5 ms·

> I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious, but another, extremely effect and quick "treatment" is vaccination. Does every discussion of about post-exposure pr

> I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious, but another, extremely effect and quick "treatment" is vaccination. Does every discussion of about post-exposure prophylaxis have to have comments about vaccination? > And it works great without the constant need for testing. A primary reason for testing has been to help stop the spread of the virus (test positive = isolate), not necessarily to let people with mild symptoms or no symptoms know that they're infected. Vaccinated individuals can still spread the virus and some people are at higher risk even when vaccinated, so testing is still of value. > I have to imagine that anyone willing to undergo treatment at the very start of getting covid, would have also been willing to be vaccinated. That's quite an assumption. Without passing judgment about his decision not to get vaccinated and to throw the kitchen sink at COVID once he was infected, Joe Rogan is an example of a person who is willing to treat an infection but not get vaccinated. I doubt he's the only one. > Additionally, in my experience, physicians aren't terribly concerned about infections in vaccinated individuals. Vaccination certainly reduces the incidence of hospitalization and death, and the data to date suggests that vaccinated individuals are less likely to develop "long COVID" symptoms. But there's still a lot we don't know. Research indicates that individuals with breakthrough infections can have viral loads that are as high as unvaccinated individuals, and some percentage report courses of illness that are virtually identical to a typical course of illness in unvaccinated individuals (respiratory symptoms, extreme fatigue, etc.) so I think it's premature to make too many assumptions. Especially since in immunologically naive people, some with "mild" or even largely asymptomatic infections also report lasting issues too.

space_fountain 5y ago
Edit: My understanding of the science here was at least slightly wrong. Please see the reply from LurkingPenguin and eventually my reply to them I think results like vaccinated individuals “can” have viral loads as high as unvaccinated individuals are next to useless. I need to know how likely I am to have high viral loads and my understanding of the science there is that vaccines still do a decent job of lowering the odds. I know you aren’t really arguing against vaccination here, but it seems like it needed to be said and I think the “vaccinated individuals can have high viral loads” line is particularly bad
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > I think the “vaccinated individuals can have high viral loads” line is particularly bad https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v... https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-similar-between-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim... How is a statement about what some researchers are finding "particularly bad"? If vaccinated individuals routinely have viral loads as high as those seen in unvaccinated individuals, it warrants more research into how the virus affects their bodies and what, if any, risks they might face both short term and long term. According to one study[1], vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID by 49%. Given that some studies have found the incidence of long COVID is in the double digit percentages[2], exploring this issue is not purely academic. It is pertinent to the hundreds of millions of vaccinated individuals who are still at risk of infection, even if their risk of hospitalization and death has been significantly reduced. Science works when we ask and investigate important questions. It doesn't work when we ignore these questions because we're afraid of the optics and how they might be misconstrued by some people. In fact, when it comes to COVID generally, it seems evident to me that shying away from difficult questions has had the opposite of the intended effect. It has probably caused more people to adopt anti-science views and reject beneficial measures like vaccination. [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-09-02/risk-of-long-covid-falls-by-half-in-breakthrough-cases https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-09-02/... [2] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/more-than-one-third-of-covid-19-patients-may-experience-long-covid-symptoms https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/more-than-one-thir...
  - space_fountain 5y ago
    Welp, this is making me realize I was just wrong. My understanding of the science was something like you can find asymptomatic vaccinated individuals with similar viral loads to asymptomatic unvaccinated people, which is a bit meaningless when you're choosing a threshold for "infected" and when random chance will just see some people at any level. So to be clear it's not that I think the questions shouldn't be investigated, but a statement like "some vaccinated cases have high viral loads" is meaningless to explaining what my risk of spreading covid is. Trying to avoid the sort of bias that comes from trying to reinforce rather than question existing views, but I do still think the statement "No Significant Difference in Viral Load Between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated, Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Groups Infected with SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant" despite being much more precise is still a bit unintuitive in it's implication. Because essentially what this means right is that they sampled people's viral loads, and then cut out everyone below a value they choose to mean "infected". It's still true that even if I had symptoms because I'm vaccinated my odds of having a high viral load are much lower. Presumably if you didn't remove all the samples with less than some concentration you'd see significant differences. I think that something the scientists got wrong consistently with covid was not unflinchingly communicating what was likely to be true mostly out of a fear that the public would take interventions that only moderately improved their safety like wearing a mask, and start doing riskier things or because of a bias towards doing nothing when clear evidence didn't exist. It can feel like similar things are happening with vaccination where it does seem pretty clear that getting vaccinated reduces your risk of passing on covid both because you're less likely to ever get a colony of the virus sufficient to count as "infected" and because you're likely to have a shorter infection.
bawolff 5y ago
> Research indicates that individuals with breakthrough infections can have viral loads that are as high as unvaccinated individuals, and some percentage report courses of illness that are virtually identical to a typical course of illness in unvaccinated individuals But that's totally expected (depending of course on how you define "some"). If the vaccine had 100% efficacy, it would be shocking. The fact that it doesn't is not a surprise. I'm assuming the point you're trying to make is vaccines aren't as good as expected. If the point is just that there is still value in developing treatments even with vaccines, than yes i agree with you.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > I'm assuming the point you're trying to make is vaccines aren't as good as expected. No, I was responding to "Additionally, in my experience, physicians aren't terribly concerned about infections in vaccinated individuals" and pointing out that there's still a lot we don't know about the risks associated with infection after vaccination and arguing that these things deserve additional scientific study.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  This isn’t about ‘95% was unaffected and the vaccine didn’t work for the other 5%’. It’s about ‘the vaccine does not protect against getting infected and being infectious in over 50% of cases’.

space_fountain 5y ago

Edit: My understanding of the science here was at least slightly wrong. Please see the reply from LurkingPenguin and eventually my reply to them I think results like vaccinated individuals “can” have viral loads as high as unvaccinated individuals are next to useless. I need to know how likely I am to have high viral loads and my understanding of the science there is that vaccines still do a decent job of lowering the odds. I know you aren’t really arguing against vaccination here, but it seems like it needed to be said and I think the “vaccinated individuals can have high viral loads” line is particularly bad

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> I think the “vaccinated individuals can have high viral loads” line is particularly bad https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v... https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-similar-between-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim... How is a statement about what some researchers are finding "particularly bad"? If vaccinated individuals routinely have viral loads as high as those seen in unvaccinated individuals, it warrants more research into how the virus affects their bodies and what, if any, risks they might face both short term and long term. According to one study[1], vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID by 49%. Given that some studies have found the incidence of long COVID is in the double digit percentages[2], exploring this issue is not purely academic. It is pertinent to the hundreds of millions of vaccinated individuals who are still at risk of infection, even if their risk of hospitalization and death has been significantly reduced. Science works when we ask and investigate important questions. It doesn't work when we ignore these questions because we're afraid of the optics and how they might be misconstrued by some people. In fact, when it comes to COVID generally, it seems evident to me that shying away from difficult questions has had the opposite of the intended effect. It has probably caused more people to adopt anti-science views and reject beneficial measures like vaccination. [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-09-02/risk-of-long-covid-falls-by-half-in-breakthrough-cases https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-09-02/... [2] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/more-than-one-third-of-covid-19-patients-may-experience-long-covid-symptoms https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/more-than-one-thir...
- space_fountain 5y ago
  Welp, this is making me realize I was just wrong. My understanding of the science was something like you can find asymptomatic vaccinated individuals with similar viral loads to asymptomatic unvaccinated people, which is a bit meaningless when you're choosing a threshold for "infected" and when random chance will just see some people at any level. So to be clear it's not that I think the questions shouldn't be investigated, but a statement like "some vaccinated cases have high viral loads" is meaningless to explaining what my risk of spreading covid is. Trying to avoid the sort of bias that comes from trying to reinforce rather than question existing views, but I do still think the statement "No Significant Difference in Viral Load Between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated, Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Groups Infected with SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant" despite being much more precise is still a bit unintuitive in it's implication. Because essentially what this means right is that they sampled people's viral loads, and then cut out everyone below a value they choose to mean "infected". It's still true that even if I had symptoms because I'm vaccinated my odds of having a high viral load are much lower. Presumably if you didn't remove all the samples with less than some concentration you'd see significant differences. I think that something the scientists got wrong consistently with covid was not unflinchingly communicating what was likely to be true mostly out of a fear that the public would take interventions that only moderately improved their safety like wearing a mask, and start doing riskier things or because of a bias towards doing nothing when clear evidence didn't exist. It can feel like similar things are happening with vaccination where it does seem pretty clear that getting vaccinated reduces your risk of passing on covid both because you're less likely to ever get a colony of the virus sufficient to count as "infected" and because you're likely to have a shorter infection.

bawolff 5y ago

> Research indicates that individuals with breakthrough infections can have viral loads that are as high as unvaccinated individuals, and some percentage report courses of illness that are virtually identical to a typical course of illness in unvaccinated individuals But that's totally expected (depending of course on how you define "some"). If the vaccine had 100% efficacy, it would be shocking. The fact that it doesn't is not a surprise. I'm assuming the point you're trying to make is vaccines aren't as good as expected. If the point is just that there is still value in developing treatments even with vaccines, than yes i agree with you.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> I'm assuming the point you're trying to make is vaccines aren't as good as expected. No, I was responding to "Additionally, in my experience, physicians aren't terribly concerned about infections in vaccinated individuals" and pointing out that there's still a lot we don't know about the risks associated with infection after vaccination and arguing that these things deserve additional scientific study.
tinus_hn 5y ago
This isn’t about ‘95% was unaffected and the vaccine didn’t work for the other 5%’. It’s about ‘the vaccine does not protect against getting infected and being infectious in over 50% of cases’.