Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

[9873210]

Folk often compare & contrast Florida (lax) and California (strict) & don't see much difference.

Some people look at 1,949* and 2,912** and say they are different; others look at them and say they are not much different.
A very few look at them and say that 2,912 is smaller.

* Covid deaths per million in CA
** Covid deaths per million in FL

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[88V8]

US army working on an all-variants vaccine Within weeks, Walter Reed researchers expect to announce that human trials show success against Omicron—and even future strains.
Yes, like Mystic Meg It even predicts the future.

As they say, it's hard now to find a clean cohort on which to test these things.
Fingers crossed it works out.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/

V8

[XFool]

I'm going to have to raise an eyebrow in Xfool's direction. His views have very largely been over taken by events, the data for which has been evolving for some time.

Really? What "views" ? What "events" ?

As my views are unlikely to be any different (hopefully!) from any conventional scientific consensus, IMV your opinion therefore translates to: "the orthodox medical analysis has been overtaken by events." Which to me sounds:

1. Unlikely
2. Aligns with your idiosyncratic opinion about the booster vaccine

Firstly vaccines are being misunderstood, they were created at breakneck speed, but were primarily not designed to stop anyone catching it, they were aimed at minimising bad outcomes. Which it is now clear they do.

I know of nobody (reasonable!) who misunderstands the vaccines in this way. The vaccines were not so designed, they were designed to be vaccines against the virus. How effective they were, and in what manner, could only be determined by testing trials.

Secondly the data is pretty clear we are following the South African experience, London has now peaked and will begin to fall. The rest of the country will follow over the next few weeks.

So, taking an overview, what is happening with this wave is exactly the same thing as has happened in every wave of COVID and in every wave of every pandemic there has ever been in history? Right.

Events and data have over taken any discussion on why Britain and South Africa might have a different experience - they didn't.

ayshfm1, if I may say so, you seem to me to have an unfailing ability to rather miss the significant issues.

[XFool]

I'm going to have to raise an eyebrow in Xfool's direction. His views have very largely been over taken by events, the data for which has been evolving for some time.

. . . the data is pretty clear we are following the South African experience, London has now peaked and will begin to fall. The rest of the country will follow over the next few weeks. Events and data have over taken any discussion on why Britain and South Africa might have a different experience - they didn't.

Yes and moreover this trend was predictable back in November when Omicron emerged. I know that because I predicted it here, noting that the combination of high infectiousness and low sickness rate was the perfect situation, as it harmlessly spreads immunity.

No. You missed the point back in November and you are still missing the point now...

The biggest problem right now is that perfectly well and healthy people are having to stay away from work, causing shortages.

Whatever could be causing that?

[Lootman]

I'm going to have to raise an eyebrow in Xfool's direction. His views have very largely been over taken by events, the data for which has been evolving for some time.

. . . the data is pretty clear we are following the South African experience, London has now peaked and will begin to fall. The rest of the country will follow over the next few weeks. Events and data have over taken any discussion on why Britain and South Africa might have a different experience - they didn't.

Yes and moreover this trend was predictable back in November when Omicron emerged. I know that because I predicted it here, noting that the combination of high infectiousness and low sickness rate was the perfect situation, as it harmlessly spreads immunity.

No. You missed the point back in November and you are still missing the point now...

I'm afraid you do not get to simply announce that you are the winner of a debate and that is it. The key is in the word "debate" - you are supposed to actually refute my argument rather than just claim that I am wrong.

Aysmfm's points are right on the money and I was merely adding the observation that this looked the most probable outcome 2 months ago. Events have confirmed that prediction.

The biggest problem right now is that perfectly well and healthy people are having to stay away from work, causing shortages.

Whatever could be causing that?

Bad policy.

[odysseus2000]

Folk often compare & contrast Florida (lax) and California (strict) & don't see much difference.

Some people look at 1,949* and 2,912** and say they are different; others look at them and say they are not much different.
A very few look at them and say that 2,912 is smaller.

* Covid deaths per million in CA
** Covid deaths per million in FL

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Super useful link, thank you!

Regards,

[XFool]

Yes and moreover this trend was predictable back in November when Omicron emerged. I know that because I predicted it here, noting that the combination of high infectiousness and low sickness rate was the perfect situation, as it harmlessly spreads immunity.

No. You missed the point back in November and you are still missing the point now...

I'm afraid you do not get to simply announce that you are the winner of a debate and that is it.

Just following your usual lead, Lootman...

The key is in the word "debate" - you are supposed to actually refute my argument rather than just claim that I am wrong.

OK. But, the relevant "point" has been explained on here previously - by me and by more than one other poster. More than once.

It just seems, for whatever reason, one or two (say) posters don't seem to get it. And will insist on keeping on not getting it. I am unconvinced that yet another pointless round of "debating" it will help, or indeed make the slightest difference. By now - two years on - one either gets it, or one is never going to get it. All IMO - as usual.

Aysmfm's points are right on the money and I was merely adding the observation that this looked the most probable outcome 2 months ago. Events have confirmed that prediction.

Unfortunately (and predictably!) I disagree. AFAICS, aysmfm's somewhat idiosyncratic points are right off the money - insofar as I can discern what they are. Perhaps you can explain them to me?

The biggest problem right now is that perfectly well and healthy people are having to stay away from work, causing shortages.

Whatever could be causing that?

Bad policy.

But you have just been telling us the the government is getting it right?

[odysseus2000]

XFool
I know of nobody (reasonable!) who misunderstands the vaccines in this way. The vaccines were not so designed, they were designed to be vaccines against the virus. How effective they were, and in what manner, could only be determined by testing trials.

Part of the problem for people like me is that there seems to be no difference in the name for the Covid vaccine and e.g. the Smallpox vaccine.

Yet in the former case it is not designed to prevent illness, but reduce the intensity, whereas in the latter case it is designed to prevent illness. As I understand what Edward Jenner did was popularise earlier results that showed that anyone who got cowpox did not get smallpox and thence was created the smallpox vaccine which was amazingly effective.

Perhaps these vaccines which have different designs should be given different names, such as vaccine and vacc_illness_reduction (Vaccine_IR)

Thanks to all for all the super useful education on this board.

Regards,

[tjh290633]

Moderator Message:
Can we just desist from mutual sniping, please? You know who I am talking about, as you have been warned previously.

Any more and posts will be deleted.

TJH

[XFool]

I know of nobody (reasonable!) who misunderstands the vaccines in this way. The vaccines were not so designed, they were designed to be vaccines against the virus. How effective they were, and in what manner, could only be determined by testing trials.

Part of the problem for people like me is that there seems to be no difference in the name for the Covid vaccine and e.g. the Smallpox vaccine.

Uh? The COVID vaccine is called "COVID vaccine" (or whatever the specific terminology), the Smallpox vaccine is called "Smallpox vaccine" (whatever the specific terminology)

Seems simple enough to me!

Yet in the former case it is not designed to prevent illness, but reduce the intensity, whereas in the latter case it is designed to prevent illness.

The COVID vaccines were "designed" to be vaccines against COVID. The effects any new vaccine has in practice (if any) is determined by the vaccine trials. Indeed that is surely the main reason for vaccine trials - that plus safety testing.

I have little knowledge of vaccinology - there are some here who may well know a lot more - but I take it that when it comes to these matters it is more than about the vaccine. Rather it is a matter of the characteristics of the vaccine, the human immune system plus the virus itself.

[swill453]

Yet in the former case it is not designed to prevent illness, but reduce the intensity, whereas in the latter case it is designed to prevent illness.

The COVID vaccines were "designed" to be vaccines against COVID. The effects any new vaccine has in practice (if any) is determined by the vaccine trials. Indeed that is surely the main reason for vaccine trials - that plus safety testing.

