Covid: the shape of things to come

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It’s not about the bias of the journalists, either, it’s about responsibility to fact and how much you let your bias inform your writing.
 
I don't know, man. It's a real tough choice. When one side is biased towards science and caution, and the other side talks about using a dewormer to treat a virus and how masks infringe their rights...

Maybe I'm biased though. Two friends of mine lost a parent, another lost his favorite aunt.

My girlfriend's sister is currently infected, so we're kinda in limbo and waiting to see how that turns out. And the sister's husband just started showing symptoms too. They've got a daughter about to turn 18 and starting college in two weeks that they won't let get vaccinated because "ThEy DoN't KnOw ThE lOnGtErM eFfEcTs Of ThE vAcCiNe."

But that's just my opinion.
 
Here are more studies and information that I’ve gathered, it seems the timing of administration is crucial and the other substances increase effectiveness as well


It’s important to know all of your options as people who have multiple vaccinations are being infected with the variants. Just like influenza or rhinovirus etc it will continue to mutate making the original vaccine less and less effect as has already been demonstrated

The other thing to keep in mind is that the high majority of people never express any symptoms when infected as well as those who are vaccinated with larger quantities of the virus thus at a greater risk to spread the virus


https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1545C_dJWMIAgqeLEsfo2U8Kq5WprDuARXrJl6N1aDjY/mobilebasic
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202007.0025/v1
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1vDD8JkHe62hmpkalx1tejkd_zDnVwJ9XXRjgXAc1qUc/mobilebasic
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/189/11/1218/5847586
 
@EricEricEric you're citing articles well over a year old, and most of it are retrospective analysis...do you really think that the vast majority of treating physicians would ignore this 'data' if there was anything to it? I honestly do not know what you smoke, but pass it on.

Did you also read the criticism on this paper and the discussion following this shining example of cherry picking data?

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/189/11/1443/5873638
 
Here’s another if you like. There are many nations using this protocol with great success as well as off label use by physicians in the USA

If you’re serious about a real long term solution then you know we need other options as the vaccine continues to lose effectiveness as new variants continue to emerge


https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext
“ Conclusions and relevance

In this multi-hospital assessment, when controlling for COVID-19 risk factors, treatment with hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality. Prospective trials are needed to examine this impact.”



MarcelNL said:
@EricEricEric you're citing articles well over a year old, and most of it are retrospective analysis...do you really think that the vast majority of treating physicians would ignore this 'data' if there was anything to it? I honestly do not know what you smoke, but pass it on.

Did you also read the criticism on this paper and the discussion following this shining example of cherry picking data?

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/189/11/1443/5873638
Click to expand...
 
DEFINE_ME came to a hypothesis based on a retrospective study (which makes sense given the date). Then:

"Prospective trials are needed to examine this impact."

What do you think has happened in the meanwhile?
 
@EricEricEric Really, try read an article or two on efficacy of vaccines but please do start with an article on trial methodology as this too is a retrospective analysis NOT a well controlled study with a predefined hypothesis and suitable power calculation.


You have the honor of being the first I click the ignore button for.
 
daveb said:
Above can be said for most if not all US based "news" outlets and their orientation. They're all more interested in making up news that fits their respective agendas than reporting actual news. It's National Enquirer for me they're only agenda is selling more rags.
Click to expand...

ian said:
It’s not about the bias of the journalists, either, it’s about responsibility to fact and how much you let your bias inform your writing.
Click to expand...

This is the real issue nowadays, isn't it? What do words like "fact," "objective," and "truth" mean or even look like in the 21st century?

Here are some "facts" to me:

The NY Post is a daily tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

The "article" linked here was an Op-Ed originally published in the National Review.

The National Review (magazine) was originally started by William F. Buckley Jr. in the 1950s and is recognized as a standard for "conservative thought" in the United States of America.

I don't have any interest in Rebekah Jones or in Florida as a whole, so I can't be bothered to read the actual article. Respect to anyone who slogged through all that. I just think it's interesting how we seem to be unable to resolve the issues of journalistic integrity or of "news" being unbiased anymore. Everything has an agenda. We are all being sold something. We are aware of this so we don't trust anything except for information that conforms to what we want to believe.

We have a whole lot more of this type of crazy in our future:
 
I think news media has always had biases, perhaps they are just more readily identifiable these days. The N.Y. Times and the Washington Post are both but a pale shadow of what they once were but even at the height of their competence and influence it took independents like I. F. Stone to keep them even semi-honest. I still read the Guardian but it too carries obvious biases. The Murdoch owned media hardly requires a mention. A close friend of mine who recently retired from a long career as a reporter, editor, and later publisher of daily newspapers simply laughs when the press insists that there is an inviolate firewall between advertising or ownership and reporting. Journalistic, and for that matter judicial, objectivity is a myth that only people in the field or the gormless still believe. The antidote is to read widely, do as much original sourcing as you can, and not to get stuck in an ideological bubble. For the most part people here have been relatively good about citing the actual research.
Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding's Twitter feed is one of many sources I've been following for Covid news.
 
