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COVID-19 vaccines as part of a “depopulation agenda”

It’s ba-ack. Antivaxxers are once again claiming that COVID-19 vaccines are part of a “depopulation agenda.” Same as it ever was.

As I’ve long been saying, when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, everything old is new again, at least with respect to the antivaccine movement. I listed a number of the tropes repurposed by antivaxxers for COVID-19 last week, including (but not limited to) misinformation claiming that COVID-19 vaccines are loaded with “toxins” (the lipid nanoparticles in the mRNA-based vaccines, given that they can’t contain aluminum, don’t you know?); blaming every death reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database on vaccines, not designed to determine causation and we would expect a large baseline number of deaths in the time periods covered by random chance alone; claiming that vaccines cause Alzheimer’s and prion diseaseblaming the vaccines for cancer; resurrecting the favorite old trope of “shedding” from the vaccinated in the most risible manner possible; invoking evolution to predict the selection of more deadly coronavirus variants that could wipe out humanitywarning that the vaccines can “permanently alter your DNA“; and that they cause female infertility. So what other evil thing could vaccines do? “Depopulation,” anyone?

Last week, I saw another such trope, one I’ve seen many times before, dating back at least to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. It comes to us courtesy of über-quack Dr. Joe Mercola, “Was the Whole Pandemic About the Vaccine?” It even featured someone we’ve met before, Peter McCullough, who’s known for pushing a narrative of a COVID-19 “vaccine holocaust.” The central message, of course, is that the pandemic is all about getting people to accept the vaccine, with Mercola asking, “Could it be that the whole COVID-19 pandemic was about the vaccine and getting a global mass vaccination campaign underway for population control purposes?” After touting Dr. McCullough as “one of the most courageous well credentialed academic physicians out there” who, “despite his impeccable credentials, he has been vilified for stating during the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.” As you might recall, the main reason why Dr. McCullough has been “vilified” is because he’s been abusing his credentials to spread COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories like this:

“All roads lead to the vaccine,” McCullough said in a recent interview (video above1,2), with stakeholders banking on countries mandating the vaccine worldwide. The first video above is a 16-minute outtake from a much longer interview, which is the second video.3

McCullough points out that a number of countries are already talking about making the as-yet unlicensed COVID-19 vaccine compulsory, meaning anyone and everyone can be forced to take it against their will. “That’s how bad stakeholders want vaccination,” McCullough says. “They do want a needle in every arm. But why?” That’s the million-dollar question right there.

Here’s the video, if you’re interested:

Dr. McCullough brings the conspiracy theory home. Does he ever!

Does anyone remember Welcome Back, Kotter? (That’s how old I am.) I feel like going all Arnold Horshack right here:

Yes, Orac felt just like this when asked why “they” might want a COVID-19 vaccine “in every arm.”

That’s because I know the answer to McCullough’s question. Maybe—just maybe—”they” want to vaccinate everyone in order to bring about the end of a deadly pandemic that’s sickened 176 million and killed nearly 4 million worldwide, with 600,000 deaths in the US alone (which is likely an undercount). Just a random thought. After all, as long as the vaccination rate remains too low, there will be areas where the virus can spread again, causing localized outbreaks, in much the way measles showed up in areas of low MMR uptake pre-pandemic.

Of course, to people like Mercola and McCullough, it’s a conspiracy. Because of course it is.

Vaccine incentives

Over the last several weeks, the pace of vaccination in the US has slowed, increasingly governments and private companies have been offering incentives for vaccination. It is, of course, not surprising that the pace of vaccination would start to slow down after a fast start. After all, those who most want to be vaccinated were the ones who sought out the vaccine, even when it was not yet widely available and getting vaccinated still took some effort. Now that the vaccine supply has caught up with (and surpassed) demand, the task has become more difficult, and it’s not just antivaccine misinformation that’s the cause. The people remaining to receive the vaccine include the young (who might not think they need it), those without easy access to the vaccine such as the poor and those who have difficulty taking time off from work to get vaccinated and feel that they can’t afford to be sidelined by side effects, and, yes, the vaccine hesitant.

As a result, some states and businesses are offering incentives, which Mercola, being Mercola, sees as a conspiracy:

Recent weeks have seen a significant rise in all sorts of vaccination incentives in the U.S., from free doughnuts, cake,4 french fries, hot dogs and pizza,5 to arcade tokens,6 10-cent beer,7 free state park season passes,8 free Uber and Lyft rides,9 free marijuana10 and Cincinnati Reds baseball tickets,11 a chance to win a full scholarship12 and even $1 million13 and $5 million14giveaways.

Below is a more complete list of incentives, posted on vaccines.gov.15 As you might expect, the million-dollar lotteries have proven to be a resounding success, credited with enticing millions of people to get their shots.16

As noted by Ohio’s first “Vax-a-Million” lottery winner,” the chance of a windfall was too great to resist. “I kept hemming and hawing about it, and I work all the time, and when the Vax-a-Million thing started I immediately went down there and got it. It pushed me over the edge,” he told a local paper.17

To say the vaccine push has an air of desperation about it would be a profoundly serious understatement.

I will admit to some…uneasiness…about some of the incentive programs, such as the million-plus dollar lottery. That being said, it does appear that the incentives are working to some extent, as recently the vaccination rate has started to recover after cratering a month ago, and it looks as though incentives are here to stay, at least until the vaccination rate hits a high enough point to forestall large outbreaks and renewed surges.

Unsurprisingly, Mercola repeats the gambit invoking the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database to claim that COVID-19 vaccines are deadly. I’ve already written about that particular deceptive ploy, most recently the last time I discussed McCullough, but also as far back as February. I even alluded to it as far back as December. So, uncharacteristically, I won’t go into that gambit (much) here, other than to mention that Mercola also trots out the lie that the vaccines are “experimental gene therapy“.

So what, according to Mercola and McCullough, is the real reason why authorities want high levels of vaccination against COVID-19? They want to “depopulate” the world. No, I’m not kidding:

Why is the vaccine pushed in this way? McCollough believes it’s a global goal to “mark” people, to get you into their vaccine database, which will eventually be turned into a tool for population control, courtesy of vaccine passports.

When we’re talking about population control, there are two distinct forms, and both may apply in this case. One form of population control is about controlling people through the ideology of utilitarianism, vaccine passports and a social credit system, all of which are tied together. Another form is actual depopulation.

Of course, this, too, is an old antivaccine conspiracy theory repurposed for COVID-19 vaccines. Indeed, I was writing about this nine years ago, at least, when antivaccine conspiracy theorist Jon Rappoport wrote essentially the same thing about the H1N1 vaccine, namely that it was a plot to depopulate the world. I’ll be referring back to Rappoport’s article after I look at Mercola and McCullough’s claims.

The “depopulation agendas”

Mercola argues that there is a “depopulation agenda” being promoted by—who else?—the global “elites.” Mercola first distinguishes between two forms of the “depopulation agenda.” The first is utilitarian and—of course!—includes Nazi comparisons:

Utilitarianism is based on a mathematical equation that some individuals can be sacrificed for the greater good of the majority. In other words, if some people are harmed by vaccines, it’s an acceptable loss because society as a whole may or will reap gains.

This discredited pseudo-ethic has repeatedly been used to justify horrific human rights abuses. The Third Reich, for example, employed the utilitarian rationale as an excuse to demonize and eliminate minorities judged to be a threat to the health, security and well-being of the State.35Now, utilitarianism is being called upon yet again, under the false narrative that mankind as a whole is in peril unless everyone rolls the dice and gets vaccinated.

In the end, the idea is that vaccine refusers won’t be allowed to freely participate in society any longer. This is the disincentive or negative incentive, which is added on top of the positive incentives previously mentioned.

In particular, Mercola does not like so-called “vaccine passports”, which, I admit, is a term that I don’t like so much in that it refers not just to vaccination requirements to travel internationally but to all requirements for vaccination, including requirements that one show proof of COVID-19 vaccination before one can be hired for certain jobs, go to concerts, fly on an airplane, and more. There are legitimate concerns about “vaccine passports,” such as how they would impact minorities and the poor more because they have less access to the vaccine and how they would impact poor countries, where the vaccines are barely available yet.

That’s not what Mercola is about, however:

The point is, once you’re in this system, you’re under someone else’s control. If they say you have to get a booster shot, you have to comply — again and again — or risk losing basic human rights, such as the ability to buy and sell, travel or get an education.

Notably, Mercola doesn’t really explain how such “vaccine passport” systems result in “depopulation,” other than to engage in conspiracy mongering about how such a system might end up being like that of the Chinese government’s system, and China’s government is an authoritarian one. It’s the logical fallacy of the slippery slope argument, in which he invokes a “slippery slope” (without using the actual term), in which vaccine passports lead to something like the Chinese social credit system, in which people with low social credit scores “can’t travel on certain kinds of public transportation, can’t travel overseas, hold certain jobs, go to school or even get a loan.” How one leads to the other in democracies, Mercola doesn’t explain. That’s the point.

It’s also why he quickly pivots to an “active depopulation agenda”:

The other form of population control refers to actual depopulation. A primary problem the global elite have been trying to solve for a long time is that there are too many people consuming too much of the world’s perceived limited resources and polluting everything in the process. The answer, in their mind, is to reduce the global population.

While birth control and abortions are promoted to help with this, these strategies aren’t effective, or rapid, enough. They need a less fertile population and they need people to die sooner.

While many may not want to believe this could possibly be true, you have to remember that the intention is not to cause suffering per se. It’s a form of self-preservation, as their end goal is to concentrate all the world’s wealth into their own hands. Ultimately, that’s what the Great Reset is all about.

Mercola has invoked the “Great Reset” on several occasions. I’ve even mentioned these occasions a few times on this very blog, such as when he falsely claimed that COVID-19 is a “casedemic” created by overly-sensitive PCR tests for the virus producing many false positives, when he featured Michael Yeadon claiming that COVID-19 vaccines sterilize women, and when he falsely claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are “experimental gene therapy” that can “permanently alter your DNA“. Basically, the “Great Reset” is a conspiracy theory based on a poor choice of words by the World Economic Forum for a proposal that explored how countries might recover from the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The conspiracy theory posits, in brief, that COVID-19 pandemic is being used as a pretext whose purpose is to “usher in a tech-driven dystopia free of democratic controls” and create a “new ‘social contract’ that ties you to it through an electronic ID linked to your bank account and health records, and a ‘social credit’ ID that will dictate every facet of your life”. Regardless of the merits of or problems with the World Economics Forum’s proposal itself, “Great Reset” is a horrible name for it. It’s almost as though the World Economic Forum wanted to provide the perfect fodder for conspiracy theorists!

In any event, I’ve written about Michael Yeadon before. He appears to be one of the originators (if not the originator) of the lie that COVID-19 vaccines cause miscarriages and female infertility that has since mutated and metastasized in various forms. Apparently, Yeadon was at one time a fairly high-ranking manager for Pfizer, although I’ve never been able to get a clear picture of what his actual job at Pfizer was. Whatever it was, Yeadon has used his previous affiliation with Pfizer to produce clickbait headlines like “Head of Pfizer Research: Covid Vaccine is Female Sterilization“.

This time around, Yeadon is claiming that booster shots for COVID-19 will be our “death knell”:

Of all the lies we’ve been told over the past year, the ones that worry and frighten Yeadon the most are the lies about virus variants and booster shots. In fact, he believes not buying into these lies may be key to your very survival.
“When your government scientists tell you that a variant that’s 0.3% different from SARS-CoV-2 could masquerade as a new virus and be a threat to your health, you should know, and I’m telling you, they are lying,” Yeadon says. “If they’re lying — and they are — why is the pharmaceutical industry making top-up [booster] vaccines? … There’s absolutely no possible justification for their manufacture. And the world’s medicines regulators have said, ‘Because they are quite similar to the original vaccines … we won’t be asking them to do any clinical safety studies’ … There’s no possible benign interpretation of this. I believe they’re going to be used to damage your health and possibly kill you. Seriously. I can see no sensible interpretation other than a serious attempt at mass depopulation. This will provide the tools to do it, and plausible deniability. They’ll create another story about some sort of biological threat and you’ll line up and get your top-up vaccines [booster shots], and a few months or a year or so later, you’ll die of some peculiar inexplicable syndrome. And they won’t be able to associate it with the vaccines … Given that this virus represents, at worst, a slightly bigger risk to the old and ill than influenza, and a smaller risk [than influenza] to almost everyone else … we didn’t need to do anything. [We didn’t need] lockdowns, masks, mass testing, vaccines.

“I can see no sensible interpretation other than a serious attempt at mass depopulation”? Seriously? I’m half tempted to post another copy of that Horshack clip, because I can see a very sensible reason for boosters. Given how widely the virus has circulated, natural mutation has produced a number of variants of concern that are more transmissible and possibly more deadly. It is known that the antibodies stimulated by current vaccines do not neutralize some of these variants as well as they do the original SARS-CoV-2, although fortunately they still neutralize them well enough to produce strong immunity. For now. The concern, of course, is that eventually there will arise COVID-19 variants that can escape the immunity due to the vaccines, coupled with the concern that vaccine-induced immunity might wane to the point where “booster shots” will be required. Nothing nefarious there. As for that bit about the variants “only” being 0.3% different from the original? It makes me want to ask Yeadon, “Seriously? Where did you get your PhD? Do you not know that small changes in nucleic acid sequence can be all that is necessary to produce significant alterations in protein function?”

There is only one response to a statement that ignorant:

Godzilla facepalm
I know, I know. I’ve been using this meme a lot lately.

Naturally, Yeadon also thinks that the “suppression” of “cures” (such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin) for COVID-19 is based on the desire to push vaccines in order to depopulate the world:

Like Yeadon, McCullough has raised serious questions about the need for a vaccine. Evidence clearly shows there are highly effective treatments,37,38 yet they’ve been near-universally suppressed in favor of these experimental shots. Why? If it’s about protecting public health and saving lives, why would effective treatments be vilified? As noted by McCullough during a roundtable discussion in the first of several U.S.-based tribunals on COVID-19,39 something very unusual happened in 2020. For the first time, doctors around the world were actively discouraged and prevented from saving their patients. There was “an enormous, complete, pervasive, steadfast suppression of any attempts to help patients with COVID-19,” he said, adding:
“We seem to somehow have developed a uniform game plan … to passively allow as much suffering hospitalization and death as possible, create enormous amounts of fear in our society, and then be prepared for mass vaccination.”

Unsurprisingly, Mercola and Yeadon are referencing McCullough’s “treatment protocol” for COVID-19 that involves basically throwing everything but the kitchen sink at patients. His protocol includes one FDA-accepted drug, Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail that was issued an EUA, followed by vitamins (of course!), steroids (another drug that works) and—also of course!—hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, zinc, and azithromycin, none of which have been shown to work, and McCullough claims that he “could have saved 50-85% of the lives lost to COVID-19”.

So, to tie it all together, according to Mercola, citing cranks, COVID-19 vaccination is a depopulation program designed to reduce the world population both through causing the institution of authoritarian control of the population and by the vaccines themselves plus booster shots directly causing female infertility, death, and chronic health problems. Quite the conspiracy! And they’re doing this because they need to reduce fertility and cause people to die sooner, the better to reduce the global population and leave the resources for the global elite.

H1N1 vaccines and “global depopulation”

This brings me back to Jon Rappoport and his article from 2012, “Germ theory and depopulation“. Personally, as a scientist, I could never understand what anyone would get out of depopulating the world, and any sort of infectious agent seems to be a very blunt, unreliable, dangerous, and likely ineffective method to achieve such an end, but let’s go back in time and see what Rappoport claimed. He believed that the H1N1 pandemic from three years before had been a “complete dud.” Personally, I was very thankful that the pandemic didn’t turn out to be nearly as severe as had been feared, but even at its level of severity it did cause a fair amount of havoc. Be that as it may, Rappoport claimed he knew what was really going on:

Swine flu was a PROPAGANDA OPERATION, plain and simple, aimed at scaring populations and driving them to get vaccines. That was the op. And it failed. In fact, the op was exposed (by yours truly and others) as a sham and a con. Millions of people online caught on. It was a devastating defeat for WHO, the CDC, and the medical cartel.

According to Rappoport, the H1N1 pandemic was a big cover, but a cover for what? Here’s where the germ theory denialism came in. Basically, his thought process (if you can call it “thought”) went along these lines: Germs don’t cause disease; so vaccines are unnecessary. But if vaccines are unnecessary, what, then, was their purpose during H1N1? Rappoport was happy to answer:

Let’s go deeper. In general, so-called contagious diseases are caused, not by germs, but by IMMUNE SYSTEMS THAT ARE TOO WEAK TO FIGHT OFF THOSE GERMS.

When we put the cart and the horse in proper alignment, things become clear. I fully realize this isn’t as sexy as talking about bio-engineered gene sequences in viruses, but the cart and horse must be understood.

GERMS ARE A COVER STORY.

What do they cover up?

The fact that immune systems are the more basic target for depopulation and debilitation of populations.

The reason I’m quoting Rappoport is simple. I just want to emphasize how Mercola’s claims that COVID-19 vaccination programs are in actuality a mass depopulation program are nothing new, just old wine in the new skin of COVID-19. This idea goes way, way back. Indeed, you might be familiar with how antivaxxers invoke Bill Gates as having said that vaccines were for “depopulation”, based on his remarks years ago about how vaccines can contribute to healthier societies and healthier societies tend to have slower population growth. Long before COVID-19, antivaxxers used that statement as “evidence” that Gates somehow wanted to use vaccines to depopulate the world. Since COVID-19 hit, they’ve quite predictably tarted up the same conspiracy theory for the pandemic. They’ve even misinterpreted concerns about low vaccine uptake among minorities and the targeting of such populations for more intensive outreach to increase their vaccination rates as evidence that not only is the agenda depopulation, but it’s eugenicist, the depopulation of “those people.”

In fact, sometimes the antivax claim that vaccines are intended for a “global depopulation agenda” get incredibly ridiculous, which is why I will conclude with what is the most ludicrous example I’ve ever found. I first encountered it a year ago. Unsurprisingly, it comes from Mike Adams and dates back to before the pandemic. It even has aliens (because any conspiracy theory can be made better if you add aliens).

In Adams’ “vaccine holocaust,” vaccines will have long latency, such that the vaccinated will spread a “bioengineered virus” around to all their family, friends, and coworkers. (Sound familiar? “Shedding”, anyone?) Months later, he envisioned people dropping dead in the streets of the virus like a scene out of the early 1970s post-apocalypse movie The Omega Man, at which point there will be calls for a second round of vaccinations, which will kill more people after an even shorter period of time, days to weeks.

But why? Why would “globalists” want to kill 90% of the population off? According to Adams, it would be to save the world. (Sound familiar?) In the meantime, the global elite will have developed AI and robots to do the work of all those billions of people dying off from their vaccine holocaust due to their vaccine bioweapon. Adams’ contempt for those who accept the science showing that vaccines are safe and effective came through, too. Multiple times, he stated that the “globalists” think that anyone who’s “stupid enough” to “line up to be injected with unknown substances” is “too stupid to be a part of the future of humanity”. He even called them “sheeple” at least once!

Here’s where the aliens come in. Adams claimed that the “globalists” have actually interacted with extraterrestrials more advanced than our civilization and have come to realize that earth must compete and expand with a cosmic economy. Thus the “globalists” needed to redirect resources into science, colonization technologies, and defense. Instead of spending to keep “useless eaters” alive, the “globalists” believe, according to Adams, that these resources need to be redirected to survive contact with advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, compete with extraterrestrials, and ultimately be part of a “cosmic ecosystem of intelligent beings”. I kid you not.

Adams even updated this alien conspiracy theory for COVID-19, calling it the “Oblivion Agenda” in which SARS-CoV-2 is that “bioweapon,” with a callback to The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which the aliens are telling the global elites that they have to do something, to prevent the earth from becoming hopelessly contaminated:

In the following 4-part lecture, I reveal why Earth has cosmic real estate value that’s recognized by all intelligent civilizations, and why Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel technology is ubiquitous across the cosmos. Earth’s location in the Milky Way galaxy puts it right in the thick of traffic from other civilizations, who have obviously watched the rise of Homo Sapiens and have no doubt sounded alarm bells over the nuclear weapons testing that humans have been carrying out since 1945.

Setting off nukes on your own planet, by the way, is sort of a cosmic-scale way to announce to the universe, “We are here, and we are infinitely stupid. Someone please stop us before we destroy everything within reach.”

