Coronavirus thread

[Karl Henning]

As of today the 3rd dose is allowed after a 3 month delay. Before that it was 6 months. I'm getting mine tomorrow.

Very good.

Separately—

Jennifer Rubin: If you are tired and frustrated after two years of the pandemic, I understand. I am, too. Who's to blame? The anti-vaccine propagandists and the ambitious politicians who lie to Americans.

[Florestan]

My father-in-law (soon to be 74, two cumulated life-threatening commorbidities, had Covid-19 in March) got the Johnson & Johnson jab today. So far, so good, not even mild adverse reactions. Fingers crossed.

[Mandryka]

An old friend of mine, who can be both an annoying knowitall, and rather an ass, lectured me last night on how masks supposedly make no difference. /he's down in The Sunshine State, and the lecture sprang from my asking if folks down by him wear masks. Note to self: You may think it's an innocent question, but....

The UK's scientific advisory group to the Government reached this conclusion about masks in the context of omicron (my emphasis)

Many face coverings such as scarves, other single-layer fabrics and valved masks, though currently permitted, are likely to be ineffective at reducing transmission. There is significant scope to improve effectiveness through use of higher quality, well-fitting face coverings. Renewed public communications on selection and wearing of effective face coverings is likely to be beneficial. Offering free masks at entry points would likely improve adherence by mitigating cost and improving availability.

It may not be realistic to enforce "higher quality, well-fitting face coverings" with the general public -- at least if that means medical grade masks. There's a lot of devil in the detail there. What quality is higher quality? How well fitting is well-fitting?  They're likely to be expensive and uncomfortable . . .


https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emg-and-spi-b-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-npis-in-the-context-of-omicron-15-december-2021/emg-and-spi-b-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-npis-in-the-context-of-omicron-15-december-2021

[drogulus]

     Moderna says its booster significantly raises the level of antibodies to thwart Omicron.

Given how quickly Omicron is marching through the world, Moderna said, the company will focus its near-term efforts on extra shots of the original vaccine. It also plans to test a booster shot that is specific to the Omicron variant early next year and to include Omicron in a multivalent booster.

     I'm triple jabbed with Moderna through no fault of my own. It looks like it's better to be lucky than good.

     From fairly early on I surmised that the path forward for this virus would be similar to that of influenza and perhaps even more similar to the common cold. It would become more contagious and less lethal. Therefore, mild Covid variants will not only give "vaccine plus" natural immunity to itself but to subsequent strains. So if a more lethal variant arrives we won't be back to square one. For the vaccinated breakthrough infections will produce mild symptoms and significantly increase the level of protection against whatever comes net.

[Florestan]

     Moderna says its booster significantly raises the level of antibodies to thwart Omicron.

Did anyone expect Moderna or Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson to say otherwise? 

[drogulus]

Did anyone expect Moderna or Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson to say otherwise? 

     Did other companies say the same thing, or an otherwise thing? I don't know what anyone expected, but I'm not surprised that Moderna would continue to perform at a high level.

[Karl Henning]

This will twist Ted Cruz' knickers:

Mask-wearing on planes may be here to stay, Fauci says

By Paulina Firozi
Today at 9:43 a.m. EST

Mask-wearing on planes may be here to stay, top federal infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci says.

In an interview on ABC News's "This Week" on Sunday, he was asked if he believes there will be a point when it won't be necessary to wear masks during air travel.

"I don't think so," he said. "I think when you're dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step."

Fauci's mask-wearing suggestion came as top government health officials sounded the alarm about the rapidly spreading omicron variant, noting that it already accounts for 50 percent of coronavirus cases in parts of the United States. Just as many prepare to travel for end-of-year holidays, health officials warned of a tough winter ahead — strengthening calls for the unvaccinated to get their shots and the vaccinated to get boosted.

Fauci's comments also follow remarks from Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly, who said during a Senate hearing last week that masks "don't add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment."

Kelly, who tested positive for the coronavirus days after the hearing, added: "It's very safe, very high-quality, compared to any other indoor setting."

During the same hearing, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker argued an "aircraft is the safest place you can be. It's true of all of our aircraft — they all have the same HEPA filters and air flow."

Fauci said Sunday that "even though you have a good filtration system, I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it."

In separate television interviews, Fauci and Francis S. Collins, whose last day as director of the National Institutes of Health was Sunday, stopped short of calling on people to cancel travel plans. They warned of risks associated with traveling, even for the vaccinated, and urged people to do so carefully.

Fauci advised people to be cautious as they travel.

"If you are vaccinated and boosted and are prudent when you travel, when you're in an airport, to be wearing a mask all the time — you have to be wearing a mask on a plane," he said.

Collins said the virus "is going to be all around us."

"I'm not going to say you shouldn't travel, but you should do so very carefully," he said in an interview on CBS News's "Face the Nation." "People are going, 'I'm so sick of hearing this,' and I am, too. But the virus is not sick of us, and it is still out there looking for us, and we've got to double down on these things if we're going to get through the next few months."

Earlier this year, Fauci said people may decide in the long term to wear masks to help curb the spread of viruses during certain seasons.

In a May interview on NBC News's "Meet the Press," he referred to the limited flu activity last season because of widespread public health mitigation measures.

"It is conceivable that as we go on, a year or two or more from now, that during certain seasonal periods when you have respiratory-borne viruses like the flu, people might actually elect to wear masks to diminish the likelihood that you'll spread these respiratory-borne diseases," he said.

[Florestan]

     Did other companies say the same thing, or an otherwise thing?

I am not aware of any other companies beside Astra Zeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson whose vaccines have been approved in the USA and the EU, either under emergency use or permanently.

[Karl Henning]

Trump got his booster, after Fox News goaded him to knock boosters


By Aaron Blake
Senior reporter
Today at 2:01 p.m. EST

If you want a case-in-point of how coronavirus vaccine skepticism gets seeded on the right, you'd struggle to do better than former president Donald Trump's August interview on Fox News.

And Trump's new disclosure that he got his booster reinforces it.

To recap: Trump said in a new conversation with Bill O'Reilly that he has gotten his coronavirus booster. This follows on Trump having relatively frequently encouraged people to get the vaccine — even as he initially declined to do so and didn't disclose getting vaccinated while in the White House. (The news only leaked out in March.)

Trump saying this is particularly important given the current natural-immunity push on the right; Trump was infected with the coronavirus in October 2020. Since then, he got the vaccine and a booster.

But for a moment in August, the Trump was goaded into seriously questioning the same booster he now says he has gotten.

Trump said early in the interview with ally Maria Bartiromo that people should get the vaccine — in arguably stronger terms than he had before.

"I recommend that people take it," he said, before stressing that people should have the choice.

Trump added: "Now one thing: When you have the vaccine, people that do — and it's a very small number relatively, but people that do get it — get better much quicker. And it's very important to know. They don't get nearly as sick, and they get better. [Sen.] Lindsey Graham is an example. He said, if I didn't have this vaccine, I would have died."

"So once you get the vaccine, you get better," Trump added.

Bartiromo, though, quickly took the conversation back to boosters, after Trump initially ignored her question about whether he would get one. And she helpfully suggested that maybe his answer on boosters might be different.

"It's a great point," she said, "but I still come back to the idea — I still come back to the idea of a booster shot. I mean, yes, you are right, the vaccines work — "

The clear subtext: I mean, the vaccines work, but what about this other thing?

Trump took the cue. He quickly suggested that maybe — just maybe — the boosters were actually a "moneymaking operation for Pfizer."

"Think of the money involved," he said, adding: "The whole thing is just crazy. It doesn't — you wouldn't think you would need a booster. You know, when these first came out, they were good for life."

That idea that the vaccines were "good for life" was never assumed to be true, but the fact that Trump was talking in these terms furthered the cause of vaccine skepticism. And he very much seemed to be giving Bartiromo the kind of answer that she wanted.

Trump's disclosure Sunday that he got the booster reinforces that even this man who declined to initially tell people to get vaccinated, who got a natural infection, and who questioned the push for boosters has now gotten one himself. That's arguably the biggest point — that this paragon of a Republican Party that remains so vaccine-resistant has taken the next step, despite his personal skepticism.

But the big point, when it comes to how that broader skepticism became what it is today, is how Trump was pulled into saying what he did in August. Here was a guy asked about the booster and who hailed the benefits of the vaccines in response. But that wasn't the answer that was desired. And Trump, mindful of catering to his base, obliged with a highly conspiratorial message that maybe the boosters were just a Big Pharma money-grab.

