CNN Insider admits hyping death toll of Covid to drive ratings.

[Silvanus]

I do listen to people that know better than me. Are you gonna argue that you know better than Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Peter Hotez?

I'm going to argue that you're either not accurately representing what they're saying (in the case of Hotez), or you're focusing exclusively on a small number of doctors who you happen to agree with, rather than the broad consensus (in the case of Bhattacharya, the co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which was widely rejected by the medical and scientific communities).

But firstly, Hotez. Here's a selection of Hotez's words which specifically contradict positions you've taken;

We're learning that the length of protection is not as long as we had hoped. For instance, in Manaus, Brazil, where people got infected at a pretty high rate early on, we're already seeing pretty high rates of reinfection. How much of that is due to the new variant versus the immunity wearing off, we don't know.

I was hoping the protective immunity would last longer, but all we really can say for sure is about four or five months.

We have new estimates now from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, really looking at the number of deaths that are going to be projected to result from COVID-19. And they're pretty chilling numbers. And that says that unless we can get to 95% mask-wearing, we're looking at another 150,000 Americans who will lose their lives between now and a week or two after the inauguration. So we have the stunning number in a terrible way of 400,000 Americans losing their lives ... by a week or so after the inauguration. That's basically the number of American GIs who died in World War II. We're looking at those kinds of numbers. For me, the tragedy is none of those people have to die if we adhere to 95% mask-wearing — No.1.

The message is that we’ve been trying to appeal to younger adults and have them shelter away and do the social distancing and explaining why they’re at risk for transmitting the virus to vulnerable populations. Now it’s a direct message — your health is directly at risk. Now is the time to do that social distancing so we’re still seeing the panoramic views of Miami Beach and spring break so we’ve got to really hold that down to protect our health.

Huh! So, I guess the question should be, are you gonna argue that you know better than Dr. Peter Hotez?

...Or perhaps we shouldn't cherry-pick specific researchers that suit our own existing beliefs on the topic.

 

[Agema]

I do listen to people that know better than me. Are you gonna argue that you know better than Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Peter Hotez?

I know better than you, because I don't delude myself that three people who say what I want to hear are the final answer on the issue.

 

[Satinavian]

I can only speak for myself, but when asked if I'd be getting the Pfizer vaccine, my own words were "I'd rather have a COVID patient cough in my face".

Well, it is not really a Pfizer vaccine. It was developed by Biontech alone. But because Biontech is just a private research institute without any production capacity or distribution channels, they had to partner with some big pharma company to actually provide it.


And yes, the EU vaccination regime is a mess. The idea was to prevent EU countries from outbidding each other or richer countries preventing poorer ones from getting it. But as a result everyone gets it late and people are pissed. Especcially in countries which could have afforded it, developed it or produce it and are still not getting it.

 

[BrawlMan]

Interesting....

Fauci Expects Decision to Lift Pause on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine by Friday

Half of U.S. adults have received at least one COVID-19 shot, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

slate.com

 

[Eacaraxe]

Well, it is not really a Pfizer vaccine. It was developed by Biontech alone. But because Biontech is just a private research institute without any production capacity or distribution channels, they had to partner with some big pharma company to actually provide it.

They entered into an equity agreement with Pfizer and Fosun, and then Pfizer immediately turned around and declined to participate in Operation Warp Speed to dodge heightened oversight, accountability, and potential profit loss from distribution. Whereas BioNTech did receive funding from both Germany, and China through Fosun. Meaning, Pfizer hasn't just acted to socialize risk and cost while privatizing profit in the face of a deadly global pandemic, they're doing it while socializing risk and cost to other sovereign states as well.

Pfizer : BioNTech :: EA : Bioware

 

[Schadrach]

I know the media has huge issues, but Fox News is way worse.

They essentially just have an audience that definitely isn't going anywhere else (since they're the largest right wing news source and most of their real competitors in terms of scale are overtly left leaning), so they don't have to be subtle about it. Just tell the audience not to trust the baby killers who want to take your guns, and then sell the narrative as hard as you have to.

The other large news sources have to be less overt about it because you might reasonably hop from one to another if they're too explicit about lying to you to support their narratives.

 

[BrawlMan]

They essentially just have an audience that definitely isn't going anywhere else (since they're the largest right wing news source and most of their real competitors in terms of scale are overtly left leaning), so they don't have to be subtle about it. Just tell the audience not to trust the baby killers who want to take your guns, and then sell the narrative as hard as you have to.

The other large news sources have to be less overt about it because you might reasonably hop from one to another if they're too explicit about lying to you to support their narratives.

