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Covid 19-31 The Mutants Are Coming


Mlle. Zabzie

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7 hours ago, Arakan said:

Looking at vaccine statistics as of now, it seems that roughly 50% of the population in the US and the UK got at least their first sho

I just posted the link that includes a chart that shows something quite different. Only 9 states and one (tiny) US territory have received 50%, there are many more states, particularly the red ones, where the percentage is barely in the 20's percentile. Overall there the adult population of the US having received at least one dose is still quite below 50%

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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Well I was firstly responding to the claim that it is "ignorant" to think that Covid isn't a threat to people under 40. It isn't ignorant to say it is statistically not very much of a threat to that group, because it isn't, and that hasn't really changed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/04/28/hawaii-covid-tourist-death-child/

Admittedly, death rates are extremely low for COVID-19 among children (HIGHLY UNLIKELY (near impossible) to be lower than death from the vaccine) and side effects from COVID-19 are also certainly more serious and common than for vaccines too. Pooh-poohing the danger of COVID-19 to young people while overstating the danger of vaccines is classic misinformation by anti-vaxxers.

Just to show that these types of viruses aren't inherently less dangerous to young people:

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Let's take a closer look at the numbers of deaths associated with the H1N1 pandemic. Of the estimated 9,820 deaths:

  • 1,090 (11%) have occurred in children 0-17 years of age
  • 7,450 (76%) in people 18-64 years of age
  • 1,280 (13%) in people over 65 years of age

This age distribution differs considerably from what we see with seasonal influenza.

Re: Herd immunity ... again ...

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Vaccinating children is really not about protecting the children from the virus because the risks to them are actually very small. You're right that the question becomes do you need to vaccinate children to achieve 'herd immunity'. I guess the answer is maybe. That is whether herd immunity is your goal or not. It also depends whether elimination is your goal or not (it not a very realistic goal), and also how many people in your country are taking the vaccine. 

I'll point out again that your assertions about herd immunity are your opinion and not based in fact.

From last thread:

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Show your work. These assertions are very serious and lack any credibility. That is not what herd immunity means. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2

https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/achieving-herd-immunity-with-covid19.html

You are confidently declaring that we'll hit a certain threshold that we A) don't know what it is B.) is hampered by vaccine take-up in rich countries C) Vaccine availability in poor countries D) potential variants that erode efficacy of existing vaccines.

And as @Fury Resurrected added:

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Also we have no idea yet how long immunity lasts with the vaccines (or with prior infection).

We do not know the things you are claiming @Heartofice

 

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2 hours ago, Week said:

Admittedly, death rates are extremely low for COVID-19 among children (HIGHLY UNLIKELY (near impossible) to be lower than death from the vaccine) and side effects from COVID-19 are also certainly more serious and common than for vaccines too. Pooh-poohing the danger of COVID-19 to young people while overstating the danger of vaccines is classic misinformation by anti-vaxxers.

Right, so death rates are extremely low for Covid amongst children. We agree on that then? So what are the dangers you are talking about. Show your working. How many children are getting extremely ill from the virus? Show your working. I already did it for you luckily. 

2 hours ago, Week said:

One child died? A child who had co-morbities? Why are you presenting us with this article? What do you think it shows? Is this your working? 

2 hours ago, Week said:

 

 

riiiiiiiight... so two other diseases have different death rates? Why are you showing this? What are you trying to say here? Other diseases have different death rates? We know the death rates for Covid.. there is a ton of data already out there. Why aren't you looking at that?

https://data.spectator.co.uk/

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Infection Fatality Ratio (chances of dying from an infection) 0-17 years: 0.002%
  18-49 years: 0.05%
  50-64 years: 0.6%
  65+ years: 9%
Percent of infections that are asymptomatic 30%
Infectiousness of asymptomatic individuals relative to symptomatic 75%
Percentage of transmission occurring prior to symptom onset 50%
R0 (basic reproduction number of the virus) 2.5

I highlighted it for you so that it will make it easier for you to see. Or go back to my previous post for data on hospitalisations.
 

Quote

Show your work. These assertions are very serious and lack any credibility. That is not what herd immunity means. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2

https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/achieving-herd-immunity-with-covid19.html

You are confidently declaring that we'll hit a certain threshold that we A) don't know what it is B.) is hampered by vaccine take-up in rich countries C) Vaccine availability in poor countries D) potential variants that erode efficacy of existing vaccines.

