SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

https://www.businesstoday.in/scienc...ing-shifts-in-immune-system-465501-2025-02-21

More verboten "misinformation" proven right. Apologies, unbannings and re-hires incoming, I'm sure.

Can you highlight for the class where this was suggested to be misinformation?

First we're pretending nobody denied it was leaked from a lab, now everyone will pretend people weren't being banned from social media for suggesting there might be negative side-effects or forced out of a job for refusing it.

I'll get right on digging up a bunch of notorized affidavits for everyone to ignore.

indeed at your switch and bait.

Let's take these in turn.

1. Of course there were denials that it was leaked from a lab, and there still are such denials since that remains far from the dominant view amongst experts.
2. There were social media bans for those aggressively spreading demonstrably false information about the virus. I'm sure we could quibble with some of those, but the bans were not for "suggesting that there might be negative side-effects". Side-effects have always been present with any vaccine.
3. There are instances where removing vaccine-dodgers from public-facing occupations would have been entirely appropriate, given the danger they posed to public health.

None of which answer the specific question I asked about this specific claim of yours.

Apologies for the delay, but I’ve been ill this week.

1. The paper is not yet peer-reviewed. Given the rest of its flaws, I don’t think it ever will be published.

2. The sample size is only 42 subjects, 22 controls, all selected via self-report of symptoms and vaccine history.

3. The conflicts of interest section was recently updated; two of the authors have been running a website since before the study began providing services and merch for people who think they’ve been harmed by the side effects of the covid vaccine, the one they’ve suddenly discovered in this paper. Very convenient. One of these is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against AZ over her participation in a COVID vaccine clinical trial.

4. One of the authors is selling supplements to protect unvaccinated people from vaccinated people “shedding the vaccine.” Definitely the mark of a serious study.

5. Despite claiming to carefully screen out anyone who’s had COVID, the test they used is ineffective for purpose. They test for anti-N antibodies, which the vaccine does not produce, but that COVID infection does. Unfortunately, if you get the vaccine before COVID, the body may not product anti-N antibodies in that case either because the anti-S reaction is powerful enough. The test gave a negative result for a subject who definitely had had COVID. Without that test, there’s nothing proving that these symptoms aren’t just long COVID. They could have done an anti-N T-cell test, but did not.

6. They used a nonstandard and much less accurate test for EBV (single test antibody) than either of the two primary tests (antibody with baseline — requires 2 blood tests — and DNA — no reason they couldn’t have done this one). Why wouldn’t they use the more definitive test? I’d guess 3 and 4.

7. The test they used for T-cell exhaustion does not test for T-cell exhaustion.

For more:

I'll pretend that the president didn't say the sunshine would take it all away
or it would be gone by the time it was Easter Sunday
It is just like the flu he said
with 1 million dead
A record that man did set!
Let us not forget
the 654 lies he told
oh to be so bold!

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/kids...ce?utm_campaign=post&showWelcomeOnShare=false

I forgot to mention it on here, I caught COVID about a three or four weeks ago.

I hope you're feeling better, and that there are no long term side effects of the COVID.

It lasted about 10 days, it felt like a bad cold. The only symptom I felt other being sick was some body aches. I don't know if it's related, but I feel chilly more often than before.

“Long COVID Mode”: Seeing the crisis through games

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...outperforms-current-vaccines-large-rcna205242

It will likely be available in 2026, assuming RFK doesn't kill the program and shunt it into vitamins or some bullshit. If it does become available, I'm definitely getting it.

https://bsky.app/profile/beyerstein.bsky.social/post/3lotqnalcis2a

How is it with 5G reception?

Better than my phone's

Few more months and I'm upgrading.

Trump officials set new requirements for COVID vaccines in healthy adults and children

https://www.reuters.com/business/he...ion-covid-flu-combination-vaccine-2025-05-21/

Of course.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/natio...ariants-detected-in-india/article69614635.ece

A New Covid Variant Is Rising Fast. Here’s What We Know About NB.1.8.1

COVID variant NB.1.8.1 hits U.S. What to know about symptoms, new booster vaccine restrictions

The nastiest thing about the first generation of Covid was how contagious it was. It seems like every successive generation gets more contagious. At this rate in a few years we'll be at risk of catching it during Zoom calls.

Contagious is not as much of an issue if severity is lessened. It didn't evolve to live in human hosts at first - as it gets used to us, it will try to pass itself on whilst also keeping us alive. Like flu, it will eventually only be a threat to the immunocompromised, but if you value the grandparents you'll still tell RFK to fuck off.

Thailand reports over 65,000 new Covid-19 cases and eight deaths from 18–24 May

Yes — the severity of a threat is the combination of contagiousness and lethality (plus, in practical terms, how likely a person is to be contagious without exhibiting symptoms). If you get Ebola, it has a roughly 50% chance of killing you, but it's relatively hard to transmit. At this point, since the official U.S. policy is now "spread disease to as many people as possible as quickly as possible," our best hope is that COVID will evolve to be more transmissible but less severe, so that the things the liars were saying about its severity in 2020 eventually become true.

I like how his face shield says "face shield". I wonder how he labels his shirts.

Less mortality does not mean less morbidity. We care currently putting no evolutionary pressure on it to stop causing Long COVID, especially after it spreads to new hosts.

The If Books Could Kill Podcast has done an episode on the lab leak "theory", and it turns out that it doesn't take a lot of work to cause that theory to fall apart. For example, the 2019 cables that State Department officials sent about the Wuhan lab that people said were filled with concerns about safety at the lab, actually say something entirely different. They describe it as a great lab that can't do a lot of work because it's understaffed. There's more, including a critique about people dismissing the idea of a lab leak prematurely.

https://bsky.app/profile/drruth.bsky.social/post/3lrhnrn2ft22a

This is interesting, but I’m not sure the conclusions are valid without more info. There’s no control mentioned, nor even a base rate in the area, in the abstract.