Cont: The One Covid-19 Science and Medicine Thread Part 4

Status
Not open for further replies.
Chris_Halkides said:
Derek Lowe on the odds of a shark attack in your car versus... "Fine - but what about your risk when, say, you visit an aquarium? Remember, the hazard a shark poses has not changed during all this - he's still hungry and he still has a mouthful of teeth. The shark is the shark. Your risk of being bitten by him has, in fact, increased a great deal when you visit an aquarium - you've gone from a place (your home, your car) where there are (one assumes) no sharks whatsoever, and now you're in the same room with one. True, you're separated by a thick pane of glass, and true, it's hard to come up with a plausible chain of events that would lead to said shark chomping on your leg, but it's undeniable that this is much more possible than it was in the parking lot outside the aquarium or back in your bed. The odds are still vanishingly low, and not many people worry on their visit the aquarium about the chances of being bitten by a shark (nor should they) - but if you write things up from the right angle, that visit can look wildly dangerous. 'RISK OF SHARK ATTACK NOW INCREASED BY FACTOR OF ONE MILLION!'" In the Pipeline

I trust that no one will think that this is off topic.
Click to expand...

Quite on topic. People just aren't good at intuitively understanding relative risks and large numbers. Add in confirmation bias and you get people sometimes afraid of their own shadow.
 
What I find baffling is that everyone watching him jumping on the 'don't get the vaccine it will give you myocarditis and you might die' bandwagon (of which there sadly seem to be a great number) seem to totally ignore the problems that can arise from contracting Covid, especially if unvaccinated.
 
angrysoba said:
Oh Jesus! Latest on John Campbell, for those who care.

Link
Click to expand...

At best he is completely clueless. The less charitable explanation, which unfortunately seems like the more likely explanation, is that he has gone over to the dark side. Either way, he's no longer a trustworthy source (If he ever was).

The reason I think it's the latter is that when he gives out misleading information, he has this way of keeping it at arm's length and saying he's just reporting it, but cannot comment on it.

There are lies of omission. You can mislead by selectively reporting the truth. Report only the facts that point in one direction, while omitting any mention of the larger picture which includes lots of more significant facts that point the other way.
 
marting said:
The problem is the lack of context. A ratio is pretty meaningless by itself. It's like saying I'm 10 times more likely to get injured in an auto accident driving to/from a store to buy a lottery ticket than winning the lottery.

It is a fact that Perio/Myo-carditis (inflammation of the sac / heart muscle) is much more common among amongst young males after vaccination. But big deal. It's effing normally uncommon as hell in that group so it's the ratio of the really rare to the extremely rare. And they recover pretty well.

And then there is the problem that it also occurs with much higher rates amongst those that get SARS-CoV-2 infections. And it's across both men and women at all ages.
Click to expand...

I think that it's also worth adding to these points, again, that focusing specifically on that one potential (though obviously rare) adverse side-effect is wrong headed from the start... in two main ways. First is the probably the obvious one when I say that - it's one potential effect out of many and it's not even close to one of the primary concerns for any objective risk-reduction calculations in the first place. The second, though, has to do with human biases. By singling out that one bit alone, it gets amplified and treated as if it actually were the primary thing of concern in play, which makes it a prime target for those so inclined to grasp onto as a weapon.
 
Aridas said:
I think that it's also worth adding to these points, again, that focusing specifically on that one potential (though obviously rare) adverse side-effect is wrong headed from the start... in two main ways. First is the probably the obvious one when I say that - it's one potential effect out of many and it's not even close to one of the primary concerns for any objective risk-reduction calculations in the first place. The second, though, has to do with human biases. By singling out that one bit alone, it gets amplified and treated as if it actually were the primary thing of concern in play, which makes it a prime target for those so inclined to grasp onto as a weapon.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a very good point.
 
Now we have covid in the country, the number of people I know with covid in the meatverse has risen very sharply.

One of the tings which strikes me as much as it did watching from a distance earlier in the pandemic is the amazing difference between how it impacts people, and anecdotally, it definitely appears that prior coronavirus infections are a good indicator of reduced severity.

I don't talk to the unvaccinated, so everyone I know is fully vaccinated, including their over-5 kids.

Young children hardly know they've got it. All of the ones I know attend daycare, or the plague factory, as we used to call it. No matter what was going around, all the kids dutifully took it home to their parents.

