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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Just one small example. Not that I expect facts will penetrate your defenses.
Tiger
Active Member
The point is also, that the strains are getting so much more contagious that it is very unlikely to avoid infection unless you totally isolate. That way, it's better to boost naturally while it is statistically safer, it will carry over longer.
Tiger
Active Member
Terminator857
Active Member
I'm dubious as to the claim that they were healthy. I doubt the newspaper has the info to determine the people who died where healthy because of privacy laws. In the past there was a claim of healthy people dying, but when shown a picture, we actually see someone substantially obese.
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Since viruses tend to get less deadly over time and treatments will continue to improve delaying any infection is clearly going to be statistically safer.
With covid that is not necessarily the case. Covid doesn’t kill when virus is active in the host, it’s the body’s auto-immune reaction after the virus is gone that kills. So covid doesn’t gain any evolutionary advantage by not killing the host like other viruses such as HIV would do.
We saw that delta was a lot more dangerous than original covid. We got lucky with Omicron which was a separate lineage than delta and so far less deadly. Mostly Omicron icreased it’s transmission by having a shorter period from infection to spread and being evolved to better bind higher up in the respiratory system.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Are you saying the people dying from Covid don't have an active infection? Since even people who survive can have weeks of active virus that does not seem to be accurate.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
This appears to be false. The estimates I have seen (Bedford) for inherent virulence of Omicron put it at a similar level to the Wuhan strain. It might be ~20% less virulent than the Wuhan strain as a best case.
Anyway, if your favorite video dude is concerned about vaccines exhausting the immune system, he should check out repeated COVID infections (clearly these happen as well). Also we’d need a study of two-booster (4 total) efficacy vs. infection plus 3 doses to make an actual judgement here. Those videos he makes are interesting and I am sure he does well on advertising income, but they seem to lack rigor and are composed of him focusing his camera on segments of studies he has highlighted (it is honestly kind of comical). This is called cherry picking.
It’s actually not clear to me from the video how boosted vaccination compares to infection-acquired immunity (with or without vaccination). Of course he doesn’t cover the details. I don’t think we even have all that much data on it, especially in the context of a prior Omicron infection - there has only been a couple months worth of data - we’ll probably see data in a couple months. As your favorite video dude says, hopefully the CDC will publish additional data soon. However, we do seem to have some evidence (in lab testing) that cross-immunity to other variants may be weaker for Omicron infection than it was for the vaccine-targeted virus. Perhaps one reason why the initial animal-model studies of the Omicron-targeted booster do not look great (may be better for the actual trials, but we will see).
Clearly the presence of infection-acquired immunity does reduce future spread (see China for example) but the question is the cost. The extremely low cost of vaccines is known, and the natural immunity they create very clearly prevents huge numbers of infections. So that is the issue with just “going with infection.” The question really is: is it better to get another booster, or get infected? I know there is a lot of drama about boosters every six months (it is far from clear that will be needed for the general population), and it causing blunting of immune response, but is infection by the actual virus twice a year (seems to be similar likelihood, though as I said we actually have very little data on the relative efficacy of boosting vs. Omicron infection) better? I doubt it!
As an example, look at all the boosted people who went through the Omicron wave without infection. They are now in much better shape - the people who got infected are protecting the uninfected with their immunity (which could have been naturally obtained in many cases from a booster and vaccination, but here we are). Those people are in great shape proceeding with much lower risk. Why not continue that? You have to have a very strong data-backed argument to suddenly be able to suggest infection as the optimal path forward. I just don’t see the justification for public health agencies to encourage this (which is what your dude is suggesting, with poorly grounded justifications).
It’s much easier to avoid COVID infection now - requires very few lifestyle modifications. May as well wait for the data to become clear on long COVID risks, on the efficacy of Omicron-specific boosters, and the long-term efficacy of infection-acquired immunity, and widespread availability of antivirals (with supporting safety data and impact on long COVID reduction) before modifying behavior in such a way as to wander down that path.
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That’s a good question. I don’t know the statistics for active (“live” or culturable virus) in hospitalized severely sick people after days or weeks of infection. My impression is that they may tend to have culturable virus a few days longer than people with mild or moderate symptomatic Covid but that many of these people do not have high viral loads during the time that they are having severe illness. Their symptoms are from the immune system spinning out of control for reasons that are not fully understood.
