• Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    ... haven't explained how use of the vaccine could suddenly cause an autoimmune disease. There's no reason to believe that the body would suddenly lose the ability to identify the "other". By your logic, me catching the common cold might cause my body to suddenly lose the ability to identify the "other", and trigger an autoimmune disease.Metaphysician Undercover

    I believe explained, just not in great length. Perhaps its brevity is insufficient for you, but it is still an explanation. But seriously, you haven't heard about the correlation between vaccines and autoimmune diseases?

    Several biological mechanisms have been proposed to explain how vaccines might cause allergic or autoimmune diseases. For example, allergic diseases might be caused by prevention of early childhood infections (the “hygiene hypothesis”), causing a prolongation of immunoglobulin E-promoting T-helper cell type 2-type responses. — Paul A. Offit and Charles J. Hackett Pediatrics March 2003, 111 (3) 653-659
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    I like that theory, but personally, I'm running with the zombie theory. The best part about covid hysteria, is that now, the wildest and most inane speculations are completely warranted.
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckfrank

    You are awesome!
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    I was under the impression that the basic technology has been around for 50 years. Is that still new in pharmacy? Sounds ancient.Benkei

    As I said, my knowledge of this only comes from articles in the BMJ mostly (it's been fairly Covid-dominated lately, obviously), but basically the idea of using external mRNA in cells to synthesise proteins is pretty old, but the mechanism by which they are got into the cell and then released, functioning, is what's caused so much trouble. It's that mechanism that's new and it's also that mechanism (or failures in it) that has caused the nasty side effects which kept the technology from being useful in the past. It's a common issue with vaccines. The idea of exposing the immune system to the virus (or preferably just one or more of it's proteins) is the simple bit. Getting that into the body is what the pharmaceutical concoction does, and it's here most problems are going to arise.

    Oh, that and the fact that the lizard-men have put nanomachines into it to control the population (we're not sure why yet). People react like a bugger to nanomachines - it's the main reason they haven't done it earlier.
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    Getting that into the body is what the pharmaceutical concoction does, and it's here most problems are going to arise.Isaac

    Sodomy, eh?
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    Oh, that and the fact that the lizard-men have put nanomachines into it to control the population (we're not sure why yet). People react like a bugger to nanomachines - it's the main reason they haven't done it earlier.Isaac

    If we could enable the handicapped to control their prothstetics by will, it would be amazing. But this is veering into transhumanism, and for the simple folk, the implications of implementing such technology (e.g. cyberization of the human brain) is rather stupendous.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    I believe ↪Book273 explained, just not in great length. Perhaps its brevity is insufficient for you, but it is still an explanation. But seriously, you haven't heard about the correlation between vaccines and autoimmune diseases?Merkwurdichliebe

    I thought the idea that vaccines actually cause autoimmune diseases was debunked a long time ago. Is that baseless hypothesis still floating around? Your quote only says that several ways that vaccines might cause autoimmune diseases have been proposed. Since they are proposing "several" ways which vaccines "might" cause such a thing , I conclude that there is no evidence of any single one way, and the author is clutching at straws.

    Book273's "explanation", if you want to call it that, was sorely lacking. Do you think you can do better? And please don't give me several ways that this might happen. I want an explanation of how it does happen.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    I thought the idea that vaccines actually cause autoimmune diseases was debunked a long time ago.Metaphysician Undercover

    Guillain-Barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Bell’s palsy, paraesthesia, and inflammatory bowel disease are all routinely checked during trials for new vaccines or new adjuvants. Autoimmune issues are a significant concern. What's been debunked is the idea that any existing vaccines cause such issues (in significant enough quantity to out weigh their advantages). This hasn't just magically made all future vaccines safe, what a ridiculous notion. You'd be arguing that it is impossible for any injected molecule of any sort to cause autoimmune conditions.

    What's ironic is that this is coming from someone who thinks every mathematician in the world has made an error, but you can't even conceive of the idea that pharmaceutical researchers might have done. Just goes to show the quasi-religious hold these people have over the population. Fear of death...come to think of it, it's not so different from religion afterall.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    Guillain-Barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Bell’s palsy, paraesthesia, and inflammatory bowel disease are all routinely checked during trials for new vaccines or new adjuvants. Autoimmune issues are a significant concern. What's been debunked is the idea that any existing vaccines cause such issues (in significant enough quantity to out weigh their advantages). This hasn't just magically made all future vaccines safe, what a ridiculous notion. You'd be arguing that it is impossible for any injected molecule of any sort to cause autoimmune conditions.Isaac

    You haven't presented any logical relationship between any vaccination and any autoimmune disease. The fact that it is checked for in trials does not demonstrate a logical relationship. What it demonstrates is that some people are afraid that a vaccine might cause an autoimmune problem so it is checked for in trials, in order to demonstrate to these people that it does not.