Even aliens, you see, can’t change the laws of physics. Radioisotopic half-lives are the same, everywhere in the cosmos, and they can’t be altered when anything short of nuclear fusion or fission reactors. Once you contaminate a planet with radiation, that planet is a biohazard for millennia, if not longer, and this holds true no matter what life form you might have in mind for occupying that planet.

Of course, the aliens also want to terraform the earth. Wait, what? “Terra” means “earth.” The earth is already “terraformed”!

You might well wonder why I concluded with Mike Adams’ version of the “vaccine depopulation” conspiracy theory, having already shown that such conspiracy theories are nothing new for the pandemic. The reason is simple. His version of the “vaccine depopulation” conspiracy theory might be the most “out there,” but it’s only marginally more ridiculous than the version being promoted by Joe Mercola, Michael Yeadon, and Peter McCullough because Mike Adams’ version includes aliens.

In reality, it is the antivaxxers’ whose agenda is far more likely to result in global depopulation. Vaccines are arguably the most effective medical intervention to prevent death and suffering ever devised by the human mind, having prevented billions of cases of disease and death over the history of their existence. Anyone who tries to frighten people out of taking advantage of vaccines, for both themselves and their children, is the true advocate of “depopulation.”

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

236 replies on “COVID-19 vaccines as part of a “depopulation agenda””

Apparently, Yeadon was at one time a fairly high-ranking manager for Pfizer, although I’ve never been able to get a clear picture of what his actual job at Pfizer was.

After 20 years, I’m not sure that anything matters aside from the exaggeration.

In general, so-called contagious diseases are caused, not by germs, but by IMMUNE SYSTEMS THAT ARE TOO WEAK TO FIGHT OFF THOSE GERMS.

Wait, how does this work? Germs don’t cause diseases, but because immune systems that are too week to fight off those germs? But what do those germs do, if they don’t cause diseases? And why should our immune systems fight of those germs, if they don’t cause diseases?
Burglars don’t cause burglaries, but doors being to week, to keep burglars out of the house do.

I wish these people could make up their minds. First they tell, germs don’t exist, then they say they do exist, but they are harmless, but still our immune systems should fight those non-existing, harmless germs of, because otherwise we get a disease, but not by those non-existing, harmless germs.

You know this feel good fluff piece you wrote is a lie. NO VAXX NO MANDATES. MY BODY MY CHOICE. STOP BEING SHEEP AND SAY NO TO THE PLANDEMIC. ITS A CROCK.

So you are a cancer surgeon. I am an economist.
That means you and I have one thing in common: We are not supposed to have profound knowledge on virology, epidemiology, immunology or vaccinology.
Informing the public on these subjects in our qualification would be arrogant and criminal!
Does Orac in any way benefit financially from promoting these vaccines?

Ah, yes. The pharma shill gambit. Seriously, do you cranks have any imagination at all? That’s the most boring, predictably ad hominem.

Also, I have a PhD in cellular physiology, and my research has long involved molecular biology. So actually, yes, I do have a lot of requisite background knowledge to address bullshit claims that COVID-19 vaccines “alter your DNA,” that the spike protein contains domains that resemble syncytin-1 and result in an autoimmune attack on the placenta that causes miscarriages, that COVID-19 vaccines can act like prions, and a wide number of antivax claims based on molecular biology. I would also say that as an MD/PhD surgeon-scientist I have way more background information than an accountant when it comes to commenting on antivax claims.

Lucas says he’s an economist, not an accountant. There’s a big difference. An accountant is useful.

I only got a shot in one arm. If they wanted a shot in every arm, the J&J vaccine would require two shots. Clearly this conspiracy is falling short of its goal.

I find that the more recent attempts by woo-providers/ anti-vaxxers to oppose Covid vaccines by increasingly outlandish scenarios/ futile attempts to sound ‘scientific’ are perhaps a sign of desperation as Covid infections/ deaths decline precipitously following widespread vaccination AND large cities which were formerly shutdown now open up. Because of my locale and travels since last spring, things are really looking up in the three states where I’ve been including, two major cities. There’s actually traffic!

Here in Michigan, state-mandated COVID restrictions are ending tomorrow, except in hospitals and other health care facilities.

They ended in CA on the 15. I don’t think it changed anything dramatically.

In a recent video, science denier and pseudo-law promoter Peggy Hall complains that she’s upset seeing people without masks now. Guess that’s a change. More people without masks.

There’s been a slow, but steady decline in mask wearing where I’m at once the mandate was lifted. I think a lot of people waited to see if cases would increase with the lift of mandates and as they didn’t, most people felt comfortable not wearing them outside of large crowds.

In a recent video, science denier and pseudo-law promoter Peggy Hall complains that she’s upset seeing people without masks now.

There really is no pleasing some people.

I’m a New Zealander and we’ve been extremely lucky to be Covid free (with life as normal) almost the whole way through this pandemic apart from a few brief lockdowns. Our vaccine roll out is only in the very early stages though (we’ve only fully vaccinated around 325,000 people out of 5 million) so our largest anti-vax group is mainly trying to exaggerate the risks of vaccination which they’ll post about on Facebook. They don’t post about the really crazy conspiracy theories like depopulation because they’re trying to appear rational but it’s clear from the comments on their posts that many of their followers do believe them and then go on to post links to conspiracy videos.

I think we also still have some level of vaccine hesitancy in NZ in part because we don’t have Covid circulating in the community so people haven’t personally seen friends/relatives suffering from severe Covid infection. However, a recent poll showed that around 77% of adults in NZ intend to get vaccinated so I still think the anti-vaxxers are a small minority and that vaccine hesitancy will decrease as more people get vaccinated. Admittedly, I am curious to see what’s going to happen when our borders open up, no doubt mostly unvaccinated people will get sick but the anti-vaxxers will come up with some ridiculous excuse as to why that’s happening.

Over here in the West Island there had been a similar rather laid back attitude to getting vaccinated, until Victoria had a two-week lockdown to stop community transmission of the Kappa variant. One of the allowed reasons for going out was getting vaccinated and people did. The number of people in Victoria who have had one dose of a vaccine double in a few weeks. If Sydney locks down this week, I would expect to see a similar rise in people getting vaccinated.

People who might otherwise be hesitant are likely to choose vaccination as soon as not doing so starts to impinge on their activities. Hard core anti-vaxxers are only a small percentage (added to in this case by far-right COVID-19 deniers).

The Vax under discussion is a depopulation agenda as mandated on The Georgia Guidestones. Look it up.

It’s great to see things starting to somewhat return to normal in the US, you certainly had it rough over there! I’m a New Zealander and we’ve been extremely lucky to be Covid free (with life as normal) almost the whole way through this pandemic apart from a few brief lockdowns. Our vaccine roll out is only in the very early stages though (we’ve only fully vaccinated around 325,000 people out of 5 million) so our largest anti-vax group is mainly trying to exaggerate the risks of vaccination which they’ll post about on Facebook. They don’t post about the really crazy conspiracy theories like depopulation because they’re trying to appear rational but if you read the comments on their posts it’s clear that many people who follow them do believe the conspiracies and constantly post links to conspiracy videos.

I think we also still have some level of vaccine hesitancy in NZ in part because we haven’t had Covid circulating in the community so people haven’t personally seen friends/relatives suffering from severe Covid infection. However, a recent poll showed that around 77% of people in NZ intend to get vaccinated so I still think the anti-vaxxers are a small minority and that vaccine hesitancy will decrease as more people get vaccinated. Admittedly, I am curious to see what happens when our borders open up, no doubt mainly unvaccinated people will get sick and the anti-vaxxers will come up with some ridiculous excuse as to why that’s happening.

Oops, sorry. My comment didn’t show up earlier so I resubmitted it and now it’s there twice! I don’t know how to delete the duplicate…..

First comments are moderated, hence the delay. As there is no edit window, people don’t usually worry about double posts or needing to point out errors in their previous posts. It is all part of the experience.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of anti-vaxxers and others who refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccines, which, while they’re not in the majority, are preventing the United States, as a whole, from making the kind of progress to stopping this pandemic once and for all, and, allowing cheaters and liars to lie about their vaccine status in order to get vaccine boosters (i. e. third shots), by jumping the line. The anti-vaxxers, the Covid-19 vaccine refuseniks, and the duplicitous liars and chislers who are jumping the line to get the third Covid-19 vaccinations by lying about their vaccine status are both dangerous and need to be stopped before they set the United States back to where it was a year and a half ago. These populations don’t give a damn.

@mplo,

I’m not worried about people lying to get a third vaccine. We have too many now going unused.

I wish we were more aggressive in helping supply other countries.

It would also be nice if politicians who try to score points by whining about Biden and Harris’ “vaccine refusal’ way back last September would offer to work with them on a series of promotion videos targeting the reluctant unvaccinated in their own states.

Here we are many months later and all around the world any one who hasn’t had there jabs and now 3rd booster jabs will have there ability to participate in society removed or even fined. Jobs lost as mandates come into play. Really think there is no agenda.

Hey Phil, did you know that almost every state in the US is a right to work state, where your employer can fire you for basically any reason they feel like that isn’t one of the extremely limited discrimination categories?

Don’t wear your khaki pants and red polo shirt to work at Target? Fired.
Don’t wear your hard hat and steel-toed boots on a construction site? Can fire you for that.
Don’t wear gloves when doing a blood draw? Fired, and might lose your license.

The “agenda” is to keep people alive.
I will always be amazed how many people get angry about rules put in place to keep them alive.

Of course there is no agenda; fire them, fine them, take away their posessions, concentrate them into camps and if still don’t want the jabs: kill them. We’ll show you how to keep a society healthy!

And that base on the little lie to protect the vaccinated for the unvaccinated, uh-uh-uh.
And not to mention that the vaccinated themselves spread the virus, uh-uh-uh.

@ Lucas: Please take your disgusting Nazi analogy and leave. No one is being “fined” for not being vaccinated. No one is having their possessions taken away for not being vaccinated. Sure as hell no one is being put in a “camp” for not being vaccinated!

What is wrong with you that someone says “please do this thing to protect yourself and the people around you from a deadly disease that has killed more than three-quarters of a million Americans” and you go straight to Nazis?

Do you not understand the difference between a request and an order?

(reads top picture) Cashless societies, zero interest rate… Bankers (plenty of)? How all of these could be connected? They must really have a devious plan. “See, if no-one else has cash, then we have all the cash, which has no value because no-one is using it”. No, forget I asked.

Re: Adams’ “this holds true no matter what life form you might have in mind”
Adams lacks imagination. Pretty sure there are at least 42 alien species in sci-fi which eat radioactive isotopes for breakfast.
And he lacks biology knowledge. Not all terrestrial life is equal to radiation hazard (that’s not biohazard – he also lacks a thesaurus). Arthropods may well replace us if we obliterate ourselves with nukes. Also, look up the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans. Three guesses as to why it’s named this way.

Also, aliens barging in and stopping us from nuking one-another? I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

I strongly suspect that any visiting aliens would conclude that humanity is in greater need of a nanny than an overlord.

Big Pharma is wholeheartedly supporting the Global Depopulation Agenda, since with far fewer people, they can make lots more $$$ selling drugs.

Just…connect….the…..dots…….

Every time I connect the dots, I just end up with a whole lot of dots. What am I supposed to do with them? They’re really tiny and they clog the air filter. Maybe I can dispose of them by writing. Very. Short. Sentences.

Vaccines are part of the depopulation program the same way that food is part of the starvation program and soap is part of the filth program.

Actually, I agree and have to admonish my antivaxx brothers and sisters who claim you guys are out to depopulate the world with vaccines. You are much too incompetent for that. Seriously, I would wager half of you can’t even tie your laces never mind attempting to depopulate the world. Of course, your incompetence might just result in that, but that’s an entirely different argument.

Anyway, as to this…

coupled with the concern that vaccine-induced immunity might wane to the point where “booster shots” will be required.

I am curious, aren’t the trials still going on; should’nt the results already be in as to whether boosters are necessary. Joel, Aarno, Squirrel — anyone?

OK, one time for now:

I am curious

No, you’re an attention-seeking asshole, which is why you’ve been ejected multiple times and sorely need another, permanent go-round on general principles. I wouldn’t let you clean the litter box with your mouth, as there’s no telling where you’ve been aside from the brief stint at AoA..

C’,mon, Narad! I’ve been asking the same question over and over again; what’s going on with the trials and efficacy reports post a year?! Joel, Athaic, Squirrel, Aarno — anyone?!

True story: I’ve known this contractor, P, a long time now, and he regularly does jobs around my house. Over a year ago the vaccine topic came up, and I told him I was an antivaxxer and that he should also be careful with vaccines.

Fast forward a year, and I had him over recently. The guy was now a blazing antivaxxer, telling me that he would get ever flu vaccines but mRNA really opened his eyes.

There we were sitting on my back deck, and there he was railing about how the vaccine was part of a depopulation agenda. He was bringing up Yeadon, Mikovitch, Del, Bhakdhi — and asking me if I was aware of them. Are you kidding me?! He was also denying that covid was real and blaming it on the flu. He also suggested that the lab-leak idea was just a smokescreen for the depopulation agenda.

There I was shaking my head in frustration that he was giving you guys so much credit. I was telling him that you guys were not crafty monsters but just complete idiots, but he would have none of it. Seriously– I was tempted to whip out my laptop and show him one of Orac’s blogs and scream, ‘Do you think someone that can BS this badly is smart enough to pull off a plot to depopulate the world?!’

Funny, P is not alone. My bro-in-law used to tell us off about not vaccinating our kids, but now he is attending rallies in the city to protest the vaccine and the covid ‘scam’.

Ask them what turned them into this. For a shit ton of people, it’s not the science,but the politics involved in it.

Go to Amazon.com; and search for the book “Covid 19, the Great Reset” by Klaus Schwab; the co-founder of the Word Economic Forum. His good buddy is Bill Gates.
I saw the recording of Bill Gates speaking at a Ted-talk; about DRASTICALLY reducing the entire world population by 80%-90%. I think he even mentioned using vaccines as one of the many ways of offing people. Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates and many others who are part of the elites ARE in TRUTH planning the demise of the vast majority of the people on earth; that is not ‘conspiracy theory’ mumbo-jumbo; it is; sadly; conspiracy fact. This isn’t stuff made up by ‘right-wingers’. though I have to say; it seems that a lot of them have been a LOT sharper than many of us ‘not-republicans’; because we are so determined to think of them as ignorant; that we’ve made OURSELVES ignorant. And it might well turn out that THEY will have the LAST laugh; because they are (Trying to; very wisely) avoid the poison jab.
I’ve been vaccinated; and I regret it now. I know TOO MANY people who have died soon after getting it;; not long after getting it, or who have had life-threatening health issues after getting it; when they were healthy people before getting it/them. And their symptoms line up with all of the others who have had sometimes very serious; many times permanent side effects after getting one or more jabs of the so-called ‘vaccines’. I have DOZENS of sites….I won’t add any here now….NOT from ‘the deep web’ but from verifiable sources; with PROOF; that there IS a plan…has been for MANY, MANY years…to drastically lower the earth’s population; AND that in FACT; one of the ways of doing that will be by releasing viruses and other pathogens; AND by vaccines themselves. We’d better stop looking at other political parties as the enemy; and realize; that while we are duking it out with each other; the snares are being set for ALL of us. Before it’s truly too late.

@Greg Issue is new variants.l. If virus changes, vaccine does not works as well. Neither is immune system as good to fight it. This is a reason why variablitu exists.

You are not answering the question, Aarno. Are the vaccine trials not still going on, and where are the efficacy results post a year? Aarno, Joel, Squirrel, Athaic — anyone?! Joel, you are usually reliable with your 300 words dissertations, can you not cut one down to maybe 50 and update me with an answer?

Slightly unrelated, seems like the Philippine’s President is threatening to jail antivaxxers. God! – I hope our government doesn’t take notice. In addition to having to fend off ‘Bubba’, I really don’t want to open a vaccination discussion with him and having to explain my refusal.

https://globalnews.ca/video/7969531/u-k-researchers-say-delta-variant-presents-new-pattern-of-symptoms

Results of trials are reported when they come in:
Shinde V, Bhikha S, Hoosain Z, Archary M, Bhorat Q, Fairlie L, Lalloo U, Masilela MSL, Moodley D, Hanley S, Fouche L, Louw C, Tameris M, Singh N, Goga A, Dheda K, Grobbelaar C, Kruger G, Carrim-Ganey N, Baillie V, de Oliveira T, Lombard Koen A, Lombaard JJ, Mngqibisa R, Bhorat AE, Benadé G, Lalloo N, Pitsi A, Vollgraaff PL, Luabeya A, Esmail A, Petrick FG, Oommen-Jose A, Foulkes S, Ahmed K, Thombrayil A, Fries L, Cloney-Clark S, Zhu M, Bennett C, Albert G, Faust E, Plested JS, Robertson A, Neal S, Cho I, Glenn GM, Dubovsky F, Madhi SA; 2019nCoV-501 Study Group. Efficacy of NVX-CoV2373 Covid-19 Vaccine against the B.1.351 Variant. N Engl J Med. 2021 May 20;384(20):1899-1909. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2103055. Epub 2021 May 5. PMID: 33951374; PMCID: PMC8091623.
Variants are indeed worrisome. A vaccine based on a new RNA sequencemay be needed
As for Dutarte, check what kind of person he is.

Mr. Duterte seems to be someone who has one solution for all problems, namely threatening or killing people who go against him.

When I listen to alties like Mikey and read anti-vaxxers, they sound now as if it is the end of the world when we already went through that last spring: field hospitals set up in parks, mobile morgues, empty streets in formerly crowded cities, people cloistered at home most of the time, an economy in free fall…
What caused this great change?
Not one will give credit to vaccination all over the world: the only problem is that there hasn’t been enough to shut down the virus entirely.
Yet they ramp up fear of evil phantoms and scary monstrous personae when we’ve already witnessed real death on a large scale.,,

@ Greg

First, I have been reading on smallpox since my teen years, actually own a dozen books and over 1200 papers. Prior to the WHO smallpox campaign between 200 and 300 million people died from smallpox in the 20th Century in Third World nations. The U.S. and Europe were already well vaccinated. From history we know that smallpox outbreaks were regular and killed between 25 and 30% of a population if that population had previously been exposed since there would be survivors, etc. In areas where smallpox had never existed, e.g., the Americas, it killed 90% of population. In other words MORON, without the smallpox vaccine the current population of world would be much much smaller, probably 1/3 to 1/2 of what it is. Measles also killed many children until advent of antibiotics; but with rise of antibiotic resistance, if we ceased to vaccinate for measles, good chance the death rates would increase; but even when population of U.S. was half what it is, 1950s, with antibiotics, 500 kids died and 50,000 were hospitalized annually. One out of every 1,000 measles cases progressed to acute encephalitis, which often results in permanent brain damage. GIven that almost every single child experienced measles, you do the math.

As for clinical trials of Covid vaccine booster shots, I typed into Google search box “covid vaccine booster trial” and got tons of articles. Below are just a few (notice the trials just started this month). I should point out that I was a volunteer in the Moderna Covid Vaccine Trials, have been a whole-blood donor for almost 45 years; but two weeks after receiving second vaccine donated convalescent plasma and continue to do so every four weeks. As participant in clinical trial I agreed to 25 months, go to lab once-in-a-while to give blood; but get no feedback; however, Blood Bank tells me my covid antibody titers are HIGH. Moron that you are, most people understand that as we age our immune systems respond less robustly to infections and vaccines, so almost five months since last vaccine and high antibody titers makes me quite happy (last donation two days ago). Studies have shown current vaccine still confers at least 80% effectiveness against variants, meaning far less chance of serious outcome. And when I first read they were developing booster vaccines for covid I contacted the research center and emphasized I am ready and willing to participate.

As for efficacy trials of original vaccines, starting December 30 and 31 The New England Journal of Medicine published results of Moderna and Pfizer Phase 3 trials and there have been literally dozens of studies of both safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines. And as I mentioned above, I committed as volunteer to 25 months and continue to go for blood tests, fill out questionnaire weekly, and monthly receive phone call/interview. I won’t bother posting because you really aren’t interested, won’t go to and read them, ASSHOLE that you are.

First few articles I found on current covid booster vaccine trials:

Clinical Trials Arena (2021 May 20). UK launches booster dose trial of seven Covid-19 vaccines
Health Europa (2021 May 20). World’s first COVID-19 vaccine booster trial begins.

