Coronavirus: Discussion and Information

[stormwyrm]

The European Medicines Agency has just revealed that Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine data stolen from its servers in December was leaked online. Anti-AGW trolls managed to quote mine the climate scientists' emails to try to show how they supposedly used "tricks" to "hide the decline" to make things look nefarious when they really aren't when looked at in the right context. Same thing was done to the leaked Podesta emails that were the genesis of QAnon, that gift that just freaking keeps on giving. Now it'll only be a matter of time till anti-vaxxers try to similarly mine this data for anything that looks incriminating and use it to feed their disinformation mill.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-leak-stolen-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-data-online/

[Azuresun]

These factors are nutrition and exercise. I cannot overstate the importance of these two things, not least because it builds and maintains a proper immune system. An immune system (and other related faculties) that by my estimates can deal with Covid-19 pretty adequately. This is a big problem because the average public perception of proper health is way off the mark. This is why I just frankly don't believe articles claiming that a perfectly healthy young person has died of Covid. It would take a head to toe medical screening for me to believe it. Someone can be very good looking and go about their life fine and still be very sick without knowing it.

I've seen this sort of argument a lot, and it makes me rankle a bit because some of us don't get to choose whether or not to have a good immune system. I take medication that suppresses mine, to stop my digestive tract from bloodily destroying itself, putting me at a higher risk even though my lifestyle is reasonably healthy.

And, not having a crack at you personally here, there's often a nasty judging undertone to those arguments implying someone "deserved" to get sick because of their dissolute lifestyle.

This is why I just frankly don't believe articles claiming that a perfectly healthy young person has died of Covid.

Never? Regardless of how well-verified they are?

Now it'll only be a matter of time till anti-vaxxers try to similarly mine this data for anything that looks incriminating and use it to feed their disinformation mill.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-leak-stolen-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-data-online/

Eh, if they didn't have that, they'd just make something up whole cloth.

[Haibane]

This is why I just frankly don't believe articles claiming that a perfectly healthy young person has died of Covid.

Well perfectly healthy people do tend to resist the virus far better than those with existing illnesses. That is a widely documented fact. So yes, its possible a perfectly healthy young person will never die of C-19 but... certainly teenagers have died of C-19 though this article doesn't give details of any additional complications. On the other hand how many humans are "perfectly healthy" and what do you mean by that description? There may be Olympic level athletes who are not "perfectly healthy".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54724032

I thought it was interesting that you used the word "articles" here suggesting the media is filtering the truth for... some unknown purpose. We're aware that some media companies make lies their bread and butter (*cough*Fox*cough*) but a reasonably well-informed person can tell those apart from media outlets that have ethical and effective standards of reporting and fact-checking. I count the BBC among the latter as it has constantly presented fact-checking articles over the last year regarding the US political scene and the pandemic, referencing back to legal documents, transcripts of spoken or written statements in the public domain and medical papers respectively.

The National Health Service of NI has no reason to issue falsehoods either. Why on earth would they? To deny that young people are at risk from C-19 to me begins to smack of a conspiracy theory and that's much more worrying than any facts reported to the general public via responsible news agencies and health services.

As I mentioned on a previous page its completely understandable to see a wider situation through the lens of your own experience but one should try to resist drawing wider conclusions from that.

[Haibane]

Shocking news from the UK's South Asian communities concerning false information over the C-19 vaccine jabs. What surprised me most is the final statistic from a survey commissioned by the Royal Society of Public Health which returned figures of *only* 79% of white UK residents willing to be inoculated and 57% of South Asians. Truly disturbingly low numbers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55666407

[Haibane]

The UK is locking down *from every other country*

[Beguile's Mistress]

More than 2 million deaths due to C19 have been logged around the world.  It is a small number compared to the total world population but so much more than a soul can conceptualize.

[Blythe]

Is my MIL not included in the death count for some particular reason? Well - I hated her so I don't much care about her except using her as an example. Potentially a too in depth example which made my point hard to find, because I'm pretty sure I got your point just fine.

