DeSantis' COVID policies broken down

[icanthearyou 4,464]

2 hours ago, homersapien said:

For and by whom?

Joe, Hunter Biden, them Chineese an all you marxist librul commie, America hating scum.

[icanthearyou 4,464]

16 minutes ago, arein0 said:

So let's take a look at all the recent boogiemen for the radical conservatives:

Tech

Pharma

Hospitals 

Education system 

Government 

Science

Data 

Wall Street 

Media

DOJ

LGBTQ+ Coalition 

I know there are others I'm missing

 

What is left for you guys to view as a boogieman? Looks like all they trust in the world is each other and their guns. Similarly, cults also create an environment where it is us vs the world mentality.

You can't run solely on tax breaks for the wealthiest.

[Leftfield 2,684]

1 hour ago, arein0 said:

So let's take a look at all the recent boogiemen for the radical conservatives:

Tech

Pharma

Hospitals 

Education system 

Government 

Science

Data 

Wall Street 

Media

DOJ

LGBTQ+ Coalition 

 

[jj3jordan 2,078]

7 hours ago, homersapien said:

Ahem, you are the one interjecting factoids from the CDC as a general argument that getting a vaccine has no societal benefit.

I simply dismantled that argument.

And you're simply wrong about the vaccine not preventing infections.  For example, as "proof", I was diligent in my vaccinations and I never got infected.

(See how that works?  )

 

I injected facts from the CDC website. That is truth. You did not dismantle anything except in your own mind. You were diligent and that is great.  You probably did get infected with minor symptoms you hardly noticed, passed Covid to unknown victims, and went about your merry way. Or if you were diligent about exposure as I was, you also did not get infected or pass infection to others. See how that works? 🤔

[homersapien 11,488]

4 hours ago, jj3jordan said:

I injected facts from the CDC website. That is truth. You did not dismantle anything except in your own mind. You were diligent and that is great.  You probably did get infected with minor symptoms you hardly noticed, passed Covid to unknown victims, and went about your merry way. Or if you were diligent about exposure as I was, you also did not get infected or pass infection to others. See how that works? 🤔

So, if you want to go strictly by facts from the CDC website, how about quoting the parts where they discourage vaccine use.

I'll wait. 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by homersapien

[jj3jordan 2,078]

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

So, if you want to go strictly by facts from the CDC website, how about quoting the part where they discourage vaccine use.

 

 

Why would they discourage vaccine use? That would destroy the narrative and as time went on, their credibility. After pushing it so hard they are committed.  

[homersapien 11,488]

45 minutes ago, jj3jordan said:

Why would they discourage vaccine use? That would destroy the narrative and as time went on, their credibility. After pushing it so hard they are committed.  

Ah yes, the Q-anon response.   

Why am I not surprised?

[Cardin Drake 1,876]

14 hours ago, homersapien said:

High vaccination rates in a population for transmissible diseases reduces the number of infections from that disease in a population regardless if said vaccinations don't prevent transmission in every individual case.

That's epidemiology 101.

 

 

The problem is credibility. The data from the vaccine manufacturers said that the vaccine prevented transmission in 95% of the cases. We all believed that.  It turns out that was not true AT ALL.  I have heard no explanation on why the manufacturers got that so wrong. Instead, they just went to the position that the vaccines prevented serious disease. Does it? Why should I believe that now? They have never explained how they got it wrong in the first place, and wildly varying vaccination rates between countries/states seemed to have little impact on mortality. The U.S. mortality rate was not good compared to most of the world, far higher than India's for example, which had a very low vaccination rate. Why? Nobody has explained it.   I'm having a hard time believing anything Pfizer or the FDA says about covid vaccines at this point.

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Cardin Drake

[Leftfield 2,684]

10 hours ago, Cardin Drake said:

The problem is credibility. The data from the vaccine manufacturers said that the vaccine prevented transmission in 95% of the cases. We all believed that.  It turns out that was not true AT ALL.  I have heard no explanation on why the manufacturers got that so wrong. Instead, they just went to the position that the vaccines prevented serious disease. Does it? Why should I believe that now? They have never explained how they got it wrong in the first place, and wildly varying vaccination rates between countries/states seemed to have little impact on mortality. The U.S. mortality rate was not good compared to most of the world, far higher than India's for example, which had a very low vaccination rate. Why? Nobody has explained it.   I'm having a hard time believing anything Pfizer or the FDA says about covid vaccines at this point.

