Vaccines and Therapeutics 2.0 & 3.0 Merge

[Gadianton]

Because you're claiming I was secretly scared of this disease and believed the vaccine was going to save me.

Ah, it's relevant to a different point. Okay.

The fact is, given your medical training, it is very likely you believe mainstream science, independent of your claims otherwise. Not that you believed the vaccine would save you, but it is more likely you believed that it would greatly increase your chances of avoiding severe illness. It's possible your positive test is a fabrication to justify the believability of your dilemma. If not, it's unlikely you believe your "natural immunity" is superior or can't be improved upon.

Why do I think you believe mainstream science?

Suppose a great swath of science is bought and paid for by the left. It wouldn't just be biased to certain fields. In fact, there would be science and procedures around human sight that likewise, are left-wing constructs. Since there are no eye-related procedures that you would withhold from your patients on the grounds of political corruption, you infer that it must be similar for other fields. But, you've got to toe the line at the same time.

[ajax18]

The fact is, given your medical training, it is very likely you believe mainstream science, independent of your claims otherwise. Not that you believed the vaccine would save you, but it is more likely you believed that it would greatly increase your chances of avoiding severe illness. It's possible your positive test is a fabrication to justify the believability of your dilemma. If not, it's unlikely you believe your "natural immunity" is superior or can't be improved upon.

I just told you what I believe. If you don't believe that, I can't reason with you. I've listened to a specialist on Lisa Booth's morning show who believes that the vaccine does not add anything appreciable to natural immunity. To me that makes sense. And while I'm not practicing immunology, I do meet a lot of different people every day who share their COVID experience with me.

Why do I think you believe mainstream science?

Suppose a great swath of science is bought and paid for by the left. It wouldn't just be biased to certain fields. In fact, there would be science and procedures around human sight that likewise, are left-wing constructs. Since there are no eye-related procedures that you would withhold from your patients on the grounds of political corruption, you infer that it must be similar for other fields. But, you've got to toe the line at the same time.

You've lost me there. While medicine is every bit as much a political profession as being a lawyer, before these damn masks, I haven't seen eyecare be political in a way that would pertain to any national left/right issues outside of who should have to pay for it.

[Gadianton]

I've listened to a specialist on Lisa Booth's morning show who believes that the vaccine does not add anything appreciable to natural immunity.

What is the name of the specialist?

I haven't seen eyecare be political in a way that would pertain to any national left/right issues

Exactly the point. Thank you. Neither is vaccine efficacy a left / right issue within the field of immunology. Broadly speaking, there is a large segment of the (non-expert) right who suddenly do not believe in immunology. That's the politics of it. See, you get this because of your medical background.

[ajax18]

Explain this to me. Why should my kids have to wear a mask to school? It's not healthy for them, especially in this southern heat. It's not about protecting the kids. How many kids have died from COVIDj? Maybe 0.0001%? Have the teachers and staff not had the opportunity to be vaccinated? From my sources, the vaccine is said to be very effective. Do the vaccines work or not? If we have to mask up until COVID is eradicated under the one is too many logic, then we're going to be in masks forever. There's always going to be a few people who die from COVID every year, just like a few die from the flu. I said this was going to happen at the start. The shutdown of 2020 was a severe over reaction and that did nothing but prolong the inevitable, not to mention a financial catastrophe that will prove to be far worse than the disease ever could have been.

[ajax18]

What is the name of the specialist?

Dr. Martin Kulldorf

For 18 months now, the media and public health officials have been pushing fear, not facts, about COVID. And they’re still doing it, with no sign of stopping. For this podcast, Lisa gets to the truth about COVID and vaccines with Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard medical professor and world-renowned vaccine expert and epidemiologist. Lisa and Dr. Kulldorff have a fact-based conversation about masks, lockdowns, vaccines, the Delta variant, and more. There's no politics or spin — just the truth as Lisa and Dr. Kulldorff shine a light on the lies that have caused so much devastation across the country.

