COVID-19 (Coronavirus) discussion

[Rroff]

Though it won't happen quickly or so easily with COVID but in the longer term people more resistant to it will likely make up an increasing number of the population, that is often how previous pandemic/epidemics worked. (Modern medicine kind of skews that a bit as well).

 

[ltron]

Unfortunately the vaccine itself is now increasingly shown to cause significant long term and adverse effects. So you're ****** either way. You either get covid and take a chance at longer term effects or dose yourself to gills with drugs and take the same roulette.

Humans will survive and overcome, adapt to this just as we have always done. It sucks if you're hit with something that changes your life forever, but I know of people who have caught flu and suffered irreversible effects as a result, as well as someone who had to have the top of their finger amputated because of sepsis having cut himself on some barbed wire.

Humans are resilient - that said it doesn't help appease the bad time that people go through when they're ill. Let's not forget the amount of people suffering chronic conditions which aren't related to covid where the NHS just can't deal with it owing to lack of funding / resources. It's a sad state of affairs. I also hate how the pharma companies basically run medical decisions. If pharma were actually keen on saving lives they would all be non-profits - then I'd be more trusting of them. Sure maybe that makes me a mad tinfoil hat wearer, if so fine, put a label on it, but I'm still not convinced that this was dealt well at all.

We have to disagree on the vaccines, they have been given to billions of people and unless you are extremely unlucky they have proven safe and effective. Covid on the other hand is a much greater risk, including for the health conditions that are often erroneously blamed on the vaccines.

My concern is if bird flu turns into a pandemic that it could be a significantly bigger threat than Covid (given that experts seem to be saying it could kill many more than Covid). However, we can create an effective vaccine for it quickly as we already do for constantly mutating flu every year. However, people need to take the vaccine for it to work and I don't see that happening in the required numbers.

The US is currently doing a poor job at containing bird flu and I pray to God that we are lucky and somehow we get away with it.

On big pharma, their main sin is profiteering. The drugs generally work, that's why they're so valuable and hence they can exploit this.

 

[Rroff]

My concern is if bird flu turns into a pandemic that it could be a significantly bigger threat than Covid (given that experts seem to be saying it could kill many more than Covid). However, we can create an effective vaccine for it quickly as we already do for constantly mutating flu every year. However, people need to take the vaccine for it to work and I don't see that happening in the required numbers.

Flu vaccine are generally 40-60% effective though. Lockdowns are far more effective at dealing with the flu :s (or as IMO we proved at work - even basic measures to prevent spread when people adhere to them actually work).

It is pretty much a lottery how any bird flu crossover virus would work out though could be anywhere from very mild to very bad. Also one of those things which while almost inevitable it is going to happen sometime could happen twice in the next few years or be 200 years until the next instance of it.

 

[Freefaller]

On big pharma, their main sin is profiteering. The drugs generally work, that's why they're so valuable and hence they can exploit this.

On this I totally agree - the drugs do work, but as many experts say these should be short term fixes, not long term strategies (other than things like insulin for diabetes etc... and similar). Profiteering on people's lives and basically running health services around the world doesn't sit comfortably with me.


It's just the 1 in 800 harm rate for a vaccine to me is totally unacceptable (when others were pulled for 1:100,000 harm rate), yet for some reason governments were strong armed into allowing this one. However, this is another debate, and I'm not trying to convince you I'm right or whatever, it's just my opinion for which I'm happy to be in the minority.

 

[R4z0r]

I'm about 90% sure I got COVID again now.

Had it just under 2 years ago, and completely lost my sense of taste and smell then.

Been a bit rough this week since Monday evening, Tuesday night went to bed with shivers, and then yesterday afternoon taste and smell gone.

Pretty much same as last time.

When I say taste and smell gone, I mean completely, I can open up a bottle of vinegar and take a massive sniff off that and nothing, was doing a BBQ today, couldn't smell the smoke, let alone taste anything, weird, was the same last time as well.

I have a similar reaction, it sucks. The last time, GP prescribed a steroid nasal spray and my smell and taste returned quickly.

First time I had COVID i couldn’t smell/taste for 6 weeks.

 

[Freefaller]

I still can't imagine what it'd be like not to be able to smell or taste my morning coffee!

 

[Kelt]

I still can't imagine what it'd be like not to be able to smell or taste my morning coffee!

One of the things that cheers me up in the morning is the smell of fresh, filtered coffee brewing, so I know where you're coming from.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

We have to disagree on the vaccines, they have been given to billions of people and unless you are extremely unlucky they have proven safe and effective. Covid on the other hand is a much greater risk, including for the health conditions that are often erroneously blamed on the vaccines.

