Notes – Page 2 – Covid-19 Notes

We should be thankful for vaccine passports

We should be thankful for the vaccine passports. The biggest threat to unvaccinated people are VACCINATED people, who are far more likely to be walking around with asymptomatic infections.

Let the self-righteous vaccinated people rule the world for a few months.

We might see them sitting in restaurants or working out at the gym and envy them for now. But soon they will start to realize that they were led astray, and that herd immunity was never even possible with these vaccines.

And we’re certainly not going to envy them when they finally begin to question what an ‘investigatory vaccine’ is, and start to ask themselves why they consented to being injected with one (or three).

And when that happens, we will show them the compassion and understanding that they never showed us.

I believe in the ‘scientific method’

I believe in the ‘scientific method’. When applied earnestly it can reveal very robust evidence. But unfortunately, the process is not incorruptible. And so much of what we call ‘science’ has been generated by forces that are not interested in the impartial pursuit of knowledge.

There are a lot of reasons why I feel that the push to get everyone vaccinated has less to do with public health and it has to do with something else.

Of course, that’s all just conjecture and opinion. And I can’t prove a word of it.

But I’m with you, man. There’s something very rotten about all of this.

At this point I feel so coerced that it’s activated my hatred of bullies.

I learned when I was a kid that you never back down from a bully. Whatever the consequences are, backing down is always worse.

I will endure the insults and the aspersions. I will be one of their unvaccinated and unclean scapegoats. I will live with whatever civic privileges they revoke from me while I will continue to exercise every mitigation strategy within my power to keep my community safe.

I’m not taking their damn vaccine.

Blame the Unvaccinated!

Immunize BC

Vaccine efficacy, effectiveness and protection

A vaccine’s efficacy is measured in a controlled clinical trial and is based on how many people who got vaccinated developed the ‘outcome of interest’ (usually disease) compared with how many people who got the placebo (dummy vaccine) developed the same outcome. Once the study is complete, the numbers of sick people in each group are compared, in order to calculate the relative risk of getting sick depending on whether or not the subjects received the vaccine. From this we get the efficacy – a measure of how much the vaccine lowered the risk of getting sick. If a vaccine has high efficacy, a lot fewer people in the group who received the vaccine got sick than the people in the group who received the placebo.

So, for example, let’s imagine a vaccine with a proven efficacy of 80%. This means that – out of the people in the clinical trial – those who received the vaccine were at a 80% lower risk of developing disease than the group who received the placebo. This is calculated by comparing the number of cases of disease in the vaccinated group versus the placebo group. An efficacy of 80% does not mean that 20% of the vaccinated group will become ill.

Vaccine efficacy, effectiveness and protection

This article is part of a series of explainers on vaccine development and distribution. Learn more about vaccines – from how they work and how they’re made to ensuring safety and equitable access – in WHO’s Vaccines Explained series.

Consent is not consent if it is coerced: beer, pot, lottery tickets

Consent is not consent if it is coerced. Over the last 10 months incentives to take an investigational COVID vaccine have escalated from free pizza and beer, to marijuana, concert tickets and lottery tickets. Now it’s the removal of basic freedoms: You need a vaccine to take a train or a plane, attend post secondary school, or to keep your job.

Yukon’s COVID-19 vaccination rate is still slowly climbing but one Whitehorse business is hoping to speed things up a bit, with some cold beer.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/whitehorse-polarity-brewing-vaccine-free-beer-promotion-1.6009295

‘Joints for Jabs:’ Company offering cannabis prizes to fully vaccinated Manitobans.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/delta-9-joints-for-jabs-1.6075707

Insurers, food businesses and even tech companies are unveiling promotions aimed at convincing people to get the jab in exchange for savings and giveaways.

Canadian companies offer freebies, discounts to customers vaccinated against COVID-19

Which common vaccines prevent transmission?

The ideal vaccine would prevent infection through complete sterilizing immunity.

Sterilizing immunity means that the immune system is able to stop a pathogen, including viruses, from replicating within your body.

This typically happens when immune cells in the body are able to bind to the pathogen in places that prevent it from being able to enter a cell where it can start making copies of itself. Some of these immune cells may produce sterilizing antibodies, which are proteins that recognize specific proteins and structures on the surfaces of pathogens.

To achieve sterilizing immunity, your body needs to produce enough neutralizing antibodies and it needs to be able to do so in the long term. Ideally, it leads to life-long immunity.

