SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Pogue Mahone said:
That’s just not true. How can you still think this? From the day the first results came out the most important measure of effectiveness has always been how vaccines keep people from getting severe disease (i.e. ending up in hospital, in ICU, or dead)

You say you were floored by covid. Did you end up in hospital? If not, you didn’t get severe covid. That might have happened to you without being vaccinated but you’re definitely not an example of a vaccine failing to be effective.
Click to expand...
I get what you are saying but into this we need to take into affect that the medical staff of hospitals were so much better equipped and the knowledge of the disease was much better then when it started so it isn't just that everyone was vaccinated. The virus had also mutated so the difference isn't all down to the vaccination. Many factors to take into the account.

Like I said it's not that I am against it and as a matter of fact many of my close relatives are doctors and nurses who worked in the ICU units during the first wave so I was fully on board. Since then some of them have started doubting this hard line that was taken and the results that are being published.

I would say that I got hit pretty hard, the booster jab affected my heart rhythm and it stopped beating for 4 minutes where I was by the doctors account dead. When I got COVID I was out for 14 days and really sick for about 3 weeks were I spent 4 days in hospital. I still have post COVID issues like irregular heart rhythm, tiredness and head aches that I never got before.

I get that it's a complicated matter and I am pro science but there is something there that doesn't sit right.

DM07 said:
Wouldn’t agree with the bold either as a lot of people in their twenties and thirties also died especially during the delta wave.
Click to expand...

Of course people of all age died but the young weren't hit hard by it. My kids age 12 and 15 were vaccinated even after they got COVID. As no one deared to ask questions. Not saying I'm right but this has got me thinking a lot about this.
 
Last edited:
arthurka said:
I get what you are saying but into this we need to take into affect that the medical staff of hospitals were so much better equipped and the knowledge of the disease was much better then when it started so it isn't just that everyone was vaccinated. The virus had also mutated so the difference isn't all down to the vaccination. Many factors to take into the account.

Like I said it's not that I am against it and as a matter of fact many of my close relatives are doctors and nurses who worked in the ICU units during the first wave so I was fully on board. Since then some of them have started doubting this hard line that was taken and the results that are being published.

I would say that I got hit pretty hard, the booster jab affected my heart rhythm and it stopped beating for 4 minutes where I was by the doctors account dead. When I got COVID I was out for 14 days and really sick for about 3 weeks were I spent 4 days in hospital. I still have post COVID issues like irregular heart rhythm, tiredness and head aches that I never got before.

I get that it's a complicated matter and I am pro science but there is something there that doesn't sit right.
Click to expand...

The new variants are definitely a big factor in covid being less dangerous now than it was. But the vaccines came out long before they were on the scene and the evidence is absolutely black and white. There was a huge difference in the rates of people ending up hospitalised/dead vs those not vaccinated. And the cohorts being compared get the same medical care otherwise. That difference still persists despite the new variants making covid a lot less deadly.

In August 2022, the risk of dying from COVID-19 among unvaccinated adults compared with adults who received a primary series was 9 times higher for adults aged 65–79 years and 4 times higher for adults aged ≥80 years. A similar pattern was observed among younger adult age groups in August 2022. Compared with adults who received a primary series in the same age group, the risk of dying from COVID-19 among unvaccinated adults was 3 times higher for adults aged 18–29 years, 5 times higher for adults aged 30–49 years, and 6 times higher for adults aged 50–64 years. Additional booster doses provide added protection. In August 2022, adults aged ≥50 years with at least 2 booster doses had 3 times lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than adults of the same age with one booster dose
Click to expand...

Sounds like you had a very rough time of it. Sorry to hear that. Although it does vindicate your decision to get vaccinated. If you were that sick despite being vaccinated think how much worse you might have been without it?
 
Last edited:
@arthurka One last point. The hopes around herd immunity was based on the original covid. Which was much less transmissible. Vaccines do reduce transmission and you wouldn’t have needed to reduce transmission of the original variant by much to potentially wipe it out. So that was why before and shortly after the vaccines first came out there was a lot of chat about reducing transmission and herd immunity and not just keeping hospitalisations down.

