2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)

[Silvanus]

How many kids do you need in a study to say it's enough?

"Enough" to... change public health policy, which could potentially affect millions of peoples' health? A hell of a lot more, I'd imagine. But I leave the minutiae up to experts, which you don't seem happy to do, considering you're ignoring your own study's researcher calling for a high level of caution when reopening.

OMG!!! It went up ONE case per 100,000 over 30 days. And the margin for error is?

This is a prime example of your shoddy analysis of studies.

Firstly: it rose from 11/100,000 to 12.8 between day +4 and day +20 after physical reopening. So that's 1.8, not 1.

Secondly: that followed a downward trend before reopening, of 0.5% daily. So if you're looking for the impact of reopening, you can't just look at the increase from day +4, because that would be assuming a static starting position. Reopening both arrested a downward trend and caused an increase.

Thirdly, the statistical significance threshold is 0.05, as mentioned clearly in the article. So the results are clearly more than statistically significant.

Fourthly, a question. If teaching in-person represents no significant increased risk, as you claim, then... why is the rate for counties teaching remotely massively lower than counties teaching physically throughout the entire timescale? That'd be the green line. It's over 10/100,000 lower.

So the one thing you "got" me on is that after schools reopened is that cases went up 1 extra case per 100,000 that was over 30 days. How about all those other things I said like long-term immunity and reinfections, the variants [...]

No, it didn't. These are all still characterised by unknowns. We don't know the length of immunity; we don't know if other variants may be resistant to our current vaccines, or more transmissable, etc etc. How on earth could you have been proven right about long-term immunity when we haven't reached the long-term yet?

You're just willing to gamble on it.

Then, why is my hit rate on what I have said so very high?

Lols.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

First of all, Vitamin D supposedly lowers severity of infections not rate of infections. Your poor writing there makes it hard to tell which you mean. Second of all, the flu vaccine is vastly superior for preventing the flu to Vitamin D boosters. While efficacy varies between 10-60% year on year (influenced by factors like whether they've matched the correct virus strain and measuring against any flu like symptom occurring after vaccination as opposed to actual diagnosed flu) that's still infinitely better then the actual 0% prevention rate that Vitamin D has.

There's studies out there showing vitamin d prevents more flu than the vaccines like the meta-analysis mentioned in the following article

Vitamin D pills 'could stop colds or flu'

Food should be fortified with the vitamin for improved health, researchers claim.

www.bbc.com

Vitamin D helps fend off flu, asthma attacks: study

In a study of Japanese schoolchildren, vitamin D supplements taken during the winter and early spring helped prevent seasonal flu and asthma attacks.

www.reuters.com

Does that make vitamin d unequivocally better than the vaccine? No. Does it show vitamin d prevents some flu infections? Yes. It does seem much more effective against influenza A though.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

"Enough" to... change public health policy, which could potentially affect millions of peoples' health? A hell of a lot more, I'd imagine. But I leave the minutiae up to experts, which you don't seem happy to do, considering you're ignoring your own study's researcher calling for a high level of caution when reopening.

Florida schools were open all school year and Florida's deaths per capita is better than average. Schools were open across many parts of the country and across many parts of the world. If you think the data is not there, then the data will never be there for you. Schools being open was literally less dangerous this school year than any other because the flu was gone and kids definitely kill more kids spreading the flu and indirectly kill more people spreading the flu than covid. I guess schools are now a thing of the past, it's too dangerous to ever put kids in schools again!!!

 

[Phoenixmgs]

This is a prime example of your shoddy analysis of studies.

Firstly: it rose from 11/100,000 to 12.8 between day +4 and day +20 after physical reopening. So that's 1.8, not 1.

Secondly: that followed a downward trend before reopening, of 0.5% daily. So if you're looking for the impact of reopening, you can't just look at the increase from day +4, because that would be assuming a static starting position. Reopening both arrested a downward trend and caused an increase.

Thirdly, the statistical significance threshold is 0.05, as mentioned clearly in the article. So the results are clearly more than statistically significant.

Fourthly, a question. If teaching in-person represents no significant increased risk, as you claim, then... why is the rate for counties teaching remotely massively lower than counties teaching physically throughout the entire timescale? That'd be the green line. It's over 10/100,000 lower.

Oh No!!!!! Not 1.8.

Seriously, you're arguing that it went down before reopening?!?!?! Whether we are at -10 days or -1 day or -30 days before the school opened, kids were home already. I bet the trend mirrored the current community trend at the time (which is why the remote also trended down cuz that was merely community transmission dropping). It's not like kids had school at -11 days, we sent them home and saw a downward trend. The point is that at one point in time when kids were home it was basically the same as when kids were in school. And this 1 case (sorry, 1.8) difference is well within the realm of randomness just accounting for the change. Sure the P value is statistically significant but the change in cases was barely noticeable.

Children learning remotely most likely have the benefit of at least one parent not needing to work while also being kept in the house from other activities just like the study stated:
A limitation of the study is that some parents opted not to send their children to physical learning. A possible confounder for increased infections with physical learning might be that it allowed parents to go to work, which may increase infections in children.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

No, it didn't. These are all still characterised by unknowns. We don't know the length of immunity; we don't know if other variants may be resistant to our current vaccines, or more transmissable, etc etc. How on earth could you have been proven right about long-term immunity when we haven't reached the long-term yet?

You're just willing to gamble on it.

