To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues

[LongShortLong]

1% is being very, very generous.

Then they go straight into quoting doctors that have had their licenses revoked. We're doomed.

Doomed we are.

[bodywhomper]

Here’s the cdc early report on the booster vax effectiveness against symptomatic covid. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7304a2.htm

My wife’s case load continues to be affected by covid, where she hasn’t been visited by her full weekly case load since December because of covid (if covid+, they don’t see her). Multiple faculty at her work have also been out with covid over the past 4 weeks. Unclear if it’s being spread through the workplace or if infections are via people doing their thing in the community, but when administrators/leaders get sick, work systems bog down.

[Trackhead]

She's in Assisted Living where there is nursing staff. They did want to send her to the ER but she refused and they treated her there (that was the second time she got it the first she was in a Rehab center that had full medical staff). No IV or Oxy though it would have been helpful but since she refused medical treatment not much could be done. Did get Paxlovid both times.

So while she felt awful and was probably weak, dehydrated, and probably had a poor appetite, maybe mild hypokalemia from not eating, she recovered without what we classify as significant disease burden or critical illness.

Paxlovid probably helped her, but she wasn't by any means, critically ill. That's my point.

People feel like shit, but they aren't getting that sick. The definition of "sick" is very different for healthcare workers than it is for lay people. One is based on reality, the other is subjective.

[bennymac]

But unless these “not so sick” elderly/chronically ill covid patients are not boosted then I fail to see how this anecdotal evidence supports the idea that boosters are no longer advisable in that population

[XXX-er]

My point is, I haven't seen someone sick with covid for a very long time, vaccinated or not. And at this point, pretty much everyone has had covid, vaxed, or likely both. So how do you infer what the "immunity" is from, or where the potential clinical benefit is coming from?

When I was getting chemo last year, both my oncologist and the cancer team in general had not seen critically ill cancer patients with Omicron. She was "meh" on boosters. The infusion nurses had the same observations. That's not speaking of hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients, of course.

So has Covid mutated to where it is now which is no longer deadly ?

[ghosthop]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...270?via%3Dihub
Some diseases were up, some were down. Most were not statistically significantly up or down. More up than down. Ofc, they selected specific diseases of interest identified in other studies.

…

Given all the distrust, having numbers is useful. The numbers are small, probably not clinically significant - I think "not clinically significant" is doctor-speak for don't worry about it (IANAD). Problem is I suspect most of those with trust problems aren't going to take these results as "everything is ok." It's tough when maybe 1% of the population has enough statistics background to begin to understand the study.

The real question isn’t if the vaccine/booster is dangerous but if it is less dangerous than catching Covid without the jab. Also, the public health issue isn’t confined to individual disease burden.

Obligatory fuck Sinclair. Bummer that is all you have KQ but that shit is insidious propaganda masquerading as local news.

[Trackhead]

But unless these “not so sick” elderly/chronically ill covid patients are not boosted then I fail to see how this anecdotal evidence supports the idea that boosters are no longer advisable in that population

How do we explain essentially zero admissions for covid positive patients in a diverse population of vaccinated+boosted, "undervaccinated", and unvaccinated?


Are they not getting admitted because they survived first exposure and have normal inferred immunity from infection?
Are they not being admitted because covid is less virulent?
Are they not being admitted because of vaccine/booster?

I have no idea.

[Trackhead]

So has Covid mutated to where it is now which is no longer deadly ?

We now have a population who is not covid naive/has some level of protection from either from vax, vax+booster, natural infection, or all of the above.

[KQ]

Obligatory fuck Sinclair. Bummer that is all you have KQ but that shit is insidious propaganda masquerading as local news.

LOL! It's my nightly sport - scoffing and yelling at the news. Quite entertaining.

[bennymac]

How do we explain essentially zero admissions for covid positive patients in a diverse population of vaccinated+boosted, "undervaccinated", and unvaccinated?


Are they not getting admitted because they survived first exposure and have normal inferred immunity from infection?
Are they not being admitted because covid is less virulent?
Are they not being admitted because of vaccine/booster?

I have no idea.

Which I think would lead you to form no conclusions other than “people (on a population scale) are not getting as sick as they previously were”

To give a population a degree of immunity, have their severity of infection go down, and then conclude they therefore didn’t need that immunity seems illogical to me.

[CarlMega]

My partner's Dad is in the hospital with covid. It's it's 2nd go-around. I believe he's been vax'd back in the day - but prob not up on boosters. We're entering the 2nd overnight stay - not sure when he may be discharged, just hoping he eventually does. Everyone is concerned.

Just one data point.

Late last year my parents were stricken. My dad's second time; first time was life threatening. Better this time - treatment is better. Mom had a real terrible time of it, doesn't sound like she's recovered yet.

