It was not a problem in Africa where they wouldn’t give it freely and so actually helped them have less deaths. Bill Gates made a fortune investing in Pfizer and promoted the Covid vaccines. When the sxxt was about to hit the fan and the truth come out , he withdrew his investment and changed his speech about the vaccines. He also said is was the best investment he ever made. IMHO I think he is evil and not to be trusted, he’s a snake oil salesman.
Is this getting a bit out of hand? - RSV jabs
- Thread starter NickDReed
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Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
But he is another fraudulent antivax nutter. There's a lot of them about. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/technology/robert-malone-covid.html
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/s...false-claim-about-moderna-patent-application/
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Yorkieguy
Established Member
Anyone who knows someone who has had shingles, and I know several, you'll need no encouragement to have the two shingles jabs.
From 1 September 2023, the vaccine programme is being offered to the following:
- healthy people aged 70 to 79 years who have not yet been vaccinated
- people aged 50 years and over with a severely weakened immune system
- healthy people aged 60 to 70 years will become eligible for the vaccine over the next 5 years, when they turn 65 or 70 years
Shingles can be very painful and tends to affect people more commonly as they get older. This can be because your immune system is weakened by increasing age, by stress or by a range of medical conditions and treatments. For some, the pain caused by shingles can last for many years. Shingles can really affect your life, stopping you from doing all the things you usually enjoy.
Incidence of shingles
About 1 in 5 people who have had chickenpox will develop shingles. This means that every year in England and Wales, tens of thousands of people will have shingles. Although shingles can occur at any age, the risk, severity and the complications of shingles all increase with age.
Post-herpetic neuralgia
Each year, about 14,000 people go on to develop post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) after shingles and over 1,400 are admitted to hospital because of PHN. Most people recover fully after a few weeks, but for some, the pain goes on for several months or even years. PHN is a particularly unpleasant condition with severe burning, throbbing or stabbing nerve pain. The older you are, the more likely you are to have long-lasting pain. The shingles vaccine reduces the risk of getting shingles and PHN.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...on-against-shingles-guide-from-september-2023
https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...on-against-shingles-guide-from-september-2023
The live attenuated herpes zoster vaccination (Zostavax), was first used on 1st September 2013, in 70- and 79-year-olds, with continued use in new 70 year-olds, and a staged catch-up of those aged 71 to 78 years in 2013. Over the first 5 years of the national herpes zoster programme period an estimated 40,500 fewer GP consultations and 1840 fewer zoster hospitalisations occurred because of the vaccination programme.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32641364/
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Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
Antivax nutters are also are obsessed by Bill Gates. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52833706
It's easy enough to check facts nowadays with google et al. but people seem drawn to conspiracy theories and false science.
Antiscience has been around since the enlightenment and is a subject in itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiscience
and it's a right wing issue, for some reason, which is worth examining.
"Modern right-wing antiscience includes climate change denial, rejection of evolution, and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines."
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jetsetwilly
Established Member
Regarding convenience and cost playing a role in healthcare, that's reality! The money to pay for healthcare is always limiting, so huge efforts are underway all of the time to figure out cost-effective ways to treat people, and to choose which people should get treatment. I'm just glad I'm not the one having to play God. Convenience is important too - the monoclonal vaccine has a low biological half-life (your body gets rid of it quickly) so you need monthly injections, which nobody is going to do for a mostly-mild illness.
Regarding targeting, as I said I'm not an RSV expert, and I guess it's always fair to ask 'could this be better targeted', but I think as about 90% of infants get RSV in the first 2 yrs, vaccinating all pregnant mothers seems OK, provided the risks and costs are acceptable. Same for the elderly - personally I think it's a bit rubbish to rule out over-80s, but my dad died of a likely RSV infection last year aged 90 so maybe I'm biased...
