8 ms·

> Her main hangup was the lies and coercion. Can you provide examples of the lies you're referring to?

avereveard 5y ago
That "vaccine granted immunity" was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit if you catch covid, but you'll be less likely to die from it. Then there's whatever percent of vaccinated that would have allowed the fabled reopen, we engaged trough most of these metrics, and we're still far from normalcy. Heck my vaccine passport has a very clear, very bold expiry date on it, talk of normalcy are nonsense. Oh and there's that "let's not tell peasants masks are useful as not to cause shortages to professionals." Maybe warranted, given what happened with hoarders and toilet paper, but still definitely a lie. edit: jesus christ look at the mess of downvotes this whole thread attracted, replies included, this place is populated by people more toxic than facebook's and more sensitive than twitter's. and you wonder why the content platform are in full on containment mode. truth is you're bringing your corporate dystopia unto yourself.
- creaturemachine 5y ago
  The science is evolving, and these differences from a year ago are proof of that. I don't think the vaccine makers were very proud to admit that their wonderdrug wasn't what it was promised to be, but that's the way it is. The only remaining choice for anti-vaxxers in the face of increasingly contagious variants is take the shot or risk death. Your call.
  - cies 5y ago
    > The science is evolving Science got massively oversold. Who did that? Who benefits from that? > The only remaining choice for anti-vaxxers in the face of increasingly contagious variants is take the shot or risk death. Your call. I think if you call anyone hesitant to take these shots an anti-vaxxer, you contribute to making the narative so everything extreme. Many that are "c19 vaccine hesitant" are vaccinating their children on the locally standard schedule. It is just that this c19 vaccine is a bit different: did not yet stand the test of time and it is in many cases a whole new therapy (mRNA therapy's debut). > take the shot or risk death This sounds so dramatic. This choice is everywhere, just not with so much media attention. Diets, traffic accidents, extreme sports, ... I think we should use vaccines only to protect those at risk, and/or those who want protection by it. Once they have the shot it's over. The media is pushing a story that we need to all get vaccinated to protect others. I think, given the research, that this is never going to happen (virus will stay in corners of the world with unvaccinated people, virus will have new variants: virus will stay with us).
    - Reason077 5y ago
      > "It is just that this c19 vaccine is a bit different: did not yet stand the test of time and it is in many cases a whole new therapy (mRNA therapy's debut)." At this point, surely the various c19 vaccines are the most highly scrutinised and widely administered vaccines developed in the past 50 years or so. More than 6 billion shots administered, and counting. How much more time do you need?
      - pigeonhole123 5y ago
        Even Pfizer’s own RCT showed no benefit for all cause mortality at six months. Covid deaths were replaced by CVD deaths
        SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
        > Even Pfizer’s own RCT showed no benefit for all cause mortality at six months There are countries that have had Pfizer rollouts to millions of people over the last 8 months ( 1) . If this were true in the real world, the excess mortality would have shown up in the real-world data by now. It has not. it's rubbish. You tout this false and trivially falsifiable "fact" repeatedly. Quit it. https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-021-00440-6 https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-021-...
        pigeonhole123 5y ago
        Quoting the vaccine manufacturer’s own gold standard study is “rubbish”. I honestly did not see that one coming.
        actually_a_dog 5y ago
        You're misrepresenting the study. That study never had enough statistical power to detect a reduction in deaths. It's disingenuous to simply cry "no reduction in deaths! manufacturer study!" https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-964291665925 https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-964291665925
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  > That vaccine granted immunity was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit, but you'll be less likely to die from it. You're being downvoted but the medical industry in the US honestly has terrible PR. It's not surprising that people misunderstand. Vaccines do grant immunity, but immunity doesn't mean "you cannot catch the virus" and it never has. It means that your immune system will recognise the virus immediately and fight it. This is the same thing as "less symptoms". "A week of feeling like shit" has nothing to do with the virus at all, they're not symptoms of an infection that you are feeling, they are side effects of your immune system learning to fight the virus that the vaccine is teaching it about. All, or at least most, vaccines require occasional boosters, but if everyone is vaccinated when they should be, the virus will die out before any significant number of further infections can occur, as has now happened with Polio and Smallpox. So in short: You were not lied to, but you absolutely should have had this explained to you with greater clarity.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    If vaccines don’t provide immunity then what’s the point of all the public policy such as vaccine passports, etc? If you can still catch and spread it those who are vaccinated should be subject to the same testing requirements as the unvaccinated.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
      > If you can still catch and spread it those who are vaccinated should be subject to the same testing requirements as the unvaccinated. You're misunderstanding the precise use of the word "can" here. I can win the lottery. I can win a coin toss. But the odds are drastically different, and so en masse, we should plan and test much more for the "much more likely" case than the other. Now, vaccination against COVID gives better odds of not catching and not spreading COVID. You still _can_, though. > If vaccines don’t provide immunity But they do, statistically they provide a high level of immunity. Not 100% though. You know this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699699 So why are you contradicting yourself?
- ZoomerCretin 5y ago
  Immunity: the ability of an organism to resist a particular infection or toxin by the action of specific antibodies or sensitized white blood cells. The vaccine gives immunity, by the definition of what immunity is. The reduced efficacy was communicated as soon as it was confirmed. There was no lie. This is how science occurs. The best conclusion was given from the data at the time. Regarding the metrics for vaccination rates that would allow full normalcy: they existed before the Delta variant, and unfortunately this new variant has made herd immunity impossible.
- YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
  > That [the] vaccine granted immunity. Vaccines work by stimulating the immune system. "Immunity" in the context of vaccines does not, and has never meant something like 'diplomatic immunity.' Instead, it means that a vaccinated person's body has the tools to fight off the virus. Which looks like reduced symptoms and drastically reduced likelihood of death from the virus. Mild side effects are expected. [1] This has been true since vaccines were first discovered /invented, and will continue to be true. Measles, Smallpox, Polio, etc. Perhaps many people misunderstood what "immunity" meant... But that initial misunderstanding doesn't mean that they were being lied to by doctors and scientists. What it really means is that they were unintentionally lying to themselves about the definition of immunity. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/why-vaccinate/vaccine-decision.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/why-vaccinate/vaccine-d...
