D&D Coronavirus thread

I want my 2 minutes and 15 seconds back.

 

Your point is? Did you actually watch the video clip?

 

So basically it seems like the responsible folks that got the vaccine are now being brought down and burdoned because some folks aren't getting the vaccines. Yet almost all the progress in regards to reopening progress comes from the vaccinations.

 

Australia is fighting cap the recent community outbreak of the virus, their population has virtually zero immunity, only 15% are fully vaccinated

The whole country of 25 mill people has less than 1k recorded deaths from Covid, to give an idea of what a tremendous job they have done for their people

These lockdowns are harsh... but they are temporary, and once community transmission is curbed, they unlike the rest of the western world, get to go back to living pre-pandemic lives with no risks from covid.

 

I don't have an opinion on this, just passing it along as a public service for folks who don't subscribe to the WSJ


https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-co...side-effects-hospitalization-kids-11626706868

The Flimsy Evidence Behind the CDC’s Push to Vaccinate Children
The agency overcounts Covid hospitalizations and deaths and won’t consider if one shot is sufficient.

By Marty Makary
July 19, 2021 1:52 pm ET

A tremendous number of government and private policies affecting kids are based on one number: 335. That is how many children under 18 have died with a Covid diagnosis code in their record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn’t researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition.

Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15. I’ve written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal, and without an analysis of relevant risk factors such as obesity.

My research team at Johns Hopkins worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020. Our report found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia. If that trend holds, it has significant implications for healthy kids and whether they need two vaccine doses. The National Education Association has been debating whether to urge schools to require vaccination before returning to school in person. How can they or anyone debate the issue without the right data?

Meanwhile, we’ve already seen inflated Covid death numbers in the U.S. revised downward. Last month Alameda County, Calif., reduced its Covid death toll by 25% after state public-health officials insisted that deaths be attributed to Covid only if the virus was a direct or contributing factor.

Organizations and politicians who are eager to get every living American vaccinated are following the CDC without understanding the limitations of the methodology. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky claimed that vaccinating a million adolescent kids would prevent 200 hospitalizations and one death over four months. But the agency’s Covid adolescent hospitalization report, like its death count, doesn’t distinguish on the website whether a child is hospitalized for Covid or with Covid. The subsequent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of that analysis revealed that 45.7% “were hospitalized for reasons that might not have been primarily related” to Covid-19.

Hospitals routinely test patients being admitted for other complaints even if there’s no reason to suspect they have Covid. An asymptomatic child who tests positive after being injured in a bicycle accident would be counted as a “Covid hospitalization.”

The CDC may also be undercapturing data on vaccine complications. The CDC’s risk-benefit analysis for vaccinating all children used rates of complications extrapolated from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database, known as Vaers, which contains raw, self-reported data that is unverified and likely underreports adverse events. The CDC or the Food and Drug Administration should expeditiously assign doctors to research each of the thousands of vaccine complications reported to Vaers.

Authorities should also consider whether a single-vaccine dose is a safer option for healthy kids. Researchers at Tel Aviv University reported that a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine was 100% effective against infection in kids 12 to 15. Not only has the CDC refused to examine the possibility of a one-dose regimen for minors; Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff told me he was kicked off the advisory committee working group on Covid-vaccine safety after he expressed a dissenting opinion.

The CDC’s poor performance isn’t limited to kids or vaccine safety. Early in the pandemic the CDC left us all flying blind by not reporting the medical conditions of those who died of Covid. Collecting this information early would have made it easier to protect nursing-home residents and patients with renal failure or diabetes. It took until March 2021 for the CDC to report that 78% of Covid hospitalizations were among overweight or obese patients.

Most striking, the CDC has never systematically collected and reported the No. 1 leading indicator of the pandemic—daily new hospitalizations for Covid sickness. Instead, the CDC offers the lagging indicator of hospitalization for anyone who tests positive for Covid.

The CDC data on natural-immunity rates is similarly disappointing. The CDC reports this measure in fragments on their website, but it’s outdated and some states are listed as having “no data available.” The low priority given to this indicator is consistent with how public-health officials have played down and ignored natural immunity in their drive to get everyone vaccinated.

Given the tremendous resources of the CDC and FDA, which together employ 39,000, these agencies ought to be able to report the statistics needed to make informed policy decisions. If the data are incomplete or flawed, so too will be the decisions derived from them. The vaccine’s benefits may outweigh its risks for healthy kids, but the government shouldn’t try to push that conclusion based on faulty data.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. He is author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—and How to Fix It.”