What I'm saying is that the virus' purported lethality didn't just fall from the sky. There are reasons why it has such an impact. I contend that the virus itself is hardly lethal but the factors surrounding it can make it relatively dangerous, perhaps even very dangerous. Moreover, I contend that these factors are relatively easy to control and could render a nation shuttering pandemic into little more than the common cold in terms of severity.

These factors are nutrition and exercise. I cannot overstate the importance of these two things, not least because it builds and maintains a proper immune system. An immune system (and other related faculties) that by my estimates can deal with Covid-19 pretty adequately. This is a big problem because the average public perception of proper health is way off the mark. This is why I just frankly don't believe articles claiming that a perfectly healthy young person has died of Covid. It would take a head to toe medical screening for me to believe it. Someone can be very good looking and go about their life fine and still be very sick without knowing it.

Now, I did say that my views on the topic are far out in the weeds. Towards this end -- if you'd like to know fun things like how McDonald's partly caused this pandemic -- I'm going to make a thread on general health stuff. If you inquire how I find nutrition so connected to the pandemic, ask me in there. I'll have to touch on so many different things that it just makes sense to be there instead.

This thread is not particularly meant for a person's personal non-scientific theories. (Frankly, good diet and exercise help a lot of things; that's not unique to COVID-19 cases, though those two things are hardly going to save everyone. It certainly helps, but it's not a guarantee.)

There is already a bevvy of misinformation being spread about COVID-19. I'm going to mention that unless an assertion is something you are willing to back up with cited sources (preferably from reputable sources such as the CDC), then those are not assertions that would be fit for this thread.

I will be very clear: I do not want people asserting that this virus is 'hardly lethal' when we are looking at a global death toll of over two million people so far.

[joeman]

Man, reality sure has surpassed the movie Contagion's expectations with the sole exception of how many Americans have died from the virus, huh?

Also: I don't think that anyone was innocent in this whole pandemic situation, if you ask me.

Everyone is guilty to some degree here!

[TheGlyphstone]

Who is everyone, and what exactly are they guilty of?

[joeman]

Who is everyone, and what exactly are they guilty of?

Everyone is everyone and I'm not sure if I want to spend the next half hour explaining every single thing that everyone played a part of in this whole pandemic but rest assure for I have thought deeply about how everything got so messed up in the first place and why everyone is guilty in this whole situation for a long, long while now during the whole quarantine thing.

No one can cast the first stone.

[Oniya]

Please be sure to review the stickies in this area.  Unlike other forums, we do have posting standards for our politics section.

[AzureRain]

I see everyone above me has done an excellent job at sharing and citing information about why this virus is deadly and why we need to keep protecting ourselves! Just want to make two points, about why COVID is more dangerous than other viruses, and how it can kill perfectly healthy people even when they have optimal lifestyles.

1. Myocarditis. A deadly inflammation of the heart muscles that can put you into rapid heart failure EVEN when your heart was perfectly normal before. Any virus can cause this - but the rate is just so much higher with COVID. In hospitalized patients, one study showed 17% had arrhythmias and 7% had acute cardiac injury (Wang et al, JAMA 2020). This was the thing that terrified me most about COVID, because pre-covid I had seen a few cases of healthy college athletes (and the like) sick as shit with myocarditis after catching some “benign” virus, and nearly dead, when two days before they felt perfectly well other than mild cold symptoms.

2. Blood clots. For some reason, COVID causes them, even in healthy people (3% risk in hospitalized patients, per Hill et al, Blood Adv 2020). In the legs (DVT), in the brain (stroke), and in the lungs (PE)! If the clot is big enough to block blood flow, or in the arteries, you lose a limb or die of it. Even after, a clot means months of being on a blood thinner (which opens up risk for more bleeding-associated side effects that can affect to healthy people).

Anyway, wear your mask, get the vaccine when you’re able, etc etc.

[joeman]

I see everyone above me has done an excellent job at sharing and citing information about why this virus is deadly and why we need to keep protecting ourselves! Just want to make two points, about why COVID is more dangerous than other viruses, and how it can kill perfectly healthy people even when they have optimal lifestyles.

