Coronavirus: COVID-19

[CBJ]

They are also saying that 75% of the UK population has had their second jab, who is this 25%, it can't be many adults as most under 17 haven't been jabbed at all so when you remove them from the number it goes down quite a bit and if the numbers are pretty low how come so many are getting infected, the numbers just don't add up.

The numbers add up fine if you read what they actually say. It quite clearly states here that it's 75% of people adults, i.e. people over the age of 18. Those under the age of 18 aren't counted in that figure at all, which admittedly makes less sense now that they have started offering jabs to 16 and 17 year olds. Bear in mind, however, that if they changed that metric, you'd be complaining that they had moved the goalposts.

[Mailo]

They are also saying that 75% of the UK population has had their second jab, who is this 25%, it can't be many adults as most under 17 haven't been jabbed at all so when you remove them from the number it goes down quite a bit and if the numbers are pretty low how come so many are getting infected, the numbers just don't add up.

The numbers add up fine if you read what they actually say. It quite clearly states here that it's 75% of people adults, i.e. people over the age of 18. Those under the age of 18 aren't counted in that figure at all, which admittedly makes less sense now that they have started offering jabs to 16 and 17 year olds. Bear in mind, however, that if they changed that metric, you'd be complaining that they had moved the goalposts.

Keep in mind the UK is pretty much the only country that calculates percentages like this (adults only), probably to keep up the fiction that it is leading vaccination rates in Europe due to Brexit, when it is actually currently currently in 9th place both for people fully vaccinated and for people who got at least one dose, 6th place for doses per capita, and a whopping 31st place for jabs per day. (Source: The Guardian, which got their data from here).
Switching to calculating it for everyone instead of for adults only would be the as much "goal post moving" as switching to the metric system would be

Pretty much related to this, why is it that it is just fine for an MP to blatantly lie in Parliament in the UK, but if other MPs call out the lie, they are ejected from the session?

[CBJ]

Switching to calculating it for everyone instead of for adults only would be the as much "goal post moving" as switching to the metric system would be

I didn't say it was moving the goalposts; I said that felter would be complaining that they were moving the goalposts. You needed to have read the thread history to understand why I said that. And, um, we do use the metric system for most things.

Pretty much related to this, why is it that it is just fine for an MP to blatantly lie in Parliament in the UK, but if other MPs call out the lie, they are ejected from the session?

Not really on topic, but it's called parliamentary privilege, and it's not uncommon. Again, I'm not saying it's right; just explaining how it came about. Given that it's politicians we're talking about, I doubt it makes any difference to the amount of lying that goes on.

[felter]

CBJ there is no need to being so aggressive with me about it, as it was more of a question on my behalf than anything else as I had read it as 75% of the UK population, which just didn't make any sense.

[fiksal]

Sometimes I can't follow if Russians (in general) do or do not trust their government now.

Simple answer they do not.


Long answer:

But, they (lots of people) also don't trust "the west", as it's always out to destroy them.

Every thing government pushed onto people is always looked at from a point of "what's in it for them".

In case of Covid, doesn't help that the government simultaneously took multiple contradictory points.
- Covid is not real or not gonna be an issue
- It is real, but still not an issue
- US numbers are fake
- US manufactured the virus that's killing everyone
- Russia made the vaccine first, and it's most effective
- The west conspired to block Russian vaccine
- Businesses must close for 2 weeks out of their own pocket to stop the virus
- Masks aren't necessary
- Everyone must take Sputnik vaccine or else!
- Hospitals aren't allowed to report Covid numbers
- Hospitals don't actually do Covid tests much anyways

and so on.

as the result people basically don't care, or hide.

some people wait for vaccine by Vector lab, which isn't affiliated with Moscow.


if you want to have one take away, a lot of things like this are done via a stick rather than a carrot, and sticks are usually given to morons. science is done elsewhere and it's at odds with nationalism

[CBJ]

Those under the age of 18 aren't counted in that figure at all, which admittedly makes less sense now that they have started offering jabs to 16 and 17 year olds.

As a quick update on this, as of yesterday the metric was updated to make it the percentage of everyone over the age of 16. I assume that if and when they start offering jabs to younger age groups here, they will adjust it again accordingly.

[mr.WHO]

I read recently that India created first DNA vacine for COVID:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57774294

Aparently this is the very first DNA vacine approved for human use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_vaccine


My very first though after months of hearing "mRNA is safe, it's not DNA" - hmm, what can go wrong, especially that it's an India.

