Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

That's what John Campbell thinks. I'm not so enamoured with him since he lost his shit and started promoting Ivermectin so much, going as far as claiming it is more effective than the new Pfizer drug. He's a former nurse with a PhD in teaching who has some medical understanding but when it comes to the statistical analysis of preprint papers, he's lost. Provided some useful analysis earlier in the pandemic but he's flailing now.
Because you disagree with him on one point, you now disagree with him on all points? :???: He spells out the reasoning, and it's not just his opinion either but other people independently considering the same. One thing is for certain - medications intended for administering into muscle tissue should not be injected into a blood vessel, and although the chances of hitting a blood vessel are low, when issuing 2/3 injections to tens/hundreds of millions of people, you definitely will hit blood vessels by unhappy accident in some people, which is entirely avoidable by aspirating the needle. The change in policy seems driven by minimising time based on taking a gamble with the injection on the assumption the chances of hitting a blood vessel are vanishingly small, it's not worth bothering with. If it adds two seconds to aspirate, across 1 million injections that's 2 million seconds, over 550 NHS man-hours to avoid a problem that probably won't arise, hence cut back...
 
The 'freedom' thing extends to principle - if it's okay to mandate vaccines for everyone, where does that stop? Mandating 'happy drug' injections to stop people rising up against a corrupt, oppressive government? You shouldn't really need to force anyone to do anything, but to rely on good education, competent science, and trustworthy leaders to guide, although it appears Evolution likes a percentage of humans to be contrary 'just in case' and you'll never approach even a 90% consensus. Strong-arming is a fallback of a failed system, like a Disney Dad saying, "while you live under my roof, you'll live by my rules!" and has its own associated long-term problems where you'd be trading one problem for another.

I don't equate 'Vaccine Passports' as the same limitations of innate freedom as 'forced vaccinations'; there's a difference between choosing to not get vaccinated and so miss out on clubs and cinema until this over, versus having someone inject you with foreign materials against your wishes (and potentially storming your home by force and violently pinning you down to inject, which will be a level government's will have to be willing to go to if mandating everyone gets an injection), even if accompanied with the best intentions.
 
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Ahh yes, the slippery slope argument "if we allow gay marriage whats to stop someone marrying their dog"
well someone in sudan (I think) married a goat, I think that was ruling cause he was caught having intercourse with it and thus the village decided he should do the right thing and make the goat proud (not sure if it was male or female).
There was no happily ever after though IIRC months/years later the goat choked on a plastic bag (no idea if there was any progeny)

Im for mandating vaccines as the decision not to get vaccinated not only affects them but other people as well. If the decision only affected their body and noone else then I say let them not get vaccinated / only eat ice cream / smoke crack whatever but it doesnt just affect them.
I equate it more to being like a drunk driver, sure if it was only them that gets killed in an accident then let them drive drunk but its not how driving drunk is.

If this was 20 years ago this wouldnt of been an issue, 90+% of the ppl would be vaccinated but now with social media, 'the dumbness' is just become a contagious disease

15-20% of americans believe the absolutely ludicrous idea that the US government / media / business are literally controlled by a group of blood drinking child sex trafficking satan worshipers, its funny when you think about it, how can ppl be such idiots until you realize fuck thats a huge chunk of the population that are just complete and utter morons. And this is the society I live in, we're doomed :LOL:

WRT vaccines to be in the US military you need up to 20 different shots, which ppl readily accept as being part of what it is to inlist, but now with this becoming so politicised, its like OK I had no problems with those last 19 but this one devil vaccine, fuck that you're not microchipping me
 
The 'freedom' thing extends to principle - if it's okay to mandate vaccines for everyone, where does that stop? Mandating 'happy drug' injections to stop people rising up against a corrupt, oppressive government? You shouldn't really need to force anyone to do anything, but to rely on good education, competent science, and trustworthy leaders to guide, although it appears Evolution likes a percentage of humans to be contrary 'just in case' and you'll never approach even a 90% consensus. Strong-arming is a fallback of a failed system, like a Disney Dad saying, "while you live under my roof, you'll live by my rules!" and has its own associated long-term problems where you'd be trading one problem for another.

Not valid comparisons. With pandemics, you are dealing with something that can put a stop to life for a long time. People can also die due to other people's recklessness.
 
I'm not saying it's comparable, but it is potentially a 'slippery slope' as Davros mentions (and then uses an unrelated example to attempt to discredit the genuine problem ;)). Mandating injecting a foreign substance into someone whether they want it or not is on whole other level to the kinds of obligations society places on people like 'do not litter' and 'pay your taxes'. Huge changes in government control will be easier to introduce if done stepwise. Like gore in movies - there's stuff out now rated 15 that'd never have gotten certification in the 70s, but the boundaries were pushed bit by bit until it became tolerable.

