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

[Ted Striker]

UV light disinfection may be ‘game changer’ to slow COVID-19 spread

"Suppose that we hit the body with a tremendous... whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light,"

"Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin, or in some other way."

[Adolf Allerbush]

"Suppose that we hit the body with a tremendous... whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light,"

"Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin, or in some other way."

did anyone actually attempt it? haha

the procedure was a success but the patient died

[jono]

We sterile filter virus like particles thru 0.2um filters. If we want it dead we UV treat.

Shame about the delivery sometimes.

[SumJongGuy]

We got a UV sanitizer box for phones and stuff. I was cycling my N95s through it it to re use them over and over n the pre vax days. Now I'm more lax.. reusing KN95s too..

[PB]

UV's a little hit or miss in practical situations; all gamma, all the time for a sure kill.

Hey, if there's no host the virus goes away, neh?

[JimmyCarter]

The real viruses are in the internet.

"I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is?"

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[Buster Highmen]

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

[LongShortLong]

Heterogeneity of behavior and common contacts within subcultures may explain a chunk of this (it was discussed here a long time ago, maybe LSL can describe it better).

Take a certain segment of the population who interact with each other more often and infect a few of them so the exponential growth is very prominent in that group. They suddenly all know someone who got sick, which means both that they get a bump toward sub-cultural/local herd immunity and that they suddenly take it very seriously. Obviously no group is totally isolated, but some really do interact with their own a lot more than not.

Since I'm called out... Not sure why the epidemiologists struggle with the rapid peak and fall issue. I'm not an epidemiologist, but epidemiology 101 surely includes the "SEIR model" of infection and its graph. A graph that rises steeply to a peak, then falls almost as steeply. They should know this. I first encountered the phenomenon in a biology class, in a paper about deer in the Kaibab forest, and the effects of removing predators. The population exploded, consumed all the greenery, then crashed.



Covid does the same. With green available hosts, the infected population explodes. As most of the available "green" hosts are consumed, the infected population crashes. With humans and Covid, there's a twist...

...Humans also change behavior in response to surges. I expected the India cases to fall, almost exactly when they did, since they declared a lockdown. Maybe a lucky guess. However, the pattern has repeated many times. Cases start growing, no one does much. Cases climb more, hospitals fill, people cry "uncle" and change behavior. Changing behavior may or may not include officials implementing health orders.

Without the behavior change, the curve would "look" the same, just with a higher peak before running short of susceptible hosts. Since infection alone produces reasonably strong immunity, without behavior changes, Covid would still burn to a peak and fall. If Covid infections were harmless, we could have let it run in 2020, and ended the pandemic phase in Summer 2020.

Since humans change behavior, the model "breaks." But it really doesn't. The model's fundamentals still match disease spread, so we see the curve shape (or something similar) in each surge.

My guess is we'll see at least one more surge, though it's hard to guess timing. Dec-Jan peak seems a good bet. Severity will likely be similar to prior surges. If the epidemiologists are saying they can't say when is the peak, how high, or why it fell, I agree. It's hard to tell how much is due to burning out the susceptible population, people changing behavior, waning immunity to infection, variants, seasons, etc. As we creep back to normal, that makes more vulnerable hosts, and Covid may surge again.

[JimmyCarter]

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

I'm off to post that to Facebook, explaining how that's the literal translation of the chinese characters here.


I bet I can get Don Jr to tweet about it within a week.

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[SumJongGuy]

Since I'm called out... Not sure why the epidemiologists struggle with the rapid peak and fall issue. I'm not an epidemiologist, but epidemiology 101 surely includes the "SEIR model" of infection and its graph. A graph that rises steeply to a peak, then falls almost as steeply. They should know this. I first encountered the phenomenon in a biology class, in a paper about deer in the Kaibab forest, and the effects of removing predators. The population exploded, consumed all the greenery, then crashed.



Covid does the same. With green available hosts, the infected population explodes. As most of the available "green" hosts are consumed, the infected population crashes. With humans and Covid, there's a twist...

...Humans also change behavior in response to surges. I expected the India cases to fall, almost exactly when they did, since they declared a lockdown. Maybe a lucky guess. However, the pattern has repeated many times. Cases start growing, no one does much. Cases climb more, hospitals fill, people cry "uncle" and change behavior. Changing behavior may or may not include officials implementing health orders.