​

 

The surge here from the delta variant will then cause more variants and soon enough something is going to break through the Pfizer and Moderna. It’s only a matter of time. It’ll affect the economy for years to come with a ripple affect and the inflation they are so worried about now will be an issue when we do have to keep bailing out our economy.

Just for the record, I 100% believe they are necessary but not if we all got vaccinated and put a bubble around the US for the next year until the world got caught up.

It’s really hard to see the US remaining as a wealthy country with opportunity and certainly democracy. 40% of your population actively trying to destroy society is just too much to overcome through sheer peaceful Democratic resistance. It’s not in the DNA of the American left to use authoritarian tactics to condition the right. So there’s just not much left we can do but at this point take care of yourself and do your best to at least try and preserve what we’ve got even though it’s a losing battle.

Hopefully Pfizer and moderna have setup infrastructure now to quickly mass produce boosters for mutations that break through. I’m still dealing with aftershocks from the Covid battle I had in December and I don’t know if I have another round left in me without something going haywire like a lot of Americans who had long hauler cases that lived.

I don’t know if a super power in history has ever self sabotaged itself this much in such a quick way. It’s truly something.

 

Better late than never. Steve Scalise finally get's vaccinated citing Delta Variant as reason to get vaccinated.
https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_f569bf58-e970-11eb-8456-7ba1aef698cd.html

After waiting, Steve Scalise gets COVID vaccine, calls it 'safe and effective'

“Soon,” U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise replied at the beginning of April when asked when he would be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

He repeated the response in May when he was asked the same question.

But it wasn't until Sunday that Scalise actually received his first Pfizer vaccination at an Ochsner clinic in Jefferson Parish.

Why did the No. 2 Republican in the House wait until now?

“Especially with the delta variant becoming a lot more aggressive and seeing another spike, it was a good time to do it,” he said in an interview. “When you talk to people who run hospitals, in New Orleans or other states, 90% of people in hospital with delta variant have not been vaccinated. That’s another signal the vaccine works.”

With the more virulent and transmissible delta strain spreading rapidly, the Louisiana Department of Health reported on Monday that hospitals have the highest number of COVID-19 patients since mid-February, when a deadly winter surge in cases was abating.

Scalise said he waited, in part, because he tested positive for COVID antibodies a while back – he believes he had a mild case of the virus at some point – and thought he had some immunity from that.

The politics of the vaccination was not a factor in his decision to be inoculated, he said.

Among Democrats, 86% had received at least one shot of a vaccine, a Washington Post-ABC News poll reported earlier this month, compared to only 45% of Republicans. And 47% of Republicans said they aren’t likely to get vaccinated compared to only 6% of Democrats.

“It’s safe and effective,” Scalise said, noting he supported funding that allowed the Trump administration to fast-track the process. “It was heavily tested on thousands of people before the FDA gave its approval. Some people believe that it might have been rushed. That’s not the case. I’ve been vocal about that for months. I know their process has high standards. The FDA approval process is probably the most respected in the world.”

Scalise said he would encourage others to get vaccinated as well, but opposes any mandatory rules.

“I don’t think people should be shamed into getting it,” he said. “It’s their choice.”

 

Pfizer is pushing for a booster and said they are already working on targeting variants.

 

Surprised this exchange hasn't been brought up.

 

people don't like when I post too much

 

Full clip here

I have absolutely no love for Rand Paul, but I have really grown to dislike Fauci over the last year.

 

Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention to him. What is it about Fauci you dislike?

 

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/07/scott-adams-deploys-his-4-point-test.html

excerpt:

ADDED: If you click through to Weinstein's series of tweets, you'll read a very sensible interpretation that seems right to me:

My read on this is different. Fauci is a system creature which entails responsibilities that may take him into biowarfare. I see him as saying “You’re outside the system. This is some set of super complicated relationships I have to manage. And I act properly within that sphere.”

I hear Rand Paul saying “I don’t don’t bow down to the system you live within. I am here to call it into question: did NIH do something as psychotic as fund GoFR in our strategic rival’s Wuhan Lab??”

I hear Fauci saying “This is part of a large strategy. You can’t break it out!”

Then I hear RP saying: “I’m a US Senator & MD who doesn’t believe in your system’s grand strategy of funding Gain of Function through the CCP as part of 12D chess. Answer the F’ing Question, Doctor.”

Fauci says “I don’t have to take this sh-t. We evaded this issue technically.”

Paul insinuates “You may have a lot of blood on your hands Dr. As SARS CoV-2 most likely came from the lab you and NIH funded.”

Fauci: “There are MANY things that would HAVE to be true for that wild of an accusation to tie me and NIH to COVID-19, and you don’t have them. F off.”