Ultimately, you can question every single aspect and decision in healthcare, from how to make a medicine to who should get it to how to sterilise the rubber gloves to the grade of steel used in the needles, and it's totally OK to do so, but I think occam's razor says the decisions are probably reasonable. If you're more concerned about RSV vaccines than, say, needle manufacture, then ask yourself why... Is it because you know about some failed attempt to make the same vaccine decades ago, or is it maybe because of a groundswell of popular opinion against vaccines?
Regarding targeting, as I said I'm not an RSV expert, and I guess it's always fair to ask 'could this be better targeted', but I think as about 90% of infants get RSV in the first 2 yrs, vaccinating all pregnant mothers seems OK, provided the risks and costs are acceptable. Same for the elderly - personally I think it's a bit rubbish to rule out over-80s, but my dad died of a likely RSV infection last year aged 90 so maybe I'm biased...
Ultimately, you can question every single aspect and decision in healthcare, from how to make a medicine to who should get it to how to sterilise the rubber gloves to the grade of steel used in the needles, and it's totally OK to do so, but I think occam's razor says the decisions are probably reasonable. If you're more concerned about RSV vaccines than, say, needle manufacture, then ask yourself why... Is it because you know about some failed attempt to make the same vaccine decades ago, or is it maybe because of a groundswell of popular opinion against vaccines?
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
One basic problem of cost is that the value of outcomes does not appear on any balance sheets. Hence the NHS is simultaneously run at an enormous financial loss/cost but with a huge profit in terms of quality of life.
Yorkieguy
Established Member
I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion, considering the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation worldwide.
He transferred $20 billion of Microsoft stock to the foundation, making it the largest of its kind in the world, and devoted more and more time to its work until they were both doing it full-time. And he encouraged billionaire Warren Buffett to donate much of his fortune to our foundation, allowing the Foundation to raise its ambitions about taking on the toughest, most important problems.
The foundation has spent $53.8 billion since 2000, and to quote Gates:
"we think that’s helped our partners make a difference. How do we know? We are committed to measuring progress so we can see what’s working and what isn’t. We’d like to leave you with one chart we find most hopeful. It’s this: The number of children who die each year before their fifth birthday. It’s fallen by half since the year 2000. Millions more kids are surviving. That makes us optimistic".
https://www.gatesfoundation.org
It publishes audited accounts and tax returns for all to see:
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/financials
I don't know how you concluded that he's evil and untrustworthy.
In 2015,Four years before Covid, in a TED Talk he correctly predicted that 'the next war won't be about with missiles, but microbes':
Check the pic at 38 secs in:
Someone will no doubt tell me that he knew what the Covid virus looked like as he invented it.
As to 'snake oil', Microsoft OS and Windows was what first enabled home uses to have PCs from the early '90s, and is still the main operating system for most users. Programs such as MS 'Office 365' ('Word, Excel, Publisher Powerpoint' etc) are used in industry and commerce and at home the world over. I'm very content to pay the £59.00 annual licence fee for '365' for the full suite of MS Office programs. I consider it excellent value for money, and if some of that finds it's way into Bill Gates pocket or to the Bill and Melinda Foundation I'm quite content with that.
Just saying.
jetsetwilly
Established Member
Thanks jacob! The NYT link is paywalled, is there another source?
jetsetwilly
Established Member
What truth was this?
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
selectortone
Still waking up not dead in the morning
Well, it must be true if it's on facebook
jetsetwilly
Established Member
Yes, great post by @Yorkieguy , but I was asking what specific 'truth' @Dave Moore was referring to.
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
May be referring to this here?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52847648
I jut googled "Bill Gates and covid truth come out". Uncovers a weird world of crazy rumours, conspiracies and quack medicine! Anybody tried the Cow Dung vaccine?
