Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[Belligerent Savant]

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Jenin Younes (Leftylockdownskeptic)
@Leftylockdowns1

Eri Clapton won’t play for vaccinated only crowds, or those in which the unvaccinated are treated differently.

https://twitter.com/Leftylockdowns1/sta ... 03681?s=20


Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated - Israel

[stickdog99]

Of course, the only possible solution is to this is to vaccinate, vaccinate, and vaccinate, and then vaccinate some more.

[Belligerent Savant]

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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1417 ... 47074.html

A reformed perspective as events unfolded.

I was terrified in February 2020. I saw the viral videos of people dropping dead in the streets, the massive China quarantines, I tracked the cases: Italy, the cruise ship, the plane, the Seattle nursing home. We faced an unknown risk with massive potential downside.

By March 17, 2020 it seemed possible this virus would ravage our world. I thought people who went out on St. Patrick’s Day were insane: risking their lives and others. We saw the dire warning of Italy.

We were always “2 weeks” away from disaster.

I sounded the alarm like a fool:

@brucefenton

1/ The virus will not stop by itself.

We must stop it. All of us.

This isn’t about insurance or overtime pay or political parties or socialized medicine or the hassles of having kids sent home.

This is about stopping a very bad virus that we must stop. We must.

I listened to @nntaleb & @yaneerbaryam who said we just needed “two weeks to flatten the curve”.

If we could just shut down fro only two weeks, the reasoning went, the virus would die out.

If not, then we faced massive death in the streets & would see morgues in Central Park.
I read up on the science, I tuned in to the WHO daily briefings, I followed dozens of epidemiologists, I became a prepper and moved to the country.

When I heard that people would be dying because of a lack of ventilators I made this my mission:

@brucefenton

Ventilators

Please read

We need to make ventilators that can be legally used by hospitals and we need to do it right now. Tonight. As many of us as possible need to get on this.

Share & recruit.

Let’s see what open source can do.

I believe in you.

I made calls, wrote articles & recruited people - I joined Yaneer & Taleb’s group the New England Complex Systems Institute & it’s Stop Covid initiative.

I decided I would do everything I could to get ventilators

The New Yorker even picked up my efforts:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020 ... r-shortage
'The MacGyvers Taking on the Ventilator Shortage'

But as I was interviewed for the New Yorker in March, I was already becoming concerned with what I saw.

By the time the article was published, I was skeptical of the need for ventilators at all. I had heard this from Cuomo’s briefings & my research didn’t jive with what he said.
In a complex series of business deals with insiders, Cuomo had NY paying $20,000 for ventilators worth $500.

Try as I might with calls & volunteers reaching out to hospitals, we couldn’t actually find any real shortage of these machines.

Meanwhile authoritarianism increased.
The world shared videos of the tough Italian mayors passionately yelling at people to stay indoors.

Then I saw restrictions on going outside.

“Whoa whoa restrictions on being...outside?! That’s not in any of the recommendations I’ve seen.” That’s not science.” was my reaction.
Then we saw that all those ‘absolute idiots’ who partied on St Patrick’s Day or who went to church in Florida against the government order did NOT suddenly drop dead.

The USS Mercy & USS Comfort had sailed into LA & NYC with patriotic fanfare...but the ships were empty.

We were told to stay home because of the overload on the hospital system. But that never came.

Hospitals were empty. Surgeries and other important visits were all delayed due to fears of overload which never happened.

This is one of the many 2nd order effects we saw.

While I had called for panic in January & February based on the unknown, even in my greatest hysteria I never called for lockdowns or limits in personal freedom.

Meanwhile places without the lockdowns seemed to not have the mass death predicted.

We also saw that people could get this illness and never even know it without a test. With weak evidence we accepted “asymptomatic spread” as a thing.

This was also when we changed the hundreds year old definition of what “sick” means.
Not only did we change the definition of what sick means, we decided to treat everyone as “sick until proven innocent”.

