Dr. Drosten [0], maybe Germany's most well known virologist at the moment, recently commented on rules to only allow vaccinated/recovered (but not unvaccinated but tested) people into restaurants and venues [1]. The reasoning behind that is a lot different than you would expect. It is not because unvaccinated would pose a threat to others but because they are at risk of catching the disease from a vaccinated, infected but asymptomatic guest (you would only find these if everyone would be tested).
This is snarky but poses a real question. If we ban people from spaces or events due to their vulnerability to COVID then why do we not do the same for those vulnerable to other diseases? Flu is a good example for the young and elderly since it poses a significant risk. It would strain the argument but you could make a case for banning the obese from fast food restaurants based on this reasoning as well.
Don't forget what makes COVID19 so insidious: without testing, it takes time before an infected contagious person shows symptoms. By the time they decide to stay off public spaces, they have already potentially spread the virus.
With the common flu, you know almost instantly so you stay home to recover.
Fat people know their condition and it's their choice to eat fast food anyway. And obesity is also non contagious.
> Symptoms can begin about 2 days (but can range from 1 to 4 days) after the virus enters the body. That means that you may be able to pass on the flu to someone else before you know you are sick, as well as while you are sick. Some people can be infected with the flu virus but have no symptoms. During this time, those people may still spread the virus to others.
> People with COVID-19 have had a wide range of symptoms reported – ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness. Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus. Anyone can have mild to severe symptoms.
The only people they would need to protect are other unvaccinated people who have made the choice to take whatever risk there is in going unvaccinated. The choice to not be vaccinated involves knowing that you may contact the virus from someone else and may become very ill or die. Attempting to protect someone by taking away their ability to make that choice is equivalent to removing the option to eat enough food to become obese.
> Attempting to protect someone by taking away their ability to make that choice is equivalent to removing the option to eat enough food to become obese.
We do that to obese people already. It's called a diet. Some of them even go farther than mere "prescriptions" but with psychological tricks to keep people on track. Also, really, comparing obesity to COVID19 is an apples to oranges thing. Obesity is not even viral.
What you're missing is that in all these measures that seem so controversial (lockdowns, vaccination campaigns) preserving an individual's life/health is secondary to the main goal, a means to an end. The main goal is to not overwhelm the public healthcare infra.
No one cares if you want to go to a concert when you're ill but when that illness has the potential to strain public health resources, then that's a different story entirely.
> Don't forget what makes COVID19 so insidious: without testing, it takes time before an infected contagious person shows symptoms. By the time they decide to stay off public spaces, they have already potentially spread the virus.
but AFAIK even vaccinated people can spread the virus?
As I mentioned in another comment, let's not forget that preventing spread through all these measures is all in service of a greater goal: avoiding strain on public health infra.
To put it another way, it doesn't matter if vaccinated people can still catch and spread the virus (any virus, even) as long as this infection chain does not result to an unmanageable pipeline of people who might need intensive medical care. In this context, the main benefit (but by no means only) of vaccines is the decreased hospitalization rate.
> As I mentioned in another comment, let's not forget that preventing spread through all these measures is all in service of a greater goal: avoiding strain on public health infra.
If the ends justifies the means, what other public health interventions should we carry out, even in cases where there's no direct harm to society[1]? Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. Should we have blood pressure/cholesterol "passports" to pressure people into being healthier?
[1] ie. you getting infected and infecting other people, as opposed to the more tenuous link of you getting infected, having to go to the emergency room, causing the emergency room to go over capacity and causing someone to die because of lack of care
> Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. Should we have blood pressure/cholesterol "passports" to pressure people into being healthier?
Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the potential to strain medical resources in a matter of days?
Again, these aren't interventions against social freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public service from being DDoSed, so to speak. The measures a matter of _hospitalization_. It's pointless to compare a "cause of death" metric to a "plain case count" metric.
>> Is heart disease exponentially contagious with the potential to strain medical resources in a matter of days?
> How is this relevant when vaccinated people are still contagious?
Because while still contagious, they are not exponentially contagious. It's not like I left out that important qualifier in the statement you are replying to.
Vaccinated people can spread in case of a breakthrough infection and infections are less likely to occur in vaccinated individuals.
> Just like banning encryption isn't against social freedoms...
Way to go attacking a straw man, and not even a particularly clever one at that. What does encryption have anything to do with vaccination and vaccination passports?
>Because while still contagious, they are not exponentially contagious. It's not like I left out that important qualifier in the statement you are replying to.
1. source?
2. It really wasn't obvious because you failed to link "vaccinated" with "not exponentially contagious".
>What does encryption have anything to do with vaccination and vaccination passports?
