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gowlerk

covid-19

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8 hours ago, winsor said:

Having had breakthrough infections to previous vaccinations (Polio, Smallpox), I still get pretty much every vaccine I can.

However, I am reminded of Chief Dan George's observation "sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't."

That's very true!  But I still use a helmet when I bike.

Quote

As vaccines go, the efficacy of the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines is truly abysmal

Well, you can define "abysmal" however you like; you might call the protection of a bike helmet "abysmal" because they only reduce the odds of serious head injury by 60%.  Still, the smart money is on the helmet.

Recent results from a large population Lancet study of US health care outcomes:  (looking specifically at the Pfizer vaccine)

Protection against any COVID infection:
Vaccinated within 5 months: 88%
Vaccinated after 5 months: 47%

Protection against the Delta variant:
Vaccination within 4 months: 93%
Vaccination after 4 months: 53%

Protection against the non-Delta variant:
Within 4-5 months: 97%
After 4-5 months: 67%

Protection against hospitalization with Delta:
Vaccinated within 6 months: 93%

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02183-8/fulltext

Quote

It's good that we have made progress, but we are in no position to rest on our laurels.

Agreed.  Which is why we're not.  We are, for example, about to approve the Pfizer vaccine for 5-11 year olds, which will reduce spread further.  Molnupiravir is in the pipeline for approval.  Pfizer is running trials on a Delta-variant booster.

Although, since through the hard work of a lot of anti-vaxxers we are hovering at about 50-60% vaccination rates, expect to see new variants appear soon.  A half-vaccinated population is an ideal breeding ground for new vaccine-resistant variants.

 

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13 hours ago, billvon said:

Many, many wonderous things.

Please be so good as to explain away the study I cited that shows, to a high degree of assurance, absolutely no correlation between percent of the population vaccinated and rate of infection. 

If vaccination conferred herd immunity as would be expected, there should be maximum infection in countries with the lowest rates of vaccination and minimum infection in those with the highest rates of vaccination.  Instead, there is, if anything, a higher rate of infection in the countries with the highest rate of vaccination.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/#CR4

"Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States"

and

"The sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences needs to be re-examined, especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants. Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real world effectiveness of the vaccines."

This is not from www.tinfoilhat.com.

The net benefit of the vaccine is, unfortunately, quite marginal overall.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

Edited by winsor

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I have now gone 2 years without a respiratory infection of any kind, the longest by far in  my adult life (and probably my childhood too).  I attribute this to fairly diligent use of masks and "social distancing" (a nasty phrase) that has kept even the common cold at bay.  A mild inconvenience with a very positive outcome.

I just don't understand the fools who oppose these measures, and the even bigger fools who oppose vaccination.  

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2 hours ago, winsor said:

The net benefit of the vaccine is, unfortunately, quite marginal overall.

Other than that whole “the vaccines provide protection against severe immunization and death” thing. It’s a stopgap; it’s the only stopgap we have that doesn’t consist of masking and social distancing (which has been ruinous for lots of adults living in aggregate situations). 
We can’t go back, only forward. Making masses of people go forward slowly is generally better than doing it all at once. People with plenty of resources (which includes most of the people on this forum) have options. Not everyone does. 
Wendy P. 

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2 hours ago, winsor said:

This is not from www.tinfoilhat.com.

The net benefit of the vaccine is, unfortunately, quite marginal overall.

Two things seem to be happening. As John just pointed out, more people are dropping precautions. This allows the newly mutated and more efficiently transmitted virus more opportunities. At the same time we are finding that the vaccine confers resistance to the worst sickness, but often does not stop infections from occurring. We were all hoping for a magic wand to make the pandemic go away, but we were warned about possible limitations. The benefits of vaccination are still very large as evidenced by the declining number of hospitalizations. There is now room in ICUs for more people with other conditions and more elective surgeries are finally being done. The exception being those areas with stubbornly low vaccination rates. Vaccines are the reason we have been able to open up our society to a point that is not far from pre-covid days. 

Your call for treatments and drug therapies is being worked on. But as always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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1 hour ago, gowlerk said:

Two things seem to be happening. As John just pointed out, more people are dropping precautions. This allows the newly mutated and more efficiently transmitted virus more opportunities. At the same time we are finding that the vaccine confers resistance to the worst sickness, but often does not stop infections from occurring. We were all hoping for a magic wand to make the pandemic go away, but we were warned about possible limitations. The benefits of vaccination are still very large as evidenced by the declining number of hospitalizations. There is now room in ICUs for more people with other conditions and more elective surgeries are finally being done. The exception being those areas with stubbornly low vaccination rates. Vaccines are the reason we have been able to open up our society to a point that is not far from pre-covid days. 

Your call for treatments and drug therapies is being worked on. But as always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

By and large I agree with you.

My problem is that the vaccine does precious little to halt infection, given the references already cited, and has the potential to cause harm due to the cytotoxic nature of the spike proteins generated and its propensity for migrating:

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/06/04/we-made-a-big-mistake-covid-vaccine-spike-protein-travels-from-injection-site-can-cause-organ-damage/

This source smacks of www.tinfoilhat.com, but the data check out.

I've personally gone whole hog on the vaccine, but the benefit analysis for, say, an 11 year old kid is not as clear cut.  Getting immunity from an asymptomatic case of the delta variant may well pose less overall risk than that of the vaccine migrating to prepubescent testes.

If I hadn't seen permanent side effects of the vaccine, or if its efficacy was better, the decision would be simpler.

Having worked in the industry for decades, I try to keep the skepticism in check.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

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5 hours ago, winsor said:

Please be so good as to explain away the study I cited that shows, to a high degree of assurance, absolutely no correlation between percent of the population vaccinated and rate of infection. 

No, I will not try to "explain it away."  That's not how science works.

However, you may perhaps be placing too much reliance in a single-variable study.  For example, if I constructed a scenario where there was a massive vaccination campaign to vaccinate everyone over age 50, with vaccination for those under age 50 not encouraged, and then studied the results, I would see that more deaths came from the vaccinated population.  This could be interpreted as "the vaccine is DEADLY!" but would be more likely due to the fact that primarily older people were vaccinated, and younger people had better outcomes even without the vaccine.  Indeed, younger people are more likely to have asymptomatic infections and never even be aware that they were infected.

However, if the outcomes of vaccination on each group were considered individually (i.e. in the 20%-vaccinated younger population vs the 80%-vaccinated older population) it would become clear that vaccination within each group significantly lowered infection risk.

Interestingly, this is exactly what happened in Israel.

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated

Likewise, it is becoming clear that the vaccine is pretty effective but its effectiveness falls off rapidly with time.  (See Lancet study above.)  Thus, in a country where an early and massive vaccine push got all the at-risk people vaccinated is compared with a country where the push came later, the country with the early effort will likely now be seeing higher rates - since those vaccinations happened 9 months ago, and the protection is starting to wane.

Vaccines are still the best weapon we have to reduce Re - for now.  And the only thing that will end the pandemic is a lower Re.

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(edited)
8 hours ago, winsor said:

 

Which is why my wife and I had the person doing the injecting aspirate (pull back on the needle) to check for blood before injecting.  We didn't do that for the doses back in February/March, but did in August/October after the study was published showing mRNA vaccines injected intravenously can cause perimyocarditis.  My wife had blood in the syringe twice, I did not.  Supposedly such hits are one in a thousand/ten thousand.

It was already known for 15 years that intravenous adenovirus vaccines could cause the rare type of blood clots seen in rare cases following the J&J and Astrazeneca vaccination.

Unfortunately, the CDC continues to recommend against aspiration, since it can cause a slight increase of injection pain in infants.  

Edited by headoverheels

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10 hours ago, winsor said:

My problem is that the vaccine does precious little to halt infection, given the references already cited, and has the potential to cause harm due to the cytotoxic nature of the spike proteins generated and its propensity for migrating:

What Bill also forgot to address was your choice of terms.  The vaccine does reduce infection, but mostly it significantly reduces the ability to transmit once infected, reduces hospitalizations and greatly reduces the chance of death if infected.   Add in that only in the very beginning of the vaccination effort did we think the chances of a vaccinated person transmitting the virus to be close to nil (recall the guidance was you could remove your mask only if you were vaccinated, whereas unvaccinated people were still asked to keep their germs to themselves).

Besides that point, we were still encouraged to continue the other preventive measures in addition to getting vaccinated.  All these methods together could have stopped this virus by now.  Eradicated?  Probably not, but the variants (Delta specifically) wouldn't have wreaked such havoc on our population had people implemented all options at their disposal to protect each other. 

The vaccine does help the person who gets it. But more importantly, it helps society as a whole by making it harder for the virus to flourish.  It also helps those who can't be protected by the vaccine, such as those with compromised immune systems and young children.

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On 10/31/2021 at 7:08 AM, winsor said:

 

I've personally gone whole hog on the vaccine, but the benefit analysis for, say, an 11 year old kid is not as clear cut.  Getting immunity from an asymptomatic case of the delta variant may well pose less overall risk than that of the vaccine migrating to prepubescent testes.

 

Tell that to a colleague of mine who's 7 year old is now paralysed from complications from catching Covid. Another friend has permanent loss of taste and smell - can you imagine how much less enjoyable life is like that?

I think you're dramatically underestimating the imapct of long term covid symptoms - something we're still figuring out.

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On 10/31/2021 at 6:14 PM, TriGirl said:

The vaccine does help the person who gets it. But more importantly, it helps society as a whole by making it harder for the virus to flourish.  It also helps those who can't be protected by the vaccine, such as those with compromised immune systems and young children.

And there you hit on the philosophical differences between people. 'My freedoms' vs ''sacrifice' for others'. (and 'sacrifice' is in BIG fucking inverted commas).

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1 hour ago, yoink said:

Tell that to a colleague of mine who's 7 year old is now paralysed from complications from catching Covid.

Yep.  MIS-C is nothing to sneeze at.  Even long COVID is no picnic.

I had a grade school teacher who was in a wheelchair due to polio.  I am willing to bet that she didn't think her "natural immunity" to polio was worth her legs.

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5 hours ago, billvon said:

Yep.  MIS-C is nothing to sneeze at.  Even long COVID is no picnic.

I had a grade school teacher who was in a wheelchair due to polio.  I am willing to bet that she didn't think her "natural immunity" to polio was worth her legs.

Everyone my age (76) growing up in the UK knows or knew someone paralyzed by polio.  I can recall visiting a relative in hospital when I was a kid and walking past the ward with a dozen or so "iron lungs" in it - all occupied.

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Interesting CDC data for the last week. FL has been trending down and now has the lowest death rate in the country with CT a close second (also trending down). CA , which was with FL a week ago, is trending upward. It's interesting that FL and CA have two distinctly different thoughts on managing COVID yet the results are what they are. Last week they were about even. 

Great example of how stats may be misleading. One has to look at this data over a period of time and consider all the factors, which could be too many to make meaningful conclusions. Adding blue/red political analysis/comments is just silly.

So many factors that may or may not impact the data. FL - maybe most of the old and vulnerable already croaked. TX - maybe it's the illegal immigrants causing the problem. And that may be true since the northern states of OK and Kansas are quite high, and the east/west states are similar to TX. CA - maybe the reporting is better or it's tourists bringing it in. SC - live free or die, we're just stubborn, or maybe it's the huge influx of northerners escaping the taxes and politics up north. 

Oh well, here comes cold weather when people go inside and pass around stuff. We'll see.

Deaths in the last 7 days, rate per 100,000, 
FL - 5, 0.02, 

CT - 26, 0.7

CA - 635, 1.6

IL - 206, 1.6

MI - 194, 1.9

Oregon - 88, 2.1

SC - 168, 3.2

TX - 909, 3.1

OK - 178, 4.5

Kansas - 204, 7

Montana - 99, 9.3

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6 hours ago, billeisele said:

Interesting CDC data for the last week. FL has been trending down and now has the lowest death rate in the country with CT a close second (also trending down). CA , which was with FL a week ago, is trending upward. It's interesting that FL and CA have two distinctly different thoughts on managing COVID yet the results are what they are. Last week they were about even. 

Where exactly are you seeing this data? The JHU data does not seem to agree [link].

91-DIVOC-states-normalized-California.png

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14 minutes ago, nwt said:

Where exactly are you seeing this data?

Perhaps he's talking about that tiny blip at the end of the CA death data?  And that FL has been level but is down a fraction since last week?

"A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest"

Edited to add: I was also curious about his claim that Florida "has the lowest death rate in the country" so I checked that out as well.  Results below.  Looks like it is well above average.

FloridaCovid.JPG

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15 minutes ago, billvon said:

Perhaps he's talking about that tiny blip at the end of the CA death data?

He must be, but his description is certainly not accurate for when he wrote it. It seems it *may* have been plausible a week or two prior.

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1 hour ago, billvon said:

Perhaps he's talking about that tiny blip at the end of the CA death data?  And that FL has been level but is down a fraction since last week?

"A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest"

Edited to add: I was also curious about his claim that Florida "has the lowest death rate in the country" so I checked that out as well.  Results below.  Looks like it is well above average.

FloridaCovid.JPG

Are you applying that pesky Mean Value Theorem again?

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(edited)
2 hours ago, nwt said:

Where exactly are you seeing this data? The JHU data does not seem to agree [link].

91-DIVOC-states-normalized-California.png

On the CDC site CDC COVID Data Tracker

Look at the map and hover on the state to see the data. It shows the FL rate as zero because it is so low. I took there population number and did the math to get the figure.

 

Edited by billeisele

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17 minutes ago, billeisele said:

Look at the map and hover on the state to see the data. It shows the FL rate as zero because it is so low. I took there population number and did the math to get the figure.

Ah I see the problem.

First off the CDC data isn't up to date.  Oct 22 - Oct 28 is the last week they reported.

Secondly they're not doing averaging.  Take a look at what happens when you don't average the Johns-Hopkins data:

 

Now if you only look at the last 2 days, Florida looks much better (because they were at zero those days.)  But when you look at the average of deaths, you see the graph I posted previously.

Another lesson that if you choose your data carefully enough you can make it look like whatever you want it to.

 

COVID_new.JPG

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(edited)
27 minutes ago, billvon said:

Ah I see the problem.

First off the CDC data isn't up to date.  Oct 22 - Oct 28 is the last week they reported.

Secondly they're not doing averaging.  Take a look at what happens when you don't average the Johns-Hopkins data:

Now if you only look at the last 2 days, Florida looks much better (because they were at zero those days.)  But when you look at the average of deaths, you see the graph I posted previously.

other lesson that if you choose your data carefully enough you can make it look like whatever you want it to.

 

 

Bill - The CDC data says as below not Oct 22 - 28.image.png.8da27ff228ebec4d1058ab3351c80e2b.png

Edited by billeisele

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Just now, billeisele said:

Bill - The CDC data says not Oct 22 - 28.image.png.8da27ff228ebec4d1058ab3351c80e2b.png

Right.  I went to the Florida data page, which is listed as the latest data they have.  This is what it said:

"Previous week (October 22, 2021 - October 28, 2021)  Published October 29, 2021"

Page is here: http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/covid19-data/covid19_data_latest.pdf

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Amusing that you used the same quote from "The Boxer" that comes to mind whenever I come up against any strongly entrenched position w.r.t. the pandemic.

I've received three doses of the Pfizer vaccine, but find this unsurprising:

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635

If the vaccines were anything as effective as everyone hoped, herd immunity would be a reality.  As it is, it is not even a consideration at this point.

 

BSBD,

Winsor

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