As Delta Variant Surges, Outbreaks Return in Many Parts of the World (nytimes.com) 363
The highly contagious Delta variant is on the rise, and countries that hoped they had seen the worst of Covid-19 are being battered again. From a report: The nightmare is returning. In Indonesia, grave diggers are working into the night, as oxygen and vaccines are in short supply. In Europe, countries are slamming their doors shut once again, with quarantines and travel bans. In Bangladesh, urban garment workers fleeing an impending lockdown are almost assuredly seeding another coronavirus surge in their impoverished home villages. And in countries like South Korea and Israel that seemed to have largely vanquished the virus, new clusters of disease have proliferated. Chinese health officials announced on Monday that they would build a giant quarantine center with up to 5,000 rooms to hold international travelers. Australia has ordered millions to stay at home.
A year and a half since it began racing across the globe with exponential efficiency, the pandemic is on the rise again in vast stretches of the world, driven largely by the new variants, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India. From Africa to Asia, countries are suffering from record Covid-19 caseloads and deaths, even as wealthier nations with high vaccination rates have let their guard down, dispensing with mask mandates and reveling in life edging back toward normalcy. Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials.
A year and a half since it began racing across the globe with exponential efficiency, the pandemic is on the rise again in vast stretches of the world, driven largely by the new variants, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India. From Africa to Asia, countries are suffering from record Covid-19 caseloads and deaths, even as wealthier nations with high vaccination rates have let their guard down, dispensing with mask mandates and reveling in life edging back toward normalcy. Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials.
Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is not enough of a motivator to those who refuse to get vaccinated, then I don't know what is.
For as long as there are pocket of unvaccinated people, the virus will hang around. It will keep mutating. We can't predict the mutations, so if it hangs around long enough, it will keep taking lives.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Interesting)
For all the people who are afraid of spike proteins: odds are, you're about to get them in your body no matter what. The difference is whether you get them in a form that's free-floating through your body and attached to a virus that's replicating by ravaging your body while doing its best to hide from your immune system for weeks on end, or whether they're double proline substituted and membrane-fused, not freely floating around (except in tiny quantities from degradation), overwhelmingly in your deltoid, only present for a matter of days, and have been given in doses by the billions with a barely even measurable number of nontrivial side effects.
To all the antivaxxers: it's your choice, and don't worry, I know you'll make the wrong one.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
legitimate misgivings
What, exactly, are those legitimate misgivings, as opposed to all the bullshit misgivings people are indulging?
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I'ma go with "already contracted and recovered from Covid and have natural immunity that a vaccine tries to replicate"
Full disclosure. Had Covid, had the vaccine. Holy crap the vaccine had far worse side effects. Lost nearly 4 days of my life between 2 shots.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
The COVID-19 vaccine adverse event numbers are a few orders of magnitude higher than would normally be considered even remotely acceptable.
Citation needed. What are the "acceptable" numbers and what are the CoVID-19 numbers?
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The swine flu vaccine was taken off the market after 25 post-vaccine deaths in the 70s. We have over 200 times that number in post-C19 vaccine deaths in VAERS alone, without figuring for under-reporting, and you people are asking for citations.
What are the number of deaths due to the CoVID-19 vaccine again? Please cite your numbers with a source. And if your source is Tucker Carlson, I would double check his numbers.
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Careful - you're asking an anti-vaxer to tell you real numbers rather than made up ones. Logic overload in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Informative)
I did not mention the deaths "due to" C19 vaccination since neither one of us has any way of knowing these numbers with certainty. I was referring to post-vaccine deaths that were reported, also known as "adverse events". Refer to VAERS for these numbers and more information regarding reporting. If it's too complicated, simply go to http://openvaers.com./ [openvaers.com.] [openvaers.com.]
Do you know what the VAERS process entails? Any adverse reaction is reported to VAERS if the patient has had a vaccine. Any adverse reaction. This is done so that it can be investigated. Note that no determination is made that the vaccine was the cause of the adverse reaction in the initial report. That requires the followup investigation. So if you get a skin rash after a vaccine that rash is reported to VAERS even if your doctor thinks the rash is due to poison ivy from your yard.
