> All trial participants previously completed the primary two-dose series of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and then were randomized 1:1 to receive either a 30-µg booster dose (the same dosage strength as those in the primary series) or placebo. The median time between second dose and administration of the booster dose or placebo was approximately 11 months. Symptomatic COVID-19 occurrence was measured from at least 7 days after booster or placebo, with a median follow-up of 2.5 months. During the study period, there were 5 cases of COVID-19 in the boosted group, and 109 cases in the non-boosted group. The observed relative vaccine efficacy of 95.6% (95% CI: 89.3, 98.6) reflects the reduction in disease occurrence in the boosted group versus the non-boosted group in those without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Median age of participants was 53 years, with 55.5% of participants between 16 and 55 years, and 23.3% of participants 65 years and older.
Sure, but with the new Delta Plus® variant (+ false-negative tests + asymptomatic transmission) it's better to play it safe & keep your distance from other human resources.
> The Leger survey, conducted for the Association of Canadian Studies, found that more than three in four respondents hold negative views of those who are not immunized.
> S.V. Subramanian, the Harvard professor of population health and geography behind the paper [Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States], says the vaccine doubters are completely wrong.
> “That conclusion is misleading and inaccurate,” Subramanian told me of Horowitz’s Blaze column over email. “This paper supports vaccination as an important strategy for reducing infection and transmission, along with hand-washing, mask-wearing, and physical distancing.”
> We note that almost 43% of patients after influenza had at least one long-COVID feature recorded (Table 1) including 29.7% during the 90- to 180-day period. In this regard, we suggest researchers take a broad and balanced view as to the nature and specificity of long-COVID.
> All I can hope for is to become happy with a life that now tortures me. One that cages me, pens me in, puts up walls all around me. One that makes me smaller, misshapen, that boxes my heart and spirit inside of me. But that’s no hope at all, no challenge at all. As if one could say, “You will be enslaved from now on with no chance of escape. Your owner will use your wife and daughters as he pleases, for his pleasure. If you do not work you will be whipped and tortured and it will be the same for your family. Your hope in life, and your challenge, is to become happy with this.”
> The dynamic isn't that the evidence is unambiguous, but rather that when the evidence is inconclusive falling back to first principles makes sense. Respiratory filtration should help prevent spread of respiratory pathogens, period.
> If there are no conclusive results proving that out for ersatz cloth masks, then the scientific approach is to try better protective equipment until it does become effective.
I respect your view and completely agree that personal protective equipment should be examined further. The current evidence is definitely sufficient for a strong mask recommendation. I’m only critical of mandates (or bans) in this situation as they push people away from doing their own research and lead to bizarre scenes, as you encountered it with your respirator.
I wasn't trying to make a distinction between blue and red tribes. You can paint a political propaganda machine however you like, its goal is the same: To encircle people by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, true and/or false, by playing on their will or their needs, assailing them in both their private and public lives. It furnishes them with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. Through the myth it creates, the machine imposes a range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence.
> The opposing position to "wear a mask to protect others" should have been "wear a mask to protect yourself and your family"
Should the mask topic also prohibit any divergence? Is the evidence so unambiguous that all raised objections can only be a tragic misleading with disastrous results?
Cochrane review (Nov 2020): "We included nine trials (of which eight were cluster‐RCTs) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness (two trials with healthcare workers and seven in the community). There is low certainty evidence from nine trials (3507 participants) that wearing a mask may make little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI) compared to not wearing a mask (risk ratio (RR) 0.99, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82 to 1.18)"
The majority of people claiming to care about others by following uncertain pandemic mitigations are doing no such thing. Rather they are taking top-down direction from a post-truth political machine that increasingly rejects uncomfortable realities, and replaces them with a reassuring narrative of doing the right thing. You can tell this when talking to them because rather than laying out some chain of reasoning and hoping to find a flaw in it (as curious minds are), they get to the exact same terminal talking points and act like having stated such settles the matter.
> Vaccines make COVID-19 a largely preventable disease—and a survivable one in all but the rarest cases—and it is heartbreaking to know that people are dying of a disease not because it can’t be stopped but because they live in a low-income country.
Sure, Bill, very heartbreaking:
> Oxford University surprised and pleased advocates of overhauling the vaccine business in April by promising to donate the rights to its promising coronavirus vaccine to any drugmaker [...] A few weeks later, Oxford—urged on by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—reversed course. It signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights and no guarantee of low prices—with the less-publicized potential for Oxford to eventually make millions from the deal and win plenty of prestige.