Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Slant]

Saxony, a state in Germany that is known for its neon-nazis, conspiracy theorists and anarchists as well as being (naturally, cos why stop at just one stupid when you can have another) anti-vaxx, is preparing to triage in hospitals now. The beds are running out within days and that'll be when the first people don't get intensive care treatment when they need it.

Sad for everyone with a heart attack or other "normal" intensive care cases...

[Shadowferal]

Something weird going on with this thread, it keeps defaulting to page 1334

Deleted posts...? Wait, I'm on 1336. It's you and your cache?

[Ryom]

Good news we shouldnt see any more massive waves like earlier this year as vaccines become normalized and more treatments before available.

A 60-70% vaccination rate does not seem to be enough to stop the Delta wave, not without lockdown measures, at least not during the colder seasons. Several countries in Europe are already reporting record breaking daily case numbers.
And while the vaccines provide great protection against serious illness and hospitalization, protection against getting infected and spreading the infection is much lower, and as long as we don't actually slow down the spread it will still eventually overwhelm the healthcare system.

I think we would have been fine now with the original SARS-CoV-2 and even Alpha, but Delta with the much higher infectivity and reduced vaccine effectiveness is still a big problem. Be prepared for another winter with heavy restrictions and hospitals at their limit, though hopefully there won't be as many deaths this time.

[caractacus]

In the UK we have started "booster" jabs due to vaccines efficiency waining, and get told we'll potentially need a jab every 6 months or so. Who knows what to believe at this point.

Obviously don't listen to the government listen to a random and clearly partisan poster on a forum who tells you to listen to "the science" when what they actually mean is whatever science they can find to fit their particular political agenda.

[Easo]

Obviously don't listen to the government listen to a random and clearly partisan poster on a forum who tells you to listen to "the science" when what they actually mean is whatever science they can find to fit their particular political agenda.

Well, we actually do not know whether boosters will be needed non-stop now. This includes goverment (mine doesn't, for example), no need to think that everything is politicized.

[Mayhem]

Saxony, a state in Germany that is known for its neon-nazis, conspiracy theorists and anarchists as well as being (naturally, cos why stop at just one stupid when you can have another) anti-vaxx, is preparing to triage in hospitals now. The beds are running out within days and that'll be when the first people don't get intensive care treatment when they need it.

Sad for everyone with a heart attack or other "normal" intensive care cases...

I chuckled

but yeah, it's bad

[Chipped coin]

People who listen to science know what to believe.

What science is that exactly...the rushed testing with results later sealed by the courts? You keep saying science I don't think you understand the basic principles of it.

[Slant]

I chuckled

but yeah, it's bad

I swear to god, my fingers have a mind of their own sometimes...

[Tommi]

neon-nazis

[Lenonis]

I don't know how effective the vaccine was or is

Do you live under a rock or are you trying to keep yourself unaware of that? Cause given the news coverage, social media discussions, and the huge outreach effort this information is quite available.

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I think the focus should be on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, rather than trying to force everyone into taking a vaccine that needs to be "topped up" every 6 months~.

or we could do both.

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Pity the media dont then.

You should probably question the media you are consuming then because it sounds you got a lot of bad info.

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A 60-70% vaccination rate does not seem to be enough to stop the Delta wave

scientific consensus points to 80-90%.

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What science is that exactly...the rushed testing with results later sealed by the courts?

Uhhhhhh. Wut?

[Rasulis]

What science is that exactly...the rushed testing with results later sealed by the courts? You keep saying science I don't think you understand the basic principles of it.

The science is definitely there. In the last five pages of this thread, I linked multiple pre-printed clinical studies and one large public study from Texas CARES about the efficacy of various methods of obtaining immunity against Covid. Including extensive statistical data from San Francisco, one of the most vaccinated city/county in the US. If people are too lazy to go through them or lack the ability to decipher those data, then there is not much I could do.

Back to San Francisco. With some exceptions, cases in California is dropping. California Reff is now 0.91. San Francisco is 0.67. Current 7-day rolling average new case per day is 54, or 43.25 by CDC criteria of 7-day total per 100k. Testing positivity is down to 1.66 from a high of 2.0 a week back. Seven day testing average is 34,428 tests per day. San Francisco tests approximately 0.4 to 0.5% of its population on a daily basis. New Covid-related hospital admission in the last 7 days is 11. As of 11/19, there are only 20 Covid patients in San Francisco’s hospitals (11 in acute and 9 in ICU).

San Francisco had 93 Delta-related deaths. Approximately 10.6 deaths per 100k. Lower than your typical flu season. Sixteen (16) were fully vaccinated. Which correlates to 1.8 deaths per 100k for those fully vaccinated.

How effective are the vaccines at preventing death and hospitalization?