There are 6136 post-C19 vaccine deaths reported as of June 18, 2021. Note that reporting could be several months behind as indicated by a number of doctors, and two studies indicate serious under-reporting within this system. As mentioned previously, the source is VAERS.
As of May 2021, 3362 of those deaths were determined not be caused by the vaccines according to the CDC. [politifact.com]
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
At least 3,362 people apparently died — by May 6th — after getting the COVID-19 vaccine VAERS is significantly undercounting the problems, even if, as the piece claims (without evidence), it undercounts COVID-related problems more than others. All of the COVID-19 vaccines have only been approved for emergency use.
When you use the quote tag as you have done here, it implies that the above section was in the article. But these quotes were not in the article. But to address your point: With NO evidence you are claiming that the deaths are underreported. Is that correct? Just like with no evidence I can accuse of a murder in 1979?
All of the COVID-19 vaccines have only been approved for emergency use.
What does that mean as you seem to imply that only people can be vaccinated in emergencies like a heart attack. That is not true. [fda.gov]
An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is a mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, during public health emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Worldwide pandemic == public health emergency? Check. Therefore emergency use authorization.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
It means, the treatment has not passed the rigorous protocol normally followed for new medicines. Whether or not the government allows you take them (or why it even should be in a position to prohibit it) is irrelevant — it simply hasn't been tested well enough.
That is factually untrue. The main difference between emergency use approval and regular approval [unchealthcare.org] is that production is allowed before clinical trials are completed. The vaccines still have to pass clinical trials.
Bullshit. Even among the fraction, who contract the disease, the risk of death is well under 2%.
Are you saying a worldwide pandemic is not a public health emergency or do you not know that the term "worldwide pandemic" means? Please look up what it means.
And that's average from the day it began. Now that treatments have improved significantly, the risk is even lesser.
I'm sure that is a comfort to the millions that have died during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, there are scientists (you do trust Science, don't you?), including the very inventor of mRNA method [foxnews.com], raising concerns about the risk of it —
Bahahahaha. The very first thing I said was if your source was Tucker Carlson, you should double check his facts. And then you cite Tucker Carlson.
and, indeed, the mRNA-based "vaccines" in particular are now known to cause dangerous heart conditions in young people [reuters.com].
By "known" you mean it is "likely linked" in some rare cases, then yes. If that is your entire basis, never take any aspirin. It has been "known" to cause deaths in individuals. Is deception and ignoratnce the heart of all your arguments?
You're welcome to take the vaccine — just don't force others, m'Ok?
Sure as long as you apologize to anyone you have killed with any diseases for which you do not vaccinate.
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That is not concerns raised by the inventor of the mRNA method; they are concerns raised by Tucker Carlson. He attaches one of the co-writers of the original thesis, who has not worked in the field for over two decades, to fuel the fear mongering.
And the main issue with covid infection is not death, nasty as that may be. It is the immense array of life quality destroying side effects you get.
Not vaccinating is murder.
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Why are you lying? Your own link shows different approvals:
Do you see that determination "that the vaccine is safe" on the emergency s
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Informative)
Lied about drugs known for decades — HCQ [cnn.com] and Azitromycin [apnews.com] — being ineffective, just to avoid being seen supporting Trump.
Study after study have proved that HCQ was ineffective in vivo for viral infections, this was known before COVID. In vitro, HCQ prevents replication through pH changes at an extracellular 5 M concentration... the toxic concentration in plasma for humans is 2 M. The replication mechanism in the lungs is also different, and isn't impacted by pH changes. Clinical trials still went ahead all over the world and demonstrated what was already known. The first clinical trial results were already out in late March 2020 and published in early April 2020. HCQ with Azitromycin was worse than ineffective: it increased mortality.
HCQ doesn't improve outcomes for already infected persons, HCQ with Azitromycin increases mortality: Effect of hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin on the mortality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis [clinicalmi...ection.com]
HCQ doesn't improve outcomes for people recently exposed to infected persons: A Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine as Postexposure Prophylaxis for Covid-19 [nejm.org]
HCQ doesn't improve outcomes if taken before exposure: Effect of pre-exposure use of hydroxychloroquine on COVID-19 mortality: a population-based cohort study in patients with rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus erythematosus using the OpenSAFELY platform [thelancet.com]
In other words, it was tested and simply didn't work.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
"At least 3,362 people apparently died — by May 6th — after getting the COVID-19 vaccine"
Yes, but you need to compare that number to the number of people who died after not getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but you need to compare that number to the number of people who died after not getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
He does not need to do that. He needs to stop listening to Tucker Carlson's false claims [politifact.com] about CoVID deaths.
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Which number you forgot to cite, for some reason... Khmm...
About 3.8 million.
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Re:Case in point (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure if I'm interpreting your claims correctly, but in case you're suggesting that the vaccine is not only causing deaths, but that that number is being under-reported, the link you included is saying the exact opposite:
KEY TAKE AWAY - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) investigated the deaths that occurred among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine and found that the vaccines didn’t cause these deaths.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
...but it also says the vaccines didn't cause the deaths. In fact the whole "Key Take Away" paragraph appears to be a caution against precisely the kind of conclusions you are drawing from the VAERS data.
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Yes, the page I linked to claims, VAERS has more reports of COVID-19 vaccination problems, than of other vaccines because these are reported more often. To me, that's just confirmation of there being a significant number of adverse effects caused by COVID-19 vaccinations. .
There have been almost 2 billion people vaccinated worldwide for COVID-19, almost 200 million in the US alone. Considering that happened since the start of the year, the number of vaccinations is off-scale compared to any other vaccinations previously. Think that, if you have a "one in a million" reaction, that means that there are hundreds of people in the US who have it.
Your numbers like 3000 events reported - which doesn't mean anything like that number of adverse events is totally dwarfed by the huge
Re:Case in point (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the page I linked to claims, VAERS has more reports of COVID-19 vaccination problems, than of other vaccines because these are reported more often. To me, that's just confirmation of there being a significant number of adverse effects caused by COVID-19 vaccinations.
Quite the opposite. This is a new vaccine, so everybody is being ultra-paranoid, and reporting anything that even remotely could theoretically maybe have been caused by the vaccine. You don't see reports from other vaccines nearly as often largely because people view the vaccinations as routine, and thus don't even think about the fact that they were vaccinated for flu two weeks prior to getting that unexplained rash or whatever.
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Apparently died? What, we couldn't verify? Are they missing? Did they die and then come back fine?
What did they die of? The vaccine? or old age? or trains? Or a bus accident? You don't know, do you?
What sort of weasel language nonsense is this, and why is it modded +3 insightful? it's not insightful, it is mass-delusional FUD.
Stop carrying water for grifters, you nincompoop.
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2000: Dissent is Patriotic.
He think the world has forgotten the George II regime.
He is also not arguing in good faith. The claims he is making are being debunked left and right but he refuses to accept he's wrong about any of it.
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At least 3,362 people apparently died — by May 6th — after getting the COVID-19 vaccine
From your link:
According to the CDC, none of the deaths have been linked to COVID-19 vaccines.
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At least 3,362 people apparently died — by May 6th — after getting the COVID-19 vaccine
Holy crap you are quoting Tucker Carlson for your stats...
https://www.politifact.com/fac... [politifact.com]
That number does not tie the causation to the Vaccine. If you distributed gumballs in the hundreds of millions you would have some similar number people die within a short time of receiving a gumball. Listen how ridiculous you sound.
Re:Case in point (Score:4, Informative)
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PolitiFact has won the Pulitzer Prize...
On the other hand, Fox News had to argue in court that Tucker Carlson is just a talking head and he "is not 'stating actual facts'.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Informative)
Did you bother to read the page you linked to? Obviously not, because it says the complete opposite of the bullshit you're spreading. Since you didn't bother to read the article, and your sock puppet accounts modded you up, I'm posting the entirety of the site for everyone to see.
CLAIM
"3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID-19 vaccine"; "more people, according to VAERS, have died after getting the [COVID-19] shot [...] than from all the other vaccines"
That is the lie the liberal arts degree moron Tucker Carlson spewed out. Here is the reality.
DETAILS
Inadequate support: Reports in the U.S. VAERS database cannot be used as evidence that a vaccine is responsible for the death of recipients. It contains unverified information that canâ(TM)t prove a causal link.
