Coronavirus: COVID-19

[felter]

Have to say this, I watched a video earlier on about Americans who refuse the Covid vaccine. Part of it was in a town hall meeting situation with maybe 50 to a 100 attendees one of them says the reason she refuses to take the vaccine is that it has not been tested and is unproven, I take it by the unproven she was saying that it had not been proven to actually work, how much testing do they want to be done how many have taken the vaccines worldwide certainly over a billion that's a fair amount for to say it's not been tested as for it not been proven the results speak for themselves on that.

Then there is this other women, I would say probably in her 80s, she says I don't take any vaccines, I will just social distance. She said this with a straight face after she had spent a long time indoors with those 50 to 100 others of all ages, from young to old, and none of them wearing a mask while also given an interview without wearing a mask. Honestly, social distancing, my ass. There is clueless and then there are these people.

I don't know where they are getting their information from, but they need to get it from somewhere else. It does just show the mentality of these people, they are either idiots or just pure dumb as they come. I wouldn't want to wish the Covid virus on anyone, but these people more than deserve to catch it, and it would be pretty funny if they caught it from that meeting.

BBC.

[CBJ]

... they are either idiots or just pure dumb as they come.

There may be an element of this in some cases, but we should also remember that they are also victims of an insidious campaign of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies. We can argue over the motivations for that campaign and who is responsible (it's unlikely to be just one person, group or reason), but we should all at least be able to agree that the most important lesson for the future is that we need to find a way to prevent millions of people from being sucked into the kind of alternate reality that leads them to put their own lives, and those of their families, friends and neighbours, at serious risk for completely spurious reasons.

[red assassin]

There may be an element of this in some cases, but we should also remember that they are also victims of an insidious campaign of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies. We can argue over the motivations for that campaign and who is responsible (it's unlikely to be just one person, group or reason), but we should all at least be able to agree that the most important lesson for the future is that we need to find a way to prevent millions of people from being sucked into the kind of alternate reality that leads them to put their own lives, and those of their families, friends and neighbours, at risk for completely spurious reasons.

Yes, it's important to recognise that the recruitment process for anti-vax groups is not by any means dissimilar from that of cults, terrorist groups, and other insular extra-social groups. It starts with exploiting very natural seeds of doubt in the face of a scary and complex situation, and offers community and certainty. It is deliberately incredibly psychologically challenging to leave once you've started down that path. Any conflicting information is not just further information to be considered, it is an orchestrated malicious attack designed to harm you and your family. Of course, public health efforts to shut down misinformation are used to feed this: they just don't want you to know the truth! And the weird language that anti-vax groups use is at once a necessity to evade "censorship" and a community reinforcement. Any expression of deviancy from the party line is punished by the in-group, no matter how minor. Leaving requires that you give up the safety of the community and the entire associated belief system in one go. Of course the more extreme anti-vax ideas like "the vaccine literally kills everybody who takes it" are obviously nonsense taken in isolation and there are few people who'd accept that in isolation. But it isn't taken in isolation; ideas like that come at the end of a long process and rejecting that idea requires that you reject everything else in one giant psychological leap as well.

The good news is that evidence tends to suggest that if you actually successfully shut off the flow of misinformation on major platforms, the groups tend to collapse and the relatively small number of individuals who originate a lot of this stuff tend to become irrelevant: without the constant self-reinforcement, these beliefs don't endure very well. But of course, actually expunging all of this material from all the major social networks and many major news networks is extremely hard.

[Vertigo 7]

The good news is that evidence tends to suggest that if you actually successfully shut off the flow of misinformation on major platforms, the groups tend to collapse and the relatively small number of individuals who originate a lot of this stuff tend to become irrelevant: without the constant self-reinforcement, these beliefs don't endure very well. But of course, actually expunging all of this material from all the major social networks and many major news networks is extremely hard.

Until Faux News is taken off the air, the primary distribution platform of that misinformation is going to thrive. Otoh, I'm having a really hard time giving a damn if their target audience gets a lesson in Darwinism first hand.

[BaronVerde]

Sure, many of those contemporaries have their problems with natural science. It is out of their mental scope, just like religion is out of mine

And, just between us, Darwinism sensu strictu is as outdated (or half a century more outdated) as for instance Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, if you get my drift ~160 years have passed since "The Origin of Species", science has moved on. It'l take months or years to explain our modern day understanding of biological evolution to guys like Darwin, Wallace, and whomnot.

