Cases are dropping precipitously near me, but we’re still a couple weeks away from Thanksgiving level and maybe two more after that to get back down to a baseline.
I’m really hoping that’s not just in time for BA.2 or some other new variant to reach here. My girlfriend has gone through a lot the last month and I want to be able to take her somewhere and do something fun. We could use a month or two of low case numbers to make that happen.
I guess the next six months is kind of a moment of truth. Do we get a real flattening? Does Omicron become seasonal or does it rip again in 3-6 months? And we’ll get some Omicron booster data in there too…
My guess is best case is two waves a year, no more severe than Omicron if we’re lucky, each wave and each round of boosters moves us closer to flu-like severitylevels until we get to the floor of severity. Maybe eventually our bodies are good enough at fending it off that the second wave stays small. I expect the Omicron specific boosters to be over 90% effective.
Who knows how many infections or shots it takes to turn this into a flu/cold like thing? It stands to reason that we’d need variant specific boosters against a few variants to achieve that.
I bet the state-by-state rollout fucks with this data. I am fully vaxxed and boosted, but one of those shots was in North Carolina, one was in Maryland, and one was in Virginia. I have no clue what that shows up as in the stats: +1 partially vaxxed person in each state?
Czech government is pushing unvaccinated people to get Novavax. They keep hinting at it not being beholden to the changing your DNA conspiracy theory without saying it.
I mean they know that the conspiracy itself isn’t what matters. Once that conspiracy falls, another will apply. The idea is to retroactively justify an anti-vax position that is by now unchangeable. But that’s their pitch to the anti-vax crowd.
Also my school is tracking cases “in a new way”. No idea what that means other than infected classes no longer need to stay in the same classroom all day, be masked all the time in class, and have lunch sent to them. Sure that’s way better for teaching but I am curious why nothing specific about this new way is mentioned. Makes me thinking that the new way is not actually doing anything.
Yup, those Omicron-specific boosters are going to be key. I see no reason not to expect it to get us back up above 90% efficacy. A multi-valent Omicron and Delta specific booster would be lovely.
Then the question is how many more mutations does this fucker have up it’s sleeve that can infect us efficiently?
Boosters increase protection against death from Omicron in over-50s to 95% – UKHSA
Covid boosters increase protection against death from the Omicron variant to 95% in people aged 50 or over, the UK Health Security Agency said on Thursday.
The UKHSA said that about six months after a second dose of any of the Covid vaccines, protection against death with Omicron was about 60% in those aged 50 and over. However, this increased to around 95% two weeks after receiving a booster vaccine dose.
UKHSA added that data continued to show high levels of protection against hospitalisation from the booster. Effectiveness against hospitalisation was 90% for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot , dropping to 75% 10-14 weeks after the booster.
For Moderna, effectiveness against hospitalisation was 90-95% up to 9 weeks after the booster.
“The evidence is clear – the vaccine helps to protect us all against the effects of Covid-19 and the booster is offering high levels of protection from hospitalisation and death in the most vulnerable members of our society,” said Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at UKHSA.
The UKHSA also issued an initial analysis of vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron sub-lineage called BA.2, which is growing in the UK and Denmark , finding a similar level of protection against symptomatic disease.
“After two doses effectiveness was 9% and 13% respectively for BA.1 and BA.2, after 25+ weeks,” the UKHSA said. “This increased to 63% for BA.1 and 70% for BA.2 from two weeks following a booster vaccine.”
According to a Czech immunologist and epidemiologist, there was an epidemic of RSV in the CR from September to November that mostly affected children. Supposedly there were more cases of RSV than covid during that time frame though no clear numbers were given.
A more disconcerting statement is this (translated from Czech)
Might be true but that’s more ammo for anti-maskers -_-
Kids don’t get it.*