I appreciate it, but tell me something I don't know. I figure that out when I was a teenager.

 

[Satinavian]

They entered into an equity agreement with Pfizer and Fosun, and then Pfizer immediately turned around and declined to participate in Operation Warp Speed to dodge heightened oversight, accountability, and potential profit loss from distribution.

This Operation Warp Speed seems to purely be about distribution in the US and refused to cooperate with the WHO, the Europen commission and lot of international movements to combat Covid. Probably because Trump.

I completely missed it and it is not particularly relevant for me.

 

[Eacaraxe]

This Operation Warp Speed seems to purely be about distribution in the US and refused to cooperate with the WHO, the Europen commission and lot of international movements to combat Covid. Probably because Trump.

I completely missed it and it is not particularly relevant for me.

Basically all you need to know is Pfizer (which bought stake in BioNTech as opposed to simply offer an agreement to distribute within the US) mooched off Germany and China while refusing US federal money for developing the vaccine, because they wanted to maximize profits and minimize oversight.

 

[Schadrach]

I appreciate it, but tell me something I don't know. I figure that out when I was a teenager.

You're the one that said Fox News was worse about it - they aren't worse, they just don't need to be crafty about their lies so they don't bother. Fox News would be more clever about their lies if they had more serious competition in the right wing cable news space because then they'd be in the same position as CNN or MSNBC.

 

[BrawlMan]

You're the one that said Fox News was worse about it - they aren't worse, they just don't need to be crafty about their lies so they don't bother. Fox News would be more clever about their lies if they had more serious competition in the right wing cable news space because then they'd be in the same position as CNN or MSNBC.

As far as I'm concerned they are the worst. If you disagree with me, I don't care. Deal with it. And once again, I pointed out that I don't trust CNN or MSNBC 100% of the time either. At least they freaking try.

 

[Agema]

They essentially just have an audience that definitely isn't going anywhere else (since they're the largest right wing news source and most of their real competitors in terms of scale are overtly left leaning)

Left-leaning only in the strange US media context of the word, which actually means "left of Fox News".

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Not to mention how Pfizer's already been caught several times with its pants down planning how to monetize the vaccine post-deployment, up to and including known-to-be-ineffective, costly, and even potentially hazardous "booster" shots. Or, celebrating how uncontrolled variant spread will lead to making vaccines for them, meaning more profits. Unsurprising coming from the consistently least ethical and most reckless pharmaceutical company in the whole-ass industry, but it damn well should have been an eye-opener to the American public.

I can only speak for myself, but when asked if I'd be getting the Pfizer vaccine, my own words were "I'd rather have a COVID patient cough in my face".

And, speaking to that, they're not just the cheapest and logistically simple of the vaccines. They're the two with the longest and safest track records. Adenovirus carrier vaccines at least had successful clinical trials before the COVID outbreak. To say I have questions about the level of safety, oversight, and accountability of the mRNA vaccine trials is...quite the understatement.

The booster shot thing is hilarious, it's not needed unless people are super concerned with having mild symptoms for a day or two yet people don't care about having a normal head cold for a few days or a week. Also, the vaccines can knock people out for days too, two friends at work got their 2nd shot on a Friday and both were knocked out for the weekend. The vaccines stop hospitalizations and deaths in the variants, that's all that matters. I bet the drug companies are massively trying to do a yearly vaccine too. There's a reason the flu is the flu, covid is not the flu. I'm not even getting the vaccine myself because I already had covid so it's pretty pointless to get the vaccine (something I doubt you'll see in the media).

1. There are enough of them for it to be a problem. It doesn't stop being a problem just because you personally aren't effected. Get over yourself.
2. Don't give me that "cancel culture" bullshit because you have no idea what I and people like me are actually doing. Get over yourself.
3. My point stands that you cannot reason with unreasonable people. Get over yourself.

I'm sick to death of being told I need to compromise on the human rights of my loved ones, but the same bigots you insist have some reasonable points to make aren't required to compromise on anything or even listen to anyone.

I didn't say it's not a problem. I said that you shouldn't shut out like half the country (whether it's democrats or republicans) because of a very very small subsection of either group. That's what's going on in America, the left ignores the right and the right ignores the left.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Snip

I focus on what doctors say with regards to their field of expertise. Dr. Hotez makes vaccines so what he says about vaccines is what I look at the most, same with Dr. Offit. Dr. Jay's expertise is looking at what creates the least overall harm and doing that. The Great Barrington Declaration is like the Green New Deal, designed to be a conversation starter vs actual policy. The Green New Deal isn't trying to ban cows (or implement anything at all actually) for example as you may have seen from the right. Bhattacharya, one of the authors, said that he welcomed such criticisms, as he hoped that the declaration would be just the beginning of an important dialogue about the benefits, and the harms, of public health interventions. Maybe you just try listening to people (like listen to a full on interview instead of snip-its from articles) and giving them a chance.