We know the length is far more than 3 months that was initially reported by the fear-mongering media. We know that B/T cell immunity is NOT FADING. There is literally not one bit of information pointing immunity not being long lasting. If immunity was so short-lived, where are the reinfections at?

- There's even doctors predicting life-long immunity like Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease physician and professor at the University of California.
- Public Health England study found that less than 1% of 6,614 healthcare workers who had Covid-19 developed a reinfection within five months—even though many of them work with Covid patients.

Opinion | Herd Immunity Is Near, Despite Fauci’s Denial

His estimate that it’ll take a 70% to 85% vaccination rate ignores those who have already been infected.

www.wsj.com

If all these variants are gonna fuck up immunity, then why do the vaccines work against all of them? You form CD8 cells across 52 different pieces of the spike protein of covid so if you have a couple/several mutations, you're plenty good still. It's likely to be an impossibility that covid could even escape immunity, things can only mutate so much.

I also said how getting covid off surfaces is extremely unlikely and now this article.

COVID-19 rarely spreads through surfaces. So why are we still deep cleaning?

The coronavirus behind the pandemic can linger on doorknobs and other surfaces, but these aren’t a major source of infection.

www.nature.com

And how I said outdoor masking is so pointless and...
In Massachusetts, governor Charlie Baker has focused his latest round of rules on outdoor mask wearing — something that many experts have said is unlikely to help since the virus is extremely unlikely to be transmitted over distances outside. The British Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has deemed outdoor mask wearing of negligible benefit.

Skip the Useless Covid-19 Rules, Please

A tangle of recommendations — some not even helpful — is contributing to pandemic fatigue.

www.bloomberg.com

Yes, I'm willing on gambling on something that has almost 0 chance of happening. If I didn't do that, I'd never do anything but stay in my house. How did you do anything before the pandemic if you have such ridiculous risk standards? Did you drive to work before? Did you go to school (there could be a shooting, at least in America)? More healthy kids died in schools shootings per year than healthy kids have died from covid. 7 kids a year die as passengers in school buses and don't even look at the numbers when kids get off the bus because it jumps up to 19 deaths a year.

 

[Agema]

Which we know is wrong.

I trust SACN a great deal more than I trust you or your sources who turn out to be middling gerontologists running generic wellbeing websites.

The flu vaccine is very ineffective. There's tons of studies showing vitamin d supplements lower flu infections.

The flu vaccine has variable effectiveness, but 40-60% is commonly cited, and reductions in likelihood of needing intensive care in the order of 80%. I am not sure how Vit D can possibly be "six times" more effective than that, because it is literally impossible to protect 300% of people from influenza.

Furthermore, there have been quite a lot of studies done on vitamin D and influenza. The sum results suggests it is marginal: in fact, the flu vaccine is about six times more effective than vit D.

How the fuck is any of this "hindsight"?

I provided a very legit argument on why it shouldn't have been tested so early ahead of other treatments. Giving an antiviral in a hospital setting makes sense how? You should be doing that very early on. Remdesivir never showed any promise against other viruses in its history. Remdesivir is a "new" drug in the sense that it's never really been given to people outside of trials so its safety is rather unknown. Remdesivir is very expensive and the supply of it was low so you couldn't treat everyone with it in the period of time that would make sense (very early infection). You'd have to save it for the bad cases, but that means waiting which isn't good thing to do with an antiviral. There are plenty of other drugs and treatments that could be hypothesized to work from looking at similar diseases like SARS and MERS and organized pneumonia that would make much more sense to test on covid.

All of that was literally known about remdesivir before it was tested. I didn't know hindsight was using information previously available.

Firstly, you're sort of wrong about efficacy. Remdesivir was originally developed for Ebola, and was not ineffective - it was just much less effective than hoped and, more problematically in terms of approval, less effective than other treatments trialled around the same time. One of the stupid and hypocritical things is that you have claimed that HCQ and ivermectin were useful because of studies showing that in vitro they impaired viral replication as a key plank of their potential. Well, guess what: so, in vitro, is remdesivir (plus against SARS, numerous other coronaviruses, and many other viruses).

The second thing in terms of gross hypocrisy is to sit there advocating for HCQ and then ivermectin being handed out like candy on inadequate data, and then suddenly for remdesivir start getting incredibly nitpicky. Your argument there approximates to "It might not be useful for everyone, so no-one should have it". That logic approximates somewhere around bizarre and obscene.

"You'd have to save it for bad cases" is another error, as it fundamentally does not understand the studies done. Remdesivir's (observed) efficacy was increased by early administration, and I've already discussed all this but you do not fucking read an/or you do not fucking remember, and I cannot express just how utterly, utterly fucking annoying it to discuss with someone who is both profoundly ignorant about the topic and seemingly pays no attention to anything written to him.

They are a luxury when so many are dying in the present. And the doctors you keep calling "quacks" are 3 for 3 and batting 1.000.

You can be right on one thing and a quack in another. Isaac Newton was a brilliant physicist. He also believed drinking mercury was good for his health. Linus Pauling is one of the greatest scientists to have lived, and also believed in staggering Vit C crankery.

Where's the data you said you had that shows ivermectin doesn't work? Where's these unsupportive meta-analyses that I'm purposefully ignoring? Look how far back I have to go, I stay on point with my argument whereas you don't.

