Christians and the Covid Vaccine

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darinhouston
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:53 am

Something just occurred to me that might help Homer understand where some of us are coming from. I am just as skeptical about other pharmaceuticals and our genetically modified food supply and all the processed foods, estrogenic compounds from plastics and pesticides and other toxins leaching into our food and water supplies and their effect on humanity and that sort of thing. That doesn't mean I don't take medications sometimes and I even eat fast food from time to time. But, there are some I refuse to eat/take and others I strive to avoid except where necessary.

Also, as I alluded to previously, here is a key part of the Planned Parenthood vs Casey decision where the Supreme Court after Roe vs. Wade explicitly rejected past restraints on personal liberty such as the Jacobson case in the name of medical treatment as a State interest in the protection of life....
Roe, however, may be seen not only as an exemplar of Griswold liberty but as a rule (whether or not mistaken) of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, with doctrinal affinity to cases recognizing limits on governmental power to mandate medical treatment or to bar its rejection. If so, our cases since Roe accord with Roe's view that a State's interest in the protection of life falls short of justifying any plenary override of individual liberty claims. Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health, 497 U.S. 261,278 (1990); Cf., e.g., Riggins v. Nevada, 504 U.S. ____, ____ (1992) (slip. op., at 7); Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210 (1990); see also, e.g., Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952); Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 24-30 (1905).

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darinhouston
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:10 pm

Homer asked for stratified data from the UK report. So, this shows it in some greater detail...

https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/negati ... mething-is

Negative Efficacy, or: Something Is Wrong With The Vaccines
Brief notes on the latest Public Health England vaccine surveillance report.

The latest Public Health England vaccine surveillance report finds higher rates of infection among the fully vaccinated than in the unvaccinated in all age brackets over 30.

For the fully vaccinated aged 40–70, infections are nearly 100% higher:

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These are numbers for the four weeks from 13 September to 4 October, and they are substantially deteriorated from the month prior. The same chart for cases from 30 August to 20 September, for example, looks like this:

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The reports themselves have no explanation, pleading merely that this phenomenon “is likely to be due to a variety of reasons, including differences in the population of vaccinated and unvaccinated people as well as differences in testing patterns.” But the line promoted by John Burn Murdoch, a Financial Times reporter, is that this is down to a “population data glitch.”

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If you use population estimates from the Office of National Statistics (=smaller numbers of unvaccinated), rather than the National Immunisation Management Service (=larger numbers of unvaccinated), it’s true that the vaccines start to look better against infection again. What’s not clear, is whether this picture is any more accurate. Nobody disputes that the NIMS data overstate the numbers of unvaccinated in some age cohorts, but we don’t know by how much, and the ONS estimates have their own problems.

The most you could say, is that vaccine efficacy against infection has faded to the point that it is beyond the ability of government statistics to measure it.

But it’s actually worse than that. Public Health Scotland publishes similar vaccine surveillance statistics based on their own data. Their most recent report shows the same trend, though less pronounced: Higher rates of infection for the unvaccinated in the 0–29 bracket, and higher rates of infection for the fully vaccinated in all ages over 30:

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It’s almost like the vaccines are fading not to a baseline of zero, but to a point of negative efficacy. At any rate, vaccine fade is surely the story here: Differences in the testing of school-age children aside, this would be why the fully vaccinated youngs in Scotland and England still have lower rates of infection. They were vaccinated more recently than older age groups, and their SARS-2 antibodies have yet to vanish entirely.

In the coming month or two, the greater part of vaccinations in Europe and North America will also begin to age out of their efficacy window, as they already have in Scotland and England. This will happen directly in the depths of winter, at the height of coronavirus season.

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darinhouston
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Thu Oct 28, 2021 10:12 pm

Here are two related articles on the theory of "Original Antigenic Sin" and why these mass vaccinations could be doing more harm than good.

