Covid-19 #17: Covid Is For Ever

[Filippa Eilhart]

I mean I don’t understand how you fail to see the bolded part.

[The Anti-Targ]

25 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

I mean I don’t understand how you fail to see the bolded part.

As I said further up. People choose to interpret things a certain way for their own reasons. When the context is as clear as the midday sun and yet is ignored there is no point in continuing the discussion. 

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Anti-targ is quoted having typed:

That sounds damned Mengele.  How does it not?  If you are trying to say you are explaining what somebody else said, you haven't provided either the context or who said it / typed it.  So it still stands Mengele-like at best. It is saying that actively infecting people makes for stronger science, i.e. it's good for science to kill people.

As someone who has lived through having hundreds dying all around us, a system and government that actively helps this alone, it is not reassuring.  At best it sounds like somebody who has no idea what it is like to have thousands around dying or threatened to die, or be very ill and morgues and hospitals can't keep up.  This happened. Nobody should have to live through this again, but for the sake of being 'robust' let's do it!  It doesn't affect you, does it?

 

You're over weighting the impact of "scientifically robust" in that sentence. It's saying that in a complete vacuum divorced from moral constraints this would determine whether the vaccine is effective faster than the current process, he is not saying that we should operate in that vacuum and ignore morality. And again I really can't over emphasises this is not his opinion, this his interpretation of what Altherion was saying in an attempt to translate for yet another poster. 

I share his interpretation of Altherions post but also share your condemnation of the sentiment. It is horrific Nazi shit. But it's not AT's opinion. And I'm a lot less surprised by Altherion presenting that sentiment than I would be by AT.

[Starkess]

On 9/7/2020 at 6:21 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

My interpretation of the attempted point is that to speed things along with vaccines it would be scientifically robust to actively infect people as part of the process. The quality of data you can get from actively infecting people is as good, arguably better, than the quality of data you can get by just sending people out into the world and relying on probability to get you the data you need. But you are going to deliberately make some people in the placebo group sick and potentially die, and some people in the vaccine group also, since it is not expected that the vaccine will be 100% effective. So it would be ethically, and probably legally proscribed to do this.

@Zorral can you please chill on calling people Nazis?

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

You're over weighting the impact of "scientifically robust" in that sentence. It's saying that in a complete vacuum divorced from moral constraints this would determine whether the vaccine is effective faster than the current process, he is not saying that we should operate in that vacuum and ignore morality. And again I really can't over emphasises this is not his opinion, this his interpretation of what Altherion was saying in an attempt to translate for yet another poster. 

I share his interpretation of Altherions post but also share your condemnation of the sentiment. It is horrific Nazi shit. But it's not AT's opinion. And I'm a lot less surprised by Altherion presenting that sentiment than I would be by AT.

There is an interesting conversation to be had about science and morality / ethics. But this isn't the thread. Suffice it to say that I think there is a view out in the wild that science is "naturally" ethical. But it most definitely isn't. It's why we need regulations and ethics committees to keep scientists' thirst for knowledge in check.

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

There is an interesting conversation to be had about science and morality / ethics. But this isn't the thread. Suffice it to say that I think there is a view out in the wild that science is "naturally" ethical. But it most definitely isn't. It's why we need regulations and ethics committees to keep scientists' thirst for knowledge in check.

Unfortunately along with many other ideas that we viewed as discredited after the first half of the 20th Century, I've been seeing too many proto-eugenics ideas starting to creep back into the conversation. Just straight up eugenics as well in some cases.

[rotting sea cow]

9 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Apparently, the CEO of Astrazeneca confirmed in a private conference call with investors on Wednesday morning that this was the second time the trials have been stopped after a patient had suffered neurological symptoms.  The first case was attributed to multiple sclerosis, that they did not find to be caused by the vaccine.  Second case has symptoms consistent with transverse myelitis, but as of Wednesday morning, the diagnosis was not officially confirmed.  He also confirmed that the second patient received the vaccine, and not a placebo.  Both diseases involve damage to the myelin sheath surrounding nerves from an autoimmune response.  The symptoms and potential causes of the two disease have a large overlap, so I think they need to revisit the first case.  I think it's over for this vaccine.  I don't think they can just waive the second case off as another case of multiple sclerosis or some other similar disease that is caused by something other than the vaccine. 

Shit. Pretty much.

I cannot find the news now but some UK health authority said that all trials should be stopped. It might be that it's not the vector what caused the reaction.

 

[DaveSumm]

This is a little more optimistic, I’m seeing a wide range of optimism and scepticism across various sites so I’m gonna hold off judgement till more comes to light.

