COVID-19 Research, Drug trials and Pathophysiology

The study dismisses this idea about the unvaccinated claims from the media and verifies that the unvaccinated who already had Covid have better protections than the vaccinated which would conclude what we are supposed to be working towards. Herd immunity. Not idiotic mask mandates. And their is NOTHING in that report that recommends you take the vaccine if you already had Covid.

 

I agree. But now this government wants to mandate mask and vaccination passports as they claim only the vaccinated are somehow worthy of such protections.

 

Since the survival rate of Covid is 99.8%, I don't think you have much to worry about.

 

To achieve herd immunity would mean that many many people would need to be infected and a number would die or need hospitalisation or have long Covid. This number would be significantly reduced if those people that were infected had been vaccinated - currently 95% reduction though that figure has been dropping after month 6 of vaccine intake. Also herd immunity from natural infection for Covid will never be achieved and will mirror immunity from two doses of the vaccine

As a caveat I have always said that there was no guarantee that long term immunity would result from the vaccine and was attacked for that

There is in the actual study. They still recommend that even if you were previously infected take one vaccine dose

 

Rather depends on your age.
Is that 99.8% of those who had it?

 

Yes it is. Amazing isn't it? How we crippled an entire economy, forced people into poverty, for a virus that has about the same fatality rate as the flu.
Not to mention, there is NOTHING you can do to kill it. (Just like the flu)
We will see it forever (Just like the flu)
Thats why herd immunity was so important.

 

That's a little unjust. Part of the reason the death rate is so low is that we prevented its spread by "crippling the entire economy". We prevented those most at risk from coming into contact with the virus, had we not the numbers might well have been worse.
Its unfair to gain the results of efforts and then use the figures they produce to claim they were unnecessary.

 

Don't get me wrong, precautions are great and should be adhered too. Especially for those with compromised immune systems. What I am saying is it is my strong belief we are being lied too about the amount of deaths in the US. And it is my strong belief our reported numbers compared to the rest of the globe are purposely inaccurate. Viruses don't have infections rates and death rates hundreds of times higher on one continent vs another. They will vary depending on climates but I don't believe the 4% of the worlds population (The US) has 23% of all global deaths. The numbers don't add up.

 

Yes I get your point. In the UK we count anyone who died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid as a Covid death.
A ridiculous assumption that would be laughed out of any board meeting in business.
Against that you have countries like Brazil where the numbers are clearly being suppressed.

That said the early refusal by Trump to recognise the virus or its severity left us bystanders in the UK gobsmacked. So I do think your numbers were higher than they should have been.

 

Then how to you explain 2200 deaths per million in New York, then only 450 per million in Florida which has the highest retirement population of the US? Some states are 150 per million. Yet states that had millions protesting every day in the streets shoulder to shoulder for 8 months somehow have lower infection rates?

In this country the government put a bounty on a virus. First time in history. Medicare pays around 16K for every patient a hospital labels Covid and 3 times that much for any patient who is on a ventilator labeled as Covid.

Hell, I don't even blame the hospitals since all of their elective surgeries have been shut down which is a huge portion of their profit centers. They tag bodies with previous infections that died on natural causes as Covid related.

My Mom passed away in April due to surgery complications for a blood clot but because she had antibodies in her system for a previous infection, she is labeled as Covid related death. And that was done the same day she died without an autopsy. I'm still fighting with them over this.

I know what they are doing here because I witnessed it first hand. Seems like Trump also cured the flu in the US since we have moved from 10s of thousands of flu deaths each year for the last 20 years to only 700 last year. Magical.

I honestly doubt the reported numbers of Covid deaths are half what they are claiming over here. Not joking.

 

Well I would explain it by population density, but it could be that older Floridians self isolated through fear. Cherry picking stats that support your view is unsafe. As for protesters, while the crowds look huge on TV in reality as a percentage of the population they are tiny.

Yes that would twist the numbers.

Yep, same here.

Again same here. In the UK, you are not allowed to die of old age so anyone in their last weeks of life whose immune system starts to fail and gets a chest infection and be listed as dying of pneumonia.

 

@Condor060 and @Tigger2, I’m enjoying your discussion but wanted to point out the deaths per million data is not current.

New York—2813/million
Florida—2048/million

Source Worldometer

Florida still has a lot of “catching up” to do.

 

Not to mention with the highest retired population which is the highest percentage of Covid fatalities.

 

Yes the over 85 demographic in FL is almost double that of CA.

 

True but Florida is catching up, and wasn't it said lately that DeSantis changed the way they are counting deaths and is now underestimating them 5-fold? I read somewhere, didn't retain the link, that the official count of 50 should have been 250. Sorry for the hearsay.

