That's a disguising lie, on par with Nazi lies, or Putin's.
This thread has degenerated so far: and is now almost entirely conspiracy theories and politics.
A shame.
It also highlights the role of health-food entangled web sites like TSN whose journalists peddle antivaxxer misinformation, providing journalistic bias that pretends to be scientific analysis. I don't like the dishonesty.
Long haulers battling hair loss due to COVID
I have hair loss. Does that mean I've got long COVID?
long COVID solved
A study has found fragments of RNA from SARS-CoV-2 in patients’ stools up to 7 months after their COVID-19 diagnosis.
The presence of viral RNA in the samples correlated with gastrointestinal symptoms, such as abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting as well as runny nose, headache, and body aches.
This study was unable to provide direct evidence of active viral infection, but other lines of evidence suggest that it may occur.
This data is certainly interesting - but one thing the last two years has taught anyone of sense who has been paying attention is that initial indications do not always pan out, and one study does not a summer make.
Anyway, in this case, if covid remains alive somewhere in the body for 7 months the solution here must go with understanding how that is happening.
And it is a big if, as the text above says.
How do you know I was asking indignantly, as a matter of fact I was asking a simple question. The president is promoting a drug that just might increase the spread thru relapse. Seems pretty stupid to me
That is true of all antibacterial and antiviral drugs.
Methinks thou dost protest too much. And involving politics just prevents anyone from the US acting in other than a partisan way on this question. Leave off it.
Display MoreTHH is not to be outdone by the ambitions of the new Ministry of Truth in the US.
Thank goodness we are about to be saved from mis and dis information.
Then there is the matter of that pesky Eudravigilance database, which reports the following for the EU (and which also incorporates UK data I think).
To give the above numbers some connection to real human experience, one could check out any number of websites such as https://www.realnotrare.com
Mark - do you really believe this? No - of course you don't. Eudravigilance is the EU equivalent of VAERS.
Remember the VAERS issues - settled ages ago when I linked proper analysis which blew out of the water the fake multipliers used by the antivaxxers (they were provably fake). Well, surprise, surprise, the EU has a similar system that allows every event that might be an adverse reaction to be reported.
Basically, that means every serious illness which is not open and shut some obvious other cause. Heart disease - is it the vaccine, or just... heart disease. People with no cardiac history die of heart attacks all the time.
Have you looked at the background death rate expected from the 440 million EU population and worked out how many deaths or serious events you would expect? No - of course not - the antivaxxers do not do this, because it proves uncomfortable to their case. If you take 3 vaccine doses and a 4 weeks window after each one you expect to have 12 weeks/80 years * 440 million = 440*0.2/80 million ~ 1 million deaths that could be vaccine-related because of temporal coincidence. Just because people die. Of course only a few of those get reported - the problems is that many more get reported for a new vaccine than for a very old well understood vaccine.
VAERs, and its EU equivalent - are uniquely inaccurate ways to measure the level of adverse reactions, because they depend on the reporting level which can be either over or under the real level of adverse events. For new vaccines - it will be higher. Interestingly in the US high VAERS spike are correlated with legal cases involving vaccines...
Whether somone reports a probably not related death to VAERS, or eudravigilance, is uniquely sensitive to how they feel about vaccine safety and of course the rate will be higher for any less well established vaccine.
Which is as it should be.
Unfortunately the antivaxxers - I use this term advisedly as a deep insult, and am happy to apply it to those here who deliberately pay no attention to repeated clear explanations (from me and many others) of why these antivaxxers memes are disinformation - abuse this data and get believed by those emotionally wired to doubt mainstream science - or indeed mainstream anything.
Social media users have claimed a European database of suspected adverse drug reactions has revealed tens of thousands of people have died as a result of COVID-19 vaccines. However, this is a misrepresentation of what the database is and what it shows.
Hundreds of people have engaged with memes online that claim to show results of a report on the Eudravigilance database, which covers the European Economic Area (EEA) – and is the European equivalent of Britain’s Yellow Card scheme.
One meme, posted to Facebook on Oct. 27, claims Eudravigilance shows COVID-19 vaccines caused 2.5 million “injuries”, more than 27,000 of which were fatal (here).