The 95% value was in terms of efficacy, not transmission.

The conflation of efficacy and effectiveness has been the cause of much of the confusion. Before Covid I was ignorant of the fact that they refer to different things in immunology. This is a good summary:

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-and-effectiveness

I do believe the medical community could do a better job with their messaging. In their defense, however, this was a very unique situation that took them by surprise, and I don't just mean the pandemic. Certainly pandemics themselves are rare - the last true pandemic was probably more than a century ago - so it's difficult to know what messages you need to craft and how to handle every situation. What added to it, however, was the sudden distrust much of the populace had toward the medical community, and science in general. I don't think anyone could have been prepared for that. The medical community has enjoyed a great deal of trust over the decades, and the only time before that people had really been skeptical of vaccinations were the bogus claims of some of them causing autism. That has largely been dispelled, so I think the medical community got a little complacent and took their level of trust for granted.

As to the disparity with India, there is quite a bit of skepticism in the scientific community that the official numbers are legitimate.  We may never know for sure what the actual numbers were, but it is believed to be much higher than reported. 

https://www.science.org/content/article/covid-19-may-have-killed-nearly-3-million-india-far-more-official-counts-show

 

 

 

 

[icanthearyou 4,464]

13 hours ago, homersapien said:

if you want to go strictly by facts from the CDC website

If you do not understand what the facts mean, if you cannot understand them in the context of a pandemic, if you cannot understand a mutating virus,,,

Politics makes some people incredibly, willfully ignorant.  Worse, it makes them incredibly inhumane.

[jj3jordan 2,078]

2 hours ago, icanthearyou said:

If you do not understand what the facts mean, if you cannot understand them in the context of a pandemic, if you cannot understand a mutating virus,,,

Politics makes some people incredibly, willfully ignorant.  Worse, it makes them incredibly inhumane.

Tell it to Comrade Biden. Take the jab or get fired!

[jj3jordan 2,078]

2 hours ago, Leftfield said:

The 95% value was in terms of efficacy, not transmission.

The conflation of efficacy and effectiveness has been the cause of much of the confusion. Before Covid I was ignorant of the fact that they refer to different things in immunology. This is a good summary:

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-and-effectiveness

I do believe the medical community could do a better job with their messaging. In their defense, however, this was a very unique situation that took them by surprise, and I don't just mean the pandemic. Certainly pandemics themselves are rare - the last true pandemic was probably more than a century ago - so it's difficult to know what messages you need to craft and how to handle every situation. What added to it, however, was the sudden distrust much of the populace had toward the medical community, and science in general. I don't think anyone could have been prepared for that. The medical community has enjoyed a great deal of trust over the decades, and the only time before that people had really been skeptical of vaccinations were the bogus claims of some of them causing autism. That has largely been dispelled, so I think the medical community got a little complacent and took their level of trust for granted.

As to the disparity with India, there is quite a bit of skepticism in the scientific community that the official numbers are legitimate.  We may never know for sure what the actual numbers were, but it is believed to be much higher than reported. 

https://www.science.org/content/article/covid-19-may-have-killed-nearly-3-million-india-far-more-official-counts-show

 

 

 

 

Agreed. They could start with the truth.

[icanthearyou 4,464]

7 minutes ago, jj3jordan said:

Tell it to Comrade Biden. Take the jab or get fired!

Yes, a safe working environment is unreasonable. 

[Leftfield 2,684]

6 minutes ago, jj3jordan said:

Agreed. They could start with the truth.

And of course that's what you get out of it.

Open-minded as always. You're a genius.

[Leftfield 2,684]

I guess I need to add to my earlier comment....the difference between efficacy and effectiveness really shows the importance of high vaccination rates. The combined effect of most of the population being vaccinated is critical to the effectiveness coming close to matching what is seen in clinical trials. We clearly did not have that, but the the vaccines being ready so early kept things from being worse than they could have been. Tough to imagine how things would have turned out if the vaccines had been introduced even a year later.

