Crazy crazy crazy

MC, You seem to have a death wish for your fellow forumites.  You continually post anti vaccine links, even though it is clear to any rational, free thinking individual that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective.  The VAERS site mentioned in your youtube link is from a US Health and Human Services group that compiles all adverse events reported to it following any and all vaccinations.  There have been a lot of vaccinations in 2021 which is reflected by an increase in reports.  The fact that the Covid-19 vaccines are in the news daily has undoubtedly caused an increase in reported events also.  Like me, if you get a slightly sore arm following a vaccination, you are free to report it as an adverse event.  Minor sniffles and a headache like I typically get from the temporary inflammation following a flu vaccination, go ahead and report it.  Temporary fast heartbeat, temporary slow heartbeat, let em know.  Dizziness, confusion, changes in eyesight or hearing, tell them.  They are obligated to include any and all reports in their summary reports.  

But, be aware that the VAERS site itself states that a causal relationship between the adverse event and the vaccination cannot be established by the data.  They continue “Some adverse events might be caused by vaccination and others might be coincidental and not related to vaccination. Just because an adverse event happened after a person received a vaccine does not mean the vaccine caused the adverse event“.   There is not a control group to compare the data with, which makes most of the data data pretty much meaningless, unless a specific adverse event shows up that is unusually high compared to the unvaccinated and can be explored further.  As of August 13, 2021 the VAERS system had documented 497 cases of myocarditis and about 100 cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome.  These have been studied in greater detail and they do in fact seem to be vaccine related.  Out of 200 million vaccinated, the incidence of these events is miniscule and is dwarfed by the number of lives saved by the vaccines.  Over the summer, YaleNews reported that the estimated number of lives saved by the Covid-19 vaccines approaches 279,000 as well as 1.25 million hospitalizations prevented.

So, I’ve got to ask you what on earth is your motivation to mislead people ?  I am really curious about this.

So you have an alternative reality, just like KellyAnne?   Nothing I have said here is untrue.  Facts as posted by the US Dept of HHS on the VAERS site and an estimate by Yale, yeah, that Yale.    You really are a piece of work.

Just 3 weeks ago, in a September 6th 2021 interview for TheAge, a Victoria Aus. news site had a story with a headline “Almost all COVID-19 patients in Victorian hospitals are unvaccinated: Foley” a quote from Health Minister Martin Foley who is speaking in your youtube video.  “Ninety-two people are in hospital as a result of infections driven by the Delta coronavirus variant but only one of the cases in the state’s hospital system on Sunday was fully vaccinated.”  A copied and pasted quote from the story.  I find it very difficult to believe that the Covid infection demographics have changed so dramatically in 3 weeks.  It seems more likely that he misspoke when mentioning the 78 as a percentage rather than 78 of the 375 in hospital are vaccinated.  I don’t have access to the raw numbers, but of the numbers he mentioned in the video (375 in hospital, 81 in icu, 61 on vent), “78% were vaccinated” is the only number mentioned as a percentage, likely in error.  It would be just like a right wing youtuber to capitalize on a misstatement like this for clicks.  I’ll take the written statements as fact.

Millercarbon _ I willfully admitted that I made an assumption in my earlier reply, but the post by coys21 makes it clear that my assumption was correct and that your youtube post was not.  Thanks coy21.  The Victoria Minister of Health misspoke one of the the many numbers he stated.  This is the classic situation where we can present the truth for you, but we cannot comprehend it for you.   You are beginning to remind me of a former co-worker who was often described as “always certain, seldom right”.  BTW, I am not even going to look at your recent youtube link.  If you have something to say, please have the courage and courtesy to say it directly.

