Covid-19 response

Amity Island said:
I was just making the point that the levels of virus circulating were low.
Click to expand...
Which caused some problems for the phase 3 trials, of course. By the time most of us were offered the vaccine it was more obvious the virus wasn't going away and that we'd all (most likely) be infected. (I forget when reinfections become clear. I think that was rather later.)

I think the sales pitch for the vaccines wasn't really about the state in 2020 (when in the UK there were significant social restrictions for a few months) but rather imagining an environment with fewer or no restrictions, where the risk of infection could be expected to be very high. I agree some people overpromised on the protection against infection and reduction of transmission, though I'll again mention that Israel did have some success, albeit short lived.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
Which caused some problems for the phase 3 trials, of course. By the time most of us were offered the vaccine it was more obvious the virus wasn't going away and that we'd all (most likely) be infected. (I forget when reinfections become clear. I think that was rather later.)

I think the sales pitch for the vaccines wasn't really about the state in 2020 (when in the UK there were significant social restrictions for a few months) but rather imagining an environment with fewer or no restrictions, where the risk of infection could be expected to be very high. I agree some people overpromised on the protection against infection and reduction of transmission, though I'll again mention that Israel did have some success, albeit short lived.
Click to expand...
So essentially the vaccines were given approval based on trials that didn't prove
Prevention of infection
Prevention of transmission
Prevention of hospitalization
Prevention of death

All on a promoted 95% effectiveness and by failing to also give the 1% absolute risk reduction figure.
 
Amity Island said:
So essentially the vaccines were given approval based on trials that didn't prove
Prevention of infection
Prevention of transmission
Prevention of hospitalization
Prevention of death

All on a promoted 95% effectiveness and by failing to also give the 1% absolute risk reduction figure.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's a reasonable summary. I think there were good reasons for that (excellent reasons for not looking at transmission, for example: how could they?), and by getting results against minor illness they had good reason to think that would extend to protection against hospitalisation and death. The trials could have had hospitalisation and/or death as endpoints but of course they'd have then needed to be longer, delaying use of the vaccines.

And the absolute risk reduction is surely not what anyone should care about. The risk for individuals varied wildly with age (and other factors), so absolute risk reductions would have very limited value. I can imagine they could also have publicised age stratified risks of hospitalisation and deaths (which did happen to some extent). I'm also not sure how people in general feel about a 1% chance of dying; personally I'm rather keen to look at a vaccine that will significantly reduce a risk of such a cause of death. Vaccination also seems to reduce the risks of long term sequelae (presumably by reducing the chance of infection and the severity of infection); hospitalisations and deaths are far from the only risks of infection.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
Yes, that's a reasonable summary. I think there were good reasons for that (excellent reasons for not looking at transmission, for example: how could they?), and by getting results against minor illness they had good reason to think that would extend to protection against hospitalisation and death. The trials could have had hospitalisation and/or death as endpoints but of course they'd have then needed to be longer, delaying use of the vaccines.

And the absolute risk reduction is surely not what anyone should care about. The risk for individuals varied wildly with age (and other factors), so absolute risk reductions would have very limited value. I can imagine they could also have publicised age stratified risks of hospitalisation and deaths (which did happen to some extent). I'm also not sure how people in general feel about a 1% chance of dying; personally I'm rather keen to look at a vaccine that will significantly reduce a risk of such a cause of death. Vaccination also seems to reduce the risks of long term sequelae (presumably by reducing the chance of infection and the severity of infection); hospitalisations and deaths are far from the only risks of infection.
Click to expand...
So, to this day, have they ever actually done challenge (knowingly exposed people to the virus if they are confident in the vaccines effectiveness) trials to show that the vaccines prevent anything?

Bruce Stephens said:
And the absolute risk reduction is surely not what anyone should care about.
Click to expand...
No but for informed consent people should be told. I'm sure the cdc have said that both a.r.r and r.r.r must be given for vaccines.
 
Amity Island said:
So, to this day, have they ever actually done challenge (knowingly exposed people to the virus if they are confident in the vaccines effectiveness) trials to show that the vaccines prevent anything?
Click to expand...
Not that I'm aware of. Have they for any vaccine? That doesn't sound like a very ethical experiment. (Particularly if you include a control arm, and I'm not sure what you'd learn without one. It may have been done in animals.)
 
Bruce Stephens said:
Not that I'm aware of. Have they for any vaccine? That doesn't sound like a very ethical experiment. (Particularly if you include a control arm, and I'm not sure what you'd learn without one. It may have been done in animals.)
Click to expand...
It would be nice to see those making billions off their incredibly safe and effective products put their money where their mouth is. I find it hard to believe nobody has had the confidence to put themselves forward.

https://www.understandinganimalrese...-who-experimented-on-themselves#:~:text=Barry Marshall must be the,the cause of stomach ulcers.
 
