outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

No, he has not been social.

Like so much these days, less than ideal.

For the first time, the FDA is planning to base its decision about whether to authorize new boosters on studies involving mice instead of humans.

"For the FDA to rely on mouse data is just bizarre, in my opinion," says John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. "Mouse data are not going to be predictive in any way of what you would see in humans."

But others defend the approach, arguing that the country has had enough experience with the vaccines at this point to be confident the shots are safe and that there's not enough time to wait for data from human studies.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/18/1117778748/whats-behind-the-fdas-controversial-strategy-for-evaluating-new-covid-boosters

The Biden administration plans to offer the next generation of coronavirus booster shots to Americans 12 and older soon after Labor Day, a campaign that federal officials hope will reduce deaths from Covid-19 and protect against an expected winter surge.

Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine regulator for the Food and Drug Administration, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not discuss timing, his team was close to authorizing updated doses that would target the versions of the virus now circulating.

Even though those formulations have not been tested in humans, he said, the agency has “extremely good” data showing that the shots are safe and will be effective. “How confident am I?” he said. “I’m extremely confident.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/us/politics/covid-booster-shots-biden.html

I'm honestly a little confused. So these are booster shots ... for the variant that's been circulating for several months now? Isn't there a good chance there will just be another variant that starts circulating by winter, which (here) is several months after labor day? It's been so long since I got my booster that I can't even remember when I got it. October 2021? Nov. 2021? I'm practically at the one year mark, is it going to be another year after this booster? Or are they going to just keep rolling out boosters willy-nilly to various demographics a couple of times a year?

It's pretty clear? This is an omicron-related booster, therefore you're up if you last got boosted in 2021.

So it's a belated booster for the strain that's been circulating for nearly a year already, right? Hopefully they hit a rhythm at some point and make it more like a flu shot, an annual preemptive vaccine based on what has been circulating elsewhere *ahead* of its arrival here.

Someone that has already been second-boosted, are they being told to get this one, too, since it is targeted to currently circulating strains?

I don't understand why they aren't putting out a booster that stops the next variant before it happens

Someone that has already been second-boosted, are they being told to get this one, too, since it is targeted to currently circulating strains?

― Josh in Chicago,

There's some debate (cited in the article). I got my fourth shot in early June and will get jabbed with this one in October.

This is extremely simple: just get the latest available booster as soon as you are eligible (if not before).

otm

Isn't there a good chance there will just be another variant that starts circulating by winter, which (here) is several months after labor day?

As I understand it, the not unreasonable hope is that, as with flu, there are only so many changes to ring and we'll enter into a state where there are different strains but they're drawn from a menu we understand pretty well, and so the annual vaccine will mostly do a good job matching the year's prevailing strain, and every once in a while (as with flu) something new or something unexpected will come up and the vaccine will be less effective that year and we'll have a bad COVID year.

I'll be getting the new booster first day I can!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JTtI3D6lqk

I just mean that I (like many) have waited almost a year for a second booster. I couldn't (and still can't) figure out why, after beating the drum for vaccines and boosters, the most recent second-booster is the one they pumped the breaks on, (officially) limiting it to specific demographics. It does make me almost want to wait for the inevitable one *after* this one. (New! Improved!) I'm not saying there's any logic to that, or that I won't get the new shot. I love vaccines.

Anyway, if this new one addresses specific strains not addressed in past shots, then it's not strictly a booster, is it?

I lied to get mine in June. No regrets.

You can walk into nearly any pharmacy in the US and get a booster without them asking questions. What is your fucking point?

xp

I mean if the booster thing is too complicated for you maybe boosters aren't for you.

