The COVID Advisor

If you are confused about the recommendations made by different professional groups for the COVID-19 pandemic, you've come to the right place.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that COVID-19 levels across the United States are currently “very high” in more than half of the states, with Omicron variant KP.3.1.1 accounting for about half of all cases; for the two-week period ending September 14, 2024 ( source ). A spokesperson for the CDC told The Epoch Times that the KP.3.1.1 “is very similar to other circulating variants in the United States, and all current lineages are descendants of JN.1, which emerged in late 2023.” Some media outlets have referred to both the KP.2 and KP.3 variants as “FLiRT,” (which stands for mutations in the virus's spike protein at positions designated "F for L" and "R for T"). Are the current treatment options still relevant? The number of options for the treatment of COVID-19 has increa...

A new COVID-19 variant called XEC has begun to spread in multiple regions worldwide and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that no specific symptoms are associated with the variant. The variant first appeared in Berlin in late June and has spread across Germany, France, Denmark, and Netherlands, said a report from data integration specialist Mike Honey, citing the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data. CDC spokeswoman Rosa Norman told The Epoch Times on Monday that the CDC is monitoring “the emergence of variants in the population,” including XEC, and that “specific cases cannot be associated with specific variants.” “Please continue to check the COVID Data Tracker for updated information on the common variants we’re seeing the U.S,” she said. Symptoms When asked whether XEC may produce different or more severe symptoms, Norman said the CDC is not aware of any “specific symptoms” associated with the variant or “co-circulating” strains. A global he...

By David Gortler Early January of 2024, Americans learned about the publication of an article from Elsevier’s journal of  Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy  overseen by  Danyelle Townsend, Ph.D. , a professor at the University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy’s Department of  Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences . As editor-in-chief, Townsend reviewed, approved and published the article titled “ Deaths induced by compassionate use of hydroxychloroquine  during the first COVID-19 wave: An estimate.” The article was always a hypothesized estimate of people that might have died, but now even that estimate has been  retracted . The reason for the retraction was that the Belgian dataset that was one of the bases for the piece was found to be “ unreliable ” (but in reality was  fraudulent ). The article  also repeatedly referenced the  New England Journal of Medicine ’s 2020  RECOVERY trial . The RECOVERY trial is well known to be a deepl...