All things CoronaVirus

[PizzaSnake]

GOP in Tennessee pressuring doctors to condone medical disinformation.

The click-bait heading in your link is disinformation. Keep on lyin' 72

It's a 1st Amendment issue genius, and push back against actual fascism. Something you and others on here love to dubiously throw around with your bogus sense of certainty.

Your response intrigued me, tech, so I clicked through to see what was happening.

Here's what I read, a medical board instituted a policy that said that spreading medical misinformation by a doctor violates their Hippocratic oath to "first do no harm" and are subject to losing their license to practice. When doctors do so, knowingly, in any other aspect of their medical practices they are indeed subject to such. And we certainly want this to be the case.

Such is the regular regulation of the medical profession by their peers.

And yet, you see a First Amendment issue, which clearly means you need to re-read the First Amendment on "free speech".

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.


First, Congress has not made a law. Second, SCOTUS has repeatedly found various regulations of speech by other government entities, eg the states, as well as private editorial of speech, to not be violations of the U.S. Constitution.

So, not First Amendment.

For instance, a person is free to libel or slander another person, but they are liable for damages if successfully sued.

A person who falsely cried fire in a theater may face criminal prosecution for endangering others.

But back to the point of licensing. We should not want doctors to provide counsel or perform operations in ways which their peers know cause harm, whether the over prescription of opioids, the use of devices that are dirty, or telling a patient in danger of death or pain for whom there is a known helpful procedure or medicine to not undertake that procedure or medicine and to instead simply 'pray it away' or 'go run a marathon' or "eat some dirt" or anything else not accepted as effective medical practice. The doctor owes a duty to provide the patient with the best available care.

But note, a person who happens to be a doctor may decide they wish to "speak" medical advice that is known by their peers to be false or misleading. They are "free" to do so, but if they do, they're subject to loss of their license as a doctor.

A doctor always has a choice as to whether he or she wishes to maintain their Hippocratic oath. They can opt out of practice if they so wish.

And here we have a powerful legislator threatening a state medical licensing board with dissolution simply because they published this policy on their website. The legislator doesn't want the public know that this is the licensing board's policy.

And you're calling the licensing board "fascist".

blah, blah, blah...

Bottom line: the misinformation/disinformation campaign that you're so fond of is bullsh!t and simply a way to control speech, silencing opposing views, and IMO, reeks of fascist tendencies.

This is a new slant: literacy is fascist. Never heard that one. How about numeracy, that fascist as well?

[NattyBohChamps04]

This is a new slant: literacy is fascist. Never heard that one. How about numeracy, that fascist as well?

Liberal school systems are forcing our kids to learn Arab numerals. Parents have no say in the matter. It's fascist and socialist and communist, and at the same time anti-Christian and anti-American.

56% of Americans and 72% of Republicans do not believe we should be indoctrinating our children with Arabic numerals.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/arab ... 18256.html

[Typical Lax Dad]

This is a new slant: literacy is fascist. Never heard that one. How about numeracy, that fascist as well?

Liberal school systems are forcing our kids to learn Arab numerals. Parents have no say in the matter. It's fascist and socialist and communist, and at the same time anti-Christian and anti-American.

56% of Americans and 72% of Republicans do not believe we should be indoctrinating our children with Arabic numerals.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/arab ... 18256.html

[a fan]

GOP in Tennessee pressuring doctors to condone medical disinformation.

The click-bait heading in your link is disinformation. Keep on lyin' 72

It's a 1st Amendment issue genius, and push back against actual fascism. Something you and others on here love to dubiously throw around with your bogus sense of certainty.

Your response intrigued me, tech, so I clicked through to see what was happening.

Here's what I read, a medical board instituted a policy that said that spreading medical misinformation by a doctor violates their Hippocratic oath to "first do no harm" and are subject to losing their license to practice. When doctors do so, knowingly, in any other aspect of their medical practices they are indeed subject to such. And we certainly want this to be the case.

Such is the regular regulation of the medical profession by their peers.

And yet, you see a First Amendment issue, which clearly means you need to re-read the First Amendment on "free speech".

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.


First, Congress has not made a law. Second, SCOTUS has repeatedly found various regulations of speech by other government entities, eg the states, as well as private editorial of speech, to not be violations of the U.S. Constitution.

So, not First Amendment.

