Covid-19 News

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Please do your damned homework. Every single source of information on influenza explains why the vaccine is not as effective as other vaccines. You ignore that, and ignore that, and ignore that, and you keep repeating the lies here about how that means other vaccines are equally ineffective.


    You should read our posts and try to remember what has been written in a post.


    I said many vaccines work fine. You say: Black & whihe: Vaccines work what is nonsense as a general conclusion.


    May be you once should try to read into the Gulf war mass vaccination program with up to 30 - many of them experimental - vaccines. More than 30'000 crippled US soldiers left behind...How many did suicide??

    Let me also say that people here who wish to make assertions that totally contrary to 200-year-old accepted scientific facts, and totally contrary to every single textbook and authoritative website, should at least be willing to admit they are in a minority. When Wyttenbach says I should look in a mirror he is saying that our views are equal, mirror images of one another. That we have equal credibility. Saying the very opposite of what all mainstream scientists claim is as plausible and should be as acceptable as agreeing with them. "A claim no longer needs to be believable. It simply needs to be made."


    That's not how things work. When you blurt out any bullshit that springs into your mind, you don't get a free pass. Saying X does not make it true. Saying that because influenza vaccines don't work well, that means other types don't either does not make that a fact. It makes you an ignorant fool.


    Let me again point out that the history of cold fusion shows above all that experts are right, that science works, and that ignorant fools who spout off nonsense contrary to established physics and experimentally proven facts are wrong. People think that cold fusion shows that the experts are wrong and you can't trust science. That is backwards. It is exact opposite of the truth. As Martin Fleischmann said, we are painfully conventional people. The nitwits at the Scientific American and at Wikipedia may be in the majority, as they claim. It is hard to know without a public opinion poll. But they have no scientific credibility. They are wrong, wrong, wrong. Science is not black and white. There is ambiguous data. There are countless unknowns, and I am sure there are many mistakes in the textbooks. But when people make claims contrary to the laws of thermodynamics, you can be sure they are wrong.

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    I said many vaccines work fine.


    No, you did not. You repeatedly pointed to influenza vaccines and lied about them, claiming their failure rate reflects on other types. And you lied about polio vaccines. If this is your version of "working fine" what would be a disaster?


    Quote from Wyttenbach

    May be you once should try to read into the Gulf war mass vaccination program with up to 30 - many of them experimental - vaccines.


    I don't believe your numbers. You probably made up that, too. But assuming for the sake of argument it is true, you are talking about "experimental vaccines." Experiments are experimental because they might fail. No one administers experimental vaccines until tens of thousands of volunteers are given the vaccine and the doctors are sure it is safe and effective. Also, steps taken in a war are often extreme, and would never be done in peacetime.


    Even with COVID-19 killing a thousand people a day, no pharma company would consider deploying a vaccine without extensive testing. No experimental vaccine will be administered to the general population. Only to volunteers. Volunteers who have been told the risks, and agreed to take them.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    That is for influenza. I do not think contact tracing and these other measures would work for influenza. It is too common, and spreads too easily. In the U.S. there are 9 to 45 million cases of influenza per year. It would be impossible to trace that many cases.


    Those recommendations do not apply to other diseases.


    So to you, contact tracing wouldn't have applied to an influenza pandemic as bad as the Spanish flu of 1918? Interesting.

    Also, I've heard that Cov-19 is more contagious than the average flu, and about on par with previous flu pandemics:

    https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-vs-flu.html


    PS The governor of Kansas is a Democrat, not a Republican.

    Quote from Mark U

    So to you, contact tracing wouldn't have applied to an influenza pandemic as bad as the Spanish flu of 1918? Interesting.


    Probably not. Within 6 weeks, it spread to such high levels, herd immunity followed. That is much faster than COVID-19. If COVID-19 were as contagious as that, we would probably have reached herd immunity with ~4 million dead by now. I do not think case tracing can work with very highly contagious, rapidly spreading disease. Death was also very quick. People showed the first flu symptoms in the morning and died by afternoon. Also, it affected mainly young people, who tend to be more mobile.


