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Author | Topic: COVID vaccine works - we're saved! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
PaulK writes: quote: They often are, but that isn’t my point. The point is that he isn't an expert and his personal opinions - which is what he’s offering - shouldn’t be accepted as anything more than the personal opinions of someone who isn’t an expert. You're mischaracterizing Wade's article. He's distilling information from the scientific community.
quote: Which still doesn’t make him an expert. Much of our information about the current state of research comes to us through science writers. It is nice when scientists themselves write for laypeople.
quote: And they don’t have to be. You obviously have a lot invested in setting up Wade as an authority but he simply isn’t in this matter. I really have nothing invested in this. I'm at a loss to understand why you've gone off the deep end about Wade. He explained why the engineered hypothesis is getting increased attention. That's it.
Let us also remember that I did address his arguments. You really didn't. You said a little about the furin cleavage, which I rebutted, but other than that you've just been derogatory.
quote: No, you go further than that. No, I don't.
You take the article as putting the engineered hypothesis on at least a rough par with the natural origin hypothesis, but the evidence is pretty weak and it really needs to be better. None of this is true, either. I have said, and will now say again, I don't have an opinion about which is more likely. You're misinterpreting my objections to your inexplicable attacks on Wade the science writer as advocacy for the engineered hypothesis. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
PaulK writes: quote:Is he? It doesn’t look that way to me. It's fine with me if you have a different opinion. I only find fault with the way you deal with information or opinions you disagree with, by attacking the person.
Which scientists claim that the furin cleavage is evidence of engineering? Is it a consensus view? What about the scientists who disagree? You're either mischaracterizing or misconstruing the situation. No one is claiming the scientific community is divided into opposing camps of engineered versus natural origins. The actual situation is that more voices within the scientific community are coming forward in favor of a closer look at the engineered possibility.
quote: And I’ve always said that reading the original paper is better than trusting the science writers. If one's competent in the field, sure. But most people are only competent in a limited number of scientific fields, if any. As they say, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and no one's better at misinterpreting a technical paper than someone with a little but not enough knowledge.
quote: It is your defence of Wade that has “gone of the deep end”. That’s how I can tell that you are deeply invested. Pointing out that someone's attacks are unmerited or in error is something I'd do for anyone. If you claimed Hitler had a peg leg I'd say that Hitler did not have a peg leg, and if recent history is any guide you'd accuse me of defending Hitler, and if I persisted in his defense of being deeply invested in defending Hitler. But of course your accusations wouldn't be true. It's just your MO of attacking whoever you disagree with using made up accusations instead of discussing the evidence and merits behind the ideas.
quote: These are contradictory claims. What are contradictory claims? You didn't quote enough to tell what "none" refers to. Going back to your Message 98, here's what you said that I was responding to:
PaulK from Message 98 writes: You take the article as putting the engineered hypothesis on at least a rough par with the natural origin hypothesis, but the evidence is pretty weak and it really needs to be better. Reading this again I still arrive at the same assessment: none of this is true. I don't think either hypothesis should be considered more likely at this point, but that more study should be done. The evidence for the engineered hypothesis is not "pretty weak" and is more than sufficient to justify a desire for more study and for more information from the Wuhan lab.
By default the natural origin is more likely by far, for reasons I’ve explained. If you favor the natural origin hypothesis then that's fine. So did I until recently. I'm now keeping an open mind until we have more information.
Indeed, it seems too me that you really want support for the engineered hypothesis which is why you are so determined to defend Wade as an authority (to the point of attacking justified criticism). Certainly you have done nothing to defend his arguments. You do say. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Thanks for your input.
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Here's is some additional information for why the engineered hypothesis is recently receiving increasing attention. There have also been developments in favor of the natural origin hypothesis, but the purpose of this post is to make clear why the engineered hypothesis is no longer being dismissed. Much of this is take from Timeline: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible, but a couple are my own insertions:
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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See Covid Breakthrough Hospitalization and Death Rates by State - The New York Times compares hospitalization rates and death rates of the vaccinated against the unvaccinated for 38 states and D.C. but doesn't roll the figures up into an average. There's wide variation between the individual states. For example, if you're unvaccinated then you're only 17 times more likely to be hospitalized for covid-19 in Alaska, but 185 times more likely in Texas. And you're only 7 times more likely to die of covid-19 in Indiana, but 85 times more likely in Texas.
