Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

This may not work for everyone's states but there is a website where you can sign up for text notifications for available vaccines in your area. I got a text this morning that CVS pharmacies in my area had the vaccine. You can then go to the link in the text which will take you to the site of the provider where you can check your eligibility. Since I'm not in the 1A/1B group, I can't get the vaccine yet.


walmart has a similar site, here
 
Yet another call from developing nations for rich countries to share the formula so they can vaccinate their people. Remember, that the science that these vaccines are based on (the hardest part of this whole thing) was done with public money by researchers who's desire was to share their discovery with the world.

The governments of the world's wealthiest countries—including the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom—are facing growing backlash for continuing to block an India and South Africa-led proposal to temporarily waive a restrictive global intellectual property rights agreement, an effort aimed at spurring broad-based production of coronavirus vaccines and getting the shots to poor nations struggling to administer a single dose.

According to Oxfam International, a member of the People's Vaccine Alliance, "rich countries are vaccinating at a rate of one person per second yet are siding with a handful of pharmaceutical corporations in protecting their monopolies against the needs of the majority of developing countries."

On Thursday—the one-year anniversary of the WHO's official global pandemic declaration—representatives from the U.S. and other wealthy nations teamed up to thwart, once again, the push by more than 100 member nations of the World Trade Organization to suspend certain provisions of the so-called TRIPS Agreement, an intellectual property rights arrangement.

"The proposal was co-sponsored by 57 countries in the trade group and on Thursday support split largely along the lines of the WTO's self-identified developed and developing countries," Law360 reported. "The only developing country to oppose the waiver was Brazil."

 
Our Premier just announced that we'll all have our first doses by June 24, which is 3 months early. Not as fast all all you US folks (maybe you'll start sharing with all of us soon?) but pretty damn good, truth be told.
 
Why, oh why do I choose to engage and argue with my anti-vax coworker?? I guess it's because he was blaring some BS loudly on his phone and calling us idiots for getting the Covid vaccine...so I lost my cool.
He says it's not actually a vaccine, and it's killing people by the thousands, unreported.
I said I'd rather listen to the scientists on this and he said he IS listening to a scientist. (I heard this "scientist" use the word incidences while blabbing his blabs) Flustered, I just said, fine I guess we all die and you idiots can have to earth to yourselves.

Also, Hank Aaron died from the vaccine two days after getting it? That's news to me.
 
Why, oh why do I choose to engage and argue with my anti-vax coworker?? I guess it's because he was blaring some BS loudly on his phone and calling us idiots for getting the Covid vaccine...so I lost my cool.
He says it's not actually a vaccine, and it's killing people by the thousands, unreported.
I said I'd rather listen to the scientists on this and he said he IS listening to a scientist. (I heard this "scientist" use the word incidences while blabbing his blabs) Flustered, I just said, fine I guess we all die and you idiots can have to earth to yourselves.

Also, Hank Aaron died from the vaccine two days after getting it? That's news to me.
Sorry you're having to deal with that. How frustrating 😬
 
Why, oh why do I choose to engage and argue with my anti-vax coworker?? I guess it's because he was blaring some BS loudly on his phone and calling us idiots for getting the Covid vaccine...so I lost my cool.
He says it's not actually a vaccine, and it's killing people by the thousands, unreported.
I said I'd rather listen to the scientists on this and he said he IS listening to a scientist. (I heard this "scientist" use the word incidences while blabbing his blabs) Flustered, I just said, fine I guess we all die and you idiots can have to earth to yourselves.

Also, Hank Aaron died from the vaccine two days after getting it? That's news to me.
Yeah, at the point where everyone has had ample time to get vaccinated and it be effective, that's the point when I stop worrying about accidentally infecting people who aren't taking precautions.

Hank Aaron died of natural causes two weeks after publicly getting the vaccine, there is zero evidence that ties his death to the COVID vaccine. He was 86 years old.
 
Yeah, at the point where everyone has had ample time to get vaccinated and it be effective, that's the point when I stop worrying about accidentally infecting people who aren't taking precautions.

Hank Aaron died of natural causes two weeks after publicly getting the vaccine, there is zero evidence that ties his death to the COVID vaccine. He was 86 years old.
If you think everyone who gets the COVID vaccine isn't going to die I have bad news for you.
 
Sorry you're having to deal with that
Thanks, I can't believe how quickly I got upset. I had been able to ignore him through all the voter fraud BS fairly easily, but this is really hitting a nerve. Going out of his way to spread misinformation is just so shitty.
Hank Aaron died of natural causes two weeks after publicly getting the vaccine, there is zero evidence that ties his death to the COVID vaccine
And yet, I can't convince him of that. It's all a cover up, he knows because someone on Youtube yelled it.
 
