Coronavirus

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/downloads/Information-for-laboratories-COVID-vaccine-breakthrough-case-investigation.pdf

Some COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases will have SARS-CoV-2 sequencing performed at a clinical, public health, or commercial reference laboratory.

Clinical specimens for sequencing should have an RT-PCR Ct value ≤28.

[astfgyl]

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/downloads/Information-for-laboratories-COVID-vaccine-breakthrough-case-investigation.pdf

Some COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases will have SARS-CoV-2 sequencing performed at a clinical, public health, or commercial reference laboratory.

Clinical specimens for sequencing should have an RT-PCR Ct value ≤28.

Very good! Well spotted.

Why do they only want to sequence specimens obtained at ct28 or less? Is it because they don't expect to find anything worth working on at the higher values?

It's the same old lark as the WHO recommending the same lower values on the 20th of January, despite the issues with high values being well known long before then.

It's the same as the uk changing the way the deaths are counted.

All the things that are now suddenly being done and which would have painted a far different picture of the last year are okay to do now that there's a shot for it. Such serendipity! it would nearly make a believer of me

[ochoill]

What if this was all really a ploy to convince people how good having a second monitor for your pc is.  Surely there's a larger percentage of people using two monitors at home now than in 2019.  Big monitor is at it again

[Kurt Cocaine]

  Ah heer

[Blackout]

What if this was all really a ploy to convince people how good having a second monitor for your pc is.  Surely there's a larger percentage of people using two monitors at home now than in 2019.  Big monitor is at it again

It's the monitor lizards

[astfgyl]

Here's a monitor lizard right now to explain a few things to us all....

https://twitter.com/i/status/1388142787703578624



Yeah right Leo, thanks for the bonus. I'm going off now to find someone/anyone vaccinated so I can sit in their house with no mask on. This has gone beyond absurd when the whole country has been doing what they like since at least February. Giving people a bonus of what they are doing only the bonus is more restrictive than the reality.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Haha, that is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXw7LYWNi5E

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Sorry, didn't register this reply:

Very good! Well spotted.

Why do they only want to sequence specimens obtained at ct28 or less? Is it because they don't expect to find anything worth working on at the higher values?

I would imagine it's because they're looking for variants that may be vaccine resistant and they want to be sure that they have fully intact specimens in order to render reliable and reproducible sequences. With higher cycle values, there is a risk of fragments of the virus being detected which would be less reliable for sequencing, but could easily, at the same time, be evidence of recent infection. So, if your strategy is erring on the side of caution, then you'd make sure you use high cycle rates for tracking the spread of a viral disease but lower cycle rates when you want to be sure you're accurately identifying and tracking any virulent mutations in the virus.

I see that in the US now - despite the recent silly sideshow of people trying to shoehorn a vaccination strategy into a question of individual rights and liberties - that the problem is rapidly becoming one of not enough take-up rather than not enough access.

[astfgyl]

Sorry, didn't register this reply:

Very good! Well spotted.

Why do they only want to sequence specimens obtained at ct28 or less? Is it because they don't expect to find anything worth working on at the higher values?

I would imagine it's because they're looking for variants that may be vaccine resistant and they want to be sure that they have fully intact specimens in order to render reliable and reproducible sequences. With higher cycle values, there is a risk of fragments of the virus being detected which would be less reliable for sequencing, but could easily, at the same time, be evidence of recent infection. So, if your strategy is erring on the side of caution, then you'd make sure you use high cycle rates for tracking the spread of a viral disease but lower cycle rates when you want to be sure you're accurately identifying and tracking any virulent mutations in the virus.

I see that in the US now - despite the recent silly sideshow of people trying to shoehorn a vaccination strategy into a question of individual rights and liberties - that the problem is rapidly becoming one of not enough take-up rather than not enough access.

Okay, that all sounds reasonable enough, and in a way agrees with what I was querying. I think after over a year now though we could all throw caution to the wind a bit and get back living though and maybe the rapid antigen testing is overdue to end the cycle threshold argument for good. We can surely manage our own levels of risk by now but I won't knock the initial approach of overly sensitive testing and unjustified lockdowns. It seemed prudent at the time and although in hindsight it hasn't worked, I was all for it myself at the start.

regarding the vaccine/personal freedom debate, the easy way to fix that is to stop the coercion, have the product there for all who wish to avail of it and never mix politics with public health again. A fine example of this is to look at how many red vs blue states have lifted mandates. Playing politics with health no matter what either side say they are doing it.

Edit: In a lot of ways I could be a bit more moderate myself with a lot of this. It has gone into silly stuff from every angle and a moderate viewpoint is surely what is needed.

Edit 2: Also in the spirit of scientific endeavour and following the science we all need to acknowledge that there is plenty of science still to come with this thing before we decide if vaccines are the answer to the current problem. An example here https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/05/01/major-study-finds-abundance-of-patients-admitted-to-hospital-with-covid-within-seven-days-of-vaccination/ not confirmed but worth considering and maybe why some advise that vaccinating during high prevalence is not the way to go.

Also this is worth a look, regarding the spike protein mimicked by some of the vaccines and why there might be adverse reactions to it. Again not definitive but worth thinking about sometime before we indiscriminately vaccinate everyone...  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.05.21252960v1.full  This suggests that the entire premise of the vaccinations may be misguided. And I stress that it's not definitive but that's the whole point with following the science. If things were done correctly we would still be striving for a vaccine by all means but the EUA would not be granted with such low levels of research into mid and long term effects..

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Also this is worth a look, regarding the spike protein mimicked by some of the vaccines and why there might be adverse reactions to it. Again not definitive but worth thinking about sometime before we indiscriminately vaccinate everyone...  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.05.21252960v1.full  This suggests that the entire premise of the vaccinations may be misguided. And I stress that it's not definitive but that's the whole point with following the science. If things were done correctly we would still be striving for a vaccine by all means but the EUA would not be granted with such low levels of research into mid and long term effects..

The mRNA vaccine mimicks a part of the spike protein precisely in order to target it, and one of the intro conclusions of that medrxiv preprint is that vaccines targeting the spike protein would be of therapeutic benefit. Am I to guess that some blogger picked it up totally wrong and communicated a pro-vaccine conclusion as a doubt-sowing distortion?

We conclude that the spike protein may have pathological effects directly, without being taken up by cells. This provides further evidence that targeting it directly, whether via vaccines or antibodies, is likely to be of therapeutic benefit.

[astfgyl]

Also this is worth a look, regarding the spike protein mimicked by some of the vaccines and why there might be adverse reactions to it. Again not definitive but worth thinking about sometime before we indiscriminately vaccinate everyone...  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.05.21252960v1.full  This suggests that the entire premise of the vaccinations may be misguided. And I stress that it's not definitive but that's the whole point with following the science. If things were done correctly we would still be striving for a vaccine by all means but the EUA would not be granted with such low levels of research into mid and long term effects..

The mRNA vaccine mimicks a part of the spike protein precisely in order to target it, and one of the intro conclusions of that medrxiv preprint is that vaccines targeting the spike protein would be of therapeutic benefit. Am I to guess that some blogger picked it up totally wrong and communicated a pro-vaccine conclusion as a doubt-sowing distortion?

We conclude that the spike protein may have pathological effects directly, without being taken up by cells. This provides further evidence that targeting it directly, whether via vaccines or antibodies, is likely to be of therapeutic benefit.

You are meant to take it to mean that the research into both the virus itself and its mode of transmission is still ongoing and how it replicates in the body and which of the proteins are the important ones in terms of pathogenicity is all still the subject of investigation and yet somehow that has all translated into the idea of giving 7 billion people a vaccine, based on what is known so far. I said it wasn't definitive and that is the point. It could be taken as meaning yes the right thing is to use the mRNA as it is, or it could mean that it maybe needs to be adjusted to a target a different sequence to be perfected, that the idea is sound but needs work. I could surely find bloggers and likely even research to say that it is either the best thing ever or completely misguided. Perhaps the mimicking of the spike protein in itself is enough to elicit a vascular response which is undesirable or perhaps it doesn't do that at all or perhaps looking at it as a respiratory pathogen in the first instance is wrong too and the respiratory effects which don't occur in many many of those infected are a symptom of some other function of the virus. There is research from Italy which suggests that it replicates in bacteria, which would lead to a whole new branch of research into both therapeutics and preventatives and whether it's right or wrong, it does show that the research is ongoing and nowhere near the science being settled or anything of the sort. Yet I've had it beaten into my head to follow the science for the last 14 months and the world shut down by following the science, and we will sure as fuck be following the science when the avalanche of cancer cases comes to the fore in the next few years, not to mention how many other undiagnosed conditions are out there waiting to come next. So regardless of how it is reported, the fact that the studies are still being done shows how little is actually known along with how much is known. Yet here we are.... follow the science!!!

Here's another link to a bit of study that says we are only beginning to understand the mechanics of the thing we already have a vaccine for... https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/

I have been confirming some other things over the last few days too, regarding case counts in countries with little to no cases and what happened in them after the rollout began. Coincidences abound!! I'll get back to that later though.

Edit: Opened up twitter to find this on the side: https://twitter.com/i/events/1389367239225208835

Fact checkers have checked and... yeah run a mile from the ministry of truth. Wow, somebody really wants me to get injected with this thing. It's worth noting that the payouts over the swine flu shot (pandemrix) were being settled out of court by the Irish government in 2020 after being administered in 2009. Check out some of the headlines and advice from the time to see how much we were all assured it was perfectly safe and look at the people advocating for it back then. History repeating itself only bigger and better this time. The fact that is there on the side of twitter when I open it shows that maybe I'm not the only one suffering from a bit of hesitancy.

[Kurt Cocaine]

I see the mutant two headed Indian variant has hit the US already... 

[Kurt Cocaine]

 

[astfgyl]

Up next is the climate crisis, mark my words.

Oh how handy that we have discovered the idea of lockdowns... that will surely come in handy in a climate crisis. Fact checkers have assured me that having my life micromanaged by an incompetent government is the best way out of a climate crisis. For the good of us all we need our every move and thought tracked!

[astfgyl]

Ok, here is a fucking beauty..

Follow the science!! https://twitter.com/AP/status/1388161501769486337

The preceding link has been fact checked by the Associated Press.