> "The intranasal dose of TriSb92 that should be administered to susceptible persons prior to events involving a risk for SARS-CoV-2 exposure remains to be established but is likely to be substantially lower than extrapolation of our current data on mice that were challenged by inoculation of the rather massive amount of 2x105 PFU of SARS-CoV-2 into their respiratory tract."
Side effects might be an issue but that should show up in well-designed clinical trials. It sounds like something that people working in infectious clinical settings might want to use, maybe immunocompromised people who have to go out in public, but otherwise, for general use seems iffy in terms of efficacy.
The list of "things the FDA once recommended but retracted" is many orders of magnitude shorter than the list of "things someone on the internet shilled that turned out to be incredibly toxic and probably not beneficial at all"
I mean, that's a useless number unless I know the list of things that the FDA once approved and then did not turn out to be detrimental to patient's health.
I'd be more surprised if it didn't happen more than once in 117 years.
The former is a measure of how effective something is, in absolute terms.
OP might mean that because the protection isn't complete or permanent, it might not make sense for an otherwise healthy person to use it unless they expect to be in close quarters with a lot of possibly-sick people. Too early to say, ofc.
Same reason as any other medicine: because it's effective enough to be worth the costs.
Almost nothing is 100% reliable or effective in biological systems. In this case, the initial promising results are from a small study in mice (check out OP's source). Anything could happen in the clinical trials.
There's already some nasal sprays around that supposedly protect against Covid-19 in a similar way. However many places online just echo the copy from the manufacturers about the efficiency. Has anyone tried those sprays and can share their experience?
I use an iota-carrageenan nasal spray that has clinical evidence showing it's effective at reducing the duration of common cold, as well as some protection from COVID. Obviously, the COVID research is a bit flimsier. It's also cheap, and carrageenan is pretty inert. I use it any time I'm around big groups of people for more than a few minutes.
If you're talking about the nitric oxide spray, my friend used it at a conference and got COVID anyway, so where n=1, it didn't work. But then again, almost all of us got COVID. I was masked the whole time, he used the spray, others took no preventative measures, and it didn't seem to matter much.
I don't think we need to resort to anecdotes to conclude this. I think it was some time during the first wave that scientists began to communicate that indoor and enclosed spaces were far more risky than outdoor and well ventilated places.
You misspelled "superfluous groups of people in enclosed spaces", which is why we had a pandemic in the first place. Some folks just can't be satisfied with a warning and have to stick the fork in the outlet for themselves.
> As far as I know nobody (other than bs "news" outlets) ever claimed covid-19 vaccinations would diminish the risk of getting covid-19.
> Nor vaccine manufacturers, nor virologists, nor doctors.
I... what?? The CDC literally still says this. (And they are correct to say it!)
The week of Feb 12, 2023, the incidence of COVID in the unvaccinated population was 137.32 per 100,000. The incidence of COVID in the vaccinated population without the updated booster shot was only 52.61 per 100,000. (With the booster, only 39.95 per 100,000.)
In other words, being vaccinated continues to massively diminish the risk of catching COVID. And vaccination was, of course, much more effective in the early days before the spread of vaccine resistant variants.
Yes, I agree, but my point was that this partially sterilizing immunity was a "bonus" of a vaccine designed to mainly prevent hospitalization and death.
The main goal of vaccine manufacturers was never to make a vaccine that would stop the spread. And certainly not to stop the spread entirely, as in: if you're vaccinated there's 0 chance that you'll get the virus or spread it (this is simply not the case, despite what you quote).
As it turns out it DOES prevent spread, but it was never the main goal.
> being vaccinated continues to massively diminish the risk of catching COVID
All these numbers are completely riddled with various kinds of biases and confounders, not the least of which is that someone who gets an mRNA shot is much more likely to socially isolate themselves in an effort to avoid infection.
70% of the population in the US have had two or more shots at this point. IDK if you've been outside recently but I'm pretty sure vaccinated people aren't hiding away in numbers that would cause anything even close to the massive discrepancies in hospitalization and death between vaxxed and unvaxxed.
is the data probably confounded to some degree? sure. Is it overwhelming despite that? yes.
In case you care to look at smaller amounts of data that won't have as many confounding variables, you could check out any of the many studies evaluating vaccine effectiveness among healthcare workers who would all have regular exposure to the virus.
Forgive me if I'm not up-to-date on all the, uhh, stinky cheese, do they address the fact that we saw very similar effectiveness numbers in real-world tests after the roll out of the vaccine? e.g. 91%, 94%, 95.3% in these three studies?
Even if that figure is correct, that statement was unequivocally and demonstrably false. We really should not be making excuses for politicians lying to the public; it is never acceptable, and we have every right to demand better.
Turn it around. The antivaxxer types can now claim, correctly even, that officials lied multiple times about the efficacy of the countermeasures. That is not the kind of ammunition you want to be giving out during the next public health crisis.
No, even by the time of Delta it was clear the efficacy against infection was marginal at best. The CDC acknowledged this in its Provincetown study in late July 2021 and recommended the reimposition of mask mandates as a result.
The Provincetown study does not say that, it says that people who do get infected likely carry a similar viral load regardless of vaccination status, which was a reversal from what was seen in the initial strain. This represented an increased risk of transmission on its own that they felt warranted an increase in precaution.
> data from this report are insufficient to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, including the Delta variant, during this outbreak.
If there was any substance whatsoever to these sorts of numbers then highly vaxxed jurisdictions would show significantly better case rates, and they absolutely do not.
Depends how you define "getting COVID". To the general population, on a practical level getting COVID = getting sick themselves. You get invaded by gastroenteritis bugs on a daily basis, but you only practically "get" gastroenteritis when it leads to diarrhea.
If you don't get covid you don't spread it. We never got enough people with the vaccine to stop the spread, and we as we learn more about how long the vaccine lasts it seems unlikely we will, but it does reduce the spread.
Reduce does not mean stop though, most people want a black or white stop or do nothing, while the truth is grey
Trump tried to make fun of the pandemic as a "Democratic Hoax" remember, but even he took the vaccine himself. But then his followers booed when he mentioned it. But he was rational, he tried to keep as many as possible of his voters alive at least till the next election.
Trump did many different, sometimes contradictory things. The Democrats made it a point to oppose him. It was a big mess. Eventually things settled down as we figure out how the virus really worked, but most people just cared to see their bias wit no concern to the truth.
Trump made fun of the pandemic, didn't take it seriously, didn't care to warn people about it. Instead he called it a "Democratic Hoax". He said “This is their new hoax”, see below. Let us never forget that.
As a result > 1 million people died of Covid in US. A big mess indeed. > 1 million. Could have been a lot less. Trump was in charge.
> As far as I know nobody (other than bs "news" outlets) ever claimed covid-19 vaccinations would diminish the risk of getting covid-19.
Gaslighting at it's finest. Here is the Director of the CDC Rochelle Walensky in her own words:
"Our data from the CDC today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick. And that it's not just in the clinical trials, but it's also in real-world data."
President Biden then echoed the same thing.
So you have the head of the CDC and the President of the US saying the same lie, which then trickled down to essentially every health professional, media outlet etc. until everybody understood this nonsense to be "the truth". Except, it was always a lie.
No. The data never showed at any time that vaccines prevented infection or transmission. That was never a thing, we were told it was a thing, but no data sets ever showed that to be true. And making it worse, when this was pointed out at the time people were banned form social platforms and called conspiracy theorists just for saying what was always true.
And it's especially ironic that your link only contains more outright falsehoods such as these gems:
> “What we know is the vaccines are very substantially effective against infection"
and..
> “It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get COVID-19"
These are still false, because most people who were vaccinated still got Covid which is the opposite of "effective". That's why the argument switched to "well you should still get it because you won't get quite as sick".
No, in an evolving situation you don't lie, you say "we don't know", or "we are hoping this will help".
When you say "vaccinated people don't carry the virus" and you are the head of the CDC or the President or countless other idiots who repeated the same thing, then you are in fact lying because that statement was never true. It's not that it was true, and then things changed. It was never true and they knew it wasn't true. And the lie was weaponized against anybody who questioned it.
They lied to the public, and there will be no historical revisionism on this.
>No, in an evolving situation you don't lie, you say "we don't know", or "we are hoping this will help".
No, in an evolving situation you explain the facts as you currently know them. Why else would they have walked it back days later if it was a lie? You don't make any sense.
>It was never true and they knew it wasn't true.
Ah, I see you're quite happy to make stuff up in the absense of actual facts. You have nothing to demonstrate it as a lie, you easily make that leap because it suits your narrative. So again, you don't understand what a lie is.
> No, in an evolving situation you explain the facts as you currently know them.
I'm not sure if you're intentionally missing the point here, so I'll restate the obvious:
There was never a data set that ever indicated at any time that vaccinated people couldn't get or spread the virus. Therefore, stating that vaccinated people didn't carry the virus was a lie.
For it not to have been a lie, they would have had to base the idea that vaccinated people don't carry the virus on some sort of data that indicated that. Except, there has never been data to suggest vaccinated people don't carry virus. Since no data ever indicated that vaccinated people couldn't carry the virus, stating that as a fact was a lie.
Individual experiences volunteered online are a very low value signal when assessing the efficacy of a medicine. This is why homeopathy exists.
I'm not blindly trusting of corporations, but the manufacturer's claims are likely to be a better guide than anecdotes, at least in a country with reasonable regulation of medicines and medical claims.
(Independent clinical trials are much better--the ones that the manufacturer uses to get approval often have undisclosed biases and the drug or whatever is often found to subsequently not be quite the wonder drug the first trials suggest)
Since the initial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 I have kept bottles of Betadine nasal spray around. They say "clinically proven to reduce cold symptoms on the packaging," always seemed reasonable to think it might work as well against this coronavirus as all the others.
