From what I hear, that is also true for getting it, only the antibodies go away sooner than that. No, I don't have a cite. — James Riley

I know a guy who was infected and never got long term antibodies, just the short term ones (we're all enrolled in antibody research).

I know a guy who was infected and never got long term antibodies, just the short term ones (we're all enrolled in antibody research). — frank

As one wag said to an anti-vaxxer: "So you don't want to be part of a government research project? Guess what? You're in the control group."

The lack of a chorus of statistically trained analyst covering the anti-vaxx position — Cheshire

Do you need me to provide all of my 30 something citations again? Do you think enough time has gone by now that you can safely pretend I haven't fully cited every claim I've made with several experts in the field? And you accuse me of arguing tactically...

The lack of a chorus of statistically trained analyst covering the anti-vaxx position — Cheshire

Do you need me to provide all of my 30 something citations again? Do you think enough time has gone by now that you can safely pretend I haven't fully cited every claim I've made with several experts in the field? And you accuse me of arguing tactically... — Isaac

Your citations create the illusion of such a chorus, but this thread is a solo performance.

Out of a group telling me Bill Gates wants to install an update in my brain to help depopulate the world; I have one person arguing the nomenclature of 'prevalence' that is understood to be common to epidemiology studies. You have been conceding it's good public policy and not citing info wars like a scientific journal. Either you really can't differentiate between an antivax position and the principle of anything being doubtable or this is a charade.

Right here is quality antivax material. Using an idiom incorrectly to support a position. Generally stating the Rosemary's Baby hypothetical they brought to the table is undecidable and suggesting a preference. Like, I prefer to divide by zero from right to left.

It is a rock and a hard place, but I know to which side I am leaning. — Tzeentch

If you have room to lean you aren't exactly caught between two rigid structures.

Your citations create the illusion of such a chorus — Cheshire

It's not an 'illusion' if they're all real is it. Are you claiming I've fabricated them?

It's not an 'illusion' if they're all real is it. Are you claiming I've fabricated them? — Isaac

It wouldn't be an effective illusion if they were all fake. To cite things that aren't intended to support antivaxx messages; and suggest otherwise with undue emphasis does create an illusion. So, yes it is, even in this case; you wouldn't need to fabricate anything.

It'll give immunity to almost anyone, but some people already have some immunity, others can acquire immunity using their own antibodies without suffering too much harm. Others will not get sufficient immunity, the vaccine is not 100% effective. — Isaac

This study seems to indicate that naturally acquired immunity is not as effective as vaccine acquired immunity: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/

Yes, in the one aspect they measured (antigen breadth). Natural immunity has the advantage of not costing anything, not taking vaccines from those who need them more, and not interfering with bodily autonomy (for those that don't like/trust the pharmaceutical companies), so it's not a binomial choice, there needs to be some weight to the difference in effectiveness to outweigh the disadvantages, it's mere presence is not sufficient. Maybe that weight is there, but the paper doesn't show it.

A larger study has just come out showing the opposite.

This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. — https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

The study is in preprint, so should be taken as preliminary, but the picture may not be so clear as your study indicates.

That's interesting. Odd that it seems to contradict the other study. In any case the question that seems to arise if the findings of this study are accurate is as to whether a vaccinated individual who suffers a breakthrough infection and survives would acquire natural immunity just as an unvaccinated infected individual would. Because if the answer were 'yes' to that question then there would be no downside to being vaccinated, but if the answer were 'no' then there might be a downside to being vaccinated for very low risk individuals..

the question that seems to arise if the findings of this study are accurate is as to whether a vaccinated individual who suffers a breakthrough infection and survives would acquire natural immunity just as an unvaccinated infected individual would. Because if the answer were 'yes' to that question then there would be no downside to being vaccinated — Janus

Yes, that's right. Although only if you measure 'downside' in terms of immunity only, not risk or cost.

The risks are minimal though it seems, unless you are privy to some evidence which has escaped my attention. And if by "cost" you are referring to the cost of vaccination, well I guess the governments are going to pay for that (although they ought to take 90 % or some reasonable amount out of the profits of the pharmaceutical companies). It is appalling that they are making massive profits out of this emergency. "Oh, but what about the shareholders" I hear them braying. Well, fuck the shareholders!

