https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/dashboard/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-dashboard/
Tons of more great stats at that site on peoples opinions.
This is a wonderful, very honest discussion of the 3 vaccines and the REAL side affects, including the incidence of them.
Scroll down to see those actual side affects. This post is not intended to stir up a debate to infinity about vaccine safety or effectiveness but only to be honest about the side effects and suggest that you get the Pfizer vaccine. ...given the choice.
https://www.healthline.com/health/moderna-pfizer-vs-johnson-and-johnson-vaccine
For those that have vaccine hesitancy because of fear of the side affects, clearly the Pfizer vaccine is the one for you. Nobody is claiming that there are not side affects, that include in a very tiny number of people, serious side affects.
However, compared to getting COVID.........well, there is no comparison.
Real stats tell us that COVID kills almost 2% of people that get it and up to 50% of people that recover, have lingering, significant illness for 6 months, called long COVID.
The vaccine, reduces your chances of dying or getting long COVID by 11 times. The risk reward is off the charts in favor of the vaccine.
However, this is NOT why I'm repeating those things again. I'm introducing something new to help people decide what vaccine to get if they are afraid of the COVID vaccine..........PFIZER is the best one with the least amount of side affects.
This is why the FDA and CDC have recommended the Pfizer vaccine first before the others.
This is the one that I got in February(just by chance) and when I get my booster tomorrow, it will be the Pfizer booster.
metmike: This was just the data from some of the studies. There have now been over 7,360,000,000 shots administered in the world..........and in less than a year. We now have more real world data about it from more people than any other medically related thing in history...........by an extremely wide margin.
The main point here, is that the Pfizer vaccine is obviously the safest.
This is EXACTLY WHY the CDC is recommending only the Pfizer for children 5 and up.
The CDC says this: . "CDC does not recommend one vaccine over another."
But they don't have to do that..............the studies/real world data and their actions speak for them!
This Song says it all~$~Sorry to hear that you are doing the booster. What happens to the forum when you, well, you know... Shall we say, become indisposed? Like Tesla, we will run on autopilot until the inevitable crash and burn? While the ivermectin will blunt the damage somewhat, likely you'll be on the ropes, punch drunk and delirious. If you even remember that there is a forum after you imbibe. Pray to God that in your elite fired enthusiasm, that you don't saddle up to the vax bar and demand a double! Oh well... Personally, I'm guessing that you are looking at the vax with the same craven compulsion as you once worshipped alcohol. Go ahead, tomorrow, get down and enjoy that 'SLow Gin Pfiz'. Salut~!~ This Song says it all~$~
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/oddball-tools_syringe_main_720x720-b31668b8499b46cba0cc9ff05008e963.jpg)
My concern is that we are now entering the start of the historical flu season.
Virus's love dry air. In the numerous scientific studies on virus's done before COVID, what they found was, when they doubled the ABSOLUTE humidity in the laboratory, the amount of virus that was able to survive after one hour was cut by 50%.
Conversely, when you DECREASE the absolute humidity by 50%, the amount of virus that survives after 1 hour is doubled.
This is a huge contribution/reason for virus's to increase in the Winter.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season.htm
An illustrated explanation of why the world's most obnoxious virus at least doesn't stick around all year.
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/fyi-why-winter-flu-season/
Palese decided to test theory #3–the idea that the flu virus does better in cold, dry air than warm, humid air. He acquired some guinea pigs and ran several experiments to see how temperature and humidity affect the way the flu spreads. In each experiment, he injected half the guinea pigs with influenza A (the common flu), and put them in a crate next to a crate of uninfected animals.
Guinea Pig Experiment
At a temperature of 41 degrees(low absolute humidity), all four of the exposed guinea pigs caught the flu, but when Palese repeated the experiment at 68 degrees, only one of the exposed animals was infected. And when he and his colleagues ran the test at a temperature of 86 degrees, none of the exposed animals got sick.
Several studies have made the case for this “transmission” hypothesis since Palese’s guinea pig study, but other researchers think the biggest factor is actually the virus’s survival. One study found that the flu virus survives for much longer in low humidity than high humidity:
How Humidity Affects Virus Survival
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767
Using the daily R values from January 21 to 23, 2020 as proxies of non-intervened transmission intensity, we find, under a linear regression framework for 100 Chinese cities, high temperature and high relative humidity significantly reduce the transmission of COVID-19, respectively, even after controlling for population density and GDP per capita of cities. One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively. This result is consistent with the fact that the high temperature and high humidity significantly reduce the transmission of influenza. It indicates that the arrival of summer and rainy season in the northern hemisphere can effectively reduce the transmission of the COVID-19.
file:///C:/Users/Basement/Downloads/SSRN-id3551767(1).pdf
Using the value R to represent the transmission, the paper also found that cities in northern China, where temperatures and relative humidity were lower, had larger transmission values than cities along the country's southeast coast.
