Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Edge-]

I'm just gonna point out that neither smallpox nor polio were eradicated by herd immunity.

But the iron lung industry was booming!

[Elegiac]

But the iron lung industry was booming!

That awkward feel when COVID put such a strain on ventilator supplies it led to renewed interest in iron lungs.

[Granyala]

The immunity gained from getting Covid does not last as long as the one gained from vaccines. Especially the mRNA vaccines.
The range of protection is also more limited. Immunity gained from the original Covid variant does not protect against Delta.

Yes, vaccines are better. No doubt.
But the adaptive immune system will be taught by the real McCoy just as much.
Just because s/o doesn't produce the same antibodies, doesn't mean that the serious complications won't be avoided when a re-infection occurs.

[Forogil]

The immunity gained from getting Covid does not last as long as the one gained from vaccines. Especially the mRNA vaccines.

The range of protection is also more limited. Immunity gained from the original Covid variant does not protect against Delta.

It's always just "protection" - it's never a fully immunity.
And it's a sliding scale so infection from the original covid variant often gives protection against Delta as well.
However, there are several factors - how severe the original infection was, how long ago, and a bit of random variation; and what you care about - getting reinfected and spreading it is a bit bad - but getting sent to the ICU or dying is worse. And we simply don't know all of that.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-...important.html
(Note that even if anti-body levels decline there is still likely the possibility of rapidly getting new ones and hypermutations on top of that.)

[Granyala]

1% death and 30% longterm health issues is massive, and has broad ranging impacts beyond just themselves.

Napkin math:

If we're talking 15% vaccine resistant people, half of those will be infected (at some point herd immunity protects even non vaccinated folks) that would put the death toll at 7.5% / 100 = 0,075% of the population.
In Germany, that would be 83M * 0,00075 = 62.250. Still ugly but hardly massive in proportions, considering that this would be a one time thing.
FYI: ~2.800 people die in Germany every day, that's ~ 1M per year. So we would be talking about ~6% excess deaths, IF all of these would have lived w/o getting covid but lets face it: that isn't the case, as the assumed 1% is far too high as a generalized death rate.

However, 30% long term cases would indeed be a huge problem. That would be 2,5% of the population needing extended treatment:
83M * 0,025 = 2.075.000 people. Not sure our healthcare system can deal with that.
Depends on how quickly they pile up, I guess.

- - - Updated - - -

I'd rather they not be a petri dish for the virus to mutate into variants that might be more deadly and be less impacted by existing vaccination protections, thanks.

The virus can mutate in vaccinated people as well.
It WILL mutate, no matter what we do.
If not in our population, it will do so in your friendly neighborhood 3rd world country that doesn't have the resources to ever hit herd immunity in any realistic real world scenario.

Sucks but that's life post SARS-CoV-2. >.<

[Forogil]

1% death and 30% longterm health issues is massive, and has broad ranging impacts beyond just themselves.

The number of deaths seem less than 1% (on average; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13554 ), and the 30% longterm health issues seem exaggerated, and seem to include people who have symptoms more than a month before they disappear; and likely based on only the symptomatic persons.

The uk reports it at 10%, but it's unclear whether it declines on its own and also if the infection is the cause; as I can see other reasons that people, in particular health-care workers, feel fatigued at the moment.

I'd rather they not be a petri dish for the virus to mutate into variants that might be more deadly and be less impacted by existing vaccination protections, thanks.

The rest of the world will likely develop such variants with or without our help. I'm not saying that we should help them, but that we shouldn't overestimate the impact we make.

[Edge-]

https://www.al.com/politics/2021/07/...accinated.html

The Death Cult continues -

“Our soldiers should not be intimidated or coerced by the government into taking an experimental shot that has death and other ill-effect risk associated with it,”

It's not experimental, and the risk of serious side effects is insanely low.

“Masks have small fibers that regularly loosen and are lodged in users’ lungs. Some masks have inks and dyes which, when consumed by lungs, have unknown cancer and other health risks,”

There is no citation for this fiction from a non-medical professional, nor any data to back it up. Masks don't cause cancer any more than 5G does. And it doesn't cause cancer.

“Certainly, all or almost all masks reduce oxygen intake into the human body, with all the risks this imposes. There is also the unknown risk that, in the heat and humidity of summers in the South, heat stroke risks increase among mask wearers.”

They do not reduce oxygen intake, not by any statistically noticeable amount. Similarly, there's no data suggesting that mask wearing increases the risk of heat stroke, especially when you can simply like, take off a mask since it's not welded to your face.

