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What truth? Asking a sincere, polite question. If I missed it in your post I apologize in advance.

Thank you zebra25...I do believe your question is sincere . I was responding to sisoon's statement about there being a difference between censorship and refusing to repeat words that are deemed unreliable by the vast majority of experts. I referenced Dr. Bennett Omalu...who was the first to diagnose CTE in the brains of American football players. It started with an autopsy he did in 2002. He and other colleagues published their findings in 2005. Needless to say...it did NOT go over well with the powerful NFL. It took 11 YEARS from the time he first published his findings until the NFL publicly acknowledged that there was a link between football and CTE. In between that time his work was not taken seriously and his findings were deemed unreliable. He is STILL being deemed unreliable by certain news sources even today.

I see this playing out with other qualified epidemiologists who are saying things about Covid that aren't what the vast majority of experts are saying. THEIR voices aren't being heard in mainstream media...they are being censored and suppressed. But their truth IS getting out even though they are being ridiculed and mocked for their findings...just like Bennett Omalu was. There are several examples that people have given in this thread.

I can be persuaded by data and transparency much more easily than by innuendo.

I sincerely hope that people will do this . The data is being suppressed now in showing the percentages of unvaccinated people who have contracted Covid...are hospitalized...and are dying from it in MY state and in others too who have looked at it. Thankfully enough people are questioning...and it IS trickling out...showing a trend that is not in line with what mainstream media is saying.

I avoid Chrome whenever I can

Me too!! I have never tried Brave though...I need to go and check it out...thanks for that .

What is this thing that I'm failing to figure out all by myself because I have no idea exactly what I'm looking for?

It's not one thing...it's the overall picture that we ALL should be questioning. YOU do a GOOD job of questioning from what I can see. I believe that when something doesn't FIT for you...you will look more into it . I truly am happy to see you doing that!!

Someone who has seen firsthand what is happening talked about it on another thread. They specifically wrote for us to NOT believe what we are hearing concerning certain medications and other things that are being said and done. Like you...when something doesn't FIT...I want to look into it. There are MANY questions about this and we should all be given the opportunity to see ALL of the answers to discern for ourselves which ones FIT for us.

Again, there's a difference between censorship and refusing to repeat words that are deemed unreliable by the vast majority of experts.

I think this is where we start down a slippery slope. Especially given how this is currently being implemented.

There are certainly historical cases where what was originally a minority position was over time accepted as truth. Given this I have a problem with modern censorship. Which to me is not flagging information as potentially unreliable and requiring further investigation to confirm validity, but removing it from actually being found.

I personally feel there is significant misinformation being spread about vaccinations and numerous other subjects, but I also feel there is a strong case we could be falling for a case of groupthink so we need to tread carefully.

but I also feel there is a strong case we could be falling for a case of groupthink so we need to tread carefully.

Theres a hive mind mentality with everything. We are social creatures after all. Its just dangerous when the hive mind is spreading obvious misinformation. Trying to correct an entire hive viewpoint is rather impossible i think.

Do you remember the 10th man theory from world War Z? 10 people faced with a situation. If 9 of them all agree to one position its the responsibility of the 10th man to take the opposite view.

We should adopt that.

When the Pfizer CEO, Albert Borla went on tv and said - "we know the two doses of the vaccine offered very limited protection, if any. The three doses with the booster they offer reasonable protection against hospitalization and death." - fact checkers decided to call this statement mostly false. They did so because folks used his quote with regards to COVID 19 in general, but considering the emerging and dominate strain is omicron (what 750, 000 average daily cases in the us and growing?) the statement was in fact mostly true. Why the need to "fact check"and wrongly at that, what he said?

In my province, our numbers of hospitalization and icus were falling in line with our vaccinated population. For 16 weeks that wasn’t the case and government had no problem showing those numbers, once they began falling in line, they quit showing them. One of our local news stations asked about this, the government replied that the numbers were no longer showing the message they wanted to convey, so there were gonna use a different system instead. Which was averaging data over the past six weeks to tell how many times more likely you were to…. Fuckery clearly afoot.