I rolled these numbers up into an average. Across these 38 states and D.C., if you're unvaccinated then you're 42 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 21 times more likely to die. Unfortunately the figures were gathered before July when the Delta variant became dominant. Perhaps someone knows of a website that has figures for the period after Delta became dominant. -Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
They won't take the public health advice to wear masks or get vaccinated, but they'll boil water?
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Actually I was thinking of the irony of ignoring advice about airborne disease while accepting advice about waterborne disease.
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Your post has already drawn a couple replies, but it's important that accurate virus information get out there, so I'm going to post another.
riVeRraT writes: I think you mean vaccines which only protect against the symptoms - which is not the case of any of the COVID vaccines available
No that is not what I meant. The science behind what I am saying has been around for a half a century already.Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens | PLOS Biology The article is an endorsement of the importance of vaccinating up to and beyond the point of herd immunity. Anything less increases the likelihood of more virulent strains mutating and spreading through the unvaccinated subpopulation. This is precisely what we've seen happen with the delta strain.
You can't really go by what you hear today about Covid, one because it is being politicized, and 2 because there hasn't been enough actual science done about what is happening. You don't specify what about covid that you think we can't trust, but there are a few things that we absolutely do know for certain, and that's that these measures if widely followed will eliminate the virus:
The poorer the adherence to these guidelines, the longer the virus will hang around, and the greater the chances for the emergence of more virulent strains.
Right now it would appear that the vaccine is saving lives, but is it really? The data is unambiguous that the vaccine is saving lives. Of all people hospitalized with covid, less than 5% of those who die are vaccinated.
Doesn't anyone remember 30 years or so ago when doctors started prescribing antibiotics less because the overuse of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistant bacteria? As nwr said, you can't analogize vaccines and antibiotics. For one simple example of how different they are, have you ever been prescribed a two-week regimen of vaccine tablets? [A company named Vaxart actually attempted a tablet approach for the virus (they investigated both one high dose tablet and two lower dose tablets a month apart, similar to the shot-style vaccines) but had poor results, though work continues.] Sounds like the lies of someone who wants people to die. Comments like these, the memes, and the fallacy about drinking bleach, are what led me to leave this forum for so long. I guess people are still not capable of rational discussion. Due to that fact, I can't really respect the opinions of anyone who behaves like that. If you're going to say incredibly ignorant things like this, as you did in Message 105:
We are being told to vaccinate to "stop the virus" ~Dr.Fauci This seems to be a lie. Sounds like a money making machine to me. Then you have to man up when people note its ignorance.
Just FYI, I am a Director of Facilities for a very large Nursing Home now. Despite working in large facilities all my working life, I picked up remarkably little about the management and operations of large facilities. In the same way, a person will learn remarkably little about health and medical issues from working in facilities management at a health care facility.
I worked through this entire pandemic and risked my life to save those of the elderly. I live in NY and had to endure Cuomo sending us Covid infected residents to a facility that is in no way set up to handle such an infectious disease. He put them all at risk, and me and my family. Many people in many industries have been and still are being placed at risk. Nationally, extremely few elder care facilities were prepared to deal with a virus like covid. The virus swept through assisted living facilities and nursing homes everywhere all across the country. Nationally about 8% of residents died.
I watched people die. I also watched how the vaccine is saving them. I am not anti-vax. The vaccine is good for them, so far, but people are still getting sick and dying. Vaccines provide a defense against infection, not protection. Viruses are fought by the body's immune system. A virus cannot be fought off until the body detects a viral infection. There's nothing in a vaccine to prevent covid virus from being inhaled into the sinuses or lungs. Once viruses begin invading cells then the immune system of a vaccinated person is already prepped to begin fighting off the virus, thus vaccinated people are much more likely to have no symptoms or only mild symptoms. An unvaccinated person's immune system still has a lot of work to do once a viral infection is detected. The virus can march through the body unimpeded for the couple weeks it takes the immune system to mount a response.