For instance, a person is free to libel or slander another person, but they are liable for damages if successfully sued.

A person who falsely cried fire in a theater may face criminal prosecution for endangering others.

But back to the point of licensing. We should not want doctors to provide counsel or perform operations in ways which their peers know cause harm, whether the over prescription of opioids, the use of devices that are dirty, or telling a patient in danger of death or pain for whom there is a known helpful procedure or medicine to not undertake that procedure or medicine and to instead simply 'pray it away' or 'go run a marathon' or "eat some dirt" or anything else not accepted as effective medical practice. The doctor owes a duty to provide the patient with the best available care.

But note, a person who happens to be a doctor may decide they wish to "speak" medical advice that is known by their peers to be false or misleading. They are "free" to do so, but if they do, they're subject to loss of their license as a doctor.

A doctor always has a choice as to whether he or she wishes to maintain their Hippocratic oath. They can opt out of practice if they so wish.

And here we have a powerful legislator threatening a state medical licensing board with dissolution simply because they published this policy on their website. The legislator doesn't want the public know that this is the licensing board's policy.

And you're calling the licensing board "fascist".

blah, blah, blah...

Bottom line: the misinformation/disinformation campaign that you're so fond of is bullsh!t and simply a way to control speech, silencing opposing views, and IMO, reeks of fascist tendencies.

So if a Doctor is on the take, and pushes a drug he's being paid to push that he knows doesn't work----you claim 1st amendment, and the Doctor is on firm footing to push said drug? Neat. Sounds like the makes of OxyC would LOVE to have you writing the rules.

I'm enjoying watching people try and reinvent civilization post Trump. Down is up. UP is down. Time-honored rules designed to protect patients from hucksters and sh*t medical advice is now fascism.

Neat-o. Can't wait to see what comes next.

[Farfromgeneva]

Kool aid for everyone!

[tech37]

Jamie Metzl interview re lab-leak hypothesis. Comprehensive and balanced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9 ... Bw&index=2

[Typical Lax Dad]

Jamie Metzl interview re lab-leak hypothesis. Comprehensive and balanced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K78jqx9 ... Bw&index=2

Comprehensive and balanced and it was on TV.

[Farfromgeneva]

I just can’t do the monotone of the history channel delivery. Sometimes for geographic wonders type stuff that’s visually compelling but that’s about it.

[PizzaSnake]

I just can’t do the monotone of the history channel delivery. Sometimes for geographic wonders type stuff that’s visually compelling but that’s about it.

[Farfromgeneva]

I just can’t do the monotone of the history channel delivery. Sometimes for geographic wonders type stuff that’s visually compelling but that’s about it.

I will pay attention to Jack

[Typical Lax Dad]

[Typical Lax Dad]

[PizzaSnake]

I just can’t do the monotone of the history channel delivery. Sometimes for geographic wonders type stuff that’s visually compelling but that’s about it.

I will pay attention to Jack

I know Jack Shite personally. I’ll put in a good word for ya!

[Farfromgeneva]

I just can’t do the monotone of the history channel delivery. Sometimes for geographic wonders type stuff that’s visually compelling but that’s about it.

I will pay attention to Jack

I know Jack Shite personally. I’ll put in a good word for ya!

I’m already in that club. Pretty close to that guy.

[Kismet]

was struck by this piece in NYT front page this AM:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/c ... icans.html

"As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished
They are among the most vaccinated groups, but people 65 and older make up about three-quarters of the nation’s coronavirus death toll."

[MDlaxfan76]

was struck by this piece in NYT front page this AM:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/c ... icans.html

"As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished
They are among the most vaccinated groups, but people 65 and older make up about three-quarters of the nation’s coronavirus death toll."

Does that include pre-vaccination deaths, presumably?
and unvaccinated now?

Seems like a very misleading headline if so.

Seems to me that the really interesting stats would be what the death rate is for that age cohort if fully vaccinated (2 doses, less than 6 months, or 2 does plus booster)? Compare that death rate to the death rate if not vaccinated...

[Kismet]

was struck by this piece in NYT front page this AM:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/c ... icans.html

"As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished
They are among the most vaccinated groups, but people 65 and older make up about three-quarters of the nation’s coronavirus death toll."

Does that include pre-vaccination deaths, presumably?
and unvaccinated now?

