Coronavirus: How dangerous a threat?

[dusty red roads]

Long Covid patients haunted by smells of fish, sulphur and burnt toast

Parosmia has emerged as a symptom for some long Covid patients

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Merckx index]

Yascha's argument is a load of BS. He is losing faith in experts but used their models as gospel to claim that the plan definitely would lead to more death? Guy is definitely out of his depth. Anything to cry more about wokeness.

He's not criticizing their models. He's criticizing the way they prioritize them. The CDC itself said it would lead to more deaths.

First, given that we don't know how much (If any) that the vaccine will decrease transmission or the prevalence (and timeliness) of vaccinations, estimating the effect of vaccination on death is an estimate with enormous error bars. So the 0.5%- 6% should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

We can certainly estimate the number of deaths avoided if the elderly are vaccinated and protected. It's precisely because we don't know how much transmission will be affected that we should focus first on what we do know.

Second, the 65+ crowd generally have less capable immune systems, so generally respond less effectively to vaccines. We just saw this with the sanofi trial that got pulled because the dose used was only effective at generating antibodies in the young. We don't know how well extrapolating the relatively small numbers of the trials to the general pop of elderly will be. Signs were pretty good, but is still a bit unknown. Plowing a scarce resource into people who might not respond as well is not automatically the optimal strategy. 65+ generally can social distance easier than essential workers who are more likely to propagate the infection, which brings us back to the earlier point. If the vaccine does limit transmission, one theory is that the infection will be stopped sooner by vaccinating the spreaders, which trend younger.

That may be true, but the CDC did not issue its initial recommendations based on this reasoning. Even if you could make an argument that vaccination of > 65 may have limited effect on protecting them, the CDC did not take this possibility into account. So the criticism of the CDC, as stated, was valid.

Third, we know that minorities are way over represented in the death tallies. If we want to limit death, why would we not look into vaccinating these groups earlier than other groups. I know Yascha wants to boil this down to wokeness run amok, but he is not remotely giving accurate representation to a very complex issue.

But the CDC' original proposal did not specifically indicate that minorities should be prioritized. They specified that groups that have an above average proportion of minorities should be prioritized. This leads to some counter-productive projections, such as more minorities actually dying, because minorities are under-represented in groups where they're much more likely to die.

 

[djpbaltimore]

He's not criticizing their models. He's criticizing the way they prioritize them. The CDC itself said it would lead to more deaths.



We can certainly estimate the number of deaths avoided if the elderly are vaccinated and protected. It's precisely because we don't know how much transmission will be affected that we should focus first on what we do know.



That may be true, but the CDC did not issue its initial recommendations based on this reasoning. Even if you could make an argument that vaccination of > 65 may have limited effect on protecting them, the CDC did not take this possibility into account. So the criticism of the CDC, as stated, was valid.



But the CDC' original proposal did not specifically indicate that minorities should be prioritized. They specified that groups that have an above average proportion of minorities should be prioritized. This leads to some counter-productive projections, such as more minorities actually dying, because minorities are under-represented in groups where they're much more likely to die.

Who makes the models? Those are the same experts.

You can certainly make an estimate. What I'm telling y'all is there are so many variables that you can't effectively predict which strategy is best ahead of time. Models are built on assumptions which are actually variables. Many scientists are predicting a decrease in transmission based on some of the Moderna data. If it does, it is a mistake to vaccinate the viral sink before the viral source in countries with outbreaks. In Australia or NZ, prioritizing the elderly is smart because of low community spread. That is not the case here.

You don't know the reasoning of the CDC because it is not monolithic entity with a single POV.

I don't think what you saying is accurate. Nor does it reflect the totality of what the expert panels were deciding. Oversimplifying this doesn't do what was debated justice. And Yascha is very much doing that. I would like to see a venn diagram of the people rightly critiquing Fauci for armchair sociology who are doing what Yascha is doing here in things they don't really understand.

