I know two people who died from Sars-CoV-2, do you know anyone?

[Gps]

I'm really happy the discussion around this potentially explosive topic has been fairly civil so far.

As we've seen before it has a chance of turning into shouting at each other. Let's please stop before we get there - otherwise I'll close the thread.

Sorry for invoking emacs vs. vi in an already-potentially-contentious thread.

Thank for the smile at my face

[TAERSH]

1) Sars-CoV-2 and Corona are same thing.

No, it is not!

Sars-CoV-2 is the Virus and Corona (exactly Corona19) is the lung disease caused by Sars-CoV-2.

If you're not going to get vaccinated then maybe don't take your heart medication, or get chemotherapy for cancer or use your phone or drive your car with it's internal combustion engine

Oh my GOD! Seriously?

I'm really happy the discussion around this potentially explosive topic has been fairly civil so far.

As we've seen before it has a chance of turning into shouting at each other. Let's please stop before we get there - otherwise I'll close the thread.

Oh no, not you again. Must be funny to give the dictator of a forum.

And by the way: the Vaccine is not made against Sars-CoV-2. It is made to make sure not getting seriously ill. So, that vaccine is very different to other vaccines. Especially by the new MRNA method. The Sars-CoV-2 virus won't disappear by the vaccines. It will just mutate inside of the bodies of vaccinated people.

Sure I'm vaccinated several times when I was a child. But I don't take the yearly vaccine against influenza - never. I decide what gets into my body when possible. That's my right to choose. And it's the same for Sars-CoV-2, even though I'm wearing a mask where needed since I don't want to get infected, of course.

Edit:

I was and am just interested in "Who knows someone dying from Sars-CoV-2/Corona". My intention was not to establish a discussion around vaccines etc.pp. that might move into a direction that will cause the topic being locked by the forums dictators.

[robbert-vdh]

(I didn't want to post here because trying to debate a conspiracy believer is almost by definition a lost cause, but reading this made me very angry so here goes)

Can you comment on something I hear ?

This vaccine against corona is a new vaccine that is not like the flue vaccine and other vaccine that came before it.
Something about a small change it can change your DNA.

My source is Peter Borger a guy who designs or designed PCR test.
He says that their should have been more research on this.

In general, I only like to add, I am not anti vaccines. Without penicillin I would probably already not be around any more.
The manufactures not being responsible for anything going wrong, is what made up my mind up about this vaccine.

First of all, like @merlyn already mentioned twice, you're misinterpreting facts. You probably don't have much of a background in statistics, but you cannot directly compare two statistics from two completely different populations. The estimated number of people who die on a yearly basis from influenza (which is not a virus, but more of an umbrella term for a family of diseases with similar symptoms caused by a variety of viruses) may be the same as the number of yearly deaths caused by SARS-CoV 2 (which, according to the data collected by the Johns Hopkins University is not true, but for the sake of the argument lets say that it is). But that does not mean that both diseases are equally deadly. You're forgetting that 'the flu' spreads more or less uncontrolled through the world every year. Countries don't enact legislation in an attempt to limit the spread of the flu every year when there's a new strain making the rounds, and we don't have hospitals announcing code black every year because they have to stop accepting new patients (in spike of the regulations that are in place to prevent the spread of 'the flu'). Even dispite the attempts to limit the spread of COVID-19, the yearly death tools caused by SARS-CoV 2 match or exceed those of influenza. You cannot just look at those absolute numbers because of that.

Also, you shouldn't look at just deaths. Even if you don't die from it (you're young, and healthy), it can still seriously mess you up for a long while. These symptoms are usually called 'long COVID', or 'long haul COVID', and I personally know three people who were still severely fatigued and were basically unable to function in a society over six months after they became infected with COVID-19. Scientists haven't been able to study these effects for long enough to be able to tell exactly what they are, but even these preliminary results are enough to make me want to avoid being infected and to get vaccinated as soon as possible, as a healthy 20-something. Dying from it is not the only bad thing SARS-CoV 2 can do to you.

And finally, do you have a peer reviewed study backing up those claims that 'the vaccine' (there are many different vaccines available) alter the DNA of existing cells? To me that sounds like the same conspiracy theory where people believe that 'the vaccine' causes you to radiate some kind of poisonous particles or something.

[GMaq]

If you're not going to get vaccinated then maybe don't take your heart medication, or get chemotherapy for cancer or use your phone or drive your car with it's internal combustion engine

Oh my GOD! Seriously?

Thanks for only using half of my quote, the half without the actual point attached to it...

[Michael Willis]

Sorry for invoking emacs vs. vi in an already-potentially-contentious thread.

At least you didn't say that other forms of Corona are like Reaper, Ardour, and Bitwig while Sars-CoV-2 is like ProTools, a much more damaging and potentially deadly infection.

[milo]

Can you comment on something I hear ?

This vaccine against corona is a new vaccine that is not like the flue vaccine and other vaccine that came before it.
Something about a small change it can change your DNA.

My source is Peter Borger a guy who designs or designed PCR test.
He says that their should have been more research on this.

In general, I only like to add, I am not anti vaccines. Without penicillin I would probably already not be around any more.
The manufactures not being responsible for anything going wrong, is what made up my mind up about this vaccine.

Yes, happy to comment. For starters I will say that I have no concerns about the safety of the US FDA-approved vaccines. I am less familiar with the other ones, so I won't comment on them. I see no indication that these vaccines are capable of altering your DNA, and I'll explain why.

The vaccine I received was the Moderna mRNA vaccine, which is very similar in mechanism to the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Yes, this is a new vaccine technology, and it is super cool. I'm not sure how familiar you are with molecular biology. After a few semesters of cell biology and biochemistry I sort of lost perspective on how much people in the general population know about these things. So I will start with the basics, and try not to get too technical or go for too long. (Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.)

The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology:

DNA --> RNA --> protein

A few years after he and Watson reported the double-helical structure of DNA, Francis Crick proposed the central dogma of molecular biology. At the time people were still trying to bend their brains around the stunning idea that DNA held the genetic information. Before that most people assumed that it was in the protein, and that DNA served some sort of structural scaffolding purpose. Crick took this new knowledge to its logical conclusion, and at the time there was not a lot of experimental evidence to support him.

There should actually be one more arrow in the flow chart above, a circular arrow from DNA leading back to DNA. (There's not a character for that, but I'm sure some creative ASCII art geek could find a way.) This (invisible) arrow represent DNA replication, or the process of DNA serving as a template to make new copies of itself.

The arrow from DNA to RNA represents the process of transcription, which is putting the genetic information into a more portable and usable, but temporary, form. Sort of like loading an executable into RAM. In this case the RNA we are referring to is messenger RNA, or mRNA. (RNA can do a few other things too, but that is beyond the scope of this comment.)

The arrow from RNA to protein represents translation, where the genetic information is decoded into the amino acid sequence of a protein.

Notice that the flow of information in the central dogma is a one-way street. In routine cases that is true. Amino acid sequences are not re-encoded into nucleic acid sequences, and RNA sequences are not transcribed into DNA sequences. Human cells do not have the tech to do these things in reverse order.

But some viruses do. Coronaviruses keep all of their information in RNA, so they do not affect the host cell genome. But retroviruses like HIV have the tools to translate their RNA into DNA, and then to incorporate their genome into the host cell's DNA. That's one reason why it is so hard to get rid of an HIV infection. Some DNA viruses like Adeno-associated viruses can incorporate their DNA genome into the host cell genome too, but in general this is a rare thing for viruses to do.

So how do the mRNA vaccines work? They are basically a single strand of mRNA containing the genetic information for the Sars-CoV2 spike protein, wrapped in lipids to help them get inside of the cell. The spike protein is what gives the virus particle its nobbly appearance on the outside, and it is an important part of its mechanism for entering host cells. So this vaccine mRNA only contains one gene. Once the RNA gets into your cells it is picked up and translated by the host translation machinery, to produce spike proteins. Your immune system becomes alerted that some cells are making a weird protein, and it dives down to investigate. Once the mRNA is degraded (a matter of hours), the cell stops making the spike protein, and there is not a trace of the vaccine left. Nothing changed your DNA because neither your cells nor the vaccine have the machinery to do RNA --> DNA or to incorporate said DNA into your genome. The vaccine is gone, and all that remains is your immune response, which is now primed and ready to attack the Sars-CoV2 virus particle if it ever tries to invade your body.

It is an absolutely brilliant mechanism, and the mRNA vaccines are astonishingly effective at preventing transmission, illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19.

[Gps]

Can you comment on something I hear ?

This vaccine against corona is a new vaccine that is not like the flue vaccine and other vaccine that came before it.
Something about a small change it can change your DNA.

My source is Peter Borger a guy who designs or designed PCR test.
He says that their should have been more research on this.

In general, I only like to add, I am not anti vaccines. Without penicillin I would probably already not be around any more.
The manufactures not being responsible for anything going wrong, is what made up my mind up about this vaccine.

Yes, happy to comment. For starters I will say that I have no concerns about the safety of the US FDA-approved vaccines. I am less familiar with the other ones, so I won't comment on them. I see no indication that these vaccines are capable of altering your DNA, and I'll explain why.

The vaccine I received was the Moderna mRNA vaccine, which is very similar in mechanism to the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Yes, this is a new vaccine technology, and it is super cool. I'm not sure how familiar you are with molecular biology. After a few semesters of cell biology and biochemistry I sort of lost perspective on how much people in the general population know about these things. So I will start with the basics, and try not to get too technical or go for too long. (Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.)

The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology:

DNA --> RNA --> protein

A few years after he and Watson reported the double-helical structure of DNA, Francis Crick proposed the central dogma of molecular biology. At the time people were still trying to bend their brains around the stunning idea that DNA held the genetic information. Before that most people assumed that it was in the protein, and that DNA served some sort of structural scaffolding purpose. Crick took this new knowledge to its logical conclusion, and at the time there was not a lot of experimental evidence to support him.

There should actually be one more arrow in the flow chart above, a circular arrow from DNA leading back to DNA. (There's not a character for that, but I'm sure some creative ASCII art geek could find a way.) This (invisible) arrow represent DNA replication, or the process of DNA serving as a template to make new copies of itself.

The arrow from DNA to RNA represents the process of transcription, which is putting the genetic information into a more portable and usable, but temporary, form. Sort of like loading an executable into RAM. In this case the RNA we are referring to is messenger RNA, or mRNA. (RNA can do a few other things too, but that is beyond the scope of this comment.)

The arrow from RNA to protein represents translation, where the genetic information is decoded into the amino acid sequence of a protein.

Notice that the flow of information in the central dogma is a one-way street. In routine cases that is true. Amino acid sequences are not re-encoded into nucleic acid sequences, and RNA sequences are not transcribed into DNA sequences. Human cells do not have the tech to do these things in reverse order.

But some viruses do. Coronaviruses keep all of their information in RNA, so they do not affect the host cell genome. But retroviruses like HIV have the tools to translate their RNA into DNA, and then to incorporate their genome into the host cell's DNA. That's one reason why it is so hard to get rid of an HIV infection. Some DNA viruses like Adeno-associated viruses can incorporate their DNA genome into the host cell genome too, but in general this is a rare thing for viruses to do.

So how do the mRNA vaccines work? They are basically a single strand of mRNA containing the genetic information for the Sars-CoV2 spike protein, wrapped in lipids to help them get inside of the cell. The spike protein is what gives the virus particle its nobbly appearance on the outside, and it is an important part of its mechanism for entering host cells. So this vaccine mRNA only contains one gene. Once the RNA gets into your cells it is picked up and translated by the host translation machinery, to produce spike proteins. Your immune system becomes alerted that some cells are making a weird protein, and it dives down to investigate. Once the mRNA is degraded (a matter of hours), the cell stops making the spike protein, and there is not a trace of the vaccine left. Nothing changed your DNA because neither your cells nor the vaccine have the machinery to do RNA --> DNA or to incorporate said DNA into your genome. The vaccine is gone, and all that remains is your immune response, which is now primed and ready to attack the Sars-CoV2 virus particle if it ever tries to invade your body.

It is an absolutely brilliant mechanism, and the mRNA vaccines are astonishingly effective at preventing transmission, illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19.

Thank you. This does make sense to me. Although I am not sure if I agree about it being tested enough, you did answer the hiv part, why that is harder to get rit off.

[Gps]

(I didn't want to post here because trying to debate a conspiracy believer is almost by definition a lost cause, but reading this made me very angry so here goes)

Can you comment on something I hear ?

This vaccine against corona is a new vaccine that is not like the flue vaccine and other vaccine that came before it.
Something about a small change it can change your DNA.

My source is Peter Borger a guy who designs or designed PCR test.
He says that their should have been more research on this.

In general, I only like to add, I am not anti vaccines. Without penicillin I would probably already not be around any more.
The manufactures not being responsible for anything going wrong, is what made up my mind up about this vaccine.

First of all, like @merlyn already mentioned twice, you're misinterpreting facts. You probably don't have much of a background in statistics, but you cannot directly compare two statistics from two completely different populations. The estimated number of people who die on a yearly basis from influenza (which is not a virus, but more of an umbrella term for a family of diseases with similar symptoms caused by a variety of viruses) may be the same as the number of yearly deaths caused by SARS-CoV 2 (which, according to the data collected by the Johns Hopkins University is not true, but for the sake of the argument lets say that it is). But that does not mean that both diseases are equally deadly. You're forgetting that 'the flu' spreads more or less uncontrolled through the world every year. Countries don't enact legislation in an attempt to limit the spread of the flu every year when there's a new strain making the rounds, and we don't have hospitals announcing code black every year because they have to stop accepting new patients (in spike of the regulations that are in place to prevent the spread of 'the flu'). Even dispite the attempts to limit the spread of COVID-19, the yearly death tools caused by SARS-CoV 2 match or exceed those of influenza. You cannot just look at those absolute numbers because of that.

Also, you shouldn't look at just deaths. Even if you don't die from it (you're young, and healthy), it can still seriously mess you up for a long while. These symptoms are usually called 'long COVID', or 'long haul COVID', and I personally know three people who were still severely fatigued and were basically unable to function in a society over six months after they became infected with COVID-19. Scientists haven't been able to study these effects for long enough to be able to tell exactly what they are, but even these preliminary results are enough to make me want to avoid being infected and to get vaccinated as soon as possible, as a healthy 20-something. Dying from it is not the only bad thing SARS-CoV 2 can do to you.

And finally, do you have a peer reviewed study backing up those claims that 'the vaccine' (there are many different vaccines available) alter the DNA of existing cells? To me that sounds like the same conspiracy theory where people believe that 'the vaccine' causes you to radiate some kind of poisonous particles or something.

Just for information my occupation, I am a mechanical engineer.

I can live with us not agreeing, but I am getting quite annoyed by people doubting my common sense and or my ability to read scientific papers.

Me being critical does not mean I agree with people stating corona does not exist, or that corona is a hoax.

I do see a death-toll from corona, that does not exceed the number of people dying from flue in 2019.
We did not have lockdowns and allot of the other stuff in 2019.

What I do believe, is that there was this new virus last year, and about every body started to panic.
Instead of learning from this, our government is still in the: Were all gonna die mode.
Mainstream media not being critical does not help either.

Allot of my info comes from this site, which is a Dutch site, so most people here wont be able to read it nor listen to it.

https://bpoc2020.nl/

Then there is this , but that is also only in Dutch:
https://www.blckbx.tv/

[milo]

I agree that newsmedia across the board have been generally terrible in their coverage of the pandemic. This applies to right-wing and left-wing media in the USA, with a few notable exceptions (Jim Geraghty, for one). Not sure about in other countries.

[merlyn]

I do see a death-toll from corona, that does not exceed the number of people dying from flue in 2019.

I can't imagine where you were looking. Here is a graph for England up to the week before the first Covid death :



Note with interest that these are weekly figures and the peak of the red line adds ~1200 deaths per week.

Now here is the Covid graph :



There were as many Covid deaths in a day. Will you stop it now?

[Gps]

I agree that newsmedia across the board have been generally terrible in their coverage of the pandemic. This applies to right-wing and left-wing media in the USA, with a few notable exceptions (Jim Geraghty, for one). Not sure about in other countries.

Maybe we should get you a T shirt , from a dutch tv show host.

It says translated:
The media is the virus.

[Gps]

I do see a death-toll from corona, that does not exceed the number of people dying from flue in 2019.

I can't imagine where you were looking. Here is a graph for England up to the week before the first Covid death :



Note with interest that these are weekly figures and the peak of the red line adds ~1200 deaths per week.

Now here is the Covid graph :



There were as many Covid deaths in a day. Will you stop it now?

Maybe I reading this too fast , because I am also eating but. 1200 a day times 7 makes 8400.
That even below the numbers of 2018 influenza numbers in the top graph. 13000.

I am confused, thank you for proving me right.

I will admitt I am comparing 2018 influenza numbers with 2021 corona numbers.

[nils]

Can this thread please stop and be closed. Or better deleted.
There is enough misinformation in here to be potentially dangerous.

[milo]

The answer to bad information is not suppression or censorship, it is to flood the space with good information. I have tried to do that in this thread.

As long as the discourse remains civil I am perfectly happy to keep participating. I rather dislike confrontation and contention, so I request that those who may disagree will do so without being disagreeable. If this thread turns into a shouting match, then I'm out.

[merlyn]

Maybe I reading this too fast , because I am also eating but. 1200 a day times 7 makes 8400.
That even below the numbers of 2018 influenza numbers in the top graph. 13000.

You're possibly not getting the first graph. The sine wave is the baseline number of deaths per week. The red line is the deaths attributed to flu. So to get the number of flu deaths you must subtract the baseline. The Covid graph is simply the number of Covid deaths which is an underestimate because using techniques like the baseline statisticians will calculate the 'excess deaths' which is more accurate and more like the first graph.

One aspect is that flu peaks for a week. Covid just kept going and the points where the figures go down are where strict lockdowns were introduced.

So you were wrong.