Vacci-Nation [CLOSED DUE TO DISRESPECTFUL, INSULTING, POLITICAL POSTS

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by weederr33

Good.

Except that he could be cooking up the next super mutation. :/

[weederr33]

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

Except that he could be cooking up the next super mutation. :/

That's inevitable at this point.

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by weederr33

That's inevitable at this point.

~sigh~

[p1l0t]

Originally Posted by wbradley

I just realized why I never click thanks on your posts.

If we start making casual jokes about airplane safety/fatalities would you get a better understanding how stupid you look to others? Of course I wouldn't do that, it's completely inappropriate.

Your post adds nothing to this thread except showing everyone childish behaviour.

On a positive note I am past 2 weeks from 2nd shot, so fully protected until further notice.
I did have 1 side effect only from shot#2, which was Moderna. I had a tender shoulder and lymph node by my left collarbone and it seems to have passed now. The first, Pfizer, only made my deltoid slightly sore for 1-2 days.

I don't really mind wearing a mask that much which is good considering it will probably be part of life for quite some time to come.

Actually pilots make jokes about it all the time so that's not going to bother me. We can't live long enough learn the hard way from crashing so we are always reading about accidents. Sometimes that devolves into bad jokes too. Sort of in the same way paramedics have a dark sense of humor about medical cases. I just can't wait until most people get their vaccines and we can find some other crisis catch-all word excuse to over-react too. At least we got our minds off terrorism for a bit. I can't wait also until the real data comes in on the effectiveness, risk/reward, side-effects, and immunity to variants by people who have strong enough immune systems naturally vs people who are dependent on vaccines (and boosters) etc... of this. I worded that badly, I can wait, and I will. And you can try to blame me for being a host for mutations if you want but the vaccine doesn't stop you from carrying the virus. Who knows maybe in 5 years it will be normal to get weekly vaccinations. Or maybe we will have a vaccine that prevents all viruses. Time will tell. Besides when the variants do come around we will see who's immune system evolves the best to defend it. Maybe those with natural immunity, maybe those with a vaccine for something similar, maybe those who had both, maybe those with neither.

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[weederr33]

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

~sigh~

I know. I know. I'm just stating the obvious.

[Clipdat]

Originally Posted by p1l0t

And you can try to blame me for being a host for mutations if you want but the vaccine doesn't stop you from carrying the virus.

But it does stop you from transmitting it. Vaccinated individuals who test positive for covid are simply NOT shedding enough virus to be a contagious carrier. Let me just say that again: vaccinated people are not transmitting the virus to others.

The data is there, research it.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by p1l0t

Actually pilots make jokes about it all the time so that's not going to bother me. We can't live long enough learn the hard way from crashing so we are always reading about accidents. Sometimes that devolves into bad jokes too. Sort of in the same way paramedics have a dark sense of humor about medical cases. I just can't wait until most people get their vaccines and we can find some other crisis catch-all word excuse to over-react too. At least we got our minds off terrorism for a bit. I can't wait also until the real data comes in on the effectiveness, risk/reward, side-effects, and immunity to variants by people who have strong enough immune systems naturally vs people who are dependent on vaccines (and boosters) etc... of this. I worded that badly, I can wait, and I will. And you can try to blame me for being a host for mutations if you want but the vaccine doesn't stop you from carrying the virus. Who knows maybe in 5 years it will be normal to get weekly vaccinations. Or maybe we will have a vaccine that prevents all viruses. Time will tell. Besides when the variants do come around we will see who's immune system evolves the best to defend it. Maybe those with natural immunity, maybe those with a vaccine for something similar, maybe those who had both, maybe those with neither.

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Reliable citation as to the likelihood of transmission occurring, please.

Absent that, it's just more MSU.

[Lantanafrs2]

The minute I received my second fauci ouchie I knew I had arrived and now had the authority to wish I'll health on those who hadn't grabbed the bull by its balls like I did.

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by weederr33

I know. I know. I'm just stating the obvious.

Not at all. I'm just disappoint.

[p1l0t]

Originally Posted by Clipdat

But it does stop you from transmitting it. Vaccinated individuals who test positive for covid are simply NOT shedding enough virus to be a contagious carrier. Let me just say that again: vaccinated people are not transmitting the virus to others.

The data is there, research it.

Oh yes the concentration is key. Breathe a little in, you'll probably be immune, touch a doorhandle someone sneezed on and don't wash your hands before you eat... oof. I try to expose myself very gently.

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[Clipdat]

Originally Posted by p1l0t

Oh yes the concentration is key. Breathe a little in, you'll probably be immune, touch a doorhandle someone sneezed on and don't wash your hands before you eat... oof. I try to expose myself very gently.

lol! You are hilarious. I'll leave it at that.

[humfrz]

WOW! What a lively conversation.

Smallpox had been around for thousands of years and by 1980 it had been eradicated from the earth.

How did we do that?

This ain't rocket medicine, folks.

SMH

[wbradley]

Still I cannot see how a pilot, the most probable candidate for point to point transmission all over a country can be allowed to decline vaccination. I am assuming pilot did decline, or perhaps he wishes us to believe he has, in order to keep the thread boiling. Maybe I missed something. There will be no unvaccinated pilots landing into Canada any time soon that's for sure. I am not sure if Canadian commercial air crews are required to be vaccinated. I'm going to guess it's a widely accepted unwritten rule for domestic and of course mandatory for international.

[AnalogMan]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

I am tired of trying to persuade or shame Americans into getting vaccinated.

That was the the point of my inflammatory and agitational post. I think as a society (U.S.) we should accept reality that it's impossible and stop trying. Instead, we should acknowledge this is the way it is, and my provocative (but serious) suggestion that we reserve precious, limited COVID healthcare resources for the vaccinated.

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

I don't subscribe to the notion that this is an extinction or even a decimation level pathogen. However. the laws of probability suggest that sooner or later mutations will emerge that 1) can circumvent the immunity offered by current vaccines, or 2) are substantially more virulent, or 3) both of the above. Thus, we must closely monitor variants as they emerge and tweak the vaccines in response to those mutations. If or when probability bites us in the ass we must be better prepared. When that happens, the vaccines for the emergent strains should be reserved, first, for those who were vaccinated in the first round.

You're absolutely right and I completely agree. I don't suggest that the current situation is itself an 'extinction' level event. But it's moving in that direction. I spend several hours a day reading the latest scientific studies and literature emerging on the virus. I do not claim by any stretch of the imagination to be an 'expert', but do have a graduate degree in biology, and spent >35 years in drug development in infectious diseases so I have more than passing knowledge of the field (and continue to be involved with a group that includes bona fide coronavirus experts and epidemiologists).

What strikes all of us is the continued and rapid emergence of progressively more virulent new pathogens. If you read the emerging scientific literature, a potentially worrisome new variant is identified every few weeks. What's most troubling about this is the trend to progressively increasing transmissibility, virulence, and resistance to vaccine-elicited antibodies.

None of this is surprising. This is what viruses do. Life mutates and evolves in ways to promote its own survival. With the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that's often at our expense.

It's the sheer numbers driving this. Very rough numbers, about half a million new COVID infections worldwide are confirmed daily. This is of course a gross under-estimate, call it a million a day to make it easy. Thus, roughly 20 million new infections every 20 days, about how often a new variant is identified. That's a lot of mutation factories (20 million infected people produce roughly 200 billion new mutations), and it doesn't take a supercomputer to extrapolate where this is going and where we could be in a few years.

The emerging variants are showing increasingly reduced susceptibility to vaccine-elicited antibodies. Many of them are 3-8 fold less susceptible to neutralization by antibodies in the blood of vaccinated individuals.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....full.pdf+html

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...92867421002981

This is a problem, because when the level of antibodies it takes to neutralize a variant exceeds what's in your blood, you can have breakthrough infections - as has already been shown with the Delta B.1.617.2, Beta B.1.35, and Gamma P.1 variants.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....06.21254882v1

https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/05072021-03

The variants are accumulating multiple mutations in the 'spike' region. Again this is not at all surprising, since this is the mechanism by which the virus infects our cells. Become more efficient and effective at infecting our cells, and it promotes its own survival.

Another new variant recently described is Lamba (C.37)

https://www.livescience.com/lambda-c...s-variant.html

It contains 7 mutations in the spike region, including one, F490S, that a recent study says may be a ‘vaccine escape mutation’

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...88754321001798

The laws of evolution dictate that this will continue. New variants will emerge that are more easily transmitted, cause more serious disease (by multiplying more quickly)

https://virological.org/t/viral-infe...-2-variant/724

and are increasingly less susceptible to vaccine-elicted antibodies, because those traits enhance it's survival. Unfortunately, those characteristics come at our expense.

The concern is that variants are emerging so quickly that we'll get to the point where we can't keep ahead of them, even with 'booster' shots. Pfizer is catching flak right now for coming out with a recommendation for booster shots. Yes, big pharma companies are greedy scum and want to make as much money as possible. But their recommendations are based on solid science and work done by many groups - to neutralize Delta you need a higher level of antibodies

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....full.pdf+html

and antibody levels decline over time (especially in certain populations, such as the elderly). We're already seeing reduced vaccine effectiveness against Delta - it's a logical proposal to boost antibody levels with the vaccine we already have.

Yes, vaccines can be tweaked and clinical study is already underway with a modified version designed to be more active against Delta. But it takes time. Even if it were possible to do the work in half the time of the original vaccine, in 6 months we are likely to have several new variants spreading (like Lambda). We might not be able to stay ahead of it.

This is why I suggest that over the long term, the pandemic may well be a decimation or extinction level event (pick your favorite term) for the unvaccinated. Just like the bubonic plagues in the Middle Ages are thought to have killed half of Europe's population (until the survivors did the only thing they could, a hard lockdown)(which still works today), I suspect the numbers of unvaccinated people will dwindle over time.

It's their choice. Call me crazy (and lots of people have called me far worse), but I'd rather choose life.