Pooter

Much like Biden's heinously botched Afghanistan withdrawal, no one should be mad at *what* Snowden did, they should be mad at *how* he did it. Based on what buddies of mine in the three letter world have said, my understanding of his "whistleblowing" is that it was an indiscriminate data dump that compromised all sorts of unrelated parts of the intel community.

Maybe you before calling people out for not reading the giant homework assignment you so graciously gave us, you should read it yourself. From the discussion section: "Our data do not demonstrate that vaccination was responsible for the evolution of hyperpathogenic strains of MDV, and we may never know for sure why they evolved in the first place." It turns out, as always, research findings aren't quite a simple as the google-able sound bites you search in order to try to win internet arguments. Having actually done research before helps you know that findings are always couched in caveats, statistical uncertainty, and specificity of their application. But by all means, let's take snippets from the abstract of a research paper on a disease in chickens and extrapolate the results as gospel to a completely different virus in a completely different species with a completely different type of vaccine. Here's an article from some experts: professors of microbiology and epidemiology (good enough for you?) And it is actually about covid.. in humans.. not a different disease in chickens, and they talk about how the large population of unvaccinated is the key driver of mutations. The argument boils down to this: A mutation is a random event that is extremely unlikely to make the virus more contagious or virulent. Even if it does, it's extremely unlikely that mutation will be passed on to someone else. This is called the population bottleneck. The population bottleneck helps prevent new mutations emerge because the odds are stacked against the virus. By having a large portion of the population remain unvaccinated we are essentially giving the virus an infinite number of dice rolls and it will eventually hit the jackpot, The article even talks about your chicken scenario, but says it isn't even relevant at this point because the virus is still running rampant and unchecked all over the world, propelled by the unvaccinated population. https://theconversation.com/massive-numbers-of-new-covid-19-infections-not-vaccines-are-the-main-driver-of-new-coronavirus-variants-166882

It's an interesting argument and I definitely understand how it could be possible with certain diseases. But we have experts saying specifically that isn't happening with covid and the perceived spike in variants is due to the entire world mobilizing to look for and classify them. And my question still stands.. the vast majority of unvaxxed people who contract covid also survive and end up with some level of immunity, which is not 100% perfect. There are already unvaxxed people re-catching it, and spreading it. One might call the natural immunity "leaky" as well. So how is it different from the perspective of driving mutations? Edit: also covid was already rapidly mutating prior to the vaccine. At least 7 variants were identified pre-vaccine including the current most concerning strain delta, which first presented in India back in December 2020.

Point to ponder: why would vaccine-created immunity force viral mutations any more than natural immunity gained by having a variant of the virus. Immunity pushes mutations, period. Does the virus know or care where you got that immunity from? Here's another possible explanation: “Early in the pandemic, only a limited number of labs were sequencing virus from infections, but since late 2020, surveillance programs have been ramping up,” Professor Jennifer Grier, Clinical Assistant Professor in Immunology at the University of South Carolina, told Reuters via email. “Effectively, we are hearing so much more about viral variants in 2021 because, globally, we now have the systems in place to consistently detect and track mutations,” Grier added.

Safe - I'll refer you to the CDC, the clinical trials, and the experts in the field of immunology for that definition as they are the ones who come up with the criteria, not me. For it to be considered safe, my understanding is that adverse reactions have to be below a certain statistically significant threshold and below a certain severity threshold, both of which I also did not come up with. Much in the same way, walking out your front door is widely considered safe despite the fact that a chance does exist of you being hit in the face by a meteor. That is because it is not a statistically significant chance. If you have statistical evidence (from a reliable source.. that you interpreted correctly) pointing in a different direction I would love to see it. Until then I will defer to the people who's entire life's work is to make these determinations. Effective - the vaccine reduces your risk of contracting covid and drastically reduces your risk of hospitalization, and death. On booster shots: why is there a new flu shot every year? Because immunity wears off and new variants emerge. As for how many boosters to get and when they will be approved for the general public, I will once again defer to experts. Much like they defer to me on matters pertaining to flying airplanes.

Yeah it's not a good look for milley for sure. Add this to the laundry list of reasons this guy needs to go. Having said that, I'm glad someone was thinking about how to mitigate the damage a desperate and defeated trump could have attempted to do in his final days. Glad it never came to this but the fact that the CJCS was so worried he thought this was a conversation that needed to happen should tell you all you need to know about trump's mental stability after the election loss.

