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Delta Variant

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

311–320 of 442 posts

Re: Delta Variant

#311
post #105
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and we are past the potential 2-week delay from cases to deaths Not everywhere. See here, for example: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherland... The Netherlands went from 550 cases/day at the end of June to 10,000 cases/day now. The Delta variant took less than two weeks to spread as much as the EU variant did in two months (Sep 1st - Nov 1st). Of course, it was helped a lot by the government de…

Still, the UK is quite a bit into the delta wave and the number of deaths have barely budged: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Barely budged? It's gone up by a factor of 5x since the beginning of April!

Re: Delta Variant

#312
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re doing it again, just stop, it’s not your job to convince people :) “It’s ok to make a choice, but here’s the consequences asshole” It’s exactly what I’m opposed too. Don’t pretend before corona virus you isolated yourself from everyone incase you gave them the flu or norovirus either. Because it’s the same thing now. If an elderly person is vaccinated, and the vaccine is 95% effective, they’d have less chance…

> You’re doing it again, just stop, it’s not your job to convince people :) > “It’s ok to make a choice, but here’s the consequences asshole” > It’s exactly what I’m opposed too. You're opposed to... people pointing out the consequences of your actions? Social pressure to protect the well-being of others? I got all vaccinations and took basic safety precautions (washing hands regularly during flu season, etc) pre-COV…

[flagged]

Re: Delta Variant

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not dishonest if it's literally true, as you already admitted. This is like saying "it's dishonest to say drinking water is essential for health when obviously you'll die if someone sticks a hose down your throat and forces you to drink until you die".

It's not literally true. Exponential goes forever. A vrius will not. Where it stops is incredibly complex. It's exponential to a point, and where that point is is extremely important.

Exponential spread does not mean "spreads forever"...good grief, stop playing pedantic games.

Re: Delta Variant

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but why is it okay to approve this mRNA delivery system in a matter of months while the approval for these others require decades of test? There's clearly inconsistency by the FDA here.

Why is it okay to destroy someone's house with axes and water when it's on fire but otherwise it's illegal? There's clearly inconsistency by the fire department here. Seriously, what other course of events do you propose should have happened? Vaccines couldn't have been developed before Covid-19 existed. Should we have just pretended that mRNA technology didn't exist, in favor of traditional approaches of making vacc…

I think the FDA's normal process is extremely flawed and would like to see more expedited trails that allow early-opt-in and continually expanding test groups that ramp up in size as efficacy and safety is proven.

It's criminal that the FDA has effectively sat on mRNA tech for decades while watching people who could have benefit from it die. The FDA deemed mRNA tech unsafe to give to much smaller groups of people already directly affected with various mRNA treatable diseases yet now after a few months of testing they have amazingly deemed it safe to give to to the entire world. The risk calculus just isn't consistent.

Re: Delta Variant

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of any results for the J&J shot? That's the one I got but it always seems to be left out.

Here you go, straight from the horses mouth. Take that as you will. "A preprint submitted by the Company today to bioRxiv contains a new analysis from blood samples obtained from a subset of participants (n=8) in the Phase 3 ENSEMBLE study. These data showed that the Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine elicited neutralizing antibody activity against the Delta variant at an even higher level than what was r…

n=8?!? That's... um... nice for those eight people, I guess. It's sure not much to draw conclusions from, though.

(I also got J&J, so I hope they're right. But the sample size makes this little better than anecdote.)

Re: Delta Variant

#316

The article purposefully conflates numbers to tell a narrative. I am talking only about EU, and at that southern EU which is where I've been following the numbers closely. Delta variant has been acting for up to 1 month in some regions, and as described in the article yes cases are up very quickly. However, the article says: > COVID deaths [...] And if you think Europe or the US will be spared This is not reflected a…

> mixing deaths in one country with infections in another so basically like the last 15 months there is a clear separation of critical thinkers on this planet such that we are almost two different species if it wasnt for the viable offspring

> so basically like the last 15 months

Yup. It started with conflating CFR and IFR (picking CFR of course because it is the bigger number). Comparing raw numbers between two regions that report their data completely different, etc.

Worse is when you show public data and get called "dangerous" because it doesn't fit the narrative that this all is the worst thing ever.

