Had your daughter had it before? Once you get strep, you tend to get it semi-frequently. I get it once every couple of years. I always kind of wondered if it's like a viral infection such as cold sores where it lays dormant permanently, and flares up on occasion. However it is bacterial, and not viral, which counts against that idea.
I'm admittedly pretty out of my element here. Apologies if any of the following is misinformed. Lyme and TB are chronic symptoms, from what I understand. No truly dormant stages in the infection, just slight lulls in symptoms. I was under the impression that chronic viral infections such as herpes or HIV were much more able to pass under the immune system's radar for prolonged periods of time, with unpredictable flare ups. From what I understood, this had to do with their cycles of replication and the nature of viral infections.
But again, not my area of expertise. Or even in the same ballpark.
No at least with TB most people will have a latent infection (no symptoms and not transmittable) present potentially for a lifetime just waiting for immune system to weaken enough
They very much are interesting, and that's a pretty wild story. There are people a lot smarter than me, doctors in the field, that think we have some of our fundamental understanding of viruses wrong. I haven't read enough to take a stance that 100+ years of research is incorrect, but I do love hearing alternative hypotheses on a variety of topics. I don't think there's any harm in hearing what others have to say, at least.
What aspect, specifically, is suspected to be wrong? The scientific understanding of viruses might be further along than most doctors suspect. There are concepts like pangenome that are becoming appreciated at the research level that might not have gotten to doctors yet.
This is completely off topic, and I apologize, but I clicked your profile.
First off, I am impressed by your credentials, very nice work, you should be proud.
But this segment in your about: box is oddly hilarious to me. Maybe I've just had too much champagne. Happy New Year, from a West Coaster posting at 12:05 AM.
Too late to edit, but I'm getting mixed votes (which I usually don't pay much attention to), so I will explain:
There's a few different frameworks people are working within. From my experience, linking or forwarding to any "outside the box" ideas in this sphere will only invite more downvotes, argumentation over the details, and flamewars. Any linking of these ideas would be interpreted by some to be an endorsement of them. In my parent comment I made sure to mention that none of them were worthy of my endosement at this time, though I do find them interesting. Anyone reading this comment, buried deep in "hacker news" is capable of finding alternative ideas outside the norm. You can do your own research, if you like.
I mentioned them because the idea of people disagreeing on this was actually more foreign to me than "flat earth" which I find "pretty far out there", when I first stumbled upon it. It's very uncommonly discussed, and I don't have the clout to either endorse or properly antagonize these ideas. It's intriguing to me that something as preposterous as "the earth is flat" can be much more widely known and discussed than "maybe the way we frame viruses is incorrect".
I mean I suspect that the flu pangenome was evolving "meta-capabilities" to evade the way that our flu vaccines are selected by the authorities, you can see, vaguely, a declining efficacy of the flu vaccine in the last 5 years pre-pandemic (admittedly this could also be noise, or it could also be a measurement artefact due to better tracking). However, we'll probably never know since the flu patterns totally got rekt these past two years, which means any large-scale evolutionary trends, if they existed, probably, got the reset button pushed on them.
Century old understandings in science have been repeatedly upended, so I could see it happening in virology too. I have my own theories based on my reading. And I've seen your comments frequently and find your perspective refreshing, could I contact in some way? You can reach me at the email in my profile.
When everything is multiplied by a fraction of a percent, the result is a bunch of small magnitudes overall. Like 12 times more likely to be hospitalized than fully vaccinated 12-34 year olds? What the latter's rate of hospitalization? Near 0, I assume?
This is all just weaponized statistics to generate fear. Or at least, vaccine sales.
I honestly don't have the strength for this discussion anymore, but it does make a pretty signifcant difference between seeing two thirty-somethings struggling for their lives vs. 20. I don't care about people like you anymore, I just want to protect the people that are actually important to me, which includes multiple people having to work in the ICU, and multiple people who might die if hospital capacities are full.
I've lost close friends and family to preventable circumstances, it hurt. I however did not try to justify imposing changes to people's behavior, autonomy, or freedom.
I'm against vaccine mandates and don't think the state should have the ability to impose so much on bodily autonomy, especially given that these booster shots might become a semi-regular thing for a couple of years. At the same time, I generally don't want to associate with unvaccinated people, and am happy that my employer has the same view.
I'm not obligated to treat people with respect that they don't deserve, and I think it is heartbreaking - but important - that hospital staff are doing their best to treat everyone the same despite the obvious negligence on the side of the unvaccinated. Autonomy is cool as long as you do not need to rely on others.
Looking at the linked document, the hospitalization rate for fully vaccinated 12-34 year olds is 2.5 per 100,000. For unvaccinated it's 30.4 per 100,000.
Unvaxxed here. Lost my job due to it. Couldn't attend a close friend's wedding. So - it is not a casual decision I made.
mRNA "vaccines" are not as tested as the pharmaceutical companies want you to believe. They've been in development for years and had serious issues. The mainstream media has severe conflicts of interest, financially, with regard to Pfizer. There are smaller conflicts of interest with regard to J&J and Moderna. The Asch conformity experiments are one example of many that show that even experts can be manipulated. If I do happen to have a bad reaction to the shot, I have no recourse to get compensation for my medical bills. I have very, very low risk of complications from the SARS-Cov-2 virus itself.
