Coronavirus

What "public"?

The mass media news camera he was looking into when he said "Yeah, I'm immunized."?

yeah, i get the frustration with Aaron Rodgers, but that doesn't seem like much of a reason to perpetuate the same nonsense that HE believes in.

I agree that there isn't a good reason to perpetuate the nonsense of his misinformed beliefs. Which is why I'm less irritated but his initial ruse than I am on how his response to this has been to double-down on perpetuating his nonsensical beliefs. I don't care about changing his personal beliefs, but I do feel like fact-checking those beliefs which can be factually refuted.

yeah, well i guess if there's anything good about the internet, it makes it obvious that everyone is sort of on a level playing field when the **** hits the fan. That isn't totally true either...but i don't like liars and hypocrites. The more liars and hypocrites...the more liars and hypocrites. I AM A LIAR AND A HYPOCRITE!

I'm just going to keep this going as it pertains to Rodgers are the rest of the coronavirus stuff isn't very interesting to me and we're never going to come to an agreement. Thankfully this news cycle has just about run it's course.

He definitely tried to mislead the public/media but I don't care. You do and that's fine. A lot of folks are with you. Misinformation is nothing but a buzzword to me. I think you're misinformed and you think I am. Stalemate.

Medical records are private, no? Rodgers mentioned the medical exemption on the McAfee show and said they would allow a medical exemption but he would still be considered unvaccinated and would have to follow the unvaccinated protocols. What he's allergic to is his business, not mine or yours or anyone else.

The only things I linked to so far are the CDC and an MSN article quoting the head of the CDC. I wouldn't call them dubious. Oh and Rogan explaining exactly what he did to beat the infection and Marshawn Lynch being awesome.

Anyway, my sources for the Rodgers hullabaloo is the Rodgers-McAfee conversation, which is everybody's only source and is something which you seem to be reacting to through soundbites and headlines. Most of what you have stated about Rodgers treatments pre and post covid were not true.

As for Rogan, I don't listen to or watch his stuff. Always thought he was kind of annoying and don't think he's funny at all. I have seen bits of his shows on youtube if he has a guest on that I'm interested in. You seemed to be confused as to when Rogan (and Rodgers) started his treatments and I thought hearing from the horses mouth and what he did post infection would clear things up.

I mean, if we think he's lying, it's a reasonable thing to wonder about, since it a) sounds kind of implausible and b) we already know he lied ("misled," if you prefer, but the key point is deliberate deception).

If a public figure lies in public about a public health issue, I do think that's kind of our business. At least in the sense that it's reasonable to question and criticize it. Nobody's breaking into his house demanding answers or anything though, so it remains "his business" in all but the sense that allows us to have opinions about it.

I think he made clear in the previous post, though, that he mistrusts what they're saying. I didn't think there was much dispute over what was said. I recall him also saying that Rogan did a bunch of different things, so ascribing recovery to any one of them wouldn't really be logical. Even if everything he's saying is true (and he has a history of just...saying stuff), he threw too many variables at the problem and there would be no way to know which was effective (or whether it was some weird combination of them).

^ the above is just me trying to clarify a few things. I grant there might be a genuine impasse and all that, but I just thought I saw a couple of places where people were maybe talking past each other a little.

Likewise, I really couldn't care less about Rodgers personally. But, you know, since this is a thread about coronavirus, I suppose I'll continue talking about that.


This is unfortunately too typical of internet debate, the "epistemic tumor" that I mentioned earlier.


I've been going by Rodgers' medical information that he has chosen to make public. Had Rodgers done like Cousins or others, privately informed the NFL of his unvaccinated status, quietly complied with protocols, and ended up with an infection, I doubt the backlash against him would have been so sharp. But he misled about his status, almost as if he were doing that for a reason. That reason wasn't privacy.


I was referring to the unlinked sources where you got the impression that vaccinated players may be a greater risk of spreading covid than the unvaccinated, or the impression that the vaccine's harm to male fertility is a valid concern worth respecting.


Part of the problem is that what Rodgers has said is not particularly clear. He had said that he consulted Rogan on the "immunization" regimen that he tried to pass off on the NFL as a vaccine substitute, and he has also said that he consulted Rogan on the post-infection treatment. Both apparently can be true.



To the larger issue, and the tumor, if it involved something other than a public health crisis that's killed more Americans than all 20th century wars combined, it would be amusing at the obstinance to evidence from those like Rogan and Rodgers, and more generally the anti-vaxx community, in which people who have been as consistently wrong as someone like Joe Rogan (or Elon Musk, or Rand Paul, or Scott Atlas) are so incapable of just saying, "Welp, looks like I was wrong". This is unfortunately a cultural development which is political in nature, and it's precisely the kind of political issue that the forum's policy is designed to discourage because once facts and evidence become arbitrary, then there ceases to be a good faith willingness to consider them.


(ps: I think this exchange has been fairly cordial, so don't take it personally.)