Gates seems to be generously setting an example which Elon Musk should follow.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Bil...EwNjcxajBqNKgCALACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
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jetsetwilly
Established Member
I think that's one of a great many. They do try to talk about concrete gains like 'NHS burden' but I think such metrics are either dismissed as unimportant or seen as offensive, trading off trivial things like cost against important things like health (see above). A medical friend of mine recently commented that the UK really needs some sort of new way to discuss the NHS in a grownup way that allows widespread understanding of its costs, benefits, tradeoffs and alternatives. For instance, the cyclical funding model hinders longterm investments that might pay off, eg preventative healthcare, effective data management. The separation between social care and health care is a well-publicised disaster. 'Going private' has been demoted to culture-war fodder rather than discussed carefully. NHS dentistry is in crisis largely because of the funding/contracting model. The list goes on.
I also think it's unfortunate how far the information pendulum has swung - I really value the modern ability to do my own limited research as a patient, and I believe it's improved outcomes for myself and family, but the populist, social media-led backlash against all 'experts', of which antivax is one example, is profoundly depressing.
NickDReed
Established Member
I fully agree cost and the continual need to deliver more cost effective healthcare is an inevitable fact of any modern society, but your comment of convenience and the populations apathy to looking after their own health may be precisely linked to the last 3 words of your sentence 'mostly-mild illness'.
So is the assertion is that the mothers of high risk children will not take their progeny to a health professional on a monthly/weekly/daily basis to ensure their child receives required medication or intervention?
If that is the assertion, is it to be assumed those mothers and the other 605000 expectant ones each year are more likely to take different medication 'just in case'?
Based on the 90% infection rate against the average birth rate, it equates to roughly 544,500 child infections each year, of those an average of 83 deaths per year in this age range, equalling 0.015% fatal infection. If we're to estimate that is 50% of individuals whose illness was severe it would total 0.03% of children at severe risk of an infection whose immune system would not be able to fight off the virus independently. This means 544,334 pregnant mothers have received medication that was not required. Even looking specifically at cost, if the vaccine cost is £1 per person to treat every pregnant mother, the treatment targeted at just those 0.03% who are at very high risk could cost £2,280 per person and still be financially viable. I have no idea of the cost to the NHS of this particular vaccine however I would be interested to know.
I have a basic understanding of the NICE method for calculating the cost effectiveness of a treatment, which as far as I can make out , by it's design is significantly weighted to make any high or reasonable cost approval virtually impossible for the older age groups. This being the reason those aged 80 will not have the opportunity to receive this new vaccine, and why the majority of cancer screening programmes in the NHS are not available to those over 75. I would agree with your position that this is a bit rubbish and I'm not sure how this fits in with article 13 & 14 of the ECHR, but I'm sure there has been a legal work around to ensure compliance.
I think your right, there should be significant scrutiny of procurement methods within all public sector bodies, and mine is certainly not focussed on vaccines.
I think the PPE debacle (fraud) during the pandemic should set alarm bells ringing for every tax paying member of society.
Nothing I have posted on here is an assertion that people should not take vaccines. Nor do I have any evidence that this vaccine is inherently dangerous. I initially posted following reading the article as it raised the question in my head 'is the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry working under a specific doctrine that has focussed attention, for whatever reason, on developing these vaccinations for what appeared to me to be increasingly low risk illnesses'. I posted to stimulate discussion around this thought.
As expected, this irked an element that does not like any questioning of topics or opinions that they have attached themselves to.
Yorkieguy
Established Member
Really quite surreal:
"A new YouGov poll of 1,640 people, external suggests that 28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44% among Republicans".
If there IQs were any lower, they'd need watering - not feeding.
But the YouGov poll comes as no surprise, given that according to a July 2024 Gallup poll, 37% (123 million) of Americans identify as creationist purists, believing that God created humans and everything in the Universe in six days in their current form within the last 10,000 years. Another 34% (113 million), of Americans believe that humans evolved over millions of years with God's guidance, while only 24% (80 million) believe that humans evolved without God's involvement.
jetsetwilly
Established Member
I thought I'd try to come back to Nick's original questions and make sure they weren't lost in the ensuing vax/antivax furore
If by 'treated' you mean 'vaccinated against' then no - the only approved vaccination route prior to today was monoclonal antibodies. This is like feeding Africa with food parcels - it works but you need to keep delivering them ad infinitum, which is a pita. Regular vaccination is like feeding Africa by facilitating agriculturee - it gives your body all it needs to fight future disease without further intervention (this analogy is not very stretchy but you get the point - wikipedia has more.).
