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Covid 19 #43: Oh Omicron, oh Omicron, how numerous are thy spike proteins.


A Horse Named Stranger

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"Our Relationship With COVID Vaccines Is Just Getting Started
We probably will need additional shots. But just how many depends on our immune systems, the virus, and how often they collide"
by Katherine J. Wu

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/12/how-many-covid-19-booster-shots/621132/

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Walter Barker has, since the fall of 2020, had five doses of COVID-19 vaccine. He’s already starting to ponder when he might need a sixth.

Barker, a 38-year-old office worker in New York, received his first two doses a year ago, as part of an AstraZeneca vaccine trial. But the shots, which haven’t been authorized by the FDA, couldn’t get him into some venues. Sick of having to test every time he went to a Yankees game, Barker nabbed a pair of Moderna injections in the spring. Then, when the government urged boosters, he figured he’d “rather be safe than sorry,” especially because of his Type 2 diabetes—a risk factor for severe COVID. That was vaccine No. 5. Plus, he told me, he’d also caught the actual virus between his AstraZeneca and Moderna shots.

Now Barker’s steeling himself for the possibility of “a new booster or two every year.” Inklings of such a policy are already starting to appear. Israel is debating whether to offer fourth shots to higher-risk groups, including people over 60 and health-care workers. Some physicians are arguing that certain Americans should dose up again as well. And vaccine makers have long insisted that we’ll likely need annual shots at least. Given the clip at which the coronavirus seems to change, “I do think we’ll have to keep updating the vaccine,” Katie Gostic, an infectious-disease modeler at the University of Chicago, told me. ....

 

 

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2 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Unvaxxed wouldn't, that's obvious. But that's the thing: it is a prisoners' dilemma: vaxxed people have done all the sacrifices for 20 months, now fuck the sociopathic freeloaders, it's time to throw them under the bus.

Can we stop with this sort of talk, please? I know you think it communicates necessary hard-headed dealing in truths, but honestly it just makes you sound callous and as if you have not really thought things through.

Unvaccinated people have families, friends, colleagues. People who will become infected if they get infected, kicking off another round of variants and so on. There is no quick way out of the pandemic via troglodytic 'fuck the unvaxxed' sentiment, as appealing as it may be to believe that there is. Playing the blame game is not the answer and it's not a good look.

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3 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

vaxxed people have done all the sacrifices for 20 months

You got stabbed in the arm a few times, get over yourself. 

Everyone(for the most part) has had to deal with the restrictions, the isolation, the affects on society.

 

Also not sure who mentioned LFT being less reliable for Omicron (or whether I imagined reading this) but I tested negative on two today before a positive PCR. 

 

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10 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's natural for those who've done everything right to feel increasingly resentful towards those who are unvaccinated by choice and are flouting the safety protocols. 

It's exhausting.  And those who are unvaxxed and believe the MAGA, Conservative, Trumpy viewpoint about vaccinations and other mitigating factors are trying to outlast those who get vaxxed, believe in masking and distancing.  The unvaxxed want to outlast the rest of us by encouraging the exhaustion and resignation that we'll simply have to live with Covid.  

And knowing that over 800,000 dead don't matter to them, because they want to "own the libs" and such, it is easier, in this exhausted state, to simply be okay with those folks killing themselves off.  And maybe Mormont is right.  There isn't an easy way out of this at this point, to simply hope these un-vaccinated folk die off sooner or later...but it is getting harder and harder to take the high road.  The problem is, that's exactly what they want.  

Get vaccinated.  Get boosted.  Still do things right.  Don't give in to the fear and hatred for the un-vaccinated...but I personally won't condemn folks if they're cheering quietly to themselves when another anti-vax "champion" expires from that which they rail against.  Sorry, Mormont.  

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32 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

You got stabbed in the arm a few times, get over yourself. 

Everyone(for the most part) has had to deal with the restrictions, the isolation, the affects on society.

 

Also not sure who mentioned LFT being less reliable for Omicron (or whether I imagined reading this) but I tested negative on two today before a positive PCR. 

 

Well you seem to live in a bubble where anti-vaxxers follow rules and recommendations in situations when they are not forced to.

Many people posting here don't.

Here another case of a corrupt person selling fake vaccinations was uncovered this week. At least 30 cases possibly more than 100. It happened in the biggest vaccination center in the country.

Is understanding the concept that anti-measure people and anti-vaxxers have a huge overlap outside your bubble that difficult?

 

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28 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Well you seem to live in a bubble where anti-vaxxers follow rules and recommendations in situations when they are not forced to.

Many people posting here don't.

Here another case of a corrupt person selling fake vaccinations was uncovered this week. At least 30 cases possibly more than 100. It happened in the biggest vaccination center in the country.

Is understanding the concept that anti-measure people and anti-vaxxers have a huge overlap outside your bubble that difficult?

 

Nope. Makes perfect sense and not really that relevant.

Do I wish more people were vaxxed? Yes. Do I also understand that a LOT of unvaxxed aren't bad people they are just sadly and badly misinformed, untrusting of the government, duped into believing false information, aren't smart enough to work out whats false and what's not.

I think if you wish death and other shitty things on all unvaxxed people as is a common theme on here you're a sociopath. But YMMV.

 

Is understanding that really that difficult?

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10 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Nope. Makes perfect sense and not really that relevant.

Do I wish more people were vaxxed? Yes. Do I also understand that a LOT of unvaxxed aren't bad people they are just sadly and badly misinformed, untrusting of the government, duped into believing false information, aren't smart enough to work out whats false and what's not.

I think if you wish death and other shitty things on all unvaxxed people as is a common theme on here you're a sociopath. But YMMV.

Bad or uninformed leads to the same outcome so it is really completely irrelevant to me at this point of the pandemic to be honest as it does not make a difference.  I really do not care about why people do things anymore.

Obviously I don't wish death or illness on people. 

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Ain’t this all kinda human?

Life kinda sucks right now.  Like seriously sucks.  It’s going to be a really, really $h*tty month or so in most places where boarders live.  And that’s true if you are vaccinated, unvaccinated, boosted, immune compromised or some kind of immune superperson.  Life just gonna suck.  And we are all looking for a pattern or a resolution or something to explain the massive suckitude.  But honestly, there are too many things and too many collective failures.  So a few things:

1.  No need to be unkind.

2.  Actually every need to be kind.  FaceTime a friend.  If you are vaccinated and boosted and have access to a rapid test, meet up with a friend or family member you care about.  In each case, make sure the person knows how meaningful they are to you.  

3.  Take care of yourself.  Get outside if you can.  Mask up if that makes sense where you are, and maybe that is a better way to see people you care about.

4.  Self denial for its own sake isn’t a virtue.  

5.  If you get covid be kind to yourself.  You are actually quite likely to get covid in many parts of the world right now.  That doesn’t make you a bad person.  And if you can’t have a pristine isolation scenario, yeah, that’s real life.  Do the best you can.

 

 

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56 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Also not sure who mentioned LFT being less reliable for Omicron (or whether I imagined reading this) but I tested negative on two today before a positive PCR.

Sorry to hear that.  Good luck.

11 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Do I also understand that a LOT of unvaxxed aren't bad people they are just sadly and badly misinformed, untrusting of the government, duped into believing false information, aren't smart enough to work out whats false and what's not.

I would go further than this actually.  There is a global movement of the far-right and Russia to tear down the western democracies.  That movement is getting stronger and more brazen, and COVID is a perfect venue for them.  Russia cannot compete with the West militarily or economically, but the past 10-15 years they've been astonishingly successful at tearing our countries apart from the inside.  Brexit and Trump are the two most obvious examples, but COVID may be the biggest battle of all. 

I'm not saying that people making poor choices aren't to somewhat responsible for their own decisions.  But it is a LOT harder to make good decisions when there is a well funded and virtually omnipresent propaganda campaign underway feeding you lies. 

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48 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's natural for those who've done everything right to feel increasingly resentful towards those who are unvaccinated by choice and are flouting the safety protocols. 

I think some people have too "high expectations" regarding the outcome of doing "everything right" and what could have meant regarding the trajectory of the pandemic.

As @Mlle. Zabzie succinctly put it some pages back. We were told that few weeks of lockdown will done the job. It didn't. That masking may be even enough to contain the virus (I even saw some analysis). It didn't. Test and trace, masking and some light restriction will avoid the next lockdown. It didn't. But vaccines were coming and a lot of discussions ensued how many people we needed to vaccinate to reach some magic "herd immunity" number. Well, that percentage has been going up and up and infections are soaring despite the "best vaccines to be had".

The message was always insinuating that if everybody did "everything right" we could eliminate the virus of our lives. Nobody told us the truth back in March 2020 that the virus, bar all countries simultaneously agreeing going full China, was going to inevitably become endemic.

I understand that people are exhausted and looking for some scapegoat of the situation. The reality is that none of the policies implemented even taking together would have been enough.

Now, we have a highly infectious and highly immune evading variant sweeping across the world that nobody could credibly claim that those "flouting safety protocols" are responsible for. It might well be that it's coming even from some animal.

The pandemic has seen colliding the limits of scientific knowledge and technology against the complexity of natural phenomena. The problems of our economy and politic systems against the the complex nature of societies. And of late I'm increasingly seeing a conflict between our humanity and our exhaustion.

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2 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

I think some people have too "high expectations" regarding the outcome of doing "everything right" and what could have meant regarding the trajectory of the pandemic.

As @Mlle. Zabzie succinctly put it some pages back. We were told that few weeks of lockdown will done the job. It didn't. That masking may be even enough to contain the virus (I even saw some analysis). It didn't. Test and trace, masking and some light restriction will avoid the next lockdown. It didn't. But vaccines were coming and a lot of discussions ensued how many people we needed to vaccinate to reach some magic "herd immunity" number. Well, that percentage has been going up and up and infections are soaring despite the "best vaccines to be had".

The message was always insinuating that if everybody did "everything right" we could eliminate the virus of our lives. Nobody told us the truth back in March 2020 that the virus, bar all countries simultaneously agreeing going full China, was going to inevitably become endemic.

I understand that people are exhausted and looking for some scapegoat of the situation. The reality is that none of the policies implemented even taking together would have been enough.

Now, we have a highly infectious and highly immune evading variant sweeping across the world that nobody could credibly claim that those "flouting safety protocols" are responsible for. It might well be that it's coming even from some animal.

The pandemic has seen colliding the limits of scientific knowledge and technology against the complexity of natural phenomena. The problems of our economy and politic systems against the the complex nature of societies. And of late I'm increasingly seeing a conflict between our humanity and our exhaustion.

Perfection is the enemy of good. That something does not work perfectly is not reason not to do it. The main problem has always been that health care systems can't take people not following rules and not getting vaccinated.

If you chose to not mask on public transport or in health care settings and can't be bothered to follow mask and social distancing mandates in other places unless you are forced to you are part of the problem. Motives are completely and utterly irrelevant at this point.

Being tolerant of the anti-measure people is part of the problem. Social pressure needs to be as high as possible. The other approach has been tried for nearly 2 years in many western countries and it did not work at least in Austria. People are attacking health care workers and hospitals now. Death threats are normal for doctors now. If you think appeasing such people has worked in any way I will never agree with you.

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6 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Perfection is the enemy of good. That something does not work perfectly is not reason not to do it. The main problem has always been that health care systems can't take people not following rules and not getting vaccinated.

If you chose to not mask on public transport or in health care settings and can't be bothered to follow mask and social distancing mandates in other places unless you are forced to you are part of the problem. Motives are completely and utterly irrelevant at this point.

Being tolerant of the anti-measure people is part of the problem. Social pressure needs to be as high as possible. The other approach has been tried for nearly 2 years in many western countries and it did not work at least in Austria. People are attacking health care workers and hospitals now. Death threats are normal for doctors now. If you think appeasing such people has worked in any way I will never agree with you.

I don’t think that was @rotting sea cow’s point.  I think their point was that many people have unrealistic expectations as to what the measures will accomplish.  At least to me that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the measures.  We should!  But we can have disagreements as to what sorts of compulsions the state should impose in respect of the measures.  We all have lines.  I don’t support going full China though it might have been effective (and might still be effective if we all did it).  I do support mask mandates in public places.  I do support vaccination requirements to access certain kinds of public accommodations.  Other people have other lines. And I also know that plenty of people are willing to spout off on the internet and then quietly attend a party with 20 of their nearest and dearest for their own mental health.  Anyhow, we are in the part of this where there are cost benefit trade offs, including with respect to externalities, and frankly our various governments are doing a piss poor job of communicating that they are making these trade offs, what these trade offs mean, and why they are making them.

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1 minute ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I don’t think that was @rotting sea cow’s point.  I think their point was that many people have unrealistic expectations as to what the measures will accomplish.  At least to me that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the measures.  We should!  But we can have disagreements as to what sorts of compulsions the state should impose in respect of the measures.  We all have lines.  I don’t support going full China though it might have been effective (and might still be effective if we all did it).  I do support mask mandates in public places.  I do support vaccination requirements to access certain kinds of public accommodations.  Other people have other lines. And I also know that plenty of people are willing to spout off on the internet and then quietly attend a party with 20 of their nearest and dearest for their own mental health.  Anyhow, we are in the part of this where there are cost benefit trade offs, including with respect to externalities, and frankly our various governments are doing a piss poor job of communicating that they are making these trade offs, what these trade offs mean, and why they are making them.

I have worked with people not following my employers rules and nobody really enforcing it for two years. I also stopped using public transport and got a bike because nobody enforced rules there too and I'm thinking about getting a drivers license for the first time in my life to just stop having to us public transport at all. It is not like the climate crisis will be reacted to in any meaningful way the pandemic has convinced me of that so I guess there is no point in bothering with having a low footprint anymore anyway.

People not following rules in such places is what is harming my mental health.

I have nothing against people risking stuff in private but that has never been my problem. 

My mistake for not learning a trade that can be done from home I guess. I have chosen unemployment for now and the foreseeable future anyway.

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I’d say for many countries the ‘anti vaxxers’ are really not the reason for the spread of the virus and it seems like a misdirection to be focussing on them. Many countries in Europe have got very high vaccination rates and booster rates and are still seeing almost record numbers of cases.

Sure there are a number of morons out there who believe some stupid stuff, but in most places it’s not enough to really have much of an effect. 
 

This isn’t really an issue of the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated any more. We just need to get over that thought and get on with it.

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27 minutes ago, Week said:

 

 

That's a stunning stat.

I still believe people in general are in denial to magnitude of that which we are swirling in here. It's as if were in a 9/11 "groundhog day" nightmare where each and everyday for 2 years we have mass casualties.

Eventually the mind numbs to the carnage. 

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10 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I’d say for many countries the ‘anti vaxxers’ are really not the reason for the spread of the virus and it seems like a misdirection to be focussing on them. Many countries in Europe have got very high vaccination rates and booster rates and are still seeing almost record numbers of cases.

Sure there are a number of morons out there who believe some stupid stuff, but in most places it’s not enough to really have much of an effect. 
 

This isn’t really an issue of the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated any more. We just need to get over that thought and get on with it.

What is the hospitalization rate of the unvaccinated?

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2 minutes ago, Week said:

What is the hospitalization rate of the unvaccinated?

Well if we take the UK for example, most people who are hospitalised are vaccinated. This is not surprising because vaccination rates are so high here. That’s my point, we’ve moved past the point of blaming the unvaccinated for causing problems, it’s really not all that relevant now. As more countries get vaccinated you will see this more and more. 

https://fullfact.org/health/economist-vaccination-status/

Quote

SAGE says: “For patients admitted after 16 June 2021 (by which time vaccination rates in adults were high) the majority of patients had received two doses. This is to be expected, as SAGE has noted previously.”

 

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Almost entirely the unvaccinated here in the USA are the hospitalized.  Hospitals and doctors across the country are even paying for ads in local venues pleading for the unvaccinated to get vaxxed.  Not only are the physical facilities overwhelmed, "So are we, who have to watch you die every day, and you didn't have to."  You cannot see a sane publication w/o stories of doctors and nurses weeping for this situation, with more and more of them saying, "I quit."

Also, Delta is still here, very much here, in the USA.  

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