Pandemics and Epidemiology (COVID-19, monkeypox, etc.)

On the other hand, this guy is at least providing useful scientific data. You can't ethically run a trial where people volunteer to get 200 doses of a vaccine, but if people do it spontaneously, might as well get some value out of that.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 6th 2024 at 9:21:05 AM

Yeah, of course. But since we basically have a sample size of one, the conclusion we should come to is: "absent a more detailed study, it appears that overvaccinating has little to no impact on one's health or immune system."

Going "well, he was lucky" or "well, he must be an exception and most people would have issues" is missing the point and looking right at the only information we have and going "it must not count because it doesn't match my assumptions." He could be lucky or unusual, but since we have no counterevidence, it's ridiculous to assume he is.

The scientific conclusion of this event is "If it happens again, we'll compare results but like, y'know, we're not gonna make it happen on purpose".

Basically the Corrupted Blood approach, then.

I feel like there’s a failure of duty of care in allowing someone to hyper vaccinate to that extent. Wanting that much vaccination should probably get someone checked for hypochondria, plus there’s the inherent risk that comes from having that many needles jabbed into a person. 217 changes for someone to screw up the injection and cause damage does raise a risk that needs to be considered even if the harm rate for vaccine admission is incredibly low.

Plus the whole thing takes up medical resources in the form of vaccine doses and the times of medical professionals, which should all probably be being allocated to something else.

He's lucky in the sense that there are plenty of possible side effects, and things could have gone a lot differently for him if he actually had any. That's why he was lucky.

This is ultimately a stupid and reckless thing to do with your own body, and it wastes valuable medical resources as well.

That has nothing to do with the point of the article.

You can't just dismiss the possibility that maybe hypervaccination doesn't actually hurt your immune response by going "oh he was just lucky".

Edited by M84 on Mar 6th 2024 at 10:23:27 PM

One datum does not make for sufficient data to validate a hypothesis, and it's unethical to ask people to volunteer to be hyperdosed with vaccines. This isn't likely to be something that the medical community puts a lot of effort into researching.

You'd think we could do something similar with animal testing. Heck, we could even do it with COVID vaccines — some animals do catch COVID, after all.

But for all we know he was lucky. That's the problem, we just don't know. You are a bit too ready to just accept that hypervaccination is probably safe now. It isn't. For all we know someone else could die from it.

Over 200 shots with no ill effect whatsoever? That's way beyond luck. Sure, there could be something freaky going on, but between this and, well, everyone else that got vaccines, we can assume it is reasonably safe.

Edited by Kayeka on Mar 6th 2024 at 8:49:58 PM

And the important thing is that this case defied the expectations. The conventional thinking was that too much vaccination weakens your immune response. But not only was this person not hurt by that many shots, their immune response wasn't significantly different from other people who had a regular vaccine regimen.

So while hypervaccination might not harm your immune response, it also doesn't improve it. So it's still not a good idea to do it.

217 shots is... a lot, to put it mildly. I remember back in India when Covid was in its heyday (2021 or thereabouts), an 84-year old man was arrested for "cheating" after getting 11 Covid shots. 217 is just insane to me. How do you even get that many? Did he just keep going back to the same place while saying he never got the shot?

Here's the article about the 11-shot guy. Though apparently he was never formally charged.

Yeah, that's basically twice a week. And how did he get them? With fraud, basically.

It's pretty damn insane.

Refresh my memory. Was it around this time of the year that the COVID pandemic really took off?

It was around now that lockdowns started in the US in 2020. But COVID had been making the news since at least February.

Well, in the US, that is. The news only really took off in the west with that cruise ship full of Americans getting infected.

Yes, it was around that time. I remember March 11, 2020 as the most specific date w/r/t Covid as that's the date it was declared a pandemic by the WHO.

(Also the date Trump banned travel from Europe, but I remember the WHO.)

Crossposting from the Latin America thread:

Former Brazilian President Bolsonaro has been indicted for allegedly falsifying his COVID vaccination status

More than half of chickenpox diagnoses are wrong, study finds: Vaccination has dramatically reduced cases, making clinical diagnoses tricky.

Somewhat ironically, thanks to widespread vaccination, doctors have a harder time diagnosing chicken pox simply because they don't encounter it as much, and can mistake other diseases with similar symptoms for chicken pox, leading to false positives.

Late to the party, but the 8 US states (and Kansas City, Kansas) put up their lockdowns between March 19th and 24th.

I distinctly remember the week because Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom: Eternal released while it was happening.

Edited by tclittle on Mar 26th 2024 at 9:16:53 AM

97% decrease, wow!!

That’s a major shift. When I was a kid, getting chicken pox at some point was the norm.

I also remember that. And it was thanks to a book featuring the Peanuts Kids that I found out about immunity; you only get chickenpox once, and then never again.

Yeah, but then you can get shingles, like I did. It's not an old people thing.

Edited by WillKeaton on Mar 26th 2024 at 6:04:12 AM

Yeah it's something that I'm making goddamn sure I get the vaccine for because I caught chicken pox when I was kindergarten age.