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Any and all updates regarding the COVID-19 will need a source provided. Please do your part in helping us to keep this thread maintainable and under control.
It is YOUR responsibility to fully read through the sources that you link, and you MUST provide a brief summary explaining what the source is about. Do not expect other people to do the work for you.
Conspiracy theories and fear mongering will absolutely not be tolerated in this thread. Expect harsh mod actions if you try to incite fear needlessly.
This is not a politics thread! You are allowed to post information regarding politics if it's related to the coronavirus, but do NOT discuss politics in here.
Added a disclaimer on page 662. Many need to post better. |
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On June 23 2023 08:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 01:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 22 2023 23:19 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
What I am saying is that study I linked earlier shows that amount of Covid cases increase together with amount of boosters taken. NSW data seems like it is indeed the case. That's not what you just said, and what I had bolded. You were talking about hospitalization when you said "That if vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU", and that's the part I'm interested in. So, again, I'll ask: 1. Do you think that recently receiving a covid vaccine/booster doesn't help reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death? (If you'd like to simplify it, you can think of this as a Yes or No question: "Yes, I don't think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death", or "No, I do think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death".) 2. If you believe that it doesn't help (the "Yes" answer), can you please explain why you believe that? As far as possibly having a positive correlation between number of boosters and number of times receiving covid is concerned: One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider. Also, over time, of course the vast majority of people are going to have at least one, if not more, covid vaccine doses/boosters, so it looks like you haven't taken those proportions into consideration either. I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all (otherwise there wouldn't be boosters). Is short term protection worth, getting boosters over and over again? Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider. As for second part of your post: Study mentioned seems to address this issues, did you actually read it? I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Exactly - did you disregard results of all the other studies with this annotations? Even those which confirmed what you thought? I dont think there is many vaccine studies without "Limitations" section. I repeatedly stated that there's nothing wrong with having a Limitations section. And I don't know what other results or studies you're referring to. Keep in mind that I'm not disregarding the results of this paper you cited; I'm disregarding your personal interpretation of the reason for the results.
You mean this one:
"The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected." ?
On June 23 2023 09:00 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2023 08:54 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:33 JimmiC wrote:On June 23 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all (otherwise there wouldn't be boosters). Is short term protection worth, getting boosters over and over again? Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider. As for second part of your post: Study mentioned seems to address this issues, did you actually read it? I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Exactly - did you disregard results of all the other studies with this annotations? Even those which confirmed what you thought? I dont think there is many vaccine studies without "Limitations" section. But the people who produced the study did not come to the conclusion you did. If they did then people here would be on board. Sorry can you specify what you mean? Which conclusion of mine people who produced the study didnt come to? That the vaccine does not lower the severity of Covid.
My exact quote:
"I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all"
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On June 23 2023 09:09 Razyda wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2023 08:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 01:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
That's not what you just said, and what I had bolded. You were talking about hospitalization when you said "That if vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU", and that's the part I'm interested in. So, again, I'll ask:
1. Do you think that recently receiving a covid vaccine/booster doesn't help reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death? (If you'd like to simplify it, you can think of this as a Yes or No question: "Yes, I don't think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death", or "No, I do think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death".)
2. If you believe that it doesn't help (the "Yes" answer), can you please explain why you believe that?
As far as possibly having a positive correlation between number of boosters and number of times receiving covid is concerned: One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider. Also, over time, of course the vast majority of people are going to have at least one, if not more, covid vaccine doses/boosters, so it looks like you haven't taken those proportions into consideration either. I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all (otherwise there wouldn't be boosters). Is short term protection worth, getting boosters over and over again? Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider. As for second part of your post: Study mentioned seems to address this issues, did you actually read it? I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Exactly - did you disregard results of all the other studies with this annotations? Even those which confirmed what you thought? I dont think there is many vaccine studies without "Limitations" section. I repeatedly stated that there's nothing wrong with having a Limitations section. And I don't know what other results or studies you're referring to. Keep in mind that I'm not disregarding the results of this paper you cited; I'm disregarding your personal interpretation of the reason for the results. You mean this one: "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected." ?
No, that's a result, not the reason for that result. You keep (accidentally) switching back and forth between the results and potential reasons for the results. If there happens to be a positive relationship between two things, according to the data, that would be the result. The paper shows such results, but then states (as I did) that there are limitations that prohibit us from knowing precisely what the explanations for those results are.
You originally had said the reason for the data showing that positive correlation was "vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU". We simply can't draw that conclusion from the data, as confounding variables identified in the Limitations section of the research paper are prohibiting us from establishing precisely what the significance (if any) of the positive correlation is, for this study. Or, put another way: The author, you, and I all are looking at the same data; you are interpreting the data in a certain way, and the author and I are both saying "Looking solely at this study, we can't be confident that your interpretation is accurate; we need more information".
For what it's worth, this thread is full of dozens of research papers that have actually established that over the past few years, covid vaccines have reduced the likelihood of serious symptoms, hospitalization, and death, especially during the first few months after receiving the vaccine/booster (which is something you later agreed with, so we may be ultimately discussing something that we don't really disagree on). The study you posted doesn't necessarily refute this; that's all I'm saying.
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On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2023 23:31 Mikau wrote:
That's not what that study showed at all.
You should consider not basing your conclusions on statistics you don't remotely understand. It will be more productive raising your concerns with Nabin K Shrestha. I will suggest however reading the study before you start educating lead author about basing conclusion on statistics he doesn't remotely understand...
