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Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

reuters.com

51–60 of 106 posts

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#51
post #2

How is this news? We've known for some time that the vaccines are leaky, and they appear to be working in regards to keeping the doctors out of the hospital and only afflicted with mild symptoms.

Yes, you see this as people point out that Gibraltar, a place that is supposedly 100% vaccinated, is experiencing an outbreak of 3000 cases since June. What they leave out is that 4 people have died in Gibraltar of Covid since that outbreak started. In January before vaccines were available, they had an earlier outbreak of 3000 cases. Close to 100 people died during that outbreak. This seems like a very obvious case…

No it doesn't. That is not a scientific observation at all and your perfectly round numbers are completely made up.

A novel disease is most potent when it hits populations with no built in immunity. The disease hit elderly people particularly hard. Among those that survived the first wave of covid, people built up natural immunity.

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reuters used to represent a “just the facts” news wire. But now it just isn’t. Yes this is an event in the same way that someone relapsing in cancer is an event. It alone is pointless and does not a trend make.

> Reuters used to represent a "just the facts" news wire. After reading the article I'm still not seeing the problem. The sentences in the article are factual information, there is no obvious editorial bias like a CNN or Fox article, and there is nothing telling you how to feel (e.g. "You should be afraid" NYT title). Reuters still seems pretty good compared to what's available out there.

Publishing the story is itself an editorial decision.

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you see this as people point out that Gibraltar, a place that is supposedly 100% vaccinated, is experiencing an outbreak of 3000 cases since June. What they leave out is that 4 people have died in Gibraltar of Covid since that outbreak started. In January before vaccines were available, they had an earlier outbreak of 3000 cases. Close to 100 people died during that outbreak. This seems like a very obvious case…

> vaccine skeptic analysis seems to stop at the cases and concludes that the vaccine is ineffective This is not accurate. It's the mandates which most people have problems with, not the vaccine. Mandating something which doesn't prevent transmission under coercion from the government is illogical. The current shots are basically potential severe symptom mitigator - which if you think you would benefit, you should tak…

No one is mandating that you be vaccinated in Canada. They're just saying don't go to restaurants or bars or other places if you aren't since you're more likely to spread the disease.

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#55
post #38

> The two doctors had received three doses of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine, and so far have shown mild COVID-19 symptoms, the hospital said. The mildness of the symptoms is just as newsworthy as the fact that there are breakthrough infections. It has long been speculated that COVID-19 would evolve into more contagious but less virulent variants. Omicron may be one such variant. If it is, that's probably a good thing.…

You don't get stronger immunity. It's like cold virus. The idea behind cold virus is to not allow your host to develop any immunity. Before host's immune system gets around it, cold virus spreads and kills itself in host. This combined with rapid mutations means that there is no cure for cold. Covid DNA structure is similar and may eventually evolve to adopt same strategy in long term. Killing host is not a good stra…

You don't think that getting one variant of COVID-19 gives you stronger immunity to other variants? Has that been the case for any variants so far?

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you see this as people point out that Gibraltar, a place that is supposedly 100% vaccinated, is experiencing an outbreak of 3000 cases since June. What they leave out is that 4 people have died in Gibraltar of Covid since that outbreak started. In January before vaccines were available, they had an earlier outbreak of 3000 cases. Close to 100 people died during that outbreak. This seems like a very obvious case…

> vaccine skeptic analysis seems to stop at the cases and concludes that the vaccine is ineffective This is not accurate. It's the mandates which most people have problems with, not the vaccine. Mandating something which doesn't prevent transmission under coercion from the government is illogical. The current shots are basically potential severe symptom mitigator - which if you think you would benefit, you should tak…

I am a bit on the fence with Vaccine mandates, I wish they weren't necessary.

But I get the key reason for them, which you have missed, is it isn't really about the health choices of the person getting vaccinated.

If your vaccination status affected no-one but yourself then I would be strongly against any vaccine mandate. If you are unvaccinated you are more likely to get infected, that is your risk. But, if you do get infected then you are MUCH more likely to pass the virus onto other people, including cancer patients etc who cannot be vaccinated. You are also likely to clog up the hospital system for an extended time, causing everyone else to receive a poor standard of care as the healthcare system strains.

This is the issue. Someone's decision to not get vaccinated has severe impacts on other people. Its NOT just about them, and if they say it is just about them then they are being incredibly selfish.

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#57
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both my parents, sister, and a slew of friends and co-workers have had "breakthrough infections" from covid, I'm not really sure (if you're not getting boosters) whether you even have protection from regular let alone Omicron at this point.

That only means you're in the place with a lot virus flowing around, nothing else. Vaccine stimulate your immune system to lower the chance to get infected, and even if infected much lower chance to get severely damaged.