I get that it's not like it was - and thank god; 'normal' people get sick and recover. But even within the last year, an aging collection of aunts / uncles / relatives had rough recovery and some with trips to the hospitals. If you're vulnerable, being vigilant makes sense to me. Sucks its still a thing but not being in a world wide health crisis changes the calculus.

[Trackhead]

Which I think would lead you to form no conclusions other than “people (on a population scale) are not getting as sick as they previously were”

To give a population a degree of immunity, have their severity of infection go down, and then conclude they therefore didn’t need that immunity seems illogical to me.

Good point and agree.

[XXX-er]

Which I think would lead you to form no conclusions other than “people (on a population scale) are not getting as sick as they previously were”

To give a population a degree of immunity, have their severity of infection go down, and then conclude they therefore didn’t need that immunity seems illogical to me.

Maybe they have better thots and prayers ?

[bennymac]

maybe they took vitamin D

[uglymoney]

Nah.. no sense in it. Despite all the weirdness I've heard from neighbors they make up for it in being there when needed often times without even being asked.

One time I was attacked by one of my horses during feeding....snip (

Good post. We were just talking about this today. Our friends, family in Chicago don't really get this or understand the nuance on some topics.

It is survival. We need our neighbors and so we can't alienate them. Works both ways.

QUOTE=KQ;7031226]LOL! It's my nightly sport - scoffing and yelling at the news. Quite entertaining.[/QUOTE]

I can rarely watch TV news. It isn't really informative. The stuff from the right is mostly propoganda designed to confuse people, and I think it works.

My mom always has CNN in when I go over there. Drives me nuts.

I'd rather read excerpts from groups like right wing watch that put misonformation in context.

[old goat]

JFC. The paper does not even speculate on the cause(s) of the signal seen in the data. "Spike protein" does not appear once: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...270?via%3Dihub

It's a serious hard science paper. The pool of people qualified to interpret the results is small.



Link to the full text above. While I'm not remotely qualified to interpret the results, it does smell a little like an overpowered study that could be generating spurious associations. That's OK for a screening level assessment like this that is meant to be followed up with additional studies that can actually address cause-and-effect, but it's problematic in the modern media environment.

Thanks for digging that up. The authors do specifically state that the purpose of such studies is primarily for screening vaccination trials and post-approval vaccinated populations for potential vaccine complications. And there's nothing new here--these potential vaccine complications have been known for a couple of years. Tables 3 and 4 show that most of the conditions they looked at showed no increased risk with vaccination and some showed lower incidence than expected, leading one to question if the increased incidence of certain conditions is random variation. (I'm inclined to believe the differences are real though.) The data on myocarditis and pericarditis is more convincing and has been understood for a long time. And the conditions seem to be temporary if I recall.

What is valid and important about the paper is that it establishes the UPPER limit of the risk of these vaccine complications--that is, given the nature of this kind of study it is very unlikely to be higher than the numbers in the paper.

What Sinclair or Rudy Giuliani or Alex Jones choose to do with the study, whattayagonnado? If they didn't have this data they'd make some up.

[DougW]

Is there anything to the "excess deaths" meme going around in some circles? Is it just bad math or out of context or explainable? Don't want to watch videos as may pollute brain with stuff that just has to be removed later.

[old goat]

Do you find yourself regularly telling your neighbor, "That's a pile of horseshit and you should know better"?

Where KQ lives I;m not sure "pile of horseshit" is much of an insult.

Nah.. no sense in it. Despite all the weirdness I've heard from neighbors they make up for it in being there when needed often times without even being asked.

One time I was attacked by one of my horses during feeding (he's a bit territorial about his food). I was bent over putting his hay down and evidently taking too long for him so he grabbed me by the lower back with his teeth an picked me up off the ground. You can imagine it hurt like hell and I let out a blood curdling scream. My neighbor 50 acres over, a person I only spoke to in passing, heard me and quickly loaded her toddler grandchildren into her truck and came racing over to check on me. I've never forgotten how without hesitation she raced over to check on someone she hardly knew.

There have been many other times neighbors have driven by, seen me working on things by myself and pulled over to lend a hand or brought a tractor to plow a drive. I even had one neighbor bring me dinner on mulitple occassions after watching me work outside all day. Despite it all ppl in farm country are amazing when it comes to looking out for and helping one another. I just stay away from talking politics and religion with them and I never post on the local FB pages unless I've found someones lost cat or dog on my property and I'm looking for its home.

I've always been struck how people who live exemplary lives of caring and service can have bizarre and even hateful beliefs. It boggles my mind.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...270?via%3Dihub
Some diseases were up, some were down. Most were not statistically significantly up or down. More up than down. Ofc, they selected specific diseases of interest identified in other studies.

