COVID-19 News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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FDA vaccine advisers recommend emergency use authorization for booster dose of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine

Quote
Vaccine advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously Thursday to recommend emergency use authorization of a booster dose of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine.

The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee agreed use of a booster dose would be safe and effective in some people six months out from their primary series.

Moderna had asked for emergency use authorization for a half dose of its vaccine to be used as a booster for certain people.

All 19 members of the committee supported authorizing a 50-microgram booster dose -- half the size of the 100-microgram doses used in the primary series of the two-dose vaccine -- at least six months after the second dose, and only for certain groups: people age 65 and older; people ages 18 to 64 who are at high risk of severe Covid-19; and people ages 18 to 64 whose exposure to the coronavirus in their settings or jobs put them at risk for Covid-19 complications or severe illness.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/14/health/f ... index.html
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erowind
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Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

Post by erowind »

caltrek wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 4:39 pm
The only two reasons this is a “debate” are to attempt to paint China as incompetent for the purpose of imperial conflict and to deflect from human impact on the ecosystem.
I don't think we should come to conclusions based on the possible political motivations of those making the argument. We could just as easily argue that those who favor the natural transmission from the Wuhan market are also making the case concerning Chinese incompetence in basic health and hygiene practices; or are trying to deflect from the possible problems of lab practices. It has been argued that some who are pushing the Wuhan market natural escape explanation were themselves implicated in collaborating with the Wuhan labs, and are trying to deflect from their possible involvement and share of the blame.

We should stick with the science. Unfortunately, depending upon who you talk to, the science itself seems ambiguous on the matter.
Rest assured I did read the quote from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and also respect their publications. However I vehemently disagree with this framing and do consider it unscientific because it refuses to approach the root cause of the problem.

Say for a moment that the Chinese lab in Wuhan did in fact isolate a coronavirus strain that had potential to breakout from an animal reservoir and proceeded to replicate the virus for purpose of study. Say the labs containment protocols then failed entirely and this was the true source of case zero. What would the outcome be? How would our media frame this incident and how would common discourse think of the event? What consent would be manufactured? Considering the current rhetoric in our media surrounding China both prior to and after the pandemic I think it is reasonable to assume the event would be spun against the Chinese government for realpolitik purposes.

So say, "Erowind, in that case they did do it! Why do you care?!" I care because it's not about the blasted Chinese government, I've made clear in other threads too I don't approve of it. And believe it or not it's not even about American imperialism or whatever other leftist line people may expect me to tow here. The real crux of the problem here that is being utterly ignored by almost everyone except select scientific researchers, is the connection to the ecological crisis. And that is the existential question. It is bigger than China, America, and all of the other nonsense the media shoves down our throats combined because it will be our end without action and consciousness of it.

So how does the ecological crisis tie into a lab of a given country replicating and modifying a virus from an animal reservoir? (If this is even the case.) It ties in because that very lab would have had to rely on human encroachment on ecosystems to begin with in order to acquire the virus that is close enough to breaking out already in order to replicate it in such a manner. Meaning, no matter where the virus came from, whether from a lab through artificial replication, or from an animal reservoir in BOTH CASES it came from an animal reservoir and in BOTH CASES human activity and encroachment on ecosystems is responsible. In other words, the framing of the question is wrong, and the only reasonable conclusion is to the tie the causal origin of the virus into a discussion on human land use and human use of this planets ecosystems as that use is the causal origin. It is not constructive or useful to the species to turn this into a ****flinging contest between apologism for a given person's favorite imperialist country, whether that country be the People's Republic of China or the United States. And pushing the lab "hypothesis" is very much part of that ****flinging because it only serves as rhetorical deflection.

This goes back to my initial question. "What consent would be manufactured?" In building this post I pointed out the obvious interest of western media to frame the event negatively in order to rally public opinion against China. However, that is not the most important motive of this manufacture. The most dangerous thing to this socio-economic system right now would not be if the lab speculation were wrong nor right. No, the most dangerous thing would be if the framing of the conservation entered into a reasoned discussion on human encroachment on ecosystems because the implications of that discussion endanger all stakeholders of power in this society internationally.
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Ken_J
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Re: COVID-19 News and Discussions

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there is an all too common belief that 'finding the responsible party' is the same as solving the problem. It's the global politics equivalent of leaving three crackers at the bottom of the box so that the next person who gets crackers is the one responsible for the crackers being gone, and thus throwing away the empty box and getting the net box of crackers to replace them.

every time there is a major event or a big problem that is in the news there is some big old blame game and a bunch of scape goating. and such a big production is made of identifying the person/s responsible. and then ones a case is made enough for people to pick teams they dust their hands happily and proclaimed the problem is solved now that we 'know who caused it'. Meanwhile the problem continues and worsens.

lung cancer isn't solved be determining if it was caused by asbestos exposure or smoking as a teen. right or wrong in figuring it out does not cure the cancer.
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raklian
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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caltrek
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Erowind: The real crux of the problem here that is being utterly ignored by almost everyone except select scientific researchers, is the connection to the ecological crisis. And that is the existential question. It is bigger than China, America, and all of the other nonsense the media shoves down our throats combined because it will be our end without action and consciousness of it.
Rather than offering a further rebuttal, which would just consist of a repetition of earlier points that I have made, I will agree with you that drawing a connection "to the ecological crisis" is a good point well worth making.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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wjfox
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Ken_J
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Post by Ken_J »

the US is currently around 370000 deaths for the years. We are currently on a downside of a wave. I'm not sure how fall and winter will effect numbers though. It seems we will likely at least have another year and likely another wave before we start to approach that idea of settling into endemic covid.