It's not complicated, just wondering why the second booster was the one never (again, officially) opened up to the general public. Of course I could have just lied, but ... I didn't.

pretty sure it's a deep state conspiracy

I'm getting the bivalent booster the day it drops. put it in my veins, now.

to answer your question, Josh, right now, most all of the variants seem to be sublineages of Omicron, rather than new variants. While there's debate over whether some of these should be their own new variant rather than considered Omicron, the fact is that this new Bivalent booster is going to likely work against new Omicron subvariants, even if not necessarily as well.

the original vaccines had no Omicron programming and as such, it's fortunate that they're managing to prevent transmission of Omicron at all (and requires being boosted for that to happen). with this booster, this could significantly curtail the spread of Omicron (or at least the symptomatic kind of Omicron), and at least get us closer to perhaps the protection we had against Delta (pre-waning, post-boosting).

the alternative to that is months and months of high transmission. FL has been stuck in "high transmission" for four months prior to cases finally dipping. My friend has a 103.6 fever right now due to getting it while being immunocompromised. she got it from her kids who got it from school.

On that note, a thing that has concerned me but I'm not sure if it's a real thing or not, is that Florida's case drop, which was consistently 16-20% week over week the last few weeks, has stalled. cases are now roughly 3% lower than they were last week.

Lots of people were blaming the return to school, but that seems a bit too soon to cause such an uptick, as it takes time for transmission to show up in reports. I did, however notice that in the last week, testing had increased 2% from the previous week, whereas the week before, testing had been 17% lower than the previous week. And, the positivity rate has gone down 2.6% in the last week despite testing going up 2%.

so I can't tell if it's...

1) kids have gone back to school and caused a little bump (but feel like that's too soon)
2) testing has gone up BECAUSE kids have gone back to school and more facing exposure, so we're catching it more
3) cases are still dropping, but testing is so bad in Florida that any bump in the testing rate is causing an anomaly.

hospitalizations are still dropping at the same rate, and as of last week, the wastewater was still declining rapidly, so no prediction of any 'spike' or resurgence.

this is why I just wanna get the bivalent booster, and get it for my folks

It can be 2 and 3.

that's kind of my leading theory. even though schools aren't really REQUIRING said testing anymore, parents are probably doing it.

and testing was dropping rapidly until last week

a 3% drop is not an uptick

you can keep dropping 20% forever i guess, like an asymptote, but how realistic is that really

Going abruptly from 20% per week drop to a 3% in just a week when you're still considered "high transmission" is not normal.

The slowing in decline typically happens when you reach lower levels of cases. Not where they're currently at.

Yesterday the 7 day average was 6% higher than week before, though there is a data anomaly from last Friday largely responsible for that

okay. but i’m wondering what you gain from this kind of attention to the detail. does this level of differentiation make a difference in terms of how you behave? i can’t help thinking that it’s unhelpful and anxiety producing after a certain point.

Thanks for the details, Neando. There are so many moving parts that it's hard to tell what is causing or not causing what, but for whatever reason I know more people catching covid now than I ever have previously, people who have been very cautious and people a little less cautious alike, all vaxxed and boosted, many double-boosted, some of whom are managing to catch covid for the first time. I also keep hearing more examples of tests (rapid and PCR) missing cases or at least being more unreliable. Still, this is all anecdotal; according to the numbers around here things have been hovering pretty constantly at some modest "medium" level for months. Like the homeland security terror threat level.

When I say "more people catching covid now," though, it's still a relatively small number of people, and thankfully so far every single person I know has had the same cold-like symptoms. (Which, to be fair, can be annoying, especially after a couple of years of people not catching colds.) But at least around here, everyone I know, while still trying to avoid it, is treating it as just a thing you can get, a nuisance, and of course we can thank vaccines for that protection. People I know still test regularly, as a precaution, reliable or not, and isolate as needed/guided. Sort of seems to be working out, knock on wood.

Anyway, I've got a kid back in school right now, and she says she knows one person with covid right now. My other kid is about to go to college, and she's already heard of a few dorm outbreaks from friends who are at school already. No schools, afaict, are testing (or masking), but kids and their families are keeping an eye on things.

okay. but i’m wondering what you gain from this kind of attention to the detail. does this level of differentiation make a difference in terms of how you behave? i can’t help thinking that it’s unhelpful and anxiety producing after a certain point.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, August 26, 2022

He worries about his dad.

yes, that. we're all going to get the new booster when it comes out, granted. but it does drive my behavior as there are some things i won't do during high transmission times that i might be willing to do during low transmission times.

which we haven't had since, well, March?

