faetal on 16/9/2021 at 13:25
Pfizer.
That should matter greatly though - the rate of side-effects in all of the available vaccines is really low. I think fewer than 1 in 10 people reported anything outside of the needle-stick injury in the trials, which is pretty good, considering that mild flu-like symptoms are pretty standard for most vaccines due to the body's immune response (but it is stil reported as an adverse event, so the 1 in 10 includes this basic reaction).
Even the rare blood clotting issue with the AZ vaccine is minuscule in terms of actual risk, especially when compared to the virus itself: (
https://twitter.com/drailyntan/status/1381872393027784710)
Azaran on 16/9/2021 at 13:56
I got Moderna twice. The first shot only gave me arm pain. The second one, I got it around noon. By 8 PM that evening I started feeling 'off', weak and feverish. Then came the migraine. I went to bed, but woke up at 5 AM, horribly nauseated, ran to the bathroom to puke, but didn't. I stayed in bed most of the day, weak, with a horrible migraine, but by 4 PM I had recovered enough to go out for groceries. The headache lingered on another couple of days though
lowenz on 16/9/2021 at 15:59
Classic inflammatory reaction :p
Starker on 17/9/2021 at 07:25
First Pfizer jab I got a bit of a sore arm the next day. Second dose not even that. It only hurt a little when I pressed on the spot, so, y'know, I didn't.
Anyway, went to a restaurant for the first time since it all started. They required proof of vaccination, so I had to log into the Patient Portal website where you can see and control your medical information and had it generate a digital certificate.
Basically, the way it works here, you must wear a mask in "uncontrolled" public indoor spaces such as shops, banks, and public transport. In "controlled" spaces you need to show evidence of vaccination, proof of recovery, or a negative test. But this only applies to people older than 18 and so I had my first class this week with some people under that age and since masks are not mandatory in "controlled" spaces, only about half the people wore them, leading to a bit of a weird situation. It's quite a big group too, so I can't space them apart as much as I would like. About the only thing I can do is open a window before class.
Starker on 17/9/2021 at 13:32
Quote Posted by Draxil
(
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/08000/Ivermectin_for_Prevention_and_Treatment_of.7.aspx#) Here is a meta-analysis of ivermectin studies that indicate it may not be such a bad idea to incorporate into treatment protocols, especially in poorer countries that haven't made much progress on the vaccination front. It's cheap, has a relatively benign side-effect profile, and could make a real difference in mortality rates if efficacy is demonstrated.
Don't eat horse paste, though. Actually, if that ever seemed like a good idea to you, do eat ivermectin paste. More is sure to be better. Have an ivermectin and jelly sandwich, and make one for all your like-minded friends.
There are a couple of fairly big red flags with this meta-analysis.
First, the authors don't disclose that all of them are affiliated with BIRD (British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group) who, among other things, is campaigning for the use of Ivermectin in the UK: (
https://bird-group.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Protocol-Ivermectin-for-prevention-and-treatment-of-covid-19.pdf)
Secondly, there have not been very many high quality studies on Ivermectin yet, so a lot of these trials included have been of low or questionable quality. Among others, they included that fraudulent Elgazzar study that was talked about earlier in this thread that in all likelihood skewed the results. And the few studies we do have that are of higher quality don't seem to suggest Ivermectin has any viable use for the treatment of COVID.
Cipheron on 17/9/2021 at 17:23
Quote Posted by Starker
Secondly, there have not been very many high quality studies on Ivermectin yet, so a lot of these trials included have been of low or questionable quality. Among others, they included that fraudulent Elgazzar study that was talked about earlier in this thread that in all likelihood skewed the results. And the few studies we do have that are of higher quality don't seem to suggest Ivermectin has any viable use for the treatment of COVID.
Yeah, the article I linked stated that if you remove that one study from the meta-analyses, the entire effect goes away. It was a pre-print study that was subsequently retracted but somehow it's still included in the meta-analyses.
Meta-analyses in general need to be taken with a grain of salt. One reason can be publishing bias - if a study finds no effect it might be harder to get it published in the first place. So, say before the Elgazzar study happened, some other group tested ivermectin and found nothing, they might not have even gotten those results published. So the initial study that *got published* was automatically biased towards finding an "interesting" result. Subsequent ivermection trials only got green-lit *because* of the sensationalistic Elgazzar study.
The problem is that the Egyptian study, the Elgazzar one was Starker stated, showed a 90% efficacy rate. So if all subsequent studies find 0% efficacy rate, the averaging the Elgazzar study and 5 other studies would still "show" a 15% efficacy rate, on "average". Even doing 89 subsequent studies of the same size, then averaging them with the Elgazzar study's 90% would still "show" an average efficacy rate of 1%, which isn't great but still greater than zero.
So the problem is that follow-up studies are meant to prove whether or not the first study actually found something real. This is why going off a "meta-analysis" that includes the first study is just wrong and goes against how science is meant to work. It's like trying to debunk a guy who said that he saw 18 aliens through his telescope one night, so you look for aliens for 17 nights, and find nothing, then some third party claims that, on average, 1 alien is seen through a telescope each night, and you don't have to take the first guy's word for what he saw on the first night - we did a "meta-analysis" of the results of 18 nights of telescope watching. So paradoxically, the 17 additional nights of telescope watching which were meant to debunk the UFO nut somehow get condensed in the data to *back up* that there are aliens visible through telescopes!
The only reason ivermectin got any look-in at the start was because high doses of ivermectin killed covid virus in a petri dish. But by "high doses" we're talking hundreds of times higher than the highest dose you can give a human. What is the actual result of giving a human 200 ivermectin tablets at once? I don't know, but it can't be good, and that's the proven amount of ivermectin you'd need to even inconvenience the virus. Lots of things are toxic at high enough concentrations, so it's not really something worth looking at - blow torches are equally effective at killing the virus in the petri dish as ivermectin, perhaps more so. That doesn't mean blow torches are a Covid treatment we should be looking into. The whole point of a thing being medicine instead of poison is when it kills the disease quicker than it would kill you.
Starker on 17/9/2021 at 18:33
Quote Posted by Cipheron
The problem is that the Egyptian study, the Elgazzar one was Starker stated, showed a 90% efficacy rate. So if all subsequent studies find 0% efficacy rate, the averaging the Elgazzar study and 5 other studies would still "show" a 15% efficacy rate, on "average".
This is not quite right. The Elgazzar study was one of the larger studies done at this point (which is not all that hard to do, if you just copy-paste patient data and change a few numbers here and there). So if there were 5 other studies with half the amount of patients on average, it would show something like a 25% rate. That's a bit more illustrative of just how massively it skewed the results.
That Miserable Thief on 17/9/2021 at 19:30
Quote Posted by Starker
First Pfizer jab I got a bit of a sore arm the next day. Second dose not even that. It only hurt a little when I pressed on the spot, so, y'know, I didn't.
That was my experience with the Moderna vaccine, except I had no soreness at all after the second one. I was very surprised that I didn't develop side effects because I have an autoimmune disease (psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis) for which I have been taking Humira and methotrexate for 8 years and, as suggested by my rheumatologist, I discontinued around my April and May Moderna shots. So, my immune system was returning to its normal overactive state, which resulted ins some skin and joint symptoms of my P and PsA returning after about 9 weeks. I am eligible for a third shot due to the meds I normally take, and have it scheduled for Oct. 1, so I will be off those meds again for another 3+ weeks before and after. Fingers crossed on no side effects this time. I'm fitting in the flu shot 10 days before, and planning to add the shingles vaccine Shingrix (I'm now 50 - yay) two weeks after, which would extend my immunosuppressant layoff a little. If I can make it through all of that without side effects it will amaze me.
Cipheron on 19/9/2021 at 13:52
Apparently a lot of the anti-vaxx people who don't want Covid vaccinated people in their businesses etc, are basing that on a concept called "viral shedding".
Viral shedding is totally a real thing, but it's for different vaccines which are based on giving you a very weak form of the target disease. So for example, a viral vaccine for measles is a shell of a virus that has the same coating proteins as measles, but doesn't have the full measles payload. So you get that vaccine and your body gets a - very mild - viral infection which causes you to create antibodies and kill the new virus. So since your body is producing small amounts of this 'toy measles' virus then those can spread to people around you. But the main effect is that it vaccinates them too, rather than making them sick.
However, this is completely not a thing with the Covid vaccines, which use the mRNA vector instead of a live virus vector. So since there is never a virus, they can't do "viral shedding", so it's not a concern. Even if it was, there is a theoretical chance that viral shedding could in fact save a lot of lives, for example you make a super-weak form of Covid, basically just a harmless virus but you put the same spike protein from Covid on there, and let that spread. It would in fact create herd immunity really quickly, but of course it always carries some risk of getting out of hand, like spreading cane toads.
faetal on 20/9/2021 at 10:05
I've encountered someone pushing the viral shedding thing before.
I spent a good few exchanges trying to convince them that a protein and a virus are different things, gave up not long after.
Can't reason with someone who is confident in their ignorance.