The Covid cure has arrived! (1 Viewer)

[Steve R.]

 

[Pat Hartman]

You can't believe a word they say nowadays.

But you believe your life is in jeopardy because not everyone is vaccinated?

Think some about my death by bicycle analogy. Granted, that isn't a contagious disease but those deaths are 100% avoidable. PERIOD. All we have to do is to ban bicycles. That will save ~750 lives per year in the US which is more than the number of children who have died from COVID. Yet Biden is insisting that the only way to save the children is to vaccinate them. Why is he not ranting about the lives taken by the bicycle? That is a problem that actually has a solution. The logic Biden is using is irrational but you've bought in to it. Google, FB, and all the rest are actively trying to stop the dissemination of conflicting medical opinions. Maybe if you heard some of the contrary opinions and their rational, you would not be so adamant that my granddaughters who are not in danger of dying from COVID MUST be vaccinated to make you feel safe.

Maybe it is even the vaccinated who are causing the constant string of mutations. We've seen more resistant bacteria over the years because doctors prescribe antibiotics just to shut people up when they have a head cold. Antibiotics don't cure colds or the flu, they are virus'. All this massive over prescription of antibiotics has done is to increase everyone's chances of actually dying from a bacterial infection because antibiotics are less effective than they should be due to the acquired resistance. I don't take antibiotics UNLESS the doctor actually orders a test to determine that the infection is bacterial.

I am not anti-vaccine. I took the jab because I am in several danger categories. I've also taken the shingles vaccine because I had chickenpox as a child (I had it long before the vaccine came out) as well as the one for pneumonia. When the grandchildren were young and walking petri dishes, I also took the flu vaccine every year. Now that they're older, I don't.

When the vaccine for the papiloma virus was released 10 or so years ago, did you and your spouse (?) rush out to take it? Probably not since you were not in a danger category. The target demographic was pre-teens.

The science is - do not take drugs you do not need to take. There is always a risk so the potential benefit must exceed the risk. These vaccines were released for emergency use only with THREE conditions attached. One being that there be no effective therapeutics available. That was why the left went ballistic when Trump mentioned that Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin were potentially successful treatments if taken within the first couple of days. Trump was being honest and trying to allay public fear by relaying information he was getting from his medical advisors and probably didn't realize that he was jeopardizing the approval of any future vaccine because that's not the way he thinks. The second condition was that no one who took the experimental vaccine could be considered to be part of a trial. The makers of the vaccine still had to perform the actual trials before the vaccine would be approved for non-emergency use. Do you think they were able to perform 8 years worth of trials in less than one year? I don't think so. But for some reason last month when Biden was pushing the OSHA law as an end run around the Constitution, his advisors realized that it couldn't possibly fly if the vaccine was still experimental. So he twanged his magic twanger and the FDA approved the vaccine without any long term testing. This push to vaccinate everyone including the young and healthy has been very successful so all we can hope for is that there are no babies with flippers for arms and legs in our future because the FDA caved to the President's demand to approve the vaccines. That is not science. That is shear political power.

 

[Jon]

But you believe your life is in jeopardy because not everyone is vaccinated?

Let me deconstruct that statement because there are two implicit falsehoods in it.

Firstly, not believing what CNN says has no bearing on my perception of Covid risk. If they say your life is in jeopardy because not everyone is vaccinated that does not mean I believe the opposite just because they said it. Instead, I greatly distrust much of what CNN says and so get information from elsewhere to confirm or deny.

Secondly, your life IS in jeopardy because not everyone is vaccinated. It is after all contagious, right? Simple facts that are indisputable. However, I believe you need sufficient numbers of people to be vaccinated in order for the rate of spread to decrease enough so the viral coefficient is below 1. Then the number infected should consistently fall for that variant. That is altogether different than saying I believe everyone should be vaccinated.

Smallpox is a great example of something petering out due to vaccinations.

Think some about my death by bicycle analogy. Granted, that isn't a contagious disease but those deaths are 100% avoidable.

