Coronavirus

[Leroy]

But if you're not vaccinated, there is still a whole lot of virus out there and your chances of catching it are still pretty high, especially if you stop masking. Infections totals and rates are falling from their peaks because of the number of vaccinated people. For the unvaccinated, they are as high as ever.

So at what point can we stop feeling sorry for the non-mask and non-vaccinate people?

[GeddyWrox]

But if you're not vaccinated, there is still a whole lot of virus out there and your chances of catching it are still pretty high, especially if you stop masking. Infections totals and rates are falling from their peaks because of the number of vaccinated people. For the unvaccinated, they are as high as ever.

So at what point can we stop feeling sorry for the non-mask and non-vaccinate people?

I did a while back. Noted it here, and got reamed for it by someone. Shrugs.

[Richie Allen]

Is there any chance someone who refuses to get the vaccine would still wear a mask at this point?

[G. Keenan]

So at what point can we stop feeling sorry for the non-mask and non-vaccinate people?

Oh, I've already passed that point. If you can't be bothered to get the safe & free vaccine that's now easily available everywhere, and you won't wear a mask for whatever asinine reason, nobody's gonna feel sorry for you when you get the rona.

Here in Illinois, 98% of new infections are unvaccinated people. People are still dying everyday because they've chosen not to get vaccinated. Boy did they stick it to that smug nerd Fauci!

[cardinalkarp]

But if you're not vaccinated, there is still a whole lot of virus out there and your chances of catching it are still pretty high, especially if you stop masking. Infections totals and rates are falling from their peaks because of the number of vaccinated people. For the unvaccinated, they are as high as ever.

So at what point can we stop feeling sorry for the non-mask and non-vaccinate people?

I did a while back. Noted it here, and got reamed for it by someone. Shrugs.

Quit being over dramatic, you didn’t get reamed for anything. You said people who don’t get the vaccine “should be nominated for the Darwin Award”, to which I said is insulting.

I’m not asking for anyone to be sorry for anyone. You do you, I’ll do me. This is a personal choice after doing ALOT of research, and continuing to live a HEALTHY lifestyle which IMO is what helps everyone combat this virus....vaccine or no. And that’s what gets lost in all of this. For Americans it’s about getting your COVID vaccine and continuing to eat garbage, stay fat, and get diabetes and heart disease which is MUCH more deadly than COVID will ever be.

[cardinalkarp]

Is there any chance someone who refuses to get the vaccine would still wear a mask at this point?

Absolutely

[ghostrunner]

But if you're not vaccinated, there is still a whole lot of virus out there and your chances of catching it are still pretty high, especially if you stop masking. Infections totals and rates are falling from their peaks because of the number of vaccinated people. For the unvaccinated, they are as high as ever.

So at what point can we stop feeling sorry for the non-mask and non-vaccinate people?

I did a while back. Noted it here, and got reamed for it by someone. Shrugs.

Quit being over dramatic, you didn’t get reamed for anything. You said people who don’t get the vaccine “should be nominated for the Darwin Award”, to which I said is insulting.

I’m not asking for anyone to be sorry for anyone. You do you, I’ll do me. This is a personal choice after doing ALOT of research, and continuing to live a HEALTHY lifestyle which IMO is what helps everyone combat this virus....vaccine or no. And that’s what gets lost in all of this. For Americans it’s about getting your COVID vaccine and continuing to eat garbage, stay fat, and get diabetes and heart disease which is MUCH more deadly than COVID will ever be.

Honestly you’re doing the insulting here. You can’t turn obesity and lifestyle off like a light switch. Covid doesn’t change psychology, metabolism, or personal circumstances.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

But if you're not vaccinated, there is still a whole lot of virus out there and your chances of catching it are still pretty high, especially if you stop masking. Infections totals and rates are falling from their peaks because of the number of vaccinated people. For the unvaccinated, they are as high as ever.

So at what point can we stop feeling sorry for the non-mask and non-vaccinate people?

I've....struggled with this. I'll keep an eye on Arkansas' numbers, in particular the county I live in, to just kind of be aware. They're pretty significantly reduced: hospitalizations, cases, deaths all about where they were back in the Spring of 2020 before the outbreak really took hold around here. Obviously, at this point it has taken hold and lots of people are vaxxed and many more have had it and plenty have died already and unable to do so again.

The governor a couple weeks ago pretty bluntly said that everyone dying hadn't been vaxxed and had had the opportunity to do so. Which, yeah, I mean it's true and it kind of made me feel, less bad, I guess for lack of a better term.

But, really, I don't imagine the majority of people dying or even suffering from the virus are the extreme outliers on the fringe. There are plenty of people that don't want to be vaccinated for a plethora of reasons. And, that's fine.