The problem came with newer, much more transmissible variants. Once they came on the scene all we could realistically hope for was using vaccines to reduce the number of people ending up in hospital. Which was successfully achieved. It’s important to be aware that those goalposts were moved by the virus, not the government or big pharma. Thankfully the newer variants also ended up less deadly. Hence we are where we are now.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The new variants are definitely a big factor in covid being less dangerous now than it was. But the vaccines came out long before they were on the scene and the evidence is absolutely black and white. There was a huge difference in the rates of people ending up hospitalised/dead vs those not vaccinated. And the cohorts being compared get the same medical care otherwise. That difference still persists despite the new variants making covid a lot less deadly.



Sounds like you had a very rough time of it. Sorry to hear that. Although it does vindicate your decision to get vaccinated. If you were that sick despite being vaccinated think how much worse you might have been without it?
Click to expand...
The thing is I will never know and that might be good but in general I like to think just for the statistics of this that I would've survived. But who knows.. just so you know I am fully pro vaxx we vaccinate our kids for all the stuff available and I fully appreciate that our standard of life is by large thanks to progresses made in science and medicine. @Pogue Mahone thanks for the info.
 
arthurka said:
The thing is I will never know and that might be good but in general I like to think just for the statistics of this that I would've survived. But who knows.. just so you know I am fully pro vaxx we vaccinate our kids for all the stuff available and I fully appreciate that our standard of life is by large thanks to progresses made in science and medicine. @Pogue Mahone thanks for the info.
Click to expand...

No worries. And I hoped I didn’t come across as judgey. When you’ve gone through what you went through it’s natural to ask questions and it bothers me that people who ask questions are often immediately dismissed as tinfoil hat wearing cranks. That’s not fair at all.
 
arthurka said:
I get what you are saying but into this we need to take into affect that the medical staff of hospitals were so much better equipped and the knowledge of the disease was much better then when it started so it isn't just that everyone was vaccinated. The virus had also mutated so the difference isn't all down to the vaccination. Many factors to take into the account.
Click to expand...
In terms of ICU patients we don't really have any new treatments that have helped us treat covid patients. The main difference is that fewer people end up in the ICU than before. That could be due to antiviral therapy, vaccines, mutations becoming less severe or those being susceptible to get severe pulmonary infections from covid already being infected, but once they end up in the ICU we don't do much differently now than in december of 2020.
 
arthurka said:
I am not an anti-vaxx to begin with but the more info that I have gathered the more this whole thing stinks, I have had the mRNA shots from Pfizer 3x so it's not that I was against it but now when the dust has settled more and more questions have been raised about the nature of these vaccines and also the side affects of them. We were told these vaccines would work and we'll they didn't, when you get vaccinated it makes you immune to that disease this certainly didn't as all of us have seen and many of us have had severe COVID infections after being vaccinated.

The people who didn't trust this were thrown aside as nutters but why would anyone really trust Big Pharma ? Their records aren't show white by any stretch and it caused a huge divide between people, people should've asked questions and not been thrown to the wolves for asking them.

I also got COVID and was absolutely floored by it while my wife who had one jab of Astra Zeneca didn't feel a thing as did my kids. The vaccination of kids and young people who never had any real problems with COVID was just ridiculous and made little sense from a medical point of view.

What I am saying is that the mass hysteria helped to create an environment where no one deared asking about this and the masses all fell in line to get our dose of what was available to help create herd immunity that never came. Something here just doesn't sit right. Hope you and your step daughter are back on good terms though.
Click to expand...
arthurka said:
I am not an anti-vaxx to begin with but the more info that I have gathered the more this whole thing stinks, I have had the mRNA shots from Pfizer 3x so it's not that I was against it but now when the dust has settled more and more questions have been raised about the nature of these vaccines and also the side affects of them. We were told these vaccines would work and we'll they didn't, when you get vaccinated it makes you immune to that disease this certainly didn't as all of us have seen and many of us have had severe COVID infections after being vaccinated.

The people who didn't trust this were thrown aside as nutters but why would anyone really trust Big Pharma ? Their records aren't show white by any stretch and it caused a huge divide between people, people should've asked questions and not been thrown to the wolves for asking them.

I also got COVID and was absolutely floored by it while my wife who had one jab of Astra Zeneca didn't feel a thing as did my kids. The vaccination of kids and young people who never had any real problems with COVID was just ridiculous and made little sense from a medical point of view.

