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George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

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Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#121

Post by maxerickson »

ampgt wrote: post #12

How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body? For the record: I am vaccinated and I always encourage others to do so. But what is the difference between someone choosing to not vaccinate “because of their religion” and just choosing not to vaccinate? Why is one of those OK and the other isn’t?

They weren't forcing them to do anything with their body, they were imposing a some job conditions.

Imagine of they required the guy to wear clothes or something ridiculous like that.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#122

Post by dragonwriter »

ampgt wrote: post #12

How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body? For the record: I am vaccinated and I always encourage others to do so. But what is the difference between someone choosing to not vaccinate “because of their religion” and just choosing not to vaccinate? Why is one of those OK and the other isn’t?

> How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body?

What do you think employment, literally, is? A gives B money and direct’s what B does (of necessity, with B’s body), both positively and negatively, within some agreed (mixed between explicit agreement and implicit agreement via governing law) parameters.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#123

Post by inter_netuser »

cycomanic wrote: post #60
inter_netuser wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is some evidence that ivermectin has antiviral activity in-vitro, tested on primate cells. Many drugs have effects that are outside of on-label indications, as those are really just for marketing purposes. Physicians are absolutely free to prescribe things off-label, do so routinely, and in fact in many situations the majority of prescriptions happen to be off-label. The only concern here is 1) that concentrati…

But the argument was that "the vaccines are too unproven so we should not trust them" and the solution is to take a medication that has seen orders of magnitude less testing and is known to be toxic (there are reports of large increases to calls to poison control because of this)?!

Ivermectin has been on the market for decades, it's side effects are well understood. It's used all the time around the world.

Toxic controls was very unfortunate events of people consuming veterinarian formulations designed for animals that weigh 1000+ lbs and overdosing. That means only that there is enough desperate people, and very few physicians willing to supervise the treatment.

I would be far more concerned about it's efficacy and people getting treatment that they think will help, when in fact it does not.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#124

Post by [deleted] »

fatbird wrote: post #49
inter_netuser wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is some evidence that ivermectin has antiviral activity in-vitro, tested on primate cells. Many drugs have effects that are outside of on-label indications, as those are really just for marketing purposes. Physicians are absolutely free to prescribe things off-label, do so routinely, and in fact in many situations the majority of prescriptions happen to be off-label. The only concern here is 1) that concentrati…

Which is to say that the more immediate concern is that it has never been tested or approved for human consumption and there are no guidelines around dosage or expected efficacy and if you're taking it because you heard about it as you seem to have, you're wildly guessing about a treatment in preference to availing yourself of a proven treatment that's been administered almost a billion times in the last 18 months un…

[deleted]

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#125

Post by criticaltinker »

ScottBurson wrote: post #118
criticaltinker wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone gets vaccinated at the same time [...] region by region, so there are no populations which mix vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals This is logistically impossible and completely unrealistic. If you can find any literature or any experts suggesting that this is feasible, please share. > and the disease goes away Even if we did manage do achieve what you suggested, the current vaccines do not guarantee s…

As a recommendation to individuals, the suggestion to seek early treatment -- indeed, to apply certain treatments immediately to oneself -- is, I believe, sound, and I second it. But the situation as regards public health policy and messaging is more complicated. Denial is among the most human of emotional patterns; many people do not want to face the possibility that they've contracted a dread disease, and will proc…

Well put, and I agree that people have a tendency to procrastinate which can be detrimental to early treatment strategies.

> why has no other country done it?

Since early in the pandemic many front-line doctors have been successfully reducing hospitalization and death through early treatment with a multi-drug approach. Those are the doctors and researchers that authored the publications I cited in my previous comment, especially [1]. Those doctors had to treat patients early in the pandemic with a very little scientific literature and clinical trials to guide them, hence the world wide collaboration in putting together reasonable guidance based on existing medicine with established efficacy and safety profiles.

They continue to use these techniques - which are being further investigated for efficacy and safety in ongoing clinical trials - but with scarce media coverage compared to the vaccines.

So in many ways countries around the world have been doing it to some degree, but it hasn't been the primary strategy, as you point out. Why hasn't it been the primary strategy? Well that's a good question and tough to answer with any certainty. To speculate, I'd say that vaccines had a tremendous amount of funding and media attention poured into them, more so than any multi-drug therapy regime.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#126

Post by 8bitsrule »

marklubi wrote: post #51
jbluepolarbear wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did we get to the point where so many people would rather risk death and the death of many others than receive a free vaccine? They’re putting themself and all peoples that interact with them at serious risk.

How did we get to the point where so many people would rather risk unknown side effects of a free vaccine that hasn't been fully tested? They're putting themselves at unknown levels of risk. /s (sort of) I find the constant "It's science" and other platitudes to be completely off-putting and it stinks of consensus building. Further, the total shutdown of anyone that opposes the vaccinations raises so many red flags.…

Thanks for pointing out the Cutter Incident ... an example of how, at the start, some stumbles - including deaths - are inevitable. (Wyeth too had 'excess deaths'.)

