Coronavirus

[heltok]

China is basically screwed:

Severe Covid-19 symptoms 5 times more likely in patients who got Sinovac rather than Pfizer jab: Study

Sinovac recipients are also more than twice as likely to be infected with Covid-19 than Pfizer recipients. Read more at straitstimes.com.

www.straitstimes.com

The study covered a seven-week period, from Oct 1, 2021, to Nov 21, 2021, and involved close to three million adults aged 20 years old and above who had received their first two doses of the Covid-19 vaccines.

Recipients of the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine are five times more likely to experience severe Covid-19 symptoms when they are infected than those who had the Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty vaccine.

Sinovac recipients are also more than twice as likely to be infected with Covid-19 than Pfizer vaccine recipients and almost six times more likely than those who took the Moderna vaccine.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

China is basically screwed:

Severe Covid-19 symptoms 5 times more likely in patients who got Sinovac rather than Pfizer jab: Study

Sinovac recipients are also more than twice as likely to be infected with Covid-19 than Pfizer recipients. Read more at straitstimes.com.

www.straitstimes.com

The study covered a seven-week period, from Oct 1, 2021, to Nov 21, 2021, and involved close to three million adults aged 20 years old and above who had received their first two doses of the Covid-19 vaccines.

Recipients of the Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccine are five times more likely to experience severe Covid-19 symptoms when they are infected than those who had the Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty vaccine.

Sinovac recipients are also more than twice as likely to be infected with Covid-19 than Pfizer vaccine recipients and almost six times more likely than those who took the Moderna vaccine.

Probably they’ll be fine if they boost their Sinovac recipients, as has been noted before. Makes a big difference. And there is a substantial efficacy gap (looks like about 3x for two doses in this plot, but for different age group and a different metric) for two doses.

Boosting is a big deal, as it allows the immune system to make up for any vaccine shortcomings (the immune system can “anticipate” variants not directly targeted by the vaccine, and the boost allows protections against such variants to be reinforced).

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508630428357300224

The China Insights videos are a bit over the top; it’s slightly comical. Guess it’s good to counterbalance the CCP.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1515327546069561345

This probably makes sense. I assume this is based somehow on excess deaths, corrected for deaths caused by lack of access to medical care.


I heard of someone I work with who got COVID in Shanghai, had to go to isolation. Once he tested negative again he stayed in isolation for a couple more days since he didn’t have any food at home.

 

[heltok]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1515551467524005888

Guess zero covid for at least another two weeks. Probably more after that

 

[JRP3]

Northeast US seeing an uptick which I assumed was being driven by the NYC area but upstate is seeing 2 new sub variants and higher case rates.

New York state officials this week announced that two new omicron subvariants, dubbed BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1, have become the dominant forms of the coronavirus in the central part of the state. For weeks, infection rates in central New York have been at least twice the state average, according to data from the state health department.

The new omicron sublineages in New York have picked up mutations that may help the virus enter cells faster and evade vaccine- and infection-boosted immunity, said Andy Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

New, highly transmissible forms of omicron may pose latest covid threat

Disease trackers are monitoring the spread of new, highly transmissible versions of the omicron variant in New York state and Europe, the latest evidence of the coronavirus's ability to overhaul its genetic profile and pose a fresh threat. It is too soon to predict how far the new subvariants...

www.yahoo.com

 

[NikolaACDC]

Covid China: Elderly deaths contradict Shanghai figures

"Dozens of elderly patients at a hospital in Shanghai have died after contracting Covid-19, but official government figures claim no deaths in the city have been caused by the disease since 2020.
The BBC has spoken to a hospital manager and had access to correspondence sent to relatives of patients who've died during the Omicron outbreak that is sweeping through China's biggest city.
We've also had access to official documents that suggest at least 27 patients from a single hospital, who weren't vaccinated, have died from what it called "underlying health problems"."
--------------
Yeah, take the official news out of China with a grain bucketful of salt.

 

[SDRick]

China is pretty interesting. If government figures show a zero death count, why the draconian lockdown?

 

[Daniel in SD]

SHANGHAI, April 17 (Reuters) - Shanghai has set a target to stop the spread of COVID-19 outside of quarantined areas by Wednesday, two people familiar with the matter said, which would allow the city to further ease its lockdown and start returning to normal life as public frustrations grow.

The target will require officials to accelerate COVID testing and the transfer of positive cases to quarantine centres, according to a speech by a local Communist Party official dated Saturday, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

Problem solved.

Shanghai targets lockdown turning point by Wednesday

The target will require officials to accelerate COVID testing and the transfer of positive cases to quarantine centers.

www.reuters.com

China is pretty interesting. If government figures show a zero death count, why the draconian lockdown?

Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. I don't understand the point of covering up deaths if you're trying to convince people to pursue zero covid. If they lose control of the outbreak, which appears likely, it won't be possible to cover up the deaths. Or maybe they are actually close to containing it and the new cases are all in quarantine facilities...

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Or maybe they are actually close to containing it and the new cases are all in quarantine facilities...

They may be making one of the biggest mistakes people make. This is a difficult trap to avoid.

I don’t understand why they don’t just boost everyone, wear N95s indoors consistently, and get on with life. Seems to work fine for nearly everyone who does that.

New Zealand has just 500 deaths, up about 15x from before they relaxed (when they had less than 40). They’ll probably hit 1000, hard to say. And over half of the deaths are in the unvaccinated and unboosted (1/3 or so are in the unvaccinated, who make up 5% of the population 12 and over).

Boosting (and vaccination, but need boosting) works. China does that, and they can cruise through with just ~300k deaths (sucks, but really not bad at all).

 

[heltok]

They may be making one of the biggest mistakes people make. This is a difficult trap to avoid.

I don’t understand why they don’t just boost everyone, wear N95s indoors consistently, and get on with life. Seems to work fine for nearly everyone who does that.

New Zealand has just 500 deaths, up about 15x from before they relaxed (when they had less than 40). They’ll probably hit 1000, hard to say. And over half of the deaths are in the unvaccinated and unboosted (1/3 or so are in the unvaccinated, who make up 5% of the population 12 and over).

Boosting (and vaccination, but need boosting) works. China does that, and they can cruise through with just ~300k deaths (sucks, but really not bad at all).

It’s politics. Xi is up for reelection and he has previous said that CCP is better than democracy because unlike the west they managed to contain the virus.

China is in a worse position than NZ. They have serious lung damages in their population from air pollution, they have worse vaccines, they have lots of smokers, high level of diabetes(CN 12% vs NZ 4%). Also their health care system is not as good and Xi has promoted TCM which doesn’t work.

 

[NikolaACDC]

Shanghai: China reports three dead in latest Covid outbreak

"China has reported the deaths of three people from Covid in Shanghai for the first time since the financial hub entered lockdown in late March.
A release from the city health commission said the victims were aged between 89 and 91 and unvaccinated.
Shanghai officials said only 38% of residents over 60 are fully vaccinated."
...
It's fair to ask - is this because the authorities have decided they need to make public the dangers of this vast wave of a virus against which barely half of China's over 60's are fully vaccinated?
Because up to now this was a virus that Shanghai's authorities had warned could devastate the population - otherwise why else would they lock down the city - yet it hadn't officially killed anyone."
-----------------
Yes, that's the problem when you screw up your messaging.

Either it's dangerous and deadly, then we need vaccines and lock-downs.

Or apparently it's not killing anybody, so why vaccinate and lock down?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

China is in a worse position than NZ.

Absolutely. They'll likely be fine if they boost everyone though, even with their vaccines. They seem to work great, in that configuration. That's the thing that is most mysterious to me. Weird obsession with containment when there's perfectly legitimate alternatives at this point. You can still try to contain and protect the most vulnerable (in addition to boosting them).

They're certainly not screwed if they actually use this one simple trick. (Clock is ticking though!)

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Another always informative tweet about the overall virus landscape from Trevor Bedford. Very brief inaccurate summary is that somewhat more infectious variants now exist beyond BA.1 (BA.2, etc.), so they'll likely be the starting point for further variants (though other possibilities exist). These variants of Omicron are becoming dominant mostly because of their transmissibility, not their immune escape (unlike the original Omicron). Getting the vaccine updated to be Omicron-specific is probably the right call (pending results on immunogenicity, etc. - there are ways in which it may not be the right call, but need data on the trials first) to minimize future immune escape.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1516147488587075584

 

[Daniel in SD]

Shanghai factory open! It's crazy to me the lengths they'll go in pursuit of #zerocovid but using N95 respirators is a step too far. Spraying disinfectant on the floor may be just as effective?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1516391010376556548

 

[Tiger]

This isn't uncommon, actually. As an example, kids get Hepatitis A frequently (esp. the pre-school age group). They just quickly fight it off and don't have very significant symptoms (they do have them if you know to look carefully). When those same kids bring it home from daycare, however, it makes their parents MUCH more ill. This is one of those "classic" infections we are taught about in medical school and just take them for granted.

Something strange going on with Childhood hepatitis outbreaks

It starts with a brief summary (summary available also as transcript in the description).

Should we start a new thread for it? Fearmongering: Is this what Shanghai is hiding?

 

[scottf200]

As usual caveat -- one can debate if new variants are more dangerous or not— but more infection, even if mild, means more problems.

BA.2.12.1

https://twitter.com/x/status/1516455973656965134

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

As usual caveat -- one can debate if new variants are more dangerous or not— but more infection, even if mild, means more problems.

BA.2.12.1

https://twitter.com/x/status/1516455973656965134

Likely is slightly more contagious but assessing how much is very tricky. Impossible to do with a nationwide plot like this. Trevor’s state level plots do show it has an advantage at a local level too, but founder effects or whatever can still paint a potentially misleading picture.

Somehow we’ve had more contagious variants at every turn, some with huge immune escape, but the maximum Rt we’ve seen in the massive Omicron surge is just above 3, not much higher than the original outbreak in New York.
Contributing to the muddled picture is the dramatically reduced serial interval, of course. (Serial interval is important to distinguish from transmissibility since it does not have much impact on herd immunity requirements.)

Hopefully these outbreaks taper off very soon as the weather warms and somehow the South avoids an early resurgence.

And hopefully with a little luck, in a couple weeks, we'll finally get to the lowest level of deaths in this pandemic since the beginning, around 200 a day. We'll see though. (Once all those people who have been in the hospital since January "resolve," the picture should be more clear!) Still high, even if it could be maintained at that level, but better!

 

[scottf200]

As usual caveat -- one can debate if new variants are more dangerous or not— but more infection, even if mild, means more problems.

BA.2.12.1

https://twitter.com/x/status/1516455973656965134

Quote:
New Subvariant B.2.12.1:
68% week/week advantage over BA.2
Significant growth of total numbers, doubling each week.
2.5x doubling speed compared to BA.2
New US projections model:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1516551779013513220

 

[FlatSix911]

Interesting trends in the reported US daily cases per 100,000 population by state.

Have we flattened the curve in the US? - Johns Hopkins

Daily Confirmed Case Trends (7-Day Moving Average) in the US

coronavirus.jhu.edu

 

[enemji]

Enough Said