In the previous comment you basically made the argument that the measures are justified because they're not "interventions against social freedoms, rather an intervention to prevent a public service from being DDoSed". I just took that argument to its logical conclusion. Law enforcement resources are stretched pretty thin, right? Why not give them a helping hand as well by allowing them to eavesdrop on everyone's communications? After all, it's not an intervention to decrease public privacy, it's an intervention to prevent law enforcement resources from being DDoSed.
1. For one, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... -- the jury still seems out as to by how much exactly the spread is prevented, it seems to depend on the vaccine and social demographics of the population studied. But at least for vaccines approved for use in the US and EU, the reduction seems significant.
2. I mean, this whole discussion is rather about the merits of vaccinations no?
> ... I just took that argument to its logical conclusion ...
This is just dishonest and misleading chain of reasoning:
- Law enforcement and public health are both public resources, yes, but of different nature and not comparable. I thought that's rather self-evident. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that law enforcement is indeed stretched thin, aiding law enforcement takes on an entirely different form than aiding the public health sector.
- Encryption is not analogous to vaccination passports at all. It's not even an apples to oranges comparison, more like, apples to cars.
The shot doesn’t work in an hour nor does it fix the actual problem.
Nor is it really as simple as just trying to bully everybody into getting injected with vaccines that have been developed and pushed trough regulatory approval in record times.
The last time something like that happened, during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, it turned out the people skeptical of rushed vaccinations were actually the ones with the right idea.
While many others ended up suffering for the rest of their life’s for it, among them a whole lot of children.
I’m talking about the amount of time and effort one has to put in. Losing weight can take years even for a determined person, recommended weight loss speed is usually 1-2 lbs per week at most.
To get vaccinated you have to just drop by the pharmacy during your grocery store run, wait about 15 minutes after the shot for observation, and it’s complete. (If taking a 2 shot vaccine, repeat the same 30 minute task 4 weeks later).
Asking people to become non-obese before entering society is an entirely different level of effort. Asking people to become non-elderly is an impossibility at our current or near-future level of science.
H1N1 was nowhere near as dangerous as COVID-19. And even in that case there’s no reason to believe getting the flu vaccine that year was a bad idea. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... “ In 2018, a study team including CDC scientists analyzed and published vaccine safety data on adjuvanted pH1N1 vaccines (arenaprix-AS03, Focetria-MF59, and Pandemrix-AS03) from 10 global study sites. Researchers did not detect any associations between the vaccines and narcolepsy.”
It’s impossible to fix being elderly by telling them to take a medication or some other means. It just doesn’t scientifically exist. By suggesting we should require the elderly to become non-elderly before mixing with society, you’d be asking the impossible. That makes no sense and no one rational would consider it to be “for their own good”.
The reason to exclude them is not whether or not it's possible to "fix" them. That is irrelevant. The reason to exclude them is that it is for their own good. That's what the original poster said was stated.
I am not asking for the impossible, I am asking that we also protect all the other undesirables and deplorables for their own good.
It is not because unvaccinated would pose a threat to others but because they are at risk of catching the disease from a vaccinated, infected but asymptomatic guest
Haven't read your link yet but I'd expect a double vaccinated 65 year old is still waaaaay more vulnerable than an unvaccinated 18 year old.
> You can still transmit the virus whilst double vaccinated. They do not slow spread only hospitalisation.
With the disclaimer that I'm not an expert: that's wrong. The vaccines are extremely efficacious in preventing hospitalisations and deaths, and are moderately efficacious in reducing transmission.
I'm not sure that's the case: the iceland, malta, and israel results (very highly vaccinated population) are worrying in the extreme; take a look and see if you agree that transmission might actually be worse. As to why that is, perhaps because they think they're not a spreader? Are we actually typhoid mary/joe when we go out thinking that we're not putting people at risk? I think this means wearing masks for the entire population is a good idea.
Either way, everyone should get the vaccine for the health benefit when they actually acquire covid (when not if). The better outcomes are without question, but what is questionable is the rate of spread, especially of delta and the new... is it called lambda(?) variant.
We need to be honest about this: the benefit of the vaccine is clear due to the milder outcomes across even low risk groups. That itself makes it worth it.
And if the vaccine prevents hospitalization and death Covid will become just like any other virus making turns in our societies. IF enough people are vaccinated, that is. if it wasn't for the people unable to be vaccinated, kids under 12 for now, medical conditions and so on, I'd say get rd of restrictions. If it was only the unvaccinated that are at serious risk, well, it was their decision and I don't really care. they are still putting others at risk, and that is simply not acceptable.
That's wrong. The vaccine is moderately effective at preventing the spread of early variants. It's not very effective at preventing the spread of Delta from an infected person, but it's quite effective (but far from perfect) at preventing people from getting infected in the first place, thus overall significantly slowing spread .