At the end of the day, omicron has changed the game. In very many ways. Nations across the globe are talking endemic and learning to live with corona. I imagine that ideas from the great barrington declaration will become much more mainstream, but undoubtedly not under its name. When 80% of the COVID cases are under 65 and over 80% of deaths are over 65, it’s quite clear where the area of concern should be.

And finally, if mandating vaccines in hospitals wasn’t a dumb enough policy, the Canadian government has decided that our international truckers now need to be double vaxxed as well. Huge inflation and supply shortages weren’t even enough to curb bad policy, so let’s shoot ourselves in the foot a little more.

[This message edited by Loukas at 5:14 PM, Monday, January 17th]

Yes, he was talking specifically about Omicron. Hence the recommendation to get a booster. The thing people were worried about happened. We got a variant that the vaccines weren't as protective against. That's just reality.

Where are you seeing the fuckery? Two shots is better than none, three is pretty good against Omicron. Maybe the message people were getting was "Well fuck it, I won't bother with getting vaccinated", which is a pretty awful message because Omicron may be nothing at all compared to the next big variant that evades vaccines even more. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy when those who refuse to be vaccinated spread COVID around so much that new variants arise that then are different enough from OG COVID that the vaccines were created to combat that the vaccines are then less effective. There are two messages one can take from this. You can either say "I knew the vaccines were bullshit" or you can say "Damn, if more people had taken precautions and gotten vaccinated, maybe we wouldn't have this variant that renders our vaccines less effective".

I'll tell you why this pisses me off, this barrington declaration. It's sociopathic. It's "I miss drinking at bars and eating in restaurants with no restrictions so if some people die or suffer permanent health damage from long COVID, I'll just hope it's not me". It's "your aunt with the organ transplant should shutter herself in her home forever because I miss doing things". It also stupid. It ignores the reality that unvaccinated people are getting COVID multiple times. It is borne of selfishness and lack of concern for the most vulnerable in our society and it's arrogant because it assumes that the person promiting it isn't one of the most vulnerable without realizing it.

We did an absolutely amazing fucking thing as a society by developing vaccines for a new pandemic in short time and what happened? A huge percentage of people didn't take them, mostly for reasons not based in reality. The groupthink is already here and it's insane. If we get something truly horrific as a pandemic, we're probably gone as a species because we failed this test so profoundly that it's amazing we're considered an intelligent animal.

And JFC wasn't the VACCINE a pretty good way to get herd immunity!??!?!??!? Let's see, get terribly sick and risk death or permanent health effects or get vaccinated. Hey, let's just everybody get sick. That will fix it. Grandma can live in the basement and we'll drop food off on the top step and hope she makes it.

[This message edited by DevastatedDee at 5:42 PM, Monday, January 17th]

But their truth IS getting out even though they are being ridiculed and mocked for their findings.

Just because someone challenges established science and is dismissed does not automatically mean that the dismissal is invalid. Often, it means that the claimant has an agenda and/or insufficiently rigorous methodology.

Take the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). Accredited medical journals published their papers on a provisional basis, on the principle that if there were therapies that might help combat COVID, it was a good idea to get that information out there in the conversation ASAP. When the studies were examined more closely, they were found to have inflated claims and inadequate scientic rigor, sometimes not even using a control group. The papers were therefore retracted or disqualified from publication by the journals. That kicked off a narrative of censorship by amorphous Powers That Be who don't want the Truth Out There. It's not censorship when you make a claim with dubious and even deliberately deceptive research and can't back it up with vetted data. It's the appropriate response to a failure to make the case.

Trying to correct an entire hive viewpoint is rather impossible i think.

Hard? Yes. Impossible? No. I work in an industry where best practices are spewed as the only way, except almost all our innovation comes from being a contrarian so to innovate you are left in the untenable position of bucking the norm, which is only acceptable when you succeed. You can change the hives point of view, but it does come with some personal risk. A trusted contrarian has a better chance, but where do these mythical beast come from?

Yes, he was talking specifically about Omicron. Hence the recommendation to get a booster. The thing people were worried about happened. We got a variant that the vaccines weren't as protective against. That's just reality.

Yeah, I know, I said he was talking about omicron, the dominant variant. You said nothing here that I didn’t. Once again, his quote was in fact mostly true, not mostly false.

