I took a risk today

(Richard Morris) #1

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No it wasn’t from going out of the house during lockdown - my risk of catching Covid in Canberra with the closest Community transmission about 280km away is effectively zero.

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No it wasn’t from the sarcastic nurse asking if I was “taking selfies or getting a vaccine … stop flexing your arm - relax it or this will hurt”

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No it wasn’t from the needle. Didn’t feel a thing.

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No it wasn’t from the lollypop she offered me. No possible way I was going to take THAT risk.

And the risk wasn’t the vaccine (comirnaty - pfizer). According to the CDC the risk of dying within 28 days of getting a vaccine is 0.0018% but that’s after not because of - a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc logic error. 6 people did die in the 44,000 person pfizer trial. 2 people in the treatment arm, and 4 in the placebo arm. That’s not the risk.

The biggest risk from either mRNA vaccine is anaphylaxis. Fatal anaphylaxes in those who have first been screened by asking “Do you have any allergies” is zero. The nurse asked me twice, and the second time she added " … other than to lollypops"

No the risk I took was getting in this Uber. Odds of dying in a car accident in your life is 1 in 107.

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(Bob M) #2

I got both shots of the Pfizer. First shot, just arm pain. Second shot, a red “ring” around where the shot was given, and a bit of tiredness the next day. That’s it.

My 13 YO daughter did have a slight fever and aches the next day after the second shot. Though I’m sure her immune system ramps up better than mine.

#3

I love the lollipop allergy :smile:

What’s your risk of dying from a SARSCoV2 infection @richard?

It is a missing risk in the risk benefit ratio.

I am wondering about asking for a T-cell immunity assay for respiratory viruses :microbe:. With that information and metabolic health markers, I reckon I can assess better the risks of adverse reactions.

I have experienced mixed after effects from annual flu shots.

My cognitive bias is that a low carb ketogenic diet has stabilised and repaired previous metabolic problems and that foundation will help my immune system respond best.

Are we even allowed to have this conversation? I thought the admins closed the discussion.

(Richard Morris) #4

Slight arm soreness here - like I bumped it on a corner of a table or something. No “red ring”

(Karen) #5

Loved this, well done getting the jab and even more well done getting home in one piece! :laughing::laughing:

(Richard Morris) #6

I’m not surprised the admins closed that down after all the BS in the low carb community around Covid. My apologies to our awesome admin staff for revisiting this plague upon them, but my excuses is I was busy studying biochemistry including immunology while that was going on so I missed it all.

3.2 billion vaccines have been given. If there was some cryptic signal of vaccine danger lurking among the noise we would know about it by now.

I don’t know what my risk of dying from getting a vaccination is, I can infer that it’s very very small. Contrasted with my risk of dying from an infection which is non-zero, the precautionary principle is sufficient for me to make the call.

As for claims that low carb people can’t get Covid I don’t buy it. @carl got Covid and experienced long Covid symptoms for a year after his infection in March 2020, and he has been ketogenic for years.

Virta has estimated [ https://www.virtahealth.com/blog/diabetes-reversal-leader-virta-health-demonstrates-promising-results-on-mitigating-covid-19-severity-for-people-with-type-2-diabetes ] that of their type formerly 2 diabetic customers who were ketogenic and infected 11.2 were hospitalized, 1.8% ventilated and 0.3% died. Contrasted with Vanderbilt UMC study of frank type 2 diabetics, 44.3% were hospitalized, 5.9% ventilated, 4.8% died. So what I take from that is if you are diabetic you can reduce your risk of death from infection by 16x by going on a ketogenic diet. It’s not zero but it’s pretty damn good.

#7

That’s a beaut reply. Thanks Richard. I guess we can chat about it while the yanks are sleeping.

I hope Carl throws off the chronic version. There are some mentions in the science media that the vaccine can have therapeutic effects in long-COVID. We use some veterinary vaccinations like that, as therapeutic as compared to prophylactic.

I’m looking forward to a return of the podcast, if that was the cryptic message the other day.

(Mark Rhodes) #8

I would take both Moderna shot again but as you know my second shot resulted in a pulmonary embolism, 3 days in the ICU and a projection of lifelong Eliquis. I am still recovering from that event of April 14. Still not 100 %. Before anyone thinks I am warning against a vaccine I said Ifirst thing I would do it again. I knew going in that I have heterozygous Factor V and Factor VIII which I think you do as well @richard. I maintained this through frequent blood donations and periodic blood draws checking fibrinogen levels as well as the occasional PT INR.

And Had I know that on April 5th The American Association Of Physicians and Surgeons issued a warning that all three vaccines might lead to thrombosis I would in all likelihood have asked for a 30 day treatment of blood thinners PRIOR to my shot. I had a life threatening situation in a controlled setting. Imagine getting an uncontrolled dose of COVID-19? Well I do not think I would be here to tell my tale. Looking back over my data my pulse and blood pressure elevated on shot number one but it was not enough to raise a concern and I didn’t think otherwise.

My overall experience was a drop in blood pressure and clouded thinking followed by high blood pressure followed by elevated heart rate followed by AFIB. After five days of thinking its just inflammation and will go away I checked my CRP, BNP & NT BNP. My CRP had gone up 1000% in three weeks time as I just had a heart stress test in March and had improved my ejection fraction from 45% to 60% while my CRP had been at 0.3 was now 33.3. My BNP which is a peptide that helps remodel the heart had been 17 ( baselines do not really exist but a reading over 50 is to be heeded) was now at 111.1 and NT BNP was a paltry 1071. OUCH.

I am so glad you are showing the world, especially those so called emperors of the fatlands that vaccines do indeed get the world back on track.

(Richard Morris) #9

I have hereditary Leiden factor V thrombophilia but no history of blood clots. I preferred to not take the AstraZeneca vaccine as a result, but if it was the only option I would have gladly taken it.

I did ask the nurse to aspirate prior to injection to make sure that she didn’t unload into a blood vessel. I suspect this may be the problem. When you inject into a muscle muscle cells make spikes. When you inject into a vessel platelets (and other blood cells) make spikes causing them to agglomerate which could cause the combined symptoms of thrombocytopenia (lack of platelets available to make clots) and thrombosis (platelets that self clot). Just an hypothesis.

(Bob M) #10

My “ring” took a bit. And I didn’t know it was there until I got in the shower. No pain.

For me, I’ve always been a scientist. I don’t think there are things that are “right” or “wrong”, only theories. From my perspective, a lot of the low carb folk just chose a side without really having data for that side. The current thing is ivermectin: People are CONVINCED this is a miracle drug (see Paul Saladino), but the RCTs are poorly done, underpowered, or confusing.

This is a good location to look at different drugs for covid 19. They reviewed over 28,000 studies to create this:

https://cdcn.org/corona/

They currently give ivermectin a D:

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I did listen to a podcast with the person who started this database, and he said he thought that well-run studies of ivermectin would show it was useful. But as of now, the studies are not convincing.

So, I think you can go into any area and look at only what you want to look at, and get results you choose to get.

But my philosophy about science extends to low carb too. After 7.5 years of low carb/keto, I STILL don’t know how much protein and fat to eat. Other than trying to avoid PUFAs, and preferentially eat animal fat like suet, I can’t tell whether lower fat or higher fat is better.

For my area of the country, CT in the US, we got hit early. One man my age spent 12 days on a ventilator and 50+ days in the hospital in the early part of the pandemic. And he lives in my town. Another woman, my wife’s age, got sick, recovered, but in the third week (inflammatory phase) died of a stroke. Once I saw these, I knew things could get bad.

And unlike most others, I don’t place complete confidence that low carb will “save” me. I think it helps (as does my taking vitamin D, which gets a B from that database, but that’s after you get covid), but I don’t see evidence it somehow makes us immune to sickness. Less likely, hopefully, but not immune.

(Richard Morris) #11

Yes I heard a This week in Virology podcast with David Fajgenbaum who built that database of studies into repurposed drugs for Covid. I have the same opinion about ivermectin.

The areas where ivermectin appears to have shown a biologically significant effect (Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Bangladesh, Florida) have endemic strongylides (roundworm) parasites. The principal standard of care for COVID includes dexamethasone. Steroids are known [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6230759/ ] to cause a strongylides infection to progress to fatal strongyloides hyper-infection syndrome. So my hypothesis is that ivermectin doesn’t cure Covid, but rather it protects the treatment against Covid from killing people also infected with with worms.

What is more believable? That an antiparasitic which won a Nobel prize for it’s discoverer and the person who elucidated the mechanism of it’s ability to kill parasites is killing parasites, or this molecule also has an possible anti-viral effect with a mechanism yet to be elucidated.

I don’t believe that the problem is that there is no commercial benefit in having an off patent drug that has a new effect (that can be patented) implies a conspiracy of pharmaceutical companies to corral us into buying their newly constructed magic pill.

What I do know is that every high performance computer in the world has been testing every single known molecule against every known SARS-Cov-2 infection and Covid disease process. For the team that discovers ANYTHING that treats Covid - Glory and a guarantee of funding into the far future.

Yes exactly. As Gary Taubes described in his interview with Peter Attia [ https://peterattiamd.com/garytaubes/ ] the hallmark of bad science is going off half cocked on an hypothesis without trying to invalidate it. There is a lot of that in the low carb world from people I used to have a lot of respect for. It’s depressing.

(carl) #12

I got Covid, but my symptoms were mild. I had a cough for a couple of weeks and lost my sense of taste for a while.

(Richard Morris) #13

I stand corrected then. How long did it take for your sense of smell/taste to return?

(carl) #14

It took a good year for to come back completely, but I got to about 75% fairly quickly, maybe 4 months.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) closed #15