[Terre]

My very first though after months of hearing "mRNA is safe, it's not DNA" - hmm, what can go wrong, especially that it's an India.

That third arm may come in handy.

[BaronVerde]

Almost 50% of COVID patients released from hospital report long covid smptoms after 1 year, like general fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, shortness of breath. Some symptoms actually increae and worsen over time.

Press note:
https://time.com/6093164/long-covid-19-largest-study/

Study, to be published:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 4/fulltext

[Redvers Ganderpoke]

Daughter (17) had first jab yesterday. She's managed to avoid covid so far anyway (quite a few of her friends have had it).

[Cpt.Jericho]

Almost 50% of COVID patients released from hospital report long covid smptoms after 1 year, like general fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, shortness of breath. Some symptoms actually increae and worsen over time.

The study is about less than 1300 people being discharged between Jan. to May 2020 in China. And of those about 50% report said long term symptoms.
What I couldn't find was the number of total covid patients in that area and period to put those 50% of less than 1300 into any context considering the risk of actually getting long covid.

[BaronVerde]

The study is about less than 1300 people being discharged between Jan. to May 2020 in China. And of those about 50% report said long term symptoms.
What I couldn't find was the number of total covid patients in that area and period to put those 50% of less than 1300 into any context considering the risk of actually getting long covid.

The number is the sample size, people released from a specific Wuhan hospital (not all over China) who were willing to participate in the study and show up for two visits and be selected for for a physical examination to determine the severity of certain symptoms, e.g. lung function, endurance, physical strength, as well as partcipate in questionnaires. Of these, ~50% have long covid symptoms with varying degree.

The study does not say anything about absolute numbers of COVID cases in the Wuhan area, nor does it claim that these are all of the patients that were released from the hospital. It says 2469 COVID-19 patients were released in total in the time frame. It doesn't put released patients in relation to those that isolated at home and recovered without being hospitalized, or those parts of the population that didn't fall sick with COVID at all. But it describes in detail number and severity of long covid symptoms in the sample, and the differences to the control group after 12 months.

Using patients from a single hospital and locality reduces bias that might be introduced from varying quality of treatment, and possibly bias from social stratification (speculation mine).

The primary aim of this study was to comprehensively compare health consequences of COVID-19 patients who have been discharged from hospital between 6 months and 12 months after symptom onset. The secondary aim was to determine whether COVID-19 survivors had returned to a baseline health status 1 year after symptom onset compared with non-COVID-19 controls.

----------------

Out of memory, the risk of having long covid after falling sick was mentioned in other places before, and said to be ~15% of all COVID cases. But that general number doesn't include a detailed view on age, risk groups, any preconditions, etc. One would have to look that up elsewhere ...

And of course people being released from hospital after a COVID treatment are certainly in a worse shape than the average cases that never got hospitalized, no question.

[Cpt.Jericho]

The study does not say anything about absolute numbers of COVID cases in the Wuhan area, nor does it claim that these are all of the patients that were released from the hospital.[...]

Then why did you say that almost 50% of released patients suffer from long covid?

Almost 50% of COVID patients released from hospital report long covid smptoms after 1 year, like general fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, shortness of breath. Some symptoms actually increae and worsen over time.

If i didn't knew any better, I would call that fearmongering.

[BaronVerde]

Then why did you say that almost 50% of released patients suffer from long covid?

Trivially, because the absolute number of COVID cases is not equal to the number of patients released from a COVID-treatment in hospital, the latter being far less than the former and their cases more severe than the population average. Thought that was intuitively clear and not in need of specific mention ...

The study says they are the first with such a large sample and control group, being statistically more relevant than similar work published before. We'll probably read more about long covid (COVID-19 hasn't been around for that long yet) as time goes by.

[Cpt.Jericho]

The absolute number of cases is not trivial when you're trying risk assessment.

[pjknibbs]

Using patients from a single hospital and locality reduces bias that might be introduced from varying quality of treatment, and possibly bias from social stratification (speculation mine).

I would say it's the opposite? This one hospital they chose for the study might be particularly crap at treating Covid. The whole point of doing a study like this over multiple hospitals is to average out fluctuations in individual treatment regimes.

[BaronVerde]

Hm, at least it makes people in here think about COVID outcomes, gooood

It fits right in. It is not isolated, other studies about released COVID patients come to similar conclusions, like for instance https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33172844/.

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Some thoughts on the origin and spread of SARS-COV-2:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6558/968

Like others before and based on available evidence they assume that the virus was lilely introduced to the Wuhan market through the cold chain of dead animal transport.

Humans are now the dominant SARS-CoV-2 host species. The danger is that SARS-CoV-2 could spread from humans to other animal species, [...] Humanity must work together beyond country borders to amplify surveillance for coronaviruses at the human–animal interface to minimize the threat of both established and evolving variants evading vaccines and to stop future spillover events.

The warning here is that the evolving viruses spread back from humans into animal populations, possibly evolving further, spreading back to humans in new forms and through the food chain and evading vaccine efforts.

Or, in short, it is not a joke.

---------------

Edit: There's more interesting news today:

Having had and recovered from a SARS-COV-2 infection offers better protection against the Delta-variant than 2 doses of the Pfizer/Biontec vaccine alone. This means that the immune system's response is more effective from a previous infection than from a vaccination. This is a qualitative argument, natural immunity is better, not an argument against vaccinations, which are effective against Delta, just only to a lesser degree.

By no means this invalidates vaccinations and is not an invitation to 'infection parties', people will die then ! The study just points out the "benefit of natural immunity, but doesn’t take into account what this virus does to the body to get to that point".

According to the study, the best protection against Delta was a previous infection plus 1 shot of the vaccine.

Source:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08 ... on-parties

[exogenesis]

...

Edit: There's more interesting news today:

Having had and recovered from a SARS-COV-2 infection offers better protection against the Delta-variant than 2 doses of the Pfizer/Biontec vaccine alone. This means that the immune system's response is more effective from a previous infection than from a vaccination. This is a qualitative argument, natural immunity is better, not an argument against vaccinations, which are effective against Delta, just only to a lesser degree.

By no means this invalidates vaccinations and is not an invitation to 'infection parties', people will die then ! The study just points out the "benefit of natural immunity, but doesn’t take into account what this virus does to the body to get to that point".

According to the study, the best protection against Delta was a previous infection plus 1 shot of the vaccine.

Source:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08 ... on-parties

This result is similar to what I was posting about a month & a half ago in this thread,
but you didn't like it due to the source

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=421591&start=1860#p5069380

We do seem to get a better immune 'setup' from a real infection, versus (just) vaccinations.

[BaronVerde]

Sure I'm aware of the former discussion and my warning not to take isolated preprints for real findings, and I stand to it. But I also helped you out with a link to a proper publication supporting your point better than the "news-medical" news item back then.

With all the COVID noise and politics involved, as consumers, we can't really judge if an unreviewed preprint or news item actually holds information based on proper work if it is not from a discipline we have deeper knowledge in. Unrelated, I've recently had one paper that confused gravity waves (waves at the interface between fluids of different densities) and gravitational waves (disturbances in space time). Came out they wanted to sell seismometers with some science babble

Anyway, I concede that there's a factual basis for a previous infection + single shot being more effective against the delta-variant than just vaccination - if the previously infected person lives up to see it and doesn't suffer from long term complications. So "Don't try this at home !"

-------------------

Without global vaccinations the pandemic could actually run out of hand.

As illustrated by the rapid spread and high transmissibility of the ‘delta’ variant, SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary potential is a major potential obstacle for control.

Sauce:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/ ... ce.abj7364

[Incubi]

pfizer Has FDA approval as of last week. And now that we are getting better from Covid and some of us are better, we now have all the answers we need to get vaccinated. My daughter got her first shot two days ago. Hopefully by the end of the month we will all have the vaccine. Now that pfizer has full FDA approval there should be an increase on Americans getting the vaccine. I know the so called antivaxxers are still gong to be an issue, but to be honest these seem to be the same people who were anti maskers and who refused to even believe that this was real. I am of the opinion that our antivaxxers are just extreme conspiracy theorist. I do not believe that the majority of people who have not been vaccinated yet are antivaxxers. Antivaxxers just are the loudest people, and we know how that goes. Between the misinformation and lack of FDA approval and confusion over the differences between vaccines and the political front, you don't have to be an antivaxxer to be hesitant for the shot.

I hope that this all changes now, with how hard we all got hit in the early August, and FDA approval, I have hopes that things will get a bit better with more vaccinated people in America. Releasing a Vaccine without FDA approval is one of the mistakes our government did that lead to the current chaos. The Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines wasn't covered very well, especially in a world where your lucky if people read more than the first 20 words after the title. And that is the result of low attention spans and a justifiable loss of trust in journalism. Educating people in ways that they will listen is a forgotten art. So hopefully this can be discussed with a little less self righteousness.