outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

BREAKING Florida Weekly DOH Report

Positive rate down to 16.8%
Inferred cases for tomorrow: 22,514
Deaths: 1,727 is new RECORD
Weekly vaccinations continue to climb

Too many more deaths to come. But this is consistent with plateau (even some improvement) from VERY high levels. https://t.co/l5W4yLkWq3 pic.twitter.com/p9FQ3xki3Y

— (((Howard Forman))) (@thehowie) August 27, 2021

read the whole thread though - almost 32% of this week's cases were kids 19 and younger o_O

Hmm, really, you surprise me with this news.

Virginia's Liberty University Announces Campus-Wide Quarantine amid Rise in COVID Cases https://t.co/fyjGIcrfkG

— DonnaCassata (@DonnaCassata) August 28, 2021

Well blow me down

Thought they believed in freedom down there

A friend and I wondered if we were seeing the usual #Floridafraud with the high number of Miami-Dade County vaccinations. How can so many hospitalizations keep happening when our overall jab rate is the best in the state and ranks with some northeastern US counties? He theorizes we're getting too many people flying in and making up an address to get jabbed.

I can't speak for Miami Dade, but a lot of the people in our metro hospitals here are not necessarily from the city/county but from outlying (less vaccinated) areas.

What’s the benefit of making up an address for the jab? Not sure I follow that logic.

I think Tipsy's explanation makes more sense than Alfred's friend's.

If you come from overseas, there’s been a lot of vaccine tourism into the US.

i know some older folks vacationing around neighboring states to get 3rd and 4th shots, like, on whims

The article buries the lede but this tweet sums it up

30-year-old leader of a prominent anti-mask, anti-vax organization got Covid, tried to treat it with horse paste, and is now dead. he leaves behind 3 kids and a pregnant wife https://t.co/KCt5EanigQ

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) August 28, 2021

Wait, so they made paste out of a 30-year old horse that died of Covid? I thought that's what they do with old horses.

rest in pieces

p sure that article was upthred (or on the other thred)

I think it was updated with " ... and now he's dead."

Epitaph: 'He died as he lived: worm-free.'

Well frickin' THAT took long enough

pic.twitter.com/inNDecBCdv

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 28, 2021

The damage done

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-28/la-me-rural-california-covid-surge-vaccinations-lag

Such genius

Gilles Simon on vaccination:

“Basically, I really did not want to. I am not very afraid of Covid. My basic philosophy is: If you are afraid of it, you vaccinate, otherwise , you don’t”

Today: *Simon’s coach tests positive for COVID, meaning Gilles must withdraw*

…

— Olly 🎾🇬🇧 (@Olly_2021) August 28, 2021

flagged Punisher's posts for flagrant misinformation, wtf

What’s the benefit of making up an address for the jab? Not sure I follow that logic.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0)

If you travel to a county like mine with significant tourism from South and Central America but with low vaccination rates, you might make up an address for the sake of a jab; we don't verify addresses if CVS/Walgreens/Publix/etc do the vaccinating.

Marc Bernier just died. https://t.co/goC0IJg5CI

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 29, 2021

Going to be a lot of openings in regional right wing talk radio this fall.

flagged Punisher's posts for flagrant misinformation, wtf

― sleeve, Saturday, August 28, 2021 6:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

not that i should be held to such scrutiny and people don't even read my posts and go by what i say, since i'm not a virologist or a biologist, but here are the articles i'm basing what i said on:

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-choose-lead-mrna-vaccine-candidate-0

BNT162b2, which recently received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Fast Track designation, encodes an optimized SARS-CoV-2 full length spike glycoprotein (S), which is the target of virus neutralizing antibodies.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.576622/full

Like other coronaviruses, the SARS-CoV-2 genome encodes spike (S) glycoproteins, which protrude from the surface of mature virions. The S glycoprotein plays essential roles in virus attachment, fusion and entry into the host cell. Surface location of the S glycoprotein renders it a direct target for host immune responses, making it the main target of neutralizing antibodies. In the light of its crucial roles in viral infection and adaptive immunity, the S protein is the focus of most vaccine strategies as well as therapeutic interventions.

believe it or not, i am also not a virologist or a biologist.

Is it better to gain immunity through exposure to COVID-19 or through a vaccine?

With some viruses, such as chicken pox, being infected with the virus itself grants stronger immune protection than the chicken pox vaccine; however, in those cases, you then have to deal with all the complications of having the virus. When it comes to COVID-19, it’s really hard to know whether being exposed to the virus is more protective of future infection than the vaccine, simply because we don’t know the SARS-CoV-2 virus well enough yet.

With natural immunity, which is the protection we get after being infected with a virus, the immune response can be variable. For example: the number of antibodies your body produces may depend on how much of the virus you’re exposed to. And there is likely beneficial variation in the types of antibodies being produced. The vaccinations currently available in the U.S. have been shown to effectively stimulate antibodies against the virus’ spike protein. New vaccines are being created that make antibodies to other parts of the virus as well. Both immunity from natural infection and vaccination stimulate a T-cell response that will hopefully provide you with protection from the virus for a longer time.

While it’s possible some people may have a higher antibody response after a natural infection than they would after vaccination, we’re still learning about this new virus, and we don’t know how protective natural immunity really is, especially when there is such a continuum of different types of infections. We don’t have clear data on how antibody responses from a mild infection compare to a severe infection, or how protective those antibody responses are.