Vaccine passport proponents routinely cite "slowing [the] spread" as a reason to impose vaccination requirements despite discoveries earlier this year showing that vaccinated individuals can still spread the disease. In light of these discoveries, vaccine passports and other coercive measures don't make any dense.
Delta has an R value of 8. That makes it one of the most infectious diseases we know about. Future variants are likely to be even more contagious. (That's the evolutionary pattern we see in other diseases.) Even if universal vaccination were to somewhat reduce the R value, the R value would remain above the critical threshold value of 1.0 regardless --- because R starts out so high naturally. We know R is above one post-vaccination because highly-vaccinated places like Iceland and Gibraltar see COVID waves despite near-universal vaccination. If R is above one, everyone will get the virus sooner or later anyway no matter what, and we are not operating in the regime in which universal vaccination has the kind of large positive externalities that might justify a universal vaccination program for other diseases (e.g. measles).
It's only large positive externalities that can justify state intervention in individual health. (The 1905 SCOTUS case that people have been citing discusses the issue in detail.) Current COVID vaccines, due to the R-value threshold effect, don't have the large positive externalities attached to previous vaccines.
As an analogy: a leather jacket might reduce a bullet's velocity to some extent, but that bullet will still penetrate and kill you. Nothing short of body armor that can actually stop the bullet is effective. Likewise, unless the vaccine can reduce R below 1 --- and no current COVID vaccine can do that --- universal vaccination cannot stop the spread of the disease.
The vaccines may be beneficial, but being beneficial, by itself, doesn't present a case for coercive state action. If it did, we'd probably all eat healthier and exercise more --- and we'd be less free as a people.
There are real social and economic costs to creating a "papers, please!" culture and setting a precedent for state intervention in individual medical choices. As it stands, the low risk posed by COVID and the insufficiency of current vaccines can't the coercive state programs being proposed around the world.
It's hard to unpick your argument but it seems that you say in a couple of places something similar to "eradication isn't possible therefore reduction has no benefit".
For example:
"Vaccine passport proponents routinely cite "slowing [the] spread" as a reason to impose vaccination requirements
Yep.
> despite discoveries earlier this year showing that vaccinated individuals can still spread the disease.
If you'd said "can still spread the disease as much as unvaccinated" then this would have made sense. From my understanding the jury is still out on this question with the consensus being "the vaccinated spread it less but we're not sure how much less".
> Likewise, unless the vaccine can reduce R below 1[...] universal vaccination cannot stop the spread of the disease.
Even if we accept this part (and I'm not sure I do) then you again seem to be conflating "can't stop it entirely" with "has no benefit"
Hey former coworker, it's been a while. What you're saying isn't quite correct: there are large positive externalities to reducing disease severity, disease spread, and the risk of long COVID, all of which vaccines help with. This isn't a binary between eradicating the disease and giving up completely.
The vaccine for measles is sterilizing. The vaccines for COVID are not. They're two completely separate classes of intervention. I'm not the one spreading disinformation here.
Just because substance A and substance B are both called "vaccines" doesn't mean that A and B have comparable effects and can be treated the same way.
It is simply not medically possible for COVID vaccination to stop the spread of COVID. We have to accept that and move on with our lives.
The government is not justified in mandating any medical treatment merely because that treatment is good for you. The vaccines seem beneficial, yes. This fact alone does not justify the use of state power. We have a 70-year-old taboo against involuntary medical treatment for a very good reason. The weak threat of COVID combined with the insufficiency of our vaccines suggests that we don't have a compelling case for breaking this taboo.
The vaccines may be beneficial on an individual level but I do not see a case for mandates.
MMR is definitely not a 100% guarantee of immunity; and the vaccine, despite what you’ve been lead to believe, is not a lifetime guarantee.
Herd immunity is what makes vaccines work so well. You want freedom? Get the shot so that one year or two from now, we can get on with our lives without more legislation being put into place.
Because the mandates will be happening if people keep ignoring the “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins” principle.
It's quite possible that if measles were introduced to our global population now it would be exactly the same: has so much spread that it has the chance to mutate to evade the immune system next time around.
If 99% of people were vaccinated then covid wouldn't have populations in which to mutate.
While this sub may be a bit distasteful for some, I recommend spending some time reading through the countless examples documented there of folks who refused the vaccine based on this kind of thinking and then ended up dying often very unpleasant deaths while unable to breathe for days or weeks: https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
This sub has seen extremely rapid growth, which is perhaps one of the most tragic "success" stories of a subreddit ever.
Presumably, if your claim were accurate and such deaths were occurring on anywhere near the same scale, then the internet would be flooded with those stories. But it's not, and there are no statistics to back up the scale you're implying.
