Pfizer clinical trial data: not good at all

[Wrench]

The sad part about all of this is that we argue amongst ourselves at a level that makes out of state vs resident hunters look like lovers.

There's not a soul alive who does not know what options and risks are on the table. If a person wishes to vaccinate or not should make zero difference in anyone else's eyes. If it works you're probably going to be fine, if it doesn't....dice roll. If I die from my decisions on crossing a talus slope or vaccine injury / lack of application.....that's on me, not you.

It's sad to think that we have so many alleged freedoms and yet have to take such a hard stance on this one.

I won't even get into NIOSH and respiratory protection laws and practices from the last 30 plus years that we've altered.

Live and let live is such a difficult concept to accept....especially when we believe we can run our neighbor's life better then he can.

 

[Skerhunter]

Well aware. I am just looking historically.

There is a guy on another forum I frequent who is deep in the weeds on the science side of COVID, and he has been suggesting for months that the vaccines may need to become multivalent like the flu shot to address variants.

Unless the virus mutates into more harmless variants, that would be extremely likely. But even to produce a multivalent vaccine becomes difficult as the number of variants circulating in the population increases. Would probably end up like the flu vaccines in terms of success.

 

[Mike Islander]

I'm just about at the point where I'm ready to attend the nearest Omicron party, if I can find one. 10X or higher immunity than the best gene therapy we have at this time ("vaccines").

 

[Mike Islander]

And, wait for it, from the Wall Street Journal. We KNEW this was true, but nobody whose been vaccinated wanted to admit it. I've been vaccinated but I "did the research". As Seinfeld says, really didn't take that long.

Opinion | Omicron Variant May End Up Saving Lives

It’s far less lethal than previous versions, and its fast spread may finally push us to herd immunity.

www.wsj.com

Omicron Variant May End Up Saving Lives​

The prudent response to Omicron might be to encourage vaccinated people and even unvaccinated young adults to catch it, while protecting the at-risk population.

 

[Rob5589]

I'm just about at the point where I'm ready to attend the nearest Omicron party, if I can find one. 10X or higher than the best gene therapy we have at this time ("vaccines").

Kinda like way back when and little Johnny got the measles, your mom sent you to play so you'd get it over with

 

[Dos Perros]

My company has done the most despicable thing. They put a noon yesterday deadline on either getting your final shot, or signing/accepting accommodation terms for religious and medical exemptions. Do that or be fired. People who didn't want to got the shot. People who didn't want to sign the papers and their silly terms did.

Then, just 80 minutes later, the company sent a company-wide email that said they were pausing enforcement of the vaccine mandate. I just cannot understand what has happened to make people act like this to each other. It's awful.

 

[bpurtz]

I'm just about at the point where I'm ready to attend the nearest Omicron party, if I can find one. 10X or higher than the best gene therapy we have at this time ("vaccines").

It sounds like Omicron is able to evade both vaccine and natural immunity - only 49% worldwide vaccination rate - 3.9 billion people w/o any level of immunity. This is why mandates are pointless.

I wonder if the Pi variant will still get blamed on the anti-vax crowd...

 

[JJJ]

My company has done the most despicable thing. They put a noon yesterday deadline on either getting your final shot, or signing/accepting accommodation terms for religious and medical exemptions. Do that or be fired. People who didn't want to got the shot. People who didn't want to sign the papers and their silly terms did.

Then, just 80 minutes later, the company sent a company-wide email that said they were pausing enforcement of the vaccine mandate. I just cannot understand what has happened to make people act like this to each other. It's awful.

Oh I don’t know, tyrannical leftists who want to destroy the country to usher in the great reset? Part of that process is vilifying half the population (aka their biggest obstacle) and training the other half as attack dogs to do the dirty work for them for free. Yes half of the people in this country and on this forum work for the government for free

 

[Actual_Cryptid]

And, wait for it, from the Wall Street Journal. We KNEW this was true, but nobody whose been vaccinated wanted to admit it. I've been vaccinated but I "did the research". As Seinfeld says, really didn't take that long.

Opinion | Omicron Variant May End Up Saving Lives

It’s far less lethal than previous versions, and its fast spread may finally push us to herd immunity.

www.wsj.com

Omicron Variant May End Up Saving Lives​

The prudent response to Omicron might be to encourage vaccinated people and even unvaccinated young adults to catch it, while protecting the at-risk population.

There's a lot of places I might go for medical advice, but an op-ed by a financial analyst is probably not it. Even if you take his math as sound, 0.2% mortality, that's a 1:500 chance. Would you buy a case of ammo if one in 500 rounds might kill you?