Really I'm not sure what you are arguing here, or what you think I am arguing? I'm not saying that Herd Immunity gets rid of the virus, go back to my post. I said it stops it spreading exponentially. .(we are stuck with the virus forever, much like a number of other viruses, such as the flu) Now what is the threshold for herd immunity? Yes we aren't sure but we have a reasonable idea that it could be between 70-80% of the population with immunity.  Those have been the WHO estimates for some time, Fauci has started at 60% and worked his way up to higher estimates over time (probably to ensure people get vaccinated more than anything). 

We can look at Israel to see how they are doing, as they have been so far ahead with vaccinations:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56722186
 

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Prof Eyal Leshem, a director at Israel's largest hospital, the Sheba Medical Center, said herd immunity was the "only explanation" for the fact that cases continued to fall even as more restrictions were lifted.

"There is a continuous decline despite returning to near normalcy," he said.

"This tells us that even if a person is infected, most people they meet walking around won't be infected by them."

And cases are falling in all age groups including children, even though under-16s are not generally being vaccinated.

Then there is this assumption that anyone is saying that herd immunity means you can just down tools and pretend the virus is over. Nobody is saying that, I am certainly not saying that. It's been obvious for a while that variants mean that we will be getting top up jabs pretty often. This is not unusual, it already happens with the flu. 


 

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But a future variant which does show resistance to the vaccine, Prof Leshem explained, could mean people have less protection and the country could dip below the herd immunity threshold.

This isn't insurmountable - it could be tackled with tweaks to the vaccine, as already happens with the annual flu jab.

 

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Israel is an interesting example and it certainly gives us all hope.  But I think the media (and probably this site too) is too obsessed with the idea of herd immunity.  Israel has relaxed restrictions but it is still far from "back to normal".  It scores 49/100 on ourworldindata's stringency index.

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

It also depends whether elimination is your goal or not (it not a very realistic goal), and also how many people in your country are taking the vaccine. 

True enough.  Elimination doesn't seem particularly likely given mutations.  You'd want to reduce COVID-19 to very low levels and fatalities to even lower levels (fatalities around flu is a possible benchmark here).  I expect we'll need teenagers (at least) to get vaccinated to ensure that.  But I am guessing here. 

And I would sympathise with a parent's decision.  It is a difficult responsibility.  But I do think that there will be more and more evidence to point towards it being safe.  It may not be available in Aug/Sept for some parents, but hopefully soon after.

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38 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Israel is an interesting example and it certainly gives us all hope.  But I think the media (and probably this site too) is too obsessed with the idea of herd immunity.  Israel has relaxed restrictions but it is still far from "back to normal".  It scores 49/100 on ourworldindata's stringency index.

True enough.  Elimination doesn't seem particularly likely given mutations.  You'd want to reduce COVID-19 to very low levels and fatalities to even lower levels (fatalities around flu is a possible benchmark here).  I expect we'll need teenagers (at least) to get vaccinated to ensure that.  But I am guessing here. 

And I would sympathise with a parent's decision.  It is a difficult responsibility.  But I do think that there will be more and more evidence to point towards it being safe.  It may not be available in Aug/Sept for some parents, but hopefully soon after.

The test case will be the UK after June, when it ‘should’ be opening up. By that point the over 50s should have had their second jab. We’ll see what happens at that point.

Although it is pretty unclear what the goal is here, originally the plan was to ‘protect the NHS’. But that will have happened, with the vulnerable protected it’s extremely unlikely there would be any real pressure of medical services. 
 

As for vaccines, yes I agree we should have a lot more evidence about their long term safety soon. I don’t think it puts people into the ‘anti vax’ category for not really wanting to jab their children. I don’t think it’s especially ethical to give vaccines to children if they aren’t directly protected from the disease ( given how unlikely the disease is to affect them anyway).

It isn’t like MMR where there is already decades of evidence behind it, many of these vaccines are brand new, using very new technology. I think some level of scepticism is normal. I’d be annoyed at adults who don’t have it, but less annoyed at parents who won’t give it to their kids. That’s all I’m saying.