NIH (2021 Jun 1). NIH clinical trial evaluating mixed COVID-19 vaccine schedules begins. From: “The National Institutes of Health has started a Phase 1/2 clinical trial in which adult volunteers who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will receive booster doses of different COVID-19 vaccines to determine the safety and immunogenicity of mixed boosted regimens.”

UMass News (2021 Jun 16). UMass Medical School to participate in trial of Pfizer COVID-19 booster vaccine.

As for: “I really don’t want to open a vaccination discussion with him and having to explain my refusal.” You can’t explain based on science, on understanding of immunology, etc. Stupidity isn’t a valid explanation.

So, it is obvious that you post not to enter into a dialogue; but just to provoke irritate others. Even a moron like you could have easily found the above and lots more. So, again, there are ASSHOLES, FRIGGIN ASSHOLES, AND PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO MAKE THE AFOREMENTIONED SEEM ALMOST DECENT.

Man! – do I ever feel cheated. I got the 300 words dissertation, but without my questions answered. Joel, for the life of it, I don’t understand why you don’t get Narad to teach you to BS with much more brevity. He really does excel at it with his glib, sarcastic retorts.

Joel, let me ask again the questions as simple as possible? Are Moderna and Pfizer’s covid vaccines trials still ongoing? Joel, do you know if the efficacy results post a year are in? Joel, if they are in, what are the results? Should any other regulars here have such info, please feel free to chime in.

@ Greg

You write: “Joel, let me ask again the questions as simple as possible? Are Moderna and Pfizer’s covid vaccines trials still ongoing?”

I wrote above: “As for efficacy trials of original vaccines, starting December 30 and 31 The New England Journal of Medicine published results of Moderna and Pfizer Phase 3 trials and there have been literally dozens of studies of both safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines. And as I mentioned above, I committed as volunteer to 25 months and continue to go for blood tests, fill out questionnaire weekly, and monthly receive phone call/interview. I won’t bother posting because you really aren’t interested, won’t go to and read them, ASSHOLE that you are.”

And you asked about trials of boosters and I gave you a list.

So, I answered your question, the Moderna, which I am in and the Pfizer both required commitments of 25 months, so they are ongoing.

Orac, please stop posting this absolute dishonest ASSHOLE whose only goal is to provoke people.

Joel writes…

I Wrote above: “As for efficacy trials of original vaccines, starting December 30 and 31 The New England Journal of Medicine published results of Moderna and Pfizer Phase 3 trials

And, what do we find..

This report includes 2 months of follow-up after the second dose of vaccine for half the trial participants and up to 14 weeks’ maximum follow-up for a smaller subset. Therefore, both the occurrence of adverse events more than 2 to 3.5 months after the second dose and more comprehensive information on the duration of protection remain to be determined

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577

One last time, Joel: Are you aware of any efficacy data for any of the existing Covid vaccines POST A YEAR? If so, Joel, can you kindly link such information.

Chill, dude. Pfizer announced on May 7 that they were starting a rolling submittal for approval. When they announced they were initiating a rolling submittal for EUA on October 6, they didn’t announce the efficacy results until the submittal was complete, on November 18th. So don’t expect an announcement of those results until the current rolling submittal is complete. If they kept to the same timetable, that would have been last Saturday, so we’re likely getting close, but this submittal is larger and so is expected to take longer. In the meantime, there’s dozens of other efficacy studies out there showing that the vaccines do indeed work, not just at preventing symptomatic and severe disease, but they also prevent transmission, including by the asymptomatic.

Kevin Vicklund, must say your suggestion that Pfizer is sitting on efficacy findings for ‘administrative’ reasons disturbing. Don’t people and governments urgently need such info to plan for boosters in the fall, as it is being hinted? Haven’t you guys always argue that such delays will only add to the death counts?!

@Greg This one
Shinde V, Bhikha S, Hoosain Z, Archary M, Bhorat Q, Fairlie L, Lalloo U, Masilela MSL, Moodley D, Hanley S, Fouche L, Louw C, Tameris M, Singh N, Goga A, Dheda K, Grobbelaar C, Kruger G, Carrim-Ganey N, Baillie V, de Oliveira T, Lombard Koen A, Lombaard JJ, Mngqibisa R, Bhorat AE, Benadé G, Lalloo N, Pitsi A, Vollgraaff PL, Luabeya A, Esmail A, Petrick FG, Oommen-Jose A, Foulkes S, Ahmed K, Thombrayil A, Fries L, Cloney-Clark S, Zhu M, Bennett C, Albert G, Faust E, Plested JS, Robertson A, Neal S, Cho I, Glenn GM, Dubovsky F, Madhi SA; 2019nCoV-501 Study Group. Efficacy of NVX-CoV2373 Covid-19 Vaccine against the B.1.351 Variant. N Engl J Med. 2021 May 20;384(20):1899-1909. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2103055. Epub 2021 May 5. PMID: 33951374; PMCID: PMC8091623.

Variants and variants, and boosters and more boosters… When will we realize that trying to hold back Covid is like trying to reinforce the dam wall with boosters, and as the water swells and swells?Sorry! — so what if we are preventing serious illness and deaths, the water is only rising with infections and threatening to burst through the wall. When will we start having the discussion that we would have been better off letting the water in earlier and have natural immunity solve the problem? Oh, the hubris!

https://saskatoon.ctvnews.ca/mobile/sask-doctor-explains-delta-variant-and-why-we-ll-have-to-learn-to-live-with-covid-19-1.5482139

And speaking of efficacy findings and what it might portends for boosters, I ran across this…

Any trial looking at booster dose study will likely focus on laboratory data as opposed to looking at how protective the vaccine is in the real world, which is what the original vaccine trials did, Barouch said. That means that instead of giving some people a booster and others a placebo and then seeing how many infections occur in the real world, researchers would instead compare the immunity levels in both groups, to see if people who received the booster saw a significant increase.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/no-evidence-yet-suggest-covid-vaccine-booster-needed-cdc-group-n1272197

Isn’t it interesting when officials keep changing the rules! I wonder what it might suggest about those efficacy findings. Hhmmnn!

@Greg Funny thing is that you seems to love coronavirus.
Of course rules change when new data come in. Doing otherwise wouyld be very stupid.

Greg, do you understand the concept of linear time?* From the article you quoted:

Between July 27, 2020, and November 14, 2020, a total of 44,820 persons were screened, and 43,548 persons 16 years of age or older underwent randomization at 152 sites worldwide (United States, 130 sites; Argentina, 1; Brazil, 2; South Africa, 4; Germany, 6; and Turkey, 9) in the phase 2/3 portion of the trial. A total of 43,448 participants received injections: 21,720 received BNT162b2 and 21,728 received placebo (Figure 1). At the data cut-off date of October 9, a total of 37,706 participants had a median of at least 2 months of safety data available after the second dose and contributed to the main safety data set.

If the first jabs for the main Phase 2/3 cohort weren’t given until July 27, that means we have at least a month (closer to two) until the first group of that cohort reaches the one year mark. It also means the final group didn’t reach the 6-month mark until last week. And that’s assuming everybody got the second dose at exactly 3 weeks after the first shot.

As far as boosters, from the clinical trial description:

In order to describe the boostability of BNT162, and potential heterologous protection against emerging SARS-CoV-2 VOCs, an additional dose of BNT162b2 at 30 µg will be given to Phase 1 participants approximately 6 to 12 months after their second dose of BNT162b1 or BNT162b2. This will provide an early assessment of the safety of a third dose of BNT162, as well as its immunogenicity.

The assessment of boostability will be further expanded in a subset of Phase 3 participants at selected sites in the US who will receive a third dose of BNT162b2 at 30 µg or a third and potentially a fourth dose of prototype BNT162b2VOC at 30 µg (BNT162b2s01, based upon the South African variant and hereafter referred to as BNT162b2SA). A further subset of Phase 3 participants will receive a third, lower, dose of BNT162b2 at 5 or 10 µg.

To further describe potential homologous and heterologous protection against emerging SARS-CoV-2 VOCs, a new cohort of participants will be enrolled who are COVID-19 vaccine-naïve (ie, BNT162b2-naïve) and have not experienced COVID-19. They will receive BNT162b2SA given as a 2-dose series, separated by 21 days.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728

booster shot dat is assessed at 7 days, 1 month, 2 months, and 6 months. So a lot of that still isn’t complete.

*I delayed posting this to check on something that struck me as odd. The cutoff date for data collection didn’t seem to give enough time. It turns out that the cut-off date means that those receiving their second shot after that date were not included in the data set. The rolling submissions contained data collected after the cut-off date in the part of the cohort not excluded. If you do the math, rolling submissions started about two months after the second shot for the initial group and ended at about 14 weeks after the second shot of that same group.

@Kevin

the first jabs for the main Phase 2/3 cohort weren’t given until July 27, that means we have at least a month (closer to two) until the first group of that cohort reaches the one year mark. It also means the final group didn’t reach the 6-month mark until last week. And that’s assuming everybody got the second dose at exactly 3 weeks after the first shot.

I thought of that, but then consider even if there wasn’t enough time for Phase 2/3 trial to yield efficacy results post a year maybe the Phase 1 trial could. I considered an objection might be that sample might be too small, but then you link…

In order to describe the boostability of BNT162, and potential heterologous protection against emerging SARS-CoV-2 VOCs, an additional dose of BNT162b2 at 30 µg will be given to Phase 1 participants approximately 6 to 12 months after their second dose of BNT162b1 or BNT162b2. This will provide an early assessment of the safety of a third dose of BNT162, as well as its immunogenicity.

Kevin, so if the Phase 1 sample is good enough to determine booster efficacy, shouldn’t it also be good
enough to yield efficacy data in general? Kevin?!

If Phase 1 data wasn’t enough to measure vaccine efficacy, why would you think it would measure booster efficacy?

Boostabilty (or booster immunogenicity) is not the same thing as booster efficacy. In other words, sample size is too small for booster efficacy. (Greg won’t understand this, but what they are measuring is whether antibody titers degrade over time and whether boosters improve those titers. Antibody titers are a proxy measure and can’t be used to prove efficacy until they have been shown to correlate with efficacy, which takes several years and a very large sample size. Also, they can get an early assessment of safety, but no more than you get from any Phase 1 trial.)

And yes, the Phase 2/3 trial will measure booster efficacy, but that data won’t be available until the end of the year.

In other words:

Chill out, dude.

If Phase 1 data wasn’t enough to measure vaccine efficacy, why would you think it would measure booster efficacy?

Because the Phase 1 data, in addition to assessing safety, actually did study efficacy or ‘immunogenicity’! Surely then, data about efficacy post a year should be available for that Phase, don’t you think, Kevin? Kevin?!

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027906

Surely then, data about efficacy post a year should be available for that Phase, don’t you think, Kevin? Kevin?!

On that note, about a month ago, it was reported that Pfizer’s Head considered that boosters will be required. Now what do you suppose was instructing him, Kevin. Kevin?!

Greg, I’ve already informed you that immunogenicity (antibody titers) is not the same thing as efficacy (preventing disease and infection). Stop lying. Also, here’s what Pfizer’s Head actually said, in response to J&J announcing that a booster might be needed:

.“A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role,” he told CNBC’s Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health.

“It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus,” Bourla said.

The comment comes after Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky told CNBC in February that people may need to get vaccinated against Covid-19 annually, just like seasonal flu shots.

Researchers still don’t know how long protection against the virus lasts once someone has been fully vaccinated.

Pfizer said earlier this month that its Covid-19 vaccine was more than 91% effective at protecting against the coronavirus and more than 95% effective against severe disease up to six months after the second dose. Moderna’s vaccine, which uses technology similar to Pfizer’s, was also shown to be highly effective at six months.

Pfizer’s data was based on more than 12,000 vaccinated participants. However, researchers say more data is still needed to determine whether protection lasts after six months.

The Pfizer trial had about 44,000 participants. So they made this comment with only partial data. A “likely scenario” is nowhere near a certainty, especially when you barely have 25% of your data in.

Chill out, dude.

Newsflash! Greg says that everyone who doesn’t believe in a conspiracy involving every world government, every world health organisation and every private concern that looks at health data is a stupid stupid-head.

Newsflash! Greg says that everyone who doesn’t believe in a conspiracy involving every world government, every world health organisation and every private concern that looks at health data is a stupid stupid-head.

Where did I say I believe in such grand collusion, Numb? On the contrary, my point was ‘antivaxxers’ that do really annoy me because they’re giving you guys far too much credit. As I stated before, like religion or the ‘war on drugs’, when people or governments are instinctual motivated to pursue bad ideas, you don’t need a grand collusion for those ideas and policies to succeed. Many ‘antivaxxers’ just don’t get this.

@ Greg

And what do you base your stupid certainty that we are all wrong and you are right? ASSHOLE.

Based on your comments, I believe you are an extremely unhappy frustrated individual, either with work and/or personal relationships, so they only outlet you have is to post anonymously on a blog, not to contribute to the dialogue; but just to provoke and irritate people.

Orac has blocked you in the past and should do so again1

Nope. The only way any of the anti-vax talking points about autism or deaths or ineffectiveness or whatever could be correct is if every government, health organisation etc etc in the entire world were all in collusion to hide the facts. Therefore all anti-vaxxers are conspiracy theorists (or, to be fair, incapable of recognising anything outside their own countries borders). If you really believe that American research holds much sway in China, Russia or Iran then you might want to take a pin to your inflated self-opinion. We don’t even take your study results blindly in the UK.

On the other hand, you did recently teach all the grandmothers in the world how to suck eggs. What’s next? I’m pretty sure the nomadic tribes in the middle east would like your input on the best type of clothes to wear in the desert. I also heard that Easter Island had an opening for a sculptor specialising in giant heads.

Anti-vaxxers, even here at RI, spread fear, uncertainty and doubt any way they can but professional dis-informers produce more sophisticated attempts to do the same, witness:
— ( Children’s Health Defense) More people died of blood clots than Covid in Australia. True, two died of blood clots and one of Covid recently HOWEVER that is mis-leading because many more people died over the past 15 months ( look it up!) which has been greatly reduced by vaccination.
— ( AoA) Kim Rossi is unhappy that NYT FaceBook commenters didn’t appreciate her input about a university athlete who died after arm surgery: she wondered if he was vaccinated and about what was ‘wrong with his eye’. In response to a question about her degrees, she claimed a doctorate in vaccine injury.

— ( Children’s Health Defense) More people died of blood clots than Covid in Australia. True, two died of blood clots and one of Covid recently HOWEVER that is mis-leading because many more people died over the past 15 months ( look it up!) which has been greatly reduced by vaccination.

Reduced by lockdowns. Every time there is a community outbreak there is closing of internal borders and geographically limited lockdowns. If that doesn’t work, the lockdowns become broader.

Less than 30% of the population has been given 1 dose of vaccine, so far and all our vaccines are 2 dose versions.

Of course. They dismiss lockdowns and masks as impositions on freedom..
My point being that they always frighten people about vaccines killing people when millions have already died of Covid all over the world including more than 900 in AUS!

In fact, you and NZ have done a great job keeping the numbers down through lockdowns, travel restrictions even within the country and other PH measures so that when you finally got the vaccines, the virus was not as widespread and was easier to manage.

Like other sites I monitor, CHD endlessly ramps up fear about vaccines rather than facts about the virus! Highly vaccinated places locales** like where I live are opening up whereas places with lower rates are experiencing an increase of Covid amongst the unvaccinated.

** however before we got the vaccines, we were already a hotspot because of early international travel prior to restrictions. In a county of less than a million people, there were over 100K cases officially and at least 3000 deaths

It’s easy to complain about utilitarianism, but I wonder what ethical/philosophical system they prefer? One in which minimizing death and suffering is irrelevant as long as they believe they are doing the Right Thing?

Nah, probably a selfish one in which only their group (family, religion, sports team, hometown….) matters. “We’ll accept X number of deaths to protect everyone else” doesn’t sound good, but it’s a heck of a lot better than “we’ll accept 20 times that many deaths, as long as the specific people I care about are safe.”

You can find flaws in any ethical system, because we’re living in an imperfect, material world. But “nothing is perfect” doesn’t mean that everything is equally bad, or equally good.

@ Greg

You write: “Variants, variants, and they just keep on coming..
This is why it’s so very important to get to the origin of the virus. If it was indeed man-made, then we need consider the unique features of the virus that’s contributing to its incessant morphing.

You keep getting stupider and stupider. We don’t need the origin of Covid. We need the RNA gene sequencing, which we have. The variants develop from it, regardless of the origin. Why don’t you try to learn a little molecular biology instead of making a fool of yourself. Oh, you are too much a fool to even recognize you are one.

“Oh, you are too much a fool to even recognize you are one.”

You are a master of psychological projection. Credit where credit is due.

I believe one should look to what is actually in the shots. Among several that are disturbing, the one that sticks out is the nano particles. They in conjunction with magnetogenerics are in my opinion key.. reference this article; https://principia-scientific.com/artificial-magneto-protein-remotely-controls-brain-and-behaviour/
This may answer some questions. Note: they included the polysorbate 80 so as to allow unrestricted passage through the blood brain barrier.

Here in BC restrictions are easing and case counts dropping, obviously the local chapter of the AV cult have been telling everyone case counts are dropping cos no ones testing anymore (not true).

Still 8 months ago they were saying its just a cold and basically all made up, odd they now think the gov is hiding the true extent of the spread.

Never happy this lot

Some nonsense I hear at PRN:
they insist that there were only a lot of “cases” found early on, because, with PCR, they amplified the samples 40 times or more but NOW, they only amplify them 25 times so it looks like the virus isn’t around as much!

So I guess all of those hospitals overrun with patients and funeral parlours filled with bodies were totally misled by faulty testing! .

@ Dr. Gentleman

Either you are just another moron posting or you just started following this blog. If you have read Greg’s posts going back many months and you are above moron in intelligence you would realize that his posts don’t contribute to the conversation. In fact, this wasn’t the first time he claimed we need covid’s origin to understand the variants and has been refuted. He just ignores science and like you attack those who base their comments on science without ever indicating he understands even elementary science. In fact, the Blog’s owner, Orac, has banned Greg several times because of his hostile unscientific comments. I’m sure you and Greg would get along fine?

Covid-19 vaccines are not only part of a depopulation scheme, there’s a disemployment agenda. 153 employees of the Methodist health care system in the Houston area have been fired or resigned over their refusal of a vaccine.

“The Houston Methodist employees who filed the lawsuit likened their situation to medical experiments performed on unwilling victims in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes called that comparison “reprehensible” and said claims made in the lawsuit that the vaccines are experimental and dangerous are false.”…

“Jennifer Bridges, a registered nurse who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Houston Methodist, said her director called her Tuesday to ask if she’d gotten the vaccine yet or made any effort to do so. She said that when she replied “absolutely not,” she was told that she was terminated.”

“We all knew we were getting fired today,” said Bridges, 39. “We knew unless we took that shot to come back, we were getting fired today. There was no ifs, ands or buts.”

“She had worked for 6½ years at the medical-surgical in-patient unit at Houston Methodist’s hospital in the suburb of Baytown.”

“Bridges said Tuesday was also her first day at her new job at a company that sends nurses into people’s homes.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/houston-hospital-workers-fired-resign-covid-19-vaccine-78430061?cid=clicksource_4380645_1_heads_hero_live_hero_related

Yes, that’s just the sort of nurse vulnerable patients will want in their homes.

@ Dr. Bacon writes, “Yes, that’s just the sort of nurse vulnerable patients will want in their homes.” According to PH measures, if the nurse wears a mask all will be okay, right? Instead, these healthcare providers are being coerced to participate in an experiment. Coercion is a direct violation of the Nuremberg Codes.

https://media.tghn.org/medialibrary2011/04BMJ_No_7070_Volume_313_The_Nuremberg_Code.pdf

Healthcare workers need to demand a test for Covid antibodies. They may already be immunized by a previous, asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infection.

OT – How’s your garden coming along?

Instead, these healthcare providers are being coerced to participate in an experiment.

This has been addressed. Mass vaccination against COVID is NOT a medical experiment, and this claim was already tedious months ago.
Pick a different arguent.

Oh oh! – this is not sounding good. Orac, maybe you should write a blog dismissing this ‘nonsense’. Again, I can help you.

Ok, let’s try this again…

So, yesterday the CDC ruled that there was a likely link between covid vaccination and myocarditis reported in a subset of young men. There have also been other adverse reactions reports to VAERs that are autoimmunity in nature and even if those links have not been established.

