Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Fincayra]

https://web.archive.org/web/20201126...e-to-covid-19#

Read the article Johns Hopkins decided to post, and then delete.

[Omega10]

https://web.archive.org/web/20201126...e-to-covid-19#

Read the article Johns Hopkins decided to post, and then delete.

Probably because it is a complete lie.

Here is a web site with excess deaths this year, which is a bit more than the number of reported virus deaths, using CDC information.

https://theconversation.com/up-to-20...ic-year-143139

Basically, if you go by the number of excess deaths, the reported deaths from the virus under counts the number of excess deaths by somewhere in the 10-20% range, with a maximum under count of close to 30%.

Note that this is dated October 14th oft his year, so it only includes data from the first two waves.

[Krakan]

United Airlines charters flights to distribute Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine

United Airlines on Friday commenced charter flights to send doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine candidates for distribution, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal that cited people familiar with the matter.

Both companies are awaiting emergency use authorization after submitting a request to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week.
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Am I paranoid for thinking that rushing a vaccine and giving the companies that made it protections from the consequences if it goes bad isn't an amazing idea?

[Forogil]

Probably because it is a complete lie.

It's not a complete lie - it's worse: the conclusions are all wrong, but some of the statistics are "true", but designed to mislead.
(Note that it was someone in Economics program posting in the John Hopkins student paper; not the normal place for a medical study by John Hopkins University.)

For the first part: Covid-19 seems to cause deaths as if people became roughly one year older (according to previous studies; might be a few months less now). That means both that it mainly is an issue for the elderly and that if you look at the proportion of deaths in different age-categories you should see no shift due to covid-19 - just an increase across the board. Thus that part is just straw-manning "mainly an issue for the elderly".

The second part is more confusing - it's looking at weekly changes in deaths compared to previous weeks. Looking at a difference will increase random fluctuations. The only sensible thing is to instead look at excess deaths:

Here is a web site with excess deaths this year, which is a bit more than the number of reported virus deaths, using CDC information.

https://theconversation.com/up-to-20...ic-year-143139

Basically, if you go by the number of excess deaths, the reported deaths from the virus under counts the number of excess deaths by somewhere in the 10-20% range, with a maximum under count of close to 30%.

Note that this varies by country (etc) - some are roughly correct, some have uncounted covid-deaths more - in some cases the uncounted covid-deaths are several hundred percent of reported covid-deaths.

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Am I paranoid for thinking that rushing a vaccine and giving the companies that made it protections from the consequences if it goes bad isn't an amazing idea?

We are out of amazing ideas, so we have to settle for the ones that are good enough.
Cynically speaking we will start with the elderly that both have the most to gain, and the least amount of years remaining if it goes completely wrong.

[Shadowferal]

Am I paranoid for thinking that rushing a vaccine and giving the companies that made it protections from the consequences if it goes bad isn't an amazing idea?

If nothing else, most of those targeted to get the first doses are those working in hospitals.

[Forogil]

As with the flu shot, I imagine the first to receive it will be the elderly, hospital workers, the young (-6 months), as well as the military.

I doubt they will give it to the very young at first; I don't think they have been part of so many phase III trials - and it doesn't seem to be that dangerous for them - in contrast to the flu.

To me it would make sense to do the military after the elderly and health workers, as most of the troops will be ok even if infected.

[Krakan]

I doubt they will give it to the very young at first; I don't think they have been part of so many phase III trials - and it doesn't seem to be that dangerous for them - in contrast to the flu.

To me it would make sense to do the military after the elderly and health workers, as most of the troops will be ok even if infected.

Speaking as one of those groups and remembering all the blind and deaf people from the malaria treatments... I hope they make them voluntary. I believe in vaccinations but I'm in zero rush to test out a untried batch for a virus with a lower kill rate then the seasonal flu.

[beanman12345]

Speaking as one of those groups and remembering all the blind and deaf people from the malaria treatments... I hope they make them voluntary. I believe in vaccinations but I'm in zero rush to test out a untried batch for a virus with a lower kill rate then the seasonal flu.

And this is why, even with a 90% efficacy rate, I'm gonna continue wearing masks for, well maybe till I die, because of the willful ignorance of people like this.

[Felya]

And this is why, even with a 90% efficacy rate, I'm gonna continue wearing masks for, well maybe till I die, because of the willful ignorance of people like this.

Remember when mouth breather was an insult? We might want to bring it back...

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Speaking as one of those groups and remembering all the blind and deaf people from the malaria treatments...

Do you have a link, before I report this for misinformation?

[Krakan]

Remember when mouth breather was an insult? We might want to bring it back...

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Do you have a link, before I report this for misinformation?

I mean you can google it. It's not an uncommon side effect for the treatment of it now. I believe in vaccines but I don't believe in being a part of the first wave of vaccines.

[Felya]

I mean you can google it. It's not an uncommon side effect for the treatment of it now. I believe in vaccines but I don't believe in being a part of the first wave of vaccines.

I did... The only thing I found was side effects of the disease it self, matching the description. It’s the first thing I did... No links? Report button it is?

I’m not assuming anything here... I googled, found nothing... so... what am I supposed to do, just trust you?

[Shadowferal]

First doses of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine has flown to US from Belgium

And another lockdown protest in London

[Felya]

So can we expect another lockdown and shut down of airports in January? When can we realistically at this point expect the US/Mexico border to finally reopen? Summer 2021?

I’m hoping April...

[Granyala]

Speaking as one of those groups and remembering all the blind and deaf people from the malaria treatments... I hope they make them voluntary. I believe in vaccinations but I'm in zero rush to test out a untried batch for a virus with a lower kill rate then the seasonal flu.

Yeah thinking of the Narcolepsy cases from the 2009 Swine Flu vaccination.. I'm in no rush either.
I will get it eventually (working in a school it may even be mandated by my employer) but I leave playing guinea pig to s/o else. I have enough health problems as is.

[Forogil]

Speaking as one of those groups and remembering all the blind and deaf people from the malaria treatments... I hope they make them voluntary.

I don't see how that is true or comparable: malaria is not caused by a virus, treatments and prophylaxis are different from vaccines (there is one malaria vaccine - but it is so ineffective that WHO does not really recommend it), and the common side-effects are more along the lines of hallucinations (so seeing things that aren't there - not really blind), and depressions.

I believe in vaccinations but I'm in zero rush to test out a untried batch for a virus with a lower kill rate then the seasonal flu.

It may depend on how you count "kill rate" - covid-19 is in absolute numbers clearly killing more than the seasonal flu; but it may be that with improved treatment the ifr is similar or lower than for some seasonal flus. However, it's unclear if we could have reduced flu deaths in a similar way - but haven't bothered.

[Shadowferal]

Hmf...don't wait too long.
Because when everyone starts getting vaccinated they'll be burning their masks.

[Shadowferal]

I actually hope Americans adopt wearing masks more often.

That's a forlorn hope at best.
Before March I never saw anyone wearing a mask.

[Vorkreist]

I don't blame people who aren't part of any risk group for being more afraid of an insufficiently and hastily tested vaccine than a virus that has a << 1% chance to kill them.

Where is the logic in that? This reeks of the same ignorance. So a virus that can fuck you up even if you are in the right age and health, killed 1.4 Million to date, kills you family your old relatives ,is a less threat than a few fucking stupid side effects as shown in the actual fucking research ?
I think some people locked themselves in weird bubbles and don't understand the danger of the virus. Hospitals are full everywhere and people die because they don't have access to ICUs but wait don't dare to get vaccinated. The reported side effects like head aches for 2 days are something extremely rough. We should stay unvaccinated and kill more people.

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a virus with a lower kill rate then the seasonal flu.

Let me guess. You also get your news and these kind of "stats" from Facebook ?

[Granyala]

Where is the logic in that? This reeks of the same ignorance. So a virus that can fuck you up even if you are in the right age and health, killed 1.4 Million to date, kills you family your old relatives ,is a less threat than a few fucking stupid side effects as shown in the actual fucking research ?

Research done on tiny sample sizes in way shorter a timeframe than is usually taken for the development, yes. That's precisely what worries me.
On top of that RNA based vaccination is a new and unproven technology.

Lets wait till a few million people are actually subjected to these vaccines until we talk about "a few fucking stupid side effects". I sincerely hope this doesn't blow up in our faces.

Yeah, any virus can fuck you up. So can the flu, most people never gave a hoot and flu vaccination with it's low efficiency rating was controversial.

[Forogil]

Where is the logic in that? This reeks of the same ignorance. So a virus that can fuck you up even if you are in the right age and health, killed 1.4 Million to date, kills you family your old relatives ,is a less threat than a few fucking stupid side effects as shown in the actual fucking research ?

People seem way to trusting of arbitrary numbers given with too high precision.
The research studies aren't complete (their planned completion is in 2022) so we don't know if there are any long term effects, and we mostly have seen press releases with questionable analysis with a sparkling of data dredging.
Similarly it's likely that perhaps 2-3 million have died of the virus, whereas 1.4 million are just the reported cases.

Hospitals are full everywhere and people die because they don't have access to ICUs but wait don't dare to get vaccinated.

Hospitals are working hard - but they are not full in most places, and just looking at ICU is too simple as one of interesting lessons that medical experts have figured out is to be able to treat people in better ways without sending them to ICUs.