"ask your doctor, but go armed with data and questions."
I guarantee that the regular reader of boriquagato is more knowledgeable about Covid, risk factors, mRNA vaccines and the efficacies of NPIs than your average doctor.
I have on my computer a graphic from last year's colleges. It's a big long list of schools, totaling 70,000 "cases" resulting in 3 hospitalizations and 0 deaths.
How would we even know the vaccine was working on these people?
Were the vaccines ever “effective”? Have you read Irving Kirsch's “The Emperor's New Clothes”, where he argues that the strong side effects for SSRI's create a kind of super placebo effect for experimental subjects in trials. There is every reason to believe that this could have been the case in the trials for these injections. We know they don't stop infection or transmission or prevent deaths overall. But for most the subjective feeling of illness could be powerfully blunted by the belief that one has been “vaccinated” against the virus.
But then … what happens when the “authorities” shatter that belief that vaccine will protect you or that they will offer a way out of pandemia distopia? Or when you discover that you “got covid” anyway? Could this lead to a Nocebo effect, worsening illness? The winter will answer this.
Sadly for the college kids, this is a now permanent state of affairs, as covidian cult membership is very high on campuses. As a college educator, I would recommend that you work with your kids to create strategies to protect oneself from toxic campuses. Staying off campus as much as one can is a good idea. Another is gap years doing service work and internships after high school to get some real world experience and then finish college a few years later (like many Europeans do). Do Not expect colleges to suddenly wake up on a Tuesday and decide it was all a bad dream, back to normal, nothing to worry about, That is NOT how they are set up, once a panic is established on campus, it self-perpetuates for years and decades.
This is why it was scientific malpractice to openly break the blinds on the clinical trials and vaccinate the placebo group. Unvaccinated people who know they are unvaccinated are not a proper control group for vaccination.
Your analysis of the evidence is irrefutable. But I am still rooting for the “vaccines work” version to be the story that circulates. My daughter just started college this year, and I can tell you we are all on the edge of our seats hoping that they don’t have to shut down. I think that the Duke data gives the non-neurotic colleges cover so that they can continue resuming normal activities. This is extremely important for the mental health of college students across the country. And as you rightly pointed out, the practical difference between vaccines working and not working is practically nail in this population. So maybe it’s good (?) to have a nice placebo effect going, and that gives a college administrators confidence that they are not killing their students. Honestly, this is how low we have all fallen, that we are rooting for “noble deceits” like this. Because otherwise I’m in despair.
and yet the duke administration is requiring double masking and distancing and contact tracing and who knows what else.
this feels less like placebo and more like "enabling."
it's rampant virtue signaling and oppressive behavior that all bolsters the "MOAR FEAR" narrative of "this is so dangerous we have to do crazy things to try to stop it" when, what they should be pushing is "your kids are safe. this disease poses them little threat and having them here on campus is the safest place they could be."
we need to bring the perception of the threat back into some semblance of reality, not distort it further into some even greater phantasmagoria.
Yes, totally, "enabling" is a great way to think about it. But I think there are levels of crazy, and different institutions have discretion. So maybe it could turn out better in some places. Of course, the difference between "two masks indoors and out" and "one mask indoors" is degrees of phantasmagoria, as you say. But as a practical "survive the semester" matter, this does make a difference.
You're right, the real problem is how to recover reality. There is currently a vicious feedback loop in the colleges: admin believes their customers demand "safety", admin provides "safety," ubiquity and intensity of "safety" measures drives up customers fears that it is unsafe, customers demand more "safety". And I get the sense that this is what is happening in a lot of other places as well.
So... you're rooting for placebo effects to validate vaccine mandates to attend higher education so everyone will feel better and you don't have to deal with this anymore?
I'm unvaccinated. What else would you like to take from me so we can declare vaccine victory and you can have your sovereign rights back (never mind where mine went).
I guess I do have a "wish it away" problem. Maybe I am not thinking clearly, but I think we're on the same side here, Guttermouth. I can barely believe what is happening, constitution torn to shreds, civil rights tossed like yesterday's fish bones. I don't want the vax, don't want anyone else to have the vax, and am terrified of what is unfolding around me. My college-bound daughter went and got the vax, she was legal and I couldn't persuade her. The sacrifice, from her perspective, was too high--life as she knew it, basically. So when I contemplate the possible long-term consequences for her life, yeah, I'm rooting for the placebo effect. Wouldn't that be the best (albeit least likely) of many possible bad outcomes available now, that we'll just wake up one day and say, oops, that was a mistake, and there are no long-term population-wide health devastating consequences? What I want is for this madness to stop. But how do we get there when the faith of the faithful is so absolute? What do you think should be done?
My problem with your position is that you're willing to accept mandates, EVEN AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR BASIS IS LIKELY SPURIOUS, as a consequence of wishful thinking in vaccine efficacy, so we can "be done." You're complying your way out of tyranny and not giving a damn (as is your right) about those who have not knuckles under like your daughter.
