Leaderboard
Popular Content
Showing content with the highest reputation on 06/21/21 in all areas
-
Not your post's, my inadequacy at communicating; my intent was to suggest a victim of prostitution is no different to a victim of rape, likewise a vistim of poverty. If I don't get my thought's down quickly I lose my train of thought, hence the brevity.2 points
-
Before I talk a bit more on the study itself I want to take a step back and talk a bit how risks in medical interventions are generally evaluated. The key element here is monitoring certain clinical endpoints, including efficacy of the drugs but also specific indicators of morbidity, for example. In a more general sense, there are no "no effect" endpoints. If you eat a cheeseburger, for example, I could monitor increases in negative biomarkers in your blood, there could be short term shifts in the gene expression of you gut microbiota and so on. However, that tells us little about the risks. As such it would be better to use endpoints such as heart attack and stroke rates and so on. The big issue with long-term effects is that it becomes very difficult to figure out what the causes for a given hard endpoint are, which is why for example nutritional studies, which often are long-term, often do not have clear outcomes. Trials are looking at such outcomes and from that viewpoint the current the current vaccines are no different from other vaccines or therapeutics. You look at endpoints within a given time frame for a given sample size. The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines all fulfil pretty much the same requirements as you typically do not monitor individuals indefinitely after taking a medication. So as such, we can be fairly certain that the the the mRNA vaccines do not seem to have any acute effects and we know roughly as much about long-term issues as for other medication. So what is new regarding our knowledge about concerns regarding this specific vaccine? One risk that folks were concerned years back is the risk that the LNP could distribute their payload throughout the body and enrich in the liver. If the spike protein is formed there, it could result in local inflammation of the organ and liver damage. However, this does not happen. In fact, the Japanese report indicates why, within a relatively short time frame all the mRNA expression is basically gone. So what about the LNP alone? Again, you get a dose, the lipids move through your body and get metabolized. Typically they accumulate in adipose tissue or liver (which for some reason is not plotted, it is higher there than in ovaries, for example). So does this cause harm? The cited study on direct injection of pure LNP indicate that yes, if given in high concentrations they can cause inflammatory responses. However, this itself is not an indicator for adverse health effects. In fact, the paper argues that these inflammatory responses might be why the current mRNA vaccines are so effective (which was a big worry before, the fact that mRNAs are generally not very immunogenic). I.e. the local inflammation caused by LNPs could have been beneficial for efficacy reasons. We do see lower efficacy in the other vaccines, for example. While the study is helpful to highlight the potential to elicit inflammatory responses from LNPs alone, (and therefore nasal delivery is not a good idea) it does not actually suggest health issues. Again, it is about endpoints and what the study measured is not helpful to provide evidence of harm in humans. First, mice are not a a great model for immune responses in humans (which is a common issue with animal models) and second, they injected a very high amount- 10 ug, IIRC which is a huge amount compared to their body weight relative to the amount found in vaccines and the body weight in humans (we are talking over a thousand fold at least if I got my numbers right). Moreover, as you know you only get two injections, so there is no chance for long-term accumulation (as opposed to many of the chemicals we use in personal care products, for example). Thus, if inflammation caused by LNPs resulted in adverse effects you would expect to see most the effects fairly soon (within days) of injection, as the levels after that will gradually decline (rather than increase). The precise rate is not known as they only monitored for two days, but it won't be years. What we do know and expect are inflammation, which are common with most vaccines (as inflammation is the result of the immune system reacting). Mild myocardial inflammation has also been recorded which could be related to LNPs (or the vaccine in general). But again, the endpoints do not suggest significant adverse health effects. Blood clots do not seem to be different between unvaccinated and Pfizer/Moderna vaccinated folks, but seem elevated in certain population subsets in AstraZeneca vaccines, which is likely to related to the adenovirus used (there have been reports in the past for issues with certain adenovirus-based vaccines, but I am not sure what they were in detail and in any case, they are not related to mRNA-based vaccines such as Pfizer/BioNTech. Meanwhile, there are studies (e.g. https://s3.amazonaws.com/media2.fairhealth.org/whitepaper/asset/A Detailed Study of Patients with Long-Haul COVID--An Analysis of Private Healthcare Claims--A FAIR Health White Paper.pdf) showing that even asymptomatic patients might be at risk of having long COVID symptoms, though it is still about double as high in symptomatic patients. So again, we have a vaccine that might cause issues in some folks, but protects them from much bigger harm. And on top, they also protect those that are too stubborn to protect themselves.2 points
-
1 point
-
We have to separate the issues. If we talk about the current vaccine, there are two factors that are relevant. The first is the availability of other vaccines and the respective countries seem to have sufficient access to cover their population with these vaccines. And the second is that currently B.1.617.2 (delta) is becoming dominant in many areas and AZ seems to perform worse than the others. Given the overall risk data, if there was no other vaccine, I would still take the AZ, even if I was in a risk group. Going to adenovirus-based vaccines and therapeutics, I should add that, again, almost everything we put in our bodies does something to it and especially when applied to a large population it is almost inevitable that there will be rare harmful interactions. The goal is therefore not zero events, but to ensure that the overall benefits outweigh the risks for a given population. Moreover, it is important to note that interactions that can lead to harmful events are not the same thing as the harmful event itself, there are mitigation strategies, dosage effects and so on. For example aspirin, causes blood thinning and in theory that could lead to internal bleeding. However, at recommended dosages it is considered to be safe, except for certain folks. In the past some studies indicate that certain adenovirus-based vectors might bind to circulating platelets and getting sequestered. That actually leads to reduced platelet count but not necessarily to clots alone. For that, it has been suggested that the vaccine might form an antigenic complex with platelet factors, resulting in the formation of antibodies against that complex. These antibodies than activate the platelets and initiate a pro-thrombotic response. It is not really my field so I do not know who would be at higher risk for this event and why.1 point
-
Most of the things in the post have been debunked in the past. There is only a small group of researchers (Lynn, Rushton and similar folks) who are still in the camp of strong gender differences. However, most other groups have failed to reproduce such results. What folks have found instead is that for the most part brain dimorphisms do not exist. If one takes a random brain, no one can really predict with any accuracy whether that brain is male or female. The last bastion of these studies are MRI-based, which generates high-dimensional data and allows the distinction of even miniscule differences. On the flip-side we run into statistical issues such as overfitting, which are a common problem with using this kind of data to identify differences (and note, even if we find statistically significant differences in certain areas, it does not necessarily allows us to accurately predict whether a given brain is male or female, the difference would also need to be large enough to make that distinction). However, even MRI fails to be reliable indicator (see David et al. Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 6082 (2018) for a discussion on reporting bias). A recent meta-analysis ( Eliot et al., Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews Volume 125, June 2021, Pages 667-697), the largest of its kind, failed to identified the dimorphisms speculated to exist. In other words, even if the most sensitive means to look at the brain fails to see clear differences, all the wild speculations in the post about these presumably huge gender dimorphisms and then the wild extrapolation regarding to performance are pretty much moot.1 point
-
Given your neg rep to me and disregard for the thoughtful answers already provided, I’m unconvinced you truly are all ears.1 point
-
We’ve been studying mRNA vaccines since 1989. The safety and risk is quite well understood, even if not by you personally.1 point
-
I'll vote for another planetary system, although I am guessing the "little grey guys" are inflatable autopilots, as in "Airplane!" circa 1980. Robotic exploratory craft could have been sent to promising planetary systems a long time ago in the hunt for alien (us) life. Aliens probably were no more successful with their version of SETI than we are, and decided to take an active rather than passive approach to finding life.1 point
-
That was very well explained. Thanks for the insight and informative post1 point
-
It's not just that China as a whole controls the vast majority of the mining. It's also that the top four Chinese mining pools control over 60% of the bitcoin hashrate, and have done so ever since I started tracking it several years ago. https://btc.com/stats/pool Basically, the conditions for a so-called 51% attack already exist and have always existed. These mining pools can wake up any morning they like and steal everyone's bitcoin. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that they haven't done it. Not because they can't. ps -- Just to clarify what a 51% attack is, the idea is that the bitcoin protocol works by consensus. If most miners verify a block, the the block is good. If a bad actor inserts a bad block (containing, say, a transaction to transfer a thousand of your bitcoins to me), the majority of legitimate miners will reject that block and the bad transaction will fail. Now if bad actors take over more than half of the hashrate, they can collude to verify bad blocks and verify fraudulent transactions. Satoshi's original idea was that mining would be done by millions of individuals running PCs in their spare bedrooms, making collusion difficult and control of more than half of the network by bad actors, impossible. What Satoshi did not foresee was the processor arms race in which individuals with PCs have no hope of competing with huge miners who own highly specialized mining rigs. Only the big players can mine bitcoin now, and this has led to centralization. Remember that the entire mythos of bitcoin is that there is no central control. Well as it's turned out in real life, bitcoin is highly centralized after all, and collusion among bad actors is a real possibility. Finally I should mention that mining pools are associations of many independent miners, and it's not clear what kind of centralized control the operators of a pool have over their individual miner participants. So things are not quite as dire as I'm describing, but far more dire than you'd know if you only listened to the claims that bitcoin is decentralized. The publicly available hashrate distribution statistics bear that out.1 point
-
What would that be? Also, it appears you have failed to pick apart my argument and provided detailed refutations. From what I have observed, it appears that you have engaged in a red herring and an ad hominem. I am not interested in arguing in circles with you. I was on onlinephilosophyclub.com and communicated various ideas in relation to the legal system. It appeared that the issue of "epistemological anarchism" (a concept I learned from Wikipedia) came up, whereby I eventually figured out that all legal cases should be ending in a mistrial. With the usage of term "accuracy," it may inferred that I am referring also to "validity." In argumentation, the reasonableness of a claim is related to whether or not it is sound and valid. However, if an individual lacks absolution in any domain of expertise to ensure the validity and soundness of a claim, then it might be interpreted that the "validity" of a claim is left upon falsification. Here is a paragraph from an essay I have typed in relation to standards of proof: Police claim they have met the standard of proof known as probable cause in various situations. They also claim to have met a standard known as "reasonable suspicion." Both of those claims are false claims. Do you think it is possible for a police officer to have totality of the facts and circumstances in relation to a perceived crime in order to claim something as a crime? If so, why would there be a need for due process, a hearing, a tribunal, etc.? There wouldn't be such a need. Otherwise, such need in itself would be considered racketeering. It appears to me that you have some sort of extreme political agenda, such as continuing the support of racketeering and extortion. Also, presuming your username is not your real name, I'm under the impression that you're suffering from some delusional disorder, categorically some form of dissociative identity disorder, thus preventing you from making logical sense out of things.-1 points