The hospitalizations in South Africa went from 19% to 1.7% but trust Imperial (whose highly inaccurate lockdown modelling last year caused who knows how much damage) to produce a study that gives significantly less favourable numbers. If anyone has the patience to read it, it would be interesting to know what statistical/definitional trickery they've used to make omicron maximally menacing.
How is 40% less likely to lead to 1+ day hospitalization “maximally menacing”?
I haven’t read this imperial college paper yet, but yesterdays preprint from SA has it at 80% less likely to lead to hospitalization, with some uncertainty as to whether that’s due to intrinsic lower virulence vs underestimated prior immunity
Edit: read through a good portion of it, the methodology seems pretty reasonable, including definitions for infection/reinfection, inclusion criteria, the covariates included in the model. I’d say the biggest uncertainty factors are (1) it’s still early and there aren’t that many hospitalizations yet (the study period ended like a week ago) and (2) for their correction accounting for undercounted prior infections, they assume undercounting of 1/3 based on some other papers. Maybe that’s reasonable, I’m not that familiar with testing in the UK. But they report both corrected and incorrect results
Unfortunately, Imperial's predictions for the UK government have become politicised, so it can be difficult to discuss them rationally.
I'd be pretty concerned at the really small date range for this study, but otherwise it looks reasonable. The corrections of hazard ratios is the part that might, if you needed to, be hiding some trickery.
To all the people saying that she's been threatened and that's why she's taking it back: uhhh, do you have any idea how many people would have to be involved? It would be impossible to keep it a secret, somebody would say something. Take off the tinfoil hats, guys.
And yet the value keeps going up. I appreciate you people, the constant reminder that so many of you hold these incorrect views really magnifies the sense of "getting in early".
Hey man, thanks for the invitation, really, but you're literally just some random account on the internet and Carl Jung is a founding psychoanalyst/symbolic thinker. I would invite anyone to regard your suggestion in proportion to the comparative significance of your intellectual contributions.
L0L. This might be a new level of wokeism. Virtue signalling via condescending, taunting language directed towards someone the woke has identified as dealing with more significant problems than themselves. Truly brave and stunning. Praise George Floyd, most deserving martyr.
The Actually Real Scandal About Ivermectin is something like the anthropic principle but about the fact that I know that nothing positive about Ivermectin would ever be allowed on the Atlantic. Is Ivermectin at best barely above useless for covid? Maybe. Is it crucial and it's a crime against humanity for being suppressed? Maybe, and I'm inclined to say probably because the same people who lie about everything are mighty certain that Ivermectin is something that doesn't help covid and anyone who says otherwise is a horse paste eating moron.
> Is it crucial and it's a crime against humanity for being suppressed? Maybe, and I'm inclined to say probably because the same people who lie about everything are mighty certain that Ivermectin is something that doesn't help covid and anyone who says otherwise is a horse paste eating moron.
It is truly an indictment of our time that this is deemed a useful standard of evidence.
Wow you've really convinced me bud you definitely sound nuanced and educated, now I know that the vaccine = good and supported by smart people and ivermectin = bad and supported by dumb people, I know exactly which side I want to be on.
There have been people pushing snake oil instead of vaccines for the entire history of vaccines.
You can draw a straight line through the history of vaccination and find people pushing fake cures and drugs that are basically unsupported by solid evidence instead of vaccines.
Smallpox is extinct, diptheria, pertussus and polio are nearly extinct, and measles mumps and rubella would be nearly extinct if not for pockets of antivaxers creating a constant stream of outbreaks.
Go look up how many diseases these people killed prior to the vaccines, and then a few years after. You are absolutely taking for granted what we've accomplished through the use of vaccines.
While agreeing with your general premise: pertussis is most definitely not extinct, unfortunately. We see recurrent waves of it in California about every five years. The problem is in adults (who haven't had a booster in ages) it's frequently mistaken for a bad cold, but it can kill young children.
Also, because of their sheer ability to spread, MMR diseases can be big problems outside of the United States, though they are usually restricted to small pockets in the USA for exactly the reasons you mention. This is why we have to pay attention to community levels of vaccination, not just state or county-level. All outbreaks start local.
I agree but those were scientists from the past that practiced real science. Meaning they accepted counter arguments and evidence; not just dictate. They also discovered through the scientific method that you can not vaccinate for corona viruses
They also were acutely aware you should never mass vaccinate during a pandemic.
They were correct and that is why you see the results in Israel, Singapore, England, and now the US, that you are seeing. That these are bad therapeutics at best. They could end up being worse.
The scientist and doctors who accomplished what you enumerated are indeed out there, but their voices are being suppressed by bureaucrats that now represent crony corrupt science; like fauci.
Oh yes, the scientists of the unspecified date in the past when everything was perfect and there were no politics and no one was ever subverting science to tell us to smoke cigarettes.
You are living in a fantasy. Science and economics have always been messy, and despite that advances in medical science are now and always have been the best and only real line of defense against disease.
The Israel data shows excellent effectiveness of vaccines. For every age group it shows that the chances of severe COVID are greatly lower in the vaccinated than they are in the unvaccinated.