[mr.WHO]

I think that with already vacinated significant portion of the population, it would be good idea to start allow pople to choose their vacine:
1) The peculiar side affects or dangers are often for only one vacine and not for others.
2) AZ and J&J are "classic" vacines - if for some reason, people do not trust mRNA vacines.


To my suprise and this in unitended, in Poland you're already able to choose between:
1) If you officially register you get randomly selected vacine (most probably the two doze ones as J&J is almost exclusive for fast vacination points)
2) If you live in big city or on vacation, there are mobile vacination point, where you can get J&J without pre-registering


I myself got J&J, but it's due to lazyness - J&J was single dose and it took me like 20 minutes to get all paperwork process, while in normal registration, it had two weeks wait time for first doze and month wait between dozes.
Now you can pretty much register for a next day, but I still think J&J is more convinient and fast (You're fully protected before the time you would get a 2nd doze with 2 doze vacine).

Edit: Seems like EU just orderd 200 milion Novavax vacine, so soon there will be another option for "classic" vacine.

[Chips]

Every week there are stories in the media of yet another "fit, young, healthy adult wishes they'd believed in covid and taken the vaccine as they die in hospital". I don't think I'm ever going to understand those people... (some do believe in covid, just didn't think they'd get it. Or if they did, they'd be okay).

Then again at age 17 I did 100 miles an hour on the motorway in a rusty Ford Orion diesel - which vibrated as if it were mid-earthquake past 95mph and the dash shook violently at 100. Not once did i think "if anything goes wrong i'm dead", just slowed down a bit. Car was a death trap.

Usually I don't think that people making bad decisions imply that they're necessarily stupid. Incredibly intelligent people make bad decisions all the time.

But given the volume of evidence - media coverage, stories of those dying years before "their time" (as they say), and all because they didn't get vaccinated despite having the chance, the continued refusal to get vaccinated is baffling. Face palm moments every single time you have to read about another one, especially leaving behind children/partners who have to soldier on without them. For the sake of what?

sensu strictu

[BaronVerde]

Yep, rolleyes

I used the term to make clear I referred to Darwin's contribution to our view of evolution by introducing natural selection, while he at the same time was not aware of for instance genes and inheritance a la Mendel. Though Darwin observed and described ratios similiar to Mendel, I believe he didn't know of Mendels work, at least not when he published his seminal "On the Origin of Species". And anyway, biological evolution has become such a huge apparatus including geology, geography, chemisry, biology, genetics, math and statistics, that I deemed it necessary to point out that Darwin and Darwinism (sensu stricto ) is just a small step for a human to make when trying to understand biological evolution.

It is also, if I am not mistaken, the case specifically in 'murrica that "Darwinism" is frequently instrumentalized and has some eschatological connotation to it, like a belief, or some such ... One more reason to make clear "I mean natural selection a la Darwin, 1859".

------------------

Read today a random news item that intelligence people have hacked Chinese lab data and are now trying to find something to hang around the Chinese necks, but that they lack capable scientists to correctly interpret the data. <opinon> Bloody intelligence derps, should rather be helpful finding solutions than searching for culprits </opinion>.

Whatever

[Tamina]

Got my second shot two days ago. I am a bit late to the party but if you want a specific vaccine here, then you have to make an appointment and I wanted Biontech. For the same reason most Brits are probably going for AstraZeneca in England, blindly guessing.

First shot: Pain in the arm
Second shot: Nothing

The vaccination center was almost empty, though. Which is kind of sad to see. Seems like Germany is going to settle for a ~60-70% vaccination rate as well from my very little experience. Politicians said there will be no forced vaccination - we will see about that.

[fiksal]

my next challenge is what we advice to our relatives, that live in Russia, about the Russian vaccines.

does the risk behind the questionably tested (or rather untested) vaccine make sense?

[BaronVerde]

I would say most definitely 'yes, it does make sense to take the Russian vaccine'. It may be not as effective as some of the others, but I think it also used elsewhere around the world and was even taken into consideration by the western Europeans.

So, if your relatives haven't already been vaccinated and they have no other choice, they should definitely take that one.

[CBJ]

For the same reason most Brits are probably going for AstraZeneca in England, blindly guessing.