Without the behavior change, the curve would "look" the same, just with a higher peak before running short of susceptible hosts. Since infection alone produces reasonably strong immunity, without behavior changes, Covid would still burn to a peak and fall. If Covid infections were harmless, we could have let it run in 2020, and ended the pandemic phase in Summer 2020.

Since humans change behavior, the model "breaks." But it really doesn't. The model's fundamentals still match disease spread, so we see the curve shape (or something similar) in each surge.

My guess is we'll see at least one more surge, though it's hard to guess timing. Dec-Jan peak seems a good bet. Severity will likely be similar to prior surges. If the epidemiologists are saying they can't say when is the peak, how high, or why it fell, I agree. It's hard to tell how much is due to burning out the susceptible population, people changing behavior, waning immunity to infection, variants, seasons, etc. As we creep back to normal, that makes more vulnerable hosts, and Covid may surge again.

I get the whole "viruses need fuel to burn and the more fuel the faster they grow, less fuel decline analogy.. But.. what vaccine did they use to slow the deer down?

[ill-advised strategy]

Pro hockey players are highly monitored high performance athletes in peak condition so this piece shows that covid doesnt care who or what you are

looks like he unknowingly got covid over the summer off-season cuz he has Covid anitibodies

he is 28 and he had 1 year left on his contract he was raising a stink over being vaccinated and having to do 14 day quarrantines so what are his chances of coming back from Myocarditis to play anywhere in the NHL ?

you mean his ex-teammates ?

Maybe he can go coach at:



Wait for it…..


MTU

[old goat]

Last week, Slavitt and a journalist from the Atlantic discuss the messaging about vax effectiveness, mistakes made in messaging, and how to move forward.

This is what I’m trying to get across. And has the temporary mask dropping definitely added to it. They messaging was that breakthrough infections would be a small fraction at most. Either they were over optimistic or delta changed the entire equation or both.

The main point is that all the changes in messaging got converted to more hesitancy and more antivax chatter

Facts and explanation are how you get adults to do the right thing. Messaging is how you communicate to children. "We took Fido to the farm where he has more room to play". So yeah, I guess they needed better messaging. Nothing in this pandemic, and I mean nothing, should surprise anyone.

However, to discuss one message--that it was ok to go without a mask (although remember the CDC was still recommending masks for everyone in close quarters indoors and out, in June--the idea was to give people a reason to get vaccinated, and it probably worked better than people realize. What's becoming clear is that you need to give peoplen a reason to get vaccinated--go without a mask, go to a concert, keep your job. Because expecting people to do the right thing for the good of the community obviously is a waste of time

Something I still don't understand (and not sure anyone does) is why major outbreaks tend to ramp up so quickly, and then subside just as quickly.

You're in good company. Michael Osterholm says the same thing.

[The AD]

Covid does the same. With green available hosts, the infected population explodes. As most of the available "green" hosts are consumed, the infected population crashes.

This makes sense, but the problem is why are the green hosts consumed so quickly? It seems like there still should have been way more people who could have been infected but weren't. I think that's the bit everyone is struggling with.

[SumJongGuy]

This makes sense, but the problem is why are the green hosts consumed so quickly? It seems like there still should have been way more people who could have been infected but weren't. I think that's the bit everyone is struggling with.

masks and vaccines.. The deer in the wild didn't have those variables in their regression.

[The AD]

masks and vaccines.. The deer in the wild didn't have those variables in their regression.

I don't think that's the answer. At least not the full answer. I say this because the same phenomenon occurred before vaccines and in places that weren't masking much.

[jono]

Failure to stratify by location (and maybe age, politics, religion....)

Typical of the whole episode. Look at the difference in the apparent effectiveness against delta in the earlier Israeli data MV posted: just looking at the whole population and overall average vaccination rate makes effectiveness look low, but as soon as cases (and vax rates) are stratified by age it turns out there are no age groups for which the effectiveness is actually as low as the overall indicates.

Do the same for states and you'll notice we don't have singular waves, we have several that add up at the same time. The daily case rates are still rising here, for example.

