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Delta Variant

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

341–350 of 442 posts

Re: Delta Variant

#341
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the asymptomatic spread that has caused a lot of the problems and concern. People with ebola for example rarely spread it because they become so quickly and acutely ill. But with COVID, you're going about your normal life for days while spreading it unknowingly before symptoms hit (if they even hit at all).

> It's the asymptomatic spread that has caused a lot of the problems and concern. Is there a lot of evidence of this? Last time I checked, asymptomatic spread was not well understood.

I used the wrong word! Most data shows people who have a truly asymptomatic infection do not frequently spread the virus. But much if not most of the transmission occurs from infected people while they are pre-symptomatic. Hence the ease of spreading the diseases, and the push by many health agencies to get people with no symptoms to wear masks and social distance in case they are infected but don't know it yet.

Here's a couple relatively recent links: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/4/20-4576_article

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/most-...

Re: Delta Variant

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe neither option is great? Have you ever considered that possibility? It's funny because your post really offers nothing new, just another opinion of your own. I've said before, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I've taken vaccines before and if the Pfizer vaccine proves safe longer term, we know more about reported heart problems in younger males, I won't need to mix and match vaccines and have booster shots and all that…

I don't know how I've implied that any option was "great" ? My post is pointing out that your previous framing is discounting the possible effects from doing nothing, while emphasizing the possible effects from doing something. This is not scientific. In general you seem to be attaching a high weighting to not taking the vaccine, including repeating common logical fallacies. Most likely you've gotten that from the "I…

What's you're deal then? You just feel strongly I should take the vaccine?

Where I live, what I do for work has really made no impact on my quality of life, so I don't give a fish about the virus or the vaccine.

It's funny to me that you say you deliberated, then you took it, and now I'm being "unscientific" for deliberating in the same way. But somehow you've made the scientific choice because you felt 6 months was long enough to wait. Not very scientific ?

Re: Delta Variant

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alr…

Clinical trials take long because they are evaluating long term side effects. They didn't deem it unsafe to give to smaller groups of people, in many cases the company withdrew it from consideration because earlier uses were centered on oncology - taking pieces of patients' cancer cells and attempting to get the body to fight them immunologically - and they weren't able to obtain a clinically significant impact. Running a long term clinical trial is an expensive proposition.

1. https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/comment/evolution-mrna-v...

Re: Delta Variant

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're looking at a century's worth of other vaccines and noting that the side effects present early on, not years later. The stuff in vaccines gets broken down or excreted by the body; it doesn't linger in your system for years. mRNA, for example, breaks down in minutes/hours.

All it tells us if that in the very short term, it seems safe. Great. When we know more about the long term, then people will be more happy to take it?

No, it is far more likely at that point that you will just trot out some other excuse.

Re: Delta Variant

#345

Can we provide the data necessary for young men to take one of the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19? The question. What percentage of men under 40 have had a cardiovascular event, specifically myocarditis, after taking the Phizer or Moderns shot? Primary reason I haven't been vaccinated yet.

> What percentage of men under 40 have had a cardiovascular event, specifically myocarditis, after taking the Phizer or Moderns shot? https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/new-information-for-pare... > Doing the math, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that for every million doses given, there have been 67 cases of heart inflammation in boys 12 to 17 (nine in girls of that age group), 56 in thos…

Thank you for providing numbers.

Re: Delta Variant

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of cognitive dissonance here is intense. >I can only make this decision based on my own research. >Unfortunately I am not qualified to interpret the data meaningfully, You do your own research but admit that you are unqualified to do that research. > and I truly believe that if there was data suggesting that the vaccine was equally dangerous to the virus, it would be suppressed. You believe institutions ar…

No one can deny that it would be very hard, almost impossible at this stage to admit the existence of a problem should one be identified. If a problem was identified A lot of people would be humiliated and there would be major fallout as many people would no longer trust Governments at all. It would be absolutely unprecedented and unthinkable after over a billion doses administered. It could almost lead to a type of…

> No one can deny that it would be very hard, almost impossible at this stage to admit the existence of a problem should one be identified.

On the contrary, publications would salivate at the prospect of dropping a bombshell like this. People love reading and watching salacious, outrageous coverups and how they unravel.

You would need a multi-national conspiracy with various state and private actors coordinating and suppressing information about negative effects of the vaccine for it to be at a scale "equally dangerous" to the extent of the deaths and injuries caused by actual infection.

And it's not like we have no data about negative side effects. We have data on side effects: getting them is literally a handful in a million chance and they're manageable when they occur[1].

1. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/07/13/mo...

Re: Delta Variant

#347
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antivirals. We've very few effective ones on the market.

Does than mean they are more expensive to produce per dose, than vaccines?

That wouldn't be an obstacle. Expensive drugs are profitable drugs; drug manufacturers love those. For example, the antiviral that cures hepatitis C costs $84k-168k for a course of treatment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofosbuvir

It's just harder to make effective ones. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-its-so-hard-t...

> In contrast, viral pathogens live inside our own cells and depend on our proteins for most of their needs, so they offer no such easy targets. And few natural antivirals exist, so scientists need to invent them from scratch, says Kathie Seley-Radtke, a medicinal chemist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Re: Delta Variant

#348

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…

I wonder if it’s also misleading to only say that young adults have a rise in cases (due to less vaccination) and be fearful of that. The overall hospitalization and death is still lower (I think I read another article that talked about either in California or NY) because they’re better at handling covid. We need to present the hospitalization / death by age range for vaccinated and unvaccinated which if anyone has any data on that I would love to see it.

Re: Delta Variant

#349
Why the heck have we still banned children from getting the vaccine? This article doesn't address this 1 time, and this is IMO the most important issue related to covid today.

Quite frankly, I don't care if anti-vaxers get COVID (there is some nuance to this, but basically true).

There is only 1 large group in the US that is banned entirely getting a vaccine, and that is children. We need to find a way to un-ban this thing now. Vaccines are safe & effective.

Just let doctors and parents make their own decisions about giving children vaccines. I have 3 children, 6, 5, and 2. Covid is about half as dangerous as drowning for them. Sure, that isn't a ton, and not as much as the elderly, but I worry about them drowning! I would give all of them a smaller dose right now without hesitation. But I can't have that option, because the government has banned it.

We keep making the same mistake. "Lets ban vaccines for a long time, run tests, and let people die so that people have confidence in the vaccines." Then, here we are, with like half the country turned anti-vaxer. Banning vaccines is a complete and utter disaster from a policy perspective.

Re: Delta Variant

#350

I honestly don't know how to feel about Tomas Pueyo. He's very opinionated about what he writes, and has gained good readership and influencer status on this topic. It's clear in his writings that he fancies himself as an "amateur of expert insight". He may be 100% correct. He may also be 100% wrong. It's hard to tell (let alone without invoking the conditional fallacy). However, the most lasting impression I have of…

>But all I remember from that TV debate is that his main argument tactic on TV was effectively interrupting all the time by saying "wtf", "people will die because of you"

Which was an apporpriate tactic given that the United Kingdom was one of the hardest hit countries in Europe and the entire world. Visible anger in the face of complete and abject failure of an expert class and in the face of a rapidly worsening pandemic was an entirely reasonable reaction and the situation was indeed obvious to anyone who didn't have his head up his own ass. You might remember all of this happened against the backdrop of a government that was willing to 'let the bodies pile up' to 'keep the economy going'.

The absolute veneration of "civility" as if being civil actually is worth anything in the face of tens of thousands dying as a result of hesistancy is mad. Any sane person should have been ragiung.

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