1. Myocarditis. A deadly inflammation of the heart muscles that can put you into rapid heart failure EVEN when your heart was perfectly normal before. Any virus can cause this - but the rate is just so much higher with COVID. In hospitalized patients, one study showed 17% had arrhythmias and 7% had acute cardiac injury (Wang et al, JAMA 2020). This was the thing that terrified me most about COVID, because pre-covid I had seen a few cases of healthy college athletes (and the like) sick as shit with myocarditis after catching some “benign” virus, and nearly dead, when two days before they felt perfectly well other than mild cold symptoms.

2. Blood clots. For some reason, COVID causes them, even in healthy people (3% risk in hospitalized patients, per Hill et al, Blood Adv 2020). In the legs (DVT), in the brain (stroke), and in the lungs (PE)! If the clot is big enough to block blood flow, or in the arteries, you lose a limb or die of it. Even after, a clot means months of being on a blood thinner (which opens up risk for more bleeding-associated side effects that can affect to healthy people).

Anyway, wear your mask, get the vaccine when you’re able, etc etc.

Thanks for the advice but I'm not going to get the vaccine until it becomes mandatory to get one.

I don't trust a vaccine that's only been tested for a year when the fastest vaccine ever created took four.

[Azuresun]

Thanks for the advice but I'm not going to get the vaccine until it becomes mandatory to get one.

I don't trust a vaccine that's only been tested for a year when the fastest vaccine ever created took four.

Okay, I really, really want to believe that you're just misinformed rather than an anti-vaxxer loon and I'm hoping you won't brush off evidence with "but my feels!", so here's some of the reasons why it was ready so relatively quickly:

--It was building on research for similar viruses.
--The scientists were working literally twenty-four hours a day, in shifts.
--There were none of the usual delays that hold up vaccine development related to funding or finding volunteers; the budget was "yes", and the volunteers were virtually beating down the door to be injected.
-The trials were overlapped (BUT none were skipped).

Anything could have been ready this quickly with this degree of concentrated effort. Basically, imagine a drive to work through a busy city. But one day, there are no other cars on the street and every light you encounter is green. You're not taking shortcuts, you're not speeding, but the barriers and holdups that are normally a part of your normal routine have all been removed:

For more detailed information, this might help: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-55281633

[AzureRain]

To refuse a vaccine because it doesn’t meet your highly subjective idea of what constitutes the right amount of time to create a vaccine seems silly. This is assuming you aren’t an expert in the vaccine development field?

100% agree with azuresun, and not just cause he has an awesome screen name (lol). They’ve been working on mRNA vaccines for many years. It didn’t take much time to just apply it to the coronavirus because all you need to do is find a target. The Pfizer study was impeccable. 40,000 were tested (20,000 of whom got the vaccine) and since then, many many more healthcare professionals and residents of long term care facilities have received it. By the time it’s even available to you, probably hundreds of thousands if not millions more.

[Azuresun]

I thought it was interesting that you used the word "articles" here suggesting the media is filtering the truth for... some unknown purpose. We're aware that some media companies make lies their bread and butter (*cough*Fox*cough*) but a reasonably well-informed person can tell those apart from media outlets that have ethical and effective standards of reporting and fact-checking. I count the BBC among the latter as it has constantly presented fact-checking articles over the last year regarding the US political scene and the pandemic, referencing back to legal documents, transcripts of spoken or written statements in the public domain and medical papers respectively.

You'll notice the term "MSM", meaning mainstream media, popping a lot among anti-vaxxers. Which is grimly hilarious, because that term includes channels or papers that normally couldn't agree if water was wet, but the implication is that they're all conspiring to promote [insert conspiracy theory here]. Usually followed by a link to Bitchute or some other place for people who got kicked off Youtube for spreading lies.

It's the exact same pattern you see in cults--make your members distrustful of any "corrupted" outside influence, so that they're only exposed to news filtered through the approved sources.

