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I think the only saving grace is that only real loosening of restrictions will apply to vaccinated people, who will once again get to eat indoors and eventually go watch movies and shows in theatres. They’re not the ones plugging up hospital beds. Right now, there’s almost nothing an unvaccinated person in Ontario can do that a vaccinated person can not. (I was hoping that vaccine passes would be applied to more places.)

As the goal pretty much is only to manage hospital loads, I hope there wouldn’t be much impact. I am somewhat surprised Ford is giving it one more week before the reopening begins.
 

‘Nocebo effect’: two-thirds of Covid jab reactions not caused by vaccine, study suggests​

US researchers show negative version of placebo effect behind many symptoms such as headaches and fatigue

From link.

More than two-thirds of the common side-effects people experience after a Covid jab can be attributed to a negative version of the placebo effect rather than the vaccine itself, researchers claim.

Scientists in the US examined data from 12 clinical trials of Covid vaccines and found that the “nocebo effect” accounted for about 76% of all common adverse reactions after the first dose and nearly 52% after the second dose.

The findings suggest that a substantial proportion of milder side-effects, such as headaches, short-term fatigue, and arm pain are not produced by the constituents of the vaccine, but by other factors thought to generate the nocebo response, including anxiety, expectation and misattributing various ailments to having had the jab.

In view of their results, the researchers argue that better public information about nocebo responses may improve Covid vaccine uptake by reducing the concerns that make some people hesitant.

“Telling patients that the intervention they are taking has side-effects that are similar to placebo treatments for the condition in randomised controlled trials actually reduces anxiety and makes patients take a moment to consider the side-effect,” said Ted Kaptchuk, professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard medical school, and a senior author on the study. “But we need more research.”

Kaptchuck and Dr Julia Haas at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston analysed adverse events reported during a dozen clinical trials of Covid vaccines. In each trial, those in the placebo arm were given injections of inactive salt solution instead of vaccine. The study did not look at severe, rare side-effects such as blood clots or heart inflammation.

Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, the researchers describe how after the first injection more than 35% of those in the placebo groups experienced so-called “systemic” side-effects, such as headache and fatigue, with 16% reporting site-specific ailments including arm pain or redness or swelling at the injection site.

As expected, those who received a first shot of vaccine were more likely to experience side-effects. About 46% reported systemic symptoms and two-thirds experienced arm pain or other localised symptoms at the injection site.

When the researchers looked at side-effects after the second jab, they found the rate of headaches or other systemic symptoms was nearly twice as high in the vaccine group compared with the placebo group, at 61% and 32% respectively. The difference was even greater for local ailments, reaching 73% among those who had the vaccine and 12% in the placebo group.

Overall, the researchers calculate that about two-thirds of common side-effects reported in Covid vaccine trials are driven by the nocebo effect, in particular headaches and fatigue, which many Covid vaccine leaflets list as the most common adverse reactions after a shot.

While evidence suggests that information about side-effects can cause people to misattribute common ailments to the vaccine, or make people hyper-alert to how they are feeling, Kaptchuk argues for more information about side-effects, not less. “Most researchers argue that patients should be told less about side-effects to reduce their anxiety,” he said. “I think this is wrong. Honesty is the way to go.”
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Two-thirds of COVID vaccine side-effects are just a placebo effect, study says​

From link.

Could the majority of side-effects people feel after getting the COVID-19 vaccine all be in their heads? That’s what a new study claims, finding that more than half of the adverse effects patients experience are not from the actual vaccine, but a psychological reaction to it.

The psychological phenomenon called the “placebo effect” happens when people feel an improvement in their symptoms that is not directly related to their treatment or medication. Instead, the improvement comes from how the patient thinks they should feel following treatment. When people believe the treatment can cause harm, people may experience unpleasant side-effects, also known as the “nocebo effect.”

“Adverse events after placebo treatment are common in randomized controlled trials,” says lead author Julia W. Haas, PhD, an investigator in the Program in Placebo Studies at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in a media release. “Collecting systematic evidence regarding these nocebo responses in vaccine trials is important for COVID-19 vaccination worldwide, especially because concern about side effects is reported to be a reason for vaccine hesitancy.”

The researchers studied the data from 12 clinical trials testing the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. All trials had information on adverse events reported by 22,578 participants who received a placebo vaccine and 22,802 participants who received the actual COVID-19 vaccine.
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1 in 3 not receiving the COVID vaccine still reported side-effects​


After the first injection, more than 35 percent of participants in the placebo group reported systemic adverse events — reactions that affect the whole body — such as fever. One in five (19.6%) in the placebo group reported headaches and 16.7 percent reported fatigue. Sixteen percent of the placebo group also experienced pain, redness, or swelling at the site of injection.

