Coronavirus

[AlanSubie4Life]

which could result in superspreader events across the country.

Depends on how many infections we've had. This group had pretty good infection coverage over the winter so I would think the impact should be fairly minor. It's not like students are taking any significant precautions at college these days and things are very well mixed at this point.

It seems pretty likely at this point that any rise in cases (I do think there will be some rise) will be short-lived and small. I think it has relatively little to do with BA.2, except to extent that its marginally higher transmissibility allows a little bit better spread into already highly immune communities. But most of the new cases will likely be people who have not yet been infected or have been infected but not vaccinated. There will be reinfections of course (Psaki for example - though she certainly had Delta the first time, and probably did not have a booster prior to first infection, so this doesn't really count in this context), but they'll be relatively uncommon for now.

Increasingly feel like we're unlikely to follow the same trajectory as European countries who had substantial second waves, since we've just had so much prior infection here relative to those countries (probably), which is largely a result of not having had any significant restrictions in place since about November 2020 (to be clear, at great cost).

But we'll see! This stuff is so hard to predict and it's very interesting how it can manifest differently in different countries.

Average deaths are below 700 a day now (still awful!), but hopefully those will drop to below 250 a day in a couple weeks (still pretty terrible and nearly completely preventable!). The steep decline should start to level out in the next week or so though.

 

[JRP3]

The thing is Cornell has 97% vaccination rate and infections suddenly shot up for some reason.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The thing is Cornell has 97% vaccination rate and infections suddenly shot up for some reason.

At a local level it is certainly possible that a bunch of boosted people haven’t had Omicron yet. So yeah, it’s possible such a group could have a rise in infections - but only if there was not much of a rise during Omicron (or at least lower rates than the rest of the area during Omicron).

I think that sort of population is exactly the type that will drive case numbers for this next rise in cases.

 

[dhanson865]

New cases keep dropping and deaths keep dropping, but the deaths are dropping slower than the new case count.

And looking at the 5th (primarily Delta) and 6th (primarily Omicron) waves it looks like more died in the 6th wave than the 5th wave (though it is close enough to call it a wash).

While for the individual Omicron might be a lower risk, for the country it seems to be just as bad what it replaced.

 

[JRP3]

And looking at the 5th (primarily Delta) and 6th (primarily Omicron) waves it looks like more died in the 6th wave than the 5th wave (though it is close enough to call it a wash).

While for the individual Omicron might be a lower risk, for the country it seems to be just as bad what it replaced.

I don't see how you reach that conclusion when the number of infected was so much higher for Omicron.

 

[dhanson865]

I don't see how you reach that conclusion when the number of infected was so much higher for Omicron.

Why is it you can't stop thinking in ratios and percentages and just look at the number of deaths? It's a simple concept and my words are describing that concept.

The area under the curve for O is similar to the area under the curve for D. Thus the number of deaths were similar which is why I said

And looking at the 5th (primarily Delta) and 6th (primarily Omicron) waves it looks like more died in the 6th wave than the 5th wave (though it is close enough to call it a wash).

While for the individual Omicron might be a lower risk, for the country it seems to be just as bad what it replaced.

How about if I say this, No matter how many people it takes to get infected by the new strain it doesn't lessen the burden if you have the same number of deaths in the end. The morgue didn't have less work and the number of families planning a funeral didn't go down. Can you wrap your head around that?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Why is it you can't stop thinking in ratios and percentages and just look at the number of deaths? It's a simple concept and my words are describing that concept.

The virus only gets one or two chances to kill you, then you become essentially immune to death from the virus (we know this - it’s not just because all the weak people died, otherwise vaccines would not work this way). So it’s a huge deal that a much larger number of people got exposed without as many deaths as Delta. Even though cross immunity to Delta infection is pretty low after Omicron, it’s highly likely it improves outcomes in the case of Delta infection (or some future more severe variant, which is likely going to be an offshoot of Omicron). In addition, for those vaccinated who still got infected, it improves immunity a bit, which is good for reducing explosiveness of future waves of antigenically similar virus.

That being said, as completely expected and widely acknowledged, Omicron is not mild. It is about the same intrinsic severity as the original virus, most likely (probably just a hair lower severity). These are estimates, so hard to be precise. Not mild! Severe outcomes would have been far worse without vaccination and treatment. Probably 10k deaths a day or so, or more (not sure exactly - lots of factors to consider).

 

[JRP3]

Why is it you can't stop thinking in ratios and percentages and just look at the number of deaths? It's a simple concept and my words are describing that concept.

OK, so look at it compared to the third wave and the number of deaths are substantially lower.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

And looking at the 5th (primarily Delta) and 6th (primarily Omicron) waves it looks like more died in the 6th wave than the 5th wave (though it is close enough to call it a wash).

Your source directly says that ~200k died from Delta (end of 2021 is a good fair estimate for the time point to use, since there is a blend of Delta and Omicron deaths at that time and obviously many Delta deaths would be reported after that due to the long tail), while 160k have died from Omicron (so far).

No matter how many people it takes to get infected by the new strain it doesn't lessen the burden if you have the same number of deaths in the end. The morgue didn't have less work and the number of families planning a funeral didn't go down.

Yes Omicron was extremely disruptive and bad due to both the severity and the sheer numbers. But I think we are very fortunate it was not as deadly as Delta - we have a couple hundred thousand fewer deaths as a result, which is not nothing.

 

[Dave EV]

The virus only gets one or two chances to kill you, then you become essentially immune to death from the virus (we know this - it’s not just because all the weak people died, otherwise vaccines would not work this way). So it’s a huge deal that a much larger number of people got exposed without as many deaths as Delta.

I don't think we can say for sure that you become "essentially immune to death" without having more data withing making some potentially major assumptions.

There has been mention of the virus attacking your bodies immune system - so the result of multiple infections could leave you more vulnerable than the same number of vaccinations.

I would wait for the data to confirm that, anyway. And I still think that focusing on deaths is the wrong metric. COVID infection in general is very well correlated to an increased risk of death from all causes after wards, even if COVID isn't the leading cause of death.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I don't think we can say for sure that you become "essentially immune to death" without having more data withing making some potentially major assumptions.

I agree this claim is not supported by data - it’s an assumption on my part which seems pretty well supported by immunology. And by “essentially immune” in this context, I meant perhaps between 10 and 100 times less likely to die (which would mean still a considerable number of deaths even at the 100x factor). The reduction in risk is probably much higher for healthy individuals. The frail will always be vulnerable to an extent and cannot see as much risk reduction.

But anyway, I’d be shocked if in a relatively healthy (but at risk due to age) population, looking at third infections only, we still saw substantial mortality. After correcting for survivor bias (tricky!), etc. I just don’t see how we could see substantial mortality reduction after two and three doses of vaccine if infection-acquired immunity did not behave similarly (even if it is less consistent and predictable - the reason to get vaccinated even after infection!).

And I still think that focusing on deaths is the wrong metric. COVID infection in general is very well correlated to an increased risk of death from all causes after wards,

Yes I agree. That was just the context here. It’ll be interesting to see whether vaccination is associated with breaking this link to increased risk of all-cause death after infection. No data AFAIK.

 

[EVNow]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1507390193782906885

 

[EVNow]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1507386151463964678

 

[NikolaACDC]

Omicron deaths of Johnson & Johnson recipients were double the rate of other vaccinated Americans, new data show

"For the week of January 8, COVID-associated deaths among Americans who were vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson reached a rate of more than 5 out of every 100,000, according to the CDC's figures.
That's higher than the rate among recipients of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which was around 2 deaths per 100,000 people.
It remains a fraction of the rate of COVID-19 deaths for unvaccinated Americans, which was close to 20 per 100,000.
Among only boosted Americans, those who had been vaccinated initially with the Johnson & Johnson shot had higher rates of COVID deaths than those who started with doses of Pfizer or Moderna.
Rates of COVID-19 breakthrough cases in the data, which CDC officials have often cited as part of their efforts to track "in real time" the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in Americans, were still similar or lower for Johnson & Johnson recipients compared to the others."
...
"The data is not adjusted for a range of factors that can muddy direct comparisons, like differences in underlying medical conditions or the length of time since vaccination."

 

[Doggydogworld]

I caught part of this segment on Full Measure this morning. US Army researchers developed a way to do pooled sequencing of many saliva samples and track positive results back to an individual without re-testing. I don't understand the "molecular barcode" part. Anyone know how this works? And does it still work if multiple samples in the pool are positive?

Kugelman: We're working with saliva, so spit in the tube. And we did it so that in the military, we can take a large formation — hand out tubes, spit in tube, collect it, takes about 10 minutes. Instead of having to spend five minutes per person swabbing them. Here, we put a molecular barcode on it, process them and then put them on a sequencer. So they're pooled before they go on the sequencer, but because they have that sequence barcode on it, we're able to identify which patient is the positive result instead of having to break that pool apart and then test each individual.

Sharyl: So, what difference does that make in terms of time and effort over what you were doing?

Kugelman: So it's much cheaper, $3 to $5 per test we're doing, and it's a huge volume.

 

[EVNow]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508090207723462656

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508280837053116416

 

[DanCar]

Video about China lockdowns. Example: If you are in a public bathroom when a lockdown occurs you might have to spend the entire lockdown period there.

 

[cwerdna]

China is shutting down Shanghai in two phases to control Covid

China's biggest city of Shanghai began a two-stage lockdown Monday as authorities try to control the country's worst Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic began.

www.cnbc.com

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

China is shutting down Shanghai in two phases to control Covid

China's biggest city of Shanghai began a two-stage lockdown Monday as authorities try to control the country's worst Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic began.

www.cnbc.com

Shutting down the factory for a week perhaps. At least a day it sounds like.

Crazy that in China they’ve actually allowed this to happen, and they have been so lax on vaccination rates - it's not like they can't make vaccination basically compulsory.

They could have been New Zealand - just 200 deaths from 260k cases (20-day lag adjustment used), so 0.07% CFR (vs. >1% prior to vaccination). NZ deaths are up 10x since restrictions were lifted, while cases are up about 100x.

The numbers would still be bad even with completely optimal vaccination in China, but it would be tolerable most likely (I'm fairly sure that is not the case currently if they let it rip).

Given the lack of complete infection-blocking, I actually think zero COVID for China still makes sense, but they should have pushed much harder for boosting and vaccination - it would have made lockdowns more effective. Why not both? Also good for the world to eliminate a few hundred million more opportunities for variants to emerge.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Seems relevant, though perhaps not newsworthy. Elon demonstrating his extremely limited grasp of virology again, though. And I say that as someone who has a very limited grasp of virology!!!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508356357967122434