[ExI] covid or cold?

[Will Steinberg]

On Fri, Dec 24, 2021 at 11:12 PM John Klos via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> > Yeah, I thought it was kind of obvious.  I think the covid vaxes suck.
> > mRNA vaccines are cheap trash made because they take no time or
> development
> > funds.  They protect against a single protein on the virus that we
> already
> > know is prone to mutation.  They're being pushed because of pharma profit
> > margins, in my opinion.
>
> Thank you! This actually gives me something to consider.
>
> So what I'd ask next is do you believe that vaccines are actively bad
> because they have limited protection? Do you think we shouldn't be taking
> them, and if so, why?
>

I think it's up to the individual to decide, honestly.  For young healthy
people I don't think it's worth taking fairly untested medications--an
entire untested *class* of medications!  For people who covid is basically
a death sentence (old, obese, immunocompromised) then it might be a better
idea to take it.  A single-protein vax is never going to beat an attenuated
virus vax or, better yet, actual natural immunity.  mRNA vaxes are like
giving your immune system a police sketch of just the perp's left ear.

> Also here's a study from recently that seems to show these vaccines
> (pfizer
> > and moderna) having *negative* efficacy against omicron after 90 days.
> > That is, you're more likely to get omicron 90 days after your shot than
> > someone who doesn't have the shot.
> > https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.20.21267966v3.full.pdf
> > This is not an antivax study, nor even against the covid vax; it's more
> > about how effectiveness wanes over time and it's in favor of boosters.
> But
> > if you look at the post 90 day bar for omicron on the graph, the 95%
> > confidence interval is so far into the negatives it's ridiculous.  Note
> > that this is a preprint
>
> Oh, dear. That's not how statistics works. I think people see papers like
> these, see something that sounds good, then they run with it without
> actually understanding what they're reading.
>
> No, vaccines don't CAUSE you to become infected. Nobody is saying or even
> hinting that there's some viral interference going on. That would be
> silly.
>
> The data for later dates excludes people who leave the category, either
> by becoming infected, by dying, by emigrating, or - and this is important
> - getting a booster. It's right there in the paper.


 Well yeah, that's why they conclude that boosters reinvigorate your
immunity.  But the efficacy post 90 days is *negative*.  It's not low or
zero; the data seems to show that the vaxed are more susceptible (only to
omicron, specifically.)  At least that's what it appears like to me.  What
else would negative efficacy mean?

It could be original antigenic sin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin


> One might reasonably assume that those who are vaccinated are more likely
> to start going about life a little more normally, and therefore are more
> likely to get infected because of that.
>

Yet another reason the public health approach here has been awful.  They
initially took a hyperutilitarian stance, get people vaxed no matter what.
So they hyped up the efficacy of these mRNA vaxes.  And part of that was
telling people they prevent the spread, not just disease.  Well it turns
out you can still spread it if you're vaxed.  All those international
omicron spreaders were vaxed.  Vaxed people are out there partying and
coming into contact with lots of people, when really they are the ones
spreading it.

In general I think the psychology of this stuff has been absolutely nuts.
Whether it's demonizing the unvaxed, or people thinking masks prevent you
from getting sick (when they're really for preventing you from spreading
it,) to the continually moving goalposts and changing definitions of what
it is to be vaccinated and even *the definition of a vaccine itself*, to
the overblowing of risk for the young and healthy, this shit has been
insane.

And especially, especially, the hypocrisy.  How everyone was talking about
getting vaxed to save others, but really they just wanted to go back to
normal.  They only care about themselves.  That's why we needed to lie and
tell them masks protect the self; they wouldn't have done it for other
people.  That's why they preach empathy while saying they hope the unvaxed
suffer and die.  That's why they're lining up for their 4th boosters when
numerous scientists and public health organizations have said that vaccine
inequality in the third world has CAUSED variants to break out.  That's why
it's so easy to control what they believe.  They are scared--and jobless
too.  And all that fear and financial uncertainty causes anger which has
been channeled onto the unvaxed as scapegoats.  When really, they're just
as much to blame, since they're out there asymptomatically spreading, or
spreading omicron, because they think they're immune.
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