Thank you for providing an excellent example of the fear-based reasoning surrounding "cases". I understand that you are scared, but is incorrect to imply that my opinion comes from a lack of understanding of what you're talking about.
> Why is this so hard for people to understand?
I understand your argument, but I disagree with you, based on a long education in this area, a deep understanding of the data, and personal experience.
> A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away.
Some do not. This one does.
> In MANY cases, it can have a lasting effect on your underlying health and wellness.
In some, rare cases, we see examples of post-viral syndromes. We have seen these for many different viruses.
> I am vaccinated. I have friends who are vaccinated, and have still gotten COVID. One of them still doesn't have their sense of taste and smell back, after nearly 3 weeks post symptoms.
Again, lingering symptoms following an illness are not unknown. Every time I get a head cold, I typically develop a cough that lasts > 3 weeks. By ~all current evidentiary standards for "long covid", I have had "long cold".
Similarly, my grandmother lost her sense of smell to a head cold when I was a child. She never got it back, entirely. Sad, but not something that we took extraordinary societal interventions to prevent.
> They describe being brain fog, and tiredness that they didn't have before, as well as an "itch" in their lungs when exercising that they didn't have before.
Neither of these are objectively defined. I have an "itch" in my lungs, right now (probably allergies). I have never had Covid. When I don't sleep well (which is often, thanks to the state of our society), I have trouble focusing. Is that "brain fog"?
Point being: some people are going to have after-effects from infection. That's unfortunate, but it's not unknown, and the virus isn't going away. If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed.
I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree.
Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized.
As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect. You likely maintain SOME impact from that infection, its just a question of how severe, or in some cases WHEN (see: chicken pox -> shingles). Viruses wreak havoc, and that is a point which is well documented, and slowly but surely people are starting to pay attention.
My gripe with your comment is that it completely disregards this point and treats the risk of viruses and either death, or no risk at all. The truth is far more nuanced than that, and there's legitimate reasons to want overall CASE COUNT to come down. It's about saving quality of life, including, actual life. Vaccination is the path to do that.
I also don't agree with your comment that "If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed."
Asking for proof of vaccination is not "completely up-ending" our society. It's quite reasonable to ask for certain personal hygiene requirements (shirts, shoes, etc.) but we can't ask that someone be reasonably protected from a getting and spreading a very dangerous virus? You're somehow OK with being required to wear clothes, which provide almost no protection from anything, but not OK with being asked to show that you're an unlikely COVID carrier/spreader?
> I am sure you believe what you are saying, and I am also not doubting that you have some education on the topic, but I have to disagree.
Reasonable people can disagree on questions like this. But you came out of the gate insisting that I "didn't understand", which isn't true.
I understand, I just disagree that this is a disproportionate threat to our society that requires disproportionate response.
> Take for example, this study [1] demonstrating significant loss of grey matter in the brain for COVID patients, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized.
FWIW, that study is terrible. It is a statistical fishing expedition, is improperly controlled (i.e. are the changes due to Covid, or something else? You can't tell!), and the whole field of "looking at MRI for reductions in gray matter" is littered with spurious findings. Here's a comment where I go into this in much greater detail:
> As our understanding of virology evolves it is becoming more and more clear that the notion of ephemeral infections is just flat out incorrect.
It's not "flat out incorrect"...as I said before, we know that post-viral syndromes are real. This is not new information.
Having a cough or shortness of breath (by FAR the most common "long covid" symptoms) after a infection are no more an indication that the virus is lingering in your body, than leg pain after a cast is removed is an indication that you continue to have a broken leg. It takes time to heal.
That's fair, my apologies for proclaiming that you don't understand. I should have known better especially on this forum.
I see where you're coming from and I don't entirely disagree with your conclusion. The post you linked, makes a strong case for not jumping to conclusions based on grey matter studies, which I think is sound advice.
That said, I maintain that given the option to get COVID or not get COVID, I would greatly prefer the later. You similarly won't find me gaming long hours, and I make sure to get plenty of sleep. In other words, taking precautions that avoid injury is generally a good idea. And FWIW, I don't find the controls in that study to be terrible? I'm not exactly an authority of statistical analysis though, so I'll trust that this is outside my scope of understanding.