What I do find particularly sad about or sorry about is the over-abundance of fake news and dearth of factual information in the general population. That's not to say people not getting vaxxed or people getting vaxxed are right/wrong or one side has better/worse information. But, I do think the media, social media, and large factions of groups stand to benefit via the spread of propaganda, half truths, and flat out lies. The easy example is Facebook pushing anti-vaccine posts onto new mothers feeds solely in an attempt to get them to spend more time on Facebook. I think that's been cleaned up, but I don't really trust they've abandoned that practice wholly of pushing controversial statements to the front.

Regardless, that's besides the point. The point is all pandemic long, we've been subject to sensationalistic claims, distorted truths, and flat out lies (Multi-Inflammatory Joint Disorder or whatever it was called in children early; the entire hydroxychloroquine debacle; masks not necessary; virus lives on surfaces for 9 days; etc etc etc). A poll/study/whatever found that democrats thought about 50% of those that caught Covid would end up in the hospital while republicans thought it was only 1% (I think the generally agreed upon number is 20% of those diagnosed). Exacerbating the already 'news as more of a form of entertainment and less of facts' situation was a lot of [expletive] generally wasn't known and scientists/doctors kind of figured it out as they went.

Some have argued the WHO in particular should have known and did a poor job even if a lot of the information about coronaviruses coudn't be trusted early on but that's another argument. I may have posted something about it earlier, but suffice to say, coronaviruses are known to be airborn and masks are known to help. I think it's in the Coronavirus Chapter of your Virology for Dummies book.

Back on point, it is really difficult to find a single news source to present unbiased, factual, and relevant information, especially immediately. I don't trust CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, etc and I don't really think its wise for people to get all their information solely from those arenas. Which leaves more independent websites and individual voices on twitter/youtube/facebook/whatever. And, you can find guys arguing the world is flat on any of those platforms. You can probably trust the local and state leaders of the health departments and what not, but how often do they provide timely information? Never. They're a week or two behind simply because they're not in the business of breaking news. And even those guys get it wrong.

People are generally misinformed, myself included, and it's easy to happen especially given the complexity of the problem. We're not dealing with a known equation where 2+2=4. With respect to the vaccines, we're dealing with how the human immune system will react to a virus or a protein and what other affects that will have on the body. I saw an article today on msn.com where the J&J CEO or something said people would need a booster shot in the fall. The pfizer ceo said the same thing months ago. And, I still have yet to see a. [expletive]. shred. of. evidence. that the vaccine efficacy wanes over time. Antibodies? Yes. Efficacy? Not proven. Why is msn.com (and lots of other outlets I'm sure) promoting this narrative when it's not. [expletive]. known. To get clicks. It's all these scumbags care about. [expletive] them.

I'll share my final anecdote about a conversation I had with my dad who had covid, recovered but hasn't been vaxxed a month or so ago. I asked him if he was going to get vaccinated and he just kind of himmed and hawed. Said he didn't know what to do/who to listen to. I asked what he meant and he said: I've had covid. It wasn't bad. I don't want it again. I've heard there are side effects to the vaccine that I don't want. I've heard all sorts of lunacy about the vaccine that I don't believe. But, I've also heard those that have had covid have immunity for some period of time if not long lasting? I don't know how long I'm immune, if I'm immune, and I don't know how long the vaccine lasts. In short, I don't know what to do.

And, to the underlined point, which was really the crux, I just kind of said it's still recommended to get it, the side effects are pretty manageable/negligible in the short term and not likely existent in the long term, certainly not more likely than having a long term effect from the virus. (though if you trust the j&j ceo the answer to the question of how long the vax lasts is ... until fall) When I look at it through those lenses, it's not difficult to understand his decision. *Shrugs* I ain't gonna go to war with him over it.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

On to the fun stuff...

The origin.

The media has, I guess, picked up some of Fauci's emails through a foia request (nice). I love when the media does foia requests for some reason.

Anyway, quick recap on the two theories. One is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab and the other is that it came from an animal, likely a bat via a pangolin or something. There was a very similar virus to Sars-Cov-2 found back in 2013 in south china (not wuhan). I think it was called ratg13. From my understanding, aka this is not reliable, the spike protein had a mutation (presence of a furin cleavage site...lol at cleavage) that made it easy to bind with the ACE2 receptor in humans. There is an eerily similar mutation on the sars-cov-2 spike protein though not identical.

From there, you can break off and say: See it existed in nature way back in 2013. That's proof Sars-Cov-2 came from nature. Or you can say: See, they had a similar virus and were studying it in Wuhan, that means its likely sc2 leaked from the Wuhan lab. Neither are proven at this point.

Back to the foia/fauci emails. I can't find this email, only mentions of it and quotes in various news articles. No idea if the wsj leans a certain way, but whatever, here's their take.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-emai ... 1622830092

They told the world that the Covid-19 virus clearly couldn’t have been manipulated in the laboratory. But what they actually thought at first sight was that it had been.

The letter from five virologists published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, was the single most influential statement in capturing the public narrative about the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Here was an authoritative statement from leading experts assuring the public that in terms of the virus’s origin “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

But that’s the exact opposite of what these experts thought after taking their first look at the virus. A large batch of emails exchanged with Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was made available this week to BuzzFeed and the Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act. For the most part the emails concern meeting arrangements or messages from cranks and have been redacted of any meaningful information. But one significant email escaped the censor’s black marker.

On Jan. 31, 2020, shortly after the SARS-CoV-2 genome had been decoded, Kristian Andersen, the five virologists’ leader, emailed Dr. Fauci that there were “unusual features” in the virus. These took up only a small percentage of the genome, so that “one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.”

Mr. Andersen went on to note that he and his team “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.” It isn’t clear exactly what he meant by this striking phrase. But anything inconsistent with an evolutionary origin has to be man-made.

Here's the paper the virologists published in March of 2020, less than two months after telling Fauci, allegedly in an email, they thought it was lab made and 'inconsistent with evolutionary theory'.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

Our comparison of alpha- and betacoronaviruses identifies two notable genomic features of SARS-CoV-2: (i) on the basis of structural studies7,8,9 and biochemical experiments1,9,10, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be optimized for binding to the human receptor ACE2; and (ii) the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 has a functional polybasic (furin) cleavage site at the S1–S2 boundary through the insertion of 12 nucleotides8, which additionally led to the predicted acquisition of three O-linked glycans around the site.

1. Mutations in the receptor-binding domain of SARS-CoV-2
The receptor-binding domain (RBD) in the spike protein is the most variable part of the coronavirus genome1,2. Six RBD amino acids have been shown to be critical for binding to ACE2 receptors and for determining the host range of SARS-CoV-like viruses7. With coordinates based on SARS-CoV, they are Y442, L472, N479, D480, T487 and Y4911, which correspond to L455, F486, Q493, S494, N501 and Y505 in SARS-CoV-27. Five of these six residues differ between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV (Fig. 1a). On the basis of structural studies7,8,9 and biochemical experiments1,9,10, SARS-CoV-2 seems to have an RBD that binds with high affinity to ACE2 from humans, ferrets, cats and other species with high receptor homology.

....picture....


While the analyses above suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may bind human ACE2 with high affinity, computational analyses predict that the interaction is not ideal7 and that the RBD sequence is different from those shown in SARS-CoV to be optimal for receptor binding7,11. Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation.

I don't know what any of that means, but thought I'd include it. Sounds like they did analyses and then threw it out because the computer said so. *Thumbs up* Then go on to say SC2 is so infectious because of natural selection on a human. Sounds made up. No idea if there was ever peer reviewed or not.

What is interesting though is the authors of this paper at first glance either got it completely wrong or for some reason changed their story when they published this. Which, hey, I'm all for getting it right even if that means evidence takes you completely away from what the first thought was, so long as it is right.

But, a year later and there still is no proof of this originating in bats despite pressure ramping up on China to give some more satisfactory answers than 'eh, whatever, it wasn't us, okay. go away now'.

I don't have much more to add, but over the past couple weeks have seen some stories that "US Intelligence" so take it fwiw confirmed wuhan lab workers were hospitalized with symptoms consistent with covid or other seasonal illness.

Rand Paul claims Sars-Cov-2 doesn't infect bats all that well....no idea what study he's referring to though that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that I couldn't find it with 3 google searches.

Apparently the host animal of Sars Cov 1 was found in like 4 months, the host animal of MERS was found in like 9 months. China hasn't found the host animal, and, from what I understand probably never will. I hope a hawk ripped that little [expletive]'s dick off while disembowling it, if it exists.

Kind of like MH370, I get the feeling we will never have a satisfactory answer.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Little information about the myocarditis side effects from the mRNA vaccines. While, likely present, it should be noted that the percentage is incredibly small and also almost assuredly less than what is associated with covid.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/ ... 9-vaccine/

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) presented data that showed heart conditions were rare. But they were more frequent than the two agencies would normally expect among individuals aged 16 to 24. The cases were more common among males, especially after a second dose.

...

In the U.S., among all age groups, a total of 216 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis were reported after first doses, and 573 cases were reported after second doses.

For every one million second doses administered, the CDC and FDA said they would have normally expected to see between two and 19 cases among the age 16 to 17 age group. Instead, they recorded 79 cases. And while they expected eight to 83 cases in people aged 18 to 24, they recorded 196.

Fifteen patients were still in hospital, including three in intensive care – two of whom had other health issues. Out of 221 patients whose recovery status was known, 81 per cent recovered fully from their symptoms. The other 19 per cent included patients with ongoing signs or symptoms.

A cursory glance shows the globe and mail is not biased but may lean a little to the right.

Regardless, this isn't an editorial and only a presentation of stats which, to my knowledge, are reliable though I didn't verify them anywhere else. David Juurlink tweeted the article and I tend to trust him, so, there's that.

Here's the tweet.