Coronavirus outbreak - From China to the World.

[Stario]

We now know the viral loads are similar in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. I for one along with the rest of my family members have all made the decision NOT to get the jab & we'll definitely NOT be lining up for our booster shots based on the fact there is a relatively small amount of independent short to medium-term studies available, while long terms studies regarding safety and efficacy of the covid vaccines are totally absent. AND nearly 2 years on since we made that decision the whole family is still perfectly healthy.
But if you have come to a different conclusion and decided to opt to get the jab (and the many booster shots that will surely follow), then good for you; one should be able to have the freedom of choice to bodily integrity I.E. the right to physical autonomy and self-determination.

Albeit here in Australia what bothers me most is the 'medical apartheid' and the 'cancel culture' we are currently entrenched in. And the fact the Australian government is trying to dangle a carrot in front of me telling me to get vaccinated in order to get back my freedom (freedom that was already mine, to begin with), I would find that laughable if it wasn't so abhorrently disgusting.

Anyways that's my 2 cents. With that said, this thread really does now seems very stale and probably has run its cause imo...

[PointOfViewGun]

We now know the viral loads are similar in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Citation needed.

[Ludicus]

US politics is full of brain dead insults.

Why is this world becoming so crazy and stupid?

'I hope you die': how the COVID pandemic unleashed attacks -Nature

Dozens of researchers tell Nature they have received death threats, or threats of physical or sexual violence.

Infectious-diseases physician Krutika Kuppalli had been in her new job for barely a week in September 2020, when someone phoned her at home and threatened to kill her.

A survey by Nature of more than 300 scientists who have given media interviews about COVID-19 — many of whom had also commented about the pandemic on social media — has found wide experience of harassment or abuse; 15% said they had received death threats

Some high-profile examples of harassment have been well documented. Anthony Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was assigned personal security guards after he and his family received death threats; UK chief medical adviser Chris Whitty was grabbed and shoved in the street; and German virologist Christian Drosten received a parcel with a vial of liquid labelled ‘positive’ and a note telling him to drink it.

In one extraordinary case, Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst and his family were placed in a safe house when a military sniper went on the run after leaving a note outlining his intentions to target virologists.

Epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz at the University of Wollongong in Australia says that two major triggers are vaccines and the anti-parasite drug ivermectin . I think I’ve received more death threats due to ivermectin, in fact, than anything I’ve done before.

In Brazil, microbiologist-turned-science-communicator Natalia Pasternak also noticed online attacks against her increasing when she spoke about the unproven COVID-19 treatments being promoted by the Brazilian government, which include ivermectin, the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin.
At the time, she was based at the Duke–National University of Singapore Medical School in Singapore, but had collaborated with the WIV since the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002–04. “Eat a bat and die, ,” one e-mail read.
Public-health researcher Tara Kirk Sell at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore has experienced online and e-mail attacks, particularly after appearing on a US conservative television network to talk about COVID-19. One e-mail suggested that Sell and her colleagues should be executed.

One Australian epidemiologist — who asked to remain anonymous because she didn’t want more abuse — told Nature that she had to push her university for help after she received “vile, sexualising” e-mails in the wake of her media interviews on COVID-19.

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vaccine is not 100% guaranteed to protect others... That is simply an inconvenient truth which gets in the way of the pro-vaccine argument

Vaccines cut the risk of transmitting delta, but not for long.What really matters is the fact that vaccination protects against serious disease, and reduces the need for emergency care, that's the obvious pro-vaccine argument.
The US has innoculated 57,6% of its population, and “99% of people who are in our ICUs are unvaccinated”, says Art Caplan. Division of Medical Ethics
It's Okay for Docs to Refuse to Treat Unvaccinated Patients-Medscape

...for primary care, if you're trying to protect yourself, your staff, or other patients, I think you do have the right to not take on somebody who won't vaccinate. This is somewhat similar to when pediatricians do not accept a family if they won't give their kids the state-required shots to go to school.
In intensive care and emergency settings, the situation is different.

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We now know the viral loads are similar in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated

...and between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.But it’s very important to get vaccinated, because – once again- all vaccines greatly reduce the risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death.

