Posted on 08/20/2020 11:11:48 AM PDT by SJackson
The World Health Organization says no evidence supports using BCG to fight pandemic. Some Israeli biologists beg to differ — after studying stats for 63% of world’s population
A vaccine that has been in use for almost a century limits the spread and severity of coronavirus, Israeli biologists have claimed after studying data from almost two thirds of the world’s population.
As they champion the bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine, they are going head-to-head with the World Health Organization. They argue that three decades after many countries — Israel included — phased out blanket BCG shots, they should consider restoring them to fight the pandemic.
“We found that countries with more coverage of BCG in the last 15 years have better outcomes for coronavirus — better death rates and fewer people being infected,” Nadav Rappoport, a Ben-Gurion University of the Negev computational biologist, told The Times of Israel.
Get The Start-Up Israel's Daily Start-Up by email and never miss our top storiesFREE SIGN UP The BCG shot, primarily used to fight tuberculosis, was first given to humans 99 years ago, in July 1921. While the researchers say BCG is not a substitute for a vaccine against COVID-19, they do argue that data shows BCG coverage contributes to the “attenuation of the spread and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Co-author Michal Linial of the Hebrew University said that while the WHO has strongly opposed deploying the vaccine against the virus, her team thinks countries that don’t use the BCG should consider doing so immediately. “There’s nothing to lose but a lot to gain,” she said.
Nadav Rappoport, biologist at Ben Gurion University of the Negev (courtesy of Nadav Rappoport) Rappoport, together with Linial and two other Hebrew University biologists, crunched data on BCG use alongside coronavirus incidence and morbidity in 55 countries, home to 62.9 percent of the world’s population.
Their work adds to a growing body of international research examining whether BCG has benefits in fighting the coronavirus, including a new University of Michigan study that “suggests that mandated BCG vaccination can be effective in the fight against COVID-19.”
The Israel researchers also tested to see whether there was a correlation between the coronavirus and another common vaccine, against measles and rubella, and found that there wasn’t.
Linial told The Times of Israel that their results were starkest when looking at some neighboring countries that are divided by BCG policy.
The UK, which ended widespread BCG vaccination in 2005, ranks third in the world in terms of coronavirus deaths per million people, while Ireland, where it was given until 2015, ranks 17th. Spain ranks 6th, and ended blanket vaccination in 1981, while Portugal gave the BCG vaccine until 2017, and ranked 33rd. The United States has not given widespread BCG vaccinations, and ranks 10th.
“Portugal has a long border with Spain, which did really badly and has another wave now, but Portugal, with poor economics and health care, is doing much better,” said Linial. “And take the UK and Ireland — the difference in coronavirus is huge.”
The World Health Organization has rejected deployment of BCG to reduce the impact of the coronavirus, writing: “There is no evidence that the Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine (BCG) protects people against infection with COVID-19 virus.”
The WHO went on to argue: “In the absence of evidence, WHO does not recommend BCG vaccination for the prevention of COVID-19.”
And some doctors reject the view that there is nothing to lose by administering the vaccine. The Indian Council of Medical Research plans to give the vaccine to some elderly people. “This worries me a lot,” tweeted Dr. Madhukar Pai, director of the McGill International TB Centre at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
He argued: “Millions of infants get BCG every year. It is quite safe in this group. But the number of elderly people given BCG is close to zero. BCG is a live vaccine. It should not be given to elderly (who might have co-morbidities) without safety data.”
The WHO is waiting for clinical trials that examine whether recently vaccinated people fare better against coronavirus. But Rapaport’s team argued that trials based on individuals won’t fully show the benefits of the vaccine, which are best discerned on countrywide levels.
Linial said: “I would start giving the BCG vaccination more widely now — it’s very safe, with very long experience.” She argued: “If it were an experimental vaccine I would be extremely worried but with this vaccine there are more than 90 years of experience and billions of people have received it.”
Linial acknowledged that her research is statistical and doesn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship between BCG and reduced impact of coronavirus, or explain the science of why the vaccine may help. Nevertheless, she said, the figures point to strong trends that are too important to be ignored.
The Israeli researchers found that BCG correlation was significant among those aged 24 and younger who had received the vaccination in the last 15 years. Among older adults who got the BCG vaccine years ago, there was no discernible correlation between BCG rates and coronavirus infection.
Scientists have been discussing the potential of BCG since early in the pandemic. In the US, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cautiously reported in June that their statistics “suggest that BCG could have a protective effect,” stressing that clinical trials are needed to find out more.
Now, some trials are underway, including one in the US involving 1,800 people and another in Australia involving 10,000 healthcare workers. Participants are being given BCG and scientists are monitoring whether being newly vaccinated with it makes them less likely than others to catch the coronavirus, and better equipped to fight it if they are infected.
The NIH researchers cautioned that correlations between BCG and the coronavirus are “difficult to validate due to broad differences between countries such as socioeconomic status, demographic structure, rural versus urban settings, time of arrival of the pandemic, and the number of diagnostic tests and criteria for testing.”
Rappoport said that his team tried to overcome such challenges by adjusting figures to account for demographic, economic, pandemic-restriction-related and health-related country-based variables, and also for different start dates of the health crisis in different countries.
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Mandatory I wouldn't support, but I don't see why people shouldn't be allowed to use a medication/vaccine that's been used for decades based on statistical evidence. Not in the US of course, it's generic thus not adequate in the revenue generation department.
If Faci says no, then no it is.............
Big Pharm, Fauci and the MSM have lots and lots of blood on their hands. Their fraud has caused much preventable death.
Pity. That means a lot of big pharma companies won’t get billions for their new (and untested) vaccines....
But it’s a 100 yr old vaccine. What’s in it for Bill Gates?
Chasing the money, the question is which vaccine wins the most lucrative government contract?
Must be less money to be made from the old vaccine.
“...If Faci says no, then no it is..”
Fauxi is a communist traitor that colluded with the CCP to develop this crap.
He should be publicly hanged.
“...What’s in it for Bill Gates?..”
Hopefully, not a damn thing.
Correct
Hanged, drawn, then quartered.
Come now. It’s time to get racist. Anyone named Rappaport is a better doctor than someone named Fauci. He may be greedy and rub his hands together too much, but he knows his medicine. What would someone named Fauci know except how to cry a lot during movies, and eat, when not doing mob hits.
The connection actually makes sense - the lungs are where tuberculosis hits hardest and where the most severe Wuhan Virus illnesses are. By offering the lung cells protection from tuberculosis, they may be simultaneously, by accident, chemically, empowering some lung cell sites to reject the Wuhan Virus as well.
Since the WHO and the CDC are both government organizations, I don’t trust either one of them. Corrupt from the inside out, both of them.
:o]
‘Face
Hydroxychloroquine part, duh.Bring Out Your Dead"If there's anything worse than Trump supporting something it's the Jooooooooos supporting it!" </The Squad and their ilk>
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
The false positive rate was 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
If a quarantine saves just one child's or one old fart’s life, it's worth it.
It'll be fun to watch the jihadists in our midst condemn this treatment as Zionist colonizing bigotry.
Simple solution to the pandemic,,,,Make HCQ and Azithromycin OTC drugs so anyone who develops a cough and/or fever can go the nearest drug store and self medicate with the drugs along with Zinc Sulfate with correct dosage within 48 hours of symptoms and pandemic over.,,,,,instead of waiting a few days to get tested and 5 days for the results,,,,if over 60 years of age,,,,you’re dead.
If I’m interpreting this article right, they think the BCG vaccine will help, because statistically areas where lots of people have gotten the vaccine, there are fewer covid deaths?
Is the vaccine the only difference? Because I’m thinking populations that are more likely to get the vaccine might make that choice because they view healthcare differently. Which would mean they might have different cleanliness and health habits in general.
Kind of like how people who own more towels are less likely to get scabies. It’s not the towels themselves, it’s the habits that those towels indicate.
Am I interpreting that correctly?
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