The disease severity doesn't seem to have the same young/old divide as it did among pre-vaccine infections, and the group by far hardest hit I know of is women under 30. None have been hospitalised, but they've had the worst symptoms by miles. Men in that age group seem like the little kids - largely unaffected. (Have we researched beer as means of reducing covid harm?)

The surprising pair to me are two women I know quite well who both teach at daycare centres and are over 50. Both had covid and one spent a whole day in bed, but otherwise their symptoms have been very mild. One is the mother of a 19 yo girl who was really crook with it. Both are smokers and had no issues at all. Obviously, they will have had recent coronavirus infections from their little darlings.
_________________________

Meanwhile, the reduction in other respiratory diseases when people are masking is very stark, and one Canadian research group is wondering whether we should maybe keep the masks on, for at least some people:

https://theconversation.com/should-...-viral-infections-shows-their-benefits-177238
 
The Atheist said:
And in China, the reality of omicron versions 1 & 2 start to bite as cases double to 3400 cases in a day: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...eak-for-two-years-as-cases-double-in-24-hours

On those numbers, and the increased infectiousness of V2.0, I do not believe they're going to be able to control it.
Click to expand...

I don't believe they can contain it either. Nor does the UofW's IHME. Their projection was that China would be amongst the last.

IHME from Feb. 17 - China: Omicron wave has not yet hit, but we expect that will change by March or April.
 
Apparently, John Campbell has a problem with numbers. Here he is reviewing IHME's numbers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFu8UjySH28

He goes on about how Russia has the highest per capita excess death rate. The problem is that he shows a list and while Russia is at the top, it is actually lower than Mexico, which is listed right below it.

Russia: 374.6 per 100k
Mexico: 433.6 per 100k

Sheesh.
 
Last edited:
marting said:
I don't believe they can contain it either. Nor does the UofW's IHME. Their projection was that China would be amongst the last.
Click to expand...

Now we just wait to see how honest the numbers from China are. India hid an enormous amount of theirs and I can't see it being in Xi's best interest to show millions of cases a day.
___________________

Meanwhile, America is due to have its millionth covid death this month, according to Worldometer.

I see the IHME numbers are quite a way short of Worldometer, but with the scale of numbers, it's small change.
 
The Atheist said:
Meanwhile, America is due to have its millionth covid death this month, according to Worldometer.

I see the IHME numbers are quite a way short of Worldometer, but with the scale of numbers, it's small change.
Click to expand...

IHME's projections are almost a month old. Their graphs are not real time but project into the future with dotted lines from the point actuals are posted when they revise their models. They are regularly off quite a bit in their projections. Especially since Omicron where they significantly underestimated how large the impact would be in the USA and probably lots of other places.

Worldometer tracks daily. While generally good, it is consistently low in recent daily deaths because of differences in state reporting. This provides the most current USA info

https://newsnodes.com/
 
The Atheist said:
Now we have covid in the country, the number of people I know with covid in the meatverse has risen very sharply.

One of the tings which strikes me as much as it did watching from a distance earlier in the pandemic is the amazing difference between how it impacts people, and anecdotally, it definitely appears that prior coronavirus infections are a good indicator of reduced severity.

I don't talk to the unvaccinated, so everyone I know is fully vaccinated, including their over-5 kids.

Young children hardly know they've got it. All of the ones I know attend daycare, or the plague factory, as we used to call it. No matter what was going around, all the kids dutifully took it home to their parents.

The disease severity doesn't seem to have the same young/old divide as it did among pre-vaccine infections, and the group by far hardest hit I know of is women under 30. None have been hospitalised, but they've had the worst symptoms by miles. Men in that age group seem like the little kids - largely unaffected. (Have we researched beer as means of reducing covid harm?)

The surprising pair to me are two women I know quite well who both teach at daycare centres and are over 50. Both had covid and one spent a whole day in bed, but otherwise their symptoms have been very mild. One is the mother of a 19 yo girl who was really crook with it. Both are smokers and had no issues at all. Obviously, they will have had recent coronavirus infections from their little darlings.
_________________________

Meanwhile, the reduction in other respiratory diseases when people are masking is very stark, and one Canadian research group is wondering whether we should maybe keep the masks on, for at least some people:

https://theconversation.com/should-...-viral-infections-shows-their-benefits-177238
Click to expand...