Seems like a very misleading headline if so.

Seems to me that the really interesting stats would be what the death rate is for that age cohort if fully vaccinated (2 doses, less than 6 months, or 2 does plus booster)? Compare that death rate to the death rate if not vaccinated...

Totals since the beginning of the pandemic data from CDC.
Note this mention -

"Still, many older people who are unvaccinated have died of the virus. And the natural weakening of immune systems and organ function, geriatricians say, leave even vaccinated older people more vulnerable. The most recent available C.D.C. data on deaths among vaccinated people, which does not include those in the past 10 weeks, shows breakthrough deaths to be a small fraction of the nation’s toll. But there is no doubt that breakthrough infections in older people have resulted in some deaths."

There is also a chart of how Covid deaths break down by race among those 65 and older.

[CU88]

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substac ... dium=email

Omicron Update: Dec 13

Katelyn Jetelina
Dec 13

We continue to get an onslaught of lab and epidemiological data and the pieces of the puzzle are slowly coming together…

Vaccine Effectiveness

We now have 8 lab studies all largely saying the same thing: Omicron significantly reduces the number of neutralizing antibodies from a 2-dose mRNA series compared to previous variants.

Importantly, a “reduction in neutralizing antibodies” is not the same thing as “reduction in vaccine effectiveness”. This is because immune systems are adaptive and diverse thanks to other types of antibodies, B-cells (antibody factories), and T-cells (secondary line of defense). So it’s important to look at other data too.

In the UK, we got our first glimpse of “real world” vaccine effectiveness against Omicron. On Friday, the UK Health Security Agency released a comprehensive report in which they compared 56,439 cases of Delta to 581 cases of Omicron from Nov 27 to Dec 6, 2021. Vaccine effectiveness against Omicron infection was 30-40% after two shots of Pfizer. After a booster, effectiveness increased to 70-80%. This is nothing short of phenomenal. This also probably means that boosters continue to reduce viral transmission.

In the past week we also had 3 T-cell studies come out. T-cells are critical to our immune system because they are our second line of defense. If neutralizing antibodies can’t catch the virus before it infects our cells, then T-cells kick in. T-cell protection is harder for viruses to escape because their protection spans virtually the entire spike protein, whereas antibody responses tend to focus on relatively few regions. As hypothesized, the results from the studies look great— T-cells continue to work against Omicron. So even though the number of infections will substantially increase, we will largely stay out of the hospital.

With this data, the case for an Omicron-specific vaccine is becoming less and less apparent. This will be highly debated in the coming months, so it will be interesting to hear both sides of the argument.

Infection-induced Immunity

A study over the weekend showed that neutralizing antibodies among people previously infected with Alpha (panel E), Beta (panel F), and Delta (panel G) completely failed to attach to Omicron. Those that were infected + vaccinated (or vaccinated + infected) had a strong response to Omicron (panel H).


But just like vaccines, neutralizing antibodies isn’t the full story. So it’s important to look at “real world” data. A week ago, a South African study found reinfection rates were 3 times higher with Omicron compared to Delta. This past Friday the UK confirmed with their own analysis: Of 329 individuals identified with an Omicron infection in this period, 17 (4.9%) were linked to a previous confirmed infection. This equates to an Omicron reinfection rate of 3-8x higher than Delta.

State of Affairs- South Africa

Omicron continues to flood South Africa. On Friday and Saturday it looked like cases peaked, but then on Sunday there was a huge case dump (Friday: 19,018; Saturday: 17,154; Sunday: 37,875 cases). South Africa clarified there was a lag in case reporting due to IT issues. Cases may still be increasing, we just need a few days for reporting to stabilize. Tracking 7-day case averages (opposed to day-to-day numbers) continues to be critical.


The number of COVID19 hospitalizations in South Africa is remaining low. But we’re coming up on the 3-4 week lag we typically see with hospitalizations, so coming to a conclusion is haphazard.

If hospitalizations continue to be low, then there is a clear indication that one of two things are happening:

Immunity works against severe disease (like we hypothesized above); or,

Omicron induces more mild disease.

We really need a more generalizable sample in order to differentiate between the two: How do older people fare with Omicron? How about those with no prior infection? Unvaccinated? We still don’t know.


