exchemist

But you also have +ve and -ve electric charges, resulting in both attraction and repulsion, depending on the combination. Yet we deal with those in terms of a single electrostatic interaction. Do you think there are different forces in that case, too, then?

You are not thinking clearly. As a result, you are confusing force, which certainly has a direction, with energy, which does not. You have a force between 2 charged particles, which diminishes with increasing separation. An increase in energy is the work done by moving them a certain distance against that force. That energy has no direction.

All this from someone who by his own admission doesn’t understand the science, and is only asking questions? Eventually , perhaps, needing to modify the vaccine does not constitute “disaster”, you halfwit. It’s what we do every year for ‘flu’ vaccines, so completely standard practice.

By the way, this poster, under the name jb71, seems to be spamming identical crap on other science forums: http://www.thescienceforum.com/health-medicine/51094-geert-vanden-bossches-covid-predictions.html#post635485 which tends to support the suspicion that the poster is not acting in good faith.

Yes, I must say I am becoming rather suspicious of the motives of our poster. The bit about Omicron and breakthrough infection is particularly interesting - and encouraging. It starts to look as if the future may be one in which repeated infections, rendered mild by vaccination, may enable the population to tolerate endemic Covid without significant severe illness. Though I suppose that one day an evolutionary jump to a nastier version is always possible. At which point a new vaccine can be produced.

You are now recycling crap that has already been amply dealt with. VAIDS is a myth. ADHD meds only help people with ADHD, by reducing the ADHD symptoms that make them more liable to catch the virus.

Well if you are relying on Goddess Kali for information, why do you bother making ill-informed and disingenuous arguments on a science forum? Or are you just trying to generate more search engine hits for your favourite cranks, charlatans and misinformation specialists?

And you “know” these two - quite separate - things how?

This is totally garbled. First, non-neutralising antibodies also help against infection by marking the virus for destruction by phagocytes. So they are generally a good thing, not a bad thing. Secondly, partial escape of variants from previous immunity seems to mean that while people catch the virus in spite of being vaccinated, as I did recently, they don’t get very ill. Upon recovery, they are likely to have a broad-based immunity, deriving from having been infected. So there are some grounds for thinking that vaccination does a good job of blunting the impact of these newer variants, while building broader based immunity from people getting mildly infected. But you ignore all this in favour of promoting alarmist nonsense from cranks, using one argument after another, to suggest that vaccination is some kind of disaster, even after each one is shot down in turn, all the while professing innocence because you are not a scientist. The obvious question is why, if you are not a scientist, you are so determined to ignore what mainstream medical opinion is saying, focusing instead on fringe and crank opinion in preference. Why is that? Why is it so important to you, personally, that vaccination be shown to be a bad thing?

False. I also pointed out what the article actually said. Vanden Bossche has not published any research since 1995, and what he published before that was veterinary medicine. I have just amended my previous post to include an article in today’s Guardian about Omicron BA.4 and 5 and the continuing effectiveness of current vaccines at preventing serious disease. Suggest you read it and cut out the dishonest antivaxxer crap.

This is trolling. You’ve already posted that article on your other thread, where I read it and replied to you, pointing out it does not say what you claim it says. There is no excuse for you to re-post it and accuse me of not thinking for myself, when I have gone to the trouble of doing that, to help you. I am reporting you for posting in bad faith. The Axios article makes clear that the current vaccines remain very effective at preventing severe disease due to BA 4 and 5 variants. So why do you post it suggesting it says the opposite? Meanwhile, here is a sane article , by an eminently qualified academic, about the implications of Omicron BA.4 and 5 for a well-vaccinated population (UK): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/13/rise-covid-cases-what-we-know-so-far Note that a further booster, using the existing vaccines, is recommended against these variants. So the original vaccines are still effective.

Not necessarily, no. You need to know who is dying. In the UK, there is high prevalence of Covid (I had it myself recently, as did my 94 yr old father), but almost always it is the unvaccinated, or people with comorbidities, that end up in hospital or die. My father and I just had mild colds. If we had not been testing ourselves, we would not have known it was Covid. Both of us are triple vaccinated. Re Portugal, we need to know who is dying. Portugal has quite an elderly population, whereas S Africa has a young one. This will make a big difference. The fact is that nobody in Europe is expressing serious concern about Portugal: there are no travel restrictions or advisories.

Actually, I had never heard of this guy. He seems to be an eccentric Belgian vet with no relevant expertise. I suggest you stop posting this crap.

This appears to be balls. What source are you quoting?

In what country?

You think Reuters is unreliable, do you? No reputable study has found any sign of immune deficiency induced by COVID vaccines. ”VAIDS” is pernicious nonsense, peddled by eyeball-rolling ignoramuses and worse.

VAIDS is a myth: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaids-fakes-idUSL1N2UM1C7 and you, I think, are either a sucker or a troll.

It does not. All it says is that antibodies against a part of the virus other than the spike protein are lower in vaccinated people than in people who caught the disease. That is not specially surprising and does not suggest the immune response has been harmed. It is just that different responses have been triggered. At least that is how I read it.

Read some books.

Who says the Covid vaccines damage the immune system? I’ve never read anything to suggest that. Nothing you have posted so far seems to support such a suggestion.

Goddess Kali? This is a science forum.

No, it’s catenation chauvinism, if it’s anything. If you can’t make long chain molecules, you have to be looking at such a radically different biochemistry that really you would be just guessing as to whether it might work or not.

The problem, though, is it has only 3 valence electrons but needs to share 8 ( i.e. form 4 bonds) to form a closed n=2 shell through covalent bonding. Hence it has a tendency for multicentre bonding, which tends not to lead to chains, i.e. catenation does not seem to be a feature of boron chemistry.

It seems to me we have learnt enough to realise the futility of interstellar travel. So I think advanced aliens would not be so thick as to try to visit physically at all. Either they would rely on robots, sent on multi-millennium missions, or else on remote sensing methods. If the latter, we might never know of their interest.

Yes I think the problem with Freud is that his theories didn’t really make testable predictions. He could theorise about the reasons for something after the event, but he couldn’t find a child that not been hugged, say, and correctly predict it’s behaviour without knowing it beforehand. It all seems to be ex post facto explanation. Mind you, I sometimes get a bit queasy about certain rationalisations of behaviour in chemistry, for similar reasons. For instance, One can read qualitative explanations of why Hg is a liquid at r.t.p., but I’m not sure any theory is capable of predicting that outcome exactly. With very complex systems in science, one can get a fair amount of rationalisation after the event.