Re masking; I think that there is some truth in this. I have seen a number of people with chronic lung disease who say there health has never been so good as during the last two years; they have had no chest infections, whilst normally they would have a series especially during winter.

Re coronavirus: I think this is not greatly true, the young children will have had little exposure to coronaviruses in the last two years. Those with the greatest exposure will be teachers, studies suggest no difference between teachers and anyone else.
 
Planigale said:
Re masking; I think that there is some truth in this. I have seen a number of people with chronic lung disease who say there health has never been so good as during the last two years; they have had no chest infections, whilst normally they would have a series especially during winter.

Re coronavirus: I think this is not greatly true, the young children will have had little exposure to coronaviruses in the last two years. Those with the greatest exposure will be teachers, studies suggest no difference between teachers and anyone else.
Click to expand...

Certainly I suffer from regular sinus infections, being prescribed antibiotics every winter, usually twice. Till corona. No issue since.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Certainly I suffer from regular sinus infections, being prescribed antibiotics every winter, usually twice. Till corona. No issue since.
Click to expand...
Very interesting.
Unnatural contact beyond survival of the fittest is the hallmark of "civilization".
 
marting said:
IHME's projections are almost a month old
Click to expand...

I've been skimming their Lancet paper:

It covers the two-year period from Jan. 1, 2020 through Dec. 31, 2021. So the 18.2 million excess deaths they estimate doesn't include any from this year.

These are excess deaths, but not necessarily only Covid deaths. It's "all cause" mortality.

In Japan, apparently, if their estimate is accurate, there were 111,000 excess deaths during this period, compared to 18,400 official Covid deaths.

There have been some criticisms of this estimate:

Ariel Karlinsky, an economist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel who has worked on excess deaths estimates, says the new study’s central estimate of 18 million is reasonable, but that some of the IHME’s numbers for excess deaths in individual countries are significantly out-of-step with other estimates.

“They still have their ludicrous estimate for Japan at over 100,000 excess deaths, which is over six times the reported deaths. I really don’t know how they are getting that,” he says.

The IHME model contains some “bizarre features”, adds Jonathan Wakefield, a statistician at the University of Washington in Seattle who leads the WHO’s COVID-19 global death toll project. The IHME’s approach leads him to doubt the validity of its uncertainty intervals and other statistical features of the modelling.
Click to expand...

I think Japan's government is at least pretty good (even meticulous) at keeping vital statistics like this, which doesn't rely on any sort of model, but is an actual count of death certificates. It seems unlikely to me that many deaths somehow escaped their notice. Which estimate is more likely to be accurate?

By the way, I also came across this recent news from Japan:

Deaths in Japan hit postwar record, Delta variant to blame
From this, there were 1,452,289 deaths in Japan in 2021, according to official statistics. This is an increase of 67,745 over 2020, but 2020 deaths were actually lower than those in 2019 by 8,445. This is despite the long-term trend of deaths increasing for demographic reasons, due to the increasingly aged population of Japan. Since 2000, the number of deaths has increased by about 1.1-2.4% per year each year. A decline is unusual. It only happened once before in the last 20 years. 2009 deaths were about 600 lower than in 2008, and then they increased by about 55,000 the following year to make up for that. To put it another way, annual deaths were 961,653 in 2000, rising to 1,381,093 by 2019, an average increase of about 21,000 each year. After a decline of 8,000, you might expect something like an increase of 50,000 the following year. So really something circa 18,000 excess deaths seems to be pretty right on the nose, and I have my doubts about the IHME estimate, at least as far as Japan is concerned.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
Derek Lowe on the odds of a shark attack in your car versus... "Fine - but what about your risk when, say, you visit an aquarium? Remember, the hazard a shark poses has not changed during all this - he's still hungry and he still has a mouthful of teeth. The shark is the shark. Your risk of being bitten by him has, in fact, increased a great deal when you visit an aquarium - you've gone from a place (your home, your car) where there are (one assumes) no sharks whatsoever, and now you're in the same room with one. True, you're separated by a thick pane of glass, and true, it's hard to come up with a plausible chain of events that would lead to said shark chomping on your leg, but it's undeniable that this is much more possible than it was in the parking lot outside the aquarium or back in your bed. The odds are still vanishingly low, and not many people worry on their visit the aquarium about the chances of being bitten by a shark (nor should they) - but if you write things up from the right angle, that visit can look wildly dangerous. 'RISK OF SHARK ATTACK NOW INCREASED BY FACTOR OF ONE MILLION!'" In the Pipeline

I trust that no one will think that this is off topic.
Click to expand...

