Covid vaccines - thread banned users in First Post

Larbre34

Considering you can buy it in Boots for about 1.7c a tablet, I don't think anyone is going to be too successful making it into the forsythia of Covid-19, do you?

Dohnjoe

Good article summing up what we see daily in this thread

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/magazine/anti-vaccine-movement.html

In 2019, even before the pandemic struck, the World Health Organization listed growing vaccine hesitancy as one of its top 10 threats to global health. W.H.O. officials often refer to the contagion of misinformation that foments vaccine hesitancy as an “infodemic”: mountains of incorrect and sometimes flagrantly conspiratorial information about diseases that leads people to avoid lifesaving medical practices, like the vaccines used to fight them. Now the pandemic has given anti-vaccine advocates an opportunity to field-test a variety of messages and find new recruits. And one message in particular seems to be resonating widely: Vaccines and vaccine mandates are an attack on freedom.

Although it is convenient to refer to anti-vaccine efforts as a “movement,” there really is no single movement. Rather, disparate interests are converging on a single issue. Many reject the “anti-vaccine” label altogether, claiming instead to be “pro-vaccine choice,” “pro-safe vaccine” or “vaccine skeptical.” For some, there may be a way to make money by pushing the notion that vaccines are dangerous. For politicians and commentators, the “tyranny” of vaccine mandates can offer a political rallying cry. For states like Russia, which has disseminated both pro- and anti-vaccine messages on social media in other countries, vaccines are another target for informational warfare. For conspiracy-minded private citizens, vaccine misinformation can be a way to make sense of the world, even if the explanations they arrive at are often nightmarish and bizarre.

The process of swaying people with messaging that questions vaccines is how disinformation — deliberately fabricated falsehoods and half-truths — becomes misinformation, or incorrect information passed along unwittingly. Motivated by the best intentions, these people nonetheless end up amplifying the contagion, and the damaging impact, of half-truths and distortions. “This is a deadly movement,” Peter Hotez told me. “With things like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, we have lots of infrastructure. For this, we don’t have anything.”

This part on Wakefield demonstrates how fanatical some of these individuals can become:

"The modern iteration of the anti-vaccine movement is often traced to 1998. That February, a group of doctors and scientists held a news conference at the Royal Free Hospital in London. They had potentially incendiary findings to discuss, which were about to appear in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal. Their paper speculatively proposed a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, the first dose of which is commonly given to children during their second year of life, and regressive autism, a mysterious condition whose prevalence seemed to be spreading. The single vaccine against the three viruses, the paper’s authors suggested, might cause an inflammatory disease of the gut, and the resulting intestinal dysfunction could affect the brain’s development. “I cannot support the continued use of the three vaccines given together,” Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist who had led the research, said. “My concerns are that one more case of this is too many.”

His words still reverberate around the world. Other skeptics had objected to vaccines over the course of the 20th century — for example, blaming the whooping-cough vaccine for causing neurological problems in children. But the medical establishment convincingly disproved the idea that the whooping-cough vaccine could lead to lasting neurological damage. By contrast, the doubts Wakefield expressed about a relatively new childhood vaccine — the combined MMR shot had been introduced in Britain only in 1988 — prompted a wave of fear about vaccines that continues to this day.

Measles immunization rates quickly dropped in parts of London, and within years, outbreaks began occurring in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. What seems to have been lost on the general public and the media was just how weak, scientifically speaking, The Lancet paper about the MMR vaccine really was. The study, which involved only 12 subjects, was so small as to render firm conclusions impossible. It had no comparison group of nonautistic children, and the subjects were not chosen randomly, a flaw in the study that could have possibly introduced significant bias into the results. At best, the paper should have been used to spur stronger studies that confirmed or refuted its speculation. Instead, many media outlets, including “60 Minutes,” treated Wakefield as one side in an ongoing scientific debate about MMR vaccine safety, when in reality there wasn’t much debate at all among most scientists.

