This year we kill it: Corona Virus Thread Mark II

[sihnfahl]

Out of morbid curiosity, would you tell us which state you're in? I think I want to not go there this year.

Florida. We're easy to not visit.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Heck, a good chunk of the year you try to visit and get blown right out of the state by the latest hurricane.

[pendell]

Meanwhile, Moderna immunity expected to last at least a year .

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[sihnfahl]

Moderna immunity expected to last at least a year

Well, which is true for most vaccines where the virus has a low mutation rate.

Whooping cough is probably one of the shortest at about 4-6 years.

Edit: Oh, and per Reuters:

Brazil's Butantan biomedical center released their results of the CoronaVac (manufactured by China's Sinovac) trials.

Barely over 50%. Reportedly, initial put it at 78%, but once they included mild cases that didn't necessitate medical intervention, the efficacy dropped.

Which, IMO, they should keep in. Cause people with mild cases can still spread, and hit someone whose case does necessitate medical intervention.

[snowblizz]

Florida.

And exactly no one was surprised.


Now if it was only the "I keep a Alligator as pet and let it loose in Walmart" state, but that is probably a more common occurrence than it should.


The best I can say is at least they are using up vaccine so it's not going to waste. Though am concerned about the second dose (not sure this one needs one) in a system like this. It doesn't strike me as a place not big on planning and record keeping.

I saw a semi-local (ie next country over) discussion where someone argued against giving it to "important workers" because it wasn't ethical to consider such things as it didn't constitute the legal requirement of "looking at the medical need". Or some such. And I can see what they are going for, but personally I'm thinking "yeah, but if all the medical personnel are ill, who's going to take care of those vaccinated elderly people when the multiple other health-issues that made them medically needy in the first place hit them?". Did they miss the entire early spring issue where the healthcare system nearly collapsed due to too many patients and too few carers...

I think we have a system in place already for who will get vaccinated first, in fact they already started with people at the local hospital.

[NichG]

Chaos or not, congrats on getting it!

I'd definitely rather there be chaos but doses in arms than orderly rollout with doses being wasted or delayed... That said, it seems like one factor for high distribution rate in the early rollout gas to do with whether the vaccinations were coordinated through locally run pharmacies, versus through CVS/Walgreens (favoring the local pharmacy approach). Curious if economy of scale will reverse that at some point, but it looks like for now added bureaucratic friction may be the dominant effect.

Actually I should probably run a calculation on prioritization. There's a pretty strong effect on mortality with priority group at least when considering age, but that's paired off against the very strong effects of exponential growth to amplify early action over late. I wonder, if you have something like a 5% or 10% inefficiency introduced by prioritization (that is, because you prioritize you delay things by 5-10%), how much of a mortality difference does there need to be between priority groups to break even, assuming a vaccination schedule that runs to completion in early September for example.

[sihnfahl]

Though am concerned about the second dose (not sure this one needs one) in a system like this. It doesn't strike me as a place not big on planning and record keeping.

Fortunately, the record keeping is pretty good. Problem comes in the planning parts. We should be good for the follow-up.

Did they miss the entire early spring issue where the healthcare system nearly collapsed due to too many patients and too few carers...

That situation has returned. There are places that are literally triaging and denying AMBULANCE SERVICES, much less hospital treatment, due to high demand and low supply. They're also at the point of rationing necessary supplies because of shortages. Again.

And they're back to the system of refrigerated trucks for corpses because of lack of storage space.

[NichG]

Caveat: following calculation is very crude, don't take this at all as given, just to get an idea about interactions of variables...

It looks like about a factor of 3 difference in mortality between prioritization groups would roughly break even with a 10% inefficiency in rollout with the current R of ~1.1 (assuming 2% current infection rate, 15% high risk population, 85% low risk population, and sustained exponential growth). I had to assume some things about the shape of the vaccine rollout (that it would accelerate to be able to meet that September deadline) which are kind of arbitrary. If we had sustained R of 1.5 (roughly what the new strains have been observed to produce) then if I assume sustained exponential growth everyone gets Covid by March but at that point I probably need a model with more resolution of different groups since you'd see saturation in high-contact groups that might push R back down faster than a well-mixed population.

[Bartmanhomer]

I heard there was a 100-year-old woman who got COVID and she beat it. She's a strong elder woman.

[sihnfahl]

I heard there was a 100-year-old woman who got COVID and she beat it. She's a strong elder woman.

There are several who have.

Lena May Shaw, North Carolina. Age 100.

Tillie Dybing, Minnesota. Age 107!

Angelina Friedman, New York. Age 102.

[Bartmanhomer]

There are several who have.

Lena May Shaw, North Carolina. Age 100.

Tillie Dybing, Minnesota. Age 107!

Angelina Friedman, New York. Age 102.

Wow! They're Superwomen. They have my respect.

