Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

My mom's been vaccinated for a while, but when she told me last night that she's going on a Viking River Cruise in October (she bought the tickets in late 2019) I immediately thought that I hope she's got her papers in order. (AFAIK I won't have to be her executor when she does go; one of her sisters has that job.)

Yeah, my mom is heading to a couple of countries in Africa for a few weeks, with multiple flights, regular required covid tests, etc. I was a bit nervous for her, but she's vaxxed, of course, and where she's heading is rated by the CDC travel map at level 1 or 2, which is lower than the US and the UK (where she is traveling later this summer).

BTW, you want new era, even the Red Cross (through whom I went to donate blood this morning) no longer requires masks for vaccinated staff or donors.

My reading is that 4% have one shot, 2-3% are fully vaxxed*, but the data are such a mess that I went with the most generous framing.

*as much as variants allow

My understanding is that fully vaxxed is fully vaxxed and none of the current variants warrant an asterisk?

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It’s a weird headspace here esp for those of us that are double jabbed, we are demob happy cause basically everything’s open (which coincided with a big improvement in the weather) but the whole 6 weeks since opening everything there has been this constant doomsaying of delta delta delta be careful (but there will be no reversal of policy obv)

I personally didn’t feel like the football was being snatched away when they postponed declaring the pandemic over with half the population vaccinated - because that was always fucking mental - but I’m feeling the dissonance as much as anyone. Also the weather turned shite again

none of the current variants warrant an asterisk?

as you say, delta delta delta, and it seems wildly optimistic to suppose that there won't be even stronger variants by 2022

That’s not really how it works, man.

sic burn

I mean I hasten to add I’m literally not an expert but a virus doesn’t have infinite degrees of freedom to evolve in response to evolutionary pressure, there’s no MegaPolio or HIV-1-Max

88% effectiveness (i.e., reducing your risk by 88% versus 93% against Alpha) hardly warrants an asterisk. the asterisk that could be attached based on what we know 'now' is that the temporary protection you get after one shot is significantly lower , which means you can't bank on the "oh well, I'm 80% protected" if exposed before your second shot. that's a non-negligible dip, and basically means you're at risk for 5-6 weeks after your shot.

as far as variants getting stronger, maybe, variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet). it's not the same thing as antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

in terms of viral evolution, killing the host is actually bad for the virus's survival, because it decreases the ability to spread.

I didn't say infinite! but it seems probable that at least Brazil, a concentrated population with a massive outbreak and little mitigation against spread, will evolve a newbie

and basically means you're at risk for 5-6 weeks after your shot.

when do you anticipate ppl in Australia are getting their second shot tho

as far as variants getting stronger, maybe, variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet). it's not the same thing as antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

curious about this - I've assumed that weaker variants just aren't getting noticed or researched in detail because they're less concerning (and they don't replicate themselves as well, so peter out before study can be done), but are they just not happening?

a newbie

(although aiui the Gamma variant was previously being considered as two strains before being downgraded to one, so maybe they're at capacity)

killing the host is actually bad for the virus's survival

covid isn't nearly fatal enough for this dynamic to affect its transmission.

variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet)

Oh I'm sure it's happened. But we won't see it because they'd be outcompeted by stronger variants and wouldn't persist in the population.

Yeah I also don’t know what I’m talking about but I really think the only thing is to just get everyone vaccinated and remove the “novel” aspect of the virus and then hopefully it’s one of those that’s just around during the winter months with minimal damage

Obv the situation in aus is dire (& more so in India, Brazil &c)… we are so far from the end of this but I can’t be worrying about deadly super strains just yet - I worried about vaccine escape at one point but the technology has been shown to work and then some, we just need world govts to do the necessary (& like obv I don’t feel great about this as a dry run for climate disaster but let’s see)

xps I keep hearing the conventional wisdom that a virus becoming endemic/more transmissible corresponds with it becoming less severe but idk

Back to Australia for a bit. Imagine for a moment, that Donald Trump really was a billionaire many times over and, having paid for anti vax adverts that got banned ( too slowly) from the radio, was using some of his fortune to mail out anti vaccine bullshit to people in low income, often immigrant communities in Melbourne. People who were particularly hard hit by the second wave last year.

This evil clown is Clive Palmer, and sad to say that you’re more likely to see one of his yellow misinfo sheets than any kind of public information campaign from the government (or anyone else).

