Twitter COVIDiocy: Spamming is not Winning

A while back, someone made a remark "I don't know of anyone with vaccine injury" on Twitter.

I replied that "ever notice it's usually antivaxxer's friends or family that have those alleged vaccine injuries?"

Then an antivaxxer dropped a Snopes-verified bogus entry "Pfizer victim" and claim "people don't start antivax, we start because we saw our loved ones suffer"

You saw a BOGUS suffering that NO ONE can verify, eh? 

So I pointed out his bogosity and linked to Snopes debunking the one he linked. 

Guess what he did next? 

He spammed 20+ more other alleged vaccine injuries, while claiming "only fully vaxxed have problems". 

Edit: Make that 37. 

The only treatment you'll get is "mute". I'm not going to debate you and waste my time when you don't give a **** about evidence and science, by leading off with a bogus vaccine death. 

Leading off with a snopes-verified bogus entry. Really smart you are (not), antivaxxer. 

Oh, AND you're getting reported. 

Antivax COVIDiocy: WHO Says Unvaxed Breeding More Variants

Bloomberg's Emma Barnett has just interviewed WHO's chief scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, and they discussed a lot of stuff about COVID. One of the subjects raised was how fast the variants such as Delta and Omicron spread. Dr. Swaminathan believed that we may not have seen such rapid rise of COVID variants, had we been less selfish. 

"If those hundreds of millions of doses we had in 2021 had been distributed equitably that the WHO had laid out the framework; let's protect all the vulnerable people around the world first, doesn't matter where they live, so we can reduce deaths, then we can start vaccinating the other age groups coming down to adults and adolescents and so on. Then maybe we would not be seeing new variants."

"Do you think the West, the richer countries hogging vaccines has led to the variants?" @Emmabarnett asks.

“Yes, I think we can say that,” @WHO's Chief Scientist @doctorsoumya says https://t.co/FwpoxCQlSG pic.twitter.com/2r8yRx5DHn

— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) February 11, 2022

So what does this have to do with antivaxxers, you ask? 

Let us consider the fact that Delta variant was first detected in India, and Omicron Variant first detected in South Africa. These are far from the only variants observed but these two are "variants of concern". 

Dr. Swaminathan is basically saying that due to the countries not sharing their vaccines so we can vaccinate as many of the most vulnerable we can, we let COVID run wild among the unvaxxed, and that produced more variants.

The point is the more unvaxxed (or effectively unvaxxed) people there are, the more variants we will see, because more of them get sick, and thus, more COVID virus produced, more mutations occurs, and more chances of variants.

Thus, the obvious answer is to PREVENT them from getting sick through vaccinations, so less COVID virus, less mutation, less variants.  

The people in India and South Africa are involuntarily unvaxxed because they lack the vaccines and/or the infrastructure to deliver them. 

Yet we have people in the US (and everywhere in the world, aka the antivaxxers) INTENTIONALLY avoiding vaccines and boosters, and thus, helping to generate more variants. And they are fighting vaccine mandates at every level, with no more reason than "I say government cannot jab me! Freedom!"

The antivaxxers are the ones preventing us from getting over COVID, as I've pointed out last September. We could have saved tens of billions in hospital costs, and tens of thousands of lives, had we all gotten vaccinated and boosted. And we may have gotten over COVID already. 

Instead, we are suffering the most COVID casualties of any nation, including China and Russia, and it's not letting up, and some so-called "lawmakers" are trying to pass laws to let us kill ourselves by OUTLAWing mask and vaccine mandates, even for children. 

Don't be a COVIDiot. Or you may be helping breed the next variant of COVID, and it may be more virulent than omicron. 

Medical COVIDiocy: Surrendering to COVID Risks Heart Problems for Up to a Year

 Among some so-called health commentators, some of them with a peripherally relevant medical degree, are calling for "return to normalcy", which basically means "we should cut any mandates as early as possible", which includes both vaccine AND mask mandates, for ANY age group. This is sheer madness. 

Denmark has voted to cut ALL COVID restrictions as of Feb 11, 2022, despite surging COVID cases since last November. Denmark has a COVID vaccination rate of about 80% and booster rate of about 75%. 

(Some antivaxxers will use this to argue "vaccination didn't work". Vaccination did work... it just did not work well enough. And it's well known that simple two doses were not enough to protect against omicron.)

It is obvious that vaccinations alone will not stop omicron. Not even boosters. It's vaccinations AND boosters AND masks that will slow omicron, and hopefully, nothing more deadly or virulent comes along, like how Omicron usurped Delta. 

Yet here are these health commentators claiming "we just need to live with COVID, it's becoming endemic like the flu". 

Except flu did not kill a million Americans in 2 years, or a thousand children. 

THEN there's the problem of long COVID... even for those with only mild COVID symptoms. Lingering blood clots can exacerbate all sorts of conditions as well as increase irregular heart rhythms, such as myocarditis, once thought to be a danger of COVID vaccines. Turns out, NOT getting the vaccine is MORE dangerous. 

Yes, you MAY still catch COVID even if you are vaxed and boosted. That's why you also wear an N95 mask. So you don't get infected in the first place. Why take chances when you can layer protection? 

And whoever wants to end all that because it's "inconvenient" is basically advocating for more COVID death and COVID suffering. 

Don't be a COVIDiot and argue for normalcy. We are still in pandemic times. Ignoring the problem does not make the problem go away. It only KILLS people. 

Sad COVIOdiocy: Antivax Nurse who Told Family Not to Vaccinate Has Died from COVID

An Idaho registered nurse with special-needs twins has died from COVID. Normally this is just sad news, but this is extra sad because she actually told her own family NOT to vaccinate, while her own mother was in the hospital in a coma from COVID. 

Idaho was a hotbed for antivax misinformation, so much so only 40.8% of residents are fully vaccinated in Idaho, compared to 54.7% in the whole US. 

And Natalie Rise fell for the misinformation so hard, she actually told her family that there were no studies done on the vaccine, even though the vaccine went through trials on thousands of people, and then was administered to millions of people with minimal side effects. Apparently, her own professional education cannot defeat misinformation. 

Her family members have no doubt that she was killed by those bloggers and Youtubers peddling misinformation. 

And it is these unvaxxed Idahoans that are clogging up hospitals and ICUs in Idaho, that Idaho has started rationing care to only the most essential and those that can be saved. 

In fact, Rise was transferred to nearby Spokane, Washington for ICU treatment, and died there. And the flood of the Idaho COVID cases is filling up ICUs in nearby Spokane, Washington as well. One hospital director said that they normally accept 90% of transfers, but in the past two weeks, they have to turn away HALF of requested transfers. They are trying to expand ICU, but they fear they will be forced to ration care soon like Idaho. 

Her brother Daryl got the shot the day after she died. He had to quit his job to take care of the twins she left behind. 

Crazy COVIDiocy: Man Punches Nurse in Pharmacy Because Wife Vaccinated Without His Permission?!

Sherbrooke Police of Quebec Canada is looking for a man who punched a nurse multiple times, knocking her to the ground, while screaming that his wife did not have his permission to be vaccinated for COVID. 

On September 20th, 2021, a man walked into Brunet Pharmacy in Sherbrooke at 9:15 AM, and was super-rude and aggressive to the nurse, who is in her 40s, accusing her of vaccinating his wife without his consent. Then immediately punched her in the face multiple times. Then the perpetrator ran out of the pharmacy. The nurse was sent to the hospital, and due to her being the only nurse in the pharmacy, the vaccination program had to be suspended. 

Unfortunately, there was no surveillance camera. Sherbrooke police is asking any witnesses with information to come forward. 

And there certainly is no need to ask a husband for permission to be vaccinated. And the guy was too mad to mention his name or his wife's name. And since the pharmacy typically vaccinates 15 people a day, there's really no way to narrow down the suspect. 

More COVIDiocy: Simple Proof that Vaccination Stopped Outbreaks

Some antivax "scientists" are just kooky, because they are so convinced of their own righteousness, they no longer recognize that they're using truthiness, not truth (such as their training, actual scientific studies, and so on). And their uneducated followers? Even worse. 

One of the most uneducated opinions was published by a French virologist by the name of Luc Montagnier. He claimed the COVID "variants are the product of and result of the vaccination". He claimed that "breakthrough infections" are creating more dangerous COVID variants, and cited a mechanism called ADE. 

This is utter bullshit, as fact-checked by none other than Reuters itself. There has been NO documented case of ADE with COVID. NONE. With several million dead, and hundreds of millions of cases world-wide, and being studied by EVERY medical organization in the world, you'd think SOMEONE would have found a case of this happening since COVID vaccine was first administered. It has been MONTHS. 

In fact, EVERY delay in vaccine mandate or mask mandate is allowing the virus time to infect an unvaccinated person... and mutate. 

And the only way to stop it is to vaccinate everyone... until herd immunity threshold has been reached... or hope the victims die without infecting more people and still reach herd immunity (by reducing the herd)

Let's take a look at Samoa and the 2019 Measles Outbreak. The islands have a vaccination rate of about 35% before the crisis. The outbreak was detected in September 2019, and fully declared an outbreak in October 2019. In November the government declared a state of emergency and shut down EVERYTHING, including all schools and public meetings, made vaccination mandatory (yes, vaccine mandate!), and in December, declared a curfew, while vaccination teams go from door to door administering vaccines to practically EVERY one of the 200000+ residents in the islands. By year's end, it's estimated that 94% of the eligible population has been vaccinated, and the outbreak ended. 

The nearby islands such as Tonga and Fiji have all declared a state of emergency in 2019, but due to their own high vaccination rate, was not hit hard by the crisis. 

All in all, there were 79 deaths and 5520 cases due to measles, out of 200874 population in Samoa.  33% of cases required hospitalization. That number should be at most, a handful. Measles is a vaccine-preventable disease that we had prevented for decades.  

Why did Samoa's vaccination rate fell to 35%? Because in 2018, a nurse prepared the MMR vaccine wrong (instead of saline, she mixed the vaccine with expired anesthetic). Two children died. The mistakes were quickly identified, but anti-vax organizations touted this as proof of "harmful vaccine" and when the cause was identified, "cover-up for vaccine harm". During the 2019 outbreak, antivaxxers continued to spread misinformation, blaming the deaths on "malnutrition", or "vitamins deficiency", or even "immune deficiency". All of which are debunked, but the misinformation campaign was not stopped. The head antivaxxer declared on Facebook "I'll be here to mop up your mess" and "Enjoy your killing spree". Samoa government arrested the head antivaxxer in December 2019 for inciting against emergency government order. The head antivaxxer was later released on bail and eventually charges were dropped. 

Then 2020 came along, and now it is mainland US's turn. 21 months later, and we have lost 659K people due to COVID (as of 10-SEP-2021)  Sure, we had to start from ZERO, but we've had 9 MONTHS to vaccinate the nation to achieve herd immunity. We're not even close. As of mid-August, barely over half of Americans have had 2 shots. We don't know what the R number for COVID is, but we have to make the worst-case assumption: we need 90-95% vaccination like measles. 

Samoa's outbreak was stopped when the disinformation campaign stopped and the government made the harsh decision to close everything and instituted a vaccine mandate. Outbreak was contained in months. 

We are at 21 months and counting. Sure, we spent 12 months getting the vaccine ready, so let's just count 9 months. And we thought we turned the corner on COVID. 

But with the low as **** vaccination rate, vaccine hesitancy on the rise, the economy barely chugging, and antivaxxers spreading false treatments both in 2020 and 2021... and now the Delta Variant, and maybe the scary Mu variant... 

We are now WORSE than we were in 2020. In fact, US is now the MOST COVID INFECTED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!!! Worse than Russia, India, Iran, China, Turkey, etc. ! 

This outbreak will end only one way: when it runs out of people to infect. Whether that's by death of said people... or by vaccination of the same people... is purely up to those people. 

Frankly, I'm ready for my third shot, when it's offered. 

And the rest of you who don't want it... 

Just don't infect the rest of us while you practice your "freedom". 

More COVIDiocy: Missouri Patients Donned Disguises and Vaxxed In Secret Because Antivaxxers

 Apparently, in Missouri, anti-vax sentiments are so public and toxic, people opted for secret vaccinations by donning disguises. 

In an episode of CNN's Anderson Cooper in July 2021, as reported by Vanity Fair, doctors and pharmacists have received requests to keep the patient's identity private. Many have donned disguises so they are not recognized by anti-vaxxers in their lives. 

Apparently, having "common sense" is not a desired quality in the south. 

Many public officials wishing to protect the public with mask mandate or vaccine mandate are openly threatened, often in public meetings.  

Getting COVID Vaccine: It Ain't So Easy Part IV

Oh, f*** me. 

I know there is a new job orientation this week. I didn't realize they scheduled it to start BEFORE my COVID vaccine appointment. And I can't be at two places at once. 

Unfortunately, I do need a job more than I need a vaccine, at least in the VERY immediate future. Guess I have to check elsewhere for more vaccines. 

ARGH!!!!! Back on the vaccine hunt. 

Egotistic Non-Doctor claims she knows more about vaccination than anybody

Anti-vaccination people actually set up a booth at babies expo trying to promote their pseudo-scientific beliefs. What gall! Here's two of those fraudsters exposed on Australian 60 Minutes.

The white-hair one on the right is Viera Scheibner. She insists on being referred to ad Dr. Scheibner. What she doesn't tell you is that her PhD is in micropaleontology, i.e. study of little fossils. That's right, she has no medical training other than, by her own admission, a nursing course when she was young.

The woman on the left, Bronwyn Hancock, is even more idiotic. She's web developer and nothing more. She was once quoted as saying that there was no "shaking baby syndrome", and all shaking baby deaths were caused by vaccines.

Watch this segment and see how these fraudsters blame the parents for their child's death. Viera was quoted ON CAMERA saying that the parents of the baby that died of pertussis (whooping cough) killed the baby because they let the doctors immunize the baby for hepatitis B, which somehow made the baby more vulnerable to pertussis. When asked where is the proof of such, and whether could she be wrong, she walked out of the interview.

The danger of vaccine refusal is erosion of herd immunity.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Herd-Immunity-Why-NOT-Vaccinating-Your-Children-Can-Hurt-Other-Children

Related articles

• Pertussis can kill, and you can help stop it (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Vaccine Refusal Endangers Everyone. Why your pediatrician may refuse to treat your child if you refuse vaccines. (survivorpediatrics.wordpress.com)