COVID-19/Coronavirus Talk - Part II

[Mike Liut]

“Nearly 60% of gravely ill patients are fully vaccinated in Israel.”
Since this was published on 8/14, Israel cases have soared higher—in one of earth’s highest vax nations.
Are we at a tipping point?

 

[Oh Baby!]

Last time I checked for my age group I have a greater than 99% of surviving COVID. Then factor in a previous bout with COVID and continuing habits to safe space, mask up, etc.

So my urgency to get vaxxed is quite low. I'll wait for more data or other vaccine options. I'm watching Novovax. That might be the one I eventually get.

The only other reasons to get vaxxed seem to be drying up. You still need to mask up because you can still spread it and the variants are reducing efficacy. Lots of breakthrough COVID cases are popping up. All that is left are mandates and those seem misguided and punative. I guess the carrots ran out and the government has opted to use sticks.

What do you think your chances are of surviving the vaccine are short term?

Do you think the vaccine has saved lives so far?

Guessing those answers, is it fair to guess your level of concern in descending order is

Long term vaccine effects
Long term COVID effects
Short term COVID effects
Short term vaccine effects

If not could you rate those?

 

[AjaxManifesto]

What do you think your chances are of surviving the vaccine are short term?

Do you think the vaccine has saved lives so far?

Guessing those answers, is it fair to guess your level of concern in descending order is

Long term vaccine effects
Long term COVID effects
Short term COVID effects
Short term vaccine effects

If not could you rate those?

(thanks for the responses, it's interesting, incredibly curious about the last one. Have a great holiday weekend!)

Long term vaccine effects: unknown, no data
Long term COVID effects: unknown, no data
Short term COVID effects: known, survived it once...natural immunity UP
Short term vaccine effects: low odds of something bad (per the available data), but of those few who had a negative experience the reactions range from mild to severe symptoms lasting weeks, sometimes months, to long term impairment, to death. One problem is that the government has done a less than stellar job maintaining this: Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) vis-a-vis COVID. You would think understanding what we are doing to ourselves when vaccinating during a pandemic would be a top priority. Israel probably has better data on this. They seem to have competent people always measuring where they are at.

 

[Blueston]

“Nearly 60% of gravely ill patients are fully vaccinated in Israel.”
Since this was published on 8/14, Israel cases have soared higher—in one of earth’s highest vax nations.
Are we at a tipping point?

That’s because basically all adults in Israel are vaccinated. Without the vaccine there would be significantly more cases and many, many more hospitalizations and death.

 

[tfriede2]

That’s because basically all adults in Israel are vaccinated. Without the vaccine there would be significantly more cases and many, many more hospitalizations and death.

Good point - that stat, alone, doesn’t tell us anything about the efficacy of the vaccine.

 

[Ranksu]

What happened to herd immunity?

 

[Mike Liut]

What happened to herd immunity?

Sweden says hi

 

[Thallis]

Sweden says hi

I don't think Sweden wants to remind anyone of their disaster of a covid response which they themselves admitted was a mistake.

 

[Mike Liut]

I don't think Sweden wants to remind anyone of their disaster of a covid response which they themselves admitted was a mistake.

Check their numbers now. They kicked Covid ass with no lockdowns and no vaccinations

 

[EastonBlues22]

So if things were 'compressed', how do you get long term safety data?

Read THIS article for an idea of how time was saved without cutting corners.

I already explained that "long term safety data" is functionally scaled to a few months for vaccines, not to years. The vaccine itself degrades in the body fairly quickly. It's not present in the body even a month, much less multiple years, down the line to cause future complications. Nor will the immune system spontaneously start doing something different (besides, perhaps, having its effectiveness wane) many months/years down the line in response to a stimulus that's no longer there.

We are 5+ billion doses given into this thing, with about 375 million of those being given in the USA, and the first doses were given to people (in testing trials) about a year and a half ago. We have the long term safety data.

When you say historically issues come out in the first two months, is this for mRNA based vaccines or more traditional vaccine delivery technologies that have been in use for decades?