Povidone-iodine (taken nasally or as a gargle) kills viruses and bacteria. All types, including Covid, with 99.9% effectiveness according to numerous studies.
Has worked this way (and safely) since the 1950's.
Given that it's effective, and cheap to produce it's no wonder big pharma lobbied so hard for their own expensive partial treatments.
Yep did the gargle as well both times I had COVID. Tried nasal irrigation with the diluted form but it was just too much to handle so I used NeilMed instead. n=1 caveats, but both cases (the first one Delta) were mild.
Betadine gargle is 1% povidone-iodine. As a nasal spray dilute by 50% with water. Active protection for 3-4 hours minimum (again according to numerous studies)
University of Western Australia Study finds nasal spray could aid battle against COVID
Nasodine Nasal Spray is based on povidone-iodine, the same active ingredient found in Betadine throat gargle, and has been in development for almost a decade as a treatment for the common cold. Laboratory experiments showed a 15-second exposure to the nasal spray reduced infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 by 99.97 per cent, while a 60-second exposure completely eliminated viral infectivity.
A subsequent pilot study of six COVID-19 patients, who were shedding the virus from the nose, looked at whether the laboratory results translated to people.
The trial showed that a single Nasodine dose (four sprays per nostril) reduced viral shedding in five of the six subjects (83 per cent) at five minutes after the dose, with an overall 79 per cent reduction in viral shedding at one hour after the dose.
It sounds like the nasal spray has a molecular structure based on the shape of a key molecule unique to Covid. Is it possible that your housemate thought they were experiencing regular hayfever but actually it was hayfever + fighting off a mild Covid infection at the same time? That's the only way I can imagine to explain what you described.
It could be that any nasal spray would have had that affect, even just a weak water only one. Considering that nasal irrigation is a treatment for hay fever, I can see it having some effect even if the medicine part isn’t applicable.
Intranasal administration of just 5 or 50 micrograms of TriSb92 as early as 8 h before but also 4 h after SARS-CoV-2 challenge can protect from infection.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37290-6
How does this work? It sounds like its not a vaccine (your immune system is not invoked) but something that attaches to the spike protein and inhibits it from entering cells. But how could a nasal spray last a long time? Is this something that needs to be used continuously?
It just reduces the amount of virus which can reproduce in your nasal cavities, giving your innate immune response a better chance at fighting it off before it gains a foothold. I've mostly seen it recommended as something to do after significant exposure events like being among large crowds indoors.
Since absolutely nowhere forced vaccination, and the restrictions related to vax status have been gone for quite a while now, it really seems like you’re shadowboxing enemies that don’t exist
I wonder if a nasal spray (or a tablet) is enough to make vaccine deniers change their minds. Sometimes you wonder, is all the ridiculousness of their protest because they're just afraid of needles and injections?
Government lost the trust of an entire generation of people by trying to force them to do something against their will. What is best for the individual you is not often what is general greater good. It would be for the greater good if you went out and shared a bedroom with the next homeless person you see. It would probably be a terrible decision for you as the risk/reward ratio is probably pretty terrible.
Part of what makes the US great, is the fundamental principal that people are given the freedom to act in their own best interest, and that, on balance will produce the greater good for society as a whole.
Did people miscalculate the risk/reward by not taking the vaccine? For anyone under 40 the benefits are statistically insignificant for anyone without serious health problems to begin with. And this is why most people stopped at two shots, with time the obvious became apparent to even the ones that were scared and guilted into taking it.
> Government lost the trust of an entire generation of people by trying to force them to do something against their will.
81% of the US has had at least one dose of a covid vaccine. Governments lost (but probably never had) the trust of about 1/5 of americans, 1/10 of canadians, etc.
I have no regrets for taking the vaccine. The reduced risk of infecting the people around me (especially loved ones) who are at-risk was worth a sore arm for a half a day. I’m acting in the best interests of not just myself but the people i love and my community in general. You’re deeply over-stating how widespread the sentiment you describe is.
Did the vaccine stop the transmission, when almost everyone contracted covid
anyway at this point. There's plenty of evidence that natural immunity is the superior immunity. Which would mean that the vaccinated were more likely to contract COVID multiple times, and thus more likely to spread over the last two years.
“Natural” immunity would have to be much much better than vaccine immunity to outweigh all the first cases prevented by the vaccine in terms of total amount of virus shed into the world. When studies find a difference between”natural” and vaccine immunity (if they find a difference) it’s very small - so i don’t think this idea holds up.
This isn't a vaccine, but there are nasal vaccines in clinical trial (I think you can already them in India). I suspect that most anivaxxers wouldn't have a problem with this nasal spray because it isn't a vaccine... but I also suspect that most of them will have objections to nasal vaccines because... they're vaccines.
While it's been officially launched, hospitals simply aren't procuring them because there is approximately zero demand. As a result, you can't actually get them.
Natural immunity has been shown to be at least as good if not superior to the vaccine, as shown in peer-reviewed research published in the Lancet. So following science is malicious and selfish?
Likewise, "CDC study finds about 78% of people hospitalized for Covid were overweight or obese" (source: NBC). So 78% of the people who are overwhelming our healthcare system are people who eat too much. Will you call them malicious and selfish as well? Eating less has 0 side effects and is actually beneficial for others as well, as BMI is correlated with COVID transmission (from a study published in Nature).
Now who has the media criticized over the past 2 years? The young healthy athlete who is most at risk for myocarditis after vaccination, or the obese person who is responsible for increased transmission and overwhelming the healthcare system?
Without any hesitation at all, yes. That is how medical science works. That is why we have the scientific method and testing procedures.
Covid was an obese disease. That was hidden from you to such a point you are willing to inject the entire population with unknown and untested substances.
This comment isn’t even for you, but others that aren’t so deep in it. This is how effective the media was on them, crazy huh?
"Safe and effective" is an ambiguous term that omits the risk-benefit ratio for each individual. It also does not discuss the risk-benefit ratio given the variant. Indeed, the obese, those over 50, and those with prior health conditions were at highest risk. But what about the young healthy athlete with no existing medical conditions? And what use is vaccination when one already has natural immunity, which is at least as good, if not superior, to protection from vaccination (from a peer-reviewed publication in the Lancet)?
Funny enough when I discussed antivaxxer and brought up polio, no one ever corrected me and said thant they are not against vaccines but only against 'untestes'/COVID ones.
The covid jab is not the only "vaccine" that exists. This is why that term is misleading. It lumps people skeptical about one vaccine into the same category as those who are against all vaccines (which is an absurd position)
I don't know many people who are "against" the COVID vaccine. Most I have spoken with agree that those who are at most risk from the disease should take it. They are not concerned with the decisions others make and have never called for the vaccine to be "banned". However, they have declined it for themselves. Hence I would say "Covid-vaxx-decliner" is a more accurate term.
Also, would you say that religions that prohibit a certain meat (e.g. pork for Muslims) are "anti-meat"? If I don't like tuna but like haddock, am I anti-fish?
Seems you are fully prepared to fight that specific strawman.
I had the vaccine but certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for being hesitant to take a new style of delivery and action (mRNA) that until Covid never once made it past phase three trials. But hey, yea, if we boil it down to “dummies afraid of needles” then we’re all set!
Rather than depositing bits of viral material directly, the mRNA vaccines instruct your own cells to manufacture a viral antigen (the spike protein), one which is now well understood by itself to play a key role in COVID pathology, despite all the initial insistence that it was harmless. This is absolutely a novel style of delivery. Even Dr. Paul Offit, who sat on the committees which voted to give the mRNA shots their emergency use authorizations, has acknowledged that they may in some cases be stimulating an immune response against the body's own healthy cells and tissues.
hundreds of millions of people vaccinated, an unknowable but definitely large number of lives saved - millions of long covid cases prevented - a handful of people with ongoing health problems from the vaccine. Yup, that tradeoff was worth it and yup i would still describe the mrna vaccine as “harmless”.
You might want to listen to what they say instead of listening to what media says about them. Perhaps you have one in your family.
Anyway, so no I don’t care about injections, I care that the same people who obviously lied to us 6 times, are the people who tell us “This time, we’re right, we know what we’re doing.”
The show Chernobyl is excellent in demonstrating how each type of personality deals with news in a regime where everything is false, some of them not even having recognized that the communist regime’s output were systematic lies.
So what happened to Facebook censoring doctors because they said the virus would behave in waves, and at that time, the theory of waves was a conspiracy, so we shouldn’t have known about it?
No meaningful signature check was ever allowed to be done in the disputed states by any judge.
So why should the other side trust the results. Let's put it this way, when a real person had to show up and vote in person, the Biden lead completely disappears.
That is also one county out of many disputed. Show me stats for Wayne/Detroit for example, where apparently more black people voted for Biden than Obama.
Also their audit stats are laughably high. 99.99% you couldn't get that ratio with 110+ IQ students signing their final exam that their life depends on. That's one bad or missing signature per 10,000 students. No way elderly can sign with this accuracy rate. I don't think they could tie their shoes anywhere near this accuracy rate.
For obvious reasons, legitimate forensic audits are not done by the same people that did the original count.
> Also their audit stats are laughably high. 99.99% you couldn't get that ratio with 110+ IQ students signing their final exam that their life depends on
You're confused. It's not that there was a 99.99% accuracy rating in signing. It's that there was a "a 99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification procedures." - which means something very different from what you're saying. That is: signatures that should have been thrown out were thrown out, and signatures that were kept were good.
The fact that you misunderstood this says to me that either means you arguing in bad faith, or you're not actually able to step back from your beliefs and evaluate the facts with any kind of impartiality.
> For obvious reasons, legitimate forensic audits are not done by the same people that did the original count.
Right yes, that makes sense to me as well:
> Raffensperger’s office teamed up with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to conduct the audit.
Unless I'm much mistaken, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Republican secretary of state aren't usually the ones counting the ballots on election night.
You can move the goalpost to counties that haven't conducted audits like this all you want, but the point is how were the supposed fraudsters to know which counties were going to be key to the election AND not get audited, in order to get away with stealing an election? If every place you look you find no evidence, you can always keep saying let's look just one more place because THAT's where the fraud is! Each time you look is not just "no fraud found here" it's also "and the fraudsters knew not to do fraud here because they knew we'd look here". But I guess you can get around this by just saying that the audits were bad, and we need to conduct more audits that will somehow be good this time?
The worst part of all this is that the false claims of fraud are being used to purge voter rolls, and pass more voter id laws that make it harder for people to vote - because the people who are making these claims know that the harder it is to vote the better chance they have of winning. If that's not rigging an election, idk what is.
Ah I understand the problem, nuance is difficult in public.
Most of these weren't unanimous arguments by doctors. Masks for example: it's true they are ineffective at preventing most things, you can't put on a mask and be free of disease from others, it's mostly to spread it from you. At the same time, some masks are more effective than others, when most people were buying up cloth masks they didn't want to discourage this by redirecting to more effective masks especially at a time where hospitals were struggling to get those needs met and they were at much higher risk.
So you see how something like that, when edited through soundbites and malicious actors, suddenly becomes "they lied about masks"? Now reevaluate the rest of your beliefs about how they "lied" during that time.
It is, however, a lie when you demonize and censor those who did so much as mildly disagree about any of it. "You are wrong according to what we know now" can be factual. "You are wrong and deserve to be silenced" is a damnable lie.
Exactly. They censored a Stanford doctor on Twitter just because he had a different opinion, which is incredibly concerning. It's no longer (and never was, in my opinion) about filtering misinformation - it's about controlling the narrative.
You have a strange definition of censorship — excluding somebody from the trending list. You are also speculating about the reason why. He made factually incorrect statements about the vaccine, in addition to stating his poorly reasoned opinions. https://mobile.twitter.com/19joho/status/1463540124407451659
Despite your perceived censorship, we all know the Christian fundamentalist Indian-American you're talking about.
Shadowbanning is a type of censorship. Who defines what is factually incorrect? The lab leak theory was considered "debunked" until recently. Who has the monopoly over what is considered fact and what is considered fiction? I would rather have a platform where people can be wrong rather than one in which a select group of individuals decide what is "true" and what is "false".
Likewise, I'm not sure why the ethnicity of the filtered person matters to you?
His followers still saw his tweets. This wasn't shadow banning.
> Who defines what is factually incorrect?
I posted an example. Are you going to argue that it is factually correct? If you're going to change the subject to the lab leak, you better post an example of somebody who Twitter "censored" for it.
> I would rather have a platform where people can be wrong rather than one in which a select group of individuals decide what is "true" and what is "false".
And I would rather have a platform that doesn't increase deaths by amplifying known misinformation, which is something that can easily be gamed by your enemies. This is different from people being wrong about the earth being flat or being wrong about evolution by natural selection, which your hero could post wrongly about and still get promoted. Your reductionist idea of "freedom" causes you to make ridiculous policy choices. It's like somebody saying, "I would rather allow people to buy and sell whatever they want to whomever they want instead of having a select group decide what I can and can't buy and sell in what quantities to what people (including fertilizer and oxycodone)." There is a wide chasm between the extremes you're thinking about where reasonable people discuss actually workable policies.
> Likewise, I'm not sure why the ethnicity of the filtered person matters to you?
I gave it to identify him. The fact that he is Indian-American makes his Christian fundamentalism a larger criticism of his intelligence. He wasn't born into those beliefs. He arrived at those beliefs by way of poor reasoning.
Claiming that public health officials said there is no link to myocarditis is the lie. You've been duped. Try reading reputable news sources instead of conspiracy theory blogs.
NEW YORK, April 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not found a link between heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccines, the agency’s Director Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday.
"We have not seen a signal and we've actually looked intentionally for the signal in the over 200 million doses we've given," Walensky said in a press briefing.
That same article says they were still investigating it, so anybody who isn't a conspiracy theorist trying to rewrite history would read that as "not seen a signal [yet]."
> "It is a different demographic than we normally see and we will be working with DOD to understand what is happening in those 14 cases," Walensky said.
So they didn't know that it caused myocarditis or not - but they deemed it safe for rollout. Shouldn't this have been caught beforehand? How is it ethical to mandate a product whose risks are not even fully known yet?
The big issue during the pandemic is that "no evidence that" was treated as "does not exist", especially by social media moderators. So I do agree with your point that the CDC did not explicitly state that such a link does not exist (thank you for pointing that out to me). However, there are times that the CDC was flat out wrong, such as when Walensky initially said that vaccinated individuals cannot spread COVID to others.
One day they say the science is settled. The next day they say that science changes according to new data. If that's the case, then I would rather sit back and wait until the science gets settled.