I have little knowledge of vaccinology - there are some here who may well know a lot more - but I take it that when it comes to these matters it is more than about the vaccine. Rather it is a matter of the characteristics of the vaccine, the human immune system plus the virus itself.

While it's apparent that vaccinated people can catch Covid, it's likely also true that that many have avoided catching Covid, even the Omicron variant, where they otherwise would have if unvaccinated.

Scott.

[Lootman]

The key is in the word "debate" - you are supposed to actually refute my argument rather than just claim that I am wrong.

OK. But, the relevant "point" has been explained on here previously

Agreed, you did an excellent job of expressing your opinion. That doesn't mean the opinion is correct though.

The main points about Omicron, predicted by me and others in November, and confirmed by data emerging now, is that it is highly infectious and relatively harmless. Both are important.

The contagiousness of it is not controversial, I believe. What it means crucially is that a lot of the prior restrictions that were implemented in previous waves just don't work for it. That is why for example the UK has just scrapped the requirement to have a PCR test before flying into the UK. It had become a pointless requirement. Likewise why the voluntary self-quarantine period has been reduced from 10 days to 7 days. And in fact the US has reduced it to 5 days, again reflecting the futility of what "worked" in 2020.

In fact a good few of the panicky responses in 2020 look dumb now. The endless washing of hands every time you touch a foreign object. Carry sanitiser everywhere we went. The paranoia about flying or going to the pub. And even in one location I visited the requirement to wear a mask outdoors. All this has been discredited.

So as I predicted in November this is increasingly looking like the last hurrah of Covid. Between this new diluted version and the success of the vaccination programme, we can see the end of all this. Airlines have been adding back summer holiday flight schedules in a further acknowledgement. Airports are crowded again. And of course the stock market is behaving like Covid is done.

The only issue is the mandatory sick-outs, but that is just bad policy rather than a structural problem.

[XFool]

OK. But, the relevant "point" has been explained on here previously

Agreed, you did an excellent job of expressing your opinion. That doesn't mean the opinion is correct though.

Of course. However, my opinion is framed by my understanding of what the science thinking is rather than just my own pulled out of the hat opinion - albeit I realise my understanding is very elementary.

The main points about Omicron, predicted by me and others in November, and confirmed by data emerging now, is that it is highly infectious and relatively harmless. Both are important.

And how did you "predict" that? Also, you are wrong.

1. It isn't "harmless" (Or your definition of "harmless" differs significantly from most people's *)
2. It is indeed "highly infectious"

* I suspect your definition of "harmless" is rooted in your idea of: "How harmful is it to me and mine? "

But, IMO (and I wager that of the authorities) that isn't the relevant criteria. They, but not you, are faced with a population of ~60 million people. It's a scale thing.

Then there is that "infectious" thing.

Here we go again! 'A highly infectious virus will spread rapidly though a large population causing a rapid surge in hospital cases (yes, even if "relatively harmless" - to use your terminology) leading to a high peak demand on those services followed by a slower but larger tail of even more cases *'

* The wave is not symmetric in shape.

Then, longer term, the more cases there are, the more people suffering with Long COVID the NHS has to go on dealing with in future.

The contagiousness of it is not controversial, I believe. What it means crucially is that a lot of the prior restrictions that were implemented in previous waves just don't work for it.

What it means crucially is what I tried to explain immediately above. (I live in hope... I think!)

So as I predicted in November this is increasingly looking like the last hurrah of Covid. Between this new diluted version and the success of the vaccination programme, we can see the end of all this. Airlines have been adding back summer holiday flight schedules in a further acknowledgement. Airports are crowded again. And of course the stock market is behaving like Covid is done.

Yep. It did that before, remember?

I mean, here's hoping! Lot's of people have made lots of predictions during this pandemic, haven't they? I remember when it was "all over" in the Summer of 2020. I remember when it was all going to be done "by Christmas" - not sure I remember which Christmas...