[LongShortLong]

This makes sense, but the problem is why are the green hosts consumed so quickly? It seems like there still should have been way more people who could have been infected but weren't. I think that's the bit everyone is struggling with.

I don't think Covid is running out of hosts*. Instead, the hosts decide they don't want Covid. Even in officially pro-Covid states, I bet if we found an appropriate data source, we'd see a behavior change about the same time as the peak. More people skipped church, didn't go to a concert, had a Zoom beer at home, wore a mask, etc. I doubt there are many pro-covid people sufficiently deluded that they don't change behavior when they hear the local hospital ordered a refrigerator truck.

For the most recent peak, it could be the start of school that removed Covid's spreading opportunities. This marked the end of vacation travel, and to the degree schools follow health recommendations the kids should be better protected vs being at home. In my community, I noticed more masks and new health orders. Florida's example was noted, and not followed.

* - covid is running out of hosts. About half of Americans are fully vaccinated, and I'd guess somewhere between 25 and 40% also acquired natural immunity (hey CDC, collect serology data!). There's some overlap, and some waning immunity, but at least half the hosts aren't available. Between vaccines and infections another ~1% escape each week.

[The AD]

* - covid is running out of hosts.

Let's hope so.

[LongShortLong]

It's not just biology students who are taught the phenomenon. Anybody who takes differential equations — engineers, physicists, math majors, etc. — are taught the predator prey model. So I think it's not so much epidemiologists are unaware of the natural pattern as it is defining and understanding why disease waves have different features.

My guess is epidemiologists generally aren't drawn from this group. And, within the differential equations group, many of us learned enough to pass the class, and maybe even solve the equations, but may not have understood what exponential growth means in practice. My math classes were pretty dry and abstract with hints of real world applicability.

[Mazderati]

Epi attracts a wide range of backgrounds. Math/stat, public health, medical. Some geniuses, some warm bodies like any other field.

I would guess there is also a mobility component that amplifies the peaks and valleys.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavir...ab44507b5de811

[bodywhomper]

A close friend is a math professor/researcher. He loves teaching and bringing in real world application. For one of his basic classes he always uses the scene from TB5 when Johan Olofsson blasts down a huge line and they provide time, vert, and avg(?) pitch stats for various basic calculations.

I was talking to a friend in Leon County, FL. They’re experiencing the severe plummet in cases that are being discussed here, despite the college football season and huge raging parties at FSU. Their daily case rates are much less than what’s current for Nevada County, CA. NV County had its worst wave yet at the end of august and beginning of September, and was one of the worst in California, and it may be experiencing a new wave now.

[mcski]

Káiser study shows Pfizer drops to below 50% efficacy after 6 mos. Bring on the boosters!

[Bunion 2020]

^^^^ ?????

The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine continues to be 90 percent effective in protecting against hospitalization and death from covid-19 up to six months after the second dose, even in the face of the widespread delta variant, a major study has found.

The study was based on research from Pfizer and the Kaiser Permanente Southern California health system and analyzed more than 3.4 million people who were members between December 2020 and August 2021. The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal on Monday, had been released in August but were not peer-reviewed until this week.

The study also showed that the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing a coronavirus infection dropped over time, from 88 percent to 47 percent six months after the second dose. This is “probably primarily due to waning immunity with time rather than the delta variant escaping vaccine protection,” the study found.

The Pfizer vaccine remains one of the most widely used in the United States and elsewhere. The Food and Drug Administration granted the vaccine full authorization in August, and in September authorized its use for booster shots for Americans age 65 and older and those at high risk of severe illness.

A separate study last month found that a lower dose of the Pfizer vaccine — one-third the amount given to adults and teens — is safe and triggered a robust immune response in children as young as 5 years old, the drug company said. The finding, eagerly anticipated by many parents and pediatricians, is a crucial step toward the two-shot coronavirus vaccine regimen becoming available for younger school-age children.

[skiJ]

Bunion -

first sentence, paragraph three -

"The study also showed that the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing a coronavirus infection dropped over time, from 88 percent to 47 percent six months after the second dose. "


when eligible, Please get your booster - -

tj

[Percy Rideout]

^^^^ ?????

Did you not read what you just posted???