[thepossum]

Looking at the (very preliminary) estimates of excess mortality due to the Pandemic (not the virus) and the likelihood that it is a massive underestimate of cumulative effect for generations to come; and with al respect due to Mr Gates and his interests in treating/vaccinating during pandemics; would it not be preferable to prevent them, or possibly have more measured and less brutal approach to what I still believe has been shown to be a very mild (relatively speaking) illness

...and, at the risk of making people angry (which is inevitable), but I hope not misunderstood, many younger healthy people in lower income economies have had generations of opportunity cruelly denied, to look after the wealthier parts of the world (on average)

The implications of that last statement is that you try to prevent or be less brutal

I realise I am arguing out of my professional area - its the Water Cooler after all - but are there not many other very serious "pandemic like" things that kill us on a massive scale without the world having to stop. I wonder why?

Come to think of it they often take a long time to kill us, often indirectly, and we are kept alive as long as possible to sell maximum product

[hrothgar]

thepossum, on 2022-May-17, 02:34, said:

Looking at the (very preliminary) estimates of excess mortality due to the Pandemic (not the virus) and the likelihood that it is a massive underestimate of cumulative effect for generations to come; and with al respect due to Mr Gates and his interests in treating/vaccinating during pandemics; would it not be preferable to prevent them, or possibly have more measured and less brutal approach to what I still believe has been shown to be a very mild (relatively speaking) illness

...and, at the risk of making people angry (which is inevitable), but I hope not misunderstood, many younger healthy people in lower income economies have had generations of opportunity cruelly denied, to look after the wealthier parts of the world (on average)

The implications of that last statement is that you try to prevent or be less brutal

I realise I am arguing out of my professional area - its the Water Cooler after all - but are there not many other very serious "pandemic like" things that kill us on a massive scale without the world having to stop. I wonder why?

Come to think of it they often take a long time to kill us, often indirectly, and we are kept alive as long as possible to sell maximum product

My father is dead
My partner's father is dead
One of my best friends from undergrad is dead

I so wish you had joined them

COVID is one of the most deadly infectious diseases that the world has seen in centuries
The only reason that the death count was a low as it was is the heroic measures that were taken
And this ignores all the folks who contracted long COVID with sever impacts on health and mental faculties.

And oh, by the way, COVID is not over

The long term impact of multiple waves of reinfection and long COVID could be earth shattering

[Winstonm]

thepossum, on 2022-May-17, 02:34, said:

Looking at the (very preliminary) estimates of excess mortality due to the Pandemic (not the virus) and the likelihood that it is a massive underestimate of cumulative effect for generations to come; and with al respect due to Mr Gates and his interests in treating/vaccinating during pandemics; would it not be preferable to prevent them, or possibly have more measured and less brutal approach to what I still believe has been shown to be a very mild (relatively speaking) illness

...and, at the risk of making people angry (which is inevitable), but I hope not misunderstood, many younger healthy people in lower income economies have had generations of opportunity cruelly denied, to look after the wealthier parts of the world (on average)

The implications of that last statement is that you try to prevent or be less brutal

I realise I am arguing out of my professional area - its the Water Cooler after all - but are there not many other very serious "pandemic like" things that kill us on a massive scale without the world having to stop. I wonder why?

Come to think of it they often take a long time to kill us, often indirectly, and we are kept alive as long as possible to sell maximum product

You might ask North Korea how ignoring the pandemic is working out for them.

[thepossum]

Seriously an attack that obnoxious from a so called intelligent person

Vicious personal and ignorant

A nasty privileged piece of ***. Stop with it

You didn't even read what I said. Do you not care about those less privileged than you who never get a chance of anything let alone a life

Stop the vicious attacks

I don't like responding personally but you keep opening the personal attacks Richard. You know that Spanish style palace you built yourself. Go and talk to real Latins. Ignorance in the extreme

Some of you need to get out of your closetted little worlds sometimes. You too Winston

And as for wishing me dead as far as I can see I am one of the few remnants of an educated humane caring part of the human race on this whole planet. I see little evidence anywhere. You want that dead I'm over it. You are all welcome to each other

I will not list all the personal attacks. Some very creepy and sinister over the last few years. But if there were a way to deal with cowards the old fashioned way lets bring it on Richard. Coward. The moderators will likely side with the trolls and the bullies and get me cancelled. That your end game. Ive experienced it all from some cowards on some forums already.

