures really help keep people healthy is something harder to do,' Mr. Orriols said.

"Madrid was the epicenter of Spain’s pandemic in the spring of 2020, when its hospitals overflowed with Covid-19 patients. But after the central government lifted a nationwide state of emergency last June, Ms. Ayuso ensured that the city was one of the most bustling in Europe, even when its Covid-19 infection rate crept back up after Easter [2021]....

"Ms. Ayuso’s handling of the pandemic provoked tensions even within her administration. After resigning last year as the head of Madrid’s regional health services, Dr. Yolanda Fuentes recently attacked Ms. Ayuso’s campaign slogan on Twitter. 'To understand that freedom means to do whatever you want during a pandemic, when intensive-care units are above capacity and colleagues feel defeated, seems to me indecent, to say the least,' Dr. Fuentes said.

"Outside the headquarters of the Popular Party on Tuesday evening, a crowd of supporters ... said they were celebrating Ms. Ayuso’s personal victory rather than that of her party and its national leader, Pablo Casado.... Mariola Vicario, a 25-year-old student, said of Ms. Ayuso. 'I don’t consider Casado to have her strength.' In terms of handling the pandemic, Ms. Vicario said that Ms. Ayuso 'took measures when needed, but what she did not do is let people starve to death' by keeping Madrid’s economy shut down as long as that of other cities.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/world/europe/spain-election-madrid-isabel-diaz-ayuso.html

Pro-vaxxers not following the science, either

COVID Vax Opponents and Rigid Proponents...Are Both Anti-Science? | MedPage Today -  Vinay Prasad, MD:

May 4, 2021 - "In mid-April, vaccine scientists and regulators were alerted to six serious adverse events after administration of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine ... in women ages 18 to 48 ... similar to reports from Europe regarding the other adenoviral-based vaccine made by AstraZeneca. The syndrome is best described as vaccine-induced thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (VITT).... 

"VITT can result in death, but also, serious and irreversible neurological impairment in an otherwise young healthy individual. After the FDA and CDC were alerted to these six cases, the agencies called for a pause or moratorium to be placed on use of the J&J shot pending further review. A few days later, a panel of experts extended the pause by 1 week, during which time at least nine additional cases of the syndrome were identified. After a hearing to discuss the risk and benefit, the Advisory Committee of Immunology Practices (ACIP) voted to resume vaccination with J&J without any restrictions by age or gender, though they recommended placing a warning....

"The moment six cases were publicly reported and the pause was instituted, a large number of experts expressed anger on social media. They claimed the denominator was the seven million doses of the vaccine that had been administered, and this event rate -- less than one in a million -- was a trivial safety signal. Some were critical of the pause itself -- which I will discuss in the next section -- while others worked to immediately downplay concerns of the risk. A popular series of memes compared the risk of CVT and VITT to the risk of thrombosis from other events. One compared VITT to the risk of clot with oral contraception and thrombosis after COVID-19. These went viral (no pun intended).

"Unfortunately, these comparisons perpetuated at least five errors.

• First, one in a million was almost surely the wrong number. The moment a novel safety signal is identified, preliminary estimates of frequency are utterly unreliable.... There are likely more unreported cases, which will raise the numerator, and the denominator should not include all vaccinated individuals. The correct denominator is the fraction of vaccinated individuals in the demographic group experiencing the severe event -- in this case, women ages 18 to 48. I tweeted that I would not be surprised if the true incidence jumped one order of magnitude when we had more facts -- a prediction that has since been vindicated.
• Second, comparing the risk of CVT in the setting of VITT to a garden variety venous thromboembolism is misleading. A deep vein thrombosis of the leg is not comparable to one in the cerebral vein in the setting of runaway platelet activation. I have long wondered how much anatomy should be taught in medical school, but I can now confidently say we should definitely clarify the difference between veins that drain the brain and those that drain the leg.
• Third, comparing the risk of CVT and VITT after vaccination to the risk of clot after COVID-19 is inappropriate. Getting COVID-19 and getting vaccinated are different. A vaccine's risk cannot be changed, while the risk of COVID-19 can be altered or modified by behavior. In fact, the bulk of this past year has been making behavior changes to modify SARS-CoV-2 risk.
• Fourth, some numbers are simply wrong. A 16.5% risk of clot among someone with COVID-19 is an inflated figure that, as far as I can tell, comes from meta-analyses of ICU patients in the first wave. These analyses likely suffer from selection, surveillance, and ascertainment bias, among other problems.
• Fifth, comparing the risk of CVT and VITT to oral contraception was objectionable.... [I]nformation about the risk of clot is available before women start taking the pill and they can balance this against their other desires. With CVT and VITT, women did not know the precise risk, still don't know exactly, and these folks were essentially arguing against providing women that information.

