corona? :(

[eddiemccandless]

...Have you any idea what a pandemic Ebola could mean...?
...probably the closest men disease to plague...

Ebola can not generate a pandemic like the one that covid did, that's the point. It is obviously a more dangerous disease for those who do catch it, but I bet you that if you see someone crying blood you are going to stay very, very far away from them. And since the only way to spread it is through touch, it just won't go very far. We did have ebola outbreaks but they were contained very quickly, and even where they spread they did relatively small damage compared to covid. Now an airborne ebola would be absolutely terrifying, no doubt about that... But that would be another disease. Just read the numbers and compare that with covid. https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html. 53k people have died of covid just in South Africa (and Africa is doing great compared to the rest of the world).

Why Is Covid-19 More Deadly Than Ebola? An Infectious Disease Doctor Explains

Dr. Mark Kortepeter, a physician and biodefense expert who formerly worked at the U.S. Army “hot zone” research lab, explains the math behind how Covid-19 death tolls are overtaking deadlier viruses.

www.forbes.com

@kurczak, not everyone can get a vaccine, and not everyone who is at risk will get a vaccine, because they will follow a similar line of reasoning. Also, younger people are not immune to it, and some of the variants appear to have mutated in a way that makes them more dangerous to younger people. Not to mention the fact that if you let the virus go on for long enough we will eventually have a mutation that renders the vaccines less effective. So I am sorry, but people refusing the vaccine are ultimately acting selfishly based on irrational fears (and actually going against their own self interest without realizing it). And your car analogy does not hold. Cars are not an infective disease overwhelming hospitals preventing people from getting healthcare for other issues, destroying economies and causing people to lose their jobs. There's a lot of indirect effects from covid that you are not considering, which do a lot of damage and would be thwarted by herd immunity.

I can, to a point, understand the concerns with AstraZeneca (although a lot of those have been fueled by misinformation). But concerns with other vaccines such as Pfizer are simply nonsense.

 

[Mad Vader]

Selfishness is the most visible quality in anti-science posters. I see this daily in the comment sections of our local news articles. Me-me-me and all kinds of irrational arguments that justify this behavior. It drives me crazy, as these are people I depend on not to get infected. Can't wait for my second shot, but I won't forget how people during crisis behave.

Luckily, I'm old enough to know not to create an account and DESTROY my opponents with FACTS and CATS and SCIENCE, like here:

Just like all evidence points to my cat being safe for me to have around while I sleep, although she definitely could kill me in my sleep and I can see in her eyes that she's thinking about it every now and then

 

[eddiemccandless]

I am not trying to "destroy" anyone, I feel that I come across stronger over written text. I just... It's so damn frustrating. We could actually get rid of this thing if everyone just followed the science, and I don't understand why there is such a distrust towards it. We are surrounded by products of it without which we would all be absolutely miserable.

 

[Mad Vader]

It's a joke. I know you are not one of those highly strung debaters gunning for the win.
I share the frustration about scientific facts - I somehow hoped that even if people are not educated enough to recognize legitimate sources, they still have common sense to recognize bull****. Mostly, I was wrong, people would believe whatever they want to believe, and the more bull**** is out there, the more they buy it. This is why I hate disinformation and would have it censored the **** out of the internet. The big social media are on the right track with this.

 

[Pentagathoos]

Adding to what Kurzac has already said, there is something new about the corona vaccines. Afaik they are all mRNA vaccines, which means they are the first vaccines with this type of mechanism to have ever been given authorization for public use. There have been mRNA vaccines developed for other diseases but so far none have been licensed (I don't know if this is because they were refused licenses or because they just haven't made it through trials yet) which means this really is new territory. Doesn't mean you shouldn't take the vaccine, especially if you're at risk but being worried about the long term effects is not unfounded. Personally I probably wouldn't bother getting the vaccine but it seems likely that there are going to be restrictions on un-vaccinated people worldwide so I'm sure I will take it eventually. And I am glad that my mother and my girlfriend have both had their first jabs seeing as they are at a higher risk than me.

