The Unique US Failure to Control the Virus

Nature always wins but we don’t have to make it worse with destroying our economies over such a minor threat.

 

So go to work. A minor threat? I'd laugh at you if this were not so serious...

 

My bad, 700,000 could have 'side effects', so he needs indemnification protection.

~3:15 mark in video here:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/...dmits-700000-people-may-die-from-his-vaccine/

As to whether I'm an 'anti-vaxxer', you tell me:

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation program in the US, since 198(4?) protects vaccine manufacturers from liability by taxing the vaccines and placing the revenue into a fund which is paid out to those injured by vaccines after the Vaccine Injury 'Court' finds cause. They've paid out around $4B last time I looked. Thats $4B in damages to people that vaccine manufacturers skate from while making bank.

I believe vaccine technology is sound. What I oppose is the lack of financial motivation for manufacturers to put out a safe, clean product and the revolving door practices between manufacturers and regulators that most certainly undermines effective regulation.

I avoid vaccines because I don't think the profit-driven corporations hold my health as their primary interest nor do I think the govt is effectively protecting me from being their cash-cow.

If I could pay extra for vaccines that were manufactured with purity and safety as priority 1 instead of profit and shelf-life, I would. But that would create a destabilizing inequity in the system.

So, am I an 'anti-vaxxer'?

 

7 or 8 deaths out of ten thousand and most are presumed??!!
This is what you choose to worry about?
Get a grip and face your real threats. Cancer and heart disease or age related organ failure will kill you!
HIV or starvation or malara or smoking or alcohol or other communicable diseases or even just driving your car are bigger threats.
Try prioritizing your fears!!

 

OK, side effects and death are vastly different issues, LOL.

Are you an anti-vaxxer?

Apparently, at least not the crazy anti-vaxxer who sustains against all scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism.

Still, with all due respect, I believe that your position on this is unwise and imprudent. Before you feel offended, do realize that I'm saying your position *in this*; I'm not implying that you are an overall unwise or imprudent man (including because I don't know you so I can't judge). Please allow me to respectfully explain why.

Again, people often think in terms of individual health, not in terms of public health.

If vaccine manufacturers didn't have some legal protection, what would happen is that we wouldn't have any vaccines... Unlike most medications that are meant to a specific class of people who are already sick with the condition so even if they have side effects, they may desperatedly still want the side effects in order to acquire the benefits of the treatment of their serious, life-threatening, and annoying conditions, vaccines are supposed to be given to the ENTIRE population and to people who are, thus far, healthy for that particular condition that is trying to be prevented. I mean, simple allergy to components, nobody can anticipate how many people will be allergic. It could happen anytime and does happen to a tiny percentage.

So, if you multiply the class of people who will receive it to billions, even very tiny percentages of side effects will result in a very expressive number of people with serious reactions. A tiny percentage of a billion people is still a lot of people. So if all of them sued for millions of dollars in damage and in class-action lawsuits, this would cut so much into the fair profits for the vaccine makers (they are for-profit private organizations, not charitable organizations) that it would make the whole thing non-viable.

If no sane business wanted to get into the vaccine-making sector of the economy, what would you prefer? A world ravaged by polio with you and your children crippled for life? Smallpox being rampant and killing your children? You tell me. I prefer a world with vaccines, and with these nice diseases controlled or eradicated.

Now, back to you.

"I avoid vaccines because I don't think the profit-driven corporations hold my health as their primary interest"

No, obviously their prime interest is profit. They are business, in a capitalist society. But so is the case for every other business. Are you typing your answers from a laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone? Guess what, the maker of your device also had their profit as their #1 priority, but you still purchased their product, and you're still happily using it, because it's a good product, right? Do you think that when car makers equip their cars with seat belts, airbags, and good brakes, their primary concern is your safety? No, their primary concern is their profit, and if they could NOT install these life-saving devices and cut corners to lower the overall price and beat a competitor, they gladly would and would think of you for a moment... but they have to include these devices because they are forced to do it by regulators. Anyway, you still purchase their cars, right?

Now, let's look at a possible COVID-19 vaccine.

