Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Clogs
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

Post by Clogs »

Denyer wrote: Sat Apr 03, 2021 6:51 pm...in the same sort of given period more people are likely to accidentally kill themselves falling on a sharp piece of mango.
Vicious brutes, mangoes.
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Tantrum
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Denyer wrote: Sat Apr 03, 2021 6:51 pm I don't think it makes much difference. Pfizer have fiddled the testing slightly in terms of reporting figures that cast the best light (most effective age group etc) the same as others. Roughly speaking, for the two dose ones the first dose is about equivalent to having been infected (but without the risks, possible organ damage etc) and cuts hospitalization and severe illness risks and the second tops it up.
It's not the Pfizer vs Moderna that bothers me. It's the 57 miles away vs on my way home from work that bothers me. Especially now that I learned my appointment time is 7am, meaning I have to leave my house by 5:40 am. Sunrise is 6:20 am. I'm going to try to go to bed around 10 pm so I get most of a full night's sleep before waking at 5 am. But, I'm a night owl by nature, so I don't know if I'll actually fall asleep any earlier than usual.

At least the place is easy to find, so I won't have to think much. The appoint says 7:00 am to 7:20 am, then 15 minutes to see if I have any adverse effects. I wonder if they'll consider it an adverse effect if I sleep during that time. I should be done by 7:40, home by 9 am, then back to sleep. Hopefully, while I'm there, I can make my 2nd shot appointment for a later time.

Edit: 1st shot done. As planned, I was home before 9 and went back to bed. My arm's barely sore from the shot. I'm otherwise feeling just a little off, but that's more likely to be from the interrupted sleep than the shot. They said they'd contact me about the 2nd dose, so I couldn't schedule a later time.

Also, I learned that the college radio station I set my alarm to plays century old Wild Bill Hickock serials at 5 am, probably because they don't expect many people to be listening that early.

2nd Edit: My arms a bit sorer now. It's not bad unless I try to extend and raise my arm at the same time.
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Sades
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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I get jabbed tomorrow \o/ was still in some sort of online queue but I had to go to the pharmacy on other business, talked to a pharmacist and just... booked an appointment.
Amazing what going in person can do.

And now I'm going to bed because "appointment" suddenly doesn't look like a real word. :yawn:
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Tantrum
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Work's starting local distribution tomorrow (Fri). I don't know if this means I'll be able to get me 2nd dose here, or if I'll have to go to Groton again. I checked the website for local distribution, and there's no days in my 2nd dose window.

Ivanka Trump got vaccinated today. The news was mainly about all the negative comments she got. I'm just surprised she didn't jump the line and get it months ago, like her dad did.

The J&J vaccine's been paused due to a literal one-in-a-million chance of unusual blood clots. People scheduled for J&J are having their appointments cancelled. Apparently, you can choose to not get any vaccine for a disease that's killed 1 out of every 60 Americans whose gotten it, but you can't choose to get a vaccine that's killed 1 of the 6 million people who's gotten it.
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Clay
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Tantrum wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:28 pm Work's starting local distribution tomorrow (Fri). I don't know if this means I'll be able to get me 2nd dose here, or if I'll have to go to Groton again. I checked the website for local distribution, and there's no days in my 2nd dose window.
I dunno. I got my first shot on the 1st with instructions to simply come back to the same site on the 28th, with the next appointment basically being auto-scheduled. Is there any way to call the site/organization that you got your first dose from?

As for the J&J being paused at the moment, apparently the blood clots it has caused have to be treated quite differently than the type of blood clots that occur normally within the affected demographic (women 30-49, I think?). And yeah, I understand the on-its-face absurdity to pull a vaccine that's harmful at a far, far smaller rate than the disease it's treating, but also consider that covid tends to kill relatively slowly compared to, say, an aneurysm caused by a blood clot. Even if someone who was scheduled for the J&J shot now doesn't get it and gets covid instead, they'll still have more opportunity for intervention and medical care than if they get an acute blood clot. But yeah, on its face it seems silly.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Unpopular opinion in this thread but I've cancelled my vaccine appointment.

I'm not anti-vax and fully agree with them but my reasoning is I am happy to accept the risk to myself of Covid (about 1 in a thousand I think for under 40's in general and I'm in good health so possibly lower) whilst further time passes to see if there are side effects. The vaccine has only been around a few months and they are already finding (all be it miniscule) possibilities of blood clots and it has barely been given to the under 40's so we still don't know the effects on them in a large scale over a period of time. I would just like it to have a few years with the general population and then in a couple of years I'm more than happy to take it, especially as I'll start to get older and at higher risk.