Virus	Does the vaccine prevent transmission?	Notes	Source
Diphtheria	No	Miller et al. suggests that diphtheria vaccination prevents symptomatic infections, though it does not prevent carriage or spread of diphtheria. This hypothesis is based on throat swabs of 306 school children and staff during an outbreak investigation in Eglin Texas. C. diphtheria was isolated from 104 (34%) individuals of which 15 (14%) were cases and 89 (86%) were carriers. Of the 104 positive, 73 were fully, 28 inadequately and 3 not immunized. The presence of the phage (referring to the phage that induces toxin production in the bacterium) is thought to confer survival advantage to the bacterium by increasing the probability of transmission; transmission may be facilitated by local tissue damage resulting from the toxin. 1,10,11 The United States Immunization Practices Advisory 3Commitee (ACIP) states, that immunization does not eliminate carriage of C. diphtheriae in the pharynx, nose or on the skin.1	link
Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib)	No	Hib bacteria can cause many types of invasive disease, including meningitis, pneumonia, cellulitis (skin infection), septic arthritis (joint infection) and epiglottitis (infection of the epiglottis, causing obstruction or closing of the windpipe). Thus, although it’s sometimes said that the Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine is given to “protect against Hib,” this phrasing is not technically correct. The vaccine protects against the diseases caused by Hib, which are numerous and can be severe. Collectively, these Hib-caused infections are referred to generally as “Hib disease.”	link
Hepatitis A	Yes	Approximately 99-100 percent of persons vaccinated with hepatitis A vaccine will develop long-lasting immunity.	link
Hepatitis B	Yes	The good news is that hepatitis B is vaccine preventable. This means that after you complete the vaccine series, you cannot contract hepatitis B through any modes of transmission; you are protected for life!	link
Herpes Zoster (Shingles)	Yes	e shingles vaccine, my doctor said to stay away from my pregnant daughter and my grandchildren. Can you tell me why? The virus that causes shingles — varicella-zoster virus — is also the virus that causes chickenpox. Your doctor's concern may stem from reports of rare cases in which people with no immunity to chickenpox — meaning they've never had chickenpox or the chickenpox vaccine — have caught varicella-zoster virus from children recently vaccinated with the chickenpox vaccine. However, there are no documented cases of the varicella-zoster virus being transmitted from adults vaccinated with the shingles vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).	link
Human Papillomavirus (HPV)	No	If you get vaccinated now, it won't protect your partner, though. But your partner can be vaccinated too. People of all genders should be vaccinated against HPV to help prevent the spread of the disease. Even if you and your partner have both been vaccinated, always use condoms for any type of sex (oral, anal, or vaginal). Condoms help prevent the spread of the types of HPV that are not covered by the vaccine. And, of course, condoms also help protect against other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).	link
Influenza	No, but it helps	When you get vaccinated, you help protect others as well by reducing the spread of the influenza virus.	link
Pandemic Influenza			link
Measles	Yes	Herd immunity in humans rarely — if ever — develops from natural infection. Measles, the best-known example, was brought under control by vaccination alone. At 95% coverage, people who can’t get shots because of age or health conditions are protected by the herd effect. But measles rarely mutates. The same vaccine has remained effective for decades. The measles shot also generates what’s called sterilizing immunity, preventing the virus from replicating in the human body. With the COVID-19 vaccines, immunity is more of a continuum than an on-off switch, says UW Medicine immunologist Marion Pepper. And that can be another problem for herd immunity. Even though they’re protected from severe illness, vaccinated people may still get mild infections and pass the virus to others.	link
Meningococcal Disease			link
Mumps	Mixed	History illustrates the remarkable public health impact of mass vaccination, by dramatically improving life expectancy and reducing the burden of infectious diseases and co-morbidities worldwide. It has been perceived that if an individual adhered to the MMR vaccine schedule that immunity to mumps virus (MuV) would be lifelong. Recent mumps outbreaks in individuals who had received two doses of the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine has challenged the efficacy of the MMR vaccine. However, clinical symptoms, complications, viral shedding and transmission associated with mumps infection has been shown to be reduced in vaccinated individuals, demonstrating a benefit of this vaccine. Therefore, the question of what constitutes a good mumps vaccine and how its impact is assessed in this modern era remains to be addressed.	link
Pertussis (Whooping Cough)	No	None of the current vaccines induce sterilizing immunity and limit circulation of B. pertussis. Therefore, new vaccines are needed that protect both against disease and infection.	link
Pneumococcal Disease	Yes	Colonization of the human nasopharynx by pneumococcus is extremely common and is both the primary reservoir for transmission and a prerequisite for disease. Current vaccines targeting the polysaccharide capsule effectively prevent colonization, conferring herd protection within vaccinated communities.	link
Polio			link
Rotavirus			link
Rubella (German measles)			link
Tetanus (Lockjaw)	No	Tetanus is a vaccine-preventable disease caused by a neurotoxin produced by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium tetani. Tetanus bacteria are found in spore form in soil, dust, manure, and have also been detected in the intestines of animals and humans.	link
Varicella (Chickenpox)	No	The lack of sterilizing immunity provided by VZV vaccines has not prevented them from being safe and effective.	link

Smug liberal conceit

Bullying people to take the Covid vaccine – whether through incentives or punishments – is not social solidarity or social responsibility. It is a smug liberal conceit masquerading as those things.

—Jonathan Cook