Coronavirus thread

[Mandryka]

In terms of left-reaction, though, the relevant trope is that any attempt to compel or coerce changes in societal behavior will necessarily result in state and elite violence against poor and minorities, because our enforcement systems are too entrenched in capitalist and racist hierarchies of power.

Actually that's probably true of the London Metropolitan Police. I hope Seattle's better.

[fbjim]

To an extent, that is true, though I don't think it'd be a very good argument against, eg, making arson illegal.


Additionally it doesn't really apply to the handwringing about "shaming" people who refuse to participate in public health measures, when shame is in fact, historically, probably the most common way societies attempt to prevent free riders when an inconvenience has to be borne by everyone.

[Todd]

Fauci recommends that you don't invite unvaccinated relatives over for the holidays

Finally, a public health policy one can embrace without reservation.

[Todd]

I'm not an epidemiologist, so hopefully one of the many epidemiologists on GMG can explain how the world will get to herd immunity soon or soon-ish.  I am not certain what constitutes herd immunity - is it an 80% vaccination rate? - so hopefully that can be cleared up too.  It would also be interesting to know why no large European countries are in the top ten most vaccinated countries.  (The Chinese statistics look to be very accurate and reliable.)

Anyway, the source for this info is the New York Times, so hopefully that passes muster: Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World

[Mandryka]

I'm not an epidemiologist, so hopefully one of the many epidemiologists on GMG can explain how the world will get to herd immunity soon or soon-ish.  I am not certain what constitutes herd immunity - is it an 80% vaccination rate? - so hopefully that can be cleared up too.  It would also be interesting to know why no large European countries are in the top ten most vaccinated countries.  (The Chinese statistics look to be very accurate and reliable.)

Anyway, the source for this info is the New York Times, so hopefully that passes muster: Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World

I think the idea that fully vaccinated = two doses is out of style.

The world may get herd immunity soonish because everyone in the world may soon become infected with omicron, those who live to tell the tale will have some residual immunity for a while, for what its worth. Universal herd immunity is not a panacea.

[drogulus]

I think the idea that fully vaccinated = two doses is out of style.

     This is so, even if GMG epidemiologists say it is.

[drogulus]

     Given that we now know that Jab 3 is better against Omicron than stopping at Jab 2, one can rationally hope that Jab 4 will be better still, especially since the likelihood that a springtime booster will incorporate Omicron specific modification is high.

[prémont]

I'm not an epidemiologist, so hopefully one of the many epidemiologists on GMG can explain how the world will get to herd immunity soon or soon-ish.  I am not certain what constitutes herd immunity - is it an 80% vaccination rate? - so hopefully that can be cleared up too.  It would also be interesting to know why no large European countries are in the top ten most vaccinated countries.  (The Chinese statistics look to be very accurate and reliable.)

Anyway, the source for this info is the New York Times, so hopefully that passes muster: Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World

It's rather simple. Herd immunity means that a sufficiently large number of the population is immune to the virus so the R can be kept lower than 1. Danish experts have calculated that this would happen with the delta variant when about 92% of the people were vaccinated. After the emergence of the omikron variant complete herd immunity can't be achieved with the existing vaccines as to the omikron variant because of its high infectiousness and its considerable ability to infect vaccinated people. So other and better vaccines or some degree of restrictions are necessary to keep the R below 1 with the omikron.

If we suppose that neither vaccines nor restrictions existed so that the virus could spread freely in the community, we would probably still not achieve herd immunity , meaning R below 1 (even after a long course with an unmanageable number of infections and fatalities) because of the virus' ability to reinfect individuals after a few months.

The people who reject vaccines account for the most part of the missing % of vaccinated people (well known in the US I think). The other part of unvaccinated people is children, whom we are beginning to vaccinate now, hoping that this may help to keep the R lower.

[André]

As has been reported, the virus mutates over time. That's what viruses do. The longer we wait before third world countries get vaccines, the more time we give the virus to mutate and (re)infect us.

Getting 3rd, 4th or 5th jabs while shutting poor countries out of the vaccine cycle simply means that we shut the front door to the intruder while letting it enter through the back doors and open windows. It's a vicious circle: the more variants and infections we face, the more clamor for new jabs we hear. Pharmaceutical companies are only too happy to oblige. I don't think there's an easy way out.

[Karl Henning]

As has been reported, the virus mutates over time. That's what viruses do. The longer we wait before third world countries get vaccines, the more time we give the virus to mutate and (re)infect us.

