https://mobile.twitter.com/AndreasHale/status/1425137670116691969
Gun to head id bet 60 percent is low, but the thread I posted used 85 percent and, if Iām understanding it right, vax doesnāt get us close to 1 barring natural immunity somehow being a lot better than vax. She did use delta R0=8 which hopefully is a bit high. Probably too simplistic, but part of why I think thereās sort of no way out of COVID case waves for the forseeable future. Best we can do is vaccinate and try to sell society on long-term mitigation.
Did someone in Iceland forget to carry a zero or something?
Improvement in the speed at which mRNA boosters tailored to variants can go from drawing boards into peopleās arms and can be scaled up for worldwide distribution would probably be as close to a silver bullet as we can hope for at this point. Still very much in play.
Iceland is averaging 110 cases a day against a population of 357,000 with 66 percent of itās population fully vaccinated. From an absolute sense there is nothing concerning about those numbers with respect to vaccine efficacy. There has been something reported about the vax covid rates being off. Also important to bear in mind that 357,000 is a really small sample size. Would we draw conclusions about the efficacy of pfizer based upon whatās going on in Orlando? Because Orange County, Florida has 4 times the population of Iceland.
So since our current state of understanding is that there can be no real-world herd immunity, and we know that meaningful mitigation isnāt going to be long-term viable, I guess this essentially guarantees we continue to see more and more infective and possibly deadly variants, right?
Do any of the smart folks here know if there is a theoretical upper bound for how deadly this thing could conceivably get? If we accept no possibility of population immunity and guarantee further spread, it HAS to get worse, right?
I pretty much agree on the punchline. As my wife could tell you, I often focus on disagreements about the details of someoneās argument even when I end up agreeing with their conclusion. She tells me itās infuriating.
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If R0 is 8 Iām not sure it is enough. I think we need a next gen vax that provides broader, more sterilizing immunity or a therapeutic. Former seems more likely than the latter, but my layman, half-educated understanding is that they are like 3-10 years away at best.
Selling people, at least in blue states, on long-term n95 masks and a Marshall project like plan to ventilate buildings should probably be front and center of the agenda today.
Of course virus could just burn itself out or mutate in our favor at some point, but obviously not a plan to count on that
I donāt think thereās any consensus on that yet.
Yah I was using that as like, folks here since it seems like that is the current thinking ITT. I know that isnāt a proven scientific consensus, sorry to imply otherwise.
I donāt see why there would be evolutionary pressure for the virus to become more deadly.
If anything, it seems like the most evolutionarily fit variation would be highly transmissible but have low mortality and morbidity.
Hmm yah I suppose that is true. So far though each notable variant has seemingly been both more transmissible and more deadly, and I guess Iām expecting every day to hear about the next one (spoiler alert: itās gonna be more transmissible and deadly groan)
The mRNA vaccine from Pfizer (PFE.N) and BioNTech (22UAy.DE) may be less effective than Modernaās against the Delta variant of the coronavirus, according to two reports posted on medRxiv on Sunday ahead of peer review. In a study of more than 50,000 patients in the Mayo Clinic Health System, researchers found the effectiveness of Modernaās vaccine against infection had dropped to 76% in July - when the Delta variant was predominant - from 86% in early 2021. Over the same period, the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had fallen to 42% from 76%, researchers said. While both vaccines remain effective at preventing COVID hospitalization, a Moderna booster shot may be necessary soon for anyone who got the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines earlier this year, said Dr. Venky Soundararajan of Massachusetts data analytics company nference, who led the Mayo study.
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I mean, Covid exploded on the world scene in like February/March, and Moderna had itās vaccine formula by like April/May. It was the manufacturing and testing that took a year. There must exist some way to shorten that without compromising safety. Iām not talking on the administrative end, I mean on the experimentation end.
Immune compromised? Hell yeah. Imo
The more deadly it gets the more people will take it seriously and try to stop the spread, so thereās that.
I donāt think what we need is just an mRNA booster. Those are more to keep what we have today. We need the next gen vaxxes with different tech to pan out and provide broader, hopefully close to sterilizing immunity against todayās COVID and potential mutations. Maybe the Novavax one pans out and we donāt have to wait that long, but it is looking increasingly unlikely the mRNA vaxxes are enough to end this, although they are hugely valuable at saving lives and reducing morbidity.
The experimentation takes time. With vax 1.0 production hopefully getting ramped up to vax worldwide and reducing risk of death and harm, we probably should be mitigating rather than cutting corners on the new experimental tech vaccines (not that you are suggesting doing an unsafe vax or anything, just it probably is going to take a bit)
Hereās the rebuttal to that manās gibberish:
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Morbidly obese retired NY cop now working as a hospital security guard. He posted in a prior thread about getting winded changing his bed sheets.
In response to questions about his new photo frame, he wrote that he can avoid getting jabbed and keep his job if he submits to weekly COVID tests.
He added, āIt sucks but I donāt need blood clots, Iāve had two heart attacks already.ā
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