Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Not to the GBD specifically, but covid hurt reputations or exposed some negative qualities for quite a few experts. I'm thinking, for instance, superstar Stanford Prof John Ionnides, who jumped all over covid with some bad science/public scholarship after earning a superstar reputation exposing bad science.

There were many others who felt the need to go full contrarian--whether politically motivated or not--in trying to cut through the cacophony to make a bigger name for themselves. We probably should have expected this given the unprecedented phenomenon, but their efforts helped sew further discord to an already fraught situation. To a large extent, this why there are so many whose thinking about covid continues to be muddled. Retrospect hasn't helped any since they're still stubbornly trying to hold onto these bad ideas.

 

When it was written that was one of the big things being discussed. It is not the focus as you said it was. The purpose was to push for focused protection.

 

They weren't "discussing" it. They were proposing it. They stated that we would reach herd immunity more than once in just a few paragraphs. Here are direct quotes, so that you can't continue to be dishonest about this:

That is their entire proposal (everything before that is Preamble about how smart they are, what governments were doing, and their understanding of Covid at the time). They mention herd immunity 5 times and immunity as a whole 3 more. In 4 paragraphs of proposal. All of their proposals involve the fact that we would reach herd immunity.

 

Wife became sick and 1.08 temperature sunday pm. We did the home test this morning and she tested positive. Stll running a temp and I have her drinking gatorade and taking nyquil.

 

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

 

Are you saying she had a 108 degree fever or is that a typo? 108 is like straight to the emergency room level.

 

Guessing that is 100.8.

Any temperature is excess of 42 C (107.6) results in immediate, permanent brain damage. You would not need to go to an emergency room, it would be too late.

 

For anyone interested in spending ~ 50 minutes, here is an interview with Dr. Paul Offit on TWIV (This Week in Virology). Things of note:

Vincent Raccanielo - host - study under Jonas Salk, was the first person to map the polio genome and his lab is responsible evolving the polio vaccine from the orignal Salk-vaccine into the one we know today. The past 35 years his labs have focused on HIV research.
Rich Condit - professor emeritus of UF's Microbiology Department - one of our nation's leading experts in Pox viruses and was part of the team that helped to develop the national response to potential Small Pox attacks in the US.
Dr. Paul Offit (guest) - nations leading experts in vaccines for children, general vaccine development and sits on the FDA panel that reviews vaccines and related biologics (monoclonal antibodies).

Offit holds very strong opinions from reviewing thousands of pages of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine data, people should listen for themselves, but the bullet points are similar to those in his letter to STAT News:

• Voted against a 4th shot for general use - data does not exist to support it
• 3 shots of initial mRNA vaccines provide excellent (> 80%), durable protection against severe disease and hospitalization with maturation of B and T cells.
• Bi-Valent versions of vaccine only showed 1.5-2x increase in neutralizing antibodies. However, we have no data that shows the 2x increase matters (recall, Moderna shot had 2x higher neutralizing anti-bodies vs Pfizer from the original 2 shot series).
• Points out that excessive boosts may start to create "antigenic sin" in people - if virus really evolves away from current type, the human immune system cannot learn to recognize it, it is still "locked in" to the ancestral version.
• Does believe in vaccinating children - even 1000 deaths seems like a small number, it is still 1000 preventable deaths.
• Laments the poor state of our health care system - we cannot tell effectively between those hospitalized FOR Covid vs. those hospitalized WITH Covid.
• Does not believe that there is much need for public mask wearing for majority of people.

TWiV 917: Boosters on, Paul Offit

 

Heres to a speedy recovery.

My wife tested positive July 1st and then again on July 10th. That’s 10 days. Isn’t that unusual? We will continue to stay inside until we both test negative. Her and I will test again on Friday the 14th. Both of us are doing much better than last week. Still scratching my head over the 10 day positive test.

 

What kind of test? PCR? Antigen?

 

The ones you give yourself at home. Cotton swab up the nose. We started with 8 of them. Down to 3. False positives with them are rare whereas false negatives are not unusual.

 

That sucks. You're likely still contagious with a positive antigen test.

 

Thats what I’m thinking. We will stay inside until we both test negative. That’s 2 weeks btw.

 

thanks for doing the right thing

 

Prior Covid infection conferred better protection against symptomatic Omicron *more than a year after infection* than 3 doses of vaccine >1 month after the third dose/booster.



https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2203965

 

Well that isn't true according to the paper you linked.

 

See the chart below.

 

See the following graph:

 

OK, so slightly more likely to catch a cold if fully vaccinated as opposed to having previously been infected a year after vaccination or infection. What is the point?

Again, data against severe disease is the only metric that is relevant with vaccines.

 

So the chart I posted shows i was right. Thanks for confirming.