Where are you seeing the fuckery? Two shots is better than none, three is pretty good against Omicron. Maybe the message people were getting was "Well fuck it, I won't bother with getting vaccinated", which is a pretty awful message because Omicron may be nothing at all compared to the next big variant that evades vaccines even more. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy when those who refuse to be vaccinated spread COVID around so much that new variants arise that then are different enough from OG COVID that the vaccines were created to combat that the vaccines are then less effective. There are two messages one can take from this. You can either say "I knew the vaccines were bullshit" or you can say "Damn, if more people had taken precautions and gotten vaccinated, maybe we wouldn't have this variant that renders our vaccines less effective".

First of, it’s a global pandemic, while rich nations have wide access to the vaccine, many poor countries are not as fortunate. Something the WHO talks about regularly, and has concerns of boosters because of. So you second message is merely a pipe dream. Truth and reality are a self-fulfilling prophecy, trying to control, that which can’t, will always prevail. In this case, vaccines are helpful, most specifically towards a certain subset of people, but overall, aren’t the solution that actual herd immunity presents, especially in the vaste majority of healthy population.

As to the fuckery, I said in my last post where the fuckery was. The government didn’t like the numbers, so they loaded them to favour their message. Fuckery.

I'll tell you why this pisses me off, this barrington declaration. It's sociopathic. It's "I miss drinking at bars and eating in restaurants with no restrictions so if some people die or suffer permanent health damage from long COVID, I'll just hope it's not me". It's "your aunt with the organ transplant should shutter herself in her home forever because I miss doing things". It also stupid. It ignores the reality that unvaccinated people are getting COVID multiple times. It is borne of selfishness and lack of concern for the most vulnerable in our society and it's arrogant because it assumes that the person promiting it isn't one of the most vulnerable without realizing it.

Clearly you didn’t read the declaration, if you did, you sure didn’t understand what it said. The level of fallacy is so far beyond misleading it’s shocking.

The rest of your post was just filled with more fear-mongering and more fallacy, and once again nothing the GBD had to say. So I’ll just leave it at that.

There are two messages one can take from this. You can either say "I knew the vaccines were bullshit" or you can say "Damn, if more people had taken precautions and gotten vaccinated, maybe we wouldn't have this variant that renders our vaccines less effective".

I see another message...if people who were ABLE to OR wanted to...got vaccinated...and the monoclonal antibodies were given to those who were positive for Covid...maybe the virus could have been eliminated. I saw...along with everyone else...how it was stated that 70% of the monoclonal antibody infusions went to just 7 states. These 7 states were named...and mine was among them. It puzzled me because I kept hearing that monoclonal antibody treatments were readily available for all 50 states. I didn't understand why the other states weren't using these treatments...unless maybe there was a shortage and someone was lying about them being readily available? It wasn't until the federal government started rationing them in September that I read where only 43% of the monoclonal antibody treatments were used...since November of the previous year!!! There were PLENTY of treatments...and PLENTY of time to make more than enough for everyone who wanted them...to give them out to every state...WHY weren't they??

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy when those who refuse to be vaccinated spread COVID around so much that new variants arise that then are different enough from OG COVID that the vaccines were created to combat that the vaccines are then less effective.

How do you know that people who refuse to be vaccinated are spreading Covid? Are you saying that vaccinated people DIDN'T spread Covid before the new variants arose?

It ignores the reality that unvaccinated people are getting COVID multiple times.

Where is this data? Are you saying that vaccinated people with breakthrough transmissions aren't getting Covid multiple times?

A huge percentage of people didn't take them, mostly for reasons not based in reality.

The majority of Americans have been vaccinated...or are you talking about globally? I know MY reason for not being vaccinated IS based in reality...and that is a pretty broad claim to make that people who aren't vaccinated...it is mostly for reasons not based in reality.

Let's see, get terribly sick and risk death or permanent health effects or get vaccinated.

The VAST majority of people don't get terribly sick from Covid...vaccinated or unvaccinated. In my state...the total cases since the beginning have been 996,623 cases. This isn't counting for those who were asymptomatic and never even realized they had Covid so they aren't among that number. The deaths have been 15,137.