To make the analogy work, you also need to add in that not all sharks are Great Whites and not all cases of myocarditis are equally severe. Most of those from vaccination are less severe and clear up quicker than those from the virus.

So visiting an aquarium where the sharks are dogfish. As opposed to spending time on the beach with fewer sharks around, but more of them are killers. Because unless you don't live on Earth, you're going to be exposed to Covid.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-11-2-3/04-COVID-Oster-508.pdf
 
Planigale said:
Re coronavirus: I think this is not greatly true, the young children will have had little exposure to coronaviruses in the last two years.
Click to expand...

Clearly. I'm meaning kids who have been exposed, so 3+. I know several kids that age who shrugged it off easily.

With the youngest age group, I'd forgotten about the cross-protective effect of other vaccines, which will no doubt be part of it.

Planigale said:
Those with the greatest exposure will be teachers, studies suggest no difference between teachers and anyone else.
Click to expand...

Do you know if data that shows that is age-adjusted?

I don't know about other parts of the world, but the average age of teachers here would be among the very highest of any occupation group. We know for sure that even unvaccinated younger people often have asymptomatic infections, so wouldn't be counted, so statistics will skew towards jobs with higher average ages.
 
Samson said:
You are normally too close to the same species as yourself for ordinary health.
Click to expand...

Mate, you really do come out with some nonsense.

Ever see chimpanzees picking each other's cooties? Penguins huddled together so tight you couldn't slide your hand between them for months at a time? Dogs sniffing each other's butts? Prides of lions rubbing their faces together...
 
Puppycow said:
I've been skimming their Lancet paper:

It covers the two-year period from Jan. 1, 2020 through Dec. 31, 2021. So the 18.2 million excess deaths they estimate doesn't include any from this year.

These are excess deaths, but not necessarily only Covid deaths. It's "all cause" mortality.

In Japan, apparently, if their estimate is accurate, there were 111,000 excess deaths during this period, compared to 18,400 official Covid deaths.

There have been some criticisms of this estimate:



I think Japan's government is at least pretty good (even meticulous) at keeping vital statistics like this, which doesn't rely on any sort of model, but is an actual count of death certificates. It seems unlikely to me that many deaths somehow escaped their notice. Which estimate is more likely to be accurate?

By the way, I also came across this recent news from Japan:

Deaths in Japan hit postwar record, Delta variant to blame
From this, there were 1,452,289 deaths in Japan in 2021, according to official statistics. This is an increase of 67,745 over 2020, but 2020 deaths were actually lower than those in 2019 by 8,445. This is despite the long-term trend of deaths increasing for demographic reasons, due to the increasingly aged population of Japan. Since 2000, the number of deaths has increased by about 1.1-2.4% per year each year. A decline is unusual. It only happened once before in the last 20 years. 2009 deaths were about 600 lower than in 2008, and then they increased by about 55,000 the following year to make up for that. To put it another way, annual deaths were 961,653 in 2000, rising to 1,381,093 by 2019, an average increase of about 21,000 each year. After a decline of 8,000, you might expect something like an increase of 50,000 the following year. So really something circa 18,000 excess deaths seems to be pretty right on the nose, and I have my doubts about the IHME estimate, at least as far as Japan is concerned.
Click to expand...

I agree. The IHME numbers for Japan look way too far off. As the critic in Nature said about the 6 fold difference between C19 and excess deaths. it's "ludicrous."
 
The Atheist said:
Mate, you really do come out with some nonsense.

Ever see chimpanzees picking each other's cooties? Penguins huddled together so tight you couldn't slide your hand between them for months at a time? Dogs sniffing each other's butts? Prides of lions rubbing their faces together...
Click to expand...
My point is that in nature populations adjust for resource availability, we do it artificially and end up in petri dishes..
 
Hong Kong is sort of a case study of what can happen when elderly people in particular aren't vaccinated.

In most countries, the most elderly people are also the most likely to be vaccinated. This makes sense since they are also the most vulnerable.