If by 'treated' you mean treated, then the other means is well-understood, and may involve hospitalisation or death. It's not cheaper to individuals or society.
Why do you make that assumption btw? Why assume that the NHS, NICE, JCVI etc would accept a newer, costlier drug over an equivalent cheaper one? As mentioned already, cost is a paramount consideration.
Pathogens evolve - new strains emerge - which may necessitate new vaccines. Seasonal flu is an example, and of course covid is another (see below).
Waning immunity has been well-described for decades. It's not 100% understood (certainly not by me!) but reflect on the need for tetanus boosters - why do you think that is? It's because over time an immunised person's response to a tetanus challenge gets weaker, to the point where they are not adequately protected against disease. Booster shots of the vaccine boost immunity back up. It's not a new thing.
There are probably some examples, but I'm not aware of any modern vaccine being less effective than predicted, except sometimes those for seasonal flu where they are tracking a moving target, and maybe the covid vaccines where, similarly, it was hard to predict whether the strain being targeted today would be the strain causing most disease by the time the vaccine rolled out. I say 'maybe' the covid vaccines, because I don't think the emergence of new strains would have surprised any scientist, and therefore any predictions of vaccine efficacy would have had that caveat - just not in the headline figure.
This brings me to the other new thing which is the public focus on immunology and epidemiology, which naturally leads to a new need for effective communication of the science - probably that's a good thing long-term.
On the 'seeming desire to depend on vaccines as a solution to all illnesses', I guess I have two thoughts. 1) Would you rather get a disease and be treated, or be immunised in advance? Within reason I think immunisation is better, but obviously it will never be universally true, or unanimously accepted. 2) Yep, there are more vaccines now than there used to be - Hooray! Would I rather go back to a world with polio in it, to save my kids a vaccine shot? Nope. Would I rather not face a winter of seasonal illnesses? Yep. Would I prefer my elderly relatives to have not succumbed to a respiratory pathogen (if you live long enough, 'pneumonia' will likely feature on your death certificate). Yep. Do I want to spend my life in clinics being injected and possibly feeling rubbish for a bit after? Nope. I guess this raises the need to understand your vaccinations to decide if you want them. Luckily, they are not compulsory.
Answered already, but the decisions about vaccination programs always consider the benefits (health, mortality, NHS burden etc) against the risks (side effects, inherent procedure risks eg injection site infection) and costs (patient convenience and cost, NHS cost) - the benefits conflate efficacy, eg will be lower for a less effective vaccine. Totally fine to question all of them, but how to answer your question without actually doing the work of an epidemiologist? As a society we tend to entrust such specialist analysis to regulated public bodies such as NICE, JCVI, NHS etc, and ultimately to the imperfect-but-best-we-have system of peer-reviewed science that backs them.
If RSV is your sole example of this, I dispute the point. RSV vaccine research has gone on for decades, and there are many vaccinated individuals in the population so there is longitudinal data for them. There is also fairly good data for the cost of RSV-infected people to the NHS, and for the cost of vaccination. The vaccine delivery (physical and chemical) components are pretty standard afaik so there will be adequate safety data for them. There will also be good data for the same variables from other vaccination programs, which I presume allows a decent comparison eg of how RSV vaccination would compare to measles vaccination, etc. I don't have those comparisons to hand but see above.
Is vaccinating for herd immunity a good thing? I don't know of any alternatives (do you have any in mind?) but I guess the answer depends on the severity of the disease (= the benefit of herd immunity) vs the cost (to me and society) of vaccination. Both hard to weigh, firstly because we don't have all of the data or the skills to turn it into a prediction, and secondly because of the inherent noise in such a prediction. So it's back to those regulated public bodies for recommendations.
Drug companies are (at least partly) motivated by profit, but capitalism does work, so we roll with it. The filter which is designed to ensure societal benefit is those public bodes again.