The timeline is because of how our immune response works. The delivery system itself (active, inactive, mRNA, whatever) is relatively meaningless. You introduce the foreign substance to the body, the immune response begins, the substance quickly degrades...and that's it. All that's left is the continuation of the immune response, and that's something we understand both the timing and the mechanism of very well.

If you're asking if there is anything about an mRNA delivery system that suggests there might be cause for concern extending well beyond the usual established timeline, or that might significantly alter the usual immune response timeline in some way, and the answer is no...no, there is not.

Again, name an mRNA drug or vaccine that has been approved by the FDA besides the vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer. Then we can talk in generalities about when side effects occur and when we think we are out of the woods so to speak. Again, we have no long term data on mRNA types of vaccines. None. So when people bring up historical knowledge with older vaccine technologies it is suspect in my view. The data is the data. We don't have any right now, but eventually we will.

[Edited: My apologies. - EB]

I've already addressed a lot of these statements, but suffice to say that I think your underlying premise here has some faults.

If you built a bridge and told me it was safe, and I told you that a bridge had never been built in this spot before so we have no idea if it is safe, and that I wasn't going to use that bridge until there was some "long term safety data" to prove that it was, how would you respond as an engineer?

You would probably have quite a few reasons for believing it to be safe based on your knowledge of how the bridge was specifically constructed, your understanding of the underlying theories supporting those choices, and your general expertise in the field...and you would almost certainly be right. But you would still be unable to satisfy my relatively ignorant and misguided demand for "long term data" that doesn't exist and doesn't prove...well, much of anything, really. No expert would justify his opinion that a bridge was sound/safe solely on whether or not it was still standing a few years later. They would confidently formulate that opinion up front before they ever let people on the darn thing based upon their knowledge of a whole host of relevant factors specific to the situation.

Once FDA approval has been granted, is it guaranteed that no future safety issues will occur? You know the answer to this.

I know that the answer is irrelevant if your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid (regardless of how small) is a lot higher than your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from the vaccine. To the best of my knowledge, there has been a literal handful of deaths directly linked to the Covid vaccine thus far (from J&J blood clots) after billions of doses given. Compare that to 4.5+ million deaths from Coronavirus out of millions of confirmed cases...

Just how bad are these potential "future safety issues," in your mind, to be an alternative that you fear more than the reality you are actually facing?

 

[Thallis]

Check their numbers now. They kicked Covid ass with no lockdowns and no vaccinations

A 10x the death rate of its neighbors is not kicking its ass. Despite having the natural barrier of the 5th lowest population density in Europe, Sweden has the worst covid metrics per Capita. It's been a failure by all accounts

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Read THIS article for an idea of how time was saved without cutting corners.

I already explained that "long term safety data" is functionally scaled to a few months for vaccines, not to years. The vaccine itself degrades in the body fairly quickly. It's not present in the body even a month, much less multiple years, down the line to cause future complications. Nor will the immune system spontaneously start doing something different (besides, perhaps, having its effectiveness wane) many months/years down the line in response to a stimulus that's no longer there.

We are 5+ billion doses given into this thing, with about 375 million of those being given in the USA, and the first doses were given to people (in testing trials) about a year and a half ago. We have the long term safety data.


The timeline is because of how our immune response works. The delivery system itself (active, inactive, mRNA, whatever) is relatively meaningless. You introduce the foreign substance to the body, the immune response begins, the substance quickly degrades...and that's it. All that's left is the continuation of the immune response, and that's something we understand both the timing and the mechanism of very well.

If you're asking if there is anything about an mRNA delivery system that suggests there might be cause for concern extending well beyond the usual established timeline, or that might significantly alter the usual immune response timeline in some way, and the answer is no...no, there is not.


No offense intended, but this perspective stems from a complete lack of understanding about pretty much everything involved in this process. It's not your field, so that's to be expected, but the corollary there is that you shouldn't assume you understand what you're talking about when it's not your field.

If you built a bridge and told me it was safe, and I told you that a bridge had never been built in this spot before so we have no idea if it is safe, and that I wasn't going to use that bridge until there was some "long term safety data" to prove that it was, how would you respond as an engineer?