Jesus wept. Your inability to look up even basic information is staggering. There's a summary of some trials here, some clearly demonstrate no effect:

Table: Ivermectin Clinical Data | COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

Review clinical data on the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.

www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov

LMAO, in my world you have to prove unequivocally that giving something to kids will provide more benefit than harm.

So you fundamentally do not understand what a clinical trial does, then.

Learning remotely is not the same and not even possible in some fields. Also, are they gonna charge less for the semester?

Well they can withdraw from college, then.

These aren't children, they are young adults who pose significant risk of infection and can make their own choices in life. Colleges can decide that their students are not free to wander round campus spreading infections that are both a health risk to others and severely disrupting studies; remembering of course many older staff may be high risk, and any staff or students may live with high risk individuals. Bearing in mind vaccination or prior infection is not a 100% guarantee of preventing hospitalisation. One death is too many just because a dozen selfish twats think they shouldn't have to put up with a needle stuck in their arm. I understand that you don't give a shit because it won't be you dying, and other people are just expendable statistics. I just don't much respect that view.

That was the messaging about the lab theory a year ago, they wanted to make it look like it was literally impossible. Where's the CNN story about Rebekah Jones now? Funny how CNN ran with how Florida was fudging numbers and made her out to be some hero. Turns out it was all fraud.

Could not give a shit. Whining about CNN is supremely irrelevant.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I trust SACN a great deal more than I trust you or your sources who turn out to be middling gerontologists running generic wellbeing websites.

The flu vaccine has variable effectiveness, but 40-60% is commonly cited, and reductions in likelihood of needing intensive care in the order of 80%. I am not sure how Vit D can possibly be "six times" more effective than that, because it is literally impossible to protect 300% of people from influenza.

Furthermore, there have been quite a lot of studies done on vitamin D and influenza. The sum results suggests it is marginal: in fact, the flu vaccine is about six times more effective than vit D.

Here's a bunch of research in the UK about vitamin d showing it prevents infections. And a study found vitamin d six times more effective against influenza A than the vaccine. Also, the first study I saw that said vitamin d didn't help was a study where most of the participants weren't vitamin d deficient to begin with when the whole point is helping the very big chunk of people that are deficient.

Vitamin D pills 'could stop colds or flu'

Food should be fortified with the vitamin for improved health, researchers claim.

www.bbc.com

Firstly, you're sort of wrong about efficacy. Remdesivir was originally developed for Ebola, and was not ineffective - it was just much less effective than hoped and, more problematically in terms of approval, less effective than other treatments trialled around the same time. One of the stupid and hypocritical things is that you have claimed that HCQ and ivermectin were useful because of studies showing that in vitro they impaired viral replication as a key plank of their potential. Well, guess what: so, in vitro, is remdesivir (plus against SARS, numerous other coronaviruses, and many other viruses).

The second thing in terms of gross hypocrisy is to sit there advocating for HCQ and then ivermectin being handed out like candy on inadequate data, and then suddenly for remdesivir start getting incredibly nitpicky. Your argument there approximates to "It might not be useful for everyone, so no-one should have it". That logic approximates somewhere around bizarre and obscene.

"You'd have to save it for bad cases" is another error, as it fundamentally does not understand the studies done. Remdesivir's (observed) efficacy was increased by early administration, and I've already discussed all this but you do not fucking read an/or you do not fucking remember, and I cannot express just how utterly, utterly fucking annoying it to discuss with someone who is both profoundly ignorant about the topic and seemingly pays no attention to anything written to him.

If you would've just said most of this stuff to begin with, you would've saved both of us a lot of time. Remdesivir wasn't as bad a choice as I though then. However, not all of my points are as invalid as you make them seem. You're "early administration" and my "early administration" are very different. I don't find giving people in the hospital an anti-viral is "early administration", I consider early administration on 1st symptom onset or even earlier when there was a known exposure. People getting to the hospital are rather late in viral process. Sure I can say the virus is cleared by the time they get treated more often than you say. But even at best estimates, the immune system is almost done clearing the virus by the time remdesivir is given. You just can't give remdesivir on when it would possibly prove most useful because it is of limited supply (at least early on last year, probably still is), it's expensive, and it has to be administered at the hospital vs outpatient. And the safety profiles are much better and known for the other drugs than remdesivir.

You can be right on one thing and a quack in another. Isaac Newton was a brilliant physicist. He also believed drinking mercury was good for his health. Linus Pauling is one of the greatest scientists to have lived, and also believed in staggering Vit C crankery.

Kory has treated very similar conditions and has experience with them. He was called a "quack" for the 3 things he was right on already.

Jesus wept. Your inability to look up even basic information is staggering. There's a summary of some trials here, some clearly demonstrate no effect:

Table: Ivermectin Clinical Data | COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines

Review clinical data on the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.

www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov

And, that's a meta-analysis how? You promised a meta-analysis. You just gave me a chart of a bunch of poor trials from the looks of it and if I gave you the same thing in favor of something, you'd say it wasn't good data.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

So you fundamentally do not understand what a clinical trial does, then.

I do, but you'd have to have a trial of millions in kids to determine if there's a benefit or not (for vaccines) due to how little covid harms them in the first place. Doing a 10,000 kid study isn't gonna prove much of anything. A couple kids dying in a million to the vaccine would not be good but it would be amazing to an at risk covid group obviously.

Well they can withdraw from college, then.