Of course it's reasonable to wonder and I'm not even saying I believe him about that. It's unreasonable to demand he specify what he's allergic to or put his medical records out for everyone to see. It's nobody's business but his.

Depends on the position the public figure holds. I don't hold athletes in some exalted class. They're entertainers so no, I am not going to hold him to the same standard as, say, an elected official or the head of the CDC.

You probably know a little about Rodgers. The media has fawned for years over how intelligent he is and how cryptic his press conference answers could be. He gives one of his cryptic answers about vaccination and no follow up? That's on the media. Especially the locals who have been around him since he joined the NFL. The question is did he lie. I prefer misled but if you like lie okay. If he thought the treatments he took provided the same amount of protection as the vaccine is he lying? At that point, according to Rodgers, who I'll admit could be lying, the NFL hadn't ruled on those treatments. The NFL has been pretty quiet, aside from the fines, but I haven't heard them deny what Rodgers said about the timeline. But I also think they (NFL) are hoping this goes away asap.

The mistrust is obvious and hardly surprising. Rogan took the "kitchen sink" after testing positive. His words not mine. Maybe it took the kitchen sink to be effective and that's why his Dr.'s put him on it. I don't know. I'm not a Dr., but he has a team of them and that's what they did. I posted the video so we had a base to work off - what exactly he took. If you don't buy what he's saying fine, but at least we both know what exactly what was said.

As somebody who follows sports and football do you really believe that the NFL didn't know the vaccination status of the reigning MVP of the NFL?

You were the first person to mention him and that's the only reason I'm even here.

To be fair to a Viking, Cousins was very public and upfront about being unvaccinated and took quite a bit of heat about it. In fact, him and Cole Beasley were the faces of the anti vax players for awhile. Nothing private about his status at all and he has also been violating protocols just like a number of players have been. Just look at how many players are wearing masks to press conferences this week. You didn't see that two weeks ago.

I linked a source. Granted it's about all people not just players.

I asked who posed a bigger threat earlier in the thread in regards to testing. A vaccinated person who tested negative 13 days ago ago or an unvaccinated player who tested negative this morning? Regardless of vaccination status I'd feel safer around the most recently tested person.

I shared Rodgers concern about fertility. I don't give a hoot about the impact the vaccine may or may not have on fertility. I'm past the age of worrying about that.

I'm fine. We have different takes on it. No biggie.

Yes, I mentioned him, in a very specific context which is relevant to the thread. My focus on Rodgers has been the covid misinformation that he's using as an excuse for getting caught not being entirely honest about his immunization. If you don't want to discuss this issue in context of the facts around covid, then I'm not sure why you're here in this particular thread.

Yes you did, and it isn't the source there that's dubious but your reading of it. The MSN article repeats what I had already said: that in the case of a breakthrough case, an infected vaccinated person carries about the same viral load as an infected unvaccinated person. You omitted the distinction that only 10% of vaccinated people have breakthrough infections, greatly reducing the overall transmissibility among vaccinated people. And the couple of quotes from your article which may be more pertinent: "The biggest takeaway is that we need more people to be vaccinated", "it’s a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated". But the answer to the question of who is more likely to spread the coronavirus is still clearly and overwhelmingly an unvaccinated person.

And I've shared the point that "don't care, la-la-la" doesn't make for a very convincing retort. Besides there being no documented instance of the vaccines causing any fertility issues, there's the added dilemma that there is no biological mechanism for how an mRNA vaccine could even cause a fertility issue. It's not a reasonable concern.

This is the article you linked to. Maybe I'm reading it wrong but where in this article does it mention men's fertility at all?


"False and misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines, fertility and miscarriages are still circulating online, despite not being supported by evidence.


Doctors are extremely cautious about what they recommend during pregnancy, so the original advice was to avoid the jab.


But now, so much safety data has become available that this advice has changed and the vaccine is now actively encouraged (as getting Covid itself can put a pregnancy at risk).


We have looked at some of the more persistent claims - and why they are wrong.


A study shows the vaccine accumulating in the ovaries - False


This theory comes from a misreading of a study submitted to the Japanese regulator.


The study involved giving rats a much higher dose of vaccine than that given to humans (1,333 times higher).


Only 0.1% of the total dose ended up in the animals' ovaries, 48 hours after injection.


Far more - 53% after one hour and 25% after 48 hours - was found at the injection site (in humans, usually the arm). The next most common place was the liver (16% after 48 hours), which helps get rid of waste products from the blood.


The vaccine is delivered using a bubble of fat containing the virus's genetic material, which kick-starts the body's immune system.


And those promoting this claim cherry-picked a figure which actually referred to the concentration of fat found in the ovaries.




Fat levels in the ovaries did increase in the 48 hours after the jab, as the vaccine contents moved from the injection site around the body.


But, crucially, there was no evidence it still contained the virus's genetic material.


We don't know what happened after 48 hours as that was the limit of the study.


Monitoring data shows vaccines cause miscarriages - False


Some posts have highlighted miscarriages reported to vaccine-monitoring schemes, including the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) Yellow Card scheme in the UK and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the US.