You can't have it both ways. Vaccine mandates to satisfy the faculty at your daughter's school and bargain your way back to normal includes me being gradually jobless, homeless, and finally probably held down by men with guns and forcibly vaccinated.
I'm not your daughter, so I'll forgive you not thinking of me here. But I'm someone's.
Collaborator, wow, that stings. You may be right, even if that is not what I meant to do. We are living in horrifying times. Evil is afoot. How to resist? It is so huge, so evil. Lives are being ground to dust in the jaws of a monster. They have divided us, manipulated us, given us little scraps to keep us in line. Each of us is just trying to survive. How do we come together to fight this evil?
Boosters are on the horizon...for everyone. If people keep complying to "get their lives back", it will not end.
Here's your motivation...every single injection your child submits to might increase her risk serious, life-altering or life-ending disease in the future. This is an experiment on humanity. They have no notion of the longterm consequences of these injections. None. Nada. Zip.
So far, the doctors and scientists who have been vilified for speaking out against the "vaxxines" have been right about every risk they identified.
Here's just one example of what might be in out future on a massive scale...
I wouldn't have called you that. My point is less melodramatic.
"Each of us is just trying to survive" = "We are not in this together."
That's fine, that's what life is. You lose the moral high ground if you don't allow people to go along to get along.
I just want people to be honest about it. If you can't or won't resist, you're not in the same position of people who will or must resist, and it's insulting to suggest we're of a kin- whether or not that's anyone's fault. It's the same bullshit of "allyship" the woke Left loves to flog. We are simply not in the same boat. It takes great moral courage to sacrifice your position unnecessarily for the sake of others. It is not the norm or the expectation.
We don't come together to fight this evil unless we're all affected by the evil enough that we see no alternative. See also, literally every other social reform in human history.
It never ends. Here in San Francisco we have a vax rate of 85%. (3x many have died of overdoses than of/with covid here.) But it isn't enough. As an unvaccinated person I can't eat indoors, go to a bar or cafe without showing proof of vaccination. There is also AB455 ("dead" for now until the results of recall election favor Newsom) that will make it impossible for unvaccinated Californians to enter any public building except grocery stores or churches. No entrance to hotels etc...Never in my wildest nightmare.
I am on your side here; I think just the reality of having the staff and students on campus and back in the normal routines will help immensely to shake us out of this bizarre fugue state.
If a widespread adoption of sensible risk assessment (if the kids weren't at school they would still have to be *somewhere*, and the virus would still get to them lol) is truly impossible due to psychological hard-wiring, it's just one more sign that society literally cannot function under secularism.
This is my sentiment as well. I think mechanistically we have confidence the vaccines work as they generate antibodies and immune memory that wouldn't have to be sterilizing. It's just that this Duke 'cohort' is not a good one to look at for a signal since it's so young. Same in trying to study efficacy among children... there's just nothing work with since the disease does nothing to them anyway, even at vast scales much less small study sizes.
Vaccines probably do work, but uptake in the low risk age groups likely won't make much of a difference in deaths or even hospitalizations. With the knowledge that natural immunity is stronger, it's a strong argument against mandates and for continued investment in treatments while still advocating to vaccinate the vulnerable.
Can you please explain to me the long term effects of taking a mRNA vaccine? You seem to comfortably think it is a "placebo". What are you basing this on, other then your faith that it will work out? There is zero data on long term use in humans.
Oh, no, I don't think it's a placebo. I personally think there are danger flares all around. But insofar as every member of my family has submitted, and will line up for boosters until whenever, I cling to the thin hope that, in spite of everything I have learned, it is somehow benign in the long term. I used "placebo" in this case only to indicate the immediate psychological effect this injection appears to have.
Do you think I can control the actions of sovereign adults? If so, your family functions differently from mine. You make other assumptions in your comment that are also unwarrented, but this is not about me or you. What I was trying to say was, all of us, whatever our "vax status", have many loved ones who have chosen or been effectively forced to go along. I cannot wish them ill. I pray I am wrong, and el gato malo is wrong, and Dr. Malone is wrong, and vanderBrosse (?) is wrong. But I fear they are all right. This should be breaking all of our hearts.
When one side argues for choice and the other side insists that the side that's happy to give them the choice to mask up, vaxx up, stay home must be compelled to do the same or else their own interventions "won't work," we've got asymmetry of regard here.
It's like a knightly order of chivalry challenging Barbary pirates to a Queensberry boxing match.
This is an important point that many people don't understand. Science can (or should be able to) tell us what the risk is -- but it can't tell us if that risk is acceptable or not. Everybody has their own risk tolerance and risk profile. I don't ride a motorcycle because the risk isn't worth the reward. On the other hand I play third base in softball whereas others won't because THEIR risk isn't worth the reward.