Another from Nov. 1 claimed COVID-19 vaccine injuries had risen to 2.6 million, while deaths climbed above 28,000 (here). A third from Nov. 11 said injuries rose another 100,000, while deaths topped 29,000 (here).
Many of these claims come from Health Impact News, a website that describes itself as publishing stories “the mainstream media seldom covers”. It regularly posts pieces that criticise COVID-19 vaccines, along with claims that figures provided by the EudraVigilance database are confirmed adverse reactions to the shots (here).
Reuters presented the claims to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which said: “The data circulating in many articles and social media posts are incorrect.”
Medicines regulatory authorities and pharmaceutical companies across the EEA are required to submit reports of suspected adverse reactions to Eudravigilance from their respective member states (here).
The database emphasizes that each report describes an effect that happened either “following administration of, or treatment with, a medicine”. This is not confirmation of a causal link between the two (here and here).
“The collection of all reports of suspected adverse drug reactions is one of the pillars of the EU safety monitoring system,” the EMA told Reuters by email. “Spontaneous reporting serves as a tool to detect unusual or unexpected issues related to the use of a vaccine which may require further investigation and risk assessment.
“Reports of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) alone are rarely sufficient to prove that a certain suspected reaction has been caused by a specific medicine, i.e. a COVID-19 vaccine. EMA’s detailed assessments take into account all available data from all sources (clinical trials, medical literature, observational studies, etc.) to draw a robust conclusion on the safety of the vaccine.
“For most medicines and vaccines, the vast majority of suspected side effects are not eventually confirmed as side effects. For cases with fatal outcome, it is difficult to state with certainty the real cause of death even if all data, including autopsy results, are available. Please note that it is not EMA’s role to adjudicate the cause of death.”
If I spend little time on this thread it is because only maybe 5 people other than me contribute here on the topic of vaccines, and most of them are died in the wool antivaxxers. Whether uninterested in science, unable to process anything anyone else argues, and therefore uniquely likely to go down rabbit holes, or just very easily deceived, it makes little difference. They will not benefit from clear logical explanations, however clear or compelling.
So it is an exercise in futility to attempt to address falsehoods - much as I have a very strong motivation to do that.
THH
But just in February, the DailyMail reported that COVID-19 vaccine injury claims were approaching 110 million pounds with up to 920 vaccine injury compensation applications. So just in two months, those claims have risen by another 280 severe injuries or death claims. The DailyMail is British-owned and is the highest circulated news in the UK.
God help us if folks in the US view the Daily Mail as the main vehicle of unbiassed news coverage in the UK!
The Independent is better, but still not great:
However you might want to try, for more factual reporting in the UK, the Times:
which comes out best of all the major UK broadsheets for factual reporting.
THH
Whether they realized it or not, their model implies a granularity or variation in the electric fields around the proton. How else can you have discrete charges of opposite sign. A similar effect can be seen in the model for the deuteron that appears on this site, and so on up the periodic table. That granularity could allow alpha particles to stick together long enough for lenr to take place, and forms the basis for consideration of Papp's engine.
I won't comment on Papp's engine. Others have, and the evidence for anything unusual is not strong.
However - variation in electric fields around nuclei that affects fusion cross-section:
This is well known, and that makes for example d+d fusion easier than p+p fusion. In fact the influence of neutrons in nuclei on cross-sections is complex (not just due to anisotropic electric fields) and the topic of a lot of diverse research:
I don't claim much expertise with this stuff, but from a cursory google you would needs to review several 100 papers 9or else find a well-focussed review) to know what work has been done.
Now - you are going further than filed anisotropy due to discrete neutrons and protons, and asking what is the additional anisotropy due to the fact that the fundamental constituents on nuclei are quarks.
