The Vaccine

[scbruet]

I guess they were on to something with this study in 1977. They just didn't have social media to confirm it. Pretty safe to say it can be confirmed now.

Illusory truth effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure. (facebook posts from russian trolls that your uncle shares)

This pandemic would be over in the US right now if social media didn't exist. It is tough to forget you read something, especially when influences in your life also share that same false information. Whether they had malicious intent or not.

 

[2kwik4u]

I see this as no different than the current vaccine mandates we have been living with for a long time now.

I'm pro-mandate at any number of levels. The impact on public health is greater than that of seat belts, driving on the right side of the road, and smoking at this point. All of those are previous situations that required enacting laws/ordinances/mandates to curb public health problems. There is precedence for it, and in this case, I think it makes sense and is a worthwhile tradeoff. I would like to see the caveat that it's still a choice you can make, however your benefits from the health system are reduced. Much like helmet laws on motorcycles. Sure, you can choose to not wear a helmet, but you're limited on the liability you can impose on someone that hits you, even if it's their fault for hitting you. You chose to avoid a simple piece of safety equipment that could have drastically changed the outcome of the situation, you share the liability at that point regardless of how you ended up on the ground.

But to be really crystal clear here, using previous restriction of liberty or infraction is not a good reason to add a new one. While legal precedence works this way, in general the restriction or imposition of government onto personal liberties should be handled on a case by case, situational evaluation. Then decided as a collective group what we are willing to accept as compared to the risks of NOT accepting that imposition. There are far to many variables at play for any one situation to mirror another. We have to weigh the various aspects and create a good, logical, and sound decision.

Imagine if I told you that we would let inexperienced operators take a few hours of training, then use heavy machinery without supervision? Probably going to cite some safety risks, consider additional training, and perhaps oversight until acceptable usage habits are formed right? Drivers licenses are this way, used to be you could walk in at 16, get a piece of plastic and motor off at high speed in a 2-1/2ton machine with little issue. Now we have graduating licensing, required seat time, and training. Have we removed civil liberties or have we increased public safety and health? It's an interesting thought experiment to go through and really look around at what controls we're already comfortable, how we got there, and then application of that to current circumstances and events.

 

[swatski]

It is clear as day that natural immunity is being downplayed by the media and government.

here is an idea (no disrespect intended). How about you stop consuming mass media info and instead pick up an immunology textbook?

I would suggest "Janeway's Immunology" by Kenneth Murphy, for starters; that is just some basic, foundational knowledge of how the thing works, written with the scope adequate for medical students and first-year (foundation-level) immunology grad students. Ken did a very good job reinventing and completely rewriting what was already a classic "Immunology" by Charles Janeway.

It will feel a bit tedious, but I promise you it will be an eye opening experience. Follow this with a couple more years of serious reading and taking a couple of advanced topics courses and - if you work hard - in few short years you will begin to understand how someone like Fauci views this field, where does he come from with his comments on what's going on. No doubt, you will also begin to appreciate why most healthcare virologists and immunologists experience visceral reaction when people who have no background in those fields call someone like Fauci a liar.

Until then you appear to be, frankly, so out of your depth the information you post is no different than what you find in mass media that you, apparently, despise.

I will no longer respond to your queries as I believe you are actually smarter than the shit you post, which makes your contributions in this thread no different than common internet trolling.

--

 

[swatski]

Is the analogy below accurate?

Non exposure is equivalent to staring at a mountain you'll most likely have to climb at some point. You haven't done it yet, but you know it's coming, and your wondering how to prepare.

Exposure and natural immunity is equivalent to climbing it alone with an unknown path and basic equipment. Could be hard, could be easy depending on, essentially, luck. You might not make it over, you might not, but if you do you'll have the memory and know how to climb it next time.

Vaccination is equivalent to climbing the mountain in a Jeep with a well marked trail. You have better equipment, and a known good path. It'll still happen, you'll still climb the mountain, but it will be a far bit easier. You still have work ahead of you and it's not guaranteed to be perfectly easy, but you'll make it over faster, safer, and the chances of not making it are relatively low.

I've been making that analogy for awhile with the guys on the shop at work when naturally immunity comes up. Thoughts?

I'm not smart enough to give a brief answer. But a better analogy maybe to think of the immune system as an army that responds to specific threats.

The initial (inborn) immunity is crap, very generic, just a few simple tools for recognition (and destruction) of things that carry common pathogen-associated molecular patterns - that we evolved with.

But, as we develop, the "adaptive" part of the immune system matures along: as new foreign antigens are encountered (be it actual infectious agents or a mimic thereof - a vaccine) your immune system "learns" the enemy and, primarily through the process called "clonal expansion" (think of it as a robust new arms production line at time of war) proliferates the elements that can fight those foreign invaders.

Once cleared, the immune system preserves a "memory" of those past invasions; it retains some of the antigenic components (POWs and parts) - to continue re-stimulating (maintaining and re-training) its effector cells (soldiers), and it also puts some of those soldiers into a dormant, long-lived state for future use - these guys are ready to do the job upon re-exposure - if it happens they know the enemy and know exactly what to do to make quick work of it.

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[Julian]

This is a good article on immunity gained by exposure vs vaccine alone vs both:

Does SARS-CoV-2 natural infection immunity better protect against the Delta variant than vaccination?

A new study from Israel suggests immunity gained after recovering from a previous COVID-19 infection is more protective against the new Delta variant than vaccine-induced immunity. Natural immunity was estimated to be about 13 times stronger than having two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

www.news-medical.net

The key being:

"vaccines can add an extra boost to protection in people who recovered from COVID-19. Results showed that a single vaccine dose with natural immunity provided greater protection against reinfection than people with natural immunity alone."​

​

The above was from the study in Israel that looked at:

"three groups in the study: 673,676 individuals who were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and with no prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2; 62,883 unvaccinated individuals who recovered from COVID-19; and 42,099 individuals with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection and who had received a single vaccine dose."​

​

Our CMO (chief medical officer) uses an analogy for explaining this that I think people can understand well. It isn't his analogy, but plagiarism is the highest form of flattery. It is called the swiss cheese model. Think of taking random slices of swiss cheese and stacking them. When you do this, often, the holes in the cheese will line up. When they do, you have a gap in your protection. This works all the way through the stack of things we do to protect ourselves from a virus like this. So all of the following things help:

• Masks
• distancing
• One vaccine does
• Two vaccine doses
• A booster dose
• prior covid infection
• quarantine
• hand washing
• avoiding touch your face
• eye protection
• full PPE (personal protective gear)
• etc

So think of each of these as a slice of cheese. If you stack all of these slices, what is the chance you can drop a pea on top and have it pass to the very bottom? Obviously not very likely...but not impossible. But the more slices you employ, the better the chance is that you'll stop that pea from passing through. Then think about each of those slices - a vaccine slice has very few holes in it. A cheap mask has lots more holes, an N95 has far fewer etc etc. I think the analogy is one most people can wrap their heads around.

The last part of this model is....if you have limited cheese (the vaccine being the most solid peace of cheese you can deploy and you don't use it), the pea can get through. The chance of dying, getting hospitalized and suffering long term symptoms is 100,000 times higher than the chance of you winning the lottery if you played. So, do you add all the cheese you can to reduce the chance of dying, or deploy none? This is a lottery you DON'T want to win! Deploy all the cheese you can!! Especially since some are so simple to do!

In the same analogy.....the risks the vaccine poses to your health is like a full stack of 40 slices of cheese. Not impossible for an adverse reaction, but highly unlikely that pea gets through. So its safe to use that slice to protect yourself.

 

[mwalker4]

His is a good article on immunity gained by exposure vs vaccine alone vs both:

Does SARS-CoV-2 natural infection immunity better protect against the Delta variant than vaccination?

A new study from Israel suggests immunity gained after recovering from a previous COVID-19 infection is more protective against the new Delta variant than vaccine-induced immunity. Natural immunity was estimated to be about 13 times stronger than having two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

www.news-medical.net

The key being:

"vaccines can add an extra boost to protection in people who recovered from COVID-19. Results showed that a single vaccine dose with natural immunity provided greater protection against reinfection than people with natural immunity alone."​

​

The above was from the study in Israel that looked at:

"three groups in the study: 673,676 individuals who were fully vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and with no prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2; 62,883 unvaccinated individuals who recovered from COVID-19; and 42,099 individuals with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection and who had received a single vaccine dose."​

​

Our CMO (chief medical officer) uses an analogy for explaining this that I think people can understand well. It isn't his analogy, but plagiarism is the highest form of flattery. It is called the swiss cheese model. Think of taking random slices of swiss cheese and stacking them. When you do this, often, the holes in the cheese will line up. When they do, you have a gap in your protection. This works all the way through the stack of things we do to protect ourselves from a virus like this. So all of the following things help:

• Masks
• distancing
• One vaccine does
• Two vaccine doses
• A booster dose
• prior covid infection
• quarantine
• hand washing
• avoiding touch your face
• eye protection
• full PPE (personal protective gear)
• etc

So think of each of these as a slice of cheese. If you stack all of these slices, what is the chance you can drop a pea on top and have it pass to the very bottom? Obviously not very likely...but not impossible. But the more slices you employ, the better the chance is that you'll stop that pea from passing through. Then think about each of those slices - a vaccine slice has very few holes in it. A cheap mask has lots more holes, an N95 has far fewer etc etc. I think the analogy is one most people can wrap their heads around.

Seems like a good analogy, I would add that each of those slices have a benefit but also a cost. Also, the pea getting through has a cost. For the Covid pea, the cost getting through is higher than the flu but lower than Ebola. So the key public policy decision is how much cost should we spend on the cheese slices, which cheese slice provide the best return, to maximize your benefit compared to the cost. Much of the disagreement is around the societal cost of each of the slices and the amount of peas we are willing to risk letting through. While the CDC can answer much of the questions involved, it is up to public policy people to look at the big picture. Unfortunately, many people don't have a lot of trust in our public policy folks.

 

[Yambers]

Get vaccinated, or don't. The choice is yours and it varies on reasons why you would or would not, such as beliefs, health reasons, etc.. But true numbers don't lie. 98% of people in ICU's due to Covid are NOT vaccinated. Completely my opinion, but those are pretty good odds in my mind as to why to get vaccinated if you are physically able..

 

[Julian]

I was in the ER last night with my Dad. I wasn't allowed to stay with him - had to leave the building. Did have a chat with the triage nurse....they were nearly at capacity-primarily with non-vaccinated covid cases. I saw 4 people brought in while I was waiting to see the triage nurse....all struggling to breath and all looking in seriously bad shape.

@mwalker4 I agree - and it is important for different places to handle viruses with different public policy. Downtown NYC where many don't have cars and reply on public transport will need to do FAR MORE than rural Indiana where pop density is VERY low. That said, some of these mitigations are so simple, why any locale would ever dissuade people from using them is mind boggling (and unfortunately where politics and public health policy intersect in a terrible way).

 

[Bruce]

Well, my fully vaccinated wife has contracted C19, and I’m pretty sure my fully vaccinated self is coming down with it.

I am not a doctor, I analyze evidence as my day job.

Have you considered monoclonal antibodies? They are available, possibly free, and if taken early in the infection can significantly reduce severity.

Based on your Wife’s vaccination, symptoms and an assumption that she is not immunocompromised she likely received a large amount of virus at the time of contraction. When the infection begins with a large amount of virus the immune system is at a disadvantage. This likely indicates contraction when not masked or not adequately masked. Monoclonal antibodies would work in addition to the antibodies produced by her immune system giving her greater advantage over the virus.

You need to be careful as caring for your wife unmasked puts you at risk of infection with a large amount of virus. If you test positive then try to get monoclonal antibodies as quickly as possible. Caretakers often have more severe illness than the initial family infection.

My wife and kids are in classrooms, vaccinated with Pfizer and wearing KN95 masks. My wife chooses to wear a face shield as well. That is a dangerous place to be from a CoVID perspective. Last year educators at her school were more than three times more likely to test positive than the average person in the school district.

 

[Yambers]

I am not a doctor, I analyze evidence as my day job.

Have you considered monoclonal antibodies? They are available, possibly free, and if taken early in the infection can significantly reduce severity.

Based on your Wife’s vaccination, symptoms and an assumption that she is not immunocompromised she likely received a large amount of virus at the time of contraction. When the infection begins with a large amount of virus the immune system is at a disadvantage. This likely indicates contraction when not masked or not adequately masked. Monoclonal antibodies would work in addition to the antibodies produced by her immune system giving her greater advantage over the virus.

You need to be careful as caring for your wife unmasked puts you at risk of infection with a large amount of virus. If you test positive then try to get monoclonal antibodies as quickly as possible. Caretakers often have more severe illness than the initial family infection.

My wife and kids are in classrooms, vaccinated with Pfizer and wearing KN95 masks. My wife chooses to wear a face shield as well. That is a dangerous place to be from a CoVID perspective. Last year educators at her school were more than three times more likely to test positive than the average person in the school district.