Of course, the bureaucrat would either ban ALL risk or spread it out evenly -- even to people who don't want to ride the motorcycle or play third base.
You're right - it's a sort of faith. Perhaps informed by the success (or failure) of past vaccines? In either case, there is no long term data yet so no one can answer those questions only speculate based on what's been observed so far. This is why getting the vaccine should be a personal choice based on one's own risk/benefit calculation.
I want to believe that, but...to the victor go the spoils. And Big Pharma and Co. have immense power. They own our government and as we have seen to our utter dismay, the sheeple include a lot more than I thought...However, the fact that ivermectin prescriptions are absolutely skyrocketing does show that word is getting out despite their mass censorship - thus the flurry of MSM articles about "the perilous horse paste" (tastes fine to me!). And probably over time, more people will connect the dots between their ailments and the vx.
As a Durham native, most Duke people (and northeast tech transplants- sorry guys) are insufferable. The city reenacted a mask mandate at the beginning of August and who knows when that will end. And because of the population, they're actually enforcing it (and some places requiring vax cards) 🙄 Duke is even requiring masks outside now. I want this to end... no concerts or festivals, people are antisocial, and I might never see my 83 year old British grandpa again. And for what!?!
The data from Public Health England puts any claims of prevention to the lie; and, IMO, this data undermines any claim of protection from severe disease. The goal is to not die. I'm beginning to wonder if the jabs are actually making things worse.
The ratio of Delta infections in the unvaxxed to fully vaxxed has dropped from 6.7 as of June 21 to 2.5 as of August 15th.
The "fully vaxxed" are fast catching up to the unvaxxed in infections...
As of August 15...
73,372 Fully Vaxxed Infections
183,133 Unvaxxed Infections
2.5 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Fully Vaxxed.
The deaths with/from the Delta variant have been underwater for weeks. The fully vaxxed are less likely to seek care or be hospitalized but more likely to die with infection.
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England/Technical briefing 21/August 20, 2021
Public Health England reports that Delta is the dominant variant in the UK. This variant accounted for 99% of sequenced and 98% genotyped cases from July 25 through July 31, 2021 in England (PHE technical briefing 20/August 8 ).
PHE last reported the Delta variant Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of ~0.2% - 0.3% in early July (PHE technical briefing 18/July 9).
PCR cycle threshold (Ct) values from routinely undertaken tests in England show that Ct values (and by inference viral load) are similar between individuals who are unvaccinated and vaccinated.
Delta in England as of 8/15/2021...
Unvaxxed: 183,133 cases/390 deaths/0.2130%
Unvaxxed <50: 178,240 cases/72 deaths/0.0404%
Unvaxxed 50+: 4,891 cases/318 deaths/6.502%
Fully Vaxxed: 73,372 cases/679 deaths/0.9254%
Fully Vaxxed <50: 40,544 cases/27 deaths/0.0666%
Fully Vaxxed 50+: 32,828 cases/652 deaths/1.986%
40,273 Unlinked Infections
89,957 Partially Vaxxed Infections
73,372 Fully Vaxxed Infections
183,133 Unvaxxed Infections
1.12 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Partially/Fully Vaxxed.
2.5 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Fully Vaxxed.
(3.2 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Fully Vaxxed as of August 8.)
~57.1% of deaths were in fully vaxxed.
~60.6% of deaths were in fully vaxxed 50+.
~65.9% of deaths were in fully/partially vaxxed.
289 more deaths of fully vaxxed than unvaxxed.
334 more deaths of fully vaxxed than unvaxxed in 50+ cohort.
393 more deaths of fully/partially vaxxed than unvaxxed.
427 more deaths of fully/partially vaxxed than unvaxxed in 50+ cohort.
However, this correct analysis of the ambiguousness of the Duke data skips the most important point: The 364 test-confirmed positives from last week haven't even had time to develop severe symptoms yet.
About the graduate versus undergraduate data divergence, this is easily explained by social behavior. The first week of school for undergraduates is an orgy of social interactions, especially at Duke which is fully residential and dominated by fraternity life. Graduate students live off campus, it takes them a while to get their social lives going, they tend to be more hermit-like. I was a graduate student at Duke, I don’t think it’s changed that much since I was there.
I think the testing policy is the same for everybody affiliated with the school. I haven't seen any college testing program that distinguishes people based on residence. From the Duke website: "In effort to help protect members of the Duke community, the University conducts three different types of tests for COVID-19: Entry Testing for all incoming students; Surveillance Testing on a weekly basis for asymptomatic students, faculty and staff; and Symptomatic Testing for those experiencing symptoms."
Your analysis of the Duke data is spot-on, as always. As an alumnus, the decision to impose mask mandates, outside no less, and the apparent ignorance of the most basic scientific principles, saddens me. Then again, I experienced a "debate" over on the Blue Bird site that illustrated just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Solid writeup about the Duke data. I think the acid test has to occur in older pops though. In the same vein did you see the Axios story and the horrific CDC writeup it was based on out of Marin County CA?