A few of those attacks suggested knowledge of me well beyond a bridge forum and public information from my name and business

Care to explain yourself hrothgar? are your really who your ID says on your account or posing as someone. or am I dealing with a hacker or some other form of creep on the platform or in the world

The little trolls and gaslighters will be laughing about having elicited a perfectly reasonable human response from a normal human being with feeling and emotion

Congratulations you win your sick games. Whoever is behind it

Who is behind it - whatever it is - did I call out a bit too much corruption and evil on this and other platforms from people wh should have greater integrity and ethics - to call it out themselves. My knowledge, my training my intellect and ability to question and criticise fairly and objectively was too much of a threat to too many with their noses in the trough. Is that it. Or is it all more evil than simple greed

Possibly my last ever comment here is to paraphrase one of the Bush Presidents. If you aren't with me you are against me and against right and good in this world. Can I count on any of you as allies in the fight for justice and against evil in this word. Instead of being constantly viciously trolled and gaslighted and made to look as if I have a problem in front of other people - rather than being the most human of them

I may not have a Professorship or even a PhD in anything (or everything) but I know enough about some evils that stop at nothing to set good people against each other, to sow distrust. You with me. Not all of us are naive and trusting. We have experience and evidence beyond most peopple's comprehension. We are easy pickings to be silenced by corrupt power and evil

Winston. You should know by now that trying to attack me with association with the likes of North Korea is totally arse about

Thanks for ruining my lunch and day and causing such an extreme emotional response while out in a public place and in front of important people in my life - people who sadly still don't understand what is and has been going on

What hurt even more is that I thought I had written so much educated well thought out informed ***** that even you wouldn't go after me that way. I appreciate people's emotions are raw. But there was no excuse to misrepresent what I wrote that way. That is part of what we (good people in this world) have been up against with being set against each other in such cruel ways

For those who don't know who I am or can easily work it out through their data gathering and analytics I am starting to think my feeling of security behind an alias and avatar would be better served by announcing who I am to the whole world and telling everyone the truth about my life, despite what others may say or write, and tell the world the level of power and evil (intentional or not) that people like me face every day of our lives

[Winstonm]

I love it when it snows in May.

[hrothgar]

Possum

I don't have the slightest clue who the f*ck you are.
I certainly haven't tried to find out.

I have very real suspicions about what you are.

I think that you're mentally ill.
I think that you're on serious meds
I think that you go off them every so often and - when you do - it is quite apparent in your postings.
And, right now, you look to be headed into a manic cycle.

In the past, you explained how you keep getting persecuted and hounded off of different forums and different clubs keep giving you the boot and you can find partners to play F2F

Sure, I guess that it is possible that there is some kind of grand conspiracy at play.
However, I know what Occam's Razor suggests...

[hrothgar]

Possum

Another point that you really might want to consider

In the course of the last day or so, you started by making an incredibly ignorant comment about the nature of COVID

> what I still believe has been shown to be a very mild (relatively speaking) illness

You followed this up by comparing the consequences of this disease - which many of us have felt on a deeply personal level - and contrasting this some set of ignorant, abstract, and unmeasurable benefits that some other people may or may not enjoy in the future

> many younger healthy people in lower income economies have had generations of opportunity cruelly denied

And then you follow this all up with a whole bunch of self aggrandizement

> as far as I can see I am one of the few remnants of an educated humane caring part of the human race on this whole planet.

> Can I count on any of you as allies in the fight for justice and against evil in this word.

> My knowledge, my training my intellect and ability to question and criticise fairly and objectively
> was too much of a threat to too many with their noses in the trough.

