What would be the point in my bothering to respond? No one is getting vaccinated any more. We've done what we are going to do. The daily vax rate has dropped to 250k (mostly boosters) and falling. No one is going to get your favored old-school vaccines. The reason they are authorizing extra boosters is because the Biden administration is frustrated that the failure to approve the shot last fall when they wanted exacerbated the Omicron variant's warpath through our nation, killing far more than necessary. We underperformed all of our peer nations because we were undervaccinated.oski003 said:Unit2Sucks said:It's an off topic discussion board on a Cal sports website that you constantly fill with anti-vax misinformation regardless of source. I'm going to continue to feel free to respond however I desire including by pointing out where you've sourced an op-ed from a person with a history of poor takes on COVID.oski003 said:Unit2Sucks said:oski003 said:Unit2Sucks said:Same Marty Makary who wrote this op ed last year?oski003 said:
FDA Shuts Out Its Own Experts in Authorizing Another Vaccine Booster
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-shuts-out-its-own-experts-in-authorizing-another-booster-covid-vaccine-pandemic-science-11649016728?st=h5e27vjd8luvoi7&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalinkReally stuck the landing on that one. Can you imagine if COVID didn't disappear by April of last year? Would have been a really bad year right?Quote:
We'll Have Herd Immunity by April
Covid cases have dropped 77% in six weeks. Experts should level with the public about the good news.
Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we'd call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?
In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.
...
In my own conversations with medical experts, I have noticed that they too often dismiss natural immunity, arguing that we don't have data. The data certainly doesn't fit the classic randomized-controlled-trial model of the old-guard medical establishment. There's no control group. But the observational data is compelling.
...
But the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn't suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Vaccines also don't explain the steep decline in January. Vaccination rates were low and they take weeks to kick in.
My prediction that Covid-19 will be mostly gone by April is based on laboratory data, mathematical data, published literature and conversations with experts. But it's also based on direct observation of how hard testing has been to get, especially for the poor. If you live in a wealthy community where worried people are vigilant about getting tested, you might think that most infections are captured by testing. But if you have seen the many barriers to testing for low-income Americans, you might think that very few infections have been captured at testing centers. Keep in mind that most infections are asymptomatic, which still triggers natural immunity.
Many experts, along with politicians and journalists, are afraid to talk about herd immunity. The term has political overtones because some suggested the U.S. simply let Covid rip to achieve herd immunity. That was a reckless idea. But herd immunity is the inevitable result of viral spread and vaccination. When the chain of virus transmission has been broken in multiple places, it's harder for it to spreadand that includes the new strains.
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Some medical experts privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little Covid-19 by April but suggested that I not to talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine. But scientists shouldn't try to manipulate the
public by hiding the truth.
He also specifically called out how Manaus had herd immunity.Quote:
Herd immunity has been well-documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in the Lancet reported the prevalence of prior Covid-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection.
A few months later, Manaus was devastated by COVID again.Quote:
But after a peak in late April, Manaus seemed to have gotten past the worst of the pandemic. Some scientists thought that the drop meant Manaus had gained herd immunity.
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Now three studies offer a sobering history of P.1's meteoric rise in the Amazonian city of Manaus. It most likely arose there in November and then fueled a record-breaking spike of coronavirus cases. It came to dominate the city partly because of an increased contagiousness, the research found.
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To reduce the risks of P.1 outbreaks and reinfections, Dr. Faria said it was important to double down on every measure we have to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Masks and social distancing can work against P.1. And vaccination can help drive down its transmission and protect those who do get infected from severe disease.
"The ultimate message is that you need to step up all the vaccination efforts as soon as possible," he said. "You need to be one step ahead of the virus."
Maybe Makary should learn from his past mistakes and recognize that we are in a continuously evolving landscape and that as a surgical oncologist he may not be the best person to be making definitive suggestions on public health policy.
... He sounds fairly reasonable here. You unfairly paint him as an unqualified nut-job because he is against vaccine mandates and wants the scientific community to recognize natural immunity.
False. This is just your agenda shining through. I haven't painted him as a nut job but just one of many doctors who is stepping outside his primary field to advocate a certain worldview on how we should treat COVID. He is trying to come across as an authority but he's not. He's just a doctor with an opinion that the WSJ and others have given a platform to, for whatever reason.
As I showed above, he's been wildly wrong before. Last year you would have said his position was "reasonable " but in hindsight it was laughably bad.
My point is that I don't see much of any reason to rate his opinion. He doesn't have the credentials or experience to warrant a platform on par with infectious disease experts or epidemiologists. Just as I'm sure he would take the opinions of epidemiologists with a grain of salt when discussing surgical oncology I would do the same here, particularly given his track record.
You are welcome to address what he actually wrote in WSJ instead of attacking his ability to comment on the fourth shot.
I took the time to rebut your criticisms of the source. In turn, you disparage the two other "sources:" me and this board. Thanks for the chuckle. Don't change Unit2, not that you are capable of doing so.
Two questions:
1) is the spike protein toxic?
2) has pfizers mRNA vaccine cause any Americans to die? A few months ago you asked me to prove it caused a single death.
We lost, COVID won and nothing we will do will change that. I doubt at this point very many people will get 4th booster shots. When the next variant hits or is on the horizon, we will probably see uptake from some members of vulnerable populations and other people who want additional protection. As you and I both know, vaccine hesitant people won't take the traditional vaccines when offered because they don't address the underlying anti-vax problem. It's why uptake has been so slow across the world where those vaccines are now offered.
This topic has more than run its course but you will continue to post misinformation and pretend that things aren't the way they are. The only way things will look good is if your buddy Makary was correct last year that COVID would run it's course and he just got the date wrong by a year or so. Right now we are about 2x the lowest level of weekly COVID cases (and deaths) that we hit last summer. Hopefully we can drop by 4 or 5x to a more sustainable level which would take COVID deaths down to a more flu like toll of perhaps 30-40k per year moving forward.