Medical stuff from my other blog

 I have a blog posting boring essays about a lot of boring medical stuff. Here are links if you want to check out any of the subject matter..

Mpox: Not caught by nearby contact.

Good news: Sitting next to someone with MPox on a long airplane ride did not lead to anyone getting infected.. 

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Spontaneous micro structures.

more correctly this is Dr. C's soon to be deleted video discussing an article that found nano crystal like structures being formed spontaneously and associated with the mRNA covid vaccines.

I included links to the article in question and to the debunkers of the article, who mainly point out that the writers lack expertise in medicine etc.

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Bird flu: Maybe not a problem

663 people who euthanized sick chickens were screened if they were sick, 109 who were sick were checked for bird flu, but only 9 tested positive and they weren't very sick, and mainly suffered from pink eye/conjunctivits.

I commented that maybe the high mortality reported in Asia might be because mild cases were not reported, and the ones who died might have had malnutrition related poor immune systems.

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Will toxic chemicals not be investigated?

RFK Jr.s video. 

Yup. chemicals probably induce metabolic syndrome/obesity and diabetes in vulnerable populations. But you know, it also means they have enough to eat. Get rid of these chemicals, and voila,  malnutrition related deaths because chemicals mean more food grown, and less food spoilage...and you get fat people because now there is enough food to eat instead.

as for Autism: Uh,  up to 50 years ago these kids were called retarded and institutionalized and often died at a young age from infectious diseases.

and left out of these dicsussion: measles does kill children and can cause retardation via measles encephalitis.

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Using drones to spray for mosquitoes

a link to this Japanese news site video.

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Caregivers the invisible people

Link to video only

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Polio in Gaza

Polio in Gaza: 🧵 1/6

💉 95%+ Gazans are immunized against polio
💉 Israel is working with @WHO & @UNICEF to get 1.3m more vaccines into Gaza
💉 UNICEF campaign will cover 600,000 children under 10 for new mutation
》》》 pic.twitter.com/j1RsS1ZSyo

— COGAT (@cogatonline) August 18, 2024

a reminder to the right wing wackos that yes, UNICEF and the WHO do save lives

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Fetal Fentanyl Syndrome

not just problems in having to treat infants for narcotic withdrawal, but a syndrome, that is a cluster of problems associated with mom's use of Fenanyl

Video here.

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Lead poisoning from fruit juice in pouches

not clear if it is from the fruit or spices used being contaminated, or if it is in the plastic pouches Nor anything about where the pouches were manufactured... hmm...someone needs to do a better study. 

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why did Western Equine Encephalitis disappear?

I remember past epidemics of this disease in the 1960s and early 1970s,  but now it is getting weaker: it seems the spike protein of the virus is losing it's ability to latch onto human cells.

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CDC report on Loneliness in USA.

worse in women and transgender folk.

Malaria vaccine: Hype or hope?

The WHO has recommended a second malaria vaccine for children which is already approved for use in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Nigeria https://t.co/YsWvRE8BRe pic.twitter.com/Rii4hXGgHj

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 2, 2023

AlJ article:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended a second malaria vaccine, a decision that could offer countries a cheaper and a more readily available option than the world’s first shot against the parasitic disease. The R21/Matrix-M, developed by Britain’s Oxford University, can be used to curb the life-threatening disease spread to humans by some mosquitoes, the WHO said on Monday.

Oxford University developed the new three-dose vaccine with help from the Serum Institute of India. Research has suggested it is more than 75 percent effective and protection is maintained for at least another year with a booster.

wow. 75 percent effective with a shot...or a series of shots. 

But when I checked the article about the vaccine in Lancet, I have questions:

Lancet article Sept 2022:

vaccine efficacy against clinical malaria was 36% in infants aged 5–17 months and 26% in infants aged 6–12 weeks after four doses of the vaccine.

italics mine. 

I posted more from the Lancet article on my medical blog.

given the problem of resistance of the Falciparum malaria to drugs, and the problem of cerebral malaria which kills children, it is a start.

But the vaccine should be considered as still experimental. The numbers in the study used to approve of the vaccine were low (400). 

And the vaccine is imperfect in it's prevention of malaria, (some of those getting the vaccine did get malaria anyway, but a lot fewer of them got Malaria, and they had fewer episodes of disease than those who got placebo).

the problem? If your kid got all those shots, but came down with Malaria anyway, parents might come to the conclusion it doesn't work at all. 

And of course, the lesson we learned in the Philippines after the Dengue Vaccine debacle in the Philippines, is if parents see a problem with the vaccine they might stop getting any vaccine for their kids, and kids will die of ordinary childhood diseases that are prevented with these vaccines that have been around for 50 years or even longer and essentially eliminated diseases like measles, whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, but which popped up to kill kids here in the Philippines after their parents stopped getting shots for their kids.

so if I lived in west Africa, would I have my kids get the vaccines? Yes. I saw cases of children dying of cerebral malaria and many sick from malaria when I worked there. And despite being on preventive medicine, I came down with a case of FMalaria, which even then was developing resistance to medicines.