Evolution of Covid Strains.

[studiot]

24 minutes ago, CharonY said:

As much of the world still remains unvaccinated, new strains continue to emerge. Recently a new variant of concern (B1.1.259, omicron). It carries 32 mutations compared to the original strain in the gene coding for the spike protein, raising worries that current vaccines might be less effective against this variant.

https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-omicron-(b.1.1.529)-sars-cov-2-variant-of-concern

It is yet another reminder that the pandemic is far from being over.

What is frightening is just how fast this variant is getting around the world.

Yesterday 61 persons on two flights from SA into Amsterdam tested positive on arrival.

[iNow]

2 minutes ago, studiot said:

What is frightening is just how fast this variant is getting around the world.

Yesterday 61 persons on two flights from SA into Amsterdam tested positive on arrival.

It’s a combination of viral evolution and human pandemic fatigue where too many folks aren’t even taking the basic minimum precautions anymore. They think the vaccine is an impenetrable shield while the enemy keeps forging better and different weapons.  

[CharonY]

14 minutes ago, iNow said:

It’s a combination of viral evolution and human pandemic fatigue where too many folks aren’t even taking the basic minimum precautions anymore. They think the vaccine is an impenetrable shield while the enemy keeps forging better and different weapons.  

Also don't forget that while many richer countries have the capacities to vaccinate everyone as well as offering third shots, many parts of the world cannot afford even the first one. It is a general failing of all of us (as in humanity collectively).

[iNow]

Indeed. Inequality as a concept will be motivating grassroots movements across the globe in vast new ways for many many years to come.  

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Indeed. Inequality as a concept will be motivating grassroots movements across the globe in vast new ways for many many years to come.  

Or alternatively we forget all lessons learned within a few years and things will again go down the drain when feces hit the spinning thing again.

[iNow]

3 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Or alternatively we forget all lessons learned within a few years and things will again go down the drain when feces hit the spinning thing again.

False dichotomy. I see both happening (sad laugh)

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

False dichotomy. I see both happening (sad laugh)

Yeah, fair enough. My trust in the ability of humanity to pull together has been tested heavily. And I foresee a failing grade. Just like my class.

[PhilGeis]

Wonder at the stats for this.  With vaccine(s)  showing efficacy in mitigating morbidity and mortality rather than infection and the dynamics of variant expansion, to what extent would broader vaccination constrain variant generation. 

[CharonY]

Vaccinations reduce viral production and accelerate clearance and as such do mitigate infections to some degree. While breakthroughs still occur, risk of infection is about cut by half to a third, even with the delta variant. Risk of passing it on after transmission is also reduced a bit. But as delta seems to have a low infectious dose, the risk is still substantial.

But especially in conjunction with masking and other public health measures we and others see less spread after a given outbreak after introduction of vaccines.

That being said you are not wrong, with the disease getting endemic, new variants are bound to appear eventually.

[swansont]

3 hours ago, PhilGeis said:

Wonder at the stats for this.  With vaccine(s)  showing efficacy in mitigating morbidity and mortality rather than infection and the dynamics of variant expansion, to what extent would broader vaccination constrain variant generation. 

Citation needed, for this suggestion that the vaccines are not effective at preventing infection. This flies in the face of reports of their effectiveness that show this very thing.

[mistermack]

48 minutes ago, swansont said:

reports of their effectiveness that show this very thing.

Citation needed. Not that I can prove otherwise, but whenever I read reports of effectiveness, they have been carefully qualified by saying "symptomatic" infection, and there is no dispute about that, the vaccines are very effective at prevention and reduction of that. But symptomatic infection doesn't tell the whole story, with this virus and it's variants. My niece was one of the first in our family to have it, and she only found out that she had had it later, after being tested for a hospital operation. And she had not been vaccinated at all due to health issues. She had not had any symptoms at all.

Edited November 28, 2021 by mistermack

[CharonY]

Read Elliot et al. Science 2021;eabl9551.

It provides a comparison between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.

[swansont]

25 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Citation needed. Not that I can prove otherwise, but whenever I read reports of effectiveness, they have been carefully qualified by saying "symptomatic" infection, and there is no dispute about that, the vaccines are very effective at prevention and reduction of that.

The claim was about infection, not asymptomatic infection. If it reduces symptomatic infection, it reduces infection. (Unless you have evidence that it increases asymptomatic transmission to offset this)

25 minutes ago, mistermack said:

But symptomatic infection doesn't tell the whole story, with this virus and it's variants. My niece was one of the first in our family to have it, and she only found out that she had had it later, after being tested for a hospital operation. And she had not been vaccinated at all due to health issues. She had not had any symptoms at all.

And? This anecdote is in no way contradictory to the studies that show reduced transmission.

But…

Under real-world conditions, mRNA vaccine effectiveness of full immunization (≥14 days after second dose) was 90% against SARS-CoV-2 infections regardless of symptom status

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7013e3.htm

 

No evidence has been presented that this 90% is actually zero.

[CharonY]

IIRC, the cases in that report were based on cases before delta. The latter was found to have higher breakthrough rates. Not that it changes the argument, just nitpicking the actual numbers.

[mistermack]

19 minutes ago, swansont said:

If it reduces symptomatic infection, it reduces infection.

So you claim, but I see no evidence. In the UK, the link between the infection graph, and the death graph, was broken when mass vaccination took hold. Clear evidence that the vaccine was acting against symptoms, far more effectively than against infection. 

Here are charts of UK cases, and UK deaths, right up to date today. You can clearly see that the vaccines are acting far more successfully against symptoms (deaths) than actual cases (positive tests). 

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

So you claim, but I see no evidence. In the UK, the link between the infection graph, and the death graph, was broken when mass vaccination took hold. Clear evidence that the vaccine was acting against symptoms, far more effectively than against infection. 

Here are charts of UK cases, and UK deaths, right up to date today. You can clearly see that the vaccines are acting far more successfully against symptoms (deaths) than actual cases (positive tests). 

 

Symptoms ≠ deaths

These charts don’t have proper labels, so I don’t know what they’re showing. There’s nothing there that distinguishes between symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, and whether the people were vaccinated 

meanwhile

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/08/cdc-unvaccinated-5-times-more-likely-get-covid-19

new data from Los Angeles County collected from May to July, which show unvaccinated peoplewere 5 times more likely to get COVID-19 than vaccinated peers

[studiot]

I did have a chuckle about the large negative spike in the green (death) graph.

Reincarnation and Resuscitation Rules OK ?

 

[CharonY]

Quote

SARS-CoV-2 infections were rising during early summer 2021 in many countries associated with the Delta variant. We assessed RT-PCR swab-positivity in the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-1 (REACT-1) study in England. We observed sustained exponential growth with average doubling time (June-July 2021) of 25 days driven by complete replacement of Alpha variant by Delta, and by high prevalence at younger less-vaccinated ages. Unvaccinated people were three times more likely than double-vaccinated people to test positive. However, after adjusting for age and other variables, vaccine effectiveness for double-vaccinated people was estimated at between ~50% and ~60% during this period in England. Increased social mixing in the presence of Delta had the potential to generate sustained growth in infections, even at high levels of vaccination.

 

[mistermack]

54 minutes ago, studiot said:

I did have a chuckle about the large negative spike in the green (death) graph.

You're easily kept amused. If you followed the subject, as I do, you would know that the UK government figures occasionally got re-assessed, and certain classes of deaths were removed from or added to the total on frequent occasions as recording criteria evolved. It's not rocket science. That is simply a faithful graph of the official UK government figures, exactly as they were issued. They are actually 7 day averages. 

And the total sample size is about 340 million tests, with ten million positive, and 145,000 deaths. A bit more reliable than Swansonts out-of-date sample of about 4,000 non-representative health workers.

[CharonY]

43 minutes ago, mistermack said:

You're easily kept amused. If you followed the subject, as I do, you would know that the UK government figures occasionally got re-assessed, and certain classes of deaths were removed from or added to the total on frequent occasions as recording criteria evolved. It's not rocket science. That is simply a faithful graph of the official UK government figures, exactly as they were issued. They are actually 7 day averages. 

And the total sample size is about 340 million tests, with ten million positive, and 145,000 deaths. A bit more reliable than Swansonts out-of-date sample of about 4,000 non-representative health workers.

Except of course that that data tells us nothing about the impact of vaccinations as the data is not separated between vaccinated and unvaccinated folks. 

The study above detailed that aspect by looking at differential infection rates and indicated the said difference (i.e. vaccinated folks have  a third of the infection if using crude numbers, about 50% if adjusted for age and other factors). The sample size is meaningless if the necessary details are missing and therefore do not provide any information related to your claims. 

[mistermack]

1 minute ago, CharonY said:

Except of course that that data tells us nothing about the impact of vaccinations

Something lacking in your comprehension, if you can't see it.

[CharonY]

7 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Something lacking in your comprehension, if you can't see it.

Please demonstrate how the infection rate among vaccinated is the same as among the unvaccinated based on the graph. What, in fact is the proportion of vaccinated folks in that graph. 

In case you forgot, you made two claims in the sentence.

4 hours ago, mistermack said:

Clear evidence that the vaccine was acting against symptoms, far more effectively than against infection. 

While mechanistically that is somewhat true (prevention of serious conditions is around 80%, depending on age and time of last jab,  and reduction of infection of infection is about 50%), the provided data does not allow you to draw these conclusions.

The minimum parameters that need to be established are how many among the infected are vaccinated or not (i.e. is there a bias between these groups). A second thing to establish is the age of infected in the last compared to the previous wave. Another, more technical issue is also how effective the testing program was in either time period (e.g. looking at test rate and test positivity).

A simple alternative explanation (which is only partially true, but you would not know without looking at additional data) is that the third wave might have been driven by unvaccinated young folks, who have a reduced risk of dying. 

[studiot]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

You're easily kept amused.

If you weren't persistently so rudely aggressive towards others, I might be inclined to resume conversation with you.

Edited November 28, 2021 by studiot

[mistermack]

6 minutes ago, studiot said:

If you weren't persistently so rudely aggressive towards others, I might be inclined to resume conversation with you.

Well really, do you not see anything rude about your post, the one I quoted and responded to? I thought I only responded in your own style. You could have queried the apparent death anomalies, without the condescending "chuckle" and I can assure you I would have explained very politely. I'll try to be more patient, I really will do my best.

[swansont]

Here’s more data from Virginia, US

https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/see-the-numbers/covid-19-in-virginia/covid-19-cases-by-vaccination-status/

Unvaccinated got infected at 4.6 times the rate as fully vaccinated, data from Jan 17 2021 through Nov 20.

 

4 hours ago, mistermack said:

You're easily kept amused. If you followed the subject, as I do, you would know that the UK government figures occasionally got re-assessed, and certain classes of deaths were removed from or added to the total on frequent occasions as recording criteria evolved. It's not rocket science. That is simply a faithful graph of the official UK government figures, exactly as they were issued. They are actually 7 day averages. 

And the total sample size is about 340 million tests, with ten million positive, and 145,000 deaths. A bit more reliable than Swansonts out-of-date sample of about 4,000 non-representative health workers.

Except your graph doesn’t show the relevant information. “reliability” is moot