I share your thoughts on this one. My wife is immune compromised (autoimmune disorder) and unable (at the moment) to get vaccinated due to low amounts of data as well as by direction of her PHP. She works in an elementary school. A school is definitely a scary place to be in a situation like hers. I worry every day, but I am more worried about what would happen if she did get vaccinated. Again, my stance is still that all who are physically able should get vaccinated. I am, she is not.

On a separate note, as far as getting the virus if you are vaccinated, at some point I believe we will most likely ALL get the virus, just like the flu or a cold. All should remember that it is a "vaccine shot", not an "immune shot". From what I have witnessed and the information I am shown in a healthcare setting is that only a small percentage of the vaccinated will end up in an ICU or with "serious" symptoms or complications.

I try hard to be respectful on this site, I try to stay pretty neutral, and everyone is entitled to their opinion and choices, but when I see 169 of 171 ICU patients in my facilities are unvaccinated, the solution seems clear. To me at least.

 

[Julian]

but when I see 169 of 171 ICU patients in my facilities are unvaccinated, the solution seems clear. To me at least.

Yup...the data couldn't be more compelling or easy to understand. The vaccines work really well, and are really safe.

 

[Yambers]

Thank you for the info. She tested Friday of last week after having a slight sore throat, and it was negative. Monday she lost her taste and smell and started running a fever, so she tested again, and received a positive result. She hasn’t had a fever at all today, and is acting more perky than the previous 3 days. I haven’t had any symptoms, other than tiredness, and a slight feeling that is sort of like a pollen allergy. Knowing that my wife has covid makes any slight abnormal feeling troublesome. I never get sick when she does, so I’m hoping that will continue.

Hopefully she makes a full recovery soon, and hopefully you don't get sick as well.. But we all know men are big babies when we get sick compared to women, so she needs to be healthy to care for you. lol

 

[tabbibus]

Thank you for the info. She tested Friday of last week after having a slight sore throat, and it was negative. Monday she lost her taste and smell and started running a fever, so she tested again, and received a positive result. She hasn’t had a fever at all today, and is acting more perky than the previous 3 days. I haven’t had any symptoms, other than tiredness, and a slight feeling that is sort of like a pollen allergy. Knowing that my wife has covid makes any slight abnormal feeling troublesome. I never get sick when she does, so I’m hoping that will continue.

Private message me if you want information on monoclonal antibodies.

 

[mwalker4]

Working hard to social distance today.

 

[Evil Sports]

I'm not running and hiding from this again. I had the virus in December and got the J&J last month. I'm going to live my life just like I did in 2020. This is not going away and the history of Coronavirus proves that. All the talk of deaths but still no correlation to why certain people have bad outcomes. No one in my house had a bad outcome, my experience was the worst with 9 days of 101.
Paralyzing this economy again and derailing education can not be an option this time. We are going to have to live with this until better than 80% of the population has acquired it in 1 form or another. So if vaxd people get it with minimal issues so be it. Those that chose not to vax will face the consequences of their decision or not.

 

[Johnboat]

Get vaccinated, or don't. The choice is yours and it varies on reasons why you would or would not, such as beliefs, health reasons, etc.. But true numbers don't lie. 98% of people in ICU's due to Covid are NOT vaccinated. Completely my opinion, but those are pretty good odds in my mind as to why to get vaccinated if you are physically able..

You are 100% correct sir. I do not trust the news. I get my info straight from the front lines. I have family and close friends who are both doctors and nurses. All of them say the same thing, 98% to as high as 100% of ICU covid patients are non vaccinated.

 

[Bruce]

Those that chose not to vax will face the consequences of their decision or not.

As are those who have a car accident, have a heart attack, need a knee or hip replacement or have any other medical need. Medical care is delayed if available to them at all.

Using my son as an example, several clinical studies for his life limiting disease are on hold due to this pandemic. I have watched him go from walking to a wheel chair at 11. Potential treatments for him and tens of thousands of other American children are pushed further and further into the future as Americans refuse to get vaccinated and or to bear the small inconvenience of wearing a mask.

 

[Julian]

Paralyzing this economy again and derailing education can not be an option this time.

Except that children under 12 don't have an available vaccine today. So what you are saying is those kids just have to wing it....some will die, most won't and tough shit for the ones that die? Or did I misunderstand you?

 

[Evil Sports]

Sorry but your not drawing me into some moral argument here. I said what I had to and thats that.

 

[2kwik4u]

Sorry but your not drawing me into some moral argument here. I said what I had to wanted to and thats that.

Fixed that for you.