'All five companies that produced the Salk vaccine in 1955—Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Wyeth, Pitman-Moore, and Cutter—had difficulty completely inactivating the polio virus."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories#Cutter_inc...] [https://archive.org/details/cutterincidentho00offi/page/100]

In the long run, the polio vaccines were unquestionably effective. In the US: 58,000 cases in 1952; 5600 cases in 1957. Salk led to Sabin - who did his trial tests in the USSR and Mexico (ethical?) - and by 1964 there were 124 US cases.

[http://www.eds-resources.com/poliotimeline.htm]

What stinks much more to me is consensus-building by people seeking a political advantage. The result has been many more deaths than 70 years ago.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#127

Post by s1artibartfast »

u801e wrote: post #100
s1artibartfast wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the parent article, the equivalent framing to add to the list is: I can't rely on my naturally acquired immunity with 80+> efficacy instead of a vaccine with 90% efficacy to go to work. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.

What study shows 80% or greater efficacy for primary immunity versus secondary immunity via vaccination? Do they go into detail regarding how long the immunity lasts, and whether it covers varients? Viruses that cause the flu or common cold change from season to season, so immunity (either primary or secondary) doesn't really protect against a subsequent varient.

>What study shows 80% or greater efficacy for primary immunity versus secondary immunity via vaccination

The CDC claims being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated. Most vaccines are 90+ effective. Say for example moderna is 95.3% effective, natural immunity would be 89% (100% - 4.7% x 2.34)

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm

>Do they go into detail regarding how long the immunity lasts, and whether it covers varients?

There is a lot of information missing on duration, but we know people who were infected with SARS-CoV-1 still have antibodies 20 years later. Natural infection triggers an immune response on many more parts of the virus than the vaccine, so protection against variants should also be good or better than the original vaccine, but not better than a booster vaccine tailored specifically to a given variant.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#128

Post by bradknowles »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #83
xondono wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this argument is that you can use it to also ban tobacco, and alcohol, and sugar, and red meat, and then you can move to things like sports, and start banning bungee jumping and rock climbing,… There’s no obvious way to draw a line, but you definitely need one.

> is that you can use it to also ban tobacco, and alcohol, and sugar, and red meat, and then you can move to things like sports To be honest, IMHO both smoking tobacco and sports that cause a lot of concussions (eg. Rugby, American Football) are not going to last in the long term, or become marginal not mainstream activities. This might involve legislative pressures on them, as well as a decline in social acceptance.…

If eating red meat was causing the ICUs to fill up, then I think the public health concerns should take precedence. And then we should be talking about a nationwide ban of the practice.

Likewise with smoking.

But neither of those activities has that level of impact on public health. So, the measures to be taken to curtail that kind of activity likewise should not be as strong.

But COVID is that bad. So, yes — vaccinations should be mandatory. Masking in public should be mandatory. At least, until the pandemic is over and we have sterilizing vaccines as well as medications that are proven to help cure the disease. And yes, this period could last years.

And if you don’t want to be vaccinated and you don’t want to wear a mask in public, then you don’t have to go out into public. You can stay home. And if you want to violate that rule too, then we should be able to lock you up in a COVID hotspot jail.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#129

Post by CryptoPunk »

junon wrote: post #54
CryptoPunk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But vaccinated people face almost no risk from covid, so it doesn't affect them if people choose to not get vaccinated. Moreover, the covid vaccines will not eliminate covid from the population, as the data from Iceland clearly shows: https://twitter.com/eliaseythorsson/status/14240115421950238... The virus will continue to circulate and impact every one regardless of what percentage of the population gets vaccinated…

Not true. People who are not vaccinated become opportunities for mutation, causing variants to emerge and spread, most of which are innocuous (this happens all the time) but some can still re-infect and do harm to vaccinated people.

But the virus spreads among the vaccinated any way.

Moreover, the global population of unvaccinated will not be meaningfully affected by any one country's decision to mandate vaccination. And the mutation rate is dependent on the size of the global population of virus carriers, not one country's.

So all-in-all, I see very weak justification for such a heavy handed mandate, no matter how useful I think vaccination is.

Re: George Mason professor wins Covid antibody lawsuit as vaccine exemption

#130

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

bradknowles wrote: post #128
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is that you can use it to also ban tobacco, and alcohol, and sugar, and red meat, and then you can move to things like sports To be honest, IMHO both smoking tobacco and sports that cause a lot of concussions (eg. Rugby, American Football) are not going to last in the long term, or become marginal not mainstream activities. This might involve legislative pressures on them, as well as a decline in social acceptance.…

If eating red meat was causing the ICUs to fill up, then I think the public health concerns should take precedence. And then we should be talking about a nationwide ban of the practice. Likewise with smoking. But neither of those activities has that level of impact on public health. So, the measures to be taken to curtail that kind of activity likewise should not be as strong. But COVID is that bad. So, yes — vaccina…

Smoking _does_ cause hospital wards to fill up. But it happens on average a few decades later. So, the measures taken to curtail it have also come in over decades. But in the end, they will be strong.

I'm in agreement with you on COVID and the necessary public health measures during an active pandemic.

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