If you just look at the totals for their whole population it may not look that way because you run into a Simpson's paradox situation. That's because older people are both more likely in general to have their COVID cases be severe, and older people in Israel or more likely to be vaccinated.
To illustrate, imagine a population that has 2000 young people and 2000 old people, and both groups are 50% vaccinated with a vaccine that reduces your chances of severe disease by 90%, and image we are dealing with a disease that is 20x as likely to be severe in old people than it is in young people. Let's say that 1% of young, unvaccinated people get severe disease.
Here are the number of severe cases we'd expect in that population.
1 in the 1000 young vaccinated people
10 in the 1000 young unvaccinated people
20 in the 1000 old vaccinated people
200 in the 1000 old unvaccinated people
If we look at the overall numbers we get 21 severe cases in vaccinated people and 210 severe cases in unvaccinated people.
9.1% of severe cases would be in vaccinated people.
Now consider a population with 2000 young people and 2000 old people, with the same vaccines that reduces your chances of severe disease by 90% and where the diseases is 20x as likely to be severe in old people, but in this population 90% of the old people are vaccinated but the young are still only 50% vaccinated.
Here are the number of severe cases we'd expect in that population.
1 in the 1000 young vaccinated people
10 in the 1000 young unvaccinated people
36 in the 1800 old vaccinated people
40 in the 200 old unvaccinated people
Now for the overall population we get 37 severe cases in vaccinated people and 50 severe cases in unvaccinated people.
42.6% of cases would be in vaccinated people.
If the young people also get vaccinated at the same 90% rate as the old people, here are the numbers for severe cases.
1.8 in the 1800 young vaccinated people
2 in the 200 young unvaccinated people
36 in the 1800 old vaccinated people
40 in the 200 old vaccinated people
That gives for the overall population 37.8 severe cases in vaccinated people and 42 in unvaccinated people.
47.4% of cases would be in vaccinated people.
If no one was vaccinated, the numbers would be
20 in the 2000 unvaccinated young people
400 in the 2000 unvaccinated old people
for a total of 420 severe cases. 0% would be in vaccinated people.
If everyone was vaccinated, the numbers would be
2 in the 2000 vaccinated young people
40 in the 2000 vaccinated old people
for a total of 42 severe cases. 100% of cases would be in vaccinated people.
It is useful to look at the severe case totals in our population of 2000 young people and 2000 old people.
420 severe cases when no one is vaccinated
231 severe cases when 50% of both young and old are vaccinated
87 severe cases when 50% of young and 90% of old are vaccinated
79.8 severe cases when 90% of both young and old are vaccinated
42 severe cases when everyone is vaccinated
He's talking about transmission, you are talking about reduction of symptoms.
The vaccines don't prevent transmission. Now follow that to its logical conclusion: "we forcefully vaccinated everyone on Earth, why are we still having outbreaks?" Because... Well, you get it
After you sit down and mull over this concept for a while, vaccine mandates make absolutely no sense. Vaccine passports make absolutely no sense. Unless your goal is a slight reduction in ICU patients, forcing people to get it is a straight up violation of human rights.
"Pandemic of the unvaccinated" yeah, right. Blame the leaky vaccine, not the people who already have natural immunity.
People vaccinated who get infected tend to have cases that do not last as long as they do in unvaccinated people, which reduces the number of people they spread it do.
I have cystic fibrosis. They basically discovered the cure a few years ago. It is called trikafta.
What you are saying is ridiculous. The medical industrial complex has problems, but it does deliver very real miracles to millions of people every year.
Comment section here proving once again that high IQ nerds are, when it comes to the stuff that actually matters, overtly authoritarian. You might be all for giving children hormone blockers and championing the right to vote without ID, but it turns out the liberalism was just a LARP all along. I am fortunate to be in a position where my livelihood is not being threatened, and I will never get an unnecessary medical procedure to satisfy either contemptible neurotics, pharma shareholders, or the government. Freedom is the freedom to say "fuck you", and I don't need
to justify why, though with the facts as they currently stand, it's about the easiest thing in the world. Seethe and cope, because at the end of the day you are a slave, and I will never be.
A lot of people will never understand you, so don't waste your time. You should instead try with a red light, say I'm not a slave, and drive through. The light won't understand you either, but maybe you finally will.
That's fine, just stay away from our towns and businesses where you can endanger people who care about each other. Your livelihood may not be threatened, mine isn't either - but you're probably threatening someone else's.
It's unfortunate that it's necessary to provide this reminder within almost every message thread.
It's basically a straw man fallacy, and the fact that it's probably unintentional on the part of the committers tells you something about the single-mindedness of those doing the committing.
How do you know anyone has natural immunity? There are plenty of anti-vaxx conspiracy nutjobs that would happily lie about it to avoid getting improved 5G.
> Seethe and cope, because at the end of the day you are a slave, and I will never be.
See, I'm not that petty, and I mostly content myself with living in a country where hospitalization rates are at a record low thanks to vaccine mandates. I don't need to seethe or think about it that much.
But if I were that petty, I think my seething and coping would be abated by the knowledge a lot of you people are dying these days, unless they can afford top-of-the-line fetus-based therapy.
