Double Speak

Bill Gates contradicted himself (or completely got it wrong) three times in a recent interview regarding COVID.  

1. Gates: “An effective vaccine is an ultimate goal for putting an end to the pandemic. . .”  He then says, “The effectiveness [of a vaccine] could range, you know, could be as low as 50% . . . We don’t know.”  And then, “Of all the therapeutics [referring to the monoclonal antibodies Trump received from Regeneron] this is the most promising” and will “save more lives than the vaccine will particularly if given in low doses.”

2. Gates: “With the monoclonal antibodies, it’s only once somebody tests positive, show symptoms and they’re old enough they’re at risk . . .”  George Yancopoulos, president and co-founder of Regeneron indicates that the “target population” for the monoclonal cocktail are SARS-CoV-2 infected people who have “not yet mounted their own immune response” and have exceedingly high levels of the virus. No mention is made of symptoms or age.

3. Gates: Warns against “the president’s recent push for the regulators to accelerate the approval timeline” on monoclonal antibodies.  Yet also says, the majority of vaccines will likely get emergency use authorizations by early next year, with Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine potentially being an exception with a possible authorization by the end of this year.

Interview: https://www.foxbusiness.com/healthcare/trumps-coronavirus-treatment-shouldnt-be-called-cure-bill-gates?fbclid=IwAR2FaCA_9P4S1VZhVWfGYeQv5aqLJUbYd93uIyhI0P8QNUmDg15bY2SFshg

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Now, explain to me why we should risk taking a vaccine that’s on an accelerated timeline for approval over a therapeutic that is more “promising” and will “save more lives than a vaccine”.

Mrs. M

Comments

  1. The full Gates interview is available here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q8D1tdpeIU

    Some of the reporting on Gates comments left a rather important bit out! From 2:48 in that video clip:

    Chuck Todd: In fact, I’m curious, I mean, do you think that in some ways finding therapeutics might end up being as important if not more so than finding this vaccine. Because we’re not even sure how, how good the vaccines are going to be and how long it will take.

    Bill Gates: **Well, for the next six months**, if the monoclonal antibodies, uh, get approved uh, they will save more lives than the vaccine will. Particularly if we can give it in low doses. The President got 8 grams and we’re trialing things that are down at more like .7 grams and .3 grams and of course that changes the cost and capacity a lot. But that’s also unproven at this point.

    Added emphasis mine. There is no guarantee one of the vaccine candidates is getting an EUA in the next six months. Add even more time for widespread availability. Meanwhile new cases are skyrocketing as we head into the fall. In the timespan of now to the spring, his commentary makes a lot of sense to me.

    • Gail Sheppard says

      New cases are skyrocketing because more people are being tested. This is a VERY contagious virus and when you have more positive cases out there, they in turn infect greater and greater numbers of people which also explains the higher numbers. What we should be looking at is the death rate in comparison to the number of cases and the number of discharges.

      The problem with Gates (well, one of them) is that what he is saying doesn’t line up with something else he is saying, which was the whole point of the post.

      For example, he says, “Well, for the next six months, if the monoclonal antibodies, uh, get approved uh, they will save more lives than the vaccine will.” Yet at the same time, he acknowledges that it won’t be until early next year before the vaccines get emergency authorization. (5:23) Only after getting approval from the FDA can they start manufacturing, which is not an overnight process. It could take months before a vaccine will be ready for distribution, and because they will be going to the targeted communities first, it could be many more months to get them to the rest of the population.

      So, it’s ludicrous to compare something that now exists to something unlikely to exist until after the identified period (6 months) when neither has been approved for use. The guy is either a terrible communicator or he is dancing around the subject.

      You omitted the part where they don’t know how effective the vaccine will be. In one breath he says the vaccine(s) will block the transmission of the virus (3:50) but in another, acknowledges the effectiveness could be as low as 50%. (6:04) If a vaccine is only 50% effective, how can it block the transmission?

      The point is they don’t know. They have no clue if the vaccine is the answer to addressing the pandemic.

      Finally, Gates acknowledges the U.S. government has “actually done a decent job” in helping to get these things off the ground but is critical of the President of the United States for singing the praises of something he actually took that looks very promising in terms of saving lives.

      At the same time, Gates seemingly thinks it’s fine for a billionaire, who has no medical background, failing to even understand the basics about clinical trials, to tout the success of something that doesn’t exist.

      Phase III is not to determine the safety of a product (5:42). The safety is evaluated in Phase I. Phase III compares the product to available alternatives and determines if the side effects can be managed.

      I appreciate the link, though. I only listened to some of the interview, but am looking forward to seeing the rest.

      • Nate Trost says

        Production of promising vaccine candidates isn’t waiting for trials to finish! This is the only reason there is a hope of widespread availability in the second half of 2021. If a vaccine proves unsafe or ineffective in Phase 3, well, thems the breaks, even if it means throwing out a couple hundred million doses of now worthless vials.
         