For fun, i looked for any previous stuff by Arnott on the topic. When i got past a series of articles encouraging people to invest in biotech, I got to an interview from 2020 where he said the following:

RA: Exactly. And if this new virus kills 50,000 people, it would not be a surprise. So we're crippling the US economy for maybe a doubling of seasonal flu deaths. That strikes me as borderline insane. That’s not a political statement about the current administration as both parties share the same policies. They want to crush the economy and then write cheques. It’s astoundingly-badly run.

Yeah, I mean he called it. We all remember how covid just killed 50,000 people and then it was done right? I'm sure he's right about this one too.

 

[Wrench]

Do other communities enjoy Christmas plays and sporting events at school and pack the stands, social distance be damned? My school district has about 500 kids total and that's how it is here. We have about a 5% mask to 95% unmasked rate and I've yet to hear anyone complain one way or the other.

I see on the news where people are standing outside businesses and spread out all over the place....not sure if that's the law or the culture...or if that's even real.

I just feel bad for kids who watch this get thrown at them and half the country expects compliance with whatever the government says and the other half fights it like a 1700's tea tax.

 

[JJJ]

There's a lot of places I might go for medical advice, but an op-ed by a financial analyst is probably not it. Even if you take his math as sound, 0.2% mortality, that's a 1:500 chance. Would you buy a case of ammo if one in 500 rounds might kill you?

For fun, i looked for any previous stuff by Arnott on the topic. When i got past a series of articles encouraging people to invest in biotech, I got to an interview from 2020 where he said the following:

RA: Exactly. And if this new virus kills 50,000 people, it would not be a surprise. So we're crippling the US economy for maybe a doubling of seasonal flu deaths. That strikes me as borderline insane. That’s not a political statement about the current administration as both parties share the same policies. They want to crush the economy and then write cheques. It’s astoundingly-badly run.

Yeah, I mean he called it. We all remember how covid just killed 50,000 people and then it was done right? I'm sure he's right about this one too.

Cue the panic porn! Anyone with the sniffles the past two years has died due to Covid right? Or have you realized most of this trash is pure lies to keep people in a constant state of fear

 

[mwebs]

Pfizer will make 65 billion off the vaccine in two years. Government funded research, government marketed and government mandated. That’s a vaccine that doesn’t even prevent you from getting the virus and we still don’t have full data on how effective it is at keeping people from hospitalization. How can anyone actually think that is right whether you believe in the vax or not. The same Pfizer that has the largest ever pharma fraud case payout.

What do the vaccine supporters on here think about vaccination of children? I believe 600 total children have died while testing positive with Covid and an overwhelming percentage had extreme comorbidities. Compare that to the vaccine incident rate among the same group from Israel and the vaccine is actually more dangerous to children than the virus.

 

[fwafwow]

I enjoy your posts, they represent what discussion should be. It can be hard to balance good discussion when you have people who call anything that does not support their position a lie all while repetitively claiming they just want an honest answer. It tends to lead to us vs them and categorizing people's positions without taking the time to realize that some are nuanced.

I have also reached the point where I'm confident in my position, and the same arguments are being recycled with at best a few details swapped, so I find less value in investing the time required to debate. But, these threads are like an addiction, I keep coming back to them even though I don't really enjoy them and know the time would be better spent doing other things. I even sound like an addict, pontificating on how I need to quite while engaging in the activity.

You are far too kind. It's like rubber-necking to watch an accident, but it's like I then stop my car, get out and start to talk to those in the accident. To others, they are probably watching and look at me as the cause of part of the accident.

 

[jmez]

Do other communities enjoy Christmas plays and sporting events at school and pack the stands, social distance be damned? My school district has about 500 kids total and that's how it is here. We have about a 5% mask to 95% unmasked rate and I've yet to hear anyone complain one way or the other.

I see on the news where people are standing outside businesses and spread out all over the place....not sure if that's the law or the culture...or if that's even real.

I just feel bad for kids who watch this get thrown at them and half the country expects compliance with whatever the government says and the other half fights it like a 1700's tea tax.

Our entire state has functioned that way through the entire thing. We were actually the national poster child for a while on how not to behave. Our numbers aren't out of line with anyone else's. We had a mask mandate in the school's for about a week last year, other than that is has been voluntary. We've yet to have any significant outbreaks in the schools.

Don't know how many are in the district. I have three in grade school, K-4th, average class size around 115. One in middle school, 5-8. same size classes. We played sports all of last year and into this year. I know exactly how many cases are in the schools as every time there is a confirmed case we get a letter from the school. Last year at the peak of infections we would get 2-3 a week. This year I haven't gotten 3 total.

The entire strategy from the get go should have been protect the vulnerable and everyone else get on with life.

 

[260madman]

In our county we have 2 cities of 10,000 each for population. Our school district is larger than the the other city because of the outlying small towns and we do not have a mask mandate for students. The other district does. It’s a huge debate in the newspaper constantly because the other district is run by a huge Liberal ”must call me doctor because I have a PhD” administrator. Our district has an administrator from North Dakota. 3 weeks ago the Covid numbers between the districts were 26 positive cases for the masked district and 32 for for the unmasked.

Our district does not require masks for sports or school activities while the other one does. Normal life here. County vax rate is less than 50%.

 

[fwafwow]

[snip]



The problem with using absolute risk in this situation is that the circumstances which convert relative to absolute risk change enormously over time. The absolute risk reduction of 0.84 % was the absolute risk of a Pfizer trial participant catching Covid during the limited months Pfizer ran the trial, early in the pandemic when Covid was far less widespread and life was locked down. Somebody is many times more likely to be exposed to Covid now than a participant was during that trial. Also, many of us want to avoid getting Covid at all, not just for a few months, and the absolute risk grows higher over time. Roughly 15 % of the U.S. population has already tested positive for Covid, and it's estimated that around the same number have had it without getting tested, so roughly 30 % of the U.S. population has had Covid already. Many more were undoubtedly exposed to Covid but didn't get it because they were vaccinated.

So the absolute risk of somebody being exposed to Covid from the start of the pandemic up until now (so they catch it or would have caught it if unvaxxed) is probably at least 40 %, likely higher. The vaccine's 95 % relative risk reduction converts to a 38 % absolute risk reduction, or about 45 times higher than what the video dishonestly portrays. The numbers I'm giving are approximate, but it really doesn't matter if they're lying by a factor of 30 or 45 or 60, does it? Their pants are on fire any way you slice it.

I'm almost certain this wasn't an innocent mistake by the people who made this video. The lie is too well-crafted to be an accident. When you catch somebody lying that deviously to you on purpose, you can't trust anything else they're saying. The video is garbage.

Thank you for taking the time to review the video and post. I have no problem with your post in the context provided. I don't believe, however, that absolute risk - at least outside of a vaccine context - is always problematic. I think that pharmaceutical companies should provide both relative and absolute risks, for the benefits and the side-effects. I believe, however, that pharma companies will often present the benefits by referencing relative risk, but then use absolute risk when talking about the side-effects. If they are going to just use one measure, they should at least be consistent.

 

[Wrench]

we have 10k in our whole county of 2300mi/sq

 

[fwafwow]

We don't have early treatments (yet.) We can't magically make them appear. There have been hundreds of studies looking at sugegsted interventions, from the same old snake oil (vitamin megadoses, hydroxchloroquine, ivermectin) to some novel drugs and antivirals, but no success yet. Merck is seeking approval for a pill (antiviral) that they've been working on since May of 2020 IIRC, but there were some complications early on. You can read more about it here:

I'm asking a serious question. I'm not trying to argue about the efficacy of any of the listed interventions. What makes something snake oil, at least when it comes to prescription therapeutics? I believe that if, after honest efforts to determine whether something works, people still recommend the treatment, and do it in a manner that makes them money, then that could make it snake oil? There's plenty of BS that I think is peddled that is snake oil (the one that comes to mind is the hat you wear with lights in it that is supposed to cure baldness) so maybe it's like the old legal definition of porn - I know it when I see it?

I can't remember where I heard this (perhaps a podcast I've mentioned too many times), but I agree with the statement - because some things are hawked even after they are not shown to be very effective, there is a "taint" so that almost any medication (apart from novel drugs, which seem to be given more optimism) will be ridiculed or treated the same way. I've personally gotten to the point that I won't even mention a medication in terms of possible Covid treatment due to that taint. I just trash statins instead.

Maybe I should start a statin thread and we can argue about them and also discuss anecdotal vs. empirical evidence, causation vs. correlation, confirmation bias - without red/blue, Don/Joe, mandates etc.

 

[Mike Islander]

There's a lot of places I might go for medical advice, but an op-ed by a financial analyst is probably not it. Even if you take his math as sound, 0.2% mortality, that's a 1:500 chance. Would you buy a case of ammo if one in 500 rounds might kill you?

For fun, i looked for any previous stuff by Arnott on the topic. When i got past a series of articles encouraging people to invest in biotech, I got to an interview from 2020 where he said the following:

RA: Exactly. And if this new virus kills 50,000 people, it would not be a surprise. So we're crippling the US economy for maybe a doubling of seasonal flu deaths. That strikes me as borderline insane. That’s not a political statement about the current administration as both parties share the same policies. They want to crush the economy and then write cheques. It’s astoundingly-badly run.

Yeah, I mean he called it. We all remember how covid just killed 50,000 people and then it was done right? I'm sure he's right about this one too.

The only relevant thing you said is 0.2%. Multiply that by the chance of contracting Covid and you get the death rate of flu. I don't get flu shots.

 

[qwerksc]

No condom, rode the town bike a few times…got chlamydia, didn’t die, I’d do it again.