What I am saying is that the mass hysteria helped to create an environment where no one deared asking about this and the masses all fell in line to get our dose of what was available to help create herd immunity that never came. Something here just doesn't sit right. Hope you and your step daughter are back on good terms though.
Click to expand...
We're fine, she understood why I did it, she's an adult, she can make her own decisions just as I can make mine

Well your first mistake is in believing that being vaccinated makes you immune, that isn't and has never been the case with any vaccine.

The thing about the rMNA stuff is everybody thinks that is something that has been invented recently, actually rMNA research and testing has been going on for years, what they actually did was modify it from something that already existed, was it all rushed, no question but you can't really blame them, this disease had the potential to be as bad as the 1918 flu and some of the measures taken helped prevent that
 
Pogue Mahone said:
No worries. And I hoped I didn’t come across as judgey. When you’ve gone through what you went through it’s natural to ask questions and it bothers me that people who ask questions are often immediately dismissed as tinfoil hat wearing cranks. That’s not fair at all.
Click to expand...
It's fair to ask questions, I'm not saying that's the case here, but if you start basing them on crackpot conspiracy theories from social media or right-wing media then you've only yourself to blame, some of the stuff that is/has been spouted defies basic common sense and people take it as gospel and then debase the reputation of people who have forgotten more about this stuff than we'll ever know
 
Red in STL said:
We're fine, she understood why I did it, she's an adult, she can make her own decisions just as I can make mine

Well your first mistake is in believing that being vaccinated makes you immune, that isn't and has never been the case with any vaccine.

The thing about the rMNA stuff is everybody thinks that is something that has been invented recently, actually rMNA research and testing has been going on for years, what they actually did was modify it from something that already existed, was it all rushed, no question but you can't really blame them, this disease had the potential to be as bad as the 1918 flu and some of the measures taken helped prevent that
Click to expand...
Not at all didn't think it at all, just wondering what mistakes might have been done. Great to hear you and your family are well intact.

Anustart89 said:
In terms of ICU patients we don't really have any new treatments that have helped us treat covid patients. The main difference is that fewer people end up in the ICU than before. That could be due to antiviral therapy, vaccines, mutations becoming less severe or those being susceptible to get severe pulmonary infections from covid already being infected, but once they end up in the ICU we don't do much differently now than in december of 2020.
Click to expand...

Nice to hear, I guess we will hear what will come out of this.



Pogue Mahone said:
No worries. And I hoped I didn’t come across as judgey. When you’ve gone through what you went through it’s natural to ask questions and it bothers me that people who ask questions are often immediately dismissed as tinfoil hat wearing cranks. That’s not fair at all.
Click to expand...



Not at all, I like to hear all sides. Love to hear all sides of the stories. You are well in order and I didn't think anything bad of it.
 
arthurka said:
Not at all didn't think it at all, just wondering what mistakes might have been done. Great to hear you and your family are well intact.



Nice to hear, I guess we will hear what will come out of this.







Not at all, I like to hear all sides. Love to hear all sides of the stories. You are well in order and I didn't think anything bad of it.
Click to expand...
Same here, you can agree/disagree and be civil about it,not everything should be like WW3!
 
DM07 said:
Whats with the rise of Anti - vax content on twitter? There’s a video of the pfizer CEO being heckled during WEF and a lot of anti vaxxers are retweeting as some sort of ‘told ya’. Can someone please summarise whats the allegation about and whats the truth?


Wouldn’t agree with the bold either as a lot of people in their twenties and thirties also died especially during the delta wave.
Click to expand...
Elon Musk.. check the Elon Twitter thread. Since his taken over Twitter most people have noticed a lot of “alt” stuff. Some of it was good, but for the most part it’s just anti vaxxers and anti migrant people with literally no real life credentials getting front page. If Google was like this we’d all be screwed especially when it comes to online shopping.
 
arthurka said:
What I am saying is that the mass hysteria helped to create an environment where no one deared asking about this and the masses all fell in line to get our dose of what was available to help create herd immunity that never came. Something here just doesn't sit right. Hope you and your step daughter are back on good terms though.
Click to expand...
Not an expert on vaccines there are other here who know more about it from a technical side.

As an numpty on the issue. One of my main reasons for trusting it was 1) we do live in a modern world, it was mostly about removing a lot of the paperwork that goes into getting stuff approved. 2) This might sound crude, but if the governments didn’t trust it they wouldn’t have made their entire population take it. Because economically the risk of a long term screwed up population is not in their interest.