 

[Mad Vader]

Only Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA, so there goes that argument - you are free to take AZ or Sputnik or Sinopharm or Johnson & Johnson if new things scare you. Also:

Early stage clinical trials using mRNA vaccines have been carried out for influenza, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus (CMV). Challenges encountered in these early trials included the instability of free RNA in the body, unintended inflammatory outcomes, and modest immune responses. Recent technological advancements in RNA biology and chemistry, as well as delivery systems, have mitigated these challenges and improved their stability, safety, and effectiveness.

There's plenty on the internet about how these work. There is no long term effect except new anribodies since the RNA is destroyed quickly and can't mess with your DNA anyway. You won't wake up the next day as a monkey.

 

[Adorno]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/st-vincent-volcano-eruption-caribbean-soufriere/​

Gonsalves said people have to be vaccinated if they go aboard a cruise ship or are granted temporary refuge on another island.​

 

[Pentagathoos]

There's plenty on the internet about how these work. There is no long term effect except new anribodies since the RNA is destroyed quickly and can't mess with your DNA anyway. You won't wake up the next day as a monkey.

There's a risk that these vaccines could cause or increase the risk of developing auto-immune diseases. However there's probably a much greater risk of developing these due to actually developing Covid so yeah I have to agree with you (grumpy face emoji) especially since we actually do know that a reasonable chunk of people are suffering long term issues after catching the covid, so I suppose the potential risk of long term side-effects from a vaccine are much lower than the potential risks of getting the disease.

 

[Age of Empires ¶ Densetsu]

Huh, I didn't know Kurczak was retarded. Interesting stuff.

 

[DanAngleland]

Kurczak, 'Long covid' doesn't sound like something I'd be blasé about experiencing, and plenty of previously healthy young people have been affected by it. I know you didn't talk about it, but I mention long covid in particular because I think it's more likely that a not-old and generally healthy person would experience that than actually dying from the illness, and because it is perhaps easier to imagine and therefore more likely to make one appropriately careful about not contracting it. Covid-19 is too unpredictable an illness which can screw up all sorts of bodily functions apart from the lungs. Here are some links to BBC articles about long covid, most of which feature specific individuals and how their lives have changed because of it. I think they are all from early this year, some as recent as a few days ago, though I've been seeing lots of similar articles for many months:

31 year old UK health coach with long covid

Survey indicates more than 1 million Brits may be suffering "long covid"

44 year old tested positive with mild dose 4 months ago but became progressively worse

29 year old man struggling a year after catching it

Of those who get 'long covid', women under 50 have worst outcomes

30 year old female badminton athlete still struggling in March from Christmas Covid

 

[eddiemccandless]

There's a risk that these vaccines could cause or increase the risk of developing auto-immune diseases.

No, there isn't. That's a rumor, which I would guess was started by studies like this one:

SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and autoimmune diseases amidst the COVID-19 crisis

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become challenging even for the most durable healthcare systems. It seems that vaccination, one of the most effective public-health interventions, presents a ray of hope to end the pandemic by achieving ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Which were focusing on something completely different (i.e., can you take the vaccine if you are already immuno compromised?), and were misinterpreted by some people.

No evidence COVID-19 vaccines lead to autoimmune disease

CLAIM: COVID-19 vaccines that rely on messenger RNA technology will teach the body to attack itself, leading to autoimmune disease...

apnews.com

Here's a good fact checking method: whatever you hear, if it plays on fear and emotions there's a pretty good chance that it's false or at least misleading, and you should probably look into it much more in depth before taking it as fact.

 

[Nega-Brutus]

Yeah, statistically, I put people at risk of every time I drive a car. I could eliminate the risk by never driving again and walking everywhere, but I'm just not going to.

This is something that's considered, but society gains to benefit much more from permitting people to drive where they want, going about their business. The risk of an accident becomes acceptable given that our entire infrastructure is based around the idea of making it as safe as possible of an experience. Like Eddie pointed out, we don't have the infrastructure to treat everyone that would contract COVID because we only have a limited amount of hospitals, ie not enough infrastructure and methods of making it safe. So people would not be able to get treated and just die in their homes.

---

I think conservative-leaning people are much more friendly and social irl. So it probably sucks extra for them to be locked up given they have stronger social needs.

 

[Adorno]

Russia cries “sabotage” after Slovakia questions quality of Sputnik vaccine

Russia now says it wants its vaccine back from Slovakia.

arstechnica.com

The Slovak regulatory agency, the State Institute for Drug Control, reported that the batches it received did not “have the same characteristics and properties” as the Sputnik vaccine that was peer-reviewed in the Lancet and found to be 91.6 percent effective.

“In several cases, they appear to be vaccines with different properties (lyophilisate versus solution, single-dose ampoules versus multi-dose vials, different storage conditions, composition, and method of manufacture).”

Story is from NYT but behind a pay wall.

Slovakia Claims a Bait-and-Switch With the Russian Vaccines it Ordered (Published 2021)

Slovakia says that Sputnik V doses it received did “not have the same characteristics and properties” as a version endorsed by a respected British medical journal.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Pentagathoos]

No, there isn't. That's a rumor, which I would guess was started by studies like this one:

Yes there is. There is no evidence for it yet but there have been no long term studies addressing this concern yet so of course there wouldn't be any evidence. I seriously doubt that anyone who isn't genetically susceptible to developing auto-immune disorders is going to have any issues here, but considering that some of the RNA will be uptaken by cells other than immune cells there is a potential mechanism for auto-immunity to develop. But I'm sure viruses in general are much more likely to induce auto-immunity and covid in particular seems to increase the risk of allergies in children so overall I'd rather have the vaccine than not and I probably shouldn't have mentioned it.

Basically I'm saying that yes, the vaccines are new and might have unknown long term effects but covid-19 is also new, is known to cause long term effects and most likely causes other currently unknown issues so vaccine is the better choice. Risks of vaccines seem negligible compared to risks of covid.

Edit:
Just to be crystal clear I'm not claiming there's any known risk from these vaccines.

 

[Adorno]

The putting others at risk is just emotional blackmail. If you're at risk, get vaccinated yourself if you want to, wear a respirator if you want to, or make any adjustments in your life you see fit. I think we've made enough sacrifice for them over the past year. Yeah, statistically, I put people at risk of every time I drive a car. I could eliminate the risk by never driving again and walking everywhere, but I'm just not going to.

I think that kind of argumentation is almost childish.
Because driving can be dangerous a heap of things are done to minimise the risk, such as making sure people know how to drive (driver's licenses), speed limits, fines for driving too fast, safety measures, airbags, seat belts, road maintenance, and so on and on.
With vaccines we attempt to minimise, or even eradicate, the risk of severe disease/death. But it requires a big majority of people to actually get vaccinated, just like most driving needs to be responsible, or the roads would be chaos.
Luckily most people want to be responsible, whether it's driving a car or being vaccinated.
We can't erase the risk of hurting others in this world, but we can always try to minimise it - which many sensible people do, and work towards every day.

 

[kurczak]

Yea, I've been minimizing for a year now. But some things are too much. I have been playing ball - wearing the mask, desinfecting my hands, staying home, losing money and sanity, got tested when socializing was inevitable. I contracted it anyway, was quarantined in an apartment for literally a month because of a clerical error. And I didn't break it although I easily could have and no one would have ever found out.