[Chen]

Barely over 50%. Reportedly, initial put it at 78%, but once they included mild cases that didn't necessitate medical intervention, the efficacy dropped.

Which, IMO, they should keep in. Cause people with mild cases can still spread, and hit someone whose case does necessitate medical intervention.

I didn’t think there was evidence yet that either of the currently approved vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) prevented you from potentially spreading the virus either though.

[sihnfahl]

I didn’t think there was evidence yet that either of the currently approved vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) prevented you from potentially spreading the virus either though.

No need for that evidence. NO vaccine needs that evidence.

If you have the vaccine, it'll reduce your chances of being infected in the first place.

No infection means you're not a carrier, you're not generating viral particles that shed into saliva and mucus, and you won't be giving it to someone else.

[pendell]

Interesting prediction in the NYT. link

The Future of the Coronavirus? An Annoying Childhood Infection

Once immunity is widespread in adults, the virus rampaging across the world will come to resemble the common cold, scientists predict.

The virus is a grim menace now because it is an unfamiliar pathogen that can overwhelm the adult immune system, which has not been trained to fight it. That will no longer be the case once everyone has been exposed to either the virus or vaccine.

Children, on the other hand, are constantly challenged by pathogens that are new to their bodies, and that is one reason they are more adept than adults at fending off the coronavirus. Eventually, the study suggests, the virus will be of concern only in children younger than 5, subjecting even them to mere sniffles — or no symptoms at all.


In other words, the coronavirus will become “endemic,” a pathogen that circulates at low levels and only rarely causes serious illness.

“The timing of how long it takes to get to this sort of endemic state depends on how quickly the disease is spreading, and how quickly vaccination is rolled out,” said Jennie Lavine, a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, who led the study.

“So really, the name of the game is getting everyone exposed for the first time to the vaccine as quickly as possible.”

So it WILL be the 'flu', but it isn't yet. The next generation will barely notice it, because their bodies will be used to it.

But not all the news is rosy. Pfizer is investigating a possible vaccine-related death . The evidence doesn't look like it now, but it still requires investigation. But it won't stop the rollout even if it proves out; though we might have more contraindications. One death out of millions is better than the approx. 1/100 death rate for the full disease.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Chen]

No need for that evidence. NO vaccine needs that evidence.

If you have the vaccine, it'll reduce your chances of being infected in the first place.

No infection means you're not a carrier, you're not generating viral particles that shed into saliva and mucus, and you won't be giving it to someone else.

My point was I don’t think the current trials show that the COVID vaccine provides sterilizing immunity vs simply preventing the disease. As such it’s not clear that even with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines you may still be able to be infected and transmit to others even if the vaccines still prevent disease symptoms.

[pendell]

My point was I don’t think the current trials show that the COVID vaccine provides sterilizing immunity vs simply preventing the disease. As such it’s not clear that even with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines you may still be able to be infected and transmit to others even if the vaccines still prevent disease symptoms.

I'll defer to the real medical people here, but I confess to finding this hard to understand. Viruses penetrate cells, reprogram them to produce copies of the virus, which then spread throughout the body and infect other cells. Viruses can infect the lungs or the bloodstream which carries to the lungs, and so the manufactured particles are expelled by breathing and infect others.

Using mRNA to reprogram the system to recognize the spike and prevent breach of the cell wall means no viral penetration, means no cells converted into virus factories, means no symptoms and far less transmissibility.

That's my understanding as a layman. So I can't see how a vaccine which prevents disease wouldn't also prevent contagion, though I daresay the professional medical people must have encountered this scenario before.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Using mRNA to reprogram the system to recognize the spike and prevent breach of the cell wall means no viral penetration, means no cells converted into virus factories, means no symptoms and far less transmissibility.

That's my understanding as a layman. So I can't see how a vaccine which prevents disease wouldn't also prevent contagion, though I daresay the professional medical people must have encountered this scenario before.

Immunity, like all biology, is messy, and it is not immediate. It can take some time for the body to a) identify a pathogen as a specific type it has encountered before; b) produce the relevant antibodies (in sufficient quantities); c) deploy the antibodies to the appropriate place and d) shut down the pathogen with those antibodies to the point it cannot reproduce further. In the meantime, the body does employ other (many, many other) methods of restraining and controlling an infection, some of which may or may not be sufficiently effective in COVID's case. Therefore, depending on a multitude of factors, the virus may have a window of time in an infected vaccinated person to reproduce and make it out before it is eradicated by the body's immune response.

For a primer, check out this Kurzgestat video (please note the "interactions" at ~0:35. Biology is really messy):


Grey Wolf

[Chen]

It's come up in some articles I've read. Consider:

https://theconversation.com/coronavi...problem-152204

I mean if the COVID vaccine provided full sterilizing immunity you would no longer need to take any of the standard precautions after you were vaccinated. That isn't being recommended anywhere with any of these vaccines right now because in reality they don't know. The efficacy numbers were comparing the number of infections in the control group vs the group that got the vaccine. They didn't go an test everyone who got the vaccine to see if they didn't get infected. They could very well be a number of people in that group who were simply asymptomatic, and perhaps asymptomatic BECAUSE of the vaccine.

[pendell]

Okay. For comparison's sake, is this different from any other vaccine? Do any vaccines provide full sterilizing immunity without some window where the patient may be contagious?

Thank you, Grey_Wolf and Chen. I will watch that video.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Okay. For comparison's sake, is this different from any other vaccine? Do any vaccines provide full sterilizing immunity without some window where the patient may be contagious?

I don't know of any examples, but in general, I'd imagine that the answer is yes, for infections whose incubation period is longer than the time it takes for the body to generate antibodies. The thing with COVID is, apart from "we really don't know enough yet" is that it is seems to be really transmissible even during the early infection period. I'd hope vaccinated people have at least significantly shorter windows, but we really don't know yet.

And of course, today in the Israeli news is that even people with a single vaccination dose can still get sick, and in a few cases, get really sick. (This, I should underscore, is not really "news" - it is the reality of statistics).

Grey Wolf

[Bartmanhomer]

I have a question to ask if I take the Covid vaccine, do I have to continue wearing my face mask?

[Peelee]

I have a question to ask if I take the Covid vaccine, do I have to continue wearing my face mask?

Frankly, I see the face mask as a perk. Don't need to fake smile to people, face is nice and warm in the winter, reduced smells... Why would I want to stop wearing one?

[Bartmanhomer]

Frankly, I see the face mask as a perk. Don't need to fake smile to people, face is nice and warm in the winter, reduced smells... Why would I want to stop wearing one?

I'll take that as a yes.

[sihnfahl]

I have a question to ask if I take the Covid vaccine, do I have to continue wearing my face mask?

Should probably do so.

One, you'd not get looks from people who'd think you're an anti-masker. They don't know you're vaccinated.

Two, even the best COVID vaccine is 95% effective. While 5% is a minimal risk, that's still a non-zero. Gamble with being one of the 5 in 100 that the vaccine doesn't do anything for?

Three, if the vaccine doesn't negate things and means you can still spread it even if you're personally not hospitalized / affected by it ... asymptomatic spreader.

[Forum Explorer]

I have a question to ask if I take the Covid vaccine, do I have to continue wearing my face mask?

Legally speaking, yes. What's more, a bunch of people are probably going to falsely claim that they've had the vaccine in order to not wear a mask. Which will likely result in places demanding you wear a mask regardless of if you've had a vaccine or not.

But probably not, medically speaking. Mind you, it's still a good idea to reduce exposure as much as possible, but that's just playing it safe. You should be fine after you've received both parts of the vaccine. Well give it a couple days. Your body doesn't react instantly, it'd need time to actually use the vaccine.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Keep in mind the mask also helps stop the spread of other things besides COVID. Like the flu.

[NichG]

In terms of the vaccine not preventing transmission, the most believable argument I've heard that it could be a concern is that Covid changes location in the body as it progresses from peripheral areas towards the lungs, and transmission tends to happen early in the course of the disease rather than late. So, conceivably, the immune response could basically block Covid at the lungs but not really prevent it from replicating in outlying tissues.

I think it'd be a very bad bet to guess that the vaccine doesn't reduce transmission at all, because the dynamics of Covid's replication rate and the appearance of mutants which escape immunity suggest that hosts that have had Covid before are spreading it sufficiently less to produce some pressure on the dynamics of the virus (otherwise, I'm not sure why you'd see virus levels drop in outlying tissues even as the host is fighting it, so people would test positive for Covid for much longer after infection than they do). So if someone tried to argue positively for 'the vaccine won't do anything about transmission' I'd say the burden of evidence is on them rather than the other way around. But at the same time, it's probably a risky bet to assume that the full 95% effectiveness of the vaccine would translate to a 95% reduction in spread. That said, if someone told me they guessed that the transmission reduction was 50% or 90% I don't think I could prefer one guess over the other at this point.

[Rogar Demonblud]

In happier news, my reporting district just posted their second straight day without a COVID death. *takes deep breath*

[Bartmanhomer]

I forgot to mention this earlier today my job asks me if I want to take the vaccine because they're going out COVID Vaccine. I thought about it and ask my older brother if it's ok but he wasn't on the phone. But my job told me that I'm not eligible yet because I'm a trainee payroll. I get my vaccine later on.

[Keltest]

I forgot to mention this earlier today my job asks me if I want to take the vaccine because they're going out COVID Vaccine. I thought about it and ask my older brother if it's ok but he wasn't on the phone. But my job told me that I'm not eligible yet because I'm a trainee payroll. I get my vaccine later on.

Kind of surprised that theyre asking "if" rather than "when". I cant imagine that the store i work at will let us get away without a vaccine for quite a while, even if they have to organize and pay for everything themselves.