TallGuyJohninBKK

Trump's numerous false COVID statements are every bit as much on-topic here as your and others repeated posts about Biden and Maddow's public comments -- all of which have nothing to do with the CDC's latest announcement about a new COVID isolation policy.

Shudder to think what the alternative would have been -- vastly more dead Americans had they continued to have a vaccine-skeptical president for the duration of the pandemic. Biden never pandered to the anti-vax fringes, unlike Trump: This is how many lives could have been saved with COVID vaccinations in each state May 13, 2022 "One tragic fact about the nearly 1 million people who died of COVID-19 in the U.S. is that a huge share of them didn't have to. In Tennessee, 11,047 of the people who died could have survived if everyone in the state had gotten vaccinated. In Ohio, that number is 15,875. Nationally it's nearly 319,000, according a new estimate. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/05/13/1098071284/this-is-how-many-lives-could-have-been-saved-with-covid-vaccinations-in-each-sta Trump won’t say if COVID vaccines work: ‘Not a great thing to talk about’ as a Republican 06/20/23 "Former President Trump would not say whether he believes the COVID-19 vaccine works, explaining that he does not like to talk about getting the shot approved during his time in the White House because it’s a divisive issue among Republicans. Trump, in an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier conducted Monday and aired Tuesday, referenced a “Democrat friend” who asked why he does not talk more about getting the COVID-19 vaccine approved just months after the pandemic started in the United States. " https://thehill.com/homenews/4059468-trump-wont-say-if-covid-vaccines-work-not-a-great-thing-to-talk-about-as-a-republican/ AND "Former President Donald Trump often seems proud to advertise his administration's record on speedily developing COVID-19 vaccines. On the campaign trail to win another term in the White House, though, he also has knocked the use of those very vaccines. In October, for example, he unleashed a barrage of social media attacks on Ron DeSantis' pandemic record by reposting claims that the Florida governor — who is running against him in the Republican presidential primaries — was too active in vaccinating Sunshine State residents." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-presidential-candidates-trump-desantis-covid-vaccine-skeptics/ Donald Trump and vaccination: The effect of political identity, conspiracist ideation and presidential tweets on vaccine hesitancy May 2020 "Donald Trump is the first U.S. President to be on the record as having anti-vaccination attitudes. Given his enormous reach and influence, it is worthwhile examining the extent to which allegiance to Trump is associated with the public's perceptions of vaccine safety and efficacy." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103119302628 etc etc etc.

You want to complain here at length about the minnows, but protest when anyone points out the whoppers.

"The percent of the population reporting receipt of the updated 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccine is 13.1% (95% confidence interval: 12.5-13.7) for children and 22.2% (21.7-22.7) for adults 18+, including 41.5% (40.2-42.9) among adults age 65+." Reported on Friday, March 1st, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/vaccination-trends-adults.html

Meanwhile, here's a couple basic flaws to the CDC's recommendations, as they pertain to the U.S. From the CDC's own announcement: "As part of the guidance, CDC provides active recommendations on core prevention steps and strategies: Staying up to date with vaccination to protect people against serious illness, hospitalization, and death. This includes flu, COVID-19, and RSV if eligible." That's clearly not happening in the U.S. The new monovalent COVID vaccines were rolled out in the U.S. last fall, and now many months later, the vaccination rate for the new vaccines among adults is only about 22%, and moving upward only very slowly....and still under 50% even for senior citizens. AND "Once people resume normal activities, they are encouraged to take additional prevention strategies for the next 5 days to curb disease spread, such as taking more steps for cleaner air, enhancing hygiene practices, wearing a well-fitting mask, keeping a distance from others, and/or getting tested for respiratory viruses." Much of the above recommendations aren't happening for most people in the U.S. either. Mask wearing is the exception rather than the rule, and keeping a distance from others is going to be pretty tough for recently infected people who immediately go back to work under this new policy. And as the various news reports here note, the new isolation policy pretty much disregards the whole concept of testing for COVID, and instead is based on people's perceptions of their symptoms. "The recommendations suggest returning to normal activities when, for at least 24 hours, symptoms are improving overall, and if a fever was present, it has been gone without use of a fever-reducing medication." No mention of COVID testing as a tool or indicator there whatsoever. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p0301-respiratory-virus.html The CDC's stated rationale for now going to the more relaxed isolation policy includes the notion that the public is going to be doing a bunch of things -- vaccination, masking, social distancing and testing -- that most of them aren't currently doing.