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12 hours ago, Arakan said:

The ethical question now is: do we in the West need to vaccinate every 18year old plus (people with basically no health risk) just to „open up“ (which means for many simple entertainment time) while on the other side of the world 10,000 people die daily as of now (and this figure will rise in the upcoming weeks). I mean until end of May conservative projections show 6,000 daily deaths (only official figures). 

It's not an ethical question so much as a technical one. First, vaccines are, at best, a medium-term solution. Even if you could magically give every person in India a vaccine, you would see no effect for the first two weeks because that's how long they take to kick in. Since there is no such magic and even in the most organized places in the world, the rollout takes on the order of months, providing vaccines now will do pretty much nothing until the end of May.

Second, the vaccines that are most prevalent in the US (i.e. Pfizer and Moderna) require cold storage. The US and EU have the infrastructure to distribute them, but this probably does not exist everywhere the vaccines need to go. Furthermore, the US is trying to export its AZ and J&J vaccines (which have no such storage requirements), but it's stymied by the fact that the manufacturing for these was shoddy and they now need more testing. We should and we will sort this out, but it's not an ethical issue (beyond the usual corruption that caused the shoddy manufacturing).

 

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2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Right, so death rates are extremely low for Covid amongst children. We agree on that then? So what are the dangers you are talking about. Show your working. How many children are getting extremely ill from the virus? Show your working. I already did it for you luckily. 

nearly 1 out of every 3 people have had longer term affects from Covid in surveys done so far. Including kids. And that's after having sometimes relatively mild cases. Signing up for headaches, anxiety, depression and brain fog for kids for the rest of their lives? SIGN ME UP. 

The idea that parents should sign up for a n==1 test plan because other folks think that this is the same kind of virus as we've ever had is very interesting. You're right that kids don't tend to die from it. But we also don't know what else is going to happen to those kids - what developmental disabilities they might have, what issues they might have later in life - because we can't study that that long. But what we do know? Ain't real awesome.

 

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According to surveys 75 % are unwilling to take the AZ vaccine here. The general willingness to get vaccinated is slowly rising again. There are a lot of no shows because people are not told in advance which vaccine they will get. The unwillingness to get the J&J vaccine is rising too though. 

People who are getting the first shot now are mostly getting the mRNA vaccines though because of the supply problems on the AZ side as they need to keep most of the AZ vaccine they have for the people who got their first shot 2-3 months ago. My mum should get her 2nd shot this week. 

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The problem now in the US is that rates of vaccination of individuals 18-49 is much less than those aged 50-64 (about 10% compared to 27%). And the former age cohort is in general more likely to transmit the disease to more than 1 person, according to some publications (its because they are 'working age', and therefore more likely to be out and about working)

No one knows the reasons why, whether it is difficulty in scheduling due to having to work, or whether a false sense of trust in their immune systems, or what.

 

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9 hours ago, Karlbear said:

nearly 1 out of every 3 people have had longer term affects from Covid in surveys done so far. Including kids. And that's after having sometimes relatively mild cases. Signing up for headaches, anxiety, depression and brain fog for kids for the rest of their lives? SIGN ME UP. 

The idea that parents should sign up for a n==1 test plan because other folks think that this is the same kind of virus as we've ever had is very interesting. You're right that kids don't tend to die from it. But we also don't know what else is going to happen to those kids - what developmental disabilities they might have, what issues they might have later in life - because we can't study that that long. But what we do know? Ain't real awesome.

So the question would then be; which is the more threatening, vaccine side effects or Covid side effects in that age group? Again, there’s very little data for this group so we don’t know. I know the UK are already discussing whether the downsides of AZ (blood clotting) make it worthwhile to vaccinate under 30’s with. I think there’s an argument that vaccinating kids is better for society at large more than the individual kid, so I can see why some might be reluctant to ‘take one for the team’ as it were.

Also, my understanding is that you need trials for an age group first anyway, which haven’t completed for any of the vaccines yet. So this is moot until then.

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3 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Also, my understanding is that you need trials for an age group first anyway, which haven’t completed for any of the vaccines yet. So this is moot until then.

Pfizer/Biontech have completed their trials and submitted a request for approval to the FDA in the US and EMA in the EU.

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/pfizer-biontech-cma-expansion/

This will allow the vaccine to be used on those between 12 and 15.  They are continuing trials for those under 12 and results will be released in a few months.

A few million people in the 16-17 age bracket have already got the vaccine.  I'm not aware of any concern regarding side effects (so far).  But you are right about AZ.  It's hard to imagine that it will be used on kids.  But other vaccine makers like Moderna are also actively looking at using their vaccine on kids.

I imagine health regulators do take on board any risk around vaccinating the very young when they make a decision.

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6 minutes ago, Padraig said:

I imagine health regulators do take on board any risk around vaccination when they make a decision.

If you ask me, the US authorities are giving all signals that they are going to look very carefully at any evidence of trouble around the vaccines. I'm saying this after how they were willing to throw J&J under the bus for a handful of troubling cases and how they intervened in the troubled Baltimore plant or the treatment of AZ for a couple of percent points in the efficacy numbers.

Yes, the safety bar for teenagers and children is going to be raised dramatically as it should be.

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12 hours ago, Leap said:

On the topic of the virus affecting the young, here's an article from the BBC on how the Brazil variant seems to be affecting children more.

I've been hearing the same stories from different regions in LA. I do wonder if it has to do with the variants or with widespread poverty.  Probably a combination of multiple factors. Unfortunately there is little data to make proper comparisons.

 

12 hours ago, Leap said:

On the topic of Post-Covid syndrome, I have my first session at a long-covid clinic on Friday. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of information out there so far, although I did heard one of the Economist pods theorise that it was something like latent virus in the system, inflammation, or long term damage to organs/nervous system (or something else). I have to say I would prefer one of the first two. Generally my symptoms have got better since I had the virus last October, but I'd still really like some answers.

I'm sorry to hear that. From what I read, it might really have to do with the immune response of your body against the disease that leaves you in a hyperinflamatory status. I've compared before long-covid with the convalescent phase for people who had mononucleosis.

I've known about two dozens of person with covid. Mostly in the 25-40yo range. None of them seem to be suffering of long term issues. A few felt tired for a month or so. However a 60+ yo female relative (no blood related) was stuck to a wheelchair for months after being hospitalized for COVID and only now is making a very slow recovery. From what they tell, she looks 20 years older.

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15 minutes ago, Leap said:

Thanks - fortunately my only symptom is shortness of breath, which is at this point mostly fine except for in certain weather conditions and during/after drinking. Oddly it has not really impacted my ability to exercise (including running). When I went in to get checked out the other week, my oxygen levels were 99% and the scans showed my lungs were fine, so I am really curious what is going on in there.

I do not think you are really going to find that many answers. The people we see that still have residual symptoms, there is little that we have found objectively abnormal for us to really do anything especially if they have normal Sp02 saturations. This is especially true if it is not interfering with your ability to function & exercise.

There was a big study out of the UK that you can find over here that looked into long covid - at the moment we don't really have a case definition etc, but that might change.

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That 'herd immunity' about which some so speak so definitively -- forget about it.

This is not a surprise.

"Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.

There is consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable...."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-herd-immunity-vaccine.html?

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...daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon....

 

In a specific way, this is a frustrating article: the numbers cited as to how many are vaccinated in this country are higher than they are, and directly contradicted by articles and graphs right next to it.

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9 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

So the question would then be; which is the more threatening, vaccine side effects or Covid side effects in that age group? Again, there’s very little data for this group so we don’t know. I know the UK are already discussing whether the downsides of AZ (blood clotting) make it worthwhile to vaccinate under 30’s with. I think there’s an argument that vaccinating kids is better for society at large more than the individual kid, so I can see why some might be reluctant to ‘take one for the team’ as it were.

Also, my understanding is that you need trials for an age group first anyway, which haven’t completed for any of the vaccines yet. So this is moot until then.

Pfizer has run trials for 12-15 already, and their trial for 8-12 is finishing this month. The trials for younger are finishing in July.

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33 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That 'herd immunity' about which some so speak so definitively -- forget about it.

This is not a surprise.

"Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.

There is consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable...."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-herd-immunity-vaccine.html?

In a specific way, this is a frustrating article: the numbers cited as to how many are vaccinated in this country are higher than they are, and directly contradicted by articles and graphs right next to it.

This has been obvious for quite a while. This isn’t a polio, or even a measles, it’s more of a flu from that perspective.  Vaccination changes risk calculations though.  

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