  - JuliusPullo 5y ago
    The Covid vaccine does not work by directly stimulating the immune system, like all other vaccines do. Instead, it inserts synthetic molecules into some cells, turning them into little machines that constantly produce a toxin that is released into the blood stream. The immune system is supposed to learn to fight this toxin. This has NEVER before been done in any other vaccine. We could speculate for hours about what could go wrong, but for the moment lets just say that myocarditis and blood clots are definitely NOT mild side effects.
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      Myocarditis and blood clots are also (more frequently) side effects from getting C19. Just because it's never been done before does not mean we have no idea what it will or won't do. Biology is uncertain, but it's important to examine the vaccine risks AGAINST COVID RISKS. Nothing is no-risk, including the vaccine. However, the accurate comparison is getting covid without the vax, versus with the vax. Looking at the vaccine risks in isolation is somewhere between misleading and dishonest.
      - effie 5y ago
- orangepurple 5y ago
  Innate immunity in a world of many unvaccinated individuals is going to gradually reduce this virus to another variant of the common cold. In the mean time, the vaccinated like myself are going to harbor and evolve dangerous variants which will kill many of the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are the real victims here, since the vaccinated ones won't help the virus become more benign as effectively as those who develop innate immunity against it.
  - effie 5y ago
    Even if you are eventually proven correct (vaccinated putting pressure on the virus to get more dangerous), I think your personal decision to favour personal health to public health is the correct one. Everybody should primarily watch their own interests and their own health. On the other hand, public policy leading to creation of more dangerous viruses would be a disaster and if that happens, it should be stopped.
- KVFinn 5y ago
  >That vaccine granted immunity was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit, but you'll be less likely to die from it. Please look up the medical definition of immunity.
  - avereveard 5y ago
    no? I know very well the definition. that why I'm stating that the way it was worded at the beginning was a big fat lie, told to the public to coerce compliance, and latter reduced to a more realistic target to manage expectations.
    - Tostino 5y ago
      You are entirely ignoring the point the other commenter made about delta changing things. You are simply repeating talking points I've heard over and over, it's exhausting.
      - avereveard 5y ago
        you are willfully merging two separate topic into one trying to shut down an argument by adjacency, as if the trite answers you bring could move the discussion forward. do you have points of your own that relate to the topic at hand?
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    I'd be curious if the definition has changed in the past year (word redefinition seems to a thing lately and it is Literally not for the better!). Immunity obviously means being immune. Immune has a specific definition and that is not "helps sometimes". https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/immune https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/immu... Resistance or, decreased susceptibility, or whatever other term you wish to use, is not the same as immunity. Otherwise what word do we use for "immunity" now?
- jjwiseman 5y ago
  From reading comments, it seems like a lot of people don't understand that Delta changed things. In a world without Delta, the vaccines did do an incredible job of actually preventing infection. "Effectiveness [against confirmed infection] remained above 95% regardless of age group, sex, race, or presence of comorbidities."[1] But that study used data up to March 2021, which means mostly non-Delta variants. Against Delta, vaccine effectiveness in preventing infection might be closer to 50%+ (e.g. [2]) -- which is still very effective! It's just not effective as we would like. "Hi, here's a shot that cuts your odds of getting infected in half. Do you want it?" Um, yes please. You have to change your behavior when the facts in the world change. The messaging had to change with the facts. Of course you can't use the old vaccination thresholds for re-opening if the virus is now infecting 10x (50% vs. 95%) as many vaccinated people as it was 2 months ago, that doesn't make sense. The virus moved the goalposts. You can be angry about that, but that's reality. We are so lucky that despite everything, the vaccines are still incredibly effective at keeping you from dying if you get COVID. I'm actually very angry at how the mask messaging was handled (there should absolutely be consequences for that), but it doesn't matter how angry I am, if I don't get vaccinated I am irrationally refusing the single best way to avoid dying in this pandemic. [1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-1577 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-1577 [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e4.htm
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    Delta was encouraged through the evolutionary pressure from a leaky vaccine
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      Bullshit. It came from India, and the unchecked spread of the virus through the largely unvaccinated population. Evolutionary pressure is exerted by all immune responses, not just ones conditioned by vaccines.
      - chana_masala 5y ago
        > Could some vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens? Conventional wisdom is that natural selection will remove highly lethal pathogens if host death greatly reduces transmission. Vaccines that keep hosts alive but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circulate in a population. [1] The covid vaccine is just that - limits symptoms but still allows transmission. > In an unvaccinated population, mutations occur at random producing a wide genetic spread with very few progeny resulting in long lasting lineages (Muller's ratchet), with a selection pressure that favors those variants that can (a) win the competition of replication among its cousins within a host, and (b) not kill the host so that it can thrive in new hosts. > In a highly vaccinated population, mutations occur at random, but the genetic spread among versions of the virus is narrowed to those that can evade immunity, which has now been made more uniform among the vaccinated population. This further encourages such lineages even when they would not have won out within individual hosts in competition among its cousins. Such evasion increases chances of reinfection. [2] [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.13... [2] https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evolution-and-immunity https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evo...
- betterunix2 5y ago
  "That "vaccine granted immunity" was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit if you catch covid, but you'll be less likely to die from it." The world changed between the beginning of vaccine availability and today. New variants emerged from unvaccinated populations and some of those variants (Delta being the most prominent currently being reported) are able to evade the immune response generated by the vaccine (breakthrough infections). The guidance was updated to reflected newly available information -- would you prefer that the CDC ignore new data and just stick with its initial statements? The reason we are far from normalcy is that since the beginning of this pandemic people have been refusing to do what they need to do to slow the spread. If people had done what health officials asked, we might have been closer to normalcy. Take your complaints to all those right-wing extremists in the media and the government who politicized a public health crisis and who continue to tell people to ignore the CDC.