Say that 1 in 20 people with this infection get in trouble (a total of 5% made of 0.65% who die, plus, say, 4.35% who come out of it with some dire health consequence like I demonstrated above).

Say that a vaccine causes 1 serious reaction (like Guillain-Barré Syndrome) in every 10,000 recipients. Well, 95% of people with Guillain-Barré Syndrome do recover with no sequelae (while others die or have permanent nerve damage). So, 5% of 1 in 10,000 is 1 in 200,000.

Say that you are in a remote mountain, it's in a desert range, you are short in water, you don't have a satellite phone to summon someone to rescue you, and you have to go back to civilization or else you'll die. There are two roads out of the mountain and back to civilization. You have a guidebook, and you consult it; it says, "Road A through the left side of the mountain is pretty safe; accidents with serious injury and death occur 1 in 200,000 travelers. Road B on the other hand is much more dangerous. It is narrow, it crumbles, there are avalanches, cars fall from it relatively frequent, so that 1 in every 20 travelers suffer serious injury or death when they travel through it."

Pray tell, what road would you pick to go back to civilization? Road A, right?

By refusing the COVID-19 vaccine you'll be choosing Road B. Does it sound wise or prudent?

Yes, there is a possibility of side effects, and a tiny possibility of death. Beats the alternative, though, because the alternative has a 10,000 times bigger risk.

In public health, that's the thinking. ALL vaccines will cause some allergic reactions (some of them even life-threatening), some GBS (a fraction of these even life-threatening), and there is concern about ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement, which was a problem for the first SARS candidate vaccine; there wasn't a need to get around it because the pandemic fizzled and the virus disappeared, so the vaccine candidate was frozen and archived, is still in a freeezer at the University of Texas-Galveston) that will hopefully be dealt with in phase 3, but the point is, the risk of the vaccine must be several times lower than the risk of the disease it is meant to prevent, or else it won't earn regulatory approval.

So, the corporation making it certainly doesn't have ModernPaladin's health as their #1 concern (profit is their top priority, obviously), but still, they do want to make a product that is safe enough and protective enough to be able to clearly land on the side of benefits outweighing risks, or else they won't earn regulatory approval and won't make any profit out of a non-approved product. Especially on a race like this, rest assured that all front runners are eager to present the safest and most effective possible product, so that they win the race and have access to a multi-billion dollar market.

I will gladly accept a vaccine that passes phase 3 with flying colors and gets FDA approval. It will mean that the risks are outweighed by the benefits, so the logical conclusion is to take it. And do I trust the FDA? Yes, I still do. Sure, they are under political pressure, but they are still the most reliable and most competent agency in the world, for this kind of thing.

 

I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass but trying to see your wife or girlfriend is hot so do her!! Not the worst thing anf that’s what she wants! Your children want you to play with them. That’s what they want and if you’re a guy your daughters will always compare their boyfriends to you and your sons will always try incredibly hard to measure up to you!
Stop for a moment and absorb that!!!
Your perfect girl thinks about this all the time and she’s gonna be a pain in your ass to make you live up to the potential you promised her.
It’s not that hard and even you will benefit!

 

Looks like this poster who is saying that HIV is a bigger threat has me on Ignore, because I've already demonstrated that the whole total of people who died WITH HIV (not FROM HIV which is now exceedingly rare after the cocktail of anti-retroviral drugs was discovered and widely used) is below 15,000 per year, so even if we ABSURDLY attributed all these deaths WITH HIV to deaths FROM HIV, they would still pale in comparison to the 165,000 deaths we've ALREADY had from COVID-19 so far, not to forget that this is not over and COVID-19 keeps killing daily, above 1,000 per day, so in less than half a month COVID-19 kills more people than all the people who die WITH HIV for the entire year.

Malaria? Only 2,000 cases per year in the US, and they rarely die, here. In the world? 405,000 deaths, almost exclusively in under-developed countries, while COVID-19 - and it's far from over yet - has killed already 730,000 people at least (one wonders how many more in a country like Brazil which is not testing enough people). So, no, malaria isn't a bigger threat either.

I don't know what these people who try to minimize it gain from it... because the virus has a way to defeat all of those.