This is one place where I'll give Trump credit, as he did get the resources in place to allow rapid vaccine development. Unfortunately he screwed up most of the other aspects of battling the pandemic.

[AuburnNTexas 7,192]

I got the vaccine because of my age and I finally came to decision it was better to be safe than sorry. As for the rigorous testing before it rolled out because of the time rush the one rigorous test that was not done was if the vaccine had any long-term issues that are not seen until years after. Only time will tell if there are any issues. 

Many things that were done made no sense with the whole pandemic. Europe early on saw enough scientific evidence that young people were not having the same rate of infection as older people and they opened their schools. The CDC and many more liberal states ignored this and kept schools closed. They were not following the science but politics. This has had a disastrous effect on our youth in lowered academic levels, social issues and mental issues.

Anybody at the beginning of the Pandemic people who said there was a possibility that is came out of the Wuhan Lab was branded as racist and anti-science even when they backed up the data with Scientific facts. The very facts that the Chinese would not open up the Lab for independent review made it suspect. Over time more and more evidence has come to light showing that it might have come from the lab. Because of lack of access to the lab we will never know for sure but the backlash on people who proposed the Wuhan Lab as a possible source went against all scientific principles. That backlash was a political choice not a scientific choice and the power of the government and sadly a lot of the press exacerbated the backlash.

Other things happened that smelled of politics.  An inconsistent policy on isolation preventing large group gatherings for some things but allowing it for Protests on other things. New York locking everything down then putting people with Covid back into nursing homes. Nursing homes had the most vulnerable population the last place you should put a covid infected person is in a nursing home. Doctors and nurses who were on the front line prior to the vaccine risking their lives but being fired if they wouldn't get a vaccine. Not getting a Vaccine might have put the doctors and nurses at greater risk themselves but not having the vaccine where infected people already were in large numbers was not going to increase the risks of already infected people. 

As I said while I was leery of how safe the vaccine was based on the amount of time to develop and test it. I made my own choice to get it and the boosters.  I recently finally got a minor case of Covid with minimal discomfort either because of the vaccine or having been exposed to it before and had built up some immunity through previous exposure.

We had a high death rate in this country but as more study is being done a lot of the deaths that were counted as Covid were from people who were very vulnerable because of pre-existing conditions where any type of infection like the flu might have caused them to die. If people who were not infected with covid but with pre-existing conditions got the flu or some other viral or bacterial disease and passed away most death certificates said it was due to pre-exiting condition it was only with Covid that we assigned anybody who had Covid and died as Covid being the primary cause of death.  

This pandemic was scary I have no issues with some of the initial things done when we knew so little about it.  Face masks no large group of people together made sense. Especially when China was isolating and claiming very low death rates. By the way while the Chinese were making those statements about low death rates the crematoriums were going 24 hours day 7 days a week. Yet nobody really doubted the Chinese deflated numbers.  

As more evidence became available as I said throughout Europe they opened their schools but the US under the guidance of Fauci and the CDC kept schools closed much longer and some States until fairly recently were still pushing remote learning even after learning about the social and mental impacts of remote learning.

[Cardin Drake 1,876]

19 hours ago, Leftfield said:

The 95% value was in terms of efficacy, not transmission.

The conflation of efficacy and effectiveness has been the cause of much of the confusion. Before Covid I was ignorant of the fact that they refer to different things in immunology. This is a good summary:

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-and-effectiveness

I do believe the medical community could do a better job with their messaging. In their defense, however, this was a very unique situation that took them by surprise, and I don't just mean the pandemic. Certainly pandemics themselves are rare - the last true pandemic was probably more than a century ago - so it's difficult to know what messages you need to craft and how to handle every situation. What added to it, however, was the sudden distrust much of the populace had toward the medical community, and science in general. I don't think anyone could have been prepared for that. The medical community has enjoyed a great deal of trust over the decades, and the only time before that people had really been skeptical of vaccinations were the bogus claims of some of them causing autism. That has largely been dispelled, so I think the medical community got a little complacent and took their level of trust for granted.