If there was doubt we would not have seen the mass hoarding that we saw by 1st world countries. They, I believe, would have first sent it to 3rd world countries. Of course it would have been under the guise of a moral cause; eg 3rd world countries don’t have the hospitals to deal with patients etc.

Simple and dumb, but the above 2 are pretty much my thought process to trusting the vaccine.
 
AlPistacho said:
Not an expert on vaccines there are other here who know more about it from a technical side.

As an numpty on the issue. One of my main reasons for trusting it was 1) we do live in a modern world, it was mostly about removing a lot of the paperwork that goes into getting stuff approved. 2) This might sound crude, but if the governments didn’t trust it they wouldn’t have made their entire population take it. Because economically the risk of a long term screwed up population is not in their interest.

If there was doubt we would not have seen the mass hoarding that we saw by 1st world countries. They, I believe, would have first sent it to 3rd world countries. Of course it would have been under the guise of a moral cause; eg 3rd world countries don’t have the hospitals to deal with patients etc.

Simple and dumb, but the above 2 are pretty much my thought process to trusting the vaccine.
Click to expand...
There's nothing dumb about what you've said, it's a valid and reasonable take, on the hoarding issues I will say this, any governments first responsibility is to it's own citizens, harsh maybe on other countries but that's the reality and the way it should be
 
AlPistacho said:
Not an expert on vaccines there are other here who know more about it from a technical side.

As an numpty on the issue. One of my main reasons for trusting it was 1) we do live in a modern world, it was mostly about removing a lot of the paperwork that goes into getting stuff approved. 2) This might sound crude, but if the governments didn’t trust it they wouldn’t have made their entire population take it. Because economically the risk of a long term screwed up population is not in their interest.

If there was doubt we would not have seen the mass hoarding that we saw by 1st world countries. They, I believe, would have first sent it to 3rd world countries. Of course it would have been under the guise of a moral cause; eg 3rd world countries don’t have the hospitals to deal with patients etc.

Simple and dumb, but the above 2 are pretty much my thought process to trusting the vaccine.
Click to expand...
My take on that is that most governments shouldn't be trusted with walking your dog but I get were you are coming from.
 
arthurka said:
My take on that is that most governments shouldn't be trusted with walking your dog but I get were you are coming from.
Click to expand...

But you do trust them though. You don't have your own army, you haven't sourced your own energy resource, you haven't built your own hospital, you don't have your own school. You trust and rely on the state for all of that, and more.

Unless someone lives in a mud hut about to die any second from cholera then the whole 'distrust of state' is as meaningful as someones 'tribe' on Grindr.

#BearsAgainstGovt
 
stw2022 said:
But you do trust them though. You don't have your own army, you haven't sourced your own energy resource, you haven't built your own hospital, you don't have your own school. You trust and rely on the state for all of that, and more.

Unless someone lives in a mud hut about to die any second from cholera then the whole 'distrust of state' is as meaningful as someones 'tribe' on Grindr.

#BearsAgainstGovt
Click to expand...
:lol:

Yes pretty much.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
No worries. And I hoped I didn’t come across as judgey.
Click to expand...

You don't at all mate and have provided a consistent and valuable shelter from the "worry" storm that I've felt since this all began (in fact I'd call it a public service).

I don't think you can underestimate the positive mental impact that you (and others who helped inform us plebs) had on members who had/have anxiety around COVID and the Vaccines.

This was the only place that I used for information throughout the complete saga (which was great for my mental health) because I felt safe that the people providing the information were rational and informed (which also allowed me to spread your information and avoid hysteria from my closest friends and family).
 
RacingClub said:
You don't at all mate and have provided a consistent and valuable shelter from the "worry" storm that I've felt since this all began (in fact I'd call it a public service).

I don't think you can underestimate the positive mental impact that you (and others who helped inform us plebs) had on members who had/have anxiety around COVID and the Vaccines.

This was the only place that I used for information throughout the complete saga (which was great for my mental health) because I felt safe that the people providing the information were rational and informed (which also allowed me to spread your information and avoid hysteria from my closest friends and family).
Click to expand...

That’s very nice of you to say. Thanks :)
 
Pogue Mahone said:
That’s very nice of you to say. Thanks :)
Click to expand...

No problem at all, I think it's important to recognize people who make positive contributions to society and provide informed opinions that can assist in fighting the tide of uninformed opinions.