Flawed reasoning: VAERS reports for COVID-19 vaccines aren't comparable to reports for other vaccines. Because the COVID-19 vaccines received emergency use authorization rather than approval, healthcare providers are obligated to report any deaths occurring among people who received the COVID-19 vaccine, even if there is no indication that the vaccine could be involved in the death. Therefore, deaths among COVID-19 vaccine recipients would be reported more frequently than deaths among recipients of other vaccines which received FDA approval as opposed to emergency use authorization.
Misleading: Health authorities systematically investigate reports of deaths in VAERS. According to the CDC, none of the deaths have been linked to COVID-19 vaccines. However, Carlson failed to inform readers of this clarification by the CDC.
So yeah, more bullshit lies from morons. Funny how they're suddenly "concerned" about fake deaths, but while 3,000 people were dying every week they kept saying it's no worse than the flu and people shouldn't worry about anything.
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At least 3,362 people apparently died — by May 6th — after getting the COVID-19 vaccine
friend of mine got the covid vaccine and six months later, BAM, herpes
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I got my second dose of Pfizer back on May 6. This week, my refrigerator died. Coincidence?
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You have reported a correlation.
You have not reported causation.
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At least 3,362 people apparently died — by May 6th — after getting the COVID-19 vaccine
By my math, at least a quarter of a million people got pregnant after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Seems like a pretty serious adverse side effect to me, yet it is completely uncounted in VAERS.
I mean, that's almost exactly as likely to have been caused by the vaccine as the 3,362 deaths you're talking about. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, right?
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Interesting)
The COVID-19 vaccine adverse event numbers are a few orders of magnitude higher than would normally be considered even remotely acceptable.
How do you define "acceptable" and how can you possibly reach your conclusion from a list of symptoms and a number of occurrences in isolation? VAERS is quite clear about the caveats with the data. For reference, my query lists 350k total events constituting, in combination and among others, 70k incidents of "HEADACHES", 55k incidents of "PAIN", 43k incidents of "NAUSEA", and only 6k of "COVID-19". Interestingly 19 people also reported "OBESITY" after vaccination, 5 reported a "FEAR OF FALLING", 67 reported "INJURY", 131 needed "SURGERY", 1 reported "DEATH OF PET", and 19 reported "WRONG PATIENT".
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Re:Case in point (Score:5, Informative)
You mean this VAERS [hhs.gov], which has a massive disclaimer before you can search stating, "While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable"
If I die of a gunshot the day after getting a vaccine, the vaccine did not kill me with a gunshot. And most people fully understand and accept that. But then if I were to die of a heart attack the day after getting a vaccine, why suddenly it's definitely the vaccine's fault. No need to check to see if the rate of heart attacks after vaccination is statistically more likely than average - we can skip that whole statistics thing and go straight to blaming the vaccine!
VAERS is used to see if there's particular areas that might need to come to researchers' attention as being unusually common, but it does not of itself establish whether they're more common than the number that would be statistically expected after vaccination. And thusfar, the only one that has passed that "more than statistically expected" barrier is myocarditis, only in specific age groups, only raising their odds to that of middle-aged people, usually mild and readily treatable, and vastly less common than the expected number of myocarditis cases from COVID itself were they not to get vaccinated.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no data showing that the shutdowns worked...
I live in a country which shut down for 4 weeks at the first sign of Covid, and we live completely normal lives now, apart from quarantining everyone who enters the country.
Our shutdowns absolutely worked, not that I expect you to accept that.
Re:Case in point (Score:4, Informative)
c19 didn't shut things down; idiot politicians did. There's no data showing that the shutdowns worked, either. None. Same with masks; there's not a real world dataset I've yet seen which shows mask efficacy.
Your government is using c19 to restrict your rights is the take away here.
Increasing restrictions are very predictable in causing case numbers to drop. Cases going up? Shut things down and boom, two weeks later cases are going down again. That is how it has worked everywhere, through multiple waves over the last year and a half. It is so incredibly obvious it is hard to believe even the densest people can't see it.
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Not to mention how moist a mask is on the inside when you take it off.
Re: Case in point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Case in point (Score:4, Insightful)
The more people say things that are derogatory to a race, a place, a culture... be it black people or southern rural people... the worse the message is going to be getting to them. To convince someone, you need to see them eye to eye, not look down on them.
