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Covid-19 #34 - Alpha, Delta, It’s All Greek to Me!


Fragile Bird

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Fauci reported today that the current covid deaths are via the Delta variant.  Again he pleas for people to get vaccinated, as the infection rates among the non-vaccinated increase.  Biden's very concerned, it seems, but decided it was still best to have official and public celebration of the 4th.

It seems that only 40 % of those identifying as 'republicans' have been vaccinated, while 70 % of those identifying as Dems have been vaccinated.   I just read that somewhere, do not know whether this is a fact, or even how They arrived at those numbers.  But I've been seeing in several of the usual places such sort of statements.

I've also been seeing that only the US G7 delegation observed covid safety protocols, but again, I don't know if that was true.  It certainly wasn't true that only Biden of the leaders masked, which Some said was the case.

 

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I heard those numbers on CNN as well. They interviewed the governor of Arkansas today, to ask about the fact they’re 44th on the list of states and wasn’t Huckabee worried about having less than 40% of the population vaccinated with even one dose. They’ve had a sharp jump in new cases.

They also interviewed the guy running the Covid team for Biden, who’s name I can’t recall, about the fact the US didn’t hit 70% of the population vaccinated with one dose by the 4th of July, which was Biden’s goal. “At least you hit 67%” the interviewer said, which made me snort out loud. My brother explained that the US administration uses “adult population”, those over 18, for their numbers, and the 2019 population number. A couple of weeks ago Biden congratulated the state of Washington for hitting the 70% number, and the state’s response was no, we haven’t, we use 16 and up and we use the 2020 population number.

The province of Ontario was using the same tactic, saying we had hit 75% of the population, without explaining their version of the numbers. At the time everyone had been using 12+ for weeks and we were at 73%, but the 75% was needed for opening up restrictions. Btw, we’re now at 76.6% of the 12+ population vaccinated with one dose (Canada’s at 77.2%) and 67.8% of the total population (Canada is at 67.9%). The 12+ group is 41.3% fully vaccinated (38.3% for Canada) and 36.5% of the total population (33.6% of the total population of Canada).

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3 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

yeah I'm waiting to see if they let him out today (he was admitted yesterday "for tests" for 24 hours) but we all know we don't usually hear the whole story.

Yeah there has been a similar case of a politician(non-vacinated though) here in Austria. Went to the hospital as a "precaution" too and he spent sons time in intense care in the end. You only hear the full story afterwards if at all. 

A 48 old guy who had one shot of AZ getting hospitalized for Covid-19 is not the most uplifting news though. 

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If you haven’t looked at Worldometer in a while, they now have a weekly feature showing the number of cases (and many other statistics) in the last 7 days and the 7 days previous to that. The UK increase is really shocking, and the US number has been creeping up.

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11 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

If you haven’t looked at Worldometer in a while, they now have a weekly feature showing the number of cases (and many other statistics) in the last 7 days and the 7 days previous to that. The UK increase is really shocking, and the US number has been creeping up.

Especially with more coming out about long covid (in kids as well) -- not to mention the increased risks of new variants.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/

Quote

Evidence from the first study of long covid in children suggests that more than half of children aged between 6 and 16 years old who contract the virus have at least one symptom lasting more than 120 days, with 42.6 per cent impaired by these symptoms during daily activities. These interim results are based on periodic assessments of 129 children in Italy who were diagnosed with covid-19 between March and November 2020 at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome (medRxiv, doi.org/fv9t).

The UK Office for National Statistics's latest report estimates that 12.9 per cent of UK children aged 2 to 11, and 14.5 per cent of children aged 12 to 16, still have symptoms five weeks after their first infection. Almost 500,000 UK children have tested positive for covid-19 since March 2020.

Most medical bodies say it normally takes a few days or weeks to recover from covid-19, and that most will make a full recovery within 12 weeks.

UK advocacy group Long Covid Kids says that it currently has details of 1200 children with long covid from 890 families in England. “And that number has been rising quickly,” says founder Sammie Mcfarland. “Not one has returned to their previous health, and most are unable to do their normal activities.”

The consequences of long covid in children can be debilitating. At a UK parliamentary briefing on 26 January, Mcfarland described how her 14-year-old daughter started to become vacant, weak and unresponsive after catching covid-19 in March 2020. After three weeks in bed, she did some gentle exercise in the garden and clutched her chest, complaining of heart pain. “She went very floppy and almost couldn't make it back into the house to bed,” says Mcfarland. “And she pretty much stayed there [in bed] for the next seven months.”

 

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1 hour ago, L'oiseau français said:

If you haven’t looked at Worldometer in a while, they now have a weekly feature showing the number of cases (and many other statistics) in the last 7 days and the 7 days previous to that. The UK increase is really shocking, and the US number has been creeping up.

Thats delta without a lot of lockdown.

from July 19, we can see delta with no lockdown, weekly increase should be even worse.

 

But perhaps Johnson is right and all will be well? Actually I wish him luck, that would be really great news for all of us, I am just not sure...

