Vaccination

[Moondira]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

10 hours ago, mika Mesmeriser said:

15 hours ago, Moondira said:

I just don’t get a sense that you’re being completely honest. I mean, all these people you know had bad reactions to the vaccine? I know a lot of people, check out a lot of forums, and I haven’t encountered even one bad reaction. The worst reactions I’ve seen were only mild flu symptoms.

I can vouch for Arielle's honesty after being involved with her for the last 12 years virtually , I know her pretty well and although we don't  agree on this subject and afew others ( I myself have thankfully had both vaccines, with slight flu like symptoms for 24 hrs) the last thing you can say about is that Arielle is dishonest. 

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It's quite possible Arielle's story is both true and wrong. There's a household in my extended family who exhibit all manner of health troubles with medications, procedures, foods, etc. You could not have a conversation with any of these people without learning of some new malady, or wrinkle in an old one. If you spent enough time with them, you'd wonder if their actual affliction was a belief system so strong that it produced psychogenic effects. This was most pronounced when everyone was together, bolstering each other's stories.

I base my assessment on patterns I've witnessed with said person over the span of months (well, it's turning into years now)     It's based on her interactions with others and how she debates or brings backup information to support her viewpoints when her evidence is lacking or not believed. These observations, along with the improbable occurrence of one person actually knowing so many others in their immediate RL vicinity with severe vaccine reactions, lead me to suspect she's not being honest and is fabricating all these cases she claims had severe reactions to the vaccine. 

The fact that there is such a thing as mass hysteria within groups of people is valid and an interesting phenomenon, yes, but we have not seen evidence that her family or community were engaging in this dynamic. Mass hysteria with such severe effects is actually rare. I would think it much more likely that her fundamentalist family (fearing government, authority, and science) never received the vaccine at all. 

[Moondira]

1 hour ago, Bitterthorn said:

Ah yes, the greatet hits of misinformation like: My great aunt lived to 93 and smoked her entire life, therefore smoking is actually healthy and expands lifespans. My father dying of heart and lung issues from it is clearly the outlier.

I also grew up in a family that pushed aside modern medicine in favor of natural medicines. While most have snapped out of its spell, for some they cannot trust experts because the damage to their ego would be too intense. 

I grew up sick, all the time, a victim of a natural health movement that is plauged by fear of doctors. 

Yeah, I lost a good friend most likely due to the bizarre reasoning you describe. She smoked like a fiend and drank like 20 cups of coffee a day, and ate poorly. Her teeth actually fell out, indicating malnutrition. I cautioned her about health effects, but to no avail. She cited some woman in a group who was elderly and smoked 2 packs a day and never tended to her health in other matters, still alive and energetic.  

We lost touch over the years, and last time I checked on her I discovered her obituary and a hospice she spent her last days at. She was way too young to die. I don't know what killed her for sure, of course, but I wish she'd have taken better care of herself -- I imagine it could have helped.

Edited July 26, 2021 by Moondira

[Rowan Amore]

At this point, unless you have a medical reason for not getting the vaccine, you could potentially be a murderer. 

Or maybe this is just survival of the smartest as 80% of deaths and hospitalizations now, with the Delta variant, are among the unvaccinated.  

[Madelaine McMasters]

52 minutes ago, Moondira said:

I base my assessment on patterns I've witnessed with said person over the span of months (well, it's turning into years now)     It's based on her interactions with others and how she debates or brings backup information to support her viewpoints when her evidence is lacking or not believed. These observations, along with the improbable occurrence of one person actually knowing so many others in their immediate RL vicinity with severe vaccine reactions, lead me to suspect she's not being honest and is fabricating all these cases she claims had severe reactions to the vaccine. 

The fact that there is such a thing as mass hysteria within groups of people is valid and an interesting phenomenon, yes, but we have not seen evidence that her family or community were engaging in this dynamic. Mass hysteria with such severe effects is actually rare. I would think it much more likely that her fundamentalist family (fearing government, authority, and science) never received the vaccine at all. 

Mass hysteria is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that informs at least some aspects of Hanlon's Razor. My personal experience, both of my internal deliberations and of my interactions with others, is that incompetence is in greater supply than malice.

