Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Burden of proof would be difficult if not impossible with an airborne respiratory virus, especially with how little the vaccine protects against symptomatic illness and risk of transmission.
Are you talking about the chain of transmission? How do you think they find the index cases in breakouts of Lassa or Ebola? Viruses mutate and all it would take is to compare the strain someone else died from to the strain you have and if they're the same, there's your proof. With as many people as Covid has killed, I don't think you'd have to go pretty far to say that someone working while they're actively sick with Covid or even just hosting Covid even if that person shows no symptoms, can't be considered dangerous to others. If someone has an asymptomatic case of antibiotic resistant TB and you knew it, would you feel comfortable letting that person hand you change or bring your food out to you? Would you, as a business owner, feel comfortable letting that person wait on your customers, exposing them to being infected with TB?
Let me put it another way: with everything you've heard about pit bulls attacking people, would you feel comfortable walking into a business where a pit bull is roaming free and barks and snarls at customers? Do you think the propensity for being bitten is there, or do you want to wait to "prove it" when someone is finally bitten? It's about prevention, not proving something when it's already too late to do anything about it.
Are you talking about the chain of transmission? How do you think they find the index cases in breakouts of Lassa or Ebola? Viruses mutate and all it would take is to compare the strain someone else died from to the strain you have and if they're the same, there's your proof. With as many people as Covid has killed, I don't think you'd have to go pretty far to say that someone working while they're actively sick with Covid or even just hosting Covid even if that person shows no symptoms, can't be considered dangerous to others. If someone has an asymptomatic case of antibiotic resistant TB and you knew it, would you feel comfortable letting that person hand you change or bring your food out to you? Would you, as a business owner, feel comfortable letting that person wait on your customers, exposing them to being infected with TB?
Let me put it another way: with everything you've heard about pit bulls attacking people, would you feel comfortable walking into a business where a pit bull is roaming free and barks and snarls at customers? Do you think the propensity for being bitten is there, or do you want to wait to "prove it" when someone is finally bitten? It's about prevention, not proving something when it's already too late to do anything about it.
Yes, contact tracing is nearly impossible when a virus is endemic unless you're a total shut in. Given the fact that vaccinated and unvaccinated alike transmit covid, what do you propose employers do? Test each of their employees prior to the start of the shift? At some point, people have to accept that by going out in public, they will be exposed to covid. Live your life or don't. Your safety is your responsibility and if you trust the "vaccine", by all means, go ahead and get it. Get boosted as often as the "experts" say so.
The dynamics of natural infection included reinfection and death. One knows the stated optimal reactions to infection and optimal response to reinfection. People were dying due to less than optimal responses. This happend when there was one initial single strain.
These are exceptionally rare, usually in immunocompromised, terminally ill people. Not to mention, vaccinating these people would make no difference.
Quote:
The biology involving those exceptions above one not ignore. The field of medicine is to save lives and not rely on optimal health outcomes from natural infections. We take care of the sick which are the exceptions. So 90% good outcomes and mild disease does not help the other 10% or more.
Medicine is not based on exceptions, but on optimal strategies that will work in the majority of people.
Quote:
Also there is no way to know when a person experienced an infection or the specific viral mutation that they were infected with. All we see is antibodies.
Any infection will produce a broader spectrum of antibodies than a vaccine designed for a specific antigen (the virus has at least 30 proteins on the surface, the vaccine just targets 1).
Quote:
I don't think they had the evidence at the time since they were not testing neutralizing antibodies but simply antibodies. The test for neutralizing antibodies involves live virus and it just isn't practical to measure neutralizing antibodies outside of a research lab with bio level 4 hood setups. That's not clinical practice. In clinical practice measuring antibodies were not for clinical use but for epidemiological use.
They do these tests for vaccines in animal models. They note the antigen sequences that are neutralizing using chimeric viruses, then they see how many antibodies in your blood will bind to these antigens.
Quote:
There were studies showing the benefit in those previously infected being vaccinated.