No, COVID is NOT the flu, and the CDC here isn't saying it is... They ARE saying that their new policy for recommended isolation after infection is going to be to have the same isolation guidelines for COVID, the flu and the RSV virus. And for those who need some reminder explanation of how and why COVID and the flu are not the same, using U.S. data as an example: Why Are We Still Flu-ifying COVID? The diseases are nowhere near the same. ... "In 2023, COVID hospitalized more than 900,000 Americans and killed 75,000; the worst flu season of the past decade hospitalized 200,000 fewer people and resulted in 23,000 fewer deaths. A recent CDC survey reported that more than 5 percent of American adults are currently experiencing long COVID, which cannot be fully prevented by vaccination or treatment, and for which there is no cure." https://archive.is/9wY9Z

Current science is saying otherwise: Study shows 43% to 58% lower prevalence of long COVID among vaccinated people February 21, 2024 A new study based on 4,605 participants in the Michigan COVID-19 Recovery Surveillance Study shows that the prevalence of long COVID symptoms at 30 and 90 days post-infection was 43% to 58% lower among adults who were fully vaccinated before infection. ... The prevalence of 30-day long COVID was 43% lower among the vaccinated group (prevalence ratio [PR], 0.57; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.49 to 0.66). The adjusted prevalence of 90-day long COVID was 58% lower among the vaccinated group (PR, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.34 to 0.53). In several secondary analyses, the authors looked at prevalence after factoring in Delta-strain infections and comorbidities. In both cases, vaccinated participants were at least 40% less likely to have long COVID. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-shows-43-58-lower-prevalence-long-covid-among-vaccinated-people AND Vaccination Dramatically Lowers Long COVID Risk Several new studies reveal that getting multiple COVID vaccine doses provides strong protection against lingering symptoms January 3, 2024 At least 200 million people worldwide have struggled with long COVID: a slew of symptoms that can persist for months or even years after an infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. But research suggests that that number would likely be much higher if not for vaccines. A growing consensus is emerging that receiving multiple doses of the COVID vaccine before an initial infection can dramatically reduce the risk of long-term symptoms. Although the studies disagree on the exact amount of protection, they show a clear trend: the more shots in your arm before your first bout with COVID, the less likely you are to get long COVID. One meta-analysis of 24 studies published in October, for example, found that people who’d had three doses of the COVID vaccine were 68.7 percent less likely to develop long COVID compared with those who were unvaccinated. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccination-dramatically-lowers-long-covid-risk/

Biden and Maddow at least had the generally correct ideas about COVID at that time -- that getting vaccinated was going to reduce transmission and infection during that period of the pandemic, as numerous studies showed (including ones cited above), even though they overstated the extent. Unlike some other public figures of the time, who were FAR FAR more wrong in their public pronouncements: 'It's going to disappear': A timeline of Trump's claims that Covid-19 will vanish October 31, 2020 In his first speech after his hospitalization for Covid-19, President Donald Trump stood on a White House balcony on October 10 and made a grand declaration about the coronavirus: “It’s going to disappear. It is disappearing.” His words might have sounded more dramatic had he not been saying the same thing for eight months. Trump has stuck to the refrain no matter what has been happening with the pandemic. Since February, the President has declared at least 38 times that Covid-19 is either going to disappear or is currently disappearing. His proclamations have been wildly inaccurate. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/10/politics/covid-disappearing-trump-comment-tracker/ Now four years and 1 million plus Americans later dead from COVID, I'd say, he was pretty much more wrong on COVID than almost anyone else by far.

How quickly some folks forget, or try to forget: Thailand’s hospitals under pressure as Covid crisis deepens Doctors forced to treat patients in car parks while others turned away as no beds available Mon 26 Jul 2021 20.00 EDT Thailand’s worsening Covid outbreak is placing intense pressure on hospitals, forcing doctors to treat patients in parking lots and turn away people who are severely ill. ... A third wave began in April, when infections began to spread in Bangkok nightlife venues, including clubs popular among wealthy businessmen. Since then, cases have spread across prisons, factories, construction sites and densely populated areas of the capital. In about four months, the country’s total fatalities have grown from fewer than 100 to 4,146. Some have died in their homes because no hospital beds were available, according to medical volunteers. Others have died on the streets of Bangkok, including one person whose body was left on the pavement for hours last week, provoking public outrage. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/27/thailands-hospitals-under-pressure-as-covid-crisis-deepens

How many news videos did you see back in 2021 during the peaks showing what was going on inside Thailand hospital emergency rooms? Or even interviews with hospital staff talking about what they were facing day-in and day-out? Pretty much none...