My country has no mandates and ICU usage from Covid is under 10%. There is a policy in place that will increase measures when ICU occupancy from COVID rises to 10% - 20%.
Or some of us might be aware of the paradox of tolerance and correctly conclude that unlimited tolerance of intolerance is not the only alternative to authoritarianism.
Driving drunk doesn’t imply violating driver’s own bodily integrity against their choice. A drunk driver risks other people’s lives and it’s a punishable crime.
The prerequisites of the applied force in the case of drunk driving would be driver’s acts of volition to choose to get drunk and to choose to drive afterwards.
What are the prerequisites of the applied force in the case of staying unvaccinated? What are the acts of volition that justify the force?
The force would be used to prevent unvaccinated people from participating in certain activities (like attending public indoor gatherings). It’s very directly analogous to drunk driving.
For some few exceptions. I am vaccinated and don't feel threatened by unvaccinated people at all. Yes, there are people with compromised immune systems, but I think it is on them to reduce the risk of exposure without having a mandate on vaccination.
It's not just about immunocompromised people. The fewer people are vaccinated the quicker we get rid of the virus. If don't do it quickly, we're slowly "marinading" the virus in the vaccine, increasing chances for a vaccine-resistant mutation. It's kind of like why you're not allowed to stop a course of antibiotics half-way through.
Well, we have gotten rid of other viruses in the past and it also makes sense in theory given what we know about viruses, so the burden of proof is on those claiming we can't.
You seem to be arguing for the sake of it. I feel that my statement was pretty clear. If I am communicating poorly, I apologize, but there isn't much more I can add.
What are you on about? Cars are actually a pretty good analogy.
Banning cars is equivalent to a full lockdown - useful temporarily if the issue is getting out of control, but despite working well, takes so much away from us that it's definitely not worth it long-term.
Banning drunk, unlicensed, etc. people from driving treats the issue more immediately without taking away ver much at all. Yes, drunkards won't get to drive, even if they're willing to risk it, so that's a negative effect for them, but society as a whole will gladly sacrifice that to protect everyone else (including them, even if they don't want it).
I am certainly confused. Do you think drunk driving on shared roads should be allowed or prohibited? I'm also not interesting in discussing whether anyone's "mind has been destroyed," but I am interesting in discussing whether specific ideas are good ideas or bad ideas.
Can people please stop using that chant? It's not relevant. It was never used for what you're using it for. It was an overly general chant used to push a very specific policy goal.
Bodily integrity isn't a blanket rule. You have it only insofar as it doesn't harm others. Abortion, HRT, plastic surgery... fall into that category. Willingly spreading a deadly disease despite an easy and safe-ish preventative option does not.
I think all your examples are wrong. I am for abortion, but the bodily integrity argument is just plainly bad because it relies on axioms that the child isn't a fully developed human.
I support abortion rights but hate this argument in particular, because bodily integrity of the child would be of interest as well.
HRT and plastic surgery are irrelevant here since they are voluntary choices.
The post I was replying to was using the "my body my choice" chant which as far as I know is almost exclusively used by the abortion right movement.
They were trying to apply it to vaccination, which isn't comparable to abortion for reasons I explained and therefore the chant had no place there.
I do agree that the framing of abortion as a bodily integrity issue is missing a lot of other aspects, which is why we got dumb things like the heartbeat laws. But it is the argument I hear most activists make.
HRT and plastic surgery are relevant because they're choices you should be allowed to make about your body because they don't harm others. Not getting vaxxed doesn't satify that criterion. It's not a perfect comparison since one is an action and the other is the lack of action, but it's still an issue of the government controlling what you do with your body, which I argue is acceptable if and only if it's something that harms others.
> Bodily integrity isn't a blanket rule. You have it only insofar as it doesn't harm others.
To move forward, you have to prove that one particular unvaccinated person harmed another particular person in the case of covid. Good luck with establishing this causation!
> I will never get an unnecessary medical procedure to satisfy either contemptible neurotics, pharma shareholders, or the government.
One man's freedom ends where another man's begins. By not getting vaccinated against coronavirus, you are endangering yourself (which, while fine from a personal freedom point of view, still leaves society in form of either the taxpayer or your health insurance on the hook for the treatment cost should you die from it) and you are endangering others who are legitimately unable to get vaccinated (children < 12 years of age, immunosuppressed people, non-responders) with a deadly disease.
And the more people get infected, the more overwhelmed hospitals get with COVID cases (especially given that the delta mutant is both more infections and more likely to cause severe, ICU-requiring distress)... which means the collective freedom of you and other people to not get vaccinated is likely to directly impact the freedom of others who are in need of an ICU bed. And then there is the immense mental and physical load that the unvaccinated severe cases of COVID put on the individual healthcare workers who are obligated by their professional ethics to treat you, no matter what.
So much loss of life, of wealth, of happiness only to satisfy the radical libertarianism of the few. You know, if it were like with seatbelts where the only one you're endangering by not wearing it is yourself then I'd say go for it, see you in wherever we end up after our death - but by not vaccinating, you are part of a direct threat against everyone else.
