Jump to content

Covid #35: I am the Alpha and the Omega.


Recommended Posts

6 hours ago, Week said:

Wait until HoI tells you about the death rate -- the only possible relevant metric.

Well I could bring it up.. but then you'd just ignore it anyway.

6 hours ago, Week said:

How effective is the vaccine for those who medically cannot take it or do not have a strong immune response?

Right and just like the 3 million times you've brought this up in the past, I'll ask you again, how many people are you talking about here? What do they do about all the other contagious diseases we have to live with every single day? What is your proposed solution?

 

2 hours ago, Gorn said:

But doesn't CDC data about Delta variant make vaccine mandates officially pointless? Vaccinated people spread that variant just as much as the unvaccinated, they just don't get sick (mostly).

Isn' the point of that Twitter thread that actually no, vaccinated people don't transmit the virus as much as the unvaccinated and that message needs to be told because lots are misinterpreting what is being said.
The question is probably still just how much does vaccination prevent transmission, and it might not be enough even if almost everyone is vaccinated. So most likely we all have to accept that the virus is never going to disappear and we have to learn to live with it and accept there will be a level of risk in life. Luckily the vaccinations mean that the level of risk far far lower if you get vaccinated, which is especially important for those for whom the virus is most problematic. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Gorn said:

But doesn't CDC data about Delta variant make vaccine mandates officially pointless? Vaccinated people spread that variant just as much as the unvaccinated, they just don't get sick (mostly).

The CDC says that there is an 8-fold reduction in disease (and a 25 fold reduction in hospitalisation and deaths).  Thus, if people get vaccinated, they are much more unlikely to get the disease.  If they don't have the disease, they can't pass it on.  Delta might change that a little but I doubt an 8 fold reduction will dissappear.

Thus, there is a logic to a mandate.

Sure, if they do get the disease, they may be as likely to pass it onto others, but that's less important (although unfortunate).

13 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

So should the U.S. expect at least one more spike after this one when winter hits?

Why only one?  If more people don't get vaccinated, you are depending on most people becoming permanently (or for years anyhow) immune via contracting the disease.  That doesn't seem likely.  We've already had reinfections.

And if  vaccines also lose effectiveness, you are also depending on people getting boosters.   Will everyone who is vaccinated get another?  With the amount of false news floating around, who knows!

The US is facing the possibility of permanent rolling waves (IMO).  I'm surprised there isn't more discussion about the long term consequences of the current situation there.  (Or i'm missing it).

Somewhat related, we've heard since the beginning that people with prior conditions are much more likely to end up in hospital and die from COVID.  And now, probably not surprising, breakthrough infections are more likely for people who have prior conditions.  I'm not sure has there been a major study on breakthough conditions but I do wonder how the odds have changed for such people.  Will a third dose help?  I know Israel is looking at that.  And it might help but I don't think it will be enough.  People's refusal to get vaccinated is really leaving others exposed.  The mask issue just adds to it.  It is such a small thing that could help things a lot if enough people used them.

In Europe at least there are signs that the case rate is flattening again (helped by restrictions).  But its hard to know whether there will be another explosion.  Some countries haven't been hit by Delta significantly yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/30/vaccination-increases-states-delta-surges/

Please, PLEASE! may this continue. Including the muzzling and die-off of the evil talk show sorts who make sacks of fula from peddling the lies about the virus and vaccines.

Quote

 

. . . . More than 856,000 doses were administered Friday, the highest daily figure since July 3, according to The Washington Post’s vaccine tracker. This was the third week that states with the highest numbers of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination numbers, deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing Friday.

Vaccine-hesitant pockets of the country turned hot spots, are at the vanguard, including Louisiana, which experienced a 114 percent increase in uptake, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Arkansas recorded a 96 percent increase, Alabama, 65 percent, and Missouri, 49 percent. . . . 

