Covid 44: The Sickening

[Iskaral Pust]

Has this been shared already?  It’s a very rigorous (and very scary) review of published medical studies on long COVID.

Ian Ricksecker (Twitter thread)

[RhaenysBee]

1 minute ago, Padraig said:

 

Hungary certainly had a disadvantage geographically.  Finland and Norway are the best countries in Europe for handling COVID.  I'm sure their government, their restrictions, people's behaviour all played a role in this. But being a little isolated helped too.

Hungary is not a surprise, we have none of the contributing factors to set us up for a decent grip on covid (we don’t have the geography, the economic strength, the culture, the public well-being, the healthcare infrastructure and system, etc). We did things right and hats off and great thanks for those, some things we did I was truly proud of (and Hungarian people don’t say that often… or even seldom… like maybe once or twice in a lifetime, tops). But none of it was enough, because of the above mentioned factors tipped the scale. We also did a lot of things wrong and very wrong, which tipped the scale even more. Finland and Norway had the geography, the culture, the well-being, the healthcare, the economy and probably decent decisions as well. Good for them for doing so well.

[Week]

Well -- tested negative -- so, fatigue, sore throat, headache, and congestion for some other reason.

[Zorral]

Sorry you are feeling so rotten.  That it isn't covid doesn't make you feel better in the moment.  Drink lots of fluids.

[mormont]

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

It is extremely unlikely that there will be any long term effects from taking a COVID vaccine but, like any forward looking statement, we can't be 100% sure. 

The thing about this is, while it's technically, philosophically true it's not in any meaningful sense true.

To date, unless I'm missing something, nobody has suggested even a theoretical, 1-in-a-million means by which any long term effects from the vaccine could actually come to pass. As far as I understand that's because there isn't one. When we say it's not 100%, we're saying that in the sense that it's not 100% that I won't spontaneously disintegrate tomorrow as a result of some unlikely quantum happenstance.

I might be wrong about this. But until someone can suggest even a very hypothetical way in which somehow these vaccines could potentially be harmful long term to even one in a million people who receive them, I think even saying 'we can't be 100% sure' is in any meaningful sense not justified.

[Padraig]

54 minutes ago, mormont said:

But until someone can suggest even a very hypothetical way in which somehow these vaccines could potentially be harmful long term to even one in a million people who receive them, I think even saying 'we can't be 100% sure' is in any meaningful sense not justified.

Fair point.  It takes my argument further.  I wasn't knowledgeable enough to be that categorical but its certainly possible.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

57 minutes ago, mormont said:

But until someone can suggest even a very hypothetical way in which somehow these vaccines could potentially be harmful long term to even one in a million people who receive them, I think even saying 'we can't be 100% sure' is in any meaningful sense not justified.

It's also a disingenuous argument, as no one knows what the “possible long term effects” of getting COVID-19 will be, and we won’t “know” on the exact time same scale (minus around a year) as the effects of the vaccine.

But we do know in a very objective way that getting the vaccine now has massively better outcomes than getting COVID-19 now.  And there is no data to suggest that this comparison will not hold against a longer timeline.

[Larry of the Lawn]

It'll be interesting to see if any of the anti-vax / vax hesitant crowd will be more willing to get something like Corbevax if it starts getting approval.

Hope this ends up being safe and effective as it's cheap and doesn't require new tech to produce. 

[rotting sea cow]

6 hours ago, Lermo T.I. Krrrammpus said:

It'll be interesting to see if any of the anti-vax / vax hesitant crowd will be more willing to get something like Corbevax if it starts getting approval.

Hope this ends up being safe and effective as it's cheap and doesn't require new tech to produce. 

Wow. That's great! I don't think it would move the ideological antivaccine, but I do think it might convince a number of vaccine hesitant and also provide options people who haven't tolerated well mRNA/Vector vaccines. Specially, if governments once for all, start changing the discourse regarding vaccine and measures, but my hopes of that are very low. Most of the people I know who haven't getting the vaccine are more in the contrarian "don't tell what to do" side.

[rotting sea cow]

I keep worrying regarding the hospitalization rate. Despite this excellent thread posted earlier.

This is the situation in US with a somewhat deeper analysis here. Focused on the NYS situation that provides better data. Some info on the age specifics showing that hospitalization are unfortunately rising sharply in the elderly.

and again, the situation seems to be markedly different to the UK.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59862568

A possible explanation is that some parts on the US had rising Delta waves before Omicron hit. Also the focus on Omicron "mildness" might have made the people to take unnecessary risks.

Overall, I think governments (and people) are acting recklessly in the face of unknowns. Scientific results are being consistent regarding that Omicron will cause milder disease, but we are not facing Omicron in the vacuum. Also, that Omicron is possibly unstoppable is not an excuse to do nothing and try to spread the infections as wide as feasible. 

This is another trend in governments policies regarding the pandemic. They react when the crisis hit instead of trying to prevent them and we pay the costs. 

 

 

 

[Mithras]

10 hours ago, mormont said:

until someone can suggest even a very hypothetical way in which somehow these vaccines could potentially be harmful long term to even one in a million people who receive them

one could, provided that there wasn't a 75-years ban on the ingredients and the phase trial details of the vaccines.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Mithras said:

one could, provided that there wasn't a 75-years ban on the ingredients and the phase trial details of the vaccines.

I'm not even asking you to say this on the basis of knowing what's in the vaccine, though. Just name something that might plausibly be in the vaccine that could cause long term damage of the type suggested. Anything. Otherwise we're still in the 'philosophically possible' not 'actually possible' realm. 

[Impmk2]

What. The formulation of the mRNA vaccines are public knowledge. It's mRNA, lipid, cholesterol, and a few salts and buffering agents. Remarkably simple. You can google it. Freely available on the FDA / CDC numerous other sites.

Hell then you can go google the RNA sequence and blast that if it takes your fancy.

Edit: and ffs the phase 1/2 & 3 trial details have all been published in very high profile journals.

[Luzifer's right hand]

24 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

What. The formulation of the mRNA vaccines are public knowledge. It's mRNA, lipid, cholesterol, and a few salts and buffering agents. Remarkably simple. You can google it. Freely available on the FDA / CDC numerous other sites.

Hell then you can go google the RNA sequence and blast that if it takes your fancy.

Edit: and ffs the phase 1/2 & 3 trial details have all been published in very high profile journals.

I would not engage with such people. It is pointless at this stage of the pandemic imho. Just a waste of energy. They do not live in reality.

[Padraig]

32 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

What. The formulation of the mRNA vaccines are public knowledge. It's mRNA, lipid, cholesterol, and a few salts and buffering agents. Remarkably simple. You can google it. Freely available on the FDA / CDC numerous other sites.

Hell then you can go google the RNA sequence and blast that if it takes your fancy.

This is another example of a story getting twisted in the news.

Although, its not a great story for the FDA (even if it is under-resourced).

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/well-all-be-dead-before-fda-releases-full-covid-vaccine-record-plaintiffs-say-2021-12-13/

I wonder what other regulatory bodies do?

10 hours ago, Lermo T.I. Krrrammpus said:

It'll be interesting to see if any of the anti-vax / vax hesitant crowd will be more willing to get something like Corbevax if it starts getting approval.

Interesting.  There does seem to be a few protein subunit vaccines arriving now.  This one.  Novavax.  Sanofi/GSK (which has been delayed into Q1 this year because it wanted to do more testing regarding using it as a booster).  They generally seem to be much cheaper than the mRNA ones.  So hopefully they will be very successful.

3 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

A possible explanation is that some parts on the US had rising Delta waves before Omicron hit. Also the focus on Omicron "mildness" might have made the people to take unnecessary risks.

Ireland has the proud distinction of having the highest COVID rate in the world right now (either us or Cyprus).  Our positivity rate is so high (41%) that we are bound to be missing a significant number of cases also.  But, we also have one of the lowest fatality rates in Europe (behind Iceland and Sweden).  Its actually a genuinely low rate also (although you can always argue that anyone dying is too many people dying), not just a relatively low rate.  Now, there might be a lag effect, so the fatality rate may still go up, but for now, I think we can thank the dominance of Omicron for that.  As well as a high vaccination rate.

Hospitalisations going up in the US is not inself surprising.  We've seen that here (and in the UK).  What would be concerning is that ICU usage has also gone up (Ireland or the UK haven't seen that).  I imagine the higher Omincron rates here and the higher vaccination rates explain that.

[Impmk2]

19 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I would not engage with such people. It is pointless at this stage of the pandemic imho. Just a waste of energy. They do not live in reality.

Eh I think it's important to push back on misinformation - quite a few people read these threads.

@Padraig ah yes that makes more sense. Not sure who wants to read 400k pages,  but I'm sure some will take great pleasure pulling out of context information they don't understand to feed to the horde on Facebook (if and when they're released).

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

The positivity rate here hit 33% yesterday. That's the 7 day average. ICU and hospital admissions are starting to tick up. 

[Fragile Bird]

Waste water testing in the province of Nova Scotia shows that Omicron was there in November.

[Zorral]

One US physician is hopeful --

https://pandemicpondering.com/2021/12/31/welcome-to-2022-the-year-the-covid-19-pandemic-ends/

Of course the decades of negative fall-out from this pandemic on our nation's political, medical, economic, cultural and social lives -- will continue.  And right this minutes are taking terrible tolls on us all.  Particularly whatever we call the 'health' system here.

[maarsen]

4 hours ago, mormont said:

I'm not even asking you to say this on the basis of knowing what's in the vaccine, though. Just name something that might plausibly be in the vaccine that could cause long term damage of the type suggested. Anything. Otherwise we're still in the 'philosophically possible' not 'actually possible' realm. 

Vaccine reactions are not always a response to what is in the vaccine but your immune system response to being vaccinated. My brother almost 60 years ago had that one in a million response to a polio vaccine and almost died. He still has the effects from that today. Even so he is still a staunch supporter of vaccinations.