To Vaccinate or Not---The Rat Flu Odyssey Continues

Dr Michael Mina’s simple explanation is that PCR tests will show positive 20+ days after one is infected and long past when they are infectious. There’s other data available from PCR tests that can provide insight about whether one is likely still infectious. Using our free clinic, the reported pcr test results were positive, negative, or testing error, but none of the nuanced details were provided or interpreted.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

Dr Michael Mina’s simple explanation is that PCR tests will show positive 20+ days after one is infected and long past when they are infectious. There’s other data available from PCR tests that can provide insight about whether one is likely still infectious. Using our free clinic, the reported pcr test results were positive, negative, or testing error, but none of the nuanced details were provided or interpreted.

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Looking at his CV, he has both the epidemiology and math/stat background to answer your question better than me. Email him.

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Originally Posted by LongShortLong

Sounds like a policy question then. Are we protecting the public from pandemics? Protecting the individual from disease? Protecting the insurance company's bottom line?

To what degree do rtpcr's stay positive? I thought that was somewhat rare, like less than 10%, maybe less than 1%. Same for how often does someone have an infection of any type two weeks earlier. Symptoms -> test -> positive seems like a pretty strong covid diagnosis, though I'm not a doctor. As conservative as we are with approving treatments, I lean toward treatment without a strong argument against. OTOH If no symptoms, screening test -> positive may not be as strong, but given the high effectiveness of timely treatment, it should probably still be given unless community prevalence is really really low.

E.g. if prevalence is 0.1% and false positive rate is 1%, then 90% of positives aren't covid, and some percent of the true positives are post-infection when early treatment won't help. So maybe only 1 in 20 positives could be helped. In that case start to consider the patient's risk profile. But you wrote above that current prevalence is close to 2%. So we're going to find 2 true positives for every 1 false positive, and treatment would help 1 in 3 positives.

Paxlovid's effectiveness approaching 90% when given early, makes a strong argument in favor of treatment.

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Those statistics are important. To me screening doesn't make a lot of sense except maybe for people being admitted to the hospital for something else. That includes asymptomatic people being tested for exposure. I don't see any point in treating asymptomatic people with Paxlovid. I also don't see the point in treating only higher risk people with symptoms and not everyone with symptoms.

Interesting what's going on with China's economy these days. There are a lot of factors but the way they handled Covid and the cost of it is a significant part of it. Pandemics have consequences no matter how you manage them.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

Apparently, infections are on the rise, a lot. Dr JP Weiland, a disease modeler, is stating that the US nationwide wastewater surveillance data posted end of last week indicates that 1 in every 55 Americans is currently infected with covid.

A new long covid piece came out from that large VA cohort. 2-year study. “Over the span of 2 years of follow-up in the nonhospitalized group, risks declined and became not significant for 69% of the examined sequelae.”

Here’s a WTF statement: “Over the span of 2 years of follow-up, 25.3% (18.9, 31.0) of the DALYs due to PASC were contributed from the second year ….” Meaning that those 25%-Wes came down with long covid at least one year after infection.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...02521-2#MOESM2

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I don't think your interpretation is correct.

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Cumulatively at 2 years, PASC contributed 80.4 (95% confidence interval (CI): 71.6–89.6) and 642.8 (95% CI: 596.9–689.3) disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per 1,000 persons among nonhospitalized and hospitalized individuals; 25.3% (18.9–31.0%) and 21.3% (18.2–24.5%) of the cumulative 2-year DALYs in nonhospitalized and hospitalized were from the second year.

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These are cumulative excess DALYs vs the control uninfected population, at the end of year one the number was 60.1 in non-hosp infected and at the end of year 2 it was 80.4 in excess of the control pop, or 20.3 in yr2. It means out of those DALYS being tracked after infection in the non-hosp group, 75% of these occurred during the first year and 25% of them occurred during the second (simple 60:20 ratio). This does not mean a delay in PASC symptoms in 25% of those infected until yr2, it refers to the percent of overall symptoms reported in the non-hosp cohort reported over the course of 2 yrs that occurred during yr 2. Of the ~77 DALYs that were tracked, 69% of those became non-significant in year 2 in the non-hosp cohort, and 31% (24/77) of the listed symptoms remained somewhat significant compared to the uninfected cohort in yr 2.

Hope that made sense?

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The findings that SARS-CoV-2 leads to postacute and long-term health effects should be framed within the larger context of infection-associated chronic illnesses—that infections (viral and nonviral) may lead to postacute and chronic disease and that there is likely a bidirectional nexus between noncommunicable diseases and infectious diseases, in that noncommunicable disease often increase the risk of infection and adverse outcomes after infection and that a viral infection may lead to the emergence of new-onset noncommunicable disease.

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Quoted passage is another reminder that Long Covid is not a unique viral phenomena and can occur after many viral, bacterial, or fungal infections and may greatly influenced/exacerbated by undiagnosed underlying conditions.

It was an interpretation that I took from one of the authors on Twitter.

“A sizable chunk of Long Covid's high burden of disability and disease (25% non-hospitalized & 21% hospitalized) emerged anew in the second year after infection – pointing to a long-term risk horizon of SARS-CoV-2”

https://x.com/zalaly/status/16936427...Mbjk5ElmdWLRnQ

Perhaps he is misrepresenting his paper and data. The paper is peer reviewed but his tweets are not. To me, overall, it still feels like the population is not necessarily a good representation of the populace, but it’s a lot of data.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/healt...ess/index.html

Wonder how much of the uptick has been due to increased travel? A lot of older people who otherwise don't encounter a lot of people in close quarters in their daily lives are getting exposed in crowded airports, airplanes, and plazas, piazzas, and places.

All Americans that I know that got sick while traveling in EU, were age 13-55. Most have had covid once or twice already. A few had it once. It was about a quarter of the families that I knew that went to Europe. All have been back in the US w/o COVID for at least 3 weeks.

Friend came over last night looking for a covid test (asymptomatic exposure with older company due to arrive). He said he checked every pharmacy in truckee and n tahoe. No tests. Is this because more covid and people have bought up all the tests, or because they don't stock them because no one wants to pay for them out of pocket so no one buying them, or because the local pharmacies are always out of everything.

Is there any way to track uptake of the current bivalent, and/or the newly formulated booster about to roll out? This data was in your face on every newscast and every paper, daily. Then poof, it went away once things started trending downwards (in the direction they didn't want). Does this data exist anymore in real time?

We want to know what the national uptake is before the fascists start calling on us to be fired from our jobs and purged from society...again.

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Originally Posted by old goat

Friend came over last night looking for a covid test (asymptomatic exposure with older company due to arrive). He said he checked every pharmacy in truckee and n tahoe. No tests. Is this because more covid and people have bought up all the tests, or because they don't stock them because no one wants to pay for them out of pocket so no one buying them, or because the local pharmacies are always out of everything.

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Yes.

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Originally Posted by Percy Rideout

Is there any way to track uptake of the current bivalent, ....... Does this data exist anymore in real time?

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In the hope you are being sincere about wanting to find this information, see link below. Not sure it's broken down by each bivalent strain, but knock yourself out. This link has been there for a long time...

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...tatracker-home

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Originally Posted by SorryBro

In the hope you are being sincere about wanting to find this information, see link below. Not sure it's broken down by each bivalent strain, but knock yourself out.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...tatracker-home

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Asspen? Sincere? Don't count on it.

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Originally Posted by old goat

Friend came over last night looking for a covid test (asymptomatic exposure with older company due to arrive). He said he checked every pharmacy in truckee and n tahoe. No tests. Is this because more covid and people have bought up all the tests, or because they don't stock them because no one wants to pay for them out of pocket so no one buying them, or because the local pharmacies are always out of everything.

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Can still get 100% insurance reimbursement in CA until November, I think.

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Originally Posted by bodywhomper

Can still get 100% insurance reimbursement in CA until November, I think.

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thanks.

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Originally Posted by old goat

Friend came over last night looking for a covid test (asymptomatic exposure with older company due to arrive). He said he checked every pharmacy in truckee and n tahoe. No tests. Is this because more covid and people have bought up all the tests, or because they don't stock them because no one wants to pay for them out of pocket so no one buying them, or because the local pharmacies are always out of everything.

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Up here all the pharmacies had big boxes of covid tests and they gave them to you gratus I think I still have a few

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Originally Posted by SorryBro

In the hope you are being sincere about wanting to find this information, see link below. Not sure it's broken down by each bivalent strain, but knock yourself out. This link has been there for a long time...

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...tatracker-home

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Thank you for this, SorryBro -

I had looked a month ago, and could not find a valid link.


Thanks Again. tj

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Originally Posted by SorryBro

In the hope you are being sincere about wanting to find this information, see link below. Not sure it's broken down by each bivalent strain, but knock yourself out. This link has been there for a long time...

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...tatracker-home

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Thanks for sharing, these metrics went from front page news to difficult to find seemingly overnight. Weird considering a COVID resurgence and all...

The CDC website says 152,508,460 updated bivalent vaccines have been "distributed" through 8/9. Assuming "distribution" means " in your arm"...With a US population of around 320 million does that mean roughly 50% of the American population are now "up to date" and got the bivalent booster? 50% seems really high, like dumbass stoner high, even in my solid blue liberal ski town.

