sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
bump this
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Discussion thread VII - COVID-19: Endemic Stage
- Thread starter Pathfinder
- Start date
sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
rant -
I am really tired of philosophy looking for some evidence instead of evidence leading the way.
Lately there is the meme that children do not get COVID-19. This is ridiculous. Of course they do. They tend to have light cases and represent approximately .00125% of all COVID-19 deaths in the US at 1,267 deaths as of June 2, 2022. link
The reason this meme is so popular is that it supports the idea that children do not need COVID-19 vaccines. i.e. forced mandates on children.
These are two different topics: the infectious rate among children, the forced vaccination of anyone.
Do not conflate these two topics. The minute I hear an expert claim children do not get COVID-19, I turn off. It is clear they have an agenda and not interested in basic biology and virology.
Even the W.H.O. says people should not be forced to take medicines against their will. Parents have the right to decide for their underage children. Schools have the right to make their own rules. If a parent does not want to get a particular vaccine for their child to attend a school that requires it, then they can home school or find a school that accepts unvaccinated children.
Also, irritating are the claims that new vaccines are safe. Well...until vaccines are distributed on a mass scale, no one knows for sure. Tiny trials are no match against the knowledge gained from mass innoculations. The rhetoric should be "The vaccine is new but in small trials it appears to be safe and effective. We won't know for sure until many thousands of doses are given over a longer period of time." Also, ALL vaccine data should be released BEFORE the mass distributions are made. wth. No wonder "conspiracy" theories about the vaccines abound. It is sorta "shut up and take this vaccine" type of climate - which only feeds the anti-vaccine industry more.
In the end you have to consider all of the data. Read extensively. Poll your friends and family. Contact your medical practitioner. Use your common sense.
rant over.
Take care of you. No one else is going to do it.
I am really tired of philosophy looking for some evidence instead of evidence leading the way.
Lately there is the meme that children do not get COVID-19. This is ridiculous. Of course they do. They tend to have light cases and represent approximately .00125% of all COVID-19 deaths in the US at 1,267 deaths as of June 2, 2022. link
The reason this meme is so popular is that it supports the idea that children do not need COVID-19 vaccines. i.e. forced mandates on children.
These are two different topics: the infectious rate among children, the forced vaccination of anyone.
Do not conflate these two topics. The minute I hear an expert claim children do not get COVID-19, I turn off. It is clear they have an agenda and not interested in basic biology and virology.
Even the W.H.O. says people should not be forced to take medicines against their will. Parents have the right to decide for their underage children. Schools have the right to make their own rules. If a parent does not want to get a particular vaccine for their child to attend a school that requires it, then they can home school or find a school that accepts unvaccinated children.
Also, irritating are the claims that new vaccines are safe. Well...until vaccines are distributed on a mass scale, no one knows for sure. Tiny trials are no match against the knowledge gained from mass innoculations. The rhetoric should be "The vaccine is new but in small trials it appears to be safe and effective. We won't know for sure until many thousands of doses are given over a longer period of time." Also, ALL vaccine data should be released BEFORE the mass distributions are made. wth. No wonder "conspiracy" theories about the vaccines abound. It is sorta "shut up and take this vaccine" type of climate - which only feeds the anti-vaccine industry more.
In the end you have to consider all of the data. Read extensively. Poll your friends and family. Contact your medical practitioner. Use your common sense.
rant over.
Take care of you. No one else is going to do it.
Last edited:
sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
Thanks. I will amend. I should have added % wise. I was on a rant after all. 
Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
I add up to 1,257 deaths using CDC's latest numbers. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Deaths-by-Sex-Ages-0-18-years/xa4b-4pzv
But remember, that number is not cause of death in all cases. Many of the hospital cases were incidental test findings after children were admitted for other reasons.
CDC describes the number this way:
"Deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with a focus on ages 0-18 years in the United States."
"Involving" could be anything from an otherwise seemingly healthy obese teen dying from Covid complications to a child already dying of a serious and intractable health condition who tests positive for Covid without symptoms.
It's important to give risk context when acknowledging infection, such as - "Currently, for the vast majority of children who get infected with Sars1, Covid is asymptomatic or mild", when correcting - "Children cannot catch Covid."
But remember, that number is not cause of death in all cases. Many of the hospital cases were incidental test findings after children were admitted for other reasons.
CDC describes the number this way:
"Deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with a focus on ages 0-18 years in the United States."
"Involving" could be anything from an otherwise seemingly healthy obese teen dying from Covid complications to a child already dying of a serious and intractable health condition who tests positive for Covid without symptoms.
It's important to give risk context when acknowledging infection, such as - "Currently, for the vast majority of children who get infected with Sars1, Covid is asymptomatic or mild", when correcting - "Children cannot catch Covid."
Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
Related to:
Science: Immune boosting by B.1.1.529 (Omicron) depends on previous SARS-CoV-2 exposure
https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum...icron-depends-on-previous-sars-cov-2-exposure
Where’s the herd immunity? Our research shows why Covid is still wreaking havoc
Danny Altmann
‘Living with the virus’ is proving much harder than the early vaccine success suggested: this fight is far from over
Danny Altmann is a professor of immunology at Imperial College London
Fri 1 Jul 2022 07.43 EDT
We are all so very tired of Covid-19, and there are many other crises to wrestle with. This pandemic has been going on since the beginning of 2020, and a state of hypervigilance can only be maintained for so long. And yet, “just live with it” looks self-evidently too thin a recipe and, currently, not very workable or successful with the emergence of BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.
...
Rather than a wall of immunity arising from vaccinations and previous infections, we are seeing wave after wave of new cases and a rapidly growing burden of long-term disease. What’s going on? The latest scientific research has some answers.
...
Last week a group of collaborators, including me and a professor of immunology and respiratory medicine, Rosemary Boyton, published a paper in Science, looking comprehensively at immunity to the Omicron family, both in triple-vaccinated people and also in those who then suffered breakthrough infections during the Omicron wave. This lets us examine whether Omicron was, as some hoped, a benign natural booster of our Covid immunity. It turns out that isn’t the case.
We considered many facets of immunity, including the antibodies most implicated in protection (“neutralising antibodies”), as well as protective “immune memory” in white blood cells. The results tell us it is unsurprising that breakthrough infections were so common. Most people – even when triple-vaccinated – had 20 times less neutralising antibody response against Omicron than against the initial “Wuhan” strain. Importantly, Omicron infection was a poor booster of immunity to further Omicron infections. It is a kind of stealth virus that gets in under the radar without doing too much to alert immune defences. Even having had Omicron, we’re not well protected from further infections.
...
Contrary to the myth that we are sliding into a comfortable evolutionary relationship with a common-cold-like, friendly virus, this is more like being trapped on a rollercoaster in a horror film. There’s nothing cold-like or friendly about a large part of the workforce needing significant absences from work, feeling awful and sometimes getting reinfected over and over again, just weeks apart. And that’s before the risk of long Covid.
...
The first generation of vaccines served brilliantly to dig us out of the hole of the first year, but the arms race of boosters versus new variants is no longer going well for us. The UK has only offered a limited group fourth doses, and even then, uptake looks poor. Even if we had good vaccination coverage, we have entered a period of diminishing returns. A study reported in the BMJ last week showed us that the protection gained from a fourth booster dose likely wanes even faster than previous boosters. This leaves us between a rock and a hard place: continue to offer suboptimal boosters to a population who seem to have lost faith or interest in taking them up, or do nothing and cross our fingers that residual immunity might somehow keep a lid on hospitalisations (as happened in South Africa and Portugal).
...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/01/herd-immunity-covid-virus-vaccine
Science: Immune boosting by B.1.1.529 (Omicron) depends on previous SARS-CoV-2 exposure
https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum...icron-depends-on-previous-sars-cov-2-exposure
Where’s the herd immunity? Our research shows why Covid is still wreaking havoc
Danny Altmann
‘Living with the virus’ is proving much harder than the early vaccine success suggested: this fight is far from over
Danny Altmann is a professor of immunology at Imperial College London
Fri 1 Jul 2022 07.43 EDT
We are all so very tired of Covid-19, and there are many other crises to wrestle with. This pandemic has been going on since the beginning of 2020, and a state of hypervigilance can only be maintained for so long. And yet, “just live with it” looks self-evidently too thin a recipe and, currently, not very workable or successful with the emergence of BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.
...
Rather than a wall of immunity arising from vaccinations and previous infections, we are seeing wave after wave of new cases and a rapidly growing burden of long-term disease. What’s going on? The latest scientific research has some answers.
...
Last week a group of collaborators, including me and a professor of immunology and respiratory medicine, Rosemary Boyton, published a paper in Science, looking comprehensively at immunity to the Omicron family, both in triple-vaccinated people and also in those who then suffered breakthrough infections during the Omicron wave. This lets us examine whether Omicron was, as some hoped, a benign natural booster of our Covid immunity. It turns out that isn’t the case.
We considered many facets of immunity, including the antibodies most implicated in protection (“neutralising antibodies”), as well as protective “immune memory” in white blood cells. The results tell us it is unsurprising that breakthrough infections were so common. Most people – even when triple-vaccinated – had 20 times less neutralising antibody response against Omicron than against the initial “Wuhan” strain. Importantly, Omicron infection was a poor booster of immunity to further Omicron infections. It is a kind of stealth virus that gets in under the radar without doing too much to alert immune defences. Even having had Omicron, we’re not well protected from further infections.
...
Contrary to the myth that we are sliding into a comfortable evolutionary relationship with a common-cold-like, friendly virus, this is more like being trapped on a rollercoaster in a horror film. There’s nothing cold-like or friendly about a large part of the workforce needing significant absences from work, feeling awful and sometimes getting reinfected over and over again, just weeks apart. And that’s before the risk of long Covid.
...
The first generation of vaccines served brilliantly to dig us out of the hole of the first year, but the arms race of boosters versus new variants is no longer going well for us. The UK has only offered a limited group fourth doses, and even then, uptake looks poor. Even if we had good vaccination coverage, we have entered a period of diminishing returns. A study reported in the BMJ last week showed us that the protection gained from a fourth booster dose likely wanes even faster than previous boosters. This leaves us between a rock and a hard place: continue to offer suboptimal boosters to a population who seem to have lost faith or interest in taking them up, or do nothing and cross our fingers that residual immunity might somehow keep a lid on hospitalisations (as happened in South Africa and Portugal).
...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/01/herd-immunity-covid-virus-vaccine
1918 H1N1 was a much more severe virus. It left enough immune response detectable in survivors that some of them were still resistant to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic 90+ years later. COVID doesn't seem to be eliciting this kind of immune response in anyone, whether through infection or vaccination.
I agree with gs in that we need to be better prepared and have legislation ready to kick in as they did in South Korea post SARS. I would add that we also need to put a lot more effort into field research into what is circulating with zoonotic potential and serological surveys in humans to look for what has been making the jump but not getting as far as sustained h2h.
Re. Emily's question another point to consider is these two viral families have very different genomes. Influenza has a 13500 base genome half of which is given over making its RNP (required as it is a negative sense RNA virus and can not use host machinery for mRNA translation) with most of the rest forming the structural proteins. Corona viruses have 30,000 base genomes with no need to make its own ribosomes (being positive sense) with the structural proteins taking a small fraction of the genome. The function of everything else is not all known but much of it is there to mess with different aspects of the hosts immune response. Flu has one NS protein involved in interferon suppression but not much else.
Re. Emily's question another point to consider is these two viral families have very different genomes. Influenza has a 13500 base genome half of which is given over making its RNP (required as it is a negative sense RNA virus and can not use host machinery for mRNA translation) with most of the rest forming the structural proteins. Corona viruses have 30,000 base genomes with no need to make its own ribosomes (being positive sense) with the structural proteins taking a small fraction of the genome. The function of everything else is not all known but much of it is there to mess with different aspects of the hosts immune response. Flu has one NS protein involved in interferon suppression but not much else.
Last edited:
kiwibird
Editor, Senior Moderator
Couldn't agree more gsgs. And by the way this - January 20, 2022, 12:09 PM
has not aged well.
Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
Omicron might be a dud as far as protecting from anything. I don't know if they are able to study infection and vaccination naive people to know about that group. I've done great after a bout with the early virus. Research indicates immunity from early infections is longer lasting in general than that from vaccines. I'll just avoid indoor crowds if BA4-5 looks like it provokes original antigenic sin.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting-immunity-found-after-recovery-covid-19
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting-immunity-found-after-recovery-covid-19
Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
Do you know what Omicron variant is circulating in NZ now, Kiwi? I haven't heard of a brain bleed where I live now since the Delta wave.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/25/onqr-j25.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/06/25/onqr-j25.html
gsgs
Registered User
jjackson: 1500-typo (-->13500 ?)
emily: it's not clear whether infection gives better immunity than vaccination.
It may depend on the variant,timing, vaccine type (BTW.did you notice that J+J is waning
much slower ?)
I think SARS also gives some longterm immunity vs. severe disease, death.
See S.Africa, Brasil, Peru, India
Just as the vaccine does - the waning slows at some point and goes asymptotic
http://magictour.free.fr/ita-2628.GIF
emily: it's not clear whether infection gives better immunity than vaccination.
It may depend on the variant,timing, vaccine type (BTW.did you notice that J+J is waning
much slower ?)
I think SARS also gives some longterm immunity vs. severe disease, death.
See S.Africa, Brasil, Peru, India
Just as the vaccine does - the waning slows at some point and goes asymptotic
http://magictour.free.fr/ita-2628.GIF
Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
Study compares infection only vs hybrid vs vaccination only. (Older viruses against early Omicron) All protection against serious illness. Vaccination only made it more likely to be infected, but vaccinations were about 6 months old.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2203965
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2203965
NZ is currently BA.2
https://covariants.org/per-country?country=New+Zealand
https://covariants.org/per-country?country=New+Zealand
gsgs
Registered User
I'm wondering about New York.
Can it be, that they still have vaccine effectiveness of >80% against being a case
and > 90% against hospitalization, while in other places
we have lots of waning ?!
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-breakthrough-data
Can it be, that they still have vaccine effectiveness of >80% against being a case
and > 90% against hospitalization, while in other places
we have lots of waning ?!
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-breakthrough-data
Quote: "ALL vaccine data should be released BEFORE the mass distributions are made. wth. No wonder "conspiracy" theories about the vaccines abound. It is sorta "shut up and take this vaccine" type of climate - which only feeds the anti-vaccine industry more."
This 100% and because the approvals were fast tracked and usual costs-to-market barriers removed, some level of transparency around real manufacturing expense and discounted supply commitments should also be set in contractual stone.
This 100% and because the approvals were fast tracked and usual costs-to-market barriers removed, some level of transparency around real manufacturing expense and discounted supply commitments should also be set in contractual stone.
gsgs
Registered User
I do see this effect (BA.5-incidence increases with vaccine coverage)
in regions of DEU,AUT,CHE,FRA but not in USA (51 States)
(does USA have an BA.5-wave anyway ?)
http://magictour.free.fr/bl-27i.GIF
https://palexander.substack.com/p/im...his-map-for-us
in regions of DEU,AUT,CHE,FRA but not in USA (51 States)
(does USA have an BA.5-wave anyway ?)
http://magictour.free.fr/bl-27i.GIF
https://palexander.substack.com/p/im...his-map-for-us