I'm raising them with you, because you're the person misrepresenting or misinterpreting the data and the conclusion the original author draws. What you concluded based on the study and what the author concluded are very different.
Do you know how the phrase "correlation doesn't imply causation" is almost a meme at this point, and gets brought up every time people try to interpret statistics? That's for a very good reason.
What you're saying "this data/study shows there's a causal link between boosters and an increase in Covid risk/severity".
What the study is saying: "this data suggests an (unexpected) correlation/association between boosters and an increase in Covid risk/severity. This could be because of a causal connection (but that would be contrary to earlier evidence, hence the use of 'unexpected' in the part you quoted earlier), or it could be because of these other factors this study didn't account for (by design), and would need to be researched further.
Not only is the study not claiming a causal connection, they are rather explicitly saying that causation can't be concluded on the basis of this research, and further research is needed to find out whether there's a causal link here or the data looks this way because of one of the factors the study didn't account for.
The difference between correlation and causation is a fundamental part of interpreting data, and one you really should learn if you want to be able to meaningfully discuss studies and data.
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Just posting this randomly, as it is to the topic.
A colleague of mine, who I am pretty sure for full vaccination, caught Covid TWICE afterwards, and got medium flu symthoms both times. I did not catch it, despite being rather close, indoors.
I did not think this was possible, but the mutations might be impossible to chase down with mass vaccines.
I stopped testing myself. I got too tired of it, and I did not have to know exactly which virus made me cough before.
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On June 23 2023 13:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2023 09:09 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all (otherwise there wouldn't be boosters). Is short term protection worth, getting boosters over and over again? Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider. As for second part of your post: Study mentioned seems to address this issues, did you actually read it? I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Exactly - did you disregard results of all the other studies with this annotations? Even those which confirmed what you thought? I dont think there is many vaccine studies without "Limitations" section. I repeatedly stated that there's nothing wrong with having a Limitations section. And I don't know what other results or studies you're referring to. Keep in mind that I'm not disregarding the results of this paper you cited; I'm disregarding your personal interpretation of the reason for the results. You mean this one: "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected." ? No, that's a result, not the reason for that result. You keep (accidentally) switching back and forth between the results and potential reasons for the results. If there happens to be a positive relationship between two things, according to the data, that would be the result. The paper shows such results, but then states (as I did) that there are limitations that prohibit us from knowing precisely what the explanations for those results are. You originally had said the reason for the data showing that positive correlation was "vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU". We simply can't draw that conclusion from the data, as confounding variables identified in the Limitations section of the research paper are prohibiting us from establishing precisely what the significance (if any) of the positive correlation is, for this study. Or, put another way: The author, you, and I all are looking at the same data; you are interpreting the data in a certain way, and the author and I are both saying "Looking solely at this study, we can't be confident that your interpretation is accurate; we need more information". For what it's worth, this thread is full of dozens of research papers that have actually established that over the past few years, covid vaccines have reduced the likelihood of serious symptoms, hospitalization, and death, especially during the first few months after receiving the vaccine/booster (which is something you later agreed with, so we may be ultimately discussing something that we don't really disagree on). The study you posted doesn't necessarily refute this; that's all I'm saying.
Oh I understand the confusion now.
Claim about hospitalization and ICU was made based on NWS data
Claim about facilitating spread of the virus was made based on Cleveland study.
On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 01:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 22 2023 23:19 Razyda wrote:On June 22 2023 09:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 22 2023 02:11 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
That if vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU (remember protect health services?) because 0s are 0s and no 100% of population is vaccinated, also they dont prevent spread, then whats the point of them (and mandates)??
The fact that unvaccinated who died werent hospitalised at all is actually a curiosity only. I'm having trouble interpreting what you're saying. Do you think that recently receiving a covid vaccine/booster doesn't help reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death? If you believe that it doesn't help, can you please explain why you believe that? What I am saying is that study I linked earlier shows that amount of Covid cases increase together with amount of boosters taken. NSW data seems like it is indeed the case. That's not what you just said, and what I had bolded. You were talking about hospitalization when you said "That if vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU", and that's the part I'm interested in. So, again, I'll ask: 1. Do you think that recently receiving a covid vaccine/booster doesn't help reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death? (If you'd like to simplify it, you can think of this as a Yes or No question: "Yes, I don't think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death", or "No, I do think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death".) 2. If you believe that it doesn't help (the "Yes" answer), can you please explain why you believe that? As far as possibly having a positive correlation between number of boosters and number of times receiving covid is concerned: One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider. Also, over time, of course the vast majority of people are going to have at least one, if not more, covid vaccine doses/boosters, so it looks like you haven't taken those proportions into consideration either. I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all (otherwise there wouldn't be boosters). Is short term protection worth, getting boosters over and over again? Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider. As for second part of your post: Study mentioned seems to address this issues, did you actually read it? I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one.
Bolded: it actually isnt:
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/scicheck-cleveland-clinic-study-did-not-show-vaccines-increase-covid-19-risk/
This is link to fact check where they actually talk with the author of the study:
Researchers can try to make statistical adjustments for differences between groups, but Fox pointed out that the main graph in the paper showing the relationships between prior vaccine doses and COVID-19 risk — which was shared widely — is unadjusted. He also mentioned that there was no table showing the characteristics of people with different numbers of prior vaccine doses, and that this data is typically helpful for making sure there are proper adjustments for any differences.