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4 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

A 48 old guy who had one shot of AZ getting hospitalized for Covid-19 is not the most uplifting news though. 

Yeah, makes me think BoJo is a bit hasty in lifting mask restrictions right now. Why not wait another month until the bulk of willing Britons will have their 2 jab and will then be better protected? Specially since the daily number of people getting their 1st dose  has barely slowed down, so there's definitely still a will to get it in the unvaccinated.

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1 hour ago, Clueless Northman said:

Yeah, makes me think BoJo is a bit hasty in lifting mask restrictions right now. Why not wait another month until the bulk of willing Britons will have their 2 jab and will then be better protected? Specially since the daily number of people getting their 1st dose  has barely slowed down, so there's definitely still a will to get it in the unvaccinated.

That was the logic last month.  So they postponed it by a month.  It was always going to be unlikely that he would wait another month.  Unless things went really pear-shaped.  Hospitalisations have continued to increase but at a very moderate rate compared to cases.  And they are mainly vaccinating young people now, who are not at comparable risk to those who are already vaccinated.

So there is a logic there and as Joanna said, it would be great for the world if it works out.

Israel has some new figures on Delta.  Notably worse than the previous figures from the UK.

Quote

The figures show that between May 2 and June 5, the vaccine had a 94.3% efficacy rate. From June 6, five days after the government canceled coronavirus restrictions, until early July, the rate plunged to 64%. A similar decline was recorded in protection against coronavirus symptoms, the report said.

At the same time, protection against hospitalization and serious illness remained strong. From May 2 to June 5, the efficacy rate in preventing hospitalization was 98.2%, compared with 93% from June 6 to July 3. 

64% isn't great but it continues to work against hospitalisation (I hope the sample size was good though).

https://fortune.com/2021/07/05/israel-data-plunge-efficacy-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-delta-variant/

The Luxembourg PM case certainly emphasises the need for that second dose.  Filippa mentioned the huge increase there.  Also in Greece and Denmark (and Belgium and Netherlands to a lesser degree).  We'll see where fatalities go in the next couple of weeks.  That is the big test.  Brutal times.

On 7/4/2021 at 7:46 PM, Luzifer's right hand said:

I know someone who works at BMW and the company vaccine program at least in Austria has changed and they are planning to give people who had J & J a 2nd shot. Not a decision such a big company would make without proper consultation I suspect. Official reason is delta. 

There has been a lot of concern about J&J recently because of the 1-shot v 2-shot issues with Pfizer/AZ.  So much so that J&J have said that their studies indicate it is capable of dealing with Delta (although a small study).

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/01/1012372893/johnson-johnsons-covid-vaccine-is-effective-against-the-delta-variant-studies-fi

The Washington Post has an article on it too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/04/johnson-johnson-vaccine-second-dose/

I imagine BMW feel it is the safer option to vaccinate people again.  Its very unlikely to be harmful given other studies on mixing vaccines.  But I don't believe they "know" anything for sure..

 

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3 hours ago, Padraig said:

Israel has some new figures on Delta.  Notably worse than the previous figures from the UK.

64% isn't great but it continues to work against hospitalisation (I hope the sample size was good though).

https://fortune.com/2021/07/05/israel-data-plunge-efficacy-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-delta-variant/

I saw some data reported from Canada today which seems more in line with the UK figures:

 

 

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18 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I saw some data reported from Canada today which seems more in line with the UK figures:

 

 

Dr. Bogoch is everywhere on tv here, very well respected. Those numbers give me some comfort, but what is the meaning of the three numbers? Is the first the median or average, and the other two the low and high?

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64% effectiveness at preventing infections and mild symptoms of the Delta strain lends credence to the assertion that you need 95%+ vaccination coverage to achieve herd immunity. Because 95% vaccination rate really only means about 60% of the population having fully protective immunity, the other 40% can still at least transmit the infection, and some will still get very sick and possibly die.

At the previously estimated herd immunity vaccination rate of 75%, with a 64% effectiveness this means only 48% of the population is fully protected. So more than half of the population would remain at least susceptible to infection. This means non-pharmaceutical controls (masks in crowded public places, contact tracing, isolation of known infected) will be important for a long time to come.

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8 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

Dr. Bogoch is everywhere on tv here, very well respected. Those numbers give me some comfort, but what is the meaning of the three numbers? Is the first the median or average, and the other two the low and high?

It means they are confident the efficacy is between the low and high numbers,  the first number shown is their best estimate of the value. The more data they have the smaller the range should be.

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10 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

Dr. Bogoch is everywhere on tv here, very well respected. Those numbers give me some comfort, but what is the meaning of the three numbers? Is the first the median or average, and the other two the low and high?

The caption says it. It's the 95 % confidence interval,  i.e. there's a 95 % probability that the true value is between the two numbers in brackets.

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The Epsilon variant has three mutations to the spike protein which confer resistance to some of the vaccine antibodies.

Meanwhile, the Lambda variant is becoming a variant of concern. Hopefully it's not being studied in the Black Mesa Research Facility.

On the plus side, everyone is becoming much more conversant in the Greek alphabet.

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