In Hong Kong, that hadn't been the case when the Omicron wave hit. In Hong Kong, it was actually the reverse. The elderly were the most vaccine-resistant.

Hong Kong’s Covid-19 Death Rate Is the World’s Highest Because of Unvaccinated Elderly (Wall Street Journal)
City was caught unprepared for a massive increase in cases as elderly vaccination rate remained low after monthslong stretches of zero infections

Half a million people over 70 weren’t vaccinated when Omicron began surging through the city. Like other places, Hong Kong gave its elderly priority to get their shots, but persistent fears about vaccine safety, fueled by local media reports about deaths following vaccinations, and Hong Kong’s low case count led many to delay.

“For such a long time, getting the vaccine seemed more risky than getting Covid here,” Mr. Ling said. “Now, everything’s changed and there is a scramble to get the shots.” His father is recovering, he added.

The low vaccination rate among the city’s elderly has driven Hong Kong’s death rate to the highest in the world: Its seven-day rolling average of confirmed Covid-19 deaths as of March 6 was 25.5 per 1 million people—more than five times that of the U.S.—and topping a global chart maintained by Our World in Data, a project based at Oxford University.

More than 90% of people who lost their lives in the current outbreak were unvaccinated, health officials have said. The vast majority were aged over 60.
Click to expand...

It was even worse in nursing homes.
What went wrong with Hong Kong’s approach to getting elderly care home residents vaccinated

For most of the pandemic, the number of cases in Hong Kong – and in elderly homes – was under control. But things have changed. With the current Omicron outbreak and the rapid increase of cases at elderly homes, the government has launched a series of policies to enhance the vaccination rate for the seniors.

The reason for the explosion in cases at care homes is simple. Government data shows the vaccination rate for elderly care home residents was around 25 per cent in February – a significant increase from 3 per cent in mid-2021, but still dangerously low for a group considered to be the most vulnerable to the pandemic.
Click to expand...

Until Omicron hit this year, the low vaccination rates among the most vulnerable didn't seem to matter much in Hong Kong because the spread of the virus was under control by other means (NPIs, etc.).

South Korea and Singapore seem like good countries to compare outcomes with Hong Kong.

Here's some charts from Our World in Data (Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, United States):

Vaccine doses administered in last 12 months per 100 population
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people

The one where Hong Kong really stands out from the crowd is in deaths per million.
If you look at the chart for vaccine doses administered, Hong Kong started out clearly at the bottom, and only ramped up early this year, after Omicron began to spread. This means there was a new rush to get vaccinated only after it became apparent that it was going to be a problem in Hong Kong. Until then many people thought "why should I get vaccinated if there's no COVID here?" What the chart doesn't show is the age distribution of who was vaccinated, which in Hong Kong actually skewed younger, whereas the reverse was true for other countries.
South Korea has a similar level of new infections compared to Hong Kong, but much fewer deaths. Likewise with Singapore. I included Japan and the United States in the chart too, just for perspective. You can add or subtract any countries you want from these charts.
 
There's a lot of detail in that Wall Street Journal article that I couldn't quote, but apparently there were a lot of things happening in Hong Kong that made it seem like getting vaccinated was scary.

The local press made a huge deal out of any reported adverse events. The government used scary language in reporting such events, and there was "a whole industry of “pre-Covid-19 vaccination” health checks", i.e., people being encouraged to get a health check prior to getting vaccinated. Here is an example of that:

https://en.imchk.hk/imc.php?page=eshop_details&id=94090

It makes it seem like the responsible thing to do is to first get a health checkup before getting vaccinated, to see if you are healthy enough to withstand the vaccine? The WSJ article suggested that some people opted to postpone getting vaccinated as a result of these health assessments.
 
Yep, Hong Kong for so long was doing well, closing the borders for the first year and tightly controlling the situation with restrictions until vaccines were available.

Then they made the mistake of not changing policies based on the availability of vaccines, and keeping with a zero covid approach. So there was little motivation for people to actually get vaccinated.

The reason for the restrictions were ostensibly low vaccination in elderly, and danger to health service if it got in, so you would imagine they would put measures in place to deal with these issues. Instead the gov did absolutely nothing.

Vaccinated and unvaccinated were treated exactly the same.
No changes to quarantine, for example. No vaccination pass for restaurants etc.
A cash handout of 5000HKD was not tied to vaccination.