No such studies exist. No clinical studies demonstrated any benefit, because previously infected people were deliberately excluded from the trials. Observational data sets are not studies, are horribly confounded. There is a famous study that getting vaccinated reduces your risk of a car accident. It uses an observational data set. In medicine, we demand clinical studies because that's the only way to know the intervention is the difference between groups.
Quote:
I also think they were outcome based. Some showed antibody titers greater in naturally infected with vaccine boosters.
You can give someone a vaccine, and that will boost antibodies. And you can do it 10 times, and they will have more antibodies than if you do it 9 times. That doesn't mean there is any clinical difference. Which is why we do clinical trials in real people and measure endpoints that matter like who gets sick and who doesn't - not antibody titers.
Quote:
There's no evidence that immunity was or is life long on any given case with people who were naturally infected.
The immunity from memory b cells is life long, or close to life long. It's just not infection blocking. Immunity does not need to be infection blocking to be immunity. Neither the vaccine nor natural infection can produce infection blocking immunity for a virus with an incubation rate of below 3 days for the reasons I explained.
Quote:
Again people who were repeatedly reinfected with COVID had died.
How many? What were their co-morbidities? How many of those were also vaccinated? How many vaccinated died? What were the similarities between these groups?
Quote:
Those observational case studies appeared early on with the virus. That is the basis and justification for vaccination in those previously infected.
There was honestly never any justification besides expediency. They didn't want people to go out and get antibody tests, they just want to hurry up and vaccinate everyone.
Quote:
It is better to immune boost with a vaccine than getting infected with the virus. It is understood that the vast majority of people will boost more with natural virus than with vaccine but we are not talking about the bulk. The target are those most likely to die or get very sick.
That needs to be verified by a clinical trial. Any clinical differences will be small, probably not even measurable short of enrolling 100s of millions of people to get the power necessary to do such a trial. It's very possible that after certain doses of vaccine, you are exposed to more harm. Every medicine has its sweet spot for dosing - too little, not enough effect. Too much, too much harm. Vaccines carry different risk profiles than the virus, and if they're not preventing infection from the virus, it's really a crap strategy. If you already have protection from severe outcomes and death, you should demand robust evidence - not speculation based on antibody titers, or bioplausability or wishful thinking.
These are exceptionally rare, usually in immunocompromised, terminally ill people. Not to mention, vaccinating these people would make no difference.
Medicine is not based on exceptions, but on optimal strategies that will work in the majority of people.
Any infection will produce a broader spectrum of antibodies than a vaccine designed for a specific antigen (the virus has at least 30 proteins on the surface, the vaccine just targets 1).
They do these tests for vaccines in animal models. They note the antigen sequences that are neutralizing using chimeric viruses, then they see how many antibodies in your blood will bind to these antigens.
No such studies exist. No clinical studies demonstrated any benefit, because previously infected people were deliberately excluded from the trials. Observational data sets are not studies, are horribly confounded. There is a famous study that getting vaccinated reduces your risk of a car accident. It uses an observational data set. In medicine, we demand clinical studies because that's the only way to know the intervention is the difference between groups.
You can give someone a vaccine, and that will boost antibodies. And you can do it 10 times, and they will have more antibodies than if you do it 9 times. That doesn't mean there is any clinical difference. Which is why we do clinical trials in real people and measure endpoints that matter like who gets sick and who doesn't - not antibody titers.
The immunity from memory b cells is life long, or close to life long. It's just not infection blocking. Immunity does not need to be infection blocking to be immunity. Neither the vaccine nor natural infection can produce infection blocking immunity for a virus with an incubation rate of below 3 days for the reasons I explained.
How many? What were their co-morbidities? How many of those were also vaccinated? How many vaccinated died? What were the similarities between these groups?
There was honestly never any justification besides expediency. They didn't want people to go out and get antibody tests, they just want to hurry up and vaccinate everyone.
