Opinion: There’s nothing ‘incidental’ about hospital patients with COVID-19 - The Globe and Mail - "Practically, it doesn’t matter if COVID-19 infections are incidental or not. Hospitals are full to bursting. Many have “ANB status,” meaning patients can be admitted but there are no beds. They lie in ER corridors... Often, it is assumed that the “with” patients are less sick, or less affected, and that’s not necessarily true. We have systematically played down the deaths of people with underlying health conditions, failing to acknowledge how the virus hastened their demise."
I remember when people were mocking when I pointed out that not everyone in hospital with covid was in hospital for covid - even after public health officials had pointed out the importance of the distinction
Practically, given that full hospitals are used to justify lockdowns, it absolutely matters if people are in hospital for covid or with it
Of course we are supposed to assume that many people are in hospital because covid worsened their health in some other way
EDITORIAL: Getting better COVID-19 data | Toronto Sun - " Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s top doctor, announced last Tuesday the number of COVID-19 deaths in the province. “This includes the death of a 14-year-old who had complex, pre-existing medical medical conditions that played a significant role in their death,” Hinshaw said, adding: “I extend my deepest condolences to the loved ones of all of these individuals.”... not every person listed in Canada as a COVID-19 death died exclusively from the virus. When it comes to kids, there have been cases where medical officers have clarified that COVID-19 was not in fact the cause of death. This brings us back to Hinshaw: This would have been the first death of a minor of COVID-19 in the province and Albertans were rightly saddened by this news. The only problem was it didn’t tell the full story. The family was upset that the teen had been mentioned this way in the news because, as they told media, the boy in fact died after a months long battle with a brain tumour. He only tested positive for COVID-19 two days before his death. On Thursday, Hinshaw apologized to the family for making the announcement the way she had done. She also announced that, moving forward, they will not publicly report any COVID-19 deaths in anyone under 18 until a proper review of the death has been completed."
VEZINA: Think about what denying health care to the unvaccinated means | Toronto Sun - "1. Deny health care to the unvaccinated...
Risks: Potential for widespread civil unrest; long-term effects on medical ethics with a precedent having been set; disproportionate impact on workers and industries required to keep critical infrastructures operational...
2. Deny ICU health care to all COVID-only patients, regardless of vaccine status...
Risks: Easy to abuse in terms of preferential treatment on an individual basis; difficult to implement in terms of practicality; potential staffing shortages, with some frontline health-care workers viewing this as the “last straw” ethically and quitting...
3. Reach endemic status rapidly, to decrease hospital load over the long term...
Risks: Over the short term, a scenario from hell with increased deaths, the hospital system strained beyond maximum capacity during this period; increased chances of a new Canadian variant developing; it will appear to the public as if governments are abandoning frontline health care."
Given that we know lockdowns don't reduce deaths, going to endemic might've been the best approach. Pity about politics
It’s a Terrible Idea to Deny Medical Care to Unvaccinated People - The Atlantic - "I ran this argument past several ethicists, clinicians, and public-health practitioners. Many of them sympathized with the exasperation and fear behind the sentiment. But all of them said that it was an awful idea—unethical, impractical, and founded on a shallow understanding of why some people remain unvaccinated... “We don’t use the medical-care system as a way of meting out justice. We don’t use it to punish people for their social choices.” The matter “is pretty cut-and-dry,” Sara Murray, a hospitalist at UC San Francisco, added. “We have an ethical obligation to provide care for people regardless of the choices they made, and that stands true for our unvaccinated patients.”... People whose actions endangered themselves, like smokers with lung cancer or drivers who crash while not wearing a seatbelt, still get treated. Those whose actions endangered others, like drunk drivers or terrorists, also get treated. “We are all sinners,” Carla Keirns, a professor of medical ethics and palliative medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, told me. “No one has made all the perfect decisions, and any of us could find ourselves in a situation where we are sick.” It is a fundamental principle of modern medicine that “everyone has an equal claim to relief from suffering, no matter what they’ve done or haven’t done,” Daniel Goldberg, a medical historian and public-health ethicist at the University of Colorado, told me. As historical examples show, the most privileged people usually benefit when care is allocated. In the 1960s, when dialysis machines were still rare, a group of seven laypeople were tasked with deciding which patients should receive the lifesaving treatment. Among factors such as age, sex, marital status, wealth, and education, the so-called God Committee also considered which people had “the highest