Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated. That would be quite stupid. Because if the risk of the disease is low, vaccines does not make sense when you do risk/benefit calculation. Hence the people should know about the cases. Of course, instead, if you are looking to push vaccines no matter what, you would say something like >The only metric the public sho…
> That would be quite stupid. Because if the risk of the disease is low, vaccines does not make sense when you do risk/benefit calculation. The risk of symptomatic illness is low if you are vaccinated. The risk of symptomatic illness is high if you are unvaccinated. The risk of death is high if you are unvaccinated and have pre-existing conditions and are under the age of 65. The risk of death is very high if you are…
Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
171–180 of 241 posts
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated. That would be quite stupid. Because if the risk of the disease is low, vaccines does not make sense when you do risk/benefit calculation. Hence the people should know about the cases. Of course, instead, if you are looking to push vaccines no matter what, you would say something like >The only metric the public sho…
Regardless of number of cases, most of us will be exposed to SARS-CoV-2 eventually. Just like with other endemic coronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43.
If the no of cases is nearly zero, that means the virus is no longer dangerous, so it does not really matter at that point.
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I strongly suspect that the goal was to cast a wide net (i.e. bias toward false positives) at the expense of accuracy, but then "cases" became some kind of top-line media metric... Then in January the WHO updated the diagnostic protocol [1] because of that false positive/low confidence problem. Unsurprisingly, case counts plummeted in the following weeks. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information…
This WHO statement has been widely misinterpreted, is is not the case that PCR tests were resulting in inflated numbers of false positives, see Reuters fact check [1] from February 4, 2021, and [2] from April 8, 2021. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-who-instruction... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-who-pcr-idUSL1N2M1...
Why would WHO feel the need to tell people to read the operating manuals closely? I’m sure its not because the accuracy was too high.
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ran one of the first labs to validate the original CDC assay (we got the controls to work). Ct numbers were a slippery slope we should never have gone down for COVID-19 PCR tests because snot is not like blood, a homogenous substance with well known homeostatic parameters that are under tight physiologic control. Do you know someone went swimming? Do you know if they were crying? Did they just eat some particularly…
I would like to see QC statistics from some of the large test-processing centers which have IIRC been established. Surely they send a blind fraction of known-negative or control samples through, to get good statistics on false-positive rates?
So, yeah, rest assured, labs work really hard to make sure they report honestly and accurately. Better to fail an occasional proficiency test and repeat, than get sideways on the inspection.
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead you're just talking about a left-wing conspiracy to lie to the public in order to take control of the government. Things like that make people suspicious, and make it easy for people who don't know the difference between a quantum dot[1] and a microchip to misunderstand when Bill Gates calls for a national tracking system[2]. 1: (a quantum dot to store medical information beneath the skin really was funded by…
>Instead you're just talking about a left-wing conspiracy to lie to the public in order to take control of the government. To take control of the government or for good PR/propaganda? Governments have never had any issues conspiring and lying to the public, remember when Fauci said not to use masks because they didn't help? Or those WMDs that we will surely find any day now?
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that it was hardly “delayed” since all initial predictions for the vaccine to be approved were around 12 months, in the end it only took about 10 months. Reports last year indicated Trump’s own FDA was responsible for setting out the needed time for data gathering and review that pushed it into mid-November. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months... Meanwhile other countries including China…
Both Russia and China started using their vaccines in August 2020: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-claims-first-corona... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-...
The first two phases involved just a few dozen volunteers.
Phase 3 trials will be conducted not only in Russia but in partner countries including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Dmitriev said in Tuesday's statement.”
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_V_COVID-19_vaccine#Aut... the first authorizations outside Russia occurred in December 2020.
Similarly for the Chinese vaccine it took time for the trial results to arrive. Sinovac was approved for general use in February 2021, months after the FDA had authorized Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3120855/covi...
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that the background for this is that Kary Mullis believed AIDS wasn’t caused by HIV and was therefore angry at Fauci and the entire medical/scientific establishment for linking HIV and AIDS. He died in 2019 so his criticisms of Fauci were related to HIV, not SARS-CoV-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Views_on_HIV/AIDS_...
Denialism and skepticism are often used as slurs in the absence of strong evidence by those who favor popular consensus over evidence. A PI once confided in me that he didn't believe in the big bang. I was startled because creationism was on the rise, and I knew that he was Catholic. However, I also knew he was a natural empiricist, and after taking a quiet moment to think things through, I realized I was being teste…
OK? That doesn’t change the massive weight of evidence in favor of HIV causing AIDS.
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that the background for this is that Kary Mullis believed AIDS wasn’t caused by HIV and was therefore angry at Fauci and the entire medical/scientific establishment for linking HIV and AIDS. He died in 2019 so his criticisms of Fauci were related to HIV, not SARS-CoV-2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Views_on_HIV/AIDS_...
The video they are referring to has a very specific part about pcr testing (relevant to the discussion here). I think it is reasonable to trust his opinion on the matter regardless of what he thinks about AIDS.
Moreover, PCR testing during the covid epidemic, which he was not alive for, has clearly been working well. High cases later correspond to high hospitalizations and high covid-19 deaths and high excess deaths across many different countries.
Frankly I don’t put much trust in his Nobel, any more than Michael Levitt who is also a Nobel laureate and has repeatedly made falsified predictions about the Covid-19 pandemic.[2] It seems pretty clear that Nobel prize winners can later lose touch with reality.
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> red death map visualizations for people to see with inflated death counts. There is no indication of inflated death counts. Death counts from covid correlate closely with excess deaths. Some have claimed that deaths did rise but because of lockdowns, however in “locked down” regions where reported Covid cases and deaths were low, so were excess deaths.
If you inflate infections, you are therefore are also inflating deaths, it's a 1 to X correlation.
Re: Over half of Covid hospitalisations tested positive after admission
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that it was hardly “delayed” since all initial predictions for the vaccine to be approved were around 12 months, in the end it only took about 10 months. Reports last year indicated Trump’s own FDA was responsible for setting out the needed time for data gathering and review that pushed it into mid-November. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-okays-fda-months... Meanwhile other countries including China…
It is worth considering that maybe Sinovac (and whatever the Russian one(s) is/are called) may have been released far earlier than they would have been if the U.S. and others had not developed their own faster. Think of space wars - even if you lose the race to first, you still want to be in 2nd vs 500th. If they were developed at a more traditional pace, would they be more effective? Would any of them be? And what w…