As to the disparity with India, there is quite a bit of skepticism in the scientific community that the official numbers are legitimate.  We may never know for sure what the actual numbers were, but it is believed to be much higher than reported. 

https://www.science.org/content/article/covid-19-may-have-killed-nearly-3-million-india-far-more-official-counts-show

 

 

 

 

From your article:

These two words come up often as journalists report on the multiple studies that have tested how well the vaccines work to prevent COVID-19. For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had 95% efficacy in the clinical trials that led to it becoming the first vaccine to get an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2020.

A few months later, in February, 2021, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was shown to provide strong protection to recipients in the real world, too; it was 94% effective against symptomatic disease (after two doses of the vaccine) in a study conducted in Israel—and published in The New England Journal of Medicine. 

This isn't a minor quibble about words; the fact is that the vaccine had neither a 95% efficacy nor was it 94% effective in stopping transmission.  We've never had a coherent explanation of how they got it so wrong. It's as if you bought a car that the manufacturer said got 30 miles per gallon but you actually got 7 miles per gallon, and the manufacturer's response was "Well, it did really well in the collision testing".   A lot of credibility was lost here by the government and the pharmacy establishment.

[Leftfield 2,684]

59 minutes ago, Cardin Drake said:

This isn't a minor quibble about words; the fact is that the vaccine had neither a 95% efficacy...

You're saying that Pfizer falsified their research?

1 hour ago, Cardin Drake said:

...nor was it 94% effective in stopping transmission. 

That's...not what it said. You cited the article, yet still misrepresented what it said. It said "it was 94% effective against symptomatic disease (after two doses of the vaccine)." Symptomatic disease, not transmission.

1 hour ago, Cardin Drake said:

We've never had a coherent explanation of how they got it so wrong.

A lot of credibility was lost here by the government and the pharmacy establishment.

I gave you one of the reasons - vaccine hesitancy from a sizeable portion of the population. Even today, only 70% of the population in the US is considered fully vaccinated, and with those that did become fully vaccinated, it didn't happen overnight. If you recall, those at high risk were the only ones allowed to get vaccinated when it was released, since not enough had been produced for the general population at that point. The efficacy number comes from a control group that is considered fully vaccinated, which is why real-world effectiveness is usually lower. It wasn't surprising at all that actual numbers were higher, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good vaccine. Scientists and the medical community were actually blown away by how well it performed in tests. Fauci himself said during the development stage that it would be a viable vaccine if it reached 50% efficacy.

Another variable was the mutation of the virus, which was expected and mentioned quite often in the news. A widespread variant had already started to emerge by the time the vaccine was released. Mutation was the greatest fear, because it was unknown how resistant and how deadly new variants would be. Naturally, some of them were more resistant to the vaccine, so effectiveness dropped. That's not a nefarious plot by the government and big pharma, that's nature. 

 

[jj3jordan 2,078]

17 hours ago, Leftfield said:

And of course that's what you get out of it.

Open-minded as always. You're a genius.

I may be a genius but I’m not wrong. 

[Leftfield 2,684]

Just now, jj3jordan said:

I may be a genius but I’m not wrong. 

Oh...JJ

[aubaseball 2,663]

17 hours ago, AuburnNTexas said:

I got the vaccine because of my age and I finally came to decision it was better to be safe than sorry. As for the rigorous testing before it rolled out because of the time rush the one rigorous test that was not done was if the vaccine had any long-term issues that are not seen until years after. Only time will tell if there are any issues. 

Many things that were done made no sense with the whole pandemic. Europe early on saw enough scientific evidence that young people were not having the same rate of infection as older people and they opened their schools. The CDC and many more liberal states ignored this and kept schools closed. They were not following the science but politics. This has had a disastrous effect on our youth in lowered academic levels, social issues and mental issues.