Having said that, I sure wish everybody would get vaccinated. I don't trust new drugs... side effects are unknown and dangerous. Vaccines are not a drug... they aren't consistently being put into your body... and they pretty darn good, and these big vaccines seems pretty decent, more than decent, for COVID.
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For the roughly two percent (autoimmune, etc), yes. For the other 98% worried about tracking chips, covert government experiments, or are "waiting for more information,"
Oh and some of those people swarmed vaccination sites causing them to shut down. Fewer immunized volunteers means greater risk for those who cannot get vaccinated.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
You know it's entirely possible to have legitimate misgivings about c19 vaccines without being anti-vax, right?
Maybe 9 months ago, but by now it's been shown to be safer than most other medicines, and much safer than catching COVID.
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You know it's entirely possible to have legitimate misgivings about c19 vaccines without being anti-vax, right?
Maybe 9 months ago, but by now it's been shown to be safer than most other medicines, and much safer than catching COVID.
The argument I hear most is that it typically takes at least 5 years to develop a vaccine, and therefore the COVID vaccines were rushed. However, that is development not validation. Trying do explain the difference between development and validation, and parallel processes versus series processes to a non-engineer is a tall task. In their mind, if it hasn't been tested for 5 years, it's "experimental".
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Informative)
The argument I hear most is that it typically takes at least 5 years to develop a vaccine, and therefore the COVID vaccines were rushed.
The timescales for development and testing of the various approved vaccines were compressed, not rushed. Normally a small team of researchers spends a total of a year developing a vaccine and testing it interspersed with several years of scrabbling around trying to arrange ongoing funding and sponsorship, making presentations at conferences, fighting for lab space and production and raw materials and technicians and grad students, finding a few thousand volunteers to take part in double-blind testing to qualify the vaccine for safety and efficacy.
For COVID-19 all the roadblocks were swept away, funding was made available no questions asked, the volunteers for trials were lined up around the block, the labs repurposed overnight, technicians and production facilities made available on demand, no conference presentation bullshit or grant application writing for the principals. The result is tested and validated vaccines in six months from the first geomic sequences of SARS-COV-2 being published back in February 2020.
Probably just as importantly, a number of vaccine candidates such as the two products by Merck (V590 and V591) were rejected after being tested at the same accelerated pace as the ones that made it to production and delivered to vaccination programs around the world. That's more evidence, to those that take note of such things, that the development and testing actually worked the way it was supposed to.
Re:Case in point (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue is that it's a brand new type of vaccine, a brand new vaccine, that doesn't have more than a yr of real testing behind it. We don't know what we don't know.
I'm just going to point out that everything you said here was false.
We've already seen unexpected heart and blood issues with the current vaccines.
This is false, too. They were anticipated based on similar issues with the flue vaccines. These are rare.
Re:Case in point (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, Covid-19 is known to cause strokes now. Imagine what we'll know in 2 years. .
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I think you're replying to the wrong person. I was pointing out what nonsense the GP's argument that vaccine side effects might turn up years down the road by pointing at that Covid-19 is equally, or probably more, likely to cause side effects years down the road. As it stands, we know that it causes strokes, lesions in basically every organ, loss of taste and smell, perhaps permanently in some, causes unrecoverable loss of lung tissue, etc., etc. It would be very surprising if anyone that had a serious cas
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We have understandable misgivings about an idiot named Anonymous Coward.
The mutant that kills us all could be inside you as we speak, and you could have stopped it with a jab. Coward is definitely the right last name.
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STFU and get the shots already.
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https://healthfeedback.org/cla... [healthfeedback.org]
A quick Google search makes your boy look like a shill.
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Some more gold.
"McCullough was also previously interviewed by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on 7 May 2021, during which he claimed that hydroxychloroquine is effective for treating COVID-19. As previous reviews by Health Feedback showed, there’s no reliable evidence supporting this claim."
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FATALITY!
Re: Case in point (Score:2)
Tucker Carlson?
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He's a cardiologist, not a virologist. Also, being able to do heart surgery does not mean that you don't have nutty ideas. By most accounts, Ben Carson was a really good neurosurgeon. He believed that the Egyptian pyramids were grain silos.
