I’ve consistently been on the bearish end of the spectrum throughout this pandemic but there are a few people out there like Geert Vandenbossche and Luc Montagnier pushing Doomsday theories and I think they are not reputable, I think they’ve gone right off the deep end.
What does worry me is that this pandemic in general needs to be treated almost as a war, it needs to involve a multi-pronged strategy including vaccines of both current and future generation and the search for treatments, plus a range of non-pharmaceutical interventions. I don’t see that seriousness of policy anywhere, even in the countries which have handled things best.
That’s not true Tim, hospitalizations and deaths are rising in Israel. Why do you think they are urgently administering booster shots to the over 30s? They would hardly be doing that to deal with mild illness.
This here is just bullshit. And they will inevitably have to roll back on it. It has to be Great Barrington Declaration ideology.
There’s a guy involved in all these decisions, Robert Dingwall, who has been consistently vaccine-sceptical and pollyannaish. He seems to be a right loon.
There is the not so trivial issue of preventing economic collapse, hard to keep up the debt driven stimulus of the past 18 months. The US jobs report came out this morning, 235k jobs added versus an expectation of 750k. So we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, nobody will accept going back to lockdowns, but the economic recovery could be stalling.
I think we are in uncharted waters as regards vaccination and how things will evolve. This is the biggest vaccination effort by far in human history with a completely new approach, it is very unwise imo to assume we are winning the war, we could be only at the first water break.
Two children out of every million infected end up in ICU. The vast vast majority do not get seriously ill and at least half have no symptoms whatsoever. From CDC data about 5 times that number (almost all males) in the 12 to 24 age group end up with myocarditis after vaccination. Yes there is a risk of myocarditis as well with Covid, but not if you don’t develop illness.
If you are a parent you have to weigh up those risks, it’s not the simple equation you think it is.
This was already posted, the people reporting that are alarmist and don’t understand basic statistics. There is an expectation of breakthroughs causing severe illness but the numbers per booster were statistically insignificant.
Israel will do what Pfizer tell them as they are the test case country for them. Boosters appear to be working to reduce infections, despite Delta, which is a positive but likely unnecessary.
More broadly, Israel is not the most vaccinated country on earth and hasn’t been for a long time. The point on antibody levels declining is interesting but didn’t represent a material hit to reducing severe illness. And whilst they were quicker, that doesn’t mean that they are the only sample to take. In other countries we were also vaccinating the most at risk in January, with nursing home residents also don’t and dusted in that month. There is currently a nursing home in Longford with an outbreak of 15 cases in a 114 bed nursing home. Afaik, all are self isolating in the nursing home. I guess we shall see how the vaccines hold up ultimately but they appear to be doing so here still with the most vulnerable cohort.
Partly this and because they naturally want lower infections.
The statistics do not show that 8 months that there is a significant weakening of vaccine efficacy against severe illness, which is the main point of them.
Israel are not the only country in the world, if there was a material issue with this, we’d have seen this already in the U.K., US, and Europe who were vaccinating the most at risk profile of people in December and January as well. We aren’t, severe illness is still being dominated by unvaccinated persons.
Beach coffees, 15 minutes alone on a rock, no human contact. 5km in place. Back home before you have to check in on the facial recognition app or the cops will bust you
According to Leslie Cooper, cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, myocarditis is seen in between 1% and 2% of Covid cases and myocarditis in vaccinated people is in order of 1 in 100,000. In Israel the rate is around 1 in 50,000.
And according to the CDC’s actual study - as opposed to VAERS - getting Covid unvaccinated raises the risk of myocarditis x 37 times for 0-16 year olds compared to not having Covid.
Again, VAERS is not in any way a reliable source because it is highly abused by anti-vaxxers.
Stockholm Correspondent Report 