The risk analysis does not justify the shot, for me.
If you're looking for hard data, there was some, but it was more of a logic based risk assessment. I deduced, for me, that the best bet was to avoid the disease as much as possible, and not risk a novel medicine for something that was low risk anyways.
Risk of me having major complications from Covid: Very, very low. Less than a hundredth of a percent, IIRC.
Rate of drugs recalled by FDA: Shockingly high.
Rate of fraud and abuse by large pharmaceutical companies: Also very high.
Effectiveness of the vaccine: I have an admittedly non-expert level understanding of statistics, but I did not agree with the efficacy analysis from the initial trials. I assume some modeling was applied, but I found that to be rather opaque. IIRC again - it was about 5k ea of active/placebo, and on the order magnitude of about 100 cases for placebo and 50 for active treatment.
> If you're looking for hard data, there was some, but it was more of a logic based risk assessment.
I take it that you did not look at odds ratio. This is probabilistic analysis not if-then-else. With no use of risk analysis this is an emotional judgement, not a logic based one.
How did you incorporate unknown long term effects of a covid19 infection, even if you dont die from it - in your own analysis?
Btw, the idea behind a multi stage RCT is to identify the unknown risks in a stage wise manner. The odds ratio does just that.
At this point you left scientific reasoning and logic a long way behind, and there is really no conversation to be had. 94% efficacy is actually extremely fucking impressive.
"Symptomatic Covid-19 illness was confirmed in 185 participants in the placebo group (56.5 per 1000 person-years; 95% confidence interval [CI], 48.7 to 65.3) and in 11 participants in the mRNA-1273 group (3.3 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 1.7 to 6.0); vaccine efficacy was 94.1% (95% CI, 89.3 to 96.8%; P<0.001)."
Your own memory reflects your unconscious bias
> it was about 5k ea of active/placebo, and on the order magnitude of about 100 cases for placebo and 50 for active treatment.
>How did you incorporate unknown long term effects of a covid19 infection, even if you dont die from it - in your own analysis?
How do I incorporate unknown long term effects of the vaccine? If both offer unknowns, of unknown severity, why should I intentionally take one to avoid another? How are you quantizing these? You seem so caught up in how others have told you to analyze risk, you are unable to do so for yourself anymore.
>At this point you left scientific reasoning and logic a long way behind,
> You seem so caught up in how others have told you to analyze risk, you are unable to do so for yourself anymore.
I am a professional data scientist[1], and get paid to do these kind of analysis myself every day. Analysis far more advanced than odds ratios. I used that as a simple measure that even laymen can understand. Your non-existent analysis is not an adequate replacement for statistical methods.
Whats that popular phrase Ben Shapiro uses ..... - "Facts don't care about your feelings".
If you are willing to lose your job to avoid a protective shot, as demonstrated by every medical review and very basic math, you are long beyond the pale of logic or reason.
This became a bit of a text meme for a bit. I think there's actually an origin in some fantasy fiction narrative about a wizard and a magic rock, but I cannot find it now.
Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
There's also the issue that with 5G phased array antennae, tx power limits are not restricted as tightly. With a standard single tx antenna, it's easy to calculate the amount of EM energy it can create in the 3D space around the antenna. With phased array beamforming, you're using using multiple small antennae and amplifying the signal beyond the sum of the individual outputs. The safety ratings for EM radiation around phased arrays tend not to be calculated on the theoretical maximum TX power, but on the typical usage. The result is that with low enough level access to the firmware, someone could theoretically weaponize a 5G antenna to produce unsafe levels of RF energy, as well as aim the antenna without physically moving the hardware.
This sounds far-fetched, and it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see it done in a lab, like some of the other practically infeasible but bleeding edge cool hacks.
> With phased array beamforming, you're using using multiple small antennae and amplifying the signal beyond the sum of the individual outputs.
No, that's impossible.
The RF power imparted onto the EM field by any antenna array is equal to or less than the sum of the output power of each antennae.
I think the argument is that while the total power over the full 4π is equal to the sum of the input power, the constructive/destructive interference cause there to be higher power output within some solid angle. But my understanding is that the limit are for avoiding interference from other devices, not for human safety, and that any reasonable amount of non-ionizing radiation is incredibly safe for humans. Congestion wouldn't be impacted by the beamforming, because on average any increase in intensity at one angle would be countered by a decrease at some other angle.
Higher power density, not higher power. You aren't going to get more watts anywhere than went in, but you will potentially get more watts per cm^2 than at the antenna.
The Overstory by Richard Powers. A few touching stories about trees and Americans. One of the best things I've read this decade, perhaps this lifetime.
Same! I typically struggle with long books, and especially those written in such rich language, but wowee this book was a phenomenonal punch to the stomach
Sure, and if you have a cure for obesity that works rapidly in the general population - because "please get more exercise" hasn't thus far - have at it.
Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications. I think if they decided to be honest, and call it a "pandemic of the overewight" early on, you would have seen a lot of people using their time off to walk around the block. By ignoring the data, they increased fear, and probably increased people gaining weight by locking themselves in their homes all day.
> Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications.
You said you are in the US in another comment. I took 3 minutes to google some big US news sites. They all had multiple articles on the topic from spring 2020 until now. Your criticism is false. Some random examples:
