Covid-19 miscellany

[Loren Pechtel]

Not so much.

Well, yes. In fact, it seems to me that vaccination is more likely to make infected people asymptomatic, and asymptomatic people are surely more dangerous, as they have no reason to suspect they are contagious.

Disagree--most transmission is while asymptomatic anyway even when people later get symptoms. (And this is why Covid has no evolutionary pressure to get less lethal--it's spread is virtually independent of the final fate of the patient. We got lucky with Omicron because moving higher in the respiratory tract both increases transmission and lowers the lethality.

 

[Hermit]

I really don't understand the vaccine deniers, especially after so many people have died and the vast majority of them have been unvaccinated. Children have been required to have vaccines since I was a child in the 1950s and until the last couple of decades, nobody seemed upset about that.

Wrong. Segments of society have opposed vaccinations since doctor Edward Jenner demonstrated in 1796 that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Apparently, the vaccine makes those inoculated by it grow cow-like appendages.

A cartoon from 1802

Even the 1917/8 influenza epidemic mobilised vaccine opponents.

1918: A demonstration against mandatory smallpox vaccination in Toronto, Canada.Credit: Ts/Keystone USA/Shutterstock

A cartoon lampooning vaccine hesitancy from the 1930s

The saintly Mahatma Gandhi was a prominent anti-vaxxer. He wrote a book titled A Guide to Health. A translation into English appeared in 1921. Part II, Chapter VI is about smallpox, in which he made his opinion about vaccination known. Part of it reads:

Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time, not to be found even among the so-called savage races of the world. Its supporters are not content with its adoption by those who have no objection to it, but seek to impose it with the aid of penal laws and rigorous punishments on all people alike. The practice of vaccination is not very old, dating as it does from 1798 A.D. But, during this comparatively short period that has elapsed, millions have fallen a prey to the delusion that those who get themselves vaccinated are safe from the attack of small-pox. No one can say that small-pox will necessarily attack those who have not been vaccinated; for many cases have been observed of unvaccinated people being free from its attack. From the fact that some people who are not vaccinated do get the disease, we cannot, of course, conclude that they would have been immune if only they had got themselves vaccinated.

Moreover, vaccination is a very dirty process, for the serum which is introduced into the human body includes not only that of the cow, but also of the actual small-pox patient. An average man would even vomit at the mere sight of this stuff. If the hand happens to touch it, it is always washed with soap. The mere suggestion of tasting it fills us with indignation and disgust. But how few of those who get themselves vaccinated realise that they are in effect eating this filthy stuff! Most people know that, in several diseases, medicines and liquid food are injected into the blood, and that they are assimilated into the system more rapidly than if they were taken through the mouth. The only difference, in fact, between injection and the ordinary process of eating through the mouth is that the assimilation in the former case is instantaneous, while that in the latter is slow. And yet we do not shrink from getting ourselves vaccinated! As has been well said, cowards die a living death, and our craze for vaccination is solely due to the fear of death or disfigurement by small-pox.

The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk in the 1950s seems to have met universal acclaim as did the announcement in 1979 that the smallpox virus had been eradicated, but the anti-vaccination movement returned with a vengeance in 1998 when the highly respected Lancet published a peer reviewed, totally fraudulent article by doctor Andrew Wakefield, purporting to show that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. It took the Lancet a scandalous eight months to retract it. By then the damage had been done. It is a well known fact that a lie travels around the globe while the truth is still putting on its shoes. The internet amplifies this unfortunate effect.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The current vaccine reduces the chances of severe illness and death from omicron. Omicron is also asymptomatic in most people (and indeed, may be much, much more widespread than testing indicates). I believe the mechanism that protects people from severe illness and death may also make people who would have had mild symptoms have no symptoms at all (I think this is a fair inference).

People who are asymptomatic have no reason to believe they are infected and therefore have no reason to isolate.

Omicron is generally mild/asymptomatic in those with prior infection or vaccination. It's not as deadly as the earlier versions in those with no protection but it's still crashing hospitals.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

For this hypothetical imagine it is about some livestock animal not humans.

At what point does giving a vaccine that is a couple generations behind the virus not only not work well at all, but actually in the long run lead to those animals in the livestock business susceptible to nastier viruses and with a blunted immune response to the current viruses?

This is sort of the analog to the livestock industry trying to find ways to neutralize or eliminate anti-nutrients in feed, but for human food it mostly being ignored. Granted, lots of traditional food preparation deals with this. Mass produced food often does not.

I will post this picture again for the third time


View attachment 37219

Posting it yet again doesn't make it any more correct.