Those of us who aren't against vaccines won't have an emotional reaction to being forced to have them and can easily shrug it off, but for others, it'll be akin to a vegan being forced to eat meat, or a die hard Sony fanboy having to game on XBox. If you're going to ask a massive sacrifice like that, it should really be won over by them choosing to make the sacrifice for the greater good, which requires a sense of community and belonging which is the very opposite you get when you force people to do stuff. If you start imposing your view of what's right on people who think otherwise, they will in turn be justified to impose what they think is right back, and you just generate conflict.

Honestly, people should just watch more X-Men; it's all perfectly illustrated there!
 
Because you disagree with him on one point, you now disagree with him on all points? :???: He spells out the reasoning, and it's not just his opinion either but other people independently considering the same. One thing is for certain - medications intended for administering into muscle tissue should not be injected into a blood vessel, and although the chances of hitting a blood vessel are low, when issuing 2/3 injections to tens/hundreds of millions of people, you definitely will hit blood vessels by unhappy accident in some people, which is entirely avoidable by aspirating the needle. The change in policy seems driven by minimising time based on taking a gamble with the injection on the assumption the chances of hitting a blood vessel are vanishingly small, it's not worth bothering with. If it adds two seconds to aspirate, across 1 million injections that's 2 million seconds, over 550 NHS man-hours to avoid a problem that probably won't arise, hence cut back...

You can be pretty certain that the aspiration claims will have been considered when looking for the causes of the clots. Heck, we don't even know if other countries which also used the AZ vaccine do or don't aspirate. It may well be that some of them do as a matter of course. It's an interesting idea, but no evidence to back it up. The latest data indicates an adenovirus/PF4 reaction leads to the thrombocytopenia and the clots. I'd imagine it will all come out in the wash, in a year or two, but the COV-boost data appears to show that we're better off with the mRNA vaccines in the interim, so that's the way we're going to head.

No real problems with Campbell, other than the fact he's got himself so hung up on Ivermectin (and Vitamin D to a less damaging degree). The statements he's now making about Ivermectin are completely lacking in evidence and could cause harm if people think the stuff is going to be effective in the case of infection. Heck, you'd potentially have the situation where the hard of thinking might turn down treatment with the Pfizer drug and try to get themselves Ivermectin! Which would be bloody stupid.
 
Latest from South Africa:

https://www.samrc.ac.za/news/tshwane-district-omicron-variant-patient-profile-early-features
In summary, the first impression on examination of the 166 patients admitted since the Omicron variant made an appearance, together with the snapshot of the clinical profile of 42 patients currently in the COVID wards at the SBAH/TDH complex, is that the majority of hospital admissions are for diagnoses unrelated to COVID-19. The SARS-CoV-2 positivity is an incidental finding in these patients and is largely driven by hospital policy requiring testing of all patients requiring admission to the hospital.

Using the proportion of patients on room air as a marker for incidental COVID admission as opposed to severe COVID (pneumonia), 76% of patients at the SBAH/TDH complex are incidental COVID admissions. This very unusual picture is also occurring at other hospitals in Gauteng. On 3 December Helen Joseph Hospital had 37 patients in the COVID wards of whom 31 were on room air (83%); and the Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital had 80 patients of which 14 were on supplemental oxygen and 1 on a ventilator (81% on room air).

The exponential increase in the positivity rate in these patients is a reflection of the rapidly increased case rate for Tshwane but does not appear to be associated with a concomitant increase in the rate of admissions for severe COVID (pneumonia) based on the high proportion of patients not requiring supplemental oxygen.

The relatively low number of COVID-19 pneumonia hospitalizations in the general, high care and ICU wards constitutes a very different picture compared to the beginning of previous waves. A detailed analysis comparing the current picture with previous waves is still being conducted. This may very well be related to the early upswing of the fourth wave, with the more classical pattern becoming evident over the next two weeks. What is clear though is that the age profile is different from previous waves. It may be that this is a vaccination effect as 57 % of people over the age of 50 have been vaccinated in the province compared to 34% in the 18-to-49-year group.
So a different profile, high infection rates (much higher than official numbers) but lower associated Covid19 disease. Still requires a couple of weeks for confirmation numbers as per the article's own caveat:
It is essential to recognize that the patient information presented here only represents the first two weeks of the Omicron wave in Tshwane. The clinical profile of admitted patients could change significantly over the next two weeks, by which time we can draw conclusions about the severity of disease with greater precision.
 