You would probably have quite a few reasons for believing it to be safe based on your knowledge of how the bridge was specifically constructed, your understanding of the underlying theories supporting those choices, and your general expertise in the field...and you would almost certainly be right. But you would still be unable to satisfy my relatively ignorant and misguided demand for "long term data" that doesn't exist and doesn't prove...well, much of anything, really. No expert would justify his opinion that a bridge was sound/safe solely on whether or not it was still standing a few years later. They would confidently formulate that opinion up front before they ever let people on the darn thing based upon their knowledge of a whole host of relevant factors specific to the situation.


I know that the answer is irrelevant if your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid (regardless of how small) is a lot higher than your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from the vaccine. To the best of my knowledge, there has been a literal handful of deaths directly linked to the Covid vaccine thus far (from J&J blood clots) after billions of doses given. Compare that to 4.5+ million deaths from Coronavirus out of millions of confirmed cases...

Just how bad are these potential "future safety issues," in your mind, to be an alternative that you fear more than the reality you are actually facing?

I understand that you know this field far more than me. I never assumed differently, I simply have concerns about a vaccine rushed to market during a pandemic. It defies historical precident, but I understand that they cut out a lot of red tape. However, as someone who is careful with what I put in my body, I have every right to question things. We all have the right to question personal health decisions and challenge what we are told, even if we are not "experts". As a pharmacist you should know all about the history of FDA failures. Drugs and vaccines that were once approved, but we're later pulled off the shelves.

Anyhow, there are folks who know even more than you about these vaccines who have a wait and see approach. So you are not the be all, end all in this. You can find these experts if you choose to look for them. The internet powers that be try to censor them, but you can find them. Many are pro vax, have worked in the vaccine industry, medicine, or science, and, yet, they have concerns. The prevailing thought in medicine is as you have mentioned: this wasn't rushed, if we didn't see an issue in the first few months, we don't have to worry about long term safety issues, etc. This is the beauty of science. It's never "settled" like many think. It's not monolithic and it advances when we challenge assumptions and ask questions.

I'm in the wait and see camp on COVID vaccines. I'm waiting for a more conventional delivery mechanism to become available. The J&J vaccine was of interest to me, but then they had some issues. I've already mentioned that I'm watching Novovax. Additionally, the efficacy of these early vaccines is falling with time and each new variant. I'm not up for getting one booster after another. As I've already said, I mostly likely had COVID early last year, so my immune system has been tested and stimulated. Natural immunity beats a vaccine in my cost benefit analysis. I've studied this as much as I can and I'm comfortable with my decision.

BTW, your bridge analogy is a little misguided. It's a static physical system that is very well understood and can be analyzed in a straight forward manner. Humans are much more complex dynamic biological systems, with a great variation in physical health conditions. The effects of injecting substances into these complex systems I would imagine can't be easily predicted, so you need to test over time and take a statistical approach. Safety is much easier to predict in bridges. We don't need random tests with control groups, etc.

 

[EastonBlues22]

I understand that you know this field far more than me. I never assumed differently, I simply have concerns about a vaccine rushed to market during a pandemic. It defies historical precident. And as someone who is careful with what I put in my body, I have every right to question things. We all have the right to question personal health decisions and challenge what we are told, even if we are not "experts". As a pharmacist you should know all about the history of FDA failures. Drugs and vaccines that were once approved, but we're later pulled off the shelves.

Yes, you have every right to question, and I do understand the history of FDA failures...and how they are relevant (or not) to this situation. I'm not saying you "must" do anything. I'm also not trying to say that you should sacrifice your own autonomy and blindly substitute my judgment for yours. I understand that it's not my place to run your life.

What I am trying to say is that there are explanations for what has been done that you may not be aware of, or that you may not currently fully understand...and that some of what you are saying is either (IMO) inaccurate, or perhaps confused. In spite of me making a hash of the previous post, there's still some good information in there that's worth delving into if you are looking to challenge some of your current beliefs, even if only to strengthen them, or perhaps just satisfy your curiosity.