Where it sounds like we disagree most is whether or not the risk of COVID causing injury is worth something as small (or large) as asking for proof of vaccination.
It just so happens that I think asking for proof of vaccination is a relatively minor thing given the possibilities of COVID.
No matter what you do, at some point you'll likely catch a SARS-CoV-2 infection (or maybe you already have). This is pretty much inevitable, just like with the other endemic common cold coronaviruses. Fortunately vaccination can greatly reduce the risk of having clinical COVID-19 symptoms.
This implies that getting the vaccine for the sake of others is far more pointless than we thought right? This would make getting the vaccine a much more personal matter, rather than a societal one.
No, it's not. Vaccinated individuals - even those who catch the virus - have far lower levels of the virus in their bodies, which means fewer chances for mutations.
> CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said recent studies had shown that those vaccinated individuals who do become infected with Covid have just as much viral load as the unvaccinated, making it possible for them to spread the virus to others.
This is why the CDC started recommending masks again.
So the vaccine is for people who want to protect themselves against a serious reaction. Makes the case for vaccination far less compelling than what most people believe.
Seems like that is also up for debate. In this CDC study[1], 74% of cases were in the vaccinated. Probably around 69% of the population were vaccinated, meaning the fact that more than 69% of the cases were in the vaccinated suggests that the vaccinated were even more susceptible than the unvaccinated. I'm sure there are plenty of considerations with this study, but it certainly isn't glaringly obvious that vaccination reduces susceptibility.
The new data for the delta variant shows reduced protection for unvaccinated people (e.g. public benefit) from being around vaccinated people, but still shows benefit to vaccinated people.
What about it? To attempt to restate it: due to the emergence of the delta mutation, it is becoming less reliable to rely on the shared benefit of others being vaccinated to protect unvaccinated or immunocompromised individuals. So the risks to all populations is increasing, but not proportionally: the speed of spread to those without the personal benefit of being vaccinated is increasing much faster.
Edit: note, I’ve seen your other link, and do wonder why that was observed for that community. Here I am referring to current CDC estimates for the country and reports of hospital utilization averages overall.
> You similarly won't find me gaming long hours, and I make sure to get plenty of sleep. In other words, taking precautions that avoid injury is generally a good idea.
That's awesome for you, but not what we are discussing here.
What we are discussing here is you mandating that all drivers of cars gets to bed by 10PM and have a good sleep, on the chance that lack of sleep leads to bad driving which leads to higher chances of accidents, including to those who slept well last night, yet were involved in the accident.
The post I was replying to included links to studies, in which grey matter was assessed in people who play too many video games, don't sleep enough, etc. I was merely making the point that evidence of gray matter reduction in other studies, isn't reason alone to write off the one I linked. We should probably take them all seriously (assuming sound practices).
>What we are discussing here is you mandating that all drivers of cars gets to bed by 10PM and have a good sleep, on the chance that lack of sleep leads to bad driving which leads to higher chances of accidents, including to those who slept well last night, yet were involved in the accident
Not even close to the reality of the situation, but you wouldn't be the first to take a very hyperbolic approach to it.
It's not "asking for proof of vaccination" though is it? It's denying access to restaurants, bars and so-on to those do not or will not accede to such a demand. I don't see that social apartheid as minor thing.
Please let’s not throw around words like apartheid and Holocaust in situations that don’t warrant it. Both of those are commonly used by anti-vax community to draw attention to their perceived pain at being requested to vaccinate. But they trivialise the incredible violence done to millions of people, some of the worst crimes committed by our species. Trivialising these just to score points is unconscionable.
And let me be clear, taking a shot that is safe and effective is not an unreasonable ask. Restricting access to leisure to people who are willing to take this precaution isn’t unreasonable. And no, it’s in no way comparable to some of the worst crimes committed by humans.
There's no "holocaust" in my post, please don't tar me with that brush. Apartheid, "separateness" in Afrikaans, seems entirely appropriate here. Except that there won't be vaccinated bars and non-vaccinated bars, there will just be vaccinated bars, those who refuse to show a vaccine passport will just have to go sit in the park or something.
For the record, I'm fully vaccinated, but if/when bars start demanding vaccine passports in the UK, I stop going to bars.
Apartheid was a system of separation based on essential personal characteristics. Vaccination-admission requirements would lead to separation based on behavioral choice, probability of disease transmission, and liability risk.
It seems like an inappropriate and needlessly emotive choice.
Don’t play semantic games. “I was just using an Afrikaans word” is a sorry excuse. We know exactly what that word means and what specific historical crimes it refers to. You are trying to evoke the memory of those crimes to make this situation look unjust. It’s exactly that behaviour that I’m requesting you not engage in.
> they will have to go sit in a park
Seems fine to me. That’s hardly the worst thing that could happen.
If you’re already vaccinated, like nearly everyone aged 30+ in the UK is and refuse to open an app on your phone to show that … I can only hope that you’re in a small minority. I guess most people just want to get on with it, rather than sticking to some principle. Im not even sure what the principle is here. Hardly anyone will be negatively affected by this mandate because nearly everyone is vaccinated.
> i stop going to bars
Cool. Parks are better for your health anyway. Good day.
Well it seems we won't agree on the substantive point, but in case you're interested, that principle is a hostility to ID cards and demands from the state to provide them in various circumstances.
And refused entry to a bar I wouldn't dream of going to the park, I head home with two bottles of decent white wine.
They may refuse to serve me if I appear to be under 18 and refuse to show proof of age. I do not appear to be under 18 and have only once or twice in my life been asked for proof of age, in each case I declined, chuckled, and moved on the next pub.
Hahaha. What do you do when you’re travelling past international borders and they ask you for a passport? Do you chuckle them too?
Or let me guess, you don’t travel out of England at all so you can avoid the tyranny of passport checkers?
Or do you do the sane thing and show your passport? So then you concede that in certain cases at least the State has a compelling interest in verifying a person’s papers.
I was responding to a question about bars, not about international travel. I have no objection to showing a passport at a national boundary, I do object to doing so to buy some eggs or a glass of wine; don't you see those things as being different?
I don't see them as being different. I'll show ID when I'm asked in both places. You seem to think they're different somehow. In both cases the State is enforcing a rule for the good of society (keeping out Undesirables(TM), restricting access to alcohol from children). I think both of these are reasonable, and I'm happy to comply. You will only comply with one of these seemingly, and I can't see why.
Btw, it's beneath you to try an innocent "some eggs". We know exactly what Tesco is going to card someone for, and it's not eggs.
I disagree with you but upvoted for the first point about using hyperbole to further one's point. That's not acceptable and undermines those atrocities and their weight.
Both sides are doing it - left considers the entire right-wing populace as 'Fascists'. The right considers the entire left-wing populace as 'Communists' and along with it comes calling out atrocities, historical turning points, etc to further their agenda.
>that is safe and effective is not an unreasonable ask
There are more post-vax deaths recorded in VAERS for the covid vaccines over the past 6 months than for all other vaccines over the past 20 years. It's definitely not 100% safe. Sure the risk is low, but the risk of dying of covid is also quite low for a significant subset of the population. There's also absolutely zero long-term safety data on the vaccines, because it's impossible to know what the effects 3-5 years down the line of a new treatment will be when that treatment's only existed for under a year.
Go look at VAERs more carefully – not what someone on TV told you to believe it says but the actual data and its collection rules. The CDC requests reports of deaths following vaccination, even if there isn’t a suspected connection to the vaccine – they’re not going to want someone who died in a car crash but the whole point here is getting a large amount of data for analysis. The emergency authorization includes unusually broad collection because they’re trying to maximize the odds of seeing a real problem earlier.
“FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines.”
Now, think about how broadly the vaccines have been given to hundreds of millions of people. Beyond the obvious conclusion that there is very little chance of a hidden serious complication which hadn’t yet manifested at that scale, think about how compressed that is in timing: if you take 100M people and look at that population for 6 months you’re going to see many deaths with or without vaccination. Now, remember that the elderly and other high risk populations were sensibly prioritized, so those rates will be even higher. Anyone looking at the data has to carefully adjust for things like that – it’s not just a query for the number of deaths but seeing whether it’s unusual for the cohort: are 70 year olds with pre-existing conditions dying at a different rate than they used to, not compared to a global rate covering kids to retirees?