potential of service to society” and were “active in church work.” Unsurprisingly, as later analyses showed, the committee favored middle-aged, middle-class white men. “When it became public, Americans were outraged,” Keirns told me. “They recognized that when you try to make moral distinctions, you end up holding against people circumstances beyond their control.” A person’s choices are always constrained by their circumstances. Even now, unvaccinated people are not all refusers. Using recent survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the health-policy researcher Julia Raifman and the economist Aaron Sojourner have shown that unvaccinated Americans are disproportionately poor—and within the lowest income brackets, people who want or would consider a vaccine outnumber those who would never get one. That they still haven’t gotten the shots might seem inexplicable to people who can just pop into their local CVS. But people who live in poor neighborhoods might not have a local pharmacy, or public transport that would take them to one, or internet access that would allow them to book an appointment. People who earn hourly wages might not have time for a vaccination appointment, or paid sick leave for weathering any side effects... Unvaccinated people are twice as likely to lack health insurance as their vaccinated counterparts, so to a degree, the U.S. is already denying them care. To lean into that denial “would compound the unjust disparities that they already face”... Moral arguments aside, withholding care from unvaccinated people is also logistically unfeasible. No one I talked with could imagine a patient arriving in need and having to wait while a health-care worker checks their vaccine card. But if the hospital crisis gets worse, the urge to conserve resources may force health-care workers to make tough choices. Vaccinated patients are more likely to survive a coronavirus infection than unvaccinated ones, and health-care workers might give them more attention as a medical judgment rather than a moral one. (But such calculus is tricky: “You should preferentially give monoclonal antibodies to unvaccinated people,” Wynia told me, because each dose will be more likely to keep someone out of the hospital.)... “Stigma and discrimination as a prism for allocating health-care services is already embedded in our society,” Goldberg told me. “The last thing we should do is to celebrate it.”... Most important, unvaccinated people are not the only ones transmitting the coronavirus. They’re more likely to do so than vaccinated people, but the latter are still contributing to the virus’s spread—and perhaps substantially so, given Omicron’s ability to partially evade immune defenses. Vaccinated people might have low personal risk of severe illness, but they can still slingshot the virus to vulnerable people who then end up in hospitals. They might not be occupying emergency rooms with their bodies, but they can still help fill those rooms through their actions."
Vaxholes just want to punish the unvaccinated,. Some have already admitted it
Report: German Government Considering Shutting Down Telegram - "A report in the German newspaper Die Welt suggests that the government there is considering taking action to shut down messaging app Telegram because people opposed to COVID restrictions and lockdowns are using it to organise protests and share information... Telegram founder Pavel Durov warned that people are “being held hostage by tech monopolies.” In addition to being independent from big tech, Telegram promises robust end-to-end encryption, ensuring messages remain private. This has made Telegram a target for authoritarians and big tech monopolists. In the U.S. lobbyist group The Coalition for a Safer Web even filed a lawsuit against Apple in an effort to get Telegram removed from the app store, claiming that it allows ‘extremists’ to spread ‘hate speech’."
War memorial defaced with graffiti: ‘The real heroes are the vaccinated’ - "A war memorial in Cranbrook, British Columbia was defaced before the town celebrated its veterans for Remembrance Day on Thursday with a pro-vaccine message in green spray paint. "The real heroes are the vaccinated," the graffiti read."
As ‘stealth omicron’ advances, scientists are learning more - The Globe and Mail - "Does BA.2 make you sicker? A Japanese lab study suggests that it could, based on experiments with hamsters. Researchers concluded that the risk for global health “is potentially higher” from BA.2 and proposed that it be given its own Greek letter — a designation for globally significant “variants of concern.” WHO’s technical group said BA.2 should remain under the omicron umbrella. Though the severity experiments were conducted in animals, the study is “not something to discount,” said Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research Translational Institute. “We should keep an open mind and keep assessing this.” But scientists are finding something different when they look at people. An initial analysis in Denmark showed no differences in hospitalizations for BA.2 compared with the original omicron, which tends to generally cause milder disease than the delta variant. More recently, researchers in South Africa found much the same: a similar risk of hospitalization and severe disease with the original omicron variant and BA.2. “We always have to interpret studies in animals with caution,” Long said. “I place more weight in studies of actual patients and what they’re experiencing.”"