Does the CDC definition of "distributed" means that is the number of vaccines that are distributed into people's arms, or distributed to hospitals, doctors offices, pharmacies (and now sitting on the shelf)?

If it's the latter that's a pretty disingenuous way to "track" data. The bivalent came out in September 2022, so do some of those "distributions" show one person that got double counted as they got 2 bilvalents at this point in August '23?

Shouldn't the CDC be tracking "up to date" at the population level based on their own recommendations?

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Originally Posted by Percy Rideout

Thanks for sharing, these metrics went from front page news to difficult to find seemingly overnight. Weird considering a COVID resurgence and all...

The CDC website says 152,508,460 updated bivalent vaccines have been "distributed" through 8/9. Assuming "distribution" means " in your arm"...With a US population of around 320 million does that mean roughly 50% of the American population are now "up to date" and got the bivalent booster? 50% seems really high, like dumbass stoner high, even in my solid blue liberal ski town.

Does the CDC definition of "distributed" means that is the number of vaccines that are distributed into people's arms, or distributed to hospitals, doctors offices, pharmacies?

If it's the latter that's a pretty disingenuous way to "track" data. The bivalent came out in September 2022, so do some of those "distributions" show one person that got double counted as they got 2 bilvalents at this point in August '23?

Shouldn't the CDC be tracking who is "up to date" at the population level based on their own recommendations?

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Well bud, who says they are not? You were given a website that breaks out that data by state, sex, and age group, and up to date as of July 31, so even you could probably figure it out in one to two clicks if you were so inclined. Hint: click on "vaccinations"

For the TL/DR, Texas is the lowest overall uptake at 3.3% with bivalent booster, Vermont is the highest at 37.2%. There is better uptake for those above 65 mostly 40+%, and the total pop boosted was 56.4 Million people, ~17-18% of overall population.

There's one to grow on.

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Originally Posted by Mofro261

For the TL/DR, Texas is the lowest overall uptake at 3.3% with bivalent booster, Vermont is the highest at 37.2%. There is better uptake for those above 65 mostly 40+%, and the total pop boosted was 56.4 Million people, ~17-18% of overall population.

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17-18%????????????? When did you all become antivaxxers????

It must be pleasant to live in blissful ignorance when you can’t discern anything more complicated than a binary good or bad assessment.

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Originally Posted by Mofro261

Well bud, who says they are not? You were given a website that breaks out that data by state, sex, and age group, and up to date as of July 31, so even you could probably figure it out in one to two clicks if you were so inclined. Hint: click on "vaccinations"

For the TL/DR, Texas is the lowest overall uptake at 3.3% with bivalent booster, Vermont is the highest at 37.2%. There is better uptake for those above 65 mostly 40+%, and the total pop boosted was 56.4 Million people, ~17-18% of overall population.

There's one to grow on.

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802 represent! 37.2%??? That's fucking sad that this is the highest rate.

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Originally Posted by Mofro261

Well bud, who says they are not? You were given a website that breaks out that data by state, sex, and age group, and up to date as of July 31, so even you could probably figure it out in one to two clicks if you were so inclined. Hint: click on "vaccinations"

For the TL/DR, Texas is the lowest overall uptake at 3.3% with bivalent booster, Vermont is the highest at 37.2%. There is better uptake for those above 65 mostly 40+%, and the total pop boosted was 56.4 Million people, ~17-18% of overall population.

There's one to grow on.

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so I clicked on Vaccinations as Mofro suggests, and my interpretation is similar > it appears less than 20% of the population is up-to-date with a bivalent vaccination ;

and yet, page one indicates in January, we had 150,000 people daily were being hospitalized for covid

( how can that be - I don't remember it being that high... )


so. eb.5 is here - any ( 'insiders' ) know the expected pathology ? ??

I Should have bookmarked the page last week that said the Administration is set to ramp-up Restrictions

( over in the 'Fear and loathing' thread it is already being shown - college courses going back to on-line presentation. )


any insiders know the expected pathology for eb.5 ? ??


boostered earlier this month ; we'll see what they say about the new vaccine...


Thank you. skiJ

Latest boost due out mid September. I'll get it early October with my Flu Boost.

We've got a stack of the OTC tests Abbott and a couple other vendor/variants. How accurate are the home tests from last year (or this year) at detecting the latest strains?

Asking for a friend: in conference room for one hour (no masks) with coworker that tested neg that morning, but positive that evening. No symptoms. Negative test results the second and third days (30 and 54 hours post exposure). How long before negative tests can be considered to be not infected?