Friday, December 30, 2022
Thursday, December 29, 2022
◄ AGE of UNIVERSE ► TIME in perspective ⏱️
https://youtu.be/Zb5qTdb6LbM
Study Finds Large Gap in Excess Deaths Along Partisan Lines After COVID-19 Vaccines Introduced < Yale School of Public Health
The study found that overall, the excess death rate for Republican voters was 5.4 percentage points, or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democratic voters. After COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 percentage points to 10.4 percentage points.
"The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates"
"The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates"
Does COVID-19 vaccination cause excess deaths?
How was the situation in the United States? From the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System co-managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration, we obtained the number of deaths within 7 days after COVID-19 vaccination in the United States from December 2020 to May 2021.4 The demographic structure of the United States was available from CDC Wonder online database,5 and the COVID-19 vaccine coverage rate from CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.6 These data were used to calculate the proportion of deaths within 7 days after receiving COVID-19 vaccination per 100 1000 vaccinated persons, stratified by gender and age group. It was found that the mortality rate within 7 days after COVID-19 vaccination was higher for males than females and increased with age. But it was still much lower than the background mortality rate
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Mortality Study Reinforces Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations | Kaiser Permanente
"Despite numerous studies showing the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, some people have remained hesitant to get vaccinated," said lead author Stanley Xu, PhD, of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation. "This study provides reassurance that the vaccines are very safe, and, in fact, people who received COVID-19 vaccines in the United States had a lower death rate than those who didn't, even if you don't count COVID deaths."
Scary Reports of Deaths Following COVID-19 Vaccination Aren’t What They Seem
The misinformation strategy.
Opponents of vaccination use the VAERS numbers in statements that suggest cause-and-effect conclusions. This misinformation then influences some people not to be vaccinated.
In this case, the numbers are correct, but the presumed conclusions are not.
Stevan Whitt, MD, an infectious disease doctor and chief medical officer at MU Health Care, gets questions about these claims regularly, and he wants people to have the right information.
"This intentional misrepresentation is a powerful tactic to sow confusion among large groups of people," Whitt said.
To address the misinformation about VAERS, the CDC shares context around adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccines and emphasizes that reports of deaths (and other adverse events) do not necessarily mean the vaccines are to blame. "
Opponents of vaccination use the VAERS numbers in statements that suggest cause-and-effect conclusions. This misinformation then influences some people not to be vaccinated.
In this case, the numbers are correct, but the presumed conclusions are not.
Stevan Whitt, MD, an infectious disease doctor and chief medical officer at MU Health Care, gets questions about these claims regularly, and he wants people to have the right information.
"This intentional misrepresentation is a powerful tactic to sow confusion among large groups of people," Whitt said.
To address the misinformation about VAERS, the CDC shares context around adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccines and emphasizes that reports of deaths (and other adverse events) do not necessarily mean the vaccines are to blame. "
Frontiers | Mortality Rate and Characteristics of Deaths Following COVID-19 Vaccination
"Results: As of January 8, 2021, 55 deaths were reported, and the mortality rate of COVID-19 vaccination was 8.2 per million population. A total of 37 deaths were reported among long-term care facility residents, and the mortality rate was 53.4 per million population. Top reported comorbidities associated with deaths included hypertension, dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, and heart failure. In addition, dementia was more likely to be associated with deaths vaccinated at long-term care facilities than at other locations.
Conclusion: The benefits of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the potential risks in older frail populations, and our findings do not support actions to exclude older adults from being vaccinated. However, continued monitoring of COVID-19 vaccination is still warranted."
Conclusion: The benefits of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the potential risks in older frail populations, and our findings do not support actions to exclude older adults from being vaccinated. However, continued monitoring of COVID-19 vaccination is still warranted."
Monday, December 26, 2022
What Happens to Your Body When You Eat Meat and Dairy Every Day?
But after analyzing the available data, Murray and his team found that the association between meat consumption and health outcomes was inconsistent. "These effects are not big, and the evidence is not strong," he said.
Many of these studies are based on small sample sizes, and the results are often biased by numerous confounding variables. For example, it is difficult to untangle whether it is the lack of meat in a vegetarian's diet that reduces their association with poor heart health or whether it is their increased intake of vegetables.
Many of these studies are based on small sample sizes, and the results are often biased by numerous confounding variables. For example, it is difficult to untangle whether it is the lack of meat in a vegetarian's diet that reduces their association with poor heart health or whether it is their increased intake of vegetables.
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Friday, December 23, 2022
Could Global Warming Start A New Ice Age?
I had a misconception that countries in Europe that have similar climates to the United States, such as England and all of western Europe, would be at the same latitude as the United States. However, if you head straight east from the eastern coast of the United States, you mostly hit Africa. The northeast United States is the same latitude as Spain.
If you travel straight west from England, you hit either Greenland or Newfoundland which is in northern Canada.
Thursday, December 22, 2022
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Myocarditis after Covid-19 Vaccination in a Large Health Care Organization | NEJM
Among patients in a large Israeli health care system who had received at least one dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine, the estimated incidence of myocarditis was 2.13 cases per 100,000 persons; the highest incidence was among male patients between the ages of 16 and 29 years. Most cases of myocarditis were mild or moderate in severity.
Incidence of Myocarditis/Pericarditis Following mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination Among Children and Younger Adults in the United States | Annals of Internal Medicine
In this population-based surveillance, we found that myocarditis/pericarditis 0 to 7 days after mRNA vaccination in persons aged 5 to 39 years occurred in approximately 1 in 200 000 doses after the first dose and 1 in 30 000 doses after second dose of the primary series, and 1 in 50 000 doses after the first booster. The incidence varied markedly by age and sex, however, with a disproportionate number of cases occurring in male persons, notably among adolescents after dose 2 and first boosters.
What It's Like To be a Computer: An Interview with GPT-3
There is this thing called the Turing Test, invented by Alan Turing seventy years ago. The idea is to see if a computer could become smart enough to fool a human into thinking he is talking to a real person. We have crossed a threshold where computers have almost reached this point.
The AI appears to understand more than it actually does. It has studied human conversation and a mountain of raw information so that it can imitate a human conversation.
However, having a conversational computer isn't the only threshold the machines have crossed recently. Computer AI has become much more useful, performing all kinds of new tasks, such as surgery or writing computer code. By the end of the decade, machines will be performing many more jobs. It is very likely that in the next couple of decades, or even in this one, we will have general-purpose robots that could perform any task that we want them to do.
Sunday, December 18, 2022
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Friday, December 16, 2022
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Monday, December 12, 2022
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Saturday, December 10, 2022
Friday, December 9, 2022
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Global Warming: An Inconvenient History
It has taken 140 years for the average atmospheric temperature to go up 1 degree Celsius. It is going to take 5,000 more years for the polar ice caps to melt, but by the year 2100 we will run out of most fossil fuels, at which point a 2 to 3-degree increase in temperature might be mildly inconvenient for some, but it is not a global disaster. Humans are adaptable, and the proposed solutions are far more damaging. Getting rid of fossil fuels now, as some have proposed, will have a huge negative economic impact, especially on the poor. So-called renewables are inefficient and have huge environmental impacts of their own. By the time we run out of fossil fuels, we probably will have nuclear fusion which will solve most of our energy problems.
Something funny happens with the climate roughly every 100,000 years. Due to the Milankovich cycles which affect Earth's orbit, we get an 8 to 15-degree spike in temperature followed by a 10 to 15-thousand-year warm period, which is then followed by a rapid decline in temperature and at least 85,000 years of mass glaciation. New York gets covered by a mile of ice. The "normal" state is very cold and all of human civilization arose during a brief 12,000-year warm period since the last cold period. During these 12,000 years, the planet Earth has gone from its maximum tilt, which melts glaciers, to halfway toward its minimum tilt, which will produce the next period of glaciation. We should already be in the cool-down cycle, except for those pesky humans who have warmed the planet a little bit. The preindustrial period from 1500 to 1850 was unusually cold and is labeled "the little ice age."
Atmospheric CO2 has been in a steep decline for about 40 million years. Calcifying marine organisms are sequestering the carbon at the bottom of the sea. It got so low during the last period of glaciation that it was close to the level where all terrestrial plants would die from CO2 starvation. Sometime in the distant future, we are going to have to put CO2 back into the atmosphere to either prevent the next mass glaciation or to support plant life. We can do this with lime.
"We are not the enemy of Nature, but its Salvation.." - Patrick Moore.
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
To End Climate Lunacy, Stop Treating Warming & C02 Hysterically
'To win this argument, it is necessary to focus on the scientific facts.
A warming planet saves lives. Analyses of millions of deaths in recent decades in numerous countries, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, show that cooler temperatures killed nine times (July 2021 study) to seventeen times (In May 2015 study) more people than warmer temperatures. The planet's recent modest warming (by 1.00 degree Celsius on average since 1880, as calculated by NASA) thus has been saving millions of lives.
CO2 emissions do not pollute and instead are environmentally beneficial. In 2017, over 300 scientists, including Richard Lindzen of MIT and William Happer of Princeton, signed a statement that made this point: "carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. To the contrary, there is clear evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful to food crops and other plants that nourish all life. It is plant food, not poison." Every one of us, indeed, also exhales carbon dioxide with every breath.
Since 1920, deaths each year from natural disasters have decreased by over 90 percent. And this happened, data from EM-DAT - The International Disaster Database presented by The University of Oxford show, not only as the planet has warmed, but as world population has quadrupled.
Global warming has not increased hurricanes. A NOAA report, updated on November 28, 2022, states that "there is essentially no long-term trend in hurricane counts. The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s."'
A warming planet saves lives. Analyses of millions of deaths in recent decades in numerous countries, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, show that cooler temperatures killed nine times (July 2021 study) to seventeen times (In May 2015 study) more people than warmer temperatures. The planet's recent modest warming (by 1.00 degree Celsius on average since 1880, as calculated by NASA) thus has been saving millions of lives.
CO2 emissions do not pollute and instead are environmentally beneficial. In 2017, over 300 scientists, including Richard Lindzen of MIT and William Happer of Princeton, signed a statement that made this point: "carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. To the contrary, there is clear evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful to food crops and other plants that nourish all life. It is plant food, not poison." Every one of us, indeed, also exhales carbon dioxide with every breath.
Since 1920, deaths each year from natural disasters have decreased by over 90 percent. And this happened, data from EM-DAT - The International Disaster Database presented by The University of Oxford show, not only as the planet has warmed, but as world population has quadrupled.
Global warming has not increased hurricanes. A NOAA report, updated on November 28, 2022, states that "there is essentially no long-term trend in hurricane counts. The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s."'
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
Sunday, December 4, 2022
Saturday, December 3, 2022
"We May Have A Problem Here" | CoD: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered
This is not realistic in terms of physics, but amusing to watch...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d77wSm9Ih14
The blast spreads too fast. BTW, if the blast is in a vacuum then there is no blast wave.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d77wSm9Ih14
The blast spreads too fast. BTW, if the blast is in a vacuum then there is no blast wave.
Sunday, November 27, 2022
Friday, November 25, 2022
Thursday, November 24, 2022
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
Saturday, November 19, 2022
Saturday, November 12, 2022
The Quantum Hype Bubble Is About To Burst
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBLVtCYHVO8
I have been saying for years that Quantum Computing is overhyped. The claims have been very pie in the sky.
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Saturday, November 5, 2022
This might be my hottest take
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VlThPXIVE8Y
There is an increasingly common disorder where people bitten by ticks become allergic to red meat, if not all meat. This happened to my uncle who was an avid hunter.
I would also kill all the mosquitos. They kill more people than any other animal.
Friday, November 4, 2022
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
Friday, October 28, 2022
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
A normal and terrifying thing about chemistry
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nleE-VEb_dU
The pork industry was looking for a humane way to slaughter pigs, so they tried having the pigs breathe pure nitrogen which did the trick. This has been suggested as a humane way to do capital punishment, and there is a political movement of people who support suicide for terminally ill patients who were encouraging people to breathe pure helium, which is easy to obtain, as a painless way to die.
There is gas exchange between the oceans and the air. CO2 in the oceans forms carbonic acid, which is used by calcifying marine organisms to combine with calcium to make calcium carbonate to create shells. This process is sequestering atmospheric CO2 over the long term, turning CO2 into limestone deposits, which is why atmospheric CO2 has been on a serious decline over the last 40 million years.
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Predictions for the year 2122
In 1922, author W. L. George wrote:
"There is a good old rule which bids us never prophesy unless we know, but, all the same, when one cannot prophesy one may guess, especially if one is sure of being out of the way when the reckoning comes."
Good advice.
"I suggest a picture of this world a hundred years hence, and venture as my first guess that the world at that time would be remarkable to one of our ghosts, not so much because it was so different as because it was so similar. In the main, the changes which we may expect must be brought about by science."
"It is easier to bring about a revolutionary scientific discovery such as that of the X-ray than to alter in the least degree the quality of emotion that arises between a man and a maid. There will probably be many new rays in 2022, but the people whom they illumine will be much the same... I am convinced that in 2022 the advancement of science will be amazing, but it will be nothing like so amazing as is the present day in relation to a hundred years ago. A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For Jefferson knew nothing of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, etc.;"
To follow up on the predictions made by W. L. George, I am going to make an educated guess as to what things might be like in the year 2122. The problem is that it is not hard to see where trends will take us over the next 50 years, or to a much lesser extent to the year 2100, but new trends will emerge that we cannot predict, making any prediction about the year 2122 far from complete.
