Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Link says:

According to November 2021 Wisconsin data:

• People not fully vaccinated were diagnosed with COVID-19 at a rate 5x higher than people who were fully vaccinated.
• People not fully vaccinated were hospitalized with COVID-19 at a rate 11x higher than people who were fully vaccinated.
• People not fully vaccinated died from COVID-19 at a rate 12x higher than people who were fully vaccinated.

These rates are age-adjusted. Learn more about age-adjustment in the "Understanding our data" accordions below.

 

Lots of mental gymnastics to try to make omicron worse than it is. Natural immunity still vastly superior to the vaccine. Thanks for helping show that.

 

Less than 2 percent of the population have had prior documented covid but 5% of the omicron cases were reinfection. Please explain to me how that shows superior natural immunity.

You walked into this. You posted something you clearly don't understand and now you look bad. Accept your failure and move forward.

 

Omicron is as infectious as measles— which has a very high infectious rate. Omicron 'is going to take over' this winter, and Fauci says Americans should brace for a 'tough few weeks to months'

 

Lol, only thing I walked into was more evidence of natural immunity being vastly superior to just vaccination. You might want to re-read my link sport. I get it, you’ve been wrong for months and it sucks. Oh well, one of these days you will be right. I’m feeling it.

 

Here we go again. It seems that every new season brings about another announcement that things are going to get worse. Hopefully this will be a last wave of covid and will prove to be less severe than previous variants.

 

I was being sarcastic with my comment as one of the anti-vaxxers arguments is that vaccines aren’t working.

 

He was reportedly not vaccinated. Don't understand what business a state senator from Washington would have in El Salvador, but with TEAMS, ZOOM and other tools, there is literally nothing he needed to travel there for.

 

Understood. I was just adding to your comment

 

Your quote. 4.3% of omicron cases were reinfection.

Based upon this source, I will revise my assessment

Denmark COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

So 600k cases out of 6 million population = 10% infection rate vs 4.3% of omicron shows some level of natural immunity. So I was wrong on that (yes I can say when I'm wrong. The facts are what they are)

But some of those with natural immunity also have had vaccines. So you really can't discern how much natural immunity there is. Even at face value, natural immunity is not wildly robust- the numbers imply 60% efficacy, which ignore any impact vaccines may have had.

 

I will say that you weren't actually wrong to the extent from this post. Re-infection usually is defined as occurring outside of 3 months (as positive tests within that time may just be recovery from the initial virus). So the math on re-infection would be based upon cases prior to September 20 (I'll use September 21 to be conservative and include the most cases possible by this definition). So the math is 355,257/5,831,000 = 6%. That is not a terribly encouraging number of re-infections. Basically, it means that having a previous Covid infection lowers your odds of getting Covid by about 33%.

It should be noted that, in those numbers, a vaccine lowers your probability of getting Covid by about 53% (the unvaccinated population has about 2x the cases as would be expected if it was a true random draw from the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations).

Of course, it should also be noted that the sample size on those numbers is quite small, especially when trying to analyze relatively rare events (which, in Denmark, being unvaccinated or having a previous Covid infection are both rare conditions).

 

Thanks for admitting you were wrong. But when in the last month or so for delta we have a 0.8% for those with natural immunity and 4.5% for omicron which if you were to pick which one to not be as effective against for sure you would pick omicron. That isn’t a debate. So yeah, lets celebrate natural immunity and the vaccines. Like I’ve said over and over, vax everyone over 18, and vax those under 18 with underlying conditions. Move on with life. Masks, don’t work, school closures, don’t work, lockdowns don’t work. Merry Christmas everyone. Enjoy it with your loved ones.

 

I guess I'm saying the evidence for natural immunity against Omicron isnt terribly robust based on this data. Given that many who had immunity may have also been vaccinated you can't definitively say that the modestly better numbers are due to natural immunity.

Don't get me wrong, I expect natural immunity did play a part but that particular set of data doesn't directly support it vs omicron. The natural immunity data vs Delta looks much better, although still you have some duplication with the vaccine.

 

The other thing with natural immunity is, with a full population, you are going to be under counting re-infections unless you test weekly. With more than 1 in 3 COVID cases being asymptomatic, what percent of the population has had COVID, never had any symptoms, never got tested, and was never recorded as a case? And how many people get a positive result thinking it is their first case, when really, it's a second?

Studies can control for this. Full populations cannot. Again, unless you test everyone weekly.

 

Omicron may sideline two leading drugs against COVID-19

 

This is an interview EVERYONE should take time to listen to. Dr. Paul Offit (sits on FDA advisory committee) discusses vaccination of children, boosters and more. His positions will probably surprise everyone as he has an extremely common sensical approach to all of this. Just a couple of highlights:

1. Believes children should be vaccinated (many will hate this), and cites the data and statistics from childhood covid hospitalizations and death. BTW, COVID is now on the top 10 killers of children in the United States.
2. He blasted the media and public health officials for ridiculous messaging and creating unwarranted panic.
3. Discussed how the mRNA vaccines are working, and working better than anyone hoped despite the failed messaging and unrealistic promises made by Pfizer, Moderna and CDC.
4. Continuing to discuss Omicron in light of cases reported vs hospitalization in S Africa.

AT the 22 minute mark ~ he discusses Provincetown on July 4th to back up points 2 and 3: Thousands of men celebrating, approximately 79% of the people were vaccinated and still 346 people contracted COVID. The media screamed "breakthrough" and anti-vaxxers screamed about "failed new drugs" all without knowing what they were talking about. Then, the media went away. What they never told us were that 4....FOUR total people developed severe enough symptoms to be hospitalized. 1.2% were hospitalized!! The other 342 were mild to asymptomatic. That is not a failure. That is EXACTLY what the vaccines were meant to do.....but our messaging is so terrible.

Much, much more listening to for the first 50 minutes of the podcast:

TWiV 844: Paul Offit on children, COVID, and boosters

 

I guess I'm about to find out. Fully vaxed. Tested + today. My 11 year old too. Wife is showing symptoms tonight.

All of our Christmas plans shot.

 

I hope your recovery is quick and that all of you are able to avoid serious complications.

 

Get the monoclonal cocktail asap

 

They are saying that the current combination of antibodies, casirivimab and imdevimab, aren't effective against omicron. Last I heard this current spike isn't necessarily omicron though so who knows...