961–970 of 1001 posts
As a side note, I want to thank dang for allowing these threads to stay up, even though they get a bit political and contentious at times. This is the only place I have to talk about COVID issues with smart people that I respect.
HN is one of the rare places where the Culture War is still fought in a relatively chivalrous manner.
Maybe this is the place where the Future is born? The Culture War is a philosophical one, and only philosophy could stop it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here. Still have heart inflammation 4 months after my second dose of Pfizer. I remember when the statistics were “1/1000000”, and now its 1/10000 for boys 12-17 [1]. In my opinion its insanity to give this to children, especially now that omicron is here. [1] - Table 2, https://www.tga.gov.au/periodic/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-safe...
I mean, I'm not an expert by any means, but the link you shared also says "Myocarditis is seen much more commonly in people who become infected with COVID-19 than in people who are vaccinated. A preliminary study from the United States(link is external) found the rate of myocarditis in young men after COVID-19 is approximately 45 cases per 100,000 infections"... So, a higher incidence among people with infections tha…
Recent data from Ontario has effectively ended this debate. Myocarditis is definitely more common from dose 2 moderna than from covid in young boys, and the same is probably true for Pfizer mostly because we don't actually know how many people have caught covid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've got your anecdotes, and I've got mine. My 3 young kids all caught omicron last week. Each were lethargic for a day, had a minor sore throat, and were back to normal in a day or two. The flu last month was way scarier with high fevers. There's a lot of reason to be optimistic about omicron.
Why would you think your three kids are somehow definitive or representative? These kinds of comments baffle me. It's almost as if people can't imagine that other people might have very different experiences, and that those experiences are equally valid. Pandemics are statistical events. Individual stories are irrelevant because the true picture is always a collective summary of cause and effect. No one can generalis…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've got the causation wrong. People didn't start rejecting the vaccine because of the mandates. Mandates came about because large percentages of the population weren't getting vaccinated. And why weren't they getting vaccinated? Because COVID denial poisoned the well of information. Even today, there are virtually no facts about COVID that you could get 95% of Americans to agree upon. My guess is that clos…
> My guess is that close to 5% would disagree with the statement "the SARS-CoV-2 virus is real". I wouldn't be surprised if the number is even higher than that. Anecdotally, my mom didn't believe it was a real virus even after I got it, tested positive, and got pretty sick in 2020. When she and my unvaccinated dad got it in summer 2021 and Dad was hospitalized with severe illness from it, she changed her mind on it b…
Trying to pretend that the top levels of government are free from corruption and that Pfizer is the one good company that isn't evil and that there isn't a major incentive for Pfizer to ensure approval and mandates, and those imposing mandates don't have incentives to do so, whether implicit or explicit, is simply naive.
So all that talk about the military industrial complex wasting money to waste money to ensure dominance isn't likely, or even possible? Because thats exactly what people believe is happening with pharma. And that's what people believed was happening to pharma until Covid.
I don't want to talk about vaccines anymore. Whatever study people have to cherry pick or whatever beliefs you may hold, whatever your stance is, most people have made the decision on whether or not to be vaccinated. What I wish we focused on instead, is the medical system as a whole. We've been hearing stories everyday about how hospitals are on the brink of collapse. Why, in 2 years of this pandemic, have we not de…
I personally look at the raw data of death. I believe that most data you would get around COVID have bias, and only overall data speak the truth.
Look at what happened in Europe: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps (This does not include hospitalizations) First of, you realize that the pandemic is not at all what we have been told. We can observe an increase in death in the winters, but somewhere like peaks with 10% more deaths than the years beforehand.
You realize that for the 0-44 age group, there has been NO PANDEMIC. So from the beginning, we should just let this age group live normally. (no mask, no restrictions, no mandatory vaccine, no pass, no isolation)
Then comes the other age groups > 44, that did have excess death especially during winters. We should focus on the care to them and allow them to have a better access to their doctor, even when positive. Equip all of them with early treatment pack (antiviral and antibiotics for the first phase, anticoagulant and anti-inflammatory for the second). Provide them access to vaccines, only if they want to take them as it is an experimental treatment.
The main reason why the hospitals got over populated is because we told people to isolate and not see their doctors. They wait to be really sick and have no choice than going to the hospital.
Then come the health structure. We should just double the wages of all the nurses, auxiliary, GP, emergency doctors. Allow quick formations for unemployed and military to become auxiliary.
And if you think we cannot pay for that, think about the cost of a single day of nation wide lockdown.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've got your anecdotes, and I've got mine. My 3 young kids all caught omicron last week. Each were lethargic for a day, had a minor sore throat, and were back to normal in a day or two. The flu last month was way scarier with high fevers. There's a lot of reason to be optimistic about omicron.
Why would you think your three kids are somehow definitive or representative? These kinds of comments baffle me. It's almost as if people can't imagine that other people might have very different experiences, and that those experiences are equally valid. Pandemics are statistical events. Individual stories are irrelevant because the true picture is always a collective summary of cause and effect. No one can generalis…
Children are one group for whom this strategy may be problematic, and is a more significant issue in the UK than US right now given that only 12+ are eligible. This review discusses some of the arguments around this topic: https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2021/11/01/archdischild-20...
We also have CEV and elderly groups for whom the vaccine still leaves a reasonable degree of risk. Here's an opinion piece that cites research into CEV & vaccine protection: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/03/30/vaccinated-yet-still-cl...
In addition to the health risk/benefit to the individual, there is also the societal cost to lost productivity. This is where keeping low COVID prevalence may be worth pursuing on a solely economic basis through low-invasiveness NPIs.
Of course, there's also the risk of escape variants, and that's just simple maths. As vaccine-only strategies do not keep R(eff) In general, I think the UK is talking about living with COVID, but really means "ignoring COVID". There is room for making accommodations to our lives that keeps COVID incidence lower than present, and these are for the most part quite easy to do. Unfortunately, our vaccine-only policy & poor mask messaging has really damaged the public's appreciation for a multi-faceted public-health approach. The UK is currently enjoying far fewer restrictions than in the early waves, and life is for the most part "back to normal". However, high incidence rates after Christmas are leading to people adjusting behaviour despite few restrictions. Anecdotally, I would not visit the pubs that I went to in October/November because COVID incidence is ~7%.
It feels to me as though western countries have forgotten that the rest of the world is in the throes of the pandemic, and ignoring this fact isn't going to help us in the long run. Despite the fact that we're all tired of this pandemic, keeping on top of things doesn't have to be draconian, and will be in our best interests whilst the majority of the world are unvaccinated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll drive yourself crazy focusing on every minor risk for children. COVID risk for unvaxed kids is the same as fully vaxed 40 years and much lower than fully vaxed seniors. If you want to do some productive worrying, figure out how to reduce your child's risk of dying in a car crash. That's much more of a risk. >Moderna was supposed to close out a trial in late November but instead expanded it to hundreds of new p…
> figure out how to reduce your child's risk of dying in a car crash Most parents already do some form of this. Car seats, booster seats, researching crash test data....
I'm vaxxed. I'm boosted. I'd very much like to be done. But my children cannot be vaccinated. As a parent of a young kid it kind of feels like everyone has just moved on. I know folks in here will tell me that statistically speaking my children are unlikely to be hospitalized and so on, and I agree. But I know enough kids who got COVID and suffered the symptoms (e.g. a months-long scratchy cough) that I'm not going t…
Asking because kids 1-4 are being hospitalized for COVID at the rate of 1.6/100,000, deaths are at 2/1,000,000 and traffic accident mortality is 11/100,000.
https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/covid-risks-for-small-chil...
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...