Some covid news. Not out of the woods yet.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/144959...-young-people/

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/29/e...ntl/index.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...ng/ar-BB1f6ZcV

https://www.france24.com/en/live-new...virus-measures

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...ce/ar-BB1f5XCg

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/med...cid=uxbndlbing

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ast...r-55-1.5968128

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...ne-among-young

Re: very long urls and TinyURL

Obfuscation didn't enter my mind. I have had problems with line breaks on some devices (especially with smaller screens) destroying the continuity of very long urls, so rather than take chance, I covered it.

Just for the feedback
That link appears as this in Palemoon.
And the whole url is present
Looks the same in dillo, and the link works. Dillo won't actually open LQ on it's own, I had to feed it with curl.

Turned on my android tablet, looks the same, link works.

Now we have soccer match with England. One of our players was tested positive - however the second test was negative. Miracle or wrong test? This raises question about reliability of tests. And how many people were tested twice? Or maybe this soccer match is more important than restrictions? Pandemia can wait till we end the game. This is very sour irony - but there is something wrong with all this. Pandemia from one side and our desperate determination to live "normal" life. But it is crucial to survive to adopt to new conditions. Life as it was will never be again. We can live new life or die like dinosaurs.

Something for non-vaxers in particular to factor in.


https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/0...in-four-months

It will be miracle if 50% of populace in most countries will be vaccinated.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see that anti-GM forces aren't protesting GM vaccines the way they did GM crops such as BT cotton.

They just refuse vaccine because of that.

I think it's deja vue. When I refused a "No side effects" whooping cough vaccine for my 4 year old, it was because my wife preferred to refuse it. But 6 months later, I discovered there would have been huge side effects because I had epilepsy. It didn't give me a positive view of vaccines! It goes like this:

1. Some vaccine with "No side effects" is pushed when often it's not hugely necessary.
2. As people or their kids start taking it, side effects start to appear.
3. Drugs companies deny the link, shifting the burden of proof to private individuals to prove the point. They have to go up against a multinational promising to fight tooth & nail. Most lack the cash to bankroll the fight.
4. Side effects continue while the drug companies look for tweaks while outwardly denying any blame.

So each new vaccine is tainted by previous suspect vaccines, the greedy behaviour of profit hungry drug companies, the absolute disregard of those suffering side effects. The drug companies, like tobacco companies before them have always fought the public, their users. Many class actions have been fought against drug companies, and results come years later, after bitter legal battles and many appeals.

So when people see another 'must-have' vaccine, why shouldn't they raise the middle finger? Personally, I have had good luck with necessary vaccines myself. But I will never again trust the drug companies. "No side effects" is always a lie - they all have side effects. Take up would be bigger if people knew possible effects.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-04-15...id-19-vaccines

(the study write-up is at https://osf.io/a9jdq/)

There are always side effects to drugs and vaccines. Always have been. So you don't take drugs or vaccines unless you must. The question is whether the benefit of taking the drug far outweighs the side effects. Morphine is an opiate. It has a risk of addiction. But when you wake up from major surgery, man are you glad they give you some for a couple days. Then they cut you off. Every now and then, someone, because of their brain chemistry, have surgery, and get addicted to opiates because of the morphine they were given. Not too often.

I read a study a while back, of the thousands of kids who get MMR, chicken pox, scarlet fever, whooping cough vaccines in the US per year. 1 kid will die from the vaccine. 1000's of kids get protection for years or life, and 1 kid dies. That has been considered an acceptable risk. Benefit outweighs the side effects.

Now, that's no comfort if it is your kid who dies. But, they were going to come in contact with mumps at some point. I'm not making lite of that. It is weighing the risk against the benefits. For 100 + years or so now, societies have said yes to this trade off.

It does not surprise me at all if several people die from these vaccines. That is what has happened for more than a century.

Agreed. It's a risk/benefit analysis. Now we all live in a world where a somewhat adequate diet can be taken as the norm. Now for diseases like whooping cough, mumps, measles, where's the risk? I had them all and got over them with no issue, no meds, just bed rest.

Rubella or "German Measles" (with apologies to all location-sensitive posters) can cause birth defects if caught by pregnant women, and chickenpox can return as shingles, so there is a risk. Covid in the over-60s or the decrepit (both of which I am) is a risk. So I have registered for my Astrazeneca vaccine today; And if it kills me, it will be great to go in one bad day. As somebody said: "The idea (of Life) is to die young, as late as possible." I'm dying by installments, and THAT'S no fun. Unlike some, I have a firm hope for the future.

Now it seems one might need to consider that 1 in 3 who get Covid but survive develop brain disorders. I got an email from AARP linking this...

https://www.thelancet.com/action/sho...2821%2900084-5

There's always some risk. And the risk from the vaccine is lower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whooping_cough#Prognosis

Quote:

While most healthy older children and adults fully recover, infection in newborns is particularly severe. Pertussis is fatal in an estimated 0.5% of US infants under one year of age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#Prognosis

Quote:

Most people survive measles, though in some cases, complications may occur. About 1 in 4 individuals will be hospitalized and 1–2 in 1000 will die.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumps#Prognosis

Quote:

Prognosis for most people who experience mumps is excellent as long-term complications and death are rare.[...]The overall case-fatality rate of mumps is 1.6–3.8 people per 10,000, and these deaths typically occur in those who develop encephalitis.[5] [...]In children, mumps is the most common cause of deafness in one ear in cases when the inner ear is damaged

That's a retrospective study, so it's not entirely clear how many brain disorders those people would get in the counterfactual where they didn't get covid. They put the "hazard ratio" at 1.44, which if I understood correctly, means they estimate about 1 in 4 would have developed some disorders anyway?

Also, they weren't counting people who got covid and didn't realize it, since they're going by health records.

Well, we can differ there without arguing about it.