In April 2020 I saw a mom arrested at a playground for letting her kids play on a swing set. Surely the public would see this & end the insanity I hoped.
The virus turned out to be far less deadly than feared. As with all flus it is dangerous and deadly to some.

Yet the tyranny increased. Previously unimaginable restrictions on basic human rights became common. Meanwhile places without the restrictions had no worse results.
The bad data around ventilators was just just the beginning. By May we saw Covid become even more political. Death counts were changed to include anyone who ever had a positive test or who had symptoms

Even shooting victims were counted as Covid deaths.

https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washi ... 19-deaths/
'Washington health officials: Gunshot victims counted as COVID-19 deaths'

We all know the rest:
- Politicization of science
- Mass censorship of opinions, data or even medical or scientific opinions that differed from the official line
- whimsical shifting of opinions & policies

A year more of lockdowns - with exceptions for left allied protestors.

Finally Florida said “no more”. Gov DeSantis said he would never do a lockdown again. The lockdowners and the media said this would cause mass death and just like the previous predictions of doom it turned out not to be the case. Texas followed Florida & also reopened.
The lockdowners were losing their grip. People weren’t going to stay in any longer.

Then, almost instantly the narrative shifted: it wasn’t that Covid wasn’t as deadly as we had feared - it was the vaccine that saved the day...so go get one right now.

Total gaslighting.
We’ve been lied to consistently & seen more of our freedoms & human rights destroyed than perhaps any generation in history.

We lost when we got into debates over “science”. The reality is that government should NEVER have such powers, no matter how serious a virus.
The idea that some people in fancy government offices know better than the citizens & this gives them moral authority to use violence on peaceful people is barbaric and evil.

Every person should be able to take the risks they choose based on their evaluation of the risk.

[PufPuf93]

Why are Hannity and McConnell and DeSantis telling folks to go get vaccinated now?

Why the change?

[Belligerent Savant]

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I'm not aware of this, as I don't pay mind to the rabble in network news. It's irrelevant to the points raised within this thread, and it shouldn't be surprising to anyone paying mind to the data points that matter. Do you have some sense there are Hannity/McConnell followers here?

(correction: it's not true that it's entirely irrelevant, in that it further underscores the notion that talking heads from either establishment party should not be afforded blind faith. Due diligence and discernment is needed at all times. It also further underscores the premise that any 'division' among establishment talking heads is mostly presentation -- optics).

Do you have a link to the commentary by DeSantis? I never took him to be anti covid shots, in any event.

[Grizzly]

Worth Sharing
Knowledge is Power
https://sci-hubtw.hkvisa.net/

[PufPuf93]

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I'm not aware of this, as I don't pay mind to the rabble in network news. It's irrelevant to the points raised within this thread, and it shouldn't be surprising to anyone paying mind to the data points that matter. Do you have some sense there are Hannity/McConnell followers here?

(correction: it's not true that it's entirely irrelevant, in that it further underscores the notion that talking heads from either establishment party should not be afforded blind faith. Due diligence and discernment is needed at all times. It also further underscores the premise that any 'division' among establishment talking heads is mostly presentation -- optics).

Do you have a link to the commentary by DeSantis? I never took him to be anti covid shots, in any event.

I do not perceive that there is anyone at RI that is particularly enamored with any of the cable or network news channels.

But McConnell and Hannity have turned a 180 this week regards vaccines.

Search DeSantis covid vaccines and find recent articles like:

DeSantis: ‘These vaccines are saving lives’

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday addressed the rising number of coronavirus infections in the state and said the key to stopping a surge in COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths is to increase the statewide vaccination rate.

“These vaccines are saving lives. They are reducing mortality,” DeSantis said during a news conference in St. Petersburg. “I can tell you that we’re going to end up having over 95% of folks that end up seriously ill from this point on are going to be people who are not vaccinated. And so, that’s the single most important thing that people can understand.”

DeSantis addressed vaccine hesitancy, saying that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the small risk of side effects.

