Maybe it is time for that booster shot?

64 thoughts on “Maybe it is time for that booster shot?”

1. What are the stats for who are visiting the ER / hospital due to breathing difficulty or pneumonia since the wide availability of the mrna vaccine ? Relative to previous years? The friends immune system might be a couple of standard deviations from normal and didn’t respond much to the mRNA vaccine or else went back to baseline faster than average.

   • Paul: Those would be easy to gather in the UK and some other countries with centralized healthcare information systems. It would be tough to do this in the U.S. Maybe it could be done with insurance claim data.

2. I doubt that just being overweight is a coronavirus risk.
   I know 1) vaccinated heavy person who had nominal covid and recovered after few days
   2) really heavy (well over 300lb since childhood) active lifestyle person whose trimmer spouse got easy form of covid but who did not get infected
   3) multiple people with BMI 30 to 100 who never got sick despite being out and inside in large groups gatherings for the duration of this pandemic; other trim poeople who attended same gatherings tested covid positive and some got sick at different time; they also did not spread infection as nobody in their immediate surrounding got sick

   • Anon: I think that it is tough to sort out being overweight because you live next to Chick fil-A and just love Chick fil-A and being overweight because you’re not very healthy and therefore don’t engage in much activity. But at least considering the headline diseases that are easy to control for, I think there has been an established statistical link. Here’s a study from Korea: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253640

     Here’s a meta-analysis from a variety of countries:

     https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7493748/

     And one from Spain:

     https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgab546/6326782

     One cause for skepticism, I guess, is that estimates of relative risk from the various studies don’t seem to be consistent.

   • Since this post relates a personal experience, not a statistic, and develops into an explanation for statistical inferences, I decided to relate my anecdotes. I noticed it early on but decided to state it 2 years into the pandemic, counting from China. Overweight by government standards people that escaped covid or got it in an easy variant were not yet vaccinated; some of them somewhat irrationally vaccinated after “surviving” light form of coronavirus infection or not getting infected by close family members. I also know cases of not-vaccinated octogenarians not getting infected from their children living in the same household; being survivors they still refuse to get vaccinated to the furor of their twenty-something brainwashed grandchildren who afraid of the infection.
     Part of Korean research where underweight people are at higher risk seems to confirm my observations; part stating that overweight are at higher risk does not. My observations sample case size is several dozens, close to a one hundred, people from different backgrounds but maybe common genetics going back six hundred years at least and living in between three bordering US states equivalent in size to all of Scandinavia

3. Why take the cardiac risk of the clotshot for a low covid risk reduction that quickly wears off and likely leaves you more prone to infection after it wears off?
   Eat clean(ish), fast, exercise, sunshine. Sauna if you have one. Vitamins if you want to feel good popping pills, NAC and such if you can find any.

4. I wonder how the symptoms of your friend-who-had-COVID compare to someone who was not vaccinated. I know several friends in Sweden who had it in the early days- all of whom are <40 years old and relatively healthy (ie not obese, lots of walking, etc), which of course is a more common thing in Sweden than in the US in my experience – and to a person they told me it was awful. "Two weeks of the worst flu you can ever imagine" they said. They also said it felt like your "lungs were on fire" constantly, to the point where they could barely breathe without breaking into a rough cough. This was in addition to the tiredness and fever that we all associate with COVID.

   If all your vaccinated friend had was tiredness and a fever, it seems less terrible than my unvaccinated friends' experience – which suggests that the vaccine may have helped. Albeit with a limited dataset – "correlation is not causation" and all of that, etc.

   For what it's worth, this is why I got vaccinated. Not really worried about dying from it, but "two weeks of the worst flu ever" doesn't sound like fun to me. Besides, at my age and health profile the risks of injury from the shot are far lower than the risks of injury from COVID.

   • That’s surprising…when I listen to “Dr” Phil I would think that Sweden is CovidUtopia and everyone is mask free and loving life — oblivious and not at all impacted by Covid.

   • Mike: What Keith describes for the Swedes who suffered through COVID actually could be a vastly better situation than what Americans who never got COVID have experienced, depending on your personal value system.

     How much negative value do you place on being horribly sick for two weeks? If the answer is “infinite” then the Swede with COVID is worse off than the American who never got it. (Though keep in mind that the masked-and-shut U.S. so far has a higher cumulative death rate from COVID-19 than the Swedish Free State.)

     How much positive value do you place on children being able to go to school and receive an education? If the answer is “a huge value” then the Swedish guy who suffered through COVID might actually be better off than the American who never got COVID but whose child’s school was closed for 18 months.

