Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

Just because the vaccines transmit binary data doesn't mean it's binary status. It could be CDMA, GSMA, or GSM. Thats not even accounting for 5GE, 5G, 5G+, or 6G.

 

I'll just avoid political commentaries and posts that bug me then. For me, conversations introduce me to new info I may have missed and open my eyes to other possbilities. eg. I had heard that 80% of hospitalisation were among the unvaccinated. When I looked months later, that had changed to 50/50. When it was raised the disease mostly circulates in the unvaccinated, I went looking for info to confirm that. The data I found seemed solid, but then I learnt, from discussion, that it's not accurate. New data showed a more accurate picture, which is not supportive of either theory, but instead a middle ground. I'm now better educated, but to get there, I keep having to hear that a source I've found is part of some political agenda or only an antivaxxer would quote that survey, or "why are you questioning vaccines?" It's so tiring!

Yes, I think the argument of impact of vaccine on mutations is to reduce the rate at which it mutates by reducing the number of actively infected persons. However, if the mutations mostly happen in the immunocompromised, vaccinating everyone for the purposes of suppressing mutations isn't efficient. In the end, vaccinating everyone for their own health is the objective, with any suppression of case rates and mutation rates being a bonus.

 

But others in the discussion had, which is what the data was about, and which you should have engaged in one way or another - either to support the view, or oppose it, or just present improved data without regard for its interpretation.

I've not advocated anything. I have no position, nor faith that I can work out the best course of action. I'm only here to have a conversation that challenges views because the 'right' course of action should be the one that stands up to scrutiny the best. Personally, I don't think there is a right option, only a choice of outcomes with different pros and cons, and most people who feel there is a 'right' are selecting a set of pros/cons that suits their values.

That's an option. There's a good case that humanity's attempts to save people is actually weakening the whole species. An interesting pointer in this direction is childbirth and caesarians. We manage to save many women and children from fatal birth complications, but we are now seeing a shrinking of the birth canal and a species headed towards being unable to give birth naturally. There's ongoing discussion around whether the 'problems' of childbirth are due to weird evolution or too much medical intervention. Possibly, if the natural faults were allowed to play out, the health of the whole species would actually be stronger overall and not require medical science to prop it up?

There are some very big, complicated philosophical questions out there, which, if we're being honest, shouldn't be ignored, although their scope is really outside this thread which is supposed to focus on the disease, its impact, possible treatments and best practices, etc. rather than politics and ethics for which there's another thread (although posts can't be moved to it!).

Edit: Also, we don't yet know that mutations in the immunocompromised is truly a thing - it's only a hypothesis - or even if it's bad! A week from now, we'll know if Omicron is the new plague or the final way out of C19. This graph on the 17th, if not earlier, will tell us what Omicron is.



If it's good news, and it turns out it was due to an immunocompromised person, it means we should go infecting them with other disease to mutate them into sissy forms...

 

New report about Omicron just released by the UKHSA:



Estimating an R0 rate of approximately 4, cases doubling every 3 days, 1 million infections a day by Christmas!

2xAZ offers pretty much no protection against infection, 2xPfizer not very much. However, a Pfizer booster after either vaccine appears to show 75% protection against symptomatic infection. Whether or not this means asymptomatic cases to some proportion remains to be seen. Also very early data on limited numbers. I'm hoping it is accurate and that 2xAZ followed by Moderna has similar efficacy as that's what I had at the end of last month!

I'd be astounded if the UK wasn't in lockdown by Christmas.

So much for Christmas fricking cheer. Just taken my young daughter for a PCR after a kid in her room at nursery tested positive earlier in the week. It's her birthday this weekend and we were supposedly going to have a party, but that's no going to happen now (and one of her cousins has just had a positive LFT as well).

 

I keep hearing that the unvaccinated account for the majority of hospitalisations, but isn’t this statistically unlikely?
It sounds like the seatbelt problem. Before the wearing of seatbelts was made mandatory, the vast majority of car accident deaths were amongst the unbelted. Now, following the mandate, the vast number of car accident related deaths are amongst those that wear seatbelts. This doesn’t mean seatbelts don’t work, it’s just that the sample base has changed.

I’m in an age group that has a very high uptake of the vaccine, so statistically wouldn’t you expect the majority of people my age in hospital to have been vaccinated?

 

That sucks Mariner, best of luck.

A stupid thing that's been bugging me apparently has been bugging someone else, how do you capitalize the disease? Is it "Covid" or "COVID"?

 

I first read that as "how do you capitalise on the disease"

 

COVID-19, apparently, Digi. Looks a bit daft when you type it out, however. I tend to stick to just capitalising the word!

 

Actually, it has been witnessed and documented already, last year in fact.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news...2-mutations-emerging-during-chronic-infection

 

Unvaccinated case rates are proportionately higher. We have a real problem with how numbers are reported, with too many raw counts. Yes, more vaccinated people may be in hospital as an absolute count, but the relative count for vaccinated vs unvaccinated shows you are far more likely to end up in hospital if you are unvaccinated.

 

Covid or C19, as the natural language evolution (mutation!). We moved from SARS-CoV-2 to SARS-COV2 to COVID-19 (actually to talk about the disease, not the virus, hence Coronavirus Disease 2019) to Covid. Scientists will need to stuck with scientific convention but people just need a name they can use that's efficient for purpose. 'Covid' and 'C19' fit Whatsapp etc., so they the correct option for the general populace and what they'll be using no matter what official name exists.

It's a shame it wasn't localised to a specific occupation/activity to begin with. It needs a 'real' name like Lab Pox or Gamer's Cough.

* BMJ articles using lower case so scientific community seems okay with the normal progression of language. Indeed, most references appear to not even capitalise the first letter, covid19 having been relegated the level of normalcy of chickenpox and measles. https://www.bmj.com/coronavirus

 

I like C19! Shorter and more accurate.

 

Indeed. For me in this crisis the biggest problem is how they define "unvaccinated" in most hospitals and how this is inevitably creating inaccurate (IMHO) reports and long-term studies based on those numbers.

Many "sick with or without COVID" in hospitals are reported as "unvaccinated" when they actually have being recently shot once or even twice with those vaccines. This is very problematic if you are doing long-term studies about vaccines.

 

Got my booster today the place was around the corner from my house so I was back home within 30 mins
Side Effects : Slightly sore arm, unfortunately I'm not suffering from enlarged testicles
ps: moderna

 

You got AZ x 2 first I assume.
So did everyone get moderna there?
WRT bigger testes, just important one of these, and whenever you want 'inflation' just dangle a limb in the aquarium.

I dont think you need to dangle your gonads in, an earlobe should surfice, as long as its an attractive target for the mother to bite

 

Thankfully, there is also this part: "But will in result in more hospitalisations and deaths? Well good news so far is there are no hospitalisations or deaths associated with Omicron. This is encouraging news, probably largely due to vaccines and high levels of immunity. But also, its very early days."

 

Early days bit is the important part. Typically, it takes a few weeks from onset of symptoms to death. Omicron was only identified as a Variant under Investigation on 25th November. Earliest cases in South Africa were mostly in younger people (at lower risk), lots of existing immunity over there from prior infection so probably reasonable protection against serious illness in that regard as well. Low vaccination levels, however. In Gauteng, cases are apparently up 400% over the past week, hospitalisations up 200%. Question remains to be seen how things will be different as it spreads into older populations, however. I'd imagine a signal should become available pretty soon at the rate this thing is spreading.

 

Medical condition of those in hospital is way better than previous waves. Far less ICU occupancy and even oxygen support.

I've been watching the SA numbers on Our World In Data looking for the expected uptick, and two weeks after the first uptick of hospitalisations, the death rate is still flat. Even more significant, the case fatality rate is plummeting...



One thing that surprised me was the 'serious healthcare' and 'case fatality' rates for Germany are so much higher than the UK. Substantially lower hospitalisations but more patients on ICU and dying. Any theories? Are they still aggressively intubating? Difference in metrics?

 

Vaccine distribution, to some degree. A much higher proportion of the older population in Germany are unvaccinated compared to the UK. They've got a bigger anti-vaxx movement than the UK, linked with support for AfD, so a lot more vulnerable people once they are infected. The much lower German infection rates (before Omicron, at least) were down to their better mitigations - requirements for the use of FFP2 masks, for instance. They've also not let it run rife in schools in the same way so fewer cases amongst kids over there which will skew the numbers as well.