COVID-19 (Coronavirus) discussion

Covid denial is fascinating. The whole movement is still banging on about how a new disease we don’t understand should not be understood. I’m sure these people are just looking for an outlet for anger about some perceived injustice. It’s such a shame the outlet this lot have found is actually a serious public health issue rather than “cats eyes are the devils work” or the like. The anti vaccination lot are the worst, because whatever you think about covid vaccines, attempting to destroy 200 years worth of proven science and saved lives (lots of them children) on the back of a conspiracy theory (for what end?) is frankly disgusting.
 
CapitalOne said:
Covid denial is fascinating. The whole movement is still banging on about how a new disease we don’t understand should not be understood. I’m sure these people are just looking for an outlet for anger about some perceived injustice. It’s such a shame the outlet this lot have found is actually a serious public health issue rather than “cats eyes are the devils work” or the like. The anti vaccination lot are the worst, because whatever you think about covid vaccines, attempting to destroy 200 years worth of proven science and saved lives (lots of them children) on the back of a conspiracy theory (for what end?) is frankly disgusting.
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My viewpoint on covid denial, for what it's worth, is this. There are people who have family, friends and colleagues who have been impacted by covid and have witnessed illness, hospitalization and death from covid. There are also people who know of nobody who have had any of the ill heath and deaths associated with covid. That doesn't make the 2nd group of people deniers.

My wife and i have personally witnessed the reported problems associated with the vaccines among two of our closest friendship couples. Couple 1, after both received the first two doses of pfizer, the female was hospitalsed twice with lymph node issues the first time and constant collapsing the second time. The male was hospitalised after suffering a stroke within 12 hours of the second dose. Both in their mid 40's and all symptoms began almost immediately after the injections.

Couple 2, same age group, female required months of hospital treatment for menstrual issues which forced her off work whilst being treated. Her husband now has ongoing heart issues which have seen him have to semi retire from his work.

Can we please just start to understand that both sides can be right even though they may seem to be at at odds with each other? Just because you may not know of people in the other camp doesn't mean they aren't there.
 
maschio said:
My viewpoint on covid denial, for what it's worth, is this. There are people who have family, friends and colleagues who have been impacted by covid and have witnessed illness, hospitalization and death from covid. There are also people who know of nobody who have had any of the ill heath and deaths associated with covid. That doesn't make the 2nd group of people deniers.

My wife and i have personally witnessed the reported problems associated with the vaccines among two of our closest friendship couples. Couple 1, after both received the first two doses of pfizer, the female was hospitalsed twice with lymph node issues the first time and constant collapsing the second time. The male was hospitalised after suffering a stroke within 12 hours of the second dose. Both in their mid 40's and all symptoms began almost immediately after the injections.

Couple 2, same age group, female required months of hospital treatment for menstrual issues which forced her off work whilst being treated. Her husband now has ongoing heart issues which have seen him have to semi retire from his work.

Can we please just start to understand that both sides can be right even though they may seem to be at at odds with each other? Just because you may not know of people in the other camp doesn't mean they aren't there.
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It’s not about “knowing people” it’s about evidence. Unfortunately any evidence that there have been problems (and there have, but the numbers are tiny) seems to come with the claim (see earlier in this thread) that millions in this country alone now have chronic conditions as a result of vaccinations which is totally outlandish. On top of this there are all the fruitloop theories. Then on top of that is the clear impact this has had on take up of other vaccines.

So as to your final sentence, which I agree with 100%, because we can’t observe all things at all times we have to rely on evidence.

So that’s the standard of evidence required to convince me.

edit: the final problem is who provides the evidence. If I were to ask why no formal body has yet provided the evidence I may well be told they can’t be trusted or they are in on it with Pfizer at which point we are in CT territory. I am not an idiot so I can take it that they may even be looking in to it, but even if they are they haven’t come up with any publishable evidence yet that shows a significant impact (i.e. not the tiny numbers I mentioned above).
 
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CapitalOne said:
It’s not about “knowing people” it’s about evidence. Unfortunately any evidence that there have been problems (and there have, but the numbers are tiny) seems to come with the claim (see earlier in this thread) that millions in this country alone now have chronic conditions as a result of vaccinations which is totally outlandish. On top of this there are all the fruitloop theories. Then on top of that is the clear impact this has had on take up of other vaccines.

So as to your final sentence, which I agree with 100%, because we can’t observe all things at all times we have to rely on evidence.