Rapid growth means absolutely nothing on Reddit when it's possibly the most the most astro-turfed platform on the internet. I came across a thread from that subreddit and it resembled a grotesque celebration that a 4-year old had died due to an anti-vax family member.
The sub’s content is based on actual examples of vocally unvaccinated people dying. Unfortunately, there has been an endless supply of new content. That’s not the result of astroturfing. It’s the result of large numbers of people refusing the vaccine and ending up in the hospital for weeks, often dying.
Frankly, the sub has probably saved lives by convincing some folks to go get vaccinated. My own parents refused to get vaccinated until my dad’s unvaccinated cousin got COVID and was dead within a week.
I can't find the example you're referring to. Feel free to link to it.
There is, the number of vaccinations in France jumped remarkably after vaccine passports were made mandatory for cinemas, theatres, restaurants, etc. Considering that's the main goal of such policies, it seems like a success.
And yes, the main point is to limit hospitalisations, because they're the main limiting factor ( at least in France, but probably in most other developed countries as well).
Those who are downvoting this are being blatantly disingenuous. Tobacco alone kills over 480,000 people per year in the US. There is a very strong case for banning it if your fundamental concern is the health of others and the upkeep of the health system.
No one can honestly look at these figures and come away with with the opinion that we need to protect the unvaccinated from themselves through mandates while turning a blind eye to these other self inflicted diseases. Argue for or against limiting personal choice to preserve health but be prepared to defend your position on all of these fronts.
Let's start with the simplest: tobacco. There is no way to make it disappear, you can only make it illegal. Our experiments with making other addictive drugs illegal had been a complete failure, I doubt you could even find convincing research that shows that making them illegal has led to less deaths due to them. Whereas vaccine passports appear to actually work. That is a major difference.
I think it’s still too early to draw conclusions about how effective vaccine passports are. There is still a significant proportion of people not accepting them, there is also another group who have been vaccinated but are now protesting the use of vaccine passports, and with the requirement of a third shot and the potential requirement for a fourth or continuing boosters we cannot know how the sizes of those groups will change. If vaccine passports become permanent my money is on it following a similar progression as prohibition or the war on drugs, it will eventually become a law that everyone flaunts. The human cost will depend on how much violence the state is willing to pursue enforcing laws that no one wants. If history is a reliable measure it will be horrific, biased, and long lasting.
I take issue with this comparison: just because the prior 'experiments' have been failures does not mean that future efforts which utilize entirely different methods will be. The war on drugs was already highly criticized for its ineffectiveness on several accounts: there is definitely a way to eradicate the problem, but those were not it and even people at the time knew it.
To be clear I was not advocating banning all of those things, I was saying that mandating vaccines is as counterproductive as trying to revive prohibition or enforce weight loss.
Which is why, in absolutely the same vein, there are regulations to incite people to consume less of those things - e.g. little branding, serious warnings and graphic pictures of the long term damage on tobacco packaging; a ban on advertisement for tobacco products; serious warnings and limitations on the advertisements for alcohol products; warnings/good advice on food-related advertisements, etc. etc.
And all of those, including the vaccination passports, work and achieve their goals.
Why do we accept mere warnings and labels on everything else, but vaccines are supposed to be mandated? That's a double standard and hypocritical. Let governments keep advertising and let people make their own decisions.
Alcohol consumption directly affects people who do not consume it in a multitude of ways from the monetary cost of increased demand on the health care system, police, prisons and damage to public property to the emotional and psychological burden of interacting with the inebriated or dependent to the physical impact of abuse and accidents caused by intoxication.
I for one fully support a complete ban on humans manually operating motor vehicles as soon as we can get to self driving cars.
A scarier argument that I saw yesterday was something called a welfare check or something in which a police officer and a jail doctor can just declare you something like insane and you no longer have any medical autonomy.
You don't have to reach for hypotheticals about how we will ban people from eating a second cookie or a full size candy bar. This is the law we have today. People with mental health issues apparently have effectively no rights. Imagine making the wrong people angry and you end up drugged up in a strait jacket... Or if you want to go conspiracy theorist, a specific set of photos appears in your iCloud account and you face prison time where you are very likely to face abuse from the guards and other prisoners alike. This is also the reality we already have, no need to reach for hypotheticals.
Drunk driving is very illegal. If we could identify unvaccinated people who infected others and punish that with jail time, would you be happy about that?
Would the people who were infected even want to press charges? Assuming they were vaccinated, they would probably have an extremely mild case, if they were unvaccinated then they would essentially be arguing a case against themselves.
No. I don't even have a strong opinion about punishing people for infecting others through negligence. But I think it is worth bringing up whenever anti-vaxxers bring up alcohol and drunk driving.
To be clear, I am not opposed to vaccines. I think the current vaccine is the best option for people at high risk of negative outcomes due to COVID. What I am opposed to is coercion by the state on something that is a personal choice. Calling this argument “antivaxx” is another example of the disingenuous way people are behaving. It’s a smear campaign that is being parroted without any critical thought.
I think alcohol might be even more dangerous to others than being unvaccinated. Violent drug users are well known ending up in fights and even causing death or permanent damage when they attack randomly at others during night. Or even kill them sometimes. So I think we should apply the new standard to it and ban it totally.
Vaccinated people also spread covid. The #1 population-level defense against infection disease is self-isolation on symptoms onset. It is possible that vaccinated people spread covid more aggressively than unvaccinated, because the vaccines dull the symptoms to a point where they don't trigger the 'stay at home' signal anymore.
Those that admit they are drunk and take an Uber instead of driving do not cause accidents. It's the 'Oh, it's just a couple of beers (narrator voice: and two vodka shots, and three martinis.)' that choose to drive while impaired that cause most of the accidents.
I'm saying it could be a responsible decision for the person making the decision.
The false premise that we should care about other people's health is annoying at this point. The vaccinated can still spread the virus, so we should make the decision to get vaccinated for ourselves, and those who don't make the orthodox decision should not be vilified.
People are quite tired of the unvaccinated who choose to opt-out without medical or traditional religious reasons; it’s worn thin because the decision affects people who want to get vaccinated but can’t.
You don’t have worry about government mandates, though that’s inevitable.
The unvaccinated won’t be able to find a job; or even conduct business the way things are going.
And soon, you won’t get ICU beds either. These choices have consequences.
It's a false premise because those who would like to get the vaccine, but can't, can voluntarily do things to make sure they don't contract COVID. Instead, they clamor for governments to force people to do something so that they are not inconvenienced.
A lot of the consequences of those choices are artificial. They are authoritarian measures designed to elicit compliance, not natural consequences.
Also, the very fact that there are people who can't get vaccinated means that the vaccines are dangerous. You have decided that the folks who decide to skip the vaccines are doing so because they don't get it, when in reality, a lot of them probably understand the dangers. While the people who can't get vaccinated would be merely inconvenienced by changing their lives to avoid the virus, those who take the shot could have life-changing consequences.
Also, you claim that people like me will not be able to get a job. I laugh at this. There is already a hospital that won't deliver babies because they can't get enough staff after so many quit over a vaccine mandate. If you and the authoritarians push us out of the economy, be prepared for the consequences. The natural consequences.
> It's a false premise because those who would like to get the vaccine, but can't, can voluntarily do things to make sure they don't contract COVID. Instead, they clamor for governments to force people to do something so that they are not inconvenienced.
> A lot of the consequences of those choices are artificial. They are authoritarian measures designed to elicit compliance, not natural consequences.
Kids 11 and under can’t get vaccinated. Not because its dangerous but because our agency is being extremely thorough.
These same kids cannot do anything to mitigate, when they are also in class throughout the day.
Oh and masking? That largely prevents spread. by the infected; not so great at preventing someone masked from getting infected. Also, even this level of temporary mandate is being fought.
Meanwhile and this point hundreds of millions (billions) of shots; and the risk factors are well-known. Yet this information doesn’t seem matter.
> Also, you claim that people like me will not be able to get a job. I laugh at this. There is already a hospital that won't deliver babies because they can't get enough staff after so many quit over a vaccine mandate.
Good luck working when insurance companies forces high premiums.
> If you and the authoritarians push us out of the economy, be prepared for the consequences. The natural consequences.
This is a veiled threat. I’m not an authoritarian at all, but in any society it’s give and take.
Some want all of the benefits of society without doing their part, and that will have natural consequences as well.
That isn’t a threat. That’s just the market correcting itself because it can’t support the level of welfare you’re advocating.
> Kids 11 and under can’t get vaccinated. Not because its dangerous but because our agency is being extremely thorough.
Kids 11 and under are in basically zero danger from COVID.
> Oh and masking? That largely prevents spread. by the infected; not so great at preventing someone masked from getting infected. Also, even this level of temporary mandate is being fought.
When masks are worn properly and changed often. That does not happen in the real world. And cloth masks are largely ineffective against viruses like COVID.
> Meanwhile and this point hundreds of millions (billions) of shots; and the risk factors are well-known. Yet this information doesn’t seem matter.
There is a difference between "heavy testing" (what COVID vaccines have gotten) and proper testing. Proper testing includes heavy samples over a long period. We haven't had a long enough period.
> Good luck working when insurance companies forces high premiums.
Insurance companies will not raise premiums any more than they have to because insurance is heavily competitive. If people start cancelling insurance plans because they raise the premiums on the unvaccinated, you can bet they'll acquiesce.
