Another Way to Help US Chess

All Things Chess
1

US Chess really had to tighten its belt due to COVID, and appeals were made for donations to help US Chess make it through the pandemic.

Here is another great way to help US Chess - and it’s FREE!

Get vaccinated

I understand there can be concerns about the vaccine. Let’s put some things in context.

First, COVID is not like measles, or other diseases where getting the disease confers long-term immunity. Coronaviruses are the cause of SARs, MERs, and the common cold. Our immune systems tend to provide immunity for shorter periods, at most a year, against coronaviruses. The immune system will tend to remember how to make antibodies against coronaviruses, but the actual antibodies generally dissipate after 6 months.

When one gets COVID, the degree of infection can vary depending upon the initial viral load. This means the number of antibodies created can also vary.

Generally, the maximum protection from getting infected is around 75% to 85% of the protection offered by mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna.)

When one gets a vaccine, the anticipated number of antibodies created is in a more standard range because the conditions are more predictable.

It was originally anticipated that vaccines would maintain their efficacy for a year. Then, some results indicated they may last longer. Now it’s looking closer to 6-8 months. Based on this, we can anticipate that immunity from infection lasts about 3-6 months. It is not like measles or other diseases where it lasts for years.

It is possible that as one gets a series of vaccinations, that longer durations may be provided. But there is likely an upper limit for duration with the current vaccines.

Here is a good PBS piece on duration of immunity: whyy.org/articles/what-immunity … a-vaccine/

Here is a good piece by Johns Hopkins on vaccine myths (including the fact that mRNA vaccines do not impact DNA): hopkinsmedicine.org/health/ … ersus-fact

We are chess players. We have to deal with reality to improve. We don’t lose games because we tripped over a rock, or the sun was in our eyes - we lose because we were outplayed. We have to accept the issue and then correct it.

Most reactions to the vaccine are minor. There have been about 1,000 U.S. deaths after receiving an mRNA vaccine as reported by the VAERS database. However, this includes any recorded death after vaccine receipt, such as an auto accident. (See msn.com/en-us/health/medica … r-BB1en6bL)

This is a U. S. death rate of about 0.001% from mRNA vaccines.

The death rate from COVID is 1.65%.

In other words, COVID is at least 1,650 times more dangerous than the vaccine (and this isn’t including COVID morbidity rates which appear to me much, much greater than vaccine morbidity rates.

Get vaccinated. When your children are of eligible age, get them vaccinated.

I anticipate that it’s likely that hotels will not cancel the space for National Scholastic tournaments in 2022. If US Chess cannot populate Nationals with near to normally anticipated entries, these events could prove to be financially troublesome for US Chess.

Get vaccinated!

This post, and the quoted links, are factual. And like we do in chess, we have to deal with it.

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Thank you, Kevin, for an excellent post.

Let’s hope your major statistic – that dying from NOT being vaccinated is 1600 times more likely than dying from BEING vaccinated – will finally shake some of these anti-vax, anti-mask knuckleheads into doing the right thing.

“This is America, I have the right to go into a large crowd with no vax and no mask and infect dozens of people.” Sure. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that your freedom ends where the next person’s nose begins?

“My religion tells me that I am not allowed to get vaccinated.” If that’s the case, you need to get yourself a different religion.

“It is not healthy to put foreign substances into my body.” Ask anybody dying of COVID if they feel healthier than those who allowed Pfizer or Moderna into their bodies.

“The vaccine has not been fully approved.” What does it take to convince you? Isn’t a 1600-to-1 ratio enough?

I like to think that most chess players are too smart to be in the knucklehead category. Let’s hope so. Perhaps the governors of at least two major states should be required to learn chess.

Bill Smythe

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Sadly, this is not my experience. I know chess players (including some very good ones) with all sorts of knucklehead beliefs/opinions. Exhibit A (although I didn’t know him): Bobby Fischer.

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My club in IL has been meeting in person since the first IL reopening on July 1 2020 (almost 14 months ago) with a suspension from late November 2020 through January 2021 (when IL closed up again). We required attendees to wear masks when the rules required that. When the rules relaxed so that a vaccinated person did not need to wear a mask we followed those rules while being one of the very few organizations I’ve heard of that actually required proof of vaccination before allowing somebody to not wear a mask. Some people were annoyed at having to wear a mask but most were greatly relieved knowing that a person really did have to prove vaccination before being able to go mask-less. That was an incentive for club members to get vaccinated.

Starting tomorrow even vaccinated people in IL will have to wear masks and we will require it again.

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+1 very well said

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Whatever happened to “My Body, My Decision”?

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The problem is your “decision” not to get vaccinated does not affect only you. It puts those around you at greater risk. The good news is that those who refuse to get vaccinated will be dying in exponentially greater numbers than the vaccinated. It’s just Charles Darwin thinning the herd.

