Skip to main content

COVID Bright Spots: Kids, Comorbidities and Getting on with Life

Lately I've seen concerning videos about the hazards of COVID vaccines: that the spike proteins the vaccines create once injected don't stay at the injection site; that the spike proteins are prevalent in ovaries and bone marrow at 48 hours (though it's not clear how long they remain); and the spike proteins themselves are damaging. I haven't been able to track down the accuracy of these claims--generic fact checkers all state "no evidence," and more technical refutations from scientists are beyond my pay grade. The original report on spike proteins in ovaries and bone marrow is in Japanese. But none of the fact checks I've read explain why the VAERS system is blowing up with reports of death and permanent disability following COVID vaccinations--why there are more deaths reported after COVID shots than after all other vaccines combined over the past 30 years or more. The VAERS list includes 17 deaths from smallpox vaccine, which hasn't been given for 50 years--so the data must go back even further than 1990. 

Deaths reported following vaccines (top 38 vaccines). Some repeated names are different kinds of vaccines for the same illness.  Data Source: United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Public Health Service (PHS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) / Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) 1990 - 06/04/2021, CDC WONDER On-line Database. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html on Jun 13, 2021 8:49:09 PM

Could it be false reports? That's a possibility, but 1) it's a crime to make false reports to VAERS, 2) the VAERS system isn't well-known to the general public, and 3) almost every time I go to YouTube I see a news story about someone who had a heart attack or died or both right after their shot. One of my coworkers died of a heart attack a few days after her shot, and even some young people are rarely getting myocarditis (inflammation of the heart). The latter reaction is rare and as far as I know, no young person has died of it, but all of this suggests something is wrong with these vaccines. This is exactly the reason many of us took a wait-and-see approach. 

Of course, all risks are in comparison to available alternatives--or to comparable situations for some perspective. Remember the H1N1 outbreak of 2009-2010? (No? Neither did I.) That season saw 288 pediatric deaths from the flu in the US. COVID has claimed 380 kids in the US as of June 16, 2021, which averages out to 304 for one year. For every million kids under 18, 4.1 kids per year have died of COVID. But as many as 7.7 per million died in some states during the H1N1 outbreak. 

I've looked at various videos, studies and news reports on kids and COVID, and so far, I haven't seen any cases of kids dying of COVID without comorbidities, though it's possible that has occurred. So if you have a healthy child of normal weight, it looks like they're at less risk of dying of COVID than they would have been from the flu in 2009/2010--or most other years.

In fact, most of us without comorbidities are at far lower risk of dying than the media suggests. The CDC says, "For over 5% of [COVID] deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 4.0 additional conditions or causes per death." The "fact checkers" were quick to jump on sites that said that 95% of the people didn't really die of COVID. That claim is a little inaccurate, but so is the media giving the impression that we're living through a black plague. 

Lately, though, I've also seen headlines that over 99% of hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated. The stories carry the whiff of schadenfreude and superiority, but as I see it, it means the finger waggers can shuck their masks, drop the pretense that they're being put upon by anti-vaxxers, and find some business of their own to mind. Whatever the risks, the vaccines look like they do a good job of preventing COVID.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these  from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese  with no emulsifiers  Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more