[Gadianton]

Explain this to me. Why should my kids have to wear a mask to school? It's not healthy for them, especially in this southern heat. It's not about protecting the kids. How many kids have died from COVID 0.0001%? Have the teachers and staff not had the opportunity to be vaccinated? From my sources, the vaccine is said to be very effective. Do the vaccines work or not? If we have to mask up until COVID is eradicated under the one is too many logic, then we're going to be in masks forever. There's always going to be a few people who die from COVID every year, just like a few die from the flu. I said this was going to happen at the start. And the shutdown of 2020 was a severe over reaction and that did nothing but prolong the inevitable, not to mention a financial catastrophe that will prove to be far worse than the disease every could have been.

I see you accepted defeat on immunity. Fine, let's move on. I have my concerns about masks. Masks aren't the vaccine, nor a substitute for it. I worry that people throw on a surgical mask and feel more protected than justified. The higher the concentration of people, and the more prevalent the pathogen, the returns diminish for mask wearing. There was a study done a few years before COVID showing that N-95 masks in hospitals are no more effective than surgical masks (in regard to the wearer getting the flu), which probably means that they aren't much more effective than no mask. People should avoid other people as much as possible, even with a mask.

However, another good pre-COVID study in Japan showed that mask wearing had a significant effect in preventing flu transmission among students, whereas hand-washing had no effect. My best guess is that along with distancing measures, 100% compliance, and larger spaces, there is effectiveness if a very small percentage of the group are carriers. How does that work across tens of thousands of schools, some of which have kids packed like sardines? I'm not putting my money on it, but...

You're right, it's not about directly protecting the kids, it's about preventing the kids from spreading it to people who are affected. And you're right, the vaccine is very effective. Yes, the vaccines work. The most relevant answer to your question, why do your kids need to wear a mask? Because your right-wing anti-vax brothers and sisters won't get vaccinated. If everyone had been pro-vaccine and rushed to get it like you and Trump did once it was available, then your kids wouldn't need to wear masks. A couple of months ago I quit wearing a mask to the store. But then, Delta came along, and it's back to another layer of protection. If you want to get rid of masks, you can do your part by being more pro-vaccine. Mandatory vaccination is a great step toward getting that mask off your kids.

[canpakes]

What is the name of the specialist?

Dr. Martin Kulldorf

The Great Barrington Declaration fellow.

Here’s a counterpoint to his view, from the Harvard Crimson -

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020 ... claration/

Excerpt below -

… The concept of “focused protection” relies heavily on the rather arbitrary line that divides high-risk populations from low-risk populations. Taking the explicitly stated metric of age as an example, this means that younger family members, who may be physically attending school, must stay away from their older family members until herd immunity is reached. This measure assumes that 20 percent of Americans who live in multigenerational homes will have the means and the willingness to adhere to these standards.

The strategy also implies that low risk is equivalent to invulnerability. Although a less common occurrence, young people can and already have lost their lives to COVID-19. To dispose of precautions for this population is to offer them as a sacrifice for the sake of opening business and resuming life as normal. This conveniently disregards the immense death and suffering taking place due to the pandemic and provides fertile ground for it to proliferate under the guise of wellness and long-term public health concerns.

In both of these oversights, minority populations carry most of the burden of suffering — Black, brown, and Asian families live in multigenerational homes at higher rates than white populations, while the majority of children and teens who have died from the virus were Black or Hispanic.
…
Finally, the reality of the situation is that the very principle of herd immunity Dr. Kulldorff and company are promising is questionable at best. With each passing month, we continue to learn more about this virus and make adjustments based on this new information. Focused protection does not allow for this flexibility, but rather operates on assumed constants — that people who contract the virus become immune and that the immunity is permanent. Without those assumptions, the plan to achieve herd immunity via focused protection collapses. We have already seen that immunity following infection is variable, with many recovered patients showing a significant decrease in immune response as early as a month after initial recovery. We have also seen that it is possible for people to become reinfected following their initial infection. Under these conditions, focused protection may create a perpetual cycle of infection and re-infection that lasts until a reliable vaccine is made widely available.