As to this comment:

"No offense intended, but this perspective stems from a complete lack of understanding about pretty much everything involved in this process. It's not your field, so that's to be expected, but the corollary there is that you shouldn't assume you understand what you're talking about when it's not your field."

Very smug on your part. Please reread what you wrote. Offense was meant. I teach many graduate level college courses part time and I would NEVER say something like this to a student asking questions or challenging a concept that I'm teaching. I was tempted to stop reading there and just ignore you, but I'll press on.

Offense was truly not meant at the time, but I see the ugliness now for what it is and I apologize for giving it. It's funny in a way, because smug is pretty close to the polar opposite of how I feel. Try some combination of burned out, frustrated, and abused. And tired.

No excuses, though. Bottom line, you were right to call me out on it. It was rude, and condescending. I apologize again for it, and will remove it from the previous post. Thank you for carrying on in spite of the offense.

Anyhow, there are folks who know even more than you about these vaccines who are either sounding the alarm bell or are cautious and have a wait and see approach. So you are not the be all, end all in this. You can find these experts if you choose to look for them. The internet powers that be try to censor them, but you can find them. Many are pro vax, have worked in the vaccine industry, medicine, or science, and, yet, they have concerns. This is the beauty of science. It's never "settled" like many think. It's not monolithic and it advances when we challenge assumptions and ask questions.

No, I am not the be-all-end-all of this. I never claimed to be. But my opinion is consistent with the majority opinion. I'm well aware of there is a vocal minority, and I have found their arguments, by and large, less than compelling (when they aren't peddling outright misinformation).

Personally, I don't find it the least bit beautiful that shills (not that every dissenting voice is a shill, but it's certainly a tactic that's used) and misinformation can be used to muddy the waters to the point that the actual science is essentially meaningless. The current public discussion about the vaccine is anything but a scientific discourse. Feel free to point me towards any credible data you want that currently suggests that the vaccines pose some sort of serious risk to the populace (greater than their current benefit), or to the scientific justifications for fears of significant long term adverse effects from the vaccines beyond those currently known. I'll happily address them as best I can.

BTW, your bridge analogy is a little misguided. It's a static physical system that is very well understood and can be analyzed in a straight forward manner. Humans are much more complex dynamic biological systems, with a great variation in physical health conditions. The effects of injecting substances into these complex systems I would imagine can't be easily predicted, so you need to test over time and take a statistical approach. Safety is much easier to predict in bridges. We don't need random tests with control groups, etc.

The point of the analogy is that the dissenting voice doesn't know enough to even understand the futility and relative meaninglessness of their own burden of proof, and to help put you in the shoes of someone encountering such a voice. It was not intended to argue for an equivalence of the systems.

You say we need to test over time. That has been done. You say we need to take a statistical approach. That has also been done. We're well past the point of predicting safety, and quite arguably to the point of "knowing" it. If some are still more comfortable waiting for whatever reason, that's up to them, but I feel like any active pushback against the safety of the vaccines (i.e. asserting they are unsafe) should include more fact-based discussion than I've personally encountered.

 

[A Real Barn Burner]

The claims have been that vaccines reduce hospitalization and mortality. They have done that. They were also likely to reduce people from getting the virus. The reduction in spreading the virus would therefore be lower because you would be less likely to get it. There were not to my knowledge claims by respected medical research institutions about reducing spread if you got the virus despite being vaccinated. The big misconception I see being made was the assumption that this set of vaccines would protect against the variants. They were developed for the original virus, which was more deadly and less communicable then the current mutations (at least the ones in the US). I would liken this to flu vaccines. The vaccines are tailored to the variants that they expect for the season. If you are vaccinated and get the flu it is either a rare occurrence likely due to other health factors like stress or vitamin deficiency, or, more likely you just got another strain.

When the Vaccines were first rolled out all the talk was about “herd immunity”. The only way you achieve herd immunity is enough people get vaccinated and the vaccines work to stop the spread. Countless interviews with Fauci and other doctors given to the media on how important it was for people to get vaccinated so we got get back to normal.

