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

[Adolf Allerbush]

Guys, this is not Rocket Science, just apply a little common sense for fucks sake

Attachment 401784

He'd be better off posting "I'm stupid" over and over again.

[Summit]

Moderna's "Omicron coronavirus variant will enter clinical development in the next few weeks and the company expects to be able to share data with regulators around March"

https://www.reuters.com/business/hea...ch-2022-01-17/

They can't just skip the clinical trials though, correct? So there is no way to speed that up?

You mean you want them to do more or less than they do for annual flu shots when they are changing less than they do with annual flu shots?

[Summit]

Imma disagree with the CDC. IIRC, they are guessing, projecting from month old data. Eyeballing local sewer data (from yesterday) says 10-20% delta. https://soe-wbe-pilot.wl.r.appspot.com/charts. Also delta prevalence has increased in the last month. Omicron has increased faster.

CDC needs to do a better job of collecting data, sponsoring studies, convening colloquia, and integrating new tech. They are half blind and consistently several steps behind. The leader, but not a leader.

I'm not an expert of sewage surveillance, but my understanding is it is more a "detected" vs "not detected" and people may shed detectable virus long after they don't have it, so seeing delta detected in 10-20% of stool does not at all call into question the sequencing conclusion that 99.5% of active cases are Omicron.

[altasnob]

You mean you want them to do more or less than they do for annual flu shots when they are changing less than they do with annual flu shots?

I was asking a question. Is it even possible to rush approve an Omicron specific vaccine?

Is this what people want? Is this what medical experts are advocating? The government to approve new mRNA vaccines specifically tailored for each new variant without any clinical studies?

[Summit]

I was asking a question. Is it even possible to rush approve an Omicron specific vaccine?

Is this what people want? Is this what medical experts are advocating? The government to approve new mRNA vaccines specifically tailored for each new variant without any clinical studies?

If you change a few "letters" in the mRNA to match to the Omicron spike protein instead of the Wuhan-1 spike protein, is that a "new" vaccine?

Flu vaccines, where we use a whole dead virus, use different viruses every season (and multiple strains). Some don't grow well in the common growth medium (eggs). It takes a while to go from selection to deployment, 6 months! Sometimes manufacturers have to guess and start producing a couple of strains before CDC picks what strains will go in the vaccine. And sometimes they guess wrong!

mRNA is faster to design and produce. So we can do 3 months instead of 6 months. That's a good thing for flu and would have been so for COVID up until the insane speed of spread of Omicron.

[CarlMega]

Guys, this is not Rocket Science, just apply a little common sense for fucks sake

Attachment 401784

Right?

I'm old enough to remember when NakedShorts was still pretending to be just "asking questions" vs. overt anti-vax. Honestly, it's better now - do away with the charade.

[old goat]

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As far as what Gov Murphy says--that's no surprise. It has been widely reported that many of the hospital cases of covid were asymptomatic patients admitted for something else. These go into covid case counts. Covid will not be listed as cause of death or cause of hospitalization unless the patients later become sick with it. As I posted before 12 or 16 trauma patients my son admitted tested positive for covid.

As far as the hospital reporting 75% of its ventilator covid patients being vaccinated the report is not from the hospital itself but from the city interpreting what is happening in the hospital. It is impossible to tell from this third hand report whether the covid ventilator patients are on the vent because of covid or if they are among the people with incidental covid. If in fact they are on vents from covid it is not surprising that there would be a small minority of hospitals where this is the case, but it is certainly not what most hospitals are reporting. In any case, more direct information is needed. I can find no other news source for this information.

There does seem to be a lack of detailed information in the mainstream press about the demographics and characteristics of omicron cases--vaxed vs unvaxed, asymptomatic, symptomatic, hospitalized, ICU, death, age and preexisting conditions. Also, while we know that there are a lot of breakthrough cases but how do the chances of unvaccinated and vaccinated getting covid compare and if infected how do their chances of transmitting compare?

[seano732]

Don’t wreck your car in Oklahoma:




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[SumJongGuy]

Don’t wreck your car in Oklahoma:




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My kid's at school in Norman there. He said he's about the only student wearing a mask (KN95) in most of his classes. He said most of the professors do. Same thing at his part time job. MURIKA!

