Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

And QaNon has no position on Covid?

 

And worse is that he wants to control others from inside that bubble.

 

Wait. Seriously? Who doesnt make bad decisions?

Stupid is the lack of intelligence. It isnt just making a bad decision.

stu·pid
/ˈst(y)o͞opəd/
adjective

1. having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense.

 

The nurses, single moms and elderly folks I am talking about are probably not QaNon.

Seriously, i have never known a person that believes that goofy stuff about JFK and very few are losing sleep over Trump either.. If it wasnt for the news, would you know QaNon existed or would the election be in your thoughts?

 

OK, then how about making bad decisions and not learning from them. Truly the antivaxx thing was started or at least popularized by parents grasping at straws over their kids being diagnosed with autism after getting their childhood immunizations. An early popularizer was Jenny Mccarthy who is not a stupid person but her medical knowledge is suspect. It takes lots of weird turns but basically now it is popularized by people who read nonsense on the internet and think it makes them more knowledgeable than doctors and scientists. Unfortunately nurses are prone to believing in woo. I have dated nurses who thought healing touch was a thing. I will know longer call them stupid, is gullible morons better though, how about usefull idiots in the dumbing down of America.

 

They should listen to their doctors and real medical experts. You know the people on real news stations.

 

Just in case you really don't understand, let me explain why I think your response is cherry picking, specifically argument by selective observation.

I took a position that vaccines saves lives and provided third party reference material (NIH) as support:

Your challenge to my position was a datapoint from a single state for a limited amount of time:

So, to me, you threw out an example of a minor, potentially contrary measurement to undercut the broader study. At best, Alabama is an outlier in the aggregate vaccine life saving measurement in the NIH (it's not). You failed to make an argument that your provided datapoint was statistically material to the larger study. You also failed to mention the other low vaccination states that had poor outcomes during Omicron. That's argument by selective observation.

To make matters worse, your datapoint was not consistent with the original thesis. The NIH study looked at deaths by vaccination status to draw its conclusion. Your datapoint didn't mention Alabama's deaths by vaccination status but rather the state's vaccination rate vs overall Omicron deaths with a qualitative description of "low death rate". The ratio of deaths in Alabama could be much higher between the unvaccinated and the vaccinated for Omicron while at the same time the total deaths could be lower than other states. @mutz87 tried to point this out by stating that pre-Omicron infections and deaths in vaccine-hesitant Alabama could produce this effect.

I hope this helped.

cherry picking - "When only select evidence is presented in order to persuade the audience to accept a position, and evidence that would go against the position is withheld. The stronger the withheld evidence, the more fallacious the argument."

 

How is that not relevant to my argument? If a study is going to try and model a vaccine that saved X amount of lives, it better cover it all. I just simply provided one example. You just want to address it since it doesn't go in line with your narrative.

My argument doesn't need to be consistent with the original thesis because I wanted to point out an obvious hole in it.
Unless they are accounting for all those with prior infection who also are vaccinated, it's a weak print in my opinion. The behaviors of social distancing, N95 mask, and lockdowns are also big limitations.

I have never argued that vaccines didn't save many lives. I am just over these "models" that have been terrible for the past 2 years.

 

Anyone who had covid previously didn't need the vaccine. NI was known to be superior to the vaccine itself. So you are way off on your "one size fits all" blanket statements, again.

 

It is not just that some think the vax is dangerous. It is that some do not see the benefit for forcing their body to initiate an immune response. They understand their body is fully capable of responding if they do get Covid and prefer to not make their body work unnecessarily.

 

Sorry, but this is an ignorant way of thinking about how your immune system works. Making your body work unnecessarily describes what a person who is infected with COVID who has not been previously infected or vaccinated. When a person who has zero immunity gets infected, his body will have to fight off millions of viruses with no blueprint on how to fight it. But if a person has NI or has taken the vaccine, the body already has a guide on how to fight off the virus, and the person with immunity will likely recover quicker, and has a much better chance of staying out of the hospital, or worse, the morgue.

Maybe if a person is a hermit, and rarely sees other people, he/she can avoid infection altogether. But if not, they will get COVID sooner or later. And if they are getting their first infection with no vaccine, then they run higher risks of having a serious illness or death. Just look at the graph:



Charts for hospitalizations look the same. Why wouldn't one want to lower his/her odds of staying out of the hospital or the morgue? Why make your body fight off a full infection when you can teach your body how to do it by just injecting the mRNA you need for your body to learn?

 

I did my best.

 

The data shows the low risk healthy immune system handles Covid just fine. So putting your body to work for minimal benefit if any would be a consideration to not take a drug unnecessarily. Especially when that drug has shown it failed to stop or slow the spread of the disease in question.