Heck the CDC dropped their mask recommendations only after a month or two of the vaccines being rolled out. They wouldn’t have done that had they known that vaccinated people could spread the virus at the rate they are currently doing. It was a selling points to get more people vaccinated. “Get vaccinated you don’t have to wear a mask”, I tried to find the TV interview were Facui said that but my google foo is failing me. I can assure you I recall it though. I did a cursory search to find you a link for the CDC guidance but all the websites have been updated with new guidance. Going through google to find any old reporting would take hours there is just so much COVID reporting. The CDC makes their recommendation off research by respected medical facilities.

Now your probably going to bring up the variants like Delta. I would remind you though that breakthrough infections were happening in vaccinated people almost as soon as the vaccination program started, and that the Delta variant didn’t become the major variant in the country until the past 3 or 4 months.

It’s quite clear that vaccinated people spreading the virus caught the CDC by surprise or they wouldn’t have flipped and flopped on their mask guidance.

We could have stopped it in the bud at the very beginning by stopping travel, initiating a hard lockdown immediately instead of waiting, quarantining those infected for two weeks and doing contact tracing. That would have required a high level of buy in and coordination at a level we were not close to seeing. The second would have been vaccinating before the variants hit. Neither happened so we are likely stuck with this like we are the flu. Variants will continue and we will play what a mole with them. Fortunately, if the flu is any indication, we will be able to limit the impacts through continued vaccination and overtime our bodies gaining defenses to the virus and it variants.

Kudos to Israel for getting vaccinated, but it was too little too late in terms of whipping this thing out. Also, one country cannot do all the lifting.

As for why they are getting sick, well the variants are turning more contagious. Fortunately, between the vaccinations and the way they are mutating, they are becoming less severe in terms of % hospitalized and dying.

I’m sorry this is just wishful thinking.

I do GIS analysis for a living. I have worked for the government and contributed on teams that built models for disease spread. Due to asymptomatic spread of this virus we never would have gotten it under control.

Here’s the thing we still to this day don’t know the true R-naught of COVID, because of Asymptomatic spread. We also don’t know the true mortality rate because of this, just a case fatality rate (CFR). Side note: Recently the CDC itself made a sensational claim that the Delta variant is more contagious than Chicken Pox to try and scare people into getting vaccinated which is just absurd misinformation (because chicken pox actually hangs in the air for hours). One of the justifications I saw for this claim was asymptomatic spread.

We have estimates for R-naught. However, every model I have seen, even with aggressive measure, would have never stopped the spread.

You don’t have to take my word for it though. Here is a medical research paper on Asymptomatic spread with modeling for herd immunity.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/9/e2019716118.full.pdf

“Our finding that many individuals were already infected by March 1 is consistent with earlier estimates that community transmission began in February in New York City (27, 55, 66).”

So from the article spread was already happening in New York well before March 1, in order for us to have had success like South Korea we would of had to go into quarantine on Jan 20, 2020 after the first USA case was confirmed. As you said one country can’t do the heavy lifting so the whole world would of had to do the same.

“In conclusion, explicit consideration of changes in testing capacity allows us to infer with certainty, from case and serology data, that most new COVID-19 cases do not become symptomatic.”

Now watch the below animated maps of the spread and keep in mind Asymptomatic spread while you are watching.

Mapping the COVID-19 pandemic

 

[A Real Barn Burner]

I have a PhD in pharmacy.

It is true mRNA technology has been studied for decades. We understand a lot about it, though it took quite awhile to make it work due to several logistical stumbling blocks. The successful application of the technology is new, but the technology itself has been in the works for a long time.

"Cutting corners" is a bit of a misnomer for how things went down with the vaccines. The corners weren't cut, they were compressed. Things that usually happened sequentially instead were done in overlap. That distinction makes a big difference.

You can't equate the long-term effects of vaccines with those of drugs. Vaccines are in the body temporarily, and they train the immune system to do its job better. The "long term" side effects of vaccines historically take no more than 2 months to become known, because once the immune response is provoked, it initiates a stable timeline for the immune response. We're well past that point of concern with the Covid vaccines.