The rollout is a shambles and slowing down not speeding up.

than any kind of public information campaign from the government

oh come now

Brief to the highest paid comms dept in Aus during a global health emergency: Write an expensive letter minus ANY urgent calls to action + give a redundant phone number | be as non-committal as possible + allude to a certificate that doesn't exist. #COVID19Aus @ScottMorrisonMP https://t.co/cSrxD5MGVV

— Louisa Deasey (@louisadeasey) June 20, 2021

I got my breakfast out this morning and, for my sins, read the herald sun. You wouldn't know there was a vaccine rollout going on until you go to the opinion pages. To be fair there was a piece by a melbourne Uni public health academic explaining the risks of Astra and the cartoon was mildly lampooning ScoMo and vaccines. There was barely any coverage of the Sydney outbreak. The lack of urgency anywhere is galling.

The @CDCgov must be the core of the nation's public health infrastructure, but in COVID19, its failings have been notable and literally disastrous. @JInterlandi's diagnosis of CDC's decay should launch a national conversation on how to rebuild it.https://t.co/23rkv8C11I

— David Michaels (@drdavidmichaels) June 20, 2021

Not a Covid fan but this is class https://t.co/VI5D04x87i

— Bob (@Robbie_OR) June 21, 2021

a ray of hope in these dark times

Australian PM couldn't even get a date with Biden at the G7, and secretly organised a side trip to Cornwall to look at the gravestones of his ancestors. But he couldn't find it, so put the flowers on another grave and went to the pub.

Now he's home and not doing the mandatory armed-guard quarantine at his own expense that every other Australian who can afford to return home* has to do. But he called in to commercial radio to say that he can't promise non-government Australians will be able to travel or see family by Christmas 2022, because he saw data about how the virus is dangerous while he was travelling overseas, so is just going to see what happens to the UK and not draw up any other plan.

(*He took 40 or more staff on the trip - ten have also been permitted to skip quarantine, while 30 are being paid $200 a day compo to quarantine. Except they get to do so in student accomodation, because nearly every case of covid in Australia in the last year has happened due to the paid hotel quarantine being unsafely run.)

Hey, so my second appointment for my moderna shot is like way after the recommended interval - 28 to 40 days, as far as I could tell from reputable sources. This seems not unusual, here in the UK at least. Should I be worried?

No.

My second shot was two and half months after the first shot.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-it-safe-to-delay-a-second-covid-vaccine-dose/

I think three months is not uncommon in the UK?

It was 12 weeks, now it's 8 iiuc.

Daniel_Rf you will have equal if not better protection two weeks after your second dose as someone who got their second dose on the "recommended schedule". So no need to worry in the long run. But you should assume you have very little or no immunity until that second dose.

just realizing the US REALLY hasn't used J&J much - 97% of the administered shots were mRNA (Moderna/Pfizer). It's not known yet how J&J does against Delta, but they're guessing it might be closer to how AstraZeneca is doing.

I have to wonder if the greater use of mRNA vaccines may help blunt the forthcoming localized surges in part of the country, at least when we cross 50% fully vaccinated threshold. it's not going to be enough to stop it outright, but I can't find data on how many of each type of shot was given in the UK to compare (I don't think they publish it, per OurWorldinData).

I wonder if the low use rates on J&J can be used as a proxy for how well or poorly the vaccine effort has reached into the homeless, migrant and indigent communities, where a single dose vaccine is going to be the most obvious choice because of the difficulty of scheduling a followup dose. I know it can't be a perfect proxy, because one of my sisters, who as a condo-owner in Seattle would have been a perfectly good candidate for an mRNA vaccine but she received J&J instead. Not sure why.

I can't find data on how many of each type of shot was given in the UK to compare

UK is mostly AstraZeneca - the standing joke is we're getting the cheap, rubbishy British vaccine - I hardly know anyone who's had Moderna.

i believe the az/mRNA breakdown in the UK is in the ballpark of 70/30 (almost no mRNA early on to older people, but almost all mRNA now that the focus is on younger people, who are told not to get AZ).

there are reasons to think the US will do (is doing?) "better" with delta than the UK: UK has slightly more people vaccinated, but more people still waiting for second dose and far fewer people with double mRNA protection.

basically US situation looks at a very high level more like israel, i.e. just over half the population full vaccinated with mRNA. cases fell much faster in israel because the rollout was faster and smoother and coincided with stricter lockdown measures, but the end states will hopefully be somewhat similar.

the challenge in the US is it's a big country with huge georgraphic and social/economic disparities so there's going to be large pockets (regions/states) where delta rages, which might make getting to ~= israel levels nationally tricky.

UK/Indian subcontinent, lots of links and travel to and from.

right, definitely that too, although the "protection" the US has there will slow things down not stop them.

Definite suspicion that, post-Brexit, the Tories were loath to alienate Modi by restricting travel to and from India until the very latest they could get away with.

there are definitely counties of FL that I think are going to get ravaged.

not where I live, thankfully.

look at that outbreak in the Manatee County government office.

caek and Neanderthal, what is the basis for thinking mRNA vaccines are so much better than the other ones?

