Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LordBaal]

Mi wife's arm is really swelled up and she can't move it properly. But she says it's getting better and not worst already.

[Vector]

Mi wife's arm is really swelled up and she can't move it properly. But she says it's getting better and not worst already.

Yeah, my arm was so painful and tender that I literally couldn't stand to have anything as heavy as a bedsheet on it. Couldn't pick up an empty coffee mug. But at least for me I woke up the next morning and it ended.

Hopefully she feels better soon. Being vaccinated is so, so worth it.

[Doomblade187]

I hope he pulls his head out of his ass and just gets fucking vaccinated. 6 months ago when the Delta variant and breakthroughs weren't a thing, it was like "haha, look at that dumbass, hope he doesn't catch it." Now he's once again selfishly putting everyone in the building at risk, AND HE REFUSES TO WORK FROM HOME.

Given the breakthoughs, aren't the vaccinated nearly as much a risk to everyone else as he is?

In most states, the case surge is led by the unvaccinated population. That said, please continue being careful even once vaccinated.

[martinuzz]

New Israeli research shows that natural resistance against the virus works much better than the vaccines.

People who have had corona recently, are protected 13 times as well against the delta variant than people who had 2 Pfizer shots.
People who had corona a long time ago are still protected 6-7 times better against infection with the delta variant than people who are fully vaccinated.

Ofcourse, the combination of being both vaccinated AND having had corona in the past offers even better protection.

It looks like that maybe we should start infecting people who are fully vaccinated and have no obvious underlying health risks with (non-delta) corona strains to boost their resistance. Although, that is ofcourse not without risk.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

[Lord Shonus]

That is a preprint, and thus has not been reviewed for statisitical rigor or even basic math errors. This can be deduced by the giant "This is a preprint article that has not been peer reviewed, do not base any decisions on it" warning.

The last Israeli preprint study to be widely circulated, foe example, used the wrong value when calculatibg case rates.

[Rolan7]

Didn't stop my dad from repeating it as true a couple days ago, heh.

It sounds likely though.  It's important to note that the MRNA vaccine IS still protecting against Delta a bit.  That could represent a much less deadly infection even if it's 13 times more likely to occur.  Hence their suggestion of... exposing vaccinated people to the virus, I guess.

It's still strange to consider intentionally infecting people.  I assume the benefits are that you can schedule around an intentional infection, quarantining and focusing on fighting it off, and that the resulting broader resistance may be worthwhile against future strains.

[Zangi]

Sounds really dumb if there are no conditionals for quarantine and/or other mitigation for further spread. 

Since there is that one chance the virus further evolves and really takes off, after being given so many opportunities to reroll attributes.

[nenjin]

People who have had corona recently, are protected 13 times as well against the delta variant than people who had 2 Pfizer shots.

Of course, even if actually true, you have to survive getting Corona first to cross that bridge.

[None]

I don't buy it, really. If the goal is to have antibodies to prevent future illness, what's the difference if they came from a vaccine versus from infection? It's not like the spike protein is radically different, or the vaccine wouldn't be effective against delta at all.

[nenjin]

Can't say, not a scientist. Someone would likely make the argument that an an anti-body response to an "all natural virus" is stronger/better than a synthesized one.

[Starver]

((Yep, nenjin, you're in the right zone, SFAICT; you ninja, you...))

The difference is that "the whole Corona" presents a dozen or more (maybe a lot more, depending upon how it crumbles) biomarkers that the immune system can later spot and immediately jump on. And even if the spike in the new variant is radically different, there's going to be a lot of other common features.

The vaccines (not being whole-Corona, either weakened or 'killed' or mushed up) tend to just present (one, maybe more than one, version of) the spike, which doesn't give the same breadth of preparedness (edit: though it is probably the single best target to actually try to target, which is why we do).

Right now, Corona is being selected 'in the wild' for variations that do better, which with a spike-based vaccine in its trial-population (the 'terrain' across which it wishes to survive) means spike-mutations are more likely, as if to sneak by the cops with a photofit by wearing a different style of spectacles (depends on the cop, though works more than without).

It at least takes some of the selective pressures off other changes (the efficacy of the internal payload, for example) and booster shots newly trained to represent "Groucho glasses"-wearing spikes (as it were) can be brought in for those that are sufficiently escaping the previous narrow net and developed other more insidious[1] mutations by chance/mix'n'match.

I'm not happy with actively helping the virus find more solutions to get past the immune system (vaccination + live-inocculation, times a huge population = higher chance of breakthroughs that surprise everyone a little further down the line), but that's just notoriously unreliable statistical instinct and someone else (whose Chair of Immunology is more than the "arm-" variety) should probably run through the numbers and mechanisms involved, rather than liddle-old-me.


[1] Could be more subtle, for longer infectivity upon others, rather than actual greater illness and ultimately deadliness on a per-case basis. In fact, it's likely that'll be the long-term drift, the longer it goes without extinguishing itself by killing off its 'hosts'.

[ChairmanPoo]

New Israeli research shows that natural resistance against the virus works much better than the vaccines.

People who have had corona recently, are protected 13 times as well against the delta variant than people who had 2 Pfizer shots.
People who had corona a long time ago are still protected 6-7 times better against infection with the delta variant than people who are fully vaccinated.

Ofcourse, the combination of being both vaccinated AND having had corona in the past offers even better protection.

It looks like that maybe we should start infecting people who are fully vaccinated and have no obvious underlying health risks with (non-delta) corona strains to boost their resistance. Although, that is ofcourse not without risk.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

((Yep, nenjin, you're in the right zone, SFAICT; you ninja, you...))

The difference is that "the whole Corona" presents a dozen or more (maybe a lot more, depending upon how it crumbles) biomarkers that the immune system can later spot and immediately jump on. And even if the spike in the new variant is radically different, there's going to be a lot of other common features.

The vaccines (not being whole-Corona, either weakened or 'killed' or mushed up) tend to just present (one, maybe more than one, version of) the spike, which doesn't give the same breadth of preparedness (edit: though it is probably the single best target to actually try to target, which is why we do).

Right now, Corona is being selected 'in the wild' for variations that do better, which with a spike-based vaccine in its trial-population (the 'terrain' across which it wishes to survive) means spike-mutations are more likely, as if to sneak by the cops with a photofit by wearing a different style of spectacles (depends on the cop, though works more than without).

It at least takes some of the selective pressures off other changes (the efficacy of the internal payload, for example) and booster shots newly trained to represent "Groucho glasses"-wearing spikes (as it were) can be brought in for those that are sufficiently escaping the previous narrow net and developed other more insidious[1] mutations by chance/mix'n'match.

I'm not happy with actively helping the virus find more solutions to get past the immune system (vaccination + live-inocculation, times a huge population = higher chance of breakthroughs that surprise everyone a little further down the line), but that's just notoriously unreliable statistical instinct and someone else (whose Chair of Immunology is more than the "arm-" variety) should probably run through the numbers and mechanisms involved, rather than liddle-old-me.


[1] Could be more subtle, for longer infectivity upon others, rather than actual greater illness and ultimately deadliness on a per-case basis. In fact, it's likely that'll be the long-term drift, the longer it goes without extinguishing itself by killing off its 'hosts'.

Worth noting that there PLENTY of reports to the contrary before the current waves. I've not looked at the paper (and I likely wont in the near future as I'm having a lot of more immediate problems to deal with these days ) but a priori I don't rule out that it's a statistical fluke (ie: prevention paradox)

[Starver]

I was mostly replying to None's "not really buying it" specific issue, of course.

And it is still better to be 'infected' with the vaccine[1] than the virus, and far, far better for anyone I might subsequently be in a position to onward-infect with the virus (but not at all with the vaccine - which is probably for the best, despite some logistical attractiveness if it could be).

Both suppress future susceptibility, but any actual advantage (as outlined) must be balanced by the trouble caused by untrammelled Covid in the very first instance.


The stats-juggling in the Israeli thing (which I haven't read, but heard of through other channels the other day) is the thing I'd be looking at if I was seriously wanting to comb through it. An old job of mine was IT support for clinical study analysis teams and I may still have a little of the knowledge about that which I gained through osmosis[2]. There are both 'tricks' and pitfalls that can be encountered when not working with quite enough vigour (and/or honesty, but I'm not going to make that suggestion) such as that Prevention Paradox but also Reversion To Mean, etc, and the general risks of underpowered studies being nitpicked for too many possible (and possibly baseless) correlations.


[1] Though I suffered a fever, the risk to me was much lower than with the real thing. And without any significant onward risks.

[2] Added to my specific A-Level maths'n'stats education, and came into physics/etc modules in higher education, though you could probably count that as 'Rusty' at best.

[Gentlefish]

Haa, my entire state of Idaho only has ~60 ICU beds. For all ICU needs.

Thanks, COVID.

[martinuzz]

From april to august this year, 15222 people were hospitalized with Covid in the Netherlands.
Of those, only 4.6% were fully vaccinated.
7.4% were incompletely vaccinated.
88% were not vaccinated.

Vaccination prevents 95% of hospitalizations from Covid, and even 97% of ICU admissions.

People, get that vaccin if you can.