CV and mad panic behaviour

[LP]

I read a nice analogy on the web over the weekend.

Poison Smarties.

- If COVID was a box of 100 Smarties, somewhere between 3 or 4 of the Smarties in that box would kill you if you ate them, any one of another 30 would make you ill.

- If the COVID vaccine was Smarties, you have to eat 20,000 of those boxes before you had a 50/50 chance of getting a single Smarty death.

Statistically, you probably find that eating 2,000,000 Smarties is likely to kill you by a range of means anyway, choking, diabetes, obesity, vitamin deficiency!

There are many ironies in the anti-vaxxer debates, perhaps none greater than the woke health aware who are fervent promoters of unpasteurised milk products, which is effectively cyanide for young babies in comparison to the risk of any vaccination!

[madbluboy]

Where is the source for your Smarties data?

[Mav]

Interesting article about the history of the polio vaccine(s): How a debate over two competing vaccines gripped the medical community — in 1961, Salon Click HERE.

I didn’t know there were 2 polio vaccines. I’m glad I received the flavoured Sabin sugar cube rather than the Salk jab as I hate needles and they would have needed a footy team to hold me down.

Fascinating that Sabin’s live attenuated vaccine eventually mutated to cause infections.

Just the story of the hostility between Salk & Sabin makes it worth the read. Reminds me of one of the more famous scientific fights to the death between Newton and Leibniz over who invented calculus. British mathematicians fell in behind Newton while those on the continent went the other way. Prof. Jerison from MIT argues the refusal of the British to use Leibniz’s notation set British maths back by a 100 years.

[LP]

Where is the source for your Smarties data?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

To date there are not many official published reports on allergic reactions, probably because of privacy issues, plus these typically take more than 2 or 3 months to be published. But there is a Moderna study in the USA. 9 reactions from more than 4,000,000 injections for a total of 0 deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7004e1.htm
The trouble with this study is the VAERS is voluntary, and anyone can report to it not just health officials, but it's very unlikely a death wouldn't be reported.

Secondly, if there are so few cases not many people will bother studying it, it's not worth the effort because of the low relative risk and because if numbers are so low they are difficult to specifically link to the vaccine. Technically the risk of vaccination is a non-issue relative to COVID itself.

[LP]

Interesting article about the history of the polio vaccine(s): How a debate over two competing vaccines gripped the medical community — in 1961, Salon Click HERE.

I didn’t know there were 2 polio vaccines. I’m glad I received the flavoured Sabin sugar cube rather than the Salk jab as I hate needles and they would have needed a footy team to hold me down.

Fascinating that Sabin’s live attenuated vaccine eventually mutated to cause infections.

Just the story of the hostility between Salk & Sabin makes it worth the read. Reminds me of one of the more famous scientific fights to the death between Newton and Leibniz over who invented calculus. British mathematicians fell in behind Newton while those on the continent went the other way. Prof. Jerison from MIT argues the refusal of the British to use Leibniz’s notation set British maths back by a 100 years.

Yes, and this is a very nice example of modern science, which now basically accepts it was a tie, I'm not sure about Jerison's observation that is a bit subjective. For the lay person, Newton's Dotted notation was very heavy reading.

btw., You have to put the outcome of those Calculus examples in context with the communications technology of the time, a international debate conducted in letters could mean a year or more before you get a response to a point! In local terms the public debate was often over before an international response even arrived.

[PaulP]

Interesting article about the history of the polio vaccine(s): How a debate over two competing vaccines gripped the medical community — in 1961, Salon Click HERE.

I didn’t know there were 2 polio vaccines. I’m glad I received the flavoured Sabin sugar cube rather than the Salk jab as I hate needles and they would have needed a footy team to hold me down.

Fascinating that Sabin’s live attenuated vaccine eventually mutated to cause infections.
........................

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/polio...in-rivalry

This article is a quick and easy read, and seems to suggest that a combined vaccine is best.

But a report released in July last year by the World Health Organization (WHO) may provide a poetic resolution to the debate between the two camps. The answer: a combination of both vaccines may be the most effective way to defeat the disease. After a series of trials in India in 2011 and 2012, researchers found that administering the injected vaccine alongside the live virus boosted immunity significantly. Now the WHO is recommending this approach throughout the remaining polio endemic countries.

[Mav]

Good read Paul. But one of the more startling claims in the Salon article (adapted by the authors from a book they’d written) was:

Mainly because of the large-scale use of Sabin's vaccine, poliovirus has largely been eradicated from the planet. Only a few natural infections occur now, mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan where polio is still endemic. Sabin's vaccine is a live RNA virus. While it does not thrive well in humans, it does replicate in us. Since RNA replication is error prone, the virus in the vaccine could mutate to become dangerous again. The mutated virus could spread to others and cause paralysis. Indeed, most of the cases of polio seen today outside the endemic areas are caused by such mutations of the live virus in Sabin's vaccine.

This implies the mutations weren’t responsible for the polio infections in Pakistan & Afghanistan but had cropped up elsewhere. As for how many were infected by mutations and whether anyone was paralysed as a result, we aren’t told. I guess we have to buy the book to find out!

[LP]

But a report released in July last year by the World Health Organization (WHO) may provide a poetic resolution to the debate between the two camps. The answer: a combination of both vaccines may be the most effective way to defeat the disease. After a series of trials in India in 2011 and 2012, researchers found that administering the injected vaccine alongside the live virus boosted immunity significantly. Now the WHO is recommending this approach throughout the remaining polio endemic countries.

Interestingly, there are some early rumours "cross vaccination" with different types of COVID vaccine are offering similar improved results. You can expect papers by mid-year, there is one paper out but the study is so small at less than 50 patients it's not worth referencing.

This might be the biggest issue in 3rd World locations, where an initial expensive dose to high risk populations can be followed up with a cheaper generic shot. Let's hope for good news on that front!

[PaulP]

Interestingly, there are some early rumours "cross vaccination" with different types of COVID vaccine are offering similar improved results. You can expect papers by mid-year, there is one paper out but the study is so small at less than 50 patients it's not worth referencing.

This might be the biggest issue in 3rd World locations, where an initial expensive dose to high risk populations can be followed up with a cheaper generic shot. Let's hope for good news on that front!

Indeed.

[DJC]

Where is the source for your Smarties data?

The back of the packet?