I will do my best and follow all recommended guidelines to keep others and myself healthy. However, I will not undergo an irreversible treatment without understanding the risks and accepting them by my free will (not coercion).
> So they didn't know that it caused myocarditis or not - but they deemed it safe for rollout
They knew it was far less likely than complications from COVID. That's how drug approval has worked from the beginning of time, but the conspiracy theory blogs you read won't tell you that.
> I will not undergo an irreversible treatment without understanding the risks and accepting them by my free will (not coercion).
SARS-CoV-2 doesn't give you a choice about whether you get treated with the virus. You could weigh the risks vs. benefits of being infected with or without the vaccine, but instead, you chose to believe conspiracy theories because of your reductionist idea of freedom.
> "They knew it was far less likely than complications from COVID"
COVID has numerous variants. Which variant are you discussing? Indeed, the first variant was serious. But what of the later variants like Omicron? Virtually all research I have read about vaccination risk includes cases from 2020 in their assessment, as opposed to separately comparing vaccination risk to each variant.
> "SARS-CoV-2 doesn't give you a choice about whether you get treated with the virus. You could weigh the risks vs. benefits of being infected with or without the vaccine"
I'm not sure what you mean here, for I already got COVID and it was extremely mild given that I am young and healthy. The risk-benefit ratio varies for each individual, and note that it also depends on the Covid variant. Why should I get vaccinated when I already have natural immunity, which is at least as good, if not superior, to protection from vaccination (from a peer-reviewed publication in the Lancet)?
I'd say the responsible thing to do is verify if the risk-benefit ratio actually warranted mandates or not for each new variant that became dominant. By the time Omicron became the dominant variant, I could not see any strong reason why mandates were still in place.
> I said you made a bad decision by getting infected prior to vaccination.
Do you know when I decided to leave lockdown? Do you know which variant I first became infected with? Indeed, I would say the people who left their homes for non-essential reasons during the first variants did not make a wise decision. However, given that Omicron is considered to be much milder than the first variants, and also since I have no prior health conditions and am young and very fit, I would say that I made a sound decision not to receive a product whose side effects are the worst for my demographic.
The whole push behind the vaccinations is not that it prevents you from getting COVID - it's that it lowers your risk of hospitalization (although this is not how it was advertised initially). Given that my risk of hospitalization is virtually nil without vaccination, then I see no reason to get vaccinated.
> I'd say the responsible thing to do is verify if the risk-benefit ratio actually warranted mandates or not for each new variant that became dominant. By the time Omicron became the dominant variant, I could not see any strong reason why mandates were still in place.
How is that any different from what happened? When Omicron's severity was understood, vaccines mandates went away.
> Do you know when I decided to leave lockdown?
Why don't you tell me? I was able to leave by summer 2021 because I wasn't swayed by conspiracy theory blogs.
14? I do recall seeing numbers around 1 per 3000-6000 from several studies (I recall one was from Israel, see: "Israel reports link between rare cases of heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccination in young men"). This means that for young men, it is around 166-333 per million.
Although anecdotal, I personally know of someone who developed a serious heart condition after vaccination, and their issue was not linked to vaccination by their doctor as they claimed that it just a "coincidence". Not sure how severe symptoms within 24 hours are a coincidence...
Regardless, you have the freedom to assess the risk-benefit ratio and make the decision that you deem best for your health. I respect that. However, coercing others to accept the risks or lose their job - that I find highly unethical.
> However, coercing others to accept the risks or lose their job - that I find highly unethical.
Your employer isn't obligated to pay your higher healthcare costs because you were duped by antivax conspiracy theorists. In fact, your employer can use the fact that you were swayed by those blogs as a signal that your decision-making ability is poor.
The whole "there is no evidence, therefore the link doesn't exist" thing is an obvious grift. Simply never look for side effects (and attribute them to hysteria or anything else besides the shots when they do arise), and it's as though they never existed.
Is that what happened ? According to whatever it says there's only been about 1000 cases and most recover. You remind me of current conspiracy theorists who now attribute any death via a health condition to the vaccine. Show me evidence they ignored reasonable warnings or didn't move fast enough?
If you're comfortable with that, that is fine, I respect everyone's decisions for their own health. But what about those who do not recover? No one has the right to coerce another person to receive an irreversible medical treatment. Masks can be taken off - nothing against them personally. But can one "un"-vaccinate themselves? And why are people forced to vaccinate when natural immunity has been proven to be at least, if not more effective, than vaccination (from a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet)?
The argument is not whether the vaccine is good or bad. It's about respecting people's right to a choice. Japan did not mandate the COVID vaccine and actively discouraged such an approach. Would you claim they are anti-science?
It's also important to consider what the former President of Australia's Medical Association has stated regarding the COVID jab: "the true rate of adverse events is far higher than acknowledged due to underreporting and “threats” from medical regulators"
I don't respect people's decisions if it may affect others. The countless money spent caring for people with Covid who might have required less care if they were vaccinated is one. Health care costs are amortized over the population through insurance
> The countless money spent caring for people with Covid who might have required less care if they were vaccinated is one. Health care costs are amortized over the population through insurance
This is a recipe for the worst, most intrusive kind of tyranny in the name of "biosecurity," but that's probably a feature and not a bug to the sort of person who is still advocating for COVID vaccine mandates at this late date.
