Corona

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Shannon SteelSlave
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Re: Corona

Post by Shannon SteelSlave »

Not trying to intentionally salt this thread, just want to post the numbers a couple of times before the cold sets in, as this used to serve as a sort of weekly statistics diary. It will be able to serve its purpose if necessary to raise awareness, so don't be afraid to post.
Total Cases 231,453,024 , Global Deaths 4,742,684

If you received the Pfizer 2 dose regiment over 6 months ago, it is possible you may benefit from a "booster". I am not sure if it is given on a case by case basis taking into account your risk factors or health, or if you might be tested for the presence of adequate antibodies before being recommended to get a 3rd shot. These boosters have recently received FDA approval in the US.
No booster has been approved yet for Moderna, however, individuals I have personally interviewed say they feel confident they are still protected. Data is currently under review.
Johnson and Johnson has not submitted any application for a booster, but I have heard that a second dose administered at some point raises it efficacy. I am not recommending that anyone who received this vaccine attempt to "double dip" at this time, but to follow your physician's or vaccine provider's advice.
Experts are considering a "mix and match" theory as they learn more, and if necessary.
Stay safe, stay healthy, remain informed. :hi:
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OrgasmAlley
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Re: Corona

Post by OrgasmAlley »

Related, a week ago today on Meet the Press, Fauci at least acknowledged that natural immunity was a thing: "When you do get infected, you get strong immunity. There's no doubt about that." Thus, at least in theory, ends the official US position of ignoring natural immunity and alignment with the extensive science indicating it is at least as strong as vaccinated immunity. He went on to claim that we don't know if natural immunity lasts, and that recovered individuals should still get vaccinated... which has little science behind it.

Between vaccinated and natural immunity, more than 80% of the US population should have "immunity", yet the daily new cases are 2/3rds of the peak level hit in Jan 2021. Declining, thankfully. More of the world continues to acknowledge that the COVID is becoming endemic, and the target of zero-COVID is unattainable. The powers that be clearly don't want to give up their control in the US, however.

The data around vaccine effectiveness remains really unusual. It's clear that the Delta variant broke vaccinated immunity, as highly vaccinated places like Israel have seen massive increases in the case load among the vaccinated, yet India -- where Delta originated, and a country with quite low rates of fully vaccinated -- never really saw a Delta surge. Vitamin D? Co-morbidities?

Even as their protectiveness against catching a case fails, the vaccines continue to provide strong protection against serious cases. Israel data (best in the world, IMO) again: over-60 unvaccinated nine times more likely to have serious case, under-60 unvaccinated twice as likely.
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Shannon SteelSlave
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Re: Corona

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I have heard that vaccinated individuals still possess as much power to spread the virus.
I can't wait to hear the efficacy of the Mo-zer and Phi-derna vaccines, as I questioned from the beginning, but health officials were obviously lacking any data to do the mix and match, even if necessary back then.
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Re: Corona

Post by ruru67 »

Shannon SteelSlave wrote:I have heard that vaccinated individuals still possess as much power to spread the virus.
What you've heard is wrong.

Vaccines both significantly reduce the likelihood of infection taking hold if you are exposed, and if you do get infected, the severity of the disease is usually reduced. The former effect means you don't become infections at all, and the latter means that you're shedding less live virus into your environment than you would with a more substantial infection. Both effects mean vaccinated individuals have less "power to spread the virus".
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Shannon SteelSlave
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Re: Corona

Post by Shannon SteelSlave »

Thank you, Ruru. People should remain cautious at any rate, then. Wasn't meant to be a statement against the vaccine.
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OrgasmAlley
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Re: Corona

Post by OrgasmAlley »

This is a current area of uncertainty. While the peak viral load of the Alpha variant was substantially lowered by vaccination, that does not appear to be true for Delta. For example:

"With Delta, infections occurring following two vaccinations had similar peak viral burden to those in unvaccinated individuals. SARS-CoV-2 vaccination still reduces new infections, but effectiveness and attenuation of peak viral burden are reduced with Delta." https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21262237v1

It is not clear whether or not the duration of peak viral load is decreased by the vaccines.

Also, we have found far more transmissibility by the vaccinated for Delta in comparison to Alpha. I cannot put my fingers on the case, but there was a weekend in some Northeastern US town where an extremely high percentage of people were vaccinated and an extremely high percentage of them caught the COVID, upon which the CDC based the recommendation revision that the fully vaccinated wear masks. Outlier case, to be sure... but less and less outlier. This evidence also continues to emerge, such as this one: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/ ... mm7038e3_w

And again, the percentage of new cases and hospitalizations who are fully vaccinated questions the effectiveness of the vaccines against become infected and transmitting the COVID. In some cases, that's the same issue leading to "boosters"... vaccinated immunity falls steeply after something like 6 months, with effectiveness at preventing infection around 15% after 8 months against the Alpha variant. Israel, the first country to heavily vaccinate, is seeing 85%+ of new hospitalizations from the fully vaccinated (Delta variant). In many Maryland counties -- one of a handful of states reporting this breakdown -- the fully vaccinated were 30-40% of new hospitalizations at the beginning of this month.

It's clear that we see reduced vaccine effectiveness at preventing transmission, both from waning efficacy and from Delta. The effectiveness against serious cases also falls over time, although somewhat less steeply, and appears to also be reduced significantly against Delta. Because there has been a huge gap in examination, we don't know nearly enough about natural immunity, but it appears to last longer than vaccinated immunity (Pfizer, specifically) and be much more effective against Delta... "This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity." Breakthrough cases 6 times more likely than reinfections, seven times more likely to result in symptomatic COVID. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 1.full.pdf
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Re: Corona

Post by OrgasmAlley »

Here's another relevant study out of Singapore: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... .full-text

Quite small cohorts, but the longitudinal testing does address one of the bigger open questions... duration of high infectivity, vaccinated v. unvaccinated. The study included only cases of Delta confirmed by genome testing. I bring it up because it's got this great graph: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... .full-text

On the left, the Ct value is the number of PCR cycles required to detect the COVID. We've reached some general agreement that Ct > 35 or so becomes irrelevant, and a person who doesn't pop until then isn't infectious at all and probably doesn't even have the live virus anymore. What we see in this study is that both vaxxed and unvaxxed are quite infectious for about 5 days. After that, the viral load in vaxxed folks falls steeply and is out of range by day 11. The unvaxxed don't reach 35 cycles until day 22.

I should also add that Ruru is right, and in case it wasn't clear I wasn't disagreeing with the statement that "vaccinated individuals still possess as much power to spread the virus" is incorrect. I believe the notion came from the CDC's crazy reaction to that outlier case I mentioned, which was in Barnstable County, MA: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/ ... mm7031e2_w ... specifically recommending masking indoors regardless of vaccination status. The bottom line they leave in this report is "Cycle threshold values were similar among specimens from patients who were fully vaccinated and those who were not."
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Re: Corona

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OrgasmAlley wrote:Here's another relevant study out of Singapore: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... .full-text
Again, be careful of quoting studies - make sure the point you're trying to make is the point they're trying to illustrate. That graph for example is interesting, but what they're showing is how the immune system responds once infected, and not total infection rates. Because of that, they've not controlled the selection for all possible infections - the sample selection (Methods - Patient Recruitment) used symptomatic patients, i.e. people who presented with symptoms.

Thus, the "day 1' patients would all (to a first approximation) have had the same level of infection (Ct), whether vaccinated or not, so they all start from about the same level. People with lower starting Ct values just don't show up in the study because they didn't present for selection. The graph just shows that, having reached that level prior to being studied, how quickly the infection level drops away.

Thus the study illustrates the more rapid response to infection among vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated people (and puts some numbers around it). What it does not measure - because to do so would involve a much more complex study with widespread surveillance testing - is how the infection proceeds at the early stages - i.e. how many people get infected but don't get sufficiently sick to present as a case and how quickly an incipient infection is fought off.

I'm pretty sure that if you could detect day 0 infection taking hold and selected accordingly - that is, you selected for all infections, not just those that got sick enough to present - you'd see a much lower overall line. But this study does not and can not show that, because they don't have that data.
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Re: Corona

Post by OrgasmAlley »

The study certainly does illustrate a more rapid response in the vaccinates.

It certainly also illustrates that the vaccinated can have as heavy a viral load as the unvaccinated, as the study cohort did. Clearly the study only speaks to the observed cohort. I don't see that I need additional caution reading studies, but you seem to have read a statement explicitly about the study cohort as a more general statement about all infected people. "What we see in this study is that both vaxxed and unvaxxed are quite infectious for about 5 days."

Would we see a lower line if the same study were performed for all infected, regardless of symptomatic status? That depends largely on whether the vaccines reduce asymptomatic infections MORE than they reduce symptomatic infections, since this is a primary indicator of viral load. There is data both ways, but generally this does appear to be the case. Example:

"Conclusions: COVID-19 vaccination with an mRNA-based vaccine showed a significant association with a reduced risk of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection as measured during pre-procedural molecular screening. The results of this study demonstrate the impact of the vaccines on reduction in asymptomatic infections supplementing the randomized trial results on symptomatic patients." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33704435/
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Re: Corona

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OrgasmAlley wrote:The study certainly does illustrate a more rapid response in the vaccinates.
Yep. Definitely. The point of the vaccine is to have the immune system forearmed and ready to fight the infection if it comes, and this data shows that it works.
It certainly also illustrates that the vaccinated can have as heavy a viral load as the unvaccinated, as the study cohort did.
Yes, but it doesn't quantify that. It only tells us about those who developed a high viral load and presented with symptoms - it doesn't tell us how many were exposed and/or infected that never reached that threshold. I would guess that proportion (that didn't present) is much higher among vaccinated people, but the study doesn't measure that.
"Conclusions: COVID-19 vaccination with an mRNA-based vaccine showed a significant association with a reduced risk of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection as measured during pre-procedural molecular screening. The results of this study demonstrate the impact of the vaccines on reduction in asymptomatic infections supplementing the randomized trial results on symptomatic patients." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3370443/
Which would suggest that your chances of becoming infectious are much reduced. What neither of these studies speak to is for those who did acquire the infection, how many proceeded to significant levels of infectiousness and/or symptomatic illness. It's been observed that how infectious you are depends a lot on your viral load - with the earlier infections, asymptomatic transmission was not significant (at least once notification systems became functional and awareness increased) - I suspect the Delta variant does show some asymptomatic transmission, but all variants are a lot more likely to be passed on once the patient becomes symptomatic.
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Re: Corona

Post by OrgasmAlley »

ruru67 wrote:The point of the vaccine is to have the immune system forearmed and ready to fight the infection if it comes
I suppose that's as good a description of the point as any at this time, except you've got to add "for roughly 6 months" in there. Of course, this point of the vaccines has moved quite a lot from the original claims about the point of the vaccines, and as we learn more about efficacy over time could move more.
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Re: Corona

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I follow Derek Lowe's blog "In the Pipeline". I'll admit that I came to it via his "things I won't work with" posts that describe delightful compounds like chlorine triflouride and contains phrasing like, "If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic."

But his actual day job is as a drug discovery chemist, so has quite insightful things to say about that field, and a lot of stuff about COVID-19 treatments, how they work and so-on. It's nice to read stuff from an actual scientist who is reading the literature with a scientist's eye, picking out what the studies are actually saying and then explaining it in easy(er) to understand terms.

Anyway, hist latest post is about some really promising results with a treatment that apparently works, called Molnupiravir. Lowe's write-up is here. This isn't a vaccine, it's a treatment for people who get sick. And what's really nice is that it's oral - you can give a vulnerable person coming down with the illness a few pills a day, and the likelihood of hospitalisation or worse drops like a rock. This has been in the wider press, but Lowe's commentary and view of wider implications is interesting, including the observation that while some people might see the availability of such a drug as an excuse not to get vaccinated, most people who won't get vaccinated have already made up their minds on that. (Seriously, don't be one of them. Get vaccinated.)
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Shannon SteelSlave
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Re: Corona

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Total Cases 235,067,647 , Total Deaths 4,804,418 , Total Vaccine Doses Administered 6,312,948,301
Bondage is like a foreign film without subtitles. Only through sharing and practice can we hope to understand.
A Jedi uses bondage for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T!....I, I mean S-M-A-R-T!
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Re: Corona

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Québec, La Belle Province at about 82% fully vaccinated, and 89% at least one shot.

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Re: Corona

Post by Shannon SteelSlave »

Total Cases 239,258,937 , Total Deaths 4,876,197 , Total Vaccine Doses Administered 6,557,013,853
Vaccine mix and match tactics being employed to provide booster shots for all initially administered shots. A pill is being produced to treat covid symptoms that works to alter the replication of the virus. I called it the "Plan C" pill. (for when plans A nd B fail)
Bondage is like a foreign film without subtitles. Only through sharing and practice can we hope to understand.
A Jedi uses bondage for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T!....I, I mean S-M-A-R-T!
👠👠
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