And that's your mistake buddy. Buying into culture war nonsense.
Covid: Lucky 13
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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On the bad news department (I may as well change my handle to Cassandra), this was expected but it is bad.
It's impossible to chase this virus with vaccines. That puts makes even the "mucosal immunity through vaccines" route a wasted one by now. What advantage could have been gained from vaccines towards an effort at eradication was wasted by letting the virus rip through the population and greatly hastening its mutations into many variants.
Edit: in addition to the other paper about evidence of original antigenic sin now affecting outcomes from covid infections, there are also papers arguing that has been observed due to exposure to other coronaviruses. The common thing? The S2 protein region. Exactly the region used for most vacines.
If this is indeed happening, then as covid variants multiply and drift further from each other, and as people get reinfected, this is going to be disaster on its own. Even apart from the other disaster of very likely cumulative damage to the immune system. And vaccines can easily become part of the problem instead of any help.
The authors of this paper point out that almost all the vaccines in use produce this very same S2 subunit, and thus "this phenomena should be studied" as new variants drift away from the original vaccines and people who were exposed to those too get infected with different variants. It would be heresy to say more just now...
It has nothing at all to do with culture war. It's an observation about an unfortunate individual trait people have, it's hard to recognize one was mistaken. Especially hard one's livelihood depends of appearing right. Unless you want to flag Keynes as a cultural warrior (he observed exactly this), you can't dismiss this observation like that. Might have been Galbraith mind you, kind of quoting from memory.
It's impossible to chase this virus with vaccines. That puts makes even the "mucosal immunity through vaccines" route a wasted one by now. What advantage could have been gained from vaccines towards an effort at eradication was wasted by letting the virus rip through the population and greatly hastening its mutations into many variants.
Edit: in addition to the other paper about evidence of original antigenic sin now affecting outcomes from covid infections, there are also papers arguing that has been observed due to exposure to other coronaviruses. The common thing? The S2 protein region. Exactly the region used for most vacines.
If this is indeed happening, then as covid variants multiply and drift further from each other, and as people get reinfected, this is going to be disaster on its own. Even apart from the other disaster of very likely cumulative damage to the immune system. And vaccines can easily become part of the problem instead of any help.
The authors of this paper point out that almost all the vaccines in use produce this very same S2 subunit, and thus "this phenomena should be studied" as new variants drift away from the original vaccines and people who were exposed to those too get infected with different variants. It would be heresy to say more just now...
It has nothing at all to do with culture war. It's an observation about an unfortunate individual trait people have, it's hard to recognize one was mistaken. Especially hard one's livelihood depends of appearing right. Unless you want to flag Keynes as a cultural warrior (he observed exactly this), you can't dismiss this observation like that. Might have been Galbraith mind you, kind of quoting from memory.
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Lexicus
Deity
Upton Sinclair, but arguably William Jennings Bryan said it first.
It's the same with influenza. We're doing fine with influenza.
(could be better, but could be a lot worse)
Wait, with #3 you complain about the new fast technologies and accelerated approval, and in #2 you complain that everyone is not fast enough, right
?Also you're objectively wrong, it has been 4 for a long time, and in the meantime it's 5, https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-...accines-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines-authorised .
Also, as above, before you've been calling for more antivirals, and now you're unhappy with the ones you got.
You might as well take on a cardboard sign with "we are all doomed".
Antivirals are notoriously difficult. This is not a surprise to anyone. Can't kill something, if the easiest route is to kill the host. Effective antivirals exist for very little viruses.
As we've been doing with a lot of other bugs. For years already. So much for "impossible"
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Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
338,000 deaths & US$105.6 billion
Costs of COVID-19 so far that could have been averted by universal health care in the United States.
Significance
The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. Universal healthcare could have alleviated the mortality caused by a confluence of negative COVID-related factors. Incorporating the demography of the uninsured with age-specific COVID-19 and nonpandemic mortality, we estimated that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved 212,000 lives in 2020 alone. We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a Medicare for All system.