Mass vaccination may permanently attenuate population-wide immunity to SARS-2: Original Antigenic Sin and the Public Health England vaccine surveillance data.
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/mass-v ... ermanently

More on Original Antigenic Sin and the Folly of Our Universal Vaccination Campaign: A deeper look at a decisive limitation of our adaptive immune systems
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/more-o ... ic-sin-and

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darinhouston
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:08 pm

https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz ... -case-rate

Horowitz: Irish county with 99.7% vaccination rate has highest COVID case rate
Daniel HorowitzOctober 28, 2021

With 99.7% of adults in the Irish county of Waterford having received the COVID shots, they have the highest per-capita case rate of COVID anywhere in the country. Are they now going to suggest it's the fault of the 0.3%?!

The Irish Times reported last week that with one Waterford city district at a 14-day incidence rate of 1,486 cases per 100,000 of the population, Waterford has the highest incidence rate of anywhere in Ireland. The COVID case rate is three times the national average, which in itself has been increasing steadily in recent weeks, despite 91% of Irish adults being vaccinated. However, Waterford takes the cake.

"Waterford has the highest rate of vaccination in the country with 99.7 per cent of adults over the age of 18 (as registered in the last census) fully vaccinated," reports the Irish Times. "The county has gone from having one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 infection in Ireland to one of the highest."

How can a vaccine that is this leaky, and apparently even counterproductive, continue to be pushed on a population even if it had zero side effects? How many more examples of this do we need to see?

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According to Our World in Data, most Irish began to get vaccinated in April/May, which is exactly when we saw a reversal of fortunes, with more cases than we've seen in months.

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What else have we seen rise at the same time? You got it. COVID cases.

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And no, it's not just mild cases. Ireland has the highest number of people in the hospital with COVID since March, and the trajectory is getting worse. This is with the highest vaccination rate in the EU – over 90% of those over 16 – and it's particularly bad in the most vaccinated county of Ireland. The state's chief medical officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, said he was "increasingly worried about the rising incidence of the disease nationwide" and that the primary focus "must be to protect the most vulnerable from Covid-19." He then proceeded to blame the unvaccinated! Gee, if just 9% of those over 16 in the country are unvaccinated and just 0.3% in the worst area, what percentage of the vulnerable do you think are not vaccinated?! And wasn't the vaccine designed to protect "the most vulnerable?"

At some point, there is nowhere to run or hide from the botched vaccine that not only fails to stop transmission, but causes viral immune escape and makes more virulent variants. A recent analysis of the emergent A.30 strain published in Nature shows that "the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 variant A.30 is heavily mutated and evades vaccine-induced antibodies with high efficiency." This is what happens when you "shoot at the king and miss," so to speak, by fighting a virus with weak, narrow-spectrum, and waning antibodies. We've gone backward. U.K. data already shows that the vaccinated are infected at a greater rate per capita – in some cohorts twice the rate – for every age group over 30.
During the past 4 weeks in the UK, for all ages > 30 years, the vaccinated were more likely to become infected.

For those between 40 and 80 years old, the vaccinated were more than twice as likely to test positive.

https://t.co/kNbFuwr7JV?amp=1
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It's becoming clear that not only does this vaccine create greater transmission, but it also fails to protect against critical illness, especially for those who need the protection the most. Even the studies that continue to rely on old data – before the vaccines fully waned – show that the protection against critical illness doesn't really work for the immunocompromised.

A new study from Sweden published as a preprint in the Lancet claims that the vaccine efficacy against serious illness is still holding up. There's just one catch. "The effectiveness against severe illness seems to remain high through 9 months, although not for men, older frail individuals, and individuals with comorbidities," conclude the authors. Well, isn't that why we needed a vaccine in the first place? Even the Swedish study shows that after 210 days, there is zero efficacy against symptomatic infection, after which there seems to be negative efficacy. Researchers found just 52% efficacy against severe illness in all men after six months, which means you can no longer count on it for protection.