 

[Merckx index]

Many scientists are predicting a decrease in transmission based on some of the Moderna data. If it does, it is a mistake to vaccinate the viral sink before the viral source in countries with outbreaks. In Australia or NZ, prioritizing the elderly is smart because of low community spread. That is not the case here.

If the sink is protected, what difference does it make if the source isn't, right away? If we have a situation where there is a lot of spread, but relatively few deaths and hospitalizations, what's the big deal?

I think you may be over-thinking this a little. Yes, there is some uncertainty in weighing an effect at the source vs. an effect downstream, but the age dependence of mortality is so striking and universal that it greatly simplifies the options. We're talking about a factor on the order of 50-100 for 65-74 vs. those under 45, and well over 100-fold for those over 75.

About 1/6 of the U.S. population, 55 million, is 65 or older. If you vaccinate all these people, and there is 100% protection, you reduce the number of deaths by about 80%. Even if the protection is only 60%, you reduce the number of deaths by about 50%. If you apply the same 55 million vaccinations randomly to everyone over aged 14, and there is 100% inhibition of spread, you reduce the number of cases, and ultimately deaths, by about 20%. If spread is not entirely eliminated, if vaccinated people are still capable of transmitting the virus, the reduction in number of cases will be less. Prioritizing certain groups that have a higher than average proportion of people of color may increase this amount, but this situation is complex. While people of color tend to have much higher rates of hospitalization and death from C19, some of this is due to other health issues. Vaccinating these people will reduce deaths, but to the extent that these health issues are at play, it will not reduce the number of cases. There are other factors that suggest targeting these people would reduce cases, but it's difficult to estimate these effects.

You don't know the reasoning of the CDC because it is not monolithic entity with a single

I don't think what you saying is accurate. Nor does it reflect the totality of what the expert panels were deciding.

Then why did the CDC change the recommended order? What was the reasoning behind that, if not a response to the charge that they weren't minimizing deaths? They began with 87 million "essential" workers, then reduced it to a few million medical workers, plus 30 million second tier "frontline" workers. The original essential worker pool may have included many people whose work wasn't essential, but they did arguably make a great contribution to spread. Why did they push them down the line?

 

[Oldermanish]

Grow up already. The Govenment has been crap since at least Lincoln.

can you name a time when the vast majority in DC were not corrupt? Neither can I.

Now sit down.

Learn to spell Government and then the rest of us will have a clue to your insight, aside from your apparent lack of regard for your own life and others. You get all super-heated over the prospect of protecting others from yourself....wait, that's not it. You'll have to check the feed from wherever the news in your head comes from.

I'm always sitting when responding; you can take solace from that.

 

[yaco]

Only deafening if you don't read the responses. I wear a mask inside NO MATTER WHAT in public spaces (store, work), and don't have visitors in my house. Your argument all along is that masks don't work because people don't use them correctly, but at my work we are required to wear masks and everyone has complied. At the store masks are required and most people have complied. That greatly reduces the viral load that everyone breaths.

The biggest source of infection is the home environment, followed by workplaces - The fact is COVID is spread more readily in indoor environments either by droplets on surfaces or in select cases by airborne transmission - People rarely use masks when visiting friends and families in indoor environments and in some indoor workplaces depending on circumstances - Masks are among a suite of measures to combat the virus BUT Government's have failed to sell the idea of using them in the right circumstances - The funniest thing over XMAS is the media highlight people gathering on a beach BUT fail to mention indoor XMAS gatherings with friends and family - I know which one is the more dangerous environment.

 

[yaco]

I will take a different view to Baltimore in regards to vaccinations in Australia and New Zealand. Think they would be better served vaccinating workers involved in quarantine centres - I say this because OZ and NZ have negligible cases of COVID BUT have suffered cases of the virus escaping from quarantine and entering the community.

 

[Merckx index]

OZ and NZ have negligible cases of COVID

I think the Great White Shark should have stayed in his home country:

If you get it, the variations and intensity of symptoms varies from person to person. I am fit and strong and have a high tolerance for pain but this virus kicked the crap out of me like nothing I have ever experienced before. Muscle and joint pain on another level. Headaches that feel like a chisel going through your head scrapping little bits off each time, fever, muscles that just did not want to work like yesterday walking my dog Apollo my quads and hip flexors just did not want to work due to fatigue. Then my taste failed where beer tastes bad and wine the same. And finally at times struggling with memory of names and things.

