Posts by JedRothwell

Quote from Mark U

I don't demand that my dentist be vaccinated, he doesn't demand that I be vaccinated

I sure as hell would demand that my dentist be vaccinated! If he told me he was not, I would cancel the appointment. I would never go to him again. In Georgia, doctors, nurses and dentists could get vaccinations in January. There is no excuse for any medical professional not to be vaccinated. A doctor who chooses not to be vaccinated is an ignorant fool who has no business practicing medicine. It would be like a surgeon who does not bother to wash his hands and put on scrubs, gloves and mask. Would you go to a surgeon who operates in his street clothes and bare hands, like the Eakins painting of the Gross Clinic? Would you really be that crazy?

(My dentist was vaccinated, so this is hypothetical.)

If I were a dentist, at this stage in the pandemic, I would refuse to see unvaccinated patients for routine cleaning. Only for medical emergencies. That is what my dentist did at the height of the pandemic. He put off appointments for a while.

Other doctors and hospitals last year made me take a COVID test, which seemed like a sensible thing to do. If a dentist demanded that an unvaccinated patient take a rapid test now, that would probably be a safe alternative. Either that, or the dentist wears complete PPE and charges extra.

A dental appointment is different from attending a university in person. You cannot get your teeth cleaned or other medical treatment except in person. And it is likely you will infect the dentist if you have the disease. It is much more dangerous than just being in a lecture hall with another student.

Quote from Mark U

An alternative? Why not simply use a waiver, like I had to sign at the dentist.

Do you mean a waiver that says, "I have not been vaccinated so it is my responsibility if I get sick"? That seems like a legally risky thing to do, given the alternative that you can ensure there will not be a single case by allowing only vaccinated students on campus. Also, that would not cover rare but possible breakthrough cases where a vaccinated student is infected by a non-vaccinated one. I just do not see why a university would take any legal risk -- or any moral risk! -- of allowing infections, when that can be totally avoided with a vaccine that we know for sure is 100% safe. The safest in the history of medicine, as you would expect from 21st Century technology.

To me, that would be letting students ride bicycles at high speed without helmets around the campus. Yes, you could get them to sign waivers, because unlike motorcycles, adult helmets are not legally required for bicycles. (Not in Georgia, anyway.) But anyone familiar with accident statistics will tell you that riding a bicycle at high speed without a helmet is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. If a student were to be seriously injured, crippled for life, or killed, how would the parents and students react? How would you, as an administrator feel? You have a piece of paper, so your school will not have to pay out millions of dollars. Okay, but was it worth it? Is there really any value to letting students risk their lives on campus in idiotic ways? Are you going to have another waiver for students who want to chug down a whole bottle of scotch, which is also likely to kill someone? It seems morally abhorrent to allow suicidal behavior on your property as long as you are absolved of paying money for the consequences. And make no mistake: not getting vaccinated is suicidal, even at a young age.

I do not see what the issue is here. Students can choose whether to get vaccinated or not. They can attend class either way. All universities now offer virtual attendance. So they are not missing anything, except the physical presence of their friends. It is their choice not to be vaccinated and not to attend. They cannot have it both ways.

Years ago, before fast internet was developed, banning students would have been an imposition. It would have meant they had to interrupt their education until after the pandemic. Now it just means they can't go into the building. I get that some students prefer actually being present. I probably would prefer that myself. But, it's a pandemic. A once-in-century disaster, like a war, only with more dead people. They are lucky they even have the choice of getting vaccinated or attending remotely. It seems to me they are asking for too much, and they want to have it both ways, when they say "no vaccine yet I get to come to class anyways." No, you don't. End of story. It is like demanding they let you come on campus naked, or drunk.

Quote from Fm1

It is muddled, I agree but I also don't think the courts will uphold any type of vaccine mandate for employment nor for a Covid passport, based on this muddled declaration

As I said, full approval will come soon, so this is a moot point. As a practical matter, ~1 billion of the mRNA vaccines have been given without a single confirmed serious adverse effect. Whereas close to 600,000 Americans have died from the disease. So, a court case or some sort of law that would prohibit universities, cruise ships, movie theaters and others from demanding a vaccine passport would be lunacy. Extreme lunacy -- an engraved invitation to sickness, death, and ruinous lawsuits from students who get sick.

What is the alternative? Stay home! Attend classes via the internet, as everyone did in 2020. You may not like it, but it is not a burden. No university is forcing any student to be vaccinated. That is NOT what is happening. They are only insisting that students who wish to attend in person be vaccinated. That is not coercion. It is not a "mandate" (as you call it). There is no mandate to attend classes in person any more, and I doubt there ever will be again.

