All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (15 Viewers)

[Maxp]

I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?

 

[MT15]

That's not accurate because we all know that China has lied and continues to lie about their real death toll.

So what? Honestly what could possibly be your point here? Good lord. The death toll in the US is unacceptable, there’s no way to possibly spin it, yet here we are.

 

[wardorican]

On the flip side, what is those over priced ventilators were actually needed (we all know now they were not)? How much blow back from being cheap and not securing these when everyone was terrified of this virus? That is rhetorical, because there is always blow back when you are trump.

I am all for looking at these deals and if Navarro screwed up and if they were grossly negligent and done in bad form, can him, file charges, whatever needs to be done depending on what the facts show. Not political venom just facts.

I found myself chuckling as I typed that because Washington is a terrible place, full of the very worst of us. Everything there is political venom.

The answer is simple. You still procure them, then investigate and litigate any wrong doing.

 

[wardorican]

The poll doesn't define who "the media" is and people have very different ideas on who "the media" is. Some even think "the media" is "left and liberally leaning" outlets only. So this poll doesn't really tell us anything useful or conclusive.

The poll had a small sample size "It is based on a representative sample of 2,493 registered voters nationwide."

Here's another piece of not so useful or conclusive information from that very same poll:

​

Available might be the key word.

I wonder how many focused on Safe and how many focused on Available. The Trump admin tend to chase their own tail.

 

[SaintForLife]

So what? Honestly what could possibly be your point here? Good lord. The death toll in the US is unacceptable, there’s no way to possibly spin it, yet here we are.

If we knew China’s actual death toll then your statement isn't accurate. That's not spin. That's just saying your claim isn't true.

 

[Ayo]

I am not going to be taking the vaccine this early.



And with a Louisiana link

 

[The moose]

If we knew China’s actual death toll then your statement isn't accurate. That's not spin. That's just saying your claim isn't true.

We have more deaths than all of Asia!


So what does one country in Asia matter for?

 

[MT15]

I’ve just about given up trying to figure out some of these arguments, SFL. I never said anything about China or whether their death totals are accurate or not, they most assuredly aren’t, but our totals are very likely underestimated as well. Especially early on there was a huge spike in death certificates that listed “pneumonia” as cause of death over a typical year for NYC.

What I said was that the US accounts for 25% of the world’s deaths. So make it 20%, or 15%, it’s still unacceptable and an utter failure by this administration. We are still logging around 1,000 deaths a day. This is the equivalent of three airliners crashing every day and we don’t even really acknowledge how messed up that is.

 

[LA - L.A.]

If we knew China’s actual death toll then your statement isn't accurate. That's not spin. That's just saying your claim isn't true.

China's number of COVID-19 deaths would have to be 846,362 to match our per capita death toll, and that's based on our under reported numbers.

That's a lot of bodies to try to hide from the eyes in the sky.

 

[lurk]

I am not going to be taking the vaccine this early.

It has been suggested that I no longer post on this site, and I will honor that request. I thought it necessary to say a few things about the current vaccine situation before I do, and your post gave me the perfect jumping off point for that.

That first tweet puts a rather misleading spin on this. I don't know anything about who that tweet is from, so I'm not suggesting he's doing it purposefully; rather I'm just pointing out that that's what the tweet does, intentional or not. The only place that I've seen the cause of the stoppage being referred to as a "serious side effect" is in that tweet. The reality is that there has been zero data released at this point that says anything about what precipitated the pause other than the fact that it is an "unexplained illness." An unexplained illness certainly could be a serious side effect from the vaccine; it could also be something 100% unrelated to the vaccine. It also does not have to be severe or serious. The unexplained illness is literally just that, and unexplained illness. Someone could have had a vaccine reaction; they also could have eaten potato salad that sat too long at a picnic (or a host of other things). This sort of stoppage to investigate an unexplained illness happens somewhat frequently in trials like this and doesn't really mean anything at all for the ultimate safety of the therapy or the ultimate outcome of the trial. Essentially the trial will be paused, the illness will be investigated to see whether it's related to the therapy or not, and then the trial will resume unless the outcome of the investigation warrants the trial to be paused for longer or halted completely. Considering the ridiculous amount of political and other non-scientific pressure being applied to these vaccine trials from the outside, we should actually feel quite good that they 1) followed proper protocol here and 2) reported it publicly. They are trying to do things right, as they should, and that means even more in the present situation than it would normally. We should be applauding that rather than trying to sensationalize it (again, a comment in general and not directed specifically at you or at that tweet). I will post AstraZeneca's statement below, which I find to be a fair and accurate statement on the matter at this time (apologies for the part that is highlighted - a columnist added that emphasis, and I couldn't find a copy without it). I would imagine AstraZeneca will follow up with more details once they have investigated the situation.

