A sore spot for me is the claim made by every single conservative talk show host that the vaccines do not stop the spread of COVID-19 and that we were lied to when the government said that they would. This claim is based on testimony by Janine Small to the European Union who said that they did not have time in their initial testing to determine if the vaccines stop the spread of the disease. However, those studies have since been done. I have found studies showing that the vaccines reduce the spread of COVID-19. It also makes sense that if you reduce infection then you also reduce spread. This logic is almost irrefutable, so it would be perfectly proper for the government to make this claim.
Friday, February 24, 2023
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Dianna Cowern Physics Girl
This is popular Youtuber, Physics Girl, Dianna Cowern
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sOhdQNjmK_U
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sOhdQNjmK_U
Reportedly, she has been suffering from "Long COVID" since July. She has made this public.
Things got worse and she went to the ER last week.
She is clearly suffering because of this. I have long believed that COVID is something that we should take seriously. It is not an ordinary disease. It is not just the cold or a bad flu.
I looked to see if there is an update on her condition. Nothing yet.
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Brain injury after vaccination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZhzWzoPB3M
John Coffey 0 seconds ago:
It is not clear to me that the vaccine causes an excess number of these cases. There is an assumed causality that is not proven.
The U.S. Government statistics show a much lower overall death rate among the vaccinated.
The quoted study concludes with ...
"Neurological manifestations following the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination have been reported, and although they are few in number, healthcare professionals should be alert to their presentation as a high vigilance and rapid response to these events are the need of the hour. Further investigations are required to establish a definitive causal association with the currently recommended vaccines. Until then, the benefit of protection against COVID-19 for both individuals and society is far greater than the hypothesized risk of these adverse events."
John Coffey 0 seconds ago:
It is not clear to me that the vaccine causes an excess number of these cases. There is an assumed causality that is not proven.
The U.S. Government statistics show a much lower overall death rate among the vaccinated.
The quoted study concludes with ...
"Neurological manifestations following the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination have been reported, and although they are few in number, healthcare professionals should be alert to their presentation as a high vigilance and rapid response to these events are the need of the hour. Further investigations are required to establish a definitive causal association with the currently recommended vaccines. Until then, the benefit of protection against COVID-19 for both individuals and society is far greater than the hypothesized risk of these adverse events."
Friday, February 10, 2023
Yes, masks reduce the risk of spreading COVID, despite a review saying they don't
An updated Cochrane Review published last week is the latest to suggest face masks don't work in the community.
However there are problems with the review's methodology and its underpinning assumptions about transmission.
An RCT comparing occasional versus continuous use of respirators in health care workers showed N95 respirators and surgical masks were equally ineffective when only worn occasionally by hospital workers. They had to wear them all the time at work to be protected.
We also combined only apples and apples in a meta-analysis of two RCTs conducted in exactly the same way and measuring the same interventions and outcomes. We found N95 respirators provide significant protection against respiratory infections when surgical masks did not, even against infections assumed to be "droplet spread".
https://theconversation.com/yes-masks-reduce-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-despite-a-review-saying-they-dont-198992
However there are problems with the review's methodology and its underpinning assumptions about transmission.
An RCT comparing occasional versus continuous use of respirators in health care workers showed N95 respirators and surgical masks were equally ineffective when only worn occasionally by hospital workers. They had to wear them all the time at work to be protected.
We also combined only apples and apples in a meta-analysis of two RCTs conducted in exactly the same way and measuring the same interventions and outcomes. We found N95 respirators provide significant protection against respiratory infections when surgical masks did not, even against infections assumed to be "droplet spread".
https://theconversation.com/yes-masks-reduce-the-risk-of-spreading-covid-despite-a-review-saying-they-dont-198992
Saturday, February 4, 2023
Dopamine: More Than Pleasure, The Secret is the Anticipation of a Reward - LiveInnovation.org
"The reason for it is because the uncertainty of receiving the reward creates a much greater expectation and therefore dopamine production."
Speaking on a personal level, I seem to get addicted to some things easily.
When I was in college 40 years ago, I noticed something about playing table tennis. After I hit the ball I had a high level of anticipation about what was going to happen next, which was only a couple of seconds away, but unknown until it actually happened. I realized then that this high level of anticipation made the game addicting. Pinball seems to work the same way.
Maybe one reason why there is still a cult following for the 42-year-old video game Donkey Kong, which I still like to play, is that it has a great deal of randomness built into the game. There is no set predictable pattern that you can follow. Parts of the game are predictable, but frequently you have to react within a couple of seconds to an ever-changing circumstance. The game can be an intense experience.
I think that there could be a similar appeal to gambling because the gambler is anticipating an unknown outcome.
On the surface, this would seem unrelated to watching a ton of youtube videos, which has been a problem for me lately. Youtube has a bunch of interesting content, but even before you finish one video, they are recommending other content that you might like. I have a natural tendency to be curious about everything, so I want to see what this other content has to offer. There is anticipation there. It is like they know how to keep me hooked.
TikTok has admitted that they use an algorithm to keep people addicted. The way it works is that they show you a list of videos with the best videos interspersed along the list The idea is to keep you scrolling looking for the best videos. Maybe TikTok is evil.
Social media creates anticipation of positive feedback from other people.