Essentially, Paul is outraged by the 12D chess official system and wants to break out one question. Fauci wants to protect that system which probably believes that it’s safer to be in bed w/ CCP than to be shut out. Fauci is playing dumb on GoFR and Rand is insinuating too much.​

Posted by Ann Althouse at 8:02 AM​

 

This is a very accurate summary.

I would have liked to have heard Fauci's responses in greater detail, but Paul cut him off too many times.

 

​

I'm almost sure Scott Adam, in his love for bubbles, forgot that he's in one himself, again.

1. Word-thinking ("not gain of function")
> Fauci was never given the chance to explain his position. Let the man define himself after he was accused of lying by Paul without interruption.

2. Attack the critic personally
> They both were attacking each other as liars.

3. Change the topic
> Paul went from GoF to 4M death and Facui respond to that. Naturally, the topic changed because of that.

4. Anger when trapped
> They both were angry and anyone that have been following their interactions should know that they hate each other guts.

 

Paul has spread a lot of misleading information and even spread the virus given he was infected early and didn't take steps to reduce his exposure to others. Fauci certainly hasn't been infallible but I would trust his record on the pandemic far more than Paul's.

 

Good job trump and republicans in 2020 nice accomplishment-

https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...1-5-years-2020-biggest-drop-since-ww-ii-covid

 

Just a reminder that even as Fox News personalities rail against "vaccine passports" Fox Corp has implemented a vaccine passport for their offices.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox...ccination-passport-memo-tucker-carlson-2021-7

Fox News has a strict COVID-19 policy that includes the kind of vaccine passport Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and other right-wing hosts have railed against

• The Fox Corporation has a return to office protocol involving voluntary proof of vaccination.
• Top host Tucker Carlson has compared vaccine passports to "Jim Crow" racial segregation laws.
• Fox Corp employees who don't submit their status must continue masking and social distancing.

The Fox Corporation has instituted a strict COVID-19 policy that includes a vaccine passport, allowing only the company's fully-vaccinated employees to work in their offices without wearing a mask or social distancing.

But a slew of the parent company's Fox News personalities, particularly two of its highest-paid and most influential primetime hosts, have railed against exactly this kind of vaccination policy, also known as a "vaccine passport."

Beyond increased vaccine hesitancy among conservative men — a major share of the network's audience — polling shows Fox News viewers are less likely to say they have gotten or plan on getting the vaccine compared to the general population.

Many of the network's daytime anchors have said on-air that they've gotten vaccinated and have encouraged viewers to do the same, but in primetime, hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have both frequently dismissed the science around the vaccine and featured guests making misleading and false claims about the shots' high level of efficacy.

Carlson, Fox's top rated host and the centerpiece of its growing streaming service, has compared vaccine passports to "Jim Crow" racial segregation laws and likened asking someone about their vaccination status to asking them whether they've been infected with HIV or what their favorite sex positions are.

"Medical Jim Crow has come to America," Carlson claimed last month. "If we still had water fountains, the unvaccinated would have separate ones."

Both the host and network will not say whether he's been vaccinated.

A Fox News spokesperson pointed Insider toward a Fox Corp. memo from June on return to office procedures. A Fox Corp. spokesperson confirmed the rollout of the voluntary proof of vaccination system to Insider in an email.

The Intercept's Ryan Grim first reported on Monday that Fox began asking its employees to attest to their own vaccination status in May in order to receive a "FOX Clear Pass." Employees who don't inform the company that they've been fully vaccinated — including the dates of their shots and type of immunization — are required to fill out a daily health screening before coming into the office, wear masks, and maintain physical distance from others in the office.

Ingraham, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, has brought guests on who spread lies about the COVID-19 vaccines, including the falsehood that the shots aren't effective agains the new, even more contagious Delta variant.

In the early months of the pandemic, much of the network's coverage downplayed the severity of the coronavirus and followed the playbook of its late founder by turning the pandemic into a culture war.

Carlson has made vaccine skepticism a mainstay of his show, even turning segments on the vaccine into attacks on elites encouraging Americans to get it.

None of Fox's on-air personalities have discussed this specific policy from their employer, but they have spoken on air about having to wear masks in the building and getting to see colleagues in person again once they got vaccinated.

Some hosts have encouraged viewers to get vaccinated. Primetime host Sean Hannity has urged his audience to seek advice from their doctors and research the vaccines. Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy has said he got the shot and encouraged others to as well.

The network recently ran a public service announcement urging those who can to get vaccinated. And in a new development on Monday, Fox News and Fox Business banners featured the vaccine.gov web address during segments on COVID-19.