Experts strongly connected to Big Pharma even warn of ‘triple pandemic’
With what is being announced as a single assembly scheduled in Infarmed next week, to make a “situation report” on Covid-19 in Portugal, experts and specialists are already pushing for this to return to “normal practice”.
Since all these experts admit that it is general to have close ties to the pharmaceutical industry, it might be political to mention the scenario first in the most recent DGS official bulletin:
The occurrence of Covid-19 instances has DECREASED 23%. Transmissibility is also DOWN at 0. 87.
This may sound like “good news”, but specialists and mavens are not encouraged. In this post-truth era, they have disparaged official statistics by suggesting that they are “far from representing reality. “
Epidemiologist Manuel Carmo Gomes warns that the number of cases “could be 3 times higher. “
Hold on to this “may” (in journalism, any sentence or headline containing the “may” is considered sensational).
“The number of Covid-19 infections in Portugal is expected to be 137% higher than published,” writes tabloid Correio da Manhã.
“The epidemiological bulletin of the DGS (general health directorate), published yesterday, registered 5,920 cases between October 25 and 31, which reveals an average of 845 daily infections, but epidemiologist Manuel Carmo Guedes believes in reality this will be 2,000”.
It is a number that is “increasing, according to the expert, bearing in mind a slight increase in hospital admissions has already been verified”.
Experts and specialists like Manuel Carmo Guedes have made no bones of their discomfort over the relaxing of Covid combat measures. They are not happy with the fact that free testing for Covid-19 has ‘gone’; they are not happy that anyone infected with the virus is not confined to their homes for various days. They are not happy that people appear to have lost what they term “the perception of risk”.
According to Carmo Guedes: “An infectious disease that spreads silently is protected by the lack of measures that can only slow its progression, and when in spite of everything we realize that the burden of disease in the population is already high, it becomes more complicated. “to oppose its spread.
“In September and October we had less than 400 beds occupied in the Covid-19 wards. We are now at almost 500 beds,” he told Lusa, adding that deaths remain “for a long time at five and six days, however, in recent days the average has risen to 7. 6 deaths. “
However, these deaths involve patients who far exceed average life expectancy and who are not “well. “If it were younger, healthier people, you can be sure that it would have already made headlines.
However, media reports continue to assiduously highlight the considerations of specialists:
“One of the points of uncertainty about the evolution of Covid-19 is that, in recent months, the Omicron variant has been deployed in many subvariants, which “have mutations that allow them to evade our antibodies”.
“For now, there is no evidence that they are more pathogenic than the first Omicron (BA. 1, BA. 2 and BA. 5), but very little is still known about their clinical significance,” said Gomes, who insisted that “anyone who cares about Covid dynamics and public fitness would like to come back to have more representative notifications of the number of cases. “
That might be true, but it boils down to “who are those other people who care about Covid dynamics and public health?”This is what experts and specialists might worry about.
One, already highlighted in the press for its links with large pharmaceutical companies, took the highlight to “predict that there will be a triple pandemic this winter in Portugal”.
Speaking to Diário de Notícias, Filipe Froes, a doctor and respiratory expert who has earned thousands of euros from Pfizer over the years, described a combination of influenza, Covid-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
There has been a lot of communication about RSV lately, especially the threat it poses to babies. It is necessarily a “common respiratory virus that often causes mild cold-like symptoms. Most other people in a week or two, but RSV can be serious, especially for infants and the elderly” (this comes from the official online page of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). UU. ).
Mr. Froes tells DN that he expects a winter where “even though other people get vaccinated against influenza and covid, immunity will wane,” leading to a backlog of cases, hospitalizations, severe cases, and “inevitably and unfortunately we will. “accumulate in deaths. “
Your suggestions?” We want to take essential steps: one of them is to rapidly develop covid and influenza vaccination, starting with the oldest ones and then expanding to as many other people as possible, and we want to improve our surveillance systems a lot. . . “
In other words, the government’s position, so far, is that next week’s assembly in Infarmed is unique. We were told that this does not necessarily mean that a qualified recommendation will be sought with repeated assemblies throughout the winter. But obviously, Filipe Froes is one of the many mavens and specialists who will oppose this.
“I think right now the political discourse is adapted to the saturation resulting from the pandemic,” he told DN. downwards. One of them, no doubt, is the announcement that the INFARMED meetings will return, or at least the first one has already been announced and will be, as expected, soon. That is, there was an era of rest and now it is herbal that things adapt and relate to the progressive point of activity. My big concern, frankly, is that we want to monitor what’s going on bigger now so that we can also better justify the moves we want to take. The ballots we have are correct, now they have a delay and that can lead to a deterioration in responsiveness. “
All of this suggests that with the miseries of the war in Ukraine, emerging inflation, and varying degrees of social drama, headlines will return this winter with the “pandemic” that pundits and pundits are so reluctant to let go.
natasha. donn@portugalresident. com
November 3, 2022 Edition