 

Interestingly, tellingly, regarding Delta, last night I saw a higher number of masked during the nightly paseo here, where we have a very high level of vaccination, while previously, the masking had, understandably dropped.  I was seeing masked even some people seated in the covid sheds and sidewalks.  Of course almost all of Staten Island (where cops and so many other unreconstructed sorts live, who have been from the git go the only tRump supporters here other than the extreme ultra Orthodox communities, who won't mask or vaccinate either and are spreading Delta at sleepaway camps and everywhere else) is unvaccinated, and has massive numbers of infections,  who have filled the hospitals.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We’ve stayed masked at any indoor public space.

Yesterday during a haircut I was just chatting normally with the stylist — both of us masked— until this otherwise normal-seeming woman told me that she isn’t getting vaccinated because an ObGyn surgeon customer told her that several patients had stopped ovulating after getting the vaccine and several others had miscarried.  It was as shocking and disconcerting as hearing someone be openly racist.

Then all I could think was: there’s an imbecile wielding sharp scissors about my head right now.  A vainer man’s first worry might have been for his hair, so good to know I have sensible priorities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

We’ve stayed masked at any indoor public space.

Yesterday during a haircut I was just chatting normally with the stylist — both of us masked— until this otherwise normal-seeming woman told me that she isn’t getting vaccinated because an ObGyn surgeon customer told her that several patients had stopped ovulating after getting the vaccine and several others had miscarried.  It was as shocking and disconcerting as hearing someone be openly racist.

Then all I could think was: there’s an imbecile wielding sharp scissors about my head right now.  A vainer man’s first worry might have been for his hair, so good to know I have sensible priorities.

Off topic, but the last time I got my hair cut at a mid level chain the stylist began our conversation by saying how much she hated cutting hair. As she proceeded to fuck my cut up she told me she was think of getting a law degree.....from a community college that at the time didn't even offer paralegal two year degrees.

Safe to say I've never worried about what the cost of a cut was after that. $50 before tipping is a bargain in my book. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

Why only one?  If more people don't get vaccinated, you are depending on most people becoming permanently (or for years anyhow) immune via contracting the disease.  That doesn't seem likely.  We've already had reinfections.

And if  vaccines also lose effectiveness, you are also depending on people getting boosters.   Will everyone who is vaccinated get another?  With the amount of false news floating around, who knows!

The US is facing the possibility of permanent rolling waves (IMO).  I'm surprised there isn't more discussion about the long term consequences of the current situation there.  (Or i'm missing it).

Prior infection provides very good protection from all the studies that have been done.  Protection is on par with the best vaccines, and duration is at least a year (and counting) to at least the original strain.  Again, much like the best vaccines.  The rate of reinfection in people that were previously infected, is very low, much like the rate of breakthrough infections in the vaccinated is very low.  Yes, it's possible and it sucks when it happens, but in the big picture view, it's not yet a concern.  Also, reinfection, much like in breakthrough infections, generally leads to mild illness.

So at this moment, I'm not concerned about permanent rolling waves occurring in the USA and throughout the world.  It's possible, but it would require the emergence of a new variant that effectively evades the immunity conferred by prior infection or vaccination and yet still causes severe disease.

Also, in the US we are finally seeing businesses and government organizations start to mandate vaccination of their employees, and similarly, some schools are mandating vaccination.  When the FDA fully approves the vaccines, the mandates for vaccination will likely pick up and some of the vaccine hesitancy should also be reduced.  A lot of Republican governors and even people in the conservative Republican friendly media are finally pushing people hard to get vaccinated.  And it seems to be working, as Zorral's link above shows that more people are getting vaccinated now, especially in states with low vaccination rates.