As for the decimals - those are from the 95% confidence intervals. In the paper everything is expressed with confidence intervals. But those are confusing to the average Forbes or forum reader, and also awkward to put in a sentence. They derived these using the "exact Poisson distribution," if that means anything to you (above my paygrade).

Given all the distrust, having numbers is useful. The numbers are small, probably not clinically significant - I think "not clinically significant" is doctor-speak for don't worry about it (IANAD). Problem is I suspect most of those with trust problems aren't going to take these results as "everything is ok." It's tough when maybe 1% of the population has enough statistics background to begin to understand the study.

The decimal thing in science papers is a pet peeve of mine--because it often implies a greater degree of accuracy than is warranted by the methodology. People are more likely to believe you if you say 5.3 than if you say about 5, even though the latter is more accurate. If the IRS can do without cents science should be able to do without decimals. As long as my mechanic uses thousandths when he's grinding my cylinder head.

[KQ]

Good post. We were just talking about this today. Our friends, family in Chicago don't really get this or understand the nuance on some topics.

It is survival. We need our neighbors and so we can't alienate them. Works both ways.

Another thing ppl around here do is send their kids over to help free of charge. Not a bad lesson to teach them IMO.

I can't say that I never experienced spontaneous acts of kindness from my neighbors when I lived in the city but they were few and far between. Most ppl there seem to operate with their heads down more than here. Ppl here are always watchful.

[skaredshtles]

Is there anything to the "excess deaths" meme going around in some circles? Is it just bad math or out of context or explainable? Don't want to watch videos as may pollute brain with stuff that just has to be removed later.

What idiocy is going around now?

[summit]

How do we explain essentially zero admissions for covid positive patients in a diverse population of vaccinated+boosted, "undervaccinated", and unvaccinated?

Essentially zero? Where are you getting that stat?

[LongShortLong]

Is there anything to the "excess deaths" meme going around in some circles? Is it just bad math or out of context or explainable? Don't want to watch videos as may pollute brain with stuff that just has to be removed later.

All I got on that is the jet fuel people have decided there were no excess deaths and the pandemic is a lizard people conspiracy that didn't happen irl. All the vaxxed people were tricked, and any day now (or two years ago), they'll suddenly drop dead from 5g, mega clots, or turbo cancer, except some of us who got the saline injection. But that was from a few months ago, so maybe it's the same again or maybe they remixed it.

Folks who don't trust anything, will believe anything.

[leroy jenkins]

But good enough and better than nothing. Your point is pointless, again.

Not really. you can't really say that factually. There are many ways the data has been corrupted. Possibly the biggest being counting the recently vaxed as unvaxed in the mass public human trials fucked the data. There should have been three categories, vaxxed, unvaxxed, and recently vaxxed, to differentiate short term vax reactions from covid infections that were merely coincidental. Really, most of these people were probablyu experiencing vax reactions and not just happened tobe coincidentally getting covid. Even if it was covid, statistically significant amounts of people getting covid after getting vaxed would be a problem. The people who did this aren't stupid. It was done on purpose.

Plus, I'm really not aware of any good data on efficacy for the vax. I'm just aware of a long narrative of ever changing numbers. Remember the 99% efficacy claims? Its funny, many people claim to not remember these claims. The above data problems have not only fucked the data for adverse reactions, but also, for efficacy.

So, like usual, you're smug bullshit is without substance or basis in science.

[leroy jenkins]

All I got on that is the jet fuel people have decided there were no excess deaths and the pandemic is a lizard people conspiracy that didn't happen irl. All the vaxxed people were tricked, and any day now (or two years ago), they'll suddenly drop dead from 5g, mega clots, or turbo cancer, except some of us who got the saline injection. But that was from a few months ago, so maybe it's the same again or maybe they remixed it.

Folks who don't trust anything, will believe anything.

Hmm. Distorting someone elses views to the extreme, so that they are easy to mock and attack, is called a strawman. Its typically something mid wits with huge amounts of cognitive dissonance who can only exist in echo chambers feel the need to do, and not something intellectually serious people arguing in good faith feel the need to resort to.

Remember those controlled opposition videos showing fat people trying to fool you into thinking the vax sites were magnetized by using their fatsweat to stick a fork to their arm? Yea, because of that, we know there must be NO problems with the vax at all and its just great and the pharma companies should probably get MORE money given to them liability free. Ya know, you could probably just donate money to them.

[leroy jenkins]

Is there anything to the "excess deaths" meme going around in some circles? Is it just bad math or out of context or explainable? Don't want to watch videos as may pollute brain with stuff that just has to be removed later.

Why don't you just do the math yourself?