> This is a veiled threat. I’m not an authoritarian at all, but in any society it’s give and take.
Not a veiled threat. I'm talking about the consequences of locking 10% or more of the able people out of the workforce. The economy will suffer. A natural consequence.
> Some want all of the benefits of society without doing their part, and that will have natural consequences as well.
> That isn’t a threat. That’s just the market correcting itself because it can’t support the level of welfare you’re advocating.
I know it's not a threat, but again, the market will correct itself the other way: if people won't work, the mandates will magically disappear. If insurance is not bought, the surcharges will magically disappear.
I don't think we should make distinction if person spreading virus was vaccinated or not if we start to punish for that. That should not affect the punishment or how guilty person is. I see absolutely no reason why being vaccinated should protect you from criminal charges in case we start to charge for spreading covid. The person is as guilty without or with vaccine. They should have gone be tested or taken actions to not spread it.
Thank you for your reply. My question was because I got a ticket for having an open container in the back seat of the car while I was stranded on the side of the road.
They did the breathalyzer several times on me, zero each time. I didn't have a drop to drink. I didn't cause an accident. I was not driving recklessly. In fact, I was stopped on the shoulder.
If I have to pay almost five hundred dollars in fines and court fees even though I didn't do anything other than drive a friend's car home, I don't see why people who refuse to take the vaccine for no reason shouldn't have to pay even if we don't have any proven incidence they spread the disease.
Point is, our legal system is very inconsistent and you can't scare me with the slippery slope like today covid vaccine and tomorrow I am in legal trouble for a second serving of fries.
The virus is an invisible agent spreading exponentially throughout society, putting the health system under a massive stress. That’s of course not what smoking, drinking, or over-eating is about…
No, these only put the health system under stress that we are used to. Remember that story about that guy in Mississippi who had trouble finding an ICU bed? If you look at the real data it turns out the vast majority of these beds are not in use by people with covid, but by people with other problems, like heart diseases. You know, the problems caused by that lifestyle that’s a-ok because we’re used to the problems it causes.
The difference is that in a very short period of time, numerous people can end up with the virus. The diseases you listed are distributed over the year. You don't see thousands of people getting a heart attack in a week in the same area. COVID puts the healthcare system at risk because it is a sudden surge of cases which ends up being overwhelming.
What is the difference with ‘we’re used to it’? The things you describe also apply to the flu, yet no one would consider requiring vaccination cards for that. It just turns out there already are beds for people that get that because we are used to it.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In a democracy there is a way to make your point for every particular case in question: voting. Or demonstrations, which were held against Covid measures basically since the first wave all across democratic nations.
> You can still transmit the virus whilst double vaccinated. They do not slow spread
That's not correct.
I can win the lottery, but I probably won't. Don't think of it as black or white, binary, can/can't. Unless you talk about the probability of getting and transmitting COVID, and how vaccination reduces these, you will come to false conclusions like that.
Not true. The removed study was just one of 50. The study already had a control for bias attached to it. Even if the study is removed the effect remains certain.
The hit job on that study was also coordinated. The study was done by an Egyptian doctor in the middle of a pandemic. An actual doctor on the front line trying to save lives. They way he has been sullied in the name of protecting the financial interests of pharma companies is shameful.
A bunch of the ivermectin studies were paid for by pharma companies that make ivermectin. Do they have any financial interests?
Also the vaccines are pretty cheap. Which do you think is cheaper, one $5 vaccine or multiple days of medical care? If the goal was maximizing money to a pharma company, you certainly don't want to prevent people from getting sick.
Wouldn’t one also perhaps analyze manufacturers of drugs may be given during a course of treating covid on a hospitalization? Ivermectin is a very very cheap drug, used in bulk with livestock for worming, and likely with low margins.
I think you're coming to a strange conclusion in what you've said...Ivermectin is out of patent - far less money can be made from it. US pharmaceutical company Merck – one of the manufacturers of patent-free Ivermectin actively discourages use of ivermectin -- Also Merck signs $356M deal to supply US with experimental coronavirus drug. These are the financial interests you should be looking at.
Additionally, 'one $5 vaccine' is just wrong. There is already 3rd booster shots being administered in Israel with the pfizer vaccine as its effectiveness is diminished with the delta strain (and Epsilon..no doubt till Omega) ...The possibility of these vaccines being used similar to annual/bi annual flu booster shots is far from 0.
Nor is your comparison a fair one...It isn't a split between use the vaccine or have everyone require days of medical care (that would of course cost more...Not necessarily to the benefit of pharma companies though) -- IF ivermectin was a effective (even just 5%) prophylactic OR treatment/therapy against severe covid symptoms (let alone possibly doing both of these things) that certainly would affect the profits of phara companies getting contracts and sales of their patented offerings.
How many doses of ivermectin are needed? If it is billions of doses for the vaccine, it is tens of billions of ivermectin, because you would have to take it regularly prophylacticly (forever?).
The ivermectin paste everybody is using for a few doses costs $7. People aren't paying wholesale costs for these drugs.
You can't say they pharma companies that make the vaccines are evil and only want money, but the other pharma companies that produce ivermectin are only promoting the drug out of the goodness of their hearts.
The Oxford study is using patients so far down the viral infection it has most certainly been designed to fail. All the evidence suggests ivermectin works best when used early, and Oxford plan to use it on late stage patients.
Funny that - given that Oxford are being funded by the pharma companies to make the vaccine and novel therapies.
Never bite the hand that feeds you and all. I don't know why we are expected to wait for a study from Oxford when it has already been written off by the actual doctors saving lives because of strange doses and late stage patients.
There are already 50+ studies. Nation states are already using ivermectin.
You are commenting on a thread about a Cochrane meta-review of the available studies that concludes that there is no conclusive evidence that ivermectin works. They know about the studies; that's the point. They don't show what you want them to.
They chose 14 studies of more than 50 available. Their method for screening studies looks biased towards finding an inconclusive result.
Bear in mind that 'bias' with regard to ivermectin is less likely to come from doctors than it is pharma companies. Doctors stand to gain nothing from the efficacy of ivermectin since it's a generic drug on the market since 1987. Pharma companies have a lot to lose if it's proven effective.
To control for bias one ought to look at larger sample sizes. And each time that happens there's a significant result.
Assuming it works, you have to take ivermectin constantly, and the pro-ivermectin studies generally only say that it reduces mortality / severe outcomes, not thy it significantly prevents infection or transmission. So if the world goes the ivermectin route, there's still a lot of value in the vaccines, and until the virus is eradicated we have to keep taking ivermectin.
This is an obvious financial win to any slightly competent evil pharmaceutical - e.g., make some small chemical variant of ivermectin, patent it, and p-hack a bit. Or just manufacture the generic and sell lots of it; plenty of companies have a good business selling aspirin, which literally grows on trees.
I'm not buying the "big pharma is trying to censor it" angle. Also, like any conspiracy theory, it requires a whole lot of people to be perfectly loyal and silent. If ivermectin is actually effective, some pharma exec with family in a part of the world with poor vaccine access is going to push for it.
Regarding your last sentence, 'If ivermectin is actually effective.." Pharma execs wouldn't have to push for it? They would just tell their family member to take it. I know anecdotes are not medical studies, but I know two people who caught covid, were feeling relatively 'incapacitated'. They were prescribed ivermectin by a doctor I know personally. They took it and started getting significantly better very quickly. Just anecdotes, but it's real life data point for me (high confidence). Not for you as you cannot know if I'm telling the truth unfortunately.
What I mean is that it would be hard to collectively keep a secret that ivermectin works. Your acquaintance's doctor happened to prescribe it - but I'm guessing most doctors would not. So this pharma exec (or researcher, or whomever) would need to tell their family to go find a doctor willing to prescribe it, or would send information to the doctor to convince them to prescribe it, or something. And that would leak.
Also I'm mostly referencing the idea, which I believe I've seen in some of these papers, that people should take ivermectin on an ongoing basis to protect against getting infected in the first place. If I were a pharma exec who knew that ivermectin secretly worked, I wouldn't want my family to get sick at all if I could help it - I'm pretty sure no paper is claiming it's 100% effective, it just reduces the chance of poor outcomes. So I'd have to tell them to find a doctor willing to prescribe ivermectin even before they're sick, and that would definitely leak.
So I hope I'm not talking past you, my perspective on the situation seems to somewhat oppose your intuition. Ivermectin is not a tightly kept secret. It has just been suppressed in the mainstream channels. Bret Weinstein has discussed this.
That website lists doctors who will hotline you a prescription. Maybe it's harder outside the US, but I know you can get off branded forms of it (perhaps those are worth less confident in?)
I would argue the secret isn't being kept. It just circulates in one silo and not all silos of our reality schism.
Like how hydroxychloroquine was suppressed in mainstream channels? Like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine also had some initial positive studies, but when large scale studies were done it was shown to actually cause more deaths than not taking it.
Brett Weinstein has made a lot of dubious claims so I am skeptical to what he says. He at one point has claimed that Ivermectin is 100% effective when taking prophylactically based on a single study that has received a lot of criticism for having numbers that dont make sense. To me it seems that he needs to be more critical of the sources he uses.
I could go on. To really understand what is happening in relation to Ivermectin I can highly recommend Ben Goldacres book Bad Pharma..it shows in detail exactly what we are seeing happen with ivermectin.