     Not everyone picks COVID as the only way to measure the success of an individual or of a society. (But even if that is your only metric, Sweden still outperforms the U.S. in the COVID Olympics: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ )

   • Keith: As it happens, none of the 50-or-so folks I talked to who had COVID in 2020 (pre-vaccination) had “lungs on fire” or similar symptoms. Many had cold/flu-type symptoms. About half had a classic loss of taste and smell.

     (I know a bunch more who tested positive, but had no symptoms. They weren’t all young athletes either. A spring 2021 family situation comes to mind. Mom (50s and plump) tested positive after one of her teenagers got sniffles (the other teenager tested positive, but was asymptomatic). It struck me as cruel that they’d spend roughly a year fully bunkered (in a Manhattan apartment!), and with their kids’ schools shut down, only to end up with exactly the same disease and symptoms as if they’d been partying for the whole year.)

5. Yes, vaccine effectiveness has fallen to ~60% against infection, but it is still ~90% effective at keeping people out of the hospital.
   https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccine-effectiveness

   A *90% reduction in hospitalization risk*. If there hadn’t been a bitter election last year, we’d be hailing this as a miracle drug.

   • Alex: You believe this 90 percent number? How is that consistent with the strenuous efforts of the vaccinated to coerce the unvaccinated? The risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 was already reasonably low compared to other risks. If that risk has now been cut by 90 percent, would it make sense for the righteous in the Bay Area and NYC to try to exclude the handful of remaining Deplorables from restaurants, etc.? How many unvaccinated people are there in the Bay Area who have enough money to pay for a meal in an elite restaurant? Or maybe the idea is that any close contact with an unvaccinated person will defile the vaccinated person?

   • >You believe this 90 percent number?

     Sure. The US, Israel, the UK, and Canada are all measuring similar levels of effectiveness. Israel says ~88% effective against hospitalization, for example. (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-vaccine-39percent-effective-in-israel-prevents-severe-illness.html)

     “Why mandate vaccination if the vaccines work so well then?” is a totally fair question.

     First, vaccines don’t work well for everyone because not everyone has a strong immune system. One day, we will all be old and frail, and our immune systems will be old and frail too. Everyone with a solid organ transplant must take immunosuppressive drugs for life. I’m in my 20s, but I still got vaccinated to minimize the chance that I spread it to my parents or grandparents.

     Second, the electorate demands that politicians do *something* about covid, and I would much rather see vaccine mandates than the alternative (masks, school closures, lockdowns, etc).

     Third, people suck at estimating their personal risk, particularly for low probability events. No smoker believes they’re going to get lung cancer, until they do. And no one thinks they’re going to end up in the ICU with covid, until they do.

     > The risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 was already reasonably low compared to other risks.

     I would fully agree that we should not forget about heart disease and cancer in our rush to fight covid. Still, the CDC estimates that about 1-in-44 Americans have been hospitalized for covid (including the president, despite his access to the best screening technologies and medical treatment in the world!).
     https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html

     While I acknowledge that everyone has different risk tolerances, would you consider that risk negligible?

   • Alex…excellent summation. Totally agree.

   • Alex: “We’re doing it for the immunocompromised” sounds to me like the standard American justification for invading a country, i.e., “We’re doing it to protect the women.” The idea is that people get three new organs at the hospital and then immediately head over to a packed dance club?

     The CDC says that 1 in 44 Americans were hospitalized for COVID-19? I can certainly believe that a lot of Americans who were hospitalized eventually tested positive for COVID-19. But actually hospitalized because they had COVID-19?

     https://qz.com/work/1351400/dunbars-number-doesnt-represent-the-average-number-of-social-connections/ says each of us has about 500 social connections (friends plus other personal contacts; the median). So each of us should know roughly 10 people who were hospitalized for COVID-19. How many people do you personally know who were hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment?

   • “How many people do you personally know who were hospitalized for COVID-19 treatment?”
     -Possibly one, an underweight individual in the risk (asthma, old but still working adult) group, leading inactive lifestyle, whose immediately family stopped all communications once he got sick. Once he recovered without long term effects he resumed normal communications but silent on his personal experiences topic, so he could be to a hospital.
     Interesting that another underweight individual in the same risk (asthma, old but still working adult) group but leading active lifestyle and punching two levels above his weight did not get sick.
     Both individuals heavily communicate with large groups of young adults traveling to covid hotpots as part of their perspective distinct jobs.