I know you are frustrated and you have every right to be. We ALL do. This should have NEVER been allowed to happen!!! But it is here and we have to deal with it the best we know how. We can have respectful conversations and try to learn and HELP each other. The unknown is scary...but we know so much MORE about this virus now...and my hope is that one day we WILL be unified in FIGHTING it .

That's just wrong. Covid-2 is just too infectious. Not publishing his views is not censorship - it's good journalism not to publish opinions that fly in the face of what we know. Could that guy be right? Sure.

Crackpot opinions used to be reserved for wooden crates on street corners or the Speaker's Corner in Hyde park.

Today there is an entire universe of the unwashed and unlearned attention cravers, nutters, fame seekers, and illitterati who feel entitled to unearned influence and adoration.

This "everybody could be right" and "both sides do it" is like a sedative for intellectual conversation.

Critical thinking used to mean something.

I have a few more items to add to this list...thank you all so much for contributing !

1. Covid is real (not a hoax).
2. Masks are effective at reducing the transmission of disease (not 100%).
3. Vaccines have been effective at reducing the transmission of Covid (not 100%). They are very effective at reducing the severity of illness and hospitalizations for those with breakthrough infections(not 100%).
4. The vast majority of people do not experience severe side effects from the vaccines.
5. Monoclonal antibodies treatments are very effective at reducing the severity of illness and hospitalization for those infected with Covid. These treatments are most effective if done before the viral load becomes too high...within 10 days of symptoms. Most are more effective in treating previous strains of Covid than they are in treating Omicron.
6. Unvaccinated people who get Covid are significantly more likely than vaccinated people to get severe illness and require hospitalization.
7. Hospital resources are not unlimited and are already strained.
8. The more people that are infected with Covid, the more likely the virus is to mutate.
9. We do not know whether the treatments we do have against Covid (vaccines, monoclonal antibodies) will be effective against new strains of the virus.
10. Sunlight and alcohol help to kill the virus (not 100%).
11. Most hand sanitizers approved for use contain alcohol (ethanol), isopropyl alcohol, or benzalkonium chloride (BZK).
12. Reducing the viral load can keep people from having to go into the hospital.
13. Some viruses tend to mutate to become more contagious but less deadly to the host.
14. Some vitamins can help boost the immune system.
15. New vaccines are being tested to combat the virus and not have adverse reactions that other vaccines have had.
16. Oral anti-viral mouthwash helps to reduce the viral load in the throat.
17. Washing hands and social distancing are effective at reducing the transmission of Covid.

Here are the new points I added from reading previous posts:

18. The CDC started a nationwide reporting system to test waste water for Covid in September 2020.

19. Some hospitals do not isolate Covid positive patients...so every floor in a hospital may have Covid positive patients.

20. Some healthcare workers are working in hospitals while Covid positive...wearing N95 masks.

If there is anything else that I missed...please let me know .

Nasal sprays were talked about the other day and that got me to thinking. I use a nasal spray for my allergies...flonase. I have never had Covid even though I have been exposed. Could my nasal spray be the answer? I looked it up...and NO...it isn't !!

I have a friend who has had severe asthma attacks and has to take a daily inhaler for it. They got Covid early in 2020 and we were all worried for them. Thank God they recovered without having to go into the hospital . Their doctor told them that it could be that their daily inhaler kept them from having to be admitted. I have seen mixed results with these asthma inhalers. Has anyone else seen something like this happen?

How nitpicky do you want to be with this list?

People are having adverse reactions to the monoclonal antibody treatments. Anaphylaxis has occurred a number of times at our hospital.

I saw you had adverse reactions mentioned for the vaccine. I haven't seen anyone mention side effects for the antibody treatments, as expected with any medication.

I wasn't suggesting you were being nitpicky, my addition possibly is.

[This message edited by zebra25 at 9:17 AM, January 18th (Tuesday)]

Someone who has seen firsthand what is happening talked about it on another thread. They specifically wrote for us to NOT believe what we are hearing concerning certain medications and other things that are being said and done. Like you...when something doesn't FIT...I want to look into it. There are MANY questions about this and we should all be given the opportunity to see ALL of the answers to discern for ourselves which ones FIT for us.

Want2B, the real issue I have with this point is to remind everyone that we simply do not have the credentials and experience to discern for ourselves what fits, plain and simple.

We don't have the education to understand what fits and what doesn't. In my field, I could explain something to you and it wouldn't make sense. You might assume I am wrong and see something that makes sense to you. You would be entirely wrong because you don't have enough knowledge in my field to know what fits and what doesn't.

This is the biggest fault in the idea of doing research for oneself. We don't have the education or the training to truly understand what we're looking at, which makes it so very easy for quacks to spin a point around so it sounds plausible when it absolutely is not.

When two sides are not equal, it does a disservice to the general public to present them as two sides, because the public cannot discern for themselves that there clearly is a right answer.

It's not about intelligence. It's about years and years of knowledge and experience that the general public simply does not have.

How nitpicky do you want to be with this list?

I think it is how emergent8 wrote when she started this list...that it not be particularly contentious .

Since so many of us have different experiences with this virus...I think we can all benefit from the various perspectives. Just like the monoclonal antibody treatments. In MY experience with seeing my family and friends have the monoclonal antibody treatments with absolutely no side effects...I haven't seen any issues with them. My doctor said that the patients she had who went through the treatments had no issues either...so I didn't even think about that. I appreciate you letting me be aware of this .

When I looked it up...it looks like the sotrovimab infusions produce the least adverse reactions. This is also the only monoclonal antibody infusion that has been shown to work to combat Omicron...but the federal government doesn't have these in their stock. In all cases though...the adverse reactions are still a small percentage...just like with the vaccines.

Do you think this would be a good point to the list?

The vast majority of people do not experience severe side effects from the monoclonal antibody treatments.

I think as you said the percentages are small with both the monoclonal antibody treatments and the vaccine.

Well, I'll post this again, and unless someone has data to refute the results of MCA studies in the Lancet, we can all agree that despite the minimal side effects from MCA's there are no medically proven benefits to taking them either! A Null result means there was no more improvement with MCA's than with the placebo. I looked at the raw data, the charts, I read the article and I'm shaking my head at the continued discussion about the lack of availability over a drug proven to be ineffective in a study released last month. Besides anecdotal examples, I'm still looking for proof that they are worth all the dialog. I'm sure a lot of money is being made on them and the ill are grasping at any treatment that might work, but the efficacy studies in the Lancet did not mince words:

"In addition to the overall null results reported here for sotrovimab and BRII-196 plus BRII-198, previous trials of bamlanivimab12 and casirivimab plus imdevimab23 have also reported null results for the overall population of patients hospitalised with COVID-19. However, evidence is emerging that patients hospitalised with COVID-19 without endogenous anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies might benefit from neutralising monoclonal antibody therapy. In our study, approximately 301 (58%) of 513 patients were negative for neutralising anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the time of randomisation and, among these patients, point estimates suggested treatment with BRII-196 plus BRII-198 could potentially be beneficial..."

The most hopeful statement is that further studies MIGHT show benefit for a subset of the infected. Might. Could Potentially be Beneficial. I'm sure more studies will become available in time, but I see nothing to get too hopeful about here. The word futility was used in the following article..

A second article in the Lancet:
Enrolment into the trial was stopped early after a prespecified interim futility analysis in 536 participants in the modified intention-to-treat population found no improvement in odds of favourable pulmonary outcome scores on day 5 after infusion with either sotrovimab or BRII-196 plus BRII-198 compared with placebo. By day 90, no difference was seen in the primary endpoint of sustained clinical recovery with either sotrovimab or BRII-196 plus BRII-198 compared with placebo, and composite safety outcomes were similar across the three groups.

[This message edited by whatisloveanyway at 4:52 PM, Tuesday, January 18th]

zebra25...cool . I will switch #4 and #5...and add "monoclonal antibodies" to that statement then when I update it the next time. Thanks!

whatisloveanyway...I think the keyword in that study is hospitalized. MCA's are VERY effective when given before the viral load becomes too great...within 10 days from the time the symptoms first appear. By the time people have to be hospitalized...the viral load is too great for the MCA's to be effective. NO ONE that I know of who had the MCA's ended up in the hospital or died from Covid. My doctor said they had the same experience with their patients who took the MCA's soon after the symptoms appeared.