There is a significant financial interest in having ivermectin perceived as ineffective. Firstly, if it works it makes the emergency use authorisation for the vaccines look quite precarious. Secondly, and probably more likely, there are novel therapies being developed for Covid right now. Nasal sprays. Anti virals.
They are patented. Ivermectin is not - it's post patent and can be manufacured by multiple companies. Merck who manufacture ivermectin themselves have a new anti viral they hope to bring to market.
If ivermectin - a $3 treatment - proves to be effective then the emergency use Authorization for novel Covid therapies goes out the window.
When we are looking at meta analysis that take about 20% of the available studies and conclude 'inconclusive' we should be mindful that there's a massive financial interest for this. Science works. But like everything else, if you influence how science is funded you influence the results it finds.
The cat is out of the bag on ivermectin. Its already being used in india (where I am) and where the second wave was brought under control without vaccines. There was just 5% vaccine penetration at the peak of second wave but ivermectin started to get administered at that time in delhi.
You'll hear more about the mega doses of horse paste. Its in super high concentration since....it's for horses. In the UK it's not even imported in tablet 12mg form. Hence the stupid situation in which people desperately try to get it via vets and the dosage is way out.
At 12mg doses it's very well tolerated. I should know since I use it india the moment I feel I have any symptoms. 18 months and so far so good. I am just one person of course but I know many many others who have been prescribed it when they got sick and they then recovered.
Science works but financial interests influence what does and does not publish.
> If ivermectin - a $3 treatment - proves to be effective then the emergency use Authorization for novel Covid therapies goes out the window.
No, they don't, because the vaccines still prevent you from getting infected in the first place. If ivermectin (or hydroxychloroquine, or Vitamin D, or whatever) had been discovered to work last year, I would have taken it but I would also have gotten the vaccine, because every story I've heard from survivors sounds like it was a deeply unpleasant experience. And I probably would have paid more for the vaccine than the government-negotiated rates, too.
Also, those government-negotiated rates are about $20. A $3 treatment, as an ongoing preventative measure for the whole population, can easily add up to more than $20!
I just want to say, thay given how tense this conversation can be, the quality of the conversation in this thread (as of right now) is amongst the highest I've ever seen.
I've seen many people say this. But the reality is that the significant part of BTCs trading volume is in tether. When that dries up it's price will nose dive and the only route out will be into fiat. And if BTCs price is declining, no one is buying. So tether collapsing means BTC will collapse.
> But the reality is that the significant part of BTCs trading volume is in tether.
I believe that is not even remotely true.
Most Bitcoin users I know have never touched tether in any form.
Rather, what you're seeing is that there are a multitude of casinos operating under the guise of "exchanges" which have absolutely no access to fiat -- usually because they're fly by night shady operations if not outright scams. All these things use tether due to having no fiat access. All of these also pump out enormous amounts of fake "volume" that is ignored by most people with a clue.
If Tether untethers there will be a rush to other assets, pushing them higher.
Shorts denominated in USDT will get absolutely decimated, pushing other assets higher.
Exchanges using Tether will enforce a maximum withdrawal, pushing other assets higher.
Smart money will buy USDT at a discount once their reserve details are made publicly available. If it's FUD they'll make an absolute killing.
There's 3 possibilities here:
1. Tether is completely backed 1:$1 (highly unlikely)
2. Tether is partially backed, the reserves are greater than the outstanding
3. Tether is partially backed, the reserves are less than outstanding
Only 3) will have a downward price correction. If they've been buying BTC like everyone here has suggested then 2) is the most probable, since you know BTC is at yet another ATH.
If it becomes public that tether has excess reserves, the FUD will disappear silently. Worst case Tether says they will slowly sell off to reach 1:$1 over the next 12 months.
> If Tether untethers there will be a rush to other assets, pushing them higher.
On unbanked exchanges this is true. However the next step is that people will transfer those inflated assets to banked exchanges to exchange them for fiat, pushing the price down. See Gox, Mt.
This argument is very flawed, I'll pick on just one point. The main users of Tether are generally people who find it difficult to use conventional finance, so in the event confidence in USDT collapses, a lot of holders will be unable to exit.
I don't know why you gave possibility 1, given Tether have admitted it is not completely backed. Since the operation has refused over many years to provide proper accounts, breaking their own promise that they would, you would be foolish to bet on a rosy picture of their finances.
you own a bunch of tether, you decide to "rush" to other assets.
Except your existing assets are dropping to 0, so you don't actually have that much buying power anymore. So you'll only see a fraction of a rise. Meanwhile whoever sold you the tether probably cashed out a while back.
Not to mention that people don't rush to other assets in general, they rush to safe assets. No one is gonna rush to buy bitcoin in the event of turmoil affecting bitcoin exchanges, this is just nonsense.