That needs to be verified by a clinical trial. Any clinical differences will be small, probably not even measurable short of enrolling 100s of millions of people to get the power necessary to do such a trial. It's very possible that after certain doses of vaccine, you are exposed to more harm. Every medicine has its sweet spot for dosing - too little, not enough effect. Too much, too much harm. Vaccines carry different risk profiles than the virus, and if they're not preventing infection from the virus, it's really a crap strategy. If you already have protection from severe outcomes and death, you should demand robust evidence - not speculation based on antibody titers, or bioplausability or wishful thinking.
Disease is an exception. Most people will not have disease at any given time. The have exceptional presentation and exceptional lab tests that sets them apart from a healthy person.
I agree that a natural infection will generate a broader and many times a stronger immune response than a vaccine. Natural infection carries a much higher risk and the immune response itself can be so strong that it can kill you. Many times its the cytokine storms that kills you. Vaccines avoid that and the risk.
Doing neutralizing studies in test tubes can not completely replicate an environment where multiple viral strains exist and can not be done on an individual level in a clinical setting on real patients.
There is an evidentiary weight scale for which one assigns the strength of the evidence to base recommendations. Without clinical studies or if one wants to ignore observational studies then expert opinion is at the bottom of the scale. All it is is opinion based.
Vaccines were shown to generate a greater antibody response in those with previous infection as shown with antibody titers. Antibody titers were shown to correlate with neutralizing antibodies. It is true that these are test tube studies and as you correctly mentioned outcome studies are more meaningful but also confounded as you state. So I can also say the same thing about you citing memory cell responses in test tubes and a lack of long lasting immunity resulting is significant disease including death no matter how rare the claim is. The point is that there is still some studies that need to be done.
If you want to discount studies then one is left expert opinion and the consensus of the expert opinon is to vaccinate and not stop vaccinating and assume that we have lifelong immunity.
Just couple of quick replies, so not as to go in circles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Medical Lab Guy
Vaccines were shown to generate a greater antibody response in those with previous infection as shown with antibody titers.
Of course. Giving someone previously infected another shot of vaccine, will raise their antibody titers. Giving a person vaccinated another shot of vaccine also raises their antibody. So where does this end? After 100 shots? 1000 shots?
Clinical trials answer the questions we want answered. Antibody titers are just surrogates to validate our models for immunology. So when the clinical trial validates our expectation, we can point to antibody titers as the mechanism of action, validating our theoretical understanding.
The problem here is we don't have those clinical trials. Infected people were excluded from the clinical trials. Nor based on real world experience do we see previously COVID recovered, getting sick and again dying (rare exceptions notwithstanding - many many more died from COVID post vaccination than post COVID infection).
Quote:
Antibody titers were shown to correlate with neutralizing antibodies.
One small, but subtle point. I know all of those studies. What they mean by 'neutralizing' antibodies is being able to prevent a chimeric virus (with only a spike antigen) to access certain cells with ACE2 receptors. They specifically designed the trials to only look at antibodies for spike - mainly because that's all the vaccine can make. So really, it's not even a fair comparison. Perhaps the other antibodies they're not looking for are also neutralizing, and they'd realize that if they actually used the real, live virus. Instead they created a fake virus with 1 spike protein, and no other proteins.
Real world applications of these studies are really tenuous. There are a lot of assumptions, that could be wrong. I term these modeling studies. The reason they're done is to test our models of disease, but people run off with them as proof of some application to medicine. No, we need clinical trials for that so we can validate our models in the first place.
Quote:
It is true that these are test tube studies and as you correctly mentioned outcome studies are more meaningful but also confounded as you state. So I can also say the same thing about you citing memory cell responses in test tubes and a lack of long lasting immunity resulting is significant disease including death no matter how rare the claim is. The point is that there is still some studies that need to be done.
Last point, my point on memory b cells is that our theoretical knowledge informs us we cannot make a vaccine that is infection blocking if viral incubation rate is under 3 days. This is basic immunology. While this is all theoretical (and not even test tubes really, though the 3-5 days of antibody titers raising from memory b-cells was validated in humans, not just test tubes), it means scientists never expected these vaccines to prevent infection.
I think this needs to be repeated, scientists in immunology and virology never expected these vaccines to be infection blocking. If you may remember, the CDC initially recommended vaccinated individuals wear masks until they were politically pressured to change their stance. That stance was to reduce vaccine hesitancy, as it was believed people would be more likely to vaccinate if they thought they could get by without needing to masks.
