Covid-19 miscellany

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes I'd say this is expected all across the south and other hot spots and yes, Covid Vax deniers are starting to and are taking up hospital beds, for something that's nearly completely preventable, such that people who have another medical emergency will not be able to get care.

Do you feel the same way about obese/unhealthy people or drug addicts?

They are not overwhelming the hospitals. Did you forget that point? It's central to the entire issue. Maybe pay attention better.

You know, when it was economics and social policy, I could accept the one shitty argument after the other. But in a live pandemic... we are still getting these ridiculously shitty arguments against... what again? How many times can people be wrong about Covid-19 not being a threat, an issue, a danger, etc...?

Three months ago children being masked in school was going to be a precaution. Now it is going to be necessary to save lots of lives.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

https://www.rawstory.com/rachel-maddow-sounds-the-alarm-about-mississippi/

...
On her Wednesday night MSNBC program Rachel Maddow said that "it's not just bad news, it's national news" that health officials in Mississippi are reporting the state hospital system is on the brink of failure.
...
"If we continue the trajectory we're on, within the next five to seven to ten days, I think we're going to see failure of the hospital system in Mississippi," said Jones said at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the flagship hospital in the state.
"Hospitals are full from Memphis to Gulfport, Natchez to Meridian. Everything is full," he continued.
....

How is that red state, conservative, small government ideology working out for the good folks of Mississippi?

 

[bilby]

View attachment 34843

From here

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6553/397/tab-pdf

Does this mean that (shudder) natural infection from covid gives more and different protection against reinfection than a vaccine?

Nobody knows. Including you. But probably not, given the absence of anyone who is qualified to have an opinion saying that it does.

I am not one of the people who hung my know-it-all bullshit ego on the contention that the vaccine is better than natural infection - an infection you DON'T want to have but there can always be positives to negatives.

No, you're not. You're one of the people who is way outside his knowledge and expertise, JAQing off and spreading FUD under the protection that JAQing provides.

You should stop doing that, whether it's accidental or deliberate.

Well, lets throw Manhattan project level resources at nasal vaccines and maybe throw some of the other three viral proteins into intramuscular and nasal vaccines going forward.

You are not qualified to make that recommendation.

Here is another article from Scientific American

To Beat COVID, We May Need a Good Shot in the Nose

Intranasal vaccines might stop the spread of the coronavirus more effectively than needles in arms

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-beat-covid-we-may-need-a-good-shot-in-the-nose/#sa_body

Maybe they will. I am sure that those qualified to investigate that possibility will do so without the advice of random Internet ignoramuses like us.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Exercise is the preferred therapy over statins. If you can keep your numbers good without them there's no reason to take them.

Exercise and diet work well for some people. Bur for others, high cholesterol is genetic. I've known people who were extremely thin--underweight, even, by anyone's standards, and physically very active who had high cholesterol.

https://www.heart.org/en/health-top...-cholesterol/familial-hypercholesterolemia-fh

Statins are an appropriate treatment.

Saying exercise is preferred over statins doesn't mean that 100% of patients should address it with exercise.

You try exercise, if that doesn't fix the numbers then you go to drugs.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

General levels of corruption in medicine and public health, such as you mentioned of Pfizer rigging their clinical trials leads to a huge amount of public distrust.

But these companies will make good, useful medicine if it makes money AND they will also make shit or marginally effective expensive medicine if they can get away with it. Who knows which is which unless you have a lot of medical training and can look at the raw data, which is often kept hidden.

But lunatics with 5g conspiracies about the vaccine as an example, not sure how to explain that.

It's not rigging. It's the lack of standardisation in testing. Why? Because different medicines need different protocols. It's perfectly fine.

Medical professionals can read a clinical trial. And know what the numbers mean. All the info is in the trial. They're not lying about anything.

The problems occur when laypeople take numbers out of context and put pressure on politicians to act on it. Don't do that. Instead, trust your experts. It's not like you have a better option

USA has a unique problem of empowered patients who can twist the arm of their doctor for unnecessary treatments. Which sucks. But they are empowered. They could also just not twist their doctors arm and just trust them instead.

This is a case where it would have been good if the FDA specified the same test criteria for all the vaccines.

Normally drugs are a one-at-a-time thing so there's no reason to insist on standardization and the FDA is perfectly happy to let the drug companies pick the exact yardstick.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Yes. For example. China shutting down Wuhan last January was extreme and draconian. Also totally justified IMHO. At that point, for all we knew, humanity was on the brink of going extinct. But even milder things, there's a cost benefit analysis. The Danish authorities demanding people to wear masks on subways and in shops until July this year. I was totally behind that. The minor inconvenience vs the large impact on disease containment is justified.

There's also no hard and fast rule. It's a question of individual judgement where the cut off goes. We all get to decide that.

But I think it looks like we've entered a paradigm where any Covid-19 deaths seem to justify any level of force to get people to vaccinated. And that's where I feel the need to put my foot down

So, what death rate is acceptable to you?

Should we eliminate mandatory seatbelts in cars? Make it an option people have to pay for?