These aren't children, they are young adults who pose significant risk of infection and can make their own choices in life. Colleges can decide that their students are not free to wander round campus spreading infections that are both a health risk to others and severely disrupting studies; remembering of course many older staff may be high risk, and any staff or students may live with high risk individuals. Bearing in mind vaccination or prior infection is not a 100% guarantee of preventing hospitalisation. One death is too many just because a dozen selfish twats think they shouldn't have to put up with a needle stuck in their arm. I understand that you don't give a shit because it won't be you dying, and other people are just expendable statistics. I just don't much respect that view.

Again, forcing something on anybody that only has emergency use authorization is not a good precedent at all. Students having to leave to a different college will have lost them both hard work and money. Also, why force people to get something that they don't need? I'd be perfectly fine with requiring immunity, let the person get a B/T cell test to show they are immune. Then, if they fail the test, the vaccine would be required. Why would you give someone a measles vaccine that already had measles?

The current huge downturn in cases is not just a result of vaccinations but also natural immunity. Those that did have it are protecting themselves and others around them just the same as a vaccinated person. Elevating one above the other doesn't make any sense.

 

[Agema]

Here's a bunch of research in the UK about vitamin d showing it prevents infections. And a study found vitamin d six times more effective against influenza A than the vaccine. Also, the first study I saw that said vitamin d didn't help was a study where most of the participants weren't vitamin d deficient to begin with when the whole point is helping the very big chunk of people that are deficient.

You really, really, really, suck at science.

That study does not compare vitamin D and vaccine, it compares vitamin D and placebo. It then references in the discussion the effectiveness of vitamin D from its study compared to some antiviral drugs from other papers. These antiviral drugs are not vaccines.

If you would've just said most of this stuff to begin with

I did say most of it. You just didn't pay much attention, and frankly, you should have bothered to find out before you started spouting.

Kory has treated very similar conditions and has experience with them. He was called a "quack" for the 3 things he was right on already.

Kory's statements and claims on ivermectin are currently in the realm of quackery. A man who testifies before the US Senate that ivermectin is "miraclulous" with no relevant evidence is hebaving like a crank. Simple as.

And, that's a meta-analysis how? You promised a meta-analysis. You just gave me a chart of a bunch of poor trials from the looks of it and if I gave you the same thing in favor of something, you'd say it wasn't good data.

I promised you nothing at all. I said you evidently can't or won't honestly or thoroughly look up things yourself and invited you, many times, to at least try.

It's a review of various studies, plenty of which are indeed poor studies, whether they show an effect or not. However, the likes of Kory and Lawrie conspicuously underplay the weakness of positive studies when trumpeting their case. That's a major reason we should be worried about them being cranks.

 

[Agema]

I do, but you'd have to have a trial of millions in kids to determine if there's a benefit or not (for vaccines)

No, you really don't. The problem you are having begins and ends in your lack of understanding of what's going on.

Again, forcing something on anybody

Again, nobody is having the vaccine forced on them.

Students having to leave to a different college will have lost them both hard work and money.

Well, that's just something they have to think about. College education in the USA is not a right, it's a privilege. It's a paid-for service with terms and conditions, and if people find the terms and conditions too distasteful, they would be best advised to find another education provider.

It's not like there's a shortage of people doing shitty, degrading jobs that they hate because the alternative is losing their house and starving, or many other tough decisions we have to make. This is life. Having to get a vaccine is, in the greater scheme of things, just about one of the smallest asks imaginable.

The current huge downturn in cases is not just a result of vaccinations but also natural immunity. Those that did have it are protecting themselves and others around them just the same as a vaccinated person. Elevating one above the other doesn't make any sense.

The more people vaccinated the better. We can see this in, for instance, measles following the MMR autism issue. So it is responsible societal behaviour to be vaccinated - for the good of everyone.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

You really, really, really, suck at science.

That study does not compare vitamin D and vaccine, it compares vitamin D and placebo. It then references in the discussion the effectiveness of vitamin D from its study compared to some antiviral drugs from other papers. These antiviral drugs are not vaccines.

And when you compare the study results to the effectiveness of the vaccine...

I did say most of it. You just didn't pay much attention, and frankly, you should have bothered to find out before you started spouting.

No, you really didn't or else I would've had a similar response already. And you still wave away all the very real downsides of the drug that make it rather impractical.

Kory's statements and claims on ivermectin are currently in the realm of quackery. A man who testifies before the US Senate that ivermectin is "miraclulous" with no relevant evidence is hebaving like a crank. Simple as.

There's the meta-analyses. He sounded like a quack before but wasn't. You act like he's some small town doctor but he's a very reputable doctor.

I promised you nothing at all. I said you evidently can't or won't honestly or thoroughly look up things yourself and invited you, many times, to at least try.

It's a review of various studies, plenty of which are indeed poor studies, whether they show an effect or not. However, the likes of Kory and Lawrie conspicuously underplay the weakness of positive studies when trumpeting their case. That's a major reason we should be worried about them being cranks.

You promised a meta-analysis, I literally quoted your post from about a month back. Since you're all into science and good studies and all that. Why are you linking to bad studies to prove your point? That's rather disingenuous. I thought there's good data showing ivermectin doesn't work?

When haven't you been accepting of Lawrie's analysis before? If Lawrie is so incompetent, why not question all her other work?

No, you really don't. The problem you are having begins and ends in your lack of understanding of what's going on.

