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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">As for the "I'm not an anti-vaxer" guy. Covid has the possibility of taking him out of the gene pool of the human race.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">To the long list of lasting effects of COVID-19 infection, add one more: erectile dysfunction.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><a href="https://health.clevelandclinic.org/yes-covid-19-can-cause-erectile-dysfunction/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://health.clevelandclinic.org/yes-covid-19-can-cause-erectile-dysfunction/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">BTW, that headline is an assertion, not a question. Wikipedia actually has a page on the Betteridge Effect.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Lastly, from what I read in the article by the real virologist, there seems to be a lot of evidence that COVID-19 was not deliberately cooked up in a lab. Even if it had been, it would have taken a lot more time and resources than the relatively new facility at Wuhan has. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>
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On Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 03:53:46 PM PDT, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
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<div>To briefly recap, what particularly annoyed me about the stream of<br>objections regular volunteer KT (at an unidentified-here California LUG) <br>posted in opposition to his LUG expecting only vaccinated people to <br>show up for in-person or hybrid LUG meetings -- and be prepared to show<br>their CDC vaccination record cards -- was that he made those arguments<br>in bad faith.<br><br>His "It's illegal to require anyone to show a confidential medical<br>record" and "The vaccines haven't gotten full FDA approval" objections<br>was _not_ his real objection, as he admitted the next day on the LUG's<br>Jitsi Meet conference. Also, those objections were bunk, for reasons I<br>explained here. They were also classic anti-vaxxer talking points,<br>making it truly hilarious that JT threw "I'm not an anti-vaxxer or<br>anything" into the middle of those talking points.<br><br>The first talking point was particularly galling, coming from KT, <br>because it's obvious that he's attended school in California, and <br>probably had relatives who've done so as well. And anyone who's <br>attended school in this state has had to produce proof of _several_ <br>vaccinations as a condition of attending. So, KT knew, or certainly<br>should have known, that the claim was flat-out false -- but he<br>advanced it anyway. Thus _very clearly_ bad-faith discussion.<br><br>Today, looking on Snopes.com reminded me of a subsidiary objection <br>KT advanced pursuant to his objection #2: "It would be a HIPPA<br>violation."<br><br><a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/businesses-vaccinated-covid19/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/businesses-vaccinated-covid19/</a><br><br> Claim: Businesses can ask customers if they have been vaccinated against<br> COVID-19 without legal repercussions.<br><br> Rating: True.<br><br><br><br>This is another of those anti-vaxxer talking points that are designed <br>to sound plausible if you don't understand the subject or don't stop to<br>actually _think_. And the thing you're not supposed to think about is:<br>What is HIPPA?<br><br>The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) is a<br>1996 Congressional statute regulating the flow of personally<br>identifiable healthcare information _among regulated healthcare and<br>healthcare insurance providers_, to protect patients' privacy.<br><br>If you are not a regulated healthcare or healthcare insurance provider, <br>HIPPA does not apply to you. Period.<br><br>If a friend, or a stranger, or a business, says to me "Hey, Mr. Moen, <br>are you vaccinated against polio? If you can't prove it, you may not<br>come into our clubhouse", that is not a HIPPA violation. If I reply <br>"Yes, I got the Sabin vaccine in 1965", that is not a HIPPA violation.<br>Neither the person asking, nor the person answering (or declining to<br>answer) is regulated by HIPPA. Period.<br><br>Even if KT utterly misunderstood what HIPPA is, he should have deduced<br>that he was spouting bushwah, because it simply doesn't make sense that<br>it would be illegal to voluntarily disclose, or to ask about, medical<br>information. The obvious applies: If the person asked doesn't care to<br>answer, then nothing compels disclose _but_ the person might have to <br>experience consequences -- like not being permitted to enter someone<br>else's clubhouse. Or business. Or school.<br><br>And even if KT really hadn't known _that_, common sense suggests he<br>should have looked up what HIPPA actually regulates before mouthing off<br>about something outside health care being made unlawful by it. The<br>_most_ charitable thing I can conclude is that KT grabbed a bunch of<br>talking points off the Internet (from the usual anti-vaxx and right-wing<br>nutjob sources) and just regurgitated them without bothering to<br>quality-check them. Or simply posted them in bad faith, knowing they<br>were dead-wrong but convenient to his then-undisclosed personal views.