Compare Polk, FL and San Francisco, CA.
Population: 725k vs. 874k
% vaccination of total population: 51.7% vs. 77%
Average Daily Test performed (last 7 days): 9,902 vs. 34,428
% positivity (last 7 days): 2.43 vs. 1.66 (Note: this shows that % positivity is bogus. San Francisco positivity rate would have gone up a lot if the testing was cut down to Polk’s level.)
Total cases (last 7 days): 362 vs. 210
Case per 100k (last 7 days): 49.95 vs. 43.25 (Note: both by CDC standard are considered moderate)
New hospital admissions (last 7 days): 98 vs. 11
Total Death (last 7 days): 15 vs. 0

[Slant]

What science is that exactly...the rushed testing with results later sealed by the courts? You keep saying science I don't think you understand the basic principles of it.

https://search.bvsalud.org/global-li...ange_year_end=



That science. Over 90k articles in the past 2 years. It's not like it's not there. It's that you refuse to acknowledge it and hide behind buzzphrases because you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about and think you can bullshit your way through life.

[Rasulis]

I mentioned earlier that California Covid numbers are dropping with few exceptions.

With hospitals full, Central California pleading to send COVID-19 patients to L.A.

The COVID-19 surge still affecting Central California is so dire that health officials are pleading with state officials to make it easier to transfer hospital patients to areas like Los Angeles County.

"We don't have enough hospitals to serve the population and the needs," said Dr. Rais Vohra, the Fresno County interim health officer. Hospitals across the entire San Joaquin Valley are "often running over capacity, so that they're holding dozens and dozens of patients in the emergency department."

Officials in the San Joaquin Valley are expecting a difficult winter. Vaccination rates are still relatively low, and in Fresno County, the region's most populous county, the COVID-19 hospitalization rate is quadruple what is being seen in L.A. and Orange counties, and more than quintuple that of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Hospitals are consistently operating above capacity, and emergency rooms are still so packed that ambulances are stuck waiting outside hospitals to drop off patients, said Dale Dotson, operations coordinator for the Central California Emergency Medical Services Agency.

Some hospitals are so crowded that ambulance patients suffering from strokes or cardiac-type symptoms are diverted to different facilities than typical to ensure that there's enough staff available to take care of them when they arrive. Hospitals and ambulance providers continue to report struggling with staffing, Dotson said.

Officials from the San Joaquin Valley are pleading with California state officials to find a way to make it easier to transfer hospital patients to other, less impacted areas.

"It's really hard to transfer across counties in the state of California," Vohra said. "When you look at Los Angeles ... they have hundreds and hundreds of open beds in Los Angeles County."

"If we need to transfer patients out to keep our hospitals operational, we should really be able to do that with one or two phone calls. That's not the situation right now. And so that's a point of frustration that we're hearing from multiple different facilities," Vohra said. "We're trying to really decompress as much as possible in anticipation of those winter numbers."

Vaccination update. 41% of children between 5 - 11 have received their shot in San Francisco. Over 20% of San Francisco population have received their booster shot. Over 43% of those over 65 have received booster shot. The city administered average 3,900 booster shots and 1,600 first time shots per day in the last 7 days.

[PhaelixWW]

Pity the media dont then.

No, the media by and large is reporting this accurately. If you're confused, perhaps it's your choice of media that's to blame?

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Obviously don't listen to the government listen to a random and clearly partisan poster on a forum who tells you to listen to "the science" when what they actually mean is whatever science they can find to fit their particular political agenda.

If you mean the consensus of all major health organizations as well as peer-reviewed scientific studies, then sure.

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What science is that exactly...the rushed testing with results later sealed by the courts? You keep saying science I don't think you understand the basic principles of it.

Except... the clinical trials weren't rushed. About a million fact-check articles have been written and scientists the world over agree.

[Zantos]

I think more vaccines is the best strategy that we have at the moment. As for public masking, the majority position among UCSF experts is that with high vaccination rate we can get away without masking. The data in San Francisco so far appears to support those prevailing opinions.

The issue with that is people just Arent taking the vaccines. The bad side effects scare them away. Add to it that saying "we can get away from masks" was a Huge draw point when vaccines started. Then they said the vaccines aren't enough and we need masks after all. Even waving around the no mask line hasn't been able to get everyone vaccinated.

Now breakthrough cases are on the rise with them even thinking its going to become more and more common. Thats a huge issue. Our vaccines aren't changing. Boosters are the same vaccine, but just hoping now to mitigate how badly you get sick. I don't think vaccines are enough any longer. We need more then just vaccines, but getting people to do anything in this is proving difficult. Especially when you have idiots saying "Im still tramatized from the first lockdown!!1!", all while failing to realize that the US never had any.

[Rasulis]

The issue with that is people just Arent taking the vaccines. The bad side effects scare them away. Add to it that saying "we can get away from masks" was a Huge draw point when vaccines started. Then they said the vaccines aren't enough and we need masks after all. Even waving around the no mask line hasn't been able to get everyone vaccinated.

Now breakthrough cases are on the rise with them even thinking its going to become more and more common. Thats a huge issue. Our vaccines aren't changing. Boosters are the same vaccine, but just hoping now to mitigate how badly you get sick. I don't think vaccines are enough any longer. We need more then just vaccines, but getting people to do anything in this is proving difficult. Especially when you have idiots saying "Im still tramatized from the first lockdown!!1!", all while failing to realize that the US never had any.

Breakthrough case is actually a good way to acquire super immunity.

Here is a study on the immune responses of 35 fully vaccinated people tested positive for Covid in the Provincetown outbreak.

Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS2 CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells

Those who got a breakthrough infection had a dramatic increase in levels of virus-blocking antibodies and virus-killing T cells, including 34-fold higher neutralizing antibody levels against the delta variant, compared with those who weren’t infected.

So the ranking goes fully Vaccinated + breakthrough case > previously infected + fully vaccinated > fully vaccinated > immunity from being infected.

Considering that hospitals in San Francisco have not seen a hospitalized breakthrough patient since September, it appears to be a much safer avenue than getting Covid without vaccination.

As for masks, what masks? Here is a picture from Outside Lands which was held on Halloween weekend. Three hundred thousand attendees at Golden Gate Park over 3 days. All attendees had to be either fully vaccinated or tested negative within 2 days prior. Almost 100% were fully vaccinated.

In case I was not clear. The number of covid hospitalization pre-Halloween in San Francisco was in the mid 40s. As of 11/19, around 2.5 weeks after Halloween weekend, the number is down to 20. Vaccines work.

[Ryom]

scientific consensus points to 80-90%.

Yeah and that's not realistic for a lot of countries. Though I guess over the next half year most of the unvaccinated will get their "vaccination" from the live virus (or die in the process).

Also, case numbers have been rising for weeks even in some countries with high vaccination rates like Spain (80%) and Portugal (88%). They're not in trouble so far, but they will be if this trend keeps up for months.

[Forogil]

Well, we actually do not know whether boosters will be needed non-stop now. This includes goverment (mine doesn't, for example), no need to think that everything is politicized.

Yes, the simple fact is that to know how long the effect from vaccines last - we have to wait and see.

The result so far seem to indicate that the effect starts going down hill, after perhaps 6 months - but it depends on your immune system (it goes down faster for the elderly) and the vaccine (some are better than others - but all are better than nothing; and it seems you can take a different booster). We will just have to wait and see - and of course take the necessary precautions so that you don't miss the next season. How fast it goes down is also a bit unknown.

It's not totally unexpected, as previous studies indicated that re-infections with other corona-viruses start occurring after 6 months; although it was hoped that the vaccine would be significantly better.

There are also some who think that once it is endemic it will just be like the common cold viruses - something you get a few times during childhood and might get later without large impacts (even if it slightly mutates); and some think that happened once before in the late 1800s.

[PhaelixWW]

Yes, the simple fact is that to know how long the effect from vaccines last - we have to wait and see.

The result so far seem to indicate that the effect starts going down hill, after perhaps 6 months - but it depends on your immune system (it goes down faster for the elderly) and the vaccine (some are better than others - but all are better than nothing; and it seems you can take a different booster). We will just have to wait and see - and of course take the necessary precautions so that you don't miss the next season. How fast it goes down is also a bit unknown.

It's not totally unexpected, as previous studies indicated that re-infections with other corona-viruses start occurring after 6 months; although it was hoped that the vaccine would be significantly better.

There are also some who think that once it is endemic it will just be like the common cold viruses - something you get a few times during childhood and might get later without large impacts (even if it slightly mutates); and some think that happened once before in the late 1800s.

It's also very important to make the distinction between active antibodies, which have been shown to start waning at about 6 months, and the longer-lasting memory T- and B-cells. While keeping levels of active antibodies high with boosters might be more beneficial during a pandemic in which there are still a lot of people who are vulnerable to the virus, it isn't as likely to be a priority once we've moved into the endemic stage. Presumably, we'll see the flu shot eventually combined with a COVID booster in one seasonal shot so people don't have to worry about both separately. But even without a yearly booster, the endemic phase of COVID will be far more mild.

[Forogil]

scientific consensus points to 80-90%.

Sort of, an 100% effective vaccine would need somewhere around those numbers (R0 is about 6-7 for Delta so the threshold should be about 83 to 86%).

It's just that the vaccines aren't 100% effective. The original reported numbers (95% for the best vaccines) were against symptomatic disease for the original variant, for Delta we are now seeing those numbers dropping to 88% and even lower for other vaccines. That seems to require vaccine coverage of >95%; but it depends on whether that is also how much vaccines reduce the spread and we don't know that.

However, even that's an oversimplification - the virus likely spread most for people who are 20-40 years old who have somewhat lower vaccine coverage in most countries - but instead the elderly have higher coverage, which is more important for reducing hospitalizations and deaths. It also depends on how much you meet - for people living in the same households the effectiveness for the original vaccines were perhaps 40% - not 95%.