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So, ignore big organizations because they are wrong 100% of the time and are staffed 100% by people pushing a secret agenda, and pay attention to certifiable nuts like Carlson who have no evidence or even anecdotes backing up their views?
Re: Case in point (Score:2)
Anything is more trustworthy than Tucker Carlson.
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If you are quarantining, the odds are you will never get covid unless you break your quarantine protocols. So, on one side you have injection of a substance with unknown long term effects, on the other side you have almost zero chance of contracting covid if you quarantine. If those are your two choices, personal risk management would dicate to wait it out before you commit to taking the vaccine. if on the other hand, you choose to not quarantine then the vaccine is the obvious choice.
I got vaccinated precisely to not have to quarantine. By the time I was eligible to get my shots there had been millions of people that already had them, without significant issues.
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Even if you are quarantining, odds are you will get covid due to all the people refusing to wear masks and get vaccinated. It's just a matter of time before you run out of luck.
So your choices are in practice, get vaccinated, or get covid. And getting covid will not infer immunity; many, including I, have had covid at least twice.
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Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials.
Nine more days to go. Can't rush progress.
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Interesting)
The key that this article misses is that the virus is expanding in areas close to the equator. (Look at other countries if you doubt this. Last year we saw this as summer approached in AZ and FL.) As it gets hot, people are spending more time inside lowering vitamin D levels. Numerous studies have shown the correlation of virus severity with vitamin D. The vaccination rates may not be the issue here.
More emphasis should be placed on improving your immune system to fight this. In the end, you will have antibodies and T cell immunity.
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You want some essential oils to go with that sunlight?
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Actually the sunlight is not a bad thing for viruses. Vitamin D does give *some* boost to immunity. It's not a magic bullet of course, but it did help with past epidemics where it was discovered that patients exposed to "fresh air" had better outcomes which was tracked down to sunlight.
But again, vitamin D is not magic, it either helps boost the immune system or possibly the lack of it hurts the immune system. But people with the lack of good sunlight do need to get some extra vitamin D. This does not m
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Re:Case in point (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the unvaccinated are unpersuadable. I talked recently my doctor about them, his anecdotal information is that their excuses run the gamut from fear of the vaccine, fear of needles, and even include the U.S. Constitution. The latter comes usually with invective of no one is going to tell them what to do. Errrr, I guess, last I checked though the U.S. Constitution wasn't a health care document so methinks they are a bit off base there.
He also works in a hospital. He was working there also during the AIDS crisis. He said the people with Covid sounded much, much worse than the AIDS patients. They were even coughing in their sleep.
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Even if you don't want the doctors giving you orders, which of those do you think -- just offhand -- more likely has your best interests in mind?
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Perhaps in America, here in Canada, there are still lots of us eagerly waiting for a shot, mostly the 2nd now. My son as an example was somewhat upset when his 2nd shot was canceled last weekend due to the heat. Sunday he should get it, same day as I'm considered fully vaccinated (2 weeks after 2nd shot).
The Delta variant is doubling every week here and you really need 2 shots for it.
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Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
The GP is also right about mutations. The more opportunities the virus has to replicate and spread the more chances of it forming a beneficial (for itself) mutation. If a vaccine reduces infection rates, infection duration, and infection intensity there's simply fewer opportunities for mutations to occur and spread. The vaccine itself doesn't stop mutations, it just reduces the total number of infected cells among the infected population.
Say it takes 50 million infections to generate a new variant of COVID. In an unvaccinated populace with high rates of community spread you can hit that 50 million mark in months and find yourself with two variants. In a vaccinated populace with very low community spread it might take years for a new variant to emerge. The variants per decade numbers are much more manageable than variants per year.
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Thank you for adding the detail. I thought I was more obvious - this makes it clearer to the average ./ reader.
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So great, you now have COVID-19 v1 antibodies, how about v2? Or maybe *you're* in the pocket of big virus and are trying to help it survive?
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Your conclusions are spot on, but just to nit-pick, it's not the number of infections that lead to mutations it's the number of times the virus replicates. So along with being less contagious an infected but vaccinated person will fight it off quicker resulting in fewer total replications than an unvaccinated person's infection would produce.
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"Vaccines do not prevent mutations"..