“Apartheid” is a very serious term referring to a brutal system of racial discrimination. I think you are being extremely disrespectful to its victims by using the same term to describe people who suffer inconsequential consequences because they’re unwilling to be safe around other people.
The vaccines are available free to everyone, take minimal time to get, and extremely safe. This is an inconvenience on the level of having to wear pants on a hot day or wash your hands (which takes far more time in aggregate), and it’s only for voluntary activities which nobody needs to do to function.
Apartheid was being shut out of decent schools or jobs, packed into bad housing conditions, and being beaten if you complained about it, all enforced by a brutal prison system.
The vaccines aren’t safe for everyone. Lupus runs in my family, I already have an autoimmune condition, and I’ve already had COVID. For me, getting the vaccine would be all risk (even if it’s unlikely) with no gain.
"The American College of Rheumatology COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Guidance recommends that people with autoimmune and inflammatory rheumatic disease (which includes lupus) get the vaccine unless they have an allergy to an ingredient in the vaccine."
and
"In general, you should get the vaccine even if you have already had COVID-19."
Right, and my father that has lupus absolutely got the vaccine. I, however, don't - and don't want to get lupus. It's a small risk, probably the same as getting sick normally, but it's still a risk with basically no benefit to me.
Let's be clear: the primary reason the messaging has been "previously infected people should still get the vaccine" is primarily because there are a lot of people out there that think they had COVID when they didn't. I had a friend who thought he had it twice, and then finally did get it on the third time. I had another friend think he got it back in February of last year and then actually got it late last year. They're both relatively intelligent (if not ignorant about certain things), and that's just in my little friend group.
I understand why they went down that road, but there's no reason for me to take it.
really? which strain/mutant of COVID did you get? There are quite some people get COVID twice, I hope you won't. One way to reduce such chance is to get the vaccine.
I said “extremely safe” for that reason - there are always people who have problems with just about anything, but from a population perspective the numbers look quite good. People like you, young children, etc. are also why it’s important for the rest of us to do our part – as long as there’s so much community spread, they don’t have a safe alternative.
Oh, don’t worry - I appreciate the difference between humorous and serious usage. The Seinfeld writers were not arguing that more people should become seriously ill because the alternative was a rather minor inconvenience.
I had all these concerns prior to this announcement. I wouldn't say all of those are now gone. However I must point out that the vaccine, at least in the US, is not being hoarded by the elite and wealthy. It is in most urban areas being made as readily available as possible. NYC even started providing a pre-paid $100 debit card which offsets time lost from work for those who could not afford that. Perhaps I am missing it - what sort of divide is being drawn?
> I understand, I just disagree that this is a disproportionate threat to our society that requires disproportionate response.
That has absolutely nothing to do with what was just being discussed. There is hard data which says COVID has a huge range of long term side effects, that’s simply a fact you can personally feel it’s an acceptable risk but nothing about your personal beliefs change the reality of long term impacts of severe viral infections.
I personally feel that the US has given people long enough to get vaccinated it’s time to open the floodgates of infection and open things up. Yes, the unvaccinated and many vaccinated will simply get very sick and die in large large numbers based on their personal choices, but such is life.
I expect most people will disagree with my personal options and that’s fine, but don’t argue about objective facts.
OPs point is that many of these long term symptoms can be observed after other infections too. Influenza is also known to have longer term side effects especially in children (sound similar?)
Unrelated but important: I think a lot of people miss that this pandemic has infected millions of people, so all of the one in a million events happen with enough frequency to where you will find significant proportions of the population displaying ever symptom you could imagine "due to COVID".
We had a woman who started hemorrhaging a week into her infection. Do you think that was caused by COVID? Probably not, but I'd bet you could find a thousand people where that happened just because of the sheer size of infections.
Many long term systems are common with viral infections, however it’s important to realize their normally a function of infection severity. As such the reality that COVID causes a disproportionate number of hospitalizations means it also disproportionately increases the risk of these side effects.
> There is hard data which says COVID has a huge range of long term side effects
If you can cite this "hard data", it'll be amongst the first I've ever seen.