    And, I think it is actually highly unlikely that an injected molecule of any sort could cause a chronic autoimmune condition. These conditions are extremely complex with unknown causes. So, if it were the case that the injection of a molecule into the body could cause such an illness, I think it would not be the case that these conditions are extremely complex with unknown causes.

    What's ironic is that this is coming from someone who thinks every mathematician in the world has made an error, but you can't even conceive of the idea that pharmaceutical researchers might have done. Just goes to show the quasi-religious hold these people have over the population. Fear of death...come to think of it, it's not so different from religion afterall.Isaac

    I don't deny that there are huge evils within the pharmaceutical industry. But I think that connecting vaccines with autoimmune diseases is a case of barking up the wrong tree. Most businesses involve themselves in some goods, along with some evils. If the pharmaceutical industry has some goods along with their evils, why attack the goods as if they are evils?
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    Since they are proposing "several" ways which vaccines "might" cause such a thing , I conclude that there is no evidence of any single one way, and the author is clutching at straws.

    Book273's "explanation", if you want to call it that, was sorely lacking. Do you think you can do better? And please don't give me several ways that this might happen. I want an explanation of how it does happen.
    Metaphysician Undercover

    Fair enough. I feel the same way about all this unsubstantiated propaganda about covid. A bunch of so called experts pulling lame explanations about the dangers of covid out of their asses, and feeding that shit to the public. Mangia mangia!!!

    And I don't know if it was debunked (you'll have to provide the data if we are going to accept that assertion), all I know is that correlations have been drawn. Personally, I don't care either way, so I can only promise to do worse.
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    Perhaps it's been discussed heretofore, but shouldn't we all have very serious concerns over the drastic shortening of the duration of the field trials of the vaccine?

    This 'warp speed' notion...

    How can science shorten field trial periods from multiple years to less than a year, and remain confident that any significant, possibly deadly, side effects from a treatment have shown themselves?

    If there are side effects that do not show immediately, but rather take years, and a very broad sampling size, to show themselves, then it is literally impossible to know about them over a much shorter duration with smaller less diverse sample sizes...



    May I ask what your opinion is on this?
  • frank
    15.7k
    This thread is getting weird.
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    This thread is getting weird.frank

    The effects of the virus are unpredictable.
  • frank
    15.7k
    The effects of the virus are unpredictable.Merkwurdichliebe

    Mass covid-brain. :grimace:
  • Leghorn
    577
    @Merkwurdichliebe I don’t know where you live, Merky, but I think you would be a lot happier living where I do. Let me give you a subtle hint: when I ride down the road, there are still a lot of Trump/Pence signs stuck in lawns, and it is not at all uncommon to see a Confederate flag flying on a pole sticking out from a house awning, or at a country store.

    You can walk into the Walmart or Lowe’s hardware, just about any restaurant, any local retail store, Food Lion or Lowe’s Foods or any other grocer or supermarket without a mask...and no one will say a thing to you; cause ‘round here, if you ask someone to wear a mask, they’ll laugh at you; and if you ask them again, they’ll shoot ya.

    It is not uncommon to be pushing your cart down the grocery aisle and encounter a redneck family with a brood of crusty-mouthed scantily clad young’uns in tow, crying and screaming, their daddy leading the way accompanied by his pregnant wife, his belly bulging out from the bottom of his tobacco-stained tank top, yellin “yo, Bubba!” at some buddy of his across the way, spewin a heavy cloud of virus up into the air where it floats about, waitin to slip behind some old woman’s mask who follows behind...

    You might want to learn a taste for grits, pinto beans and cornbread, half-runner green beans before you come, and practice speaking with the local twang, talkin about hay season and the best scraps to feed pigs, the best way to mix green and cured wood...

    ...but if you ever mention Nietzsche, I’d suggest you style him as a confederate general (they won’t know the difference), maybe call him “Nick Shay”.
  • Wayfarer
    22.4k
    There's been a sudden outbreak in Sydney's Northern Beaches area, which includes my neighborhood. After nearly a month with no community transmission, somehow a resident of Avalon, on 'the peninsula', became infected, and then went to a dance that had been scheduled after the lifting of restrictions. So earlier this week there were two infections, then 5, then 28, now around 60. So far all the cases have been confined to the region, but many state borders are being restricted, and we're in lockdown again until Wednesday midnight. We have an AirBnB booked out of town from Wed-Sat for Christmas, and it's looking dicey. :fear:
  • ssu
    8.5k
    People are getting tired of it. Especially Americans. Hardly noticing that they lose daily same number of people as in 9/11 in the pandemic.

    I guess I'm just waiting for the things to normalize next autumn. People assume here the spring is already lost and the same thing will go on for a half year at least.

