Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

The WHO released a statement similar to the CDC claiming the benefits if the vaccine far outweigh any myocarditis or pericarditis risks. The WHO, like the CDC, mentioned the very low rate of heart issues and the fact the overwhelming majority of vaccine cases are extremely mild, and can be treated with OOC medicines or just observation, before the issue goes away on its own.

 

The question is: are we playing to defeat Covid, or are willing to settle for a tie? Because guess what, a tie goes to the virus. The virus stays alive in human hosts, and continues to develop variants. The sooner we drive the number of cases towards zero, the better chance we have. Swine flu from 1918 kept killing millions of people well into 1920, primarily because people were ignorant and accidentally kept the virus alive. It turns out that while we know more about viruses in 2021 than we did in 1920, there are still ignorant people (and their victims) who are keeping the virus alive. If we keep it alive another year or two, we may see a new variant that requires a new round of vaccinations at a cost of trillions of dollars and millions of lives. The choice is simple: get the vaccine, or prolong the pandemic.

 

If people have the time, and can tolerate the first 4-6 minutes of banter, Dr Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus MC Department of ViroScience who is a leading expert in Influenza Virus transmission and evolution was on the TWIV podcast this week. It is a pretty straightforward discussion, almost like a lecture for non-virologists and is very easy to follow. I found it fascinating how he dispelled so many myths and inaccuracies being repeated daily not just in the mass media, but even by people at the CDC and WHO.

In particular, there is no proof that any one variant is more transmissible than another. No one has done the studies and just because the media cannot understand "fitness" and immune evasion, it does not make one strain more "transmissible" than another.

He spent a good some time explaining the difference in our vaccines for the FLU vs. SARS-CoV-2, which I also found enlightening.

• Flu vaccines generate very poor B-cell response and almost no T-cell response, yet natural infection confers a long lasting T-cell response, which is why the average unvaccinated person only gets infected by the FLU once every 10 years.
• mRNA vaccines are generating B-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 many orders of magnitude higher than FLU vaccines do. Additionally, the mRNA are provoking T-cell responses well beyond what anyone had hoped for and that is an immune response that is expected to last many years in young, healthy people.

He also made a great point about how those who are vaccinated will be constantly going out into society and encountering the virus and inhaling it into our respiratory systems, But, because of the aggressive T-cell responses of these vaccines, we will constantly by "boosting" our immune system which will eventually continue to extend our own protection (or at least, very likely based on what we already know).

I wish more people trying to report on this stuff, and more people who want to argue about what is right and wrong would listen to sources like this. These folks are experts, but are willing to admit that they do not know the answers yet, but they can explain the reality of the data we do have day and night better than what we are getting from the NY Times or Fox News.

 

Meanwhile, nice job Texas......

Biden ramps up vaccination push; states struggle with COVID variant

 

Not to be outdone, great job Missouri.....way to continuing proving that the level of ignorance across your state really IS worthy of South Eastern Conference membership. Well done all.

 

Colleen Kay Porter: Understanding the COVID-19 numbers

 

Those pesky science backgrounds....

 

Obviously a smart dude but his take on the delta variant not being more infectious is just wrong
Australia - 20 people attended a party, 4 were vaccinated, 16 got infected. Delta variant is causing 100% household infections where older variants might be 40%. Oz has lost ability to contact trace as delta does not require close proximity for any length of time

 

It is a subtle yet important point that keeps getting neglected. Even the CDC and WHO communications are botching this..... He was not saying that the Delta variant might not eventually be proven to have a higher transmissibility or that it is more infectious. He is saying there is literally no proof of that because no one has had time to collect any data and evaluate it in a controlled set of experiments to determine it. It also does not mean it isn't, but without proof you cannot say one way or the other.

Because a bunch of people from Australia to Missouri are becoming infected from the Delta variant neither proves it is more infectious, nor transmissible. It does show that this is the "likely the most FIT" strain based on ~ 17 mutations relative to the ancestral strain, specifically to a couple on the spike that allows this variant to more easily attach to the receptor binding domain. Also, you must be forgetting the anecdotal evidence out of the early days of the outbreak in both Wuhan and again in Lombardy, when entire multi-generational families were getting infected.

To be sure, something odd is going on in Australia because the types of virus behavior that they are reporting are not being observed in the United States with Delta, or even Delta plus. If they were, nearly half of the states of Missouri and Nevada would be infected right now, and we are just not seeing that. State Virologists have already debunked the hysteria about the virus going "airborne" in one of their quarantine hotels, and I suspect that eventually the truth will come out about the supposed "5 second exposure" case that they are blasting the airwaves with. Most of their hysteria is based around what infected individuals are willing to admit to in terms of behavior, knowing full well that violating Covid Protocols in Australia is criminalized and will draw fines. So, who the heck knows what is truth and what is a lie about people's behavior.

Meanwhile, study after study after real world examples are showing that the T-cell response provoked by the mRNA vaccines are undiminished against any variant to date and even if Delta and now Kappa evades our B-cell response, it does not last long in our system as the T-cells do their work. Even amongst the hyperbolic stories coming out of Australia they have one person....one, who has been hospitalized after being fully vaccinated. All others are unvaccinated, only partially vaccinated or were vaccinated elderly who were move to the hospital from care homes as a precaution, and not because they needed to be.

