Covid Vaccine thread

[Kevin Seitzer]

I just lost a coworker to COVID yesterday. He was in his early fifties and otherwise in good health. That's the second person close to me, who was otherwise healthy, that has died in this pandemic. Both of them are a great loss.

I would plead with you, if you have not been vaccinated, please consider it. I would be happy to talk with anyone about hesitations they may have. I don't want to lose any more friends to this virus.

[Mithrandir]

I just lost a coworker to COVID yesterday. He was in his early fifties and otherwise in good health. That's the second person close to me, who was otherwise healthy, that has died in this pandemic. Both of them are a great loss.

I would plead with you, if you have not been vaccinated, please consider it. I would be happy to talk with anyone about hesitations they may have. I don't want to lose any more friends to this virus.

Were your friends not vaccinated?

Sorry for the loss.

[Gregg]

I just lost a coworker to COVID yesterday. He was in his early fifties and otherwise in good health. That's the second person close to me, who was otherwise healthy, that has died in this pandemic. Both of them are a great loss.

I would plead with you, if you have not been vaccinated, please consider it. I would be happy to talk with anyone about hesitations they may have. I don't want to lose any more friends to this virus.

Way too young. I am sorry for your loss.

[nullnor]

i had an idea recently, what would happen if you could prevent all deaths on earth except for natural causes. for example, do some of the longest lived animals end up that way because they have less natural predators. why does the bowhead whale live over 200 hundred years, or the greenland shark 500 - which has a slow metabolism lurking in the bottom of a cold ocean. yet, the rougheye rockfish, which can grow up to 4 feet and swims the pacific ocean can live 200 years. freshwater pearl mussels can live 300 years, quahog clams 500 yrs, deep-water black corals can live 4000 yrs. Turritopsis dohrnii are called immortal jellyfish because they can potentially live forever. it would seem different animals employ different strategies. a lobster can live over 200 years, but i wouldn't say it doesn't have natural predators. a lobster has long telomeres. as the ends of our chromosomes get shorter cells stop being repaired and replaced. we don't actually know how long a lobster can live.

life is a complex system. it's goal is to preserve and pass along it's genes, and it's competition which seems like the shaping force. a species under duress matures and reproduces earlier. thus, reproduction also seems like a fundamental force. so what would happen on a planet with no competition, no accidents and everything lived forever. i imagine on an evolutionary scale fertility would change. with no selective pressure, instead of reproducing early it would happen later. i think this happens in orca matriarchs. cancer would happen less frequently. like cancer is nature's way of making sure we reproduce earlier. sharks don't seem to die a lot from cancer but then they have more cartilage. elephants have cancer resistant genes.

you could achieve immortality artificially with science perhaps by curing cancer and eliminating disease. but there would still be outside selective pressures. or you could do it naturally in 10,000 years by eliminating all other competition. but that would be a contradiction since intelligent life needs competition in order to evolve. yet somewhere in the universe there is a planet where a species has achieved immortality naturally, it has no selective pressure to reproduce early, and it has no other competing species.

[Gregg]

i had an idea recently, what would happen if you could prevent all deaths on earth except for natural causes. for example, do some of the longest lived animals end up that way because they have less natural predators. why does the bowhead whale live over 200 hundred years, or the greenland shark 500 - which has a slow metabolism lurking in the bottom of a cold ocean. yet, the rougheye rockfish, which can grow up to 4 feet and swims the pacific ocean can live 200 years. freshwater pearl mussels can live 300 years, quahog clams 500 yrs, deep-water black corals can live 4000 yrs. Turritopsis dohrnii are called immortal jellyfish because they can potentially live forever. it would seem different animals employ different strategies. a lobster can live over 200 years, but i wouldn't say it doesn't have natural predators. a lobster has long telomeres. as the ends of our chromosomes get shorter cells stop being repaired and replaced. we don't actually know how long a lobster can live.

life is a complex system. it's goal is to preserve and pass along it's genes, and it's competition which seems like the shaping force. a species under duress matures and reproduces earlier. thus, reproduction also seems like a fundamental force. so what would happen on a planet with no competition, no accidents and everything lived forever. i imagine on an evolutionary scale fertility would change. with no selective pressure, instead of reproducing early it would happen later. i think this happens in orca matriarchs. cancer would happen less frequently. like cancer is nature's way of making sure we reproduce earlier. sharks don't seem to die a lot from cancer but then they have more cartilage. elephants have cancer resistant genes.

you could achieve immortality artificially with science perhaps by curing cancer and eliminating disease. but there would still be outside selective pressures. or you could do it naturally in 10,000 years by eliminating all other competition. but that would be a contradiction since intelligent life needs competition in order to evolve. yet somewhere in the universe there is a planet where a species has achieved immortality naturally, it has no selective pressure to reproduce early, and it has no other competing species.