<br><br>I rather resent being transparently bullshitted, in that way. It<br>suggests KT either thought I was a little dim, or wouldn't mind having<br>low-grade propaganda showed at me. Either way, nope.<br><br><br>Since we're on the subject of fraudulent COVID-19 anti-vaxx talking<br>points, here's a related Snopes piece:<br><a href="https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/04/16/18-reasons-why/</a><br><br> ’18 Reasons I Won’t Be Getting a COVID Vaccine’ Post Filled With<br> Reckless Falsehoods<br><br>Article covers one of the Typhoid Marys of COVID-19 anti-vaxxers, <br>Christian Elliot, who published a piece on 2020-03-09 of the quoted<br>title, that was then spread all over Faceplant and Twitter millions of<br>times over this past year. Full debunking is at the link, but here's a<br>summary:<br><br>#1 “Vaccine Makers Are Immune from Liability”. No, they aren't. <br>But as part of a compromise in 1986 to give vaccine manufacturers <br>an incentive to keep supplying the government, any lawsuits over alleged<br>vaccine injury must be filed in a special Federal court, the National<br>Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, run by U.S. Court of Federal<br>Claims, which adjudicates damages and awards them if merited from a risk<br>pool funded by an excise tax on vaccines. <br><br>And, by the way, this has applied to all vaccines since 1986. If you <br>don't trust the three COVID-19 vaccines for that reason, then you don't<br>trust any of the vaccines you must have to attend schools and colleges,<br>either.<br><br><br>#2 “The Checkered Past of the Vaccine Companies”. Elliot's framing of <br>companies' history implies that we have to just trust them -- but that<br>is false, given requirement and checking of clinical trials and<br>subsequent regulation. And one reasons we know these have teeth is <br>that FDA has refused AstraZeneca even an emergency use authorisation, <br>so far, because of flaws in its supporting data.<br><br><br>#3 “The Ugly History of Attempts to Make Coronavirus Vaccines”, Elliot<br>repeats here, uncritically, a wild tale by anti-vaccine activist Sherri<br>Tenpenny that has been proven factually incorrect and to misrepresent <br>older studies of SARS and MERS vaccine efforts.<br><br><br>#4 “The ‘Data Gaps’ Submitted to the FDA by the Vaccine Makers”. Elliot<br>charges that approval reports for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines<br>admitted that there are "data gaps" in those reports suggesting that <br>the vaccines don't actually prevent transmission or mortality. But<br>Elliot ignores that those reports covered only data collected through<br>Nov. 2020, and data already collected in the following several months <br>when Elliot wrote that filled in the apparent gaps.<br><br><br>#5: “No Access to the Raw Data from the Trials”. Technically correct<br>but damningly misleading, as the general public doesn't ever get direct<br>access to raw clinical-trial data. Hundreds of pages of summary data<br>are, along with selected data in two independent peer-reviewed medical<br>journal articles, among other places.<br><br><br>#6: “No Long-Term Safety Testing”. It's technically true that, when<br>Elliot was writing, there was less than a year of available follow-up<br>data. We don't know for absolute certain what the very long-term<br>effects of the vaccines are -- but we have a really good idea what the<br>long-term effects for millions of people are from being infected, and <br>those are really bad.<br><br>Saying "We should wait a few years and find out what these vaccines'<br>long-term effects are" today (or in March 2020 when Elliot was writing)<br>makes about as much sense as saying to Jonas Salk in 1955 "Hey, sure you<br>have a miraculously effective vaccine against polio, but let's wait a<br>few more years and keep having an epidemic, to get more long-term data."<br><br><br>#7: “No Informed Consent”. Basically, bunk. Elliot tries to claim that<br>FDA's emergency use authorisation of the three vaccines is an unethical <br>undisclosed clinical trial imposed on the public (hence 'no informed<br>consent). No. There were full phase 3 trials, and then three months of<br>FDA review for each vaccine. As Snopes points out, the seriousness of<br>the FDA process can be seen in FDA having paused authorisation for J&J <br>vaccine over a mere six blood-clotting cases out of nearly 7 million<br>doses administered.<br><br><br>#8: “Under-Reporting of Adverse Reactions and Death”. False. This is a<br>mad hand-waves from Elliot based on the fact that the Federal Vaccine<br>Adverse Events Reports System (VAERS) program relies on self-reporting<br>of adverse vaccine after-effects and making a non-sequitur claim about<br>data. To wit, Elliot says that the VAERS data shows "over 2,200 deaths<br>from the current COVID vaccines". No, it doesn't. It shows that over<br>2,200 people died after getting vaccines, which happens because people<br>die, and vaccines don't render people immortal.<br><br>Elliot further hand-waves a claim that VAERS captures only 1% of the<br>total adverse reactions, and guesstimates the vaccines have actually<br>caused 110,000 to 220,000 deaths -- which is compounding a wild guess<br>about captured data with a wilder claim about underreporting. The best<br>that can be said is that Elliot's envelope calculation is evidence and<br>math-challenged.