The scientists' findings align with what some experts have suspected about weather's impact, including Hong Kong University pathology professor John Nicholls, who told AccuWeather that research on a lab-grown copy of SARS-CoV-2, "in cold environments, there is longer virus survival than warm ones."
Total virus collected for 60 minutes retained 70.6–77.3% infectivity at relative humidity ≤23% but only 14.6–22.2% at relative humidity ≥43%. Analysis of the individual aerosol fractions showed a similar loss in infectivity among the fractions. Time interval analysis showed that most of the loss in infectivity within each aerosol fraction occurred 0–15 minutes after coughing. Thereafter, losses in infectivity continued up to 5 hours after coughing, however, the rate of decline at 45% relative humidity was not statistically different than that at 20% regardless of the aerosol fraction analyzed.
At low relative humidity, influenza retains maximal infectivity and inactivation of the virus at higher relative humidity occurs rapidly after coughing. Although virus carried on aerosol particles <4 µM have the potential for remaining suspended in air currents longer and traveling further distances than those on larger particles, their rapid inactivation at high humidity tempers this concern. Maintaining indoor relative humidity >40% will significantly reduce the infectivity of aerosolized virus
Washington, D.C., March 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- What can the public do to defend against the COVID-19 coronavirus? One simple answer is to ramp up humidification at home and in the workplace, if humidity levels are low. Hospitals treating cases of viral respiratory infection may be advised to do the same.
Why has the novel coronavirus COVID-19 had only a minimal impact in tropical countries while temperate zone countries such as China, Korea, Italy, Iran and the United States have suffered outbreaks? Humidity, and especially indoor humidity, seems to hold the key.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190513155635.htm
While experts know that cold temperatures and low humidity promote transmission of the flu virus, less is understood about the effect of decreased humidity on the immune system's defenses against flu infection.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151016-the-real-reason-germs-spread-in-the-winter
Lab experiments, for instance, have looked at the way flu spreads among groups of guinea pigs. In moister air, the epidemic struggles to build momentum, whereas in drier conditions it spreads like wildfire. And comparing 30 years’ worth of climate records with health records, Jeffrey Shaman at Columbia University and colleagues found that flu epidemics almost always followed a drop in air humidity.
In fact, the overlap of the graphs was so close, “you could pretty much put one on top of each other,” says Metz, who together with Adam Finn, recently reviewed all the evidence for the Journal of Infection. The finding has now been replicated many times including analyses of the 2009 Swine flu pandemic.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1000316
Much of the observed wintertime increase of mortality in temperate regions is attributed to seasonal influenza. A recent reanalysis of laboratory experiments indicates that absolute humidity strongly modulates the airborne survival and transmission of the influenza virus. Here, we extend these findings to the human population level, showing that the onset of increased wintertime influenza-related mortality in the United States is associated with anomalously low absolute humidity levels during the prior weeks. We then use an epidemiological model, in which observed absolute humidity conditions temper influenza transmission rates, to successfully simulate the seasonal cycle of observed influenza-related mortality. The model results indicate that direct modulation of influenza transmissibility by absolute humidity alone is sufficient to produce this observed seasonality. These findings provide epidemiological support for the hypothesis that absolute humidity drives seasonal variations of influenza transmission in temperate regions.