Here is a good lay-person's intro to the interior parton model of the proton, and the deep inelastic scattering data that provides experimental evidence for this:
Also relevant is measurements of the diameter of the proton - where an old apparent discrepancy between muonic and regular hydrogen proton diameters has been shown not correct by better measurements: a good Quanta Magazine (a good level for me to find out initially about stuff I don't know) artice is here
The review of possible stimulation mechanisms of LENR (low energy nuclear reaction) is represented. We have concluded that transmutation of nuclei at low energies and excess heat are possible in the framework of the modern physical theory - the universal resonance synchronization principle [1] and based on its different enhancement mechanisms of reaction rates are responsible for these processes [2]. The excitation and ionization of atoms may play role as a trigger for LENR. Superlow energy of external fields may stimulate LENR [3]. Investigation of this phenomenon requires knowledge of different branches of science: nuclear and atomic physics, chemistry and electrochemistry, condensed matter and solid state physics,... The results of this research field can provide a new source of energy, substances and technologies. The puzzle of poor reproducibility of experimental data is due to the fact that LENR occurs in open systems and it is extremely sensitive to parameters of external fields and systems. Classical reproducibility principle should be reconsidered for LENR experiments. Poor reproducibility and unexplained results do not means that the experiment is wrong.
What I object to in this is the idea that for LENR uniquely we should abandon ideas about the importance of reproducibility, and the fact that unexplained and irreproducible results mean things not understood - they do not mean "new physics is here" nor do they mean "highly speculative effects in old physics are here". The whole point about highly speculative things is you have lots of them, and mostly they do not pan out.
Theories which are descriptive with no predictive power have no place in physics. Literally. They do not help us understand the world.
At best such a descriptive theory can motivate efforts to find some real predictive theory underlying the phenomena. Which has been the case for LENR. But as yet no predictive theory exists.
For example, if NAEs cause LENR then there should be certain clear switches - across all experiments - that can be used to eliminate observed effects. My view is that the whole corpus of results so far (without very large pruning) is too subject to error for that effect to be seen, because of many experiments showing false positives. But if I'm wrong, then the absence of reliable "off switches" shows that whatever is going on is not even slightly understood. If I'm right, that unreliability means we have first to consider false positives as a most likely explanation for any apparently strange result.
these are old arguments that can never be resolved.
That is my point - the above paragraph is saying - don't worry about finding something definite - abandon normal standards for what is a physical theory.
I see no reason for such a step - and anyway it is a policy for never understanding LENR, if indeed there is some new effect.
So - to be positive - what would help?
I see stuff about NAEs, electron shielding, quasiparticles that allow greatly increased reaction rates, all as proper real mechanisms that can be quantified and investigated.
Quite a lot of work has been done on electron shielding. Specific quantitative analysis of both QM coherence effects and (related) quasiparticle effects could move things on, if there is some real effect here. The magnitude of effects could be bounded, or related to other parameters that are measurable.
For nuclear reaction rates as claimed in the best experiments we have filters to do with lack of ionising reaction products, and rate of reaction.
All of that work is real LENR investigation. And it is what those interested in LENR should be looking to, not excusing the lack of.
THH
Display MoreFrom the study:
"An increase of over 25% was detected in both call types during January–May 2021, compared with the years 2019–2020"
If I read you right, you are saying that COVID induced heart attacks, and myocarditis (often confused with ACS according to the study) happen later after initial infection, than those caused by the vaccine, and the study did not take that into account?
But if so, I would say that the study used the pre-vaccine years 2019-2020 as a baseline to compare with the vaccine year 2021. Any such lag in onset of heart troubles would therefore have been accounted for.
Shane, I am (as is often the case) saying something more nuanced than what you read.
Luckily - heart problems are a very well know side effect of the mRNA vaccines (at least) as well as of COVID, so there will be lots of people analysing the data and determining risks in different ways for various subgroups. This analysis does not contribute to that, however it does deserve further investigation.
Using a unique dataset from Israel National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) from 2019 to 2021, the study aims to evaluate the association between the volume of cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls in the 16–39-year-old population with potential factors including COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates. An increase of over 25% was detected in both call types during January–May 2021, compared with the years 2019–2020. Using Negative Binomial regression models, the weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group but were not with COVID-19 infection rates. While not establishing causal relationships, the findings raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side-effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals.
Looking at this paper, which shows something worth further study especially since the results are in line with other things we know, there is one caveat that weakens the conclusions, which they do not explicitly mention.
Cardiac emergencies are time correlated very closely (within a few days) to COVID vaccine injections (we know this).
They are correlated much less closely with case counts, because the time between COVID infection and a heart problem can be much longer, instead of a potential allergen peak over 48 hours or so, we have virus invading the body for a prolonged period.