    About European quarantine, travel limitations and The Holidays:

    My Mother-in-Law came to visit us from Mexico. After reading just how "forbidden" and "only in special cases" it was allowed to come to the EU from outside, especially from North America, I didn't know how it would go. The papers have told here how much effort has been put especially to surveillance of international flights at the airports. I told my wife to check and double check the procedures with the officials, the flights, ask if my mother-in-law had to quarantine in a hotel before and check that she had that Covid-19 test before leaving. We were prepared to pick her up from a hotel and feared what a hassle it all would be. She came and nothing... No Covid-19 test on arrival at the airport, no covid dogs on stand by. Just like ordinary times: only a Dutch border guard checked his passport in Amsterdam and then for the connecting flight. Here the airport was empty without any officials in sight, as usual for a 11:00 PM flight, just pick your luggage and a cab here to our place. The only thing was that my mother-in-law used a face mask even at home before she noticed that Finns basically use them only at shopping malls and stores.

    So no hassle to come to Finland from Mexico, I guess.
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k


    Lol. Great post. Sounds like a beautiful place with beautiful people. But, that old woman with the mask should not be leaving her home if she is scared of catching the covid. What a selfish cunt, inconveniencing everyone because she's a cowardly bitch.
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    People are getting tired of it. Especially Americans. Hardly noticing that they lose daily same number of people as in 9/11 in the pandemic.ssu

    I don't trust the statistics at all, there is absolutely no way that covid is as fatal as it is being portrayed.

    I have a friend whose wife just died of pneumonia.
    Her death was officially attributed to covid. I know someone else that died of heart failure whose death was also attributed to covid.

    What the fuck is that about? It's about inflating numbers to support the pandemic narrative. Using dead people to spread propaganda, that is some crooked, disrespectful shit.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    You haven't presented any logical relationship between any vaccination and any autoimmune disease. The fact that it is checked for in trials does not demonstrate a logical relationship.Metaphysician Undercover

    I just presumed that you'd have no reason to disbelieve me. I can cite a dozen trial results, but if you've already decided that I'm making stuff up I'm sure you'd just sweep them away somehow too. There's little point in continuing along those lines.

    What it demonstrates is that some people are afraid that a vaccine might cause an autoimmune problem so it is checked for in trials, in order to demonstrate to these people that it does not.Metaphysician Undercover

    Absolute nonsense. Pharmaceutical trials are not public relations exercises.

    I think it is actually highly unlikely that an injected molecule of any sort could cause a chronic autoimmune condition. These conditions are extremely complex with unknown causes. So, if it were the case that the injection of a molecule into the body could cause such an illness, I think it would not be the case that these conditions are extremely complex with unknown causes.Metaphysician Undercover

    How does it being complex prevent it from being triggered by some molecule. And if not triggered by some molecule, then what is it triggered by? Something from another realm?
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    How can science shorten field trial periods from multiple years to less than a year, and remain confident that any significant, possibly deadly, side effects from a treatment have shown themselves?

    If there are side effects that do not show immediately, but rather take years, and a very broad sampling size, to show themselves, then it is literally impossible to know about them over a much shorter duration with smaller less diverse sample sizes...
    creativesoul

    Yeah, this is certainly a concern. Having said that, a phase III trial is a phase III trial, if it's come about two years earlier, it's not necessarily a less powerful trial as a consequence. I think the greater concern is that no amount of money can buy expertise (that requires training). We can sequester people from other projects, but those projects were not trivial themselves and don't necessarily have less of an impact, so expert scrutiny will either be lacking here, or we will have drawn such scrutiny away from other live-saving projects. What we can't do is suddenly 'buy' another few hundred expert pharmacologists.

    As to the potential long-term effects, we'll probably never know. Beyond a few years, the compounding factors mount up in any cohort making isolation of subtle effect difficult, if not impossible. With a small enough cohort it might be possible, but the more people involved in the first wave of take-up, the more confounding factors become likely to materialise in that group from possibly external sources.

    The point is that we fully expect vaccines to have side effects at a low prevalence. Most governments have a Vaccine Adverse Reaction compensation system (I know the UK and most of Europe does). With MMR, for example anaphylaxis occurs at a rate of about 10 per million, seizures about 1 per 1,150 doses, thrombocytopenia at about 1 in 30,000, up to a 1 in 100 risk of Aseptic Meningitis (depending on the strain of the mumps component used), febrile seizures at about 8.5 per 10,000...

    ...and those are just the acute short-term effects.

    The point is the benefits outweigh the risk, not that there is no risk. Vaccination against something like measles remains one of the most cost effective ways of saving lives, but the idea that it has no negatives to weigh this against is a fairy-tale for people who can't handle complexity.

