Getting vaccinated

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Econoline
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Econoline »

vaccine-induced lego-foot.jpg
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ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

And in other news, Trinidad's Health Minister is denying that Nicky Minaj's cousin's friend had swollen testicles as a result of the vaccine.

There may well be some harmful side-effects of the vaccine and there is no proof yet that TPFKA@W's friend Laura did not succumb to one, and we can only hope that they find out soon for then sake of her family and for the rest of us. But this sort of thing is not helpful.

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Sorry; I've just seen that Gob posted the above in its own thread.

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

There's an interesting Israeli study about the efficacy of a (Pfizer) booster shot.

It's a New England Journal of Medicine paper with public access. The meat of the conclusions is in this table:

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They looked at the "Israeli Ministry of Health database regarding 1,137,804 persons who were 60 years of age or older and had been fully vaccinated (i.e., had received two doses of BNT162b2 [the Pfizer vaccine]) at least 5 months earlier." There was no evaluation of unvaccinated people so there was no attempt to determine the overall vaccine efficacy (boosted or not). That was not the point of the study.

In round numbers you can see that, for the period of the study (August 2021) there were about twice as many 'boosted' participants than there were 'unboosted.' Yet the unboosted group yielded 4439 positive cases while the boosted cohort had 935 cases. Just doing the math in your head, five times as many cases in a group which was half the size means that the booster shot gave a 90% reduction (or, to put it another way, a 10x reduction) in the occurrence of infection.

There are other studies with similar results. I'll wait for FDA to assess them but it looks pretty convincing to me.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by BoSoxGal »

Several times on Facebook in conversations about covid19 vaccination - usually comments sections of the NYT, Boston.com (Globe) and Bangor Daily News pages - I have had antivaxxer commenters tell me how the FDA is useless and can’t be trusted, because after all THEY APPROVED THALIDOMIDE!

Does anyone know offhand why this is a hilarious comment? (Bonus points if you don’t have to Google the answer - Scout’s honor!)
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Crackpot
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Re: Getting vaccinated

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Because that was why the FDA was created?
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Because it didn't happen here.  The FDA DID keep it out of the USA as an approved and prescribable medication.

Thalidomide was a foreign medication developed in Germany and approved and marketed there as a sort of OTC sedative/tranquilizer ... and a treatment for morning sickness among pregnant women. It was never 'officially' available in the US, although it did go through some clinical trials in the 1950s, involving less than 25K persons.

Were there thalidomide babies born in the USA?  Yes there were — a grand total of maybe 20, as I recall — but it was determined that none of them were to participants in the clinical trials. It can probably be assumed that these were the result of private individuals who had taken the drug or brought the drug back into the country as travelers returning from Germany or other places in Europe where the drug was available.

And no, I didn't have to Google. I remembered this from some trivia book or website I came across sometime back.
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Econoline
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Econoline »

Thalidomide was approved earlier in Europe, but the FDA held up approval for use in the US— and thus the US was spared the much larger number of birth deformities that occurred elsewhere in the world. Right? (Strictly from memory: I didn't google.)



ETA: Bill beat me to it.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
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BoSoxGal
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Re: Getting vaccinated

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Yes the FDA through the wisdom of one of its female scientists (Canadian born Frances Oldham Kelsey) repeatedly refused to approve thalidomide in the USA. After the tragedy of thalidomide, congress passed the 1962 drug amendments which set standards for drug approvals in the USA here’s a wiki on that https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefauve ... _Amendment
So actually the thalidomide non-tragedy in the USA was the start of making the FDA one of the most stringent drug screening agencies in any country on earth.

And all over Facebook and elsewhere on social media, the antivaxxers are discrediting the FDA by asserting that they once approved thalidomide.

There are limits to the universe, but not to human stupidity. Someone needs to tell Albert he was right.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Every now and then Fox News gets it right:

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eddieq
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by eddieq »

eddieq wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 12:31 pm
It shouldn’t be controversial. However we Americans love to put the “dumb” in “freedom”.

Meanwhile, my vaccinated neighbor has a positive test. I’ll be scheduling my own test as a precaution. Haven’t had too much direct contact with them recently but our homes are attached.
Results came back negative for me. Also the rest of the family next door tested negative. The person who came up positive is an older person so I don't know if that was a factor in her contracting a break-through case.

Burning Petard
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Burning Petard »

Was this test confirmed by repeating the test, or any other method? False positives are possible with any medical test. Usually such tests are intentionally designed to give more false positives, where a false negative would lead to more dangerous consequences.

snailgate

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eddieq
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by eddieq »

Burning Petard wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 3:17 pm
Was this test confirmed by repeating the test, or any other method? False positives are possible with any medical test. Usually such tests are intentionally designed to give more false positives, where a false negative would lead to more dangerous consequences.

snailgate
I honestly do not know what sort of test she took. She took the test because she had been symptomatic.

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Sue U
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Sue U »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:25 am
So actually the thalidomide non-tragedy in the USA was the start of making the FDA one of the most stringent drug screening agencies in any country on earth.
Well, plenty of bad drugs slip through the FDA approval process, but to be fair the harm comes mostly from the bad acts of the pharmaceuticals industry in concealing unfavorable data and in unlawfully marketing and promoting their products (Oxycontin, Subsys, Vioxx, Baycol, Avandia, Actos, DES, Seroquel/Zyprexa/Risperdal, just to name a few off the top of my head). The FDA is hardly infallible, but their expert opinion should carry somewhat more weight than Janet on Facebook or @eaglepatriot1776 on the Twatter.

But for all those who say "dO yOuR oWn ReSeaRcH," I say, what kind of research did *you* actually do? I have no education, training or practical expertise in medicine, pathology, virology, immunology, epidemiology, cellular/molecular biology or vaccine development and production. However, there are people who do, and they are called experts for a reason. So, for example, when my line of work requires expert opinion, I find a professional who has actual credentials, expertise and experience in the field. And not just anyone, but someone whose work and research involves the specific subject at issue, who uses and relies on scientific methods and theories generally accepted within that field, and whose opinion falls within the general consensus of his/her professional peers and is not an oddball outlier. Fortunately, our government employs a whole lot of these people for the express purpose of making sure (as far as reasonably possible) that drugs are safe and effective and that their benefits substantially outweigh their risks. And in this case, ALL their expert opinions are distilled down to approval for use and a public policy of pandemic control through vaccination. And voila, "my research" is already done for me -- without even applying to medical school!

There is a legitimate place for skeptics and contrarians who may find actual flaws in the experts' work -- assuming they have the knowledge base and expertise to validate the criticism they might offer. But even so, speculation about what might be a problem is not the same thing as identifying an actual problem, and it is certainly not sufficient to contradict the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence.
GAH!

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Absolutely correct Sue - and to add to that, there is a point at which one's own knowledge and understanding runs out and trust in others takes over.

I've read many books explaining relativity (both special and general) and although I have made a decent living as a scientist of sorts over the years, I still do not understand it. That doesn't mean that I say it's not happening, because I have enough faith in (a) Einstein (b) those like Eddington (the solar eclipse guy) who ran experiments to confirm or refute it, and (c) the process of science in general.

So - and staying on the subject of solar eclipses - when the moon passed in front of the sun in August 2017, I did not do my own research and calculate the exact time and place of totality. I probably have the math skills (or, more accurately, once had the math skills) to do it but there are many guys who are better at it than I am and who have their computers programmed to do it in microseconds instead of the several days it would take me.

So I read in the paper when and where to see it. Actually, that's what our then Lord and Master 45 also did. A good question to him would be - how come you trust the scientists to get that right, but you do not trust them on issues like the prevention and amelioration of a pandemic?

Any rando who says on the interwebs that s/he'll do his/her own research has no fucking clue what the word means.

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BoSoxGal
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Re: Getting vaccinated

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ex-khobar Andy wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:04 pm


So I read in the paper when and where to see it. Actually, that's what our then Lord and Master 45 also did. A good question to him would be - how come you trust the scientists to get that right, but you do not trust them on issues like the prevention and amelioration of a pandemic?
Maybe he’s a specialist just in human health. After all, he rejected the science behind the advice not to look at a solar eclipse with the naked eye.
6DD52C55-F2E9-46BA-9048-4F63B9ABD068.jpeg
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Econoline
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Econoline »

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People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
God @The Tweet of God

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Gob
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Gob »

Having that!
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Bicycle Bill »

There are really only three blonde jokes known to exist in the entire world.

Everything else said about them is the absolute Gospel truth.
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Gob
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Re: Getting vaccinated

Post by Gob »

Keep 'em coming, the more the merrier!
Personal finance guru Alan Steel, a prominent anti-vaxxer, has died after a month-long battle with Covid-19.

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The 74-year-old's death last Wednesday came after he was hospitalised with the virus. Hours before he was placed on a ventilator he had told friends to 'keep their fingers crossed'.

Mr Steel had frequently retweeted anti-vaccine views on Twitter since the start of the pandemic.


Days before he fell ill he had reposted misinformation about Covid and the vaccine to 3,753 followers.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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