[JB70]

He's not interested in understanding them. It's propaganda site only interested in whatever can be used to make the propaganda more effective.

He has his conclusion already, he;s drawn his curve now he;s going to selectively add points to make it look reasonable.

If you cherry pick form all the studies everywhere you can create very deceptive pictures.

The site had no information value.

So what are the studies and data telling you?

if the data is true i can´t see how it is not alarming.

[Godstud]

You don't understand how ADE works and I don't have the time, nor the crayons to explain it to you. The study did NOT say what you said it did. In fact, it says quite the opposite.

Your narrative is transparent, anti-vaxxer.

A pilot study, as this WAS, is not something to be concerned about. Indeed, it's results NOT being published comes as no surprise. They don't publish studies(least of all pilot studies) of ANY king until they are peer reviewed. You stating this is a result of a conspiracy is bullshit, as the results ARE available. You simply don't understand them, which is not surprising, as you are likely not an epidemiologist.

[JB70]

You don't understand how ADE works and I don't have the time, nor the crayons to explain it to you. The study did NOT say what you said it did. In fact, it says quite the opposite.

Your narrative is transparent, anti-vaxxer.

A pilot study, as this WAS, is not something to be concerned about. Indeed, it's results NOT being published comes as no surprise. They don't publish studies(least of all pilot studies) of ANY king until they are peer reviewed. You stating this is a result of a conspiracy is bullshit, as the results ARE available. You simply don't understand them, which is not surprising, as you are likely not an epidemiologist.

Could be wrong but i think it does mean that. But does it matter since there are new research that may mean the mass vaccination is a big misstake?

I just see emotional arguments from you. Why are these new studies and data not important?

[pugsville]

So what are the studies and data telling you?

if the data is true i can´t see how it is not alarming.

It's not significant evidence.

[XogGyux]

Oh boy, another wackadoodle.
Let's see.
Vaccines are tested,
Vaccines are safe,
Conspiracy theorists are borderline mental,
Grow up.

[Godstud]

I just see emotional arguments from you. Why are these new studies and data not important?

That's a dishonest statement. I don't have an emotional argument. I am stating facts about pilot studies, of which this was one. You simply don't like the fact that it's insignificant unless it is thoroughly studied... properly. This could take time and will require peer reviews and testing. Right now, it's sheer conjecture based on limited statistics.

The information on ADE is proving that vaccines provide better protection than previous thought, because it differs from the natural immunity. You simply don't understand the science, which is extremely complex, to begin with.

I can quote statistic showing vaccines are overwhelmingly successful.

How We Know That the COVID-19 Vaccines Work
Saying that the COVID-19 vaccines work is more than just cheerleading: there are many studies to back it up
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid ... cines-work


You, @JB70, are simply an anti-vaxxer trying to use science you don't even understand, statistics taken out of context, and a pilot study(meant to determine if something should even be studied), to claim that vaccines make your immune system weak(the opposite of how vaccines actually operate). This is a fundamentally flawed argument, and scientifically false.

You show a lack of understanding of how vaccines work, and a pseudoscientific bias that lends credence to conspiracy theories about how the lack of information is due to them hiding it, and not simply due to the fact that they didn't do an actual study.

A pilot study, pilot project, pilot test, or pilot experiment is a small-scale preliminary study conducted to evaluate feasibility, duration, cost, adverse events, and improve upon the study design prior to performance of a full-scale research project.

[JB70]

It's not significant evidence.

What?? It is official data. And they stopped publishing it recently. If true it is very alarming. Can´t you see that?

"Look at the numbers: Compared to week 6-9, cases in week 7-10 among the unvaccinated barely increased by 1%, from 59,904 cases to 60,372. For the boosted, cases increased by 14%, from 543,809 to 617,982!

For the vulnerable 60-69 year old category, the boosted 60-69 year olds get sick 4.25 TIMES as much as unvaccinated 60-69 year olds. Take a minute to let that sink in. Far from being protective, boosters make 60-69 year olds four times more vulnerable to infections!"

