Covid-19 #41: Collateral Damage

[RhaenysBee]

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

At this stage I am hopeful our final death tally, once the pandemic phase of this thing is over, is in the hundreds rather than the thousands. But we still have a lot of people unvaccinated, and with the very high vaccination rate to achieve a decent sort of herd immunity we may yet have thousands of deaths over the next year or so.

I think 1000 deaths is kind of the benchmark for whether or not to regard our approach since the beginning of 2020 to have been sound. Finland and Norway are my reference countries, having done similar things to us, but also having but perhaps not being quite as tight for quite as long. So if we compare well to them in the final wash up I will be happy that we took the right path. If we wind up more like Ireland or Sweden in the per capita death tally one might question whether the 2 years of isolation was worth it. We have 40 deaths right now, so 960-odd to go I suppose.

Not really sure how we might quantify long COVID. Does any country have solid stats on that?

This is a country? With 40 deaths altogether since the beginning of the pandemic? Hats off before you. 

I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we make it to 2022 summer with under 50.000 deaths. We are at 33k right now. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

3 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

This is a country? With 40 deaths altogether since the beginning of the pandemic? Hats off before you. 

I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we make it to 2022 summer with under 50.000 deaths. We are at 33k right now. 

New Zealand. 

Unlike the anti-measure people tend to claim their approach worked really well when it came to saving lives and protecting people from long term illness until now. Would be even better if they got enough vaccine earlier. 

 

[Week]

https://www.ft.com/content/8330da6c-031d-4613-8f55-5b0269eaac00

From FT, study in England showing that the booster elevates protection above the peak of two shots. Good news is good news.

[Heartofice]

What do we know about the longer term effectiveness of boosters? Much of what I’ve read mentions it’s effects after 2 weeks, with little on long term data. 
 

The waning effect of vaccination is already quite depressing, so you’d hope that a booster would give you more than just a few months worth of strong protection.

[DireWolfSpirit]

^^^ Tis a very good question.

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

What do we know about the longer term effectiveness of boosters? Much of what I’ve read mentions it’s effects after 2 weeks, with little on long term data. 

Israel is the only source of better data on boosters, since it began its campaign much earlier than everyone else.  I haven't seen an update recently though.  Over a month ago it did suggest similar numbers to what England is saying.  You would hope there will be a follow up on that study.

I do keep an eye on COVID number in Israel.  They continue to plummet.  I don't think that is completely boosters though (only 44% of the population got a booster, although I imagine a high proportion of vulnerable people, while 62% have two shots).  COVID rips through a country with a big wave of cases and then recedes for a few months (the same thing happened pre-vaccine).  Boosters obviously helped and continue to help.  But at some stage, COVID will strike again.  Its previous wave was due to waning vaccines coming at the same time as Delta.

I see the CEO of Astrazeneca was mischievously claiming that AZ does better than the mRNA vaccines in the longer term when it comes to hospitalisations.  No research has supported that claim but its not impossible I suppose (given there is always a lag in research).  Certainly a way to grab a few headlines.   This article below looks at the claim.  Sorry if it is paywalled for people!

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-24/did-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-really-keep-britain-safer-than-europe-not-so-fast

[felice]

7 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

This is a country? With 40 deaths altogether since the beginning of the pandemic? Hats off before you.

The problem is the pandemic is really only just beginning here, and virtually nobody has been exposed yet. Reasonably high vaccination rates will certainly help a lot, but on the other hand, we're going straight into Delta with effectively no immunity through prior exposure.

[Zorral]

People (the Young) are lining up for covid tests on lower Broadway.  These testing centers have been around for some months.  But I've never seen people lined up for the tests.  Wonder what's up?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

People (the Young) are lining up for covid tests on lower Broadway.  These testing centers have been around for some months.  But I've never seen people lined up for the tests.  Wonder what's up?

Thanksgiving.  They are testing before going home to see elderly parents/grandparents.  Same thing happened last year.  The Young are more responsible than we credit them.

[Zorral]

OK!  Great!  And you are right.  Responsible people tend to behave responsibly early on too.