Meanwhile, very different Booster responses and a clear need for best third-shot options, both in terms of immune response and minimising side effects.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02717-3/fulltext
(From BMJ summary)
Among those primed with two doses of AstraZeneca, antibody levels were 32 times higher after the Moderna booster than control (24.8 to 42.0) compared with nearly two times higher after a half dose of the Valneva (1.8, 99% confidence interval 1.5 to 2.3).

For people primed with the Pfizer vaccine, a Moderna booster increased antibody levels 11.5 (9.4 to 14.1) times higher than control while a half dose of Valneva increased levels by 1.3 times (99% CI 1.0 to 1.5). The results were similar for all ages.
 
Like gore in movies - there's stuff out now rated 15 that'd never have gotten certification in the 70s, but the boundaries were pushed bit by bit until it became tolerable.
There are movies from the 70's that would definitely never be allowed to be made today.
 
There are movies from the 70's that would definitely never be allowed to be made today.
Oh they'll be allowed to be made, just that noone would want to. The only exceptions are perhaps cannibal holocaust or mondo stuff, but salo or island of death (to bring it back to goat sex) I dont see any issues, eg we had 'new born porn' from a infamous film a few years ago
 
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Yes. That would definitely solve the problem of this virus that breaks through vaccines.
Talk about ignoring reality.

That would be significantly less of an issue if everyone who could take the vaccine did take it. Leaving virus little room to spread and potentially mutate further.
 
Though true, you'll only slow it, not stop it. Prior to Covid19, we had Flu mutating, with vaccines created to provide resistance to three strains out of several doing the rounds. The lack of measures to stop influenza spreading means it keeps mutating, but it's not actually possible to stop it. You'd have to vaccinate everyone with adequate vaccines to stop all the strains at the same time and cross your fingers that across 7 billion people, there isn't a breakthrough infection to keep the whole thing going.

Either the intention with C19 is to keep vaccinating everyone constantly to prevent it progressing like any other disease, or sooner-or-later it has to be accepted as part of the background diseases humans face. If the former, what about all the other diseases? There are plenty of infections now happening in people's weakened immune systems, which is propagating diseases that can be fatal to the immunocompromised etc., plus running the risks of mutating into nastier versions - how long until a mutation in 229E or HKU1 makes them more serious if we aren't vaccinating against them now? Do we let our immune systems build back naturally, with the cost of some lives on the way, or go into lockdown until we can vaccinate against every disease? If we're picking a middle ground, what's the reasoning behind drawing a particular line between vaccination and natural immunity?
 
That would be significantly less of an issue if everyone who could take the vaccine did take it. Leaving virus little room to spread and potentially mutate further.

Or it could only increase the evolutionary pressure for it to be more vaccine resistant quicker sice all the sub-strains that are effectively stopped by the vaccine would die off, but none of the ones that can break-through would. What does that buy humanity, realistically?
 
Or it could only increase the evolutionary pressure for it to be more vaccine resistant quicker sice all the sub-strains that are effectively stopped by the vaccine would die off, but none of the ones that can break-through would. What does that buy humanity, realistically?

Breakthrough infections are not a product of new strains, they are mostly just a product of vaccines not being 100% effective and people with less effective immune response. The more it circulates the more chances of a mutation.

You also miss the part where the risk of letting it circulate unchecked possibly leads to more deadly strains. And instead of this becoming the common cold it becomes something much more deadly.
 
Breakthrough infections are not a product of new strains, they are mostly just a product of vaccines not being 100% effective and people with less effective immune response. The more it circulates the more chances of a mutation.

You also miss the part where the risk of letting it circulate unchecked possibly leads to more deadly strains. And instead of this becoming the common cold it becomes something much more deadly.

Even within the same strain, as defined by health authorities and research communities, there still are small genetic variabilities. I'm sure some of those have higher chance of breaking through the vaccine than some others. Leaky vaccines, unfortunately, end up inadvertently selecting for those variations. Same reason we have tight control over anti-biotics. We don't want people taking anti-biotics half-assedly, because that ends up accelerating their evolution towards ever stronger variations.

Of course, the way bacteria and viruses reproduce is VERY different, and the way in which genetic variability comes about is not the same. Honestly I don't know how significant this type of evolutionary pressure actually is, but it is not zero. Might still be near negligible, though, or it might not.
 
You also miss the part where the risk of letting it circulate unchecked possibly leads to more deadly strains. And instead of this becoming the common cold it becomes something much more deadly.
That's true of every disease in circulation though, including 'the common cold'. Why single SARS-Cov-2 out especially?
 
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