Is simple. Like every decision in life, there is a weighing of risks and benefits. The risk to me from CV-19 is incredibly low. The risk to me (short-term, mid-term and long-term) from the vaccine is unknown. That is an easy and rational decision.

To paraphrase you, on a serious note, when there is no reliable data out there anywhere on the medium and long-term effects from these pre-infection treatment protocols, I can’t believe anyone without any of the underlying pre-existing health problems think it is better to assume these unknown risks for a very slight benefit. But then again, I am not lobbying to ban vaccinated people from society either.

I did have to laugh at your reference to “reliable sources”. You might want to reconsider where you get your news from.

Status update on omicron spread being tracked here:

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2021/11/omicron-tracker/

4A7A3C56-4D9A-4951-991F-7BF287B53C7A.jpeg

There’s more people than ever, there are more
Dumb people than ever, and people are more
Stubborn than ever.
It’s a brutal mix.
It is
at work is a complete joke..no one seems to care

...or the murder hornets!

CE4C87FF-8AE6-4908-96DE-4C2B06B1E9D9 (resized).jpeg

So do you want to do a show of hands of those that have lost loved ones to Covid vs the vaccine?

Has the vaccine killed roughly 1 in every 450 Americans? No?

You’re right, it seems so simple yet so many can’t critically think for themselves. SAD!

Define short term, medium term, long term.

This story about a soccer team in Portugal is disturbing knowing that over 90% of Portugal is vaccinated. A player came back from South Africa and now the majority of the team has Covid. Could it be a sign of Omicron’s ability to evade immunity from vaccines? I am sure we will hear more on this story if it is found to be the new variant.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/portuguese-liga/story/4532864/portugal-league-match-abandoned-as-covid-outbreak-reduces-belenenses-to-nine-playerstwo-keepers?platform=amp

Critical thinking requires to start with an hy

If case count is rising within the vaccinted population and if mutations are coming then we are wasting our time with vacine mandates.

How manny shots needed for each mutation, two three?

Why are you castigating for breaking something they are not using.

If the vacincine is so safe and effective then why does WHO recommend that vaccinted mask up and stay six feet when we were told that the vaccine was going to wipe out the covid.

Can you ask yourself with the mutations is getting to zero cases as plausible goal post to allow mobility and unrestricted living.

Omicron is the 15th letter in the Greek alphabet, so I guess the WHO reckons this could run and run...

Face masks are mandatory again here, and of course travel restrictions for affected countries, though the banker health minister doesn't want any more WFH or other restrictions. So watch this spread like wildfire. We've seen this game before, but the politicians apparently don't learn. Let's just hope those boosters work...

Am I reading this correctly? It sounds like the one team knew one of its players had Covid and asked for the game to be canceled and was told they have to play. And then the entire team got sick. Am I reading this correctly?

No, not the correct read. The Portuguese league appear to be the ones in the wrong in this story:

"In the middle of the afternoon we communicated to the Liga that we didn't want to play the game," he said. "We had eight players who could attend the game and as such, they told us that if we didn't attend the game it would be unjustified absence."

My understanding is one South African National Team player came back to the Portuguese pro team (Belenenses) after World Cup Qualifiers were played and tested positive. The qualifiers were played around November 16, so the player probably traveled back to Portugal on Nov. 17. After that a total of 17 players on the pro team tested positive since then so they only had 8 healthy players available for their league match. The Portuguese league told them they must play anyway. The players made public statements disagreeing with the decision of forcing them to play, and they tried to play but were getting blown out 7-0 so after halftime one player sat down on the pitch to force the stop of the match because it was a farce to play that match in the first place as 11 players against 8.

Preprint, but booster data looking promising. Maybe good enough to overcome omicron. Tbd.

25x antibody concentration. Even higher than infection+vax combo.

Don’t think 2 doses gonna cut it anymore. I suspect previous infection probably not good enough either.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.19.21266555v1.full?s=09

This is an early not very scientific report on Omicron symptoms. We should hope that this is the beginning of the variants being less harmful versions of Covid, and that the existing vaccines still are effective in significantly reducing the affects of Covid.

https://thegazapost.com/en/post/133898/What-are-Omicron-symptoms-

This never happened.

Again, nobody ever said that getting to 0 cases was a realistic goal. Most communities are reasonably using hospital overcrowding as the metric for restrictions.

You’re confusing a few things in your post.

Covid is like the flu, in the sense that it constantly mutates. That’s what viruses like that do. It doesn’t matter how many people have immunity or are vaccinated, the virus will keep on mutating.

