Coronavirus in Massachusetts (live, dangerous, vs.)

[msRB311]

I think i'll listen to an MD over a PhD.

At my work there's a guy who has a PHD in immunology and at the beginning of the pandemic he said he was disgusted by the media's reaction to covid and the way everyone was freaking out. I recall saying to him, ok well if you're not that worried then I guess I shouldn't be either. He said quite firmly, I'm not worried. This was in March 2020...but i mean this is a guy with a PHD in immunology working in a medical field. Pretty sure you can't have a PHD in Immunology and listen to Howie Carr/vote for Trump AND be from Cambridge...but this immunologist was not worried about covid in March 2020.

My boss on the other hand is an MD and he was freaked out. I recall his boss returning from CA and went into his office and i could just hear the fear in boss' voice. After he says to me, i was really freaked out when so and so just came into my office. Then WFH started and we haven't gone back

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by msRB311

I think i'll listen to an MD over a PhD.

At my work there's a guy who has a PHD in immunology and at the beginning of the pandemic he said he was disgusted by the media's reaction to covid and the way everyone was freaking out. I recall saying to him, ok well if you're not that worried then I guess I shouldn't be either. He said quite firmly, I'm not worried. This was in March 2020...but i mean this is a guy with a PHD in immunology working in a medical field. Pretty sure you can't have a PHD in Immunology and listen to Howie Carr/vote for Trump AND be from Cambridge...but this immunologist was not worried about covid in March 2020.

My boss on the other hand is an MD and he was freaked out. I recall his boss returning from CA and went into his office and i could just hear the fear in boss' voice. After he says to me, i was really freaked out when so and so just came into my office. Then WFH started and we haven't gone back

Offit has an MD of course, but I have a PhD in science so I have to stick up for us ;-) Clearly this guy has poor judgement, even if he has the theoretical understanding - it sounds like he just decided it was no big deal before he really had much information (poor judgement) - but that shouldn't cast doubt on scientists generally... it didn't take too long for word to get around in any case that Covid-19 had spread like wildfire at this local Biogen "superspreader conference", and that was a very big red flag that people should take this virus seriously.

[Lampert]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

Offit has an MD of course, but I have a PhD in science so I have to stick up for us ;-) Clearly this guy has poor judgement, even if he has the theoretical understanding - it sounds like he just decided it was no big deal before he really had much information (poor judgement) - but that shouldn't cast doubt on scientists generally...

Yeah. There are dumb people everywhere. I met a few MDs incredibly incompetent. And I mean INCREDIBILY. Doesn't really lower my confidence in medicine overall though.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by Lampert

Yeah. There are dumb people everywhere. I met a few MDs incredibly incompetent. And I mean INCREDIBILY. Doesn't really lower my confidence in medicine overall though.

Like maybe Senator Paul Rand? An opthamologist? My sister got her Immunology/Hematology PdD from the Duke medical school a bit before that moron attended. In March 2020, she owned the convalescent plasma harvesting project in Canada and was working long hours doing that. Enough was known about transmission rates and mortality rates in March 2020 that nobody competent in public health was saying "it's just the flu".

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by timberline742

PhD from University of Chicago
Vs
PhD from listening to Howie Carr or reading Turtle Boy Blog

Hmmmmmnnnn... challenging choice

Turtle Boy Sports is a definitive reference for COVID-19 information, right?

[msRB311]

No one here said it's just the flu. Appreciate all the background on your sister

[htfdcolt]

Originally Posted by Lampert

Yeah. There are dumb people everywhere. I met a few MDs incredibly incompetent. And I mean INCREDIBILY. Doesn't really lower my confidence in medicine overall though.

Exhibit A: "Dr" Scott "let's murder 2-3M people by letting it spread the old-fashioned way" Atlas

[Shrewsburried]

Originally Posted by jayrandom

Know one knows anything absolutely about the future. You look at the available evidence and make as informed a decision as it allows. I have yet to see someone who is vocally anti-vaccination make a compelling risk-assessment-based argument that isn't also selfish.

It's always "well, this COULD happen, we just don't know, so I'm not going to take a risk". You saw the same sort of stuff with people who didn't want to wear seat belts. They would always talk about how you could become trapped if your car went underwater or was about to explode. Yes, those could happen, but they are so exceedingly unlikely that it still makes sense to wear a seat belt.

Agreed.

IMO, the biggest cause for pausing vaccinations amongst low-risk demographics is early research suggesting the ‘spikey protein’ of the virus or a pseudovirus (e.g., a vaccine) can cause respiratory and vascular damage.

Personally, I’d prefer and did risk the vaccine versus risking having the virus replicating inside me also potentially causing respiratory and vascular damage, but for my child that risk assessment might differ from my own.


Here’s an overview of the Salk study. Not trying to fear-monger and anyone reviewing must understand that this study does not in anyway imply the available vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, rather, it confirms the idea that the vaccine risks are not zero.

https://www.salk.edu/news-release/th...le-in-illness/

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by Shrewsburried

Agreed.

IMO, the biggest cause for pausing vaccinations amongst low-risk demographics is early research suggesting the ‘spikey protein’ of the virus or a pseudovirus (e.g., a vaccine) can cause respiratory and vascular damage.

Personally, I’d prefer and did risk the vaccine versus risking having the virus replicating inside me also potentially causing respiratory and vascular damage, but for my child that risk assessment might differ from my own.


Here’s an overview of the Salk study. Not trying to fear-monger and anyone reviewing must understand that this study does not in anyway imply the available vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, rather, it confirms the idea that the vaccine risks are not zero.

https://www.salk.edu/news-release/th...le-in-illness/

If the thought is that the spike protein produced by the vaccines is somehow causing the same effects as the virus itself, experience with 10s of thousands of people in the clinical trials and then 100s of millions of people in the clinical application of the vaccine have clearly demonstrated that no, vaccine does not equal disease. If it did, there would be millions of people dead from the vaccine, just as there are millions of people dead from the virus.

We don't see the massive vascular endothelium damage, coagulopathies, alveolar damage, pulmonary thrombi, acute respiratory distress syndrome, pneumonia, cardiac arrhythmias, thromboembolisms, cardiac ischaemia, lung fibrosis, encephalitis, cerebral microthrombi, neurotoxicity, stroke, confusion, memory issues, depression, kidney damage, proteinuria, haematuria, liver damage, etc from the vaccines - that we see from the virus. See for example, Osuchowski et al, "The COVID-19 puzzle: deciphering pathophysiology and phenotypes of a new disease entity", The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Volume 9, Issue 6, PP 622-642, June 01, 2021.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...218-6/fulltext

The spike protein used in the vaccines has been deliberately modified in several ways. It's also processed differently by the body than the spike protein from the virus. And of course the virus itself is not present in the vaccine.

There's a guy running around out there, Robert Malone, who claims to be the inventor of mRNA vaccines (he's greatly exaggerating his role), and who's saying a lot of irresponsible and incorrect things - alleging conspiracies and malfeasance at the FDA, CDC, (and by implication, biotechs and the scientific and medical communities broadly), with the apparent goal of frightening people. Perhaps for this reason, he seems to be a darling over at Fox News. I don't know what's wrong with him, but don't listen to the guy - he's full of crap. Covid-19 vaccines do not equal the disease, not even close - say that 3x and take a few deep breaths. And if you see Robert Malone (or his henchman, Alex Berenson), change the channel.

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by Shrewsburried

Agreed.

IMO, the biggest cause for pausing vaccinations amongst low-risk demographics is early research suggesting the ‘spikey protein’ of the virus or a pseudovirus (e.g., a vaccine) can cause respiratory and vascular damage.

Personally, I’d prefer and did risk the vaccine versus risking having the virus replicating inside me also potentially causing respiratory and vascular damage, but for my child that risk assessment might differ from my own.


Here’s an overview of the Salk study. Not trying to fear-monger and anyone reviewing must understand that this study does not in anyway imply the available vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, rather, it confirms the idea that the vaccine risks are not zero.

https://www.salk.edu/news-release/th...le-in-illness/

The reporters of this paper never identified the vaccine with the pseudovirus and started the entire article with:

“Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2’s distinctive “spike” proteins help the virus infect its host by latching on to healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that the virus spike proteins (which behave very differently than those safely encoded by vaccines) also play a key role in the disease itself.”

So either the authors of the news article or the authors of the paper (or both) believe that the vaccine does not trigger this response. Anyway, as with any harmful substance, the dose makes the poison, so it’s unclear how much spike protein is necessary for adverse effects. In a viral infection that dose is not controlled, in a vaccine it is limited, the news summary does not indicate details about what dose the pseudovirus became problematic.

These vaccines were studied extensively before use and have now been studied even more extensively through mass vaccination. The risk of side-effects is nonzero but small.