   • Now that I think about it, if the primary concern were preserving those for whom the vaccine is not effective and/or not applicable, wouldn’t you actually try to limit the use of a “leaky” vaccine like the ones that we have?

     If vaccines don’t prevent infection and transmission, but only makes young and middle-aged people feel invulnerable (since they’re being told that their hospitalization risk has been cut by 90 percent), won’t that actually increase the amount of virus circulating? And therefore, even if the virus does not mutate in any way, the risk for those for who can’t be protected by a vaccine will be increased.

     If we allow for evolution, however, the risk can be turbocharged for those who aren’t vaccinated, as happened with

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease

     The Marek’s disease vaccine is a “leaky vaccine”, which means that only the symptoms of the disease are prevented.[12] Infection of the host and the transmission of the virus are not inhibited by the vaccine. This contrasts with most other vaccines, where infection of the host is prevented. Under normal conditions, highly virulent strains of the virus are not selected. A highly virulent strain would kill the host before the virus would have an opportunity to transmit to other potential hosts and replicate. Thus, less virulent strains are selected. These strains are virulent enough to induce symptoms but not enough to kill the host, allowing further transmission. However, the leaky vaccine changes this evolutionary pressure and permits the evolution of highly virulent strains.[13] The vaccine’s inability to prevent infection and transmission allows the spread of highly virulent strains among vaccinated chickens. The fitness of the more virulent strains is increased by the vaccine.

     Highly virulent strains have been selected to the point that any chicken that is unvaccinated will die if infected.

   • I know six people who have died from Covid, and another three who were hospitalized and eventually returned home. Four out of the six deaths were elderly, so they might have eventually been hospitalized anyway. My social circle isn’t particularly large.

     What percentage of people are hospitalized shortly before dying (of any cause)?

   • On people who can’t depend on their immunity:
     Unfortunately, vaccine effectiveness starts dropping in our 40s, with a steep decline after 75. Time is a cruel mistress. (https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/07092021_covidupdate.html, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e2.htm#T1_down).

     On “people who I know”:
     I am a pretty boring tech worker myself, but my parents are practicing physicians, so I do know the following:
     – several of their patients were hospitalized and died of covid
     – my father witnessed the “covid ward” at a local hospital, full of covid patients
     – both of my parents rushed to get the covid vaccine and recommended it to all of their staff and family members

     Maybe we should defer to the doctors on this one?

     On the leakiness of vaccines:
     This is a real possibility! But the vaccine *does* reduce infection risk, by 60%. That’s 60% less likelihood that you’ll spread covid. And note this in people who *know* they’re vaccinated and are behaving accordingly. Also note that the pre-delta number was ~95%, and the booster shot appears to restore something close to that level of immunity (per Israel data).

     I’m happy to continue engaging here. If I can convince even one person to get one shot, I’ll consider that a victory.

   • Alex: “Maybe we should defer to the doctors on this one?”

     Do you mean for figuring out how many hospitalized COVID patients a typical person might encounter? I think that would be a great example of sample bias!

     Or do you mean for Covid policy? If the latter, which doctors do you want to defer to? The MDs who are among the 44,000+ “practitioners” who signed https://gbdeclaration.org/ (“open up everything for the reasonably young and let the virus spread”) ? The expert committee of MDs in the UK who said not to vaccinate 12-15-year-olds? (see https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/world/uk-vaccines-children.html ) Harvard Medical School graduate Joseph Ladapo who is the Florida Surgeon General and says “This idea that people don’t get to make their own decisions on issues of health related to their own personal health is wrong,” he told reporters. “Vaccines are up to the person. There is nothing special about them, compared to any other preventive measure.”
     https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210923/florida-new-surgeon-general-opposes-covid-vaccine-mandates

   • Disambiguation attempt here: There are two people posting as “Alex.” I’m not the person who authored the above posts, I’m the old verbose gun-owning Alex who double posts replies to himself and things of that sort.

   • OMG my mind has just been blown. So there are two Alexes! I suppose Alex doesn’t always respond to his own posts. It all makes perfect sense now. For the curious there is only one Toucan Sam!

   • I am surprised to get so much pushback on the ~7 million hospitalizations number. Is it really so hard to believe that on a base of 767,000 recorded deaths? That would imply ~10% of hospitalized patients die. Is that unreasonable?

     I agree these numbers are shocking, particularly in a world where a 90% effective, bipartisan, exhaustively-studied vaccine now exists.

