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At least 65,000 more men have died of covid-19 than women in the United States by the end of August, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.

Israel said it has identified a mutated delta variant, AY.4.2, the first case of the mutant confirmed in the country.  The AY.4.2 variation of the coronavirus, which was described by one expert as a “descendant” of the delta variant, is being monitored in Britain, though it is unclear whether AY.4.2 poses a significant risk of being more contagious or more capable of evading protection provided by vaccines. It has not been categorized as a “variant of interest” or a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization.

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4 hours ago, Detonable said:

Are there any other vaccines in development? One would think by now someone would have come up with a better idea. 

Yes.  There are some additional technologies like DNA strands that are in clinical trials that will be another proof of concept for new technologies. I can tell you that we are testing ones with refined spike protein targets and there is a lot of work on hyper-responsive low dose boosters that use the blanket antigen status that allow rapid deployment to fight whatever variant is hitting at the time.  That is what is publicly released at least.  There are plenty of others on going behind the various NDA's.  

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7 hours ago, sunday said:

Nope, you are not. The paper for which you introduced a novel way to compensate infection rates was a survey, not a randomized control trial (paid by Pfizer, curiously) like your first example, nor a systematic review like your second, so the both links are not really relevant for this discussion. 

I would give you a D- in weaseling out efforts, and I should remind you people are still waiting for this:

What the hell are you even talking about?

If you want to compare the infection rate between unvaccinated and vaccinated people, the best way to do it is with a randomised control trial. If you remember your basic high school science, in a scientific investigation it is important to try to eliminate all variables other than the one you're trying to study otherwise it is impossible to determine the cause of an observed effect.

In the case of drug or vaccine studies, what you ideally want to do is to have two groups of people, as close to identical as it is possible to make them, and to give one group the treatment and the other a placebo. It is then possible to compare relative infection rates without introducing possible bias into the results.

As I have pointed out I think 4 times now, the report that the New World Order site you linked to got its graph from makes the same point.

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Since we're back on the Indian horse paste thing yet again, perhaps out resident stats guru can answer this one:

Here are graphs showing the infection rates for Uttar Pradesh and several of its neighboring states. Can you identify from the graphs which one is the state that made widespread use of ivermectin to treat its population and which ones did not?

 

image.png.262ca7b2024fe53577a3f8304d082b9d.png

 

image.png.fbc0b8320568b65978b3b7033e5ed445.png

 

image.png.eadf59d61481b4b289b5354cba19ec60.png

image.png.ad17463a0d74c1d36c5f743311b57926.png

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27 minutes ago, Adam_S said:

If you want to compare the infection rate between unvaccinated and vaccinated people, the best way to do it is with a randomised control trial. If you remember your basic high school science, in a scientific investigation it is important to try to eliminate all variables other than the one you're trying to study otherwise it is impossible to determine the cause of an observed effect.

 

How are you eliminating those who are vaccinated from those who were also previously infected?  Such would be a third category of people. 

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24 minutes ago, Adam_S said:

Since we're back on the Indian horse paste thing yet again, perhaps out resident stats guru can answer this one:

Here are graphs showing the infection rates for Uttar Pradesh and several of its neighboring states. Can you identify from the graphs which one is the state that made widespread use of ivermectin to treat its population and which ones did not?

 

image.png.262ca7b2024fe53577a3f8304d082b9d.png

 

image.png.fbc0b8320568b65978b3b7033e5ed445.png

 

image.png.eadf59d61481b4b289b5354cba19ec60.png

image.png.ad17463a0d74c1d36c5f743311b57926.png

Graphs without scales let alone citation? Really? You must be joking. 

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2 minutes ago, rmgill said:

How are you eliminating those who are vaccinated from those who were also previously infected?  Such would be a third category of people. 

That's actually a good question. It would possibly be something that would need to be screened for in the initial selection of the survey group.

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Shouldn't case rates be a factor here too? Raw total cases doesn't tell us what the relative population numbers in relation to total cases are.

If a prophylactic cut the case rate down to 1/2 of what was in the other states, then that would be notable. 

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On 10/20/2021 at 10:47 PM, Adam_S said:

What the hell are you even talking about?

I am talking about this:

And still waiting for your procedure to "balance" already normalized infection rates in a population using the ratios of people in different populations when making a survey studio, but looks you are not going to produce it.

Edited by sunday
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On 10/21/2021 at 12:01 AM, rmgill said:

Shouldn't case rates be a factor here too? Raw total cases doesn't tell us what the relative population numbers in relation to total cases are.