[Luzifer's right hand]

1 hour ago, felice said:

The problem is the pandemic is really only just beginning here, and virtually nobody has been exposed yet. Reasonably high vaccination rates will certainly help a lot, but on the other hand, we're going straight into Delta with effectively no immunity through prior exposure.

That is what you want right? Get as many people vaccinated before it hits you. They nearly succeeded and have 70% vaccination rate far better than many other western countries especially low vax places like the USA or Austria. They might have significant waves but they will be far less deadly than the other way round. The vaccines work well when it comes to hospitalisation and incredible well when it comes to preventing deaths. Herd immunity without vaccines was always an incredible immoral and dangerous approach.

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

What do we know about the longer term effectiveness of boosters? Much of what I’ve read mentions it’s effects after 2 weeks, with little on long term data. 
 

The waning effect of vaccination is already quite depressing, so you’d hope that a booster would give you more than just a few months worth of strong protection.

Total speculation, but my guess is protection from breakthrough infection relies a lot on circulating antibody, which only lasts for a relatively short period of time (a few months). Cellular (note not 5G cellular) immunity can prevent infection but apparently not as effectively as when you have antibodies in circulation. The more you are exposed to the virus or vaccines the better the cellular immunity should be (like giving your immune system regular work outs), but maximum prevention of breakthrough infection will probably always rely on antibodies being present in the blood stream. Hence more boosters are likely, but if cellular immunity is strengthened with each booster then circulating antibodies might last longer and residual immunity from cellular immunity may get better at preventing breakthrough infection. So there is reason to hope the immunity will be better and last longer after one booster, and for non-vulnerable people an annual booster might be enough. If they can make a 'flu-COVID combo vaccine then that might be a good long term option.

1 hour ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

That is what you want right? Get as many people vaccinated before it hits you. They nearly succeeded and have 70% vaccination rate far better than many other western countries especially low vax places like the USA or Austria. They might have significant waves but they will be far less deadly than the other way round. The vaccines work well when it comes to hospitalisation and incredible well when it comes to preventing deaths. Herd immunity without vaccines was always an incredible immoral and dangerous approach.

Double vaxed as of today is 71% of the total population. Of that 29% not fully vaccinated, slightly over half are people who are eligible to be vaccinated, about 1/4 of those have not had their first dose. So roughly 20% of the population have no immunity whatsoever. By and large that's probably a similar or even higher number non-immune people than most countries, since most countries, even with a relatively low (but still in the high 50s-60s) vaccination rate have a lot of unvaccinated people with immunity through recovery from infection.

What we really need is even more currently eligible people to get their first jab, the vaccine to be approved for 5-11s to increase the population of people eligible for vaccination and being vaccinated, and get to a total population double jabbed of 85% at least and preferably 90%. The one good thing is that those vulnerable because of age are all over 90% double jabbed, and starting to get their boosters. Curiously the 80-84 age group is way ahead of the other older age demos with about 98% double jabbed and pretty much 100% at least single jabbed. I guess the 85% and over group has quite a few people not able to be vaccinated? So there is a very high age-related level of protection, which should mitigate against many deaths that we would have seen if the virus got here in a substantial way before vaccination was being rolled out.

There are still a lot of vulnerable people in the under 65 age demogtraphics. NZ has a high obesity rate, which seems to be quite correlated with severe disease and death with COVID, and along with that fairly high diabetic and pre-diabetic people. The latest death to be reported is a 40-year old person, not sure of their vulnerability attributes. Delta also seems to be a more serous strain for young people than the OG virus, and vaccination rates in the under 30s are significantly lower than any of the age demos above 30. Long COVID in the young has to be a significant worry even if we won't see massive demand on hospitals and ICU beds from that age demographic.

[The Anti-Targ]

Our case fatality rate is now 0.4%. 10,000 cases, 40 deaths. Since we have kept a pretty tight lid on COVID for most of the last almost 2 years, our 10,000 cases should not be too far off the true total number of infections. I expect that as we lose control of the disease here as we progressively open up that the CFR will probably start to creep up as number of diagnosed cases starts to fall behind the true total number of infections. The important metric for the vaccination doubters, will now be deaths and hospitalisation rates among vaxed and unvaxed. It will be very important for the media to make sure they publish this information in the right context. In the wrong context it could end up as mis-information leading people to conclude vaccination is not so great. it will be interesting to see how the various media organisations break on this. Some organisations are a lot more politically biased than others, so anyone motivated to make the govt look bad will be motivated to mis-represent the data.