[The Anti-Targ]

I think it's overstating things to say it's over for the AZ/O vaccine. If the first pause was because of undiagnosed, pre-existing MS it has no bearing at all on the vaccine's safety. The second case is one person possibly with TM, that is not only caused by a bad reaction to a vaccine. So it's not yet possible to say with certainty that this vaccine definitely caused the second illness, but there is a good chance it did. And as mentioned up thread by someone, TM as a known side effect does not in itself make a vaccine unsuitable for widespread use since there are vaccines on the market with that as a known side effect, according posts in this thread (I haven't done any independent verification to confirm this).

I think there is still a decent probability that this vaccine will push on with the phase 3 trial, but there is a note of caution about whether it will come through the trial in a state fit to be approved for use.

[Mudguard]

It's not over yet, but they need to release more details about the two cases.  With the first case, how confident are they with the diagnosis of MS and that the vaccine was not responsible?  If the person was suffering symptoms of MS before the start of the trial, OK.  If the symptoms only started after receiving the vaccine, then I'm not sure how they can rule out the vaccine as the cause, when the ultimate cause of MS is generally unknown.  The cat is out of the bag now, so they need to provide a lot more details, at least with respect to the first case, where the review is already complete, and then for the second case when the review is completed.

Transverse myelitis occurs in about 1 in a million or less for the other vaccines that have been approved.  It's extremely rare.  If one or both cases are attributed to Oxford's vaccine, it would occur roughly 100 times more frequently.

I was willing to write off one case as bad luck, but the existence of the other earlier case makes me much more doubtful.  Let's see the data and analysis for the first case.  I'm not willing to just take them at their word.

[Zorral]

18 hours ago, karaddin said:

this his interpretation of what Altherion was saying in an attempt to translate for yet another poster. 

This is the first time it has been overtly stated that ATarg was interpreting Altherion who supposedly was interpreting what someone else said.

I inquired who said what more than once.  In response, you and ATarg repeated the words and said they weren't ATarg's words. 

What you meant ... I think ... is these words supposedly were not the writer's opinion or ethical signature, but some one else's.  Who that writer is I still don't know. Plus that writer invoked is 4 removes from now: you, Atarg, Altherion, and the mysterious #4 writer.

Nor do I understand why that person's idea that deliberately infecting people with the virus was a useful thing to do, not a negative thing to do, and wanting to talk about it.

Whew!

 

 

[williamjm]

11 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

I cannot find the news now but some UK health authority said that all trials should be stopped. It might be that it's not the vector what caused the reaction.

It would be interesting to see a link for this if you can find it again, since I haven't seen any mention of it on UK news sites and it feels like something that would be big news.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

24 minutes ago, williamjm said:

It would be interesting to see a link for this if you can find it again, since I haven't seen any mention of it on UK news sites and it feels like something that would be big news.

I suspect that it may be a  miss quote and what was really meant was all trials of that particular vaccine.  Not all the different trails for different vaccines.   

But if someone is able to provide a link it would clear this up

[rotting sea cow]

41 minutes ago, williamjm said:

It would be interesting to see a link for this if you can find it again, since I haven't seen any mention of it on UK news sites and it feels like something that would be big news.

I saw it in a tweet as response of the tweets above, but cannot find it again. It might well be a miss-quote.

Ah.... it might be this one

But as no link was provided, I google it, and indeed it's not exactly what it was said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-vaccine/uk-science-adviser-other-vaccine-trials-also-likely-to-be-paused-idINKBN2602NB

Quote

LONDON (Reuters) - Other COVID-19 vaccine trials are likely to be paused at some point the British government’s Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance, said, describing a pause in the trial of an AstraZeneca [AZN.L] vaccine as “not good” but a sensible step.

“I think you should expect in some of the other trials that you will see situations where things are paused and then restarted,” Vallance told a news conference.

“We need to make sure with these vaccines that they work, they work well enough, and they are safe,” he added.

 

[Filippa Eilhart]

It’s too frustrating to not say this, so I will.

@Zorral I quoted the exchange for you! It went: Altherion, Old Zog, Anti Targ. Everyone in this thread understood how the exchange went, including non-native speakers such as myself. It really wasn’t hard to get and didn’t require 5 separate people explaining this to you!

I’ll shut up now, whew.

[The Anti-Targ]

12 hours ago, Mudguard said:

It's not over yet, but they need to release more details about the two cases.  With the first case, how confident are they with the diagnosis of MS and that the vaccine was not responsible?  If the person was suffering symptoms of MS before the start of the trial, OK.  If the symptoms only started after receiving the vaccine, then I'm not sure how they can rule out the vaccine as the cause, when the ultimate cause of MS is generally unknown.  The cat is out of the bag now, so they need to provide a lot more details, at least with respect to the first case, where the review is already complete, and then for the second case when the review is completed.