For comparison, 46 percent of actual vaccine recipients reported at least one systemic adverse event and two-thirds had one local adverse event. Previous studies show that coronavirus vaccines can produce temporary side-effects ranging from mild aches to more severe conditions including blood clotting. In this trial however, the team found a staggering 76 percent of the adverse effects reported by vaccinated patients were from the nocebo effect.

After the second dose, only 32 percent of the placebo group reported systemic side-effects and 12 percent reported local side-effects. Conversely, the vaccine group continued to report more side-effects. More than six in 10 (61%) had systemic adverse events and 73 percent continued to report local adverse events. The analysis revealed over half (52%) of the side-effects among vaccinated individuals came from the nocebo effect.

“Nonspecific symptoms like headache and fatigue – which we have shown to be particularly nocebo sensitive – are listed among the most common adverse reactions following COVID-19 vaccination in many information leaflets,” says senior author Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter at BIDMC.

“Evidence suggests that this sort of information may cause people to misattribute common daily background sensations as arising from the vaccine or cause anxiety and worry that make people hyper alert to bodily feelings about adverse events.”

The findings appear in the journal JAMA Network Open.
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🤣😂😅
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There were 307,205 deaths in Canada in 2020, representing a 7.7-per-cent increase from 2019. Of those, 16,151 deaths were attributed to COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic, representing 5.3 per cent of the country’s 2020 deaths.

That made COVID-19 the third leading cause of death in Canada in 2020, although Statscan added that the pandemic may have also contributed indirectly to a number of other deaths across the country.

Cancer was the leading cause of death at 26.4 per cent, while heart disease was second at 17.5 per cent.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1485984268404801546
 

Why most Covid-19 deaths won’t be from the virus​


From link.

Two-year-old Emile Ouamouno had been fond of playing inside the tree, which was near his home in Meliandou – a village in the heart of the Guinean jungle. But other life had also discovered its cosy confines: bats. Children would sometimes catch them there, before roasting them for dinner.

Then Emile got sick. On the 28 December 2013, he succumbed to a violent and mysterious illness. His mother, sister and grandmother were next. And that was it – after the funeral, the disease gradually began to spread.

By 23 March 2014, there had been 49 cases and 29 deaths – and scientists confirmed that it was Ebola. Over the next three and a half years, the world looked on in horror as the virus claimed more than 11,325 lives. But while this was going on, another tragedy was unfolding.
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The outbreak severely strained the resources of local healthcare services – workers died, large numbers of hospitals closed and those that remained open were overwhelmed with tackling Ebola itself. In the three most affected countries – Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – people began avoiding healthcare at all costs. They were afraid of this mysterious new disease, but they were also fearful of doctors. With their sinister white protective overalls and association with sudden death, healthcare workers had become heavily stigmatised. People didn’t want to go near them.

As a result, a 2017 analysis found that the pandemic led to a dramatic drop in the popularity of medical care. The number of pregnant women seeking help with childbirth was down by 80%, vaccination rates plummeted and there were 40% fewer admissions of children with malaria. Ironically, after an intense international effort to combat the pandemic, this collateral damage was more severe than the disease itself.
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In 2020, the world risks watching a similar scenario unfold.

Early on, many nations were keen to reassure the public about the ways Covid-19 was being prioritised – beds and ventilators were ringfenced, unproven treatments were stockpiled and doctors were re-assigned to respiratory wards in their thousands. In the UK, the government pledged to provide everything the health service needed to cope with the pandemic, “whatever it costs”.

Similar steps were taken in countries around the world as they fought to tackle the rising infection rates. Anything considered non-urgent was delayed or cut back, from certain surgeries to sexual health services, stop smoking programmes, mental health support, dentistry, vaccinations, cancer screenings, and routine check-ups.

It turns out all these things are important – there’s no such thing as a “spare” doctor or superfluous medical discipline after all. As a result, this intense focus on a single foe has already had some harrowing side-effects.
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Across the globe, patients have reported being denied cancer care, kidney dialysis and urgent transplant surgeries, with sometimes fatal results. In the Balkans, women have been driven to try dangerous, experimental abortions themselves, while experts in the UK have reported a rise in DIY dentistry, as people turn to toe-curling improvisations involving chewing gum, wire-cutters, and superglue. Panic-hoarding of the drug hydroxychloroquin, which is normally used to treat malaria and autoimmune conditions, and has recently been found to increase deaths from Covid-19, has led to shortages.