So far, all I've seen are anecdotes and poorly controlled surveys of self-reported symptoms, the vast majority of which are mild. Reports of "cough" and "fatigue", three weeks after a respiratory illness are not exceptional, they're the expected case.
Just today, this paper was published in a Lancet journal, looking at symptom duration in a large cohort (259k) of children under 17. The most enduring symptoms? Loss of smell, headache, sore throat and fatigue. Virtually everything else fell to background in a week.
If you’re happy with literally any longer term impacts here’s one documented though very rare one: “Most patients were treated with a single course of intravenous immunoglobulin, and improvement was noted within 8 weeks in most cases. GBS-associated COVID-19 appears to be an uncommon condition with similar clinical and EDx patterns to GBS before the pandemic.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32678460/
I bring it up not because it’s a significant risk, but as a demonstration that immune responses themselves are one of the risk factors associated with viral infections. Critically though there are a lot of rare conditions that individually may not be a factor but collectively are.
Hospital-acquired infections for example aren’t directly caused by covid, but start talking about 100’s of thousands of people being hospitalized and it’s a common risk.
As to that study, people under 17 aren’t even close to representative of the larger population when it comes to viral infections. It’s an important consideration but people 35-44 while generally considered low risk are literally at 100 times the risk of death as 4-14 year olds. Youthful immune systems are simply vastly better.
If we're down to talking about Guillain-Barré, then I'm definitely not concerned.
37 cases of "covid-associated" GBS falls in the category of "lighting strike risks" in life. Yeah, it can happen, but it's pretty damned rare. I'm not changing my life for it.
Also, of course...GBS is associated with at least one of the covid vaccines, itself:
Great, you just made the first step and admitted yes there is at least one long term risk from covid infections. I picked a tiny one specifically because it was so easy.
Next, what about hospital born infections? Clearly people who aren’t in hospitals are at lower risk and clearly people are hospitalized in large numbers from Covid-19. So is that another slightly larger step you’re willing to take?
> Great, you just made the first step and admitted yes there is at least one long term risk from covid infections. I picked a tiny one specifically because it was so easy.
I've never said anything different. I'm not sure what victory you think you've won.
Some people will have long-term symptoms of Covid. Just like pretty much every other virus.
Until I see some serious, well-controlled, high-quality data that shows me that there's an unprecedented risk for a lot of people, I'm not on board with taking unprecedented actions that affect everyone.
> I've never said anything different. I'm not sure what victory you think you've won.
You just said so in this thread:
“ > A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away.
Some do not. This one does.”
No qualifications just absolute dismissal of all long term symptoms.
> Until I see some serious, well-controlled, high-quality data that shows me there’s an unprecedented risk for a lot of people
Sure, because the only evidence you can infer is that which you already agree with. Raising the bar arbitrarily isn’t science it’s a logical fallacy.
However, the exact data you’re asking for is quite simply hospitalization rates. Severe cases of covid include the normal risks of severe viral infections, but it causes severe infections at significantly higher rates thus it also causes those normal complications at much higher rates. Along with it’s own unusual risks from blood clots causing all the things blood clots cause.
> Until I see some serious, well-controlled, high-quality data that shows me that there's an unprecedented risk for a lot of people, I'm not on board with taking unprecedented actions that affect everyone.
What kind of evidence would convince you?
Bear in mind (as I'm sure you know), it's gonna be very difficult to get accurate before and afters while in the midst of a pandemic, and it's likely that this evidence will only exist if enough people don't get one of the vaccines.
I haven’t read a definitive answer to how much that blood vessel damage sticks around. Of course secondary effects of that damage such as strokes have their own long term progression.
How many of those children do you think had healthy immune systems?
Kids with compromised immune systems are at risk, and there at increased risk the longer this goes on. Are you willing to talk at the funerals of all those kids?
Also, your link is: At least 172 children had died as of Dec. not 2,000.
Enforcing restrictions that are excessive in order to just keep cases down is in most case even more detrimental to the long-term quality of life of the majority of the population.
What so many of the restrictions enthusiasts don’t seem to understand, is the long term mental health impact this upending of society has had on all of us, and especially on the younger generations.
I say this as a fully vaccinated individual.
