Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[jimmy olsen]

Lol, the eyebrow game on the other guy is the stuff of legends. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2021/aug/23/go-out-and-spread-their-legs-nz-covid-minister-delivers-saucy-advice-video?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1629691111

[Jacob]

BC is apparently introducing vaccine passports, with an announcement today.

[Jacob]

I'm not confident at all. There very well could be. There are, for example, long term health consequences of other respiratory diseases such as pneumonia that can go into adulthood.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-09-tables-508.pdf

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Deaths-by-Sex-Ages-0-18-years/xa4b-4pzv

316 people died from influenza and pneumonia in 2019 in the 1-19 age group. That is roughly comparable to the 430 aged 18 and under that have died from covid (the age groups differ slightly, and the covid period is a bit more than 12 months). A few years ago if you wanted to avoid family gatherings because you don't want to expose your healthy children to the risks of pneumonia - it is your call - but that seems a bit risk averse.

That's pretty encouraging.

Covid is new and it might have worse long term effects on kids or it might not. I don't see why we should approach uncertainty by assuming worse case outcomes, especially when we are talking about multi year periods.

You might be right.

[Neil]

Well, in the US the FDA fully approved the Pfizer vaccine.  I wonder what the antivax crowd who were talking about 'it's not really approved' will switch to now?

[Sheilbh]

So striking again on the increasing Israeli data around waning effectiveness of Pfizer in particular:


Israel started its vaccination program a little earlier than the UK but I feel like the biggest differences are probably 3 week dosing v delayed second dose and also using AZ. I have no idea and I hope someone is looking into what's driving this difference - but my instinct is it's likely to be delayed second doses because that would extend protection for three months. But this feels like an important thing to bottom out.

[Valmy]

Well, in the US the FDA fully approved the Pfizer vaccine.  I wonder what the antivax crowd who were talking about 'it's not really approved' will switch to now?

Well some people just generally hate vaccines, they vastly prefer infectious disease and 400 years of data showing vaccines save lives will not dissuade them. But I do think there are a number of people who are generally pro-public health but have been convinced by all the fear mongering to wait on this particular vaccine and hopefully this will convince some of them to go ahead and take the vaccine.

I hear some people have already gotten their booster shot. I am going to check in with my local pharmacy and see if I can get my flu shot and vaccine booster soon.

[DGuller]

Well, in the US the FDA fully approved the Pfizer vaccine.  I wonder what the antivax crowd who were talking about 'it's not really approved' will switch to now?

Obviously it was approved only because of political pressure, so it doesn't really count as approved.

[Berkut]

I was going to be part of a study on the Pfizer booster, but got excluded because I had a previous positive test for Covid.

[Syt]

Yikes.

[Syt]

7 day incidence per age group in Vienna for the last 120 days:

[Valmy]

Yeah this Delta Variant is every bit as bad as we were warned, actually probably worse. Sucks because I think most of us had been glad to see the pandemic seem to have come to an end by June but nope. Everything sucks again.

I guess positively I did see lots of people lined up to get the vaccine in Walgreens yesterday when I went in for my flu shot. So maybe the FDA approval did get some people motivated.

[Syt]

Also, a comparison US vs UK:

[ulmont]

Also, a comparison US vs UK:

The US problem is that our non-vaccinated people are also (a) disproportionately in the same locations and (b) not taking other preventative measures.  So right now we just have Phase 1 again (but worse, Delta) in a subset (large minority) of the population.

[Sheilbh]

Also the uptake is lower in the US by about 10% in the most at-risk groups and given how serious covid is for those groups even that small-ish margin could have a big impact.

I also think - given the case v hospital rate in the US - that another factor is the UK does a lot of testing compared to most countries (combination of lateral flow and PCR). A big chunk of that is done for schools so we're lower than the average during term-time, but still at about 750k tests a day. Given that the US does less testing (I understand it's about the 1-1.2 million level a day) and that chart it's not clear how may undetected tests there are to hospitalisations.

One other thought is it may be that the people who are most susceptible, because they're not vaccinated are also, I imagine, the least likely to be getting tested before they end up in trouble?

It's less clear that vaccine selection and dosing schedule is likely to be factors here (unlike Israel) because take-up is lower at every age group in the US than in the UK so I think that's probably the bigger factor.

[ulmont]

I also think - given the case v hospital rate in the US - that another factor is the UK does a lot of testing compared to most countries (combination of lateral flow and PCR). A big chunk of that is done for schools so we're lower than the average during term-time, but still at about 750k tests a day. Given that the US does less testing (I understand it's about the 1-1.2 million level a day) and that chart it's not clear how may undetected tests there are to hospitalisations.

Looks like that level, yes.  I checked the last 2 Tuesdays and saw 1.3 and 1.2 million: https://healthdata.gov/dataset/COVID-19-Diagnostic-Laboratory-Testing-PCR-Testing/j8mb-icvb

One other thought is it may be that the people who are most susceptible, because they're not vaccinated are also, I imagine, the least likely to be getting tested before they end up in trouble?

I think no one here is getting tested when nonsymptomatic unless in regular contact with others or required by work.  I'm getting tested weekly now because there's still chess club at the coffee shop twice a week.

And yes, it's definitely uptake differences, but I think those are substantially magnified by having the nonuptaking groups clusted together.