    What's wrong here (corona virus) is that without a strong indication that a vaccine will reduce the severity of the disease in vulnerable patients then hospital admissions will probably increase - just at a time when our healthcare services are at breaking point. The vast majority of the side effects I just listed require at least some healthcare intervention, mostly hospital admission. Imagine if the whole country were given the vaccine and it had those rates of adverse reaction (which are really good rates). Tens of thousands of additional hospital admissions.
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    On the subject of MMR vaccines, which are credited with saving millions of lives a year, the WHO reports

    Vaccinations have been disrupted for several reasons. Some parents are no longer taking children to clinics because of movement restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus or because they are scared about the risk of exposure to the virus. Health workers who provide vaccinations have also been diverted to help with the response to the pandemic. A lack of protective equipment means clinicians are reducing the number of people they treat.

    Lockdowns and cutbacks in commercial flights have also led to delayed the delivery of some vaccines, leading Gavi to devote funding to ship vaccines around the world.

    Monumental recklessness.
  • ssu
    8.5k
    I don't trust the statistics at all, there is absolutely no way that covid is as fatal as it is being portrayed.

    I have a friend whose wife just died of pneumonia.
    Her death was officially attributed to covid. I know someone else that died of heart failure whose death was also attributed to covid.
    Merkwurdichliebe

    Yeah. Statistics isn't your thing, obviously.
  • frank
    15.7k
    no hassle to come to Finland from Mexico, I guess.ssu

    That surprises me. How are Finns thinking about the vaccine?
  • Merkwurdichliebe
    2.6k
    Yeah. Statistics isn't your thing, obviously.ssu

    Definitely not covid statistics...its complete bullshit
  • frank
    15.7k

    Thanks for clearing that up.
  • magritte
    553
    firstly, that a rushed vaccine based on new technology may be either falsely effective, have unexpected side effects ..., or too expensive to help poorer countries.
    And secondly that a huge proportion of the deaths are in poor communities coupled with poor healthcare services. Investing in core service provision and community healthcare is a far more efficient as it helps not only this pandemic, but also future ones.
    Isaac
    Firstly, These are legitimate concerns but that's not how the process works. Effectiveness is established in the labs in thousands of test tubes by mass laboratory techniques. Before they ever take a vaccine outside the lab effectiveness is already solidly established.
    Biological testing with live animals and humans is different. This is where side effects, persistence, and other unknowns are expected to show up before a vaccine goes for approval.
    The vaccines are effective if they say so, but unknown side effects may not show up in the human trials or be known for years or decades. This is partially unknowable, even in theory.

    Secondly, Here you are just pushing a political agenda that is completely unrelated to and is ignored by viruses and vaccines. Viruses do not attack individuals or communities or the poor. Viruses attack the entire extent of the human genome anywhere and everywhere even in the most remote regions of Earth, sooner or later. There is no escape. The choice is whether to be infected by the virus or by the vaccine, with no exceptions.

    Poverty only comes into play in the speed of the spread of the virus. Poor people are less able to hide to postpone infection because they have to be out there to make enough for food for their families, which makes them more exposed to early unprotected infection. Once infected the virus runs its course and the poor suffer the sometimes very serious side effects of the virus but otherwise gain some immunity, but see below.

    Two more factors might be the availability of rapid and accurate testing and reporting with medical details, and...and that we might not be just talking about the virus but a family of very similar mutating cluster that should probably survive most of the current vaccinesmagritte
    And it begins, see news from the UK.
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    As to the potential long-term effects, we'll probably never know. Beyond a few years, the compounding factors mount up in any cohort making isolation of subtle effect difficult, if not impossible. With a small enough cohort it might be possible, but the more people involved in the first wave of take-up, the more confounding factors become likely to materialise in that group from possibly external sources.Isaac

    Isn't that the reason for long term studies? I mean, isn't it the case that the reason we'll probably never know(this time around) is because we've neglected public safety protocols that have been in place for decades because we already know that such measures are necessary to insure we're doing everything we can to provide the safest possible treatment(s)?
  • Isaac
    10.3k
    Effectiveness is established in the labs in thousands of test tubes by mass laboratory techniques. Before they ever take a vaccine outside the lab effectiveness is already solidly established.magritte

    Well then you should have no trouble citing the published results demonstrating this effectiveness.

    Viruses do not attack individuals or communities or the poor.magritte

    Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19. — CDC

    Here is an overview. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7221360/

    Again, if this is so obviously false you should have no trouble citing counter-arguments.

    Viruses attack the entire extent of the human genome anywhere and everywhere even in the most remote regions of Earth, sooner or later.magritte

    No. For example people with S-reactive CD4 T cells show significant immunity without having been previously exposed to the virus. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1

    This is a highly technical subject, seriously, if you can't even be bothered to provide citations there's not much point in commenting. No one's interested in what you 'reckon' might be the case.
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