"The first crux of the public communication failure is to ask why, when we hear of a novel adverse event, is the reaction of so many experts to downplay or trivialize the risk? Why construct minimizing memes when you have not even gathered all the relevant facts? The answer to this question warrants reflection, but I will offer a hypothesis. 

"In 2021, there is clearly a small, but vocal minority of individuals opposed to nearly all vaccinations.... In response, there is a group of individuals on the other extreme. To them, either one must embrace all vaccines for all indications for all ages, or one can be lumped with the other extreme. They favor universal child vaccination of SARS-CoV-2 via an EUA, even before they have the data for that claim. They were quick to embrace vaccination for pregnant woman prior to appropriate trials establishing safety. Suppressing critical thinking to extol vaccines is also wrong and may backfire, but I believe this explains why it occurs. It is, to some degree, a counter-movement against the anti-vaxxers, which can go too far.

"All of this discussion is not a referendum on the pause, which must be considered on its own merits.... [W]hether the FDA and CDC should have issued a total pause for J&J vaccine ... cannot be settled by rhetoric. It requires careful studies. Pauses have complex downstream effects. Yes, they may poison vaccine acceptance. On the other hand, inaction, while the tally of women with CVT and VITT rises, is also a dangerous game."

Read more: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/92413

Scientists confirm immune response to variants

SARS-CoV-2 Variants Still Recognized by T Cells | Immunology & Microbiology, Technology Networks - original story from the National Institutes of Health:

March 31, 2021 - "When variants of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) emerged in late 2020, concern arose that they might elude protective immune responses generated by prior infection or vaccination, potentially making re-infection more likely or vaccination less effective. To investigate this possibility, researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues analyzed blood cell samples from 30 people who had contracted and recovered from COVID-19 prior to the emergence of virus variants. They found that one key player in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 — the CD8+ T cell — remained active against the virus.

"The research team was led by NIAID’s Andrew Redd, Ph.D., and included scientists from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Immunomics-focused company, ImmunoScape.

"The investigators asked whether CD8+ T cells in the blood of recovered COVID-19 patients, infected with the initial virus, could still recognize three SARS-CoV-2 variants: B.1.1.7 [Alpha variant - gd], which was first detected in the United Kingdom; B.1.351 [Beta variant], originally found in the Republic of South Africa; and B.1.1.248, first seen in Brazil. Each variant has mutations throughout the virus, and, in particular, in the region of the virus’ spike protein that it uses to attach to and enter cells. Mutations in this spike protein region could make it less recognizable to T cells and neutralizing antibodies, which are made by the immune system’s B cells following infection or vaccination.

"Although details about the exact levels and composition of antibody and T-cell responses needed to achieve immunity to SARS-CoV-2 are still unknown, scientists assume that strong and broad responses from both antibodies and T cells are required to mount an effective immune response.  CD8+ T cells limit infection by recognizing parts of the virus protein presented on the surface of infected cells and killing those cells.

"In their study of recovered COVID-19 patients, the researchers determined that SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T-cell responses remained largely intact and could recognize virtually all mutations in the variants studied. While larger studies are needed, the researchers note that their findings suggest that the T cell response in convalescent individuals, and most likely in vaccinees, are largely not affected by the mutations found in these three variants, and should offer protection against emerging variants."

Read more: https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/sars-cov-2-variants-still-recognized-by-t-cells-347278   

Read study here: Redd AD, Nardin A, Kared H, et al. CD8+ T cell responses in COVID-19 convalescent individuals target conserved epitopes from multiple prominent SARS-CoV-2 circulating variants. Open Forum Infect. Dis. 2021;(ofab143). doi:10.1093/ofid/ofab143

Denmark's gov't mandates internal Covid passport

 Coronapas: The passport helping Denmark open up after Covid | BBC News - Adrienne Murray:

April 21, 2021 - "Football fans will be allowed into stadiums from Wednesday and bars, restaurants and museums are reopening as Denmark takes a big foot forward in lifting its coronavirus restrictions. 

"The big condition for Danes to take advantage of these new freedoms is that they must prove they are infection-free, by showing a coronapas or corona passport. It's a digital app on your phone which shows whether you have had a negative test result within the last 72 hours, a certificate of vaccination or proof of a previous infection two to 12 weeks earlier. It can also be in paper form if necessary.

"Digital certificates are seen as Europe's route out of lockdown, and the EU wants to have its scheme in place across all 27 member states by the end of June.... Privacy concerns have made the passes controversial in some countries, but Denmark is among the first to embrace the idea fully.

"Unlike much of Europe, this Scandinavian country succeeded in avoiding a third wave and has started easing a lockdown that began last December. Denmark's infection and death rates are now among the lowest in Europe and authorities here believe coronavirus is under control."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56812293

Denmark among first in Europe to introduce COVID pass scheme } Euronews - with AFP:

March 29, 2021 - ""Businesses that allow customers in without a valid 'coronapas' will be fined €400 and up to €6,000 for repeat offences while clients will be fined €330, the Ministry of Justice has warned. Some retailers are unhappy about the coercive measure.

"'It is an unreasonable responsibility to impose (this control) on a small trader. It would have been much better if, for example, the police made inspection visits, like train inspectors,' said Jakob Brandt, head of the SMVdanmark federation of small and medium sized businesses, in an interview with the daily Politiken.

"The 'Men in Black' — who regularly protest against restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the deadly virus — have called for a protest against the 'coronapas' and mass testing programme.... 'The Corona passport and the mass surveillance and registration of Danes that we put up with testify to a society based on distrust in citizens,' the group said in a Facebook post."

Read more: https://www.euronews.com/2021/04/06/covid-19-denmark-launches-coronapas-certificate-to-reopen-economy

Canadian gov't moves to regulate online content

 'Full-blown assault' on free expression: Inside the comprehensive Liberal bill to regulate the internet |National Post - Tristin Hopper:

April 29, 2021 - "After more than 25 years of Canadian governments pursuing a hands-off approach to the online world, the government of Justin Trudeau is now pushing Bill C-10, a law that would see Canadians subjected to the most regulated internet in the free world. 

"Although pitched as a way to expand Canadian content provisions to the online sphere, the powers of Bill C-10 have expanded considerably in committee, including a provision introduced last week that could conceivably allow the federal government to order the deletion of any Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Twitter upload made by a Canadian. In comments this week, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh indicated his party was open to providing the votes needed to pass C-10, seeing the bill as a means to combat online hate....

"Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies said in an interview that Bill C-10 'doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy'....

"The draft text of Bill C-10 specifically included a clause exempting social media. While the government was looking to regulate the internet, it didn’t want to bother with anything 'uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service.' Indeed, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has repeatedly framed C-10 as a way to regulate streaming services such as Netflix and Crave while leaving social media alone.... 

"But in a House of Commons Heritage committee meeting Friday the social media clause was deleted.... What the deletion means is that every single Canadian who posts to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter or YouTube could be treated like a broadcaster subject to CRTC oversight and sanction. The users themselves may not necessarily be subject to direct CRTC regulation, but social media providers would have to answer to every post on their platforms as if it were a TV show or radio program....

"When he introduced Bill C-10 in November, Guilbeault assured the House of Commons that 'user-generated content, news content and video games' would not be subject to the new regulations. Guilbeault’s 180-degree turn on social media ... [means that] if your Canadian website isn’t a text-only GeoCities blog from 1996, Bill C-10 thinks it’s a program deserving of CRTC regulation. This covers news sites, podcasts, blogs, the websites of political parties or activist groups and even foreign websites that might be seen in Canada. In a Monday meeting of the Canadian Heritage committee, smartphone apps were also thrown under the Bill C-10 rubric, although the complete text has not been released to the public.

"Passage of Bill C-10 would not subject Canadian content creators to a top-down China-style censorship regime.... But the ultimate effect of C-10 would be to plunge whole realms of independent media — from YouTubers to podcasters to bloggers — into an environment where they could face both a requirement for government registration as well as any number of CRTC content strictures drawn up without the need for additional legislation or oversight. As the bill’s official FAQ states, only after it becomes law will the CRTC decide 'how it should implement the new powers afforded by the Bill.'

"Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, has been among one of the most persistent critics of Bill C-10, calling it 'dangerous,' and 'inexcusable.' In a February blog post, Geist noted that aside from C-10’s infringements on free expression, it could spark blowback.... Geist cites the experience of Facebook in Australia.... [After]  Australia passed legislation requiring the social media giant to compensate news companies whenever a link was shared on its platform ... Facebook simply banned the sharing of news content by Australian users, restoring it only after Australian legislation was amended.

"The penalties prescribed by Bill C-10 are substantial. For corporations, a first offence can yield penalties of up to $10 million, while subsequent offences could be up to $15 million apiece. If TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are suddenly put in a situation where their millions of users must follow the same rules as a Canadian cable channel or radio station, it’s not unreasonable to assume they may just follow Facebook’s example and take the nuclear option." 

Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/full-blown-assault-on-free-expression-inside-the-comprehensive-liberal-bill-to-regulate-the-internet

Lockdown one of Canada's greatest policy failures, suggests economist

Economist: Lockdowns ‘Greatest Peacetime Policy Failure’ in Canada’s History | Foundation for Economic Education - Jon Miltimore: 

April 26, 2021 - "Canadian economist Douglas Ward Allen, the Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, suggests the ineffectiveness of lockdowns may stem primarily from voluntary changes in behavior.

"'Lockdown jurisdictions were not able to prevent noncompliance, and non-lockdown jurisdictions benefited from voluntary changes in behavior that mimicked lockdowns,' writes Allen. 'The limited effectiveness of lockdowns explains why, after one year, the unconditional cumulative deaths per million, and the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown across countries.'

"Allen’s thesis would help explain the abundance of data that show lockdowns and other restrictions have been, at best, largely ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19. His study does not stop there, however.

"While much of Allen’s paper analyzes the literature to show that studies over-estimated the benefits of COVID-19 lockdowns, he also considers the cost of the lockdowns. In order to do this, he relies on the estimate from George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan regarding the quality of life lost due to lockdowns.

"Caplan frames this problem by asking, 'Suppose you could either live a year of life in the COVID era, or X months under normal conditions. What’s the value of X?' Caplan argues 10 months seems like a conservative estimate. Another way to think of this is that people would be willing to sacrifice 2 months of life to avoid a year of lockdowns. This estimate seems reasonable, due to the violence, job loss, business failure, and substance dependencies fostered by lockdowns. If a year of lockdowns means losing an equivalent of 2 months of life per person, multiplying that 2 months over the entire population of Canada (37.7 million people) gives a cost of 6.3 million years of life lost.

"If COVID-19 lockdowns made the death rate 10 percent lower, that would be equivalent to 22,333 years of life saved. Compared to the loss of 6.3 million years, this trade-off hardly seems worth it. Even if the frightening projections of the Imperial College of London had turned out to be correct — and Allen painstakingly shows they were not — the number of years saved from lockdowns would be 1,735,580, which is still significantly below the 6.3 million years of life lost.

"As more countries and states open and do not suffer the consequences lockdown proponents predicted, the empirical data will become increasingly difficult to ignore — especially as the adverse effects of lockdowns become more clear. For example, FEE’s Brad Polumbo recently reported on new CDC data that show 87,000 people died from drug overdoses from October 2019 to September 2020, a 30 percent increase from the same period the preceding year.... As more data are made available giving a complete picture of the effects of lockdowns, a long-established truth about tradeoffs observed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase is becoming apparent.

It would clearly be desirable if the only actions performed were those in which what was gained was worth more than what was lost,” wrote Coase. “But in choosing between social arrangements within the context of which individual decisions are made, we have to bear in mind that a change in the existing system which will lead to an improvement in some decisions may well lead to a worsening of others.

"To be sure, Allen’s research will not be the final word on lockdowns. But if his data are correct it will be difficult to disagree with his verdict on how history will judge government lockdowns. '[It] is possible that lockdowns will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in Canada’s history,' he writes."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/economist-lockdowns-greatest-peacetime-policy-failure-in-canada-s-history/

Read study here: http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf

German gov't grabs lockdown powers from states

Germans confront new Covid lockdown rules that could last until June | CNBC - Holly Ellyatt:

April 26, 2021 - "Germany has implemented tough lockdown rules in a bid to curb a third wave of [Covid-19] infections, issuing a set of new measures expected to last until June. Protests have been seen in several German cities after the restrictions were introduced this weekend on coronavirus hot spots. A curfew, limits on customers in shops, leisure center closures and limits on household contacts are part of the measures....

"Enacting a 'nationwide emergency brake,' cities or districts that exceed a seven-day incidence rate of 100 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants over three consecutive days must now implement the lockdowns. Schools are to close if incidence rates are above 165 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants for three days in a row. Data from the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s public health body, shows that all but one of Germany’s 16 states are above the threshold for the emergency brake to kick in.... 

"The measures, set out in the Infection Protection Act, effectively expand the federal government’s authority to control the pandemic. Germany’s states have been largely able to set their own rules....

"[T]he measures — and, particularly, the curfew, which will run from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. and allows people to leave their homes only if they must go to or from work, seek medical assistance or take a dog for a walk — have provoked fury among some members of the public, with small demonstrations taking place in several cities at the weekend, notably Frankfurt and Hanover.

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the new rules, urging compliance. 'If we succeed now in reducing infections significantly and quickly, step-by-step relaxations will be possible in the foreseeable future,' she said in her weekly video podcast.... Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that he didn’t think the measures would be eased before the end of May."

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/26/german-coronavirus-new-lockdown-rules-could-last-until-june.html