Two of those Peter Hotez links are from like a year ago, and much more information is known now. Concerning reinfections, here's the very recent Danish study that puts protection at 80% from reinfection. Also, you have to take note of the severity of reinfections, reinfection on its own doesn't mean anything. I don't know how many times I have to explain this over and over again, you can get reinfected an unlimited amount of times no matter how good your immunity is, your immune system doesn't instantly kill it. So, if you get tested at just the right time after exposure, you'll test positive even though you'd have no symptoms and wouldn't transmit it and you'd never know otherwise because the test will find the virus RNA. Even if it's not one of those cases where you didn't even know, you might get mild symptoms but your immune system will take it out faster than it did the first time, thus the infection is milder and has a very very very low chance of causing hospitalization or death. It's like complaining that the 2 adenovirus vaccines are in the 70% area for effectiveness while the mRNA ones are 95+% effective, the important part is both types keep you out of the hospital and keep you from dying. I got the chickenpox vaccine as a kid and still got chickenpox, though a mild case of it, that's how it works sometimes, that's not a failure, it's still a success.

Dr. Vinay Prasad's response to the study
The other thing I think is sort of the deepest limitation of this study is we don't know how sick people were when they tested again in the fall. You know, obviously SARS-CoV-2 isn't a problematic virus because we find it on PCR. It's not a problematic virus because it causes malaise and fevers and headaches and weakness. I mean, those things aren't terrific, but that's not why it is a global pandemic that we rightfully fear and rightfully have taken strong measures against. The reason we do all that is that there was a fraction of people who get very, very sick from SARS-CoV-2, and a fraction of people who die. And that is why SARS-CoV-2 is treated very differently.

And what we don't know in this study is perhaps it is possible that the people who are being reinfected are being reinfected with milder versions of the illness, that they don't get as sick, they don't die. And that would be important because just like when we talk about vaccines, although we talk about that 95% relative risk reduction, or we talk about the, whatever it is -- 70, 80% relative risk reduction for the other vaccines -- many commenters rightly point out that what you really ought to care about is hospitalizations and deaths. And these vaccines are exquisitely good at lowering that to as low as conceivably possible. Not zero, but quite low. Similarly, prior SARS-CoV-2 infection might make you less likely to have those outcomes, were you to be in the unfortunate case of being reinfected.

Funny how you cut off the following:
I was hoping the protective immunity would last longer, but all we really can say for sure is about four or five months. It probably does protect longer

How many times was it that I had to explain to you I was going with LIKELY/PROBABLE scenarios and you kept confusing that with best case scenarios? Funny how my prediction of the restrictions being completely gone this summer is still on track.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I know better than you, because I don't delude myself that three people who say what I want to hear are the final answer on the issue.

Me either, I just used them as examples (did you expect a full complete list?). When Dr. Offit says variants are very very unlikely to escape the vaccines, I'm gonna believe him, he's literally the top vaccine expert in the US. Plus, all the real-world data is showing that as well...

Interesting....

Fauci Expects Decision to Lift Pause on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine by Friday

Half of U.S. adults have received at least one COVID-19 shot, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

slate.com

Because pausing it made no sense to begin with...

 

[Eacaraxe]

I bet the drug companies are massively trying to do a yearly vaccine too. There's a reason the flu is the flu, covid is not the flu. I'm not even getting the vaccine myself because I already had covid so it's pretty pointless to get the vaccine (something I doubt you'll see in the media).

We're so far beyond the Rubicon on that one we're sitting in the middle of the Aegean Sea and still wondering why the damn river's so wide. Globally, we're past the point herd immunity is even a remote possibility, because COVID is so widespread in the population variants aren't going to be controllable unless there's another global lockdown that, unlike last time, is actually serious. Look, even accounting for ongoing international travel restrictions, the major variants that have popped up are still spreading globally, and frankly it's going to get worse so long as countries fuck around and continue to loosen restrictions in the face of every last bit of scientific evidence that shows this is the worst thing that could possibly done from a policy perspective.