I remember when people were screaming "haha, the flu kills 30,000 people, this little virus has killed only 2,000 Americans" and I just said "just wait and you'll see."

Funny how we don't hear this "The flu kills many more" any longer, huh? Now they changed their tune to "the total of deaths is fake, the deaths are being over-counted."

People can stick their head in the sand as much as they wan't, it won't change the facts, and the virus will continue to prove them wrong.

 

Very interesting information, thanks. Do notice that even in this short period between your two articles, France in the second one is said to be counting deaths in care homes. It's not except in the US according to your own source, which quotes various countries that are counting like us, confirmed cases by testing and unconfirmed but strongly suspected (by a physician) cases. And your first source talks about scarcity of testing; well, we had that here too, early on. But if you look at Worldometer you'll see that many of these countries have already caught-up. Spain, quoted in your first article as deficient in testing, has now tested 7,064,000 people, resulting in a testing-per-million rate not so far behind ours (151,000 per million there, 197,000 here).

Like I said, once this is all said and done I believe that these things will reach an equilibrium when a sufficient number of people end up getting tested.

Anyway, while it is true that counting methods differ, testing rates differ, and proficiency of healthcare systems differ, I think we're still splitting hairs here, in the bigger scheme of things. The bottom line is that regardless of some variation, certain countries like Germany seem to be doing a heck of a better job than we are doing, and this I believe can't be denied just by some fringe differences, because of the concept of order of magnitude. Do you seriously think that the order of magnitude of these differences, is sufficient to explain the HUGE difference between their stats and ours? We have 500 deaths per million of the population; they have 110. Do you actually suppose that this almost 5-fold difference is entirely explained by some fringe differences in counting???

 

An interesting thing: when cases in the US started to soar after the states opened up, some people (including the White House) kept insisting that it was just because we were testing more (ignoring the facts that percentage of positive tests and number of hospitalizations were going up, too). Now it seems like we are testing less... we've been running into backlog of testing and lack of kits and the materials to make more. So we've seen a drop in newly diagnosed cases... and suddenly the same people are touting the fact that supposedly we're having fewer cases... So, now, it's no longer in function of the number of tests, huh?

It reminds me of politicians who say that polls are great as long as they show them ahead, but are fake and unreliable the moment they show them behind. Double standard...

 

First week of April I could feel that my employees did not feel good.
So we had a talk. Everybody was able to vent their concerns.
I told them I would come up with a plan in 2 days. On the internet I researched how they handled it in Germany, France and Italy. Speak the languages.
2 days later we had a nother talk. Masks mandatory for everybody, employees safety goggle or shield plus mask. Safety zone for employees, around the counter, just one customer at a time. Plastic shield over the counter, 5 feet long 5 feet high. Private hand wash station.
The early shifts, became 1 hour more payed time, so they could hunt the stores for sanitation supplies. They bring supplies they get one extra hour pay plus the cost of supplies. We made a list of what is needed and what minimum stock should be. Since we rotate early and late shift, everybody was in on it.
We came up based on square footage with a max amount of people in the store. Closed pool tables video games etc.
Every employee got a written authorization to 86 every person who refused to wear a mask. Call the cops if they refuse to leave.
By the end of the week every thing was installed and the signs up.
Naturally we have to sit down every 4 weeks, we all get tired of this and get lax, now with summer near 100F everyday and so on and so on, its not that easy.
But this is what made my employees happy in April, this is what they wanted and I had told them, till there is a shot against that virus, this is what it is going to be.
It cost business and some problems from a certain group of people in the county, they organized a boycott through social media, or came organized on purpose without masks into the store. We had to call the cops.
Now it becomes a advantage and we gain new customers, because we try our best to give our customers and employees a safe environment. The harassments have stopped, but we are still on top of the list of that group's facebook page, for businesses who enforce mask wearing.
They advertise for us, people google.

 

No nation on earth has anything like herd immunity. That's just a nonsense, sorry.

One country has no COVID, though .. and they got it the only way that's possible - by 'hiding'. New Zealand has just celebrated it's hundredth day with no COVID in the community. They're back to full business as usual, without masks, and no economic destruction or terrible death toll.