I’m not sure your explanation is sound. Studies have shown doctors/nurses get sick (pre-Covid) at more or less the same rate as the rest of the population, despite increased exposure to circulating colds and flus. Explanations ranged from “they get vaccinated more” to “background exposure to very low payloads primes the immune system and keeps them healthier.”

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you see this as people point out that Gibraltar, a place that is supposedly 100% vaccinated, is experiencing an outbreak of 3000 cases since June. What they leave out is that 4 people have died in Gibraltar of Covid since that outbreak started. In January before vaccines were available, they had an earlier outbreak of 3000 cases. Close to 100 people died during that outbreak. This seems like a very obvious case…

No it doesn't. That is not a scientific observation at all and your perfectly round numbers are completely made up. A novel disease is most potent when it hits populations with no built in immunity. The disease hit elderly people particularly hard. Among those that survived the first wave of covid, people built up natural immunity.

> That is not a scientific observation at all

I said it would be a good case study, which would be an element of research trying to establish the effectiveness of the vaccine. Obviously what I presented here is not science, and I didn't claim it was. Science is one tool of many that we can use to observe reality and try to draw conclusions about it. It's not the only tool, and you shouldn't discount one tool for not being another tool.

> your perfectly round numbers are completely made up

Good on you to insist on a source, I forgot to provide it. My perfectly round number are approximations of these data, they are not "made up": https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/gibraltar/

5 deaths in Dec 2020 up to 94 deaths ~100 deaths. Cases were ~1000 in December 2020 and went up to ~4000 in February, an increase of ~3000 cases. Infections leveled off and started increasing in June from ~4000 to exactly 7248 today, an increase of ~3000 cases. During this outbreak, exactly 4 people have died.

> The disease hit elderly people particularly hard. Among those that survived the first wave of covid, people built up natural immunity.

Maybe. Or maybe the vaccine is doing in the wild exactly what scientists found it did in their vaccine trials? Occam's razor would say to go with the vaccine as the explanation due to it requiring fewer assumptions (we know everyone is vaccinated, we don't know what proportion of that population has built up immunity by contracting Covid naturally).

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people have been talking about it responsibly throughout the course. It’s become a weird morality issue and anyone taking about it from that position is adding to the problem regardless of moral stance, and the morality isn’t even being done correctly focusing on the actual issues. I guess it’s just a symptom of the attention economy and the bad state of education and ability for independent thought everywhe…

Disease has always been viewed through a moral lens. Plague was from sin, aids was from sin. We have always judged the sick through a moral lens and only through hindsight do we see how terrible that was. And then we repeat the same mistake. I am confident that the people giving out so called “Herman Cain Awards” for COVID will be judged as harshly as we judge those who called HIV the gay plague.

> I am confident that the people giving out so called “Herman Cain Awards” for COVID will be judged as harshly as we judge those who called HIV the gay plague.

I’m not so sure. If there were a safe, free and widely available vaccine for HIV and gay men were going out of their way to shout about not taking it then I think the situation may have been comparable.

Re: Two Triple Vaccinated Israeli Doctors Infected with Omicron

#60
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vaccine skeptic analysis seems to stop at the cases and concludes that the vaccine is ineffective This is not accurate. It's the mandates which most people have problems with, not the vaccine. Mandating something which doesn't prevent transmission under coercion from the government is illogical. The current shots are basically potential severe symptom mitigator - which if you think you would benefit, you should tak…

No one is mandating that you be vaccinated in Canada. They're just saying don't go to restaurants or bars or other places if you aren't since you're more likely to spread the disease.

Air-travel is an essential service according to Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (Crown corporation).

https://www.catsa-acsta.gc.ca/en/covid19-response

You aren't allowed to air-travel without COVID shots. Is that not mandatory then?

Also the courts have stated before that:

> "at the very least, liberty must include those freedoms of lawful conduct always enjoyed by Canadians and by our predecessors in the Anglo-Saxon heritage. If we have enjoyed a right for many centuries then it must surely be included in "liberty" whether specifically stated in the Charter or not."

If one had been able to access centuries old liberties like gyms, restaurants, weddings, funerals etc without disclosing private medical data, then they are covered under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter regarding liberty and privacy is covered under both s.7 and s.8 of the Charter.

> if you aren't since you're more likely to spread the disease

This is inaccurate. Even in mild symptom cases, vaccinated and unvaccinated infections harbour the same levels of viral load. The Delta variant is able to grow in the noses of vaccinated people to the same degree as if they were not vaccinated at all and both groups can unknowingly and unwittingly transmit the virus for 3 days before experiencing any symptoms in 75% of the Delta variant infections.

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