Coronavirus Outbreak

[Josh]

Ken,

You just seriously claimed we try to control common colds as much as covid has been tried to be controlled?

[Ken]

Ken,

You just seriously claimed we try to control common colds as much as covid has been tried to be controlled?

I said nothing of the sort. I simply said we don’t let any disease run wild, even the common cold. It took me all of 10 seconds to find that Americans spend over $40 billion a year dealing with the common cold and several billion alone on over-the-counter remedies and preventatives. This was all prior to the pandemic: https://www.marketplace.org/2011/01/21/ ... mmon-cold/. Long before anyone had ever heard of Covid we still sent kids home from school who had fevers and they were required to stay away until 24 hours after the fever was over.

We have always tried to prevent the spread of every type of infectious disease. When was the last time you heard any public health expert say that we should just let the common cold or the flu run wild so that everyone is quickly immune? I suspect never.

[nett]

This sounds like good news

I agree - so far so good, although in some respects the jury is still out. I

We had talked about this earlier, but if the Omicron variant is more transmissive yet mild it may be a blessing in disguise, potentially outpacing more deadly variants like Delta, and leaving a relatively immune population in its wake. Ironically, it may help the pandemic burn itself out - and move us at least from a pandemic stage to an endemic flu-like stage - and normalcy.

It's too early to say at this point, but if Omicron is definitively mild, I wonder if most of the world would ever have the guts to vaccinate and boost whoever is willing, then open borders and barriers and just let Omicron run its course until most folks are either vaccinated, recovered, or some combination of both.

I don’t think the fact that Omicron might be mild or less deadly is necessary any reason to let an infectious disease run wild. We do’t do that with the flu or common cold, chicken pox, mumps, or measles. We still take precautions (at least most of us do) to prevent catching colds and the flu even though we know they aren’t deadly, or aren’t likely to be deadly if we aren’t elderly with other respiratory diseases. And we still vaccinate against those other common but rarely deadly diseases.

The obvious danger to letting any coronovirus run wild is that it will continue to mutate and who knows what the phi, rho, or sigma variants are going to look like. Maybe they will be equally infectious but much more deadly.

While your assertion about viruses mutating naturally is a popular right now, it's not based in reality.

Natural selection dictates that viruses mutate to be more contagious and less virulent. There are mathematical models that show how a virus cannot mutate to become more deadly. When the common cold first jumped from bovines to people, it was deadly in most cases, but quickly mutated to becomes less virulent, and is now almost endemic.

There are many viruses that are endemic to the human genome that cause no issues whatsoever, and many are even beneficial.

Leaky vaccines have been shown to cause major problems with the natural selection of viruses, with ADE and VEI being demonstrated in lab environments with accelerated generational testing.

This is the main reason why mRNA vaccines don't work on a macro level. The narrow band response to a single spike protein encourages the virus to mutate unnaturally. Our immune systems are designed much holistically, with a wide band response that ensures eradication of the virus at the expense of symptoms, up to and including death in some cases, which is sometimes necessary to ensure more virulent strains do not continue to spread.

[nett]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 1.full.pdf

We now have empirical data showing that not only are vaccines not effective for those with natural immunity, they actually increase the chances of both infection and severe symptoms in all cohorts.

I've been looking forward to this kind of empirical data being release, since it's the gold-standard in epidemiology. Unfortunately Israel doesn't have a large unvaccinated population in a few of the cohorts, which probably artificially improves the result profile for the vaccines.

Regardless, the data is clear. Vaccination is inferior to natural immunity across the board, and vaccinating those with natural immunity weakens their natural immunity after 2 months.

[Dan Z]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 1.full.pdf

We now have empirical data showing that not only are vaccines not effective for those with natural immunity, they actually increase the chances of both infection and severe symptoms in all cohorts.

I've been looking forward to this kind of empirical data being release, since it's the gold-standard in epidemiology. Unfortunately Israel doesn't have a large unvaccinated population in a few of the cohorts, which probably artificially improves the result profile for the vaccines.

Regardless, the data is clear. Vaccination is inferior to natural immunity across the board, and vaccinating those with natural immunity weakens their natural immunity after 2 months.

Nett, did you read this report? It is not concluding what you claim it is - that vaccinations "actually increase the chances of both infection and severe symptoms in all cohorts."

Instead, it concludes:

• 1) That protection from reinfection wanes for both recovered and vaccinated people, but natural immunity, over time, offers more robust protection against COVID than vaccine-achieve immunity (something other research has confirmed).
  
  2) That a booster, either for vaccinated or recovered individuals, restores the immune response to COVID in all cases. In their words: "We found that protection against the Delta variant wanes over time for both vaccinated and previously infected individuals and that an additional dose restores protection. Future studies will help determine the optimal timing of that dose."

The report is implicitly recommending a booster for everyone - vaccinated or not.

I would also add that the study only considered reinfection vs infection of vaccination individuals, and not the toll of the initial infection upon the unvaccinated (including a much higher incidence of infection, hospitalization, and death). Finally, the report is also in a "pre-print" form, and not yet vetted or peer-reviewed by the scientific community...so it must be read in that light.

[Somebody]

Here is a funeral director saying what is happening in his world.

[nett]

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 1.full.pdf

We now have empirical data showing that not only are vaccines not effective for those with natural immunity, they actually increase the chances of both infection and severe symptoms in all cohorts.

I've been looking forward to this kind of empirical data being release, since it's the gold-standard in epidemiology. Unfortunately Israel doesn't have a large unvaccinated population in a few of the cohorts, which probably artificially improves the result profile for the vaccines.

Regardless, the data is clear. Vaccination is inferior to natural immunity across the board, and vaccinating those with natural immunity weakens their natural immunity after 2 months.

Nett, did you read this report? It is not concluding what you claim it is - that vaccinations "actually increase the chances of both infection and severe symptoms in all cohorts."

Instead, it concludes:

• 1) That protection from reinfection wanes for both recovered and vaccinated people, but natural immunity, over time, offers more robust protection against COVID than vaccine-achieve immunity (something other research has confirmed).
  
  2) That a booster, either for vaccinated or recovered individuals, restores the immune response to COVID in all cases. In their words: "We found that protection against the Delta variant wanes over time for both vaccinated and previously infected individuals and that an additional dose restores protection. Future studies will help determine the optimal timing of that dose."

The report is implicitly recommending a booster for everyone - vaccinated or not.

The abstract just repeats conventional wisdom, which you have to do, otherwise your report won't be published, and you risk losing funding.

I would also add that the study only considered reinfection vs infection of vaccination individuals, and not the toll of the initial infection upon the unvaccinated (including a much higher incidence of infection, hospitalization, and death).

I don't see how that's relevant at this point. The dominant variant is quickly becoming Omicron, which is extremely mild.

Finally, the report is also in a "pre-print" form, and not yet vetted or peer-reviewed by the scientific community...so it must be read in that light.

Pre-print vs review is basically irrelevant in an empirical study, the statistics are very easy to confirm, and reproducibility is not a concern.

I'm not going to go through the numbers in detail, because last time I provided a detailed statistically analysis, bootstrap completely ignored it, after basically calling me a liar multiple time. It takes quite a bit of time to break down in purely written form ( as opposed to a whiteboard or interactive medium), and is proverbially casting my pearls before swine, given how it's gone so far.

If you don't have the mathematical background or education to verify empirical studies, then you basically have to decide who you believe. Abstracts increasingly distort, ignore, or outright lie about the underlying data and findings in studies when it comes to COVID, because to report a finding that goes against the scientific orthodoxy on COVID is very risky for a researcher.

This data quite convincingly demonstrates that vaccines harm natural immunity.

The risk of severe reinfection in the 60+ cohort who were infected, then got vaccinated then got reinfected was 12.5% compared to 8% in the unvaccinated.

Drop in immunity against ANY infection was also much more sharp in the vaccinated cohort.

[Grace]

Here is a funeral director saying what is happening in his world.

Wow, I wonder how long that video will be up.

[AnthonyMartin]

Here is a funeral director saying what is happening in his world.

Wow, I wonder how long that video will be up.

Oh boy, a funeral a director whose also an immunologist and intensivist. Oh, and he’s giving out holy kisses, must be legit.

[Bootstrap]

If you don't have the mathematical background or education to verify empirical studies, then you basically have to decide who you believe.

Please show me your analysis, include whatever math you want, I have some background in these things. Just as you seem to disagree with the people who wrote the study you chose to cite, we might find we disagree with your analysis, but we haven't even seen it.

I think I also know how to read studies. They tell you what they found. If you disagree with a study, then you shouldn't cite it in support of a position that disagrees with the conclusion of the study. If you do your own analysis, you should show it. That's how the research world works. In a research paper or even a class project, citing a paper as though it reached a different conclusion would be seen as dishonest or at least sloppy.