I strongly suspect that booster shot and new vaccination rates will not be as good as the crap job we've had so far.

I find myself wondering about flu rates in that time as well. will flu get the same numbers it was achieving pre-covid, or will the be competeing for the same population and effect the numbers for each... of will the mild symptoms of covid make some far more vulnerable to deadly outcome from flu?

not to mention waning immunity to covid, new strains, new pandemics.
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erowind
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Post by erowind »

Due to waning flu immunity caused by more aggressive social distancing last year we might expect the flu to come back with a very strong season whenever it does. At first I had hopes that covid had killed off the flu entirely which was a speculation going around at one point.

Now i’m hoping for the infinitesimal chance of the opposite. That a highly infectious flu adapts to outcompete covid but still maintains the very low death rate the flu has generally had over the years. Wishful thinking I know, but we sure know humans aren’t going to eradicate covid anytime soon so if the fates exist and favor us that’s all I can hope for at this point.

It really shows had absurd and bad the situation is that my best case scenario is a monster flu pandemic in terms of infections that sweeps through the population wiping out covid. Because that would actually somehow be better longterm than if it didn’t happen!
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caltrek
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If you are wondering about why the U.S. continues to have one of the highest death tolls from Covid among the developed nations, this should help explain that a good part of it is our love of freedumb:

Lawsuits Demand Unproven Ivermectin for Covid Patients
October 16, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/lawsuits ... -patients/

Introduction:
NEW YORK (AP via Courthouse News) — Mask rules, vaccination mandates and business shutdowns have all landed in the courts during the Covid-19 outbreak, confronting judges with questions of science and government authority. Now they are increasingly being asked to weigh in on the deworming drug ivermectin.

At least two dozen lawsuits have been filed around the U.S., many in recent weeks, by people seeking to force hospitals to give their COVID-stricken loved ones ivermectin, a drug for parasites that has been promoted by conservative commentators as a treatment despite a lack of conclusive evidence that it helps people with the virus.

Interest in the drug started rising toward the end of last year and the beginning of this one, when studies — some later withdrawn, in other countries — seemed to suggest ivermectin had some potential and it became a hot topic of conversation among conservatives on social media.

The lawsuits, several of them filed by the same western New York lawyer, cover similar ground. The families have gotten prescriptions for ivermectin, but hospitals have refused to use it on their loved ones, who are often on ventilators and facing death.

There has been a mix of results in state courts. Some judges have refused to order hospitals to give ivermectin. Others have ordered medical providers to give the medication, despite concerns it could be harmful.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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caltrek
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COVID Super-immunity: One of the Pandemic’s Great Puzzles
by Ewen Callaway
October 14, 2021

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02795-x

Introduction:
(Nature) Around a year ago — before Delta and other variants entered the COVID-19 lexicon — virologists Theodora Hatziioannou and Paul Bieniasz, both at the Rockefeller University in New York City, set out to make a version of a key SARS-CoV-2 protein with the ability to dodge all the infection-blocking antibodies our body makes.

The goal was to identify the parts of spike — the protein SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells — that are targeted by these neutralizing antibodies in order to map a key part of our body's attack on the virus. So the researchers mixed and matched potentially concerning mutations identified in lab experiments and circulating viruses, and tested their Franken-spikes in harmless ‘pseudotype’ viruses incapable of causing COVID-19. In a study published this September in Nature1, they reported that a spike mutant containing 20 changes was fully resistant to neutralizing antibodies made by most of the people tested who had been either infected or vaccinated — but not to everyone’s.

Those who had recovered from COVID-19 months before receiving their jabs harboured antibodies capable of defanging the mutant spike, which displays much more resistance to immune attack than any known naturally occurring variant. These peoples’ antibodies even blocked other types of coronaviruses. “It’s very likely they will be effective against any future variant that SARS-CoV-2 throws against them,” says Hatziioannou.

As the world watches out for new coronavirus variants, the basis of such ‘super-immunity’ has become one of the pandemic’s great mysteries. Researchers hope that, by mapping the differences between the immune protection that comes from infection compared with that from vaccination, they can chart a safer path to this higher level of protection.
Conclusion:
Those studying hybrid immunity stress that — whatever the potential benefits — the risks of a SARS-CoV-2 infection mean that it should be avoided. “We are not inviting anybody to get infected and then vaccinated to have a good response,” says Finzi. “Because some of them will not make it through.”
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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