The lay public was lied to and mislead. These vaccines were never capable of preventing infection based on our theoretical understanding of immunology. This is separate from the topic if you should get vaccinated to prevent bad outcomes from infection. But one cannot deny that the public was led to believe the vaccines could take us to herd immunity by being infection blocking.
The lay public was lied to and mislead. These vaccines were never capable of preventing infection based on our theoretical understanding of immunology. This is separate from the topic if you should get vaccinated to prevent bad outcomes from infection. But one cannot deny that the public was led to believe the vaccines could take us to herd immunity by being infection blocking.
People in the know did not mislead anybody. The entire immunology community knew about coronaviruses and the problems with long lasting immunity from the beginning.
The FDA's only requirement was in terms of efficacy knowing that there were possible problems in transmission.
Medical professionals can not talk over the heads of ordinary soccer moms. When I first started posting here I was still trying to assess my posting style and got some negative posts about having to tone it down to more basic language and making things understandable. I expressed the possible dangers of oversimplification and generalizations because when exceptions come up then one is attacked for being wrong or misleading. Fauci got attacked for changing his mind about masks.
There was misunderstandings with words when people would say reduce transmission vs prevents transmission.
The goal was for disease reduction because of the hospital bed capacity. The rest was whatever could be achieved. As far as herd immunity the only ones talking about herd immunity were the people who refused to use any mitigation measures and considered the virus a harmless version of the flu. Everybody in the immunology community knew what it took as far as a vaccine and response rates needed to generate herd immunity including a very high vaccination rate for a highly infectious airborne disease. Those levels were never achieved because of vaccine hesitancy much less other variables of escape mutations because of the low vaccination rates and populations who were immunocompromised.
There were goals stated but no promises were made. The goal was to achieve herd immunity through vaccines but what I saw and heard is filtered by my understanding the limitations on what they were saying. People were not getting vaccinated and they said if you do not get vaccinated then herd immunity would never be achieved. The only way to know if herd immunity was possible is to get that very high vaccination rate and find out if herd immunity was achieved. That never occured for a variety of reasons.
People in the know did not mislead anybody. The entire immunology community knew about coronaviruses and the problems with long lasting immunity from the beginning.
The FDA's only requirement was in terms of efficacy knowing that there were possible problems in transmission.
I don't know why you keep using the phrase "long lasting immunity" as if to imply the immunity generated from a coronavirus infection is not long lasting?
Your memory b cells last just as long as from an infection from a coronavirus and a infection from any other virus, say measles.
Your antibody levels wane the same too. Immunity generated from coronaviruses is just as long lasting as the one generated by the measles virus. It simply will never be infection blocking, due to the incubation rate. Your immunity against more severe outcomes will remain in place though.
And yes, misled/lie. They could have simply spoken the truth to the American public, and the truth is simply to convey.
- The truth about the vaccine is that it could never be infection blocking. Just reduce disease severity. Therefore all vaccinated individuals could expect to get the virus once their initial antibodies (from vaccine) waned sufficiently.
Saying this alone, a simple message everyone could understand, would have resulted in no mandates.
As for masks, I have no idea what went through Fauci's head, but no one has ever demonstrated masks work in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses. We have a lot of modeling studies, and observational studies but once applied in a clinical trial, null results left and right.
Either way, if masks work at all, they work very little. Either due to human behaviors, us not understanding something about viral transmission, or masks themselves - they just don't seem to work when tested in a clinical trial.
As for masks, I have no idea what went through Fauci's head, but no one has ever demonstrated masks work in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses. We have a lot of modeling studies, and observational studies but once applied in a clinical trial, null results left and right.
Either way, if masks work at all, they work very little. Either due to human behaviors, us not understanding something about viral transmission, or masks themselves - they just don't seem to work when tested in a clinical trial.
Sorry, but a quick google will show clinical trials in which it was found that masks work. Please don't disseminate misinformation.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