[Loge]

The number of new cases in Germany has reached another all time high with almost 76,000 cases. On the bright side, the number of vaccinations is up to, though still way below the figures from spring / early summer. Mostly boosters, though. The number of persons getting their first or second jab is still small. Meanwhile, ICU are running short. Patients have to be moved between states.

[Luzifer's right hand]

21 minutes ago, Loge said:

The number of new cases in Germany has reached another all time high with almost 76,000 cases. On the bright side, the number of vaccinations is up to, though still way below the figures from spring / early summer. Mostly boosters, though. The number of persons getting their first or second jab is still small. Meanwhile, ICU are running short. Patients have to be moved between states.

Two weeks ago Austria had an excess mortality of 36,1% and that was before shit really hit the fan. The numbers are lagging behind. The numbers for the next few weeks should be interesting.

[Padraig]

I see that Austria does have one of the highest booster rates in Europe (at 16%).  You can actually see a positive trend change regarding double vaccinated people also.  While Germany is 9% when it comes to boosters.  Not so good.

Germany and Austria had relatively low (reported) fatality rates up before the latest wave.  But Delta might be doing a better job at getting at those vulnerable people.  Ireland's fatalities are still too high but they haven't escalated as badly.

And in other news, the EMA has approved the use of the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine on those 5-11.  Will mean a difficult decision for some parents over the coming weeks but millions of kids have already had the vaccine in the US/Canada and Israel.  So we'll see what the take up will be.

It is not as relevant as you may think because...

Quote

Countries will not be able to start rolling out the shots among younger children until next month. The first of the low-dose paediatric version will be delivered on 20th Dec , a spokeswoman for BioNTech said.

Which is disappointing.   I wonder will there be pressure to move that forward.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-drug-regulator-approves-first-covid-shot-5-11-year-olds-2021-11-25/

[RhaenysBee]

Failed to get a booster today. I always overestimate the system. I went to clinic, it was suspiciously empty and I was 100% sure from the start that it’ll fall through, because it was just too good to be true. 

I’m supposed to call a number tomorrow to ask when and where I can get Moderna. Because the app where you book your appointment doesn’t say what vaccine your chosen location works with , and you can’t book by choosing a vaccine and then being offered a location that has it. So I’m not sure when and where but hopefully early next week I can get the booster. 

[RhaenysBee]

In other news, we have vaccine stats!!!  well some, anyway. 

The study works with data from 2021 Jan 22 to June 10 and not fourth wave data, but it’s something at least and it might be the long awaited booster of vaccination willingness.

It breaks down the efficiency of each vaccine we used to prevent infection and death by age group. These are rather raw averages though, no refinement with co morbidities or target demographic (certain vaccines were used for very specific demographics back in January/February). It also doesn’t measure how well vaccines are holding up after a certain amount of time because there wasn’t enough data yet up until June 10. And we also don’t know how any of these hold up against delta. 

Either way, the findings are such: Moderna wins at preventing infection at 88%, Sputnik V wins at preventing death at 97%. All vaccines prevent death at least with 87% efficiency. 

so we still don’t know much but it’s more than nothing and again, it’s at least a valid effort to boost vaccination willingness. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

Covid: New heavily mutated variant B.1.1.529 in South Africa raises concern

Not looking good. Not looking good at all.

It seems to be replacing delta quickly.

Maybe the world should not make the same mistake again and assume the worst. Time to ground planes again I suspect. Better safe than sorry delta is much worse than people suspected initially after all.

[Consigliere]

Not surprising.

And to make matters worse, vaccine skepticism in South Africa is far, far worse than what it is in the US for instance. The inoculation campaign has slowed down so much due to this that the government has asked J&J and Pfizer to delay deliveries because there is too much stock (158 days of stock at current use) and very low demand.