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@hazlin @gabriel why can't people understand that the cytokine response from the vaccine would likely have produced the same response from the real virus and these people would have been harmed the same way from their own immune system anyway? In fact, the data says it would have been worse for them because the real infection comes with inflammation and other issues beyond just the cytokine response.

So the vaccine didn't trigger some magical behavior that the virus cannot. We know what it did, and we know the virus does to people with these immune systems too. The odds are that the vaccine have been less severe for these people.

It sucks. Their immunological response went crazy and we didn't have a way to deal with it. This is something we need to figure out for any novel virus like this -- some way to get the desired immunity while tempering the cytokine response. I don't think we have the tools to do so.

These people were likely doomed unless they could somehow completely avoid ever being exposed to the virus.

@feld

These people were likely doomed unless they could somehow completely avoid ever being exposed to the virus.

This is such a weird assertion when the vaccine was rolled out a whole year after the virus and basically all the "essential workers" still had regular contact with the public. Nobody tested for this but I would bet money many people hurt by the shots would show evidence of having at least a variant in their system.

Unless we're believing that SARS-COV-2 is somehow magic and didn't actually do anything until late 2021.
@hazlin

@gabriel @hazlin

- A meta-analysis found the relative risk of myocarditis was 7-fold higher from SARS-CoV-2 infection than from vaccination (RR: 15 for infection vs. RR: 2 for vaccine) [ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9467278/ ]

- The Nature study of ~38 million people found 40 excess myocarditis events per million following SARS-CoV-2 infection, versus only 1–10 per million following vaccination [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0 ]

- The CDC MMWR study across 40 healthcare systems confirmed cardiac complication risk was significantly higher after infection than vaccination for both sexes and all age groups [ https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7114e1.htm ]

- COVID-19 patients had higher cytokine levels than vaccinated participants, while vaccinated individuals had higher antibody levels [ https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1148549324000015 ]


yes I used the slop machine to pull these up because I haven't dug into this in a couple years and my bookmarks to studies are not well organized

@feld
Correlation isn't causation and all that.
One of the signs the data was cooked was that the data also showed that the shot reduced literally every kind of death (including accidents and murder) which basically means some "healthy user bias" is baked in at minimum.

Also, how many shots just one or the whole recommended schedule? Cause that matters too.

But all that is irrelevant because you're asserting that for every case the virus must be more lethal than the shot and that doesn't account for a great many things. At minimum I think it's basically impossible for a vast majority of people to not have caught a virus/variant by 2021 given how lockdowns were actually done even here in Ontario, which was one of the more serious jurisdictions.

Some go as far as to argue the whole virus was a charade. In hindsight it's actually pretty hard to rule that out when you consider the fact that the data is making that assertion.

@hazlin

@gabriel @hazlin

> data also showed that the shot reduced literally every kind of death (including accidents and murder) which basically means some "healthy user bias" is baked in at minimum.

Obviously that's just the result of humans being in lockdowns really. Hard to have accidents when there's nowhere to drive, etc, hard to murder people who aren't at the local In-N-Out drive thru, etc etc lol so yeah that's weird and dumb, agreed

> But all that is irrelevant because you're asserting that for every case the virus must be more lethal than the shot and that doesn't account for a great many things.

It accounts for a lot, actually. The real disease comes with systemic inflammation and a many other things that the vaccine cannot cause. That's why we know it to be less harmful than the actual virus.

> Some go as far as to argue the whole virus was a charade. In hindsight it's actually pretty hard to rule that out when you consider the fact that the data is making that assertion.

What data?

@feld

It accounts for a lot, actually. The real disease comes with systemic inflammation and a many other things that the vaccine cannot cause. That's why we know it to be less harmful than the actual virus.

Getting back to my point here, we agree that an infection (at an arbitrary time and variant) is not the same as the shot for a variety of reasons.

It can both be true that the shot is less dangerous but also that someone who died from one may not always die from the other. That's the distinction I'm trying to make.

It's also worth putting out that there was more than one kind of shot and one of them even got pulled (Astrazenica?) So it's not at all implausible that they would have dangers that don't overlap perfectly. Especially when you consider commorbities to particular problems.

But to be clear I don't think you can trust the official data on Covid as a whole because anyone who asked difficult questions got shunned and fired from basically any institution. I understand that doesn't really make my case compelling, so all I'm trying to say is that it can be a lot more complicated than "if they die from the shot the virus 100% was gonna get them". Which is an awfully convenient story for everyone involved with lockdown harms and vaccine injury.