[JB70]

Geert Vanden Bossche are predicting this now:

https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarit ... 9-pandemic

"I SERIOUSLY expect that a series of new highly virulent and highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 (SC-2) variants
will now rapidly and independently emerge in highly vaccinated countries all over the world and that
they will soon spread at high pace. I expect the current pattern of repetitive infections and relatively
mild disease in vaccinees to soon aggravate and be replaced by severe disease and death.
Unfortunately, there is no way vaccinees can rely on assistance from their innate immune system to
protect against coronaviruses1 as their relevant2 innate IgM antibodies are increasingly being
outcompeted by infection-enhancing vaccinal Abs, which are continuously recalled due to the circulation
of highly infectious Omicron variants. In contrast, Omicron’s high infectiousness would enable the non-
vaccinated to train their innate immune defense against SC-2 while the infectious and pathogenic
capacity of the new SC-2 variants would be debilitated in the non-vaccinated for lack of infection-
enhancing Abs in their blood. Unless we immediately implement large scale antiviral prophylaxis
campaigns in highly vaccinated countries, there shall be no doubt that the pandemic will end by taking a
huge toll on human lives."

[Godstud]

You ignore my questions because they dissect your conspiracy theory, Anti-vaxxer. One guy's theory doesn't hold water when there isn't supporting evidence. Take your quack and conspiracy theories and trot off, @JB70.

He's a nutbar.
The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche
A Belgian virus expert has scared the Internet by claiming the COVID-19 vaccines will doom humanity. No need to panic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted a swarm of vocal contrarians like little else in the recent past. These public commentators, often bedazzled with advanced degrees, have painted themselves as brave mavericks escaping from the mainstream herd to denounce the cataclysmic consequences of public health measures. The latest example of this phenomenon comes in the form of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who recently published an alarming manifesto. In it, Dr. Bossche makes a number of incorrect or exaggerated claims about the use of mass vaccination during a pandemic and urges international health authorities to stop the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines or else risk unleashing “a global catastrophe without equal.” This is scary stuff, but it’s all quite misguided.

Analogies break down in the face of data
Dr. Bossche asserts that vaccines are like antibiotics in that, when they are both overused and imperfect, they allow germs to mutate in dangerous ways. With antibiotic use, the bacteria that have developed a mutation or acquired a gene that gives them protection from the antibiotic will escape death and soon become the dominant strain. That’s antibiotic resistance. Bossche claims that the same thing will happen with the coronavirus. Because, he says, the vaccines are imperfect, they will allow the virus to keep being transmitted from person to person and thus mutate inside of us, until a dangerous new variant emerges.

This is not complete nonsense. I reached out to Dr. Paul Offit, a paediatrician specialized in vaccines and immunology and the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, to get his thoughts on whether antibiotic resistance and vaccine-associated immune escape are indeed comparable. “In a sense it is, but he misses the main point,” Dr. Offit told me. A vaccine shows your body an inert part of the virus so that it can make neutralizing antibodies against it. If the body ends up making low levels of these antibodies, i.e. not enough to swiftly kill the virus when you catch it, this could allow the virus to stick around in your body for a little bit and make copies of itself. Some of these copies may by chance have the right kinds of errors in their genetic code to become variants of concern, although the mutation rate of this coronavirus is quite low.

“But if you have a vaccine that results in high levels of neutralizing antibodies, that’s not a way to create variants,” he continued. To use an analogy, if a gaggle of invaders is coming but you have only managed to round up a few soldiers, be prepared for a long siege during which the enemy might learn a thing or two about your defences and adapt. But if you have a full and overpowering army at your command, the invaders won’t stick around for long. So the question becomes: do the COVID-19 vaccines give us low or high levels of neutralizing antibodies?

While scientists don’t yet know exactly what levels of antibodies are needed to ward off disease, the approved vaccines do elicit the production of neutralizing antibodies. Meanwhile, a small study published in The Lancet showed that giving people who had never had COVID-19 a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine resulted in them making similar levels of anti-spike protein antibodies as individuals who had had COVID-19 but had not yet been vaccinated. A study of the Moderna vaccine in 34 participants showed “high levels of binding and neutralizing antibodies that declined slightly over time, as expected, but [that] remained elevated in all participants three months after the booster vaccination.” More broadly, data from the vaccine clinical trials and from countries that have vaccinated a large percentage of their population show a significant reduction in cases and mortality. The vaccines are working.

But what about asymptomatic transmission? Many vaccines prevent transmission of the virus from person to person, and there is mounting evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines do as well. Even if they don’t prevent all transmissions, it looks like they can drastically cut the transmission chain and also reduce the amount of virus that can be transmitted in these cases. Dr. Bossche’s idea that the coronavirus will simply continue moving from person to person and that vaccines will only prevent severe disease is contradicted by the data that is accumulating.

