Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

Cute, but the facts to date are indisputable with regards to kids and masks in schools. If they worked, the rest of the world would mandate them for their schools as well. They do not, and even with that they do not have higher COVID infection rates than we do.

This week's MMWR. Unvaccinated symptomatic teacher, unmasked when reading to a class of unvaccinated masked elementary students, infects 55% of her (or his) class with delta (80% in the front rows). The room's doors were opened, the windows were open for ventilation, and HEPA filters were in use in the classrooms.

There was spread to another grade, but not clear what the transmission path was.

27 total cases. 4 other adults (parents) were also infected, 3 of 4 of those parents were vaccinated. (Likely infected at home by their children.)

80% of cases were symptomatic, all of the vaccinated parents were symptomatic.

Outbreak Associated with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta)...

COVID-19 outbreak associated with an unvaccinated infected teacher in an elementary school from May–June 2021 in Marin County, California.

www.cdc.gov

Demonstrates potential importance of individuals masking (including children) for source control, including in the home if there are any possible exposures, even with other layered NPIs in place (ventilation, filtering, etc.). Wish they had analyzed the masks students were wearing!

The secondary attack rate on vaccinated parents was likely pretty low - 3 of 4 were vaccinated but that's likely a lower % than the % vaccinated in the population of parents. 5 of the 27 cases were adults. So figuring 22 students who were positive, infected perhaps 4 of ~35-40 parents, most of whom were likely vaccinated (the MMWR did not address this). Does not seem too bad given heavy home exposures.

 

[Doggydogworld]

This week's MMWR. Unvaccinated symptomatic teacher, unmasked when reading to a class of unvaccinated masked elementary students, infects 55% of her (or his) class with delta (80% in the front row). The room's doors were opened, the windows were open for ventilation, and HEPA filters were in use in the classrooms.

There was spread to another grade, but not clear what the transmission path was.

27 total cases. 4 other adults (parents) were also infected, 3 of 4 of those parents were vaccinated. (Likely infected at home by their children.)

80% of cases were symptomatic, all of the vaccinated parents were symptomatic.

Outbreak Associated with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta)...

COVID-19 outbreak associated with an unvaccinated infected teacher in an elementary school from May–June 2021 in Marin County, California.

www.cdc.gov

Demonstrates potential importance of individuals masking (including children) for source control, including in the home if there are any possible exposures, even with other layered NPIs in place (ventilation, filtering, etc.). Wish they had analyzed the masks students were wearing!

The secondary attack rate on vaccinated parents was likely pretty low - 3 of 4 were vaccinated but that's likely a lower % than the % vaccinated in the population of parents. 5 of the 27 cases were adults. So figuring 22 students who were positive, infected perhaps 4 of ~35-40 parents, most of whom were likely vaccinated (the MMWR did not address this). Does not seem too bad given heavy home exposures.

I recall Osterholm or someone talking about an unmasked speaker with a roomful of masked listeners and saying that was 100% backward.

I'm sure the kids had cloth/paper masks on. Only well-fitted N95s provide meaningful protection to the wearer. Superspreader events are oddly random. I'm in a small workout class a couple evenings a week. Everyone is vaccinated and we distance a bit, but it's still a closed space this time of year (95 and humid outside). The gal who runs it woke up with fever the morning after a class a couple weeks ago and tested positive. She had to be near peak contagiousness during the class, yet none of us got it.

 

[bkp_duke]

This week's MMWR. Unvaccinated symptomatic teacher, unmasked when reading to a class of unvaccinated masked elementary students, infects 55% of her (or his) class with delta (80% in the front rows). The room's doors were opened, the windows were open for ventilation, and HEPA filters were in use in the classrooms.

There was spread to another grade, but not clear what the transmission path was.

27 total cases. 4 other adults (parents) were also infected, 3 of 4 of those parents were vaccinated. (Likely infected at home by their children.)

80% of cases were symptomatic, all of the vaccinated parents were symptomatic.

Outbreak Associated with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta)...

COVID-19 outbreak associated with an unvaccinated infected teacher in an elementary school from May–June 2021 in Marin County, California.

www.cdc.gov

Demonstrates potential importance of individuals masking (including children) for source control, including in the home if there are any possible exposures, even with other layered NPIs in place (ventilation, filtering, etc.). Wish they had analyzed the masks students were wearing!

The secondary attack rate on vaccinated parents was likely pretty low - 3 of 4 were vaccinated but that's likely a lower % than the % vaccinated in the population of parents. 5 of the 27 cases were adults. So figuring 22 students who were positive, infected perhaps 4 of ~35-40 parents, most of whom were likely vaccinated (the MMWR did not address this). Does not seem too bad given heavy home exposures.

We weren't talking about unmasked teachers, ever. This is an apples to potatoes comparison. Under ALL previous discussions, the teachers were masked, and vaccinated.

We're talking about the value of masking kids that don't have access to a vaccine because of the age cut-off, in the context of school setting with masked (+/- vaccinated) teachers; nothing more, nothing less. The data, the CDC's OWN DATA, do not support masks on kids in this scenario.

Cherry pick much?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

We weren't talking about unmasked teachers, ever. This is an apples to potatoes comparison. Under ALL previous discussions, the teachers were masked, and vaccinated.

We're talking about the value of masking kids that don't have access to a vaccine because of the age cut-off, in the context of school setting with masked (+/- vaccinated) teachers; nothing more, nothing less. The data, the CDC's OWN DATA, do not support masks on kids in this scenario.

Cherry pick much?

I’d say we don’t have great data on it, but my money is on source control being effective (and also on quality masks worn well by children helping to reduce infection). We’ll know in a couple months.

The mechanism whereby a teacher spreads more when unmasked while a student does not…I don’t follow.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Only well-fitted N95s provide meaningful protection to the wearer.

I’d actually be a bit surprised by this - I’d guess a well-fitted mask, where the air must pass through the mask, actually would provide decent protection to the wearer, especially if they are vaccinated (I know we are discussing unvaccinated children here, and in that context I bet they still help a bit). That being said, I definitely am for N95s for self-protection and I think more people should wear them if they can. They’re also more comfortable than cloth masks and surgical masks in my opinion (the Aura specifically).

Speaking of cherry-picking - I’m way too lazy to look up the latest literature. Maybe someone could look up the studies - my understanding from what I have heard recently is that there is ample evidence to support mask wearing now?

 

[UrsS]

These Governors Push Experimental Antibody Therapy — But Shun Vaccine and Mask Mandates

"Since mid-July, delivery of the antibody cocktail made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has soared from 25,000 doses to 125,000 doses per week, with about half shipped to four states: Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama...
...
“It’s a backwards strategy,” said Ramers. “It’s so much better to prevent a disease than to use an expensive, cumbersome and difficult-to-use therapy. It does not make any medical sense to lean into monoclonals to the detriment of vaccines. It’s like playing defense with no offense.”

The cost of Regeneron infusions: about $1,250 a dose. For now, the federal government is covering the cost.

The federal government is also covering the costs of covid vaccination, at about $20 a dose."
...
At Memorial Hospital Pembroke in South Florida, Chief Nursing Officer David Starnes has overseen treatment of more than 2,000 patients with antibody cocktails since December. At least 90% of the patients have been unvaccinated — and the numbers keep climbing.

“What’s amazing to me is that a vaccine we’ve been working on for 10 years, they are deathly afraid of,” Starnes said. “But this highly experimental cocktail? They’re willing to run in there the minute that they’re sick to get this infused into their bodies.”
_____________________

It boggles the mind...

Follow the money:

DeSantis top donor invests in COVID drug governor promotes

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been criticized for efforts to ban mask mandates and vaccine passports.

apnews.com

 

[NikolaACDC]

Delta variant poses twice the risk of hospitalisation - study

"People who get the Delta variant of the coronavirus are twice as likely to be hospitalised as those who were infected by the Alpha variant which was first detected in England last year, a study showed on Friday.

The study, based on more than 43,000 COVID-19 cases of mostly unvaccinated people in England, compared the risk of hospitalisation for people infected with Delta, which was first detected in India, with people who caught Alpha."

 

[madodel]

Should the Government Impose a National Vaccination Mandate?

 

[Maarten]

The Dutch RIVM National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has conducted an extensive and very interesting study regarding the effectiveness of Corona vaccines in The Netherlands. It shows that vaccines are also very effective against hospital and ICU admission for the delta variant.

Excerpt:
* Corona vaccines work well to prevent people from being admitted to hospital or intensive care due to COVID-19, according to the new analysis by the RIVM. In fully vaccinated people, the vaccines protect 95% against hospitalization and 97% against ICU admission. The chance of being hospitalized as a fully vaccinated person with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is 20 times lower than for a non-vaccinated person. For the IC, the chance when being fully vaccinated is even 33 times smaller;
* The study shows that the vaccines in the period when the delta variant was most present (July 4 till August 12) protected just as well as in the period when the alpha variant was mainly present in The Netherlands (April 4 till May 29);
* The Dutch vaccination campaign started more than 8 months ago. In those 8 months, more than 10 million people have been fully vaccinated. In this analysis there is no indications that the effectiveness of the vaccines decreases in the first months after vaccination. It should be noted that only 1 million people in The Netherlands were fully vaccinated four months ago;
* The study also made a distinction between the type of vaccine and its effectiveness. Most people in the Netherlands have been vaccinated with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The analysis shows that this vaccine protects more than 98% against hospital and ICU admission in fully vaccinated people under the age of 70. That means that the chance of hospitalization and ICU admission for these people is 50 times smaller than for unvaccinated people.
Moderna's vaccine seems to have a somewhat lower effectiveness against hospitalization. Nearly one million people received the Moderna vaccine, many of which are at high medical risk. People at high medical risk are known to have less effective vaccines. This may explain the lower effectiveness of Moderna in the analysis.

Link to the study (in Dutch, 15 pages, may be translated with help of Google Translate): Study Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination against hospital and intensive care admission in The Netherlands

 

[cwerdna]

There was spread to another grade, but not clear what the transmission path was.

27 total cases. 4 other adults (parents) were also infected, 3 of 4 of those parents were vaccinated. (Likely infected at home by their children.)

I didn't digest the report completely, but there were references to siblings. Those might've been in different grades. Also, I missed that there were diagrams like a seating chart (figure 1 on the right).

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I didn't digest the report completely, but there were references to siblings. Those might've been in different grades. Also, I missed that there were diagrams like a seating chart (figure 1 on the right).

Yes that is true, if so, that would have reduced the number of parents involved slightly.

 

[Noneduck]

I haven’t checked this thread in a while, but I am very impressed with the amount of useful information here. Kudos to the recent posters keeping the signal to noise ratio high on these pages.

 

[JRP3]

Study misinterpreted and used to spread misinformation

CLAIM: A preprint paper by the prestigious Oxford University Clinical Research Group, published Aug. 10 in The Lancet, found vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The study is being misrepresented. It found vaccinated health care workers with breakthrough infections caused by the coronavirus delta variant had higher viral loads — the amount of virus detected in a person — compared to patients infected with earlier strains of the virus. Furthermore, other studies that compare the viral loads between vaccinated and unvaccinated delta patients found similar amounts of viral material in the two groups.

Study on breakthrough delta cases in Vietnam misrepresented online

The website, The Defender, which is published by the anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, posted an article this week that distorts the findings of a recent study of breakthrough delta infections among vaccinated hospital staff in Vietnam.

apnews.com

 

[dhanson865]

JPAnalyst made the two graphs below and the conversation above is in a discussion thread about one of those graphs.

and

 

[wdolson]

These Governors Push Experimental Antibody Therapy — But Shun Vaccine and Mask Mandates

"Since mid-July, delivery of the antibody cocktail made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has soared from 25,000 doses to 125,000 doses per week, with about half shipped to four states: Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama...
...
“It’s a backwards strategy,” said Ramers. “It’s so much better to prevent a disease than to use an expensive, cumbersome and difficult-to-use therapy. It does not make any medical sense to lean into monoclonals to the detriment of vaccines. It’s like playing defense with no offense.”

The cost of Regeneron infusions: about $1,250 a dose. For now, the federal government is covering the cost.

The federal government is also covering the costs of covid vaccination, at about $20 a dose."
...
At Memorial Hospital Pembroke in South Florida, Chief Nursing Officer David Starnes has overseen treatment of more than 2,000 patients with antibody cocktails since December. At least 90% of the patients have been unvaccinated — and the numbers keep climbing.

“What’s amazing to me is that a vaccine we’ve been working on for 10 years, they are deathly afraid of,” Starnes said. “But this highly experimental cocktail? They’re willing to run in there the minute that they’re sick to get this infused into their bodies.”
_____________________

It boggles the mind...

IMO if someone could have gotten the vaccine, but didn't, they should have to pay for the Regeneron. Anyone who couldn't get the vaccine (children and those at too much risk to get it) as well as those already vaccinated can get the cost covered because they got it through no fault of their own.

This week's MMWR. Unvaccinated symptomatic teacher, unmasked when reading to a class of unvaccinated masked elementary students, infects 55% of her (or his) class with delta (80% in the front rows). The room's doors were opened, the windows were open for ventilation, and HEPA filters were in use in the classrooms.

There was spread to another grade, but not clear what the transmission path was.

27 total cases. 4 other adults (parents) were also infected, 3 of 4 of those parents were vaccinated. (Likely infected at home by their children.)

80% of cases were symptomatic, all of the vaccinated parents were symptomatic.

Outbreak Associated with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta)...

COVID-19 outbreak associated with an unvaccinated infected teacher in an elementary school from May–June 2021 in Marin County, California.

www.cdc.gov

Demonstrates potential importance of individuals masking (including children) for source control, including in the home if there are any possible exposures, even with other layered NPIs in place (ventilation, filtering, etc.). Wish they had analyzed the masks students were wearing!

The secondary attack rate on vaccinated parents was likely pretty low - 3 of 4 were vaccinated but that's likely a lower % than the % vaccinated in the population of parents. 5 of the 27 cases were adults. So figuring 22 students who were positive, infected perhaps 4 of ~35-40 parents, most of whom were likely vaccinated (the MMWR did not address this). Does not seem too bad given heavy home exposures.

The grade to grade transmission may have been between siblings.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The grade to grade transmission may have been between siblings.

Maybe, although the report did not say that. There are so many opportunities for transmission in a school that it may be impossible to say.

 

[Doggydogworld]

View attachment 702546

JPAnalyst made the two graphs below and the conversation above is in a discussion thread about one of those graphs.

and

The "extra half million deaths" mentioned was just in 2020. Add another quarter million so far this year. CDC estimates 782k excess deaths since 2/1/20. We could hit a million by 2/1/22. The counts of official Covid deaths (Johns Hopkins, Worldometers) are lower, more like 650k, due to under-counting (especially early) and reporting lags.

Age 25-44 data shows an increase in odds of death from ~0.65% normally to ~0.75% per year with COVID. It's a lot of preventable deaths overall, but for any single individual an increase of 1 in 1000 is not a huge motivator.

 

[madodel]

Vaccinated Democratic Counties Are Leading the Economic Recovery

But some interesting new data on the overlap of electoral politics and economic dynamism suggest another reason: The geography of America’s economic engine is heavily concentrated in counties that Joe Biden won in 2020. These counties are much more heavily vaccinated than the rest of the country and thus better able to withstand the economic effects of Covid’s delta variant.​

 

[TespaceX]

IMO if someone could have gotten the vaccine, but didn't, they should have to pay for the Regeneron. Anyone who couldn't get the vaccine (children and those at too much risk to get it) as well as those already vaccinated can get the cost covered because they got it through no fault of their own.

I don’t think it can be entirely black and white like that.

As much as I believe in vaccines, I prefer to side with someone unvaccinated who is very diligent about taking the maximum precautions than with someone who is vaccinated but completely carefree.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The "extra half million deaths" mentioned was just in 2020. Add another quarter million so far this year. CDC estimates 782k excess deaths since 2/1/20. We could hit a million by 2/1/22. The counts of official Covid deaths (Johns Hopkins, Worldometers) are lower, more like 650k, due to under-counting (especially early) and reporting lags.

Age 25-44 data shows an increase in odds of death from ~0.65% normally to ~0.75% per year with COVID. It's a lot of preventable deaths overall, but for any single individual an increase of 1 in 1000 is not a huge motivator.

Tangentially related:
It seems like that biggest notable source of lockdown deaths in 2020 was opioid deaths. Obviously there were deaths caused by inability to access medical care too, but I would not classify those as lockdown deaths for the most part (except maybe in the first few months).

We ended up with 20k more opioid deaths than normal (about 90k, so a massive increase in % terms). Shows what the support groups and aid agencies, and probably distraction/having a job do for people, I guess.

But these opioid deaths are very likely directly attributable to lockdown (of course actually directly attributable to the opioids, but hopefully my meaning is clear).

On the plus side, it looks like mitigation strategies probably saved a few hundred thousand (mostly older) lives at least, so it seems they were probably worth it - and I think long term effects will not be so bad (and there are positives and negatives) as to outweigh the savings.