Nope, actual doctors have said that.

Again, nobody is having the vaccine forced on them.

Well, that's just something they have to think about. College education in the USA is not a right, it's a privilege. It's a paid-for service with terms and conditions, and if people find the terms and conditions too distasteful, they would be best advised to find another education provider.

It's not like there's a shortage of people doing shitty, degrading jobs that they hate because the alternative is losing their house and starving, or many other tough decisions we have to make. This is life. Having to get a vaccine is, in the greater scheme of things, just about one of the smallest asks imaginable.

Again, yet...

Say a young women already had covid and is forced to get the vaccine and dies from the blood-clot side effect, why should that even be a thing that could happen even one time?

The more people vaccinated the better. We can see this in, for instance, measles following the MMR autism issue. So it is responsible societal behaviour to be vaccinated - for the good of everyone.

Again, you always wanna sidestep around my questions. If someone had measles already, why would you vaccinated them? It doesn't make sense much like it doesn't make sense to get a covid vaccine if you already had it.

 

[stroopwafel]

Again, yet...

Say a young women already had covid and is forced to get the vaccine and dies from the blood-clot side effect, why should that even be a thing that could happen even one time?

That is the one thing that irks me about mass vaccinations. The auto-immune reaction to the adenovirus vaccines isn't so rare that it doesn't lead to either death or a lifetime in a wheelchair for quite a few young, healthy people who would have had little to fear from coronavirus. If I take Agema's logic than this is a small price to pay so people drowning in their own body fat or who are otherwise very unhealthy reap the benefits of 'group immunity'(even if inflammation in body fat can render vaccines ineffective). Not saying everyone doesn't have a right to be protected; whether people are at risk of their own lifestyle choices, an underlying disease they had no control over or simply old age but the very least you can guarantee to people who have very low risk of the virus itself and who should get vaccinated out of a moral appeal to these people is that the vaccine in question is 100% safe. That 1 in 100k that gets the rare blood clotting issues, I guess they just die or become permanently disabled ''for the good of everyone'' then as Agema would put it.

From what I understand every scientist agrees on the fact that coronavirus is endemic at this point. This implicates repeat vaccinations for those most at risk so what is even the point of group immunity? No such thing is even possible with endemic viruses just look at flu or cold virus. You can vaccinate everybody and accept the pointless deaths from vaccine side effects but a year later you will have the exact same scenario. Just vaccinate the people who are at risk and anyone else who wants a vaccine and the hospitals will be empty and as such the need for lockdowns or any other draconian measures. Then they should invest more in preventative healthcare; promoting exercise, healthy diets, reducing fat/sugar intake etc. Make people less vulnerable and reduce the burden on healthcare. The most effective measures to make people fitter and more resilient to viruses don't even cost anything. No doubt with climate change, loss of biodiversity and poachers intruding more and more into wildlife and trading those animals on wet markets it's only a matter of time before some other virus rears it's ugly head. With or without covid or some other virus the collective burden on healthcare is becoming unsustainable anyway.

 

[Seanchaidh]

 

[Agema]

And when you compare the study results to the effectiveness of the vaccine...

The 'flu vaccine is 40-60% effective at preventing symptoms, up to 80% effective at preventing hospitalisation. We have those figures from many studies and effectively hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

That is a study of flu in ~300 children, suggesting a 42% reduction in observed symptoms. That would indicate an effectiveness at the lower end of the vaccine, which is a long, long way from the "six times more effective" you claimed.

Secondly, and as I am so incredibly bored of pointing out with regards to your hopeless inadequacy in reviewing science, it's just one study. There are literally dozens of studies. A lot of them find much less, or no effectiveness. The end result of meta-analysis, and I'm repeating myself here from months ago, is that it seems beneficial in cases of vitamin D deficiency. Like, the sort of levels where bone health is impaired because, as also covered, that's why panels like the UK SACN don't find sufficient grounds to increase their current vit D recommendations.

No, you really didn't or else I would've had a similar response already. And you still wave away all the very real downsides of the drug that make it rather impractical.

I have literally, multiple times, stated that remdesivir either probably doesn't work, or is at best very niche. This is by far the most important downside that really needs to be considered, and I have definitely not waved it away.

Can you please get that into your skull for once and thereby stop lying?

There's the meta-analyses. He sounded like a quack before but wasn't. You act like he's some small town doctor but he's a very reputable doctor.

And Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He also thought drinking mercury was good for him. Linus Pauling was one of the greatest chemists who ever lived, and took completely absurd quantities of vitamin C. Such is the world.

What meta-analyses, exactly? Have a read of:

Misleading clinical evidence and systematic reviews on ivermectin for COVID-19 | BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine

ebm.bmj.com

You promised a meta-analysis, I literally quoted your post from about a month back. Since you're all into science and good studies and all that. Why are you linking to bad studies to prove your point? That's rather disingenuous. I thought there's good data showing ivermectin doesn't work?

Not for the first time, you're trying the dishonest trick of reversing the burden of proof, assuming ivermectin's effiacy and demanding that it is proven not to be. This is not how it works.

The long and short of it is that there is a mass of often very poor studies with variable results. What Tess Lawrie and Pierre Kory did was to ignore quality control and uncritically accept studies even if they were inadequate, unsuitable for comparison, not peer-reviewed, etc. The best of these studies tend to the negative. But I don't think you should necessarily conflate "best of a generally bad lot" with "good".