Non-mRNA vaccines can be as good as Pfizer and Moderna in some scenarios - ""a single vaccine dose was sufficient to confer benefit [in the Israeli study]," Moore says, which suggests that among people who have already been infected, the standard two-dose regime is not necessary. Halving the two-shot regimen for previously infected people "would save a lot of doses and hence needs to be seriously considered""
Israel Finds Fourth COVID Booster Is Only 'Partially Effective,' Vast Majority Of Hospitalised Omicron Patients Are Unvaccinated - "A fourth COVID-19 booster mRNA vaccine has proven ineffective against Omicron infection, according to preliminary research from Israel... “Despite a significant increase in antibodies after the fourth vaccine, this protection is only partially effective against the Omicron strain, which is relatively resistant to the vaccine,” lead researcher Prof Gili Regev-Yochay, told a media briefing... there had been a five-fold increase in antibodies in people who took the fourth dose, but she later told a radio station that “the amount of antibodies returns to the level it was after the third vaccine, not more. It’s nice, but it’s not what we expect from a booster.” In addition, around the same percentage of hospital workers who received the fourth dose caught the virus as those who didn’t get the fourth booster... About half the proportion of NYC hospitalized patients required intensive care during the Omicron wave compared to the peak of the winter 2020-2021 wave – about 11% versus about 20%, according to a NYC health department report released late last week. “In NYC, those most likely to be hospitalized are people who are not vaccinated, and a higher proportion of Black New Yorkers and people age 75 and older were hospitalized,” according to the report. “New Yorkers who were not vaccinated were more than eight times more likely to be hospitalized compared to New Yorkers who were fully vaccinated, early in the Omicron wave. Differences in health outcomes among racial and ethnic groups are due to long-term structural racism, not biological or personal traits”... a pre-print study of COVID-19 cases in southern California compiled by Kaiser Permanente of over 52,000 Omicron infections and almost 17,000 Delta infections, found 0.5% of hospital admissions for Omicron patients and 1.3% for those infected with the Delta variant. Rates of ICU admission from Omicron patients were 0.26 fold those of Delta, while mortality for Omicron patients was 0.09 fold that of Delta patients. No Omicron patients received mechanical ventilation in comparison to 11 Delta patients, and Omicron patients stayed in hospital on average 3.4 days less than Delta patients."
Clearly they need to force people to get a fifth shot or be fired
Weird how obesity, vaccine hesitancy and genes are not why some racial and ethnic groups do worse with covid than others. Then again, if you can blame obesity and vaccine hesitancy on "long-term structural racism", I'm sure you can find a way to do the same for genes
What multiple vaccinations really do to your body - "“I would get a fourth jab if it meant supporting the vulnerable people in our community, but the introduction of fourth vaccines also makes me nervous,” says 37-year-old Tania Taylor. “I’m getting married at the end of July, and I’ve already had some people drop out due to France’s strict vaccine requirements. If the UK starts with fourth jabs, does that mean other European countries will too? And will that mean travel is impacted even more?” This hesitance has already been seen in Israel where the country’s vaccine advisory panel recommended a fourth Covid vaccine dose to all adults at the end of January. However, so far, uptake has been limited, with Israeli scientists attributing this to increasing public scepticism about the necessity of a fourth dose. Some have dubbed this ‘vaccine fatigue.’ “People aren’t sure that it’s really needed,” says Gideon Schreiber, a virologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. “They feel, ‘OK, I’ll take another booster and it will be good for a few months but then the antibodies will go down, and I’ll start all over again.’” Some new studies have suggested that this attitude might well be justified as for most healthy adults, three doses appear to be sufficient to protect them from serious illness for a long time. This is because antibodies are not the only tool that vaccines use to fend off the virus. The Pfizer and Moderna jabs are also designed to stimulate specialised immune cells called T-cells, which can detect many more parts of the spike protein than antibodies, enabling them to still detect highly mutated forms of the Covid virus. The vaccines also encode a memory of the virus in B cells, which can activate and rapidly produce new antibodies on demand in cases of a new infection. Unlike antibodies, the B and T-cells generated as a result of three jabs appear to be capable of providing active protection for many years. Virologists believe this is one of the main reasons why people who are still reinfected with Covid following vaccination are much less likely to be hospitalised. As a result, Werbel believes that governments should focus their attention primarily on providing repeat vaccinations to people who are most at risk rather than targeting the general population with further boosters."
