Covid-19

New pills !

The Food and Drugs Administration has granted emergency approval for Merck's new antiviral, Molnupiravir.  The treatment should last 5 days and be given to adults who have a mild case.  England has already bought a large quantity.  

The Food and Drug Administration has also granted emergency approval for Pfizer's new antiviral, Paxlovid.  The treatment should last 5 days and should be given to mild cases, 12 years and up who weigh at least 40 kilos.  Only small quantities will be available for months.  

England

In September 2021, the positivity of PCR tests dropped suddenly from 3% to 1%.  This drop was not observed elsewhere.  Concerned health professionals asked the NSH to investigate.  On October 12 the Immensa lab was closed because the investigation revealed that 43,000 false negative results were issued.  The positivity rate then soared because infected people had not isolated.  On 14 November, Thiemo Fetzer, a graduate student from the University of Warwick, estimated in his study that 21,000 additional cases were attributable to that blunder.  And the number of excess deaths is 400 to 1100.  In 2020, a database error wiped out the data of 15,000 cases of Covid-19.  Contact tracing was wiped out.  1500 deaths were attributable to this other NHS blunder.

China

China was the first country to detect and treat Covid-19.  Its borders are closed and new arrivals must be quarantined for 14 days.  Vaccination with Sinovac and Sinopharm is rolled out.  The pandemic has killed 6,000 chinese, compared to 800,000 Americans.  The National Institutes of Health (of the American government) has spent 1,000,000,000 $ to develop treatments and prevention methods.  The winter olympic games will take place in front of a strictly chinese audience.  The "zero covid" policy is popular there because of results.  In the Shanghai Disneyland, 34,000 visitors were confined to the site and then tested at night because of a single case.  Visitors were then asked to isolate for 48 hours.  about 100 cases are discovered every day in China (against 70,000 cases in the United States.)  Foreigners make up only 0.06% of China's population.  Quarantines are required for all visitors to China including Hong Kong.