Up to several hundred COVID deaths per day at its peak in Thailand. Hospitals and ERs overwhelmed, and at times closed to new admissions because of that. Temporary morgues set up to handle the masses of dead bodies. Because the government at that time did its best to limit the flow of the most damaging info to the public, in all likelihood, here, it was worse than we were being told. How much worse would you have wanted it to be? The graph below indicates that Thailand's COVID deaths tally peaked at more than 200 people PER DAY... They were having to set up temporary morgues because they couldn't handle all the bodies back in 2021. Source link:

The graph below indicates that Thailand's COVID deaths tally peaked at more than 200 people PER DAY... They were having to set up temporary morgues because they couldn't handle all the bodies back in 2021. Source link: As cases surge, Thai hospital uses containers to store bodies July 31, 2021 BANGKOK, July 31 (Reuters) - A Thai hospital morgue overwhelmed by COVID-19 deaths has begun storing bodies in refrigerated containers, resorting to a measure it last took in a devastating 2004 tsunami, as the country grapples with its biggest coronavirus outbreak. ... "What makes us feel extremely sad is that we were not able to help people who died because of lacking access to medical treatment," he added. Hospitals in Bangkok and the surrounding provinces are running out of capacity due to the surge in infections. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/cases-surge-thai-hospital-uses-containers-store-bodies-2021-07-31/

That's true... And sadly, many of the deaths in both categories could have been prevented if governments and individuals had taken the known measures to prevent them.

No Evidence Excess Deaths Linked to Vaccines, Contrary to Claims Online April 17, 2023 COVID-19 vaccines substantially reduce the risk of dying from COVID-19, and serious side effects are very rare. Excess deaths among working-age adults in 2021 and 2022 were driven by COVID-19 and other factors, not vaccination. Faulty logic underlies claims that vaccines caused mass disability and economic harm. https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/scicheck-no-evidence-excess-deaths-linked-to-vaccines-contrary-to-claims-online/

Yes, let's hold the responsible for this: COVID vaccines saved 20M lives in 1st year, scientists say Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday. ... “Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn’t been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines.” The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom. https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-england-54d29ae3af5c700f15d704c14ee224b5

The 3% range discussion pertained to the Case Fatality Rate for COVID (the share of deaths out of the confirmed cases) earlier in the pandemic when death rates were much higher... It wasn't any estimate of deaths out of the total population as you claim. The Global Case-Fatality Rate of COVID-19 Has Been Declining Since May 2020 "The weekly global cumulative COVID-19 rCFR reached a peak at 7.23% during the 17th week (April 22–28, 2020). We found a positive and increasing trend for global daily rCFR values of COVID-19 until the 17th week (pre-peak period) and then a strong declining trend up until the 53rd week (post-peak period) toward 2.2% (December 29–31, 2020)." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8176487/ Different countries had different CFR rates at different times throughout the pandemic, some worse and some better than others.

Thailand has had plenty of COVID deaths, nearly 35,000 cumulative according to the Thai MoPH. And those official numbers from Thailand are widely considered as a significant undercount to reality: https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main Source link: Source link:

And likewise in the U.S. right now, new COVID hospitalizations are running at about 17,000 per week... so lots of people still getting sick and requiring hospitalization... even though the numbers have been improving lately and are down from the peaks of a year ago. Source link:

To be counted as a COVID death in those CDC statistics, the death has to have COVID as the underlying (main) cause or a contributing cause as coded on the death certificate. "Provisional data are non-final counts of deaths based on the flow of mortality data in NVSS. Deaths include those with COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1, as an underlying or contributing cause of death on the death certificate." Source link:

Although U.S. COVID deaths and hospitalizations have been declining lately, and are much down from their peaks of early 2023 a year ago, COVID is still killing more than 200 Americans per day, each and every day, in the U.S., more than 1,500 per week right now. Source link: "Data during recent periods are incomplete because of the lag in time between when a death occurs and when a death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS, and processed for reporting. This delay can range from 1 week to 8 weeks or more, depending on the jurisdiction. The most recent 3 weeks of mortality counts are shaded grey and mortality rates shown as dotted lines because NVSS reporting is <95% during this period."

More on why the CDC's latest guidance is at odds with what the science shows on transmissibility of COVID even now: Covid Taught Us a Lot. The CDC Now Wants Us to Forget It. ... "the guidelines outlined by the Post’s three sources would run counter to the available research on Covid and other respiratory illnesses—presumably in order to satisfy economic and political interests. The consequences both for contagion and public trust, should the agency follow through on these plans, could be severe. ... Crucially, Covid symptoms do not seem to correspond with contagiousness. “We knew surprisingly early on in the pandemic that asymptomatic individuals can shed virus and can transmit the virus to others,” said Sorrell. With omicron, only 22 percent of vaccinated people had a fever, and it was even less common among those who had a booster; even so, 80 percent of patients still tested positive after five days, one study found. Some 40 percent of kids are still contagious after symptoms resolve; one-quarter are contagious after seven days, and 10 percent are still contagious after 10 days." https://newrepublic.com/article/179304/covid-cdc-guidelines-isolation-symptoms