[Cyclops]

Yes we had some wannabe Nazi scum spit on nurses in their workplaces during a mass protest: the police said right wing groups infiltrated the Union march and targeted immunisation clinics and Union headquarters to create confusion. There was at least one infected individual at the protest and it seems likely the right wing scum planed to spread the virus deliberately.

Its nasty when idiots in the US get into their pendulum outrage, but there are vicious scum deliberately encouraging the spread of the virus, and perhaps actively infecting police and other members of the public. It amounts to terrorism in my view.

[Ludicus]

Its nasty when idiots in the US...It amounts to terrorism in my view.

That's right. In the US and in Europe.There is no other way to put it, The Delta Variant of Global Stupidity

...The third problem is political. The far right has jumped on the anti-vaccination bandwagon, seized control of the wheel, and is driving the vehicle, al-Qaeda-style, straight into oncoming traffic.
Both in the United States and globally, the far right has long been infected by various harmful delusions—the superiority of white people, the fiction of climate change, the evils of government.

Now, with its anti-vaccine opportunism, the far right is circulating a new delta variant of global stupidity: virally through social media, in a shower of spit and invective on the street, and through top-down lunacy from politicians and political parties.

Reporter: I’m here with patriot James Q. Public. He and his family are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Tell me, James, why are you about to take a big step into the unknown?
James Q. Public: The government can’t tell me what to do. I believe in choice. And this is my choice.
Reporter: Do you think of yourself as a pioneer?
James Q. Public: Absolutely. This socialist government with its Five Year Plans sickens me. I take it one day at a time. One minute at a time.
Reporter: Your youngest child doesn’t look happy about your choice.
James Q. Public: Oh, he’s just a crybaby. He’ll get used to it.
Reporter: Get used to falling off a cliff?
James Q. Public: What makes you think we’ll fall?
Reporter: Well, uh, gravity –
James Q. Public: Come on, man, you believe in all that nonsense those scientists are trying to force down our throats? Vaccines? Climate change? Gravity? Okay, everyone, let’s go. One small step for the Public family, one large step for arrgghhh….!

It would all be grimly amusing, like some pandemic version of the Darwin Awards, if the far right’s Lemming Crusade wasn’t threatening to drag the rest of us off the cliff with it.

[EmperorBatman999]

Vaccines cut the risk of transmitting delta, but not for long.What really matters is the fact that vaccination protects against serious disease, and reduces the need for emergency care, that's the obvious pro-vaccine argument.
The US has innoculated 57,6% of its population, and “99% of people who are in our ICUs are unvaccinated”, says Art Caplan. Division of Medical Ethics
It's Okay for Docs to Refuse to Treat Unvaccinated Patients-Medscape

All what this does is ensure that more of the unvaccinated die, which in-turn helps the pro-vaccine cause by pumping up the death numbers of the unvaccinated. This is why I'm absolutely fed up with the medical system. There is nothing ethical about what Caplan is saying. He's like Saudi Arabia on the UN Committee for Human Rights.

[antaeus]

All what this does is ensure that more of the unvaccinated die, which in-turn helps the pro-vaccine cause by pumping up the death numbers of the unvaccinated. This is why I'm absolutely fed up with the medical system. There is nothing ethical about what Caplan is saying. He's like Saudi Arabia on the UN Committee for Human Rights.

Wait what...

There's an easy way for those unvaccinated to reduce their chances of dying of Covid or a Covid exacerbated condition...

People choosing not to vaccinate, and then finding their options for treatment of a largely preventable state reduced is not 'pumping up the death numbers'. It's idiots choosing to die of something the likely don't have to.

I agree that it's not ethical for a doctor to turn away someone because of their vaccination status. But your reasoning is stupid. Don't want to be a Covid death statistic? Get a vaccine. Sheesh.

[EmperorBatman999]

Wait what...

There's an easy way for those unvaccinated to reduce their chances of dying of Covid or a Covid exacerbated condition...

People choosing not to vaccinate, and then finding their options for treatment of a largely preventable state reduced is not 'pumping up the death numbers'. It's idiots choosing to die of something the likely don't have to.