Most Brits don't get to choose which vaccine they get. In fact for those in groups that are eligible for multiple types, you don't even generally know which one you're getting until you're standing in the queue.

[fiksal]

I would say most definitely 'yes, it does make sense to take the Russian vaccine'. It may be not as effective as some of the others, but I think it also used elsewhere around the world and was even taken into consideration by the western Europeans.

So, if your relatives haven't already been vaccinated and they have no other choice, they should definitely take that one.

most people over there are worried about how safe it is, in short term and in long term.

I also wonder how effective it is, but that's secondary

[BaronVerde]

@fiksal, If you're talking about the 'Sputnik' dubbed vaccine, I think one can find quite a lot of independet information, including studies about it's effectiveness/efficacy/whatever and known existing side effects. I doubt it is a total black box.

[fiksal]

@fiksal, If you're talking about the 'Sputnik' dubbed vaccine, I think one can find quite a lot of independet information, including studies about it's effectiveness/efficacy/whatever and known existing side effects. I doubt it is a total black box.

yep it's about Sputnik.

Most info I got is from government sources that aren't trusted in Russia.

I had some from publications in international papers. Perhaps I missed some independent conclusions.

I will try to look again

[Tamina]

Sometimes I can't follow if Russians (in general) do or do not trust their government now.

For the same reason most Brits are probably going for AstraZeneca in England, blindly guessing.

Most Brits don't get to choose which vaccine they get. In fact for those in groups that are eligible for multiple types, you don't even generally know which one you're getting until you're standing in the queue.

You don't really get to choose here as well. The government's website tells you which vaccination you get directly after making an appointment. You can also just go there anytime without one, but then you won't know until you are standing in the queue.

Some vaccination centers offer only a subset of all authorized vaccines, or even just one. You can indirectly influence it by choosing your center of choice that way. Or you can cancel and reschedule an appointment until you get your preferred vaccine My family doctor gave me a choice but the waiting list was veeery long.

I just did not want to get J&J, and when I got an appointment for Biontech I waited for that one instead of going there immeadiatly.

[Incubi]

I was concerned about how fast the vaccine came out, and there was so much crap about it that it was difficult to separate the bs from the truth. My main concern was the possible long term effects. So we continued wearing mask and social distancing and watched and waited. CDC was too quick to say that people who are vaccinated do not need to wear mask and people took advantage of it. And in my area everyone was only to quick to pretend that covid-19 is over. So it became a race to find the truth about the vaccines and get vaccinated or get covid. All it took to finally get to us is for my sons girlfriends moms boyfriend to get it. I took too long researching vaccines and Covid-19 got to me before I could decide.

I think that I have decided on the pfizer and as soon as I am better and given the ok, Ill be getting it.

[mr.WHO]

Anyone heard there is Kappa variant, from Colombia?
Soon we will run out of the Alphabet.


I really think that people will explode when there will be a variant resistant to vacine (and there will be, eventually) and everything would need to be start again.

[Alan Phipps]

There is a very profound lesson in Incubi's post above about the harm and loss directly caused by the misinformation going around about Covid and vaccines. Time to prevaricate really is not available.

The moral of that story is to get your information from reputable sources, cross-check it yourself with other reputable sources if necessary, and speak to your doctor or other healthcare provider if still in doubt. Time is of the essence in protecting yourself, your family and the general community; the disease will find chinks in any non-clinical isolation routines (and even in the clinical ones considering that my brother contracted his Covid while in hospital).

I am not at all saying that there is absolutely no possibility of potential longer term effects from vaccines, but we already know about longer and shorter term effects from catching Covid.

[BaronVerde]

I am entirely with you, @AlanPhipps. Only verified, reviewed information adds to our knowledge. I ignore initial news items, if they are not based on a reviewed publication or reflect a widely accepted view.

Anyone heard there is Kappa variant, from Colombia?

The WHO has a list of named SARS-CoV-2 lineages, ordered by level of concern or interest:
https://www.who.int/en/activities/track ... -variants/

The Kappa variant is listed as a "Variant of Interest" ("Fascinating!" ).

For a new lineage it'll take some time to fully analyse, document and publish it, and some more time and observation to judge if it should be included in the above watch-list.

New variants are more likely to emerge as long as people reject or don't have access to vaccinations, or as long as the virus spreads and evolves.