These time series correlations are sensitive to time shifts - they have (I believe) not done an autoregression analysis to see how a time shifted version of the COVID incidence would fit heart admissions. So the comparison between COVID risk and vaccination risk cannot be established - and in any case could not be established in general, since it scales with the COVID incidence rate over this period. Israel was vaccinating the entire population, but only some fraction of that actually caught COVID.
Therefore I find the implicit comparison here misleading, if read as that. They do not (quite rightly) make any such comparison.
Chalking it up to coincidence, “Sometimes these things happen fortuitously, sometimes it’s the result of convergent evolution (when organisms evolve independently to have similar traits to adapt to their environment).” He went on a “quirky observation, but I wouldn’t call it a smoking gun because it’s too small.”
Moreover, a microbiologist at Reading University, Dr. Simon Clarke, suggested the finding wasn’t as rare as the study authors claim, telling the UK media, “…it’s an interesting coincidence but this surely entirely coincidental.” He makes this claim, declaring, “There can only be a certain number of [genetic combinations within] furin cleavage sites. They function like a lock and key in the cell, and the two only fit together in a limited number of combinations.”
Yet can these critics be 100% confident the study author’s conclusions are incorrect? What about the math behind the 1 in 3 million probability of a match argument
The math is that it is not 1 in 3,000,000 because not all DNA sequences are equally likely in a genome (by a very long way).
It is really difficult to know what is the real probability, because you need to look at how likely are subsequences etc, and also, for a cleavage site, you filter all that by sequences that actually work (a strong filter!).
You might better ask, what is that match behind the 1 in 3,000,000 figure?
The answer is, nothing correct!
Nobody can be 100% sure of anything in science. The question is whether particular data points you uniquely in one direction. Clarke here is saying that the data surely is not strong enough to point you in any direction. He is being sure about the lack of evidence from this analysis. That is not the same as saying there is guaranteed no connection.
Adam Schiff chairman of the Senate oversite committee on intelligence. Something he lacks. You talk of US politics but know little about it. Yes hux it's a joke just as Adam, I have evidence of trump being a Russian asset, Schiff is a joke and so is Russian misinformation. Calm down cowboy and have a nice cup of tea.
Maybe I should cry to the mods about you calling me an anti vaxer . Dish it out hux but you can't take it. From now on I'll just reply Russian asset to your posts
Trump is too narcissistic to be an asset to anyone. You could never know what he would do.
Sure, look at the context where I called you an antivaxxer you will find there were specific reasons. You keep on posting this one-sided proven false stuff from TSN. You know they are journalists with an agenda and no ability to scrutinise science from what has previously been posted here about their stuff.
As for Russian asset - glad you think I'm an asset - I do too. But I've no idea what Russian disinformation has to do with antivaxxers - except Putin spread a rumour Western vaccines were not reliable and then it bit him when no-one in Russia was prepared to take the Russian vaccine!
Putin is not my favourite person at the moment - for reasons any European would be very much aware of.
Huxley is a Russian asset filling this thread with misinformation. Adam Schiff has the evidence
Is this a joke, if not I'll ask the moderators to step in? (Perhaps they are Russian assets too?)
Who is Adam Schiff?
In much the same way, if you fail to take on faith the official lines on immigration, you are 'a fascist or racist'. If you don't want drag Queens playing women's football or sharing toilets with your daughters, then you are a 'homophobe'. These labels are intended to slur and intimidate anyone that refuses to bow before officialdom.
I realise the US has specific problems with politicisation of all discourse.
I think you are now guilty of generalisation - as (with some merit) you accused me above.
Sure, homophobe, fascist, racist are terms that have all been used as political catch-alls.
I'm not sure about fascist - but racism and homophobia are very well understood and natural human traits. Homophobia mostly from the fears of males (male fears related to sexuality are very common and well documented). Racism because skin color is a very strong and visible differentiator and humans (again this is well documented) very easily form in-groups, out-groups and react with hostility to the out-group members.
How much these two traits affect society now - well that is like how long is a bit of string and I'd only make teh (non-contentious in the UK) point that the US seems still very hung up on racism - perhaps understandably given the relatively recent history of race-linked slavery there.