If a prophylactic cut the case rate down to 1/2 of what was in the other states, then that would be notable. 

Case rates AND the possible use of Ivermectin, too. That could vary over time. Some states authorized it, then went to ban it a bit later, for instance.

Seems our self-proclaimed epidemiological and statistical expert here thinks IVM only was used in Uttar Pradesh, so if other states show similar curves, then IVM has no effect. That was an attempt to "deboonk" this article, whose gist was basically this:

Quote

The New York Times reported India’s colossal drop in COVID cases was unexplainable, while the BBC declared that Kerala’s rise was also a mystery. While new cases of COVID in Uttar Pradesh are rare as million-dollar lottery tickets, in Kerala, a tiny state located in southern India, new daily cases are the same as the United States, nearly one case per thousand. Yet, as we have seen in this series, there has been a curious media blackout on India’s overall success against COVID.

The self-proclaimed expert went to state that there were other factors here, likely vaccination rates, but a cursory search showed that vaccination rates in Kerala were quite higher than the vaccination rates in Uttar Pradesh. I posted that bit of data on vaccinations, then went to ignore the self-proclaimed expert. The later retorted with cases in Northern India states, claiming that the reduction of cases there mean Uttar Pradesh was no a special case that could show the effectiveness of IVM, but without presenting any data about if the other states had approved/banned IVM.

Nobody questioned the "deboonk", so the self-proclaimed expert feel confirmed in his supposed "expert" role, and was put on the same level as Niftlegal, a real pro, by his NPC cheerleading team.

As an aside, I wonder if there could be a unexplored aspect, namely that IVM is easily available in India because it is the drug of choice for treating some endemic diseases there, and how effective a ban on using it for Panda flu could be. It could be also that IVM is widely used prophylactically against those parasitic diseases (in the same way as people takes HCQ to prevent infection by malaria, see what the US CDC says on the matter), and the dose use is enough to prevent Covid infection, in which case that could be a very effective, cheap way to fight against Covid. I do not know if there are studies on this later possibility, nor I am a subject matter expert in anything medical, so this whole paragraph should be taken with a grain of salt or two.

Of course, Uttar Pradesh did more than deploy IVM as early treatment and prophylactic, they also introduced aggressive testing and strict case tracking, as this other article in the same series describes

Edited by sunday
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9 hours ago, bojan said:

Yes, ones orientated on delta strain.

If they use the current methods for making the Moderna, Pfizer, J&J etc and tweek them for the Delta or what ever variant comes to dominate next would they have to go through a full approval process in the U.S. with the FDA and what ever the EU equivalent is?

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While robust debate is acceptable and is encouraged, it must be tempered with respect for others posting who may have differing viewpoints. 

In short, MODERATOR says knock off the name calling and posting of silly pictures and treat others with respect.

If things continue as they are, this thread may be locked and/or offenders given a time out.

This warning applies to all participants, regardless of your position on COVID, vaccine mandates, Ivermectin, or anything else.

Govern yourselves accordingly.

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6 hours ago, nitflegal said:

Yes.  There are some additional technologies like DNA strands that are in clinical trials that will be another proof of concept for new technologies. I can tell you that we are testing ones with refined spike protein targets and there is a lot of work on hyper-responsive low dose boosters that use the blanket antigen status that allow rapid deployment to fight whatever variant is hitting at the time.  That is what is publicly released at least.  There are plenty of others on going behind the various NDA's.  

Thanks for that bit of information.

That bit about DNA makes me wonder if at last gene therapy will be going mainstream. There are some gene therapies approved by the FDA, but it looks there is none for infectious diseases yet.

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8 hours ago, Adam_S said:

That's actually a good question. It would possibly be something that would need to be screened for in the initial selection of the survey group.

In the UK paper they used the NHS patient numbers to determine the vaccination status for those in the sample who tested positive for COVID. The do not present data on people who tested positive after previously recovering from an infection. I'm fairly sure that it's not relevant to the statistic they were generating anyway.

Note that the UK paper is not in any way a clinical trial, it's observational data.

The India charts prove nothing, but not because the don't have a vertical scale. It's because we don't have information on the penetration of the kits into the populations involved.

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2 hours ago, DB said:

The India charts prove nothing, but not because the don't have a vertical scale. It's because we don't have information on the penetration of the kits into the populations involved.

There must be an explanation of the curbing of deaths by the pandemic Uttar Pradesh, less than 10 daily on average since July 1st. Population is 241 million, and full vaccination rate on July 1st was 4.3%, now is 20.8%. Stats from Our World in Data.

The explanations could be local environment (more sunlight?), virus variability, dodgy statistics, or that they are using some procedure that works well, I guess.

Edited by sunday
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14 hours ago, nitflegal said:

Yes.  There are some additional technologies like DNA strands that are in clinical trials that will be another proof of concept for new technologies. I can tell you that we are testing ones with refined spike protein targets and there is a lot of work on hyper-responsive low dose boosters that use the blanket antigen status that allow rapid deployment to fight whatever variant is hitting at the time.  That is what is publicly released at least.  There are plenty of others on going behind the various NDA's.  

Unless the implied system of variant detection, isolation & distribution, etc. becomes uniquely rapid, this sounds like the flu shot mess over the last 30 years. "Whoops, we guessed wrong, so this year's flu shot doesn't help much."

In our overwrought bureaucratic environment, I am concerned that lack of a reliable, broad-spectrum vaccine will result in frequent flare-ups in case rate (if not mortality rate), resulting in another lockdown. Imagining a lockdown every 2 or 3 years, the long-term economy won't support 19th century medicine, much less 21st (IMHO).

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Rationally-acting governments won't shut down the economy (again) as long as the mortality stays low (and the best way to ensure that is vaccination). There may have been overreactions in the last 18 months, but at least in Europe it seems like there's a return to normalcy. Eventually the US will follow, I presume.

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Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?

Quote

Abstract

This article examines issues related to COVID-19 inoculations for children. The bulk of the official COVID-19-attributed deaths per capita occur in the elderly with high comorbidities, and the COVID-19 attributed deaths per capita are negligible in children. The bulk of the normalized post-inoculation deaths also occur in the elderly with high comorbidities, while the normalized post-inoculation deaths are small, but not negligible, in children. Clinical trials for these inoculations were very short-term (a few months), had samples not representative of the total population, and for adolescents/children, had poor predictive power because of their small size. Further, the clinical trials did not address changes in biomarkers that could serve as early warning indicators of elevated predisposition to serious diseases. Most importantly, the clinical trials did not address long-term effects that, if serious, would be borne by children/adolescents for potentially decades.

A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic. The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.

There is an in-depth discussion on how to use VAERS data.

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1 hour ago, Ivanhoe said:

Unless the implied system of variant detection, isolation & distribution, etc. becomes uniquely rapid, this sounds like the flu shot mess over the last 30 years. "Whoops, we guessed wrong, so this year's flu shot doesn't help much."

In our overwrought bureaucratic environment, I am concerned that lack of a reliable, broad-spectrum vaccine will result in frequent flare-ups in case rate (if not mortality rate), resulting in another lockdown. Imagining a lockdown every 2 or 3 years, the long-term economy won't support 19th century medicine, much less 21st (IMHO).

I'm not sure that you are wrong, unfortunately.  The scale will make it brutal if we have to booster everyone or else.  There will be a manufacturing lag as well.  Part of the problem is that this virus is really, really weird.  It isn't working like other identified coronaviruses such as SARS or MERS.  I know that it tends to come across as a conspiracy theory but I am convinced at this point that the virus is lab altered.  I've talked with people at the in vivo CDC rapid response team for a couple decades ago (at one time it was my dream job, here is some weird squirrel or bat or lemur from some middle of nowhere jungle, figure out how to keep it alive and wear your BSL 3 suits and figure out how to test disease response.  It's about as close to Nic Cage's jon in the Rock as my field gets) and they spent 20 years intensively studying the weirdest bat and other coronaviruses.  None of them act like this without massive GoF tweaking.  None.  Which means unless the lab tells us what they did to the damned thing we will be trying to figure it out for a long time.  It's hard enough to fully characterize a novel virus if it behaves according to the rules, when it is making up its own rules tracking gene expression is almost impossible; we can't extrapolate based on known actions.  

Put simply, a virus should not be able to thwart vaccines this quickly.  It has never happened and on paper shouldn't be able to happen.  So cracking this one is uncharted territory.

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Did You Get the Johnson & Johnson Vaccine? Your Booster Is Coming.

Yale Medicine experts share seven things you need to know about the J&J booster.

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/johnson-and-johnson-covid-booster

 

Pfizer and BioNTech Announce Phase 3 Trial Data Showing High Efficacy of a Booster Dose of Their COVID-19 Vaccine.

https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-phase-3-trial-data-showing-high

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5 hours ago, nitflegal said:

Put simply, a virus should not be able to thwart vaccines this quickly.  It has never happened and on paper shouldn't be able to happen.  So cracking this one is uncharted territory.

But these vaccines also were rushed. And some have new tech.

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