Well.. not completely, but mostly they do since not as many people get sick, and they get less sick which equals much less virus and replication, thus less chance of a mutation.
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Re: Case in point (Score:3)
Yes they do.
The idea with vaccinations is to pressurise the virus into extinction. Since the mutations arise by random events, there is already the pressure of the mutations to :
1. Be viable. An overwhelming majority fail here.
2. Be immune to regular human immunity
3. Be able to evade the immunity given by more transmissible variants of themselves. For this, they can get
3a. More transmissible
3b. Be different to immune system
Vaccinations dry up the pool of victims that have no specific immunity to covid-19(an
COVID still doens't kill all that often (Score:2)
I just don't know how to reach people under those circumstance. I don't blame them even. You grow up like that, it's hard to
misinformation (Score:5, Informative)
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Thank you, I always go to Twitter to receive health advice.
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How is an expert on Twitter suddenly less expert because they're on Twitter?
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I always go to Twitter to receive health advice.
Well Twitter as a whole is more accurate than the CDC, so it has that going for it, which is nice.
Anyone claiming Twitter is more accurate than anything, doesn't use Twitter. It excels at one thing; a rumor mill spitting bullshit.
At least people question irrational statements from Twitter.
If by question, you mean go viral, then you would be correct.
Twitter "facts" make the Weekly World News look like National Geographic, thanks to humans.
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Whatever the CDC says goes unquestioned be media or governments.
A public that lives through otherwise, will eventually learn to not blindly trust their proverbial masters.
At least on Twitter you can read the corrections.
A bullshit artist, isn't likely to suddenly paint in another flavor. You're still wallowing in a greed machine, run by those who seek profit at all viral cost, truth be damned.
This seriously isn't a hard concept to grasp. Follow the money? No. Follow the motivation to make money. You'll also find the motivation to purport truth and fact.
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Well Twitter as a whole is more accurate than the CDC, so it has that going for it, which is nice. At least people question irrational statements from Twitter.
My rule for good health is to see what the wackos on Twitter are claiming, then do the opposite.
This is why my response to Covid was not just to take the vaccine, but to take several extra vaccines indicated for my demographic to keep my immune system toned.
Re:misinformation (Score:5, Informative)
See multiple peer-reviewed studies showing a 2,0 - 2,7x higher rate of hospitalization after controlling for age, vaccination status, risk factors, etc, not "Monica on Twitter".
Vaccination has done great things for the UK in this wave, including 20-25% the hospitalization rate vs. the equivalent point in the last wave due to the high vaccination rate among the highest-risk individuals, and an even bigger difference with deaths. But that doesn't make Delta itself less deadly than older strains. And the disease does not simply revolve around hospitalization/death rates, nor should breeding vaccine evasion be brushed off, nor the fact that if you allow the case load to get much higher, you now have a much high higher multiplier offsetting your lower hospitalization / death rates.
It seems people decided to give up on achieving herd immunity, going instead for "just reducing the case fatality rate". Okay, but there are consequences to this choice, including breeding better, more evasive viruses that put everyone else in risk, as well as a high incidence rate of Long COVID.
Re:misinformation (Score:5, Interesting)
Increased hospitalization is not the same thing as increased mortality. It used to be. It no longer is. One of the primary differences between delta and other variants is that it does generate high amount of medium to severe covid, but almost no deaths.
Relevant chart: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5... [twimg.com]
Those two have basically decoupled among people who have delta variant. It's likely because most people now have one dose in them. It could be because delta itself is evolved to be less lethal, which is a natural progression of a virus as it evolves more adaptations to a new host. Most likely, it's a combination of both of these factors.
On the other hand, the whole problem of "vaccinating in the middle of pandemic" is one that has been raised on the evolutionary biologist side, but has been largely suppressed and censored even in scientific community until very recently. Reality is that when you put a virus that is currently widely spread in population under a very narrow evolutionary pressure (vaccination targeted at spike protein), evolved variants that can work around this vaccine, even to a very limited extent, will easily outcompete variants that are defeated by it. This is basics of evolutionary theory and utterly uncontroversial. Or were, until covid and the need to propagandize totality of populace with a pro-vaccination message.
I am still unsure if "fuck the science, we need to propagandize people because that's the only way out of the pandemic regardless" was the right way to go. Arguments for it are very strong, but I fear that evolutionary biologists have a really good point AND that damage that ongoing wave of censorship in the name of pushing for herd immunity has done to scientific methodology is irreversible in short and medium term and will create significant problems even in long term. Whenever politics get involved in science and actually manage to successfully force scientists censor other scientists, outcomes tend to be exceedingly bad for society in the long term.
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Your chart mixes new cases from all variants and deaths from all variants, and therefore means next to nothing.
Meanwhile, actual Public Health England briefings [service.gov.uk] state that "it is too early to provide a formal a
Re:misinformation (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. But one thing is clear. We have delta, it's getting prevalent in places like UK, but there is still no spike in deaths.
Considering the prevalence of delta, if it was anywhere near lethality of previous variants, we should have already seen elevated deaths. We do not see it. Peer reviewed studies referenced above on the other hand are not out yet for the exact reason you cite: "not enough time to draw conclusions". That has been the theme of response to this virus so far. Not enough time.
Would it have been better if I clarified "in light of information we have so far, delta variant appears to produce medium and high severity covid, but no deaths"? I assumed that was a given, but given your response, I suspect that was a misconception on my part.
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So you literally blew right by the "lagging indicator" issue and ignored the actual text from the report.
"We have delta... but there is still no spike in deaths" ignores that Delta was a minority of cases until very recently and "no spike in deaths" does not equal zero deaths, but a consistent level of deaths suggesting, if anything, that the case fatality rate is comparable, rathe
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No big spike in deaths (although they are up) but what is less clear is the effect on long COVID.
At least a million people in the UK have long COVID, it's a huge public health crisis with massive economic and social ramifications.
Estimates are something like 10% of people get it. That means about 15k people in the UK got it in the last week and the number is increasing. Many of them are kids who aren't vaccinated, can't be vaccinated, but many are fully vaccinated adults too.
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To my knowledge, there are no definitive studies on delta in Western nations with single vaccination of AZ or Pfizer/Moderna in most patients. There simply hasn't been enough time for that.
There are some studies done in India, but between poor vaccination rates and much less potent vaccines being used, those are not applicable to Western countries directly. At best, they are applicable tangentially.
Re: misinformation (Score:2)
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2.0x based on what? For example, if 2x people are infected, 2x people would be in hospital without it being any less dangerous. But who knows if that's what you meant because you threw out a meaningless "2x".
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It's not more deadly, it will just kill more people all other things being equal.
Dr. Gandhi's point is that other things *aren't* equal, because the vaccination rates in the UK have reduced the fatality rates among vaccinated people. The demonstrable ability of Delta to create mild breakthrough infections in vaccinated people is not good news for anyone who has refused vaccination. It increases their chance of being exposed.
Once you're sick, it might not make any difference which strain you've been infect
Re:misinformation: Higher transmission = deadlier (Score:3)
Re:misinformation (Score:4, Informative)
Delta is not more deadly. Perhaps more transmissible.
See Monica Gandhi, Infectious Disease Expert
https://twitter.com/MonicaGand... [twitter.com]
That Tweet doesn't mean what you think it means.
She's saying nothing about Delta being less deadly.
Rather, she's saying that vaccinations mean that infections are less likely to lead to severe illness and death.
It's still early enough that we can't be certain that this will hold. We're also still struggling to understand the long term effects of "normal" COVID [medrxiv.org] much less the variants. I'm young enough to probably get another 50 years of life, I'm fortunate enough to have dodged COVID and the long term consequences so far, I'd rather not catch it and take some sort of long-term health hit at this point.
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I'm no expert, but from what I understand is that what you said is *usually* the case - that a mutation that is more transmissible is usually less dangerous. With microbes, almost everything is a tradeoff - if they get a mutation to defeat a defense, a vaccination, whatever, even a little bit, it is almost always at the expense of some other ability.
Every once in a blue moon, though, the microbes may make a breakthrough mutation - hit the lottery as it were. Hopefully we won't see that here.
"Rooms" (Score:5, Funny)
Chinese health officials announced on Monday that they would build a giant quarantine center with up to 5,000 rooms to hold international travelers.
They misspelled "cells".
Why is crossing borders allowed yet? (Score:2)