But even if the COVID-19 vaccines were “leaky,” meaning they still allowed some vaccinated people to transmit the virus to others, there is evidence that they could still efficiently contain the spread of the disease. Edward Nirenberg, a science blogger who addressed Dr. Bossche’s claims in great detail, points to Marek’s disease. It is caused by a herpesvirus and it gives chickens a number of health problems, including cancer. Thankfully, there is a vaccine against it, but over time, newer and more virulent strains of the virus have been detected, and this made scientists think it was because the vaccine was leaky, that it did not allow the chicken to mount a good enough immune response. Interestingly enough, the use of this seemingly leaky vaccine in chickens led to a reduction in the incidence of Marek’s disease by 99%. Potentially leaky vaccine but stellar disease reduction.

Another important counterpoint to Dr. Bossche’s claim is that we can simply reformulate our vaccines to match new variants of concern. There is a reason why a new flu vaccine is made each year: the influenza virus drifts and shifts and the vaccine needs to be reformulated to be a better match for the specific viruses that are predicted to be common during the next flu season. Similarly, if a new SARS-CoV-2 variant emerges and is so different that our current crop of vaccines don’t match it, scientists can simply tweak their vaccines. It’s not an instantaneous solution, as massive vaccination campaigns require manufacturing and deployment at scale, but it’s a fix we know well and have implemented in the past.

And lest we forget: the variants of concern making headlines now arose before we had any vaccine against the coronavirus. Dr. Bossche’s concern about imperfect vaccines allowing the virus to mutate should be dwarfed by the much larger, evidence-based worry of allowing the virus to mutate inside of unvaccinated people. Without vaccines, the virus is allowed to jump from person to person and make imperfect copies of itself, and this flawed replication process is like a worldwide game of Russian roulette. Most times, the virus will not mutate or its mutation will be harmless, but the more people incubate the virus, the bigger the chance of a dangerous mutation emerging by chance. Vaccines can put a stop to that.

Dr. Bossche, however, seems to be a big fan of the innate immune system and he worries that all of these COVID-19 vaccines and public health measures are getting in the way of our innate immune system fighting off the coronavirus. He claims that keeping people in lockdown during the pandemic is not beneficial to their innate immune system, which requires exposure to viruses and bacteria to remain in tip-top shape. This is a bad argument. As Dr. Offit pointed out to me, even at home we are exposed to legions of microorganisms. “The food you eat isn’t sterile,” he reminded me, “the dust you inhale isn’t sterile, the water you drink isn’t sterile.” We get exposed to a lot of microorganisms.

This innate immunity gambit on the part of Dr. Bossche is something typically seen in wellness communities obsessed with the naturalistic fallacy, where strengthening your immune system is as simple and as natural as taking in the sun, walking in the woods, and hugging people. For Dr. Bossche, however, the solution is not long walks on the beach, but an alleged new type of vaccine focused on training the innate immune system. One of the cell types of the innate immune system is a natural killer cell, and Dr. Bossche claims to be developing a natural killer cell vaccine. Have we seen any evidence of this? No. I believe I speak for many scientists when I say: show us the evidence.

Imagine you were a public health advisor and were confronted with this choice: to heed Dr. Bossche’s apocalyptic warning and stop all COVID-19 vaccinations (scenario #1) or to ignore him and follow the evidence (scenario #2). What would you do?

In scenario #1, you get rid of vaccines and lockdowns and allow the virus to spread, practically unimpeded, through the population, killing more and more people and leaving many with long-term health consequences. As the virus spreads, it mutates here and there and new variants of concern emerge. And maybe, at some point, Dr. Bossche validates a new kind of vaccine that works in a completely different way and it eventually allows us to curb the pandemic. Maybe.

In scenario #2, we vaccinate as many people as we can and as quickly as we can. Cases and deaths go down. If new variants of concern that escape from the protection granted by the vaccines emerge, scientists reformulate the vaccines. This strategy is based on vaccines that target the adaptive arm of our immune system, the same principle that allowed us to slay smallpox and bring polio and measles down to their knees.

I know which scenario I would choose.

Take-home message:

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a veterinarian who recently released an open letter boldly claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines will be harmful to humanity by allowing the virus to mutate in dangerous ways

If we are worried about dangerous variants emerging, it is much riskier to allow the virus to spread between unvaccinated people

If coronavirus variants emerge for which the current vaccines offer little to no protection, the vaccines can be reformulated to be a better fit, much like the annual flu vaccine

Dr. Bossche proposes the use of a new type of vaccine based on natural killer cells, which he claims he is working on but for which there is no published evidence


https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid ... en-bossche

[JB70]

You ignore my questions because they dissect your conspiracy theory, Anti-vaxxer. One guy's theory doesn't hold water when there isn't supporting evidence. Take your quack and conspiracy theories and trot off, @JB70.