“There are occasionally some side effects, but if you’re 70 years old, man, the benefit is so much better than worrying about some of that. It’s not even close,” he added.

Remainder of article at: https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/202 ... ing-lives/

One could conclude that Hannity at Fox may have legal liabilities and McConnell may perceive political liabilities from the poor advice not to take the vaccines in light of what appears an impending surge from the delta variant.

So we disagree on much about covid except for the impacts to the economy, party time for authoritarians, and all that good stuff. Not a good situation as parties are rearranging the deck chairs for various paths of human population decline, figuring how their flavor will come out on top.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Talking heads in front of cameras and microphones often, if not always, have little bearing on truth (or approximation of it). But the words may be useful, regardless, as a means to understand, or parse through, the dominant narratives on a given day/week.

None of their comments change the raw data and/or actual science.


These covid shots may well be saving/extending the lives, near-term, of those at higher risk (which are predominantly individuals of advanced age, who unfortunately have a higher chance of succumbing to a variety of other illnesses that, on average, are far more likely to cause their demise). These shots also appear to be prematurely ending and/or reducing the quality of life on a statistically significant number of individuals, and we currently have NO data at the moment on how these experimental shots may impact bodies over the course of time (12+ months from now). When we add the promise and demonstrable efficacy of alternative treatments with far less -- if any -- side effects, the net benefit of these covid shots appear to be far less than advertised.

Of course, we must also be sure to reference naturally acquired immunity as a means to combat this virus, despite aggressive concerted efforts by the CDC and related parties in placing natural immunity into the memory hole. Natural immunity via antibodies and acquired t-cells have been shown to last far longer than any would-be vaccine efficacy:

https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post ... d-immunity
"Not Covid-19 vaccine-mediated but naturally acquired immunity enables herd immunity"

https://thebl.tv/world-news/israel-data ... -shot.html
"Israel data shows natural immunity almost 7 times stronger than if given the COVID shot".

https://www.clinicalomics.com/topics/pr ... 9953823B5U
"COVID-19 May Prompt Strong T Cell Response in Mild Cases with No Detectable Virus-Specific Antibodies"

And in any event, regardless of the actual efficacy of these covid shots, NONE of the draconian measures/restrictions/coercions/mandates imposed on populations to inoculate on a global scale are justified. EVER.
(especially not for a virus with an IFR of ~0.2%)

https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/23/cor ... io-update/

[alwyn]

is there a source in english for that Israeli data chart showing most covid cases are occuring in the vaccinated population? I went to the link, but it was in hebrew, which I can't read, and I wanted to find the chart. This is rather explosive information that needs to be posted elsewhere, but I need to know it's not a manufactured chart, which would be really counter-productive where I want to post it. Thanks.

Of course, the only possible solution is to this is to vaccinate, vaccinate, and vaccinate, and then vaccinate some more.

[drstrangelove]

the evidence you are looking for from an authoritative source can be found in the UK: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ing_18.pdf

Delta Strain Case Fatality Rate: 0.2% (Which is an overestimation. For the first strain the CFR was 1-3%, but the infection fatality rate was estimated to be 0.1-0.3%, so to extrapolate, the delta ifr could be 0.02%)

The report has all the vaccination data as well.

[stickdog99]

https://gript.ie/israel-40-of-new-covid ... eliminary/

Cautioning that data is “very preliminary”, the Times of Israel is reporting that 40% of confirmed new cases of Covid-19 since May 1st have arisen amongst those who were vaccinated – while just 1% are amongst those who were previously infected with Covid.

The paper said it begged the question as to whether “recovered Covid patients are more recovered than the vaccinated?”, but also cautioned that the data was preliminary. At the time, 3,000 people who had been vaccinated were infected with Covid-19, while just 72 people who previously had Covid had become re-infected.

“Some experts conclude that those who had COVID are relatively safe from reinfection. But other health officials counter that the data does not take into account that new outbreaks did not spread in areas that previously saw massive outbreaks during the pandemic, such as in the ultra-Orthodox community, reports Channel 13,” the Times of Israel said.