Getting 3rd, 4th or 5th jabs while shutting poor countries out of the vaccine cycle simply means that we shut the front door to the intruder while letting it enter through the back doors and open windows. It's a vicious circle: the more variants and infections we face, the more clamor for new jabs we hear. Pharmaceutical companies are only too happy to oblige. I don't think there's an easy way out.

Yes.

[Todd]

It's rather simple.

Incorrect.

As has been reported, the virus mutates over time. That's what viruses do. The longer we wait before third world countries get vaccines, the more time we give the virus to mutate and (re)infect us.

There is truth to this, though no one outside this forum uses the phrase "third world countries" anymore.

[Mandryka]

If you look at the SA data, where there's very wide immunity to covid-19 through previous delta infection, reinfection with omicron doesn't seem to be causing a great problem in the hospitals at all. This presumably is because the immunity "in the herd" is providing some good protection after reinfection. So, we can reasonably hope that, if the world becomes infected with omicron soon, the survivors will have some improved capacity to resist a serious reaction if they're subsequently re-infected, either with a new variant or an existing one. I think that's the best we can hope for in fact -- the silver lining in the omicron cloud.

[Todd]

If you look at the SA data, where there's very wide immunity to covid-19 through previous delta infection, reinfection with omicron doesn't seem to be causing a great problem in the hospitals at all. This presumably is because the immunity "in the herd" is providing some good protection after reinfection. So, we can reasonably hope that, if the world becomes infected with omicron soon, the survivors will have some improved capacity to resist a serious reaction if they're subsequently re-infected, either with a new variant or an existing one. I think that's the best we can hope for in fact -- the silver lining in the omicron cloud.

Hope is not a strategy. 

[Mandryka]

As has been reported, the virus mutates over time. That's what viruses do. The longer we wait before third world countries get vaccines, the more time we give the virus to mutate and (re)infect us.

Getting 3rd, 4th or 5th jabs while shutting poor countries out of the vaccine cycle simply means that we shut the front door to the intruder while letting it enter through the back doors and open windows. It's a vicious circle: the more variants and infections we face, the more clamor for new jabs we hear. Pharmaceutical companies are only too happy to oblige. I don't think there's an easy way out.

Well if the whole world catches omicron the problem is reduced, because the consequent global protection may well be at least as good as vaccine induced immunity. But there's another point I want to make. The first world's hoarding vaccines isn't necessarily the main problem with getting vaccines out to the whole world -- distribution is a major problem, possibly more important than supply.

Again the distribution problem is circumvented by a global omicron pandemic.

[Mandryka]

Hope is not a strategy.

As Turandot said

Nella cupa notte
vola un fantasma iridescente.
Sale e dispiega l'ale
sulla nera infinita umanità!
Tutto il mondo l'invoca
e tutto il mondo l'implora!
ma il fantasma sparisce con l'aurora
per rinascere nel cuore!
ed ogni notte nasce
ed ogni giorno muore!

[prémont]

Well if the whole world catches omicron the problem is reduced, because the consequent global protection may well be at least as good as vaccine induced immunity.

We can hope so, but we don't know concerning the omikron. Many young people with light or no symptoms when infected have a low antibody response, and this may mean low resistence to reinfection.

[prémont]

As has been reported, the virus mutates over time. That's what viruses do. The longer we wait before third world countries get vaccines, the more time we give the virus to mutate and (re)infect us.

That's true, but even if we don't see more serious mutations in the foreseeable future, we are already in trouble with the omikron. We may hope that it causes milder infections than the delta but until now this isn't but conjecture, and we still need to see its behaviour in an European population 60+ in a larger scale.

[amw]

There's some emerging data to suggest that VE over time of booster shots declines at pretty much the same rate as it does for "full vaccination" with two shots, although with a longer plateau of initial effectiveness. VE seems higher for mRNA vaccines than inactivated virus vaccines, but I haven't yet seen a comprehensive meta-analysis for statistical significance.

The cause is presumably immune escape over time. My gut reaction to this is that mRNA vaccines are not entirely the game changer they were advertised as, at least in this context, and yearly or six-monthly shots will likely be required for the foreseeable future with the continual possibility (which has not yet eventuated) that, as long as the contents of the mRNA "container" remain unchanged, there's the possibility of vaccine-resistant strains emerging. Under those conditions I feel somewhat less inclined to get a booster shot until I see companies start tailoring them to conditions on the ground now, rather than conditions on the ground in March 2020. That said I have another two months until I'm eligible anyway and will wait to see what other data emerge.

