Coronavirus

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

If you haven't seen the Joe Rogan video where he uses his massive mental capacity to draw enormous conclusions from reading one sentence from the abstract of a 2015 paper about vaccines, well, don't bother. Here's the author of that paper explaining how Rogan's got it all wrong:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2021/08/08/joe-rogan-is-getting-this-completely-wrong-says-the-scientist-who-conducted-the-vaccine-study/

[Nazgûl]

Was listening to Sam Harris' podcast on vaccinations fr a couple of weeks ago, which was a decent listen. He got a ton of a backlash on Twitter from people for going fairly hard against people like Bret Weinstein (who he's had on his podcast) and Joe Rogan. Then on his Ask Me Anything episode just last week, he doubled down even more on his stance when responding to the backlash from the first one. He made some well considered points around podcasters or people with a platform spreading misinformation and why they should be taking responsibility.

You'll get both of them on Spotify if anybody is arsed in hearing them.

[Necro Red]

At this stage live music should begin again and indoor gigs also. Seems fine up north, why not down here? Literally paddy last as usual

[Ollkiller]

At this stage live music should begin again and indoor gigs also. Seems fine up north, why not down here? Literally paddy last as usual

Live outdoor music should have happened weeks ago. At this stage we have 75% of the population fully vaccinated. By September they reckon they'll have all adults done. So start of September open the indoor gigs. And tell people now.

[Giggles]

How do they reckon they'll have all adults done?

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Think they've said 90% of adults.

[astfgyl]

A woman's fully vaccinated father died from COVID-19, with her saying she "can't imagine how much more he would have suffered if he had not gotten the vaccine."

Yes she did say that. And this was also said..

According to Jan Patterson, an infectious disease specialist at UT Health, Rodriguez was right in her assessment, that her father would have suffered more if he had not been vaccinated."

He died! Get vaccinated for a fucking quicker death!

Sources: https://www.newsweek.com/daughter-fully-vaccinated-man-who-died-rare-covid-breakthrough-case-supports-shots-1618352
                https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/567402-fully-vaccinated-man-dies-of-covid-19-daughter

[astfgyl]

https://youtu.be/NVFLdnDEjaI?t=382

The surprising thing for me is that stuff gets on the telly at all. It's not new news btw it goes back a few weeks but fuck me is this insane and reminds me of the shite we have been getting served up for the last 18 months.

Not hearing much about Sweden these days for some reason, but a good bit about Australia. Looks like the Queensland lockdown is finished though so there is that. For now.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

1914, full page anti-small pox vax ad taken out in the New York Tribune. The rationale adopted seems familiar...
https://imgur.com/vuwI6g5

Sourced from reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/aqu98b/an_editorial_cartoon_about_the_antivax_movement/egjh607?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

[astfgyl]

1914, full page anti-small pox vax ad taken out in the New York Tribune. The rationale adopted seems familiar...
https://imgur.com/vuwI6g5

Indeed the bullshit must be called from all sides, and there's a lot of it to draw from. Is that ad any worse than the CMO saying not to talk to people, in spite of the fact that nobody actually knows how the virus is transmitted? It isn't really even though the ad was clearly horseshit.

Anything in there about dying a better death? Because that's where we are currently at with the propaganda from the pro side.

Does this rationale seem familiar while we're here?



I am also firmly of the belief that the whole backlash on vaccines is due to the attempts at mandating these vaccines via the passport and the constant push to take them from people who couldn't be trusted as far as they could be thrown, and less so to do with the perceived danger inherent in them. Making them open source could have gone a long way toward combating this but alas there was ridiculous fortunes to be made and so it wasn't to be.

As for the term "Anti-Vaxxer" applied to those who dissent or question the official narrative, well that's just as thick as shit just like it's as thick as shit to say all vaccines don't work because one doesn't like a particular type. I don't like lamb. Does that make me a vegetarian? Of course not. I also don't care if anyone else eats lamb as long as they don't try to force me to do so.

Newstalk had a piece on Ivermectin this morning as well. Amazing how much more trialing that this particular cheap and effective cure needs to go through even though it has been safely given to both humans and animals for about half a century, but those vaccines were absolutely fucking banged out using the infrastructure developed during GAVI's "Decade of Vaccines", with minimal approval due to the emergency nature of the situation. (https://medium.com/future-crunch/a-decade-of-vaccines-7f86a432d771 bit on that there from a neutral perspective and article not saying it's a bad thing, although a picture does paint a thousand words)

Then again, we've been over all of this for the last year or so and I'm just going to go back to finding things to laugh at for the next while, as we patiently await the results of the vaccine trials which are currently underway worldwide. Here's hoping they work!