This doesn't mean I don't think people who may be at higher risk should avoid it or any in lower risks who want it shouldn't have it. I'd never think people who do that are wrong and it is a personal choice for everyone. I'm just lucky that my circumstances mean I've got time on my side to wait

And if I happen to be that 1 in a thousand then so be it
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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My ex-partner, in their early 20s, got Covid in March 2020 and over a year later has not recovered.

The chances of getting a blod clot from the vaccine are less than getting a blod clot from being on the pill.

Take the bloody vaccine.
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inflatable dalek
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

Post by inflatable dalek »

And generally speaking, vaccination is not about individual safety (there's a chance you'll get covid after the jab. My uncle did), but societal safety. The stamping out of any disease depends on vaccinating everyone from it. Worked with polio. Worked with smallpox.

People refusing because "I have marginally less chance than a woman whose boyfriend won't wear a condom of getting a blot clot! Oh **** no to that!" are screwing everyone else.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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I think if you're not going near anyone who is at risk it's fair enough, but also impossible to know where we are in those chains (I know I have immediate colleagues who are vulnerable, for instance) -- plus being male our base blood clot risk in any given year is significantly lower than women, and particularly anyone using hormonal contraception. Any inoculation or ordinary infection that stimulates an immune response can go wrong in rare circumstances, there doesn't seem to be something incredibly unique about the protein that these vaccines are targeting. The hib boosters I've had and seasonal flu shots are likely to be about as dangerous, and the risks of blood poisoning, food poisoning, lead, asbestos and various other things a lot higher. Bottom line is it's unlikely any notable proportion of the 878 million dosed worldwide so far are going to have problems because vaccine research has been going for about 225 years and we're actually quite good at it by now.

But there's also a fairly good chance you've had it in some form or other by this point; it's fair to assume both that actual infection rates are significantly higher than has been recorded and that there were high rates of transmission pre first lockdown and during every in-between **** up the government decided to have before vaccines were available. Effective population immunity doesn't take 100% and previous pandemics have ended without vaccines, albeit in some cases with huge numbers of deaths.

edit: ed-partner = ex-partner? Yeah, having known people who've developed fibromyalgia or similar from childhood and other infections (most probable explanation, the science is patchy but essentially an overloading of the immune system) it's a shit way to live if you're unlucky enough for it to become permanent.

There are some signs it does kill kids, just doesn't present in the same way and isn't being accurately diagnosed -- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-56696907 -- which is incredibly disappointing since basic oxygen level testing is simple and accessible.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Computron wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:15 pmI'm not anti-vax and fully agree with them but my reasoning is I am happy to accept the risk to myself of Covid (about 1 in a thousand I think for under 40's in general and I'm in good health so possibly lower) whilst further time passes to see if there are side effects.
Honestly, if you were only accepting a risk to yourself, no one would try to change your mind. But that's not how immunology works. By taking that risk, you are also putting everyone you come into contact with -- and everyone they come into contact with, and everyone they come into contact with -- at risk too. It's entirely possible that you catch COVID and only have the sniffles, but you pass it to someone who passes it to someone else who gives it to their elderly grandparents who wind up in the hospital.

The easy answer to that is "no, all of those other people will have taken the vaccine", but that's one of the anti-vax movement's most insidious lies: that it's okay for "us" to take a risk because all of "them" will still be getting their jabs. The reason it's a lie is because as soon as enough people start to think that way, we can't achieve herd immunity and no one is safe. Look no further than the resurgence of measles in the Western world thanks to soccer moms who've been convinced not to immunize their kids by omnipresent ads on Facebook.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Clay wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:51 pmI dunno. I got my first shot on the 1st with instructions to simply come back to the same site on the 28th, with the next appointment basically being auto-scheduled. Is there any way to call the site/organization that you got your first dose from?
I asked the lady who coordinated my first shot, and she said she was only coordinating 2nd shots at Groton, and that everyone who got their first shot there was guaranteed a 2nd shot there. I was just hoping to get out of another 5 am wake up call and 3 hour round trip.

Though, the 3 hour trip kind of works out for me, since my work allows up to 4 hours of paid leave per shot. I'm one of the people who reacts badly to shots. I didn't go into work the day of or day after my first shot. But, I only had to use 12 hours of sick leave instead of 16 since I had the 4 hours of shot time.


Delaying your vaccine because of unknown long term vaccine effects doesn't make much since, given that we only have a few months more data about long term covid effects. Sure, it seems like most young to middle age people have minimal effects, or recover OK. But, 5 years from now we may find out that all those "asymptomatic" covid patients' eyes melt our of their skulls, or something.