Regarding the specific case, to make my position even more nuanced, I don’t have a specific problem with having to prove vaccination or positive test for indoor dining. Here in Berlin that’s the rule they used when reopening last May, and it never went away. This way, nobody has ever really debated it.
> You're somehow OK with being required to wear clothes, which provide almost no protection from anything, but not OK with being asked to show that you're an unlikely COVID carrier/spreader?
So natural immunity should be included then? I hear all these arguments but then people pretend like natural immunity is not a thing. Sure maybe it isn’t as effective as a vaccine (though some argue it is better), but it definitely makes you at least unlikely to spread.
I might believe this isn’t just a huge power grab and people are actually concerned with the health of individuals, if folks would acknowledge “the science” of natural immunity.
Saying it isn’t as good as vaccine means nothing, because we are only trying to eliminate more likely spreaders, not any statistical chance of spreading.
I used to think natural immunity was a thing. Most people in India thought so too. Based on surveys, a majority of people in cities had been infected in the first wave of Covid in 2020. So confident in herd immunity was the Indian government that they were happily organising programs to give away vaccines to countries around the world, thinking it wasn’t necessary in India.
As the events of April-July 2021 proved, the new variant ripped through a population that was supposed to have reached herd immunity. As it stands, 80%+ of people in major Indian cities have had an infection. Does that mean that covid will never bother India again? I’m guessing no.
I think that speaks to the rapid evolution of the virus, more than to the lack of a natural immunity process. It's terrifying how quickly COVID has evolved, and given more time in the human species, it will evolve further. That's why the push for vaccination is so important. There's even people pushing for prophylactic use of other medications to completely stamp out COVID for the simple reason of - you do NOT want this virus evolving any more than it has.
Sure: if they can prove it. But since that's hard and expensive and there is no effective risk to a vaccine (particularly if you definitely are naturally immune, as it would be an antigen response your body is already mostly familiar with and not trigger any primary immune responses), we do the other thing.
I am literally working with vaccination registry APIs right now which have an explicit system for registering and tracking natural immunity.
I’m glad to hear that natural immunity is considered. I might get one dose as a booster for my natural immunity, but not two.
Regardless even if I got two, I will behave as if I had none, and will not go dining if they require proof of vaccination and whatever other things.
I will never report someone for violating a vaccine mandate, or a mask mandate. Or if they forge their vaccine card.
If they are knowingly sick, going out with a fever, and a cough in public places and essentially trying to get people sick, I will report them. Even if they’ve been vaccinated but “just” had the Flu.
And that person exists by the way. People who essentially knew they had covid, were feeling symptoms, yet went to a party anyways. But I’m sure there is the person who proudly goes out with their vaccination card showing both doses sick with something else like the flu, judging those who have no symptoms of sickness but aren’t vaccinated also being out.
No that would be getting two doses when I’m already effectively immune. One dose as a booster if you have antibodies. It would essentially be like getting a 2nd dose for those who haven’t had it.
This was actually recommended by the Irish vaccination committee, as long as your infection was within the last 180 days and you actually had a seropositive Covid test.
Absolutely. I firmly understand that natural immunity is as good, if not better, than the vaccine.
The trouble is, how do you prove it? There are antibody tests that maybe are positive even months later? I'm not sure, honestly. The tricky part is just the recording of the matter, not the science behind it.
How does someone know if my fake vaccine card is a fake?
How does someone know that even though I’m vaccinated I’m one of the very very small few who will have a breakthrough infection?
We could probably do things to ensure these as well, but at what point do we just say “yep there is a risk”, and accept that risk as part of living life?
I think there is a part
where the principalities and powers that rule, actually want us to get so angry and divided.
That is why things are forced, and mandated, rather than appealed to. One side gets mad that they ask, the other side doesn’t give a chance for the good natured to help voluntarily.
There is no conspiracy of people plotting in a room coming up with how they can gain more power to take over the world (unless they’re two mice trying to do same thing night after night), but nonetheless there is a spirit of division and hatred that is very much present in our country that is tearing us apart.
> I think there is a part where the principalities and powers that rule, actually want us to get so angry and divided.
Totally agree.
> There is no conspiracy of people plotting in a room coming up with how they can gain more power to take over the world (unless they’re two mice trying to do same thing night after night), but nonetheless there is a spirit of division and hatred that is very much present in our country that is tearing us apart.