There are vast demographics of healthy young people at infinitesimal risk from COVID and much higher risk from the shots, for whom taking them actually raised their risk of being hospitalized. But the difference between you and me is, if I found out people required more medical care because of their unwise and ill-considered health choices, the last thing on earth that would occur to me would be to punish them with job losses, higher insurance premiums, and the like.
78% of individuals hospitalized for COVID were obese/overweight. In other words, people who eat too much were primarily responsible for overwhelming our health care system.
- Gaining weight takes time and is the result of a continuous large number of bad decisions over a long period of time. Not getting vaccinated is a single decision
- Losing weight requires a great deal of effort over a long period of time. Getting vaccinated is quick and easy
- Weight gain can have factors that are difficult to control like mental illness, self control issues, and other things related to your emotions. I'm sure you'll agree that the vast majority of people who are overweight don't want to be overweight. Those who didn't get vaccinated wanted to not be vaccinated
While you can argue anyone can lose weight, which I would agree with you, the amount of effort is extreme, otherwise I'm sure no one would be overweight. Therefore a person who is overweight has a heart attack deserves sympathy whereas a person who didn't get vaccinated* but ends up in the hospital because of Covid doesn't.
* Assuming they could have gotten vaccinated, meaning no health issues or real risks
> Therefore a person who is overweight has a heart attack deserves sympathy whereas a person who didn't get vaccinated* but ends up in the hospital because of Covid doesn't.
A person who is obese willingly chose to gorge on lots of food. (Of course, there are a minority of individuals who have conditions like thyroid issues). A person who declined vaccination was most likely afraid of the side effects, which are rare but possible.
> Weight gain can have factors that are difficult to control like mental illness, self control issues
Mental illness? So a schizophrenic person magically gets obese? Self-control issues? People who can't put the cookie down? And a young athlete has to undergo a procedure with risk because the obese person can't say no to Taco Bell? These people were responsible for 78% of hospitalizations. Yet the media had basically no campaign to encourage them to lose weight. Note that they have had a significant impact on our health care system before COVID even began.
By your logic:
"I can't stop overeating" => "It's not your fault"
"I'm concerned about myocarditis" => "You're selfish!"
Even though I find their decision to be extremely selfish, I still hold sympathy for them. Only a sadist would find joy in seeing others suffer. Imagine if doctors laughed at their patients for having a preventable illness.
Likewise, I know there are people who refused to get vaccination for poor reasons - reasons that appear to be due to mental illness (e.g. schizophrenics who actually believe there are microchips in the vaccines).
> the amount of effort is extreme
And the amount of effort to become obese is extreme. No one becomes obese after one cookie.
> Those who didn't get vaccinated wanted to not be vaccinated
Did the obese make the responsible decision (to lose weight) to stop overwhelming our healthcare system?
(Quick edit: when I say "I find their decision to be extremely selfish", I'm referring to the obese)
Also, I wanted to thank you for engaging with me in this discussion. While we have different opinions, I enjoy learning about other viewpoints and becoming more informed about them :)
"I can't stop overeating" => "It's not your fault"
"I'm concerned about myocarditis" => "You're selfish"
I didn't say this and you ignored my entire premise about the difficulty of the situation. Both an obsese person and a unvaccinated person are to blame(unless we want to talk about misinformation). The difference is the mitigating factors .
Getting vaccinated is easy but so is gaining weight. Losing weight is hard.
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"Yet the media had basically no campaign to encourage them to lose weight. "
There are massive campaigns by the government encouraging people to become more fit. Remember the presidents physical fitness challange? ( I'm assuming you are US).
Encouraging a health lifestyle through physical activity happens all the time. Also the obesity issue in America is reported on all the time.
Also the "media" isn't an organization it reports the news and they reported that government official wanted people to get vaccinated. I don't understand how you look at them, like some sort of government.
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- fear about side effects
The vast majority of experts said it's safe and the chances of side effects are extremely low. Lower than the probability of getting covid. It doesn't make sense to be afraid of side effects but not the disease.
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"Mental illness? So a schizophrenic person magically gets obese? Self-control issues? People who can't put the cookie down? "
I saw your comment about how you are happy about this engagement which makes me think you are a reasonable person however the comment above is the opposite of that. The mental illnesses I'm thinking of is depression and anxiety disorders. People don't magically become obsese, as you said, and if it was as easy as "put the cookie down" almost no one would be fat. There's also been studies showing that sugar is similar to an addictive substance.
Finally have some empathy for people in a difficult situation that has a difficult solution. Getting vaccinated is easy that is unless you don't want to look stupid after you took a absolute stance.