Anybody at the beginning of the Pandemic people who said there was a possibility that is came out of the Wuhan Lab was branded as racist and anti-science even when they backed up the data with Scientific facts. The very facts that the Chinese would not open up the Lab for independent review made it suspect. Over time more and more evidence has come to light showing that it might have come from the lab. Because of lack of access to the lab we will never know for sure but the backlash on people who proposed the Wuhan Lab as a possible source went against all scientific principles. That backlash was a political choice not a scientific choice and the power of the government and sadly a lot of the press exacerbated the backlash.

Other things happened that smelled of politics.  An inconsistent policy on isolation preventing large group gatherings for some things but allowing it for Protests on other things. New York locking everything down then putting people with Covid back into nursing homes. Nursing homes had the most vulnerable population the last place you should put a covid infected person is in a nursing home. Doctors and nurses who were on the front line prior to the vaccine risking their lives but being fired if they wouldn't get a vaccine. Not getting a Vaccine might have put the doctors and nurses at greater risk themselves but not having the vaccine where infected people already were in large numbers was not going to increase the risks of already infected people. 

As I said while I was leery of how safe the vaccine was based on the amount of time to develop and test it. I made my own choice to get it and the boosters.  I recently finally got a minor case of Covid with minimal discomfort either because of the vaccine or having been exposed to it before and had built up some immunity through previous exposure.

We had a high death rate in this country but as more study is being done a lot of the deaths that were counted as Covid were from people who were very vulnerable because of pre-existing conditions where any type of infection like the flu might have caused them to die. If people who were not infected with covid but with pre-existing conditions got the flu or some other viral or bacterial disease and passed away most death certificates said it was due to pre-exiting condition it was only with Covid that we assigned anybody who had Covid and died as Covid being the primary cause of death.  

This pandemic was scary I have no issues with some of the initial things done when we knew so little about it.  Face masks no large group of people together made sense. Especially when China was isolating and claiming very low death rates. By the way while the Chinese were making those statements about low death rates the crematoriums were going 24 hours day 7 days a week. Yet nobody really doubted the Chinese deflated numbers.  

As more evidence became available as I said throughout Europe they opened their schools but the US under the guidance of Fauci and the CDC kept schools closed much longer and some States until fairly recently were still pushing remote learning even after learning about the social and mental impacts of remote learning.

Wow…someone finally with a little common sense and sound post.   It’s amazing that most on here take a political side, but then again, I think it’s just the sign of the times.   Everyone is either complaining about the Republicans or Democrats, when common sense has left the building.  

[Cardin Drake 1,876]

31 minutes ago, Leftfield said:

You're saying that Pfizer falsified their research?

That's...not what it said. You cited the article, yet still misrepresented what it said. It said "it was 94% effective against symptomatic disease (after two doses of the vaccine)." Symptomatic disease, not transmission.

I gave you one of the reasons - vaccine hesitancy from a sizeable portion of the population. Even today, only 70% of the population in the US is considered fully vaccinated, and with those that did become fully vaccinated, it didn't happen overnight. If you recall, those at high risk were the only ones allowed to get vaccinated when it was released, since not enough had been produced for the general population at that point. The efficacy number comes from a control group that is considered fully vaccinated, which is why real-world effectiveness is usually lower. It wasn't surprising at all that actual numbers were higher, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good vaccine. Scientists and the medical community were actually blown away by how well it performed in tests. Fauci himself said during the development stage that it would be a viable vaccine if it reached 50% efficacy.

Another variable was the mutation of the virus, which was expected and mentioned quite often in the news. A widespread variant had already started to emerge by the time the vaccine was released. Mutation was the greatest fear, because it was unknown how resistant and how deadly new variants would be. Naturally, some of them were more resistant to the vaccine, so effectiveness dropped. That's not a nefarious plot by the government and big pharma, that's nature. 

 

 

94% effective against symptomatic illness. I'm not sure what your point is. If it reduces the incident of symptomatic illness by 94%, then clearly transmission of the disease has been stopped also.  Regardless of the words used, it did NOT reduce the incidence of symptomatic illness by 94%. Not even remotely close.  Vaccine hesitancy had nothing to do with that, because by definition, we are only talking about vaccinated folks.  Vaccine mandates are one thing, but vaccine mandates when it is crystal clear that vaccination is not stopping the transmission of the disease leads to a great deal of distrust. Especially when there are no exceptions being made for those who have natural immunity after recovering from a covid infection.  It's easy to lose credibility when politics gets involved in the science.