I think the US will get to a good level of protection (with a combination of vaccination and infection) within 6 to 12 months.  Hopefully a really problematic variant that sets everything back to ground zero doesn't pop up in the next 2-3 years, which is probably how long it will take to get the rest of the world vaccinated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Gorn said:

But doesn't CDC data about Delta variant make vaccine mandates officially pointless? Vaccinated people spread that variant just as much as the unvaccinated, they just don't get sick (mostly). I guess you could make an argument about protecting the hospital system from overloading, but that risk isn't currently present in any Western countries. Vaccinating is about protecting yourself, not about protecting others or doing a favor to the society.

And if a significant portion of population chooses to ignore medical evidence about risks and remain unvaccinated, keep in mind that a significant portion of population also smokes tobacco regularly, and that a not-insignificant portion of population uses hard drugs regularly. I disagree with their choice, but I don't go around knocking cigarettes out of people's hands.

The articles I’ve read don’t make it very clear.  The impression I got from some of the articles are that the vaccinated are joining the asymptomatic spreaders.  My state has a piss poor vaccination rate and our COVID numbers are hitting all time highs and well above other states especially those with substantially higher vaccination rates.  So is that because it’s transmitting more through the unvaccinated populace, or is it that we have a larger number of unvaccinated people being hospitalized which then accounts for the larger COVID count.  Or perhaps some combination of the above.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

I think the US will get to a good level of protection (with a combination of vaccination and infection) within 6 to 12 months.  Hopefully a really problematic variant that sets everything back to ground zero doesn't pop up in the next 2-3 years, which is probably how long it will take to get the rest of the world vaccinated.

Hopefully!

I did see the Fauci is hinting at full FDA approval in August.  That should help, as you say.

I do find it interesting that Israel is going for boosters for those over 60.  But hopefully that is because of an overabundance of caution.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/delta-variant-israel-to-give-pfizer-covid-booster-shots-to-elderly-.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The current horrendous spike that has reared its ugly head reportedly has Prez Joe at his wits end with frustration. He had hopes we had turned the corner on this pandemic.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/politics/joe-biden-pandemic-turning-point/index.html

Also from that article-

 A legal memo sent to the White House on July 6 — two days after Biden's Independence Day party — stated federal law doesn't prohibit public agencies and private businesses from requiring Covid-19 vaccines, even if the vaccines have only emergency use authorization.

^^^^^That's kind of a big deal imo. There's nothing legally preventing us from making life MUCH more difficult for the Vaxx hesitant. Time to crack the whip on these bastards imo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I've mentioned many times in many threads on this Forum, in rural areas it's increasingly difficult to access health care.  Recall 'rural' is used to cover towns and even small cities for some reason.  Even before the pandemic, the hospitals there had been disappearing.  The pandemic accelerated the process, as I've also mentioned.  However, rural is used, it is always used to describe the places where Delta is currently surging (except maybe Miami isn't considered rural?).  Florida currently has the highest and increasing numbers of hospitalizations.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/health/rural-hospital-closures-pandemic/index.html

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

I see the NYT is reporting that at least 233 staff members at two San Francisco hospitals have contracted Covid-19, mainly Delta, and all were fully vaccinated.

I was curious enough to read about that.

https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-outbreak-san-francisco-general-hospital-sf-covid-ucsf/10920805/

Quote

According to UCSF:

In July, 183 UCSF employees or learners tested positive for COVID out of 35,000 people.
84% were fully vaccinated.
2 vaccinated people were hospitalized

"We were expecting and planning for breakthroughs, that said the rate of breakthroughs is a little bit higher than we had originally predicted," said Dr. Adler. But that's because those predictions were based on data from the original variant, not the Delta - which is twice as infectious.

35k people.  American hospitals are supersized!  But COVID situation seems reasonably normal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/28/2021 at 11:13 PM, Padraig said:

He also thinks that COVID is here to stay.   I suppose he is probably right (although i'd be curious to read his logic for that).