[stormwyrm]

The vaccines we have now, like all medical interventions, have risks associated with them, certainly. But they have to be balanced with the benefits, i.e. avoiding getting sick with COVID-19. Death, while certainly a very distinct possibility with COVID-19, is not the only outcome of note. A moderate case of COVID-19 can result in a hospital stay of two weeks or so, which can mean financial ruin in places like the US where there is no universal health care. There are also long-term sequelae to the disease that we are only now beginning to fathom, such as persistent cardiopulmonary and neurological issues and organ damage. The strain that the disease is putting on the health care infrastructure around the world is also a great concern. We won't know how many people will die or have worse quality of life because they could not receive the medical care they needed because hospitals are so congested with COVID-19 cases. The vaccines give us a path to reducing all of these risks of the disease substantially.

It is true that the testing done on these new vaccines has not been as extensive as that done on other vaccines in the past, but in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the risks of the disease are far greater than the possible longer-term side effects of the vaccines that current clinical trials have not yet been able to uncover.

[Haibane]

Everyone is everyone

That would include me then and since I have been scrupulously obedient to all our lockdown and social distancing rules I can tell you for a fact that your statement is false.

[Haibane]

Anything could have been ready this quickly with this degree of concentrated effort. Basically, imagine a drive to work through a busy city. But one day, there are no other cars on the street and every light you encounter is green. You're not taking shortcuts, you're not speeding, but the barriers and holdups that are normally a part of your normal routine have all been removed.

Thank you Azuresun for such a superb analogy. The "virus was developed too fast for it to be safe" lobby really pisses me off.

Also nobody ever is going to be forced to be vaccinated. Unless perhaps you're a citizen of somewhere like N. Korea. That argument pisses me off as well.

[Blythe]

Thanks for the advice but I'm not going to get the vaccine until it becomes mandatory to get one.

I don't trust a vaccine that's only been tested for a year when the fastest vaccine ever created took four.

The vaccines were created with well over a decade of research into various types of coronavirus, particularly after research into SARS and MERS.

People claiming that this was a 'fast' development do not understand how years worth of research we already had on prior types of coronavirus aided immensely in development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

[Haibane]

In the last year I have made friends with an elderly lady who lives a few doors down my street. We casually got chatting over the 2018-2019 winter when I was walking past her door and she was sweeping her front step. We bumped into each other a few times after that and gradually became friends. I began to visit her home about twice a week for an hour or so to make her a cup of tea, tidy up a bit and just sit and give her some company. She turned 97 a few months ago and has become much more frail and lacking in confidence to go out over the last year. Her son and daughter-in-law live many tens of miles away and during the lockdown I think she became pretty lonely so unable to visit her I began phoning her most days to just talk. A couple of days ago she received a letter from the NHS saying she could contact her local medical centre for her C-19 vaccination and did so, getting an appointment this evening. She called me asking me if I would drive her there as her son is too far away. I was delighted to be able to help.

We arrived at the large local medical centre which is actually just a GPs surgery on steroids. We were met at the door by a masked volunteer and I was completely blown away by the sheer number of staff inside all of whom were bubbling over with smiles, laughter and amazing friendliness and efficiency. My friend is wheelchair-bound outside of her home and I pushed her through to the consulting room straight away, no waiting at all. After her jab she was given a card that showed the vaccine manufacturer (it was Pfizer), the vaccine batch number and the date. We were also given a small battery timer set to 16 minutes and guided to a waiting room where she was told to wait until the timer's bell sounded and if she had no signs of distress or reaction at that time she could leave. A helpful information leaflet was also provided. I got chatting to one of the volunteer helpers and asked about the proceedures that were going on. I was informed:

1). The medical centre is open from 8am to 8pm dealing with vaccinations only. All other medical appointments have been shifted out to surrounding GP surgeries to enable this clinic to 100% support vaccinations in this area of our city.
2). There are 6 consulting rooms with a doctor and technician team in each. That's 12 staff. Prior to administering the vaccine the doctor asked my friend a series of questions about her general health, any C-19 symptoms, allergies, reactions to vaccinations and so on. The technician entered all data on a PC and filled in the vaccine card. These 12 people are working a TWELVE HOUR SHIFT.
3). There are 6 admin staff in the building doing various bookkeeping and secretarial tasks. These work 6 hour shifts. So that's another 12 people in a working day.
4). There are 18 (yes, eighteen) other nurses, volunteers and backup staff on duty to meet and greet patients, offer help and advice and keep a smooth flow of traffic at socially distanced spaces. These too work a 6 hour shift.
5). While we were waiting 4 other people came into the waiting room. I was told there are two other waiting rooms, so that makes about 15 people being vaccinated every 16 minutes. Potentially up to about 720 people a day in one sector of a mid-sized provincial city.
5). Grand total therefore of 60 staff each day, running an extremely efficient operation with the most amazing friendliness and good humour. How they do it I simply do not know.

Apart from the usual tiny stab of pain of the needle, my elderly lady friend has suffered no pain, no side effects, no soreness in her arm and not even a red splotch on the skin. I phoned a couple of times in the evening to make sure she was okay. No side effects whatsoever.

I wanted to just put up here a description of how the British NHS is rolling out this enormous mass vaccination process and to say I was blown away by how good-natured, efficient and incredibly hard-working they all were as well as how intensely proud of our fantastic NHS I am would be a huge understatement.

[stormwyrm]

Thank you Azuresun for such a superb analogy. The "virus was developed too fast for it to be safe" lobby really pisses me off.

Also nobody ever is going to be forced to be vaccinated. Unless perhaps you're a citizen of somewhere like N. Korea. That argument pisses me off as well.

The vaccine has at least been demonstrated to be quite safer than getting sick with full-blown COVID-19. That is a reasonable bar in times like this. The evidence so far of the vaccines' safety and efficacy is far from ideal, yes, but when the disease is killing thousands of people every day in the United States alone, I think this lower standard is more than rational and justified. No one, at least not those in relatively liberal democracies, will be forced to take a vaccine if they don't want it, but if you do refuse to take it you must understand that that decision may limit your ability to do things like travel, and that you are at higher risk of death and complications from COVID-19. Even if your personal risk of death or severe complications is low, it is not zero and probably significantly higher than if you take the vaccine, and you could spread the disease to others for whom the risk is higher. Something to consider when making the decision to take the vaccine or not.

[joeman]

The vaccine has at least been demonstrated to be quite safer than getting sick with full-blown COVID-19. That is a reasonable bar in times like this. The evidence so far of the vaccines' safety and efficacy is far from ideal, yes, but when the disease is killing thousands of people every day in the United States alone, I think this lower standard is more than rational and justified. No one, at least not those in relatively liberal democracies, will be forced to take a vaccine if they don't want it, but if you do refuse to take it you must understand that that decision may limit your ability to do things like travel, and that you are at higher risk of death and complications from COVID-19. Even if your personal risk of death or severe complications is low, it is not zero and probably significantly higher than if you take the vaccine, and you could spread the disease to others for whom the risk is higher. Something to consider when making the decision to take the vaccine or not.

Wait just a minute: Did you just made a reasonable case for the vaccine without acting like someone who get high from their own farts?! o.O

Lol, joking aside, I'm glad to hear someone who presents a logical argument without automatically resorting to extreme assumptions like some typical, political hack!

To everyone else in this thread, let me make something crystal clear: I'm not anti-vaccine but rather someone that questions the safety of the vaccine that was created in such a short period of time by incompetent governments who were the ones that have caused the virus spiral out of control in the first place like the U.K. with it's herd immunity idea and the U.S. with it's slow response, downplaying, and cover-ups, and China with it's cover-ups, downplaying, and denial!

[Lilias]

I don't trust a vaccine that's only been tested for a year when the fastest vaccine ever created took four.

That was the mumps vaccine, which was introduced in 1988. Technologies have advanced quite a bit since then, not to mention this one had the entire scientific world's undivided attention.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-did-we-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-so-quickly

[Oniya]

Wait just a minute: Did you just made a reasonable case for the vaccine without acting like someone who get high from their own farts?! o.O

Lol, joking aside, I'm glad to hear someone who presents a logical argument without automatically resorting to extreme assumptions like some typical, political hack!

While we realize that political/controversy forums in other parts of the web are toxic cesspools, we do strive for a certain standard of behavior here.  Things like citing sources, civility towards others, and not spreading misinformation are key points in this endeavor.