For CD318 - I just had a booster and feel fine about it.  Fauci never stated that vaccine efficacy was now at 0%.  Breakthrough cases have been discussed ad nauseum in the media – you just need to read a bit more.  I do suspect that additional vaccinations against Covid -19 will be recommended in the future, just as influenza vaccines are recommended every single year.  You really need to read a lot more.  No one that has not been infected or vaccinated has any “natural immunity” to Covid-19.  If you have been infected, there is no way to determine that your immunity is “dozens of times” more effective than vaccination.  Both degrade over time.  Herd immunity to the original Covid-19 alpha variant was originally estimated to be at about 70% or so total immunity.  We might be approaching that number with infections and vaccinations combined, but Delta changed everything with regard to numerical estimates of herd immunity, so it is likely now about 90 or 95% ? not sure.  We will likely never approach that number thanks to some of those involved in this conversation.   Do you read anything at all?  99% of people are not anywhere near safe from the effects of this virus.  You must be from another planet.  Adverse effects from vaccinations predominantly are immunological in nature and typically occur very early, days, weeks, not years later.  Do you know what the long term effects are of the hot dog you had for lunch?  How long term?  Very recent studies show that about 36 minutes of lifetime is lost for each hot dog you have ever eaten.  I've had a few.  As published in many major medical journals, the virus was identified, isolated, sequenced, replication rates studied, and cell culture characteristics were documented back in March of LAST year.  Do you even know how to read or use Google?  

Mahgister – From reading the forums, I first thought you were a bit different, but I have come to appreciate your posts, approach, and insight.  Different can be good.  Words to live by.  I checked your links and though the Flemmingmethod post may have some pertinent information, there is just too much info to digest quickly from the link you provided.  I will try to check it out later.  Geert Vanden Bossche seems to have some credibility.  Vaccine leakage is really more a characteristic of a mutating virus, and doesn’t imply that there is a problem with the vaccine.  These mRNA vaccines were developed quickly to target a very specific protein.  With mutations occurring (it’s what viruses naturally do), very specific vaccines might show some limitations.  The alternative is to not have a vaccine at all right now, and have millions more dead, while we wait in lockdown conditions for a better vaccine.  I am certain that work is continuing to make improved Covid vaccines.

I will apologize in advance for the length of this, but the questions and issues are complex and cannot be addressed easily.  I am also going to publicly apologize to CD318 as my remarks to him last night were out of line, and I regretted them almost as soon as I hit submit.  Questions in a public forum need to always be welcome and never discouraged.  This is mainly a response to a few individuals I have been debating with, so if you have no interest in reading it, please ignore it.

At some level, I get the freedom issue.  In the US, we have a long history of well defined human rights that are guaranteed to us as individuals.  Free speech, religious choice, assembly, voting rights, bearing arms, etc. are all guaranteed to us by the Constitution, and cannot be taken away.  We also enjoy a multitude of undefined additional freedoms every single day.  Freedom to travel, what to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what kind of music to enjoy.  There are limits here though.  I have to wear shoes and a shirt to enter almost any public business, I cannot play my music so loud that I create a public nuisance.  And maybe someday, the government will mandate that all corn production go into the production of ethanol fuel, so maybe I will not be able to have corn flakes for breakfast.

Freedom is discussed every day by some, and often not even given a second thought by most.  I contend that there are some freedoms that really matter, and some that matter not so much.  Take away my right to vote, and  I will be marching in the street.  Take away my corn flakes by government mandate, and I will happily switch to raisin bran.

Several times a week we see cell phone footage of an airline passenger getting into a fist fight with a flight attendant who asks the traveler to put on a mask.  I am going to contend that mandates for mask wearing, social distancing, a reduced number of patrons in a restaurant or a bar are not the draconian infringements that some people claim, but well intentioned directives.  

The reduction or loss of business for restaurants, bars and mass attendance businesses was a serious side effect of the pandemic, and though the government tried to help with temporary monetary assistance programs for individuals and small businesses, all is not well.  Jobs were lost that will likely not come back.  Many/ most urban office buildings bars and restaurants still do not have full occupancy and many are still suffering.  These businesses would have suffered an extreme loss of customer base in any event due to the pandemic itself.  Personally, I would not have gone into a bar, restaurant, gym or concert last year at this time even if they were open.

There is indirect evidence that these mandates were incredibly successful at limiting the speed of spread of Covid-19.  It cannot be proven what the numbers of infections would have been without mandated behavior limits, but anecdotally, last season due to the mandates in place, the US cases of influenza resulting in death were reduced from about 30,000 during the 2019/20 flu season to just 646 during the 2020/21 flu season an incredible decrease of 98%.  It is easy to argue that without the limits on our (lesser) freedoms, at least hundreds of thousands of additional lives in the US would have been lost due to uncontrolled spread of Covid-19.  The governments of most of the industrialized countries of the world made similar calculated decisions to limit some freedoms in order to save lives.  Exceedingly difficult decisions to make.

Sweden was mentioned as an example of a successful alternative.  The numbers show that Sweden experienced a similar sharp economic downturn during 2020 with their GDP declined 2.8%, compared to declines of 2.8%, 2.7%, and 0.8% for their most comparable neighboring countries, Finland, Denmark, and Norway respectively (Nordicstatistics.org), each of which had taken some lockdown measures.  According to worldometers , the death rates per 100K in Sweden are about 3 fold to 5 fold higher and infection rates are also 2 to 3 fold higher than their Scandanavian counterparts.  Was staying mostly open really worth the cost?

You have more confidence in social behavior than I do.  I think that for the most part, people are predominantly ill-informed about public health matters and when given a choice many would make selfish decisions in their own best interests that would have adverse effects on everyone else.  Therefore, we have laws governing our behavior.  It might be desirable to some to drive 130MPH, and to ignore stop signs.  Governments enact rules and laws to protect commerce, personal property, and other people’s rights to travel safely.  I don’t think that anyone really takes issue with those laws.

Ah, but enforced vaccination is different people say.  I remember requirements for vaccinations for measles, mumps, polio, and probably others that I do not recall, in order to attend grade school.  Vaccinations have been required for some international travel for many years.  I had to receive a Hepatitis B vaccination in order to keep my job.  Is Covid-19 vaccination any different?  Perhaps if I fear getting Covid, I should get myself vaccinated, mask up, stay home, and let other individuals be free do as they please.  Maybe, also I need to drive a halftrack, and change my work and shopping hours to let others drive 130MPH and ignore stop signs if they feel like it.

In any case, the Covid vaccine is not actually forced into peoples arms.  You are given a choice to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing, or to get vaccinated or lose your job, or to get vaccinated or not be allowed to travel.  Harsh rules, no question, but for the safety of society, maybe a reasonable approach.

I am not so sure that there are reasonable, effective, affordable treatment options.  Chloroquine, and Ivermectin have been touted as treatment options, but when tested rigorously, they have come up short.  Remdesivir shows promise, but has a typical treatment cost of over $3,000 and is useful only after you have been infected.  Same story with convalescent plasma which has recently been shown to not be as effective as hoped.  Monoclonal antibody treatment seems to be effective but comes with a price tag exceeding $2000 per infusion, and again only an option after you have been infected and likely have been publicly contagious for days.

I know there are R & D costs, distribution costs, etc associated with vaccine production, but as a consumer, receiving the vaccinations have cost me exactly $0.  They are pre-emptive, work well, and have been shown to be safe in the arms of billions of people throughout the world.  

Good Morning to you Mahgister.  Thank you for your welcome and well intentioned interaction.  While I would normally agree with your comment about name calling, Millercarbon is about the worst offender I have seen on this forum in this regard so I have relaxed my normally high standards.  In addition, his ironic utilization of the Einstein avatar would imply a level of comfort with this particular moniker.

I appreciate the link you provided.  It is a very large summary of a wide range of alternative Covid-19 treatment regimes.  There is a lot to digest here, so I selected the Hydroxychloroquine related group of publications to have a look at initially.  There are limits to the amount of time I can spend on this stuff, so I decided to take a closer look at the 10 most recent studies (of the total 290 publications) in this HCQ subset list that they analyzed since they would seem to have the benefit of earlier knowledge with regard to HCQ treatment parameters.   Sound fair?  I think so.

Six of the most recent 10 HCQ publications showed summaries that stated no significant differences were found and I will not dwell on them.  Statistical significance in data is a hallmark of modern science.  The Civriz-Bozdag publication actually shows an increase in mortality in the HCQ treated group.  The Accinelli paper studies groups that were only treated with HCQ and Azithromycin (no control groups) and concludes that the patients whose treatment with HCQ/AZT earlier in the course of the disease (0 to 3 days) do not have as poor an outcome as those whose treatment was started later in the course of their disease.  With the known dangerous side effects of hydroxychloroquine, an untreated  control group may well have shown even less mortality than any of the groups treated with (challenged by?) HCQ.  We do not know since it was not included in the study.  They also state that “there was no apparent protection among the 558 patients that received these drugs when they were already hospitalized”. 

The Sawanpanyalert publication shows lower risk of a poor outcome with the antiviral Favipiravir, but also shows that Favipiravir with HCQ treatment shows a trend towards lower risk that does not meet the parameters for significance.  HCQ seems to diminish the positive effect of the antiviral drug.

Finally, the first one on the list is actually a preprint of this very analysis of the 290 the papers in the list making it sort of a nested loop of data. I will not comment on it because of this, but will note that they make the comment that “While many treatments have some level of efficacy, they do not replace vaccines”

So, once again, my choice 100 times out of 100 is to get vaccinated.

It seems that his thread has devolved into a game of who can post the most links or repeat their argument the most times.  I will not play that game, but rest assured, if I did, there are tens of thousands of readily available references documenting the effectiveness of the vaccine and its safety.  I have looked at all of the posted links in this thread and addressed some already, but it seems that most of them are now links to politically motivated right wing propaganda sites.  Sorry for the length, but I am not sitting here ready to reply to each and every post as it is made.   Posting the sources can help to elucidate the motivation.  For instance:

https://noqreport.com/2021/07/02/as-adverse-reactions-to-covid-vaccines-reaches-400000-the-truth-must-be-spread-widely/

NOQreport is It is considered a far right low credibility, conspiracy theory site by: 

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/noq-report/

https://rumble.com/vnbv86-winning-the-war-against-therapeutic-nihilism-and-trusted-treatments-vs-unte.html

Since September 2020 Rumble has been part-owned by none other than Dan Bongino a right wing political figure and host of Fox news “Unfiltered”.  I wonder what his motivations are?

Mahgister, your link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352837543_Analysis_of_COVID-19_vaccine_death_reports_from_t...

seems to be in direct contradiction to your proposal that only the elderly and infirm should receive vaccines against CV-19.  The data analyzed in this paper in figure 7 shows VAERS reported deaths from 2017,18,19, and 2020 compared to this year’s data as of April 1 2021.  There is a large rise in VAERS 2021 death reports.  The data from Jan 2021 through April 2021 would in large part be represented by the over 75 age group, which were among the first to be approved for vaccinations in the US.  If the vaccine was responsible for this increase in VAERS death reports, maybe the old and infirm should be excluded from vaccinations?   But, alas, even the authors conclude that of the 250 of these 1600 deaths that they tried to find an actual clinical cause of death for, only 13 of these 250 cases (5%) implicated the vaccine as the most likely cause of death.  VAERS does not in any way claim that post vaccination death reports were in any way related to the vaccination.  To make that assumption is incorrect as detailed on the VAERS site itself.

And, last for today,  a medical paper written by a population health geographer (raise your hand if you knew there was such a profession?) and a high school student.

https://trialsitenews.com/population-wide-epidemiological-geography-demonstrates-vaccination-doesnt-correlate-to-reduction-in-sars-cov-2-infection/

Almost the whole left end of their international data scatterplot is driven by 19 African countries with very low vax rates, but there are a host of reasons why the rates of Covid-19 infection are exceedingly low in Africa, among them are: early border closures, 55% rural, just 3% over the age of 65, open air ventilation in homes, very low median age of 19.7 years, lower expression of ACE-2 receptor which is the gateway for lung infection, and far fewer pre-existing conditions like diabetes, hypertension etc.  Without those dubious data points clustered to the lower left, the trendline would have the opposite and expected slope.  Here is a link that explains the reason for low Covid cases in Africa.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210818/Why-have-COVID-19-caseloads-been-comparatively-low-in-Africa.aspx.

As the health geographist’s medical paper continues, the premise of the US analysis seems to be akin to trying to learn how to raise cattle by studying ground beef.  Studying single time point case increases county by county in a situation where the case number profile has looked like 50 different roller coaster profiles at the state level, let alone county level has obvious limitations.  There are huge demographic variations in counties – population density, rural vs. urban, proximity to medical facility and case reporting, affordability for care, etc.  To chop the data into small pieces and not analyze these parameters seems extremely shortsighted.  But the author is a geographer, and as is often said “to a man with a hammer most things look like nails”.  The recent surge of the Delta variant has altered the curves, and increased infection rates.  The vaccination efficacy as well as natural immunity have been declining over time further muddying up this analysis.

VAERS is continually brought up.  VAERS data does NOT link the adverse effects or deaths as being CAUSED by vaccinations.  It says so on their site.  Any claims making this assumption are in error.  Finally, a link of my own from the Nebraska School of Medicine about this.

https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/does-vaers-list-deaths-caused-by-covid-19-vaccines

I will not likely participate further in this thread as it has become clear that no one will change their minds regarding vaccination.  It has certainly been an interesting exercise, but sadly little more than a pointless exercise. 

One final set of comments.  “early in 2020….When the sick and dead did not pile up anywhere near what we were told..”  Oh, but they have far exceeded those early death and case rate estimates.

“It responds to some or all of the various molecular shapes that comprise the virus”.   The immune system responds to the proteins/macromolecules expressed on the surface of the viral envelope/coat.

I agree, native immunity is likely better than vaccinated immunity, but to achieve it, you need to risk your life and become infected.

“But then some years ago the definition changed!”  No, science advanced to the point where we can readily synthesize proteins and macromolecules to use as an antigens.  We no longer need to risk patients lives by using attenuated viruses.  We no longer need to be limited to roots and plant extracts for medications since we can synthesize specific drug compounds to use as drugs also.  The original polio vaccine production and usage were temporarily halted when children were killed by improperly attenuation in one of the production facilities that manufactured the vaccine in the 1950s.

“The truth is that by any honest scientifically based definition the so-called "vaccines" are not vaccines at all”.   Not sure how you come up with that truth, so I will assume it belongs to you and you alone.  Everyone else in the entire whole world agrees and refers to the mRNA vaccines as vaccines.  We discussed this before, and I am surprised you keep bringing it up.

“Go do a little research, learn about mRNA. Messenger RNA is like a genetic program that tells the DNA in your cell nucleus to make something. In this case it is telling your cells to make a molecule that resembles covid.”   Again, not correct at all.  Under normal circumstances our the DNA in our nuclei codes for and synthesizes specific human mRNAs in the nucleus.  The mRNA is then transported out of the nucleus into the cytosol where your protein synthesis apparatus begins to make human protein off of the instructions of the mRNA strand.  The resulting protein is used inside the cell or shipped outside of the cell for use elsewhere as necessary.  In the case of the mRNA vaccine, the mRNA vaccine coding for the Covid spike protein is injected and the lipid vesicle mRNA “package” allows the mRNA to penetrate the lipid cell membranes of human cells.  The mRNA directly enters the cytoplasm of a human cell and utilizes the human cell protein synthesis machinery to make spike protein which is shipped out into the extracellular space/bloodstream, where your immune system recognizes it and mounts an immune response to the Covid spike protein.  The mRNA never enters you nuclei, and never alters your DNA in any way.   Your nucleus and your DNA simply is not involved in this process.  The mRNA is so labile that it gets degraded by your cells within hours.