No new hospitals built, no new doctors or health care staff hired. Absolutely nothing done to mitigate what would happen if the virus did break through.

They relied on anti-science policies like 21 day quarantine to discourage travel, when all the science showed the maximum incubation period was 12 days. They insisted on sending all positive cases to hospital for up to 17 days, even if no symptoms.

Despite this, the vaccination level did actually creep up, at about the same rate per million overall as, for example, the UK, but for some reason the elderly still resisted. Its up for discussion as to exactly why, some say lack of trust in the government, so claim bad advice from doctors, some the press reporting of adverse events, but it was a clear pattern. Now we actually have a pretty high vaccination rate overall, but still badly low in the over 80s, I think only around 50% with 1 shot even after this wave has been going for months.

So we have the combination of a health service unable to cope with large numbers and an unvaccinated elderly population, and policies that are based on zero covid ideology rather than mitigation or science.

So what has the government done? Built tens of thousands of isolation camps, to stop those with mild or no symptoms passing it on. Still fixated on stopping it, rather than dealing with those who need treatment. Obviously, the though of being forcibly incarcerated has not gone down well with the population, so most who now are testing positive through self testing are keeping it to themselves and recovering on their own.

The HK gov then had the bright idea of testing all of Hong Kong over 9 days, then isolating those found to be positive. This announcement came with a warning of possible lockdowns, so started a wave of panic buying and food shelves were completely empty for a week, even though real city based lockdowns like they do in China are not possible in HK, there is not the will or infrastructure or logistics to do it.

Of course, the HK gov was too slow to actually implement that, so once the cases hit 50,000 per day, obviously this was a waste of time and untenable, but they are never one to let go of a bad idea. That idea will come back once cases are lower.

China had to eventually step in, rebuke the government for being useless and force a rethink to concentrate the efforts on getting the elderly vaccinated, and protect the vulnerable rather than wasteful ideas of mass testing.

A few weeks back the HK University estimate was 22% of the population has had it due to this wave, by the predicted end it will be 70 or 80%, with maybe 6 to 8,000 deaths, at which point it will effectively be over, and we will be living with it.

However, the danger then is that the government will not accept that reality, and continue with restrictions permanently to get the cases down to zero again, for ideological reasons. So HK will have gone through all the pain, restrictions and deaths but still not be back to normal, the worst of all possible worlds.

Hence 500 people per day are leaving HK for good. I am considering my options.

China on the other hand although facing far more cases than ever before (if you believe their figures) still has a chance to keep it under control. They can and do lock down entire cities in a way that no other country could ever do. This will of course come at huge economic cost, but they could do it.

My money is probably still on Omicron, but its a point of national pride to have zero covid, so they will pull out all the stops to get it back down to zero. Even if that means locking down the entire country for 2 weeks, they are capable of doing that.
 
Puppycow said:
Hong Kong is sort of a case study of what can happen when elderly people in particular aren't vaccinated.

In most countries, the most elderly people are also the most likely to be vaccinated. This makes sense since they are also the most vulnerable.

In Hong Kong, that hadn't been the case when the Omicron wave hit. In Hong Kong, it was actually the reverse. The elderly were the most vaccine-resistant.
......
Click to expand...

Great summary. I hadn't realized how asymmetrical and opposite of almost everywhere else the age/vaccination rate was there until fairly recently. They also use a lot of Sinovac which is less effective than mRNA vaxes.


Waning immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern among vaccinees in Hong Kong
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(22)00088-3/fulltext

https://hongkongfp.com/2022/02/26/f...nst-infection-from-omicron-analysis-suggests/

Articles discussing the reasons for low elderly vax rate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/business/hong-kong-unvaccinated-elderly.html
https://hongkongfp.com/2022/03/13/w...tting-elderly-care-home-residents-vaccinated/
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong...166840/coronavirus-hong-kong-alone-afraid-and
 
Prospective longitudinal study shows 85% infected were asymptomatic

Unreal! And this is back during Delta and earlier variants. Few vaccinated.