    Quote from Mark U

    Also, I've heard that Cov-19 is more contagious than the average flu, and about on par with previous flu pandemics:


    I doubt that. But if it is true, then evidently masks and social distancing are interrupting the contagination. Thank goodness! The 1918 epidemic was also reduced in some cities by the use of masks and social distancing. That is, by closing all movies theaters and restaurants, and holding all court cases outdoors.


    Real-time case tracing was not possible in 1918. They did not have computers. They did have quarantine, which was imposed successfully in some cases.


    There is no doubt you can break the chain of infection with COVID-19 with masks and distancing, and case tracing. They did it successfully in Italy, Japan, Korea and New York state. In places such as Georgia where there has been no effort by the government to do these things, infections are about 100 times higher.

    In Georgia, the governor and others are working as hard as they can to spread the disease. They don't see it that way, but the virus does! Also, they are doing all they can to keep the public from finding out what is happening. They have started charging news organizations ~$30,000 for information that is supposed to be free. They delay and delay handing it over, and when the finally do, they blot out all the numbers, so actually they are hiding everything. Like this:



    That is an actual document provided to the Atlanta Journal.


    This reminds me of the Soviet Army during the cold war. They invited U.S. observers to watch war game maneuvers. They gave the Americans binoculars with ordinary glass in them, no magnification. That's what I heard, anyway. It sounds like something the Russkies would do, my dad would say. (He was stationed in Russia during WWII.)

    Quote from JedRothwell

    But if it is true, then evidently masks and social distancing are interrupting the contagination.


    The initial slope of the COVID-19 infection curve, in March 2020, does resemble the 1918 curve. So maybe that is what happened?


    Here is a National Geographic article showing how some cities kept the 1918 epidemic at lower levels than others:

    How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic

    Social distancing isn’t a new idea—it saved thousands of American lives during the last great pandemic. Here's how it worked.

    https://www.nationalgeographic…flu-pandemic-coronavirus/


    Quote from JedRothwell

    Real-time case tracing was not possible in 1918. They did not have computers.


    They have been doing case tracing for slow moving epidemics since the 19th century. Especially for STDs. Also, they did a lot of epidemiology after the fact. That didn't prevent sickness or deaths at the time, but it gave the medical establishment more knowledge of disease, making it better able to cope with the next epidemic.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    how some cities kept the 1918 epidemic at lower levels than others:

    Georgia had 2.9 million in 1920... now the population is 10M +

    we are a lot more mobile nowadays amd more interconnected..

    and less compliant with government regulation

    who grows their own nowadays.. except for marijuana..

    I tried hydroponic lettuces.. the green caterpillars ate them all.


    Quote from JedRothwell

    No one administers experimental vaccines


    Hepatitis C vaccine is still not' working fine'... they gave up R&D.

    But its no big deal .. unless you are a small minority


    In Australia the HepC incidence is about 1%.... quite a few being IV druggies..

    One lady told me after her methadone dose.. she had liver cancer...due to HepC

    complained about the side effects of methadone.. and vaccines.,.. the government..the other druggies .. etc etc.


    in contrast to HepC the vaccines for shingles look 'pretty fine'.. "90% effective?"

    https://www.westmeadinstitute.…e-latest-shingles-vaccine


    and influenza vaccines are 'sort of fine.'..... at least better than Tamiflu.

    "VE against A(H3N2) viruses was 14% (95% confidence interval [CI]−14% to 36%) for adults ≥65 years

    VE against A(H1N1)pdm09 was 49% (95% CI 22%-66%) for adults ≥65 years"

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p…ged%20%E2%89%A565%20years.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Real-time case tracing was not possible in 1918. They did not have computers. They did have quarantine, which was imposed successfully in some cases.


    The simple fact remains : In 2019, in the age of computers, and in full knowledge of what 20th century flu pandemics have wrought, the experts at the WHO said that the following were "Not recommended in any circumstances" for flu pandemics :


    "Contact tracing"

    "Quarantine of exposed individuals"

    "Entry and exit screening"

    "Border closing"


    Why such strong wording? What did they have in mind?


    Now with Covid-19 we are doing exactly the opposite, even when Covid-19 is about on par with the 1957 and 1968 flu pandemics and far less deadly than the 1918 flu pandemic.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Many conspiracy theories are based on the idea that anything any mainstream experts or institution claims is wrong by definition. Or it is a lie. If the experts say vaccines work, that is proof they do not work


    The modern popular rejection of experts is rooted in social factors that are real and need to be addresses. the neo-liberal "expert" consensus has not served many people well in two ways: those at the bottom have dome worse over time, with parents seeing children have less opportunity. And the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom has increased. High asset prices (vastly to the benefit of those with assets) are a political choice - not an economic necessity. They make this gap much harder to cross.


    Unfortunately this reality has turned into a rejection of those who are educated, experts, etc. Ironically, the core of this is perhaps a society in which intellectual education has been promoted at the expense of recognising worth in other occupations, caring, manual work, outdoor work of many different kinds.


    One aspect of this that could be corrected, but only with a more general change in remuneration, is the way that what is admired can be narrowed, so that academic achievement becomes so much more important than everything else. It is very bad for society.


    Still the counter-reaction - not believing what experts say - is even worse. If we can't trust people who have researched and spent much time studying matters, who do we trust? Gut feelings? Facebook disinformation? A popular internet sage whose expertise is in PR?


    It is obvious there are some things that are complex and can be naively argued both ways, where experts can understand (and argue, given enough time and education of those listening) that one is correct. Who has time to do this for all areas of expertise? Or even one?


    We need systems that allow experts to speak freely and have debates, where matters are uncertain, or even where they seem certain but there is a possible challenge. We need experts who as a whole are motivated to speak truth - to themselves, and to power. We need politicians who are prepared to have truth spoken to them, rather than view expert objections as a political opposition to be swept aside. That means a clear understanding on all sides of what is the science, and what is the political decision.


    Thus with COVID: the science is how many people die given specific actions. It is is uncertain, and changes. That uncertainty is the most difficult thing for scientists to communicate, a great example of this, and Herculean attempts to communicate the breadth but also the limits of uncertainty comes from the science on global warming.


    Quote from JedRothwell

    You need to be careful about throwing around terms such as "fake news." That is often used as a way to deny the facts, or flat out deny reality.


    It is so sad that now, in popular discourse, factual content has all become relative, a social artifact where what matters is only how you feel about something, and the people on your facebook feed who agree, not what is true. A real perversion of post-modern relativist ideas.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Showing that a technology or drug fails on rare occasions is not showing it does not work.


    In fact showing that things fail occasionally is exactly the tough work needed to quantify how well they work. If scientists claimed vaccines were 100% safe we would not trust them. When they publish study after study looking at various possible side effects and the evidence, quantifying their occurrence, we know they are doing the necessary work to know how safe vaccines are and more that this information is entirely open.


    THH


    Probably, Mark U, they had in mind exactly what many here argue even for the more severe COVID: that such measures are not very effective, and have unintended effects far worse than their benefits. Flu is a particular case where they seem to be totally ineffective.


    These judgments are complex, and doctors make such all the time: to perform an operation that may kill a patient because balance of risk is less; or vice versa. In this case though it seems pretty clear that you recommend measures that will vastly disrupt society only when they have some chance of working. It is also true that till China showed it could work, no-one really thought that shutdown and tracing would help with an easily spread respiratory virus. On the other hand, SARS and MERS have been kept under control for many years by contact tracing and localised shut-down. So it does sometimes work to benefit of all.


    It is so sad that you have this dark and paranoid view of medical expertise, joining dots to make a fearsome dragon, yet one whose actions are to you always inexplicable.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Still the counter-reaction - not believing what experts say - is even worse.


    To many "experts" are just called/named experts instantiated by the "ruling" mafia. Best example is Faucci that plays a nasty two sided game. A little bit disagree with the governments to gain public trust. But strictly doing what his mafia friends recommend - e.g. financing a Chinese lab to do stopped US research. Arresting Chinese researchers that work in the program under false pretext of stealing etc... Not recommending obviously working drugs in favor of not working ones of a mafia friend etc..


    Thus most experts are "soldiers" of the mafia that now rules mots western and eastern countries.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    the neo-liberal "expert" consensus has not served many people well in two ways: those at the bottom have dome worse over time, with parents seeing children have less opportunity. And the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom has increased.


    Your view seems to chime with the current Internet articles based on the new book by Michael Sandel - such as this one from the Guardian.


    A revolt against the tyranny of merit.

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