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Nope. Just pointing out that a "lack of critical thinking" is not unique to those on the political right.

See my rant several pages back, I had to deal with anti-vaxxers on a daily basis when I was still practicing medicine. At that time, they were almost exclusively on the political left.
Did you ask them their political affiliation? LoL.

I've posted similar before, but my wife still has a large number of black and latino patients who refuse to be vaccinated. When she tried to explain how black people are at a statistically higher risk for adverse outcomes from COVID to one patient, he called her racist, got angry to the point she ended the visit and left the exam room and he reported her to the hospital administration. That was a rare one time occurence, but she keeps trying to get all her patients to get vaccinated. And she doesn't mince words. As a cardiologist if she is seeing them then most likely they have one or more major risk factors. This goes across political spectrum, but it is clear one party is fanatically promoting unscientific and dangerous beliefs right now. In Pennsylvania the Republicans in our legislature are suing our Governor for imposing a school mask mandate. Lives mean nothing to these people. They have become a death cult.
 
The first U.S. COVID death was reportedly a month before everyone thought

"Kansas great-grandmother Lovell "Cookie" Brown died on Jan. 9, 2020.
Originally, her death certificate cited "chronic obstructive lung disease,"
but it has since been updated to include COVID-19,
making her the first official coronavirus death in the U.S."
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This death was reclassified based on symptoms alone.


We'll see how these pan out - sounds like the four early deaths under investigation may come to nothing. (Seems more likely than not, given what we know to be true about when the main pandemic started - though there has been a lot of confusion and noise about cases in Italy way earlier (since debunked), etc.)

Also "funny" that there were a flurry of January 2020 death reports at the beginning of 2021 - because doctors were writing 2020 on the death certificates by mistake.

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"False. The original anti-vax movement was firmly entrenched in the far left / progressive movement of the Democratic Party. It wasn't until recently that it moved to the far right due to more "fertile ground" established by the Trump administration."

If they say they have never voted for a Democrat they are admitting that they do not look at individual qualifications and just vote party lines. That demonstrates a lack of critical thinking regardless of their other education achievements.

I've observed for years that people who move to one political extreme or the other tend to meet around the back side of the curve in their practices. On a national scale the fascist powers of the mid-20th century were technically extreme conservatives, and communism was an extreme liberal ideology, but in just about every country where one or the other ideology took hold, the day to day practices of the two governing ideologies were very similar.

Living in the Seattle and Portland areas most of my life I've known many extreme liberals and I've been thankful many times they had little or no political power. Political extremists are rarely very good at the practicalities of governing. A talented politico convinces the majority of the population that their plan is a good one and then they get enacted because the people demand it. But that takes understanding not just their base, but those outside their base who are convincable.

Political extremists tend to believe most people already feel the way they do and they act accordingly. When they get push back, they tend to try and force their ideas on the public rather than try and sell them. Many political extremists also suffer from magical thinking of one kind or another. A few are leaders who cook up magical theories, but most are sheep who just follow along with whatever the guru they believe today says.

A friend of my partner is one of these sheep. Her entire world is a sea of "shoulds" cast down from some guru or another and she hasn't given any of them any thought. For instance she avoids gluten even though she has never had any health issues with it because some guru she believe said gluten is bad. I also know people who avoid gluten due to some kind of sensitivity and I don't blame them for avoiding it.

Back in the 90s the anti-vax thing was primarily an extreme lefty thing. I saw it.

It started with Thimerosal which is a mercury based preservative that was common in vaccines then. There were questions about whether some childhood vaccines were contributing to Autism because of the Thiomerosal. I had an acquaintance who first saw signs of Autism in her son shortly after his first rubella dose. And we did see a dramatic increase in Autism diagnosis around that time.

But correlation does not always mean causality. There is a small town in the Netherlands where the thing about storks bringing babies comes from. Almost everyone born in that town are born around the time the storks return to breed in the spring. The reason isn't the storks, but what happened nine months earlier. nine months earlier is the end of the harvest when farmers are often drinking too much at harvest festivals and have some extra energy for the first time in many months, so a lot of women get pregnant around that time and the children are born in the spring which just happens to be when the storks are arriving.

A case where there is a strong correlation without causality. In the 90s medicine became much better at diagnosing Autism, so the number of cases increased dramatically. Same thing happened with ADD and dyslexia. My mother was school nurse when I was in early grade school and she diagnosed a number of my classmates with dyslexia, but they were all fairly severe cases. I was happy because one of my biggest tormentors was sent off to a special school. She completely missed my dyslexia because it was mild and I had little trouble reading, my problem was more output than input.

Back in the 90s questions were raised about whether it was safe to inject small kids with anything that had mercury in it and that's not a bad question to ask. In any case Thimerosal has not been used in any vaccine for children since 2001. We still seem to have just as many Autism spectrum diagnosis today as 20 years ago, so it's almost certainly something else causing it.

But to the sheep who don't think the meme is now vaccines=bad. COVID has changed that on the left to some extent. Some bad actors in the political arena have drummed up all sorts of new reasons for why vaccines are bad, playing on the existing meme. Some political sh** stirrers are very good at using existing memes to stir up trouble and get people upset.

The friend of my partner I mentioned above got the COVID vaccine as soon as she qualified, but my partner and I spent most of an evening explaining to her why the idea that Bill Gates was putting tracking chips in vaccines was patently ridiculous for many reasons.



What is your definition of “all the precautions”?

If a vaccinated individual goes about life as pre-pandemic normal, would you consider that person to be guilty if a close contact becomes sick?

Using the word guilty, a car traffic accident caused by someone who is careful is still the responsible party for all property damage and medical injury of others, even if that person had no malicious intent.

Generally in the law if you are doing everything that the authorities mandate and/or recommend and something bad happens, you aren't at fault. If you are doing something that has been deemed risky by the authorities and someone gets hurt, you're likely going to be liable either criminally or financially.

Civil suits involve this question all the time. Someone who was doing everything in their power to reasonably prevent harm to others are usually able to walk away from the suit without having to pay anything. The law often has a "reasonable person test". If someone was doing what the court determines to be what a reasonable person would do, then they are free of culpability.

In the case of COVID transmission, if somebody is doing everything the CDC and/or their local authorities say to do to prevent spread, then they are not culpable if someone catches COVID from them.
 
Back in the 90s the anti-vax thing was primarily an extreme lefty thing. I saw it.


Sort of unrelated, and I knew anti-vax was bad, but didn't realize exactly how bad this was until recently, when I read this (old) article.

I had no idea measles could have the particular side effect of destroying immunity (naturally acquired or otherwise) to other viruses - particularly in severe cases.

 
An age group to watch this September perhaps. One angle of this logic is <=11 year olds so parents starting families in their early 20s.

Om4yW3T.jpg

I think it’s more a question of what we are not doing in Ohio. Namely, vaccination, which dramatically (by a factor of 50 or so for mRNA) reduces these hospitalizations in this age bracket, from already relatively low levels.

Would like to see the breakdown of these curves by vaccine status and specific vaccine. No one can be bothered to track that obviously critical information, of course. 🤷‍♂️

The timing of the surge is such that I’m also not sure at all that the kids are to blame, primarily. Looks closer to coinciding with the Independence from COVID Day (July 4th) and throwing caution to the wind.
 
So I went to the county courthouse today because I received a summons for jury duty. Had to fill out a COVID questionnaire and did so honestly. I was the only one pulled out of line and told to go home and wait to be rescheduled because I was out of the US within the past 10 days. I understand and appreciate they are trying to do something to protect people but I've been tested 3 times in the past 2 weeks and they let in people who didn't even come to the courthouse today with a mask. If they were serious they'd be rapid testing everyone.
 
I think it’s more a question of what we are not doing in Ohio. Namely, vaccination, which dramatically (by a factor of 50 or so for mRNA) reduces these hospitalizations in this age bracket, from already relatively low levels.

Would like to see the breakdown of these curves by vaccine status and specific vaccine. No one can be bothered to track that obviously critical information, of course. 🤷‍♂️

The timing of the surge is such that I’m also not sure at all that the kids are to blame, primarily. Looks closer to coinciding with the Independence from COVID Day (July 4th) and throwing caution to the wind.

Here’s one factor: Only half of Ohio school districts have some kind of mask requirement at school. Further, many of these districts that have a mask requirement are only required for high school students.
 
New efficacy data in the MMWRs today. Efficacy remains very good, though it clearly is reduced vs. prior analyses.

Looks like Moderna is about 3x better than Pfizer (92% vs. 77%) and over 4x (92% vs. 65%) better than J&J at keeping you out of the Emergency Department. (Confidence intervals are fairly tight.) Definite drop-off in efficacy above age 75, so that will support boosters very soon in the older groups. Hopefully they'll do 60 and up at least (I'm honestly not sure why they would try to be parsimonious at this point).
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10x reduction in mortality (though this data is not stratified by vaccine type, so J&J is possibly playing an outsized role here?).



 
What is your definition of “all the precautions”?
Stop hair-splitting. I'm not going to fall into the trap of discussing trivialities.

Its simple. If someone does reckless driving, DUI or shoots randomly in public because of ... "freedom" ... then they are guilty of consequences. Same thing applies to Covid. Instead of bullets, they are willingly sending out deadly pathogens.
 
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New efficacy data in the MMWRs today. Efficacy remains very good, though it clearly is reduced vs. prior analyses.

Looks like Moderna is about 3x better than Pfizer (92% vs. 77%) and over 4x (92% vs. 65%) better than J&J at keeping you out of the Emergency Department. (Confidence intervals are fairly tight.) Definite drop-off in efficacy above age 75, so that will support boosters very soon in the older groups. Hopefully they'll do 60 and up at least (I'm honestly not sure why they would try to be parsimonious at this point).
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10x reduction in mortality (though this data is not stratified by vaccine type, so J&J is possibly playing an outsized role here?).




This is probably a very reliable study, and I’m not arguing any of its findings.
But, I’m curious as to how they adjusted for geographic region, and it doesn’t appear that they adjusted for time since being vaccinated. It says they adjusted for time to medical event from January 1, but not anything about vaccination time.

Regarding geographic region, for example, at least in my area, the vaccines were available in rotating fashion. There were many times only J&J was available, or Pfizer, or Moderna. And, for various circumstances (one dose, storage, availability, etc), the J&J vaccine was the only vaccine at certain mass public vaccination sites at, especially in the lower income areas (even within the same region).
 
But, I’m curious as to how they adjusted for geographic region, and it doesn’t appear that they adjusted for time since being vaccinated. It says they adjusted for time to medical event from January 1, but not anything about vaccination time.
The MMWRs are always good about stating the limitations, and these specific issues are mentioned in the reports (they're always towards the end of the discussion in the text - there are three stated limitations in the first report and 5 in the second). Yes, these are absolutely limitations, and while they make efforts to adjust for geographic variations, it's hard to get rid of all the confounders.

It's not meant to give the final word on things, but I think it's reasonable to think that J&J would be less effective, and regarding Moderna & Pfizer there's the dose spacing (3 weeks vs. 4 weeks) and the dose size (30ug vs. 100ug) that are reasonable to think could drive an efficacy difference - however, the factors you mention could confound the picture, for sure.
 
Pre print and not peer reviewed.

Argues that mRNA vaccines have a higher chance of hospitalizing 12 - 17 year old males from myocarditis than COVID itself. Did not see data on comparison for death rates.


 
Hopefully boosters are coming soon for everyone. Seems like side effects are all over the map - some people who had reactions to the second have minimal reaction to the third, “others” have worse reactions to the third than the second (worse meaning no reaction to the second, but with a reaction (fever/chills) to the third).
I just had to give the long term care facility permission for Mom’s booster.
 
Pre print and not peer reviewed.

Argues that mRNA vaccines have a higher chance of hospitalizing 12 - 17 year old males from myocarditis than COVID itself. Did not see data on comparison for death rates.



What we should be talking about is single-dose vaccination for children 17 and under. Almost all the myocarditis events reported are after the 2nd dose. Children have a much lower hospitalization rate and death rate from COVID-19 than adults. Given this fact, it would be very beneficial to study how a single dose of mRNA vaccine would reduce hospitalization and death rates further from current levels, while minimizing myocarditis events. Seems like the next logical study to pursue.
 
What we should be talking about is single-dose vaccination for children 17 and under. Almost all the myocarditis events reported are after the 2nd dose. Children have a much lower hospitalization rate and death rate from COVID-19 than adults. Given this fact, it would be very beneficial to study how a single dose of mRNA vaccine would reduce hospitalization and death rates further from current levels, while minimizing myocarditis events. Seems like the next logical study to pursue.
I was thinking the same.

This is a lucid and reasonable path based on potential adverse events with the goal of maximizing risk / reward for all involved.

So why am I so certain that it will be probably not be attempted or followed if improbable attempt proves effectiveness? Sigh….
 
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