We don't have concrete long term data for these particular vaccines, either. But, we know enough about vaccines in general to detect a literal 1-in-a-million issue like these blood clots. You have to decide who you trust more: virtually all the medical scientists in the world, or bats. 'Cause one of those groups will be putting something in your bloodstream in the near future.

The worst case scenario is enough people delay the vaccine to see what happens that herd immunity is never reached, allowing the virus to mutate into a strain that the vaccines aren't effective against. Then, when it's announced that the current vaccines aren't effective, everyone who waited (and some others) will think they were right and skip the next vaccines as well. Repeat forever.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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And many people who take medicinal birth control and struggle with its varied side effects (it's worth remembering a pill for men is entirely possible, but it was decided the effect on men was not worth it whilst it was fine for women) have been keen to point out no one ever cared about blood clots as a risk when cis men were not the ones taking the medicine.

Same as there having been more advances in a HIV treatment in the 12 months we've had a plague that kills straight people than the previous 30 years, because suddenly money is being thrown at viral research.

Also, "I'm not anti vax, but my argument for not taking the vaccination is the anti vax one" is not a great way to convince people that you are not anti vax.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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And it's also important to remember that for all the other **** ups of their governments, Britain and the US are well on the way to full vaccination. And some versions of the vaccine do not survive long once the crate is opened, they need to use it or lose it (hence a lot of younger people getting the jab, they arrive at the end of the day and get a surplus one before it expires).

There's no altruistic reason for delaying.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Computron wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:15 pm Unpopular opinion in this thread but I've cancelled my vaccine appointment.

I'm not anti-vax and fully agree with them but my reasoning is I am happy to accept the risk to myself of Covid (about 1 in a thousand I think for under 40's in general and I'm in good health so possibly lower) whilst further time passes to see if there are side effects. The vaccine has only been around a few months and they are already finding (all be it miniscule) possibilities of blood clots and it has barely been given to the under 40's so we still don't know the effects on them in a large scale over a period of time. I would just like it to have a few years with the general population and then in a couple of years I'm more than happy to take it, especially as I'll start to get older and at higher risk.

This doesn't mean I don't think people who may be at higher risk should avoid it or any in lower risks who want it shouldn't have it. I'd never think people who do that are wrong and it is a personal choice for everyone. I'm just lucky that my circumstances mean I've got time on my side to wait

And if I happen to be that 1 in a thousand then so be it
And going to triple post because this is actually worst than I thought.

It's not "I'm skipping my vaccine because I'm scared of the side effects I learnt about from TwatTube and don't care about the long term vaccination efforts".

It's "I skipping my vaccine because I'm scared of the side effects I learnt about from TwatTube, so I'm going to wait to see what it does to the people who have to take it now. Using them as guinea pigs. Whilst thinking I am superior to the illness.

And not caring about the long term vaccination efforts"
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Seriously, this ain’t going away. It’s all very well, Computron, to make the decision to cancel your jab, but I’m sure as heck going for my second AZ one.

Call me a grumpy old woman (bloody hell, I’m 60?), but I’d personally like 10 minutes in a locked room with the leading anti-vaxers and a selection of terminal weaponry with which to make my argument. Let’s be honest: a lot of anti-vaxers are mischief makers of the first water or out to flog their own patent cure i.e. snake oil.

Historic fact: when Jenner first used cowpox to vaccinate (new word created from the Latin vacca meaning cow) against smallpox, the wags of the time reckoned it’d turn people into cows, which was rather a sly insult to milkmaids. This resulted in very serious campaigns against the treatment (and possibly against insulting milkmaids).

I guess one blob told other blobs that the whole evolution rumour was fake or dangerous or not for blobs like us as the fishes walked past...
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

Post by Denyer »

There is an edit button, unlike more primitive platforms.

Yeah, ultimately I'm in the "protect society or stay away from it" camp and the same with people who are sudden converts to a nationalised health service if the worst happens but don't look after their health with diet, vaccinations, not smoking, basic exercise, etc. Happy to let them die if they don't affect anyone else, but unfortunately that's not how viruses work.

I think a lot of it boils down to whether people actually know people who've died or been seriously ill, or would rather let vulnerable people who can't get jabbed or it isn't as effective for bear greater risk and be unable to trust any of the fuckers around them. Ignoring everyone else involved isn't a good look, if nothing else.

Rather than trying to make vaccination mandatory they could introduce legal liability for those that can have it but don't and go on to infect others, but the approach that businesses like plumbers/electricians tend to be adopting where they re-contract, or requiring proof that you're not willingly putting the rest of the passengers at risk for travel, etc are fairly effective nudges too.

If care workers don't end up with it being required to operate, as is the case for other clinical contexts, there's a good chance we'll see legal precedents and press storms where elderly clients have died as a result, then gas fitters, delivering for Currys, etc.

Warcry wrote:Look no further than the resurgence of measles in the Western world thanks to soccer moms who've been convinced not to immunize their kids by omnipresent ads on Facebook.

And it's been so long since it was an issue and everyone was surrounded by the consequences that people forget scarring and blindness are relatively common side effects of having lesions all over the body.

Tantrum wrote:5 years from now we may find out that all those "asymptomatic" covid patients' eyes melt our of their skulls, or something.

Evidence of lung damage has been found in asymptomatic cases, the unknown is to what degree tissue is able to regenerate. By the time someone develops a hacking cough it's too late because a) they're coughing to get dead tissue out of the way, b) that tissue plays a key role in absorbing oxygen, so the effect is drowning on dry land, and c) there's a risk of infection crossing over into the blood, which is where thickening and clotting starts damaging other organs. In that sense it's very unusual for a respiratory disease because most are confined to the respiratory system. It's also unusual in that people with hypoxia usually get more warning signs before serious damage is done.

It's safer to build immunity with vaccines and target a specific protein, than to be in the same position eg security guards have been, where they'd be healthy enough to fight it off before it gets too developed but the cumulative viral load of being indoors with infected people is too much to handle. Lower viral loads from community transmission will promote some immunity, but also lead to uncontrolled spread and with no way of knowing when a low load is becoming a high one.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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I'm chomping at the bit to get my jab. Five minutes into lockdown restrictions being eased and people are already wandering around without masks, forgetting to social distance and cluttering up Primark like it's going out of business. I just don't trust the public to look after their own health, as well as mine.

We have a healthy scepticism of government doing 'what's good for us', and rightly so, The Police And Crime Bill can f**k off, for one thing, but I think where public health is concerned, it's the one area where we should sit up and listen.*

Yes, the blood clots are a concern, but the numbers are so small compared to the numbers vaccinated that for me, it just boils down to 'no cure is without risk'.

*As an aside and on a related note, I get furious with some of the valued customers I have to deal with at work - who've usually bought into some online conspiracy garbage - refusing to use the water we supply because 'it's got chemicals in it'. Well, of course it has. Potable water has to be disinfected before it's consumed. It stops us all dying of cholera and other water-borne horrors. If we were allowed to, I'd be straight up saying, 'sign this release', we'll disconnect your water and sewer connections and you can sort yourself out, see how you get on sorting your own water and sh*t out.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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It is a chemical. Very dangerous that dihydrogen monoxide stuff -- https://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Beyond skepticism, would happily see most governments shut in an indoor stadium with the coke can (possibly milk carton by now) that would theoretically contain every molecule of covid in the world. Far more inclined to trust people who actually know what they're talking about and who can run public health services when they're not being handicapped by politicians, and failed pop stars and newspaper columnists on Twitter just aren't a good bet versus people who actually deal with, research and treat viruses.

Plus, asides from people who just don't care about other people, there are some bastards actively spreading disinformation in the hope of killing more in ethnic groups. For the purpose of picking sides would rather be as far away from those holding either position as possible.
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Also, "I'm not anti vax, but my argument for not taking the vaccination is the anti vax one" is not a great way to convince people that you are not anti vax.
I've had all my vaccinations I've ever been offered when they have gone through years of testing. MMR, Meningitis, annual Flu shot ... so I fail to see how I'm anti-vax?

I just don't trust a vaccine that has been about for less than 6 months and as much as we talk about 228 million people having it the majority have been elderly where it has been shown the effect is less. Very few people percentage wise in their 20's and 30's have had this.

It isn't even like the vaccine stops you spreading it. It simply lessens the symptoms people have and as I'm said I'm happy to accept them to myself
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Re: Covid 19 / everybody PANDEMIC

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Whilst there's understandable caution about making statements or claims that vaccines provide sterile immunity, data so far does support significant reductions in transmission. That tallies with infection being largely predicated on viral load.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56211755

(Just as interestingly, there's some evidence vaccines appear to reduce side-effects of "long covid" disruption).

for less than 6 months

The science/tech for mRNA (glorified way of saying teaching the body to produce a specific protein) has been around for longer, and the AZ approach is a traditional viral vector one; the novel technology with the latter has been working out which proteins are in the exterior surface that covid uses to bind to cells. China's is one of the few that uses inactivated virus, but AFAIK hasn't been used in the West -- and its main downside actually seems to be that it provides less immunity.

You're apparently older than me and we're both 10-20 years away from having youthful over-achieving immune systems.
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