A lot of people are firmly convinced that the vax manufacturers are conscientiously following up on each and every vaccination and collecting reams of data on side effects. The reality is that nobody gives a monkey’s toss. There’s a half-assed effort to collect information via VAERS and similar schemes, but the limitations of that are well-known. It’s cargo-cult science, but since the average man in the street doesn’t know what a real clinical study looks like, he’ll happily believe that everything’s being done by the book.
As for the “why”, well, why bother when the government will cover their ass even if the vaccines trigger a zombie apocalypse?
I was just looking into the backstory of that Danish politician. He gets a bit over-enthusiastic in the video, but it’s good to hear that the Law is still functioning and that (in some countries at least) you can challenge the narrative if you’re feeling brave.
In other news, I was reading that the UK are still counting any PCR test up to 40 cycles as a valid positive, even though it’s been demonstrated that anything much above 30 is clinically meaningless. The interesting aspect of this is that they get most of the positive samples sequenced (which must be incredibly expensive, which in turn explains why tests are now 120 pounds a pop). However, they don’t send anything above 30 cycles for sequencing … because they know full well that there’s nothing in there that can actually be sequenced. It’s just bits of viral detritus. Only about half end up sent for sequencing; the implication is that roughly half of recorded positives are known to be false positives.
I don’t think your conclusion there is valid, is it? It seems reasonable in principle for the detection limit for PCR tests to be lower (i.e., more sensitive) than the amount that can be reliably sequenced; that doesn’t mean that this region corresponds entirely to false positives (I imagine that some are, especially in the upper end of the Ct value range, but not all).
I’m actually surprised from the BBC article that they’re sequencing so many samples. As you say, that must be pretty expensive.
Sure, the two things are not equivalent, but there’s a lot of overlap, surely? Since they’re not disclosing any further information on the subject, we can only take a finger-in-the-air guess.
I think the research on PCR is clear: anything above 30 cycles (or thereabouts) is not picking up anything clinically meaningful. Most researchers seem to agree that this represents an optimum tradeoff between false positives and false negatives.
As you go above 30ish, the signal-to-noise ratio becomes progressively poorer, and at some point you’re looking at all noise and no signal. You’re either amplifying a very small amount of viral RNA in the original sample (which may not actually be causing infection in the original subject) or you’re amplifying contamination of one sort of another.
If sequencing fails - and if I understand the sequencing technology correctly, it can operate on extremely small samples of the DNA/RNA being studied - then the implication is that there simply isn’t any RNA in the original sample in the first place, or at least none that would indicate that the person had any chance of being (or becoming) infectious.
This paper suggests that sequencing is possible even using samples that (as we now know) had absolutely no chance of causing infection:
So if the gov’t is deciding not to send high-Ct samples for sequencing, it’s presumably because they expect sequencing to be impossible in those cases … which in turn suggests that the material in those samples is of even worse quality than surface swabs.
I’m towards the end of sous viding some lemon and herb chicken breasts and baking some chocolate chip muffins, so can’t respond to everything right now.
But my understanding is that there are different degrees of possibility here – I wouldn’t take the fact that the government has decided that samples below a Ct value of 30 aren’t worth subjecting to routine sequencing to mean that sequencing isn’t possible. It’s plausible that the routine sequencing is less sensitive than state-of-the-art high-sensitivity sequencing. This seems to be supported by the following bits from the paper you posted:
We made modifications to the ARTIC Network Protocol (v2) [34], to optimize sequencing of environmental samples. Our complete protocol is available online nCoV-2019 environmental sample sequencing protocol. In brief: we conducted random hexamer primed reverse transcription and amplified cDNA using v3 primers, which tile the entire viral genome (save for non-coding regions at the genome ends) with overlapping 400 bp fragments. We concentrated PCR products using the Zymo Select-a-Size DNA Clean & Concentrator Kit (Zymo Research, Irvine CA), ligated barcodes using the Oxford Nanopore Native Barcoding kit, and ligated sequencing adaptors. Samples were run on ONT R9.4 or R10.3 flow cells. We followed the ARTIC Network bioinformatics SOP, which in brief involved high accuracy basecalling and demultiplexing using ONT Guppy, mapping reads to the Wuhan-Hu-1 (accession MN908947) reference, polishing with Nanopolish, and consensus generation (code for analysis available GitHub - sociovirology/sars_cov2_environmental_seq).
From the mentioned protocol:
This version modifies a few steps from the above protocol to obtain a better yield from low concentration samples.
My take on this is that at least some of the samples we’re discussing could be sequenced if they really wanted to sequence them, but there’s probably a limit as to how much resources should be thrown at sequencing every possible case (I think you will agree on that).
I believe it’s possible to do sequencing for samples that are low concentration, degraded, etc., but different techniques are required to accommodate those things (incidentally, a friend of mine did her PhD on sequencing ancient DNA from maize samples that were, I dunno, thousands of years old, where stuff like this is a problem).
I just realised that I misread the article - 49% was the original sequencing rate, and it’s now gone down to 5%.
Presumably, they’re using some particular technique that meets the requirements for high throughput and reasonable cost.
The DHSC has said: “All viable red-list arrivals samples are being sent for sequencing.”
The implication here is that their technique is less likely to work reliably with the majority of samples that test “positive”. While we can’t necessarily conclude that just because something can’t be sequenced then there was no chance of infection, there is surely some strong correlation between the two things.
Indeed. All I was trying to suggest is that, by not bothering to sequence low concentrations specifically, they are effectively admitting that - even if those samples contained the Armageddon Mutant - the original host had no chance of ever passing anything on to anybody.
I think what people are saying is that it was unprecedented for something with such a low fatality rate. We are absolutely not talking about Bubonic Plague here, or even Spanish Flu. But even if we concede that this was done before … so what? A lot of stupid things have been done before. What conclusions are we supposed to draw from that?
I wasn’t “reading into” people’s statements. My recollection is that people have been pretty clear about their meaning. Do you think anyone here has said “we’ve never had a lockdown in recorded history” or even “we’ve never had a lockdown in modern history”? IMO you’d be hard-pressed to find any conspiracy theorist on YouTube suggesting anything like that.
Anyway, we really seem to be arguing over the meaning of “is” again. I don’t see how this is relevant to the debate over the propriety, usefulness or legality of what is being done today.
@TT posted a video from YouTuber “JP”, which reminded me he has a lot of funny stuff. It turns out he’s not a fan of the cult of COVID. Not sure where else to put this, but perhaps it belongs here:
OK, I thought maybe “Dr. J. Stacey Klutts” was just somebody having a laugh, but it turns out he’s a real person (or at least has an online footprint, which I’m assuming is the same thing). That guy must have got some serious bullying as a kid. But whatever.
I notice first of all that the title doesn’t match the content. There is no advice here about “fighting” Delta. His advice boils down to “be afraid”, and “wear a mask”. I find it fascinating that masks went from being something that might possibly help (but probably wouldn’t) to being our best and last line of defence.
The belief that “Delta” can be fought at all is highly dubious … as indeed was the whole premise of “fighting” COVID from the beginning. The idea of fighting it with masks would be funny if people weren’t taking it so seriously. That’s like bringing a sharpened stick to a nuclear war.
And then there’s the fact that Dr Klutz looks like he’s being sponsored by Coca-Cola and McDonalds. Google him for some better pictures. That guy has a far higher chance of ending up in hospital with a heart attack or a stroke than of anything else. So my advice to the good doctor would be firstly, “Physician, heal thyself!”, and secondly, “Grow a pair of bollocks, or perhaps have look under that roll of fat and you might find you have some”.
I’m just poking fun at the guy, because he’s some sort of idiot savant. This does not constitute a “critique”. I know it’s despicable to mock the afflicted, but he decided to put the article up there (I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he hasn’t merely put his name on a propaganda piece in exchange for payment).
Presumably you disagree, though, that if he weren’t so enormously fat he’d have a lot less cause to be afraid? Healthy people seem to have a risk of ending up in hospital dramatically lower than people in his condition, and if by some misfortune they do end up there, they have about 60-80% greater chance of walking out alive. Healthy individuals accounted for around 1% of the COVID death toll worldwide, which suggests that simply being healthy offers protection comparable to vaccination. So why aren’t we all making sure we’re in optimum health?
Sorry, I don’t see it. How do we defeat “Delta”? What miraculous new technology has Dr Klutz invented for holding back the tide?
As I’ve said before, I’m pretty certain they’ve done no such thing, simply because nobody else has managed to do it. It would be absolutely extraordinary if Taiwan had actually managed to defeat something that is invisible. It’s not impossible, I suppose. Just very, very unlikely. The more plausible explanation is that it’s all a bit of performance art. Given the choice between “the politicians were supremely competent and pulled a master stroke” and “the politicians were lying through their teeth”, I’d generally put money on the latter.
I’m railing against three things here:
The appalling level of hubris that humanity continues to display as we get our collective faces stomped into the mud by Nature, and the idea that our pathetic technology is superior to Hers;
The complete lack of perspective and the misinformation that accompanies it (eg., the idea that children are being decimated by Delta - they are not);
The absolutely laughable idea that masks are going to save us, while we neglect things that might actually help people remain healthy and alive.
If you have some evidence to bring to the table, then let’s see it. Is Delta going to kill us all? Can we do anything about it? Is it all the fault of Trumpists and anti-vaxers? And should we round up all the fat medical-diagnostics professors and send them to boot camp until they’re a normal shape?
Going back to a little exchange I had with @FairComment ~60 to 70 posts ago, he said
but I don’t agree with that sentiment, as I have explained.
Since we’re still at it, I should say that my “no objection” requires some clarification. The overall situation is unprecedented for a pandemic with such a low fatality rate, but smaller scale reactions of a similar nature (such as mandatory vaccination for influenza among health care workers) even when the fatality rate is similarly low or lower are not unprecedented.
She mentions that in Australia there are apparently some people planning to “citizen’s arrest” MP’s for being shoddy MP’s, specifically wrt Covid (allegedly breaking the oath of office). That won’t fly, and I think she knows it. The people planning to do such things should be advised not to, but hey, it’s Oz.
Those things aside, she does make some very good points about informed consent and liability. I actually would recommend the video to anyone interested, with the above caveats.
That is true. But, as you noted, not towards everyone.
Previously, such measures were directed towards certain health professionals or the very vulnerable. Now, we have extreme, unnecessary and disturbing measures directed against all demographics, including those not vulnerable and not requiring any sort of vaccine. For example:
Martin Adel Makary, M.D., M.P.H.: (Dr. Makary is a surgical oncologist and chief of the Johns Hopkins Islet Transplant Center, professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and editor in chief of MedPage Today):
"A tremendous number of government and private policies affecting kids are based on one number: 335. That is how many children under 18 have died with a Covid diagnosis code in their record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn’t researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition.
Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15. I’ve written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal, and without an analysis of relevant risk factors such as obesity.
My research team at Johns Hopkins worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020. Our report found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia. If that trend holds, it has significant implications for healthy kids and whether they need two vaccine doses. The National Education Association has been debating whether to urge schools to require vaccination before returning to school in person. How can they or anyone debate the issue without the right data?"
Pfizer head admits Israel are a vacccinated population due to politics:
“The biggest thing that became clear was Bibi was on top of everything, he knew everything,” Bourla said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “He called me 30 times, asking: ‘What about young people . . . what are you doing about the South African variant?’ I’m sure he was doing it for his people, but I’m also sure he was thinking: ‘It could help me politically.’”
It’s incredulous that there are people who still think this is all about keeping people “safe from Covid.”
There’s a pandemic all right, a pandemic of politicians and bigpharma looking after each other.
An unsavoury alliance, with some unsavoury characters.
I actually would recommend the video to anyone interested, with the above caveats.