You cannot take a virtual cruise on a cruise ship, so that is all or nothing. Either get vaccinated or don't go. But again, no one can call that coercion because not being allowed to take a cruise for a good reason is not a punishment.

Quote from Fm1

it is not legal to mandate an emergency use drug.

Are you sure about that? The article you quote above seems muddled to me. It is approved for use. Approved is approved, emergency or not. No doubt the vaccines will soon be fully approved on a non-emergency basis. So even if you are right, this will soon be a moot point.

Quote from Fm1

Government silence is a form of coercion! There are laws on the books against such actions!!!

More than 100 US colleges and universities are now requiring students to get Covid-19 vaccinations

Those colleges and universities would be crazy not to require this. They would be sued for huge sums of money when the students get sick or die, after vaccines are available and that can easily be prevented. It is inevitable that unvaccinated students will get sick.

The CDC wants cruise ships to only allow passengers with vaccination passports. The industry complains that the CDC regs are too complicated. The governor of Florida vows he will overrule the CDC and any cruise ship company that demands vaccination proof. He wants a law that says they are not allowed to ask for a vaccine passport. Question: Would you board a cruise ship knowing that some passengers may not have been vaccinated? I would say you are crazy if you would. COVID tests are not sufficient. In Japan they just conducted a test cruise with all passengers rapid-tested before boarding. The second day someone came down with COVID, and the rest of the cruise was cancelled.

The governor of Florida is always in favor of free enterprise and letting private property owners set their own rules, except when he is against it. He is always in favor of freedom of speech for corporations, except when he is against it.

This person says "We still believe that IVERMECTIN is SAVING INDIA." Nothing is saving India. The pandemic is out control, with exponential growth. The only thing that can possibly reduce the carnage in the short term would be universal masks and a strict lockdown. It is not possible to deploy the vaccines quickly enough to avoid hundreds of thousands more deaths. That is dreadful, but that's how things are. It should be a warning to all other countries, including the U.S. It should also tell anti-vaccine Death Cult lunatics how wrong they are, but nothing will disabuse them of their delusions.

It could be that ivermectin is effective, and the situation would be even worse without it. I do not know enough to judge. But to say that anything is "saving" India now is grotesque. If 379,000 new cases per day and 3,600 deaths is "saving" India, what would a catastrophe be like? Obviously, however good ivermectin may be, it is not good enough to stop mass deaths. Whereas it is 100% certain that vaccines would stop the pandemic, as you see in the UK and Israel. If 90% of the people in the world were vaccinated, the virus would go extinct in the human population. (It might infect people from some animal again in the future.)

Prophylaxis is never as good as a vaccine. The best treatment is never as good as prevention. And public health saves more lives than all the hospitals combined.

Here is an article for the layman explaining exponential decay in epidemics. I wish more people understood this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0…id-exponential-decay.html

The author describes how decay curves tend to be smoother than the exponential increase phase. Quote: "Fortunately, the exponential dynamics that lead to wild swings in case numbers when cases are high lead to far less dramatic swings when cases are low. And as more and more people are vaccinated, the swings will also shrink, since fewer people are susceptible to infection." She mentions Israel. The curves in Israel are a close match to her description:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/

Another version:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/israel

QUOTE:

"It is possible to bring Covid-19 case numbers down quickly via exponential decay even before vaccination rates reach herd immunity. We just need to keep transmission rates below the tipping point between exponential growth and exponential decay: where every person with Covid-19 infects fewer than one other person. Every single thing people can do to slow transmission helps — including wearing masks, getting tested and avoiding crowded indoor spaces — especially given concerns about current and future variants, since it could be what gets us past the threshold into exponential decay. . . ."

This is what you see in Japan. Vaccination rates are still low. The 4 peaks were caused by people slacking off on social distancing, masks, and voluntary partial lockdowns. The previous 3 peaks were brought down by the voluntary lockdowns, and the 4th one is starting to respond to the latest lockdown. Of course it is far better to use vaccination, but unfortunately the Japanese government has not been able to purchase large numbers of vaccines yet.

People who claim that masks, social distancing and (at last resort) lockdowns do not work should look closely at events in Japan. They are the most clear proof that these things work. The vaccines work far better, and they are a permanent solution, as you see in the data from the UK and Israel.

This is great stuff!

Quote from Navid

Why don't you mature your thinking - if we don't want a govt and want a free market - let's go there.

In a free market, people could decide to take IVM, or the V or nothing.

That is what we have! You have nothing to complain about. Everyone is free to take or not take the vaccine. Also, companies are free to ban people who do not take the vaccine, just as they are free to ban people who do not wear shoes.