To Trump's credit, he has — however infrequently and delayed — continued to point to the benefits of vaccination and now boosters. He has done so even as other prominent conservatives have wagered that dancing around their booster status (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) or vaccination status (Tucker Carlson) or hailing their unvaccinated status (Sarah Palin) is the way to go.

He also did so even after getting booed for it, which happened at a rally shortly after his Bartiromo interview. That shouldn't get lost in all of this, and it continues to be a wonder someone hasn't bankrolled a TV ad playing Trump's repeated comments endorsing vaccination.

But the larger procedural point is why Trump, in delivering his comments, again got jeered by the O'Reilly audience. "Don't, don't, don't, don't," Trump said in response, assuring: "It's a very tiny group over there."

While it might be a tiny group that is bold enough to jeer their hero, it's hardly a tiny group that is feeding them what they and others who are vaccine-reluctant want to hear — often relying upon the kind of innuendo Trump was convinced to traffic in back in August.

[Karl Henning]

Opinion: The torment of hope in the time of the plague

By Max Boot
Columnist
Today at 12:52 p.m. EST

"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

NEW YORK — I have been thinking about Nietzsche's typically dour observation recently as my hometown confronts yet another coronavirus wave. Back in the spring of 2020, I had hope — based on models of the pandemic's expected course — that it would fade away by summer. We know how that went. Hundreds of thousands of deaths later, I should have known better than to hold out any expectation of things improving. And yet I did.

This fall, once again I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel, only to discover that it was the lamp of an oncoming locomotive. I was foolhardy enough in October to book a family trip to France over the holidays with friends. It was a tradition that we had foregone the past two years and were eager to resurrect. We were all fully vaccinated, and the delta wave seemed to be cresting. It seemed safe enough. Then came the omicron wave, washing away the best-laid holiday plans of millions.

Now we anxiously scan the headlines to see whether France is going to close to American tourists as it has already closed to British ones. Even if France remains open, we fret that one of our family members — or more than one — will test positive for the coronavirus and be unable to go. And even if we do make it there, will we be able to make it back? What if one of us tests positive over there?

The anxiety is debilitating. The prospect of a vacation shouldn't be so stressful. Given that most of my family is triple-vaccinated (all except a 14-year-old who isn't allowed to be boosted), I am not particularly afraid of the health risks of catching omicron, at least for us. What I am afraid of is the psychological and economic impact of omicron on a society just beginning to dream of a return to "normality."

Now, omicron caseloads are skyrocketing in New York City; soon it will be the same all over the country. Companies are again closing offices. Broadway shows and sporting events are again being canceled. Universities are again suspending in-person classes, and rumors abound that schools will be next. Hardy diners are again shivering in freezing temperatures because we don't want to risk eating indoors.

Once again, we are all forced to become amateur epidemiologists trying to assess which activities are safe and which aren't. We have been going to the movies ever since the spring. We even went to our first Broadway show since the pandemic started ("The Lehman Trilogy" — I can't recommend it highly enough). But is it too big a risk to run now? What about taking the subway or going to the gym? You have to make countless difficult decisions and constantly fret that you made a mistake. Once again, you have to wonder if every sniffle or cough is just a cold — or covid?

This is the last thing I ever expected nearly two years since the onset of the pandemic, and yet here we are. We all desperately want to return to normal life, but the virus has other ideas.

Whose fault is this? I blame the unvaccinated — the roughly 100 million Americans who refuse, for perverse reasons, to get fully immunized. I am part of the silent majority that wears our masks, gets our vaccine shots and now finds ourselves at the mercy of the selfish blockheads who refuse to take even minimal steps to combat the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history. They are being egged on by demagogues such as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. She just told a right-wing gathering, to cheers, that it will be "over my dead body that I'll have to get a shot." Given how many covid deniers have died of the disease, that stance could prove prophetic for some people.

But honestly, at this point, I am too exhausted to even be all that angry. I just want this to end.

And I have to acknowledge that even countries such as Denmark and the United Kingdom, which have higher vaccination rates, are still being hammered by omicron. We would have had many fewer deaths in the United States if we had had more competent leadership. (A new House report finds fresh "evidence of the Trump Administration's deliberate efforts to undermine the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes.") But even if Franklin D. Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln had been in charge, we still would be struggling with omicron today.

So much of this pandemic seems to be beyond our comprehension or control. It makes you realize how insignificant we humans are, how little our designs count compared with the caprices of nature. Yet — foolish man — I still dream of better, brighter days. I read the news from South Africa — that omicron cases already might be peaking, with half the hospitalizations of the delta wave — and I pray that our experience will be similar.

Haven't I learned anything? I continue to be tormented by hope.

[Artem]

What an odd venting piece.

[Karl Henning]

What an odd venting piece.

Aye.

[Mandryka]

This is very good I think, if you can get it -- use a VPN if you can't. No answers, no reassurances, but still very good to see the complexity of the problems.  Spiegelhalter is just the sort of prof we all need.


https://www.channel4.com/news/unvaccinated-very-likely-to-get-covid-this-winter-says-prof-sir-david-spiegelhalter

[Que]

This is very good I think, if you can get it -- use a VPN if you can't. No answers, no reassurances, but still very good to see the complexity of the problems.  Spiegelhalter is just the sort of prof we all need.


https://www.channel4.com/news/unvaccinated-very-likely-to-get-covid-this-winter-says-prof-sir-david-spiegelhalter

So....London - thanks to the British "let the virus rip" strategy - is going to be the test case for the rest of Europe...

Sofar "the vast majority" of people in Intensive Care is unvaccinated. Amongst them "a troubling amount" of pregnant women. All unvaccinated are likely to catch the virus during this winter.

Any more questions? 

[Florestan]

All unvaccinated are likely to catch the virus during this winter.

In which country?

[Mandryka]

So....London - thanks to the British "let the virus rip" strategy - is going to be the test case for the rest of Europe...

Sofar "the vast majority" of people in Intensive Care is unvaccinated. Amongst them "a troubling amount" of pregnant women. All unvaccinated are likely to catch the virus during this winter.

Any more questions? 

Two other key points - 50% of the omicron hospitalisations in London are incidental, they are in hospital not because of covid, and were diagnosed after being admitted. And the London hospitalisations figure is not soaring. London is ahead of the rest of the UK by a couple of weeks - I won't show you the omicron data but it doesn't make me feel comfortable catching the tube!

[Spotted Horses]

It may not be realistic to enforce "higher quality, well-fitting face coverings" with the general public -- at least if that means medical grade masks. There's a lot of devil in the detail there. What quality is higher quality? How well fitting is well-fitting?  They're likely to be expensive and uncomfortable . . .

A simple medical grade mask (a disposable multi-layer paper surgical mask) costs about $0.25. I've already made the colossal investment of upgrading from my simple cloth masks.

[Mandryka]

A simple medical grade mask (a disposable multi-layer paper surgical mask) costs about $0.25. I've already made the colossal investment of upgrading from my simple cloth masks.

So $70 a year per person, if one a day. Likely more than that because likely more than one a day. That's a lot of money for a large part of the population in Europe and, from what I read, in the States poverty is even deeper than here.  People won't do it because they can't do it.  I bet business will vigorously resist offering them for free at the point of entry.

[Que]

Two other key points - 50% of the omicron hospitalisations in London are incidental, they are in hospital not because of covid, and were diagnosed after being admitted. And the London hospitalisations figure is not soaring. London is ahead of the rest of the UK by a couple of weeks - I won't show you the omicron data but it doesn't make me feel comfortable catching the tube!

You mean omicron might be milder. On this I've read various theories. South Africa has a relatively young population that is therefore less affected. Another possibility is that although a previous episode of Covid or vaccination doesn't sufficiently protect against catching and developing the disease, it might make a difference in severity and prevent hospitalisation.

I'm sure we'll learn more in the weeks to come.

[Mandryka]

You mean omicron might be milder. On this I've read various theories. South Africa has a relatively young population that is therefore less affected. Another possibility is that although a previous episode of Covid or vaccination doesn't sufficiently protect against catching and developing the disease, it might make a difference in severity and prevent hospitalisation.

I'm sure we'll learn more in the weeks to come.

Yes, and that's what makes it so hard to know the best thing to do. I think that we will learn a lot in a couple of weeks - right now there are a hell of a lot of omicron cases in London, we'll see how that's showing up in morbidity by the end of the year. Keep your fingers crossed, light a candle, say a prayer.