In its Phase 3 trials (i.e. without newer variants) J&J reduced moderate to severe cases by 66%. AZ's phase 3 was a shitshow.

In real world study (i.e. with newer variants), Pfizer and Moderna reduced all cases (including mild and even asymptomatic) by 90%: https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/29/real-world-study-by-cdc-shows-pfizer-and-moderna-vaccines-were-90-effective/.

(also side effects)

i think i posted the email i wrote to my family when we had the choice to get J&J the next day or pfizer in a week or two and i explained why i thought we should wait. that has more detail. but i cannot open this whole thread to find it.

AZ and J&J are pretty good. if you'd have told me a year ago we'd have two vaccines that are above 50% effective and are massively less risky than being vulnerable to covid, and we'd have before the one year anniversary i'd have been thrilled.

but the mRNA vaccines are absolutely the greatest successes of 21st century medicine: given to hundreds of millions of people so far, almost perfectly safe, and almost perfectly effective at both protecting the recipient against severe cases *and* stopping the spread by surpressing mild cases (which wasn't even a goal of the trials!)

i remember the day the first mRNA phase 3 results came out. absolutely staggering. again, the threads here are too long to find it, but i'm sure i posted here.

caek i'm sure that i've read that you can't just say AZ is 60% against Delta, vs Pfizer 90-odd%, because of differences in how long it takes AZ to reach full effectiveness and in dose scheduling. i'm thinking of this actually - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/22/pfizer-and-astrazeneca-highly-effective-against-india-covid-variant

there is a long tweet thread about this that i can't find now. i was just wondering if there were something newer or if that's the study you're talking about.

it's frustrating trying to understand this stuff. some studies are about whether a vaccine stops infection at all. some are about whether they reduce hospitalisation rates. for instance this one:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/uk-study-finds-vaccines-offer-high-protection-against-hospitalisation-delta-2021-06-14/

PHE said that the Pfizer/Biontech COVID-19 vaccine was 96% effective against hospitalisation from the Delta variant after two doses, while Oxford/AstraZeneca's offered 92% protection against hospitalisation by Delta.

but the mRNA vaccines are absolutely the greatest successes of 21st century medicine: given to hundreds of millions of people so far, almost perfectly safe, and almost perfectly effective at both protecting the recipient against severe cases *and* stopping the spread by surpressing mild cases (which wasn't even a goal of the trials!)

this does seem pretty good yeah

Oxford/AstraZeneca's offered 92% protection against hospitalisation by Delta

Hospitalization is a significant indicator, but you can have long term health effects from a case not requiring hospitalization. Ideally, you want any viral infection at detectable levels to have no symptoms at all. The mRNA vaccines really shine in that regard.

This thread is great at making us poor AZ saps feel really good about life.

lol seriously. as someone who has a vested interest in how good the AZ vaccine is i kinda want to include it in the 'modern miracles' category too! and if it's not really a modern miracle... how come?

you can't just say AZ is 60% against Delta

no, you can't. based on the shitshow AZ phase 3 trial it's probably about 70% effective against *serious cases* caused by the original strain. it's likely less effective against delta than against the original strain given the evidence about delta's transmisability. it's certainly less effective at stopping mild/asymptomatic cases, although they didn't measure that in the trial i the interests of time (neither did any of the others, but it's super important if your goal is to stop the disease spreading in addition to protecting the people who receive the vaccine).

you also can't say the mRNA vaccines are 90% effective against delta because there are no studies yet afaik. it's clearly not 100% effective as evidenced by the fact there are plenty of cases among vaccinated people in the US where almost everyone got an mRNA vaccine. but we do *know* mRNA vaccines are 90% effective against even *asymptomatic cases* earlier this year (with the kent/SA strains circulating). that's the study i linked, which is different to the one you linked.

note the one you linked is focused on symptomatic cases and even then is unambiguously saying that that pfizer provides more protection than AZ. the one you linked to was conducted in the UK, where the dose spacing is both long and changing, so that's a confounding variable and might be what was discussed in the twitter thread you saw. but i hadn't seen that study and my point is not dependent on it.

“This study provides reassurance that two doses of either vaccine offer high levels of protection against symptomatic disease from the B.1.617.2 India variant and we expect the vaccines to be even more effective at preventing hospitalisation and death,” said Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at PHE.

this is both true and the right thing for a public health authority whose goal is to protect the most number of people to say, especially if you're logicistically constrained. and if your goal is to protect only yourself it's perfectly fine advice to follow. but it's not at all the full story. i don't want to say you're being lied to or that you shouldn't get the first one offered to you. but if you have a choice you should get pfizer or moderna and it's not even close. and this is especially true if you live with people who can't get vaccinated (e.g. children, immunocompromised, republicans you don't want to die, etc.).