CharonY

A recent study indicates that omicron seems to have increased rates of hospitalization among unvaccinated children and adolescents. The authors have adjusted for incidental COVID-19 cases and found:

! Moderator Note The answer is No. Also, nothing in the post seems logical, and the reasons for high death rates in the US are well documented and include: - dismantling of pandemic response forces and plans - downplaying the disease by politicians and especially the former administration - crippling CDC and other health professionals and undermining their message by the administration - as a result, anti-pandemic responses were fractured and often counterproductive (catastrophic PPE distribution, is but one of the many examples) - sowing vaccine hesitancy - lack of solidarity and trust in science We do not need a bioweapon, if we have facebook. Since this appears to be an attempt to promote conspiracy rather than a discussion, the thread is locked pending review.

Also, they failed to provide any evidence that there was more safety data out there before any of those have been approved. If you register a trial you propose a time point when you expect to hit an endpoint which can be used to demonstrate efficacy (PhaseIII). In case of vaccines they can be based on infection events or disease manifestation. Once the endpoints are met, they are submitted to the drug agencies for review, where requests for additional data could be required. Due to a little, barely noticeable global pandemic, these endpoints were reached really fast and no surrogates were required. But this this point has been made repeatedly and are ignored or met with willful misunderstanding of the process. So let's ask instead: what endpoints did other approved vaccines met that the COVID-19 vaccines didn't? I would like to see evidence that individuals in any of the previous vaccine trials were monitored for longer than three months for side-effects, before wasting any more time on this. Notice that you again fail to understand how trial endpoints work. Or that in Phase IV (i.e. after release) effectiveness information is continued to be collected which then allows regular approval (which also happened). See, if one does not make an effort to understand the process, it is easy to get baffled. But it becomes an issue if instead of reading up and trying to understand the process, one then creates a dangerous narrative that is based on said failure to understand. In most other circumstances it would be easy to dismiss, but in the age of social media, weaponized ignorance is unnecessarily killing folks. That, together with a distinct lack of solidarity shows how difficult it is for us to face a common challenge.

I suggest that you take a look at the syllabus for your course. Typically there will be textbook recommendations. If the recommended books are not online/open source, you might be able to get them from your library. More often than not, lectures are structured around a couple of textbooks so you can easily read up on the topics. In fact, the original intention of lectures was that students first read the textbooks and then use the lectures to deepen/apply the knowledge and to get guidance into context.

Also folks under cancer treatment are extremely vulnerable to infectious diseases such as COVID-19. In the US COVID-19 alone is only behind heart disease and cancer as the leading disease. The mere fact that there are folks still trying to minimize its impact at this point truly and fully establishes how f---ed we are. Especially when the next disease (or a more deadly variant) comes up. Also, it is annoying the those pro-virus folks newest (or at least one of the newest) talking point is how somehow the COVID-19 deaths are all overcounted, whereas epidemiologists and other folks who actually calculate these things indicate that they are likely to be vastly undercounted. To make it perfectly clear, folks dying with rather than of COVID-19 is for the most part a myth, driven seemingly by the rise of Omicron in vaccinated populations where there was a substantial number of incidental COVID-19 hospitalizations. However, comparing the numbers coded with COVID-19 as cause of death, vs just presence of COVID-19, (e.g. looking the ONS data, freely available and with clear definitions of what they consider "involving COVID-19" vs "due to COVID-19" in the mortality analysis) it still appears that whenever COVID-19 appears, it is still the underlying cause of deaths in over 80% of all cases. Looking at the data, one can also see interesting patterns. Early in the pandemic, the highest proportion of deaths in which COVID-19 was involved but also the cause of deaths was very high (ca. 95%) and dropped when the cases were low and vaccinations started to increase. However, whenever a wave hit, the values go up to 80% again. I.e. if the disease is wide-spread it will more likely to hit vulnerable (including unvaccinated) folks, exactly as we would expect. But then, it is abundantly clear that this is not about facts at all, but rather to try to find narratives to justify one's worldview, even if it kills us.