But I really don't know - I never like making predictions, particularly about the future.

[swill453]

With hospitalisations still skyrocketing, I'd still say it's too soon to tell (much).

Scott.

[dealtn]

It just seems, for whatever reason, one or two (say) posters don't seem to get it. And will insist on keeping on not getting it. I am unconvinced that yet another pointless round of "debating" it will help, or indeed make the slightest difference. By now - two years on - one either gets it, or one is never going to get it. All IMO - as usual.

What is this "it" you keep referring to?

It seems to me that over those two years much has been unknown, and much that is now known has been changing as that knowledge even among scientists, let alone us mere forum users, has evolved.

Surely you can't be claiming you have known this "it" for those two years, and have been getting it, and letting us all know about it all that time, and that debate is unnecessary, or worse not allowed? If not, what is wrong with civilised debate about it (whatever that "it" happens to be)?

[9873210]

And of course the stock market is behaving like Covid is done.

It's been doing that since March 20, 2020. Or October 30 2020, if you just look at the FTSE.

[ayshfm1]

So.

It is looking like Omi is not an evolution of any of the existing mutations. in other words a pure evolution from the original Chinese one. So where the hell has it been for the last 2 years? Mice most probably, where it evolved near complete immune escape, became more virulent than the common cold, became more benign yet retained the characteristics the T-cells need to spot and kill it.

Then when it had done all these things, it jumped back into humans in Africa (of all places) and spread like wildfire.

WTF!

{edit]
At a mutation rate at least twice as fast as normally expected.

[odysseus2000]

XFool
Uh? The COVID vaccine is called "COVID vaccine" (or whatever the specific terminology), the Smallpox vaccine is called "Smallpox vaccine" (whatever the specific terminology)

Seems simple enough to me!

If as I understand it, the Covid vaccine was never meant to behave like the smallpox vaccine, then some qualification beyond Covid vaccine seems necessary to indicate to the user the expected effect was not to prevent any illness but to reduce the intensity if one gets the virus. By contrast, again as i understand it, the smallpox vaccine was taken to ensure that those who took it did not get ill with smallpox.

It may be as noted earlier that the Covid vaccine has prevented many folk from catching the O variant and that testing and experience show that the Covid vaccine does prevent illness in some people.

However, the covid vaccine as originally 'marketed' did not give an indication that one would need a second and then a booster and in Israel a 4th. If this had been made clear up front perhaps some confusion would have not happened. As far as I know many vaccines last for many years with repeat booster times of 5+years, not weeks as is the situation with the covid vaccine.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

daveh
No the vaccines were developed in a number of places including at Oxford University for the Oxford -AstraZeneca vaccine. This was based on an already existing vaccine based on a recombinant, replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus vector originally designed for a meningitis vaccine. The gene encoding the SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein was spliced in to replace the coding region for the antigen in the original vaccine. Oxford had designed it so that it could be used in that way - plug in different antigens for different diseases - so vaccines could be developed more rapidly.

Different vaccine technologies were developed in different countries/by different companies dependant on the technologies those companies had developed. So Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech used an mRNA based design - very new, but very quick to produce and some other companies used the older method of using whole disabled virus as the antigen, but that took longer to develop and to test. So no it wasn't first produced in Russia (or for that matter in China), it was produced in multiple locations to multiple different designs and the speed at which it was produced depended on the technology, the availability of funding and the speed at which it was tested and approved.

I am confused here as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_V ... 19_vaccine says that the combination vector vaccine was registered on the 11-Aug-2020 where as the AstraZeneca was registered for use https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centr ... in-uk.html on the 30-Dec-2020.

What am I not understanding here?

Regards,

[servodude]

What am I not understanding here?

The skipping of regulatory processes by Putin (so far as to inject his own family as a stunt but strangely not himself)