One problem with the CDC's policy change is that science shows that people 24 hours after their COVID symptoms have begun improving -- the CDC's new cutoff for ending recommended isolation -- can and will continue to be contagious to others around them. Some experts disagree on guidance change It’s reasonable to want to treat Covid-19 like other respiratory viruses, said Dr. Ellie Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University’s School of Public Health, “but you can’t just discard the science.” ... Murray notes that we’ve learned a lot about how respiratory diseases spread and how best to control them during the pandemic. But instead of applying those lessons to help protect people from other infections like the flu, she says, this rolling back of precautions is sending a harmful message. “It’s undermining the whole rest of the public health system,” she said. “Because what people are hearing is, ‘Actually, diseases aren’t as bad as we’d said they were, and we don’t actually need to do anything. It’s not actually that bad if some people die.’” https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/01/health/cdc-covid-isolation-recommendations/index.html

I think the CDC's policy change here is a recognition of several things: 1. Protection against COVID is better now than it was in past years, because of the partial/temporary immunity gained from prior infections and vaccinations at the society levels. Along with better medical treatments and methods of care. 2. That their policy on isolation is and was only a recommendation, and people and entities weren't required to follow it, and in fact, probably weren't mostly following it in real life these days. Still, there are a good number of folks out in the public health community who believe the current CDC policy change is ignoring what the actual science continues to show about COVID and its infectiousness and transmissibility. Why Are We Still Flu-ifying COVID? The diseases are nowhere near the same. ... "In 2023, COVID hospitalized more than 900,000 Americans and killed 75,000; the worst flu season of the past decade hospitalized 200,000 fewer people and resulted in 23,000 fewer deaths. A recent CDC survey reported that more than 5 percent of American adults are currently experiencing long COVID, which cannot be fully prevented by vaccination or treatment, and for which there is no cure. ... Dropping the current COVID-isolation guideline—which has, since the end of 2021, recommended that people cloister for five days—may likewise be dangerous. ... That means a return to a world in which tens of thousands of Americans die each year of flu and RSV, as they did in the 2010s. With COVID here to stay, every winter for the foreseeable future will layer on yet another respiratory virus—and a particularly deadly, disabling, and transmissible one at that. The math is simple: “The risk has overall increased for everyone,” Landon said. That straightforward addition could have inspired us to expand our capacity for preserving health and life. Instead, our tolerance for suffering seems to be the only thing that’s grown. https://archive.is/9wY9Z

There were instances when some public figures overstated what the data was showing at the time.... And then they were corrected by the U.S. CDC: CDC reverses statement by director that vaccinated people are no longer contagious April 2, 2021 The CDC later told the Times Walensky was speaking broadly during the interview. “It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get COVID-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the evidence,” a CDC spokesman told the Times. The CDC study found the two mRNA vaccines prevented 90 percent of infections two weeks after patients received the second of two doses, including asymptomatic and presymptomatic infections. Following a single dose of either vaccine, the participants’ risk of infection dropped by 80 percent. https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/546234-cdc-reverses-statement-by-director-that-vaccinated-people-are-no/ The truth was out there and was told repeatedly as to what what occurring and found during that period of time.

No, society wasn't "lied to" about the vaccines.... though some politicians did overstate what the data was showing in the early going. Fact Check: Preventing transmission never required for COVID vaccines’ initial approval; Pfizer vax did reduce transmission of early variants "To get emergency approval, companies needed to show that the vaccines were safe and prevented vaccinated people from getting ill. They did not have to show that the vaccine would also prevent people from spreading the virus to others. Once the vaccines were on the market, independent researchers in multiple countries studied people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and did show that vaccination reduced transmission of variants circulating at the time." ... Evidence continued to build in 2021 that the mRNA-based vaccines prevented infections and onward transmission of the virus (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl4292 , opens new ta). But with the advent that year of the coronavirus Delta variant, plus waning immunity from vaccines delivered at the start of the year, protection against infection and transmission was seen to be dropping, although not eliminated, as previously described by Reuters Fact Check (https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-vaccines-idUSL1N2SA1FZ). The newest family of Omicron variants has further eroded vaccine effectiveness against infection and transmission (https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/how-omicron-highlights-fading-hope-herd-immunity-covid-2022-01-20/) . But even Omicron does not escape vaccine protection completely. https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/preventing-transmission-never-required-covid-vaccines-initial-approval-pfizer-2024-02-12/ Things were different in the early going with the original variants of the virus. And there were valid reasons for the original optimism about greatly reducing transmission, based on studies at the time. Israeli studies find Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine reduces transmission February 19, 2021 JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine greatly reduces virus transmission, two Israeli studies have found, shedding light on one of the biggest questions of the global effort to quash the pandemic. Data analysis in a study by the Israeli Health Ministry and Pfizer Inc found the Pfizer vaccine developed with Germany's BioNTech reduces infection, including in asymptomatic cases, by 89.4% and in symptomatic cases by 93.7%. https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-israel-vaccine-int/israeli-studies-find-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-reduces-transmission-idUSKBN2AJ08J/