Basically, if the test was not applied correctly, you do not know whether you got COVID-19 or whether you are still contagious. The rough timeframe of being contagious was about 1-2 days before you got symptoms and for roughly 10 days after. But a test would be much better to ascertain that. Wear a tight mask, see if you can get tested again (either rapid or PCR) and talk to your MD.

Did you use an appropriate gel percentage to see your fragments? Did the BamHI digest also show a smear? Was the undigested product smear-free? Was your estimate of the amount of DNA accurate? You could try to make prolonged digests (assuming no star activity) just to make sure. Finally if it is important, it might be worthwhile to submit your product for Sanger sequencing. Prices are so low now, it tends to be cheaper than the work time and material required to do all the trouble shooting and it gives at minimum confirmation that the ends are correct.

It is simple, really. If you want your group to rally around your cause, the easiest approach is to create a foe.

It should be noted that the UK SC has also limited power as it cannot overturn primary legislation by Parliament. Inherently, their appointment therefore becomes less political as it cannot be used to change legislative agendas (from what I understand at least).

Another study on veteran's data in the US indicated that COVID-19 is associated with an increased long-term risk of cardiovascular diseases. For all types of cardiovascular cases the excess burden (i.e. additional cases per 1,000 persons) after a year was 45, with heart failure and atrial fibrillation being the most common issues. Xie et al. Nature Medicine 22 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01689-3

It is slightly off-topic but I think it is worthwhile highlighting that terms like immunity, tolerance and resistance are often used in slightly different ways depending on context. In "classic" microbiology, which includes non-medical contexts we often use the terms tolerance to define a host-pathogen interaction which does not negatively affect host health but is also not being detrimental to pathogen fitness. Resistance on the other hand typically refers to direct limitation of the pathogen burden (and can include passive and active elimination of it). Unfortunately this is about the most consistent definitions you can find in literature and after that things get muddied up, depending on the sub-discipline. Immunity is then generally often referred to as a resistance mechanism, which can include our immune system, but sometimes also refers to other mechanisms which are employed to defend against parasitic interactions (it can be used in the context of bacterial mechanisms to fend off bacteriophages, for example). But unfortunately when it moves into the medical area, language can get a bit vague as the focus there is less on the direct interactions between host and pathogen (and underlying mechanisms) but is typically (and perhaps unsurprisingly) based on health outcome, such as disease development. Moreover, typically there is little consideration with regard of infection in the process. Infections are mostly considered in the context of host range but rarely (to my knowledge at least) extends to individuals. Individuals who get infected, but never develop symptoms would under the classic definition considered to be tolerant, but sometimes are also called immune, for example. But then, this is also used to describe a situation when an individual has the ability to clear the pathogen before disease manifests (which would be a resistance mechanisms). It also does not help that those terms are sometimes are not used consistently within a field, in part because mechanisms often overlap or are linked. That being said, natural immunity rarely is used (at least from what I have seen) to describe a situation where an individual cannot be infected by whatever reasons. Rather it does refer to immunity (in terms of resistance) due to exposure to a pathogen and is contrasted to vaccine-induced immunity. Neither of them meaning that one cannot get infected, but rather describing a situation where resistance is enhanced, if that makes sense. Time makes it even more complicated, as at this point we would need to look at the time dependent response of the immune system (where fast responses wane but slower long term responses have to take over) but also new variants play a role.

So is there data out there that would suggest either? Because most reports I can find on Lionfish does indicate that there are efforts underway to control them and I am unable to find reports indicating that they are mostly non-disruptive. Sure, it is possible that the worries were overblown, but before declaring it a myth, I would like to see some evidence. And if I scan lit on the Southern Caribbean I see a number of efforts to cull them (https://www.forbes.com/sites/daphneewingchow/2022/01/31/the-caribbean-is-taking-a-bite-out-of-its-invasive-lionfish-problem/?sh=648af9cb5e8f) There several papers that try to investigate the impact and cost of lionfish management, e.g. DOI:10.1007/s00227-015-2745-2 and a number of agencies, including NOAA seems to spend quite a bit of efforts on controlling this species, too: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/southeast/ecosystems/impacts-invasive-lionfish So at least that makes it strange that apparently either no one picked up on the fact that they are harmless (and spending a lot of money on it) or at least I cannot find reports on that.

If we had concentrated HCl or even HF in our bodies, we would be pretty much dead. . Concentrated HCL has a molarity of ca. 12M whereas the concentration in our stomach is ~0.15M. Also, I am pretty sure that even in concentrated HCl it will take quite a bit longer than a few hours to dissolve bone.

I wonder whether that is really a myth. Or conversely, are there studies that indicate that lionfish are non-disruptive for the ecosystems they got in? A quick google seems to indicate a fair number of studies where they seem to indicate significant damages. That being said, these were mostly a few years old already and it would be interesting to see what the current state of science is on that matter. One of the newer ones for example: https://doi.org/10.1080/03632415.2017.1340273

I mean, what else would become feces but what we ingest? Note that food does not liquefy in your stomach. It gets partially digested and mixed up, but it is mostly a pulpy mess. As this liquid pulp travels through our intestines, excess liquid gets re-absorbed by our intestines.

Hey, you know, just saying, but we can help with excess funding...

Actually folks knew for years that we need to put more money into vaccines to speed up development. Folks were just not that interested until recently.

There is quite some data for that out there and it is sometimes referred to as the leaky pipeline issue (my apologies if that has been mentioned before, I read this thread in bits and pieces and may have missed it). It is not necessarily only because of conscious preferential treatment, but as you mentioned there are complex contributors, including monolithic structures at the top and other systems that provide slight sieving effects on every step. In academia this leakiness even persists in women-dominated fields. In nursing above 90% of the students are female, but on the professorial level (I could not find data separated by rank) about 18% are male. While overall pay in this area is closer to parity than in other fields, it still favours men, if only slightly. But as a whole the barriers to seniority (as well as certain well-paying fields) are certainly contributors to the gender pay gap and there is a huge body of literature on this topic going back decades at this point. In parallel, as mentioned earlier various studies still find (sometimes diminishing) gaps within groups. For example here: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1060821ar And this is just in academia, which is a competitive field, but at least outwardly strives to achieve equity.

Very good points. I also wanted to add that due to the exponential nature of spread, even moderate reduction in transmissions per infection event can change the timeline with which hospitals fill up dramatically. It is not an all or nothing situation.

I think an easier, cheaper, but less inconspicuous method would be paper-based immunosorbent assays. It is possible to basically dry down a colorimetric assay in various size and shapes and it would likely not be less accurate than any straw-based design. A further advantage is that it won't come in direct contact with the drink, so risk of consumption and toxicity is also less of an issue. I would not be surprised if there are already products out there, actually. However, one would need to transfer some liquid from the drink onto it, which might not be easy to do without anyone noticing. A challenge with these assays (and likely more so for straw-based design) is that often there is a compromise with regard to sensitivity and accuracy, but in a pinch they would be better than nothing in either case. Edit: I was told that there is already something on the market like that: https://www.drinksafe.com/

I get that way when I see folks too lazy to to check their own sources and as a result promote dangerous misinformation. Especially when the claims are ridiculous. PhaseI is never dropped as it is a requirement to recruit a larger cohort (especially if preclinical data is lacking) From your link: How does it square with your claim that: It is bad (but perhaps not fatal) to misunderstand something. But it is worse to spread misinformation and then put in a link that contradicts the assertion, apparently hoping that folks would not read. Heck, here is a graph showing the timeline and the overlap between I/II/III. There is misunderstanding, which I am happy to help clear up and there is willful misrepresentation. This is not an example of the former. I also note that you entirely missed the issue of endpoints and rather seem to develop an own idea how trials should be rather how they are in reality. Edit: It is a bit rich in accusing someone of using outdated data and then present papers to delta. That aside the percentage in the paper refer to the secondary attack rate (SAR), which is basically the ratio between numbers of new cases among contacts to the total number of contacts. A SAR of 25% would indicate one new infection after four contacts, whereas a SAR of 38% would indicate one infection after 2.6 contacts (i.e. vaccination resulted in a reduction by ca. 34%). There are a couple of more studies out there but fundamentally they roughly show that vaccinations in delta reduce transmission roughly by half (some show more, some less). The authors do describe why they had overall SAR, and this is because they measured most of it in household settings, where SAR is higher due to ongoing contact with an infected person. With regard to omicron, studies found that two shots do not confer much of immunity anymore, but a booster shot still reduces transmission by half (i.e. comparable to two-shots with delta). The immunity does go down with time, but is still protective for at least 6 months. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1050721/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-4.pdf See page 14. I will reiterate, we are entering a new phase where proper risk assessment is going to be increasingly relevant. Spreading misinformation has contributed significantly to the disease burden and deaths we have seen so far and we have to take a strong stance against it. I do get that being anti-consensus can make one feel like something special, but here we are not talking about something theoretical ideas. Here, our actions have immediate impact on those around us and we have seen that misinformation kills. I am happy to address and discuss things that may be confusing, as frankly the whole mess is not necessarily straightforward. However disseminating outright misinformation is dangerous and should be treated like spread of similar dangerous information. I am pretty sure that at this point more folks died from misinformation related to COVID-19 than from trying to do dangerous experiments, for example, and we have a policy against the latter.