To date, Israel has 838,000 people who have had Covid and recovered, while some 5,724,000 people are vaccinated. Observers say that it is to be expected that larger numbers of reinfected people will come from the vaccinated cohort.

However, earlier this year, Trinity Professor Luke O’Neill referenced three studies which suggest that people who have recovered from coronavirus may have a stronger protection against the disease than those who take the vaccine, including one which monitored over 12,000 people, mostly healthcare workers, who were found to have had persistently high antibody levels after being infected – and did not get infected a second time.

Research published in January in Science found that “the immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection”. While eight months was the longest period the study could speak to (since the Covid-19 virus only emerged last year) the results of the study indicated that immunity after infection was being conferred for years and perhaps decades.

[stickdog99]

[stickdog99]

https://ncrc.jhsph.edu/research/evidenc ... dividuals/

In a matched pair case-control study, available as a preprint and thus not yet peer-reviewed, comparing breakthrough cases in 247 partially and 149 fully immunized adults with BNT162b2 vaccine to unvaccinated controls in Israel, the odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection by the B.1.1.7 variant versus the wild-type were twice as high among partially immunized adults compared to unvaccinated controls but there was no difference between fully vaccinated cases and unvaccinated controls.

[stickdog99]

https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/06/30/ ... nated.html

In a recent media presentation, Dr. Sharon Alray-Price, head of Public Health Services, revealed that of the 891 coronavirus cases confirmed in Israel during May, almost half had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. A Channel 12 report showed that 6,765 fully vaccinated people had contracted the coronavirus, and based on epidemiological tracing, another 3,133 had contracted the virus from the vaccinated people.

Back in January, the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) Military Intelligence Directorate published a report warning that vaccines could trigger viral mutations.

“The mass vaccination program, which is happening at the same time as an active outbreak in Israel, may lead to evolutionary stress on the virus… This situation may cause that mutations offering the virus a certain protection against immunity (whether from the vaccine or disease) will spread significantly among the population, if they appear,” the report said.

[stickdog99]

https://www.wlwt.com/article/experts-sp ... s/36961437

The spread of the delta coronavirus variant in the United States has many experts questioning whether it should be time to start testing even vaccinated people for the virus.

Although health officials have said evidence shows vaccinated people are unlikely to spread the virus to others, Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, says it may be important to watch to make sure the more transmissible delta variant does not evade the effects of vaccines.

Current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fully vaccinated people can refrain from routine testing.

"I think now we should revisit this policy with the Delta variant and determine if the current recommendations hold up," Hotez wrote in an email to CNN on Wednesday.

Plus, the CDC is only reporting data on "breakthrough" infections that cause severe disease. That could mean scientists and health officials will not know how many vaccinated people have mild or asymptomatic infections — and it will be very difficult to track whether a new variant such as delta is causing more vaccine failure.

"We need to design studies. Assuming this is underway, then the question comes, do we wait for those studies or change recommendations now and reconsider regular testing for asymptomatic vaccinated individuals? Given how disruptive this is, I would probably be inclined to wait for additional data before going backwards," Hotez wrote.

"The good news is that the mRNA vaccines are still highly protective against serious illness even for Delta."

The mRNA vaccines are made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. Johnson & Johnson has also reported evidence its vaccine is protective against delta.

Because vaccines are still highly protective, other experts argue there is no need to change guidance.

"I still think that the pre-test probability of a positive COVID test in people who are vaccinated and asymptomatic is very small. So much so that you would worry about false positives," Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, told CNN on Wednesday.

Overall, data on COVID-19 cases caused by the delta variant among vaccinated people are hard to come by — especially when seeking cases that may be asymptomatic. As of May, the CDC transitioned from monitoring all "breakthrough" COVID-19 cases among vaccinated people to only tracking cases that result in hospitalization or death.