Drugs are often given in a wide range of doses, over a wide range of durations, and (especially for chronic medications), the rarer side effects of them might not be known for years. It is not a comparable situation.

I am ex-military have had the Anthrax vaccine so not opposed to getting the vaccine. So please don’t take me as someone who you have to be frustrated with or someone looking for an argument. I just haven’t had a reason live by myself work from home all that. Other than a haircut really don’t need to leave the house.

My understanding is that COVID has like 15 genes and that’s a lot. The flu has like 5 or something. This is the reason it is mutating so easily or so I understand.

Her is my concern/question. Now covid has a lot of long term side effects that are possible. So how many of those 15 genes are they messing with when they make a vaccine? Is there still 15? What are the chances the vaccines can do something other that generate an immune response? Hopefully this question make sense.

Thanks for indulging me.

 

[Mike Liut]

A 10x the death rate of its neighbors is not kicking its ass. Despite having the natural barrier of the 5th lowest population density in Europe, Sweden has the worst covid metrics per Capita. It's been a failure by all accounts

Their current numbers are nearly 0 deaths per day.

 

[Mike Liut]

These new strains will be vaccine resistant.

 

[Celtic Note]

When the Vaccines were first rolled out all the talk was about “herd immunity”. The only way you achieve herd immunity is enough people get vaccinated and the vaccines work to stop the spread. Countless interviews with Fauci and other doctors given to the media on how important it was for people to get vaccinated so we got get back to normal.

Heck the CDC dropped their mask recommendations only after a month or two of the vaccines being rolled out. They wouldn’t have done that had they known that vaccinated people could spread the virus at the rate they are currently doing. It was a selling points to get more people vaccinated. “Get vaccinated you don’t have to wear a mask”, I tried to find the TV interview were Facui said that but my google foo is failing me. I can assure you I recall it though. I did a cursory search to find you a link for the CDC guidance but all the websites have been updated with new guidance. Going through google to find any old reporting would take hours there is just so much COVID reporting. The CDC makes their recommendation off research by respected medical facilities.

Now your probably going to bring up the variants like Delta. I would remind you though that breakthrough infections were happening in vaccinated people almost as soon as the vaccination program started, and that the Delta variant didn’t become the major variant in the country until the past 3 or 4 months.

It’s quite clear that vaccinated people spreading the virus caught the CDC by surprise or they wouldn’t have flipped and flopped on their mask guidance.



I’m sorry this is just wishful thinking.

I do GIS analysis for a living. I have worked for the government and contributed on teams that built models for disease spread. Due to asymptomatic spread of this virus we never would have gotten it under control.

Here’s the thing we still to this day don’t know the true R-naught of COVID, because of Asymptomatic spread. We also don’t know the true mortality rate because of this, just a case fatality rate (CFR). Side note: Recently the CDC itself made a sensational claim that the Delta variant is more contagious than Chicken Pox to try and scare people into getting vaccinated which is just absurd misinformation (because chicken pox actually hangs in the air for hours). One of the justifications I saw for this claim was asymptomatic spread.

We have estimates for R-naught. However, every model I have seen, even with aggressive measure, would have never stopped the spread.

You don’t have to take my word for it though. Here is a medical research paper on Asymptomatic spread with modeling for herd immunity.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/9/e2019716118.full.pdf

“Our finding that many individuals were already infected by March 1 is consistent with earlier estimates that community transmission began in February in New York City (27, 55, 66).”

So from the article spread was already happening in New York well before March 1, in order for us to have had success like South Korea we would of had to go into quarantine on Jan 20, 2020 after the first USA case was confirmed. As you said one country can’t do the heavy lifting so the whole world would of had to do the same.

“In conclusion, explicit consideration of changes in testing capacity allows us to infer with certainty, from case and serology data, that most new COVID-19 cases do not become symptomatic.”

Now watch the below animated maps of the spread and keep in mind Asymptomatic spread while you are watching.

Mapping the COVID-19 pandemic

First, I appreciate the response and as a fellow GIS’er, I am excited to know we have another here in the community!

