Coronavirus: What questions do you have?

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Chuck, question for you:

We often see statistics comparing rates of cases and infections between vaxxed and not-vaxxed, as well as similar comparisons for hospitalizations and deaths. Generally these favor vaxxed people by a factor of 4-10 somewhere.

Is there a similar comparison metric for long Covid that demonstrates a lower incidence of long Covid in the vaxxed population either per 100k people, or per Covid case? I was in a discussion the other day and realized I didn't have a good metric for this. Have you encountered one?
 
Chuck, question for you:

We often see statistics comparing rates of cases and infections between vaxxed and not-vaxxed, as well as similar comparisons for hospitalizations and deaths. Generally these favor vaxxed people by a factor of 4-10 somewhere.

Is there a similar comparison metric for long Covid that demonstrates a lower incidence of long Covid in the vaxxed population either per 100k people, or per Covid case? I was in a discussion the other day and realized I didn't have a good metric for this. Have you encountered one?

Great question. I did not have that sort of data, but there was a study released in September that clearly indicates that vaccination with an mRNA vaccine reduces the risk of long haul syndrome by 50%, and other studies that that vaccination after covid infections also reduce long haul syndrome. There are better studies coming.
 
Any Omicron news your can share with us yet? It sounds like it's been in the US for a couple of weeks now based on the case in Minn who got infected (in theory) from attending a convention in NY Nov 19-21.

Is it time to run out and buy more toilet paper.
 
Any Omicron news your can share with us yet? It sounds like it's been in the US for a couple of weeks now based on the case in Minn who got infected (in theory) from attending a convention in NY Nov 19-21.

Is it time to run out and buy more toilet paper.

Do not hoard TP! There is no reason to worry at this time. Move along, nothing to see here.

In all honesty, I am not sure what to think. We are seeing a very slow rise, but it is way less than last year after thanksgiving.
 
Do not hoard TP! There is no reason to worry at this time. Move along, nothing to see here.

In all honesty, I am not sure what to think. We are seeing a very slow rise, but it is way less than last year after thanksgiving.
NE Ohio currently has higher rates of infection and hospitalization than last year. Not good.
 
WA case counts are headed downward pretty fast. They're currently about half of the peaks last holiday season and September 2021, about even with the peak in May 2021. In related news, 80% of the population 12 and up has received at least one dose, and 75% are fully vaccinated.
 
Wife has all 3 shots. Pfizer
Over 6 weeks ago she got the booster.
Yesterday she was sent home for testing positive for covid.
Told by her doctor she is contagious.
So, is the vaccine actually stopping the spread and from you contracting it?
Doesn't seem so in this case.
Or is it just a medicine to lessen the effects if you contract it?
If the latter, why mandates?
 
Wife has all 3 shots. Pfizer
Over 6 weeks ago she got the booster.
Yesterday she was sent home for testing positive for covid.
Told by her doctor she is contagious.
So, is the vaccine actually stopping the spread and from you contracting it?
Doesn't seem so in this case.
Or is it just a medicine to lessen the effects if you contract it?
If the latter, why mandates?
It both significantly reduces the effects and the likelihood of getting it in the first place. Nothing is guaranteed, however.
 
According to the local news... "New Hampshire now has the highest seven-day new case rate in the country, with a case rate of 505.4 cases per 100,000. New Hampshire is followed by Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Active cases rose above 8,000 for the second time in the pandemic."

I'm going to need to order some more jigsaw puzzles pretty soon. I have one 5,000 piece and one 9,000 piece puzzle left in my to-do pile.
 