Changing topics, I would like to say a few words about the Moderna vaccine as it relates to the others. I hope that we can have an adult conversation about pros and cons and how stuff works in the real world and how things work in medical science without jumping to ridiculous black or white conclusions here.

In lieu of a very lengthy, technical explanation, I will just say that if multiple vaccine candidates emerge from the clinical trial process as safe and effective (and there appears to be a decent chance at this point that multiple ones will), my suggestion to you would be that you seek out any of them but the Moderna one. I have tried to craft the briefest, simplest explanation I can below.

Some History
The Moderna vaccine is the first vaccine created using mRNA manipulation to be brought through trials. This sort of gene therapy technology was touted as something that would change the entire landscape of medical science when it first began around 40 years ago, but when therapies began being brought to trial years ago, the results were a disaster (I'm not aware of any of these being vaccines). What would happen is that the therapy would behave OK in the majority of people, but then in tiny subsets it would cause catastrophic results. Those subsets often didn't emerge until decently along in the trial process. There was even a large scandal at the University of Michigan where a lab intentionally falsified many of its results to hide that this was happening. Numerous retractions, resignations, and ended careers resulted from it. The end result was that no therapies were deemed safe enough to gain approval, and trials of these sorts of therapies all but died out for more than a decade. They did eventually resume, and the methods that are being used are not identical to the methods used a couple of decades ago. The first therapy using this technology finally gained FDA approval in 2017, if I remember correctly, so it's been a very long haul (almost 40 years) to finally get a therapy of this technology approved.

Concern #1
The first concern with the Moderna vaccine is an acute reaction occurring in a microscopic subset of people like I mentioned above. While the trial will do everything it can to eliminate this as a possibility, there is no guarantee that it can hit every possible corner. In fact, medical history is rife with examples of significant to catastrophic complications occurring in truly unexpected and unimaginable ways once new medical technology is widely implemented post-trial. It is because of how unexpected and unimaginable these complications can be that it is so difficult, if not impossible, to design a study that covers all these bases. The trials underway on the other vaccines obviously carry this same risk of missing something. The difference is that every single one of those other vaccines uses a technology that we have decades of experience with in the real, post-approval vaccine world. This enables us to much better construct a trial to check those boxes, and it also helps us to much better anticipate and treat an acute reaction should one occur.

Concern #2
The second concern is the concern that people who get this vaccine could develop demyelinating disease or other conditions in 5/10/20 years. When you start messing with RNA and start sending edited RNA into the body, this is a very legitimate concern (and one that I'm quite surprised to not hear getting more discussion - I think the lack of which speaks to how off the radar this sort of situation is for the majority of physicians and researchers). I'll refrain from going into a lengthy explanation about how and why this could occur, but this is particularly an area that suffers from our not having decades of experience with this sort of technology. The therapies that are currently approved using RNA editing technologies are largely approved as late stage, last resort cancer therapies (oftentimes referred to as "cancer vaccines," although they aren't actually vaccines). There are a couple others for extremely serious, debilitating, non-cancerous conditions, but they too are used mostly as a last resort. The point here is that we aren't terribly concerned about the possibility of these down-the-road effects when we treat qualifying patients with therapies like this because these are patients who wouldn't generally live any length of time without them (a lot of times they won't be around that long even with them). Five years is a very long time for most of these patients - to say nothing of ten or twenty. Basically, if you get really lucky and the therapy gives you five years instead of six months and then you develop demyelinating disease and die from it instead of the cancer, you've still gotten four and a half years longer than you would have had without it (the same applies to the leukemia and such that people often develop years down the road because of their chemo). This sort of trade off is seen as a positive and is not a hurdle to regulatory approval for therapies in these sorts of patient populations (nor are down-the-road effects typically studied with these sorts of therapies until there's a push to expand access - again, for obvious reasons). This is a completely different scenario than giving a vaccine to an otherwise healthy individual; and, as such, the allowability threshold is simply not the same, as I'm sure you can understand. As you can see from the timeline above, it is not possible for these effects to show up during the clinical trial because we do not have the luxury of trialing these vaccines for the amount of time needed to demonstrate whether or not they occur and, if so, on whom and under what conditions.

When I WOULD Take the Moderna Vaccine
Again, it is important for anyone reading this to be an adult and be able to put the above in context. The above is a list of theoretical concerns that are based on medical knowledge and medical history rather than on any specific data from this vaccine trial. It is very important to understand that THERE IS CURRENTLY NO DATA TO SUGGEST THAT THE MODERNA VACCINE IS NOT SAFE OR EFFECTIVE. The concerns laid out above could come to fruition all or in part, or they could fail to materialize entirely. Again, there is no data to suggest the existence of any of the above at the present time. Out of an abundance of caution, my suggestion to you (and to myself and my family as well) is to seek out any of the older technology vaccines that show similar safety and efficacy should multiple vaccines gain approval rather than take a chance on the unknowns of the mRNA vaccine. If the Moderna (mRNA) vaccine is the only vaccine that gains approval (or if it is shown in trials to be significantly safer and/or more effective than the others), then you should take the Moderna vaccine, as my family and I will also do in that situation. The potential longterm effects of this virus are real, and as such must take precedent over the theoretical. We have forced ourselves into a corner in this country where a vaccine is the only possible way out. As such, the decision to simply forgo a vaccine is not an option if we wish to return to "normal" ever again.


Stay safe and healthy and make good choices. Peace.

 

[Optimus Prime]

If Trump has followed mask protocol from the beginning how different would things be now?
==============

Hours before President Trump arrived in Winston-Salem, N.C., for a campaign rally on Tuesday, the county’s top Republican official issued a warning: The president better be wearing a mask.


“It’s been ordered by the governor,” David Plyler, a Trump supporter and GOP chair of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, told the Winston-Salem Journal. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in North Carolina, do as the governor says.”


But when the president emerged Tuesday evening to address a cheering group of supporters, his face was fully exposed, a likely violation of the state’s coronavirus rules..........

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/09/trump-rally-masks-nc/

 

[MT15]

According to NYT the suspected adverse reaction is transverse myelitis.

“A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the participant who experienced the suspected adverse reaction had been enrolled in a Phase 2/3 trial based in the United Kingdom. The individual also said that a volunteer in the U.K. trial had received a diagnosis of transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections. However, the timing of this diagnosis, and whether it was directly linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine, is still unknown.

Transverse myelitis can result from a number of causes that set off the body’s inflammatory responses, including viral infections, said Dr. Gabriella Garcia, a neurologist at Yale New Haven Hospital. But, she added, the condition is often treatable with steroids.”

 

[Optimus Prime]

That's not accurate because we all know that China has lied and continues to lie about their real death toll.

I agree with this. What China did or did not do is or is or is not lying about has zero to do with how we handled this

 

[SaintForLife]

I agree with this. What China did or did not do is or is not lying about has zero to do with how we handled this

I specifically referenced the death toll and not Trump's response.

 

[brandon]

I specifically referenced the death toll and not Trump's response.

It's been explained to you more than once that even if China's death toll is inaccurate, the United States death toll still represents a grossly disproportionate amount of the worldwide death toll.

Thus, China's accuracy in reporting, or lack thereof, is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

What is relevant to the topic is the reason why the United States death toll represents a grossly disproportionate amount of the worldwide death toll.

And the answer to that question is because of the Trump administration's failed response.

@Optimus Prime's post is therefore relevant. Yours is an obfuscation. The end.

 

[CoolBrees]

So if China’s death toll was 1 million, how would that change our response, or lack there of?

Honestly I don’t understand what point you are trying to make. That they lied? Ok? It doesn’t change the fact we had two months head start on the virus and pissed it away because your favorite “ President” said “it’s just the flu” and then it would be “gone just like that. Like a miracle” or it would be “gone by April.” Or that “we have 15 cases and it will be none soon.”

 

[EmBeeFiveOhFour]

My favorite part of the bungled American COVID response is when the White House issued what appeared to be reasonable guidelines for a phased reopening and then the head guy just immediately started cheering for people to "liberate!!!" themselves from those standards, ensuring that they were destined to fail. That was pretty good.

In hindsight it really is a miracle that we made it from 2017 to 2019 without some other society collapsing disaster that the big guy could have golfed and tweeted through.

 

[Optimus Prime]

This also sounds true and it’s damning if it is
=======================

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book "Rage."

"This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward on February 7.

In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. "Pretty amazing," Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times "more deadly" than the flu.

Trump's admissions are in stark contrast to his frequent public comments at the time insisting that the virus was "going to disappear" and "all work out fine."

The book, using Trump's own words, depicts a President who has betrayed the public trust and the most fundamental responsibilities of his office.

In "Rage," Trump says the job of a president is "to keep our country safe." But in early February, Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, and in March, admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic.".......

‘Play it down’: Trump admits to concealing the true threat of coronavirus in new Woodward book | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward...

cnn.it

 

[insidejob]

This also sounds true and it’s damning if it is
=======================

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and "more deadly than even your strenuous flus," and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book "Rage."

"This is deadly stuff," Trump told Woodward on February 7.

In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. "Pretty amazing," Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times "more deadly" than the flu........

‘Play it down’: Trump admits to concealing the true threat of coronavirus in new Woodward book | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward...

cnn.it

The WH press pool needs to hammer Barbie about this and not let her brush it off. It should be the only question every single reporter asks until she gives a real answer.