By way of observation .. those in denial of the reality of what must be done to beat this virus, are usually the most fearful - not the least.

New Zealanders have balls. Warrior nation. Greeting the enemy with a Haka.

 

This source contains words by a Mayo Clinic specialist saying how unlikely it is to achieve herd immunity, and the article also mentions the likelihood of getting to 300,000 deaths by December 1st, doing away with what the other user was saying, that cardiovascular and cancer deaths are more numerous. If we get to this number, COVID-19 will be the #1 cause of death in the United States in 2020.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/f...tions-near-5-million-2020-08-09?siteid=yhoof2

Fauci is saying he'll be happy if the vaccines are 70% to 75% effective. Me too. If they avoid 70 to 75% of infections and dampen the severity of the other 25 to 30%, it will be a success; but still, the population needs to accept the vaccine in large numbers. 71% of 70% is almost 50%. So if we get 50% of adults immune through the vaccine and if half of the other 50% get naturally immune through the natural infection, we'd have a chance at (barely) reaching Herd Immunity Threshold. Barely. I don't think it will be possible, because it will be EXTREMELY unlikely to get the divided and politicized American population to accept a new and barely tested vaccine at a rate of 71% (see, a 70% efficacious vaccine needs 71% of the susceptible population to accept it in order to protect 50%), when a simple flu shot is only accepted by 45.3% of the adult population.

As I've said, I'm not in favor of mandatory measures but rather in favor of education, but in this situation of emergency, I guess one way to get people to take the vaccine, would be if businesses everywhere required it of their employees. This is not dictatorship. A private business - and a governmental business too, for that matter - are within their rights in saying "you are not forced to take the vaccine; you are free to not take it but then we are also free to say that without it, we don't want you to work for us." So employees would have to show proof of vaccination to Human Resources to remain employed. Other businesses like Airlines might say "we don't want to sell a ticket to you to fly in one of our aircrafts potentially infecting our employees and other customers, if you don't show a certificate of vaccination." Hotels could say the same: "We're happy to rent you a room as long as you show a certificate of vaccination upon check-in." Movie, theater, concert ticket sales could require the same. Restaurants could say "yes, we want your reservation but when you get to the hostess, you won't be admitted to your table if you don't show a certificate of vaccination." Widespread requirements like this might push higher the acceptance rate. Businesses have an interest in implementing these measures because even if they would lose some business in the short run, if we get Herd Immunity it would mean we'd beat the virus and business would boom again, while if the virus is endemic and coming and going in successive waves, business will remain suppressed.

How likely is this to happen? Not very likely. I guess governmental jobs will have the requirement right away, as in many state jobs flu shots are already a requirement for employment. Schools, same thing. Most schools including colleges already have proof of vaccination as required to enroll for classes. Private companies though would vary widely, and many smaller businesses like restaurants, theaters, etc., would be afraid of losing business in the short run and wouldn't be planning too much in the long run, eager to get customers again after this prolonged downturn. Other industries would have to act in a concerted effort - like all airlines, all major hotel chains - because any individual one would be afraid of losing business to competitors if they were the only ones to implement the policy.

It would be up to the federal, state, and city administration to implement the requirement for their own operations, and strongly encourage businesses within their cities and states to adhere to the policy too. And since when are we politically united enough to implement wide-spread policies like this? What we've been doing is the opposite: whatever a party does the other one tries to sabotage, even when it makes sense.

I guess a good percentage of the people who already accept the flu shot will accept the COVID-19 vaccine. Not all though, given fears of it being so new and barely tested. But lets say, of the 45.3% of people who accept the flu shot, we only lose 10% to fears of the novelty and untested side effects, so, 35% get it. We would need another 36% of the population to accept it too to reach this 71% threshold, an uphill battle since those would be the ones who don't even want the flu shot. I only see it happening through widespread requirements via businesses.

And even the 11% unemployed, they could also be persuaded by, for example, only being allowed to participate in agency-driven job search and job retraining programs with proof of vaccination.

Now, if this vaccine is only effective at a 50% rate, forge Herd Immunity because we'd need 100% of the population to accept it and this is never going to happen.

