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This whining coward replied to a post I was mentioned in, with a cherry-picked statistic and a bunch of wild conspiracy theory, then blocked me in an attempt to to deny me a right of reply. That tells you everything you need to know about the intellectual honesty of the Chicken Little brigade.

On the upside, they've spared me having any of their nonsense in my timeline. So ... thanks ... I guess?

(1/?)

The evidence they wanted is right here in this 2023 study;

"Among adults hospitalized with COVID-19, those with Omicron had less severe hypoxemia and nearly 40% higher 30- and 60-day survival, as compared with those with Delta ..."

doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0

But since they've done the fediverse equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting nya nya nya, they won't be able to see that.

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doi.orgClinical progression, disease severity, and mortality among adults hospitalized with COVID-19 caused by the Omicron and Delta SARS-CoV-2 variants: A population-based, matched cohort studyBackground To compare the intrinsic virulence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) omicron variant with the delta variant in hospitalized adults with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods All adults hospitalized in the Capital Region of Copenhagen with a positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test for SARS-CoV-2 and an available variant determination from 1 September 2021 to 11 February 2022. Data from health registries and patient files were used. Omicron and Delta patients were matched (1:1) by age, sex, comorbidities, and vaccination status. We calculated crude and adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) for severe hypoxemia and mortality at 30 and 60 days. Results 1,043 patients were included. Patients with Omicron were older, had more comorbidities, were frailer, and more often had three vaccine doses than those with Delta. Fewer patients with Omicron developed severe hypoxemia than those with Delta (aHR, 0.55; 95% confidence interval, 0.38–0.78). Omicron patients exhibited decreased aHR for 30-day mortality compared to Delta (aHR, 0.61; 0.39–0.95). Omicron patients who had received three vaccine doses had lower mortality compared to Delta patients who received three doses (aHR, 0.31;0.16–0.59), but not among those who received two or 0–1 doses (aHR, 0.86; 0.41–1.84 and 0.94; 0.49–1.81 respectively). Similar findings were observed for mortality at 60 days. Similar outcomes were obtained in the analyses of 316 individually matched patients. Conclusions Among adults hospitalized with COVID-19, those with Omicron had less severe hypoxemia and nearly 40% higher 30- and 60-day survival, as compared with those with Delta, mainly driven by a larger proportion of Omicron patients vaccinated with three doses of an mRNA vaccine.

@strypey to continue your quote the difference was "mainly driven by a larger proportion of Omicron patients vaccinated with three doses of an mRNA vaccine."

@bigblen
> to continue your quote

If you want to split hairs, I've got a whole headful right here. The *data* says that more people are getting COVID but overall they had less severe symptoms. It seems to be obligatory to interpret that data in a way that gives the credit to vaccines that evidently don't stop people getting COVID or passing it on 🤷‍♂️

@musicman
> I guess it's not fair to compare covid and drinking since one is contagious, but did not expect to see liver disease ahead of covid

Alcohol is certainly poisonous to the liver and is best avoided. But it's only one cause among many of liver disease. Anything that stresses the body enough can result in harm to the liver, including serious viral infections. I've heard it said that some forms of Hepatitis infection wreck the liver.

@bigblen

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@musicman
> the vaccines absolutely do not stop people from getting covid, and never have

That's what I just said. This was *not* the pitch when people were being coerced into taking them with mandates. Which was obviously wrong at the time, to anyone who understands basic medical ethics, and look even more unjustified now (if that's possible) given the fact you state above.

Let's face it, we all got conned. Yet some of us are still trying to sell the snake oil 🙄

@bigblen

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"... the seasonal flu vaccine is only 45% effective."

gavi.org/vaccineswork/why-are-

You what now?! Less than 50% effective means less likely to be effective than a coin toss is to come up heads. I've always thought vaccinating against flu was dopey, but that absolutely confirms it.

Again, someone is making a *lot* of money selling this seasonal snake oil.

www.gavi.orgWhy are fully-vaccinated people still catching COVID-19?Breakthrough infections are to be expected, but it doesn’t mean the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t working.
@strypey GPs here push it like mad. Also any medical contact at all you'll get nagged about it.

@sullybiker
> GPs here push it like mad. Also any medical contact at all you'll get nagged about it

GPs and other frontline medical staff don't have time to read all the relevant research about everything. So they have to trust their professional bodies (AMA etc) to do that, and advise them. Those bodies are significantly captured by the pharmaceutical salesmen, as are those who advise health policy people. A reminder about the professional ethics of salesmen;

slate.com/life/2024/12/work-jo

Slate · In My Life, I’ve Witnessed Three Elite Salespeople at Work. You Won’t Like Their Secret.By Franklin Schneider

Here are 2 fundamental problems with the existing medical system;

1) the public directly fund the majority of medical research but outsource control of the studies, and ownership of the outputs;

tni.org/en/podcast/why-we-need

2) companies selling medical products are allowed to conduct their own studies on safety and efficacy in private. So they can cherry-pick which ones to publish, based on what makes their products look good, and bury the rest.

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#pharma

@sullybiker

TNI.org
Transnational InstituteWhy we need to break Big Pharma's Power before the next Pandemic hits | Transnational InstituteHow is it that drug companies can make huge profits from vaccines while people in the global South die from lack of access to medical care? How does the global regime of intellectual property rights enable this inequality? And what is the role of Bill Gates in defending this system? 

It seems pretty clear to me that we need a medical research system where studies are carried out by independent not-for-profit institutions.

Companies selling medical products should pay for *more* of this than they currently do, to cover the costs of verifying that their products are safe to use, and effective at what they're sold for. Not by conducting the studies themselves, but by paying directly into public medical research funds.

Open source medicine!

(2/?)

Ben Goldacre's "All Trials Registered, All Results Reported" would a good start, and could be put in place much more quickly;

alltrials.net/

This is the minimum viable regulation. Unregistered trials conducted by or for for-profit companies are simply not credible sources of data about the safety and efficacy of medical products.

(3/?)

If I added a third problem, it would be the existence of drug patents. As with software patents, there is no reason to believe these are necessary. NZ already abolished most patents on software, and we need to do the same with drugs.

Drug patents observably lift the price people pay for drugs and other medical products, whether directly or via public drug buying schemes like NZ Pharmac. For no measurable benefit to anyone but their owners;

orcid.org/0000-0002-3453-134X

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orcid.orgORCID

@musicman
"The mechanisms by which vaccination attenuates COVID-19 are largely unknown ..."

gavi.org/vaccineswork/why-are-

In other words, what we have here is correlation, *not* proof of causation. I don't know if anyone has crunched the numbers on whether unvaccinated people are also more likely to be low income, or to have poor immunity before the pandemic. But it seems pretty likely.

There are many plausible explanations for this correlation.

@bigblen

www.gavi.orgWhy are fully-vaccinated people still catching COVID-19?Breakthrough infections are to be expected, but it doesn’t mean the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t working.