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Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

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Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#811

Post by bonzini »

MatteoFrigo wrote: post #757
JPKab wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption that excess deaths can be attributed to any single cause is simply not based on data and/or science. What is the age breakdown of these excess deaths? If the distribution doesn't mirror the age distribution of known COVID deaths, that's an immediate indicator that it's factoring in multiple sources. Drug overdoses, attempted suicides and actual suicides are way up, for example. Drug abuse is way up. Ch…

In case you haven't seen it before, https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps has graphs of excess data for most of Europe (plus Israel) by age groups. I find it a great resource to cross-check the misinformation of the mainstream media. For example, I challenge anybody to look at the 0-14 and 14-44 graphs and tell me when covid actually occurred. Note that excess is not defined as a deviation from a typical year, but as a…

I am talking about the raw "deaths in 2020 - average deaths in 2015-2019" number. It is much higher than just the COVID deaths.

> Note that excess is not defined as a deviation from a typical year, but as a deviation from a typical year when no diseases are circulating.

Data is deseasonalized, which does not mean what you wrote.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#812

Post by PickledHotdog »

nostromo wrote: post #639
buryat wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

simple numbers show that unvaccinated get covid at higher rates and the number of hospitalizations is higher which puts strain on the hospitals. If something happens to me I dont want an unvaccinated taking a spot I need.

What about smokers? What about the obese? What about people who took risks and acquired HIV?

When obesity, HIV and smoking related illnesses are easily transmitted by breathing and (largely) easily avoided by getting vaccinated I'll have a problem with them too

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#813

Post by parkingrift »

mulletbum wrote: post #574
parkingrift wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Great! The problem is that vaccines don't protect society unless a critical-mass of people are vaccinated. They don't protect society at all. The herd immunity goal flew out the window with Delta and left the galaxy with Omicron. We will not ever eradicate Covid-19 with vaccination. >It ends when the the threat subsides. It should end right now, then. The threat has subsided. We have vaccines and other treatment pro…

"We will not ever eradicate Covid-19 with vaccination" is the most small minded statement possible to make. We have eradicated so many diseases with vaccination. I think what you mean to say is "We cannot eradicate COVID-19 with the current vaccines," but to swear off vaccines as if they can't do the work is frankly, dumb.

>but to swear off vaccines as if they can't do the work is frankly, dumb.

Come now. I said no such thing. This is straw man.

>"We will not ever eradicate Covid-19 with vaccination" is the most small minded statement possible to make. We have eradicated so many diseases with vaccination

I suppose with a long enough time horizon we may invent some vaccine to eradicate Covid-19, the common cold, and Influenza.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#814

Post by otterley »

notch656a wrote: post #412
e40 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do it all the time. You are mandated to get a license to drive a car so that you don't have a higher chance of killing people.

Not on private property you don't need a license. Similarly, a business on private property should be able to dictate a mask or vaccination isn't required. You shouldn't have a right to dictate what kind of consensual conduct happens on private property. In Texas, I can get hammered, drive a car drunk without a license behind a fence 10 feet next to the highway (property-side). And there's not a damn thing you can le…

There's often more than one statute that prohibits a certain proscribed activity. You might not be liable under the Texas Vehicle Code for DWI for drinking and driving on a non-public highway; but depending on the circumstances, you could be liable for under the Penal Code for reckless endangerment (section 22.05(a)).

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#815

Post by kmonad »

mikem170 wrote: post #600
kmonad wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the hospital capacity is a key argument indeed. But there is another aspect to consider. Each viral replication is a potential event where a new variant can arise, thus the fewer viral replications the better since each new variant has unknown risks. An unvaccinated person will on average be host to many more viral replications after exposure to the virus than a vaccinated person after exposure. Thus, if a la…

> Thus, if a large part of the population remains unvaccinated, the virus has more room room to evolve than necessary given we have easy access to effective and safe vaccines. Word was that Omicron diverged from an earlier version of covid in mice, over the course of about a year, then jumped into humans [0]. I think this detracts quite a bit from the point you were trying to make above, since we are not vaccinating…

Interesting. Indeed animal hosts could be problem. I would counter two points:

1) Assuming animals were a major source of variants, it quantitatively but not qualitatively changes the problem. Until we know the quantities, I do not see how you can assert relevance.

2) The references you provide say Omicron came most likely from a human with prolonged infection. The paper proposing a intermediate variant in mice is interesting, but considered unlikely (your reference: "Evolutionary biologist Mike Worobey, Ph.D., of the University of Arizona in Tucson, said the most plausible theory remained that Omicron evolved in an immune-compromised patient with a protracted [SARS-CoV-2] infection.")

Viral replications are the only scenario where variants can emerge naturally. Duration of disease and severity of disease are correlated with load and total viral replications. Vaccination reduces both at the population level. A vaccinated person therefore will on average be a less likely source of a variant. How much this weighs against other factors when deciding on policy is impossible for me say, but I would insist it is not irrelevant based upon current knowledge.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#816

Post by 7952 »

namdnay wrote: post #676
nu11ptr wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies in advance for getting on my soapbox, but this has been on my mind for a while. The way in which the media has gotten everyone to say "the unvaccinated" is a 'disease' against basic science (not even getting into the divisive nature of this). I would go as far as saying if you read any paper, study, or other that refers to the "unvaccinated" as a single cohort, you are reading vaccine propaganda, not scienc…

Isn’t it just simpler to vaccinate everyone and be done with it? Instead of tracking who already had an infection etc. Just like we do for all the other vaccines we get. I don’t understand why it’s so controversial. The upside is huge and there is literally no downside.

What we need are tests that indicate immunity levels and give a good predictor of risk.

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#817

Post by innocentoldguy »

tzs wrote: post #30

Something from the NYT mailing list yesterday: > The Covid vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If you’re vaccinated, your chances of getting severely sick are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ effectiveness and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that Covid now appears to present less danger than a normal flu. > For the unvaccinated,…

You're not going to get COVID antibodies via the vaccines. You would with other vaccines (e.g., polio, measles, etc.), where they inject the actual disease into your body in order to trigger your body's natural immune response, but the mRNA vaccines don't work that way. The only way to get COVID-19 antibodies currently is to get the disease.

I'm not vaccinated and it is by choice because I've already had COVID. Getting a vaccine for a disease you've already had is like wearing two pairs of pants. Sure, you can do it, but why?

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#818

Post by ffwd »

If everyone is unmasked and the Omicron variant seems to burn through the vaccines in terms of infection but not serious illness, does that mean that it can lead to more mutations and more _bad_ mutations if so many people get it? What's the "mutation rate" in a person who has mild or no symptoms and how infectious are they?

It just seems if one sick person creates a bad variant that is more infectious or even more deadly (and burn through the vaccines like Omicron) and everyone is unmasked/etc at the same time then such a variant could spread wide without immediate detection. I have no idea if any of this is true so take it with a grain of salt...

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#819

Post by thebigspacefuck »

walterbell wrote: post #38

The media's binary separation of populations into vax and unvax is a false dichotomy. More causal factors would be represented by: 1. Covid-recovered 2. Vaccinated 3. Partly-vaccinated ( CDC reporting bundles #3 and #4. UK reports all 4 categories separately. #1 was already a high percentage in 2021 and is now higher due to Omicron. Edit: CDC estimated pre-Omicron #1 as 146 million people (as of Oct 2021), https://ww…

“In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions.”

- Edward Bernays, “Propaganda”

Re: Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates

#820

Post by MatteoFrigo »

henrikschroder wrote: post #802
nu11ptr wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies in advance for getting on my soapbox, but this has been on my mind for a while. The way in which the media has gotten everyone to say "the unvaccinated" is a 'disease' against basic science (not even getting into the divisive nature of this). I would go as far as saying if you read any paper, study, or other that refers to the "unvaccinated" as a single cohort, you are reading vaccine propaganda, not scienc…

Yes, this is a prime example of bad data being worse than no data. In the UK, for months now, the rate of infection has been higher among the vaccinated cohort than among the unvaccinated cohort, for most age groups. [1] The antivaxxers are of course pointing to this data and claiming it's evidence that the vaccines make you more likely to get infected, and therefore the tinfoil hats were right all along. But what's…

Either way, there is no point in vaccinating the unvaccinated cohort that you mentioned.

If you are right, most of them have natural immunity and the data proves that this is already better than the vaccine, so what's the point? They are already doing ok, and vaccination would then move them to the vaccinated column and count their immunity as a success for the vaccine, which is unscientific and dishonest.

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