@Isaac and I had discussions that have a similar analogy, but instead about hospital admissions. I will alter to cater for the bicycle analogy to suit taste!

Cycling can risk your own life. It can be a killer. Yet being unvaccinated can increase the spread of a lethal disease and end up killing millions. Let us take for example Patient Zero. No Covid anywhere. For the sake of this thought experiment, pretend that they had the option of taking a vaccine against any Covid strains, be they common cold or Covid-19.

Person A decides to remain unvaccinated. They get infected and then start the spread of Covid, leading to millions dead. The disease ends up recurring year after year, like flu.

Person B decides to get vaccinated and they have reduced their risk of infection. In this case, they have saved millions of deaths. Yes, you can catch Covid if vaccinated, but we are talking about risks along a continuum, not binary yes or no. You are essentially reducing the risk of a mass catastrophe.

Compare that with a bicycle anology, where one person gets killed instead of millions. Not remotely comparable. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is the difference between a domino, and the domino effect.

Edit: Just thought of a good analogy: TNT vs nuclear fission! The outcomes are very different.

Whilst a new infection is not Patient Zero anymore, they are Patient Zero for those around them who get infected as a consequence.

Regarding antibiotics, there is some great research going on where they have found some that do not lead to resistance against them. I think they examined stuff in soil, or something like that!

The science is - do not take drugs you do not need to take.

I have a different view. Surpise surprise! I take a great interest in life extension science, and future medication to extend life and health spans. Without the drugs, significant improvements in these areas are unlikely. I can keep eating Blue Zone diets and intermittent fasting, but significant improvements are likely to be pharmological. That means you will be healthier if you constantly take drugs.

 

[NauticalGent]

Secondly, your life IS in jeopardy because not everyone is vaccinated. It is after all contagious, right?

IF...the CDC could actually provide proof that the vaccine prevents the spread of the virus or prevents the vaccinated from contracting it, I would agree.

At best the vaccine makes the recipient asymptomatic - virtually useless. Sorry folks, I am just not sold on it. I had to choose to either stand my ground or cave in to remain employed. I caved and I feel sick about it...

 

[Jon]

IF...the CDC could actually provide proof that the vaccine prevents the spread of the virus or prevents the vaccinated from contracting it, I would agree.

I believe no one is saying it prevents the spread, but reduces the spread. Same for contracting it.

It does beg the question though: what evidence would you need to see to convince you that it reduces the spread?

At best the vaccine makes the recipient asymptomatic - virtually useless.

Better than dead?

 

[AccessBlaster]

Isreal has reached herd immunity yet their numbers still climb

Edit: Israel

 

[Jon]

Isreal has reached herd immunity yet their numbers still climb

By definition, they have therefore not reached herd immunity:

The idea of herd immunity is that there is a certain proportion of people who need to be protected from a virus, either by vaccination or by having been infected, for the virus to stop spreading and die out.

Source: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/questions-answers/questions-and-answers-vaccines

 

[Jon]

I envisage the following scenario in 20 years time:

Monday: Flu jab
Tuesday: Covid jab
Wednesday: Bird Flu jab
Thursday: Ebola variant X jab
Friday: Day off. Yay!

 

[AccessBlaster]

Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune

The reports are between 78-89 percent of their population are fully vaxxed

 

[Jon]

I know Israel had a very fast rollout of the vaccine.

The link I gave said herd immunity is difficult to achieve due to the very high number of people needing immunity, waning vaccine effectiveness (get that booster!), vaccine hesitancy, new variants etc. It is by no means an easy task.

The Spanish Flu died out after two years. Let us hope Omicron proves to be mild and has a similar impact. The stock markets have dived though.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Op-Ed: Why Did Fauci Move the Herd Immunity Goal Posts?​

December 29, 2020
Late last week, Fauci told the New York Times that new science had changed his thinking on the herd immunity threshold -- but he also admitted that his statements were influenced in part by "his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks."

Specifically, the fraction of people who would need immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (either through vaccination or recovery from prior infection) to extinguish the spread of the virus was initially estimated to be 60% to 70%. In recent weeks, Fauci had raised the percentage: from 70% to 75%, and then to 75%, 80%, and 85%.

Why would we trust the person who helped create the problem to somehow have the solution.

 

[conception_native_0123]

Monday: Flu jab
Tuesday: Covid jab
Wednesday: Bird Flu jab
Thursday: Ebola variant X jab
Friday: Day off. Yay!

is that the 4 day workweek everyone is now buzzing about again?

 

[Isaac]

Even with reckless driving, the analogy is not as stretched as you would like to believe, I think.
Many accidents involve several vehicles, where only one made the wrong decision. In fact, one accident on my local freeway involves THOUSANDS of people whose daily lives are affected that day, causing a lot of disturbance to schedule, families, committments, and who knows how many other domino effects that suddenly result from 2000 people being 30 minutes late to everything that evening. (Remember, in this specific contextual analogy, that COVID causes little more than inconvenience to the vast majority who encounter it).
The more one scrutinizes this analogy, the more strong & relevant it gets..

Secondly, is this a little like voting? You already know everyone will never get vaccinated, and have admitted just above that even very high %'s of vaccination (Israel) are still not achieving the 'stop the spread'.

Therefore, it can be argued that any single person's decision is meaningless, because it makes little to no difference to the outcome.

Entrenchment in that voting argument is going to follow you everywhere, Jon.
I'm just playin'

 

[Steve R.]

Let me toss in a slight twist concerning the argument that if you are not vaccinated, that you should not be treated at a hospital.

I fully understand that the purported reason for this is to prevent an unvaccinated person from infecting others. Yet, Biden is keeping the US Southern border wide open and not imposing any vaccine mandate on the illegal immigrants. Unvaccinated illegal immigrants can spread the Coviedtoo. The illegal immigrants will be needing medical care (as well as welfare), so are we to deny them medical care?

Moreover, if Biden was really concerned about the unvacinated being a health hazard, why has he not shut-down the border. That would eliminate one disease vector. Biden also imposed travel restriction from various countries, but not for those entering this country through the southern border. A double standard. Why?

Since the Biden administration is aggressively promoting the illegal immigrant loophole to exist, the logical conclusion is that that Biden adminstration is blowing smoke concerning the infectious spread of Covid by the unvaccinated. Smoke and mirrors.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Secondly, your life IS in jeopardy because not everyone is vaccinated.

So, if a person can't take the vaccine for medical reasons, they should be ostracized and removed from society? What about natural immunity? Studies seem to indicate that it doesn't wane as quickly as the artificial immunity from a vaccine but at least in the US we don't care even a little bit. Lord Faucci said you still needed to take the vaccine and since only "science" comes out of his mouth, who are we to argue? What about all those HIV positive people who do not have to disclose their condition? Up until quite recently, HIV was a death sentence and so carelessly infecting unsuspecting people was at least manslaughter but HIV positive people are still allowed to roam free in society and they can't be prosecuted for transmitting the disease or for not warning the people they come into close contact with such as dentists and other medical personal and sexual partners..

Sorry Jon, I like you but I am NOT going to allow you to force my grandchildren to take a drug they do not need because you are afraid. Maybe the gun analogy is better. If I could rid the world of guns as well as the knowledge to make new ones, I would because guns have no purpose except to kill (sorry target shooters) but as long as only the bad guys have guns because only the law-abiding would relinquish their guns, then all you do is to endanger the good guys by forcing them to give up theirs. So by forcing my grandchildren to take the vaccine to make you feel safe - it doesn't actually make you safe, it just makes you feel safe, YOU are endangering THEIR lives and potentially future generations since we have NO long term studies on these drugs. Please consider how you would feel should any of the vaccines turn out to produce "thalidomide" babies. Would you feel personally responsible for the pain and heartbreak that will cause or will it be OK because you feel safe and just blame it on the government for pushing something unsafe? You are willing to jeopardize the future of the human race if necessary just so that you can personally feel safe. Screw everyone else.

We do not know the long term affects of the vaccine. What we do know - the actual science- is that COVID is highly transmittable but it is only deathly dangerous to a very small segment of the population. If you are in that segment, you should be very worried and you should take the vaccine and every booster they come out with and never leave home without a mask or three (can't be too safe) and don't go into crowds anyway and wash your hands every half hour even when you are home alone. Wear your mask when you are out walking the dog and there is no one within 200 feet of you. You just never know when some random stray virus will just float by and infect you. The virus particles are everywhere. Too bad they're so tiny. If they were big like dandelion seeds you would see them swirling all around you in the first half of June. Maybe that is how transmission is taking place now. People out walking in parks walk through some viral particles left there hours ago by an infected person. Wear your mask in your car even when the windows are closed. Do what ever makes you feel safer just do not expect everyone else in the world to endanger themselves by taking a drug that won't prevent the disease and won't stop transmission of it should you contract it and whose long term affects are simply unknown. We don't know that there are dangers. Many of us bet our lives that at least short term, we won't have any ill effects from the vaccine. The bet was that the vaccine was potentially less dangerous than getting COVID. We wear our seatbelts because empirical evidence shows they save lives. We don't talk about the accidents where people die because they were wearing their seatbelt. All we have with COVID are computer models. And the early ones were so off the mark that they turned the world upside down and no one has recanted. We still act as though COVID is killing 10% of the people it infects instead of .018 %. That is a HUGE variance but it doesn't fit the narrative so we conveniently forget it. We do not have sufficient empirical evidence (that is what trials are for) to say that the vaccines are 100% safe in the short term and also have no long term effects. We were collecting empirical evidence but the CDC stopped reporting on it because they didn't want to confuse people with numbers. Just FYI, one of my daughter's best friend was forced to take the vaccine to keep her job so she did. Three days later she was blind in one eye due to a hemorrhage caused by the vaccine. She didn't want to take the vaccine. She wasn't in a danger group. Her doctor recommended against it and yet it was take the jab or loose her income. I guess she could have let her children starve. Maybe gone on welfare, if she could qualify. She did what she had to do to keep her job and she is the one holding the bag. The manufactures are exempt from prosecution. The employer isn't responsible. OSHA said he had to do it. You can't actually sue the government if no one will take the case. Personal injury lawsuits are taken by lawyers on a contingency fee basis and they don't take cases they think they can't collect money for no mater how good the claim.

If taking a drug endangers others, you're OK with that as long as you feel safe? Really? You and Biden won't feel safe unless everyone in the world is vaccinated? Curl up in a corner. You'll be spending the rest of your life there with the Republicans who are afraid of being called names if they disagree with any liberal policy/person no matter how insane. New variants are on the way.

Now the talking heads are speculating that monoclonal antibodies won't work on omicron!!! Typical fear mongering. If it bleeds, it leads. No one in South Africa has been sick enough to cause a problem yet but here we are swinging from the chandeliers again pushing to shut down the world. Notice that only the people wo will still have a job and can work from home in their jammies are pushing for this. NY has already set themselves up to kill people unnecessarily by cancelling "optional" surgery. "optional" means you are not going to bleed to death if they don't sew you up now. In the eyes of most people, cancer surgery isn't exactly optional. But since it isn't classified as emergency, it must be "optional".

 

[Steve R.]

Unfortunately, (at the time) Biden was making his nasty accusation, we were in an election period. Biden, with the help of the complicit media was able to "win" an election (in part) with this disgraceful narrative. Today, the election is over thereby minimizing this as headline news. Furthermore, the complicit media has now made a "180" and advocates Biden's actions as "good". It's unfortunate that the Biden administration was successful in lying to the gullible to (fraudulently) "win" and election.

PS: As an additional thought, if Covid is as severe as the Biden administration claims; why isn't the southern border closed?
Why are illegal immigrants exempt from these mandates? Seems that Covid really isn't the concern. The concern of the Biden administration is to take away civil liberties and impose an autocratic regime.

how

 

[Isaac]

Let me toss in a slight twist concerning the argument that if you are not vaccinated, that you should not be treated at a hospital.

I fully understand that the purported reason for this is to prevent an unvaccinated person from infecting others. Yet, Biden is keeping the US Southern border wide open and not imposing any vaccine mandate on the illegal immigrants. Unvaccinated illegal immigrants can spread the Coviedtoo. The illegal immigrants will be needing medical care (as well as welfare), so are we to deny them medical care?

Moreover, if Biden was really concerned about the unvacinated being a health hazard, why has he not shut-down the border. That would eliminate one disease vector. Biden also imposed travel restriction from various countries, but not for those entering this country through the southern border. A double standard. Why?

Since the Biden administration is aggressively promoting the illegal immigrant loophole to exist, the logical conclusion is that that Biden adminstration is blowing smoke concerning the infectious spread of Covid by the unvaccinated. Smoke and mirrors.

I agree, and the idiocy of any doctor who wails on and on about requiring vaccinations, but doesn't care that a quarter-million people came over the border unvaccinated in one month alone, really ought to inform one's level of trust in what they are saying about anything

 

[NauticalGent]

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Part of the problem with "herd immunity" is that the percentages will depend on information that isn't widely available - if at all. It is all about probability of transmission. IF you can figure out a reasonable coefficient of infection following the contact between an infected person A and another person B, you will get a number from 0% to 100% as the odds of that infection spreading. In fact, you would have to take a more complex sum of probabilities that a person in a given situation will or won't spread the disease. This would include that person B in the above (1) could already have had the disease and thus has antibodies - but does not know it, (2) has been vaccinated, (3) is immuno-compromised, (4) is at a super spreader type of event, (5) one or both were wearing masks that have some non-zero percentage effectiveness... and so on. One of those will also be "person is self-isolated". Take the population-weighted average over all situations. The final number will be greater than 50% or less than 50%. If the probability of transmission is greater, you have not reached herd immunity and the disease will rampage. If less, you have reached herd immunity and the disease will die out due to lack of eligible carriers and victims.

Of the innumerable situations, which ones can you influence to help bring the total odds down below 50%?
You can get vaccinated - decreases (but doesn't eliminate) odds of spreading.
You can isolate yourself - depends on HOW isolated you are, but decreases odds by narrowing the opportunities.
You can wear a mask - depends on effectiveness of the mask but decreases spread by a few percentage points.
You can avoid super-spreader events (i.e. large public gatherings) - not as effective as total isolation but does decrease spread by a few points.

#1 in that list depends on testing to determine magnitude. #3 depends on medical records. The others depend your actions and choices.

It's all about probability. But here's the essential consideration. These are basically all about actuarial computations. I'm not making them up because this is the kind of thing actuaries do - including the roll-ups leading to the overall numbers. In fact, I have probably left out a lot of situations that have significant populations. I am NOT going to defend Fauci because of what he said, but I should point out that as you get more items to add into this actuarial nightmare, it is possible for the odds to shift.

If you cannot see that your individual choice here has an effect on the population reaching herd immunity, then you cannot see the forest for the trees. There was an old phrase that is incredibly relevant here: No man is an island. Unless you are Tom Hanks in the movie "Castaway" your actions WILL affect others.

Now, the Libertarian in me returns to the fold. Make your choices. They are yours to make. I defend your right to MAKE those choices. But don't give me an excuse about how your choice doesn't affect anyone else. Actuarial science says otherwise. It doesn't matter that I don't know the coefficients for each case. What I've shown is that the mathematical formula for herd immunity supports "No man is an island."

 

[AccessBlaster]

If that's the case why did they dangle "herd immunity" and "natural immunity" like a carrot? Science should say herd immunity is a concept in medicine, not a reality. They used it to get jabs in arms knowing it was impossible to obtain, that's called lying.