Shrestha said he and his co-authors would not have shared the unadjusted graph had they not concluded in the main adjusted analyses that the association held up. But as we said, he agreed there could be some confounding factor explaining the results.
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On June 24 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2023 13:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 09:09 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider.
[quote]
I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Exactly - did you disregard results of all the other studies with this annotations? Even those which confirmed what you thought? I dont think there is many vaccine studies without "Limitations" section. I repeatedly stated that there's nothing wrong with having a Limitations section. And I don't know what other results or studies you're referring to. Keep in mind that I'm not disregarding the results of this paper you cited; I'm disregarding your personal interpretation of the reason for the results. You mean this one: "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected." ? No, that's a result, not the reason for that result. You keep (accidentally) switching back and forth between the results and potential reasons for the results. If there happens to be a positive relationship between two things, according to the data, that would be the result. The paper shows such results, but then states (as I did) that there are limitations that prohibit us from knowing precisely what the explanations for those results are. You originally had said the reason for the data showing that positive correlation was "vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU". We simply can't draw that conclusion from the data, as confounding variables identified in the Limitations section of the research paper are prohibiting us from establishing precisely what the significance (if any) of the positive correlation is, for this study. Or, put another way: The author, you, and I all are looking at the same data; you are interpreting the data in a certain way, and the author and I are both saying "Looking solely at this study, we can't be confident that your interpretation is accurate; we need more information". For what it's worth, this thread is full of dozens of research papers that have actually established that over the past few years, covid vaccines have reduced the likelihood of serious symptoms, hospitalization, and death, especially during the first few months after receiving the vaccine/booster (which is something you later agreed with, so we may be ultimately discussing something that we don't really disagree on). The study you posted doesn't necessarily refute this; that's all I'm saying. Oh I understand the confusion now. Claim about hospitalization and ICU was made based on NWS data Claim about facilitating spread of the virus was made based on Cleveland study. Show nested quote +On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 01:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 22 2023 23:19 Razyda wrote:On June 22 2023 09:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
I'm having trouble interpreting what you're saying. Do you think that recently receiving a covid vaccine/booster doesn't help reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death? If you believe that it doesn't help, can you please explain why you believe that? What I am saying is that study I linked earlier shows that amount of Covid cases increase together with amount of boosters taken. NSW data seems like it is indeed the case. That's not what you just said, and what I had bolded. You were talking about hospitalization when you said "That if vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU", and that's the part I'm interested in. So, again, I'll ask: 1. Do you think that recently receiving a covid vaccine/booster doesn't help reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death? (If you'd like to simplify it, you can think of this as a Yes or No question: "Yes, I don't think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death", or "No, I do think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death".) 2. If you believe that it doesn't help (the "Yes" answer), can you please explain why you believe that? As far as possibly having a positive correlation between number of boosters and number of times receiving covid is concerned: One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider. Also, over time, of course the vast majority of people are going to have at least one, if not more, covid vaccine doses/boosters, so it looks like you haven't taken those proportions into consideration either. I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all (otherwise there wouldn't be boosters). Is short term protection worth, getting boosters over and over again? Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider. As for second part of your post: Study mentioned seems to address this issues, did you actually read it? I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Bolded: it actually isnt: https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/scicheck-cleveland-clinic-study-did-not-show-vaccines-increase-covid-19-risk/This is link to fact check where they actually talk with the author of the study: Researchers can try to make statistical adjustments for differences between groups, but Fox pointed out that the main graph in the paper showing the relationships between prior vaccine doses and COVID-19 risk — which was shared widely — is unadjusted. He also mentioned that there was no table showing the characteristics of people with different numbers of prior vaccine doses, and that this data is typically helpful for making sure there are proper adjustments for any differences. Shrestha said he and his co-authors would not have shared the unadjusted graph had they not concluded in the main adjusted analyses that the association held up. But as we said, he agreed there could be some confounding factor explaining the results.
That entire website supports what I (and others) have been saying. Yes, the association holds up. That's the result. Not the reason. That factcheck.org link says "Shrestha said he did not know the explanation for the findings", which is my point. Here are other quotes from your source that reaffirm my position:
"But the researchers didn’t find that more doses caused a higher risk of infection. Rather, this finding was an association that could be due to multiple other factors. And studies have generally found that each additional vaccine dose reduces COVID-19 risk."
"Incorrect claims about the paper have been circulating since before it was peer-reviewed and published. Recently, a widely viewed social media post jumped to the conclusion that the study shows that “a higher number of COVID-19 vaccine doses received increases the risk of infection with COVID-19.”"
"The original COVID-19 vaccine series was initially very effective against infection and without question “saved a lot of lives,” co-author Dr. Nabin Shrestha, an infectious disease physician at the Cleveland Clinic, told us. Determining whether getting more doses of the COVID-19 vaccines can later cause greater susceptibility to infections “wasn’t the point of the study,” he said."
"The study said: “The unexpected finding of increasing risk with increasing number of prior COVID-19 vaccine doses needs further study.”"
"There is no clear or compelling evidence that repeated vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines makes anyone more susceptible or prone to getting COVID-19" (notice the use of the term "makes" here - correlation does not imply causation, and makes = causation).
