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?
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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 ..."
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282806
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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@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
@strypey @bigblen unclear to me what the argument is here, but the vaccines absolutely do not stop people from getting covid, and never have: https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/why-are-fully-vaccinated-people-still-catching-covid-19
@strypey @bigblen 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: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7331a1.htm
@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.
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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
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"... the seasonal flu vaccine is only 45% effective."
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/why-are-fully-vaccinated-people-still-catching-covid-19
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.
@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;
https://slate.com/life/2024/12/work-jobs-sales-telemarketing-america.html
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;
https://www.tni.org/en/podcast/why-we-need-to-break-big-pharmas-power-before-the-next-pandemic-hits
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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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!
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Ben Goldacre's "All Trials Registered, All Results Reported" would a good start, and could be put in place much more quickly;
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.
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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;
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3453-134X
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@musicman
"The mechanisms by which vaccination attenuates COVID-19 are largely unknown ..."
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/why-are-fully-vaccinated-people-still-catching-covid-19
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.