The risks are minimal though it seems, unless you are privy to some evidence which has escaped my attention. — Janus

Not for the under 24s (well, not compared to the benefits anyway - the risks definitely are minimal in real terms)

https://medium.com/@wpegden/weighing-myocarditis-cases-acip-failed-to-balance-the-harms-vs-benefits-of-2nd-doses-d7d6b3df7cfb

For adults, the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination are enormous, while for children, they are relatively minor. Rare side effects from adult COVID-19 vaccination are unlikely to lead to future vaccine hesitancy whose public health impact could be comparable to the benefits of the adult COVID-19 vaccination program itself. But accelerated mass child vaccination under EUA — perhaps even spurred by school mandates and “vaccine passports” — presents a different balance of risks and benefits. Rare adverse events really could prove to be the most durable public health legacy of an EUA for child COVID-19 vaccines.

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/05/07/covid-vaccines-for-children-should-not-get-emergency-use-authorization/

Given uncertainty over risks I cannot foresee for now that there will be a recommendation for general vaccinations" in children, he said, adding that while the vaccine was shown to be effective, "practically nothing" was yet known over any long-term adverse effects in adolescents. — interview with paediatrics professor Ruediger von Kries, a member of Germany's advisory vaccine committee

With kids, they’re not going to stop transmission, they won’t stop escape variants, nothing is. It is about the risk to the child themselves. — Paediatric critical care consultant Dr Ruchi Sinha speaking to the UK APPG on Coronavirus

And yet both Germany and the UK are rolling out vaccines to children, contradicting their own advisory committees.

It is appalling that they are making massive profits out of this emergency. "Oh, but what about the shareholders" I hear them braying. Well, fuck the shareholders! — Janus

Absolutely.

WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called global vaccine inequity “grotesque,” a recipe for seeding viral variants capable of escaping vaccines, and a “moral outrage.” — https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2027

As Gavin Yamey, professor of global health and public policy put it recently in the BMJ

This moral scandal, enabled by corporate and political permission of mass death, is tantamount to a crime against humanity. Yet we too are complicit by our silence. Why are workers and shareholders at vaccine companies not speaking out? Where are the academics clamouring to make the “fruits of the scientific enterprise” available to all? Where are the lawyers demanding global justice and corporate accountability? Which leaders of rich nations are pressuring vaccine companies to make their people safe by making the world safe? Where is the grassroots mobilisation of scientists and health workers to fight for fair access to vaccines?

"Anti-vaxxin. Is it right?"


Maybe right, maybe left. You have to examine it.

It is appalling that they are making massive profits out of this emergency. "Oh, but what about the shareholders" I hear them braying. Well, fuck the shareholders! — Janus

I don't understand how half the country fights tooth and nail against socialized medicine since recent memory, but when the vaccine is produced by the same system it's untrusted? Where are all the free market capitalist insisting it must be the best vaccine because it's made for profit? The conservative right is doing a handstand on this issue.

@Isaac; do you think that your view is the consensus amongst epidemiologists?

I'd buy tickets to this one. :eyes:

Isaac; do you think that your view is the consensus amongst epidemiologists? — Banno

'My view' is a rather broad term so it's difficult to answer that question. I don't want to go off on some long spiel only to find you meant some quite specific aspect of it. Which part of 'my view' are you asking about - or do you actually mean my entire response in this thread?

I think that question was in response to you comment here:

Do you need me to provide all of my 30 something citations again? — Isaac

I have not been following this discussion closely, but I gather you have qualms about vaccination. Perhaps the question is, which of those qualms do you think would have some general acceptance amongst those in the field?

Ah - OK, that's the easier question to answer.

The hesitancy to authorise the vaccine for children is very widely supported, most advisory bodies are either split or have actually come out in favour of not.

The reluctance to support boosters until the rest of the world has sufficient first doses is actually WHO policy, so plenty of support there.