So, Sorenson agreed with me that we need to understand the etiology of the virus to produce an effective vaccine for it. Autoimmunity was one of his concern and the consideration that the spike protein may be similar to other human-like proteins. He wrote….

Analysis of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 shows 78.4% similarity with HL epitopes. For the
avoidance of confusion, a standard protein blast searches for functionalities and homologies to
other proteins. However, antibodies can only recognize 5–6 amino acids and the
acid rolling window search for antibody epitopes was performed. A
search so tailored to match against all human known proteins will
give a 78.4% human similarity to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, that
is if all epitopes on the 1,255-amino acid long SARS-CoV-2 spike
protein can be used by antibodies then there will be 983 antibody
binding sites which also could bind to epitopes on human proteins.

So, Joel, my question is simple: Did knowing covid genome. which you’re arguing is all we need, in itself alerted Sorenson to this similarity and its autoimmunity potential, or was it doing the blast search after reflecting that the virus may had been passed through human cells?

@Greg Your link was that COVID was circulating China earlier than assumed. This is another thing, not reacting COVID fast enough.
I would be interested how professor mentioned recovered destructed data, and what that data is.
We do have sequence(s) of SARS CoV 2 viruses. They did not either, as per lab leak hypothesis, so any sign of manipulation (which could cause a immune reaction specific to them). So source does not matter. It is variants that are the current problem.

For a different perspective on what may have happened with those viral samples, read this.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/23/health/coronavirus-sequences-database-scientist/index.html

Scientists not involved with Bloom’s analysis were skeptical about his conclusions.

“If these sequences were removed for the purpose of obscurity, it is also worth noting that such an effort clearly flopped because these sequences do not immediately provide any completely new knowledge about the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in the early pandemic,” said Robert Garry, a professor of immunology at Tulane University.

“The reality is that minor scientific missteps and less-than-ideal circumstances surround the sharing of scientific data all of the time,” Garry told CNN.

“In general, the work is vague or remiss about extremely important context and details about the sequences in question.”

“The language of the paper is unusual, its contains a significant degree of supposition and conjecture, cites blog posts and appears to be pointing towards a deliberate cover up by Chinese authorities of early sequence data from Wuhan. However, this is an entirely subjective appraisal of the situation, which will be very difficult to confirm or disprove,” Andrew Preston, a professor of microbial pathogenesis at the University of Bath in Britain, said in a statement.

Also, I think I previously cited a published paper describing two variant lines circulating in Wuhan at the time of the outbreak. There are several indications that the virus may have been circulating in China and perhaps elsewhere in the world for weeks or months before the Wuhan outbreak. But we haven’t turned up definitive evidence for them.

None of those indicators support a lab release as a likely source.

It also occurs to me that one of the things people talking about a ‘depopulation agenda’ don’t realize is… it takes live bodies to deal with dead ones. Mortuary services are built based on an assumed rough death rate. With the pandemic hitting, not only were there enough excess deaths in big cities that resulted in the infamous issue of refrigerated trucks used as temporary morgues, once the pandemic broke out of just the big cities and started hitting the smaller towns that had expected to be immune, there were places where the local mortuary was completely shut down. Not only was the only mortuary within fifty miles and built for at most ten dead people at a time suddenly dealing with four or five times that many all at once, but then what happens when the one or two people with any training in town end up amongst the sick, and you can’t bring anybody else in because every other town within a couple hundred miles is dealing with the same problem?

You’d expect any supervillain who was both trying to plan a massive depopulation and then also expecting there to be enough of a working society afterward for their money to still be useful would think about this and make sure there was extra capacity to deal with this ahead of time.

On top of that, the pandemic has seriously screwed over global supply chains. A lot of companies have started rethinking the whole ‘just in time’ inventory management practices as a result of the events of the last year and a half. Sure, warehouses cost money, but without them to act as a buffer on your supply chain you end up running out of important things way too quickly if there’s any disruption. And during global events, ‘buy from the second lowest bidder instead’ is often no longer an option either, even assuming the devices were compatible enough that it was an option in the first place. You’d think that if anybody were planning this, they’d have been stocking up to make sure their own stores and warehouses were full before this happened.

I mean, obviously, these are minor things compared to the fact that biological warfare is an utterly stupid way to do any sort of large-scale killing because once the genie is out of the bottle, it is no longer taking your orders; or the fact that, you know, reducing the size of your market and completely upending global society is not generally the way ‘global elites’ make money. The belief that this sort of conspiracy is actually reasonable could only come from, say, actual targets of genocide, or people who are so isolated from dealing with the lower levels of what keeps society running that they’d consider a retail job to be a personal insult.

” .. reducing the size of your market and completely upending global society is generally not the way ‘global elites’ make money..”

Exactly correct:
if this past year’s returns mean anything, the investments that prevailed- and that also enriched the elites- were the types of products and services that EVERYONE used such as the FANG ( or FAANG or FAAAN) stocks – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet ( google),Netflix, Microsoft and other tech services as my/ SO;s mutual funds’ heaviest weighed choices illustrated- the best earnings in years..

So if there were say, half or less the population, they would earn more? I think not.

Ok, let’s try this again…

So, yesterday the CDC ruled that there was a likely link between covid vaccination and myocarditis reported in a subset of young men. There have also been other adverse reactions reported to VAERs that are autoimmunity in nature and even if those links have not been verified.

So, Sorenson agreed with me that we need to understand the etiology of the virus to produce an effective vaccine for it. Autoimmunity was one of his concern and the consideration that the spike protein may be similar to other human-like proteins. He wrote….

Analysis of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 shows 78.4% similarity with HL epitopes. For the
avoidance of confusion, a standard protein blast searches for functionalities and homologies to
other proteins. However, antibodies can only recognize 5–6 amino acids and the
acid rolling window search for antibody epitopes was performed. A
search so tailored to match against all human known proteins will
give a 78.4% human similarity to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, that
is if all epitopes on the 1,255-amino acid long SARS-CoV-2 spike
protein can be used by antibodies then there will be 983 antibody
binding sites which also could bind to epitopes on human proteins.

So, Joel, my question is simple; did having covid genome, which you’re arguing is all we need, in itself alert Sorenson to this similarity and its autoimmunity risks, or was it doing the blast search after reflecting that the virus may had been passed through human cells?

I found this also interesting from Sorenson…

It is well documented that the receptor binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein uses the ACE2 receptor. But
clinical findings discussed below observed in Covid-19 patients suggest that other receptors for attachment such as
CLEC4M/DC-SIGNR may be involved as well. We have investigated and sustained this supposition from amino-acid
scale bio-chemical analysis.

With alarms of emerging strains, could Sorenson be on to something that it might be beneficial to target more than the spike receptor? Again, I am not endorsing his candidate vaccine or overlooking the COI element of it. In fact, remember that I am an antivaxxer that is wary of all vaccines. Still, I don’t understand how a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the virus would not aid in developing successful therapeutics for it, and, again, that’s if such a thing is even possible with vaccines.

@Greg How your mental status (reason why you started a BLAST search) affects search results ? Seems like Chopra to me.

was it doing the blast search after reflecting that the virus may had been passed through human cells?

Eh? I must have tuned to an episode of Star Trek. A badly written one.
Also, Sorenson doesn’t seem to have much faith in his thymus.

could Sorenson be on to something that it might be beneficial to target more than the spike receptor?

Nice try, Greg, but you are mixing-up everything. On purpose?

That they call the receptor is the human ACE2 proteins – and maybe, as explored in your quotes, some other human proteins. On the surface of human cells.
A quick ‘net search told me that. Really, you are not even trying.

The spike protein is the part of the virus looking for a receptor. Any receptor allowing it to enter cells. Interesting that there could be more than one. Well, we already know the virus is using either one of two entry points.
So, no, that’s not a reason to target more than the spike protein. Now, maybe you mis-read and they were talking about the Spike protein binging site to ACE2. Well, yeah, obviously, if other parts of the protein are involved in binding to human proteins, it may be useful to target them, if it’s possible.
I’m glad you are accepting the science behind vaccine design.

Did your mom give you the talk about the bees and the flowers? That may help you understand the relationship between the spike protein and its potential receptors on human cells.

@ Greg

Still think you are clever because you find another newspaper article about origin of covid may be Wuhan lab. As I’ve written, I don’t completely discount the possibility, though after reading 50 or more peer-reviewed articles and other papers probability small. As I’ve written and you continue to ignore, doesn’t matter if leaked from lab or much more likely nature. We were ill-prepared and Trump made it worse, regardless of source. The current covid virus though much more serious than flu is not even close to previous SARS and MERS, etc. And also, as I’ve written several times and you ignore, doesn’t matter source of current virus, genome has been sequenced and the variants are not unusual for such a virus. When there are literally billions of covid viruses, each mutating and some going into animals and mutating more, doesn’t matter origin. Your lack of understanding of the basics of molecular biology and ignoring what people write just is pathetic.

Declaiming that the “CDC ruled” something is marginally less stupid than stating (as another poster did) that a published article being indexed by PubMed means that the NIH endorses its contents.

@ Greg

You write: “So, yesterday the CDC ruled that there was a likely link between covid vaccination and myocarditis reported in a subset of young men. There have also been other adverse reactions reported to VAERs that are autoimmunity in nature and even if those links have not been verified. So, Sorenson agreed with me that we need to understand the etiology of the virus to produce an effective vaccine for it. Autoimmunity was one of his concern and the consideration that the spike protein may be similar to other human-like proteins>

“Sorensen agreed with you???” Delusions of grandeur??? Yep, a rare myocarditis has been linked in young men who received second dose of mRNA covid vaccine. The vast majority recovered with NO long-term damage; but we also know that the actual Covid virus causes a much greater risk of myocardititis and vascular damage. As for VAERS, CDC teams thoroughly investigate any reports of serious adverse events, including obtaining medical records. The vast majority of reports don’t pan out. However, CDC has several other valid programs for looking at potential vaccine risks, e.g., Vaccine Safety Datalink. Orac has written several times explaining in clear detail why only antivaxxers like you keep citing VAERS. Police sometimes bring in multiple people for interrogation following a crime. I guess in your mind ALL must be guilty.

First, for autoimmunity to develop one needs molecular mimicry, that is, a very close match between parts of proteins on invading microbe and some human cells. 78.4% is NOT a close match. Second, the current mRNA vaccines produce only a portion of the s-spike protein, so the match would be even less. Third, given the immense attention to the current vaccines, not only in the U.S. but around the world, there has been NO credible reports of autoimmune reactions. Credible, not VAERS!

In addition, numerous studies have found that people with autoimmune diseases are at higher risk from covid and recommend, if possible, they get the vaccine. I won’t bother to give references.

Orac has already dealt with Birger Sørensen earlier, The “lab leak” hypothesis is becoming a conspiracy theory June 7, 2021.

And I just did a search and so far not even a hint that Birger Sørensen’s Biovacc-19 vaccine is even in the pipeline, let alone any studies being done on it. It is simply a “theoretical” article, just one more example of how an idiot like you finds one paper, doesn’t really understand it, and cites it if it fits your agenda.

You write: “With alarms of emerging strains, could Sorenson be on to something that it might be beneficial to target more than the spike receptor? “

Not really. The more epitopes targeted by a vaccine, the fewer antibodies for each. Our immune systems are great; but can only produce so many antibodies at a time. The current mRNA vaccines actually elicit much higher antibodies to spike protein that the actual disease. And even with the current variants confer good immunity; but if variants develop that current vaccine doesn’t confer enough immunity, mRNA technology would allow for rapid development of a booster vaccine, which I would be eager to receive.

And, as opposed to moron’s like you, I won’t completely rule out possibility of a rare autoimmune response; but given what we know about risk from covid even for healthy young people, e.g., some deaths but many with vascular damage, etc. and the much higher risk for those already suffering from autoimmune diseases, the value of the vaccine is overwhelmingly positive.

I should remind you, though it won’t sink in, that seatbelts only reduce deaths and serious injury by 50% and there have been a small number of cases with ruptured bladders and bruised kidneys caused by the seatbelts. And even one or two deaths. So, based on your approach to the mRNA covid vaccines, we should revoke mandatory seatbelt laws and, perhaps, begin to warn people about their usage.

Producing antibodies to different epitopes was discussed as a vaccine option on TWiV a year ago when research on these vaccines was really kicking off. A similar tactic is used in the flu and polio vaccines.

But after developing, testing and deploying these vaccines, the results seem to indicate that the spike protein is a really good target. It seems to be somewhat conserved across variants so far and most vaccines offer reasonably good protection against the variants of concern that have emerged so far.

I would also note that the mRNA vaccines generate a partial spike protein stabilized in the prefusion form. Thus it cannot fuse with the cell membrane and cause the harm that the full viral spike does, but generates immunity to the virus.

You know maybe the conspiracy theorists are coming to some extreme false conclusions but everyday I ask, why are millions of people being given a vaxx that offers NO IMMUNITY or NO STOPPING in TRANSMISSION?

The vaxx compared to our traditional vaccines of old are very poor quality.

On that point alone, there should be protest and outrage. They are low quality and have incredible risk.

Some are asking why these vaxx are designed that way instead of our former decent ones that use inactivated viruses. Why trust a system, that lets people die of diabetes because they can’t afford insulin and where a great majority of people are uninsured. We are supposed to think the system cares about our health? That’s a laugh.

The Covid vaxx are poor quality, they do not even do what former vaccines did before, they should be sent to the scrap heap. The fact that people want to give this experiment to kids and young people who have very little risk from Covid, not even knowing the long term side effects, is monstrous on multiple levels.

@fivehundredpoundpeep:

why are millions of people being given a vaxx that offers NO IMMUNITY or NO STOPPING in TRANSMISSION?

Those vaccines are so “ineffective” that > 1% of patients are vaccinated.
Try again.

Which COVID vaccine are you talking about? There are several (a dozen?) COVID vaccines in use all around the world right this minute.

Which specific vaccine offers “no immunity”? What country is it used in? How do you know that it doesn’t work?

There is an inactivated virus vaccine. It is not available in the US, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

If you can’t be specific then it’s quite reasonable to conclude that you are not arguing in good faith.

If you actually believe that COVID vaccines confer no immunity, you must of course assume a conspiracy theory to hide this.
Explanation is simple. COVID vaccines do confer immunity:
Dagan N, Barda N, Kepten E, Miron O, Perchik S, Katz MA, Hernán MA, Lipsitch M, Reis B, Balicer RD. BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Mass Vaccination Setting. N Engl J Med. 2021 Apr 15;384(15):1412-1423. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2101765. Epub 2021 Feb 24. PMID: 33626250; PMCID: PMC7944975.
You must assume that this article is a part of conspiracy. Btw, 95 % from the trials seems to be quite good number.
Vaccines do prevent transmission, too:
Haas EJ, Angulo FJ, McLaughlin JM, Anis E, Singer SR, Khan F, Brooks N, Smaja M, Mircus G, Pan K, Southern J, Swerdlow DL, Jodar L, Levy Y, Alroy-Preis S. Impact and effectiveness of mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths following a nationwide vaccination campaign in Israel: an observational study using national surveillance data. Lancet. 2021 May 15;397(10287):1819-1829. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00947-8. Epub 2021 May 5. PMID: 33964222; PMCID: PMC8099315.
Effectiviness against asymptomatic caseswas 91.5. Asymptomatic carriers do trnasmit the virus.

Stop begging the question and provide some evidence.

Meanwhile on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic, the vaccines are clearly working.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fcf43d9731c76c16e7354f5d5e187

An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 0.1%.

And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average.

And on the transmission front, a UK study, and Israeli study and this CDC study all show the vaccines greatly reduce your chances of even an asymptomatic infection as well as reducing the viral load you can transmit if you do get infected.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-reduce-risks.html

In the new analysis, 3,975 participants completed weekly SARS-CoV-2 testing for 17 consecutive weeks (from December 13, 2020 to April 10, 2021) in eight U.S. locations. Participants self-collected nasal swabs that were laboratory tested for SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID-19. If the tests came back positive, the specimens were further tested to determine the amount of detectable virus in the nose (i.e., viral load) and the number of days that participants tested positive (i.e., viral shedding).

Once fully vaccinated, participants’ risk of infection was reduced by 91 percent. After partial vaccination, participants’ risk of infection was reduced by 81 percent. These estimates included symptomatic and asymptomatic infections.

@ fivehundredpoundpeep

You write: “I ask, why are millions of people being given a vaxx that offers NO IMMUNITY or NO STOPPING in TRANSMISSION? The vaxx compared to our traditional vaccines of old are very poor quality.”

Are you really that stupid? I was a regular whole blood donor; but after receiving the vaccine I became a regular plasma donor. Blood bank tests and found HIGH LEVEL OF ANTIBODIES. In addition, there are numerous studies around the world showing the vaccine works. And the actual studies, animal, Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 for Moderna and Pfizer found approximately 95% effectiveness. No one in vaccine group developed severe covid. A few developed minor symptoms. They did find in some cases a low level of viral shedding, so what?

And the mRNA vaccine technology has been developing over 30 years. It is actually a game changer because one can sequence the genome of any microbe and design within a week a vaccine and produce it quickly, a vaccine that confers strong immunity.

Either you are incredibly stupid or just an ASSHOLE posting for amusement. I think probably a combination.

Why are you going to sink so low to call me an asshole for questioning the fact these vaccines are not like our traditional vaccines? Look I am noticing the vaxxed even are only meeting outside, because they hear about “breakthrough” cases and don’t feel “fully safe”, old traditional vaccines once you had it, you were IMMUNE to the disease, you could not catch it. It was not vague promises that you may have less serious symptoms. Do you all have connections to these companies or something? Sheesh.

Yes flu shots work different in lessening the symptoms but I am talking traditional vaccines, that gave full immunity and where transmission was no longer possible. Even being unvaxxed if these Covid vaxx were at the level of traditional older vaccines, the vaxxed would have nothing to fear from the unvaxxed. I wouldn’t have to wear a mask, [I do wear them] being in their company.

Why are these BASICS ignored? Haven’t some of you realized the public is rejecting this new technology because the standard of quality is lower and the promises vague? I know you will call me a liar, but I have a high school classmate on Facebook who was fully vaccinated and ended up in the hospital with Covid pneumonia.

Calling me an asshole is kind of low. I mean come on. If you are going to argue things out don’t turn it personal. I would say even the failure of the PR with these vaxx, relates to the censorship, the attitudes that are being shown. You think the public when they hear about the young men getting life threatening conditions who were otherwise healthy before and had little risk are going to be happy?

There are so many lies so much gaslighting. They changed the meaning of vaccine in the dictionary for heaven’s sakes.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=50886

I only come here rarely. It’s interesting how the pro-vaxx side is operating, namecalling, even of lay people. All this gung-ho stuff always minimizing the negative. I hope for all the people who got it who I know it does turn out more positive but it could also be one of the world’s biggest disasters even beyond the pandemic itself if it goes wrong. I think hubris is science is a negative trait.

“old traditional vaccines once you had it, you were IMMUNE to the disease”

Even though this is an exaggeration (no vaccine has ever been 100% effective in preventing disease), it’s good to see an antivaxer admitting that vaccination has been tremendously effective.

I ask, why are millions of people being given a vaxx that offers NO IMMUNITY or NO STOPPING in TRANSMISSION? The vaxx compared to our traditional vaccines of old are very poor quality.”

‘Five’, the way I understand it, it is not a problem so much with the vaccine as it is with Coronas. Dr Frazer from Queensland University explained that it’s hard to develop a successful vaccine for Coronas, because they target the upper respiratory track where immune cells don’t normally operate. Essentially then, Covid vaccination is a promise that can never be fulfilled. The virus will always be on the front porch and waiting to storm through the door. Pity that the public is not made aware of this. Also, from the biggest ‘asshole’ around here, consider it a badge of honor.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616

Why are you going to sink so low to call me an asshole for questioning the fact these vaccines are not like our traditional vaccines?

Nice straw man. Joel is calling you out for exaggerating the risks of the vaccine and downplaying the harms of COVID.
You, like so many other antivaxxers, got nuthin’.

I am gaslighting you with this:
Haas EJ, Angulo FJ, McLaughlin JM, Anis E, Singer SR, Khan F, Brooks N, Smaja M, Mircus G, Pan K, Southern J, Swerdlow DL, Jodar L, Levy Y, Alroy-Preis S. Impact and effectiveness of mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths following a nationwide vaccination campaign in Israel: an observational study using national surveillance data. Lancet. 2021 May 15;397(10287):1819-1829. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00947-8. Epub 2021 May 5. PMID: 33964222; PMCID: PMC8099315.
It is nationwide effectiviness study. You will notice that 95% from trials were quite good number. Against asymptomatic cases it was 91.5 %
MRNA from vaccines is translated to the spike protein, so after this is a traditional vaccine.
Btw, there are COVID vaccines based on spike protein itself ? Would you accept these ?