Buried in the CDC writeup where they (and axios) castigate the evil unvaxxed teacher is this gem,
"Among the five infected adults, one parent and the teacher were unvaccinated; the others were fully vaccinated. The vaccinated adults and one unvaccinated adult were symptomatic with fever, chills, cough, headache, and loss of smell. No other school staff members reported becoming ill. No persons infected in this outbreak were hospitalized."
So 2 unvaxxed adults got infected (with the unvaxxed teacher being the proximal case) & 3 FULLY VAXXED adults got infected. None died and zero difference in reported outcomes. Granted small outbreak here, but the way this data is being handled makes me want to puke.
It's also totally outdated anyway - the dynamics of spread in May and June no longer apply. So "weird" that the study, which represents an entire apparent hour of labor, is appearing now.
Getting bearings from this Duke stats seems a bit like setting your sails on a dead calm sea, considering the demographics at play, being the vaccine benefits/risks balance, for the majority in question, more like anchors than oars.
people that teach and get into Duke, like you, aren't dummies
they know correlation isn't causation. At least they used to.
So I'm scratching my head wondering how those non-dummies didn't do this same math, or if they did, did they hide it or spin some other way to review the data?
Some county level dashboards here for cases & deaths vs. vax. Can filter by zones representing heat (1=Very Hot, 7=Very Cold) and moisture (A=Moist, B= Dry, C=Marine). Click on those zones in lower right legend to filter the data. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/t.coddington
Quote from your article: “304 undergrads test positive out of 6,542. 4.6% in a week.
45 grad students test positive out of 9,009. 0.5%. why this is so much lower is an interesting question to which i’m not sure i have a good answer.”
I have a good answer. You made a mistake in your numbers and there are not 9,009 graduate students, it’s more likely 900. I’ve never heard of a school with 50% more graduate students.
If I’m correct, then 4.6% is very close to 5.0%. What other numbers have you misconstrued?
Not sure I am reading your post correctly, or if I even understand it, but Duke has well over half of its total student population in graduate school. In fact, of about 16K total students, about 10K are in graduate and professional programs.
I do not know where you checked, but College Tuition Compare shows similar numbers to the actual Duke website. (The Duke site is hard to find actual numbers on, though.)
I'm not going to fact check Duke's own claims, but it's hard to think of the incentive they would have to lie about this. Here is one of the top results, a website *they publish*, called "Duke Facts". One of the facts is that they have 9,009 graduate students. The reason your number is so low is that you're obviously leaving out the humanities, social sciences, and most of the physical sciences. Not too complicated. https://facts.duke.edu/
Well, thanks for being willing to update your priors. It's rare to find that. I should noted that technically it is "grad and professional students", just to be scrupulous, but when I got my PhD not so long ago, "grad student" generally included professionals unless otherwise specified. But the number of "grad students proper" (people getting PhDs) at Duke is very likely still in the several thousands, so even conservatively, it's an infection rate around one percent, much lower than undergrads. That said, I have no good answer to this puzzle.
"ask your doctor, but go armed with data and questions."
I guarantee that the regular reader of boriquagato is more knowledgeable about Covid, risk factors, mRNA vaccines and the efficacies of NPIs than your average doctor.
I have on my computer a graphic from last year's colleges. It's a big long list of schools, totaling 70,000 "cases" resulting in 3 hospitalizations and 0 deaths.
How would we even know the vaccine was working on these people?
Thanks
Were the vaccines ever “effective”? Have you read Irving Kirsch's “The Emperor's New Clothes”, where he argues that the strong side effects for SSRI's create a kind of super placebo effect for experimental subjects in trials. There is every reason to believe that this could have been the case in the trials for these injections. We know they don't stop infection or transmission or prevent deaths overall. But for most the subjective feeling of illness could be powerfully blunted by the belief that one has been “vaccinated” against the virus.
But then … what happens when the “authorities” shatter that belief that vaccine will protect you or that they will offer a way out of pandemia distopia? Or when you discover that you “got covid” anyway? Could this lead to a Nocebo effect, worsening illness? The winter will answer this.
Sadly for the college kids, this is a now permanent state of affairs, as covidian cult membership is very high on campuses. As a college educator, I would recommend that you work with your kids to create strategies to protect oneself from toxic campuses. Staying off campus as much as one can is a good idea. Another is gap years doing service work and internships after high school to get some real world experience and then finish college a few years later (like many Europeans do). Do Not expect colleges to suddenly wake up on a Tuesday and decide it was all a bad dream, back to normal, nothing to worry about, That is NOT how they are set up, once a panic is established on campus, it self-perpetuates for years and decades.
This is why it was scientific malpractice to openly break the blinds on the clinical trials and vaccinate the placebo group. Unvaccinated people who know they are unvaccinated are not a proper control group for vaccination.
Your analysis of the evidence is irrefutable. But I am still rooting for the “vaccines work” version to be the story that circulates. My daughter just started college this year, and I can tell you we are all on the edge of our seats hoping that they don’t have to shut down. I think that the Duke data gives the non-neurotic colleges cover so that they can continue resuming normal activities. This is extremely important for the mental health of college students across the country. And as you rightly pointed out, the practical difference between vaccines working and not working is practically nail in this population. So maybe it’s good (?) to have a nice placebo effect going, and that gives a college administrators confidence that they are not killing their students. Honestly, this is how low we have all fallen, that we are rooting for “noble deceits” like this. Because otherwise I’m in despair.
and yet the duke administration is requiring double masking and distancing and contact tracing and who knows what else.
this feels less like placebo and more like "enabling."
it's rampant virtue signaling and oppressive behavior that all bolsters the "MOAR FEAR" narrative of "this is so dangerous we have to do crazy things to try to stop it" when, what they should be pushing is "your kids are safe. this disease poses them little threat and having them here on campus is the safest place they could be."
we need to bring the perception of the threat back into some semblance of reality, not distort it further into some even greater phantasmagoria.
Yes, totally, "enabling" is a great way to think about it. But I think there are levels of crazy, and different institutions have discretion. So maybe it could turn out better in some places. Of course, the difference between "two masks indoors and out" and "one mask indoors" is degrees of phantasmagoria, as you say. But as a practical "survive the semester" matter, this does make a difference.
You're right, the real problem is how to recover reality. There is currently a vicious feedback loop in the colleges: admin believes their customers demand "safety", admin provides "safety," ubiquity and intensity of "safety" measures drives up customers fears that it is unsafe, customers demand more "safety". And I get the sense that this is what is happening in a lot of other places as well.
agreed. it seems like a feedback loop to limbic melt down and decent into permanent performative panic alleviation rituals.
it's like telling more ghost stories to calm the terrified cub scouts down.
So... you're rooting for placebo effects to validate vaccine mandates to attend higher education so everyone will feel better and you don't have to deal with this anymore?
I'm unvaccinated. What else would you like to take from me so we can declare vaccine victory and you can have your sovereign rights back (never mind where mine went).
I guess I do have a "wish it away" problem. Maybe I am not thinking clearly, but I think we're on the same side here, Guttermouth. I can barely believe what is happening, constitution torn to shreds, civil rights tossed like yesterday's fish bones. I don't want the vax, don't want anyone else to have the vax, and am terrified of what is unfolding around me. My college-bound daughter went and got the vax, she was legal and I couldn't persuade her. The sacrifice, from her perspective, was too high--life as she knew it, basically. So when I contemplate the possible long-term consequences for her life, yeah, I'm rooting for the placebo effect. Wouldn't that be the best (albeit least likely) of many possible bad outcomes available now, that we'll just wake up one day and say, oops, that was a mistake, and there are no long-term population-wide health devastating consequences? What I want is for this madness to stop. But how do we get there when the faith of the faithful is so absolute? What do you think should be done?
My problem with your position is that you're willing to accept mandates, EVEN AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR BASIS IS LIKELY SPURIOUS, as a consequence of wishful thinking in vaccine efficacy, so we can "be done." You're complying your way out of tyranny and not giving a damn (as is your right) about those who have not knuckles under like your daughter.
You can't have it both ways. Vaccine mandates to satisfy the faculty at your daughter's school and bargain your way back to normal includes me being gradually jobless, homeless, and finally probably held down by men with guns and forcibly vaccinated.
I'm not your daughter, so I'll forgive you not thinking of me here. But I'm someone's.
Collaborator, wow, that stings. You may be right, even if that is not what I meant to do. We are living in horrifying times. Evil is afoot. How to resist? It is so huge, so evil. Lives are being ground to dust in the jaws of a monster. They have divided us, manipulated us, given us little scraps to keep us in line. Each of us is just trying to survive. How do we come together to fight this evil?
How to resist? Don't comply. Speak out.
Boosters are on the horizon...for everyone. If people keep complying to "get their lives back", it will not end.
Here's your motivation...every single injection your child submits to might increase her risk serious, life-altering or life-ending disease in the future. This is an experiment on humanity. They have no notion of the longterm consequences of these injections. None. Nada. Zip.
So far, the doctors and scientists who have been vilified for speaking out against the "vaxxines" have been right about every risk they identified.
Here's just one example of what might be in out future on a massive scale...
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cheryl-cohen-dies-rare-brain-disease-second-dose-pfizer-covid-shot/?fbclid=IwAR0Y_YbtRi9nIrk-hzZso-1upbrOlHi6W9g3_6x_cMrRbmufuZ4qyknNRlY
This, this, a thousand times this. "How" to resist is very simple. Gato malo already answered it.
Will you choose to do so, or will you go along to get along is the bigger question, and one without any concrete answer.
I wouldn't have called you that. My point is less melodramatic.
"Each of us is just trying to survive" = "We are not in this together."
That's fine, that's what life is. You lose the moral high ground if you don't allow people to go along to get along.
I just want people to be honest about it. If you can't or won't resist, you're not in the same position of people who will or must resist, and it's insulting to suggest we're of a kin- whether or not that's anyone's fault. It's the same bullshit of "allyship" the woke Left loves to flog. We are simply not in the same boat. It takes great moral courage to sacrifice your position unnecessarily for the sake of others. It is not the norm or the expectation.
We don't come together to fight this evil unless we're all affected by the evil enough that we see no alternative. See also, literally every other social reform in human history.
It never ends. Here in San Francisco we have a vax rate of 85%. (3x many have died of overdoses than of/with covid here.) But it isn't enough. As an unvaccinated person I can't eat indoors, go to a bar or cafe without showing proof of vaccination. There is also AB455 ("dead" for now until the results of recall election favor Newsom) that will make it impossible for unvaccinated Californians to enter any public building except grocery stores or churches. No entrance to hotels etc...Never in my wildest nightmare.
btw my daughter is vaccinated as well; she had no choice, the NCAA requires it of all student-athletes.
I am on your side here; I think just the reality of having the staff and students on campus and back in the normal routines will help immensely to shake us out of this bizarre fugue state.
If a widespread adoption of sensible risk assessment (if the kids weren't at school they would still have to be *somewhere*, and the virus would still get to them lol) is truly impossible due to psychological hard-wiring, it's just one more sign that society literally cannot function under secularism.
This is my sentiment as well. I think mechanistically we have confidence the vaccines work as they generate antibodies and immune memory that wouldn't have to be sterilizing. It's just that this Duke 'cohort' is not a good one to look at for a signal since it's so young. Same in trying to study efficacy among children... there's just nothing work with since the disease does nothing to them anyway, even at vast scales much less small study sizes.
Vaccines probably do work, but uptake in the low risk age groups likely won't make much of a difference in deaths or even hospitalizations. With the knowledge that natural immunity is stronger, it's a strong argument against mandates and for continued investment in treatments while still advocating to vaccinate the vulnerable.
Can you please explain to me the long term effects of taking a mRNA vaccine? You seem to comfortably think it is a "placebo". What are you basing this on, other then your faith that it will work out? There is zero data on long term use in humans.
Oh, no, I don't think it's a placebo. I personally think there are danger flares all around. But insofar as every member of my family has submitted, and will line up for boosters until whenever, I cling to the thin hope that, in spite of everything I have learned, it is somehow benign in the long term. I used "placebo" in this case only to indicate the immediate psychological effect this injection appears to have.
> every member of my family has submitted, and will line up for boosters until whenever
I really question your judgement. I do hope it all works out for you.
Do you think I can control the actions of sovereign adults? If so, your family functions differently from mine. You make other assumptions in your comment that are also unwarrented, but this is not about me or you. What I was trying to say was, all of us, whatever our "vax status", have many loved ones who have chosen or been effectively forced to go along. I cannot wish them ill. I pray I am wrong, and el gato malo is wrong, and Dr. Malone is wrong, and vanderBrosse (?) is wrong. But I fear they are all right. This should be breaking all of our hearts.
and this is an important point.
arguing for choice and liberty involves accepting that others will make choices we wish they would not.
hell, i have some friends that listen to (shudder) maroon 5 and have mistaken it for music...
what can one do save pity them and try to educate them?
we can provide information, but we cannot force choices. that's not consistent with supporting a free society or personal agency.
When one side argues for choice and the other side insists that the side that's happy to give them the choice to mask up, vaxx up, stay home must be compelled to do the same or else their own interventions "won't work," we've got asymmetry of regard here.
It's like a knightly order of chivalry challenging Barbary pirates to a Queensberry boxing match.
This is an important point that many people don't understand. Science can (or should be able to) tell us what the risk is -- but it can't tell us if that risk is acceptable or not. Everybody has their own risk tolerance and risk profile. I don't ride a motorcycle because the risk isn't worth the reward. On the other hand I play third base in softball whereas others won't because THEIR risk isn't worth the reward.
Of course, the bureaucrat would either ban ALL risk or spread it out evenly -- even to people who don't want to ride the motorcycle or play third base.
Maroon 5?! You have my deepest sympathies.
You're right - it's a sort of faith. Perhaps informed by the success (or failure) of past vaccines? In either case, there is no long term data yet so no one can answer those questions only speculate based on what's been observed so far. This is why getting the vaccine should be a personal choice based on one's own risk/benefit calculation.
Imagine how much loss could have been prevented if all available options were on the table from day one? No patent with ivermectin though....
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ohio-judge-orders-hospital-treat-ventilated-covid-19-patient-ivermectin
Yes. It's flat out murderous. Mass murder.
Yes, it is. They will be held to account. Know that.
I want to believe that, but...to the victor go the spoils. And Big Pharma and Co. have immense power. They own our government and as we have seen to our utter dismay, the sheeple include a lot more than I thought...However, the fact that ivermectin prescriptions are absolutely skyrocketing does show that word is getting out despite their mass censorship - thus the flurry of MSM articles about "the perilous horse paste" (tastes fine to me!). And probably over time, more people will connect the dots between their ailments and the vx.
Truth is very corrosive to untruth over time.
As a Durham native, most Duke people (and northeast tech transplants- sorry guys) are insufferable. The city reenacted a mask mandate at the beginning of August and who knows when that will end. And because of the population, they're actually enforcing it (and some places requiring vax cards) 🙄 Duke is even requiring masks outside now. I want this to end... no concerts or festivals, people are antisocial, and I might never see my 83 year old British grandpa again. And for what!?!
p'town mass, on cape cod is filled with karens, highly vaxxed group!
in july they had a mass event of breakout vaxxed cases. totally out of hope simpson timing.
past 3 weeks they are back at hope simpson and lowering mask mandates!
cdc came up to do damage control on the vaxx failure!
The p'town outbreak and the runaway Texas democrats blew a big hole in the narrative.
boston radio is saving it proclaiming indoor masking...... put p'town back on h-s!!
i no longer drink coffee while i drive listening to boston radio, but they are good for traffic jamming
The data from Public Health England puts any claims of prevention to the lie; and, IMO, this data undermines any claim of protection from severe disease. The goal is to not die. I'm beginning to wonder if the jabs are actually making things worse.
The ratio of Delta infections in the unvaxxed to fully vaxxed has dropped from 6.7 as of June 21 to 2.5 as of August 15th.
The "fully vaxxed" are fast catching up to the unvaxxed in infections...
As of August 15...
73,372 Fully Vaxxed Infections
183,133 Unvaxxed Infections
2.5 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Fully Vaxxed.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1012644/Technical_Briefing_21.pdf
As of June 21...
10,834 Fully Vaxxed Infections
71,932 Unvaxxed Infections
6.7 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Fully Vaxxed.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1001358/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_18.pdf
***********************************************
The deaths with/from the Delta variant have been underwater for weeks. The fully vaxxed are less likely to seek care or be hospitalized but more likely to die with infection.
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England/Technical briefing 21/August 20, 2021
Public Health England reports that Delta is the dominant variant in the UK. This variant accounted for 99% of sequenced and 98% genotyped cases from July 25 through July 31, 2021 in England (PHE technical briefing 20/August 8 ).
PHE last reported the Delta variant Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of ~0.2% - 0.3% in early July (PHE technical briefing 18/July 9).
PCR cycle threshold (Ct) values from routinely undertaken tests in England show that Ct values (and by inference viral load) are similar between individuals who are unvaccinated and vaccinated.
Delta in England as of 8/15/2021...
Unvaxxed: 183,133 cases/390 deaths/0.2130%
Unvaxxed <50: 178,240 cases/72 deaths/0.0404%
Unvaxxed 50+: 4,891 cases/318 deaths/6.502%
Fully Vaxxed: 73,372 cases/679 deaths/0.9254%
Fully Vaxxed <50: 40,544 cases/27 deaths/0.0666%
Fully Vaxxed 50+: 32,828 cases/652 deaths/1.986%
40,273 Unlinked Infections
89,957 Partially Vaxxed Infections
73,372 Fully Vaxxed Infections
183,133 Unvaxxed Infections
1.12 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Partially/Fully Vaxxed.
2.5 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Fully Vaxxed.
(3.2 times more infections in Unvaxxed versus Fully Vaxxed as of August 8.)
~57.1% of deaths were in fully vaxxed.
~60.6% of deaths were in fully vaxxed 50+.
~65.9% of deaths were in fully/partially vaxxed.
289 more deaths of fully vaxxed than unvaxxed.
334 more deaths of fully vaxxed than unvaxxed in 50+ cohort.
393 more deaths of fully/partially vaxxed than unvaxxed.
427 more deaths of fully/partially vaxxed than unvaxxed in 50+ cohort.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1012401/Technical_Briefing_21.pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1009243/Technical_Briefing_20.pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1001358/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_18.pdf
ivermectin!
Another way of putting it is that if 1,000 young adults take a preventative medical intervention to prevent 1 hospitalization (using https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122354/covid-19-us-hospital-rate-by-age/ ), 999 of them took it for nothing.
However, this correct analysis of the ambiguousness of the Duke data skips the most important point: The 364 test-confirmed positives from last week haven't even had time to develop severe symptoms yet.
About the graduate versus undergraduate data divergence, this is easily explained by social behavior. The first week of school for undergraduates is an orgy of social interactions, especially at Duke which is fully residential and dominated by fraternity life. Graduate students live off campus, it takes them a while to get their social lives going, they tend to be more hermit-like. I was a graduate student at Duke, I don’t think it’s changed that much since I was there.
i would wager there is also a huge variance in testing rates in on vs off campus. would like to see that split out.