 

@557 I found the link, so no longer hearsay:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/change-covid-death-count-makes-131607375.html

Another report here:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/statistical-sleight-hand-florida-changed-064558031.html

It doesn't surprise me. DeSantis is trying to out-Trump Trump.

 

Interesting. Not a new trick but a dirty one if not telegraphed in advance.

DeSantis seems to be taking cues from Trump and Cuomo. Not smart. Does anyone remember if Cuomo’s polling numbers suffered when he got caught moving figures of care home deaths around? If DeSantis loses support over this at least it shows Floridians care about getting real data. That’s a good sign no matter what party the Governor belongs to.

 

Have any of you heard of Ivermectin?
What are the side effects of ivermectin?
The Food and Drug Administration warned that ivermectin in large doses can cause side effects including “skin rash, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, facial or limb swelling, neurologic adverse events, sudden drop in blood pressure, severe skin rash potentially requiring hospitalization and liver injury.
I would not recommend it.

 

Documents brought into public view via FOIA.
Details Emerge About Covid Research at Chinese Lab

Lerner & Hvistendahl, Intercept

 

A large study about masks and Covid-19.
https://www.mdedge.com/infectiousdi...ge_eNL_090721_F&ecd=wnl_evn_210907_mdedge_8pm
340,000 people in real life, that's really large, the country is Bangladesh. Very poor country with very uneducated population.

Compared cloth masks to surgical masks to no masks.
Found that cloth masks decreased transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 by 5% in communities where the masks were distributed, and surgical masks by 11%. They talk about why they believe this is underestimated and could be better than that, but oh well, that's what they found. The older the subjects, though, the better effect. 50-60, 23%, and over 60, 35% which is not bad.

In any case, no data for N95 masks instead of merely surgical masks. Almost certainly these would have had a bigger impact.

On one hand, it's disappointing. The average decrease in transmission was 9%, hardly a solution for this pandemic.
On the other hand, every bit counts. It confirms what we see elsewhere, that cloth masks are low in efficacy (although this study used pretty sturdy ones with three layers).
Pity that they didn't include an arm of the study with N95 masks.

Not peer reviewed.

The obvious flaw of this study is that only the group that was given masks, benefited from education and explanations that included videos with politicians and celebrities. Conceivably this campaign could have made this group more conscious of Covid-19 and more prone to adopting other epidemiological controls such as social distancing rather than just masking up.

Also, while the measures they took with this study increased communal mask use, masks were only used by 42% of the population in the studied communities, so, this in itself does indeed suggest that 100% of use would have achieved a much higher efficacy number.

 

Are the walls closing in on the Chinese?
Proof of Lab Leak Lies? How Top Scientists Manipulated Truth

Ian Birrell, UnHerd

There are many things we still do not know about the origins of this pandemic — including the central issue of whether it began with natural spillover from animals or some kind of laboratory incident. But we do know one thing now beyond debate: speculative “gain-of-function” experiments on mutant bat viruses were taking place in Wuhan laboratories.

This research, carried out in labs that did not have maximum level of biosafety, was increasing the infectivity of laboratory-created diseases by constructing chimeric coronaviruses — despite strong denial of such practices by the key Chinese scientists. And the bio-engineering was being funded by United States taxpayers — channelled through a charity run by a British scientist — despite similar denials from America’s most senior public health officials that they supported such science fiction activities in Chinese labs.

The details have been confirmed by the latest batch of documents emerging under US freedom of information rules — which unlike in Britain, actually assist attempts to break through walls of official obfuscation. The Intercept obtained 900 pages of documents detailing two research grants in 2014 and 2019 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to EcoHealth Alliance. This is the charity headed by Peter Daszak, the controversial Briton who led efforts to squash “conspiracy theories” about a possible lab incident after spending years hunting viruses with Shi Zhengli, the now-famous “Batwoman” expert at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). . . .

 

It certainly isn't impossible for those in China to take actions that Americas and/or Brits didn't know about.

I don't see a way forward that prevents that happening at Wuhan until scientists from other countries including our own are there in Wuhan, working with them on shared objectives.

btw: One can not "squash" a conspiracy theory. One would have to try to "quash" it. I don't know who Birrell is, but I wonder if he isn't more versed in the popular press than in obtaining information from reluctant governments.

 

This youtube video is about a year old but it might be of some interest to people posting on this thread. It is something to which I've been donating computer time to several years. Small effort, I know, but I can contribute in this limited way and I think distributed computing research really does help.

 

Ian Birrell:
Ian Birrell - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Ian_Birrell

Ian Birrell is a British journalist and former speechwriter to Prime Minister David Cameron. ... He has been a columnist at several newspapers including the i and ...
‎Journalism · ‎Awards

 

I liked this.