Perhaps if a person is aware of how they are being manipulated on a psychological/neurotransmitter level, then maybe they can change their behavior by not falling for this trap.
Friday, February 3, 2023
COVID vaccines slash risk of spreading Omicron — and so does previous infection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgrMzvasrm8&t=1100s
"Decreases in transmission of the delta variant were greater after two BNT162b2 vaccinations"
"The team found that among individuals with COVID-19, those who received at least one vaccine shot were 24% less likely to infect close contacts"
"This study confirms that COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and also accelerates viral clearance in the context of the delta variant. However, this study unfortunately also highlights that the vaccine effect on reducing transmission is minimal in the context of delta variant circulation. These findings have immediate public health implications. Higher vaccination coverage rates need to be achieved because indirect protection from vaccinated to unvaccinated people remains suboptimal."
"Pfizer vax did reduce transmission of early variants"
"Researchers in the United Kingdom reported in a February observational study that Pfizer's vaccine helped cut transmission of the alpha and delta variants."
"Fact check: Vaccines protect against contracting, spreading COVID-19"
"Scientific studies show that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine reduces transmission"
"However, when booster vaccine doses reduce the risk of infection (as shown in the study by Spitzer et al2), then these boosters will also prevent transmission. As with all infectious diseases, the pathogen is required to cause the disease, and SARS-CoV-2 infection is the sine qua non for COVID-19. Prevention of infection results in prevention of potential onward transmission from all individuals who are spared the infection."
"New research suggests COVID-19 vaccines can slow the spread of disease, even with Omicron"
"Early data suggest infections in fully vaccinated persons are more commonly observed with the Delta variant than with other SARS-CoV-2 variants. However, data show fully vaccinated persons are less likely than unvaccinated persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2, and infections with the Delta variant in fully vaccinated persons are associated with less severe clinical outcomes. Infections with the Delta variant in vaccinated persons potentially have reduced transmissibility than infections in unvaccinated persons, although additional studies are needed."
"Instead, it's the principle that the UKHSA identified above: if you don't get infected in the first place thanks to a vaccine, you can't spread it. Once you're infected, you still can"
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
Significant Events
Until recently, the most significant thing to happen in my lifetime was 9-11. It had a profound effect on this country and its foreign policy, and it also had a profound effect on me because I went to work for a defense contractor. It also temporarily brought Americans together to fight a common enemy.
In terms of the number of people affected, 9-11 is small potatoes compared to the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been 675 million cases worldwide, with 6.76 million deaths. In the United States, there have been 104 million cases with 1.1 million deaths. Roughly 1 out of every 300 Americans has been killed by COVID-19. However, when it comes to fighting the disease, this common enemy did not bring us together but made us more divided.
Perhaps the most important thing in the world right now is that we don't get into a nuclear war with Russia or China or any other potential adversary. Since this is not likely to happen, I'm not too worried about it.
So the second most important thing in the world is how we handle the COVID-19 pandemic both personally and in terms of public policy. The actions we take could save or cost lives.
Most people today see the pandemic in the rearview mirror. The public seems very lax. People stopped wearing masks. President Biden has declared May 11th the end of the COVID emergency. However, I think that it could be naive to think that COVID is over. We currently have around 500 deaths per day. New mutations keep popping up and some of these might not be so bad, but there is always the potential for a new deadly strain to arise. The XBB 1.5 variant is so infectious there is a possibility that everyone will get it, and it has killed 1,600 New Yorkers since December 1st.
I suspect that we will be fighting COVID for the rest of our lives.
Almost nobody has time to read scientific literature. This is one reason we pay politicians to make policy so that we don't have to sort through all the details ourselves. And most people are fine with that. However, only 68% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, with around 21% having never been vaccinated.
I am personally angry with the anti-vax crowd because they seem to only think about themselves. There are some very small risks associated with the vaccines, so many people assume that if they are young and healthy that they are better off not getting vaccinated. These assumptions may not be correct, since many young healthy people also have died from COVID-19. However, the reason for my consternation is that the anti-vax crowd seems to not care at all about people like my elderly mother whose health issues would make her extremely vulnerable to COVID. If a person chooses not to be vaccinated, then they are choosing to likely spread COVID to someone else, because the R factor of the Omicron variant is 3.4. In the past, anything with an R factor of 1 or higher was considered serious.
I like to say that the anti-vax crowd cherry-picks their data, but that is being generous. For the most part, they don't look at data. They see statements on social media, Youtube, and fringe conspiracy-theory websites made by very questionable people, and they believe in some of the most absurd positions as if they were gospel. I have spent 2 years fighting vaccine misinformation on the Internet, but I give up because apparently, you can't reason with irrational people.
I see claims every day that I know have been debunked by at least one scientific study. The most recent one is that the mRNA vaccines don't stop the spread of the disease. There are studies that say otherwise.
Some commentators who I would normally respect think that the government has been lying to us this whole time. They are calling for the prosecution of government officials for their "COVID lies".
What the data currently shows is that there is much lower overall mortality for people who have been vaccinated. There is a small health risk with the vaccines, but COVID-19 is no ordinary disease. It attacks every organ in the body. The health complications from COVID are far more dangerous than the vaccines.
Best wishes,
John Coffey
John Coffey
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