I mean, there are a lot of things that kill less people/year than Covid has that are currently illegal or otherwise mitigated pretty heavily with your "draconian" laws, so let's start a list, shall we? (just off the top of my head)
- drunk driving
- second hand cigarette smoke
- speeding and all other traffic violations
- guns (in the US, maybe the rest of the world should just allow carte blanche gun ownership too)
- flying (let's just eliminate safety regulations, eh?)
- dumping chemicals into the drinking water, rivers, etc.

Which of these should start de-regulating, first?

If we legalise gay marriage we will have to legalise pedophilia. Is that what you want?! Please, think of the children!

Now with mass vaccination death rates are back to normal. Since death rates are back to normal, what are we even discussing? .

The only places that are still suffering are places with low, rates of vaccinated. If its because of a lack of access, then let's work on that. If its because of choice, then we need to respect those people and back off. Americans have had earlier and easier access to vaccine than any other population. There's no reason for Americans not to be vaccinated other than choice. You can't save people who don't want to be saved.

 

[Trausti]

That most people believe their COVID death risk is hundreds of times higher than reality is the root of all this insanity—making rational discourse impossible. The sole priority of any responsible government would be to inform the public how low their real risk is.

 

[Trausti]

The great thing about having these effective vaccines is we get to keep living like they're not effective at all.

 

[Trausti]

Exercise is the preferred therapy over statins. If you can keep your numbers good without them there's no reason to take them.

Exercise and diet work well for some people. Bur for others, high cholesterol is genetic. I've known people who were extremely thin--underweight, even, by anyone's standards, and physically very active who had high cholesterol.

https://www.heart.org/en/health-top...-cholesterol/familial-hypercholesterolemia-fh

Statins are an appropriate treatment.

Saying exercise is preferred over statins doesn't mean that 100% of patients should address it with exercise.

You try exercise, if that doesn't fix the numbers then you go to drugs.

Or you change your diet; cut out the seed oils, excess carbs, and processed foods.

 

[DrZoidberg]

General levels of corruption in medicine and public health, such as you mentioned of Pfizer rigging their clinical trials leads to a huge amount of public distrust.

But these companies will make good, useful medicine if it makes money AND they will also make shit or marginally effective expensive medicine if they can get away with it. Who knows which is which unless you have a lot of medical training and can look at the raw data, which is often kept hidden.

But lunatics with 5g conspiracies about the vaccine as an example, not sure how to explain that.

It's not rigging. It's the lack of standardisation in testing. Why? Because different medicines need different protocols. It's perfectly fine.

Medical professionals can read a clinical trial. And know what the numbers mean. All the info is in the trial. They're not lying about anything.

The problems occur when laypeople take numbers out of context and put pressure on politicians to act on it. Don't do that. Instead, trust your experts. It's not like you have a better option

USA has a unique problem of empowered patients who can twist the arm of their doctor for unnecessary treatments. Which sucks. But they are empowered. They could also just not twist their doctors arm and just trust them instead.

This is a case where it would have been good if the FDA specified the same test criteria for all the vaccines.

Normally drugs are a one-at-a-time thing so there's no reason to insist on standardization and the FDA is perfectly happy to let the drug companies pick the exact yardstick.

I don't think so. That kind of regulation will do more harm than good. It will slow down pharmaceutical research and make something already expensive, even more expensive.

If we want to regulate we need to be sure that the regulation does what we want it to do. What if this rule is unnecessary in the next trial? Now we've added a, layer of complexity, for no reason. And we have to pay for staff to make sure an unnecessary rule is followed.

Its not like J&J or Pfizer aren't honest. Both have honestly published all their numbers and described their method. Their in-house staff made a different judgement call on how effectiveness is best monitored. Pfizer didn't think the extra cost of regular screening of everyone was financially justified. J&J did. Readers of their reports know this and can take it into account.

And I really don't care what lay people think about this. These reports are written for medical professionals. It's absurd to put regulation in place to ease the understanding of a report in the cases when readers aren't the intended audience. Is that really a road we want to go down? We live in a world of extreme and increasing professional specialisation. Making sure that everyone can read specialist litterature for eachothers specialisation isn't practical, nor do I think it's desirable.

How about we all work on tempering our inner control freak instead, and accept that there are things out there others understand better than us?

 

[barbos]

That most people believe their COVID death risk is hundreds of times higher than reality is the root of all this insanity—making rational discourse impossible. The sole priority of any responsible government would be to inform the public how low their real risk is.

Without confidence level fatality rate 0.00% is useless garbage. As for apparently low overall number, that's meaningless too, because lethality depends on amount of virus you ingested. Low level does not affect you but it leaves traces.

The mere fact that hospitals are running out of beds is all you need to know to realize that we can't business as usual.

Also 0.05% median death rate is utter garbage, because overall death rate in US is already 0.2%.
I have no idea how that retard got 0.05% rate for infected when US has 0.2% for all people. US population is 1.2 billion and they are all were exposed/infected? John P A Ioannidis is a fucking idiot!

 

[Shadowy Man]

US population is 1.2 billion…

I think we are counting guns as citizens now.

 

[blastula]

That most people believe their COVID death risk is hundreds of times higher than reality is the root of all this insanity—making rational discourse impossible. The sole priority of any responsible government would be to inform the public how low their real risk is.

Without confidence level fatality rate 0.00% is useless garbage. As for apparently low overall number, that's meaningless too, because lethality depends on amount of virus you ingested. Low level does not affect you but it leaves traces.

The mere fact that hospitals are running out of beds is all you need to know to realize that we can't business as usual.

Also 0.05% median death rate is utter garbage, because overall death rate in US is already 0.2%.
I have no idea how that retard got 0.05% rate for infected when US has 0.2% for all people. US population is 1.2 billion and they are all were exposed/infected? John P A Ioannidis is a fucking idiot!

Check the submission date of the paper. It was still known to have problems at the time though. Ioannidis is also known for predicting 10,000 total deaths in US, back around the same time, in March 2020. That number was passed the very next month.

Trausti thinks science is done by memes.

 

[Harry Bosch]

[removed]

Dr.: I have a secondary question for you. I've just been mystified why so fucking upset over wearing a mask. I understand if someone doesn't want to get a vaccine. I think that they are looney, but I understand it more. But not wanting to wear a mask. I think that it's just bizarre. Such a small sacrifice. As we all know, COVID 19 mostly killed the elderly and people in poor health. It appears that the Delta variant is affecting younger kids and even kids under 12 much greater than covid. Does this give you pause? If COVID only affected children and killed children would you be more supportive of wearing a mask? I'd want to protect the elderly also. But I'm just trying to understand your position better.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

[removed]

I've already told you what I think about your proposed [removed] solution. I think your attitude is dangerous and a threat to democratic values and modern civilisation as we know it. I wish it was hyperbole.

What was my proposal? You keep using lazy hyperbole to describe something that doesn’t exist.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That most people believe their COVID death risk is hundreds of times higher than reality is the root of all this insanity—making rational discourse impossible. The sole priority of any responsible government would be to inform the public how low their real risk is.

Without confidence level fatality rate 0.00% is useless garbage. As for apparently low overall number, that's meaningless too, because lethality depends on amount of virus you ingested. Low level does not affect you but it leaves traces.

The mere fact that hospitals are running out of beds is all you need to know to realize that we can't business as usual.

Also 0.05% median death rate is utter garbage, because overall death rate in US is already 0.2%.
I have no idea how that retard got 0.05% rate for infected when US has 0.2% for all people. US population is 1.2 billion and they are all were exposed/infected? John P A Ioannidis is a fucking idiot!

Check the submission date of the paper. It was still known to have problems at the time though. Ioannidis is also known for predicting 10,000 total deaths in US, back around the same time, in March 2020. That number was passed the very next month.

Trausti thinks science is done by memes.

Again, shitty arguments. The massive death spike is past tense, last winter... and people are unwilling to accept it happened and use bullshit or simply denial to make it go away.

 

[DrZoidberg]

[removed]
What was my proposal? You keep using lazy hyperbole to describe something that doesn’t exist.

[removed] You want to force and/or bully people to get vaccinated. As if you know better than them what is good for them. Maybe you do? Maybe you don't? Either way it's their decision.

 

[DrZoidberg]

 

[Harry Bosch]

[removed]
I think your attitude is dangerous and a threat to democratic values and modern civilisation as we know it. I wish it was hyperbole.

Do you really think that asking people to wear a mask is a threat to democratic values and modern civilization? Wow. Americans in the 1940s had to make far far greater sacrifices to win WW2 along with the allies. After the war, the sacrifices waned, and democracy survived. How do you explain that?

 

[Toni]

It's not fascist to require that people all drive in the correct lanes and stop at stop signs and red lights. It's not fascist to require people to obey speed limits, cross walks and other traffic conventions.

It's not fascist to require that automobile manufacturing and pharmaceutical manufacturing and food manufacturing/production/packaging all follow established safety laws and regulations.

It's not fascist to require licensure and board certification for physicians, nurses, PAs, lab techs, and other medical professionals.

It's not fascist to require routine childhood vaccinations appropriate for student's age, prior to enrollment into schools and day care. Or to require that their teachers and other adults they will come into contact with in an aggregate setting are also up to date on their vaccinations.

It's not fascist to expect similar requirements of care facilities for elderly adults and those in need of long term care.

Such rules and regulations have been responsible for saving countless lives and for improving the health and wellbeing of countless others. By countless, I mean hundreds of millions of lives, minimum.

Millennials and the following generations have not had to be vaccinated against small pox because smallpox (and polio) have been largely eliminated--because of vaccination.

It's not fascist to expect or even require people to be vaccinated against COVID19 if they are medically able to be vaccinated or for everyone to wear masks until this threat is eliminated.

Hint: Thanks to the slow response to the need for vaccination production/distribution and reluctance to mask and socially distance, it is likely that we will be dealing with COVID19 variants for years now.