Personally speaking I developed symptoms of COVID-19 on Friday (possibly contracting it sometime last week), which I was told was likely Omicron variant based on local seroprevalence; the symptoms match up fairly well (muscle aches/pains, sore throat, cough, etc.). For me it's indistinguishable from the mild cold that would be caused by any other coronavirus at this time of year, but I'm not in any of the at-risk groups (older adults, males, overweight people—or for Omicron specifically, infants). This hasn't really disrupted my routine, since I already worked from home and the symptoms do not prevent me from being mobile and active—in fact I'm walking more than usual, just due to the fact that I can't run errands outside anymore (no grocery shopping, no public transit, etc.) but get stir crazy at home.

This doesn't prove Omicron is a "mild" variant; I know a number of other people who've had it and who were also not strongly affected, but people I know tend to skew younger and healthier. And yes, this is a breakthrough infection, but I likely wouldn't have contracted it at all in most circumstances; however, since moving back to New York my diet has been severely disrupted, so my health hasn't been as good in general. That is an untestable hypothesis obviously, but hyperglycaemia is known to correlate with increased rate of COVID-19 infection, severity of COVID-19 illness, and death from or exacerbated by COVID-19, and hyperglycaemia can be a result of a high-calorie diet. My blood sugar levels are in the normal range, but it's not out of the question that consuming mostly processed/prepared foods and energy drinks for several months might have made me more vulnerable.

The immune response to this variant does not seem to confer long-term immunity—though we obviously don't have long-term population-scale data, only statistical models—so I won't be too surprised if I catch it again at some point.

[71 dB]

Hope is not a strategy.

However, a strategy should give hope.  0:)

[Karl Henning]

There's some emerging data to suggest that VE over time of booster shots declines at pretty much the same rate as it does for "full vaccination" with two shots, although with a longer plateau of initial effectiveness. VE seems higher for mRNA vaccines than inactivated virus vaccines, but I haven't yet seen a comprehensive meta-analysis for statistical significance.

The cause is presumably immune escape over time. My gut reaction to this is that mRNA vaccines are not entirely the game changer they were advertised as, at least in this context, and yearly or six-monthly shots will likely be required for the foreseeable future with the continual possibility (which has not yet eventuated) that, as long as the contents of the mRNA "container" remain unchanged, there's the possibility of vaccine-resistant strains emerging. Under those conditions I feel somewhat less inclined to get a booster shot until I see companies start tailoring them to conditions on the ground now, rather than conditions on the ground in March 2020. That said I have another two months until I'm eligible anyway and will wait to see what other data emerge.

Personally speaking I developed symptoms of COVID-19 on Friday (possibly contracting it sometime last week), which I was told was likely Omicron variant based on local seroprevalence; the symptoms match up fairly well (muscle aches/pains, sore throat, cough, etc.). For me it's indistinguishable from the mild cold that would be caused by any other coronavirus at this time of year, but I'm not in any of the at-risk groups (older adults, males, overweight people—or for Omicron specifically, infants). This hasn't really disrupted my routine, since I already worked from home and the symptoms do not prevent me from being mobile and active—in fact I'm walking more than usual, just due to the fact that I can't run errands outside anymore (no grocery shopping, no public transit, etc.) but get stir crazy at home.

This doesn't prove Omicron is a "mild" variant; I know a number of other people who've had it and who were also not strongly affected, but people I know tend to skew younger and healthier. And yes, this is a breakthrough infection, but I likely wouldn't have contracted it at all in most circumstances; however, since moving back to New York my diet has been severely disrupted, so my health hasn't been as good in general. That is an untestable hypothesis obviously, but hyperglycaemia is known to correlate with increased rate of COVID-19 infection, severity of COVID-19 illness, and death from or exacerbated by COVID-19, and hyperglycaemia can be a result of a high-calorie diet. My blood sugar levels are in the normal range, but it's not out of the question that consuming mostly processed/prepared foods and energy drinks for several months might have made me more vulnerable.

The immune response to this variant does not seem to confer long-term immunity—though we obviously don't have long-term population-scale data, only statistical models—so I won't be too surprised if I catch it again at some point.

Mend well!