Oklahoma's probably the reddest state in the nation.. even literally. They have red dirt there..

[MontuckyFried]

My kid's at school in Norman there. He said he's about the only student wearing a mask (KN95) in most of his classes. He said most of the professors do. Same thing at his part time job. MURIKA!

Oklahoma's probably the reddest state in the nation.. even literally. They have red dirt there..

Now THAT'S hilarious you sent your kid to freaking OU of all places. And then act surprised with the lack of masks. That'd be like me sending my kids off to UC Berkeley (lol NOPE) then acting surprised about how librul the place is.

And screw OU football, btw.

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[LongShortLong]

Delta went away because it does not have a fitness advantage over Omicron. It simply cannot compete with Omicron as well for hosts due to it's increased transmissibility, despite not being quite as replication competent( average CT's 1 log higher for Omicron, 23 vs 20 for Delta). Just like Wu-1 was obliterated by Alpha, and then Alpha completely was wiped off the map by Delta, now Delta bows out to Omicron.

I look at this from the tree's point of view. A Wu-1 infected individual will infect others at a given rate. Wu-1 will continue to increase prevalence until R changes. Wu-1's R only changes as Wu-1 produces immune resistance, and as behavior (masking, etc), and environment change. Introducing Alpha (or any variant) does not change Wu-1's R immediately. Nor do variants that infect very small proportions of the population "compete" directly. When humans meet, whichever variant is present has a chance to infect. Another variant is very rarely present for any "competition."

So I see the Alpha replacement of Wu-1 as a combination of Alpha's higher R, and the population's NPI efforts. NPI's decreased Wu-1's R below 1, and it went away. Alpha's somewhat higher R was enough to remain above 1 in the face of NPIs, so it remained ("replaced Wu-1").

Same for all the subsequent variants, though immunity from vaccination and infection also comes into play. E.g. in Nov/Dec delta's R appeared to be slightly above 1. Due to holidays, behavior changes were outweighing the slow immunity increase. Omicron comes along with a higher R (2 maybe), and rapidly rises. Delta pokes along for awhile, but both of them and vax together are raising immunity by maybe 0.2-0.4% per day. (That's a bigger percentage of the susceptible population, especially so for delta.) At the same time people become more cautious (omigosh omicron) also making R fall for both.

Anyway, I'm surprised if delta is gone already. I don't think its R could be below 0.5 and is probably higher. At New Years, I'd guess its R was still close to 1. There's just a lot more omicron, so percentage-wise there's a lot less delta.

[jono]

This seems to support some of that^^

https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamJKuch...43229934661633

Note the common ancestor between alpha and omicron, though: evidently that didn't die out.

Also re: delta reduction: heterogeneity reduces viable hosts that actually meet the virus and 3 shots kills delta.

[wkd-rdr]

Peace, Summit

You do good things, bro.
Don't stop.

[riser4]

Now THAT'S hilarious you sent your kid to freaking OU of all places. And then act surprised with the lack of masks. That'd be like me sending my kids off to UC Berkeley (lol NOPE) then acting surprised about how librul the place is.

And screw OU football, btw.

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I would have been over the moon if my kids got into UC Berkeley AND I could afford out of state tuition. The only problem is that it's not liberal enough.

[wkd-rdr]

Guys, this is not Rocket Science, just apply a little common sense for fucks sake

Attachment 401784

Also. Let's not forget that the demographics between the 2 groups are not identical.

[SumJongGuy]

Now THAT'S hilarious you sent your kid to freaking OU of all places. And then act surprised with the lack of masks. That'd be like me sending my kids off to UC Berkeley (lol NOPE) then acting surprised about how librul the place is.

And screw OU football, btw.

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Who said I was surprised by the lack of masks? Kid's a 3rd generation Sooner. with me, my sister, my mom, grandma, tons of other cousins, aunts uncles etc.. Pre vax he did last spring semester remote. Thanks to vax and good masks he's fine there. He even got to go the OU Texas game.