I think the testing policy is the same for everybody affiliated with the school. I haven't seen any college testing program that distinguishes people based on residence. From the Duke website: "In effort to help protect members of the Duke community, the University conducts three different types of tests for COVID-19: Entry Testing for all incoming students; Surveillance Testing on a weekly basis for asymptomatic students, faculty and staff; and Symptomatic Testing for those experiencing symptoms."
they tested the avg student 1.5X in a week but missed about 10% of students altogether and never tested them once.
this makes me suspect significant variance is likely.
My son is a grad student at Rice. Enforcement is lax...based on the honor system.
the student athletes are tested more than normal students. and those are undergraduates. they also travel more, which might require even MORE testing.
Your analysis of the Duke data is spot-on, as always. As an alumnus, the decision to impose mask mandates, outside no less, and the apparent ignorance of the most basic scientific principles, saddens me. Then again, I experienced a "debate" over on the Blue Bird site that illustrated just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Solid writeup about the Duke data. I think the acid test has to occur in older pops though. In the same vein did you see the Axios story and the horrific CDC writeup it was based on out of Marin County CA?
Buried in the CDC writeup where they (and axios) castigate the evil unvaxxed teacher is this gem,
"Among the five infected adults, one parent and the teacher were unvaccinated; the others were fully vaccinated. The vaccinated adults and one unvaccinated adult were symptomatic with fever, chills, cough, headache, and loss of smell. No other school staff members reported becoming ill. No persons infected in this outbreak were hospitalized."
So 2 unvaxxed adults got infected (with the unvaxxed teacher being the proximal case) & 3 FULLY VAXXED adults got infected. None died and zero difference in reported outcomes. Granted small outbreak here, but the way this data is being handled makes me want to puke.
https://www.axios.com/cdc-unvaccinated-teacher-outbreak-205cbb6d-7184-43fd-99b4-2189ddeb7f0e.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=health-unvaccinatedteacher
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e2.htm?s_cid=mm7035e2_w
It's also totally outdated anyway - the dynamics of spread in May and June no longer apply. So "weird" that the study, which represents an entire apparent hour of labor, is appearing now.
It's the CDC...last year's data tomorrow.
Getting bearings from this Duke stats seems a bit like setting your sails on a dead calm sea, considering the demographics at play, being the vaccine benefits/risks balance, for the majority in question, more like anchors than oars.
people that teach and get into Duke, like you, aren't dummies
they know correlation isn't causation. At least they used to.
So I'm scratching my head wondering how those non-dummies didn't do this same math, or if they did, did they hide it or spin some other way to review the data?
Some county level dashboards here for cases & deaths vs. vax. Can filter by zones representing heat (1=Very Hot, 7=Very Cold) and moisture (A=Moist, B= Dry, C=Marine). Click on those zones in lower right legend to filter the data. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/t.coddington
Quote from your article: “304 undergrads test positive out of 6,542. 4.6% in a week.
45 grad students test positive out of 9,009. 0.5%. why this is so much lower is an interesting question to which i’m not sure i have a good answer.”
I have a good answer. You made a mistake in your numbers and there are not 9,009 graduate students, it’s more likely 900. I’ve never heard of a school with 50% more graduate students.
If I’m correct, then 4.6% is very close to 5.0%. What other numbers have you misconstrued?
Not sure I am reading your post correctly, or if I even understand it, but Duke has well over half of its total student population in graduate school. In fact, of about 16K total students, about 10K are in graduate and professional programs.
I’m quoting the numbers in the article. Does Duke really have about 50% more graduate students than undergrads? It seems unlikely, what’s your source?
I do not know where you checked, but College Tuition Compare shows similar numbers to the actual Duke website. (The Duke site is hard to find actual numbers on, though.)
I checked and came up with about 4,000 graduate students in Business, Law, Medicine, and Engineering, and Nursing.
I'm not going to fact check Duke's own claims, but it's hard to think of the incentive they would have to lie about this. Here is one of the top results, a website *they publish*, called "Duke Facts". One of the facts is that they have 9,009 graduate students. The reason your number is so low is that you're obviously leaving out the humanities, social sciences, and most of the physical sciences. Not too complicated. https://facts.duke.edu/
I used their web site. It could well be 9,000, so my point is incorrect.
Well, thanks for being willing to update your priors. It's rare to find that. I should noted that technically it is "grad and professional students", just to be scrupulous, but when I got my PhD not so long ago, "grad student" generally included professionals unless otherwise specified. But the number of "grad students proper" (people getting PhDs) at Duke is very likely still in the several thousands, so even conservatively, it's an infection rate around one percent, much lower than undergrads. That said, I have no good answer to this puzzle.