Coronavirus

[Swerd]

A responsible politician would determine the facts, not “ask questions” premised on unverified claims made by bottom feeders of the Internet.

That's why Ron Johnson is both irresponsible and reckless. I suspect he isn't dumb – he actually knows better – but he deliberately spews falsehood after falsehood. He's earned the epithet of Senator from the state of Death Cult.

@Dan Thanks for that post. It's a good example of Mark Twain's observation about lies and truth:

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." – Mark Twain

 

[Mikado463]

This so-called Second Opinion Roundtable, hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) is irresponsible and dangerous. Johnson is an active spokesman for the 'Death Cult Wing of the GOP'.

Stop posting this kind of miss-information.

Richard, I know you're the resident genius here so therefore those on that roundtable are all fabricators of the truth ? How do they still hold their respective jobs then ?

 

[NINaudio]

Richard, I know you're the resident genius here so therefore those on that roundtable are all fabricators of the truth ? How do they still hold their respective jobs then ?

Why do you want to take the opinion of this miniscule subset of doctors when 99.9% of doctors don't agree with them and none of the data and evidence supports their claims? McCullough's and Malone's claims have repeatedly been shown to be false and spurious. They're entirely based on dubious information at best.

As for how are they still holding their jobs? What jobs do they have? How many of them are self employed and running their own practices? Never mind that they could lose their job but still have the title of Dr.

 

[Dan]

I shall reply to Mikado because @Swerd is too classy to. First I dispute the title resident genius even in his own family (my SAT scores were higher I believe).
Ron Johnson is an elected US Senator. The qualifications to serve in Congress are virtually nil as has been demonstrated throughout our history.
Dr. Robert Malone does not hold a job currently as near as I can tell having resigned from his last company in 2020.
Dr Harvey Risch PhD is tenured faculty at Yale School of Public Health where his dean said of him: "My role as Dean is not to suppress the work of the faculty, but rather, to support the academic freedom of our faculty, whether it is in the mainstream of thinking or is contrarian." In other words he is tenured and I can't do shyt.
Dr. Jay Battacharya works at Stanford in the same institute as Dr. Scott Atlas, an embarrassment to my specialty. Atlas silly ideas while an advisor to Trump were shown to all at the time. Dr. B is focused on health care economics, tangentially part of the pandemic but no viral expert.
Ryan Cole, MD owns his own lab in Idaho so I guess he can't fire himself but his company has lost access to a large group of hospitals in Idaho reasons undisclosed. He is a dermatopathologist (i.e. the study of diseased skin under the microscope).
Dr. Pierre Kory, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist in private practice in Wisconsin is a leading proponent of Ivermectin. He has had papers retracted for their faulty statistics. The one I saw included an unrealistic number of patients treated with ivermectin (in the 200,000 range) that was utter BS when I read it as a preprint on Researchgate. Buried in n obscure Brazilian medical journal.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty was fired from UC Irvine 12/32/21 and is a psychiatrist.
Dr. Richard Urso is an ophthalmologist in private practice in Texas. His specialty has nothing to do with Covid or public health.

Simple google searching no Wikipedia given the controversial nature of the subject. Note not a single contrasting view in the bunch. Hardly a balanced discussion. Apologies for typos but I'm at work.

 

[Swerd]

Richard, I know you're the resident genius here so therefore those on that roundtable are all fabricators of the truth ? How do they still hold their respective jobs then ?

I already knew about Ron Johnson. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he is a liar. But I had never heard of the web site "The Highwire", before you posted your link.

I eventually found this Washington Post article:
How the falsehood of athletes dying from coronavirus vaccines spread by Glenn Kessler

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/01/how-falsehood-athletes-dying-covid-vaccines-spread/

Kessler writes a regularly appearing column, called The Fact Checker. In his 1 Feb 2022 article, he debunks the entirely false story of athletes collapsing and dying after being vaccinated, how Ron Johnson has dishonestly milked this story, and follows the whole misinformation trail.

In post #7520 above, @Dan posted the entire text of this article. It's complex, but I urge you to read it. I'll quote from this Washington Post article, where it talks about The Highwire.

On Nov. 4, the HighWire tweeted a translation of the Austrian article to its more than 100,000 followers. The HighWire is associated with the anti-vaccination group Informed Consent Action Network, which is headed by Del Bigtree, a major voice in the anti-vaccination movement.

By Nov. 16, the HighWire had produced a video titled “Why Are Healthy Athletes Collapsing?” that restated the debunked Report24 list. That led to another fact check by PolitiFact on Dec. 1 that flagged the video as false, limiting its circulation on the Facebook platform. A few weeks later, the HighWire reedited the video to remove names of players who had not been vaccinated.

For fact checkers, it’s like a game of whack-a-mole. By late January, Good Sciencing claimed its list had grown to 577 players, with 352 dead. (Any close scrutiny finds links of deaths to a vaccine to be highly tenuous.) On Jan. 21, the HighWire posted a new video, titled “Healthy athletes are still inexplicably collapsing.”

It's clear that this whole story cannot be believed. That it gets repeated by Ron Johnson and The Highwire qualifies it as deliberate misinformation – of the worst kind.

 

[Trell]

I already knew about Ron Johnson. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he is a liar. But I had never heard of the web site "The Highwire", before you posted your link.

I eventually found this Washington Post article:
How the falsehood of athletes dying from coronavirus vaccines spread by Glenn Kessler

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/01/how-falsehood-athletes-dying-covid-vaccines-spread/

Kessler writes a regularly appearing column, called The Fact Checker. In his 1 Feb 2022 article, he debunks the entirely false story of athletes collapsing and dying after being vaccinated, how Ron Johnson has dishonestly milked this story, and follows the whole misinformation trail.

In post #7520 above, @Dan posted the entire text of this article. It's complex, but I urge you to read it. I'll quote from this Washington Post article, where it talks about The Highwire.



It's clear that this whole story cannot be believed. That it gets repeated by Ron Johnson and The Highwire qualifies it as deliberate miss-information – of the worst kind.

He is just asking questions and posting informative posts that is interesting to read.

 

[davidscott]

Fox News fail to report on anti-vax trooper’s death from Covid

Robert LeMay died due to complications related to Covid-19, having previously hit out at vaccine mandates

www.independent.co.uk

And all of the FOX hosts are vaccinated or tested daily. Sad.

 

[Mikado463]

Thanks to 'all' the resident geniuses here for clearing the air on the controversial PodCast.

For the record Ninaudio, I never said that I took their opinion, rather that PodCast further shows the rhetoric that continues to circle about on all things COVID. That teach anyone to trust a guy in white lab coat

 

[Dan]

Thanks to 'all' the resident geniuses here for clearing the air on the controversial PodCast.

For the record Ninaudio, I never said that I took their opinion, rather that PodCast further shows the rhetoric that continues to circle about on all things COVID. That teach anyone to trust a guy in white lab coat

For the record I never wear my white coat. The last time I did it was because my scrubs split

 

[Mr._Clark]

two years into this mess, where are we now, what have we learned ........

https://thehighwire.com/videos/covid-19-a-second-opinion-roundtable-in-d-c/

Since you asked, here's what I've learned.

I've learned that people I know can die from COVID.

I've also learned the following:

"There is no increased risk for mortality among COVID-19 vaccine recipients."

COVID-19 Vaccination and Non–COVID-19 Mortality Risk ...

This report describes lower non-COVID-19 death rates among COVID-19 vaccinated people.

www.cdc.gov

I've also learned that during the most recent wave of COVID in New York City, unvaccinated people were about 10 times as likely to end up in the hospital:

10 times is just a rough estimate based on eyeballing the graph. You can compare the blue line (unvaccinated) to the red line (vaccinated) and draw your own conclusions

COVID-19 Breakthrough Data

Cases and hospitalizations by vaccination status

coronavirus.health.ny.gov

See that black line in the graph above? That's the estimated vaccine effectiveness. See that little slope near the end going from about 95% to about 90%? I've learned that some people look at that little downward slope in the black line and declare "The vaccines should be pulled off the market. They clearly are not solving the problem.”

Dr. Peter McCullough: Official COVID ‘narrative has crumbled’

'The vaccines should be pulled off the market, they clearly are not solving the problem.'

www.clarkcountytoday.com

So, another thing I've learned is that I think of these people as being idiots.

Another thing I've learned is that yet another double blind trial of ivermectin this past year did not show any benefits:

>>>In the very same presentation, the very same trial that showed this antidepressant might lessen the symptoms of Covid-19 also showed that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin—you’ve heard about that one, right?—doesn’t help at all. In the Together trial, that drug, commonly used against things like river blindness and intestinal roundworms, didn’t keep anyone with Covid out of the hospital any better than a placebo. Of 677 people with Covid who got 400 micrograms per kilogram of weight per day for three days, 86 ended up in the ER or hospital; of the 678 people who got a placebo, 95 went. That’s not a significant difference, and Mills’ team dropped it from the study.<<<

https://www.wired.com/story/better-data-on-ivermectin-is-finally-on-its-way/

Another thing I've learned is that in clinical trials, Paxlovid was highly effective in treating COVID:

>>>Pfizer’s oral antiviral drug paxlovid significantly reduces hospital admissions and deaths among people with covid-19 who are at high risk of severe illness, when compared with placebo, the company has reported.

The interim analysis of the phase II-III data, outlined in a press release, included 1219 adults who were enrolled by 29 September 2021. It found that, among participants who received treatments within three days of covid-19 symptoms starting, the risk of covid related hospital admission or death from any cause was 89% lower in the paxlovid group than the placebo group.<<<

Covid-19: Pfizer’s paxlovid is 89% effective in patients at risk of serious illness, company reports

Pfizer’s oral antiviral drug paxlovid significantly reduces hospital admissions and deaths among people with covid-19 who are at high risk of severe illness, when compared with placebo, the company has reported. The interim analysis of the phase II-III data, outlined in a press release...

www.bmj.com

 

[Verdinut]

Since you asked, here's what I've learned.

I've learned that people I know can die from COVID.

I've also learned the following:

"There is no increased risk for mortality among COVID-19 vaccine recipients."

COVID-19 Vaccination and Non–COVID-19 Mortality Risk ...

This report describes lower non-COVID-19 death rates among COVID-19 vaccinated people.

www.cdc.gov

I've also learned that during the most recent wave of COVID in New York City, unvaccinated people were about 10 times as likely to end up in the hospital:

View attachment 53537

10 times is just a rough estimate based on eyeballing the graph. You can compare the blue line (unvaccinated) to the red line (vaccinated) and draw your own conclusions

COVID-19 Breakthrough Data

Cases and hospitalizations by vaccination status

coronavirus.health.ny.gov

See that black line in the graph above? That's the estimated vaccine effectiveness. See that little slope near the end going from about 95% to about 90%? I've learned that some people look at that little downward slope in the black line and declare "The vaccines should be pulled off the market. They clearly are not solving the problem.”

Dr. Peter McCullough: Official COVID ‘narrative has crumbled’

'The vaccines should be pulled off the market, they clearly are not solving the problem.'

www.clarkcountytoday.com

So, another thing I've learned is that I think of these people as being idiots.

Another thing I've learned is that yet another double blind trial of ivermectin this past year did not show any benefits:

>>>In the very same presentation, the very same trial that showed this antidepressant might lessen the symptoms of Covid-19 also showed that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin—you’ve heard about that one, right?—doesn’t help at all. In the Together trial, that drug, commonly used against things like river blindness and intestinal roundworms, didn’t keep anyone with Covid out of the hospital any better than a placebo. Of 677 people with Covid who got 400 micrograms per kilogram of weight per day for three days, 86 ended up in the ER or hospital; of the 678 people who got a placebo, 95 went. That’s not a significant difference, and Mills’ team dropped it from the study.<<<

https://www.wired.com/story/better-data-on-ivermectin-is-finally-on-its-way/

Another thing I've learned is that in clinical trials, Paxlovid was highly effective in treating COVID:

>>>Pfizer’s oral antiviral drug paxlovid significantly reduces hospital admissions and deaths among people with covid-19 who are at high risk of severe illness, when compared with placebo, the company has reported.

The interim analysis of the phase II-III data, outlined in a press release, included 1219 adults who were enrolled by 29 September 2021. It found that, among participants who received treatments within three days of covid-19 symptoms starting, the risk of covid related hospital admission or death from any cause was 89% lower in the paxlovid group than the placebo group.<<<

Covid-19: Pfizer’s paxlovid is 89% effective in patients at risk of serious illness, company reports

Pfizer’s oral antiviral drug paxlovid significantly reduces hospital admissions and deaths among people with covid-19 who are at high risk of severe illness, when compared with placebo, the company has reported. The interim analysis of the phase II-III data, outlined in a press release...

www.bmj.com

Those stupid physicians with misinformation about vaccines and anything else related to Covid-19 should lose their operating license permanently. There are too many idiots on this planet!

