What's interesting is that suicides were down by 5.6% year-over-year in 2020. What actually went up were traffic accidents (by 8%), despite significantly less driving overall. Apparently, people saw the wide-open roads as an excuse to drive like morons.
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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
Georgia becomes third state to shut down Johnson & Johnson vaccine site after adverse reactions
Dozens have suffered adverse reactions to the shot in three states.
www.cbsnews.com
I hate needles so whenever I go for shots, I tell them I don't want to see them.
I did once almost faint before having blood drawn at a doctor's office. Was my first and only time ever having that. I think felt lightheaded or dizzy and it became hard to hear people. Was really weird. I think I got too nervous or something. I don't have that issue w/injections.
Many many years later, I was hospitalized once for bleeding (I won't specify what publicly) but apparently the doctor called for CBC every x # of hours (I don't recall how often). I had pretty bad blood loss and was given an infusion of 2 units of blood. People would come to draw blood from me every x hours. That SUCKED. IIRC, they did it between my knuckles in some cases.
OT, I did watch this 12.5 minute video:
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I did notice that when the roads were sparsely populated there was sort of a post apocalyptic feel of freedom and I would tend to drive faster. Nothing insane though because crashing with zombies lurking around would be a bad idea.
MXLRplus
Active Member
Israeli data shows South African variant able to ‘break through’ Pfizer vaccine
In a real world study, Israel group finds that people given the Pfizer vaccine had much higher rate of breakthrough cases versus unvaccinated people who were previously infected with the original strain of coronavirus.
My worry with this news is people might think it’s just better for them to get COVID than get a vaccine. Probably might reinforce that idea among those who were already against getting the vaccine.
In a real world study, Israel group finds that people given the Pfizer vaccine had much higher rate of breakthrough cases versus unvaccinated people who were previously infected with the original strain of coronavirus.
My worry with this news is people might think it’s just better for them to get COVID than get a vaccine. Probably might reinforce that idea among those who were already against getting the vaccine.
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Sigh... Half of vaccine rejectors believe it is safe to travel now, compared to 29% of vaccinated adults | YouGov. There are numerous other troubling stats from the poll. Example:
The above might explain the crazy # of people traveling now at TSA checkpoint travel numbers (current year(s) versus prior year/same weekday) | Transportation Security Administration.
I’ll continue to stick with traveling by car only for quite some time.
I think the following is the most frustrating, though somewhat expected among those people.
Many vaccine rejectors have little confidence in advice from leading national medical figures, like the CDC or Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Instead, nearly half in this group trust advice from former President Donald Trump.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
They compared matched groups, retrospectively - all PCR positive, there were no negatives, so this study does not establish absolute efficacy, it just looks at relative strength against each strain, by comparing the overall prevalence in unvaccinated individuals, to the strains that show up in vaccinated individuals. So they had a control group, of unvaccinated people who were infected with whatever strain (not the original strain only), and a group of vaccinated people (I think all vaccinated on the same day?), and used data from samples that were gathered over a period of time subsequent to that vaccination day (around January 10th).
That way they can see the relative rates of each positive case. The numbers for B.1.351 were extremely low so it's very hard to determine the actual rates, by the way - just that breakthrough was higher - as we expect from the antibody studies.
Anyway this study is actually great news. B.1.351 was only 8 times more likely to break through (due to low numbers the uncertainty on relative efficacy is very high here, too), but that was measured from one week after the second dose.
Also, as far as I can tell, they actually found NO cases of B.1.351 14 days after the second dose. Again, hard to say what this means - there's hardly any B.1.351 in Israel. But 14 days after vaccination, no one got B.1.351, for the samples they used for the study (study period looks like 7.5 weeks starting 14 days after the first dose, so that extends 6.5 weeks after the second dose). Note that they also simply had many fewer matched samples during that period of two weeks after the second dose (~February 14th), so if they had gathered more maybe they would have found some - but still, the trend is down on B.1.351 prevalence, not up. Again, as far as I can tell, 21+ days after the second dose, they found 46 cases of B.1.1.7 in vaccinated individuals, compared to 0 cases of B.1.351 (Note again: B.1.351 seems to make up something like 1% of cases in Israel, or lower.).
(The 24th of January is 14 days after the first dose in the plot below, I believe. January 31st is second dose. Feb 14th is 2 weeks after 2nd dose. Feb 7th is one week after second dose.)
I think I'm interpreting this right but I could be wrong. The study structure is a little confusing and a few key explanatory sentences to clarify are not included in the paper.
Another interesting snippet from this paper is that it suggests that holding off on the second dose may not be a good idea if B.1.1.7 is around, because it seemed to be breaking through a lot after the first dose (relative to wild type, I think).
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Even Trump has said to get the vaccine, so they aren't even listening to him. Maybe they need a rebranded vaccine:
""Trumpcine" is the former president's desired moniker for the life-saving jab,"
Trump wants you to start calling it the 'Trumpcine' instead of the COVID-19 vaccine, report says
Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his frustrating that he isn't receiving credit for the coronavirus vaccine rollout.
www.businessinsider.com
The second Pfizer shot really kicked my arse. Pretty much spent the whole day in bed yesterday with a fever (102-103), aches, headache, chills, fatigue, dizzy, etc. felt like I had the flu. After about 24 hours the fever went away and then I slept for about 12 hours. Feel much better now.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Second wave in India looks incredible.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yes, we can now confirm that all these headlines are clickbait (be VERY skeptical of all headlines). It is a bit sad that the messaging is so so bad on this, because it's likely doing exactly what you fear - and what's more, the headlines are arguably fake news (literally, the headlines are true, but that's not the point).
A better headline would be: "Pfizer Vaccine Demonstrates Ability To Stop B.1.351 Spread in Israel"
This turns out to be true. Hooray.
