Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Danish Study Published in Nature Reveals the Prejudice Unvaccinated Individuals Face in Most Countries
The results of a global study from Denmark’s Aarhus University, reveal that across the globe people show prejudice and discriminatory attitudes towards individuals not vaccinated against COVID-19. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
The study is part of the research project How Democracies Cope with COVID-19: A Data-Driven Approach (HOPE), https://hope-project.dk/#/about supported by the Carlsberg Foundation. It was made in cooperation with the Centre for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination, supported by the Danish National Research Foundation.
The researchers set out to assess whether people express discriminatory attitudes in family and political settings across groups defined by COVID-19 vaccination status. Specifically, the sought to quantify discriminatory attitudes between vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens in 21 countries, covering a diverse set of cultures across the world.
Across three conjoint experimental studies (N=15,233), researchers demonstrated that vaccinated people express discriminatory attitudes towards the unvaccinated, often as high as the discriminatory attitudes often seen in common targets including immigrants, drug-addicts and ex-convicts. In contrast, there was little evidence that unvaccinated individuals display discriminatory attitudes towards vaccinated people.
Many vaccinated people do not want close relatives to marry an unvaccinated person. They are also inclined to think that the unvaccinated are incompetent as well as untrustworthy, and they generally feel antipathy against them.
Discriminatory attitudes are more strongly expressed in cultures with stronger cooperative norms. According to the researchers, the reason for this appears to be that the vaccinated perceive the unvaccinated as free riders. The findings suggest that contributors to the public good of epidemic control (i.e., the vaccinated) react with discriminatory attitudes against perceived free-riders (i.e., the unvaccinated).
Part of the overall study looking solely in the United States showed that not only do vaccinated people harbor prejudice against the unvaccinated, but they also think they should be denied fundamental rights. For instance, the unvaccinated should not be allowed to move into the neighborhood or express their political views on social media freely, without fear of censorship.
“It is likely that we will encounter similar support for the restriction of rights in other countries, seeing as the prejudice and antipathy can be found across continents and cultures,” said co-author Michael Bang Petersen, who is a professor of political science at Aarhus University.
With low vaccine uptake still a challenge to pandemic management, the researchers warn authorities against employing a rhetoric of moral condemnation in their attempt increase vaccination rates.
“Moral condemnation may strengthen the cleavages and further feelings of exclusion that have led many unvaccinated to refuse the vaccine in the first place. Our prior research has shown that transparent communication about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is a more viable public-health strategy for increasing vaccine uptake in the long term,” said Michael Bang Petersen.
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Molecular Changes linked to to Long COVID
One of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Mount Sinai in New York City associate long COVID symptoms with changes in gene expression during acute COVID-19. Specifically, researchers employed with this prestigious academic center in Manhattan are the first to publish a study associating changes in the blood gene expression during COVID-19 with post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (long COVID) in patients over a year post hospitalization for severe COVID-19. Published in Nature Medicine on December 8, the team highlights the need for greater attention at the infection stage for improved understanding of how the processes that commence eventually turn into long COVID. The hope is that this research can help scientists better understand how the processes that start with SARS-CoV-2 infection led to long COVID. The goal? Develop prevention strategies and treatment options for COVID-19 survivors experiencing ongoing long COVID problems.
What did the Mount Sinai team discover?
Among other things, the New York City-based team found two molecularly distinct subsets of long COVID symptoms with opposing gene expression patterns during acute COVID-19 in plasma cells, the immune system’s antibody-producing cells.
In patients who went on to develop lung problems, antibody production genes were less abundant. However, for patients with other symptoms such as the loss of smell or taste and sleep disruptions, the same antibody production genes were more abundant instead.
Mount Sinai researchers led by co-corresponding author Noam D. Beckmann, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine (Data Driven and Digital Medicine) and Associate Director of Data Science Strategy at The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai wrote that these opposing patterns observed in the same cells, as well as additional unique patterns observed in other cell types. They point to the existence of multiple independent processes leading to different long COVID symptoms; importantly, these processes are already present during acute infection.
Principal Investigator's Point of View
Dr. Beckmann went on the record “Our findings show that molecular processes leading to long COVID are already detectable during COVID-19 infection,” which of course has implications for future care regimens. The Mount Sinai professor continued, “Furthermore, we see the start of multiple molecularly distinct paths leading to long COVID, providing a unique viewpoint into differences between long-term symptoms.”
Study Data Sources
Using the Mount Sinai COVID-19 Biobank, the researchers examined gene expression data in blood samples from more than 500 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between April and June 2020. More than 160 of these patients provided self-reported assessments of symptoms still present six months or more after hospitalization. The team tested each gene expressed in the blood for association with each long COVID symptom, accounting for ICU admission, COVID-19 severity during hospitalization, sex, age, and other variables. The team then tested for associations specific to each of 13 different types of immune cells, including plasma cells. Finally, these associations were categorized by whether they matched up with changes in patients’ levels of antibodies specific to the virus.
“For long COVID symptoms, like smell or taste problems, connecting antibody gene expression in plasma cells with the actual levels of antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein demonstrates a direct link to the body’s response to the virus,” said lead author Ryan C. Thompson, Ph.D., Data Science Analyst at The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine. “On the other hand, the gene expression pattern for lung problems does not match up with SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody levels, highlighting the different immune processes leading to long COVID that are triggered by COVID-19.”
Long COVID Poorly Defined
The reality is that long COVID still remains poorly defined and future studies should take the initial stage of infection into account to characterize the molecular processes of long COVID more comprehensively and identify biomarkers that can help predict, treat, and prevent prolonged symptoms.
“Our findings show there is the potential to use data from the infection stage to predict what might happen to the patient months later,” said co-corresponding author Alexander W. Charney, MD, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and Co-Director of The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine. “We should not ignore the infection phase in research on long COVID—this is clearly a critical window of time where the body’s response to SARS-CoV-2 might be setting the stage for what is to come.”
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Exaggerated COVID-19 Death Rates used as Fright Factors
What did Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) do to lower the absolute risk of dying from COVID-19?
The phrases "fully vaccinated" and "fully antibody protected" mean different things, obviously. There is not a causation graph that proves that being "fully vaccinated" (a protocol of two shots, that is no longer a measure of efficacy or protection against newer SARS-CoV-2 variants) is any indication of Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) from the risk of death from SARS-CoV-2. Since the original EUA products have diminishing benefits, the COVID-19 vaccination booster and bivalent booster rates are the only vaccination rates that should be considered to determine the ARR of deaths as a result of the COVID-19 variants of today. Even the nonvaccinated-person (as variable as this "group" is) COVID-19 death rates have changed.
There are hidden reasons for stories to come out the way they do. The recent stories that are being now told -- of achieving a universal saturation in humans of natural and injection-assisted antibodies to the variants of SARS-CoV-2 -- have many tangents. With these data from stories (clinical data are also the basis of "storytelling"), statisticians try to come up with one or two figures that represent statistics to comfort themselves with knowledge, such as how many individuals have died from COVID-19 -- 6,657,680 human deaths is a number that was published yesterday. But what do the statisticians' collective knowledge, represented by one figure, mean?
It means, for one thing, that only those official deaths, that were counted by official counters and recorded by official record keepers, that are the basis for COVID-19 policies and actions -- are not revealing everything we need to know. COVID-19 "death rates" are calculated for as many nations and geographic regions as can be officially monitored, but it is not now reasonable to call these numbers absolutely accurate figures.
Another confounding thing is that the number of deaths of individuals who were sometime-in-the-last-three-years infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus -- "had COVID-19" -- but were not only sick with COVID-19 (they were interfered with) -- having other added reasons that they died.
Yet another confounding factor to the official count is the number of deaths that occurred while attempting to mitigate the COVID-19 infections and contagion scope, with such actions "inadvertently leading to deaths of more individuals" than were in the death-by-COVID-19 designation (think: evasive tactics such as taking medications, receiving vaccinations, trying activities to avoid death from the virus, deaths at the hands of hospital staff, suicides, depression and personal abuses, etc.).
There are also the numbers of individuals that have not been revealed to the officials, those who have neither reported their SARS-CoV-2 infections, nor their recoveries, nor have their determined causes of deaths been clearly confirmed, nor has there been, or will be, a clear inventory of their virus-sharing contacts.
All these are confounding factors. This latter category -- 'contacts' -- is a juicy morsel of human geographical information, with absolute accuracy out of the reach of those demanding to convert us to that theory that the world surveillance of the human population would lower death rates.
But such a strained definition of correlation (of officials having knowledge of where we all are, what we own, what we spend, who we associate with -- correlated to our personal safety through submission to official policy) is a false authority attempt and an untenable conspiracy* that is yet currently being attempted by some so as to become centrally global in scope(if that ever made sense) -- just convince people to waive their own rights temporarily for "the sake of all". The COVID-19 death figure is to be your motivation to serve others in the way the government has found to be approved. Obey the mandates, lower the death rate -- is the mantra.
During this current COVID-19 disease period of changing variants, there is a current single figure representing the death rate from the disease called COVID-19, using one figure. This is supposed to scare us into giving our wills to a central organization that is planning to eradicate the disease COVID-19. We can admit that the figure is indicative of a large number of deaths, roughly calculated at 853.8 deaths of individual human beings -- per million population. With the starting point of "a nearly accurate population estimate" for the world of 8,002,627,404 live humans (the Current World Population from the Worldometers website at 0815 hours Mountain Standard Time on 12-10-2022), we can divide 6,657,680 (current official COVID-19 deaths) by 8,002,627,404 and then worry about how to stop that number from becoming a larger number:
It is not reasonable for the World Health Organization to consider being the One that is skilled and powerful -- so much so that it can attempt to persuade and/or mandate us all to a single-source treatment policy. It is advisory only, and advice can be and will be, in many cases in this vast world --- unuseable when that advice is also untenable.
The current conspiracy (or the milder tone of "collusion") to surveil and control our healthcare through the central organization WHO is untenable. The plans to convince us are dependent on waiving rights of masses of human populations in various and diverse countries.
There are 0.083194% of the World's Human Population that have officially died from COVID-19. Or for more clarity, the decimal fraction of the world's humans that have died from COVID-19, officially, is 0.000831937
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) Also here
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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1 comment:
The authors act as if the discriminatory attitudes they describe occurred naturally and have nothing to do with relentless government propaganda encouraging it.
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