Wakefield’s position started to unravel in fairly short order. In 2001, after he declined to conduct a larger study to substantiate or refute the contents of The Lancet study, the funding for his work at University College London dried up, according to Mark Pepys, then head of the university’s department of medicine at the Royal Free campus, and Wakefield left his job there. In February 2004, a British investigative journalist named Brian Deer began publishing what would become a series of damning articles in The Sunday Times of London and later The BMJ, formerly The British Medical Journal. His investigations revealed apparent conflicts of interest and included, among other shortcomings, evidence of what he said was scientific fraud: Medical records suggested that some of the children had developmental problems before they received the vaccines. Deer also found that Wakefield’s work had been funded by a lawyer representing parents of autistic children who thought they had been harmed by vaccines; the lawyer needed evidence to support the claim that vaccines had damaged the children he represented and had paid Wakefield to find it. The month after Deer’s first article appeared, 10 of Wakefield’s 12 co-authors from the original 1998 paper issued a “retraction of an interpretation.” “We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism,” they wrote.

In 2010 — the same year that a whooping-cough epidemic in California led to the death of 10 infants, nine of them unvaccinated, and also sent more than 800 people, most of them young children, to the hospital — Britain’s General Medical Council stripped Wakefield of his medical license. He had breached medical ethics by subjecting children to unwarranted and potentially painful procedures, the council charged. Soon after that, The Lancet retracted the 1998 paper, which a British gastroimmunologist described in testimony as “probably the worst paper” ever published in the journal’s history.

In the early 2000s, Wakefield landed in Texas, where he worked for one autism-related charity and co-founded another. He still has an ardent base of supporters and, where he can find a receptive audience, gives talks about the supposed dangers of vaccines. Those appearances have included speaking to the Somali immigrant community in Minneapolis that, some years after his visits in 2010 and 2011, experienced a measles outbreak stemming from a decline in vaccinations; and video Q. and A. sessions for paying members at his film-production website.

Wakefield has also directed films such as “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” a 2016 documentary that, along with other familiar anti-vaccine attacks, charges that the C.D.C. is hiding data showing that vaccines are dangerous. The documentary was scheduled to run in that year’s Tribeca Film Festival, which was co-founded by the actor Robert De Niro, who has an autistic son; De Niro then pulled the film after an uproar. And yet “Vaxxed” was featured on Amazon Prime’s home page for a time. It was finally removed from the streaming service after the California congressman Adam Schiff publicized its presence there in 2019. Even as at least 16 well-designed epidemiological studies by different researchers around the world, using different methods, have failed to find a link between vaccines and autism, Wakefield still contends that vaccines are dangerous and that he’s the victim of a smear campaign. (Wakefield did not respond to requests for comment made through his publisher and his film-production website.)"

^^^

Nice piece of propaganda there!

Completely ignores those of us who had genuine issues with a product that was rushed into being released on to the general public without full long term testing, plus the fact that its use was extended to include many millions who would have received little or no benefit from taking it, in fact the risks have been proven to be higher than the benefits for many groups.

Excess deaths! still running above average, why?

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120434397#Comment_120434397

Are excess deaths still running above average?

Not in Scotland in February 2023, and aren't they highly vaccinated?

February’s ASMR was 6% below the five year average. This is the best measure to use to track excess deaths as it is more accurate as it takes into account the growing and ageing population.” 

Respiratory deaths (such as influenza and pneumonia or chronic lower respiratory diseases) are close to average levels again, after the first major increase since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/news/2023/excess-deaths-in-february-at-lowest-level-for-a-year

Just one month you find!

Excess Deaths, as reported here has Ireland as the fourth highest in the EU

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/irelands-excess-mortality-rate-fourth-highest-in-eu-1438817.html

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120434623#Comment_120434623

And what exactly? Are you making a specific point about Ireland or vaccines? Because in the article you linked highly vaccinated Spain is at the bottom of the list. So if you are making a specific point about Ireland it would seem to undercut any argument linking it to vaccines.

You do realise some country must be #4 on the list? In and of itself, it means nothing.

You have also picked just one month, December 2022. Not even the entire year. And my post was in reply to your claim that excess deaths were still running above average. So how does December 2022 trump February 2023? It doesn't, which is why I picked the latest available figures I could find from a highly vaccinated country.

And the article even says: However, Mr Donnelly said the estimates of excess mortality rates for recent weeks were “reported with some uncertainty and should be interpreted with caution”.

Are those figures age adjusted? Because when the figures for England were age adjusted for 2022 it showed no real increase in excess mortality.