I know there is a worry associated with being "the voice of reason" as it can come across as preachy or judgy or whatever but when it comes to something like a global pandemic I think it's essential that our best and brightest provide the rest of us with the ammunition we need to fight the fear (usually due to ignorance) that radicalizes otherwise "normal" people.
 
stw2022 said:
But you do trust them though. You don't have your own army, you haven't sourced your own energy resource, you haven't built your own hospital, you don't have your own school. You trust and rely on the state for all of that, and more.

Unless someone lives in a mud hut about to die any second from cholera then the whole 'distrust of state' is as meaningful as someones 'tribe' on Grindr.

#BearsAgainstGovt
Click to expand...
Ironically one of the few things Boris did right was secure the vaccines for the country and in the US, Trump provided the money for the intial research surge
 
Had a rough few days with the old rona. Night sweats and loss of smell and taste being the most annoying of the symptoms. For those whose sense of taste/smell were affected, how long did they take to come back to normal? I can still vaguely taste and smell things but probably only 10% of what I could before.
 
Has anyone been keeping up with the news of Covid outbreak in China from a few weeks ago? I remember it was all gloom and doom with the Chinese government’s change in policy from zero covid to completely opening up the doors. Now the covid situation there doesn’t even find a mention in our news media.
 
iKnowNothing said:
Has anyone been keeping up with the news of Covid outbreak in China from a few weeks ago? I remember it was all gloom and doom with the Chinese government’s change in policy from zero covid to completely opening up the doors. Now the covid situation there doesn’t even find a mention in our news media.
Click to expand...
It's more or less impossible to know.

They defined COVID deaths as only those directly caused by COVID pneumonia and that's not a common cause of death from the Omicron variant. They excluded anyone with a pre-existing condition, which basically excluded almost all the over 70s and most people at high risk of developing severe disease.

They also made it an advantage to local health officials to present good news figures only. In rural areas an official COVID death is almost impossible due to lack of testing and lack of acute hospital care (which is where COVID pneumonia would be diagnosed). Deaths at home etc don't count.

They've ended up officially declaring a peak death toll of around 4000/day and say its now below 1000/day. The real numbers are certainly a lot higher, but we may never know how much higher. We know from leaked video etc that some hospitals have been overwhelmed, that cemeteries and crematoriums have been running flat out.

We may get more data later, from regions who publish total deaths and do an excess deaths calculation - but I doubt we'll ever see the full story.

TLDR - nobody knows, not even The Chinese government.
 
SillyUsername said:
I wouldn't be posting stuff like that here, regulars in this thread are determined to believe it came from a wet market and anything other than that is "misinformation" or "disinformation"
Click to expand...
Well we really dont know where it originated, there are multiple theories from multiple agencies. In one way it mostly depends on what you want to believe that determines which theory you follow.
 
SillyUsername said:
I wouldn't be posting stuff like that here, regulars in this thread are determined to believe it came from a wet market and anything other than that is "misinformation" or "disinformation"
Click to expand...
I don't think people are determined to believe anything other than it's a close relative of lots of other coronaviruses in human and animal circulation. It doesn't have obvious markers of being genetically engineered.

Could it have been a virus that the Wuhan lab were looking at? Sure - labs all over the world work with viruses, including animal viruses, to look at possible hazards and possible treatments. If their containment method failed then that could be the source.

There have always been question marks over when the Chinese authorities knew. Some of the intelligence services had already reported that the lab's normal communications pattern (how many cell phones in use etc) changed in late 2019.

Did someone working at the lab catch something at Wuhan market? Did someone get exposed to a live virus in the lab and spread it outside? Did someone from the lab sell virus exposed animals to the market? It may be the lab was where the initial animal/human crossover took place, or it may be the lab was asked to analyse cases before there were any official reports. We don't know and we're not convinced the Chinese government would tell us, that's why three years later it's still being analysed.
 
I think a lot of the original push back wasn’t against a lab leak but the conspiracy theories that it was man made in the lab
 
Snowjoe said:
I think a lot of the original push back wasn’t against a lab leak but the conspiracy theories that it was man made in the lab
Click to expand...
Correct. Conspiracy theorists watch too much Resident Evil to even have a sane discussion about the possibility that some random lab worker did a lousy job with pathogens.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.