Got a Covid Booster? You Probably Won’t Need Another for a Long Time - The New York Times - "How soon before they need yet another shot? Not for many months, and perhaps not for years, according to a flurry of new studies. Three doses of a Covid vaccine — or even just two — are enough to protect most people from serious illness and death for a long time, the studies suggest. “We’re starting to see now diminishing returns on the number of additional doses,” said John Wherry, director of the Institute for immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. Although people over 65 or at high risk of illness may benefit from a fourth vaccine dose, it may be unnecessary for most people, he added... other parts of the immune system can remember and destroy the virus over many months if not years, according to at least four studies published in top-tier journals over the past month. Specialized immune cells called T cells produced after immunization by four brands of Covid vaccine — Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax — are about 80 percent as powerful against Omicron as other variants, the research found. Given how different Omicron’s mutations are from previous variants, it’s very likely that T cells would mount a similarly robust attack on any future variant as well, researchers said. This matches what scientists have found for the SARS coronavirus, which killed nearly 800 people in a 2003 epidemic in Asia. In people exposed to that virus, T cells have lasted more than 17 years... Throughout the pandemic, a disproportionate amount of research attention has gone to antibodies, the body’s first line of defense against a virus. That’s partly because these molecules are relatively easy to study: They can be measured from a drop of blood. Analyzing immune cells, by contrast, requires milliliters of blood, skill, specialized equipment — and a lot of time. “It’s orders of magnitude slower and more laborious,” Dr. Burgers said. Few labs have the wherewithal to study these cells, and their findings lag weeks behind those on antibodies. Perhaps as a result, scientists have frequently overlooked the importance of other parts of the immune system, experts said. “Most people don’t even know what they are — a lot of doctors and scientists are not completely clear what a T cell is,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who led one of the T-cell studies... Antibodies spike after every shot of vaccine — or after each exposure to the virus — and inevitably decline within a few weeks to months. Waning antibody levels after two vaccine doses prompted federal officials to recommend boosters for everyone older than 12. The extra shots fortified antibody levels and helped to contain Omicron’s spread, but they too appear to lose some of their ability to prevent infections within four months... the recent studies suggest that in most people, the immunity gained from infection or vaccination will hold up for a long while"
Covid hystericists will be demanding 3 boosters a year
This won't make governments recognise natural immunity, since there's no money in that
What do we know about covid vaccines and preventing transmission? - "Vaccine effectiveness against infection, hospital admission, and mortality have all taken a hit when pitted against the omicron variant, and it seems only logical that the impact against transmission would likewise drop."
A vaxhole claimed that I was making un unwarranted assumption that just because the vaccines were less useful against omicron infection than the original covid strain, they would also be less useful against omicron transmission, so I threw this BMJ article at her. Apparently covid infection has nothing to do with covid transmission. It's amazing how dumb people become when they beg the question and have a narrative they can't bear to be challenged.
Apparently there's nothing wrong with assuming that there're no long term side effects from covid vaccines. But vaxholes are very happy to make that assumption
ZUBY: on Twitter - "An 'emergency' does not last for 2+ years."
25 US states want to 'prioritize' non-whites for vaccines | The Post Millennial - ""According to our analysis, 25 states have committed to a focus on racial and ethnic communities as they decided which groups should be prioritized in receiving a coronavirus vaccine dose," tweeted Jon Levine... Twelve of the 25 states which have specifically targeted communities of color for receiving the vaccine on a priority bases have gone as far as working with healthcare companies which are based in areas with large minority populations"
From 2020
Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change - "Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means."
