The Vaccine Thread

[beeatnik]

I kindly disagree. Getting vaccinated doesn't just protect you, it reduces the prevalence of the virus in the community. While breakthrough cases may shed the same amount of virus, there are less break through cases than unvaxxed cases. Most people's immune systems were sufficiently charged by the vaccine to prevent breakthrough infection, which reduces the spread. If everyone was vaxxed, the prevalance of the virus would likely be below a threshold that disrupts life, economy etc. My attitude to those who choose not to get vaxxed is not kind.

Herd immunity was always (likely) a dream. At this point, all we can do is look at the numbers.

sweden.jpg
sweden2.jpg

israel.jpg
israel2.jpg


uk1.jpg
uk2.jpg
uk3.jpg

[bcm119]

^what those numbers don't account for is the 2x transmissibility of this latest variant, which masks the effectiveness of community vaccination at first glance (no pun intended).

[beeatnik]

^what those numbers don't account for is the 2x transmissibility of this latest variant, which masks the effectiveness of community vaccination at first glance (no pun intended).

Some are interpreting (CDC) the numbers from Israel as indicating waning vaccine protection (against infection).

drjohn2.jpg
drjohn.jpg

Delta + waning protection = endemic covid

[Chik]

Florida, under the "leadership" of Ron DeSantis, looks to be pretty much on track to set a new record for daily new cases of C19. And still he refuses to use his "goodwill" to tell folks that the reality is that wearing masks will make us safer and improve our economic situation faster than not.

Is this guy a buddy of DeSantis?
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/mic...040216466.html

[echappist]

Some are interpreting (CDC) the numbers from Israel as indicating waning vaccine protection (against infection).


Delta + waning protection = endemic covid

Let's say that your conclusion is proper, what would be your solution, if you were the head of the CDC? Would you be suggesting to just let this thing run wild and take us where it might (appears to be implied by your conclusion that the virus will be endemic), would you be suggesting to give booster shots to those who want them, or would you be suggesting something else?

[swt]

...

You are not making the point you think you are making. You yourself have no idea what you are talking about and you continually resort to cherry picking things off the Internet and regurgitating them on an forum for people who like nice bikes.
There are people on this forum who know what they are talking about but for whatever reason you have difficulty taking their perspective into account.
Have you asked yourself why you spend time promoting vaccine whataboutism on a forum for people who like nice bikes?

[beeatnik]

You are not making the point you think you are making. You yourself have no idea what you are talking about and you continually resort to cherry picking things off the Internet and regurgitating them on an forum for people who like nice bikes.
There are people on this forum who know what they are talking about but for whatever reason you have difficulty taking their perspective into account.
Have you asked yourself why you spend time promoting vaccine whataboutism on a forum for people who like nice bikes?

I am a vaccinated person in a highly vaccinated county who accepts that there is a large variability in individual and population level susceptibility to negative outcomes, including high rates of infection, due to socio-economic status, age, BMI, etc. Others who are risk averse or anxious about the progression of this pandemic have a right to their feelings. However, on this nice bike forum, only one viewpoint has been expressed. I've argued from the beginning that in the end the most vulnerable are not representative of the individuals here. That's a disconnect. I believe that to help those groups we shouldn't demonize the choices of individuals; choices which don't seem to move the needle regardless of what we read in major media.

Also, this nice bike forum has a 47 page thread about vaccines with a survey which reflects the vaccination level in my community, 85%.

LA County "Canary in the Coal Mine" data. At the risk of conflating or cherry picking, I'd respectfully request that you offer your own conclusions

2020
covidz2.jpg


2021

covidz.jpg

covidz3.jpg

[ABiCi]

Had my second vaccine last Friday.

Tested positive for Covid on Monday. Symptoms suggest Delta strain, majority of cases in Berlin currently are Delta.

My partner was in a higher priority grouping for vaccination due to a lifelong lung condition, so had her second a couple of months ago. Despite being around me all week while I was infectious, she thankfully continues to test negative and has at worst minor symptoms of a cold at the moment, which is a positive sign for the vaccine's effectiveness.

Looks my incomplete vaccines kept me from getting too sick for too long, already feeling pretty good again after only one day or so with a fever. Bit frustrating to go so long avoiding catching it and then get it what appears to be a day or two before I could get my second shot, but grateful that it hasn't been any worse.

[beeatnik]

Glad you and your partner are doing well.

In LA County, your infection would be reported as a case in an unvaccinated individual. And, many, if not most, health authorities continue to message that one dose provides minimal protection against Delta. As an optimist, I believe otherwise. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Had my second vaccine last Friday.

Tested positive for Covid on Monday. Symptoms suggest Delta strain, majority of cases in Berlin currently are Delta.

My partner was in a higher priority grouping for vaccination due to a lifelong lung condition, so had her second a couple of months ago. Despite being around me all week while I was infectious, she thankfully continues to test negative and has at worst minor symptoms of a cold at the moment, which is a positive sign for the vaccine's effectiveness.

Looks my incomplete vaccines kept me from getting too sick for too long, already feeling pretty good again after only one day or so with a fever. Bit frustrating to go so long avoiding catching it and then get it what appears to be a day or two before I could get my second shot, but grateful that it hasn't been any worse.

[Sino]

CNBC reporting that at least 74% of recent MA infections were vaxed.

NBC reported last week that COVID cases last year before Delta were unreported in 2/3s of cases because symptoms were so mild or not at all, indicating we've already well passed "herd immunity."

MSNBC reported that vaxed people are more contagious, was subsequently redacted without any explanation.

----
In all of this, there are still no concrete real answers. Anyone who claims anything absolute is full of it. I had the original, got J&J, and still got this new delta variant (presumed anyhow). It was mild, but the symptoms were far worse than the first time around when I only had a single symptom of light body aches. Felt like a cold, had the same weird body aches, and lost taste/smell.

What is clear, is that this virus seems to be mutating rapidly into more serious variants. The current vaccines seem to show a great reduction in seriousness, but also seem to show unimpressive efficacy in transmission reduction.

We're back to the point where there aren't any really great decisions. Masks, no masks, etc...people getting mad on either side is pretty ridiculous, just like it was before.

[beeatnik]

CNBC reporting that at least 74% of recent MA infections were vaxed.


MSNBC reported that vaxed people are more contagious, was subsequently redacted without any explanation.

----
In all of this, there are still no concrete real answers. Anyone who claims anything absolute is full of it. I had the original, got J&J, and still got this new delta variant (presumed anyhow). It was mild, but the symptoms were far worse than the first time around when I only had a single symptom of light body aches. Felt like a cold, had the same weird body aches, and lost taste/smell.

What is clear, is that this virus seems to be mutating rapidly into more serious variants. The current vaccines seem to show a great reduction in seriousness, but also seem to show unimpressive efficacy in transmission reduction.

When reading between the lines of CDC leaked data and reports in WaPo and NYT, the failure of high rates of vaccination in some states (MA) and countries (Israel and the UK) to limit the increasing proliferation of clusters in the vaccinated (vaxx infecting vaxx) represents the most troubling trend. This is what we used to call super spreading. A postgrad degree in biostatistics is not required to deduce that the unvaccinated are not fueling these surges.

We're back to the point where there aren't any really great decisions. Masks, no masks, etc...people getting mad on either side is pretty ridiculous, just like it was before.

[X] Like

[thollandpe]

And this virus is still transmitted mainly by aerosols, and masks are absolutely effective in limiting the potential for transmission.

[Todd Amunrud]

CNBC reporting that at least 74% of recent MA infections were vaxed.

This was actually an isolated outbreak on Cape Cod. Not the whole state. The article also details how to approach this event. I don’t think you can extrapolate this event to all outbreaks, but it is important to still test, contact trace, and release information.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc-...accinated.html

[jclay]

In all of this, there are still no concrete real answers.
Masks, no masks, etc...people getting mad on either side is pretty ridiculous, just like it was before.

Of course there are concrete answers and concrete facts:

Properly wearing appropriate particulate masks reduces transmission rates meaningfully.

The greater the percentage of folks who wear them, the greater the reduction in transmission.

We are safer if all of us wear them.

By politicizing it, stoking defiance, being defiant and failing to uniformly do what needed to be done early in the pandemic, and even much later, we have created the situation about which we were warned; that the infected population would grow so large that multiple mutations would occur, thrive and make an already serious problem far worse.

In the not quite as concrete world, but seemingly consistent with first principles wrt proliferation of variants is that current vaccines alone will not reduce the reproduction number to less than 1.

It's perfectly understandable to be annoyed at the people and political party who refuse to take simple, inexpensive and available steps to reduce transmission.

[Bobonli]

so at what point do we stop wearing masks? Assuming the virus continues to mutate, as all viruses do, then presumably the answer is to always wear a mask now and forever. That’s not a world I care to live in, and not one that most people will tolerate. Show me any other virus/disease that we’ve ever handled this way in the last half century. This is as much a public health issue as a struggle for cultural and legal control of our society. Why not take the same approach to the flu, obesity, alcoholism…..these problems just have a less effective PR dept., but someone just died from each of these in the time it took me to type this.

The government has done a pretty crappy job of laying out substantial and meaningful evidence. One report I saw today touted an outbreak without any mention of the denominator of the total number of people present. To say 100 people tested positive and got sick out of 4,000 is a lot different from 100/40,000. And papers from public health experts with contrary conclusions and different data get no coverage whatsoever. I don’t believe for a moment that we see the entire picture at least not what makes it to the media. And I long ago gave up hope that the best and brightest are working in our government.

I’m not anti vax or mask but a lot of the discussion revolves around people disguising their opinion with a thin layer of facts. Real life is more nuanced than “everyone should wear a mask” or “pandemic of the unvaccinated” If you woke up in a cave after a two year nap and read the paper for the first time today, you’d have to think twice about getting vaccinated based on the messaging that you’re still likely to get very sick despite the vaccine. No wonder people are hesitant.

I’d love to see the polling data behind the recent uptick in vaccinations. Was it driven by fear, mandation by employers, or the $100 gift card to Applebee’s?

The only sure thing is that the virus doesn’t care about our opinions, politics or strategy. It wants what it wants: to spread itself around to survive.

[Bobonli]

Some are interpreting (CDC) the numbers from Israel as indicating waning vaccine protection (against infection).

drjohn2.jpg
drjohn.jpg

Delta + waning protection = endemic covid

Did anyone really think we’d stop it or eradicate it?

[Mark Kelly]

IF by effective, you mean providing societal protection, that isn't how it works. These are amongst the most effective vaccines ever in terms of preventing the initial COVID-19 illness of concern.

The percent uptake of vaccine in the population, needed to protect society at large, is driven by the RO of the virus in question. The original SARS-CoV-2 RO is no longer the same as the Delta version, it has a higher R0. A virus with an R0=2 needs 50% vaccine uptake, R0=3, 66.67%, R0=4, 75%, etc. Sadly it is still early as far as data, but I read one analysis that had the original R0 at 2.7 and DELTA R0 at 6, another estimated Delta R0 at 4. Studies showing viral load of a Delta-infected person is 1000 times higher than the original SARS-CoV-2.

The modelling equation you are using, Vc= 1 / (1 - R0), is valid if vaccine effectiveness is 100%. At lower effectiveness numbers it becomes Vc = ( 1 / (1 - R0)) / E where E is the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing infection.

It should be obvious that if E < 1 / (1 - R0) there is no vaccination rate that assures herd immunity.

At the moment that is the case with the delta variant as far as we know: R0 is higher (maybe 4 - 6) and E is lower ( maybe 65% ) on the available evidence.

[Mark Kelly]

On a slightly related note, the latest insanity from the antivaxxers: that the vaccine contains (or worse, is 99% composed of) graphene oxide. This is apparently based on a report from some clown who looked at what he thinks was a vial of Covid vaccine under a microscope and saw what he thought looked like graphene oxide.

Seriously.

Have they ever seen graphene oxide? It's pitch black. Even a 0.2% suspension is black.

[jimcav]

[QUOTE=Bobonli;1055130]Did anyone really think we’d stop it or eradicate it?[/QUOTE
39 of 100 get infected, 41% of those 39 get symptomatic = 16, 88% of those get very sick=14, 91% of those get hospitalized= 13. What is missing is of the 13, how many die. AND, of the 13, how many were fully vaccinated (and with what vaccince). Then you'd look for anything in common among the deaths-age, smoking BMI, medical condition, etc. The answers to those questions, and validating similar data from other populations (for me it would be similar data on Moderna and Pizer vaccines in the USA) is what will drive the continued need for vaccine efforts and the other public health measures like masking, physical distancing, limiting indoor gathering, etc. There are ongoing modeling efforts that seek to answer questions such as "When will we stop masking"

you can keep track of pre-publish efforts at medrxiv.org here is one example, there will be more as more data is available https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....09.21260257v1

In an earlier post you mentioned poor/lacking gov't provided evidence and then mentioned "one report", but was that a gov't sourced report, or some news report? NIH is well respected, and the federal gov't science grants fund most of the top academic research institutions in the US, on everything from infectious diseases to AI. The gov't not only has some of the best, it helps fund the best.

[Mark Kelly]

The modelling equation you are using, Vc= 1 / (1 - R0), is valid if vaccine effectiveness is 100%. At lower effectiveness numbers it becomes Vc = ( 1 / (1 - R0)) / E where E is the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing infection.

It should be obvious that if E < 1 / (1 - R0) there is no vaccination rate that assures herd immunity.

At the moment that is the case with the delta variant as far as we know: R0 is higher (maybe 4 - 6) and E is lower ( maybe 65% ) on the available evidence.

Please note I typed the equation the wrong way around, it should be 1 - 1 / R0 not 1 / 1- R0