     Vaccines have given us the luxury of not having to make the choice posed by the GBT.

     The “UK’s four chief medical officers” have evidently endorsed vaccination for the 12-15 age group. I see why this was a tricky decision, but personally I feel much better visiting my parents and grandparents having been vaccinated.
     https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58423152

     Florida is such a depressing story. It enjoyed success for most of the pandemic, then squandered it. The *post-vaccine* covid wave has left Florida with New York-level deaths per capita (>2,800 deaths/million). This was an unnecessary political tragedy.

   • @Toucan Sam: Like Obama always said, since we like our Toucan Sam we’ll keep our Toucan Sam.

     For the record, I was vaccinated in March/April of 2021 and am currently being treated for a Bad Disease that I am Afraid Of for a Good Reason. I have older parents who interact with me on a daily basis in close proximity and we all got the shots at the same time for precisely those reasons. I have not yet received a booster shot but I’m going to get one after I recover a little more from a major operation I had in the very-not-too-distant past.

     I don’t see any option for myself right now. However, I’m thrilled by the intellectual back-and-forth on display here. I’ll save my own opinion for another time, because “time will tell.”

     Separately, I really do think the Universal Mandatory RFID Chip is one very good/really bad answer to these questions on a lot of levels. We’d be able to maintain, gather and look at the data in a completely different way. My experiences over the past 18 months is that while individual health care systems / hospitals may be pretty good at keeping track of data on their patients, the United States as a whole does is patched together like Frankenstein, and therefore nobody can believe the damn numbers we see, and there are a million ways to slice the ones we do. It’s sucks. The only problem is we all become Snake Plisskin or Pet Nazis.

     So it’s either that, or we get the sh*t out of our brains and learn how to use the expertise we have INVENTED and CREATED in this country but cannot seem to use and implement very well when it comes to health care data but spend enormous sums of money maintaining. Our host had a few very good ideas about that in the past as I recall, almost none of which actually happened.

     Over and out.

   • “I am surprised to get so much pushback on the ~7 million hospitalizations number. Is it really so hard to believe that on a base of 767,000 recorded deaths? That would imply ~10% of hospitalized patients die. Is that unreasonable?”
     ?
     So much wrong with this paragraph as related to the original posting. Asserted 7 million of hospitalized tells us nothing of vaccine effectiveness rate of hospitalization prevention. 767,000 coronavirus – related deaths assumed to come only from hospitalized population, which is false.

   • Alex (non-verbose): I think you’re right that a 10:1 ratio of hospitalizations to deaths isn’t crazy. On the other hand, middle-aged folks’ social networks don’t seem to include the statistically predicted number of friends and acquaintances who’ve gone to the hospital for COVID treatment. Perhaps the answer is in the average age and prior health condition of an American who was hospitalized with COVID-19 and/or died from COVID-19. The typical working-age American does not have a lot of contact with people who live in nursing homes and/or are over 75 years old (median age of a COVID death in Maskachusetts was 82 through August 2020).

     Florida is a depressing story? Not for our neighbors here in Florida, it doesn’t seem to be! It is true that Florida didn’t come up with a unique way to beat our viral enemy. And, partly due to having a lot of folks over age 75, Florida has also suffered a high-by-world-standards aggregate death rate. But folks around here aren’t sad because they lost the COVID war. Back in June 2020, after the initial panic wore off, Floridians accepted COVID-19 as one of the risks that people who leave their houses take. COVID-19 got lumped in with car accidents, flu, and other things that you could avoid by staying home. Those who didn’t consider the total risk acceptable stayed home. Those who were willing to accept the total risk went out.

     If the only thing that matters is maximizing life-years, why not implement one of the proposals from here on my blog for cutting traffic accident deaths down to close to 0? Nobody actually needs to travel at more than 35 mph. Most trips are non-essential and can be eliminated altogether.

   • Philip, I know several elderly (in their late eighties and nineties people and one centennial) and I know not of a single hospitalization. The elderly whom I know have wide circle of elderly friends whom I sometimes see and who disregarded 6 feet separation rule (outside) and sometimes (often) did not wear masks properly. I have not heard a single story of hospitalization. The elderly all have in common that they do not live in nursing homes. Since being vaccinated the elderly regularly gather indoors.

6. The problem is that we don’t know if friend developed antibodies from the vaccine – not everyone does.

   Since we know that vaccine is leaky, it’s very likely that more virus is now spread asymptomatically. I.e. before infected person more likely stayed home than unknowingly went out and infected others.

