21 ms·

Purely anecdotal but I'm double vaccinated (Astra Zeneca) and I caught Covid recently. It was probably Delta as 99% of cases in UK are. I know of quite a few va

by jmfldn 5y ago

Purely anecdotal but I'm double vaccinated (Astra Zeneca) and I caught Covid recently. It was probably Delta as 99% of cases in UK are. I know of quite a few vaccinated friends who've caught it recently too. Mainly AZ I think but one was Pfizer (single jabbed). Anyway, none of us had severe illness although I felt pretty rough for a few days like I had a really bad cold and smell went for a week completely. I was basically fine though and everyone else I know is too who got it recently. The point is that it does seem like this Delta variant breaks through regularly and it does seem (again, purely anecdotal) like it's v infectious. Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree. It does highlight however the need to not be complacent. Vaccines don't seem to be stopping the spread right now as much as you might think, and the high number of cases combined with high vaccination rates is an obvious selection pressure. More variants are inevitably coming and it does seem like this virus is bucking the trend and not necessarily becoming less potent despite increased tranmissability in some variants My conclusion is that, whilst I welcome the UK being sort of "back to normal", let's keep up the mask wearing, hygiene standards and so on. It's a balance but I sense things are getting a bit too lax. I'm not overly anxious but let's stick to the precautionary principle a bit more.

kzrdude 5y ago
It's not normal until we can forget about it all. (So it will take time!)
loosescrews 5y ago
Note that it appears that it is still unknown how likely breakthrough infections are to result in long Covid. The very limited data that does exist indicates that the likelyhood is rather high (~20%). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/well/live/vaccine-long-covid-breakthrough-infection.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/well/live/vaccine-long-co...
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
  Long Covid has the same symptoms as stress, anxiety and depression, which are to be expected after contracting a pandemic level virus and being forced to isolate. Is there any proof yet that it is any more than that?
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Stress, anxiety and depression don't show up as lung damage on MRI scans.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      What are the stats on that, especially vs. other severe respiratory diseases? Asking because I've had "long covid" since long before there was a COVID, so either everyone's making a bigger deal out of it than necessary, or I'm actually much worse off relative to normal than I thought and I should really be questioning my doctors.
      - Closi 5y ago
        > Asking because I've had "long covid" since long before there was a COVID Well that isn’t “Long Covid” then. Symptoms can come from a variety of causes, and just because you suffered some of the same symptoms unrelated to a Covid infection doesn’t mean that others won’t experience similar symptoms after Covid.
        nitrogen 5y ago
        So what are the percentages of people who will have long-term symptoms from Covid, how does that compare in severity and frequency to other respiratory diseases, and if it wasn't something people cared about before Covid, why do they care now?
        Closi 5y ago
        > So what are the percentages of people who will have long-term symptoms from Covid Im from the UK, so for rates here see https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/1april2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... although I’m sure the USA will have their own stats. > how does that compare in severity and frequency to other respiratory diseases I’m not sure and that’s a very wide question, but the main difference is we have never had such a large amount of the population get a respiratory disease so quickly because of the transmissability. > if it wasn't something people cared about before Covid, why do they care now? Some people cared about it before Covid, and now more people care about it because it’s becoming more prevalent with the spread of Covid. I mean to ask the same question - why didn’t people really care about respiratory viruses until about 2 years ago?
- phkahler 5y ago
  Isn't long Covid caused by damage from the spike proteins? In that case, repeatedly giving people the vaccine might do damage as well since it gets you to produce those spike proteins right?
  - eecc 5y ago
    orders of magnitude less though.
  - red_trumpet 5y ago
    What's your source that spike proteins cause long covid? This article[1] says the cause of long covid is still not clear. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57833394 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57833394
  - nradov 5y ago
    Long COVID isn't a distinct disease, it's just a vague label for a set of non specific symptoms. There is evidence that some cases are caused by re-activation of dormant Epstein-Barr virus infections. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233978/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233978/ If proven correct that wouldn't be at all surprising. We already know that major stresses can sometimes reactivate EBV. It might be a good idea to also test all COVID-19 patients for EBV.
  - undersuit 5y ago
    The spike proteins allow Covid to enter your cell where its actual RNA coopts the cellular machinery of the cell to reproduce. After enough copies of the virus are assembled the RNA coopted cell is made to kill itself by self-lysis releasing the new viruses. The spike protein itself is not dangerous.
    - singingfish 5y ago
      I think it kind of is because it's got a similar binding affinity to heparin. Heparin is a first responder chemical in the immune system. Coopting a low level part of the immune system like that is rather more dangerous than if it were getting entry via some other mechanism. On the other hand I could be wrong about this.
code_duck 5y ago
> it does seem like this virus is bucking the trend and not necessarily becoming less potent despite increased tranmissability in some variants I would think causing more severe symptoms is a disadvantage for a Covid strain in terms of selection, because people affected by such an illness are more likely to go into quarantine or a hospital, reducing transmission.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  From what I understand: Not if symptoms appear many days after the infection. Covid easily transmits when it's still in the upper parts of the body. Once it gets into the chest/pulmonary system and you start manifesting symptoms and it start inflicting long lasting damages it has already contaminated others. What happens then and after that doesn't apply pressure to the virus to be less virulent or lethal.
  - code_duck 5y ago
    True. A longer asymptomatic incubation period is also an evolutionary advantage.
    - rolph 5y ago
      when reproduction[X] occurs before a selective factor[y] is in play, the selective factor has no first order influence on reproductive success. the theory of inverse relationship between severity of symptoms and transmissibility, is based on the idea that sick individuals spend more time laying in convolesence than interacting with other individuals. this mechanism goes out the window when the infection is transmissible before symptoms appear. this is the case with covid, i wish it was other than wishfull hoping but it isnt.
      - godmode2019 5y ago
        Its also based on what is not getting used to increase fitness gets repurposed. Causing illness in the host after it has finished spreading has no evolutionary advantage. So those traits are less likely to make it to the next epoch.
mynameishere 5y ago
a bit more A bit more until the virus decides to go away? Or a bit more until they invent a non-leaky vaccine? Or a bit more like when the cows come home? Because that's what you are talking about. A bit more forever.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  A bit more until, by combination of the virus mutating to less dangerous forms and everyone's immune system being primed against it, it settles somewhere between common cold and the flu.
  - jmfldn 5y ago
    Yes someone thing like this. Exactly where we draw the line now is the hard question. I don't think we're massively off the mark but I feel we could be proceeding a bit more slowly is all. I'm not advocating the reverse gear or massively changing course. We're not quite out of the woods is the point.
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    It’s already well outside the top causes of death among the vaccinated.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Lets start with "Lets be precautious until hospitals stop triage of care". Maybe we should be precautious until hospitalization levels return to something looking like normal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... > Man shot 6 times waits more than a week for surgery after hospital is overwhelmed by covid --------- When our hospitals are full, we should be cautious. When our hospitals empty out, we can open up a bit more. This obviously is location-dependent (and higher-vaccinated areas can afford to open up more). But the absolute goal in every location is to keep hospitals functioning, and the relative stress levels of doctors / nurses at a reasonable level. I know in my state, we've been having to employ student nurses before they've graduated, so that there's enough staff around. As long as hospitals feel the need for emergency measures, we need to be precautious and doing what we can to clamp down on the sickness.
tommymachine 5y ago
Do you have awareness that your anecdotal data, even if it were more than anecdotal, still would not prove that the shots you've taken reduced the symptoms, as many cases are asymptomatic / mild symptoms anyways?
- jmfldn 5y ago
  Sure, it's anecdotal not proof and in no way scientific my self assessment. I've just noticed a trend amongst friends recently.
  - tommymachine 5y ago
    The criticism I made wasn't about the anecdotal nature of your post, but the lack of logic in the conclusions you drew from it. It's amazing how people of your persuasion must avoid at all cost viewing their own thinking from a logical framework.
    - jmfldn 5y ago
      The point in my sharing this as 'anecdotal' is that this is my subjective view, and that from where I sit, these conclusions might follow but the correlation might be coincidental too. I.e maybe I avoided serious illness for some other reason; maybe I have no antibodies and the vaccine didn't trigger a response in me but I'm one of many who had it mildly. There are any number of other possible explanations. I'm not making any scientific logically bullet proof statements here, I'm speaking as an armchair pundit thinking "hmm, seems like a lot of vaccinated people I know have the virus all of a sudden. Seems like vaccines might be helping with the severity of the illness, maybe I was one of them. However, I wonder if all this means we should exercise just a bit more caution until we're sure this high infection rate isn't a problem in the overall fight we're engaged in". The actual hard logic and policy I'll leave to the scientists and policy makers but, in the UK, at least the latter have a chequered history.
    - technothrasher 5y ago
      You invoke "you people" and then draw an unfounded and non-sequitur conclusion about your interlocutor's motivation while asking them to think with a logical framework???
zzt123 5y ago
Same. My breakthrough infection lasted over a week. Nothing serious, but definitely very infectious, so I self quarantined. I’ve had minimal social contact and just about avoided COVID the original, so it was surprising how quickly I caught Delta after it became dominant.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Since more people are vaccinated, they don’t always know that they carry. It adds a lot to the contagiousness. They may also be less careful, due to the insurance paradox (insured people have more accidents).
- cmoscoso 5y ago
  Sick for a week despite being vaccinated?
  - zzt123 5y ago
    Yep. Despite 2 shots of Pfizer, the second of which was in early May.
belter 5y ago
Thanks for sharing your experience. >"... Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree...." Important to note, vaccines do not protect you, its the immune response they trigger and the level of antibodies that will protect you. What really should be happening should be a mass vaccination program and a mass antibodies level testing program at the same time. Except for a few clinical studies, whose results are only now starting to come out I do not think any country is doing that. Frankly it puzzles me a little bit. There is not enough data yet to see how these antibodies levels reduce with time, but there is already plenty of information to show they drop dramatically after 6 months, hence the talk now of the third shot. Hence I think its better to say vaccines will produce level of antibodies that will protect...for now. "Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines" https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  > What really should be happening should be a mass vaccination program Compulsory mass vaccination using the current vaccines poses a serious public health risk [1][2][3]. See my other comments here for more explanation and citations. For these reasons, vaccination strategies should be highly targeted towards vulnerable populations, and should be heavily supplemented by additional therapeutic modalities. > and a mass antibodies level testing program at the same time Antibody levels are used as proxy for protection [4], but higher levels of antibodies do not necessarily always translate to higher levels of protection. In fact, individuals with undetectable levels of antibodies can still have robust and durable immunity [5][6][7]. There is plenty of literature on antibody levels reducing with time [8][9], but again, antibody levels are only one aspect of a complex immune response. [1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ [2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evolution-of-sars-cov-2-26-july-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti... [3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016.2562 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016... [4] SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positivity protects against reinfection for at least seven months with 95% efficacy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33937733/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33937733/ [5] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf [6] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(21)00203-2 https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37... [7] Rapid induction of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells is associated with coordinated humoral and cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3 https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3 [8] Antibody Responses 8 Months after Asymptomatic or Mild SARS-CoV-2 Infection https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920668/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920668/ [9] Naturally enhanced neutralizing breadth against SARS-CoV-2 one year after infection https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03696-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03696-9
tasogare 5y ago
> The point is that it does seem like this Delta variant breaks through regularly and it does seem (again, purely anecdotal) like it's v infectious. Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree. If numbers from IHU Méditerranée are to be believed, the Indian variant is about 6 times less dangerous than the English one. Way more infectious and less dangerous, the latter part helped mutating it to the former. And that's the numbers without taking vaccination into account. I wish medias would relay the information fully instead of spreading fear by only telling about the more infectious part. If indeed less dangerous this is a very good news that this strain is spreading more.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  > IHU Méditerranée I'd wait a bit for someone else to provide a second opinion considering Raoult track records regarding covid.
- pama 5y ago
  Assuming that all of Florida has the delta variant, right now 53% of all adult ICU patients is with COVID-19, and the total people in hospitals with COVID is about 79 per 100K. So I don’t understand why anyone thinks this variant is less dangerous. https://www.fha.org/covid-19.html https://www.fha.org/covid-19.html
  - ls612 5y ago
    Less dangerous on an average individual level, more dangerous since its so contagious and can infect every last unvaccinated person who doesn't have antibodies (and a few who do).
    - pama 5y ago
      I haven’t seen any credible evidence yet that delta is less dangerous at the individual level than alpha or than the original virus. We know that if a person is vaccinated, then exposure to the original variant is less dangerous than exposure to delta (based on limited controlled studies).
bingohbangoh 5y ago
How long do you think we'll be keeping up the mask wearing given that "more variants are inevitably coming?"
- jmfldn 5y ago
  No idea, this is a deeply complex question that I'm not qualified to answer. I'm merely wondering out loud as a member of the public if we have our policy around this calibrated quite right.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  It has to end at some point, and for me and most other people where I live in the US, it mostly has.
  - bingohbangoh 5y ago
    I thought the same last summer. It's always "almost over" yet there's chatter of Lockdown 3.0 here in the tristate area.
    - jimmaswell 5y ago
      I see in New York's case that there's been a big rise in cases but barely a blip in deaths, as opposed to both rising in step in Texas, I'm guessing largely due to vaccination rate. So I expect this winter will be a lot better.
    - MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
      No lockdowns are going to happen, but I expect to be masking up for at least another 6 months. Not a big deal, definitely better than it was last August, that’s for sure.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    >It has to end at some point In some countries at least it might become normalized the same way it has in say Japan or Singapore with a history of respiratory disease, the UK does not have the same aversion to public health measures as the US.
tunesmith 5y ago
"Selective pressure". I find this phrase really confusing, because I think people use it differently. I'm still trying to nail down my own knowledge about this, but here's the gist I have so far. Viruses are not like bacteria. Bacteria can mutate in direct response to antibiotics. Viruses cannot mutate in direct response to vaccines. Some people use "selection pressure" to describe what happens with bacteria and antibiotics. Others use it in a looser sense. Viruses mutate purely randomly. Now, if a virus happens to mutate in a way that escapes vaccines, and if vaccinated people are more likely to party because they are vaccinated, then yes, you could argue the mutation has an advantage against other variants the vaccine has protected against, in a social sense. Some people use "selection pressure" in this sense, which I think causes confusion. So the more relevant question is, if a virus mutates in an unvaccinated person, and that mutation happens to have the ability to escape all current vaccines, then, can the virus spread faster in a 50% vaccinated community than a 0% vaccinated community? Answers as far as I can tell: - Arguably yes, if the 0% vaccinated community is so sick from other variants that they aren't out and about to get exposed to the new variant. But I think this answer is cheating and doesn't get to the heart of the question. So, control for population activity and assume that both the 0% and 50% populations have the same chance of being exposed. - If the 0% vaccinated community is infected with variants that can "crowd out" the newer mutation, then it could grow faster in the 50% vaccinated community. But I don't know if this is actually possible - I do know it's possible to catch multiple variants at one time, and I'd expect that usually a mutation that is more fit in terms of escapability might also have fitness advantages with transmissibility. - If the mutation responded to the vaccine, in a direct biological sense, then it would clearly grow faster in the 50% population since it wouldn't have existed otherwise. But this is the scenario that not possible as I understand it, since it is based on a misunderstanding of how viruses work. I welcome any corrections from those who are more familiar with this.
- undersuit 5y ago
  >Bacteria can mutate in direct response to antibiotics. Viruses cannot mutate in direct response to vaccines. What do you mean by this? Are you a Lamarckian?
  - 5y ago
stakkur 5y ago
Current breakthrough rate in the US is .004%, including Delta. In fact, vaccines are generally working as well or better than expected against all known variants.
- resource0x 5y ago
  Could you please give a scientific explanation of the difference between the most vaccinated country and one of the least vaccinated countries located next to it https://www.google.com/search?q=israel+covid+cases&rlz=1C1CH https://www.google.com/search?q=israel+covid+cases&rlz=1C1CH... https://www.google.com/search?q=palestine+covid+cases&rlz=1C1C https://www.google.com/search?q=palestine+covid+cases&rlz=1C......
  - elif 5y ago
    I am not an apologist for vaccine utopianism and don't agree with the other commenter but your particular example suffers the same unfortunate fate of a point I made in the past. The scientific explanation is that Google infographics suck. They are sourced from wikipedia data and have huge gaps and sometimes even absurd duplicates. If you look at a consistent data source[0] you will see that the 7-day average case rate in Palestine has gone from 131 on August 11th to 699 August 20th, a doubling time of 1.42 days. This would be extremely rapid transmission. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine
    - resource0x 5y ago
      Thank you! I didn't know about this resource, it's quite helpful! The site makes it possible to compare any two countries on the same graph. That's what I did, but the qualitative effect looks as sharp as in google's graphs. Please take a look https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine?country=PSE~ISR https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine?cou...
- stakkur 5y ago
  For the inevitable Reddit-like downvoting above, I invite you to research it yourself: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...
dcolkitt 5y ago
There’s a question of preferences that too often gets buried in this debate. If Covid becomes endemic at around its current severity, what level of pandemic restrictions are you willing to accept forever? For me personally, Covid would have to be at least 100 times worse before I’d support masking forever. But I get the sense that some people barely see any downside to it. I think these cross-views drive so much if the underlying debate. But because we’re not talking about the hard long-term questions we’re getting bogged down in largely short term spats about case spikes, vaccine boosters, etc.
- aflag 5y ago
  What's so bad about face masks? Just trying to understand.
  - OliverGilan 5y ago
    I wear glasses and masks are basically untenable. I have yet to wear a mask and not fog up my glasses. Maybe I'm just an idiot, I don't know, but being able to see properly is far more valuable to me than not getting COVID (in it's current state and threat level to me).
    - dboreham 5y ago
      With some work it's possible to find and fit masks that don't fog glasses. Fwiw in order to work effectively as an "outbound" filter , the mask must not duct exhaled air around it's seal with the face. So fogging means it isn't working.
      - jader201 5y ago
        Then most masks, by your logic (and not necessarily arguing your logic) aren’t working. The only way to completely seal off your mouth and nose is to wear a more fitted mask. The masks most (probably 99%+) people are wearing are ducting air on either side of the nose. And yes, most masks have the metal piece to help with this, but it doesn’t work. No matter how I adjust the metal piece, air makes its way out. So if what you’re saying is true, these cloth/disposable masks are not working, and the CDC should be telling everyone to stop wearing them, and switch to ones that properly seal your nose/mouth. > With some work it's possible to find and fit masks that don't fog glasses. I’m not convinced this is true, or maybe my face just won’t work with the typical mask. But most (all?) people I know that have glasses fog them up, with any amount of adjustment of the metal piece/mask. EDIT: I see a downvote already, so curious how this is a flawed extrapolation. My logic is simply assuming the parent’s logic is true, and extrapolating from that. I’m not explicitly agreeing or disagreeing with it. A downvote means you either feel my extrapolation is flawed (please explain), or you think the parent’s logic is flawed (in which case you shouldn’t be downvoting my extrapolation).
betwixthewires 5y ago
> ...the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree. Anecdotally, you don't know that, you don't know what caused you to have a mild case, if this had happened a year ago you wouldn't be giving credit to a vaccine. > it does seem like this virus is bucking the trend and not necessarily becoming less potent Don't you think it's possible your very mild case might be evidence against this claim? Anecdotal, of course. I haven't seen the data for infection vs hospitalization/fatality rate for the Delta variant against previous ones, but it just seems to me that someone having caught it and had a very mild case wouldn't logically jump to "it isn't less deadly."
- MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
  The numbers don’t lie, .001% of vaccinated people end up dying from covid, which is an order of magnitude less than folks who aren’t vaccinated.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    OK, that's good, but the claim I was responding to was that the new variant is not less deadly than the old one. I was asking about infection v hospital rates for the old and new variants. Also with all these different variants going around, if the newer one is less deadly it would skew that number unless the different variant cases, deaths and vaccination statuses are all accounted for.
    - MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
      A variant can be more dangerous even if it’s not technically more deadly simply because it’s more contagious.If a virus is 10x as transmissible, and a lot more people get infected than would otherwise, a 1% mortality rate would result in a lot more dead bodies
- jmfldn 5y ago
  Sure I have no idea why the case was mild. This is just me saying "I seem to know a lot of vaccinated people who had mild cases". "it just seems to me that someone having caught it and had a very mild case wouldn't logically jump to "it isn't less deadly." I wasn't basing that on my own experience, just on random reports of studies I've picked up on. In two different studies from Canada and Scotland for example, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus strains. So it does a least seem possible that it's both more infectious and more deadly to hospitalized individuals than other strains. It does seem like an unusual mutation therefore in that its both more deadly in theory, and more infectious. This is all I'm saying here.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
I'll get down voted but... COVID and it's variants now have a growing reserve in the mammal animal populations of the world. If we decide to continue this fight we must go in eyes wide open that this is an unwinnable war that will go on forever with ever new versions of vaccine immune COVID. The problem is people believeing it will be over. And using that belief to justify opinions and action against others who believe the opposite... which is... since it's not going away we just have to live with it. We can not stop society for this. Society will collapse before this is eradicated to levels some members of public hope for. You must consider the mutability of a virus along with is other attributes and respond accordingly. Perhaps next we work on preventing earthquakes and volcanoes.
- zpeti 5y ago
  There is nothing untrue in this statement, shameful that you are getting downvoted. People just can’t accept that COVID zero is impossible. The only way it could happen is if we find a prophylactic drug, and we all take it together, but this seems like a dream too.
devnull3 5y ago
I think a better metric now (compared to March 2020) is number of severe cases and hospitalizations and not number of infections. I wonder if we counted how many people got common cold/flu before the pandemic that number would also be large.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  A nearby county is one of the few in the state that is honestly reporting the share of vaccinated cases being hospitalized. Only 2/3rds if the hospitals are reporting, and about half of the patients in those 2/3rds of hospitals are vaccinated. Of course without knowing the age of the patients and the vaccination rate for that age bracket it’s hard to make much sense of the numbers. That is intentional. The data are available and could be reported but they are not, intentionally. That most counties are withholding this information— the share of hospitalized cases that are vaccinated— is unconscionable to me. Is that not misinformation? They have the data and could report it, they’re reporting all sorts of other information about hospitalizations. It’s quite clear that they are withholding this information to help market the vaccines to the unvaccinated. If they reported the share of severe cases that were fully vaccinated it might give justification to the hesitant. The problem is, by withholding the data to shade the truth and provide “nudges” as Fauci likes to say, they are instilling a false sense of safety in many vaccinated high risk people. I’ve had arguments with elderly high risk family members when I tried to alert them to the Israel data and the fact that the vaccines were losing efficacy. They thought I’d fallen prey to anti-vaxx conspiracy theories. They we’re “trusting the science” that was being quoted by their favorite politicians and news outlets. I was paying attention to the international scientific literature. Ironically, similar arguments played out at the outset of the pandemic when I tried to warn them that despite the WHO repeatedly saying there was no evidence of a pandemic, there indeed was a pandemic rapidly approaching. One went to Chinese New Year party in San Francisco, encouraged specifically by Nancy Palosi. Similarly, at the outset of the pandemic I tried to tell them to wear masks, but our vaunted experts told them not to. Up until a few days ago, they thought their vaccines rendered them invincible. Thankfully the sourced they trust are now talking about boosters, so they are being more cautious. I’m sick of dangerous misinformation but it’s mostly come from the media and politicians. The scientific literature with a few notable examples has been solid. Sadly most posters in this thread won’t read it. Instead they’ll “trust the science” that the news muppets tell them to.
avnigo 5y ago
From the CDC [0] referring to this preprint [1]: > Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to be infectious for a shorter period. It appears that vaccinated people have the same viral load to spread when they're initially infected, but it is significantly diminished shortly thereafter. [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-variant.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var... [1]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v...
peakaboo 5y ago
Have you even thought about the kind of future you are promoting here? A society where people wear masks and continually force vaccinates their bodies? This used to be dystopian science fiction just a few years ago. Now I see people like you acting like that's where we should be heading. So extreamly weird! It's like you don't understand how unnatural it is for humans to wear masks and inject chemical substances into their blood streams. Do you think about what you are saying? What kind of world it creates for humanity?
- subsection1h 5y ago
  > A society where people wear masks and continually force vaccinates their bodies? This used to be dystopian science fiction just a few years ago. Hi, 57-day-old account. People have been wearing masks in Japan for many years. I have gotten flu vaccinations for decades. Where have you lived all your life that flu vaccinations are considered science fiction? Mississippi?

by jmfldn 5y ago

kzrdude 5y ago

It's not normal until we can forget about it all. (So it will take time!)

loosescrews 5y ago

Note that it appears that it is still unknown how likely breakthrough infections are to result in long Covid. The very limited data that does exist indicates that the likelyhood is rather high (~20%). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/well/live/vaccine-long-covid-breakthrough-infection.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/well/live/vaccine-long-co...

irthomasthomas 5y ago
Long Covid has the same symptoms as stress, anxiety and depression, which are to be expected after contracting a pandemic level virus and being forced to isolate. Is there any proof yet that it is any more than that?
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Stress, anxiety and depression don't show up as lung damage on MRI scans.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    What are the stats on that, especially vs. other severe respiratory diseases? Asking because I've had "long covid" since long before there was a COVID, so either everyone's making a bigger deal out of it than necessary, or I'm actually much worse off relative to normal than I thought and I should really be questioning my doctors.
    - Closi 5y ago
      > Asking because I've had "long covid" since long before there was a COVID Well that isn’t “Long Covid” then. Symptoms can come from a variety of causes, and just because you suffered some of the same symptoms unrelated to a Covid infection doesn’t mean that others won’t experience similar symptoms after Covid.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        So what are the percentages of people who will have long-term symptoms from Covid, how does that compare in severity and frequency to other respiratory diseases, and if it wasn't something people cared about before Covid, why do they care now?
        Closi 5y ago
        > So what are the percentages of people who will have long-term symptoms from Covid Im from the UK, so for rates here see https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/prevalenceofongoingsymptomsfollowingcoronaviruscovid19infectionintheuk/1april2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... although I’m sure the USA will have their own stats. > how does that compare in severity and frequency to other respiratory diseases I’m not sure and that’s a very wide question, but the main difference is we have never had such a large amount of the population get a respiratory disease so quickly because of the transmissability. > if it wasn't something people cared about before Covid, why do they care now? Some people cared about it before Covid, and now more people care about it because it’s becoming more prevalent with the spread of Covid. I mean to ask the same question - why didn’t people really care about respiratory viruses until about 2 years ago?
phkahler 5y ago
Isn't long Covid caused by damage from the spike proteins? In that case, repeatedly giving people the vaccine might do damage as well since it gets you to produce those spike proteins right?
- eecc 5y ago
  orders of magnitude less though.
- red_trumpet 5y ago
  What's your source that spike proteins cause long covid? This article[1] says the cause of long covid is still not clear. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57833394 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57833394
- nradov 5y ago
  Long COVID isn't a distinct disease, it's just a vague label for a set of non specific symptoms. There is evidence that some cases are caused by re-activation of dormant Epstein-Barr virus infections. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233978/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233978/ If proven correct that wouldn't be at all surprising. We already know that major stresses can sometimes reactivate EBV. It might be a good idea to also test all COVID-19 patients for EBV.
- undersuit 5y ago
  The spike proteins allow Covid to enter your cell where its actual RNA coopts the cellular machinery of the cell to reproduce. After enough copies of the virus are assembled the RNA coopted cell is made to kill itself by self-lysis releasing the new viruses. The spike protein itself is not dangerous.
  - singingfish 5y ago
    I think it kind of is because it's got a similar binding affinity to heparin. Heparin is a first responder chemical in the immune system. Coopting a low level part of the immune system like that is rather more dangerous than if it were getting entry via some other mechanism. On the other hand I could be wrong about this.

code_duck 5y ago

> it does seem like this virus is bucking the trend and not necessarily becoming less potent despite increased tranmissability in some variants I would think causing more severe symptoms is a disadvantage for a Covid strain in terms of selection, because people affected by such an illness are more likely to go into quarantine or a hospital, reducing transmission.

johnchristopher 5y ago
From what I understand: Not if symptoms appear many days after the infection. Covid easily transmits when it's still in the upper parts of the body. Once it gets into the chest/pulmonary system and you start manifesting symptoms and it start inflicting long lasting damages it has already contaminated others. What happens then and after that doesn't apply pressure to the virus to be less virulent or lethal.
- code_duck 5y ago
  True. A longer asymptomatic incubation period is also an evolutionary advantage.
  - rolph 5y ago
    when reproduction[X] occurs before a selective factor[y] is in play, the selective factor has no first order influence on reproductive success. the theory of inverse relationship between severity of symptoms and transmissibility, is based on the idea that sick individuals spend more time laying in convolesence than interacting with other individuals. this mechanism goes out the window when the infection is transmissible before symptoms appear. this is the case with covid, i wish it was other than wishfull hoping but it isnt.
    - godmode2019 5y ago
      Its also based on what is not getting used to increase fitness gets repurposed. Causing illness in the host after it has finished spreading has no evolutionary advantage. So those traits are less likely to make it to the next epoch.

mynameishere 5y ago

a bit more A bit more until the virus decides to go away? Or a bit more until they invent a non-leaky vaccine? Or a bit more like when the cows come home? Because that's what you are talking about. A bit more forever.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
A bit more until, by combination of the virus mutating to less dangerous forms and everyone's immune system being primed against it, it settles somewhere between common cold and the flu.
- jmfldn 5y ago
  Yes someone thing like this. Exactly where we draw the line now is the hard question. I don't think we're massively off the mark but I feel we could be proceeding a bit more slowly is all. I'm not advocating the reverse gear or massively changing course. We're not quite out of the woods is the point.
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  It’s already well outside the top causes of death among the vaccinated.
dragontamer 5y ago
Lets start with "Lets be precautious until hospitals stop triage of care". Maybe we should be precautious until hospitalization levels return to something looking like normal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez-houston-covid-hospitals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/16/joel-valdez... > Man shot 6 times waits more than a week for surgery after hospital is overwhelmed by covid --------- When our hospitals are full, we should be cautious. When our hospitals empty out, we can open up a bit more. This obviously is location-dependent (and higher-vaccinated areas can afford to open up more). But the absolute goal in every location is to keep hospitals functioning, and the relative stress levels of doctors / nurses at a reasonable level. I know in my state, we've been having to employ student nurses before they've graduated, so that there's enough staff around. As long as hospitals feel the need for emergency measures, we need to be precautious and doing what we can to clamp down on the sickness.

tommymachine 5y ago

Do you have awareness that your anecdotal data, even if it were more than anecdotal, still would not prove that the shots you've taken reduced the symptoms, as many cases are asymptomatic / mild symptoms anyways?

jmfldn 5y ago
Sure, it's anecdotal not proof and in no way scientific my self assessment. I've just noticed a trend amongst friends recently.
- tommymachine 5y ago
  The criticism I made wasn't about the anecdotal nature of your post, but the lack of logic in the conclusions you drew from it. It's amazing how people of your persuasion must avoid at all cost viewing their own thinking from a logical framework.
  - jmfldn 5y ago
    The point in my sharing this as 'anecdotal' is that this is my subjective view, and that from where I sit, these conclusions might follow but the correlation might be coincidental too. I.e maybe I avoided serious illness for some other reason; maybe I have no antibodies and the vaccine didn't trigger a response in me but I'm one of many who had it mildly. There are any number of other possible explanations. I'm not making any scientific logically bullet proof statements here, I'm speaking as an armchair pundit thinking "hmm, seems like a lot of vaccinated people I know have the virus all of a sudden. Seems like vaccines might be helping with the severity of the illness, maybe I was one of them. However, I wonder if all this means we should exercise just a bit more caution until we're sure this high infection rate isn't a problem in the overall fight we're engaged in". The actual hard logic and policy I'll leave to the scientists and policy makers but, in the UK, at least the latter have a chequered history.
  - technothrasher 5y ago
    You invoke "you people" and then draw an unfounded and non-sequitur conclusion about your interlocutor's motivation while asking them to think with a logical framework???

zzt123 5y ago

Same. My breakthrough infection lasted over a week. Nothing serious, but definitely very infectious, so I self quarantined. I’ve had minimal social contact and just about avoided COVID the original, so it was surprising how quickly I caught Delta after it became dominant.

laurent92 5y ago
Since more people are vaccinated, they don’t always know that they carry. It adds a lot to the contagiousness. They may also be less careful, due to the insurance paradox (insured people have more accidents).
cmoscoso 5y ago
Sick for a week despite being vaccinated?
- zzt123 5y ago
  Yep. Despite 2 shots of Pfizer, the second of which was in early May.

belter 5y ago

Thanks for sharing your experience. >"... Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree...." Important to note, vaccines do not protect you, its the immune response they trigger and the level of antibodies that will protect you. What really should be happening should be a mass vaccination program and a mass antibodies level testing program at the same time. Except for a few clinical studies, whose results are only now starting to come out I do not think any country is doing that. Frankly it puzzles me a little bit. There is not enough data yet to see how these antibodies levels reduce with time, but there is already plenty of information to show they drop dramatically after 6 months, hence the talk now of the third shot. Hence I think its better to say vaccines will produce level of antibodies that will protect...for now. "Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines" https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...

criticaltinker 5y ago
> What really should be happening should be a mass vaccination program Compulsory mass vaccination using the current vaccines poses a serious public health risk [1][2][3]. See my other comments here for more explanation and citations. For these reasons, vaccination strategies should be highly targeted towards vulnerable populations, and should be heavily supplemented by additional therapeutic modalities. > and a mass antibodies level testing program at the same time Antibody levels are used as proxy for protection [4], but higher levels of antibodies do not necessarily always translate to higher levels of protection. In fact, individuals with undetectable levels of antibodies can still have robust and durable immunity [5][6][7]. There is plenty of literature on antibody levels reducing with time [8][9], but again, antibody levels are only one aspect of a complex immune response. [1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ [2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evolution-of-sars-cov-2-26-july-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti... [3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016.2562 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016... [4] SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positivity protects against reinfection for at least seven months with 95% efficacy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33937733/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33937733/ [5] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf [6] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(21)00203-2 https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37... [7] Rapid induction of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells is associated with coordinated humoral and cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3 https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3 [8] Antibody Responses 8 Months after Asymptomatic or Mild SARS-CoV-2 Infection https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920668/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920668/ [9] Naturally enhanced neutralizing breadth against SARS-CoV-2 one year after infection https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03696-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03696-9

tasogare 5y ago

> The point is that it does seem like this Delta variant breaks through regularly and it does seem (again, purely anecdotal) like it's v infectious. Of course the thing to emphasise is that, whilst it might break through, the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree. If numbers from IHU Méditerranée are to be believed, the Indian variant is about 6 times less dangerous than the English one. Way more infectious and less dangerous, the latter part helped mutating it to the former. And that's the numbers without taking vaccination into account. I wish medias would relay the information fully instead of spreading fear by only telling about the more infectious part. If indeed less dangerous this is a very good news that this strain is spreading more.

johnchristopher 5y ago
> IHU Méditerranée I'd wait a bit for someone else to provide a second opinion considering Raoult track records regarding covid.
pama 5y ago
Assuming that all of Florida has the delta variant, right now 53% of all adult ICU patients is with COVID-19, and the total people in hospitals with COVID is about 79 per 100K. So I don’t understand why anyone thinks this variant is less dangerous. https://www.fha.org/covid-19.html https://www.fha.org/covid-19.html
- ls612 5y ago
  Less dangerous on an average individual level, more dangerous since its so contagious and can infect every last unvaccinated person who doesn't have antibodies (and a few who do).
  - pama 5y ago
    I haven’t seen any credible evidence yet that delta is less dangerous at the individual level than alpha or than the original virus. We know that if a person is vaccinated, then exposure to the original variant is less dangerous than exposure to delta (based on limited controlled studies).

bingohbangoh 5y ago

How long do you think we'll be keeping up the mask wearing given that "more variants are inevitably coming?"

jmfldn 5y ago
No idea, this is a deeply complex question that I'm not qualified to answer. I'm merely wondering out loud as a member of the public if we have our policy around this calibrated quite right.
jimmaswell 5y ago
It has to end at some point, and for me and most other people where I live in the US, it mostly has.
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  I thought the same last summer. It's always "almost over" yet there's chatter of Lockdown 3.0 here in the tristate area.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    I see in New York's case that there's been a big rise in cases but barely a blip in deaths, as opposed to both rising in step in Texas, I'm guessing largely due to vaccination rate. So I expect this winter will be a lot better.
  - MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
    No lockdowns are going to happen, but I expect to be masking up for at least another 6 months. Not a big deal, definitely better than it was last August, that’s for sure.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >It has to end at some point In some countries at least it might become normalized the same way it has in say Japan or Singapore with a history of respiratory disease, the UK does not have the same aversion to public health measures as the US.

tunesmith 5y ago

"Selective pressure". I find this phrase really confusing, because I think people use it differently. I'm still trying to nail down my own knowledge about this, but here's the gist I have so far. Viruses are not like bacteria. Bacteria can mutate in direct response to antibiotics. Viruses cannot mutate in direct response to vaccines. Some people use "selection pressure" to describe what happens with bacteria and antibiotics. Others use it in a looser sense. Viruses mutate purely randomly. Now, if a virus happens to mutate in a way that escapes vaccines, and if vaccinated people are more likely to party because they are vaccinated, then yes, you could argue the mutation has an advantage against other variants the vaccine has protected against, in a social sense. Some people use "selection pressure" in this sense, which I think causes confusion. So the more relevant question is, if a virus mutates in an unvaccinated person, and that mutation happens to have the ability to escape all current vaccines, then, can the virus spread faster in a 50% vaccinated community than a 0% vaccinated community? Answers as far as I can tell: - Arguably yes, if the 0% vaccinated community is so sick from other variants that they aren't out and about to get exposed to the new variant. But I think this answer is cheating and doesn't get to the heart of the question. So, control for population activity and assume that both the 0% and 50% populations have the same chance of being exposed. - If the 0% vaccinated community is infected with variants that can "crowd out" the newer mutation, then it could grow faster in the 50% vaccinated community. But I don't know if this is actually possible - I do know it's possible to catch multiple variants at one time, and I'd expect that usually a mutation that is more fit in terms of escapability might also have fitness advantages with transmissibility. - If the mutation responded to the vaccine, in a direct biological sense, then it would clearly grow faster in the 50% population since it wouldn't have existed otherwise. But this is the scenario that not possible as I understand it, since it is based on a misunderstanding of how viruses work. I welcome any corrections from those who are more familiar with this.

undersuit 5y ago
>Bacteria can mutate in direct response to antibiotics. Viruses cannot mutate in direct response to vaccines. What do you mean by this? Are you a Lamarckian?
- 5y ago

stakkur 5y ago

Current breakthrough rate in the US is .004%, including Delta. In fact, vaccines are generally working as well or better than expected against all known variants.

resource0x 5y ago
Could you please give a scientific explanation of the difference between the most vaccinated country and one of the least vaccinated countries located next to it https://www.google.com/search?q=israel+covid+cases&rlz=1C1CH https://www.google.com/search?q=israel+covid+cases&rlz=1C1CH... https://www.google.com/search?q=palestine+covid+cases&rlz=1C1C https://www.google.com/search?q=palestine+covid+cases&rlz=1C......
- elif 5y ago
  I am not an apologist for vaccine utopianism and don't agree with the other commenter but your particular example suffers the same unfortunate fate of a point I made in the past. The scientific explanation is that Google infographics suck. They are sourced from wikipedia data and have huge gaps and sometimes even absurd duplicates. If you look at a consistent data source[0] you will see that the 7-day average case rate in Palestine has gone from 131 on August 11th to 699 August 20th, a doubling time of 1.42 days. This would be extremely rapid transmission. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine
  - resource0x 5y ago
    Thank you! I didn't know about this resource, it's quite helpful! The site makes it possible to compare any two countries on the same graph. That's what I did, but the qualitative effect looks as sharp as in google's graphs. Please take a look https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine?country=PSE~ISR https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/palestine?cou...
stakkur 5y ago
For the inevitable Reddit-like downvoting above, I invite you to research it yourself: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...

dcolkitt 5y ago

There’s a question of preferences that too often gets buried in this debate. If Covid becomes endemic at around its current severity, what level of pandemic restrictions are you willing to accept forever? For me personally, Covid would have to be at least 100 times worse before I’d support masking forever. But I get the sense that some people barely see any downside to it. I think these cross-views drive so much if the underlying debate. But because we’re not talking about the hard long-term questions we’re getting bogged down in largely short term spats about case spikes, vaccine boosters, etc.

aflag 5y ago
What's so bad about face masks? Just trying to understand.
- OliverGilan 5y ago
  I wear glasses and masks are basically untenable. I have yet to wear a mask and not fog up my glasses. Maybe I'm just an idiot, I don't know, but being able to see properly is far more valuable to me than not getting COVID (in it's current state and threat level to me).
  - dboreham 5y ago
    With some work it's possible to find and fit masks that don't fog glasses. Fwiw in order to work effectively as an "outbound" filter , the mask must not duct exhaled air around it's seal with the face. So fogging means it isn't working.
    - jader201 5y ago
      Then most masks, by your logic (and not necessarily arguing your logic) aren’t working. The only way to completely seal off your mouth and nose is to wear a more fitted mask. The masks most (probably 99%+) people are wearing are ducting air on either side of the nose. And yes, most masks have the metal piece to help with this, but it doesn’t work. No matter how I adjust the metal piece, air makes its way out. So if what you’re saying is true, these cloth/disposable masks are not working, and the CDC should be telling everyone to stop wearing them, and switch to ones that properly seal your nose/mouth. > With some work it's possible to find and fit masks that don't fog glasses. I’m not convinced this is true, or maybe my face just won’t work with the typical mask. But most (all?) people I know that have glasses fog them up, with any amount of adjustment of the metal piece/mask. EDIT: I see a downvote already, so curious how this is a flawed extrapolation. My logic is simply assuming the parent’s logic is true, and extrapolating from that. I’m not explicitly agreeing or disagreeing with it. A downvote means you either feel my extrapolation is flawed (please explain), or you think the parent’s logic is flawed (in which case you shouldn’t be downvoting my extrapolation).

betwixthewires 5y ago

> ...the vaccine still stops serious illness to a high degree. Anecdotally, you don't know that, you don't know what caused you to have a mild case, if this had happened a year ago you wouldn't be giving credit to a vaccine. > it does seem like this virus is bucking the trend and not necessarily becoming less potent Don't you think it's possible your very mild case might be evidence against this claim? Anecdotal, of course. I haven't seen the data for infection vs hospitalization/fatality rate for the Delta variant against previous ones, but it just seems to me that someone having caught it and had a very mild case wouldn't logically jump to "it isn't less deadly."

MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
The numbers don’t lie, .001% of vaccinated people end up dying from covid, which is an order of magnitude less than folks who aren’t vaccinated.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  OK, that's good, but the claim I was responding to was that the new variant is not less deadly than the old one. I was asking about infection v hospital rates for the old and new variants. Also with all these different variants going around, if the newer one is less deadly it would skew that number unless the different variant cases, deaths and vaccination statuses are all accounted for.
  - MagicWishMonkey 5y ago
    A variant can be more dangerous even if it’s not technically more deadly simply because it’s more contagious.If a virus is 10x as transmissible, and a lot more people get infected than would otherwise, a 1% mortality rate would result in a lot more dead bodies
jmfldn 5y ago
Sure I have no idea why the case was mild. This is just me saying "I seem to know a lot of vaccinated people who had mild cases". "it just seems to me that someone having caught it and had a very mild case wouldn't logically jump to "it isn't less deadly." I wasn't basing that on my own experience, just on random reports of studies I've picked up on. In two different studies from Canada and Scotland for example, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus strains. So it does a least seem possible that it's both more infectious and more deadly to hospitalized individuals than other strains. It does seem like an unusual mutation therefore in that its both more deadly in theory, and more infectious. This is all I'm saying here.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

I'll get down voted but... COVID and it's variants now have a growing reserve in the mammal animal populations of the world. If we decide to continue this fight we must go in eyes wide open that this is an unwinnable war that will go on forever with ever new versions of vaccine immune COVID. The problem is people believeing it will be over. And using that belief to justify opinions and action against others who believe the opposite... which is... since it's not going away we just have to live with it. We can not stop society for this. Society will collapse before this is eradicated to levels some members of public hope for. You must consider the mutability of a virus along with is other attributes and respond accordingly. Perhaps next we work on preventing earthquakes and volcanoes.

zpeti 5y ago
There is nothing untrue in this statement, shameful that you are getting downvoted. People just can’t accept that COVID zero is impossible. The only way it could happen is if we find a prophylactic drug, and we all take it together, but this seems like a dream too.

devnull3 5y ago

I think a better metric now (compared to March 2020) is number of severe cases and hospitalizations and not number of infections. I wonder if we counted how many people got common cold/flu before the pandemic that number would also be large.

newbamboo 5y ago
A nearby county is one of the few in the state that is honestly reporting the share of vaccinated cases being hospitalized. Only 2/3rds if the hospitals are reporting, and about half of the patients in those 2/3rds of hospitals are vaccinated. Of course without knowing the age of the patients and the vaccination rate for that age bracket it’s hard to make much sense of the numbers. That is intentional. The data are available and could be reported but they are not, intentionally. That most counties are withholding this information— the share of hospitalized cases that are vaccinated— is unconscionable to me. Is that not misinformation? They have the data and could report it, they’re reporting all sorts of other information about hospitalizations. It’s quite clear that they are withholding this information to help market the vaccines to the unvaccinated. If they reported the share of severe cases that were fully vaccinated it might give justification to the hesitant. The problem is, by withholding the data to shade the truth and provide “nudges” as Fauci likes to say, they are instilling a false sense of safety in many vaccinated high risk people. I’ve had arguments with elderly high risk family members when I tried to alert them to the Israel data and the fact that the vaccines were losing efficacy. They thought I’d fallen prey to anti-vaxx conspiracy theories. They we’re “trusting the science” that was being quoted by their favorite politicians and news outlets. I was paying attention to the international scientific literature. Ironically, similar arguments played out at the outset of the pandemic when I tried to warn them that despite the WHO repeatedly saying there was no evidence of a pandemic, there indeed was a pandemic rapidly approaching. One went to Chinese New Year party in San Francisco, encouraged specifically by Nancy Palosi. Similarly, at the outset of the pandemic I tried to tell them to wear masks, but our vaunted experts told them not to. Up until a few days ago, they thought their vaccines rendered them invincible. Thankfully the sourced they trust are now talking about boosters, so they are being more cautious. I’m sick of dangerous misinformation but it’s mostly come from the media and politicians. The scientific literature with a few notable examples has been solid. Sadly most posters in this thread won’t read it. Instead they’ll “trust the science” that the news muppets tell them to.

avnigo 5y ago

From the CDC [0] referring to this preprint [1]: > Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to be infectious for a shorter period. It appears that vaccinated people have the same viral load to spread when they're initially infected, but it is significantly diminished shortly thereafter. [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-variant.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var... [1]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v...

peakaboo 5y ago

Have you even thought about the kind of future you are promoting here? A society where people wear masks and continually force vaccinates their bodies? This used to be dystopian science fiction just a few years ago. Now I see people like you acting like that's where we should be heading. So extreamly weird! It's like you don't understand how unnatural it is for humans to wear masks and inject chemical substances into their blood streams. Do you think about what you are saying? What kind of world it creates for humanity?

subsection1h 5y ago
> A society where people wear masks and continually force vaccinates their bodies? This used to be dystopian science fiction just a few years ago. Hi, 57-day-old account. People have been wearing masks in Japan for many years. I have gotten flu vaccinations for decades. Where have you lived all your life that flu vaccinations are considered science fiction? Mississippi?