Nope, actual doctors have said that.

Great. Then you agree with this doctor, then, that illness is caused by witches and demons, and they reproduce by turning themselves into women to steal men's sperm.

Stella Immanuel - the doctor behind unproven coronavirus cure claim

Stella Immanuel has caught the US president's attention for claiming hydroxychloroquine cures Covid-19.

www.bbc.co.uk

Say a young women already had covid and is forced to get the vaccine and dies from the blood-clot side effect, why should that even be a thing that could happen even one time?

Don't give her the AZ or J&J vaccine in the first place. Problem solved.

Again, you always wanna sidestep around my questions. If someone had measles already, why would you vaccinated them? It doesn't make sense much like it doesn't make sense to get a covid vaccine if you already had it.

All kids are supposed to be vaccinated against measles via the MMR vaccine as routine. Hence the problem with the autism scare, which dropped vaccination rates and led to more kids suffering measles, although thankfully not that many more deaths - at least in the West. Lack of vaccination elsewhere, deaths.

Most people don't need tetanus booster jabs, either. But they're advised to get them. Get vaccinated even if you've had it because the more protection the better.

For instance, I bet there will be a load of twats who had a cold and decided they had caught covid, and will therefore conclude they don't need the vaccine - when in fact they are still at risk. Managing public health also means managing the unhelpful and perverse attitudes within the general public, such as those repeatedly demonstrated in this and other threads by you and Stroopwafel. You are precisely why every i needs to be dotted and every t needs to be crossed.

 

[Agema]

That is the one thing that irks me about mass vaccinations. The auto-immune reaction to the adenovirus vaccines isn't so rare that it doesn't lead to either death or a lifetime in a wheelchair for quite a few young, healthy people who would have had little to fear from coronavirus. If I take Agema's logic than this is a small price to pay so people drowning in their own body fat or who are otherwise very unhealthy reap the benefits of 'group immunity'(even if inflammation in body fat can render vaccines ineffective).

If you want to give yourself a stroke, feel free. At the point you think you have a right to infect someone else with a potentially lethal disease, you can fuck right off.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

That is the one thing that irks me about mass vaccinations. The auto-immune reaction to the adenovirus vaccines isn't so rare that it doesn't lead to either death or a lifetime in a wheelchair for quite a few young, healthy people who would have had little to fear from coronavirus. If I take Agema's logic than this is a small price to pay so people drowning in their own body fat or who are otherwise very unhealthy reap the benefits of 'group immunity'(even if inflammation in body fat can render vaccines ineffective). Not saying everyone doesn't have a right to be protected; whether people are at risk of their own lifestyle choices, an underlying disease they had no control over or simply old age but the very least you can guarantee to people who have very low risk of the virus itself and who should get vaccinated out of a moral appeal to these people is that the vaccine in question is 100% safe. That 1 in 100k that gets the rare blood clotting issues, I guess they just die or become permanently disabled ''for the good of everyone'' then as Agema would put it.

From what I understand every scientist agrees on the fact that coronavirus is endemic at this point. This implicates repeat vaccinations for those most at risk so what is even the point of group immunity? No such thing is even possible with endemic viruses just look at flu or cold virus. You can vaccinate everybody and accept the pointless deaths from vaccine side effects but a year later you will have the exact same scenario. Just vaccinate the people who are at risk and anyone else who wants a vaccine and the hospitals will be empty and as such the need for lockdowns or any other draconian measures. Then they should invest more in preventative healthcare; promoting exercise, healthy diets, reducing fat/sugar intake etc. Make people less vulnerable and reduce the burden on healthcare. The most effective measures to make people fitter and more resilient to viruses don't even cost anything. No doubt with climate change, loss of biodiversity and poachers intruding more and more into wildlife and trading those animals on wet markets it's only a matter of time before some other virus rears it's ugly head. With or without covid or some other virus the collective burden on healthcare is becoming unsustainable anyway.

I obviously agree about not forcing people to due to many of those issues as people that were previously infected shouldn't get vaccinated, I don't think young kids should get vaccinated, and it should also be a choice as well. We'll have more than enough vaccinated and infected to reach herd immunity (we already have really) so it really doesn't matter. The shaming of people not getting vaccinated really needs to stopped. The current cases are already 10% of what the flu is during the middle of a flu season and the case fatality rate is down to where the flu is normally at.

I'm pretty sure no one thinks covid is endemic in the same sense as the flu or common cold, chicken pox is endemic as well. Everything is pointing at long-term immunity to covid, people that got SARS in 2003 are still immune and they are also immune covid as it confers immunity. The real test will be the fall, I think cases will go up a bit but we'll have so much vaccinated and immune that community transmission will be really low, not even close to a normal flu year even.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

The 'flu vaccine is 40-60% effective at preventing symptoms, up to 80% effective at preventing hospitalisation. We have those figures from many studies and effectively hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

That is a study of flu in ~300 children, suggesting a 42% reduction in observed symptoms. That would indicate an effectiveness at the lower end of the vaccine, which is a long, long way from the "six times more effective" you claimed.

Secondly, and as I am so incredibly bored of pointing out with regards to your hopeless inadequacy in reviewing science, it's just one study. There are literally dozens of studies. A lot of them find much less, or no effectiveness. The end result of meta-analysis, and I'm repeating myself here from months ago, is that it seems beneficial in cases of vitamin D deficiency. Like, the sort of levels where bone health is impaired because, as also covered, that's why panels like the UK SACN don't find sufficient grounds to increase their current vit D recommendations.