Robert Sapolsky-Stanford:

"Primates are super smart and organized just enough to devote their free time to being miserable to each other and stressing each other out," he said. "But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick."

[GwynnInTheHall]

i had an idea recently, what would happen if you could prevent all deaths on earth except for natural causes. for example, do some of the longest lived animals end up that way because they have less natural predators. why does the bowhead whale live over 200 hundred years, or the greenland shark 500 - which has a slow metabolism lurking in the bottom of a cold ocean. yet, the rougheye rockfish, which can grow up to 4 feet and swims the pacific ocean can live 200 years. freshwater pearl mussels can live 300 years, quahog clams 500 yrs, deep-water black corals can live 4000 yrs. Turritopsis dohrnii are called immortal jellyfish because they can potentially live forever. it would seem different animals employ different strategies. a lobster can live over 200 years, but i wouldn't say it doesn't have natural predators. a lobster has long telomeres. as the ends of our chromosomes get shorter cells stop being repaired and replaced. we don't actually know how long a lobster can live.

life is a complex system. it's goal is to preserve and pass along it's genes, and it's competition which seems like the shaping force. a species under duress matures and reproduces earlier. thus, reproduction also seems like a fundamental force. so what would happen on a planet with no competition, no accidents and everything lived forever. i imagine on an evolutionary scale fertility would change. with no selective pressure, instead of reproducing early it would happen later. i think this happens in orca matriarchs. cancer would happen less frequently. like cancer is nature's way of making sure we reproduce earlier. sharks don't seem to die a lot from cancer but then they have more cartilage. elephants have cancer resistant genes.

you could achieve immortality artificially with science perhaps by curing cancer and eliminating disease. but there would still be outside selective pressures. or you could do it naturally in 10,000 years by eliminating all other competition. but that would be a contradiction since intelligent life needs competition in order to evolve. yet somewhere in the universe there is a planet where a species has achieved immortality naturally, it has no selective pressure to reproduce early, and it has no other competing species.

Humans are every other species greatest predator/danger--even its own.

[revo]

If there was only something, anything that could've helped this guy......

"Marcus Lamb, a co-founder and the CEO of the conservative Christian Daystar Television Network who vocally opposed Covid-19 vaccines, has died at 64, weeks after he contracted Covid-19, the network said.

“It's with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning," the network said a tweet Tuesday. "The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/anti-vaccine-christian-broadcaster-marcus-224434365.html

[Ken]

If there was only something, anything that could've helped this guy......

"Marcus Lamb, a co-founder and the CEO of the conservative Christian Daystar Television Network who vocally opposed Covid-19 vaccines, has died at 64, weeks after he contracted Covid-19, the network said.

“It's with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning," the network said a tweet Tuesday. "The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/anti-vacc...224434365.html

His son rationalized this as the devil not being happy that he was providing other information about Covid

“As much as my parents have gone on here to kind of inform everyone about everything going on to the pandemic and some of the ways to treat COVID — there’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that,” Lamb’s son fumed. “And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad”

That’s right. The devil is killing people because they are saying vaccines don’t work.

Le sigh

[nullnor]

i am going to make an appointment to get vaccinated. mostly because of the restrictions. the blue states are going to start their own passports and i need to get a job. so i am already behind the 8-ball because it will take 2 shots to be considered fully vaccinated. one of the old guys here got arrested for dui and brought the heat down. living in an RV on private land is illegal everywhere. i have a lot of options, i think. save myself and save the cats.

i was trying to google innate immunity the other day. i read an article in the guardian where this healthy dude died https://www.theguardian.com/society/...-covid-vaccine and one of the things they said

“Had he been vaccinated, the best case would have been that he developed sterilising immunity, meaning that, when the virus landed in his nostrils, it got picked up by antibodies and never set up an infection,” says Dr Tom Lawton, an intensive care doctor. “If he’d had a lower level of immunity from the vaccine, he would have had non-sterilising immunity, meaning that the virus did start to infect cells, but his body fought it and was able to clear out the virus before it ramped up rapidly.” But John was not vaccinated. The Covid virus infected his cells, replicating in his body. He eventually managed to expunge the virus – but then his immune system went into overdrive. “The virus seems to set something up in the body and the damage comes from there,”

my first thought was i was wrong about innate immunity. a sterilizing response is your body preventing infection in the first place; depending on the viral load. so how can the vaccines, which is an adaptive response, help the innate immune system.

the best information i found was https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/N...ateimmunesyste i was hoping for more from Wikipedia. when a germ gets by the innate system it signals the adaptive immune system for help. but supposedly the vaccines bypass the innate system.

i don't think anyone actually fully understands innate immunity. and these are the kind of moments where you think, i am smart. i could've done something with my life. but what i think i learned was

When a part of the skin is infected, immune system cells move to the area or immune system cells that are already there are activated. Specific immune system cells release substances into the immediate area that make the blood vessels wider and more permeable. This causes the area around the infection to swell, heat up and redden, and inflammation results. A fever may develop as well. Then the blood vessels expand further and even more immune system cells arrive.

what i understand this to mean is the innate system causes inflammation. it's like when you get a tattoo. i learned this in school. your body makes vacuoles and blocks it off from the body. and when i had a tattoo removed with a laser, it blasts it apart and lets white blood cells remove it. also, the ink in tattoo's color your thyroid or Lym nodes or something. heh. when i was getting a tattoo removed with laser, they took me into a room to explain the scientific principle behind it and i explained it to them, and they where like uh-huh. ok!

i think injecting yourself with UV light is a great idea. Ultraviolet Light Therapy, it's making a comeback. heh.

but seriously, it's your innate immune system that triggers inflammation. and inflammation is an autoimmune response. Autoimmune response found in many with COVID-19 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-...-many-covid-19

More than a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, much about how the human body responds to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, remains unclear.

ok that's not a good statement. we are two years into this thing i we can't be saying shit like that.

A recent study found that autoantibodies that existed before infection with SARS-CoV-2 may account for 20% or more of serious or fatal COVID-19 cases. Scientists have wondered if infection with SARS-CoV-2 could also result in the production of autoantibodies in people who didn’t have them before they got sick... In some people, the levels of autoantibodies were very high, close to the levels seen in autoimmune diseases. Common targets of these misdirected antibodies included immune system proteins such as cytokines, which normally help coordinate the immune response.

my first thought is since what is killing ppl is the body's immune response, which results in killer inflammation, the innate system is triggering the adaptative system to attack the virus and even after the virus is cleared. which means both systems are attacking each other and creating a vicious circle.

yes, there are really a lot of smart ppl in the world, who if they were completely unencumbered could figure out our biggest riddles. because it's nature. since we are part of the system, it's inevitable we are part of the solution. so we'll figure it out. it's nice to see nuclear fusion making a comeback. or is that fission? and life goes on. and you have to get vaccinated and save the cats. because the cats know all this. heh

[nullnor]

when blood vessels widen and become more permeable to allow your immune system to do its thing, this should mean that your blood pressure should be lowered. thus, infection will give you a fever and amp up your body, yet lower blood pressure, which is a contradiction. yet, when you have kidney or cardiovascular disease, higher blood pressure can be beneficial- when you are sick, if you can pump more blood and pump up your organs. this means when you get covid, you'll notice a drop in blood pressure and potentially respiratory rate.

[nullnor]

also, when you say the virus is 'novel'. it means a lot of things. and one of those things is, the more new things you find, the more it might mean it's not natural. this is history. at this stage of evolution, we've discovered and seen a lot. and we have a pretty good idea about viruses. we've identified all the major ones we need to be aware of. simply, we weren't born yesterday. we've set up surveillance expecting this. yet, we got hit. and it's a simple as being novel. inserting a cleavage site. and the fact that we have to do it artificially to expand our knowledge. perhaps in millions of years, nature's never done it this way in this combination. it's really the key to everything. it can happen.

take something infectious and make it even more. that had never been documented naturally before like this. sure it can happen.

but the more new it is the more you say the more unnatural the sickness is, the more we don't understand how our body is responding, the less natural it is. the greater the chance it was engineered. and i am ok with that. i just don't understand how a disease can infect so many different animals at the same time in such a short amount of time. humans, deer, ferrets, mink, mice, cats, dogs, etc.. unless we did something to make it adaptable. like inserting a cleavage site.

so obviously i've been making the rounds trying to understand what the 'other' side is doing. one article i like is Why did the world react so hysterically to covid? https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/...cally-to-covid. and one of my reasons is because we knew it wasn't natural, and that's still ok, but that is what alarmed us.

[nullnor]

Humans are every other species greatest predator/danger--even its own.

if you think about it, the reason we can't achieve a longer lifespan- which for humans is about 150 years; naturally is because nature doesn't trust us. for example, when a species gets set in their ways, we become specialists. any change in our environment dooms our species. it's really as simple as the H.G Wells The Time Machine. with no competition we become decadent and vulnerable to any change. thus nature won't allow us to achieve immortality because she doesn't trust us.

[nullnor]

i was never, ever, against vaccines i had some curiosity. but i never thought i would be one of those ppl. it was a greater debate that i had no interest wading into. so i was watching the show Battlestar Galactica, it's an even greater show if you played the mmo before it died. space opera. space western. everything is always better in space.

so in this episode they introduced the Tom Zarek character. Richard Hatch. they needed the inmates to help mine water. and i thought, this is philosophically like vaccines. it might kill a few ppl, but overall it will save everyone. releasing the inmates might be releasing a few murderers and rapists, but it's for the greater good. since it will help the fleet get water and save the fleet. so that is what imperfect vaccination is. it's like releasing a a bunch of murderers and rapists from jail because supposedly it's better to go with the devil you know.

i don't really think i built my case using that example. yet it's a logical debate. sometimes saving the many over the few is not logical. but it depends on the situation. this is what the world will be someday. once the resources deplete. there is no achievable utopia.

[nullnor]

so this may be my last time getting drunk. i keep trying to quit. it's like a superman suit. especially for someone that is competent but unconfident.

its the cats reactions that interest me. humans are easy to understand. but getting cats to understand humans, that's a different animal. most of the time when the shit hits the fan cats can goto plan B and be like fuck it, i'll live on mice, they don't need the bullshit. i respect that. and one of the greatest things i've attained moving from safety to country is if i had to kill a deer or something to live, i've overcome that barrier.

i've also noticed that the ginger cat has two bite marks on her neck. it's been there all summer but i never really noticed and put it together. and she has a stripe down her back missing fur. and i realize, something grabbed her by the neck and then swiped her back when she got away. that's called living on borrowed time. once i put it together. the missing fur on her neck and bite size gives me an idea of the size of the animal she got away from. so it was about the same size of her. it had to be a wild animal. other cats don't go for the neck. i don't think.

i leave a window open in my car all the time. even when it rains. my sailboat sails are in the back seat. it makes a nice bed. it took me two years to figure out that they could just sleep in my car instead of the 340k abandoned house next door when they weren't in the RV. it has the same effect as when i was at the campsite with the RV guys dog. it's Larry's car. and if we sit in his car, he can't leave without us. it didn't work out too well for the RV guys dog. but i taught that dog how to bond to someone he didn't know. and he'll carry that tool for the rest of his life.

one of the reasons i bought a sailboat was as backup. the really smart RV guys hedge their bets. if i didn't have these cats i adopted i'd be living free and easy on the ocean right now. and when the RV guy gave up his dog to a shelter to live on his own boat, he failed the test. as for me, i didn't think the cats here would survive. but they did.

and now i have to watch them assimilate. on my dime. the feral calico making small strides. they know something is up. and are on their best behavior. still i can't live on the road with them, or live with them on the water. yet, each day together, living on edge creates a stronger bond.

[nullnor]

Tom Hanks newest apocalyptic movie Finch. it was all about saving the dog. who knew. heh. at least he accomplished something.