If South Africa’s hospitalizations and deaths continue to remain low regardless of a high case rate, many would consider the crisis of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa over. The virus will still ebb and flow, there will be people that will go to the hospital and die but it certainly won’t look like what we saw previously in the pandemic. Their hospitals will not be overrun; they have a large enough immunity wall. If this happens in South Africa, will it be the same story in other countries? Unfortunately we don’t know; we are at the mercy of time.

State of Affairs- United States

Thirty states have confirmed an Omicron case, although we can certainly assume it’s in all 50 states by now.


(NYT)
There’s now enough data to estimate the reproductive number (i.e. contagiousness) in the United States. And it’s not looking good: R(t)=3. With this high level of transmissibility, cases are doubling every ~3-4 days, so Omicron will easily be the dominant variant in coming weeks.

This R(t) is similar to other countries like Germany and South Africa. Nothing is stopping Omicron in its tracks. As time goes on, R(t) should differentiate itself across countries due to many factors: differing behaviors (public health mitigation measures), genetics, patchwork immunity, age distributions, etc.


Twitter Trevor Bedford
Unfortunately, Omicron will be become dominant at a terrible time: For the first time in a few months, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all increasing.


(NYT)
Yesterday 1,288 souls died from COVID19. As Kaiser Family Foundation reported, 163,000 COVID-19 deaths since June 2021 would have been prevented with vaccinations. A true national tragedy.


Just like with Delta, the news of Omicron is increasing vaccinations, especially with boosters. A silver lining to new variants?


(Axios)
Bottom Line: Data is showing that immunity will keep a large proportion of people out of the hospital. But the million (billion?) dollar question remains: Is there a high enough immunity wall to keep our hospitals from flooding? Time will tell.

Love, YLE

[MDlaxfan76]

was struck by this piece in NYT front page this AM:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/c ... icans.html

"As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished
They are among the most vaccinated groups, but people 65 and older make up about three-quarters of the nation’s coronavirus death toll."

Does that include pre-vaccination deaths, presumably?
and unvaccinated now?

Seems like a very misleading headline if so.

Seems to me that the really interesting stats would be what the death rate is for that age cohort if fully vaccinated (2 doses, less than 6 months, or 2 does plus booster)? Compare that death rate to the death rate if not vaccinated...

Totals since the beginning of the pandemic data from CDC.
Note this mention -

"Still, many older people who are unvaccinated have died of the virus. And the natural weakening of immune systems and organ function, geriatricians say, leave even vaccinated older people more vulnerable. The most recent available C.D.C. data on deaths among vaccinated people, which does not include those in the past 10 weeks, shows breakthrough deaths to be a small fraction of the nation’s toll. But there is no doubt that breakthrough infections in older people have resulted in some deaths."

There is also a chart of how Covid deaths break down by race among those 65 and older.

Right...it's just that the subtitle makes it sound like despite vaccination, there's a high rate of death as if the vaccines don't work. The opposite is the case, older folks are much more likely to be vulnerable (and many died before vaccines were available)...and the vaccines change the game dramatically for them (but need to be boosted). The quote doesn't differentiate in those breakthrough cases as to whether the same rate applies if boosted and I very much doubt that it does...

It's the problem of editors doing article titles versus the authors.

And likewise, while less vulnerable, it's pretty darn clear that the under 65 have the same dynamics with vaccination (incl.boosters), most deaths were among those not vaccinated, whether prior to availability or due to choice, or at a lower rate as immunity waned and prior to booster...

Someone needs to do that analysis and make it all crystal clear...

[DocBarrister]

If you can’t follow orders and don’t have the common sense or courage to get vaccinated, you don’t deserve the privilege of serving in the United States Armed Forces. Mandatory vaccinations in the American military dates back to the Continental Army when General George Washington mandated small pox inoculations. https://www.newsweek.com/list-vaccines- ... 1228?amp=1



The Air Force removed 27 people for failing to obey orders to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, a spokesperson said Monday, marking the U.S. military’s first apparent dismissals of those who refuse the shots.

More than 94 percent of the Air Force is fully vaccinated, according to its data. But tens of thousands of active-duty members of the military have declined the vaccines, a show of defiance in a culture built around following orders.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... B2EYT6UP5Y

Getting a Covid-19 vaccine isn’t hard … millions of young children have received the vaccine.

DocBarrister