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gowlerk

covid-19

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This may have been posted, but I don't remember seeing it.

One of the 'fun' things about Covid (and one of the really big unknowns) is it's long term effects.
"Long Covid" is a well known (not well understood, but well known) phenomenon.
Some people continue to experience symptoms for quite a while after recovering from the initial infection. 

However, death is also a 'symptom' of Long Covid.

A study in Florida showed that people who tested positive had a 223% greater chance of dying (from all causes) in the year after their infection than those who weren't infected.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-survivors-have-an-increased-risk-of-death-12-months-post-infection

Not only is this pandemic 'not over', it won't be over even after it's over. 
We're going to be dealing with the long term effects of it for a...

Long time.

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13 minutes ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi folks,

WOW!!!!  Who would have ever guessed:  Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates : Shots - Health News : NPR

Jerry Baumchen

One of the more telling facts from the story is that the vax rates for pro-Trump places is far below the rest of the country.
And that believing false statements about Covid & the vax are telling factors in vax rates. From the story:

 

Quote

Misinformation appears to be a major factor in the lagging vaccination rates. The Kaiser Family Foundation's polling shows Republicans are far more likely to believe false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines. A full 94% of Republicans think one or more false statements about COVID-19 and vaccines might be true, and 46% believe four or more statements might be true. By contrast, only 14% of Democrats believe four or more false statements about the disease.

Belief in multiple false statements highly correlates with vaccination status, Hamel says. "If you believe that the vaccines can damage your fertility, that they contain a microchip and that the government is inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths, you're going to think really differently about whether to get vaccinated."

Trump and the Rs saw how Covid was mostly affecting 'blue' places at the beginning.

So they tailored the response in the hopes that their foes would be worse off (remember Trump saying he'd decide who got supplies based on 'how nice they were to him?).

Now that their base is killing itself off, they can't reverse the trend.
Remember how Trump & Graham got booed for suggesting people get vaxxed?

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18 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

One of the more telling facts from the story is that the vax rates for pro-Trump places is far below the rest of the country.
And that believing false statements about Covid & the vax are telling factors in vax rates. From the story:

 

Trump and the Rs saw how Covid was mostly affecting 'blue' places at the beginning.

So they tailored the response in the hopes that their foes would be worse off (remember Trump saying he'd decide who got supplies based on 'how nice they were to him?).

Now that their base is killing itself off, they can't reverse the trend.
Remember how Trump & Graham got booed for suggesting people get vaxxed?

Death isn't the biggest factor by a long shot.  For every death there are many more who suffer permanent damage from blood clots, varying from plugged capillary size to plugged aorta size (thought the latter are usually fatalities).

Even eliminating death from the equation leaves an awful lot of damage amongst the undead.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

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We can hope:

Fauci says early reports encouraging about omicron variant

By GENE JOHNSONyesterday

FILE - Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. U.S. health officials said Sunday, Dec. 5 that while the omicron variant of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading throughout the country, early indications suggest it may be less dangerous than delta, which continues to drive a surge of hospitalizations. President Joe Biden's chief medial adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CNN's “State of the Union” that scientists need more information before drawing conclusion's about omicron's severity. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

U.S. health officials said Sunday that while the omicron variant of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading throughout the country, early indications suggest it may be less dangerous than delta, which continues to drive a surge of hospitalizations.

President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that scientists need more information before drawing conclusions about omicron’s severity.

Reports from South Africa, where it emerged and is becoming the dominant strain, suggest that hospitalization rates have not increased alarmingly.

“Thus far, it does not look like there’s a great degree of severity to it,” Fauci said. “But we have really got to be careful before we make any determinations that it is less severe or it really doesn’t cause any severe illness, comparable to delta.”

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-lifestyle-health-travel-ef7c250c58b90b9835a972d7ebd9556b

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From early on in the use of vaccines to fight COVID, heterologous vaccination (vaccination series that used two different vaccines) has shown promise.  An early study from the NIH showed that substituting one of the mRNA vaccines with J+J improved both neutralizing activity (i.e. inactivation of the virus) and antibody titers (an indication of protection against specific strains of the virus.)  

Now there's data out of Israel showing that going with a heterologous booster can also help improve resistance.  They looked at people who got both doses of the Pfizer vaccine initially, then got either the Pfizer booster or a J+J booster.  Both led to boosts in antibody counts, but the J+J booster also showed greater CD8+ T cell responses (one of the cells that recognizes and attacks pathogens) than the people who got the Pfizer booster.  The J+J booster was also longer lasting - after 4 weeks, people who got the J+J had higher antibody levels.

This reinforces the theory that heterologous vaccinations (including boosters) are somewhat preferable to homologous vaccinations.  It also provides an option for the vaccine-hesitant who originally got the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, but have since been radicalized by misinformation.  Since the J+J is not an mRNA vaccine, but rather a more conventional adenovirus-based vaccine, they may be more comfortable with that as a booster.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.02.21267198v1.full.pdf

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1 hour ago, billvon said:

From early on in the use of vaccines to fight COVID, heterologous vaccination (vaccination series that used two different vaccines) has shown promise.....

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.02.21267198v1.full.pdf

Thanks for that. Now i understand why you get paid the big bucks as a mod.

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The issue of false positives vs PCR cycles has repeatedly been raised and ignored.  Would that ignorance was bliss:

https://brownstone.org/articles/pcr-tests-and-the-rise-of-disease-panic/

'Cases' remind me of the McDonalds sign '100 Billion Served!' 

