TR EMERITUS

A new peer-reviewed study shows more than two-thirds of adolescents with COVID-19 vaccine-related myopericarditis had persistent heart abnormalities months after their initial diagnosis, raising concerns for potential long-term effects and contradicting claims by health officials that the condition is “mild.” A new peer-reviewed study shows more than two-thirds of adolescents with COVID-19 vaccine-related myopericarditis had persistent heart abnormalities months after their initial diagnosis, raising concerns for potential long-term effects. The findings, published March 25 in the Journal of Pediatrics, challenge the position of U.S. health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which claim heart inflammation associated with the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines is “mild.” Researchers at Seattle Children’s Hospital reviewed cases of patients younger than 18 years old who presented to the hospital with chest pain and an elevated serum troponin level between April 1, 2021, and Jan. 7, 2022, within one week of receiving a second dose of Pfizer’s vaccine. While 35 patients fit the criteria, 19 were excluded for various reasons. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the remaining 16 patients was performed three to eight months after they were first examined. The MRIs showed 11 had persistent late gadolinium enhancement (LGE), although levels were lower than in previous months. According to the study, “The presence of LGE is an indicator of cardiac injury and fibrosis and has been strongly associated with worse prognosis in patients with classical acute myocarditis.” In a meta-analysis of eight studies, LGE was found to be a predictor of all-cause death, cardiovascular death, cardiac transplant, rehospitalization, recurrent acute myocarditis and requirement for mechanical circulatory support. Similarly, an 11-study meta-analysis found the “presence and extent of LGE to be a significant predictor of adverse cardiac outcomes.” Researchers said that while symptoms “were transient and most patients appeared to respond to treatment,” the analysis showed a “persistence of abnormal findings.” The results “rais[e] concerns for potential longer-term effects,” researchers wrote, adding that they plan to repeat imaging at one year after the vaccine to assess whether abnormalities have resolved. “The paper provides more evidence that myocarditis in adolescents that result from COVID-19 vaccines is very serious,” said Dr. Madhava Setty, senior science editor for The Defender. “All patients had significantly elevated serum troponin levels indicative of heart damage. And LGE, which is indicative of poor outcome, was present in more than two-thirds of the kids.” The study stated, “All patients had elevated serum troponin levels (median 9.15 ng/mL, range 0.65-18.5, normal < 0.05 ng/mL).” “These young patients had a median troponin level of 9.15 — more than 20 times greater than the levels found in people suffering heart attacks,” Setty said. Commenting on the study, Dr. Marty Makary, surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, tweeted “CDC has a civic duty to rigorously study the long-term effects of vaccine-induced myocarditis.” Dr. Anish Koka, a cardiologist, told The Epoch Times the study suggests 60% to 70% of teenagers who get myocarditis from a COVID vaccine may be left with a scar on their heart. “Certainly, children who had chest pain severe enough to merit seeking medical attention need to at least make sure they get a follow-up MRI,” Koka said, adding that the findings “should have clear implications for the discussion around vaccines, especially for high-risk male teenagers … and definitely for vaccine mandates.” Both Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines have been linked to several forms of heart inflammation, including myocarditis and pericarditis. Myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, is a severe and life-shortening disease. It was virtually unknown in young people until it became a recognized side effect of mRNA COVID vaccines, especially in boys and young men. Pericarditis is inflammation of the pericardium, a sac-like structure with two layers of tissue that surrounds the heart to hold it in place and help it work. According to the CDC, the most at-risk group is 16- and 17-year-old males, who have reported rates of 69 per million after the second dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, although that number is likely underreported. The CDC presentation also reported that in three-month follow-up evaluations, less than one-third of adolescents 12 to 17 who suffered vaccine-induced myocarditis (reported in Vaccine Safety DataLink) had fully recovered. The 69-per-million rate the CDC uses to determine the incidence of myocarditis in 16- and 17-year-olds came from the agency’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — a U.S. government-run database that receives reports of vaccine adverse events. One of the biggest limitations of passive surveillance systems, like VAERS, is that the system “receives reports for only a small fraction of adverse events,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services website. A recent study from Hong Kong suggests the incidence of myo/pericarditis after two doses of Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine was 37 in 100,000 (370 per million). This incidence matches nearly exactly with findings from a study that used the Vaccine Safety DataLink system, which showed 37.7 12- to 17-year-olds per 100,000 suffered myo/pericarditis after their second vaccine dose. This indicates an incidence rate that is almost six times higher than the 69-per-million rate reported by the CDC. In a preprint study from Kaiser Permanente, the incidence of myocarditis in 18- to 24-year-old males post-vaccination was even higher — at 537 per million, or 7.7 times higher than the statistics reported by the CDC. No such thing as ‘mild’ heart damage A paper published Jan. 14 in Circulation summarized the clinical course of 139 young patients between the ages of 12 and 20 who were hospitalized for myocarditis following COVID vaccination. Of those patients, 19% were taken into intensive care, two required infusions of potent intravenous drugs used to raise critically low blood pressure and every patient had an elevated troponin level. Troponin is an enzyme specific to cardiac myocytes. Levels above 0.4 ng/ml are strongly suggestive of heart damage. The paper concluded, “Most cases of suspected COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis occurring in persons <21 years have a mild clinical course with rapid resolution of symptoms.” “We suppose [a ‘mild clinical course] refers to the 81% who did not go to the ICU or the fact that none died or required ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, a desperate means to keep the body oxygenated when a patient’s heart or lungs have completely failed),” wrote Setty and Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D., a theoretical physicist, in an article critiquing the Circulation paper. “When does a ‘mild clinical course’ require hospitalization for a two-day median length of stay?” they asked. “How does anyone know if symptoms rapidly resolve?” “We don’t know what it will do to young boys in the long term, especially since every patient had some damage to their heart as evidenced by significantly abnormal troponin levels,” Setty and Mitteldorf wrote. “And we don’t fully understand the mechanism by which the vaccines cause myocarditis.”     Source: The Defender      Read More →

Say what you like about Donald Trump but he is an exceedingly successful politician. For all his obvious faults (the management chaos helped boost the sales of newspapers and wrote material for comedians), the man inspired passions and somehow every issue in the world’s most significant nation became all about him. Even with his criminally inept (the world’s most advanced country having significantly more Covid cases and deaths than India and Brazil – which are both developing nations. Incidentally, when someone wrote a Linkedin post about how Singapore needed to ban people from places like India and the Philippines, I replied that we needed to ban white Americans for spreading misinformation along with the disease – my comment was deleted by Linkedin for “bullying” – but apparently it was OK to talk about banning people from Indian and the Philippines even if White Americans are more likely to give you Covid than an Indian or Pilipino) management of Covid-19, he still managed to get more votes than anyone else in history and one can say that the 2020 election was not so much a case about Biden winning but Trump losing – a case of more people voted against him rather than for Joe Biden. Furthermore, one cannot rule out the possibility that should he run again in 2024, he may well be back in the White House. I will undoubtedly come under fire for what I’ve just written and its worth understanding why people whom you might deem a rational and decent would cheer on a man who openly targeted an ethnic group (the one that actually does work in the USA – or as one Mexican guy said “the group that actually makes love to women”) and didn’t seem to find anything wrong with the fact that Neo-Nazis and members of the KKK felt so embolden during his stint in the White House. So rather than talk about his policies, let’s look at why he’s managed to inspire so much passion. The answer lies in what the man is – which is a brilliant sales man. The Donald instinctively understands that humans are essentially emotional and when it comes to buying products and services, how feel about the said product or service is perhaps more important than the dry details of that product or service’s benefit. If you look at what Donald Trump did in 2016, you’ll notice that what he was doing was creating feelings about himself rather than reeling off product benefits. He made it such that his opponent, a known “policy wonk” turned out to be dry and well, the less said the better. Sure, we live in an environment where marketing has become “left brained” where data analytics and research consultants have grown in stature at the expense of creative agencies. Whilst the more technical side of marketing communications may be on the rise, some of the best drivers of sales have come from advertising that brings out feelings. David Ogilvy famously said “When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.” Bill Bernbach, the legendary creative director of DDB went further and made the point that “Facts are not enough.” [LINK] A great salesman needs to tell a story and Trump did tell stories that people wanted to hear. He was fact checked and for the most part found to be lying or to use his words “telling truthful hyperbole.” What fact checkers forgot was that Trump had made it such that facts were not really relevant. When I was an intern in Citibank back in 1999, my then boss, Mr. Eddie Khoo would tell us that “there is no sale without a story.” Trump told stories and people could feel whatever he was saying, regardless of the facts. Let’s look at the comparison in Singapore. Our ministers are good at reeling of statistics. If you talk about open door policies on immigration, they will inevitably reel of a bunch of statistics on how that benefits you, the voter. However, even if those statistics are true, they don’t tell a believable story, especially if you’re talking to a forty something year old retrenched PMET who can’t get a job and has a mortgage to pay and all he notices is that the HR manager in ever company he’s applied to happens to be from a particular nationality. Which tells a more believable story? One that reiterates statistics or the one that people can relate to from their gut? Yes, facts are important. You have to be truthful and not lie and mislead people. However, just telling facts on their own won’t do the trick. You need to make the facts relevant. Credit where credit is due. The Donald told stories that people could relate to and made it such that dry facts on their own didn’t matter. This is something that people need to remember. Having data is good. Having facts on your side is good. However, you’re not going to get very far if you can’t make the data relevant to your audience.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

For decades, CEOs have advocated for globalization in order to expand their markets and take advantage of low labor costs and slack environmental regulations. China especially profited the most, while Russia gained enormously from its exports of minerals and energy. The Group of Seven industrialized nations accounts for more than half of the global economy, with China and Russia accounting for over 20%. Now that we've been jolted awake, the majority of our attention is focused on the conflict in Ukraine, and properly so. When the Cold War ended, governments and businesses anticipated that better global economic links would lead to greater stability. Prominent U.S. officials and strategists asserted that a globalized economy was a pillar of what they call the rules-based international order, and that trade and financial ties would prevent major powers from going to war. But the Trump administration’s trade policies on China and Mr. Putin’s war have challenged those notions. Interconnected economies are dismantling in significant portions. Because of growing prices and unexpected delays in global supply chains, American and European authorities are now using sanctions to cut off important portions of Russia's economy — the world's 11th biggest — from global trade, and hundreds of Western firms have suspended operations in Russia. Western officials and executives are also rethinking how they do business with China, the world's second-largest economy, as geopolitical tensions and the Chinese Communist Party's use of advanced technology to reinforce autocratic control make business dealings risky. Geopolitics is unmistakably shifting away from globalization and toward a world controlled by two or three major trading blocs. This might include an Asian bloc led by China and possibly Russia as its energy supply, an American-led bloc, and possibly a third focused on the European Union. Other powers will sway back and forth between these two (or three) big blocs, as they did during the Cold War. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a larger and more decisive attack than past incursions. The supply of fundamental goods has been affected, ranging from wheat to nickel to titanium to oil. The West is doing everything possible to "cancel" Russia's participation in the global economic system. There has been discussion of Russia being kicked out of the World Trade Organization and the G20. Whether or not China's leader decides to abandon Putin, the incursion has undoubtedly accelerated Xi's medium-term aim of "decoupling" — isolating his nation from reliance on the West. Biden should adopt a two-stage policy to enhance economic unity among like-minded countries while leaving the door open to autocracies who grow more flexible. China's massive holdings of dollar assets suddenly appear to be a liability, particularly if Xi considers an invasion of Taiwan. Nothing will change until Biden first binds the free world together with more open commerce— especially free-trade pacts. His trade secretary, Gina Raimondo, was dispatched to Asia last year to talk about inviting countries like Singapore and Malaysia into vague things like “frameworks,” when all America’s Asian allies really want is a solid trade deal — in fact, one like the CPTPP deal that Trump jettisoned. The solution to globalization's problems is not to renounce economic liberalism, but to reinvent it. And the next weeks present an excellent chance to reshape the global economic system.   Sjorne Shen      Read More →