https://jvi.asm.org/content/88/14/7692.short
https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/88/14/7692.full.pdf
"In addition to having an effect on the virus, temperature andhumidity may affect the host side of the host-pathogen equationby altering susceptibility to influenza virus infection or the courseof disease following infection. Cooling of the nasal epitheliumthrough inhalation of cold air has been shown to inhibit muco-ciliary clearance and may limit phagocytosis by innate immunecells resident in the upper airways (13). Similarly, inhalation of dryairfor a 30-min period was found to slow mucociliary clearancesignificantly (15). Both cold air and dry air are thought to alter therheologicalproperties of mucus (13,15). At lower temperatures,cellularmetabolic functions are also slowed, which in turn maydecrease the frequency of ciliary beats, reduce mucus secretion,and restrict phagocytosis (13).Finally,environmental conditions may impact transmission through effects on the vehicle itself, the respiratory droplet. Thelength of time a droplet remains airborne, and therefore availablefor inhalation, is dependent on its size: droplets of20mindiameter settle out of the air rapidly, whereas those of5mremain airborne for prolonged periods (16). Evaporation of waterfromrespiratory droplets, which occurs more rapidly with declin-ing RH, decreases droplet size and therefore increases the distanceand time over which transmission can occur.Thus, cold and/or dry conditions impact the stability of influ-enza virus particles, the innate defense of host nasal epithelia, andthe production of infectious bioaerosols. Each of these effects con-tributes a plausible explanation for the impact of RH and temper-ature on respiratory droplet transmission, and more than onemechanism most likely contributes to the observed transmissionoutcomes.Meteorological predictors of influenza virus outbreaks.Totest whether the observed impact of environmental factors on in-fluenza virus transmission does in fact drive the seasonal period-icity of influenza, a number of epidemiological studies comparinginfluenza incidence to climatic conditions have been performed.The association between the month (or months) of peak influenzaactivity and a number of climatic variables was recently assessedfor 78 localities around the globe. Analysis of average monthlytemperature, RH, precipitation, solar radiation, and specific hu-midity (a measure of AH) revealed that, at high latitudes, influ-enza peaks coincided with months of lower temperature, lowersolar radiation, and lower specific humidity. In contrast, peak in-fluenza activity in localities within 10° of the equator correlatedwith months of high specific humidity and precipitation. At inter-mediate latitudes (12.5 to 25°N/S), no significant association wasobserved. The authors concluded that, across temperate and trop-ical climates, two distinct types of climatic conditions are associ-ated with influenza epidemics: cold/dry and humid/rainy (1).Similarly,using data specific to the United States, the date of onsetof influenza epidemics was strongly associated with periods ofanomalously low absolute humidity and temperature conditionsin the weeks prior to the epidemics (17). A mathematical modelincorporatingobserved AH data, as a modulator of influenza virustransmission rates, was furthermore successful in simulating ob-served influenza-related death rates for individual states"
https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2334-13-71
Low absolute humidity (AH) has been associated with increased influenza virus survival and transmissibility and the onset of seasonal influenza outbreaks. Humidification of indoor environments may mitigate viral transmission and may be an important control strategy, particularly in schools where viral transmission is common and contributes to the spread of influenza in communities.
For example, mean calculated 1-hour virus survival is projected to decrease from approximately 75% during periods when indoor AH is very low (~3-4 mb) to 35% when indoor AH is raised to 10 mb, a target we demonstrate can be achieved over several hours by a classroom humidifier set to a target RH of 60% on a winter day. During late spring and early fall, indoor school AH often reached 10mb and 60% RH (data not shown). Our estimation of changes in virus survival are limited to models constructed from a single set of animal experiments; however, other experiments have demonstrated similar increases in survival at very low humidity [12, 13]. These data suggest that raising wintertime indoor AH to levels typically experienced indoors during fall and spring offers a strategy to reduce transmission of influenza in schools, and potentially the community, particularly when combined with vaccination and other non-pharmaceutical interventions [14–18]. As our measures reflect changes in 1 hour virus survival, humidification over a longer period (4 hours or longer) would afford a greater opportunity to reduce transmission more substantially. Indeed, this intervention may be particularly important when influenza outbreaks (or pandemics) due to novel influenza viruses occur and effective vaccines and antiviral medications are not available.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2034399/
In temperate regions influenza epidemics recur with marked seasonality: in the northern hemisphere the influenza season spans November to March, while in the southern hemisphere epidemics last from May until September. Although seasonality is one of the most familiar features of influenza, it is also one of the least understood. Indoor crowding during cold weather, seasonal fluctuations in host immune responses, and environmental factors, including relative humidity, temperature, and UV radiation have all been suggested to account for this phenomenon, but none of these hypotheses has been tested directly. Using the guinea pig model, we have evaluated the effects of temperature and relative humidity on influenza virus spread. By housing infected and naïve guinea pigs together in an environmental chamber, we carried out transmission experiments under conditions of controlled temperature and humidity. We found that low relative humidities of 20%–35% were most favorable, while transmission was completely blocked at a high relative humidity of 80%. Furthermore, when guinea pigs were kept at 5 °C, transmission occurred with greater frequency than at 20 °C, while at 30 °C, no transmission was detected. Our data implicate low relative humidities produced by indoor heating and cold temperatures as features of winter that favor influenza virus spread.