I interpreted correctly.
Here is the information from an author of the study, it is a much shorter summary of my post above. Short story is the Pfizer vaccine is stopping B.1.351 dead in its tracks in Israel. Is it 95% effective against B.1.351? Probably not (as expected based on correlates of protection for which correlation has not been established yet
). But it doesn't need to be. It's probably in the 75-85% effective range (just a guess - we really have no idea and it's actually a little difficult to measure effective against a (rare) specific variant):End of the thread (mic drop!):
So far, the mRNA vaccines approved in the US continue to devastate all variants that come their way. Hopefully the virus won't come up with anything trickier (at least, not on a timescale that beats the updated vaccines, which will likely be closer to any escape variant that arises) but obviously that is TBD. Note that the CDC currently has found no known variants of high consequence.
And this does seem to confirm that in the presence of B.1.1.7, the single-dose strategy (delay second dose) may be less effective. (It may still be the right thing to do, but the benefit is very likely less than with wild type.)
Cases, Data, and Surveillance
Cases, data, and surveillance to track and analyze COVID-19.
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That sounds good.Yes, we can now confirm that all these headlines are clickbait (be VERY skeptical of all headlines). It is a bit sad that the messaging is so so bad on this, because it's likely doing exactly what you fear - and what's more, the headlines are arguably fake news (literally, the headlines are true, but that's not the point).
A better headline would be: "Pfizer Vaccine Demonstrates Ability To Stop B.1.351 Spread in Israel"
This turns out to be true. Hooray.
I interpreted correctly.
Here is the information from an author of the study, it is a much shorter summary of my post above. Short story is the Pfizer vaccine is stopping B.1.351 dead in its tracks in Israel. Is it 95% effective against B.1.351? Probably not (as expected based on correlates of protection for which correlation has not been established yet
End of the thread (mic drop!):
So far, the mRNA vaccines approved in the US continue to devastate all variants that come their way. Hopefully the virus won't come up with anything trickier (at least, not on a timescale that beats the updated vaccines, which will likely be closer to any escape variant that arises) but obviously that is TBD. Note that the CDC currently has found no known variants of high consequence.
And this does seem to confirm that in the presence of B.1.1.7, the single-dose strategy (delay second dose) may be less effective. (It may still be the right thing to do, but the benefit is very likely less than with wild type.)
Cases, Data, and Surveillance
Cases, data, and surveillance to track and analyze COVID-19.www.cdc.gov
But, as mentioned, the proportion of B.1.351 cases pretty much dropped off the map, relatively speaking, by about 3 weeks after the second dose. So, I wouldn’t necessarily say this study is confirmation that the breakthrough ratio observed won’t hold beyond the 14+ days. It could. I guess we will observe what happens between all the variants and vaccines once more cases are due to different VOCs in the US.
And, does Israel’s experience mean that B.1.351 is not as transmissible as B.1.1.7 (at least in their population)?
bkp_duke
Well-Known Member
I used to say . . . "there is no cure for stupid" . . .
Now I'm beginning to think instead . . . "the cure for stupid . . . is experience".
I say if they don't want vaccinated, fine, let them get the disease instead. It's a free country, and perhaps they will learn a lesson and tell a few people they know "I was wrong about this COVID thing."
Honestly, I think it is the only way to get through to these people.
A harsh lesson in the reality of COVID-19 - Dallas Voice
For Tony Green, the coronavirus pandemic was just a ‘scamdemic’ — until truth hit home hard EDITOR’S NOTE: Tony Green contributed this article as a guest columnist. Contrary to reports by some media outlets, he is not a Dallas Voice employee, and he was not paid for this column. Imagine the...
dallasvoice.com
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
No, they were pretty much a little below 1% throughout the study. So the dropoff isn't due to an overall dropoff in the population.
Even if it does hold to some degree (which I would expect), it's still great news.
Looking at efficacy of 97% against symptomatic illness for Pfizer in Israel (primarily B.1.1.7) that suggests about 76% efficacy against B.1.351, just using that ratio - very roughly. And it might be better (that 8:1 ratio is basically just noise, it's significant but we have no idea what the ratio actually is).
76% efficacy is great. And it's probably considerably better than that since that was measured only 7 days after the second dose. (Basically Pfizer efficacy may have been peaking around 7 days but it may have taken a bit longer for B.1.351 to peak since overall final neutralizing titers are lower.)
We know neutralizing titers go down (by only a factor of 6 or so) for B.1.351, so some dropoff in efficacy is expected. You have to look at the distributions of titers to guess at how much (and know how well they correlate). But I'd guess it's between 75-85% effective (maybe 75% against asymptomatic or symptomatic illness?) based on those data (and frankly this really is a wild guess - it's very hard to say, but I believe this is likely a guess on the low side). That's wonderful. It probably puts B.1.351 relative to B.1.1.7 at a disadvantage given how poorly it spreads. Remember that even with that lowish efficacy, you can't apply the same R value to the virus, either - nearly all vaccinated people are less likely to spread, even if they become infected - because they often end up with less viral load than they would without vaccination. So that's probably going to lower the overall ability of the virus to spread asymptomatically and symptomatically.
We're still waiting on a study directly looking at efficacy, of course. It would definitely be nice to know.
Yes it's less transmissible than B.1.1.7. Whether it's less transmissible than wild type I'm not sure; you'd have to review the literature. It might be.
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Do we really know that B.1.351 is less transmissible than B.1.1.7? I don’t recall seeing any high-quality evidence yet.
As for B.1.351 vs wildtype (original “Wuhan” variant) I think “351” near fully displaced the original variant in South Africa which tends to imply that it is more transmissible.
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