On the vaccine front, I think there is a disconnect in messaging and interpretation of that messaging nation-wide and probably world-wide. The vaccine and the statistical analysis provided was for the ordinal strain. So, when a Fauci makes a claim, I am assuming he is talking about the vaccine in relation to the original, not the variants. The timeline for all of this is pretty important because we are living though a fast passed changing dynamic. So, what is said one day can change based on new information. Is that frustrating? Absolutely. Is it also understandable? Absolutely. I personally am not one to latch onto something that was said and hold it as a truth in perpetuity, because the dynamic is changing with a high degree of pace. It’s likely that the statement was true at that point in time.

The vaccines did seemingly slow the spread at the onset before variants took hold (I haven’t seen a causality analysis though), but when paired with the clinical trial data showing a 90% reduction in chance of getting the original virus when exposed, this theory seems to hold some weight. To your point about breakthrough cases, I would be interested in seeing what percentage of breakthroughs cause by the original virus occurred amongst those vaccinated. If that percentage was around 10% then I wouldn’t be surprised given the data from the clinical trials. I suspect we won’t have that day though, because it will be intermixed with people who had variant strains, unless we are able to establish a clear timeline for when variants started hitting (which, like the original itself, will likely have been before the first large scale documentation of cases). One would expect that a great proportion of those breakthroughs would be from the variants because the vaccine was not developed for them specifically.

I cannot respond to the other parts of your post at the moment because I have to get going. Will try later.

 

[Xerloris]

I get vaccines and I am pro vaccine but this vaccine just seems strange to me. They developed a vaccine in like 8 months for a virus that has a 99.8% survival rate and are pushing people to take it like they nobodies business. Frankly it comes off as creepy and cult like how hard people are pushing the vaccine.

 

[AjaxManifesto]

This is very interesting. Israel seems way ahead of the curve on data collection and analysis. You would think the CDC would be putting more effort into this.

 

[Blueston]

Read THIS article for an idea of how time was saved without cutting corners.

I already explained that "long term safety data" is functionally scaled to a few months for vaccines, not to years. The vaccine itself degrades in the body fairly quickly. It's not present in the body even a month, much less multiple years, down the line to cause future complications. Nor will the immune system spontaneously start doing something different (besides, perhaps, having its effectiveness wane) many months/years down the line in response to a stimulus that's no longer there.

We are 5+ billion doses given into this thing, with about 375 million of those being given in the USA, and the first doses were given to people (in testing trials) about a year and a half ago. We have the long term safety data.


The timeline is because of how our immune response works. The delivery system itself (active, inactive, mRNA, whatever) is relatively meaningless. You introduce the foreign substance to the body, the immune response begins, the substance quickly degrades...and that's it. All that's left is the continuation of the immune response, and that's something we understand both the timing and the mechanism of very well.

If you're asking if there is anything about an mRNA delivery system that suggests there might be cause for concern extending well beyond the usual established timeline, or that might significantly alter the usual immune response timeline in some way, and the answer is no...no, there is not.


[Edited: My apologies. - EB]

I've already addressed a lot of these statements, but suffice to say that I think your underlying premise here has some faults.

If you built a bridge and told me it was safe, and I told you that a bridge had never been built in this spot before so we have no idea if it is safe, and that I wasn't going to use that bridge until there was some "long term safety data" to prove that it was, how would you respond as an engineer?

You would probably have quite a few reasons for believing it to be safe based on your knowledge of how the bridge was specifically constructed, your understanding of the underlying theories supporting those choices, and your general expertise in the field...and you would almost certainly be right. But you would still be unable to satisfy my relatively ignorant and misguided demand for "long term data" that doesn't exist and doesn't prove...well, much of anything, really. No expert would justify his opinion that a bridge was sound/safe solely on whether or not it was still standing a few years later. They would confidently formulate that opinion up front before they ever let people on the darn thing based upon their knowledge of a whole host of relevant factors specific to the situation.