Abstract
The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. During a pandemic, the lives saved and economic benefits of a single-payer universal healthcare system relative to the status quo would be even greater. For Americans who are uninsured and underinsured, financial barriers to COVID-19 care delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission. Concurrently, deaths beyond COVID-19 accrued from the background rate of uninsurance. Universal healthcare would alleviate the mortality caused by the confluence of these factors. To evaluate the repercussions of incomplete insurance coverage in 2020, we calculated the elevated mortality attributable to the loss of employer-sponsored insurance and to background rates of uninsurance, summing with the increased COVID-19 mortality due to low insurance coverage. Incorporating the demography of the uninsured with age-specific COVID-19 and nonpandemic mortality, we estimated that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved about 212,000 lives in 2020 alone. We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a single-payer universal healthcare system over the course of the pandemic. These economic benefits are in addition to US$438 billion expected to be saved by single-payer universal healthcare during a nonpandemic year.
Costs of COVID-19 so far that could have been averted by universal health care in the United States.
Significance
The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. Universal healthcare could have alleviated the mortality caused by a confluence of negative COVID-related factors. Incorporating the demography of the uninsured with age-specific COVID-19 and nonpandemic mortality, we estimated that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved 212,000 lives in 2020 alone. We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a Medicare for All system.
Abstract
The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. During a pandemic, the lives saved and economic benefits of a single-payer universal healthcare system relative to the status quo would be even greater. For Americans who are uninsured and underinsured, financial barriers to COVID-19 care delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission. Concurrently, deaths beyond COVID-19 accrued from the background rate of uninsurance. Universal healthcare would alleviate the mortality caused by the confluence of these factors. To evaluate the repercussions of incomplete insurance coverage in 2020, we calculated the elevated mortality attributable to the loss of employer-sponsored insurance and to background rates of uninsurance, summing with the increased COVID-19 mortality due to low insurance coverage. Incorporating the demography of the uninsured with age-specific COVID-19 and nonpandemic mortality, we estimated that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved about 212,000 lives in 2020 alone. We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a single-payer universal healthcare system over the course of the pandemic. These economic benefits are in addition to US$438 billion expected to be saved by single-payer universal healthcare during a nonpandemic year.
Paper WriteupMrCynical
Deity
Inaccurate. There are currently 5 approved for use in the UK (Pfizer, Moderna, Oxford/AZ, J&J, Novavax) and that's the case for most European countries, including yours.
Your complaint implies there are others that should be introduced, but are not approved solely for political reasons. This doesn't really hold up in reality. Ignoring minor reformulations of the approved vaccines, the other available options are Sinovac, Sinopharm, CanSino, Sputnik and Covaxin. The last of those is still in phase 3 trials in the US.
Sure, politics around China and Russia aren't going to help the others get approved, but given they all gave substantially inferior results to those that were, it's an entirely rational scientific stance to avoid these as well. (Except maybe Sputnik, but remember it's also a valid scientific stance to be suspicious of results in regimes where politicians have that much involvement and influence over the scientists). Sinovac was struggling to even get to 50% efficacy before the virus had time to adapt.
With clinical trials being the most expensive bit of drug development, pharma companies would be very happy to have all the testing paid for by someone else. Who did you have in mind?
Your link here doesn't really seem to hold up that "blacklisting" is going on. It's a vaguely entertaining spat to look through, but it mostly amounts to Paul Thacker sulking that Facebook fact checkers stuck a "health warning" on his piece. Not even removed it - just a "dodgy - this is being used to mislead" warning. Bit of a stretch to argue that's being silenced. The piece in the BMJ is still up there, and rather more important than how much it's being passed around on Facebook.
He rather ties himself in knots trying to argue that his article didn't actually claim to call into question the results of the clinical trials when the piece is literally titled "Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer's vaccine trial. (Data integrity issues is science-speak for "their data is a load of made-up crap").
Whether you accept his splitting of hairs here or not, he's rather missing the point. Once his piece was latched onto and passed around as the latest tidbit for the antivaxxer misinformation crowd, it needed that fact checker's warning. The point of the warning was that it was being used to mislead, not what the article itself actually said.
Sadly that's not as paradoxical as it ought to be. Something I have noticed with monotonous regularity is the misinformation crowd posting links to pieces which don't support, or even flat out contradict the stance they are taking. Since most people don't even read the linked material, let alone stop to think about it, you get end up with articles being waved around as "evidence" for a stance they directly contradict. So yes, that can result in a situation where a piece that's reasonable in itself still needs a warning because of what is being done with it.
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I think this is the critical figure from that paper:
There certainly is some drop in protection with the later variants, but it is not at all saying they are useless or it would be better to be unvaccinated. The smallest effect is seen in the vaccinated only group, the drop is much greater in the infected groups (b and c).
We've very much flown over the thread limit. Will there be any protest if I start a new one?
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