And the whole time, these experts whom I must trust unconditionally if I want to be accepted to polite society, with their "settled science", told me first that 14 days to flatten the curve, then that tens of thousands people congregating to protest racism is ok or perhaps even decreasing infection rates, but effectively firing hundreds? of thousands of people from their job, that's a small price to pay for literally no effect on the infection rates. And yeah first that I don't need a mask, then they admitted they deliberately lied to me, but see the thing they're telling me now that's definitely true. Omg why would the government lie to me, when did they ever do that, except the dozens of times they were caught red-handed including five minutes ago. Japan has had 9k dead for the whole epidemic, Taiwan literally just 10 people and neither of them had any """lockdowns""" whatsoever. Cuomo and all the other absolute c-words of governors pretended that holy **** everything has to be shutdown, but the moment the federal elections are over, yeah let's open it and live a little. The whole time they are gaslighting the **** out of people and act like oh no, how can you have questions and doubts about anything we say, even though we treat you like a disposable turd 24/7 and openly lie to you and **** your life over for political gains. Clearly we are entitled to your unconditional love and trust and we should be allowed to take away your freedoms and liberties for any ****stained, flimsy excuse of a reason and if you have a problem with it, we will guilt trip and shame the living hell out of you. Yeah we did lie about every other thing in this process, but the thing we're pushing right now, that's 100% truth, why would you doubt that. What's wrong with you, who hurt you?

 

[Adorno]

If you're referring to the USA, then the efforts have certainly been a disaster with incompetent politicians and politicised 'experts', saying what's convenient ad hoc. Here in Denmark it has been handled fairly well, but in many countries, maybe Czechia included, it's chaos and death.
(Protests are protected by most constitutions, pandemics or not).
I understand you've been following (quite far) left wing media (praising protests while saying people should stay home), and it's just as bad as right wing media.

We still don't have much, and no really good, research showing benefits of using masks in public. So it's mostly a political decision more than a scientific one (but few will admit that). (It's still vital in hospital settings, but that's a whole other ballgame).
It's a new disase no one knew much about in the early days, so maybe a lot of people (including 'experts') were naïve in saying "14 days to flatten the curve". But that quickly stopped.
I think it's natural to be bombarded with conflicting information with such a new, deadly disease. At least today - as opposed to 100-200 years ago - we know a lot about viruses and could quickly diagnose it, and vaccines have been produced in record time.

The sad truth is it looks like a war we can't win. Vaccines are our best bet.

 

[eddiemccandless]

@kurczak the experts did not say any of that. The press said it. And if you are talking about Fauci's stance on masks, he did not lie on it. He encouraged people not to use masks before we knew that covid could be spread by asymptomatics. The reasoning being that we needed to reserve masks for health workers, and that we were assuming that people with covid would be clearly identifiable from their symptoms and would be too sick to go around anyway. It was a mistake for sure but it was one that everybody made, and it was not a deliberate lie.

Now of course some of the press and stuff that you see in social media presented it that way, which is why you and many people believe it. They also did a wonderful job at getting people to distrust science and the medical community, which as Adorno rightly said is the only thing that can get us out of this mess.

I understand your frustration, but you are barking at the wrong tree.

P.S.: if it helps, Cuomo is a bag of dicks.

 

[Mad Vader]

I understand you've been following (quite far) left wing media (praising protests while saying people should stay home), and it's just as bad as right wing media.

All her talking points are straight from the US right-wing media sphere. The Taiwan bit gave it away really, as they keep banging about it - but NEVER New Zealand as it's leftyland and heads may explode.
The Covid information is highly politicized - while conservatives tend to be skeptical or outright deny things that are new and real, there's been a similar denial on the populist hard left that lockdown regimes are somehow used to control the population (without explaining why governments are in a hurry to vaccinate people and ease the lockdown regimes). It's Daily Stupidity out there on general forums.
The average man is also unable to distinguish between a political decision and expert advice, as you guys pointed out. The politicians didn't stop looking for reelection just because of the pandemics and sometimes disregard expert advice to help their ratings.

 

[kurczak]

All her talking points are straight from the US right-wing media sphere.

Unnecessary partisan PoV. I didn't mention NZ because - unlike Japan or Taiwan - they did institute lockdowns, which are my major point of contention and whose blatant immorality is a hill I am willing to literally die on since covid did nothing to me anyway.

P.S.: if it helps, Cuomo is a bag of dicks.

It does. I can't believe my hatred of him even makes me like DeBlasio a bit.