COVID-19: Chapter 7 - Brags, Beats, and Variants

wat

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You look for vaccine your way, I’ll look my way.

That was a weird autocorrect from search to sexy.

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:sob::sob::sob:

Word tho is that turnover is so high I’ll be approved within a day or two.

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They wrote that the length of time between the infections ruled out viral shedding causing a second positive test.

This does not inspire confidence in the competence of the people involved. Could be covid x2 sure, but tests can be positive for a super long time even with negative tests in between.

Read the original source paper… It is linked in the article. It explains everything in more detail:

1st infection in Sept with positive test, then 2 negative tests in December, then second infection with positive test in January

A very similar sentence was in the original paper, but what the authors were saying is that the second test had the South African variant, but the first infection in September was before the variant made it to France or was even described anywhere.

Certainly seems pretty convincing to me.

Of course it’s theoretically possible that the variant just existed earlier and we didn’t know about it. But I think the main problem is a communication problem. WAPO reporter is not communicating what the paper said very well. (Also paper is written in English by authors for whom it is likely not a first language. Even with the editorial process, sometimes the wording is not as precise as it could/should be).

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It’s not convincing. Seen similar scenarios in asymptomatic testing twice in psych patients. It’s probably re-infection, just that line in the paper doesn’t sit well.

Or shit, what if those were all re-infections?

Still very concerning, just not ‘ruled out’ based on that. I’m sure there’s more.

edit: and apologies, reading it back dont like how i came off here. Didn’t mean to be dickish.

The critical piece of info is the that the second test that had a strain that, to our knowledge, did not exist at the time he had his first infection.

I highly doubt you’ve seen any patients where that has been the case.

What is more plausible than reinfection to explain the following series of events.

  1. Patient gets COVID with a positive test in Sept, he is symptomatic
  2. Patient recovers
  3. He has 2 negative COVID tests 2 months after #1
  4. Four months after #1, he then gets symptoms of COVID again, and tests positive with a strain of COVID that as far as we know did not exist when #1 happened

Sure, we can come up with all sorts of explanations that don’t involve 2 separate COVID infections, so above is not definitive proof, but I think all of those alternatives seem less likely to me than 2 separate COVID infections.

EDIT: If your problem is that specific sentence, then the problem is with the WAPO writer and not the research itself. Here is the sentence from the original text:

Clearly, WAPO’s paraphrase is not great. Also if you want to be really nitty, that doesn’t truly rule it out either, for the reason mentioned earlier. But it’s still pretty convincing.

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This is a media criticism, not a science criticism: I’ve seen in a few different fields where when a reporter tries to write about science or other specialized field, they don’t know as much as an expert. They wind up making mistakes. They would probably benefit from a edit by an expert, but my understanding is that usually doesn’t happen. Don’t freak out about mistakes in a news article and don’t assume the article accurately describes the problem.

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Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

FWIW - I think it’s more nuanced than this quote, which comes from noted douchebag Michael Crichton.

I think newspapers usually get the gist mostly right (but not always). But they get there in a shorthand way that often makes zero sense - because to correctly convey every aspect of the story would take more than their allotted word count.

Extrapolating this phenomenon into - “newspapers know nothing mannnnn” leads to severe afflictions such as Roganism, Muskovicia, and 4-hour-work-week-itis.

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Meh just read that South Africa wants to give back its Astrazenica doses because it seems to not really working against the South African variant of the virus. Our hospital might get a delivery of this vaccine this week after an earlier Biontec delivery failed in January. Not happy.

WHO clears way for dispatch of Covid vaccine to Africa

The World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use, clearing the way for vaccines to be shipped to African countries through the Covax scheme.

Covax is a global initiative in which countries pool their resources to support the development of vaccines with a view to ensure that all countries receive a fair supply of effective vaccines.

“Countries with no access to vaccines to date will finally be able to start vaccinating their health workers and populations at risk,” says WHO Assistant-Director General Mariângela Simão.

The vaccine has been found to have 63.09% efficacy and is suitable for low and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements, WHO said.

A group of experts on immunisation assembled by WHO recommended the vaccine for all age groups above 18 years.

The vaccines are produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio in South Korea and the Serum Institute of India.

South Africa last week halted its rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after a study showed “disappointing” results against a new Covid variant that’s dominant in the country.

But experts are hopeful that the vaccine will still be effective at preventing severe cases.

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North Korea has yet to report a single case of coronavirus.

However, the country is due to receive two million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in the coming weeks.

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Are grocery store workers, factory workers, warehouse workers also on that list?. Delivery driver is spending like 90% of their time in a car, don’t even really need to interact with the customer, and only ever have to pick up take out which is usually super low risk.

71 year old mother successfully got an appointment for next Tuesday.

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My sister is in a Novavax trial, experienced some side effects so that seems like a good sign she got the vax.

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Try going to the rite aid site directly, then the Covid vaccine page. We had a similar thing here, where if you click the link on the state website it would only search at that specific store, but if you go to the store’s site directly you can fill in your info once and then click on all of the stores within 100 miles or whatever individually after that. Safeway was the same way - going directly through the Safeway website was the only way to check on more than one store at a time.

Rite aid in PA, you get to a list of 10
Stores nearest the zip code entered and the have to click on each one and check. I’ve been through the state/county site links and started directly on riteaid.com. Ended up in the same place. It does look like it might be different in other states.

Tennessee expanded eligibility to everyone 65 and older today. My parents are in that age group, and they showed up at the vaccine site (a NASCAR track) an hour and a half before it opened. After waiting in their car for 7 hours they eventually got their shots. I’m glad they were able to get vaccinated, but “first come, first served” doesn’t seem like a very equitable distribution plan.

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It’s equitable if you want to prioritize white people with cars.

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I’d also assume that doing drive-through vaxxing is safer for everyone.

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