   I think this is most likely (and ironical) explanation for the third peak on the excessive deaths graph in US (aka one true stat).

7. I don’t understand why people who talk about the vax first have to declare they aren’t “anti-vax”. I am glad our fine host did not include this disclaimer in his anti-vax post! It’s too bad facebook isn’t here to remind us that vaxs are great!

   • TS: It’s true. A lot of schools and non-profit orgs now start every meeting with an “acknowledgment” that they’re on indigenous land (but they won’t give it back!). Every article about climate has to start with the author acknowledging a personal belief that human actions have already caused dramatic climate change in a negative direction. Every article about vaccines has to start with a statement about how the author has now gotten 3 shots plus 6 more for his/her/zir/their children 5-11.

   • Phil is in the same camp as FoxNews Corp — vaccinated but asking others to fight The Man against vaccines/masking.

     Phil: your previously-stated cop out for getting vaccinated is that you were scared about not being allowed into society without the vaccine. Is there anything in the last 10 months that you would have been prevented to do without a vaccine card? So do you now regret getting vaccinated? You certainly now hold less cred among your fellow right-wing-media, FoxNews-watching, Republican-worshiping Facebook buddies.

   • Mike: Although I haven’t watched Fox News, I understand that they’re very popular with my friends back in Boston (constantly posting on Facebook about what they’ve seen on Fox News), so I’ll take that as a compliment!

     My personal vaccine journey is exactly as Professor Ioannidis predicted in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-021-00362-z

     Assured of my invulnerability, I got on a couple of packed commercial airline flights (for business, though I could have driven or flown the Cirrus given a bit of patience), stepped up indoor restaurant dining, and attended a gathering of 100,000+ people per day (Oshkosh/EAA).

     I admit that I was wrong about the utility of a vaccine passport for myself. I was right that traveling to a lot of countries now requires proof of vaccination. Where I was wrong is in thinking that the other coronapanic-related hassles and requirements would be lifted. So I now have the theoretical ability to travel (because I have my vaccine card), but I don’t want to travel because, as noted elsewhere on this thread, I am afraid that I will get stuck in a foreign country because (a) could not get test results back in time for return flight, (b) tested positive for COVID-19, etc.

     Just tonight, actually, we abandoned a planned family trip to New Orleans. We told neighbors here in the Florida Free State about the trip and they responded by telling us about the vaccine passport check at every restaurant. We Googled and were amazed to learn that New Orleans has joined San Francisco and NYC in maximizing public health via a vaccine status check when you’re walking in to load up on supersized hurricanes and beignets.

     (Separately, given that the current COVID vaccines may protect against severe illness, but do not stop infection/transmission, if someone at Fox News says “I want this for myself, but I don’t want the government to force it on others,” I don’t think that is a philosophically or logically inconsistent point of view. The current COVID vaccines cannot be compared to smallpox vaccines, for example, which has the potential to eradicate the smallpox virus (a DNA virus, unlike SARS-CoV-2 (RNA virus, like influenza), and one without an animal host, unlike SARS-CoV-2, which is apparently thriving inside deer.)

   • I will say that here in mask-show-you-papers-los-angeles that it is really annoying to have to constantly be showing your vax card. Most of the time we just ask to sit outside where showing the card is not required. I find it personally insulting to be asked to see it so often. To make matters worse my card was issued almost one year ago and has sat in my wallet ever since. It is so worn out it is hardly recognizable and I am constantly being quizzed on its condition. It was never designed as a “passport” and is just a simple piece of paper with some stickers on it. I am sure I am not the only one in this position.

   • Toucan…strange because I also live in LA and have only been asked to show my card once. And that was at SoFi stadium for a Ram’s game. Not a single restaurant has asked.

   • Jim: Looks as though expanded demands for vaccine record checks went into effect on November 8 (and also there is a difference between L.A. County and L.A. City). Have you been securely bunkered since November 8 or are restaurants not complying with government orders?

     https://ktla.com/news/local-news/l-a-will-require-covid-vaccine-proof-for-indoor-restaurants-gyms-malls-movie-theaters-starting-monday/

     Confusing: “Patrons who aren’t vaccinated and don’t qualify for an exemption can still opt to use outdoor areas of the venues. And they can be allowed to briefly go inside the location to use the restroom, place an order or pick up an item if they’re masked.”

     The homeless population in California has certainly demonstrated that nobody needs to use an indoor restroom. Why are restaurants letting in infidels and heretics to use the bathroom?

   • Phil…I am in LA City. The restaurants are simply not complying…at least the ones I’ve been going to. On average, we go out 2-3 times a week.

     There’s so much pretending going on with all of this. I have vaccinated friends who pretend they are not vaccinated, and unvaccinated ones who say they are. I’ve verified this through mutual friends who report different stories than I do when talking to them. Who knows what their reasons are for the deception…especially the vaxxed ones.

   • Jim: I think we’ve seen some motivation to lie here among the comments. A person who says “I don’t think universal vaccination will end COVID-19 and I think forcing people to get vaccinated violates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code and therefore the government should not order compliance” is attacked as hypocritical if he/she/ze/they admits to voluntarily getting a vaccine. To my mind, there is no logical contradiction in these positions (“I want it for myself, but I don’t want the government to force others to get it.”), especially given the vast difference in COVID-19 risk depending on age. But to at least some folks, they feel like they’re scoring points if a person who is against vaccine coercion (in apparent violation of the Nuremberg Code) gets a vaccine for him/her/zir/themself.

   • Jim is a big fat liar. Jim please name the restaurants that do not ask to see the vaccine card. I would prefer to visit those restaurants.

8. Also, usually we go to Cancun for Christmas school break, but hotels we usually go to are already sold out. This is all you need to know about how truly “dangerous” the virus is.

   • SK: I am shocked at how many people are traveling. There are so many annoying testing requirements and there is always the possibility of a real or false positive resulting in an inability to return home. The airline ride itself is obviously hazardous. Even if you don’t get COVID on the flight, it will probably be unpleasant compared to in pre-mask days (as a measure of the bad mood on the prison galleys… the prison uprising: https://www.today.com/news/unruly-passengers-are-higher-i-have-ever-seen-tsa-head-t239293 )

     Traveling was one of my passions, but I’ve cut back to essentially no leisure travel.

   • I had a friend just go to Europe a few weeks ago. He planned what was essentially a refundable backup stay in an expensive hotel with balcony in case he tested positive the day before returning home. Seems like too much trouble to me.

   • I took 4 domestic flights in the last month and it’s pretty laze-back now, compared with the beginning of 2021. While “masks” are still “required”, enforcement is relatively lax.

   • I recently returned from 5 weeks in Europe – London, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Netherlands and Iceland. This involved 6 airplane flights and 6 Covid tests on the way. I didn’t worry at all and had a great time.
     https://www.facebook.com/randall.gasdf/posts/10159650440854485

   • Bless you for supporting the travel industry! I’m not quite ready to accept something that requires 6 high-stakes medical tests as a fun leisure activity! Imagine if one of those tests had come up positive.

     Your pictures on Facebook are inspiring, though!

     Those museum photos from October 2 are in the Rijksmuseum ? Nobody is wearing a mask! No wonder #Science has ordered them to lockdown again and also give up their New Year’s fireworks (see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59355950 ).

   • It was a calculated risk. I don’t spend much time in places where Covid is likely to spread. Should I have tested positive it would mean I could not go somewhere that requires a negative test (like home to Canada) for 14 days, at which point you are deemed recovered and no longer infectious. Didn’t happen though!

     Yes that is the Rijksmuseum. Europe was mostly normal. London: masks only on public transport. Switzerland: masks on public transport and indoor public places. Netherlands: masks only on public transport. Iceland: No masks anywhere!

     Glad you liked some of the pictures. They were all taken with a Sony DSC-HX90V, an excellent pocket camera with a viewfinder that works in bright sunlight.

9. s/should be effective/should not be effective/ (I think).

   This paper claims herd immunity against several Covid19 strains in Stockholm:

   https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.07.21260167v1.full

   There is too much information in there to sum up the paper in a single paragraph.

   • Fixed the missing word. And thanks for the paper reference. The authors are vaccine believers: “Finally, on an individual level it is impossible to know if pre-immunity is present or not, and it is well established that getting COVID-19 unvaccinated is connected with greater health risks than if vaccinated. Based on this, it is our firm conclusion that the vaccination roll-out must continue with high participation to avoid both personal tragedies and COVID-19 becoming endemic…”

     The last part confuses me. The top Swedish health officials, back in February 2020, concluded that COVID-19 would become endemic, which was one of their stated reasons for not including in several years of 14 days to flatten the curve. I thought that pretty much everyone else in the world had now come to the same conclusion, i.e., that COVID-19 would inevitably be endemic (and, indeed, might already be).

10. Sweden has a pretty high vaccination rate – especially for at risk populations. They also do tend to follow “recommendations.”

    • I’m sure that explains no-plague Sweden versus back-to-lockdown Germany. Germans are notorious for refusing to comply with government instructions. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations shows that Germany has a low vaccination rate of 70 percent of the population while Sweden has a sky-high vaccination rate of 72 percent.

      (back-to-lockdown France’s vaccination yet is higher than both at 76%)

    • The vaccination numbers are even higher in Germany for adults. Numbers from the official government site (https://impfdashboard.de/, fully vaccinated):

      60+: 85,8 %
      18-59: 74,6 %
      18+ (total for all adults): 78,5 %
      12–17: 44,7 %

      There is no full lockdown like in April 2020. Schools are open, people go to carnival mass events. Now only the fully vaccinated and recovered (positive PCR test less than 6 months ago) can attend indoor or even outdoor events like carnival.

      So much for the effectiveness of the vaccine with respect to #StopTheSpread. The rules are in place to get everyone vaccinated and not for anything else. I wonder how much school children are spreading the disease though.

      All of this is just extra information, philg’s Sweden/Germany comparison is of course correct.

    • (German) Anonymous: Your neighbors in Austria just went into full lockdown (even for those who’ve enjoyed the Sacrament of Vaccination) and there will be forced vaccinations for the “hesitant” by Feb 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59343650

      How much longer will Germans be doing mass gatherings? Munich Christkindlmarkt was canceled a few days ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/world/europe/munich-christmas-market-canceled.html

      Separately, in order to make it look like the unvaccinated are causing the plague and not doing their share, it would make sense to include more people who aren’t legally eligible for the vaccine. Right now we’re including the 5-11-year-olds for whom no FDA-approved vaccine exists, but who could be stuck with an emergency use authorized product. And we include the 0-4-year-olds as well so that we can never hit our goal of 100 percent. But I am thinking that we should go back to babies who are still in the womb. Unless super long needles are provisioned to CVS, the unborn cannot be vaccinated. This will bring down the overall vaccination rate and give people a greater sense of urgency.

    • philg: Fully agree. The 67% vaccinated figure is promoted to blame the unvaccinated.

      I also agree that Germany will go into lockdowns soon, since Germany is addicted to lockdowns and refuses to look at Sweden.

      Mandatory vaccinations would be a curious situation, given that the Green party is in power. Many Green party followers believe in Homeopathy, Anthroposophy and the power of healing crystals. Therefore many #Science deniers in Germany are the opposite of Deplorables!

      But I’m sure that the Green Party will cave in, they have betrayed their voters many times before:

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/may/14/greenpolitics

    • I would love to see the posters for this, e.g., “Germans: you can be safe only if you follow your Austrian leader”.

    • philg: The poster would be funny (what else do we have left if the government forcibly inserts substances into our bodies?) , but things like these are currently “fact checked” on the Internet, apparently by people without any sense of humor or stylistic exaggeration!

      https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-goering-falsequote-idUSL1N2LM23W

11. Bill Gates helped fund the mRNA vaccine technology could nosiness prior to the pandemic.

    Since these vaccines are gene therapies—bodily source code injections disguised in a lipid nanoparticle Trojan horse—why would any sane person buy into the version 1.0 beta (“EUA”) test? Especially when it requires reinstalls multiple times per year?

    From a software & cybersecurity perspective it seems really dumb…

    • Michael: You raise a good question, i.e., to what extent can technocratic central planners (e.g., governments and the Gates Foundation) predict what is going to be useful. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w presents the history of mRNA vaccines and there is no mention of Bill Gates, nor his plaintiff, nor the Gates Foundation. In other words, to the extent that Gates funded mRNA, he was getting on an already-moving bandwagon.

      According to Nature, Robert Malone at the Salk Institute had the original idea. Nobel Prize for Dr. Malone? This article implies that he falsely “claims” to have had the idea for mRNA vaccine (i.e., trust #Science as embodied in the journal Nature, unless the journal Nature says that a heretic invented something useful):
      https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-malone-vaccine-inventor-vaccine-skeptic/619734/

      What is Dr. Malone’s heresey? He co-authored https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/aug/5/biden-teams-misguided-and-deadly-covid-19-vaccine-/

      Four flawed assumptions drive the Biden strategy. The first is that universal vaccination can eradicate the virus and secure economic recovery by achieving herd immunity throughout the country (and the world). However, the virus is now so deeply embedded in the world population that, unlike polio and smallpox, eradication is unachievable. SARS-CoV-2 and its myriad mutations will likely continually circulate, much like the common cold and influenza.

      The second assumption is that the vaccines are (near) perfectly effective. However, our currently available vaccines are quite “leaky.” While good at preventing severe disease and death, they only reduce, not eliminate, the risk of infection, replication, and transmission. As a slide deck from the Centers for Disease Control has revealed, even 100% acceptance of the current leaky vaccines combined with strict mask compliance will not stop the highly contagious Delta variant from spreading.

      The third assumption is that the vaccines are safe. Yet scientists, physicians, and public health officials now recognize risks that are rare but by no means trivial. …

      The failure of the fourth “durability” assumption is the most alarming and perplexing. It now appears our current vaccines are likely to offer a mere 180-day window of protection – a decided lack of durability underscored by scientific evidence from Israel and confirmed by Pfizer, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other countries. …

      It’s an arms race with the virus. …

      The essence of this arms race is this: The more people you vaccinate, the greater the number of vaccine-resistant mutations you are likely to get, the less durable the vaccines will become, ever more powerful vaccines will have to be developed, and individuals will be exposed to more and more risk.

    • In other words, the inventor of the technology (according to Nature) is pointing out that the same thing that happened with Marek’s disease is likely to happen with COVID-19 as a result of our fanatical vaccination efforts. An optimum strategy, from a virology point of view, might have been vaccination only for those most at risk, e.g., over 65. But, at least with regard to the “non-Chinese” Wuhan version of SARS-CoV-2, the universal vaccination-followed-by-mutation ship has sailed.

      (Dr. Malone’s criticism of forced vaccinations from the government actually supports individuals getting the latest vaccine voluntarily. If everyone else is rushing to get the vaccine that will pressure SARS-CoV-2 to mutate into far more lethal forms (for the unvaccinated), your personal need for a vaccine is far greater than it would have been before anyone was vaccinated. Marek’s disease v2.0!)

      Circling back to your original point, it looks as though Bill Gates, his plaintiff, and his foundation are all getting undue credit. They are latecomers to the mRNA party. In fact, https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-global-access-covid-vaccines says that a higher percentage of the world would have been injected by now if Bill Gates had never shown an interest in COVID-19 vaccines.

12. This just in: The FDA wants 55 years to process FOIA requests on the Pfizer licensing data it controls.

    https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants-55-years-process-foia-request-over-vaccine-data-2021-11-18/

    • Maybe I’ll get the shot in 2076 when I am able to give informed consent.

13. I have the cure. Mandate fitness. BMI over 25 you can’t buy food or go to bars. You will be allowed to go to the gym. Problem solved. Covid only kills fat people and all the other modern diseases are obesity related. Mandate fitness and we can get health spending back to 1970 levels when there were no fat people.

    • GB: Somewhere in this blog I must have suggested something similar, a life-year-saving plan to go with my embedded-systems-on-cars-enforced 35 mph speed limit. Certainly your idea would save way more lives and vastly more life-years than Faucism. I am thinking that a modest way to start would be with sugar ration coupons (convertible into alcohol, corn syrup, maple syrup, honey, etc. equivalents). Americans of any BMI would still have perfect freedom to choose drinks or dessert, either at home or in restaurants, but a limited amount per week. Even without an RFID chip in human necks, it would be easy for restaurants to check and debit coupons since they’re already going to be checking vaccine status with an app.

      Once sugar rationing is implemented, people could be nudged to the gym on a purely voluntary basis. They could earn a beer or a slice of pie, for example, for every gym visit.

      (Folks in Massachusetts and California would still, of course, have unlimited marijuana available from “essential” dispensaries that stay open through any future lockdowns, but they’d need to hit the gym to get enough sugar ration coupons to stockpile delicious snacks to consume while stoned.)

    • I know four people who have died of Covid. Not a single one was obese. Only one had diabetes but was well controlled. Their ages ranged from 40-67. On the other hand, I know at least a dozen fat (for lack of a kinder word) people who had Covid and never missed a beat.

      So, at this point, who the hell knows what to believe anymore.

    • Also, that’s not to disagree. Obesity in this country is way out of control. I say get rid of the drive through lanes at fast food restaurants.

      They’re trying. Have you seen the new commercials on TV yet? They’ve created a city called ObeCity.

    • Jim: Thanks for the stats (though anecdotal, I still find personal experience useful). The CDC wants you to say “people with fatness” instead of “fat people”!

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