  - silver-arrow 5y ago
    No. Variants spring up because of non sterilizing vaccines. We always knew to NEVER engage in mass vaccination during a pandemic situation. We also knew we can’t vaccinated against corona viruses. As evidenced by Israel and other countries.
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      This doesn't even make sense as biology. You're essentially saying the virus evolved exclusively because of the pressure vaccines, which is absurd on its face.
      - chana_masala 5y ago
        > Could some vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens? Conventional wisdom is that natural selection will remove highly lethal pathogens if host death greatly reduces transmission. Vaccines that keep hosts alive but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circulate in a population. [1] The covid vaccine is just that - limits symptoms but still allows transmission. > In an unvaccinated population, mutations occur at random producing a wide genetic spread with very few progeny resulting in long lasting lineages (Muller's ratchet), with a selection pressure that favors those variants that can (a) win the competition of replication among its cousins within a host, and (b) not kill the host so that it can thrive in new hosts. > In a highly vaccinated population, mutations occur at random, but the genetic spread among versions of the virus is narrowed to those that can evade immunity, which has now been made more uniform among the vaccinated population. This further encourages such lineages even when they would not have won out within individual hosts in competition among its cousins. Such evasion increases chances of reinfection. [2] [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.13... [2] https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evolution-and-immunity https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evo...
orangepurple 5y ago
Because of the way they are constructed, Randomized Control Trials will never show any benefit for any antiviral against COVID-19. Not Remdesivir, not Kaletra, not HCQ, and not Ivermectin. The reason for this is simple; for the patients that they have recruited for these studies, such as Oxford’s ludicrous RECOVERY study, the intervention is too late to have any positive effect. The clinical course of COVID-19 is such that by the time most people seek medical attention for hypoxia, their viral load has already tapered off to almost nothing. If someone is about 10 days post-exposure and has already been symptomatic for five days, there is hardly any virus left in their bodies, only cellular damage and derangement that has initiated a hyperinflammatory response. It is from this group that the clinical trials for antivirals have recruited, pretty much exclusively. In these trials, they give antivirals to severely ill patients who have no virus in their bodies, only a delayed hyperinflammatory response, and then absurdly claim that antivirals have no utility in treating or preventing COVID-19. These clinical trials do not recruit people who are pre-symptomatic. They do not test pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis. This is like using a defibrillator to shock only flatline, and then absurdly claiming that defibrillators have no medical utility whatsoever when the patients refuse to rise from the dead. The intervention is too late. These trials for antivirals show systematic, egregious selection bias. They are providing a treatment that is futile to the specific cohort they are enrolling.
- javagram 5y ago
  > Because of the way they are constructed, Randomized Control Trials will never show any benefit for any antiviral against COVID-19. Not Remdesivir, not Kaletra, not HCQ, and not Ivermectin. The reason for this is simple; for the patients that they have recruited for these studies, such as Oxford’s ludicrous RECOVERY study, the intervention is too late to have any positive effect. This claim is egregiously false itself. Several RCTs have been done for early exposure to covid or for prophylaxis. Just out of memory I remember studies for HCQ prophylaxis (doesn’t work), remdesivir prophylaxis (does work), and monoclonal antibody prophylaxis (does work). The lies created by anti vaccine activists are already spread widely and apparently convinced you these studies which happened didn’t happen. https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/22/remdesivir-reduces-covid-hospitalizations-when-given-early-in-study/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/22/remdesivir-reduces-covid... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/regen-cov-works-covid-post-exposure-prophylaxis-study-says https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/regen-co... https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638
ohdannyboy 5y ago
Off the top of my head: Fauci told the American public that masks don't work. My mom already owned N95 masks and got looked at like a crazy person because she was wearing one when shopping, ect. Then suddenly it became "the science" on the heels of all the research that already existed... Turns out it was a noble lie to protect the supply of masks while production caught up with demand. It looks like Fauci lied about the lab leak theory for his own reasons, although I'm pretty out of date on that issue. Even if not Fauci we know that scientists with conflicts of interest all signed an open letter saying the theory is bunk and it was uncritically paraded around as "the science." We were very clearly told "get the vaccine and you'll get your life back" but that hasn't even happened in paces like Israel with extremely high rates. The vaccine was initially sold to us as something that would prevent infection, but that turned out not to be true. (I'm willing to concede this probably wasn't a lie but just something we learned as time went on, but it does reflect that they may have been overconfident and refrained from discretion because it was a pro-vaccine talking point) Vaccine passports used to be conspiracies. Same with the idea that we'd have to get booster shots every so often to stay current. And this is probably the biggest one: So many of the politicians pushing covid restrictions fail to practice what they preach outside of photo ops. The list is a mile long of local, state and federal politicians constantly violating their own restrictions. It lends credibility to the idea that none of them believe any of it.
- gkop 5y ago
  > And this is probably the biggest one: So many of the politicians pushing covid restrictions fail to practice what they preach outside of photo ops. Thanks for bringing this up, it's something that everyone should be able to agree is unacceptable. I feel naive for asking, but WHY does the public allow politicians to get away with this hypocrisy? (eg. https://www.sfgate.com/bay-area-politics/article/London-Breed-San-Francisco-mask-mandate-COVID-19-16472998.php https://www.sfgate.com/bay-area-politics/article/London-Bree...)
  - silexia 5y ago
    In many cases there has been a single photo of a politician with a mask off. Lots of predatory paparazzi photograph public individuals all day. Catching someone at a bad moment or accidentally doing something is easy.
hartator 5y ago
> Can you provide examples of the lies you're referring to? The mask one not being useful is a lie where Fauci was trying to reserve masks for medical staff. Why not lying again about the current vaccine effectiveness/side effects balance to reserve promising treatments to a certain category of the population?
- res0nat0r 5y ago
  He said that at the time because COVID wasn't endemic all over the USA and he didn't want folks going out and hoarding all of the N95 masks which were needed at the time most critically for hospital workers. Once the situation changed and everyone needed to wear a mask he said that folks should go out and buy masks (and after the supply gap was closed a bit).
