20 ms·

SARS-CoV-2 Gamma variant infected 16 fully Pfizer vaccinated Guiana gold miners

216 points by kaczordon 5y ago

234tlzb 5y ago
Fauci should be executed. This is a video of him presenting and talking about how he funded Gain of Function for the Wuhan lab: https://rumble.com/viskb1-anthony-faucis-presentation-of-gain-of-function-research-on-viruses.html https://rumble.com/viskb1-anthony-faucis-presentation-of-gai... He lied (yet again) yesterday in Congress for which he now has a criminal prosecution referral for (since lying to Congress under oath is a felony).
dgant 5y ago
"No clinically severe COVID-19 (1) was observed, and no patient was hospitalized" In other words, this case study is a relatively ordinary result in line with what we know: that the major COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of severe illness but leave nontrivial chance of infection and transmission.
- dopylitty 5y ago
  It’s worth noting that the bar for severe illness is set incredibly high. [1] All of the major symptoms including high fever, cough, severe fatigue, loss of taste/smell, and shortness of breath still count as mild under their definition. This is very much a disease you don’t want to get, even the so called mild version that happens in vaccinated people. 1. https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/overview/clinical-spectrum/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/overview/clin...
  - version_five 5y ago
    > Severe Illness: Individuals who have SpO2 <94% on room air at sea level, a ratio of arterial partial pressure of oxygen to fraction of inspired oxygen (PaO2/FiO2) <300 mm Hg, respiratory frequency >30 breaths/min, or lung infiltrates >50%. Isn't the point that levels below severe are not generally fatal and don't require hospitalization. Nobody thinks it's good to get sick, but it generally ceases to be a threat to public health with vaccination.
    - lugged 5y ago
      Sure if you don't think permanent social distancing and mask wearing is not a problem. The severity of mild covid is still potentially long lasting and I'm willing to guess elderly aren't going to handle it well. Letting covid become endemic could reduce our life expecty considerably.
      - version_five 5y ago
        > Sure if you don't think permanent social distancing and mask wearing is not a problem. I'm confused by this comment. I do think they are a problem, that's why I am encouraged by a vaccine that reduces covid to something that is not life threatening and that we can stop freaking out about.
        throwawayboise 5y ago
        It always was that for the vast majority of people.
        audiometry 5y ago
        3mn Indian souls would disagree
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        55555 5y ago
        That's a terrible loss, practically a genocide, but to be fair the parent said "the vast majority of people" and there's 1.4 billion people in India. In India, 151,000 people die every year just from car accidents, and ~4 million die each year from heart disease.
      - kadoban 5y ago
        Isn't covid already endemic?
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I had COVID before the lockdowns. It wasn't apparent to me until I started hearing about the symptoms. The fatigue was awful, but on top of that, the night my fever broke I was laying down on my bed during February with a window open and no sheets covering me. All while hyperventilating. I kinda thought this was a weird flu but fortunately I didn't have to worry up front about potential death while having it. Worst case scenario I just wouldn't have woken up.
    - codr7 5y ago
      Yeah, me too. I traveled by bus all the way from Southern Italy to Sweden just before the virus hit the news, and fell sick with the same symptoms for about a week from the day I arrived. The fever was nasty, but the one thing I remember most is lying there alone in the middle of the night feeling like I wasn't getting enough oxygen and wondering what the hell was going on.
      - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
        I honestly was a little scared because it was so odd. I though it was just gonna be another flu. But of everything, the fatigue was the absolute worst. My spine, neck, and legs just felt like mush for a full week. Existing was effort. Could barely keep food down. When my fever broke, I went about my life like normal. Still I'd hate to imagine what it would've been like in a not so vaccinated era like the early 1900s. I probably would've died.
  - camillomiller 5y ago
    I got it, and it was annoying, sure, but I had influenza A in the past and boy, was that REALLY bad. I would be totally fine if we get to a point where we consider Covid to be like an endemic seasonal flu for the vaccinated, because I can’t see many ways out otherwise
    - blub 5y ago
      A virus with the flu's potential for damage and the SARS-2 level of infectivity even after a vaccine would be terrible for those getting sick, but even worse for healthcare.
    - foepys 5y ago
      I think what a lot of people call the flu is actually "the sniffles" which desensitizes people to the danger. Influenza like you had is really, really bad. It takes weeks to recover and the first 1 or 2 weeks are hell.
      - Pyramus 5y ago
        Yes, that is correct. I believe the difference is that most of us were exposed to the flu when we were younger, building immunity to the strains that are seasonal. This is not the case for new strains. There are reports from the 1918 influenza strain that it killed young people over night: Folks went to bed with fever and didn't wake up the next day. If you had the flu or know somebody who had, it's no joke.
  - peter_retief 5y ago
    I had the virus and it was slightly inconvenient, had a slight fever, cough and shortness of breath. Strangly my wife had different symptoms to me, no fever and vomiting. Lasted around 10 days with no lingering symptoms. I think the fever is important because my wife got reinfected but I did not.
    - lambdaphagy 5y ago
      Glad you're ok, but I'm surprised you describe SOB as a slight inconvenience. In general, SOB is a pretty bad sign-- you're having trouble getting the one thing you'll die fastest without. Sure, you can put up with temporary mild SOB if you know it's going to stay mild, but not everyone can know that :/
      - peter_retief 5y ago
        Thanks, I realize I was lucky, it is a wildly unpredictable virus and I am not trying to minimize the possible outcomes.
      - peteretep 5y ago
        > but I'm surprised you describe SOB as a slight inconvenience Ever been to a high altitude city? I was short of breath for my first week in Mexico City, and my lungs hurt after exercise. It’s very disconcerting, but also just a slight inconvenience.
        lambdaphagy 5y ago
        Yes, it's a minor inconvenience when it's expected and you have confidence in a good prognosis. It can be tortuous when you don't know whether it's about to get worse.
  - JeremyNT 5y ago
    i.e., it's like the common cold +/- a bit. Also keep in mind that many people are mostly asymptomatic entirely, even the unvaccinated. Sure, try not to get sick. Understand that there is some risk of symptoms. But getting COVID once you've had the vaccine shouldn't really be a concern worthy of altering any behaviors to avoid for healthy people.
- kaczordon 5y ago
  What’s more interesting is that 0/6 of the miners who had natural immunity were re-infected. That points to natural immunity preventing spread. The fact that vaccinated individuals don’t stop transmission means that there is no “public good” from getting vaccinated, it’s solely for personal benefit. Vaccine mandates or checking for vaccination status are pointless because of this.
  - gojomo 5y ago
    It is interesting that none of the infection-recovered were infected - though with only 6 individuals, that could be luck. There have been other hints natural immunity is stronger versus later variants. But your other point doesn't follow. The vaxed still tested positive at a slightly lower rate than the unvaxed. With no severe cases, no one died & no burden on limited emergency facilities was created. There's not enough info to know how much the vaxed spread it to others; they conjecture that their "patient 40", an unvaxed individual who had an asymptomatic case, was the "index case" that brought the infection in. Especially in the conditions of a mine – which might have limited ventiliation – perhaps that one unvaxed person shedded enough infectious material to create all the subsequent infections.
  - wussboy 5y ago
    That is an incredible leap.
    - kaczordon 5y ago
      Nope, globally we know that re-infection rarely occurs after being infected. This study shows a 60% attack rate for fully vaccinated miners, which is horrendous. The whole point of this study is that vaccination does not stop transmission of the virus. To quote the study: In conclusion, we describe a VOC Gamma COVID-19 outbreak with a strikingly high attack rate among persons fully vaccinated with BNT162b2 vaccine.[…]Masking and social distancing —even among those fully vaccinated— may be necessary.
      - pbourke 5y ago
        We also know that confirmed cases are mainly among the unvaccinated and serious outcomes are nearly all (99%) among unvaccinated, despite fully vaccinated and unvaccinated being roughly equal populations in the US at present.
- Ostrogodsky 5y ago
  I suppose those miners are strong healthy men, wouldnt we expect the same results if they were exposed to the virus while being not-vaccinated? > In other words, this case study is a relatively ordinary result in line with what we know: that the major COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of severe illness but leave nontrivial chance of infection and transmission. I dont think this particular case is a proof of your claim at all.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Depending on the mine, I'd guess miner is a prexisting condition in and of itself
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    From the study: "Mine workers were mostly men (42/44); median age was 53.3 years. Eighteen of the workers had risk factors for severe COVID-19: high blood pressure (11/44), diabetes mellitus (4/44), or obesity (4/44)."
    - Ostrogodsky 5y ago
      What is your point? You are not comparing against the general population to see if there is a difference. Also from the study: > Such a low vaccine efficiency against infection by the Gamma variant was not expected because in vitro studies have shown a similar reduction of neutralization for Beta or Gamma variants by BNT162b2-elicited antibodies (5) and a conserved CD4+ T-cell response against spike proteins from the Beta variant (6). So, no, this was not "business as usual", in fact the results are so shocking that the investigators wrote: > Given the surprisingly high attack rate, we hypothesized potential dysfunctions of conservation or administration of vaccines, but the absence of traceable cold-chain interruption and the use of different batches seemed to refute this hypothesis. So the study so far suggests that the Pfizer vaccines may well have an actual low effectivenes rate against this virus variant.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        It was in response to "I suppose those miners are strong healthy men" They were not. They were obese and hypertensive. That is unhealty no matter what vaccines you take.
- ianai 5y ago
  What I wonder is the other symptoms like long covid. We’d hope the vaccines would diminish the incidence of that, but I’ve not heard it. Probably too early for the newer variants.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  It should become obvious by now: As long as you care about detected infections the only solution is infinite lockdowns.
- _user112 5y ago
  Dying means the Vaccine is working.
refurb 5y ago
Fully vaccinated individuals getting infected shouldn't be all that surprising. The phase 3 trials of Pfizer and Moderna saw a 95% reduction in severe symptoms. No routine testing for infection was done, only testing if someone showed symptoms. Singapore's gov't is tracking all of their infections and 80% of the population has had 1 shot, 50% fully vaccinated (Pfizer and Moderna). They've had 1096 cases in the last 28 days, 484 are in fully vaccinated people [1]. The key difference is that 100% were asymptomatic/mild cases.[2] [1]https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/update-on-local-covid-19-situation-(22-july-2021) https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/update-on-loc... [2]https://www.moh.gov.sg/images/librariesprovider5/covid-19-chart-(pr)/fig10(22jul21).png https://www.moh.gov.sg/images/librariesprovider5/covid-19-ch...
- sterlind 5y ago
  I feel like a 60% attack rate among fully vaccinated people in one outbreak is pretty chilling, though. Like I'm glad they didn't have severe illness but this news is disappointing. Delta seems to heavily dominate in Singapore [0], and they don't seem to have Gamma at all. The outbreak in this article was Gamma. This study doesn't jive well with the in-vitro tests of vaccinated serum against gamma and the numbers we're seeing broadly though, so I'm still hopeful this is a fluke occurrence. 0. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-finds-delta-most-prevalent-among-virus-variants-locally-2021-06-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-finds-d...
  - refurb 5y ago
    I wouldn't read too much into the 50% being fully vaccinated. Front-line workers (both medical and retail) are most likely to be exposed versus someone unvaccinated. In addition, as vaccination rates go up, you'd expect to see more fully vaccinated people test positive since there are so few unvaccinated people. Not sure why I got downvoted - this is exactly what we expected - the vaccine protects against serious disease, not necessarily infection. We have some data showing that vaccinated people have a reduced risk of infection, but it's still a significant risk.
    - 5y ago
standapart 5y ago
The main takeaway here, mentioned above, is that this might throw shade on the "public good" idea of vaccination-- that you should still vaccinate those at minimal risk from Covid. If you're at high risk, you should definitely still get vaccinated. Maybe just stop telling twenty-somethings they should get vaccinated too.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Even if vaccinated people could get COVID (which they can) and could get sick (which they currently do, to some extent) - the question is ultimately whether or not vaccinated people die at the same rate. As long as Rate of Death for Vaccinated < Rate of Death for Unvaccinated + Rate of Death for taking Vaccine; you should be vaccinated, regardless of age.
  - standapart 5y ago
    I'm not sure how you came to this decision rule. There are plenty of things which strictly decrease my mortality rate, by some non-zero amount, which I do not do and are not recommended for me.
    - hnzix 5y ago
      20-somethings are at a lower risk for mortality, that doesn't mean they won't suffer long COVID symptoms like arthritis and reduced lung function. And also infect more vulnerable age groups.
      - standapart 5y ago
        True. However, because viral fatigue and related complications are generally present among symptomatic people (and 20-somethings are less symptomatic than other age-cohorts) it might well be that your risk of these things is also lower-- even if, conditioned on being symptomatic, the risk of "long-COVID" in 20-somethings is higher. I think the jury is still out regarding risk ratios for long-COVID, however-- partly because the pathology is rather ill-defined and still developing. The more important point is just that viral fatigue and respiratory complications are not new things. They are present for a range of viruses. The mere existence of these factors is not pertinent to the "public good" point that the original comment centered on.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
"Mine workers were mostly men (42/44); median age was 53.3 years. Eighteen of the workers had risk factors for severe COVID-19: high blood pressure (11/44), diabetes mellitus (4/44), or obesity (4/44)." "The overall attack rate was 54.5% (24/44); 87% were symptomatic, 65% with fever, and 22.6% with dyspnea. No clinically severe COVID-19 (1) was observed, and no patient was hospitalized." This make sense. If more severe variants are more damaging (i.e. more severe symptoms, death, etc.) they are less likely to persist. The less harmful variants are more likely to carry on. At the extrene, for example, look at Ebola. It's quick and it's deadly. Consequently, it burns out. On the other hand, a longer asymptomatic incubation period - long enough to get on a plane - and Ebola is going to be big trouble.
- scheme271 5y ago
  All of this really depends on the specifics of the disease. For example, HIV is pretty much 100% fatal and it has remained so over the last 40 years. Syphilis and Leprosy also have high fatality rates and have been around for 2000+ years. If a fatal disease doesn't kill the host for a while then it can easily become more transmissible while still being very harmful.
  - becuzThrowaway 5y ago
    Wait, you think that HIV is still 100% fatal? What year do you think it is? Or maybe you mean untreated HIV?
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    Exactly. Long incubation period. Takes long to kill its host. The opposite of Ebola. If it were more like Ebola it would be must less likely to spread, if at all.
flybrand 5y ago
“Attack rate was 0/6 among persons with a previous history of COVID-19 versus 63.2% among those with no previous history (Table).”
- seventytwo 5y ago
  … and 99% of cases in the US are among the unvaccinated. What’s your point?
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    The point is that the people naturally infected were not reinfected. That stat isn't incompatible. The 99% in the US could easily be the people neither vaccinated nor previously-infected. It says nothing about the risk of reinfection.
    - SubiculumCode 5y ago
      Small samples are almost the same a meaningless.
  - jstanley 5y ago
    But the US methodology of deciding whether you have COVID is much more strict if you've been vaccinated - this just fudges the numbers to make it look like vaccines work much better than they really do.
    - seventytwo 5y ago
      Fair, but infections is only a proxy measurement for the actual outcome we are trying to avoid: hospitalizations and death. The fact remains that hospitalizations and deaths are basically only occurring among the unvaccinated.
      - jstanley 5y ago
        How are you measuring that? If it's using the CDC measure of whether you have COVID, then many of the hospitalised and dead who "didn't have COVID" were merely vaccinated and therefore didn't count.
corona-research 5y ago
No excess mortality, though.
throwitaway1235 5y ago
Does anyone know if their is a correlation between how contagious a variant is and how lethal it is? For example, MERS has a 35% CFR but wasn't a global health disaster because it wasn't highly contagious. Same goes for Ebola, which is even more fatal but even less contagious. My point/question - the more contagious a Covid-19 variant = lower CFR?
- wyldfire 5y ago
  IIRC pathogenicity has an inverse relationship with virulence.
  - YZF 5y ago
    There are no hard rules here. The UK variant is supposedly both more severe and more infectious ( https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 ). The common wisdom there is that something that kills you faster has less chance to transmit but there's nothing precluding something that kills you slowly and is very infectious while it does that.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Yes, Ebola is quite contageous but kills so fast it tends to burn out and not spread. AIDS kills you slowly and is infectious while it does that, so it spreads widely.
      - spfzero 5y ago
        Both are blood-to-blood, rather than respiratory. They are not at all contagious, compared to flus and colds. A lot more deadly, but they can be stopped much more easily. Ebola spread is not stopped so much by it’s deadliness, but by the fact that you can’t get it by just being near someone who has it and is breathing.
- guscost 5y ago
  It is possible and even likely IMO (at least for respiratory viruses). Look up the “transmission-virulence tradeoff hypothesis” for more info: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ The “Russian flu” in 1890 may have been the first introduction of the common cold coronavirus OC43: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544107/ Also, keep in mind that stress and fear can be very bad for health: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540261.2017.1357540?journalCode=iirp20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540261.2017.13... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447278/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447278/
bigcorp-slave 5y ago
If someone can check my math, this seems like a perfect opportunity to do a statistical test. Sample sizes are too small to say that there is a difference between previous infection and no previous infection. Given the contingency table: No prior inf. Prior inf. Infected 3 0 Uninfect 4 6 A Fisher Exact Test yields a p value of 0.1923. So there is not evidence that previously infected people are safe. Similarly, if we compare the attack rate in previous infections vs Pfizer, the p value is about 0.15, so there’s not evidence one is better than the other.
- xpe 5y ago
  Would you please label the rows and columns your table? This will help others check your work.
  - bigcorp-slave 5y ago
    Done, thanks.
- fooofw 5y ago
  I think the "4" should be changed to a "1" yielding p = 0.0333. 4 is the total number of unvaccinated miners without prior infection.
  - bigcorp-slave 5y ago
    You are right, I misread the article and now it is too late to edit.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
cashsterling 5y ago
We should keep in mind that working in mining operation is very bad for your lungs and mucous membranes in general. They may also be vitamin-D deficient among other issues. Just saying they may be immune suppressed...
aparashk 5y ago
In a mine -- constricted space of very small volume with forced ventilation -- the conditions would be ideal for getting infected with a very high initial viral load. Under these conditions, it is not unreasonable that immunity of any kind (from infection or vaccination) would not be sufficient to prevent symptomatic COVID19 infections.
- yosito 5y ago
  Not that mines have a great reputation for safe operation, but who made the call to allow unvaccinated people to continue working in the mine?
adminscoffee 5y ago
there's a gamma now? nature is sure on it version control game
- capableweb 5y ago
  There is even more and it's not nature, it's WHO (and representatives from GISAID, Nextstrain, Pango). Currently designated Variants of Concern: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta Currently designated Variants of Interest: Eta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/ https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-varian...
criticaltinker 5y ago
As other commenters have noted, this case study further supports the widespread observations that COVID-19 vaccines reduce the chance of severe (symptomatic) illness but do not necessarily prevent infection and transmission. The authors of this study conjecture that the unvaccinated asymptomatic “patient 40” may have been the source of the infections seen in the other fully vaccinated patients - however this was a minor point as limited rational and evidence was provided. That being said, IMO there seems to be a growing public opinion that unvaccinated individuals are to blame for the increasing dominance of variants of concern (delta, gamma, etc). One counterpoint that I’ve come across during my own review of the literature, is the idea that imperfect vaccines can cause selective pressure which enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. For example see this peer reviewed publication from 2015: “Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens” (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...). My understanding is that this is a relatively new and perhaps highly understudied phenomenon. I wanted to share the idea here because it seems conspicuously missing from many of these discussions. Furthermore, I’d love to hear feedback from someone with more expertise - or just trade relevant links with others who are diving into primary sources as a way to form an educated and well rounded opinion.
- Izkata 5y ago
  > One counterpoint that I’ve come across during my own review of the literature, is the idea that imperfect vaccines can cause selective pressure which enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. This is what happened with "Marek's disease", a virus-caused disease in chickens. The vaccine was "leaky" and ended up selecting for a more deadly form, such that now all chickens worldwide have to be vaccinated for it or they'll die if they get infected - which didn't used to be the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease
  - sschueller 5y ago
    So does this mean we made this pandemic worse than the one from 1918 when we didn't have a vaccine?
sschueller 5y ago
Off topic but I wonder if one could build a "Covid Canary". A device that can alarm when there is a presence of Covid in the air in an enclosed room. Supposedly there are several companies working on a covid breathalizer.
- effie 5y ago
  When this tech comes, only trust the autonomous ones not connected to Internet or other means of control.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Maybe sars2 will turn out like the cold viruses - impossible to vaccinate against.
- scotty79 5y ago
  I don't think we ever tried to vaccinate against other cold viruses. With mRNA tech I hope we'll eventually try.
- rwallace 5y ago
  Are the cold viruses impossible to vaccinate against? I always assumed they were the same as flu – possible, but you need new vaccines every year because the strains keep shifting – it's just that the severity of colds is low enough that we don't bother. Is that not the case?
_user112 5y ago
You're not meant to go backwards in the alphabet. Going upwards gives the illusion of escalation, creating more panic.
- scotty79 5y ago
  Gamma isn't later variant than Delta. It's one of the first four concerning ones we know about for some time already.
vmception 5y ago
> No clinically severe COVID-19 (1) was observed, and no patient was hospitalized. > All had Pfizer vaccine. Why don’t they lead with that as it is the expected result.
tonywastaken 5y ago
Does French Guiana have the Pfizer vaccine for the general population? Or did the gold miners have Pfizer vaccines procured for them by the owner of the mine/government?

216 points by kaczordon 5y ago

Fauci should be executed. This is a video of him presenting and talking about how he funded Gain of Function for the Wuhan lab: https://rumble.com/viskb1-anthony-faucis-presentation-of-gain-of-function-research-on-viruses.html https://rumble.com/viskb1-anthony-faucis-presentation-of-gai... He lied (yet again) yesterday in Congress for which he now has a criminal prosecution referral for (since lying to Congress under oath is a felony).

dgant 5y ago

"No clinically severe COVID-19 (1) was observed, and no patient was hospitalized" In other words, this case study is a relatively ordinary result in line with what we know: that the major COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of severe illness but leave nontrivial chance of infection and transmission.

dopylitty 5y ago
It’s worth noting that the bar for severe illness is set incredibly high. [1] All of the major symptoms including high fever, cough, severe fatigue, loss of taste/smell, and shortness of breath still count as mild under their definition. This is very much a disease you don’t want to get, even the so called mild version that happens in vaccinated people. 1. https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/overview/clinical-spectrum/ https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/overview/clin...
- version_five 5y ago
  > Severe Illness: Individuals who have SpO2 <94% on room air at sea level, a ratio of arterial partial pressure of oxygen to fraction of inspired oxygen (PaO2/FiO2) <300 mm Hg, respiratory frequency >30 breaths/min, or lung infiltrates >50%. Isn't the point that levels below severe are not generally fatal and don't require hospitalization. Nobody thinks it's good to get sick, but it generally ceases to be a threat to public health with vaccination.
  - lugged 5y ago
    Sure if you don't think permanent social distancing and mask wearing is not a problem. The severity of mild covid is still potentially long lasting and I'm willing to guess elderly aren't going to handle it well. Letting covid become endemic could reduce our life expecty considerably.
    - version_five 5y ago
      > Sure if you don't think permanent social distancing and mask wearing is not a problem. I'm confused by this comment. I do think they are a problem, that's why I am encouraged by a vaccine that reduces covid to something that is not life threatening and that we can stop freaking out about.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        It always was that for the vast majority of people.
        audiometry 5y ago
        3mn Indian souls would disagree
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        55555 5y ago
        That's a terrible loss, practically a genocide, but to be fair the parent said "the vast majority of people" and there's 1.4 billion people in India. In India, 151,000 people die every year just from car accidents, and ~4 million die each year from heart disease.
    - kadoban 5y ago
      Isn't covid already endemic?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I had COVID before the lockdowns. It wasn't apparent to me until I started hearing about the symptoms. The fatigue was awful, but on top of that, the night my fever broke I was laying down on my bed during February with a window open and no sheets covering me. All while hyperventilating. I kinda thought this was a weird flu but fortunately I didn't have to worry up front about potential death while having it. Worst case scenario I just wouldn't have woken up.
  - codr7 5y ago
    Yeah, me too. I traveled by bus all the way from Southern Italy to Sweden just before the virus hit the news, and fell sick with the same symptoms for about a week from the day I arrived. The fever was nasty, but the one thing I remember most is lying there alone in the middle of the night feeling like I wasn't getting enough oxygen and wondering what the hell was going on.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      I honestly was a little scared because it was so odd. I though it was just gonna be another flu. But of everything, the fatigue was the absolute worst. My spine, neck, and legs just felt like mush for a full week. Existing was effort. Could barely keep food down. When my fever broke, I went about my life like normal. Still I'd hate to imagine what it would've been like in a not so vaccinated era like the early 1900s. I probably would've died.
- camillomiller 5y ago
  I got it, and it was annoying, sure, but I had influenza A in the past and boy, was that REALLY bad. I would be totally fine if we get to a point where we consider Covid to be like an endemic seasonal flu for the vaccinated, because I can’t see many ways out otherwise
  - blub 5y ago
    A virus with the flu's potential for damage and the SARS-2 level of infectivity even after a vaccine would be terrible for those getting sick, but even worse for healthcare.
  - foepys 5y ago
    I think what a lot of people call the flu is actually "the sniffles" which desensitizes people to the danger. Influenza like you had is really, really bad. It takes weeks to recover and the first 1 or 2 weeks are hell.
    - Pyramus 5y ago
      Yes, that is correct. I believe the difference is that most of us were exposed to the flu when we were younger, building immunity to the strains that are seasonal. This is not the case for new strains. There are reports from the 1918 influenza strain that it killed young people over night: Folks went to bed with fever and didn't wake up the next day. If you had the flu or know somebody who had, it's no joke.
- peter_retief 5y ago
  I had the virus and it was slightly inconvenient, had a slight fever, cough and shortness of breath. Strangly my wife had different symptoms to me, no fever and vomiting. Lasted around 10 days with no lingering symptoms. I think the fever is important because my wife got reinfected but I did not.
  - lambdaphagy 5y ago
    Glad you're ok, but I'm surprised you describe SOB as a slight inconvenience. In general, SOB is a pretty bad sign-- you're having trouble getting the one thing you'll die fastest without. Sure, you can put up with temporary mild SOB if you know it's going to stay mild, but not everyone can know that :/
    - peter_retief 5y ago
      Thanks, I realize I was lucky, it is a wildly unpredictable virus and I am not trying to minimize the possible outcomes.
    - peteretep 5y ago
      > but I'm surprised you describe SOB as a slight inconvenience Ever been to a high altitude city? I was short of breath for my first week in Mexico City, and my lungs hurt after exercise. It’s very disconcerting, but also just a slight inconvenience.
      - lambdaphagy 5y ago
        Yes, it's a minor inconvenience when it's expected and you have confidence in a good prognosis. It can be tortuous when you don't know whether it's about to get worse.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  i.e., it's like the common cold +/- a bit. Also keep in mind that many people are mostly asymptomatic entirely, even the unvaccinated. Sure, try not to get sick. Understand that there is some risk of symptoms. But getting COVID once you've had the vaccine shouldn't really be a concern worthy of altering any behaviors to avoid for healthy people.
kaczordon 5y ago
What’s more interesting is that 0/6 of the miners who had natural immunity were re-infected. That points to natural immunity preventing spread. The fact that vaccinated individuals don’t stop transmission means that there is no “public good” from getting vaccinated, it’s solely for personal benefit. Vaccine mandates or checking for vaccination status are pointless because of this.
- gojomo 5y ago
  It is interesting that none of the infection-recovered were infected - though with only 6 individuals, that could be luck. There have been other hints natural immunity is stronger versus later variants. But your other point doesn't follow. The vaxed still tested positive at a slightly lower rate than the unvaxed. With no severe cases, no one died & no burden on limited emergency facilities was created. There's not enough info to know how much the vaxed spread it to others; they conjecture that their "patient 40", an unvaxed individual who had an asymptomatic case, was the "index case" that brought the infection in. Especially in the conditions of a mine – which might have limited ventiliation – perhaps that one unvaxed person shedded enough infectious material to create all the subsequent infections.
- wussboy 5y ago
  That is an incredible leap.
  - kaczordon 5y ago
    Nope, globally we know that re-infection rarely occurs after being infected. This study shows a 60% attack rate for fully vaccinated miners, which is horrendous. The whole point of this study is that vaccination does not stop transmission of the virus. To quote the study: In conclusion, we describe a VOC Gamma COVID-19 outbreak with a strikingly high attack rate among persons fully vaccinated with BNT162b2 vaccine.[…]Masking and social distancing —even among those fully vaccinated— may be necessary.
    - pbourke 5y ago
      We also know that confirmed cases are mainly among the unvaccinated and serious outcomes are nearly all (99%) among unvaccinated, despite fully vaccinated and unvaccinated being roughly equal populations in the US at present.
Ostrogodsky 5y ago
I suppose those miners are strong healthy men, wouldnt we expect the same results if they were exposed to the virus while being not-vaccinated? > In other words, this case study is a relatively ordinary result in line with what we know: that the major COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of severe illness but leave nontrivial chance of infection and transmission. I dont think this particular case is a proof of your claim at all.
- 8note 5y ago
  Depending on the mine, I'd guess miner is a prexisting condition in and of itself
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  From the study: "Mine workers were mostly men (42/44); median age was 53.3 years. Eighteen of the workers had risk factors for severe COVID-19: high blood pressure (11/44), diabetes mellitus (4/44), or obesity (4/44)."
  - Ostrogodsky 5y ago
    What is your point? You are not comparing against the general population to see if there is a difference. Also from the study: > Such a low vaccine efficiency against infection by the Gamma variant was not expected because in vitro studies have shown a similar reduction of neutralization for Beta or Gamma variants by BNT162b2-elicited antibodies (5) and a conserved CD4+ T-cell response against spike proteins from the Beta variant (6). So, no, this was not "business as usual", in fact the results are so shocking that the investigators wrote: > Given the surprisingly high attack rate, we hypothesized potential dysfunctions of conservation or administration of vaccines, but the absence of traceable cold-chain interruption and the use of different batches seemed to refute this hypothesis. So the study so far suggests that the Pfizer vaccines may well have an actual low effectivenes rate against this virus variant.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      It was in response to "I suppose those miners are strong healthy men" They were not. They were obese and hypertensive. That is unhealty no matter what vaccines you take.
ianai 5y ago
What I wonder is the other symptoms like long covid. We’d hope the vaccines would diminish the incidence of that, but I’ve not heard it. Probably too early for the newer variants.
tinus_hn 5y ago
It should become obvious by now: As long as you care about detected infections the only solution is infinite lockdowns.
_user112 5y ago
Dying means the Vaccine is working.

refurb 5y ago

Fully vaccinated individuals getting infected shouldn't be all that surprising. The phase 3 trials of Pfizer and Moderna saw a 95% reduction in severe symptoms. No routine testing for infection was done, only testing if someone showed symptoms. Singapore's gov't is tracking all of their infections and 80% of the population has had 1 shot, 50% fully vaccinated (Pfizer and Moderna). They've had 1096 cases in the last 28 days, 484 are in fully vaccinated people [1]. The key difference is that 100% were asymptomatic/mild cases.[2] [1]https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/update-on-local-covid-19-situation-(22-july-2021) https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/update-on-loc... [2]https://www.moh.gov.sg/images/librariesprovider5/covid-19-chart-(pr)/fig10(22jul21).png https://www.moh.gov.sg/images/librariesprovider5/covid-19-ch...

sterlind 5y ago
I feel like a 60% attack rate among fully vaccinated people in one outbreak is pretty chilling, though. Like I'm glad they didn't have severe illness but this news is disappointing. Delta seems to heavily dominate in Singapore [0], and they don't seem to have Gamma at all. The outbreak in this article was Gamma. This study doesn't jive well with the in-vitro tests of vaccinated serum against gamma and the numbers we're seeing broadly though, so I'm still hopeful this is a fluke occurrence. 0. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-finds-delta-most-prevalent-among-virus-variants-locally-2021-06-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-finds-d...
- refurb 5y ago
  I wouldn't read too much into the 50% being fully vaccinated. Front-line workers (both medical and retail) are most likely to be exposed versus someone unvaccinated. In addition, as vaccination rates go up, you'd expect to see more fully vaccinated people test positive since there are so few unvaccinated people. Not sure why I got downvoted - this is exactly what we expected - the vaccine protects against serious disease, not necessarily infection. We have some data showing that vaccinated people have a reduced risk of infection, but it's still a significant risk.
  - 5y ago

standapart 5y ago

The main takeaway here, mentioned above, is that this might throw shade on the "public good" idea of vaccination-- that you should still vaccinate those at minimal risk from Covid. If you're at high risk, you should definitely still get vaccinated. Maybe just stop telling twenty-somethings they should get vaccinated too.

endisneigh 5y ago
I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Even if vaccinated people could get COVID (which they can) and could get sick (which they currently do, to some extent) - the question is ultimately whether or not vaccinated people die at the same rate. As long as Rate of Death for Vaccinated < Rate of Death for Unvaccinated + Rate of Death for taking Vaccine; you should be vaccinated, regardless of age.
- standapart 5y ago
  I'm not sure how you came to this decision rule. There are plenty of things which strictly decrease my mortality rate, by some non-zero amount, which I do not do and are not recommended for me.
  - hnzix 5y ago
    20-somethings are at a lower risk for mortality, that doesn't mean they won't suffer long COVID symptoms like arthritis and reduced lung function. And also infect more vulnerable age groups.
    - standapart 5y ago
      True. However, because viral fatigue and related complications are generally present among symptomatic people (and 20-somethings are less symptomatic than other age-cohorts) it might well be that your risk of these things is also lower-- even if, conditioned on being symptomatic, the risk of "long-COVID" in 20-somethings is higher. I think the jury is still out regarding risk ratios for long-COVID, however-- partly because the pathology is rather ill-defined and still developing. The more important point is just that viral fatigue and respiratory complications are not new things. They are present for a range of viruses. The mere existence of these factors is not pertinent to the "public good" point that the original comment centered on.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

"Mine workers were mostly men (42/44); median age was 53.3 years. Eighteen of the workers had risk factors for severe COVID-19: high blood pressure (11/44), diabetes mellitus (4/44), or obesity (4/44)." "The overall attack rate was 54.5% (24/44); 87% were symptomatic, 65% with fever, and 22.6% with dyspnea. No clinically severe COVID-19 (1) was observed, and no patient was hospitalized." This make sense. If more severe variants are more damaging (i.e. more severe symptoms, death, etc.) they are less likely to persist. The less harmful variants are more likely to carry on. At the extrene, for example, look at Ebola. It's quick and it's deadly. Consequently, it burns out. On the other hand, a longer asymptomatic incubation period - long enough to get on a plane - and Ebola is going to be big trouble.

scheme271 5y ago
All of this really depends on the specifics of the disease. For example, HIV is pretty much 100% fatal and it has remained so over the last 40 years. Syphilis and Leprosy also have high fatality rates and have been around for 2000+ years. If a fatal disease doesn't kill the host for a while then it can easily become more transmissible while still being very harmful.
- becuzThrowaway 5y ago
  Wait, you think that HIV is still 100% fatal? What year do you think it is? Or maybe you mean untreated HIV?
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Exactly. Long incubation period. Takes long to kill its host. The opposite of Ebola. If it were more like Ebola it would be must less likely to spread, if at all.

flybrand 5y ago

“Attack rate was 0/6 among persons with a previous history of COVID-19 versus 63.2% among those with no previous history (Table).”

seventytwo 5y ago
… and 99% of cases in the US are among the unvaccinated. What’s your point?
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  The point is that the people naturally infected were not reinfected. That stat isn't incompatible. The 99% in the US could easily be the people neither vaccinated nor previously-infected. It says nothing about the risk of reinfection.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    Small samples are almost the same a meaningless.
- jstanley 5y ago
  But the US methodology of deciding whether you have COVID is much more strict if you've been vaccinated - this just fudges the numbers to make it look like vaccines work much better than they really do.
  - seventytwo 5y ago
    Fair, but infections is only a proxy measurement for the actual outcome we are trying to avoid: hospitalizations and death. The fact remains that hospitalizations and deaths are basically only occurring among the unvaccinated.
    - jstanley 5y ago
      How are you measuring that? If it's using the CDC measure of whether you have COVID, then many of the hospitalised and dead who "didn't have COVID" were merely vaccinated and therefore didn't count.

corona-research 5y ago

No excess mortality, though.

throwitaway1235 5y ago

Does anyone know if their is a correlation between how contagious a variant is and how lethal it is? For example, MERS has a 35% CFR but wasn't a global health disaster because it wasn't highly contagious. Same goes for Ebola, which is even more fatal but even less contagious. My point/question - the more contagious a Covid-19 variant = lower CFR?

wyldfire 5y ago
IIRC pathogenicity has an inverse relationship with virulence.
- YZF 5y ago
  There are no hard rules here. The UK variant is supposedly both more severe and more infectious ( https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 ). The common wisdom there is that something that kills you faster has less chance to transmit but there's nothing precluding something that kills you slowly and is very infectious while it does that.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Yes, Ebola is quite contageous but kills so fast it tends to burn out and not spread. AIDS kills you slowly and is infectious while it does that, so it spreads widely.
    - spfzero 5y ago
      Both are blood-to-blood, rather than respiratory. They are not at all contagious, compared to flus and colds. A lot more deadly, but they can be stopped much more easily. Ebola spread is not stopped so much by it’s deadliness, but by the fact that you can’t get it by just being near someone who has it and is breathing.
guscost 5y ago
It is possible and even likely IMO (at least for respiratory viruses). Look up the “transmission-virulence tradeoff hypothesis” for more info: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30734920/ The “Russian flu” in 1890 may have been the first introduction of the common cold coronavirus OC43: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_pandemic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544107/ Also, keep in mind that stress and fear can be very bad for health: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540261.2017.1357540?journalCode=iirp20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540261.2017.13... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447278/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447278/

bigcorp-slave 5y ago

If someone can check my math, this seems like a perfect opportunity to do a statistical test. Sample sizes are too small to say that there is a difference between previous infection and no previous infection. Given the contingency table: No prior inf. Prior inf. Infected 3 0 Uninfect 4 6 A Fisher Exact Test yields a p value of 0.1923. So there is not evidence that previously infected people are safe. Similarly, if we compare the attack rate in previous infections vs Pfizer, the p value is about 0.15, so there’s not evidence one is better than the other.

xpe 5y ago
Would you please label the rows and columns your table? This will help others check your work.
- bigcorp-slave 5y ago
  Done, thanks.
fooofw 5y ago
I think the "4" should be changed to a "1" yielding p = 0.0333. 4 is the total number of unvaccinated miners without prior infection.
- bigcorp-slave 5y ago
  You are right, I misread the article and now it is too late to edit.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

cashsterling 5y ago

We should keep in mind that working in mining operation is very bad for your lungs and mucous membranes in general. They may also be vitamin-D deficient among other issues. Just saying they may be immune suppressed...

aparashk 5y ago

In a mine -- constricted space of very small volume with forced ventilation -- the conditions would be ideal for getting infected with a very high initial viral load. Under these conditions, it is not unreasonable that immunity of any kind (from infection or vaccination) would not be sufficient to prevent symptomatic COVID19 infections.

yosito 5y ago
Not that mines have a great reputation for safe operation, but who made the call to allow unvaccinated people to continue working in the mine?

adminscoffee 5y ago

there's a gamma now? nature is sure on it version control game

capableweb 5y ago
There is even more and it's not nature, it's WHO (and representatives from GISAID, Nextstrain, Pango). Currently designated Variants of Concern: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta Currently designated Variants of Interest: Eta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants/ https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-varian...

criticaltinker 5y ago

As other commenters have noted, this case study further supports the widespread observations that COVID-19 vaccines reduce the chance of severe (symptomatic) illness but do not necessarily prevent infection and transmission. The authors of this study conjecture that the unvaccinated asymptomatic “patient 40” may have been the source of the infections seen in the other fully vaccinated patients - however this was a minor point as limited rational and evidence was provided. That being said, IMO there seems to be a growing public opinion that unvaccinated individuals are to blame for the increasing dominance of variants of concern (delta, gamma, etc). One counterpoint that I’ve come across during my own review of the literature, is the idea that imperfect vaccines can cause selective pressure which enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. For example see this peer reviewed publication from 2015: “Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens” (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...). My understanding is that this is a relatively new and perhaps highly understudied phenomenon. I wanted to share the idea here because it seems conspicuously missing from many of these discussions. Furthermore, I’d love to hear feedback from someone with more expertise - or just trade relevant links with others who are diving into primary sources as a way to form an educated and well rounded opinion.

Izkata 5y ago
> One counterpoint that I’ve come across during my own review of the literature, is the idea that imperfect vaccines can cause selective pressure which enhances the fitness of highly virulent pathogens. This is what happened with "Marek's disease", a virus-caused disease in chickens. The vaccine was "leaky" and ended up selecting for a more deadly form, such that now all chickens worldwide have to be vaccinated for it or they'll die if they get infected - which didn't used to be the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease
- sschueller 5y ago
  So does this mean we made this pandemic worse than the one from 1918 when we didn't have a vaccine?

sschueller 5y ago

Off topic but I wonder if one could build a "Covid Canary". A device that can alarm when there is a presence of Covid in the air in an enclosed room. Supposedly there are several companies working on a covid breathalizer.

effie 5y ago
When this tech comes, only trust the autonomous ones not connected to Internet or other means of control.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Maybe sars2 will turn out like the cold viruses - impossible to vaccinate against.

scotty79 5y ago
I don't think we ever tried to vaccinate against other cold viruses. With mRNA tech I hope we'll eventually try.
rwallace 5y ago
Are the cold viruses impossible to vaccinate against? I always assumed they were the same as flu – possible, but you need new vaccines every year because the strains keep shifting – it's just that the severity of colds is low enough that we don't bother. Is that not the case?

_user112 5y ago

You're not meant to go backwards in the alphabet. Going upwards gives the illusion of escalation, creating more panic.

scotty79 5y ago
Gamma isn't later variant than Delta. It's one of the first four concerning ones we know about for some time already.

vmception 5y ago

> No clinically severe COVID-19 (1) was observed, and no patient was hospitalized. > All had Pfizer vaccine. Why don’t they lead with that as it is the expected result.

tonywastaken 5y ago

Does French Guiana have the Pfizer vaccine for the general population? Or did the gold miners have Pfizer vaccines procured for them by the owner of the mine/government?