And as with all crises, the current pandemic looks set to hit the poorest countries the hardest. Scientists have warned that, in some places, disruption to the control of diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria could lead to losses on the same scale as those caused directly by the virus. Similarly, experts fear that deaths from illnesses such as cholera could far exceed those from Covid-19 itself.

Vaccinations are a particular concern. The World Health Organization has calculated that at least 80 million children under the age of one are now at risk of diptheria, polio and measles, after the pandemic disrupted programmes in at least 68 countries. Polio is expected to make a comeback, despite a multi-billion dollar effort stretching back decades which meant it was tantalisingly close to joining the exclusive club of viruses that are extinct in the wild, whose sole member is currently smallpox.

Meanwhile, David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), warned last month that the world is teetering on the edge of a famine of “biblical” proportions – with 130 million people at risk of starvation, on top of the 135 million who are already on the brink.

Finally, it's thought that the global lockdowns and subsequent economic turmoil could increase so-called deaths of despair, as some people resort to alcoholism or suicide.
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What is the true scale of the collateral damage caused by Covid-19 – and what can we do to stop it?

For the epidemiologist Timothy Roberton, together with colleagues from Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, the side-effects of the pandemic became a concern almost as soon as it started. “A lot of us looked at the response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, so we knew what might happen,” he says.

In particular, the team was interested in how Covid-19 could affect women and children in low-income countries, such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa. They modelled the impact of several scenarios of increasing severity, and identified two main ways that the response to Covid-19 could increase the number of casualties.

One is through the disruption of health services. “So, for example, that might be because people are too afraid to seek help – the demand side,” says Roberton. And then there's the supply side – health care workers might be sick themselves, they might be diverted to work on the pandemic, or there might be shortages of medicines.”

Another looming problem is families not having access to enough food, which can increase their susceptibility to infectious diseases.

In all, the scientists predicted that in a worst-case scenario, where the use of health services is reduced by up to 50% and malnourishment is boosted by the same amount, over a million children and 56,700 mothers could die as an indirect result of the pandemic. Most of the child fatalities would be from pneumonia or dehydration due to diarrhoea, while for the women, they would probably be due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth – haemorrhages, eclampsia, and sepsis. “What we were looking at is if they don’t get treatment for these things – if children don’t get oral rehydration or mothers don’t get antibiotics,” says Roberton.
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When these deaths are added to the number at risk from famines, the toll really begins to add up. The WFP is currently providing food to nearly 100 million people every single day – and of that number, around 30 million depend on them for their very survival. According to their analysis, 300,000 people could starve to death each day in the coming months, if their ability to provide this normal support is disrupted. That’s not including those who are newly impoverished by the pandemic itself.

“If you look at the big picture, the world thought it was doing pretty well and the numbers of hungry people in the world were coming down,” says Jane Howard, who is head of communications at WFP. She explains that in the last five years or so, this trend has reversed – mostly as a result of conflict and climate change. “Just before the coronavirus crisis broke, we got some new figures which really alarmed us – showing that the number of acutely hungry people had risen quite steeply.”

Not only is the current pandemic likely to tip an extra 130 million people into near-starvation, but it also threatens the donations the programme relies upon. “If the world economy is hit and countries are not able to provide as much funding as they expect, then, you know, you have a whole new scenario in your hands, which is really quite scary,” says Howard.

Exactly how Covid-19 will push people into famine is a little bit more complicated. Howard explains that, contrary to the stereotypical images of starving people from 90s charity films, who might live in the remotest parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, today malnourishment is also a big problem in cities – and this is where the pandemic is likely to hit people the hardest.
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“If you live in a rural village, you might have a vegetable plot, or your aunt might have a cow that can give you meat,” she says. “You've got a little bit of a cushion around you. But in a city you are absolutely at the mercy of the prices in the market.” At the moment, the major concern is for labourers, rickshaw drivers and building workers.

For example, one of Howard’s colleagues in The Republic of the Congo has already noticed that the cost of many basic foods near where he lives, such as peanut paste and cassava flour, has gone up by 10% in the last two weeks. This is perhaps partly down to the fact that markets have restricted their opening hours, but also because Covid-19 has already started to affect global supply chains – and imports are already becoming more expensive. And there are all kinds of other hidden costs. For one woman, the lack of public transport due to a lockdown meant she had to hire a wheelbarrow to bring her purchases home.
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Of course, there’s another reason many countries could experience more deaths from collateral damage, rather than the virus itself – and that’s age. It’s well-known that Covid-19 affects the elderly more, but the degree to which this is true is staggering – according to New York City data from 13 May, there had been around 811 times more deaths from the pandemic in people aged 75 years and over, compared to those up to 17 years old.