"Observational studies like the Cleveland Clinic one can turn up associations between things, but it can be difficult to assess what caused these patterns."
I'm gonna take a break from this discussion; I appreciate the conversation. Have a wonderful weekend!
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On June 24 2023 11:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 13:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 09:09 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:57 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:24 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
"The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses."
"The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine."
I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19."
Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Exactly - did you disregard results of all the other studies with this annotations? Even those which confirmed what you thought? I dont think there is many vaccine studies without "Limitations" section. I repeatedly stated that there's nothing wrong with having a Limitations section. And I don't know what other results or studies you're referring to. Keep in mind that I'm not disregarding the results of this paper you cited; I'm disregarding your personal interpretation of the reason for the results. You mean this one: "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected." ? No, that's a result, not the reason for that result. You keep (accidentally) switching back and forth between the results and potential reasons for the results. If there happens to be a positive relationship between two things, according to the data, that would be the result. The paper shows such results, but then states (as I did) that there are limitations that prohibit us from knowing precisely what the explanations for those results are. You originally had said the reason for the data showing that positive correlation was "vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU". We simply can't draw that conclusion from the data, as confounding variables identified in the Limitations section of the research paper are prohibiting us from establishing precisely what the significance (if any) of the positive correlation is, for this study. Or, put another way: The author, you, and I all are looking at the same data; you are interpreting the data in a certain way, and the author and I are both saying "Looking solely at this study, we can't be confident that your interpretation is accurate; we need more information". For what it's worth, this thread is full of dozens of research papers that have actually established that over the past few years, covid vaccines have reduced the likelihood of serious symptoms, hospitalization, and death, especially during the first few months after receiving the vaccine/booster (which is something you later agreed with, so we may be ultimately discussing something that we don't really disagree on). The study you posted doesn't necessarily refute this; that's all I'm saying. Oh I understand the confusion now. Claim about hospitalization and ICU was made based on NWS data Claim about facilitating spread of the virus was made based on Cleveland study. On June 23 2023 08:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 08:00 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 03:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 03:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 23 2023 02:39 Razyda wrote:On June 23 2023 01:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On June 22 2023 23:19 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
What I am saying is that study I linked earlier shows that amount of Covid cases increase together with amount of boosters taken. NSW data seems like it is indeed the case. That's not what you just said, and what I had bolded. You were talking about hospitalization when you said "That if vaccine doesnt prevent hospitalisation and ICU", and that's the part I'm interested in. So, again, I'll ask: 1. Do you think that recently receiving a covid vaccine/booster doesn't help reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death? (If you'd like to simplify it, you can think of this as a Yes or No question: "Yes, I don't think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death", or "No, I do think receiving a covid vaccine/booster helps reduce serious symptoms, hospitalization, or death".) 2. If you believe that it doesn't help (the "Yes" answer), can you please explain why you believe that? As far as possibly having a positive correlation between number of boosters and number of times receiving covid is concerned: One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider. Also, over time, of course the vast majority of people are going to have at least one, if not more, covid vaccine doses/boosters, so it looks like you haven't taken those proportions into consideration either. I think for limited period they do, after that not so much, if at all (otherwise there wouldn't be boosters). Is short term protection worth, getting boosters over and over again? Of course the covid vaccines are most effective for a "limited period", with boosters being required for anyone interested in keeping up with reduction of harm. And as covid strains mutate over the years (hopefully continuing to become less severe), your question of whether or not to bother getting a booster ends up being a legitimate personal question for individuals to consider. As for second part of your post: Study mentioned seems to address this issues, did you actually read it? I did read it. Please paste the part where you believe the study addresses my concern ("One can imagine that people who have received multiple boosters might do so because they travel a lot or work in a field where they could be regularly exposed to covid (or a lot of strangers). Not every person has the same chance of coming into contact with someone who has covid, so any correlation here still has additional variables to consider."). "The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses." "The study has several limitations. Individuals with unrecognized prior infection would have been misclassified as previously uninfected. Since prior infection protects against subsequent infection, such misclassification would have resulted in underestimating the protective effect of the vaccine. However, there is little reason to suppose that prior infections would have been missing in the bivalent-vaccinated and nonvaccinated states at disproportionate rates. There might be concern that those who chose to receive the bivalent vaccine may have been more worried about infection and more likely to be tested when they had symptoms, thereby disproportionately detecting more incident infections among those who received the bivalent vaccine. We did not find an association between the number of COVID-19 tests done and the number of prior vaccine doses, however, suggesting that this was not a confounding factor. Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those who were more likely to have lower risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19. This would have the effect of finding a higher risk of COVID-19 in the nonvaccinated state, thereby potentially overestimating vaccine effectiveness, because the lower risk of COVID-19 in the bivalent-vaccinated state could have been due to lower risk-taking behavior rather than the vaccine." I believe bolded addresses it? Traveling and meeting lots of people seems to fit under description of " risk-taking behavior with respect to COVID-19." Those bolded parts repeat my concern, not solve my concern. As these are mentioned around the "limitations" section of the paper, it absolutely makes sense that they qualify these issues by using words like "could" instead of "we were able to control for X" (like when it says "Those who chose to get the bivalent vaccine could have been those..."). This is a standard, good-faith attempt by the author to offer potential explanations and extensions outside of what was being studied. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the author writing about them; it suggests other things to consider in the broader narrative of this topic... but this study's data doesn't specifically address other potentially-confounding variables. Yes they do, more also there may be more variables (eg more vaccinated may have been in direct contact with the patients). However given the fact that they addressed it isnt it fair to say that they accounted for them? And still decided to publish it. Shouldnt be concluded that they decided this deviations wouldnt change the overall result? Given that result was unexpected and controversial, one would expect that they checked it multiple times. The short answer is No; that's not what the "limitations" part of a research paper is for. In general, most published papers have a section (at the end) outlining certain limitations, afterthoughts, extensions, and suggestions for future research. Those are specifically things that weren't accounted for in the original study (because a single study can't do everything, of course), but should be considered and addressed in other future studies. Sometimes, the limitation is one that the authors had predicted from the beginning but couldn't really do much about (especially if it's observational data, rather than an experiment / randomized controlled trial); other times, the data suggests something surprising that hadn't been considered, and needs further research to explain. It's not a knock against this paper at all, but rather, the author is helping the audience by pointing out other things to look for in other papers, because they weren't fleshed out in this one. Bolded: it actually isnt: https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/scicheck-cleveland-clinic-study-did-not-show-vaccines-increase-covid-19-risk/This is link to fact check where they actually talk with the author of the study: Researchers can try to make statistical adjustments for differences between groups, but Fox pointed out that the main graph in the paper showing the relationships between prior vaccine doses and COVID-19 risk — which was shared widely — is unadjusted. He also mentioned that there was no table showing the characteristics of people with different numbers of prior vaccine doses, and that this data is typically helpful for making sure there are proper adjustments for any differences. Shrestha said he and his co-authors would not have shared the unadjusted graph had they not concluded in the main adjusted analyses that the association held up. But as we said, he agreed there could be some confounding factor explaining the results. That entire website supports what I (and others) have been saying. Yes, the association holds up. That's the result. Not the reason. That factcheck.org link says "Shrestha said he did not know the explanation for the findings", which is my point. Here are other quotes from your source that reaffirm my position: "But the researchers didn’t find that more doses caused a higher risk of infection. Rather, this finding was an association that could be due to multiple other factors. And studies have generally found that each additional vaccine dose reduces COVID-19 risk." "Incorrect claims about the paper have been circulating since before it was peer-reviewed and published. Recently, a widely viewed social media post jumped to the conclusion that the study shows that “a higher number of COVID-19 vaccine doses received increases the risk of infection with COVID-19.”" "The original COVID-19 vaccine series was initially very effective against infection and without question “saved a lot of lives,” co-author Dr. Nabin Shrestha, an infectious disease physician at the Cleveland Clinic, told us. Determining whether getting more doses of the COVID-19 vaccines can later cause greater susceptibility to infections “wasn’t the point of the study,” he said." "The study said: “The unexpected finding of increasing risk with increasing number of prior COVID-19 vaccine doses needs further study.”" "There is no clear or compelling evidence that repeated vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines makes anyone more susceptible or prone to getting COVID-19" (notice the use of the term "makes" here - correlation does not imply causation, and makes = causation). "Observational studies like the Cleveland Clinic one can turn up associations between things, but it can be difficult to assess what caused these patterns." I'm gonna take a break from this discussion; I appreciate the conversation. Have a wonderful weekend!
Bolded: This is actually amazing  . I hope you will have best weekend ever.
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New emails and slack messages uncovered regarding COVID origins. These pertain to the authors of the Proximal Origin paper in Nature that labeled lab escape as not plausible and was basically the main driving force behind shutting down the lab leak hypothesis. The lead author on the paper was Kristian Andersen.
https://theintercept.com/2023/07/21/covid-origin-nih-lab-leak/
Just a few days prior to the publishing of the paper Kristian Andersen was sending emails such as this one where he believed the virus looks like it may have been engineered and inconsistent with a natural evolution
A day before the teleconference, Kristian Andersen, an expert in infectious disease genomics at the prestigious Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, had told Fauci first by phone and again later by email that the genetic structure of the virus looked like it might have been engineered in a lab.
“The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” Andersen said in an email to Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020. Andersen added that he and University of Sydney virologist and evolutionary biologist Edward Holmes, plus a handful of other top scientists with whom Fauci was on a first-name basis, “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.”
Some facts that have come to light on why his opinion of lab leak being plausible changed so abruptly after a conference call with Fauci and others:
At the time he had an $8.9 grant on Fauci's desk at the NIH awaiting his approval. So he had 8.9 million reasons to be in Fauci's good graces.
It seems according to private messages he was also worried with being labeled as a "crackpot" by the louder and more senior voices in the group:
“Both Ron and Christian are much too conflicted to think about this issue straight – to them, the hypothesis of accidental lab escape is so unlikely and not something they want to consider. The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely – it’s not some fringe theory,” Andersen wrote on Slack. “I don’t think we should reply back on the current thread as he effectively shut down the discussion there and I think will just lead to a shouting match – Christian and Ron made it clear that they think this is a crackpot theory.”
It also appears Kristian Andersen and his co-author on the Proximal Origins paper, Andrew Rambaut were also concerned about being seen as anti-gain-of-function research.
Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”
“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.)