And conclude with a bunch of conspiratorial nonsense

> tell the world the level of power and evil (intentional or not) that people like me face every day of our lives

So, sorry if I didn't react in the way you want me to

If you want to have real conversations about this sort of stuff, learn to frame your discussions such that you don't immediately tick people off

[y66]

Eric Topol said:

https://erictopol.su...apitulation?s=w May 15, 2022

The United States is now in the midst of a new wave related to Omicron variants BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 with over 90,000 confirmed new cases a day and a 20% increase in hospitalizations in the past 2 weeks. That belies the real toll of the current wave, since most people with symptoms are testing at home or not testing at all; there is essentially no testing for asymptomatic cases. The real number of cases is likely at least 500,000 per day, far greater than any of the US prior waves except Omicron. The bunk that cases are not important is preposterous. They are infections that beget more cases, they beget Long Covid, they beget sickness, hospitalizations and deaths. They are also the underpinning of new variants.

Meanwhile, the CDC propagates delusional thinking that community levels are very low (as my friend Peter Hotez called the “field of greens”) while the real and important data convey that transmission is very high throughout most of the country. Not only does this further beget cases by instilling false confidence, but it is conveniently feeding the myth that the pandemic is over—precisely what everyone wants to believe.

Quote

But well beyond the use of boosters and vaccines, and easy, rapid access to Paxlovid, we absolutely need an aggressive stance to get ahead of the virus—for the first time since the pandemic began—instead of surrendering. That means setting priorities, funding, and the realization, unfortunately, that the pandemic is far from over. Our Covid vaccines and medications are an order of magnitude more effective than what we have for influenza, but even our current level of deaths (we have already had over 175,000 Covid deaths in 2022), no less what may be in store, is still >10-fold in excess of seasonal flu (about 30,000 per year). That is totally unacceptable, nearly totally preventable loss of lives at scale.

No, we don’t have to “live with it” as it currently hurts us.

Humans naturally get tired, but they shouldn’t be foolish or outsmarted by a virus.

[johnu]

thepossum, on 2022-May-18, 06:04, said:

A nasty privileged piece of ***.

I rarely agree with your comments, but I have to agree with this.

[y66]

Anthony Fauci said:

I think there is understandable confusion when people hear about people rebounding. Don’t confuse that with the original purpose of what Paxlovid is meant for. It’s not meant to prevent you from rebounding. It’s meant to prevent you from being hospitalized. I’m 81 years old, I was at risk for hospitalization and I didn’t even come close to being sick enough to be hospitalized.

https://www.nytimes....896ed87b2d9c72a

[PassedOut]

My youngest grandson, four years old, got his first Covid shot today. He was all smiles when he showed me the Band-Aid on his leg. "Now I can go shopping," he told me.

[barmar]

PassedOut, on 2022-June-30, 16:26, said:

My youngest grandson, four years old, got his first Covid shot today. He was all smiles when he showed me the Band-Aid on his leg. "Now I can go shopping," he told me.

Did he also get money from the Covid fairy?

[PassedOut]

barmar, on 2022-June-30, 21:42, said:

Did he also get money from the Covid fairy?

He must have!

[thepossum]

PassedOut, on 2022-June-30, 16:26, said:

My youngest grandson, four years old, got his first Covid shot today. He was all smiles when he showed me the Band-Aid on his leg. "Now I can go shopping," he told me.

The world is doomed

[pilowsky]

The pandemic is far from over. SARS viruses continue to mutate in the wild and hospitals are still full of cases.
In Australia today 3899 people are in hospital.
To give some idea of the strain this puts on the health system the average major hospital in Australia is 800 to 1000.
If SARS is occupying 4-5 of our major hospitals - to say nothing of the strain on staff - there is additional suffering because of the displaced activity.

On a positive note, work is continuing on the development of new and better vaccines.
On Wednesday a group in the Netherlands reported the development of a highly effective (in hamsters) formulation that can be given intranasally.

The method uses a live attenuated virus (somewhat like the Sabin vaccine for Polio - the pink liquid on a teaspoon I had as a child).

You can read the article here.

Quote

Highlights
•Intramuscular injection or intranasal inoculation of a recombinant NDV expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was immunogenic in hamsters.

•Intranasal vaccination provided highest levels of protection against clinical signs, as measured by activity wheel measurements.

•NDV constructs encoding the spike of SARS-CoV-2 may be attractive candidates for development of intra-nasal COVID-19 booster vaccines.

According to the authors: "Naturally occurring lentogenic (low-virulent) NDV strains, such as LaSota, are used worldwide as live-attenuated vaccines to control Newcastle disease in poultry."

[Cyberyeti]

One of my friends went to a convention in the Netherlands last weekend, came back with Covid which his housemate now also has despite attempts to isolate (fortunately more like a cold than anything else in both cases).

My doctor's surgery is barely functioning due to Covid absences.

We're experiencing what looks like the start of another spike, our hospitalisations are similar to Australia's per head. We have 2.62 times the population, and 2.54 times the hospitalisations.

I had my 4th jab recently (now completed the set for the UK, 2 OAZ, Pfizer, Moderna).

I have to go to a funeral at the start of next week, many of the mourners will be elderly, I worry about whether there will be spread there.

[Winstonm]

Cyberyeti, on 2022-July-08, 02:11, said:

One of my friends went to a convention in the Netherlands last weekend, came back with Covid which his housemate now also has despite attempts to isolate (fortunately more like a cold than anything else in both cases).

My doctor's surgery is barely functioning due to Covid absences.

We're experiencing what looks like the start of another spike, our hospitalisations are similar to Australia's per head. We have 2.62 times the population, and 2.54 times the hospitalisations.

I had my 4th jab recently (now completed the set for the UK, 2 OAZ, Pfizer, Moderna).

I have to go to a funeral at the start of next week, many of the mourners will be elderly, I worry about whether there will be spread there.

Good luck . I had a similar experience but fortunately the service was outside but it was in 2020 so still uncomfortable during the heart of the pandemic.

[y66]

Eric Topol said:

From The BA5 story

The Omicron sub-variant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen. It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility, well beyond Omicron (BA.1) and other Omicron family variants that we’ve seen (including BA.1.1, BA.2, BA.2.12.1, and BA.4). You could say it’s not so bad because there hasn’t been a marked rise in hospitalizations and deaths as we saw with Omicron, but that’s only because we had such a striking adverse impact from Omicron, for which there is at least some cross-immunity (BA.1 to BA.5). Here I will review (1) what we know about its biology; (2) its current status around the world; and (3) the ways we can defend against it.

...

My recent posts about our Covid capitulation and the risk of reinfection have tried to hammer home the imperative of next-generation vaccines (pan-coronaviruses, as described above, and nasal) but the frustration keeps mounting as we now confront unsatisfactory deliberations on variant chasing. Meanwhile, new versions of the virus (think: the time it took from Omicron BA.1 to get to BA.5) are accelerating and we’re not done yet, by any stretch. It’s frankly sickening to watch this virus continue to outrun us, knowing we are so damn capable of getting ahead of it.

[johnu]

In the US, people with new Covid infections are recommended to take Paxlovid to minimize symptoms. The last couple of months, people with compromised immune systems are being scheduled to get shots of Evusheld, a monoclonal antibody medicine that is supposed to prevent symptomatic Covid in a large percentage of cases and is supposed to be effective against the newest BA.4 and BA.5 strains.

[thepossum]

johnu, on 2022-July-08, 13:14, said:

In the US, people with new Covid infections are recommended to take Paxlovid to minimize symptoms. The last couple of months, people with compromised immune systems are being scheduled to get shots of Evusheld, a monoclonal antibody medicine that is supposed to prevent symptomatic Covid in a large percentage of cases and is supposed to be effective against the newest BA.4 and BA.5 strains.

I am sure there will be increasing drug-cocktail options available as time goes on

In other news billions of people worldwide face serious food insecurity - maybe not as profitable

Very few industries (other than maybe software technology) keep using the failure of previous versions to sell upgrades