The qualms about the efficacy are not so widely shared (though still a reasonable basis in qualified, respected experts - I don't do 'woo').

The belief in natural immunity was a fairly uncommon position, but is now (see the study above) becoming more common, still not a majority though.

The concerns about the pharmaceutical industry's practices in general are shared by a small but significant group of experts in the field.

As to the ethical stuff...

If papers in the Journal of Medical Ethics are a weathervane (I only really have time to keep up with one ethics journal, and they never make it into the mainstream news - poor ethicists!) then I'd say about 50/50 papers in favour of things like accepting a variable response and directed approach vs papers which think that won't work socially and we need to scare the bejeezus out of everyone just to get a 70% take up.

Thanks for that.

Interesting stuff. My medical knowledge is not generally up to much more than the secondary literature; so for the most part I will ride along with the expressed considered opinion.

It's all a bit complex...

https://vaers.hhs.gov/ — Isaac

You're lucky to have at least that. Where I live, one is on one's own. It takes one doctor to diagnose covid by symptoms, or a covid death by symptoms (no test and no autopsy required), but a medical board must convene before they even consider that something could be the side effect of a covid vaccine. You could die from the damn thing, and it still wouldn't be counted among "serious negative side effects of the covid vaccine".

Whereas there isn't a rational reason to not get vaccinated (except in those with health conditions that make vaccinations dangerous), and so can't be excused. — Michael

But not in the case of this pandemic. Nobody gets excused, everyone is put into the same category.

Right in the beginning when they first started vaccinating, the plan was expressed that first the healthy should be vaccinated, in order to protect the most vulnerable. This is the standard approach to vaccination in general.

But in about a week or so, this concern completely died out, and a medically dangerous practice was adopted of vaccinating the most vulnerable first.

It's not clear whether there is any other medication where this approach is taken. Normally, if a person is already immunocompromised or otherwise of vulnerable health, they aren't forced into medical treatments that further stress their already compromised immune system. But with covid, all this caution was thrown to the wind.

In jurisdictions where covid passports are mandatory for many activities, the matter of whether it is moral or immoral to refuse to get covid vaccinated has been rendered moot anyway, and made into a matter of practical convenience. If you're vaccinated, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and you don't need to get tested. Who wouldn't opt for that?! But whether it will stop the pandemic is another matter.

But if the Israel scenario is anything to go by, then, even if the majority of the population gets vaccinated, this will not stop the pandemic.

In jurisdictions where covid passports are mandatory for many activities, the matter of whether it is moral or immoral to refuse to get covid vaccinated has been rendered moot anyway, and made into a matter of practical convenience. — baker

What jurisdictions? Nursing homes and hospitals?

Yeah, funny that!

I'm seeing some accusations of hypocrisy (double standards) here, while at the same time committing a two-wrongs-make-a-right fallacy. :meh:

Head over to this parallel post ⇒ Poll: (2020-) COVID-19 pandemic ⇐ hit some buttons (y) (n) and let's see what the forum members think at large.



A Jan-Jun 2021 probe somewhere out there ...

... via KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: In Their Own Words, Six Months Later (Jul 13, 2021)

Anyone who wants to bet about the outcome?

I'm seeing some accusations of hypocrisy (double standards) here, while at the same time committing a two-wrongs-make-a-right fallacy. :meh: — jorndoe

:100:

Yes, yes you are. Not only that, but there are unfounded assumptions about those with comorbidities (i.e. that they are the ones pushing vax); or that those who push vax are not also pushing for other health-saving choices; and a failure to distinguish between knowingly assuming risk and thinking there is no risk; and risking others beyond the self. Those who are allegedly killed by, or suffer from the vax also had comorbidities. Should we take them off the table and say the vax does not harm at all?

If one is going to fail logic by an appeal to authority (as I do), then at least have the authority appealed to be an actual authority; not like some generally smart people who don't know shit.

Everyone on both sides has already bet. The difference is, which lives were anteed up? At least I didn't throw someone else on the table.

I could go on, but the the failures of reason/logic go on and on, and I tire. I just hope those who answered the call to service haven't done so in vain.