It is for these reasons that we — along with others signing onto a petition opposing the Great Barrington Declaration — condemn the idea of focused protection as a means to achieve herd immunity. We condemn the needless death and suffering that this strategy would cause, and we condemn this departure from the standard of doing no harm, taught by the Hippocratic Oath, the Belmont Report, and the central tenets of all health professions. The caregivers of our society can and must do better.

[Gadianton]

For 18 months now, the media and public health officials have been pushing fear, not facts...

That's a huge exaggeration. Martin K. doesn't appear to be without his own spin. It's not at all unbelievable that for those who were lucky enough to get off with low symptoms, that these people at least temporarily have greater immunity than those who got the shot. At least with traditional vaccines, a dose of weakened virus won't push your immune system like the real deal. You had no symptoms and claim to have tested positive. What is the false-positive rate for that test? Were you really going to chance it when the shot is readily available? And what about a year later? If the claim is that you got Covid once, and like chickenpox, you're now immune forever, then that's certainly something, if true. But if not, then you get to play Russian Roulette next year when you contract it again, or contract a variant. Either way, it in no way lessens the seriousness for everyone who is able, to get the vaccine, given the far greater chance for suffering, disability, and death than the flu.

There are all kinds of future possibilities. Maybe a super-Delta variant will spread so quickly that it tears apart the non-vaccinated and suddenly we have herd immunity. But maybe it can mutate for a while and keep re-infecting with new variants for years to come. We'll probably get to find that out as I think enough of the 'vaccine hesitant' are happy to take their chances.

[Res Ipsa]

It's posts like this that make it hard for me to take you seriously as a medical professional. Is that how you keep up with the best way to deal with an eye condition -- follow the recommendations of a guest on a politically biased talk show that belongs to a group that has let politics and not the actual medical evidence drive his opinions? Oh, and you talk to a few people who had the condition? That's it?

Seriously, if I went to a medical professional and found out that the professional was recommending a treatment based on that kind of "evidence" (and I mean evidence in the weakest sense possible), I'd fire them on the spot and report them to their licensing board. (Relax, Ajax, I'm not threatening to dox and report you, because you haven't attempted to treat me and I have no reason to believe that you actually form your opinions as an optometrist on that kind of BS nonsense.

There are studies on this topic. And they provide evidence that getting vaccinated improves your immunity even if you've been infected with COVID -- especially if you've had a mild or asymptomatic case. It's not like the research is inaccessible to you. In fact, it's quite easy to find.

It's too bad that your political views are at odds with the medical evidence. But rather than ignore the medical evidence, may it's your political views you should be reconsidering.

[Res Ipsa]

For 18 months now, the media and public health officials have been pushing fear, not facts...

That's a huge exaggeration. Martin K. doesn't appear to be without his own spin. It's not at all unbelievable that for those who were lucky enough to get off with low symptoms, that these people at least temporarily have greater immunity than those who got the shot. At least with traditional vaccines, a dose of weakened virus won't push your immune system like the real deal. You had no symptoms and claim to have tested positive. What is the false-positive rate for that test? Were you really going to chance it when the shot is readily available? And what about a year later? If the claim is that you got Covid once, and like chickenpox, you're now immune forever, then that's certainly something, if true. But if not, then you get to play Russian Roulette next year when you contract it again, or contract a variant. Either way, it in no way lessens the seriousness for everyone who is able, to get the vaccine, given the far greater chance for suffering, disability, and death than the flu.

There are all kinds of future possibilities. Maybe a super-Delta variant will spread so quickly that it tears apart the non-vaccinated and suddenly we have herd immunity. But maybe it can mutate for a while and keep re-infecting with new variants for years to come. We'll probably get to find that out as I think enough of the 'vaccine hesitant' are happy to take their chances.

"Huge exaggeration" is far too kind.