It's only the anti mask anti vax idiots that are at risk... and anyone who needs the hospitals for anything else right now. OU has it's own medical center, most kids are fully vaxxed too. The trailer trash goes elsewhere.

[TNKen]

Prevailing thought is that omicron gives you immunity perhaps for a few months. Does this mean that in highly infected locations, masks are no longer necessary?

[::: :::]

I don’t understand how that question follows the premise

[altasnob]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamJKuch...43229934661633

Interesting thread. I like this part too:

"Reduction in global travel may also have influenced variant dynamics globally so far – and subsequent reopening may change this, as there is less potential for 'evolutionary villages' that are relatively cut off from global dynamics."

In other words, maybe the WHO was right when they denounced travel bans and closed borders and all these world leaders who think they need to lock the gates on their respective countries are full of shit.

[altasnob]

Some good stuff in the NYTimes this morning:

"Since early last week, new cases in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and New York have fallen by more than 30 percent. They’re down by more than 10 percent in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In California, cases may have peaked."

"If anything, the official Covid numbers probably understate the actual declines, because test results are often a few days behind reality."

They discuss Oxford's COVID risk culator: https://qcovid.org/Home/

"A typical 65-year-old American woman — to take one example — is five foot three inches tall and weighs 166 pounds. If she had been vaccinated and did not have a major Covid risk factor, like an organ transplant, her chance of dying after contracting Covid would be 1 in 872, according to the calculator. For a typical 65-year-old man, the risk would be 1 in 434.

Among 75-year-olds, the risk would be 1 in 264 for a typical woman and 1 in 133 for a typical man.

Those are meaningful risks. But they are not larger than many other risks older people face. In the 2019-20 flu season, about 1 out of every 138 Americans 65 and older who had flu symptoms died from them, according to the C.D.C.

And Omicron probably presents less risk than the British calculator suggests, because it uses data through the first half of 2021, when the dominant version of Covid was more severe than Omicron appears to be."

[altasnob]

If you change a few "letters" in the mRNA to match to the Omicron spike protein instead of the Wuhan-1 spike protein, is that a "new" vaccine?

Flu vaccines, where we use a whole dead virus, use different viruses every season (and multiple strains). Some don't grow well in the common growth medium (eggs). It takes a while to go from selection to deployment, 6 months! Sometimes manufacturers have to guess and start producing a couple of strains before CDC picks what strains will go in the vaccine. And sometimes they guess wrong!

mRNA is faster to design and produce. So we can do 3 months instead of 6 months. That's a good thing for flu and would have been so for COVID up until the insane speed of spread of Omicron.

This is fascinating to me. I haven't read anyone suggesting this, other than Summit. To play devils advocate, sounds like you are proposing we identify emerging COVID variants, or maybe even guess what variants will emerge, and then rapidly deploy a mRNA booster shot to the masses tailored to the novel variant. As if we can eliminate all disease from Earth, no matter how mild that disease. But it begs the question, what if disease serves an important purpose?

[ex-powderbroker]

The average American woman is 5'3 165? Not to contribute to anyone's body dysmorphia but maybe Biden should send every American some running shoes. WTF.

[altasnob]

These nurses say it's not COVID or lack of nurses that is causing a crisis in the medical field. It is greedy, profit driven hospitals:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/o...rstaffing.html

[jono]

In other words,

Tell me you don't speak science without saying you're a lawyer.

[jono]

This is fascinating to me. I haven't read anyone suggesting this, other than Summit. To play devils advocate, sounds like you are proposing we identify emerging COVID variants, or maybe even guess what variants will emerge, and then rapidly deploy a mRNA booster shot to the masses tailored to the novel variant. As if we can eliminate all disease from Earth, no matter how mild that disease. But it begs the question, what if disease serves an important purpose?

I'm not going to put so many words in Summit's mouth, but I see him suggesting the and kind of thing that had been suggested numerous times before: that 3 phases of trials for a minor adjustment is overkill. Particularly when the risk of delay is greater than the risk of moving forward. Do a phase I, establish safety, and get the adjusted version out.