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COVID 46 - Please disperse, nothing to see here!


Week

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You'd need to have regular randomised global covid survey to get a real grasp on prevalence, which we've never had, and probably never will.

Still, until the last couple weeks case numbers were at higher levels than seen in the entirety of 2020/2021 while deaths were at lower levels than any time since March 2020. That gives some reassurance the the big reductions in mortality is probably real and not any more of an undercount than we've previously seen. People not getting tested due to [reasons] is not a new problem.

 

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Count me as someone who wishes they'd approve the 4th booster for the general populace, or at least my corner of it. I get a tdap booster at my next prenatal so I can pass on the pertussis antibodies to the fetus. The science is pretty clear about being able to pass on COVID antibodies the same way (and it's obviously not a live vaccine that would be dangerous). Let me get the booster and pass on something for the kid who won't be able to be vaccinated until who knows when at this point.

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6 hours ago, QuietColours said:

Count me as someone who wishes they'd approve the 4th booster for the general populace, or at least my corner of it. I get a tdap booster at my next prenatal so I can pass on the pertussis antibodies to the fetus. The science is pretty clear about being able to pass on COVID antibodies the same way (and it's obviously not a live vaccine that would be dangerous). Let me get the booster and pass on something for the kid who won't be able to be vaccinated until who knows when at this point.

I have seen nothing that would speak against getting it before the fall. We are not talking about a shot every few months here it would be 9-10 months after the 3 shot in my case. Might not help a lot but better than nothing.

The only argument I usually see is "we need to focus on shot 1-3". That is no argument because at least here everybody who wants the vaccine got it. We are throwing vaccines away or donating them shortly before they expire with the countries that receive them throwing them away in most cases.

I have no intention about getting "boosted" by an infection if I can avoid it if millions of doses are going to waste in the meantime.

Obviously I would prefer an improved vaccine but I will take what is available.

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2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The benefits of a 4th shot to the general population , healthy adults are marginal at best.

The real test will be where we are in 5 or 6 months.  Especially if there are reformulated vaccines which significantly reduce transmissability again.  Moreover, if cases start to grow in Sept/Oct, I can easily imagine that a lot of countries will restart a wide vaccination campaign.  That's me ignoring the possibility of a summer wave!

Scientific American has a very good article on risk (although it unsurprisingly errs on the side of safety first):

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-make-smart-decisions-about-covid-risk-benefit1/

And it has a link to a nifty risk calculator, where you can compare risks across a wide variety of things.

https://www.covidtaser.com/relativerisk

It makes other solid points:

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Thanks to vaccines, infection-induced immunity, therapeutics, better care and other factors, the relative risk of dying from COVID if you catch it is now, broadly speaking, comparable to that of seasonal flu, Jetelina says—but importantly, because you are more likely to catch COVID than flu, the absolute risk remains much greater.

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Marr says that talking in bars expels a similar number of respiratory particles as coughing, “so it’s like everyone’s in there coughing together.”

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Places with rapid rates of ventilation and filtration—such as some subways—are also much lower risk. The Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) system in San Francisco Bay, for example, filters the air more than 50 times an hour with “virus-trapping MERV-14 air filters” inside each car. An Italian study of schools found that classrooms with ventilation systems that exchanged air six times per hour reduced infections by more than 80 percent, but many classrooms in the U.S. fail to meet this standard.

 

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PSA -- By posting any interest in a 4th vaccine you are automatically enrolled in HoI's Vaccine Scold service on westeros.org. Please provide all health history for yourself, and, potentially, any family or friends you are in regular contact with. This information will be generally disregarded (unless you are over 50), as has posts by local medical professionals (excluded a 'confused reaction'), and you will be promptly scolded. Thank you and please enjoy this courtesy service on westeros.org.

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4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The benefits of a 4th shot to the general population , healthy adults are marginal at best.

A 4th shot has some benefits, but not if you are healthy and under 50. 
 

Gotta say, that sounds familiar from such previous measures as

1st lockdown
mask wearing
2nd lockdown
better to meet people outside rather than inside
3rd lockdown
1st vaccine
2nd vaccine
4th lockdown
3rd vaccine

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1 hour ago, Week said:

PSA -- By posting any interest in a 4th vaccine you are automatically enrolled in HoI's Vaccine Scold service on westeros.org. Please provide all health history for yourself, and, potentially, any family or friends you are in regular contact with. This information will be generally disregarded (unless you are over 50), as has posts by local medical professionals (excluded a 'confused reaction'), and you will be promptly scolded. Thank you and please enjoy this courtesy service on westeros.org.

Lol.

Just putting out a friendly reminder about who a 4th vaccine is truly useful for, in case anyone was under any illusions about what it does and whether they need it.

1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

Gotta say, that sounds familiar from such previous measures as

1st lockdown
mask wearing
2nd lockdown
better to meet people outside rather than inside
3rd lockdown
1st vaccine
2nd vaccine
4th lockdown
3rd vaccine

You wot mate?

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This might be of interest to commentators such as @Padraig.

THE POST’S VIEW
Opinion: As the pandemic
exploded, a researcher saw the
danger. China’s leaders kept silent.
By the Editorial Board

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/china-researcher-covid-19-coverup/?

It's astounding how quickly this lab researcher identified this virus and its pandemic danger.  Not that it did any good, for reasons.  Sigh.

It's a very long report.

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.... ‘Those people who know the truth are silent’
Little Mountain Dog wondered how the Wuhan patient got infected. Her first thought, she wrote, was “the history of contact with wild animals,” maybe with bats. But “it was also suspected that some staff working somewhere with man-made viruses may have been infected by accident because of careless handling” — a possibility a colleague had mentioned to her on Dec. 27, recalling a very recent Brucellosis outbreak after an accident at a vaccine plant in China. That colleague also noted at the time that the Wuhan Institute of Virology “is located nearby.”

However, Little Mountain Dog did not elaborate about the virus origins; her goal was to identify the pathogen, not the source. She thought her laboratory had performed well and demonstrated the value of its technology.

But she watched with deepening anxiety as the government failed to warn people.

On Dec. 30, at 3:10 p.m., the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an “urgent notice” to health institutions about cases of “pneumonia of unknown origin.” In the early evening, ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, a physician at Wuhan Central Hospital, wrote in a private Weibo chat group that seven people had contracted a virus similar to the one that causes SARS and were quarantined at his hospital. On Jan. 1, he and other doctors were summoned by police and reprimanded for spreading rumors about Wuhan hospitals receiving SARS-like cases. Li later died of covid-19.

“Feeling that something is wrong,” Little Mountain Dog wrote on Dec. 31. The “overly optimistic” Chinese propaganda machine had swung into action. China’s news media referred obliquely to “rumors” and failed to inform the public of a spreading SARS-like infection.

Dec. 31, 2019, 12:04 a.m.

Little Mountain Dog
感觉大事不妙
Feeling that something is wrong
On New Year’s Day, knowing of the risks of revealing too much information, she nonetheless tried to warn a friend, saying it must be kept “strictly confidential” that a “Novel SARS virus” had been discovered, and then:

Little Mountain Dog
从感染的病例数看,还是可能有很强的传播能力的
Judging from the number of infected cases, there may still be a strong transmission capacity
Through most of January, the rapid human transmissibility of the virus was hidden from the Chinese public — and from the rest of the world.

“Those people who know the truth are silent,” Little Mountain Dog wrote in her blog post. ....

 

 

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10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The benefits of a 4th shot to the general population , healthy adults are marginal at best.

A 4th shot has some benefits, but not if you are healthy and under 50. 
 

So there is something magic about being 49 and 364 days, but the second one wakes up on birthday 50, this is magic?

50 is an arbitrary cut-off.

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6 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

So there is something magic about being 49 and 364 days, but the second one wakes up on birthday 50, this is magic?

50 is an arbitrary cut-off.

Obviously it’s arbitrary but it’s a useful marker in determining risk, and the one that is commonly used.
I wasn’t recommending panicking the minute you hit your 50th birthday either. 

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4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Obviously it’s arbitrary but it’s a useful marker in determining risk, and the one that is commonly used.
I wasn’t recommending panicking the minute you hit your 50th birthday either. 

Oh, there will be many other reasons to panic once I hit my 50th birthday  :rofl:

Especially if I have not, by that point, found Mr. Right and am still on a series of Mr. Right Now types.

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Getting under 5s vaccinated is still causing headache.  Maybe May.  Maybe June.  The results haven't been great.  I doubt huge numbers will end up getting vaccinated but if you have been waiting, I could understand the impatience by now.

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That leaves the FDA with the prospect of green-lighting Moderna’s (2 dose) vaccine, only to potentially find out several weeks later that Pfizer’s (3 dose) vaccine performs far better.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/21/biden-kids-vaccine-covid-00026798

And this (I imagine) is the future of vaccinations.  Flu and COVID vaccine combinations.  But we are still 18 months away.

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Novavax says its combo flu and COVID vaccine elicits a strong immune response similar to standalone flu and COVID jabs, according to initial results of a phase 1/2 trial. 

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/novavax-touts-early-data-flu-covid-combo-vaccine-fda-decision-looms

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This is foreboding for the rest of us, if the ruscism [stet. - see link]forces at loose throughout the world, and particularly here in the USA, are not defeated.  Covid isn't over here anymore than in China. And there will inevitably be other, successive pandemics.  As of today the BBC reports a new Ebola case in Africa.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/shanghai-blockades-covid-hit-buildings-fuelling-fresh-outcry-2022-04-24/

 

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I have received 2 covid test kits.  Not sick or anything, but since everybody among even the big shots are saying we're all going to get covid, it's probably good to have them, so if one uses it and sees positive one can begin the long search for the pills that nobody who isn't a big shot seems to have a lot of trouble and failure at obtaining, particularly during that short window during which it matters to take them.

Beyond looking for the antivirals, what exactly is one supposed to do after testing positive, beyond isolation?  Are we supposed to call somebody official in government/or health services >!ha!<and report it for reasons?  If so, who does one inform?

So much solemn verbiage thrown at us about tests, anti-virals etc., but nothing useful, NO ACTUAL INFORMATION.

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2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Beyond looking for the antivirals, what exactly is one supposed to do after testing positive, beyond isolation?  Are we supposed to call somebody official in government/or health services >!ha!<and report it for reasons?  If so, who does one inform?.

You probably know far more about this than I (since you mention antivirals) but is Test to Treat the main approach in the US once you acquire COVID?

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On 4/22/2022 at 1:55 PM, Chataya de Fleury said:

So there is something magic about being 49 and 364 days, but the second one wakes up on birthday 50, this is magic?

50 is an arbitrary cut-off.

Especially with the lack of interest vs supply of these things you'd think they'd let anyone who wants one get one of their doctor is cool with it, or have a quick medical questionaire ready for those who want one but don't have a doctor.  

@Padraig

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You probably know far more about this than I (since you mention antivirals) but is Test to Treat the main approach in the US once you acquire COVID

More or less.  The approach here seems to be that the pandemic is over and anyone getting getting sick, spreading the virus or dying is some personal fuckup.  As a whole we did our job and anything as that happens was just going to happen.  

They've been pivoting to this since last December.  

As a whole we have simply given up and are just making this into a 'blame the individual' issue.  

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