Of course the modern slavery (related to sexual trafficking) we have now is not strongly black-white race linked and every bit as horrible - though in its horrible forms not quite as socially embedded as slavery was historically in the US.
THH
'Anti-Vaxxer' is the name given to anyone that isn't prepared to take on faith the medical propaganda handed down by their 'betters' in the political establishment. Given that this designation is handed out to anyone that refuses to prolate themselves, I think we can assume it is a coverall term for people who, in reality, have a lot of different opinions, outlooks and backgrounds, whose only common uniting factor is that they don't swallow official BS hook line and sinker. In much the same way, if you fail to take on faith the official lines on immigration, you are 'a fascist or racist'. If you don't want drag Queens playing women's football or sharing toilets with your daughters, then you are a 'homophobe'. These labels are intended to slur and intimidate anyone that refuses to bow before officialdom.
I don't known who it is that objects to animal vaccinations or what their reasons are. For all I know, this article is propaganda and what they are talking about never happened. But the arrogance of sluring people and grouping them because they don't tow the party line, is a good example of why many people hate the political left.
I have become jaded on this thread.
You are right in theory: every view can be accorded the same respect and considered on merits. Somone with views that vaccines are specially dangerous, based on poor and often fraudulent science (Andrew Wakefield the classic example) does not have to be grouped with all others having similar views.
Why the commonality? 99% of such opinion circulates on the internet, which as you know is an echo chamber for those with like-minded views based on shared experience (typically politics of one sort or another). The memes - and believe me on this thread I have spent 12 months of so dissecting them, are repetitive, and the signature of poorly referenced arguments, or arguments with bad maths (which I'm competent personally to detect) is notable.
Interestingly; associating those specific scientific view with political left or right is a new thing - and an interesting sociological study no doubt.
THH
As for what their opinions happen to be, I don't think you are in a position to be able to speak for all of them, or even tell me what percentage think one way or another. My GP told me quite bluntly at the height of this so called corona virus crisis, that mortality rates in our town were about the same as they had been for years. He was critical of the lock downs, because he believed that the isolation and forced changes would create an unprecedented mental health crisis. He was certainly right about that. I strongly suspect that lock downs had negative public health benefits overall. Many people put on weight, many developed mental health problems and the disruption to social life was extreme. Yet anyone questioning the lock downs at the time was considered to be an anarchist, a fascist, a scaremongering terrorist, etc.
You are I think forgetting that in matters of health we do not count all deaths equally. There is a proper argument about whether to lock down or not is best. You have not put the factors here into any balance - so until you attempt this I won't comment much. My (not very strong) view is that the type of disruption seen in Italy - where health services collapse - is overall worse than lockdown, but I agree it is arguable, and probably unknowable given that the future course of epidemics has that nasty exponential characteristic.
Governments have more immediate pressures. politically, arguments about what might be pale to nothing compared with the outcry for action when inaction leads to a health service being overwhelmed. That was, at the time likely given best available evidence, without lockdown,
Long-term harm? Yes - but we allow many things in society that have proven large long-term harm. For example, massive marketing of unhealthy foods, and a food production system that means those needing to eat cheaply must eat poorly. That kills many more people, and has bad effects on children. There are many other examples where we prioritise prevention of directly caused deaths over things that in a whole population are statistically certain to lead to poorer health outcomes.
I am not saying that I like this - I accept it is not easy to change the politics in a democratic country.
THH
Display MoreAnd at the extreme opposite of triumphant 21st century technology, we have the latest news from the Antivaxxer Death Cult Lunatics, which would be hilarious if it were not so disgusting:
Anti-vaxxers are furious that the Toronto Zoo is protecting hits animals with vaccines
https://www.blogto.com/city/20…ous-toronto-zoo-vaccines/
I kid you not. That's what it says.
You might think the antivaxxers would like this as reducing availability of vaccine for use in humans?
I guess that supposes rational thought, rather than what Freud called primary process thinking.
I am not prepared to draw any hard conclusions, precisely because I have not carried out a balanced and thorough investigation.
Just a point of logic.
In these matters with complex data and may possible mechanisms, even having done the most thorough possible balanced investigation, it may still be impossible to draw hard conclusions.
in fact that is sort of the case for most hot science topics.