So that’s the standard of evidence required to convince me.

edit: the final problem is who provides the evidence. If I were to ask why no formal body has yet provided the evidence I may well be told they can’t be trusted or they are in on it with Pfizer at which point we are in CT territory. I am not an idiot so I can take it that they may even be looking in to it, but even if they are they haven’t come up with any publishable evidence yet that shows a significant impact (i.e. not the tiny numbers I mentioned above).
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Are there any stats showing the number of serious side-effects after the vaccine? How do the stats compare to other vaccines delivered at scale? How does it compare to the serious effects of actual covid?
 
sigma said:
Are there any stats showing the number of serious side-effects after the vaccine? How do the stats compare to other vaccines delivered at scale? How does it compare to the serious effects of actual covid?
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It's unfair really to compare the covid vaccine with other longer term researched / developed vaccine. I mean just look how quickly it was rolled out - it was hugely impressive. Other vaccines have been around for a far longer time with far more testing and undoubtedly side effects soon.

(Please note this is not me saying the vaccine is bad, I'm just suggesting you cannot compare something that has been developed in different timescales / circumstances).
 
Jokester said:
Adverse side effect reports for the mRNA vaccines are orders of magnitude higher than for other vaccines apparently.
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I realise this might sound like shooting the messenger so apologies up front for that, however where is this shared that's not a meme?

Is orders of magnitude 0.01% instead of 0.002%? Or is it as claimed over 1 million people in the UK alone (I think the claim was hospitalised).

Is adverse side effects feeling rough the day after (yeah we all got that) or is it a heart attack?
 
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If they were self reported as well then I imagine before the Covid vaccines rolled out 99% of people would have had no idea that the yellow card scheme was a thing.
 
Freefaller said:
It's unfair really to compare the covid vaccine with other longer term researched / developed vaccine. I mean just look how quickly it was rolled out - it was hugely impressive. Other vaccines have been around for a far longer time with far more testing and undoubtedly side effects soon.

(Please note this is not me saying the vaccine is bad, I'm just suggesting you cannot compare something that has been developed in different timescales / circumstances).
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Those vaccines change year on year also though, that is my understanding. Also, what else do you compare it to? Other than catching covid itself, which is a comparison I'd like to see. I'm pretty sure the chances of having the heart related issues are a lot higher with covid than the vaccine.

It would be good to get a proper insight into it written by someone with the technical knowledge, based on the best dataset possible.
 
maschio said:
My viewpoint on covid denial, for what it's worth, is this. There are people who have family, friends and colleagues who have been impacted by covid and have witnessed illness, hospitalization and death from covid. There are also people who know of nobody who have had any of the ill heath and deaths associated with covid. That doesn't make the 2nd group of people deniers.

My wife and i have personally witnessed the reported problems associated with the vaccines among two of our closest friendship couples. Couple 1, after both received the first two doses of pfizer, the female was hospitalsed twice with lymph node issues the first time and constant collapsing the second time. The male was hospitalised after suffering a stroke within 12 hours of the second dose. Both in their mid 40's and all symptoms began almost immediately after the injections.

Couple 2, same age group, female required months of hospital treatment for menstrual issues which forced her off work whilst being treated. Her husband now has ongoing heart issues which have seen him have to semi retire from his work.

Can we please just start to understand that both sides can be right even though they may seem to be at at odds with each other? Just because you may not know of people in the other camp doesn't mean they aren't there.
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That's fine and all, but pushing personal anecdotes in favour of the overwhelming evidence is where things get sketchy.
 
sigma said:
Those vaccines change year on year also though, that is my understanding. Also, what else do you compare it to? Other than catching covid itself, which is a comparison I'd like to see. I'm pretty sure the chances of having the heart related issues are a lot higher with covid than the vaccine.

It would be good to get a proper insight into it written by someone with the technical knowledge, based on the best dataset possible.
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I guess it's because there's decades of data which makes iterative changes easier?

Who knows if heart disease is more attributable to the vaccine or covid itself or even other underlying conditions that the vaccine or covid itself has brought forward. Regardless the covid situation, vaccine, infection or whatever other issues as a result of the whole debacle is clearly causing issues.

I agree though it would be good to get real data that hasn't been skewed by anti vaxers, pharma or governments with an agenda.

I'm open to believe that there are adverse affects from the vaccine, just like there are adverse affects from covid for some people as well as longer term issues for a minority.

Look at the old BCG debacle and people thinking it gave a rise to autism etc... it took years to convince people that it was safe. I guess it's not too dissimilar a situation.
 
I cannot imagine how disastrous covid would have been in Europe without the vaccines. The USA as well. Brazil is a likely case where many thousands of burials went unrecorded and vaccine was scarce. We dodged a bullet developing vaccines early and I don't care what some people think, we got through the dangerous phase of the virus relatively lightly only because of effective vaccines and vaccination. A few side effects in a minority of cases was massively worthwhile to the general population although regrettable.
 
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sigma said:
Those vaccines change year on year also though, that is my understanding. Also, what else do you compare it to? Other than catching covid itself, which is a comparison I'd like to see. I'm pretty sure the chances of having the heart related issues are a lot higher with covid than the vaccine.

It would be good to get a proper insight into it written by someone with the technical knowledge, based on the best dataset possible.
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IIRC going by the US data (which thanks the stupidity of republicans is actually statistically useful), the effects from covid are far worse than any of the effects from the vaccine.

In some ways Trump and his ilk have done the world a bit of a favour, as we've got a country where one group has almost identical health/wealth/living conditions but not taken the jab whilst another has.
IIRC it's still the case that non vaccinated people in the US are dying of covid at about 4 times the rate even with the latest strains of the virus. I mean it sucks to be one of the Republican anti vaxxors that dies, but the world thanks them for their help in being such a useful and large control group.
 
People in general are just terrible at evaluating risk.... particular when you're into very small possibilities.

Chance of dying of covid? Really small.
Chance of dying of vaccine side effect? Really small.

Which leads to : you're just likely to die from the vaccine as covid, so why bother? Surely it's all a big pharma scam....etc.

Anyway...I'm just about over my second infection now. It's spreading like wildfire out there at the moment, kinda glad I've got it out the way early.

Extremely glad that so far I don't appear to have any of the heart problems that plagued me for months after my first infection a year ago.
 
mid_gen said:
People in general are just terrible at evaluating risk.... particular when you're into very small possibilities.

Chance of dying of covid? Really small.
Chance of dying of vaccine side effect? Really small.

Which leads to : you're just likely to die from the vaccine as covid, so why bother? Surely it's all a big pharma scam....etc.

Anyway...I'm just about over my second infection now. It's spreading like wildfire out there at the moment, kinda glad I've got it out the way early.

Extremely glad that so far I don't appear to have any of the heart problems that plagued me for months after my first infection a year ago.
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Is it all around the country or just in big cities?
 
Freefaller said:
Is it all around the country or just in big cities?
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I am just basing on anecdotal evidence, myself and partner getting it, very high sick rates at work, and the creeping up of covid on the news agenda.

My parents up on Skye say its spreading round the island at the moment, which it hasn't done previously.

The Zoe covid stats are showing a clear wave in progress.

Fortunately, although this new variant seems to have evaded my immunity from last year, the symptoms are still milder.
 
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CapitalOne said:
edit: the final problem is who provides the evidence. If I were to ask why no formal body has yet provided the evidence I may well be told they can’t be trusted or they are in on it with Pfizer at which point we are in CT territory. I am not an idiot so I can take it that they may even be looking in to it, but even if they are they haven’t come up with any publishable evidence yet that shows a significant impact (i.e. not the tiny numbers I mentioned above).
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One good thing they may have come about due to covid

www.bbc.co.uk

YouTube starts verifying health workers in the UK

The plan will help ensure YouTubers are genuinely qualified to dish out medical information.
www.bbc.co.uk
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YouTube has launched a verification system for healthcare workers in the UK as it battles disinformation online.

In 2022, health videos were viewed more than three billion times in the UK alone on the video-sharing platform.
Doctors, nurses and psychologists have been applying for the scheme since June and must meet rigorous criteria set by the tech giant to be eligible.

Successful applicants will have a badge under their name identifying them as a genuine, licensed healthcare worker.

But YouTubers have warned the system is only meant for education purposes, not to replace medical advice from your GP.
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People who take health advice from google or online videos rather than seeking proper medical papers/research or speaking to a proper medical practitioner only have themselves to blame really.

The thing about the demographic here on OcUK is that most of us have relatives, or friends who work in the sector, or actually work in the sector themselves, so we're privileged to have access to information that the masses don't necessarily see or care about.
 
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Freefaller said:
People who take health advice from google or online videos rather than seeking proper medical papers/research or speaking to a proper medical practitioner only have themselves to blame really.

The thing about the demographic here on OcUK is that most of us have relatives, or friends who work in the sector, or actually work in the sector themselves, so we're privileged to have access to information that the masses don't necessarily see or care about.
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I think it is more aimed at the spread of disinformation by unqualified people mainly during covid type situations.

As you say most know some one that works in the sector yet there are still many different takes on the same data.
 
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