Lastly, Andersen and his co-author concluded that it's a toss up if the virus came from the lab or nature with Andersen leaning towards the lab, but they concluded that the lab theory would piss of China so they were comfortable tossing the whole thing out the window and ascribing it to natural origin:
Andersen, returning to the question of Covid’s origin, repeated that “Natural selection and accidental release are both plausible scenarios explaining the data – and a priori should be equally weighed as possible explanations. The presence of a furin [cleavage site] a posteriori” — the furin cleavage site was the characteristic of the virus that the scientists thought was indicative of engineering or other lab origin — “moves me slightly more towards accidental release, but it’s well above my paygrade to call the shots on a final conclusion.”
In fact, Andersen would be listed as the lead author on the conclusive paper. Rambaut responded by warning of the geopolitical fallout of such a claim. “Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”
“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.”
TL;DR version
Lead authors of the Proximal origin paper that called lab leak implausible were privately messaging each other saying they think it's the more likely scenario but it may piss off China. The lead author also had a $8.9 million grant on the desk of Fauci awaiting approval. Their messages also show they were concerned about being seen as crackpots for supporting lab-escape and for being seen as anti-gain-of-function.
I think it's safe the say we have all the markings of a proper conspiracy here.
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Yes a conspiracy to best serve the public, oh the horror of doing your job in the middle of a plague.
What if this breaks the public trust of the government?!? Will people stop trusting the government to act in their best interests if they act in their best interests?!?
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On July 22 2023 23:56 Sermokala wrote:
Yes a conspiracy to best serve the public, oh the horror of doing your job in the middle of a plague.
What if this breaks the public trust of the government?!? Will people stop trusting the government to act in their best interests if they act in their best interests?!?
How exactly does this serve the public? If a virus that killed millions of people escaped from a lab because some scientists were fucking around with it then it would serve the public more to make sure that doesn’t happen again instead of blaming Mother Nature. Deflecting scrutiny from China and gain of function research serves China and those doing gain of function research. Not to mention it adds fuel for conspiracy theorists to doubt the government.
As for your 2nd paragraph, the idea that this shouldn’t erode public trust because even if the public is misled the public should be confident they are being misled for the right reasons is one of the more foolish things I have heard said here.
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On July 23 2023 08:34 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2023 23:56 Sermokala wrote:
Yes a conspiracy to best serve the public, oh the horror of doing your job in the middle of a plague.
What if this breaks the public trust of the government?!? Will people stop trusting the government to act in their best interests if they act in their best interests?!? How exactly does this serve the public? If a virus that killed millions of people escaped from a lab because some scientists were fucking around with it then it would serve the public more to make sure that doesn’t happen again instead of blaming Mother Nature. Deflecting scrutiny from China and gain of function research serves China and those doing gain of function research. Not to mention it adds fuel for conspiracy theorists to doubt the government. As for your 2nd paragraph, the idea that this shouldn’t erode public trust because even if the public is misled the public should be confident they are being misled for the right reasons is one of the more foolish things I have heard said here.
Your first paragraph has nothing to do with what you posted so I'm going to ignore it. I'm not surprised you think that competent representation is foolish, I just wish you would try to understand why some of us enjoy a functioning government.
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On July 22 2023 19:09 BlackJack wrote:New emails and slack messages uncovered regarding COVID origins. These pertain to the authors of the Proximal Origin paper in Nature that labeled lab escape as not plausible and was basically the main driving force behind shutting down the lab leak hypothesis. The lead author on the paper was Kristian Andersen. https://theintercept.com/2023/07/21/covid-origin-nih-lab-leak/Just a few days prior to the publishing of the paper Kristian Andersen was sending emails such as this one where he believed the virus looks like it may have been engineered and inconsistent with a natural evolution Show nested quote +A day before the teleconference, Kristian Andersen, an expert in infectious disease genomics at the prestigious Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, had told Fauci first by phone and again later by email that the genetic structure of the virus looked like it might have been engineered in a lab.
“The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered,” Andersen said in an email to Fauci on Jan. 31, 2020. Andersen added that he and University of Sydney virologist and evolutionary biologist Edward Holmes, plus a handful of other top scientists with whom Fauci was on a first-name basis, “all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.” Some facts that have come to light on why his opinion of lab leak being plausible changed so abruptly after a conference call with Fauci and others: At the time he had an $8.9 grant on Fauci's desk at the NIH awaiting his approval. So he had 8.9 million reasons to be in Fauci's good graces. It seems according to private messages he was also worried with being labeled as a "crackpot" by the louder and more senior voices in the group: Show nested quote +“Both Ron and Christian are much too conflicted to think about this issue straight – to them, the hypothesis of accidental lab escape is so unlikely and not something they want to consider. The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely – it’s not some fringe theory,” Andersen wrote on Slack. “I don’t think we should reply back on the current thread as he effectively shut down the discussion there and I think will just lead to a shouting match – Christian and Ron made it clear that they think this is a crackpot theory.” It also appears Kristian Andersen and his co-author on the Proximal Origins paper, Andrew Rambaut were also concerned about being seen as anti-gain-of-function research. Show nested quote +Rambaut continued on the theme: “Ron had me clocked as an anti-GOF fanatic already. Although my primary concern is that these experiments are done in Cat 3 labs.”