The purpose of the vaccine is to protect people. Like all other vaccines, it isn’t 100% effective. No vaccine is 100% effective. It’s a fact of life. Some years, the flu vaccine will have a 40% effectiveness. Other years, it will be higher. It is what it is.

You’re right in the sense that cases will never get to zero. It’s going to be with us forever, unless it mutates itself out of existence.

I did read about the new variant, and from the limited amount of people who had it (that’s all we have to go with for now), it appears that it’s a very mild virus, that is easily fought off by the body. Will it end up being this as we learn more? Don’t know. The early signs is that it’s along the lines of a cold.

Interesting story regarding lung transplants in the US. About 1 in 10 are now going to Covid patients. Lots of ethical considerations especially as it relates to vax status.

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/28/1058988220/once-rare-lung-transplants-for-covid-19-patients-are-rising-quickly

Made up or exaggerated BS on this thread frequently begins with "We were told...." or "I was told...."

It's lazy.

Re: omicron having mild symptoms

We simply don’t know that. There is an out of context quote circulating from SA officials that incorrectly indicates a mild disease. Unfortunate, various news sources are running with it.

It is true that a lot of the cases being found in Europe appear to be asymptomatic…but as I understand it those folks are double vaxxed, so I would expect their covid symptoms to be on the mild side due to that alone.

True, SA hospitals are doing ok…but they also just got off of a delta wave, so ok is relative. Also…in the region with omicron surge, hospitalizations are ticking up again. (Edit: see attached image)

If we get a combo like double rate of infection with half the severity…we still lose.

Time will tell.

5975C3EB-6464-40D0-B706-0EBE51088AC7.jpeg

Having been on the support team for my friend who had a double lung transplant last year, a lung transplant is only done as a last resort because of all the types of transplants, it has the worst odds of success. If they are doing them for Covid patients, those patients would literally die otherwise.

My friend needed a transplant because of Cystic Fibrosis, so not due to “lifestyle factors” but many people on the list are there because of conditions brought on by smoking. They don’t screen out people for those choices, so I don’t see them screening people out for needing a transplant bc they weren’t vaccinated. But it’s a self teaching lesson because they will end up spending the rest of their lives as extremely immunocompromised people. Vaccines may be the only thing that gives them any level of protection.

Greek alphabet names are confusing, especially when we skip letters.

I propose we name them after the Seven Dwarfs, then Santa’s Reindeer, then Spice Girls and if we need more after that maybe the Beatles, Buffalo Wild Wings flavors and the Fellowship of the Ring.

Right now delta would be Grumpy or Dopey I think.

Why? If the CDC can “evolve” the definition of “vaccinated” and “vaccine”, while ignoring its own mask metastudy that predated its politicalization, I don’t need to define those time frames in the slightest. Suffice to say, the longest study possible to date cannot exceed 2-years.

The fundamental and incorrect assumption underlying your beliefs is that every individual is the same and has the same risk profile. We don’t.

And your reply confirms that there are risks from the vaccine. You just weigh those risks differently than I do.

You say you don’t know what the short medium and long term effects are, but then you also refuse to define short medium and long terms.

That’s a bit of a box you have put yourself in.

I’m not trying to trick you. I’m trying to understand you.

Some people want to wait longer before getting vaccinated. I may not agree with it, but it’s perfectly acceptable for people to do that. After all, it is their body.

Unvaccinated risking death and paying the price:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/colorado-hospitals-overwhelmed-by-young-dramatically-ill-unvaccinated-covid-patients

And the poor soul they passed it onto had no say in the matter.

This is the first thing I thought of when I heard the new name of the variant
Give us a Futurama pin

IMG_20211129_230610 (resized).jpg

In May I turn 68 and I got the J&J shot as a hedge against potential negative reactions to the virus. Friday was diagnosed with Covid and feel like crap. In an hour and a half I’m going to the infusion room at the hospital to get the Regeneron monoclonal antibodies. These seem to help in almost every case. The good news on Verizon is the antiviral medication‘s for Merck and Pfizer,
Should be a great asset in stopping COVID from Replicating itself. Everything in life is a choice make the best decision for yourself.

Siri typed Verizon rather than Horizon ,

You can’t force people to put things in their body.

What gives you that right?

Sounds pretty simple to me. What possible effects can it have on my body five, ten, twenty years down the road? I think you know that’s what he means too but you’re trying to bait him into saying it so you can come back with why are you worried about twenty years down the road when Covid can kill you now. If you go back to Trekkie’s post from a day or two ago with the CDC elevated risk factors and not check off any of those boxes and add in a healthy diet and regular exercise, the odds of this killing you are slim to non existent vaccinated or not. I think it’s pretty clear by now that especially in younger people that an elevated BMI and smoking is your worst enemy.