[Moondira]

34 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

3 hours ago, Moondira said:

I base my assessment on patterns I've witnessed with said person over the span of months (well, it's turning into years now)     It's based on her interactions with others and how she debates or brings backup information to support her viewpoints when her evidence is lacking or not believed. These observations, along with the improbable occurrence of one person actually knowing so many others in their immediate RL vicinity with severe vaccine reactions, lead me to suspect she's not being honest and is fabricating all these cases she claims had severe reactions to the vaccine. 

The fact that there is such a thing as mass hysteria within groups of people is valid and an interesting phenomenon, yes, but we have not seen evidence that her family or community were engaging in this dynamic. Mass hysteria with such severe effects is actually rare. I would think it much more likely that her fundamentalist family (fearing government, authority, and science) never received the vaccine at all. 

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Mass hysteria is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that informs at least some aspects of Hanlon's Razor. My personal experience, both of my internal deliberations and of my interactions with others, is that incompetence is in greater supply than malice.

You're framing the argument wrong  -- who said anything about "malice" (which is the intention or desire to do evil; desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another)?  Much of the lying we all participate in does not involve malice, and is simply a way to save face or to escape disfavor by others, and in some cases we aren't even fully conscious of the lie -- it has nothing to do with malicious intent  -- with ill-will, malevolence, or a desire to harm others.

While I may judge some lies less harshly than others depending on motivation, nonetheless such behavior is considered lying, and it does cause harm. And in this case, grave harm if even one person viewing this bs on the forum delays their vaccine because they believe vaccination is harming others to the degree this person claims.

[Polenth Yue]

57 minutes ago, Moondira said:

While I may judge some lies less harshly than others depending on motivation, nonetheless such behavior is considered lying, and it does cause harm. And in this case, grave harm if even one person viewing this bs on the forum delays their vaccine because they believe vaccination is harming others to the degree this person claims.

This is why I responded to this thread. I'm the example that anti-vaxxers want to pretend doesn't exist. I was very healthy before covid. I ate a good diet and did a lot of exercise. My immune system smited most things and flu was usually a mild sniffle for me. Do not think for a moment that you'll avoid problems because you're young, fit, eat herbal pills every day or whatever else you've been told. Feeling rough the day after the vaccine is nothing compared to post-viral complications or death. So go get the vaccine.

[Pixie Kobichenko]

4 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

With Facebook, Google/Youtube, Instagram and Twitter all actively deleting and banning all those who have any negative stories about the vaccines, is it any wonder you don't run across anyone talking about a bad reaction? Especially considering most of the sites you likely frequent would be pro vaccine? If you were actually interested in adverse events, they can be found here, here and here. For a quick perusal of events for the US you can go here.

I had to google “straw man fallacy” just to reassure myself that was what I was reminded of.  Yep.  I am referring to the question being posed to you now 2x myself (once today & previously when I mentioned  the WHO eradicating the disease between the late 1980s & 2000) & I know several others- where would society be if our grandparents did not embrace & inoculate against Polio.  You’ve yet to address that supposition.

I can’t find where you questioned the emergency use of these vaccines.  But I know someone else referenced polio only having 5 tests subjects. & I know I’ve posted about EUAs before.
 

The ongoing fight against COVID-19 has thrown a spotlight on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its power to grant emergency use authorizations (EUAs). EUA authority permits FDA to authorize formally unapproved products for temporary use as emergency countermeasures against threats to public health and safety.

Under § 564 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), use of FDA’s EUA authority requires a determination that an emergency exists by secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as a declaration by the HHS Secretary that emergency circumstances exist warranting the issuance of EUAs. Each issuance of an EUA requires that FDA conclude that:

• it is reasonable to believe that a given product “may be effective” as an emergency countermeasure,

• the known and potential benefits of authorization outweigh the known and potential risks, and

• no formally approved alternatives are available at the time.

https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2021/01/28/fda-emergency-use-authorization-history/h

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by Pixie Kobichenko

[Rowan Amore]

This could be perceived as fear mongering.  I know if I weren't vaccinated, I'd be fearful.

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1017002907/u-s-covid-deaths-are-rising-again-experts-call-it-a-pandemic-of-the-unvaccinated

"Unvaccinated Americans account for virtually all recent COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths," said Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator. "Each COVID-19 death is tragic, and those happening now are even more tragic because they are preventable."

[Lyssa Greymoon]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Mass hysteria is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that informs at least some aspects of Hanlon's Razor. My personal experience, both of my internal deliberations and of my interactions with others, is that incompetence is in greater supply than malice.

