I sleep an hour at a time because of my medication as many know. I was notified that Joe Rogan caught COVID. That led me to Twitter . And the variety of lines that republicans are pushing on social media.
I got stuff like a list of 50 crackpots which they tried to use to say their anti-vaccination propaganda was as legitimate as my support for vaccines. I pointed out that they were not representative of professors of medicine nor of epidemiologists. I used sources to expose them as frauds and crackpots. One was a psychiatrist who denied that the novel coronavirus actually was real. I got anecdotes like all of my friends got the shot and got really sick. Therefore, the vaccine doesn’t protect people. What does that mean ? Did they simply get a side effect from the vaccine? Did they get breakthrough cases ? I got a chart of vaccinated people who were breakthrough cases which the person tried to use to say that 94% of vaccinated people got the novel coronavirus. I disabused him of that notion.
Then another person trying to say you should use natural antibodies. Don’t go to the hospital then. Then I had people trying to say that the reason why more of the population of the country is not vaccinated is because of African Americans. I pointed out that when controlled for education, African Americans are vaccinated at the same rates and that some people can’t miss work and are afraid of getting sick as a side effect of the vaccine. I pointed out republicans are vaccinated at much lower rates. They tried to deny that the vast majority of the hospitalized and dead were not vaccinated. They tried to support this by referring to England and Israel. I put those back in context with reliable sources .
Another person tried to use polio derived vaccine as an argument against vaccines when it was the success of the polio vaccine which led to the eradication of polio and not needing to be vaccinated against it. Now I have somebody else who says that the government should have no say about your body (but cf what about pro-choice and drugs) . I said that the federal government is not going to force you to get vaccinated, but other people are free to deny you entrance and other companies may be influenced by their insurance company to require you to be vaccinated.
Another person tried to say the polio vaccine is completely different than the COVID-19 because of the number of years it wax worked on, but I pointed out that mRNA technology has been worked on by scientists for over a decade.
Then the same person said that anybody who died with a co-morbidity should not have their death attributed to COVID-19. I pointed out that if somebody screwed with the inhaler of an asthmatic and the asthmatic had an asthma attack and took their inhaler and died, then the district attorney would prosecute them, possibly for murder. This person claims to be pro-vaccine.
A couple of people claimed I could not cite any source for saying that 95% of the hospitalized and 97% of the deaths were from people who were not vaccinated (plus minus epsilon ) and there are no shortage of sources to back that up. I did.
Another person showed that Valley Health hospital had 51 people who were hospitalized who had not been vaccinated and 30 people who had been vaccinated. Even so, only 37% of the hospitalized were vaccinated and there are more people vaccinated than unvaccinated in Winchester VA (barely) which is apparently where it is.
Another person said that Rogan wasn’t lucky, survival rate is 99%. I said surviving playing Russian Roulette isn’t lucky; survival rate is 5/6 , 83%. Delta has a huge viral load and an R0 between 7-9. Go to a COVID party and take unnecessary risks. Fuck around and find out.
Another person pushed the Regeneron monoclonal antibodies and that DeathSantis is doing a great job because of that. I pointed out that treating people individually when the virus is spreading exponentially isn’t a good plan. That’s not mentioning how expensive it is per person and it’s not available in unlimited quantities.
Thursday, Sep 2, 2021 · 1:25:20 PM +00:00 · Dem
Now somebody brings up that the horse deworming medication was adapted for humans and got a Nobel prize in 2015. She didn’t mention that it was for TREATING PARASITES (deworming but for humans) in humans, not for COVID-19. Good grief, the stupidity burns. I pointed out that it was not for COVID and that it is primarily for animals other than humans. I was ready to use an extremely helpful comment posted by Laurel in CA .
Thursday, Sep 2, 2021 · 4:09:40 PM +00:00 · Dem
If republicans had gotten vaccinated in larger numbers earlier, then there is a good chance that we could have achieved herd immunity. Prior to the new variants making their appearance, breakthrough cases were less common. The earlier we got to herd immunity, the more under control the virus would have been. While breakthrough cases are more frequent with the Delta variant , the unvaccinated still are significantly more likely to catch it. Delta could have been more rare and more under control. Instead, Delta made its appearance here and found a country very vulnerable to it.
The longer that a virus circulated among a population, the more likely it is to mutate. I am not going to address convergent evolution here. Suffice it to say that simplistic views of mutations may not always be the most realistic. While there appears to be a republican apologist here, there can be no doubt that republicans have made this pandemic much, much worse. I don’t see how anybody could dispute that and I certainly have no idea why anybody here would want to.
Friday, Sep 3, 2021 · 12:33:35 AM +00:00
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Dem
I just hope (and I certainly tried my best) that I represented you all well . My field is math, not biology or viruses or epidemiologists or medicine. I have tried to learn from the many brilliant people here who are far smarter than I am and who know a million times more about this topic than I do. Where I was wrong or made mistakes, I apologize and am truly sorry. I am grateful to all the people who have shared their expertise and knowledge with me. Thank you very much!!