 

[TLS Guy]

I shall reply to Mikado because @Swerd is too classy to. First I dispute the title resident genius even in his own family (my SAT scores were higher I believe).
Ron Johnson is an elected US Senator. The qualifications to serve in Congress are virtually nil as has been demonstrated throughout our history.
Dr. Robert Malone does not hold a job currently as near as I can tell having resigned from his last company in 2020.
Dr Harvey Risch PhD is tenured faculty at Yale School of Public Health where his dean said of him: "My role as Dean is not to suppress the work of the faculty, but rather, to support the academic freedom of our faculty, whether it is in the mainstream of thinking or is contrarian." In other words he is tenured and I can't do shyt.
Dr. Jay Battacharya works at Stanford in the same institute as Dr. Scott Atlas, an embarrassment to my specialty. Atlas silly ideas while an advisor to Trump were shown to all at the time. Dr. B is focused on health care economics, tangentially part of the pandemic but no viral expert.
Ryan Cole, MD owns his own lab in Idaho so I guess he can't fire himself but his company has lost access to a large group of hospitals in Idaho reasons undisclosed. He is a dermatopathologist (i.e. the study of diseased skin under the microscope).
Dr. Pierre Kory, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist in private practice in Wisconsin is a leading proponent of Ivermectin. He has had papers retracted for their faulty statistics. The one I saw included an unrealistic number of patients treated with ivermectin (in the 200,000 range) that was utter BS when I read it as a preprint on Researchgate. Buried in n obscure Brazilian medical journal.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty was fired from UC Irvine 12/32/21 and is a psychiatrist.
Dr. Richard Urso is an ophthalmologist in private practice in Texas. His specialty has nothing to do with Covid or public health.

Simple google searching no Wikipedia given the controversial nature of the subject. Note not a single contrasting view in the bunch. Hardly a balanced discussion. Apologies for typos but I'm at work.

Dan, our team used to have a select category of colleagues that we noted were wrong more often than by chance. I think those Mikado mentioned are in that category for a dead cert!

 

[Mr._Clark]

Those stupid physicians with misinformation about vaccines and anything else related to Covid-19 should lose their operating license permanently. There are too many idiots on this planet!

At some point, the notion that these people are just expressing a different opinion becomes ludicrous.

Here's another recent study showing the effectiveness of vaccines against omicron.

>>>Adults who were unvaccinated had 5x higher risk of infection compared with adults who were fully vaccinated with a booster. . . . Average weekly, age-standardized rates of cases and deaths (events per 100,000 population) were higher during periods of Delta predominance and Omicron emergence than during pre-Delta and Delta emergence periods and were consistently higher in all periods among unvaccinated persons (range = 64.0–725.6 [cases] and 1.5–11.4 [deaths]) than among fully vaccinated persons (range = 7.4–230.9 and 0.1–0.7).<<<

COVID-19 Incidence and Death Rates Among Unvaccinated ...

This report describes COVID-19 incidence rate ratios for unvaccinated versus fully vaccinated persons with and without booster vaccine doses during the emergence of the Omicron variant.

www.cdc.gov

 

[Swerd]

At some point, the notion that these people are just expressing a different opinion becomes ludicrous.

My thoughts exactly. I am baffled by the idea that expressing contrarian opinions on this subject is desirable. We are struggling with how to handle a lethal and highly contagious viral pandemic among a US population of more than 330 million. When these opinions fly in the face of widely accepted scientific, medical, & public health practices, I find them to be no better than sabotage – politically-motivated sabotage. They should not be tolerated as part of the give & take that comes with free speech.

 

[Swerd]

First I dispute the title resident genius even in his own family (my SAT scores were higher I believe).

If they were higher it has to be because 1) I coached you before you took your SATs. 2) When you took those tests, years after I took them, the population taking the SATs was dumber, making your percentile scores higher.

I shall reply to Mikado because @Swerd is too classy to.

Thanks, I cannot dispute that .

 

[Mr._Clark]

Swerd's favorite immune cells are getting some positive press lately:

>>>‘Killer’ immune cells still recognize Omicron variant
Amid concerns over lost antibody defences, some researchers [and swerd] argue that more attention should be paid to T cells.
. . .
“The picture that’s emerging is that [new] variants remain highly susceptible to T-cell responses,” says Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “That includes Omicron.”<<<

‘Killer’ immune cells still recognize Omicron variant

Amid concerns over lost antibody defences, some researchers argue that more attention should be paid to T cells.

www.nature.com

>>>SARS-CoV-2 spike T cell responses induced upon vaccination or infection remain robust against Omicron<<<

SARS-CoV-2 spike T cell responses induced upon vaccination or infection remain robust against Omicron

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has multiple Spike (S) protein mutations that contribute to escape from the neutralizing antibody responses, and reducing vaccine protection from infection. The extent to which other components of the adaptive response such as T cells may still target Omicron and...

www.medrxiv.org

>>>SARS-CoV-2 T Cell Responses Elicited by COVID-19 Vaccines or Infection Are Expected to Remain Robust against Omicron<<<

SARS-CoV-2 T Cell Responses Elicited by COVID-19 Vaccines or Infection Are Expected to Remain Robust against Omicron

Omicron, the most recent SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern (VOC), harbours multiple mutations in the spike protein that were not observed in previous VOCs. Initial studies suggest Omicron to substantially reduce the neutralizing capability of antibodies induced from vaccines and previous infection...

www.mdpi.com

 

[Swerd]

Swerd's favorite immune cells are getting some positive press lately:

>>>‘Killer’ immune cells still recognize Omicron variant
Amid concerns over lost antibody defences, some researchers [and swerd] argue that more attention should be paid to T cells.
. . .
“The picture that’s emerging is that [new] variants remain highly susceptible to T-cell responses,” says Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “That includes Omicron.”<<<

‘Killer’ immune cells still recognize Omicron variant

Amid concerns over lost antibody defences, some researchers argue that more attention should be paid to T cells.

www.nature.com

>>>SARS-CoV-2 spike T cell responses induced upon vaccination or infection remain robust against Omicron<<<

SARS-CoV-2 spike T cell responses induced upon vaccination or infection remain robust against Omicron

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has multiple Spike (S) protein mutations that contribute to escape from the neutralizing antibody responses, and reducing vaccine protection from infection. The extent to which other components of the adaptive response such as T cells may still target Omicron and...

www.medrxiv.org

>>>SARS-CoV-2 T Cell Responses Elicited by COVID-19 Vaccines or Infection Are Expected to Remain Robust against Omicron<<<

SARS-CoV-2 T Cell Responses Elicited by COVID-19 Vaccines or Infection Are Expected to Remain Robust against Omicron

Omicron, the most recent SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern (VOC), harbours multiple mutations in the spike protein that were not observed in previous VOCs. Initial studies suggest Omicron to substantially reduce the neutralizing capability of antibodies induced from vaccines and previous infection...

www.mdpi.com

Thanks for posting those papers. When it comes to scientific publications, you're getting pretty good at recognizing the wheat from the chaff.

The short news article in Nature was good. I found myself smiling & agreeing as I read it. I recommend reading it to anyone interested. It's a well-written overview that explains the important questions and answers, without going in to the nuts & bolts details of doing the work.

‘Killer’ immune cells still recognize Omicron variant

Amid concerns over lost antibody defences, some researchers argue that more attention should be paid to T cells.

www.nature.com

That Nature article mentioned the next paper on your list by Burgers & Riou in South Africa. It's the first hard data on T-cell responses in clinical samples taken from omicron infected patients. I can recommend reading the Summary – and stop there.

SARS-CoV-2 spike T cell responses induced upon vaccination or infection remain robust against Omicron

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has multiple Spike (S) protein mutations that contribute to escape from the neutralizing antibody responses, and reducing vaccine protection from infection. The extent to which other components of the adaptive response such as T cells may still target Omicron and...

www.medrxiv.org

The rest of that article is for readers who are familiar with the research lab method called Flow Cytometry, and the kind of data and results you get with that technique. I can nod my head as I read it, but I wouldn't attempt to explain it to anyone.

For extra credit and grins, read this brief Wikipedia description of Flow Cytometry . It's the method used in most T-cell analyses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_cytometry

The last paper is a computerized prediction of T-cell responses expected in vaccinated people who become infected with omicron. If you've ever encountered the words "in silico analysis", this is what is meant. Overall, it seems to be consistent with the results of Burgers & Riou, but I don't read enough of these papers to be able to comment on it's value.

The bottom line of all these papers is the good news that vaccinated people do have strong T-cell responses against infections with the omicron variant.

Why is it that vaccinated people can get infected by the omicron variant, but they get severe disease, requiring hospitalization, much less often than non-vaccinated people? I think it is possible that these T-cell findings might actually end up being the explanation. As scientific evidence goes, I'd say the T-cell evidence is consistent with that explanation. It isn't a solid air-tight demonstration, establishing it as fact, but it's headed in that direction.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Noticed in that in the wiki they use red, green, and blue light/laser. Are they playing video afterwards?

 

[Swerd]

Noticed in that in the wiki they use red, green, and blue light/laser. Are they playing video afterwards?

They're playing video while they're doing that. It's like fluorescent-labeled laser tag on a microscopic level. Like the latest video games, none of that would be possible without fast computers.

 

[mtrycrafts]

..., none of that would be possible without fast computers.

I want one of those fast computers on the cheap though.