Malice or ignorance, at this point it’s a distinction without a difference.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Mass hysteria

I find the regular kind, sort of lonely.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Pixie Kobichenko said:

& I know I’ve posted about EUAs before.

Fun fact: If you accept a website's cookie, then they know if you have been vaccinated. It's in the EUA! Or the EULA. 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Moondira said:

You're framing the argument wrong

[Drake1 Nightfire]

3 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Mass hysteria is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that informs at least some aspects of Hanlon's Razor. My personal experience, both of my internal deliberations and of my interactions with others, is that incompetence is in greater supply than malice.

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

20 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Fun fact: If you accept a website's cookie, then they know if you have been vaccinated. It's in the EUA! Or the EULA. 

i didnt get a cookie when i got my vaccine..

[Pamela Galli]

I feel like I am living in a dystopian Kafkaesque Nazi nightmare from which I can’t wake up.

OTOH, I feel a warm solidarity with everyone except the white supremacist murder suicide group. We are in this together as we have never been in my lifetime. We are united not by the color of our skin but the content of our character.

 

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by Pamela Galli

[Silent Mistwalker]

20 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

i didnt get a cookie when i got my vaccine..

All I got was a stupid card and no invite back. 

[Chroma Starlight]

Quote

Mass infection is not an option: we must do more to protect our young

Deepti Gurdasani, John Drury, Trisha Greenhalgh, Stephen Griffin, Zubaida Haque, Zoë Hyde, Aris Katzourakis, Martin McKee, Susan Michie, Christina Pagel, Stephen Reicher, Alice Roberts, Robert West, Christian Yates, Hisham Ziauddeen, Show less

Published:July 07, 2021, 
The Lancet

 

As the third wave of the pandemic takes hold across England, the UK Government plans to further re-open the nation. Implicit in this decision is the acceptance that infections will surge, but that this does not matter because vaccines have “broken the link between infection and mortality”.

 

 On July 19, 2021—branded as Freedom Day—almost all restrictions are set to end. We believe this decision is dangerous and premature.

An end to the pandemic through population immunity requires enough of the population to be immune to prevent exponential growth of SARS-CoV-2. Population immunity is unlikely to be achieved without much higher levels of vaccination than can be reasonably expected by July 19, 2021. Proportionate mitigations will be needed to avoid hundreds of thousands of new infections, until many more are vaccinated. Nevertheless, the UK Government's intention to ease restrictions from July 19, 2021, means that immunity will be achieved by vaccination for some people but by natural infection for others (predominantly the young). The UK Health Secretary has stated that daily cases could reach 100 000 per day over the summer months of 2021.

 

 The link between infection and death might have been weakened, but it has not been broken, and infection can still cause substantial morbidity in both acute and long-term illness. We have previously pointed to the dangers of relying on immunity by natural infection,  and we have five main concerns with the UK Government's plan to lift all restrictions at this stage of the pandemic.

First, unmitigated transmission will disproportionately affect unvaccinated children and young people who have already suffered greatly. Official UK Government data show that as of July 4, 2021, 51% of the total UK population have been fully vaccinated and 68% have been partially vaccinated. Even assuming that approximately 20% of unvaccinated people are protected by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, this still leaves more than 17 million people with no protection against COVID-19. Given this, and the high transmissibility of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant, exponential growth will probably continue until millions more people are infected, leaving hundreds of thousands of people with long-term illness and disability.

 

 This strategy risks creating a generation left with chronic health problems and disability, the personal and economic impacts of which might be felt for decades to come.

(excerpt from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01589-0/fulltext )

 

Test, Quarantine, Contain

Edited July 27, 2021 by Chroma Starlight

[Chroma Starlight]

Quote

Tunisia's president has sacked the PM and suspended parliament, after violent mass protests nationwide on Sunday.

Anger over the government's handling of a massive recent spike in Covid cases has added to general unrest over the nation's economic and social turmoil.

President Kais Saied, who was elected in 2019, announced he was taking over.

His supporters erupted in celebration, but opponents in parliament immediately accused him of staging a coup. Clashes among rival groups continued on Monday.

Coronavirus-related deaths reached a record for the country last week, passing 300 in one 24-hour period. Tunisia has one of the highest per capita death rates in the world.

Vaccinations have been slow: only 7% of the 11.7 million population are fully vaccinated.

But Covid is only one factor in the unrest. Tunisia has had nine governments since the 2011 revolution, many of them short-lived or fractured.