The Cochrane studies on flu vaccine effectiveness aren't anywhere near close to those figures and it looks at 50+ studies and 80,000+ people.

I have literally, multiple times, stated that remdesivir either probably doesn't work, or is at best very niche. This is by far the most important downside that really needs to be considered, and I have definitely not waved it away.

Can you please get that into your skull for once and thereby stop lying?

Again, my point was several things should've been considered due to all the negatives of remdesivir. Other more readily available drugs with better chances at working should've been considered before remdesivir.

And Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. He also thought drinking mercury was good for him. Linus Pauling was one of the greatest chemists who ever lived, and took completely absurd quantities of vitamin C. Such is the world.

What meta-analyses, exactly? Have a read of:

Misleading clinical evidence and systematic reviews on ivermectin for COVID-19 | BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine

ebm.bmj.com

So an opinion piece vs actual analysis?

Not for the first time, you're trying the dishonest trick of reversing the burden of proof, assuming ivermectin's effiacy and demanding that it is proven not to be. This is not how it works.

The long and short of it is that there is a mass of often very poor studies with variable results. What Tess Lawrie and Pierre Kory did was to ignore quality control and uncritically accept studies even if they were inadequate, unsuitable for comparison, not peer-reviewed, etc. The best of these studies tend to the negative. But I don't think you should necessarily conflate "best of a generally bad lot" with "good".

You started it by saying there were meta-analyses saying it wasn't effective. I'm asking you to prove your statement.

Great. Then you agree with this doctor, then, that illness is caused by witches and demons, and they reproduce by turning themselves into women to steal men's sperm.

Stella Immanuel - the doctor behind unproven coronavirus cure claim

Stella Immanuel has caught the US president's attention for claiming hydroxychloroquine cures Covid-19.

www.bbc.co.uk

I said doctors...

Don't give her the AZ or J&J vaccine in the first place. Problem solved.

And the heart inflammation side effect from the mRNA vaccines?

All kids are supposed to be vaccinated against measles via the MMR vaccine as routine. Hence the problem with the autism scare, which dropped vaccination rates and led to more kids suffering measles, although thankfully not that many more deaths - at least in the West. Lack of vaccination elsewhere, deaths.

Most people don't need tetanus booster jabs, either. But they're advised to get them. Get vaccinated even if you've had it because the more protection the better.

For instance, I bet there will be a load of twats who had a cold and decided they had caught covid, and will therefore conclude they don't need the vaccine - when in fact they are still at risk. Managing public health also means managing the unhelpful and perverse attitudes within the general public, such as those repeatedly demonstrated in this and other threads by you and Stroopwafel. You are precisely why every i needs to be dotted and every t needs to be crossed.

Why can't you just answer the question? You're just like Fauci avoiding the actual question. Would you vaccinate someone that already had measles?

I told you I'm fine with forcing immunity. If people prove they have antibodies or B/T cells for covid, then they shouldn't be forced to get the vaccine.

 

[Agema]

The Cochrane studies on flu vaccine effectiveness aren't anywhere near close to those figures and it looks at 50+ studies and 80,000+ people.

It helps if you can interpret scientific information.

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004876.pub4/full

"Older adults receiving the influenza vaccine may have a lower risk of influenza (from 6% to 2.4%), and probably have a lower risk of ILI [influenza-like illness] compared with those who do not receive a vaccination over the course of a single influenza season (from 6% to 3.5%) "

So, you can look at it as 3.6/6 = 60% reduction in influenza, or 2.5/6 = 42% reduction influenza-like illness. Which we might therefore call 40-60% effectiveness.

Again, my point was several things should've been considered due to all the negatives of remdesivir. Other more readily available drugs with better chances at working should've been considered before remdesivir.

This is completely irrational.

How does anyone know that a drug would have a better chance of working than remdesivir in the absence of any significant data to indicate any drug effectiveness? (Nor I suspect are you aware of the large and diverse range of drugs that have been tested against covid-19, most of which were tested and abandoned without any headlines.)

You started it by saying there were meta-analyses saying it wasn't effective. I'm asking you to prove your statement.

Exactly - I didn't promise you any, I told you to look for them. You can find a Cochrane report on the effectiveness of the flu vaccine when you want to, even if you are too incompetent to interpret it correctly. Therefore you can find meta-analyses of ivermectin and covid-19.

I said doctors...

Okay, so all we need to do is find another doctor who's said that, and you'll think it credible, then.

And the heart inflammation side effect from the mRNA vaccines?

If it occurs, is primarily in male adolescents. Which is handy, because the blood clots from the traditional vaccines occur in women. So traditional vectors for young men, and mRNA for yound women.

Why can't you just answer the question? You're just like Fauci avoiding the actual question. Would you vaccinate someone that already had measles?

Yes. Not least because this is overwhelmingly done via the MMR vaccine which also covers mumps and rubella, and chances are they haven't had all three.

I told you I'm fine with forcing immunity. If people prove they have antibodies or B/T cells for covid, then they shouldn't be forced to get the vaccine.