SARS-CoV-2 incidence, transmission, and reinfection in a rural and an urban setting: results of the PHIRST-C cohort study, South Africa, 2020–21
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00069-X/fulltext

In this study, 565 (85·3%) SARS-CoV-2 infections were asymptomatic and index case symptom status did not affect HCIR, suggesting a limited role for control measures targeting symptomatic individuals. Increased household transmission of beta and delta variants was likely to have contributed to successive waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection, with more than 60% of individuals infected by the end of follow-up.
Click to expand...

HCIR: Household Contact Infection Rate

Oh, and over 90% of infections for people under 18 were asymptomatic.

And this was a serious study testing the same cohort whether symptomatic or not.

Midturbinate nasal swabs were collected twice a week from household members irrespective of symptoms and tested for SARS-CoV-2 using real-time RT-PCR (RT-rtPCR). Serum was collected every 2 months and tested for anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
Click to expand...

8 out of 9 people that were infected had zero symptoms!


Contrast this with the early study of a summer camp where 1 person infected much the campers/staff. Because the infected person was identified early, everyone kept a daily symptom diary and were tested. Over 90% of them were symptomatic. Likely because they paid attention and recorded even subclinical symptoms. But still, most had multiple, distinct symptoms.

This contrast can't easily be explained and is way beyond statistical variability. So what's the difference?
 
Last edited:
GraculusTheGreenBird said:
My money is probably still on Omicron, but its a point of national pride to have zero covid, so they will pull out all the stops to get it back down to zero. Even if that means locking down the entire country for 2 weeks, they are capable of doing that.
Click to expand...

They could do that, but I don't think that is a long-term solution to the problem. You would have to repeat that process on a fairly regular basis, because it's not going away in the rest of the world, and China cannot isolate itself forever. Unless they want to emulate North Korea.

A better approach in my opinion is to get the most vulnerable protected, and then "bend the curve" like people have been talking about for the past two years. Since the current version of the Sinovac vaccine is not highly effective against Omicron or later variants, I think updates to the vaccine are sorely needed. mRNA vaccines also appear to be more effective.

The "zero Covid" mindset may have worked in the past, but maintaining that stance will prove increasingly costly in the future. The cost exceeds the benefit.
 
marting said:
8 out of 9 people that were infected had zero symptoms!
Click to expand...

That's very interesting. I think I mentioned earlier that I had what I thought was "a cold" back in Feb. 2020, before it was widely realized that "life as normal" needed to change in any significant way. Members of my family also had various symptoms, not the same for everyone. The kids first. They had fevers, but my wife and I did not. I wondered if it might be Covid at the time, and a few months later, but considered it unlikely due to the overall mildness of what we all experienced. Whereas I remember seeing stories about or from people who had really bad cases. Stuff that really wasn't comparable to what I had experienced. I've had much worse from a flu in the past, and Covid was supposed to be even worse than the flu.

I really don't know what to make of this information though. I wonder if it all depends on which cells get infected by the virus first. If it gets deep into the lungs, that's bad, but maybe it gets started somewhere else, like the GI tract, in the mild or asymptomatic cases? Or maybe there's just something about particular people, as yet unidentified, that makes them more vulnerable to the virus?
 
Fatality rate of Omicron higher than influenza, say experts (Asahi Shimbun)

They calculated the fatality rate of COVID-19 during January and February of this year when the Omicron variant was particularly virulent and came up with a figure of 0.13 percent based on reported deaths.

Multiple methods were used to calculate the fatality rates of seasonal flu. They used an index called "excess mortality," which refers to the number of deaths from all causes above the norm during a particular period. They also relied on patients’ information, or "receipt data."

The fatality rates of seasonal influenza based on excess mortality figures in 2018 and 2019 ranged from 0.01 to 0.05 percent. The fatality rate of seasonal influenza based on receipt data during the same period came to 0.09 percent.

They also calculated the fatality rate from COVID-19 based on excess mortality data from January 2020 to October 2021, before the Omicron variant took hold and began to spread. The figure they came up with was 4.25 percent.

However, the experts stressed it is difficult to accurately compare fatality rates of the novel coronavirus and seasonal influenza. This is because data on the number of people with flu and patients infected with the novel coronavirus are collected differently.
Click to expand...

The way it's described, the methodology seems a little bit questionable. "Excess mortality" could come from many different factors besides a particular infectious disease. Also the "4.25 percent" mortality rate for Covid prior to this year also seems too high, even if the 0.13% estimate for Omicron seems to be in the right ballpark.