And note that the same thing would apply whether it was from vaccination or infection--even if you're right there's no value to natural immunity.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Had a trip to the supermarket earlier. Despite the indoor mask mandate still in place, went in the store without a mask, did my shopping, checked out and went on my merry way. Nobody said anything. One other guy in the store was sans mask, we let on to each other with a nod. It was a good day.

Because too many of your brethren are terrorists.

Somehow I don't think you would feel the same way about Islamists making off with your daughter because she's obviously a whore (since she's not wearing a burqa) and nobody doing anything because they feared being shot.

Why are your terrorists better?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Duh! Rules that are not enforced don't make much difference.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the vaccine only reduced sickness and death from COVID to the individual, but did not reduce the chances of catching it or passing it on (that is, they'd still be 'plague rats'), (presumably) nobody would force it on people. It is solely for the benefit of others that the vaccine is being injected into unwilling people.

You aren't in a place where the hospitals are crashing.

By getting sick you are posing a risk to everyone else who might need a hospital. (And that's everyone--being young and healthy is no protection against car accidents.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, it makes complete and total sense to compare a tiny island nation with no state, county or provincial governments to the United States.

Give me strength.

The size of a nation has no bearing on the resources per capita they can apply to a problem and effectiveness is based on resources per capita. New Zealand being small provides no protection.

And it can be done without being an island.

Bhutan

Very poor, surrounded by other countries, even better outcome than New Zealand.

Yes, that chart is very jagged, that doesn't make it bad data. That's what happens when your sampling rate is far above your incidence rate.

 

[repoman]

For this hypothetical imagine it is about some livestock animal not humans.

At what point does giving a vaccine that is a couple generations behind the virus not only not work well at all, but actually in the long run lead to those animals in the livestock business susceptible to nastier viruses and with a blunted immune response to the current viruses?

This is sort of the analog to the livestock industry trying to find ways to neutralize or eliminate anti-nutrients in feed, but for human food it mostly being ignored. Granted, lots of traditional food preparation deals with this. Mass produced food often does not.

I will post this picture again for the third time


View attachment 37219

Posting it yet again doesn't make it any more correct.

And note that the same thing would apply whether it was from vaccination or infection--even if you're right there's no value to natural immunity.

Ok, can you get in a time machine today and be exposed to an extinct strain of the virus?

No, but you can get a vaccine now that does that.

 

[southernhybrid]

Now whether some are dragging along too much connotation is another matter

Whether? Hardly a question.
Plus inventing a non-existent context (forced against their will) within which to place this contrived horror…

If one of the VERY RARE side effects like VITT happened to a person who only got vaccinated because of a requirement and no testing out - like for Washington State Govt workers, would that be "contrived"?

This parody of a hard line you are taking, are you venting personal frustrations through being an internet tough guy? This is a joke.

When I was administering vaccines back in the 80s. the parents or the person about to receive the vaccine had to sign a paper that listed all potential side effects, a few that could be serious. Those were extremely rare. In fact, some of them have now been proven not to be associated with the DPT vaccine. Never once did a parent act scared or back out of having their child vaccinated. For one thing, they were required if they wanted their children to attend public schools. Secondly, these parents knew that any risk associated with the vaccines was far less common than the risks associated with their children becoming infected with the diseases that the vaccines protected them from getting. Maybe people were smarter in the 80s. Maybe there wasn't so much stupid propaganda in the 80s. Or maybe, since we didn't have the internet, there wasn't so much crazy misinformation in the 80s. All I know is that the anti vaccine movement is ignorant. And, I agree with he posters who mentioned that we all should be vaccinated to protect ourselves as well as others in our communities.

 

[Elixir]

If one of the VERY RARE side effects like VITT happened to a person who only got vaccinated because of a requirement and no testing out - like for Washington State Govt workers, would that be "contrived"?

That would be the lamentable cost of SAVING millions of lives (as long as we're being hyperbolic). As SH says, it would be tragic. About 1/1,000,000th as tragic as a million more people dying from a preventable disease.

This parody of a hard line you are taking, are you venting personal frustrations through being an internet tough guy? This is a joke.

You must run across a lot of tough guys as a repo man, eh? Maybe you see tough guys where there aren't any tough guys?
I'm 5,11, 160 lbs (actually just under both measurements) and am habitually non-confrontational. Almost the exact opposite of how I picture a repoman. There was a TV show I liked called Airplane Repo... those guys are awesome. One of them is no "bigger" than I am. Maybe tougher by some measures, but a hundred times more of a badass tough guy than I'll ever be.

Thanks for asking about my personal life though; not a lot of people take such an interest.

can you get in a time machine today and be exposed to an extinct strain of the virus?
No, but you can get a vaccine now that does that.

No, you cannot. That's ignorant right wing fake news.
Have you ever been to a natural history museum? Did you get eaten by a "dinosaur"?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

For this hypothetical imagine it is about some livestock animal not humans.

At what point does giving a vaccine that is a couple generations behind the virus not only not work well at all, but actually in the long run lead to those animals in the livestock business susceptible to nastier viruses and with a blunted immune response to the current viruses?

This is sort of the analog to the livestock industry trying to find ways to neutralize or eliminate anti-nutrients in feed, but for human food it mostly being ignored. Granted, lots of traditional food preparation deals with this. Mass produced food often does not.

I will post this picture again for the third time


View attachment 37219

Posting it yet again doesn't make it any more correct.

And note that the same thing would apply whether it was from vaccination or infection--even if you're right there's no value to natural immunity.

Natural immunity usually comes with better near term protection of the virus, however, it also comes with much worse risks due to acquiring the virus.

The vaccine provides extraordinarily low risk and almost all benefit. You immunize 300 million people, there will be a handful of awful side effects, which doctors can be on the look out for. But the benefits for individuals and the community greatly outweigh the consequences so much that we need to even discuss this is tragic.

125,000 dead from Covid-19 in the Omicron wave. Roughly 0 dead (rounding up from zero) from getting the vaccine.

 

[Toni]

I really don't understand the vaccine deniers, especially after so many people have died and the vast majority of them have been unvaccinated. Children have been required to have vaccines since I was a child in the 1950s and until the last couple of decades, nobody seemed upset about that.

Wrong. Segments of society have opposed vaccinations since doctor Edward Jenner demonstrated in 1796 that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus. Apparently, the vaccine makes those inoculated by it grow cow-like appendages.

A cartoon from 1802

Even the 1917/8 influenza epidemic mobilised vaccine opponents.

1918: A demonstration against mandatory smallpox vaccination in Toronto, Canada.Credit: Ts/Keystone USA/Shutterstock

A cartoon lampooning vaccine hesitancy from the 1930s

The saintly Mahatma Gandhi was a prominent anti-vaxxer. He wrote a book titled A Guide to Health. A translation into English appeared in 1921. Part II, Chapter VI is about smallpox, in which he made his opinion about vaccination known. Part of it reads:

Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time, not to be found even among the so-called savage races of the world. Its supporters are not content with its adoption by those who have no objection to it, but seek to impose it with the aid of penal laws and rigorous punishments on all people alike. The practice of vaccination is not very old, dating as it does from 1798 A.D. But, during this comparatively short period that has elapsed, millions have fallen a prey to the delusion that those who get themselves vaccinated are safe from the attack of small-pox. No one can say that small-pox will necessarily attack those who have not been vaccinated; for many cases have been observed of unvaccinated people being free from its attack. From the fact that some people who are not vaccinated do get the disease, we cannot, of course, conclude that they would have been immune if only they had got themselves vaccinated.

Moreover, vaccination is a very dirty process, for the serum which is introduced into the human body includes not only that of the cow, but also of the actual small-pox patient. An average man would even vomit at the mere sight of this stuff. If the hand happens to touch it, it is always washed with soap. The mere suggestion of tasting it fills us with indignation and disgust. But how few of those who get themselves vaccinated realise that they are in effect eating this filthy stuff! Most people know that, in several diseases, medicines and liquid food are injected into the blood, and that they are assimilated into the system more rapidly than if they were taken through the mouth. The only difference, in fact, between injection and the ordinary process of eating through the mouth is that the assimilation in the former case is instantaneous, while that in the latter is slow. And yet we do not shrink from getting ourselves vaccinated! As has been well said, cowards die a living death, and our craze for vaccination is solely due to the fear of death or disfigurement by small-pox.

The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk in the 1950s seems to have met universal acclaim as did the announcement in 1979 that the smallpox virus had been eradicated, but the anti-vaccination movement returned with a vengeance in 1998 when the highly respected Lancet published a peer reviewed, totally fraudulent article by doctor Andrew Wakefield, purporting to show that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. It took the Lancet a scandalous eight months to retract it. By then the damage had been done. It is a well known fact that a lie travels around the globe while the truth is still putting on its shoes. The internet amplifies this unfortunate effect.

All of this is correct but at the same time, by the 50’s children were expected to have a set of vaccinations prior to enrollment in public schools. As far back as the late 1930’s or early 1940’s, children routinely were vaccinated against smallpox AT SCHOOL, or at least at the small rural schools my parents
attended.

I am certain there were vaccine refuseniks back then and before but I don’t remember any from my childhood, and only one or two when my kids were young—and those were religious exemptions.

 

[Toni]

The current vaccine reduces the chances of severe illness and death from omicron. Omicron is also asymptomatic in most people (and indeed, may be much, much more widespread than testing indicates). I believe the mechanism that protects people from severe illness and death may also make people who would have had mild symptoms have no symptoms at all (I think this is a fair inference).

People who are asymptomatic have no reason to believe they are infected and therefore have no reason to isolate.

Omicron is generally mild/asymptomatic in those with prior infection or vaccination. It's not as deadly as the earlier versions in those with no protection but it's still crashing hospitals.

Omicron is hospitalizing more children compared with earlier variants.

 

[TSwizzle]

Comical. LA County public health director "Dr" Barbara Ferrer at the super bowl, sitting there with her mask on while practically no one else is wearing a mask;



Mayor Eric Garcetti also in attendance, sans mask.

And these idiots maintain that the school kids need to wear their masks.

I've ditched my mask.

 

[Toni]

Comical. LA County public health director "Dr" Barbara Ferrer at the super bowl, sitting there with her mask on while practically no one else is wearing a mask;



Mayor Eric Garcetti also in attendance, sans mask.

And these idiots maintain that the school kids need to wear their masks.

I've ditched my mask.

Why the scare quotes?

You've made it clear that you have no concern for the health of other people or for reducing the potential that you might possibly transmit an infection that could kill someone else but is asymptomatic in you. So why are you continuing to remind us?

 

[ZiprHead]

Comical. LA County public health director "Dr" Barbara Ferrer at the super bowl, sitting there with her mask on while practically no one else is wearing a mask;



Mayor Eric Garcetti also in attendance, sans mask.

And these idiots maintain that the school kids need to wear their masks.

I've ditched my mask.

Why the scare quotes?

You've made it clear that you have no concern for the health of other people or for reducing the potential that you might possibly transmit an infection that could kill someone else but is asymptomatic in you. So why are you continuing to remind us?

Virtue signalling.

 

[TSwizzle]

Comical. LA County public health director "Dr" Barbara Ferrer at the super bowl, sitting there with her mask on while practically no one else is wearing a mask;



Mayor Eric Garcetti also in attendance, sans mask.

And these idiots maintain that the school kids need to wear their masks.

I've ditched my mask.

Why the scare quotes?

You've made it clear that you have no concern for the health of other people or for reducing the potential that you might possibly transmit an infection that could kill someone else but is asymptomatic in you. So why are you continuing to remind us?

"Dr" Ferrer, same as "Dr" Jill Biden. Just so you know that "Dr" Ferrer is not a medical doctor.

Yeah, I'm not really that concerned about other people's health as I have no control over their health. And in the state of California the mask mandate will be lifted tomorrow, Feb 15th anyway. Except of course in LA County where "Dr" Ferrer has decreed that the mask mandate will remain for some reason.

And it's not so much as to remind you, it's more pointing out the stupidity of "Dr" Ferrer sitting there wearing a mask in a crowd of umpty thousand maskless people. I'm one of these people that will not go along with the charade any longer. The tide has turned. Pandemic over.

 

[Toni]

So, you toss your garbage in the street, defecate in public pools and parks, don't bother covering your coughs or sneezes, etc.?

And you choose not to acknowledge Ph.D. recipient's honorific.

I'm pretty sure you drive on publicly maintained roads, receive various government services such as the maintenance of roads, water supply, fire department, police department, border patrol, US military, etc. etc. etc.

How unsurprising.

 

[TSwizzle]

So, you toss your garbage in the street, defecate in public pools and parks, don't bother covering your coughs or sneezes, etc.?

I don't do any of those things. It just shows how unhinged the covidians have become to even equate such nonsense with going about your daily life sans mask. It really is stupid to say such things. Incidentally. I have my own pool and have not been in a public pool since about 2000.

And you choose not to acknowledge Ph.D. recipient's honorific.

I choose to mention "Dr" Ferrer's lack of medical expertise. Which may go some way to explain why she does the shit that she does.

I'm pretty sure you drive on publicly maintained roads, receive various government services such as the maintenance of roads, water supply, fire department, police department, border patrol, US military, etc. etc. etc. How unsurprising.

Yeah, and I pay for it all through exorbitant California taxes so I am entitled to these service.