Anyone can report symptoms or health conditions they experience after being vaccinated. Not everyone will choose to report, so this is a self-selecting database.


There were indeed miscarriages reported in these databases - they are unfortunately common events - but this does not mean the jab caused them.




A study has found data showing the miscarriage rate among vaccinated people was in line with the rate expected in the general population - 12.5%.


Dr Victoria Male, a reproductive immunologist at Imperial College London, says these reporting systems are very good for spotting side-effects from the vaccine that are normally rare in the general population - that's how a specific type of blood clot was linked in some rare cases to the AstraZeneca vaccine.


If you suddenly start seeing unusual symptoms in vaccinated people, it raises a red flag.

• The unfounded claims about vaccines and fertility
• True stories, fake claims about periods and the vaccine

They are not so good at monitoring side-effects that are common in the population - such as changes to periods, miscarriages and heart problems. Seeing them in the data doesn't necessarily raise these red flags because you'd expect to see them anyway, vaccine or not.


It's only if we start getting many more miscarriages than are seen in unvaccinated people that this data would prompt an investigation - and that's not been the case so far.


Some people have also shared graphs showing a big rise in the overall number of people reporting their experiences to these schemes compared with previous years, for other vaccines and drugs.


This has been used to imply the Covid vaccine is less safe. But the rise can't tell us that, it can only tell us that lots of people are reporting - possibly because an unprecedented proportion of the population is being vaccinated and it is a much talked-about subject.


Vaccines could attack the placenta - No evidence


A widely shared petition from Michael Yeadon, a scientific researcher who has made other misleading statements about Covid, claimed the coronavirus's spike protein contained within the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was similar to a protein called syncytin-1, involved in forming the placenta.


He speculated that this might cause antibodies against the virus to attack a developing pregnancy, too.


Some experts believe this was the origin of the whole belief that Covid vaccines might harm fertility.


In fact syncytin-1 and the coronavirus's spike protein are just about as similar as any two random proteins so there is no real reason to believe the body might confuse them.


But now evidence has been gathered to help disprove his theory.




US fertility doctor Randy Morris, who wanted to respond directly to the concerns he'd heard, began monitoring his patients who were undergoing IVF treatment to see whether vaccination made any difference to their chances of a successful pregnancy.


Out of 143 people in Dr Morris's study, vaccinated, unvaccinated and previously infected women were about equally likely to have a successful embryo implantation and for the pregnancy to continue to term. The women were similar in most other respects.


The study is small, but it adds to a large volume of other evidence - and were the claim true, you would expect that to show up even in a study of this size.


Dr Morris pointed out that people spreading these fears had not explained why they believed antibodies produced in response to the vaccine could harm fertility but the same antibodies from a natural infection would not.


The problem is, while scientists are rushing to provide evidence to reassure people, by the time they can report their findings people online have moved on to the next thing.


As Dr Morris explained: "The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is as soon as it's disproven, you move the goalpost.""

Here's a study posted on 9-21 on the effects of the vaccine on sperm count. It's a small study but it's something.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8446925/


Fertility is something I never cared much about as far as vaccines go although I think it should definitely be studied before going into widespread use. It wouldn't have been a deciding factor for me as to getting the vaccine or not unless it made things fall off, which I'm sure would have been reported somewhere. Anyway, this discussion piqued my curiosity regarding fertility and the above study is one of them I came across.

The study's conclusion: "After receiving the two doses of the vaccines, we did not observe a clinically significant sperm parameter decline within the cohort, suggesting the vaccines do not negatively impact male fertility potential."

Was talking to a neighbor yesterday inside a gas station. Was trying to direct her to someone who could help her with her apartment issues. Talked to her for about 10 minutes.

Walking home today remembering this & suddenly remembered this woman is not vaccinated. She wore a mask yesterday, but I didn’t.

__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

The more I think about this the dumber I look.

Oh, I don't know. The unvaccinated person being masked is the more important piece, I think.

I'm just masking all of the time unless I'm in my home or the home of a family member. If I start being masked some of the time and unmasked at other times, my brain will not be able to handle it.

i totally get that, i remember when i was just wearing a mask so that people in businesses wouldn't bat an eye, that was pretty stressful. "oh, i forgot!", so annoying...

I don't usually wear a mask when I'm outside, though as we get further into winter I may start doing it just for the warmth, but I always wear a mask when I'm at work or in any indoor public space. I haven't visited any family since the pandemic started and rarely go to friends' houses, but all of my friends are vaccinated so I don't bother with a mask when I do visit them.

__________________

So the Pfizer booster shot beat the living daylights outta me this weekend. Got it Friday at lunch and woke up Saturday feeling like I'd been run over by a dump truck. Fever got to 102.2 at one point. This was my experience with the previous shots as well, so I was expecting it.
I was mostly fine by Sunday afternoon, but I hope this is my last shot for the next year at least. Ouch.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection