Covid: the shape of things to come

[LostHighway]

Not sure that study generalizes to the rest of the world. The British are a bit .... peculiar

There are a number of heads of state who have had covid but most of them seemed a little peculiar even before they had covid. It may prove to be a boon to politicians who might now point to covid rather than relying on the now tired "I have no recollection of those events"

 

[Keith Sinclair]

It's not in the interest of microbes to kill off all their host. They have uncanny ability to mutate around our defenses. The airplane much better than trains which were a advantage for them 19 & 20 centuries. Planes are worldwide host to infect. Wars, deforestation(stirring up dormant pathogens.) Air born virus are very effective in crowded situations. Not hard with over 7 billion of us.

I got a bad infection on my thumb from weeding in rich volcanic soil. Wasn't even concerned about having dirt on hands & around fingernails & thumb. Bacteria helps to make soil breaking down organic substances. Had to take antibiotic to clear it out from around thumbnail. Was watching on my DVD how when humans went from hunter gather to farming bacterial
sickness increased. Now use latex gloves never had a problem since.

Vector borne diseases carried by insects have
killed millions. Blood suckers take it from other animals & transfer to humans.

Mosquitos

Chikinguna - Virus
Dengue- Virus
Lymphatic Filarisis- Parasite
Rift valley fever- Virus
Malaria - Parasite
West Nile fever - Virus
Japanese Encephalitis - Parasite
Tsetse Flies - Sleeping sickness.

Hawaii has had outbreaks of Rat Lungworm disease that affects Brain & Spinal Cord.

Adult form only found in Rodents that pass larvae of worm in their feces. Snails and Slugs that are plentiful in Hawaii eat the feces & become infected they are intermediate host.
Even the snails slime trail can infect humans.

Plague still exists in modern time in small pockets. That is rodent - flea- human. In the past several Bubonic Plagues have put a serious dent in the population. In the little ice age when temperature dropped very moist more rats.in Europe. Starvation because less crops were growing. Not a good time at all to be living in Europe.

 

[Luftmensch]

@daveb, I am not an expert in the field... but I consider myself 'science literate'. Maybe I can offer you a different perspective?

I don't think we recognise how skin deep our understanding of the world is. Often a gut feeling of how things work on a basic level is sufficient knowledge to function in society. On closer inspection, it can be obvious how little you know! Prior to this pandemic I had a fairly crude understanding of how vaccines work. Mind you, my understanding is still relatively unsophisticated! But the pandemic has drawn attention to them.

Vaccines are quite fascinating. In post #980, I tried to emphasise the difference between infection and disease. This is worth raising again.

My understanding is that a vaccine is to prevent the vaxee from contracting what he is being vaccinated for. The notion that it is to lessen the effects has been introduced (in my opinion) to justify continued vaccinations that don't work as a preventive.

I know you were using colloquial language here... but I'll explore the issue with you nevertheless.

Think about it... a vaccine is a bunch of molecules/proteins injected into your muscle fibres. We live in environments where our bodies are continually assaulted by pathogenic organisms. There is NO WAY some tiny proteins in your body can prevent you from being infected by a pathogen. Only PPE can do that.

So what do vaccines do? They prepare our body for a response once we have already been infected.

Here is where it gets a bit grey (and interesting). What is infection? Is it one cell/virus replicating in your body? Does it have to be multiple cells/virus replicating in your body?? Do there have to be enough pathogens to be transmissible. I believe the medical science have reasonable broad definitions but there is a little bit of discussion about how to define it at a very fine scale.

If this seems overly pedantic, or just a matter of semantics, it is not! It is quite cool! I believe what you mean by the word 'prevent' is essentially a sterilising vaccine. Sterilizing vaccines stop an infection right in its tracks when it enters the body. At this stage the pathogen has already entered your body. The vaccine is able to prevent the pathogen from taking hold and replicating in any meaningful way.

If this is logical to you so far... the it should be reasonable to conclude that vaccines are not a binary defense mechanism (they either work or they dont). Instead, it is more productive to view vaccines are spectrum of responses. Some vaccines are super effective and can stop infections super quickly (but the infections still happen at some low level). Other vaccines are 'slower': the infections take a stronger hold before the body's immune response can completely neutralise the pathogens. Perhaps in these case you are 'asymptomatic' - you don't have the 'disease' but you have the pathogen replicating in your body. But there is still value here right? The vaccine has allowed your body to mount an immune response to an aggressive/invasive pathogen early enough to prevent you from getting the disease! And of course.... disease occur on a spectrum as well; right? Maybe you get the disease after vaccination but its severity has been reduced because your immune system has been primed to fight the pathogen.

Viewing the mechanism of infection and vaccines in this way helped me. Maybe there is value in it for you? I believe what I have said is broadly accurate... but I am happy to be corrected!

 

[daveb]

Thanks for taking the time to pen your thoughts.

Most of my musings on the subject of the virus, vaccines and such may appear pointless rambling. I'm trying to offer a point of view (my own) that has me seeing the Covid phenomena differently from what is typically concluded from studies, reported on, presented as fact, etc. I'm the first to admit I don't always do a good job of articulating the point(s) I'm trying to make.

To the vaccines role as preventive and / or reducing effects I'll offer: My long held perception (and I think most people would agree) is that vaccines are to prevent (not reduce) effects from what is being vaccinated for. That is to say, IMO, the common view of a vaccine is binary (though I doubt most have put much thought into it) and is sterilizing (and I know most have not put much thought into that).

I know that the flu vaccine is trying to hit a moving target every year and some years it's more effective than others. But that effectiveness is measured by prevention.

When I take my dog in to get a rabies vaccination, it is to prevent him from contracting rabies should he be exposed to it - it is not to reduce the effects of rabies should he contract it.

In both examples the incentive to get the vaccine is prevention. The metric of effectiveness is prevention. If the vaccine reduces effects after it failed to prevent contraction, I'm sure that can be seen as a good thing but the vaccine still failed.

My second problem with the "reduces effects" incentive is how is that measured? I'm out of my comfort zone here but not at all sure that comparing outcomes of a group that was unvaccinated to a group that was vaccinated can be used to confirm that "reduces effects" is true.

In my cynical opinion (IMCO) the "reduce effects" argument is being made to provide more incentive for people to take the vaccine and boosters and I question the validity of that argument. That world and national leaders have mandated, threatened, discriminated, all in the name of shot count does not play well with me and a little flexibility with definitions is not surprising.

 

[user 16756]

My second problem with the "reduces effects" incentive is how is that measured? I'm out of my comfort zone here but not at all sure that comparing outcomes of a group that was unvaccinated to a group that was vaccinated can be used to confirm that "reduces effects" is true.

there's not a simple answer to this question at all.

if experiment design, causal statistics, trying to back out effects in dirty real world samples, frankly even conditional probabilities judging by this thread were trivial problem, they wouldn't be the majority of what you learn in every social science graduate program, nor would I be nearing a brain aneurysm from this thread some times.

the basic idea is you either need to find genuinely comparable groups who differ by the treatment or you need to get out your textbooks and start working through the methodologies to try and compensate for the fact that they aren't. then, you end up with a bunch of measures that still require adequate interpretation. then finally you go and show that to some idiot in the administration who looks you dead in the eyes and says "make it 5 days because I care more about the SP500 than your statistics or indeed the very people I am nominally supposed to be working for".

how is it measured? great question, there are tons of possible tests that may or may not tell us something useful. even finding the right instrument is kind of hard. is it deaths? hospitalizations? self reported symptoms?

and your intuition that you cant just willy nilly compare the groups is actually quite correct. there's tons of differing behaviors and situations between the vaccinated and not. e.g. some people are immuno-compromised and cannot get it. obviously if they get sick and die but someone without that condition doesnt it would be completely spurious to suggest it was the vaccine.

that said, so far the evidence has lined up pretty favorably for the vaccine in clinical trials which are trying to address these things.

 

[MarcelNL]

there surely are data on how reduced effect of the vaccines was established, and I'm guessing here; the data probably is a conglomerate of signals, nr of infected under those vaccinated over time probably is a key factor. You can find the FDA advisory panel sessions on the FDA YT channel, in Sept there was not enough data to support boosters, two months later there was.

It's one thing that administrations communicate the measures, it's their scientific advisory committees that mull over the data, some of their recommendations become decisions and some are influenced by politics, economics or whatnot. Don't shoot the messenger, try find the source data and follow its trail...I for one do not see much that does not make sense or appears 'invented'. Vaccines work very good for x months but were created for Covid Mk1, the same thing applies to the booster but meanwhile we are with Covid Mk4 and in need of modified vaccines.

 

[Keith Sinclair]

I look at it in terms of football early in season when saw fans packed together with no mask was surprised, but at the time cases weren't increasing dramatically. Sturgis huge motorcycle rally only had limited cases. Thought good sign perhaps virus winding down.

Switch to end of season Hawaii had to cancel bowl game because so many player sick.

On pro level same time players & coaches out because positive for Omicron. Today Saturday Dallas played at Philadelphia. Dallas lit up depleted Eagles secondary. Few shots of the fans hardly any mask. I was even more surprised as we have yet to see this spike in cases turn.

It's funny because been watching my great courses Mysteries of the Microscopic World
last couple days. This morning watched the 1918 Spanish Flu. It is misnamed
first case was in March 1918 in Kansas where persons were in close contact with animals.
Many Asian Virus have also began with people close to animals. In 1918 a large military base was nearby. It spread quickly solders died on troop ships going to Europe many more died after they got there. One year later it had become a worldwide Pandemic infecting as many as 500 million people. It is estimated over 50 million died. Making it one of the worst in all history. When troop ships came back to Philadelphia many with sick soldiers, city leaders said no big deal and held a large parade. Quite a few Philly people died from 1918 Flu. I wonder if those football fans chugging beer with no mask know of their history in late 1918. It was a nasty strain.

I have never experienced anything like this. Pandemic. Have a bunch of science DVD. That's my favorite subjects started with Astronomy set.
Very large many DVD I was hooked. Like history of wars too, couple cooking & history of beer.

On second of 4 disk really enjoying it since it is appropriate for our present time.

 

[MarcelNL]

BTW: infection is pretty solidly defined, the article below appears to be well written.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infection

 

[Luftmensch]

BTW: infection is pretty solidly defined, the article below appears to be well written.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infection

Sure!

Defining infection as a pathogen entering the body, replicating and causing an immune response is concise and neat. I have no qualms with it. I can see how it is useful for microbiologists, virologists and the field of immunology. Definitions are useful.

On the other hand, medical clinicians tend to prefer diagnosable (observable) evidence. You obviously have an infection if you have the corresponding disease. You also obviously have an infection if you are asymptomatic - that is; you can test for the presence of the pathogen. These are effectively threshold tests. If there is not enough information to deduce the presence of the pathogen... or the tests don't have a high enough precision... then the threshold has not been passed. A responsible doctor will use cautious language in their diagnosis - they cant tell a patient that have been infected with something if there is no way of verifying that position. Instead they might say "you may have been exposed; I recommend you do <something> out of caution".

In other words, you can see how a microbiologist might be happy to assert that someone had an infection if the body summarily destroyed a pathogen... yet a doctor may find that untestable position to be wholly academic...

I am just trying to encourage the notion that these are terribly complex systems that occur on a continuum - not discrete outcomes. More generally (not specifically in response to you @MarcelNL), given the nature of Covid and its current vaccines; *I* believe this can be a useful way of thinking about the pandemic:

• In some cases the 'infection' will be destroyed 'immediately' (sterilising immunity)
• In some cases the infection will be asymptomatic
• In some cases the disease will be mild
• In some case the disease will be moderate
• In some cases the disease will be severe

It is disappointing that the current vaccines do not provide sterilising immunity (first bullet). But it is a tricky disease! If the vaccines stymie the infection such that fewer people develop severe disease, then it clearly still has utility!

As I mentioned before; don't let perfection (it was very unlikely to be a sterilising vaccine) be the enemy of the good!!

If I am injecting confusion into the mix, I apologise. Similarly if I have made any mistakes!!

 

[knifeknight]

Omikron (symptomatic) cases in Germany (Data from RKI, weeks 49-52/2021), 77% completely or 3 times vaccinated….
The gouvernment keeps telling us that vaccins are highly effective…

 

[Luftmensch]

Thanks for taking the time to pen your thoughts.

No wukkas cobber! Pleased to do it!

My long held perception (and I think most people would agree) is that vaccines are to prevent (not reduce) effects from what is being vaccinated for. That is to say, IMO, the common view of a vaccine is binary (though I doubt most have put much thought into it) and is sterilizing (and I know most have not put much thought into that).