If by 'treated' you mean 'vaccinated against' then no - the only approved vaccination route prior to today was monoclonal antibodies. This is like feeding Africa with food parcels - it works but you need to keep delivering them ad infinitum, which is a pita. Regular vaccination is like feeding Africa by facilitating agriculturee - it gives your body all it needs to fight future disease without further intervention (this analogy is not very stretchy but you get the point - wikipedia has more.).
If by 'treated' you mean treated, then the other means is well-understood, and may involve hospitalisation or death. It's not cheaper to individuals or society.
Why do you make that assumption btw? Why assume that the NHS, NICE, JCVI etc would accept a newer, costlier drug over an equivalent cheaper one? As mentioned already, cost is a paramount consideration.
To me, 'fully vaccinated' means 'has had all the vaccinations needed against this disease'. Why might more than one be needed? Two reasons - evolving pathogen and waning immunity. And maybe a third - the first vaccine wasn't as good as we hoped.
Pathogens evolve - new strains emerge - which may necessitate new vaccines. Seasonal flu is an example, and of course covid is another (see below).
Waning immunity has been well-described for decades. It's not 100% understood (certainly not by me!) but reflect on the need for tetanus boosters - why do you think that is? It's because over time an immunised person's response to a tetanus challenge gets weaker, to the point where they are not adequately protected against disease. Booster shots of the vaccine boost immunity back up. It's not a new thing.
There are probably some examples, but I'm not aware of any modern vaccine being less effective than predicted, except sometimes those for seasonal flu where they are tracking a moving target, and maybe the covid vaccines where, similarly, it was hard to predict whether the strain being targeted today would be the strain causing most disease by the time the vaccine rolled out. I say 'maybe' the covid vaccines, because I don't think the emergence of new strains would have surprised any scientist, and therefore any predictions of vaccine efficacy would have had that caveat - just not in the headline figure.
This brings me to the other new thing which is the public focus on immunology and epidemiology, which naturally leads to a new need for effective communication of the science - probably that's a good thing long-term.
On the 'seeming desire to depend on vaccines as a solution to all illnesses', I guess I have two thoughts. 1) Would you rather get a disease and be treated, or be immunised in advance? Within reason I think immunisation is better, but obviously it will never be universally true, or unanimously accepted. 2) Yep, there are more vaccines now than there used to be - Hooray! Would I rather go back to a world with polio in it, to save my kids a vaccine shot? Nope. Would I rather not face a winter of seasonal illnesses? Yep. Would I prefer my elderly relatives to have not succumbed to a respiratory pathogen (if you live long enough, 'pneumonia' will likely feature on your death certificate). Yep. Do I want to spend my life in clinics being injected and possibly feeling rubbish for a bit after? Nope. I guess this raises the need to understand your vaccinations to decide if you want them. Luckily, they are not compulsory.
You have just developed a cost modelling methodology, there was one developed for the decision to roll out of this vaccine and it is in the government report. Scanning the modelling section it is somewhat more complex than your proposal, but it is open to scrutiny.
I'm not sure what you mean regards a specific doctrine. I expect drug companies are developing multiple ways to improve health outcomes for any number of illnesses, including minor illnesses. Perhaps there are more new vaccines appearing at the moment due to advances due to COVID research, or perhaps the number of new vaccines per year is the same in 2024 as in each of the preceding 10yrs. Have you seen any evidence that there is an uptick?
I think many of us are irked as we have seen the damage that social medial opinion can do in society, with much of the population putting more credence in this opinion than in scientific evidence and hard work.
“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
It is implied in the title itself, re-asserted in your doubts and reasonings for not taking it, hinted at by your allusions to drug company manipulations etc. ....
As one of your irked elements I can assure you that I am quite happy with questioning, it's an opportunity to kick topics around and get better informed.
And no it doesn't involve "opinions that they (we) have attached themselves to".
You seem to be the most irked and defensive of all of us!
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