Deep-rooted problems of unemployment and crumbling state infrastructure that were behind the uprising have never been resolved.

(from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57958555 )

 

[Pixie Kobichenko]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Fun fact: If you accept a website's cookie, then they know if you have been vaccinated. It's in the EUA! Or the EULA. 

Emergency use authorization vs end user license agreement.

Not the same but I do like peanut butter cookies 😃

[Eddy Vortex]

6 hours ago, Moondira said:

Yeah, I lost a good friend most likely due to the bizarre reasoning you describe. She smoked like a fiend and drank like 20 cups of coffee a day, and ate poorly. Her teeth actually fell out, indicating malnutrition. I cautioned her about health effects, but to no avail. She cited some woman in a group who was elderly and smoked 2 packs a day and never tended to her health in other matters, still alive and energetic. 

The old woman was a medical anomaly much like Lemmy Kilmister who lived to 70 with a liter of whiskey and 2-packs-a-day habit.  It's a miracle he made it as long as he did considering his unhealthy habits.

It's insane when some folks look at them and think just because they had defied the odds it must mean their lifestyle could work out fine for them too.  Anyone who drank and smoked the way Lemmy did would quickly earn themselves a membership to the 27 Club, or suffer some malaise.

[Silent Mistwalker]

29 minutes ago, Eddy Vortex said:

The old woman was a medical anomaly much like Lemmy Kilmister who lived to 70 with a liter of whiskey and 2-packs-a-day habit.  It's a miracle he made it as long as he did considering his unhealthy habits.

It's insane when some folks look at them and think just because they had defied the odds it must mean their lifestyle could work out fine for them too.  Anyone who drank and smoked the way Lemmy did would quickly earn themselves a membership to the 27 Club, or suffer some malaise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club#Identified_members

Interesting variety of causes of death listed. Not as many drug or alcohol related ones as you might expect. Far fewer than what I expected.

[Eddy Vortex]

17 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club#Identified_members

Interesting variety of causes of death listed. Not as many drug or alcohol related ones as you might expect. Far fewer than what I expected.

I'm surprised to see heart failure and cardiac arrest amongst those youngins. Heart trouble is commonly considered an old people aliment.

[Rolig Loon]

8 minutes ago, Eddy Vortex said:

I'm surprised to see heart failure and cardiac arrest amongst those youngins. Heart trouble is commonly considered an old people aliment.

Take a look at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190307081026.htm .. Among the key observations:

• ... during the 16-year study period (2000 to 2016), the proportion of very young people having a heart attack has been increasing, rising by 2 percent each year for the last 10 years.
• "It used to be incredibly rare to see anyone under age 40 come in with a heart attack -- and some of these people are now in their 20s and early 30s," said Ron Blankstein, MD, a preventive cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston and the study's senior author. "Based on what we are seeing, it seems that we are moving in the wrong direction."
• The study included a total of 2,097 young patients (<50 years) admitted for a heart attack in two large hospitals. Of these, 20 percent were 40 or younger. Researchers compared young heart attack victims (<50 years vs. ?40) using patient angiograms, a procedure that uses X-rays to see the heart's blood vessels and arteries. People in the very young heart attack group were more likely to have disease in only one vessel, suggesting that this disease was still early and confined, yet they had the same rate of bad outcomes.
• In a related study, Blankstein and his team found that 1 in 5 patients who suffer a heart attack at a young age overall -- defined as younger than 50 years of age -- also have diabetes. Data show that if someone has diabetes they are more likely to die and have repeat events than heart attack survivors without diabetes. Not only is diabetes one of the strongest risk factors for having a heart attack, it also predicts future events in young people who have previously had a heart attack.

[Jordyn McGregor]

Maybe there is a good reason for me to get the jab after all.  

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/covid-19-coronavirus-women-are-claiming-boobs-get-bigger-after-having-pfizer-jab/U2HXMBBCYSWOMLTONGZGX5WADY/

 

 

[Chroma Starlight]

(from https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/variant-data)

What are they even doing besides obviously plotting a culling? How do I go to a country where they've sequenced more than 10% of the viruses in circulation to determine if variants are spreading naturally or artificially, etc? Are any of you running a co-op that needs an English speaker and a cat in Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, or Luxembourg? Can you get me there without forcing me to go through an airport or on a public jetliner? 

Edited July 27, 2021 by Chroma Starlight