I agree that it's not ethical for a doctor to turn away someone because of their vaccination status. But your reasoning is stupid. Don't want to be a Covid death statistic? Get a vaccine. Sheesh.

Because if the hospital refuses to admit the unvaccinated, the sick are almost certainly going to die, and their deaths become a foregone conclusion. At least if they become admitted, there is good chance that timely medical attention could save them.

[antaeus]

Because if the hospital refuses to admit the unvaccinated, the sick are almost certainly going to die, and their deaths become a foregone conclusion. At least if they become admitted, there is good chance that timely medical attention could save them.

Like I said, I agree that it is unethical for hospitals to make choices on who they treat based on vaccination status.

But it is also more complicated than the binary you present suggests. Certainly, it shouldn't be framed as a pro vs unvaccinated political dialogue.

Voluntarily unvaccinated people aren't the only group at-risk from Covid. And hospitals house many of those other at-risk groups - for example, people undergoing chemotherapy, or with otherwise compromised immune systems. When the willingly unvaccinated get sick, their treatment in hospitals compromises the outcomes of others who are being treated, but don't have free choice to be there - This places doctors and nurses in the unenviable situation where they have to manage the infection risks for those who choose to be at-risk, alongside those who have no choice in their situation.

There is certainly a fairness argument to be made there - is it ethical to treat someone who is willingly increasing their risk of passing on a disease to others who might share the hospital and have no choice?

And certainly, if we find ourselves in a situation as we did last year, when doctors were managing limited resources by prioritising health care for those with the best chance of a positive outcome... then yes, I can see some justification for making unethical decisions when triaging patients such as prioritising the treatment of those who are vaccinated, and thus more likely to survive, thus being a better investment of limited resources - especially when vaccination is so easy and mostly free to do.

[Cyclops]

Because if the hospital refuses to admit the unvaccinated, the sick are almost certainly going to die, and their deaths become a foregone conclusion. At least if they become admitted, there is good chance that timely medical attention could save them.

Sorry that's absurd reductionism. The internationally agreed position is you can enforce conditional vaccines. Mawkish scenarios don't change that pragmatic reality. The methodology works. We accidentally wiped out a version of the flu with the current spate of controls, even when the UK was bungling it.

Pausing mid crisis to banter about settled points of epidemiology come across as sabotage. We can discuss it here without ramifications but injecting that waffle into the public discourse as if its a valid point and jeering at embattled public health officials for not considering this silly idea? It amounts to sabotage.

[Cope]

Because if the hospital refuses to admit the unvaccinated, the sick are almost certainly going to die, and their deaths become a foregone conclusion. At least if they become admitted, there is good chance that timely medical attention could save them.

If the comments (which are allegedly only open to "medical professionals") are any sort of measure, there's entrenched opposition to Caplan's position, both medical and ethical. No serious or thoughtful person believes that doctors should refuse to treat the sick on the basis of vaccination status.

[Heathen Hammer]

Yes we had some wannabe Nazi scum spit on nurses in their workplaces during a mass protest: the police said right wing groups infiltrated the Union march and targeted immunisation clinics and Union headquarters to create confusion. There was at least one infected individual at the protest and it seems likely the right wing scum planed to spread the virus deliberately.

Its nasty when idiots in the US get into their pendulum outrage, but there are vicious scum deliberately encouraging the spread of the virus, and perhaps actively infecting police and other members of the public. It amounts to terrorism in my view.

Sounds like your basic run-of-the-mill smear campaign. Apparently people that oppose the government are very bad people that spit at nurses, kick puppies and eat kittens, but there is no proof except for anecdotal claims made by corporate journalists and government officials, you know, people who, more often then not, are the actual scum.
Because only globalist scum would use disease to take away freedoms from population. Governments like the ones in Australia or NZ should be labeled as a dangerous criminal groups and not be viewed as legitimate governments at all, until its leadership stops violating basic freedoms and just resigns.

[antaeus]

Because only globalist scum would use disease to take away freedoms from population.

Except isolationist scum have also use disease to take away freedoms. Heathen... Do I have to start asking you to be better again?.

[Heathen Hammer]

Except isolationist scum have also use disease to take away freedoms.

Do we have to explain to you again that whataboutism isn't a valid argument? Austrlian government is violating basic human rights of its citizens. Defending disgusting abhorrent Austrialian government is definitely not a good hill to die on.

[Ludicus]

An emergency is a situation that poses an immediate risk to life. In this case, it's an ethical imperative to treat Covid patients in isolation rooms-obviously.When isolation rooms are insufficient, that's problematic. A shared room with no-Covid patients is a killing room.
In what concerns people waiting for routine operations -here and every where- we have a preoperative SARS Cov-2 screening.As simple as that. Routine consultations? the practice is prepared for consultations with patients suspected of having COVID-19; there is a clear policy and procedures for triaging patients with suspected COVID-19/respiratory symptoms.
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The full article. Feel free to agree or disagree.I would just say that vaccination is also a moral imperative.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I’m at the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine in New York City.
A couple of weeks ago, a physician in Alabama said he'd had enough. He would not be seeing any more unvaccinated patients in his practice. Many other doctors are starting to think about following in his footsteps.
Is it ethical to say, “I'm not going to treat you if you're not vaccinated”? Well, it's a sticky issue and a complicated issue. Let me try and work through a little bit of the thinking.

The Alabama doctor said it was too hard on him. He suffered too much worrying about what was going to happen to his unvaccinated patients. I don't think that's a good reason.

I do think a better reason might be, “I have to protect my staff from unvaccinated people. I want to keep people safe in my waiting room, and I don't want to be exposed to people with COVID-19 for fear of a breakthrough infection.” It also may make some sense to say, “If you won't follow my medical advice and do what I tell you, there's no point in me taking you on as a patient.”

Under those terms, I think family doctors, nurses, and others in primary care could say, “I'm not taking on any patients who won't vaccinate.” This basically is justified by protection of the office, other patients, and the doctor as well as saying, “For us to work together and for me to be a good doctor to you, you've got to follow my advice. My advice is to vaccinate.”
Does that rule apply to the emergency room (ER) and hospital settings? I don't think so. When someone comes in very sick, or whatever the reason, I think we have to take care of them ethically, and legally we're bound to get them stable in the emergency room.

I do think different rules apply there. I don't think vaccination status can be used to tell someone to move on to another hospital unless, obviously, you're full, but that doesn't have anything to do with vaccination status.
Some physicians have started to ask me, “Well, okay, I can let people in, but should I put the unvaccinated at the end of the line if, as is true in Idaho, Texas, Louisiana, and other states, the intensive care units (ICUs) and ERs are starting to get full, there are no spare beds, and we have to start thinking about triaging?”

I wouldn't put someone at the end of the line simply because they're unvaccinated. I might put them at the end of the line if their lack of vaccination made it likely that they would not do well or that their disease had gotten so advanced that they wouldn't respond to the treatments that we have.
In other words, if you could use lack of vaccination as a predictor for failed treatment, then I think it might become relevant if it tells you something is futile or it tells you something failed. If you can't really do that in good conscience, then I don't think we can, using good ethical standards, shove that group to the back of the line.

However, we ought to publicize what happens and talk about what happens when you don't vaccinate. That, I think, is very important to do. I think one of the best arguments we have to get people to vaccinate is to say that 99% of people who are in our ICUs are unvaccinated and they're pushing other people aside who need ICU care but can't get in because it’s full.

The bottom line is that for primary care, if you're trying to protect yourself, your staff, or other patients, I think you do have the right to not take on somebody who won't vaccinate. This is somewhat similar to when pediatricians do not accept a family if they won't give their kids the state-required shots to go to school. That's been happening for many years now. I also think it is morally justified if they won't take your advice. If they won't follow what you think is the best healthcare for them, there's not much point in building that relationship.

In intensive care and emergency settings, the situation is different. It's a little harder to use unvaccinated status when someone really is at death's door. The way to use it, if it makes sense, is as a predictor. If someone unvaccinated with COVID-19, let's say, is less likely to do well than someone who's there because of a heart attack or some other ailment, maybe that can become relevant.

I’m Art Caplan at the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Thank you very much for watching.

Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, is director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center and School of Medicine. He is the author or editor of 35 books and 750 peer-reviewed articles as well as a frequent commentator in the media on bioethical issues.

---
Once again,it's not difficult to understand that there is a clear correlation between vaccination progress and a lower Covid mortality.For example, between West Europe and East Europe.And when hospitals are running at 100% capacity, that's not good, right?

western Europe outperforms east

Health systems in Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia are struggling to cope, with hospitals running at 80% to 100% capacity. Romania last week postponed all non-essential operations. Official data shows 93% of deaths in Romania are in unvaccinated people.

The correlation with vaccination progress appears plain. Again according to Our World In Data, Bulgaria and Romania have the EU’s lowest immunisation rates, with just 20% and 29% of their total populations having received two doses.
Portugal has now fully vaccinated nearly 86% of its total population, Spain nearly 79%, Italy more than 68% and France more than 66%, with any increase in cases having only a very limited impact on fatality figures.

[antaeus]

Because only globalist scum would use disease to take away freedoms from population.

Except isolationist scum have also use disease to take away freedoms. Heathen... Do I have to start asking you to be better again?.

Do we have to explain to you again that whataboutism isn't a valid argument?

It seems you do need to explain to me. In this case the only way to refute a claim to universality, which you have done, is to show that it isn't universal by giving an example outside your claim. Whataboutism is an attempt to illustrate hypocrisy, which isn't what I'm doing.

You made a stupid claim, and hid behind an erroneous understanding of the concept of whataboutism rather than concede.

[Heathen Hammer]

It seems you do need to explain to me. In this case the only way to refute a claim to universality, which you have done, is to show that it isn't universal by giving an example outside your claim. Whataboutism is an attempt to illustrate hypocrisy, which isn't what I'm doing.

You made a stupid claim, and hid behind an erroneous understanding of the concept of whataboutism rather than concede.

You haven't really refuted anything or pointed to any hypocrisy, all you did was just vague gainsaying. Also I'm not sure what "isolationists" are you even talking about, hence why referencing some random group that evidently only you have an idea about is as whataboutist as it gets. Come on now anteus, you can do better.

[Cope]

More evidence emerging that Fauci may have mislead the public on the NIH's funding of gain of function research.

[sumskilz]

More evidence emerging that Fauci may have mislead the public on the NIH's funding of gain of function research.

Yeah...

Although for me, this part is most interesting:

On September 20, a group of internet sleuths calling themselves DRASTIC (short for Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) released a leaked $14 million grant proposal that EcoHealth Alliance had submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

It proposed partnering with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and constructing SARS-related bat coronaviruses into which they would insert “human-specific cleavage sites” as a way to “evaluate growth potential” of the pathogens. Perhaps not surprisingly, DARPA rejected the proposal, assessing that it failed to fully address the risks of gain-of-function research.

The leaked grant proposal struck a number of scientists and researchers as significant for one reason. One distinctive segment of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code is a furin cleavage site that makes the virus more infectious by allowing it to efficiently enter human cells. That is just the feature that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology had proposed to engineer in the 2018 grant proposal. “If I applied for funding to paint Central Park purple and was denied, but then a year later we woke up to find Central Park painted purple, I’d be a prime suspect,” said Jamie Metzl, a former executive vice president of the Asia Society, who sits on the World Health Organization’s advisory committee on human genome editing and has been calling for a transparent investigation into COVID-19’s origins.

When Vanity Fair digs deeper than most of the mainstream media. You want hard hitting news though, you better read Teen Vogue.

[Cyclops]

Well I feel like and idiot, I could not believe a public official in the US could be so duplicitous, and it seems I was wrong. I mean I had to concede it was a possibility but I felt it was unlikely. Yet here it is, and this sort of equivocation and misleading statements makes space for wacky conspiracy theories. How long was this guy in the system? I guess when elected officials get clean swept every few years you need some appointed officials giving continuity of policy and retained expertise. We have a more thoroughgoing bureaucracy in my country and the bleedover between public and private gets looked at to a certain degree, looks like this has not happened with Fauci.