“Interesting,” Andersen responded. “I’m all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* – however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts!” (Rambaut and Andersen were referencing biosafety level 3 laboratories.) Lastly, Andersen and his co-author concluded that it's a toss up if the virus came from the lab or nature with Andersen leaning towards the lab, but they concluded that the lab theory would piss of China so they were comfortable tossing the whole thing out the window and ascribing it to natural origin: Show nested quote +Andersen, returning to the question of Covid’s origin, repeated that “Natural selection and accidental release are both plausible scenarios explaining the data – and a priori should be equally weighed as possible explanations. The presence of a furin [cleavage site] a posteriori” — the furin cleavage site was the characteristic of the virus that the scientists thought was indicative of engineering or other lab origin — “moves me slightly more towards accidental release, but it’s well above my paygrade to call the shots on a final conclusion.”
In fact, Andersen would be listed as the lead author on the conclusive paper. Rambaut responded by warning of the geopolitical fallout of such a claim. “Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes.”
“Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion,” Andersen responded. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that.” TL;DR version Lead authors of the Proximal origin paper that called lab leak implausible were privately messaging each other saying they think it's the more likely scenario but it may piss off China. The lead author also had a $8.9 million grant on the desk of Fauci awaiting approval. Their messages also show they were concerned about being seen as crackpots for supporting lab-escape and for being seen as anti-gain-of-function. I think it's safe the say we have all the markings of a proper conspiracy here.
It's a very meaningful development. On the one hand it seems shitty that a congressional committee would hand the product of its subpoena (on private citizens) over to a media outlet, without even the pretense of it being a leak with an unknown source. But this really is documentary proof of a conspiracy to cover up the possible happening of the worst case scenario in the virology field: an accidental lab leak causing a global pandemic. Gain of function research is long known to be controversial and debated; there was even a pause on it imposed by the Obama administration. For the worst case scenario to happen, that almost renders the whole concept and endeavor into a net negative. It threatens the funding and the business model that's in place in the field.
Thus the scientists who were racing to form a conclusion on the virus's origins, and produce a publication to drive the public narrative away from the lab leak theory, were admitting amongst themselves in no uncertain terms that their conclusion was preconceived and dictated and not based on the scientific method. These of course are the people who get millions in funding from the federal government (which is the lifeblood of GOF research) and who pull the strings. They were being admonished that treating lab leak as plausible opens up scrutiny of past outbreaks (wow) and threatens the research status quo. It's very black and white.
You've also got other signs of cover up - the documents almost certainly show that fauci lied under oath, when he said they weren't doing GOF in WIV and that he didn't have a personal relationship with certain critical players in the GOF area, such as Ralph Baric. Then of course you have the WIV scientists who have been disappeared, the incineration of all virus samples, etc. The Proximal origin scientists admitting that safety protocols in GOF labs are questionable. Previous complaints and warnings about lax standards at WIV.
You've also got, and this eye opening, a lot of scientists insisting that lab leak is less likely when there may be convincing evidence to the contrary. GOF lab at ground zero. Genome similarity (closest known relative) was a virus in a WIV paper and viruses in a Laos bat colony used by WIV scientists for sample collection. WIV research proposals that map onto SARS-COV-2. (It's a basic inference from this stuff that lab leak is likely - as the prominent scientists behind proximal origin were admitting to themselves at the time, even after publication thus proving that the publication was not genuine.) 3 WIV scientists - the ones proposing that research and publishing all their past papers with proof of specific and relevant GOF research - became sick in the timeframe of patient zero.
That evidence is being downplayed by the established, prominent scientists in favor of other circumstantial evidence, which at minimum grossly mistates the state of play in the evidence. They haven't validly inferred that lab leak is implausible.
All of which suggests that the field of virology is both fundamentally dangerous and fundamentally untrustworthy.
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Gain of function research is about as dangerous as nuclear facilities: it depends on who runs it. In France there's no issue with nuclear reactors as they put so much into safety that the cost almost outweighs the benefit. In China it's more the opposite. With gain of function it's the same. A number of lab leaks have been reported from various countries. Interestingly not a single case was ever reported from China. You can bet good money on that being the case not because China's labs are so safe, but because they suppress all information about their leaks.
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I think extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Unless someone digs up a research project of a Cov-2 virus from a lab in China, I don't think it is worth worrying about. I did see some solid studies about the initial cases, and there was nothing indicating a lab leak there either, the smoking gun seemed to be a wet market.
Outside of internet conspiracies, "plausible" does not mean "100% proved", it just means you can't rule out something 100%.
Just as China wants to distance itself from scandals, there were strong forces craving to frame Chinese labs for the virus. Weirdly, they could have blamed archaic practices of trading wild animals in the middle of big cities instead, but I guess that is not sexy enough.
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Northern Ireland24660 Posts
On August 03 2023 23:49 JimmiC wrote:
I’m not sure if it is just where I work but now when people show up with visible cold or flu symptoms they are asked to work from home. Which I think is a win, having sickness run through an office is not good for anyone and certainly not productivity. I wonder if it will stick?
Hopefully, especially in a cramped office or indoor workplace the culture of ‘drag yourself in unless you’re dead’ is really counter-productive and somewhat inhumane
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On August 02 2023 03:07 Slydie wrote:
I think extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Unless someone digs up a research project of a Cov-2 virus from a lab in China, I don't think it is worth worrying about. I did see some solid studies about the initial cases, and there was nothing indicating a lab leak there either, the smoking gun seemed to be a wet market.
Outside of internet conspiracies, "plausible" does not mean "100% proved", it just means you can't rule out something 100%.
Just as China wants to distance itself from scandals, there were strong forces craving to frame Chinese labs for the virus. Weirdly, they could have blamed archaic practices of trading wild animals in the middle of big cities instead, but I guess that is not sexy enough.