I would appreciate it if you would conduct at least do some basic fact checking before stating falsehoods as facts. All clinical trials are listed and you can easily look them up on clinicaltrials.gov. There, you can easily see that the BioNTech has set the trial up in two parts. One PhaseI and one PhaseII/III. Phase I started April 2020 and moved into Phase II/III in July. Again, that is publicly available information. As noted, the endpoint is not length, but whether a sufficiently large cohort of individuals got infected to evaluate efficacy, and in November an interim report indicated that they were hitting those numbers. Again, all of that is available and documented. Why are you making things up? It is not like that the virus is going to pay you anything, yo know?

That would be a huge jump in assumption. A lot of syndromes are associated with the immune system and a lot stimuli and drugs influence it. In order to ascertain that any of that has a direct impact on the course of a specific infection very specific studies are needed.

The reason why trials take so long is not because they need to be so long, but it is because they phases are traditionally done one after the other. In large part because they are expensive. Safety is assessed predominantly in Phase I. Phase II is looking for efficacy and III is generally used to assess whether it works better than e.g. existing treatments. So one way to accelerate the process, is to increase the recruitment and basically conduct II and III at virtually the same time, rather waiting for a result and then decide on making a decision to go forward. The fact that countries threw money at them clearly helped in the process. The length is often determined by the type of treatment (i.e. how long has it to be taken to show an effect) and time required to recruit sufficient number of people. Moreover, each trial has specific endpoints being monitored, which determines the length of the trial. In case of vaccinations, an important point is to get a certain amount of people infected, so that you can compare how many of the infected were in the placebo vs the treatment arm. For some diseases this can indeed take years. If they are are rare, it is very unlikely that any of the participants will get infected within a short time frame. The companies were "lucky" as during the trials there were several COVID-19 surges and they hit their endpoint fast. As StringJunky pointed out Phase 4 are after-market observations (which includes aspects like manufacturing quality, impurities and other issues). But again, it is not looking at an individual for a long time, but it is looking at side effects in a large population. For vaccines a typical Phase 4 would be a follow-up for side effects for three months and analysis of efficacy over 2 years (e.g. involving antigen/antibody tests, surveys etc.). Others have already commented on the other aspects that are misunderstood. To go back on-topic: the the vaccination mandate was scrapped for fear of losing workers.

You don't take vaccines over several years. Can you show me the article for details? The vaccine components are eliminated from the body in a fairly short time frame. What effects are you looking for and how would you ever now it was because of the vaccine rather than what happened to you between taking the vaccine and the point when it happened? In typical trials folks are not monitored for years after taking a vaccine. What is generally monitored are acute side effects, but those normally manifest while components of the vaccines are still present. So the typically monitoring time is roughly 2 months. You can find examples here: https://www.chop.edu/news/long-term-side-effects-covid-19-vaccine Fundamentally the number of folks vaccinated is still the best way to get safety data. The longer you look back, the fuzzier the sources becomes. Moreover, we also already know that COVID-19 causes long-term issues. So you have the choice between high risk of immediate and long-term issues up and including death and then another option of minimal risk.