Good for him.
At this point the evidence that getting that shots was a terrible mistake is there for anyone to see. In the UK where somehow they're able to keep data unlike here in the U.S., all health data is *worse* for the "vaccinated."
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/pandemic-of-the-vaccinated?s=r

I don't think anyone is gullible enough to follow your stupid link.

Well, apparently several Red Sox players would be.

The Rangers, from what I can tell, had no vaccination issues, starting the season in Toronto. There was speculation that they'd shuffled the roster a little to keep one unnamed unvaccinated relief pitcher out of the mix, but honestly, with relief pitchers, who could tell.

Well, apparently several Red Sox players would be.

Haha, fair enough!

Man, I hate being reminded of the utter idiocy of so many jocks. I enjoy watching them play baseball - but to routinely travel all over the country and not feel obligated to get vaccinated is just lunacy. And #1 is right up there with the dumbest thing posted on this site in the 20 years I've been around here...

Man, better go check on "Q" so you know what to do next to bring about the Storm.

And #1 is right up there with the dumbest thing posted on this site in the 20 years I've been around here...,

I'm not sure that cracks Rough's Top 20 of dumb.

So, the official UK numbers are the product of untermenschen or something? Your arrogance is so ironic.

And here's a lovely study which indicates that big pharma's spiked protein injection screws up the body's normal cancer cell suppression.
https://www.authorea.com/users/455597/articles/552937-innate-immune-suppression-by-sars-cov-2-mrna-vaccinations-the-role-of-g-quadruplexes-exosomes-and-micrornas

But what's evidence compared to your tribal identification.

It would be great if that URL was actually to an Albright. I know better. But I wish it was.

Rough Carrigan = anti-vaxxer moron.

Sorry if this has been covered already, but with people entering Canada required to show proof of covid vaccination (and Ottawa now not allowing an exemption for pro athletes) MLB/MLBPA seems to be handling Toronto Blue Jays home games by temporarily placing unvaccinated players on the "restricted list" and calling up minor league guys to cover them.

This didn't happen Opening Weekend TEX@TOR because all TEX players were reportedly vaccinated, so no problems. Then TOR was @NYY. But last weekend it was OAK@TOR, and the issue came up.

OAK did not confirm this with a statement, but on Friday they placed LHP A.J. Puk, LHP Kirby Snead, and C Austin Allen on the Restricted List, and placed RF Stephen Piscotty on the 10 day IL after he tested positive for covid. Same day they recalled LHP Zach Logue, C Christian Bethancourt, and selected RHP Ryan Castellani, SS Drew Jackson.

Toronto is now on the road for two series, so it won't come up again until 25Apr-04May when Jays are home to BOS, HOU, NYY.

So funny reading anti-vaxx stuff here and in other places, well, it would be funny if it wasn't so deadly. Check the stats and you quickly see that the US has far more dead from COVID than Canada, which has more dead than places that took it seriously from day one like New Zealand. Not sure why NZ is doing so poorly right now, but it appears to be worst in the areas where anti-vaxxers are going coocoo.

Numbers vis https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
USA: 2,983.01 dead per million people (9.65 in the past 7 days)
Canada: 1,006.27 (4.58 past 7 days)
New Zealand: 86.64 (22.78 past 7 days)

Here in Canada we had the 'freedum' convoy where they were allowed to camp out in front of parliament for weeks thanks to white supremists in their group who were also in the Ottawa police force. When the feds came down hard on them they were cleared out quickly. Now the leaders of that group are in jail and looking at long jail terms.

As to the morons in MLB who have access to tons of medical data and have teams pushing them hard I'm sure to get the shot (as they don't want players down for extended time if they catch COVID). Well, I have zero respect or time for them. As a Jays fan I'm quite happy that the Red Sox might find themselves in a hole thanks to those idiots, and the same with the Yankees potentially. Remember, no Jay could come to the US if unvaccinated as the US has the same rule on the books.

Sorry if this has been covered already, but with people entering Canada required to show proof of covid vaccination (and Ottawa now not allowing an exemption for pro athletes) MLB/MLBPA seems to be handling Toronto Blue Jays home games by temporarily placing unvaccinated players on the "restricted list" and calling up minor league guys to cover them.

I don't know if that's what Boston will do, but they did report today that Kevin Plawecki tested positive for COVID. I imagine he will not be allowed to travel to Toronto next week even if he's vaccinated.

If I'd had to bet on which Red Sox player was the most likely to act like an idiot, Tanner Houck would've been right up near the top.

I'm just hoping that Aaron Judge gets vaccinated by May 2nd and Joey Gallo becomes a holdout.

re: Piscotty and Plawecki, I don't know if they are vaccinated. You can still get covid if vaccinated. But from a reporter on MLB.com, this is how testing positive will be handled:

Vaccinated players on the COVID-19 IL must receive clearance from Major League Baseball's Joint COVID-19 Health and Safety Committee to be reinstated. Unvaccinated players must submit two negative PCR tests before returning. -- Mitch Bannon (Last updated: April 15)

I don't know if the Covid-19 IL can be shorter than 10 days? The MLB.com Transaction page entries don't mention the Covid IL, they just say Piscotty is on the 10 Day IL, same as if he twisted his ankle or something.

I don't know if the Covid-19 IL can be shorter than 10 days?

I believe it can be. Corey Knebel was on the IL for just one day last week.

I met Kevin Plawecki's wife, kids and in-laws at Opening Day. That was nice. Took a home COVID test at lunch today so that was fun (and negative).

OAK did not confirm this with a statement, but on Friday they placed LHP A.J. Puk, LHP Kirby Snead, and C Austin Allen on the Restricted List, and placed RF Stephen Piscotty on the 10 day IL after he tested positive for covid. Same day they recalled LHP Zach Logue, C Christian Bethancourt, and selected RHP Ryan Castellani, SS Drew Jackson.

Snead and Logue were Blue Jays until very recently. Partially explains why they were traded. Though getting Matt Chapman seems to have the issue covered without that side angle.

Thanks Nate, good info.
Yeah the Phillies mlb.com Transaction page says Knebel on 10-day IL, but then activated a day later.
So Piscotty could come back any time. And if vaccinated and he recovers and tests negative in time, I don't see why Plawecki couldn't play @TOR.

I found this, despite spelling mistakes it seems legit:

INJURED LISTS [...]
CoViD-19 EXCEPTION: There is a special MLB "CoViD-19 Related Injured List" in 2022 for players who are diagnosed with CoViD-19 during the MLB regular season, as well as for players who exhibit symptoms and/or have been exposed to the virus, or who are in a CoViD-19 "high risk" group. A player can only be placed on the CiViD-19 Related Injured List by consent of the CoViD-19 Joint Health & Safety Commitee. There is no minimum or maximum number of days a player must spend on this list, but a player may not be reinstated until he is symptom-free and tests negative for the virus twice where the tests are administered at least 24 hours apart. A player on the CoViD-19 Injured List does not count against his club's Reserve List or Active List.

NZ is doing poorly (i.e. pretty average) right now because of Omicron (and a lesser extent Delta). The politicians pretty much decided people were at the limit of lockdown tolerance and relaxed a few restrictions. Omicron's highly contagious of course so once it got out there was no way to contain it except maybe another full, extreme lockdown. What the early approach achieved was a pretty high vax rate by the time Omicron hit. The vaxxes aren't great against Omicron infection but are doing the job on hospitalisation, ICU and death. Unfortunately the booster is going much slower.

So while we're not "letting it rip", we gave up on elimination months ago and are in "live with it" mode like pretty much the rest of thw world. We're still under mild restrictions -- masks in stores, no big indoor events -- and I'd say Kiwis in general are still more wary about going out (certainly moreso than we were in Oz) but the strategy now is to hope the vaxxes do their job and that we can roll out boosters quickly whenever needed. The last bit will never happen though which means we're probably in big trouble if a deadlier variant arrives.

Anyway, the country overall and most areas appear to be past the peak of Omicron. Certainly from a public health perspective, the NZ approach worked -- life expectancy actually went up -- and bought time to get the vaxxes out. How much of that was luck (e.g. if the vaxxes don't arrive so early ...), how much policy brilliance, how much the generally higher levels of civic cohesion in NZ, etc. who knows. But you can't argue with the results. Unfortunately from this point, I don't expect NZ to do any better than average, maybe a bit worse than OECD average. And while the economy is doing well relatively speaking, we're getting killed by supply chain issues, etc.

Good for him.
At this point the evidence that getting that shots was a terrible mistake is there for anyone to see. In the UK where somehow they're able to keep data unlike here in the U.S., all health data is *worse* for the "vaccinated."

At this point I'm convinced you go around wearing a t-shirt that says "I'm with stupid" with an arrow pointing up at your own face. Every time you get on one of these ridiculous jags, people prove every single thing you post wrong, accurately call into doubt the reliability of your sources, and provide truthful information. But you go on barfing your bullshit out anyway.

Here are the simple numbers from the UK about covid cases among the "vaccinated" and those who didn't from the weeks of March 6 through March 27. (After that date, the UK stopped giving out the data because it was so damning for the case of those promoting the spiked protein injections)
-----------Rates of cases--------Rates of cases
-----------per 100,000------------per 100,000
Age Group--among the vaxxeds-----among the UNvaxxed
Under 18-------1,454.0--------------1,711.7
18-29----------3,118.8----------------941.6
30-39----------4,324.7--------------1,085.6
40-49----------3.957.8----------------955.3
50-59----------3.303.4----------------779.8
60-69----------2,814.9----------------572.8
70-79----------2,161.5----------------532.1
80 & over------2,023.7----------------775.6

It's impossible to look at these numbers and blandly accept that a person should choose to get these injections. And, these numbers were put out by a gov't agency frantically promoting citizens getting the injections. And, again, they've been so damning, for months that the UK now wants to hide these numbers. That would give open minded people who tend to think they should get the injections pause, wouldn't it? Hey, do this . . but, uh, now we're gonna hide the numbers that show whether it works or not.

And these injections are not a vaccine. Some actual other vaccines are effective and are completely worthwhile. Others are a waste of time. This isn't even a vaccine so arguing against its use is not being "anti-vaxx". That's childish false dichotomy argumentation.

Be an adult, admit that you could be wrong about something. Take in information and decide if you need to revise your position.

Speaking of UK Studies....

Risk of Covid-19 Death Is 93% Lower for Fully Vaccinated People Than Unvaccinated

Mortality rates were “consistently lower” across all age groups for those who had received an extra dose, the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics says.

The risk of death involving Covid-19 is 93% lower for people who have had a booster or third dose of vaccine compared with unvaccinated people, new research suggests.

Mortality rates for coronavirus deaths were found to be “consistently lower” across all age groups for those who had received an extra dose compared with those who had received no doses, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The research used age-standardised mortality rates, which take into account differences in age structure and population size, to allow for comparisons between vaccination groups.

Among fully-vaccinated people in England who had received a booster or third dose at least 21 days previously, the age-adjusted risk of death involving Covid-19 between July and December last year was 93.4% lower compared with unvaccinated people, while it was 81.2% lower for those who had received only two doses.

For much of 2021, mortality rates for death involving Covid-19 for people who had received two doses of vaccine remained well below the equivalent figures for people who were unvaccinated, the ONS found. ...

Of course there's zero chance that rough will actually check his assumptions. But as usual ...

Well check out The actual source . Specifically table 14 on page 45. Which breaks things down by age groups, infection rate and severe outcomes.

Under 50 there's no noticeable affect on death. Over 50 unvaccinated are significantly more likely to die.

But death's not the only bad outcome. At every age group unvaccinated people are more likely to end up in the hospital:

Under 18 unvaccinated are 3 times as likely to end up in the hospital. 18-29 it's around 1.5 times as likely that you'll end up in hospital.

Combine the two and (bad results per 100,000)



It is fair to say that healthy people in their 30s don't appear to derive much benefit in this time frame.

EDIT: And that unvaccinated people over 70 ...

#25. This is pretty cute:

For much of 2021, mortality rates for death involving Covid-19 for people who had received two doses of vaccine remained well below the equivalent figures for people who were unvaccinated, the ONS found.

For much of last year no one was "vaccinated" so anyone who died was, officially, "unvaccinated". That's how you create a false impression. Fauci engaged in this particular dishonesty for months. Also, the fact that people don't officially count as "vaccinated" until two weeks after a second shot (though the goal posts keep moving) is a way to call severe reactions ending in death the passing of the "unvaccinated" when the truth was something a bit different.

#26
That's page 45 of 58, from which my numbers came. Take any one of those groups.
Among people 18-29, of 100,000 people who are "vaccinated", 2,000 more people will come down with covid than 100,000 people who are "unvaccinated". Of those same 100,000 "vaccinated" people, 2 fewer will go to the hospital and/or die than among the 100,000 "unvaccinated" people. (And, again, by defining the person who got their shot less than 2 weeks ago and has a severe reaction as "unvaccinated" those numbers are a bit slanted). 2 more people having a real problem out of 100,000 is 1 in 50,000 greater likelihood of such a problem even with the definitional legardemain.

As many others have pointed out, who does not get Big Pharma's spiked protein injections? One of the leading demographics is those with PhD's. But that's not the point. People skeptical of Big Pharma are a major faction, of course, but that's not the point either. People skeptical of big gov't? That's also a major faction but, alas, not the real point here. Who also doesn't get the shots? People regarded as too ill or infirm to get them. Could such people, already very ill or infirm, be much or all of the difference of 2 people in 100,000? It's possible. And that's why seeing it as 2 people in 100,000 is more accurate than portraying it as 33% more.

There are so many very interesting things in that report. One curious one is that on page 20 it says that 501,669 people who are "immunosuppressed" got one shot of Big Pharma's cocktail. But only 460,472 people among this group got three doses. What happened with the other 41,000 people? Did they go to the hospital? Did they die? What happened to them? Why didn't they get all three servings? Did they have bad reactions? Were they feeling so wonderful after one injection or two that they didn't think they needed another?

That's the problem with a supposed benefit being a tiny real number of people, 2 in 100,000. Very very small cohorts of people can swing 2 in 100,000 people. But 2,000 more people out of 100,000 people testing positive for covid *after* getting the damn shots is not susceptible to being explained away by some tiny cohort of people. It's a pretty damning number.

The poster in #24 omitted this information from his own source:

The case rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations are unadjusted crude rates that do not take into account underlying statistical biases in the data and there are likely to be systematic differences between these 2 population groups. For example:
• testing behaviour is likely to be different between people with different vaccination status, resulting in differences in the chances of being identified as a case
• many of those who were at the head of the queue for vaccination are those at higher risk from COVID-19 due to their age, their occupation, their family circumstances or because of underlying health
issues
• people who are fully vaccinated and people who are unvaccinated may behave differently, particularly with regard to social interactions and therefore may have differing levels of exposure to COVID-19
• people who have never been vaccinated are more likely to have caught COVID-19 in the weeks or months before the period of the cases covered in the report. This gives them some natural immunity to
the virus which may have contributed to a lower case rate in the past few weeks.

More generally, I don't understand why anyone would hook into absolute numbers ("it is only 2 in 100,000") from a three week study.

If I contract COVID but remain asymptomatic, my only concern is that I may spread the virus to someone who is at risk for becoming seriously ill from it. The vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting infected. It keeps you from getting sick.

edit...it keeps you from getting seriously ill from it. Which is a good outcome.

I've had three shots, but after being persuaded by Rough Carrigan's honest and sane posts in this thread, I'm going to try to dig the vaccines out of my arm. Thanks, Rough Carrigan.

(though the goal posts keep moving)

Stupid scientists. Can't get everything exactly right with their first hypotheses. Always wanting more "data" and "evidence." And they have the nerve to call themselves "doctors."

I've had three shots, but after being persuaded by Rough Carrigan's honest and sane posts in this thread, I'm going to try to dig the vaccines out of my arm.

Ahem. Not vaccines. “Spiked protein injections.”

Protein injections are one thing, but "spiked"? That sounds scary to me.

Does anyone have the data on the efficacy of tanning your balls to prevent COVID?

Does anyone have the data on the efficacy of tanning your balls to prevent COVID?

As I understand it, it's absolutely effective, but indirectly. Tanning your balls prevents beta-cuckness, which is 100% effective in preventing everything bad.

Protein injections are one thing, but "spiked"? That sounds scary to me.

Huh? I thought it meant that Gates was slipping a little rum in with the micro chips.

In all seriousness though, if you actually want to engage with someone like Rough (which maybe you don't), what's going on in threads like this is counterproductive. Belief in conspiracy theories is often a reaction to a perceived threat to an established cultural order (see this paper, especially towards the end), and motivated reasoning often leads people to reject culturally unwelcome information (here's Dan Kahan and colleagues on the topic, but there's lots of work out there on identity protective cognition). Cuturally unwelcome information, in this context, probably includes evidence that he's wrong. Effective communication with someone like Rough probably requires culturally sensitive communication (see pp. 35-36 of the Kahan paper): an explanation of the utility of vaccines that doesn't threaten whatever values he finds the usual discourse around the COVID vaccines to threaten. This requires getting to know him, at least enough so that you can find out where the cultural threat is, and establishing an amount of trust with him (and I take it that this thread nukes that possibility, hence I'm okay with indulging in a little snark above). Moreover, depending on the nature of the group of conspiracy theorists with whom he no doubt hangs out, without a culturally sensitive intervention, you run the risk that evidence and counterarguments will actually end up reinforcing his beliefs.

Well, one bonus is that I got to learn how to use the Ignore button.

What's the over/under on unvaccinated Yanks? 5?

you run the risk that evidence and counterarguments will actually end up reinforcing his beliefs.

I guess that's a problem if you think that he's capable of rational thought.

How about this for a cultural sensative innervention Al. I could punch the guy in the Schnozz. If that does not estabish Trust with him I could go the Extra Mile and kick his Patoot for him.

so now WHAT is wrong with protein injections? i personally like em even if i don't get as many as i used to

anyhow the covid vaccines are not protein injections. they are mrna and that is not a protein

we can put it like this:

every single person i know who has gotten covid who was not vaccinated are the ones who died, had to go to the hospital, have/had long covid. the vccinated ones didn't die or have to go into the hospital. or get long covid.

i have a lot of high risk family members and the ones who got the shots are still with us and the ones who didn't are not or are much worse now than they were when they got the covid. it is my personal opinyin - i don't know what scientists say - but the old folks i know who got the covid but didn't get sick enough to go in the hospital have caught some kind of alzheimers problem or trouble walking or hearing. that virus is bad. we got no idea what it does to the brain but i figure if it gave you the worst headache you ever got and you don't get headaches it went in your brain and who knows what it does. just because you didn't die from it don't mean it didn't do nothing.

me i ain't afraid the shot is gonna turn me into a man or even worse, right wing. i know i didn't get injected with no microchip and i disbelieve all that other stuff.

and demanding that fauci/scientists/doctors immediately know everything there is to know about a brand new virus the minute it forms so they don't need no mo data or re-evaluation after mutations is like deciding who is going to the WS based on win loss records from Opening Day.

cmon

we got no idea what it does to the brain

This is true and why it makes no sense to just risk getting the disease because it's "no worse than the flu". When people lose their sense of smell it's not because the nerves in their nose are temporarily inactive. It's because the virus is in their brain and it's messing with things.

Completely anecdotally, but Mrs. Pope had plantar fasciitis a couple of years ago. She did PT and it went away. It flared up 3 weeks ago out of the blue. She went to her physical therapist who asked if she recently had COVID. She did have it 5 weeks ago. The therapist said that she's seen dozens of patients who got COVID and then some old problem popped up. One customer had had a broken arm 10 years ago. After COVID she started getting pain where the break had been. Again, this is anecdotal, but I don't think we know very much about this virus.

37. What did Billy Ripken have against ElRoy Face? Posted: April 19, 2022 at 10:43 AM (#6072519)
Does anyone have the data on the efficacy of tanning your balls to prevent COVID?
As I understand it, it's absolutely effective, but indirectly. Tanning your balls prevents beta-cuckness, which is 100% effective in preventing everything bad.

We know that's not true, cause Trump got COVID. Unless we only count natural and not spray tan nuts.

Effective communication with someone like Rough probably requires culturally sensitive communication

You mean, like if we tell him that (((some people))) don’t want him to get the shots and are putting out false data to trick him, then he’ll change his mind?

I would also like to point out to RC that neither Moderna nor BioNTech could be considered Big Pharma (see scary caps!) at the beginning of the pandemic, as neither had an approved product at the time. We’ll see if he adapts his thinking on that now that he has new information.

neither Moderna nor BioNTech could be considered Big Pharma (see scary caps!) at the beginning of the pandemic, as neither had an approved product at the time.

The conspiracy fantasy that gets me is the idea that Fauci is some sort of megalomaniacal dictator who wants to subjugate us all under the heel of his jackbooted white coat. The man's been Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, been an advisor to every president since Reagan, and was leading the country's response to HIV/AIDS, SARS, Swine Flu, MERS, Ebola, and now COVID-19. Seems to me if he were really some publicity-seeking power-hungry medical fascist, he would have been a household name long before early 2020 when he was 79 years old.

The man's been Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, been an advisor to every president since Reagan, and was leading the country's response to HIV/AIDS, SARS, Swine Flu, MERS, Ebola, and now COVID-19. Seems to me if he were really some publicity-seeking power-hungry medical fascist, he would have been a household name long before early 2020 when he was 79 years old.

It would take a true conspiracist about 3 seconds to turn this into why it's OBVIOUS that Fauci is a diabolical mastermind. He's been the hidden hand behind every supposed health emergency for decades...and has now reached the moment where he can emerge from the shadows.

Yup, he’s Deep State. Really, really deep.

There is a measure called an h-index that measures both the quantity and quality of a researchers body of work. It is used across all fields of research. The way it works is that if you have x number of citations for x number of publications, your h-index would be X....as an example, if you had 20 publications each with 20 or more citations your h-index would be 20. An h-index of 50 is indicative of a productive career in research that your peers also thought was innovative and informative enough to site in their own research. It's not a perfect measurement, but certainly is an informative vector. Anthony Fouci has an h-index of around 225, among the 50 highest in the world. He is an undisputed leading world expert in his field. The people who blindly disparage him about things related to immunology are so willfully ignorant that there isn't an English word that accurately describes their level of ignorance.

The people who blindly disparage him about things related to immunology are so willfully ignorant that there isn't an English word that accurately describes their level of ignorance.

I refer to them as rough around the edges.

WTF people. Put the ####### trolls on ignore.

The real trouble with these people is that they generally have children. Talk about a fucking virus.

No, not (((these people))), the other people.

The U.S. response to the pandemic has already spawned a range of speedily published books. ... the most significant entry so far, the book that should be an indispensable resource for future historians, is Silent Invasion by Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under President Donald Trump.
...
the book is the best account we have so far of how Trump’s team botched the pandemic response so badly.
...
In the early crucial weeks of the crisis, she writes, “some roaming the halls of the West Wing believed that the less we did, the less we would be held accountable for whatever was about to happen.”

Birx has her own list of bad guys. The worst is Scott Atlas, the radiologist whose epidemiology advice Trump came to take. Atlas, she writes, repeatedly responded to group emails from her by hitting “Reply All” and then removing her from the list before sending. Other lead villains include presidential Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
...
The forces for good, in her view, include some surprises. She portrays Vice President Mike Pence and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner as often aiding work that Trump loudly derided

She is remarkably candid about how she and her colleagues manipulated Trump into the initial 15-day shutdown in March, and then its 30-day extension, which he almost immediately regretted. (Neither Trump nor anyone in his camp seems to have responded to Birx’s book publicly.)

As long as the Yankees are all vaccinated, what the Red Sox want to do about their vaccine resisters is between them and the Red Sox fan base. Hell, they can all shoot up bleach FATIC.