It's weird how people focus so much on the vaccine.

7 million people died from COVID, people will dispute the figure of course but whatever the figure is it's still a lot higher than the number of people who died from the vaccine. Not that the two are comparable. My point is more that people ignore the COVID or COVID related deaths as if they're nothing.

 

[Freefaller]

It's weird how people focus so much on the vaccine.

7 million people died from COVID, people will dispute the figure of course but whatever the figure is it's still a lot higher than the number of people who died from the vaccine. Not that the two are comparable. It's more that people ignore the COVID or COVID related deaths as if they're nothing.

I'm not really focussing on it, I'm just surprised it was permitted considering research seems to point that it is harmful (and pfiser and AZ seemed to acknowledge it), many experts suggests it's as harmful if not more than long covid. I know they had to be seen to do "something" but as has been mentioned, the best way to have dealt with it instead of rushing out an untested vaccine was to lockdown, and ride it out that way.

However, that was also incredibly difficult if you take into consideration the economy, and mental health, but also general life - people got ill regardless of covid, had to have babies, needed to go the power station to keep the lights on, had to drive the trucks to stock the shops etc... so lockdown in reality was always a pipe dream. Furthermore, you get the herd mentality of "well if they're out, I'll go out".. and so the house of cards crumbles.

all this shown is that we don't like taking orders, we also seem to respond to fear and sensationalism, and given indication of how much we seem to be able to be coerced into things when our personal freedoms are at stake!

Anyway other than a handful of people in here which I'm sorry to hear are still struggling, life is back to normal for the majority.

 

[BUDFORCE]

I still can't imagine what it'd be like not to be able to smell or taste my morning coffee!

Yea it's weird.

I can't taste anything, couldn't taste morning coffee, got some chopped fruit left from yesterday, chunks of pineapple, mango, strawberry etc.

It's basically just texture, I can just about barely get a bit of the tang from the pineapple that's it.

Honestly though, compared to how it has affected some, I'm fairing petty well, last time a well when I had COVID and tested positive, very mild generally.

So really in the scheme of things I shouldn't be complaining, but man its weird... I can imagine it would make life a bit dull if this was permanent, although I'd guess you'd loose weight because eating seems like a necessity rather than a pleasure.

 

[Freefaller]

Yea it's weird.

I can't taste anything, couldn't taste morning coffee, got some chopped fruit left from yesterday, chunks of pineapple, mango, strawberry etc.

It's basically just texture, I can just about barely get a bit of the tang from the pineapple that's it.

Honestly though, compared to how it has affected some, I'm fairing petty well, last time a well when I had COVID and tested positive, very mild generally.

So really in the scheme of things I shouldn't be complaining, but man its weird... I can imagine it would make life a bit dull if this was permanent, although I'd guess you'd loose weight because eating seems like a necessity rather than a pleasure.

You're totally entitled to complain. Having one of your senses affected changes how you perceive the world.

I have a hearing impairment (brain swelling from a blow to the head when I was younger) and without my hearing aids my perception of the world is completely different and worse. I can live without them but the world is not the same.

It's affecting your life, sure not your health directly not being able to taste but it's not something that you'd want.

Have you done some of these training things where there are distinct smells and you can almost retrain your brain by associative stimulation?

 

[GGizmo]

Here's one of the latest reports about the accumulative effects of repeated infections after getting covid and how it turns into long covid.

“Multiple hit” model shows that COVID protein potentiates subsequent infection-related neuroinflammation and other physiological problems - PolyBio Research Foundation

PolyBio-supported study in rats demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 protein activity drives longer-term vulnerability to another infection, augmenting physiological problems such as neuroinflammation,...

polybio.org

Here is a more indepth tweet thread about it.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1817282599011639758

You don't need to be repeatedly hit with covid, after the initial infection. It can be anything. Which, in my opinion, explains why people these days are sick, and sicker, more often.

My own experience of covid matches the findings. I first had covid in December 2019. It lasted 5 days, and apart from being a little light headed late at nights nothing else happened. At that point I thought it was a media overblown cold.

I think anyone concerned about the subject, or who want to keep an eye on the situation should consider reading some of the long covid groups of people suffering. Because quite a few people have been blindsided once long covid happens. Both physically and psychologically.

There as been over 24,000 research papers done in 4 years for covid and long covid, the most of any virus condition ever.

This is a good channel if you want to hear doctors talking about research papers and talking about the current theories of how covid attacks the body.

UniteToFight

We envision a world free of Long Covid & ME/CFS stigmatization, where every individual can thrive. Our mission is to create an inclusive, interactive space to address unmet needs and drive societal change. As an international, community-driven platform, we unite passionate voices through digital...

youtube.com

I admit I am more puritanical about the subject as I'm a convert after getting it myself, and I've also seen people writing about killing themselves and some doing it, or arranging appointments for euthanasia.

I think it is as much the psychological impact of becoming disabled over a short period of time, something most people never thought would happen to them. When they don't recover in a short space of time they get depressed and wonder if this is permanent.

My only advantage in this scenario is I've always been disabled, so I'm not suffering from ptsd.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

I'm not really focussing on it, I'm just surprised it was permitted considering research seems to point that it is harmful (and pfiser and AZ seemed to acknowledge it), many experts suggests it's as harmful if not more than long covid. I know they had to be seen to do "something" but as has been mentioned, the best way to have dealt with it instead of rushing out an untested vaccine was to lockdown, and ride it out that way.

However, that was also incredibly difficult if you take into consideration the economy, and mental health, but also general life - people got ill regardless of covid, had to have babies, needed to go the power station to keep the lights on, had to drive the trucks to stock the shops etc... so lockdown in reality was always a pipe dream. Furthermore, you get the herd mentality of "well if they're out, I'll go out".. and so the house of cards crumbles.

all this shown is that we don't like taking orders, we also seem to respond to fear and sensationalism, and given indication of how much we seem to be able to be coerced into things when our personal freedoms are at stake!

Anyway other than a handful of people in here which I'm sorry to hear are still struggling, life is back to normal for the majority.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though.

I disagree with a lot of your post, let's pick one point, "we don't like taking orders" I think in the main, most people did follow "orders", even crime stats fell. So even criminals followed orders - bar the criminals that stole £40bn of public money, even fewer people seem to be concerned about this - a literal theft and corruption that people are seemingly happy with? More so than a vaccine that saved lives.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

Here's one of the latest reports about the accumulative effects of repeated infections after getting covid and how it turns into long covid.

“Multiple hit” model shows that COVID protein potentiates subsequent infection-related neuroinflammation and other physiological problems - PolyBio Research Foundation

PolyBio-supported study in rats demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 protein activity drives longer-term vulnerability to another infection, augmenting physiological problems such as neuroinflammation,...

polybio.org

Here is a more indepth tweet thread about it.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1817282599011639758

You don't need to be repeatedly hit with covid, after the initial infection. It can be anything. Which, in my opinion, explains why people these days are sick, and sicker, more often.

My own experience of covid matches the findings. I first had covid in December 2019. It lasted 5 days, and apart from being a little light headed late at nights nothing else happened. At that point I thought it was a media overblown cold.

I think anyone concerned about the subject, or who want to keep an eye on the situation should consider reading some of the long covid groups of people suffering. Because quite a few people have been blindsided once long covid happens. Both physically and psychologically.

There as been over 24,000 research papers done in 4 years for covid and long covid, the most of any virus condition ever.

This is a good channel if you want to hear doctors talking about research papers and talking about the current theories of how covid attacks the body.

UniteToFight

We envision a world free of Long Covid & ME/CFS stigmatization, where every individual can thrive. Our mission is to create an inclusive, interactive space to address unmet needs and drive societal change. As an international, community-driven platform, we unite passionate voices through digital...

youtube.com

I admit I am more puritanical about the subject as I'm a convert after getting it myself, and I've also seen people writing about killing themselves and some doing it, or arranging appointments for euthanasia.

I think it is as much the psychological impact of becoming disabled over a short period of time, something most people never thought would happen to them. When they don't recover in a short space of time they get depressed and wonder if this is permanent.

My only advantage in this scenario is I've always been disabled, so I'm not suffering from ptsd.

That's in rats though. Other studies show that you're more likely to be worse off after the first time you catch it, in terms of long COVID.

I guess the jury is still out, the picture will get clearer as time goes on.

 

[Freefaller]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though.

I disagree with a lot of your post, let's pick one point, "we don't like taking orders" I think in the main, most people did follow orders, even crime stats fell. So even criminals followed orders - bar the criminals that stole £40bn of public money, even fewer people seem to be concerned about this - a literal theft and corruption that people are seemingly happy with? More so than a vaccine that saved lives.

Yeah the corruption demonstrated was sickening - glad those lot are out, though not sure if the "establishment" will ever be fixed. Money and power is always the common denominator unfortunately. As the experts seem to agree though the vaccine should have been kept for the immunocompromised and vulnerable rather than mass roll out - but as you say hindsight. I'm upset I took the vaccine, but I wanted to travel (and did extensively) so I took it... Hopefully no damage was done, but we'll never know, whether it was the vaccine or covid (if I ever got it, which I must have really).

Let's hope when this happens again we're a bit more wise with how we deal with untested medication - hopefully hindsight will offer a bit of foresight.

 

[GarethSouthgate]

Yeah the corruption demonstrated was sickening - glad those lot are out, though not sure if the "establishment" will ever be fixed. Money and power is always the common denominator unfortunately. As the experts seem to agree though the vaccine should have been kept for the immunocompromised and vulnerable rather than mass roll out - but as you say hindsight. I'm upset I took the vaccine, but I wanted to travel (and did extensively) so I took it... Hopefully no damage was done, but we'll never know, whether it was the vaccine or covid (if I ever got it, which I must have really).

Let's hope when this happens again we're a bit more wise with how we deal with untested medication - hopefully hindsight will offer a bit of foresight.

It was tested though. Obviously not in terms of 10 year long studies but it was tested.

Ultimately, any medicine can cause side effects, I know someone who ended up in a wheel chair after a dose of well tested antibiotics.

Regarding health and hindsight, who knows what micro plastics in the diet are doing, they're probably more harmful than all medicines combined. I wonder how people will look back on this time of micro plastics.

 

[Rroff]

It was tested though. Obviously not in terms of 10 year long studies but it was tested.

Ultimately, any medicine can cause side effects, I know someone who ended up in a wheel chair after a dose of well tested antibiotics.

Regarding health and hindsight, who knows what micro plastics in the diet are doing, they're probably more harmful than all medicines combined. I wonder how people will look back on this time of micro plastics.

Even stuff which is benign to like 99.999% of the population can be a problem for some - I've hypersensitivity to certain artificial colours, flavourings and some excipients in medicine which are completely harmless to most people.

 

[Freefaller]

Problem is when you take %ages of the world's population you end up with headline numbers which demonstrate millions - and again that sensationalises a lot of things unnecessarily.

The test programme wasn't done properly it's well documented, but it was done well enough to "pass" - I'm not satisfied that that's good enough to force people to be vaccinated with (ok not forced, but actively encouraged with a lot of strong propaganda). I'm glad the BMA turned around the decision to force the vaccine on their staff. Whilst there is a lot of evidence of testing, there's also a lot of evidence that was contained to showcase things aren't as great as they seem, hence the amount of difficult conversations going on on the medical world nationally and internationally now about big pharma etc... the issue is Pfizer and AZ don't really care as they can ride the wave as they have enough positive news to drown out the negative noise. I think it's naive to think that there's altruism and "for the good of the world" coming from those companies.

As I said earlier some medicines / drugs are life saving and are incredible, but like with the whole antibiotics issue we have at the moment the more you give people things the more resilient the infections become to them.

I'm just yet to be convinced that what was injected into millions of people was actually necessary - that said it's impossible to do a control experiment of that scale. Maybe I'm just a naturally suspicious person - but to state it was tested well enough unfortunately isn't correct, the impact of the vaccine now is as serious or getting to be as serious as the actually disease it was trying to mitigate.

But happy to agree to disagree - there's so much evidence countering each position that invariably you end up in a stalemate. It comes down to lived experiences, and personal perspectives and opinions.

I entirely respect anyone that feels / believes / knows that the vaccine programme is a gold plated success - because that's your perspective / lived experience and you've had the confirmation/affirmation from your peers and the experts to support that. That's entirely fair and I'm not suggesting for 1 second that it's wrong, or that my perspective is right. I just am very much on the fence/leaning to the not so rosy and good, side of the argument - I just don't accept it's as safe/effective/benign as seems suggested.

 

[arknor]

7 million people died from COVID,

did they? or did the majority of them die a few weeks/months after having covid..

we all know what they did with statistics...

 

[GarethSouthgate]

but to state it was tested well enough unfortunately isn't correct, the impact of the vaccine now is as serious or getting to be as serious as the actually disease it was trying to mitigate.

I'm not sure who said it was tested well enough, not me. You definitely said it was untested, which, when taken literally, isn't true.

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing more about why the impact of the vaccine is now as/close to as serious as COVID itself, please could you elaborate?