What goalposts exactly? Throughout all of these discussions I have maintained the same exact points. 1. the vaccine is safe and effective and no one so far has provided convincing evidence to the contrary. To include your and @torqued's statistically illiterate flailing. 2. While I think it's a very bad plan to pass on the vaccine, getting the shot should be entirely your choice unless you voluntarily surrendered some of your medical autonomy by joining the military. My suggestion, stick to what you're good at and keep posting your tangential Alex Jones-esque rants with a healthy side of racial slurs.

Wrong again. You aren't controlling for the total number of people in the vaccinated and unvaccinated sub groups. Your continuing arrogance in the face of being so objectively wrong is getting pretty obnoxious. When you calculate a death rate you divide deaths in a particular sub group by total number of people in that sub group. You do not divide a death number by another death number. That results in a unit-less proportion that has no context. We will now spell this out so there's no more confusion. When you want to find the total covid death rate you do this: Number of covid deaths / number of people So if you want the elderly vaccinated covid death rate you do this: number of vaxxed old people deaths / number of vaxxed old people And if you want unvaxxed old people death rate you do this: number of unvaxxed old people deaths / number of unvaxxed old people Hopefully by now you have caught on that there are two different denominators and one is much larger than the other. And that is why the death rate can be much lower for vaxxed old people despite their numerator being larger. The only thing your mis-analysis allows you to say is that approximately two thirds of the UK elderly covid deaths are among vaccinated and one third are the unvaccinated. But without the correct denominators that number does not tell you anything useful about death rates and relative risk level between the two groups. Quick thought experiment. If everyone had the shot, vaccinated people would account for 100% of the deaths! My goodness! The vaccine must be pointless! It's almost like having the correct denominator actually matters.

I actually haven't encountered a single one of those people. Most of the rest of us aren't "staunch mandate" we just have a modicum of awareness about what we signed up for and aren't going to torpedo our job and reputation because we got a little too riled up over some podcasts.

Hope everyone who choose to die on this vaccination hill gets some immense satisfaction out of sticking it to big blue. Because that's likely all you're getting. The staunch anti vax dudes I know of are invariably the squadron shitbags, who spend way too much time publicly arguing politics on Facebook, and who will not be missed by anyone.. least of all the commanders who are relishing this excuse to get a complete liability out of their organization. The number of people who discovered their extremely sincerely held religious beliefs on stem cells just this past week is particularly rich. You'd think a supposedly principled person would think twice about faking a religious belief to justify their stubbornness, but I'm sure the crippling case of Dunning-Kruger prevents that level of introspection.

Perhaps try making an argument rather than just blasting out more links and expecting people to go on a scavenger hunt to figure out what your point is. Are you actually arguing the vaccine does not reduce the rates of hospitalization and death? And if you want anyone to take you seriously, can't just LOL away the fact that you were citing absolute death numbers without considering the denominators those numbers come from.

Jesus dude take a second to look at statistics for more than just a surface level talking point. Covid deaths are extremely closely linked to old age. The elderly are overwhelmingly vaccinated. Like upwards of 90% in the UK. So yes, more vaccinated old people have died in the last six months. Could that be because the denominator is far larger?? Weird.. so a small proportion of a giant denominator can sometimes be larger than a medium proportion of a small denominator. Math is so weird isn't it?! This is a perfect example of how a garbage interpretation of data can lead to a totally incorrect conclusion. You have to look at the death rate. 1000 deaths in 90% of a demographic is a much much better rate than 500 deaths in 10% of that demographic.

@BashiChuniAs usual, multiple things can be true at once. I don't think you can take a single factor analysis and treat it as gospel simply because someone superimposed two graphs. Saying Israel->mask mandates->huge spike anyway, vs Sweden->no masks->no spike... therefore masks are useless neglects to mention the litany of other variables at play here. Demographics, climate, population, population density, when and where a variant hits first, covid approach from the beginning all play a role. Israel and sweden are so different I don't think you can draw a good conclusion from a single factor analysis. Having said that, I don't think mask mandates make much of a difference as polling data shows people tend to mask up voluntarily when their perceived risk increases.