He's a nutbar.
The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche
A Belgian virus expert has scared the Internet by claiming the COVID-19 vaccines will doom humanity. No need to panic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted a swarm of vocal contrarians like little else in the recent past. These public commentators, often bedazzled with advanced degrees, have painted themselves as brave mavericks escaping from the mainstream herd to denounce the cataclysmic consequences of public health measures. The latest example of this phenomenon comes in the form of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who recently published an alarming manifesto. In it, Dr. Bossche makes a number of incorrect or exaggerated claims about the use of mass vaccination during a pandemic and urges international health authorities to stop the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines or else risk unleashing “a global catastrophe without equal.” This is scary stuff, but it’s all quite misguided.

Analogies break down in the face of data
Dr. Bossche asserts that vaccines are like antibiotics in that, when they are both overused and imperfect, they allow germs to mutate in dangerous ways. With antibiotic use, the bacteria that have developed a mutation or acquired a gene that gives them protection from the antibiotic will escape death and soon become the dominant strain. That’s antibiotic resistance. Bossche claims that the same thing will happen with the coronavirus. Because, he says, the vaccines are imperfect, they will allow the virus to keep being transmitted from person to person and thus mutate inside of us, until a dangerous new variant emerges.

This is not complete nonsense. I reached out to Dr. Paul Offit, a paediatrician specialized in vaccines and immunology and the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, to get his thoughts on whether antibiotic resistance and vaccine-associated immune escape are indeed comparable. “In a sense it is, but he misses the main point,” Dr. Offit told me. A vaccine shows your body an inert part of the virus so that it can make neutralizing antibodies against it. If the body ends up making low levels of these antibodies, i.e. not enough to swiftly kill the virus when you catch it, this could allow the virus to stick around in your body for a little bit and make copies of itself. Some of these copies may by chance have the right kinds of errors in their genetic code to become variants of concern, although the mutation rate of this coronavirus is quite low.

“But if you have a vaccine that results in high levels of neutralizing antibodies, that’s not a way to create variants,” he continued. To use an analogy, if a gaggle of invaders is coming but you have only managed to round up a few soldiers, be prepared for a long siege during which the enemy might learn a thing or two about your defences and adapt. But if you have a full and overpowering army at your command, the invaders won’t stick around for long. So the question becomes: do the COVID-19 vaccines give us low or high levels of neutralizing antibodies?

While scientists don’t yet know exactly what levels of antibodies are needed to ward off disease, the approved vaccines do elicit the production of neutralizing antibodies. Meanwhile, a small study published in The Lancet showed that giving people who had never had COVID-19 a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine resulted in them making similar levels of anti-spike protein antibodies as individuals who had had COVID-19 but had not yet been vaccinated. A study of the Moderna vaccine in 34 participants showed “high levels of binding and neutralizing antibodies that declined slightly over time, as expected, but [that] remained elevated in all participants three months after the booster vaccination.” More broadly, data from the vaccine clinical trials and from countries that have vaccinated a large percentage of their population show a significant reduction in cases and mortality. The vaccines are working.

But what about asymptomatic transmission? Many vaccines prevent transmission of the virus from person to person, and there is mounting evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines do as well. Even if they don’t prevent all transmissions, it looks like they can drastically cut the transmission chain and also reduce the amount of virus that can be transmitted in these cases. Dr. Bossche’s idea that the coronavirus will simply continue moving from person to person and that vaccines will only prevent severe disease is contradicted by the data that is accumulating.

But even if the COVID-19 vaccines were “leaky,” meaning they still allowed some vaccinated people to transmit the virus to others, there is evidence that they could still efficiently contain the spread of the disease. Edward Nirenberg, a science blogger who addressed Dr. Bossche’s claims in great detail, points to Marek’s disease. It is caused by a herpesvirus and it gives chickens a number of health problems, including cancer. Thankfully, there is a vaccine against it, but over time, newer and more virulent strains of the virus have been detected, and this made scientists think it was because the vaccine was leaky, that it did not allow the chicken to mount a good enough immune response. Interestingly enough, the use of this seemingly leaky vaccine in chickens led to a reduction in the incidence of Marek’s disease by 99%. Potentially leaky vaccine but stellar disease reduction.