So plasma therapy might not actually be effective in treating Covid.

The open-label, phase 2 PLACID trial, published yesterday in BMJ, involved assigning moderately ill coronavirus patients in 39 hospitals across India to receive either two doses of convalescent plasma 24 hours apart or standard care from Apr 22 to Jul 14.

Forty-four (19%) of the 235 patients assigned to receive convalescent plasma clinically deteriorated or died by 28 days, as did 41 (18%) of the 229 assigned to usual care (risk difference, 0.008).

Thirty-four of 228 patients (15%) who completed treatment in the convalescent plasma group and 31 of 226 patients (14%) who completed treatment in the usual-care group died. The deaths of 3 participants (1%) were recorded as possibly related to convalescent plasma.

Levels of neutralizing antibodies were available for 224 of 235 patients who received convalescent plasma; 160 (71.4%) received at least one unit of plasma with detectable antibody concentrations. There was no difference in clinical worsening or death in patients who received plasma with high or undetectable antibody concentrations or who received only usual care.

Patients receiving the therapy were more likely to experience relief from shortness of breath and fatigue and test negative for coronavirus after 7 days but did not show lower levels of inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein, D-dimer, ferritin, or lactate dehydrogenase.

The authors called for future research to include antibody assays before the trial rather than only after to further clarify convalescent plasma's role in the treatment of coronavirus. "Convalescent plasma was not associated with a reduction in progression to severe COVID-19 or all cause mortality," they wrote. "This trial has high generalisability and approximates convalescent plasma use in real life settings with limited laboratory capacity."


 
For anyone curious about this latest source of (mis?)information on the vaccine, the guy's name is Dr Steven Hotze. Says he personally knows several people that died two days after getting the vaccine.

What is his angle? Why go through this?

I realized something in the last 20 minutes; my coworker is actually terrified of dying from the vaccine because he says his life insurance won't pay off if he dies from an experimental gene therapy treatment. This manipulation of people is gross, it really is.
 
For anyone curious about this latest source of (mis?)information on the vaccine, the guy's name is Dr Steven Hotze. Says he personally knows several people that died two days after getting the vaccine.

What is his angle? Why go through this?

I realized something in the last 20 minutes; my coworker is actually terrified of dying from the vaccine because he says his life insurance won't pay off if he dies from an experimental gene therapy treatment. This manipulation of people is gross, it really is.
A very short google search produced this on our dear Dr. Hotze:

Hotze is seeking to benefit from coronavirus fear as well. In his Facebook post entitled, “How we should live in a world with the coronavirus,” he recommends a vitamin and probiotic regimen to help you “strengthen your immune system and increase your energy level.” And guess what? You can order it directly from his website, at a cost of $125 for a 30-day supply.

“It sure seems like grifters are going to grift regardless of how incredibly distasteful that might be given the situation,” says Yoni Freedhoff, MD, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa who was a contributor to HealthNewsReview.org.


So short answer, he's profiting from being a snake oil salesman.

However, he's not the only one doing this.

Indeed, Hotze is not the only doctor exploiting the crisis. Several news organizations including The New York Times have chronicled the deceptive practices of Vladimir Zelenko, MD, a family doctor who has downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic and is treating patients with an unproven three-drug cocktail that includes hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that has been hyped by right-wing media and President Trump.

Then there’s Mehmet Oz, MD, who has appeared numerous times on Fox News shows in recent weeks mischaracterizing the evidence for that same drug. The Times’ Frank Bruni pointed out in an op-ed that Oz is “not a virologist. Not an epidemiologist. His actual specialty — cardiothoracic surgery — isn’t the most immediately relevant to the coronavirus. But his real specialty is using medicine as a means to maximum public exposure.”



So the reason they are doing all of this is to make a few bucks.
 
I've been seeing a couple papers floating around about the morbidity and mortality of the B117 strain. It seems to be linked to higher incidence of death and illness.

SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7, a variant first detected in the UK in September 20201, has spread to multiple countries worldwide. Several studies have established that B.1.1.7 is more transmissible than preexisting variants, but have not identified whether it leads to any change in disease severity2. Here we analyse a dataset linking 2,245,263 positive SARS-CoV-2 community tests and 17,452 COVID-19 deaths in England from 1 September 2020 to 14 February 2021. For 1,146,534 (51%) of these tests, the presence or absence of B.1.1.7 can be identified because of mutations in this lineage preventing PCR amplification of the spike gene target (S gene target failure, SGTF1). Based on 4,945 deaths with known SGTF status, we estimate that the hazard of death associated with SGTF is 55% (95% CI 39–72%) higher after adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, deprivation, care home residence, local authority of residence and test date. This corresponds to the absolute risk of death for a 55–69-year-old male increasing from 0.6% to 0.9% (95% CI 0.8–1.0%) within 28 days after a positive test in the community. Correcting for misclassification of SGTF and missingness in SGTF status, we estimate a 61% (42–82%) higher hazard of death associated with B.1.1.7. Our analysis suggests that B.1.1.7 is not only more transmissible than preexisting SARS-CoV-2 variants, but may also cause more severe illness.
 
I've been seeing a couple papers floating around about the morbidity and mortality of the B117 strain. It seems to be linked to higher incidence of death and illness.

SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7, a variant first detected in the UK in September 20201, has spread to multiple countries worldwide. Several studies have established that B.1.1.7 is more transmissible than preexisting variants, but have not identified whether it leads to any change in disease severity2. Here we analyse a dataset linking 2,245,263 positive SARS-CoV-2 community tests and 17,452 COVID-19 deaths in England from 1 September 2020 to 14 February 2021. For 1,146,534 (51%) of these tests, the presence or absence of B.1.1.7 can be identified because of mutations in this lineage preventing PCR amplification of the spike gene target (S gene target failure, SGTF1). Based on 4,945 deaths with known SGTF status, we estimate that the hazard of death associated with SGTF is 55% (95% CI 39–72%) higher after adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, deprivation, care home residence, local authority of residence and test date. This corresponds to the absolute risk of death for a 55–69-year-old male increasing from 0.6% to 0.9% (95% CI 0.8–1.0%) within 28 days after a positive test in the community. Correcting for misclassification of SGTF and missingness in SGTF status, we estimate a 61% (42–82%) higher hazard of death associated with B.1.1.7. Our analysis suggests that B.1.1.7 is not only more transmissible than preexisting SARS-CoV-2 variants, but may also cause more severe illness.
Saw that which is really concerning. I enjoyed this breakdown thread:



Which included these studies which thankfully seems to indicate that vaccines should remain effective against it. All the more reason for us to push for vaccination supply and adoption.


 
For anyone curious about this latest source of (mis?)information on the vaccine, the guy's name is Dr Steven Hotze. Says he personally knows several people that died two days after getting the vaccine.

What is his angle? Why go through this?

I realized something in the last 20 minutes; my coworker is actually terrified of dying from the vaccine because he says his life insurance won't pay off if he dies from an experimental gene therapy treatment. This manipulation of people is gross, it really is.

So a RNA vaccine is considered as a gene therapy treatment now? No gene is being integrated into the host cell and an RNA molecule is not a gene. Also, technically, a vaccine shouldn't be considered as being a treatment since it is administered into a healthy person and therefore nothing needs to be treated. Although, I guess you could say it's a preventative treatment if you want to play the role of an unscrupulous insurance company. Finally though, it's not experimental if it's approved by the FDA, no? Are the vaccines still under an emergency approval and would that still be considered as an experimental medicine?

Man, the things I'm glad I don't have to think about with our system....
 
So a RNA vaccine is considered as a gene therapy treatment now? No gene is being integrated into the host cell and an RNA molecule is not a gene. Also, technically, a vaccine shouldn't be considered as being a treatment since it is administered into a healthy person and therefore nothing needs to be treated. Although, I guess you could say it's a preventative treatment if you want to play the role of an unscrupulous insurance company. Finally though, it's not experimental if it's approved by the FDA, no? Are the vaccines still under an emergency approval and would that still be considered as an experimental medicine?

Man, the things I'm glad I don't have to think about with our system....

This Hotze guy goes on and on about how it IS experimental (wrong) never fully tested (wrong) and that it IS gene therapy. (wrong) I don't understand how a doctor (or anyone, but especially a doctor) can be SO irresponsible. I've been really wound up about this all day...and sadly I'm fully aware that this is just a fraction of all the misinformation out there. Meanwhile, my coworker is not only more scared of the vaccine than the virus, but he is telling everyone that will listen. Two other coworkers decided he and Hotze are correct and won't be getting the vaccine under any circumstances. An actual quote: "I'm the bread winner, I can't leave my wife with no money if the vaccine kills me, can't take that chance."
 
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