Apologies for contradicting the podcast gospel. Believe it or not, I'm actually tracking as well. I too have a phone with a spotify subscription and listened when these two went on rogan last week. My point was never that there are no side effects, or no long term side effects of the covid vaccine. There are. They are already documented and the data set on them grows every day. But they are also exceedingly rare. And most importantly, they are much, much rarer than the documented side effects of the actual disease. My point (really the CDCs point) is that long term effects typically don't manifest out of nowhere if they hadn't already manifested in the short term. This holds true across a wide variety of medications and vaccines over decades and decades of study. I did not invent this idea. Now you are right, the covid shot is an mRNA vaccine and is the first of its type. So maybe that means it's such cutting-edge voodoo witchcraft that it goes against all prevailing medical wisdom and us lemmings are all going to develop ass cancer out of nowhere in 20 years. Or.. probably not. In the meantime, my risk analysis tells me that I need to be concerned about things that actually exist in the here and now, rather than future hypotheticals.

The cool part about predicting long term vaccine side effects is this: for some people those effects will manifest in the short term, so we can use that to determine if and what the long term effects will be. There are no vaccines that exist for which there are long term effects that randomly pop up after a few years, which didn't originally manifest in the short term in some recipients. In summary, if you are worried about some 10 year-later infertility side effect from the covid shot, you are worrying about nothing. With billions of doses already administered, statistically significant infertility would have already manifested in some people if it was ever going to be a long term problem. The same applies for any other side effect. The idea that previously undocumented side effects are likely to show up decades down the road is both scientifically and historically illiterate.

One of the most important tenets of liberal thought is: you should be able to do what you want unless it impacts someone else A lot of anti vax people think their choice to not get the shot is solely a personal one with little to no ramifications on others. After all, if you're vaccinated why would you worry about getting covid from an unvaxxed person. Except there's a catch. Healthcare is a finite resource and non vaccinated people are taking up almost all of the bandwidth. Across all age groups, the unvaccinated are far more likely to contract severe illness and require hospitalization. When your trash decision puts you in the hospital and you take an ICU bed from someone needing urgent care for something that wasn't preventable, your decision just hurt someone else. I'll say the same for obese people and smokers. Your trash lifestyle and decision making has upped your risk factors and you are negatively impacting others.

Never said it did. Simply pointing out that we were in a very different spot a few months ago. So much so, that even the CDC let up on their masking nonsense.

It's absolutely not too late to talk about this stuff. We had covid essentially beat back in May to the point the CDC lifted masking guidance. Now hospitals are a dumpster fire again. Things change, new variants emerge, and public health guidance/medical best practices should change accordingly. What was a good idea in May might not be a good idea now. If you think we can just let the delta variant run its course and that'll be the last we have to deal with covid, I would love some of what you're smoking.

Well if you ask the White House all those Americans still there just must not have "wanted to leave." They're just having a nice summer sabbatical hiding in the closet to avoid the stonings and beheadings.

I can answer this for you based on how ICU doctors in the country behave on every Friday night shift.. you triage patients based on severity and allocate resources to the ones in the most critical condition. If two patients are in the same exact condition, and you can only take care of one, it probably comes down to chance or whoever got there first. Any medical care policy regarding covid vax status or comorbidities or how you got into that situation would inevitably be met with massive legal challenges as it would be a huge violation of the Hippocratic oath.

Two questions: -How do you think the vaccine was sold? By whom? Because some of us have understood for quite a while this is much more similar to a yearly flu vaccine situation than a polio vaccine one-and-done situation. -How would a vaccinated person's immune system encourage mutations any more than the immune system of a person with natural immunity from having had the virus, and then re-encountering it?

Moot, as in "having little or no practical relevance." We know that the vaccine dramatically reduces the chance of hospitalization. Therefore a more vaccinated population will have fewer hospitalizations per capita, resulting in a less strained health care system. If the hospitals are only half full, turns out you don't have to worry about who to give the last ventilator to. Instead, we live in the stupidest possible timeline where these hypotheticals can and have actually happened. We have the privilege of living in a timeline where people are more interested in fish tank cleaner and horse de-wormer they heard about on a podcast than a vaccine endorsed by virtually every epidemiologist in the western world. **caveat** love JRE. Just not a great place for reliable medical guidance.

If only there was a safe, effective, and fully approved vaccination that radically reduces your chances of hospitalization from covid, rendering these hypotheticals completely moot. Wouldn't that be nice

Saw some reporting that we blew up some ammunition and the explosion was heard across Kabul, hopefully that's all it was

I think when unvaxxed people start re-catching it, that will massively change the way people think about covid. Right now there's a chicken pox-esque "had it once so I'm good" mentality which is completely incorrect. Similarly I think we are about to see an uptick in breakthrough cases among the vaccinated as we near the 6 month point from the first shots and that immunity tapers off over time.