I know that the answer is irrelevant if your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid (regardless of how small) is a lot higher than your risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from the vaccine. To the best of my knowledge, there has been a literal handful of deaths directly linked to the Covid vaccine thus far (from J&J blood clots) after billions of doses given. Compare that to 4.5+ million deaths from Coronavirus out of millions of confirmed cases...

Just how bad are these potential "future safety issues," in your mind, to be an alternative that you fear more than the reality you are actually facing?

Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful post. 100%.

 

[Blueston]

This is very interesting. Israel seems way ahead of the curve on data collection and analysis. You would think the CDC would be putting more effort into this.

Israel is ahead of curve bc they cut deal with Pfizer. They basically jumped line to get doses for everyone in exchange for giving Pfizer full access to all data on this. Has been quite illuminating as we can all see so much of what they have found.

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Two evolutionary biologists weighing in. I've been listening to these two for a while. Agree or disagree, just food for thought.




COVID lockdowns and work from home has opened my eyes to a lot of stuff on the internet (most good, some bad, some informative, and some just plain silly). It's still far better than the garbage on TV.

 

[Celtic Note]

Two evolutionary biologists weighing in. I've been listening to these two for a while. Agree or disagree, just food for thought.



COVID lockdowns and work from home has opened my eyes to a lot of stuff on the internet (most good, some bad, some informative, and some just plain silly). It's still far better than the garbage on TV.

A summary of claims:
- Fauci is responsible at some level for the existence of COVID. (Evidence not provided)
- You can only belong two two camps. One is that the virus is not really a big deal and doesn’t need to be taken seriously or that it is incredibly serious to the point it has been blown out of proportion. Both camps are said to be wrong. Actual discussion on why by the podcasters is minimal.
- We haven’t communicated that Vitamin D is a great preventative measure (I personally have heard about this plenty both directly related to COVID and in relation to general immune system defense - any decent primary care doctor shares this info with their patients) and we haven’t told people that going outside is important (not sure about the other states but during lockdown in Illinois there was frequent communication that contradicts this statement).

 

[AjaxManifesto]

A summary of claims:
- Fauci is responsible at some level for the existence of COVID. (Evidence not provided)
- You can only belong two two camps. One is that the virus is not really a big deal and doesn’t need to be taken seriously or that it is incredibly serious to the point it has been blown out of proportion. Both camps are said to be wrong. Actual discussion on why by the podcasters is minimal.
- We haven’t communicated that Vitamin D is a great preventative measure (I personally have heard about this plenty both directly related to COVID and in relation to general immune system defense - any decent primary care doctor shares this info with their patients) and we haven’t told people that going outside is important (not sure about the other states but during lockdown in Illinois there was frequent communication that contradicts this statement).

You went from A to Z, but they didn't. As I understand it Fauci funneled money from NIH to EcoHealth Alliance (Dr. Daszek). EcoHealth Alliance then funded research at the Wuhan where it is suspected that this all began. There are released e-mails that I haven't gone through that suggest that Fauci, Daszek, and others were worried about their funding links to Wuhan.

They mention two camps at the extreme ends of the spectrum on this. Granted, there may be other dimensions and not just a linear spectrum. I think they are correct to present the argument as such since these seem to be the primary poles to which people tend to gravitate IMO.

Please see what is happening in other countries with respect to draconian lockdown measures. Specifically, Canada, NZ, Australia, UK, France, etc. The most drastic I'm watching are regions of Australia. Some crazy stuff. There are plenty of videos of people being arrested in many countries for simply getting fresh air when their governments instructed them to stay inside. Is COVID just floating in the air? I always get a laugh when I see people all by themselves driving or walking with a mask on. They've been frightened by the media and their government in an unhelpful way. Fresh air and exercise are good. I rarely hear that from Fauci and the CDC. "Get the Vax and Wear a Mask" seems to be >95% of their messaging on this.


BTW: I'm still waiting for you to further explain the two opportunities to nip this in the bud and rid ourselves of COVID forever. It seemed to end when you suggested that we didn't lockdown hard enough early last year and then didn't get vaccinated fast enough and in enough numbers earlier this year.