This is why this country is fuckin doomed. Because there's a determined Death Cult that's hell-bent on spreading doubt and disinformation (this isn't just innocent misinformation, this is malicious disinformation).

[D Luniz]

plus, if your out in that kind of heat, you're likely not near other people, you can take off the mask at that point

[Elegiac]

This is why this country is fuckin doomed. Because there's a determined Death Cult that's hell-bent on spreading doubt and disinformation (this isn't just innocent misinformation, this is malicious disinformation).

Silver lining is that it's become extraordinarily easy to identify these folks on sight.

You remember how in Mass Effect the Turian term for a liar is "barefaced"? Prophetic.

[Rasulis]

It's always just "protection" - it's never a fully immunity.
And it's a sliding scale so infection from the original covid variant often gives protection against Delta as well.
However, there are several factors - how severe the original infection was, how long ago, and a bit of random variation; and what you care about - getting reinfected and spreading it is a bit bad - but getting sent to the ICU or dying is worse. And we simply don't know all of that.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-...important.html
(Note that even if anti-body levels decline there is still likely the possibility of rapidly getting new ones and hypermutations on top of that.)

Immunity may be a poor choice of word. Although the article that you linked also used the the immunity and pretty much supported my-two sentence post. Just in a much more verbose way.

Some interesting fact -

In a news briefing Thursday, Mayor London Breed said that 28% of San Franciscans currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are Black, despite Black people making up just 5.6% of the city’s population.

[Forogil]

Immunity may be a poor choice of word.

It's a word that has multiple meanings - medically it means any immune-resistance to disease (etc), but non-medically we normally only think about full-blown immunity. So, the main point was people who have had an infection with the original covid-virus normally have some immunity to the Delta-variant for some time; but not 100%.

Some interesting fact -
In a news briefing Thursday, Mayor London Breed said that 28% of San Franciscans currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are Black, despite Black people making up just 5.6% of the city’s population.

Yes, the uneven disease-burden has been a problem - it's been a combination of how densely people live, their occupations, and possibly more.

However, in terms of vaccinations it's complicated in the US.
Overall in the US black people aren't that under-represented (if it all - a significant number answer "other" when vaccinating, so the numbers don't match up). The real racial inequality for vaccination is self-inflected: white americans choosing to not get vaccinated recently - only 38% of the ones getting vaccinated the latest fortnight are white compared to 61% of the US population as a whole.

It may differ at state (and other local) levels, although I don't know if that is the case in SF (the difference is minor for California (and most other states) for black people - hispanics are over-represented in terms of deaths and cases, but under-represented in terms of vaccination).
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covi...ace-ethnicity/

[Puupi]

Some interesting fact -

Black people have been more vulnerable to the disease since the beginning of the pandemic. It's something genetic, but not sure if anyone has yet figured out what exactly.

[Forogil]

Black people have been more vulnerable to the disease since the beginning of the pandemic. It's something genetic, but not sure if anyone has yet figured out what exactly.

It could be indirect so that the combination of genes and environment increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases - and that increases the risk of covid-19.

It's not blood group at least, since A is more common among Europeans and seems to increase the risk.
It doesn't seem to be Neanderthal genes as they are not common enough in Europeans; and so far Neanderthal genes have found that both increase (gene cluster on chromosome 3) and decrease (OAS1) the risk for covid-19.

[Elegiac]

Black people have been more vulnerable to the disease since the beginning of the pandemic. It's something genetic, but not sure if anyone has yet figured out what exactly.

Could also be, you know, the fact that many of the most vulnerable jobs (i.e. "essential workers") have high numbers of Black and Latino people working them. And their lack of access to healthcare.

Racism kills, y'all.

[Elegiac]

here in sweden black people live more crowded than most others due to lack of money because of most of them being people who arrived here mostly as refugees... like a family of 6-8 people in a 2 or 3-room apartment...

And living conditions like that are prime vectors for the spread of disease.

It really does underscore how public health is more than just a matter of wearing a mask or social distancing; the very way our communities are set up can have a huge difference. See: London's establishment of a sewer system and how it ended what were once chronic cholera epidemics.