View this content on Instagram

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View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJUEeHSpdJw/?utm_source=ig_embed

 

[Jagartrott]

(google translated from 'De Standaard')

Postponement of a second vaccine dose is also on the table in other countries

Consensus is growing among Canadian experts that all available vaccine doses should be used as the first dose. "Is it justified to watch people die when vaccine doses are waiting in the fridge?"
Maxie Eckert Monday, December 28, 2020 at 3.25 am

With the corona vaccines, Canada may again take a unique path. Again, because Canada, and in particular the province of Québec, is known in the art as a pioneer in deviating and improving pre-established vaccination schedules. For example, Quebec was the first region in the world to switch from a three-dose regimen of the hpv vaccine to a two-dose regimen for girls. Many countries have since followed. Now in Canada a similar discussion is emerging, namely about the postponement of the second dose of the corona vaccine, with a view to the widest possible roll-out of the first dose. Consensus is growing among Canadian experts that all available vaccine doses should be used as the first dose.

One of the experts in that line and who advise the Canadian authorities is the Belgian Philippe De Wals. He is a professor of epidemiology at Université Laval (Quebec) and a member of the Quebec Immunization Committee and the Canadian National Advisory Committee on Immunization. As a renowned researcher, De Wals would hold the international Francqui chair at the University of Antwerp last academic year, but the corona crisis threw a spanner in the works. Via a video call, De Wals tells De Standaard that there is more to the debate in Canada than purely scientific arguments. "Besides the scientific insights - the second dose after three weeks gives a minimal increase in efficacy - there are also ethical issues. We have to ask ourselves whether it is justified to see people get sick and die when we have vaccine doses in the fridge reserved for people who already have good protection with a first dose. "

Much depends on the courage that politicians show, says De Wals. "I suspect that decisions on the matter will be made in Canada within the next week. The question is whether politicians dare to deviate from a vaccination schedule that has been researched in clinical studies and on the basis of which the vaccines have been approved by drug agencies. Governments will fear that they will be taken to court if someone who has not received a second dose still falls ill. " "The question is whether politicians dare to deviate from a vaccination schedule on the basis of which the vaccines are approved"

"You can also turn that liability issue around", says professor of vaccinology Pierre Van Damme (UAntwerpen). "If we take longer to build group immunity while giving the virus free rein to make variants, who will be responsible for that? This is worth a debate. " De Wals and Van Damme argue that the detailed data from the clinical studies with the corona vaccines show that the postponement of the second dose is justifiable: a high degree of protection against covid-19 is already achieved after the first dose. The Havard epidemiologist Michael Mina also cited the data in an opinion piece in The New York Times.

Researchers from the Simid group, which health economist Philippe Beutels (UAntwerpen) leads together with biostasticist Niel Hens (UAntwerpen / UHasselt), want to model the impact of a broad rollout of the first dose (and a delayed second dose) for our country: what is the effect on the reproduction rate, the pressure on the hospitals and the possibilities to resolve the corona measures? It is expected that the effects of the vaccination will be felt earlier if the first dose is administered to a large group at an accelerated rate. But what are the long-term consequences of delaying the second dose? The second dose may not so much increase the level of protection in the short term, but it can make the protection more durable. According to vaccinologist Van Damme, other vaccines have previously shown that the result of a vaccination sometimes even gets better as more months pass between the first dose (the "primer") and the second dose (the "booster"). "You give the immune cells more time to mature after the first dose. The response of the immune system to the booster is then better: antibodies of a higher quality are formed. It remains to be investigated whether this also applies to the corona vaccines. I would like to set up clinical studies to investigate that in detail. In times of scarcity, we must dare to look for alternatives. "

 

[8472]

Who would have thought?

In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.

The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of Covid-19. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Dr. Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information.

Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Dr. Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.

They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.”

The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.

At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies, China is manipulating online discourse to enforce the Communist Party’s consensus. To stage-manage what appeared on the Chinese internet early this year, the authorities issued strict commands on the content and tone of news coverage, directed paid trolls to inundate social media with party-line blather and deployed security forces to muzzle unsanctioned voices.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/technology/china-coronavirus-censorship.html


In my opinion, the virus didn’t win. The CCP won. But let’s blame anybody but where the blame truly goes. Every single government on the planet should literally turn their backs to China. Unwind all of it.

LOL at the MSM trying to shift blame and push this propaganda piece again about China allegedly silencing the “whistleblower” like Dr. Li Wenliang, who allegedly “discovered” the coronavirus, but was silenced and “arrested” by government officials before he could alert the public about the novel coronavirus. Many people have already documented at length that he was definitely not a whistleblower. Li wasn’t a virologist or even an epidemiologist, but an ophthalmologist, meaning it was outside his field of expertise, and he also incorrectly claimed that the new virus was SARS (from 2003), meaning he was spreading false information. A whistleblower is someone who tries to alert the public about wrongdoing on the part of individuals or an organization; Li didn’t consider himself to be one, and didn’t want his December 31 posting in a private WeChat group to be shared with anyone else. Neither were Li and his colleagues “arrested,” as the MSM falsely claimed, although some did later issue retractions, eg. from the Wall Street Journal: "Dr. Li Wenliang was taken in by police and questioned after telling former classmates about a cluster of pneumonia cases. An earlier version of this article mistakenly said Dr. Li Wenliang had been arrested.“

Chinese Doctor Who Issued Early Warning on Virus Dies

A Chinese doctor who became a folk hero after he was taken in by authorities for warning about the dangers of a deadly new virus died after becoming infected with it.

www.wsj.com

More importantly, the MSM completely ignored the fact that the “whistle” had already been blown by Dr. Zhang Jixian, who reported the novel coronavirus to health authorities on December 27, a whole 4 days earlier than Li's WeChat post, which was announced by the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Wuhan Health Commission (WHC).

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316?query=featured_coronavirus

Was Zhang suppressed by the government? No, she was commended for her efforts. So saying Li "discovered" the coronavirus or was a "whistleblower" is blatantly false. So much for being a "whistleblower" when on the same day he supposed revealed his information, numerous foreign news outlets (e.g., Reuters, 12/31/19; Japan Times, 12/31/19; Medical Xpress, 12/31/19) and others (University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (12/31/19), Hong Kong government (12/31/19), the World Health Organization (12/31/19) and US-based International Society for Infectious Diseases (12/30/19) had all already picked up on China’s announcement and were able to report on this supposedly “secret” information in real time.

 

[8472]

You tell me.

https://thehill.com/opinion/interna...hinas-xi-jinping-know-and-when-did-he-know-it

https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...nally-for-covid-19-but-pushed-foreign-travel/

Anyone with an education would rather believe independent and prestigious medical journals like Science, Nature, and the Lancet, instead of biased opinion pieces from well known anti-China sites that spew nothing but lies.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6491/638
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2293-x_reference.pdf
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31637-8/fulltext

 

[Jagartrott]

Ah, I bet you get some kind of posting alert whenever 'China' is mentioned? You sidestep most of what the story on Li's death was about, namely control about the narrative by the Chinese government. Furthermore, there is no question that China was pushing to keep international flights going, same as WHO. Capital mistakes. Not intentional, I'm sure, but nevertheless very wrong.

Your ranting against the MSM, whatever that actually is, is fairly ironic given that in China, only one type of media exists, fully under government supervision. Freelance journalists risk jailtime, as we've seen again today.

Wuhan Covid citizen journalist jailed for four years in China's Christmas crackdown

Prosecution of 10 Hong Kongers detained in mainland China after allegedly attempting to flee to Taiwan also began on Monday

www.theguardian.com

 

[Chris Gadsden]

Learn to spell Government and then the rest of us will have a clue to your insight, aside from your apparent lack of regard for your own life and others. You get all super-heated over the prospect of protecting others from yourself....wait, that's not it. You'll have to check the feed from wherever the news in your head comes from.

I'm always sitting when responding; you can take solace from that.

Apologies for the typo. It’s not the first time and win’t be the last.

Lack of regard for my own life because I won’t wear a mask in my own home? Ya got me there.

Super-heated is the headspace you provide rent-free to Donald Trump. TDS is real.

 

[Chris Gadsden]

Ah, I bet you get some kind of posting alert whenever 'China' is mentioned? You sidestep most of what the story on Li's death was about, namely control about the narrative by the Chinese government. Furthermore, there is no question that China was pushing to keep international flights going, same as WHO. Capital mistakes. Not intentional, I'm sure, but nevertheless very wrong.

Your ranting against the MSM, whatever that actually is, is fairly ironic given that in China, only one type of media exists, fully under government supervision. Freelance journalists risk jailtime, as we've seen again today.

Wuhan Covid citizen journalist jailed for four years in China's Christmas crackdown

Prosecution of 10 Hong Kongers detained in mainland China after allegedly attempting to flee to Taiwan also began on Monday

www.theguardian.com

A pro CCP bot? This one was dripping with irony:

anti-China sites that spew nothing but lies.

 

[8472]

Ah, I bet you get some kind of posting alert whenever 'China' is mentioned? You sidestep most of what the story on Li's death was about, namely control about the narrative by the Chinese government. Furthermore, there is no question that China was pushing to keep international flights going, same as WHO. Capital mistakes. Not intentional, I'm sure, but nevertheless very wrong.

Your ranting against the MSM, whatever that actually is, is fairly ironic given that in China, only one type of media exists, fully under government supervision. Freelance journalists risk jailtime, as we've seen again today.

Wuhan Covid citizen journalist jailed for four years in China's Christmas crackdown

Prosecution of 10 Hong Kongers detained in mainland China after allegedly attempting to flee to Taiwan also began on Monday

www.theguardian.com

No it's because of ignorant people that makes me shake my head in disbelief. Shows how thoroughly the western MSM propaganda outlets have brainwashed the masses. The "journalist" in question had no journalist credentials and was just trying to get her hour of fame by breaking the strict quarantine law forbidding entry in and out of Wuhan since it was in lockdown. So what does this genius do? Break into quarantine, then sneak to a P4 biolab, take pictures and do a live stream, ie. disrupting social order. You break the law, you get sentenced, pure and simple, it's not about freedom of speech or other nonsense these MSM propaganda outlets want you to believe. Also I love these double standards, since where's the media sympathy for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange? Don't they also have the rights of free speech as journalists/whistleblowers?

Chelsea Manning Again Takes Fall for Defending Public's Right to Know - FAIR

Where is the outrage, or even recognition, that someone whose goal was to reveal what actions—illegal and unconscionable—were being carried out in US people's name, and whose revelations led in fact to debate and interrogation of those actions, is once again taking the fall for reporters happy...

fair.org

Regarding not restricting flights OUT of China: It's always in the best interest of the country to close its own borders, regardless of what WHO or any other country says. In fact, all countries should have enforced the travel ban from China. But it's the responsibility of these other countries to restrict travel and close their own borders. If you're another country and you don't want Chinese people to travel to your country, you don't have to allow them. That's up to you, that's what closing the borders are for. Why's it up to China to decide for the entire world what they are willing to accept into their country? Case in point, even months after the outbreak with millions of cases worldwide, there are almost ZERO countries in the world that have travel bans restricting flights OUT of their own country, since they have only restricted flights INTO their own country. Where's all the hate towards these countries for not banning travel OUT of their heavily infected countries? eg. UK still has not blocked travel OUT of their country after discovery of the much more virulent strain of coronavirus, so it's up to the rest of the world to block UK flights from coming INTO their own countries.

 

[jmdirt]

The biggest source of infection is the home environment, followed by workplaces - The fact is COVID is spread more readily in indoor environments either by droplets on surfaces or in select cases by airborne transmission - People rarely use masks when visiting friends and families in indoor environments and in some indoor workplaces depending on circumstances - Masks are among a suite of measures to combat the virus BUT Government's have failed to sell the idea of using them in the right circumstances - The funniest thing over XMAS is the media highlight people gathering on a beach BUT fail to mention indoor XMAS gatherings with friends and family - I know which one is the more dangerous environment.

I think that you are extrapolating your experience onto everyone else. Plus, I don't think that you actually read my response.

EDIT: I had to 'meet' with my team...
-You should not have non household members in your home.
-If more people wear masks in public, that reduces the odds of C19 entering the home.
-How can home be a greater source of infection? There are 100+ people at my work site, and only my wife at home.
--Yes, if my wife or I get it at work or the store, we can transmit it to one another, but the odds are much greater that we get it at the store.
--People who participate in high risk activities (ie: bars) are the ones who should be most concerned about home transmission, but probably aren't.
-Surfaces are a NOT a significant source of transmission.
-IDEALLY, I could go back to the way I had it for 5ish months when my only exposure to others was the twice a month I went to the grocery store, but I am required to work from work now.
-Short of isolation, masks are our best defense (reduced viral load).

 

[djpbaltimore]

If the sink is protected, what difference does it make if the source isn't, right away? If we have a situation where there is a lot of spread, but relatively few deaths and hospitalizations, what's the big deal?

I think you may be over-thinking this a little. Yes, there is some uncertainty in weighing an effect at the source vs. an effect downstream, but the age dependence of mortality is so striking and universal that it greatly simplifies the options. We're talking about a factor on the order of 50-100 for 65-74 vs. those under 45, and well over 100-fold for those over 75.

About 1/6 of the U.S. population, 55 million, is 65 or older. If you vaccinate all these people, and there is 100% protection, you reduce the number of deaths by about 80%. Even if the protection is only 60%, you reduce the number of deaths by about 50%. If you apply the same 55 million vaccinations randomly to everyone over aged 14, and there is 100% inhibition of spread, you reduce the number of cases, and ultimately deaths, by about 20%. If spread is not entirely eliminated, if vaccinated people are still capable of transmitting the virus, the reduction in number of cases will be less. Prioritizing certain groups that have a higher than average proportion of people of color may increase this amount, but this situation is complex. While people of color tend to have much higher rates of hospitalization and death from C19, some of this is due to other health issues. Vaccinating these people will reduce deaths, but to the extent that these health issues are at play, it will not reduce the number of cases. There are other factors that suggest targeting these people would reduce cases, but it's difficult to estimate these effects.



Then why did the CDC change the recommended order? What was the reasoning behind that, if not a response to the charge that they weren't minimizing deaths? They began with 87 million "essential" workers, then reduced it to a few million medical workers, plus 30 million second tier "frontline" workers. The original essential worker pool may have included many people whose work wasn't essential, but they did arguably make a great contribution to spread. Why did they push them down the line?

That is what Scott Atlas thought. The fixation on mortality is shortsighted in this discussion IMO and the hospitalization numbers are not nearly as skewed toward senior citizens.

That age disparity does not magically start at 65 though. If you look at the numbers the big jump starts at 50 (CDC data below Hospitalization on the left, death on the right). And a lot of those who are 50 are still working. You can also see why grouping the 65+ crowd with the nursing home crowd does not make sense. The risk of death is a combination of age susceptibility times the risk of contracting the virus. A 60 year old teacher or a 61 year old Walmart stocker with dodgy health care access have a greater risk of dying from COVID than a 66 year old retiree due to the latter factor. Making the 65+ crowd the priority for vaccination ignores that. Which is why I think the order of vaccination is not a huge difference in the model in question. It is shuffling who dies rather than having a huge effect on the total mortality.

18-29 years	Comparison Group	Comparison Group
30-39 years	2x higher	4x higher
40-49 years	3x higher	10x higher
50-64 years	4x higher	30x higher
65-74 years	5x higher	90x higher
75-84 years	8x higher	220x higher
85+ years	13x higher	630x higher

Who is proposing random vaccination though? Quite a strawman argument. Essential workers over 50 or who have risk factors would be my suggestion.

Over the last week, so many people have weighed in on the vaccine order ad nauseum. Mounk, Silver, Yglesias, etc. If you have never complained about vaccination policy before now, I would suggest that it is better to sit this one out and let the experts do the work we pay them to do. The great irony is that order of vaccination is much, much less important for protecting lives than vaccine hesitancy and the speed of vaccination. How is that last part going? Like $hit. And these are mostly hospital workers who are the easiest people to jab. Maybe the discourse can focus on these 'last mile' problems?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1343560144735645702

View: https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1343560144735645702

I will take a different view to Baltimore in regards to vaccinations in Australia and New Zealand. Think they would be better served vaccinating workers involved in quarantine centres - I say this because OZ and NZ have negligible cases of COVID BUT have suffered cases of the virus escaping from quarantine and entering the community.

No, I agree with you. I was mainly addressing the tier below health care and nursing homes which are almost universally accepted to be top priority. We don't really have quarantine center workers, but I would group them in the top tier too.

 

[Unchained]

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ye7CtNEUm8M

 

[Unchained]

He has never been able to stay on message..masks, big gatherings, financial aid, PPE..and vaccines..all over the place about everything..and we can never know what would have happened if the US took a leadership role and worked closely with other countries and not pre maturely demanded punitive action and confirmed blame for the virus spread through malicious acts

 

[djpbaltimore]

(google translated from 'De Standaard')

Postponement of a second vaccine dose is also on the table in other countries

Consensus is growing among Canadian experts that all available vaccine doses should be used as the first dose. "Is it justified to watch people die when vaccine doses are waiting in the fridge?"
Maxie Eckert Monday, December 28, 2020 at 3.25 am

With the corona vaccines, Canada may again take a unique path. Again, because Canada, and in particular the province of Québec, is known in the art as a pioneer in deviating and improving pre-established vaccination schedules. For example, Quebec was the first region in the world to switch from a three-dose regimen of the hpv vaccine to a two-dose regimen for girls. Many countries have since followed. Now in Canada a similar discussion is emerging, namely about the postponement of the second dose of the corona vaccine, with a view to the widest possible roll-out of the first dose. Consensus is growing among Canadian experts that all available vaccine doses should be used as the first dose.

One of the experts in that line and who advise the Canadian authorities is the Belgian Philippe De Wals. He is a professor of epidemiology at Université Laval (Quebec) and a member of the Quebec Immunization Committee and the Canadian National Advisory Committee on Immunization. As a renowned researcher, De Wals would hold the international Francqui chair at the University of Antwerp last academic year, but the corona crisis threw a spanner in the works. Via a video call, De Wals tells De Standaard that there is more to the debate in Canada than purely scientific arguments. "Besides the scientific insights - the second dose after three weeks gives a minimal increase in efficacy - there are also ethical issues. We have to ask ourselves whether it is justified to see people get sick and die when we have vaccine doses in the fridge reserved for people who already have good protection with a first dose. "

Much depends on the courage that politicians show, says De Wals. "I suspect that decisions on the matter will be made in Canada within the next week. The question is whether politicians dare to deviate from a vaccination schedule that has been researched in clinical studies and on the basis of which the vaccines have been approved by drug agencies. Governments will fear that they will be taken to court if someone who has not received a second dose still falls ill. " "The question is whether politicians dare to deviate from a vaccination schedule on the basis of which the vaccines are approved"

"You can also turn that liability issue around", says professor of vaccinology Pierre Van Damme (UAntwerpen). "If we take longer to build group immunity while giving the virus free rein to make variants, who will be responsible for that? This is worth a debate. " De Wals and Van Damme argue that the detailed data from the clinical studies with the corona vaccines show that the postponement of the second dose is justifiable: a high degree of protection against covid-19 is already achieved after the first dose. The Havard epidemiologist Michael Mina also cited the data in an opinion piece in The New York Times.

Researchers from the Simid group, which health economist Philippe Beutels (UAntwerpen) leads together with biostasticist Niel Hens (UAntwerpen / UHasselt), want to model the impact of a broad rollout of the first dose (and a delayed second dose) for our country: what is the effect on the reproduction rate, the pressure on the hospitals and the possibilities to resolve the corona measures? It is expected that the effects of the vaccination will be felt earlier if the first dose is administered to a large group at an accelerated rate. But what are the long-term consequences of delaying the second dose? The second dose may not so much increase the level of protection in the short term, but it can make the protection more durable. According to vaccinologist Van Damme, other vaccines have previously shown that the result of a vaccination sometimes even gets better as more months pass between the first dose (the "primer") and the second dose (the "booster"). "You give the immune cells more time to mature after the first dose. The response of the immune system to the booster is then better: antibodies of a higher quality are formed. It remains to be investigated whether this also applies to the corona vaccines. I would like to set up clinical studies to investigate that in detail. In times of scarcity, we must dare to look for alternatives. "

As stated above, I am a big proponent of any legit strategy that would speed up putting vaccines into arms. But without a clinical trial, I would put this one on the back burner. It is definitely worth a debate, but I alluded to immunological issues with the single dosing strategy the other day. This is one of the issues that I was talking about.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1343318430821314568

View: https://twitter.com/jallepap/status/1343318430821314568


I would also worry a little that the placebo was not a different vaccine in these trials. Way back in the thread, we talked about re-purposing things like the Polio vaccine to boost non-specific antiviral defense. Maybe that is part of what is happening after the first dose? I am really curious what these new RNA-nanoparticle platforms does non-specifically to induce the inflammation necessary to make antibody.

This is going to be somewhat of a digression, but people have made HIV vaccines that work in animal models. Other vaccines seem to work better in animal models and fail in humans too. One thing with these animal studies is that, out of practicality, you vaccinate the animals and then often challenge them with live virus ~2-3 weeks later. In most cases, this is not how it works in the real world. I fear that early protection in the COVID trials after the priming dose is a little bit of fool's gold, and you need the second dose for the real thing.

 

[yaco]

I think that you are extrapolating your experience onto everyone else. Plus, I don't think that you actually read my response.

EDIT: I had to 'meet' with my team...
-You should not have non household members in your home.
-If more people wear masks in public, that reduces the odds of C19 entering the home.
-How can home be a greater source of infection? There are 100+ people at my work site, and only my wife at home.
--Yes, if my wife or I get it at work or the store, we can transmit it to one another, but the odds are much greater that we get it at the store.
--People who participate in high risk activities (ie: bars) are the ones who should be most concerned about home transmission, but probably aren't.
-Surfaces are a NOT a significant source of transmission.
-IDEALLY, I could go back to the way I had it for 5ish months when my only exposure to others was the twice a month I went to the grocery store, but I am required to work from work now.
-Short of isolation, masks are our best defense (reduced viral load).

Home can be a greater source of infection for the simple reason people don't take the same protections as they do in a workplace - Catching COVID from surfaces is completely overblown - Look at the criteria followed by contact tracers which is15 minutes of close contact. At some stage in the future there will be more detailed breakdown of known sources of infection - Finally, if you believe that masks are always used appropriately and to the best advantage, then you are trusting.

 

[Unchained]

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G5-7E3kMj4Y

 

[Unchained]

So who is right? Trump or the people making the vaccines? And Pfizer didn't use Warp Speed money..first to market,first through trials,first in distribution

 

[Chris Gadsden]

With any luck... perhaps... the beginning of the end.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1343230445773848576

View: https://twitter.com/facethenation/status/1343230445773848576?s=21

 

[djpbaltimore]

Pfizer also made the vaccine that is by far the most difficult to get through that tricky last mile. Maybe the most difficult vaccine ever approved to actually put in a lot of people's arms. Their speed was not without a few tradeoffs. Moderna had more experience with the platform after years and years of failure and seemed to better identify the type of nanoparticles that are easier to actually use in practice.