Absolutely! I am wholly empathetic to this position.

I think it is a reasonable shortcut so that people can get on with their lives. We have had amazing successes in the past century - Polio, MMR, Tetanus, Chicken Pox and HPV. These vaccines are so successful that you may as well consider them a binary outcome (in reality there are caveats).

Like I said... I consider myself to be scientifically literate... Both through training and interest. My exposure to biology is largely through secondary education and popular science like New Scientist and Scientific American (aka not particularly deep). That background might make me incrementally more informed than an average person. Even so... a year ago, I imagine if I was walking on the street and somebody stuck a microphone in my face and asked me to describe what vaccines do... I would probably say "they prevent disease"... despite knowing better.

But the last year has been complex. The current Covid vaccines are not effective in the same way that our other 'staple' vaccines are. This places a much greater burden on leaders to communicate their value as part of preventative health care. This has been a challenge and it is clear there are no quick and easy solutions.

I found it was easier to navigate the current information environment by reading some neutral sources out there. For instance, Wikipedia has pretty decent articles on vaccines and immunity. Even these articles can be overly technical! But they are a slow introduction to the sort of language and jargon that experts use in the media grabs.

My second problem with the "reduces effects" incentive is how is that measured?

An obvious measurement is deaths. The next most obvious measurement is critical care numbers (e.g. ventilation etc..). We want to see these numbers go down. If people get the vaccine and the population still becomes crook from covid... but deaths, ICU numbers and length of admission go down... we are winning!

Another measurement is the severity of the symptoms. A lot of people talk about Covid becoming similar to the flu. That would be great! Many will get sick. The frail and unlucky will die. Many will get their seasonal boosters... others will not. Society will shrug and move on to the next catastrophe. But this lacks ambition! The flu sucks! It would be even better if the vaccine reduced the severity of Covid to be more like the common cold!

Since I have made it a running theme ... this is all a continuum right? I am sure the emergency rooms will be happy to see these basic indicators move in a favourable direction and leave it at that. Basic hospital indicators aren't the highest standard for 'measurement'. For instance what if the vaccines aren't doing anything and reduced numbers can be explained by a non-virulent Omicron.

Deeper into the continuum is causal analysis. As @tcmx3 articulated, this can be difficult to do. Unfortunately the world is messy. We don't have time to partition society and control for all the variables. It would also be unethical! The vaccines are available and circulating in the community for good reason. Instead, statisticians will have to gather data in the right way and from the right places. They'll need to construct well defined objectives and deploy the right statistical model on the data to generate a result. The results then need to be analysed and communicated in a way that has relevance for the broader community. It is time consuming work!

 

[daveb]

Deeper into the continuum is causal analysis.

Sorry to seem so stubborn on this but what I think we've seen is casual analysis. Let's sell this vaccine stuff appears to be the pre-determined outcome and the "analysis" supports it. Covid 1.0 has left the station and I'm sceptical that any of the current vaccines / boosters are impacting the Omni variant.

Still have memories of our own leaders ridiculing initial mitigation efforts, then mask for two weeks to flatten the curve and 20 gagillion people are going to die, and so on.....

It's also not lost on me that when our polies wanted the numbers high, any and every hospitalization was attributed to Covid. Only now that the polies want the numbers low are hospitializations differentiated into "with" and "because".

The only thing gagillion about the last three years is the amount of money the pharma industry (and our good mega doctor) has made off of the pandemic.

That none of the world or national bodies are seriously considering natural immunity instead of vaccines is another part of my equation. With the number of people that have contracted Covid, how many "need" the vaccines or boosters? And I'm not a black helicopters guy but do think that any comprehensive look at natural immunity would put the number of false positive tests into consideration - something that pharma does not want to talk about.

Anyway, I don't think the vaccines will do any harm and recognize they may have some benefit. I'm fully vaxed (by this week's definition) and will get the booster for future employment, travel and we all know there are no atheists in the foxholes.

Cheers

 

[user 16756]

Sorry to seem so stubborn on this but what I think we've seen is casual analysis. Let's sell this vaccine stuff appears to be the pre-determined outcome and the "analysis" supports it. Covid 1.0 has left the station and I'm sceptical that any of the current vaccines / boosters are impacting the Omni variant.