I'm getting my booster (3rd dose) this week. In your face, Omicron.

Still thinking abut the flu vaccine, as the efficacy can be quite low, and this year Oz had zero cases so difficult to know if it's the right 'strain'?

You may think my sources are laughable, but I'm afraid I think the same about yours.

I get that listening to the 1% of doctors when 99% tell something that you yourself don't believe to be true is nice.
It's like with climate change: 95% or more of the experts were certain about the influence of mankind on the climate and 1 or a few percent said otherwise. Guess who is easier to listen to if you don't want to hear that we should change something in our consuming society. Lots of politicians and consumers adopted that few percent instead of what was researched by science as a whole. Guess who's right? Well, there are probably still some climate change deniers, or deniers that what we do has an influence, though they have become quite rare.
I think it's the same here as with climate change: you can listen to what almost all scientists agree on, or search for someone who is or was once a doctor and has a different point of view that fits you better. Yes, it's true: not everything is certain and some things do change, but we do know a lot already. And yes, scientists don't all agree at details, but for a lot, there's quite some consensus in a direction (like: vaccinations protect you from so much more damage (as an average) than the damage that vaccinations can cause (average).

Swing and a miss.

Not baiting. It’s more of If I put words in his mouth of 5,10,20 then he can come back with “those aren’t the timeframes I am talking about, don’t put words in my mouth”. Then I say 1 month, 1 yr, 3 yrs and he comes back with “those times are way too short, try again”.

I am trying to skip that part of the back and forth and get to the meat of the matter.

I will probably have counter arguments, but it is impossible to have a good faith discussion with paranoia and accusations like you are slinging around.

The pills are very good news, even if the Merck one isn’t as good as the initial data showed. The way they go about messing with the virus is very flexible to mutations.

Same cannot be said for the current formulations monoclonal cocktails. Very real potential that the omicron variant decreases their effectiveness decidedly.

Plus pills scale so much better than infusions.

Exactly!!!

The best defense against disease is a healthy body/lifestyle.

Anyone who thinks different is a complete idiot.

As my doctor told me, vaccinated or not, this disease has a 0% chance of killing me. I got vaccinated because I don't want to get sick.

But don't forget, because I posted directly from the CDC, the CDC is no longer trusted for information. Just like the FDA with masks.

With masks, forceflow posts that study, where the study itself said it was heavily biased...so much for being a scientific study.

The impact from Covid on your health isn't a binary "you live or you die" situation - long term effects could be reduced lung capacity, brain and organ damage, and more. So sure, you may and probably will survive, but you may not return to your perfect health.

People have received multiple vaccines for other diseases over the years yet there were never studies for 10, 15, and 20 years down the road. If those studies had to exist then the vaccines would never be released.

There's basically 3 ingredients in the MRNA vaccines, the doctor in this video from Duke Health explains it well.

1. MRNA, protein derived from a surface molecule that helps Covid bind to our cells (active part of vaccine)
2. Delivery vehicle that allows MRNA to come into cells, lipid nanosphere, tiny ball of fat (normal fats) that brings MRNA into cell
3. Carrier molecule, Poly Ethylene Glycol (PEG), common chemical in food and cosmetics
4. Saline it's mixed with and potassium as a stabilizer

"Most of them are seeing very, very mild symptoms and none of them so far have admitted patients to surgeries. We have been able to treat these patients conservatively at home," said Angelique Coetzee.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/583368-south-african-scientists-give-first-reports-on

And 4 days later.....

800K going once,

800K going twice,

By the end of the day.

Screen Shot 2021-11-29 at 12.17.47 PM (resized).png

"Vaccine development is a long, complex process, often lasting 10-15 years and involving a combination of public and private involvement."

Found that here:
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation

I think the long studies are generally completed before the approval. In this case, it seems reversed.

This is what I don’t understand. You’re worried about possible effects from the vaccine 5 years down the road with absolutely no signs that point to there being any issues yet are willing to risk getting COVID which we KNOW is already causing long term effects.

Got a booster today. Moderna was zero fun for me back in the spring, so I switched brands and got Pfizer this time. Smooth sailing 4 hours in to it, but historical me warns not to celebrate yet.

-Rob
-visit https://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or my repacement LED display boards for model 78, D, E, H & S Skee Ball

chad This is the exact out of context quote I was referring to below.

Been putting off the booster as everybody I know has been knocked on their ass by it.

But I don't want to be booster shamed!!! How long do you think until the booster shaming starts? We still got a few months, right?

Is that over a 1 year period?