Also, the reason they are testing for that is because we were, quite successfully, using convalescent plasma to treat severe cases in the ICU. Seems better to build your own preventative “convalescent” plasma, no?

Also, can you show me on the doll where the mRNA hurt you?

@ Greg

You write: “it’s hard to develop a successful vaccine for Coronas, because they target the upper respiratory track where immune cells don’t normally operate.”

You are full of shit. Immune cells function in the upper respiratory track; but first, virus get trapped in mucus then many removed by the ciliary escalator, essential minute fibers that push the virus trapped mucus upward; however, mucus also has Dendritic cells, Macrophages, neutrophils, IgA cells which bind to viruses and behind them are IgG cells, two types of antibodies. In addition, from the upper respiratory tract they must spread and that’s when more of the immune system works.

I am sick and tired of you as you just keep coming up with bullshit, grasping at whatever one idiot claims

I’ve suggest numerous times that you read a book on the immune system; but you wouldn’t dare because it would undermine your moronic mind.

In any case, Lauren Sompayrac’s “How the Immune System Works,” only 150 pages or I could recommend a 850 page book; but the first gives a good basis.

For those that would like to following along as I go into battle with Joel, I have linked a helpful Khan video that outlines the body’s innate response.

Joel, how exactly is Dr Frazer full of shit or my understanding of what he is explaining? Yes, the body has immune cells as part of its first-line innate response, but their main function is to prevent spread rather than stropping the infection in the first place. The adaptive response is to stop further infection altogether but that takes time. In the meantime, the virus has time to replicate.

My understanding is Covid infection operates in the same way. Even if you are vaccinated, it doesn’t necessarily prevent the virus from infecting those ‘outer’ epithelial cells of the upper respiratory tract; you may be still contagious.

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/human-biology/immunology/v/inflammatory-response

So, if the virus can hang out, multiple and even mutate in the upper respiratory tract of vaccinated people before it is expelled, how will vaccines ever save us? So what if it’s eventually expelled or exterminated, by then it will have time to jump to other vaxxed and unvaxxed people. Is it not a lie then to suggest fully vaccinating a population will save us? Joel?!

@Greg Mucosa have MALT, mucosa associated lymphoid tissue. There B and T cells meet pathogens, and adaptive immune system is activated.
After adaptive immune system is activated, IgA is secreted. This is antibody type found in mucus, saliva, milk, etc

@ Greg

You write: “Joel, how exactly is Dr Frazer full of shit or my understanding of what he is explaining? Yes, the body has immune cells as part of its first-line innate response, but their main function is to prevent spread rather than stropping the infection in the first place. The adaptive response is to stop further infection altogether but that takes time. In the meantime, the virus has time to replicate. My understanding is Covid infection operates in the same way. Even if you are vaccinated, it doesn’t necessarily prevent the virus from infecting those ‘outer’ epithelial cells of the upper respiratory tract; you may be still contagious.”

There are two lines of defense before the adaptive immune system kicks in. The first is skin, mucus membranes, and anti-microbial peptides, essentially chemical either already in the mucus, e.g., lysozyme or released by cells being attacked. These chemical damage microbes, sometimes killing them. The second line of defense involves neutrophils, dendritic cells, and macrophages. Neutrophils are built to destroy microbes, so, even if they don’t get all of them, they reduce the viral load. Dendritic cells and macrophages literally gobble up invading microbes, break them into small pieces, put these pieces on extensions to their cell membranes and show them to B-cells and T-cells. Macrophages also just kill. Sometimes this is all that is necessary to end a viral infestation. But even if they don’t completely stop the virus, they reduce the amount of viral shedding. However, since adaptive immune cells are in the upper respiratory tract, once the vaccine has elicited a full immune response the chances of any viruses being spread is close to zero; but if spread, a significantly reduced viral load. Second, if everyone around you is also vaccinated, then they will have adaptive immune cells ready to defeat any exposure to this reduced viral shedding. And they won’t get sick.

Vaccines don’t have to always stop one from being minimally infected. We have billions of microbes in our bodies that could potentially be harmful if our immune systems failed. This is just another example of your foolish antivax approach of all or none. So, he’s not full of shit; but your not understanding immunology is! ! !

And there have been two recent newspaper articles that the titles say it all:

Hollingsworth H (2021 Jun 24). Missouri sees COVID spike amid low vaccinations: Hospital estimates 60% of patients in ICU younger than 40. San Diego Union-Tribune .pdf

Johnson C & Stobbe M (2021 Jun 25). Unvaccinated now make up most U.S. COVID deaths: Breakthrough cases account for 0.1% of hospitalizations San Diego Union-Tribune .pdf

As I’ve written before, I could care less about you Greg; but you represent a large segment of American population, people who lack the basics of science and critical thinking, formulate opinions that they are certain of and search for anything that may support their opinions, often taking things out of context, misunderstanding, or simply not understanding that one or two people, even if scientists or doctors, not enough to base anything on. We have medical doctors who practice homeopathy, essentially water. Traditionally putting some chemical that elicits same thing as a disease, e.g., fever, then diluting 10^28 time. They believe they are treating like with like. Well, that is exactly what vaccines do, though not diluted to non-existent. I just hope that what I write is seen by open-minded individuals and they might use some of my arguments.

Joel, you are actual no different than Orac. You yammer and yammer, hurl insults, but when one looks closely, you haven’t really addressed the point. You write..

So, he’s not full of shit; but your not understanding immunology is! ! !

So, is Dr Frazer correct in his assessment that upper respiratory tract infections such as Coronas pose a unique immunity challenge and especially for vaccines. Joel, does this in anyway account for mRNA vaccines poor track record in preventing infections? We are not discussing hospitalizations and deaths, Joel, but infections. Joel, if it doesn’t, what does?

PS: Joel, I am also considering putting you on a 20 sentences restriction; any more and I stop reading. I am noticing a pattern with you; the more you write, the more you BS.

MRNA vaccines prevent infections very well:
Haas EJ, Angulo FJ, McLaughlin JM, Anis E, Singer SR, Khan F, Brooks N, Smaja M, Mircus G, Pan K, Southern J, Swerdlow DL, Jodar L, Levy Y, Alroy-Preis S. Impact and effectiveness of mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, and deaths following a nationwide vaccination campaign in Israel: an observational study using national surveillance data. Lancet. 2021 May 15;397(10287):1819-1829. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00947-8. Epub 2021 May 5. PMID: 33964222; PMCID: PMC8099315.
It is nationwide effectiviness study. You will notice that 95% from trials were quite good number. Against asymptomatic cases it was 91.5 %
Frazer interview was written April 2020. He has been proven wrong multiple counts after that. Interesting thing is that he does not know (or journo mispresented him) about mucosal immunity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucosal_immunology

@ Greg

You write: “So, if the virus can hang out, multiple and even mutate in the upper respiratory tract of vaccinated people before it is expelled, how will vaccines ever save us? So what if it’s eventually expelled or exterminated, by then it will have time to jump to other vaxxed and unvaxxed people. Is it not a lie then to suggest fully vaccinating a population will save us? Joel?!”

How will vaccine ever save us? All or none. Either vaccines save every single person or according to you they are worthless. And the two articles I mentioned in previous comment answers your question. Plus, they don’t just hang out, multiply and mutate. And if one is vaccinated, then both 1st line, 2nd line, and adaptive immune system stop them cold in the vast majority of cases.

As I’ve written before, seatbelts only reduce deaths and serious injury by 50%, so why bother? The current covid vaccines have reduced hospitalizations and deaths by almost 99%.

Don’t get vaccinated Greg. Maybe you will be lucky, partially protected by those who did and those who survived covid; but if one of the more dangerous variants attacks you, then hopefully you will survive with mild disability and learn your lesson; but I doubt it.

And if one is vaccinated, then both 1st line, 2nd line, and adaptive immune system stop them cold in the vast majority of cases.

Not supported by what we are seeing in the real world. Consider the data coming out of Israel; half of Delta infections are occurring in their fully vaxxed population, and fully vaxxed people make up 60% of their entire population. Joel, that is a dismal rate, and especially for Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine that is being considered as the new ‘stealth’ of vaccine technology. Please account Joel, and remember 20 sentences!

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/dangerous-delta-covid-19-variant-011913549.html

And, as we wait on ‘the great science maestro’ to account for why mRNA vaccines are doing such a poor job at preventing infections and whether Dr Frazer’s explanation of the challenges of protecting the upper respiratory tract serves, here is something to reflect on: Given the Israeli info of pfizer’s mRNA vaccine poor job at preventing delta infections in their fully vaxxed population, is it a case of the vaccine doing a poor job with just delta infections, or is it a case of it doing a poor job with all Covid infections and it is now coming to light with the delta numbers?

Maybe a little history lesson can provide an hint of an answer: Initially, when the Phase 1 trials were launched, the aim of those trials were to determine if the vaccine could neutralize the virus — prevent infection! Those results revealed that the vaccines were producing binding antibodies, but not so much neutralizing antibodies that would be needed to effectively kill the virus. Binding antibodies though suggested that the vaccines could conceivably stop symptoms.

Moving on to the stage 2/3 trials, the protocol of those trials were switched to determining whether the vaccines could prevent symptoms and not necessarily infections, The results would eventually come out that the vaccines were doing a ‘great’ job at preventing symptoms, but with the researches cautioning that they weren’t sure if it would prevent infections. Of course they weren’t sure, that was the design!

Now, reading this, maybe some will protest: They say, ‘Greg, you vile, reprehensible antivaxxer, what does it really matter that the vaccines are not preventing infections as long as they are preventing sickness and deaths?’ It matters because as long as the vaccines are not preventing infections, they are allowing the virus to hang around and possibly produce deadly strains that might eventually escape vaccine protection, and then of course we will have sickness and deaths. Yet, the vaccine pushers, as always, have a foolproof way of avoiding such blame; they simply blame the non-compliant antivaxxers.

If anyone cares to follow Greg’s link re: Israeli outbreak, you’ll see he is lying through his teeth. About a third of the Delta cases in Israel are in the fully vaxxed population. Greg is deliberately mixing up adult population with total population. Half of the Delta cases are in the adult population, and half of the adult cases are in the fully vaxxed. That may sound scary, until you realize that 85% of the adult population is fully vaccinated. That means, at most, only 15% of the adult population is not protected. And we know from the UK outbreak that the vaccines provide about 80% protection. So let’s do the math:

Unvaxxed unprotected = 15% * 100% = 15%
Vaxxed unprotected = 85% * (100% – 80%) = 85% * 20% = 17%

% expected vaxxed cases = 17% / (15% + 17%) = 17% / 32% = 53%

In other words, the vaccines are protecting even better than we expected based on the numbers from the UK. Note that this calculation was done on Greg’s link (the author used an additional step that introduced a rounding error, which is why the % expected numbers are slightly different), so Greg has no excuse for not knowing this.

Having demonstrated that the vaccines are, in fact, working (in Israel’s case, adult cases are a third of what they would be without vaccines, and that’s without counting herd immunity effects), let’s address Greg’s alternate history lesson. You see, Greg is lying again. The neutralizing antibody titers produced by vaccination were actually higher than those produced by natural infection! He’s also wrong about what neutralizing and binding antibodies do. Neutralizing antibodies work by bonding to the portions of the virus that bond with the cellular receptors, preventing infection. They do not actually kill the virus. Binding antibodies work by binding to an exposed portion of the virus and then bonding to an immune cell so that the immune cell can kill the virus, or the cell the virus has infected.

Here’s an excerpt from the study that explained why Pfizer chose the B2 version of their vaccine over the B1 version:

Results In both younger and older adults, the two vaccine candidates elicited similar dose-dependent SARS-CoV-2–neutralizing geometric mean titers, which were similar to or higher than the geometric mean titer of a panel of SARS-CoV-2 convalescent serum samples.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027906

As for the Phase 2/3 protocols, the trials were set up to detect both prevention of symptoms and prevention of infection. However, to determine prevention of infection required more data than could possibly be available when they submitted for the EUA. Proving efficacy against symptoms was sufficient for an EUA, and the data proving efficacy against infection is being submitted right now as part of the rolling submissions. Also, plenty of studies outside of the clinical trials have shown that the vaccines do prevent infection, Greg’s innumeracy notwithstanding.

An excerpt from the study based on the EUA submission:

Here, we report safety and efficacy findings from the phase 2/3 part of a global phase 1/2/3 trial evaluating the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy of 30 μg of BNT162b2 in preventing Covid-19 in persons 16 years of age or older. This data set and these trial results are the basis for an application for emergency use authorization.9 Collection of phase 2/3 data on vaccine immunogenicity and the durability of the immune response to immunization is ongoing, and those data are not reported here.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577

Half of the Delta cases are in the adult population, and half of the adult cases are in the fully vaxxed. That may sound scary, until you realize that 85% of the adult population is fully vaccinated

Actually, Kevin, I think it just sounds dishonest. 85% of their adult population is not fully vaccinated — it’s only 60%! 85% is the portion that has received at least one vaccine. So, we have 50% of the cases in the 60% of fully vaxxed adult population. I’ll leave it up to you to revise your calculation, Kevin, but, whichever way you slice it, it’s not good.

https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/vaccination-rollout-and-access/

Actually, Kevin, I think it just sounds dishonest. 85% of their adult population is not fully vaccinated — it’s only 60%! 85% is the portion that has received at least one vaccine. So, we have 50% of the cases in the 60% of fully vaxxed adult population. I’ll leave it up to you to revise your calculation, Kevin, but, whichever way you slice it, it’s not good.

Oh look, Greg was so embarrassed by being caught in a lie that he decided to double down and accuse me of lying. Sorry Greg, but the 85% fully vaccinated came directly from the link you provided. And then Greg had to double down on his double down and lie again by linking to another site that showed that the percent of the total population fully vaccinated was only slightly less than the total population with at least 1 dose, which is 61.1%. I guess in Greg’s world, Jews don’t have kids.

But since Greg thinks his own source is lying, let’s look at another source, from June 1:

Israel offers a glimpse of life after herd immunity: With 80% of adults vaccinated, cases have dropped to 15 per day

“This is probably the end of COVID in Israel, at least in terms of the current strains that we know,” Dr. Eyal Zimlichman, deputy director general at Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital, told Insider. “We’ve obviously reached herd immunity.”

Scientists previously estimated that getting to herd immunity — the threshold beyond which the virus can’t easily pass from person to person — would require countries to fully vaccinate 70% to 85% of their residents. But Israel has vaccinated just 60% of its citizens, or roughly 80% of its adult population, so far. Vaccines haven’t been authorized there for children under 16 yet.

That’s a sign that other countries could vanquish their outbreaks with similar vaccination levels, Zimlichman said. He estimated that around 70% of Israeli citizens now have immunity to the virus, either through vaccines or natural infection.

https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-vaccinated-most-adults-covid-herd-immunity-2021-6

There’s been a few more weeks to get more people vaccinated, but probably not enough to go from exactly 80% to exactly 85%, so it’s a reasonable assumption that there has been some rounding and the actual number is somewhere in between. So let’s use 80% as the lower limit for fully vaxxed and redo the math:

Unvaxxed unprotected = 20% * 100% = 20%
Vaxxed unprotected = 80% * (100% – 80%) = 80% * 20% = 16%

% expected vaxxed cases = 16% / (20% + 15%) = 16% / 35% = 46%

So that’s not performing quite as well as expected, BUT!

This assumes that those who got Covid but didn’t get fully vaccinated either a) received 0% protection from natural infection, or b) consist almost entirely of children. Both of these positions run entirely contrary to the antivax narrative From the quote above, we know that about 10% of the population (adults and children) has immunity through natural infection but not vaccination. I’m going to hazard a guess and say that enough adults had Covid and refused vaccination that the immunity imparted by natural infection does need to be accounted for in the equation above, which brings the percent expected right back to about 50%.

TLDR: Greg is a lying liar who lies (and can’t do math)

Oh look, Greg was so embarrassed by being caught in a lie that he decided to double down and accuse me of lying. Sorry Greg, but the 85% fully vaccinated came directly from the link you provided.

That statement and calculations seemed to come from the writer and not the direct journal source itself. I searched for more articles to confirm whether that figure was correct, but just about every one of them discussed ‘vaccinated’ rather than ‘fully vaccinated’, and it remained ambiguous what percentage was partial or fully vaccinated.

Anyway, let’s give it to you that 85% of Israel adults is fully vaccinated and 50% of the delta cases was found in that group. Let’s think this through further. So, if the vaccine had no effect, we would’ve expected that group to have an 85% share of the cases, but they actually had 50%. Would this not suggest then that the vaccine reduced their infections by 35%. But, wait! Weren’t we told that a second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine was well over 90% effective against the delta strain?! What gives, Kevin?

Sorry, Greg, but you appear to have failed probability and statistics. You need to learn what (1-p) means and how to use it, for starters. If 85% is fully vaccinated, that means there is, at most, 15% of the adult population that is unvaccinated. If we assume that all unvaccinated adults have no immunity (which is highly unlikely), then that means, of the adult population that was exposed sufficiently to be infected without immunity, 15% will be unvaccinated and infected, 15% will be vaccinated and infected, and 70% will vaccinated and not infected. The amount of protection can be calculated (in percent) by 100-(%vaccinated-infected/%total-vaccinated), or 100- (15/85) = 82.3%. This is close to the 80% protection that the UK public health department claimed.

BUT!

We know that roughly 10% of the total population is not fully vaccinated but does have immunity through natural infection. Let’s assume that half of those survivors are adults; that is, 5% of the adult population is not fully vaccinated but does have natural immunity. Let us further assume that natural immunity is 100% effective (this is a bit of a spherical cow but it demonstrates the point); that is, none of the delta cases are in unvaccinated with natural immunity. That means only 10% of the sufficiently exposed population is unvaccinated and infected, 10% is vaccinated and infected, 75% is vaccinated and not infected, and 5% is unvaccinated and uninfected.
The amount of protection can be calculated (in percent) by 100-(%vaccinated-infected/%total-vaccinated), or 100- (10/85) = 88.2%. This is close to the 90% protection that the head of Pfizer claimed.

The numbers aren’t exact, but the exercise gives a reasonable range of expectations given the initial inputs are remotely accurate. Getting your ass handed to you over and over must be embarrassing, Greg. Greg?

Sorry, Greg, but you appear to have failed probability and statistics. You need to learn what (1-p) means and how to use it, for starters. If 85% is fully vaccinated, that means there is, at most, 15% of the adult population that is unvaccinated. If we assume that all unvaccinated adults have no immunity (which is highly unlikely), then that means, of the adult population that was exposed sufficiently to be infected without immunity, 15% will be unvaccinated and infected, 15% will be vaccinated and infected, and 70% will vaccinated and not infected. The amount of protection can be calculated (in percent) by 100-(%vaccinated-infected/%total-vaccinated), or 100- (15/85) = 82.3%. This is close to the 80% protection that the UK public health department claimed.

But Kevin, these are your assumptions, not supported by what the article actually say. I revisited it, and it is actually sounding worse for you guys. It reads….

Of more than 100 daily cases amid an outbreak of the delta variant, half were children younger than 16., The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Most of them hadn’t yet been vaccinated, according to Dr. Ran Balicer, head of of a COVID-19 advisory advisor panel on COVID-19 for the Israeli government.

But half of the adults infected had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, Balicer said.

So, of the 100 daily cases, half were unvaccinated children. That leaves 50 cases of which half (25%) were fully vaccinated adults, and the rest (25%) being unvaccinated adults. So, that’s a 70% (25/85) protection rate for the fully vaxxed adult population. If we consider the entire population, it’s a 59% (25/60) protection rate for the adult population. But, wait! The article reads ‘most of them hadn’t yet been vaccinated’ referring to the kids. So, there were actually some vaccinated kids coming down with the virus, and that would make the rate even worse than 59%. Again, Kevin, either way you slice it, this info is calling into question the much touted plus 90% fully vaxxed protection rate.

Kevin loves to spout off about how dishonest I am. Let it be known that I conceded the point that 85% of Israel’s population is fully vaccinated. Now, just for fun, let’s see how honest Kevin was. He began with this assumption….

If we assume that all unvaccinated adults have no immunity (which is highly unlikely), then that means, of the adult population that was exposed sufficiently to be infected without immunity, 15% will be unvaccinated and infected, 15% will be vaccinated and infected, and 70% will vaccinated and not infected.

Perhaps that assumption may have sounded fair to many, but it was a glaring contradiction of the article stating half of the delta cases was among the fully vaxxed, and, by extension, half would’ve been among the unvaxxed. There was no way you could get that from that assumption.

Pulling that assumption scam to try and boost the fully vaxxed protection rate to come close to Pfizer’s 90% figure but still falling short, he next came with this…

We know that roughly 10% of the total population is not fully vaccinated but does have immunity through natural infection. Let’s assume that half of those survivors are adults; that is, 5% of the adult population is not fully vaccinated but does have natural immunity. Let us further assume that natural immunity is 100% effective (this is a bit of a spherical cow but it demonstrates the point); that is, none of the delta cases are in unvaccinated with natural immunity. That means only 10% of the sufficiently exposed population is unvaccinated and infected, 10% is vaccinated and infected, 75% is vaccinated and not infected, and 5% is unvaccinated and uninfected.
The amount of protection can be calculated (in percent) by 100-(%vaccinated-infected/%total-vaccinated), or 100- (10/85) = 88.2%. This is close to the 90% protection that the head of Pfizer claimed.

In a nutshell, what Kevin was attempting was to work the partially vaccinated group to account for Pfizer’s figure. Again, you may have felt he succeeded. Wrong! Pfizer’s claim of 90% protection against delta was only for the fully vaccinated that got both shots. It was definitely out of bounds for him to consider the partially vaccinated.

Anyway, will leave it to folks to decide who the dishonest party really was. Perhaps Kevin will also return to ‘whip my ass’ even more and account.

So let’s see. If there are 100 people that got sick, that would mean 50 are adults. If half of those are non-vaccinated, that means there are 25 that are non-vaccinated. If the un-vaccinated make up 15% of the adult population, that means there must be at least 25/.15=166 adults in the overall population, 166-25=141 of which are fully vaccinated. This means that at least 141-25=116 of the at least 141 vaccinated adults did not get sick, meaning the protection was 116/141=82.3%.

Greg error is that he fails to account for all the people who didn’t get sick. In fact, if you try to use Greg’s math, you’ll find that 25 of the 7.5 unvaccinated adults got sick, which is nonsensical.

in reality, the reason that 50% of adult cases are vaccinated is because there are so few people unvaccinated. If the vaccination rate was lower, the unvaccinated would dominate the case numbers. The total number of cases is way lower than they would be without vaccination, and those with the math skills can prove using these numbers.

,

Greg error is that he fails to account for all the people who didn’t get sick

No, Kevin, I based my calculations using the numbers provided in the article They were in line with the same calculations you made at 1:40, but the numbers you used weren’t consistent with the article.

@ Greg

You write: “And if one is vaccinated, then both 1st line, 2nd line, and adaptive immune system stop them cold in the vast majority of cases. Not supported by what we are seeing in the real world. Consider the data coming out of Israel; half of Delta infections are occurring in their fully vaxxed population, and fully vaxxed people make up 60% of their entire population.”

I guess you missed in the article: ““Israel’s aggressive vaccination program has kept cases and deaths low. But new cases jumped to 200 on Thursday, up from 10 cases a day for much of the month. At the peak of the nation’s outbreak in January, Israel was recording about 10,000 daily cases. Until now, most health officials have downplayed the delta variant’s threat to vaccinated people. Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are currently among unvaccinated people.”

So, from 10,000 to 200 and they are again encouraging masks and physical distancing. Note, article mentions cases, not hospitalizations, not deaths.

You write: “And, as we wait on ‘the great science maestro’ to account for why mRNA vaccines are doing such a poor job at preventing infections and whether Dr Frazer’s explanation of the challenges of protecting the upper respiratory tract serves, here is something to reflect on: Given the Israeli info of pfizer’s mRNA vaccine poor job at preventing delta infections in their fully vaxxed population, is it a case of the vaccine doing a poor job with just delta infections, or is it a case of it doing a poor job with all Covid infections and it is now coming to light with the delta numbers?”

Really, poor job with all covid infections? Are you totally nuts. In my hometown the number of case, hospitalizations has plummeted, same in other communities with high rates of vaccinations. And in U.S. as a couple of articles I posted earlier, almost all hospitalizations and deaths in unvaccinated. Yep, viruses mutate, so the current vaccines don’t fully keep them out; but so far, serious disease and deaths still prevented.

You write: “Now, reading this, maybe some will protest: They say, ‘Greg, you vile, reprehensible antivaxxer, what does it really matter that the vaccines are not preventing infections as long as they are preventing sickness and deaths?’ It matters because as long as the vaccines are not preventing infections, they are allowing the virus to hang around and possibly produce deadly strains that might eventually escape vaccine protection, and then of course we will have sickness and deaths. Yet, the vaccine pushers, as always, have a foolproof way of avoiding such blame; they simply blame the non-compliant antivaxxers.”

FIrst, viruses mutate and coronaviruses are no exception. And they mutate in bats, in civets, etc. Second, I guess you would prefer we had not vaccinated at all, then we could have had 2 million deaths from covid instead of 600,000. Flu mutates and every year we have a new flu vaccine and I get it and it only protects about 50%; but 50% protection against infection, against serious illness, against hospitalization. and against death is far better than nothing. As I wrote, seatbelts only reduce deaths and serious injury by 50%.

As for upper respiratory tract. Of course, that is where the virus enters, so it isn’t that the immune system isn’t doing its job; but that it sometimes takes time. Even with memory cells from adaptive immune system it takes adaptive immune system several days. And I don’t care what Frazer says, I pulled out the FOUR immunology textbooks I have and reviewed upper respiratory tract. But, yep, if you cut yourself and get an infection, it will remain, hopefully only for a short while as immune system reinforcements arrive.

In any case, ASSHOLE that you are, you ignore how many lives have been saved by the current vaccine, ignoring that many unvaccinated young people in U.S. are those being hospitalized, that though Delta cases in Israel, far fewer than at height of original covid, and no mention of mass hospitalizations, deaths, etc. Though a poor analogy, public health departments, etc. inspect restaurants. I guess if people get food poisoning at one restaurant you would call for ending inspections.

We don’t live in a perfect world. Yep, the goal of Pfizer, etc. was to prevent infection; but according to numerous studies, it does significantly protect against severe disease, hospitalization, long covid, and deaths and does protect many from infection.

Please, don’t get the vaccine, don’t wear a face mask, don’t practice physical distancing. Hopefully, you won’t be an asymptomatic who infects innocent third parties; but will suffer yourself. You deserve it. Anyone who rails against a vaccine proven to have saved countless lives, is a very mentally sick individual, so why not add physically sick to the mix.

@ Greg

Do read what W. Kevin Vicklund says in his comment. Excellent job W. Kevin Vicklund. Kudos to you. So, despite a rise in cases, vaccine doing its job.

And the article in Yahoo news you link to ends with: “If the delta variant is allowed to spread through unvaccinated people, there’s not only a heightened risk of severe illness but also a chance it could mutate and form yet another deadly new variant that could be less affected or even unaffected by current vaccines, experts warn.”

How could you miss that. In other words, if you are worried about mutations, the risk from them is much much higher from infected unvaccinated people. Your level of STUPIDITY just keeps growing.

@ Greg

The Immune System & Upper Respiratory Tract

“Serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) is the dominant antibody involved in protection from respiratory viruses in the lower respiratory tract, whereas mucosal IgA plays an important role in immunity in the upper respiratory tract [my emphasis]. Although cellular and humoral responses contribute to clearance of primary infection, neutralizing antibodies play a critical role in protection against re-infection [vaccinated individual]. Immunological memory is maintained by T and B cell subsets (Subbarao, 2020).”

“Adenoids and tonsils contain immune cells that respond to pathogens. Humoral immunity (immunoglobulin A) and cellular immunity act to reduce infections throughout the entire respiratory tract [my emphasis]. Resident and recruited macrophages, monocytes, neutrophils, and eosinophils coordinate to engulf and destroy invaders (Meneghetti, 2020).”

As explained, not 100% protection against infection; but at worst short-term reinfection before clearance by innate and the adaptive immune cells produced by vaccine. So, perhaps, for a few, short-time small amount of viral shedding; but if others around vaccinated, the lower short-time viral shedding probably in overwhelming majority won’t be infected. And as the Yahoo article you linked to made clear mutations much higher in unvaccinated. Why? Simple. Those vaccinated, even if infected for a short time, give virus much shorter period to mutate.

As the articles above and others make clear, all parts of immune system function in upper respiratory tract; but, of course, if that’s where virus enters, may take a brief time to completely eliminate.

Yep Greg, let’s follow your advice and millions more will sicken, be hospitalized, and die; but, heh, in world of black and white, if vaccines not perfect then worthless?

References:

Meneghetti A (2020 Sep 11). What is the role of the immune system in upper respiratory tract infections (URIs)? Medscape.

Subbarao K & Mahanty S (2020 Jun 16). Respiratory Virus Infections: Understanding COVID-19. Immunity;

@ Greg

You write: “Actually, Kevin, I think it just sounds dishonest. 85% of their adult population is not fully vaccinated — it’s only 60%! 85% is the portion that has received at least one vaccine. So, we have 50% of the cases in the 60% of fully vaxxed adult population. I’ll leave it up to you to revise your calculation, Kevin, but, whichever way you slice it, it’s not good.”

I’ll let Kevin deal with the math; but you continue to ignore that the article didn’t mention hospitalizations, deaths, etc. We are infected all the time by literally billions of microbes; but our immune systems keep them in check and often removes them; but doesn’t keep all of the them out completely. Given that the mRNA vaccines actually elicit higher antibody titers than those actually infected and . . . And you keep ignoring that the article you linked to made it quite clear that mutation rates much higher in the unvaccinated.

I repeat that based on ALL the evidence, without the vaccines literally millions more would have died or been hospitalized developing long covid. And even young asymptomatics who are unvaccinated are being hospitalized, dying, or experiencing cardiovascular problems and vascular damage. Yep, let’s go with your take, after all, what’s a few million lives compared with accepting your STUPIDITY.

You are just incredibly stupid and/or dishonest.

I repeat that based on ALL the evidence, without the vaccines literally millions more would have died or been hospitalized developing long covid. And even young asymptomatics who are unvaccinated are being hospitalized, dying, or experiencing cardiovascular problems and vascular damage. Yep, let’s go with your take, after all, what’s a few million lives compared with accepting your STUPIDITY.

And, you accuse me of all or none thinking, Joel? No vaccine, or we vaccinate the world with an experimental vaccine for which there is no long-term safety profile and even its efficacy is in question? Joel, things might work out for you guys, and you can continue to laugh at us ‘batshit’ crazy antivaxxers: I have a hunch though that you all really stepped in it this time around.

@ Greg

You write: “No vaccine, or we vaccinate the world with an experimental vaccine for which there is no long-term safety profile and even its efficacy is in question? Joel, things might work out for you guys, and you can continue to laugh at us ‘batshit’ crazy antivaxxers.”

It isn’t an experimental vaccine. mRNA vaccines have been researched for 30 years. The current ones have gone through animal studies, Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 studies. They have met all the criteria for FDA approval; but the FDA is a bureaucracy, slow moving, and given they gave Emergency Use Authorization, seems they are in no hurry. What long-term safety profile? You are incredibly dense/stupid. I’ve explained that the mRNA breaks down rapidly, so only a limited number of subpart of s-spike protein produced, a part that can’t attach and enter cells, a protein that will break down and/or be demolished by immune system cells in blood if it breaks lose from the small proteins, MHC, that hold it outside the cell for viewing. As for efficacy, you really just don’t care that as vaccination rates have increased, cases have pliummeted. No, efficacy is not in question, except by absolute dishonest morons like you.

You live in a fantasy world where you, based on incomplete evidence, a few individual postings, ignores the real world.

I hope we vaccinate the whole world. It will save countless suffering, hospitalizations, long covid, deaths and significantly reduce the risk of mutations.

@ Greg

“Joel, things might work out for you guys, and you can continue to laugh at us ‘batshit’ crazy antivaxxers”

Oh, yeah !…

It’s like when I try to explain the rules of ice hockey to my spaniel.

@ Dangerous Bacon

I would be willing to bet your dog understands rules of ice hockey better than Greg, given his brain is in a deep freeze.?

And if a year or two from now overwhelming evidence, e.g., cases, etc. clearly show only unvaccinated still at risk, hospitalized, deaths, etc and the FDA officially approves mRNA vaccines, Greg won’t change his mind. If he believes 2 + 2 = 5, it must be true.

@ Joel

“If he believes 2 + 2 = 5, it must be true.”

6 x 6 = 666 666 !

It must be Greg’s birthday. It’s the only reason I can think of for him to demand so many spankings from me today. I don’t think he’ll be able to sit down for a week.

@ Respondents to Greg in the past few days:

Gentlemen: terrific comments. HOWEVER, ice hockey may not be the right choice because I believe he is Canadian/ Canadien ( or perhaps, that actually is the best insult EVER!)
— Bonjour, Monsieur F!
— Because I read literally hundreds of headlines a day ( general news, medical, altie BS) for the past week or so, they frequently say that most infections occurred in the UNVCACCINATED
( such as in Orac’s place, other US states, parts of the EU, Israel) and those articles made that perfectly clear so it is obfuscation to not mention it.
–Similarly, age range is important too: for a while, a vaccination tracker showed that certain towns here had lower overall rates of vaccination BUT if you looked closely, the rates for older people were fine which is probably because those towns have more kids ( rates: all residents, over 25, over 65)- probably related to socioeconomic class- middle vs wealthy- and until recently, teenagers couldn’t be vaccinated at all
:
( AoA, today) Jameson writes about her daughter, a college student who managed to get through the past year mostly in person BUT now that suspect institution, citing drug cartels, evil agencies and the Master od Deceit himself, Anthony Fauci , is requiring students to be vaccinated by the fall. It’s time for the parents to organise against this tyranny!
Jameson, like some of the TMs. has taught her daughter to be an anti-vaxxer and she applauded her participation in debates and her admissions essay citing her beliefs. Let’s see how that works out for her if she studies anything remotely scientific .I thought that youth were naturally rebellious. .

More inconvenient coincidences…https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/covid-breakthrough-cases-cdc-says-more-than-4100-people-have-been-hospitalized-or-died-after-vaccination.html

“The CDC doesn’t count every breakthrough case. It stopped counting all breakthrough cases May 1 and now only tallies those that lead to hospitalization or death, a move the agency was criticized for by health experts.”

“The CDC says its numbers are “likely an undercount” of all Covid infections in vaccinated people because the data relies on passive and voluntary reporting.” They don’t want to know the actual numbers in this ongoing, shoddy experiment.

And of them, how many would have died anyway? – In other words, are the numbers higher that the expected death rates of the demographics of those vaccinated?

Alright:
Almost all of current covid-19 deaths are among the unvaccinated : Business Insider 15 hrs ago Many details
Total 853K / 1200 vaccinated hospitalisations; Total18 000 deaths / 150 vaccinated May 2021
Who is still dying of Covid? The Oregonian ; also Times Union. Yahoo

@ cuckoo4cocopuffs

You write: ““The CDC doesn’t count every breakthrough case. It stopped counting all breakthrough cases May 1 and now only tallies those that lead to hospitalization or death, a move the agency was criticized for by health experts.”

“The CDC says its numbers are “likely an undercount” of all Covid infections in vaccinated people because the data relies on passive and voluntary reporting.” They don’t want to know the actual numbers in this ongoing, shoddy experiment.

Did you actually read the CNBC article. 600,000 deaths and counting vs “The total number of individuals who died after contracting Covid-19 despite vaccination is 750.” Given that almost half our population has received the vaccine, 750 is minuscule. And most of these were elderly in poor health. As I’ve written before, seatbelts only reduce deaths and serious illness by 50%, so I guess, since overwhelming data finds mRNA vaccines reduce risk of death and serious illness by approximately 95%, you would advice not using seatbelts. Just how stupid are you???

There are a number of reports, e.g., Israel, where they do a lot of testing and found, yep, some vaccinated were infected; but very few seriously ill and/or needed hospitalization. We are infected continuously by potentially dangerous microbes. Some stopped cold, others slowed so no symptoms as our immune systems remove. Given just how many previous stupid comments you have made the fact you ignore that mRNA vaccines have been studied for 30 years, that the two mRNA vaccines currently being used, Moderna and Pfizer, went through ALL the required FDA studies, e.g., animal, Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3, and that all advanced nations have follow-up programs, such as CDC Vaccine-Safety Datalink, and on and on it goes. The only thing SHODDY is your immensely moronic comments.

And maybe, just may there is a significant undercounting of the deaths and you ignore stats on how many, even asymptomatic young people, infected with covid have developed cardiovascular and/or vascular damage. Since not reported, among those mentioned in article as not reported. Maybe some subclinical; but I certainly wouldn’t want my blood vessels damaged

If you are at all interested and I doubt you are, the University of Washington has a top rated center that looked at covid deaths and came up with figure of at least 905,000, 50% higher than current CDC stats.

University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (2021 May 6). News Release: COVID-19 has caused 6.9 million deaths globally, more than double what official reports show. Both available at: http://www.healthdata.org

University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (2021 May 13). Estimation of total mortality due to COVID-19.

So, maybe deaths significantly undercounted and studies have found more than 20% of infected young asymptomatics with cardiovascular and/or vascular damage.

Yep, “cuckoo” is perfect name for you.

From your link regarding deaths from Covid.http://www.healthdata.org/special-analysis/estimation-excess-mortality-due-covid-19-and-scalars-reported-covid-19-deaths.

“Excess mortality is influenced by six drivers of all-cause mortality that relate to the pandemic and the social distancing mandates that came with the pandemic. These six drivers are: a) the total COVID-19 death rate, that is, all deaths directly related to COVID-19 infection; b) the increase in mortality due to needed health care being delayed or deferred during the pandemic; c) the increase in mortality due to increases in mental health disorders including depression, increased alcohol use, and increased opioid use; d) the reduction in mortality due to decreases in injuries because of general reductions in mobility associated with social distancing mandates; e) the reductions in mortality due to reduced transmission of other viruses, most notably influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and measles; and f) the reductions in mortality due to some chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory disease, that occur when frail individuals who would have died from these conditions died earlier from COVID-19 instead. To correctly estimate the total COVID-19 mortality, we need to take into account all six of these drivers of change in mortality that have happened since the onset of the pandemic.”

To clarify, this takes into account the additional deaths that came from mandatory lockdowns/social distancing…not under counted Covid infections.

Just an interesting observation, when mentioning the old and frail with comorbidities that could possibly die from Covid, there was a push to vaccinate them to save them. When they died from the vaccine, we were told they were old and frail with comorbidities and they were about to die anyway.

You will notice that COVID deaths are there, as are deaths that are direct consequence of COVID. There is no breakdown of numbers.

I have to work tomorrow, so for now I’ll leave a challenge for Greg. Given the following conditions, answer the following questions:

1) 100 adults in a population
2) 85 are vaccinated
3) All unvaccinated get Covid
4) Vaccinated make up 50% of cases

A) How many unvaccinated get Covid?
B) How many vaccinated get Covid?
C) How many cases total?
D) How many do not get Covid?
E) How much protection did the vaccine provide?
F) Which answers A-D did you use to calculate E?

I have to work tomorrow, so for now I’ll leave a challenge for Greg

Go to work, Kevin!

Greg the liar sure has been prolific today. Too bad he’s been too cowardly to take up my challenge and is instead lying about other things I’ve said. We are awaiting you answers to the challenge, Greg. Greg?

Well, it’s been a week, Greg has clearly run away in terror. The correct answers:

A) There are 100-85=15 unvaccinated. All 15 unvaccinated get Covid,
B) Tricksy me, this should have been question C. We’ll revisit in a moment.
C) 100%-50%=50% of the cases are unvaccinated. That means there are 15/0.5=30 total cases.
B revisited) There are 300.5=15 vaccinated cases.
D) There are 85-15=70 without Covid, all vaccinated.
E) The vaccine provided 70/85
100%=82.4% protection
F) To calculate protection provided, you divide total protected (answer D) by total vaccinated (condition 2)

How cowardly of you, Greg. Greg?

Well, my formatting went to hell. Apparently the asterisk turns italics on and off. Here are the lines that got reformatted as they should appear, I hope:

B revisited) There are 30×0.5=15 vaccinated cases.
D) There are 85-15=70 without Covid, all vaccinated.
E) The vaccine provided 70/85×100%=82.4% protection

And, as I continue to point our that the actual figures are suggesting that the protection of the vaccines are far worse than we are being led to believe, I imagine Joel is still seething: “That asshole refuses to accept the the vaccines have prevented hundred of thousands of hospitalizations and deaths!”. Let me directly address that: If the vaccines are protecting at an inferior rate, and they are in someway interfering with the protection that natural immunity confers, then that will only prolong the pandemic and eventually resulting in greater hospitalizations and deaths. On that note, I find it curious that India, the country that went through a brutal second wave from the delta variant, is experiencing plummeting cases while cases, especially delta cases, are starting to rise again in far more vaccinated countries. Could it be that India has built up significant natural immunity from their brutal second wave? Maybe sometimes the only way to beat nature (and if manufactured lab virus counts as such) is to let her win.

To cite
“The findings of the study demonstrated that the breakthrough cases and the COVID-19 recovered individuals with one or two dose of vaccine had relatively higher protection against Delta variant in comparison to the participants who were administered either one or two doses of Covishield”
Natural immunity is not mentioned. Conclusion would be that three doses are bewtter than one or two

@ Greg

You write: “If the vaccines are protecting at an inferior rate, and they are in someway interfering with the protection that natural immunity confers, then that will only prolong the pandemic and eventually resulting in greater hospitalizations and deaths.”

Numerous studies have found that the mRNA vaccine elicit a higher and longer lasting antibody response than the natural infection. So, your “if they are protecting at an inferior rate” is an “if” from your sick mind. You continue to ignore that overall deaths are among unvaccinated and even asymptomatic, over 20% with cardiovascular and vascular damage. However, I agree that without a vaccine we may have reached herd immunity; but also 2 million or more deaths, 100s of thousands more with long covid and many more with subclinical damage to heart and vascular system. I guess that’s all right with you.

From my local newspaper today:

“One recent study found that the full two-dose course of the Pfizer vaccine was 88 percent effective against symptomatic disease caused by the Delta variant and 96 percent
protective against hospitalization . . . Los Angeles County statistics suggest that vaccines are still overwhelmingly effective in protecting people. Of those 123 confirmed cases of the Delta variant in the county, 89 percent of them occurred among people who were not vaccinated against COVID-19, and 2 percent among those who were partially vaccinated. . . Data released by the county showed that 99.8 percent of COVID-19 deaths between Dec. 7 and June 7 occurred among unvaccinated people. [Lin RG et al. (2021 Jun 28) Variant spreading rapidly in
California.]

You worry about need for boosters. Well, my car brakes work well; but brake linings wear out and have to be replaced. I have to change oil. Your rabid antivax stance results in speculation of what might happen in the future. The odds are enormous that you are wrong; but I would bet that you are not one who would ever admit it.

Greg: If the vaccines are protecting at an inferior rate, and they are in some way interfering with the protection that natural immunity confers, then that will only prolong the pandemic and eventually resulting in greater hospitalizations and deaths

I remember Bosseche saying that it was foolish to over vaccinating during a raging pandemic because that might lead to adaptive immunity or antibody dependent immunity out competing innate immunity. Joel, up thread you also detailed how effective innate, first line immunity can be in stopping an emerging pathogen in its tracks. Joel with this from you, “I agree that without a vaccine we may have reached herd immunity’, are you in some way agreeing with Bosseche and the finding below….

It is generally thought that innate immunity combats infection immediately, whereas adaptive immunity reacts only after a delay of several days. This suggests that adaptive immunity should not influence the early innate response. In this issue of Nature Medicine, however, Kim et al.1 reveal that T cells of the adaptive immune system actively suppress the cells of the innate immune system to prevent an overzealous early innate response and severe immunopathology.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm1007-1142b

Think about the implication of that as it relates to the wide scale vaccination drive with the current pandemic. We have more and more emerging strains that may escape the specific, adaptive vaccination induced response, but with the possibility of that adaptive response nevertheless telling the innate general response to chill out and do nothing. Can you see how that would be a disastrous thing, Joel?

Seriously, think about what that article is suggesting as it relates to the existing covid vaccination drive: More and more vaccines to suppress the emerging strains may actually have a counter effect of suppressing innate immunity that is really needed to combat the new strains. The antivaxxer whose immune system is not over provoked might end up having the better innate response to fight those developing strains.

@ cuckoo4cocopuffs

You write: “To clarify, this takes into account the additional deaths that came from mandatory lockdowns/social distancing…not under counted Covid infections.
Just an interesting observation, when mentioning the old and frail with comorbidities that could possibly die from Covid, there was a push to vaccinate them to save them. When they died from the vaccine, we were told they were old and frail with comorbidities and they were about to die anyway.”

I suggest moron you read more carefully. Yep, a small number of deaths can be attributed to mandatory lockdown; but not even close to the number of undercounted. Read the entire papers and look carefully at the tables, etc. As I’ve written before, seatbelts only prevent about 50% of deaths and serious injury. Why? Because in overwhelming cases the car crash was so severe that they would have died even without seatbelts. Senior citizens who are old and frail also have immune systems that react weakly to vaccines. They didn’t die from the vaccine; but would have anyway. You are just too stupid and intellectually dishonest to even consider this. Nothing is perfect. Overwhelming history of vaccine-preventable deaths, knowledge of how the immune system works, and anyone with an open mind will understand that vaccines are highly beneficial. And current stats find the vast, 95% or more, of those being hospitalized and/or dying from covid are the unvaccinated, followed by those who only received one of the shots.

Oh, by the way, I just found an interesting article on the 1918-19 flu pandemic that shows much lower death rates in cities that adopted lockdowns, masks, social distancing. You should read it, so prior to a vaccine these measures saved lives; but, of course, probably also led to a few deaths. There is NO perfect intervention; but one has to look at how many lives saved vs how many harmed:

Hatchett R et al. (2007 May 1). Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America; 104(18) 7582-7587.

Like most antivaxxers you pick and choose what supports your ideology without the tools to actually understand the methodologies, the immunology, etc. And you are a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, someone who really doesn’t understand something and thinks they are right.

I wonder how many deaths can be attributed to the lockdown. Some people count people, who died because of a delayed treatment, but I’m not sure that is right, because the treatments are mostly delayed because the hospitals are overcrowded with Covid-19 patients.

Hey! And what is this new study ‘speculating’ that protection from Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines may last for years?

After infection or vaccination, germinal centers form in the lymph nodes and create memory B cells that prime the immune system to recognize viruses over the long term.

Ok,

“We found that germinal centers were still going strong 15 weeks after the vaccine’s first dose,” study co-author Ali Ellebedy said in a press release.

Bur, that 15 weeks – not years!

These earlier findings indicated that immunity might last years in people sickened with the virus and later vaccinated, though it remained unclear whether vaccination alone would have a similar effect, the researchers said.

Wait! So, it’s protection from NATURAL INFECTION (what I have been saying all along we should pursue) that might last for years and not necessarily vaccine protection?! So, what about vaccine protection? I have an idea; hear me out. Instead of speculating about antibody production centers, why doesn’t Pfizer just release info from its Phase 1 trial about actual antibody levels post a year. Isn’t that a great idea?!

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/world/2021/06/684_311293.html

So, was it really the case that Pfizer’s Phase 1 trial portion on immunogenicity was inadequate for determining antibody titers post a year. You be the judge…

IMMUNOGENICITY
Immunogenicity assessments (SARS-CoV-2 serum neutralization assay and receptor-binding domain [RBD]–binding or S1-binding IgG direct Luminex immunoassays) were conducted before the administration of vaccine or placebo, at 7 days and 21 days after the first dose, and at 7 days (i.e., day 28) and 14 days (i.e., day 35) after the second dose. The neutralization assay, which also generated previously described virus-neutralization data from trials of the BNT162 candidates,2,5 used a previously described strain of SARS-CoV-2 (USA_WA1/2020) that had been generated by reverse genetics and engineered by the insertion of an mNeonGreen gene into open reading frame 7 of the viral genome.11,12 The 50% neutralization titers and 90% neutralization titers were reported as the interpolated reciprocal of the dilutions yielding 50% and 90% reductions, respectively, in fluorescent viral foci. Any serologic values below the lower limit of quantitation were set to 0.5 times the lower limit of quantitation. Available serologic results were included in the analysis.

Immunogenicity data from a human convalescent serum panel were included as a benchmark. A total of 38 serum samples were obtained from donors 18 to 83 years of age (median age, 42.5 years) who had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection or Covid-19; samples were obtained at least 14 days after a polymerase chain reaction–confirmed diagnosis and after symptom resolution. Neutralizing geometric mean titers (GMTs) in subgroups of the donors were as follows: 90, among 35 donors with symptomatic infections; 156, among 3 donors with asymptomatic infection; and 618, in 1 donor who was hospitalized. Each serum sample in the panel was from a different donor. Thus, most of the serum samples were obtained from persons with moderate Covid-19 who had not been hospitalized. The serum samples were obtained from Sanguine Biosciences, the MT Group, and Pfizer Occupational Health and Wellness.

PS: I also found it interesting that Kevin suggested that immunogenicity or antibody titers was inadequate for determining vaccine efficacy, but the prior article was essentially boasting such as evidence of Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines potential for lasting efficacy. Hhmmnn!

@ Greg

You write: ““After infection or vaccination, germinal centers form in the lymph nodes and create memory B cells that prime the immune system to recognize viruses over the long term. . .
We found that germinal centers were still going strong 15 weeks after the vaccine’s first dose,” study co-author Ali Ellebedy said in a press release.”

But you didn’t bother to read the article which stated: “The persistence of S-binding GC B cells and PBs in draining LNs is a positive indicator for induction of long-lived plasma cell responses. Future studies will be needed to examine whether mRNA vaccination induces a robust S-specific long-lived plasma cell compartment in the bone marrow”

As usual, in your immense stupidity, you jump to any conclusion that supports your antivax position. Whether from natural infection or vaccine, protection is conferred by long-live plasma cells and memory cells; however, the longer the antibodies exist and the higher the level, still positive. 15 weeks is actually a positive indicator.

You write: “These earlier findings indicated that immunity might last years in people sickened with the virus and later vaccinated, though it remained unclear whether vaccination alone would have a similar effect, the researchers said.”

The article states: “People who recover from COVID-19, these memory B cells remain in bone marrow for at least eight months after infection, based on findings published last month by Ellebedy and his colleagues, also by Nature.”

Yep, memory B cells last in those who were infected with Covid; but studies have also found antibody levels actually higher in vaccinated than from natural infection and several months later.

What you continue to ignore is that, yep, reasonable immunity does develop from actual infection; but so do deaths, hospitalizations, long covid (even in asymptomatic, even young people, including cardiovascular and vascular damage). Anyone with an open-mind, not you of course, would prefer vaccination, even if boosters required to risk of actual disease.

And, as I’ve written over and over, I am in Moderna Covid vaccine study and we volunteers signed on for 25 months, including going to lab for blood draws.

And as I have written and others, I don’t rely on newspaper articles. They often ignore nuanced discussions and even more often are written by journalists with little to no scientific background.

You write: ” Instead of speculating about antibody production centers, why doesn’t Pfizer just release info from its Phase 1 trial about actual antibody levels post a year. Isn’t that a great idea?!”

Phase 1 studies mainly “This phase aims to figure out the highest dose humans can take without serious side effects.”. They are done on small groups and use different dosages and different ways of giving, e.g., oral, injection, etc. so only small number may have received the dosage used in actual vaccine. And I would be willing to bet if someone actually did what you ask for, you would ignore it, just like you ignore the history of vaccine-preventable diseases, are ignorant about how the immune system works, and just keep jumping at anything and everything that you believe supports your stupidity, in this case, a newspaper article that didn’t include that the actual article stated quite clearly that next study would look at long-lived plasma cells.

‘Anyone who tries to frighten people out of taking advantage of vaccines, for both themselves and their children, is the true advocate of “depopulation.”’

What would you call those who lie relentlessly and use government, courts, sophisticated media propaganda, censorship, coverups, expensive litigation, free ice cream cones, forced suffocation, and lockdowns (designed by the human mind to punish prisoners) to frighten people into taking “vaccines”?

I suggest you do some more investigation and perhaps another long post as the current nominee for Land Management in the great old USA openly advocates for, what was it again? – depopulation! Those who deny that there is true evil in the world are mainly the same who deny there is Truth and a Creator of that truth.

There is no shortage of those wishing to enforce segregation into vaxxed an unvaxxed, sick and unclean, antivaxxer and pro-LGBTQ+, bigots and racists, and whatever else the human mind can invent in 2020 (global lockdowns, forced economic shutdowns, communist police states) or beyond. The same thinking was responsible for those most well known people forced to wear yellow stars in a certain country. In another certain country people were forced to have green cards. There is no end to eugenics and totalitarianism. God will allow evil men to punish the sins of the world when that world has abandoned him. In Germany cases have been won in court following the prosecution of crimes against humanity during this “plandemic” as I so affectionately call it. I often hear talk of a second Nuremberg style trials. We shouldn’t forget that before there could be a show court there was a world war.

“Truth and a Creator of that truth.”

Yeah. I do that from time to time. I’m kinda techie {though not all that good at it} and I’ve determined that you may fuck right the fuck off.

I’m willing to turn on the Sock-Signal for Victor on general principles.

How do free ice cream cones “frighten” people into being vaccinated?

“Get the shots, or it’s strawberry pistachio for you“. “Aieeeeee!!!!!”

I suppose those free ice cream cones are to mislead people and let them voluntary take those ‘dangerous’ vaccines. I’ve gotten my vaccines and I didn’t even get a free icecream cone, or money, or a lottery-ticket, or something else. Just a free vaccine and although I’m now fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca, I’ve even got an invitation for a vaccination, if I wouldn’t have taken the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was delivered by my family doctor.

Ice cream brings people happiness, and anything that brings people joy is evil by Victor’s lights – joy reminds people of God’s love, and once they remember that, they stop being scared of the imaginary conspiracies that Victor is selling

Orac, please post my comment under ‘Greg@Kevin’. I believe the ‘nym got caught under automod. What can I say, Kevin? I am a sucker for punishment:)

While we wait for Orac, I’ll take a bit of pity on Greg and rephrase the problem statement in a framework more conducive to his level of mathematical competency. You see, Greg doesn’t really understand how percentages work so let’s move to relative numbers. This is a bit more concrete. Note that this is dealing only with adults to make the phrasing simpler.

15% is very close to 1/7. Let’s work with that. 1 of every 7 are unvaccinated (14.3%). That means for every 1 unvaccinated, there are 6 that are vaccinated (that is 7 total -1 unvaccinated = 6 unvaccinated). With me so far Greg?

Now if 50% of cases are in the vaccinated, that means that 50% of cases are unvaccinated. We can also state this as for every 1 unvaccinated case, there is 1 vaccinated case. But we have also stated that for every 1 unvaccinated, there are 6 that are vaccinated. That means that for every 1 unvaccinated case, there are 5 vaccinated that don’t get Covid because they are protected by the vaccine. (6 vaccinated – 1 vaccinated case = 5 protected). Still there Greg?

That means that 5 out of every 6 vaccinated were protected. That equals 83.3% protection. Now wasn’t that easy to understand Greg?

Greg?

Wholly ignoring Cumstain Poutine Failboy is its own reward, I assure you.

Waiting on Orac aside, actually, Kevin, I find this much easier to understand. Pfizer vaccine is only 66% effective for the fully vaccinated?! Wait! — wasn’t that right in the ballpark of my calculation? Very close, but I did say 70%. Oh well, Kevin, I guess I can also be generous.

Greg up thread….

So, of the 100 daily cases, half were unvaccinated children. That leaves 50 cases of which half (25%) were fully vaccinated adults, and the rest (25%) being unvaccinated adults. So, that’s a 70% (25/85) protection rate for the fully vaxxed adult population

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pfizer-vaccine-efficacy-drops-israel-101022878.html

Edit: the article is actually saying 64% effectiveness, not 66%. Ouch! Interestingly, Kevin keeps boasting how he is whipping my butt, but why sometimes do I feel it’s actually the other way around? Hhmmnn!

Hey, Kevin, I am also thinking that maybe you should call those Israeli statisticians and tell them that they’re are also flunkies at basic math. Or, maybe another of your hypothetical examples should straighten everything out ?

As usual, you forget something:
“The vaccine is still conferring strong protection against severe symptoms of the virus, with hospitalisation rates remaining low. The ministry’s data shows the vaccine’s efficacy in preventing hospitalisation was 93 per cent from June 6 to July 3, compared to a 98 per cent rate in the previous period.”
A citation from your link. Data is called preliminary, too

I swear to God (even though I am an atheist) this is better than sex ? ?

Kevin, all joking aside, let me extend this hand of courtesy: I don’t doubt your math and statistics expertise. The thing is, sometimes we all fall prey to complex problem solving when simple solutions would suffice. To err his human, Kevin. Again, I say this with absolutely no snickering. No sirree bob!

Actually, I did calculate effectiveness at 70%, where as the Israelis are reporting it as 64%. What accounts for this discrepancy. I believe it’s the initial disputed point that 85% of Israel’s population was fully vaccinated. Again, I wasn’t able to find any clear verification of that number.

Likely, the 85% figure includes partially vaccinated people. 74% fully vaccinated (still making Israel the world leader) and 11% partially vaccinated would give us the 64% protection rate for the fully vaxxed.

And, isn’t this UK data even more horrible news of the vaccine ineffectiveness in preventing delta deaths, and despite the spin…

Data from Public Health England show that there were 117 deaths among 92,000 Delta cases logged through June 21. Fifty of those — 46% — had received two shots of vaccine.

Latest figures report the UK having a 60% fully vaxxed rate. This translates to the vaccine having a mere 24% effectiveness at preventing Delta deaths. Yikes!

https://www.foxnews.com/health/why-some-vaccinated-people-dying-covid-19

I don’t want to interact with a troll so I wish that someone else would instruct him about why new variants emerge that evade the current crop of vaccines that were designed last year\AND why we might need new ones or boosters eventually..

I don’t want to interact with a troll so I wish that someone else would instruct him….

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him wash his armpits.

So, England is expected to lift all its Covid restrictions on the 19th despite surging Delta cases, and the US is also refusing to return to massking despite the WHO’s recommendation. Am I the only one seeing the hypocrisy?! Wasn’t Trump roasted by the Left and MSM for failing to heed the threat of the virus. Don’t get me wrong, I am no fan of lockdown, but fair is fair.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/risks-england-unlocking-covid-third-050024491.html

At the rate things are going, we would’ve been better off with Trump doing absolutely nothing and the US and world building herd immunity from a weaker strain rather than now having to do so with a nastier strain. Yeah yeah, the vaccines saved hundred of thousands of lives, but couldn’t this prove to be a short-term thing.

And one more point before I start my day: In the article above that I linked about Israeli data confirming reduced protection from Pfizer’s vaccine, it reads….

Pfizer spokesperson declined to comment on the data from Israel

Oh, Kevin! By any chance, are you employed by Pfizer?l ?

@lGreg
Boris Johnson (PM of UK) is conservative. So, liberals did not end lockdown there.
There is an evaluation of vaccine effectiviness.
Collaborators. SARS-CoV-2 Delta VOC in Scotland: demographics, risk of hospital admission, and vaccine effectiveness. Lancet. 2021 Jun 26;397(10293):2461-2462. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01358-1. Epub 2021 Jun 14. PMID: 34139198; PMCID: PMC8201647.
In case of delta variant (S positive mentioned is virtually identical to delta):
“BNT162b2 (Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine) offered very good protection: 92% (95% CI 90–93) S gene-negative, 79% (75–82) S gene-positive. ”
Natural immunity does not protect against mutations. (Flu is a good example.) IImmunity is mounted against a specific target, and if target changes, immunity vanishes. Chasing natural immunity would mean lots of infected people, lots of viruses around, and thus lots of dangerous mutants

And, in keeping with my curiosity as to why Pfizer hasn’t released efficacy findings for its vaccine post a year, I find this news interesting: So, Pfizer is saying they’re seeing falling protection — surprise surprise! — and boosters will be required, but the government is against this? Some where behind the scenes, I picture a government guy screaming at a Pfizer rep, ‘We told the goddamn public that the bloody vaccine would end all this shit, and now you want us to go and tell them that they will need more?!’

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/08/health/pfizer-waning-immunity-bn/index.html

You know? I hoped I’d seen my last COVID death but a guy we admitted from the ER today probably hasn’t got long. He and his wife both balked when asked if they got vaccinated and started in on “Sheep” and all the other standard-issue antivax crap. She had a “cough” for a couple days and he is now on a vent after coming in saying he just thought his “copd was acting up.” It was pretty damn hard to feign empathy; in fact, I’m mad as hell. My staff and I had to listen to them spew nonsense while the guy was on death’s doorstep and it was all totally preventable. She was refusing to wear a mask so we had to take her out the EMS door to keep her from coughing all over the waiting room. He’s going to the unit sick as sh*t and she’s still proud and defiant. These ppl are infuriating.

If you read the article, you would notice that FDA and CDC does not agree. Article does not say is the problem delta variant, either. I suspect that it is. You will get flu agian, even if you have had it. Same thing applies here, though it seems that delta may not be dangerously different.

For the past few years, I have been studying where the world is heading and its all slowly occurring- read revaluations in the bible. Depopulation is real and its a main agenda. Why take a vaccine when you can still get and spread the virus. You might have degrees hanging off you wall but you have no idea who controls the world. The vaccine is designed to attack weak immune systems, fertility, Alters your DNA. I’m no Anti-vaxxer who jumps on FB or is part of a group. But I can do my research and use my little brain to find the truth. First they said the virus came from a Bat and then from China. Only the clowns believe that. Do your research!!!!!

Those of you are Logical Thinkers time to see what the other side is being Censored for, at least Rumble allows Freedom of Speach. Anyone heard of Stew Peters one of the strongest Logical Thinkers that I am aware of. Here is one video of his on Rumble where he has a great discussion with an Ex Pfizer Employee who now is a pharmaceutical marketing expert and biotech analyst. If you think Pfizer is fully licenced in the USA think again the inoculation was fully licenced by the FDA has not even been developed yet while Pfizer-BioNTech has an extended EUA only. Its a play on words and what can go wrong now, appears that Pfizer has about 12 days to disclose exactly what is actually in the vial including the Trade Secret for what’s actually inside the Lipid Encapsulated Nanoparticle will see how that pans out. It’s all discussed here https://rumble.com/vlod4c-wow-former-pfizer-employee-checkmate.-game-over.-we-win.html

Anthony Colpo hands Gorski Orac his butt on everything. COVID019 is the biggest crime ever against the world;s populace. Many people are involved. I have never seen ANYTHING like this And, also, These “vaccines” ( they are not vaccines) are DANGEROUS and not effective as Colpo PROVED with the dat thus far.

https://www.anthonycolpo.com/data-from-australia-iceland-singapore-shows-the-covid-19-vaccines-are-useless/

Here is the paper where Fauci FUDNED and worked with Chinese researchers to turn coronaviruses into MONSTERS in 2015 – with a special affinity for human being’s bronchial cells….Fauci needs to be arrested immediately for high crimes against the populaiton.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985.pdf

Colpo is the ANSWER to Groksi;s NOSENSE.

https://www.anthonycolpo.com/scientific-evidence-indicates-covid-19-was-almost-certainly-made-in-a-laboratory/

Lastly, look up The Georgie Guidestones erected in 1981ish? These New World Order psychopaths want to maintain the population below 500 million – gates is a eugenicist who openly talks about depopulation and gates’ dad was a eugenics guy as well- the original of the Gates.

Gorski’s JOB depends on him FOLLOWING this Satanic crime.

RESIST.RESIST RESITS, people !!!!!! NO to “CHIN SAILs”, face diapers and mandates and vaccines.

Fauci does not decide who get NIH funds, there are committees, as always when government is involved. Gain of function studies have been publoished, read them,

This is sickening,who uses kids as guinea pigs for some so called Vaccine that doesn’t even work and before everyone starts trolling, answer me this…,
Does this covid “vaccine” stop people from getting covid? NO., Does it stop the spread of covid? NO.,all it does is reduce the effects that covid has on the body.. or does it? See there have been such a small number of kids under 12 that have got covid about 8,700 and around 640 deaths over the past 22 months.. Now CDC has lied about how many deaths have happened in adults from the covid vaccines and believe me,they will LIE about it in kids too.
Now I pray that not one kid dies from the covid Vaccine and I will be extremly happy to see that it actually works for kids, but here’s the problem I have with
giving kids this “vaccine”, I don’t want to take a chance with any kids that something might happen,because the numbers say that there will be injuries and deaths from the vaccine which most likely be higher than from them catching covid too. Plus who knows what long term effects the vaccine will have on kids,
there are NO studies that let us know and they will have to take another chance with something going wrong,every time the get a booster shot too. So Just
leave the kids out of this experimental vaccine push and STOP using them as guinea pigs, because natural immunity is the best defense against any virus and the only way people can get rid of this one, because it won’t happen with these vaccines and booster as they chase the different variants that will arise,
being one step behind them..

“before everyone starts trolling”

You started it. Brace yourself for some reality-based feedback.

” natural immunity is the best defense against any virus”
Except that when you get the measles (a virus) it specifically kills your immune memory cells, so that you no longer have “natural” immunity to everything you’d been exposed to before.

So you can get the mumps again, and maybe this time it destroys your hearing. Or your gonads. Or it kills you.

That’s the thing about disease-acquired immunity: you have to suffer the disease to get the immunity. Your choice is a tiny poke and immunity, or being mauled by a grizzly bear, and maybe immunity. How is that even a choice?

Vaccine does cause immune response, this is a definition of vaccine. There is of course, lots of efficiency studies, showing that COVID vaccine is efficient. Measles vaccine has been around 50 years, how much longer experience you want ?

Indeed. The immunity conferred by the vaccine is natural. Your plasma cells crank out antibody just the same. Doesn’t matter to then when the antigen came from.

Also, you get to avoid your lungs looking like acute, late stage PCP in an AIDS patient with the attendant consequences.

I get a bit of an impression that Steven doesn’t like us. It’s subtle, but there’s just that underlying vibe.

He’s not quite clear what bothers him, but…

@ORAC
Like RS states, an economist is not an accountant. However, some pretend they are; often with failure as a consequence (as a business economist I can tell you this is true).
Again, a surgeon (or a cell physiologist fort that matter) is not a virologist, nor is he an epidemiologist, immunologist or vaccinologist.
If however, you think you are the ‘Know it all’, failure will be the consequence in your case as well. In subjects you are not a specialist, you most likely don’t really know what you’re talking about. You don’t have the profound knowledge and experience; you don’t have the credentials.
Humility would suit you better, docter. Remember that arrogance is a danger. It can, and often does, turn a physician into a murderer.

You overlooked my question whether “Orac in any way benefits financially from promoting these vaccines”. So dear docter, tell us if you’ve got nothing to hide. Like for example dependence on the NIH. Be open.

You wrote: “I have way more background information than an accountant when it comes to commenting on antivax claims.”
Could you please share with me what antivax claim I made?
In fact I haven’t made any claim at all, have I? Don’t you just act here like a yet again ‘bribed’ and unprofessional journalist?

You wrote about the “goal and intentions of the WEF”. Fyi, the WEF is an economic and not a medical forum. Are you now an economist as well, that you have this insight in its true goals and intentions? Do you know what is really going on in our economies and how this relates to the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’? Or is this another utterance of a ‘Know it all’?
Well, as an economist and with a relative professor economist advising our government and this very Forum, I pretend that I do know what is going on at the WEF. And no, the “Great Reset” is not a “conspiracy theory”, it is a conspiracy. With some critical reading, you can conclude this from the WEF’s very own website yourself. And no, it is not a “Forum for a proposal that explored how countries might recover from the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.” Note that this “proposal” has not any democratic content, it is meant as a regulation and a guideline. It will basically serve the members involved and that is not you. And that ‘proposal’ was there way before the pandemic, how could you not have noticed? The pandemic just served as the “small but closing opportunity” according to Klaus Schwab himself.
If you valuate your personal freedom, I advice you start reading and do so critically.

@Orac,

After 2 attempts from my side, you still haven’t answered this question:

“Does Orac in any way benefit financially from promoting these vaccines. Please tell us if you’ve got nothing to hide. Like for example dependence on the NIH. Be open.”

It would at least explain your bullying of many specialists on virology, epidemiology, immunology and vaccinology; all in which you have no background.
A normal question, please be so polite and answer the question…

No. I do not in any way benefit financially from promoting vaccines, these or any. (Antivaxxers using the pharma shill gambit bore the crap out of me.) In fact, I pay the hosting charges for this blog, and there is no advertising or Patreon. If a post of mine goes viral and uses a lot more bandwidth than the blog normally does, I actually pay more money to the ISP that hosts the blog and to Cloudflare.

Next question.

Now, Mr. Lucas, ask your anti-vaccine leaders if they benefit from promoting anti-vaccine misinformation.

Please report back.

And by the way “I’m going to accuse you of being a shill in the guise of a question asked aggressively, and this is a perfectly reasonable and polite way to behave” is only convincing in the anti-vaccine alternative reality world.

@Orac
I asked you (3x) if there is a connection between you promoting these vaccines and financial benefit from third parties. Be that direct or indirect.
‘Whose bread one eats his word one speaks’ always answers this very question; if you’re aware of any exception, Im glad to hear so.
Well then, who are your funders? Orac (aka you?) states:
“Over the last 20 years, his research has been funded by the NIH, the Department of Defense”.
So David, I think you are lying to us, aren’t you?
Please also explain why ‘Truthwiki’ mentions that you are a “Vaccine industry front man”?
You will be familiar with these words?

“I’m a pretty piss-poor pharma whore.”
and:
“I’m a Pharma Funded Shill, supported by National Geographic.”

Explain, explain. Prove to us that you’re not this corruptable, untrustworthy person. Because there are really better ways to spend our time then with a troll. For us this isn’t a game, you know.

I think Lucas has just shown that his question was as insincere as it was impolite and unreasonable. Having been funded in the past by NIH or the DoD is not a financial benefit for supporting COVID-19 vaccines. The fact that anti-vaccine activists also use the shill gambit is not, either.

When your only rebuttal is to try and twist and misrepresent things to pretend someone is a shill, you don’t actually have a rebuttal.

Please tell us if you’ve got nothing to hide. Like for example dependence on the NIH.

Cripes, one might think that a putative economist could find RePORTER on his fucking own.

Unfortunately, I currently do not have any NIH funding and have not had NIH funding (at least not as a principal investigator) in a decade.

“The simple man believes every word, but the prudent man watches his steps.”
Comprende?

@Orac
“Currently” was not what I asked you.
Please answer the questions and stop beating about the bush. Show the public who you are, they have the right to know.

@Dorit Reiss

Dorit, Dorit, apparently you are as wise as you look.
So typical: using words like “aggressively” , “promoting anti-vaccine”, “shill”, “accuse”. And why? Because you don’t like questions that go against the narrative they told you?
Ask yourself what you really value, the truth or subtlety.
Listen carefully Dorit. You use the same tactics as my neigbours, the Nazi’s, did. History is repeating right now, but the question is what kind of person do you want to be. Do you really want to blindly follow the same bad people as back then? Do learn history’s lessons. Or not, your choice.

@Orac
“Unfortunately, I currently do not have any NIH funding and have not had NIH funding (at least not as a principal investigator) in a decade.”

Oh yeah, not only do you not tell us what you mean by “currently not”. Currently not – correct me if I’m wrong – means that indeed you did have this NIH funding. And David, that’s exactly in accordance with what we read from your website, your own words. So David, you did have this funding.
Please stop deceiving us, David.

But also you say you “have had not had NIH funding (at least not as a principal investigator) in a decade”. Dear David, again I think you try and mislead us: the words “at least not as a principal investigator in a decade” imply that you did have this funding. And who cares David, in what position you then did receive this money.You received it.

Always clouding the issue, thinking your audience is studpid anyway. Isn’t it so, David? Do you realize this is a form of plain lying?

@Dorit Reiss

“I think Lucas has just shown that his question was as insincere as it was impolite and unreasonable. Having been funded in the past by NIH or the DoD is not a financial benefit for supporting COVID-19 vaccines. The fact that anti-vaccine activists also use the shill gambit is not, either.
When your only rebuttal is to try and twist and misrepresent things to pretend someone is a shill, you don’t actually have a rebuttal.”

Another Nazi tactic Dorit: trying to set up “Lucas” against the group.
Or do you want to really teach the group a lesson about me? Is your esteem of the others here that low that you really think they are not able to think for themselves? You may have a problem with arrogance then, Dorit.

Oh, and please be a bit more creative and don’t use David’s term “shill gambit” in every reply you send.

And don’t lie to us. It’s so cristal clear that there is financial benefit from the NIH, Dorit. And your boss, David, says so himself on his website.

No Dorit, the only one twisting and misrepresenting here is your boss, David G. I’m just asking questions, while he’s the slippery eel.

I have been reading many comments on here from Orcus blog article @Lucus been asking legitimate questions and no one has provided any legitimate answers.
Is anyone concerned for the Children that survival rate from this so called Covid 19 Narrative Virus that is nearly 100% with no underlying health conditions Factcheck that!
This Experimental Gene therapy jab is just a Treatment not a cure because still can catch and spread Covid 19 so it’s not a Vaccine. How many of you know what’s going on?
Look at VAERS nearly 20,000 Deaths this is the most ever for all traditional Vaccines and less than 1% is reported possibly takes 30 mins to fill out just for one. Was it around 56 for the Alleged Swine Flu Program was removed it may of been when a top Scientist exposed it on MSM, Event 201 made sure that would not happen again (my emphasis) instead of attacking a man or a woman who have a different point of view figure out why near 20,000 deaths from these Experimental Gene Therapy jabs on VAERS has not stopped this program how many deaths will be needed until something is done, surely we all have to agree on this point ???

I remember the phrase “2 weeks to slow the spread”almost 2 years and it’s accelerating. Facemasks were introduced even though when do proper research, they can not prevent anything.
Surgeons wear the Surgical Facemasks so not to contaminate the patient they are operating on, after that they get rid of them until next time in Surgery. Before Covid 19 you would expect that to be the case. Surgical Facemasks protects you to contaminate the Environment will not protect the Environment to infect them. Can someone answer this question why only Surgical Facemasks are only one to be worn not cloth Facemasks in Hospitals? Has any Surgeon worn a Cloth Facemask in a operating Theatre?

Last thing before I leave is when has Science never been debated or Scientists and Doctors been Censored to bring data and facts that go against a different side of Science.
I will not respond to anyone stating am like an Anti Vaxer because it’s irrelevant when proven it’s Experimental Gene Therapy with ZERO Long term SAFETY Data.

This Experimental Gene therapy jab is just a Treatment not a cure because still can catch and spread Covid 19 so it’s not a Vaccine.

First off, it’s not experimental and it’s not gene therapy.
Secondly, it IS a vaccine. No vaccine is perfect, but all significantly reduce the risk of developing a severe case and becoming contagious.
The rest of your screed is antivaxx drivel we’ve seen and refuted many, many times before.

A quick search on the blog will show the new anti-vaccine commenter that many of his claims – like the VAERS reports misuse, or the claims that the vaccines are gene therapy – have already been addressed here.

Not liking the responses correcting Lucas does not mean they were not provided, either.

@JustaTech
You wrote: “No one is being “fined” for not being vaccinated.”
JustaTec, you are wrong. How can you not know this when even MSM (These Countries Are Slapping the Unvaccinated With Fines and Bans (msn.com)) mentions such fines?

I quote:

“Here are some of the measures against the unvaccinated deployed by governments around the world.
Greek Fines
The government is making vaccines mandatory for all Greeks above 60 years of age. From next month, refuseniks will pay a 100-euro ($113) fine every month they don’t get a shot”.
Austria’s Lockdown
“A lockdown for the unvaccinated will probably persist, though they can still go to work with a negative test. Officials are also working on plans to impose mandatory vaccinations from February, with fines reaching as high as 7,200 euros ($8,151).”
Just two examples here, but I’m not going to write pages full, please do your own homework. People and companies are being fined or threatened so in cases of disobedience; really, haven’t you noticed this?
It seems some guys play games all day in the basement of their mom.

Now, my text was primarily ment to ridicule the absurd Covid measures all around the globe. But just extrapolate what has been going on. And more importantly, find out what powerful entities with what goals and plans are active behind the scenes. Then you get the picture of where we’re heading. Covid and its measurements is just a means to get to a goal. And you are not going to like what is planned for you; and being vaccinated or not will not matter; vaccination has more to do with obedience, your ‘green’ pass and dependance of Big Pharma for the rest of your life (and who knows even with slowly killing you, like many physicians and other scientist say). This was btw planned long before Covid (again: read!).
All over the place politicians now do their best to make life miserable for people that do not want to comply; politicians make no secret of this at all. It’s pathetic but true.

The people in charge in these organizations are definitely Nazi’s of the worst kind. And as a consequence, people who choose their side (a.o. because of profits, like that weasel here, Mr David Gorski) use their tactics like bluntly denying, lying, distorting, ridiculing etc. Would you expect differently?
I suggest you critically review the papers of the UN, the WHO, the IMF and the WEF (the latter being the most blatant of all, in my opinion). Between all the many beautiful words, you will find the true intentions; think these through. Ask yourself what will these imply for you.
About what is going on at the WEF, as an economist and having a relative with an informant function there, I consider myself well informed. However, the WEF has no secrets they don’t share, it has their plans written down at their website. But even though everyone can read them, people in general just don’t want to believe them, as they are in denial, a sort of mass hypnosis this will probably be.

And yes, one of the actions will be that your possessions will be taken from you, however that is not the worst that can happen to you. To live in the midst of chaos, of economic and social unrest, that will be the biggest challenge. And your personal freedom will be reduced by such margin that you may find hard to imagine right now.
And no, JustaTech, this isn’t about protection against a disease. You should see this by now.

The real question is will the greater part of the population wake up and be able to halt the charade. That is the ‘small but closing opportunity’ for you and me.
My guess is we won’t, not in time.

@Julian Frost
You write: “First off, it’s not experimental and it’s not gene therapy.
Secondly, it IS a vaccine. No vaccine is perfect, but all significantly reduce the risk of developing a severe case and becoming contagious.”

Julian, I think you are all wrong.

If it’s not experimental we know what effects on our health can be expected for the years to come. Please tell me, what can we expect? Please mention your source, I’m curious.

Whether or not we can call this a vaccine depends on your definition. We used to name a vaccine “an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)”,
However since ‘gene therapy’ is in use we rushed into broadening the definition with: “a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)”.
Two years back there was no way that this gene therapy could be called a vaccine. However, the word vaccine sounds trustworthy to the public, while gene therapy does not. Hence the broadening of the definition. Basically a deception, Julian.

How can you be so sure that these vaccines significantly reduce risks when you have no idea about future side effects?
Please have a look at the Vaers databank as well and multiply the case mentioned there x100 (VAERS admits fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported). Yes, perhaps there has been a significant risk until now, but this just goes for the vulnerable.
Furthermore, if these vulnerable people would be protected with the FLCCC protocol, how would statistics look then?

And your last conclusion is not true either: vaccinated people are contageous.

One more question for you Julian, how do think about being vaccinated every few months for the rest of this pandemic (perhaps for the rest of your life, as this is the goal of the UN, WHO and WEF; and yes, vaccination is a goal)?

Lucas I admire your Tenacity and your ongoing questions that never seemed to be answered. When it comes to it those who started their Lifetime Booster Subscription Program could be needed to be kept alive due to being immune compromised. Sources I have read are really concerned about this and Antibody-dependent Enhancement.

Did you read the latest that CDC has stated going to be at least 15,600 deaths a week to the start of 2022. CDC relates to Cases rising due to the Omicron Variant, CDC have not considered that the deaths increasing could be due to the Booster jabs this is 6 months after the initial 2 jabs. The Second Booster what kind of effect will it have which would make it for Moderna and Pfizer 4 Experimental Jabs in 1 year. No one has ever received 4 of the same type of jab in a single year. The VAERS has never had near 20,000 deaths in about a year could be as many as 2 Million Deaths due to the inadequate reporting system.

Living in Australia have a State Premier open the Borders in South Australia possibly so his mates could arrive to celebrate Christmas and now Cases are on the rise because of it. The Problem lays that Self Quarantine is in effect mainly at home its a lockdown with out having a Lockdown.

Victoria Premier Dan Andrews now has a Bill that was passed that gives him every 3 months to initiate State Of Emergency with out evidence of even having one. Segregation starting to happen as well. This just came to me which I feel is valid argument has Covid 19 brought on Communism in Countries that never had it ???

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