 

Yes. Australia had adopted stringent measures to keep the vaccine out and had been fully opened. But, no measure is airtight. And they have a low vaccination rate. So the virus getting in was all that needed to be. Btw: T cells deal with the infection. Person can still become ill. But the body has knowledge. It is prepared.

 

I'm confused. I've seen that the estimated R0 for Delta is 5-8 while the original strain was around 2.5. Doesn't that equate to "more transmissible"?

 

R0 being reported in the news is not being properly calculated. It is a handwaving number based solely on new infection reports. That is NOT how R0 is calculated for a virus or even a strain of a virus.

 

US coronavirus: With an uptick in cases, there is growing alarm. 'We've seen almost an entire takeover in the Delta variant,' one state official says - CNN

The surge has alarmed officials in Mississippi, where only a third of the population is fully vaccinated.
"We've seen almost an entire takeover in the Delta variant," said State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs.
"We're seeing a lot of outbreaks. We're seeing a lot of outbreaks in youth. We're seeing a lot of outbreaks in summer activities. We're also seeing a lot of outbreaks in nursing homes, where we have our most vulnerable people," he said.

 

Central Florida COVID-19 infections rates sky rocket (floridapolitics.com)

The rising rates of COVID-19 infections already showed concerning trends. But new data released Friday, covering the previous week, suggest there may be a new surge coming in Central Florida.

The six counties making up greater Orlando saw a 58% rise in confirmed new COVID-19 cases for the week ending July 8, compared with the week that ended July 1, according to the latest weekly report from the Florida Department of Health.

The week before, the six Central Florida counties — Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, and Volusia — combined for a 33% increase in new cases. The week before they showed a 21% increase.

 

R0 is always a mere estimate of a disease's rate of reproduction. It's a calculation based on the contact rate, mode of transmission and how long one is infectious. I'm sure at this point we have good estimates for the latter two. The former (contact rate) is certainly tougher to measure given wide range of compliance with community responses (mask, distancing, vaccination rates). That might explain the broad range for Delta's R0 being published.

All that aside, I think the Delta's dominance over Alpha in such a short time in the US is a reasonable indication that it has a higher transmission rate. In fact, I would not surprised if simulations can estimate Delta's R0 based how quickly it overwhelmed Alpha in common communities given that Alpha's R0 is well established.

 

Fitness. It is more FIT. That does not mean it is more transmissible. Maybe it is, maybe by a long shot. Maybe it is not. But again, not one controlled study measuring the necessary variables and therefore not one bit of the necessary data needed to declare a strain more transmissible relative to another has been collected. People, rather, are simply doing what you just did and say "hey, it is quickly displacing less FIT strains, so it must be transmissible".

And, they are doing it because, frankly, no one has time to sit around and conduct the rigorous studies. I get that, and I am not faulting people for that. However, people really should at least make the effort to use the correct terms, even if it is more difficult for the general public to grasp them. Sadly, even our public health experts are simply too lazy.

 

Not an exhaustive explanation, but this story gives a peek into the flaws of the media reports confusing R, R0 and the real Re (effective) that is not ever explained in the media.

I will be the first to confess that I do not understand all of the subtleties either, but I do understand that Fitness is being replaced by transmissibility in the media because no one wants to have to explain the difference.

Coronavirus: is the R number still useful?

 

The Covid floor at my hospital is full again (we had been down to one patient) and we're expanding to another floor. It's definitely the Delta variant and it's definitely effecting only un-vaccinated people the most. Survival rates for those who are vaccinated is virtually 100%. For the life of me I can't understand people who are risking death by not getting the vaccine. I had a guy the other day who had all the co-morbidities and should have been first in line for the vaccine but he didn't "believe" in them. He's probably going to die as he went from room air to bi-pap and is headed for intubation. Once intubated your life can change forever even if you survive. This virus also has long term effects causing lung damage that may become permanent and other issues like blood clots and something we call "Covid brain" where you feel like you're in a fog for months.

This is a disease just like other diseases that have been eradicated by vaccines. Why do some people who've had other vaccines for some reason not believe in this one? If anything the science today is light years ahead of when the polio vaccine was developed and that vaccine totally wiped out polio in the US.

And don't think for a second that it's only "Trumpers" who don't get the vaccine. Our floor is full of people who hardly look like they voted for Trump. And shockingly, lots of hospital workers have not been vaccinated including some nurses and even more med techs and other ancillary workers.

If you haven't gotten it yet, for God's sake, common sense and you own damn health, get the damn vaccine!

 

curious, how does a COVID patient look that voted for trump versus one that didnt voted for trump?

 

From today’s Times

Florida officials reported 23,697 coronavirus cases over the seven-day period from July 2 to 9. That’s a 48 percent increase in weekly cases from the last reporting period and almost double the number of weekly cases seen last last month.


POSITIVITY: Florida’s positivity rate rose to 7.8 percent in the past week, up from 5.2 percent the week before.

Positivity rates were up across the board in the Tampa Bay area, where the positivity rate was 8.4 percent in Hillsborough, 6.1 percent in Pinellas, 7.9 percent in Pasco, 7.7 percent in Manatee, 8.7 percent in Polk, 9.2 percent in Hernando, and 6.1 percent in Citrus.

HOSPITALIZATIONS: The CDC reported 2,369 confirmed COVID-19 patients were admitted to Florida hospitals from June 30 to July 6. That’s an increase 500 new hospitalizations compared the week before.