There are new worrying reports on quite strongly increasing numbers of hepatitis in young children around the globe, majority reported from UK, but more and more from other countries as well. None of the kids had been exposed to the wellknown hepatitis viruses A,B,C,D,E it seems, but analysis did show presence of adenoviruses. All cases had one thing in common: all kids had Covid-19, and none got a vaccination... so some deeper investigation required on the accurate biological mechanism.
You can never be sure, but in the UK we think the most likely culprit is an adenovirus - either greater problems as a result of the lack of exposure during the lockdown - or possibly a variant.
Not sure about the significance of all having had covid-19 (if it is true) - since it went through schools and pretty well all had it. The antivaxxers muts be annoyed this mystery related to young children, they would otherwise no doubt blame it on covid vaccines...
There are lots of different types of adenovirus. One particular adenovirus called F41 was detected in around three-quarters of the children with confirmed hepatitis who were tested.
Health officials believe it's likely to be making a comeback after virtually disappearing during the first year of the pandemic due to reduced social mixing.
Its impact on young children, who did not come into contact with any of the normal viruses during lockdown when they were infants, could be behind the current surge.
Lab data from the NHS shows that common viruses are now circulating in children, particularly the under-fives, at a higher level than in previous years.
and
UKHSA says it is looking at previous Covid infections in the children affected as well as the possible emergence of a new variant of adenovirus.
It says it is continuing to investigate a wide range of other infections and causes.
Studies suggest small numbers of babies and children infected with Covid have needed treatment for hepatitis in other countries such as the US as well as Brazil and also India. In most of those cases, the patients recovered quickly and were discharged in days.
Display MoreGentlemen, mRNA vaccines are specifically designed to trigger an immune response that develops antibodies. That immune response is essentially an inflammatory response that will cause tissue damage. It is an inevitable side effect of how these things work and shouldn't surprise anyone. Some people will die as a direct result of taking the vaccine. It is inevitable.
Taking a vaccine is about trying to reduce total risk. You are reducing the risk of dying from a disease, but accept a certain risk of being damaged by the vaccine. What matters is that you reduce aggregate risk. Even though the vaccine has risks of its own, it is still worth taking if it reduces risk overall. In much the same way, seat belts reduce your risks of dying in a crash, but may impede your escape.
The reasons the coronavirus vaccines are controversial:
(1) Risk from COVID and risk from the vaccines will always be different for different people. For some people, the vaccine will carry a greater risk than the disease itself. To coerce people into taking it is immoral;
(2) The vaccine was developed in a hurry and there isn't good understanding of its long term health impacts. What if we discover in five years time that it has caused cardiovascular damage?
(3) The politics behind the whole corona virus issue is completely toxic. There is now a political divide between those of the right that are naturally sceptical of coerced medicine and those of the left, who tend to favour centralised control over personal freedom and want to force the vaccine on the people out of spite for daring to question their authority. Neither side is objective or rational.
(4) Yyou have corporate interests that have invested a fortune in developing the vaccine and want the biggest return possible. They will use financial leverage on politicians to sell as much vaccine as they can. They will suppress any reports of health consequences. They will attempt to demonise any opposing voice. They will use their influence to coerce compulsory vaccination, against the wishes and best interests of many people.
Good list Caliban,
I'd just make three minor qualifications:
(2) Cuts both ways. the long-term risks from covid are equally not well understood, so you can balance these against possible not understood long term risks from vaccines - the short-term risks after 12 months + of whole population rollout are now well understood.
(1) Not entirely immoral, for example childhood vaccines are worth some coercion because they reduce risk for all, even though when they work there is no risk for the unvaccinated...
(4) We have these corporate interests but governments and regulators have had a uniquely strong incentive to do whatever is most effective in stopping COVID as well as paying the minimum. So, for example, that argument can't simply be used to claim that wonderful repurposed antivirals are being suppressed, or having not enough large-scale trials. The level of regulatory captures is undoubtedly different in different countries, so you can get some idea of what is real from the variation in what countries do.
Governments now seem to me to be making slightly weird decisions - for example not investing much in newer vaccines and continuing with 4th (5th?) boosters) from vaccines designed for original COVID, a long way away from current COVID strains. Surely we should be pushing harder now for newer vaccines, against the possibility that a new and more serious COVID strain develops.