My understanding is that most reports of people having “active virus” for weeks after a typical Covid infection are just PCR testing positive due to fragments of “dead” virus that is incapable of reproducing.
This chart is from Covid in young adults.
Will be interesting to see what happens in China. Cases are increasing rapidly:
Shanghai residents are getting fed up with restrictions:
Meanwhile election is coming up an Xi has staked a lot on zerocovid.
At this point even if Shanghai manages to get R from say 2 to 0.25 with drastic measurements, it still would take many weeks of pain to get from todays level to near zero levels. Even with current strict restrictions it hard to say if R is meaningfully below 1.
And with their less effective vaccines, with their populations preference to traditional chinese medicine over western medicine, with their populations hesistance toward taking government vaccines, letting loose BA.2 into their population would likely mean a lot of sick people at the same time…
Shanghai residents are getting fed up with restrictions:
Meanwhile election is coming up an Xi has staked a lot on zerocovid.
At this point even if Shanghai manages to get R from say 2 to 0.25 with drastic measurements, it still would take many weeks of pain to get from todays level to near zero levels. Even with current strict restrictions it hard to say if R is meaningfully below 1.
And with their less effective vaccines, with their populations preference to traditional chinese medicine over western medicine, with their populations hesistance toward taking government vaccines, letting loose BA.2 into their population would likely mean a lot of sick people at the same time…
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yep, it’s been like watching a train wreck in slow motion for the last couple months. Definitely has taken longer to take off than expected. Too bad they didn’t use that time wisely.
I have (in my personal experience only) found that the Chinese much preferred supplements and such from the US (often wanting it brought over from Costco). Pretty sure a bunch of them would have taken Pfizer boosters and others if they had been offered.
But putting that aside, in China it’s relatively easy to get people to do anything with a “slightly heavier hand” (if you will), so it’s not clear to me why they haven’t done a better job with vaccinations and boosting of the elderly. The Chinese vaccine seems perfectly fine (not sure about any clotting issues, I’ll caveat that); it just needs three doses and then protection is quite adequate (though they’d still have a mind-boggling number of cases).
Tiger
Active Member
In my understanding he is argung pertrains exactly this group: " boosted people who went through the Omicron wave without infection. They are now in much better shape - the people who got infected are protecting the uninfected with their immunity". These people got natural boost which replaces need for at least one vaccine boost - and ofcourse after time (probably longer than after a vaccine boost), might need another boost.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
As I said, this immunity to protect others clearly could have been obtained through a booster vaccine in many cases!
For those infected, it is what it is, at this point (note that a disproportionate number of people who were not boosted (this includes those not vaccinated at all) got infected during the Omicron wave - they made up the vast majority of Omicron infections - this also includes those previously infected before Omicron of course). But what would be the justification for those people who have not been infected, but have been boosted, to get infected?
I'm not sure what you're arguing for at all, or what is the justification for it.
What's the advantage of infection over the natural immunity from a vaccine boost? What's the advantage of an infection over the natural immunity of a second vaccine boost? Do you have the data? I sure didn't see it in that video (it seemed to be focused on a couple words in some publication which seemed to address the situation before Omicron).
He seemed to make this claim in the video but I don't see the data. It's bizarre. I find it extremely doubtful that at this point we have data on the persistence of Omicron immunity vs. booster immunity. It's possible we don't even have clear data on the persistence of Delta or prior variant immunity vs. boosted immunity, but even if we did, that obviously wouldn't apply to Omicron (the only thing you're going to catch these days), given what we already know about the immunogenicity differences between the variants (based on the results of the cross-neutralization assays).
If you want to make the argument that people with immunity to some variant prior to Omicron, who have also been boosted with 2-3 doses (whatever the order) are better off than those who have three doses, you could try (would be great to see some data!). But some small percentage of those people are already dealing with long COVID, so I hope they have great protection. And the ones who are dead likely didn't get a chance to get boosted (it would be a very small, primarily immunocompromised group who got boosted but then died of Delta). But anyway, I'm not sure how such an argument applies to Omicron. At all.
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Someone in another forum who lives in Texas posted a pointer to Bass Performance Hall - Official Website | COVID-19 Health and Safety Protocols about a show they went to and reflection of where Texas is when it comes to COVID.
Emphasis above added by me. Note it doesn't say for people who test positive or have symptoms to not go...
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
You have not spoken to most of the patients my wife sees. But you are right, most aren't healthy but they think they are.
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