Good news is straightforward: “Among immunocompetent adults aged ≥65 years hospitalized in the multistate IVY Network, a bivalent booster dose provided 73% additional protection against COVID-19 hospitalization compared with past monovalent mRNA vaccination only.”
Bad news that I’m inferring: It seems like protection against hospitalization is super low for the multiple-mRNA-shots-but-no-bivalent-booster population. “When compared with unvaccinated persons, VE of a bivalent booster dose received ≥7 days before illness onset (median = 29 days) against COVID-19–associated hospitalization was 84%. Compared with persons who received ≥2 monovalent-only mRNA vaccine doses, relative VE of a bivalent booster dose was 73%.” Maybe I shouldn’t be interpreting things this way, but if vaccine effectiveness only increases from 73% to 84% when the comparison group shifts from the mono-vaccinated to the unvaccinated group, that says not great things about the current effectiveness of the mono-vaccination.
Given the low bivalent vaccine uptake, I assume COVID deaths will somehow continue at high levels through 2023. Sigh.
Semi-related question/thought I had: When the CDC calculates excess deaths, they’re relying upon an estimated number of normal deaths. One approach to estimating this death rate would be to use a rolling X-year period, but the problem with that approach is that you’d be including the early years of the pandemic in your baseline estimate, which would bias towards abnormally high “normal” death rates and correspondingly low abnormal deaths.
If I understand this correctly, the CDC is excluding 2020 and later from their baseline rate calculation, which is good if you want ongoing estimates of overall COVID deaths. But at some point, excluding the 3 most recent years of data (or more) is going to leave you with noisier and noisier measures of baseline deaths. I don’t think there’s a good way to fix this, but it’s just one more complication in trying to estimate total effects.
Did that once when doing a self test. I skipped the second nostril and figured if anything has COVID, a booger will and deposited it in the testing dropper thing. Came back negative
We should be investigating whether to boost the population with non mRNA vax tbh since they seem to wane less. I’ve seen estimates below 30 percent VE against hospitalization for six months plus past the last shot for Pfizer/Moderna (population so highly infected now that I don’t totally know how to interpret that). Boosting clearly works to restore protection, but unclear how sustainable regular boosting will be and/or how much mutation we continue to see going forward.
Acute COVID deaths should be lower in the US next year (China makes the world a wild
card) barring new variant, but seems likely to
stay north of 100k annually for the forseeable
future in the US skewed heavily elderly with the wild card being long-term effects.
My wife tested positive this AM, my kids and I all negative. My sister and her family are in LA, staying elsewhere thank goodness, but my 87 year old father is staying with us. He’s in great health, all vaxxed up, and had COVID in July, so those seem like positive things. Currently planning on continuing more-or-less with business as usual, just keeping my wife away and isolated. Hopefully my biggest problem is deciding where to sleep, with my dad in the guest room my choices are pretty limited!
“I had never had Covid in the past few years while living abroad, but got it several days after came back… Everyone I know is getting Covid and having a fever - so if you can stay out of the country recently, don’t come back,” one user on another popular social media platform Xiaohongshu wrote.
I developed an annoyingly painful sore throat yesterday. Kept me up all night, so I tested this morning and was negative. Sore throat and cough have persisted all day. Have felt like I was febrile but never actually had a fever. I had Covid last May, and bivalent booster in October so I’d like to think I’m well protected. Really hoping its nothing and I’m back to normal tomorrow.
I think you buried my post stating the same a few days ago
My opinion, if I’m still allowed one… MRnA vaccines now seriously waning, countries only served by MRnA will experience minor rebound off the back of chinese new infections that will soon be circulating globally. Best combo probably RNA with MRNA boosters (IMO). Time will tell.
Thousands of people who had Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic are still finding that certain foods, toiletries and even their loved ones smell repulsive. All the food and socialising that Christmas brings can make this time of year particularly isolating and tough for those with the condition, known as parosmia.