At this point I don't think it's an extraordinary claim, it's just an obvious probability judgment from the evidence. What has happened is that the leading scientists, the ones responsible for gain of function research, have covered up the fact that gain of function research turned out to be a catastrophically bad gamble. As was almost inevitable, and as has happened before (soviet H1N1), a constellation of circumstantial evidence has locked into place showing that the virus most likely leaked from a lab. That evidence is very much within the layperson's grasp, and it's actually a fascinating (and shocking) path to walk. The natural origin arguments propagated across major journals and US MSM outlets depend on elementary fallacies.
Start with this Aug 2020 scientific paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202000091
Mind you, there is only circumstantial evidence In favor of lab leak, because they destroyed all of the direct evidence. The Wuhan lab (WIV) could give us dispositive proof that the virus didnt come from the lab if they simply disclosed their database of in-house genome sequences that pre-existed the outbreak. But instead they deleted the databases, incinerated all viral samples, and (likely) pushed one scientist Zhou Yusen off the roof of the building (https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/crime/chinese-military-scientist-zhou-yusen-thrown-to-his-death-at-wuhan-lab-for-leaking-covid-lab-information--c-11016771).
There also is no direct evidence of a natural origin - which is unexpected if natural origin is the right explanation. No one has found the virus's precursor in any animal population in China, even though the virus would be expected to leave traces as it makes its way from a bat "reservoir" population, to an intermediate host (perhaps at a commercial animal farm), to humans. They've found covid samples on surfaces and animal hairs at the wet market, and there were cases near the market dating from late Dec 2019. But the outbreak started in mid Nov 2019, and so the market evidence is consistent with the market merely being a subsequent superspreader event. Plus that late dec 2019 case data shows some cases not near the lab, which is unexpected even if we were to accept the fallacy that late dec 2019 case data tells us where the outbreak started.
That market, by the way, is one of 50,000 in China, whereas there aren't many labs in China that do gain of function research. There is one solitary lab in China that is built to bio safety level 4 specs and specializes in bat coronaviruses. Scientists from this lab go to bat colonies 1000 km away to collect samples, bring them back to the lab, isolate coronaviruses from the samples, and then roid up the viruses for research purposes. The lab is capable of transforming a relatively inert virus into one that is capable of (1) airborne human to human transmission and (2) attacking multiple human organ systems. (The purpose behind that is to then develop a vaccine against the creation.) This is accomplished by modifying the portion of the genome that encodes the virus's "spike protein," which incorporates a "receptor binding domain," which in turn incorporates a "furin cleavage site" (or that may not be an exactly correct description of the components, but it's close enough to understand the issues). In published papers and research proposals preceding the outbreak (look up the PREDICT and DEFUSE proposals), this lab showed beyond any doubt that they were modifying bat coronaviruses via the spike protein, RBD & FCS. In 2015 for example they published some of their early results: they created a synthetic virus by mixing and matching one virus's spike protein and another's backbone: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985. This prompted controversy: the research risked a pandemic while having questionable value. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787
This lab is of course WIV. Covid has a roided spike protein. (Which in theory could evolve pseudo-naturally on a commercial animal farm, but not likely in a purely natural environment given how incredibly optimized it is.) Covid is a "lineage B" coronavirus, and no other coronavirus on that part of the family tree has the roided spike protein, likely because it would not be successful in nature because it would kill the host too quickly to propagate. As covid circulated among humans, its spike protein barely evolved at all, which is unexpected if it evolved naturally, because it wouldn't be immediately optimized for human to human transmission if it jumped from a bat to an intermediate animal to humans.
Covid is also a 96% genome match to a virus (RaTG13) WIV had in-house, which WIV voluntarily disclosed in early 2020 (possibly because they had in the past disclosed portions of it, thus leaving a breadcrumb that would eventually be found): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7095418/. The 4% difference is almost entirely the spike protein portion. (Natural origin arguments rely on the fallacy that RaTG13 is likely not itself an ancestor of covid, which ignores that the lab had a whole family tree in-house from which they were deriving new variants by unnatural means (focused on the spike protein portion), thus putting WIV's output right within the family tree zone of covid.)
Thus the natural origin theory requires an incredible coincidence: that of all the 50,000 Chinese wet markets, the virus that jumped from a bat colony 1000 km away from Wuhan ended up at the wet market closest to the gain of function lab that had collected samples from the bat colony and then brought them back to the lab to do research that's very specifically consistent with the covid genome.
Understand also that the CCP embeds itself within all major Chinese institutions, WIV is one such institution, those institutions send dispatches of CCP loyalty to the CCP, and WIV's dispatches show a biosafety emergency at the lab in mid Nov 2019 that was elevated to the highest levels of the Chinese govt. https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab
So we have a series of anomalies all of which are very specifically consistent with the activity of a gain of function lab located in the city where the outbreak started. On the natural origin side we have basic logical fallacies, such as that used in the Proximal Origins nature paper - that if the virus could in theory have evolved naturally, that tells us something meaningful about the relative likelihood of natural origin vs lab leak. Like natural evolution, the GOF labs produce new viruses. It is thus unremarkable to point out that natural evolution could in theory produce Covid’s super-optimized spike protein.
This shit is a massive scandal that they can't keep covered up forever. The dam is breaking.
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EPT