Wife has all 3 shots. Pfizer
Over 6 weeks ago she got the booster.
Yesterday she was sent home for testing positive for covid.
Told by her doctor she is contagious.
So, is the vaccine actually stopping the spread and from you contracting it?
Doesn't seem so in this case.
Or is it just a medicine to lessen the effects if you contract it?
If the latter, why mandates?
Vaccines train your body to recognize and fight a virus and thus speeding up the response from your immune system. They don't form a barricade against the virus. As your body fights it, the virus is still replicating and shedding. Hopefully, the body fights it off before the virus causes illness, but that isn't always the case. Because the process of the immune system is sped up by the vaccine, less replication and less viral shedding occurs. This means it is less likely to be spread and less likely to develop into severe disease. The risk isn't eliminated, but reduced. As they say "The dose makes the poison," so let's do our part to make the viral doses as small as possible.
 
Chuck, continued thanks for your efforts here.

i read a recent article that suggested that technology can fairly quickly make a new virus specific variant (we can sequence the DNA pretty quickly with current technology, generate the correlating mRNA, and mass produce it.) The more time consuming issue is TESTING it.

the article suggested that since the current mRNA vaccines are have been tested and proven safe, that future new mRNA vaccines might not require as extensive testing.

i wonder about that second part. The mRNA is going to code for a slightly (or markedly.) different protein, and if it different enough to alter the antibodies it may be different enough to cross-react with NORMAL human proteins. Seems like concern for autoimmune reactions is a major issue, with human diseases like Guillain-Barré syndrome or Acute Disseminated EncephaloMyelitis (ADEM.). So I can’t see the testing as going any FASTER than the original vaccine. So I can see concern that by the time you both design AND adequately test a new vaccine, the variant you target my have been superseded by something completely different.

How long (or how short) is considered adequate testing duration for a new vaccine to get an Emergency Use approval?
 
How long (or how short) is considered adequate testing duration for a new vaccine to get an Emergency Use approval?

We do not have a great answer for that. I know the experts are trying diligently to figure that out. I know several folks that work running calculations to determine the risk of different testing protocols prior to starting the research. I would feel comfortable with 2-3 months and 10-20K.
 
Maryland is definitely going into a winter spike. Will it be as bad as last year? Time will tell. I am hoping the vaccine keeps the numbers down.

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Maryland is definitely going into a winter spike. Will it be as bad as last year? Time will tell. I am hoping the vaccine keeps the numbers down.

These are the same dynamics we went through last year - weather gets colder, folks spend more time congregating inside, exchanging germs and viruses. Virus transmission spikes up, then goes back down in the spring, all other things being equal (e.g. no new and more transmissible variants show up).

This year it's happening again, starting with the norther states, and steadily spreading further south inline with ambient temps declines.
BTW, same dynamics are underway in Europe as well. Reporting in the rest of the world is unreliable (China stats are still pure fraud).
 
In the last 4 weeks, locally, we have seen more Influenza A than we had all last year. I have my opinion as to why and that is that we have ditched the masks And social distancing.
 
It's not a spike *yet* but WA's hospitalization and case numbers are flattening out of their previous descent.
 
In the last 4 weeks, locally, we have seen more Influenza A than we had all last year. I have my opinion as to why and that is that we have ditched the masks And social distancing.
My son had "something" the week before Thanksgiving week, not Covid (per BINAX test under my watchful eye experienced with these types of tests) that was probably influenza. Not bad enough to get him formally flu tested (places here don't want you coming in if you are coughing etc). But we kept the kid home from school for much of the week until he improved rather than just packing him full of cough medicine and putting him on the bus...
 
Hopefully it is not as large.

Hopefully, it's not as deadly.
As our treatment options and success rates improve, and vaccination penetration increases (as well as the boosters), this will become an endemic source of a manageable disease. Larger spikes in infection will become seasonal, or new variant wave driven, "normal" occurrences. We'll just learn to stop freaking out about it.

Forget about achieving herd immunity - it ain't happening in the US, never mind in less medically capable parts of the world. In the entire modern history of the world, we've only managed to eradicate one and only one virus, smallpox, after decades of global vaccination efforts. There is zero political will to attempt anything of the kind with Covid-19.

https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/19...cientists-look-to-the-past-to-see-the-future/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/31/when-does-the-pandemic-end/
 
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