Quote from Fm1

I made this point last august, targeting the s protein could lead to a vaccine resistant virus.

Well, that is not the problem the transgenic mice are suffering from. Which, so far, has not shown up in people.

Quote from Fm1

Wyttenbach has said the same thing.

Ah! Good. Excellent. So there is no problem. You can be sure that whatever Wyttenbach says is wrong.

Here is a fascinating look at the Pfizer production lines. Amazing! It looks a lot like a top-quality experiment. Which it is. See:

https://www.nytimes.com/intera…-coronavirus-vaccine.html

This has both text and short, high resolution video portions. It shows close-ups of the equipment. It briefly explains many of the steps in the processing. For example, it shows how the RNA is encased in lipids. For much more detail about that step, see:

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/1/65/htm

This will sound familiar to an experimentalist:

"A rack of 16 pumps precisely controls the flow of the mRNA and lipid solutions, then mixes them together to create lipid nanoparticles. . . .

Synchronizing eight pairs of pumps is not an ideal solution, but Pfizer engineers chose to scale up existing technology instead of trying to build a larger, unproven type of precision mixing device. . . ."

New York Times articles about the pandemic are not behind their paywall, so anyone can see this, I think.

Quote from Navid

It happens in humans.

There are many studies published on this.

No, it doesn't. What internet sewer did you dredge that from? The Journal of Imaginary Results?

Quote from Navid

This is heading to the biggest war crime in human history.

Paranoia strikes deep when you spend all your time in the Internet sewers. You should come up for air.

This is cute!

"If the COVID-19 Vaccines Interviewed for a Job"

Quote from Fm1

SARS-CoV-2 spike protein alone may cause lung damage

https://medicalxpress.com/news…ov-spike-protein-lung.amp

That could be bad news, because the mRNA vaccines produce only the spike protein. The assumption has been that the spike alone causes no harm.

It the spikes cause problems, it does not seem to happen often in humans. Hundreds of millions of people have been vaccinated. The problems described in this paper have not been reported as far as I know. Maybe it only happens with transgenic mice, the poor things. They are put upon from conception, with people messing with their genomes.

Quote from Fm1

The mRNA vaccine likely adopts a protein conformation that presents cross-reactive epitopes. This could be useful against emerging virus variants and suggests the antibodies produced could still be effective against them.

mRNA vaccines elicit a strong antibody response

That's good news. It seems to me, this report is saying that in some ways the vaccine antibodies are better than the ones from natural acquired immunity. I find that surprising, but perhaps the experts do not. I have read that doctors recommend you get the vaccine even if you previously got the disease. If there are any advantages to the vaccine antibodies, you get the best of both that way. That is the conclusion:

"Thus, vaccination induces a more robust antibody response, and even people who have been previously infected may benefit from the vaccine."

They also say that the vaccine helps relieve some of the long haul effects in some patients. That is excellent news!

Quote from Shane D.

I understand what you are saying, but speaking for myself, I am vaccinated and have no problem with being in the company of those who are not.

That depends on where you are. In a park or grocery store I would have no problem at all. Unless the grocery store was jammed with people, as some of our farmer's markets are on weekends. In an airplane or a movie theater, I would have a problem with unvaccinated people, especially if they did not wear masks.

The latest CDC recommendations may be a little too conservative, but they do show the vaccinated person in the green "safe" space in all situations.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru…singSaferActivities11.pdf

Quote from Shane D.

In order to convince a younger me to get jabbed, someone would have to give me a better reason than "you might get sick, and die if you don't". Do we have that reason?

No better reason exists! There is never any other reason to get a vaccination. If there were no chance of getting sick or dying, why would anyone get a vaccination? We don't vaccinate people for harmless bacteria and viruses. Your body is full of them.

Even if it were very unlikely you might die -- or even if we could rule that out -- "you might get sick" is a far more compelling reason than you seem to realize. There are degrees of sickness. A bad cold for a few days is one thing. A bad case of COVID is far worse. It makes you sleepless, unable to breathe, hallucinating, vomiting, with no sense of taste or smell . . . It may stay with you for months or years, in long-haul effects, leaving you unable to walk up a flight of steps, or work. In short, it may ruin your life.

Quote from Shane D.

People in the low risk group (<55, healthy) do not fear sickness, or death from COVID because the stats show them they don't have to. So why push, or coerce them to get vaccinated?

Oh yeah? You should check that. Try:

https://19andme.covid19.mathematica.org/

Input a 50 year old male in DeKalb county with no health problems living with 3 other people. Results:

County prevalence

We found data from DeKalb County, GA for your zip code. As of April 25, 2021 , this county had 1,155 new reported cases in the last 14 days and 57,257 total reported cases of COVID-19. Many people who contract COVID-19 are not tested, and therefore not reported. We estimate that your county has an under-reporting factor of 4.3x .

Taking into account the under-reporting factor and average time from symptom onset to recovery, we estimate that:

There are 5,014 total sick people distributed throughout the county, including those who are not officially reported.

1 in every 151 people in your county is currently infected with COVID-19. . . .

Risk of contracting COVID-19

Among people in your county who have behaviors and levels of interaction with others that are similar to yours, the estimated probability of catching COVID-19 through community transmission in a week is 0.04% . For comparison, 0.41% of Americans catch the flu every week during flu season.

Good to know that you wash your hands per CDC guidance. In general, hand washing reduces people's risk of being exposed to COVID-19 by 55% . Good to know that you wear personal protective equipment per CDC guidelines . In general, wearing personal protective equipment reduces people's risk of being exposed to COVID-19 by 68% .

Risk of adverse outcomes from COVID-19

Among people who are the same age, sex, and health status as you and get sick from COVID-19, the risk of hospitalization is 11% , the risk of requiring an ICU is 3.5% , and the risk of not surviving is 0.79% .

That's only a 2% chance in year but . . . would you frequent a fast food joint where 1 in 50 people who ate regularly there got severe food poisoning? Would you take an Uber where 1 in 50 passengers got into serious accidents? I sure wouldn't. If you do get sick, you may well be more miserable for longer than you have been in your life. That was my experience with pneumonia. I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. "The risk of hospitalization is 11%" means you will likely be at home, sleepless, hallucinating and suffering for weeks, but you may well end up in a hospital even worse off. Sleepless, suffering, with needles stuck into you. No contact with family members allowed. Terrible food. Ordinary ICU treatment, with no complications, can leave you debilitated for months.

It may not be terrifying, like getting severe cancer, but it is the most unpleasant thing you may ever experience. And for what? Why not ensure you will not get it, with a simple vaccine? Why risk giving it to other people, especially family members, who are in close quarters and most vulnerable? Apart from the pain and misery and danger, what about the money it costs you to be debilitated for weeks? Many thousands of dollars in medical expenses and lost work. You can avoid that with a zero cost vaccination that takes a half-hour. I cannot understand why any rational person would risk it. What benefit could there be to avoiding the vaccine? Are you afraid of a momentary pin-prick? Do you seriously think that after 530 million doses, there could be a significant problem?

This is very serious illness. It is often far worse than a typical cold or flu.

Quote from Shane D.

Were I younger, I would probably prefer to take the natural route (get exposed) and develop immunity that way.

Hey, well, if natural route is what you want, move to India. There is nothing more natural than crowding people two to a bed without enough oxygen to go around, and cremating bodies day and night. If you survive, you do get immunity, although the vaccine immunity is stronger.

The natural route is what I did when I was younger and in excellent health. There was no choice. The natural route for pneumonia is a week in the hospital followed by weeks of misery, coughing, and pleurisy, which feels like sandpaper in your chest every time you breath. Night and day. "Nothing to worry about!" -- the doctors say. "Go home. Take 4 ibuprofen every 4 hours." You would voluntarily subject yourself to that . . . because . . . why? Are you some sort of masochist?

The "natural route" for serious illness such as COVID and other pneumonia is what we had in 1918, and what they are going through in India now. It is to permanently destroy millions of lives and kill tens of millions of people.

No one is pushing or coercing anyone else to get vaccinated in the U.S. We are, however, insisting that after vaccines become available, if you don't want one, we don't want to be in the same store or movie theater or airplane with you. Go ahead and kill yourself, but do not endanger me. Breakthrough cases are rare and usually mild, but I don't want one.

Quote from Fm1

Vaccines take years to get to approval, this took months, long term safety is yet to be determined.

You are missing the point. Vaccine R&D projects take years because only a few people work on the project, and only a few thousand patients are enrolled in the double blind tests. This project had just about every qualified medical researcher on earth working on it, and 44,000 enrolled patients for just one of the vaccines. In terms of man hours of effort, this exceeded anything in history, including R&D projects that took decades. Nature reports that 4% of the world's research was devoted to COVID-19 last year, and more than 100,000 papers devoted to various aspects of it (not just the vaccine):

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03564-y

Long term safety of other mRNA vaccines for a few other diseases has been determined. They are very safe. Most problems occur in the first hours or days after vaccination. No trace of the vaccine mRNA is left in the body after a week. The only effects it has are producing lots of spike proteins, which are harmless. If the RNA or the spike proteins caused harm, then coronaviruses such as the common cold would probably all cause that same harm. They have the same RNA, and they make your cells produce far more spike proteins than the RNA from the vaccination does.

Of course the coronaviruses do cause harm, but not from the spike protein itself.

It has been a year since the first test patients were inoculated. I gather they are all being watched closely, to see if any problems develop, and to measure how many antibodies they still have. So far, so good. If there are problems, a year is probably long enough for it to emerge, I gather. As I said, most problems happen within hours or weeks.

Quote from Fm1

Still labeled experimental so again to get back to the point, you can't legally mandate anyone to take an emergency use drug.

There is no chance this vaccine will be legally mandated in the U.S. The right wing and the Death Cult fanatics would have conniptions, and they would prevent it. Eventually, the "emergency drug" status will change to "approved" (or whatever they call it). It will then be an ordinary drug like the flu vaccine. It may be needed on a regular basis. Unfortunately, booster shots and reformulations for variants may be needed. There are so many loony-toon Death Cult fanatics, I fear we may not reach herd immunity and the virus may be with us forever. We can thank the anti-science Death Cult lunatics for that. They want to kill hundreds of thousands more people to feed their own egos. Mission accomplished!

COVID risk score calculator:

https://19andme.covid19.mathematica.org/

I ran this a couple of times with varying parameters. It tells me that 2 doses of vaccine 2 weeks ago reduces the likelihood of disease by a factor of 20, which is the reported efficacy of the mRNA vaccines. No surprises there. It produces this grim paragraph:

"Risk of adverse outcomes from COVID-19

Among people who are the same age, sex, and health status as you and get sick from COVID-19, the risk of hospitalization is 16% , the risk of requiring an ICU is 4.5% , and the risk of not surviving is 2.6%."

It tells me that in my zip code:

1 in every 151 people in your county is currently infected with COVID-19.

In a group of 50 people, there is a 28% chance that at least one person has COVID-19.

I think that does not take into account the fact that many sick people are at home, suffering from the disease, so they will not be found in a randomly selected group of 50 people at a grocery store, for example.

It says:

"Risk of contracting COVID-19

Among people in your county who have behaviors and levels of interaction with others that are similar to yours, the estimated probability of catching COVID-19 through community transmission in a week is 0.01% . For comparison, 0.41% of Americans catch the flu every week during flu season.

Good to know that you wash your hands per CDC guidance. In general, hand washing reduces people's risk of being exposed to COVID-19 by 55% . Good to know that you wear personal protective equipment per CDC guidelines . In general, wearing personal protective equipment reduces people's risk of being exposed to COVID-19 by 68%"

Quote from Fm1

First paragraph, how would you know?

Many sources reported this. As I recall it was in the New York Times quoting various experts -- the usual suspects. The number of people in double blind tests for the Pfizer vax was 44,000. I think most double blind tests range from a few hundred in the first round, to a few thousand in the final round before approval. 44,000 is an astounding number. Many drugs are not administered to that many patients even after approval. That is why rare problems sometimes do not emerge until long after approval. There are not enough test cases.

It was somewhat easier to do a massive test for COVID-19 vaccines, because the disease was so widespread. By the summer of 2020, exposure and infection was likely to occur. You cannot test 44,000 patients for a cancer drug when only a few thousand people get that form of cancer.

Following that 44,000, we have 560 million doses actually given. That's orders of magnitude more doses than some drugs have for the life of the product. If there were any problems, they would be obvious. Plus, as I said, the follow up has been more rigorous than any vaccination campaign in history, thanks to modern data collection and processing. The capabilities of today's data systems are astounding. Nothing like them existed as recently as 2000.

44,000 reported here:

https://www.statnews.com/2021/…19-to-placebo-volunteers/

Quote from Fm1

2nd paragraph, bold and dangerous, and lacking in data.

560 million doses, with modern data tracking, is OCEANS more data than we have for most drugs. It is by far the largest data set of any medical study in history. Other aspects of the pandemic have also been tracked and measured in unprecedented detail. As I have mentioned, in Japan government databases listing every single patient in detail are available online to anyone. (The data is anonymous, but available in such detail you can sometimes figure out who the patient is, which has justifiably upset people. The data was adjusted after complaints emerged.) This kind of data also gave them the ability to do case tracking and warning exposed people to an extent that would have been impossible in any previous era. Their ability to do case tracking is one of the reasons Japan has 23 times fewer cases per capita than the U.S.