If we're ultra lucky and get a vaccine that is 85% effective (unlikely) we'd have better chances, needing only 60% of the population to accept it, a much more feasible number if businesses jump in.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe all vaccine candidates frontrunners will fail phase 3 or the virus will mutate, and we won't have a vaccine for a couple of years. It needs to be understood that this is ALSO unlikely, though. Traditionally, 75% of vaccines that reach phase 3 (that is, have survived phases 1 and 2 fine, with no safety issues thus far, and good immunogenicity) make it through the end of phase 3 and earn approval from regulators. We have already 5 vaccines on phase 3, it's unlikely that neither one will succeed.

 

Lockdown IS the answer. It's the only answer.

A vaccine might never happen, and even if it does ... we won't all get it at once. As for 'herd immunity', there is zero evidence thus far that any immunity is retained beyond a few months.

It's not science and legislation keeping it at bay - it's people avoiding crowds, avoiding indoor public places, and practising scrupulous hygiene. That's how they manage it in Japan, incidentally. The Japanese are very different to Americans, and are prepared to do the right thing without complaint or argument ... things like mask wearing, and retaining a very high standard of sanitation - both personally, and in their surroundings.

 

An entire nation is a pretty big hole. I doubt New Zealanders are feeling confined ... though I'm guessing millions of Americans are.

 

So you think the entire world just simultaneously decided to freak out over a 'harmless' virus?

Seriously .. you actually think that?

 

Fantastic! Well done! It's incredible, you are doing the right thing for your employees and customers, and those idiots are trying to boycott you on Facebook. But like people say, there is no such thing as negative publicity, so, more power to you!

 

Sure. But a better adjusted individual would first ask why they regard themselves as privy to some kind of special insight, when the entire world's governments and sciences have responded according to the actual threat.

Once you've done that, you might ask your question again. You might actually come up with the right answer (ie, if the world's economy has been crashed for a virus, it must be one hell of a virus).

 

98% of the Japanese obeyed their government's demands (they only had to ask, not mandate) to control the pandemic. That's how they got it done. Everybody wearing high quality masks, doing social distancing, hygiene, etc.

Of course lockdown has decreased the deaths... like in Spain you can see a very neat relationship between their strict, 12-week lockdown, and a sharp and sustained decrease in deaths.

Even our lousy cloth masks have made an impact. In Kansas, 15 counties have mask mandates, 90 do not. The contagion dropped sharply in all 15 with mask mandates, and did not drop in any of the 90 without it.

 

There are cases of COVID in New Zealand though. North Korea is the only country that claims to have none but their word is rather suspect. I hope the entire world is exposed as I expect it is to be rid of this nonsense.

 

Isn't it incredible that there are still people who think that this is harmless and not a big deal? Unreal... Invariably they quote the low infection-fatality rate... forgetting the much more numerous people who come out of it with severe and permanent medical complications. To call a virus that can cause:
1. Death
2. Sustained heart inflammation
3. Kidney insufficiency
4. Stroke
5. Brain damage
6. Severe lung fibrosis...

Harmless...

I point to my avatar when I hear something like this.

 

Exactly.

Fear is sinking some people ever further into denial. It's really an adjustment issue .. they can't quickly and comfortably adjust to a changed world, and so do all in their power to view everything as an aberration of yesterday, rather than a normalcy for today. Clinging to what was, rather than adjusting to what is.

When you're either very invested in your predictable comforts, or have set your life up as a precariously balanced complexity of dependences (mortgages, car loans, shaky employment/business, children, etc etc) - or worse, both - you're going to be in fairly robust state of terror. Dexterity, not money, is the key to surviving this with your happiness and sanity intact.

 

Japan never locked down and they are doing great. The Netherlands barely locked down and they are doing great and I should know.
Lockdown only creates economic chaos and does very little to contain a virus that like all viruses cannot be contained.
But. I understand that fairy tales can be placebic!
Enjoy them.

 

Yes because of inane and useless government edicts.

 

Yeah. I was tracking them, but they got below 1% positives for about a month so I quit.

 

Yes the entire world is often wrong. Most of the world thought slavery was a fine institution once.

Truth is not arrived at by concensus!!!!