[Leftfield 2,684]

17 minutes ago, Cardin Drake said:

 

94% effective against symptomatic illness. I'm not sure what your point is. If it reduces the incident of symptomatic illness by 94%, then clearly transmission of the disease has been stopped also.  Regardless of the words used, it did NOT reduce the incidence of symptomatic illness by 94%. Not even remotely close.  Vaccine hesitancy had nothing to do with that, because by definition, we are only talking about vaccinated folks.  Vaccine mandates are one thing, but vaccine mandates when it is crystal clear that vaccination is not stopping the transmission of the disease leads to a great deal of distrust. Especially when there are no exceptions being made for those who have natural immunity after recovering from a covid infection.  It's easy to lose credibility when politics gets involved in the science.

You say the Covid decisions were political, yet you ignore what the medical community says about vaccines and the importance of vaccinating as many people as possible, and appear to be accusing them of falsifying their research.

Right from the start, you saying "if it reduces the incidence of symptomatic illness by 94%, then clearly transmission of the disease has been stopped" shows a basic misunderstanding. It's been established that carriers of Covid, even if asymptomatic, could pass the disease to someone else. Most anecdotal evidence suggests that the chance of transmission is reduced, but to my knowledge no in-depth studies were done due to the inherent difficulty of it (you'd have to have strict control over the control group in order to continually test for infection and track virus movement). Then you say that we're only talking about vaccinated people, but you can't just removed the unvaccinated because they're part of the equation. They allow more places for the virus to spread, hide, and mutate simply because they're more likely to develop the disease and transmit it. 

In effect, you're saying that someone tested a wall of sandbags and found it diverted 95% of the water, but they lied because when it was tried in the real world much more water got through, while ignoring the fact the wall wasn't as high because not as many bags were used. 

[Cardin Drake 1,876]

Leftfield, that is quite a mess of conflicting claims. I'll just say that if you believe the vaccine was 94% effective, you'll believe anything the government tells you.  Effectiveness is just a measure of the likelihood of a vaccinated person catching the disease as compared to an unvaccinated person.  Given that, the background environment really doesn't matter. It effects the unvaccinated as well as the vaccinated.

"They allow more places for the virus to spread, hide, and mutate simply because they're more likely to develop the disease and transmit it."  This is another thing we heard a lot. The unvaccinated were driving mutations, and that too is unsupported by actual data. In fact, people warned early on that vaccinated people would drive mutations as the virus mutated to evade the antibodies that vaccinated folks had.

But for politically driven decisions, I don't think anything matched the controversy over natural immunity vs. vaccinated immunity.  We have a lot of history with this, and the presumption has always been that natural immunity to disease has been equal or superior to vaccination. That was turned on it's head with covid.  Even after good data confirmed that there was no benefit to vaccinating people who had already had covid, the government refused to acknowledge it. (https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210608/No-point-vaccinating-those-whoe28099ve-had-COVID-19-Findings-of-Cleveland-Clinic-study.aspx)

When you see the government acting is such a heavy-handed, authoritarian way, and they are clearly in the wrong, it affects their credibility on everything.  I'm no rabid anti-vaxxer.  I got 2 doses early on. But I've been very turned off subsequently by the half-truths and lies that have come out of the government agencies in charge of this whole thing. And I still wonder who is paying them "royalties", and for what. It is absolutely unbelievable to me that this information is still secret. That affects your credibility too.  It should bother people on both sides of the aisle.

 

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Cardin Drake

[arein0 980]

50 minutes ago, Cardin Drake said:

But for politically driven decisions, I don't think anything matched the controversy over natural immunity vs. vaccinated immunity.  We have a lot of history with this, and the presumption has always been that natural immunity to disease has been equal or superior to vaccination.

Sure, natural immunity could be better than the vaccine. However are you really willing to kill off x% of the population in order to have a possibility natural immunity is better than the vaccine?