If both of those figures are assumed to be correct, that would make Omicron 32 times less deadly than earlier variants.

OK, so maybe what could possibly explain such a large difference might be that now most of the vulnerable people have been protected by vaccines?

But I will note in passing that the Omicron wave has been the most deadly of the six waves so far in Japan. Only because so many more people have been infected this time around than in all previous waves combined.

(Also, referring to it as "the novel coronavirus" seems to be mostly a Japanese thing, as that's a literal translation of a common Japanese word for it.)
 
Puppycow said:
They could do that, but I don't think that is a long-term solution to the problem. You would have to repeat that process on a fairly regular basis, because it's not going away in the rest of the world, and China cannot isolate itself forever. Unless they want to emulate North Korea.

A better approach in my opinion is to get the most vulnerable protected, and then "bend the curve" like people have been talking about for the past two years. Since the current version of the Sinovac vaccine is not highly effective against Omicron or later variants, I think updates to the vaccine are sorely needed. mRNA vaccines also appear to be more effective.

The "zero Covid" mindset may have worked in the past, but maintaining that stance will prove increasingly costly in the future. The cost exceeds the benefit.
Click to expand...

Well, we and they know its probably not a long term solution. However, they have been pushing the zero covid narrative for so long, to show how much more they care for their citizens and how much better they have done than democracies, that their population now expects and wants this. Hence is much harder for them to pivot away from it than another country.

They would have to come up with a face saving explanation as to why its now OK for Chinese citizens to die from it, once they abandon zero covid, which is going to be pretty hard to do, and risks social stability which is the number 1 priority for China, bar none.

Hence it still makes sense for them to continue with this approach, even as the rest of the world moves on. They have painted themselves into a corner. That's the problem when your policies are based on absolutes and ideology.
 
GraculusTheGreenBird said:
Well, we and they know its probably not a long term solution. However, they have been pushing the zero covid narrative for so long, to show how much more they care for their citizens and how much better they have done than democracies, that their population now expects and wants this. Hence is much harder for them to pivot away from it than another country.
Click to expand...


Along those lines here's a short report from Beijing.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/new...ents-react-to-china-s-virus-surges/vi-AAV56VF
 
NZ as a test case - the data looks remarkably good.

Solely Pfizer vaccines, with rates, including boosters, in the graph - https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/he...ew-community-cases-10-further-deaths-reported

Note that as cases have already past their peak in by far NZ's biggest city, and look to be peaking everywhere else, the number of hospitalisations and intensive care beds are already falling.

Most important of all, only one third of covid cases in hospital are there because of covid, with the rest there for other reasons and testing positive.

The only thing I can point to as to why NZ is getting away so lightly is because we have have mask mandates still in place almost everywhere, so maybe more vulnerable people will be exposed when they come off, but so far, it's very plain sailing down here.
 
marting said:
Thread by @DrEricDing

Good indication the USA will see an increase in cases in two weeks as BA.2 increases as it is doing now in much of the EU.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1503933528374976513
Click to expand...

It's already well and truly dominant here, with percentage of all cases rising from 40-65% in the past 10 days or so.

The experts all seem to think that's a good thing, because we won't have two waves. Seems legit - no question it out-competes every other variant. Delta got wiped out last month and BA-1 is on the way out too.
 
The Atheist said:
It's already well and truly dominant here, with percentage of all cases rising from 40-65% in the past 10 days or so.

The experts all seem to think that's a good thing, because we won't have two waves. Seems legit - no question it out-competes every other variant. Delta got wiped out last month and BA-1 is on the way out too.
Click to expand...

Locally BA.2 is now the dominant isolate. 10% of cases are re-infections so prior infection do not proved complete immunity, so herd immunity eradicating the infection seems unlikely. Hospital admissions with covid are the highest seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Patients have less severe disease so deaths are few. We are beginning to see admissions with flu so as covid fades this summer we may continue to be under pressure from flu.
 
The Atheist said:
It's already well and truly dominant here, with percentage of all cases rising from 40-65% in the past 10 days or so.

The experts all seem to think that's a good thing, because we won't have two waves. Seems legit - no question it out-competes every other variant. Delta got wiped out last month and BA-1 is on the way out too.
Click to expand...

TS Elliot

Pandemic for world of course
Unfortunately the nasty bug may be more Chucky Doll.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom