FSM News and Articles
A house divided against itself cannot tame the pandemic: “Our prime minister is insisting that with 80 per cent of people over 16 vaccinated we are opening up. If that is a come-what-may figure, we will be sentenced to the same unacceptable outcomes experienced by other countries who tried to do the same. The percentage is only important if it delivers the desired product ie our ability to control this COVID-19 epidemic.”
When is food medicine? Friends of Science in Medicine is currently challenging Australian regulations regarding “food as medicine”. They have found a marked discrepancy in consumer protection between the standards for therapeutic claims for medicines and therapeutic claims for foods. FSM’s current president, Ken Harvey, has written about Avemar, classified as a “Food for Special Medical Purposes for Cancer”. He mentions that the price of a month’s supply is $220 AUD.
FSM Friends’ News and Articles
Of course we should all get boosters: “Thus the argument against boosters is not a scientific one. The argument is really about where to ship the vaccines that we have. For example, as several vaccine experts wrote in this Lancet article last week, ‘even if some gain can ultimately be obtained from boosting, it will not outweigh the benefits of providing initial protection to the unvaccinated.’ “
General
Victorian chiropractor suspended for six months after linking childhood vaccination to poison: Anti-vax rhetoric has been an issue long before the current pandemic. It’s particularly worrying when any healthcare professional, whom patients view as informed, spreads misinformation to their patients and even more worrying how common this seems to be in chiropractic.
No, vaccinated people are not ‘just as likely’ to spread the coronavirus as unvaccinated people: Arguments made by anti-vax and some vaccine-hesitant individuals often surround the ability to spread COVID-19 – if I’m not at high risk of dying, and I can still spread the disease if vaccinated, why should I get the vaccine?
I will try to explain that these things are not binary – you are not just infectious or non-infectious, transmissible or non-transmissible, but these things exist on a spectrum. Being vaccinated will not completely prevent your ability to transmit the virus (should you still become infected) but they vastly vastly reduce it. This is because vaccinated infected people tend not to get as sick, tend not to be sick as long, and tend not to get sick in the first place with COVID-19. Disappointingly, some studies have shown vaccinated infected people have similar viral loads to unvaccinated infected people. However, their ability to transmit seems to be way down looking at epidemiological data (I would suggest this might be because vaccinated people have reduced symptoms they may cough less). Either way, the benefit of getting vaccinated – not just for yourself but your loved ones and community – is clear.