  - lovecg 5y ago
    Yeah he lied because he had to, and he lied later about herd immunity too. Whether it was good policy or not, I can’t assume anything he says is based on fact alone.
    - wavesounds 5y ago
      They weren't sure about airborne transmission from a-symptomatic people at the time. Delta variant has a higher r0 than alpha, so the herd immunity numbers change. Saying he's purposefully lying because the facts on the ground change is ridiculous.
      - knodi123 5y ago
        > Saying he's purposefully lying because the facts on the ground change is ridiculous Yeah, but it's fair to say he's purposefully lying because he told us he was purposefully lying. https://www.axios.com/fauci-goalposts-herd-immunity-c83c7500-d8f9-4960-a334-06cc03d9a220.html https://www.axios.com/fauci-goalposts-herd-immunity-c83c7500... Here's the direct quote: > When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent ... Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, "I can nudge this up a bit," so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here .... We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I'm not going to say 90 percent."
tomp 5y ago
I listed some of them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28536296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28536296
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- walterbell 5y ago
  There is also lying via omission, statistical manipulation and censorship. Why did Pfizer data for their COVID-19 vaccine not report the injury and paralysis of a 12-year participant in the clinical trial? June 2021 article from Robert Kennedy's CHD organization, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/sen-johnson-ken-ruettgers-press-conference-families-injured-covid-vaccines/ https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/sen-johnson-ken-... > Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) held a news conference Monday to discuss adverse reactions related to the COVID vaccines — giving individuals who have been “repeatedly ignored” by the medical community a platform to share their stories ... “We are all pro-vaccine,” Johnson said at the onset of the news conference. In fact, Johnson has had every flu shot since the Swine flu, is current on all of his vaccines ... he has not had a COVID vaccine because he already had COVID. > Five people from across the U.S., including a 12-year-old girl who was part of the Pfizer clinical trial, joined the conference at the federal courthouse ... Among them was Maddie de Garay from Ohio who volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial when she was 12. On Jan. 20, Maddie received her second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine as a participant in the clinical trial for 12- to 15-year-olds and is now in a wheelchair ... “Why is she not back to normal? She was totally fine before this,” said Stephanie de Garay, Maddie’s mother. She volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial “to help everyone else and they’re not helping here. Before Maddie got her final dose of the vaccine she was healthy, got straight As, had lots of friends and had a life.” > ... Upon receiving the second shot, Maddie immediately felt pain at the injection site and over the next 24-hours developed severe abdominal and chest pain, de Garay said at the press event. Maddie told her mother it felt like her heart was being ripped out through her neck, and she had painful electrical shocks down her neck and spine that forced her to walk hunched over ... She developed gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, seizures, verbal and motor tics, menstrual cycle issues, lost feeling from the waist down, lost bowel and bladder control and had an nasogastric tube placed because she lost her ability to eat. > ... Johnson argued that while most people don’t suffer significant side effects following vaccination, he is concerned about “that small minority that are suffering severe symptoms.” 80-min video of news conference: https://rumble.com/vj5xbf-senator-ron-johnson-milwaukee-news-conference.html https://rumble.com/vj5xbf-senator-ron-johnson-milwaukee-news... The more we know about the statistical minority who suffer severe adverse reactions, the better we can screen vaccine recipients to prevent these injuries.
jboggan 5y ago
The lie that masks didn't work was the first and one of the biggest. At the time it meant that my wife's hospital wouldn't let her wear an N95 that we personally provided when interacting with obviously sick COVID-19 patients. She got extremely ill and after she recovered we decided it wasn't really worth it to work as a nurse in a medical establishment that could tell such obvious lies to its own people.
- altacc 5y ago
  I can't speak specifically for your wife's hospital, but by the sounds of it this might have been less of a lie than bad information. Apparently during the early phase of the pandemic the knowledge about the usefulness of masks against airborne viruses wasn't accurate. People didn't think it was truly airborne, in which case masks wouldn't be that effective. As it turns out, it's very airborne and masks really do help stop transmission. A lot has been learnt, as well as a lot of mistakes made. Wired was one of the publications that did an interesting article about this: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
  - samdunham 5y ago
    Well, the face of the government's response to the pandemic, Fauci, went on 60 minutes and stated flatly that masks didn't work. About a year later he went back on TV and was asked about his earlier comments about masks and he admitted - again, in no uncertain terms - that his previous comments stating that masks didn't work were said specifically to protect mask supplies for health care workers. Seems like he lied to me.
    - nmz 5y ago
      can you post the video?
    - tootie 5y ago
      That's a lie. Fauci said there's no reason to wear a mask because there wasn't proof it would help. He never said they definitely wouldn't help.
koheripbal 5y ago
How about the rampant false claims from various health officials and the WHO that masks didn't work in the very beginning of the pandemic. ...and this lie was intentional to protect mask stockpiles for healthcare workers. How about the initial censorship of the outbreak on social media and news media, on the grounds that the "fear-mongering" about an outbreak in China was racist? How about the labelling by the news media of the initial travel bans as racist? How about health officials refusing to test anyone who hadn't personally travelled to China for months after the virus had been observed in the US. Trust was destroyed in the first two months of this pandemic.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  > and this lie was intentional to protect mask stockpiles for healthcare workers. Do you have any evidence that this was the reason for the claims? > How about the initial censorship of the outbreak on social media and news media, on the grounds that the "fear-mongering" about an outbreak in China was racist? What censorship? I heard about it quite early. > How about the labelling by the news media of the initial travel bans as racist? Did the news media label it, or were they reporting on people who were labeling it? > How about health officials refusing to test anyone who hadn't personally travelled to China for months after the virus had been observed in the US. AFAIK, there were lack of resources to test. Once the resources became available, testing was widespread.
  - CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
    On the second point, to claim you do not know about this story is... surprising: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 Just because you heard about it, doesn't mean there weren't attempts to censor these discussions.
    - BeetleB 5y ago
      The claim was that the fact there was an outbreak was censored - not about the origin.
  - 5y ago