Low humidity fuels spread of viruses, new research finds
It's one of the hallmarks of winter: The misery of being stuck in bed with the flu. Now, scientists are finally figuring out why the virus hits hardest in the wintertime and why some winters are worse than others.
Extremely low humidity levels in winter, according to new research, fuel influenza outbreaks. Particularly dry spells make the problem worse. The discovery might help scientists prepare for epidemics and for the rash of secondary illnesses, like pneumonia, that often slam people once they're already down.
"It is the first step toward potentially forecasting the risk of influenza outbreaks," said Jeffrey Shaman, an atmospheric scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "By getting a handle on what's going on with influenza, we are also getting a handle on the other diseases that really piggy back on influenza."
To explain why flu and related illnesses strike far more often in the winter than at other times of year, theories have fallen into three categories. One idea is that people spend more time indoors in the winter and schools are in session, so there is more person-to-person contact.
Another theory is that, with less exposure to sunlight, people have lower levels of melatonin and vitamin D, weakening their immune systems and making them more likely to succumb to influenza viruses. Scientists have also hypothesized that temperature and humidity affect how long the virus can last after someone coughs or sneezes.
Previous research has shown that influenza viruses survive longer in air when temperatures are colder and relative humidity is lower. Relative humidity, which appears in many weather reports, describes how close conditions are to the point of forming fog or clouds.
But relative humidity isn't the best measurement for studying flu outbreaks, Shaman said, because relative humidity varies with temperature. So, there is actually less moisture in the air on a rainy winter day in Seattle than there is on a sunny summer day in the same city.
He thought it would be more useful to look at absolute humidity, which measures exactly how much moisture is in the air, regardless of temperature.
On that scale, Shaman said, winters are usually twice as dry as summers in a place like San Diego and Arizona, four times drier in New York, and up to five times drier in a particularly cold state like Minnesota.
Along with colleagues, he analyzed 31 years of data from around the United States and used a computer model to show that influenza outbreaks were more likely to occur when absolute humidity levels were low. Like a sliding scale, progressively drier air led to progressively higher likelihood that an outbreak would occur, the researchers reported in the journal PLoS Biology. Temperature didn't play much of a role.
"People had recognized that there was seasonality to this, but nobody has really come up with a unifying explanation," said Gregory Poland, Director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minn. Humidity, he said, "is likely is part of that unifying explanation."
Humidity is probably not the only explanation, however, and the weather forecast will probably never serve as a flu forecast. Even in dry conditions, the virus needs to be hanging around, and people need to come into contact to spread it. Still, any insight into what drives epidemics is a step toward saving lives.
When absolute humidity is low, for example, local hospitals could start stockpiling anti-viral medications and other supplies, and they could increase moisture levels in patient rooms.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/dry-air-may-spur-flu-outbreaks
"In PLoS Biology on February 23, 2010, the researchers reported that there were often significant drops in absolute humidity in the weeks prior to a flu outbreak. "This dry period is not a requirement for triggering an influenza outbreak, but it was present in 55-60% of the outbreaks we analyzed, so it appears to increase the likelihood of an outbreak," Shaman says. "The virus response is almost immediate; transmission and survival rates increase and about 10 days later, the observed influenza mortality rates follow."
This discovery might be used in the future to help predict when outbreaks will occur. It also has implications for treating influenza outbreaks. For example, hospitals may pay more attention to controlling humidity levels.
"Obviously there are tradeoffs because influenza is not the only pathogen out there," Shaman says. "There are pathogenic molds that flourish in higher humidity. But if the immediate concern is an outbreak of influenza, it may be worthwhile to raise humidity levels."
metmike: If this is true of COVID-19, then we should be elevating humidity levels in hospitals to help decrease the survival time by 50% in the drier air. However, considering the protective gear being worn by health care workers already, it may not have that great of an affect.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/723902/coronavirus-dies-sunlight-us-homeland-security-study/
The game-changing findings of the joint effort between the DHS's Science and Technology directorate and Donald Trump's coronavirus task force was revealed at Thursday's White House press briefing.
The virus dies quickest in the presence of direct sunlight, and it survives best in indoor conditions, the study found.
Latest on COVID here: