Covid-19 News

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    Nature papers are written 6 months ago. This is as outdated as the stocks rating of yesterday. So simply of no value at all.



    Thanks! Now you confirm that vaccine protection is just 50%. And according Pfizer it goes down 6%/month...

    W - some adice - your ratio of truth to false statements on this thread is so low that I now reckon by default that if i have not checked something, and you say it is true, that makes it most likely false.


    I'm sure you are not fearmongering, or behaving as a spin doctor, to use FM1s terms?


    • Protection against asymptomatic infection (relevant to reducing R number) is 50%.
    • Protection against serious disease or hospitalisation is better than 90%.
    • I'm sure you remember that, but the way you said it made it sound as though you were forgetting the type of protection more important personally for individuals!


    Nature papers are written 6 months ago. This is as outdated as the stocks rating of yesterday. So simply no value at all.


    That is false: as you would know had you bothered to read it? Since you do not, I expect, read your own sources - certainly you don't post them - you should at least read mine. The figure captioned Delta's rise in Indonesia shows a graph ending July 1st 2021. So it can be at most 5 weeks old. That figure is referred to, with months, many times in the text.


    According to Pfizer it goes down 6% / month


    That I believe is false, if by it you mean efficacy (and anyway which efficacy - against infection, hospitalisation, death?). Maybe the neutralising antibodies go down 6%/month? However the relationship between antibody level and efficacy is not simple see

    Neutralizing antibody levels are highly predictive of immune protection from symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection - Nature Medicine
    Estimates of the levels of neutralizing antibodies necessary for protection against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 or severe COVID-19 are a fraction of the mean level…
    www.nature.com


    Anyway I don't think we know how the efficacy against delta changes over time yet with any great accuracy, but I'd be interested in your source for this - from which we might be able to work out something. I would not be surprised if efficacy did decrease significantly ater 12 months...

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Just as a matter of interest - what agenda do you think CDC has other than keeping people safe from disease?

    Similarly, why would the EPA managers not want to ensure the public is safeguarded from potentially harmful chemicals coming to market? Why, why why?


    Whistleblowers Expose Corruption in EPA Chemical Safety Office
    EPA managers removed information about the risks posed by dozens of chemicals, according to whistleblowers.
    theintercept.com


    MANAGERS AND CAREER STAFF in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention tampered with the assessments of dozens of chemicals to make them appear safer, according to four scientists who work at the agency. The whistleblowers, whose jobs involve identifying the potential harms posed by new chemicals, provided The Intercept with detailed evidence of pressure within the agency to minimize or remove evidence of potential adverse effects of the chemicals, including neurological effects, birth defects, and cancer.

    Quote from ZenoOfElea

    And meanwhile, immunocompromised people, for whom vaccines don’t generate much immunity, are desperately waiting for herd immunity. I have no way to comfort my rightfully outraged transplant patients who contracted COVID-19 after isolating for over a year and getting fully vaccinated as soon as they could. With angry tears, these patients tell me it’s not fair that there are people who are choosing to endanger both themselves and the vulnerable people around them.

    Here's a reality check for that doctor, from a more enlightened perspective.


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    Quote from Mark U

    Similarly, why would the EPA managers not want to ensure the public is safeguarded from potentially harmful chemicals coming to market? Why, why why?


    https://theintercept.com/2021/…orruption-whistleblowers/


    MANAGERS AND CAREER STAFF in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention tampered with the assessments of dozens of chemicals to make them appear safer, according to four scientists who work at the agency. The whistleblowers, whose jobs involve identifying the potential harms posed by new chemicals, provided The Intercept with detailed evidence of pressure within the agency to minimize or remove evidence of potential adverse effects of the chemicals, including neurological effects, birth defects, and cancer.

    Thanks Mark that is a great example of something I linked about earlier


    As Dr Morris explained: "The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is as soon as it's disproven, you move the goalpost."


    We were talking about what agenda CDC might have - since FM1 thought they had one?


    I'd love to explore your EPA conspiracy stuff too but let's stick to the topic of this thread, and CDC?

    Quote from Mark U

    Here's a reality check for that doctor, from a more enlightened perspective.


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    Yes, but...

    Half-truths are more dangerous than lies.


    if you had argued that vaccination did not make you safe - I'd agree.


    However I posted earlier today the best data we have so far on delta variant which is that the vaccines in the UK provide 50% protection against even asymptomatic infection. From which you'd expect to be significantly safer if the people around you were vaccinated. in addition that 50% means that we will get to herd immunity from natural infection more easily.


    As Jed pointed out (and I knew) herd immunity is a rather vague term. We have R very nearly equal to 1 here in the UK - which might seem close to herd immunity, but in reality it may not feel like that with COVID endemic for a long time, especially because natural immunity will probably decrease over time, in which case true herd immunity (R << 1) will be maybe be impossible to achieve. I think that is what Pollard meant. (You also have the fact that R will go up in the Autumn when schools are back, and again with cold weather due to people being inside more).


    But half a glass is better than none! So 50% efficacy is better than no vaccine, if considering epidemic spread.

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    Laughable, laughable, laughable, laughable, laughable, laughable, laughable, laughable, laughable


    wasn't it 99% protection a few days ago???????????????


    And tomorrow with teh true Israel data...

    I think you are not keeping up with the details:


    the number depends on whether this is:

    original COVID

    alpha variant

    delta variant


    it also depends on whether you are protected from:

    asymptomatic infection

    symptomatic infection

    serious or hospitalised infection

    death


    That is 12 separate numbers.

    The delta data is less certain but the UK has been all delta for a while, and was sequencing a lot before that, so we have early versions of these numbers already. Our first vaccinated were 2nd dose in February (I think) so we cannot test long time from vaccination response.


    In addition maybe the protection varies with time from last dose, and also time between doses. There is some idea that (as in UK) long time between doses provide better protection (there is some lab measurement support). In addition it will provide more recent protection. So Israel is hitting getting close to a year from second dose for some, with two doses close together, and will probably be doing less well than the UK. But we still have incomplete data.


    These details are fascinating and I hope you can be as interested in them as I am. Or maybe, since you have decided for some strange reason not to be vaccinated, it is less interesting to you.

    Here are two magazine articles about people who resist COVID vaccinations. These are terribly depressing:


    In Alabama and Louisiana, partisan opposition to vaccine surges alongside Delta variant
    Many people are turning down Covid vaccines because they are angry that President Donald Trump lost the election and sick of Democrats thinking they know…
    www.politico.com


    ‘What’s Covid?’ Why People at America’s Hardest-Partying Lake Are Not About to Get Vaccinated
    At the Lake of the Ozarks, vaccines are shunned, masks are mocked and the long-term consequences take a back seat to the time at hand.
    www.politico.com


    It is hard to see how this can be overcome. It seems to me there are two main causes:


    1. The GOP and other right wing groups are promoting opposition to the vaccine and other public health measures. You see many comments in the above articles confirming that. You see it in public opinion polls like this one:



    2. The Dunning Kruger effect. Stupid people who know nothing about science think they know more than doctors and public health workers. We have seen many examples here, such as this comment from Mark U., which sticks in my mind:


    Personally I'll take a few thousand live viruses to do battle with my capable nasal mucosa rather than have tens of trillions of altered RNA bits wrapped in high tech slippery fats and stabilizers, injected directly into my tissue, blood and lymphatic systems, that coopts my body to produce a toxic protein that my body may not properly associate with a foreign, real virus.


    Any junior-high school kid who has taken biology and reads the newspaper would see this is nonsense. Clearly, Mark U. has no training in science, and no ability to separate fact from fiction. Normally, such ignorance is harmless. It makes no difference that 25% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. Unfortunately, in this case, Mark U. and the others are betting their health and their lives on nonsense, and ignoring pleas from doctors. They are endangering themselves, their families, and the rest of us.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    It makes no difference that 25% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.

    I should not single out Americans. People in all countries are about equally ignorant, as you see in this table:


    nsf.gov - S&E Indicators 2014 - Correct answers to factual knowledge questions in physical and biological sciences, by country/region: Most recent year - US National Science Foundation (NSF)


    It is widely believed that Japanese people are better educated than Americans. Perhaps that is true, but the difference is not large. I have been following Japanese mass media for a long time and that is my impression. The public seems ignorant. The Japanese National News TV (NHK) is of high quality, with factual, science based stories, similar to the BBC. I think it is better than most U.S. TV broadcasts, but I cannot judge, because I stopped watching U.S. TV about the time Walter Cronkite retired. *


    People have always been ignorant and ill educated. Perhaps that causes more harm today than it did in the past. Perhaps, as H. G. Wells put it: "Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have."


    Arthur Clarke felt that way. Certainly there are many examples of ignorance causing harm, such as people who want the schools to teach Creationism, or people who do not think vaccines work. But it seems to me that most of the harm is not caused by ordinary folks who happen to be ignorant, but rather by political leaders and influential journalists at places like Fox News. Most of these people are well educated. Some of them do know the facts, and they are lying. I know that many of them have been vaccinated, but they tell their followers COVID is not real and the vaccine does not work, and their followers applaud them the way they applauded Greene. I have the impression that some of the other educated people really are as stupid as they seem, and they believe COVID is not real, vaccines don't work, etc. I cannot read minds, but they seem sincere. Some of them have been hospitalized with COVID lately, and some have died, so they really have not been vaccinated, which proves they are idiots.


    The thing is, a person's intelligence is not one attribute. It is not uniform. It cannot be measured with one metric. The so-called IQ only measures a narrow aspect of intelligence. I have been working with ivy-league professionals, scientists, engineers, and other highly educated people all my life. I have met many who were very good at their own specialty, but they had no common sense, and they were dangerously stupid and ignorant of many things that I learned as a child. Many of their views are the kind of batshit nonsense Mark U. and others post here. Some are conservative, and some are liberal, but none of them "has enough sense to keep a ton of pig iron from floating out to sea," as one of Thomas Edison's associates said of Edison's staff. (Edison had some brilliant people working for him, but also a large collection of hapless imbeciles.)



    * Except for local news when something happens in Atlanta, and I can report the quality is abominable.

    Quote from RobertBryant

    Follow the $cience

    As a rule, EPA managers and other government researchers are not influenced by money. They cannot be. They would be found out, arrested, and imprisoned. They seldom even have an opportunity to be corrupted. Government and military purchasing agents may be corrupted by the huge sums they deal with because industry people will offer them kickbacks, but you could not get away with giving a kickback to someone at the EPA, the CDC or the Census Bureau (where my mother was a manager). Uncle Sam would find out. Those are upper middle class jobs. They pay well: $110,000 to $143,000. However, if someone slipped you a large sum of money under the table, like a million dollars, Uncle would notice. No manager would risk his or her career and retirement for some smaller sum, such as $100,000.


    Government researchers never get one dime from their discoveries, even when they develop profitable technology such as the internet. They know those are the rules, and they don't mind. As my mother said, these people are not in it for the money; they want to do the science. To put it unkindly, they are nerds. Most of them could get paid a lot more in private industry.


    $143,000 is a lot of money, after all. It is not as if they are ascetics. But instead of pursuing large fortunes, they seek recognition in other ways, such as becoming Fellows of The American Statistical Association.


    Naomi D. Rothwell - Wikipedia

    Quote from Seatrout

    As its the only deceitful way they can continue to deceive,

    hollywood.nasa,navy, news groups ect.

    like you don't know already jed.

    No, I have no idea what you are talking about. Let me again ask: Who are you talking about? Who deletes data? What data -- about COVID, or cold fusion, or upcoming Hollywood movies?


    I suppose they might delete data in Hollywood. I wouldn't know about that. But they are in the business of creating and maintaining illusion, after all. The information they have is inconsequential in any case, and much of it is bunk, so who cares if they delete it?

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