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One must stop at lights, drive on the right side of the road, not drink and drive, pay taxes, refrain from taking your neighbors’ stuff, etc.

Limiting individual rights to good of the whole of society is part of the price to live in civil society.

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well, let them get the vaccine then. and, yes, that is survival of the fittest.

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Correct. It’s actually “our bodies” and hence “my decision” isn’t appropriate.

  • Viruses only mutate when reproducing, and they only reproduce when infecting a new host.
  • The combination of individual and herd immunity therefore reduces mutations
  • The combination of individual and herd immunity lends additional protection to the immuno-compromised.
  • It’s been accepted since a 1905 SCOTUS case Jacobson v Massachusetts, has long affirmed that individuals have social responsibilities as well as rights, and that reason contributing to the common public health overrides individual liberty. It also affirms that STATES, not the FEDs, have the power to compel this.
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Actually, it’s not. Survival of the fittest is often mistaken to think it means “those most physically (or mentally) fit.”

It doesn’t. Survival of the fittest refers to the way that species FIT INTO the environment. It’s not “fit” like individual strength, it’s “fit” like a puzzle piece (representing a group) fitting into a puzzle. A vaccine is not a “natural adaptation.”

Additionally, while those unvaccinated die off, they are still a breeding ground for variants, which would be vaccine-resistant and more deadly, during the time that the unvaccinated still survive.

This is the case of the alien invader, and we all need to work together to defeat it.

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It’s sad to see chess players regurgitating media and pharma industry talking points. Randy Bauer seems to know a lot about virology and immunology. Randy, what was the last science class you took? HS Biology, 1985 is my guess.

I was also unaware that Darwin still walked the earth, and was somehow involved in thinning herds.

But the saddest is chess players exulting over the (putative) deaths of fellow players for choosing one risk over another. Mr. Parker, do you realize that you will probably face some of the people you insulted OTB? When did it become cool to vilify people for getting sick?

Some of you may recall the last time Dr. Fauci warned us of imminent death through casual personal contact. It was the early 1980s, and gay men were dying from a variety of illnesses of mysterious origin. The religious right took the opportunity to remind us of how much God hated homosexuality, that this was His revenge for their sinful lifestyle. “Why can’t they just stop…?”

We are repeating this, except that the hippies who once chanted FREE LOVE are the ones asking The Almighty to smite His enemies.

Except for very rare circumstances we do not take medicines for others. (E.g. I’d get the flu shot if my wife had just had an organ transplant). A person who gets vaccinated takes 100% of the risk and, depending on their situation, gets 90-100% of the benefit. The other 10% is for the person who takes care of them when they fall ill. The benefit to “the herd” is equal to the number one (“1”) divided by the size of the herd. If you think you are protecting your city from COVID, or your state, or the globe, you are deluded.

We have reached peak absurdity in all this. The vaccine is obviously for last year’s variant. Taking it is like taking the vaccine for the predominant influenza strain that circulated in 2013.

I await reliable numbers on “breakthrough” hospitalizations and deaths from a country in which the revolving door separating regulators, public health officials, and industry does not swing so wide. Israel is the best bet since they are fanatical about numbers and quite good at their application and interpretation.

In the meantime I read through depressing threads like this one, in which the prevailing sentiment is to blame people who did NOT take the vaccine for the vaccine’s apparent failure. You can’t get crazier than that IMO. It’s like an alcoholic blaming me, a teetotaler, for their cirrhosis, or a smoker blaming me for not smoking and giving him lung cancer.

BTW I am a scientist, organic chemistry PhD. I have worked in and around biopharma for the last 30+ years. Of course I have my biases but I do not base anything I say on anybody’s opinion, editorial, or political affiliation. I read scientific and medical journals, and official public health reports.

And thus I leave you with two more stats which provide some perspective.

  1. Divide 8.5 billion people by 4.6 million deaths and what do you get? My calculator gives me 1848.

We have shut down the world and destroyed our economies because a virus has killed 1 in 1848 people. The sickest, oldest, unhealthiest 1 in 1848 people. Meanwhile malaria kills between 300,000 and 500,000 CHILDREN every year.

  1. Speaking of which, fewer than 400 people younger than 18 have died from COVID in the US, and just 8 in the past year, yet we are still debating vaccinating and masking children. We will probably not have a real school year due to ridiculous zero covid policies.

COVID is never going away. If you gave everyone on earth 7 boosters it would not go away because the virus, unlike polio and smallpox, has animal reservoirs. It has been and always will be with us.

Unless, of course it was engineered, but I’m not willing to go there yet.

Angelo DePalma

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This forum isn’t a place to debate the merits or otherwise of vaccination. The original post was marginally related to chess, saying that players can help US Chess by getting vaccinated, and Angelo DePalma’s post presents an opposing point of view. I’m locking the topic.