Seeing a lot of discussion at the moment on the required herd immunity level for Delta which seems to put it out of practical reach. The previous figure of 85% was for OG non-Greekified COVID and people have been crunching numbers for Delta for months and seem to have come up with a figure of between 98% and, er, 130%. The latter case means that herd immunity for Delta, even with vaccines + prior infections, is impossible, and in the former case it is practically impossible (assuming more than 2% of the population can't take the vaccine for whatever medical reason or their immune system is so compromised it won't help, or they are morons).

This conclusion - from an American perspective - is relatively dark, suggesting that COVID will, due to the above reasons, become endemic and there will be permanent standing waves of the disease until better vaccines are developed (we know they're on their way, some attuned to Delta specifically, but no timescale) or unless Delta itself mutates into a variant that spreads as fast but is less serious (possible but not a given). Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaxx rates in the USA are much higher than in other countries, so the virus becoming endemic in the United States would cause huge numbers of deaths every year, permanently, until anti-vaxx numbers fall or the government intervenes more forcibly to make vaccinations mandatory.

What is quite interesting (given both threads are ten days old) is that people from the UK have asked how those factors figure in with the rates there, but since the threads are US-centric they didn't seem able to engage. This article paints a much rosier picture of COVID's morbidity in the UK - once a high immunity level is reached even if herd immunity is unachievable - falling to match or below that of flu, with an R rate of below 0 in the summer and above 0 in the winter, matching other winter diseases. The UK's relatively high rate of vaccine take-up has helped make the situation here much more optimistic than in the US.

In the UK all eyes on the ONS figures which should come out at the end of the week and confirm the degree to which cases seem to continue to be dropping despite the country relatively opening up to business as normal, which might indicate that the above outcome is happening already, which would be spectacularly good news. It would also show a way out of the pandemic globally: get the fuck vaccinated, yesterday.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Padraig said:

I was curious enough to read about that.

https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-outbreak-san-francisco-general-hospital-sf-covid-ucsf/10920805/

35k people.  American hospitals are supersized!  But COVID situation seems reasonably normal.

Still, do you want to be one of them after you’re fully vaccinated?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Padraig said:

I was curious enough to read about that.

https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-outbreak-san-francisco-general-hospital-sf-covid-ucsf/10920805/

35k people.  American hospitals are supersized!  But COVID situation seems reasonably normal.

Its a bit confusing because UCSF is also a university with courses, professors, students etc., so that isnt exactly the total number of hospital staff. The majority of cases at UCSF 9~90%) were from home or community spread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’m watching CNN and they are saying the CDC is reporting 6,300 ‘breakthrough’ infections out of how many fully vaccinated people? 163 M or so? And they are mainly people over the age of 65 with pre-existing conditions, so maybe they (hell, we) need a booster shot six months after their 2nd shot.

Of course, I assume they don’t hear about all the cases, but the pandemic in the US is really a pandemic of the unvaccinated now. Same in Canada, where the federal head of public health is saying we are at the start of the 4th wave, with infections more than doubling in two weeks, from 424 to 904 Thursday to Thursday.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I absolutely do not trust the CDC to accurately track all breakthrough infections, because many are asymptomatic and are therefore going to slip through any testing nets. I mean, very few people are getting tested for Covid unless they're symptomatic, or they know they've been exposed. So the only other way to capture asymptomatic infections (or the very, very mild ones) is when the infected person goes to the doctor for an unrelated medical issue.

A silent pandemic is still a pandemic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I thought the CDC stopped tracking vaccine breakthrough cases unless the person was hospitalized or died.  In hindsight that seems like a poor decision.

It was an absolutely terrible decision, because the CDC, federal government, and state governments all foisted the responsibility to stay safe from Covid directly on the shoulders of individual people, and then totally refused to do what was necessary (track breakthrough infections in vaccinated people) to give individuals the information necessary to make informed risk-management choices. They chose literally the stupidest option that maximizes harm, and especially maximizes harm to children, disabled folks, and chronically ill folks who have otherwise done all that they can to avoid Covid infection. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...