Transverse myelitis occurs in about 1 in a million or less for the other vaccines that have been approved.  It's extremely rare.  If one or both cases are attributed to Oxford's vaccine, it would occur roughly 100 times more frequently.

I was willing to write off one case as bad luck, but the existence of the other earlier case makes me much more doubtful.  Let's see the data and analysis for the first case.  I'm not willing to just take them at their word.

One thing you can anticipate is that regardless of any follow up, if the vaccine gets approved the anti-vaxx lot will start proclaiming that this vaccine gives people MS.

Since MS is a chronic degenerative disease I would be very surprised if a shot from a vaccine would suddenly cause actual MS in such a short time. What could be happening is that the person has the degenerative process of MS happening already, but not progressed to being symptomatic, and maybe the vaccine causes some reaction that causes a sudden progression of the MS degeneration to then bring about symptoms. Since MS is regarded as an auto-immune condition stimulation of the immune system by a vaccine might accelerate the process. So possibly any vaccine might be a trigger in such people, not this vaccine specifically or exclusively.

There is an acute from of MS, I just found out, which no doubt also has no known cause. But if the first case has that I don't see how they would have carried on with the trial, because that would be some serious shit needing a helluva lot of investigation before it could continue. It is apparently usually fatal. Given it came up near the top of my googling for it here's the wiki page on the acute form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_acute_multiple_sclerosis

ETA: Ugh! the person who spread COVID-19 to people at a funeral was meant to be in self-isolation from close exposure to a confirmed case. Problem is, the health department initially said this person wasn't required to be in self-isolation, but a day later they said the person was supposed to be in self-isolation. Makes me wonder if the person concerned was confused by what the Health dept was telling them so thought they were OK to go to the funeral. It certainly seems like the Health dept was a bit confused.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

It’s too frustrating to not say this, so I will.

@Zorral I quoted the exchange for you! It went: Altherion, Old Zog, Anti Targ. Everyone in this thread understood how the exchange went, including non-native speakers such as myself. It really wasn’t hard to get and didn’t require 5 separate people explaining this to you!

I’ll shut up now, whew.

We just have to accept that the curse of Zorral is upon me. I have to come to terms with it and live with it for the rest of my days. Nothing to be said or done. It is what it is, as they say.

[karaddin]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

This is the first time it has been overtly stated that ATarg was interpreting Altherion who supposedly was interpreting what someone else said.

I inquired who said what more than once.  In response, you and ATarg repeated the words and said they weren't ATarg's words. 

What you meant ... I think ... is these words supposedly were not the writer's opinion or ethical signature, but some one else's.  Who that writer is I still don't know. Plus that writer invoked is 4 removes from now: you, Atarg, Altherion, and the mysterious #4 writer.

Nor do I understand why that person's idea that deliberately infecting people with the virus was a useful thing to do, not a negative thing to do, and wanting to talk about it.

Whew!

 

 

I really don't understand where this confusion is coming from, the words aren't 4 people removed - they're Altherions. He was stating his own opinion and AT was translating it. Altherion saying shit like that is not at all surprising and I'm not telling you to reconsider your assessment of him, I was only talking about AT.

[Zorral]

OK.  Yes, I do seem to recall it is Altherion who is a big supporter of herd immunity -- somebody who post here is, anyway, and brings it up often.   Thank you for clearing this up.  Evidently I saw only AT, and was literally shocked at the bent, for it did seem to me to be just what so many unthinking and maybe even sociopathic people in the sciences in both the US and Germany and some other countries did and said in the later 9th century through the nazi era.

I apologize to Anti-Targ, sincerely.  I'm very sorry I confused you with somebody else.

Again, thank you K, for having the patience to make this clear.

 

 

[Altherion]

20 hours ago, karaddin said:

I really don't understand where this confusion is coming from, the words aren't 4 people removed - they're Altherions. He was stating his own opinion and AT was translating it. Altherion saying shit like that is not at all surprising and I'm not telling you to reconsider your assessment of him, I was only talking about AT.

To be clear, it's not a wholly original opinion -- the idea is pretty widespread (the technical term for it is "human challenge testing" which I didn't know before) and, as was pointed out earlier in the thread, the World Health Organization even has guidelines for how to do this ethically.

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

Yes, I do seem to recall it is Altherion who is a big supporter of herd immunity -- somebody who post here is, anyway, and brings it up often. 

You recall incorrectly. The only thing I have ever said on these boards about herd immunity is that certain localities may have already reached it (this is one explanation for why reopening in some places has had no measurable effect on infection rates whereas reopening in others has caused the rates to skyrocket). I have never supported herd immunity as policy; it's what will happen by default if policy fails, but the cost will be enormous.