<br><br><br>#9: “The Vaccines Do Not Stop Transmission or Infection”. But they do.<br>It's been proven that the vaccines greatly reduce asymptomatic spread<br>and viral load.<br><br><br>#10: “People Are Catching COVID After Being Fully Vaccinated”. Well,<br>yes, but some of these caught it before vaccine immunity full ramped up,<br>but also the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been shown to be 95%<br>effective, which means they will be ineffective in 5% of cases. (J&J's<br>vaccine's numbers are less spectacular, but still good.) That is _wild<br>success_ by the standards of other vaccines. Also, in the 5% of persons<br>who are subsequently infected, it's been shown that severity of<br>infection is far less.<br><br><br>#11: “The Overall Death Rate from COVID”. Elliot claims 99.74% survival<br>rate from infection, without saying where he got that (wrong) figure<br>from. One of the best recent estimates, from JHU, is a 1.8% death rate<br>in the USA from infection (98.2% survival rate). That's about 20x more<br>fatal than seasonal flu. Moreover, getting severe COVID-19 often ruins<br>the patient's health for life even if it doesn't kill him/her.<br><br><br>#12: “The Bloated COVID Death Numbers”. More bushwah, relying on, I kid<br>you not, a claim in a QAnon tweet retweeted by Trump. <br><br><br>#13: “Fauci and Six Others at NIAID Own Patents in the Moderna Vaccine”.<br>Actually, they aren't. Dr. Fauci is listed as an _inventor_ on at least<br>36 patents or patent applications, but inventor doesn't mean owner, and<br>Fauci doesn't _own_ any patent related to a COVID-19 vaccine. NIH<br>(Fauci's employer) co-owns the Moderna patents, but NIH is not Fauci.<br>It's the United States.<br><br><br>#14: “Fauci Is on the Hot Seat for Illegal Gain-Of-Function Research”.<br>This is a really wild personal accusation that Fauci was involved in <br>(allegedly) medical experiments in Wuhan to make viruses more<br>transmissible and deadlier, specifically the issuance of an NIH <br>$600M grant to a company called EcoHealth Alliance -- an accusation that<br>Fauci had approved money to deliberately develop a bioweapon in Wuhan.<br>Leaving aside the wild claims about EcoHealth Alliance's sponsoring of<br>research in Wuhan, Dr. Fauci had no direct oversight over the $600M<br>grant anyway, and it was just an extension of an existing grant that had<br>been funded since 2014. And none of this has anything to do with the<br>vaccines, anyway.<br><br><br>#15: “The Virus Continues to Mutate”. Well, yes, so? We vaccinate<br>against viruses anyway, and so far, the three approved ones are<br>continuing to be spectacularly effective against newer strains --<br>although Pfizer and Moderna (at least) say we'll need a booster shot<br>next year, being worked on, because the pandemic is still a threat.<br>To stop needing boosters, it would be nice to cut the infections,<br>e.g., by enough people getting vaccinated, and then the world will<br>stop being a huge Petri dish to crank out new strains.<br><br><br>#16: “Censorship … and the Complete Absence of Scientific Debate”.<br>This is _so cute_! This guy puts out a piece of misinformation that<br>gets viewed over 2 million times on Faceplant, and he's complaining<br>about "censorship". Intellectual consistency is not his strong suit.<br><br><br>#17: “The World’s Leading Vaccinologist Is Sounding the Alarm…”<br>Who is 'the world's leading vaccinologist" according to Mr. Elliot?<br>A crank veterinarian (admittedly with a Ph.D. in virology) named Geert<br>Vanden Bossche, who for the past decades has been trying and failing to<br>patent something he calls a “universal vaccine” capable of killing a<br>wide variety of diseases. Somehow, Elliot trusts this wack-job, but not<br>real epidemiologists and virologists.<br><br><br>#18: “I Already Had Covid”. Non-sequitur. "I had it and it wasn't that<br>bad" has been true for many but misses the point, and Elliot's belief<br>that he automatically got full lifelong immunity from a mild COVID case<br>is doubtful. I hope he's right, but this simply isn't a reason why he,<br>let alone the rest of the world, ought not to go get one of the vaccines<br>and rejoice in one's good fortune (except those who unfortunately cannot<br>get them for medical reasons). <br><br><br><br>The other big thing: In his grand summary, Elliot asks why we don't<br>just trust our bodies' natural immunity that we develop by getting sick<br>and then getting better. It's a stupid question, but a common one. We<br>don't do that because having and using well-tested, effective vaccines<br>is so _very_ much better.<br><br>But hey, if you wish to follow Elliot's advice and have a very serious <br>likelihood of getting very ill and possibly having your health ruined<br>for life, or dying slowly of suffocation in the knowledge that it didn't<br>need to happen at all, go right ahead.<br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>conspire mailing list<br><a href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br><a href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br></div>
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