However...for Omicron...sotrovimab is the only MCA that is effective against Omicron. Omicron doesn't have the spike protein...which the other two MCA's target. I believe this may be why vaccinated people are having more breakthrough infections as well...because most vaccines targeted the spike protein from what I have read.

First of, it’s a global pandemic, while rich nations have wide access to the vaccine, many poor countries are not as fortunate. Something the WHO talks about regularly, and has concerns of boosters because of. So you second message is merely a pipe dream. Truth and reality are a self-fulfilling prophecy, trying to control, that which can’t, will always prevail. In this case, vaccines are helpful, most specifically towards a certain subset of people, but overall, aren’t the solution that actual herd immunity presents, especially in the vaste majority of healthy population.

As to the fuckery, I said in my last post where the fuckery was. The government didn’t like the numbers, so they loaded them to favour their message. Fuckery.

Oh yes, for sure we have fucked up not getting vaccines to the poorer nations. Would be kinda nice if those in the wealthier nations would actually take the shots that they are so fortunate to have available. We must look like idiots to those who wish they could get one. You know we can come up with a nasty variant in Kentucky or Ontario as easily as anyone in any other place can.

Herd immunity is the pipe dream at this point. Delta and Omicron pretty well squashed that. People are getting COVID two and three times because our natural immunity fades. Yes, vaccinated people can get infected, but they aren't getting nearly as sick. This is likely going to be endemic and we are going to need to get vaccinated for it yearly if we'd like to avoid wrecking our healthcare systems. New variants will continue to arise. We failed.

Who are healthy people, btw? My brother is in his mid-40s, hits the gym regularly, eats healthy and his only real health complaint is that his back hurts sometimes. Doesn't smoke, no asthma, is a very healthy man. He's not diagnosed for a single thing. However, COVID kicked his ass twice in 2021. He had brain fog for months after the first infection that affected his ability to do his job. It took him down hard. He refuses the vaccine because "natural immunity" and he believes everything Joe Rogan says. He'd be a great test case for this herd immunity thing. I just wonder how many times he'd need to get seriously ill and given all kinds of new medications to get him through it before he's contributing to this herd immunity thing. Do we even know the long term effects of being sick with COVID? Personally, I wouldn't volunteer to be that sick twice in a year to avoid a vaccine.

Clearly you didn’t read the declaration, if you did, you sure didn’t understand what it said. The level of fallacy is so far beyond misleading it’s shocking.

The rest of your post was just filled with more fear-mongering and more fallacy, and once again nothing the GBD had to say. So I’ll just leave it at that.

So what did I read wrong? What did I miss? It ain't fear-mongering if it's reality.

Want2B, the real issue I have with this point is to remind everyone that we simply do not have the credentials and experience to discern for ourselves what fits, plain and simple.

We don't have the education to understand what fits and what doesn't. In my field, I could explain something to you and it wouldn't make sense. You might assume I am wrong and see something that makes sense to you. You would be entirely wrong because you don't have enough knowledge in my field to know what fits and what doesn't.

This is the biggest fault in the idea of doing research for oneself. We don't have the education or the training to truly understand what we're looking at, which makes it so very easy for quacks to spin a point around so it sounds plausible when it absolutely is not.

When two sides are not equal, it does a disservice to the general public to present them as two sides, because the public cannot discern for themselves that there clearly is a right answer.

It's not about intelligence. It's about years and years of knowledge and experience that the general public simply does not have.

And honest to god, that right there.

About the MAB's. I personally was fortunate enough to have them and did have Sotrovimab, and it absolutely made a difference. When I rec'd it I felt lousy, and the congestion was definitely heading into a sinus infection, and ear infection. The morning after I felt like I had been ill, but was on the path to getting better, and the congestion was mobilized.
Now I am 5 days out from them, and still have some minor congestion lingering, and fatigue. But overall this was NOT as bad as it could have been by any means.
My spouse has it, and says if it wasn't covid he would not be working from home. My daughter has it, and has a job that requires her to be on site, so she is out for the week. She says today she is feeling better, she was positive on Saturday. Felt bad starting last Thursday.