[Biglog]

Since there have been some recent articles highlighting athletes or others that are vaccinated that test positive, as some sort of attack on the vaccine, it's worthwhile for a very simple recap on the vaccine. Most places explain this to each individual when you get the shot and is very fundamental basic info about vaccines that people should understand without confusion. I think most of the confusion being spread is intentionally, with anti-vaxxers using willful ignorance to spread it. The important part is:

The vaccine does *not* make you *immune* to covid-19, that is not how they work. It builds up your antibodies so that if you are exposed to covid, the effects are either very minor or asymptomatic. Put more simply, it keeps you from ending up on a ventilator in a hospital and/or dying from it. You can still technically test positive. But most people won't be tested, nor will even know they had it if they did if they are vaccinated. They might feel like they had a minor cold, or nothing at all. This is crystal clear info and is easily accessible on the CDC website or countless other places. But athletes, important politicians, and others are tested often and will likely 'test' positive. So it's important to understand the distinction between a vaccinated person testing positive, which is expected and not a big deal at all, to an unvaccinated person testing positive where their life is actually at risk from covid-19. The 700,000+ in the US and the millions globally that died were also not all 'obese or old' as MTG intentionally misinformed people yesterday. You do not have to look far to know someone personally that has died from it in the past year that was not in either category.

So if you see alt-right media or anti-vaxxers claiming, "see person X that was vaccinated tested positive, that means the vaccine doesn't work", it's a 5th grade explanation to prove that nonsense wrong, and again willful ignorance on their part. I do not believe for a second that they don't understand how vaccines work. I also love that the anti-vaxx media is all vaccinated themselves, but are obvious opportunists parroting anti-mask/anti-vaxx policies of the former President to appeal to his supporters for their own rating/financial gain.

[Edge-]

I do not believe for a second that they don't understand how vaccines work.

If you've hung around the anti-covid/vaxx circles, you'd be pretty quickly disabused of this notion. A great many of them are indeed well and truly this stupid/ignorant, and it's purely by choice that they choose to remain that proudly ignorant.

[Ursus]

If you've hung around the anti-covid/vaxx circles, you'd be pretty quickly disabused of this notion. A great many of them are indeed well and truly this stupid/ignorant, and it's purely by choice that they choose to remain that proudly ignorant.

If somebody chooses to be ignorant about something, and that ignorance is leading to people's deaths, are they merely just ignorant, or is it okay to call them evil?

[Rasulis]

Since there have been some recent articles highlighting athletes or others that are vaccinated that test positive, as some sort of attack on the vaccine, it's worthwhile for a very simple recap on the vaccine. Most places explain this to each individual when you get the shot and is very fundamental basic info about vaccines that people should understand without confusion. I think most of the confusion being spread is intentionally, with anti-vaxxers using willful ignorance to spread it. The important part is:

The vaccine does *not* make you *immune* to covid-19, that is not how they work. It builds up your antibodies so that if you are exposed to covid, the effects are either very minor or asymptomatic. Put more simply, it keeps you from ending up on a ventilator in a hospital and/or dying from it. You can still technically test positive. But most people won't be tested, nor will even know they had it if they did if they are vaccinated. They might feel like they had a minor cold, or nothing at all. This is crystal clear info and is easily accessible on the CDC website or countless other places. But athletes, important politicians, and others are tested often and will likely 'test' positive. So it's important to understand the distinction between a vaccinated person testing positive, which is expected and not a big deal at all, to an unvaccinated person testing positive where their life is actually at risk from covid-19. The 700,000+ in the US and the millions globally that died were also not all 'obese or old' as MTG intentionally misinformed people yesterday. You do not have to look far to know someone personally that has died from it in the past year that was not in either category.

So if you see alt-right media or anti-vaxxers claiming, "see person X that was vaccinated tested positive, that means the vaccine doesn't work", it's a 5th grade explanation to prove that nonsense wrong, and again willful ignorance on their part. I do not believe for a second that they don't understand how vaccines work. I also love that the anti-vaxx media is all vaccinated themselves, but are obvious opportunists parroting anti-mask/anti-vaxx policies of the former President to appeal to his supporters for their own rating/financial gain.

They really need to see the hospitalization and mortality numbers. SF has a vaccination rate of 83% currently (76% fully vaccinated). The number of hospitalized Covid patients is 28 (7 in ICU) and the last Covid related death was 07/02/2021. I think the City has seen only one Covid death in over 6 weeks. Pretty crazy numbers for a city that size.

[Twdft]

Black people have been more vulnerable to the disease since the beginning of the pandemic. It's something genetic, but not sure if anyone has yet figured out what exactly.

Dude what? Genetic? Take a fucking look at who is on average twice as poor as someone else, who is on average working "essential jobs" etc and you might figure out why black people get covid more often.