Another important counterpoint to Dr. Bossche’s claim is that we can simply reformulate our vaccines to match new variants of concern. There is a reason why a new flu vaccine is made each year: the influenza virus drifts and shifts and the vaccine needs to be reformulated to be a better match for the specific viruses that are predicted to be common during the next flu season. Similarly, if a new SARS-CoV-2 variant emerges and is so different that our current crop of vaccines don’t match it, scientists can simply tweak their vaccines. It’s not an instantaneous solution, as massive vaccination campaigns require manufacturing and deployment at scale, but it’s a fix we know well and have implemented in the past.

And lest we forget: the variants of concern making headlines now arose before we had any vaccine against the coronavirus. Dr. Bossche’s concern about imperfect vaccines allowing the virus to mutate should be dwarfed by the much larger, evidence-based worry of allowing the virus to mutate inside of unvaccinated people. Without vaccines, the virus is allowed to jump from person to person and make imperfect copies of itself, and this flawed replication process is like a worldwide game of Russian roulette. Most times, the virus will not mutate or its mutation will be harmless, but the more people incubate the virus, the bigger the chance of a dangerous mutation emerging by chance. Vaccines can put a stop to that.

Dr. Bossche, however, seems to be a big fan of the innate immune system and he worries that all of these COVID-19 vaccines and public health measures are getting in the way of our innate immune system fighting off the coronavirus. He claims that keeping people in lockdown during the pandemic is not beneficial to their innate immune system, which requires exposure to viruses and bacteria to remain in tip-top shape. This is a bad argument. As Dr. Offit pointed out to me, even at home we are exposed to legions of microorganisms. “The food you eat isn’t sterile,” he reminded me, “the dust you inhale isn’t sterile, the water you drink isn’t sterile.” We get exposed to a lot of microorganisms.

This innate immunity gambit on the part of Dr. Bossche is something typically seen in wellness communities obsessed with the naturalistic fallacy, where strengthening your immune system is as simple and as natural as taking in the sun, walking in the woods, and hugging people. For Dr. Bossche, however, the solution is not long walks on the beach, but an alleged new type of vaccine focused on training the innate immune system. One of the cell types of the innate immune system is a natural killer cell, and Dr. Bossche claims to be developing a natural killer cell vaccine. Have we seen any evidence of this? No. I believe I speak for many scientists when I say: show us the evidence.

Imagine you were a public health advisor and were confronted with this choice: to heed Dr. Bossche’s apocalyptic warning and stop all COVID-19 vaccinations (scenario #1) or to ignore him and follow the evidence (scenario #2). What would you do?

In scenario #1, you get rid of vaccines and lockdowns and allow the virus to spread, practically unimpeded, through the population, killing more and more people and leaving many with long-term health consequences. As the virus spreads, it mutates here and there and new variants of concern emerge. And maybe, at some point, Dr. Bossche validates a new kind of vaccine that works in a completely different way and it eventually allows us to curb the pandemic. Maybe.

In scenario #2, we vaccinate as many people as we can and as quickly as we can. Cases and deaths go down. If new variants of concern that escape from the protection granted by the vaccines emerge, scientists reformulate the vaccines. This strategy is based on vaccines that target the adaptive arm of our immune system, the same principle that allowed us to slay smallpox and bring polio and measles down to their knees.

I know which scenario I would choose.

Take-home message:

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a veterinarian who recently released an open letter boldly claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines will be harmful to humanity by allowing the virus to mutate in dangerous ways

If we are worried about dangerous variants emerging, it is much riskier to allow the virus to spread between unvaccinated people

If coronavirus variants emerge for which the current vaccines offer little to no protection, the vaccines can be reformulated to be a better fit, much like the annual flu vaccine

Dr. Bossche proposes the use of a new type of vaccine based on natural killer cells, which he claims he is working on but for which there is no published evidence


https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid ... en-bossche

I think Vanden Bossche has already been proven right on the above.

Btw Pfizers CEO is also a veterinarian. Maybe its not than unusual. Bossche has degrees in virology and immunology

[Godstud]

I think Vanden Bossche has already been proven right on the above.

No. It's only his opinion. There is no science backing it up. You think wrong. You engage in conspiracy theories.

You didn't read any of the article because you're afraid of the facts, and it would destroy and tear apart your pathetic argument, which is based on a bullshit theory by a nutbar.

Go peddle your conspiracy theories on reddit. People here aren't dumb enough to fall for your idiotic falsehoods, and you can't even debate well.

edit: spelling

[Rancid]

Where are the thousands upon thousands of negatively affected people?

[Godstud]

Where are the thousands upon thousands of negatively affected people?

They don't exist. That's why these conspiracy theories fail. There's simply no actual facts to support them. Fools who can't critically think, however, are very quick to promote them at the drop of a hat.