What's a 'served?'  Order items? Entrees? Cash register sales?  Please define your terms.

Similarly, what's a 'case?'  Positive test and medical intervention required?  Positive test?  Medical diagnosis of 'you have COVID?'  These data are vastly different.

The fact that PCR is used makes the resulting data suspect.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

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22 minutes ago, winsor said:

The issue of false positives vs PCR cycles has repeatedly been raised and ignored.  Would that ignorance was bliss:

https://brownstone.org/articles/pcr-tests-and-the-rise-of-disease-panic/

'Cases' remind me of the McDonalds sign '100 Billion Served!' 

What's a 'served?'  Order items? Entrees? Cash register sales?  Please define your terms.

Similarly, what's a 'case?'  Positive test and medical intervention required?  Positive test?  Medical diagnosis of 'you have COVID?'  These data are vastly different.

The fact that PCR is used makes the resulting data suspect.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

I couldn't take that drivel more than a couple paragraphs. What's the punchline? That EBV suddenly rose up and killed 790k Americans over the past 2 years?

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(edited)
2 hours ago, winsor said:

The issue of false positives vs PCR cycles has repeatedly been raised and ignored.  Would that ignorance was bliss:

https://brownstone.org/articles/pcr-tests-and-the-rise-of-disease-panic/

'Cases' remind me of the McDonalds sign '100 Billion Served!' 

What's a 'served?'  Order items? Entrees? Cash register sales?  Please define your terms.

Similarly, what's a 'case?'  Positive test and medical intervention required?  Positive test?  Medical diagnosis of 'you have COVID?'  These data are vastly different.

The fact that PCR is used makes the resulting data suspect.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

Brownstone Institute? Credibility = Zero Like most of your links. Good grief, you must hang out in some weird places when you are not here helping us!

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/95601

Edited by gowlerk

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3 hours ago, nwt said:

I couldn't take that drivel more than a couple paragraphs.

You never wondered what the ever growing "100 Billion Served" means?

They might as well just change the sign to a bazillion and be done with it. . .my guess is french fries.

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1 hour ago, Coreece said:

You never wondered what the ever growing "100 Billion Served" means?

Since you are asking......

April 15, 1994- 100 Billion (McDonald's executives announce at the annual owner operator convention that they will stop counting hamburgers served because the count has surpassed the 99 Billion Hamburger mark so all the operators should change their signs to say "BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED" and the signs have remained that way since.

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2 hours ago, gowlerk said:

Since you are asking......

April 15, 1994- 100 Billion (McDonald's executives announce at the annual owner operator convention that they will stop counting hamburgers served because the count has surpassed the 99 Billion Hamburger mark so all the operators should change their signs to say "BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED" and the signs have remained that way since.

Remember when it was in the millions? I do as a kid back in the 70s. I always thought the number referred to hamburgers served. But they could have been padding the numbers with filet o fish sales.

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3 minutes ago, murps2000 said:

Remember when it was in the millions? I do as a kid back in the 70s. I always thought the number referred to hamburgers served. But they could have been padding the numbers with filet o fish sales.

The first McDonalds in Winnipeg opened in 1968. And it was considered a bit of a big deal. Our family went there and I can remember going up to the window and ordering a hotdog and fries. I just could not believe it when they told me I could not have a hotdog. What king of burger joint doesn't have dogs? Anyway, I guess I must have have one of those "where the beef?" burgers that I can't stand instead. The Big Mac and the Quarter pounder weren't a thing yet.   

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14 hours ago, gowlerk said:

Brownstone Institute? Credibility = Zero Like most of your links. Good grief, you must hang out in some weird places when you are not here helping us!

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/95601

Being an Atheist I hold orthodoxy suspect.  I much prefer Machiavelli to most of what the Vatican didn't ban.

So delete the link and address the content.  How hard is that?

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7 hours ago, gowlerk said:

The first McDonalds in Winnipeg opened in 1968. And it was considered a bit of a big deal. Our family went there and I can remember going up to the window and ordering a hotdog and fries. I just could not believe it when they told me I could not have a hotdog. What king of burger joint doesn't have dogs? Anyway, I guess I must have have one of those "where the beef?" burgers that I can't stand instead. The Big Mac and the Quarter pounder weren't a thing yet.   

We went to McDonalds when it was just one Ray Kroc location, and it was pretty much as you describe.  Your options were burgers with or without cheese, fries and a soda or milkshake, all for pocket change.

Nothing to write home about, and bears faint resemblance to the McDonalds of today.

Anyhow, the point of the post including the article is that data quality makes quite a bit of difference, and the 'gold standard' PCR can generate rather misleading results, depending on how it's used.

A lot of statistics are bandied about, and most can be interpreted one way or another, depending upon the criteria.

Did George Floyd die of COVID?  His autopsy indicated that he had a pretty advanced case of it, as I recall.  That would add to the tally of the COVID Pandemic.

Did he die if a Fentanyl overdose?  His autopsy also indicated better than LD50 quantities in his system.  That would up the numbers of the Opioid Crisis.

Having said that, I'm cool with attributing his passing to the evil sonofabitch kneeling on his neck and be done with it.

I agree that it is a bad bug, but the decision making surrounding its treatment has an element of panic, which is generally counterproductive.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

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6 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

His autopsy, and a test from April 3, indicated that he had had it in April, according to this: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200605/george-floyd-tested-positive-for-covid-19

If a person is terminal with cancer and is hit by a car, what killed them?

Wendy P.

 

Lack of affordable healthcare?

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