LostHighway said:
I think news media has always had biases, perhaps they are just more readily identifiable these days. The N.Y. Times and the Washington Post are both but a pale shadow of what they once were but even at the height of their competence and influence it took independents like I. F. Stone to keep them even semi-honest. I still read the Guardian but it too carries obvious biases. The Murdoch owned media hardly requires a mention. A close friend of mine who recently retired from a long career as a reporter, editor, and later publisher of daily newspapers simply laughs when the press insists that there is an inviolate firewall between advertising or ownership and reporting. Journalistic, and for that matter judicial, objectivity is a myth that only people in the field or the gormless still believe. The antidote is to read widely, do as much original sourcing as you can, and not to get stuck in an ideological bubble. For the most part people here have been relatively good about citing the actual research.
Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding's Twitter feed is one of many sources I've been following for Covid news.
Click to expand...

While I agree with you that there has always been bias in the media, that's not really what I see as being the issue.

It's more that, as a society, we have lost trust (or faith) in many - if not all - of our institutions. And often for good reasons!

We don't trust our health care system or our medical professionals. We don't trust our elected officials or our government. We don't trust our educational system(s). We don't trust environmental scientists (or, sometimes, science itself). We don't trust our media sources. We don't trust others to help us out in times of need.

Your friend is lucky to be retiring nowadays because that career they had practically no longer exists. And the move from print media to digital has led to a large loss in oversight and an increase in editorialization. As much as I wish that the overload of available information that our new digital society presents us with would result in a more open-minded, informed, and intelligent populace, it just doesn't seem to be the case.

Reading widely, doing original sourcing, and not getting stuck in ideological bubbles certainly seems a lot easier said than done. How else do we explain the widespread anti-vax sentiments, violent political divisions, deranged conspiracy theories, and the complete loss of faith in our election processes by many in this country?
 
https://nationalpost.com/health/ine...-covid-treatment-yet-canadian-led-trial-finds
The funny thing is that there is a drug that works roughly how HCQ is portrayed (a pill that can be taken at home without cold storage and shows a modest but significant decrease in severe cases) but it's being ignored in certain media bubbles. While we're finally seeing bigger studies now, the effect was discovered last year and first printed in JAMA in November 2020. But if you google "foxnews fluvoxamine" there is absolutely nothing on it, just dead silence.

So why has the HCQ crowd not shown the same interest in Fluvoxamine? My cynicism tells me that it's due to well-positioned people with stakes in Sanofi (but I'm willing to admit this is a conspiracy theory). I won't be surprised if we see less vocal support of Fluvoxamine even if it's eventually adopted by medical communities in developing countries. I hope I'm wrong and that people just haven't caught up yet, because the depressing alternative is that a large group of people are being duped by a cabal of snake oil salesmen.
 
ADE is a theoretical concern for any vaccine. There is enough real world data on COVID vaccines to conclude that ADE has absolutely no impact on those. Ffter hundreds of million doses administered there are remarkably few serious side effects reported. If you are worried about COVID vaccine safety at this point, you are living in a fantasy world of social media scaremongering. Here in the US there has been 600,000+ examples of why COVID vaccines are a remarkable public health achievement. This train has left the station. Vaccinations are safe and effective and remain our best and only long-term tool to fight the COVID pandemic (can keep a lockdown forever).
Vaccination is voluntary and will remain so. So if you dont want to take the vaccine, don’t take it. But (a) COVID is not fun even if you survive it; your probability of not surviving it is not very high, but if you do die, you won’t get a do-over. Long COVID is not fun either; (b) Be prepaed to face significant hurdles in daily life (entering restaurants, concerts etc) and at your workplace (frequent testing, mandatory masking or outright ban on coming to on-site). Why? Because society has a right to protect its members from the consequences of people’s bad decisions.
 
1629137663993.png


Not a pleasant graph when you realize they have a vaccination rate of over 80% and their death rate is higher than during the first and second waves when there was no vaccination program.
 
Bill13 said:
View attachment 138226

Not a pleasant graph when you realize they have a vaccination rate of over 80% and their death rate is higher than during the first and second waves when there was no vaccination program.
Click to expand...

Where are you getting your data on death rates? My quick google search of israel covid death seems to indicate the death rate is lower now than before. (If you look at the charts that pop up, the current upswing of new cases is sharper in comparison to the old data than the upswing in in the deaths chart. Maybe I’m misreading.) Also, serious illnesses in Israel are significantly more common among the unvaccinated.