So do me a favor and all of you take your stupid childish comments and stick them up your ass. I understand that you were unaware that some of the things you said were ignorant or erroneous at the time you made them, but presumably you know better now.
The title of this thread is "we're saved". I don't see that as a reality. In fact the end result may be worse....or not. As long as the world remains below herd immunity the possibility exists of the emergence of even more virulent strains. The wealthy nations have not yet internalized that unless they completely cut themselves off from the rest of the world, reaching herd immunity within their borders won't squelch the virus and they'll still suffer periodic outbreaks, perhaps even ones against which the vaccines provide no protection at all.
2 weeks to flatten the curve and herd immunity were both lies. This was never said by anyone knowledgable. What is true is that if everyone around the world masked up for real for a month it would not just flatten the curve but put an industrial sized dent in it. And herd immunity, which given the delta variant could be somewhere north of 85%, would make any region relatively safe until invaded by hardier variants.
We are just about at herd immunity, and Covid is worse than ever. As a country we're pretty far from herd immunity. Nationwide we're at 53.4% fully vaccinated, around 30 percentage points away from herd immunity, so nowhere close to it. So of course covid is worse than ever. As a nation we're doing a terrible job of social distancing, masking up and vaccinating. That the least socially distanced, masked up and vaccinated parts of the country are doing the worst makes clear their importance. And since there was never enough vaccine for the world, the more virulent delta strain has made the situation even worse. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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I think a discussion between you and LamarkNewAge would be a real hoot.
--Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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The article What do all these stories of vaccine denial deaths do to our sense of empathy? discusses how people react to the deaths of those who refuse to get vaccinated. Part of the article focuses on a subreddit forum called the Herman Cain Award, which declares someone a "winner" if they've been vocal online about their anti-vaccine views and then died of the virus.
The forum has gotten aggressive. It used to focus on the famous or at least sort-of famous, but now it takes on anyone. In addition to declaring someone a winner they'll post on the person's social media sites and those of their family and friends. It does seem a bit much, but how is one supposed to feel about someone who declares that getting vaccinated is a personal choice that doesn't affect anyone else, especially when everyone who is anyone in epidemiology has been spreading the message that the unvaccinated are ten times more likely to become vectors spreading the virus. Obviously some people are victims of misinformation and/or lack the necessary background to understand the issue, and the article makes the point that persuasion is emotional, not factual. But despite that government experts provide the necessary confidence in making a pro-vaccine choice, many anti-vaccine people have made it political and declared that that's not their government and they're not their experts. Herman Cain was a person of considerable accomplishment. He was a businessman, chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, an advisor to Bob Dole's presidential campaign, and a presidential candidate himself. On June 20 of last year he attended a no-mask Trump rally in Tulsa and died of covid-19 a little over a month later on July 30. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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But LNA wasn't totally out in left field. Minority groups do tend toward vaccine hesitancy due to past experience and an inherent distrust of white solutions. Racial diversity was an important goal of the vacine clinical trials, but most people aren't aware of papers like Racial Diversity within COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trials: Key Questions and Answers.
Where LNA went wrong was in saying that minorities comprise "most" (his word) anti-vaxers. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Unfortunately it's immunity from informed scientific advice. Enough people are never going to get vaccinated, mask up and avoid large social gatherings.
I check the covid case numbers everyday, and I think we're in the beginning stages of a fall bump. Too early to be certain, we'll know in another week or two. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Oh, that reminds me. A few weeks ago just from following the daily numbers I thought we might be in the early stages of a fall bump, and it looks like we were. My thoughts, given past patterns, are that we'll peak in mid-December and be back to low numbers again between mid-February and mid-March.
--Percy Edited by Percy, : Typo.
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Marcus Lamb, head of Daystar, a large Christian network that discouraged vaccines, dies after getting covid-19, says the Washington Post headline. Lamb was 64. His television network touted anti-vaccine conspiracies and urged its members not to get vaccinated.
--Percy Edited by Percy, : Fix URL.
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4
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Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates : Shots - Health News : NPR, reports NPR. Here's a scatter plot showing declining vaccination rates and increasing death rates the more a county voted for Trump:
Congregating indoors while not wearing masks or getting vaccinated isn't a death sentence. It just increases your likelihood of death by about three times. --Percy
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