COVID is the new flu. And like the flu now, there will be annual vaccines, like it or not.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

We're so far beyond the Rubicon on that one we're sitting in the middle of the Aegean Sea and still wondering why the damn river's so wide. Globally, we're past the point herd immunity is even a remote possibility, because COVID is so widespread in the population variants aren't going to be controllable unless there's another global lockdown that, unlike last time, is actually serious. Look, even accounting for ongoing international travel restrictions, the major variants that have popped up are still spreading globally, and frankly it's going to get worse so long as countries fuck around and continue to loosen restrictions in the face of every last bit of scientific evidence that shows this is the worst thing that could possibly done from a policy perspective. We are so very close to herd immunity right now (in the US), the case numbers probably aren't ever going up again (outside of the occasional slight uptick for a day or 2), but as a trend, they aren't going to go up again.

COVID is the new flu. And like the flu now, there will be annual vaccines, like it or not.

I'm pretty sure there's literally no data pointing in that direction. The vaccines work against the variants just fine. The variants aren't a big deal, it's just something the news keeps on running with, it's meaningless. Viruses mutate, that hasn't stopped us stopping them before, we literally still use the same measles vaccine to this day and it still works. Also, the fact that they say variants means a lot because they aren't new strains, which are different and can be troublesome. Here's a couple doctors making fun of the whole issue of variants. Dr. Paul Offit, the head vaccine expert, said variants escaping the vaccines are an extremely unlikely situation. We're almost at herd immunity (in the US), cases aren't ever going to go back up again (outside of the occasional uptick for a day or so), but trend-wise, they are only going down from here on out.

Here's a study (that I'm was planning on posting in the main coronavirus thread and still will) showing that immunity is looking to be long lasting. Pretty much all the ways we track immunity is basically showing flat-lines (stuff like memory B cells and T cells), thus they are fading very very slowly and not at all quickly. This is expected from the 1st SARS, which has immunity going on now 18 years and counting.

Science | AAAS

science.sciencemag.org

 

[Eacaraxe]

I'm pretty sure there's literally no data pointing in that direction. The vaccines work against the variants just fine. The variants aren't a big deal, it's just something the news keeps on running with, it's meaningless. Viruses mutate, that hasn't stopped us stopping them before, we literally still use the same measles vaccine to this day and it still works. Also, the fact that they say variants means a lot because they aren't new strains, which are different and can be troublesome. Here's a couple doctors making fun of the whole issue of variants. Dr. Paul Offit, the head vaccine expert, said variants escaping the vaccines are an extremely unlikely situation. We're almost at herd immunity (in the US), cases aren't ever going to go back up again (outside of the occasional uptick for a day or so), but trend-wise, they are only going down from here on out.

Here's a study (that I'm was planning on posting in the main coronavirus thread and still will) showing that immunity is looking to be long lasting. Pretty much all the ways we track immunity is basically showing flat-lines (stuff like memory B cells and T cells), thus they are fading very very slowly and not at all quickly. This is expected from the 1st SARS, which has immunity going on now 18 years and counting.

Science | AAAS

science.sciencemag.org

Yeah, I'll just save us both some time here and refer you to Silvanus' post once again about confirmation bias.

 

[tstorm823]

Yeah, I'll just save us both some time here and refer you to Silvanus' post once again about confirmation bias.

Frankly, him giving you sources and an argument about actual facts is more than I'd have given you. "We're past the point herd immunity is even a remote possibility" is the worst take I've heard on covid, and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of essentially everything virus related.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Yeah, I'll just save us both some time here and refer you to Silvanus' post once again about confirmation bias.

I have no bias in wanting covid gone or it being the next flu or whatever in-between, I couldn't care less either way. It is what it is. I've been doing stuff as normal for over a year since I got covid like the first week of the shutdowns last year, thus IMMUNITY; I've been going to the bar every Friday maskless for ~year, hanging with friends 2-3 times a week just like normal, did all the holidays, even last Easter. You think I got a horse in this race that I want everything to go back to normal? I've been back to normal for nearly a year.

What actual data is pointing to covid immunity being short-lived (outside of baseless news stories)? Where's the mass reinfections at? Where's the mass infections of vaccinated people at because the vaccine was developed based on a version of the virus from like a year ago? There's tons of old people maskless at packed restaurants where I am for months. Shouldn't all these vaccinated people be getting infected with the variants? Who here has a better track record of covid predictions? I said no restrictions this summer from last October (in a thread here), who else here was saying that at that time? It's very much looking like no restrictions this summer. Even fucking California is planning to lift restrictions by June 15th. When Texas lifted all restrictions in early March, everyone here said that "EVERYONE GONNA DIE!!!" and I said nothing is gonna happen and guess what? The COVID-19 disaster that did not happen in Texas.