You’re so right that delta is concerning though. And depressing. :(

B40C06BC-4FC3-42F9-BF77-1446C70EE1A1.png
8AF22DA8-F732-4460-857A-DD254A78ED99.png
 
MarcelNL said:
High vaccination rate? Israel? I see them below 60%, in the land of the blind one Eye is king, but 60% is not a high vax rate IMO. (pretty much the same as the Netherlands)

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/israel
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Israel has been used as something of a data benchmark because they got a widely accessible vaccination program (mostly the Pfizer vaccine) off the ground early and have had a relatively robust testing and reporting program in place. They were for a time the most highly vaccinated country but as in the USA their program bogged down for a period. I think they are currently in somewhere around 10th or 11th place globally. Like the USA fear has driven up their vaccination rates recently. There is some evidence suggesting that the vaccines may be more vulnerable to breakthrough cases than has been officially reported at this point. Unless they have restarted the program the US CDC stopped tracking breakthrough cases in May.
On the mask front there is a huge difference in effectiveness among different types of masks. In the US I see the bare minimum, e.g. a bandana, quite often and rarely see N95 masks or better. I don't know what the situation is in Israel. There are a number of better designed* and tested mask designs available these days, although some are not inexpensive. Vaccinated or not I think treating Delta casually is a mistake.
*mostly with regard to the integrity of the facial seal and comfort
 
I'm for mask indoors public area's, outdoors as long as not large unrelated groups mask optional your choice. Shutting non essential business down no way.

One of favorite places Koolau Farmers garden
supply almost went under closed all of lockdown. Now open I wear a mask going in
the 2 employees & owner all wear mask, it's understood. Who is to say what is essential anyway.
 
ian said:
Where are you getting your data on death rates? My quick google search of israel covid death seems to indicate the death rate is lower now than before. (If you look at the charts that pop up, the current upswing of new cases is sharper in comparison to the old data than the upswing in in the deaths chart. Maybe I’m misreading.) Also, serious illnesses in Israel are significantly more common among the unvaccinated.

You’re so right that delta is concerning though. And depressing. :(

View attachment 138241View attachment 138242
Click to expand...
If you look at the bottom it tells you John Hopkins.
 
MarcelNL said:
High vaccination rate? Israel? I see them below 60%, in the land of the blind one Eye is king, but 60% is not a high vax rate IMO. (pretty much the same as the Netherlands)

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/israel
Click to expand...

I did think they were higher but they are at 62.5 fully and 67.5 partially are still near the top. Their problem seems to be the protection is fading and since they got a big head they are really struggling now.

1629160148723.png
 
Bill13 said:
View attachment 138265
Click to expand...
That graph is misleading, at least for Australia. The actual percentage of adults > 16 years with one dose is about 48%, the number of adults with two doses is a little over 26%. I guess that adds up to 60% more or less if one just counts the number of administered doses. But that aggregate value says little about the overall level of immunisation until it gets quite close to 200%.

https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines
 
Not being argumentative about a few % extra, the data showing at the Johns Hopkins website to me says Israel is not doing much (or any) better than many countries AND their death rate is not even close to what it was prior to vaccinations being completed for more than a few % of population. The page I referred to shows the vacc rate at 59%,, deaths at 241 last month where that number at the all time high was over 1400. I referred to that page in response to Bill13.

Recent numbers tell us that of those folks fully vaccinated only a very low percentage is at risk of getting admitted to ICU with Covid and an even smaller percentage is at risk of dying of Covid, we see the same thing in the Netherlands....infection numbers going up, hospital admissions to some extent too (but way lower than before) ICU admissions are very low and Covid deaths too. Protection fading? How? you can still get Covid after being fully vaccinated but the severity of the disease is seriously lower once vaccinated.
 
It definitely is a disease of the unvaccinated now. While vaccinated people can catch and spread the virus, the illness is typically mild enough to not require hospitalisation. It is similar for fatalities. Of the people who died from Covid here in the current wave, virtually all of them were unvaccinated; I believe there were two or three deaths of fully vaccinated people. But these people had either some other medical problem or were extremely old (in their nineties, from memory).

The situation is similar in the US: Delta Variant: What We Know About the Science

And this: Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated

A good article on why herd immunity is likely unachievable.

And, sadly, One in four COVID cases in NSW outbreak has been a child under 19.

Australia has finally approved Pfizer from age 12 onwards. Was about bloody time, too. At least here, the disease is spread mainly by younger people, from children to about mid-thirties in age. Not a surprise, really. These are the people who tend to naturally be more socially active, and they also tend to be the people with fewer savings, meaning that they are more likely to go to work despite "not feeling quite well."
 
The people in US & Hawaii that died many had or have serious medical conditions. even at middle age obesity, strain on heart, kidneys, type 2 diabetes. When you throw in these virus the system not strong enough causes shutdown.

The US is highest in industrialized countries in obesity 37% Unfortunately Hawaiians and other pacific island cultures have highest obesity rates.

So saying other variables at work when variant
virus hits unvaccinated people & unwell vaccinated. Pretty much all the vaccinated that got sick enough to go to hospital have other medical conditions.
 
I was sorry to read but not all that surprised that we are now being told in the US that we’re all going to need the booster shot after 8 months of the second shot. I have been reading for awhile now about people with underlying conditions probably needing a booster after maybe 6 months and that makes sense to me for people with compromised immune systems. People like my stepmother who is being treated for cancer. But to hear that the CDC is recommending a booster shot to pretty much everyone after 8 months of the second dose is down right depressing. I can’t help but think if everyone would have been on board at the beginning of all this the outcome might have been different. That’s probably just optimistic thinking on my part though. Even I, who is all for wearing masks, getting vaccinated and looking out for my fellow man is getting sick of this ugly mess we’re all being forced to endure. Is this ever going to end?
 
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