On the other hand, low-income countries tend to have more youthful populations. In the youngest country in the world – Niger, in West Africa – the median age is just 15.2 years. (The nation also has the highest birth rate, with each woman having 7.2 children in her lifetime.) So far, they’ve reported 254 deaths from the current pandemic.

In contrast, Italy has a median age which hovers around 45, as well as one of the highest tallies of fatalities from Covid-19, with over 33,000 deaths at this time.

The degree to which the pandemic is responsible for these fatalities is still under debate – it might be that there are fewer life-years lost to the virus directly than it seems. For example, while older people have the highest risk of dying from Covid-19, they are also at the highest risk from other seasonal or respiratory diseases, like norovirus or pneumonia. At the moment, there are still significantly more deaths each month than is normal for this time of year. But if the total later drops below the average, it’s possible that the virus has mostly been bringing forward the deaths of elderly citizens by months, as rather than years.

In fact, even in wealthy countries, it’s thought that indirect deaths could eventually eclipse the number of direct ones in the long term.
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Take cancer. Since the pandemic began, much of the work that goes into reducing the burden of the disease and making it less fatal – from cervical smear tests to breast cancer screening – has been affected, as the focus shifted to saving the lives of those at the most immediate risk. For some people, this will inevitably have fatal consequences.

“Cancer can’t wait,” says Sara Hiom, director of early diagnosis and cancer intelligence at Cancer Research UK, a charity that funds scientific research into cancer. “Cancer will always be more easy to treat and cure, the earlier it’s diagnosed.” Despite this, she explains that numerous cancer screening programmes have been paused across the UK since the lockdowns began – meaning the 1,600 cancer cases they would normally uncover each month are currently going undetected.

“These are not sick people. These are not people who we expect to have cancer. But the purpose of the screening programs themselves is they're part of our armoury to diagnose cancer early,” she says. Another important tool is referrals from GPs, but here there’s also a problem. The data shows that people aren’t attending appointments at the moment, possibly because they’re afraid to of leaving the house. When they do make it, referrals to specialists aren’t going ahead – even when they’re urgent.

For those who already have a diagnosis, there might be a long delay before they are able to start treatment – and Hiom explains that when the pandemic begins to subside, working through the backlog will be an extremely slow process. In total, one group of oncologists estimated that 60,000 cancer patients could die in the UK alone, as a result of delays in diagnosis and treatment.

Finally, there’s the issue of the impending recession, which has already officially begun in Germany and is expected to be the most severe since the Great Depression. Like many other important health organisations, Cancer Research is dependent on donations from the general public – and many of their most lucrative activities, such as sponsored runs, are currently off-limits. This could set back their research efforts for many years.
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So what can be done to minimise the indirect consequences of Covid-19?

Hiom is keen to see cancer screening programmes restarted quickly, but she is also hoping to get the message out that cancer must be dealt with as soon as possible – and hopes that patients will start to attend appointments again over the coming months. “Late stage cancers are far more complex, involved and costly to treat, in every sense of the word,” she says. “Costly to the patient, costly to the NHS.”

Howard, meanwhile points to a checklist of things the WFP’s resident economist has come up with. They range from helping governments to bring in safety nets for their populations – such as continuing to provide free school meals to children, though the schools may be shut – to keeping supply chains working and avoiding trade barriers. “It can be small things that actually can have a big impact,” she says. “For example, if you insist that international truck drivers have to go into quarantine, your supply chain completely breaks down. So in southern Africa we've been persuading governments to issue letters to certain contracted transporters, guaranteeing their drivers’ rights of passage.”
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Maybe I'm just thick, but it seems the truckers are protesting against the mandate that they be vaccinated to enter Canada from the US . . . but doesn't the US have the same rule? So they wouldn't be able to enter the US anyway. Or am I missing something?

It looks like they are planning to hit Ottawa on Saturday . . . when the government is closed and Parliament isn't sitting.
 
PinkLucy said:
The US rule went into effect a couple of days ago. But yes, they are totally ignoring that fact because it’s more fun to blame Trudeau apparently
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It's also advantageous to claim current empty spots on store shelves are the cause of trucker's being forced to have vaccinations, rather than the major supply chain disruption that happened last week in the form of inclement weather. Also, it seems as if Conservatives are willing to parrot this BS under the guise of caring about "essential workers".

https://twitter.com/x/status/1485822779857514496
 
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