Re: Delta Variant

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many reasons people choose not to get the vaccine. What evidence do you have that the main issue is a distrust of authority? The main authority on this, the FDA has not even officially approved the vaccine and likely won't for quite awhile. For some people it is logical to ask why other vaccines require 10year+ trials and for this a few months was sufficient. While personally, I think the risk of the virus…

The FDA is ridiculously over conservative because of litigation, settlement, and insurance costs. They're not doing another thalidomide. My premise is that the facts we choose for our opinions are for support of an underlying belief, and that this underlying belief is that the people running things are full of shit, if not deceptive. I can't change someones mind about that (and wouldn't try), but I'm addressing that…

They're supposed to be conservative though?

Re: Delta Variant

#318
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also why vaccination is so critical and why "young healthy people" should not opt out: when you get the virus, even if it's a mild case, you are in effect donating processing power to what amounts to a global supercomputing project to evolve more virulent strains of COVID. That's how evolution works. The more chances the virus has to replicate, the more likely it is to become more virulent or even worse learn…

That entirely depends on the selection pressure being applied. A vaccine that only targets the spike protein is a great way to select for a mutation with a different spike protein. Limiting human contact selects for strains that can infect during short periods of exposure… oops.

Vaccination means you don't need to limit exposure so much, which reduces selection for casual transmissibility. It also means the existing un-mutated virus has far less of an opportunity to "experiment" and mutate further.

Re: Delta Variant

#319
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a vaccinated person - the risk of dying is quite low. That isn't the only criteria i use to decide if something should concern me.

There are plenty of other factors in determining concern including one's individual risk factors. But there's also a difference between concern and fear. Unfortunately I've seen people who are vaccinated express fear and reluctance to participate in normal activities with other vaccinated individuals due to the Delta variant. If we're looking for zero risk from Covid, we won't be finding it for years.

So you would advise those people not to fear the Delta variant, because catching it is inevitable, and probably won't kill you?

Re: Delta Variant

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, my experience is that the main reason is distrust of authority. It's usually warranted distrust too. Authorities aren't trustworthy. To answer your question: (1) Most vaccines don't have 10+ year trials. A year is not even the fastest; the flu on 1957-1958 has a vaccine developed in 4 months. (2) Most medical trials are slower since everything is done sequentially, since there is no rush. You can do an a…

I meant to say risk of virus greatly outweighs the risk of the vaccine. But I still disagree that we should force that choice on everyone. 1) Did that 1957-58 vaccine use existing tech? My understanding is that other RNA vaccines and therapies were already under FDA trials with ~10 year time-frames since the method is new. 2) Why is sequential better, because it is considered safer? 3) Yes, short-term we know it is e…

> 1) Did that 1957-58 vaccine use existing tech? My understanding is that other RNA vaccines and therapies were already under FDA trials with ~10 year time-frames since the method is new.

Our scientific knowledge in 1957 was limited at best. The double-helix was discovered just a half-decade before. Today, we understand in-depth most of the mechanisms of action involved. There just isn't a comparison here. The COVID19 vaccine is far safer than what we put together in 1957, no question.

> 2) Why is sequential better, because it is considered safer?

It's safer to the original research subjects, but not to the general public. For general safety, you don't find out more by going slowly. You generally learn strictly more from a human study than an animal one, and you learn more from a large study than from a small one.

The point of an animal study before first-in-man is to not endanger a human subject. Small groups come before big ones to pick off things which might e.g. harm 10% of subjects. And so on. The decision was made to skip that step, slightly raising the risk of the subjects, in order to save millions of lives.

Part of that is we had pretty darned good reason to believe the vaccine was safe, and part of that was the grave risk.

> 3) Yes, short-term we know it is extremely safe. But there are zero people that have had the vaccine much over 1 year. Long-term effects are unlikely but it's just not scientifically correct to say that this vaccine is better studied than any other just because of the number of doses administered. Duration matters a lot.

Not so much:

- We have historical evidence. Do you know of any vaccine in the history of mankind which had long-term effects not visible the first few months? I don't.

- We understand mechanisms of action pretty well at this point. Your body gets all sorts of junk thrown at it all the time -- random polens, plastics from your water bottle, randomly mutating cold viruses, and so on. There just isn't any reason to believe a new vaccine is any more dangerous than a random bug bite. Indeed, we understand the stuff going into the vaccine a lot better than we do a random bug.

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