right. and that feels like the relevant metric. rather than monitoring weekly stats and speculating on what’s driving what might just be statistical noise. i’m sure there is probably a degree of i dunno self-soothing maybe that goes along with the stat monitoring and i don’t want to belittle that. you just want to make sure you’re not driving yourself crazy with it.

i appreciate the concern, but (and I want to say this softly), one thing that bugs me a wee bit about this place is people suggesting I'm 'wigging out' over things when I pay them attention and post about them or express any concern.

now, earlier this year, that was a fair assessment, because I got into a bad mental space and had an outright meltdown on the board. and I'm still not even close to 100% and have moments where I embarrass myself, though fewer lately thankfully.

but for stuff I post like this, which is more innocuous, it feels like, well, sorta condescending to worry about my well-being. I don't think that's the intent, but that's how it's coming across. just as a note of feedback. that doesn't mean I don't want people to care, but questioning why I care about something feels a little belittling is all.

fair enough!

I also assumed that someone in a situation like Neanderthal, who has a good reason to monitor how things are going, but also (I believe) live in a state that would really like to pretend COVID never existed and definitely doesn't now, would feel the need to do some amount of independent research into the figures. Basically, if my family's health depended on it, I wouldn't trust what the state of Florida put out, and would be keeping a close eye on what I could dig up.

Stats for Tennessee look pretty wild right now, up 65% over the last two weeks with some dramatic looking spikes in some counties.

I saw those colors on the NYT map yesterday.

lol Florida back down 4% today from last week. the reason, last Friday's case total rolled out of this 7-day period, and that total was a data anomaly.

my theory is 'schools' right now.

bivalent booster going to be ready after Labor Day. i'm making an appointment as soon as they're available. woot.

Stats for Tennessee look pretty wild right now

I'm sorry, you must be thinking of some other state. Nobody in Tennessee will ever have COVID or abortions again, our Legislature is very clear on that.

as the lord jesus intended

PSA: If you haven’t used up the free USPS at home Covid tests for your household yet, you should do so this week. “Ordering through this program will be suspended on Friday, September 2 because Congress hasn’t provided additional funding”https://t.co/dKVYxEMKdS

— Dr Kathleen Bachynski (@bachyns) August 28, 2022

ty, just ordered some

If you're a Washington or Minnesota resident (might just be certain zip codes? I can't tell from the site), you can also order 2 free sets of 5 tests each month from https://sayyescovidhometest.org/

on the omicron boosters

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02806-5

Buried lede:

Dean Follmann, a statistician at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, says even the marginal benefits of a vaccine based on BA.4 and BA.5 might be enough to justify their roll-out. “It’s probably somewhat better. A lot better — probably not.” Moreover, he says the main message of the analysis should be that any COVID-19 booster is a good one.

yeah, this is dumb. throwing cold water on the bivalent boosters is just going to lead to less people getting them, and the narrative about "similar protection" was based on a non-human study. yes, so was the efficacy of the booster (mice trials), which I'm aware of, so there is some degree of potential that it might not be quite what its producers hoped, but people have been pushing the 'it's no better than regular boosters' narrative since like March, but there is no actual evidence of that in a human trial.

it's not a foregone conclusion that it's going to be the silver bullet people want either, but sick of the throwing cold water shit. we need to try every weapon we have now.

anyway Walgreens has appointments already and i booked one

Cases def trending downward in Florida too.

yep. that little blip I was worried about was temporary and they've resumed declining, as has the positivity rate. all good signs.

Found this thread fairly alarming, particularly coming from a non-alarmist source. (Doubly so since I'm still recovering myself. Nice to think I'm now carrying possibly permanent higher likelihood of heart attack, stroke, etc.) I know some of this has been out there in other studies, but this seems pretty comprehensive and persuasive.

When Dr David Strain encountered a 64-year-old patient on his ward round, the British geriatrician had a bleak epiphany.

Less than six months earlier he had treated the man for Covid-19. Now, the man's deterioration was painful to witness https://t.co/1t7nJwkTJb

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) August 31, 2022

correct me if i'm wrong but the key phrasing there seems to be long term impact on "acute" cases, so the question is what qualifies as acute?