It's also important to remember that many people in Sweden – more than most other countries – already had the infection, possibly asymptomatically. So, it's possible that the efficacy of the shots is being overstated because some of those people benefited from natural immunity.

Thus, where are we nine to 12 months after the shot? Negative efficacy against symptomatic infection for all, as witnessed by the hard data in places like the U.K. and Ireland, and very low and spotty efficacy for serious illness, going down to zero for those who need it the most. But this is not cost-free. Who is to say that the effectiveness against severe illness won't go negative as well, following some sort of pattern of antibody dependent disease enhancement? Moreover, who's to say more mass vaccination of children and boosters for adults won't create even more viral immune escape that will strengthen the virus and subject people to the risks of the shots without even protecting them for another month against these new self-perpetuated mutations?

This week, the Irish parliament was issued a "stark" warning from health officials about the growing threat of the virus. During sane times, policy leaders would reject the definition of insanity by engaging in introspection and changing course from existing failed policies. Yet in their warped minds, no matter how much the vaccines make the virus worse, you can always vaccinate more! So long as there is a single human being who didn't receive the latest number shot, there's always a way to project the viral enhancement on those who didn't create it.

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darinhouston
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Sun Oct 31, 2021 2:17 pm

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ium=social

LEARN MORE
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lani ... 4/fulltext

Vaccinated People Also Spread the Delta Variant, Yearlong Study Shows
Suzi Ring
October 28, 2021, 11:00 AM CDT

People inoculated against Covid-19 are just as likely to spread the delta variant of the virus to contacts in their household as those who haven’t had shots, according to new research.

In a yearlong study of 621 people in the U.K. with mild Covid-19, scientists found that their peak viral load was similar regardless of vaccination status, according to a paper published Thursday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal. The analysis also found that 25% of vaccinated household contacts still contracted the disease from an index case, while 38% of those who hadn’t had shots became infected.

The results go some way toward explaining why the delta variant is so infectious even in nations with successful vaccine rollouts, and why the unvaccinated can’t assume they are protected because others have had shots. Those who were inoculated cleared the virus more quickly and had milder cases, while unvaccinated household members were more likely to suffer from severe disease and hospitalization.

“Our findings show that vaccination alone is not enough to prevent people from being infected with the delta variant and spreading it in household settings,” said Ajit Lalvani, a professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London who co-led the study. “The ongoing transmission we are seeing between vaccinated people makes it essential for unvaccinated people to get vaccinated to protect themselves.” [darin: I have to say this is an absurd conclusion in light of the study, but the study itself is important]

Vaccination was found to reduce household transmission of the alpha variant -- first discovered in the U.K. in late 2020 -- by between 40% and 50%, and infected vaccinated individuals had a lower viral load in the upper respiratory tract than those who hadn’t had shots. The delta variant has been the dominant strain globally for some time, however.

The research also showed that immunity from full vaccination waned in as little as three months. The authors said there wasn’t enough data to advise on whether this should lead to a change in the U.K.’s booster policy, where third doses are currently being offered to older and more vulnerable people six months after their second shot.

Six months was an arbitrary time period chosen following early data from Israel on the effectiveness of boosters, but there is no reason to believe they would be less effective if given earlier, said Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London and investigator on the study, at a press briefing Thursday.

The booster program could help halt the virus, as extra shots or repeated infections tend to lead to longer immunological memory, potentially protecting people for up to a year, Lalvani said. More data are needed to confirm this, he said.

The authors didn’t analyze infections based on the type of vaccines people had received. Maria Zambon, head of influenza and respiratory virology at the U.K. Health Security Agency, noted that there are still more than 300 vaccines in development, and said it’s possible that future generations of shots may be better at preventing transmission.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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darinhouston
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Mon Nov 01, 2021 10:47 am

Science!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... i86RcOYX1c
Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States

S. V. Subramanian<corrauth.gif>1,2 and Akhil Kumar3

***At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.***

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darinhouston
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Wed Nov 03, 2021 7:46 am

The CDC is now trying to downplay the relative value of naturally acquired immunity to drive vaccination of that group. That is deplorable. Lest their efforts persuade anyone, I found this excellent and rational critique comparing that CDC "study" and the larger and more reliable study from Israel (which coincidentally is consistent with everything every known or understood about immunity in the past).

https://brownstone.org/articles/a-revie ... y-studies/

A Review and Autopsy of Two COVID Immunity Studies
Martin Kulldorff


By Martin Kulldorff November 2, 2021 Public Health 10 minute read

How effective is immunity after Covid recovery relative to vaccination? An Israeli study by Gazit et al. found that the vaccinated have a 27 times higher risk of symptomatic infection than the Covid recovered. At the same time, the vaccinated were nine times more likely to be hospitalized for Covid. In contrast, a CDC study by Bozio et al. claims that the Covid recovered are five times more likely to be hospitalized for Covid than the vaccinated. Both studies cannot be right.

I have worked on vaccine epidemiology since I joined the Harvard faculty almost two decades ago as a biostatistician. I have never before seen such a large discrepancy between studies that are supposed to answer the same question. In this article, I carefully dissect both studies, describe how the analyses differ, and explain why the Israeli study is more reliable.

The Israeli Study

In the Israeli study, the researchers tracked 673,676 vaccinated people who they knew not to have had Covid and 62,833 unvaccinated Covid-recovered individuals. A simple comparison of the rates of subsequent Covid in these two groups would be misleading. The vaccinated are likely older and, hence, more prone to have symptomatic disease, giving the Covid recovered group an unfair advantage. At the same time, the typical vaccinated patient received the vaccine long after the typical Covid-recovered patient got sick. Most Covid recovered patients got the infection before the vaccine was even available. Because immunity wanes over time, this fact would give an unfair advantage to the vaccinated group.

To make a fair and unbiased comparison, researchers must match patients from the two groups on age and time since vaccination/disease. That is precisely what the study authors did, matching also on gender and geographical location.

For the primary analysis, the study authors identified a cohort with 16,215 individuals who had recovered from Covid and 16,215 matched individuals who were vaccinated. The authors followed these cohorts over time to determine how many had a subsequent symptomatic Covid disease diagnosis.

Ultimately, 191 patients in the vaccinated group and 8 in the Covid recovered group got symptomatic Covid disease. These numbers mean that the vaccinated were 191/8=23 times more likely to have subsequent symptomatic disease than the Covid recovered. After adjusting the statistical analysis for comorbidities in a logistic regression analysis, the authors measured a relative risk of 27 with a 95% confidence interval between 13 and 57 times more likely for the vaccinated.

The study also looked at Covid hospitalizations; eight were in the vaccinated group, and one among the Covid recovered. These numbers imply a relative risk of 8 (95% CI: 1-65). There were no deaths in either group, showing that both the vaccine and natural immunity provide excellent protection against mortality.

This is a straightforward and well-conducted epidemiological cohort study that is easy to understand and interpret. The authors addressed the major source of bias through matching. One potential bias they did not address (as it is challenging to do) is that those with prior Covid may have been more likely to be exposed in the past through work or other activities. Since they were more likely to be exposed in the past, they may also have been more likely exposed during the follow-up period. That would lead to an underestimate of the relative risks in favor of vaccination. There may also be misclassification if some of the vaccinated unknowingly had Covid. That would also lead to an underestimate.

The CDC Study

The CDC study did not create a cohort of people to follow over time. Instead, they identified people hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms, and then they evaluated how many of them tested positive versus negative for Covid. Among the vaccinated, 5% tested positive, while it was 9% among the Covid recovered. What does this mean?

Though the authors do not mention it, they adopt a de facto case-control design. While not as strong as a cohort study, this is a well-established epidemiological design. The first study to show that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer used a case-control design. They compared hospitalized patients with lung cancer and found more smokers in that group compared to non-cancer patients, who served as controls. Note that if they had restricted the control group to people with (say) heart attacks, they would have answered a different question: whether smoking is a larger risk factor for lung cancer than it is for heart attacks. Since smoking is a risk factor for both diseases, such a risk estimate would differ from the one they found.

In the CDC study on Covid immunity, the cases are those patients hospitalized for Covid disease, having both Covid-like symptoms and a positive test. That is appropriate. The controls should constitute a representative sample from the population from which the Covid patients came. Unfortunately, that is not the case since Covid-negative people with Covid-like symptoms, such as pneumonia, tend to be older and frailer with comorbidities. They are also more likely to be vaccinated.

Suppose we wanted to know whether the vaccine rollout successfully reached not only the old but also frail people with comorbidities. In that case, we could conduct an age-adjusted cohort study to determine if the vaccinated were more likely to be hospitalized for non-Covid respiratory problems such as pneumonia. That would be an interesting study to do.

The problem is that the CDC study answers neither the direct question of whether vaccination or Covid recovery is better at decreasing the risk of subsequent Covid disease, nor whether the vaccine rollout successfully reached the frail. Instead, it asks which of these two has the greater effect size. It answers whether vaccination or Covid recovery is more related to Covid hospitalization or if it is more related to other respiratory type hospitalizations.

Let’s look at the numbers. Of the 413 cases (i.e., Covid positive patients), 324 were vaccinated, while 89 were Covid recovered. That does not mean that the vaccinated are at higher risk since there may be more of them. To put these numbers in context, we need to know how many in the background population were vaccinated versus Covid recovered. The study does not provide or utilize those numbers, although they are available from at least some of the data partners, including HealthPartners and Kaiser Permanente. Instead, they use Covid-negative patients with Covid like symptoms as their control group, of which there were 6004 vaccinated, and 931 Covid recovered. With these numbers in hand, we can calculate an unadjusted odds ratio of 1.77 (not reported in the paper). After covariate adjustments, the odds ratio becomes 5.49 (95% CI: 2.75-10.99).

Ignoring covariates for the moment, we will look at the unadjusted numbers in more detail for illustrative purposes. The paper does not report how many vaccinated and Covid recovered people there are in the population at risk for hospitalization with Covid-like symptoms. If there were 931,000 Covid recovered and 6,004,000 vaccinated (87%), then the proportions are the same as among the controls, and the results are valid. If, instead, there were (say) 931,000 Covid recovered and 3,003,000 vaccinated (76%), then the odds ratio would be 0.89 instead of 1.77. There is no way to know the truth without those baseline population numbers unless one is willing to assume that those hospitalized for Covid-like symptoms without having Covid are representative of the background population, which they are unlikely to be.

With a background population to define a cohort, one must still adjust for age and other covariates as in the Israeli study. Some may argue that the Covid negative hospitalized patients with Covid-like symptoms are a suitable control group because they provide a more representative sample of the population at risk of Covid hospitalization. That may be partially true compared to an unadjusted analysis, but the argument is incorrect as it does not address the key issue of the relevant medical question being asked. There is both a relationship between being vaccinated/recovered and Covid hospitalization and a relationship between being vaccinated/recovered and non-Covid hospitalization. Rather than evaluate the first one, which is of intense interest for health policy, the CDC study evaluates the contrast between the two, which is not particularly interesting.

The CDC study adjusts for covariates such as age, but the procedure does not resolve this fundamental statistical issue and may even exacerbate it. Frail people are more likely to be vaccinated, while active people are more likely to have been Covid recovered, and neither of those are properly adjusted for. With the contrast analysis, there is also more confounding that must be adjusted for: both the confounding related to the exposures and Covid hospitalizations and the confounding related to the exposures and non-Covid hospitalizations. This increases the potential for biased results.

While not the main problem, there is one other curious fact about the paper. Covariate adjustments will typically change the point estimates somewhat, but it is unusual to see a change as large as the one from 1.77 to 5.49 that was observed in the CDC study. How can this be explained? It must be because some covariates are very different between the cases and controls. There are at least two of them. While 78% of the vaccinated are older than 65, 55% of the Covid recovered are younger than 65. Even more concerning is the fact that 96% of the vaccinated were hospitalized during the summer months of June to August, while 69% of the Covid recovered were hospitalized in the winter and spring months from January to May. Such unbalanced covariates are usually best adjusted for using matching as in the Israeli study.

Epidemiologists typically rely on case-control studies when data are unavailable for a whole cohort. For example, in nutritional epidemiology, researchers often compare the eating habits of patients with a disease of interest versus a sample of representative healthy controls. Following the eating habits of a cohort over long periods is too unwieldy and costly, so a questionnaire-based case control study is more efficient. For this immunity study, there is no rationale for a case-control study since cohort data are available from multiple CDC data partners. It is surprising that CDC chose this case-control design rather than the less biased cohort design selected by the Israeli authors. Such an analysis would answer the question of interest and may have given a different result more in line with the Israeli study.

Should the Covid Recovered be Vaccinated?

The Israeli study also compared Covid recovered with and without the vaccine. Both groups had very low Covid risk, but the vaccinated had a 35% lower risk for symptomatic disease (95% CI: 65% lower to 25% greater), which could be indicative that there is also a lower risk for hospitalizations. While not statistically significant, vaccines may provide some additional protection above the already strong protection from natural immunity. If confirmed by other studies, it is then a question of benefits and risks, also taking vaccine adverse reactions into account. For a high-risk person, a 35% reduction is a significant benefit, although much less than the efficacy of the vaccine for those that have not had Covid. For a low-risk person, which includes most people with natural immunity, a 35% risk reduction is more marginal in terms of absolute risk.

As an illustration of this concept, a daily concoction that reduced cancer risk by 35% would be a miracle drug of enormous importance that everyone should take even if it tasted terrible. On the other hand, a cumbersome walking device that reduced the risk of being killed by lightning by 35% would not be appealing. The risk is already minuscule without the device. This example illustrates the importance of not only looking at relative risks but also at absolute and attributable risks.

Conclusions

Concerning the Covid recovered, there are two key public health issues. 1. Would the Covid recovered benefit from also being vaccinated? 2. Should there be vaccine passports and mandates that require them to be vaccinated in order to work and participate in society?

The CDC study did not address the first question, while the Israeli study showed a small but not statistically significant benefit in reducing symptomatic Covid disease. Future studies will hopefully shed more light on this issue.

Based on the solid evidence from the Israeli study, the Covid recovered have stronger and longer-lasting immunity against Covid disease than the vaccinated. Hence, there is no reason to prevent them from activities that are permitted to the vaccinated. In fact, it is discriminatory.

Many of the Covid recovered were exposed to the virus as essential workers during the height of the pandemic before vaccines were available. They kept the rest of society afloat, processing food, delivering goods, unloading ships, picking up garbage, policing the streets, maintaining the electricity network, putting out fires, and caring for the old and sick, to name a few.

They are now being fired and excluded despite having stronger immunity than the vaccinated work-from-home administrators that are firing them.

Author

Martin Kulldorff, Senior Scientific Director of Brownstone Institute, is an epidemiologist and biostatistician specializing in infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. He is the developer of Free SaTScan, TreeScan, and RSequential software. Most recently, he was professor at the Harvard Medical School for ten years. Co-Author of the Great Barrington Declaration. kulldorff@brownstone.org

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Homer
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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by Homer » Wed Nov 03, 2021 11:04 am

Yippee! Both my wife and I appear to have had Covid just before the pandemic began. (there were no tests for Covid being done at the time and we were both negative for the flu). We both have had two Moderna shots, she has had a booster and I'm scheduled for mine next Monday.

The foregoing post is no argument for those who have not had Covid to skip the immunization and gain immunity from getting the disease. It does address the issue of how people who have had Covid but not the shots should be treated.

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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by darinhouston » Wed Nov 03, 2021 2:24 pm

Homer wrote:
Wed Nov 03, 2021 11:04 am
Yippee! Both my wife and I appear to have had Covid just before the pandemic began. (there were no tests for Covid being done at the time and we were both negative for the flu). We both have had two Moderna shots, she has had a booster and I'm scheduled for mine next Monday.

The foregoing post is no argument for those who have not had Covid to skip the immunization and gain immunity from getting the disease. It does address the issue of how people who have had Covid but not the shots should be treated.
I'm glad you're happy about that (not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I'm truly happy if you feel comforted by this). But, this is not meant as an argument for those who have not had Covid to skip vaccines - there is ample other argument for that -- even so, it is still an argument that you cannot trust the positions being taken by public health officials in this situation and should give pause for anyone not in a particular risk category before taking something that could have adverse consequences not only for themselves but also to public health.

Did you know this is the FIRST EVER IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY federally mandated vaccine? Even smallpox and polio, which had a dramatic death rate and affected children greatly. NEVER a federal mandate.

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Re: Christians and the Covid Vaccine

Post by Homer » Wed Nov 03, 2021 7:34 pm

Darin,

As mentioned recently I am recovering from major surgery at OHSU. I was fortunate to get the OK to proceed with the surgery; my surgeon prevailed with the powers that be due to my dire situation (bowel obstruction). The hospital has been overwhelmed by unvaccinated (over 90% of them) Covid patients. And this in a state with a high vaccination rate.

Recently the Eugene Register-Guard published an opinion article written by Brett Sheppard M.D., FACS, William E. Colson chair of Pancreatic Disease Research and professor of Surgery, Division of Gastrointestinal and General Surgery, at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Not pages of statistics, but experience from where the rubber meets the road.

The following is a condensed excerpt from the article; the balance of the article concerned the lack of action by congress:
As a surgeon and chair of Pancreatic Disease Research at Oregon Health and Science University, I and my dedicated colleagues remain tirelessly committed to the health of each patient and, consequently, our entire community.

But that impact — and our entire health care system — is being strained to the breaking point by COVID-19 on one side and congressional inaction on the other.

Start with the pandemic: Beyond the way it continues to rip through our communities, the delta variant has dramatically increased hospitalizations, dominated by the unvaccinated. Everyone here — doctors, nurses and other health care providers — is providing vital care to those critically ill, but the compounding effects are troubling.

Overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases, hospitals have to cancel or postpone surgeries. Anxious about variants, people are delaying routine doctor’s visits, which don’t just include critically important screenings, but the kind of doctor-patient interactions that are an essential part of successful health outcomes for patients and their families.

A massive range of patients are being negatively impacted, from people in Portland to more rural areas across Oregon. We see issues with patients across the entire socio-economic spectrum, including so many patients who have limited ability to get care, not to mention so many of our seniors.

Again, any erosion of the scope of our care cuts across the entire community.

That’s why the time has never been more important for everyone across the state to take the step of getting vaccinated for COVID-19.

If you are already vaccinated, please encourage your family and friends to get vaccinated or, if they are eligible, to get their COVID-19 booster.

Beyond increased protection from COVID-19 for you and people you care about, the vaccine will help ensure that our hospitals can manage not just critical-care cases from COVID-19 but also all of the other patients who require our care, including essential and important surgeries and screenings.

It comes back again to the idea that our individual choice can have wider impact in the community.
And this has been my plea from the beginning. Love your neighbor.

There was no sarcasm intended in my mentioning my, and my wife's vaccination. As octogenarians we can testify that the apparent Covid we had was not fun and no way for a person to seek immunity.

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