Still have memories of our own leaders ridiculing initial mitigation efforts, then mask for two weeks to flatten the curve and 20 gagillion people are going to die, and so on.....

It's also not lost on me that when our polies wanted the numbers high, any and every hospitalization was attributed to Covid. Only now that the polies want the numbers low are hospitializations differentiated into "with" and "because".

The only thing gagillion about the last three years is the amount of money the pharma industry (and our good mega doctor) has made off of the pandemic.

That none of the world or national bodies are seriously considering natural immunity instead of vaccines is another part of my equation. With the number of people that have contracted Covid, how many "need" the vaccines or boosters? And I'm not a black helicopters guy but do think that any comprehensive look at natural immunity would put the number of false positive tests into consideration - something that pharma does not want to talk about.

Anyway, I don't think the vaccines will do any harm and recognize they may have some benefit. I'm fully vaxed (by this week's definition) and will get the booster for future employment, travel and we all know there are no atheists in the foxholes.

Cheers

I dont think that's true. both England and Australia have. both have changed their minds (quickly).

 

[ian]

That none of the world or national bodies are seriously considering natural immunity instead of vaccines is another part of my equation. With the number of people that have contracted Covid, how many "need" the vaccines or boosters? And I'm not a black helicopters guy but do think that any comprehensive look at natural immunity would put the number of false positive tests into consideration - something that pharma does not want to talk about.

Guess this is a little complicated, since it's simpler to say “everyone get vaccinated” than it is to somehow get verification of previous infection, and you don’t want to encourage people to get infected instead of getting vaccinated. But yea, maybe that should be changed, and maybe we’ll see this kind of rule adopted in the US before too long. Idk.

It's also not lost on me that when our polies wanted the numbers high, any and every hospitalization was attributed to Covid. Only now that the polies want the numbers low are hospitializations differentiated into "with" and "because".

Might very well be some truth to that. Also could just be because it’s complicated to differentiate between the two, so it wasn’t a huge priority at first. Probably a combination of factors.

The only thing gagillion about the last three years is the amount of money the pharma industry (and our good mega doctor) has made off of the pandemic.

They certainly have. A parent-friend of mine who was a Moderna test subject just wrote an op ed explaining why he resigned from the trials basically for this reason.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/04...pig-im-resigning-from-moderna-vaccine-trials/
The health impacts have been pretty catastophic too tho.

 

[gregfisk]

Dave, I certainly understand your long standing belief on what a vaccine is supposed to do. We all grew up in the same world and vaccines are supposed to keep you from getting the disease your taking them for. The fact that the current vaccines aren’t doing that doesn’t mean they’re not working. They have been keeping people from dying or less ill for a long time now and even with Omicron I think they’re still doing that, at least if you have the booster. It’s unfortunate that they don’t work better but the fact we have them at all is pretty amazing. I think it’s been fairly well established by now that the vaccines keep people out of the hospital and therefore from dying. Omicron so far doesn’t seem as deadly, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise and will help with immunity, I guess time will tell. I know one thing for sure, omicron is extremely contagious because even with it being less severe hospitalizations are at record breaking numbers. In my small part of the world I’m finally seeing people all around me getting Covid. Every time I talk to a friend I hear about someone I know who has it. And since pretty much every person I know has at least two doses they are all breakthrough cases. One friend with the J&J single vaccine was down for two weeks with Delta, other than that the cases have all been fairly mild. It’s definitely getting harder to avoid around here.

 

[ReiHamono]

Yep, it’s starting to show again isn’t it?

Omikron (symptomatic) cases in Germany (Data from RKI, weeks 49-52/2021), 77% completely or 3 times vaccinated….
The gouvernment keeps telling us that vaccins are highly effective…

View attachment 159616

 

[Keith Sinclair]

All those microscopic illness & death built up resistance in Europeans. When they sailed to new world what they carried decimated native populations. It happened in Hawaii too native Polynesians we're almost wiped out. Syphilis, influenza, measles, small pox, leprosy. By 1840
only 62 years after James Cook landed number of Hawaiians had fallen over 84%. Census 1920 declared 24,000 down from hundreds of thousands before contact.

 

[MarcelNL]

Nothing against quitting participation in any study, I'll just say that the informed consents are quite specific these days.

Making sure natural immunity is effective involves testing, and those tests are seriously difficult -not a matter of ticking a box if you've tested positive and later negative. Doing those tests large scale is not an easy task.Also; pharma does not drive vaccination or testing decisions.

BTW: 15B in sales revenue does not equal 15 B in profit..(although the numbers produced/sold mean interesting profits even when the margin is low) selling billions of vials means large investments in study cost, pharmacovigilance, manufacturing, huge cost due to large scale operations everywhere...transporting and keeping a drug in storage (esp -80'C) is expensive...sure, there is money made on each vial yet I know for a fact that by far the most non generic drugs have a much more favorable ROI. Pharma companies make money off inventing new drugs and need to keep their investors happy, so do many hospitals in countries like the US...does anyone know how much revenue was made on ICU bills alone?


The good news is that vaccines still prevent greater havoc to happen...just look at the difference in ICU population vaxxed vs non vaxxed, a striking difference I'd say. If the vaccine and booster in the end of day did cost me a couple of hundred bucks out of pocket (somehow we'll pay) and it cuts being off work due to Covid by a day it was worth it to me, conveniently forgetting ending up in ICU or worse.

 

[MarcelNL]

There are a number of heads of state who have had covid but most of them seemed a little peculiar even before they had covid. It may prove to be a boon to politicians who might now point to covid rather than relying on the now tired "I have no recollection of those events"

Our past and future PM did not need Covid to claim no recollection on several occasions when caught lying flat out.... I'm sure he'll use it at some point in the near future!

 

[Luftmensch]

Absurd... I have a rant pre-prepared you.

For any KKF members who want to walk through what happened in Australia in the past month, I will be happy to do my best. Just ask. What happened was part of a plan that did not adjust for Omicron and was dripping with political ideology. We are now paying the price.

 

[ian]

Yikes, maybe I haven't been paying attention enough, but this graph surprised me. (From NYT.) Deaths seem like they're trending higher than I'd hoped they would with Omicron.

Explanation: The death graphs are shifted to the left by 21 days so that the peaks match those of the case numbers. The heights of the graphs are scaled so that "100%" is the largest number of cases (or deaths) at any time in the past year. (Note that the cases and deaths graphs are displayed at different scales! Covid is not 75% deadly!) To me, the content here is that the recent peak in the death graph is only like 3/4-5/6 or so the height of the recent peak in the case graph, rather than lower.

 

[Michi]

NSW published quite detailed figures about infection rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, as well as hospitalisations and fatalities.

Here are some interesting figures.

Vaccination status of cases in NSW:

Looking at this graph, the immediate reaction is "look, most cases are vaccinated people, the vaccines don't work."

Looking a bit more closely, it is obvious that, during the Delta wave (August to end of October), there were way more unvaccinated cases than vaccinated ones. Then, during the Omicron wave (still ongoing), we see that, from mid-December (which is when the wave started here), vaccinated cases vastly outnumber unvaccinated ones.

How come? Two reasons, I believe:

• The vaccines are a lot less effective at preventing infection with Omicron than with Delta.
• At a vaccination rate of over 90%, there are nine times as many vaccinated targets for the virus than unvaccinated ones, so the vaccinated cases outnumber the unvaccinated ones.

Now let's look at the vaccination status of hospitalised cases in NSW:

Now the picture is very different. Unvaccinated hospitalisations vastly outnumber vaccinated ones for both Delta and Omicron. There is an uptick of hospitalisations in December, but it is small, despite the hugely higher number of infections.

The picture is very similar for ICU cases:

Unvaccinated people are way more likely to end up in ICU. Although there are fewer than 10% unvaccinated people in the state, they account for ten times as many ICU cases. In plain text: per capita, unvaccinated people are 100 times more likely to end up in ICU than vaccinated people.

And here is the status for fatalities:

Despite accounting for < 10% of the population, unvaccinated people account for about five times as many fatalities. Translation: an unvaccinated person is about 50 times more likely to die from Covid than a vaccinated person.

I think this makes it abundantly clear that, while the vaccines don't protect well against infection with Omicron, they greatly reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death.

In my book, that's a huge win.

 

[ReiHamono]

I feel my greatest fears are coming true here as the connection strengthens and the bigger picture becomes more and more clear

 

[Michi]

the bigger picture becomes more and more clear

Please avoid blindly copying and pasting lies.

Wild claims about CDC PCR alert don’t pass the test

THE VERDICT
The CDC has not declared that its PCR test or any similar tests for COVID-19 cannot differentiate between influenza and the coronavirus, nor did the test fail a review as claimed.

The CDC said the test was not being withdrawn for any issues relating to its performance. Rather, it is withdrawing its initial test from use due to the widespread adoption of newer PCR tests which enable laboratories to simultaneously test for COVID-19 and influenza viruses, saving time and resources.

False – Content that has no basis in fact.

 

[MarcelNL]

man o man o man, what a bunch of nonsense, either pick some misinformation from places where we cannot verify it, OR; much preferred; try verify it yourself.

A pity the page is not translated but here is the Dutch CBS page with more information on excess deaths than just one number. Gezondheid in coronatijd

 

[MarcelNL]

NSW published quite detailed figures about infection rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, as well as hospitalisations and fatalities.

Here are some interesting figures.

Vaccination status of cases in NSW:
View attachment 159749
Looking at this graph, the immediate reaction is "look, most cases are vaccinated people, the vaccines don't work."

Looking a bit more closely, it is obvious that, during the Delta wave (August to end of October), there were way more unvaccinated cases than vaccinated ones. Then, during the Omicron wave (still ongoing), we see that, from mid-December (which is when the wave started here), vaccinated cases vastly outnumber unvaccinated ones.

How come? Two reasons, I believe:

• The vaccines are a lot less effective at preventing infection with Omicron than with Delta.
• At a vaccination rate of over 90%, there are nine times as many vaccinated targets for the virus than unvaccinated ones, so the vaccinated cases outnumber the unvaccinated ones.

Now let's look at the vaccination status of hospitalised cases in NSW:
View attachment 159751
Now the picture is very different. Unvaccinated hospitalisations vastly outnumber vaccinated ones for both Delta and Omicron. There is an uptick of hospitalisations in December, but it is small, despite the hugely higher number of infections.

The picture is very similar for ICU cases:
View attachment 159752
Unvaccinated people are way more likely to end up in ICU. Although there are fewer than 10% unvaccinated people in the state, they account for ten times as many ICU cases. In plain text: per capita, unvaccinated people are 100 times more likely to end up in ICU than vaccinated people.

And here is the status for fatalities:
View attachment 159753
Despite accounting for < 10% of the population, unvaccinated people account for about five times as many fatalities. Translation: an unvaccinated person is about 50 times more likely to die from Covid than a vaccinated person.

I think this makes it abundantly clear that, while the vaccines don't protect well against infection with Omicron, they greatly reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death.

In my book, that's a huge win.

Great summary of information! What I see as positive sign is that the data sets that I looked at seem to indicate a very similar picture, just as if Covid has no borders nor does it have a political affiliation ;-)

 

[Keith Sinclair]

All the Hoop & Hollar about about vaccines not working on Omicron. The charts Michi posted
are pretty much what scientist in the field of infectious microbes are saying.

Even flu vaccine has to be manipulated to address different strains. These tiny invaders
are always finding ways around our defenses.
They puncture cell wall encasing themselves in
cell membrane so bodies defenses won't recognize them as foreign microbes. The complexity of what goes on at cellular level is truly amazing. Not like right or wrong vacinne it's a fluid ever changing landscape of biology.
Don't care about politics just a host to multiply in & spread to others.


Bacteria is the earliest life form.
They are still here in the mega trillions. That's survivor. We have beneficial bacteria separate life forms in our bodies. Yet there are deadly bacteria that can kill us.

 

[Michi]

Another very clear graph of ICU cases:


Of all the cases in ICU, 6.55% had two doses of the vaccine, and 7.49% had a single dose. The remaining 85.96% are unvaccinated.

If you want to avoid ending up in ICU, getting vaccinated looks like an excellent idea.

 

[Luftmensch]

After some lengthy consideration,

I think KKF needs to talk about preserving aspect ratios when posting images. THAT is the pressing issue here...

 

[dAtron]

After some lengthy consideration,

I think KKF needs to talk about preserving aspect ratios when posting images. THAT is the pressing issue here...