 

Our immune systems are marvelous things. And survival rates for all communicable diseases are always very high. If they weren't, we would have died out as a species long ago. So would the viruses and bacteria that cause infection, for that matter. Measles, for example, had a mortality rate of 12 in 100,000 infected, but we still vaccinate. Because after vaccination, the rate dropped to below 2 in 100,000.

Look again at the chart above. How can you claim the vaccine has minimal benefit when the unvaccinated are dying from COVID several times higher than the vaccinated? Your statement is clearly false, and not supported by the data when you look at deaths, or hospitalizations unvaccinated versus vaccinated.

Unless you think you aren't ever going to catch COVID, which is an unlikely scenario unless you are a hermit and never see people, the vaccine is the best way to train your body so that when you do get sick, you will be prepared. And lower your risk of having any severe complications. That's how vaccines work.

 

You are correct. Our immune systems are marvelous. And complicated. A new drug is not a smoking gun that every single person needs to take. Especially when the drug does not stop or slow the spread.

I know you do not typically like to hear it. But if you get in shape. Eat healthy. Get good sleep. Keep your mind mentally fresh. Covid is not a major threat to you. Now if you have unfortunate circumstances that are outside your control. Or you choose to not do the things that keep our marvelous immune systems in tip top shape. This disease is more dangerous.

Best thing you can do is take care of yourself. If you want to take a drug designed for a variant long gone continually…by all means. At this point I don’t see much of an advantage for even the higher risk groups. Thankfully we have some therapeutics and more information on how to treat as time has gone by.

 

So in the chart above that shows mortality rate among the unvaccinated is several times higher than the vaccinated, it shows that vaccinated people are all healthy people, and the unvaccinated are fat slobs who don't take care of themselves? Or, is there another explanation?

 

I will be straight honest...I don't believe that chart is accurate. I can make a graph say what I want it to say. I can make a model produce what I want it to produce. I am skeptical of all the information coming out. Charts in particular. I want to see actual numbers. Like what England provides. X vaccinated died. X unvaccinated died. X boosted died. X partially vaccinated died.

It should be so easy. And yes I know New Hampshire is a small state. But when a spokesman for the state provides information that shows almost every single death is fully vaccinated over a two week stretch. It makes me question charts like yours.

24 fully vaccinated people in NH have died from COVID-19 as surge continues

new hampshire covid deaths - Google Search

13 fully vaccinated deaths in the two weeks following Aug 26. The 7 day average over those two weeks was two. A vast majority of the deaths were fully vaccinated. This matches the data out of England that showed the numbers by the September timeline switch to a solid majority of fully vaccinated deaths. A higher percentage than the fully vaccinated population. Which in a way is expected as the higher risk groups I would expect to be more inclined to be fully vaccinated. And the high risk groups are the ones at higher risk regardless of vaccination status.

Why can't we get the hard numbers? Why do we get reporting provided in a way to protect a narrative? Can you provide the numbers so I can input them and see the graph look like the one you posted? Or do I just need to trust your graph?

 

The chart above is looking at deaths per 100,000 people in the categories of vaccinated versus unvaccinated. That's a much better way at looking at the effectiveness of a vaccine versus total deaths, vaccinated and unvaccinated. Total deaths doesn't take into account the size of each specific population. For example, if there are only 100,000 unvaccinated, but 1,000,000 vaccinated, total deaths might look like the vaccine isn't working, because there would be more vaccinated deaths versus unvaccinated. But in reality, the population size of the vaccinated is also 10X greater.

You know, if 100% of the population was vaccinated, and there were still COVID deaths, which there are, then 100% of the deaths would be from the vaccinated population! And you would claim the vaccine wasn't working! Well, in Vermont, 100% of the population isn't vaccinated. It's just over 80%. But when you look at the age range, kids under 5 aren't eligible, so they are 100% unvaccinated. And kids 5-11 in Vermont are only 56% vaccinated. In contrast, those 60 and older are 91%+ vaccinated.

We know the older you are, the more susceptible to severe COVID you are. One would expect there to be more deaths among the older population, even if they are vaccinated, versus kids, even if they are unvaccinated. It's how the COVID operates. But adjust for age, and fully vaccinated are 93% less likely to die from COVID than unvaccinated.

The chart is accurate. You just don't like what it's showing. A chart that just looked at hard numbers, as you claim, without respect to denominators of each X (population size), would likely give you what you are looking for, but would be far less accurate at determining the effectiveness of the vaccine.

 

Odd Todd doesn't want anyone to read this post

Our kids watched the Bad Lemonade episode of Odd Squad for about the millionth time yesterday, surpisingly topical. Odd Todd used misleading charts to give people a distorted idea of what was happening around them.

 

Way off? I know that the data on those previously infected vs those vaccinated is meager. Making sure everyone is triple vaccinated is the best way to make this virus a minor inconvenience instead of a widow maker.