The Vaccine

[msavold]

A couple more thoughts, as if I didn't ramble on enough before.

The first problem here is, IMO, the 'emergency' nature of all this. We're in effect seeing the wizard behind the curtain - something that has never happened before. Usually the good folks like @swatski have done their work long before we even hear of a treatment or vaccine but here we see in real time the stuff that has gone on for all vaccines, often WAY before we even hear of them. And unfortunately, the cross checks in place to make sure we're mostly safe are interpreted as 'failures', often by shrill voices seeking to make a platform for themselves on the interwebs!

And then there's the matter of people pulling up IMO absurd comparisons to historic events and past failures as justification for their distrust of the product of all this research, starting from the oft repeated inference that mRNA is a 'new' thing. Meh, relatively new, but that doesn't de facto make it a BAD thing! (See my previous post!)
What has gone into this vaccine is stunning. We are SO far from the days of "hey, let's see what this fuzz on this piece of bread will do when I inject it into something!". As an example, I was blown away when I first heard of the computing power that has been applied to figuring this out. (COVID-19 HPC Consortium Pours 437 Petaflops Of Compute Power Toward Virus Research | Awaken). Yeah, I had to look it up too - a petaflop is one thousand trillion operations per second, So we're talking 437x10^15, or 437 with 15 zeroes after it, calculations per second. A few things have changed in science in the past few decades. Um, the space program's calculations were done with slide rules! PLEASE stop pointing at stuff from the 50s or earlier (love that x-ray shoe sizer! Someone brought one into Pawn Stars a while back!) as proof that if we/they screwed up once before then THIS will certainly be a screw up too! We've become collectively smarter than that - or so I thought.

 

[seanmclean]

Where are you getting these effectiveness numbers? Keeping in mind that the effectiveness rate is compared to those taking a placebo on people who were never infected. Most medical sites are showing 90-95% effectiveness. You have a 99.4% chance of surviving covid without medical intervention. So why lower your chances by taking an untested drug that is already showing high levels of adverse side effects greater than any other treatments currently being administered for covid. 47% of doctors and nurses want nothing to do with the vaccine. When nearly half of the US healthcare providers say no, that has some weight behind it.

So, I mean this is the thing, and I sincerely mean this in the most non-offensive way possible: people like you lack the capacity to understand the 'research' you are doing. Period, full stop. If you think that the virus has a 99.4% survival rate (which is dubious but an entirely separate conversation), and compare that to the claimed 95% efficacy of a vaccine and think that you are somehow worse off with the vaccine? That it is lowering your chances? That's fucking bananas, and such a fundamental misunderstanding of the plain English text in front of your face.

The claimed 95% efficacy of the mRNA vaccines is of getting sick at all, not dying. What the vaccine does is make it so that you are 95% less likely to get it in the first place, and if you did manage to get it, would suffer a far less severe course of disease. So to keep the math simple, and we'll use your numbers: 100,000 people get exposed to covid in a manner that would ensure they get infected, and 100,000 fully vaccinated people get exposed to covid in the same manner. Of the unvaccinated group, 100,000 people get symptomatic disease and 600 of them die (99.4% survival, right?). Now let's look at the vaccinated group, 95% of them escape illness entirely, leaving 5,000 getting sick of which 30 die (ignoring the fact that if you do get sick, you don't get as sick).

Your chances aren't 'lowered'. If you didn't understand that very simple point, then you don't have the ability to read and interpret medical data. That's not an insult, it's just a fact. I don't know what you do for a living, but its clearly something different than I do. Given the fact that group of guys that post here can afford relatively expensive toys, I'll assume that you're pretty good at whatever it is that you do - so I wouldn't try to challenge the body of knowledge that you've built around your career, just like I wouldn't try to tell an astrophysicist something about their work just cause I found a video on Youtube that was filled with fancy sounding language that I can't understand.



People in general are terrible at knowing what they don't know. It takes a fair bit of self reflection to realize it, and to accept that you can't know everything about everything. I happen to know a lot about this, clinical development is my day job. I know a little bit about a lot of other stuff because I'm a curious person, but when I need information to make a serious decision, whether about my health, my home, etc - I get input from experts directly.

 

[Gunner]

So, I mean this is the thing, and I sincerely mean this in the most non-offensive way possible: people like you lack the capacity to understand the 'research' you are doing. Period, full stop. If you think that the virus has a 99.4% survival rate (which is dubious but an entirely separate conversation), and compare that to the claimed 95% efficacy of a vaccine and think that you are somehow worse off with the vaccine? That it is lowering your chances? That's fucking bananas, and such a fundamental misunderstanding of the plain English text in front of your face.

The claimed 95% efficacy of the mRNA vaccines is of getting sick at all, not dying. What the vaccine does is make it so that you are 95% less likely to get it in the first place, and if you did manage to get it, would suffer a far less severe course of disease. So to keep the math simple, and we'll use your numbers: 100,000 people get exposed to covid in a manner that would ensure they get infected, and 100,000 fully vaccinated people get exposed to covid in the same manner. Of the unvaccinated group, 100,000 people get symptomatic disease and 600 of them die (99.4% survival, right?). Now let's look at the vaccinated group, 95% of them escape illness entirely, leaving 5,000 getting sick of which 30 die (ignoring the fact that if you do get sick, you don't get as sick).

Your chances aren't 'lowered'. If you didn't understand that very simple point, then you don't have the ability to read and interpret medical data. That's not an insult, it's just a fact. I don't know what you do for a living, but its clearly something different than I do. Given the fact that group of guys that post here can afford relatively expensive toys, I'll assume that you're pretty good at whatever it is that you do - so I wouldn't try to challenge the body of knowledge that you've built around your career, just like I wouldn't try to tell an astrophysicist something about their work just cause I found a video on Youtube that was filled with fancy sounding language that I can't understand.



People in general are terrible at knowing what they don't know. It takes a fair bit of self reflection to realize it, and to accept that you can't know everything about everything. I happen to know a lot about this, clinical development is my day job. I know a little bit about a lot of other stuff because I'm a curious person, but when I need information to make a serious decision, whether about my health, my home, etc - I get input from experts directly.

Amen

 

[lokart]

So, I mean this is the thing, and I sincerely mean this in the most non-offensive way possible: people like you lack the capacity to understand the 'research' you are doing. Period, full stop. If you think that the virus has a 99.4% survival rate (which is dubious but an entirely separate conversation), and compare that to the claimed 95% efficacy of a vaccine and think that you are somehow worse off with the vaccine? That it is lowering your chances? That's fucking bananas, and such a fundamental misunderstanding of the plain English text in front of your face.

The claimed 95% efficacy of the mRNA vaccines is of getting sick at all, not dying. What the vaccine does is make it so that you are 95% less likely to get it in the first place, and if you did manage to get it, would suffer a far less severe course of disease. So to keep the math simple, and we'll use your numbers: 100,000 people get exposed to covid in a manner that would ensure they get infected, and 100,000 fully vaccinated people get exposed to covid in the same manner. Of the unvaccinated group, 100,000 people get symptomatic disease and 600 of them die (99.4% survival, right?). Now let's look at the vaccinated group, 95% of them escape illness entirely, leaving 5,000 getting sick of which 30 die (ignoring the fact that if you do get sick, you don't get as sick).

Your chances aren't 'lowered'. If you didn't understand that very simple point, then you don't have the ability to read and interpret medical data. That's not an insult, it's just a fact. I don't know what you do for a living, but its clearly something different than I do. Given the fact that group of guys that post here can afford relatively expensive toys, I'll assume that you're pretty good at whatever it is that you do - so I wouldn't try to challenge the body of knowledge that you've built around your career, just like I wouldn't try to tell an astrophysicist something about their work just cause I found a video on Youtube that was filled with fancy sounding language that I can't understand.



People in general are terrible at knowing what they don't know. It takes a fair bit of self reflection to realize it, and to accept that you can't know everything about everything. I happen to know a lot about this, clinical development is my day job. I know a little bit about a lot of other stuff because I'm a curious person, but when I need information to make a serious decision, whether about my health, my home, etc - I get input from experts directly.

Bottom line... there have been no clinical studies suporting anything you are preaching about. NONE!!! There has not been a trail whereby participants were subjected to the vaccine AND THEN weeks or months later subject to the covid virus. THIS is how normal clinical trails are conducted. The case you are trying to build is so very weak and the numbers your quoting sound like something you've picked up from watching to much CNN. Mark my words, this vaccine is going to backfire.

 

[Jerlane]

Bottom line... there have been no clinical studies suporting anything you are preaching about. NONE!!! There has not been a trail whereby participants were subjected to the vaccine AND THEN weeks or months later subject to the covid virus. THIS is how normal clinical trails are conducted. The case you are trying to build is so very weak and the numbers your quoting sound like something you've picked up from watching to much CNN. Mark my words, this vaccine is going to backfire.

Please tell us more about how clinical trials are supposed to work and how the DBPC trials that have already been done are flawed.

 

[tabbibus]

Fascinating the things people type with so much unfounded certainty. Wowza.

 

[seanmclean]

Bottom line... there have been no clinical studies suporting anything you are preaching about. NONE!!! There has not been a trail whereby participants were subjected to the vaccine AND THEN weeks or months later subject to the covid virus. THIS is how normal clinical trails are conducted. The case you are trying to build is so very weak and the numbers your quoting sound like something you've picked up from watching to much CNN. Mark my words, this vaccine is going to backfire.

1. Trials, not trails.
2. Modern vaccine trials are never designed such that they expose vaccinated trial participants to live virus to see if they get it. It's 2021, we can readily assess the immune response of a trial participant without intentionally exposing them to a potentially fatal virus. Real world surveillance of infection outside of a controlled environment is a better endpoint anyway as that's what people actually do - get vaccinated and then go about their daily lives. Do you think when they were developing the HPV vaccine, they took a bunch of adolescent girls and gave them HPV just to see if it took? There are ebola vaccine trials going on, do you think they puff a bunch of Ebola in their face to see if they die? Yet another ridiculous example of how little you understand what you're talking about.
   1. FWIW, we do actually do these types of trials in monkeys and other animal models. Guess what? It worked.
   2. Ethics is actually a pretty big thing in clinical research, if you want to do some light reading, go check out ICH: E6, The Declaration of Helsinki, and the Nuremberg Code. We don't put humans in harms way to develop vaccines. The safety margin is incredibly high. If you're really interested in vaccine trial design, which you aren't, here's a nice article.
3. The numbers I used (99.4% survival, 95% vaccine efficacy) were yours, on purpose - funny that when you hear them being used by someone you disagree with, they're suddenly derived from CNN.

 

[swatski]

Very informative website for sure. Thanks for providing that resource. I feel like if you want true covid relief, simply turn off the news! The fear mongering from the media is the true pandemic.

You do realize those "miracle" discoveries have been largely discredited by the medical community?

Peer review is slow and tough but works extremely well in science and medicine.

Controversy Flares Over Ivermectin for COVID-19

The NIH now says it can't recommend for or against the antiparasitic drug to treat COVID-19. Physicians and patients are left to weigh the evidence, with substantial debate.

www.medscape.com

 

[lokart]

You do realize those "miracle" discoveries have been largely discredited by the medical community?

Peer review is slow and tough but works extremely well in science and medicine.

Controversy Flares Over Ivermectin for COVID-19

The NIH now says it can't recommend for or against the antiparasitic drug to treat COVID-19. Physicians and patients are left to weigh the evidence, with substantial debate.

www.medscape.com

Yeah, I know there's a bunch of information supporting one treatment over another, as well as many protests against one treatment over another. Very difficult to weed through all the, what often times seems like misinformation. The choice really is up to each of us. I personally am more concerned about the vaccine than the virus. But that's just me. After all, the FDA and big pharma hasn't got the best track record and it's hard to trust agencies with padded pockets.

 

[lokart]

Fascinating the things people type with so much unfounded certainty. Wowza.

I know that may have been a plug at me, but I agree. Like the media and big pharma making numbers out of thin air. Read the following recommend books. Plandemic, Plague of Corruption, and the Truth About covid-19. There are many others, but you'll learn more truth in those resources than you will from the media or this forum.

 

[Chatt_Jetsetter]

So did the last few posts get deleted by author or removed by mods? I figured this one would have been locked by now

 

[Bruce]

@lokart, personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Your recent commentary appears to be heavily skewed toward viral debate. I would encourage you to focus on boating content.

 

[Bruce]

What does the FDA say about ivermectin being used as a preventitive and treatment for covid? They are neither for or against it.

You really should consider applying a little research to your misunderstandings.

Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19

Using the Drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19 can be dangerous and even lethal. The FDA has not approved the drug for that purpose.

www.fda.gov

 

[belmor]

I took both doses (Moderna) early in the year (I work in LE) primarily because work is sending me to a 400 hour school that costs in the range of $40,000 and I didn't want to screw it up by getting sick halfway thru. I am high risk due to asthma but I worked the entirety of 2020, had numerous contacts with known positive people and never had an issue.

I figured if anything adverse happened since I took it thru work it would be workman's comp anyway-fairly low risk IMO.

The first dose made my arm sore as all get out for a couple days. The second dose I was fine until about 12 hours after I took it then I was miserable for a day with chills, couldn't sleep, etc. No issues since.

Taking this should be a very personal, informed choice and I don't think there is a right or wrong answer-only what is good for you and your personal situation!

 

[crazy4life]

Maybe it is you that should do a little more research maybe you won’t misunderstand certain things versus other things. I have been taking ivermectin for seven months under the care of a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania which is in the top 10 hospitals in the country and he is also a full professor. I can find just as many articles on the Internet of the benefits of ivermectin that you can find on the potential danger and I stress potential danger again let me say it again slower for you the potential danger. The article you reference plainly states if you were taking ivermectin under the care of a doctor all well and good the problem is people are buying horse paste that contains 1.9% ivermectin because their doctors are just like you, to obtuse to do their own research. Ivermectin has been around for 40 years with a proven track record of safety.can you say that about your six month old vaccine believe me if you want to get a vaccine I don’t care I am not getting a vaccine I take ivermectin as a prophylaxis and all other vitamins and minerals. My brother-in-law who is a paramedic in the city of Philadelphia deals with hundreds of Covid patients a month has been taking ivermectin for a year and so have many of his fellow paramedics. As a matter of fact 60% of the Philadelphia paramedics who deal with Covid patients on a daily basis will not get the vaccine, are they right I don’t know are they wrong I don’t know but I don’t have the hubris to sit here and tell him that they were wrong or right unlike yourself. You want me to value your opinion as a jet boaters admiral over a doctor in one of the top 10 hospitals in the country. I could sit here and argue with you and the debate for hours but that’s not my thing I don’t come on the Internet chat rooms to call people stupid or misunderstood or miss informed or oh let me see can’t comprehend normal thinking that’s not my thing do your own research make your own decision. The right thing to do is come on here and post your reference on this chat room and not tell people they were misunderstood let them make their own decision because frankly I don’t give two shits what you think.

Also I see why you deleted certain posts that I think went overboad even though I agree with what he was saying. I notice that you left the post up that triggered our fellow member up on the board. He was called stupid, albeit in a much more polite way. So maybe you have a builtin bias in what you believe is fair. I myself would never call a member stupid or dumb or ignorant etc, etc, etc.

I would like to see information posted on this board that people can discuss with their healthcare provider and then make their own decisions. I realize that is extremely difficult for people who think they are a genius or just waiting for their Nobel Laurete trophy to come in the mail. I would never tell someone else that are (insert proper adjective here). One thing I learned decades ago was no matter how smart you think you are there is always someone a whole heck of a lot smarter.

How about if everyone post's relevant articles and research on this thread and leave the name calling and references to one's intelligence for another day. I would love to see that happen but certain peoples gigantic ego"s will not that happen. One could always hope.

Carry on.

 

[Bruce]

@crazy4life, you comments demonstrate a severe disconnection from reality.

Enjoy your cattle wormer.

 

[crazy4life]

@crazy4life, you comments demonstrate a severe disconnection from reality.

Enjoy your cattle wormer.

The only thing missing from your post was an na na nana. Back at you with your severe disconnected from reality and also enjoy your vaccine have a nice day

 

[Bruce]

Not yet where we need to be but much better than where were a year ago.

Personally I will be excited when vaccination is available to under 16s. Nothing could be more important than protecting our children.

Thanks to everyone that is doing their part for the benefit of all.

Half of US adults have received at least one COVID-19 shot

WASHINGTON (AP) — Half of all adults in the U.S. have received at least one COVID-19 shot, the government announced Sunday, marking another milestone in the nation’s largest-ever vaccination campaign but leaving more work to do to convince skeptical Americans to roll up their sleeves.

apnews.com

 

[seanmclean]

I feel like I must missed something entertaining

 

[tabbibus]

I feel like I must missed something entertaining

Right!?