For example, George knew nothing of computers, the Internet, and how they would change the world. He knew nothing about television, but he did imply that new communication methods would be possible.
Unlike the prediction made by George about the year 2022, technological change will accelerate over the next hundred years to such an extent that our ghosts might find the world unrecognizable a hundred years hence. Within 50 years machines will be smarter than people, but even before then, they will help us develop new technologies at a faster pace. We will see huge advances in material science, medical technologies, energy, and anything digital. Medical technology will improve our health, our mental state, and our abilities. It is very likely that in the year 2122, people will age very slowly or not at all.
All transportation will be automated. Airplanes will not need pilots. Cars, trucks, trains, and ships will not need drivers. A driver's license will be a thing of the past.
Unfortunately, most jobs will also be automated, with a fraction of the population supervising the machines that do all the work. Society will have to be reorganized, with many people not being able to obtain work. This could create great political turmoil, along with booms and busts and financial collapses, causing a few nations to fall apart and reorganize into something else.
War will not go away, but it will be mostly carried out by machines. It is very likely that nuclear weapons will be used over the next century, with devasting consequences over large areas, which will greatly increase the need for defensive systems.
Most fossil fuels will be gone by the year 2122. The future will depend upon whether we can develop nuclear fusion, which is likely. If so, we will have abundant relatively-clean energy, although not necessarily cheap at first. If we can't develop cost-effective nuclear fusion, and this is a distinct possibility, then a hundred years from now we will be facing energy shortages, and relying mostly on nuclear fission power and some coal, while maximizing renewables which by themselves won't be nearly enough to supply all our energy needs. Every home and business will have solar panels. We will see more windmills, more hydroelectric, and more geothermal energy production.
Material science might solve the energy storage problem, but maybe not completely. We might also have to rely on synthetic fuels, because this may be the most efficient energy storage method.
Natural resources will become more strained and therefore more expensive. The world population will expand slightly, level off within decades from now, and then slowly decline as resources become more scarce.
People will find their behavior more tightly controlled, not just by the government, but also by other people. Surveillance will be everywhere, including in the home. Crime might become impossible to get away with, but personal freedom will suffer. I predict that there will be a backlash against this, and perhaps a political movement to protect privacy.
Movie theaters will disappear within decades. Movies will be more like video games, or video games will replace movies altogether, with the user participating in the story, possibly with multiple endings depending upon the choices the player makes. Realistic virtual reality should be possible, with many people spending most of their lives in virtual reality. Some stories could take weeks to finish.
More computer technology will be integrated into people, allowing them to experience augmented or virtual reality, and increase their access to information.
People might choose robotic pets, or even virtual ones, which could be made realistic but easier to care for. Robotic pets might have additional features, serving as crude household robots, in addition to the other household robots that people will most certainly have in a hundred years' time. Some people will have robotic friends which will provide emotional support almost as well as a person, if not better. And they will have relationships will robots.
"Reality" in the future is going to be much less real, with people spending much time in virtual worlds, having artificial companions, and experiencing the world through augmented senses.
John Coffey
Good advice.
"I suggest a picture of this world a hundred years hence, and venture as my first guess that the world at that time would be remarkable to one of our ghosts, not so much because it was so different as because it was so similar. In the main, the changes which we may expect must be brought about by science."
"It is easier to bring about a revolutionary scientific discovery such as that of the X-ray than to alter in the least degree the quality of emotion that arises between a man and a maid. There will probably be many new rays in 2022, but the people whom they illumine will be much the same... I am convinced that in 2022 the advancement of science will be amazing, but it will be nothing like so amazing as is the present day in relation to a hundred years ago. A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For Jefferson knew nothing of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, etc.;"
To follow up on the predictions made by W. L. George, I am going to make an educated guess as to what things might be like in the year 2122. The problem is that it is not hard to see where trends will take us over the next 50 years, or to a much lesser extent to the year 2100, but new trends will emerge that we cannot predict, making any prediction about the year 2122 far from complete.
For example, George knew nothing of computers, the Internet, and how they would change the world. He knew nothing about television, but he did imply that new communication methods would be possible.
Unlike the prediction made by George about the year 2022, technological change will accelerate over the next hundred years to such an extent that our ghosts might find the world unrecognizable a hundred years hence. Within 50 years machines will be smarter than people, but even before then, they will help us develop new technologies at a faster pace. We will see huge advances in material science, medical technologies, energy, and anything digital. Medical technology will improve our health, our mental state, and our abilities. It is very likely that in the year 2122, people will age very slowly or not at all.
All transportation will be automated. Airplanes will not need pilots. Cars, trucks, trains, and ships will not need drivers. A driver's license will be a thing of the past.
Unfortunately, most jobs will also be automated, with a fraction of the population supervising the machines that do all the work. Society will have to be reorganized, with many people not being able to obtain work. This could create great political turmoil, along with booms and busts and financial collapses, causing a few nations to fall apart and reorganize into something else.
War will not go away, but it will be mostly carried out by machines. It is very likely that nuclear weapons will be used over the next century, with devasting consequences over large areas, which will greatly increase the need for defensive systems.
Most fossil fuels will be gone by the year 2122. The future will depend upon whether we can develop nuclear fusion, which is likely. If so, we will have abundant relatively-clean energy, although not necessarily cheap at first. If we can't develop cost-effective nuclear fusion, and this is a distinct possibility, then a hundred years from now we will be facing energy shortages, and relying mostly on nuclear fission power and some coal, while maximizing renewables which by themselves won't be nearly enough to supply all our energy needs. Every home and business will have solar panels. We will see more windmills, more hydroelectric, and more geothermal energy production.
Material science might solve the energy storage problem, but maybe not completely. We might also have to rely on synthetic fuels, because this may be the most efficient energy storage method.
Natural resources will become more strained and therefore more expensive. The world population will expand slightly, level off within decades from now, and then slowly decline as resources become more scarce.
People will find their behavior more tightly controlled, not just by the government, but also by other people. Surveillance will be everywhere, including in the home. Crime might become impossible to get away with, but personal freedom will suffer. I predict that there will be a backlash against this, and perhaps a political movement to protect privacy.
Movie theaters will disappear within decades. Movies will be more like video games, or video games will replace movies altogether, with the user participating in the story, possibly with multiple endings depending upon the choices the player makes. Realistic virtual reality should be possible, with many people spending most of their lives in virtual reality. Some stories could take weeks to finish.
More computer technology will be integrated into people, allowing them to experience augmented or virtual reality, and increase their access to information.
People might choose robotic pets, or even virtual ones, which could be made realistic but easier to care for. Robotic pets might have additional features, serving as crude household robots, in addition to the other household robots that people will most certainly have in a hundred years' time. Some people will have robotic friends which will provide emotional support almost as well as a person, if not better. And they will have relationships will robots.
"Reality" in the future is going to be much less real, with people spending much time in virtual worlds, having artificial companions, and experiencing the world through augmented senses.
John Coffey
Saturday, October 15, 2022
Saturday, October 8, 2022
Thursday, October 6, 2022
Electrical carbon capture
There are an octillion phytoplankton that are the basis of the ocean food chain, plus all the other plants that are the basis of the terrestrial food chain, all of which take CO2 out of atmosphere. Atmospheric CO2 is plant food and it has been in a sharp decline over the last 40 million years. What a pity to waste it. It is a valuable natural resource.
All of human civilization arose over just the last 12,000 years after we came out of the most recent period of mass glaciation. Geologically it is not a very long time. In just 10,000 years from now, half of North America will covered by a mile of ice and this period of mass glaciers will last another 80,000 years.
We will run out of most fossil fuels by the year 2100 and we will run out of coal by the year 2150. Then the natural sequestration of CO2 by calcifying marine organisms will continue to deplete atmospheric CO2 until it eventually gets so low that it threatens all terrestrial plant life. This has come close to happening already during the ice age 20,000 years ago. If it happens again then we will have to generate CO2 from limestone deposits to survive.
We are not the enemy of nature; we are its salvation.
Begin forwarded message:
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Begin forwarded message:
From: Larry
Subject: Electrical carbon capture
Subject: Electrical carbon capture
It would be great if we could go back to using coal with this carbon capture.
Allowing the demand on natural gas to drop lowering the price.
It would be interesting to see if this could be eventually used in personal gasoline cars so that the world doesn't also try to phase them out.
Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
astrophysics - Is it possible that black holes are also neutron stars?
Are there regions of space from which no light can escape (trapping horizons)?: almost certainly. Supermassive black holes can have large horizons, with surprisingly small space-time curvature, and we understand gravity and GR well enough that we can be reasonably sure that such horizons exist. Are there singularities inside these horizons? - almost certainly not. Physicists dislike singularities, which is one reason why they search for a quantum theory of gravity. So the question of what lies inside a black hole can only be answered when someone comes up with a consistent quantum theory of gravity.
Saturday, September 17, 2022
Black Holes May Be Covered in Vortex Structures According to New Study
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ_DO3Q5-PM&lc=Ugy61SHCzrggMCxcET94AaABAg.9g4lcTBUTKA9g5HmNA600s
John Coffey:
Anything that approaches infinity tends to be a problem scientifically and maybe mathematically. I have long suspected that matter might have a maximum density, making Black Holes not a point with infinite density but a tiny sphere. It seems plausible since our mathematics tends to break down when discussing singularities.
Perhaps Black Holes could spin so much, or have a high enough energy that these would counter the collapse? Maybe the time dilation becomes so great that it never becomes a point?
I am wondering if this is something that can be proved one way or the other using observations?
Alondro77:
It might become 'solid' at the point where the gluons are pressed into the quarks, shoving all these particles into a TRUE solid, where the particles are totally crushed together and no space at all remains. I don't believe we could simulate that, because the energy required to compress quarks and gluons in such a way would be beyond our capacity to generate.
John Coffey:
@Alondro77 We know that subatomic particles are fluctuations in Quantum Fields. Although we haven't defined a limit to the amount of energy that a Quantum Field can have at any particular point, it seems to me that there could be a limit where either it is not possible, or the field breaks, or it changes into something else.
I don't think that we know what the fields are made of and probably will never know, but there might be properties at higher energy levels or densities that we will never be able to test.
John Coffey:
Anything that approaches infinity tends to be a problem scientifically and maybe mathematically. I have long suspected that matter might have a maximum density, making Black Holes not a point with infinite density but a tiny sphere. It seems plausible since our mathematics tends to break down when discussing singularities.
Perhaps Black Holes could spin so much, or have a high enough energy that these would counter the collapse? Maybe the time dilation becomes so great that it never becomes a point?
I am wondering if this is something that can be proved one way or the other using observations?
Alondro77:
It might become 'solid' at the point where the gluons are pressed into the quarks, shoving all these particles into a TRUE solid, where the particles are totally crushed together and no space at all remains. I don't believe we could simulate that, because the energy required to compress quarks and gluons in such a way would be beyond our capacity to generate.
John Coffey:
@Alondro77 We know that subatomic particles are fluctuations in Quantum Fields. Although we haven't defined a limit to the amount of energy that a Quantum Field can have at any particular point, it seems to me that there could be a limit where either it is not possible, or the field breaks, or it changes into something else.
I don't think that we know what the fields are made of and probably will never know, but there might be properties at higher energy levels or densities that we will never be able to test.
Friday, September 16, 2022
🔢 How to count to 10 in Latin
https://polyglotclub.com/wiki/Language/Latin/Vocabulary/Count-from-1-to-10
I find this interesting because the numbers 1 to 6 are close to Spanish numbers.
The numbers 7 to 10 resemble our months 9 to 12. This made me speculate that maybe the ancient Romans only had a 10-month calendar, although this was cited only in legend and the Roman Republic adopted a different 12.5-month calendar. Later reforms would be done by Julius Ceaser and August Ceasar, from whose names we get July and August.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Re: Watch "You're Immortal And I Can Prove It" on YouTube
I like the video. It doesn't teach me anything new, but he makes entertaining videos.
On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 11:34 PM Albert wrote:
A "Thoughty" video.
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Monday, August 29, 2022
Sunday, August 21, 2022
Effect of mRNA Vaccine Boosters against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Infection in Qatar | NEJM
Compared to the primary series, booster effectiveness against symptomatic omicron infection was 49.4%, with the primary series 76.5%.
Study shows probability of getting COVID for mask wearers vs. non-mask wearers
In the healthcare setting, 9% of the mask wearers and 33% of the non-mask wearers tested COVID-19 positive.
Additionally, in community settings, the team noted that 6% of mask wearers and 83% of non-maks wearers tested SARS-CoV-2 positive.
Monday, August 15, 2022
A brief history of humanity
In the year 1800, about 90% of the United States population was needed to produce enough food through farming. In the early 1900s, it was about 35% and in the year 2000 it was 3%. Six decades ago when I was very young, farmers were held with some regard. These people worked the land to produce the food that we need. Today, farmers are considered rednecks. It is not too surprising that many early cartoons from almost a hundred years ago mostly took place on farms involving farm animals. In the 1960s there were many popular TV shows nostalgic for a more rural time, perhaps a simpler time compared to life in the big city, such as The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry RFD, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and The Real McCoys. By 1972 all these shows were obsolete and canceled.
The Earth has been cooling down for about 50 million years. For at least 40 million years the atmospheric CO2 level has been in steady decline. The two go hand in hand since the temperature affects the vapor pressure of CO2 on the surface of the ocean. As it gets colder, the oceans absorb more CO2. Calcifying marine organisms learned to take calcium carbonate, which is made from calcium and CO2, and turn it into shells, which later get sequestered as limestone. This is where the CO2 has been going.
Climate change over the last 9 million years affected human evolution, forcing arboreal apes to come down from the trees and cross on foot the newly formed grasslands to find food. We entered the Pleistocene ice age about 2.5 million years ago which continues to the present because we still have ice at the poles. Also around 2.5 million years ago, in eastern Africa, a half-ape early human named Homo Habilis, meaning "Handy Man", learned how to make a stone hand ax. This remained the highest level of human technology until about 50,000 years ago. It is thought that early humans engaged in persistence hunting, where the human ability to sweat allowed them to chase an animal in the hot sun for a couple of hours until it collapsed from heat stroke. Then they could kill it with their stone ax and have a meal for their tribe. However, 50,000 years ago mass glaciation in Europe caused Africa to dry up. What was left of the human race was about 7,000 humans living on the southern coast of Africa. For the first time, they learned how to build permanent dwellings, much better tools and weapons, and how to fish. This was the beginning of the Upper Paeleolitch Period or the third stone age.
For about 90,000 years we had mass glaciation across the northern hemisphere. Due to changes in the Earth's orbit, in what are called the Malankovich Cycles, we get a warm period roughly every 100,000 years, and the last one started about 10,000 BC. We are currently in the year 12,022 in what some people call the Human Period. This was the beginning of the Neolithic Period or "new stone age." It is no coincidence that all of human civilization arose during this brief warm period. The Fertile Crescent, a region that follows the Nile River and extends over to Iraq, blossomed with grains even more so than today, and humans learned how to make use of those grains. Roughly 12,000 years ago humans learned how to make bread. Roughly 500 years later they learned how to make beer, and the world would be forever changed.
The Sumerian Kingdom, which started around 4100 BC in Iraq between the Tigres and Euphrates rivers, invented farming, although roughly about the same time that it got started along the Nile River. They also invented civilization, writing, clay pottery, and money. Although called a Kingdom, it was more like a collection of powerful city-states, which is how most power structures worked in the ancient world. They persisted for an amazing 2,400 years until they were overthrown in 1,700 B.C. by roaming nomads called the Amorites, who built a new powerful city-state called Babylon.
The era of the Pharaohs started around 3100 BC when the northern and southern kingdoms along the Nile were united by force. They would be conquered by Rome in 30 BC.
The Egyptians were expert beer makers, and beer was a regular part of their diet. The pyramids were built by workers who were paid in beer. For a day's labor, they were given a clay chip worth a gallon of beer. The chip could be exchanged for other goods.
Rome was founded in 753 BC, and it was such a powerful city-state that it would conquer most of Europe, but it would be conquered in 476 AD by the Barbarians, which were groups of Germanic tribes. This period is referred to as Ancient Antiquity, where Rome was the military power, but Greece was the intellectual center of the world.
Roman militarism was brutal, often killing or enslaving the people they conquered. Sometimes soldiers would be rewarded with land from the conquered territories because most people survived by farming. Around 146 BC, in the Third Punic War with Carthage, a city-state of a million people in ancient Tunesia, the Romans killed 750,000 people and burned the city to the ground.
The fall of the Roam Empire lead to the dark ages that lasted 900 years until the 1400s. The Christian religion dominated Europe and took a negative view of science. Much of the old manuscripts by the Greek Philosophers had been lost until some of them were rediscovered and printed thanks to the invention of the printing press. This helped lead to a more enlightened era.
During the middle ages, Italy continued to be a few powerful city-states constantly at war with each other. The country wasn't united until 1861.
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Saturday, August 6, 2022
Sunday, July 31, 2022
Saturday, July 30, 2022
Friday, July 29, 2022
Thursday, July 28, 2022
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Monday, July 25, 2022
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Saturday, July 16, 2022
Friday, July 15, 2022
Thursday, July 14, 2022
Spinal cord repair
Eventually, this may be very useful.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Larry
From: Larry
A drug under investigation as a cancer treatment has shown exciting promise in a rather different branch of medical research, with scientists demonstrating how it can promote nerve repair following spinal injury. The breakthrough shows how the drug acts on a DNA damage response mechanism at play in both these unrelated conditions, and triggers a "remarkable" recovery in mice with injured spinal cords.
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Monday, July 11, 2022
Watch "Science Proves What We Suspected Was True About Them" on YouTube
It is easy to say that something is wrong with the Political Left if they don't have the same level of disgust that we do, but what if that were the norm? My tendency toward disgust is pretty high, which is probably why I am the way I am. However, I might be the abnormal one.
I think that there is a big range of human tendencies. Everyone feels a little bit of anxiety, depression, fear, neuroticism, and compulsiveness. It is when one of these normal human traits becomes exaggerated to the point of being a problem that it becomes a mental illness.
On Sat, Jul 9, 2022 at 9:27 PM wrote:
Science can be amazing !!!
Watch 4 min11 sec. video below until Google censorship takes it down.
-Beesley-
From: John Coffey
Subject: Re: Watch "Science Proves What We Suspected Was True About Them" on YouTube
When I lived in Indianapolis from 1991 to 1992, I made friends with a chess player who was an extreme liberal, likely a Marxist. He said that he had a very permissive father whereas I had a very restrictive father. So I valued freedom and he valued government control.
On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 11:30 AM Albert wrote:
Scientist say a brain scan can reveal whether you are a liberal or a conservative. I'm not sure how they tell if you're a libertarian. Lol
Saturday, July 9, 2022
Thursday, July 7, 2022
What the BA.5 Subvariant Could Mean for the United States - The New York Times
The most transmissible variant yet of the coronavirus is threatening a fresh wave of infections in the United States, even among those who have recovered from the virus fairly recently.
The subvariant of Omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and together with BA.4, another subvariant, it is fueling an outbreak of cases and hospitalizations.
"I think there's an underappreciation of what it's going to do to the country, and it already is exerting its effect," said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, who has written about the subvariant.
BA.5 and BA.4, both subvariants of the Omicron variant that swept the world during the winter, are the most capable versions of the virus yet at evading immunity from previous infections and vaccines. Both variants have mutations in their spike proteins that are different enough from earlier versions of the virus that they are able to dodge some antibodies.
Waves of infection — and the subsequent immunity that comes with them — vary across countries and make for imperfect comparisons. Vaccination rates also vary. But in places where BA.4 and BA.5 have been dominant for weeks or months, the subvariants have caused increases in cases and hospitalizations, despite some population immunity from previous waves
The subvariant of Omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and together with BA.4, another subvariant, it is fueling an outbreak of cases and hospitalizations.
"I think there's an underappreciation of what it's going to do to the country, and it already is exerting its effect," said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, who has written about the subvariant.
BA.5 and BA.4, both subvariants of the Omicron variant that swept the world during the winter, are the most capable versions of the virus yet at evading immunity from previous infections and vaccines. Both variants have mutations in their spike proteins that are different enough from earlier versions of the virus that they are able to dodge some antibodies.
Waves of infection — and the subsequent immunity that comes with them — vary across countries and make for imperfect comparisons. Vaccination rates also vary. But in places where BA.4 and BA.5 have been dominant for weeks or months, the subvariants have caused increases in cases and hospitalizations, despite some population immunity from previous waves
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Science and human progress
There is very little that we don't currently understand about the laws of physics. The so-called "Standard Model" can explain almost everything. I have to admire the brilliance of the people who figured this stuff out because to understand anything more than in general terms requires very many pages of high-level mathematics.
It is not perfect. Both the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics are incomplete theories. They don't agree perfectly with each other and they can't explain what happened during the first nanosecond of the Big Bang. We would need a Quantum Theory of Gravity that we don't have yet. We don't know yet what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are, although we have some theories.
Some things we might never know. Subatomic particles behave like waves on a vast ocean. We may never know what the ocean is made of because it sits beneath our reality. It is likely beyond our reach.
But in terms of what makes spaceships travel the path they do, how computers compute, and why socks stick to your clothes when you take them out of the dryer, we understand all that stuff perfectly.
So besides cosmology and particle physics, what is left to discover?
1. We will never have faster than light travel. It would be a miracle and a monumental and dangerous undertaking if we could reach 10% the speed of light. Even 1% of the speed of light would be amazing.
2. Our computing technology will soon run into physical limitations where we just can't make the circuits any smaller. The next step would be light-based circuitry, but the technology is not yet even close. People make pie-in-the-sky claims about Quantum computers that are a very long way off. So it seems likely that the advancement in computer technology will slow down in about a decade. Maybe the next big breakthrough would come from software.
3. For seventy years people have been predicting that nuclear fusion power is just 30 years away. They said the same thing 30 years ago. It turns out that nuclear fusion power is very hard to do and only remotely possible on a massive scale requiring at least billions of dollars to build. We should have it by the year 2100, which is a good thing because we are going to start running out of some fossil fuels long before then. We need more nuclear fission plans, and we are predicted to get more in about a decade, but it would be difficult to build enough to power the world.
4. Renewables are going to be somewhat of a bust. They are useful on a limited scale, but they require too much land and too much raw material and resources to power the world.
5. We are seeing advances in nanomaterials that could change the world. The first graphene batteries are being developed. This could have a major impact on electric vehicles.
6. I think that we will see huge advances in biotechnology, not only in our understanding of biology and medicine but in the ability to manipulate genetic code for useful purposes. We could program microbes to make medicines and materials that we need. We might be able to cure diseases, improve our health, and increase our lifespans. Biotechnology could be the next big thing.
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Sunday, July 3, 2022
Saturday, July 2, 2022
Liquid Nitrogen Rockets 🚀🥶❄️
My Jr. High School science class gave us a choice of projects to work on, and my lab partner and I chose the one that involved model rockets using high-pressure air.
Saturday, June 25, 2022
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
What the HECK is Time?! (in Einstein’s Relativity)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HBKEDyFTv8&t=584s
I still have some problems with the concept of "spacetime". It seems to conflate two things that aren't the same. The problem with "spacetime" is that they sometimes make weird statements about extreme events, like saying that before the Big Bang there was no time, or that beneath the event horizon in a Black Hole that time flows toward the singularity. Scientists say that the Theory of Relativity breaks down in extreme events and is most certainly not a complete theory.
There is an alternate theory about Black Holes which states that they aren't infinitely dense. There could be a finite limit to density. There is also a much more fringe and probably not true theory that states that Black Holes are just super massive neutron stars.
If we accept that gravity can attract light then this explains gravitational lensing.
If we accept that there is a cosmic speed limit then this explains time dilation.
"Spacetime" is a model that explains both these things. When they say that space is curved, they really mean that spacetime is curved. This concept confused me for a long time.
In my mind, this doesn't rule out the possibility of another model. "All models are wrong. Some models are useful."
March 4 2022 Moon Crash - view from different location
I think that this is fake, but a scenario like this is definitely possible. History has recorded people seeing a fire on the moon from an apparent meteor strike. I have heard about a strike that was more recent.
A few years ago an asteroid exploded over Russian with the force of a powerful nuclear weapon.
https://youtu.be/bfThiqDd9FA
Best wishes,
John Coffey
A few years ago an asteroid exploded over Russian with the force of a powerful nuclear weapon.
https://youtu.be/bfThiqDd9FA
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Saturday, June 18, 2022
The actual science of the "industrial seed oil" panic
I get frustrated with all the contradictory health information we hear regularly. This video does a good job of talking about the science and the arguments on both sides.
Gravity
I get annoyed when I hear people say, as they often do, "There is no gravity in space."
There is gravity everywhere. Some places much more than others. A ship in orbit is using centrifugal force to counteract the pull of Earth's gravity. Technically, it is in constant freefall.
Friday, June 17, 2022
Re: Why Stupid People Think They're Smart
I've seen this. I've talked about the Dunning-Kruger effect.
On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 12:04 PM Albert wrote:
A good video about why stupid people think they're smart. 42 here!
Monday, June 6, 2022
Friday, June 3, 2022
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Quantum Field Theory: What is a particle?
I was hoping for some deep explanation. What I got instead was 35 minutes of math that was over my head. I actually had fun trying to keep up with the math. I have never studied differential equations but watching the video was giving me some idea of what they may be about. While the math was too deep for me, I sort of understood what was going on.
This is interesting because it shows how deep physics can get.
After 35 minutes of extremely deep math, he comes to a simple conclusion that I already knew.
Physics is one of my favorite subjects because everything that exists boils down to physics.
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Fwd: Calcium is crazy
This is interesting science.
https://youtube.com/shorts/a9XSxgQhNJ0?feature=share
I consume calcium carbonate on a regular basis. I did not know that calcium is a metal, but I did know that it is pretty reactive. So is sodium.
Friday, May 27, 2022
Vaccine Lies?
FYI.
On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 10:34 AM Albert wrote:
The lies about Covid vaccine keep co I got. I think there is no end to it.
What lies do you think are being told? The vaccines were very effective against the original variant and became less effective as the virus evolved. This was expected.
Being vaccinated produces much better results than not being vaccinated.
"The age-standardized IRR for cases in unvaccinated versus fully vaccinated persons was 13.9 during April–May and progressively declined to 8.7 during June, 5.1 during July–November, and 3.1 during December, coinciding with the periods of Delta emergence, Delta predominance, and Omicron emergence, respectively. This decline suggests a change in crude VE for infection from 93% during April–May, to 89% during June, 80% during July–November, and to 68% during December. Age-standardized IRRs for deaths among unvaccinated versus fully vaccinated persons were relatively stable; crude VE for deaths was 95% during April–May, 94% during June, and 94% during July–November.
Rates of COVID-19 cases were lowest among fully vaccinated persons with a booster dose, compared with fully vaccinated persons without a booster dose, and much lower than rates among unvaccinated persons during October–November (25.0, 87.7, and 347.8 per 100,000 population, respectively) and December 2021 (148.6, 254.8, and 725.6 per 100,000 population, respectively) (Table 2)."
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e2.htm
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
What is Quantum Mechanics Really Trying to Tell us about Reality? Featuring @Sabine Hossenfelder
The problem is that subatomic particles are fuzzy, act randomly, and behave like waves while moving. Even whole atoms can behave this way.
Quantum Physics was invented to explain the double-slit experiment., which is shown here ...
The "Copenhagen Interpretation" states that a particle traveling through space is not really a particle but a probability wave called a Psi wave. However, once we measure the particle then the Psi wave "collapses" down to a real particle. We can't predict the location, but measurement affects the outcome. This is completely counterintuitive.
Einstein hated this theory, didn't like randomness, and believed that there are "hidden variables" that we can't yet measure.
I don't pretend to understand the following...
I tend to agree with Einstein.
One counter-theory that I like is called the Pilot Wave Theory which says a particle is always a particle, but its motion through space creates waves in space that we can't detect that in turn cause the particle to behave like a wave. Maybe the particle is like a beach ball riding an ocean wave. There is no practical way to distinguish this theory from the Copenhagen Interpretation, so the theory is not very popular.
I am wondering if the problem is that we don't properly understand motion? Our everyday experiences at the macro level don't apply at the quantum level. Maybe there is a field that affects motion?
I view all of reality as a great invisible ocean. If the ocean is bobbing up and down, the energy at that location causes a particle to exist at that location. If the ocean is quiet then there is no particle there. This is Quantum Field Theory.
A "field" just means that every point in space has a value, positive, negative, or zero. The value represents the amount of energy at a particular point. A sufficiently high value in the field causes a particle to exist there. If the value is too low then there is no particle. These fields seem to have random fluctuations because "virtual particles" pop into existence all the time and then immediately disappear. This can be proven experimentally.
There is an electric field, an electromagnetic field, a gravitational field, a Higgs field, and fields for up and down quarks. Disregarding different types of "exotic" matter, which have their own fields but decay quickly, these fields control all of reality.
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
Monday, May 16, 2022
The dangers of the COVID-19 spike protein
The dangers of the spike protein.
"SARS-CoV-2 Spike Proteins Disrupt the Blood-Brain Barrier, Potentially Raising Risk of Neurological Damage in COVID-19 Patients"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12035-021-02696-0
"A lot of people think of it as a respiratory disease, but it's really a vascular disease," says Assistant Research Professor Uri Manor, who is co-senior author of the study. "That could explain why some people have strokes, and why some people have issues in other parts of the body. The commonality between them is that they all have vascular underpinnings."
"If you remove the replicating capabilities of the virus, it still has a major damaging effect on the vascular cells, simply by virtue of its ability to bind to this ACE2 receptor, the S protein receptor, now famous thanks to COVID,"
https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/
COVID-19 spike proteins may cause neurological issues
There is some previous evidence to suggest that following Covid-19 illness, the spike protein can remain in the bloodstream after the virus has gone and travel far from the site of infection. This research could help explain and ultimately treat some of the effects of severe Covid-19 infection, where levels of the virus are particularly high. "
https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2021/august/covid-19-spike-protein-binds-to-and-changes-cells-in-the-heart
"while other papers showed that the spike protein by itself (without being part of the corona virus) can damage endothelial cells and disrupt the blood-brain barrier. These findings may be even more relevant to the pathogenesis of long-COVID syndrome that may affect as many as 50% of those infected with SARS-CoV-2. "
"Very recently, Tavassoly et al. proposed a view that seeded protein aggregation by SARS-CoV-2 could be attributed to long-term post-infection complications including neurodegeneration [4]. They suggested that SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S1 region binds to heparin and heparin binding proteins (HBPs) present in brain which are prone to self-assembly, aggregation, and fibrillation processes. They also showed that the peptide from S protein (S–CoV-peptide; ∼150 aa) has more aggregation formation propensity than the known aggregation-prone proteins, suggesting that this peptide is prone to act as functional amyloid and form toxic aggregates. Thus, the heparin binding and aggregation propensity of S1 protein has been suggested the ability of S1 to form amyloid and toxic aggregates that can act as seeds to aggregate many of the misfolded brain proteins and can ultimately leads to neurodegeneration. It has been suggested that SARS-CoV-2 infection invades the CNS by controlling protein synthesis machinery, disturbs endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondrial function and increases the accumulation of misfolded proteins, thereby activates protein aggregation, mitochondrial oxidative stress, apoptosis and neurodegeneration [3,5,10].
Interestingly, it has been shown that HSV-1 spike protein binds to heparin and increases the aggregation of amyloid β (Aβ42) peptides on its surface spikes [11]. This study suggests that the heparin-binding site of the spike protein might act as a binding site for Aβ42 peptides and thus could dock to the viral surface and catalyze aggregation of Aβ42. As the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2, which is located within the S1 subunit of spike glycoprotein has several heparin binding sites [[12], [13], [14]], the same mechanism of aggregation of neurodegeneration causing proteins such as Aβ, α-synuclein, tau, prions, and TDP-43 can be observed in COVID-19 infection in the brain."
The vaccine spike protein is different.
"There is no spike protein in the vaccines first of all. The amounts that are made after the mRNA is injected are very small and it almost exclusively stays locally. It is nowhere near the amount he was talking about," Dr Ratner said.
US fact checking website Health Feedback, which uses experts to verify claims about health science, said Dr Bridle's statement "rests on the assumption that if the viral spike protein causes cardiovascular toxicity in COVID-19 patients, the spike protein produced in vaccinated people should be toxic as well".
However, Health Feedback said this assumption was incorrect: "While both mRNA vaccines and viral vector vaccines carry the instructions to produce the entire spike protein, the cells break down much of the protein into small fragments. Furthermore, unlike infection, the spike protein from COVID-19 vaccination doesn't get assembled into new viral particles."
US fact checking website Health Feedback, which uses experts to verify claims about health science, said Dr Bridle's statement "rests on the assumption that if the viral spike protein causes cardiovascular toxicity in COVID-19 patients, the spike protein produced in vaccinated people should be toxic as well".
However, Health Feedback said this assumption was incorrect: "While both mRNA vaccines and viral vector vaccines carry the instructions to produce the entire spike protein, the cells break down much of the protein into small fragments. Furthermore, unlike infection, the spike protein from COVID-19 vaccination doesn't get assembled into new viral particles."
"Vaccine skeptics have seized on the study to cast doubt on the safety of vaccines. But a review of the study's findings shows that the concerns raised by vaccine doubters are much ado about nothing.
The Study
The vascular endothelium is an important player in the illness and death associated with COVID-19. The endothelium is a system of cells that line and protect the inside of blood vessels. SARS-CoV2 injures the endothelium leading to blood clots, heart attack, pulmonary embolism, and stroke. Despite the established link between COVID-19 and these cardiovascular complications, the mechanism by which they develop is unknown.
Researchers from Jiaotong University; the University of California, San Diego; and the Salk Institute used a pseudovirus coated with spike protein to investigate the effects of the viral protein on endothelial cells. Pseudoviruses – which were first developed over 50 years ago – contain the outer shell of the virus, but they lack the viral genes needed to reproduce.
Hamsters treated with the spike protein coated pseudovirus showed lung damage similar to that seen in humans infected with SARS-CoV2. When researchers added pseudovirus to cultured endothelial cells they found that the mitochondria inside the cells were injured. Since mitochondria are responsible for providing energy to cells, their dysfunction can cause cell death.
When isolated pulmonary arteries were exposed to the spike protein carrying pseudovirus there was some disruption in the ability of the blood vessels to dilate. The decreased ability to expand blood vessels that serve the lungs could impair the ability of the body to take up oxygen from lungs that are damaged by the virus.
The novelty of this study was the discovery that the spike protein itself causes damage, and that the pathway triggered by the spike protein could explain the widespread cardiovascular complications that develop in COVID-19 patients.
A Twisted Tale
Shortly after Lei and colleagues published their study, vaccine skeptics touted the findings as proof that newly developed COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous. Afterall, if COVID-19 vaccines produce spike protein to trigger immunity, and that same spike protein causes injury, then vaccines are really no different than the disease they are designed to prevent.
The problem with these claims is that science doesn't support their arguments.
The Long Road to Perdition....
In order to damage the endothelium of blood vessels, COVID-19 vaccines have to enter the vascular system and infect cells that circulate in the blood. Data collected by the European Medicines Agency shows that no significant amount of vaccine enters the circulation (3). The confinement of the expressed spike protein away from the circulatory system significant prevents it from causing damage to the vascular endothelium.
Redesigning the Spike Protein
The spike protein attaches SARS-CoV2 to cells through a receptor called ACE2. In order to fully interact, the spike protein must undergo a conformational change.
A research team lead by Dr. Barney Graham from the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases created an engineered form of the spike protein that is unable to make the shape change required to effectively bind to cells (5). The Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines all use this inactivated spike protein, which means any spike protein that is produced by the vaccine is not able to be activated. This safety-switch limits the ability of the spike protein to bind ACE2 and limits its ability to cause damage.
Stuck in a Hole
In addition to engineering the spike protein so it can not be fully activated the protein is tagged with an extra piece called a "transmembrane anchor" (6). The transmembrane anchor allows the spike protein to appear on the surface – or membrane – of the cell, but it is held in place by the anchor. This prevents the spike protein from drifting away and creates a fixed target for the immune system to recognize the foreign protein."
https://covid19resources.ca/2021/05/13/the-thorny-problem-of-covid-19-vaccines-and-spike-proteins/
So far, there is no scientific evidence available that suggests that spike proteins created in our bodies from the COVID-19 vaccines are toxic or damaging our organs. COVID-19 vaccines are relatively new and long-term side effects are yet to be known. However, the vaccines have met the safety standards of many government and international safety agencies.
Several systems help us monitor vaccine safety. In the United States these include the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), the Post-License Rapid Immunization Safety Monitoring (PRISM), and the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Project (CISA). These systems are used by scientists to monitor side effects and any other patterns of risks from vaccines.
The COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to 135 million people in the United States. As expected with any vaccine, some fully vaccinated people still got sick, hospitalized, and/or died. These "breakthrough cases" are a very small percentage of those vaccinated (<0.001%) and are being studied to detect any relevant patterns.
So far no scientific evidence is available that gives credence to claims that spike proteins created from vaccines travel in our bloodstreams. Research shows that spike proteins stay stuck to the surface of the cells around the vaccine's injection site. They are not known to wander around to other parts of the body.
A very tiny dose of the vaccine does make it to the bloodstream (about 1%), but as soon as it gets to the liver, the enzymes there destroy it completely. The U.S. CDC refers to the spike protein made from the vaccine as "harmless."
There is no evidence that the spike protein in vaccines "is toxic or that it lingers at any toxic level in the body after vaccination," an FDA spokesperson told us in an email.
Jason McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin who has been studying spike proteins in other coronaviruses for years and whose work was fundamental for the development of COVID-19 vaccines, said Bridle's statements are not correct.
"The spike protein is not pathogenic. It is not a toxin," McLellan told us in an email. "I have not seen any data to support what Bridle claims."
"The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work by introducing mRNA (messenger RNA) into your muscle cells. The cells make copies of the spike protein and the mRNA is quickly degraded (within a few days). The cell breaks the mRNA up into small harmless pieces. mRNA is very fragile; that's one reason why mRNA vaccines must be so carefully preserved at very low temperatures."
Does the COVID-19 vaccine cause Prion disease?
Safety of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
"Notably, the study identified 34 cases of heart inflammation in patients aged 12 to 39 years. 85% of these cases occurred in males. 82% of these people were hospitalized for a median of 1 day. The authors calculated that among patients aged 12 to 39 years, there is a slight risk of 6.3 additional myocarditis cases per million doses during the first week after vaccination.
However, a separate study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that heart inflammation events are far more likely after COVID-19 infection than vaccination."
However, a separate study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that heart inflammation events are far more likely after COVID-19 infection than vaccination."
"But because reinfection is possible and COVID-19 can cause severe medical complications, it's recommended that people who have already had COVID-19 get a COVID-19 vaccine. A recent study showed that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than twice as likely as fully vaccinated people to be reinfected with COVID-19.
Recent research also suggests that people who got COVID-19 in 2020 and then received mRNA vaccines produce very high levels of antibodies that are likely effective against current and, possibly, future variants. Some scientists call this hybrid immunity."
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