Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Do any of you ever drive over the speed limit? Have you ever done the research on the likelihood of a crash causing injuries or death to others based on the number of miles over a posted speed limit?

Someone has likely posted in this very thread while driving.

Do you donate to Feeding America every time the cashier asks you to while grabbing wings and beer?

Do you give blood as often as you could?

The point is...everyone has their limits and things they will and wont risk or sacrifice for others.

We should all remember that in this case too

 

I was going to post a tweet but it has f’s in it. So I will instead copy the text and remove the words that give some around here the vapors:

This pandemic has ruined my social skills so much, I couldn't smile at a person in the lobby because I was wearing a mask so I SLOW BLINKED AT THEM LIKE A CAT TO SHOW I'M NON THREATENING

 

Actually, there is greater evidence that shows that once vaccinated, even if infected.....the viral load rarely reaches the point to where you are "infectious". And, much like the myth around children who most certainly are infectious....they appear to be infectious for a much shorter period of time than non-vaccinated adults.

Also, there are now 107 million fully vaccinated American adults. At a 95% efficacy, we would expect nearly 5M people who have been vaccinated to eventually test positive for the virus. The fact that we are reporting breakthrough (love how everything needs a scary term) cases at 10,000 so far, says that the vaccines are likely outperforming their small sample size (40-60k) study results, which is what both Pfizer and Moderna predicted subsequent to their EUA grants from the FDA.

Finally, some of the fear and misunderstanding about the vaccines, even among doctors and others in the medical fields is coming from the fact that none of us fully understand mRNA vaccines and potential longer term problems. However, many of the objections are rooted in historical understanding of legacy vaccines with "active virus" or "attenuated virus" (Chinese vaccine) or "proprietary adjuvant" (like Novavaxx and AZ) aided vaccines or even the "adenovirus vectored vaccines" (which Sputnik V, Johnson and Johnson and the Astra Zeneca are). Much of what we know about adverse effects from those legacy platforms and are not applicable to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. We have entered a whole new realm of medical treatments, and we simply have no long term reliabilty and safety data. People should not be chastized for showing caution. Vaccine trials normally run many years before the target vaccine is deemed both effective and safe. We saw almost immediately that this new, modern techology was going to be massively effective. We also know these vaccines will not have many of the legacy issues we have seen with vaccines through the years....but without long term safety data, no one can be sure of the long-term, unintended consequences (if any). We can rationalize....but we cannot prove without doing the work.

That said, when you have a-holes throwing out absurd claims like the Miami school founder that the vaccines are causing women near vaccinated people to spontaneously abort their pregnancies, and couple that with the millions of igorant Americans who simply fear that they choose not to understand and are led around by the nose by liars and grifters.....you take any serious discussion of the topic and throw it right in the garbage, and we are left with the Trump-induced quagmire, where we have created opposing "sides" based on politics, becasue frankly, most Americans simple cannot or will not sit down long enough to study and understand the science involved.

 

Good post.

I will add, some of the fear also comes from the fact that he FDA caves to pressure. They have tarnished their trustworthiness. They can be bought.
Anything hasty from them is worthy of a deeper look.

Monsanto says hi.

 

10k breakthrough cases with most areas with mitigating effects still in place. What happens when things open up even more and the vaccine effect starts to wane?

COVID-19 is a killer. Want to be as sure as possible it's out of our lives? Herd immunity through vaccination.

 

It is not going to happen when 40+% of the adult population will refuse the chance to be vaccinated. Further, we are not vaccinating children yet and like was previously mentioned they are very effective spreaders, though they remain infectious for shorter durations than adults.

I am a guy with physics, math and engieering degrees. Big fan of actually following science. We will simply not be rid of SARS-CoV-2 any time soon and people need to come to grips with that. Much like other diseases that run around we need break throughs on therapeutics to treat people at home and early on, keep them out of the hospital and ensure your bodies immune system can fully clear the virus before lasting damage is done to lungs, heart, kidneys, liver or brain. That is our best path forward.

 

Believe it or not, I pay very little attention to the FDA. Most of what I think I know is from podcasts, reading pre-prints on-line and discussions either on line or with family (doctor, nurses and 1 former classmate at Gilead (nothing to do with Remdesivir)).

The cool thing is, in the age of the internet, there is a ton of access to pre-prints, actual trial data and expert discussion (much of the detail of which is lost on me, but I have learned some things during the past 14 months and can follow most data analysis even if I do not understand the topic). Often when I post information, it is an amalgamation of what I have read and could understand and retain. Very little is original thought or my own analysis since I really know nothing in the field....but I can read and regurgitate with the best of them.

 

Pretty sure the trials were conducted with even more mitigation in place. Yet the 95% seems modest. More like 99% if using your number.
You are actually proving our point.

 

Doing the math it's 99.99%

 

You guys can place the vaccine hesitancy squarely on fauci's shoulders. He should be shouting to everyone that can hear, the vaccines work amazingly well, get one and you should go back to living your lives. But here we are.

 

I was throwing him a bone ...Dude had to put up with Sean Miller and Kevin Sumlin. He needs some love.

 

Nobody did less with talent than Sumlin. Good riddance. Miller? Wouldn't surprise me if he goes the Kelvin Sampson route, and is back in the college game before we know it, and is winning at a .700 or higher clip again.

The vaccines are working great. And while it may never be attainable, the goal should be zero new cases and zero new deaths from COVID. 10,000 > 0 and from the breakthrough cases, I think I read somewhere, about 85 deaths. And 85 > 0. We can do better, can we not?

Sadly, it won't happen. Too many adults not taking the vaccine, and even if we vaccinated all children, it still might not be enough to reach herd immunity. This creates the reality that COVID will be with us for a while. And it means people will get sick and die that probably would not have had everyone got vaccinated.

 

Israel is returning to normal as it approaches herd immunity via vaccinations. Unless they have some genetic superpowers we don't, there is no reason to believe that wouldn't happen here.

Fauci was right when he said the vaccine works "amazingly" well. Those that have been immunized are one step close to normalcy by being able to safely resume outdoor activities. Now it's incumbent on the vaccinated person's peers to get immunized to resume safe indoor activities. It's not rocket science. Hell, it's not even tricycle science. I'm sadden by how scary and confusing the world must be for some.

 

The cases you are citing are "breakthrough" cases. That means we can't stop them. Correct?
Taking the vaccine wont stop breakthrough cases because you cant have a breakthrough case unless you have been vaccinated.

And yes a hew will sadly die, just like people will actually die because of cars, and going to work etc. We don't take away someone's freedom to drive based on that fact.

Zero is not even in the picture. It can't be because it is a fool's errand.

 

Not sure where you live, but in my state with a democratic governor, we have long been able to do almost all indoor activities.
The people who are scared can get a vaccine that shows 95%-99% success.

Some folks are acting like this is still last May. I mean who isn't doing relatively normal things at this point (while still masking and distancing I hope)?

 

OK sure, fauci can continue his one step closer schtick and people on the fence will continue to remain there, and the US numbers will never go above probably 60%.

 

A vaccinated person with a breakthrough case has to come in contact with an already infected person in order to contract COVID. If we reach herd immunity, the chances of someone susceptible to a breakthrough case coming into contact with someone who has the disease becomes incredibly rare. This is the definition of herd immunity, that enough of the herd is protected, that even those who aren't protected, either because they can't take a vaccine for one reason or another, or the vaccine still left a person not completely covered, still has 99%+ protection. So to answer the question, we can't stop all cases, but we can likely stop 99% of breakthrough cases if we reached herd immunity.

And while we shouldn't stop people from driving, should we not do everything in our power to make it as safe as possible? Use seat belts, drive carefully, enforce DUI laws, etc. The goal for driving should also be to reduce accidents and fatalities to as close as zero as possible, or should the roads just be a free-for-all for everyone?

With the COVID vaccine, the mitigation measures to reduce the spread of the disease is easy. One shot if you get the J&J, two if you get the others. That's it. No forgetting to put on a seat belt, or worrying that the car next to you has an impaired driver that even if you take all precautions, can still cause you trouble.

 

The efficacy number of 94% doesn’t mean 6% of people are expected to get infected. That is not the math. Instead, it means that in the double blind study, 94% fewer people were infected in the vaccinated group vs. the control group. Only a certain % we’re infected even in the control group, and due to distancing and safety protocols the death numbers weren’t huge (was like 11 unvaccinated deaths vs. 0 vaccinated deaths in one of the mRNA trials, but even that is enough to show statistical significance when you are running an experiment with a sample of 10,000).

As I recall, initially included in that overall efficacy was that the vaccines were 100% against severe illness and deaths. In the smaller trial groups they were, but in the broader population of 100,000,000 some of that 6% included severe illness and death - which is why we have about 100 COVID deaths from fully vaccinated people.

It’s not a knock on the vaccines, and probably not even unexpected by those experts. Especially with some of the variants slightly reducing the effectiveness. They probably have outperformed against variants, otherwise we’d be in worse shape, but it wasn’t going to hold up to the initial claims of 100% against severe illness and death. But as long as it substantially works (statistically), the vaccines are still the key.

 

Do you ever speed?

 

When I was younger and less mature. Today? Rarely more than 5 mph over the posted limit. Being 2 minutes late is better than getting into an accident because you're in a hurry. Even better to plan ahead so you don't have to hurry. Given today's tech, like Google Maps, very easy to do.