Just The Vax

at

This afternoon.

Dáil, Leinster House.

During leader’s questions, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (above) said:

“On Monday, Minister Harris announced the decision to make the flu vaccine available free of charge to all children aged between 2 and 12 this year. And to all of those defined as at risk, aged between 6 months and 69 years.

And, as we know, everyone over 70 already has access to the vaccine without charges. I believe we can save hundreds of lives this winter and every winter by a much greater uptake of the flu vaccine.

This matters now more than ever as we need to avoid a second wave of Covid-19 coming at the same time as the flu’ season.

It’s particularly important that uptake by healthcare workers is much better than in the past. This pandemic teaches us there is no excuse not to be vaccinated. We’ve experienced a small taste of what the world was like before vaccines and it hasn’t been good.”

FIGHT!

Ireland can’t borrow cheap money forever – Taoiseach (RTÉ)

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51 thoughts on “Just The Vax

  1. ReproBertie

    “the flue vaccine”
    It’s about time we protected our children from chimneys.

  2. SOQ

    This pandemic teaches us there is no excuse not to be vaccinated.

    This pandemic has nothing to do with the uptake of flu vaccines.

    And anyways, sure death rates from flu have plummeted since CoVid-19 emerged so- is it not reasonable to assume it is a cure for the flu?

      1. Commenter #1

        Wait! I kept reading! Silly me.

        Here (https://evidencenotfear.com/evidence/#nonlockdown-lockdown) we’re told that there’s no evidence for social distancing. But I thought we should move towards 1m of social distancing. But also that the virus was communicable between people within 6 feet of one another.

        So to sum up the evidence from Evidence Not Fear:
        1. The virus spreads person-to-person between people within about 6 feet (approx. 1.8m) of one another
        2. We should institute social distancing of 1m between people
        3. There is no evidence for social distancing.

        Interesting stuff!

        1. Cui Bono?

          Haha ridiculous, so you have a quick 15 minute scan of the website searching for something that will caress your obvious confirmation bias and you feel you have summed up the website.

          Why don’t you take some more time and watch the professors and doctors videos?

          1. f_lawless

            Agreed – fatuous attempt to dismiss the site rather than take time to give it honest consideration.
            .
            “3. There is no evidence for social distancing.”
            This isn’t what is written on the site. It says “there is no scientific proof that social distancing prevents the spread of coronavirus” when relating what the Californian professor being interviewed has to say. In the video, his context is the spread of the virus among different populations.

            That’s not contradictory to saying that social distancing may slow down the spread of the virus. However, ultimately it won’t stop the spread from happening (prevent)..

            When the British doctor talks about setting a 1m social distancing guideline (which, he says, is the WHO’s official recommendation), it’s in terms of taking a step towards moving out of lockdown, albeit in a cautionary manner.
            (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at637wBqSRA)

            This viewpoint doesn’t contradict that it may be theoretically possible to contract the virus at a distance of up to 6 feet from someone. The further apart you are the lower the risk. He’s saying he believes 1m is an acceptable risk to take – ie that it won’t lead to a disastrous spike in cases.

            So to sum up, Commenter #1 the 3 points you refer to don’t actually contradict each other

          2. Commenter #1

            1. It literally says, in big black letters, “No evidence for social distancing.” If this is a misrepresentation of the Californian professor’s argument, then that’s evidence that “Evidence Not Fear” is playing fast and loose with the material it’s mediating.

            2. Prof. Sikora is quoted as saying “We should move to 1m social distancing which means restaurants and bars could reopen.” Why move to 1m social distancing if it doesn’t work?

          3. f_lawless

            1. Ah, you must be one of those “headline reader only ” types. No time to be reading what’s written in the first sentence directly underneath!

            2. I’m just repeating myself here but again, a statement that “there is no scientific proof that social distancing prevents the spread of coronavirus” is not the same as saying social distancing doesn’t slow down the spread of the coronavirus. The British doctor believes that 1m is an acceptable risk at this point. That it won’t cause a disastrous spike.

          4. Commenter #1

            You don’t think a headline that flatly contradicts the content of its associated article diminishes the credibility of a website called Evidence Not Fear?

    1. Commenter #1

      Here (https://evidencenotfear.com/evidence/#nonlockdown-lockdown) we’re told that there’s no evidence for social distancing. But elsewhere on that page we are told that we should move towards 1m of social distancing. Elsewhere still on that site we are told that the virus was communicable between people within 6 feet of one another.

      So to sum up the evidence from Evidence Not Fear:
      1. The virus spreads person-to-person between people within about 6 feet (approx. 1.8m) of one another
      2. We should institute social distancing of 1m between people
      3. There is no evidence for social distancing.

      Interesting stuff!

        1. Cui Bono?

          Hardly critical thinking.

          Just a quick 15 minute scan and proves correct the original point I made.

          1. Commenter #1

            If I may; if I can identify contradictions big enough to drive a truck through in a few minutes of reading a website called “Evidence Not Fear”, maybe it’s not so much evidence as incoherent nonsense?

          2. Cui Bono?

            Yes you may BUT because you went onto the website deliberately searching to find a contradiction to discredit it you ended up falling into the ad hominem fallacy.

            The website is simply bringing together a collection of the worlds best doctors and scientists and presenting their findings. They will have differing evidence.

            The website is still under construction and has been put together quickly to help people realise that Covid-19 is nowhere near as bad as first thought.

            The fear mongering from the mainstream media is shocking when you realise that the IFR is far lower than the 4% first announced by Imperial College. I hope we can at least agree on this.

          3. Commenter #1

            I genuinely thought a website that called itself “Evidence Not Fear,” set up to “help people realise that Covid-19 is nowhere near as bad as first thought,” would have been able to take a consistent position on social distancing. It turns out, I was wrong.

          4. Cui Bono?

            This is just straw man fallacy nonsense.

            Again, you keep proving my point about the lack of critical thinking.

            Why don’t you go in with an open mind and watch some of videos with some of the best doctors in the world?

          5. Cui Bono?

            I don’t see what’s confusing here.

            They’re using information from all media sources but they believe that the mainstream media have let the public down so they recommend those other sites.

            Again you’re trying so hard to find things to discredit this site.

          6. Cian

            That isn’t a good example of a “ad hominem fallacy”.

            You presented a website.
            If Commenter #1 had attacked the website based on the owner or publisher because of their other sites, or the based on other attributes of the authors – that would be ad hominem. However, (s)he looked at the website as presented and found inconsistencies there.

          7. Cui Bono?

            It is 100% ad hominem because you can take the website as an individual entity just like an individual person.

            Commenter #1 went onto the site searching for something to discredit it.

          8. Commenter #1

            This was more fun when Orla was accusing me of relying on the government 350 to subsidise my weed habit and firing around “Hegelian dialectic” like rice at a wedding. This “fallacy” business is v. v. boring. Where am I, the L&H?

          9. millie in handcuffs

            There is absolutely a hint of Orla about these comments. I do wonder, now she’s been mentioned (much like the divil) will she appear.

            Really enjoying watching you dismantle this person’s arguments all the same. Very entertaining.

          10. Cui Bono?

            There’s no dismantling going on here.

            Just a narrow mind desperately trying to discredit an entire website (for some bizarre reason) by focusing on a couple of minor sections that (s)he thought would win some argument that was never really there to begin with.

            BTW there’s some great interviews on it which I highly recommend as alternative to what’s being pumped out of the TV 24/7.

            The Key Facts section on the homepage is a nice summary too.

          11. Commenter #1

            If sources have demonstrated that they no longer deserve your attention, why should information coming from them be trusted?

            Odd!

          12. Cian

            That still isn’t a good example of a “ad hominem fallacy”.

            Look, if I said “anything Professor Dolores Cahill says about COVID should be ignored because she is hard-right and chair of the Irish Freedom Party” that is ad hominem – my reasoning is not connected to my proposition.

            If I say “anything Dr. Nick Riviera says about surgery should be ignored because his degree is from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College” that is not ad hominem – because my reasoning is relevant.

            Commenter #1 pointed out internal inconsistencies within the website that should be red-flags to any critical thinker.

    2. Cian

      if the IFR is only 0.3% and everyone in the country gets COVID then 15,000 will die.
      Generally there are ~30,000 deaths each year. So that is an extra 50%.

      1. Johnnythree

        Cian,
        I don’t think so because the cohort that get the flu and die are 65yrs+ so they are the same cohort that get C19. So they can only die once – either flu or corona not both! so most people who are at risk of the flu will probably be more susceptible to corona for which there is no vaccine. Michael Levitts current work on excess death patterns in Europe is really worth a look. Shows much less excess death than we would imagine. There may be more people who might die because of corona but look at the flu figures and corona figures ( M. Levitt did a great graph showing the corona backdated over the flu to see the peaks) interesting. So, I don’t think there will be 50% extra deaths.

      2. Commenter #1

        I wonder too: one of the papers quoted from in the google doc is from The Lancet, apparently a reliable enough journal to be considered to support Cui Bono’s argument.

        However, The Lancet has stated that the virus is transmissible from someone with Covid 19 to another individual within 2m of them. But, that would contradict Evidence Not Fear’s position. A real pity.

        1. Johnnythree

          I think looking at what I have read as I genuinely have an interest in this is that is is more infectious than thought but not as fatal. We can’t really judge fatality until we more about infection rate. But there is a shift in Govts including our own to start to blame ‘science’ and ‘modeling’ for their heavy handed approach to lockdown.

          1. Cian

            In fairness to governments – if they were relying on the experts and made decisions based on that science; and the science is now shown to be wrong – they are correct to blame the science/scientists.

        1. Cui Bono?

          What’s garbage about it?

          It’s got interviews with some of the best and most highly regarded scientists in the world.

          Dr. John Ioannidis for example is the most qualified person on the planet when it comes to statistics and infectious disease. As an academic he has a H index of almost 200, with his work being cited by other academics over 270,000 times. They say a h index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is exceptional. He is 198.

          1. Johnnythree

            He is a pretty heavy hitter now to be fair. You Tube just removed his last three videos though – whats that about? He is a colleague of Michael Levitts in Stanford. Both fascinating takes on C19. We have to be really careful not to label outliers and upstarts from the scientific community as nut jobs particularly if their thoughts don’t concur with Govt Policy. We always have to stay open to the other thinking.

  3. SOQ

    Am I correct in my reading that the manufacture of flu vaccines includes using the linings of dog’s kidneys?

    If so, surely you are within your rights as a vegetarian or vegan to refuse on ethical grounds? Also, are these dogs specially bred for this purpose?

      1. SOQ

        Yet- but they are on the cards for health workers- a demographic you would expect to be fully in favour, but increasingly they are not- why is that?

      1. SOQ

        The spaniel reference in that article is to vaccines grown in dogs livers- not kidneys.

        https://time.com/3548419/flu-shot-flucelvax/ states “Flucelvax is grown in kidney cells from dogs” so just like eggs, one has to assume the cells are replaced for each batch. My question is from where?

        Either way NO vaccine is totally safe because if they were, the manufacturers would not need to be protected from indemnity by governments. And, what people who have issues with this vaccine production are claiming- note I did not say anti vax as some have been in vaccine industry themselves- is that remnants of corona viruses from dogs are being injected straight into humans.

        1. Cian

          *Nothing* is totally safe. There is a risk with everything.
          The question should be: “does the benefit outweigh the risk?”

  4. John Davis

    Vaccines are so safe that we are currently in the process of setting up a vaccination redress scheme in this country.

    No company that makes vaccines is liable, only the state is liable for any damage done.

  5. Johnnythree

    Cian – ‘In fairness to governments – if they were relying on the experts and made decisions based on that science; and the science is now shown to be wrong – they are correct to blame the science/scientists’
    I see your point but I’m not sure they got the experts, even as lockdown began there were experts saying it was a bad idea, now I know the general consensus was to go with it but they could have changed along the way once more evidence came up.

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