So actually the article you linked appears to undercut your position, not support it.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120434623#Comment_120434623

What does this have to do with vaccines?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120434397#Comment_120434397

I haven't seen you express any genuine issue or concern in this thread.

Excess deaths! still running above average, why?

Explained multiple times in this thread

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221

Healthcare crisis. Lasting effects of pandemic (and Covid) and several other factors.

I have always been a pro-vaccine individual, had all childhood shots a available in my time , I get annual influenza shot, have had course of Hep A/B vax, Rabies shots for travel etc, Cholera protection, all saving me from developing these conditions.

I also had 4 Covid shots, and thought all ok. But then I developed an accelerating form of neurological disease which is still under evaluation, and my consultant neurologist asked me in detail about the timing of the vaccines, and she is strongly of the opinion that they triggered my progression of disability, and said that she and her colleagues have been reporting an upsurge in autoimmune neurological conditions, which seem to relate to the timing of vaccines, with subtle symptoms reported to commence about 2 weeks post a booster vax

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120434397#Comment_120434397

The risks have not proven to be higher for many groups. Your statement is false and without foundation.

You are using the current state of play - a highly vaccinated population with Omicron in circulation - to rewrite history in an utterly disingenuous way. Just because the vaccines would not be recommended in that situation for certain groups in 2023 does not and cannot retrospectively invalidate what was done in 2021.

The vaccines were rolled out in a population that was not highly vaccinated and Delta was in circulation.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120434949#Comment_120434949

That's a difficult situation... I hope you are getting the best of care.

One question - you may not know answer or want to discuss further, no worries.

When you say "triggered progression of disability", did they explain that to you as something that was there dormant and 'triggered' by the vaccine? And in other people may have been triggered by another event such as infection or accident?

AerLingus747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120435530#Comment_120435530

Also add to that... the vaccines pretty much eradicated the original strain (which is was designed to do) and pretty much eradicated the Alpha variant also, with very good results against the delta variant...

To say it wasn't a successful vaccine is just outright dis-ingenious.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120435951#Comment_120435951

This is incorrect, what actually happened was that as each variant came along, it simply out-competed the previous variant to become dominant in each wave, the vaccine did NOT eradicate any variant. each variant was replaced by another one. Alpha had already replaced the original Wuhan variant before the vaccines even left the factory.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120435564#Comment_120435564

Therein lies the mystery, I reported that I had subtle symptoms going back decades, so obviously I very likely have an underlying issue. She seemed to be saying that in those who have a vulnerability the Covid vax challenges the immune system to accelerate symptoms, and she pointed to booster shots seeming to be the trigger.

It’s a very complex situation, I knew in the oast couple of months I had symptoms I couldn’t quite ignore, and then I had a bad fall at home, ending up knocking myself out, waking up in a pool of blood and unable to move any limb at all for sone time. Thought I’d broken my neck and would be found well decomposed after somebody got worried that I wasn’t replying to texts! 😱

I had to accept I could no longer function normally and took myself in a taxi to Blackrock ED, where they admitted me for 2 weeks and did lots of tests. However the previous resident neurologist had left and not been replaced, and I had previously attended him for something that seemed unrelated, and he touched abnormalities in brain MRI and wanted me followed up, but then he left and seemingly scans he had ordered and which were taken at the Beacon have disappeared into the the ether.

The admitting general medicine consultant had to call in a visiting neurologist from another hospital, she was hot onto Covid vaccines playing a part in an upsurge in neurological symptoms that she and her colleagues are encountering. She mentioned present scan being consistent in appearance with MS but that it can only be diagnosed by mapping at minumum of two subsequent scans and that it can take further scans to make a definitive diagnosis. There are, of course, other autoimmune mediated similar conditions, so will take further tests to evaluate, and I’m to be followed up by the neurologist at her extremely busy clinic.

AerLingus747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120436164#Comment_120436164

given COVID was suppressed for a period of time in the UK right after the vaccine rollout, before they opens back up boarders again which allow Delta and Omicron variants to enter, proves your theory is false

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120435951#Comment_120435951

To say that it was the vaccine that eradicated each of those covid variants is outright disingenious. The dogs on the street know that it was Omicron that defeated covid and the governments and vaccine manufacturers were sure to be there to take the credit for it.

