WTF :2019-nCoV NovaCoronaVirus Thread

[dZeus]

Slovenia: government introduces mandatory vax/testing/recovered for everything including gas stations and doctor visits (state only health system).
Test costs 10-12€, valid for 2 days. It's a burden for low income familes - eg a cashier told me it costs her 30 EUR to take kids to dentist and cashier here earns around nett 1000 EUR monthly.
Since J&J Janssen is only one shot although not the most effective it gives you green pass the quickest - with Pfizer it's only 2 weeks after 2nd shot. Demand for Janssen surges.
Yesterday 20-y old woman died of stroke and brain hemorrhage couple of days after being vaccinated with Janssen. Since start only one 18-21y old person died of covid according to official data (which I have no reason to doubt).

So vaccinating 15-24y olds with J&J resulted in same mortality as Covid. 30k officially got infected (likely 3-times more as not all mild cases are caught by testing). One of them died. You are twice as likely to die from lightning strike in your lifetime as from Covid in 15-24y group. Yet government insists on vaccinating everyone.

They want to make vaccination mandatory for state workers now and talking about making it mandatory for all workers with decree (not law passed by legislators) despite no pandemic or extraordinary measures declared. Constitutional court will decide tomorrow.

Requiring vaccination or proof of recovery is, for the young segment of the population, primarily not about reducing deaths at individual level, but at societal level as the occurence of breakthrough infections is much lower in the fully vaccinated population.

Whether such a mandate is ethical is another question. I'd much rather have governments make more of an effort to convince people to take vaccination without forcing them, and combat misinformation without resorting to censorship.

As for avoiding costs of PCR tests: maybe unvaccinated could resort to organizing and attending 'covid parties' in order to get infected with and recover from Covid? Parents of young children have done similar things with regards to some infectious childhood diseases for a long time.

[UtwigMU]

I think that this will lead to evolution of strain that is resistant to vaccine as vaccine is not sterilizing.
Of course it's easier for politicians to say, get 70 or 97% depending on country vaxed and everything will go back to normal than to say: Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Then once we get to situation like Singapore with 80% vax rate and 2000 new Covid cases per day they will invent new things to say as we go along.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

According to article you posted, 1 in 59 vaccinated infected needs hospitalization, while for unvaccinated it's 1 in 46.

[MultimediaMan]

I think you are right UtwigMU: They are playing Whack-A-Mole with a virus which is known for mutations. I really don't think that extending hopes for a Vaccine-based solution is viable at this point. Israel and Singapore are highly Vaxxed, yet their numbers continue to climb at higher-than-modeled rates, and clinically-observed re-infection rates show a definite pattern of diminishing returns for ongoing immunity and general Vaccine Efficacy. At this point, the only thing that is consistently good about COVID Vaccines in general are the quarterly sales of the Drug Companies. I think there has been a considerable erosion in confidence in the Medical Mass Media... to the point where YT has stopped "discussion" on the matter entirely (as of this morning, 2021-09-29).

[dZeus]

Well it's impossible to make Covid disappear, considering its mutation rate.
The pfizer and astra zeneca vaccines perform pretty decently today considering they were developed for the original strain in 2019.

As for hospitalisation rates, those are likely the raw figures not normalized for age and comorbidities. It's most likely that the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated, while young people run much lower risk when unvaccinated.

They've bought time to hopefully be able to provide therapeutic treatment of covid patients (preventing the cytokine stom appears essential), while reducing overload of the healthcare systems by providing some base immunity against covid.

If anything, the the latest figures from Israel show the success of the vaccine.

The best that we can hope for is that covid will mutate into a harmless seasonal common cold variety, much like HCoV-OC43.

[UtwigMU]

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7038e3-H.pdf

Table 2 from this study:
After 4-6 months attack rate among vaccinated is 89, while among unvaccinated is 93. Basically after 6 months protection from vaccine vanes.

[dZeus]

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/...mm7038e3-H.pdf
Table 2 from this study:
After 4-6 months attack rate among vaccinated is 89, while among unvaccinated is 93. Basically after 6 months protection from vaccine vanes.

That's not the conclusion I draw from Table 2. Perhaps the number of breakthrough infections rise after 4-6 months, but there's no evidence in those numbers that the vaccine doesn't continue protecting against hospitalization and death.

If anything, the study shows that being vaccinated protects fairly well against hospitalization and lethal consequences of a covid infection.
But I think that a study with such low numbers of participants is statistically almost meaningless.

Have you looked at Israeli figures? The number of deaths is still low, and the vast majority of hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated. Imo this shows that the vaccine does exactly what it is supposed to do.

[UtwigMU]

Based on data from here until they stopped publishing: around 30% percent of hospitalized were vaxed with around 50% vaxed population. Vax in high age groups was more predominant.

Vaxed have according to Slovenian data around 65-70% less chance of getting hospitalized. This is also likely the case in Israel. Vaxed have considerably less chance of getting hospitalized. Vaccine affects spread of disease less than hospitalization as with 50-60% vaxed population, spread of disease is comparable to spring.

Problem is that after 6-8 months vaccine protection vanes and/or new strains emerge -> booster shots, annual subscription model.

[dZeus]

Based on data from here until they stopped publishing: around 30% percent of hospitalized were vaxed with around 50% vaxed population. Vax in high age groups was more predominant.

Vaxed have according to Slovenian data around 65-70% less chance of getting hospitalized. This is also likely the case in Israel. Vaxed have considerably less chance of getting hospitalized. Vaccine affects spread of disease less than hospitalization as with 50-60% vaxed population, spread of disease is comparable to spring.

Problem is that after 6-8 months vaccine protection vanes and/or new strains emerge -> booster shots, annual subscription model.

The loss of protection after 6-8 months against hospitalization is not yet settled science, especially for the under-60 population. Imo there is insufficient data at this point.
But, consider that today, a large part of the at-risk population gets a yearly flu shot. Would it be outragous if Covid requires a similar regime?

Just in case you think I believe all pharma sales talk:
I don't plan to get any booster shots even if they become available, unless there's new evidence that would prove them essential to substantially reduce risk of hospitalization for my age cohort.
I am against inoculation of the under-15 population, it seems like an almost pointless exercise to enrich the pockets of big pharma.
As far as vaccine passports go, they are extremely undesirable imo. Unfortunately, this pandemic seems to have brought out the worst in authoritarians. The scandinavian model looks much healthier, but requires a large percentage of the population to be inoculated and the risk appetite to deal with any waves of flare-ups.

[Dr Mordrid]

This comes on the heels of MI's Spectrum Health - in the nation's Top 15 - will recognize natural immunity in their vaccine requirements.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/15/natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate/

Marty Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, editor-in-chief of Medpage Today

Natural immunity to covid is powerful. Policymakers seem afraid to say so.

People making decisions about their health deserve honesty from their leaders.

It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt. Unfortunately, many elected leaders and public health officials have held on far too long to the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against covid-19 — a contention that is being rapidly debunked by science.

More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild covid infection resulted in long-lasting immunity.
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[Umfriend]

So let's say natural immunity protects better than vaccination. However, for natural immunity, you need to be infected first. So then the question is on side effects of either (a) infection or (b) vaccination. With vaccination, side effects are rate and mostly not serious. Infection has far more severe side effect. Moreover, with breakthrough infections, vaccinations protect against severe effect of infection but, arguably, you would still benefit from the infection benefits. So to my mind, even if infection provides better protection, it makes no sense to forego vaccination. Rather, infection after vaccination may perhaps be seen as a "lucky" booster shot.

I am on the fence about vaccine mandates and passports. I believe institutions, corporations etc may require it but that is a private decision and not a public one (although I do think the government may help such institutions with respect to enforcement. Passports, to my mind, make less sense if the danger to vaccinated people is acceptably low: I am not sure who would really benefit. Especially given that vaccination does not immunize so that vaccinated people may infect each other as well. If we never had a vaccine, then natural immunity would have been the only way to go and I speculate that given the protection we already have, it is OK to have the non-vaccinated acquire natural protection.

[MultimediaMan]

RE: Infection vs. Immunity.

The biggest question is to what degree a person is infected (how much initial exposure, under what conditions): by most estimates, more than 50% of infected people are asymptomatic (no outward symptoms), and these people develop antibodies (and do not shed virus particles) just like a recovered person. We don't have an accurate model for this. What is not known is how quickly and for how long an asymptomatic person can infect others around them. How long does is take for an average asymptomatic person's immune system to fight and overcome COVID-19? How long does an average asymptomatic person shed virus particles? How much does a recovered asymptomatic person contribute to overall "herd immunity"? Are there other factors?

[Umfriend]

Wait, what? I can imagine 50% of infected people not being asymptomatic but 50% of infected people not shedding virus seems unlikely to me.

My point is more that currently, we have more vaccinated people than infected people (counted since start of pandemic) yet the hospitalisation and death numbers are higher in the latter group.

[UtwigMU]

Here you can only get status of recovered counting for green pass if you tested positive PCR during your infection and then you had to vaccinate with only one dose.
People who had covid but haven't taken test (called doctor who told them to quarantine at home) don't have any status and have to vaccinate or test to do anything but grocery shopping. Someone who has natural immunity from infection still has to vax or test 2x weekly to function in society.

So, many vaccinated also had symptomatic or asymptomatic infection. A friend who got vaccinated tested for antibodies and found out they were higher than they would be from vaccine alone, meaning he had covid sometime during last year but doesn't know when. I regularly met about once a month and he never complained of any respiratory illness.

In Slovenia we have 2M people 1M vaxed 277k total covid cases and our version of CDC reckons further 500k had covid but haven't tested and registered as a case based on antibody tests and other factors. so between 750k infected and recovered and 1M vaxed there must be overlap.

[Dr Mordrid]

https://apnews.com/article/merck-says-experimental-covid-pill-cuts-worst-effects-a9a2245fdcee324f6bbd776a0fffcc60

Merck says COVID-19 pill cuts risk of death, hospitalization

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a potential leap forward in the global fight against the pandemic, drugmaker Merck said Friday that its experimental pill for people sick with COVID-19 reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half.

If cleared by regulators, it would be the first pill shown to treat COVID-19, adding a whole new, easy-to-use weapon to an arsenal that already includes the vaccine.

The company said it will soon ask health officials in the U.S. and around the world to authorize the pill’s use. A decision from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could come within weeks after that, and the drug, if it gets the OK, could be distributed quickly soon afterward.
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[Umfriend]

A pill is a great way to get microchips!