[astfgyl]

https://dis-blog.thalesgroup.com/identity-biometric-solutions/2021/07/27/how-digital-id-can-help-citizens-access-government-services-from-anywhere

I think I made mention of this lark somewhere along the way....

"So-called digital 'vaccination passports' will play a key role in enabling citizens to access all manner of services and will act as a precursor to the rollout of mobile digital IDs."

No way, who would have seen that coming!?

[Blackout]

It is crazy the amount of conspiracies that people so readily dismissed as absurd only 6 months ago are now coming to fruition. Not saying what had been done is right or wrong btw.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

There's a living meta analysis of the major prophylactic treatments of COVID:
https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n949

I looked this up when Lex Fridman had whichever Weinstein brother on who was lauding ivermectin. In short, even by-passing the question of whether it is safe or not, the uncertainty of the studies that have been carried out on it couldn't really be any higher. In other words, anyone who is convinced ivermectin works, such as Weinstein, is relying on either anecdotal or unreliable evidence. So, you may think ivermectin is being unfairly subjected to a demand for more trials, but actually it is only being subjected to a demand for methodologically rigorous ones which, as you can see from the bmj meta analysis there, have not yet been forth-coming.

[astfgyl]

Methodologically rigourous? Do you mean like the vaccine trials, which are published online and are an absolute joke (https://media.tghn.org/medialibrary/2020/11/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol_Nov2020_Pfizer_BioNTech.pdf)? RCT where the placebo group were unblinded before the end of the study period, thus eliminating the control group? Sounds sort of unbelievable but it happened. New side effects added continuously to the safety data as they emerge? Sounds about right. In fact here's a favourite of mine regarding the trials from that BMJ you mention.. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037 and another from same author also regarding the trials https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/

Here's a meta-analysis of IVM trials: https://ivmmeta.com/ which you can peruse in your own time.

I haven't once listened to this Weinstein chap on any of it btw (I did mean to but never got around to it), but I have heard a good bit from Pierre Kory, who was on Newstalk speaking to Pat Kenny about IVM (https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-the-pat-kenny-show/an-icu-specialist-says-ivermectin-is-the-drug-that-can-end-the-pandemic). My own opinion is that both IVM and the vaccines should be used against the disease. Say for example with breakthrough cases, it's pure folly not to try cheap and safe drugs even if the results are 50/50. IVM is not the only one either and indeed lots of doctors recommend a multi-layered approach and including steroids as part of the recovery effort along with the likes of IVM. Sure look at the state of the results from Remdesivir and that is routinely used in treating C19 patients. Why? It does fuck all but it's worth plenty of coin.

Anyway, proper trials or no proper trials this shit is already certain to continue for years to come... https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-moderna-seen-reaping-billions-covid-19-vaccine-booster-market-2021-08-13/

Lastly, a serious and not being a smartarse question for those who have taken the shot: How do you all feel about the boosters, and the vaccine passes you have expiring every year thus virtually ensuring your continued participation? Is it a case of "all aboard!" or do any of you feel like it might have been slightly mis-sold?

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Rigorous/robust methodology = methodology that can be reproduced and reliably give similar results within a stated statistical margin.
If someone fucks up the execution of the methodology, say by unblinding the placebo group, that doesn't mean the methodology is in question. If someone followed the same methodology properly, they should find that if the treatment/vaccine is significantly effective, then it will be significantly different to the control group regardless of whether they were unblinded (though of course, you need at least one proper sized unblinded group to conclude this). The methodology itself is in question in too many of the ivermectin studies. The ivermectin advocating meta analysis you shared barely mentions such questions, and when it does it explains away why they may not be important, so I don't know what exactly you think it offers over the bmj meta analysis of prophylactics (including ivermectin) that I shared: https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n949

But anyway, here's why we're even talking about ivermectin, because you said this;

Amazing how much more trialing that this particular cheap and effective cure needs to go through

This is false. It doesn't need to go through "more" trialing. It needs to go through the same level of proper trialing. Even if you think the vaccine trials have been flawed, and let's even grant they have, it's ridiculous to even imagine that ivermectin has been through nearly the same amount of trialing for COVID. Lots of drugs are considered "safe", but that's not the criteria for doling them out willy-nilly for a particular medical reason.

The WHO has explicitly recommended against using remdesivir btw, stating there is no hard evidence it has any meaningful impact on COVID mortality. I'm pretty sure that's been mentioned before. They recommend against ivermectin too, for the same reason, except in the case of clinical trials on ivermectin, so they haven't closed that door. Unfortunately, again much like the hydroxychloroquine story, the ones closing the doors are the ones designing and carrying out the clinical trials, including the rather large Egyptian one retracted last month.

But yes, we agree that proprietary rights for the vaccines should never have been allowed to reside in the hands of corporate interests. Hardly surprising I'd think that though.