        “If a vaccine is only 50% effective, how can it block the transmission?”
         
        That gets to some of the statistical meat of epidemiology. The base transmissibility of the disease, the vaccination coverage as a percentage of population, and the effectiveness of the vaccine in blocking transmissions…all variables! Accessible overview from the standpoint of herd immunity concept:
        https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077
        I’ve always found Gates to be remarkably good at details, so I went and checked what the FDA says in regards to safety/side effects in stage 3 trials:
        https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3-clinical-research
         
        “Researchers design Phase 3 studies to demonstrate whether or not a product offers a treatment benefit to a specific population. Sometimes known as pivotal studies, these studies involve 300 to 3,000 participants. Phase 3 studies provide most of the safety data. In previous studies, it is possible that less common side effects might have gone undetected. Because these studies are larger and longer in duration, the results are more likely to show long-term or rare side effects”

        • anonimus per Scorilo says

          All this phase 3 carefulness about rare side effects is a bit pretentious, when the virus kills people above 75 with a 10% death rate.

          The Russians have began mass vaccination after phase 2, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeev has vaccinated himself, and urged all the babushkas to vaccinate as well (no doubt because Bill Gates paid him big bucks :-)).

          Nobody over there seems to be dying a gruesome death from the vaccine.  Soon they will be chartering flights to Russia for people in the West who want to get the vaccine and return to normality sooner than the CDC and EU bureaucracies decide stop the vaccine-side-effects fear-mongering.

          • Gail Sheppard says

            The Sputnik V?! They’re genetically engineering viruses to trick the body into thinking it’s been infected. I don’t know if it works. I don’t know if they know if it works. I guess we’ll find out.

  2. Here is a link to a Twitter thread from Dr Mike Yeadon
    who was for 16 years Chief Scientific Officer to Pfizer:
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1317236300248961025.html

    The ‘Chris’ he addresses is UK Ministerial aide Chris Green MP
    whose resignation letter from Boris’s government can be read here
    (Scroll down the page):
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8836259/Tory-MP-Chris-Green-resigns-government-Covid-19-plan.html

  3. Students self-isolating at the University of York have been told
    to wait in their room in the event of a fire and let others out first.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-54551789

    “The boy sat on his burning bed
    while all around him fled…TWIT”
    [With apologies to Mrs Hemans]

  4. jim of olym says

    I beware of George Yancopoulos, president and co-founder of Regeneron bearing gifts. Along with transhumanist Gates. Even if I’m elderly 84 years now and still healthy mostly.

  5. “Police checkpoints, supermarkets sealing off shelves of “non-essential”
    goods [ie: clothes], a police state the likes of which nobody in Wales has experienced since the 13th century ” Why? COVID!
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/10/24/escape-from-wales-britains-most-out-of-control-covid-19-lockdown/

  6. Greta Mark 1: “In April of 1856, a fifteen-year-old girl named Nongqawuse heard a voice telling her that the Xhosa must kill all their cattle, stop cultivating their fields, and destroy their stores of grain and food. The voice insisted that the Xhosa must also get rid of their hoes, cooking pots, and every utensil necessary for the maintenance of life. Once these things were accomplished, a new day would magically dawn.”

    “By the end of 1858, the Xhosa population had dropped from 105,000 to 26,000. Forty to fifty-thousand people starved to death, and the rest migrated. With Xhosa civilization destroyed, the land was cleared for white settlement. The British found that those Xhosa who survived proved to be docile and useful servants. What the British Empire had been unable to accomplish in more than fifty years of aggressive colonialism, the Xhosa did to themselves in less than two years.”
    https://www.anti-empire.com/the-xhosa-cattle-killing-movement-the-forerunners-of-the-lockdown-fanatics/

  7. “Books, bibles and newspapers would be seized and destroyed under the SNP’s plan to criminalise “inflammatory” publications, religious and secular organisations have warned.”
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/bibles-and-newspapers-would-be-banned-under-new-hate-crime-law-m0wntj3jn
     
    Books, bibles and newspapers? But not Korans and Hadith?

    Scotland is becoming a very dark place.

  8. It’s the Talmud you need to worry about. I just read this in the article:
     
    Only Muslim Engagement and Development (MED), an Islamic rights lobby group, and the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (Scotjec) argued that the bill did not go far enough in the latest round of scrutiny by Holyrood’s justice committee.
     
    Posted without comment.
     
    I know one other Scottish Orthodox guy besides you, Brendan, and I’m pretty sure that when he hears this news, he will be grateful that he no longer lives there, yet sad that he might not be able to return, lest he get arrested.

    • Talmud (not Torah) is the normative text of Rabbinic Judaism,
      which is a younger religion than Christianity.
      Talmud is to Judaism what Hadith is to Islam,
      which seems (to me) very like an Ishmaelite version of Judaism.