On the other hand, we do know that the vaccine is very protective. In most people, getting vaccinated generates a lot of antibodies. So far, the vaccines appear to be incredibly effective, especially when it comes to preventing severe infections, hospitalizations and death.

https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/do-i-need-a-vaccine-if-i-had-covid

It's weird that the people who stump for "natural immunity" are the same ones who think COVID is an engineered bioweapon

Anyway, my stats friends are very skeptical of the effect size claimed by that paper, but it's certainly not implausible that immunity following infection could be better and longer-lasting than we expected (just as the immunity conferred by the vaccine has been better than we could have reasonably expected!) and if so that's awesome news because it means less death and suffering down the line, especially in places where vaccines remain scarce

But no, don't intentionally give yourself COVID, that would be extremely dumb

karl malone, sorry, was that directed at me? that article is from may. and it repeats pretty much all articles that suggest being conservative with your health in the face of an unknown

the study from israel on the sciencemag.org site was released last week and it's an analysis of 32,000 people

yeah, i saw yr links to the mRNA stuff and they were from last year, but i was missing your point, sorry.

i still think the conclusions seem to be based off of limited info. 32,000 people, sure, finding that "the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher." but also, "the higher hospitalization rate in the 32,000-person analysis was based on just eight hospitalizations in a vaccinated group and one in a previously infected group."

but i don't know. like eephus is saying, it wouldn't be that surprising if infection ultimately provided more protection than a vaccine.

it's hard not to look at it and immediately feel bleak, though. because we can say to ourselves "yes, but obviously don't get infected on purpose, and you will have even more protection if you get a vaccine as well as infection", and you can read a sciencemag article making the same points and move on with your day. but yeah, that translates to a red state person as "scientists just said infection is better than the vaccine. ain't nothing you can do to prevent covid, it just wipes out the weak"

but there's nothing i can do about that (points to red state people), and there's nothing i can do about that (points to even-keeled discussion in sciencemag and among normal people) and there's nothing i can do about that (all the dead people everywhere), so

there IS actual value in knowing whether natural infection provides better immunity than vaccination. the problem isn't that, it's that it's being used to dissuade people from getting the vaccine like it's unnecessary, even though most people agree that even if the former theory is true, getting naturally infected AND vaxxed would provide more protection and be the responsible thing to do.

that being said....the paperi s controversial for a reason

for sure, neanderthal.

here's the thing. there is also reason to believe immunity through natural infection may not last long or as long as through the vaccine because of the different numbers in the UK

we were in this catch-22 where we wanted to vaccinate to avoid the spread, but at the same time, everyone that got jabbed was pretty much participating in an experiment in a pseudo clinical trial gone wrong, because different people were being given different vaccines, mixing and matching, and most people in an actual blind phase 3 clinical trial all ended up getting vaccinated, so now we have to wait longer to find out all this information

Going to be a lot of openings in regional right wing talk radio this fall.

The biggest opening is accusing the Dems/libs/Biden et al. of assassinating anti-vaxxers.

I've definitely seen right-wing anti-vaxx sources claiming that study shows mass infection is better than mass vaccination for protection. The logic of which is approximately like, "I'm going to burn down my house so that I can build a new one that's more fireproof."

The assumed goal here is to prevent infection, and if you do get infected, to prevent serious illness. So to say you should just go ahead and get infected to give you better protection against getting infected again is just ... cuckoo.

yep, exactly. it' meant to mean IF you get infected, maybe it gives you more durable protection, but you're not supposed to TRY to get infected

right. i assume all this will be more important as more strains come up and we realize everyone getting jabbed twice a year forever is probably not the best solution and probably something a lot of people are against

BREAKING Florida

Continued substantial improvements, albeit still at VERY high occupancy levels.

A LOT of hard work ahead, but thankful to see Florida coming down from previously unimaginable levels.

Please do your part: Mask, test, vaccinate, avoid high risk events. https://t.co/pqyomHAuOH pic.twitter.com/etoxmhLUVs

— (((Howard Forman))) (@thehowie) August 29, 2021

Hospital beds were over 17,100 just a few days ago. Some became ICU beds, and some ICU beds became deaths, but between this and a 3% drop in infection rate, FL does appear to be close to declining. I hope

OTM thread:

.@PatriciaMazzei @benjmueller @gebeloffnyt missed the big "tell" in @GovRonDeSantis' comments: "'...but we’re not building the herd immunity that people hoped,' Mr. DeSantis said." 1/ https://t.co/PThTCfyI8e

— Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves) August 28, 2021

there is also reason to believe immunity through natural infection may not last long or as long as through the vaccine because of the different numbers in the UK

i’m not following this - can you explain what you mean?

i posted this a couple days ago which suggests immunity conferred from infection may last for life:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01557-z

The article linked above references studies that only tracked immune response to viral infection. It appears that no similar studies are yet available for immune response to vaccines. The final paragraph is:

The good news is that the evidence thus far predicts that infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces long-term immunity in most individuals. This provides a welcome positive note as we wait for further data on memory responses to vaccination.

Having had chickenpox might have made me immune to getting chickenpox again, but it set me up for a lifetime risk of having shingles because that fucking virus hides in your spinal cord. It never is eradicated from the body it infected. Who knows what is coming for survivors of a COVID-19 infection. Sure go ahead and get your "natural" immunity and potentially play host to a ticking time bomb.

people who have had smallpox have better immunity to smallpox than people who have been immunized iirc. well jealous.

Easy to tell they had it too, no need for a card when you can just be disfigured.

ok guys jeez

No, some people around here need to read this shit.

Not you, Tracer.

Are we now just responding to what we think people are saying