Here's the timeline that proves this:

-2020 Covid hits

~May-Sep 2021: Vaccine rollout

17 Dec 2021: Government announce lockdown due to unprecedented cases/hospital/ICU figures

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/4174f-new-public-health-measures-announced-friday-17-december/

19 Dec 2021: Omicron becomes dominant strain

https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/03d57-statement-from-the-national-public-health-emergency-team-sunday-19-december

21 Jan 2022: "Ireland drops most Covid restrictions in wake of Omicron Storm"

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/ireland-set-rapidly-drop-almost-all-covid-19-restrictions-2022-01-21/

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120439040#Comment_120439040

Your cherry picked time line leaves a lot out.

Nowhere does your linked article state that "Government announce lockdown due to unprecedented cases/hospital/ICU figures."

The government had started the process of lifting restrictions coming to Autumn of 2021 before Omicron hit. And the reason why we went into lockdown in December 2021 was because of uncertainty about Omicron's severity. If we waited 2 weeks to impose restrictions and Omicron turned out to be severe \ escape vaccine protection versus severe covid it would be too late.

If you look at what happened in Hong Kong when Omicron hit a large group of unvaccinated vulnerable demographic, you will see that vaccines played an essential role in ending the restrictions without significant loss of life.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-61586600

Cawlurs, I’m tucked into the snuggest, most luxurious bed in a giant hotel room, overlooking a picturesque lake.

View from my room.

and especially for Ray Darcy, an even most complex button controlled loo. He’d end up a very wet, powdered, wind-blown man at the end of the chosen procedure.

Vaccinated people have different "long covid" symptoms than unvaccinated.

I think that it is these reports that "[Deleted User]" neurologist's are looking at.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/longcovid/103708?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Patients with functional neurologic disorder (FND) after SARS-CoV-2 infection had different symptoms than people with FND after COVID vaccines, retrospective data showed.

Patients with post-COVID FND tended to be older, had more insidious onset, and had higher disability, according to Araceli Alonso-Canovas, MD, PhD, of Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal in Madrid, and co-authors.

Those with FND after COVID vaccination more closely resembled classic FND: they were younger, had an acute onset, and tremor was the most common phenotype, the researchers reported in Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatryopens in a new tab or window.

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120439065#Comment_120439065

Nowhere does your linked article state that "Government announce lockdown due to unprecedented cases/hospital/ICU figures.

Of course it was because of unprecedented cases, do you think they were doing it for the fun of it?

The government had started the process of lifting restrictions coming to Autumn of 2021 before Omicron hit. And the reason why we went into lockdown in December 2021 was because of uncertainty about Omicron's severity

This is absolutely not true. There were over 3000 daily cases on the friday that they reintroduced restrictions. Omicron only made up 33% of those:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211217195701/https%3A//www.independent.ie/news/cases-will-break-all-records-pubs-and-restaurants-to-close-at-8pm-as-part-of-new-restrictions-until-january-30-41159555.html

>>mod snip<<

@Marcus Antonius discuss the topic inline with the Charter and without accusations of shilling or about posters needing to be spoon-fed information because a poster doesn't agree with you.

HS

patnor1011

Just accept that Omicron was the covid-killer and stop shilling for the government/vaccine manufacturers.

On a lighter note Omicron was not only covid-killer, it seems it also become a profit-killer.

How could anyone claim vaccines eradicated covid is a mystery since they were unable to prevent infection or transmission and were only supposedly good at reducing symptoms - and even that worked for some people and did not worked for the other people.

patnor1011

Even the fiercest vaccine advocates started to be hesitant about recommending boosters. Remember Dr Paul Offit?

In April 2021, Offit had this to say about the mRNA jabs:

Certainly, no one would have predicted that these mRNA vaccines would have worked as well or been as safe as they are… I don’t think you could have devised a vaccine that appears to be more perfect.

Less than two years later, Offit rejected more doses of those “perfect” vaccines.

For everyone. Even the immunocompromised.

But even more stunning than Offit’s rejection were the words he used:

“Given the lack of data, I don’t think it’s fair to say to people, ‘Inject yourself with a biological agent,’” said Dr. Paul Offit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/health/covid-booster-older-immunocompromised.html

(article is behind paywall but quick google will offer several ways how to solve this and read it)

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120440015#Comment_120440015

Well, if he thinks the orginals are perfect and do an effective job... that would be a factor in not recommending boosters.

What is his position on whether to be vaccinated at all?

I suspect strongly in favour.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120439562#Comment_120439562

I explained why they did it... precaution for the surge expected from Omicron which had already started and there was uncertainty about its impact. Nowhere did I say anything about doing it for the fun and no in good faith reading of my post could interpret it that way. An obvious attempt at deflection.

And if you look at another highly vaccinated country such as Denmark they did not lockdown for Omicron. Same vaccines and viruses there but their health service in better shape to run the risk. We had no margin for error if Omicron panned out badly.

And if you actually look at Hong Kong and not just ignore it as you are trying transparently to do - it is clear why vaccines were needed even versus Omicron.

There is abundant established evidence on this thread of the effectiveness of vaccines versus severe covid, including severe covid from Omicron.

AerLingus747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120439040#Comment_120439040

no, what's disingenuous is your cherrypicked timeline with Irish centric events and mapping it as to what happened on a global scale.

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120441247#Comment_120441247

Nothing cherrypicked about it. That's the timeline and you are more than welcome to insert whatever you think I'm omitting that proves the vaccines cured covid. It should be easy to show how the ever virtuous governments and bleeding heart vaccine manufacturers came to save us from the tyranny of this once in 100 year naturally occurring virus 🙄

BoxcarWilliam99

Luke O'Neill lied repeatedly on TV and radio regarding vaccines

Leo Varadkar and Michael Martin both lied numerous times about same.

Trump lied intentionally or not

Biden lied intentionally or not

Fauchi lied intentionally or not

Many media heads wrote and spoke untruths during the pandemic .

Not everyone believes everything the talking box in the corner tells them .

https://m.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/varadkar-says-5pc-unvaccinated-causing-a-lot-of-the-trouble-in-covid-fight-41065615.html

Fighting Tao

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120441935#Comment_120441935

The main point in that article is that 5% of the population were taking up 50% of the ICU beds occupied due to having Covid. So the other 95% of the population were responsible for the other 50% and that is for having Covid, and any other illness/injury that required ICU treatment.

So where is the lie in that 5% of the population is “causing a lot of the trouble”?

BoxcarWilliam99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120442236#Comment_120442236

Leo said we wouldn't have restrictions if everyone was vaccinated. Lies

We were told lie after lie by the likes of Luke O'Neill and co.

Pure bluffers.

I believe he himself went onto to have 2 full doses and multiple boosters and caught COVID 3 or 4 times anyway .

His Twitter feed from 2020 through 2021 is a wall of pseudo science and false claims .

https://twitter.com/laoneill111/status/1376972312487006219?s=20

We now know that this is completely false.

What other data about vaccinations and long term effects will we eventually discover to also be false.

patnor1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120441247#Comment_120441247

Your argument might be applicable with a little twisting and creativity if you stick to Irish centric events but is completely moot when used on global scale. There are plenty of countries which did little to none covid vax so according to your logic they should be swamped and ravaged with covid (they are not obviously).

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120442241#Comment_120442241

This is blatant misrepresentation.

What he said was:

“Unfortunately, the 5pc that are not are causing a lot of the trouble, about 5pc are not fully vaccinated but about 50pc of people in hospital and ICU are not fully vaccinated. So even that 5pc can create an awful lot of difficulty,” he said.

Mr Varadkar said he hopes more restrictions will not be imposed before Christmas. He said the situation on further restrictions will be assessed in “two weeks’ time”.

“But what I would say to people who are not vaccinated, 5pc of our population is unvaccinated and if everyone was vaccinated, we wouldn’t be imposing the restrictions we are now.

You have entirely failed to show how this was a 'lie' - which meant at the time he knew it to be untrue. You haven't even tried to make that case. Nowhere in the linked Irish Independent article does it discuss the position that this was a lie; linking it with your comments is misrepresentation and creates a completely misleading impression.

You haven't even shown that when the claim was made at the time, it was false based on the best available information. Or even that it was false at the time! When those statements were made, for the vaccination versus pre-Omicron variants, there was blocking immunity. Subsequently it was found that the immunity waned over time. But that was the basis on which the statements were made.