BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

Erm except it doesn't, seems to have made marginal differences in many countries and in Russia the vaccines seem to increase the death rate.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Some stats:

current 7 day average in my county is 2.3x the rate of the same time last year.

current 7 day average in my state is 2x the rate of the same time last year.

current 7 day average for the USA is 2.15x the rate of the same time last year.

More people died of COVID this years than last year. I noticed that the other day when responding to Newbie and his calls for broad vaccine mandates. At this point we should just give up.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Erm except it doesn't, seems to have made marginal differences in many countries and in Russia the vaccines seem to increase the death rate.

you are completely illiterate.

the russian and chinese vaccines have not been through the same scrutiny or process of approval. reports as to their efficacy and performance vary. it doesn't help that russia and china have both consistently 'cooked the books' on their case/death numbers. in short: we have no idea.

for the western vaccines we have PLENTY of evidence. there have been numerous longitudinal studies at this point of the efficacy of pfizer/biontech/moderna/astrazeneca/johnson&johnson. what you are peddling is a TOTAL nonsense. the idea that they make 'marginal difference' and 'seem to increase the death rate' is fucking insane.

the UK has completely decoupled the daily case number from serious illness and death. which is the ENTIRE point of vaccination: not to reduce cases or to eradicate the disease, but to stop it from seriously harming people. that's always been the best-case scenario and it is WORKING. deaths used to increase in proportion with cases; now they do not.

add this to much better hospital care and antiviral treatments, with better understanding than this time 1-2 years ago, and the picture is indeed much more positive than you make out. companies like merck will soon bring on-line new pill-based antiviral treatments which should work handsomely in tandem with widespread vaccination and seasonal boosters. in effect, we have the same arsenal and treatment programme available to us as with seasonal influenza, plus some incredibly promising pills which should mitigate its worst effects (as opposed to just taking a tylenol w/ caffeine whenever you catch a cold or flu).

about the most damning thing you could say is that this winter, 2021–2022, could be one more crunchpoint with a fair bit of nastiness. there's enough unvaccinated and vulnerable people still out there to overwhelm health systems once again. the race is on. and, probably in countries like the states, bipartisanship and general fucking insanity in the populace have made this winter again a worrisome prospect. but that's hardly because 'vaccines only marginally work and in fact might increase the death rate'. ffs.

you persistently try to misrepresent vaccines here, which is fucking odd considering your 'man of science' status. vaccines work. mRNA works. traditional vaccines work.

australian case/hospitalization images

australia currently has 58% full vaccination. that is NOT enough considering the potential for serious illness with the delta variant in younger age brackets. the australian government – rightfully – proposed 70-80% full vaccination as the 'transition' and 'consolidation' phases, to 'exit' from the current covid system. this is entirely in line with the general picture. want to know what it looks like in a country with ~70% fully vaccinated?



in short, shut up and read some studies. we are admittedly playing catch-up in our treatment of delta, but that's entirely to be expected. viruses mutate and our existing vaccines become less and less effective. it's been the same picture with flu for decades. eventually we will tweak the boosters to be better at beating delta/sigma/charlie/echo/foxtrot and life will continue. again, we don't ONLY have vaccines to rely upon at this point. public health measures + social distancing + antivirals + vaccines + better hospital treatment w/ steroids etc. and covid hasn't spawned any nightmare-scenario mutations yet, in over 2 years of firestorming around the globe, which probably means that it doesn't have any further nasty surprises for us. virologically speaking, it is a pretty simple beast with few 'moving parts'.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-06 19:27:39)

Its business as usual for high level research - conducted with chinese involvement

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-10-06 19:31:12)

Dilbert_X wrote:

Its business as usual for high level research - conducted with chinese involvement

which is a substantial amount of high-level research. do you have any idea what % proportion of papers i publish are from research teams at leading chinese institutions? tsinghua university is at least as prevalent as MIT in top journals thesedays.

it doesn't help that austerity-struck western nations have cut research funding to shreds whilst china has juiced theirs up to world-beating levels.

Plenty of countries with 80% vaccination are doing quite poorly, Britain is one of the few doing better - as likely to be due to better treatment than vaccine effectiveness.

about the worst thing you can say is that the vaccines are not a magic silver bullet for this pandemic, which was realistically known by everyone with a clue all along. vaccines are there to mitigate serious illness/death, and they are doing that. i've made this point many times before, but: a 50-60% effective flu vaccine has been considered 'good' for decades. longitudinal studies of mRNA vaccines put them at 75-88% effectivity over the first year. that's an astonishing result and we should be very, very glad for the vaccines.

you saying 'they only marginally work and might increase death' is just insultingly moronic. stop.

portugal has the 2nd highest rate of vaccination in the world right now. let's look at their relation between new cases/deaths:
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coro … /portugal/
oh. looks like it's working there to me.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-06 19:46:37)

you also have to consider the wider epidemiological picture. america has some of the highest rates of diabetes and heart disease in the world – two prime comorbidities for covid-19. to look at the american stats and conclude 'the vaccines don't work!' is idiotic.

Anti-vax murder spree, story is totally nuts.

Anti-vaxxer killed pharmacist brother and sister-in-law for ‘killing people’ with the Covid shot
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl … 5.html?amp

Court docs: Maryland man arrested for murders wanted to confront pharmacist brother with 'government poisoning people with COVID vaccines'
https://www.wusa9.com/amp/article/news/ … 1ba11cb6a7

"A little misinformation never harmed anyone!"

Depends on if the family lives where that sort of thing isn't just stereotype.

Elsewhere, another one of these:

Fifty Shades of Whey
@davenewworld_2
Anti-vaxxers in Beverly Hills harass children outside of an elementary school
https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/stat … 67844?s=21

(video in link)

Couple replies (I guess) clipped where I found this link:


lol

Would take a lot of nurse-murdering nutters to get to the point where that is literally true.

It would be nice if messy hair/beard guys would appear on more positive news stories to offset the Kaczynskis and bin Ladens and crazy, murdering hobo mofos.

Do you think it'll be crushed to foil collectors?

except that's not even close to being true.

https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/il

look at the relation between new cases/deaths. for the first 2 waves, it was pretty much a mirror-image. now, following vaccination, the proportion of deaths has basically been halved. 2nd wave daily cases peak: 58k. daily deaths peak: 382. 3rd wave after mass vaccination rollout: 65k cases, 203 deaths.

israel was a canary-in-the-mine for the reduced efficacy of vaccines against the delta variant. we know this. we know we will need boosters. but to say that vaccines are 'making no difference', by cherrypicking your favourite nation and spiritual homeland, of all places, is a nonsense. vaccines REDUCE deaths.

to scaremonger about global vaccination efforts based on the russian or chinese vaccines is beyond spurious. they haven't been through the same approval and haven't been developed with anything like the same transparency. all of the vaccines which are being mass-distributed at present in the west have been RIGOROUSLY tested. so to say 'vaccines might in fact increase deaths' and then gesture feebly towards russia is culpably moronic. you are contributing to vaccine skepticism, which is total fucking bullshit my guy.

the real 'issue' with vaccines is the piteous levels of vaccination in the global south. i think average vaccination levels are hovering somewhere around 5% for the african continent. we need to work on global roll-outs and on bringing everyone up to the same level. if there are to be any more scary or vaccine-defeating mutations, they're going to come from the global south where its spread is basically unmitigated. that's the real pressing concern with vaccines, NOT 'oh actually maybe they don't work at all'.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-07 20:54:58)

Never said they don't work, what I've said is 70-80% vaccination is not enough to justify relaxing all restrictions - especially travel.
All I hear from my moron friends is "When can we travel? I want to go to South America, then China, then Europe, then..."

Vaccines + a lot of other things = Effective virus eradication

Vaccines + life as normal =/= Anything really

Britain's figures are not mirrored everywhere.

Russia for example

you keep talking about russia, where, for the THIRD time, they are using their own vaccine that has no relation to global vaccination efforts. russia have never shared their true covid data. not cases, certainly not deaths, and next to nothing about their vaccine tech.

again, if your best argument for 'vaccines aren't working' is 'but russia!' then you're really scraping the barrel.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Never said they don't work

Dilbert_X wrote:

Erm except it doesn't, seems to have made marginal differences in many countries

for someone who took me to task for my use of 'prevalent', you're really stretching the meaning of 'marginal difference' there. vaccines have a MUCH more than 'marginal' effect on serious illness and death. that's just a fact. there have been umpteen studies done on this subject over the last 12 months and we have a pretty good consensus on the subject.

mention russia again!