“Injecting Freedom” doesn’t sound like antivaxx … until it does.
I don’t want to say this is wrong, but it’s so much higher than I would have imagined that I can’t get my head around it. In the U.S., there have been about 44 million reported cases. Say that it’s undercounted by about 60%, that gets to roughly 110 million true cases, or about 0.33 cases per person. These regions in Iran are getting hit 7-8 times higher than that?
They got hit with delta in a very low vaxxed population.
So yeah if agree it seems high but I don’t feel great about the recent reinfection research as a whole. I’ve seen other estimates that everyone will get infected every 16 months. Who knows. I would I expect vaxxes mitigate obviously, but how much and for how long just TBD, we should be a lot smarter six months from now (probably should have been more cautious as a country/world for longer while we figured this out!)
Just gonna really suck if it is 2023 and we figure out oh yeah getting infected three times with COVID actually very very bad for you
My dog sitter text me today as I’m halfway to Asheville saying he tested positive for COVID. SUPER! I spent 5 minutes indoors with him yesterday (he was masked and I had the door open) I didn’t want him in my apartment with my dog so had someone else thankfully come grab the dog. CDC says since it was such a short amount of time and I’m fully vaccinated that my risk is incredibly low. I’ll mask indoors as usual and get tested in 3-5 days if I develop any symptoms.
Edit: he was fully vaccinated and used a take home test.
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General heads up that the in-home tests are in and out of stock at Wal-Mart and CVS. I bought 6 tests from Walmart under the general assumption that I’d need/want one or more at some point, and when that point comes I’d want it RIGHT NOW.
Walmart is currently sold out, but CVS is not: https://www.cvs.com/shop/abbott-binaxnow-covid-19-antigen-self-test-2-tests-for-serial-testing-prodid-550147
I’m a little rusty on the effectiveness of testing modalities, but can someone give me some cliffs on how good they (i.e., antigen tests) are. Obviously not as good as PCR, but how good are they exactly. Not motivated enough to dive into this right now. But surely someone here knows.
These have been hard to find in New York, but there was plenty of stock at a pharmacy in midtown (the central business district) earlier this week.
I actually did my first COVID test a couple days ago with one of these take home versions. No high-risk activities, but I did attend an outdoor dinner event with a bunch of vaccinated coworkers, and I just wanted to be sure. Negative!
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I don’t think the situation is that dire. The vaccinated will continue to have much lower death rates and the vaccine makers will make new versions. There maybe some morbidity breakthrough higher than now, but not on the order of non-immunized rates.
(I also don’t put the doomsday breakthrough mutant as a 0 possibility, I’m just saying the obvious that survival odds are much better with good vaccine technology—but nature is a bitch and may figure out how to claim 10s of millions more)
When the researchers used a new formula for calculating the rapid test’s accuracy, they found LFTs were more than 80% effective at detecting any level of Covid-19 infection and likely to be more than 90% effective at detecting who is most infectious when they use the test.
This is much higher than previously thought, they say.
Prof Michael Mina, from Harvard School of Public Health, also part of the research team, said the LFTs could “catch nearly everyone who is currently a serious risk to public health” when viral loads are at their peak.
“It is most likely that if someone’s LFT is negative but their PCR is positive, then this is because they are not at peak transmissible stage,” he said.
Yeah has been better this week, were nowhere last week but got them shipped and found in store earlier this week. Going to buy some more now because school having a COVID outbreak. We did soccer this fall (Low key no indoor time, but maybe an error) and basically every school on the team has an outbreak this week after zero problems the first month so perhaps the northern wave is starting.
I do think it is reasonably likely that we are going to have issues where vaccinated isn’t binary but a continuum so how much protection someone has at any given time is a bit of an art based on strain, time since last vax, etc. Hopefully it is just three shots and durable immunity, but don’t think I’d bet my life on that. I don’t really see a time in the forseeable future where just doing indoor activity is safe without mitigation again.
I’m worried how even in places like SF there is a push to find an end to masking where the conversation should really be about a push to change indoor air permanently and a real real real cautious approach to unmasking (hard for me to envision scenarios at this point where id support unmasking in 2022)
I actually think “immunity” to COVID doesn’t matter. I mean it would be nice, but at the end of the day what matters is not dying. So even if immunity wanes to the point that you will still get COVID if exposed, as long as you don’t die, I don’t think it matters that much.
Once kids can get it, really all we are worried about is olds and unhealthy people who might die despite being double vaxxed and maybe they will need more frequent boosters. For everyone else, double vaxxed is probably enough to fend off death, and triple vaxx really seems like it should do the trick. As far as United States is concerned, at that point it’s endemic and it’s business as usual. If you don’t get vaxxed, you’re willingly playing russian roulette (or you’re one of the few who truly can’t be).
I find the 2.5 claim extremely unlikely, here’s the preprint this is based on:
I can’t talk about the validity of the methods in the paper, but these numbers are very much more estimates based on a model than anything resembling actual measurement. I suspect there’s an error in their methods, there’s been nothing else close to that reported elsewhere.
Hopefully, think we need some more work
on the long-term effects on the vaccinated though. Gonna be not great if we lose grey matter in our brain every time we get COVID.
Also we are gonna need to at least have enough immunity to get hospitalizations down what is happening now is highly unsustainable even without kids.
Six months ago I was in the vax and mostly normal camp, I’m more pessimistic now, at least on the time frame
I’ll admit we (and certainly I personally) don’t really know what the chances of significant long term effects are, so I’m really just guessing. But I am kind of a long COVID skeptic in a lot of ways. I’m not that worried about it, but I could be wrong. That’s just my gut feeling right now.
I was a lot more that way a few months ago. I still don’t buy the hysterical headlines of like 60 percent of people get long COVID or whatever. I do find some of the research on brain matter, kidney function, and heart damage troubling, but obviously am not a medical expert.
We aren’t going to mitigate forever or anything, but I won’t drop dead of surprise if the end result of this is we give back decades of life expectancy gains.
FYI, Whetstone Library usually has free tests you can take home. 1 Per family member. I don’t think they even checked for my Library card when I got them.
Not sure if Dublin might have something similar, but worth checking on or just calling Whetstone and popping down.
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Australia just announced that the borders will open to parents of permanent residents (I.e. mrs rugbys mum and dad)
I’d like to joke about in laws. But this is great news and I’m looking forward to a visit in the new year.
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Dublin library does, but they’ve been out every time I’ve been there.
The legal challenge was backed by 114 scientists, nuclear engineers, research technicians, designers, project managers and other workers at the lab. Some are specialists and have high security clearance for the work they do, which ranges from national defense to infrastructure improvements and COVID-19 research.
LOL, “scientists”.
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