My original comment was about the cost of all these people going threw the medicial system. I take it your arguement and annoyance with this is that I'm selective right? Something like "what if someone is skiing and breaks a leg. That was an optional activity so shouldn't I be angry?"
Not to argue with myself but skiing is entertainment which has value, people don't intend to break a leg, and i hope often take precautions. If there was a situation that a person put themselves in intentionally increasing the risk of an event that then requires huge amount of medical care I would say the same thing.
> "Getting vaccinated is easy but so is gaining weight. Losing weight is hard."
And accepting the risk of severe heart problems is harder for many people. Especially young athletic individuals who have no prior medical conditions. Similarly, gaining weight also takes substantial time. No one wakes up obese after one fast food meal.
>"There are massive campaigns by the government encouraging people to become more fit."
My point is in regards to media campaigns during COVID for people to become fit. COVID and vaccination have been constantly been reported for the past couple of years. Unvaccinated people have been ridiculed by the media. If they put the same level of pressure on the obese during this pandemic, then perhaps they may have been more incentivized to lose weight.
> "The vast majority of experts said it's safe and the chances of side effects are extremely low."
The majority of experts said AstraZeneca was perfectly fine... until its authorization for young people got revoked in several nations. J&J was considered to be safe by experts... until millions of doses were tossed out after it was discovered that the manufacturing facility was contaminated. Then it was revoked for young people, since:
"In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended prioritizing the Moderna and Pfizer shots over J&J’s because of its safety issues. Previously U.S. officials had treated all three vaccines similarly because they’d each been shown to offer strong protection.
But follow-up studies have consistently shown lower effectiveness for J&J’s vaccine. And while the blood clots seen with J&J’s shot are rare, officials say they’re still occurring."
And this is the issue. The "experts" did not catch this before - The follow-up studies did. Also note that there has been substantial pressure on doctors during the pandemic (several told me that their license could potentially be revoked if they say anything that contradicts the medical board). Check out what Dr. Kerryn Phelps (former Australian Medical Association president) said.
> "if it was as easy as "put the cookie down" almost no one would be fat"
But it is as easy as that. All it takes is a few seconds of mental reasoning - is obesity worth the sugar rush? If the media reported on obesity in the same light as it covered COVID, then perhaps people would take it more seriously. (Are there campaigns for obesity? Sure. But none are as serious and "spooky" as those they did to make people scared of COVID and encourage them to get vaccinated)
> "Finally have some empathy for people in a difficult situation that has a difficult solution."
If not overeating is considered "difficult", then I'm not surprised why this nation is failing.
> 'Something like "what if someone is skiing and breaks a leg. That was an optional activity so shouldn't I be angry?" Not to argue with myself but skiing is entertainment which has value'
And many young, fit individuals declined the COVID vaccine because of the value this refusal has - no side effects from the vaccine. You may argue that COVID has more serious side effects. However, the first variants were not as transmissive as Omicron, and provided that you took social distancing + masking (with a respirator) very seriously, then your chances of getting it would be much less. In other words, the cons of vaccination must also be compared with the probability of actually getting COVID (based on the variant) in addition to the probability of a serious side effect occurring.
Again, the risk varies for everybody. If an over 50 year old obese person with prior medical conditions denied the vaccine, then you could definitely argue that their decision may not be the best. But for young healthy adults?
I strongly believe that everyone should do whatever they can to keep themselves and others safe. However, when it gets to accepting a rare but serious risk, that is where individuals must have a choice. I don't find anything wrong with restricting public venues to the vaccinated only (watching football is not a fundamental human right). But mandating it for employees and disallowing testing? That is concerning.
There are lots of nasal sprays that may potentially be protective against covid, e.g. Betadine Cold Defence, but almost all of them are banned for sale in the US. But you can buy pure saline nasal spray for a couple dollars at Target, which itself is likely protective.
Dr. McCullough has been recommending people use diluted povodone iodide solution for a couple years already. I've done this anytime I felt cold symptoms coming on and they usually disappear within a few hours.
It's pretty much common sense, most bacteria and viruses for respiratory infections live in the upper respiratory tract and multiply there. Kill them at the source and your infection tends to resolve much faster...
You can try vouching it by clicking on its timestamp and then "vouch". Both mods and the community have the power to flag comments; mod decisions can't be overridden, but community decisions can. The fact that it's [flagged][dead] instead of [flagged] implies that the community flagged it, though it being collapsed seems like a new change that might indicate moderator intervention.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.28.474326v1....
> "The intranasal dose of TriSb92 that should be administered to susceptible persons prior to events involving a risk for SARS-CoV-2 exposure remains to be established but is likely to be substantially lower than extrapolation of our current data on mice that were challenged by inoculation of the rather massive amount of 2x105 PFU of SARS-CoV-2 into their respiratory tract."
Side effects might be an issue but that should show up in well-designed clinical trials. It sounds like something that people working in infectious clinical settings might want to use, maybe immunocompromised people who have to go out in public, but otherwise, for general use seems iffy in terms of efficacy.