Amity Island said:
I find it hard to believe nobody has had the confidence to put themselves forward.
Click to expand...
What kind of experiment are you suggesting, and what might it practically show? Nobody thinks the vaccines absolutely prevent infection, and nobody thinks they eliminate the risk of acute or other harms, so on what basis would an experiment make sense?

The best I can imagine is taking a group of children and experimenting on them (since we apparently think that infecting children is fine), but then we're not that much in favour of vaccinating them so perhaps that arm of the experiment would be unacceptable.
 
Amity Island said:
The point I am making is, only a small percentage of people ever caught the virus during each variant in 2020. Of those that did, most age groups would not show symptoms or have only mild symptoms etc The average age of death from covid is 83yrs of age.

The attached picture shows the proportion of people catching the virus based on official ONS data.
Click to expand...
Hardly surprising fewer were infected during lockdowns and masking and distancing than now with zero measures in place really. Can you imagine the death and disability that would have occurred if nearly half the unvaccinated (without immunity from prior infection too) population had got the first couple of variants?
 
HSSS said:
Hardly surprising fewer were infected during lockdowns and masking and distancing than now with zero measures in place really. Can you imagine the death and disability that would have occurred if nearly half the unvaccinated (without immunity from prior infection too) population had got the first couple of variants?
Click to expand...
But the excess deaths didn't start until AFTER lockdowns (and other measures like clearing the elderly out of hospitals) started.

Where is the evidence we reduced excess deaths?

It's likely the virus was circulating well before 2020, yet no evidence of excess deaths before lockdowns etc.

billricejr.substack.com

Flu Season of 2019-2020 was one of worst in decades

Why don’t virus experts recognize what might have been obvious evidence of early Covid?
billricejr.substack.com billricejr.substack.com
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is the single most important exchange of the inquiry.<br><br>Sunak rightly highlights the possibility that lockdown may have caused more harm than good, and is promptly shut down by Keith who doesn&#39;t even understand what the term QALY means.<br><br>Scandalous - please watch and share. <a href="https://t.co/S95RYJ9Uu6">pic.twitter.com/S95RYJ9Uu6</a></p>&mdash; Professor Karol Sikora (@ProfKarolSikora) <a href="
https://twitter.com/x/status/1734508743021240762
">December 12, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Last edited:
Amity Island said:
Click to expand...
This week at the pandemic inquiry, BJ gives this written statement about the reasons for first lockdown.

"In imposing that lockdown, I went against all my own personal and political instincts. I believe that a society will be happiest and strongest if people are free; free to make their own choices: free to live their lives as they please, provided – in the great caveat of J.S. Mill, father of libertarianism – they do no harm to others. And that was the problem."

This principle of locking down to prevent harm to others could be applied to almost anything in life.
 
New official data from Italy puts into context the risk of covid in the younger generation compared to other life risks and injuries etc. A total of 162 died in 2020 "with" covid. "With".

trusttheevidence.substack.com

Did Italians under 40 need Covid vaccination?

A crash helmet or body armour would have been better.
trusttheevidence.substack.com trusttheevidence.substack.com
 

Attachments

  • Lockdowns - Italy.jpg
    Lockdowns - Italy.jpg
    43.8 KB · Views: 0
Amity Island said:
Please can you expand?
Click to expand...
Just the obvious: in the generally accepted account as the virus spread to populations it expanded quickly (doubling time of 3 or 4 days) and fairly caused sickness in enough people that countries noticed.

If it was reasonably widespread earlier in 2019, how did it stay hidden?

The only explanations I can think of involve a significant level of conspiracy: the "it's flu rebranded" one, for example. Or the wholesale "there was no pandemic" (so the events in China, northern Italy, etc., were all faked).
 
Bruce Stephens said:
If it was reasonably widespread earlier in 2019, how did it stay hidden?

The only explanations I can think of involve a significant level of conspiracy: the "it's flu rebranded" one, for example. Or the wholesale "there was no pandemic" (so the events in China, northern Italy, etc., were all faked).
Click to expand...
The answer to that @Bruce Stephens is quite simple, testing!
 
Amity Island said:
The answer to that @Bruce Stephens is quite simple, testing!
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that's nearly enough. There wasn't a whole lot of testing in January-March 2020, remember, but clinically health workers were sure they were seeing something new. There weren't lots of calls of "Oh, this is just like that strange flu-like virus thing we saw a few months ago".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top