Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely true, but not the whole story unfortunately. While many African countries need more vaccines, South Africa was in the process of throttling shipments because less and less people were getting vaccinated. So the other big challenge is raising acceptance of the vaccines and fighting denialism.
I am South African. Can you give a citation for this claim?
Update on Omicron
531–540 of 794 posts
Re: Update on Omicron
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta. I thought this was weirdly worded. It's also not clear whether Omicron disease is less severe, either, right? A long time ago, long before the pandemic politicized messaging so much, a researcher posted a comment here on HN where they said that virus deadliness and contagiousness…
> a researcher posted a comment here on HN where they said that virus deadliness and contagiousness were in tension. I've heard this statement a lot, and have been rather puzzled by why this must be the case. It's certainly true over a long period of time (a deadly pathogen that will kill off its hosts too quickly will also perish); and it's also certainly true that if a pathogen is very contagious but not deadly it…
> I don't believe there's any molecular mechanism
why does it have to be molecular and not just evolutionary? That's what a virus does for a living after all.
Re: Update on Omicron
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's well known it's more infectious, and widely suspected to be more deadly. See both https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-is-de... and https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var...
The problem with these studies is the mild symptom cases may never even be reported as cases, I know alot of people that had covid symptoms but never got tested, and would never get tested unless it got to the point where they needed medical care. So if you just had a "pretty bad" flu and sat at home you likely never got tested, and thus would never show up in these studies Hell I know a couple people that were told…
> I know alot of people that had covid symptoms but never got tested
Sure, let's just trust anecdotes from random person on internet over data
Re: Update on Omicron
#534Ok, my 2 cents. This happened because there isn’t enough vaccines in third world countries. They can’t afford them. The moral of the story? It doesn’t matter if you 100% vaccinate your western country. We’re all in this together. When COVID spreads in Africa and makes a new strain, it may as well be on your own doorstep. The world needs to step up and distribute vaccines to every corner of the globe, for FREE, or we’…
Absolutely true, but not the whole story unfortunately. While many African countries need more vaccines, South Africa was in the process of throttling shipments because less and less people were getting vaccinated. So the other big challenge is raising acceptance of the vaccines and fighting denialism.
Not just denialism, but travel costs could also be an issue. I know in more highly vaccinated countries the government had to basically pay people to take the vaccine.
Re: Update on Omicron
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't a peer reviewed study, it's a submitted abstract. The sole name on the paper is someone who sells psudoscience plant-based debunked theories that the majority of our health issues come from lectins. He "authors papers" for Gwyneth Paltrow's weird publications. The guy sells supplements based on his scaremongering research to fringe-groups who like the idea of plant-based medicine, I don't trust his opinion…
>The sole name on the paper is someone who sells psudoscience plant-based debunked theories that the majority of our health issues come from lectins A professional cardiologist with decades of experience who now runs his own cardiology practice. Do you feel you're more qualified to assess his qualifications than the editors of Circulation just because you read a wikipedia article? >psudoscience plant-based debunked t…
Yeah, I'm sorry, this is the classic pseudoscience narrative. Somehow everyone else is wrong because of except this one guy who somehow figured out the truth.
Re: Update on Omicron
#536Ok, my 2 cents. This happened because there isn’t enough vaccines in third world countries. They can’t afford them. The moral of the story? It doesn’t matter if you 100% vaccinate your western country. We’re all in this together. When COVID spreads in Africa and makes a new strain, it may as well be on your own doorstep. The world needs to step up and distribute vaccines to every corner of the globe, for FREE, or we’…
If you'd take personal responsibility for the world and wear 2 masks to sleep, the common cold would go extinct in 2 weeks, but you're a selfish asshole killing tens of trillions of grand mothers every day you deny it.
Re: Update on Omicron
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should probably read the "Expression of Concern" that the AHA has already attached to that abstract (it's a link under the title); namely the part that says "...there is no data in the abstract regarding myocardial T-cell infiltration, there are no statistical analyses for significance provided, and the author is not clear that only anecdotal data was used." (They also mention the typographical errors, but I didn…
>Also, and this is something I'm not clear on, but is this just an abstract? It doesn't seem like there's an associated paper or any data beyond what's mentioned there. It's from a report presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2021; https://www.thecardiologyadvisor.com/home/topics/acs/acute-c... . Presumably the actual paper is upcoming. >"...there is no data in the abstract regarding m…
What I wonder with this (and other warnings about vaccine safety)
mRNA vaccines have been administered to millions of people around the world. A sizable percentage had the first shot six months ago or longer.
The effects the author is warning against also occur supposedly with high probability and across age groups and sex. (He makes no mentions about pre-existing conditions, which would probably be important: usually, you visit a cardiologist for a reason)
If there was actually an increased risk of e.g. ACS, shouldn't we have seen a significant increase in actual ACS cases among vaccinated by now? Wouldn't this have been detected during the clinical trials?
Re: Update on Omicron
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
Distribution in the country is not the problem (look what "Medecins sans frontires" do). Mostly 3rd world countries do not have medical standards as high as in first world so you can instruct taxi drivers how to jab people and give them trunk full of vaccines and they will empty it in the same day without problems. And it will be still safe enough as those vaccines are applied to muscles. I think it is the problem of…
Paying more by richest countries is fine, but it should help get vaccines cheaper for developing country.
To be fair, this was always the plan. Once the rich countries got vaccinated, they were going to give the surplus to the rest of the world.
Boosters and supply chain issues have rather upended that plan, though.
Re: Update on Omicron
#539The omicron variant could be a blessing in disguise if the early stories on how it is less deadly checks out. That means people refuse to get the vaccine shot will be infected with the omicron variant with relatively low consequence and get immunity that way. Btw this is how it suppose to work. The virus has no incentive to kill its host. The variant that is fast spreading and less deadly eventually wins out.
Too bad most media are into natural immunity denialism.
Re: Update on Omicron
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Watching the people around me has stirred in me many new questions. Have you ever considered they might have a point? More and more data is coming out, like https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.107... , in the highest-impact cardiology journal, showing that the mRNA vaccines are not particularly "safe" by any reasonable interpretation of the word.
I don't read that as them not being safe. They're trying to explain why there's an increase in some symptoms, symptoms we already know about, post vaccine. Sadly I can't dig too much into that paper because the page is being really buggy. But having had three shots now and no symptoms I've stopped really caring much to hear any fear mongering. I'm a lot more concerned by new variants.
I'm in the opposite bucket regarding symptoms unfortunately. First shot gave somewhat unusual symptoms which were brushed off. Only after the left side of my face went numb after shot two did they consider allergic reaction.
The side effects of the vaccines, while generally not that severe, are very real. Discounting them just because you were lucky isn't the best way to go about it imo.
I'm not looking forward to the mandatory booster.