Yup, there sure is and it's really disheartening to watch it unfold day after day. The country seems more divided than I've ever seen it in my 30ish years, and certainly more divided than rose colored glasses of past decades.
It's a shame but, maybe it's also a sign of healthy country? Maybe united countries are also the ones that go to war and invade others?
It depends what they’re united on. If they’re united on something evil, it is good they lose power, if united on something good then they will use that power for good.
Our wars for example in the Middle East, our unity was on security and safety as the highest good, so we were willing to do something awful to pursue that thing.
The letters next to their names have changed, but we’ve still made a god of security and safety, and have allowed it to blind us to the evil we’re doing.
We obviously don't know much about PASC/long COVID, but the initial data is worth paying attention to. This Swedish study says ~10% of healthcare workers who got COVID had lingering symptoms.
Self reported data on things like this is absolutely useless, even though I’ve had lingering taste issues myself. If the media is constantly talking about long COVID it’s no surprise that people will think “gee, I have been kind of tired since I got infected.”
Even my own taste issues might be something else - the only reason I’m confident they’re there is that it’s intermittent and takes me by surprise. I have two friends that think their sense of taste isn’t quite the same as it was and it’s steadily that way, which to me sounds like it could just be all in their heads (or not).
What other measures do you think we have? We have reported symptoms (suffers from what you mention) and physical evidence [1] - what other forms of evidence are even possible?
[1] Imaging data has also physically confirmed lasting damage from COVID which could definitely be affiliated with some of the symptoms we lump under PASC.
I wasn't saying it doesn't exist, I was just saying that "blah blah percentage of people think they have long COVID" is a useless statistic.
In an alternate universe where the media took and ran with the 5G conspiracy theory for over a year, you could survey the population and find the same amount had symptoms from that.
I'm not saying that there will not be people who do not have lingering symptoms. We already know this happens with other viruses.
I'm arguing that most of the science here is bad, and even if these things hold up, the risk of ~10% of the population having anosmia for a few months is not worth the permanent restructuring of our society to fixate on the prevention of a single illness.
Well on the one hand it sounds like what you're saying is that there's a high degree of uncertainty, but on the other we can be certain that there's not a severe long-term problem.
I don't think the fear is about 10% ending up with anosmia. The fear is that the 10% of detectable problems might be indicative of much more severe and/or much more prevalent problems going undetected. You're right that the problem is lack of very good data, but the folks who live and breathe this domain appear to be very concerned by the data we do have.
For what it's worth, I don't think many (any?) people are arguing for a permanent restructuring of our society. They're merely asking that we don't consider death to be the only endpoint that's relevant to the conversation.
If you don’t mind, could you share data on the UK, a place where nearly all adults aged 30+ have received two doses of the vaccine? It simplifies the discussion because there’s no question about self selection bias. If there’s any negative effects, it should surely have manifested in a large subset of this group of tens of millions of people, across ages and ethnicities.
Not just a handful of cases here or there. I’m talking about 0.01% or more of this population suffering some persistent harm. Not something that disappeared after a day or two.
VAERS records around 10k deaths post-vaccination in the US. Around 150 million Americans have been vaccinated. If all those deaths were caused by the vaccine, that would be 0.006% suffering the extremely persistent harm of death. In fact it's not known however whether those deaths following the vaccination were necessarily caused by covid, but unfortunately very little follow up (autopsies) is being conducted, so there's no way to know. Counter-balancing that is the fact that previous research has found "Adverse events from vaccines are common but underreported, with less than one percent reported": https://digital.ahrq.gov/ahrq-funded-projects/electronic-sup...
And thus no substantial change was made today on HN, besides to people who get fatigues seeing 4+ level deep comment debates: only reading a few comments before going back to reading tech articles.
So you bring up the "I have the DATA!" Trump card and then when asked to provide it your response is, "well, no, where is YOUR DATA?"
That long Covid is a pernicious result for many people with debilitating effects is well established in the literature, it's not controversial.
That refusing to get the virus under control will lead to further variants potentially worse than Delta that perhaps the vaccines are less able to guard against. Not some crazy conspiracy!
What this is ultimately about is many of our fellow citizens believe "my choice" and "freedom" means the "freedom" to infect other people with a potentially debilitating virus rather than they be mildly inconvenienced.
Most being the operative word too: 1 in 1000 get encephalitis and brain damage, 1-3 in 1000 die!
Measles R0 is also something absurd like 15, with spread characteristics of "a person with measles goes in an elevator - the next day a person gets in the same elevator and catches it".
Fine, but if it's just a matter of degree, why would anyone want to keep spinning the evolution roulette wheel that might lead to a variant with significant vaccine breakthrough? This is a global pandemic that we have effective tools to fight not being fully utilized.
One more example: itch in one's throat and nasty suffocating cough that does not stop for an hour. Surprisingly, this might be caused by reflux (without the accompanying stomachache).
I imagine it would be pretty easy for someone not used to dealing with gastritis on a regular basis to attribute such a symptom to "COVID".
Yeah, all of these "long covid" symptoms overlap substantially with other, common things, or have otherwise been defined so liberally by these terrible, self-reported "studies" that anyone with a normal human immune system and a head cold would qualify. Just consider the three most common complaints (by far):
Cough & Shortness of breath: allergies, asthma, typical recovery process from any cold or flu
Fatigue: depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from most illness
Brain fog (whatever that is): depression, anxiety, insomnia, recovery from illness...
It's not that "long covid" isn't real...it's just that the scientific data for it at present are so vague that you can "have" it by being a normal person.
The author of that comment obviously has quite some expertise in the matter (see their profile and some of their other comments linked to in this thread).
They didn't say that "Long COVID" symptoms aren't real. They just stated that this particular virus disappears after some time, that is once your immune system manages to cope with it and the infection clears out.
This statement is emphatically true. Otherwise, antigen and PCR tests would still yield positive results months after someone became infected.
An example of a virus not simply disappearing from your body anymore once you're infected with it would be HIV.
A potential mechanism for Covid to produce lingering symptoms would be some kind of mast cell activation syndrome. I believe that "long Covid" is probably a mix of that, actual lung or vascular damage that takes time to recover (we have a friend who suffered lung damage and referred to the recovery period as "long Covid"), and some (possibly quite large) amount of psychosomatic subjective experience and amplification of lingering symptoms caused by the relentless hype on this issue.
I take “quietly” to mean “without causing havoc and long term symptoms” which appears to be the undefined term here. This is why I refer explicitly to long term symptoms as being what remains.
I stand by my comment, it does not “quietly” go away.
Censorship in the name of 'misinformation' isn't the answer. I know I've been wrong many times for things that I took as granted and as factual. I was so passionate about these facts, blindingly so - I just never saw the contrary evidence. Ever considered that you could be wrong and misled yourself? This is why we need to have a debate to get to the bottom of the truth.
> Why is this so hard for people to understand?
I understand your argument, but I disagree with you, based on a long education in this area, a deep understanding of the data, and personal experience.
> A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away.
Some do not. This one does.
> In MANY cases, it can have a lasting effect on your underlying health and wellness.
In some, rare cases, we see examples of post-viral syndromes. We have seen these for many different viruses.
> I am vaccinated. I have friends who are vaccinated, and have still gotten COVID. One of them still doesn't have their sense of taste and smell back, after nearly 3 weeks post symptoms.
Again, lingering symptoms following an illness are not unknown. Every time I get a head cold, I typically develop a cough that lasts > 3 weeks. By ~all current evidentiary standards for "long covid", I have had "long cold".
Similarly, my grandmother lost her sense of smell to a head cold when I was a child. She never got it back, entirely. Sad, but not something that we took extraordinary societal interventions to prevent.
> They describe being brain fog, and tiredness that they didn't have before, as well as an "itch" in their lungs when exercising that they didn't have before.
Neither of these are objectively defined. I have an "itch" in my lungs, right now (probably allergies). I have never had Covid. When I don't sleep well (which is often, thanks to the state of our society), I have trouble focusing. Is that "brain fog"?
Point being: some people are going to have after-effects from infection. That's unfortunate, but it's not unknown, and the virus isn't going away. If the choice is to completely up-end our society to prevent people from ever getting sick again, then I'm strongly opposed.