So what exactly is your weird objection to the vaccine, then? Contextually, you think billions of people should be taking drugs with adverse effects that you can't even demonstrate has any effectiveness at all. You constantly downplay the fact HCQ and ivermectin do, albeit rarely, generate severe adverse effects. And yet a very rare effect from a vaccine is reason it should not be used. So explain that to us, because it sounds kind of anti-vaxxer.

 

[stroopwafel]

If it occurs, is primarily in male adolescents. Which is handy, because the blood clots from the traditional vaccines occur in women. So traditional vectors for young men, and mRNA for yound women.

For someone who prescribes other people's reasoning as anti-scientific this conclusion seems awfully premature. There could be so many variables involved(from vaccine target audience to pre-existing conditions to genetic susceptibilities to age to specific allergies to environmental contributors etc) that pinning the side-effect of traditional and mRNA vaccines to just a chromosomal difference is woefully simplistic when you want to expose people to a potentially lethal or debilitating side-effect.

So what exactly is your weird objection to the vaccine, then? Contextually, you think billions of people should be taking drugs with adverse effects that you can't even demonstrate has any effectiveness at all. You constantly downplay the fact HCQ and ivermectin do, albeit rarely, generate severe adverse effects. And yet a very rare effect from a vaccine is reason it should not be used. So explain that to us, because it sounds kind of anti-vaxxer.

The difference is that the medication you list are given to people who are already sick, so the cost-benefit analysis carries a different weight than a vaccine given to healthy people who have very low risk of complications against the virus they are vaccinated for. Now you say you vaccinate for other people which, OK, is fair enough. But the very least they should be able to do then is guarantee the vaccine is 100% safe which it isn't. One in 100k is a small number but when you vaccinate tens of millions of people than suddenly it isn't, specifically with many potential fatalities going underreported. ''Anti-vaxxer'' implicates that you think vaccines are harmful or that they have a mind control chip from Bill Gates but no one put up such a nonsensical argument. Vaccines are highly effective in curtailing this pandemic and no one argues against their use only that they should be used responsibly and specifically. What point is there in vaccinating people who are at extremely low risk of complications from coronavirus and exposing them to potentially lethal side-effects when the people at high risk all have had their jab at this point? The amount of people who are very sick from covid in the hospitals is melting like snow in the sun.

You have yet to provide a counter-argument on the fact that since the coronavirus is endemic that there is very little reason to believe that covid will not be a seasonal recurrence like every other respiratory virus. What is even the point of ''herd immunity'' that lasts six months to a year and then it's back to square one. Has herd immunity ever been accomplished with flu or common cold? No, it's just a part of life like covid will be and for which those most at risk can now be immunized for. You want a situation with absolutely zero risk of covid deaths when it's a completely unrealistic expectation that isn't maintained for any other sickness, disease or virus. If you want people to be less vulnerable than first and foremost they should improve their general health.

 

[Agema]

For someone who prescribes other people's reasoning as anti-scientific this conclusion seems awfully premature. There could be so many variables involved(from vaccine target audience to pre-existing conditions to genetic susceptibilities to age to specific allergies to environmental contributors etc) that pinning the side-effect of traditional and mRNA vaccines to just a chromosomal difference is woefully simplistic when you want to expose people to a potentially lethal or debilitating side-effect.

Premature is an interesting term for you to use, seeing as no-one's yet identified whether mRNA vaccines even cause this inflammation: it's still under investigation. From early examination it seems to be in the order of a 1:million to 1:100,000 chance. Such rare events are extremely hard to tell from background noise. Mortality of course is even lower, as the vast majority of these myocarditis cases have been mild, so chance of death is likely to be 1-10% of vaccine-induced myocarditis cases.

So under current data, the mRNA vaccines are likely to kill less than one 13-17-year-old child per 10 million through myocarditis. Covid-19 kills them at a rate of ~1-5 per million. If we look at young adults (under 30), the covid-19 death rate becomes about 20 per million. Plus, of course, non-vaccinated people also are more likely to catch and spread the infection, incurring risk of additional casualties.

Similarly, we can talk about the chance of blood clots from the traditional vaccines; these are also reckoned very rare, ~1:100,000. However, contextually, the same expectation of blood clots as a complication of covid-19 is ten times higher: you're much less likely to get a blood clot from the vaccine than the disease.

So, this is sort of important when we considered "potentially lethal or debilitating side effects". It's all a roll of the dice, and any one individual is better off with the vaccine, and society as a whole is better off for the improved protection of the whole. So good citizens should go get their jabs. At the end, if people are using bogus arguments to persuade people (or themselves) out of vaccination it's anti-vaxxer territory, even if not as rampantly bonkers as weird microchip fantasies.

And I just totally bet that were we to drill down, reluctance to have a jab is rooted in all sorts of less-than-virtuous irrationalities: fear of needles, dislike of inconvenience, anti-establishmentarianism and suspicion of science / medicine, laziness, selfishness, etc. The rest is just rationalisaton.

The difference is that the medication you list are given to people who are already sick...

There writes a man who clearly hasn't been following the debate. Remember Trump, saying he was taking HCQ, months before he caught covid-19? I think you'll find they have explicitly been touted for prophylaxis or early in symptom development tfor prevention of worsening. And unlike the vaccine, have no proven efficacy. Never mind all the people who'll start taking them "to be on the safe side" if they catch a cold.

But again, it is fascinating to see people soil their smalls over extremely rare side effects to vaccines, and at the same time hand-wave away adverse effects to drugs with a similar or worse order of risk.