That "vaccine granted immunity" was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit if you catch covid, but you'll be less likely to die from it. Then there's whatever percent of vaccinated that would have allowed the fabled reopen, we engaged trough most of these metrics, and we're still far from normalcy. Heck my vaccine passport has a very clear, very bold expiry date on it, talk of normalcy are nonsense. Oh and there's that "let's not tell peasants masks are useful as not to cause shortages to professionals." Maybe warranted, given what happened with hoarders and toilet paper, but still definitely a lie. edit: jesus christ look at the mess of downvotes this whole thread attracted, replies included, this place is populated by people more toxic than facebook's and more sensitive than twitter's. and you wonder why the content platform are in full on containment mode. truth is you're bringing your corporate dystopia unto yourself.

creaturemachine 5y ago
The science is evolving, and these differences from a year ago are proof of that. I don't think the vaccine makers were very proud to admit that their wonderdrug wasn't what it was promised to be, but that's the way it is. The only remaining choice for anti-vaxxers in the face of increasingly contagious variants is take the shot or risk death. Your call.
- cies 5y ago
  > The science is evolving Science got massively oversold. Who did that? Who benefits from that? > The only remaining choice for anti-vaxxers in the face of increasingly contagious variants is take the shot or risk death. Your call. I think if you call anyone hesitant to take these shots an anti-vaxxer, you contribute to making the narative so everything extreme. Many that are "c19 vaccine hesitant" are vaccinating their children on the locally standard schedule. It is just that this c19 vaccine is a bit different: did not yet stand the test of time and it is in many cases a whole new therapy (mRNA therapy's debut). > take the shot or risk death This sounds so dramatic. This choice is everywhere, just not with so much media attention. Diets, traffic accidents, extreme sports, ... I think we should use vaccines only to protect those at risk, and/or those who want protection by it. Once they have the shot it's over. The media is pushing a story that we need to all get vaccinated to protect others. I think, given the research, that this is never going to happen (virus will stay in corners of the world with unvaccinated people, virus will have new variants: virus will stay with us).
  - Reason077 5y ago
    > "It is just that this c19 vaccine is a bit different: did not yet stand the test of time and it is in many cases a whole new therapy (mRNA therapy's debut)." At this point, surely the various c19 vaccines are the most highly scrutinised and widely administered vaccines developed in the past 50 years or so. More than 6 billion shots administered, and counting. How much more time do you need?
    - pigeonhole123 5y ago
      Even Pfizer’s own RCT showed no benefit for all cause mortality at six months. Covid deaths were replaced by CVD deaths
      - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
        > Even Pfizer’s own RCT showed no benefit for all cause mortality at six months There are countries that have had Pfizer rollouts to millions of people over the last 8 months ( 1) . If this were true in the real world, the excess mortality would have shown up in the real-world data by now. It has not. it's rubbish. You tout this false and trivially falsifiable "fact" repeatedly. Quit it. https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-021-00440-6 https://ijhpr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13584-021-...
        pigeonhole123 5y ago
        Quoting the vaccine manufacturer’s own gold standard study is “rubbish”. I honestly did not see that one coming.
        actually_a_dog 5y ago
        You're misrepresenting the study. That study never had enough statistical power to detect a reduction in deaths. It's disingenuous to simply cry "no reduction in deaths! manufacturer study!" https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-964291665925 https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-964291665925
LeoPanthera 5y ago
> That vaccine granted immunity was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit, but you'll be less likely to die from it. You're being downvoted but the medical industry in the US honestly has terrible PR. It's not surprising that people misunderstand. Vaccines do grant immunity, but immunity doesn't mean "you cannot catch the virus" and it never has. It means that your immune system will recognise the virus immediately and fight it. This is the same thing as "less symptoms". "A week of feeling like shit" has nothing to do with the virus at all, they're not symptoms of an infection that you are feeling, they are side effects of your immune system learning to fight the virus that the vaccine is teaching it about. All, or at least most, vaccines require occasional boosters, but if everyone is vaccinated when they should be, the virus will die out before any significant number of further infections can occur, as has now happened with Polio and Smallpox. So in short: You were not lied to, but you absolutely should have had this explained to you with greater clarity.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  If vaccines don’t provide immunity then what’s the point of all the public policy such as vaccine passports, etc? If you can still catch and spread it those who are vaccinated should be subject to the same testing requirements as the unvaccinated.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > If you can still catch and spread it those who are vaccinated should be subject to the same testing requirements as the unvaccinated. You're misunderstanding the precise use of the word "can" here. I can win the lottery. I can win a coin toss. But the odds are drastically different, and so en masse, we should plan and test much more for the "much more likely" case than the other. Now, vaccination against COVID gives better odds of not catching and not spreading COVID. You still _can_, though. > If vaccines don’t provide immunity But they do, statistically they provide a high level of immunity. Not 100% though. You know this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699699 So why are you contradicting yourself?
ZoomerCretin 5y ago
Immunity: the ability of an organism to resist a particular infection or toxin by the action of specific antibodies or sensitized white blood cells. The vaccine gives immunity, by the definition of what immunity is. The reduced efficacy was communicated as soon as it was confirmed. There was no lie. This is how science occurs. The best conclusion was given from the data at the time. Regarding the metrics for vaccination rates that would allow full normalcy: they existed before the Delta variant, and unfortunately this new variant has made herd immunity impossible.
YossarianFrPrez 5y ago
> That [the] vaccine granted immunity. Vaccines work by stimulating the immune system. "Immunity" in the context of vaccines does not, and has never meant something like 'diplomatic immunity.' Instead, it means that a vaccinated person's body has the tools to fight off the virus. Which looks like reduced symptoms and drastically reduced likelihood of death from the virus. Mild side effects are expected. [1] This has been true since vaccines were first discovered /invented, and will continue to be true. Measles, Smallpox, Polio, etc. Perhaps many people misunderstood what "immunity" meant... But that initial misunderstanding doesn't mean that they were being lied to by doctors and scientists. What it really means is that they were unintentionally lying to themselves about the definition of immunity. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/why-vaccinate/vaccine-decision.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/why-vaccinate/vaccine-d...
- JuliusPullo 5y ago
  The Covid vaccine does not work by directly stimulating the immune system, like all other vaccines do. Instead, it inserts synthetic molecules into some cells, turning them into little machines that constantly produce a toxin that is released into the blood stream. The immune system is supposed to learn to fight this toxin. This has NEVER before been done in any other vaccine. We could speculate for hours about what could go wrong, but for the moment lets just say that myocarditis and blood clots are definitely NOT mild side effects.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    Myocarditis and blood clots are also (more frequently) side effects from getting C19. Just because it's never been done before does not mean we have no idea what it will or won't do. Biology is uncertain, but it's important to examine the vaccine risks AGAINST COVID RISKS. Nothing is no-risk, including the vaccine. However, the accurate comparison is getting covid without the vax, versus with the vax. Looking at the vaccine risks in isolation is somewhere between misleading and dishonest.
    - effie 5y ago
orangepurple 5y ago
Innate immunity in a world of many unvaccinated individuals is going to gradually reduce this virus to another variant of the common cold. In the mean time, the vaccinated like myself are going to harbor and evolve dangerous variants which will kill many of the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are the real victims here, since the vaccinated ones won't help the virus become more benign as effectively as those who develop innate immunity against it.
- effie 5y ago
  Even if you are eventually proven correct (vaccinated putting pressure on the virus to get more dangerous), I think your personal decision to favour personal health to public health is the correct one. Everybody should primarily watch their own interests and their own health. On the other hand, public policy leading to creation of more dangerous viruses would be a disaster and if that happens, it should be stopped.
KVFinn 5y ago
>That vaccine granted immunity was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit, but you'll be less likely to die from it. Please look up the medical definition of immunity.
- avereveard 5y ago
  no? I know very well the definition. that why I'm stating that the way it was worded at the beginning was a big fat lie, told to the public to coerce compliance, and latter reduced to a more realistic target to manage expectations.
  - Tostino 5y ago
    You are entirely ignoring the point the other commenter made about delta changing things. You are simply repeating talking points I've heard over and over, it's exhausting.
    - avereveard 5y ago
      you are willfully merging two separate topic into one trying to shut down an argument by adjacency, as if the trite answers you bring could move the discussion forward. do you have points of your own that relate to the topic at hand?
- mythrwy 5y ago
  I'd be curious if the definition has changed in the past year (word redefinition seems to a thing lately and it is Literally not for the better!). Immunity obviously means being immune. Immune has a specific definition and that is not "helps sometimes". https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/immune https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/immu... Resistance or, decreased susceptibility, or whatever other term you wish to use, is not the same as immunity. Otherwise what word do we use for "immunity" now?
jjwiseman 5y ago
From reading comments, it seems like a lot of people don't understand that Delta changed things. In a world without Delta, the vaccines did do an incredible job of actually preventing infection. "Effectiveness [against confirmed infection] remained above 95% regardless of age group, sex, race, or presence of comorbidities."[1] But that study used data up to March 2021, which means mostly non-Delta variants. Against Delta, vaccine effectiveness in preventing infection might be closer to 50%+ (e.g. [2]) -- which is still very effective! It's just not effective as we would like. "Hi, here's a shot that cuts your odds of getting infected in half. Do you want it?" Um, yes please. You have to change your behavior when the facts in the world change. The messaging had to change with the facts. Of course you can't use the old vaccination thresholds for re-opening if the virus is now infecting 10x (50% vs. 95%) as many vaccinated people as it was 2 months ago, that doesn't make sense. The virus moved the goalposts. You can be angry about that, but that's reality. We are so lucky that despite everything, the vaccines are still incredibly effective at keeping you from dying if you get COVID. I'm actually very angry at how the mask messaging was handled (there should absolutely be consequences for that), but it doesn't matter how angry I am, if I don't get vaccinated I am irrationally refusing the single best way to avoid dying in this pandemic. [1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-1577 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-1577 [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e4.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e4.htm
- chana_masala 5y ago
  Delta was encouraged through the evolutionary pressure from a leaky vaccine
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    Bullshit. It came from India, and the unchecked spread of the virus through the largely unvaccinated population. Evolutionary pressure is exerted by all immune responses, not just ones conditioned by vaccines.
    - chana_masala 5y ago
      > Could some vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens? Conventional wisdom is that natural selection will remove highly lethal pathogens if host death greatly reduces transmission. Vaccines that keep hosts alive but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circulate in a population. [1] The covid vaccine is just that - limits symptoms but still allows transmission. > In an unvaccinated population, mutations occur at random producing a wide genetic spread with very few progeny resulting in long lasting lineages (Muller's ratchet), with a selection pressure that favors those variants that can (a) win the competition of replication among its cousins within a host, and (b) not kill the host so that it can thrive in new hosts. > In a highly vaccinated population, mutations occur at random, but the genetic spread among versions of the virus is narrowed to those that can evade immunity, which has now been made more uniform among the vaccinated population. This further encourages such lineages even when they would not have won out within individual hosts in competition among its cousins. Such evasion increases chances of reinfection. [2] [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.13... [2] https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evolution-and-immunity https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evo...
betterunix2 5y ago
"That "vaccine granted immunity" was a big one, it rapidly became less symptoms, and from that surreptitiously changed again to well you'll still have a week of feeling like shit if you catch covid, but you'll be less likely to die from it." The world changed between the beginning of vaccine availability and today. New variants emerged from unvaccinated populations and some of those variants (Delta being the most prominent currently being reported) are able to evade the immune response generated by the vaccine (breakthrough infections). The guidance was updated to reflected newly available information -- would you prefer that the CDC ignore new data and just stick with its initial statements? The reason we are far from normalcy is that since the beginning of this pandemic people have been refusing to do what they need to do to slow the spread. If people had done what health officials asked, we might have been closer to normalcy. Take your complaints to all those right-wing extremists in the media and the government who politicized a public health crisis and who continue to tell people to ignore the CDC.
- silver-arrow 5y ago
  No. Variants spring up because of non sterilizing vaccines. We always knew to NEVER engage in mass vaccination during a pandemic situation. We also knew we can’t vaccinated against corona viruses. As evidenced by Israel and other countries.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    This doesn't even make sense as biology. You're essentially saying the virus evolved exclusively because of the pressure vaccines, which is absurd on its face.
    - chana_masala 5y ago
      > Could some vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens? Conventional wisdom is that natural selection will remove highly lethal pathogens if host death greatly reduces transmission. Vaccines that keep hosts alive but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circulate in a population. [1] The covid vaccine is just that - limits symptoms but still allows transmission. > In an unvaccinated population, mutations occur at random producing a wide genetic spread with very few progeny resulting in long lasting lineages (Muller's ratchet), with a selection pressure that favors those variants that can (a) win the competition of replication among its cousins within a host, and (b) not kill the host so that it can thrive in new hosts. > In a highly vaccinated population, mutations occur at random, but the genetic spread among versions of the virus is narrowed to those that can evade immunity, which has now been made more uniform among the vaccinated population. This further encourages such lineages even when they would not have won out within individual hosts in competition among its cousins. Such evasion increases chances of reinfection. [2] [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.13... [2] https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evolution-and-immunity https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/variant-roulette-evo...

orangepurple 5y ago

Because of the way they are constructed, Randomized Control Trials will never show any benefit for any antiviral against COVID-19. Not Remdesivir, not Kaletra, not HCQ, and not Ivermectin. The reason for this is simple; for the patients that they have recruited for these studies, such as Oxford’s ludicrous RECOVERY study, the intervention is too late to have any positive effect. The clinical course of COVID-19 is such that by the time most people seek medical attention for hypoxia, their viral load has already tapered off to almost nothing. If someone is about 10 days post-exposure and has already been symptomatic for five days, there is hardly any virus left in their bodies, only cellular damage and derangement that has initiated a hyperinflammatory response. It is from this group that the clinical trials for antivirals have recruited, pretty much exclusively. In these trials, they give antivirals to severely ill patients who have no virus in their bodies, only a delayed hyperinflammatory response, and then absurdly claim that antivirals have no utility in treating or preventing COVID-19. These clinical trials do not recruit people who are pre-symptomatic. They do not test pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis. This is like using a defibrillator to shock only flatline, and then absurdly claiming that defibrillators have no medical utility whatsoever when the patients refuse to rise from the dead. The intervention is too late. These trials for antivirals show systematic, egregious selection bias. They are providing a treatment that is futile to the specific cohort they are enrolling.

javagram 5y ago
> Because of the way they are constructed, Randomized Control Trials will never show any benefit for any antiviral against COVID-19. Not Remdesivir, not Kaletra, not HCQ, and not Ivermectin. The reason for this is simple; for the patients that they have recruited for these studies, such as Oxford’s ludicrous RECOVERY study, the intervention is too late to have any positive effect. This claim is egregiously false itself. Several RCTs have been done for early exposure to covid or for prophylaxis. Just out of memory I remember studies for HCQ prophylaxis (doesn’t work), remdesivir prophylaxis (does work), and monoclonal antibody prophylaxis (does work). The lies created by anti vaccine activists are already spread widely and apparently convinced you these studies which happened didn’t happen. https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/22/remdesivir-reduces-covid-hospitalizations-when-given-early-in-study/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/22/remdesivir-reduces-covid... https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/regen-cov-works-covid-post-exposure-prophylaxis-study-says https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/regen-co... https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638

ohdannyboy 5y ago

Off the top of my head: Fauci told the American public that masks don't work. My mom already owned N95 masks and got looked at like a crazy person because she was wearing one when shopping, ect. Then suddenly it became "the science" on the heels of all the research that already existed... Turns out it was a noble lie to protect the supply of masks while production caught up with demand. It looks like Fauci lied about the lab leak theory for his own reasons, although I'm pretty out of date on that issue. Even if not Fauci we know that scientists with conflicts of interest all signed an open letter saying the theory is bunk and it was uncritically paraded around as "the science." We were very clearly told "get the vaccine and you'll get your life back" but that hasn't even happened in paces like Israel with extremely high rates. The vaccine was initially sold to us as something that would prevent infection, but that turned out not to be true. (I'm willing to concede this probably wasn't a lie but just something we learned as time went on, but it does reflect that they may have been overconfident and refrained from discretion because it was a pro-vaccine talking point) Vaccine passports used to be conspiracies. Same with the idea that we'd have to get booster shots every so often to stay current. And this is probably the biggest one: So many of the politicians pushing covid restrictions fail to practice what they preach outside of photo ops. The list is a mile long of local, state and federal politicians constantly violating their own restrictions. It lends credibility to the idea that none of them believe any of it.

gkop 5y ago
> And this is probably the biggest one: So many of the politicians pushing covid restrictions fail to practice what they preach outside of photo ops. Thanks for bringing this up, it's something that everyone should be able to agree is unacceptable. I feel naive for asking, but WHY does the public allow politicians to get away with this hypocrisy? (eg. https://www.sfgate.com/bay-area-politics/article/London-Breed-San-Francisco-mask-mandate-COVID-19-16472998.php https://www.sfgate.com/bay-area-politics/article/London-Bree...)
- silexia 5y ago
  In many cases there has been a single photo of a politician with a mask off. Lots of predatory paparazzi photograph public individuals all day. Catching someone at a bad moment or accidentally doing something is easy.

hartator 5y ago

> Can you provide examples of the lies you're referring to? The mask one not being useful is a lie where Fauci was trying to reserve masks for medical staff. Why not lying again about the current vaccine effectiveness/side effects balance to reserve promising treatments to a certain category of the population?

res0nat0r 5y ago
He said that at the time because COVID wasn't endemic all over the USA and he didn't want folks going out and hoarding all of the N95 masks which were needed at the time most critically for hospital workers. Once the situation changed and everyone needed to wear a mask he said that folks should go out and buy masks (and after the supply gap was closed a bit).
- lovecg 5y ago
  Yeah he lied because he had to, and he lied later about herd immunity too. Whether it was good policy or not, I can’t assume anything he says is based on fact alone.
  - wavesounds 5y ago
    They weren't sure about airborne transmission from a-symptomatic people at the time. Delta variant has a higher r0 than alpha, so the herd immunity numbers change. Saying he's purposefully lying because the facts on the ground change is ridiculous.
    - knodi123 5y ago
      > Saying he's purposefully lying because the facts on the ground change is ridiculous Yeah, but it's fair to say he's purposefully lying because he told us he was purposefully lying. https://www.axios.com/fauci-goalposts-herd-immunity-c83c7500-d8f9-4960-a334-06cc03d9a220.html https://www.axios.com/fauci-goalposts-herd-immunity-c83c7500... Here's the direct quote: > When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent ... Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, "I can nudge this up a bit," so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here .... We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I'm not going to say 90 percent."

tomp 5y ago

I listed some of them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28536296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28536296

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
walterbell 5y ago
There is also lying via omission, statistical manipulation and censorship. Why did Pfizer data for their COVID-19 vaccine not report the injury and paralysis of a 12-year participant in the clinical trial? June 2021 article from Robert Kennedy's CHD organization, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/sen-johnson-ken-ruettgers-press-conference-families-injured-covid-vaccines/ https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/sen-johnson-ken-... > Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) held a news conference Monday to discuss adverse reactions related to the COVID vaccines — giving individuals who have been “repeatedly ignored” by the medical community a platform to share their stories ... “We are all pro-vaccine,” Johnson said at the onset of the news conference. In fact, Johnson has had every flu shot since the Swine flu, is current on all of his vaccines ... he has not had a COVID vaccine because he already had COVID. > Five people from across the U.S., including a 12-year-old girl who was part of the Pfizer clinical trial, joined the conference at the federal courthouse ... Among them was Maddie de Garay from Ohio who volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial when she was 12. On Jan. 20, Maddie received her second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine as a participant in the clinical trial for 12- to 15-year-olds and is now in a wheelchair ... “Why is she not back to normal? She was totally fine before this,” said Stephanie de Garay, Maddie’s mother. She volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial “to help everyone else and they’re not helping here. Before Maddie got her final dose of the vaccine she was healthy, got straight As, had lots of friends and had a life.” > ... Upon receiving the second shot, Maddie immediately felt pain at the injection site and over the next 24-hours developed severe abdominal and chest pain, de Garay said at the press event. Maddie told her mother it felt like her heart was being ripped out through her neck, and she had painful electrical shocks down her neck and spine that forced her to walk hunched over ... She developed gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, seizures, verbal and motor tics, menstrual cycle issues, lost feeling from the waist down, lost bowel and bladder control and had an nasogastric tube placed because she lost her ability to eat. > ... Johnson argued that while most people don’t suffer significant side effects following vaccination, he is concerned about “that small minority that are suffering severe symptoms.” 80-min video of news conference: https://rumble.com/vj5xbf-senator-ron-johnson-milwaukee-news-conference.html https://rumble.com/vj5xbf-senator-ron-johnson-milwaukee-news... The more we know about the statistical minority who suffer severe adverse reactions, the better we can screen vaccine recipients to prevent these injuries.

jboggan 5y ago

The lie that masks didn't work was the first and one of the biggest. At the time it meant that my wife's hospital wouldn't let her wear an N95 that we personally provided when interacting with obviously sick COVID-19 patients. She got extremely ill and after she recovered we decided it wasn't really worth it to work as a nurse in a medical establishment that could tell such obvious lies to its own people.

altacc 5y ago
I can't speak specifically for your wife's hospital, but by the sounds of it this might have been less of a lie than bad information. Apparently during the early phase of the pandemic the knowledge about the usefulness of masks against airborne viruses wasn't accurate. People didn't think it was truly airborne, in which case masks wouldn't be that effective. As it turns out, it's very airborne and masks really do help stop transmission. A lot has been learnt, as well as a lot of mistakes made. Wired was one of the publications that did an interesting article about this: https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwu...
- samdunham 5y ago
  Well, the face of the government's response to the pandemic, Fauci, went on 60 minutes and stated flatly that masks didn't work. About a year later he went back on TV and was asked about his earlier comments about masks and he admitted - again, in no uncertain terms - that his previous comments stating that masks didn't work were said specifically to protect mask supplies for health care workers. Seems like he lied to me.
  - nmz 5y ago
    can you post the video?
  - tootie 5y ago
    That's a lie. Fauci said there's no reason to wear a mask because there wasn't proof it would help. He never said they definitely wouldn't help.

koheripbal 5y ago

How about the rampant false claims from various health officials and the WHO that masks didn't work in the very beginning of the pandemic. ...and this lie was intentional to protect mask stockpiles for healthcare workers. How about the initial censorship of the outbreak on social media and news media, on the grounds that the "fear-mongering" about an outbreak in China was racist? How about the labelling by the news media of the initial travel bans as racist? How about health officials refusing to test anyone who hadn't personally travelled to China for months after the virus had been observed in the US. Trust was destroyed in the first two months of this pandemic.

BeetleB 5y ago
> and this lie was intentional to protect mask stockpiles for healthcare workers. Do you have any evidence that this was the reason for the claims? > How about the initial censorship of the outbreak on social media and news media, on the grounds that the "fear-mongering" about an outbreak in China was racist? What censorship? I heard about it quite early. > How about the labelling by the news media of the initial travel bans as racist? Did the news media label it, or were they reporting on people who were labeling it? > How about health officials refusing to test anyone who hadn't personally travelled to China for months after the virus had been observed in the US. AFAIK, there were lack of resources to test. Once the resources became available, testing was widespread.
- CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
  On the second point, to claim you do not know about this story is... surprising: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27388587 Just because you heard about it, doesn't mean there weren't attempts to censor these discussions.
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    The claim was that the fact there was an outbreak was censored - not about the origin.
- 5y ago