@hazlin

@gabriel @hazlin

> It can both be true that the shot is less dangerous but also that someone who died from one may not always die from the other. That's the distinction I'm trying to make.

Of course, not always. It's not perfect because our bodies are not exact clones or anything. But the odds were far from being in the favor of "less risky to just get the infection". So maybe something like 1 in 100 people would have been better off with the virus. Doesn't mean we should completely end the efforts to vaccinate the population during the pandemic, though. You gotta do what you gotta do to protect the majority of the population.

(side note: I had a reaction to the MMR vaccine as a baby, so according to my mom I never completed that course. I have no paperwork to confirm this though. Perhaps I could have died if they forced me to finish it? Who knows.)

> It's also worth putting out that there was more than one kind of shot and one of them even got pulled (Astrazenica?) So it's not at all implausible that they would have dangers that don't overlap perfectly. Especially when you consider commorbities to particular problems.

yes, Astrazenica was an Adenovirus vaccine and a few people got Guillain-Barré Syndrome from it. Maybe something else too? So weird... makes me think back to reading about the side effects of the seasonal flu vaccine and how some people end up paralyzed from it.

> But to be clear I don't think you can trust the official data on Covid as a whole because anyone who asked difficult questions got shunned and fired from basically any institution.

Yeah, this sucks, but we can't just dismiss it all because this was handled so poorly. Earlier you likened it to being a "charade". Okay, so what then -- China announces that this thing is coming and it's bad and the entire world just falls in line and accepts it unquestioningly? No national security concerns from anyone over whether or not China is just fucking with us?

Except we know that didn't really happen because those of us obsessed with getting the latest information were translating research papers published in Mandarin to stay ahead. And the USA was ignoring all of that research because they insisted on doing their own first. Which is why it took 6 months or more before the CDC finally admitted that it could be aerosolized and spread through closed air systems when I was staring at a stack of papers straight from China showing how they traced it through HVAC systems in various buildings.

Not trusting and directly cooperating with China on this was probably one of our biggest mistakes as we could have taken better action earlier. but I digress...

@gabriel @hazlin

Let's enumerate the actual documented side effects of both:

Vaccines:

Myocarditis/Pericarditis - rarer than virus, but statistically increased for young males 12-29 after dose 2

Anaphylaxis - ~5-11 per million mostly for people who already had severe allergies

Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) - ~3-4 per million (from Adenovirus vaccines)

Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) - rare (no available numbers)

Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (CVST) - rare, but associated with TTS

Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP) - rare

Bell's Palsy/Facial Paralysis - slight elevation (no numbers)

Transverse Myelitis - "very rare"

Capillary Leak Syndrome - "very rare"

Acute Hypertension - ~3.2% of people

Menstrual Irregularities - documented but transient

Tinnitus - rare

Local reactions (pain, swelling, fatigue, fever) - common



Now let's look at the list for the people who got the virus with no immunization:

Myocarditis - ~40 per million, higher than vaccine

Cardiac Arrest/Arrhythmias - significantly elevated in severe cases of hospitalized patients

Heart Failure - elevated risk persisting for 12+ months after infection -- even a mild infection

Stroke (Ischemic) - 1.6% of hospitalized patients

Pulmonary Embolism - ~25% of patients in the ICU

Deep Vein Thrombosis - very common

Acute Kidney Injury - common in severe infections, sometimes requiring dialysis

ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) - common in severe cases

Long COVID (PASC) - 10-30% of infected individuals (some stats claim even higher)

Post-Exertional Malaise - comes with the long covid

Cognitive Impairment ("Brain Fog") - comes with long covid

POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) - elevated post infection

Loss of Smell/Taste (Anosmia/Ageusia) - depending on variant of virus, 5%-80% (lol wat?)

New-Onset Diabetes - elevated risk for 12+ months post infection

Autoimmune Conditions - elevated post infection

MIS-C/MIS-A (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome) - rare

Cytokine Storm/Death - primary cause of people dying from severe infections

Fatigue/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - common long covid

Psychiatric Effects (anxiety, depression, PTSD) - elevated



The vaccine list looks a hell of a lot better risk-wise. This data is why the consensus is that in almost every case it's worse to be infected than to get the vaccine. Edge cases could exist, sure.