So much for the "myth" of the slippery slope; we have already seen Malaysia and New Zealand push through tobacco bans for people born after a certain year
One eye on midterms, Dems ease up on approach to virus - "“People are tired,” Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock says in the opening ad for his reelection campaign. There’s not a face mask to be seen in the Democrat’s video montage of scenes across Georgia, as he goes on to say people that are “wondering when things will get back to normal, and at the same time not knowing what normal even means anymore.” The ad reflects a shifting narrative on COVID-19 restrictions across the country: Democrats are now increasingly supportive of easing mandates as they struggle to address voter frustration with the lingering pandemic... More than a year after he was sworn into office pledging to bring about an end to the pandemic, the virus’ persistence has taken a toll on Biden’s approval in the midterm election year as COVID-19 restrictions and mask-wearing requirements move to the forefront of the nation’s culture wars. After months of sparring with Republican governors for standing in the way of public health measures like face-coverings and social distancing, the sudden shift on the part of Democrats in recent days has caught White House officials off guard and left them seemingly out of sync with their own party. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend indoor masking in more than 99% of the country, even Democratic states from New York to California began easing mandates for the public, and New Jersey announced plans to roll back its face-covering requirement in schools... According to an AP-NORC last month, just 45% say they approve of Biden’s handling of COVID-19, down from 57% in December and from 66% in July 2021... White House officials noted that the Democratic mask roll-backs coincided with sharply declining cases as a two-month nationwide surge in cases from the omicron variant was showing signs of ebbing. Even as Biden has shown reluctance, top Democrats are applauding the shift... Warnock’s ad stood in stark contrast to a photo from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams days earlier, which featured the candidate mask-less in front of a room of school-children with their faces covered. Abrams’ campaign insisted she had followed safety protocols, but later deleted the photo amid near-universal backlash."
Republicans call on Biden to end COVID's public health emergency designation - "Republicans in Congress have asked President Biden to end the designation of COVID-19 as a public health emergency (PHE), citing the accessibility of vaccines and effective treatments as well as the harms of long-term isolation on public health. Their request for the president to undo the designation comes as calls grow — including from former Biden advisers — for the federal government to chart a course for the next stage of the pandemic. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have plunged after the dramatic omicron-driven surge, and deaths have begun falling"
Subtle shift in China's Covid-19 approach but full reopening unlikely soon - "With sporadic Covid-19 clusters popping up across China, local governments have turned to a tried-and-tested playbook of lockdowns and movement controls. But two years into the pandemic, with economic growth starting to slow and consumer demand still sluggish, policymakers are subtly softening their stance, moving from a strict "zero-Covid-19" approach towards what they call "dynamic zero". In the latest iteration, officials are further finessing preventive and containment measures to ensure the least possible disruption to economic and social activity. The approach does not mean there will be "zero infections", Dr Liang Wannian, head of the Covid-19 response expert panel under the National Health Commission (NHC), told the official Xinhua news agency. It simply means outbreaks are quickly contained, he said. One of the biggest signals of a shift came from China's top economic planning body that last week ordered local governments to stop excessive control measures, which it said was hurting small and medium-sized businesses... "People in low-risk areas shall not be prohibited from returning to their home towns; the scope of medium and high-risk areas shall not be arbitrarily expanded," the paper said, adding that centralised quarantine cannot be arbitrarily implemented nor should the local authorities expand lockdown areas without prior approval... During the Chinese New Year holidays earlier this month, several local governments including in Shandong province had initially barred Beijing residents from returning to their home towns after an outbreak in the capital city, subjecting some to 14-day quarantine. After an outcry, the NHC issued a statement warning local governments against capriciously implementing policy. The shift was subtle but the message was clear: Gone are the days of enforcing lockdowns at all cost. China's services sectors, particularly small and medium-sized businesses in tourism, catering, entertainment and retail, have been hit particularly hard by excessive control measures. Despite better than expected overall economic growth, consumer demand has continued to lag... According to a McKinsey survey in October last year, after a spate of outbreaks following the National Day holiday, only 2 per cent of respondents planned to travel within the next two months."
Meme - Nikki Fried @NikkiFried: "I'll say this until blue in the face - our prosperity depends on public health. If businesses, especially those relying on group events, want to protect customers by requiring COVID vaccines, @GovRonDeSantis & the legislature shouldn't be stopping them."
Nikki Fried: "Never been a supporter of vaccine mandates or bans. have said that publicly"
Thread by @JohnnyABottom on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It's tough to capture how completely Covid has broken Canadian brains.
2 weeks ago at my gmother's funeral, the home roped off her casket. We removed the rope so ppl could pray. The attendant ran over huffing, "That rope protects her!" We were stunned. "But...she's dead."
The focus has been on (valid) Canadian anger against the mandates. But it doesn't capture the day-to-day paranoia, psychological derangement, and utter nonsense ppl there have been dealing with re fellow Canadians. It's genuinely difficult to capture how insane people have been. Not to mention the actual restrictions.
The viewing allowed 20 ppl in the room. The burial allowed 10. The immediate family is more than double that.
2 years into this & Canada is still insisting families can't bury loved ones. That ppl die alone. Absolutely unforgivable.
Also, as a clarification, I don't think the attendant literally thought we needed to protect my deceased gmother from Covid. I think ppl's brains have been so captured by propaganda & safety rationalizations they will repeat literal nonsense & agree to anything w/out thinking."
Excess deaths, increased mental health disorders and substance use: new CMA report highlights pandemic’s broader impact - "A new report commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) provides a stark overview of the broader impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Canadians. From delayed or missed treatments to a significant increase in the incidence of mental health and substance use disorders, the report highlights the dire consequences beyond the immediate loss of life and illness caused by the COVID-19 virus. The report, A Struggling System: Understanding the Health Care Impacts of the Pandemic, conducted by Deloitte, shows that delayed or missed health care services may have contributed to more than 4,000 excess deaths not related to COVID-19 infections between August and December 2020."
Meanwhile, between August and December 2020, only 6,696 people in Canada died due to covid - lockdowns were madness, especially since they don't reduce covid deaths
NP View: An Alberta court's wrongheaded order to compel anti-vaxxers to refute their own opinions - "Judge Adam Germain was ruling on punishments for three notorious anti-vaxxers: brothers Artur and Dawid Pawlowski, who lead a church in Calgary, and Christopher Scott, owner of a cafe in the central Alberta hamlet of Mirror... the judge seemed to be dissatisfied with his own leniency, and he unexpectedly waxed creative, issuing an order that the men, in lecturing or preaching from now on, must include a disclaimer stating that their ideas about vaccines are in conflict with the scientific consensus and majority medical opinion. As severalcharterexperts observed after hearing of the decision, this sounds an awful lot like compelled speech, something that Canadian law has correctly treated as equal to the suppression of speech, and is tantamount to the improvised creation of an official scientific credo."
Experts: When you might need a second Covid vaccine booster shot - "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing early data that could point to the authorization of a new booster dose this coming fall — potentially as the first in a series of annual Covid vaccinations, much like flu shots"
"The vaccines work. But you still need endless boosters"
Omicron-specific booster may not be needed, US monkey study finds
Meme - "Scientific Method
Ask a Question
Do Background Research
Construct a Hypothesis
Test with an experiment
Procedure working?
No -> Troubleshoot procedure, Carefully check all steps and set-up -> Test with an experiment
Yes -> Analyse Data and Draw Conclusions
Results Align with Hypothesis -> Communicate Results
Results Align Partially or Not at all with hypothesis -> Experimental data becomes background research for new/future project. Ask new question, form new hypothesis, experiment again -> Construct a Hypothesis
Science Worshiper's Method
Formulate or plagiarize a Hypothesis
Construct a Model Based on Preconceived ideas
Find Data that agrees with model
Discard Data that does not align with model
Shout "TRUST THE EXPERTS""
Opinion: Science doesn’t justify Imperial College of London’s claim of 5,000 deaths a day - "The Covid modellers at Imperial College have begun to back down. About time, too. Over the past few weeks, they have made extreme claims about the omicron variant that cannot be fully justified by fundamental science, let alone by clinical observation. Academic etiquette restrains direct criticism, but immunologists say privately that Professor Neil Ferguson and his team breached a cardinal rule by inferring rates of hospitalisation, severe disease, and death from waning antibodies, and by extrapolating from infections that break through the first line of vaccine defence. The rest are entitled to question whether they can legitimately do this. And we may certainly question whether they should be putting out terrifying claims of up to 5,000 deaths a day based on antibody counts. “It is bad science and I think they’re being irresponsible. They have a duty to reflect the true risks but this is just headline grabbing,” says Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK Vaccine Task Force. Needless to say, these headlines have spread as fast as omicron itself... Governments are so alarmed by the possibility that healthcare systems might collapse under pressure that they have neglected the opposite risk – and much more probable outcome – that omicron will largely bounce off a population where almost everybody has cell immunity from vaccines or past infection, and in the case of Britain where most vulnerable people have been triple jabbed for good measure. “To talk of 5,000 deaths a day is a very high number. It is risky to push apocalyptic scenarios that are highly unlikely to happen,” said Professor Francois Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics Institute. “What I am more worried about is a loss of trust in governments and public institutions for crying wolf. The mood is changing everywhere.” Balloux, who used to work with the Imperial team, said he understood why they had focused on neutralising antibodies: they are easy to measure and tell you how well the front-line fighters are doing against infection. But this has led to great confusion. The second line of defence, what really matters for serious illness, comes from B and T cell memory – either from jabs or prior illness. This carries on long after antibodies are no longer circulating in the blood. Cell memory is much harder to measure but is known to last much longer. “Cellular memory is still there for omicron and remains intact,” Balloux said. The first studies from around the world have begun validating the potency of cell memory against omicron, more or less as theoretical science would predict. A team at the University of Cape Town found that double-jabbed patients still had 70 per cent of the CD4 T cell response against the new variant, and full CD8 protection, despite the mutations. “T cells are holding out against omicron, and the data is very consistent across vaccines,” they told the US magazine Science. “From everything we know about T cells, this is what they do – control a virus once you’ve been infected. So this is their time to shine.” You would not know this from the series of claims in the past few weeks by Ferguson and his team that omicron “largely evades immunity”... Their assertion that vaccine efficacy for double-jabbers ranges from zero to 20 per cent was misleading. Nor can they legitimately assert that there is “no evidence of omicron having lower severity than delta” since their sample was vanishingly small, the timeline was too short, and they did not know the denominator of actual omicron infections since so many asymptomatic cases passed undetected. The clinical pattern worldwide suggests otherwise. That is “evidence”... There is an interesting twist to this. The AstraZeneca adenovirus vaccine scores well on cell memory and may ultimately protect better than messenger RNA jabs such as Pfizer-BioNTech, now that we are relying more on this second line of defence. He believes the UK should have stuck with AstraZeneca for mix-and-match boosters. Dix said the political class in the UK – and more broadly in Europe – does not understand the difference between front-line antibodies and lasting cell memory, and is therefore succumbing to unnecessary alarmism. He assumes that Professor Chris Whitty and his close colleagues do understand but went along with Imperial’s claims as a tool of public policy, hoping to cajole more people into getting booster jabs. Anthony Fauci in the US is apparently thinking along the same lines. But it is a double-edged strategy. It risks a loss of faith in vaccines altogether... “If you have to pick between bronchitis and pneumonia, I can tell you, take bronchitis any day”... the case fatality rate of omicron for populations with broad immunity is 25 to 30 times lower than the earlier pre-vaccinated waves. There is a 90 per cent drop in hospitalisation rates, and a further two-thirds drop in death rates after admission. This takes it down to the levels of seasonal flu. He said data from Australia is the most “elegant” yet, showing two simultaneous outbreaks of Covid in a well-vaccinated population; one delta, the other omicron. The hospitalisation rate of omicron is roughly half... The high probability is that omicron will disappoint the alarmists and frustrate those of a hairshirt puritan character who almost seem to want lockdowns as a form of self-flagellation. The rest of us can get on with our lives and leave the antibody modellers to build castles in the air."
You can only be irresponsible if you paint a rosy picture about covid, not if you doom monger
